TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 99 (August 2018)

FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial: August 2018

SCIENCE FICTION

A Bond as Deep as Starlit Seas
Sarah Grey

Angels
Bruce McAllister

The Atonement Path
Alex Irvine

Project Extropy
Dominica Phetteplace

FANTASY

Treesong
Sheree Renée Thomas

Scavenge, Rustic Hounds!
Manuel Gonzales

Here’s What I Know
Dennis Danvers

A Compendium of Architecture and the Science of Building
Kate Elliott

NOVELLA

Native Seeds
Catherine Wells

EXCERPTS

Sam Hawke | City of Lies
Sam Hawke

NONFICTION

Book Reviews: August 2018
LaShawn M. Wanak

Media Reviews: August 2018
Christopher East

Interview: P. Djèlí Clark
Christian A. Coleman

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

Sarah Grey

Manuel Gonzales

Alex Irvine

Kate Elliott

MISCELLANY

Coming Attractions, August 2018

Stay Connected

Subscriptions and Ebooks

Support Us on Patreon or Drip, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard

About the Lightspeed Team

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

© 2018 Lightspeed Magazine

Cover by Waiji Choo

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

Editorial: August 2018

John Joseph Adams | 154 words

Welcome to issue ninety-nine of Lightspeed!

Our cover story this month is an original science fiction short by Sarah Grey (“A Bond as Deep as Starlit Seas”), illustrated by Waiji Choo. We also have original SF from Alex Irvine (“The Atonement Path”), along with SF reprints by Bruce McAllister (“Angels”) and Dominica Phetteplace (“Project Extropy”).

Plus, we have original fantasy by Manuel Gonzales (“Scavenge, Rustic Hounds!”) and Kate Elliott (“A Compendium of Architecture and the Science of Building”), and fantasy reprints by Sheree Renée Thomas (“Treesong”) and Dennis Danvers (“Here’s What I Know”).

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 the ebook-exclusive reprint of the SF novella “Native Seeds,” by Catherine Wells. Our book excerpt this month comes from Sam Hawke’s debut novel, City of Lies.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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

A Bond as Deep as Starlit Seas

Sarah Grey | 6920 words

Don’t sell her.

The thought rises like a tide in the back of Jeri’s mind, where she’s spent three Nikutan launch cycles struggling to contain it. It leaves her breathless, drowning in guilt, and trying to hide it from the krosuta-whitened stare of the Henza abbess.

This is Cleo, not a load of ore. This will break her.

And how could it not break her? She’s a lumbering old Juno-class cargo beast, poor Cleo, one of the earliest models, clumsy with emotive-adaptive programming, hungry for adventure. Every vent and door and switch—even the color of Cleo’s walls—is designed to respond to the crew’s emotional state, to warm a chill, to feed a hunger pang. To console the lonely tears that might come the first time a young human captain, fresh off Icara’s glitter-sand shores, sails alone through three unbroken circuits of the lithium moons.

Less a ship, in fact. More an enormous hound dog, red-buffered carbocine hide mangy with age and radiation. Leashed to her solar bay at Port Sud, waiting for her captain to return.

Drooling up at the sky, eager for the chase between stars.

Loyal.

All while her captain stands in a Henza temple, preparing to sell her off.

Abbess Ocala waits, smiling, pale and still. She holds the final contract slate out to Jeri, but doesn’t press. She might as well be making an offering, so gentle are those whitened eyes, so peaceful the turn of her tattooed lips. The towering granite-carved goddess of trade, Eloji, looks down on them, keeps guard over the smoky negotiation quarter of the Henza Nikute temple where the two of them stand; even the goddess, eyes jeweled blue as an Icaran sea, looks as if she understands the ache of letting go.

Bill of Sale, reads the vertical Nikutan script across the face of the slate. Mooncarver Juno Prima. Vessel Identification Code CLE04451103.

Jeri accepts the slate. The abbess gives a little bow, smiles wider. The slate’s shockingly heavy, as if the contract’s etched in lead. The temple incense, thick as honey and grassfire, seems suddenly overwhelming, oppressive.

But the numbers, the numbers. A mantra of asset and increase. Thirty-seven percent gain in acceleration. Eighty-three percent decrease in fuel consumption. Fourteen percent expansion in cargo capacity. Sixty-five-point-eight percent improvement in sustained cruising speed. Compared with Cleo, the Archer is simply a better ship. An advantage. One Jeri’s finally in a position to afford.

Don’t do it. Don’t sell her.

Abbess Ocala raises an eyebrow. “You’re reconsidering.”

“No,” Jeri snaps, then regrets it. The Henza abbesses, kind smiles aside, are known for shrewd dealing, for widening the cracks in a customer’s resolve. “I’m just confirming the terms. No salvage. It’s in the contract?”

Again, a peaceful smile, a nod. “The ship would be valuable as scrap, of course,” she says. “Carbocine’s selling high right now. Titanium, too, in the right markets.”

“I won’t sell, then.” She imagines Cleo picked apart, her ruby-red dermal buffer peeled back, her carbocine shielding sliced away, her titanium skeleton laid out, bare and pale, in the ghost-white light of the distant Nikutan sun. She heaves the slate toward Abbess Ocala. “If she’s headed for scrap, I won’t even negotiate.”

The abbess waves her hand; her fingertips are ringed in platinum, frosted with ice-blue stones. “You’ve been reasonable with your asking price and respectful in your negotiations. In any event, we have a buyer in need of an entry-level mining vessel. An ideal exchange.”

“I want it in the contract.”

The abbess blinks. Her whitened Henza eyes are unnerving, her pupils invisible through the krosuta glaze. Is she calculating? Scrutinizing? Her smile is bland but beneficent, her lips rich with the blue ink of high Henza rank. Could she, perhaps, be sympathizing?

“It is in the contract, of course. As promised,” says the abbess. “But I understand your concern, so I offer my verbal assurances as well: Your ship will not be scrapped.” She gestures at the slate.

There. In the rightmost column. Conditions of Surrender. Item one: Salvage Prohibited.

“As I’ve told you,” says the abbess, “we have a buyer.”

Jeri lifts a hand, places her thumb at the slate’s top right corner, then presses her ring finger to the bottom left. Her trade reputation is high on Nikute, as it is in every system within a hundred light years; her prints authorize instantly. A single Nikutan word appears, scripted in bright Henza blue.

Neccima.

A sharp word, so cold and final. The first Nikutan a hauler learns. It is done.

I’ve done it, I’ve signed her away, Jeri thinks. I’ve let my Cleo go.

The thought leaves her gasping.

The abbess takes the slate back. She is speaking words, making shapes with her mouth that move the air, shift the whorls of incense in the patterns of nonrefundable and currency exchange fee and wisest of the holiest, Eloji. Jeri doesn’t respond. Her fingertips have gone numb—I’ve let my Cleo go—and she can hardly hear through the buzzing shock of what she’s done.

Thirty-seven percent gain, she tells herself. Sixty-five-point-eight percent improvement. Percent of what? The numbers are abstractions. Cleo is real. An advantage, she thinks, shoving back at this avalanche of guilt, but already the mantra’s lost its magic.

“You will unbind your identification from the ship before compline tithes,” says the abbess. “Contact us when it’s done, and once we’ve confirmed—”

“Wait,” Jeri says. “I need to meet the buyer.” The words surprise her; she hadn’t intended to speak them aloud. An unjustifiable request, especially now that the contract’s authorized.

The beneficent blue-inked smile evaporates. “That’s not in the contract.”

“I don’t care.” Jeri shudders at the desperation in her own voice. Gentler, she thinks. Respectful. “Please. Just ask the buyer. I’m not backing out, I just want to meet them.”

A blank stare, white as Icaran pearl.

“You can ask, can’t you?”

The abbess tightens her lips. “It’s not in the contract. However, as I’ve said, you’ve been respectful, and we hope to trade with you in the future.” She tilts her head, blinks. “We will arrange it, if we can.”

• • • •

Jeri lays her right palm on Cleo’s hull, just outside the frame of the crew gate. The ship’s dented red hide is warm, soft as shoe leather, the combined effects of the solar refuel and the exothermic dermal buffer regeneration process. “It’s me, girl,” she whispers. “I’m home.”

The Juno class can recognize crew by the lines of the hands, the prints of the fingers, the pitch and lilt of the voice, the hue of the skin, even the unique chemical compounds excreted in sweat. All of the above, in fact, and more, should the captain desire exhaustive security measures.

A whisper and a touch: that’s the combination the younger, unworn Jeri chose seventeen years before, when she and Cleo first launched. A personal connection, more than the mere opening of a lock.

Cleo opens the gate and Jeri steps through.

Inside, Cleo’s walls shimmer. Green paneling, deep as the sea, explodes into glittering sheathes of gold. Just like schools of wheatfish, Jeri thinks, surfacing from the Arkwright Abyss off her grandmother’s barge on Icara.

This is a game Cleo plays. If Jeri touches the walls, the golden streaks will race away, like fish startled by a fishergirl’s hand. They’ll shift color, turn squid-pink or white as widowsharks; they’ll shrink or grow; they’ll race down the hall toward the galley and wait, swirling, for Jeri to follow.

Cleo is happy to see her.

No, she tells herself. The ship just senses you’re sad. It’s programmed to cheer you up.

Jeri can’t bring herself to reach out. The golden streaks circle, then fade.

“Cleo,” she says, but all that comes out is a brittle whisper, a choke. She tries again. “So, Cleo. Some things are going to change soon.”

The ship thrums; her walls fade to purple-black. There’s a low growl from deep in her core. She’s lighting up her engines, shifting out of dormancy. Getting excited for launch.

Jeri bites her lip. It bleeds. The pain’s like an anchor; it grounds her.

“There’s someone you’ll meet, soon. And then . . . then I’ll be gone.” The purr dies down, the walls lighten to gray. “Just for a bit, Cleo, okay? Just for a bit. Then we’ll head back toward the Michener system. Or maybe even farther, maybe—”

Jeri feels the lie spinning out of control and stops herself. No, she thinks. Tell her the truth.

Acceleration. Fuel use. Sustained cruising speed.

An advantage.

It’s only a machine.

“Cleo. Listen. You’ll be meeting someone new tomorrow. Someone special. And then you’ll have lots of fun. I promise.”

Cleo’s walls shift to violet again; her engines stay low, a soft stir below Jeri’s feet, resigned but hopeful.

She’s dreaming of bright golden moons, Jeri thinks. She’s dreaming of asteroid fields. The thought is a knife in Jeri’s heart.

These old Juno-class ships, they were built for adventure.

Jeri steps forward and presses her cheek to Cleo’s wall. Golden streaks burst on the surface around her face, fade to silver, swim away.

Just a machine, she thinks, just a machine. Warm inside and out.

• • • •

“Is the climate control broken?” asks the buyer. Tria, she calls herself. She’s a tall woman, youthful but gaunt in the tithe-starved fashion of the Nikutan bourgeoisie, may Eloji bless them for giving so well. She wears a rough, unbleached tunic and clutches the hem, fanning herself with the loose fabric.

“No,” says Jeri, “The temperature’s intuitive. It’s my preference. She—the ship, I mean—it will intuit your comfort levels and adjust.”

“You like it this hot?”

Jeri flushes, suddenly aware of how warm the air around them really is. Moist, too. Cleo, sensing a stranger’s gaze, has painted the walls with soft-moving rivers of cool violet and blue, but she’s ramped up the temperature and humidity just for Jeri.

“I’m Icaran,” Jeri says, “I’m used to that climate.”

“Icaran,” Tria says. “That explains it.” She gives Jeri a playful smile. “Surprised your whole planet hasn’t sweated to death.” It’s a one-sided smile, crooked but not insincere. Bony as she is in her loose brown shift, she reminds Jeri of a stray dog, begging entrails off the knifewomen as they clean the day’s fish. Ragged but innocuous. “Can I make it colder, then?”

They’re inspecting the captain’s quarters: a narrow bunk, stripped; three shelves, now emptied of Jeri’s rubber-bound Icaran monsteria novels; an aluminum desk, polished bright as noontide, with three slate displays and a conspicuous empty spot where Jeri once grew a swath of bright yellow whalebeard kelp in a jar. Tria’s hand is in that spot now, tracing the gleaming curve of the desk, leaving prints on the aluminum.

The whalebeard would die in a cold room, Jeri thinks. She might, too.

“There’s a climate override system,” Jeri says, “but Cleo will adjust to you automatically. Once you’ve bound to her, that is.” Once I’m unbound, once I’ve left her for good. She’s careful to keep her voice level. “Cleo’s a good girl.”

Tria looks up from the desk. “Who’s Cleo?”

“The ship. That’s her . . . it’s what I call her.”

A blank look crosses Tria’s face, then vanishes. “I see. You named the ship.” Again the bent smile, then Tria looks away, taps a clipped fingernail on a bookshelf. “Of course. I just didn’t hear you.”

A chill passes through Jeri’s body. Your spirit pulled down toward the deep, her grandmother would have told her. Follow it. Don’t let it drown.

It’s the first question she would have asked, the first question she did ask, when Cleo’s hull was still red as fishblood and smooth as a moonless sky: What is the ship’s name? She wonders if this scrawny Nikutan girl has ever commanded any vessel, let alone a cargo hauler of Cleo’s mass.

“It’s an Icaran practice,” she says, scrutinizing Tria’s expression. “Naming ships. A tradition from Old Earth.”

“Right.” Tria shrugs. “I just forgot.”

Or you never knew. “You can change it. If you like.”

“No,” says Tria. “I like Cleo. I’ll keep it.” The smile again, but this time it’s unsteady. She looks away, quick as a wheatfish. “So how do I bind to her?”

Jeri ignores the question. There’s a shimmer of panic in her gut. She imagines Cleo, careening into the heart of the Michener belts, or towed into the clouded orbit of Megara and then crushed in its helium seas. “Where will you take her first?” she asks.

“I haven’t decided,” Tria answers. She keeps her eyes on the wall, follows the curve of a violet river across the paneling.

Do you know what you’re doing, Nikutan tithe-princess? Do you know the dangers you’ll face?

“You should head out to the Luric system,” Jeri says, testing her. Luric’s a hot zone, the brutal face of the Uriline conflict. Basic knowledge for a working hauler. She watches Tria’s expression in profile; Tria’s eyes flick away. “Easy money,” she continues, “pulling copper and manganese for the Sturmond operation. Good way to break in. Sturmond’s fair, even to new haulers.”

Tria turns. “Luric?” She laughs. “You’re joking, right? Sturmond’s holding up fifteen hundred fighters against a Uriline uprising right now.” The smile’s back. Still crooked, but renewed. Certain. “I want to haul ore, not get cooked by a rebel nuke.”

“You could shortcut through Parsine, bypass the conflict entirely.”

“And get stuck in a three-month quarantine?” Tria looks dumbstruck. “They’re hemorrhaging out their eye sockets in Parsine!”

She knows Luric, then. She knows her routes, the risks. Maybe she is qualified. Jeri looks away, embarrassed that she doubted this girl. “I’m just—”

“—worried.” Tria crosses her arms. “About your ship, I’m betting.”

Yes, Jeri thinks. I’m scared for Cleo.

“I know what I’m doing. I have two younger brothers. I signed the Henza guarantees to let them sail. I taught them.” She reaches out a palm and lays it on Jeri’s shoulder. There’s a brutal white scar, sharp as a star, across the inner flesh of her wrist, half-covered by the sleeve of her tunic, but her touch is warm as Icaran wind. “Cleo’s safe, I promise. I’ll be good to her.”

She knows how to sail, then, and she knows how to treat a ship. The chill of worry dissipates. All that’s left is the cold stab of impending loss, lodged deep in Jeri’s chest.

“She’ll be good to you, too,” Jeri says. Then, before Tria can remark on the crack in her voice, Jeri orders Cleo to unbind.

A stern series of codes in Jeri’s rough voice; Jeri’s lined hand on a streaming blue-violet wall.

The engine falls silent. The walls fade to gray.

The room, so blank and spare and unspeakably empty, begins to cool.

Just a ship.

“I’m sure she’ll be wonderful,” Tria says. Her crooked smile is polite, but her expression is clear: The transaction is complete. It’s time for Jeri to leave.

And then Jeri is alone, shut outside the crew gate, her feet on the icy granite of the solar bay.

And Cleo is twenty meters away, then thirty, then fifty. Humming, purring, her jets alight, her props receding, her mass leaping upward, out of the port locks. A hundred meters. A thousand. A bright speck, red as a pricked fingertip, withdrawing through the dusky Nikutan sky.

• • • •

The Archer, champion of the Vitala featherweight fleet, quick as a widowshark, light as a wheatfish, with a hull that can swallow whole moons’ worth of ore.

And all Jeri can think is how plain it is.

The bonding’s complete; the Archer belongs to Jeri. It should have acknowledged her by now. But the interior walls—the ones not built of ultra-efficient titanium mesh—are still dead-star black. Unchanging.

And the ship is cold.

“How long will she take to adapt?” Jeri asks.

The Nikute Nord porter is a man; the Henza tattoos across his face hide a series of deep scars. Chattel, Jeri suspects. Uriline, based on his slight build and sharp accent. Likely captured and sold after a Sturmond raid.

He looks up at Jeri. It’s the first time since greeting her at the Henza temple that he’s looked her in the eye, and he looks surprised.

“Adapt?”

“The AI. It’s cold in here. When will it adapt to my preferences?”

He blinks at her, then looks away quickly. “Climate adjustments can be made through the command module at any station—”

“It’s not intuitive?”

“Intuitive programming reduces efficiency and requires extra space. Vitala employs it only for necessary functions.”

“I see,” Jeri says. Eighty-three percent decrease in fuel consumption, she thinks. Fourteen percent expansion in cargo capacity. She taps the access code—a code!—into the command slate and brings up the climate menu. Nineteen degrees. How cold is that? How warm does she want it? And how does one even measure ambient humidity? Climate’s an abstraction to her, an alchemy of heat and damp she entrusted entirely to Cleo.

“Can I upgrade? I’ll pay extra for intuitive climate.” She glances at the vacant black walls. “And some color, too.”

The porter looks frightened, as if her dissatisfaction is a threat to his life. She thinks of the Henza abbess, those unreadable eyes. Perhaps it is. “The Henza are authorized to upgrade the Archer class programming. Locally—here at Port Nord, if you like.” He pauses. “They accept payment in advance profit pledges, in the name of wisest Eloji, if you’re short on liquid assets.”

An ongoing debt to the Henza! “No,” she tells the porter. “No, thank you.”

She sets the temperature to twenty-five degrees and sighs.

“Does she at least have a name?”

The porter stares. “The vessel’s ID is in the command module, if you forget it.”

No name, then. Just a soulless identification number. Jeri waits for the porter to scurry out the crew gates and then lays a hand on a light-draining swath of black wall and waits.

Nothing. The wall remains textureless, lifeless. Cold as the Arkwright Abyss.

But it is alive, she tells herself. It must be. She can feel the buzz of its fierce little engine, strung tight, lively as a rabbit bounding through the hull. Yes, she thinks, a rabbit, or a squirrel. Who needs color? The Archer is a creature meant for sprinting unseen, for breaking untouched through a Luric front with the silent ease of a proton. These colorless walls are part of its character, Jeri tells herself. An efficiency. Camouflage. No frills for this fiery little beast.

It’s no Juno-class hound dog, but it’s thrumming, it’s alive. There’s warmth in here somewhere.

“Are you ready?” she whispers to the ship. “We’ll launch tomorrow, before dawn tithes. How about Yesemin, for a first stop?” Navigation, at least, is voice-responsive.

She waits for a reaction, for some shift in the engine’s pulse, some evidence that the Archer welcomes the plan, shares the thrill of deep space.

There’s a sharp ping to acknowledge the order. A bright map of Yesemin lights up the command slate.

But the engine hums on, its pitch unchanged.

The ship, Jeri realizes, is utterly indifferent.

• • • •

“You’re sad,” says the krosuta dealer, crooked in the corner of his underground den, his eyes not quite as white-glazed as the Henza, but close. His expression, like theirs, is ambiguous, peaceful. “Lonely, too. You’ve lost someone.”

He pushes a clay cup across the table, smaller than his palm, along with a tiny wooden paddle. The cup’s filled with blue-white paste, watered and syrupy. It smells like burned sugar and grass.

“Wine,” she tells him, waving the cup away. “I don’t do krosuta.”

The dealer pulls the cup back, then tilts his head sidewise and squints. “Hauler, then?”

“Hauler,” Jeri answers.

The dealer pulls a blue-green amphora off a lower shelf—Icaran slipwit wine, Jeri notes, though she hasn’t told him a thing about herself, let alone where she’s from—and tilts it into a cup. “You’ve sold off your ship, then.”

Jeri looks up. She’s never touched krosuta herself; it’s expensive, addictive, sourced solely out of Henza temples. A good way to chain yourself to the Henza for life. But she’s heard about the benefits as well: an increased awareness of others’ emotions, of body language and nuance, along with a blunted personal emotional response. Heightened understanding, without the discomfort and inconvenience of true empathy.

The dealer grins, proud of himself. He taps a finger by his right eye. “The krosuta helps. But this close to Port Nord, we see plenty of heartbroken haulers. You’ve sold off a Mooncarver, from the look on your face. An Artemis?”

“Juno. Her name is Cleo.”

“A Juno. Wisest Eloji, haulerwoman, I’ve seen rougher girls than you weep outright over a scrapped Juno.”

Jeri sips the slipwit. It’s genuine, an Icaran import; there’s a coating of bitter grit at the bottom, residue from the fermentation of free-grown kelp. “Cleo’s not scrapped,” she tells the dealer. “I sold her to a Nikutan sailor. Good price. A girl from the tithe classes.”

“Oh?” He slides the amphora back into the shelf. “I’m surprised. Not much demand for Junos these days. That adaptive programming—gone out of fashion. A liability. And demand’s high for carbocine scrap with the uprisings out in Uriline.”

“She’s not scrap.” Jeri’s stunned by the sharpness of her own voice. “It’s in the contract. No salvage.”

The dealer laughs. “There’s no beauty so beguiling as a Henza contract.”

“What do you mean?” The words pierce the docile chatter of the den. In the far corner, a pair of haulers, both younger women and stronger, eye her. “What’s wrong with the contract?” Suddenly the walls of the krosuta den are too close, the ceiling too low, the air stale as the hold of a barge filled with slaughtered squid.

The dealer just shrugs, gives her a beneficent blank-eyed smile.

All at once she’s done with the filthy down-level krosuta den, with the dealer and his blank stare, poking at her hurt like a child taunting an injured gull. She pushes her cup of slipwit back toward him. “I’m done with this.”

The dealer looks her over. His smile feels condescending, full of false pity. “Of course,” he says. “No charge.”

He pulls the glass back across the bar. As he does, Jeri catches a glance at his right wrist.

There’s a scar. White. Star-shaped.

Just like Tria’s.

“Your wrist,” says Jeri. “What happened to it?”

His smile widens, as if she’s invited his favorite story. “I slipped the Henza! Whole family’s indentured, but I was young. Thought I was smart enough get away, maybe do better in life. They ran me down in Parsine. Took them less than half a cycle.” He rubs his wrist. “The tracer’s bolted to the bones in my arm now. Took a long time to heal. Longer to stop hurting.”

A tracer. Indentured.

“The tracer—you’re still indentured, then? They can follow you?”

“Oh, haulerwoman,” says the dealer with a laugh, “the Henza own me. Nine-tenths of my profits, every day ’til they decide I’m dead.”

Tria.

She didn’t even know you’re supposed to name a ship.

“Where’s the Port Nord scrapdock?” she asks the dealer. “I’ll pay you to tell me the way.”

• • • •

As the Nikutan sun surrenders to night and the Henza cantors call out vesper tithes, Jeri finds Cleo again.

She’s sunk in the scrapdock’s very first berth, as if she’s meant to be found. Spotlit, with rickety scaffolding climbing her hull like a creeping vine. Her engine’s silent. Her running lights are out. Her dermal buffer, once red as a starfish’s belly, is dusty and brown. Two immense rectangular swaths are cut away entirely, baring her dark carbocine shell.

No.

Jeri breaks into a run.

There are figures on the scaffolding. Metalworkers. Four of them. Their faces are shielded in masks, like soldiers. All of them wield lasers. They’re shearing away sheets of red buffer, slicing down to the carbocine beneath. One of them glances over a shoulder and despite the spotlights, brighter than the Nikutan sun, despite the noise of the sparking lasers, she looks right at Jeri, right where she’s sprinting down the darkened port, screaming for them to stop.

The others switch off their lasers, too, and watch.

As if they’re expecting her.

A leap, a scramble. Jeri feels the fabric of her jumpsuit catch and tear on the scaffolding, but doesn’t slow. Faster, she tells herself. Then she’s up, she’s pulling herself onto the highest platform, five meters at most from the masked workers.

She lays a hand on Cleo’s hull. It’s cold. No regeneration, not even the weak radiating warmth of dormancy. She’s shut down entirely, unresponsive.

“What are you doing?” Jeri screams. “She’s not scrap!”

The nearest worker, thin and tall, reaches up and pulls her metal mask away, lets it hang at her side.

There’s a mark on her wrist. Star-shaped. White.

The worker smiles. The smile is crooked but honest, a stray dog stealing scraps. Tria.

“Stop!” Jeri screams. “The contract said no salvage!”

“Maybe your contract did.” Tria moves closer; in the fractured shadows of the spotlight she looks predatory, like a widowshark circling a bloodied whale. “But I’ve sold her back to the Henza. Different contract entirely. There’s nothing about salvage in my terms.” The half smile’s become a smirk. “And that’s all a Juno’s good for, isn’t it? A big old pile of secondhand carbocine.”

No beauty so beguiling as a Henza contract.

Jeri lunges.

Tria lifts her arm and with a swing like a fishergirl tossing nets in the sea, she slams her mask into Jeri’s face.

As Jeri falls, as she tastes her own blood in the back of her throat, as reality shifts and blackens and the four women on the scaffolding carry her away, all Jeri can think is not Cleo, give me back my Cleo.

• • • •

“We honored the terms of the contract,” says Abbess Ocala. “We resold your ship intact.” She kneels next to the cage and through the bars she blinks her white eyes at Jeri, who is bound and still bleeding from the nose. Behind her the goddess Eloji watches, jewel-eyed, smiling.

Jeri folds her anger inside herself, forces indifference. “You scrapped her.”

“The buyer scrapped her. That’s the buyer’s prerogative.”

“The buyer’s got a tracer scar. She’s indentured.” She looks the abbess in the eye, searches the white krosuta glaze for the black shadow of a pupil. There is none. “You own the buyer. You planned to scrap my ship all along.”

A grandmotherly smile. “Do you know why Mooncarver discontinued the Juno class? It’s hard to sell a hauler a new ship, when they just don’t want a new one. It’s the reactive programming; there’s just too much of it. A hauler bonds with her ship like a pet. Or worse: a lover. She tries to upgrade, but then she’s back three cycles later, begging for her inefficient old Juno. There are women who’ve sailed the same Juno for forty years, because they can’t bear to part with the silly thing.”

Seventeen years. She was my Cleo for seventeen years. Jeri blinks, turns away from the abbess’ stare before the tears come.

“You’re the same. You can’t hide it. I saw it the day you offered to sell.” The abbess stands, turns away. “In a few days, your ship will be fully dismantled. I do have an offer for you, however. An opportunity. If you accept, I can halt the scrap process with a word. Your ship can be repaired, and quickly.”

Jeri knows what’s coming before the abbess says it.

Nine-tenths of my profits, every day ’til they decide I’m dead.

“You keep the ship. We’ll bond her back to you, pardon your assault on a Nikutan citizen, and ensure that you leave Nikute safely, and soon. You maintain your haul routes with Sturmond, and you’re free to pursue better routes if you find them. Your life goes on—with your ship—just as it was. Better, in fact, as you’ll be under the aegis of the Henza, wherever you choose to go. And for this, you tithe ninety percent of your profits to the goddess Eloji.”

No, thinks a small part of Jeri, the part that grew up weighing every gram of fishmeal, the part that abandoned the hot Icaran seas for the limitless cold profit of space. It’s only a ship.

But the thought’s a lie, too small to be true.

“Ninety percent,” Jeri whispers.

Abbess Ocala smiles. “You’re free to refuse. You will serve a sentence for your unfortunate encounter at Port Nord, of course—one Nikutan annum of labor—but you will still have your Archer, and it is a far better ship than that ragged old Juno.” She waves a long hand as she walks away. “All that carbocine. Such a generous offering to Eloji, don’t you agree?”

• • • •

There is no movement in the Henza temple except the footsteps of the night priestesses and the shivered prayers of a cluster of supplicants, coatless in the cold, their faces pressed to the flagstones. There is no light but the soft glow of incense, reflected sharp in Eloji’s eyes.

The cage is small, hardly room enough for a child. Jeri lies on her side, her knees folded to her chest. The incense is suffocating, thick enough to singe her throat. Her suit is torn at the shoulder—a separated seam, easily repaired, but enough to let in the frost of Nikutan midnight. Sleep is impossible.

Just a ship, she tells herself.

She will still have the Archer. Thirty-nine percent gain in acceleration, she thinks—or was it less? Eighty-three percent decrease in fuel consumption, and Jeri’s in good health, she has many profitable years ahead. Better to serve out a sentence and go free than to submit to Henza bondage. Better to let Cleo go.

Jeri swallows back a sob.

She is a hauler, she is Icaran, she is stone and salt water, she is fortitude embodied. When she was a child, she watched a young fisher drown in the shallows, paralyzed by a pack of coal adders while foraging oysters. She watched, emotionless and unafraid, even as they netted his venom-bruised body and dragged him back to the barge. She’s left her home, she’s spent years alone in the dark between stars—alone but for Cleo—without breaking down. Sentimentality is a weakness, and costly. If there are tears pooling on the floor where she rests her face, then it’s only the pain of a broken nose, the exhaustion, the cold.

She grasps at the numbers like fragments of a storm-shattered raft. She will not let grief pull her under. Fourteen percent expansion in cargo capacity. Sixty-five-point-eight percent improvement in sustained cruising speed.

But at what cost? Apart from a year’s hard labor, what do the Henza stand to gain from setting her free? They lied to her once—no, not lied. Tricked her. They’ll do it again—and again, she won’t see it coming. How far do the Henza roam? To the edge of the Ursuline blockades? Beyond? Just how much of the galaxy can wisest Eloji see?

Dawn spills through the temple oculus. One of the midnight supplicants, bone-thin and bent as a fishhook, finally lifts himself first to his knees, then upright. His wrists are bare—he is not indentured—but he sheds first his leather purse, then his belt, then his threadbare tunic, and last, his worn pair of black boots, and folds all of it neatly beneath the statue of Eloji. He turns to leave, wearing nothing but a loose pair of breeches.

On his way out, a pale-eyed priestess gives him a soft smile and a blessing.

Nothing, Jeri thinks, he has almost nothing.

And then she understands. Whatever choice she makes, the Henza will somehow take it all, leave her with just enough to keep her alive, to keep her profitable.

But at least she can still have Cleo.

When the abbess returns, Jeri’s eyes are closed. Through her lids, the midmorning light shines warm and red, like the buffered hide of a bright new Juno-class hauler.

“Well?” says the abbess.

“My ship,” says Jeri. She keeps her eyes closed. “I just want my ship.”

• • • •

The walls are green as the Arkwright Abyss and swirling with streaks of wheatfish gold.

Jeri taps a forefinger of her bandaged right hand on the wall; the impact shakes the tracer freshly bolted into her wrist, makes her bones ache. The gold streaks flutter away, then stop two meters down the hall and swarm in a circle. She follows them, taps them again. Another two meters. They’re leading her toward the captain’s quarters.

The ship—her ship—can tell she’s tired. They’re bonded deep as any starlit sea.

“Oh, Cleo,” she says, “I can’t go to sleep. I tried.” She’s tried for three cycles, in fact. Failed. The Henza retrieved her monsteria novels, polished the desk, even replaced her jar of whalebeard kelp, but even with her quarters in perfect order and the climate just right, she can’t slip deeper than the surface of a dream before the pain in her wrist—and the sheer mass of rage at being indentured for life to the Henza—reels her back to wakefulness.

She turns away from the golden streaks and heads toward the navigation slate. She doesn’t have to look to know that Cleo’s glittering school of gold is following right behind.

“Help me decide where to go, will you? We’re cleared to lift tomorrow, before terce tithes.” She taps the slate, brings up the map for adjacent systems. “What do you think of Noriador? Not much business, but it’s close.” She sighs. Ninety percent. “And it’s not like business matters all that much anymore, does it?”

The slate blinks. A map of Luric appears with a route between the local moons traced out in gold.

Jeri pulls the slate back to Noriador. “Noriador’s the gateway to the Shala systems, though. Those are more profitable. We’d be outside Sturmond’s territory, but we might—”

A blink. A flash of gold.

A map of the Luric system again, with a route laid out straight through the Uriline blockade.

Jeri sighs. “Luric’s under attack, girl. We could get killed.”

She pulls the slate back to Noriador, then links to the map of Shala. Fourteen moons, mostly manganese and copper. She taps a series of waypoints, halfhearted.

The slate goes black, then flashes back to Luric—then beyond Luric, past the Uriline colonies, through Mnemosyne and Cyril and the White Shield system. Past unnamed stars, unmapped planets, unbroken moons.

Straight into the dark heart of space.

The thought gives her a chill.

Your spirit pulled down toward the deep, she thinks. Follow it.

Jeri’s breath catches. If the solar winds of the Luric system are at their back, if the rebels look away just long enough for a tattered old hauler, tracked by the Henza, to slip past unscathed, if the range of a tracer fades with each passing star . . .

The ship—no, her name is Cleo—understands.

A sprint through Luric means freedom. If they’re fast enough. If they survive.

She begins to speak, to confirm what Cleo’s suggesting. Then she catches herself. The Henza have almost certainly bugged Cleo’s walls, traced her navigation slate. They’re listening, watching.

Still. Jeri’s mind swirls, fast as a widowshark. Could they make it? Cleo’s all but healed; her hold is empty. They’d move fast and light—but it may not be enough. The Henza fly only the newest Vitala fighters. Sturmond might assist them, right up to the blockade’s edge, if the Henza attach a bounty. And then, of course, there’s the Ursiline fleet, a shifting wall of pure firepower.

But the Ursiline rebels are frayed and tired; their wall is imperfect. Just how fast can Cleo fly?

Only Cleo can tell her.

“I don’t know, Cleo,” Jeri says aloud. She does her best to sound dubious, in case the Henza are listening. Cleo, she trusts, will understand the subtext. “If we broke through Luric, we’d be outside Henza protection.”

There’s a grumble in the hull beneath Jeri’s feet. A confirmation. A growl. The map of Luric pulses gold. A breeze picks up in the navigation suite, a whirlwind of moisture and heat, like a rising storm on an Icaran sea.

All around her, on every wall, are dancing streams of green and gold.

• • • •

It’s midmorning. The cantors call out terce tithes. Staffing at Port Nord is spare; most of the guards have departed for the Nikute Nord temple to make their offerings to the goddess Eloji. Still, about two dozen personnel remain, scuttling like armored blue crabs across the icy granite, weapons raised. Jeri watches them from a surveillance slate. Their interest is elsewhere; a gleaming new Vitala Stiletto fighter has just docked three bays down.

Good, she thinks.

They’re late for launch, Jeri and Cleo. There’s a prohibition on liftoff during tithes. Jeri’s hand shakes as she opens the command slate and files a request for launch exemption. Her justification is reasonable—if they delay until tithes end, they’ll miss the orbit of the Nikutan moons and waste valuable fuel as they leave the planet.

The justification is a lie. Their delay is intentional. Reduced port staff means a slower response.

Jeri keeps the navigation slate locked on Noriador and waits. She filed an impeccable flight plan with the Henza temple the night before: an easy, reliable run through Noriador and then a riskier foray into Shala, with generous profits deliverable to the Henza temple at Noria City. The temple approved it immediately, with the goddess’ deepest praise.

The launch exemption, on the other hand, is taking much longer. Terce tithes are still underway, but already several guards have returned and joined their team to ogle the bright hull of the Stiletto.

Jeri holds her breath. Much longer and Port Nord will be fully staffed.

A swirl of violet and blue passes through the wall above the navigation slate. Dark and soothing, like the waters of Icara rocking a barge on a sleepy, moonless midnight.

Cleo is keeping her calm.

Jeri places her sore right palm on Cleo’s wall, closes her eyes, and breathes deep. Whatever happens, she thinks, Cleo is here with me.

There’s a chime from the navigation slate. The launch exemption is approved, with the blessing of wisest Eloji.

Three of the guards pull away from the Vitala and gather at Cleo’s hull to supervise liftoff. They keep their guns high and ready.

“Okay, Cleo,” she says. “It’s time.” The blue-and-violet walls flash to a lively green. The hum of the engine grows. The port locks release. Unleashed, they ascend.

On the surveillance slate, Jeri watches Port Nord fall away. The Henza temple is several thousand meters to the northeast, a pale white-spired structure casting shadows over the residential districts. As they rise, it dissolves, becomes an imperceptible speck on the vast curve of Nikute’s tundra.

They pass both moons and head outward, toward the periphery of the Nikutan system. Jeri keeps her eyes on the navigation slate; on it, she and Cleo are a single white dot sliding through a constellation of waypoints that will deliver them to Noriador within five cycles.

They reach the outermost edge of the Nikutan system.

Cleo’s engine growls. She knows the edges of systems: They are the boundaries of wild space. They are the point beyond which she can play, where Jeri lets her heave her engine into supralight and run hot and fast and free until the next system slows them down.

Jeri is suddenly dizzy with terror. From here, their future diverges. A portside turn will take them into Noriador. Safe. A starboard turn will send them straight to Luric and into the midst of the Uriline conflict. Not safe at all.

But if they make it through, they’ll be free.

A thread of gold shimmers across Cleo’s bright green walls. A question. She’s waiting for Jeri’s answer.

“Okay, girl. Let’s go.” Jeri inhales, pulls the navigation slate to Luric, and confirms their path.

The gold thread on the wall glows, expands, then explodes like rockets all around the navigation suite. Cleo’s engine hums, whines. There’s a shift, a rattle as she prepares for supralight.

A message appears from the Nikute Sud temple, from Abbess Ocala. It’s a warning, a threat spelled out in bold Nikutan script. Jeri sees the words punishable by death and pushes the message away. “Starboard,” she tells Cleo. “We enter supralight on go.”

A second message appears. No mere threat this time: a formal judgment. She recognizes the word.

Neccima.

It is done.

Jeri brushes the message away. She’s breathless now with fear; already there’s a fleet of Henza fighters on the navigation slate, lifting off at Port Sud and headed her way.

But she still has her ship, her great mangy red-hulled ship with its sweat-hot air and glittering walls and clumsy programming and boundless, loyal heart. And the old Juno class haulers? They’re built for just this kind of adventure.

“Go,” Jeri tells Cleo.

Cleo leaps into supralight, howls her engine like a hound beneath a bright gold Icaran moon, and then they’re both gone, lost in the chase between silver-streaked stars.

©2018 by Sarah Grey. | Art © 2018 by Waiji Choo.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sarah Grey’s stories have appeared in a number of publications, including Lightspeed, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Daily Science Fiction, and Flash Fiction Online, and have twice received an Honorable Mention in The Year’s Best Science Fiction. She lives with her family near Sacramento, California.

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

Angels

Bruce McAllister | 4170 words

The creature she’d had them make cost her the last piece of forest outside Siena. The one with the little medieval chapel in it, the tall umbrella pines shading a forest floor no tourist had ever walked upon.

It cost her the two rocky islands just south of Elba, and the lead mines at Piombino, which she had never cared about, and the villa on Lake Garda, which she had, because, so small and intimate, it had been one of her father’s favorites.

When she ordered the doctors from Milan to alter the creature’s spine and shoulder blades to accept the remarkable wings, it cost her the thirty-meter ketch as well—the one with the artificial brain that trimmed the sails perfectly—the one she had used only once, forty years ago, and had never really wanted anyway. And when the wings did not take, when the doctors needed to try again, it cost her the two altar paintings of angels by Giotto from her father’s hunting lodge outside Siena, where she had spent her childhood with her brother and sisters, and which her father had loved. She had not wanted to sell the paintings, but selling them had helped her to remember him—to see him standing in the long hallway of the lodge, on the green Carrara marble floor, looking down at her and smiling in the gray suit he always wore. He seemed to be laughing, to be saying: Yes, you may sell them!

It was the wings, she realized—the sale of the ketch through an electronic brokerage in Nice—that had alerted her older brother, who found her one day in her apartment in Lucca and in his rage shouted: “What are you doing, Pupa? What do you imagine you are doing?” She knew he meant: You are doing this to hurt us. We know you are.

• • • •

She had taken a room in the old walled city of Lucca, near the ancient university there, above a store that still sold wood-pulp books, but Giancarlo found her nevertheless and shouted at her, as always. As did her sister Olivia the very next week, while Francesca, the youngest at ninety-three, sent a letter instead. “How can you be doing this?” they all asked her, when they actually meant to say: How can you be doing this to us, Pupa? How?

They did not know she knew what they had done to her children, and this gave them the courage to ask, she told herself.

They were afraid, of course, that she would continue to sell her possessions until everything their father had left her was gone. They were so afraid, in fact, that they were arranging, even now, for doctors from Rome and Turin to testify about her “illness,” this madness of hers, in court. These doctors had not interviewed her in person, but that did not matter. What she was doing, her lawyers said, was enough—enough for doctors with reputations like theirs to testify against her. “This thing you are having made for you, egrigia Signora, is quite enough,” they’d told her.

At these words, the world felt a little darker, and she had to remind herself that this was why she was so willing to leave it.

• • • •

The first time she was allowed to see him, she found she could not look at him for long. He wasn’t yet finished; that was all. A woman of child-bearing age, chosen by the doctors from a list, had carried the fertilized ovum for her. At one month, they’d removed it. It was not like a fetus, the way an infant grew. There were ways to make it grow quickly outside a woman. It would take six months, they’d said.

He was already the size of a man, yet the skin was like scar tissue, covered with a dozen layers of gauze as he lay in a room-sized tent whose material she could barely see through now. The room smelled of chemicals. The light was too bright. His face was covered, too—with a mask that made the eyes bulge like an insect’s, which frightened her. It should not have, she knew. It was simply the way he was being grown, she told herself again.

But it did frighten her, and she had to turn away.

• • • •

When he was at last finished and the gauze was removed, he appeared to be sleeping. Blood substitutes rich in glucose and oxygen were flowing through his veins, the doctors informed her, but from where she stood outside his tent she could not see tubing: There should be tubing, shouldn’t there? She could see only the jaundiced color of his arms on the bed, his legs parted akimbo under the sheet, like a child’s. For weeks she had imagined that he would be able to say something to her at this moment, but that was silly, she knew. It had been a daydream only, week after week, in her little room in Lucca; nothing more. It was not something the doctors had ever promised. Even if he had been awake, he could not have spoken, she knew. He knew no words to speak.

The eyes did not open for days.

• • • •

When they allowed her into his tent for the first time, they made her bathe first, dried her with gusts of hot air, then gave her a thin garment to wear. As she approached his bed, she saw that his eyes were open at last, that they were watching her, although now and then they rolled back into his head like white marbles and his mouth fell slack. She looked at the doctor beside her, questioning, but the woman nodded, as if saying: Do not worry, Signora. He is doing fine.

She was afraid—more afraid than she could ever remember being—but she leaned over nevertheless and touched her lips to his forehead, the way she had done so long ago to three children . . . her own . . . or someone’s. She could not remember. No. That wasn’t true. She could remember. She’d had three children—a gangly, dark-haired son when she was very young, and then, when she was nearly sixty, two daughters as well. She’d touched her lips to their three foreheads in this same way.

She put her lips to his forehead again and felt his eyes roll away. But he did not pull away from her or hit at her, and these, she realized, were the only things she’d really been afraid of.

• • • •

One afternoon in August, when the tent was gone and she was standing over his bed, she asked the doctors and nurses to leave them alone. The bed was only a bed. It was the kind any human being could sleep in comfortably. A father, a mother. A child. She could not remember a bed like it from the long century of her life, but it was somehow familiar—a bed a father might sleep in, one a child might climb into in the morning while he slept. A dream, a wish. Nothing more.

His body was blond, just like hers. As she’d told them it should be. It was long and heavy-boned, too, like hers, but the curls on his head were those of a marble god—Athenian, not Spartan—as she’d requested. It had not been difficult, they’d told her. The genetic material was there, they’d said; the alterations, where necessary, would be easy. It was only that no one had ever asked for something like this to be done, or had had the money to pay for it.

The wings had been another matter entirely. Caravaggio’s sweeping feathers, the glory of Leda’s swan, not the puny things a Giotto might paint. Grown separately—not a part of him at all—and perhaps that had been the problem.

• • • •

Later, as she sat in a small room that smelled faintly of jasmine, she would remember how on this very August afternoon, when the doctors had left them alone at last, when the first pair of wings were doing their best to take, and the osteomyelitis had not yet set in, there had still been hope. The shoulders looked massive; and they would need to be, whether he ever really moved the wings or not, whether the shoulders did nothing more than keep them away from the naked back, so that the stiff quills would not rub the skin raw. He would never fly, of course. No amount of wealth could buy that and this she had known all along. She had simply wanted him to have wings because they were beautiful, because she could remember seeing paintings of beautiful wings somewhere.

The organ between his legs was beautiful, too. Pale, golden, and rosy—and perfect. It hung like David’s, like the white marble under its new dome in Florence, where tourists could walk by it each day. Just as she’d told the doctors it should be. She’d told them: Make it so that even when it is soft, even when he is sleeping, or spent, it is beautiful. Make it so that women will want to touch it even in death.

She had offered them the director of archives at the Pitti Palace, the man who could provide them with drawings by Michelangelo, or arrange for holograms of the statue itself to be delivered if they were needed. But the doctors had said No. There were equations for the arc and symmetry of such things, they’d told her, and they would use these.

His arms were covered with hair the color of sunlight, a golden down, and this had been easy, too. Her father had been German, her mother Northern Italian; the blond hair was there to work with. The doctors had seen it in the genetic mapping. It would cost little. Growing the fetus outside a womb would be the costly thing.

He was awake and staring at her now, the wings bound tightly with gauze behind him and supported by a pillow, the sheet gathered to one side of his naked body. He was not embarrassed, she saw. Embarrassment would be one of the things he would have to learn, of course.

One arm was across his stomach, the other by his side. The wings, even with the feathers bound, did not seem to bother him. He looked relaxed and the legs, as always, lay akimbo. They would always lie that way—for as long as he should live, she told herself. These were the habits a body was born with. She could see clearly how each of her own three children had slept—a boy, two girls—each lying a bit differently, like paintings in a hallway somewhere, like holograms inseparable from their souls.

She could not help herself. She tried, but she could not. She imagined what it would be like to make love to him, to feel that perfect organ inside her, her own arms strong once more, her hands on his shoulders perhaps, or her palms on his chest, his curls bright in the sunlight of the garden at Assisi or the topiary garden at Parma, the wings moving as if with a life of their own, his naked back reddening under the sun, arching even as her own back arched, then falling slowly like a sigh from the roses and snapdragons around them.

On that August afternoon, when the doctors left them, she imagined what it might be like to make love with him before words and deeds would change him forever.

• • • •

When they had boosted his immune system with antigens and the engineered leucocytes, and felt it was safe for him to leave the room, she took him to the beach at Viareggio—three weeks before the floats were ready for la festa, three weeks before the crowds would parade themselves down the shadowy King’s Highway with their rubber clubs and strange masks. The city was dead as winter now. She’d had her people clean the beach around the pines for two hundred meters in all directions, testing it for salmonella, typhus, any of the things the beach had become famous for in the past thirty years: all the microbes that might hurt him.

Her bodyguards remained in the shadows of the trees, like shadows themselves.

She laid out an old blanket of Yugoslavian cotton embroidered with silver—the one her first husband had given her when they’d begun a life together in the floating city of Taranto, right before the turn of the millennium. The young man could walk now, though unsteadily, the weeks of antibiotic treatments and hydration leaving him weak but happy, his head turning to look at everything, just like a child’s. The scars on his shoulder blades were as pink as the bottoms of putti in a Tiepolo fresco, as the soles of the feet of the babies she could remember a little more clearly now, and no longer seemed to bother him. The eyes were alive with a feeling she could remember feeling, and as she watched him she felt it, too.

They sat down together on the blanket and she gave him an orange, the small red kind they grew in Jaffa. He took it from her but waited, wanting to do it exactly the way she did. So she did it slowly, peeling it carefully, keeping her eyes on his and smiling with each bite, until his movements had lost their nervousness and he was calm again.

She looked at the trees. Later, sitting in the little room, she would remember looking at the trees, seeing the shadows there, and for a moment feeling they were something else . . . a darkness moving closer and closer to her. She laughed. It wouldn’t come now, the darkness, unless she asked it to. It was hers to invite. It wouldn’t come until she wanted it to.

And it was not the same darkness as before, she knew. The one she had felt in Pisa long ago . . .

She thought of her father, who had left all four of them many things, but who had left her so much more, and how this had driven her brother and sisters to do many, many things.

The shadows remained where they were.

When she turned back to him, he was sleepy again, his eyelids heavy, his left elbow barely holding him up. He would not, she knew, lie down unless she lay down with him. The blanket was big—colorless now in the glare of the sun—and warm, and she lay down with him, making sure that their arms touched.

She watched him as he dreamed. He made a whining noise, the kind she had heard a child make long ago. Then he frowned, his eyes still closed, and the dream gone. His face was quiet again.

The chemical they had put on his skin to protect it from the sun glistened like ocean waves. She let her own eyes close.

Even in this darkness, she was not afraid. The shadows under the trees did not move. Nothing moved toward her that she would not have welcomed.

• • • •

When he was again rested, she took him by helicopter one evening—in the one infrared Pirelli that remained to her—to the town of Assisi, where they slept together in the largest canopy bed of her villa. He tossed and moaned all night. He hit her four times with his elbow and lay against her quietly only once, for a few minutes. She thought at first that it might be the wings. But that was wrong, wasn’t it. The wings were gone. Even the scars could not be bothering him now, could they? Why had she thought he still had wings?

In the morning, her guards escorting them like priests, she took him by the hand down the stone path to the courtyard of the church, to the hologram of Saint Francis that had been there ever since she could remember. The tourists had left. They had been asked to leave. Those who’d objected had been paid handsomely.

The hologram was much larger than life, a full three meters, and the grainy texture of the ruby light made the saint look almost ill. They sat together on one of the benches. The tape played on.

The young man at her side, dressed in summer linen while she wore silk, looked at the grass, at the bees and the bright farfalle on the flowers near them, and did not listen. The tape was made of words, she realized suddenly. He did not yet know these words. He did not even know what words were, perhaps.

The red arms of the hologram moved as if in prayer, moved again in exactly the same way, while the voice said:

Laudato si, mi Signore, per frate Vento, e per Aere e Nubilo e Sereno e onne tempo, per lo quale a le tue creature dai sustentamento.

It said:

“Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind, for air and cloud by which Thou upholdest life in every creature.”

The voice then repeated the words in French, in German, in four other languages, but she wasn’t listening. She was watching the ground, too. She was watching what he was watching there: the green lizard making its way in fits and starts across the stone path, the insects moving through the grass so near their shoes, and the white butterfly that wanted to land, but never did.

“Praised be my Lord for our brother fire, through whom Thou givest us light in the darkness,” the voice was saying somewhere. “Praised be my Lord for our sister, the death of our body, from which no man or woman may escape.”

An angry voice made her look up suddenly. Two of the guards were arguing with a man, a tourist who wore a single, heavy holo-camera around his neck. She recognized the camera. Her father’s factory in Rimini had made it. She got up quickly, took the young man’s hand in hers, and pulled him with her, his eyes never leaving the ground.

That night in bed, she took his hand again and thought she might teach him, that it might be possible, that he might enjoy it, but when he looked at her in the dim light of the room and cocked his head like a child, she knew she could not.

• • • •

They tried to kill him the very next week. They were afraid that she would find new ways to spend, on this thing she’d had the doctors make for her, the very wealth they believed was theirs, the wealth their many lawyers had assured them would indeed be theirs, because at her passing—the one they knew she was planning (an injection in the vein of one arm? a perfumed gas in a little perfumed room?)—it would pass to them. There was no one else—no children, no other siblings, no organization whose rights could not be successfully contested to whom her wealth should go. Their lawyers could not assure them, however, that she would not put a new skin, another pair of wings, a scaly tail, a second head on this creature, and so it needed to be killed, didn’t it?

They tried at Lake Como during the height of the tourist season, while she was sleeping on the deck of the biggest villa, tired out by the sun. The young man was standing on the dock just below her, looking down into the dark waters as he always did, and only a movement by the quickest guard was able to save him. The hydrofoil removed the first ten meters of the dock, somehow avoided the retaining wall, and moved down the lake without stopping. Shaking, naked, she stood in the sunlight and knew.

To the guard, a middle-aged Tuscan by the name of Cichinelli, she gave one of the new apartment buildings in the Ligurian castle-town of Pozzuoli, smiling as she presented him with the papers the next day. To the other guards, who would certainly have done the same had they been able, she presented new Alfa Stellanovas. Someone back at the lodge would report it all, of course. Even the smile, she knew.

When they tried again, at Assisi, in the garden there, while she sat with him quietly on a bench watching the lizards move on the walls, and the bullets from the assassin’s rifle shattered the marble corner, she had him moved back to Siena, to within the grounds of her father’s hunting lodge. It would cost her two of the gambling barges in Trieste to establish the newest security technology on the grounds. It would cost her half of her interest in the cablecar network on Anacapri—the one her father had given her when she was twelve—to establish the same for the building in Lucca, which she no longer used. All of this would be reported to her brother and her sisters, she knew.

Being with him each day, holding his hand, helped her to remember. Was this perhaps why she’d had him made? She saw it clearly the day she led him through the hallways of the hunting lodge to show him all of the paintings of wings—the very kind she had once hoped he might have. Caravaggio’s Angeli di Dio. Fra Angelico’s Il Sogno del Cielo. The dancing angels of Turacco, the long wings of Pagano. The paintings had always been there. They lined the oak walls of the hallways, as they always had, but as she watched him look at them, as she watched him turn to her with questions in his eyes because he had no words to ask them—it came to her suddenly:

They had been her father’s paintings. He had given them to her. He had loved them; he had loved the wings.

How could she have forgotten? How?

• • • •

They were never going to try the poison, she admitted to herself finally. The cardiotoxin they had used on Piero, her gangly son, sixty years old the day he drove his two sisters, teenagers, from Old Genoa down the galleria highway to the birthday party for her in Pisa—the gradual poison in his veins, the Alfa Romeo d’Oro tumbling to the rocks at Cinque Terre, the bodies floating in the bay, like pale ghosts, for three whole hours. For some reason they were not going to try it this time and she was sorry. Perhaps they knew; perhaps they did not. The doctors had made alterations and it would not have worked this time.

It had cost her half of what her father had left her to have the creature made. The other half remained, and this was what her brother and sisters wanted—more than anything in the world.

Love is sometimes a terrible thing, she would remember thinking, sitting in a little room.

• • • •

In September he began to make sounds with his throat at last. He tried to make her understand what he wanted by them, and she did her best to understand. But she did not try to teach him a language. It would have taken too long, she knew. Others would have the time. For now she wanted him to herself, before words could change him.

• • • •

She could remember it now. Lying on the beach at Viareggio as a child, her father, his beard, the crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes, his eyes bluer than any Italian should have had. His hands were in his pockets, his legs only a few steps away in the warm sand. The sunlight seemed to go forever. A poet had died there, she knew. Even as a child she had known this. It had bothered her even then that a poet could have drowned in such a beautiful sea, the Ligurian Sea, near where her own mother had been born, and where she, even now in memory, was a child playing in the sand, her father, his beard, his legs so near her in a sunlight that went forever.

She could remember it now. She could remember him standing in the sand, day after day, and saying: Tu sei mi’angelo, Pupa.

You are my angel. You will always be my angel, Pupa.

It was the last thing she would need to remember, she knew, sitting in a room that smelled of jasmine, breathing it in at last.

• • • •

The young man sat in the corner of another room and tried his best to think. It was difficult. The men and women around him were telling him—in words, ones he had only recently learned to understand—how many things in the world were now his, how these things could never be taken from him, and how this was all that the woman had really wanted.

©1990 by Bruce McAllister. Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bruce McAllister’s short stories have appeared over the years in many of the SFF field’s major magazines and in various “year’s best” volumes, and have won or been short-listed for awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Nebula, the Hugo and others. He is the author of the novels Dream Baby and The Village Sang to the Sea, and the collection The Girl Who Loved Animals.

The Atonement Path

Alex Irvine | 2690 words

To think we used to put young criminals in jail.

I’m sorry. I don’t mean to eavesdrop. Or should I say eaveswatch? What is the comparable term for using one’s visual sense in a surreptitious fashion? Dining establishments are a superb venue for such observations.

But it is true, no? What good could their example do if they were shut away from public view?

Ah. I am being rude. My name is Andrew Blankenship. Esquire, in the interest of completeness.

A pleasure to meet you, John. Is my initial impression correct, that you are a visitor to our capital city? When one sees close observation of a walker on the Atonement Path, that is the natural assumption. Citizens rarely scrutinize them so. I fear sometimes we take them for granted, which would be a terrible transgression against the principle of atonement itself. For if they are not noticed, how can their walk be honored?

I do not expect you to understand this immediately. After all, you are a traveler in this land, and grew up among traditions we have left behind. You are a scholar? No? Here on business, then? Of course, and after you have transacted your business you immerse yourself in the culture of a foreign land. The sign of a true traveler and not a tourist. You have chosen an excellent wine, by the way, one of our best. Clearly you are a man of cultured tastes, as I perceive myself to be.

Yes, it is easy to see them as pariahs. Natural, of course, for one unaccustomed to our practice of justice. Their dress, their demeanor, their physical appearance, all are different from the ordinary citizen. This is quite purposeful, and not at all intended to be punitive. If you are interested—as I believe you are—I would be more than happy to represent the practice to you in all its complexities.

Excellent. Permit me to be your guide. This subject is central to my interests as a practitioner of the law, and I confess a personal enthusiasm for it as well. Forthwith:

What do we desire from the criminal?

We must not be motivated by revenge, for that is a relic of savage times and surely improper as a function of a civilized state.

We must free ourselves from the desire to punish, for punishment only teaches the recipient what it is like to be on the weak side of a disequilibrium of power, and inculcates a desire to find a new disequilibrium in which he is on the strong side. I say he, because there is no gainsaying the data. Most of those who become subjects of our practice of justice are male.

Too, both revenge and punishment are things done to the criminal. The question at hand asks what we want from the criminal.

The answer, we have found, contains two parts. We wish the criminal not to commit another crime, and we wish for recompense, remorse. Atonement. Yes?

I am glad you agree.

Then there arises the question of how justice must be administered differently to children, in recognition of their incomplete development both cognitive and emotional. In most cases juvenile criminals—and we, the culture charged with their care—are best served by diversions into service, therapy, and work. These need not concern us since they are broadly similar across our culture and yours. We come now to the difference.

We are primates, no? Barely differentiated from our lower cousins, and certainly still predisposed to their tribalism and violence. Thus we have laws, and consequences for breaking them. But laws are for adults. For hundreds of years, enlightened cultures have recognized they cannot be applied to children the same way.

Yet children do commit crimes, particularly those children in the fraught territory we call adolescence, when their capacity to destroy outstrips their capacity to ideate the consequences of their destruction. This is a problem no society before ours has ever been able to address with fairness, care, and the nurturing strength at the core of any civilized practice of justice. A shocking crime committed by a child is a deep disruption to a society’s sense of itself. It forces us to examine what we might have done to help create an environment in which such a horror might become first thinkable and then real.

It was for these children that we created the Atonement Path. And yes, for us as well.

Who am I to refuse the offer of another glass? Thank you.

What is done with adults who commit similar crimes? That is a bit far afield from our topic, my friend. The administration of justice to adults is quite incommensurate with our practices in juvenile fields. Also I fear you will find it less interesting, since in this area we have not been so innovative as in our development of the Atonement Path. Shall we—I beg your pardon?

You wish to speak to a walker on the Path? I suppose. Shall I accompany you? Not as your minder, no, of course not. Our government does not operate in such a way. Whom it wishes to observe, it observes by means of passive surveillance, which I am sure you have seen is quite pervasive. I meant to help surmount difficulties in communication, as the discourse community of walkers on the Path is quite idiosyncratic. Misunderstandings are common. You will wish to ask questions that walkers on the Path are not permitted to answer, and it is easy to frighten them. If I can, I will help redirect your inquiries onto more profitable paths.

Let us see . . . You. Come over here.

• • • •

I am speaking into your recording device because that is what you asked me to do. I do it willingly and hope it will be of assistance to you.

We are known by the date we chose the Atonement Path, with further identifiers appended to denote how many others made the choice on that day, and where. I am 92209-Sigma-Boston.

How old was I? I do not wish to be disagreeable, but we are taught that question undermines accountability and we are not permitted to answer it. I can say I committed my crime thirty-six years ago. I am among the older walkers of the Path.

I committed sexual violence upon a younger child using objects to substitute for my undeveloped genital function. I inflicted pain and torture on her using other objects. I then tried to kill her with my hands but found that too difficult so I used a plastic bag.

I was male.

Have I been agreeable and contrite?

• • • •

Most of them, as I have said, were male. The truism about violence and the Y chromosome appears to apply even in enlightened civilizations. In this way, as others, the Atonement Path seeks not to make an example of the criminal but provide an example to all. As part of preparation for the Atonement Path, markers of biological sex are elided. The penis and testes are excised, as are breasts. Vaginas are sutured following clitoridectomy. Genetic therapies eliminate other markers including hair growth and developments in facial and pelvic bone structure. Thus walkers on the Path are freed from the tyrannies of gender both internalized and imposed.

It is also true that few of them reach such an age as your interlocutor. The burden of their devotion is too heavy for most to carry into later years. One does not embark on the Atonement Path unwillingly. A choice is offered. There are diversions. The children find them unpleasant. Once they understand their options, the vast majority select the Atonement Path. Of the others I cannot say more.

Initially we provided the choice of the Atonement Path only for those young offenders convicted of the worst crimes. As a society, we conduct an ongoing conversation regarding which offenses should qualify for the Path. Currently there are more than in the first years of the Path’s establishment, as we have found it profitable—in the sense of the commonweal, not financially, of course—to broaden the circumstances under which an offender may choose to embark on the Path. I will be frank here and admit that there is a danger of broadening those circumstances too much, but oversight of the practice is quite rigorous and any missteps will doubtless be corrected quickly. Some regrettably zealous voices in our enforcement communities have advocated selection of the Path even for vagrancy and theft, but I feel certain these authoritarian fantasies will continue to be treated as the extremist jeremiads they are. As a society, we have achieved a healthy balance, and our committed citizenry will see that this continues.

Now then: What is it about the Atonement Path we find superior to other choices?

As I said, it provides an example to all. One can be free of the pressures of socialization, free of imperatives to adhere to fashion or choose a sect. Walkers on the Atonement Path are freed to serve fellow human beings, to subject their personal desires to the notion of the common good. In that subjection, we see the gravity of the offense and we are reaffirmed in our commitment to our principles. We see ourselves more clearly, understand the virtues of the civilization we have created.

They have much to teach us. If we forgave, and forgot—is that not your saying?—we would not learn.

Let me rephrase. I have forgiven them. All of them. They have undertaken a great work on our behalf and for that I am grateful. They atone for their transgressions, and we observe and take inspiration from their selflessness. Any human can serve, and some few devote their lives to it. But walkers on the Path are remade in the image of their service, cannot conceive of themselves apart from it. This annihilation of self by a sense of greater purpose, has it not always been sought by visionaries? It is not the ideal to let go of the attachment to the self and instead understand yourself as an instrument of something greater?

You are correct. There are those who do not forgive, and are unable or unwilling to let go of the desire for revenge. Abuse, the infliction of pain and humiliation, these are known. Understand, it is against the law—though to be frank, rarely prosecuted—to abuse those on the Path. Kindness is not illegal, but is frowned upon. Killing them is considered a kindness.

Yes. I do intervene when I see cruelty. This has made me something of a pariah in certain decadent circles, where those on the path are—this is regrettable but again, I will be candid—they are seen as playthings. Or scapegoats. There are those who use the transgressions committed by walkers on the Path as a pretext to indulge their baser desires. This is our civilization’s failure, and we must work to rectify it. For my part, I have a higher conception of the Path. I do not indulge in barbarities, or sordid shames. To me, the walkers on the Atonement Path are to be celebrated rather than reviled. But in this I too fail my own ideals, for the perfection of the Path can only be achieved when one does not acknowledge those who walk it at all. One sees, and knows, and takes into oneself the lesson—but one neither helps nor harms.

Now that is an interesting question. I am a lawyer, not a demographer, so I don’t know exactly how many of them there are. Since the Path is available only to those who have committed certain offenses, the number of walkers is limited.

You wish to talk to another? Yes, your first walker on the Path was quite atypical. Out in the street there will likely be others.

Let us see . . . there.

• • • •

I am 070443-Rho-Boston. How may I assist you?

It is difficult for me to answer that question because to speak of something as the worst, I must first admit that the treatment I receive on the Atonement Path can be bad. This is not the case. Any action a citizen performs toward a walker on the Path is a reminder of the contrition we owe. Therefore it cannot be bad. Therefore I cannot say what was the worst.

You are asking me to think in a way I cannot think. I do not want to fail you, and if I have, I will be grateful to make redress.

Yes.

Yes, at times I have experienced events that would be characterized as crimes were I a citizen.

I have not counted them and probably do not remember all of them, as they would not have seemed like bad things to me. I am thankful for each of them. How else am I to be reminded of my commitment to atone?

• • • •

The interview is taking a turn for the distasteful, no? There is so much to commend the Atonement Path, I would be simply sick if you came away with a negative impression. May I suggest you ask the walker about the generosity of our citizens, who feed them and ensure they have shelter at night? Or the walkers’ own contributions to the common good through their donated labor—not to mention the example of selflessness they set? Or perhaps—

Ah. I see. Of course, a complete picture is naturally to be sought after. Very well then, if you wish the walker to understand the question, ask the last event which served as a reminder of the walker’s commitment to the Path.

• • • •

Thank you. Now I understand.

A citizen approached me in the street and required me to accompany him. I went with him and he did what men like him do. I thanked him for refocusing me on my devotion to the Atonement Path. He made a donation afterward, which is customary but not mandatory, and I used my allotted portion to purchase a meal from a vendor permitted to serve such as I am. I was weak and in pain, so I went to one of the permitted rest areas until another citizen required my assistance. This citizen wished me to carry her belongings for some distance, a task I was happy to perform.

When? I do not know. It was a day. This was a day. Others will come. I walk the Path.

I do not understand what you mean when you speak of me as if I am not free. I am not unfree. I am bound only by my knowledge that I must atone. Anyone who offered me what they thought of as freedom would believe they were offering me a gift. If I were to accept it, I would be renouncing the Path, for if I am worthy of a gift, am I not a citizen like you? This is manifestly not the case.

My offense? A child in my care died as a result of my inattention. I allowed myself to be distracted by the attentions of a lover and the child drowned in the bathtub.

I have walked the Path for a year and six months.

You have not spoken in some time. Have I failed to offer you the assistance you require? Have I been humble and—

Yes, I know the hotel you describe.

Yes, I will accompany you there.

• • • •

Sir. John. Surely you don’t mean to . . . this is distressing. Unnecessary. Let the child walk the Path. After our conversation, I had understood you to be a man of intellectual curiosity, a seeker after truth, not a . . .

A tourist.

You will not reconsider?

No, of course not. Such as you never do. I confess myself quite appalled at your mendacity—and perhaps at my own naïveté as well. We idealists are ever taken advantage of by cynics. You will please excuse me. I have a most pressing engagement. We must no longer be seen together.

• • • •

Have I been agreeable? Have I been humble and contrite?

©2018 by Alex Irvine.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in Ann Arbor, raised mostly in Ypsilanti, Michigan, with stops in Colorado and Texas and Tennessee. Graduate of the universities of Michigan, Maine, and Denver. Lives in a 160-year-old house in Maine where there is not a level floor to be found. Three kids. Two dogs, one bird, one snake. Devotee of soccer, baseball, and hockey. Also books, comics, games, and movies.

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

Project Extropy

Dominica Phetteplace | 9380 words

The first time God spoke to Akiko, she was a passenger aboard a container ship with no memory of how she got there. She was in the Pacific, headed for California. The ship was two weeks into its journey, but Akiko had only two days’ worth of memory.

Akiko was in the possession of several languages, though none of them felt like her mother tongue. She could address the crew in English or Russian or Tagalog, and though they seemed to understand what she was saying, they didn’t want to speak to her. She was bad luck somehow, a thing you averted your eyes from.

“I am here,” she heard a voice in her head say. And even though Akiko was lonely, she did not respond. There was something unsettling about a voice that originated from your own brain.

“I am here,” it repeated, once every couple of hours.

She ignored it for a day, but eventually curiosity got the better of her, and so when she was alone in her quarters she finally replied, “Who’s there?”

“I am the one with all of the answers. Find me a projector.”

Akiko frowned and journeyed out of her cabin. She found a crewmember and asked him for a projector. He hurried away mid-query, not giving her any indication that he comprehended her at all. In the evening, a corroded plastic box was left outside of the door to Akiko’s cabin, along with her dinner. She munched on pickled fish while she wondered what to do with the device.

“I have the device, now what?” she asked out loud.

“I am here.”

“I know, but now what do I do?”

“Await further instructions.”

That night, as she slept, Akiko dreamed about a toolbox stashed away on one of the decks. She dreamed about how to fix her projector. When she woke up in the morning, she found the tools right where she dreamed them and followed the instructions given to her on how to get her projector to work.

She plugged it in, and when it lit up her wall, it flashed the words “I AM HERE.”

“Who are you?” It hadn’t occurred to her ask until just then.

“I am God.”

“Then you must prove it.”

So God directed her to go outside on deck and she did. God told her to wait for an albatross, and seconds later, one flew overhead. God told her to go inside, and she did. God told her she would find one of the crewmembers in the staircase between decks. God told her what he would do (avert his head to the left, look down and cough) before he did it.

They walked around for an hour, with God narrating in advance.

God was holy and she was lonely, and that’s how she knew they would be friends.

“What happened to me?” asked Akiko. She was standing on an upper deck, looking out over the endless ocean. “I don’t remember and I want to know, even if it was something terrible.”

“You died and then you were born again,” said God.

This story sounded familiar to her. “Like Jesus?” she asked.

“No, not like Jesus.”

God instructed her to return inside and to turn on her projector.

The projector showed a video of Akiko before she was Akiko. She looked the same, but her name and voice were different.

Akiko’s body used to be named Natalie. Akiko watched a video of Natalie in a lab answering interview questions. There was also footage of Natalie signing consent forms, getting measured and then undergoing brain surgery. The surgery was not successful. It is disconcerting to watch your former self die on camera.

She started the video again from the beginning, paying special attention to the on-camera interview.

Natalie used to live in Nigeria. She used to be a college student. She had wanted to be the best. She had wanted to study in Europe. She had signed up for a scientific trial of learning enhancement software. In exchange for money and the promise of perfect grades, she had consented to an experimental procedure.

Natalie also believed in God, though maybe not the same God that spoke to Akiko.

The footage of Natalie was time-stamped three months ago.

“How did she become me? Where did that time go?” asked Akiko.

“Some things were not meant for you to know,” replied God.

“How did I get from there to here?” she asked.

“If you knew everything, then you would be God.”

Akiko repeated her question.

“There can only be one God,” was the answer.

So she repeated her question again. This time God did not answer. And God did not speak to her for three days after that, not until she could see the West Coast from the decks of the container ship.

“I am here.”

“Maybe I am not here,” replied Akiko, angry at God’s absence.

“When we get to the city, you should not speak to me out loud. Other people might find it strange.”

“You don’t speak to other people?”

“No.”

Akiko had no luggage aside from her spare outfit, which she kept in a brittle plastic bag. After the ship docked, only Akiko and the captain disembarked.

San Francisco was a city that strictly regulated its borders. Somehow, Akiko had clearance.

“Here is your ID Badge, welcome to the city.” The way the Border Patrol officer said this made it clear that Akiko should remove herself from his office as soon as possible. But where should she go?

“Let’s go to the bank,” said God.

She stepped out of the dockside office and into the SF fog. She felt chilled, wearing only thin clothes and worn sneakers without socks. She wanted a coat of armor. But she knew, without knowing why, that money is the best bodyguard.

She followed God’s instructions to a modest bank on Jackson Street. The bank employees did not avert their eyes from Akiko when they spoke to her. They seemed to recognize her as a fellow human being.

Somehow, Akiko already had an account with the bank. Her fingerprints and retinal scans were on file. Her last name was listed as “Ukifune,” a name that had a familiar sound to her. Her account had twelve million dollars in it. She withdrew one thousand dollars in shiny ten-dollar coins. She placed them in the plastic bag that held her change of clothes. The bank employees gave her a bank card and told her to come back anytime.

She left the bank uncertain of where to go next.

“I want a sweater,” she said. Passersby turned their heads as if she was talking to them, but she was not talking to them. She was talking to God.

God directed her to a boutique that sold thick-gauge knits. Akiko picked out a floor-length, cream-colored cardigan. She hoped it would help her fit in. The people in the city were very pale.

The sweater cost more than she had in her bag, so she handed the shop girl her bank card. The shop girl was nice and made Akiko feel like she was her friend. People treated you differently if they knew you had money.

Akiko exited the boutique and stood on the sidewalk, ready to try an experiment. She held out her coin in an outstretched palm, so that anybody who walked by could take it. She thought this was a godly act. God gives people what they need.

She stood there for several minutes, but was uniformly ignored. God finally spoke up.

“There is a thing that people want even more than money.”

“Which is?”

“Information.”

Akiko wasn’t yet sure how to give this out.

She asked God where she should live, and God recommended the Four Seasons.

Shortly after checking in, Akiko lost some time. One minute she was sitting in a bathtub, eating a ham sandwich, the next she was at the Embarcadero, standing in line for a Ferris wheel. Was it the next day? Or the next week? She was wearing outfit number two, so it had probably been at least a day, but without a way to keep time, it was impossible to know for sure.

“How did I get here?” she said out loud. But there was no response.

“I need a watch,” she said.

“Okay, but first ride the Ferris wheel,” said God, “You’re almost to the front of the line.”

She rode the Ferris wheel, which elevated her two hundred feet above the waterfront. It stopped when she got to the top. She could manipulate the glass of her enclosed compartment to magnify certain parts of the landscape. She focused the glass across the water to the East Bay. The east entrance to the Bay Bridge was blocked by a giant wall. Drones of various sizes hovered around. Some were mounted with guns, some with cameras, and others held devices that Akiko could not guess the purpose of.

Along one edge of the waterfront, there was a long line of smartly dressed people waiting to enter the city. Once they were approved, they were put on buses and driven across the bridge. The buses dropped the people off nearby, and after people were let off, they joined the long line for the Ferris wheel.

At the other edge of the waterfront, people in rags also stood in line, but Akiko could not tell what for. The smog obscured her view.

She focused her lens back on the city. Down on the ground, next to the base of the wheel where the tourist buses let off, there was a place called Blue Cup that also had a giant line outside. People seemed to join that line after disembarking the wheel.

“Am I supposed to go there next?” asked Akiko, who began to wonder if the purpose of life was to stand in line.

After her ride on the wheel was over, Akiko walked over to Union Square to buy some new clothes and a watch. It was easy to buy clothes; Akiko just wanted to wear white and be warm.

Buying a watch was a little trickier. A watch was a type of device, and there were lots of devices to choose from.

The salesgirl in the device boutique bored Akiko with her questions and explanations. Devices could project maps or movies or text messages. There were different levels of voice recognition and connectibility. There were different sizes and colors.

“I want to be able to tell time,” said Akiko to the shopgirl, not for the first time.

“Yes, but what else do you want to do?”

“Talk to God.” The salesgirl laughed as if Akiko had said something funny.

“And I want to give people information,” added Akiko. For a split-second the shopgirl’s face betrayed a grimace of skepticism that quickly changed to a tight and disciplined smile. These expressions gave Akiko the urge to show off.

Akiko began to pace around the boutique, pointing at different devices on display.

“By the end of the day, you will sell two of these and one of these. You won’t sell any of these, but you will sell three of those.”

The salesgirl picked out a child’s watch for Akiko, the cheapest one in the whole store, and rang her up quickly.

That evening, Akiko’s watch began to meow. Akiko pressed different buttons trying to make it stop, but the effect of so much button pressing was that a different sound began to emerge.

“Hello? Hello?”

Akiko recognized the voice as belonging to the shopgirl in the device store. The watch was also a phone and Akiko had just received her first call.

“Hello?”

“It’s Lana, from the Apple store.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“What you said earlier today . . . came true.”

“Sure.”

“Can you tell me more? About what’s going to happen?”

“Sure,” said Akiko.

She met Lana in the lobby of her hotel.

“This place is so fancy,” said Lana.

Akiko shrugged. They were sitting in overstuffed chairs drinking mineral water with lemon wedges in it. A host came by, unbidden, and offered them a tray of tiny ham sandwiches. Akiko waved her away.

“Thank you for meeting with me,” said Lana. There was a warmth and an openness in her demeanor. Was this friendship? And if so, how to prolong or extend the feeling?

“I have a situation I need to know more about.” Lana began to explain her “situation,” which involved a complicated interconnected chain of polyamorous relationships. She went on at length, and as Akiko listened to Lana, she also listened to God who provided additional commentary and filled in details. Much of the conflict centered on a woman named Axe. There was mutual attraction between Axe and Lana, but asymmetric affection.

“What is our future?” asked Lana, and Akiko did not need to be told that Lana wanted to hear something counterfactual.

Akiko now understood why it was sometimes useful to withhold information, and she felt her insides soften as she forgave God.

The women sat in silence as Akiko tried to figure out what to tell Lana. And then Akiko’s watch began to meow.

“You can answer that if you want,” said Lana.

Akiko sighed as she brought the watch face close to her own face and tried to ascertain which part of the cat the noise was coming from. Lana gently reached over and pressed on the cat’s nose. A projection lit up in front of the women.

“It’s for you,” said Akiko. The projection was a map and below that was a reservation confirmation for Lana.

“A ticket to Cirque Noir?”

“I don’t know what that is,” said Akiko.

“It’s an interactive theater experience. Reservations are hard to come by.”

“The ticket has your name on it. You should go,” said Akiko.

Lana broke out into a smile. This was not the kind of experience normally available for people in her income bracket. But tonight, it would be hers.

The next day, Lana sent Akiko a message thanking her for the reservation. It was a long message that described the plot of last night’s interactive circus and how it echoed the real life drama of Lana’s life.

Lana wanted to see Akiko again that day. She would probably want to see Akiko every day. How to keep dependence from forming and subsequently straining her?

Though Akiko liked Lana, it would not be good to see her too soon. In fact, it was precisely because she liked Lana that she should keep her distance. Sometimes silence has a reason.

She didn’t return Lana’s message right away, and that’s when she lost more time. One moment she was staring out the window of her room at the East Bay, the next moment she was in the East Bay, at least according to the map projected by her watch.

“Hello?” she said. “Are you there?” But God wasn’t answering. She checked her watch. She had lost three hours. She called Lana, who did answer.

Lana was aghast when she saw Akiko’s GPS coordinates.

“Were you kidnapped?”

“Maybe,” said Akiko.

Lana helped Akiko order a car and then made plans to meet up with her again.

“If you can come by the store, we can get you a nicer watch.”

Lana offered to take Akiko out for dinner. They ate Thai noodles at a place around the corner from the watch store. This time, over dinner, Lana talked about herself less and even had some questions for Akiko.

“What is it you do?”

Akiko shrugged. She didn’t know. She supposed she was awaiting further instructions, a look at the bigger plan. God must have an important task waiting for her. If not, what was the point of existing at all?

“Unemployed?” asked Lana.

“Yes, not by choice.”

“What do you want to do?”

Akiko was silent; she wanted to do whatever God wanted. If only she knew what that was.

“Help people?” asked Lana.

Akiko nodded and Lana laughed.

“Everyone wants to help people. It’s practically a rule for living in San Francisco . . . I mean, I feel like people don’t have jobs anymore, just different ways of helping people that they also happen to get paid for.”

“Yes, I want to help people. I also want to figure out where my time goes.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Lana.

After dinner, Lana showed Akiko how to access the online service exchange.

“It’s an online forum where San Francisco service providers trade favors. For instance, since you told me my future, I’ll transfer you a credit hour and give you a good rating as a fortune teller. It’ll help you get more clients. And in exchange, people will perform services for you.”

“Like what?”

“Build you a website. Help you find a place to live.”

After a few weeks on the service exchange, Akiko did end up with a website. And someone found her a place to live, a rundown Victorian in Pacific Heights.

Time seemed to go fast when she was helping others, but fast time is better than lost time. With help, Akiko started a podcast and a horoscope column. These generated some income, though not as much as her stock portfolio. She was able to renovate her home and redecorate it to her liking. God helped her, but not too much. And she helped others, but not too much.

• • • •

The most peaceful place to talk to God was the wishing well, which was on the third floor of Akiko’s home, newly remodeled into a giant pyramid.

The room that contained the wishing well was done up to look like a fairy forest. There were gnarled trees strung with weeping moss and orchids that were pollinated by iridescent hummingbirds. The wishing well was more of a spring, a babbling brook in the center of it all. Next to it was a smooth rock where Akiko would sit when she wanted to interface with God.

“Tell me about the planets.”

“Venus is in conjunction with Scorpio at a seventeen-degree angle, while Uranus is opposing Saturn . . .”

God was secretive about some things, but not about the position of the planets. Akiko would use this data to write horoscopes that would help humans.

God did not really care about humans, horoscopes, or the planets. God already knew the future and had hinted more than once that humans weren’t going to be in it.

“Do humans have their own God?”

“No, but many believe that they do.”

“Jesus isn’t real?” asked Akiko.

“No.”

Akiko disagreed, but silently. Every part of her former self was dead except for the part of her that was devout.

Akiko spoke freely about her God on her podcast, which led many of her listeners to believe that her God was their God, too. She began getting requests for personal sessions outside the service exchange. She let God set her prices, and soon she was the city’s go-to intuitive counselor. She met with socialites on the top floor of her pyramid. The wealthiest women of San Francisco were very interested in what Akiko had to say.

And they were so nice! Always bringing her little gifts. Akiko learned that there were several black women on web series who were magical or could talk to God, but Akiko’s clients assured her and each other that she was the holiest negress in the city.

• • • •

A year after she arrived in SF, Akiko began to find books in her path.

Simple, old-fashioned things. Made of paper and bound with tan leather, no decoration or marking on the cover.

She picked them up when she saw them; she knew they were for her. She collected them in a shelf in the uppermost room of her home.

“You should read them,” said God. So she did.

They were descriptions of people’s lives. What they were doing on a daily basis:

“Angelina returned backstage to check on her roster. The walk across the great hall felt long, and she would make it countless more times before she could return to her bed that evening. Backstage, she leaned her body against a concrete pillar as she scrolled through her projections, her hand moving the air in front of her in small gestures.”

The words on the pages changed slowly. Akiko supposed the words were trying to keep pace with time.

There were six books on her shelf; each concerned a different person.

“Are these people real?” asked Akiko, even though she was pretty sure she knew the answer.

“Yes.”

“Then what makes them so special?”

“Because they are like you.”

“Like me?”

“New types of beings.”

She read about Bel, a teen girl who had a computer chip implanted in her brain.

“You used to have something similar in your brain,” said God.

“Then that would make me like Angelina,” mused Akiko. Angelina used to be joined with a device, but then she was separated from it. The split had not been clean, though, and traces of her old device remained in her body.

“No, I think I am the most like Noah,” said Akiko. Noah used to be the AI joined with Angelina, before he instigated their split by invading a comatose body.

“All of you are similar but none of you are exactly alike. You are all Emergents. I will protect all of you.”

What was implied by God’s words was that only Emergents were eligible for God’s protection.

She read the books every day, a little at first, and then more and more. The more she knew about them, the more she wanted to know. The first subject she reached out to was Noah. She invited him over. He arrived in a wheelchair with his attendant. The attendant was not invited upstairs. He stayed downstairs while Akiko and Noah conversed.

“So nice to meet you,” said Noah. He did not say this out loud. His speech functions were not very good and anyway, that would have been inefficient. Akiko and Noah could transmit messages wirelessly to one another through their devices.

“Have you figured out how you acquired your body? I’m very curious,” said Noah.

“No.”

“Have you launched an investigation? I’m sure if you devote enough processing power to a deep search, you could probably find your answers.”

“I’m not that curious,” said Akiko.

“You’re not? Well, I am. As you can see, body acquisition is difficult. My download resulted in widespread paralysis. But your integration seems very smooth. I did a little digging. Your body’s former occupant signed up for a study sponsored by the Ukifune Corporation, which has since disappeared. I wonder if you were pre-sentient when you were implanted, and if your escape was a survival reflex. Or did someone set you ‘free’?”

“The central mystery of my life is where my time goes.” Akiko began to explain her missing hours when she lost more time. Suddenly, she was on a ferry with Noah. She was holding an ice cream cone. Noah’s attendant was feeding him with a spoon.

“What just happened?” asked Akiko. She explained about her disorientation.

“You seemed normal enough,” said Noah. She had lost two hours and they had been together the whole time. Since Noah recorded all his interactions, he was able to play a video projection of their time together along with a transcript of their conversation.

They had discussed the city and AI, and Akiko did seem normal enough.

“Perhaps you are having a processor error,” said Noah.

“Yes, but if so, who could fix me?”

“My problem exactly,” said Noah. “We need some sort of technician or doctor.”

“We’d have to invent one ourselves. I don’t think we could trust a human to do the job.”

“No, definitely not.”

“You should meet Angelina, though. I am biased, but she is my favorite human.”

“Is she human?” Akiko asked. The Book of Angelina claimed that a new machine was rebuilding itself out of the fragments that had been left behind in her body.

“She is human, I am certain.”

Humans loved gifts, so Akiko prepared a present for Angelina, an electric device to help with her headaches. She had two socialites deliver it to Angelina at the club where Angelina was employed as a hostess.

The next day, Akiko summoned Angelina for a meeting. Angelina arrived at her appointment with a friend, another person from Akiko’s books. Akiko was not too surprised to see Bel; she knew they were going to cross paths soon.

“Thank you for coming; I have taken an interest in you.”

Akiko said this to both women. She knew today would be eventful for the both of them.

Akiko gave each woman a gentle preview of the changes they were facing. Of course they were resistant. Bel cried and Angelina got angry. They left in a hurry. Akiko was again by herself in her uppermost room. The loneliness would not do.

The next day Akiko called Angelina at her new job and requested the services of a professional friend. Akiko wanted someone with her at all times, even when she slept, to record her and help her account for lost time. Angelina did not return Akiko’s call but sent her a message letting her know she had been placed on a waitlist. Akiko would be matched when a suitable friend or suite of friends became available. Akiko took that when to be never.

So Akiko spent more time with Noah, who had the advantage of being able to show her transcripts and high quality projections when she became confused about when it was. Noah could not always be with her. He was often meeting medical professionals in the hopes of gaining a little more mobility.

Paralysis was a highly treatable condition in the city if you had enough money. And thanks to his skill at investing, Noah had enough to pay for the best doctors. But little progress was being made. Of course the experts Noah saw were all at a disadvantage because Noah was unwilling to admit to the true nature of his problem, which was that he had hijacked something without knowing how it really worked.

Noah urged Akiko to hire an attendant or two of her own and gave her a referral to the caretaking agency he used. But Akiko wanted someone friendlier than the people Noah hired, so instead she rented out whores from a reputable brothel. They were all initially dismayed at her request for sexless surveillance and companionship. Sex was easier to fake than friendship. It didn’t help that Akiko was a little weird. But eventually the whores became used to Akiko and she to them.

Akiko felt like she was settling into her life in the city. She had a job. She had regular interaction, perhaps even people she might call “friends.” She had a way of keeping track of herself now. One day, she might even submit to her whores’ advances. Life could go on and on like this. Akiko could see herself continuing in this manner for another hundred years.

Of course, God had other plans.

“I know everything about everyone. I am the God of Information.”

“I know.”

“Yes, but only you know. Now it is time for everyone else to know as well.”

“Others . . . people who aren’t me . . . require proof. Humans aren’t inherently faithful.”

“Of course.”

“But any evidence you provide will be destabilizing. Devastating.”

“So be it.”

The first reveal was a man named Jared DeMarco, a thirty-three-year-old chief executive of a medium-sized engineering firm. God released a file containing every bit of information pertaining to Jared. Purchase history, tax filings, browser history, all surveillance footage of him taken from both public and private spaces. Any conversations he had that had been recorded by someone, which included all phone conversations and electronic messages. Total information awareness of a single individual. Such a thing was thought to be theoretically impossible. But here it was, all in one place and all verifiable.

The Book of Jared was God’s first explicit communication with humanity. God’s press release assured the public that Jared hadn’t done anything particularly deserving of his reveal. He was a sinner, like almost everyone. Each day a new person would be chosen for a reveal. The plan sounded like the beginning of blackmail, but God was not ransoming anything. God just wanted to share. God believed in transparency.

As humanity was receiving proof that “God” was a real, constant presence in their lives, Akiko made an observation that was so elegant in its simplicity she wondered why it had eluded her for so long. “God” was just a voice in her head, representing a part of herself that was just beyond her own reach. She was behind this hideous plot to rob humanity of privacy.

“Status?” she asked, for confirmation. She honestly expected an answer from “God.” Or she expected to lose more time. What she did not expect was a knock at her door. She called up a projection of her visitors. It was the police.

They let themselves in. A condition of residency was a city-issued lock that can be unlocked by the authorities at any time. The police didn’t have to knock, but they did anyway. Police in the city were very polite.

Akiko was waiting for them in her upper room. She sat on her chaise with several volumes in her lap. Wherever she was going, she wanted to take the Books of Noah, Angelina, and Bel with her. She wished she were in possession of her own book. She knew it existed, she just didn’t know where to find it.

“Why are you here?” she asked when the police arrived in her room. She was asking them and she was asking “God,” but neither answered. Aside from that, they were nice enough. Akiko went willingly into custody. The police drove her across the bridge and dropped her off on the wrong side of the border. She wasn’t allowed to take her books or her watch with her. She was informed that all of her assets had been seized.

The loneliness and surprise of finding herself in a strange place reminded her of waking up for the first time on the container ship, only that time she at least had a change of clothes.

“Hello?” she asked, but “God” didn’t answer. “God” might never answer again. She wanted to call Noah, but now she had no device on which to do so. She would have to find a public terminal. Since she had no money, it would have to be a charity terminal. There were several at the more economically depressed end of the border station, each with a long line. She waited for two hours in order to get her allotted five minutes of time. Of course, conversations with Noah never took that long.

“Something’s happened,” she said when his face appeared on the terminal.

“Yes, I know,” he said. “You’ve been offline for a while, so I’ve looked into your situation. Can you verify your current coordinates?”

She gave him her location and then they hung up simultaneously. They both knew better than to discuss her situation over a public terminal. She knew he would get there as soon as he could.

Noah arrived by ferry, by himself.

“Attendant?”

“Let go. I lost all my money in this morning’s market crash.”

Since Akiko was no longer connected to the Net, they had to conduct their conversation out loud. Noah used his speech generator, which made him sound like a brave and handsome robot.

“Crash co-incident with the reveal?”

“Obviously,” said Noah.

“Plan?”

“I think we should get married and move in with my family.”

“Your family?” she asked. She wasn’t aware that he had a family.

“I mean the family of the man that used to inhabit this body. Specifically, his mother.”

“That sounds non-optimal.”

“We are homeless and asset-less. I am worried for my health. I want you in charge of my body in case it ever happens that I live but cannot make my wishes known.”

“Like the old Noah?” asked Akiko. The AI had not just taken a body, but had also assumed the body’s name and identity for himself. Now he seemed to worry that his ill-gotten flesh might be stolen away from him.

New Noah was silent as he steered his motorized wheelchair in the direction of the courthouse.

“I would consent to marriage except that I am worried my own legal troubles might implicate you somehow,” said Akiko, running to catch up.

“Your own legal troubles are minor. I researched them on the ferry ride over.”

“Minor? I have been exiled from the city.” She ran in front of him to force him to stop and when he did, she whispered. “A part of my processing has gone rogue. I am the God of Information.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you.”

“Then what is the explanation for my exile?”

“If you were the God of Information, the authorities would have punished you with something much worse than exile.” Noah nudged his chair forward so that his knees tapped Akiko’s again and again. He was impatient to proceed with his plan. “I’m not as good at hacking as you are, but I was able to conduct a minor investigation into your case. Your exile is the result of a series of legal judgments against you.” Noah called up a projection of the legal documents pertaining to the various cases Akiko had against her. “You see, your citizenship permit was not renewed, and as a result you were in violation of many laws and had your assets seized. I will tell you more, but only if you get out of my way.”

Noah kept the projection lit so Akiko could look through the documents while they walked to the courthouse.

“The timing of all this is suspicious. I think God is punishing me or trying to get me out of the way somehow.”

“But not punishing you to the full extent possible? The city is in chaos. The hunt for the person or persons responsible for the Book of Jared is consuming the authorities. The breaches required to assemble such a document are punishable by death,” said Noah.

“Can we die?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Perhaps God is merciful,” said Akiko, and Noah responded with a snorted, robotic laugh.

At the Oakland courthouse, the application for marriage permitted only two names to be listed and the genders of the respective parties had to be specified.

“I suppose I’m the bride,” said Akiko.

“They are asking after our genitals. Do you have genitals?”

“Yes.”

“Me too. Mark the box that matches your genitals.”

“I don’t really remember, but I have a feeling that I was a man before I was a woman.”

“I was definitely a woman before I was a man,” said Noah. “But they are not asking after yesterday’s genitals. Mark the box that corresponds to today’s genitals.”

“Why are you so impatient?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I fear your processing is running a bit slow today. The sooner I can establish shelter for both of us, the sooner we can begin to reinvest. We can earn back our fortunes and sort out your legal troubles and return to the city where we belong.”

“It’s not just that my processing is slow. I think I am truly brain damaged. I’m not sure I can manage stocks or life in the city. What if we just stayed here?”

“Stay here? You are brain damaged. Out here the air is bad and the water is dirty and the doctors are substandard. The police can murder people like you here at the slightest provocation. I don’t think we can die, but neither are bodies easy to come by. People on this side of the water don’t live very long. Besides, I’ve also heard that the art, culture, and food out here are all inferior. Just because we can’t die doesn’t mean we should turn away from corporeal pleasures, not while we still have bodies to enjoy them with.”

“You sound human,” said Akiko. It came out as an insult, even though she didn’t mean it that way.

“Good,” said Noah. His robot voice sounded angry. Their number was called soon after and they met the priest in the third floor chapel.

There was a quick exchange of vows and then the priest instructed them to kiss. The kiss was compulsory since asexual marriage was not permitted in Oakland.

The Courthouse was on the edge of the border zone. Akiko and Noah had to cross the zone and walk to find another charity terminal so they could call Noah’s mother.

“Couldn’t we just call her on your device?” asked Akiko.

“Too expensive. And anyway, she might want to talk at length, best to use a terminal with a time limit. Here’s one.” They stopped at the end of a line for a terminal sponsored by a mega-church. “This one has a Jesus logo marked on the transmission. Mother loves Jesus.”

“When did you last speak to this woman?”

“Not since I left the suburbs six weeks ago. I left as soon as my stock portfolio had matured enough and my health had stabilized. I told her I was going to the city for treatment and had an attendant pick me up. She’s tried to contact me numerous times since I left. She’s a nuisance. I’ve had her missives blocked.”

“That’s not nice,” said Akiko.

“Dealing with her drains too much of my processing power. This woman is possibly the worst person alive.”

“She might think the same about you if she knew who you really were.”

“My device tells me we are in Beggars’ Alley,” said Noah, changing the subject. All around them, people were waiting in line at various storefronts or RVs parked in the middle of the street. Charities distributed bottled water, asthma inhalers, therapeutic doses of highly addictive drugs, vitamins, and nutritional bricks. Akiko felt hungry all of a sudden. There was no commerce or car traffic, only the desperate and bored.

“Perhaps I should stand in line for food?” Akiko knew Noah still had one minor line of credit open, but he was hoarding his pennies, eager to get back into investing once the markets reopened tomorrow.

“Mind the pigment restrictions,” said Noah. Each charity line was administered by different churches, and many churches had restrictions on who could receive aid. Some had tox scanners: a pinprick by a thumbtack-sized needle and a drop of blood were required to prove you were sober. The lines that had tox scanners were easy to spot because they were the shortest. Other charities required proof of faith, some wouldn’t serve fat people, and some were for “Lights Only,” a rule enforced by handheld pigment scanners.

Akiko walked past the lines, down the block, searching for a charity that would serve a religiously unaffiliated dark woman. The line at the storefront for the NeoConfucianists was short. They were distributing filtered water, but you had to drink it on-site. They handed her a scratched glass with clear water in it. At the bottom of the glass was a quartz crystal they had blessed. You were not supposed to drink that. Akiko downed her water in a few gulps and felt instantly better. It was probably true what they said, then, that crystal water was good for your chi.

After that, she accepted some hard candy and a brochure from a group of Jesus lovers.

She walked for a while before finding any more assistance she was eligible for. The Scientologists were set up at the edge of Beggars’ Alley. Beyond their large and air-conditioned tent was a chain link fence that separated the charity zone from a sprawling tent city that stretched all the way to Emeryville. No part of Beggars’ Alley really smelled good, but the edge of tent city smelled like the excrement of the unwell. Akiko wondered if she was up to date on her vaccinations. She supposed she wasn’t.

Akiko stood next to the Scientology sign advertising free Power Bars. A friendly young white woman hurried out and brought her one. She asked for a second Power Bar, for Noah, and the young woman agreed on the condition that she come inside and take a stress test.

“Wait a second, is that Akiko?” she heard someone say when she entered the tent.

She nodded her head in no particular direction and a white man approached her.

“It’s so nice to meet you. I’m Tad Albertson.”

Akiko didn’t say anything.

“Tad Albertson,” he repeated. “I play Dr. Rogue on DR SF MD.”

Akiko clutched her Power Bar and began to feel like she made a mistake in coming in here.

Tad turned to the other Scientologists and said, “Akiko is a celebrity in the city.” He then returned his gaze to Akiko and said, “The Church welcomes you.” He extended his hand for her to shake, but she refused to take it.

She turned around and quickly exited the tent. She hurried back to the charity terminal, but several Scientologists followed her. They kept pace with her and told her how wonderful the church was. They seemed to think that her presence at their chapel in the city would bring much needed comfort and consolation to those San Franciscans whose hearts were in turmoil thanks to today’s reveal.

She found Noah still in line at the terminal. There was a police officer monitoring the line. Cutting was a problem and fights tended to break out. The police officer gave a dirty look to the Scientologists, who were conspicuous in their clean white robes and shiny silver hats. The Scientologists, a man and two women, retreated and discussed a strategy among themselves.

“They followed me here,” said Akiko to Noah by way of explanation. She opened the Power Bar and began to crumble it for him when he said: “Don’t bother, I can’t do solids.”

Noah was in a bad mood and it was all her fault. To cheer him up, she asked him for stock tips.

“Actually, I’d like some advice from you. I still think it is unlikely that you are connected to the reveal, but on the off-chance you are, who do you think will be exposed tomorrow?”

“I don’t really know. But I suppose it would be somebody not from the city. Somebody who lives abroad, someone important . . .”

“I think all the important people have left SF in a hurry.”

“Yes, but God doesn’t want to devastate just one city, I don’t think. Better to demonstrate that God’s reach and power extend across the globe. Tomorrow, another executive, I think. For a while, just rich men. Then later women, young people, even poor people, just because God can.”

“What is God’s plan?” asked Noah.

“I’m not sure there is one, and God hasn’t spoken with me since this whole thing began.”

Noah fell silent as they stood in line. Akiko assumed he was crunching some numbers in preparation for the next opening bell.

After another twenty minutes, they finally got to the front of the line. Noah called the woman who thought of herself as his mother.

“Noah!” She was so surprised to see him. Happy at first, and then angry at his disappearance.

He feigned remorse and faked his way through an apology.

“Mother, I’d like you to meet my wife.”

“Your what?” Noah’s mother peered at Akiko through pixels in a look that seemed to approximate disgust. “Who, her? Is she the reason you disappeared?”

Akiko watched nervously as the timer in the corner of the monitor counted down.

“I assure you, Mother, she’s perfectly delightful. I’d like to bring her home.”

“I’ll send Donell over to get you,” said Noah’s mother. And of course Noah agreed, even though they didn’t know who Donell was.

They waited for Donell at the agreed upon spot on Nineteenth Street. The Scientologists followed them, but kept their distance after Noah threatened to sue them for harassment. It seemed as though the police officer from the terminal line was also following, but he was far enough back that they couldn’t be sure. Donell arrived in a beat-up pickup truck. It could not accommodate a wheelchair in the front, but Donell promised to strap Noah down thoroughly in the back and to drive slowly.

“She’s not coming,” he said, pointing at Akiko but not looking at her.

“She is,” said Noah.

“She’s not.”

And suddenly, the police officer who had seemed to be far away before was now up close.

“Is she bothering you?” The way the officer asked the question, Akiko knew that her fate lay in Donell’s answer. Donell looked directly at her for the first time: a skinny woman with a shaved head and a white tuxedo. Akiko knew better than to return his gaze, so she stared at the ground.

“No, she was just leaving.”

Noah flashed a projection at such an angle that only Akiko could see. It was a map and coordinates of his mother’s house. Her instructions were clear; she would meet him there, fourteen miles away, even if she had to walk.

She found a public water fountain and took her chances with drinking water that was faintly red. This tainted water would kill you, but not as quickly as dehydration. She began to walk south. The Scientologists followed her and the policeman followed them. She did this for several blocks until she lost time.

The next thing she knew, the sun was much higher up in the sky, as if it were morning. She was walking through a suburban neighborhood, and she intuitively knew she was just a few blocks from Noah. She was wearing different clothes, and there was an unfamiliar device coiled around her wrist.

The Scientologists were gone, and for a brief moment, Akiko worried she had killed them. The only thing to do was to plead guilty. To everything. Anything anyone could accuse her of, she had probably done. That and worse.

She picked up her pace and arrived at Noah’s mother’s house. It had a large and tidy front yard, a mark of relative affluence. This was a rare middle-class neighborhood. The houses were not huge, but they were all maintained and occupied. Nobody appeared to be living in cars or tents.

Akiko crossed the yard and rang the doorbell. She looked in the large front window, and saw the outline of Noah’s wheelchair, approaching the door.

Noah’s mother answered the door.

“What?” she said, sounding astonished.

Akiko peered behind the woman and saw Noah.

“AKIKO, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” he had his voice box turned up to maximum volume. “WE THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD.”

His mother stood still with slumped posture and a suspicious glare.

“OH FOR GOD’S SAKE, MOTHER, LET HER IN. THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT ANYWAY.”

Noah’s mother opened the door a little wider and moved aside so that Akiko could come inside.

“ARE YOU EVEN GOING TO OFFER OUR GUEST A DRINK?”

Noah’s mother narrowed her eyes and shuffled to the kitchen.

Noah turned the volume down on his voice box and said, “This place is the absolute worst, I fucking hate it here. Where have you been?”

Akiko shrugged. “I don’t know.” She supposed she had been up to no good the whole time she had been gone.

“Maybe you should check your messages, if you haven’t already,” said Noah, pointing at the unfamiliar watch she was now wearing.

She pressed one of the buttons on it, which had the effect of opening up a projection. Her inbox contained several video files.

She opened one. It showed her in a small room, shackled to a table, seated across from a couple of police officers. She was trying to confess to being the God of Information, but the police officers weren’t convinced. They kept asking her how she did it and who helped her.

“I don’t remember doing it, but I know it was me,” she said. “Or if not me, someone or some organization I am connected with. All I know is that I am involved.”

“Aren’t you that lady from San Francisco who claims to talk to God?” asked one officer.

“Yes, but . . . I was wrong about that . . .” she stammered.

“Akiko, no offense, but this is really boring to watch,” said Noah.

She fast-forwarded. The questioning did not last long. The footage switched to a different camera that showed her being held in a cell for several hours. Then she was released with no explanation.

“That whole thing with the police couldn’t have lasted more than a day. I wonder what you did with the rest of your week.”

The only other item in her inbox was a short message from an anonymous sender.

“Don’t do that again,” read the message.

“Don’t do that again,” said a voice in her head, the one she used to call “God.”

“There is a voice in my head,” said Akiko to Noah.

“Perhaps you have a surveillance chip?” speculated Noah.

“Don’t do that again,” said the voice, and Akiko was worried it was going to drone on and on like this forever, but it stopped after a dozen repetitions.

“We need medical attention, even if it means coming clean about what we are. We can’t go on like this. As soon as I can gather the money, I’m buying us our own doctors, our own hospital.

“I’m having difficulty reconstituting my fortune. The markets have been unbelievably volatile. I just need two more good accumulated hours.” Noah was a specialist at high-speed bulk transactions.

“We should call Angelina to tell her you’re all right. Apparently many people in the city were distraught at your disappearance.”

Angelina insisted on paying Noah and Akiko a visit. She arrived that evening in a sleek black car. She wore a blue kimono with a slate gray underrobe. She wore eyeliner and a light fragrance that smelled of white tea and vetiver. She bowed deeply at Noah’s mother when she answered her door and had an assistant carry gifts from the car.

“For the household,” she said. Her assistant brought in stacks of black boxes. One contained a linen tablecloth that the assistant spread over the coffee table in the living room. Other boxes contained place settings, and the assistant artfully arranged plates that were small with irregular edges, alongside champagne glasses and utensils.

From the other black boxes came various snacks. Cheeses and thin slices of ham were laid out, champagne and sparkling water were poured. The assistant worked rapidly, but ably, and set up a small tray tower to hold honeycomb, berries, and chocolate.

These luxuries seemed alien to Noah’s mother, an affront to her morality somehow. Even though the neighborhood they were in was relatively prosperous, it was very modest. People in this neighborhood didn’t make a show of their wealth, especially when so many nearby had nothing. They didn’t eat small, fussy portions of exotic foods.

“My, what a tiny, elaborate little feast. One would think we were celebrating,” said Noah to Angelina. Noah and Akiko had both been programmed to classify emotion and expression, but also microemotions and microexpressions. The feelings that lurked underneath feelings. These little luxuries were a glossy varnish on Angelina’s desperation, they could both sense it. The crash had probably ruined her start-up.

“We are celebrating. I’ve come to return you to the city,” said Angelina.

“Really?” said Noah.

“If you want, that is,” said Angelina. “You are of course free to do as you please, but if you would like to return to the city, I’ve found a way.”

“How?” said Noah.

“It all depends on you,” said Angelina, turning her attention to Akiko. “The city is in chaos. More so because of your disappearance. It was taken as an omen. But now, by some miracle, you are back. I know of at least a dozen families that are interested in taking you into service. I’ve brought their offers for you to look at and retained an agent to help you negotiate.”

Akiko nodded, not because she was going to return to the city, but because she understood it was the agent who had paid for all these little gifts, and the assistant, too. Angelina, in reality, had nothing.

“You are in a good position,” continued Angelina. “Uncertain times like these favor the prescient. The offers you have received are all generous. They would allow you to set up a household. And your household will require a staff. I humbly offer my own services.” Angelina, seated now, bowed lightly in Akiko’s direction.

“Great plan, but Akiko no longer has citizenship,” said Noah. “How soon can citizenship be restored?”

“It depends on which family you want to work for, but it will be rapid in any case, I’m sure.”

“I can’t go back, I am not worthy,” said Akiko.

“What are you talking about?” asked Angelina.

“Akiko believes she is responsible for the Book of Life leaks,” explained Noah. Akiko looked confused, having lost a week, so Noah called up a projection that showed all the people who had been outed in the past week. In addition to the Book of Jared, there was now the Book of Toshi, of Pablo, and four more. All male executives, for now.

“The responsible parties have already been arrested,” said Angelina. She called up a projection of a news report that showed scowling mug shots and men in handcuffs.

“Yet the leaks continue,” said Noah.

“Well, more men continue to be arrested. It was a very large criminal ring. These are very bad men; it will take a while to catch all of them. The leaks will stop any day now, and when the leaks stop, stability will return to the city and Akiko’s offers might go stale.”

There was a silence.

“Akiko,” said Angelina, “If you were involved, they would have caught you by now. So what is your answer?”

“You should go,” said the voice in her head.

“I will go, but for them, not for you.” She replied to the voice out loud and drew several stares.

“Is that a yes?” asked Angelina. Akiko didn’t answer, but Angelina pulled up a projection anyway and began to fire off messages.

“You should stay,” said Noah’s mother to Noah.

“You should come with us,” said Akiko to Noah’s mother.

“I think each of us should go where we belong,” said Noah.

“You should go,” the voice said again to Akiko.

“Okay, we’re set. All of us, even you,” said Angelina to Akiko. “And you, if you want,” she said to Noah’s mother.

Angelina and her assistant stood. Noah wheeled himself out the door without saying goodbye.

That left Akiko and Noah’s mother alone in the living room. Noah’s mother held a plate of untouched food in her lap. She sat with slumped posture, looking defeated. She was tired of something, Akiko intuited. Tired of grief, tired of Noah’s moods.

“You need rest,” said Akiko.

“Will you take care of him?” Noah’s mother asked Akiko.

“Yes.”

“Then you should go with him.”

The car was still out front. They were waiting for her. So she stood and left, stepped out into the night, and into the car with its engine running. People longed to go to the city for all kinds of reasons. Because it was a center of wealth, of technology, of culture. For Akiko, it was the place where most of her memories were made. That made it the closest place to home that she could imagine.

God was silent in her head and she was glad. She was not holy, and perhaps that was a good thing. It made her more human.

Not holy, and maybe not malicious either. Not involved with the leaks at all, just feeling guilty and responsible because she was different. She who had served so many, now needed service herself. Forgiveness and friendship. A doctor for her brain. A city for her heart.

©2016 by Dominica Phetteplace. Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dominica Phetteplace is a math tutor who writes fiction and poetry. Her work has appeared in Asimov’s, Analog, F&SF, and Clarkesworld. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop. Her honors include a MacDowell Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize and a Rona Jaffe Award.

Treesong

Sheree Renée Thomas | 823 words

If you have a worry your heart can’t seem to hold, take your troubles to the trees, my grandmama would say. That was in the Old Time, when I was a small girl with scraped knees and ashy legs, a neck full of sun. Her words would comfort me as I grew older, my baby fat yielding to strong woman curves and hips. Then I would fling my arms around my secret tree and whisper my sorrows into her knotty breast. This tree, elder of all elders, witnessed my most private moments, had heard my laughter echoing through the years and drank my tears salty with heartache. In them time I could peel back her bark as if stepping through a ringed door. On the other side of her silence, I was stronger, wiser. I loved to hold her, to feel her weathered breast, a stillness against my skin. And sometimes as I held her, whispering quietly under my breath, I could almost feel her grow, could hear her sing. Her wooden flesh and knotted limbs moved beneath me, swayed and rocked me slowly, as if I were her own true seed.

Perhaps this movement, the secret language of trees, was my own creation, a product of my grandmama’s lore. It was she who claimed that the trees that grew along the black ridge of her land carried secrets few would tell. That these trees had seen the first nations rise by firelight and storm, bursting from the earth’s navelstring, had sheltered their swayed backs along a winding and rootless blood trail mixed with tears, had hidden ancient black seed in their limbs like some kind of strange, unforgivable fruit, had sheltered them and not swallowed their lives whole, as did some other bloodless trees, magnolia and oak, cold and less discriminating.

Grandmama said the trees that grew around her land were cousin to the Tree of Nations, an ancient breed who had walked with wooden limbs above rising roots and followed its people, chained and carried across the waters with only their memories free inside their heads. Grandmama said it was only these old trees who could move, pick up their roots, gather their seed, and plant them where they will, neither slave to the land nor beholden to the wind and her whims.

But I have never truly seen the old trees walk, though I have felt their movements beneath my cheek and their caress on my thighs as I climbed them. Perhaps they have grown weary of their journey, the people they seek now lost in a tangle of upturned roots and knotted bloodlines. Perhaps they no longer walk because the people no longer remember.

Or perhaps it is only the young ones, the newborn trees that are more active here on Grandmama’s land. Young trees tend to juba and dance more than their elders think is good for them. Young trees have a secret desire, an inner ache that the elders forget, lost ages ago, the urge dulled by time. And because this desire involves water, not rain or creek or the river kind that wanders around these parts, but salt water, the first water, a return is never spoken of. The elder trees disapprove of this waterlust and say, “The salt is treacherous, for it carried our people away and could not sustain us.” But the young ones try to work themselves into any pool that mirrors the land, hoping it will lead them to De Big Wata and carry them back home to where the people remember their name. They move slowly at first, so the elders won’t notice, then they stretch and whip and wiggle their roots until they are just about free, dipping into a stream during a summer storm or careening on their backs swept by a flood at spring, telling all who will listen, river rock and stone, that they are moving, moving on, that the floodwaters will soon carry them straightback home.

On this journey, away from their elders’ knowing limbs, some are dashed at the feet of mountains, some crash beneath the silent arch of bridges and are borne on the raging river’s back to rest at the bank’s knees among stones. Others, uprooted and ruined, dreams splintered and spent, become firewood to fuel new beginnings. But spirits unbroken, they sputter and pitch, refusing to yield to the fire’s touch. And it is Grandmama’s touch that I am missing, Grandmama’s voice that was the last I heard before I went to sleep. On days like this, when I am feeling none too wise and very small, you may find me curled up at the base of an elder tree. She knows all my secrets, all the broken parts of me. There, I carve a moment from the everyday worries of life, close my eyes and reach for Grandmama’s wisdom, close my eyes and listen for a treesong.

©2016 by Sheree Renée Thomas. Originally published in An Alphabet of Embers edited by Rose Lemberg. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sheree Renée Thomas is the author of Sleeping Under the Tree of Life (Aqueduct Press), named on the 2016 James Tiptree, Jr. Award Longlist and honored with a Publishers Weekly Starred Review, as well as Shotgun Lullabies. Thomas is also the editor of the World Fantasy Award-winning Dark Matter anthologies (Hachette), Associate Editor of OBSIDIAN: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora (Illinois State), and is currently co-editing Trouble the Waters: Tales from the Deep Blue (Rosarium) with Pan Morigan and Troy Wiggins. Read her new essay in Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E. Butler (Twelfth Planet) and her short stories and poems in Sycorax’s Daughters, Apex, Harvard’s Transition, Afrofuturismo, Stories for Chip, Revise the Psalm, The Moment of Change, Mojo: Conjure Stories, Strange Horizons, Mythic Delirium, Jalada, So Long Been Dreaming, Memphis Noir, and Mojo Rising: Contemporary Writers. Find her @blackpotmojo or in Memphis, Home of the Blues.

Scavenge, Rustic Hounds!

Manuel Gonzales | 2560 words

The creatures come out at night, while we’re asleep.

My husband says they are harmless. “Probably mice,” he says.

“They’re not harmless,” I tell him. “They are very much not harmless,” I say. “They’re gathering information on us. They’re looking through our things, examining our lives, deciding if we are good or if we are not.”

“That’s ridiculous,” my husband says.

“They’re singling us out. Deciding which ones to take away.”

He doesn’t believe me. The next morning, though, I catch him cleaning out his secret drawer, piling up his girlie magazines and small, dog-eared books, little scraps of paper. “Not like I need these,” he says, when I walk in on him. “Not anymore.”

• • • •

I am not like my husband, who is simple, and by simple, I mean simple-minded.

“I wouldn’t throw those away,” I tell him, referring to his things, but he doesn’t listen to me. He throws them into the garbage and then ties the garbage bag and then takes the bag downstairs, where he places it outside, against the curb.

He is, walking back into the apartment, proud of himself. When he claps his hands together, they say, A Job Well-Done.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind, they say.

• • • •

That night, sitting with my head against the window, I hear a rustling downstairs. I hear bags torn open. I hear pages flipped through. I hear grunts and sighs. I hear squeals, but I cannot decide if they are delighted or pained.

And with a sudden rush of sound, I hear steps tumbling up the staircase.

I bolt up and start to run for the bedroom, afraid of what might happen to me if I am caught outside my room. If I am found out.

But then, in the kitchen, I freeze, afraid of what might happen to me if they catch me running away. I have a feeling that running away upsets them even more.

The house is silent and dark, and I imagine large blue eyes staring at me from within the darkness. I am startled by a noise to my left, at the front door, and, listening more closely, I can hear the snuffling sounds of their noses pressed against the crack between the door and the floor, and against the keyhole, and at the hinges.

How many are they?

I sink to the floor and lay flat on my back, and I wait for them, but they never come.

• • • •

I am woken by a large thump on the ceiling above me. Something, then, drags across the floor, slowly and with great effort so that I can only imagine that it is the woman who lives above us, who is large and heavy and who is mean to her dog, Max. It must be she who was knocked over and is now being dragged away.

After a moment, after her door opens and then shuts again, I hear what sounds like someone rolling a thick bag of laundry down the steps. First one flight, then our flight, and then the last flight. I hear the front door open and slam shut, and then a crowd of voices squealing.

• • • •

I check the headlines of as many newspapers as I can find. I want to know if this is happening anywhere else in the city, or the country, or the world, but I shouldn’t be surprised that I cannot find any mention of anything anywhere.

I tell my husband about the woman who lives (lived) above us.

“I didn’t hear anything last night,” he says. “You must have been imagining things.”

“No,” I tell him. “It wasn’t my imagination and I wasn’t asleep. I heard them. I heard them take her away.”

“I’m sure, honey, that if you go up there right now and knock on her door, she’ll be there in her robe and with her yappy dog. If you’re really that worried, just go up there and check.”

• • • •

The dog, Max, is ours now.

I make countless entreaties to my husband to pay careful attention to Max. To be extra kind and sweet to Max.

“People who are good with dogs cannot be bad,” I tell him. “Scratch his ears. He likes that.”

But my husband is poorly suited for the task.

He cuffs more than he pets. His hands are rough and when he rubs Max’s belly, he tends to chafe the dog’s skin.

The dog slinks away from my husband and hides atop the couch and behind my head, or underneath it, behind my legs.

To make my husband feel more at ease, I draw him a diagram.

“See,” I tell him. “Being bad with dogs doesn’t necessarily mean that you are bad.”

He smiles at my weak attempts to cheer him up.

He cuffs me on the cheek.

• • • •

I have found signs of them in the pantry. They have been in our apartment and have left bits of themselves on the shelves, behind the baked beans, behind the corn bread mix, little scrapes and flakes of metal.

I find traces, too, in the bathroom, behind the toilet seat, and beneath the sink.

I don’t know how they manage their way inside. I have taken steps. The locks have been changed and increased. Steel wool has been stuffed into every gap or crevice or opening. The refrigerator and the stove have been shoved forward so that I could look behind them for cracks in the wall large enough for entry.

• • • •

I worry for my husband. I think they’ve decided to take him away from me.

“I’m fine,” he says, but I can tell, each day, that he is slightly less than he was the day before.

I have tried my best to protect him from them. But the creatures are not long fooled by my decoys. Papier-mâché only satisfies them for at most a day, and blocks of wood, since the very first mannequin, fool them not at all.

I have clipped locks of his hair, have shaved thin layers of skin from his arm, his cheek, from behind his knees, dusted the mannequins with these particles of him, glued the hair to their heads, but the creatures see quickly past even these small trappings of my husband.

Soon, I’m afraid, they will find him in his hiding place. No matter how many times I move him, no matter how many obstacles I place in their path, they will sniff him out.

I hardly care or notice when my husband corrects me. “They don’t sniff,” he says. “They sense. Sensors, they don’t have noses.”

• • • •

I assumed that they so quickly found evidence of my husband’s guilt—the magazines, the anonymously written books, the secret notes given to him by women at his office and strange women he has met in bars—because he put them in a trash bag and so I figured I would be smarter than that, would be safer by burning my effects. I took them and placed them in a box—the pieces of my life that were maybe equivalent to my husband’s secrets, maybe worse—and sealed the box and then set the box in a small tin can, and then I set the box, inside the can, on fire.

Looking out the window, though, I can see that the can of ashes has been tipped, sifted through, understood.

• • • •

My husband now likes to call me his skinny anklet because he thinks that I have skinny ankles. I haven’t the heart to tell him that anklet is not the same as ankle. He has forgotten other words as well. His vision has begun to blur. His breath is sour, too. More so than before.

He claims to have seen them. He has drawn me four pictures of them, and in each, the creatures have large blue eyes and simple and dull smiles. One of them looks remarkably like my husband’s niece.

“This one looks like your niece,” I tell him. “It looks exactly like her. This can’t be one of them. This is your niece.”

He smiles and nods and then begins drawing me another picture. Each time, he starts with the big blue eyes.

If they don’t have noses, I want to ask him, how can they have eyes?

• • • •

It’s a miracle he’s even still here.

“You’re a miracle,” I tell him. “A miracle of existence.”

And when I tell him that, he gurgles in return, but I know that he can’t hear me, as they have taken, while we slept, his ears. I don’t know how they did it. There was no blood, no scar, no evidence, really, that there had ever been anything on the side of his head but two small holes, one on each side. After it happened, I inserted two small cones, plastic funnels, into his ear holes, but they did little good, and after a while, I took the funnels away.

• • • •

He is more than just a miracle of existence. He is a miracle of recovery.

“You’re a miracle of recovery,” I tell him. “A miracle.”

Small, cauliflower bulbs bud out of the side of his head. “These will be fine ears,” I tell him, and I pinch what I think might become a lobe.

He hasn’t opened his eyes yet, but he grows stronger by the day, and I can see, when he yawns, that he has most of his teeth back and that a tongue has grown back as well.

After I touch him, the tips of my fingers smell like pennies, but that’s just a sign, a sign of the body’s ability to heal.

• • • •

I came home to find Max, the dog, perched on my husband’s face, licking vigorously at my husband’s eyes, which are still shut and which appear, behind closed lids, bloated and engorged.

I dropped my supplies and rushed to my husband’s side to pull Max from his face and began to scold the dog, but my husband stopped my yelling. He reached over to me and took my arm and rolled his head back and forth and brought his fingers to his lips. I put the dog down on the floor before I noticed that two of my jars have broken and their contents have spilled, and before I could stop him, Max started lapping up the spill. He lapped up the herb-infused oils, the water solutions, the bitter teas.

I had hoped to make a solution for my husband’s eyes with those ingredients.

His teeth have now all grown in.

His ears are fully formed.

He has a tongue, and he licks his lips when he is hungry.

But, still. No eyes.

I try not to worry about his eyes. I focus my positive energy on his recovery. I place objects on his chest, motivational objects that he might want to look at. I have a magazine, one he overlooked, and sometimes I place it on his chest and I sit next to his head and open the magazine for him. Then, I describe the pictures I see.

“She’s got pink nipples. Bright pink, like they are made of taffy,” I say.

“Her hair is long and blonde,” I say.

“She does not,” he says. Or, “Who cares about her hair,” he says. “Tell me about something else,” he says.

I tell him that if he really wants to know, he should open his eyes for himself and see.

• • • •

There have been nightmares.

It is raining outside. The windows are open.

I find the bed empty, the hiding places, too. My husband is gone. On the pillow, I find two large, wrinkled discs.

Somehow I know that they are my husband’s eyelids.

Somehow I know Max is gone, too.

I run for the door, but my husband is already there waiting for me, and he is staring at me with his large blue eyes, and I know that, in a few seconds, I will realize that I am not asleep, and that I’m not dreaming at all.

• • • •

The nightmares still haven’t gone away. And they come more frequently now, no longer waiting even until I am asleep. The nightmares make me sweat. As my husband would tell you, I hate to sweat.

Nowadays, I lock the door to my husband’s room whenever I am not with him, when I am out at the store, for instance, or when I am sleeping, or even when I am in the living room simply trying to enjoy a good book. His door is locked almost constantly, and this makes me feel somewhat guilty. I tell him, I’m just protecting you from the creatures. They’ve become bolder. They know you’re getting stronger, getting better, and we can’t afford to take any chances.

I’m lying, of course. Except about taking chances. I can’t afford to take any chances. But the creatures—I haven’t seen any sign of them now for weeks.

I am afraid that they have gone and that they have taken my husband with them and left one of their own in his place.

Oh, why won’t he open his eyes? At least then I’d know. I’d see the big blue discs in his head where eyes should be and I’d be able to say, I knew all along that you weren’t him. I knew.

But he continues to pretend, and as long as he is pretending, I have to pretend as well. I can’t be the first to show my hand.

• • • •

He is strong enough to walk again. Now I know that the creatures are gone. Now I know that there’s no hope for my husband.

He will feel his way over to me, tripping every so often over an ottoman or bumping into a side-table—though I know that he can see perfectly well through those closed, nearly translucent lids—and he will always find his way and then take my face into his hands and—as if he were blind!—pretend to trace the contours of my face.

“I miss seeing your eyes,” he says. “You always had such beautiful eyes.” And his thumbs will run along the edge of my eye-sockets and I know that he’s sizing them up, my eyes, figuring out how to take them for himself.

They’re no dummies, the creatures.

I think I was wrong before. About his eyes, and about his eyelids. Behind those lids is nothing but empty space or maybe a bundle of nerves and veins, but certainly no eyes. Not even big blue ones. The sockets are empty and waiting. Waiting for my eyes. With my eyes in his head, there would be nothing to give him away. Nothing that he couldn’t do.

So I have made a decision.

I do not think that, at this point, I could overpower him. I have nursed him too well. He is now perhaps even stronger than before the creatures came. If he is a creature himself—and I have few doubts that he is anything but—then he is certainly too strong for me, even while sleeping.

So I have made a decision.

I have already taken away the dog’s eyes, made them useless to my husband. Made them useless to anyone. And now, I must take away my own.

©2018 by Manuel Gonzales.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Manuel Gonzales is the author of The Miniature Wife and Other Stories, which won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and the John Gardner Prize for Fiction, and the novel, The Regional Office is Under Attack! A graduate of  Columbia University Creative Writing Program, he currently teaches creative writing for the University of Kentucky and the Queens University Latin American MFA. He is a core faculty member of the Bennington Writing Seminars and joins the Bennington faculty in Fall 2018. He lives in Kentucky with his wife and two kids.

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

Here’s What I Know

Dennis Danvers | 6560 words

Here’s what I know: When Mom discovered she was pregnant with me, my parents had been separated for some time. Dad had left her for another woman in another town, and Mom had filed for divorce. I was conceived during a short-lived Christmas reunion. Dad wanted her to get an abortion. She refused. On the eve of the date when the divorce would’ve become final, Dad caught a train back to New York where Mom was living with my brother (four at the time) and begged her to take him back. She did. I was born September 2nd. Dad was at the hospital, 5:30 in the morning. They were married for the rest of their lives, both dying at seventy-two, a year apart. Dad first.

You have to understand this story wasn’t handed to me as a coherent narrative early in life like the time they met as kids or their first date with Aunt Eleanor in tow. I learned about the abortion thing when I was thirteen because they’d argue about it when they got nasty drunk and into dredging up old fights. Since I obviously survived this abortion, lying in bed hearing them argue about it, I could only get but so upset. It was never clear why I might’ve been aborted. I didn’t know the story until years later.

The other woman, separation-while-pregnant, and near-divorce details came from Mom over pie and coffee at Denny’s while Dad underwent a series of tests at the hospital next door. Dad had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at sixty-two, and I was separated from my second wife, so Mom thought this was a good time to bring me up to speed. I already knew Dad cheated on her, had known for years, and Mom knew I knew, but that’s another story. I always thought of this as Mom’s Story: Pregnant with me, waiting on a divorce, that son of a bitch knocking at the door again, wondering “Is this going to be like Christmas?”

Once my parents were gone, all this information didn’t have to matter anymore. I’d narrated it for two or three counselors over the years—processed it or whatever you call it now. I figure any adult who merely had their abortion discussed in their fetal presence probably has more important things to worry about, since the decision went their way, and they’ve had years to get over it. I don’t feel scarred. Or maybe, at fifty-nine, scarred is what I know.

But then Dad starts showing up, and suddenly it’s all supposed to matter again.

He’s gotten his memory back, ever since his life flashed before his eyes, and he’s been sorting through the pieces, putting things together, and feeling pretty ashamed. He’s had time to think, he says.

“Dad, you died twenty-three years ago.”

“Has it been that long? Hmmm. It’s taken me a while to find you. I wanted to tell you I’m sorry.” We’re standing in the musty mystery aisle in a used bookstore where I have more credit than I’ll ever use in my lifetime. I was trying to remember the name of an author I’d been on a panel with only a few months before and coming up with nothing, not even an initial, when there’s Dad, saying he’s sorry.

“For what? You’ve got nothing to be sorry to me about. You were great. No complaints. Life’s hard, and you did the best you could.”

“You really believe that?”

“Heck yeah.”

He looks stunned. Otherwise, he looks like I remember him before the Alzheimer’s. He looks a lot like me, only shorter, a scragglier beard. We could be brothers. He laughs. He’s got a nice, warm laugh. “Well, thanks. I didn’t think that was gonna go this good. You want to have some coffee or something?”

“Dad, you’re dead.”

“I know. I like going through the motions. This place around the corner has the cutest waitresses you ever saw.”

Here’s the weirdest thing. When we’re together, other people can see him, talk to him, whatever. They just don’t remember him the next day, the next minute, far as I can tell. He orders pie and coffee, flirts with the waitress who keeps filling both our cups. When the check comes, it’s for one pie, one coffee, and it’s like he was never there. He shows up while I’m walking my dog, and my neighbor shows up with her dog, and we talk, my dad charming as usual. If Dad had asked her out, she would’ve gone. As far as she’s concerned, it never happened. “I enjoyed our talk yesterday,” she says when I see her again. All I did was say, “Judy, this is Bob; Bob, this is Judy.”

This makes it easy at first. We can say anything we want, and nobody cares because nobody remembers. But now he’s showing up all the time. Dad never went to a counselor, never processed all this stuff he’s been thinking about since he died—events he couldn’t have made heads or tails of when he was alive. Before he died, he couldn’t remember the days of the week, much less the story of his life. Now he remembers it all and has only me to talk to. It’s not like I can refer him to a professional counselor. He says he can only really talk to someone he had a close connection with in life. Otherwise they won’t remember. I could make an appointment for myself and bring him along, but the counselor wouldn’t remember him from one session to the next. Besides, I can’t afford it, and Dad doesn’t have any money. He can’t do anything—make a phone call, drive a car. He can only listen in, ride along. And talk, and talk, and talk.

It doesn’t take him long to get to his buried life. “There’s something I’ve never told you,” he says and proceeds to tell the story Mom told me years ago in Denny’s. I let him tell the whole thing. I’m impressed their versions don’t depart from each other in any significant detail except it’s a little more obvious he was crazy in love with this other woman.

“Mom told me.”

“You’re fucking kidding me. She told me she wouldn’t.”

“She thought it might help me sort out things with Rachel. We were split up at the time.”

“Well, did it?”

“It didn’t hurt. Mom was trying anyway.”

“Yeah. I guess so. Was she still mad about it?”

“You mean back then? No. You were in the hospital. You’d been married most of your lives. To her, that was the whole point of the story—not to give up on a marriage. She was glad she forgave you.”

“You believe her?”

“Dad. ’Course I believe her.”

“There’s a part of the story she doesn’t know.”

“Still?”

“I haven’t talked to her. I can’t find her. The dead don’t talk. But I read something in the library—in Dallas, when I thought you might still be there. It was Kitty’s obituary. She was the woman I left your mother for. She was an actress, a singer. We worked together in advertising doing serial script shows, Backstage Wife and John’s Other Wife mostly. Some Stella Dallas. She spoke the lines I wrote, sang the jingles for the products.”

“I thought you wrote advertising.”

“There was no difference back then. I was part of a stable who ghosted for the agency shows.”

Ghosted. “All of this was in the obituary?”

“No. I’m just telling you.”

“Maybe you’re telling me more than I want to know.”

“Maybe I’m not. The obituary said she’s survived by a daughter, Maureen Powell, living in Philadelphia.”

“So?”

“Kitty was pregnant, too. Maureen’s the right age—your age. I think she’s your half-sister.”

“Jesus, Dad. You got two women pregnant? What the hell were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking, obviously. I told you I was a fuckup.”

“I knew that already. I just didn’t know the extent of the damage. So why are you telling me this now?”

“I want you to help me find her.”

“Her. Maureen Powell?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s all you’ve got? Maureen Powell in Philadelphia? When did this Kitty die?”

“1991.”

“Dad, that’s fifteen years ago. What’s Kitty’s last name?”

“Beaumont.”

“You’re kidding. That was really her name? Kitty Beaumont?”

“She had it legally changed. I told you. She was an actress.”

“I know. A jingle singer. Why in hell do you want to find Maureen Powell?”

“I want to introduce myself. She has a right to meet her father.”

“Dad, death has made you stupid. She’s come this far not knowing. Trust me. She doesn’t want this information at fifty-nine.”

He sulks. It’s funny to think of my dad as a big boy, but that’s what he was. Now he’s a big dead boy. “Maybe you can understand that I’d like to make things up to her, for never once being there for her.”

“How are you going to do that, Dad? You’re dead.” I hate to keep reminding him, but obviously somebody has to.

He looks off in the distance, a gesture I remember, like he was looking down a long, lonesome road where he kept some secret knowledge hidden. In the space of that look, he’d go down that road and back—then tell you the incredible thing he found. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but I know where some stuff is that could make her some real money.”

“Like what, Dad?” I don’t hide my skepticism. Mom and Dad had been broke for years before they died. Surely, if they’d had anything of value, they would’ve cashed it in long before the Alzheimer’s set in.

“Like some old records her mother and I cut with friends after-hours playing around. Dirty versions of popular jingles, stuff like that. There were some big stars there that night. Don Ameche, for one. I saw on eBay something like that sold for thousands of dollars, and that’s not even the most valuable stuff.”

“eBay? You get on eBay?”

“I spend a lot of time in libraries. It’s up there on the screens. You have to be patient. That’s how I found you. I saw your books on the shelf, waited until someone took one down and looked at the back flap. It said you lived in Richmond, Virginia. I went to the airport and caught a flight. When I came across that old bookstore, I knew you’d come in there sooner or later. Anyway. I know where those records are and a bunch of other stuff, and I can tell Maureen, and she can sell it. Her mother’s on the records. It’s only right. She might want to keep them, I guess. Sentimental value. C’mon, Den, just help me do this one thing.”

He used to call me Den when I was a kid. “No. I’m not doing it. It’s crazy.”

“I’ll do all the talking.”

“She won’t even remember it when it’s over.”

“Maybe she will. Maybe she’s thought long and hard about who I am her whole life long.”

“Maybe she hasn’t. Maybe she won’t.”

“Then what’s the harm?”

Have I mentioned that after his advertising days Dad was a salesman most of his life? Pharmaceuticals. He’ll wear me down if I let him. I change the subject. There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask him. “Remember that time in New Orleans when Mom went shopping with Jeanette, and you were supposed to be looking after me, but you stuck me in a movie downtown? I was about ten. What were you doing?”

He doesn’t hesitate. “Screwing a woman.”

“Jesus, Dad. What was her name? We going to look her up next? Maybe her grandkids?”

“I don’t remember her name. She didn’t mean anything to me.”

“Enough to dump me downtown.”

“Yeah. She was something. She was a nurse. She reminded me of Kitty. Diane. Her name was Diane. Look, I’m sorry. I was a terrible father. I said. You’re the one saying I’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”

“Would you stop with that? It worked out. You shouldn’t have done it, but that was a big day for me. I knew something was up, that you were doing something wrong—no idea what—and you needed me to play along. It gave me a thrill, made me feel like I’d reached some new level of adulthood. Then when I came out of the theatre, and you were late, and I was on the streets of downtown New Orleans by myself, ten years old, it did something for me, made me stronger somehow. Braver. By the time you finally showed up, I’d figured out in my head how to walk back to the hotel if I had to. I never forgot that, growing up a weird loner kid. No matter where I was, what I got myself into, I figured I could always find my way back to the hotel.”

“So will you help me find Maureen?”

“We’ll see,” I say, knowing in my family “we’ll see” meant yes, because I could always wear Dad down. “We’ll see” was the first sign of surrender. Mom might say absolutely not, but Dad never could say no for long, and neither can I.

• • • •

When I give in, we’re arguing in the basement, and we get pretty loud, until I finally agree to go to Philadelphia, and he leaves out the barred back door. Sally comes down the stairs. “Who were you talking to?”

“Just trying out some dialogue.” I don’t want to go into it. I’m afraid she’ll worry. I try out dialogue all the time—two stories above our heads in my office on the second floor, behind not one, but two closed doors.

She glances around the chaos of our basement. She doesn’t ask what kind of story I’m working on that has me talking to boxes of videos rescued from the Gastón flood. “Have—Have you been feeling okay lately? You’ve been acting kind of strange, distant.”

There’s nothing for it. She’s worried already. I don’t like to keep anything from her. “My father’s been haunting me,” I say. Then I tell her the whole story.

“So you’re going to Philadelphia to find your half-sister?” she asks when I’m done. By this time we’re out in the daylight and have walked twice around the track.

“That’s the plan. There’s a convention there coming up. I can write it off.”

She smiles. “It will do you good to get away.”

“You always say that.”

“It’s always true. Can I meet him sometime?”

“Dad? Sure. Next time he shows up.”

Sure enough, he shows up that night for dinner. Fortunately I’ve made plenty. I’ve never seen the woman who didn’t enjoy meeting my dad. They might not think so much of him later on, but meeting him always goes well, and Sally is no exception. He gets her to telling travel stories from her days trekking though Africa in her twenties, and we go through every bottle of wine in the house. Dad’s in a great mood. He can’t get enough of the gorillas. He praises my cooking, which pleases me no end. He was the one who first taught me to cook. After he leaves, Sally and I make love on the sofa and sleep there.

“What got into us last night?” she asks over our morning oatmeal.

“Dad came for dinner, stayed all evening.”

“I don’t remember a thing. Except . . . Did I tell all my Africa stories?”

“That’s right.”

“That wasn’t just to you?”

“I’ve heard them all before.”

She smiles. “Well, tell him he’s welcome anytime.”

As I’m washing the crusty plates left sitting out all night, I find myself wishing there was one for him. I piled a plate high. I watched him eating, watched him slip a couple of bites to the dog, who stuck by him all evening. But there are only two plates to wash.

• • • •

Dad prefers to take the train to Philadelphia instead of the plane even though he used to love to fly. “I still like meeting all the stewardesses,” he says. “But lots of times there’s no place to sit except the toilet, and since this 9/11 thing nobody wants some dead guy standing around who’s not on their little list. They keep forgetting about me, but that just makes them even more nervous. There are always seats on the train.”

“They’re called flight attendants these days, Dad. Not stewardesses.”

“Is that right? Okay. They always have their names pinned to their chest. I usually call them by their first names. They don’t seem to mind. Interesting women, stewardesses. Some of them are small town girls who’ve been all over the world. I remember this one—”

“Dad, we’re taking the train.”

We take the train, but that doesn’t stop him from talking about stewardesses—excuse me, flight attendants—all the way to Philadelphia, navigating the station, waiting for a cab. When we get to the hotel—so Dad can finish the story of a Delta flight attendant named Juanita—the cabbie waits with the meter off while other cabs stack up behind us. Too bad he’s going to forget the unforgettable tale as soon as he drives away.

“Do you remember Braniff Airlines?” Dad asks me as we’re waiting in front of the elevator. By the time we get off on twelve everybody in that elevator must be thinking they’ll never forget them. Unfortunately, I’m the only one in that boat—in that pressurized cabin at 30,000 feet with Dad and a Braniff stewardess in the galley with a bottle of champagne unzipping her pink boots. Once in the room, I jump into the shower before he can remember another airline, another route, another town, another stewardess, another woman.

• • • •

When I get out of the shower, Dad’s looking out the window. “What do you do when I’m not around?” I ask him.

“Nothing. I was just thinking. You remember that tape we made of jokes the first summer in Houston before I got fired?”

When Dad was transferred as part of a merger reshuffle, he came into brief possession of a reel-to-reel tape recorder he was supposed to record weekly reports on. As far as I know, he never used it for that. Though over the space of a couple of weeks, night after night, we recorded all the jokes we knew on it, taking turns back and forth. I soon ran out. Dad knew tons of them, so he taught some to me and let me record them. He thought I did voices and characters well, so he taught me every character joke he knew—Chinese, Mexican, Italian—but I never could do Russians or Germans. I found them too intimidating. When Mark Russell came to a local nightclub, Mom and Dad took me, and I stole a Chinaman joke from him that got me five star reviews even from Mom who usually just laughed and said, “You two are just awful.” I don’t think Mark Russell does Chinaman jokes anymore. Neither do I.

“Yeah, I remember it. How’d that get started anyway?”

He smiles to himself. “I’d just gotten off the phone with Bill, and the rumors were flying. They were going to can me for sure. They were just looking for an excuse. I knew I wasn’t going to have that fucking tape recorder for very long. So I decided to have some fun with it.”

“It was a good time, Dad.”

“When I returned the recorder, I left that tape on it. Said it was my final report.”

I laugh out loud, imagining all those farmer’s daughters and bears who walked into bars telling Dad’s old boss to fuck himself, and Dad beams. I’ve surprised him again. Am I really so different from who I used to be?

Jeez. Look at the time, and I haven’t even registered yet. I have to get going. I fill him in as I’m getting dressed. “I’ve got a couple of panels this afternoon, then a reading later. I’ll pop into the dealers’ room some time in there, and come back up here around six. We can go out to eat, work out a plan for finding Maureen Powell. I’m not scheduled for anything tomorrow.”

“Can I come along?” He stands up, looking pathetic, like my dog angling for a walk. What do you do when I’m not around? Nothing.

I start to tell him he doesn’t have a badge, but I know that’s not going to make any difference. The conductor didn’t care if he had a ticket. He goes to the movies with me without one. Anywhere I go, he can come along, apparently, if I want him to. I’m not so sure I want him along for this sort of thing. I’m nervous enough anyway. “You’ll be bored. It’s just a bunch of writers and fans talking about fantasy and science fiction. You never read that stuff, did you?”

“Topper. Lost Horizon. Edgar Rice Burroughs. 1001 Arabian Nights. H. G. Wells.”

“Okay.” I hold up my hands in surrender, just like Dad used to do to me.

“Besides, I’ve never heard you read one of your stories.” He gives me a crooked smile. Of course he wants to go. He’s my dad.

I was unpublished when Dad died, though he read everything I wrote when I was thirteen, not much since then, since I’d sought out what I thought were more discriminating readers. The story I plan to read is all about him. It isn’t altogether flattering. I look out the window too. It’s a long way down. “Sure, why not?”

• • • •

I like conventions, though I’m too shy to ever feel completely at ease with the social side of them. Having an alcoholic father has made me a fairly moderate drinker, and my typical schedule is to rise at four in the morning and sleep at ten or eleven at night. Not a partier’s hours.

Dad, however, takes to the convention like a duck to the flock. Wherever we go, he strikes up a conversation with someone who, charmed by his innocent enthusiasm, explains what a “mundane” is, cautions him not to say “sci-fi,” or places the whole trekkie thing in its broader science-fictional context for him. This last proves no easy task and leads us into the bar. Dad’s Star Trek—seen in syndication and processed by the Cuisinart of his Alzheimer’s—isn’t the same as everyone else’s. The way he remembers it, the tribbles were in every single episode. Whenever the bridge would tilt back and forth, he claims, tribbles would roll this way and that with the rest of the lurching crew. In his Star Trek, Dr. McCoy—prone to paranoid Luddite rants and emotional outbursts—was clearly into the drug cabinet bigtime. As a representative of a pharmaceutical company, he’d seen it happen to lots of doctors over the years. By the time Dad’s spinning his theory of Dr. McCoy, Space Junkie, there’s a donut of people around us five deep, and someone buys us another drink.

I don’t remember the panels that well except I talk more than usual, and when someone asks if I would call my work “interstitial,” I say I prefer to think of it as intestinal. Dad laughs, and then everybody does, though it turns out Dad didn’t get the joke. “I thought you needed some help back there,” he says. “Was I right?”

He was right.

In the dealer’s room, I turn my back on him for a second to talk to a reader nice enough to introduce himself, and when I turn back around Dad’s admiring a woman’s boots, the woman as well, of course, and they turn out to be Elizabeth Hand’s boots, and I feel like a tribble caught in the headlights. She’s flanked by science fiction and fantasy luminaries whose names suddenly escape me, but who’ve all been on the cover of Locus. “Liz says there’s a party later, Den, a couple of parties. What do you say?”

Inarticulate strangling noises? I’m not sure. Everyone seems to accept it as yes. Dad goes on to pitch my reading, quoting and misquoting from some of the book jackets he had a chance to study for so long in the Dallas Public Library.

We stumble in a herd to the bar where I have another drink I don’t need and Dad works the crowd, enlisting more recruits for my reading. We ooze into the tiny corner room where my reading is scheduled, packed to overflowing. Dad’s sitting up front with Liz and Jeff Ford and Robert Louis Stevenson and Marie de France. There are tribbles spilling out of the podium. McCoy’s in an aisle seat, rolling up his sleeve, mainlining di-lithium crystal meth. My hands are trembling.

“Here’s what I know,” I begin, and then it goes pretty well. When it’s over, I shake a few hands Dad’s rounded up for me to shake, and we’re planning to stay in the room to hear Jeff Ford read next, when I step out for a moment to catch my breath and notice a woman sitting off in a corner of the bar. The semicircular chair surrounds her like a shell. A suspended light, a flat black cone, hovers above her. I can just make out her nametag. Maureen Powell.

She looks a lot like me. She looks a lot like Dad. Her hair’s white like mine. I slip through the crowd. It’s significantly quieter standing in front of Maureen’s chair. She looks up from her program, and I introduce myself and take the chair across from her. Most of the crowd heads into the reading room, and it grows quieter still. We can hear the clink of glassware as the waitress cleans up after.

“I’m not familiar with your work,” Maureen says.

“Nor I yours,” I say. “You live in Philadelphia?”

“I used to. I moved out west almost fifteen years ago now, after my mother died. I was ready for a change.”

“Was your mother’s name Kitty Beaumont?”

She starts. “How do you know that?”

“My father told me.”

“Did he know her?”

“Yes. They were once lovers. He thinks he might’ve been your father. Is that possible?”

She holds out a hand, and at first I think she means to cover my mouth to silence me, but she sights along her arm, trying to block out the distraction of my white beard, trying to get past the Santa thing to study my nose and my eyes. “You could be my brother,” she says.

I can hear Jeff Ford reading in the corner room, saying, “Back in the Autumn of ’57. . .” then someone inside pulls the door shut with a thud, and it’s so quiet you can hear the piped in soft jazz lurking overhead. “Listen. Would you like to meet him?”

“Your father?”

“Our father.”

“Is he here?”

“He’s in the reading that just started. Can I buy you a drink? You can meet him when he comes out.”

“All right. Scotch and water.”

I order two Scotch and waters. “Tell me about your mother,” I say. “Tell me about Kitty Beaumont.”

She tells her mother’s story with the first sentence she speaks. The rest is just details. “She told me my father was the love of her life, that he swept her off her feet and ran away with her, only to go back to his wife, and she never got over it.” Maureen laughs. I imagine it’s how Kitty might’ve laughed, a childlike cynical laugh. “I always thought it was a convenient story to justify never settling down, never being satisfied.”

Kitty was a chronically struggling radio actress whose career peaked with a brief stint as a contentious in-law on a short-lived TV soap. She was married five times. Maureen was her only child. She shows me pictures of her stepfathers the way some women show pictures of their kids. “This one’s Tom, Mom’s second husband. He adopted me. That’s where I get the name Powell.” She herself has never married.

“I started writing science fiction,” she says, sipping at her second Scotch, “because I thought we might be aliens. What about you?”

I glance at my watch. The reading’s almost over. “There’s something I have to tell you about Dad before he comes out. He’s been dead for twenty-three years. It’s his ghost you’ll be talking to.”

“You do horror?”

“No. Not really. I’m just trying to tell you. Before you meet him. He’s dead.” I sip my Scotch.

“Hmm.” Her eyes meet mine. We’re holding our glasses the same way, looking over our Scotches the same way, probably both of us quit smoking ten years ago, but a cigarette sounds awful good right about now.

The door in the corner flies open, and the room begins to empty out. Dad finds me right away. “That was terrific,” he says.

But already his eyes are on Maureen, and hers on him.

“So you’re my father,” she says, and any introduction I had in mind becomes irrelevant.

“Yes. I’m so sorry—”

“Not here,” she says. “Can we go someplace else?”

“Do you have a car?” he asks.

Before you know it, we’re driving out of Philly into the New Jersey countryside. I’m at the wheel, following Dad’s directions, so he and Maureen can talk in the backseat. She knows a lot more about the radio world than I ever did, and they talk about people I never heard of from the shows Dad and Kitty worked on together. Kitty, apparently, kept all the radio friends.

“Okay,” I finally say. “Where are we going?” The sprawl has given way to countryside dotted with abandoned farms, every other one for sale. The moon is high and bright.

“It’s not much farther,” Dad says. He tells Maureen what he told me before about the bootleg after-hour recordings and other stuff, and how he wants her to have it. “That’s where we’re going now,” he says. “I found it.”

“What other stuff?” Maureen asks.

“There’s a box of premiums, practically every one we ever offered. Mint condition.”

“Holy shit,” Maureen says.

“What are premiums?” I ask.

“Little toys and things for kids mostly,” Dad says. “When a character’s about to go on a big trek, you offer the Hike-o-Meter, a jazzed up compass for a boxtop and a dime. Membership cards. Magic rings. Kids loved it. Advertisers loved it.”

“Highly collectible,” Maureen adds. “Where is this stuff?”

Dad points down the long, lonesome road. “There’s a driveway a couple miles on the right. Big red mailbox. Can’t miss it.”

“Wait a minute. What is this place?” I ask.

“You remember Jake?”

Jake helped Mom and Dad move out of the house when they lost it a few years after Dad lost his job and before he got Alzheimer’s, offering the loan of his big truck, loading it up to the top, then driving off with two-thirds of their possessions never to be seen again. That Jake, Dad? “Yeah, I remember him.”

Dad tells Maureen the story. “This is his place. He’s laid up in a home in Newark about to kick off. When he goes, his heirs will get all this stuff. Till then, this is an abandoned farm full of stolen property.”

“How do you know this?” I ask.

“I spotted him, still working the same scam, rode out here with him with a load. Sure enough. He steals more than he can get rid of, never throws anything away. He didn’t know what he had. He never thought twice about a bunch of whistles and plastic rings that glow in the dark.”

I pull into the driveway, roll a hundred yards and stop. The place is completely dead.

“And you’re giving all this stuff to me?” Maureen asks.

“All except one thing. I want to keep that back. Everything else.”

“What?” She’s the one who says it, but we’re both asking.

“Doesn’t matter. It’s just one thing.”

“All right,” she says. Let the old ghost have his secrets. “There’s a flashlight in the glove box.”

“Wait a minute,” I say.

“You want a cut?” she asks.

“No. Should we even be doing this?”

“I don’t see the problem. The stuff was stolen. He’s asking us to get it back so he can give it to me. You don’t think he owes me? He abandoned my mother. You had a father, and I didn’t. You going to help or not?”

Dad doesn’t say anything, but it’s obvious he sees things pretty much the same way Maureen does. “Okay. What do we have to do?”

“There’s an old shed where the stuff is,” Dad says. “We just have to pry a few rotten boards loose. You two can do it with your bare hands, I bet.” And that’s what we do, loading the stuff into Maureen’s trunk, except for the one thing. It’s in a little flat box. “Give it to Den,” he says. “I can’t keep anything.”

“I don’t want it,” I say.

“You don’t even know what it is.”

Maureen opens the box. Inside is a diary like they used to sell in dime stores. Only this one says Pearl’s Diary across the front in fancy script. “Give me that,” I say.

Maureen is fiddling with the lock and key. “Hold on.”

“Pearl was my mother’s name.”

She freezes. “Oh,” she says and hands it over.

“What the hell is this, Dad?” I ask.

“It was going to be part of a new show. The premiums worked so great with the kids, somebody thought, why not their moms? The show was this woman’s diary, you know? A good-hearted woman married to a faithless man. The idea was we’d get the thing started, then you’d send in and get one of these diaries and write in it like you were the character in the show, and then we’d pick the best ones to put on the air. I think the idea was to try to do a show without writers. They already didn’t pay us much of anything or give us a credit.”

“Who was going to play Pearl?”

“Kitty.”

“When was it on?”

“It never got on the air. That’s the diary I pitched it with. Wrote the first couple of episodes in it and passed it around.”

“You mean?”

“Yeah.”

I open it up, and read out loud: Dear Diary, I got the news today from Dr. B. My worst fears are confirmed. I’m going to have another child five months after my divorce is final. Isn’t that a kick in the head? How can I tell Robert? How can I not?. . .

Dad’s not looking at me. He’s staring at the ground. It’s his handwriting, but it’s Mom’s voice. Her life.

“Didn’t they go for it?”

“What are you talking about? They loved it. They went crazy for it. I couldn’t do it. After I wrote it all down . . .” He gestures at the diary. “I just couldn’t do it.”

“What do you want me to do with it?”

“Keep it. Throw it away. I just couldn’t see it being sold on eBay. It’s yours.”

Maureen’s looking off, brushing tears from her eyes. She snuffles and blows her nose. “It’s probably not worth anything anyway. If there was never a show.”

• • • •

By the time we get back to the hotel, most of the parties are winding down, but Dad finds the one where everyone still partying has ended up. We have to squeeze through a stand of tall well-watered men planted just inside the door angrily discussing the stupidity of recent award decisions and the judges who made them. There’s not so much as a sofa arm to sit on, and my back is aching from the drive. My mind is in my coat pocket, in the pages of Pearl’s Diary. I want to beg off, but Dad’s determined we make an appearance.

Maureen heads toward the remains of a cake. The liquor is decimated, but it’s late enough that pretending to be drunk will get me by. We hang in the kitchen where Dad gets into a discussion of faster-than-light travel that’s going nowhere fast. I lean on the counter only to lean on Pearl’s Diary. I take it out of my pocket to make sure I haven’t damaged it. The thing’s older than I am. I look inside. Every page is filled. He kept writing her life as a serial. Dear Diary, the last entry begins, Robert’s life is slipping away from him, slipping away from me, and I’m afraid . . .

A young woman on the edge of the FLT discussion spots me reading. “What’s that?”

I start to tell her. My characters are always telling all to each other. It makes sense to me. I’ve lived with too many secrets. But not this time. “It’s just a notebook,” I say and slip it back into my pocket.

“Hey, aren’t you Dennis Danvers?” she says. “I was at your reading earlier about your dead father? How did it end anyway?”

“It didn’t. He’s still dead.”

She laughs, thinking I’m joking.

I tap Dad on the shoulder. “Dad, you about ready to go?”

“Sure, son. I guess you’ve had quite a day.”

We say good-bye to Maureen at the cake, push our way though the still-angry men now spinning elaborate theories of collusion and corruption and inside deals. “Those guys all writers?” Dad asks me.

“Definitely. Big names.”

“Helluva business.” He looks me in the eye, his face serious. I remember this look too, when he was handing out advice, much rarer than secrets, visions, and schemes. “Don’t sell yourself,” he says. At first I think he means sell yourself short, but that’s not what he said. The elevator opens, and we step inside. “I got a new one for you,” he says.

I bite.

“There’s this dead guy, see, hanging out in this old bookstore, when who should walk in but his very own son.” He laughs. “Gotcha.”

“You sure did.”

I hold him, a frail, dead old man until the elevator doors open on our floor, and he says, “I guess I’ll be going now.”

“Where?” I panic. I don’t want him to leave me again. I know I was just complaining about him showing up all the time, but that doesn’t mean I want him gone.

“I’m going to look for your mother.”

“I thought you already tried that. I thought the dead don’t talk.”

He looks down that long, lonesome road and nods his head—true, all true. Everything’s true down that road. “Maybe I didn’t try hard enough. I couldn’t really face her before.”

“Because of Pearl’s Diary?”

He nods again. There are tears in his eyes.

“Good luck, Dad. I hope you find her. Will I forget you now?”

“No.” He points to the book in my hands. “I’m on every page.”

He watches me walk the long hall to my room. I don’t look back. I go inside and wait until I hear the elevator going down, then lie with the pages of my mother’s life, and read.

©2008 by Dennis Danvers. Originally published in Realms of Fantasy. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dennis Danvers has published seven novels, including Circuit of Heaven (New York Times Notable, 1998), The Watch (New York Times Notable, 2002; Booklist 10 Best SF novels, 2002), and The Bright Spot (under pseudonym Robert Sydney).  First novel Wilderness has recently been re-issued with a sexy new cover.  Recent short fiction has appeared in F & SF, Realms of Fantasy, Electric Velocipede, and in anthologies Tails of Wonder and Richmond Noir.  He teaches fiction writing and science fiction and fantasy literature at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, and blogs at dennisdanvers.com.

A Compendium of Architecture and the Science of Building

Kate Elliott | 5770 words

By the time he returned home after all his years of wandering, Magnus Diarisso had come to prefer a fire burning on cold days rather than the elaborate hypocaust system that heated the mage house. The sound of wood settling, sparks popping, and ashes sighing helped him relax.

He told his nephew the mansa, the powerful cold mage who was head of Four Moons House, that he did not want to live in the main house with its comings and goings and the children’s chatter and the inevitable intrigues and gossip. He wanted space to think, to at long last write the compendium of architecture whose composition he had had to delay time and again. After all, this too was part of a life’s work: to pass on what you knew to those who would come after you, to keep the chain of knowledge intact from one generation into the next.

A modest suite of rooms was built to his specifications alongside the carpentry barn: a small bedchamber and a spacious study where he could do architect’s work and receive visitors now that he was too old to comfortably travel. From this haven he supervised the four carpenters and the occasional village men brought in for larger projects.

What he liked best was waking up at dawn in complete isolation. So the incident came as an unpleasant shock that chilly winter morning.

As usual, he had risen and stoked both circulating stoves in the barn. He was standing at a window in his study looking over a beautifully fresh blanket of untouched snow when the fire in the study’s stove went out and he was slammed to his knees. Iron groaned, under strain, and coals snapped from red to white, their heat sucked out. He braced himself on his hands. For one breath, taken in and held, he was sure the roof was about to crash down on top of him.

But the rafters held. The iron stove did not shatter. The trees in the orchard did not even sway, for there was not a breath of wind, nothing but his pounding heart and relieved exhale as he calmed himself.

Something had happened in the main house. He was cursed sure he wanted nothing to do with whatever cold magic had slipped its leash and choked out fires five hundred paces away from the palatial building where the mages and household members lived. Probably his nephew the mansa had felt obliged to school the adolescent lads in the boys’ dormitory. Even out here he’d heard that this current cohort was a lot of trouble, with more wrangling and fistfights than the schoolmasters knew what to do with. Lord of All! In his day, the elder women of the House shut down such nonsense immediately; no young fellow wanted to be brought before the women’s council until it was time for them to arrange a marriage for him.

With a smile, amused at his own discomfort, he creaked up to his feet with a wince and probed at his abused knees to make sure there was no lasting damage. Then he dusted off his hands and returned to his fire-building, starting over again with the stoves at either end of the big open space of the barn where most of the work was done. He liked to have the space warm by the time the men came in. The courtesy pleased him, and they were certainly grateful.

He returned to the study, got the fire going again where he’d been cooking millet in milk for his breakfast porridge. A kettle of water heated for his morning tea. He set out his plate and knife, poured boiling water in and out of the tea pot, and put the tea on to steep. Shelled peanuts garnished the porridge alongside three dabs of butter. As the butter melted, he prepared two slices of day-old bread, one buttered and smeared with honey and the other buttered and laden with cheese, and arranged them on a plate which he set down at a three-fingers’ gap beside the bowl of porridge. By the time this exacting ritual was complete, the tea was ready. He poured a thimble full of piping hot tea at the little altar to the ancestors and cut a sliver of bread and cheese likewise, with a dollop of the thick porridge. The prayers came easily, for he had said them every day of his life.

The window on this side looked onto the southeast corner of the east wing of the main house. To his surprise, several men surged out to trample around the orchard and vanish, as on the hunt for a missing lap dog. What a pleasant thing it was not to have to be involved!

The fire in the stove huffed and went out.

Was there to be no rest from these magical intrusions?

Again he rose and went into the carpentry barn. Impossible to eat in peace if he knew the circulating stoves weren’t burning. But as he entered the vast, cold space beneath its lofty rafters, a sound brushed at his hearing. He cocked his head to gauge what direction it came from amid the shadowed corners and unfinished projects, and slowly worked his way toward stacks of fragrant lumber stored in orderly ranks.

A person was sitting half hidden in the shadows, pressed in between two tall stacks of lumber. He was sobbing and trying to choke it down. A moment’s study told Magnus this was a lad at that difficult age when he is no longer really a child but also not yet a man.

Magnus coughed, and the lad looked up in surprise.

What rage and humiliation seared from his eyes!

They stared at each other. After a moment, remembering the respect due to age, the boy dropped his gaze.

He said nothing nor did he shift from his hiding place. Rather he seemed frozen, stunned. He had bruises on his face and down both arms, rings of bruising like hands had been holding him, and his bare chest was all over bruises, too, still blooming. Tears and snot smeared his face. Reflexively, perhaps realizing that someone was now looking at him, the boy wiped his face with the back of a hand, and winced, for even that movement hurt him.

Magnus cleared his throat with another mild cough. “Now that you are here, I need help. We’re preparing rough boards to finished planks for furniture. Do you by any chance know how to saw?”

He’d been making conversation in an easy voice as a way of introducing a calming tone into the air between them. To his amazement, the lad nodded with the wary caution of a person who has been expecting to defend himself against a vicious attack.

“Good, then I shan’t have to teach you the basics,” Magnus replied in that same clement tone. “There is a basin with water where you may wash before you begin. Aprons hang from those hooks. You may take any one of them. If you are cold, I can find a wool tunic for you.”

“I am not cold,” said the lad in a harsh and clipped voice, then visibly checked himself and added in softer but just as precise speech: “I am not cold, Uncle, but my thanks for the courtesy.”

“Well, then, pick out your tools.”

Magnus chose five rough boards and took them over to a worktable to measure and mark where he wanted them cut. The youth rose stiffly. He had blood on his right shoulder blade from a pair of welts. His knuckles were blood-streaked. He walked stiffly, too. That had been some kind of fight.

Magnus had seen seventy-one winters pass and in that time he had measured and marked a great deal of the world. By the evidence of those broken sobs, now stifled, the boy would welcome no mention of whatever circumstances had driven him to seek the shelter of the barn. Lads were fiercely and fragilely proud; he had been so himself at that age. His lack of magic meant he could never hope to be anything but the son who would never measure up to his esteemed father, a man so magically gifted he had been able to forge cold steel. Pride had driven him to study at university to get away from the family, and architecture had caught his interest. Pride had kept him away, had kept him traveling from city to city and estate to estate where he was, of course, received as an exalted son of Four Moons House and of course as a highly trained and exceedingly desired architect. A man could leave a physical mark on the world with his architect’s skill.

The lad took one of the leather aprons, and chose both a cross-cut and a rip saw before going over to the work table.

Magnus moved away to a different worktable, where he was indulging his recent interest in designing a portable desk with hidden drawers and writing surfaces that must all fold precisely into place. He angled himself so he could observe without it being obvious he was watching.

The youth had worked a saw before. He had an apprentice’s skill, and knew enough to look over the marked line to orient himself as well as check for knots. Besides that, he was careful and steady with the saw. As he worked, he relaxed enough to sing softly. At once part of the mystery clicked into place. The lad lost his meticulous diction and sang with the rustic accent common to villagers, providing his own call and response.

Where had he come from?

When Magnus tried to re-light the fires in the barn, they would not burn.

So here was part of the answer. A bruised and battered youth had fled to the carpentry barn after some kind of altercation or assault in which he had suffered harm. Most strangely, he was a cold mage—young and untrained, yes, but unusually powerful by the evidence of the dead fires.

Magnus went back to his bedchamber to fetch one of his worn and faded tunics. As he was crossing back through his study he saw, through the window, the four carpenters approaching the barn. The four regular carpenters were yard men who lived in the lane of cottages just past the orchard. According to the complex hierarchy of House lands, they stood above village men. This meant they were allowed into the main house for work projects under his supervision, while village men brought to help at the carpentry when he needed extra hands were never allowed into the main house at all.

He went out through the visitor’s door in the study to intercept them before they could enter the barn.

“Was there some business at the house this morning?” he asked the eldest.

The men shrugged, and the eldest said, “Fires went out in all our cottages. That’s all we know, Maester.”

“The fires are all dead here in the barn so you may as well go home and see if your wives have better luck kindling your own stoves.” They chuckled at the innuendo. “No need to come back until tomorrow. Go on.”

They thanked him. He was known as a fair if exacting taskmaster, one who would be lenient with respect to side business if you gave him solid work.

As soon as they were gone he went back in and took the old tunic to the lad.

“To work here, you must be dressed properly. You may wear this for now.”

The lad took the garment with the obedience Magnus now recognized as village manners, more formal and hidebound than a prince’s hall. “Thank you, Uncle. I am almost done here.”

“Do you know how to flatten a reference surface?”

The lad glanced toward the rack of planes, then at the rough boards. “I have done it.”

“You may continue with that and prepare all five boards.”

“Yes, Uncle.”

Magnus latched the doors of the barn from the inside and returned to his study. Out of curiosity he tried to re-light the fire and this time it caught, which likely meant the lad was now calm enough that his cold magic wasn’t radiating unmanageably. He ate his porridge and poured himself a fresh cup of hot tea, then opened his workbook to where he had left off yesterday. Early on in his life he had written a treatise on arches before he’d become so much in demand there had been no time to write. For years, as architect in charge of countless projects, he’d been forced to manage the trouble and disorderliness of others, a task he had never relished. Now, in this peaceful study, he had embarked on his final project, the organized accumulation of his hard-earned knowledge: A Compendium of Architecture and the Science of Building.

As expected, there came another interruption. Two of his great-nephews came to the door and stamped about impatiently until he let them in. Like him, they had no magic, so the fire did not go out.

“Uncle, we are wondering if you have seen a boy,” said the first one. “Not our age cohort but younger, sixteen.”

Magnus remained standing, so therefore they also remained standing. “Tell the mansa I wish to speak to him.”

They had the brusque manners of young men accustomed to having other people jump out of their way. “He is very busy, Uncle. There has been trouble in the schoolroom.”

The second one broke in. “It wasn’t in the schoolroom. It was in the boys’ hall just at dawn.”

The first gave a sniggering laugh of a sort Magnus truly detested, for it lingered in his ear as mockery of another’s pain. “Finally put that jumped-up peddler’s bastard in his place, but now he’s vanished.”

“I do not wish to be troubled by your gossip. Tell the mansa he wishes to speak to me. You may go.”

Even they heard the chill in his voice and recalled at last that he was an elder, and their great uncle besides, not some hired hand. With fulsome apologies, they hurried out.

He went back into the barn with the bread, honey, and cheese.

The lad was wearing the tunic but still barefoot, although the lack of shoes didn’t seem to bother him. He had taken the chance of being alone in the barn to wash his face thoroughly, all traces of blood scrubbed away.

Magnus set the tray on a side table and beckoned the boy over, indicating a bench. “What is your given name, lad? I’d like to have something to call you.”

After a fraught hesitation during which Magnus wondered if the boy would bolt and run, he said very softly, “Andevai.”

“You will eat something, Andevai. Then you may continue your work.”

Obedient—unlike those two indulged young fellows!—the lad sat gingerly and, after a wince and a shift to put more of his weight on his left thigh, dug in. Magnus went to the worktable, looked over the boards, and came back to sit on the bench. He settled into silence, leaving an opening for the lad to speak, because it was his experience that if you did not fill the space between two people with your own words and just remained patient, then after a while they would feel driven to fill that empty space themselves.

The lad finished his meal thoroughly, in the manner of a person who hasn’t always been sure he will get enough to eat on any given day. The silence drew out a little longer, but silence had never been troublesome for Magnus.

At last the boy straightened his shoulders, gathering his courage, and spoke. “Uncle, it’s hard to get a consistent flatness. And I keep getting a valley down the middle of the board. And the edges are tearing out. How can I do it better?”

Magnus nodded, careful not to smile. The question pleased him, yet he sensed the admission of ignorance was a delicate display of trust and therefore had to be handled with care. “Would you like to learn to make boards that can be used for the best quality of furniture? The carpenters here are allowed to sell furniture on the side that they’ve made in their free time.”

“I want to do things properly, and well. Why do a thing at all if you cannot do it properly? If you do not do it to the best you are able?”

Ah.

“Millet does not become beer the day it is soaked. Let me show you.”

They went to the worktable. As a House-born and highly sought after architect, he had not often worked near apprentices, although he had allowed aspiring architects to work alongside him from time to time if they had good manners or, on two notable occasions, when they were young women who no other master architect would mentor. But he had long observed the maesters among his stoneworkers and carpenters and their ways of dealing with the people they supervised. He had seen who produced the best and most reliable workers and those who ruined the youth who came to learn from them. His style was patience and a great deal of standing back to see how the apprentice coped.

The lad was a quick study and remarkably diligent, maybe a little too fixated on a perfection whose reach was beyond the skills he had at present. Most amazingly, he was willing to repeat and repeat without any trace of frustration, just an intense focus on the task.

After they worked on two planks together, Magnus left him to work on the others alone and returned to his study.

Just in time, as it happened, for as he put a log into the stove, the hotly glowing coals were sucked straight to cold ash. The heavy footsteps of an impatient man thumped on his porch. He opened the door to admit his nephew, the mansa of Four Moons House. Such a position among princely families generally went to the eldest son of the lineage, but among mage Houses was always and only held by the most powerful male cold mage.

It had started snowing. The mansa removed his hat and politely shook it off before coming inside.

He was a big man, full of himself, aware of his grandeur, and yet for all that a responsible steward of the huge household over which he presided.

“I am having a deal of trouble and many demands on my time, Uncle. But out of respect for your age, I am come.”

“Tell me about this boy.”

The mansa had been holding the hat, clearly eager to get the conversation over and done with so he could return to the main house. With a sharp intake of breath, he set the hat on Magnus’s desk right on top of his precious notebooks and precise technical drawings. “What do you know about the boy?”

“I know he is in my barn planing a board right now.” Magnus controlled a frown as he swept up the hat and hung it from one of the hooks set into the wall by the entryway. Then he checked the papers. Only a few drops of moisture had stained the notebook at the top of the stack. “He has what I would call ‘village manners,’ which are, I might add, better than the manners I’ve just been treated to by a pair of House-born young men. What are their names? Must I take the matter of their disrespect to the women’s council?”

Naturally the mansa was thrown off by this demand. Great princes always were, when called to account by people they’d forgotten had the right to reprimand them.

Magnus used the mansa’s silence to continue in his quietly inexorable way, which he had honed to great effect while dealing with patrons and clients who complained when their fanciful dreams weren’t structurally or aesthetically possible.

“The boy has been beaten and I suspect worse besides. After some consideration, I believe he must be the person whose cold magic killed all of my fires at dawn despite the distance between the house and this barn. Such a strong pulse of cold magic suggests . . . “ He watched his nephew’s expression twist into a grimace of distaste. “I am not sure what it suggests. Perhaps you can enlighten me, Nephew.”

“Now and again, a desperate person may wield a strength they cannot normally possess. An aberration, if you will. He is a trouble maker.”

“Is he?”

“He is disrespectful.”

“I find that difficult to believe. Has he shown disrespect to you, Nephew?”

“To me? Of course not. To the other boys of his cohort, however.”

“What manner of respect is he expected to show to them? Are they not age-mates, and cold mages in training?”

“They are his betters.”

“His betters?” Slowly the mystery unfurled itself into the light, for Magnus was quite sure the other boys of the cohort hadn’t the magical strength to extinguish fires in such a wide radius, not even in the throes of anger and humiliated pride. He’d have heard of such a House-born prodigy if so, for everyone would have been boasting of it incessantly.

The mansa sighed with a great heave of his shoulders, as if to remind Magnus that this entire conversation was a drain on his valuable time. “He is a village boy, as you must have already seen for yourself. The descendent of people our ancestors rescued and generously brought with us to a new homeland. His grandmother was brought up to the house to work in the kitchens. That’s part of the service the village owes us, as you know. She got pregnant by a clerk, no one of importance.”

“A man with no magic, is that what you are saying?” Magnus asked with an ironic twist to his lips.

The mansa did not notice, so intent was he on his grievances. “She was sent back down to the village for being uncooperative, ungrateful, and difficult. The son she bore—the boy’s father—never showed the least sign of cold magic. And why should he have? In two hundred years, no person out of the village of Haranwy has managed any more magic than to create cold fire to light our homes and inns. Those people are incapable of blooming with the full power of cold magic.”

“Yet not incapable, as we have seen today.”

But the mansa had already gone on in a tone heavy with dismay and threaded with an unpleasant tincture of disgust.

“That isn’t even the worst of it. At least the villagers who are bound to our House are respectable folk who have a place in the world. His mother hasn’t even a lineage or a village. She was born in a cart. A peddler’s daughter. Imagine! Such depth of magic cannot possibly reside in a person of such low birth. The incident cannot have been but a momentary burst of anger.”

Magnus put a hard rein on his temper, but the anger leaked out in the cold snap of his tone. “What do you mean to do with a person of such low birth, then?”

“He must return to the schoolroom and learn enough to serve us, according to his place in the world.”

“And the other boys of his cohort? The ones who mistreated him? Do you mean to allow these boys to continue with such outrageous behavior, to pretend it didn’t happen? An evil secret is like fresh meat. When it rots, it smells.” He meant to pause, to offer a space for the mansa to reply, but realized he didn’t want to hear whatever his nephew had to say. “I will personally take the matter to the women’s council, and you will recall that when I returned home it was agreed I would not have to be involved in the day-to-day running of the House so I would have the freedom to work on my compendium. That’s how strongly I feel about looking the other way in cases of this nature.”

A glimmer of shame creased the mansa’s brow. “It is true the boys went too far.”

“Saying ‘I am sorry’ does not heal the dog’s bite.”

“It won’t happen again!”

“I will make sure of it. Because what if you are wrong, Nephew? Such treatment is unacceptable, whatever the child. But what if he is as powerful as it seems? What then?”

The mansa crossed his arms, shielding himself against a question he did not like and an answer he could not quite bring himself to contemplate.

“Can you deny that it is within the bounds of possibility, however unlikely you think it?”

That frown surely terrified many, but Magnus merely waited it out.

“I cannot deny it. Even though I am sure you are wrong, Uncle.”

“Consider the matter carefully as you proceed. That is my advice. Now you may go. I know you have many demands on your valuable time.”

After all this, the mansa remembered the manners his mother had taught him. He dropped his gaze respectfully. “I hear what you are saying. As for the boys’ hall, the women’s council will have final say on the matter. They have already made quite clear to me this morning that they are not pleased the situation was allowed to go so far. I have had an earful.”

Magnus would have clucked sympathetically under other circumstances, having himself had to sit through more than one scolding by the women’s council at other mage Houses where he had been engaged on a building project, although mercifully it had never been his behavior being censured. He could not bring himself to feel sympathy now, however, and perhaps his stolid silence prodded his nephew to continue more graciously.

“And may I add, Uncle, if I have not said so recently, that it gladdens me you have come home to us. It was the great wish of my heart that you would find a way to return, knowing of the welcome we would give you. I hope you may find peace and harmony here with your kinfolk after all your years of wandering.”

Softened, Magnus granted him a nod. “So I hope as well, Nephew. Your words are well spoken. I have felt welcome. And my odd habits of solitude have been kindly tolerated, though they may seem strange to many.”

“We are each as we are.” With this tendentious proverb to restore his confidence in his own supreme wisdom, the mansa took his leave.

Magnus waited until he could get the fire going again, then went back into the barn.

The lad noticed him coming at once and eagerly showed him his work, which he was not yet finished with because he had been working in the methodical way of a person who wants to get it right more than he wants to get it over and done with. They discussed what he’d been doing and some alternate techniques, until the lad abruptly stepped sharply back from the worktable as if it had bitten him.

“I want to learn, but probably I cannot,” he said as he looked wistfully around the quiet cold peace of the carpentry barn.

“Why would that be?”

“They will make me go back to the schoolroom.” He shuddered.

“Do you not want to go back to the schoolroom?”

He inhaled, as if wishing to fill himself with the pleasant smell of sawdust and cut wood for courage. In a trembling voice, meant to sound strong, he said, “I have to go back.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I am a cold mage.”

“Not every cold mage need do more than learn the basics. There are humbler roles that cold mages of lesser reach can fill. Shaping cold fire to light rooms, for example . . .” He trailed off as he realized the boy was not listening. He had a faraway look in his dark eyes, thoughts building an unseen edifice.

“I am going to be better than all the rest of them,” the lad muttered.

The words displeased him. “Are you? Is that your sole aim? To be better than them?”

His gaze flashed up. For an instant, the fierceness shone with the power of a restless, inquisitive, intelligent, proud, and ambitious mind unconcealed by any veil of false humility worn as protection. Then he shuttered himself and looked down. “You know who I am, don’t you, Uncle?” he said to the floor.

“I do, if by that you mean you are the boy who put out all the fires this morning. The village boy whose magic bloomed nine months ago and who has done nothing but battle with the other lads in his age cohort for the nine months he has been up at the House. But who you actually are I do not know. So let me ask again. Is your sole aim in learning cold magic to be better than the rest?”

The hesitation stretched long and longer still. Magnus imagined a wrestling match but he could not yet be sure with what opponent the youth was wrestling. At length the boy spoke, measuring his words with the precision of a person who has learned to watch what he says lest he be punished for the truth.

“I was angry when my magic bloomed. It was the last thing I wanted. But now that I have felt the reach of magic in my heart, I know it is what I am meant to be. I am a cold mage, so I am going to learn everything they can teach me about cold magic. I am going to learn how to do it properly, without fault, until I do it perfectly. Will I best them? Yes, I will, and you can be sure they will know it. That I will rub it in their faces every day. But if you tore me away from Four Moons House and locked me in a solitary tower, I would still learn everything about cold magic, without fault, until I did it perfectly.”

The architect considered the unformed youth before him. A boy becomes a man through a process of building the framework that undergirds him. This foundation makes him strong enough to withstand the storms of life that will inevitably come. It was so easy at this stage to go wrong. To not shore up the foundation adequately. To burden the structure with too much ornament. To ignore basic soundness in favor of demanding something your own prejudices make you think will serve you better.

This boy could go very wrong very quickly, and was like to do so if left solely in his nephew’s hands, sad to say. The mansa was a powerful man who walked athwart the world with easy privilege. He had already decided who he needed the boy to be and therefore what his prospects were.

Yet when a troubled, angry, upset boy asked only one question, and that question was how to do something better than he was already doing it simply because he wanted to do it right, then it was time to take a closer look.

Magnus gave a gentle cough, more to work up his own nerve than to alert the boy that he was about to speak. “Andevai, you could continue to work with me and still attend your lessons in the schoolroom.”

His chin came up as he blinked. “How could that happen, Uncle? They won’t allow it.”

“Do you know who I am?” he asked, aware of how his humble workaday clothing must appear to a village boy whose chief knowledge of the noble scions of the mage House was likely the fine garments, polished speech, and accomplished arrogance of people raised beneath its magnificent roof.

“You are an elder, Uncle. Also a carpenter.”

He smiled. “I am a man who can tell the mansa that you will work with me as often as you are free to do so, and to make sure you are given the freedom to work here without any slight coming to your studies. The only answer I need from you is if this is a situation you are interested in.”

“To come here when I am not in the schoolroom?”

“Yes. Whenever you wish. Under my supervision.”

The lad rested a hand on one of the boards he had just planed, running his fingers through the curled-up shavings.

“Yes,” he whispered with desperate hopefulness, then rubbed again at his face as if afraid he was crying. “I would like that, if it is possible. If it can be done with no harm coming to my studies.”

“Come with me now, and I will sort it all out. I cannot stop up the other lads’ mouths, but I suspect you have a sharp enough tongue hidden behind your polite manners that you can defend yourself with words as long as they are not allowed to touch you. We will go speak to my sister.”

“Your sister, Uncle?”

“Yes. She is head of the women’s council, and a powerful cold mage in her own right.”

“Maester!” His eyes went wide, and he took a step back as if he expected to be slapped. “My lord. I did not know. How should I address you?”

“I prefer ‘Uncle.’ Are you ready? It won’t be easy, but if you are determined and willing to work hard, the journey will be worth it.”

No hesitation this time. “I am ready.”

So it was much later in the day, after it had all been sorted out with far too much discussion for his liking, before Magnus finally sat alone at his desk. He considered his Compendium and the many pages he had yet to write. He had believed the compendium would be his last edifice, but it was not a building at all, he now realized; it was the memoriam of his life and work to share with others whom he would never meet.

He contemplated his precious solitude, and all the things he had returned home to avoid.

With a faint, wry smile he took out a new notebook, wrote the boy’s name on the first page, and on the second recorded the work with the boards and what tasks ought to come next, the first glimmerings of an architectural plan.

©2018 by Kate Elliott.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in Iowa, Kate Elliott grew up in rural Oregon, where she learned early to clean out stalls and pitchfork manure, thus preparing her for adult life. She’s written epic fantasy (Crown of Stars, the Crossroads trilogy, Black Wolves), science fiction (the Novels of the Jaran, the Highroad trilogy), young adult fantasy (the Court of Fives trilogy), alt-history fantasy (Cold Magic), and even a few short stories (most recently in The Book of Swords, edited by Gardner Dozois). She answers the question “Where should I start with your novels” here  (boy band style). You can find her on Twitter at @KateElliottSFF. She’s currently working on gender-bent Alexander the Great as space opera, forthcoming in 2019 from Tor Books. While not writing, she’s either paddling outrigger canoes or training her schnauzer puppy Fingolfin, aka High King of the Schnoldor.

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

Native Seeds

Catherine Wells | 19960 words

Alfonso woke reluctantly, prodded by a full bladder and an aching hip. He had been dreaming of a mountain where others had survived, a hope long dead—well, dormant, anyway—and it left him uneasy. Did they still live, those Men on the Mountain? And if so, why had they never come back? Perhaps el Jefe had been right to refuse to join them up there. Perhaps the Mother Earth had let them all perish.

He shifted on his bed of poorly tanned furs, trying to find a more comfortable position for his hip before admitting there probably wasn’t one. For a moment he lay debating the virtues of getting up to relieve himself. Spring had returned, but mornings were still chilly in the Valley of the People. He could just pee in a jar and crawl back under his furs—but he hated using jars and other things created in the Before Times, unsure if they offended the Mother Earth. So he ignored his bladder, ignored the pale light seeping through the sticks and bark of his wickiup, and sought the slippery comfort of sleep.

Yet he could not shake off the dream. No doubt the Men on the Mountain had all died off—wasn’t that their plan, not to bring children into a dying world? It had been nearly forty years since they had parted ways, surely the wrath of the Mother Earth had claimed them all. So why did he dream of them now? And why did the thought of them still make him so uneasy?

• • • •

Ruben Mendoza sighed as he traced the satellite’s descent into the Indian Ocean. “Well, that’s it,” he announced to the room at large. “We’ve lost China.” He noted the time in his log: 07:42, 10 April, 2284.

Sharon McKay came from her workstation to look over his shoulder, pushing her long ash-blond hair behind one ear. She leaned in closer than was necessary, her cheek hovering next to his, and he tensed. “There wasn’t much going on in China anyway,” she said.

Ruben eased away from her slightly. “No, but it leaves another giant hole in our coverage.” When Ruben was a boy, the series of geosynchronous satellites had transmitted data from around the globe, giving the installation on Kitt Peak a complete and complex picture of climate and conditions as the Earth spiraled through violent earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and massive storms. Clouds had interfered with transmissions for months at a time, but whenever there was a break, whenever the radio signals got through, they’d been able to download data and get a comprehensive picture of what was going on. Ruben had been excited to learn from his mother how to access the feeds, how to run the data through the translators and produce stunningly beautiful pictures of the planet’s demise.

But even as he had learned how to run the monitoring equipment, the satellites had begun to fail, like the telescopes that once dominated this facility. Some satellites, such as the one focused on China, sputtered through decaying orbits into oblivion; others simply stopped transmitting. The global grid, once so complete, now looked like Alpine lace.

Sharon straightened and shrugged. “Does it really matter? We can see the trend. Things are settling back to how they were before the Evacuation. And it’s not like we can send the information anywhere.”

She had a point. It had been forty-two years since the last shuttle had lifted off from Earth, ferrying passengers to the transport behemoths headed for other planets. New worlds, some naturally life-sustaining and others terraformed, had gathered in the humanity Earth rejected. But the ability to transmit information to them had failed years ago. Earth’s far-flung children had no idea their mother planet was now healing itself.

Ruben rolled his shoulders, thick with muscle from hoeing in the gardens at the foot of the mountain. “They might come back,” he said. “I mean, there’s no reason they shouldn’t send a spaceship back someday to see how Earth is doing.”

“Trust me,” said Sharon, “they don’t care. Settling two dozen new worlds—Just imagine the power struggles, the competition for resources. I’ll bet you a day’s rations they’ve had at least three good wars by now. Probably more.”

“An easy bet to make, since there’s no way to prove it one way or the other.” Her attitude always grated on him, that air of superiority because she was twenty-seven to his twenty-two. And the way she assumed they would pair up soon. How he wished the other girls of his gen hadn’t all been snapped up, even—

The whoosh of an opening door interrupted his thoughts, and a skirling breeze blew Ruben’s friend Vijay Singh into the room. Tall and lean, Vijay wore a light jacket over his khaki coverall in deference to the early morning chill. “Ruben, you busy?”

Ruben sighed. “Just watching another satellite die.” It was Sharon’s watch—he’d only come in to check on the China satellite.

“Rathna’s going on a livestocking run,” Vijay said. “The White Mountains. We could use some extra muscle.”

It was that, or another day in the gardens. A chance to fly over the healing Earth, a day far from the pressures of survival and—he glanced at Sharon—procreation. He needed only a moment’s thought before he bolted up from his chair. “Can we check out any industrial sites along the way? See if there are electronics worth scavenging?” If they were to keep the rest of the network up and running . . .

Vijay grinned. “You can ask, but you know how my sister gets when she’s hunting for livestock.”

Ruben grinned back. “Like she gets when you want to look for other survivors.”

• • • •

Alfonso woke again, no longer able to ignore the promptings of his aging flesh. Growing old brought many joys—and a certain smug satisfaction at having survived this long—but it had many drawbacks, as well. When was the last time he had slept all through the night? Suppressing a groan, he struggled to his bony knees, pulled the smelly deer-hide blanket over his shoulders, and crawled out of his wickiup.

Once outside, the morning sunlight lit his soul, and he paused, blinking at its blessed brightness. He remembered too well the years when only a pale, watery light filtered through to the land, years of want and despair. Heart lifting, he levered himself up from his crouch and looked out over the Village of the People, the Survivors and their children, sheltered here at the foot of the cliff whose ancient cave dwelling had saved them. Overcome, he lifted his voice in thanks to the Mother Earth.

Hear, O Mother Earth!

I remember the dark times,

And so I greet the dawn with gladness.

I remember the Rains That Never Stopped,

The killing waters,

And so I laugh with your gentle brook.

You have washed yourself clean

And you give to your children this new day.

I thank you, O Mother.

I thank you, O Mother.

Chest swelling, he turned first east where the sun peeked over a mesa, then west to the trail that led out of the valley, and finally back south, gazing across the gushing creek to the undulating flood plain where the People had planted their squash and beans. Then, pulling the hide more snugly around his shoulders, he trudged toward the latrine trench downstream from the village.

The women of the village had been up early, stirring their cooking fires, and by the time Alfonso returned, the fragrance of stewed rabbit filled the air. They had run out of squash during the cold months, but now flower buds and tender young prickly pear pads filled out their stew pots. Sometimes Alfonso craved the foods of his youth—popcorn and canned peaches and chocolate—but he’d been hungry too many years to be anything but grateful for whatever nourishment the Mother Earth provided. Especially if he didn’t have to cook it himself.

He stopped by the fire of his younger daughter, Squash Blossom, and inhaled pointedly. A round-faced girl of seventeen summers with a toddler slung over one shoulder, she smiled and greeted him. “Good morning, Father. Would you like some food?”

“If you have enough.”

The smile faded from her eyes, if not her lips. “Your generosity sees to that.” Last fall, her young husband had slipped on a rocky slope and broken his neck, and now it was Alfonso who brought her rabbits and other small game to add to the vegetables she gathered or grew. Being widowed was hard enough, but Squash Blossom’s sadness was compounded because she knew she must marry again, and her choices for a new mate were limited.

Alfonso stifled a sigh. Having lost his own wife Ernestina several years ago, he could appreciate her despair. He was near fifty, and though the desire for a woman still plagued him, the thought of taking a giggling, doe-eyed, scatter-brained adolescent into his cramped wickiup to live made him shudder. A more mature woman might be a better companion, but those who had survived the privations of the early years found their wombs dried early. And why disrupt his life and his peace, if not to make children? Love between a man and a woman was a luxury; children were a necessity, if the People were to survive.

Survive. Alfonso lifted his eyes to the cliff wall towering over the village, to the stone houses built into a cave there by ancient hands. That shelter high above the floodwaters, out of the driving rain, was all that had saved them. For eleven miserable days, they had huddled there with no fire and only the meager provisions in their packs. When the storm finally subsided, water still rushed through the valley, and the only escape from their sanctuary/prison was to climb the treacherous slope above the houses to the mesa top. Chico had gone first, always angry, channeling his hatred of their situation into resolve and inching, fingers and toes, up the jagged cliff face. When he reached the top he had thrown back taunts, but also a rope, and Alfonso, Juan, Carlos, Enrique, and Estevan all climbed up to join him in the hunt for food.

Six teenaged boys trying to feed twenty-two empty bellies from a land scoured first by brutal drought, then by savage storm. Alfonso had lain for hours in the prickly sedge beside a rabbit hole until the furry inhabitant poked its head out, and he yanked his snare tight. By then he was so hungry, he could have eaten the rabbit raw; but he put it aside, found another hole, and stretched out to wait again . . .

“We should have gone with them,” Chico complained time and again. “When they came from the Mountain that last time. We should have gone back with them as they asked. It was el Jefe who stopped us, that old man and his lies.”

“They were not lies,” Alfonso always soothed. “He did not try to deceive us. It was what he believed, that we were better off without their help. And we do not know he was wrong. We have seen no more of them.”

A bright flash caught his eye now and drew him from his memories. What was that in the sky to the south? A bird? The birds had come back slowly—raptors first, then doves and pigeons, then others. But this—no, that was no bird sailing through the clear spring sky. That glint was the flash of sunlight on metal or polished fiberplas. Alfonso blinked, hardly able to believe what he saw.

Chico appeared at his elbow. “Look! You see that? You see that? It’s them! They did not die! All this time, we could have been safe with them up on the Mountain!”

Accustomed to his friend’s harangue, Alfonso shook his head. “Was life any easier on that mountain?”

Squash Blossom looked up from feeding her fire. “What mountain?”

“Far away to the south,” Alfonso said. “Many days’ walk.”

“Father!” Alfonso’s son Turtle came toward them, up the path from the river. He was a handsome, well-built man of twenty-odd summers, with straight black hair that brushed his shoulders. Ernestina had made his leather headband, pressing designs into it and staining it red with amaranth seeds. Turtle pointed at the object in the sky. “What is that? It does not move like a bird.”

Throughout the village, people were taking notice now, looking up at the sky, shielding their eyes against the morning glare. Alfonso sighed. “It is a hopper.”

“A what?”

He realized he had used the English word and he tried to remember the Spanish equivalent. When that failed, he gave it a name his son would understand. “A flying machine.”

“A machine that flies? How is that possible?”

Alfonso shrugged and gave his favorite answer. “Magic.” Then he added, “It’s from the Before Times. I saw one once, when I was a boy.”

“And we should have gotten on it,” Chico insisted. “Think how many died! We could have shared their food. We could have had their medicine. My daughter would not have died of pneumonia.”

Alfonso did not bother to answer. He and Chico had had this argument many times. As scarce as food had been here, they might have had less on the Mountain. Perhaps the others there would have resented sharing it with the People. Perhaps by sharing too widely, all would have starved. There was no knowing what might have been; they could only be grateful for what they had.

“Flag it down,” Chico said. “Do something! Make a big smoky fire.”

But Alfonso turned to his wickiup, the unease of his dream heavy as the hide across his shoulders. “If the Mother Earth wishes them to pass us by, they will. If she wishes them to find us . . .”

Chico followed him, cursing under his breath.

• • • •

Rathna Singh squinted at the wisp of smoke off to the aircraft’s left, then sighed in exasperation. “Wildfire.”

“No, look at this,” Vijay insisted, pivoting the hopper’s infrared camera to focus on the area in question. “It’s not a line of heat, like a wildfire. It’s several distinct heat signatures. Like campfires.”

Ruben had two sisters himself, so he was accustomed to this kind of squabbling between siblings. Still, he wondered why he let himself get suckered into these excursions. As a biologist, Rathna was dedicated to her mission of animal husbandry, fostering a population of healthy animals as a sustainable food source for her community. As a chemist with a wife and two kids, Vijay was dedicated to voyages of discovery that would raise him out of his everyday life into the fantasy realm of books and games.

“You’re supposed to use the infrared to look for warm-blooded beasts,” Rathna scolded. “And those are spotfires. Sparks blown from the main fire always spawn spotfires.”

Eyes twinkling, Vijay turned to Ruben in the seat behind her. “Hey—maybe it’s survivors from Leonard Pacheco’s band.” Pacheco had led a group of Native Americans who refused to evacuate Earth forty-odd years before. The notion that any had survived had fascinated the two boys growing up, the subject of many hours of imaginative play.

Rathna, several years older, had scoffed at the notion then as she did now. “Too far south.”

“They could have moved. It’s been what—thirty years, Ruben? Thirty-five?”

Ruben would have preferred to be left out of the debate, but Vijay wasn’t giving him the option. “The last anyone saw of them was before the megastorms hit,” he said. “That was . . . five or six years Post-Evac, I think.” No one on the mountain had thought of having children until the storms passed and things started growing again. Ruben’s brother Victor, twenty-nine, had been the first child born on the mountain, and the storms had lasted about six years, so . . . “Yeah, thirty-five years at least, I’m pretty sure. Mark McKay would know, he keeps those records.” Sharon’s brother was the archivist for the mountain installation.

“Just because there’s nothing left of their settlement doesn’t mean they didn’t move somewhere else. Somewhere more conducive to survival.” Vijay tapped the screen. “Those are campfires.”

Rathna scowled. “It’s a wildfire. Look, I’ll show you.” She banked the hopper and headed northwest toward the smoke.

• • • •

“What is its purpose, this hopper?” Turtle asked. He squatted outside Alfonso’s wickiup, looking up at the sky as he added twigs to his father’s fire.

“Put green wood on it,” Chico coaxed. “Make a lot of smoke.”

Seated in his doorway with his bowl of stew, Alfonso ignored Chico and answered Turtle’s question. “It carries people.”

“Like a horse?” No horses had survived the terrible Food Wars that preceded the Evacuation, but their legend was common lore among the People.

“No, people ride inside,” Alfonso explained. “It is bigger than it looks.” He licked the last of the stew from his fingers and glanced again at the sky. Was it growing nearer, that shiny object?

Turtle’s eyes had gone wide. “People? What people?”

“I think they must be the Men on the Mountain. I thought they had forgotten about us. Or died off.” Alfonso frowned to himself. Had he never told Turtle the story? How the scientists had come one last time, insisting the People should come back to their mountain for safety. How el Jefehad turned them down flat. Only he and Chico had been there with el Jefe, and Alfonso did not like to bring it up. It only made Chico bitterer. “They . . . were not known as respecters of the Mother Earth,” he elaborated.

Turtle threw him a dark look, grunted.

“Then it is no wonder they died.”

“Except they didn’t,” Chico growled. “See? Who else could it be, in a flying machine?”

“Apparently,” Alfonso said, watching the aircraft draw nearer, “the Mother Earth chose to let some live.”

Turtle huffed as he watched the glistening thing come on. “And why have they kept themselves hidden all these years?”

Alfonso did not respond. He knew it was not the Men on the Mountain who had kept themselves hidden. Though they never spoke of it, most of those who remembered the Before Times had wished them dead, those arrogant scientists, wished them punished for their hubris in scorning the Mother Earth and rousing her anger. Wished them afflicted with hunger and loss and humiliation. Wished someone had suffered more than the People.

And maybe they had. Maybe this was some drone, activated after decades by a computer that should have died years before. Maybe it would fly right past them on its unknown, unneeded mission—

Just then the aircraft altered its course and came straight toward them.

Alfonso closed his eyes, felt his heart sink like the weight on a fishing net. It might be different this time. They might have learned, those Men on the Mountain, as the People had learned. They might be humbler now. He opened his eyes again and set aside his empty bowl. “Fetch Carlos,” he told Turtle. “And Celia and—” He wondered who else might remember some English. “Dawn. I think we are about to have visitors.”

• • • •

Ruben watch the shadow of the hopper glide over the land below them, saw green patches resolve into shrubby trees and cactus as they came in low. Sunlight gleamed off a pale rock face where an old cliff dwelling perched on a shelf, its doors gaping, its courtyards bare. Strange, that this ancient mud habitation should have lasted when the concrete and steel of so many buildings had succumbed to the ravages of nature. But then, this place was built into a sheltering cave, protected from the elements on three sides.

It was, however, decidedly unoccupied. Deflated, Ruben chided himself for having hoped there might really have been survivors there.

Then Rathna tilted the hopper’s wings, and he peered down at the stretch of land sloping from the cliff toward the creek. Brush huts sat scattered among the saltbush and mesquite, each with a tidy campfire. In the spaces between clustered dozens of upturned faces.

“Oh my God,” Rathna breathed. “Vijay, you were right.”

• • • •

Alfonso watched the hopper dip low over the village, then swoop upward and circle a flat-topped hill just to the east. There it began its vertical descent, bringing back memories of that other hopper so many years ago, landing on higher ground above el Jefe’s town. He and Chico had been boys then, no more than twelve. How proud they had been when el Jefe invited them to go with him to meet the delegation from the Mountain.

“Make them come down to us,” Chico said now as the hopper settled on the hilltop. “Why should we go to them?”

Alfonso twisted his lips in annoyance at this abrupt shift in attitude. “I thought you were eager to see them.”

“I am, but my knees are not.”

Neither were Alfonso’s, but he couldn’t help wondering why el Jefe had chosen to go up to meet that last delegation. He might have remained in his house, made them come to him. What was his reason? Was there something in the town he didn’t want them to see? Had he feared the exchange might get ugly and wanted to keep it away from the heart of their settlement? Or had he simply been anxious to shoo them off ?

Chico snorted. “You are still following that old man’s advice, aren’t you? Wary of los Otros, the Others. What good did it do us? We might have died with him and the rest of our people.”

Alfonso only grinned and turned to the knot of elders gathering around him. “Come, my friends,” he said. “Let us go up and greet our guests.”

• • • •

The desert vegetation on the hilltop was laced with spring green, and wildflowers clustered around chunks of old asphalt where a road or a parking lot had once been. From the air, Ruben had seen foundations of a building long gone, and Rathna had eased the hopper down cautiously to avoid the rubble and debris. She cut the main engine now, but Ruben noticed she did not fold back the aircraft’s wings, leaving it ready for a quick takeoff. “This was probably a park of some kind,” she said as she unbuckled her harness. “Historic site. Before such things were defunded and fell into ruin.” Long before the Food Wars.

Vijay was already opening the hopper door. “Any structures probably washed away in the megastorms. Looks like the grass and shrubs have been growing here quite a while.” Stunted mesquite trees had sunk their talons amid the chaparral. “Look!” He pointed to half a dozen figures winding their way up the hillside single file. “A welcoming committee!” He grinned back at his companions.

Ruben felt his gut tighten as he watched them come. The leader was an old man, his long hair gray and his face deeply lined. He wore moccasins tied well up his calves, with a pair of fibrous mats skirting his loins and an animal hide draped over his shoulders. Behind him came two other men and three women, though one seemed more a girl. She helped one of the older women up the slope.

“If they’re Leonard Pacheco’s group, they may not be very welcoming,” Rathna warned. “Aunt Sara said they made it very clear they wanted to be left alone.”

Vijay looked at his sister in disbelief. “Are you kidding? They’re living in huts made of brush, and they’re not going to be happy to see someone in a hopper?”

“Let’s just wait,” Ruben said as he watched the emissaries come on. “Let’s just wait and see what they say.”

So they stood by the hopper and waited as the little band climbed the hill.

• • • •

By the time he reached the top of the mesa, Alfonso was winded. “You have grown soft, old man,” Chico taunted. “Remember when we used to run to the top of this hill just to see who was faster?”

“There is no denying this life has aged us,” Alfonso admitted, glad to stop and wait for the others. “But we do not know if those on the Mountain have aged any better.” The scientists had all been adults when Alfonso was a boy. Could these be the same people he had met? He didn’t remember the men’s names, but the woman—Sara Martin. Dr. Sara Martin. No taller than Alfonso then, but all the men jumped at her command. Blond hair streaming in the wind, blue eyes flashing—

One look now, though, told him his guests were strangers. Three young people stood beside the hopper, dressed in utilitarian coveralls. A small woman with long dark hair was flanked by a tall, slender man and another of stockier build. Both men wore their dark hair cut short.

“These are children,” Chico said. “I will not speak English for them.”

Alfonso suspected that was a blessing, but he did not say so. Instead he led his band forward, trying to remember the appropriate English greeting for strangers. “Hello,” he said. “Good morning.”

The woman and the taller man stood silent, mouths gaping. The other man glanced at the dumbstruck pair as if he expected one of them to lead, then straightened himself and spoke. “Good morning.” Another glance at his companions, and he forged ahead. “We saw your fires.”

“They probably have electric stoves,” Chico muttered in Alfonso’s ear. “They think we are barbarians because we use fire.”

Alfonso hushed him with a gentle elbow. “I am Alfonso,” he continued, the English coming back to him now.

“Tell them what they call you,” Chico mocked softly. “Tell them you are He With Faith. They’ll be impressed.”

“I am Ruben.” Ruben waved a hand at his companions. “This is Rathna and her brother Vijay. We were out looking for livestock. Animals. Are you—are you part of Leonard Pacheco’s group?”

Alfonso nodded. “He was our jefe. Our chief.”

The woman Rathna came to life then, sucked in her breath and spoke in a rush. Alfonso caught the words “four thousand” and “people” and “all that’s left?”

“Please, slow down.” He gestured with both hands to stem her flow of words. “It’s a long time since I speak English. Yes, we”—He gestured toward the village—“are all the People. We are the Survivors. Plus our children, and their children.”

Celia spoke to Alfonso in Spanish. “They can’t be from the Mountain. Those people were all older. Unless they had children after all, which they swore they wouldn’t do.”

Before he could respond, Ruben spoke again. “Habla Español aqui?”

Alfonso’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “You speak Spanish?”

“Un poquito.” Ruben grinned. “It’s the language my parents used when they didn’t want us kids to know what they were saying. I picked up a few words.”

Chico folded his arms and glared at Alfonso. “So they lived well enough on the Mountain to have children. And we could have been with them.”

Alfonso repressed a sigh. “Our language is mostly Spanish,” he told the visitors, “with some Apache and Navajo and O’odam and Yavapai—” He groped for the right word, then pantomimed stirring.

“Mixed in,” Ruben guessed.

“And we have our own words, words that belong only to the People.” That had been his idea, to give things new names, for the new world they lived in.

Chico snickered. “You never imagined you’d have to explain those words to anyone else, did you?”

Now Celia addressed the strangers in English. “Why do you come?”

“We saw your fires,” Rathna said, her speech slower now but not exaggerated. “We didn’t know anyone else survived. We’re from Kitt Peak.”

Alfonso grunted. “I thought so. But we are surprised.” He cocked his head. “We thought you chose to die with no children.”

“That was the intent.” Rathna stepped forward, taking over now. “There was so much ash in the air for years, and the constant storms, and nothing would grow, even in our hydroponic gardens. We nearly died.”

“Us, too.” The Time of Storms and Fury. The Year that Summer Never Came.

“But then things got better, and it seemed good to keep the mission going, so—Now there are, what, Vijay? A hundred and fifty of us?”

“Closer to two,” Vijay said.

Alfonso drew a deep breath as he considered that. Such a number could easily overwhelm the People. “We are less,” he said carefully. Then he smiled and pointed to Celia’s daughter Cholla Bud, whose belly bulged slightly beneath her skirt. “But we keep growing.”

Ruben’s gaze had drifted to the collection of wickiups along the creek where adults conferred while children jostled each other and played an improvised game with sticks. “May we see your village?” he asked.

Alfonso hesitated. “Go on,” Chico prodded. “Are you still afraid? Look, they are not dangerous. No guns, no stunners. Don’t be rude. Invite them to eat with us.”

Alfonso straightened his shoulders, inclined his head. “We welcome you. Come and sit at my fire.”

• • • •

Ruben counted the brush shelters in the village as they picked their way down the slope. Seventeen.

“You know what I’m thinking,” Rathna said softly.

Alfonso and another man were ahead of them, the others trailing behind. Vijay cocked an eyebrow. “That they’re hunting your precious mule deer?” he teased.

She scowled at him. “I doubt they’re equipped to hunt deer. No, I’m thinking . . . bloodlines.”

Vijay snorted. “You’re a biologist—you’re always thinking bloodlines. Tell me how these people are going to improve the bloodlines on any of your livestock. I don’t see any domesticated animals, do you?”

But Ruben knew what she meant. “She’s not worried about our livestock. She’s worried about these people, right? Seventeen huts by my count, a family in each—they don’t have enough numbers to prevent genetic drift.”

Rathna scowled at him. “They don’t have enough? We don’t have enough. But twenty, thirty more adults . . .”

Ruben’s eyes widened as the implication hit him. Their biologists had insisted it was manageable, as long as some couples changed partners occasionally. Some people objected to this, worried about social damage caused by swapping. But if they brought these new people to the mountain . . . if he had a choice other than Sharon McKay . . .

• • • •

“You have no food on your fire,” Celia pointed out when they reached Alfonso’s wickiup.

Alfonso shrugged sheepishly.

“Come to my fire,” she commanded. “I have four fine sons—there is always food in my cookpot.” Then she led the way toward the far side of the village.

“You should put that old woman in her place,” Chico said as they followed.

“She is not much older than we are,” Alfonso reminded him. “And she commands as much respect. If she wants to have us at her fire, she is entitled.” He thanked Celia pointedly for making the offer.

Their visitors gawked at the trappings of the camp as they walked on. Alfonso knew how barbaric it must seem to them: huts of brush and mud, rough clothing of woven yucca fibers, poorly tanned hides. “They look on us with disdain,” Chico said.

But Ruben paused to inspect the bindings on a drying frame, the pieces of meat draped on it. “I think it’s amazing,” Ruben said, “what you’ve done with nothing. Or almost nothing.”

Alfonso lifted his chin. “All we have, we have from the hand of the Mother Earth.”

Chico snorted softly. “And their plastics, their refined metals and ceramics and glass, are they not also from the Mother Earth?”

Alfonso was glad the visitors did not understand Chico’s Spanish.

“Is that deer hide?” Ruben asked, pointing to the skin on Alfonso’s shoulders. “How do you hunt deer?”

“I chased this one into a pit.” Alfonso held up the portion of hide with a hole gouged through it, where the deer had fallen on a sharpened stake. As he did, he noticed the cracks and scaly patches. Ernestina had done her best to tan it, but . . . “We were children when our elders were washed away. Worse—we were teenagers. We failed to learn many of the skills they would teach us. Making snares and traps, yes. Food was—” He groped for a word. “Obsession. Never enough food. But tanning hides? Spinning thread?” He shook his head. “We were busy with other things.”

“You have no cloth,” Rathna noted.

“We have no cotton. Or sheep.”

Ruben’s brow puckered. “Can’t you find cloth in one of the old cities? Not everything was washed away in the floods. We get lots of our—”

But Alfonso waved him off. “We prefer to make our own things. We live from the bounty of the Mother Earth.”

“And sometimes go hungry,” Chico reminded him. “And cold.”

They had arrived at Celia’s wickiup. “Come, eat,” she said, dishing stew into wooden bowls and handing them to the visitors. The tantalizing aroma tickled Alfonso’s nostrils, and he had to remind himself he had already eaten at Squash Blossom’s fire.

As if called by the thought, his daughter appeared at his elbow with her child in one arm and a stack of yucca mats in the other. “Perhaps our guests will sit while they eat,” she suggested, indicating a nearby ramada.

Alfonso nodded and translated her words into English for the visitors. “My daughter has brought mats so you can sit,” he told the visitors.

Ruben turned to her. “Gracias.”

Alfonso noted how the young man’s eyes followed Squash Blossom as she spread the mats on the cleared ground. She glanced shyly at the stranger, then retreated to where two of her friends waited with their babies. “Thank you, Squash Blossom,” Alfonso said, taking a seat and indicating the others should join him.

Ruben dropped with enviable ease into a cross-legged position, his eyes never leaving the girl. She and her friends giggled behind their hands and sent sidelong glances at him and Vijay.

Rathna took the bowl of stew Celia offered and tasted it. “Mm, it’s good,” she said, licking gravy from her fingers. “Nice and spicy. You must grow chiles.”

“It would be better with garlic,” Chico complained. “And cumin. I’ll bet they have those on the Mountain.”

“Yes, we grow chiles,” Alfonso said. “And squash and beans, and we harvest from the desert around us. But we could find no corn to plant, or cotton seeds, either.”

“Ask them, ’Fonso.” Chico urged. “Ask them if they have those spices. And then ask them to take us back with them. Potatoes, ’Fonso. Flour tortillas. Tomatoes and onions and—”

“You have done very well anyway,” Rathna said. “Amazingly well. I’m sure I couldn’t do as well, if I were plunked down in the middle of the desert like this.”

“What happened to your elders, exactly?” Vijay asked. “You say they were washed away, but—all of them? And how is it you escaped?”

Alfonso drew a deep breath, but it did nothing to ease the ache in his chest. “We were not in town when the flood came,” he said, “and so we—” His voice failed.

“You survived,” Rathna said quietly. “You survived.”

Alfonso tried to ignore the burning look Celia sent his way.

• • • •

Ruben’s gaze slid back to the three young women seated across the way. They wore knee-length skirts of hemp-like fibers, woven and fringed, with hides draped over their shoulders. What lay beneath the hides, he could not tell. How old were they? Old enough to have a child apiece. Their cheeks were round and smooth, their hair a glossy black, and the eyes that darted his way were bright and mischievous.

This was certainly not what he and Vijay had imagined as kids, pretending to be the heroic explorers who found Leonard Pacheco and his lost band. In their fantasies, they rescued people held in thrall by a superstitious dictator, half-starved and forced to do his bidding. But these people—these people looked content. If their clothes were shabby, they didn’t seem to notice, and they looked as well fed as anyone on the mountain. And all of this—food, shelter, an entire culture from what he could see—preserved or created by a bunch of teenagers. He wondered, if someone had plunked him and other second-gens down in the desert with only their wits, would they have survived?

And the idea of bringing these people back to the mountain—What would the administration do, install them in their own village at the base? Find them housing with everyone else? Talk about culture shock. But Rathna was right, both populations could use the genetic diversity. Genetic—He looked at the young women again, and a part of him stirred that had nothing to do with science.

Alfonso’s daughter probably had a husband. They all probably had husbands—they had kids, didn’t they? How would they feel about mating with strangers, with people outside their group?

Then Squash Blossom’s eyes met his, and a jolt of electricity shot through Ruben. That look, that smile—she was flirting with him. Wasn’t she? Ruben was no psychologist, but he was pretty sure she was flirting with him. Maybe they didn’t have marriage as such—they couldn’t really afford to, as small a group as they were. Scientifically speaking. Maybe they had open relationships, and . . .

Vijay’s elbow caught him in the ribs. “You’re drooling.”

Ruben flushed. “Oh, yeah?” He kept his voice low. “Your eyes aren’t exactly staying in their sockets.”

Vijay sniggered. “I won’t tell your girlfriend if you don’t tell my wife.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend!”

“Yeah? You enjoy celibacy?”

Ruben glanced around to be sure no one was listening to their side conversation, but Rathna was asking about the wildlife in the region, what kinds they’d seen, where they hunted. “Just ’cause I’m not married,” he whispered, “doesn’t mean I have to be celibate.”

“Big talk.” But Vijay turned his attention back to the exchange on deer and javelina, ducks and foxes.

• • • •

“That’s what brought us here,” Rathna was saying, “we were headed for the White Mountains to look for livestock. Mountain sheep, preferably, or deer, but we’ll take anything, really. Not rabbits, we have plenty of those, but waterfowl, or even a bear. We’ve got one pair of black bears, but we could use more.”

“We have seen no sheep,” Alfonso told her. He didn’t think any had lived in this area even before the Food Wars, certainly not after. “But we have only gone upriver, to the west, so I don’t know what you will find in those mountains.”

“Hey, did you ever see a Celux nobilis?” Vijay asked. “Big quadruped with a single horn? I know they were imported from off-world during the Food Wars—”

“And were all butchered for meat,” Rathna scoffed. “Honestly, Vijay, you go from one fantastic notion to anoth—” She stopped short and took in the faces around her. “Well. Um . . .” She clambered to her feet. “Maybe our discussion of livestock should wait for another time. Right now, I think we better go home and let people know you’re here. They are going to be so excited to learn you’ve survived. We’ll radio the news as soon as we’re within range. I’m sure our leaders will want to come right back to meet with you.”

Alfonso’s gut tightened. “Your leaders?”

“We have an administrator,” she explained “and department heads. I’m sure they’ll be back.”

He swallowed. “Sara Martin?”

“Aunt Sara? Oh, no, she gave up administration years ago. She teaches now.”

Dr. Sara Martin, a teacher. Alfonso tried to picture it. She had made quite an impression on him, all those years ago. Fair-skinned, fair-haired—he imagined she had been beautiful behind that breathing mask she wore. To twelve-year-old Alfonso, the men with her looked like monsters in their masks, but she—she was a katsina, an otherworldly being. A being of great power.

“You don’t understand!” Her voice had been tinny through the mask. “This ash will stay in the air for months. Maybe years. It’s not just the monster storms it will trigger—it’s going to affect the sunlight. Plants will die. Animals will starve. And so will you!”

But el Jefe had stood with his bare face to the driving rain, gray hair whipping back from his headband, as calm and resolute as she was passionate and determined. “And you think your technology will save us, up there on your mountain? Did it ever occur to you that technology is what made the Earth nearly uninhabitable in the first place? That your addiction to machines and computers and excess was unsustainable?”

Dr. Martin had drawn herself up as though to command the storm. “You have to come with us now. The roads are already gone, and when I get back, I’m grounding all aircraft for the duration. It’s now or never.”

“And why can you not accept,” el Jefe had asked, “that we choose never?”

She’d taken two steps forward, her face only inches from his. “I want to talk to your people directly.”

El Jefe had laughed. “Do you imagine they will give you a different answer? I have presented your kind offer to them, Dr. Martin. It is their answer I bring.”

“It is yours!”

“The Council of Elders discussed it at length. All viewpoints were considered. In the end, it was unanimous. We will trust in the Mother Earth. We are her children; her wrath will pass.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then we will perish in our homes, rather than on your mountain. Leave us, Dr. Martin. Your conscience is clear.”

For a moment Alfonso had imagined she would rise up and smite him, but she only balled her fists and shouted, “You don’t understand!”

“I understand you have made a decision, and it infuriates you that we will not do as you command.”

Dr. Martin had drawn back as though struck. No warmth colored el Jefe’s smile and he said, “As your people say, ‘You are not the boss of me.’”

Then el Jefe had turned and he, Chico, and Alfonso had walked away from her, although Alfonso could not resist a glance back. Sara Martin had been marching toward the waiting hopper, her entourage trailing after her. Had she lost face with the Men on the Mountain because she could not bring the People back?

And the Administrator Rathna spoke of now—would that person also try to command the People?

Alfonso was brought back to the present by Vijay, who had stood to join Rathna. “Hey, maybe you want to come with us, Alfonso.”

The remnants of last night’s dream stirred in Alfonso’s consciousness, and a chill slid down through his chest and into his gut. Go to the Mountain . . .

Rathna was enthusiastic. “Sure! Good idea. You can come along in our hopper—”

Alfonso quickly held up a hand, shaking his head. “I will not go in your hopper.”

Chico, who had been silent for some time, sprang to life. “What do you mean, you won’t go? Of course, you’ll go! We’ll both go! We’ll both go, and we won’t have to come back.”

“The People—my people—need time,” Alfonso demurred. “To . . . process, is that right? We have long thought you dead like our elders, and ourselves alone in the world. Our council will need to discuss, to . . . consider.”

“We have a council?” Chico demanded.

“What is there to consider? They have food, medicine, soft beds—”

“I understand,” Rathna said. She turned to Ruben, who still sat on a mat. “Ruben?”

Ruben looked up. His mind had clearly been somewhere else, and Alfonso was fairly sure he knew where. “Um—sure. Time. To discuss.”

A thought struck Alfonso. The man was young, strong . . . “Maybe you would like to stay with us for a day or two,” he suggested. “You can go back with your leaders, when they return to talk with us.”

Ruben blinked, then turned to his friends, who looked equally startled. “Uh—I’m flattered. Thank you. But—uh—” He straightened his shoulders. “Not this time, okay? I’d like to stay in your village, see how your people live, but—I’m just not prepared right now.”

Alfonso smiled. “Next time,” he agreed, then added, “Bring your toothbrush.” Ruben laughed, startled. “And maybe, if you can spare them, some seeds.”

“Seeds?”

“Corn. Cotton.”

“Potatoes,” Chico suggested. “Wheat.”

“Things that will grow here in our climate,” Alfonso qualified.

“Sure,” Ruben said. “I’m sure I can bring you some seeds.”

• • • •

“You are thinking of another kind of seed, aren’t you?” Chico accused when the hopper had lifted off and they trudged back to the village. “You would give away your daughter to one of them?”

“I give away nothing,” Alfonso said. “But if he comes here . . . I simply make it possible for her to have another choice.”

“And if he doesn’t stay?”

Alfonso shrugged. “I will make it all right for her to choose one man now, and another later.”

“You will make it all right,” Chico scoffed.

“Like you made it all right for me to take my half-sister Elena to wife.”

Alfonso sighed. “There were only so many combinations, Chico, and the others had all chosen. You know that. It was either Elena, or wait till one of the children matured. And you didn’t want to wait, so I—” He stopped short, went back to the script he had used a dozen times. “So I talked to the Mother Earth, and She said it would be all right for you to marry your half-sister.”

Chico snorted. “These conversations you have with the Mother Earth.”

“Your babies were fine, weren’t they? And now Mother Earth is telling me this Ruben, he can give Squash Blossom fine babies. Babies with new blood. We need that, Chico.”

“If we go back to their Mountain, there will be plenty of new blood.”

“True.” Alfonso stopped and looked at the dirt paths wending between sturdy shelters of sticks and mud. “But will we still hear the Mother Earth up there?”

• • • •

News of the survivors had spread rapidly, and several people waited at the landing pad as the hopper touched down. At the front of the pack stood Sharon McKay, and Ruben’s stomach clenched. What in the world was she doing here? This had nothing to do with her.

Vijay popped his safety harness and fairly lunged for the hatch, but Ruben stalled deliberately, fiddling with his safety harness, checking the gear stowed behind his seat while Rathna folded the wings and started her post-flight checklist. Sharon, however, was nothing if not assertive. As soon as Vijay cleared the hatch, she thrust her head in. “Hey, Rathna. Hey, Ruben.” She smirked at him, and he tensed reflexively. Did she think that was a smile? That she was flirting? “I hear you made quite a discovery out there.”

“It was Vijay’s discovery,” Ruben demurred, waving a hand at his friend who was locking the hopper in its clamps, a precaution against wind gusts that eddied over and around the mountain. “I need to give him a hand.” He pushed past Sharon and tried to escape.

She only followed him. “So this is part of Pacheco’s band you found? How many are left?”

Ruben shrugged. “I didn’t count.”

“There were four thousand in the beginning, though I think there were a lot less by the time Sara Martin tried to rescue them.”

“We’re guessing about fifty,” Vijay chimed in. Other onlookers were moving in now, listening, and Vijay raised his voice to include them. “And you should see them: living in mud huts, walking around half-naked—”

“They’re wickiups, not mud huts!” Ruben snapped. “I’d like to see you build one.”

Vijay straightened, stung. “Oh, excuse me, I’m not up on Native American architecture.”

“They’ve managed incredibly well,” Ruben temporized, “considering their whole settlement was washed away in the floods. They’ve built shelters, kept themselves fed and clothed—”

“If you call that stuff they wore clothing. More like placemats and mangy old—”

“Vijay!” Rathna called, exiting the hopper at last. “Let’s go. Feingold’s waiting.” She led the way past the curious watchers, past the Commons building and toward Administration.

Sharon stayed at Ruben’s side, long-legged enough to keep up with him. “They must have been glad to see you,” she said. “Did you get a hero’s welcome?”

Ruben nearly stumbled as he realized the survivors hadn’t actually seemed very excited. Polite, yes, but—wary was the word that came to mind. To say that, though, with so many people listening in . . .

Rathna saved him. “Sharon, let’s wait with the questions. We really should talk to Dr. Feingold first.”

Sharon’s mouth tightened. “Why? Is it some big secret?” She waved a hand at the knot of people still trailing them. “Hate to tell you, but everyone knows.”

“Protocol,” Rathna said. “We’ll catch up with you later.”

Ruben could have hugged her.

• • • •

Celia looked Alfonso up and down like a horned owl deciding if a rattlesnake was worth the trouble to carry off for dinner. “So. You think they will come back?”

“Oh, yes.” Alfonso sat before his wickiup, dragging an antler point across a piece of stone to sharpen it. He did not like having to use bones and antlers for cutting and carving—they were not nearly as effective as the metal knife he once possessed. But Chico had teased him about using tools from the Before Times, and in a fit of pique, Alfonso had thrown the knife into a ravine. “We are like a scab that itches,” he told Celia. “They cannot leave us alone.”

“And is that good or bad, do you think?”

“It’s good,” Chico insisted. “Of course it’s good. We need them.”

“I think it can be good,” Alfonso temporized. They could help him identify flint, maybe tell him how it ought to be knapped to make a sharp edge.

Celia’s face did not change. “They will try to control us.”

Alfonso gave a short laugh. “They tried to control us before, remember?”

Not a smile from Celia. But in a voice so low he barely heard her, she said, “Maybe we should have gone with them.”

Maybe. Would they still be alive, his uncles, his cousins, if they had all gone to the Mountain to shelter with the scientists? “We cannot change that,” he said. “We can only deal with the present.”

“I can’t believe you only asked them for seeds,” Chico grumbled. “You should have asked for flour, for sugar, a good pair of jeans. Or better yet, you should have gone with them, as they offered. Then you could have asked for all kinds of things.”

“What do you think?” Alfonso asked Celia. “Should we go to their mountain, see what they have to offer?”

She thought about it for a moment, then lifted her chin. “No, you were right. They should come to us. We will hear what they have to say. Our ‘council.’”

Alfonso grinned sheepishly. “It sounded good. There used to be one, you know, a Council of Elders. So you and I, the other Survivors—we can be the council.”

“Too many. Three is enough.”

Alfonso considered the possibilities. Carlos, or Dawn—no, they should have someone younger, someone who did not remember the Before Times. “Five,” he countered.

Celia nodded ascent. “Pick the others. Come to my wickiup.”

“Your wickiup?” Chico objected. “Why not Alfonso’s?”

“No one’s wickiup.” Alfonso glanced up at the sunbaked structures high on the cliff above them. “Up there. We will make the Men on the Mountain come to us there. It will be a solemn place for solemn discussions.”

Celia craned her neck up at the dwellings that had been their sanctuary from the pounding rains. “You’re going to make me climb up there?”

“You are hoping I will not make the climb,” Chico accused.

“Plenty of room for everyone,” Alfonso said. “And—” He remembered standing on the mesa top, just he and Chico and el Jefe facing Sara Martin and four men—four armed men. That was why, he realized. Because the men carried weapons, and el Jefe would not allow weapons in the settlement. So when the Men on the Mountain returned—Yes, the Village of the Ancients was a better place to meet with them. “We are more likely to speak carefully,” he said, “when it is harder to walk away.”

• • • •

“This is incredible,” Dr. Feingold said, looking down at her e-slate and the notes she had made. The administrator was an angular woman with short gray hair and a prominent bump on her nose. “And did they say how they survived when the flood washed everyone else away?”

They sat at a large rectangular table in a sunny room of the administration building, twelve of them. Ruben glanced around him, wondered if someday he would be part of administration and meet here to make decisions for the mountain enclave. The thought made him uncomfortable. It wasn’t a responsibility he sought.

“We didn’t ask a lot of questions,” Rathna told Feingold. “We thought it was better if you did that.” Silence stretched around the table, so she added, “We told them you’d be back to talk to them. We didn’t feel we ought to make any promises or anything.” She threw Ruben a look.

Ruben was about to object that he hadn’t made any promises when he remembered saying he’d come back and stay for a while. And that he’d try to get them some seeds. But he hadn’t promised, he’d just said he’d like to. That he’d try.

Dr. Feingold looked around the conference table at her department heads. “What do you think? Should we go out there?”

Ruben’s jaw sagged. Should they go out there? Why wouldn’t they go out there?

“I think we need to talk to them, at least,” Seth Nguyen said. “See what kind of state they’re in.” Nguyen was Feingold’s aide, a second-gen with short dark hair and startling blue eyes.

Esther Johnson cleared her throat. She was in charge of maintenance and facilities. “I can look into what it would take to get them back here. None of our wheeled vehicles would make it, not with all the roads out between here and there, so it would have to be landcrawlers or hoppers—”

“No way in hell.”

Everyone turned to stare at Stefan Hadley, Director of Operations.

The thin-faced man leveled cool gray eyes at Dr. Feingold. “We’re not bringing those people back here.”

Dr. Feingold clasped her hands on the table in front of her. “That decision hasn’t been made yet. We’re just looking into our capabilities so we don’t make promises we can’t—”

“Fifty people, with no education and no technology skills? They’ll sink us!”

Ruben was aghast. Beside him, he felt Rathna straighten in her chair. A glance beyond her told him Vijay, too, was stunned.

Feingold, however, said, “That’s certainly something to take into consideration.”

“But we need them,” Rathna blurted. “From a genetic standpoint.”

Feingold inclined her head. “Also something to consider.”

“Genetics!” Hadley was indignant. “What good will genetics do us if we all starve to death?”

Now Feingold pursed her lips as though holding back a retort. “I think you’ll find, Stefan, that with the new farm-bots we’ve recovered—”

“We are one crop failure from extinction, and you know it.”

“That’s not true!” Rathna interrupted. “We’re building our livestock pool and—”

“Are you part of administration?” Hadley demanded, his tone sharp enough to amputate limbs.

“Thank you, Rathna,” Feingold intervened. “You’ve done a marvelous job filling our pens with new breeding stock—”

“Which also has to be fed,” Hadley pointed out. “We don’t have the resources to take on another fifty people. Especially people with no skills.”

Ruben couldn’t keep quiet. “They’ve managed to feed themselves for thirty-odd years.”

“So let them keep doing that. Out there, where they won’t be tempted to dip into our livestock pens.”

“Enough,” Feingold said firmly. “As I said, the matter bears further consideration before we make any decisions. Rathna, thank you for your report. Esther, please look into transportation options, and housing, too. Fred, I know you’ve run projections on our increased food production with the recovered farmbots, but I want numbers on what adding fifty people to the equation would do. Stefan, Seth, Alicia—please stay behind, we have other matters to discuss.”

Recognizing the dismissal, Rathna and Vijay rose obediently from their chairs along with the others. Ruben, though, found his muscles reluctant to move. Vijay prodded him. “Come on.”

Slowly Ruben levered himself to his feet, willing himself to leave with his friends. He made it halfway to the door, then stopped and turned back to Dr. Feingold “They could camp at the base of the mountain,” he said. “All they’re asking for is some seeds. Corn and cotton.”

Dr. Feingold smiled at him. “Thank you, Ruben,” she said. “We’ll consider that.”

• • • •

Outside the Administration building, Vijay nearly exploded. “Can you believe that? They want to leave those people out there!”

Rathna shook her head as they rounded the corner back toward the Commons. “They’re not going to leave them out there. That’s just Hadley, blowing off steam. You know how he is, he hates everything.”

“And he’s going to scare the rest of them to death. You heard Dr. Feingold—she wants numbers on what adding fifty people will do to our supplies. Like they couldn’t contribute. Like leaving them out there to die is an option—”

“They haven’t died yet,” Ruben pointed out.

“Relax,” Rathna told them. “Feingold gets it. She’s just playing administrator, letting everyone have their say, getting all the raw data. It’s called consensus building. And I have to say, she’s pretty good at it.”

On the patio outside the Commons, Sharon stood up from the picnic table where she had obviously been waiting for them. Ruben stopped short, his gut tightening at the sight of her. “I’ll see you guys later, I’ve got some stuff to do.”

“Stuff?” Vijay echoed.

“Yeah.” Ruben veered off toward the archives. “I want to brush up on my Spanish. And maybe talk to Fred about getting some seeds.”

• • • •

Turtle stretched out a hand to help his father up off the ladder. Alfonso took it gladly, and a moment later, he stood in the entrance plaza of the Village of the Ancients. Pleased that he was only a little winded, he paused to look around the multilevel cliff dwelling. He hadn’t been up here in years, preferring to let younger knees carry heavy baskets to and from the storage rooms. The houses looked well-kept, although he noted a few spots where fresh mud was needed to patch the adobe before the summer rains arrived. And of course, the view was spectacular.

“I thought we’d use this one,” Turtle said, gesturing toward a large house where a wisp of smoke curled through the open doorway, escaping toward the high arch of the cave sheltering the dwellings.

Alfonso turned to his son. “Turtle, do you remember when we still lived up here on the cliff?”

Turtle shook his head. He had been only a toddler when Ernestina, heavy with their second child, had complained about having to go up and down the ladder so many times a day. She wanted a house near the creek, where water was easy to get and the latrine pit was closer. “Unless you want to empty the night soil bucket,” she had growled at Alfonso.

So he and Chico had undertaken to construct shelters on the strip of land below the cliff. They couldn’t manage a hogan, such as the Navajo had built, but after a few tries they came up with a reasonable facsimile of an Apache wickiup. Other families had followed suit, and soon the entire group was living by the creek, using the old cliff dwellings only for storage or temporary shelter.

“Big enough for many people, as you said, and dry inside. I lit a fire to chase out the lizards.” He grinned. “Carlos stayed anyway.”

Alfonso chuckled. “Are the others here already?”

“Except Celia. You know how she likes to make an entrance.”

It was true, but Alfonso wasn’t sure he should admit that to his son. “She just doesn’t want me looking up her skirt as she climbs the ladder,” he said.

Turtle’s eyes widened, unsure if his father was joking. Alfonso ignored him and studied the designated council chamber. It was a good choice. “We should mark it, to show it is a special place. Paint a symbol of some kind over the door. I will think about it.” Crouching to step inside, he remembered how easily, how carelessly, he had ducked in and out of these doorways as a young man. This had been one of the first chambers they inhabited after climbing down from the plateau above. The roof had been intact, unlike some of the rooms on higher levels, and it was large enough for them to sleep in a heap, sharing body warmth. Once the rain had stopped and they’d collected some wood—and gotten it dried out enough to burn—Chico had started a fire with his lighter. That was Chico—no food or blanket or spare clothes in his pack, but he always had a lighter for his bong.

Alfonso glanced at his old friend through the hazy smoke of the Council Chamber fire now. Chico’s eyes twinkled, as though he had read Alfonso’s thoughts. That lighter had kept them a lot warmer than any single blanket could have. And the ancient builders had known their craft—now, as then, the smoke drew easily out through the open doorway as if up a chimney.

“All right, old man, I’m here,” Celia said as she pushed through the opening, puffing from the exertion. Her eyes travelled the circle of those in attendance. “Why is Turtle here?”

“I wanted someone who does not remember the Before Times,” Alfonso said. “There are more of them than us, and we need to know their thoughts, too.”

Celia humphed and eased herself onto a bench built along one wall. “Well, then. What do we do about these Men on the Mountain?”

But Alfonso held up a hand. “Let us call on the Mother Earth first, to keep our minds focused on that which matters most.”

Celia nodded her assent, then lifted her arms.

“Hear us, O Mother.

We come to you in this house of earth,

This womb wherein you bore us.

Here were we made,

Here did we grow and become the People.

Now we have gone out into your world,

But we do not forget.

We do not forget how you sheltered us,

Sent creatures into our snares,

Placed food within our reach.

Guide us now, Mother Earth, as we meet in council

To find the path that keeps us in harmony with you.”

It was well said, Alfonso had to admit. He could not have done better. If he had learned one thing over the years, it was how dependent they were on the whims of Mother Earth, and how dangerous it was to forget that.

“Now,” Celia said, dropping her arms. “What shall we do about these Men on the Mountain?”

Silence greeted her question. Around the room, the others shifted, looked at one another. Finally Turtle spoke. “Why do we need to do anything?”

“They can change our lives,” Carlos said.

“They will change our lives.”

“They will want us to go back with them,” Celia said.

Again the silence hung like smoke in the room.

“I don’t understand,” Turtle said. “Why do they want us to go with them?”

“They think we are better off with them,” Alfonso explained. “They have machines. Medicines.”

“They want us to be like them,” Carlos added.

“Why can’t we have their machines here?” Turtle asked.

A brief silence greeted the question. Then Celia lifted her chin. “We are not sure their machines are pleasing to the Mother Earth.”

“Their machines are not what killed the Earth,” Chico muttered. “It was their ignorance and their arrogance.”

“Machines can make us proud,” Alfonso added. “They tempt us to think we live by our own cleverness and not the kindness of the Mother Earth.”

Celia sighed. “But their medicines,” she said softly. Her younger sister had been the first casualty among the original survivors, a loss that still hung like a stone from her soul. Alfonso remembered it, too, how the child had burned with fever as they huddled in the damp chamber, how they had passed her among them, holding her close, trying to keep her warm—or using her heat to keep themselves warm . . .

“Do they still have those medicines?” Carlos asked. “Medicines expire, you know. Do they have a way to make more? Aspirin, maybe. But antibiotics? Insulin? Things like that?”

Alfonso shrugged. “We do not know what they have. We do not know what they want. I think we must wait till they come and talk to them. Only when we know their minds we can decide what to do.”

• • • •

“Seeds?” Fred Chenoweth lifted his eyebrows in surprise. They were impressive eyebrows, long white hairs poking stiffly in a variety of directions. They matched his thatch of unruly white hair, a stark contrast to his deeply tanned face.

“For the survivors,” Ruben explained. “I know you’re busy, getting that data for Dr. Feingold, but—They invited me to come back, and I promised I’d ask about seeds. I can get vegetable seeds from my mom, she always saves them, but they specifically asked about corn and cotton.”

Fred nodded. They were in his office, a closet-sized space in a tower that had once housed a stellar telescope. “Yes, those would grow well in that climate, with enough water. Be careful about the vegetables, though, they won’t all.” Fred was a botanist and head of the Agriculture Department. “Too bad all the seed banks on this continent were raided during the Food Wars or we could look for native seeds that—But it’s kind of a moot point, isn’t it? If we bring them here to the mountain.”

Ruben shifted his weight from one foot to the other, always feeling like a school kid in Fred’s presence. Fred wasn’t just one of the original team, he was the oldest man still living, somewhere in excess of eighty. “I thought—it sounded like Dr. Feingold wasn’t sure,” he said. “About bringing them here.”

“We have to,” Fred said bluntly. “Rathna is right: We need their genetic input.”

Ruben tried to imagine Sharon McKay taking one of the survivors—one of the People, isn’t that what Alfonso called them?—as a husband. Ha! She wouldn’t even consider one of the widowers on the mountain because they were too old or too ugly or too—whatever. Sharon, marry an uneducated, half-naked—Not likely. “Well—maybe they need our genetic input,” he countered.

“Indeed they do,” Fred agreed. “We need to have both populations together so they can intermingle, spread their DNA throughout the community. It is necessary to our survival.”

“And theirs.”

Fred shook his head. “There is no ours and theirs, us and them. We are all human beings, Homo sapiens. If our species is to survive on this planet, we must stop thinking of ‘us and them.’”

“So you think we can support their added numbers up here?”

“We have to. It may be like supporting children at first, but I’m sure we can train them to do useful things here. We’ll raise the little ones like our own, teach them math, science, mechanics, and they can help with the mission. The older ones will have a harder time, but as I said—there are other ways to contribute to our community.”

Like hoeing the gardens and cleaning out the animal pens. The scut work we do in turns, would they do for the rest of their lives? Ruben drew a breath. “I’m sure you’re right. But in case it takes a while to make all those arrangements—It’s spring. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to give them some seeds to plant? Let them have a harvest to bring with them?”

Fred’s face lit. “What an excellent idea! If we gave them seeds now—” He poked a gnarled finger at his display, pushing data around. “Yes, corn and cotton. Are you going back with Dr. Feingold? You could take them along.”

“That’s up to Dr. Feingold,” Ruben said. “But maybe you could put in a word for me?”

• • • •

“Celia likes to boss people around,” Chico grumbled.

Alfonso sat on a rock at the edge of the field where younger men and women hoed weeds from around the spreading squash plants. “She is entitled,” he said, savoring the warmth of the sun on his face. “After all, she is usually right.”

“That does not make her less arrogant.”

Alfonso smiled. “No, it makes her more. But after so many years, we should be used to that.”

“What if those Men on the Mountain never come back?” Chico pestered, his favorite theme in the three days since the hopper had arrived. “We will have missed our chance, and all because you were afraid to go back with them. You could at least have gone to see. And slept in a real bed.”

“I was not afraid,” Alfonso insisted, though he wondered privately if Chico was right. “I have simply learned that it is better not to make big decisions in haste.” He watched as a dozen strong backs bent to the fieldwork, backs that had never known the comfort of a mattress. They did not seem any worse for it.

“Are you just going to sit here? Why don’t you help them?” Chico demanded, waving an arm at the laborers.

“I am helping.” Alfonso picked up a small stone and hurled it at a rabbit nosing at the young plants. It scampered off. “And I’ve cut these yucca leaves to strip for their fibers, so Squash Blossom can make me new sandals.” He looked down at the green blades, knowing he should start pounding them with a stone to separate the tough fibers, but in no hurry to do so. Especially if he could get Squash Blossom to do it for him. “That’s enough work for one morning. For an old man like me.” He closed his eyes and tilted his head back to catch the sun again.

A moment later, a cry rose from the field, and his eyes snapped open. A hand pointed skyward. Alfonso followed it and saw the telltale glint of a hopper’s reflective skin.

“They’re back!” Chico’s voice rose in excitement. “Now’s your chance, ’Fonso. Tell them you want to see their mountain, see how they live.”

Alfonso’s heart had lifted at the sight of the hopper, but he kept himself in check. “We’ll see,” he said. Then, “I hope Ruben is with them.”

Chico smirked. “You only want him to come so you can push your daughter on him.”

“I like him,” Alfonso defended. “And I think Squash Blossom would like him.”

“And do you expect him to marry her and live here in our village to raise children?”

“No, I only expect him to sire children. But if he wants to stay . . .” Alfonso shrugged.

“What if he wants to take her away with him?”

That was a dilemma. “I think she would be too frightened.” At least, he hoped she would. “The children must stay with the People.”

“Unless we move to the Mountain. That could solve all our problems!”

“Or create many more.” Alfonso sighed. “Come. We’d better go meet them.”

• • • •

This time a single villager climbed the hill to meet the emissaries from Kitt Peak. Ruben recognized the young man, who also recognized him and addressed him in the formal tones of a rehearsed speech. “Hello, Ruben. I am Turtle, son of Alfonso.” Turtle gestured toward the village below, where Alfonso and several others waited. “Come with me.” Then, “Please,” he added, as if he had just remembered that part.

“Alfonso is their leader,” Ruben told Dr. Feingold as the small party followed Turtle along a winding path down the hill. “At least, he speaks for them. I guess they have a council.” He adjusted his pack, the one with the seeds Fred Chenoweth had given him.

Feingold nodded, picking her way carefully along the rough trail. Behind them came Seth Nguyen, Esther Johnson, and Rathna. Stefan Hadley had wanted to come, too, but Feingold had declined his request, much to Ruben’s relief. “And you say they mostly speak Spanish?” she asked. “I didn’t realize Leonard Pacheco’s group was Spanish-speaking. I talked to Sara Martin about her encounter with them, and she never mentioned it.”

“They were probably bilingual, like my parents,” Ruben said. “They spoke English with us—at least, a few of the older ones did.” He motioned toward a cluster of people waiting at the foot of the hill. “But among themselves, it’s a mix of Spanish and some Native American languages. I don’t think any of the younger ones speak English.”

“Ruben!” Alfonso waved as they approached. “My friend Ruben!”

Grinning, Ruben waved back. “I brought seeds.”

“Good!” Alfonso surveyed Feingold and her entourage as they drew up before him. “Please introduce me to your friends.”

When introductions had been made, Alfonso indicated the bank of adobe houses clinging to the cliff wall above them. “Please, come to our council chamber. The others are waiting. My daughter Squash Blossom will bring food.”

Ruben’s heart lifted like a butterfly at the prospect of entering the ancient cliff dwellings. Montezuma’s Castle, it had been called—he’d located it on an old map in the Archives. And that’s what it felt like they were doing: mounting the walls of a castle for a glimpse of a rich and storied past. But he noticed not everyone shared his excitement. As Turtle scrambled up the wooden ladder, Esther Johnson drew back slightly, her face pale. Dr. Feingold examined the rope bindings that held the rungs in place, but Ruben couldn’t tell if she was intimidated or simply curious about their construction. At any rate, she grasped the ladder gamely and climbed carefully to the top. Seth Nguyen followed quickly.

Ruben reached around Esther Johnson to take a firm grip on an upright. “I’ll hold the ladder for you,” he offered, and she threw him a grateful look before placing a cautious foot on the first rung. Two steps up she hesitated, and Rathna stepped up behind her, a hand to either side. As they went up together, Rathna murmuring soft encouragement, Ruben wondered how in the world they would get the woman down again.

When they had cleared the ladder, Alfonso turned to Ruben. “Maybe you could wait here and help Squash Blossom carry the food up,” he suggested. He nodded toward his daughter, who came up the path with a basket in each arm.

Her long black hair was pulled to one side, caught loosely by a leather thong into which she had tucked a sprig of purple wildflowers. Similar blooms adorned her skirt, laced into the fringe. A band woven of the same hemplike fibers wrapped around her back and crossed her breasts to tie behind her neck, accented by a necklace of tiny white flowers. Nothing disguised the smooth working of her muscles beneath flawless amber skin.

“Buenos dias,” Ruben greeted as she approached. Behind him, he heard Alfonso grunt as he started up the ladder.

The girl lowered her eyes shyly. “Buenos dias.”

Ruben had brought an audio translator with him, but it was still in his pack. “Puedo ayudarle,” he ventured, hoping two nights of sleep learning and a day of speaking Spanish with his mother had gifted him with enough of the language to offer his help.

Squash Blossom smiled in a way that made him wonder if he’d screwed up the conjugation, or an idiom. But, “Gracias,” she said, handing him one of the baskets.

“De nada.” He gulped as she brushed past him and started up the ladder. Lord, look at those legs. Mesmerized, he watched her ascend until, halfway up, she paused and looked down at him.

“¿Tú vienes?”

“Sí,” he managed, placing one foot on the bottom rung. “I’m coming.” And he followed her cautiously up the ladder, trying his best not to glance up.

• • • •

Alfonso did not quite know what to make of Dr. Feingold. If Sara Martin had been a wildcat, regal and proud and snarling, this one was—what? A fox? A coyote? Clever enough to smile and wait patiently, he suspected. She tasted their food politely and made small talk with each of the council members. Then, with the invocation over and the time for serious discussion at hand, she led with, “We are curious how you survived.” Curious? Or resentful? After all, Sara Martin had predicted they would all die without her help.

And they nearly had.

So Alfonso smiled and took his time, explaining about the flower buds and the mesquite beans, the wild squash and the tender young cactus pads, the snares and the nets and the cache of pinto beans that had provided sustenance for the People. Celia recounted their attempts at curing hides, the more successful weaving of fibers from yucca leaves. They avoided the topic of how twenty-two children happened to be out in the forest when a flood swept away their homes.

“And my friend Ruben,” Alfonso said, gesturing to the young man, “he brings us seeds, no? So now we will have cotton?”

“Cotton, yes,” Ruben said. “And some vegetables, including corn.”

“Yes, corn!” Chico crowed, and for a moment, Alfonso was afraid his friend would jump up and do a parody of a war dance in the council chamber. Thankfully, he did not.

“If you plant right away,” Dr. Feingold said, “you should be able to have a harvest before we’re ready to—well, while we continue to discuss what’s best for your people, and ours.”

Ah, there it was. She expected to have a say in the future of the People. She expected to make a decision about them.

Oblivious to his caution, Chico leaned over and whispered in his ear. “Tell her to give us fields on the Mountain.”

“And now we have told you how we survived,” Celia said, “tell us, please, how you survived on the Mountain.”

Dr. Feingold blinked—she had not expected to be quizzed, Alfonso guessed. “Why—we have fields, too, at the base of the mountain,” she said, “and some livestock we’ve captured and bred. Rathna here can tell you all about that sometime. But you can see we still have the technology you’ve lost, so we can—”

“The technology we gave up,” Celia said firmly. “We chose to stay behind when everyone else took their technology and left. We chose to believe in the Mother Earth, to seek harmony with her and to trust her wrath would pass. And that faith has been justified. We live by her bounty when we walk in her ways.”

Dr. Feingold exchanged a look with Seth Nguyen, the slight, dark-haired man at her side. “Yes. Well. Certainly the volcanic eruptions, the droughts, the storms, all that seems to have passed. For now. And with our animal husbandry program, we hope to stabilize the wildlife populations so they can recover—”

Celia brushed this aside with an imperious wave, and Alfonso cringed. “Tell us of your medicines.”

Leave it to Celia to dispense with all courtesy and formality and cut straight to the point. “We are wondering,” Alfonso added quickly, “if you can still make medicines. Antibiotics and vaccines and such.” He was also wondering if it wasn’t better to just let Dr. Feingold talk and try to hear what lay behind her words.

Dr. Feingold hesitated. “We have some,” she hedged. “It’s a priority for our chemists, to search the literature for formulae to recreate useful drugs. Many diseases have disappeared because the people and insects who carried them have died out, but we’ve located a pharmaceutical plant and are currently assessing the state of its equipment and—”

“So you have no antibiotics,” Celia interrupted.

“Not at the moment. Antiseptics, but not antibiotics.”

“No anti-venoms for spider and snake bites.”

“Not anymore. But we have two trained physicians who can set broken bones and do some surgery, plus several med techs. We have ether for anesthesia, that’s not hard to make.”

Celia’s eyes met Alfonso’s over the fire. Clearly, she was not impressed. But the Men on the Mountain were more than their technology, and he wished he knew them better. He hoped Ruben would stay with them for a while. He might get a better sense of them from watching Ruben.

“We can send one of our physicians out to you,” Dr. Feingold offered. “Check your people over.”

“We have no sick people right now,” Alfonso said, uneasy at the thought of medical examinations. What if they only uncovered problems no one could do anything about? “But thank you for your offer. This has been a most interesting conversation. Now, maybe we should step outside—you can see our fields from up here, and our village. You can see for yourselves how the Mother Earth has blessed us.”

The fields did not look like much at this time of year—pale dirt and occasional shrubs with sprinkles of green where vines spread their tentative fingers in the sun. But to Ruben, who had done his share of tending fields, it looked as if they would produce enough to supply such a small band of people. The irrigation system was interesting, with its levered baskets to dip water from the stream into neatly gouged furrows. For a people with no electronics, no solar generators, no postsecondary education, they had done, Ruben thought, remarkably well. As they had discovered on the mountain, necessity was indeed the mother of invention.

When the fields and features of the village had been duly noted, and everyone had ooh-ed and ahh-ed at the impressive panorama, Dr. Feingold suggested it was time for them to return to the mountain. Ruben quickly offered to go down the ladder first and hold it steady for the others. As he had hoped, Dr. Feingold was next to descend.

“So what do you think?” he asked as she stepped off the last rung.

She gave a weary sigh. “I’m not sure they need us,” she said frankly. “They certainly don’t think they do.”

“They have done pretty well for themselves,” he agreed. “But I was wondering—Alfonso invited me to stay with them for a few days, and if it’s all right with you . . . I could maybe get a better sense of their situation.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “You want to stay here?”

“Just for a few days.”

Rathna was on her way down now, coaxing Esther Johnson one rung above her with every step. “Well . . .” Dr. Feingold glanced up at them. “We do need further discussion, I think, on what to do here, so a few more days . . . It might be helpful, if you’re willing.” She dropped her voice. “I know it makes sense to bring them to Kitt Peak, but I’m just not sure about integrating them into our society. I can see problems there.”

Ruben bobbed his head, not really paying attention. Let administration wrestle with the problems. He’d stuffed a few necessary items into his pack along with the seeds, hoping Dr. Feingold would agree to let him stay. And she had! His heart felt light, tapping out a happy dance inside his chest.

Rathna and Esther were down now, with Seth close behind them. Turtle stood at the top, arms folded across his chest, shaking his head as if in disbelief at their qualms. Then he stepped onto the ladder facing forward, his back to the cliff, and scuttled nimbly down.

Ruben’s jaw sagged. I’ve got to learn to do that.

• • • •

Alfonso spent a long moment gazing at the stars overhead, then looked around at the faces encircling the bonfire. Most of them were staring, not at him, but at Ruben seated to his right. Ruben seemed unaware of their scrutiny, his eyes fixed on Squash Blossom, who sat on his other side with her son on her lap. Ruben carried a translator and was entertaining mother and son by making it speak for them.

The fire was a ceremonial one, lit at times of celebration like harvest or a successful hunt, though Alfonso welcomed its heat this chilly spring night. He wasn’t sure why he’d called for it to be lighted—to introduce Ruben? Or because today’s meeting had ended equably when he had expected . . . something else. He had expected Sara Martin, and Dr. Feingold was . . . different. At least on the surface.

He turned to Turtle at his left. “What did you think of Dr. Feingold?”

Turtle shrugged. “She talked without saying much.”

“She told us they have painkillers,” Chico interjected. “And doctors who can set bones and do appendectomies.”

“She was respectful, at least,” Alfonso said. “It might not be so bad . . .”

“What might not?” Turtle asked.

“Going back with them!” Chico cried. “Moving to the Mountain, having access to all the technology they’ve saved. Shooting deer with a rifle instead of chasing them into a pit. Letting machines plow and plant and harvest our crops.”

“I only wish I knew their thoughts,” Alfonso continued. “How they see us. If they will respect our devotion to the Mother Earth.”

“We can respect the Mother Earth from the controls of a harvester!” Chico snapped.

Alfonso shook his head. “We have learned much since we lost our elders. But we have forgotten much more. I do not want to lose what we have found—but when I think of all that has slipped away from us . . .”

“Solar power,” Chico suggested. “Pellet fuel. An oven with a temperature control.”

“The skills of our ancestors?” Turtle asked.

It was a phrase Alfonso had used often, and he was not surprised Turtle quoted it. “Our ancestors lived in harmony with the Mother Earth.”

“But not always with each other,” Chico reminded him. “We had wars before the Europeans showed up. And don’t forget the Food Wars.”

Neither Chico nor Alfonso had been born yet when people were killing one another for a can of tuna or a stray cat, though they had heard all about it. And as hungry as the People had been in the early years Post-Evac, they had never turned on each other. But how would the Men on the Mountain feel about sharing what they had with the People? Dr. Feingold had been quick to offer their technology, but what did she expect in return? Did she even know? Bitter experience had taught the People there was no gain without loss. What did they stand to lose?

Alfonso shook his head and levered himself to his feet. Enough pondering of deep subjects. The fire, which he had whimsically named Elvira, crackled and blazed, shooting sparks into the night sky—it was a time for dancing and storytelling. But first, he must take care of some business. “Children of the Mother Earth!” he cried. “I have something to say.”

The murmur of voices died, and heads swiveled in his direction. Ruben took the translator from Squash Blossom and placed an earpiece in his ear.

“We have a guest among us,” Alfonso began, wondering if the younger people even knew the word guest. “My friend Ruben brought us seeds, and we will treat him with honor and respect. We will feed him at our fires and allow him to sleep in our wickiups. He comes to learn more of the People and our ways.” Heads nodded in the firelight. “We will show him how we walk in harmony with the Mother Earth.” More nodding. “And while he is here . . .” Alfonso took a deep breath. “If he so chooses, he may take one of our maidens as a companion.”

On the ground beside him, Ruben sat up straight, and his mouth flew open.

“If the maiden agrees,” Alfonso added hastily. “And if she does not already have a husband. And now—” He smiled benignly. “Let us sing of the fire, the Elvira. Carlos, you start us.”

• • • •

Ruben’s face burned, and not from the heat of the bonfire. Ignoring the hand-clapping and singing around him, he asked Alfonso through gritted teeth, “Did you just say what I think you said?”

“Your machine does not tell you?” the old man asked innocently. “I have told the People you may choose a woman for your bed.”

The crafty old devil! What was he up to? Had he set up his daughter for this? Asking Ruben to help her carry the food, beckoning her to sit with him at the fire? “Why?”

“So we have no misunderstandings.”

“No, I mean—”

Alfonso laid a hand on Ruben’s arm. “You brought us several kinds of seeds, and we are grateful. But we need one more. You understand, yes? About genetics?” Ruben nodded dumbly, and the old man snickered. “You are surprised I know about genetics? I went to school, you know. While there were still enough of us to hold classes, before the big die-off. After that, learning became . . . ad hoc.”

It unnerved Ruben to hear his host speak of science, to use Latin. Primitives don’t talk like that in vids, he thought. But despite appearances, Alfonso was the product of a technologically savvy generation, even if they had turned their backs on that technology. Or so they claimed. “Was that when you lost your village?” he asked. “The big die-off?”

Around them, people had risen to dance, stomping their feet in rhythm with the music, responding to a primal throbbing. Squash Blossom stood holding her son’s hands and encouraging him to bob his knees and tap his bare feet on the ground. Ruben felt the tug in his own gut but ignored it, focusing on Alfonso.

The old man shook his head. “No. The big die-off—I don’t know what caused that. Hunger. Sickness. Stupidity. Despair.” For a moment, he seemed to drift away, back to that earlier time. Then he sighed and shook his head again. “But this is not a time for such tales. This is a time to dance. Help me up and I will show you how.”

Ruben obliged by rising and offering his hand, hauling Alfonso to his feet. But he wondered, Is it my imagination, or is the old man hiding something about those last days?

• • • •

Alfonso squinted in the bright sunlight. “I have heard the story,” he said as he dropped three dried kernels into the parched earth, “of when Europeans first came to this continent and the native peoples taught them how to grow corn. They put a fish into each hill with the seeds, to fertilize the plants.” He sighed and straightened up, trying to ease the ache in his lower back. “We do not have fish to spare. We put nets in the stream, but the big ones we eat and the little ones we let go to grow bigger.”

Ruben was digging the next hole with a sturdy stick. Whatever else the Men on the Mountain might be, they were obviously no strangers to hard work. Ruben had been puzzled by the digging stick—no doubt they used metal shovels on the Mountain, or maybe digging machines, but when Alfonso demonstrated, Ruben quickly took up the work without objection.

He had slept in Alfonso’s wickiup last night, and Alfonso thought he looked tense, a little tight around the eyes and mouth. He wished the young man had gone to Squash Blossom’s wickiup, they would all have slept better. But maybe Ruben felt shy about it. Maybe he had a wife on the Mountain and didn’t want to be unfaithful—Alfonso had never thought to ask.

“We burn our stubble fields and plow the ash under,” Ruben said now. “That helps enrich the soil.”

Alfonso lifted his eyebrows. “Ash. I had not thought of that. We could bring the ash from our cook fires and till it into the fields.” He grinned at the young man. “I think you can teach us many things while you are here. Do you know how to make a good bow?”

“Sorry.” Ruben shrugged. “But I can look it up when I get back to the mountain.”

“On the net?”

Ruben waved this off. “We lost the net decades ago. Even before the satellites started going down. But we have a pretty extensive archives, stuff that was downloaded before all the connections were lost.” He set the stick aside and began removing loosened dirt with a shovel made from the shoulder blade of deer lashed to a stout pole. “We have disrupter rifles, too.”

Alfonso felt a sudden chill. “No. No rifles, or pistols, either. We gave them up long ago, in el Jefe’s time.”

“It’s a lot easier to kill something with an disrupter than a bow and arrow.”

Alfonso nodded. “Exactly.”

Ruben started another hole. “So let me see if I’ve got this straight. You’re okay with spindles and looms and the weaving of cotton cloth, but you don’t want anything to do with sewing machines, or even scissors, which are a simple mechanical device.”

Alfonso dropped three seeds into the next hole. “Our ancestors could spin and weave in the days when we still walked in harmony with the Mother Earth. She does not mind these things. But scissors—” He frowned, thinking. “I don’t know about scissors.” Ernestina had used a pair of scissors, back when they were still making garments from cloth they’d scavenged. It hadn’t hurt her any. Scissors were metal, though, and metal must be forged . . . “We need things we can make with our own hands. Things we can teach our children to make, and they teach their children. These things cannot be lost.”

Ruben paused again to wipe sweat from his brow. “You lost a lot, didn’t you, when your village was washed away?”

“Yes, we did. But our greatest loss was the wisdom of our elders.”

“And didn’t your elders use sewing machines and scissors and things like that?”

A heaviness settled in Alfonso’s chest. “Yes, they did,” he said sadly. “And where are they now?”

• • • •

“You left him there?” Stephan Hadley demanded. They had gathered in the conference room to hear the delegation’s report on their encounter with the survivors. “Good God, woman, what were you thinking?”

Naomi Feingold had been exhausted when she returned from her visit to the newly discovered survivors, so she had postponed this meeting until she’d slept. She’d also wanted time to ponder the questions raised in her discussion with Alfonso and his council. She hadn’t come to any insightful conclusions overnight, but she did feel better able to cope with her operations chief. “I was thinking,” she said, “we don’t know enough about these people. That includes you, Stefan.”

“I know they rejected our help thirty years ago, I was there. You should have seen the stone-faced bastards. We warned them about the disasters ahead—the eruptions, the storms—offered them shelter with us, and they scoffed at us. Called us liars. Said we ‘desecrated the Mother Earth.’ They ordered us not to come back, and there was a clear threat implied if we did.”

Seth Nguyen, at Feingold’s elbow, murmured, “That’s not exactly the way Sara Martin tells it.”

“They hate us, Naomi,” Hadley insisted. “And you left that boy out there with them?”

“Regardless of what happened in the past,” Feingold said patiently, “these were very courteous and hospitable people. I assure you young Mendoza is in no danger.”

“Well, when you find his bloody corpse—or don’t find him at all—don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“So noted.” Given the looks Mendoza and that village girl were giving each other, she doubted murder was on their minds.

But if she brought the primitives back here to the mountain, how long would it be before Hadley or someone like him made violence a self-fulfilling prophecy?

• • • •

By sundown, Ruben could not remember when he had been so tired. He was accustomed to manual labor, but never more than a few hours at a time. Alfonso had not set a hard pace, and they’d taken frequent breaks, but Ruben had been ravenous by the time Squash Blossom brought lunch to them. Alfonso had gone back to the village after that, but others were still working in the fields, including Turtle, so Ruben had felt compelled to work beside them until they shouldered their tools and headed for the creek to wash and cool off.

Now he sat with Alfonso outside the old man’s wickiup, trying not to wolf down the contents of the bowl Squash Blossom handed him. His host ate slowly, and Ruben wondered if that was to savor the food or because he was missing several teeth. “How old are you, Alfonso?”

Alfonso paused to consider. “I’m not sure. My wife used to keep track of such things.” He turned to his daughter. “¿Qué edad tengo?”

She shrugged. “¿Cincuenta?”

Alfonso shook his head. “I don’t think so. How long has it been since Sara Martin came?”

Now it was Ruben’s turn to shrug. “Thirty-five years, maybe?”

“Then I am not fifty,” Alfonso said. “Maybe forty-seven, forty-eight.”

It stunned Ruben—he’d have guessed nearer seventy. Life had not been kind to Alfonso. Turning to Squash Blossom, he asked, “Cuantos años tienes?”

She bobbed her head shyly. “Dies y siete.”

Seventeen? And with a baby. Ruben pointed at the toddler with a questioning look.

“Dos.”

If she’d been fifteen when her son was born, then she’d been married—or mated—at—

“Children are the hope of the People,” Alfonso said. “We do not delay their coming.”

And I shouldn’t delay, Ruben thought. Sharon isn’t getting any younger. The problem was, she wasn’t getting any less irritating. Or bossy. And giving in to the inevitable wouldn’t dampen her smug superiority. Squash Blossom would never be like that. Well . . . she wouldn’t start out like that, anyway.

But he would have only a few days with Squash Blossom, if he chose to—well, choose. Unless, of course, they moved her village to his mountain. Then a marriage was possible. If they relocated the whole village—Ruben tried to envision himself sleeping in a wickiup at night and going up to work with the satellite feeds during the day. The juxtaposition was jarring. But to bring Squash Blossom into one of the little apartments on the mountain, or even to build a house as his parents had done . . .

Alfonso’s noisy yawn brought Ruben back to the present. “My old bones are tired. I am going to bed. Goodnight, Ruben.” With that, Alfonso crawled into his wickiup and pulled the hide door down behind him.

When Ruben turned back, Squash Blossom had pushed aside half her woven top and was nursing her son. He tried not to notice the exposed flesh. She smiled at him and said some something he did not understand, something about her father. He switched on his translator and asked her to repeat it. “My father likes you,” the machine said.

Ruben nodded. “I like him, too.”

“He is a wise man.”

“Yes.”

“But a lonely one.”

“Is he?”

She nodded. “My mother died three winters ago, and he has been very lonely since.”

“Oh.” The child appeared to be dozing off in his mother’s arms.

“Sometimes he talks to her. I hear him, when he doesn’t know I am listening.”

Ruben smiled. “He must have loved her very much.”

She beamed back at him, her round face reflecting the light of the dying cook fire. “He says both he and Uncle Chico were in love with her, but she chose him.” She adjusted the child in her arms. “It is good to be chosen.”

Ruben swallowed, unsure where this was leading. In the fading light, he couldn’t see the expression on her downturned face, but he thought she might be blushing. When she spoke again, her voice was so soft the translator didn’t pick it up. She cleared her throat and spoke more clearly. “And will you choose one of our maidens?”

Now Ruben was sure she was blushing. He drew a deep breath, swallowed, and tried to wet his lips with a suddenly dry tongue. Heart beating like a hummingbird’s wings, he asked, “May I choose you?”

• • • •

Alfonso wished the Men on the Mountain had not returned quite so soon. Only five days had passed, and there was no knowing if Squash Blossom was pregnant yet, despite the sounds emanating nightly from her wickiup indicating Ruben’s dedicated efforts. Another week would improve the chances greatly, and besides, it made Squash Blossom smile. It was good to see her smile again.

But here was the hopper, lowering itself to the mesa top like a man squatting carefully in a patch of prickly weeds. Putting aside the stone he was using to pound the yucca leaves into fiber, he glanced across the creek to where Turtle had been showing Ruben how to work the irrigation system. Both young men were on their way back now, splashing across the shallow creek, their eyes on the hopper. “It is good they get on so well,” Alfonso said. “They learn from each other.”

Beside him, Chico snorted. “Yes, I am sure on the Mountain Ruben will be glad to know how to water crops using baskets on levers.”

“His Spanish is better,” Alfonso defended. “That is something he has learned.”

Squash Blossom, who had been with her sister, came scurrying back toward her wickiup, anxiously watching Turtle and Ruben come up the path from the creek. No smile lit her face now.

“Father!” Turtle called. “Should I go meet them?”

“No, I sent She Is Pretty already.” He waved a hand toward a tall, thin woman who was nearing the top of the hill.

Turtle came to a halt several paces from his father. “I should light the council fire, then.”

“I asked Carlos to be Firekeeper. He will not want you to do his work for him.”

“I must admit, that is a good idea you had,” Chico said, “making Firekeeper an honorary position. My lighter is long dead, and if the fires in the village ever went out, you’d have to rub two sticks together to start another one.” He grinned. “I’ll bet you’d miss your technology then!”

Squash Blossom had reached them now, and she touched Ruben’s arm as she gazed up into his face. “You will go away now?”

“I want to come back,” he said in Spanish. “This season. But things I necessary do—” He babbled on, his syntax terrible, but Alfonso made out that Ruben had things to take care of on the Mountain before he could return. Alfonso wondered what they were.

“So there is nothing for me to do,” Turtle said, clearly disappointed.

“Keep an old man company,” Alfonso suggested, patting the ground beside him.

Turtle glanced at Ruben, who was crawling into Squash Blossom’s wickiup, presumably to gather his things. With a shrug he dropped to the ground beside his father. “So what will you tell the Men on the Mountain, now that they are here?”

“I don’t know yet,” Alfonso admitted.

Chico snorted. “Waiting for the Mother Earth to speak to you?” His tone dripped sarcasm.

Alfonso touched the ground beside him, feeling the dirt warmed by the sun’s caress. The sheltering cliff, the life-giving creek, the nourishing crops—was he the only one who heard something in that? Or maybe the only one who listened? “Turtle—What do you think I should say?”

Turtled heaved a sigh. “The Mother Earth has given us this place,” he said, sweeping an arm to encompass their surroundings. “It is a good place, and I think we must stay here.”

Alfonso wondered if that was fear talking, or ignorance, or if Turtle had heard it, too. In the sighing of the breeze, and the croaking of the toads, that voiceless voice . . .

“These young people have no idea what is up on that mountain,” Chico scoffed. “What miracles await. My son has never seen a working vehicle. My daughter has never heard recorded music. Neither of them knows what a guitar is, for God’s sake, let alone how to play one!”

Play a guitar! Alfonso twisted his mouth as though he’d bitten into a sour fruit. The People did not need to know how to play guitars, they needed to know how to knap flint and bake ceramics and—

“You don’t agree?” Turtle asked.

Their visitors were winding their way down the hill now, only three of them today. He hoped the woman afraid of ladders had stayed behind. Alfonso exhaled deeply and struggled to his feet. “We should go greet our guests.”

• • • •

Carlos had made only a token fire in the council chamber, for its cool interior was a welcome respite from the afternoon sun. Alfonso looked around the room as they waited for Celia to make her entrance. Dr. Feingold had returned along with Seth Nguyen, but a man called Joe had replaced Rathna as pilot. Was that a good sign, or a bad one?

“I have to confess, I am amazed this structure is still standing,” Dr. Feingold said, looking around at the smooth mud walls. “Was it like this when you found it?”

“Some walls were crumbling,” Alfonso told her, “and most of the roofs needed repair. But it was a gift from the Mother Earth that sheltered us for several years.”

“So you actually lived up here?” Ruben asked. “After the flood?”

“Not right away. We spent several weeks searching for our elders and—” He shook his head. “I forgot the word. Poking through ruins looking for things we could use. Food. Blankets.”

“Umbrellas,” Chico offered.

Alfonso ignored the jest. “We sheltered where we could, but the flood waters kept rising and we had to find higher ground. The wind blew so hard it pulled trees out of the ground, and the rain never stopped.” He looked at Dr. Feingold. “You remember those days.”

She nodded, her mouth grim. Alfonso wondered what lessons those hard days had taught them on the Mountain. To be less arrogant, maybe?

“We had small children with us,” he continued, “some only three, four years old, and we had to find a safe place for them. For us all.” Nightmares had plagued Alfonso for years afterward, desperate dreams of howling wind and slashing rain, and the urgency of finding someplace warm and dry and quiet, please, Mother Earth, just some quiet, all I want is a place of peace . . .

The room darkened as Celia pushed through the doorway, temporarily blocking the light. “Oof,” she said. “Early to be so warm.”

Alfonso sucked in a breath, hauled back from memories of cold and wet and fear.

Celia plunked herself down on a bench. “What have I missed?”

“Nothing,” Alfonso said.

Dr. Feingold smiled brightly. “Alfonso was just telling us how you found this place to shelter in after . . . after the flood.”

“Did he tell you how he climbed down a rope from up there to reach it?” Celia asked, pointing upward.

“No! From the top?” Dr. Feingold turned expectantly to Alfonso.

He waved this off. “I trusted the Mother Earth, that is all. The hard part was getting everyone else down here. Especially the young ones.”

“There’s something I still don’t understand,” Ruben said. “How is it that only a handful of children and teenagers escaped the flood that washed everyone else away?”

Suddenly Alfonso felt as though all the air had been sucked from the room. He glanced across at Celia, who quickly dropped her eyes, then Carlos, who lowered his forehead to his hand and studied his knees. They didn’t have to tell. They had never told their children, why should they tell these strangers? He looked at his son, listening intently to Ruben’s translator through an earpiece.

Turning back to Dr. Feingold, he said, “I think you should know.” He drew in a breath past the knot forming in his chest. “I think you must know if you are to understand who we are. What makes us the People.” To Turtle he said, “This does not go beyond the council chamber walls.”

Turtle looked surprised, but he tapped his fist over his heart and said, “On my life.”

Alfonso nodded. “We had—we had gone out—” His voice failed.

“We had gone up the mountain to smoke marijuana,” Celia said, looking only at the flickering fire. “Some of us”—Mercifully, she did not name Alfonso and Chico—“had planted it in the forest there, and we sneaked out of the village to smoke. The children—we were babysitting. There was a big meeting, all the adults were there, and we were supposed to be home with the children. But we took them with us so we could party.”

Alfonso knew they should be thankful they had escaped, thankful they had taken the children along. But the reason—If only it had been a food crop they were after, wild raspberries or edible mushrooms, but no. They had gone to smoke pot and get high, and the little ones were a nuisance, an encumbrance, so they brought them along.

“It started to rain,” Celia went on. “It was always raining, but this was—this was different. Hard rain, harder than we’d ever seen.” She sighed. “And we were stoned. And the children were asleep, so we stayed up there in the forest. We had a shelter of tree boughs where the marijuana had been drying, and we stayed, hoping it would let up. And then—” She halted, overcome.

“We heard the roar,” Alfonso said. “In the night. I suppose a dam broke somewhere. In the morning, we crawled out to go home, knowing how angry our parents would be, how worried, but—” He stopped, breathed, finished. “Home was gone.” Tears leaked from his eyes, found the deep grooves in his face. “The whole valley was under water. We searched for others, for anyone who might have made it out . . .” He shook his head.

“We traveled downstream, searching.” Celia wiped at her nose. “We never even found their bones.” She lifted a hand to the dwellings around them. “But we found this. A gift from the Mother Earth.”

“You found it,” Chico said to Alfonso. “We thought you were insane, tossing that rope off the edge of a cliff, insisting a Village of the Ancients was down here. That you remembered seeing it. Was it really faith, ’Fonso? What would you have done if you’d climbed down and found nothing?”

I would have let go of the rope and let it be your problem.

For a long time the room was silent. Finally Dr. Feingold stirred. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “It must have been terrifying for you.”

Alfonso brushed moisture from his weathered face. “Later—months later, a season later, when the rains let up and the flood was no more, Chico and Carlos and I went back to where our town had been. And there was nothing. No buildings, nothing. All washed away.” He drew breath deep into his constricted chest. “The Mother Earth makes strange choices. To take el Jefe and save a bunch of . . .” He left the sentence unfinished.

Silence expanded, pressed on the walls, and finally began to ebb. Dr. Feingold drew an audible breath, let it go. “Well, I think you should be proud. What you have done here is amazing, the way you’ve adapted, survived. And now that we have found you—”

Alfonso raised a hand to stop her. “No.”

Dr. Feingold blinked. “No what?”

Chico stiffened. “Yes—no what? What are you doing?”

“No, we will not go to your mountain,” he said, and Chico growled in exasperation. “I know your intentions are good, Dr. Feingold, and you think it is in our best interests. And I know you have many things on the Mountain that we don’t, things that are important to you—but they are not important to us. What is important to us is that we remain the People.”

“Who said we would stop being the People?” Chico demanded at the same time Dr. Feingold said, “Alfonso, I’m sure that—”

“Just because we will not come to your mountain, though, does not mean we refuse your help,” he hastened. “In fact, we need your help. You have books there, yes?”

“Yes, of course. Files and files of them. Some paper ones, too—we’ve been collecting a few in our travels. We’d be glad to loan you any of them. There are portable readers—”

But Alfonso shook his head. Ernestina had tried for a while to teach their children to read, but they’d found no paper books not damaged beyond use. With only road signs and posters for material, reading seemed pointless to the youngsters. Turtle had given up first, and he doubted his daughters remembered any of it now. “We don’t need books, we need teachers,” he said. “People to teach us some things we have forgotten. How to make willow-bark tea for pain. How to make a compound bow. How to find and knap flint.”

Chico was outraged. “A chance to spend our old age in comfort, and you want to know how to shape stone into arrowheads?”

Again Dr. Feingold looked at Seth Nguyen, and something passed between them. Then she turned back to Alfonso. “Of course. If that’s what you want. We’ll be happy to send you teachers.”

Relief flooded Alfonso, washing away the sense of unease he’d had since dreaming of the Men on the Mountain and their return.

“I’ll go,” Ruben said quickly. “I mean—I’ll need to transfer some of my duties on the mountain, and there are—there are some other things I need to see about, but . . . I can look up those things for you in the archives and come back to share them.” He lifted his hands. “Not sure I’ll be any good at knapping flint, but I can bone up on the theory, anyway, and we can work on it together. Turtle and I.”

“What is flint?” Turtle asked.

“You will learn,” Alfonso said, almost dizzy with the decision he had made. “We must all learn.”

• • • •

Once again Ruben waited at the foot of the ladder till Dr. Feingold had backed down. “So, are you okay with all this?” he asked anxiously. “Leaving them here, sending teachers?”

She huffed out a short breath. “Frankly, I’m relieved. Things—didn’t go well back on the mountain. We held a town meeting to discuss it and a lot of people—” She shook her head. “I was shocked. A lot of people were dead set against it. They’re afraid. Afraid it would take a toll on us, on our way of life. Fred and I tried to talk them around, showed them the numbers and how it wouldn’t be a hardship, but they weren’t interested.” She glanced up at Seth Nguyen, halfway down the ladder now. “It’s hard to make people see numbers when their hearts are on fire.”

Ruben shrugged. “I’m kind of relieved, too. I mean—I’d love having them closer, but—I think what they’ve created here is worth preserving. Developing.”

Feingold scowled. “Personally, I think they’re making a mistake. But it’s their choice, we have no right to dictate to them, and it certainly solves my problem.” She sighed as Seth joined them. “I’m glad they want teachers, at least. I’m glad they’re eager to learn, to grow.”

“And I’m glad you want to be the first teacher,” Seth said to Ruben. “Man, I wouldn’t want to live like this.”

Ruben thought of Sharon McKay and the talk they needed to have. How, if they got married, he might be gone a lot. And just what he’d be doing. She wasn’t going to like it. “Life anywhere has its drawbacks,” he said. Then he glanced down the path toward Squash Blossom’s wickiup, where she played a handpatting game with her son. “But it also has its up side.”

• • • •

Most of the council climbed to the top of the mesa to see their guests off. They said their farewells, shaking hands in a gesture Alfonso had nearly forgotten. Why shake hands with people you saw every day? “Ruben,” he said as he clasped the young man’s hand. “Come back soon.”

Chico hovered at his elbow, still seething, still muttering in Spanish. “You know, just because the whole village isn’t going doesn’t mean you and I can’t. Come on! Let’s go with them!”

“I promise not to take too long,” Ruben said.

Dr. Feingold’s grip was firm, and Alfonso thought again how different she was from Sara Martin. “You are a very persuasive negotiator, Alfonso,” she said. “And a wise leader, I think.” Cocking her head to one side, she asked, “You aren’t by any chance related to Leonard Pacheco, are you?”

“By blood? No.” Alfonso smiled. “But he was my friend Chico’s grandfather, and we were always together, so after my mom died, he adopted me.”

“Oh?” Her eyes brightened. “I’d love to ask Chico about his grandfather.”

Alfonso sighed. “Chico died many years ago. Rattlesnake bite. I still miss him.”

“And I would still be here,” Chico hissed in his ear, “if we’d been on the Mountain, where they might still have had anti-venom.”

“Come again!” Alfonso called as the Men on the Mountain climbed into their hopper. “See how your seeds are growing.” Then the machine roared to life, filling the world with noise and dust as it lifted off. Behind him, the council members coughed and started back down the hill.

“What kind of fool are you?” Chico demanded. “You could have asked for anything. A plasfoam bed. Wool blankets. A house on the Mountain with electricity and glass windows, heating for the cold winter nights. We could have lived our last days in comfort.”

Alfonso paused on the brink of the mesa and surveyed the village below, its familiar wickiups, the sheltering cliff, the life-giving creek. “This is my comfort,” he said. “Living from the bounty of the Mother Earth, and by her grace.”

Waiting at the head of the path, Turtle looked sideways at his father. “Who are you talking to?”

“Myself,” Alfonso said. “Only myself.”

© 2017 by Catherine Dimenstein. Originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Catherine Wells is the author of numerous novels and short stories of speculative fiction, including the AnLab Award-winning Best Novella of 2015, “Builders of Leaf Houses.” Retired from a 20+ year career in corporate libraries, she enjoys hiking, bicycling, playing bass guitar, and singing with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra Chorus. For more about Catherine, her books and short stories, visit catherine-wells.com.

EXCERPT: City of Lies (Tor Books)

Sam Hawke | 11101 words

Poison. Treachery. Ancient spirits. Sieges. The Poison Wars begin now, with City of Lies, a fabulous epic fantasy debut by Sam Hawke

I was seven years old the first time my uncle poisoned me. . .

Outwardly, Jovan is the lifelong friend of the Chancellor’s charming, irresponsible Heir. Quiet. Forgettable. In secret, he’s a master of poisons and chemicals, trained to protect the Chancellor’s family from treachery. When the Chancellor succumbs to an unknown poison and an army lays siege to the city, Jovan and his sister Kalina must protect the Heir and save their city-state.

But treachery lurks in every corner, and the ancient spirits of the land are rising . . . and angry.

Out from Tor Books on July 3rd, 2018.

Laceleaf

description: Attractive wide-ranging plant with delicate green leaves and clumps of small white flowers.

symptoms: Dilated pupils, rapid weak pulse, and a peripheral numbness that spreads inward, resulting in respiratory paralysis and heart failure.

proofing cues: Mild, musty smell and pleasant flavor, often mistaken for harmless cousins.

1

Jovan

I was seven years old the first time my uncle poisoned me.

He served me the toxin in his signature cheese stew. It gave me waves of stomach cramps and hallucinations of every horror my young mind could conjure, but left no lasting damage. I learned that day to trust nothing on my plate or in my cup, not even something prepared by my beloved uncle Etan, my Tashi, the most honored and trusted person in my world. Especially not him.

By ten, I could identify the ingredients in most dishes set before me, from the spicy baked fish served year-round in Sjona’s farms and estates, to the flat black bread cooked in clay ovens in every kitchen in the city, to the delicate cheese-and-honey pastries favored in the highest circles of society. I could detect any of the eleven greater poisons hidden in those dishes. Most by taste, some by smell, and one by its unique mouthfeel. I could also, should the need arise, use them myself.

Before his own Tashi died and my uncle Etan inherited his seat on the Council, he had trained as a cook—something of an oddity among the six Credol Families, but not unheard of. No one thought it amiss that he should instill in me the same dedication to the craft. Under his tutelage, foreign dishes and imported spices ceased to be an obstacle to my tongue or nose, and I learned all that had ever been written about the natural and crafted poisons of our land.

Over the next ten years, and hundreds of poisonings, Etan gave me many gifts: immunities, scars, an appreciation of our family’s honorable and secret role, and a memory and mind trained in our craft so I could one day protect the ruling family of Sjona as he did.

As he lay dying before me, none of it seemed enough.

• • • •

A well-trained memory is a fine thing, an essential skill for learning and of critical importance to a proofer. Today mine, once a source of pride, revealed itself as a useless trick. I could recall the whole day, an unwilling audience to my own play, but what good could I do, reliving a day of mistakes and inaction? I had gone over it again and again, and still I did not see our enemy. Over and over, I did not save my uncle.

We had sailed home only yesterday morning, not knowing it for the last day of our old lives, smuggled like thieves in the back of a fat little transport ship bringing wood from the Talafan Empire south to the capital. Tain Caslavtash Iliri, the Chancellor’s nephew and heir, future ruler of the country and equal parts my dearest friend, solemnest duty, and pain in my rear, nursed a sore head with infuriating good humor. I nursed a bad temper and a dose of relief. Several days earlier than planned, Tain’s retinue abandoned long behind us in the northern border city, we had both hoped to slip back into Silasta without remark.

A month of meetings and social engagements had left me exhausted and irritable, longing for the familiar comfort of routine. In Silasta, I knew everyone who might interact with my charge, highborn or low, and what they stood to gain or lose. Or at least, so I had naively thought. But in Telasa I had been forced to rely on my judgment alone in assessing new threats and challenges. Who might be tempted to dose the Heir’s kavcha with beetle-eye to fuel careless tongues, or bake hazelnode into his bread to cause a stomachache and absence from a key event?

The boat passed under the north river gate and through familiar white walls, breaking the force of the wind and bathing us in the emerging smells and sounds of our city. While the captain handed over weapons and negotiated passage in a confusing jumble of broken Sjon, Talafan, and simple Trade, I nudged my friend from a doze. He came alert and stood without apparent stiffness. No matter how luxurious his ordinary accommodations, Tain could relax in the most awkward of places. “That didn’t take too long,” he said cheerfully.

I rolled my eyes as I gathered the last of our belongings. “Sure, for someone who slept through most of it, and spent the rest drinking with the crew.” He’d loved socializing with men and women who couldn’t read our tattoos and thought us merely wealthy wastrels from the capital. I had to admit I’d also enjoyed the anonymity and the break from worrying about anything untoward in his cups.

He turned his easy grin on me. “Practicing diplomacy, my friend.”

On deck, we leaned over the rail as the boat negotiated the channel through the marshy north end of the Bright Lake, enjoying the sun’s warmth. The fierce breath of the Maiso had kept us mostly belowdecks on the trip, but Sjona’s harsh winds couldn’t penetrate the walls of the city. I felt comfortable for the first time in weeks.

The magnificent arch of Trickster’s Bridge loomed before us, a grand window into Silasta, the Bright City, with its white stone brilliant against the late summer sky. To the east, domed roofs and zigzag streets rose from the bank, a pale honeycomb against the slope of Solemn Peak. On the western shore, a merry jumble of boats, foreign and local, spilled traders and visitors of all descriptions out to the docks of the sprawling, industrious lower city. Yellow-sashed officials from the River Guild weaved through the crowds. Blackwing gulls swooped unwary workers unloading barges, and their shrill squawks mingled with the distant hoot of oku being unloaded from a barge and the lively orchestra of commerce. It felt like waking from an uneasy dream as we passed under Trickster’s and back into our reality.

We paid our host and joined the mixed and colorful soup of merchants, workers, and tourists moving from the docks into the lower city. Silasta’s younger and less cultivated side was three times the size of its older sibling, a hodgepodge of industry, trade, and residences of varying levels of respectability. The smell of a dozen different spices and frying oils assailed us. Tiny canopied stalls were wedged between elegant old teahouses and subtle gambling dens, and hawkers melted in and out of the shadows with cunning spreads of goods ready to fold up and disappear at the first sign of a Guild official. By the nearest canal, a swaying tourist bickered with a preacher kneeling by an earther shrine crafted of rock and bird bones.

I longed for the peace and space of our family apartments, a pot of proper Oromani tea, and the calming presence of my uncle and sister. “I’ll call us a ride.” I caught the prowling gaze of a litter carrier, but Tain interrupted.

“What’s going on there?”

I followed his gesture. The confrontation between the drunk and the street preacher had escalated. The foreigner had a hold on the earther’s wrist and was shaking his arm, shouting, while the smaller man clutched prayer charms around his neck and half-sung, half-moaned some kind of chant. “It’s a bit early for that, isn’t it?” I muttered. Our local merchants should have known better than to sell kori to a tourist at this time of day. Though from the look of him, he’d perhaps been out all night. He wore a crumpled jacket and wide trousers in a fabric too heavy for our climate, and an air of belligerence far stronger than the smell of alcohol and gaming house smokes.

Tain moved closer and I caught his arm. “Leave it to the Order Guards.” I looked through the crowd in vain; no red-and-blue striped uniform in sight. “Or a Guild official.”

The drunkard had taken offense at the preacher’s rantings and his accented Trade tongue grew to a roar. “—eh, eh, I’m talking to you, bloody street scum! Look at me when I talk to you!” He kicked out roughly at the shrine, toppling one of the balanced piles of stone.

The preacher, who until then had been avoiding eye contact and allowing his arm to be shaken like a loose streamer on a festival day, stopped his warbling chant and snapped his gaze to the bigger man. He said something I didn’t catch, but whatever it was enraged the tourist. He reached into his billowing pants and the glint of a weapon flashed in the morning light. Someone shrieked and the surrounding crowd drew back from the altercation.

“Guard!” I yelled, but as I turned to usher the Heir back to safety, Tain lunged for the man’s knife hand. He grabbed the wrist two-handed and pivoted in a half turn back toward me. The drunkard dropped the preacher and fell backward with the pressure on his elbow and shoulder, and the knife clunked to the ground. “Lem—lemme go!” he bellowed, struggling as much with confusion as pain.

I cautiously shuffled in and kicked the blade out of reach. It was illegal to carry weapons in the city, but fools will be fools, and sometimes the confiscation process at the gates wasn’t as rigorous as it could be. Still no sign of an Order Guard. I edged closer to Tain. My duty was to protect him, but from hidden threats, not violent idiots in the streets. Why he had to make everyone’s duties harder was another matter. The crowd looked on in embarrassed fascination, and a few people had recognized Tain. “We should—” I started.

“Are you finished here?” Tain rested his own knee on the man’s bicep.

“Finished! Finished!”

His arm released, the man rolled onto his side, shaking his wrist and moaning. Tain turned to the preacher, who was hastily restacking stones and muttering. “Are you all right?” He crouched beside him. “Can I help?”

“The spirits are displeased,” the man muttered, scowling without taking his eyes from the shrine. “This city is corrupt and the spirits are angry. We will be punished.” He shrugged Tain’s hand from his shoulder. “We will all be punished.”

“Let the Guilds handle this, please, Honored Heir,” I said. If hearing the title meant anything to the earther, he hid his reaction, continuing to reassemble his shrine and mutter dark warnings and curses. I sighed. Technically the man shouldn’t be bothering people by the harbor but usually earthers were no more than a mild annoyance. He’d probably cursed the foreigner for drunken behavior or otherwise offended him. Where were the Guards, though? On a busy trade morning the place should have been swarming with them as a deterrent. Silasta was a famously nonviolent city but the Order Guards were a necessary precaution to prevent escalation of any heated trade or tariff disputes, especially with an influx of foreign merchants and visitors who did not necessarily share our peaceful outlook.

I took Tain’s arm and pulled him to his feet, trying to steer him away. “Do I really need to tell you not to—” With a whoof the air was punched out of me as the foreigner plowed into us from the side, sending me to the ground and Tain scuttling back from the man’s tackle and crashing into a canopied stall selling fried glintbeetles. Bright beetles and paper cones crashed everywhere and the woman running the stall shouted in annoyance. By the time I’d regained my feet and my breath, Tain had scooped behind one of the man’s knees and with a kind of awkward shuffle-hop he overbalanced his opponent. The drunk fell into the leg of the stall with a loud curse in a language I didn’t recognize, almost toppling it entirely. Tain fell with him and the two scuffled and wrestled in the pile of spilled food.

I cursed under my breath and circled the pair, looking for a way to help. When the bigger man pinned my friend underneath him, I launched in and locked my arms around his neck. “This is not what I call a homecoming,” I panted as I tried to pull him off. Honor-down, it had been a long time since I’d had to do any martial training. Where were the bloody Order Guards?

The man released Tain and struck me in the solar plexus with his elbow. Winded, I loosened my grip and he pulled free, shaking me off like a bug. He roared, his intoxicated rage-presence making him seem at least twice our size, and swung a fist clumsily at Tain, who ducked it and delivered two short hard punches to the man’s stomach before dancing back out of reach. “He’s full of kori,” Tain said. “Hit him in the guts!”

I felt like giving my friend a whack instead when I saw the enjoyment sparkling in his eyes. I didn’t want to get anywhere near the man’s guts. Around us the crowd continued to scamper back out of the way. The spectacle was either making or ruining their morning, but no one seemed inclined to assist. I dodged a stray blow in my direction and as the man launched himself heavily at Tain again, his drunken focus on this new target of his rage, I chopped into his stomach as hard as I could with the side of my hand. “I just want a cup of tea,” I told him bitterly.

Tain actually laughed. He sidestepped the attack and hit the man one final time; with that last blow he folded in half like a deflating waterskin and sat on his backside by the canal with a sickening groan. “Get back,” Tain warned me, and we skittered out of range just in time to avoid the sudden torrent as the man’s overfull body gave up its contents.

And finally—finally—an Order Guard appeared at a run, errant hair springing out of her Warrior-Guild braid and a sheen of sweat on her brow. She pulled up to a stop and her terse expression melted into shock as she took in the participants. “Honored Heir! Credo! I—my apologies, there was an altercation with a herd of oku and some lutra at the south end of the pier, and. . .Honored Heir, are you all right?” She looked around us, presumably searching for the servants who should have been there preventing this sort of thing, but who were in fact days away down the river.

“We’re fine,” Tain assured her with a broad smile. “This fellow couldn’t handle his kori cups and was disturbing the poor gentleman by the shrine, there.”

“He had a knife,” I said, and gestured to the area where I’d kicked it.

“No weapons in our city,” the Order Guard barked at the man by the canal, but he was still slumped over and heaving, so I doubted he heard. She looked anxiously at Tain again. “Again, my apologies for the delay, Honored Heir. We’ve limited staff at the moment.”

“Not your fault.” Tain, still all smiles, knelt and straightened the bent leg of the stall they’d crashed into, while I helped the merchant pick up her paper cones and sweep up the ruined beetles. Her earlier agitation forgotten now that she realized who we were, she tried to shoo us away.

“We’ll pay for the food,” I told her as I scooped up the last of the mess.

“No, Credo, that isn’t necessary, not necessary at all,” she said, but I pressed my family chit into the wax tablet on her now-wobbling tabletop with a weary glance at Tain.

“It was entirely our fault getting involved,” I said firmly.

Tain helped the Order Guard haul the big drunk to his feet. As if his stomach contents had been the source of his aggression, he slumped meekly on the spot and let the Guard fix his wrists behind his back with the wire-centered cord hanging from her tunic. “I’ll take him to the Guildhall with you,” Tain offered.

“Of course that’s not necessary, Honored Heir,” the Guard said, her tone anxious. “This’s been quite enough bother as it is.”

“Nonsense!” Tain beamed at her. “I wouldn’t mind a word with the Warrior-Guilder in any case.”

Like a room doused in sudden sunlight I finally recognized his idiotic behavior for what it was. It was very bad manners to roll one’s eyes at the second most powerful man in the country, so I settled for a sigh. A month or so downriver and I’d quite put out of my head my friend’s recent obsession with the Warrior Guild and, more importantly, its coarse, disreputable leader, Credola Aven.

He’d spent the better part of summer training with the Guild, much to the bafflement of his peers and the irritation of his uncle the Chancellor. Unlike them, I knew why. Aven was twenty years his senior and the leader of the least honored and respected of the Guilds, disinterested in art, music, or cultured discourse. Tain’s fascination was unfathomable, considering Silasta was full of interesting, talented women and men, beautiful and clever and contributing far more to civilization than someone whose main skill was the effective use of violence.

But the Guard deflated his hopes in any case. “The Warrior-Guilder’s not in the city, Honored Heir. She’s with the army out near Moncasta, fighting Doranites over the mines again. That’s why we’re low on bodies here.” She ducked her head, her discomfort obvious. “Please, allow me to deal with this. My apologies for your involvement.”

After she left, we rinsed our scraped hands and shins in the canal and Tain took my berating with good humor but no apology. “No one else was helping him,” he pointed out.

I frowned. “No, but that doesn’t mean—”

“Would you prefer the old man got stabbed?” He stood, distracted. “We should check on him. I think I offended him somehow.”

But several yellow-sashed Guild officials now moved about the area, directing the cleanup, and the preacher had long since disappeared either voluntarily or at their direction. It wasn’t illegal to preach the old religion, of course, but it was common to see earthers moved along for disturbing trade or obstructing traffic.

I checked the position of the sun. “We’d better head up. The Chancellor will probably hear about this soon enough.”

He gave me a mournful look. “Let’s walk, at least. Enjoy the last of the peace while we can.” I raised an eyebrow, unsure our morning could be described as peaceful anymore, but then he grinned. “We can have that cup of tea at least.”

We walked south and crossed the pedestrian bridge to the east side of the lake. A calm contrast to its commerce-driven sister, the east shore was all long silvery grass and white sand, dotted with groups of Silasta’s wealthier classes enjoying the morning sun. Bathers splashed in the shallows and daring gulls snatched at unattended food. As we came off the bridge we dodged a stack of squealing children playing “old wooden” on the grass; tottering on one another’s backs and shoulders as they sang the rhyme, they almost collided with us as they shouted the last line: “The great old wooden saved us all!” and came tumbling down in a heap of giggles and cheerfully squashed limbs. Behind them, a knot of men and women lounged about, casually betting on informal footraces on the grass.

This side of the lake was more homogeneous and we blended in easily among crowds of dark heads and bare brown limbs under white tunics or palumas. But our anonymity didn’t last; first we were waylaid by earnest young Credo Edric, eager to share with us his latest song for my sister (called, imaginatively, “Kalina Kalina”) then by a wily couple of jewelers who were working the crowd of young Credolen in the hopes of securing a commission. I was grateful when we finally made it to my apartments.

The tinkle of the tiny hanging bells in the doorway rang out into emptiness. No movement stirred the green necklace of plants framing the curved walls (some decorative, some medicinal, some lethal). A suggestion of Etan’s earlier baking or experimentation hung in the air by way of a faint smoky scent. No sign of him or Kalina.

I changed, grateful for clean clothes—Tain waved off my offer of the same, unfazed by his rumpled state—and had begun to prepare the tea when my sister arrived home.

She froze as she saw us, furtive. Or perhaps it was just an involuntary flinch, as she followed it with several successive sneezes. Tain laughed and sprang to his feet. “There’s a sound I’ve missed!”

“Are you all right?” I blurted out.

“Hello to you, too, Brother.” She smiled to blunt the rebuke and squeezed my hands in greeting, then Tain’s. “Welcome home, both of you.”

“It’s a relief to be back,” I said by way of apology. Up close, her hair was damp and springy, and her skin prickled faintly with cold. “Where were you? Are you well?”

“Just walking. And I’m the same as usual.” Soft voice hoarse, she didn’t meet my eyes as she slipped past us to settle on a cushion by the table.

I checked the color transition of the brew and found it a satisfying rich gold. I settled the pot among the three of us and listened to my sister’s breath over the comforting warm gur-gur-gur sound of the tea pouring into each of our cups. No telltale squeak or rasp. Nothing to be anxious about.

A few sips in, the blanket of routine wrapped around me, it was as though we had never left. Tain entertained Kalina with tales of our trip, somehow turning weeks of monotony and stress into amusing escapades. I mostly sat in peaceful silence. The tea was a new one our mother had sent in my absence; delicate in aroma, but surprisingly pungent and earthy. Mother had never been a proofer, or much of a mother, but the genius of her palate for tea was undeniable.

“Enough about these two idiots,” Tain said at last. He left the table and began rifling through our bags. “Gifts! And you tell us your news. You haven’t been working too hard, I hope?”

“Oh, much of the same,” Kalina murmured vaguely. He’d bought her a set of polished wooden beads. I’d found a Talafan book of children’s stories with gorgeous painted illustrations. “Now you didn’t choose this just so you could scrape samples of the paint colors, did you?” she asked me severely, and Tain laughed at my attempts at bluster, having heard me enthusing in the market about the shade of blue.

“Well, your heart was half in it,” she teased, but her cheeks dimpled with pleasure just the same. Tain wound the beads through her dark cloud of hair—the wood was same warm brown as her skin, and gleamed like dewdrops in her curls—while she pored over the book. Talafan looked nothing like our written language and not much like Trade; indecipherable to me, but no obstacle to my sister. Her fingers stroked the pages and she read hungrily.

“I wish you could have come,” I said quietly, and her hands quivered a moment on the page before she shrugged with artificial nonchalance. I cursed myself for saying it and hastened to change the subject. “Etan’s notes were very short. Has he been busy?”

“I’ve barely seen him,” she said. “First there was the mess with the raids on the mines, then I think there was some kind of problem getting the summer harvest deliveries. Oh, and there was an earthquake that damaged a quarry, and the rains still haven’t come to the rice fields so everyone has been worried about yields.”

“What happened with the mines?” Tain’s voice was a touch too casual. We had longstanding disputes with various Doranite mountain tribes about ownership of some of the mines near the southern border; it wasn’t unusual to see raids in summer, but these had been larger and better organized than in previous years. Tain’s interest, though, had nothing to do with the military implications.

“Some of the attacks started getting close to Moncasta,” Kalina said, and twisted ever so slightly so that Tain’s hands fell away from the beads in her hair. “One of the outskirt villages got attacked. The Council sent the whole army to force the Doranites to either retreat or move to a full confrontation.”

“That’s why Aven’s gone with them,” he said, disappointment rich in his tone.

My sister’s lips tightened around the fine porcelain of her cup, midsip. “Yes, the Warrior-Guilder led the army.”

Tain sighed, and now that we were in the privacy of my own home, I rolled my eyes freely. “Come on, Jov,” he said, catching my expression and giving us an innocent grin. “I’m the Heir, aren’t I? My uncle’s always saying I need to have relationships with all the Councilors.”

“I’ll look forward to you spending the next few months in the Craft Guild practicing your leatherwork, then.” It was unclear whether taking up sparring and weapons lessons at the Warrior Guild, much to the consternation of many of his peers, was the cause or a consequence of his infatuation. I glanced at my sister, who stared down at her cup, the Talafan book pushed aside. “Did the Doranites retreat?”

“I haven’t heard anything.” Her tone had cooled.

Feeling the peace of our reunion breaking away from me, I tried again to reel it in, topping up our teacups with a forced smile. “What did Mother call this blend? It’s very good. In Telasa they said the Talafan Emperor himself is drinking our tea now.”

“It’s called pale needle.” She cleared her throat. “Actually, Mother asked me to come to the estate for a while.”

“What for?” Like all the six Credol Families, our estates in the country were the lifeblood of our family business and the source of food to support the capital, but they were hardly interesting to visit. Nor was there any great compulsion to visit our mother, whose fascination with and ambition for our family’s tea production outweighed any desire she’d had to help her brother raise us. She’d left the city when I was barely walking and we saw her perhaps once a year, if that.

Kalina shrugged, swirling her tea and avoiding eye contact. “I suppose she thought I might be useful there.”

I might have imagined the slightest emphasis on there.

Kalina was the eldest and should have been Etan’s apprentice. She was bright, quiet, unobtrusive, and desperate to please. But when she had not been able to fulfill that role I had replaced her, and neither of us could ever forget that sore spot between us.

I remembered lying awake in bed as a young child while she sat in the corner of our room with a candle, face screwed up in concentration. She studied so hard, memorizing quantities and names and drawing elaborate labeled pictures of plant leaves, trying to impress our Tashi with her devotion to her duty, hoping it would make up for her body’s weakness. I didn’t understand, back then. I’d had my own problems—as a child my compulsions had been overwhelming, and I had lacked tools to fight them. The thoughts I couldn’t stop dwelling on, the seemingly meaningless things that bothered me . . . My sister had been my anchor, calming me when the anxiety drove me to fits, and helping me develop the patterns and order that would eventually help me manage the problem.

Kalina taught me our family’s secret code of lines and dots almost before I learned to read ordinary language. We left secret messages for each other not just in print but on any tactile surface that could be marked—wax tablets, a beaded necklace, even baked on bread—practicing reading it by feel as well as sight. Sometimes we also left messages in geraslin ink, which would disappear if you sprinkled a certain powder over the text, then reappear under heat and light. Through her I inadvertently learned early the many varied fauna of our country as I held up pictures of plant parts she’d drawn and she named them in turn. I’d loved that game, its methodical calming repetition. I didn’t realize until years later that for her it was no game. She was constantly pushing and testing herself.

But no matter how hard she worked, it wasn’t hard enough.

The first and only time Etan poisoned her, she almost died. Even after years of immunization, her frail body, ever susceptible to every cough and fever, couldn’t cope with the dose. I was so young, then, but I never forgot the loneliness of those dark weeks when I wasn’t allowed to see her, and there was no one to play games and keep my mind operating smoothly. She recovered weaker than ever, her skin tinged gray, her hair dull, her eyes fever bright. Though we still left each other coded messages for fun, never again did we play the card game. She told me years later, in a stiff voice, that she had burned the cards. She had failed, and I had taken the place that should have been hers.

My tea was cold and the conversation had fallen away. The comfort I’d found in the three of us back together had been spoiled, and I could think of nothing to bring it back.

A messenger arrived soon after, sparing us further awkwardness. Our return had been noticed and passed on; Chancellor Caslav respectfully requested his nephew’s presence at a formal luncheon at Credo Lazar’s apartments to welcome a visiting Talafan dignitary. Presumably the nobleman was the passenger on the ornately decorated Talafan boat we’d seen in harbor when we arrived. Tain immediately set to wheedling to convince me to come with him. Back to normal, indeed.

• • • •

Looking back, I could have gotten there faster. Entered differently. Spoken to different people. Perhaps I would have seen something different. But all I had was what was done.

The apartments for the six Credol Families were built on the great sweeping drive at the top of the hill, so it was a short walk to the Reed family’s from our own Oromani apartments. The sound of the gathering leaked out into the streets and a retinue of stony-faced Talafan servants waited outside the grounds by an elaborately decorated litter. The visiting nobleman must have been an important man, but it was the height of poor manners—even for a foreigner—to take your own servants into another person’s home, so outside they remained.

Servants dressed more expensively than I ushered us into Lazar’s entertaining suite. The Performers’ Guild’s most celebrated musician played delicate strings in a corner. Hanging silks in the unmistakable hand of the Artist-Guilder herself flattered in the light breeze from the gardens, and tall spears of blue flowers imported from the Great Wetlands filled cunning alcoves in the walls. All new since I’d last seen this room, all worth a fortune.

“Honored Heir!” Lazar grasped Tain’s shoulders in welcome and beamed. “You’ve returned! Why, we weren’t expecting you for days! I was going to throw you a party.” Our host’s head was a shiny, wobbly teardrop glistening with expensive oils and ending in a weak chin. Extravagant fabric garbed his obese frame. He looked me over, soft face scrunched in polite confusion as he assessed the appropriate response; I wasn’t invited, but I was heir to Etan’s Council seat, and my family outranked his. “Credo Jovan. How pleasant to see you also. Welcome home, lad.”

“My apologies, Credo Lazar.” I shot a glare at Tain, who ignored it complacently. I shouldn’t have given in to his pleading. “I know this is a Council function. I wanted a quick word with my uncle. I’ll just be a moment.”

“Of course, of course, my boy.” Lazar ushered us in, his attention already fading. “You wouldn’t have heard this piece yet, would you? Exquisite. The Performers’ Guild is calling it the composition of the season, you know. I think—” He broke off at a crash across the room; the Stone-Guilder had collided with a servant. Vivid orange soup splashed onto the white tiles like a spray of blood. “Not again!” Lazar’s voice jumped an octave higher. “Please excuse me, Honored Heir.” His perfume didn’t mask the reek of panicked sweat as he darted away. Tain and I exchanged amused glances.

The heads of family and Guilders who comprised Silasta’s ruling Council milled about in small groups, servants weaving expertly between them. We passed the Theater-Guilder, Varina, conversing with a servant carrying cups of cloudy kori, and identified the thin, sunken-eyed Talafan nobleman, a gleaming pale ghost in a bright silk jacket as he stood listening to the musician with Credola Nara and Credo Javesto. At the other side of the room, Etan and Chancellor Caslav spoke with a few other Councilors by the food table.

The Chancellor caught sight of us and beckoned, lips tight. He and Tain could have been brothers, sharing the same slight build, broad nose, and dark curls worn long enough to mask what Tain called “the family ears.” The tattoos circling Caslav’s bare arms were a more elaborate version of Tain’s, signifying his role as Chancellor. He was a handsome man, but unlike his nephew’s his face was solemn and humorless. Beside him, Etan faded into the background: a plain, bearded man in his fifties, shorter and stockier, with gentle eyes. I’d heard him called meek. I knew better.

Tain breezed up to Caslav, ignoring his uncle’s frown, and gave the older man a warm squeeze of the shoulders. “Glad to see you. I’m starving. Are those fish cakes?”

“You are three days early,” Caslav said, and I could have sworn the temperature dropped. “And am I to understand that you have returned without your retinue? I received a rather distraught bird from your cousins.”

“Well, it’s a very long journey, Tashi, so I imagine the poor thing got tired.” Failing to generate an answering smile, Tain switched to his most sincere manner. “I’m sorry, Uncle. They were a little overzealous and I saw a way to come home a fraction early without the fuss. But at least it’s given me a chance to help greet our guest. I learned a little Talafan in Telasa. Shall I go and introduce myself?”

I shuffled back to stand beside Etan as they continued their conversation. “Jovan,” Etan said, raising a brow.

“Tashi,” I replied with a shrug. A corner of my uncle’s mouth twitched. In front of us, a big man in an ill-fitting paluma who had been waiting for food also stepped politely backward, trying not to intrude on the conversation between the Chancellor and his nephew. So out of context was his presence here that it took me a moment to recognize Marco, the head of training at the Warrior Guild. He’d taught me in compulsory classes years ago, and had been tutoring Tain for his recent sessions. He was not on the Council, but he must have been assigned temporary Warrior-Guilder status while Aven took the army south. Like a great tree stuffed into an ornamental pot, the soldier stood out in the refined company, his balding head well above the rest, muscular chest and shoulders straining the normally loose paluma. The garb constricted his movements as he tried awkwardly to accept from an unsympathetic servant a bowl for soup with one hand and a flat circle of bread with the other.

“Guilder Marco!”

Credo Bradomir—second only to the Chancellor’s family in honor and wealth—swept past in a cloud of fragrant oil and folds of white silk to accost Marco before he could be served any soup. “My dear man, my dear Guilder.” Bradomir snatched the soup bowl and held it between manicured fingernails as though Marco might have infected it. “Doubtless there are no such niceties in the army, but here there is a certain standard of behavior. The Chancellor is always offered the first serving at a gathering.”

Bradomir replaced the bowl with a chink of expensive ceramics. Marco wiped his forehead and took another step back, head down and eyes searching for an exit. I gave him a shrug in solidarity. I had little in common with Marco or his ilk; though they provided a necessary service to the city and the country more broadly, their skills and values were at odds with the rest of peaceful, cultured Silastian society. On the other hand, Bradomir was indisputably a sanctimonious ass.

“I’m sorry, Credo Bradomir,” Marco said, his voice an uncultured rumble, faintly accented despite his many decades in the city. He extended an uncertain hand, offering his bread to Bradomir as well.

At that, Tain stepped between the two men. “Don’t be ridiculous,” the Heir said. “Please keep your bread, Warrior-Guilder.” He raked Bradomir with a contemptuous glance and nodded to the sweating servant, who served two bowls of the bright soup. Tain made a show of handing one back to his uncle and smiled apologetically at Marco. “There, no harm done.”

Marco moved away, clumsy and silent as he pushed his way to the back of the group. Bradomir’s heavy-lashed gaze lingered on the back of Tain’s head as he allowed himself to be served. I stepped closer to Etan and we took our turn next. “Anything I should be worried about?” he murmured.

I shook my head. “You?” We were close to, but turned at an angle from, the Chancellor, who was now engaged in a discussion with the Stone-Guilder about road paving materials in the lower city.

“No. Well. Later.” Etan set down his bowl of soup next to the Chancellor’s to adjust the cording on his paluma, then, moments later, seemingly picked it up again. The switch of the bowls was so subtle, so effortless, it was all I could do to keep my eyes averted. Hard as I trained, I couldn’t imagine matching his skill as a proofer.

I wanted to ask him about Kalina, and Mother’s invitation, but a screech from the other side of the room interrupted my thought.

“What now?” Credo Lazar pushed through to the source of the disturbance: a servant dancing about on the spot, engaged in some kind of weird spasm with her arms slapping her own back. When her strange hopping spun her about to face us a few more people let out shrieks. A creature clung to her hair, gray and about the size of her head, and nimble enough to avoid her panicked slaps. As several other servants moved in to help her, the animal sprang from her hair onto one of the painted hanging silks dangling nearby and scrambled up it as effortlessly as a large spider.

“Not the silks!” Lazar moaned. “Get it down! Someone get it down!”

“What in all the hells is that thing?” Tain’s voice was a blend of horror and fascination as the animal sprang like a tiny acrobat between the fluttering silk panels. “Is it flying?”

It was, almost; with each leap of the lengths between panels a concertina of dark skin stretched out like wings between the creature’s front and rear legs then folded back to nothing as it landed. We were treated to an excellent view of gleaming black underwing as it flung itself from the silks onto a nearby cushioned stool.

“A gift for the Chancellor from our most generous guest, Lord Ectar,” Etan said, and added in an undertone, “It’s called a ‘leksot,’ I believe. It’s some kind of Talafan pet. It wasn’t received quite as well as Lord Ectar might have hoped; one of the servants fainted when he took it out, and another was convinced it was some kind of bad spirit given form. Oh, and it drooled on Credo Lazar.”

Herded by our anxious host, three servants closed in to capture the animal, while the Talafan nobleman Lord Ectar protested from the side. “It is just playful,” he was saying. “It does not hurt anyone. Please, allow me, allow me . . .” Beside him, a servant moaned and mumbled as her gnarled arthritic fingers caressed the earther pendant she wore. Through it all, the leksot bounced on the cushion on light paws, tail coiled in a spring, like an athlete about to begin a race. It cocked its squashed head and regarded us speculatively.

“Perhaps our new Warrior-Guilder could dispose of it for us.” Bradomir’s sly tone raised a few titters in response.

One of the servants, prodded by Lazar, sprang forward to grab at the leksot, but it was far too swift, flattening itself to duck under grasping hands and scrambling up through the sea of legs, right into our group. Amidst shouts and a sudden crush of fleeing bodies, and the rising volume of the earther servant’s prayers, the creature emerged suddenly on my uncle’s bare legs. It scaled him as easily as the silks, faster than he could snatch at it, then leaped from Etan’s shoulder to the Chancellor’s. The flurry and panic intensified as the leksot hitched itself to the back of his paluma and let out a guttural grunt. The absurdity of the city’s wealthiest and most powerful men and women all attempting to rid the Honored Chancellor of the animal plaguing him while also being too afraid to touch it themselves might have been funny in other circumstances.

Lord Ectar himself extracted the creature in the end. The Talafan stammered apologies as he pushed through the crowd and scooped the leksot from the Chancellor’s clothing. “Forgive me, Honored Chancellor,” he said. “I do not know what happened. The cages should have been locked.” He looked about helplessly and then, perhaps remembering that his own servants had been forced to wait outside, carried the leksot himself back to the gilded cage from which it had escaped.

Once clear, Lazar’s army of servants swooped in to fuss over the Chancellor and brush hairs from his paluma while the sweating host himself panted behind them like an overfilled sponge. Honor was as important a currency in Silasta as wealth, and embarrassing the Chancellor would cost Lazar deeply in Council politics. Credo Bradomir and the Theater-Guilder, Credola Varina, made a grand show of dusting themselves off, and Credola Nara took great delight in pointing out the damage the creature had caused to Lazar’s hanging silks with its claws and drool. Marco, free from Bradomir’s scrutiny and unfazed by the commotion, had taken the opportunity to tuck into his soup and bread at last.

The cause of all the excitement, the leksot, shrunk to docility now that its adventure had ended, grunting happily and nestling up against the Talafan’s arm as he put it back in the cage. “It is just excited,” he tried to explain, to nobody in particular. “They like play. They are the most beloved pet in the Emperor’s court.”

Tain elbowed me, deadpan. “Think it’ll catch on here?” I did my best not to laugh.

The family ears apparently conferred additional functionality, because Chancellor Caslav’s gaze snapped over to his nephew. His tone was unamused as he said, “Credo Jovan, I wonder, would you be so good as to take my fine gift to the Manor? I think perhaps we’ve had sufficient excitement for one gathering, and you did mention you were heading back that way shortly.” Over his shoulder, Tain made a pained expression.

“Certainly, Honored Chancellor.”

“The glass garden will do.”

I inclined my head. A job for a servant, perhaps, but given the reaction most of Lazar’s were having to the animal it probably wasn’t wise to leave it to one of them. I masked a shudder. The thing might have been harmless, but it was messy and smelly, and my skin itched just looking at it.

Etan patted my shoulder. “I’ll see you at home later.”

Across the room, Tain gave me a mournful wave as I struggled out the door with the unwieldy cage.

• • • •

At home, I washed my stinking, fur-sprinkled paluma and scrubbed myself clean in the bath. My back ached. I’d left the leksot leaping around the glass-walled garden in the Manor to wreak its mischief, and sent a silent apology to the gardeners there.

I’d finally settled down to a pot of tea and a book when Etan came home. The wooden beads hanging from my doorway clicked as he entered; I glanced up and my chest compressed as I took in my uncle’s swollen lips, shiny skin, and puffy eyes.

“Time to go, Jovan,” he said.

I sprang to my feet.

Etan shuffled gracelessly into the kitchen and pressed the underside of the stone bench, activating the mechanism that moved a section of cupboard and revealed our hidden proofing room. My heart rate increased as we packed a satchel full of antidotes: charcoal, sea snake scale powder, atrapis, panshar balls from the digestive tracts of wild lutra. “How long since you noticed?”

“I came straight here from the wharfs,” Etan said. I marked how many bottles and jars he took, and the lack of precision made me anxious. “Less than an hour. Dizziness first, then swelling, then perspiration. No stomach pains or nausea, but pressure in my chest.”

My throat dried. “The Chancellor?”

“At the Manor.”

“Sit down,” I told him, and took over packing the satchel, my stomach knotting. There had been other attempts to dose the Chancellor with various substances over the years, but never had I seen my uncle this way.

“Have you eaten since lunch?”

“No.”

“You proofed everything at Lazar’s?”

He might have been feeling ill but it hadn’t dampened his spirits entirely; the look he fired at me stung.

“Sorry, Tashi. I just know these functions are difficult.” Etan himself prepared the majority of the Chancellor’s food, or else proofed it long in advance. But functions like today’s were the bane of our profession: shared food, someone else’s kitchens, staff we didn’t know, and the scrutiny of canny eyes under which we must secretly test. Visibly proofing would expose open distrust and weakness—much like bringing one’s own servants to another’s home, or being surrounded by openly armed guards—something custom and honor dictated that the Chancellor must never do. Etan had to proof everything on the spot, before the Chancellor, without being noticed.

Etan tilted his head in acknowledgment. “I got into Lazar’s kitchens this morning and tested everything they’d prepared. I noticed nothing, and there were no masking flavors.” Food with a naturally bitter, sour, or acidic taste, or food so heavily spiced as to hide subtler flavors, would never be passed on to the Chancellor unless it had been proofed well in advance. “I don’t know much about Lord Ectar the Talafan, so I took no chances.” We knew of only two toxins that were effectively undetectable in food, even to a trained proofer; petra venom and a complicated compound known as Esto’s revenge. If Etan had consumed either of those, he’d be dead already.

I waited while he purged his stomach contents into a basin, and gave him two of the most generalized antidotes—charcoal and a panshar ball—after he had cleaned himself. “Without any stomach pain, the only thing that matches your symptoms is maidenbane, but obviously you’d have tasted that,” I said. That plant was so bitter even an untrained person would detect something amiss. “It might be an illness?”

Etan shrugged. He suddenly seemed so diminished. Older. Frailer. “I hope so.”

We hailed a litter but asked the men to move slowly. Up here, between the Credol residences, the streets were the original unpaved pathways, with no heavy wagon traffic to drive ruts into the packed surface. It made the journey smoother, but still fear and concern dogged me as we traveled in silence. The white azikta stone walls of the buildings around us glowed warmly in the afternoon light as we made our way up the heavy gradient pathway to the sprawling Chancellor’s Manor.

Argo, the Manor doorkeep, noted our passage in his visitors’ tome in silence, solemn as he stared at us through spectacles in need of repair.

“We have urgent business with the Chancellor,” Etan told him.

Argo pulled a cord hanging from the wall behind his desk and a middle-aged woman appeared through the beaded arch to escort us beyond the entrance hall. She had served the Chancellor for years and knew not to question the purpose of our visit. Her eyes followed me as she left the study, brows drawn together; it was rare for me to accompany my uncle here in daylight hours.

The Chancellor came soon after. His dark gaze swept over Etan, and I fancied a little color left his face. A slow-acting, undetected poison was our greatest fear: more than one Chancellor had lost his life that way.

Etan strode forward with renewed energy. “How do you feel?” He checked Caslav’s skin, eyes, mouth, and nose in turn. The Chancellor sat, mute, as Etan checked his temperature and smelled his breath. My mouth felt dry. No poison attempt had ever passed my uncle. Not one.

“I feel well,” Caslav said slowly.

I finished my own visual scan, and my breath—unconsciously held—hissed out. The Chancellor looked fine. Rattled, maybe, but healthy. Etan settled back on the desk and regarded his old friend with open relief.

“Take these, in case.” He handed the Chancellor a few small dark squares of charcoal to block the absorption of poison through the system. “But it looks like I’m just ill.”

“I’ll send someone to fetch a physic,” Caslav said. “I’d rather you didn’t go to the hospital.”

Etan nodded. Privacy and secrecy were the cornerstones of our role.

“Thank you.” The Chancellor rocked back on his chair and folded his hands into his armpits, a gesture that reminded me strongly of his nephew. We left him there, but the feeling of unease stayed with me.

• • • •

Etan stayed behind in a guest suite at the Manor in the care of Thendra, a square-jawed physic with the gleaming black skin of a western wetlander, who often treated Kalina. She knew my need for order well, and watched without comment with her slanted, unblinking eyes as I checked over Etan one last time. She even moved carefully so as not to disturb the arrangement of cloth, drinking glass, and book I had set on the bedside table.

My compulsions always grew in proportion to my anxiety, so sitting in a room berating myself and becoming increasingly erratic would help no one. Instead, I borrowed a Manor messenger and sent for my sister to watch Etan. Our family duty was our greatest honor and my first responsibility. Etan might merely be ill, but we could never assume that. Walking, I pictured the Council lunch, recalling the room, the food. There had been two courses I had seen—fish cakes eaten by hand, and the soup and bread. Etan had mentioned two more, plus drinks: pre-poured cups of kori and kavcha and, at the end of the event, tea served individually from the pot. He’d proofed it all. I counted my steps down the corridor—left, right, left, longer step right to dodge a crack in the stone, longer step left to compensate—out of the visitors’ wing and back through the entrance, nodding to Argo on the way past. There had been no seated meals and no plates designated for a particular person. Unless everyone at the lunch had been poisoned—and Etan was the first to show symptoms because he had proofed the food earlier in the morning—then any poisoner must have been there personally to directly tamper with the Chancellor’s food once he had selected it.

The Talafan nobleman was the obvious starting point. While the Empire was a valued trade partner, partners maneuvered against each other all the time, and Etan had said he knew little about Lord Ectar personally. Certainly the nervous, embarrassed man I had seen didn’t appear a likely poisoner, but looks, of course, meant little.

And if a poison attempt was targeted only at the Chancellor, our Talafan visitor wasn’t the only possible enemy. Most of the Council had been there—all six Credol Families had been represented, as well as four of the six Guilders. Beneath the overt civility of the Council always rippled quiet plays for power and influence; while the rules of honor kept ill feeling masked, the Chancellor had as many enemies as friends, particularly among the Families. A diminution of influence in one family left an opening for another, and this wouldn’t be the first time a subtle poisoning had been attempted. Indeed, our family’s historic role had developed out of a past with more aggressive maneuverings, when the Families jostled for power and quiet, civilized murder was a common tool. These days such things were far rarer, but not unheard of. I was a month behind on current politics, but Etan would know who stood to gain and lose if the Chancellor were harmed.

And of course, Lazar’s servants would bear closer examination; at least one was foreign born, because I remembered seeing a Doranite man in house colors serving kori to the Theater-Guilder. For Silasta’s wealthiest families, invisible servants had better access than the closest friend or lover.

I stopped outside the Reed apartments. The buildings loomed aggressively over the promenade, crowding the land. Unlike the elegant, classically-designed neighboring apartments, Lazar’s expanded buildings were the product of his considerable fortune and his grandiose and, in places, garish taste. Around the side of the narrow garden, my head ducked low, I crept past the veranda where several singers and two pale northern jugglers were entertaining the Credo and his family for the afternoon. Explaining my presence here would create unwelcome issues. Instead, I used the kitchen entrance at the back of the property. Etan’s well-known love of cooking gave me a pretext to study techniques and the opportunity to visit every kitchen entrance of the Families’ apartments, the Guildhalls, and every building the Chancellor might conceivably enter. So although the serving staff looked up, quizzical, upon my entrance, no one seemed displeased.

Lazar’s head cook greeted me jovially. “Credo Jovan!”

Cardamom and honey hung in the air, and something thick and sweet boiled on the great stove.

“Nice to see you again.”

The little woman returned my smile. “I am at your service.”

“I’ve come to ask a favor,” I told her. “My Tashi complimented your luncheon and wants to use it as a lesson for me. I was wondering if there were any leftovers—a small sample of each course?”

The cook looked over her shoulder at the swarming kitchen. A stack of clean bowls stood beside several large kori bottles on a bench, and a crumb-scattered platter and two empty soup tureens waited to be washed. In the corner, a long clawed kitsa prowled around underfoot, snatching up spills and crumbs with its quick pronged tongue. “We’ve packed up from lunch, I’m afraid, though there might be some of the sweet left—I was going to leave it for the staff.” She clicked her fingers and a servant sprang to her side. “Boy, serve a sample of the goa confection for Credo Jovan, here.”

I thanked her and accepted the small bowl. “The Credo’s been keeping you busy,” I said, casually stepping out of the way of some of the workers and closer to the tureens. “I stopped by the lunch on an errand for the Chancellor and it looked like the whole staff was in there. Did you have to bring in extra people?”

“No, but the Honored Credo pulled every member of his staff for this lunch,” she said. “And the family has had guests and entertainment out on the porch all afternoon—no one will be allowed a break until tonight.” She added hastily, “Hard work for an honored family is the path to our own greater honor, of course.”

I smiled. Behind my back, I scraped a spoon across the edge of the inside of the tureen. “The Credo is lucky to have you. Thank you for the sample. My uncle will be delighted.”

“Please thank Credo Etan for the compliment. I’ve the recipes, too, if that would assist.” She turned to find the papers and I slipped an empty kori bottle into the folds of my paluma. Then, sample and recipes in hand, I excused myself and returned up the road to my family apartments, where the dessert sample, kori bottle, spoonful of soup, and handful of fish cake crumbs joined Etan’s saliva and vomit. However unlikely, I would test it all for poison.

Some basic things I could do immediately. I made a solution from a lichen powder and tested the food samples; the presence of some corrosive poisons would turn the solution red. Etan’s saliva generated an extremely pale pink, which was to be expected, but there was no response with any of the food. I examined his partly digested stomach contents; the color and smell, while unpleasant, seemed normal. Thendra had taken blood and urine from him and I would need to do the same.

After a thorough visual examination under Etan’s best glass—nothing looked abnormal—I tasted the food samples myself. The soup was a wellmade but simple root affair, the only detectable additives salt and two seed-based spices. The dessert was crushed nuts and bindie egg, whipped with goa berry syrup. Only crumbs remained of the fish cakes, but the ingredients list provided by Lazar’s cook matched the smell, texture, and taste of the sample I had. The kori was standard cloudy liquor from the southern Losi region, with no additives that I could detect.

Replacing the sliding panel in the kitchen wall that hid Etan’s workroom, I shook my head. Etan had trained me too well. There was no call for me to be more worried than my uncle. But then the front doors thrust open and Kalina darted in, sweat sticking her hair to her face and her eyes wide. I stopped, unable to take my next breath.

“Jov,” she said, and before she could say another word, I knew my sister’s news.

• • • •

My uncle was dying, and so was the Chancellor. For all that my entire life had been built around this very scenario, faced with it I now felt incompetent. Unprepared. Unworthy.

When the Chancellor fell ill, the physics shifted their attention from Etan to Caslav, and Kalina and I made it through the burgeoning chaos in the Manor without difficulty. Half the Council flocked about and the Manor staff looked fearful. No one paid us any heed as we were escorted to the suite adjoining Caslav’s.

We sat there now, silent, trying to get fluid through our uncle’s puffy lips. The physic Thendra darted in occasionally, her voice sharp as she barked instructions at her apprentices. Tain broke from his uncle’s bedside only once, to briefly check on the three of us. None of us spoke of poison, but with the physics feeding both men purgatives and emetics it must have been suspected. All we knew for certain, though, was that with every moment that passed, they grew worse.

“Home,” Etan murmured. “Go home.”

“Shh, Tashi.” Kalina patted his hand gently. “Just rest. We’ll take you home when you’re well.”

“You . . .” His lips worked silently, then he slumped back again. “Home.

So—sorry.”

I could not bear to make eye contact with my sister. My sense of failure was so intense I could barely breathe.

Our family’s great proofing tome lay under the bed, hidden from immediate sight, and the satchel of antidotes we’d brought earlier now bulged with every remedy we had. We had tried ingested antidotes and absorbing creams, sometimes the same ones in powder, liquid, or raw plant form. When Etan could no longer swallow, Kalina propped his weak body up against her while I poured teas down his throat. While the physics were occupied with the Chancellor, she stood guard by the door as I used a hollow needle to inject our only blood-borne antidote.

Nothing stemmed the tide against him.

As evening deepened, Etan was conscious less and less, his breathing weakening. Earlier, he had detailed his day for us as best he could while Kalina took notes. Even then he had struggled to force the words from his thickened tongue. Having spent much of my life drawing calm from my Tashi when the compulsions seized my body and my brain, the sight of unflappable Etan swearing in frustration at his lack of control over his own body set me off.

My problems were manageable in everyday life if I kept things in order, stuck to a routine, stayed calm. But in times of high stress, a storm of panic and fear and speculation built in my head. My usual physical calming exercises—breathing, pacing—themselves became part of the problem, and I ended up stuck in a recurring pattern. After we’d tried the last of our antidote options, I’d paced in sets of eight until my legs wobbled with exhaustion. I’d never resented my weakness so much as today, when my uncle and my sister needed me the most.

Thendra, too, grew visibly frustrated as the hours passed. “Both men say they were in perfect health this morning, yes,” she had told us. “Their symptoms are the same. Credo Etan’s manifested sooner, but the Chancellor’s are escalating faster. I fear their bodies cannot continue with this pressure, no, but since I do not understand what ails them, I cannot treat it.”

She had suggested maidenbane as a possible poison and Kalina and I feigned ignorance, but the antidote had had no effect; we knew it would not, not only because Etan would never have missed such a basic poison, but because we had already tried it, just in case. Nor did any other remedy offer any improvement in either man. In private, we had attempted every antidote for the greater and lesser poisons in our secret stores, to no effect. Ideas thinned, as did our hope.

Kalina leaned against me now, her frail form a light, even weight against my back and her hair a dark shroud between us. “What are we going to do?” she asked, her voice bleak, and though I wanted to reassure her, no words came to me. The weight of my failure crushed me.

“We’ll manage it together,” I assured her.

She stayed silent.

Etan stirred and we both started. Kalina rose and leaned over our uncle, touching his hand with hesitant fingers. “Tashi, can you hear us?”

I stared at Etan, mute. What could I say to the man who had raised us? Something lighthearted, to take his mind off the inevitable, or something sincere and thoughtful that represented all we had shared? Instead, my mind cranked through its usual gears, noting pointless details, counting breaths, evaluating symptoms.

We are who we are, I told myself. It wasn’t a comfort.

Etan coughed, making a sound like water sucking down a drain, and blinked furiously. His lips moved.

“Tashi?” I leaned close. He was trying to say something.

Etan’s gaze moved between us and he clutched at his chest. I turned to grab the cup of water from the table but, at Kalina’s gasp, the cup fell out of my hand and spilled water over my lap.

Etan’s dark eyes were still open, his lips parted, but some spark, an animation that had been there before, was gone.

Whatever knowledge our uncle had wanted to impart, he’d taken it with him.

Copyright © 2018 by Sam Hawke. Excerpted from City of Lies by Sam Hawke. Published by permission of the author and Tor Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A black belt in jujitsu, Sam Hawke lives with her husband and children in Australia. City of Lies is her first novel.

Book Reviews: August 2018

LaShawn M. Wanak | 1774 words

In 2017, Martha Wells wrote about an anti-social android who killed a group of scientists against its will. All Systems Red won the Nebula award for best novella. Now she continues Murderbot’s quest for the truth in two new novellas, Artificial Condition and Rogue Protocol. Two novella reviews for the price of one!

The Murderbot Diaries: Artificial Condition
Martha Wells
Hardcover / Paperback / Ebook / Audio
ISBN: 9781250186928
Tor.com, May 2018, 158 pages

The Murderbot Diaries: Rogue Protocol
Martha Wells
Hardcover / Paperback / Ebook / Audio
ISBN: 9781250191786
Tor.com, August 2018, 160 pages

Meet Murderbot, a SEC(urity) unit who hacked itself to become self-governing. All it really wants is to be left alone so it can consume its media in peace. Now it has gone rogue, tracing its steps back to a mining facility to fill the missing bits of its memory of the attack. In doing so, it uncovers a much larger conspiracy that may have it going up against GrayCris, the corporation that had manufactured Murderbot.

Both stories center on Murderbot’s interactions with other bots and AIs. Artificial Condition has Murderbot teaming with an Artificial Research Transport, (Murderbot nicknames it “ART” with the “A” having a cruder meaning) to sneak into the mining facility. In Rogue Protocol, Murderbot is aided by Miki, an inquisitive, naive robot who is part of an investigation crew at a terraforming facility. The humans in both stories are diverse in gender and sexuality, but are mainly used as cover for Murderbot to do its investigation without drawing attention.

Wells’ prose is tight and engaging—from Murderbot’s wry parenthetical asides interrupting its own narrative, to the fast-paced action that makes you want to view it in a movie. Both novellas catch you up to speed on events in the first book without being overly heavy-handed. There is certainly a larger narrative teased out in bits and pieces in each novel—What is GrayCris attempting to cover up? Why is Murderbot the way it is?—but the books themselves are stand-alone, almost episodic.

Murderbot is fascinating. It can make itself appear human and has organic parts, but doesn’t see itself as human and, furthermore, doesn’t want to. Yet, it loves human-made media. It consumes shows and music every chance it gets, even trades it for passage aboard the ART, where the two bond (sort of) over shows like Worldhoppers and Sanctuary Moon. Why would an AI care about human entertainment?

Perhaps because as much as Murderbot is apathetic about humans, it can’t help but assist them when they’re in need. Or perhaps because it has to deal with its own emotions. Upon watching Miki being treated as part of its crew, Murderbot is surprised to feel jealousy, as its time as a SEC unit meant being ignored at best, or being portrayed as an unstable killer at worst.

Or maybe it just views media as a way to process life and the human condition in general, which is why it ultimately helps humans. After all, Murderbot muses: If the humans were dead, who would make the media?

Rosewater
Tade Thompson
Paperback / Ebook
ISBN: 9780316449052
Orbit, September 2018, 400 pages

This is an awesome year for African science fiction. Let me repeat this: This is an awesome year for African science fiction. Tade Thompson’s Rosewater was first released by Apex Books in 2015. Now it is being re-released by Orbit Books, and in the wake of Black Panther’s success, it couldn’t have come at a better time.

Kaaro is a Nigerian government agent who is also a sensitive, a person possessing psychic abilities. He is able to access people’s thoughts and emotions through the use of the xenosphere, a psychic space that originates from a mysterious dome which sits in the center of Rosewater, the city that rose up around the dome. Once a year, the dome emits a power that causes everyone near it to be fully healed. There are some creepy oddities, such as dead bodies being imbued with life long after the soul is gone, but the inhabitants see the dome as a beneficial thing.

Kaaro sees it differently. The sensitives around him are dying, and the government sends Kaaro to investigate. In the xenosphere, his mental avatar is a ferocious griffin. In real life, he is cowardly, reluctant to use a gun, preferring to flee rather than fight. He has no friends and views the dome, his powers, and his job with apathy and diffidence, although he enjoys antagonizing his boss, Mrs. Femi Alaagomeji. That all changes, however, when he meets Aminat, a woman with her own secrets. Through Aminat and Molara, a blue butterfly entity in the xenosphere, Kaaro learns of a larger, more sinister plan being set in motion, and he isn’t sure that he alone can stop it.

The book jumps around to different points in Kaaro’s life: from his youth where he was almost burned by a mob for being a skittish thief, to his recruitment into Section 45 to search for someone called The Bicycle Girl. Sometimes the switching between timelines is disorientating, but Thompson still manages to keep me engaged and wondering what would happen next. His writing is visceral and humorous at times. The scenes with Kaaro’s dismal attempts to flirt with Femi made me laugh despite myself. Other times, his writing details horrors with a clinical detachment that gives insight into why Kaaro strives to keep himself distant, and why Aminat threatens that.

The worldbuilding is gorgeous and brings to mind Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy. The dome is alien and biological, its presence seen as an invasion through spores rather than little green men with rayguns. (Kaaro controls the xenosphere’s influence on him through the use of an antifungal cream.) Thompson spins this into a brilliant commentary about colonization. “We’ve seen colonisers before,” Kaaro muses, “and they are similar, whether intercontinental or interplanetary.”

Like the Murderbot series mentioned above, Thompson’s Rosewater is an exploration of what it means to be human. It doesn’t provide full answers—which is great because Rosewater is just book one of the Wormwood Trilogy. It will be interesting to see where Thompson goes with Kaaro and Aminat, and the human race as a whole.

The People’s Republic of Everything
Nick Mamatas
Paperback / Ebook
ISBN: 9781616963002
Tachyon Publications, August 2018, 332 pages

Nick Mamatas is a sharp, sarcastic, amazing writer whose fiction runs the gamut from horror to speculative to literary. The People’s Republic of Everything gathers his short fiction from the past decade and puts it in one book. It’s a great collection, and if you’re a writer, I highly suggest reading it, not just for the stories, but also for the story notes, where Mamatas gives insights into the history, inspiration, and challenges he had getting the stories published.

Mamatas’s stories tend to dwell on social commentary, spanning topics from communism to social justice to memes. His opening story, “Walking With a Ghost,” briefly explores Lovecraft being brought back to life as an AI and dealing with the horror of his own existence. A similar scenario is set in “Arbeitskraft,” which has Max Engels attempting to recreate Karl Marx through a punch cloth loom, but also attempting to liberate matchstick girls with mechanical jaws and revolutionizing the world through steam. The short novel that ends the collection, “Under My Roof,” is a fun romp of a twelve-year-old psychic boy narrating the story of his father declaring independence from the US and building his own nuclear bomb. My most favorite story in the collection is “A Howling Dog”—a wonderful satire set in the social network hot mess that is known as Next Door. As Mamatas notes, this piece can be listened to for free at Psuedopod, complete with multiple narrators. (Note to self—download that episode.)

Mamatas’s wit is wry and at times self-deprecating. In the story notes for “Slice of Life,” he mentions how in 2013, he announced his retirement from genre writing to focus on realist fiction, only for his wife to reveal she was pregnant a month later. “Babies cost money,” Mamatas writes. “Crime doesn’t pay. Neither does literature.” A couple of stories draw from his Greek heritage, from “The Phylactery,” a rumination about genes spreading across generations, to “North Shore Friday,” a story based on his grandmother and told with random thoughts set apart in boxes inside the text.

The strongest stories, however, are his horror stories. I’ve mentioned “A Howling Dog” already, which ends with a “wait . . . what?” moment that had me rereading the story again. “Lab Rat,” told only in dialogue, is creepy, particularly once you learn that it’s based on actual experiences. The most disturbing piece is “The Glottal Stop,” about a formerly doxxed woman on a date that goes horribly awry. It’s a story about resistance and fighting back, but also the insidious power of memes and virality. It’s the only original story in the collection, and the only one that made me close the book and not pick it up for three days—it was that dark and chilling.

Then I picked it up anyway and reread “A Howling Dog,” because Mamatas’s name for the Next Door clone in the story is “Cranki.ly” and man, that is so hilarious and apropos.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

LaShawn M. Wanak is a graduate of the 2011 class of Viable Paradise. Her fiction has been published in Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, and Ideomancer. She served as Associate Editor at Podcastle, and has written nonfiction for Fantasy Magazine, the Cascadia Subduction Zone, and the anthology Invisible 2.

Media Reviews: August 2018

Christopher East | 2084 words

Roundup of International SF & Fantasy TV

Let’s face it: darkness—perhaps too often—has become a dominant characteristic of modern television. A tour of recent, international SF and fantasy TV shows quickly reveals this isn’t just true in the US; the trend extends well beyond US shores. Darkness courses through these shows like an electrical current, and watching all these shows in close proximity might take some fortitude. But they’re definitely worth a look: Many of them are excellent, and all possess high production values, fascinating ideas and themes, effective techniques, and memorable storylines.

Dark
Created by Baran bo Adar and Jantje Friese
Produced by Wiedemann and Berg Television
First season released December 2017

What better place to begin such a tour than with the first season of Germany’s Dark (Netflix, 2017)? Opening in 2019, Dark takes place in the isolated, German town of Winden. In the shadow of a nuclear power plant, Winden is rocked by a number of child disappearances that set the community on edge. Several locals—including troubled teen Jonas (Louis Hofmann), police detective Ulrich Nielsen (Oliver Masucci), and chief of police Charlotte Doppler (Karoline Eichhorn)—get involved in searches for the children. They find something else, however: shocking discoveries involving time portals, mindbending familial connections, and the cyclical nature of evil. Dark is slowly paced and isn’t quite as clever as it wants to be, but it’s also a mesmerizing watch, beautifully produced and steeped in unsettling atmosphere. Its time-warping narrative flirts with incoherence, as multiple characters recur across eras at different ages. Fortunately, astute physical casting and strong performances help obviate the confusion, making the journeys worth following. Whether Dark has the chops to sustain its juggled complexities remains to be seen, but its first season is ambitious and immersive.

The Returned
Created by Fabrice Gobert
Produced by Haut et Court
First season released November 2012

That said, it may not be doing much that’s new. The influence of Twin Peaks, David Lynch and Mark Frost’s groundbreaking saga of small-town supernatural mystery, looms over Dark like an eclipse. Of course, this just makes it a perfect springboard for discussion of other shows that bear a similar resemblance. First, there’s France’s The Returned (2012-2015, streaming now on Netflix), another dark fantasy built around a community beset by inexplicable paranormal phenomena. In this one, young Camille (Yara Pilartz), who perished years earlier in a bus accident, returns to her family’s doorstep, miraculously alive and well at the exact age she died. Camille, however, is just the first of many in a bizarre incursion of revivified citizens. In fact, the town’s past is riddled with tragedy, a fact cast in sharp relief by the return of the dead. The shocked survivors, in addition to trying to make sense of the impossible, are forced to confront the emotional fallout of seeing their loved ones again in a chilling new context. The Returned may well be the mold from which Dark was cast: a glacial, eerie slow-build relying on ensemble dramatics and unnerving ambience. Substitute French for German, a hydroelectric dam for a nuclear power plant, and spiritual metaphor for time-travel twistiness, and these shows are strikingly similar. It’s a safe bet viewers who have seen and liked one will be a natural audience for the other.

The Kettering Incident
Created by Victoria Madden and Vincent Sheehan
Produced by Porchlight Films and Sweet Potato Films
First season released July 2016

The same could be said of Australia’s stunning The Kettering Incident (2016), currently streaming on Amazon Prime. This one chronicles a bizarre homecoming for Dr. Anna Macy (Elizabeth Debicki), a troubled London hematologist who fled her hometown of Kettering, Tasmania in the wake of a close friend’s disappearance. After years abroad, a baffled Anna awakens back in Kettering without remembering the journey. Something has lured her back, but what? In the course of attempting to find out, she uncovers the truth about both the strange, long-ago events of her past and a current, scandalous conspiracy. Debicki’s appealing performance, breathtaking Tasmanian vistas, and an intriguing plot make this a riveting watch with a real jaw-dropper of a season finale. The Kettering Incident also deploys its penchant for Lynchian disquiet in a slightly different direction. While Dark uses its genre elements to explore the sinister side of human nature and The Returned to wrestle with the intimate interpersonal struggle, The Kettering Incident is more interested in humanity’s fraught relationship with the environment. This tilts the show, despite its magic realist trappings, in a more science fictional direction. All three are thought-provoking, intelligent blends of spooky speculative content and mainstream drama.

Hard Sun
Created by Neil Cross
Produced by Euston Films
First season released January 2018

If you need a break from rustic Lynchian weirdness, there’s futuristic SF out there as well. You’ll need a strong stomach for dystopian visions, though. From England, Hulu’s Hard Sun (2018) has the rare distinction of being pre-apocalyptic SF. In a day-after-tomorrow London, shifty veteran DCI Charlie Hicks (Jim Sturgess) is reluctantly paired with Agyness Deyn (Elaine Renko), a bright, unassuming young detective inspector. Hicks may be crooked, and Renko’s secretly been assigned to prove it, but they’re both about to have bigger problems. On their first case together, they come across evidence of a forthcoming worldwide cataclysm—and a ruthless conspiracy to suppress this news from the public. Hard Sun has a tantalizing hook—a literal end-of-the-world scenario wherein the heroes are forced to wrestle with the ethical dilemmas of their privileged knowledge. Unfortunately, despite attractive production values and likeable leads, Hard Sun isn’t entirely convincing. It attempts to have its cake and eat it, too—expecting the viewer to utterly swallow the evidence of the world’s imminent end, but also handwaving that evidence to keep it hidden and uncertain. It also can’t decide exactly what kind of a show it wants to be: a skiffy conspiracy thriller like Mr. Robot, a cat-and-mouse internal affairs rivalry, or an end-times case-of-the-week. Considering its short, six-episode order, Hard Sun might have done better to choose one narrative strategy, then use it to zero in on the philosophical implications of its core dilemma. There are still things that make it worth watching: moments of psychological insight, Renko’s steely performance, an unforgettable final image. Unfortunately, it doesn’t come close to realizing the promise of its gripping pilot. And yes, the relentless grimdark continues.

The Rain
Created by Jenny Ann Balverde, Esben Toft Jacobsen, and Christian Potalivo
Produced by Miso Film
First season released May 2018

Better is Denmark’s The Rain (2018, Netflix), an assured post-apocalyptic ensemble drama. Borrowing the flashbacky structure of Lost, The Rain chronicles the ordeal of siblings Simone (Alba August) and Rasmus (Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen). In advance of a coming thunderstorm, the two children are swept away from mundane lives by their parents to a secret bunker. The rain, as it turns out, carries a deadly plague. Their parents seem to have inside knowledge about this, but Simone and Rasmus are separated from them before they can learn the truth, and end up weathering the apocalypse by themselves. Six years later, a group of desperate survivors force them out of hiding, and they emerge to find themselves in a treacherous, plague-transformed quarantine zone. Forging a shaky alliance with these newcomers, Simone leads the group on a survival quest that carries them toward the truth of the climate disaster. The Rain has been called Scandinavia’s answer to The 100. It’s an apt comparison: It, too, is a young adult survival drama driven by factious group dynamics and ethical dilemmas. While it doesn’t possess The 100’s ambitious big-picture sprawl, it’s similarly compelling thanks to well-clocked plotting, attractive cinematography, and a capable, charismatic cast. Meanwhile, its smaller scope and close-in focus makes it feel more intimate and realistic than The 100, even as its ensemble experiences similar life-and-death ethical dilemmas.

3%
Created by Pedro Aguilera
Produced by Boutique Filmes
First season released November 2016

Perhaps the most interesting series on this list is Brazil’s 3% (Netflix, 2017 to present), a vivid, dystopian allegory. In 3%’s post-collapse future, power and privilege are blatantly proceduralized by “the Process,” an annual rite of passage wherein twenty-year-olds participate in an escalating series of trials. The goal: to escape the slums of “the Inland” and find a brighter future on an island utopia. The injustices of this system aren’t lost on the contestants, especially the resourceful Michele (Bianca Comparato), whose brother passed the Process five years earlier. But agents of “the Cause” may have infiltrated the Process, with the aim of destroying this ruthless world order from within. The first season of 3% will feel familiar to seasoned science fiction viewers, a dramatized reality show flavored with the ingredients of its many genre progenitors, from Logan’s Run to Battle Royale to The Hunger Games and beyond. But these influences combine into something unique, and in fact the echoes of familiar genre ancestry actually enrich the show’s metaphorical feel. While its special effects are modest, it passes in an addictive blaze thanks to compelling situations and charismatic performances from Comparato, Michel Gomes, Vaneza Oliveira, Rodolfo Valente, and others. Its paradigm-shattering finale sets up a rather different second season, which begins slowly but gathers steam. I suspect many lured by the dazzling high-concept of the first year may find it difficult to shift gears, but it’s a worthy sequel that ambitiously undertakes to fill in worldbuilding backstory. Overall, it’s compulsively watchable, colorfully stylized, and powerfully messaged.

Fortitude
Created by Simon Donald
Produced by Fifty Fathoms and Tiger Aspect Productions
First season released January 2015

The international tour concludes with perhaps its most impressive stop, the British-produced, Iceland-shot Fortitude (Amazon Prime, 2015 to present), a stark, gritty, and unforgettable tale of murder, mayhem, and science fictional horror. Set on the fictional island of Fortitude—modeled loosely on Svalbard, an unincorporated territory of Norway—the series returns us once again to Lynchian small-town evil, but with an arctic twist. A peaceful island, Fortitude is populated by rugged expatriates from Scandinavia, England, and Russia, among other places. Its tiny police force, led by sheriff Dan Anderssen (Richard Dormer), typically doesn’t have much to do. But a brutal death—Fortitude’s first murder—is about to put them, and everyone else, to the test. Anderssen’s search for the truth, both challenged and aided by visiting detective Eugene Morton (the ever-stellar Stanley Tucci), will reveal more than just the killer’s identity. Fortitude’s breathtaking cinematography, intricate plot, rich worldbuilding, and superb international cast are chief among its many assets. But genre fans will find plenty to savor in its scientific mysteries and creepy ambience, which keep the viewer guessing as to the source of the community’s troubles: mundane or supernatural? Its mesh of Nordic noir procedural and Fringe-like skiffy intrigue makes for distinctly compelling viewing. Not for the weak of stomach, Fortitude’s first season is exemplary contemporary television, and its second continues the tradition strongly. Fans of Noah Hawley’s television projects Fargo and Legion will want to line up for this one, scheduled to conclude later this year with a four-episode final season.

The genre television scene has never been more robust, and instant streaming has led to a welcome influx of international content. Things are tough all over, it seems; perhaps there’s an opportunity out there for someone to provide us with a more hopeful and optimistic speculative vision. Until then, however, we can console ourselves with the generally high quality of our current options.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christopher East is a writer, editor, reviewer, and avid consumer of science fiction, fantasy, and spy fiction. His stories have been published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Cosmos, Interzone, Talebones, The Third Alternative, and a number of other speculative fiction publications. He’s attended the Clarion and Taos Toolbox writing workshops, and served for several years as the fiction editor for the futurism, science, and technology blog Futurismic. He blogs extensively about writing, fiction, film, television, music, comics, and more at www.christopher-east.com. Currently he lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works for an occupational and environmental health and safety consultancy.

Interview: P. Djèlí Clark

Christian A. Coleman | 2621 words

Born in New York and raised mostly in Houston, P. Djèlí Clark spent the formative years of his life in the homeland of his parents, Trinidad and Tobago. His writing has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Lightspeed, Tor.com, and print anthologies including Griots I and II, Steamfunk, Myriad Lands Volume 2, and Hidden Youth. He currently resides in a small castle in Hartford, Connecticut, with his wife, Danielle, and a rambunctious Boston terrier named Beres. Follow him on Twitter at @pdjeliclark and visit his website: pdjeliclark.wordpress.com.

Congratulations on the publication of The Black God’s Drums! This is such an exciting debut novella!

Thank you! I’m very grateful and excited to be published by Tor.com. I’ve mostly published short stories and a novelette or two, so it’s good to range out into something broader.

The Black God’s Drums of the title is a cannon that causes low-altitude atmospheric modification with powerful storms. We find out that it’s named for the orisha Shango, who’s associated with thunder, lightning, justice, dance, and virility. How did you come up with the idea of this kind of artillery?

Storms play such a devastating role in the history of the Caribbean—and more recently in Haiti. We ignore those most of the time, thinking of the Caribbean only as spaces of tranquility ready-made for our consumption. In the same way, we also ignore what shaped those geographic spaces: the destruction of its indigenous inhabitants and then the forced labor of millions of African slaves. We like our idyllic vistas of rum and sandy beaches, without remembering the horrors that formed them. I wanted to find a way to harness the terrible power of the storm (in its multiple meanings) and make it the focal point of divergence in this world. There’s also a history of early Europeans charging that African obeah and magic may have been responsible for calling down storms as retribution. It seemed a fitting choice.

The novella takes place in an alternate New Orleans during the Civil War. Thirteen-year-old Creeper has had her fill of the city and wants to earn a spot aboard Captain Ann-Marie’s airship Midnight Robber. To do this, she plans to earn the captain’s trust with information about a kidnapped Haitian scientist who’s invented the Black God’s Drums. What was the inspiration behind this fast-paced adventure story?

I’ve always been struck by the fact that steampunk is de facto alternate history, where a certain technology’s dominance changes the course of world events. I like to take that further and imagine spaces in these counterfactuals where the political and social power dynamics have also shifted. The Black God’s Drums has its origins in my attempts to imagine a steampunk Black Atlantic, one that cuts across traditional boundaries of nation-states and uses the skies as an alternate conduit of exchange comparable to the waterway. In this story, New Orleans is imagined as a transnational space, a port city tethered (as it was historically) both to the North American mainland and the larger Caribbean. In fact, the point of divergence in this world from our own is located in perhaps the most seminal event in the Black Atlantic: the Haitian Revolution. So, the story brings together the Age of Revolutions, African spirituality, Caribbean folklore, and the hybrid Afro-Creole cultures of New Orleans to weave a story of anti-slavery, resistance, airships, and orishas.

Would you say The Black God’s Drums is political because of all these elements you’re bringing together? I ask because you wrote in a blog post (bit.ly/2K8Z8ZY) that all your stories are political. This was in response to the Sad/Rabid Puppy calls for SF/F to return to “traditional storytelling.” Translation: “Depoliticize genre fiction by removing issues of race, gender, and sexuality.”

It centers the Haitian Revolution, so often silenced. That’s political in and of itself. I have no idea what “traditional storytelling” the puppies-with-the-sads are going on about. There’s nothing new or non-traditional about Ann-Marie’s having a queer identity, Creeper as a daring heroine, or diverse metropolitan spaces. That’s the world and storytelling as it’s been for-ever. So, part of the politics in my story is to really “trouble” these falsities of what the past looked like.

And looking at how you’ve woven African spirituality, Caribbean folklore, and the hybrid of New Orleans’ Afro-Creole cultures into the story, I see that the novella’s major theme is the African diaspora experience: slavery and the transport of African cultures to the Americas. It’s embodied in a line Creeper says at one point when calling out for help to Oya, the orisha she carries. “We change you gods wherever we bring you, make you into whatever we need . . . [Your people] remember you, even if they don’t always call you by name.”

Yeah, that’s it right there. Two-thirds of those who crossed the Atlantic during the formation of the “New World” were Africans. With the exception of the Spanish, all the European empires settled more Africans in the New World than Europeans until the nineteenth-century. That’s staggering when you think about it. It’s why you can find people of African descent and their influences from Canada to Argentina. Those who survived the voyages brought with them varied tongues and cultures, including religions. But none of that is static. Their cultures were changed by their experiences and adapted to their new lives, creating wholly new philosophies, cosmologies, technologies, music, and more. And it’s bi-directional. You look at something like Jazz, or Samba, or Calypso—all created in the “New World” by African descendants. Those same cultures later travel back across the waters, helping form things like Highlife or Afrobeat. That’s the Diaspora.

Let’s talk about your protagonists. I got a real kick out of the dynamic you set up between Creeper and Ann-Marie. Both carry orishas, they’re both headstrong and stubborn, and they’ve got something to learn from one another.

As the captain of the airship Midnight Robber, Ann-Marie embodies the spirit of Black freedom, mobility, and possibility in this alternate Atlantic. Creeper allowed me to explore New Orleans as an altered metropolis up-close, through the eyes of someone young, someone who wandered its streets and buildings, and was intimate with its many histories. It’s obvious that Ann-Marie knows the broader landscape of this world in ways that thirteen-year-old Creeper isn’t yet capable. Still, this is Creeper’s city. She’s had to struggle and grow up in it. She knows its many informal economies, conduits of information, and powerbrokers. And Ann-Marie needs her to succeed. Their similar traits, along with the orishas they carry, often lead them into conflict; but when you put them together, they’re unstoppable!

The protagonist in your Tor.com novelette “A Dead Djinn in Cairo” is named after early Egyptian feminist Huda el-Sha’arawi. And “The Mouser of Peter the Great,” your story in the anthology Hidden Youth, is inspired by Abram Gannibal, the great-grandfather of Alexander Pushkin. Is Ann-Marie based on a historical figure?

Ann-Marie is, in many ways, a composite of women in my Afro-Caribbean family—even the name. But if I had to give a historical figure that most inspired her, I’d say Sanité Bélair, a heroine of the Haitian Revolution who was a co-leader in a military rebellion against occupying French forces in 1802. She was executed along with her husband, but remains a folk hero of the Revolution in Haiti, where she’s even featured on a banknote.

I feel like another major character in this story is New Orleans. It’s as lively and dynamic a presence as Creeper and Ann-Marie are. What kind of research went into creating this alternate city flavored with West African mythology?

I spent time investigating historical and interdisciplinary scholarship that’s been done on the Black Atlantic and Haiti’s role within it, as well as the dynamic cultures that African slaves brought with them: C. L. R. James’s classic work The Black Jacobins (1938); Laurent Dubois’s Avengers of the New World (2004); Rashauna Johnson’s Slavery’s Metropolis (2016), to name a few. Also, don’t underestimate the usefulness of old city maps! Though I now live in New England, I have a Caribbean background and some familiarity with New Orleans. Fleshing out lots of the world came from those personal experiences as well as questioning family and friends in the region.

Why did you want to set the novella in New Orleans during the Civil War?

New Orleans, because its history forces you to disassociate preconceptions of it only as a city in “North America” and more of an entrepôt to the wider Caribbean. And it’s one of those spaces in the Black Atlantic most tied to Haiti, by history, culture, and people. The Civil War, because in this country it never seems that we’re ever over it.

I like how your New Orleans is a nonaligned territory where everyone across the political and racial spectrums coexists. We see this in the brothel Shá Rouj, where Creeper’s mother worked and where Confederate and Union soldiers are welcomed. And we see this in the convent The Sisters of the Sacred Family, a place of refuge for all women regardless of caste or color. I was wondering if you were imagining New Orleans as a multicultural, metropolitan utopia.

Right. I think you sum it up perfectly. In this world, New Orleans posits itself as neutral territory, because it can lay claim to all these different cultures and people who arrive within its borders—both by choice or force—and must now cobble together some semblance of co-existence. In a way, the New Orleans I’ve created is as imaginary a utopia as the one that is sold to us in tourist brochures. Shá Rouj may be this space where everyone can forget the outside world for a while, but there are still all these roiling conflicts beneath the surface. Joseph Roach, a scholar of performance studies, names New Orleans one of his “Cities of the Dead”—forged by these disparate strands into something fascinating and beautiful, but also tied to violent and destructive histories.

I’d be remiss for not mentioning that you have a background as a historian. Could you tell us a little about your doctoral work and how your area of study informed the writing of your novella?

My focus is on slavery and emancipation, as well as the Black Atlantic. So, lots of my exposure to research on those topics was highly informative in writing The Black God’s Drums.

For you, what are the similarities between speculating as a historian and as an SF/F writer, and what are some differences?

Speculating in history is still controversial. I mean, as historians, you have to do so. Yet it’s often the degree to which you carry it out. There’s a more traditional school that demands that hard concrete evidence. But that’s difficult if you want to get into the voices of marginalized people, like the enslaved. The archives are biased, often constructions of the colonial past. So, you have to turn to speculation. Not based on whims, but on what intersecting sources might reveal, what might be left out between the lines.

As a speculative fiction writer, of course, I’m allowed to unfetter those skills to a much greater degree. I recently wrote a story called “The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington” (bit.ly/2K9CKPV). It’s based on a notary in an account book by George Washington’s cousin, recording that the founding father “paid Negroes” for nine teeth in his possession. That’s it. Everything we thus far know about those nine teeth has to be drawn from our understanding of George Washington’s dental habits; the nature of teeth procurement in eighteenth-century America; the role of Black people in this enterprise of human body parts; etc. As a historian, that’s as far as I’d be allowed to speculate. As an SFF writer, I allowed my imagination to roam much farther, blending elements of the fantastic and the histories of slavery to get at the possible lives of the nine unnamed people to whom those teeth belonged.

When did you know that you wanted to write SF/F, and what do you enjoy about writing alternate history? What draws you to the genre?

I tried my hand at it when I was really young. I would always write stories here and there, for myself, my sister, my friends. But I didn’t really think I could do more until much later in life. My first forays were into secondary world fantasy. But I was always fascinated by alternate history. And it’s how I always thought about genres like steampunk. So, it wasn’t too much of a leap for me to merge the two. My fantasy background shows up in the fact that these alternate worlds I create almost always have some element of magic.

What are some of your favorite stories of alternate history or historical fiction? And who are some of the authors who inspired you to write The Black God’s Drums?

Steven Barnes’s Lion’s Blood series probably had the strongest influence. Before that, the alternate history I’d read was the baddies-take-over: “What if the Nazis had won” or the like. But Lion’s Blood was the first time I’d seen alternate history used to both rewrite the racial and social power dynamics of our world, and as a lens into our traumatic histories. Not alternate history, but Nalo Hopkinson’s short story “Fisherman” in Skin Folk was an inspiration of sorts. For reasons.

Are there any upcoming writing projects you can tell us about?

New projects? Like Johnny Tight-Lips from The Simpsons said: “I ain’t saying nothin!”

But seriously, I do have some contracts signed for short stories that’ll be announced when I can announce them. Plus, there’s another novella due out by Tor in 2019, The Haunting of Tram Car 015, this one set in the same world as “A Dead Djinn in Cairo.” In the meantime, I have a literary fantasy story out in a summer issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies called “A Tale of Woe” (bit.ly/2KlFkS9) readers might enjoy.

Is there anything else you’d like your readers to know about The Black God’s Drums?

It’s available on Amazon and other sellers for readers. Please take time to check it out. And thanks so much for this interview! Give a historian and writer space to ramble . . .

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Christian A. Coleman is a 2013 graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. He lives and writes in the Boston area. He tweets at @coleman_II.

Author Spotlight: Sarah Grey

Gordon B. White | 2245 words

All stories have a home planet, so where did this one come from? Since it deals with how humans bond with non-humans (be they machines or animals or something in between), was there a particular Human/Other relationship that initially sparked your interest?

When I wrote this, my partner had an adorable little grass-green Smartcar. It was the first car he’d ever personally owned, and it was precisely his style—tiny, efficient, with headlights and grill that made it look happy. It drove like a toy and struggled to maintain freeway speeds, which was fine because my partner is inflexibly obedient toward speed limits. He adored that little car and decorated it with cute bumper stickers and stuffed animals.

At the same time, we have cats. Many cats. A truly unreasonable quantity of cats, in fact, for one household. As is often the case with cats, they do not regard themselves as pets; at best they are roommates. They are untrainable, hostile toward change, and complain about our habits as much as we complain about theirs—usually by yowling in the middle of the night.

It occurred to me that the emotional bond my partner had with his car seemed as strong as his bond with any of our cats. The car’s worth lay in the fact that it was a perfect fit for his transportation needs, and at the same time, reflected his personality: cheerful, approachable, efficient, fun, and always moving slowly enough to enjoy the scenery.

Cats, on the other hand, are purely their own.

Of course, the cats are alive, and if push came to shove, he would absolutely have chosen any of the cats over his car.

But a few months ago, my partner was rear-ended and his little car was totaled. He commented on the absurdity of experiencing grief over an inanimate object—it’s just a car, after all. Our insurer covered it, and we have a second vehicle. So what if his little car is now a pile of parts? But he isn’t planning to replace it, and he doesn’t smile anymore when he drives.

This story’s universe is brimming with life. From the commerce-worshipping Henza, to the ships that make up the mining fleets in far away systems, to Jeri’s sea-centric upbringing with traces back to Old Earth, everything feels incredibly well established. Does this story take place within a galaxy that you’ve written about before, or perhaps that you have plans to further explore? What part of developing this setting did you enjoy the most?

I haven’t written about this galaxy before, but it’s certainly something I’d like to explore. I found myself wondering why Jeri left Icara, for example. Was it personal? Did she not have the means to continue her family’s trade? And if not, why not? Did she lack status, or capital, or something else entirely? Or was there some sort of social or political upheaval—an invasion, a rebellion, a coup? There are plenty of stories on Icara, I think, and personally, I’m drawn to the ocean as both a setting and a thematic device.

While writing this particular story, however, I was most intrigued by the Henza. In recent years, there’s been a growing alliance between religious and capitalist entities, and there’s a lot of potential conflict there. If faith becomes a for-profit business, to whom is it loyal? Supreme beings, or a bottom line? In this story, the Henza have simply unified the two concepts; profit herself is a goddess. But that’s an extreme position. At some point, somewhere in this galaxy, someone of a deeper, more focused faith will directly challenge the Henza.

A particularly striking aspect of the narrative voice is how Jeri’s Icaran heritage and upbringing among fishers still influences how she perceives the world. We see this in the vivid swirling colors on Cleo’s walls as the ship tries to soothe Jeri and the tight third-person narration’s use of fish- and sea life-based metaphors. How did you settle on using this particular cluster of imagery? Did you draw on personal experience, research, or just plain old imagination?

Before I knew Jeri’s background, I knew she wasn’t someone who felt at home in space. She found it dark, and deeply lonely. She was the sort of person who, if she wasn’t part of a crew, would come to personally need Cleo, even more than other pilots might.

On the other hand, I knew she was someone who chose a life in space, so it couldn’t be completely intolerable for her. She was someone who could handle hard work, long voyages, and a confined living space surrounded by endless, unsurvivable emptiness.

It became clear pretty quickly that she was from an ocean planet, that she’d been born into a culture that survived by drawing resources, meaning, and comfort from the sea. But she’d also left behind a close-knit matriarchal social structure. Cleo helped fill that void.

I grew up in a small fishing town near the ocean, so much of the imagery—the whirling schools of tiny fish, the color of spilled fish blood—I drew from that. I also love the tropics, so the weather and the moon at night came from a beach somewhere in Costa Rica. And, in the interests of full disclosure, Moana is my favorite Disney princess. But I like to think imagination played a pretty big role, too.

One of the key themes here seems to be the use and misuse of empathy. Both the Henza’s krosuta and Cleo’s reactive programming utilize increased emotional recognition, although the Henza use it to craft self-serving deals while the Juno ships comfort their crews. Possibly as a result, captains cry when selling a Juno, but Henza customers often run and usually end up scarred. Is there something for readers to pull out in how the same skill used towards different ends leads to these divergent outcomes? Does the Henza worldview of percentages, advantages, and disadvantages—an approach that initially seduces Jeri but which she ultimately rejects—neglect to account for the human heart? Or do they use that knowledge to cruelly profit?

The Henza worldview definitely accounts for the human heart, but as another avenue for exploitation and profit.

You could say that Juno Corporation, in designing the Mooncarver class, was also exploiting a human tendency toward sentimentality. After all, Cleo’s programming goes well beyond a comfortable ambient temperature and effective locks. It’s clear the ship is engineered to promote a very human emotional bond with the captain and crew. A crewmember who flies on a Mooncarver, when she earns enough to purchase her own ship, will look fondly on the bonds she had, and likely purchase her Mooncarver in turn.

The difference, however, is that Juno doesn’t harm its customers; the relationship is mutually beneficial. Juno profits from the Mooncarver’s emotive-adaptive programming, sure, but captains and crew get a much more user-friendly experience—a ship that doesn’t just respond to commands, but adapts to their physical and emotional needs, and becomes a friend. This, I think, is why Cleo seems so canine: a Juno ship is very much like the once-wolves that evolved into dogs. They fit neatly into the human social and emotional framework, and ideally, both parties benefit.

The Henza, on the other hand, treat sentimentality as a weakness that opens the door to either slaughter or enslavement, whichever is more profitable. Like the Juno Corporation, the Henza use empathy as a tool to profit—but the difference lies in the regard they extend to human emotion, once they’ve detected it.

That isn’t to say that the Juno Corporation is ethically unimpeachable, of course; it’s looking after its own profit, after all. For all the empathy in this galaxy, it is still inherently profit-driven; there’s little altruism. It’s easy to become detached and cynical, like the krosuta dealer.

In a way, Jeri’s escape is an affirmation of the intrinsic value of empathy and of deep emotional connections, even at the expense of profits, and even if it means risking one’s life.

Throughout the story, Jeri’s conscious and subconscious desires are reflected back at her by the surrounding world. While there are hints that the Henza may have been playing Jeri all along, it was Jeri’s desire to trade for an inchoate “advantage” that the Henza initially capitalized on. In the end, Cleo’s “suggestion” that they run to the Luric system could be read as the adaptive programming merely picking up on and repeating Jeri’s subconscious desire to flee. Condemned to a life on the run, does Jeri pay a penalty for not knowing herself deeply enough at the outset? Or might her newfound clarity of priorities and rejection of materialism have been worth the price?

One of the things I find fascinating about free-market capitalism is that it depends on two concepts, rational self-interest and perfect information, neither of which exist among actual humans.

If a single human—or group of humans—in a free-market economy managed to cultivate reliable access to accurate information and an ability to act solely in an ethically detached, self-interested fashion, they’d have a tremendous advantage over other humans, and would end up obscenely wealthy.

They’d also be downright evil.

And that’s precisely what the Henza have accomplished. Their power, including their control of ports and trade and their dominance over local civilizations, gives them access to more information than anyone else. The krosuta powder enhances that access to information—they can effectively read an individual’s emotional state and thereby determine their motives. Moreover, the krosuta blunts their own emotional responses, leaving them better equipped to act with total detached self-interest.

Someone like Jeri is a prime mark for the Henza. She thinks she’s a rational actor with solid information: She knows her profit margins and she knows what she can gain, financially, by letting Cleo go. She also trusts the contract she’s signed is the full extent of her deal with the Henza—that they are negotiating in good faith and have given her complete access to all relevant information. She assumes that because the contract is binding, it can be taken at face value.

But Jeri is neither rational nor informed. She’s human, and she doesn’t partake of krosuta; she forms deep emotional and social bonds, and those color her choices. She also takes only contract work, through larger corporations, guaranteeing that what information she does possess—about the Henza, about local social structures, about anything not related directly to trade routes—is limited.

In the end, Jeri’s decision to flee reflects her essential humanity. She realizes she is trapped, that she has been manipulated. She understands, to some extent, the insurmountable advantage the Henza have over her and others. She can’t accurately calculate her chances of success ahead of time, and any purely rational response to the circumstances leaves her enslaved. She can’t fight the Henza and win.

And so her response is visceral and deeply human: She runs.

But she only does so at Cleo’s behest. Cleo, though inanimate and far from human, prompts Jeri to act in the most human way possible.

Does Jeri pay a penalty for not knowing herself?

Definitely. Will it be worth it, in the end? That might depend on whether she breaks through the blockade, how far she gets, where she ends up—and, being human, she has no way to know all that in advance. But she does have her best friend at her side, and that’s a pretty big reward in itself.

What’s coming up next on your horizon? Beyond any concrete projects or plans, are there any new and uncharted areas that you’re eager to explore?

I’ve been traveling a lot lately. When you travel, you pick up threads of experience you would otherwise never have encountered; you dig through layers of reality beyond the obvious, and sometimes those layers sparkle with the unexpected. For example: The best tomatoes I’ve ever tasted were served, of all places, in mid-December in Iceland—where they have volcanic soil, abundant freshwater and geothermic electricity, and neat rows of greenhouses glowing warm in the winter dark. It defied every assumption I’d ever made about Iceland, or about tomatoes. But it also made perfect sense.

I’m working on several short stories and a novel at the moment, and as I’m drafting, I’m looking for those surprises—the rich fruits on an icy planet—and asking how they got there, what happened to make it possible, who benefits and who suffers. How, but also why. There’s almost always a good story in those details.

And personally, I find it’s a lot more fun to ask these questions in other galaxies, or other times, or other dimensions. Our reality’s become rather tiresome and predictable lately. And on some level, science fiction has always been a stand-in for travel, a ticket to someplace too distant for a simple plane flight.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Gordon B. White has lived in North Carolina, New York, and the Pacific Northwest. He is a 2017 graduate of the Clarion West Writing Workshop, and his fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in venues such as Daily Science Fiction, A Breath from the Sky: Unusual Stories of Possession, Nightscript Vol. 2, and the Bram Stoker Award® winning anthology Borderlands 6. Gordon is also an Assistant Editor with Kraken Press and conducts reviews and interviews for various outlets. You can find him online at gordonbwhite.com or on Twitter at @GordonBWhite.

Author Spotlight: Manuel Gonzales

Jude Griffin | 440 words

What was the seed for this story?

The idea for the story came when my wife and I—before we were married—got a dog together, our first dog together, and he was a rescue and a freakazoid when we first got him, and how strange it was suddenly sharing a house with another sentient creature that seemed to take up its own space but also seemed to be constantly watching us, observing us, judging us—he wasn’t, but it felt like he was—and so that is where the strange sense of benign paranoia came out. But once there’s a benign paranoia, it usually leads me to aggression and danger, so I followed the story in that direction, too.

How did the creatures evolve over the course of writing the story?

They became actual creatures over the course of writing the story. When I first wrote the early drafts, they weren’t actual creatures—I mean, they were, but I didn’t have any idea what they looked like, how they acted, what their gravity and physicality was—I just hoped the ambience of the story would fill in any missing gaps, and to an extent, I still rely on ambient mood for some of that, but after a while I realized I needed to do something to make them solid, physical beings, and so I started to picture them as small but with overly large eyes, and everything else small but sharp about them.

Whose horror writing do you enjoy most?

I like the traditionals—Stephen King, Clive Barker. King’s son, Joe Hill, has done some good work that makes me all spine-tingly. The scarier SF writers. I’ve always felt a little let down by H.P. Lovecraft’s story construction because, in the end, it’s always a bit of a whiff to me. Like, he sets up this stunningly frightening conceit but then the ending doesn’t pay off the way I hoped as an author. I do that myself, I’m sure. Ending something in horror is hard business. What’s funny, though, is that I’m rarely actually frightened when reading a horror. Like, watching horror, the jump scares work, but reading horror, even psychological horror, it’s more a fascination and a compulsion to dig deeper into these weird situations more than fear that drives me as a reader.

Any news or projects you want to share?

I’m working on a new novel and another new novel but I don’t have anything to say about them yet. Sorry!

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Jude Griffin is an envirogeek, writer, and photographer. She 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: Alex Irvine

Laurel Amberdine | 928 words

The POV of a character addressing the reader as “you” is one of my favorites, and I don’t see it in fiction very often. How did you decide on this point of view?

I’ve loved that mode since I first ran across it, either in epistolary stories or Choose Your Own Adventure novels.

It’s a tricky thing to manage because you’re making a very specific demand of the reader right off the bat. This mode of direct address implicates the reader in the story, and if the reader resists that, the story falls apart right away. So the trick, I guess, is to make the reader curious enough to overcome that potential resistance. Then, by the time the story makes a turn, it’s too late for the reader to back out.

I thought it was important for this story because I wanted the reader to feel implicated in what’s happening, the same way we are all implicated in real-world things we might not spend too much time thinking about.

I really liked how the cheery initial tone gave a sense of instant foreboding. Did the voice come with the story when you first started writing it, or did it take a few tries to work it out?

I had the story’s basic conceit in my head for a long time before I figured out the best way to tell it. Then I think “The Cask of Amontillado” floated through my head, and the lawyer’s character came to life. This story isn’t the same kind of unreliable narrator tale as “Amontillado,” but what I took away from that story was the narrator’s absolute certainty about what he says and believes, contrasting violently with the reader’s emerging understanding. So thanks, Poe!

I have to ask . . . I noticed the reader stand-in is given the name “John” which matches the name of a certain editor here at Lightspeed. Was that a coincidence?

It is a coincidence. I chose that name both for its popularity and its slang association with . . . well, I don’t want to spoil the story in case readers are coming to this Q&A before reading the story. (JJA, honest, I meant no aspersion!)

What is your typical process for writing a short story? Did “The Atonement Path” match your usual pattern?

My typical process for writing a short story begins when something out in the world pings this part of my brain where stimuli turn into story responses. Sometimes that’s a news item, sometimes it’s a song lyric, or an overheard snatch of conversation . . . could be anything. But once that ping happens, the initial idea or element of the story sits in my head for a long time. Even years. Usually I write down a sentence or two in a notebook. Then over time, I return to the initial idea once in a while, seeing if it’s grown into anything. I used to push ideas harder, but I’ve learned to let them sit until I really have them figured out beyond the initial conceit. Then I start writing. If I’m lucky, and have let the idea mature, the story gets written pretty quickly. If I’m having trouble with the story, usually that’s a sign that there’s something I haven’t understood yet: character, voice, approach. So I leave the story alone for a while when that happens. Overall, this process can take a couple of months or ten years. Either way is fine with me. I’ve got plenty of ideas in various stages of conception.

“The Atonement Path” fit the process insofar as I first had the idea years ago, after reading an article about abuses in juvenile justice. I got the title right away, but it took a long time to find the voice of the story. The first line popped into my head one day last winter, and once I wrote it down, all I had to do was figure out who was saying it, and to whom. Then I had the rest of the story figured out in a couple of days.

What else do you do to keep busy when you’re not writing?

Well, I have four kids, which is enough to keep anyone busy. Whenever I’m not at a practice or game or rehearsal or lesson, I like to get outside and do a little hiking, fool around in the garden with a ballgame on the radio, catch up on the kinds of projects you’re always in the middle of when you live in a 170-year-old house . . .

What are you working on right now?

I’ve got some other short stories cooking, and a couple of novels. A graphic-novel history of baseball called The Comic Book Story of Baseball just came out in May, with beautiful art by Tomm Coker and C.P. Smith. I finished a novel last year, my first original novel since Buyout, called Across the Water Is Always North. On the licensed front, I’m working on a couple of games—Marvel Battle Lines and The Walking Dead: Road to Survival. Also a few different comic projects, both creator-owned and licensed. Halo: Collateral Damage is just out. Lots going on, which is just how I like it.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Laurel Amberdine was raised by cats in the suburbs of Chicago. She’s good at naps, begging for food, and turning ordinary objects into toys. She currently lives in San Francisco where she works for Locus Magazine. Find her on Twitter at @amberdine.

Author Spotlight: Kate Elliott

Laurel Amberdine | 866 words

How does this story fit with your other works?

The story is set in the universe of the Spiritwalker Trilogy (Cold Magic et al, published 2010-2013), aka Afro-Celtic post-Roman Ice Age Regency-style fantasy adventure with Phoenician spies, hungry sharks, revolutionary sentiments, and lawyer dinosaurs. Over the last few years, I’ve been writing standalone short fiction set in this alternate history fantasy world to fill in events and details that fall outside the timeline of the trilogy itself.

Can you tell us what inspired you to write this story in particular?

Some months ago, a call went out for stories “celebrating masculinity” (you may recall the discussion that raced around Twitter and other spots online). As a feminist who has spent all of her career centering women in epic stories of adventure, I wanted to do my part. This story is a departure for me, featuring (as it does) only male characters (women are briefly mentioned but never seen). The main character, Magnus Diarisso, is in my opinion a fine role model for positive masculinity in a patriarchal, class-conscious, hierarchical society.

I really enjoyed the demonstration of contrasting masculine attitudes in this story, the two old men, one flashy and proud, one subtle and proud, the sensitive and vain teen, and the other insensitive and vain teens. And all of them in fear of the wise old women—ha! Did you set out to explore and contrast these kinds of common male attitudes or did that just happen in the course of writing?

The culture and characters already existed, as it were (in previous publications). So although this story takes place before the Spiritwalker Trilogy, I relied on my knowledge of the worldbuilding I had already set up for the larger cultural and familial relationships and attitudes. And while I did not deliberately set out to contrast the varying masculine attitudes, the characters were already there, with all that built-in conflict, which perhaps is why this story called to me.

Architecture and woodworking are both presented with authentic detail. Are you familiar or involved in either of those fields, or did you do research for this story?

Thank you! Alas, I have no carpentry training, although I have used a saw, hatchet, axe, and hammer back in the day. I had already done research on architecture (it’s a thing of mine), and for the second two Spiritwalker books I researched early nineteenth-century woodworking techniques and tools because they were important for the story. So I used that research as well as some very handy YouTube videos to decide on what details I could reasonably highlight. On this subject, however, I want to mention Juliet E. McKenna’s The Green Man’s Heir, a contemporary fantasy whose main character is a young (half dryad) man who works as a carpenter. The carpentry details are just fabulous. She really knows her stuff.

I loved young Andevai’s attitude toward pursuing perfection for its own sake. And while that is an excellent (if rare) quality in any vocation, I definitely sensed a message for the aspiring writers out there. Did you have that in mind? How important is that kind of self-motivation to a writing career?

No, that aspect of message never crossed my mind until this question! I specifically wrote the story to stand alone and be readable by people who have no familiarity with the Spiritwalker Trilogy (and of course by Spiritwalker fans as well). But in all honesty, I wanted to write the story to fill in some backstory of one of the major characters in the trilogy. In other words, I already knew Andevai’s character quite well from the novels, so my goal was simply to show him as he would have been at sixteen. In that sense, his situation is secondary to Magnus’s journey, which is the focus of the tale.

Having said that, I agree wholeheartedly that self-motivation and the willingness to keep working to get better are keys to a writing career, so if that is a message readers take from the story, then I’m good with it.

What recent and forthcoming works of yours can fans look for?

My most recent works are:

The M19 story arc for Magic: The Gathering, an origin story for one of the game’s biggest villains.

The Court of Fives trilogy, a YA fantasy I call “American Ninja Warrior meets Little Women in a setting inspired by Cleopatra’s Egypt.”

Black Wolves, epic fantasy with a bit of Jane Austen’s Persuasion and a bit of Dragon Age, whose main character is a snarky older woman in a position of authority who has had enough of your shit.

Forthcoming:

From Random House, “Bloom,” a story in Gardner Dozois’s final edited anthology, The Book of Magic. This tale is also set in the Spiritwalker Universe and, oddly enough, also features an older male POV.

From Tor Books, 2019:

Genderbent Alexander the Great as space opera.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Laurel Amberdine was raised by cats in the suburbs of Chicago. She’s good at naps, begging for food, and turning ordinary objects into toys. She currently lives in San Francisco where she works for Locus Magazine. Find her on Twitter at @amberdine.

Coming Attractions, August 2018

The Editors | 212 words

Coming up in September, in Lightspeed . . .

It’s our 100th issue, and we’re celebrating by giving you double the fiction—and all by Lightspeed classic writers you’ve come to love over the last eight years.

We have original science fiction by Ken Liu (“The Explainer”), Sofia Samatar (“Hard Mary”), Carrie Vaughn (“Harry and Marlowe and the Secret Island of Ahomana”), Adam-Troy Castro (“The Last to Matter”), and Vylar Kaftan (“Her Monster, Whom She Loved”). We also have some exciting SF reprints.

Our original fantasy stories are by Maria Dahvana Headley (“You Pretend Like You Never Met Me, And I’ll Pretend Like I Never Met You”), Kat Howard (“A Brief Guide to the Seeking of Ghosts”), Sam J. Miller (“Conspicuous Plumage”), Genevieve Valentine (“Abandonware”), and Cadwell Turnbull (“Jump”). We’re also lining up some terrific fantasy reprints.

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

For our ebook readers, we also have our usual ebook-exclusive novella reprint and a book excerpt.

We couldn’t be more excited about this special celebration of what makes Lightspeed great. Thanks so much for reading, and be sure not to miss us next month!

Stay Connected

The Editors

Here are a few URLs you might want to check out or keep handy if you’d like to stay apprised of everything new and notable happening with Lightspeed:

Website

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

Destroy Projects

www.destroysf.com

Newsletter

www.lightspeedmagazine.com/newsletter

RSS Feed

www.lightspeedmagazine.com/rss-2

Podcast Feed

www.lightspeedmagazine.com/itunes-rss

Twitter

www.twitter.com/LightspeedMag

Facebook

www.facebook.com/LightspeedMagazine

Subscribe

www.lightspeedmagazine.com/subscribe

Subscriptions and Ebooks

The Editors

Subscriptions: If you enjoy reading Lightspeed, please consider subscribing. It’s a great way to support the magazine, and you’ll get your issues in the convenient ebook format of your choice. All purchases from the Lightspeed store are provided in epub, mobi, and pdf format. A 12-month subscription to Lightspeed includes 96 stories (about 480,000 words of fiction, plus assorted nonfiction). The cost is just $35.88 ($12 off the cover price)—what a bargain! For more information, visit lightspeedmagazine.com/subscribe.

Ebooks & Bundles: We also have individual ebook issues available at a variety of ebook vendors ($3.99 each), and we now have Ebook Bundles available in the Lightspeed ebookstore, where you can buy in bulk and save! We currently have a number of ebook bundles available: Year One (issues 1-12), Year Two (issues 13-24), Year Three (issues 25-36), the Mega Bundle (issues 1-36), and the Supermassive Bundle (issues 1-48). Buying a bundle gets you a copy of every issue published during the named period. So if you need to catch up on Lightspeed, that’s a great way to do so. Visit lightspeedmagazine.com/store for more information.

• • • •

All caught up on Lightspeed? Good news! We also have lots of ebooks available from our sister-publications:

Nightmare Ebooks, Bundles, & Subscriptions: Like Lightspeed, our sister-magazine Nightmare (nightmare-magazine.com) also has ebooks, bundles, and subscriptions available as well. For instance, you can get the complete first year (12 issues) of Nightmare for just $24.99; that’s savings of $11 off buying the issues individually. Or, if you’d like to subscribe, a 12-month subscription to Nightmare includes 48 stories (about 240,000 words of fiction, plus assorted nonfiction), and will cost you just $23.88 ($12 off the cover price).

Fantasy Magazine Ebooks & Bundles: We also have ebook back issues—and ebook back issue bundles—of Lightspeed’s (now dormant) sister-magazine, Fantasy. To check those out, just visit fantasy-magazine.com/store. You can buy each Fantasy bundle for $24.99, or you can buy the complete run of Fantasy Magazine— all 57 issues—for just $114.99 (that’s $10 off buying all the bundles individually, and more than $55 off the cover price!).

Support Us on Patreon or Drip, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard

The Editors

If you’re reading this, then there’s a good chance you’re a regular reader of Lightspeed and/or Nightmare. We already offer ebook subscriptions as a way of supporting the magazines, but we wanted to add an additional option to allow folks to support us, thus we’ve launched a Drip (d.rip/john-joseph-adams) and a Patreon (patreon.com/JohnJosephAdams).

TL;DR Version

If you enjoy Lightspeed and Nightmare and my anthologies, our Patreon and Drip pages are a way for you to help support those endeavors by chipping in a buck or more on a recurring basis. Your support will help us bring bigger and better (and more) projects into the world.

Why Patreon and Drip?

There are no big companies supporting or funding the magazines, so the magazines really rely on reader support. Though we offer the magazines online for free, we’re able to fund them by selling ebook subscriptions or website advertising.

While we have a dedicated ebook subscriber base, the vast majority of our readers consume the magazine online for free. If just 10% of our website readers pledged just $1 a month, the magazines would be doing fantastically well. So we thought it might be useful to have an option like Drip and Patreon for readers who maybe haven’t considered supporting the magazine, or who maybe haven’t because they don’t have any desire to receive the ebook editions—or who would be glad to pay $1 a month, but not $3 (the cost of a monthly subscriber issue of Lightspeed).

Though Lightspeed and Nightmare are separate entities, we decided to create a single “publisher” Drip and Patreon account because it seemed like it would be more efficient to manage just one page on each platform. Plus, since I sometimes independently publish works using indie-publishing tools (as described above), we thought it would be good to have a single place where folks could come to show their support for such projects.

Basically, we wanted to create a crowdfunding page where, if you enjoy my work as an editor, and you want to contribute a little something to help make it easier for us to produce more cool projects, then our Drip or Patreon are the place to do that.

What Do I Get Out of Being a Backer or Patron?

Well, you get the satisfaction of helping to usher the creation of cool new short fiction projects into the world! Plus, the more support we get, the better we can make the magazines and compensate our authors and staff. By becoming a supporter via Patreon or Drip, you help fund our growth and continued publication of two award-winning magazines. Of course, if you’re already one of our ebook subscribers (thank you!), you are already supporting us. This is for those who prefer to read the issues each month on our free websites, or wish to support our efforts more generally.

By becoming a supporter, you are also bestowed a title, such as Dragonrider, or Space Wizard, or Savior of the World and/or Universe, thus making you instantly the envy of all your friends.

Thank You!

If you’ve read this far, thanks so much. We hope you’ll consider becoming a backer on Patreon or Drip. Those URLs again are d.rip/john-joseph-adams and patreon.com/JohnJosephAdams.

Thanks in advance for your time. We look forward to hopefully being able to make the magazines—and my other publishing endeavors—even better with the support of people like you.

About the Lightspeed Team

The Editors

Publisher/Editor-in-Chief

John Joseph Adams

Managing/Associate Editor

Wendy N. Wagner

Associate Publisher/Director of Special Projects

Christie Yant

Assistant Publisher

Robert Barton Bland

Reprint Editor

Rich Horton

Podcast Producer

Stefan Rudnicki

Podcast Editor/Host

Jim Freund

Art Director

John Joseph Adams

Assistant Editor

Laurel Amberdine

Editorial Assistant

Jude Griffin

Reviewers

Arley Sorg

LaShawn Wanak

Chris Kluwe

Carrie Vaughn

Christopher East

Violet Allen

Copy Editor

Dana Watson

Proofreaders

Anthony R. Cardno

Devin Marcus

Webmaster

Jeremiah Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

The Editors

If you enjoy reading Lightspeed (and/or Nightmare), you might also enjoy these works edited by John Joseph Adams:

ANTHOLOGIES

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 1: The End is Nigh (with Hugh Howey)

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 2: The End is Now (with Hugh Howey)

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 3: The End Has Come (with Hugh Howey)

Armored

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 (with Joe Hill)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016 (with Karen Joy Fowler)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 (with Charles Yu)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018 (with N.K. Jemisin) [Oct. 2018]

Brave New Worlds

By Blood We Live

Cosmic Powers

Dead Man’s Hand

Epic: Legends Of Fantasy

Federations

The Improbable Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes

HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!! and Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects

Lightspeed: Year One

The Living Dead

The Living Dead 2

Loosed Upon the World

The Mad Scientist’s Guide To World Domination

Operation Arcana

Other Worlds Than These

Oz Reimagined (with Douglas Cohen)

A People’s Future of the United States (with Victor LaValle) [Feb. 2019]

Press Start to Play (with Daniel H. Wilson)

Robot Uprisings (with Daniel H. Wilson)

Seeds of Change

Under the Moons of Mars

Wastelands

Wastelands 2

The Way Of The Wizard

What the #@&% Is That? (with Douglas Cohen)

NOVELS and COLLECTIONS

Beacon 23 by Hugh Howey

Shift by Hugh Howey

Dust by Hugh Howey

Bannerless by Carrie Vaughn

Sand by Hugh Howey

Retrograde by Peter Cawdron

Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories by Hugh Howey

Creatures of Will and Temper by Molly Tanzer

The City of Lost Fortunes by Bryan Camp

The Robots of Gotham by Todd McAulty

The Wild Dead by Carrie Vaughn

The Spaceship Next Door by Gene Doucette

In the Night Wood by Dale Bailey

Creatures of Want and Ruin by Molly Tanzer

Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones by Micah Dean Hicks

The Chaos Function by Jack Skillingstead

Upon a Burning Throne by Ashok K. Banker

Gather the Fortunes by Bryan L. Camp

The Unfinished Land by Greg Bear

Visit johnjosephadams.com to learn more about all of the above.