by Crystalline Sphere Publishing
Crystalline Sphere Publishing - Science Fiction / Fantasy
Crystalline Sphere Publishing
crystallinesphere.com
Copyright (C)2004 by Crystalline Sphere Publishing
NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment.
How Do You Get the Job You Want? editorial by David M. Switzer
Tickling the Siroko's Chin by E. L. Chen
Granvort, the Discount Wizard by R. E. Mendel
Interview with Peter Watts by James Schellenberg and David M. Switzer
Last Request by Steven Mohan, Jr.
Dirt Roads and Robots by Will McIntosh
The SF of Ursula K. Le Guin review by James Schellenberg
Anna's Implants by Marissa K. Lingen
Publisher Crystalline Sphere Publishing
Editor David M. Switzer
Contributing Editor Michael Felczak
Cover Artist Matt Stawicki
Challenging Destiny (ISSN 1206-6656), Number 19, December 2004. Copyright (c) 2004 by Crystalline Sphere Publishing. All rights reserved by the individual authors and illustrators. All correspondence: Challenging Destiny, R. R. #6 St. Marys, Ontario Canada N4X 1C8. Email: csp@golden.net. Web site: challengingdestiny.com.
I remember learning in Psych 101 that an interview is not the best way to find the best person for the job. In fact, it's not much better than picking a random person off the street. Yet many positions are filled based on an interview (we humans are nothing if not stubborn). If you have the time, you could volunteer for a company in the hopes that they will then hire you—that worked for one friend of mine. If you have the inclination and ability, you could create your own job—maybe it's never occurred to you to start your own business, but you might want to give it some thought.
But I'm going to assume that you want a job at a company or organization. Looking for a job is not fun, but sometimes it's what you've got to do. Whether your employer has foolishly decided to let you go or you've decided it's time to find something better, the process can be extremely frustrating. I've got some tips I learned recently that I think will make things go more smoothly.
For more information on choosing a career, searching for a job, and succeeding in an interview, I highly recommend What Color Is Your Parachute? by Richard N. Bolles (also see www.jobhuntersbible.com). The most startling piece of information in this book is that the methods people most commonly use to find a job are the least effective. Answering ads, sending out resumes, and going to an agency do work for some people—but very few. For example, Bolles says mailing out resumes “by the bushel” leads to a job for 8 out of every 100 job-hunters who try it.
The most effective way to find a job is to figure out what company you'd like to work for, figure out who at that company has the power to hire you, and go there and speak to them. This obviously takes work—but just ask yourself how badly you want to find a job sooner rather than later. Bolles says, “This method, faithfully followed, leads to a job for 86 out of every 100 job-hunters who try it."
Other things you should be doing are asking friends and relatives for job leads, and using the placement office at the school you attended. It's tough out there, and you need all the help you can get.
Nobody likes rejection, and not getting a job makes you feel pretty lousy. You may feel angry about the situation, and if so you need to deal with that anger. Find someone you can talk to, and try to look ahead to the future rather than back to the past. While you're looking for a job, make sure you do the things that you need to do to keep your spirits up. One thing you might do is volunteer for an organization you believe in.
Finding a job might take longer than you think, so you should realize that and prepare for it at the outset. Bolles says, “one out of every three becomes an unsuccessful job-hunter simply because they abandon their search.” Don't give up.
I tried to get a job the old-fashioned way, and I'm guessing many of you will too, so here are some tips on three aspects of the process: resumes, cover letters, and interviews. My #1 tip is: be specific. Tell the employer what you've done in the past that will show them you can excel at this position.
Your resume will be looked at on average for 30 seconds to determine which pile to put it into. Be consistent with your formatting. Choose a serif font (like Times New Roman) because it's easier to read. Bold headings to make them stand out. Avoid underlining as it's harder to read.
The first thing on your resume should be your “career objective,” which should merely be the title of the job you're currently applying for—this is just because employers may be hiring for more than one position.
The second thing on your resume should be your “summary of qualifications,” tailored for the job you're currently applying for. Put the most important thing first—determine what's most important by reading the job description carefully. Tell them the number of years of experience you have, and indicate what relevant training and skills you have.
Group your work experience so that the most relevant experience is first. If it's all of equal relevance, use reverse chronological order. In as many of your bullets as you can, you should have these four things: a skill you demonstrated, a task you completed using that skill, a tool you used to do it, and the result. If the result is quantifiable, all the better. Most of your bullets should be one or two lines long.
Your resume should be one or two pages—your goal is to get an interview, in which you can fill in details. Don't repeat the same word too many times—use your thesaurus.
Something you should always send with your resume is a cover letter. Note that your resume has to grab the employer's attention, though—that's what they'll look at first. You should always address your cover letter to the person who's hiring, or at least their title if you can't find out their name.
You might start with a quotation from a former employer that's relevant to the position you want—something to grab their attention. Tell them why you're applying to their organization—let them see that you know something about them. Mention names of people you know who work at their organization, if any. Highlight things that are relevant to the position that don't fit in your resume, but don't repeat your resume.
You might have a tendency to write a bunch of statements that start with “I"—try to turn some of those around and start them with “You.” Keep it brief—again, the goal is to get an interview.
Most interviewers will decide within the first five minutes whether or not they're going to hire you. However they phrase their first question, you should tell them how your personality, academic career, work experience, and skills make you the perfect person for this position. And then expand on that later in the interview.
Maintain eye contact a “normal” amount of the time. Don't stare at them the whole time, but don't stare at the floor the whole time either. Watch your posture, and don't fidget. Employers will expect you to be nervous, though, so don't worry too much about it.
You need to have answers prepared for a wide variety of questions, because you don't have much time to think during the interview. You might write down your answers in order to remember them better—but don't read them during the interview.
The interviewer may even say something silly like “Tell me about yourself.” If they do, don't tell them your life story—just the parts that are relevant to this position. Keep your answers to 90 seconds—after that, the interviewers have stopped listening. Give them some reason to hire you instead of the other people they're interviewing.
Get a friend to pick some random interview questions from a list so that you can practise answering them. Ask your friend to time your answers and to point out if you say “uh” or “um."
Don't say anything negative about anyone, even if your former employer was the pointy-haired manager in Dilbert. Many interviewers are looking for any reason not to hire you—don't give them one. The bottom line is you want to show them you have the skills that will help solve their problems, whatever they are.
If you're asked for references, make sure you prepare your references for the call. Give them a copy of your resume, tell them about the position you want, and remind them of particular things you'd like them to mention.
“If you would work for another, this job interview process—competitive and unscientific though it may be—is your only doorway to getting a job,” says Bolles. “So, you're going to have to participate in the whole dumb and Neanderthal ritual, no matter how much it offends your simple common sense."
You are in control of your job search. If you want the best chance of finding a job sooner rather than later, read What Color Is Your Parachute?
Thanks to Tanya Gillert at the University of Waterloo.
Dave Switzer recently read all four of Dan Brown's novels—The Da Vinci Code was the best, combining non-stop action with intriguing ideas. He also read Starfish by Peter Watts, The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, and On by Adam Roberts—each of which made him want to read more by that author. He reread The Essential Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson—this must be the best comic strip ever made, because every single one is hilarious. Dave's favourite music to listen to these days is The Nylons’ Play On and Howard Shore's three Lord of the Rings soundtracks.
Cover artist From superhero comics to the illustrations of Frank Frazetta, Matt Stawicki has always had an interest in fantasy. Since beginning his professional career in 1992, he has created many images for a wide range of products and clients including video gamecovers, collectible card images, book covers, collectors plates and fantasy pocket knives. The paintings of noted illustrators like N.C. Wyeth, Norman Rockwell and Maxfield Parrish are among his traditional influences. Also the films of Walt Disney, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are sources of inspired imagery. In the last few years he has moved to doing most of his work in “digital paint."
Love is finding that the things you like best about yourself are not in you at all, but in the person who completes you.
—Orson Scott Card, Sarah
Isemi's hair drifted onto the sand in ragged handfuls.
Spring wind rolled against the hut's creaking walls, blustering, battering, demanding entrance. Isemi did not answer as her hands were busy shearing her scalp with the blunt blade of last season's knife. Perhaps if Kimabe had been there, she would have answered the summons, laughing raucously, throwing the door aside and welcoming the wind to her bared breast like a lover. But this season only Isemi tended the diving-hut and cut her own hair with clumsy cold-numbed and chapped fingers. She did not even have the baby's weight on her back to comfort her, nor the little fists tugging at her cropped hair to distract her from the spring morning's chill.
When the last tuft of hair had scattered onto the ground, Isemi slipped off her robe. She plucked a basket off of a rusted hook and stepped out of the diving-hut, squinting at the sudden brightness that flooded her eyes, shivering from the wind that buffeted her naked body. As she stumbled down the sandy slope—she was still discomfited by the soft, shifting terrain—she almost expected Kimabe's steadying hand on her shoulder, or to hear the baby's gurgle over the sound of carousing gulls and terns. But only the spring wind had come back this season to witness her return to the sea.
The water was as grey and colourless as a dead prawn, reflecting a sky choked with clouds. Foamy white waves rivalled the wind in their determination, curling, swaying, crashing, spitting up seaweed and broken shells on the smooth, wet sand before sliding back into the ocean. Isemi stood for a few heartbeats, knife in one hand, basket in the other. Goosebumps crawled over her arms, breasts, legs. Salt spray stung her eyes and lips. She gazed at the sunless horizon rather than the ocean itself, unable to bring herself to step over the water's threshold. The lambent edge of the surf dared to lick her bare toes like a wet flame.
She tucked the knife into the basket and set down her burden, anchoring it into the damp sand to prevent the greedy, swelling waves from dragging it under. Just one dive, she thought. Just one quick dive, without the basket, to ease in muscles weak from a long winter spent indoors.
An albatross dipped briefly below the horizon and then soared upward, above smoke-grey clouds, out of sight. The ocean licked the shore clean with angry laps. Isemi picked up the basket, turned around and returned to the hut.
What would she tell her father? Yesterday the blade had not been sharp enough to shear her hair; the day before that it had been too cold and the waves too furious. Last week the diving-hut had needed repairs, and its rotting timbers painted with a fresh coat of persimmon juice. Today she had no excuse other than her own reluctance. Cowardice, a voice snorted in the back of her head. It sounded suspiciously like Kimabe.
Perhaps she could tell him that she'd glimpsed a shark—or even the siroko. But she didn't want her excuses to spread unnecessary panic in the village. She imagined her stepmother's rough chuckling. “People here are suspicious of anything out of the ordinary,” Kimabe had once said. “They think your father a fool for wedding a stranger. A coarse, unattractive stranger."
She'd grinned, the smile splitting her plump, tanned face. “They think us crazy for diving. They think the siroko roams our little cove, because a drunken fool drowned years ago while hunting for the creature's magical pearl. They fear the water. Where I come from, water is as sacred as the land that yields rice, and the sky that gives you breath ... the water is our land, our sky—see?"
She had led Isemi to the churning face of the retreating surf, on which a cloudless sky was reflected, and through which Isemi could see abalone nestled between jagged rocks. “See? Everything one needs, the whole world, in water."
Isemi hoped that Kimabe, wherever she was, had everything she needed. She at least had the baby for company, if nothing else.
Isemi slid open the door to her father's house and saw two pairs of dainty lacquered sandals lined up on the straw mats. They had visitors. She heard a familiar, querulous voice, and sighed. Unwelcome visitors: Atsubo the herbwoman, and her daughter Hesiyake.
Isemi smoothed down her crumpled, sand-speckled robe and slid open the screen door to the sickroom.
Her father seemed thinner and paler than when she'd left him this morning; however, Atsubo's formidable presence would sap the joy out of anyone, young or old, ill or able-bodied. His rheumy eyes lit up when he saw her. She knelt by his pallet and felt his cold but affectionate hand on her bowed head.
“Atsubo-dan thinks I should marry her, so she can take care of me properly,” he said. Laughter forced itself from his lungs in desperate, wheezing gasps. “What do you think, eh? Would you like Hesiyake for a sister?"
I want my own sister back, she thought, remembering the baby's tiny fists tangled in her damp hair.
“One who laughs such on his sickbed is an impossible, stubborn fool, Momu-don,” Atsubo said. “One who believes she can change you would be tickling the siroko's chin."
Isemi's father wheezed again. “Well, what are you waiting for? Don't you enjoy a good challenge?"
He patted Isemi's shoulder and they shared a brief, secretive smile. Isemi stood up to greet their guests. Atsubo sniffed. Her daughter said nothing, only looked down at the hands clasped together under the wide, long sleeves of her layered robes. Hesiyake was pale and willow-slender, and her hair was swept up into an elaborate chignon. A tiny swatch of red silk peeked out of the loops of lacquered hair, indicating that she was of marriageable age.
Isemi was suddenly conscious that there was nothing between her clammy skin and the coarse, faded blue robe tied with a fisherman's straw rope. Her rope sash had seemed shorter this season, as her body was thick from muscle turning to fat. She didn't even have enough hair to sweep into the tiny bun that elderly grandmothers wore. Her toes were grey from sand and she felt the tightness of an imminent sunburn on her nose.
She and Hesiyake had played together when young, scampering through rice paddies with the other village children, chubby, tanned and half-naked. She knew what her old playmate must've been thinking, despite her downcast eyes—Isemi had never grown up.
Atsubo handed Isemi a small wooden box. “One has brought more herbs. Hesiyake?"
“One must drink an infusion twice daily,” her daughter said in a voice so quiet that Isemi had to strain to hear her. “The herbs contain crane's bill and creeping sailor, which will ease one's pain and soothe one's sleep."
“Hesiyake trains to be a herbwoman as well,” said Atsubo. She sounded more smug than proud.
“Thank you,” said Isemi's father. “Now go. Leave a sick man in peace.” He dismissed them with a feeble flutter of his bony hand.
Isemi accompanied Atsubo and Hesiyake to the front door, where she could be sure that her father would not hear. “What do you think?” she asked. “Is he better or worse? Should I fetch the physician?"
Atsubo frowned, and Isemi realized that she'd been speaking in the blunt, informal fishermen's dialect that she and Kimabe used to banter in when no one was listening.
“Child,” Atsubo said, as if Isemi was one of the ragtag village children instead of a young woman as old as her daughter, “Momu-don is dying. To send for the physician would be futile. One might as well tickle the siroko's chin, for all the good it would do. One does not think he wants to recover. Only the siroko's pearl could save him now.” Atsubo frowned as if Isemi's father were dying merely to insult her.
“It is Kimabe's fault,” she added. “He dies of heartbreak. If not for her silliness, he would be strong enough to take his fishing-boat out with the other men."
“Kimabe's diving wasn't silly,” said Isemi, hotly. “Diving brings in more than we need. Father doesn't need to work."
Atsubo's lips pursed; there were no buckets of shellfish by the door, waiting for the fish-seller's inspection. Isemi flushed under her tanned skin.
“The lord collects his tax next month,” Atsubo said.
Isemi said nothing else.
Hesiyake, her head still bowed, said, “One thanks you for your hospitality, Isemiyama-dan."
Isemi slid open the door in a single rough motion and the two shuffled away in their lacquered sandals. She slumped against the door frame, weary, defeated.
The lord's tax. How could she have forgotten? If Kimabe were here, she would know what to do ... but if Kimabe were here, Isemi wouldn't be in this dilemma. Father would be well, and she and Kimabe would be warming themselves over the fire in the diving-hut, their buckets overflowing with sea urchins, shellfish and abalone. One month's bounty would support them comfortably for a year, and she and Kimabe and the baby would spend the rest of the summer frolicking by the shore, crowning each other with yellow garlands of cat's tongue, or combing the seabed for pearl-bearing oysters.
Her father's anguished coughing startled her out of her reverie. She hurriedly slid the front door shut and flew to his room. He smiled to reassure her, but the coughs racked his emaciated chest. Isemi found a cold but half-full teacup on the floor. She brought it to his lips with shaking hands. He swallowed. The coughs subsided.
He put his hand over hers and they remained motionless, wordless. His shallow, strained breathing seemed so loud, so painfully resonant. Isemi didn't know what to say or what to do. Kimabe would've known how to say the right thing to ease their worries. Even Atsubo's familiar haughtiness would have been a comfort.
“Would you really marry Atsubo-dan?” she blurted out.
Her father tried to laugh and coughed instead. “I've already been lucky enough to have been wed to your mother, and then Kimabe. Don't want to push my luck, eh?” He coughed again. Isemi handed him a scrap of cloth. He brought it to his mouth; it came away stained with blood.
Isemi bit her lip. If only he were well! Then they could sail in his fishing-boat, which held happier memories than the diving-hut Kimabe had built at the siroko's cove. It would be like old times. Isemi would mend the nets and sails, cook the meals, help with the gutting and scaling, as her mother had when Isemi was little. At night they would unroll their pallets on the deck and her father would tell stories of how the siroko, tired of luring men to their deaths in the water, would take the form of a beautiful maiden to beguile and betray men on land.
Her father's hand slackened and slid off of her own. His breathing, although shallow, was steady; he was asleep. Isemi brushed away a stray tear. She'd already lost two mothers and a sister. When—if her father died, she would have no one. She'd have to toil in the rice paddies to pay the lord's tax and earn her place in the village. She wouldn't even be able to find a husband to take care of her; no one wanted a stocky, wild-haired, sun-browned, rough-tongued wife who was known for romping in the sea without a stitch of clothing on.
Her happiness depended on her father's survival, which, as Atsubo had said, was an impossibility. In her village, there was an expression used to describe the futile act of attempting the impossible. Isemi thus had no other option than to tickle the siroko's chin. Literally.
“If the siroko's pearl will heal you,” she whispered to her sleeping father, “I'll find it.” Even if I have to dive.
The ocean was a bolt of rippling indigo silk embroidered with white tongues of flame. Soot-brown petrels fluttered over the waves, hopping and skipping over the surface, but never alighting, as if they could not decide where to land. Isemi knew how they felt. Although this morning she would finally steel her mind and brave her old friend—her old enemy—the water.
The surf spat onto the smooth rim of the beach. Isemi chewed nervously at her lip and tasted salt. She clutched her knife and basket and squinted at the cluster of rocks in the distance, where the siroko was said to dwell.
It was the spot where Kimabe had taught her to deep-dive. The spot where Kimabe—and the baby—had disappeared, without a trace. Not a single splinter from the basket in which the baby had floated nor a single shred of the blue cloth in which she'd been wrapped had washed ashore. Village tongues had wagged at bringing the baby along while they dived, but Kimabe hadn't cared. Farm women brought children into the paddies all the time, and even gave birth in the fields.
Isemi closed her eyes. She remembered breaking the surface, savouring the triumph of her first deep-water dive. The sun searing her saltwater-swollen eyes. Her vision clearing, and seeing no one with whom she could celebrate her victory over the ocean's depths.
She remembered staggering out of the water, assuming that Kimabe had simply come back to shore to feed the baby—and seeing only two sets of footprints in the sand, one firm and steady, the other erratic, both heading toward the water's lambent edge.
She remembered her shaking muscles, her chattering teeth. The desperate half-run, half-crawl up the sandy slope to the diving-hut. Nearly tripping over bindweed vines. Discovering the hut's hollow emptiness, and collapsing before the smouldering fire. She remembered the water trickling from her hair down along her collarbone—first one drop, then another, then another and another, their fall as unstoppable as tears.
She remembered the look on her father's face when she came home, alone.
It would be the same look on her face if he were to die.
Isemi tied the basket's handle to her naked waist with a length of straw rope. She waded into the ocean, the basket thumping against her thigh, until the water was up to her shoulders. Her reflection stared up at her as if waiting to see what she would do next. Her hand gripped her knife until the knuckles grew white.
No time to dawdle, Kimabe's voice scolded at the back of her head. The longer you wait, the more strength the cold will sap from your body.
Isemi kicked up her heels and swam toward the distant outcropping. The siroko's spine, local fishermen called it. The jutting rock cluster was indeed as large as she imagined the siroko's backbone to be. A full-grown man could easily slip between its abalone-lined crevices. She and Kimabe would've pried loose a fortune last season if not for the risky depth.
Isemi winced as her toes struck the slimy, seaweed-festooned rock face. She found a foothold and leaned forward, forcing all the air from her lungs before her head slid underwater. Kimabe had taught her this technique, claiming that empty lungs helped them sink easily to the ocean floor. “Bubbles streaming out of your nose only scares away the fish,” she'd said.
Saltwater stung Isemi's eyes, but she kept them open. A deafening throb filled her ears. In the thundering silence Isemi felt her loneliness magnified to despair. No one waited for her on the beach, to race her, laughing, to the diving-hut's warmth. Fear and misery paralyzed her muscles as keenly as water-chills. She propelled herself to the surface.
If you do not go through with this, she told herself, sputtering water from her mouth, soon there will be no one to wait for you at home, either.
Isemi exhaled, willing herself to be as heavy as an anchor. This time the saltwater did not sting her eyes as much. She sank, slowly, occasionally reaching out for the rock face when the undercurrents threatened to sweep her from her descent.
She remembered what Kimabe had said. Where I come from, the water is our land, our sky. Isemi could believe that she was in a different world, albeit one in which there was still a boundless sky and ground beneath one's feet. This is what it feels like to fly, she told herself, thinking of the soot-brown petrels who rarely landed. That was what diving was like: gliding above ground, floating on currents, touching down occasionally, while fighting the pull of the jealous sky.
Her toes touched a pebbled, yielding surface, setting off miniature sandstorms that obscured her vision. Peering through the murk, she saw nothing of interest below, only more rocks. Then the sandstorms settled, revealing the nature of the surface on which she perched.
The siroko lay under her feet, twined in intricate coils on the ocean floor.
Isemi bolted off the siroko's back and clung to the rock face, staring through the swirling sand. She discerned the serpentine body, the shaggy head and bulbous long-lashed eyes. Its sinewy appendages were about the length and girth of Isemi's own legs, but compared to the gargantuan body they appeared stubby, helpless if not for the fierce five-clawed grip. Even in the dim, cloudy undersea, the siroko's scales shimmered as if under the afternoon sun, and each talon gleamed as if dipped in gold.
The creature stirred. A movement akin to a shrug rippled from its neck all the way down to the barbs of its tail. Isemi became still. But the siroko's eyes never fluttered open; it was asleep. Isemi wondered what it dreamed—if it dreamed. Did it dream of thunder and rain, of precious jewels pouring from the split hulls of storm-ravaged ships? Did it dream of succulent fishermen falling from the sky?
A creamy, iridescent flash caught her eye as the siroko's shaggy beard wriggled lazily in the current.
The pearl.
Isemi swam toward the siroko's head with steady, even strokes and gently combed its beard with the tip of her knife. The silky tendrils parted, revealing a smooth, rounded surface. She tucked the knife into the loop of rope at her waist and stretched out her shaking fingers, forcing them to curl around the orb.
The siroko's treasure slid out easily from under its chin. The pearl was the size of a man's fist, and heavier than she'd expected. She unlatched the lid of her basket and dropped it in. The siroko stirred and rippled. She froze; giant bubbles rose from the siroko's quivering nostrils, but it continued to sleep. Isemi would have sighed with relief if she'd had breath to spare in her lungs.
Isemi raked the water with one hand and her body shot upward. Seaweed followed, clinging to her arms and legs. The sand on the ocean floor swirled again, obscuring the siroko's golden coils. More than once she kicked in panic, imagining that the seaweed at her ankles was the siroko's silky beard.
But no needle-sharp fangs sank into her leg; the only enemy she had to elude was her own fatigue. As the sky above her head brightened, her vision blurred and her air-starved lungs felt as if they were being shredded by the siroko's gold-tipped claws.
At last air and sunlight burned her eyes. Isemi broke the surface, forcing herself to take slow, measured breaths. She still had to reach the shore before water-chills and her own tired muscles betrayed her. She began to paddle for land, straining against the weight of the pearl at her waist. She paused, fumbled with the rope and hauled the basket to the surface. She tipped it to one side, letting the water drain until the basket floated.
Something in the basket flopped against the woven straw. Curious, Isemi unlatched the lid and flipped it open, assuming that a fish had squirmed inside.
A baby lay at the bottom of the basket, wriggling its arms and legs. A baby wrapped in a familiar scrap of blue cloth. The baby that Kimabe had never named. Isemi's sister.
Isemi's gasp was lost in the sudden roar of an oncoming wave. She latched the basket and swam for shore, towing her precious cargo behind her on its rope. She craned her head, hoping that the approaching wall of water wasn't as high and angry as it sounded.
There was no wall—only a golden-scaled, serpentine shape that wove in and out of the water like a bindweed vine. A scream, louder and more poignant than a seagull's cry, pierced the air; startled petrels took to the sky.
Isemi's feet scraped against polished pebbles and broken shells. She winced and stumbled out of the water onto the shore. She scanned the horizon, hugging the precious basket to her chest, wondering if the baby could feel her heart pounding through the straw.
The siroko was still far away; the golden curves that protruded between the waves appeared small, almost human in scale. Then Isemi realized that her eyes deceived her; the curves were small. She stared at the unexpected sight of human buttocks, hips, shoulders. What she thought was the siroko's barbed tail was actually a pair of fluttering human feet.
The siroko could take the form of a beautiful maiden, she remembered. There was only one set of footprints in the sand, after all, pointed toward the sea.
Isemi staggered up the slope to the diving-hut as fast as her tired legs would allow her. The sky darkened. Lightning crackled. Thunder crashed a heartbeat afterward, sounding as if the sky had been split in half. A storm was approaching, quickly, as if it had followed Isemi out of the water.
“Isemi,” said a familiar voice in the blunt tones of the local fishermen's dialect. “Give me back my pearl."
Isemi turned, struck dumb with shock.
The siroko was said to take the form of a beautiful, pale, willowy maiden. Instead, Kimabe stood before her—her stocky brown flesh all curves and dimples, her hair as short and wild as Isemi's own.
Thunder and lightning crackled again, startling Isemi out of her stupor. She bolted past the diving-hut and on to the road. The thunder devoured the siroko's shriek until all Isemi could hear was her heart's fierce hammering within her ears.
Rain as hot and harsh as angry tears began to strike the ground, battering the dirt road until mud oozed from the furrows. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled, almost in unison; the storm nipped at her bare, muddy heels. The baby cooed and batted impotent fists against the sides of the basket. Isemi dared to lift her head, squinting. Black shapes loomed ahead, obscured by her waterlogged vision. She had reached the outskirts of her village.
Doors were closed and blinds drawn against the oncoming storm. Isemi stumbled down the deserted alleys, too troubled to care what the villagers would think if they peeked outdoors and saw her naked flight. She felt as if she'd turned a lifetime of sharp corners when she halted in front of her father's house, her mud-spattered legs trembling from the novel effort of standing still.
She shifted the basket to one arm and slid the door open with the other. The storm howled and tried to follow her inside; she summoned her remaining strength to slide the door back into place. The storm's fury was mute, now, powerless, punctuated only by bamboo blinds rattling over the windows. The rattling echoed inside her skull as her teeth chattered.
She snatched up a blanket from her room and wrapped herself in it. Then she tiptoed toward the sickroom, allowing herself the luxury of catching her breath. She slid the door open with cold-numbed fingers.
“Isemi?"
Her father's voice was so faint and sibilant that at first she thought it was the wind whistling through the blinds. The word was no more than a sputtered, shallow breath, not much stronger than a sigh.
Isemi lifted the basket's lid. The baby gurgled and stretched chubby arms toward her. Isemi picked her up; although the baby's skin was unnaturally cool and dry, the familiar weight was comforting against her shoulder.
“I brought back the baby,” Isemi said, kneeling by her father's side. “The siroko's pearl, its treasure. Now you'll be better, and we can go fishing, like the old days."
Her father's smile was so fleeting that Isemi thought she had imagined it. His hand lifted, then fell, and as she stared into his unblinking gaze she realized that she was too late.
Outside, the storm raged and howled, furious yet sorrowful.
A rainwater droplet flew from behind the rippling bamboo blinds and splattered on her father's forehead, forming a little bow-shaped puddle. Suddenly Kimabe was there, kneeling beside Isemi, her lips pressed against the spot on which the rain had landed. She drew her hand over his eyes, closing them, and leaned back, saying nothing.
Isemi said, blankly, “She didn't cure him.” The baby murmured and squeezed water from the drenched tufts of hair at the nape of Isemi's neck.
Kimabe snorted. “Of course not. She's only a baby. I did have a pearl, once, a long, long time ago. I lost it. But it doesn't matter. It was only an oyster's pearl."
“She didn't cure him,” Isemi repeated.
“He had lung-sickness. Nothing could've cured him, no matter what that hag Atsubo says."
That frank statement eliminated Isemi's last doubts that the creature beside her was her stepmother. “Kimabe,” she sobbed.
Kimabe's face softened. She enfolded Isemi and the baby into her arms. Isemi noticed that her bare skin was as cool and dry as the baby's, and her hair smelled like rotting seaweed.
“Why did you leave us?” Isemi asked.
“Didn't you notice that the baby wasn't growing any older?” Kimabe said, pulling away. “My kind doesn't age as you do."
The baby wailed. Kimabe took her daughter to her breast, crooning under her breath. Isemi looked away.
“I have lost everything,” she said.
“No,” said Kimabe, “you still have yourself."
“But I miss her. And you. Stay,” she said, grabbing Kimabe's hand. Despite the appearance of rounded, tanned flesh, it felt scaly. “Please. I need a mother."
“You've had two already,” said Kimabe, shortly. “How many more will you need before you can balance on your own two feet? I've been watching you at the beach; you can cross the sand on your own now. You don't need me to steady your step."
“Yes, I do,” Isemi blurted, flushing with shame as she remembered her fear and hesitation at the water's edge.
Kimabe sighed. “What would you have me do, to convince you that you are old enough? Must I buy you a scrap of red silk to put in your hair, before you're convinced? Or should I sell your maidenhead to the highest bidder, like a courtesan? The rules are different here, by the sea. There are no artificial rites of passage. Only everyday survival. And everyday joys and sorrows. The pleasure of finding a pearl in an errant oyster; the misery of a stubborn abalone that will not let go of its rock."
“Please,” Isemi said, “I need a sister, at least."
“My daughter,” Kimabe said, drawing the baby closer to her breast, “is my means of survival. My legacy. You must choose your own, now that you're no longer a child. That's what you're really afraid of, isn't it? More than the water, more than being without family. You're afraid to grow up."
Isemi bowed her head, recognizing the truth in Kimabe's honest words. Atsubo and Hesiyake and the other villagers saw her as a child because she had never given them reason to believe otherwise. She had always been Momu's indulged daughter, tagging alongside her parents instead of finding a place of her own.
“And anyway,” Kimabe said, lifting Isemi's chin with a stubby, callused finger, “the village believes we're dead. Imagine the look on Atsubo's face if we appeared again!” She threw her head back and cackled. “It would almost be worth coming back."
“I don't care what everyone thinks,” Isemi said, fiercely.
Kimabe grinned. “I know you don't. That's why I believe you're ready to stand on your own. You've tickled the siroko's chin, after all."
Isemi giggled, despite herself. Kimabe said, “Once you learn to depend on yourself, you'll realize that you don't have to be alone. I chose you, and Momu-don.” She leaned over the sickbed and kissed Isemi's father on the forehead again.
“I hope you choose as wisely,” she said, touching Isemi's cheek—and all of a sudden she and the baby dissolved into mist and the storm passed overhead, leaving Isemi kneeling by her father's deathbed, alone save for the sunlight trickling through the bamboo blinds.
Spring wind rolled against the hut's creaking walls, blustering, battering, demanding entrance. Isemi flung the door open and welcomed it inside, despite her bare skin.
She descended the slope to the water's edge, not caring if she stumbled or tripped. She heard giggling and spun around, her hands on her hips, a mock gruff expression on her face. A handful of village children squealed and jumped out from behind an enormous piece of driftwood, no doubt trying to catch a glimpse of the young fisherwoman who caught shellfish without a boat—or clothing. Isemi grinned, waving her knife and basket, and the children scampered away.
The lord was going to collect his tax next month. Isemi tied the basket to her waist and tucked her knife within the loop of straw rope. She pondered Kimabe's words as she waded into the water. You don't have to be alone. Perhaps if one of the village children showed an interest in diving, she would take an apprentice. There'd been a little girl who'd lagged behind, staring with curiosity at Isemi's face rather than her nude body. But that was something to think on later, in the warmth of the diving-hut over a pot of rice drenched with fish drippings.
Damp tufts of hair clung to Isemi's forehead and the nape of her neck. As she waded into the water, she looked at her reflection in the frothy surface; a round, brown face surrounded by a nimbus of coarse, water-logged tendrils stared up at her with solemn eyes crinkled by morning sunlight. Then the face smiled, puffed its cheeks with breath, and rushed up to meet her with a wet, enthusiastic splash of a kiss.
E. L. Chen is also an artist, which means she's pretty much screwed unless she marries rich. Her short fiction has been published in On Spec and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, and her comics have appeared in Say ... Everything else that she doesn't mind you knowing can be found at www.geocities.com/elchensite. E. L.'s story “Bobby's First ABC's” appeared in Challenging Destiny Number 14.
The King of Thysland was distraught. This would normally not be a major calamity as the King was often distraught and had a tendency to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation. He had summoned his Prime Minister and his Minister of Finance for an emergency consultation.
As they entered the King's private chambers, they could not help but notice—but made every effort to appear otherwise—that he was still in his pajamas, even though it was well after noon.
Rolled up in the King's fist was the latest edition of The Royal Payne, Thysland's leading newspaper, which he violently shook at them. “Have you seen this morning's paper?"
“Yes, Your Highness, I read it this morning before I started work,” responded the Prime Minister, realizing that he had just pointed out to his king and master that most of the Kingdom had been working all morning rather than sitting around in their pajamas reading the newspaper.
Luckily the King's ire and general obliviousness shielded him from the implications of the remark. “It says here that the Monarch of Thaghtland has recently brought a wizard into his court. This is an outrage! How can it be that a second ... no ... third rate kingdom like Thaghtland has a court wizard, while a superpower like Thysland no longer does?"
The Kingdoms of Thaghtland and Thysland were arch-rivals who competed directly against each other in the enchanted commodities market. While Thysland's riches were derived from its monopoly of the magic bean harvest, the mines of Thaghtland were the only source of pixie-dust. The competition was fierce and the two opposing kings loathed each other.
The Prime Minister rubbed his temples as inconspicuously as he could. “Your Majesty, we have been through this on many occasions, though it is certainly your right to raise it as often as you please. The cost of having a wizard in the employ of the royal court is quite prohibitive. Demand for their services are high while there are fewer and fewer qualified wizards graduating these days."
The Finance Minister was a vain man who sincerely—and perhaps correctly—believed that he was much more intelligent and accomplished than the King. While many agreed with his assessment, they also repeatedly warned him that the future of his career—and for that matter his head—rested entirely on the good graces of the King. Nonetheless, as Finance Minister, he had worked quite hard to ensure that the profits from the magic bean harvest were not needlessly squandered.
“Your Highness,” the Finance Minister began in a tone of voice that implied that he felt the King was a moron, “the royal budget has been finely balanced. The Royal Court is already over-staffed as it is, I cannot countenance any further expansion, especially with such an expensive position."
The King was fully aware of the Finance Minister's lowly opinion of him and had wanted for a long time to remove him—and his head. Nonetheless, he was widely regarded as a competent minister and any move against him would be interpreted as a petty and vindictive act. The King, however, prided himself on being a petty and vindictive man and was not prepared to remain patient indefinitely.
“Need I remind you, gentlemen, that the role of the cabinet is to provide counsel to the Royal Family. It is my opinion, and thus the opinion of the Court, that your counsel is garbage and I have no interest in wasting any more time listening to your protestations. All that interests me is how quickly you can bring a wizard on staff. Good day."
With that the King threw out his Prime Minister and Finance Minister. Exhausted from that display of decisiveness, he went to take a nap. Luckily he was still in his pajamas.
A special meeting of the Cabinet was called, for the King's instructions could not have been more clear. The ministers had been called in at the last minute, unaware of the King's latest project. The Minister of Finance sat moping in the corner, as his perfectly balanced budget was about to be torn to shreds.
“Colleagues,” began the Prime Minister to quiet down the gathered assembly, “the King, whose wise and benevolent reign has brought peace and prosperity to our beloved Kingdom of Thysland [Note: it was the procedure to introduce the King's ideas in this fashion—a procedure introduced by the King, mind you] has decreed that a wizard will be found to serve in the Royal Court. The decision has been made emphatically, there will be no debate on the matter. We are only here to discuss how we will finance this new position."
The Prime Minister was aware that there would be a multitude of opinions around the cabinet table. There were those ministers who had no question in their mind that the King was a certifiable dolt, but remained at their post to ensure that he did not bring ruin to the Kingdom. There were others who remained steadfastly loyal to the King, if only to ensure their stature and power remained undiminished. And there were those who shared the King's outrage that their arch-rival Thaghtland would enjoy the status and prestige as a wizard-equipped nation.
“I happen to concur with the King's assessment of the situation,” sniffed the Foreign Minister. “We cannot allow a wizard-gap with Thaghtland. This imbalance must be addressed immediately."
“And how are we to pay for this?” demanded the Finance Minister angrily, suddenly awoken from his funk. “Thysland is the wealthiest nation in the known world, but our riches are continuously being squandered with these silly and extravagant projects. Did we really require a third moat-monster for the palace? Could we not have used yellow paint for the Yellow Brick Road instead of gold-leaf?"
“Thysland is a great and powerful nation,” bellowed the Industry Minister, slamming his fist on the table. “I have no time for these small-minded, penny-pinching arguments. What good are riches if they cannot be spent ... richly?"
The Prime Minister sighed, betraying his general sense of fatigue and frustration. “I did not call this meeting for endless discussions. Finance Minister, what are the options for paying for this initiative?"
The Finance Minister, realizing that the battle was lost but perhaps the damage could be limited, unveiled an impressive-looking document filled with graphs and charts. “Colleagues, my staff has come up with a number of options: first, we could dramatically slash your departmental budgets; second, we could raise taxes; and third we could consider a magician, rather than a wizard, as they tend to be cheaper."
Many moments of awkward silence hung over the cabinet room. The Agriculture Minister was the first to speak. “The population will simply not tolerate any further reduction of services or an increase in tax burdens. I think we all remember the unfortunate instance of the Cheese Tax."
The ministers all nodded their heads in agreement as they recalled the ugly riots that had ensued. For two days, angry citizens pelted the Royal Palace with cheese. The palace gargoyles turned out to be lactose intolerant, which created an even uglier mess. More importantly, no minister was prepared to sacrifice any of their precious departmental budgets.
The Attorney General, rubbing his chin in an attempt to affect an intellectual air, interjected, “Did His Majesty say anything about a competent wizard?"
“Pardon me?” the Prime Minister inquired with some suspicion, though also admittedly some curiosity.
“It would seem to me,” the Attorney General continued in a tone of voice that suggested he was speaking off the top of his head and should not be held accountable if the idea was completely asinine, “that the King is more interested in the position of a wizard rather than the wizard itself. An incompetent wizard would fill the job, not cost very much and would not undermine any of our positions in the Royal Court."
While some feigned indignation at this cynical ploy, all quietly concurred that the Attorney General was on to something. The Prime Minister, while wishing to avoid the appearance of complicity, nonetheless instructed the Labour Minister to do a feasibility study.
The Prime Minister received the confidential report of the Labour Department a few days later. The wizard market was very tight with very few qualified wizards to meet the demand. A job posting, the Department suggested—but by no means advocated—which included a very poor pay package with little or no benefits would not attract the interest of any wizards of note.
While no one was prepared to endorse the plan publicly and certainly not to the King, an advertisement was quietly prepared. According to procedure, a copy of the posting was placed inside a hollowed-out stump which was then set alight. Interested applicants were invited to send their resumes by incantation to the Personnel Department of the Royal Court.
Weeks passed with—to no one's surprise—not a single response. The King became increasingly impatient, demanding to know the status of the wizard search. His aides assured him that this was a process that could not be rushed as wizards did not like to be pressured.
Then one sunny autumn day the Prime Minister received, to his astonishment, a most unusual message from the head of the personnel department of the Royal Court. It appeared that, despite everyone's expectations—and intentions—an application had arrived in response to the advertisement. Rushing back to his office, the Prime Minister was presented with a battered and charred envelope by the head of the Personnel Department.
The Prime Minister took the envelope apprehensively. “What happened to this envelope?"
“Actually, sir, it arrived in this condition,” began the head of the Personnel Department, still baffled by the recent chain of events. “I was at my desk last night catching up on some paper work when there was an explosion over my IN basket. This appeared in flames and almost set my whole desk on fire. My ears are still ringing."
The Prime Minister feigned concern and cautiously opened the envelope. Inside were the charred remains of a resume that appeared to be written on the back of a cocktail napkin. All that remained legible was the letterhead: GRANVORT THE WIZARD: FOR ALL YOUR CONJURING NEEDS.
The Prime Minister, while not convinced that the wizard crisis had abated, at least could demonstrate to the King that the file was moving. He went immediately to the Throne Room where the King was holding court. Rather than entering through the Grand Hall that led to the Grand Doorway that led into the Grand Anteroom that eventually led to the Even Grander Doorway that led to the Throne Room—which in itself was quite grand—the Prime Minister used the private entrance reserved only for the King's most senior advisors.
Pulling the King from a no doubt vital conversation with the Court Jester, the Prime Minister informed him that there was an interesting development in the wizard file.
“Well, it is about time,” sniffed the King loudly. “So what news do you have for me?"
“We have received our first application, Highness,” the Prime Minister announced while both staring down the jester, who was not happy at the interruption of his meeting, and handing the King the charred envelope.
“Granvort the Wizard...” The King began reading the remains of the resume out loud, but before he could finish, a loud explosion rocked the Throne Room, knocking everyone off their feet and filling the room with smoke.
As the smoke cleared the royal guards rushed into the room, looking for the cause of the blast. In the quiet aftermath a small voice could be heard coming from the ceiling. “Umm, a little help please."
All looked up in astonishment to see clinging precariously from the chandelier a thin elderly man with a long white beard, flowing robes and a pointy hat. The captain of the guard used a spear to knock the old man to the ground as six of his men pounced.
“Wait, wait,” cried out the old man desperately clutching his pointy hat, “I am the Wizard Granvort. I've come about the ad."
The King called off the guards and, brushing the soot from his royal robes and straightening his crown, approached the old wizard suspiciously. “So you wish the title of Wizard of the Royal Court of Thysland. Prove yourself."
“Oh, I'd be delighted,” exclaimed the wizard, rolling up his sleeves and eagerly pulling a rabbit out of his pointy hat.
The King was outraged. “I did not bring a wizard into this court for tricks not even worthy of a children's party."
Granvort was nonplused. “I can certainly understand that. Here, pick a card..."
Sensing that the King was about to get violent, the Prime Minister intervened. “What his Royal Highness means is that a Royal Wizard is expected to do more than simple parlour tricks..."
“I fully understand,” declared Granvort cheerily. He rolled up his sleeves again and blasted lightning-like bolts from his fingertips. The Finance Minister was hit and transformed into a hamster.
The King looked impressed. “Well, that is more like it. Now turn him back."
“Turn him back into what?” asked Granvort, not fully following the King's logic.
“Into my Minister of Finance!” yelled the King.
The Prime Minister had to physically place himself between the King and the wizard. The full implications of hiring an incompetent wizard were quickly becoming apparent to him.
The Prime Minister was able to convince the King to allow Granvort a probationary contract. The King agreed only on condition that the old wizard provide something spectacular in honour of the Queen's upcoming birthday. With this agreement concluded, some nice crisp lettuce was found for the Minister of Finance.
Deep underneath the Royal Palace were the Forbidden Catacombs, the ancient and long-unused home of the former wizards of Thysland. Granvort made his way down the precariously steep and creaky staircases. At the bottom of the seemingly endless staircase was an old and moldy wooden door. Carved in the middle of the door was an awful and fearsome gargoyle head. Granvort fumbled in his pocket and pulled out the set of keys provided to him by the Palace's Lock Master. Finding the key marked Gargoyle Head: Front Door, Granvort gingerly placed it into the Gargoyle's open mouth.
The Gargoyle's eyes glowed a terrible red and a deafening screech rang out as the door flew open, revealing the inner sanctum of the wizard's chamber.
“I must remember to oil those hinges,” mumbled Granvort, admiring the lovely floral couch in the middle of the newly revealed room.
Placing his meager belongings onto the charming coffee table and stretching out on the lovely floral couch, Granvort began to ponder what he could do to win the King's favour. The Queen's birthday was fast approaching, and he would have to do something special for her—but what?
Surveying the surprisingly spacious interior of the chamber, Granvort noticed a pile of musty and long-discarded books piled in a corner. Flipping through the pile, Granvort found his answer. Translating the ancient text written in a long-dead language, Granvort said to no one in particular, “How to Create a Dragon: A Handy Do-It-Yourself Manual. That's it! I'll create a dragon and present it to the Queen for her birthday."
For a full week Granvort remained in his chambers, poring over the ancient manuscript. He did not sleep or eat, only taking short breaks to comment to himself how tired and hungry he was. Taking careful notes, Granvort prepared a list of the magical ingredients that he would require. There was only one place where he could obtain the ingredients: he would have to seek out the Enchanted Florist of the Enchanted Forest.
The Enchanted Florist, as his title indicated, lived in hermetic isolation deep within the treacherous woods of the Enchanted Forest. He was the sole supplier of many of the elements required to practice the black arts of magic and sorcery. His home was difficult to find and he was reputed to be quite unpleasant.
Musing out loud, Granvort assembled his plan. “I will simply transform myself into a graceful bird and fly quickly to the Enchanted Forest. Once there, I will use my trusty Hiker's Guide to the Enchanted Forest to find the Enchanted Florist and get what I require."
A spectacular blast of light lit up the catacombs as Granvort transformed himself into a slug. Several brilliant and spectacular blasts of light later a cow ... with wings ... and a beard ... and a pointy hat emerged from the wizard's chamber.
“Close enough,” Granvort declared merrily.
Many necks were craned in Thysland that evening as a flying winged cow was spotted flying east ... then west ... then northeast ... then south. Some were astonished to hear a faint voice through the clouds say, “I have no idea where I'm going."
Eventually Granvort made his way to the edge of the Enchanted Forest and after many, many attempts, returned to his normal state. Blocking access to the forest was a rapidly flowing brook quaintly known as the Bone Crushing and Drowning Brook. Across the brook was a flimsy wooden bridge, missing several crucial planks. On this side of the bridge was a gnarled and faded sign: The Enchanted Forest: Beware All Who Enter—Dangers Beyond Imagination Exist Here—No Camping.
Granvort peered nervously over the precarious bridge at the dark tangled woods on the other side. He had anticipated something a lot cheerier. Gulping, Granvort gingerly began to cross the bridge.
“Who dares to enter the Enchanted Forest?” a deep and thunderous disembodied voice bellowed from amidst the trees.
“Tis I,” squeaked Granvort in a high-pitched voice that contrasted unfavourably with the deep voice emerging from the forest, “Granvort, Wizard of the Royal Court of Thysland—at least the probationary wizard, but I'm very confident that my contract will be renewed—"
Granvort was cut off by the deep and thunderous voice. “I am the Gatekeeper of the Enchanted Forest. What business have you here?"
“I seek the counsel of the Enchanted Florist,” Granvort replied, feigning bravado unconvincingly. “I wish only to meet with him briefly and I'll be on my way ... sir."
“Silence!” demanded the Gatekeeper. “Only the most worthy are permitted entrance to the Enchanted Forest. Be gone with you!"
Seconds of absolute silence were broken by a horrific shriek. Emerging from the woods was giant monster with six yellow eyes, four arms and a ferocious mouth filled with dagger-like teeth. The creature charged at Granvort who stood his ground and did not flinch. Just as the four arms were about to strike, the monster vanished in thin air.
“Magnificent!” exclaimed the Gatekeeper. “No one has ever passed my test so definitively. You are truly worthy."
Granvort barely heard what the Gatekeeper had said to him as he was desperately trying to dislodge his foot from a cracked bridge plank so that he could run away. He froze as he saw rustling in the woods on the other side of the bridge and out emerged ... a chipmunk.
The chipmunk looked at Granvort with its big bright eyes, its button nose twitching affectionately, its chubby cheeks glowing with glee. “You are most welcome, my dear Wizard Granvort,” the chipmunk bellowed in its deep thunderous voice.
“Well, the pleasure is all mine,” responded Granvort meekly, covertly removing his foot from the broken plank.
The Gatekeeper, so impressed by Granvort's show of courage, offered to personally escort him to the home of the Enchanted Florist. Rapidly skipping through the forest, the Gatekeeper wove effortlessly through the twisted and turning trails. Granvort was having difficulty keeping up, but his skipping and prancing was surprisingly passable.
At the end of an overgrown pass was a small cottage covered in vines and moss. A small sign stood in front reading: The Enchanted Florist of the Enchanted Forest—No Soliciting.
The Gatekeeper merrily skipped to the front door, knocking with great force. They waited for many minutes, but there was no response. The Gatekeeper enunciated in his deepest and most authoritative voice, “Oh, Enchanted Florist, tis I the Gatekeeper. I bring the brave and noble Wizard Granvort of the Royal Court of Thysland—"
“Probationary,” Granvort added helpfully.
The Gatekeeper continued, “You know that I am not one for frivolity. I would not disturb you if I did not find merit in this mighty wizard's quest."
Granvort could hear the pitter-pattering of feet on the other side of the wall. A tiny eye hole swung open in the middle of the door.
“Well, well, the Mighty Wizard Granvort,” a disembodied voice laden with a palpable dollop of sarcasm pronounced through the eye hole, “and how is the Minister of Finance?"
“I hear he is adjusting well,” responded Granvort, not picking up on the contempt oozing through the eyehole.
“Are you not the same Wizard Granvort who brought the Fughtstul Empire to its knees by a terrible plague?” The voice clearly knew the answer.
“A most remarkable feat, is it not?” demanded the Gatekeeper.
“True, but I believe that he was actually in the employ of the Fughtstul Emperor and was charged with adding vitamins to the water supply"—the voice of the eyehole was clearly enjoying this—"I believe that you are also the same Wizard Granvort who, in the service of the Potentate of Naughwayr, blew up his castle in the midst of his daughter's wedding?"
“In fairness,” said Granvort, “the marriage didn't last."
“Enough!” insisted the Gatekeeper. “I unleashed upon this wizard my most terrifying apparition and he did not even flinch. The test of bravery has never been mistaken. By refusing entry to the Wizard Granvort you are insulting both myself and the office of the Gatekeeper."
“Oh, very well,” sighed the voice, which of course was that of the Enchanted Florist. The little door creaked open, unveiling an impossibly large room for such a tiny cottage. As far as the eye could see was shelf upon shelf of the most exotic flora and fauna.
The Enchanted Florist was a short, angry looking man whose age was impossible to guess. He made no secret of his irritation at this unwelcome interruption, but who could resist the authority, power and chubby cheeks of the Gatekeeper?
Granvort and the Gatekeeper sat in the undersized lounge chairs in the middle of the cavernous room. Granvort squirmed uncomfortably as the Florist brought him a cup of bitter smelling tea and the Gatekeeper a bowl of nuts.
“So, Mighty Wizard Granvort,” the Florist began without conviction, “what brings you to my modest home?"
Beginning to wonder how such a small man could produce so much sarcasm, Granvort proceeded, “Have you heard of the term dragon?"
Somehow the Florist managed to audibly roll his eyes. “I have been practicing the Black Arts since the days when the moon itself was young. Yes, Wizard Granvort, I have come across the term dragon."
“Excellent,” exclaimed Granvort obliviously, “I intend to create one to honour the celebration of the birthday of the Queen of Thysland."
The Florist looked at him mouth ajar before crying out, “Are you out of your mind? Am I to understand that you intend to unleash a ferocious dragon into the middle of this poor woman's birthday party? Is it not enough that she is married to the King of Thysland?"
Granvort was unfazed by the Florist's histrionics (he was actually quite used to other people's histrionics in response to his work). “I am not a complete idiot, I did buy a leash."
“Get out!” shrieked the Florist.
“Now one moment,” asserted the Gatekeeper, his cheeks filled with nuts, “you will not treat my guest with such indignity. The Wizard Granvort will prove his powers by replicating my apparition in the middle of this room. I have every confidence that his powers match my own."
Granvort, buoyed by this uncommon show of confidence rolled up his sleeves, lifted his arms and ... blew out the far wall of the Florist's cottage, setting on fire many of the shelves with their rare and valuable stock.
The Florist was apoplectic. He stood petrified with shock and furor as his home began to burn out of control. The Gatekeeper was buried under a collapsed shelving unit and knocked unconscious.
Granvort backed out of the severely damaged front door. “Well, I guess I should go now. Thanks for the tea."
The Florist, regaining his composure, ran after Granvort only to watch helplessly as a flying cow with a pointy hat and long white beard flew off in the distance.
The Florist would have been even more incensed to have discovered that Granvort also whisked off with a small box marked in an ancient tongue: Home Dragon Kit—Fun For the Whole Family—In Case of Eye Contact Rinse Thoroughly.
Granvort poured the contents into his cauldron, stirred gently, let it sit off the flame for a half hour, then zapped it repeatedly with a lightning bolt from his finger.
Exhausted by his efforts, Granvort gingerly approached the smoking cauldron. He peered inside, but could see nothing through the smoke.
“I give up,” cried Granvort collapsing beside the cauldron. “I'm a failure as a wizard. I can't do anything right..."
But his self-pitying was interrupted by a violent scratching from within the cauldron. Granvort eagerly reached inside and found, to his surprise and amazement, a dragon ... a very small dragon. It was the size of a small lap dog and blew a soothing steam through its nostrils.
“Well, this is pretty close to what I was shooting for,” conceded Granvort, scratching his head but then realizing what day it was. “Oh no. I have no time left to lose."
Scooping up the tiny dragon in his arms, Granvort raced upstairs.
The King was not having a good day. The Queen was not the least impressed by the party he had thrown for her. He had neglected to invite any of her friends and she hated his gift of a blender. He was desperate for something to salvage the party and furious that his new wizard was nowhere to be found.
At that moment Granvort rushed into the ball room ... and then tripped over the step.
“Where have you been?” shouted the King. “And why do you smell like a cow?"
“Wonderful news, Your Majesty,” Granvort announced. “In honour of the birthday of our lovely and gracious queen I have created a dragon."
“Are you out of your mind?” shrieked the King as he shielded himself with the Queen.
“Why does everyone always say that?” thought Granvort to himself. But before he could say anything in his defence the Queen noticed the little dragon napping in Granvort's cradled arms.
“Well, what do we have here?” cooed the Queen, approaching Granvort and petting the little dragon on its head. “Why this is the most darling thing I have ever seen."
The Queen was delighted by the little dragon and effusively thanked the initially puzzled King for the wonderful gift. The Queen would take the tiny dragon everywhere, carrying it in her purse with its head sticking out. Soon owning a Lap Dragon was all the rage amongst fashionable circles and breeding them became quite an industry. Once again, Thysland had a monopoly on a hot product and profited handsomely.
The King was, of course, thrilled. The office of Court Wizard had more than paid for itself. And the Finance Minister with the help of both Granvort and a plastic surgeon eventually was back to his old self.
R. E. Mendel is a Canadian writer of science fiction and fantasy. After allowing his stories to stagnate for years on his computer's hard drive, he has finally gotten around to submitting them for publication. As such, he is in constant search for sources of inspiration, be it creative or motivational. The sequel to “Granvort, the Discount Wizard” will be appearing in Challenging Destiny Number 20.
I'm a believer in promiscuous creativity. Creativity is like other exercise—you don't have to be a professional to benefit from it as a person.
—Charles Coleman Finlay, “Charles Coleman Finlay: All in the Details” in Locus (Apr 2004, Vol 52 No 4)
CD: You were hired at various times by the animal welfare movement, the US fishing industry, and the Canadian government. Each of these groups has a very different point of view. Which point of view did you identify with the most, or did you disagree with all of them?
PW: Given the choice of only those three, I would definitely lean towards the animal welfare movement. There's a distinction between “animal rights” and “animal welfare.” As a biologist I've found it difficult to get behind the very concept of “rights,” even “human rights.” When you look at the way the universe works—the way we evolved, the way our brains operate—"human rights” seem like an artifact. Like growth economy, or organized religion. Interesting ideas to play with, but there's nothing inevitable or inherent about them. So I tend to shy away from “animal rights” in the same way as I tend to shy away from anything that's fundamentally faith-based or unprovable.
Animal welfare is a different issue. It's a bit more akin to conservation, and conservation is just good sense. It's life-support stuff. This doesn't mean I'm entirely happy with the strategies that animal-welfare types use sometimes. I can understand why they hug baby seals, why they get Loretta Swit out on the ice to spout her inanities. I understand that they're trying to appeal to Joe and Josephine Six-Pack, and those are the strategies that work. They could be cynical strategies, but they're effective ones. Still. If they're targeting that demographic, then they're not targeting mine.
I had some problems when I was working for a group called the International Marine Mammal Association, which was funded by IFAW (the International Fund for Animal Welfare). I once co-authored a documentary which had the dubious distinction of winning the Environment Canada Trophy for Best Documentary on the Environment, while at the same time being black-listed by the Feds for being anti-government propaganda. There were apparently cases of tourist stands in the Gaspé showing this film on their video screens, only to have gummint guys in low-brimmed hats and sunglasses show up saying, “You don't really want to show that here..."
I ran into lots of problems while writing it. This is when I was a postdoc at the University of Guelph. I almost quit the gig because I wasn't allowed to use terms like “Bambi Syndrome,” which is perfectly legitimate shorthand for the fact that we mammals are programmed to go “Awww” at the sight of big eyes, high foreheads, little snub noses—kittens, baby seals. This is an understandable mammalian response. I illustrated it by writing a scene where Loretta Swit is lying on the ice holding a baby harp seal. This was in the infancy of CGI but we had some money in the budget for morphing, so I was going to have this little seal pup morph into a giant banana slug—the question being, of course, whether Loretta would be quite so eager to rescue helpless giant banana slugs. But I was told that this was tantamount to calling her a “nigger lover.” “Bambi syndrome” equals “nigger lover"—it's an incendiary term. So I definitely have problems with the strategies used on both sides of the fence.
There are certain types of science that are inherently “whore” science, where nobody is going to fund the research unless they have a political bottom line they want supported. As a result, you're not going to get funding unless you know your conclusions in advance. I've encountered a fair bit of whore science, so I'm cynical about both sides of the spectrum. But again, if I had to choose sides, I'd definitely come down on the side of conservation. How can you not? When you're in a spacesuit, the last thing you want to do is hack wires out of your life-support system in pursuit of better cable reception. It just doesn't make any sense.
CD: How did you make the transition between scientist and novelist?
PW: I got unemployed. I was working at the Marine Mammal Unit at UBC, studying the collapse of the Stellar sea lion population. This is a population that has dropped by 80% over the space of 15 years. Nobody really knows why. Interestingly enough, the beginning of the collapse coincided with the expansion of the Pacific fishing industry into the Bering Sea in a big way. So obviously one of the prime suspects—one of the hypotheses you've got to explore—is that people are hoovering up all the fish. Basically everything that ate plankton in the Bering Sea was doing OK, everything that ate fish was not. The planktivorous whales were doing fine, the fish-eating whales were in trouble. Harbour seals collapsed even faster than Stellar sea lions did. Fish-eating sea birds were collapsing. Whatever was going on, it seemed across the board to have something to do with dependence on fish.
So it only made sense to look at the fishing industry as a potential culprit. Now this consortium I was working for was getting 95% of its funding from the US fishing industry. The fishing industry itself did not put me under any pressure to change my results, or to come up with certain results; they didn't have to, because the guy I was working for did all that for them. Which was a bit disappointing, because this was a guy I'd known for ten years and considered a friend. But now he's playing politics, and spinning our research, and misrepresenting the data. I started seeing my work distorted in the local media—experimental artefacts presented as real results, premature and erroneous conclusions being drawn which (surprise, surprise) exonerated the fishing industry from any role in the Steller decline.
There were also problems with the fact that we were keeping our sea lions at the Vancouver Aquarium. The aquarium would spend tens of thousands of dollars on campaigns advertising their involvement in “conservation through research” with endangered species, while at the same time telling us that they didn't have enough money to feed the animals, for example. So after 15 months of gritting my teeth, I said “fuck it” and quit.
And then I had no job.
I had been a wannabe writer ever since I was seven years old, so I figured I've got UI coming in for such-and-such a period of time—let's write a book. That was when I wrote Starfish, and Starfish did pretty well. It didn't support me, but by that time I was also getting piece work for the Feds—working with the Canadian Wildlife Service on statistical analyses, and so on.
I wouldn't say I never looked back, because I always look back, and I'm never happy with where I am. I'm always happier with where I was. And I don't look to the future because I think that'll be even worse. I've never regretting quitting the consortium—I miss the science something awful, I miss the fieldwork, I miss the teaching. But I do not miss the political bullshit.
Anyway, that's how it started. And I've managed to keep going at it since 1998.
CD: Your SF has a close relationship with current science. How do you see that relationship between science fact and SF?
PW: I think it sucks. I'm coming to the conclusion that having too much knowledge of conventional science acts to straightjacket your imagination. William Gibson, who didn't know shit about computers when he wrote Neuromancer, changed the bloody field. (Granted, the tech heads didn't take his message to heart. Evidently he was saying “People, look at the horrible world we're heading for” and the computer guys said “Wow, we could build this.” And they set about doing it.) In a number of cases, the most visionary work has been done by the people with the least expertise.
I think it's absolutely essential that you respect the scientific process, that you don't just throw ideas at the wall and see what sticks. But scientists who become SF writers are to some extent constrained. For one thing, we know too much about why this or that cool idea couldn't work, so our ability to imagine is hamstrung. For another, we're not really writing to the audience. We're writing to the guys at the back of Wednesday afternoon science seminars, who put up their hands not because they're curious about the world but because they want to be noticed by senior faculty. Scientists are raised to shoot holes in other people's ideas, and they're going to try to cover their asses when they write SF as well, and that tends to make us pedantic and boring.
We're also trained to be very bad writers. Someone actually did a study back in the nineties which they submitted to Science and Nature, and Science and Nature both turned him down—unsurprisingly, because he concluded that the more prestigious the journal, the worse the quality of the writing. Clearly worded, precisely described papers tend to be looked down upon because you understand them. The reviewers will say, “Well, of course. That's clear, that's obvious. There's nothing special about that.” But if somebody writes something so convoluted that it makes absolutely no sense, the immediate reaction is to say, “This guy's way beyond me. This guy's way smarter than I am.” And so it gets into Science and Nature. Science has actually improved a lot lately. (I don't subscribe to Nature.) But in the mid-90s, this was an empirical finding.
In my case, I'm a marine biologist, and the marine biology that I put into my books is good, solid stuff (although I break the rules when I have to). But that's not what gets noticed. The stuff that people seemed to consider more “brilliant” was my AI riff in Maelstrom. I've even gotten fan mail from a guy working at the Lawrence Livermore Labs, who says my insights into genetic AI inspire him in his own work. (This is kind of scary when you think of what the Lawrence Livermore Lab actually does.) I've been cited on Slashdot occasionally, but nobody ever said, “My god, this guy's got a great grasp of marine biology.” They only mention the AI and computer riffs, and I don't know shit about computer science.
On the other hand, the one story I wrote that was unabashed fantasy—I did no research for it at all—involved the premise that colonial electromagnetic bacteria in the clouds controlled Earth's weather patterns. I know nothing about meteorology. This entire story came to me while on the bus to Guelph, looking out at an approaching storm front. My girlfriend said, “Geez, those thunderheads look almost alive, don't they?” So I wrote this story called “Nimbus,” the second story I ever got published. It was pure fantasy, this idea that the clouds are literally alive with these bugs. I threw in some references to chaos theory, because that was current back then, but that was just chrome.
“Nimbus” came out in 1992. And in 2001, CNN ran a story under the headline “Bugs in clouds control weather, scientists say.” Israeli scientists are actually launching expeditions to scoop a dipnet through clouds, looking for these electromagnetic microbes. Again, I did no research for my story. I threw a dart over my shoulder and somehow happened to hit the bullseye. So bottom line, I think that to some extent scientific knowledge—the bricks that constitute the education, the facts that you pile around yourself in the course of getting your degree—is highly overrated when it comes to writing good SF. I think it holds you back.
CD: Is it becoming harder to write SF, because of change happening more quickly?
PW: Definitely. Back in the old days, when Asimov was writing all those stories about a tidally-locked Mercury, he got 20 good years out of those stories before they staledated. In contrast, I wrote a story called “The Second Coming of Jasmine Fitzgerald” that was the hardest, most rigorous SF I'd ever written—absolutely cutting-edge when I wrote it—and the theory underlying it had already been disproven by the time it appeared in print.
CD: You said that facts hold you back, so then does it matter that progress is increasing?
PW: I think you've got two different issues to deal with here. In the first place, SF isn't supposed to predict the future. Rigorous SF is a thought experiment that says, “This is the premise. What are the consequences of that premise?” Not “Is this plausible?", but rather “Assume this is the case. What follows from that?” On that basis, stories don't date, because they're always just thought experiments. 1984 remains relevant, The Sheep Look Up remains relevant, and 2001 remains relevant. Even though everyone's saying, “Here we are in 2004. Where's the monolith? Where's HAL?” That's not the point. (Although granted, writing a novel with a year in the title is like money in the bank. My next novel should be called 2005 1/2.)
The bigger issue is, if Vernor Vinge's right, we are headed for a Singularity within our lifetimes. Assuming that Moore's Law doesn't hit a wall, assuming it holds, we'll soon reach a point where the next generation will have as much in common with the last as we'd have with a planet full of gerbils. At which point it becomes physically impossible to describe a post-Singularity society for a modern audience. That is very constraining. I've been disappointed with the solutions or workarounds that have been presented so far, which often boil down to the Singularity's happened, but a bunch of us have been left behind surrounded by these weird autonomous post-Singularity bits of technology and it's kind of scary. That's great, but the Singularity hasn't happened to the story's protagonist. Another workaround is to say The human brain would go crazy if it actually experienced the Singularity, so we're going to put simulations of our guys into a pop can, and we're going to simulate a conventional world for them to inhabit, complete with bars (very much like this one). We're all being simulated, we're all in the matrix, because our minds would simply be blown if they let us off the leash. Which, again, is a cheat. We're not seeing past the Singularity, we're seeing ourselves in a nature preserve.
I don't know if anyone has written a legitimate post-Singularity story, with the possible exception of “The Last Question” by Isaac Asimov—and even that had to wait for the Singularity to happen at the end of the time itself. But all the other stories I've read seem to dance around the incomprehensibility of what happens next. They always avoid it somehow. Granted, I don't know what else they could do. It still pisses me off.
CD: How do you see the alarmist strain in SF, when the writer is trying to warn about something—does it work?
PW: The tome that immediately springs to mind isn't SF at all, it's Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Cautionary tales work, and they don't have to be fictional. Unsafe at Any Speed did something. The Sheep Look Up changed my life—but I in turn didn't change anyone else's. I'm still sitting here drinking beer, living an unsustainable lifestyle. 1984 didn't prevent hanging chads from putting Bush in the White House. William Gibson's cautionary tale actually got people to embrace dystopia. In that context, I guess you'd have to say yes, cautionary tales do have an impact. They accelerate our trajectory towards the nihilistic endpoint.
CD: What do you see as the biggest agent of change in society?
PW: I'm not a huge Heinlein fan, but I think the biggest agent of change is violence. The fact that we can now shut down civilization through the use of trojans and worms as opposed to shoulder-fired nukes doesn't really change the fundamental fact that strong people basically beat the crap out of weak people—given that the definition of strength is context-dependent, of course—and they therefore get to make the rules.
CD: When you wrote “A Niche,” which is in Ten Monkeys, Ten Minutes, did you know what the larger story of Starfish was going to be?
PW: “A Niche” was a second run at an earlier story I'd written in 1984 that basically had the same setting, but didn't really have much of a story behind it. (Analog said, “It's got a really great setting but it's depressing—can you bring in some clowns at the end?” I still haven't sold any stories to those guys.) I had the context. The environment had been percolating in my mind for some time, and I knew there was a bigger world there. But when I wrote “A Niche” I had definitely not worked out the larger plot elements of the story: the idea of the refugee strips, the idea of Behemoth. All that stuff came later. Basically, what catalyzed “A Niche” was that I was coming out of this bitter relationship with a woman who is personified in Lenie Clarke. To some extent she was a cipher to me. I tried to superimpose my own speculations behind that mask. I happened to have this trunk-dwelling story hanging around, containing a spooky context and a bioluminescent mermaid—so I put the two of them together, and that was a lucky conjunction. But at the time I wrote it, I had no master plan. I just really wanted to publish a story.
CD: When you were writing Starfish, did you have the subsequent volumes in mind?
PW: Not really. As originally written, Lenie died at the end of Starfish. She dragged herself onto the beach, released Behemoth into the world, and that was the end of it. My editor, David G. Hartwell, said that that would be too negative for American audiences. It might sell in Canada, but selling in Canada is like selling in Arkansas. So he wanted something a little more ambiguous. Something a little more “clench your fist and be triumphant."
I had originally introduced Behemoth as a MacGuffin. The basic premise of Starfish is that Western civilization is built on the backs of its outcasts. The people who make the actual discoveries—who invent the microwave ovens, who make the breakthroughs in cancer—they're the obsessive-compulsives, the ones who are driven to prove themselves to dads who will never accept them because they didn't become a lawyer or whatever. Those people who have healthy, well-balanced lives, who take their weekends off, they never get as far because they're not so driven. It's the people who are totally fucked in the head that make the difference. But these are also the people that we never invite to our parties.
So I basically literalized that. In Starfish we've got a lot of basket cases and we're going to literally put their hand on the knife switch that runs the power grid. What happens? Logically, the system is going to have so many shackles on such people that they'll be utterly impotent, utterly controlled. So every ending I tried out had the rifters getting squashed like bugs every time they tried to stand up for themselves. That's just the way it happens in the real world. So I had to introduce some contrivance that at least gave them a fighting chance.
Behemoth does that. It allows this one loser of a woman to destroy the world. Starfish thus becomes a revenge fantasy, a tale that celebrates the healing power of revenge. (By the way, the latest scientific studies show that we are in fact hardwired for revenge—that it does stimulate the pleasure centres of our brain. This is one of those things that everybody's known but nobody proved until it came out about six months ago.)
My original take on Starfish was that it was a little like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest except not nearly as popular. The message is, you can win against the system, you can kill Nurse Ratched—it might kill you, but you'll at least have the satisfaction of knowing that you've gone to your grave with your teeth in your enemy's throat. That's how I wrote it, but apparently that's not a commercial or a popular view, so I had to leave her alive.
Okay, so she's alive. What now? She can't just wander back onshore, because in Starfish I established there were these refugee zones. How does she get past those? Something had to happen, but it wasn't going to be simple because I had previously described all these conditions which I never thought I was going to have to deal with. Starfish was my first novel, remember. It was a one-set scene, a microcosm. I didn't have to worry about what was going on in the world outside. And now, thanks to David Hartwell, I did.
So I was playing around with these ideas, and finally he called me. I'd sent him an outline and followed it up with an email saying, “Throw away the outline. It sucks.” He phoned me up and said, “Get off your ass. We'll pay you three times what we paid you for Starfish. Just write something.” That's how it turned into a series.
And that series is ending now with Behemoth. I would have liked to have more time to write Behemoth. The book I'm working on now, Blindsight, was what I'd wanted to write first because it had been kicking around in my head since 1993 when I read a quote by Dawkins that made me think, “Yeah, what is consciousness for, anyway? What good is it?” Sure, there was more to tell in the Rifters story, but I was a little bit tired of it. But my agent (who I've since fired) said, “No, you've got to go with the Rifters story, because it's got the momentum behind it. It's a proven series.” In hindsight it probably wasn't the best advice to follow.
CD: In terms of your own alarmist fiction, or the way that you've tried to identify ways that our society could go downhill, what is the main problem you see?
PW: My hackles rise at the term “alarmist.” How would you react to the argument that I write almost childishly naïve and optimistic fiction? I think in a sense I'm almost too optimistic. Yes, the world that I portray is falling down around the protagonists’ ears. But that's happening now, in real life. There's an inertia to huge systems. Big ships turn slowly. The things that are happening now, even if we stop doing them tomorrow, are still going to have massive ramifications into the 22nd century. So the damage is done. Any credible extrapolation will show a world in disarray and chaos, simply because the inertia of the system is already there. Given that, I can't pretend the present never happened. We all know it did.
But how do the people in my books act? Do you see anybody in my books starting a war to line the pockets of their industry buddies? Do you see anybody in my books who is a racist? Do you see anybody in my books who invokes God or Allah or some invisible purple hamster that lives up your butt to justify jihad or genocide?
My character Patricia Rowan was frequently cited by the reviewers as the heartless bureaucrat, the baddie. She authorized the deaths of thousands—to save millions. She authorized the deaths of millions—to save billions. I have actually been accused of having characters in my books that are too rational, too decent. They do horrible things, but these things are forced on them. They've either been horribly abused, or they have an enormous responsibility. What you've got with my books is my hopeful view that people 50 years from now will be stuck with our legacy, but they will have grown somehow. These people are better than we are. They behave rationally, they do horrible things because they don't have many choices—but they try to choose the lesser of the available evils.
Now I don't think people will act like that. I think people will continue to act pretty much the way they act now. I don't even think the promise of genetically redesigning ourselves is going to help. We could write jealousy and greed and the rape instinct and capitalism and communism—we could write them all right out of the human genotype. There's a story in the Toronto Star today about a guy who's discovered a gene which he says is responsible for religious belief. It's something that generates monoamines, or rather codes for monoamine production. We could edit that out—we could be freed of the religious impulse. But I don't think we'll do that, because we're programmed to protect the self. And the self is this twisted 400 million-year-old thing that uses prejudice and racism and sexual violence and unmitigated greed as a survival strategy. If you take those things away from us, it's committing a kind of suicide, it's turning us into something else. And although I think it would turn us into something better, we're programmed for self-preservation. Even if we have the technology to become better people right at the molecular level, we'll pass it up because it will seem like, “Gad dang it, that just ain't natural. It's like those faggots wanting to get married.” We will reject it for no rational reason, but for basic gut reasons. Which is basically why we do everything.
I've been characterized as a guy who looks at the world through lead-lined glasses. I have been characterized as this sort of nihilist and misanthrope and so on. I suppose there's some truth in that, but I honestly think that I'm not being cynical and I'm not being pessimistic. I think that things could be a lot worse than the way I portray them.
CD: What are you working on now?
PW: I'm working on a book called Blindsight. Most of the story takes place in deep space. Blindsight is a first-contact story dealing with the evolutionary significance of consciousness. One of the characters is a reconstructed vampire, a cannibalistic Human subspecies that died out with the rise of Euclidean architecture. We found enough of their genes in the bloodlines of sociopaths and high-functioning autistics to resurrect them. We brought them back because they've got these incredibly cool analytical pattern-matching abilities—but we also have them hooked on anti-Euclidean drugs to avoid spazzing out when they see intersecting right angles.
Another one of the characters is a linguist whose brain has been surgically partitioned into autonomous chunks—surgically-induced multiple personality syndrome, so that she can have a series of onboard parallel-processing modules. There's a biologist whose motor strip has been so massively interfaced with teleoperated equipment that much of the coordination of his physical body has been lost (he tremors a lot because there's just not enough room on the motor strip to handle both his body and his teleoperators).
The protagonist is a character who had half his brain removed when he was a child. He had a particularly devastating form of epilepsy, and a radical hemispherectomy was the only way to keep the seizured from killing him. This form of epilepsy involves an electrical storm bouncing back and forth across the corpus callosum, producing a positive feedback loop in the brain. So they removed half. Such operations actually happen today, by the way.
Anyway, our protagonist grows up convinced that he is not what his parents say he is. His parents killed their only child, because they cut out half his brain. There was personality in that half. The other half had to make up the slack, had to totally rewire itself—and what identity could possibly survive that kind of neurological violence? So this character grows up feeling that he is essentially a pod person that has grown up in the body of a dead boy, and he has this enormous survivor guilt syndrome.
Anyway, these characters go off and meet aliens, and explore the theme of consciousness along the way. And perhaps the most disturbing possibility I explore is that consciousness—as distinct from intelligence, which is a whole other phenomenon—actually isn't necessary in an evolutionary sense, and may in fact be a bad thing. Everything from driving a car to playing a piano to scientific Eureka moments seem to occur primarily on the nonconscious level, and the conscious part of the mind simply gets an executive summary after all the heavy lifting's been done. Even something as simple as the decision to wiggle your finger is a nonconscious process, in the sense that the relevant motor nerves have been fired up a full half-second before the conscious self “decides” to move. So obviously, that decision wasn't a decision at all; effect does not precede cause. Something else made that decision, and if that other thing is conscious, we don't have access to it.
We say we're intelligent, we're conscious, and that's why we rule the nest. But those primitive egg-laying mammals in Australia? They ruled the nest too, until the bunny rabbits washed up on shore. They didn't rule the nest because they were superior; but because they were isolated. They had no real competition. So. We Humans are highly intelligent, and maybe that's enough to overcome the drawback of being conscious at the same time. But there's absolutely no reason why you can't postulate an organism that's every bit as intelligent as we are, but nonconscious. And when those guys wash up on the Australian shores, we are toast.
That's basically the premise of the book. And the biggest problem is going to be selling people on the idea that consciousness and intelligence are not inextricably linked. Things can learn, things can develop technology, things can communicate without necessarily having to be self-aware. I'm 60 000 words into it. Parts of it rock, parts of it suck. I've put bits and pieces of it up on the web site if you want to check it out.
Consciousness seems to be an idea whose time has come in SF. Rob Sawyer's coming out with a consciousness riff of his own. Karl Schroeder, in Permanence, dealt with the idea a little bit. I have a lot of respect for Karl. I think the character development sucks in his novels, but his conceptual inventions are brilliant. The man is far more erudite than anybody has a right to be without a formal science background. So I have a lot of respect for the man's intellect—but his riff on consciousness sucked the one-eyed purple trouser eel. He equated consciousness with intelligence, and then described intelligence as a symptom of maladaptation. If you were truly adapted to your environment, Permanence says, you'd need no artifice, no intelligence to help you survive. Sure, stupid alligators disappear when smart people drain their swamps—but people are only doing that because they're ill-adapted to swamps, and when the swamps come back, so will the alligators. It's a lame, fallacious argument. Nothing comes back after it's been wiped out.
But my point is not to rag on Karl. My point is that a number of authors are coming out with consciousness riffs, and I'm sure most of them will outsell me. Any one of Rob Sawyer's books is going to outsell me by orders of mag. Nonetheless—if I can pull this off, which I may not—my consciousness riff is going to be the better book. Assuming the finished product looks anything like the image in my head (which could, admittedly, be just an internally generated simulation that is not being updated by reality).
CD: So you came at the story not from “I'm going to create an alien race” but more along the lines of exploring consciousness?
PW: That was the theme. Although it's true, I also wanted to design an alien. I'm a little tired of humanoid aliens. You can forgive it in Star Trek and limited-budget stuff that has to use human actors. But I like the idea of alien aliens. I recognize that the laws of natural selection are probably universal, so you're not going to have aliens with absurd anatomy and behaviour just because they're “alien.” There will be inherent universal motives—replication, persistence. Replication is really a way to achieve persistence; the parts wear out after a while, so you have to replicate. But that's just one way of persisting. If you can come up with an alien that doesn't reproduce but regenerates, an immortal alien if you will, it could be fundamentally different from us. But at the same time, it will still follow the rules of natural selection.
I'm trying to kill two birds with one stone. I'm sick and tired of throwing some heavy acne on a guy's forehead and calling him an alien. If I'm going to have an alien he's going to be a really cool alien. My aliens don't even have genes; most of their metabolism is mediated externally, by magnetic fields. At the same time the characters in Blindsight are “human” but every one of them—the vampire, the linguist, the pod person—they each highlight consciousness from a different perspective. The issue is raised that some or all of these characters may in fact not be conscious. How do you tell? An automaton would want to blend in. Natural selection would promote crypsis. For all we know, you're just a meat puppet—processing information through a number of algorithms, responding intelligently, but not aware in any conscious sense.
CD: You mentioned that you wanted to write for a long time. Can you tell us about the first story you wrote?
PW: You're probably talking to the first author who actually gets worse with practise. Empirically I can prove that. Also—and this is something I'm quite proud of—everybody has stories about sending off thousands of submissions and getting rejected by all of them, but how many people have you interviewed that can claim to have been rejected by markets they never even submitted to?
I'd been writing stories since I was a little kid, but it wasn't until Grad school that that I actually sent something out, a story called “Refugee.” It got rejected by Analog—and I never sent it to Analog. I sent it to George Scithers at Asimov's, because I didn't think it was rigorous enough for Analog. And it got rejected by Analog. Scithers liked it enough to pass it along to Schmidt. I guess they had different response times, so all of a sudden I get this rejection letter from Analog. “George Scithers passed ‘Refugee’ along to me. Several really intriguing ideas, neatly woven together, engagingly told, but the ending does seem awfully futile.” Already I was becoming known as a downer. “I too just had to write to tell you that we're also not going to buy it. Not only does the protagonist get squashed like a bug at the end, but it's really kind of difficult to see why he would even bother trying to survive in that kind of environment. However, we're really interested in seeing more of your work.” Shortly thereafter I got a rejection letter from Scithers saying, “This is really nice but we need clowns at the end."
OK, so now Schmidt's my man. Everything I wrote after that I sent straight to Analog. And I got constant personalized rejections. “The micro-writing in this is really intriguing.” “When I read it four times, I realized it actually had a good story, but it took me four times to get it. Not buying it, but this is what's wrong with it, this is how to fix it.” “'Ambassador’ nearly made it. Strong narrative drive, but I found the ending unnecessarily ugly. Can you bring in some clowns?” Again with the clowns.
This all happened through the better part of a decade. Just a couple of years ago I dug out all my Analog rejections, and I noticed a pattern. They were all getting shorter, more and more terse. Finally I got a letter from Analog: “Dear submitter: We regret to say that we are currently overstocked on stories of this sort at this time.” And that story was “A Niche."
There were mitigating circumstances. A week after I'd sent “A Niche” off, this movie came out called Deepstar Six. Big toothy things, bottom of the ocean, guys living in an undersea habitat. And then Roger Corman came out with Lords of the Deep. And then Leviathan came out, and then The Abyss came out. Two weeks after The Abyss came out I got that form rejection from Schmidt. I don't know if he really thought that “A Niche” sucked, or if he just opened the story, read the first paragraph, and thought, “Not another Abyss rip-off. We've got so many of these."
At any rate I decided I could at least recoup the cost of my printer ribbon, so I sent it off to Tesseracts. Then I forgot about it. Almost a year to the day after I sent it off I was talking to a friend of mine on the phone and I said, “It's time for me to grow up. I'm obviously not going to make it as a writer. Fuck it. I'm never going to write SF again in my life. From now on I'm going to concentrate on science."
The next day, I got a contract from Tesseracts. I spent about twice as much as they paid me on a celebratory meal in a fine restaurant. So I still didn't recoup the cost of my printer ribbon, but I was at that point a published author. The person I was with at the time made a colour photocopy of the advance cheque, and I've still got it hanging on my wall. That story got reprinted about four or five times. It's my one hit single.
CD: Have you gotten any interesting reader feedback for your novels?
PW: Some of it's almost obsessive. If you look at my web site, there's something about “angst-ridden blogging teenage girls.” That was not really a joke. It's very cool—especially when you're in your late 40's and have no job—it's very cool to be told that you've got someone like Lenie Clarke right. There are people with some pretty raw histories who say that I somehow nailed the affect, that I somehow got what goes on in their heads. I consider myself just a poseur; I've heard some pretty scary stories, but I've never lived them myself. So to have people who have lived through that stuff tell me that my speculations are anywhere close to legitimate is an honour.
On the other hand, when they start lying in wait for you at 2:00 a.m. in hotel lobbies, that can be a bit creepy.
That's not the only kind of response I get, of course. I've already mentioned that I get occasional kind words from science types, and I've gotten fan mail from other SF writers. But some of the most helpful stuff just comes from the ranks of the readers. I've gotten into some really rewarding correspondences with folks who, for the most part, I've never actually met. I know from a Darwinian perspective that doesn't matter as much as, say, sales figures do. But for every lame-ass royalty statement that leaves me depressed, all it takes is one e-mail—"Hey, did you think about this?” Or, “How could he eat outside without the pressure flattening his duodenum?"—to make it seem worth the trouble again. It matters. It keeps you going.
I know how stupid, how uneconomic that sounds. But screw it. This morning I got an email from a guy who said he hadn't been so rabidly interested in somebody's writing since Gibson or Stephenson or Robinson. I'm nowhere near that good, but it's not bad company to be in.
This is a slightly abridged version of our interview with Peter Watts—you can find the complete version at challengingdestiny.com. You can find Peter's web site at www.rifters.com.
It began, as these things so often do, with desire.
In this case the desire for sushi. I felt the sudden need to try the finest bluefin tuna, what the Japanese call maguro.
I make it a point to always indulge my sudden needs.
In better days, bluefin was worth its weight in gold, but not any more. Now it's worth hundreds of times more. All gold does is hold its value.
And what good is that?
Of course the bluefin is an endangered species (but then what isn't, ha ha) which makes the purchase and/or consumption of maguro a felony, so a little discretion was in order.
I decided to go to the Red Dragon, a little Serbian place down on Clairemont and Edison that still took cash. The Dragon was basically legit, although on occasion Velimir had sold me an item or two from his personal collection.
So I shaved my legs and slipped on a pale blue cocktail dress over my slinkiest Victoria's Secret. I pulled out my nice comm, the one that looks like a diamond pendant and carefully placed it so as to emphasize my décolletage.
It wasn't that I was looking to bring someone home, but I figured sushi was a special occasion and really, how many more chances was I going to get to dress up?
While I was changing I enabled my neural implant and queried Amy Sanders who lived next door in 3C.
She answered at once. The voice in my head hinted at tears and grief. Yes?
Amy, I said brightly, this is Katya. Get dressed, we're going out.
Oh. Pause. Really, thank you, Katya, but I—
Still mooning over Mark? Her husband had run off three weeks ago to join an apocalyptic Christian cult. I mean it's bad enough when a man leaves you for another woman, but when he leaves you for a life of wool robes, bad haircuts, and angry harangues about the end of the world, that's really too much. You know the best antidote to a man? Another man.
I really don't think I can. Softly.
OK, I said gently. We won't party. Let's just have a nice dinner, all right? If there was anyone who needed a night out it was Amy Sanders.
Well ... Maybe.
After I got dressed I went next door and dragged her out of her apartment. She was twenty-five and beautiful, but since her husband left she never seemed to wear anything but oversized gray sweats. Somehow I managed to get her into a black miniskirt and a pink silk blouse. She tied her shoulder-length blond hair back with a matching pink hair band. By the time she was done, she didn't look half-bad.
Hot even.
The greeter at the Dragon had a perfectly sculpted body and natural Mediterranean good looks. The fact that he was also gay was all the proof I needed that there was no God.
Umberto smiled brightly at me. “Miss Katya. So good to see you again.” He raised an eyebrow. “And who is your beautiful friend?"
Amy actually blushed. It was good to see.
No need to tell her that Umberto was gay.
He escorted us to our table (pulling the chair out for Amy) and brought us a couple drinks. I gave him a hundred and then rummaged around in my purse for a tip. I slugged down a whiskey sour while Amy delicately sipped a pink lady through a straw.
The Dragon is a nice place: cozy, circular tables draped in red tablecloths and lit by the glow of long, graceful tapers, dark enough to be intimate without slipping into sleazy, and the food is five star. The smell of roasting meat and exotic spices wafted from a wood-burning oven.
“So why are we really here?” Amy asked after a moment.
“Sushi,” I said simply.
“Sushi?” Her face scrunched up in confusion.
I leaned toward her and gently took her outstretched hand in mine. “Amy,” I said softly, “when tragedy strikes we have two choices. We can wallow in despair or we can enjoy ourselves. Sushi is an extraordinary delicacy, one I've never tried. Now is my chance.” I squeezed her hand. "Our chance."
Amy moistened her lips. “I didn't realize it was so important to you."
“Well, I refuse to wallow in despair.” I glanced over and caught Velimir's eye across the bar.
Velimir Bajic was a short, good-looking man in his mid-thirties, with dark hair, dark eyes, and pale skin. He was no Umberto, but he had his charms and he was very straight, or at least that's what I'd heard.
He said a few words to the bartender and then drifted over to where we were sitting. “Miss Grigorev,” he said in low tones, “how good to see you. Can I offer you something special tonight?” There was just a slight emphasis on the word special.
"Sunazuri," I said. It was the finest cut of the finest tuna, but I believe if you're going to splurge you ought to do it right.
Velimir smiled. “I think we can oblige.” He made a small gesture and a waiter scurried over. Velimir whispered a few words and the waiter scurried off.
Velimir caught my eyes. “Of course you understand we can't take cash."
I blinked. “What? We just paid for the drinks with cash."
Velimir shrugged, his lips turned down in a pro forma look of despair that said he was willing to pretend he was sorry, but that was it. “My apologies, Miss Grigorev, but for a delicacy of this nature, I must insist on something a bit more, ah, tangible than money."
I looked at him blankly for a moment. Then I understood. Oh. Very straight.
Velimir watched me intently.
I could've changed his mind with a single word. Audit. I'm sure there was enough on Velimir to tie him up for ninety days. It would only be tax court, but that was still three months he'd never get back. A lot of IRS auditors would've done just that, in fact I wasn't sure I knew one who wouldn't.
But some obsolete vestige of morality kept me from saying the magic word.
The waiter brought out the plate. Tiny cubes of red meat marbled with thin lines of fat. My mouth watered. You never want something so much as when you're told you can't have it.
Now I'm not a prude. I like sex as much as the next gal and I'm sure Velimir would've been pleasant enough, but I didn't like the way his greasy gaze slid over my body like I was a pleasure to be bought and sold.
Like a plate of fish.
“No,” I said primly, “Thank you anyway."
Velimir raised an eyebrow and tilted his head.
Yes, I'm sure, you bastard, I thought.
Amy looked from me to Velimir, her eyes wide, confused.
“Excuse me."
I looked up. A man with short, curly hair the color of gingerbread and startling blue eyes had appeared next to Velimir. He had a strong face, but there was a certain innocence in those bright eyes.
Velimir frowned. “Yes, sir?"
The man shook his head. “I'm at the next table and I couldn't help overhearing. Please let me pay for the ladies."
Velimir raised an eyebrow. “Sir,” he said archly, “I am quite certain you have nothing I could accept as payment."
“I brought this to drink with dinner.” The man reached into a brown paper sack and pulled out a magnum of wine labeled Harlan Estate.
Velimir swallowed. “Forgive me, it seems I was wrong."
“What do you want in return?” asked Amy suspiciously.
The man shook his head. “It's a gift."
I flushed. It was a sweet, extravagant gesture, a pre-89 Persei gesture, the kind of thing a man was supposed to do: protect a lady's honor. I looked into his clear blue eyes and felt myself melt.
I licked my lips. “I wouldn't want to impose."
The man blinked. “No, I insist. It's not an imp—"
“No, thank you,” I said sternly.
“I'll pay,” said Amy in a small voice.
I turned to her. “No, Amy. I didn't mean for you—"
She smiled bravely and stood up. “No, really. I want to."
My mouth worked, but no words came out.
Velimir's eyes flickered over her body. In that blouse, she was a pink cloud of femininity. Velimir took her hand and led her away and I just sat there with my mouth open.
“Maybe,” said the man coldly, “you shouldn't say ‘no’ when someone offers to help you.” And then he strode away.
The comm I'd so carefully placed between my breasts trilled softly, but for once I didn't give a damn who was calling.
I picked up a piece of sushi. Sunazuri was reputed to have a light, buttery taste and a velvety texture, but when I popped it past my lips I didn't taste it at all. I chewed mechanically and swallowed.
When Amy came back twenty minutes later with her hair band pushed back and her silk blouse rumpled, looking like a lost little girl, she said, “How was the maguro?"
“Wonderful,” I said and that seemed to make her happy.
I felt so bad that I bought the drinks for the rest of the night and we ended up partying after all.
Sometime during the evening I remember looking at the man with curly, gingerbread hair and the bright eyes through a haze of alcohol and thinking, I could spend the rest of my life with you. Then I remembered how long the rest of my life was and sobered up right away.
Instead I went home with a man who called himself Black Ice because, as he explained, no one ever saw him coming. He was probably an accountant (I never found out for sure). He was trying hard for the bad-ass biker look: black leather jacket, spiky blond hair, metal piercings in a variety of interesting places.
We mainlined a couple vials of Blue 69. I don't know what's in it exactly, but it definitely doesn't slow you down. He fucked me three times, the last time bending me over my recliner.
He was perfect. The sex was OK and when I woke up the next morning and found him gone, I didn't miss him.
Not even a little bit.
The world didn't use to be like this. I still remember what it was like before Huygens discovered 89 Persei.
Huygens was an interferometer: two massive space telescopes positioned at opposite ends of the Earth's orbit. ESA put it up to evaluate a list of 43 extrasolar planets, looking for oxygen lines in the absorption spectra of their atmospheres. In between the alien worlds, Huygens surveyed various astronomical oddities.
After checking planet number twenty-six, Huygens turned its attention to a dark nebula in Perseus that was also a minor X-ray source, Persei X-12, to be exact.
Huygens never made it back to the planets.
What it discovered hidden in the heart of that dark nebula were three monstrous stars, each thirty times the mass of the sun, engaged in an intricate and self-destructive dance of mass and gravity.
Astronomers designated the system 89 Persei.
Careful observation of Eta Carinae had already taught them much about hypernovae and the gamma ray bursts they engendered, great swaths of radiation poured across the stars, sterilizing any world in their paths.
When 89 Persei finally went, when the trio of stars finally spiraled down into each other and flashed off, releasing the energy of a million galaxies in a moment, Earth would lie directly in the path of the deadly storm.
In a funny sort of way the disaster had already happened. 89 Persei lay 270 light years from Sol System, so it had exploded long ago. Humanity's fate had been sealed a few years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The astronomers assured us that when the stars had collided they had boiled off more than enough angry gamma to superheat the Earth's atmosphere and kill every living thing down to the bacteria.
There was nothing we could do to save ourselves. But thanks to the astounding powers of science we could predict exactly when it would happen: Wednesday July 12, 2023, at 3:47 p.m.
We had a little more than three years.
I woke the next morning, sore from the sex and strung out from the drugs. I staggered out of bed and glanced at the mirror. I hadn't taken my make-up off the night before and my mascara had smeared. There was an ugly red mark on my left breast (it turned out that Black Ice liked to bite).
I groaned and threw a robe around my body and stumbled into the living room where I found Assistant Special Agent in Charge Charlie Hampton of the FBI's San Diego Office sitting in my good leather recliner drinking a cup of coffee.
I was too strung out to be surprised, though I did have the presence of mind to check my robe to make sure it was closed.
“Good morning, Katya,” ASAC Charlie said cheerfully and took another sip of coffee. The smell roiled my stomach. If he wasn't careful I was going to throw up all over his shoes.
There was no point in giving him a hard time about breaking into my apartment. The U.S. government had adopted broad police powers to hold things together during the home stretch. A little violation of privacy was nothing. Not when the FBI could make you disappear, no questions asked.
“What do you want?” I croaked.
He frowned. “You don't look so good, Katya.” He picked up a hypo lying on my glass-topped coffee table with the vial of Blue 69 still attached. “You ought to watch this stuff, it's related to early-onset Alzheimer's."
I gave a chuckle that sounded like a death rattle. “Alzheimer's? That's a good one, Charlie."
He scowled. “I said ‘early-onset.’”
“Yeah? How early?"
“We-e-ll, a few years maybe."
“So that's, what? Twenty, thirty years from now?” I cackled again.
“Anyway that's not the important part.” He tossed the hypo down. “It's illegal as hell."
I shrugged. As long as I hurt only myself the FBI didn't really care and we both knew it.
ASAC Charlie sighed. “OK. I came to talk to you about David Brodek."
I shook my head. “Uh, David, uh—"
Hampton yanked an eight by ten glossy out of a manila folder.
“No glossies,” I croaked. “It's way too early for glossies."
Hampton held it up anyway. It was the man from the Dragon, the man with curly, gingerbread hair and bright eyes.
“Oh,” I said brilliantly. “He didn't tell me his name."
“Yes he did,” said Hampton.
I knew the drugs and alcohol had taken their toll, but I felt I was on sure ground here. Then I remembered my comm trilling. “Oh,” I said again. “Why do we care?"
“Brodek's been on sabbatical from Sandia for the last three months. They reported a theft of antimatter last week."
"After he left?” I asked. “That puts him in the clear, doesn't it?” I was having a hard time following him, but maybe that was because my head felt like it was packed full of cotton.
“Yeah, except for this.” He pulled out another glossy. It showed Brodek talking to a tall, slim man with snow-white hair and a weathered face.
I shook my head.
“Ezekial Carpenter."
Was that name supposed to mean something to me? I accessed my implant and ran a quick-search. It came up blank. I shrugged.
ASAC Charlie leaned forward, a look of sudden intensity tightening his face. “Brotherhood of the Fifth Angel."
I sucked in my breath. “An apocalyptic Christian cult."
He nodded soberly.
I felt a sudden chill and folded my arms across my chest. Along with obscure astrophysical phenomenon the 21st Century had taught us all a lot about the Book of Revelation.
“Antimatter, a scientist, and apocalyptic Christians,” I muttered under my breath.
“You see the problem.” I realized ASAC Charlie looked tired. There were dark circles under his eyes and every muscle in his face seemed to sag. This was how it would be at the end when all the people trying to hold it together began to learn, to really know there was no point.
“How much did they take?” I asked.
“A few dozen kilos.” He shrugged. “Enough."
“Enough for what"
“To turn any city they choose into a smoking crater,” he snapped. “To send a plume of ash miles into the atmosphere. It's E equals fucking mc2, Katya. They took enough."
My hand went to my mouth. “Can they really do that?"
“Sure they can do that,” he said angrily. “It's not like a nuke. Antiprotons can be contained in a simple magnetic field. There's no spherical trigger with carefully designed explosive charges. No radiation leakage. Just hydrogen and antihydrogen and boom."
I licked my lips. “What do you want me to do?"
“We've been watching Brodek for a long time, but we haven't learned much. We need to know the exact plan, who's involved. Time is growing short."
“You want me to rattle him."
ASAC Charlie exhaled heavily. “He seems interested in you. Shake him up, see what falls loose. We'll pay,” he added almost as an afterthought.
I looked up. “Pay in what?” I asked, more because I wanted to know how worried he was than because I really cared about the answer.
His jaw set and he met my eyes. “In whatever you want."
That's when I realized he wasn't worried.
He was terrified.
I wasn't sure about taking Amy with me to the party even though ASAC Charlie told me I should. He thought it might allay Brodek's suspicion if he knew I was IRS.
Maybe he was right, but considering how the last girls’ night out had ended, I wasn't sure she'd really be up for another one. I told myself I was just going over to 3C to see how she was.
I knocked on her door.
“It's open,” she called.
I pushed the door open six inches. “Amy?"
She was on her hands and knees rubbing lemon polish into her coffee table with a dirty rag. She looked up and gave me a dazzling smile. “Katya. Come in."
I blinked. I had expected her to look as bad as I felt, but she was up and indecently cheerful. She had her beautiful blond hair tied back and she was wearing a cute red top and jeans. “I just wanted to make sure you were OK,” I said hesitantly. “We partied pretty hard last night."
She smiled and waved my words away. “No, I'm great."
I swallowed and glanced down. “Look, about the sushi, I never meant for you to have to—"
She was up in a second. “I know. It's just, well, you seemed so passionate about it and when Velimir said he wouldn't take your money—"
“If I'd wanted the sushi that badly I would've—"
Amy stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. “I hope it hasn't gotten to the point where a woman can't do something nice for a friend."
I took a deep breath and held it. Then I let it out all at once. “OK,” I said, letting it drop.
She dropped her hand. “Did you need something?"
“Yeah. I'm going to a party. Want to come?” I held my hands up. “I don't want you to pay for anything,” I said hastily.
“Where is it?"
“The marina."
“Oooh, swanky. Who's throwing it?” she asked.
“Do you remember the guy with the wine?"
“Curly hair and blue eyes?” She smiled impishly. “How could I forget? A lot better looking than Vanilla Ice or whoever you were dancing with last night."
“Anyway,” I went on evenly, "he invited me."
She smiled brightly. “Wouldn't miss it for the world."
It was a mild summer day in San Diego, eighties and clear, not a single cloud in the blue, blue sky. A great day to live in SoCal.
I parked in a secure lot and we walked over to the gate on West Harbor Drive. The twin silver towers that had once been a Marriott rose up like a mirrored beacon behind the ten-foot concrete wall and the APC parked carelessly in front of it.
We endured the security search right there out in the open. It included a close frisk, a blood sample, and a quite thorough body scan, but neither one of us gave the soldiers so much as a cross look.
Downtown was patrolled by soldiers with dead eyes and semi-automatic weapons with the safeties off. Protecting the rich at the end of times was a deadly serious business.
(And how did the rich pay their soldiers, now that money was nearly worthless? By letting them live within the gates, of course.)
After my soldier was done, he spoke into his throat mike and a part of the wall shimmered and disappeared, revealing an open steel hatch.
Amy and I stepped into an entirely different world. Safety, comfort, luxury for the asking. No mass suicides, no angry young men flipping out, no people going hungry because their cash was suddenly worthless.
All of it had been replaced by beautiful people dressed in bright splashes of color, canary yellow and aquamarine and shimmering silver, laughing and drinking and dancing along the waterfront, white sailboats lined up neatly in their slips behind them, sunshine glistening on the water.
Except it wasn't really a different world, was it? Or it wouldn't be in three years when the universe casually wiped away the happy falsehood in a fraction of a second, leaving nothing behind but the blackened husks of what might've once been people.
I followed Amy into the throng. I was wearing a little black dress and I felt a twinge of jealously standing next to her. She who was a good five (OK, ten) years younger than me and looked like an absolute vixen in scarlet lamé.
We were hardly there five minutes before she was swept away in a swirl of men and music and champagne in long, fluted glasses. I watched her for a while. There were a lot of women there (there always are at this sort of thing) but Amy was clearly the belle of the ball.
Mark Sanders was a moron.
I turned my back on her and leaned over the wrought-iron fence that separated the party from the gentle waves of San Diego Bay. A gull skimmed low over the water.
“I'm glad you came."
And there he was standing beside me with that curly hair and those bright blue eyes, looking magnificent in a black tuxedo.
Mr. Perfect.
I waved my drink at the water. “It's a lovely party."
He snorted. “I'm sure you could go to any party you wanted."
“Why don't we start over.” I extended my hand. “My name is Katya Grigorev."
His hand closed over mine. It was warm and gentle and I felt myself flush. “David Brodek.” He held the contact for a moment longer than was strictly polite and then turned to look behind him. “Your friend's having a good time."
I glanced over at Amy. She was surrounded by a group of men. One of them said something and she laughed.
“I hope so,” I said.
“You know,” he said softly, “what you told her last night was wrong."
I turned to look at him. “What?"
“About enjoying yourself despite tragedy."
“Really,” I said. “Then what's all this?"
He gave me a shy, little boy smile that I felt way down in my stomach. “This is my lame attempt to get your attention."
“But you really don't believe in hedonism?"
“What I don't believe in is nihilism,” he said seriously.
I folded my arms. “You think wallowing in despair is a better option?"
He shook his head. “There's another choice, Katya."
“Oh, yeah? What's that?"
He looked at me intently. “Fight back."
I snorted. “How do you do that? Through prayer? That's the kind of idiocy that got Amy where she is today."
He frowned.
“Her husband ran off to join a cult."
David shook his head and looked over at her. “Well, she seems to be doing OK now."
“You think so?” I murmured. I glanced over at him. “So how much does a bottle of Harlan Estate cost anyway?"
“Fifty, sixty grand.” He shrugged. “Back when money was worth something."
I whistled softly. “No wonder Velimir's eyes bugged out of his head when you pulled it out of the bag.” I looked up at him. “Why were you willing to trade it for the sushi?"
He didn't turn away from my gaze. “It seemed like a small price to pay for a soul."
“Oh, you traffic in souls, do you?” I said lightly.
“I don't buy and sell them for my pleasure, if that's what you mean."
“No,” I said slowly. “No, you're the great preserver of souls."
“You make me sound so self-righteous."
“Aren't you?"
He sighed. “I do what I can to help. Isn't that what you do?"
I shook my head.
He glanced at Amy. “Yeah right."
“I try to make the passing easier,” I said bitterly. “I'm not under illusion I can really help."
“Just words,” he said.
“This is a stupid argument,” I snapped. “None of it matters."
“'I saw a star which had fallen down to the earth,'” he intoned, “'and it was given the key to the abyss.’”
I shrugged, suddenly very tired. “Something like that."
He looked out at the water. “This way we live...” He shook his head. “It's not right."
“There's no point in building anything permanent."
“Really? You'd give up three years of happiness because you can't have more?"
I frowned. “I don't believe in a God who loves us."
I'd meant for the comment to shock him, but he just smiled indulgently. “Neither do I."
I blinked. “You're not a Christian?"
Now he definitely looked pleased with himself. “Was I supposed to be?"
Judging by the goofy half-smile stretched across his face I wasn't doing a very good job of rattling him. “I know about your little side project."
“You do?” Still amused.
“A few kilograms could take out a major American city,” I said doggedly.
“At least."
If there was a nerve there, I hadn't found it. I was supposed to rattle Brodek, but it turned out it was working the other way around.
“You're a fibby, aren't you, Katya."
I shook my head. “I work for the IRS."
“Then you're free-lancing for them."
I said nothing.
“There's a lot of things you don't understand,” he said softly.
I tried to imagine the kind of fanaticism that would cause someone to blow up a city of ten million. “You're right about that."
He suddenly leaned forward and kissed me, a long, lingering kiss that left the taste of him on my lips.
“Well,” he whispered, “I hope you figure it out soon."
And then he disappeared into the crowd of revelers.
I was so flustered that I didn't find the datatab he'd tucked into a fold in my dress until after I got home.
The tab contained a simulation showing the gamma ray burst's most probable path through the solar system. It also contained a second simulation that was much more interesting than the first.
The second sim modeled a massive explosion on the Moon's surface, evidently much larger than your garden-variety nuke. The explosion scattered particles throughout cislunar space.
As near as I could tell, it was supposed to be some kind of shield.
Of course ASAC Charlie would have none of it. “He's playing with you, Katya. Come on. The Moon?"
And maybe he was right. I spent a day doing some intense web research, wading through paper abstracts, NASA contingency plans, and transcripts of congressional testimony.
It turned out that Brodek's plan, which had been labeled Lunar Detonation and Dispersion, had been thoroughly investigated. The government had concluded that there was almost no chance of success.
Of course the word that caught my attention was “almost."
“Thanks for inviting me to the party.” Amy sat on my sofa, cross-legged, a fat pillow in her lap. She was wearing a gray sweatshirt again, but she also wore a pair of plaid shorts that showed off her slim legs and her hair was pulled back into a sporty pony tail.
I sat opposite her, sipping a steaming mug of coffee laced with chocolate and orange and God knows what else. I know it sounds like we were on the set of some gourmet coffee commercial, but Amy had insisted. Apparently, she actually liked the stuff.
I tried to be patient. I was anxious to get back to my research on Lunar Detonation and Dispersion.
She set her mug down on my coffee table and leaned forward on the pillow. “So tell me about the guy with the curly hair.” She raised her eyebrows. “Did you and he...?"
I thought about that incredible kiss, the kiss that knocked me off my feet. Then I thought about him quoting Revelation. “He was a disappointment,” I said flatly.
“Well, you must've found someone else with a bigger ... uh ... a less disappointing...” She clicked her tongue.
I shrugged. I was suddenly tired of the girl talk. It felt like I was back in the dorms at SDSU. Had I really been like this at twenty-five?
She picked the mug back up and brought it to her lips. “You know, I had stopped drinking this stuff. It's so fattening."
I snorted. “No need to worry about that any more."
She cradled the mug in both hands and looked into its depths. “No,” she said softly. “I guess not."
It sounded like she'd made a decision. I hoped so anyway. Screw Mark Sanders. And screw the end of the world.
“He asked me to go with him,” Amy said.
I frowned in confusion. “One of the men at the party?"
She smiled and shook her head. “Mark. To the commune."
I thought of Brodek. “Who'd want to spend the rest of her life praying to an absent God?"
“Yeah,” agreed Amy, “sounded stupid to me, too. But at least we'd have been together."
I didn't say anything.
“You know, Mark and I used to love downtown San Diego, before they closed it off, I mean.” She was staring out my sliding glass window, looking at nothing, and I realized she wasn't really talking to me.
“We'd buy chocolate down at Seaport Village, walk along the sidewalk, and look at the water. Or go window shopping at Horton Plaza. It was nice to see it again.” She turned to look at me. “And I have you to thank for it."
“I'm glad you had a good time,” I said carefully. “But you have to live in the now. That's all we have left."
Amy smiled a sad smile. “Of course you're right.” And then, suddenly the sad smile disappeared, replaced by a smirk. “Oh, I was living in the now, all right. There are a couple guys at the party who can attest to that."
And with that charming thought, I decided it was time to get back to my research. I looked down into my mug. “I'm sorry to cut this off, but I have some work to do..."
I glanced over at her just in time to see the muscles in her face sag, replaced quickly by the broadest, brightest smile I'd ever seen.
“No problem.” She got up and left.
I frowned as I watched her go.
I didn't stop reading about schemes to save the world until sometime after midnight when I fell asleep at the keyboard.
I didn't learn much.
I woke up late the next morning. I remembered running Amy off and winced. Better go over there and apologize, I thought. So I ran a comb through my hair and stumbled over to 3C.
I rapped on the door.
No answer.
“Amy,” I called in a hoarse voice.
Nothing.
Maybe she was in the shower or on the phone.
I edged the door open. “Amy?"
I found her in the bedroom, lying on the bed. At first glance I thought she was sleeping, but then I took another look. She wore a gown of shimmering, virginal white, its sleeves fashioned from fine lace, a gauzy veil draped over her face.
Her wedding dress.
Oh god oh god. I surged forward, glimpsing a small pill bottle on her nightstand, brown-orange and transparent enough to show that it was empty.
Syrup of ipecac, then, to bring up the pills, that and CPR, if I was fast enough, lucky enough, just maybe—
I touched her hand.
Cold.
Cold as the cold sea.
I jerked my hand back from death's touch and looked wildly around the room, searching for something I could do. Of course there was nothing.
Not any more.
She left no note. Why should she? An absent husband, a dying world; what did she need to explain?
How could I have been so stupid? The signs had all been there. Suicides often give away their treasures before they exit. I shuddered to think what she'd given away so I could try sushi.
I strolled along the beach at La Jolla. It was a gray day, no more than fifty degrees out, unusual for San Diego in June. I wore battered sneakers and jeans and a cream-colored herringbone sweater. No make-up.
Dressing up just didn't seem important any more.
For a week, I'd been beating myself up about Amy. If only I'd talked to her. If only I'd paid more attention I could've—
What?
Saved her?
Maybe I shouldn't have tried.
Maybe Amy was right.
What was there left to do? What was there left to hope for? All the little pleasures, the pointless luxuries were dry and tasteless. Like the Sunazuri I'd eaten the night we'd gone to the Red Dragon.
I gazed out at the gray-green waves of the Pacific. I could strip off my clothes and just walk into the surf, swim out into the ocean, nice, easy overhand strokes, swim, until I could swim no more.
I could really do it.
I heard a man's voice say, “How are you, Katya?"
I turned and he was standing right behind me. David. He looked great. Gray sweatshirt that said MIT, faded jeans. The wind lightly ruffled his curly hair.
“I'm sorry about Amy."
I didn't want to talk about it, so I said, “The FBI thinks you plan to blow up a city."
He gave me a crooked smile. “That's OK. So does the Brotherhood of the Fifth Angel."
“You just used them so you could make the bomb."
His grin widened. “Pretty cool, huh?"
I shook my head. “Charlie Hampton wants to arrest you and Ezekial Carpenter will want to kill you."
He shrugged. “Two men trapped in their paradigms."
“I've done some checking, David. Everyone says it can't work."
“Not everyone,” he said softly.
“But the chances aren't good."
He offered me a small, sad smile, as if to say, “Well, no."
“How're you going to get it into orbit?” I demanded.
“I don't know."
“Have you picked a detonation point yet? How do you know you'll get the right particle density?"
He shrugged.
“What if your calculations are off? If you detonate too soon, the Moon will sweep most of the particles out of orbit."
“What's your point, Katya?” he said softly.
I bent down to pick up a stone and hurled it savagely at the sea. "You're a bloody fool."
“Nothing makes someone's who's given up angrier than offering her hope."
I wheeled on him. “You're saying I want the world to die."
He held my gaze, not matching my anger, but not backing down either. “I'm saying you've made your peace with it."
“So it's better to have false hope,” I sneered.
“Better than no hope,” he said.
“You're just as crazy as the cultists."
“The flashy parties, the drugs, the empty sex,” he snapped, suddenly angry. “Treating people like they're commodities to be purchased and consumed. Is that what you're defending?” He glanced out at the cold, deadly ocean. “Is that what you really want?"
“The world is coming to an end.” My throat tightened painfully around the words. “And you can't stop it."
“Maybe, maybe not,” he whispered. “But, either way I can live my life like it means something."
He held out his hand and after a long moment I reached out and took it.
Steven Mohan, Jr. lives in Pueblo, Colorado where he works as a manufacturing engineer. When not writing, he helps his wife keep track of their three small children. Steve's short fiction has appeared in Writers of the Future, On Spec, Talebones, Extremes 4: Darkest Africa, and Aboriginal Science Fiction and has won honorable mention in both The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and The Year's Best Science Fiction. This is Steve's first story for Challenging Destiny. His story “Murder in the Shadow of Exile” will be appearing in Challenging Destiny Number 20.
It's a wonderful thing to be clever, and you should never think otherwise, and you should never stop being that way. But what you learn, as you get older, is that there are a few billion other people all trying to be clever at the same time, and whatever you do with your life will certainly be lost—swallowed up in the ocean—unless you are doing it along with like-minded people who will remember your contributions and carry them forward. That is why the world is divided into tribes.
—Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age
On the way back from the Minute Mart, Tommy saw the damndest thing he'd ever seen. There was one of those robots working in Edgar Deal's front yard. It was trimming Edgar's hedges, which were so overgrown you could barely see the windows. The thing was using a motorized cutting attachment on the end of a mechanical arm. It was round and brass-colored, low to the ground, with eight roach-like legs.
How in hell had Edgar managed to afford a robot? They were thousands of dollars. Hell, that robot cost more than Edgar's beat-up, paint-peeling, lopsided old house was worth. Tommy shook his head, kept on driving.
He cracked open a Bud, keeping one eye on the road. It felt nice and cool going down. He chucked the empty out the window, into a ditch, cracked open another. The old tub-a-lard would bitch at him if he drank too much where she could see.
The truck kicked up a cloud of dust as Tommy turned off the shimmering pavement and hit the top of the dirt road that led to his house. From here he could see the whole farm—it was quite a sight. The triple-wide trailer house needed a coat of paint, but it was holding up pretty good. They were only supposed to last twenty, twenty-five years. His daddy had bought theirs thirty-one years ago. But what was really something was all the planes sprawled out across the fields. All fifty acres were covered with airplanes of every size, from little Cessna ultra-lights to gigantic Boeing 787's. Made his heart jump to see them, a sea of silver metal glinting in the sun. He and his son Wayne joked all the time that they hadn't given up farming, they'd just swapped crops, from cotton to airplanes. That always cracked them up good.
Out past the house was the hay barn, now stuffed to the gills with airplane parts, and the grain silo, sticking out like a giant, useless thumb among all the airplanes. Closer to the house were other kinds of mechanical devices—washers and dryers, air conditioners and the like—but they were mostly junk, they'd given up on that end of the business when they started getting heavy into the airplanes.
Ever since they'd come up with ultra-thin alloys, you could buy old-style steel and aluminum planes for damn close to nothing. They were worthless as scrap, and most people didn't fly heavy metal planes any more. But you still had your buffs, and they were Tommy's customers. He was making way more than his daddy had ever made farming.
As he pulled up Wayne pulled his head out of a Cessna 860's engine. Good boy, didn't need to be told what to do. He was twenty, not a boy any more. Tommy kept forgetting.
He went inside and put the rest of the Buds in the fridge. One of Jacklyn's damn dogs had pissed on the damn carpet again. It smelled like a kennel with all those dogs and Jacklyn too lazy to paper train them properly.
Tommy went out and got working on a pretty little Concorde. The fuel system was shot, but he figured he could jury-rig something.
It was getting up on lunch time when Tommy pulled his head out of the engine compartment of the Concorde and went to grab another Bud from the fridge. That's when he saw it, coming down the road.
“Hey Wayne, take a look at this,” he said.
Wayne popped out from under the Cessna, grabbed a rag and wiped his hands. “What?” he said. Then he caught sight of it. “God damn. That Edgar's?"
A robot was coming down the dirt road, happy as you please. “Nope, that ain't the one was in Edgar's yard, no sir,” Tommy said. This one walked on four thin legs, like it was on stilts. Like a porcupine on stilts—all sorts of pointy things stuck out the top of it. It was about two feet high, looked to be made of ultra-thin, flexible titanium.
It just kept coming, walked right on past Tommy and Wayne and climbed into the engine of a Jetstream 1800. Tommy and Wayne looked at each other, mouths hanging open. They walked over to the Jetstream.
“Hey! What the hell you doing?” Tommy yelled, feeling stupid yelling at a machine. Course he yelled at the airplanes all the time.
There was all sorts of whirring and thunking going on. Wayne stuck his head under the hood. “I'll be God-damned!” he said. “The damn thing is taking apart the hydraulics!"
“What?” Tommy said. He poked his head in to get a look, and sure enough, the little robot was in there head-first, power drivers, socket wrenches, you name it popping out of it and then retracting. Parts were lined up along the engine block. It was cleaning the parts before it put them in the line. It had a hose attachment, what looked like a detergent dispenser, and a rotating buffer.
“What in hell is it doing?” Tommy said. “You think it's fixing the hydraulics?” Wayne shrugged. The robot pulled out a pressure hose that had a good-sized crack at the seam. The hose flew past their noses and into the weeds. The robot came out after it. Tommy and Wayne watched as it stilt-walked around the yard, poking its head into one plane, then another till it found a replacement hose and dove back into the Jetstream.
Tommy looked at Wayne. They busted out laughing. “I got me a robot!” Tommy said. He slapped Wayne on the back. “Hey Jacklyn!” he yelled towards the house. “Jacklyn!"
Jacklyn poked her head out the front door. “Whaddaya want? I'm watching something."
“Come on out here,” Tommy said. “You gotta see this. Craziest thing you ever seen!” Jacklyn thumped down the porch steps in her slippers, her big jugs and belly swinging, both threatening to pop out of a tank-top.
“What is it? I'm missing my show.” Wayne pointed into the Jetstream's engine compartment, trying not to laugh. Looking put out, Jacklyn poked her head in. “Holy—” Tommy and Wayne cracked up.
They watched the robot work for half an hour, then sat on the porch and drank beers.
“Tommy, come look at this,” Jacklyn yelled from the living room.
“What?” Tommy yelled back.
“Quick, you're gonna miss it,” she said. Reluctantly Tommy got up and went to see what she wanted. Wayne followed. “Aw, it's over,” Jacklyn whined when Tommy got there, pointing at the TV set. “They was talking about having trouble with robots. You should of seen the pictures—there was robots all over! All over the place!"
They waited till the news came around again.
“See?” Jacklyn said. “They're everywhere!"
Tommy shushed her. The news guy explained that the robots were so hi-tech that when they wore out, they were programmed to replicate. So if you bought one it was guaranteed for life, because a dying robot built you a replacement before it headed off to the dump. But they were malfunctioning, making copies of themselves when they weren't worn out. At least that's what Tommy got from the report. News reporters talked too fast.
The TV footage was something—there were robots everywhere. Traffic was clogged, cars were running over robots like they were empty beer cans. The reporter barely had anywhere to stand.
That explained where Tommy's robot had come from, and Edgar's, too. Tommy figured he'd keep his mouth shut unless someone came looking for a lost robot.
Two days later, another robot came rolling down the road. Tommy called to Wayne and Jacklyn; the three of them watched it roll toward them on three wheels. It was about a foot and a half high, looked sort of like a tricycle with big cartoon eyes, one on each side. Kind of cute.
It rolled right up to the porch steps, then arms came out and it boosted up the stairs. It stopped at the front door.
“I think it wants to be let in,” Jacklyn said. “You think we should let it?"
“Maybe if you let it in it'll fix the toilet,” Wayne said. The toilet kept clogging, and Tommy couldn't find anything wrong with it. They let it in. It rolled into the house, and a round tube came out of its ass and started vacuuming the rug.
“Now I got me a robot!” Jacklyn cackled. She hooted and pumped a plump fist, like she was at a football game, then sat right down in her recliner, picked the remote off the coffee table and turned on the TV. As if she wouldn't have done the same thing if a robot hadn't shown up and started vacuuming.
When the robot finished vacuuming, it dusted. Then it did the laundry, which was piled waist-high on the cement floor in the mud room. Jacklyn yelled updates of what the robot was doing out the screen door.
Six more showed up the next day. Four came down the road, the other two through the woods behind the south forty. One pulled six gallons of paint out of the shed and started painting the house (Tommy'd been planning to paint, but hadn't gotten round to it). Another started fixing planes, and another washed and buffed Tommy's truck, then started washing planes. It didn't pay attention to the condition of the planes—even washed rusted-out cabin compartments with no wings or tail.
One robot went into the house and started following Jacklyn around like one of her dogs waiting to be fed. Half an hour later she was yelling out the door again. “Pa, come quick! Lookit this!"
Tommy dragged his ass inside, stood waiting, hand on hips, to watch whatever stupid thing Jacklyn wanted to show him.
“Lookit what I can do,” she said, lying in her chair. Then louder, she said, “Fetch me a lemonade!” The robot waiting by her chair shot into the kitchen and returned with a tall glass of lemonade with ice, on a tray. Jacklyn picked it off the tray, took a swig. Some of it spilled down her chin, onto her shirt.
Tommy clapped sarcastically, went back outside to watch the robots fix things with Wayne.
They were watching one robot repair a rotor while another was trying to buff it, when Wayne tugged at Tommy's sleeve and pointed at the robot painting the house. It had stopped painting and was doubled over. A wide seam, like an oversized mouth, formed across its waist. Suddenly a pile of parts burst out of it, onto the ground.
“What the heck?” Tommy said.
The pile quivered. An appendage popped out of the center and started to assemble the pile. Tommy and Wayne gawked, dumbstruck. Half an hour later an exact replica of the robot painter stood testing its joints.
“I'll be damned,” Wayne said.
Tommy shook his head. “If I hadn't just seen that with my own two eyes, I wouldn't believe it. No sir."
“Daddy?” Wayne said. He pointed up the road. Three more robots, heading toward the house.
The cable was out, so they went to bed early. Tommy lay awake, hands laced behind his head. In the darkness robots skittered across the floor, under the bed. One stood motionless on the windowsill, silhouetted in the moonlight. Outside, drilling and hammering drowned out the trill of the crickets.
“I don't like this no more,” Jacklyn whispered.
“Me neither,” Tommy said. “We'll figure something out in the morning."
Tommy, who usually slept late, was up at first light, peering out the bedroom window.
There were hundreds of them.
Fat round ones, tall thin ones, cute ones that looked like cartoon characters, scary ones covered in rotating blades. Some wandered aimlessly, bumping into each other. Others were building an addition onto the house. Tommy had no idea where they'd gotten the wood. One was tilling the soil with the tractor, weaving around the planes. The tractor had been a rusted heap, abandoned in the woods thirty years ago. Now it was freshly painted, the motor humming. There were others planting crops in the freshly tilled soil. Tommy stormed out of the bedroom.
“Wayne,” he called, “wake up! We got work to do.” He grabbed his keys off the kitchen counter, unlocked the oak rifle cabinet in the living room, and pulled out a 12-gauge shotgun.
“I'm up. Couldn't sleep worth a damn with them things moving around,” Wayne said. He already had on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.
Tommy retrieved a dozen boxes of shells from the mud room. With practiced ease he cracked open the shotgun and loaded it. “Get yourself a gun,” he said to Wayne, motioning toward the cabinet. Jacklyn walked by in pajamas without a word, headed into the kitchen, started making coffee. She clicked on the radio.
Tommy went out to the porch, Wayne right behind. He stacked the shells on the railing, leveled the shotgun, took aim at an eight-legged robot that looked like a cartoon crab, and fired. The shot tore three of its legs clean off, and ripped a sizable hole in the thorax. It twitched spasmodically, then was still. None of the others took any notice.
Jacklyn came out with two mugs of coffee, set them on a white plastic table near the door.
“Radio says things are worse in the cities. Robots so thick people can't get around, not even on foot. I don't like this.” She disappeared into the house, came back with a mug of coffee for herself, sat in the rocker.
They shot robots for an hour. Tommy couldn't help notice the parade of robots coming down the road and across the fields, and the ones being birthed.
“There's too many,” he said. His shoulder ached from the kick of the gun.
“Hang on,” Jacklyn said, disappearing into the house. She returned with a shovel, an ax, and an aluminum baseball bat. Tommy nodded his approval. He cleared the chambers of the shotgun, leaned it against the house, took the ax from Jacklyn.
He could not find a route around the robots littering the porch steps, so he cleared them off with his work-boot as he stepped down into the yard. Raising the ax high, he brought it down on one of the housecleaning robots. It shattered with a satisfying crack. Stepping on the lifeless husk, he pried the head of the ax out of it. He took a level swing at a tall, thin one and took the head right off it. The head tumbled end-over-end, ricocheted off a once-rusted dryer that was now not only refurbished, but tumbling empty with no apparent power source.
Ten paces away Wayne swung for the fences with the aluminum bat, his beefy arms bulging. He howled like a warrior as he pounded one of the scary-looking ones over and over, sweat pouring down his red face. Tommy liked the sound of it, and let out a battle-cry of his own. Jacklyn took up the cry, her belly hanging out of a ZZ-Top t-shirt, the shovel plunging and hacking. Seeing Jacklyn up and moving like that actually got him a little horny. He funneled the energy into his swing.
Tommy's hands were leathered from a lifetime of work, but eventually blisters rose on his palms, then popped, leaving raw pink circles that burned with every swing. Jacklyn had wrapped her hands in rags a while back. Still, Tommy had no idea how she kept going. She wasn't used to hard work.
The robots kept coming. Tommy spotted a cylindrical robot that looked like the one in the Star Wars movies digging a hole, and he went over and clocked it good. Another grabbed the bottom of Tommy's jeans. He started and jerked his leg, but the robot hung tight. A little hose came out of its face and sprayed something on a mud stain. A little brush popped out and scrubbed at the stain. Tommy hammered the little bastard across the yard with the flat end of the ax.
“Oh, Jesus,” Wayne shouted. He had stopped swinging the bat to catch his breath, and was staring up the road. At the top of the road a horde of robots headed their way, climbing over each other, jostling like a crowd at a rock concert.
“There's too many,” Tommy said. “Let's get inside."
There were fewer robots inside. They collected them up and flung them out doors and windows, then closed the house up tight. Tommy sent Wayne out the back door to fetch wood from the barn. They covered the windows with plywood and nailed everything shut with two-by-fours. Then there was nothing to do but sit by the radio.
Most of the stations were out. Jacklyn found a religious station, and for a few minutes they listened to a near-hysterical preacher saying prayers. Finally Jacklyn turned the tuner, found a news station.
“...just horrible,” the reporter was saying in a blubbering voice. “People trapped in the streets are being crushed. There's a woman below me trying to walk across them. Oh! She lost her footing. She's down. The churning mass is sucking her down. Oh, God, I can't watch—"
“Oh, Jesus,” Tommy said. He looked at Jacklyn. She was crying, her arms hugging her shoulders. Tommy patted her knee. “We'll be okay. The worst of it is far away.” Jacklyn nodded, but kept crying.
Tommy was jolted awake by the sound of breaking glass, followed by loud thumping. He sprang out of bed, ran into the living room and turned on the light. They were spilling in through a breach in the window, skittering around on the wood floor, looking for something to do. One started sweeping up broken glass as soon as it righted itself.
Wayne stared, open-mouthed, from the hallway.
Tommy became aware of a constant sound coming from outside—a howling clatter he felt in his gut as much as his ears, like a stadium of people clapping with metal gloves on. He wasn't sure how he could have missed it before. Maybe because it had been building slowly.
Reluctantly, he looked through the breach in the window. Silver moonlight reflected off a sea of churning metal. He could see patches of sandy ground in only a few places. He tried to stay calm. What to do? The truck? No way they could drive it out of there. They needed to get to higher ground ... the roof! Then he spotted it, the sentinel towering high above the chaos.
“The silo!” He shouted. “Get supplies, anything you can think of. We may be there a while. Maybe weeks. We need food, water, medicine, radio...” he ticked them off on his fingers while Wayne and Jacklyn listened. Then they scattered.
Tommy yanked a big blue suitcase out of the hall closet, filled it with boxes and cans of food from the pantry. “The gas grill, and propane!” he shouted.
“Got it!” Wayne shouted back.
They'd need a way to haul the supplies to the top of the silo, Tommy realized. He found a 60-foot length of rope in the mud room, then headed for the back door. When he turned the knob it flew open; a pile of robots tumbled into the house. He kicked his way through them, into the yard.
The ground wasn't visible at all any more. Tommy climbed onto the churning mass on his hands and knees. It was like wading through a swift stream, except the turbulence was not all pulling in the same direction. Again and again he lost his balance; he was battered and cut by the time he had plowed his way to the silo twenty feet away.
He climbed the rusty exterior ladder, tied off the rope at the top. He had to scream at the top of his lungs to get Wayne's attention over the roar of the machines. Wayne appeared on the porch, which was still in decent shape because it was elevated above the sea of robots. But it would be overtaken soon—Tommy swore the robot tide was rising fast enough for him to see it. Deftly he threw Wayne the end of the rope; Wayne snared it, turned, shouted to Jacklyn. She dragged out Tommy's old foot locker. Wayne tied the rope to the locker's handle, and Tommy reeled it in. It bounced furiously over the robot swarm.
They worked for half an hour, stockpiling supplies until the robots were close to rising past the porch. Then Tommy climbed down the side of the silo until he was just above the robots. He tied one end of the rope to the ladder, and tossed the other to Wayne, who tied it around Jacklyn's waist. Good boy. Tommy was proud of him, he knew just what to do, kept his cool when the pressure was on. He'd of made a good soldier.
Jacklyn crossed on all fours on top of the robots, her hands and feet occasionally sinking through as if she were crossing thin ice that kept giving way. Halfway home, both of her hands lost their purchase simultaneously, and she disappeared head-first into the swarm.
“Jacklyn!” Tommy cried. He grabbed the rope and heaved. He saw her leg break above the tangle, sneaker churning to find purchase. He tugged frantically; the bandaged blister wounds on his palms screamed. Another leg surfaced. Howling from the strain, hearing Wayne exhorting him ("Pull!"), Tommy heaved, and Jacklyn flipped ass-first to the surface, the top of her head gripped by a bowl-shaped robot. Tommy dragged her, hand over hand, Jacklyn swimming to keep her head up, until her scrabbling hands clutched the ladder. He ripped the robot off her head and tossed it. Jacklyn's hair was neatly trimmed, the mass of frizzy knots gone. The damned thing had given her a haircut.
Wayne came across cussing and punching; when he was safe they hustled to the top of the silo and collapsed in exhaustion. Tommy could hear Jacklyn's wheezing gasps clearly over the din below. But the sound didn't piss him off like it normally did—she'd earned the right to breathe loud.
When his hands had mostly stopped trembling Tommy stood and surveyed the scene. It was a terrible, awesome sight. As far as he could see, nothing but robots. In the distance where the details were lost, it looked like a shimmering silver sea had flooded the land. Trees and houses poked out here and there, but otherwise there was nothing to see but robots until sight distance was lost in the gentle rises that passed for hills in south Georgia.
A big industrial robot, wide and flat and hinged in two places, climbed onto the roof and looked around for something to rivet, or solder, or whatever the hell it did. Wayne dragged himself to his feet, retrieved the baseball bat from inside Tommy's foot locker, beat it till it stopped moving.
“We'll have to take turns knocking ‘em off the ladder,” Tommy said.
Wayne peered over the edge to see if any others were climbing up. “What if they just keep multiplying?” he said.
“Let's take inventory of what we got,” Tommy said. He pulled a suitcase from the pile and opened it up. “That ice chest was a good idea.” He gestured at the blue and white chest. “Y'all pack it with meat from the freezer?"
“I did,” Jacklyn said. “I figured food was gonna be most important."
“Smart thinking,” Tommy said. It felt strange to pay Jacklyn a compliment. Neither of them had had anything nice to say to each other in a dog's age.
“I tossed in the six packs too. Figured we might could use a drink while we was waiting for the rescue."
Tommy stood watching the last few black shingles on the roof of his house disappear. He tried to picture the inside of the house packed tight with them, pressed up against his shirts, his guns, his deer trophies. Four days, and no sign of rescue.
“God help us,” Tommy said under his breath. He figured they had food and drink to last three weeks, but at this rate they'd be under robots before that.
A friendly looking robot came up the ladder. Tommy recognized it, or its type anyway. “Go fetch me a lemonade,” he said. It headed back down the ladder, double time. Tommy laughed.
He looked at the others. Jacklyn was sleeping, her face pressed against the waist-high silo wall, trying to escape the afternoon sun. She'd cried half the night, till Tommy'd finally had to tell her to shut the hell up.
Wayne had his hunting knife out, and was dissecting the big robot he'd beat with the bat. He was gutting it like a deer, pulling out parts and tossing them across the roof.
Suddenly he stopped, stared off into space with his mouth hanging open. “Hang on,” he said finally, “I got an idea."
“What's that?” said Tommy.
“We can build a helicopter. Fly us off of here!” he said. He pulled a clump of circuitry out of the robot and looked at it hard. “We got all the material we need right here."
“That's the stupidest idea I ever heard!” Tommy said.
“We can do it, parts is parts, and we got parts,” Wayne said.
“What're we gonna use for fuel? How are you gonna make the blades?” Tommy shouted. “Jesus, use your head."
“Well it's better than sitting here waiting to die!” he said, his voice cracking. “At least I'm doing something."
He stood, fetched a hooked rod from the littered roof, tied it onto the end of the rope, and tossed it over the side. A minute later he reeled in a mechanic robot, just like that very first one that came down the driveway what seemed to Tommy like ages ago. Wayne clocked it with the bat till it stopped moving, began prying it apart at the seams.
“Need belts to drive the rotors,” he muttered to himself. He was rocking slightly as he pulled a layer of Banlar fabric from the robot's guts. Tommy didn't like the looks of this. He hoped like hell someone got here soon, in a real helicopter.
He stared at the piece of Banlar fabric that Wayne had unfolded and carefully laid out. The stuff was strong as steel, flexible as silk. He owed his livelihood to the stuff—it was what made steel obsolete in aviation construction. Would make a heck of a parachute, if they were trying to go down instead of up.
Hold on ... He thought through the idea that had burst into his head, trying to keep his hopes from getting too high till he had it worked out, terrified that he would find a fatal flaw. Then he did find one. Then, he spotted the gas grill and propane, and the fatal flaw was gone.
“Wayne, you're a genius!” he shouted. Wayne looked up at him, stunned. “Jacklyn!” His shout had woken her up. She looked at him, exhausted and bleary-eyed. Tommy grabbed the patch of Banlar. “Start sewing these squares together into a big quilt."
“What for?” she asked.
“We're gonna make us a balloon!” he said.
“Huh? A balloon?” she said.
“That's right. A hot air balloon.” He let the words sink in. “We're gonna fly off this stinking roof."
“You know how to make one?” Jacklyn asked doubtfully.
“Me and Wayne know more about flying than anybody,” he said. Wayne gave him a proud look.
They didn't have thread, but found filament in the robots that worked just as well. Tommy tried to break it between his big fists, and couldn't. It was better than thread. Wayne pulled sheet metal off the sides of the silo and started making a basket.
The balloon was lopsided as hell, but when they fired up the propane grill it inflated quick as you like. The three of them hooted with joy. After three bumps along the roof, it lifted off, cut a ragged horizontal path, dipped hazardously close to the advancing tide of robots, then started to rise steadily.
Wayne laughed as they rose. “You can kiss my country ass!” he shouted down at the robots.
They floated over the trees. Tommy controlled their altitude by cranking the propane higher or lower, but they had no way to steer. They drifted north, and eventually spotted Atlanta. The robots were piled five stories high. People packed the roofs of the glass skyscrapers, hung out busted windows on the floors below.
“What do we do now?” Jacklyn asked.
“We'll think of something,” Wayne answered. “We got ourselves off that silo, didn't we?"
“We need to find high ground. We're heading for the Smokies, that'll work,” Tommy said. He put his arm around Jacklyn's beefy shoulders; she leaned against him, wrapped an arm around his waist.
Will McIntosh is a 2003 graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop. His stories have appeared in NFG and Interzone (forthcoming). By day he is a psychology professor at Georgia Southern University. Will's story “Faller” (Challenging Destiny Number 17) was an honorable mention in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror: Seventeenth Annual Collection edited by Ellen Datlow and Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant.
The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin, Grafton, 1974, 319 pp.
The Dispossessed is a melancholy work, a thrilling work, a work of brutal honesty and exhilarating insight. It's science fiction, complete with spaceships, settlements on a planet and its nearby moon, and a scientist-hero who only wants to be left alone and work on his possibly-galaxy-altering theory. It's also a smartly written, character-based work that transcends the genre as much as it inhabits it. The Dispossessed is one of two famous science fiction books, along with The Left Hand of Darkness (which I've reviewed previously in a column on feminist science fiction), that made Le Guin's reputation. She won the Nebula and Hugo awards for best novel of the year for both books, but the awards certainly did not cause her to settle into a rut and churn out similar works. She has been prolific throughout her whole career and it seems as if she has always been trying something new.
I'll be covering two other major works of sf in this column: Always Coming Home, an extensive project finally published in 1985, and The Telling, published in 2000 and part of a recent burst of creativity on Le Guin's part. I'll also take a look at The Language of the Night, one of the many non-fiction collections that bring together Le Guin's thoughts on writing and other cultural matters. In terms of other genres, Le Guin has published many fantasy novels, the most notable among them the Earthsea series (once a trilogy, now an ongoing “cycle"), many books for children, volumes of poetry, several translations (notably of the Tao Te Ching and Angelica Gorodischer's Kalpa Imperial), mainstream novels, and short story collections. She's also edited or co-edited other anthologies, such as The Norton Book of Science Fiction. It's a sprawling oeuvre, so I've decided to focus on science fiction in this column.
What is The Dispossessed all about? Shevek is a scientist from the world of Anarres. As the book starts, he leaves his home planet and goes to the nearby world of Urras. What is he fleeing from? What does he hope to find on Urras? We don't find out the answers right away, but we gradually come to understand the two societies due to the straightforward structure. Alternating chapters tell the two aspects of Shevek's life: the ongoing story of his experiences on Urras, then his past experiences growing up and getting to the point where he has to leave Anarres.
While on Urras, he is kept away from the public and lives on a university campus. A number of scientists who understand advanced Simultaneity theory interact with Shevek, but they are clearly uncomfortable with many of things he stands for. Gradually, Shevek breaks free from the restrictions put on him, and comes to realize just how hierarchical and dangerous life on Urras can be. His only point of power is his promised breakthrough on the Principle of Simultaneity, which is a sort of macguffin, except that its potential of instantaneous interstellar communication shows up as the ansible in books that happen later in the shared Hainish history (as it's known) such as The Left Hand of Darkness. Everyone wants the Principle, and while the other scientists have glimpses of what it might be, only Shevek has the final pieces.
Urras is the society that is probably closer to our own, so Le Guin's anthropological creativity gets expressed in the society on Anarres. We learn about Anarres as Shevek grows up. It's a society founded on anarchical principles about 200 years previous by a woman named Odo, who was exiled from Urras at that time. Language and culture and custom have all been adjusted to create an aversion to property, to create a sense of community responsibility, and to make each person (somewhat paradoxically) totally responsible for their own actions. We learn a bit about Odo's ideals second-hand but where the story of The Dispossessed comes in, the society has calcified considerably. Shevek finds himself on the raw end of more than one deal during his life. For example, he somehow ends up with an emergency work posting that has nothing to do with science and takes him away from his lover Takver. He gradually comes to realize that the only way he will get his scientific work done is to go the propertarian planet of Urras. The end of the Anarres storyline ends with Shevek leaving his home planet with only the clothes on his back ... which loops back to the beginning of the book and the start of the storyline on Urras.
One thing struck me on this re-reading of the book: whom does the title refer to? I had never thought about it before, but the obvious answer is Shevek himself, the most important character of the story, the one whose dilemmas and struggles are front and centre on virtually every page of the book. Perhaps that's one way of understanding the structure: as we learn how Shevek doesn't fit in on Urras, we also learn how he didn't fit in on Anarres. Both stories end up with him at the same point, leaving the planet he is on, with empty hands.
But it's a good title because “dispossessed” isn't necessarily singular. If it's taken in its plural meaning, the question raises itself again: whom does the title refer to? The people of Anarres have drifted away from their roots as permanent revolutionaries. They were exiled from Urras years ago, but have they truly made of Anarres a new home? Likewise, there are many dislocated people on Urras, as Shevek discovers much to the other scientists’ dismay. To add to the layers of meaning, Le Guin has given the novel the subtitle “An Ambiguous Utopia” which is in itself as ambiguous as the title, and easy to misunderstand. We can take a good guess as to Le Guin's own leanings, in the matter of which planet might be a utopia and what might be ambiguous about it. But there's no direct binary opposition, as the book is sometimes painted. For example, it's telling that the Grafton edition leaves off the novel's subtitle, and calls Urras the “authoritarian hell-planet” on the back cover. Le Guin's novel is much trickier than that, in the way that the tendrils of meaning work their way through the book. Never mind a contrast between anarchist heaven and authoritarian hell; the book resolves into something more like an examination of human nature under two diverse circumstances.
The Dispossessed is an excellent book, with influence that has resonated through many subsequent books (especially Joan Slonczewski's A Door Into Ocean). It's a foundational work in Le Guin's career and a foundational work for the field of science fiction.
The Language of the Night, Ursula K. Le Guin, Harper Perennial, 1989, 250 pp. (originally published in 1979 and edited by Susan Wood, revised edition published in 1989 and edited by Ursula K. Le Guin)
The Language of the Night is an intriguing collection of non-fiction. It collects works written from the mid-60s up until its first publication in 1979—the general time period of The Dispossessed and following—and the revised edition chronicles many of the changes in thinking that Le Guin made up until the next item in this column, Always Coming Home in 1985. Le Guin explains why she would alter existing material in her “Preface to the 1989 Edition.” Pronouns are changed to the non-gendered throughout, and Le Guin adds extensive comments to what turned out to be a controversial essay on The Left Hand of Darkness. More on that in a minute. Susan Wood provides her own introduction, explaining how she originally put together the pieces that make up this book.
The Language of the Night is divided into 5 main sections. The first, “Le Guin on Le Guin,” is short, consisting of one piece in which Le Guin discusses a bit about herself and how she started reading and writing genre fiction.
The second section is called “On Fantasy and Science Fiction,” and it contains a mix of general pieces on fiction and on some of Le Guin's works in particular. For example, in “Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?” Le Guin identifies certain strands of American thought that disapprove of reading for pleasure, which leads to a disregard for fantasy. “Dreams Must Explain Themselves” is an explanation of how the Earthsea series came about, insofar as Le Guin felt that she could explain her intuitive writing process. There's a short speech from 1972 when Le Guin accepted the National Book Award. Two more in-depth pieces cover Jung and the role of myth in modern fantasy, “The Child and the Shadow” and “Myth and Archetype in Science Fiction.” In a somewhat uncharacteristic turn, Le Guin lambastes those fantasy writers who don't pay close attention to tone in their prose in the essay “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie.” She uses examples, including Tolkien, Dunsany, Lieber, and many others.
Next up in the second section is what I consider the strongest piece in the book, “Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown.” The title refers to an essay that Virginia Woolf wrote about the importance of character; here, Le Guin argues that only a few works of science fiction have ever achieved a truly memorable, unique, and real character. She refers briefly to Zamiatin's—a href=we.htm—We—/a—(the subject of an entire essay later in the collection), argues that Tolkien's greatest character is actually an amalgam of Frodo, Sam, and Gollum, and uses two other interesting examples, Thea Cadence from D.G. Compton's Synthajoy (with which I'm unfamiliar) and Nobusuke Tagomi from Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle. Le Guin also talks about The Dispossessed, whether it's possible to create a real character after all, and some works by Stanislaw Lem. It's a lively essay, showing Le Guin at her most engaged and engaging.
The second section concludes with a short piece, “Do-It-Yourself Cosmology,” about the need for careful scientific speculation in sf.
The third section, “The Book is What is Real,” has a title that refers to Le Guin's assertion that books stand apart from the lives of their authors. The section mainly consists of introductions that she wrote to her books after they were first published, i.e., once she had a few more years of perspective. Le Guin readers might already be familiar with these (for the record, the introductions are to Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions, The Word for World is Forest, and The Left Hand of Darkness). Three essays about other writers are included here (Tolkien, Dick, and Tiptree).
The third section concludes with an essay on The Left Hand of Darkness, “Is Gender Necessary?” (1976). This is combined with the comments Le Guin added in 1988. The original essay seems to defend the use of “him” and “his” in Le Guin's famous novel about androgynous characters. The later comments show that Le Guin had totally changed her mind, and also her unease that her earlier uncertainty had been taken as such a blow to feminism as a movement.
The fourth section, “Telling the Truth,” has a few short pieces about writing.
The concluding section, “Pushing at the Limits,” has just two essays. The first is an excellent essay about Evgeny Zamiatin, “The Stalin in the Soul.” Le Guin uses the biography of Zamiatin, a man who was persecuted for his writing and ideals, to argue persuasively that we need to do more with our freedom. “We are free, freer perhaps than any writers or public have ever been” (219) is how Le Guin puts it, and she also points out that while modern societies don't have censorship as such, there are the imperatives of the marketplace. An inspiring essay.
“The Stone Ax and the Muskoxen” from 1975 is about how sf is on the verge of breaking out of its ghetto. Le Guin says in her 1989 introduction, “I was perhaps more hopeful than wise” (3). This discussion across time, between Le Guin of the 1970s and the 1980s, is part of what I like about this revised edition. Le Guin is fully engaged with the world of ideas and, like any thinking person, she reserves the right to change her mind. The Language of the Night is one of many demonstrations of Le Guin's keen intellect.
Always Coming Home, Ursula K. Le Guin, Harper and Row, 1985, 525 pp.
Music & Poetry of the Kesh, words by Ursula K. Le Guin, music composed by Todd Barton, 1985, 45 min.
Always Coming Home was six years in the making, a massive project involving Le Guin's best efforts to create an entire culture, convincing, complete, and worth reading about. It's largely a book of fragments—songs, stories, poems, anecdotes, dramatic works, maps, illustrations, recipes, genealogies, and personal tales—all in support of transporting the reader to a Northern California of some time not our own. As Le Guin puts it in her brief “A First Note": “The people in this book might be going to have lived a long, long time from now in Northern California” (xi). The people who live in this area are called the Kesh and we start off with a young Kesh girl named Stone Telling. As I'll discuss in more detail, the book is divided between two types of writing: a section from the point of view of Stone Telling (usually 40 pages or so) followed by about a section (often four times the length) of background material on the Kesh and their world, mostly cultural items. The last 100 pages or so are called “The Back of the Book” and this part is much more dry and filled with facts. Overall, this is definitely not a typical novel.
Le Guin enlisted some help with fulfilling her vision of an entire world, and here I should note a few things about the original edition. Always Coming Home is commonly available in a paperback edition, which is mostly text, but it was first published as a box set. In this deluxe edition, the book itself comes in a trade paperback that is about the size of a large hardcover book. The edition is illustrated throughout by Margaret Chodos, in an anthropological vein (the drawings reminded me of Ernest Thompson Seton's Wild Animals I Have Known). Chodos also provides icons in the margins that indicate what is going on in the text, i.e., a vulture icon indicates that Le Guin is in the middle of a Stone Telling section, some romantic tales are indicated by a pair of quail, poetry by an intricately varied set of moon/shadow/separated yin and yang/double spiral symbols, and so forth (these marginal icons disappear for “The Back of the Book” section). There are a handful of maps in the text, and these are drawn by Le Guin herself.
Most intriguingly, this original box set of Always Coming Home by Harper and Row includes a cassette tape, Music & Poetry of the Kesh. For this part of the project, Le Guin collaborated with Todd Barton to create thirteen tracks in all, with three recitations of poetry from the book and ten original songs by Barton. The music is clearly folk music, very low on production values, as is appropriate. The lyrics are also sung in the original language of the Kesh, with a translation into English for each song in the accompanying booklet (the entire book is conceived of as a translation from the Kesh by Le Guin, which I'll discuss further, but we only get smatterings of the language in the book). The booklet also explains the context of each song. For example, this is the description for “Yes-Singing":
Words and tune of this song are traditional, more or less, but not sacred. The singers were teasing, provocative, and seductive; the men they were singing at tried hard to pay no attention, being held to celibacy for the period before the Moon Dance. The recording, made on the common place of Sinshan, may give a hint of the tense, wild atmosphere in town before the First Night of the Moon. The singers were Thorn, Chickadee, and River Flowing Northwest.
And yes, the song lives up to its billing (and there's a much longer description of the Moon Dance in the book). Most of the other music is less tense and wild, like the mood piece “Long Singing” which is described an excerpt from an all-night midwinter singing ritual. On the whole, the music is more haunting than catchy, but it's a nifty way of giving the reader an entrance point into this world.
In one of those bits of serendipity, two photographers were inspired by the publication of Always Coming Home to go out and take pictures of the geography of Northern California as described in the book. The photographers, Ernest Waugh and Alan Nicholson, contacted Le Guin, and their project became a Le Guin-endorsed companion volume called Way of the Water's Going. It includes some gorgeous photography alongside various excerpts from Le Guin's writing. The book is actually more than a companion: it also stands as (another) excellent introduction to Le Guin's world, becoming an indispensable part of the encompassing vision of this culture.
So, what is Always Coming Home like? Despite all of my praise of the project, and its ambitions, the book is not an easy read. In some ways, the background material is the kind of stuff that impatient story-driven readers skip over completely, if it's in the middle of a book, or if it's an appendix at the end of a book, glance at briefly to make sure that there are no important story bits in it but otherwise never read. These extensive sections are like the world's most blatant transgression of that old writing cliché: Do all the background work, but hide it all from your readers. It's an old problem, a variation on the structural problem faced by most works of science fiction or fantasy: how to convey enough information about a world different than our own, but without boring the reader. With Always Coming Home, Le Guin, usually a careful writer who brings us into a new world by means of compelling characterization, has thrown this balance out the window. And why not? Why not, at least once, throw all caution to the wind and indulge your most full-blown world-building urges? At least Le Guin takes courage in her convictions, puts her considerable powers to the task, and creates the biggest and best all-in-one world-building book that she can. And the reader has plenty of warning signs; even the briefest of flip-throughs will indicate that more than half the book is non-narrative (or at least composed of unrelated anecdotes).
If you commit to Le Guin's approach, and read Always Coming Home not as if it is a genre work but rather an artifact from another time and place, the book is richly rewarding and worth the extra time. In some ways, the story of Stone Telling feels like an afterthought, especially when you start to notice some of the sophisticated framing strategies that Le Guin uses in the non-narrative sections. The comparison that comes to mind is Eco's The Name of the Rose, a novel that has many layers of perspective (someone finds a manuscript, that manuscript is an old man remembering his younger life, and so forth). In Le Guin's case, one of those extra layers is an unnamed person, who is clearly from much the same era as ourselves, but she is walking around Kesh and talking to the people. This person is often referred to as the Editor, although it's clear that she also did a lot of the translating. And expresses her frustration with her translation. Another layer is represented by a number of short sections from the point of view of a character called Pandora, who could be considered as an abstraction of Le Guin, just like the Editor but with artsier writing (the Pandora sections reminded me a great deal of some of the New Wave-era stories by Ellison or Zelazny, if that helps make my point). She worries about the narrative, talks philosophy in concrete terms, and so forth; the acknowledgments that close the book are written in her voice. There's a segment called “Pandora Converses with the Archivist of the Library of the Madrone Lodge at Wakwaha-na” (314) that specifically lays out the difficulties of writing about this pseudo-utopian society.
Although the sections of background material are rooted in the world-building impulse, these postmodern flourishes help illustrate one of Le Guin's key concerns. It's fine and good to create a different world but what's the point if the people are similar to ourselves? What about a different world that is truly different? The Valley in Always Coming Home is familiar in its geographical set of features, the flora and the fauna, and so forth. But the people who live there think differently than we do, and that's part of the narrator's problem. How to convey this mindset? How would we understand something truly alien? Science fiction runs into this problem all the time, from not-very-alien alien species to desperate workarounds for the oncoming singularity.
The Kesh people are indeed like us; in many ways, just as familiar as the geography. They live in small towns. They are a mix of hunter-gatherers and farmers (much more detail is available in the background material). They have an elaborate set of rituals to mark the passage of the year, and many other occasions along the way. Parents still disapprove of what children are doing (or of what other the children of other families are doing), and different towns still get upset with each other. In the story of Stone Telling, a nearby culture called the Condors is trying to take over as much territory as they can.
But the Kesh have diverged from our culture in startling ways. For one thing, they have a completely different view of history—at one point, the Editor is talking to a scholar of sorts, trying to pin down where the Kesh are from, and she simply has no way of formulating the question that the scholar can understand. The tape of Kesh music that accompanies the book (mentioned a few times here and there) also caused some controversy: “we were able to record a certain number of songs and performances; but in this we were doing something which they never did, and often it was tactfully indicated to us that replication of the music—of music—was a mistake, perhaps a mistake concerning the nature of Time” (505). A strong strain of Native American respect for nature shows up in Kesh culture, but this may as well be as alien as anything else to our hyper-consumeristic civilization. And, as we discover in a background segment called “Yaivkach: The City of the Mind,” an entire gestalt machine intelligence has separated off from the rest of civilization and has advanced itself tremendously. The machines interact with humans, but the humans, especially the Kesh, don't seem all that interested in the technology the machines freely offer to them. Again, not entirely alien, but bizarre enough when applied to an entire culture.
This is as good a place as any to talk about the didactic tendency in Le Guin's work. For example, what should the reader make of this passage? From near the end of the first segment of background material, and a subsection titled “A Note on the Backward-Head People":
The people of the Valley did not conceive that such acts as they saw and felt much evidence of in their world—the permanent desolation of vast regions through the release of radioactive or poisonous substances, the permanent genetic impairment from which they suffered most directly in the form of sterility, stillbirth, and congenital disease—had not been deliberate. In their view, human beings did not do things accidentally. Accidents happened to people, but what people did they were responsible for. So these things human beings had done to the world must have been deliberate and conscious acts of evil, serving the purposes of wrong understanding, fear, and greed. The people who had done these things had done wrong mindfully. They had had their heads on wrong. (159)
On one hand, Le Guin seems to have fallen for the typical loaded scenario of a post-apocalyptic story. Those who disagree with the Kesh are the ones who destroyed the world ... it's hard to make a counter-argument within such a framework. However, while there are a few passages like the one I've just quoted, Le Guin makes the focus of this book the daily-lived life of the Kesh. And the Kesh, with this passage as the major exception, don't seem to care that much about the past. Their lives, of course, are still troubled; this is not some unchanging utopia. As the title itself says, the journey is never complete.
Interestingly, an issue that illustrates the title over and over again in the background material is also the main part of Stone Telling's story: growing up. How should someone raise their children to be mindful people? It's a task that's always new for every generation. Stone Telling's story is quite brief in comparison to the rest of the book (in fact, it only adds up to approximately 120 pages of the 525 total). Her mother has grown up in the same town as she has, but she has never known her father. When she is nine, her father comes back for a season, along with his army, then leaves again when his army is ordered to leave. He is part of the warlike Condors, and his mindset is often completely at odds with the Kesh (another way for Le Guin to point out the contrast between a character more like ourselves and the Kesh). It seems like a tragedy waiting to happen—the peaceful Kesh, who can't really understand militarism, and the expansionist Condors, who see the Kesh as so much fresh meat for the war machine. Le Guin resolves this dilemma neatly, perhaps too neatly, but after all this is a depleted world where even evil is less sustainable than it once was.
The book is bookended by two poems. The opening poem, “The Quail Song,” can be found on the accompanying tape, while the closing poem, “Stammersong,” is a lovely evocation of the Kesh and the place where they live.
Always Coming Home has been recently reprinted by The University of California Press in a handsome edition that keeps all of the illustrations and other flourishes of the original edition. For the complete tape of Todd Barton music, however, anyone interested would have to track down a used copy of the Harper and Row box (often available on eBay).
The Telling, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ace, 2000, 246 pp.
The Telling is a stunning book, proof once again, late in her career, that Le Guin is one of the best writers in any field. Le Guin has written some of the most famous science fiction novels, and she's not content to rest on her laurels, as evidenced by her recent burst of output, most notably a fifth Earthsea novel and a collection of Earthsea short stories, both excellent. The Telling itself is a strong science fiction novel, with smooth and sure writing, an interesting protagonist, and the ingenious construction of societies that has always characterized Le Guin's work. It's also an angry work, as strong a condemnation of certain human tendencies like intolerance as might be possible.
A time of religious upheaval and repression has hit Earth. A girl named Sutty is trying to make her way through life without too much harm; she is also ambitious, so after a personal tragedy, she leaves her home city and applies for training with the Hainish Envoy system. The Hainish are a galaxy-wide civilization, contacting all of the humanoid cultures that long ago spread across the stars and subsequently were left to their own devices. With a long memory, Hainish methods of first contact have been refined by history and practice. Le Guin's famous The Left Hand of Darkness was also the story of a Hainish Envoy, in that case to a winter planet named Gethen populated by androgynous people. At first I was worried that The Telling, with another Envoy, would not live up to the high standard of The Left Hand of Darkness. Or even become unique in any way. Thankfully Sutty's story is indeed distinctive.
She is sent to a planet called Aka. Aka has a strange history with Earth, and recently Akans shifted from a semi-agrarian society to a hyper-industrialized system. Aka was contacted by Earth during Earth's fundamentalist phase and now the Hainish are trying to understand the people and culture that developed subsequent to that contact. Unfortunately the orthodoxy on Aka is now a bizarre and brutal mix of rabid capitalism and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. All traces of the past are considered anathema, all history suspect, and everything has to contribute towards the technological leap that the Akans now officially want en masse. How could such a repressive system develop? How could change happen so rapidly? There are clues scattered all the way along, and Sutty makes some guesses from theory. It also helps that she learned the old languages of Aka while in transit; she has yet to see any traces of these languages, but she does know them.
After a dispiriting report to her Hainish superior, Sutty gets the news she has been authorized to make a trip to a small, backward town somewhere near the mountains. She is followed on her trip by an official, but she makes it to Okzat-Ozkat without much more incident. She tries to make herself at home and find a way to learn more about the true history of Aka. By about a third of the way through the book, Sutty has made some friends and has begun to learn about the telling. The telling is the system of culture that governed most of life before contact (see quotation following for more detail), and it is most remarkable for its complexity and essentially diffuse and infinite nature. In the course of her studies, she finds out that there is a centre of the telling, insofar as such a thing is not a contradiction in terms. The last third of the book is about Sutty's journey there and what she discovers; the ending of the book itself is Sutty's leap forward in intuition, proving once again the rightness of the Hainish envoy method of contact. Science fiction tends not to use an epiphany as the conclusion of a story, but here it couldn't be a tighter fit with the story and the underlying ideas. The telling has worked on Sutty, heightening her Envoy training while she is learning about Akan culture.
Le Guin as always demonstrates her anthropological acumen. And with The Telling, it's as if she set herself the most complex sociological backstory possible. I quote at length from a section where Sutty is digging into the telling:
Day after day she recorded her notes, observations that stumbled over each other, contradicted, amplified, backtracked, speculated, a wild profusion of information on all sorts of subjects, a jumbled and jigsawed map that for all its complexity represented only a rough sketch of one corner of the vastness she had to explore: a way of thinking and living developed and elaborated over thousands of years by the vast majority of human beings on this world, an enormous interlocking system of symbols, metaphors, correspondences, theories, cosmology, cooking, calisthenics, physics, metaphysics, metallurgy, medicine, physiology, psychology, alchemy, chemistry, calligraphy, numerology, herbalism, diet, legend, parable, poetry, history, and story. (91)
The long section in the middle where Sutty learns about the telling would bog down any writer except Le Guin. For Le Guin, this is exactly as it has to be, no less is acceptable. It's like the map that's as big as the geography it's meant to describe. For one book to contain a culture is by definition impossible; usually some level of representation is required, and it's a measure of Le Guin's power as a writer that she can describe a culture like the telling with a sense of fullness and life. If my description of Always Coming Home has scared anyone away from that book, The Telling is like everything about that book but reduced to half its length and shaped into the sympathetic story of one compelling character.
The Telling is a triumph of the first order, a wonderful science fiction novel with everything the reader could hope for in a work by Le Guin. Highly recommended.
James Schellenberg lives and writes in Canada.
All times are changing times, but ours is one of massive, rapid moral and mental transformation. Archetypes turn into millstones, large simplicities get complicated, chaos becomes elegant, and what everybody knows is true turns out to be what some people used to think.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, Foreward to Tales From Earthsea
She was lurking in the elevator lobby, waiting for me. Through the misted-over glass window in the door, I caught a glimpse of her, pacing restlessly around the foyer.
I limped around the building. Reaching up, I gripped the end of the fire escape and pulled myself up. My shoulders howled in protest. I landed hard, mashing my nose into the rusty grillwork. Prying my office window open, I crawled inside. I slid the window closed to a chorus of hollow knocking sounds from the radiator. My coat hit the floor a second or two after I fell into my chair. I stretched out, propping my feet up on the scarred surface of the desk.
Safe, for the moment at least. I'd made it past the landlady without having to listen to her demand the last three months’ rent again.
What with the dive the economy had taken, there wasn't much demand these days for an ex-cop turned P.I. Setting out a shingle had seemed like such a good idea, four months ago. But the jobs had all vanished with the sunny weather. Eyeing my appointment book's blank pages, I grabbed a two-cent cigar off the surface of my desk and pulled my lighter out of my pocket.
The fire sprite housed inside the sterling silver pentacle refused to perform. It stared sullenly up at me with burning-coal eyes. I rapped the edge of the lighter against my desk a few times to see if I could convince it to cooperate, but no dice. It just crossed its toothpick arms and hunkered down.
Chewing on the end of my unlit cigar, I started opening drawers, looking for a box of matches. No luck; all I found were a couple of six-inch roaches that'd set up shop in the file folders.
I paused mid-rummage. Over the arthritic mutters of the radiator, I could hear footsteps coming down the hall. My ears pricked up, swiveling forward in a way that caused the cartilage around them to pop. It wasn't my landlady; the footsteps were too light for that. A lightweight, but male. No woman's gait would sound like that unless she was being chased by something nasty.
I dropped both feet to the floor and leaned forward, planting my elbows on the desk and bruising my second to last cigar. I tried to rearrange my body language into something closer to “nonchalant” than “territorial” as whoever it was knocked on the door.
“Come in!"
That was easier; gruff and territorial sounded alike to the untrained ear, and I was supposed to sound gruff. Clients expected it from someone who was six feet tall with a face that looked like it had been forced through a bean masher.
“William Littlejohn?"
He was wispy on top, and what hair he had was going gray. His delicate features were better suited to a dame than a man. His voice didn't help much either; it was a high tenor, with an Ivy League accent. I found myself checking him over for signs of rouge or eye paint.
“That's me.” When I stood up and clasped his hand, I sensed the burnt magic emanating from him. My fingers twitched, then cramped painfully. “Burnt” was an understatement; what I was sensing had been toasted black on both sides. My palm actually felt singed as it fell away from that brief grip, and I felt my teeth beginning to show again.
“My name is Henry Champe,” he said, looking up at me. He had to tilt his head back pretty far to get a good look. His face was strained, worry written large on his features as he tugged at the hem of his suit jacket. “Officer Dimonatello recommended you for ... Well, let me start from the beginning."
“Beginning's a good place to start.” I waved at the armchair seated in front of my desk. “Why don't you have a seat, Mister Champe, and I'll get settled in to listen."
Now that I'd noticed his aura, ignoring it was impossible. He might as well have the words “Wizard! Upset!” stamped across his forehead in boldface type. I offered a few more inanities while he sat down.
I hadn't left the force on bad terms. They were as likely to throw me business as not, but it was usually the low paying stuff. The suit this guy wore said “Money” just as clearly as his aura said “Wizard.” A guy like this wouldn't be coming to someone like me for a simple retrieval or detection.
Champe cast a dubious glance around the room. I looked around too, trying to see my office from the eyes of a potential client. Filing cabinets leaned against each other, taking up most of the far wall. A table crouched in the near corner, surface cluttered. Sandwich crusts surrounded a coffee carafe, stale crumbs like a light brushing of snow over a deactivated fire pentacle. A few faded pictures hung on the walls, covering the worst bits of cracked plaster. And then there was my desk, a testament to how plywood and a couple of nails can resurrect furniture thought to be beyond repair. The only thing in the room that looked all shiny-new was the telephone, out of place with the rest of the furnishings.
He'd settled into the chair gingerly, and that dubious look hadn't faded. Maybe if there'd been a rug on the floor, some homey touch like that, he'd have felt more at home.
“Coffee?"
“No. Thank you for offering.” Champe managed to smile a bit; a polite expression, not a pleasant one.
“Suit yourself.” I leaned forward in my chair. “Now, Mister Champe. What brings you to my office?"
He didn't give any “oh please, call me Henry” protests of friendliness; he just got right down to business. “Have you ever heard of Cassius Jenson?"
Cassius Jenson had been a High Wizard and the best alchemist on this side of the Mississippi River until his death a year ago. He'd discovered a metallurgical process that allowed bigger and fiercer fire and water elementals to be harnessed together in steam engines a couple of decades back. He'd made a bundle on the Rainy Nickel process; it wasn't for nothing that he was called “Midas.” There wasn't anyone in the wizardry business for the last twenty years that didn't know Midas Jenson.
“If you'd thought I hadn't, you wouldn't be here right now. It doesn't take a genius to figure that much out, Mister Champe."
His smile was rueful; crows’ feet gathered at the corners of his eyes. “The sergeant did say you hadn't lost your touch, despite your ... rather unfortunate accident."
I bit back a snarl. Dimonatello had no right to go flapping his yap about what had happened. “We were talking about your problem."
“I was Cassius's first apprentice.” Champe's posture and scent exuded a subtle satisfaction. Apparently satisfied with my reaction, he started trotting out the whole of his problem in those educated cadences of his. “Even before I attained my wizardry, we were ... close. I fancy that I took the place of the son he never had.” His expression changed, becoming more reminiscent. “We remained in close contact after I left to establish myself in Ohio. However, over the years, our correspondence dwindled. I was traveling in the Far East when he passed on. The attempts of his solicitor to reach me were ineffective at best. It was not until my recent return that I was made aware of the provision in his will that deeded me his Library."
Wizards’ Libraries were sometimes acquired by bequest, but more often by treachery and violence. Each book within such a collection was a compendium of spells, notes, and discoveries made by the writer—a how-to manual and a day-by-day work journal.
I had one that I kept even now, although I couldn't use it any more. There was no point in giving it away. Like all Libraries, it was spell-locked to me until my death, and enchanted into the shape of a mundane object except when Commanded to reveal its true form. It would stay that way until I kicked the bucket and someone who knew what it looked like gathered it up to add to a collection.
Champe must have been nearly as close to Jenson as he claimed; a wizard didn't make a bequest like that lightly. I was still thinking long and hard about who my Library would go to when the time came, and it was a paltry ten-volume thing, compared to the collection of personal notes that Midas Jenson had probably amassed over the years.
“Mister Littlejohn.” Champe leaned forward. The smell of scorched magic intensified. “Cassius Jenson's Library has disappeared—all one hundred and four volumes of it. By the time that my solicitor managed to contact me, the majority of his possessions had been sold at auction by his heir."
“You think it was auctioned off,” I finished for him. “And you want me to find out who has it. It ever occur to you, Mister Champe, that it might be bound already?"
He pounded a fist on the arm of his chair; I half expected the wood to splinter under the blow. “It's out there somewhere, unbound. I can feel it, Mister Littlejohn. The police have closed the case; they refuse to investigate further.” His eyes narrowed. “But I mean to have that Library, just as Cassius intended."
There were probably enough half-finished formulae, spells, and hexensigils in old Midas's Library to make Champe a fortune, if he could complete them. If the Library really was out there unbound, the chances that it would stay unbound decreased day by day.
“I don't come cheap, for something like this,” I said finally. “What you're asking me to do is pretty work intensive, Mr. Champe. I'll have to set aside all my other business to make this a top priority case. That is what you want, isn't it?” It wasn't quite a lie; if I'd had other clients, I'd have had to shunt their cases aside to take care of this.
“I mean to have it,” he repeated. “And I'm willing to pay."
I did some quick mental arithmetic. “It's ten a day to cover expenses, plus a fee of six hundred if I manage to find it. Expenses are non-refundable, and I'll need the first week in advance.” That should take care of my landlady's howls for the rent.
He didn't even blink; he just pulled a roll of cash out of his pocket and laid five twenties down in front of me. “Let's make it an even hundred a week for expenses. I can't stress enough how imperative this is, Mister Littlejohn."
I made the money vanish before it hit the desk, stowing it safely away in an empty breast pocket. “I'll get started on this right away, then, Mister Champe. Do you need me to see you to the door?"
“Not at all.” Now he produced a card, a pristine white rectangle of heavy pasteboard, with an address and telephone number listed on it in flowing script. “I can be reached at this address and number. I'll be expecting a daily update, of course. And Mister Littlejohn?"
“Yeah?” I reached out to take the card, but he dropped it before my fingers could touch his. It fluttered away from my hand, landing on the floor. Impolite, but I got the message loud and clear: I was now the hired help.
“You came highly recommended. I'm assured of your qualifications by your former colleagues. I've placed some trust in their assurances. I'd hate to be ... disappointed.” His voice was civil, at odds with the veiled threat in his words.
As Champe turned and exited, I sat back down. The door clicked shut behind him, and I leaned over to pick up the card, turning it around and around in my fingers. My right knee twinged. Outside, it was starting to snow, big fat flakes that stuck to the window, melting away the soot in streaks.
I reached for the phone. First things first; it was time to call Dimonatello and get the skinny on my new client. Then I'd have to head home for lunch; the Old Lady would probably be chewing the woodwork to flinders if I was late.
When I finally got Sgt. Dimonatello on the line, I had to listen to him chewing on something while he talked. Chicken salad sandwich, probably. It was getting to be about that time, and my own stomach had started to growl.
“Hey! Bill! I was wondering when you were going to call.” His chuckle was rusty, and full of the sound of something tucked into his cheek.
I doodled a stick figure with four arms and fangs on the corner of my sheet of notepaper. “Ten cents says you already know what this is about."
More chewing noises. Dimonatello was probably spraying crumbs all over the mouthpiece. “...that guy, right. Harvey Champe. I thought this one would be right up your alley, all things considered."
“Love and kisses to you, too.” I added a few four-letter words in a speech-bubble above my stick figure's head. “Is this guy on the up and up, or is he just a lunatic with a lot of cash to throw around?” Personally, I was hoping for option number two.
“Oh, he checked out as legit, all right. When he started darkening our doorstep every day, the Chief called over to Cleveland to check his credentials. To hear them tell it, he's the original upstanding citizen. Does something to do with the steel mills. I forget what."
“So if he's such a big man, why'd you guys turf him over to me?” That was the real question on my mind. “Not that I'm complaining about the extra business."
“We've been scraped pretty thin here since you had to leave, Bill. We've got more on our plate than we can handle with the real stuff, and the Chief got a bee up his backside when this guy marched in and tried to give him an ultimatum. Wish I'd been a fly on the wall."
If Champe had treated the Chief the way that he'd treated me, it wasn't any wonder that the most cooperation he'd gotten was Dimonatello giving him my name. I wished I'd been a fly on the wall, too.
Dimonatello was speaking again. “...case is closed. The thing's probably been found and bound by someone else, anyway.” From the way he was talking, it was clear that he thought this was an open-and-shut that'd already been shut.
One of the advantages about the telephone was that nobody could see when I was showing all my teeth. “Come on, Joe, throw me a bone. What've you got on file?"
Closed case or not, there was always paperwork around, and hopefully some stray piece of information would give me a place to start.
A heavy sigh greeted this request. It wasn't reluctance as much as it was laziness. I waited, counting silently; I got all the way to “twenty-one” before Dimonatello finally replied. It'd probably taken him that long to find the file, what with all the junk piled up on his desk. “Jenson died from a bad case of pneumonia. No foul play suspected. He left most of his estate to his daughter, Lillian Ramey, the Library to this guy Champe. There weren't any other beneficiaries in his will. We went through her place twice, looking for it. Didn't find a thing. I guess that she sold most of the stuff at auction when it looked like Champe was completely unreachable. That was a good two months before we got the search warrant."
That wasn't much, but at least it was something. I scribbled the name down: Lillian Ramey.
There was a commotion at the other end of the line. I heard the sergeant, more distantly, saying, “...did what to how many people? Yeah, I'm coming.” His voice picked up volume; he must have leaned toward the mouthpiece again. “Look, Bill, I gotta go. Stop by sometime when it's less busy, and we'll chew the fat, hey?"
“Right.” I hung up fast, before Dimonatello could forget Rule Two. You don't say thank you to fairies, and you don't say good-bye to your buddies.
Snow collected on the shoulders of my overcoat during the ten-block walk back to my apartment. Ascending the three flights of stairs to my apartment didn't do anything but augment the ultimatum my knee was giving me: stop moving and sit down.
However loudly my joints creaked with the weather, the Old Lady was louder, greeting me at the door with a shriek shrill enough to shatter glass. Nobody swears as well as a cat, and she was not only hungry, she was going to tell me all about how she was starving and I was late.
“Let me get in the door, will you?” I said, tripping over her. She leapt up onto the back of my easy chair, kneading the snagged fabric with her claws. Her green eyes were fixed on the bag I held, rather than on my face.
“I got lunch for us both. That's right.” She squeezed her eyes shut in renewed good humor, but the tip of her tail flicked back and forth as I shrugged out of my overcoat and gimped toward the table.
A stenographer I'd been seeing a couple years ago had given me flack about talking to my cat. It had only happened once; I'd dropped her like a hot potato after that particular comment. The way I figured it, the Old Lady probably had more brains than most people I knew. She'd been a wizard's familiar until I left the Force, after all.
She was going a bit gray around the jowls, but then so was I. And she'd let me know clearly enough that she was unimpressed by my injuries. There'd been plenty of times during that first month and a half when she'd jarred me out of a bout of self-pity with five sharp claws across the nose.
I owed her for that. It was all that saved her hide when I saw what she'd done to my Library this time. It was lying in the middle of the floor, a battered needlepoint cushion with forget-me-nots embroidered all over it. Only now, there was cat hair all over it, and one corner was not only drooled on, but chewed on.
If the Old Lady had one fault, it was her fetish for chewing on magical objects. My Library was just the latest victim. She'd tried to swallow my cigarette lighter twice, and my wand was scarred by quarter-inch-deep tooth marks. I'd tried hiding the magical items in the house, locking them away, and even painting the ones that would survive it with pepper sauce. Nothing worked.
“Cat!"
She didn't even bother to look guilty. Giving the now-empty tuna salad container a final lick, she jumped down from the table.
Grabbing up the pillow, I hugged it to my chest. “Ohhhh, no you don't."
She stared at me, looking affronted as she crouched low to the ground.
“This is going back in the dresser, where you can't get at it.” Truth to tell, I couldn't remember why I'd had it out last night to begin with. I kicked an empty bottle across the room. Maybe I couldn't remember, but I could make a good guess: too much Scotch and way too much self-pity.
By the time I'd finished securing my Library, the Old Lady had curled up on my chair and started napping. I headed for the table. My sandwich was still waiting for me, but the Old Lady had swallowed down the pickle that came with my sandwich, while I'd had my hands full.
Two days later, the rent was paid up through next month, the streets were accumulating a dusting of snow, and I was trying to straighten my tie without choking myself, using the faint reflection in the incline window as a guide. I'd managed to secure an afternoon appointment with Miz Ramey.
Initially she'd been reluctant, but she'd capitulated right when I thought I wasn't getting anywhere. It made me wonder just what I'd said that had done the trick.
Maybe it was the reassurance that I wasn't a member of the press. I'd had no idea that she'd been married to that Ramey, the railroad tycoon, until I'd checked the society papers on a hunch. And there it was, in black and white. A big wedding, a beaming bride, and appearances at all the Right Events for over twenty years...
And then a year ago, a tasteful funeral. Afterward, Lillian Ramey had done her best to drop out of sight. The one newspaper photo of her since her husband's death showed a woman who was in black for her father's funeral, face averted from the camera.
My thoughts were interrupted by the proximity alarm. A bell went off. Loudly. From the bag under my arm, the Old Lady gave a querulous yowl. Seemed like she didn't like the alarm on the Troy Hill incline any more than I liked having a tie around my neck. Resisting the urge to join her with my own snarled complaints, I muttered, “You were the one that insisted on coming along to hobnob with high society, cat. Stop complaining."
She ignored me. I stared out over the view of the 30th Street Bridge, and waited for the incline to jerk to a halt.
Lillian Ramey lived on Troy Hill, up on the North Side, in a mansion overlooking the Allegheny and the Strip District, on the other side of the river. It wasn't a far walk, even with the snow, my chewed-up knee, and the editorial meowing from the bag I had slung over my shoulder. The Old Lady wasn't even going to expose so much as a whisker to this weather; it made me wonder why she'd made for her traveling bag so determinedly and then set up such a racket when I'd tried to leave without her.
I was greeted at the door by a sober-faced butler who tried to take my coat and my bag. The coat I let him have; the bag I kept. His expression shifted from supercilious to shocked when the Old Lady growled at the touch of his fingers against the bag. It was his good luck that there was a double layer of canvas between her claws and his fingers.
The butler showed us past two rooms so immaculate they could have been museum showcases, and into a study decorated in warm reds and golds. There was a piano in the corner. The furniture was expensive-looking, with velvet upholstery and plush padding. Sitting in the armchair in the center of the room was a brown-haired woman who I recognized from the news pictures.
“Miz Ramey.” I held my hand out. She was a sad-faced woman with wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and a few streaks of gray in her neatly curled hair. Her grip was firm; up close, she smelled like expensive perfume. “I'm William Littlejohn, P.I."
Her expression went from closed to wary as the Old Lady popped her head out of the bag and stared intently around. I figured that some sort of introduction was in order. “This is my familiar."
It was almost true. What's more, it was easier than explaining that “my ex-familiar decided she was coming along, and since I didn't want my closet used for a litter box, I let her.'
“Please, have a seat,” Lillian invited, waving at the nearest of the sofas. When I sat down, I sank two inches into the cushion. “You said you wanted to see me about my father's will...?"
“Right.” I took off my hat and set it on my knee. The Old Lady sat down on my other knee, one tattered ear lying flat against her scalp and the other pricked forward.
“Ma'am, let me get to the point.” It was better than limping through a quarter-hour of pleasantries. “I've been hired to locate your father's Library, by a Mister Champe. Do you know him?"
I'd thought her expression was wary before; now it was hostile. “Know him? Yes. I daresay I do.” One elegant hand fingered the rope of pearls at her neck. “I was engaged to him, briefly."
“Before you met your former husband?” A lovers’ spat would be a plausible explanation for just how Champe knew that the Library was unbound, and why he'd hired me to get at it.
Her tone was frosty. “Certainly. Long before, when I was rather younger and very ... pliable.” At the moment, Lillian Ramey seemed about as pliable as a fireplace poker. The Old Lady flattened both ears against her furry skull in response to that tone of voice.
I pressed on. “So you'd say that you and he don't, uh. Don't move in the same circles, these days?"
Both she and the cat on my lap shot me identical looks of disgust. Lillian's voice was clipped. “Mister Littlejohn, I certainly try my utmost to avoid any contact with Mister Champe or any of his associates. If I had my father's Library, I would certainly give it over to him, to avoid his ... attentions."
“He's been a problem?” I stretched my lips thin over my teeth. If Champe was trying to treat a woman the way he'd treated me ... “He harassing you?"
Her voice thawed a degree or two. “Only through intermediaries, Mister Littlejohn. It's nothing I can't handle. Still, I'd imagine his desperation is related to his financial problems."
“Oh?” I leaned forward, the urge to bite something subsiding. Champe talked big, dressed big, and as far as I knew, didn't have a single cloud on the horizon.
“You didn't know?” Lillian drawled the question out, lifting an eyebrow. “He's got quite a substantial amount of debt that's recently come due, Mister Littlejohn. He'd made some bad investments over the last year, or so my father told me before he passed on. I think that's why he's been so persistent; he fancies that my father's Library will hold the solution to his solvency issues."
I tried to keep a neutral expression as I scratched under the Old Lady's chin. A fine dusting of cat hair down onto my good wool pants. “I ... see."
“I think you do see, Mister Littlejohn.” She leaned forward, now. “Let me make this as clear as I possibly can. I don't have what he wants. I have no reason to keep something like that. I don't even know what form my father had enchanted it into. Everything of my father's was sold at auction, except for some small pieces that I kept for sentiment's sake. The police have been through this house and the property twice, with my full cooperation. They've found nothing, because it is not here. Mister Champe, however, has decided not to trust them, and not to trust me. I have repeatedly offered to let him inspect them in the company of an impartial witness, but he has declined."
“Well, would you mind if I took a look at the items you're talking about, Miz Ramey? It won't take much more of your time, and then I can assure Mister Champe that you don't actually have the item in question."
She smiled. “Certainly. It will be a relief, actually, to have some corroboration. Please, wait here for a moment; I'll have to go retrieve those things."
As she exited, I looked at the Old Lady. She was staring at the nearer arm of the sofa, big green eyes full of the scratching gleam.
“No.” I rapped her on the head with a knuckle. She hunkered down on my lap and growled. “I mean it."
“Mean what?” The voice came from the doorway, young and curious. I jumped. The Old Lady deserted my lap, digging in all of her claws as she leaped to the floor, purring loudly.
I cleared my throat, turning in my seat to get a better look. The girl in the doorway was six, maybe seven years old. Her long dark hair was tied back with a ribbon, and her eyes were pale blue. The aura around her was like summer lightning or blue moonlight. This kid had Magic with a capital “M."
“To turn her into a fur stole if she scratches up the furniture in here.” The electric feeling of so much magic was blurring my vision around the edges. The girl broke into a smile; my ex-familiar was twining around her legs, acting like it was mealtime and the kid was a sixty-pound tuna.
“You wouldn't really do that. She's a nice kitty.” She squatted in the doorway, navy skirt hanging like a fringe around her legs as she rubbed the Old Lady's belly.
The last time I'd tried to do something like that, she'd left six-inch bloody scratches down my forearm. “Careful, kid—"
The cat squeezed her eyes shut and proceeded to shed calico hairs all over the girl's navy-colored dress.
“I'm Lettie. And I like your cat,” she said, grinning down at the Old Lady conspiratorially. “I should probably go. Auntie Lil said I was supposed to stay in the library and practice my Greek, but that's so boring. And besides, I already know Greek. It was nice meeting you!"
Lillian Ramey entered through the same open doorway, carrying a wooden box. “Lettie! Didn't I tell you to..."
But Lettie was already gone, footsteps fading down the hall. The Old Lady was peering after her. I rubbed at my neck; the hairs there were still standing on end. “Nice kid."
“My ward.” Lillian's expression softened. “A relative from my mother's side of the family. Her parents thought it would be more advantageous to place her with me. As you likely saw, she has Potential."
“In spades.” Leaning back in my seat, I studied the box. “This is all that you didn't auction off?"
Setting the box down on a coffee table, Lillian gave a sharp nod. “Everything.” With an abrupt gesture, she opened the box and stood aside. “You'll want to examine the contents, of course."
I glanced over at the Old Lady. She looked back at me, supremely disinterested. “Of course,” I agreed, scooting to the edge of my chair and reaching into the box. There were a variety of knick-knacks inside: a pair of cuff links in mother of pearl, a diamond necklace, two small silver oil lamps, a delicate ivory ball-within-a-ball, and a few other items. I handled each piece like I could still dowse an enchantment before it sunk its teeth into my backside. What I was really waiting for was the Old Lady's reaction; she greeted each item with a bored stare. She actually yawned as I held up the ball-within-a-ball, my best bet as to what the Library might be. All the while, I was acutely aware of Lillian's eyes on me.
“Well, it's certainly not among these items. I'll be happy to assure him that that's the case.” I'd have to look elsewhere. Tracking down the buyers from the auction was going to be a nightmare.
“Thank you, Mister Littlejohn. If there's anything else I can help you with, please let me know.” Lillian had remained standing while I inspected each piece, a silent reminder that I'd taken up enough of her afternoon. “Robert will retrieve your coat for you."
With a sigh, I held the travel bag open, and clicked my tongue. The Old Lady, busy licking at the stuff that lived between her toes, paused long enough to look up. After a moment of further hygiene, she strolled over and settled herself inside the bag. The butler was already at the door, my coat draped over his arm.
Champe slammed his hands down on my desk; it wobbled back and forth, but nothing rolled off of it. The telephone earpiece rocked back and forth in its cradle with the impact. Between the fury on the wizard's face and the roil of scorched magic around him, I was surprised his palms didn't leave char marks on the scarred finish of the wood. “This is unacceptable!"
It took a lot of effort to ignore the little voice in my head encouraging me to lean forward, grab Champe around the throat, and squeeze. “You said that already,” I said instead. “Twice."
I didn't blame him for being frustrated; I was getting frustrated, too. Progress had gone from slow to glacial over the last two weeks, as I tried to track down every buyer from the auction who lived within a ten-mile radius of the city. But that wasn't what was getting to me. It was his yelling, pacing, fretting presence in my office every afternoon, demanding progress reports and slowing things down further that made me want to break something. Several somethings.
He went red, flushing from the neck upward. “I don't tolerate—” he began.
I'd just spent the last five days running all over the city and a bunch of tin can-sized towns with the Old Lady, inspecting everything from a box full of crumbling old Bibles to a dressmaker's mannequin. He'd been sitting on his duff complaining about every move I made. I bet he'd never spent time in a car with a complaining, motion-sick cat.
I'd heard this before, too. He didn't tolerate insolence, blah blah yackety smack hired help. The word “tolerate” was the last straw for my patience, already stripped paper-thin by the waxing moon.
“Yeah? Then it's time to terminate our relationship, Mister Champe. Obviously, you're not satisfied with my progress on your behalf.” Just to make my point, I stood up and let all my teeth show.
The color heightened in Champe's face. The desk warped under his grip, wood running like water as the stink of magic in the room became nearly unbearable. “Yes. Yes, I think it might be. That means you owe me three hundred dollars worth of expenses, Mister Littlejohn."
“Non-refundable expenses, remember?” I could feel the back of my throat vibrating with the urge to growl.
“Oh, no. I think not. I will get my money back, or my money's worth from you.” Champe's face was nearly back to its normal color, his pale eyes stone hard as he pulled a wand out of his pocket.
I lunged forward, grabbing not for his wand arm, but for his other wrist. My fingernails, a good quarter-inch longer than they'd been five minutes ago, bit into his skin. He froze.
“Drop. It.” There was an ugly burr under my words; it thickened as I gave in to the moon-pressure.
He didn't drop the wand. I shifted my grip so that my fingernails bit more deeply into his flesh. “You forgot tonight was a full moon when you decided to try to renege, Champe?"
“You wouldn't.” He sounded certain, but I could smell anxiety on his breath.
“Try me.” I grinned, and a bead of drool ran down my chin. From the feel of my teeth against my lower lip, they were slowly getting more pointed. “Drop the wand, Champe, or I draw blood, and you end up just. Like. Me."
He blanched. I didn't blame him. I knew what he was seeing. Pronounced five o'clock shadow. Pointy teeth, slavering mouth, and eyes gone amber and feral. All the signs of a were-animal under the influence of the full moon—an infectious were.
His pulse jittered in his neck as he stared at me. The wand clattered to the floor. Being able to sense magic without the ability to Command it was any magic-user's idea of a nightmare. Still keeping my grip on his hand, I circled around my desk and planted a foot on top of the polished mahogany wand. “Now get the hell out of my office. And don't come back, or I'll break that wand of yours in half."
He winced, anger suffusing his face. “Why ... you...” His lunge was abortive, as I tightened my grip just a little more. I could smell the anger that swamped away his anxiety. He wanted to hurt me. I wanted him to give me an excuse, but he held still. The scent of magic in the room was fading already.
“You just remember the law of contagion, Champe. I'm going to keep that wand of yours. Won't matter if you make a new one. You do anything to cross me and I'll have your Harvard-educated hind parts for lunch. Now scram!"
I released his wrist; where my nails had pressed inward, there were deep crescent-shaped marks. I didn't see any blood welling up. Still pale, he backed toward the door, never taking his eyes off of me.
I had to resist the urge to give chase as he exited.
I thought that was the end of it. Champe was out of my life for good if he had a brain in his head. It wasn't my problem any more. The Library was either gone for good or bound to someone else.
Four-legged or two, it still nagged at me. I locked myself in during the three nights of the full moon, and paced around the confines of my bathroom, nails clicking against the tile. Unable to get out without opposable thumbs, I had plenty of time, and nothing to do with it but think.
Even after the full moon was over and I'd gotten cleaned up, the fact that I'd left the case unfinished bothered me. Despite my best efforts to keep my mind on paying business, I found I was getting as obsessive about the missing Library as my former client had been.
About a month after chasing Champe out of my office, I was busy swearing at a cranky old Remington that I'd bought for fifty cents. I thought it'd be more legible than my handwriting. Quicker, too. I hadn't counted on the size of the keys. They'd been designed for midgets. It was slow going, using my two pinky fingers to peck out the words letter by letter.
The sound of the phone was a reprieve. I grabbed for the earpiece, knocking one of the “how to” manuals that came with the Remington off of my desk. It flopped open. The bookplate pasted into the front read “Ex Libris Susannah Cunningham"; from the library of, in Latin. I stretched out a leg to toe it closed with my foot. “Yeah?"
“Hey, Bill, it's me.” It was Dimonatello, slurping in between his words. This time, it was coffee; too early for anything stronger and too late for lunch. “That guy Champe, you still working for him?"
“Nah.” I rubbed at my left pinky. It felt like I'd sprained something. “I fired him three weeks ago."
There was a choking, coughing sound on the other end of the line. It took Dimonatello a minute to get his voice back; an impressive recovery time for someone who'd just inhaled station house coffee. “You fired him.” And then the coughing resumed, interspersed by chuckles. “Had me going for a minute. But you aren't following up on that Library thing for him any more?"
My curiosity bump twinged, aching more than my finger. “Why're you asking?"
“Because he got caught red-handed in the middle of a B&E last night. What do you know?” Dimonatello sounded suspicious.
My gaze landed on the “how to” manual again and all the pieces came together, in a flash of inspiration. I sat up, dragging the phone halfway across the desk by the earpiece. I tried to keep the epiphany out of my voice. “Nothing. He wasn't satisfied with my work on the case, so we parted ways. I got the idea his cash flow was thinning out, right about the time he let me go. Whose house did you say you found him in?"
“The Ramey mansion."
“Sounds like you got him dead to rights. She going to press charges?"
There was a crackle of static on the line. “...wants us to throw the book at him. She's got some high-powered lawyer making a case for kidnapping or worse, since he had a knife, a ransom note, and some rope on him."
“Yeah?” I replied. “What a winner. Personally, I wouldn't have put it past him to do something like that. If you need me to make a character statement, just say so."
Dimonatello didn't know how to trade pleasantries. He just grunted and hung up the phone. That was fine by me—I had an unannounced visit to go make, after I finished howling in triumph.
The butler met me at the door to the Ramey mansion. He made me wait in the foyer, my coat dripping melted slush. Apparently, you only got to have your coat hung up if you were an approved guest.
I waited, the soggy brown paper parcel under my arm wet enough that its crinkling was subdued. When the butler finally returned, he nearly objected aloud to my taking the package inside with me. Lips pressed into a thin line, he showed me down the hall and into a small drawing room with spindle-backed chairs scattered between the wide-glassed windows. There were fancy cookies set out on a silver tray, on a side table. The mirrors that hung on the walls gave me proof positive that I was out of place here, although they all stood up to the strain of reflecting my ugly mug.
Lillian Ramey was already seated, her expression that serene poker face that she'd used on me earlier. She didn't smile as I entered; in fact, as I took a seat without asking, she frowned slightly. I guessed that meant I shouldn't help myself to the cookies.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit, Mister Littlejohn?” Her voice was barely civil. “Do please be brief; we've had some unpleasant excitement here recently, and I'm afraid it's left me rather preoccupied with other things."
“I'd heard, ma'am,” I said, politely. “I won't waste much of your time."
“Indeed.” She sounded dubious, and frost was creeping back into her tone, along with a note of impatience.
I got straight to the point. There wasn't any graceful way to approach this, and I wasn't any good at subtle, anyway. “I know you have your father's Library, Miz Ramey."
Two small spots of color flared, high in her cheeks. She shifted in her seat, and asked in precisely measured tones, “Are you calling me a liar, Mister Littlejohn?"
“Yes, ma'am.” No sense denying it. “I am. You might as well not bother, because I know what the Library is. Or I guess I should say, who the Library is."
Lillian's poise vanished. She looked apprehensive, nervous. I was feeling pretty flush; I'd been right, after all. I kept talking, watching her all the while to see just how much of my theory was right. “The way I figure it, your father wanted to modify his Library. To change it from a simple object into something secure. Something living.
“But it went wrong somehow. The Library wasn't what he expected. It ended up being a real person with Potential, instead of something he could control and access.” I watched her reaction—the slight twist of her lips, the way she turned her head away; I was off track.
“It turned into Lettie, didn't it? And she's got all that knowledge tucked inside her head. She told me she ‘knew Greek already,’ last time I was here.” The Old Lady's reaction should have clued me off right away. “You didn't want a slimebag like Champe anywhere near her. So you put around this story of her being your ward, and you let Champe assume that the Library had been stolen.
“All the while, it was right under his nose."
Lillian smoothed the fabric of her skirt, and then looked up. Her voice was passionate, not tired. “Lettie was an experiment gone wrong. My father was trying to transfer his Library into his familiar. She doesn't remember anything, but from what he told me before he passed away, the spell turned inside out, shunting most of his life force away, into the creation of a human being.
“He caught pneumonia the next day; by nightfall he was delirious. There was no time for him to modify his will. I had to do something, you understand. Even though she was created by magic, Lettie is a living, breathing human girl. She deserves all the same rights that any person should have—including the freedom to make something out of her life."
Her voice dropped, becoming more intense. “Can you imagine what would happen to her? She'd be taken away from me, and tested to destruction for the sake of magical experimentation.” She hesitated, then added, “Besides, she's all that's left of my father's. Who has a better right to her than I do?"
I knew what the fancy lawyers would say to that. Legally, she was in the wrong. Morally, though ... for the first time since retirement, I was glad that I was out of the game for good. I wasn't a wizard or a cop any more; I was just a guy with a curiosity bump the size of Montana. I didn't have any obligation to tell anybody anything.
“You're preaching to the choir, Miz Ramey.” I got up. My knee popped, reluctant to do its job and support my weight. Pulling the parcel out from under my arm, I dropped it with a soft thump on the side table. It left a wet smear next to the cookies. “I just came by to find out if I was right ... and to leave your kid something, if I was."
Lillian picked up the package, turning it over in her hands before unwrapping it.
“It's a little bit battered, but I figure Lettie might be able to find a use for it someday. Once I'm dead and gone."
As I limped down the hall, I started whistling. The way I saw it, a kid like that would find some use for a second-rate wizard's Library, complete with cat hair.
S. Evans is a pediatric resident at the University of Minnesota. She lives in Saint Paul with her son, her husband, and a sadly overloaded set of bookshelves. Her work can be found in Strange Horizons, Fortean Bureau, Talebones, and Abyss & Apex, as well as Challenging Destiny.
Thomas was quiet as usual when I went downstairs for dinner, but I was still thinking a lot about him. We all were thinking about our implants then.
My mom handed me a big bowl of salad. “Where's Anna?"
I rolled my eyes; I am always my sister's keeper. “I don't know, Mom. Her citizenship class probably went over time."
Dad frowned. “Haven't they covered everything yet?"
“They always go over common implant choices on the last day of class."
Both of them were suddenly silent. Tactful, I thought, laying the napkins by each of our places.
“It's not like her not to call,” Mom said.
I snorted. It was exactly like Anna not to call. At least once a week, she got too involved in her studio at school and showed up late for dinner. Sometimes Mom talks just to be talking, when she's nervous. Not that I know anything about that.
Mom sat down at the table, leaning back in her chair. “You don't know anything about what Anna might be considering for her implants, do you?"
“Not really,” I said.
Dad wiped his hands on the dishtowel. “We just thought ... you're her big sister. We thought she might have talked to you."
“Hasn't said a word."
They looked at each other. “Well, if she does say anything...” Mom started.
“It's very important,” Dad said. “You understand that, don't you? It's something the family should discuss with her. It can have big effects on all of us."
Nobody said Julia's name. We didn't need to.
Just as the silence was growing awkward, Anna burst through the door. “Sorry I'm late! The People just kept talking and talking, and then the train had to reroute."
“No problem, honey,” said Mom cheerfully. “Jackie, will you call your sister?"
I glared at her. “All right.” I had a momentary juvenile urge to shout Julia's name from right there in the kitchen, but I decided the folks were edgy enough.
Julia, of course, was in her studio. We would never need to lock her up, no matter how bad she got: as long as she had food, paint, and canvases, she'd never leave. “Time for supper, Julia."
“Hmm?"
“Julia. Vincent! It's time for supper."
She looked up. “I need to finish the Person."
I peered over her shoulder. The murky grays and bright blues and greens might someday make a credible—or at least interesting—representation of one of our artificially intelligent guardians—but it looked like at least another hard day's work. I gently took her wrist. “No way. Come on—Mom and Dad are waiting."
“But I need to—"
“After supper. Come on."
Julia and I were really close before Vincent came between us. When she's in control, we still are. I don't remember the last time that was, though. We got through dinner with a minimum of badgering from Mom and Dad about Anna's implant choice. I excused myself to study for my test, which was on implant legislation. Anna stayed behind to help clear the table. Mom was lecturing her on implants under the guise of sharing a family story:
“When I first got Chu implanted, it was like having a voice talking in my head all the time. It was really scary, but I got used to it. Now it's kind of calming, really..."
I snorted softly as I climbed the stairs. That's what they always tell you, but Mom isn't one for the party line, so I guess she must have been telling Anna the truth. It's not like that for me. Mostly I don't use the implant at all, less than once a day usually. Julia uses hers all the time, and I've seen how that turns out.
I turned to the section on Teeling/Rand vs. The People to review details for the test, though it wasn't too likely I'd have forgotten any. It was one of my least favorite trials. Brad Teeling had been the first person to have the old Earth author Ayn Rand implanted, back in the early days, when humans and People were still figuring out what they wanted the colony to be like. Problem was, the Rand construct decided it didn't want to be in Brad's head—or anybody else's. I would be totally fine with that, except that the People acquiesced to her wishes (or threats, if you want to be blunt about it). So now it's okay for an implant-construct to opt out, but not for a human being.
The analysis of it was really dumb, too, setting up straw men and then knocking them down with glee. Why didn't they make a more compliant Rand-construct? Because it was fundamental to her personality to be difficult. And so on. It was the sort of thing Professor Estyn would ask, because she was scared of the tough questions. I kept going through cases, getting more and more depressed with them.
The last case on my list to study was Rosenberg vs. The People, known to everyone as the Einstein Trial. Mariangela Rosenberg, a promising young physicist, had sued to get Albert Einstein on the approved list of implant-constructs. She claimed that both his theories and his writings about them proved that he was an artist with numbers. The final decision read, “We do not dispute that Albert Einstein's personality contained some elements of artistic nature—as, indeed, every human personality does. However, his endeavors in his lifetime were not primarily artistic. If the artist in such a person was sufficient to enable him to live in our special society, the implants themselves would be unnecessary."
Well, they said it, not me.
As I was reading the section on the Einstein Trial, I became aware of Anna's presence in the doorway, but I finished my reading before looking up. “Hi."
“Hi. What are you doing?"
“Studying. Implant legislation and rulings."
“We went over some of that in citizenship class."
“Yeah, I know. It's a lot more commentary here, though."
“I'd guess."
“You know, Anna, there's a lot of stuff they don't tell you about in your citizenship course,” I said. “People like Julia never make it in their curriculum."
“They told us half of one percent of the recipients can't stand the psychological stress and go insane."
I waved my hand dismissively. “They don't count Julia in that. Do you know who they count?” She shook her head. “People who are clinically insane within one calendar year of their treatment, directly due to the implant. That's all. The people who can't handle having another person in there with them, even in bits. Not the ones who've handled it until it's all they have. Not the ones who go schizoid on them later. Anything after the initial period—well, they had their implants earlier, and obviously were fine then, so it obviously couldn't be the implants."
“That's terrible!” said Anna. “How many people do you think there are like—like Julia?"
“You've started thinking of her as Vincent, haven't you?” When she didn't answer, looked away, I said, “I have, too. That's what she is half the time. Who she is."
“Is that okay with them?” she demanded.
I shrugged. “They think it's worth it. Maybe it is. We don't have the crime rates most places do. We don't have—"
Julia wafted in. She had paint on her forehead and in her hair, as well as all over her hands and clothes. That had always been the way she was, even before the implant. The difference was subtle, I guess, but I'm her sister. I know these things.
Before she got her implant, Julia looked normal-spacey. When you looked her in the eye, it was clear that someone was at home in there, thank you very much, even if that someone might be too busy rummaging around in the back of her head to spend much time with you. After the implant, one look in her eyes was enough to confirm that whoever was supposed to be there was not—and we could never tell whether it was going to be the psychological equivalent of a night on the town or a year's sabbatical.
“How are you, Julia?” Anna asked gently.
Julia stared at her. “I'm out of phthalo blue."
“That's too bad. We'll get you some more tomorrow,” I said.
“Tomorrow? Tomorrow's no good. It's seven o'clock."
I sighed. “I can't go tonight, Julia. I have to study."
She frowned. “Anna?"
“Anna has enough on her mind,” I said quickly.
“I'll find Mom. I'm out of phthalo blue,” she explained patiently.
Anna and I looked at each other in the helpless silence of her wake.
“She's getting worse,” I said quietly.
“I know.” Anna looked at me. “Do you think they could remove her implants?"
My Thomas-memories sifted through patterns. I ignored them. “No way. Holland vs. The People."
“What's that?"
“Court case. Eben Holland's parents sued to have his implants removed—the other personality was driving him nuts. Just like Julia."
“And the court said no?” Anna looked mutinous.
“They said yes."
“So what's the—oh."
“Yeah. It made him worse."
Anna didn't say anything. I knew what she was thinking: we'll never get Julia back, we're stuck with Vincent forever.
I finished my test early the next day and had a couple of hours to kill. I caught the train partway back out to the suburbs and got off at the Art School stop near us.
If there's one thing the People have done right, it's art schools. They polled all the people with visual artists in their heads about what they would have wanted when they were first starting out—and for once, they listened to the polls. Younger kids have all the art supplies they could possibly use, with a great mix of technical instruction and creative freedom. The art teachers watch all of them carefully, and any student who shows promise is encouraged to spend lots of time on it. When kids get older, they can try out for an art-oriented high school. Almost everyone who makes it goes.
Anna's school was just like all the others—spacious and light-filled, done in pale neutral colors with reproductions of the great works along the public halls. Although it looked nothing like the monastery near Waltham, I was reminded of the exciting, emerging atmosphere when I went to school there, studying the old forms of music and trying out a few new ones. No. When Thomas went to school there. I hate it when that happens. I turned down a side corridor: the senior studios. I hadn't been to Anna's studio since she got it, but they all had nameplates—self-designed, so Anna's was easy to find. Not many of the kids do metal sculpture, I guess.
The door was slightly ajar. I knocked on it with a half-closed hand. It swung open. “Anna?” I called. No response. She was probably still in class. I knew I should sit down outside and wait for her—or better yet, go home—but I couldn't resist seeing what she had been doing.
I always wondered what she did with sculptures she was done with. It was the sort of thing I just never got around to asking. The answer was kind of weird. The ones she didn't like were stuck in a corner, the parts jostled together, arm on rectangle on butterfly. The “good” pieces—the ones Anna liked—had their own space but no particular arrangement. The angular sculpture of Bach as one of the People had my mother's exasperated gaze straight through his ear.
Several of the more recent sculptures were done along the same line as Bach: famous artists and musicians made over in the likeness of the People. Some of them didn't work at all. Some were brilliant. I was still trying to decide which category the statue of John Lennon fell into when Anna returned. She cleared her throat quietly.
I managed not to jump. “Hey, Anna."
“Hey, Jackie. What are you doing here?"
“I finished my exam early. Thought I'd check up on my baby sister."
“Your concern is touching."
I ignored her sarcasm. “So how was your class?"
She grimaced. “Okay. I guess. It's gotten to the point where they're kind of waiting around for us to get our implants. Your style doesn't really settle until then."
I took her by the shoulders. “Anna, listen to me."
She shrugged my hands off. “I'm listening. I'm not five."
“This is important. You have to get out of here."
She looked around her studio. “And I thought Julia was the crazy one. What's wrong with my studio?"
“Not your studio. Out of here. Off planet. Go to Skade, go to Vonbraun, go to old Earth, I don't care. But you have to go."
“You didn't."
I turned away from her. “I didn't have your talent. Look at this stuff. I mean, some of it isn't great—"
“Thanks,” she said ironically.
“But some of it is really awesome. And you're still learning. Think of what you'd be able to do in ten years. Or even five. They have art schools elsewhere. Just go."
“I can't."
“Why not?"
“What about all the crime? It's so violent out there."
I sighed. “The crime rates out there are not nearly what they want you to think they are. I mean, yeah, things are better here. But not by that much."
“But you and Mom and Dad are still here. And Julia—she's still my sister."
“You can visit. I mean it, Anna. I don't think this can work for you. You have your own talent, not Bach's or Rodin's or—"
“Or van Gogh's?"
“Yes, or van Gogh's! Doesn't that worry you?” It hit me hard. “Anna, you're not thinking about getting—"
“Vincent? Don't be silly. Of course not. One of him is enough for one family."
“None of him was enough for this family. Don't do this to yourself, Anna."
She cocked her head, regarding me mockingly. “What about the chance to learn firsthand from art's greats?"
“It's not first-hand. You know that. It's second-hand at best. You're getting—one of the People in your head."
“Is that what it's like?"
Damn. I had her interested on that one. “Yes. No. I don't know. But it's not really like having another person, just—parts. Bits and pieces. It's not worth it."
She patted my shoulder. “Don't worry, Jackie. I'm staying. But I've got my own plans.” Then she was on her way out, not mad, not even bothering to slam the door behind her.
I stood there like an idiot for a minute, looking from the statue of Lennon to the doorway. I ran to the door and shouted after her, “Look at Julia, dammit! Look at your sister!” Other students poked their heads out of their studios curiously, but Anna didn't even turn around.
Anna went in for her implants the next night. We said careful, casual good-byes at dinner, and then she left on the train. No big deal. Just like everyone else. Only it wasn't everyone else, it was my baby sister, and I was still up at four that morning, messing around in the kitchen. I had a book open, but I wasn't really studying. I took a swig of my tea. It was too hot to swig. I didn't care. There were footsteps in the hall.
“Mom?” I called.
“Have you seen my palette knife?"
Julia. Of course. “No, I haven't."
She stepped into the glow of the kitchen lamp. Her cropped brown hair looked a little greasy in the light. “How am I supposed to work without it?"
“How can you work with Anna in there?"
Her focus swayed. “What? Anna—where's Anna?"
I wanted to swear. I wanted to smack her, shake her, anything. I had had years of Vincent. “In getting her implant,” I said patiently.
“She is?” Julia blinked muzzily. “I'm sorry. It gets so—big in here. I get lost."
“Yes, she's getting her implant tonight. It's all we've talked about for a week. A month."
“That's bad. Anna shouldn't—that's bad."
“Yes, it's bad!” I shouted. “Of course it's bad! Jesus Christ, Julia, do you think I sit up every night drinking tea and looking for your palette knife?"
She blinked again, then started to cry. I should have felt bad about yelling at her and switched to sympathetic sister mode, but I'd never been Vincent's sister. “Oh, shut up,” I said wearily.
“Like me. You're afraid she's going to end up like me."
I looked at her, trying to see where she began and Vincent ended. “Yeah. Wouldn't you be?"
“I am,” she whispered. “When I can remember it, I am."
Mom appeared behind her. “Some of us,” she said frostily, “are trying to sleep."
“I'm sorry, Mom."
“What were you thinking, Jackie?” she hissed, putting a hand on Julia's shoulder. “She can't deal with this right now.” Or any other time, I thought.
Julia looked at me miserably and mouthed, “Help.” Then her eyes shifted somehow. She turned to Mom. “Have you seen my palette knife? It's gone. And I'm almost out of French ultramarine. I need it. I need my palette knife. Oh, this is no good. I'll never get the—"
“Shh, shh,” Mom soothed her. “In the morning, okay, sweetie? Let's get you to bed."
“But my palette—"
“Shh. It's okay."
I downed the last of my tea. I had gotten used to Anna being the sister I could help. I took for granted that there was nothing I could do for Julia. What I really meant was, there was nothing I was willing to do for Julia. Until that moment.
I unlocked the workroom door. The work of cutting and hammering the wood for new frames felt good, felt more honest than any other work I'd done lately. I cut the excess material away with a free razor blade. Julia had always liked making her own canvases, when we still let her. That night I understood why. I knelt on the wood of the frame and pulled the canvas taut. The only concession we made to technology was using microadherents to secure the canvas.
I picked up the canvas in one hand, the razor blade in the other, and gently carried them to Julia's studio. I put the razor between canvases, way in the back. Julia probably wouldn't find it for weeks, and I didn't know what she would do when she did. That was all right. I went back to my room and listened to Brahms. I fell asleep almost immediately.
Anna came home quiet, subdued. She spent a lot of time by herself, but that was pretty normal. I wanted to be calmed and reassured, but Julia had been pretty normal at first, too. The first paintings Julia did after she got him implanted were really awful, but in a way that made everyone happy: it was obvious Julia's sense of form was warring with Vincent's sense of color, and if only they would settle down, they'd really have something.
That was the theory. They never settled down. Sometimes it was like they were working together—"The Lady in the Flowered Hat” is so brilliant it brings tears to my eyes—but sometimes they fought so much that everything looked amateurish. The difference between genius and muddled mess gets so small sometimes.
I think the worst of it was that neither of them ever lost their aesthetic sense. No matter who was in control at any moment, they knew the bad paintings were bad. Sometimes Julia would fly into a rage when she saw a finished product, slashing with the razor she used to cut fresh canvas until there was nothing left. One of them came out gorgeous that way, but Mother and Dad still took away the razors. At least, the ones they found.
I was late for Anna's first sculpture's unveiling.
When I got there, everyone was standing around looking puzzled at Anna's sculpture. The other art school kids had pretty clear influence: Rembrandt, Monet, even a Dali in the back. Sometimes pleasant, sometimes promising. Utterly predictable. Anna had done a bronze casting of two heads. One side was a perfect likeness of her own face, right down to the line between her eyes when she was thinking. Then there was a frame between them, and the other side was a twisted version, in some ways simpler but with some extra features, lines that didn't belong where they were, details slightly out of place. It was called “Chipped Mirror."
All around me I heard murmurs of speculation. Rodin? Degas? Who had been the voice in her right ear? Anna had on her canary-laden grin and wasn't talking.
“That little shit,” I said out loud. People glared at me. “I can't believe she pulled it off."
“Who do you think she used?” asked one woman near me.
“Anna!” I shouted. “You brilliant little shit, come over here and give your sister a hug. I can see it, even if none of these people can."
“Who do you see, Jackie?” she asked softly.
“You, you clever little bitch! How the hell did you fake that?” The whole gallery was staring. I didn't care.
“It's not fake,” she said. They hung on her every word. Hell, so did I. “Nothing says it has to be a dead artist, right? Or a famous one? The People just have to see enough artistry in a body of work to accept it. So...” She shrugged.
“But I don't understand. You had Michelangelo, Miko Andrewes, anybody in the worlds to choose from,” Mom said.
“Who did they have?” said Anna mildly. “Nobody. They did it themselves. They got there themselves. So will I."
I took her aside later, when the uproar had died down. “That took a lot of courage, kiddo."
She grinned cockily. “If even my big sister believes I'm on my way to greatness, convincing an AI has to be simplicity itself!” The grin died down a little. “It's kind of strange sometimes, to have what a computer thinks is me whispering in my ear."
“You going to schiz on us?"
“Seen too much of Julia for that."
I hoped so, but there were no guarantees.
Marissa Lingen has sold over 40 science fiction and fantasy short stories. She was the 1999 winner of the Asimov Award. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is very, very happy about that. She's currently working at finishing a modern fantasy trilogy that uses the Kalevala as an inspiration. Marissa's story “Dark Thread” appeared in Challenging Destiny Number 17.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
This planet has—or rather had—a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
—Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
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Graphic Novels James reviews Watchmen by Alan Moore, The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, Bone by Jeff Smith, and The Great Women Superheroes by Trina Robbins.
Black Brillion is a novel that's short and satisfying, a well-told tale that feels a bit retro in its use of the apparatus of science fiction. Indeed, it's a deliberate piece of homage to the work of Jack Vance. Matt Hughes's book pays attention to both its apparent source material and the needs of the narrative at hand; my point of comparison for the book's achievement would be Kingsbury's excellent love letter to Asimov's Foundation, Psychohistorical Crisis. Both books do two things at once—tell a tale and pay homage—while most books have trouble even with the first.
Spider-Man 2 was the reliable bet for summer entertainment for 2004, and it mostly delivers on the goods. Sam Raimi's direction still creates a solid feel to the picture, with occasional jolts of excitement and verve. There's an old rule about a script losing quality every time another writer is added, but in this case the scriptwriting team is one quality name after another and their resulting script has meshed together into a coherent whole. The acting is generally passionate and authentic enough and the special effects support the story. All in all, it's a solid, entertaining package.
The Warrior-Prophet is the second book in the fantasy series The Prince of Nothing. It is the sequel to The Darkness That Comes Before, a book that was also R. Scott Bakker's debut. The series follows a complex set of political circumstances that leads to a Holy War, with factions and rivalries on both sides, and no clear sense, among the many groups, of who is good and who is evil (although there are a handful of characters who are the main protagonists). The Warrior-Prophet doesn't always escape the narrative traps of epic fantasy, but it's packed full with other good stuff.
Winter on the Plain of Ghosts is a surprisingly effective book, a nifty mix of historical novel and fantasy. The book takes place in the Indus River valley before the time described by the Rig Veda, which essentially means before recorded history. This area of the world is one, like Mesopotamia, that is built on many layers of collapsed civilizations. Eileen Kernaghan takes this somewhat abstract historical notion—the reasons why an entire civilization would disintegrate—and works narrative magic out of it, mainly by personalizing the story. What would it be like to live in a doomed society?
Number 1
+ Stories by Tim Reid, Timothy Dyck, Terry Thwaites, Douglas M. Grant, Charles Conrad, and Gord Zajac
+ Reviews of the Blade Runner books and movie
Number 2
+ Stories by Michael Mirolla, D. Sandy Nielsen, Paul Benza, Greg Bechtel, and Stefano Donati
+ Reviews of Isaac Asimov's books and movies
Number 3
+ Stories by Bonnie Blake, Erik Allen Elness, Tom Olbert, and Robert Arthur Vanderwoude
+ Reviews of Stanislaw Lem's books and movie
+ Interview with James Alan Gardner
Number 4
+ Stories by Timothy Carter, Bonnie Mercure, Carl Mills, Nicholas Pollotta & Phil Foglio, and Erik Allen Elness
+ Reviews of Frank Herbert's Dune books and movie
+ Interview with Tanya Huff
Number 5
+ Stories by D. Sandy Nielsen, Anne Louise Johnson, B. R. Bearden, Mark Leslie, and Hugh Cook
+ Reviews of Arthur C. Clarke's books and movies
+ Interview with Robert J. Sawyer
Number 6
+ Stories by Leah Silverman, Nicholas Pollotta, K. G. McAbee, Hugh Cook, and Daniel Pearlman
+ Reviews of books by and about Philip K. Dick
+ Interview with Julie E. Czerneda
Number 7
+ Stories by D. K. Latta, Hugh Cook, Kate Tompkins, Stefano Donati, K. G. McAbee, and Michael Mirolla
+ Reviews of feminist science fiction books and movie
+ Interview with Robert Charles Wilson
Number 8
+ Stories by James A. Hartley, Ken Rand, A. R. Morlan, Vincent Sakowski, Kelly Howard, and James Viscosi
+ Reviews of feminist science fiction books and movie
+ Interview with Phyllis Gotlieb
Number 9
+ Stories by J. S. Lyster, Kate Burgauer, D. K. Latta, Shelley Moore, Joe Mahoney, and Chris Reuter
+ Reviews of The War of the Worlds books and movie
+ Interview with Charles de Lint
Number 10
+ Stories by Hugh Cook, David Chato, Nye Marnach, Matthew J. Reynolds, and Karina Sumner-Smith
+ Reviews of New Wave SF books and movie
+ Interview with Candas Jane Dorsey
Number 11
+ Stories by Peter S. Drang, Mark Anthony Brennan, Karl El-Koura, Hugh Cook, and Diane Turnshek
+ Reviews of books that Judith Merril wrote and edited
+ Interview with Guy Gavriel Kay
Number 12
+ Stories by Carl Sieber, D. K. Latta, A. R. Morlan, Justin E. A. Busch, Rudy Kremberg, and Hugh Cook
+ Reviews of books and movie about Mars
+ Interview with Nalo Hopkinson
Number 13
+ Stories by Ilsa J. Bick, Christopher East, Hugh Cook, Erol Engin, Nye Marnach, and Donna Farley
+ Reviews of Alice in Wonderland book and movies
+ Interview with Jim Munroe
Number 14
+ Stories by Helen Rykens, E. L. Chen, James Viscosi, K. G. McAbee, and Hugh Cook
+ Reviews of Canadian SF books
+ Interview with Alison Sinclair
+ A Survey of SF & Fantasy Art (Part 1 of 3)
Number 15
+ Stories by W. D. Glenn, Jeff Dundas, Ian Creasey, K. G. McAbee, and Corey Kellgren
+ Reviews of Alien movies, games, and book
+ Interview with Karl Schroeder
+ A Survey of SF & Fantasy Art (Part 2 of 3)
Number 16
+ Stories by Uncle River, Vincent W. Sakowski, A. R. Morlan, Ken Rand, and Michael R. Martin
+ Reviews of time travel books
+ Interview with Alison Baird
+ A Survey of SF & Fantasy Art (Part 3 of 3)
Number 17
+ Stories by Marissa K. Lingen, Fraser Sherman, William McIntosh, Brian N. Pacula, and A. R. Morlan
+ Reviews of time travel movies
+ Interview with Scott Mackay
Back issues are available online at www.projectpulp.com or through the mail. If you're ordering through the mail please make your cheque out to Crystalline Sphere Publishing and send it to:
Challenging Destiny
R. R. #6
St. Marys, Ontario
Canada N4X 1C8
Back issues are $7.50 Canadian, $6.50 U.S., and $7.00 International (in U.S. funds).
Number 18
+ Stories by Jay Lake, Karl El-Koura, Greg Beatty, G. C. McRae, and L. Blunt Jackson
+ Reviews of Frankenstein books and movies
+ Interview with Karin Lowachee
Issue 18 is available exclusively at www.fictionwise.com for a limited time. The cost is $5.00 U.S.