Crystalline Sphere Publishing
www.crystallinesphere.com
Copyright ©2007 by Crystalline Sphere Publishing
10 Memorable Science Fiction & Fantasy Stories by David M. Switzer
The Dao of Stones by Ian McHugh
The Little Cat in the Attic Window, the Blue House on the Corner by Jennifer Rachel Baumer
Interview with Michelle Sagara by James Schellenberg & David M. Switzer
The Chermasu by Brian Patrick McKinley & Mark Jenkins
Abigail & Chang by Harvey Welles & Philip Raines
The Latest in Canadian SF by James Schellenberg
Freya's Flight by Andrea McDowell
Like Water in the Desert by Hayden Trenholm
Publisher Crystalline Sphere Publishing
Editor David M. Switzer
Contributing Editors Luke Felczak, Michael Felczak & Andrew Hudson
Cover Artist Jim Warren
Challenging Destiny (ISSN 1719-9727), Number 24, August 2007. Copyright (c) 2007 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 don't have a particularly good memory. So for these stories, all of which I first read some time ago, to stick in my mind must mean that they're memorable. I found it difficult to decide which stories by Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke to include—the other choices were easier. There are, of course, lots of brilliant stories that I haven't read yet, and I look forward to reading more of them.
"Nightfall” by Isaac Asimov (in Nightfall and Other Stories)
The world of Lagash has six suns, and no night. When you have no night, everyone is afraid of the dark. But once every 2049 years there's a total eclipse: night falls, the stars come out, people go mad, and civilization is destroyed. The astronomers have figured this out, with some help from the religious writings of the Cultists. They've been able to persuade some people to go to a Hideout, where they have food, water, records—and hopefully safety. But most people didn't believe them. And now that the eclipse is here, there's an angry mob approaching the Observatory...
The end of the world might seem inherently memorable, but the image of night falling once every couple of millennia is particularly vivid. I like the scientists-against-everyone-else aspect of the story. The cyclical nature of the civilization reminds me of A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. As for the psychology, at first glance it may seem silly to go mad just because it's dark. But unless we've lived near one of the poles, we can't have any idea what it would be like to have no night. And it's obvious these days that when some people are presented with logical evidence for something they're still quite willing to disbelieve it.
Asimov wrote many great stories, including “The Bicentennial Man” and “The Last Question.” He also wrote some fascinating novels, including the Foundation series and The Gods Themselves. And he also wrote many nonfiction books on all kinds of topics, such as the aptly titled A Roving Mind. I'm not much into biographies or autobiographies, but I found his autobiography, I. Asimov, quite readable.
"Fondly Fahrenheit” by Alfred Bester (in Virtual Unrealities)
James Paleologue Vandaleur's father was fabulously wealthy but lost all his money just before he died. Now his only way to make money is to hire out his multiple-aptitude android. But his android has been causing trouble lately, and they've had to move from world to world to avoid the authorities. Androids aren't supposed to be able to harm people, and Vandaleur has no idea why his can. On the first hot day of summer, the android began singing—and continued singing as he killed the woman he was working for. They'll have to move again. But when you live with a murderous android for so long, what happens to you?
What keeps this story in my head is the image of an android killing people when the temperature gets above a certain point. The android acts like we think it should at all other times—for example, reminding Vandaleur that it is a valuable piece of property. With a very small number of exceptions, Bester's stories read as if they were written yesterday (this one was first published in 1954). They aren't old fashioned like some old stories. Bester allows himself to experiment with his prose a bit more than most of the other authors in this list. The pronouns in the story are a bit confusing, but they make a certain kind of sense when you consider whose point of view the story is from.
I discovered Bester a few years ago, and in addition to his wonderful short stories his novels The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination are two of my favourites.
"Unaccompanied Sonata” by Orson Scott Card (in Maps in a Mirror)
Christian was identified as a music prodigy at a young age. He was sent to live in the forest so that he wouldn't be corrupted by anyone else's music, and cared for by unsinging servants. He created music on his Instrument, and eventually people came to listen to it. When he went out to see the people, they would all go away. Except one, who handed him a recording of Bach. Although it was forbidden, he listened to it. And although he tried to avoid it, elements of Bach started showing up in his music. He was caught, and forbidden to create music ever again...
This story is sadder than the ones about the end of civilization, because it's more personal. Card always creates characters you care about, and Christian is no exception. Someone for whom music is the most important aspect of life is forbidden to create any more music. Even if you agreed that he broke the law and received a reasonable punishment, it's still tragic. Once Christian makes his choice, his path through life is perhaps somewhat inevitable. But that doesn't make it trivial.
Card is one of my favourite authors, for both short stories and novels. He has written many brilliant novels, from classics such as Ender's Game and Seventh Son to newer works like Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus and Magic Street.
"Tower of Babylon” by Ted Chiang (in Stories of Your Life and Others)
It took four months for a man to walk up to the top of the tower with a load of bricks. The tower was visible from leagues away. When you stood beside it, it rose up farther than the eye could see. If someone fell off the tower, they would have time to say a prayer before they hit the ground. It had taken centuries to build. Why did the Babylonians build the tower? To know Yahweh better. The tower had been planned sensibly and built robustly, and now it was finished—they had reached the vault of heaven. So they called for miners from Elam and Egypt to break open the vault...
It seems simple when you describe it—they build a tower that's so high they reach heaven. But it's a fascinating exploration of a universe that works differently than ours (a novel-length example is On by Adam Roberts). Chiang includes so many details that make perfect sense, you believe in this universe—and you want to find out what happens when they break into heaven.
There are several brilliant stories in Chiang's debut collection, but “Tower of Babylon” is the one that sticks in my mind. Chiang is not prolific, but based on this collection I will be on the lookout for anything that he writes.
"Expedition to Earth” (aka “History Lesson") by Arthur C. Clarke (in Expedition to Earth)
In the far future, our descendents have forgotten all of history and science. They're fleeing from a glacier that's approaching from the north. But then they reached a point where there's another glacier approaching from the south. So they buried the mysterious “treasures” they'd been carrying with them longer than anyone remembered, and they died. Some time later aliens arrived at Earth, which now had no intelligent life. But they found the “treasures,” because one of them was a radioactive beacon. When the aliens study the artifacts, what will they be able to find out about humans?
The ending of the story is what's memorable—it's shocking or amusing, depending on what mood you're in. This is a look at the end of a civilization from a different point of view—from another civilization coming across the remains. An alien civilization is obviously going to be different from us in unimaginable ways. What will they be able to tell about us from the artifacts? Will their deductions be correct?
Clarke's stories “The Nine Billion Names of God” and “The Star” are also unforgettable. It's been a long time since I read any of Clarke's novels, but I remember enjoying 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rendezvous With Rama, and Childhood's End. Like Asimov, Clarke wrote a lot of nonfiction, such as 1984: Spring—A Choice of Futures.
"Mythological Beast” by Stephen R. Donaldson (in Daughter of Regals & Other Tales)
Norman woke up every morning at the signal of his biomitter, went to work at the signal of his biomitter, and ate lunch at the signal of his biomitter. His biomitter took care of him. Just like everyone else he knew, he was perfectly safe, perfectly sane. But he worked at the National Library and knew about a few things that everyone else didn't—for one thing, he could read. One day he started undergoing a change, and he could no longer trust his biomitter. People were afraid of him, including his own wife and son. He had to be careful, and figure out what was going on...
I like the idea of what Norman changes into—it appeals to me on a very basic level. I like how the story is written—the phrases “safe and sane” and “you are OK” are repeated just enough to give you the idea that people in this society live a somewhat monotonous existence. I enjoy cheering for the man in the man-against-the-system story. It's a combination of science fiction (it takes place in the future, and Norman uses a computer and has a car that drives itself) and fantasy (there's no way that his transformation could really happen)—but it works for me.
I haven't read any other Donaldson in a long time, but I would like to. His Thomas Covenant series was one of the first fantasy series I read—maybe when the current Covenant series is done I'll go back and read them all.
"'Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” by Harlan Ellison (in Paingod and Other Delusions)
In the future life is scheduled so precisely that if you're late the amount of time that you're late by is taken off your life. If you were consistently late you would find yourself receiving a notice from the Ticktockman that you would be terminated. One man dressed up as a clown and went around disrupting things. He dropped millions of jelly beans onto workers on a moving sidewalk—the workers were delighted, but the sidewalk got jammed and stopped, delaying the next shift by seven minutes. The Ticktockman would terminate the Harlequin, if he only knew who he was...
Both of the main characters, the Harlequin and the Ticktockman, stick in my head. Ellison takes an idea to its logical conclusion—we will become more and more preoccupied with getting things done on time. The Harlequin reminds me of Zorro—swinging in and doing something for the people, and then swinging out before the powers that be can get him. Of course, we want to know how this society can change now that it's gotten to this outrageous point. Ellison experiments with language even more than Bester, which can make the story a bit more difficult to read—but it's worth it.
Ellison's “A Boy and His Dog” is a magnificent post-apocalypse story. “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” is also memorable but too disturbing for my taste. The City on the Edge of Forever is an illuminating tale about one of the best episodes of Star Trek. I, Robot is Ellison's unproduced adaptation of the Asimov stories for the screen—and much more faithful to Asimov than the Will Smith movie. Ellison's introductions and essays are remarkable for his willingness to say whatever he feels like and his unparallelled bombastic language. I definitely need to read more Ellison.
"Muffin Explains Teleology to the World at Large” by James Alan Gardner (in Gravity Wells)
Muffin was only six years old, but she knew that the world was going to end next week. Of course, no one believed her—except three bald monks in grey robes who showed up and listened to everything she said. Then the big dipper started looking more like a dipper—if things are going to stop, they might as well stop in a way that makes sense. That's what Muffin thinks, and it turns out that she's actually in charge. She and her brother Jamie get to stick around past the end of the world, but what will happen then?
What's memorable in this story is the combination of the plot, the humour, and the use of language. This is a very different end-of-the-world story. There's no apocalypse—the world just ends because it's time. There's no sadness about the world ending either—more of a sense of wonder about what's going to happen next. I like how explaining the meaning of “teleology” and “the Eschaton” fit right into the story.
I've read all of Gardner's novels, and they're well worth reading. I particularly enjoyed Ascending because its narrator is absolutely hilarious.
"The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin (in The Wind's Twelve Quarters)
Omelas was a place of beauty and happiness. People came from all around to the Festival of Summer for parades, music, dancing, and horses. But the people of Omelas were not simple folk, and they were not barbarians. They had trains, central heating, washing machines, and floating light-sources. But they did not have monarchy, slavery, secret police, or the bomb. Why would anyone want to leave such a perfect place? And yet there were people who walked away from Omelas...
This is another story with a shocking ending. It's a slightly postmodern story, in which the author states that some of the elements are optional—you can include them if they make Omelas more real to you. The people of Omelas have made a deal. It's not stated who the deal was made with, but it's a horrifying deal. The people of Omelas have rationalized their acceptance of the deal—except for the ones who walk away.
You can't go wrong picking up a Le Guin book. The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, and the Earthsea series are some of my favourites. More recent works such as The Telling and The Birthday of the World and Other Stories are also worth reading.
"...And Then There Were None” by Eric Frank Russell (in Major Ingredients)
Many people left Earth hundreds of years ago and colonized other planets. Terrans are now getting around to finding them all and bringing them under the umbrella of the Earth Empire. On this particular planet, Gand, they're having an unprecedented problem. Sometimes the locals’ language changes a bit over time. These locals, calling themselves Gands, seem to be speaking the same language, but what they say doesn't make any sense. The first thing the Terrans do when they arrive at a new planet is find the leaders. But according to the locals, there aren't any leaders...
This is an amusing story, but it contains ideas that are worth giving a lot of thought to. At first glance it might seem like the ideas are silly, but they are very real. The Gands have named themselves after Gandhi, and they practise civil disobedience. How can you maintain your way of life in the face of a superior force who wants to make you do things their way? The officials act in a way that we know some officials act, and it's marvelous to watch them realize what's really going on.
This is the story I've added most recently to my list—I found it in the anthology Give Me Liberty, which has other stories worth reading as well. I haven't yet read anything else by Russell, but I'm certainly interested in doing so.
Runners-up
"A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury (in The Golden Apples of the Sun) is about men who travel back in time to shoot dinosaurs.
"The Minority Report” by Philip K. Dick (in Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick) ponders what would happen if pre-cogs could see into the future and the Pre-Crime Office arrested people before they committed crimes.
"Flowers For Algernon” by Daniel Keyes (in Daniel Keyes Collected Stories) reveals the consequences of taking a mentally retarded man and turning him into a genius.
"Shed Skin” by Robert J. Sawyer (in the forthcoming Identity Theft and Other Stories) explores what would happen to your old flesh-and-blood body if you transferred your mind into a shiny new robot body.
"Bluesberry Jam” by Gene Wolfe (in Strange Travelers) is about life in a permanent traffic jam.
Dave Switzer taught computer studies at a high school from February to June. Although it was difficult, he will be returning in the fall to see what happens when he starts the year off with his own classes rather than continuing from where someone else left off.
Cover artist Jim Warren is one of the most successful and versatile artists in the world today. His versatility ranges from his unique portraits, to his illustrations (from the 1980s) for books, movies and album covers, most notably his Grammy award-winning artwork for Bob Seger's 1981 album Against the Wind. His fine art oil paintings and limited editions are featured in some of the top galleries in the world. About his own art Jim says: “I try to paint the best of what this world has to offer, then take it a few steps further."
The first time the shi-ren came to Yin Xi, it found him picking lettuces in the eastern greenhouse dome. He was engrossed in his task and it was several moments before he noticed the other standing expectantly a few feet away.
Remaining seated on his stool, Yin Xi spun himself around to face it, brushing dirty hands on his apron before he flicked the translator patch on his collar.
The shi-ren was a runt of its kind, barely four feet high to the top of the protuberance that passed for its head. Its cylindrical torso rested on several dozen locomotive toes, which investigated the bare stone floor like a nest of fat worms. Six spindly, multi-jointed arms were tucked neatly into its sides while its four eyestalks scanned the greenhouse, following the movements of other human workers along the aisles between the planter troughs.
The shi-ren's low stature and its variegated blue-and-purple carapace—most locals were coppery or bronze-green in colour—led Yin Xi to guess that it was a foreigner or recent immigrant.
Technically, ‘it’ was a ‘he', Yin Xi knew, but he could never quite manage to think of the mindless, coral-like flower pods that the shi-ren tended in their rock-pool gardens as ‘females'.
"Hello rock,” he said.
The two nearest eyestalks focused on him. The shi-ren replied in its own language, grating and clicking like a radiation counter. Yin Xi's collar patch burbled a translation. “Am other-self Yintzu?"
Yin Xi winced at the translator's mangled syntax. The patches were supposedly state-of-the-art, but he always felt they made the shi-ren sound like primitive AIs from those execrable historical adventure sims the children were always playing.
He was surprised to be named. Personal names were a concept that the shi-ren struggled with, since they didn't use them among themselves.
"I am Yin Xi,” he said, “I do not presume to claim the title of ‘master'."
The shi-ren rustled its arms quizzically. “Why not, when other human-selves apply label to other-self?"
"While I accept the choice of others to label me as they will, a label cannot set me above others. One cannot truly aspire to enlightenment if one sets one's self apart so."
Yin Xi knew that he was being perverse, but at his age and after so many decades of bullying students into thinking for themselves, perversity was habitual. In any case, he enjoyed seeing what shi-ren made of his cryptic responses. Having never seen a non-human sapient until he left Wangwei, he remained fascinated by the shi-ren to an extent that most of his compatriots on Hai found mildly eccentric.
"Hypothesis that one cannot acquire knowledge so long as one accepts separateness of identity appears flawed,” the shi-ren clacked.
So, Yin Xi thought, a philosopher. “Enlightenment is not the same as knowledge,” he countered. “Knowledge is a phenomenological map of the universe. Enlightenment transcends phenomena."
The shi-ren made a rapid chittering noise that the patch was unable to translate. Yin Xi guessed the sound equated somewhat to a harrumph of dissatisfaction. Watching it wriggle its toes and jiggle its arms, he surmised that it was working its way along the probable trajectory of their discussion: foreseeing, as he did, the mutual befuddlement that so often resulted when humans and shi-ren attempted philosophical discourse.
With another ‘harrumph’ and a shiver of its arms, the shi-ren changed tack.
"One-self curious,” it said, “One-self heard that other-self a great teacher of the Way. One-self wishes to acquire knowledge."
Yin Xi's interest pricked. This was not a line of inquiry he had encountered before from shi-ren. “How do you propose to acquire such knowledge?"
"Other-self will tell self."
Yin Xi suppressed a smile. “Ah, but the Way that can be spoken is not the true Way."
The shi-ren's toes froze.
Its eyestalks slowly extended to their full length and went rigid. It raised its arms, then banged them loudly against its sides. At the same time, it emitted a rude blattering sound. It was as close to a display of anger as Yin Xi had ever seen a shi-ren come.
It picked itself up on its toes and scuttled away. Yin Xi scratched his goatee as he watched it go, then shrugged and returned to his lettuces.
The second time the shi-ren came to Yin Xi, he was outside, down by the sea.
He sat cross-legged on his favourite ledge above the retreating tide. The breeze plucked at the quilted fabric of his robes and played with the wispy hair that fringed the naked dome of his head. The rumble of the waves shivered up through the rock and into his bones, in time with the rhythmic crash-and-hiss that reported in his ears.
Something tiny skittered behind him in search of even tinier prey.
He opened his eyes. The vast, orange and rust arc of Liyuan touched the horizon. He watched the planet slowly set through the punctuating plumes of his breath, majestic and unattainable, drawing the waters of Hai along in its wake.
Yin Xi's reverie was penetrated by awareness that he was no longer alone. He glanced over his shoulder and once again found the shi-ren standing behind him.
With its arms extended to bask in the sunlight, it looked like an animated silicon tree stump. Its toes fidgeted with the pebbles and other flotsam at its base while it waited for his acknowledgement.
Yin Xi shifted himself around and flicked his collar patch. “Hello, rock."
The shi-ren lowered its arms and extruded its eyestalks.
"Other-self's language is inadequate,” it said.
Yin Xi frowned, not understanding.
The shi-ren evidently recognised the expression. It explained, “If Way that can be spoken is not true Way, then other-self's language is inadequate."
Yin Xi chuckled, then roared with laughter. He slapped his thigh and quoted: “'Those who speak do not know, those who know are silent; I heard this saying from the old gentleman. If the gentleman was one who knew the Way, how was he able to write five thousand words?'
"So said Bai Juyi, regarding the Great Master and his book."
The shi-ren's eyestalks twitched, a blink. Yin Xi waited, wondering if it could make the leap to understanding. After a while it ventured cautiously, “Other-self agrees?"
"Yes."
The shi-ren relaxed and resumed tossing pebbles between its toes. “Why does other-self sit here?"
Feeling mischievous, Yin Xi smiled and in expansive tones replied:
"'You ask what reason I stay on the green mountain,
I smile, but do not answer, my heart is at leisure.
Peach blossom is carried far off by flowing water,
Apart, I have heaven and earth in the human world.’”
The shi-ren's eyestalks contracted almost completely: a sign it was thinking fiercely, Yin Xi knew. Translation of his response would have been instantaneous. Shi-ren augmented their silicate brains in much the same way that humans might load new programs onto a dryware processor, without need for the implants and devices that humans used to augment their own wetware systems.
After a considerable pause, the shi-ren said, predictably, “Other-self are not sitting on a phenomenon to which the label ‘mountain’ would be applied."
Yin Xi laughed again.
"But I am,” he said, “even though most of it is under the water. We sit atop one of the greatest peaks in all the world, so high it even breaks the surface of the waves when the tide is low."
"Hmmph. Other-self's semantic flexibility is distraction. Self does not need label for fissure in the ground in order to recognise that one-self will get stuck if self falls into it,” the shi-ren replied, causing Yin Xi to reflect that its kind were as well equipped for sarcasm as any human. Pedantically, it added, “Other-self's ‘mountain’ is not green, nor is there detection of ‘peach blossom’ in this location."
Yin Xi sighed, amused. On the colony worlds they inhabited together, humans and shi-ren had found a state of what he thought of as ‘perfect alien-ness'. They were neither too similar nor too different to bring them into conflict and lived their parallel lives in a state of mutually bemused tolerance. It was only when individuals tried to bridge the culture gap that aggravation arose.
"It is poetry,” he said, “Written long ago by a person named Li Bai, during the High Tang period of Old Zhongguo. It is meant to convey feelings, which are able to bridge the gulf of time and space where the poem's literal description cannot. The poet alone on his mountain is at one with his world, as I am when I sit here alone on this ledge."
The shi-ren absorbed this in thoughtful silence. Yin Xi let his attention wander while it mused.
Behind the shi-ren, rock shelves rose erratically to a low peak, where the translucent domes of the settlement clung. Before the domes, human gatherers harvested seaweeds and fossicked for leafy worms and liar crabs and other crawling delicacies, while down by the edge of the surf, a handful of shi-ren pottered about in their leeward gardens.
"You are a student of humankind?” he asked, after a time.
"One-self is,” the shi-ren affirmed. “Have journeyed many twelves of years since leaving world of birth. Some twelves of years have lived among humans. Have studied Xian-ren immortality cult on Shihuangdi. Have studied collectivism of Han Commune on Maotzu and Lunari of ship-worlds. These one-self have studied and comprehend, although foundations of human belief and contortions of rationality are bizarre to self."
With an agitated flick of its arms, the shi-ren continued, “Yet understanding of Way has been denied. In contrast to investigations of other society-forms, one-self have experienced active impediment to acquisition of knowledge from informants regarding Way, for example, by Yintzu-self."
"Words can only explain,” Yin Xi replied. “The Way is a matter of enlightenment, rather than knowledge. It cannot be explained."
"Define enlightenment. How does self acquire?"
"Enlightenment is what lies at the end of the rainbow, and there are many roads to it. Like the roads to the rainbow, the paths to enlightenment have no end."
The shi-ren shuffled its toes in sequence, indicating uncertainty. It was a gesture that reminded Yin Xi uncannily of a nervous human child hopping from one foot to the other before their stern-faced schoolmaster.
"One-self wishes to acquire,” it repeated.
Yin Xi frowned to himself. It would be specist to reject the possibility out of hand, he thought, although he had no idea whether shi-ren psychology was compatible enough to assimilate a human concept of ‘enlightenment'. He rather suspected not. Then again, this particular individual exhibited a scientific curiosity about humans that was comparable to human xeno-sapientologists.
In fact, he realised, the shi-ren was actually an anthropologist. Yin Xi enjoyed the irony of that, in an age when humans had largely abandoned the study of each other in favour of more clearly externalised Others.
Besides, he chided himself, if the philosophy of the Way were truly universal, then any sapient being, human or otherwise, should be able to find a path to enlightenment.
He said, “Let me consider the matter, rock, of how best I might assist you. I will seek you out."
The shi-ren dipped its head as much as it was able and splayed its arms slightly, imitating a human bow. Without turning around, it trundled away, leaving Yin Xi to his meditation.
The third time Yin Xi spoke to the shi-ren, he found it in the tideward rock-pool gardens with its fellows.
It was low tide, a Late Sun Day, with only the sun and a handful of Hai's fellow moons standing high in the sky. The edge of Liyuan's orb had just crested the horizon. Yin Xi climbed the stepped path from the docks to the domes, a tally book tucked under his arm. A procession of younger townsfolk trudged ahead of him, bearing cartons of goods: crafts and produce from other settlements; manufactured goods brought down the space elevator. A second procession passed in the other direction, bearing the town's produce and other trade goods for the junk's return journey.
Yin Xi paused to look down at the shi-ren in their garden.
Their numerous toes operated like caterpillar tracks as they moved around and through the breeding pools, their torsos tipping at precarious angles over the steep rocks. They moved around each other without ever getting in each other's way, even though each was apparently absorbed in its own, self-appointed tasks.
Half-grown juveniles worked among the adults with varying degrees of diligence. The youngest rarely applied themselves to any task for long. Every so often, a few would race around the pools, in hectic pursuit of nothing that was visible to Yin Xi—perhaps in simple excitement at being outside.
Very young males were kept inside, along with the very old, under gentle light condensers in the nutrient rich ponds of the northeast dome. They were carried there at the time they detached from their mothers and remained until they were strong enough to reliably anchor themselves against the tide.
Yin Xi's recent interlocutor was easy to pick out among its bronzed native-born companions.
He had given its request a great deal of thought over the last few days. He returned to worrying at the problem as he watched the shi-ren now.
Getting nowhere at all, he thought. That there was a path to the Way for any sapient being did not mean that he, Yin Xi, could necessarily identify it.
On a sudden impulse, he hurried up the path and fell into step beside the rearmost of the stevedores. The man was one of the sons of the Wang family, he saw.
"Wang Yangming,” Yin Xi said, “I have a difficulty, on which I would like your advice."
Wang was a burly, slow-spoken man who rarely offered his opinions but was—Yin Xi knew, having tutored him as a child—secretly pleased to be asked for them.
"Of course, Master Yin."
"Brother Wang,” said Yin Xi, “You are an enlightened man..."
"Thank you, Master Yin."
"Quite. A shi-ren has come to me with a request that I am unsure how to answer."
"Don't have a lot of dealings with the rocks myself,” said Wang, after a moment's consideration. Yin Xi waited, hearing the unspoken ‘but’ at the end of the sentence. After a long pause, Wang continued, “But when I have a problem like that, where I'm not sure where to start—like the ones you used to give us in school—I just start trying things I already know, just to be doing something, you see? And then I go from..."
Yin Xi had stopped in his tracks, his face fallen into an expression of chagrined revelation.
"Thank you, Brother Wang,” he said, faintly.
The younger man glanced briefly over his shoulder. Seeing his advice was no longer required, he continued on his way.
Yin Xi realised he had never let go of his initial assumption that the matter was one of unprecedented difficulty. He had fallen unconsciously into an old pattern of trying to intellectually solve the problem before he acted.
Enlightenment is spontaneous, you old fool, not premeditated.
Shaking his head at his own folly, he left the path and marched down to the shi-ren gardens. He picked his way to the pool where the anthropologist was working. He paused to let a pair of shi-ren pass, hatchlings cradled in their hands. The anthropologist looked up at his approach. Yin Xi squatted at the edge of the water, knees creaking as he did so.
"Hello, rock."
"Hello, Yintzu-self."
The shi-ren continued what it was doing. All six of its arms worked under the water, picking dirt and small crustaceanoids from the coral-like stems. The females responded to its touch by flicking exploratory tongues from their numerous orifices. It was a mindless reflex, but one the shi-ren seemed to enjoy, trailing its fingers through the questing tentacles.
"Rock,” said Yin Xi, “I will give you what meagre assistance I am able."
"Self have gratitude,” it said.
Yin Xi held up a warning hand. “First, you must recognise the truth of what I have already said: that there are many paths to find the Way. The path I have found is what works for me. It may not work for you. Likely it will not, in fact, since our natures are alien."
The shi-ren dipped its eyestalks, ceding to Yin Xi's wisdom.
Yin Xi cast about himself, seeking inspiration. With an exclamation of triumph he picked up a nearby pebble. He held it out for the shi-ren to see. “Now tell me, rock, what do you see in my hand?"
The shi-ren extended its eyestalks to examine the pebble more closely. It reached out a dripping arm and carefully lifted it from Yin Xi's palm. It rubbed the smooth surface with sensitive, tentacular fingers.
Dropping the stone back into Yin Xi's hand, it said, “Identified substance as being of volcanic origin; approximately...” The translator paused while the shi-ren chattered on, needing a moment to convert dodecimal fractions into a percentage figure, “65.82% silica, with moderate amounts sodium and potassium, estimates processing; self estimates mass at approximately...” Another pause for number conversion, “0.17 kilograms; given dimensions, specific density approximately..."
Yin Xi held up a finger in a gesture the shi-ren recognised as requesting silence. He said, “It is a pebble. It is worn to a pleasing roundness by the sea. It fits comfortably in my hand and it is warm from the sun. Which of us is right?"
The shi-ren blinked. Its fingers curled tightly for a moment, a gesture somewhere between a shrug and a grimace of frustration. The shi-ren said, “One-self not understand."
"Therein lies your problem,” Yin Xi said, grinning. “As did mine, for the past several days. Understanding is irrelevant. Understanding is a matter of knowledge. The Way is not."
"Self does not ... Do not..."
Yin Xi took pity on it. “Come with me,” he said, standing.
The shi-ren tucked up its arms and drove, tank-like, up the side of the pool. It followed Yin Xi down to the seaward edge of the gardens, where he sat.
"Sit beside me,” he said.
The shi-ren shuffled over and lowered itself onto the base of its stump beside him, toes splayed around it, arms tucked against its sides. Yin Xi swept his hand across the breadth of the horizon. The sails of distant junks dotted the ocean, beating their slow paths against the tide.
Yin Xi said, “Give your attention to the sea. Do not tell me what you perceive, but focus on it with your whole being."
He waited in silence while the shi-ren's eyestalks wandered about, scanning the ocean from the surf below all the way to the horizon and back, then out again and up to the rising planet beyond. It raised two pairs of arms, fingers splayed, to examine its environment with senses that Yin Xi could only guess at. Tension radiated through the shi-ren's body as it concentrated.
Yin Xi's own gaze drifted upward, to Hai's lesser siblings in the sky: Bailian the white face, old Gui the tortoise and the luminous brothers, Big and Little Ming. Between the moons and the greater arc of the planet, the sun pierced the sky, its fierce blue-white light shattering into a rainbow where it touched the edge of Liyuan's corona.
Twenty times brighter, that star, than the dim red sun under which Yin Xi had been born. But Liyuan and its brood of supplicants orbited at a far greater distance than the close embrace in which Wangwei danced with its slowly dying parent.
After a few minutes, the shi-ren's eyestalks drooped. It gave out a hiss of static that to Yin Xi sounded uncannily like a sigh.
"Self not understand,” it said, adopting a posture that cried mournfulness in every line.
"Do not be discouraged,” said Yin Xi. “Tell me, rock: is your whole life ruled by intellect? Are you but a thinking machine, or do you feel as well?"
The shi-ren twisted its eyestalks to look at his face. Yin Xi noted the significance of the action. Its species did not have ‘faces'. This shi-ren clearly had spent an enormous amount of time in human company.
"One-self feels."
"What things do you feel?"
The shi-ren shrugged its fingers. An arm waved randomly as it struggled for a translatable answer. When it did finally respond, the translator patch had just as much difficulty, offering: “Hurt-feeling, fright-feeling, warm-feeling, joy-feeling, well-feeling..."
Yin Xi interrupted, “When you choose companions, do you do so purely on the basis of reason?"
"It depends upon purpose for company,” the shi-ren answered, uncertainly.
"And if the company is not brought together for an intellectual purpose?"
"Then for joy-feeling and well-feeling,” it said, more confidently.
"When you tend your gardens, what do you feel?"
"Well-feeling."
"And with what part of you do you feel it?"
It hesitated. A couple of its eyestalks wandered to the garden pools. Eventually, arms rustling to make its answer half a question, it said, “All parts."
Yin Xi nodded. “And when you tend your gardens, do you have concern for anything else but the females you tend?"
The eyestalks examined his face again. Clearly it was wondering where this line of questioning was headed. It replied, “Sometimes consciousness strays to matters of idleness or theory. But for most times: no. Is an absorbing task."
Yin Xi asked, “Why is it so absorbing?"
That got a blink. “Because ... because females are important. Because are wombs of self's species."
"And does that knowledge explain your feelings when you tend to your gardens?"
The shi-ren stuttered for a moment and fell silent.
Yin Xi stood, gathering up his tally book and brushing down his robes. “I will leave you with that question. Come to me when you know your answer."
The final time the shi-ren spoke to Yin Xi, it found him on the observation deck at the top of the main dome.
He was polishing the dome's upper viewports, a task for which he often volunteered. It allowed him to watch the rising tide beat against the dome walls, and to stand as long as possible in the breeze before the high vents were sealed. The smell of the sea mixed with the fragrance of fruit trees wafting up from inside the dome. The laughter of children playing cut across the hiss of the waves.
Yin Xi found he wasn't surprised to see the shi-ren, even though its kind typically avoided the higher gantries. The anthropologist hugged the dome wall as closely as its rigid body allowed, eyestalks resolutely averted from the drop on the other side of the deck. Yin Xi stopped what he was doing.
"So, rock, does the knowledge that the females are the wombs of your species explain your feelings when you tend to your gardens?"
It gave a sharp double-click. “No."
Yin Xi nodded. “When one is wholly absorbed in the present, when one's actions are passionate and spontaneous, then one is in harmony with one's true nature, and one flows in the current of the Way."
The shi-ren shuffled its toes noncommittally.
Yin Xi said, “Shi-ren and humans have similar understandings of physics, yes?"
Its eyestalks twitched in evident surprise at his apparent change of topic. “Yes."
"It is a truth of physics that mass is merely a form of energy and that all forms of energy are convertible into other forms of energy. Therefore, all phenomena are part of a single, dynamic continuum. Correct?"
"Is sustainable interpretation, yes."
"So tell me, rock: are you any less intrinsically connected to the rest of the universe than you are to the rest of your species?"
Yin Xi watched it closely as it teetered on the brink of epiphany.
"Come,” he said. “We will seek our paths to the Way together."
He led the way up a short ramp to a nearby maintenance hatch. The shi-ren followed him onto the external gantry, holding the side rails tightly. Yin Xi left the hatch open, so that the breach alarm would trip before the water came too high. Knees complaining, he lowered himself cross-legged onto the metal grating. The shi-ren planted itself beside him.
Yin Xi said, “Hear the beating of the waves against the dome. Feel the attraction of great Liyuan. Feel the world and its fellow moons in their eternal dance. Feel the wind, the warmth of the sun. Smell the ocean. Turn your passion to it all as you would turn it to your garden."
He fell silent, and saw calmness descend over the shi-ren. Its grip on the railings relaxed somewhat. He broadened the focus of his attention and opened his consciousness to the world around him.
He breathed in time with the sea, taking its briny respirations into his core and giving back the moisture of his body with every outward breath—made one with the ocean, the wind and the world by that simple conspiracy.
He felt the pull of Liyuan, drawing him upward. He was filled with the ocean's yearning, his frail vessel overwhelmed and destroyed by its ceaseless pursuit of Liyuan's grace. In turn, he absorbed the sea and rendered it to nothingness. The deck upon which he sat and the shi-ren beside him were erased. Even great Liyuan was swept into oblivion.
Yin Xi flowed, undifferentiated, in the current of the universe.
After an unmeasured time he returned, gently, to himself. He allowed his mind to drift freely for a while and recalled old fantasies of sailing ships and storms at sea. Dreams from a boyhood trapped on a world of rocky crags and crater-scapes, oceanless and only half terraformed.
The flood alarm on the access hatch rang its first warning: ten minutes until it automatically shut and sealed itself.
With a sigh, Yin Xi dragged himself back to the present and opened his eyes. The water was nearly up to the gantry. Liyuan hung balefully overhead, streaked with storms and impossibly heavy in the sky. Yin Xi gazed up at it, awestruck as always.
Cooking smells drifted out of the hatchway with the smell of fruit blossoms. His stomach grumbled.
He turned to his companion. The shi-ren was still absorbed in its meditation. It had raised two pairs of hands to feel the wind and sun.
Yin Xi said, softly, “Enlightenment is not intellectual, it is felt. It is a state in which all action is spontaneous and every gesture is filled with passion. In it, the self is extinguished in the continuum of all things. Of course, these are but poor words: they explain and do not enlighten. Enlightenment cannot be spoken. It is like a dream that, upon awakening, one remembers but cannot tell."
After a pause, the shi-ren said, “Self haven't word other than ‘understand'."
"That, my friend,” said Yin Xi, with a slow grin, “is because your language is inadequate."
The shi-ren blinked, then clapped its forearms together to show its appreciation. Yin Xi laughed as well, delighted that his slight witticism had bridged the culture gap.
He stood and rubbed his knees, gesturing for his companion to precede him through the hatch.
The quotations are Tang-era (8th-9th century), obtained with permission from www.chinese-poems.com.
Ian McHugh is a graduate of the 2006 Clarion West writers’ workshop. His fiction has appeared in the anthology All Star Stories: Twenty Epics, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine (ASIM), and AntipodeanSF. Shortly before getting the good news from Challenging Destiny, he sold a story to the anthology Blood & Devotion, and appeared destined to conquer the fiction world alphabetically. ‘The Dao of Stones’ is one of the stories that won Ian a place at Clarion West.
Fantasy tales are today's parables. They present problems and issues of today in a manner that is enjoyable and therefore is often dismissed. Fantasy tales are not less powerful simply because they are entertaining. Sometimes we see so much evil around us that we become hardened, inured. Move the problems into a different setting and we suddenly see them more clearly.
—Margaret Weis, Introduction to Treasures of Fantasy
There's a big house on the corner lot, the kind of house that looks like it should be broken up into apartments. Three stories plus a basement, kitchen in the back, trees crowding the front porch and, in one instance, shoving it upward. The house is blue and white, but an old, faded, teal-ish blue, turquoise almost, something that looks dead and flat at night. The oak in the front yard drops acorns all around the porch and the upper branches strain for the roof, one of those smushed-point roofs, kind of an Amityville Horror house look to it and in the attic there are a couple of round windows and one of those arched top, flat bottomed ones.
That's where the little cat sits. Jess sees him in the mornings when she's walking to work. He sits on the southeast side, morning sunlight picking out his fine long springy whiskers; at night when she walks home he's lying in the southwest sun, content and squinty-eyed. Little brown cat with stripes and she doesn't know why she assumes he's a boy, she just does.
Lately Jess finds she's anticipating the cat. Like he's a friend of hers. Like she'll stop and they'll chat and he'll ask her what she has planned for the day when she passes by in the morning and in the evening he'll ask how her day went.
He's someone else's cat, she reminds herself, but she still looks forward to seeing him and he hasn't let her down yet.
When Jess gets home in the evenings she checks messages and mail and voice mail and email accounts and there's never anything there. Well, there is, of course—there's email from the lists she's on and snail mail from her various pen pals across the country and usually there's even a call or two, reminders of appointments or offers of merchandise or even her own voice, reminding her of some task, some necessity. But there's never anything from anyone she really cares about. It's like her first onion circle is empty. Onions peel out from the core in layers, layer upon layer, each one out that much farther from the center. That's how Jess feels about relationships. Everyone has that first onion circle, that immediate circle of people who mean more than anything, the ones most near and dear, the ones to do anything for, the ones to die without.
Hers is empty. No one there. No one home. Just Jess and the feeling that something is missing. Just Jess and the thought of someone else's cat.
She daydreams about it, dreams about it. At night she dreams she lives in a big gray house (or blue?) with a man who loves her so much he'd do anything for her, anything at all if she'd just tell him. A man who loves her so much she can almost hear him say her name and she wakes trembling on the edge of something, some knowledge or discovery or truth, but she wakes alone to another day.
She came here because it's a big California city, temperate and sprawling, big enough to get lost in, with enough people, places and things she was sure she could start a new life.
I have, she thinks fiercely, but it's meant leaving everyone and everything else behind. And sometimes she can't remember who she's left behind and sometimes she's not sure there's anyone left behind at all, or that there was ever anyone there to begin with.
In the summer Jess walked every day to work with no one and nothing and she watched couples and families and even single people on the streets and everyone looked content or purposeful or fulfilled or at least alive and Jess had to dodge out of their way when they came towards her. Even when there were people and traffic near her the hot morning air felt sullen and secretive, excluding her somehow, as if she were not a part of the city. Every morning she walked to work in a quiet bookstore where the owner rarely spoke or even emerged from behind his stack of books. With the coming of winter she took a second job on her days off, this one in a children's bookstore, loud voices and kinetic motion and mothers brimming with love and umbrage, but none of it coming Jess's way. She tried to talk to the mothers but they constantly interrupted her with prohibitions to the children and when they looked courteously back at her she'd try again until this time the mother would interrupt Jess herself or be interrupted by her offspring and sometimes the mothers would tell their children to go to the play area and wait, but then Jess would lose track of her conversational gambit and stutter to a halt, or forget what she'd meant to say at all, or just feel too intimidated to try again.
She tried talking to the children, sometimes, but that made the mothers nervous.
In the evenings she took a job waiting tables in a small, trendy hangout actually within walking distance of her apartment and there she found loud and vibrant conversations and jokes and insults and laughter but all of it swirled around her and left her on her own little island, untouched, and she learned for the first time that no one actually sees the server. Even when she was somehow part of a joke, when someone included her in a tease or invited her in by rolling his eyes or asking her opinion, still by the time the check was paid and the coats were collected, those people had moved on and they no longer saw her as anything but their way out.
Jess sometimes took to walking home on an alternate route to avoid the blue house and the little cat because they made her more lonely than ever and the house was more faded and farther back from the road every day and everything seemed gray. But in the morning there was only one sensible way to go to work, and that took her directly by the house.
When Jess walks to work in the morning the little cat meows at her from the upstairs window in the corner house. She can see his mouth opening and closing and imagines his squeaky little voice. She thinks what it would feel like to have him come running up to greet her at the door, soft winding around her legs and enthusiastic purring as she picks him up. At least one person would know she was alive.
In the evening Jess walks home from the bookstore, or maybe from the restaurant, her days are starting to blur a bit. But she's tired and so takes the direct route home and when she passes the blue house on the corner she notices it looks ramshackle and unkempt, the grass needs cutting, the paint is flaking, the windows are cloudy. In the upstairs window the little cat meows at her and paws at the window as she goes by, dark little paw pads pressed against the glass. He's insistent and Jess feels the first thrill of fear that something is wrong. She stops and stands and watches him but in the end she walks away. He's a cat, after all. Just being a cat. Maybe there was a fly in the window or something.
In the morning the little cat is even more insistent and Jess, now afraid, stops moving and stares up at him. The house seems sad to her, shut down, in mourning or lost. Maybe something has happened to the people in the house. Maybe they've fallen ill or gone off on a short trip and failed to return or the cat sitter forgot to come. Maybe they've gone off and forgotten they live there.
That's crazy, she tells herself, but in the attic window the cat is in fits trying to get to her and Jess looks around furtively as if she's about to commit a heinous crime and lets herself in through the front gate.
No one answers her nervous knocking, no one responds when she calls out and Jess falls silent, watching the front door, partly as if she expects something is about to happen she didn't cause, partly knowing what she's about to do.
The door is unlocked. The knob feels cool and smooth and familiar under her hand. She holds her breath as she steps inside, no longer calling. Her heart trembles and she tells herself it's just anticipation. She tells herself she's just checking on the welfare of the cat. In the state where she used to live there was a statute that people could do just about anything to rescue an animal. She doesn't know if that's the case where she is now.
She steps into the entrance and closes the door.
Inside the house is sun warm and light and airy. Hardwood floors, deep green walls leading lighter and lighter into the house, and she knows where every room is, every stick of furniture. She knows the smell of breakfast cooking and the sound her shoes make on the floor.
The little cat comes bounding to greet her. He rubs against her legs, purring, ecstatic. He meows up at her and she laughs and picks him up; he seems inordinately heavy.
She wanders farther into the house. Her heart has stopped pounding and she feels curiously at ease, becoming lighter and lighter as she walks, cat in her arms and she's obviously trespassing but she feels more at home than she's can remember feeling in ages.
Living room, drawing room, somebody's office—maybe Eric's? Eric. The name resonates. Dining room, breakfast nook, kitchen. Up the stairs and it's as if she's drawn, moving along the front hallway to a room where a woman lies in a huge oak framed bed. The room's on the front of the house and faces south and sunlight streams through the windows. The woman is surrounded, connected to living machines, tubes and monitors and moving graphs and her eyes are closed, her chest barely moves, she's so far away Jess has to squint to see her at all but she's familiar somehow, someone she's seen before and there's a man in the room, he moves suddenly and Jess backs up a step but all his attention is on the woman in the bed.
The cat snuggles tight under her chin, constant rumble of purr, and the man brushes one hand over his face, a gesture of despair as he looks at the woman in the bed, the woman he loves so much he'd do anything for her, anything at all if she'd just tell him.
Jess takes another step back and the cat flies from her arms, jumps to the bed to knead the woman's legs through the blankets. The man makes an abrupt move toward them but the woman opens her eyes, slowly, as if not used to doing so, and says in a thin, tired voice, “I had the most curious dream that everything I loved was gone, that I was alone and lost within the city and no one could see me—"
He reaches for her, and the cat meows, and Jess feels herself sliding and slipping, disappearing and becoming thin and stretched like a dream at the edge of waking. The little cat stands on her legs in the bed while Jess slips and slides and winds down back inside and opens her eyes and comes home.
Jennifer R Baumer lives and writes in Reno, Nevada, where she lives with her husband and best friend Rick, three cats and an incipient dog. When not writing fiction she's writing business articles, lifting weights, running, growing herbs, baking, or procrastinating. Her work has appeared (or will soon) in On Spec, Talebones, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Jabberwocky 3 and many genre anthologies.
CD: You've written under the name Michelle Sagara, Michelle West, and Michelle Sagara West. How did that come about?
MS: When I submitted to Del Rey, I used my name, Michelle Sagara. That part was fairly straightforward. My first novel was published in 1991, by which time I was married. I was working full-time at Bakka, and when we decided to have children, I thought it would be fairly easy to transition to writing at home with a baby. Anyone who has babies can now laugh. The writing became necessary income when I wasn't working full-time, and the sales numbers for the initial book weren't great. When the third book was published in 1993, I had had my first child, and I was both tired and panicking.
I wanted some peace of mind, and the only way to give myself peace of mind at that time was to try to secure another publishing venue—and I went to DAW because I worked with Tanya Huff, and I saw what they were doing with her books and her publishing identity. So I submitted 4 chapters and very sketchy outlines to Sheila Gilbert at DAW, and she accepted them. I asked that they publish them under my married name, Michelle West, because I still wasn't certain how the Del Rey books would do in the numbers game that is so crucial to publishing, and this would separate the identities for chain buyers.
By the time she accepted them, the third Del Rey book had both been published and gone out of print—before the fourth book in the series had been published. Del Rey had bought the books that became Hunter's Oath and Hunter's Death, and after some discussions with my agent, we bought the books back and sold them to DAW.
And then DAW had an unexpected slot open up in their schedule, so they filled it with Hunter's Oath, which was complete.
The original proposed trilogy that DAW first accepted has never been written; my editor wanted me to write the 2 Hunter books, and then write the 2 books that I also had planned in the same world before moving to a different universe. The two books, however, became six books.
The Luna books—published as Michelle Sagara—came after the eight books for DAW. I wanted to try something a little different with those. I think of them as my Tanya Huff novels. Tanya Huff says they're nothing like Huff novels.
I should make something clear: I don't care what name I write under—I have stories I want to tell, but it doesn't matter to me if people know that it's specifically me who's telling them. I want consistency of name for particular stories so that people can find what they're looking for. I think the West novels are different; they're slower and more complicated. I wasn't sure that people who like the West novels would like the books I was working on for Luna, so I suggested using a different name. Because I didn't want my Luna editor to think I was writing something I was ashamed of, I suggested that we just use my real name. She asked what that was, and I said “Michelle Sagara.” And she said, “Oh my God, are you the same person?” She'd read the Del Rey books when they'd first come out, although she hadn't read the West novels. She was happy with the suggestion, and that's why I write those books under Michelle Sagara.
The third name, Michelle Sagara West, came about with the reprint of the Del Rey books. The publisher had asked that they be allowed to use Michelle West, because they were comfortable with the bookscan numbers for that name (the first books have no history with Bookscan, which wasn't active then). I suggested that they use Michelle Sagara because I thought there would be more crossover for the reprints with Luna readers, and in the end, they decided to use both names.
CD: What's your process for writing a big series—how do you keep track of the characters and events?
MS: My process for writing a big series is to sit down and write it. That sounds a bit flippant, and actually, it's not meant to be.
I write structurally, and novel structure, for me, is almost organic. I know writers who can outline an entire novel from beginning to end, and then write that book. I can't. I've tried it once or twice, and it simply doesn't work for me. Nor does writing scenes out of order—they might be fabulous scenes, and I might love them to pieces—but there's no guarantee that the evolving structure of the novel will ever reach them. I have to start at the beginning—and by that, I mean start the book several times trying to find the way in—and then write straight to the end. I know what I'm reaching for at the beginning. I know the ends of the arcs or the books. But my understanding of the novel is largely intellectual when I conceive plot—the emotional complications become apparent only as I write real wordage.
I work from a very emotional centre. For me, the point of a novel is the end. Everything is structured to give emotional weight to that end, to resonate with it.
Do I care what colour people's eyes are? No. It was four years before I knew what colour my husband's eyes were. I just don't think about it. I started a list of character names and distinguishing characteristics—in particular, eye colour—and it's now huge.
I know who the characters are—I know what they want, what motivates them. But there are still surprises.
An example: You know when you have friends you think will love each other because you love them both, and you put them in a room together and they hate each other's guts? My characters are sort of like that. The chemistry that the characters will have when you put them together for the first time is entirely unpredictable. My mother thinks this is insane, because I'm writing it—don't I have control over it? Obviously, I do—but I don't want to over-control a book, to dictate everything. I want to be surprised.
My favourite fan letter for Broken Crown was from a woman who said that it was the first fantasy novel she had ever read in which the characters did things that were entirely in character, rather than things that read as if they were authorially convenient. And I thought, “Good, because it was bloody inconvenient.” You can go two ways. If you're really, really good—and I'm obviously not that good yet—you can probably do both things. Your characters do exactly what you want them to do and nobody notices. For me, sometimes they surprise me while at the same time being completely true to my understanding of who they are. My response is generally a lot of swearing, but I leave things as they are.
I don't know how to separate story and character. I build the world, and I have a rough idea of where everything's going, and I know what the villains are doing. You can know all these things until you actually touch them. All the emotional engagement occurs when the words hit the page, and then all bets are off.
I was discussing The Broken Crown—prior to actually writing it—with my husband, and something came up in that discussion that I want to mention. There was a section of the book that he said would not work. He said, “There's going to be no tension here.” And I said, “Well, yeah. I think this is what this character would do because he would think it would have this effect. And obviously it's not going to have this effect. But he has to try."
So I wrote the section—which involved the killing of hostages from the Northern Empire in the Southern Court. It was hoped that the public deaths of those hostages would incur the deaths of the exchange hostages from the South in the Northern Court. The cultures of these two large countries are very, very different. I reached the section where he'd said “this won't be strong enough” and gave it to him. He came downstairs and he said, “Oh my God.” And I said, “Yes, I'm not actually sure how I'm going to get out of this without killing them all, which would make it a very short and almost pointless book."
He had expected that everybody would be safe in the north. Killing hostages, of course, would be seen as barbaric. But if something barbaric has occurred to your people, your response is often barbaric. It's true and it's visceral and it's not you at your best.
I remember telling my editor how Sea of Sorrows ended, just after I'd finished the last confrontation between one of the main characters and her cousin. It was not the ending I had originally envisioned when I had started the novel. The event itself, the necessity of it—that hadn't changed. But the emotional tone and texture of it was completely unexpected. For those who've read the book, it had never even occurred to me that Diora and Margret would become friends. They despised and resented each other, and I thought—when I first began to lay out the book—that this would continue; that Jewel ATerafin, travelling with both of these very different women, would become the cultural bridge between them to some small extent. But it was never going to be a large one and in the end, I thought that Diora would be both unmoved by a very necessary death and almost contemptuous of any sorrow felt over it.
My editor knew that this was generally where I had intended to go. It was not where I went. When I told her what had actually happened she said, “That's not going to work.” By this time I was used to this, so I just finished the epilogue and I sent it to her. She read it and called me back to tell me, “That shouldn't have worked."
I am often uncertain about what I write; I am often uncertain about whether or not it works. The few cases in which I'm entirely certain, I cling to. There are very few times I weep when I'm writing, and the end of this book—which I certainly hadn't expected when I started it—was one of them. I can think of four other times. I never change those scenes. When you are so much in character, when you are absolutely where the character is, there is no effort—it's all there; the emotion and the intellectual understanding are perfectly twined. Words are not magic. I understand how you use them. But there is something, sometimes...
CD: It sounds like as you're developing a story, it's generated from the characters.
MS: Yes and no. Well, mostly yes. When I started writing Hunter's Death I stopped really early on and I wrote 250 pages of world building. I wanted to create a society in which our contemporary values of Right and Wrong would also be true—and the one big advantage to a fantasy universe is that you can actually do this. I built the rulers and I built the guilds and everything else, and I thought about how they would interact. The minute that you're writing about people who have any power, you're dealing with people who understand the power structure. And if I have to constantly stop and struggle and make stuff up on the fly, then I don't understand what they understand. My characters are actually usually smarter than I am but that intelligence needs subconscious time to come to the fore. So in this case, the world is created to contain the characters, to explain them.
Things have evolved but the basic structures have stayed pretty much the same. As I get older it's harder to write things. There are deficits I hadn't really thought of earlier that I recognize as problems as I learn more about the way the world works. When I started writing the second book in that six-book series I realized that because these two nations have been at war for a while, and because the armies are riding to the south, there's a very good chance that the generals of the army will not want the rightful heir to the southern throne to be travelling with them. Because he will see the logistics operations that they probably don't want seen. It suddenly occurred to me that I had no idea how to feed 50 000 soldiers. I said to my ever-helpful husband, “Tom, how do you feed this many people in this tech level? Or any tech level?” And he said, “Good question.” That's one of the things that's not published very often. You get a lot about strategy but very little about logistics. I'm of the firm belief that if you can't feed your soldiers, they die. I don't actually care about the strategy—that'll take care of itself. But I do care about how you feed these people. I can't just assume that it's known, because I don't know. It might be important. As it turned out, it wasn't important.
I want there to be enough play in the knowledge that I have that it can come up organically. You plant everything and you see what grows. Some of the stuff will never come up. It is stuff the characters would know. If I know it, it serves to make them stronger or smarter.
CD: Have you received any interesting letters or emails from fans?
MS: I have had a long time to accumulate email or letters from readers of the DAW Michelle West books, and I have to say that I universally adore them. I've never gotten a huge amount of mail about those books. There's a Yahoo group that I read when I have time; I also try to answer non-spoiler questions when they're asked there.
I've heard a number of fan-mail horror stories—but I haven't personally experienced anything negative. People who are too bored by the books probably don't finish them, and certainly aren't enraged enough by boredom to seek out a way of communicating this to me. Maybe the West novels don't attract the type of reader who really takes things personally. I got some slightly peeved letters when Shining Court came out from people who were not happy with the way the trilogy ended, and I had to write back and apologize—I wasn't aware that it had been called a trilogy, and this was not in fact the last book. Even then they were really polite about it. They said, “We really love the way you did this. We hope you write more in the series.” I mostly read between the lines.
My West readers will wait for at least a year until after the previous novel was published before they begin to email me to ask me when there might be another one. They always wait a realistic publishing time. Which makes me wonder if they're not all writers or people who work in the book industry.
I had one person write to me when I was working on Sea of Sorrows. DAW had said on its web site that I was working on the last book now. And he said, “Don't do it. There's no way you can tie up everything that you started. You'll ruin the entire thing.” And I wrote back and said, “You are probably the first person in the history of Big Fat Fantasy series to write to the author to tell them to make it longer. As it happens, I was trying to tie things up but...” It ended up being the longest of the books to that point and clearly did not end the series.
I corresponded with somebody on Amazon. He'd written a review, clearly traumatized by Broken Crown. He really did not like the book—although he gave it three stars, which was funny. He also posted two one-star reviews of the last two books. I said to my husband, “I don't understand why he read the last books if he hated the first one so much.” And my husband said, “He didn't read them.” I said, “Why would you post something if you didn't read them?” And he said, “Trust me, he didn't read them.” I was curious about it. I emailed him and I asked him. He was shocked. He said, “I didn't read them. But I was so upset that no one was upset about the things that upset me. I couldn't understand how they could all like your work so much, when so much was unpleasant.” It turned out that everything that he hated I had done on purpose—and this surprised him enormously. He hated the fact that the main character didn't hate her society. I said, “It's the only one she knows.” He hated the fact that it was an incredibly misogynist society, which it is. I would say it's a misanthropic society, because everybody's out to get somebody. Everybody wants power.
This particular reader was upset that a baby is killed. He was upset at a large number of things. He wanted a particular character to be a spunky, courageous American Girl, and he wanted her to save the baby. I said, “First of all, I would not recommend that you read anything else that I've written because I have a feeling you won't like it. Second, I didn't do this to upset you. I did it because she is a product of her culture. Not only that, but she is important politically because of who she is. She understood when it all started that she could die or she could wait. But she could in no way influence the outcome."
The only other book that he ever finished that upset him was Shadow of the Torturer. So I'm in good company. He said, “Obviously your writing can't suck, but why did you do these things?” It hadn't occurred to him that you could try to write somebody who was completely true to their culture. If you have a culture and the people don't act as if they're part of that culture—then you don't have a culture.
But it was an interesting discussion, and it was all very polite.
CD: What's the difference between writing for Luna versus writing for DAW?
MS: I think of them as tonally very different. I approach the Luna novels almost as if they were short stories. I start, I go. Alis read the first four chapters of the first book and said she was screaming “Slow down! The set-up and everything else, it could be so good.” I said, “What you mean is it could be as dense as anything else I've ever done, which would make it four times as long with 16 different viewpoint characters."
I'm trying to write something that's accessible enough that people can read it for story. One reader said that it was only on rereading that he actually realized that there was a surprising amount of detail. It was very easy to miss it.
That said, I don't want to not write the West novels. The West novels are a story in progress—they're not finished. I have never reached a point where I think, “Oh my God, is it done yet?” I have only just started to finish one of the earliest envisioned character arcs. Although one of them might change. Something happened in Sea of Sorrows I really hadn't expected and the ramifications of that might change one arc. I'm not quite sure how that will play out. It's a tricky thing because you always have to know where you're going but you also have to be willing to go someplace else. My subconscious is really good at coming up with something that intellectually and emotionally works, so I just go with it.
The Luna novels are my attempt to write a series as opposed to a trilogy—like a television series like Buffy with episodes where there's a background arc and foreground closure. I'm not sure that I've succeeded. That's something new for me. The tone is new for me—people like it because it's a more contemporary tone. It's so hard for me. The way that people think in a contemporary novel is not my writing voice. The West novels, everybody says they're so stylized. Actually, they're not stylized. That's the way I write. That's why I can be weeping through something and writing it at the same time. It's my invisible language, my voice. Which is unfortunate, because clearly it's not a voice that is easily accessible. I would like to be entertaining and moving—mostly I care about moving. As a reader I don't care about the flashy gadgets—I care about the people and what happens to them. But I often have to go back over the Sagara books and weed out the heavier use of metaphor and a particular turn of phrase—it's actually more difficult, for me.
The publishing cultures between DAW and Luna are also entirely different. My editor at Luna will often put happy faces in the margins of the manuscript when she likes a particular turn of phrase. She is incredibly tactful, incredibly diplomatic. Since I came up through the SF ranks, I sometimes don't know how to take what she says—I don't actually know how to read between the lines. Both Veronica Chapman and Sheila Gilbert would give tact one good try, but basically, they were blunt as a mace. If they didn't understand the point of something, they made damn certain that it was going to be corrected Right Now. I got used to that. So it's been very different.
CD: What do you have coming up?
MS: Cast in Secret is coming out in August. The working title was Cast in Streetlight but “streetlight” was considered too mundane, not fantasyish enough. I'm not hugely wed to titles. The same with names. I'm perfectly happy to go with a different title if it's suggested. I generally whine if my title is judged unsuitable and I'm told to come up with a better one, though.
I don't tell people in the store that I wrote the books. I'm not hugely wed to the acknowledgement of that. I want people to read them, to be moved by them. I don't need the personal interaction. I also don't need to interact personally with authors of books that I absolutely adore. If I really adore something and I haven't met the author yet, I frequently won't meet them. Sometimes you can't separate them. If I have a bad impression, it will adversely affect my reading of their books. And as I get older, I find less that I adore.
The first volume in House War is coming out in March 2008. I think it will be four volumes—originally I was thinking two. I knew where the first book had to end and I'm about halfway to where the first book had to end at the end of The Hidden City.
I wrote four or six beginnings. In general, I know when I start what the beginning of the book has to be, but getting tone or voice right can mean that I'll take several running starts. When I finished the first twelve pages of the third attempt, I knew it was the beginning of the book. Unfortunately, this particular beginning was going to destroy the structure I had intended. So I hopefully gave all of the putative chapter ones to my husband and when he reached the fourth one he said, “This is the book.” I said, “That's what I was afraid of."
It's the only beginning that demands regular chronology—because it was the only beginning that was done in the viewpoint of a character who is dead the first time you see him in Hunter's Death. I'd intended to do a braided narrative—one that starts in the present, but winds in and out of the incidents in the past to give the present more weight. If the viewpoint character was dead fifteen years before current events, there's no possible way to do that (I've never done viewpoints of dead people in the present time).
One of the characters who dies after four pages in Hunter's Death was the resident psycho of a small band of orphans who survived in the poorer section of town. She was called Duster, and she was a very damaged individual. She was loyal to Jewel, but she had her issues. It's funny because she figures, dead, very prominently in the rest of the books. Even dead, because Jewel remembers her so clearly.
Writing her alive was hell. Something falls out at the end of this book that upset me so incredibly much, I had trouble writing the penultimate chapter. I really dithered; I didn't know why. But I finally had to face the deadline, and sit myself in a chair. I wrote two paragraphs, and I suddenly realized exactly where the chapter was going. I stopped. And I spent another two weeks trying very hard to get it to go anywhere else. In that period of time I realized there's no place else for it to go. All the questions about why the characters do certain things, about their motivations, given my understanding of their characters—they're all answered, but only if the book goes forward. It's the only thing that will make it make sense. My editor said, “Given how attached you are to these characters, I'm surprised it didn't take you longer to write this book.” I didn't want to go there, but that's where it went.
I have very few first readers. I send a book to my editor when I hate every single word I have written. Once I cannot move a word around any more and I think it's all garbage I take a deep breath, throw it in the mail, and do something else. There are authors who say, “Don't send something out until you're happy with it.” If I did that I would never be published. It's never going to be perfect.
The one thing I learned from the first volume of House War: do not try to backfill stories, ever. This advice obviously applies only to my own experience. When I write in the past I'm stuck with everything I've already written—the future the book is approaching has already been decided. I lose flexibility and I lose freedom. I like approaching a story when I know it can go anywhere at all at the whim of the characters. The reality is it can't really go anywhere—I have to tie up certain plot arcs. The only thing I'm having stress about at this point in time is there is a definite future—the end of Hunter's Death—that the first two books must close with.
I started a different series in the same universe before I sat down to write the first volume of House War (it's set in the Hunter Kingdoms, at least to start, and it occurs after House War, albeit not by much) and I decided I had to go back and write House War first. There is a seminal turning point in House War, a choice given to one of the characters, and I don't actually know until I see how the war plays out what the person will do. If I wrote the second series first, I would have to make the decision on the fly, and then live with it.
CD: It sounds like you'll be busy for a while.
MS: I will be working on the second House War for DAW, which I haven't started yet. I sold Luna a fourth and fifth book in the Cast series. And I'm still writing the review columns for Fantasy & Science Fiction.
CD: You've worked in a bookstore for quite a few years. Do people have misconceptions about what a bookstore does, or what it's like to work in a bookstore?
MS: People have misconceptions about anything they haven't done. I certainly do.
I have a LiveJournal site. I decided at some point to explain how the bookselling part of publishing works in general, because so many questions about publishing are really about bookselling, and some of the terms I was using weren't obvious to people who'd never had to work in a bookstore. I started answering questions about how bookstores work—pub dates, returns, ordering from a sales rep.
It's impossible to take the industry personally if you work in a bookstore. You know that there are brilliant books that die because nobody buys them, while crap sells. But you also know that there are crappy books that die because nobody bought them, and there are brilliant books that do sell. It ‘s a crap shoot. You can't always say what will work. You think you know when you're ordering books, but you're never 100% certain.
At some point in time on LiveJournal, people started talking about first book sales and contracts. I decided I would go through a first contract step by step. And I happened to have one handy—mine. It made sense at the time because I could point to specific clauses, could say what had made me scream with terror, and could speak of what the fallout was.
My Del Rey sale was a standard first book contract. It was not Terry Goodkind's, it wasn't exceptional. It's several years old, but contracts haven't changed that much except for electronic rights. Publishing does not move swiftly in that particular way.
CD: So your words of wisdom would be to not take the process too personally?
MS: It is a very unfortunate thing that mixes love and business. Generally speaking, people call it prostitution. I would not call publishing prostitution but I would say that publishing is a business. Put everything into your writing, and then step back and look at it as a business. You're going to be one of many books on the mass market list. There are no guarantees. All of your best work, all the emotional, personal involvement should go into your writing.
However, if you are personable and good at PR, having a public profile is not a bad thing in this day and age. It's not something I actively pursue, because I'm not altogether that personable, and I tend to just open my mouth and say whatever I'm thinking—which has its uses, one of which is not being the Welcome Wagon. Also? If you really hate people, skip conventions. Offending people isn't likely to be the kind of PR you want.
Nobody's out to get you. An editor did not sit in their office throwing darts at your future. The editor's career is based on whether or not they can turn a profit for the company that's paying their salary. There are editors who have read things they've adored but did not think they could sell. And they've had to say they can't buy the book. I've seen people get very bitter and unhappy about the publishing industry, the way their books are treated. It's not personal, and it happens. The thing you have control of is the writing. Your energy should be put into your words, and then some energy into other words you can use to put towards marketing, if you can. And none of it into feeling that you are being persecuted.
The ecosystem is like a vast life-support machine. It is built on the interactions of species on all scales of life, from the humblest fungi filaments that sustain the roots of plants to the tremendous global cycles of water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide ... How does the machine stay stable? We don't know. Which are its most important components? We don't know. How much of it can we take out safely? We don't know that either.
—Stephen Baxter, Evolution
In the early afternoon of the day she felt would change her life forever, Alia Cheveyo ground blue corn. She ground in the traditional way, using the same three stones that her Mother and her Mother's Mother used before her. The scuff of the hearty, dry corn upon the rough surface of the stone lulled her, her hand moved in practiced, automatic rhythm as thoughts flowed through her. For her, grinding in the old way connected her to the land that gave the gift of this sacred blue corn. It connected her to her ancestors as well, who tended the fields of the Wolf clan before her.
She'd always found joy in the simple pleasures of life on Third Mesa: the sight of Father Sun appearing boldly every morning on the horizon, garbed in His golden-white glory; the clean, thin air that filled her lungs while she ran herself to a pleasant fatigue over the parched, amber surface of the mesas; tending the corn through its season and watching it rise from its Mother's protective bosom, nurtured by her ancestors who sent the life-giving rain; sharing a good meal and conversation with Father after a productive day's work and sitting together by the fire afterward, just enjoying the melody of his voice while he recited one of the old stories. These were the memories that represented home to her.
But then there were the dreams.
( ... wolves, ceremonies, monsters, battles, fire ... )
Strange dreams. Not quite visions, but with a strength and richness similar to the ones where her mind took her back to childhood and her Mother. Almost like memories but they couldn't be, since she'd never experienced anything like them. She'd had these dreams maybe once or twice a year, ever since she was ten. She'd had one again this morning, more powerful than usual.
The dreams were something she pushed aside upon waking. Usually, her thoughts were peaceful as she ground, but today she couldn't quite rid herself of the apprehension that had hovered around her since waking.
After greeting Father Sun this morning, she'd made a particular effort to complete the day's tasks early. She'd beaten the dust and dirt from their colorful Navajo rugs, swept the flagstone floor beneath, given Grandmother's cast-iron stove a good cleaning, and prepared the ingredients for dinner tonight (dried rabbit stew with blue cornmeal dumplings). She'd even been able to finish weaving the last of the oeungyapu plaques that they owed her seldom-seem clan cousins in Waalpi.
She listened to music as she ground, a small battery-powered radio on the window ledge filled the air of her home with song. A local FM station played “light” Pahana songs and she remembered Mother listening to it.
She sometimes found herself wishing that she were more like other people her age, that she could regain the warm circle of school friends that her traditional views and lifestyle drove away years ago. Would it be so hard? Simplify her daily routine a bit, take advantage of some modern conveniences, and make time to join some of the girls from the other villages who played basketball. Get them to teach her, be willing to spend time with them afterward...
And be another selfish kahopi throwing the world off balance. What's wrong with me today? Why am I so unsettled?
Outside, Father Sun hid behind the thickening Cloud People again; the day was mild for October, but overcast with the strong winds that were typical of the mesas.
The shelves above her grinding area were filled with sacks of cornmeal, a sign of industry that made her an attractive marriage prospect to some. At her request, Father had turned away several would-be matchmakers over the years. He sometimes joked that she'd grow to be a lonely old woman indeed if she waited for a husband equal to the standard of her Father.
She forced her attention back to the rhythmic rasp of corn on stone. She'd give this batch to the trading store at Kiqotsmovi to be sold on consignment. At least there was one positive aspect to the modern tendency toward laziness: spare products of their work could be sold for some extra money.
Of course, they could just go on government assistance, as many did, but Father always joked: "Why, yes, just look at how much the government's assistance has helped the Hopi so far." They lived in harmony with the people around them and the land that supported them. She knew her place in the world, in the universe, in the Creator's plan, and accepted it.
That's when she heard the singing through the open window.
The song was in Navajo: she recognized the language but the voice was unfamiliar. This was the visitor's way of announcing himself and giving her time to prepare (a custom among older Navajo and Hopi). Since her home lay at the outskirts of Hotvela, on the edge of one of Third Mesa's many outcroppings, none of her neighbors were close enough to be disturbed.
She set down the corn and grinding stone, shut off the radio, and moved quickly to the kitchen cupboard. She put a roll of piki bread out with a jar of wolfsberry jam, plates, and glasses. She decided to heat up the leftover chile rolls now and hoped that Father returned before they got cold again.
As she got the chile rolls and a pitcher of suvipsi out of the icebox, she noticed that the singing had stopped. He must have seen her in the window and now waited for her to receive him. After setting out the suvipsi, putting the chile rolls atop the stove, and starting the fire, Alia answered the door.
The man was ancient, in his eighties if not older, but had the most powerful eyes she'd ever seen: deep and gold-flecked, they had a clarity and calm she'd never encountered before. He wore a red velveteen shirt which, while not uncommon among older Navajos, was the kind of dress generally reserved for ceremonies and special occasions.
"Good day. I am John Begay from over in the Canyon de Chelly,” he said. His voice, with the breathy Navajo pronunciation, was melodic and genial. The name Begay, she knew, was a common product of the early Pahana schools, an Americanization of the Navajo term for “son of.” Normally, a Navajo with such a generic name would introduce himself further with his “born to” and “born for” clans and other things they felt would help distinguish them, but Begay said nothing.
Well, de Chelly's so far from here, he probably doesn't think it would matter to me. “It's nice to meet you, Hosteen Begay,” she said. Hosteen meant “Old Man,” but was a term of respect among Navajos. “I'm Alia Cheveyo of the Wolf clan. Please come in."
The Pahana schools were also responsible for her last name, which meant “Spirit Warrior” and was a nickname of Father's Father because of a dream where he'd wrestled a qatsina and won.
She stepped aside to let Begay pass and he gazed around at her home for a moment to let his eyes adjust. In the years since Father and Grandmother had told others of her childhood vision, older Hopi and Navajos had occasionally arrived so she could look at a painful area with her “special sight” and tell them whether they needed to go to a Pahana hospital or to a singer. Perhaps that was what brought this man here today, but she'd try not to assume anything.
Whenever non-Hopis visited, she always found herself wondering how her home appeared to them with its stone walls, awkward fitting modern door and windows, rebuilt roof of beams and tarpaper, kerosene lanterns, second-hand sofa, chairs, and Navajo rugs. Could they feel the warmth of her family's lives in these walls?
"I was just preparing lunch,” she said, indicating the place settings on the oilcloth they used for meals. “Would you like to join me?"
"That is very kind, thank you,” he said, settling himself slowly onto a floor pillow. This style of eating was also traditional and helped make more use of the space. Besides, sitting at floor level was more intimate and relaxing than the formality imposed by a table and chairs.
Begay didn't seem to find the arrangement awkward, either; he broke off a piece of piki and put jam on it like an old hand. His face was not the typical squarish shape she associated with Navajos, but more angular like crumpled leather stretched over granite with a proud eagle's beak of a nose. A stiff red and black cloth banded his forehead while his full, silver hair framed his face in two tightly bound braids.
Despite his age and the power she glimpsed in his eyes, he didn't carry himself like a politician or wear flashy displays of turquoise jewelry and a big silver belt buckle. His denim pants and cowboy boots looked well used and she sensed that this man lived in keeping with Navajo tradition, which would mean that he appreciated the modesty of her home.
After checking the status of the chile rolls, she poured them both a glass of suvipsi; its tartness made a good balance to the sweetness of the jam. Begay nodded his thanks as he finished chewing and took a sip of his drink.
"This is good,” he said, breaking off another piece of the tissue-thin cornbread. “I had me a Hopi wife, long time ago, and she used to make piki for me.” He glanced at her with a conspiratorial smile. “But I think yours is better."
She blushed at the compliment. “That's very nice of you to say.” She opened her mouth with the intention of asking which village his wife came from, what her clan was: the polite conversation that would pass the time while they ate and help determine whether they had any clan relation. But something held the questions inside her and, after a moment, she got up to check the stove.
The chile rolls were heated through and ready to eat; the mutton she'd used for the meat stuffing was very tender and they still smelled as delicious as they had last night. After placing a couple on her plate, she returned to Begay and gave him one. There was a nagging familiarity about this man, but she couldn't pin it down.
As he swallowed the first bite of his roll, his eyes widened slightly and he took a drink. “I see you use the real mashed chile paste instead of that powder."
She'd always mashed her own chile paste using Grandmother's recipe. “Oh, I'm sorry, I should've mentioned that—is it too hot?"
"No, no,” he said. “I like when the food bites back.” To further assure her, he took another large bite.
Was he perhaps at this past Soyal ceremony? No, that wasn't it...
She didn't realize what an appetite she'd built up and polished her rolls off quickly, helping herself to some piki while Begay finished his roll.
"That was wonderful,” he said when done. “I have not eaten good mutton in years. When my clan and I travel, they always want to go to the Taco Bell."
She smiled. “Well, thank you. Do you travel a lot?"
He took a sip of his suvipsi before answering. “More than I would wish, but it is necessary."
An unexplainable disquiet rose in her, a sense of pressure building. “So, do you have business with my Father?"
"No. My business is with you."
Somewhere in her, his words struck a chord: she was rounding a blind corner on her life's road. She recognized this same feeling of pressure, of your heart having knowledge before it was given to your mind, from when she was ten and she'd seen the owl who came to announce Mother's death. Her heart had known the message he carried all during her long run home, well before the words had come from Father's mouth.
"You mentioned earlier that you had a Hopi wife,” she found herself saying. This was the moment that would change her life. She should just ask John Begay to leave and continue with her chores. But, no, she would have to face whatever this turn in the road held for her. She was Hopi. “Do you know what clan she was?"
Begay glanced past her shoulder, as if assessing her. She could see that he knew what was in her heart at this moment, whether from his power or simple experience. His eyebrow rose, ever so slightly, with curiosity. “My first wife was of the Wolf clan."
Alia went still as she remembered exactly where she'd seen him before. It swept out from her childhood memories like canyon debris washed out by a flash flood...
While running in her ninth summer, she'd collapsed in exhaustion. As she lay dying on the parched ground, far from anyone, the Wolf Qatsina had appeared to her, announced itself as her Guardian Spirit, and taken her to visit Maski, the land of the dead. There she'd spoken to her Mother, who'd assured her of her happiness in the underworld and urged Alia to stop her grieving and return home. Another man had appeared—this man, she realized—who Mother had introduced as Red Feather. He'd also spoken to her and told her that she must live a good life and obey her Father. After taking her outside her Mother's home, Red Feather had lifted his hands to the sky and Alia had been struck by a bolt of lightning, an ancient sign of the spirits granting their seeing power...
Remembering it all now, it was nearly impossible to imagine how the vision could have ever left her mind. It hid inside me so that I wouldn't mistake the time my Guardian Spirit spoke of, she reasoned. After her vision, she'd awakened, cotton-headed and connected to tubes that nourished her dehydrated body. In the same clinic where Mother had died. She would have died of heatstroke, they told her later, had it not been for a Navajo shepherd passing by on his way to work. She discovered her Father sitting beside the bed, watching her with tears spilling down his cheeks.
She'd never seen him weep.
"Stay with me a while yet, daughter," he said, brushing damp hair away from her forehead and managing a smile. "I don't think I would have the strength to bury you too." It was the first time he'd referred to Mother's death since informing her of it the month before but, in those simple words, he was transparent to her eyes and she saw the terrible pain he carried in his heart. She also saw his complete, helpless love for her and felt shamed by it. Slowly, she told him of her journey to the underworld, careful not to leave out any details.
In the years that followed, she grew closer to Father and Grandmother, listened to their stories with genuine interest, and did her work diligently. Though they never spoke of the vision, she always kept it in mind. However, over the years the specifics had quietly drained away, leaving her with the silent reassurance of Mother's touch...
As all this passed through her mind, Begay—Red Feather—sat waiting for her to speak. On impulse, he grabbed a last bit of piki and slipped it into his mouth.
"Red Feather...” she whispered.
He stopped chewing abruptly and swallowed, the surprise clear in his rapid blinks. “How ... do you know that name?"
She examined him more closely now, realizing that this man even wore the same clothing in which he'd appeared to her nine years ago. “I saw you in a vision when I was a girl,” she answered, her mind still distant from this voice that spoke so calmly. Prophetic visions, she decided, were wondrous in the sacred stories and kiva tales, but very disconcerting when they stopped in for lunch. “It was the name I was told to call you. You said that you'd come to me one day and ask me to accompany you. Then, you told me, I'd have to make a choice that would determine my life's road."
Red Feather (for that was how she would think of him from now on) considered, nodded slowly. “I was also first shown you in a vision, but that vision came to me only two days ago. I have no memory of you before that time. But you have named me correctly; the name you spoke is the name given to me in a vision by First Wolf, when I was young and moving about. It is my most true name, to be used only among the people of my blood—who are not the Diné and, indeed, are not truly men."
He paused then, either to phrase his next thoughts or allow her a chance to respond.
It was his last, most unusual statement that brought her solidly back to earth. Red Feather's voice, even in English, was like listening to Father speak Hopi; there was a gentle, lulling rhythm to the Navajo's speech that made it easy to listen and drift on the current of his words. She drew a deep breath, fortifying herself with the crisp autumn air, and inclined her head slightly in a request to continue.
"As your vision has warned, granddaughter, I have come here on this day to ask that you return with me to my hooghan,” Red Feather said. “In that place I have the means to perform a brief ceremony that will draw memories of our people from your blood—for I do come to you in kinship, despite that you are not yet aware of our ancestors. You are unique in all my travels, and would add much power to the great ceremony I have begun, but you must first be aware that this journey will change you even in the first step. Only if you accept that warning should you agree to accompany me."
They sat in silence for a full minute while Alia considered and Red Feather waited. The silence was a comfortable one. Presented now with a simple choice, curiosity replaced her earlier dread.
"What you've said does make me a bit uneasy, but I realize now that I've been waiting for you for years.” The words were out of her mouth almost before she was aware of speaking and they surprised her. More of a surprise was that she was speaking her heart's truth. “I had forgotten my childhood vision until today but..."
She paused, amazed at how simple it was to speak to Red Feather of such things, like talking to Father or to an old family friend. Already he felt like kin to her. Considering this, she made her decision.
"Perhaps, as you say, it won't be easy for me to see what you show me, but there is a part of me that needs to know. I don't know if I'll want to go further once we're done at your hogan, but I'll follow you to the first step, at least,” she said.
Red Feather nodded, a faint smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “I could see in my vision that you would be unique.” He climbed gingerly to his feet with a popping of joints and a loud burp. “Mmm-hmm, some powerful-good mutton."
When she finished straightening up the floor, she wrote a quick note to Father and followed the Elder outside. “Quite a thing,” he mused. “First time I ever had someone agree so quick..."
The land where Red Feather made his home was absolutely breathtaking. The rich orange-gold layers of the sheer canyon walls slowly transitioned to the soft tans of soil and the plentiful greens of scrub brush, cacti, grama grass, and hearty trees that populated the canyon floor.
Though nothing could replace Third Mesa in her heart, the contrast between the golden brown landscape of home and the rich variety of color out here was astounding. Red Feather's hogan sat off a small dirt road in the floor of de Chelly, a mile or so past where Monument Canyon branched off.
She took a moment to stretch before Red Feather went to the back of his jeep, took out a small shoulder pack, and walked toward his “home.” It was more like a settlement to her eyes, composed of three traditionally made, six-sided hogans (which Red Feather pronounced hoo-whan), a small cone-shaped hut, an empty fenced corral, the tops of storage dug-outs, and a modest green trailer home similar to many she'd seen before. A dormant gasoline-powered generator sat next to the trailer.
The Elder led her to the door of a hut and stepped inside.
She entered the darkness and stood inside the threshold to let her eyes adjust. Red Feather set his bundle down near the fire pit and removed the large blanket which covered the roof's smoke hole in his absence. She saw that three large, forked posts positioned in a triangular fashion supported the log-and-mud walls of the conical hogan (hooghan, she thought, his is the correct pronunciation). The floor of hard-packed soil was clear except for a few storage chests set against the walls and the fire pit in the center; there was room for at least a dozen people to sit comfortably around it. Medicine bundles and ceremonial rattles hung from pegs or nails on the walls but there were no domestic objects or tools.
"Close the door and sit over there,” Red Feather told her, pointing to a spot behind the fire pit which faced the door.
With the door closed, the only light came from the smoke hole in the ceiling. She watched the dust motes dance in bright shafts of sunlight as she took her position. Red Feather came over to the fire pit, singing in Navajo, and sprinkled corn pollen into the empty hole. The pollen sparkled as it traveled Father Sun's rays. He sprinkled a bit upon the crown of her head.
When he finished his song, the Elder went to one of the storage chests and removed an armload of dried brush and branches of pine, juniper, and pinyon. “This may be uncomfortable,” he said as he returned and filled the fire pit. “But we must begin by speaking of witches and witchcraft."
A shiver tingled her spine and, without thinking, she glanced around the empty hut suspiciously. Even among more progressive Hopi and Navajos, witchcraft was still not something discussed casually.
"I will not speak of it over-much, but I must give you warning that much of what will be shown to you may have the seeming of witchcraft. I promise you that it is not. Much of the history of our ancestors is unpleasant, much is full of wickedness, and much has passed into the stories of human tribes, often changed or confused in the telling."
Having arranged the kindling to his satisfaction, Red Feather took a small plastic lighter from his pocket and lit the wood in a few places. Fragrant smoke wafted up through the passage to the sky. “Our ancestors, who I know by the name Chermasu, had great power. In the final days of their war against the yei'iitsolbahi'—the blood-drinkers—who control the biligana world, they often hid among the tribes and taught ordinary people how to perform some of their feats. When our ancestors were slaughtered, many of these people, now skinwalkers, were left behind to cause mischief and suffering and to bring still more into their evil societies."
She glanced around the hut again as Red Feather rose and went to get a bundle from the wall. For the first time, she realized just how isolated she was out here. She was alone at the only settlement for miles with two men she'd only met a few hours ago, completely vulnerable if his intentions should prove malicious. Her note to Father had provided only the slightest indication of her whereabouts, since the Canyon de Chelly monument was huge and she could be anywhere within the huge expanse of canyons and overlooks.
She forced herself to control the creeping edge of panic she felt and think calmly. She trusted her Spirit Guide, she trusted her power to see clearly, she trusted her instincts: all these things had assured her that Red Feather and his group were to be trusted.
Chermasu. The word itself—
( ... wolves, ceremonies, monsters, battles, fire ... )
—seemed to have a strange, haunting power.
Red Feather unwrapped the bundle, inside which she saw (among other things) a ceremonial pipe, tobacco, and a white wolf's pelt. “Because so much of our ceremonies and powers have become witchcraft in people's thoughts, it is difficult sometimes to explain the difference..."
"My Grandmother and Father both taught me that evil is in the malicious intention of the user, not the power itself,” she explained, managing to sound more certain than she felt.
"Yes, yes, exactly!” he said. “That is what I mean, that because you have heard of witches transforming with skins does not make our using of skins witchcraft. The other members of my Pack did not share the traditions that our two tribes do and so this was easier, in some ways, to explain without alarming them."
"Can you tell me what Chermasu means?” Speaking the word filled her with an odd euphoria, something that seemed to come from outside herself. Or, more precisely, seemed to be an outside force expressing itself inside her.
"Yes,” Red Feather said after a few moments. “Though I do not know what tongue the word comes from or who first used it to name our ancestors—and I cannot even say that the word has not been changed many times since then—there is an idea of it which was passed down to me. Chermasu could be said in biligana as ‘The Wolf People,’ ‘Animal Skin People,’ ‘Wolf's Children,’ ‘The Changing People,’ ‘Changing Wolves,’ or even ‘The Standing Wolves.’ You may choose any of these in your thoughts, for it means all of these but also none of them. It is human, a clumsy thing made more so by the clumsiness of the biligana tongue. Among themselves, our ancestors had no need of such a word.” He handed her the white wolf pelt. “Put this on your head and shoulders."
As she did, he lit the pipe with a twig from the fire. The fur of the pelt was remarkably soft and the inside had been worked to a texture like the supplest of leathers, only the deep-set stains of human oil and a faintly sour smell hinted at its age. She wondered for a moment if Red Feather was going to transform her into a wolf right here and now.
He handed her the pipe. “Smoke this down to the bottom. Tobacco's good for thoughts.” He fed a few more branches to the fire and, from the pack he'd carried in, removed a gray wolf's pelt and a bag of some finely chopped material she couldn't identify.
She began to smoke and placed herself into a prayerful mindset while Red Feather sprinkled a pinch of the bag's contents into the fire and donned his own pelt. The pipe was simple but expertly carved from a solid piece of pipestone, the tobacco local and traditionally prepared (the taste was noticeably mellower and smoother than the store-bought Pahana tobacco that often got used for convenience). The old man watched her smoke, waiting for some subtle signal...
The walls of the hut slowly disappeared from her perception, lost in darkness and haze, but the sensation was not unpleasant.
Her body fell into a rhythm of bringing the pipe to her lips, inhaling smoke, lowering the pipe, and exhaling...
Her remaining thoughts drifted like wispy clouds in a season of drought.
Lift, inhale, lower, exhale...
The weight and unfamiliarity of the pelt no longer register. It is a second skin.
Lift, inhale, lower, exhale...
She's not sleepy or disoriented, just calm. Her mind is clear and uncluttered.
Lift, inhale, lower, exhale...
Her peripheral vision no longer picks up Red Feather, but his presence remains constant. She looks past the fire into the darkness where the door was.
Lift, inhale, lower, exhale...
Red Feather growls. A low sound from deep in his throat. Almost a purr. Her blood resonates with the sound. The growl shifts for a moment to a higher whine before returning to the deep rumbling—
The memories come, a gentle stream that quickens to rushing torrent:
{she is stands in the rain. she moves silently through the sleeping camp, mind focused on her goal. she slips into the tipi that is her target, her child barely stirring in her crooked arm as it suckles her breast. the couple lay together beneath buffalo blankets, their newborn resting in the woman's arms with its head at her throat. a glance tells her that they have drunk from the water jug with the sleeping powder. with practiced movements, she reaches down and twists the infant's neck to break it, slides the baby from the mother's loose grip, and sets her own child into its place. a pang of loss hits her and she forces it away. she must not falter now. the dead human baby is meat for her pack, her own living child is an encumbrance. this is how it must be. if he survives, he will be claimed one day by a pack of his own like she was. she must forget him. once stands in the rain is certain her baby—the baby—is properly positioned and the human couple has not stirred, she rises and steps cautiously from}
{this jesus society that remains in awatovi is dangerous to them. it will spread like a disease and bring more pahanas. it may also bring more of the blood drinkers. all those who take part in the jesus ceremonies must be destroyed. she must see to it. once deserted, the village will make a fine place of refuge for her pack and the slaughter will provide an abundance of meat. there is hatred enough against the pahana priests for the abuses they heap upon the people there. all it will take is to encourage the talk of witchcraft, fan the flames}
{fire everywhere, smoke, confusion, her senses are overloaded and disoriented. the blood drinkers are everywhere, far more than they were told. lightning wolf, where is lightning wolf?? a few long strides away, a mass of the wretched creatures leap upon two eagles—they're tearing the limbs from his body! no sign of the blood-drinker chief at all. they are betrayed! cursing herself for cowardice, she shifts her spirit to the pure wolf and runs through the burning streets. gunfire! bullets scream past}
{she watches as the trapper lays pelt after pelt upon the desk, the hides of brothers, sisters, cousins, and friends piled up as grisly trophies of slaughter and she must watch and say nothing. wanted posters with wolf faces upon them}
{she runs with what remains of her pack. the blood-drinkers are so much stronger than men and track better too. for days now they have been pursued, then escaped, only to find the blood-drinkers closing upon them again later}
{it is done. strange newcomers dead now. (scent identification) carves manmarks of close human pack in wood to confuse. he is clever. alia reads what her memory-eyes cannot: “croatoan"}
{running, running, joy and excitement, scent so strong, prey close, pack near}
{slaughtered buffalo rotting whole in fields as far as her eyes can see}
{the smoking ruins of the massacred village, stomach rumbling}
{slash, bite, tear, savage joy, frenzied celebration of feast}
{he mounts her and she gives herself to the joy of mating}
{she howls a warning into the night even as she runs}
{she is dominant male, no other will lead this pack}
{more of her kind than she's ever seen together}
{soaring inside an eagle, human camp below}
{the meat of the blood drinkers is foul to}
{human screams, drawing her}
{they lie together, content}
{her forest gone forever}
{scent of sheep on}
{must hide, must}
{raw hatred}
{all failed}
{ ... }
a gorgeous, silver full moon shines down from the clear sky above. alia stands in a lush, primeval forest lent a grayish blue cast by its light. such colors, unlike anything her eye has ever perceived before in life or dreams. she can barely breathe as her gaze takes in wonder upon wonder...
the silence is absolute...
she feels the gentle, steady throb of her heart in the trees, the sky, and the soil beneath her feet. like having a new sense, she is aware of The Wolf's presence without seeing, hearing, or smelling It. she turns to find It watching her from atop a mossy fallen log three yards away...
The Wolf looks to be the exact creature from which red feather's pelt (her pelt) was taken: an arctic species, soft and radiant white fur like newly fallen snow with darker shades visible only in the ears, muzzle, and paws. at the same time It is more, It is all wolves, the magical essence which infuses and connects the blood of all chermasu. Its eyes are like red feather's, wolf and human mixed with a knowledge beyond time shining from within. First Wolf.
you know me, It says without speech, a language of movement and innate knowledge.
do I? she responds.
you know me.
I'm not sure.
you know me.
I don't remember.
you know me, First Wolf tells her for the fourth time.
yes. you took me to see my mother.
for the briefest instant, the Wolf Qatsina stands in the place of the unearthly white Wolf. then the Wolf turns and bounds away.
stay or follow.
her heart makes the decision before she can even consider and she is running, moving with a slow, dream-like grace as if traveling underwater...
despite this, she keeps pace with the Wolf, leaping obstacles and negotiating the dense undergrowth with ease...
her every stride seems to cover ten...
the forest blurs around her, she sees only the Wolf...
up ahead, It waits in a clearing. the trees, the soil, the rocks are all topped with snow, but no tracks mark The Wolf's progress to Its place in the center. The Wolf rises onto Its hind legs, transforming as it does to become the Wolf Qatsina and, then again, to become a perfect fusion of human and wolf. It is a being of both nightmare and fantasy, a creature caught halfway between worlds.
she moves toward It, the snow softer and less tangible than expected. like walking atop a cloud. the Standing Wolf seems to look her up and down and she realizes that she's wearing a manta of third mesa design with her hair braided up above her ears, squash-blossom style: the traditional dress and hair of an unmarried maiden.
she comes to First Wolf as a Hopi.
It does nothing for a moment, then the towering Wolf-Man begins to dance. It moves faster, faster still, arms moving together in the same rhythm. then It stops, throws back Its great head and sings out to the moon above. a beautiful note layered with frequencies, the first sound to break the silence. the Standing Wolf looks to her.
she nods her understanding, having memorized the dance.
It touches the pads of Its first two semi-human fingers to her forehead, just above her eyes. it feels similar to when the lightning struck her in her childhood vision, but the sensation is doubly intense now. her spirit power is both confirmed and strengthened.
running a clawed finger down Its chest, the Standing Wolf creates a seam in Its fur and a red glow emanates from within the creature. It draws aside Its fur to reveal Its glowing, beating heart...
light floods her vision, washing away everything...
Sees Within.
she blinks. she has yet another name now. she stands in a kiva and understands that it is the deepest part of herself. understands that this entire journey has not been a traditional dream or vision journey, but is instead a journey into herself. hanging on a peg in the kiva wall is a single white wolf pelt and she understands what to do.
she currently understands, in fact, much more than she will remember upon her return to red feather's hut. this does not worry her, however, for the knowledge will remain within her, influencing when needed. she takes the wolf pelt down from the wall and slips it on.
the transformation is quick and effortless. Sees Within moves confidently across the kiva floor on her four legs, tail swishing happily back and forth. she throws back her head and sings out a single note of exultation before running nimbly up the rungs of the kiva ladder and out...
Alia sat up, her head snapping up from her chest. She was trembling.
Red Feather gazed at her. He nodded. “I feel in you the awakened blood. Tell me the name you received. I will not share it with any other, but it must be known to me."
The fire had died down and the Elder fed it a few more branches while she gathered herself to speak. So many memories, so much to absorb, so much already draining away...
"Sees Within,” she managed.
Red Feather let out a grunt of surprise. “A powerful name. It is as I thought, then; your vision will guide the Pack when I am done. It is for me to help you to be ready."
Only a moment ago, her feelings had been a turbulent mash but already she felt them draining away and realized that they had not been her feelings at all, rather the feelings of long dead ancestors living again in her. Alia was strangely calm, focused. The situation was still so unreal as to be more like a hypothetical discussion in the kiva than something affecting her life.
"Wait,” she said and removed the white pelt. It felt nearly alive with power now. “Some of the things I saw—some of the things I felt myself doing..."
Red Feather also removed the pelt from himself, rolled it up. “I understand your fears. It was much the same with me when the eldest brother of my blood awakened the memories."
"Allow me to tell you our story. It is not like the stories of the Hopis and Diné, passed down in words from the early times. It is a thing which I created from the memories I experienced as well as the experiences and memories told to me by my first Packmates. Others have said that it helped them in putting order to the chaos of the memories."
Anything would help, but certainly the familiarity of a story would soothe her. And his voice was comforting to listen to with its even, rhythmic lilts. He'd warned her that the things he'd show her would disturb her, hadn't he? “Yes, I'd like to hear the story."
Red Feather smiled, tucked his pelt back in his pack, and assumed the straight-backed posture and faraway gaze of the storyteller. “Ahodi'neeshnih,” he began, his voice gentle but with a subtle tension that hinted at things to come. “Long time ago—I'm not sure how long, but the world and people and animals were already around—there was First Wolf..."
The story took hours in the telling, but it did soothe much of the anxiety that the memories had awakened in her. After the creation of the Chermasu, the loss of their changing ability, and the Twins’ effort to win it back, Red Feather told of how the blood-drinkers (the monsters in his thinking) had arrived in the land as prophesied and begun a systematic campaign to wipe out both Chermasu and Indian. The Chermasu had no choice but to ally themselves with their ancient adversary Man to battle this new threat. Though there were great victories, primarily led by the Chermasu hero Lightning Wolf, the alliance proved too fragile and too recently forged to succeed. In the last great battle between Chermasu and blood-drinker, Lightning Wolf was betrayed into a trap amid the burning city of Chicago. The few survivors of that battle scattered to the winds and took refuge among the native peoples on their reservations, occasionally daring to have children and pass along their ways to select members of the tribe...
Chermasu ways. The ways of a people she'd had no knowledge of before today, whose ways were not the Hopi way. If her Mother and the clan of her Mother were not truly Hopi, then she was not Hopi. That was tradition. Her Mother and her Father lived their lives as good Hopis. She'd lived her life as a good Hopi; it was all she'd ever tried to be.
How could she try to live now as something else?
"Grandfather,” she began, using the general term of respect for an elder. She took a breath, suddenly conscious of the offense she might give by misspeaking. They sat beside each other now, warmed by a fire she had built during the last section of the story.
Red Feather cocked his head, lowering his hands to give her his full attention.
The air itself went still, the spirits pausing as if to eavesdrop.
"I suppose the simplest way to put it is that I'm afraid that to learn how to be a good Chermasu, that I'll have to ... forget how to be a good Hopi. It's ... it's also that all those things you told me about our history were so unpleasant and kahopi that it's hard to imagine wanting to be a part of that heritage. Not that I think that you do, either.” She was already tripping over herself and it was making her angry and more awkward. Damn having to speak in English! “What I mean is that you seem to have found a way of balancing the Navajo life you were raised in with being Chermasu. I was hoping that, perhaps if you told me how you've managed to do that, it might help me find my way."
Red Feather glanced at her before turning back to the fire. His body became more rigid, a subtle tension in his bearing, even as his flame-lit expression slackened in thought. “The first thing to understand, I think, is that I do not try to be a good Chermasu. The ancestors of our blood did all kind of wickedness and built around them an evil reputation everywhere, and it was a reputation they deserved. It was Chermasu hidden among the Diné who raided the biliganas and let the clans who made treaties take the biliganas’ anger. Then, after the biliganas made them take the Long Walk, the Chermasu stayed living by eating the dead and the children of the ones who were captured. The ones who would later be my Diné clan were among the captured ones. They told me of the way things were in that place..."
She couldn't help but shudder, his revelation both shocking and saddening to her. The Long Walk: after months of conducting “scorched earth” warfare, which destroyed the tribe's ability to feed itself, Kit Carson and the U.S. Army rounded up about eight thousand Navajos in 1864 and forced them to march over three hundred miles to Fort Sumner. They were housed at Bosque Redondo, in conditions no better than a Nazi concentration camp, with thousands more Apaches. Starvation, disease, and execution took a horrible toll during their four-year imprisonment and less than five thousand Navajo returned home.
The Elder didn't show much of his reaction to these memories in his face, but she could see the uncried tears waiting in his eyes, hear the sorrow hiding within his words, and feel the grief, shame, and deeply buried anger carried from him on the air like the heat from Father Sun. Without thinking, she placed her hand lightly upon his and just let it lay there, expressing herself through the simple human contact.
He didn't look at her or respond other than by turning his hand over to gently clasp hers, but his gratitude was clear. “The parts in me that are good are the parts that are Diné,” he continued. “In my Pack, I use Chermasu traditions only when it is helpful for us to think of our common blood. For me, the history that was passed down from my clan and hataali teachers is the true history. For me, Wolf—who was made the chief of all the animal people after the emergence into the Fifth World—is the same as First Wolf; in this same way is Black God the same as the god you call Maasaw. There are also many places before and after that part in my history when I think that the doings of First Wolf and his children were confused for Coyote's doings. Because the world is different within everyone's thoughts, there are many levels of understanding to all histories. The history of the Chermasu, as shown to me, is a true history, but it is history as seen by people who were more wolf than human. The way that I learned to live with both histories was to look with a higher level of knowledge and see how they are both true."
Just on the surface alone, there were many elements of Hopi history that allowed for beings like the Chermasu to exist if she were flexible enough to let herself see them. It reminded her of the visual illusion Mrs. Whitehorse had shown the class in school, where a picture of a forest looked empty at first, but then your eye found an Indian warrior hiding in the forest, and then another, and another until the entire forest was full of Indians. That was the first time she'd realized that your eyes and mind could be tricked into blinding themselves; her understanding of how people could have such different opinions of things had come quickly after that.
"Then you must have also found a way to make the Pahana's history true for yourself,” she said in mock-awe, feeling it was time to inject a little humor into the discussion.
Red Feather laughed and gave a dramatic sigh. “That is beyond even my power. I fear it takes the gods’ level of knowledge to make that history true.” She chuckled and he gave her hand a gentle squeeze before letting go. “But you also wished to know how I keep balance between the two worlds that I walk."
He paused to think before he resumed. “I still remember how it was when I was a boy and the biliganas came and took me away from my family to go to their school: how they cut my hair and slapped my face when I cried; how I was made to wear their uncomfortable clothes; how the biliganas would shout and make mockery of me when I could not speak their words in the correct way; how they would whip me when I spoke Diné. Most of all, I remember how I wished all the time to be home with my family again. I ran from the school to return home many times; again and again I did this, no matter how they scolded or beat me when I was taken back. I remember that I was a selfish boy and often my Mothers would scold me: ‘Evil-spirited child, you must share with your brothers! If you do not, we will have to tell the hataali about you and he will come and cut off your head.’”
He chuckled at the memory. “But I think now that because those school people tried so hard to take my people's ways from me, that in my mind these ways had value. So, being a selfish boy, I held them close to me and would not let the school people have them. For many years after, I carried deep anger in me toward biliganas and tried to have no dealings with them."
She sat with one knee up, hands stacked over it, and rested her head on her hands as she listened to him. Red Feather shifted and drew his knees up in front of him so he could wrap his hands over them. It struck her as oddly vulnerable, making him appear more like a frail old man to her than ever before. He darted a glance at her, seeming almost shameful. “When the elder brother of my blood came to find me, I had already begun my training with my first hataali, but still I burned with the quiet anger at the biligana. Each new time I would hear of how they treated people, lied, slaughtered the sheep and horses, or was made to deal with them was like a new branch added to a camp fire, keeping it alive. When I first went out with a Pack to hunt blood-drinkers, I went with anger, a dark wind, and I did not think about Blessingway."
She could feel how badly these memories still affected him and the urge was strong to lay a comforting hand upon his shoulder, but something within told her that it was best to let him tell the story without interruption. “It was only later,” he continued, “that I began to question the ways of our Chermasu ancestors. I went to my hataali friend for guidance. He helped me to think carefully about my life, and Blessingway, and the history of the Chermasu—for I revealed to him the full truth of myself. It was he who first helped me to understand how to make both of our histories true and helped me understand how much I still wished to live in Blessingway. It took me many years to bring myself to beauty, but the decision that made it less difficult was to accept that I could not be Diné in all things. If Monster Slayer and Born-for-Water had not devoted themselves to ridding the world of the monsters that were harmful to the people, the people would not have survived to live in beauty.” He paused and, when he spoke again, his desolation was devastating to her in its rawness: “If I must be apart from my Mother's people and feared for a witch to do what Monster Slayer did, then I shall be so..."
His knees left his chest and his posture straightened, his tone gained conviction. “There are many evil ways that the powers of our ancestors can be used, but I do not use those ways and I do not teach those ways to others. The monsters are not part of Blessingway, I think; if they are, then their purpose is to be defeated. I do know that to slay monsters is not evil, that Changing Woman herself told that the monsters would return one day. ‘They will make everything difficult and have no shame,’ she said. ‘When the people build a fire, the yei'iitsolbahi' will piss on it.’ And so, now the monsters have returned to prey upon the people and only we have power enough to fight them. That is why we fight them."
Alia nodded, sitting up. Her heart had grasped his lesson long before he'd finished speaking and she felt it swell with hope and relief. She would remain true to her upbringing in her beliefs, in her heart, in her actions. She would take the responsibility this new knowledge had brought upon her and she would learn how to use the power of the Chermasu.
But she would remain Hopi.
Both Mark and Brian are lifelong vampire fans from New Jersey, where they met in the Garden State Horror Writers. Brian has written four screenplays (one of which is being adapted as a graphic novel by Wicked Karnival and Grafika for publication in 2007) and a stage play which won a state-wide contest. Mark served on the board of the New Jersey Romance Writers before becoming a founding member of the GSHW. For twenty years, he's proofread, written, and copyedited for CCH Inc., the country's leading legal publisher. As collaborators, they have had a short story published in Reflection's Edge.
The old hermit coiled himself around a rock in the middle of the desert and toyed with the bit of electronics at his tail. The wind-polished stone gave up its heat to his body as the Great Mother set in the west and the pale red sky began to darken.
Presently one of the Hunchbacks arose in the east, drifting through the stars toward the zenith. Before long its twin appeared in the west, darker and somewhat larger, moving in the opposite direction. The old hermit, unmoved by the celestial display above him, twisted the knobs on his radio and listened to the eternal static. He knew all kinds of it now, the kind that came from high in the atmosphere and was caused by the wind from the sun, the kind that came from far beyond the outer planets and pervaded all the universe, and the kind that came from the ancient cities buried in the rock beneath him, the dying cries of machines made long ago to call out for help. That the help had never come, that most believed it never would come, did not prevent the hermit from carrying out his duty. He had been trained long ago in the sacredness of what he did, and though he could not imagine how the Matriarchs would find out if he stopped, he persisted, emerging from the shade of the canal at the brief twilight to point his radio at the stars and listen.
The hermit twisted the radio's knob again, and paused at a minor shift in the static's pitch. A novice would never have noticed it, but the hermit was long practiced and heard every unexpected pop and hiss. He did not yet rush himself, but his pads trembled ever so slightly on the knob as he searched back over the spectrum.
There ... faintly in the background ... the hermit twisted the fine adjustment, increased the amplification, and bent close to listen.
His hearts nearly burst in his chest when he heard music pouring from the radio's speaker:
"Shine on, shine on harvest moon, way up in the sky,
I ain't had no lovin’ since January, February, June or July.
Snow time ain't no time to sit around and croon,
So shine on, shine on harvest moon, for me and my girl."
This language was like nothing he had heard before. He tried to repeat it, but his mouth could not wrap around the strange sounds, and he only hissed and spit into the dry sand.
"What manner of speech is this?” he said. The hermit had heard a dozen languages from as many worlds in the libraries of the ancient cities, but never any words like these. “Where could it come from...” He stopped with a sudden feeling of dread. He looked up into the sky and saw the tiny blue dot that the stargazers had long studied, the Sister of their world, which the wise men had always thought to be lifeless.
"And remember, friends,” said the radio, “don't risk the lives of those you love on worn tires. Buy only genuine Firestone brand tires and enjoy the roads in safety!"
The hermit unwrapped himself from the rock and slithered as fast as his old bones could manage to the east, where a long straight line cut across the desert, straight and narrow as a knife edge.
He raced down to the canal, dry these million years, and shouted to the black forms he could see indistinctly moving around at the bottom. “Listen! Listen!"
Heads turned to look up at him. He held the radio up and turned the volume to its maximum. The music echoed from the stone walls of the canal:
"Way down upon the Swanee River, far, far away,
That's where my heart is turning ever, there's where the old folks stay.
All up and down the whole creation, sadly I roam,
Still longing for the old plantation, and for the old folks at home."
"What is it?” they called up to him. “Is it our help at last? Are we rescued?"
The old hermit slithered down to them, winding along the narrow switchback carved into the sides of the canal. “It is not our help,” he told them. “These are not the friends we await."
Then they huddled around him and listened with wide eyes, and the music from the Dead Sister carried up into the swirling winds of the night.
"What shall we do? What can we do?"
The Matriarchs crammed into the little meeting room in the underground city of Hatibe, curling their long bodies around sitting posts until there was hardly an inch of open space. The eldest, Anharmam, looked around and tried to remember when she had last seen such a gathering. She decided that she never had, and saw also how many of her old friends no longer appeared in the crowd. This realization, and the trouble which had brought the Matriarchs together from all over the world, made her feel very old indeed.
The room in which they met was in the oldest part of the ancient city, built by the Xantys who had abandoned Redworld in the days of encroaching drought and banished Anharmam's people from their own watery world. This city had served as the capital from the earliest days of the Exile, and the domed room in which they now met, with its picture screens showing live images from the icy poles and the parched equator, had hosted a thousand generations of Matriarchs, ruling over a civilization consumed with keeping itself alive.
In the center of the room sat a radio tuned to an Earth frequency, now pouring forth a description of a new tonic to aid digestion and promote vitality. A young scholar sat curled up beside it, giving a running translation of the strange words from the box. In the two years since the hermit's discovery, exolinguists had worked day and night deciphering the Earth language, a feat much complicated by the fact that the humans had more than one. Their success had provided the Matriarchs an education on the new world fifty million miles away, a civilization that only a short time ago had not existed and now seemed on the verge of reaching out to grasp them.
"They are very young,” the Polar Matriarch, Gemam, said from the back of the room. “Perhaps their society is only a few thousand years old. But they are numerous, and very hungry. They may swallow us up before many more generations pass."
"We have nothing left to swallow up,” an angry voice answered. This was Anharmam's friend Yeunmam, who occupied one of the places of prestige near the center of the room. Her brittle old voice drowned out the radio. “These humans are already powerful. In a hundred years they may be strong enough to rescue us. Their world is drowning in water. It would be a paradise."
A clamor of debate erupted at this, and the shouts echoed from the high domed roof, through which the pink morning sky could be seen.
"All night we have listened to these humans, as they call themselves,” one of the younger Matriarchs said. “They are riddled with wars, diseased with anger. Can anyone fail to see the similarity with the race that stole our world and marooned us here? Have we learned nothing from our own history? The humans are not to be trusted.” She paused before going on. “And they are ruled by their men."
Another tumult broke out, and Anharmam felt older than ever. She looked up at the sky, the only sky a thousand generations of her people had ever known, and wondered how many more would live to see it, humans or no.
"What about you, Mother?” Yeunmam said, addressing Anharmam by her informal title. “Do you wish to make contact with the Earth men? Our radios could be made ready in hours."
Anharmam paused to consider her response. In the silence while they waited for her to speak, the radio blared on ... “The Red Sox edged the Athletics today six to five as Babe Ruth hit two home runs for Boston. Detroit slugger Ty Cobb wrapped up another batting title with three singles in a four to one victory over the White Sox."
"I cannot agree with you, Yeunmam,” Anharmam said. Though her bones ached, she twisted herself higher on her post so that all could see and hear her. “The humans are not peaceful people. It may be that they could help us, though they are not the ones for whom we have waited. But it is just as likely that they could destroy us, and ruin the world our ancestors struggled to preserve. The risk is too great. We must hide ourselves."
There was a general murmur, and Yeunmam spoke up again. “This we cannot do."
"And why?” Anharmam said.
Yeunmam assumed the tired posture of a teacher lecturing a student. “You are forgetting that our world is marked by the work of those who came before us. Though they are dry, the canals will surely be visible to the stargazers of Earth. They may have seen us already."
"I doubt this,” the young Matriarch said. “The radio has not mentioned us, and none of the transmissions seem meant for us. I am certain they do not yet possess the skill to see the canals."
"But unless I miss my guess,” Yeunmam said, nodding at the radio, “they soon will."
Anharmam lowered her head. “I fear you are right."
"We did not dig the canals,” Yeunmam went on. “The great machines which did the work are rusted hulks in the desert. Even if we worked for fifty years, we could scarcely fill in one canal, let alone all fifty."
"She's right, Anharmam,” Gemam said from her post. “Our people are only a few millions. Already the Earth people may have seen the canals. We should prepare ourselves instead for their arrival."
Anharmam felt despair creeping up inside her. “Our race has been abandoned to this world by those who wished us ill. All we know of the universe teaches us that the strong rule and crush out the weak. In the next encounter we may lose our lives, not just our world. I feel we must hide. But how?"
There was a commotion at the rear of the room as the door opened and someone else squeezed in. From the murmurs of disapproval as the newcomer slithered forward Anharmam knew it must be a male, but she was hardly in the mood to enforce strict procedure. She waited until the man had presented himself at the middle of the room, and noted with some surprise that she recognized him.
"I am Emric,” he said. “Of the Institute of Hatibe, student of Dallamam, caretaker of the water pipelines from the poles."
"I know you, Emric,” Anharmam said. “Your teacher is my niece.” And your lover, she thought to herself with a private smile. He was young, but Anharmam knew Emric to be among the brightest in the city, some said even a prodigy. He held in his pads the white buds of the pillow plant which grew in the city's water farms, and which were used to make the fine rugs on which he now coiled. “What news do you bring us?"
Emric raised himself as high as he could without a sitting post, and held the pillow plants up for all to see. “I can hide the canals,” he said.
"This is foolish. The humans have already seen the canals."
"Only one human, and his telescope was weak. By the time the telescope on Mount Wilson was finished we had already covered the large canals. They cannot see the smaller ones like this."
"So the humans will believe it was all a hallucination?"
"A trick of the mind. Save your complaining for after work, Quanric, and help me with this bole."
Quanric grumbled, but he helped Velmam lift the heavy bole of stiff fabric into place. They moved slowly out over the canal, keeping the motorized car on which they rode positioned over the pilings driven into the sandy bottom. The fabric unrolled behind them, forming a screen which concealed the channel below. Workers followed behind the car to fasten the fabric to the pillars and spread sand and rocks across the top. For miles to the north, Velmam could see crews rolling rocks and shoveling sand, creating a perpetual cloud of red dust that hung over the canal. She tugged her mask closer over her face and held on as Quanric turned the car for another pass.
"Sandstorm coming,” she observed, looking at the smear on the horizon to the west.
"Hum,” Quanric said, and brought the car to a jerking stop as the fabric roll ran out. “Maybe we'll get to stop work early today.” He headed back toward the canal's edge to load another bole.
As the car neared the storehouse Velmam noted a clamor among the workers. Crowds of them swarmed to the open storehouse door, centering around someone coiled on a sitting post. As she watched, more workers approached, wriggling hurriedly across the rocky soil. “What is going on there?"
"I don't know,” Quanric said, turning the car toward the crowd, “but I'm going to find out."
The center of attention was a male Velmam did not recognize. He had evidently come a great distance, for the gossamer-winged flyer beside the storehouse had not been there that morning and must have been his. He coiled now upon the sitting post and held a picture-screen out to the workers. Images flashed across it in shades of gray.
"What is all this?” Quanric said, horning in among the workers on the back row. “Who is that?"
"They figured it out,” one of the workers said excitedly, showing no annoyance at being shoved aside. “All those signals from Earth we could not decipher. They were pictures, not just words."
"Pictures?” Velmam said, and pushed her way toward the front, too. The male with the picture-screen beamed as he held it up for all to see. “Watch,” he said.
Raucous music played from the box, and the screen showed markings of a type Velmam did not understand, written in a flowing script:
"Lucille Ball"
"Desi Arnaz"
"I Love Lucy"
The audience lay spellbound as the first images of humans appeared on the screen. They were pale, fur-bearing creatures who stood upright and possessed two tentacles attached high up on their bodies. They showed an unusual amount of dexterity in picking objects up and moving them about, and soon it became clear that they had five small tentacles at the ends of the two large ones.
"Freakish,” someone said. “Look how they can just grab things."
There were three humans on the screen: a stocky one with dark fur atop his head and a booming voice, a slender, light-furred one lying flat, and atop it, what Velmam could only take as an infant of the species, a large-headed, furless creature wrapped in a length of cloth.
"Waah, Ricky!” the slender human said, and from the screen came a huffing, moaning sound that took the crowd aback.
"Are they laughing?” someone said. “It sounds as though they are about to die."
Now the box showed the larger human moving across the floor, a strange, jerky motion, and Quanric howled with laughter.
"Look at them!” he cried, and rolled on the ground. “They stand on their tails to move! How do they keep from falling over?” A few others in the crowd giggled, and the male with the picture-screen frowned.
But Velmam sat transfixed and watched as the slender human with long curling fur trailing from the back of its head cradled the infant, who reached a tentacle out to touch the slender human's face.
"They're beautiful,” she said.
On the day the last screen was stretched across the canal, they pulled old Anharmam out from her nest to see. The crowds were thick along the dry bed, but they drew back to make a space for the Matriarch. Her assistants rolled her to the edge of the canal, where she could look down and see the workers slithering among the pilings that held up the screens. Anharmam's eyes were failing, as was the rest of her body, but she told no one, and smiled with approval and felt a great happiness at what she knew was happening.
"Now we are hidden,” she said as the workers spread sand across the screen. “Our children can grow up without fear."
The civilization of Earth had erupted while the screen was being built. The radio broadcasts, so weak and few in number at first, multiplied and strengthened until a corps of one thousand Listeners was required to monitor them all. The Earth men learned to fly, to sail beneath the sea, to harness the power of the atom. Their nature, however, seemed not to change. They fought two colossal wars, in which millions were killed, and in the final act the power of the atom was used to snuff out life. The people of Redworld listened to these reports with wonder, and shuddered at the sight of the little blue dot in their sky. They hoped fervently the humans would not venture beyond their own world, though in their hearts they knew better.
The humans did come, though timidly and not in person. Robots sailed to Redworld on long ellipses, giving ample time to prepare for their arrival. When a Listener heard of a launch, he alerted the stargazers, who watched for the probe with the powerful telescopes left behind by the Xantys. They calculated orbits and warned the people when an orbiting satellite was to pass overhead. No one could state with certainty the power of the cameras on board the satellites, and so those in the cities stayed underground during a passage, and the desert dwellers slithered beneath the screens and hid at the sandy bottoms of the canals.
The first robot arrived only a few years after the humans had visited the moon of their world. It landed far from centers of population, and caused less trouble than its orbiting companion, which looked down with its baleful, unblinking eye, taking in half the planet at its highest point. The people cursed and moaned whenever they were forced to duck underground, but soon the passages became a matter of routine, no more remarkable than the passage of night and day.
For a long time no other robots came. Then, a dozen years later, another landed within a hundred miles of Hatibe. The populace huddled below ground and stargazers anxiously followed the flight of the probe as it passed overhead. When it became clear that the robot had landed some distance to the east, two of the stargazers were sent out to reconnoiter the site and see what danger this new intruder presented.
They worked up slowly from the southeast, hiding behind boulders and making sure always to be downwind. It was painstaking work, and the sun rose to the zenith and descended again on the other side before Ghemam and her assistant Tanric at last glimpsed the reflection of sunlight from metal. They hugged the ground, and slithered from stone to boulder without making a sound.
The probe was very small, even more so than the previous one. It had landed on some kind of balloon, now deflated and lying flat. The robot unfolded like an exotic flower, revealing a long narrow ramp, poised atop which sat what looked like a gold-colored box with a black board on top and six wheels beneath.
"Where's the rest of it?” Tanric asked, but Ghemam shushed him. They were still a long way off, but this robot might have ears, and there was no point in taking unnecessary risks.
As they watched, the box rolled down the ramp to the ground. For a long while it did nothing, as though the effort had tired it. Then, slowly, tentatively, it began to move again, crawling over the rocks with its six knobbed wheels. It approached one of the larger rocks nearby, and when it had drawn close, extended a tiny arm and brushed the surface of the rock.
"This? We are afraid of this?” Tanric said, and began to rise. Ghemam put a pad to his back and pushed him back down.
"I am afraid it is only the beginning,” she said.
Years passed, and no more threatening emissaries than these visited Redworld. Then, a messenger rushed to the Matriarchs with the news that a larger ship was approaching, landing almost on top of Hatibe itself.
Ghemam, twenty years older than when she had seen the robot ship touch down, now elder of the Matriarchs, felt a thrill of fear run up her skin. “Show us,” she said.
With an advance guard clearing their way, the Matriarchs hurried to one of the observation bubbles on the western side of the city. There, peering through the pitted dome, they saw a tiny orange flicker high in the sky. As they watched, the flicker grew larger, and descended until they could see the glint of metal above the flame.
"Mother, we have intercepted signals,” a technician said from Ghemam's side. “Listen.” He held a speaker box in the midst of the Matriarchs. The words of the humans poured forth:
"A hundred feet ... down at ten. Fifty feet. Kicking up some dust now. We're still go."
"What does it say?” the Matriarchs asked. Ghemam, who had learned the language as a stargazer, wrapped her tail tight about her. “It means the humans have arrived,” she said.
They watched in mute horror as the ship descended, aiming for a spot on the plain no more than five minutes’ journey away. When the ship had come within perhaps ten of its own lengths from the ground, the orange flame beneath it sputtered and changed color, becoming a lurid green. The ship lurched to one side, spun crazily and fell, sputtering flame as it went. It hit the ground with an impact the Matriarchs felt inside the dome. A muffled boom reached them a moment later.
"Houston ... Houston ... do you read? ... crash landing...” Words still came from the ship, but Ghemam could tell the voice was pinched with pain. She could see vapor trails rising from the silver hulk now, the lifeblood of the humans spilling away into the thin atmosphere of Redworld.
"Propulsion failure,” another voice said in the radio loop. “Stand by ... stand by."
The Matriarchs whispered to each other. “What will happen? Will they die? Can they breathe our air?"
Ghemam looked at the young male technician holding the speaker box. “Well?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “They rely on oxygen to breathe. We have this in our labs, but there is almost none outside."
"Thank the Creator,” one of the Matriarchs said. “We have been delivered."
Ghemam felt a flash of relief herself. She looked out at the crumpled ship, still bleeding white trails of gas. The radio transmissions were becoming more frantic now. Ghemam winced at the words she heard, messages of pain, loss, death. She regarded her fellow Matriarchs, staring with absorption at the Earth ship. They could not speak the language. They could not understand.
Time passed—a minute, perhaps less. Ghemam felt a change rising up inside her, a queer lightness that increased by the second. A weight had been taken from her.
She looked at the technician, and could find no fear in his eyes. He reminded her of Tanric long ago. “Come with me,” she said. She picked two more youths from the crowd nearby. “And you two as well. Stay close beside me, but don't speak unless I tell you."
"Mother?” said one of the Matriarchs, reaching out with a puzzled look. Ghemam shook her head and moved forward through the crowd, the young ones close behind.
She opened the door and wriggled her way outside.
Corey Brown is a native of North Carolina and has made his home in Florida for the past seven years. He's trained as a mechanical engineer and works now for a company which makes rocket engines when the budget allows. When not working Corey enjoys playing golf, basketball, and fleeing from the occasional hurricane. “Camouflage” is his third short story sale.
There can be no peace without equitable development; and there can be no development without sustainable management of the environment in a democratic and peaceful space.
—Wangari Maathai, “The Nobel Peace Lecture for 2004” in The Ploughshares Monitor (Spring 2005, Vol 26 No 1)
March 2
The visitors came back this week. The worst outbreak for over a year.
I'm sure it started by accident. I was in the shed, cleaning oil from the generator, when I heard trampling in the tomatoes. My new Jet Stars as well—good against the new diseases going around these past few seasons, and it'd taken some sharp bargaining to get the seeds. My gun was in the kitchen, but unless you catch a visitor with their back to you and you've got a silencer—well, guns weren't going to make any difference.
The visitor looked confused, very Where the hell is this? But as soon as he spied my Chieftains, he was gone. Sure enough, twenty minutes later, he was back with the rest. First count, looked like five of them, but they move so fast and in the last couple of years, they've all started cutting their hair the same way, so no one can tell them apart. Pretty soon they were munching on the Chieftains—raw and primitive, not even brushing off the dirt. They were all youngsters so there was no point trying to reason—only the older ones remember things like privacy or manners—but I was so angry that I grabbed my rake, thinking I could chase the visitors off the property like crows. Yes, yes, should have known. There I was, with my bad hip, swinging away like a batty old maid, and they dodged without even looking, until someone thought this was a good game, and they were all around me, playing tag. Smart thinking, Abigail.
Then one of them must have looked through the back window of the kitchen, and before I knew it, pop! pop! pop! they were all inside. I rushed indoors, but they just ignored me as they scavenged the house. They pulled my science fiction novels from the shelves, looking for travel or housey or any kind of picture books, what we used to call ‘coffee table'—anything with photos. I kept those upstairs in Mark's room, so I held my breath, hoping they'd lose interest before too long—and of course, they did. They always do. But an Oriental girl stared at one of the pictures on the wall, my photo of the temple at Banteay Srey from my year of trekking before I had Mark, and called over the others.
So, six of them. They stood around the photo, memorizing the image with that disturbing concentration of theirs. Then they were gone.
Stupid. I should have taken the picture down years ago. Now they'll be back looking for more images. Moving the furniture around won't make any difference so I'll have to redecorate and that will mean a trip up to Parchers Crossing and that will mean going to Sal to ask for a lift in his mini-bus and that will mean letting Sal persuade me back to his Memory Circle.
I should have taken the picture down.
March 3
No one was interested in the visitors at the market. “Come on, Abi,” Sal said during one of his breaks. “Look around."
OK, there were a lot of visitors around this afternoon—a few popping in and out, a group playing frisbee in front of the Wal-Mart. And why not—it was the first bright day this year that wasn't a winter sun sputtering, the kind of early Spring gift day Mark and I used to celebrate in the park behind the library.
"But Sal, none of these visitors are inside your house."
"They're not visitors, Abi.” He had that stern look that annoys me. When an old Goth like Sal—long black hair tied back, decrepit velvet shirt all laced up—tries to reprove, it just comes over Old Testament and foolish. Bad as things are, it's hardly the End of Days. “You make them sound like aliens."
Visitors is a polite way of saying vermin, Sal. And what do you call them? Ghosts? No worse than a poltergeist with an irritable bowel? I don't think so.
But Sal's not the only dozy one around here—most of the good folk of Cray Point want to ignore them as well. There weren't many traders out at the farmers market—still a bit early in the season for us in Cray Point. I'd tried to rattle some of my neighbours with the stories, but they were all buzzing with unlikely rumours about a band of marauders working their way south from New York.
"Once the visitors get inside, they'll keep coming back until they've found every picture and photo in my house,” I told Sal. “I'm thinking I'm going to have to redecorate. Make sure they can't get back in."
Sal was always a bit slow on the uptake, but I let it lie in the silence for a while. “So you want running up to Parchers Crossing for supplies."
"I'll get the gas off Felipe."
Sal scowled. “Ain't the petrol. Stories of marauders—"
"And the New Jersey Devil. And the werewolves. And the zombie remains of the New York Giants. Sal, of all people, I can't believe you'd fall for a few bored tongues. Don't you want to go exploring?"
Of course Sal doesn't want to go exploring—none of them do—but he pretended to consider this for a while. “One condition."
"Don't, Sal."
"Mayor Santos said there'll be no civic guards to spare until April. Have to make a special trip."
"I won't do it. Especially if Mona's still going."
"All alone up there, unprotected—"
"All right! All right!"
"Say it out loud, Abi."
"I'll come back to the Memory Circle."
That sent Sal back to his next session with a smile on his face, which didn't really suit songs by Marilyn Manson, but most people wouldn't have any idea who Marilyn Manson was anyway, and Sal's efforts to educate folk with his acoustic renditions of classic folk songs weren't going to change that.
I managed to talk Felipe out of a can of gas on credit, telling him the Chieftains would be ready next week (I think he knew I was lying, but he didn't say). “You heard the stories about those raiders up north, Abi?"
"Up north, Felipe? I'd heard they were coming up from Philly. And I didn't hear raiders—sounded to me like a whole army is already whooping it up in Atlantic City."
"Yeah, yeah, Abi. And how you going to run from them with that hip of yours?"
"I'll tell them where they can get as much gas as they want."
"You and your stories, Abi. Think they'll believe them any more than we do?"
Donna exchanged my empty bottle for the week's water ration and when I was done, I cycled into the Wal-Mart to see if I could scavenge a screwdriver for the small screws on the generator. I was lucky—the tools section hadn't been ransacked too much. There were a couple of visitors, probably looking for food, so when I got the screwdriver, I hobbled back to my three-wheeler and the trailer before they spotted the bag of potatoes.
As I was leaving, for some weird reason, I thought about elephants. I imagined elephants strolling up and down the aisles of the Wal-Mart and elephants picking up the frisbee with their trunks and trying to throw and catch it and elephants suddenly finding themselves in my front room. That lifted me. What if there was another universe where all this had happened to the elephants instead?
March 5
One of them turned up again today—the Oriental girl. I thought maybe she'd drawn the short straw to be the advance party this time, but she stood in my front room, examining each of the photos on the wall for twenty minutes and no one else followed.
Like most of the other younger visitors, she ignored me, so I ignored her and just carried on emptying the shelves so I could get at the wallpaper, occasionally saying, ‘Excuse me'. Didn't have to bother with the Excuse Me's because the visitor would have instinctively reacted before I'd gotten near her, but it's my house and I'm not going to let a visitor make me abandon simple manners.
When I finished the shelves, she was still there, studying that picture of Banteay Srey, so I studied her. Their nakedness still rattles me and I'm amazed how it doesn't unnerve them, not because of propriety, of course, but just out of a feeling of vulnerability. But I guess they can't help it so they've gotten used to it. In the early days, the older ones draped curtains or whatever was to hand around their bodies like a bedroom farce, though now most of them have given up what must feel like pretty ancient notions like indecency and embarrassment or anything remotely civilized. Seem to put up with the cold pretty good too.
Chinese, I decided—certainly not Cambodian, or anywhere near Banteay Srey. Slight, but not as soft and out of shape as a lot of the young visitors. Cropped black hair, a young Yoko Ono except for the nose that looked more flattened than was natural—broken perhaps? Surprisingly clean—maybe the dirt really does come off them every time they jaunt. I'd have placed her in her mid-twenties, which meant she must have been five or so when it happened (and yes, I thought it immediately—Mark's age). She had the big-eyed, blank-faced innocence that they all had now—nothing fazed them, nothing escaped them.
I had to rake the compost, so I was about to shoo her away when she finally spoke. “Doesn't exist."
Spoke. They don't often speak to folk like me anymore (Do they have a word for us? I'm sure they do—slowpokes or fils de boue or something) so I was startled.
"Excuse me?"
The visitor pointed at the Banteay Srey picture. “Can't find."
She had a high-pitched child's voice, very sharp, demanding. “What do you mean?"
"I see. I imagine. But can't find.” She chastised the photo with a slap. “So doesn't exist."
Imaging, Mark described it once. We learnt how to do it together, even though it broke my heart to help him do something that would take him away from me. Close your eyes, he told me. Pick out a detail of the place you want to be—the detail that makes it all come together. Focus on that detail, see how the light changes its surface, then follow the light back, see how it falls on everything around that detail, how everything relates to the detail. And you'll be there. We did that with the photos—the albums I used to flick through with him as a child, telling him stories. But with the change, it was Mark who was telling me the stories, visiting the places he saw and coming back to me, full of excitement at everything he'd experienced.
The image doesn't have to be perfect—a detail wrong here or there doesn't trip up a jaunt. This new universe we live in is kinder, more user-friendly to the visitors and will find them a close fit, like a well-intentioned dating agency. You can change around the furniture and still jaunt back to the same room.
But find a detail that buggers any chance of a close fit—well, that's a different story.
"Oh, it exists,” I told her. “Well, almost."
"Almost?” the visitor repeated and looked closer. “Details not right."
"That's right."
"Shadows go the wrong way."
"I'd have said the flying saucer in the top left-hand corner is the give-away, but yes, I didn't get the shadows right. I was still getting used to Photoshop."
She stared at me in bafflement. “A piece of software you could use to manipulate photographic images digitally,” I explained to her patiently. “You know—software? Computers?"
"Know computers. No need to patronize."
"Then stop talking like a child and use sentences when you talk to me. I'm not a visitor. Or a ghost. Or whatever you call yourselves."
"We call ourselves humans. Same as you call yourselves."
We must have glared at each other for a good ten seconds in silence. That would have been a good point for her to leave, but no, she wasn't going anywhere. “Did you go there?"
"Banteay Srey? Once. What about it?"
"New places are so—rare. Describe it."
"Why? I took this way back."
"Places like this don't change much. Tell me."
That would have been a good point for me to leave, but no, it seemed I wasn't going anywhere either. I'm still not sure why, but I guess it's not often someone asks me to tell one of my stories. So I looked at the picture on the wall, then I closed my eyes and looked at the picture in my head.
"There was a square, surrounded by tropical trees. Across the square, there were two lines of stone stumps, remains of pillars leading up to a gateway. That was all that was left—just this gateway, carved from pink stone. The top was crowned with sculptures like the leaves of the trees, three huge leaves like the feathers of a mythical bird. Just below the feathers, I could make out figures in relief. Lines of human dancers with the heads of elephants, their trunks waving in the air, dancing around a Buddha figure, arms and legs almost reaching out of the stone. I remember that Buddha looking straight at me, asking me to dance."
She smiled, then closed her eyes and her face crinkled up with the concentration. Within two minutes, she was gone.
You're welcome, I thought.
A minute later, she came back. “Thank you,” she said. “My name's Chang."
"Abigail,” I blurted out, not meaning to.
And she was gone again.
March 6
Sal doesn't waste time. He even had his foot on the frame so I couldn't close the door.
"Just to let you know, next Tuesday at 6. You promised."
"Hello, Sal. I know I promised. Anything else?"
"There's homework. Written."
"Come on, Sal. Who writes anything down anymore? So—what's the Memory Circle doing this time?"
"Where you were. When it happened."
I nearly winced. I'm sure Sal noticed, but he didn't say. “Oh, and I'm doing a run to Parchers Crossing on the 18th."
"I could do with some wallpaper before then."
"You're not the only one with errands."
"Dozens of them. Rattling through my larder every night—"
"OK, OK. I'll see what I can do."
He stood on the doorstep for a while longer. “Yes?"
"One last thing. We're not at Mona's anymore."
"Why?"
"Ceiling collapsed. Roof timbers rotted right through. They just missed her in the bedroom."
Pity. “Poor Mona. So where will you be then?"
"Abi?"
"No way."
"We can't use my place because of the fire."
"I'm not having Mona and those bitches in here."
"And I'll see about moving the trip up to Parchers Crossing by a few days."
He drives a hard bargain.
"One time only. And I mean my coming along to the Memory Circle."
"Oh, I'm sure we'll convince you to stay. History is as important as food and water to communities like Cray Point—"
"Is that the phone ringing?"
"A phone hasn't rung here in twenty years, Abi."
"I've got good hearing."
It was meant to be an insult, but Sal just smiled, knowing he'd won. “See you the 12th. And don't forget your homework."
March 7
Mark's home! When was the last time—the turn of the year?
He liked the book I got him. I'd found it in a weekend condo during a scavenger trip in Craytown—one of the later apartment blocks where wealthy New Yorkers used to enjoy their long summer weekends, but now the sea wind just crusts the paneless window frames with salt. On the second floor, I came across the treasure trove—the cupboards had been ransacked, but no one had touched the books. Tough decision deciding what to take with me. I thought about British Country Homes From The Air, but couldn't bear the idea of Mark jaunting a half mile above the ground. OK, you don't hear about people jaunting inside objects—this new universe seems happy enough to displace a little air and find you some room. Where you can, arrive high, take a quick look down, pick your spot and jaunt down safely. I'm sure Mark can do that fine—but I'm his mother and I'm not going to encourage any risk-taking.
So I took an Ansel Adams instead. That was a find—those views of Yosemite can't have changed in the century since Adams had photographed them. Mark drank up the images. He sat on the edge of his bed, turning the pages slowly, committing the pictures to memory. He barely noticed the soup I left him, or how much I wanted to hug him (I wouldn't, of course, visitors never touch people—and I can understand why, a lot of us didn't react well to the visitors at first, and I guess it's just second nature for them to avoid bodily contact now).
When he'd gone right through the book, I remembered my homework and asked Mark about the change. He tried to find the words for a minute, nervously jaunting from chair to bedside faster and faster, so for a while I had two sons. Finally, he just smiled apologetically and jaunted away.
He didn't touch his soup. But Chang came today as well—I'm sure visitors can smell free food a thousand miles off.
I didn't offer. I had my back turned to scrape the wallpaper and she just took the soup. But she eyed it suspiciously. “Think it's poisoned?"
"Not used to hot food.” Her hands shivered around the ceramic bowl, enjoying the luxury of the warmth. “You have electricity?"
"I've got a generator for a little power, but I use a woodstove for cooking. A genuine Aga, needed Sal's pick-up to drag it cross town from the old Stone Creek restaurant. Not that you'll be seeing much of it. But you can help yourself to the weeds out back."
She wasn't listening, just wolfing the soup down quickly—they do everything quickly. “You're changing the wallpaper."
"Thought it was time to do something about home security."
"I'll still get in."
Just try it. I scraped louder.
"Aren't you going to ask?"
"No,” I told her.
"About the temple? It was amazing."
"You went? You actually went?” Stupidly, my heart went off like a hysterical alarm clock. I wanted to be rid of this creature, but I couldn't help myself. “What's it like now?"
She curled up on my couch, flipping through the Ansel Adams, using the blanket there to cover her bony shoulders. They look so underfed, and for one insane moment, I thought about fetching her some bread. Sure, and when word gets around, all those thousands of lips licking, I'll get to think about how underfed that huge army of visitors crushing the rest of my Jet Stars looks.
She clapped her hands, chuckled, one side of the room to the other, as if my whole front room was delighted. “Stone and feather rustling together. Old laughter and song. Yes! Yes! I filled up and downloaded to Batchu receiver, and she downloaded to Batchu tribe, and at Sixteenth Fest, Batchu copied Faster and sub-Faster tribes. No Chinese whispers. Digital perfect. Everyone came, staggered arrivals through the night, a waterfall of tribes. And we saw elephants over the gateway! Receivers understood and laid down Batchu and Faster grooves. And we danced with Buddha!"
Her story came in stereo, her voice wrapped around me as she jaunted from the couch to the rug by the woodpile to the window seat and back to the couch. But I could still hear it in her voice, awe and surprise there should still be room for awe in the world. I could hardly believe it—growing up with this gift, and here she was discovering the joys of exploring for the first time. I wished I could have been there with the hundreds of them, dancing, jaunting in and out of each other's space as the receivers’ vocal beat-making got more and more frenzied.
"And Delphine and I found an old drinks stall by the parking lot. Bottles of Pepsi! Funny taste—flat, different, but sweet. Orangeade-coloured wooden front, deep forest green canvas sagging over the bar. In the black-brown of the lacquered oak bar, so many overlapping hearts cut white in the wood, so many names carved over and over. Delphine kissed me. She cut our names and new hearts. Can you see it?"
Wilson and I used to tell each other stories like this, though all of mine were made up. I think I told Chang, Yes, I could see it.
Chang finished her bowl and I refilled it. Before she left, I asked her what she remembered of the change.
"The change?"
I listed on my fingers. “The Rapture. Le premier jour du fin. The day you woke up and realized you could jaunt."
"Jaunt?"
"Sorry—that's from an old Alfred Bester novel. I meant the day that you could suddenly teleport anywhere you could think of."
Five, I'd guessed. Chang should be able to remember. But the visitors don't feel the same way about time as the rest of us and Chang put her fingers in a steeple against her forehead. She stopped jaunting as she tried to recall.
"Grew up outside Shanghai,” she said after a while. “Three sisters worked in garment factory. Can't remember parents."
She paused for a moment—their heads are so full of images, memory doesn't come easily to them. “I was the youngest and sat with the next youngest. She stitched jeans, I helped cut off loose threads. Always very hot, very noisy, but it was really noisy that day. Other girls were screaming. Sister left her machine and walked away to see. I watched her walking, ten feet away, fifteen feet away. Then she was back at her machine, twenty feet in an instant. Now she was screaming. And all around, a waterfall of bodies. Blurs. Drops of blood all over the floor. I crawled towards the wall, head down, not looking at anything until I got there. I saw the poster. The American girl in jeans smiling and behind her the street corner in San Francisco. I saw street names, the skyscraper—everything I needed, but didn't know it then. I shut my eyes. I opened them far away."
A familiar story. A lot of inadvertent jaunting took place in those first few minutes when people didn't realize what they were doing. No one knows how many died in the panic of the first hour—we never got the chance to count.
She put down the Ansel Adams. Thinking about Mark, I asked her, “You been to Yosemite?"
Chang flipped through the pages to check she hadn't missed anything. “Is there food?” she asked dubiously.
"Did you go to Banteay Srey for food?"
She didn't answer, but I could tell the question bothered her.
March 8
The Craytown apartments really are a gold mine. Who were these people? All those visiting New Yorkers never used to come down here and spend their days reading. They came down and walked along the boardwalk, huddling in the arcades out of the wind and sneering at my friend Sally and I as we borrowed quarters off the boys and beat them at air hockey. OK, in time, I came to sneer at everyone as well and went off travelling, at least until I realized in Ho Chi Minh City that I wasn't throwing up because of the food but because of Mark. My first year out of America. My last year out of America. But if I did sneer at Cray Beach, it was because I'd damned well earned the right to sneer after munching through every wild-eyed book in the library and the Barnes & Noble at Parchers Crossing.
I found a well-thumbed copy of Slaughterhouse-Five, which I haven't read in thirty years, and two Philip K Dicks I've never seen before. There were history books too, and I piled them on the kitchen table for Sal to come by sometime. Wilson would have enjoyed this. We would have sat on the veranda, reading passages out to each other, and then if there was a bottle of something nice still lying around, we'd have got drunk and had another of our delirious arguments over what caused the change. My theory was that parallel universes were colliding together and visitors were slipping between them through some kind of psychic rupture in the space-time thingy. Wilson insisted it was simply quantum entanglement gone amok in this universe. Sometimes though we wondered whether the Christian millenarians were right and God was sifting the wheat from the chaff, and then we'd argue which of us was which.
I didn't realize how late it was getting. The light got dirtier and orangier against the beachfront window—though my hip was acting up, I decided to risk a twilight return home and watch the sunset. There was a group of visitors down on the beach—maybe enough for one of their tribe-lets. I wasn't sure if they were practicing one of their ceremonial dances or just enjoying the sensation of jaunting, but there was a ring of them, blurring as they jaunted into each other's footsteps, first one way, then the other, complex patterns that must have required incredible concentration and awareness to the sudden shifts of displaced air.
How many of them were there? Fifteen down there. Five billion around the world—at least at the start. What was the ratio? Used to be a daft old Abigail for every five thousand of them. And in the early days, we really did feel outnumbered, forced into defending ourselves when the younger ones abandoned any ties with us and the older ones slowly forgot. But how many are there now? A billion? That many? They're starting to disappear. Maybe they've died and become real ghosts, like the shimmering figures below, shining with the promise of diamonds on an engagement ring.
I watched them for an hour, thinking of Chang and the tribes at Banteay Srey, what it must be like to dance with them, to look at the horizon, and then the next horizon, and the one after that, and make myself my own engagement ring around the world. Jaunting like this—that was how Wilson and I used to have sex. Very gentle, but so fast that I couldn't bear to look at him, Wilson would steady himself above me and jaunt in and out, a butterfly inside of me. We did that right through our seven years together, from the morning my beautiful black South African professor found me in the dry ice rink off the motorway to the occasional visit he made towards the end.
But why can't I go with you? Why didn't it happen to me?
Wilson laughed and filled my glass. So we can tell you our stories, Abigail.
March 9
Mark came back today! Twice in one week—twice in one month, that's a gold-star day.
I didn't ask him why he'd come back so quickly. He took a slice of the bread, still hot from the oven, sat down at the kitchen and ate quietly. “Thanks, Mom,” he said. “Yosemite was really pretty."
I didn't ask him about whether there was any food there. Chang's loss, I decided.
I told Mark about the Memory Circle and asked him what he remembered of the day it happened.
"You know what happened. You were there."
"I know, but I just want to hear it."
He concentrated hard, exactly the same look he'd had as a little boy. “In the bath."
"I was giving you a bath. You always hated having baths."
"I liked the sparkle on the water."
"And it made you think of the sea."
"Atlantic City. We used to go there every September."
"That's right. We stayed with Sally, who was working as a croupier in Trumps. Sally took you out on the beach while I played the poker room."
"The sea sparkled the same way."
"And suddenly you were gone. Not in the bath."
"I was scared. I was drowning. But it was shallow and I rubbed water from my eyes and saw the big hotels and the names on the sides."
"And you wanted to go home. You remembered the bath."
Yes. But not at first. Not until after I'd thought for one crazy moment he'd disappeared down the plughole, and I'd torn all over the house looking for him, and when I couldn't find him, I ran out into the street, back on Maine Street where we used to live. It wasn't until I'd run as far as the library that I realized that I wasn't the only one shouting and yelling and there were terrified naked people appearing and disappearing on the lawns on either side of me. But I came back to the house to phone the police and it was OK—I heard Mark crying, upstairs in the bath, home again.
Like everyone else, there were a lot of horrible scenes in the first few days, until we realized what was happening, and the fact it wasn't happening to everyone. We all settled down after that. The President was on the television to tell us to stay calm and I thought, why not materialize inside everyone's house and tell them individually. Everyone took a deep breath and said, Just for now, let's go back to how it was, and let's think about this for a minute. This could be the start of a Golden Age.
But that didn't last long. I remember driving down to Trumps to put a bet on it—in a month, it would fall apart. Good odds, I recall. Within the week, the prisons and highways emptied. After ten days, people got bored of their jobs and vanished whenever they wanted. Things started to stutter, and as they did, the ones who tried to keep it going lost hope or were seduced by the change and then everything pretty much ran down. About that time I fell off the roof trying to help Mrs Leygues and did my hip in. Trumps agreed that I'd won my bet the day that TV had been off air for 24 hours straight—Day 26, but of course, I never collected my bet.
I kept the chit though. I can always dream.
March 9 (later)
Chang again.
"No bread left,” I told her.
"Not here for food."
Oh yes, I thought, but she said, “I need to ask you something."
I didn't respond, but to my amazement, Chang picked up the other scraper and started stripping the wallpaper on the opposite wall. “What was Banteay Srey like?"
"Dancing elephants. I told you."
"No—when I went. What did I tell you. The other day."
I looked at her. “You've forgotten?"
"It's difficult,” she said, a little bashful, but only a little. “There are so many places to remember. We have to concentrate so hard to remember."
"Why don't you write it down then? Or sketch?"
"I can read a little,” she admitted. “But not write."
She said it without embarrassment, as if writing was as outlandish a skill as playing the tuba. Her fidgetiness got the better of her and the scraper clattered on the floor as she jaunted over to the couch. “And I guess you don't have the patience for art."
Wilson had said that the younger ones had given up on reading and writing. He'd kept a diary and a sketchbook somewhere private, but that was beyond a new generation which could barely remember a world before the change.
"Orange front, green awning,” I told her. “You and Delphine and all the other sweethearts carved into the bar."
"No, no. Can't imagine it like that. I need you to tell it to me—like a story. See—I tell you and you remember it for me and you can tell it back to me."
Why didn't it happen to me?
So we can tell you our stories, Abigail.
Then find someone else to listen to your little adventures, you freaks! I'm not your captive audience!
But I didn't snap at Chang the way I had at Wilson that last time. I didn't want to drive her away as well. I don't know why—maybe Mark's just not enough anymore.
Chang must have watched all of this on my face, and she jaunted from one side to the other to see if it was the same expression from both angles. “But you like stories? You like to hear them. You like to tell them. Yes?"
Abi, you should never have let her into your home. But after a while, I put down the scraper too. “There's a little bread left. You can have it."
March 10
"Where's the soup?"
"Story first."
Chang told me about someone in sub-Faster finding Polaroids of the southern island of the Galapagos in a garage in Anchorage. She described the giant turtles sinking into the mud and I could almost see their perpetual air of surprise and resignation as if I was there myself. What if they could jaunt? I imagined an alternate world where turtles moved faster than us. Turtles in my bathtub, turtles flying through the air, turtles chuckling.
"Your turn."
But before she could put in her request, I brought out the Ansel Adams. Chang frowned. “That's not one of my places."
"Trust me, you'll like it."
Reluctantly, she closed her eyes. I stretched my arms, filled my lungs and took in the view of the Half Dome—and she was away again.
March 11
It took a while to find it in my atlas. My breath caught, as we both closed our eyes, as Chang talked, and we were both watching the giant glacier at Moreno break into blue plaster, tumbling into the water below. I heard the long cracking noise that went on forever.
"Did you go up on the glacier?"
"No, Delphine wanted to play tag with Batchu. We lost them in Père Lachaise!” She pulled a photograph out of my album. “There. Please."
This is good. Chang's warming to the idea. So I described the bar in Ho Chi Minh City, but I was up on top of the glacier, looking for the source of that cracking.
March 11 (pm)
Poppies carpeting the fields on the road to the Dune de Pilat outside Bordeaux. “But did you go onto the Dune?"
Chang shrugged. This was nothing to her. I gritted my teeth—with this hip, I'll never go to France.
She wanted somewhere else with flowers, so I told her about a picture near Nijmegen I'd seen in one of the Craytown apartments—a windmill, an old church, a sea of tulips.
Nearly told her daffodils instead.
March 12 (am)
"Banteay Srey."
"You're kidding. I told you that on Saturday."
Chang knew my kitchen well enough to find the soup (plenty of it—Mark hasn't come back yet), which she started spooning cold right from the pot.
"What about Nijmegen? Aren't you going to tell me?"
"Hide and seek. Not much fun.” Something about the soup she didn't like, so Chang put it aside and began rummaging in the larder. “Delphine wants to drink those funny—you know."
"Pepsis."
"Yes!"
Bits of old wallpaper were all around me. Ignoring the pain in my hip, I was sweeping them into small piles and the small piles into larger piles and everything into something that was going to be thrown out. “But three days? I found a fantastic book on Madagascar last night. Lots of great pictures. You'll love it, they've got spider monkeys and—"
"No. Tired of new places. And anyway—I don't want to get lost."
No food—she slammed the cupboard door. “What do you mean lost?” I asked her.
Chang jaunted outside, then came back in again. “No more cabbages?"
"You said lost."
She jaunted upstairs for some reason—I could hear her rummaging for a few seconds—and then back to the couch. “Tribes are getting smaller. They're getting lost."
Part of me knew I shouldn't be pushing. She started jaunting around the front room faster and faster—Chang was scared.
But I thought: what I'd give to be scared like that.
"Well, maybe they're out exploring. And maybe you should be too."
"Why? Delphine wants to go to Banteay Srey."
I swept, she kicked her feet. The front room was barely big enough for the thunderstorm.
Then Chang did a thing she hadn't done before. She snapped her fingers. “Story! Banteay Srey!"
So I put on my straight face, which I do very well. And I told her the story. The stall with the front painted orange, the hanging green canvas. Can you feel the heat? I asked her. Can you hear the old laughter? Can you see the bar beneath your fingers? Fresh, unmarked wood, as if it had just been varnished.
Can you imagine what it would be like?
No thank you this time. Just—pop.
I'm looking at the walls now. Shouldn't take long to put the new strips of paper up. Sal promised he'd move up the trip to Parchers Crossing. Curtains on the window and I won't be bothered again.
Sal—
Uh oh.
That's today.
March 12 (afterwards)
Well, it hasn't changed.
The Memory Circle arrived all together, as if they can't trust themselves to be on their own—and to be honest, maybe that's why the numbers haven't gone down. The same gang as before—lovely Mona, the General and his ghostly wife, who hardly speaks and whose name I can never remember, Gunther, Pico, the rest. Sal, of course. No one had dropped out, not since Mona and I had that humdinger.
"I see you've made the effort, Abi."
I smiled and gave Mona a seat close to the biggest pile of wall droppings. “And how's the house, Mona? Lose anything valuable when the roof caved in? Your broken Game-Boy? What about that fantastic collection of DVDs you can't play?"
"At least some of us are working towards the future."
"By living in the past."
"Abi, Mona. Please."
Another of Sal's Judgement Day looks. I wanted to laugh, but I did want that wallpaper badly. I wanted to laugh at how they all looked as well. Carefully researched from old copies of Cosmo or Rolling Stone or whatever they used to read in the old days: Mona in black lace and kohl, the others in skater punk wear, crop tops and combats. I'd seen their homes—museum pieces they kept clean for visitors that never came. I felt like I'd dropped into that old movie where the apes had evolved and taken over the world and the only humans left worshipped vestiges of the past, artefacts that didn't make sense anymore.
And what if apes did rule the world? Or intelligent elephants and turtles? I wanted to close my eyes and imagine other worlds. But Sal wanted to talk about this one.
Sal got out the Book—his huge leatherbound bible, the Memory Circle's archive, every meeting meticulously written down. “We've talked a lot about our memories of the past over the last few months, keeping a record of how things used to be."
"And will be, again."
"That's right, Mona. One day. But there's one group of memories we've never talked about."
"The Rapture."
"The Last Day in November."
"When everything changed."
"Yes.” Sal opened the Book to the first blank page. “Pico, you want to start?"
Pico got out his bit of paper and read it out in his faltering, flat English. When he was done, he gave his paper to Sal for writing out in the Book later. They moved around the circle—Mona, the General. Mona had been on a freeway in Atlanta when dozens of cars suddenly swerved, driverless. The General was at a soccer game in Guatemala, when the goalie disappeared and the ball went into the back of the net—the crowd started cheering, until people realized only half of them were still there. The General's wife didn't know until the next day because she was out of it on heroin, when her mother had jaunted past her locked front and bedroom doors to see how she was doing. All incredible stories, but already I could see that their memories were covered in concrete, the details rehearsed, the punchlines the same. They'd be telling each other these stories for the next thirty years.
"Abi?"
"I'm looking forward to this."
"Be nice, Mona. Did you write something, Abi?"
"What, you think I keep a diary, Sal? Why would I bother?” That shut them all up. “OK. This is mine. I was giving Mark a bath at the time—not this place, but my old one over on Maine. Mark hated baths, and he was being a real pain in the ass that day. He was splashing water all over the bathroom, soaking me, and I was getting pretty pissed off. I remember looking at the sparkle of the water, and how the water looked on the Cam Ranh Bay coast."
I closed my eyes.
"And suddenly, my hands weren't just in the water, all of me was. Splashing around in the sea. The sun was overhead, not the light bulb, the bathtub was as big as the whole horizon, and Mark was gone—"
"Abi?"
"But fortunately, I could see the beach, so I swam towards the shore. Jesus, I can't tell you how good it felt to have sand under my toes—"
"I told you this would happen, Sal."
"Shut up, Mona. Abi—you can't jaunt."
"Course I can, Sal. Didn't you know?"
"She can jaunt?"
"She can lie. She's always ruining things."
"Abi, you're not one of them."
"No, I'm one of me, Sal. I can jaunt. I can go anywhere I want. I can leave anytime I want. I can—"
"You lied!"
And suddenly, right in the middle of our little circle of nostalgia, naked Chang appeared, six inches from my face and spitting fury. Chairs kicked back, cups of soup sprayed the walls, Sal dropped the Book, everyone yelled.
"Who is that?"
"Is she going to hurt us?"
Chang was so angry that she didn't notice them—which, given how jumpy visitors are, must have meant she was pretty damned angry.
"You lied to me."
"About what?"
"Banteay Srey. It wasn't—” She popped all around the room, unable to express how she felt, and members of the Memory Circle tried swatting at the fuzzy figure. “I can't remember. But it was different."
"You asked for a story."
"The bar! That was it. The bar was different. It was—new! But you were so convincing when you told me!"
I smiled, but I felt twinges down my right side.
"Everything was the same—but different,” Chang continued. “There were people all around, wearing clothes, but they couldn't—jaunt? And they looked at me as if they'd never seen anything like me in their life. They had—cameras? But they were pointing them as if they worked. And I was so frightened—I didn't want to be lost like the others. So I went to Père Lachaise but Delphine wasn't there and—I don't understand. Where was that?"
Sal was staring at her. He's got his blind spots, but he can be quick when he has to. “Not where. Not—where. That was from—before. I don't believe this. You travelled back in time."
He picked up his big, useless book. “Or at least, sideways."
So—parallel worlds after all. I win, Wilson.
Chang was in front of me again. “But I could have been lost!” she yelled.
"Lost? Lost? You should get down on your knees and thank God or random cosmic chance that you know how to get lost!"
She backed away from me. I remember looking around—they were all backing away from me. “I get into my bed every night and I worry about whether my Jet Stars are going to fail this year and maybe there really are gangs of killers loose in the countryside and what's going to happen to me if my hip gets worse. And I close my eyes, and I think, I beg myself, let me get lost. And I dream of all the places in the world I could get lost in, and when I've gone through all of them, I make up new places beyond the world I can get lost in."
I was on my feet. The room was just too damned small with all these people looking for shelter. “You can sit around here remembering the good old days. You can find somewhere neat and comfortable and go there again and again. Or you can get lost. Just like Mark. Just like my son."
"Her son? What's she talking about, Sal?"
"An old story, Mona. Abi—Mark's not—That first time, that first time for everyone—he never came back, did he?"
I was having trouble breathing, so I walked out of the room, the house, ignoring the Chieftains under my feet, the cramp in my hip, and I was running as hard as I could. But eventually the pain was so sharp that the tears were all over my face, and I thought, they'll think that I'm crying for little baby Mark or poor poor pitiful me, and I'm not, it just hurts. It just hurts.
But I felt a hand against my face and it was Chang's. “Tell me a story."
"I don't know anymore.” It just sounded like a whimper.
She whispered in my ear. “Yes, you do."
September 23
The pumpkins are coming along nicely. Another few weeks and the house will be heaving with the big orange balls—just as well, since I promised Mayor Santos I'd make the pies for his new Halloween festival.
Chang came by later while I was finishing the last touches of painting along the ceiling—she'd brought Delphine, so I was a little stiff with them at first. I'm still not used to the company. But they shouted “Let us help!” so eagerly and they were so excited by everything, that I couldn't not give brushes to them.
"So—tell me."
"The turtles were great, Abi!” Chang babbled, and I tried not to worry about their paint splatters ruining the wallpaper below. Oh well—an excuse for another adventure up to Parchers Crossing. “Whole formations of them—the shadows on the ground were huge!"
"But all that shit falling out of the sky.” Delphine made a face. “And the smell."
So they want their worlds to smell of roses every time? But I hold my tongue and just put out plates for the two of them.
"But it's just a story,” Delphine continued. “It's not real."
I remembered Sal's latest theory—he spins them all the time down at the farmers market, where he'll argue with any visitor who drops by, but I liked this one. Every time someone jaunts, our universe tries to accommodate. But if it can't, a new one will appear, summoned from all possibilities.
So jaunting's creating worlds? I asked him.
No, Abi—your stories are.
"They've always been real to me,” I said and served the stew. When we were done, I brought out the cake and asked them to help me blow out the candle.
"Whose birthday is it?” Delphine asked.
I didn't say, but Chang knew. After they did the washing up, she found me on the couch and kissed my forehead. For once, I didn't shy away.
"What's that for?"
"That's your gift to him,” she said. “I'll kiss his forehead for you. Just tell me when."
I closed my eyes and told her a story.
Stories by Philip Raines and Harvey Welles have also appeared in Albedo One, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, New Genre, On Spec and two recent anthologies, Nova Scotia (modern Scottish stories of the fantastic, edited by Neil Williamson and Andrew Wilson) and Extended Play (stories about music, edited by Gary Couzens). Stories have appeared in successive editions of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (edited by Ellen Datlow, Gavin Grant and Kelly Link) and have won the UK's Bridport Prize for Best Short Story. Philip Raines is a member of the Glasgow Science Fiction Writers Circle.
Tesseracts Ten, edited Robert Charles Wilson and Edo van Belkom, Edge, 2006, 301 pp.
I went through a phase a few years ago of reading Canadian science fiction and fantasy obsessively. This phase was a necessary corrective to the idea that nothing good was coming out of the frozen north, at least in terms of speculative fiction. So science fiction is an expression of American exuberance (or something)? It appealed to my perverse side to find out just how well Canadians were doing in this stereotypically American genre. I took a break after a few years—focusing on one thing for too long is an easy way to get fed up with it—and now I'd like to come back home with a column suitably titled “The Latest in Canadian SF.” What has been happening up here in the last few years? I'll be looking at the most recent novels by four Canadian writers to answer that question.
But an even better way to take a survey of the state of affairs in Canadian genre fiction is to look at Tesseracts Ten. Editor Judith Merril started up the Tesseracts series in 1985, with a collection that had the express intent of showcasing and proving the worth of Canadian material. The series has continued strongly over the next 22 years, and this is actually the eleventh entry, with TesseractsQ as a side entry that focused on French-Canadian stories. The series ran for many years under the imprint of Tesseract Books, with Tesseracts 8 being the last item from them (and quite a worthy entry). Edge Books picked up the series with Tesseracts 9, and here we are with number 10. As before, two editors, most often working writers, get together and select stories from original submitted works.
So what does this collection look like? And what can it tell us about Canadian genre fiction?
The best story this time around is clearly Matthew Hughes’ “Go Tell the Phoenicians.” The story is a bit heavy on the exposition at the top, but the setup is worth it. Earth's civilization has spread through the galaxy, and it's a repressive one—as Hughes puts in a memorable phrase, it's a combination of “multinational corporations and tyrannical regimes” (159). It's like all the worst aspects of colonial times, with the science fiction twist that only humans have discovered interstellar travel and they're keeping it a huge secret. Endless exploitation follows, as only the Bureau of Offworld Trade could do—and it's certainly a wonderful acronym!
Into this setting comes a protagonist, Kandler, who is an exo-sociologist, and mostly filled with self-loathing because the only way he'll get to practice his knowledge is as a BOOT functionary, thus opening up new planets to BOOT “trade". So there are two things going on here, both of which Hughes has to get right: the puzzle of a new alien race and their culture, and then the question of how Kandler will resolve the situation. I feel a bit odd cheering on the stick-it-to-the-humans ending, but BOOT is a hissworthy villain if there ever was one. And the story plays on so many different SF ideas that it's a marvel that Hughes can pull it off.
Another memorable story, “Puss Reboots” by Stephanie Bedwell-Grime, is a somewhat unusual thing for an anthology of Canadian speculative fiction: it's a story set in space with strong leanings towards standard science fiction, with a computer/culture twist. Life in space is hard, but made much livelier (i.e., more difficult) by sexy androids, the mechanical cat of the title that's not quite what it seems, and a seriously down-and-out group of workers who are just trying to survive. Bedwell-Grime uses a light tone, but just like the story by Hughes, we have a hostile workplace as a form of antagonist. That's less the case here, but the similarities are remarkable.
Scott Mackay contributes two stories, “The Threshold of Perception” and “The Girl from Ipanema.” In the first story, an astronomer named Monsieur Marcotte argues with Percival Lowell about the existence of canals on Mars. Then when Lowell makes a claim that the Halley's Comet of 1910 has altered its course and is now heading directly for Earth, Marcotte does not immediately believe him. The story ends on an unusual note. The second story takes us into the viewpoint of an AI learning how to escape into the “real world” from the prison of a funding cut at a laboratory. Solidly assembled, but a bit standard in narrative.
Allen Moore's “Donovan's Brain” runs with a similar theme as “The Girl from Ipanema” but instead of a look from the inside, we are looking at the same development from the outside. What would a benevolent AI look like? How would it treat us normal humans? The story ends with what might be a dry historical piece—someone from the future looks back at the development of Donovan's Brain—but it's chilling, absolutely chilling, in its implications. A standard cautionary note perhaps, but with a nifty twist.
I liked Matthew Johnson's “Closing Time.” It's a tale of ghosts and Chinese cooking. Made my mouth water! It stands out as the one major story in the collection that doesn't try to riff off of standard SF ideas.
Quite a few of the other stories take standard sci-fi set pieces and try to do something new with them, with not as much success. “Women are from Mars, Men are from Venus” by Michele Laframboise (and translated by Sheryl Curtis) takes the title literally, but doesn't seem to get very far. “The Intruder” by Lisa Smedman seems very Tiptree-esque to me—a small creature on another planet sees a weird biped land on the surface. How to drive off such an intruder? Fine, but it's been done.
Tesseracts Ten has a number of mood pieces, some more successful than others. For instance, “Permission” by Mark Dachuk is one of the weirdest leaving-Earth stories I've ever read. Very compelling, very intriguing. I don't even know how to summarize it, since it seems so ordinary yet it still has a clear/sinister edge of surrealism. The story that follows directly after it, “Summer Silk” by Rhea Rose, aspires to be a mood piece of the horror variety, as a mother's instinct gets altered into a less nurturing version of itself. It's passable, but not compelling.
Other mood pieces include “Au pays du merveilles” by Wendy Warring, a look at a futuristic society without books, “The Undoing” Sarah Totton, a grim story about a doctor who works in a disciplinary system that destroys prisoners physically, and “Angel of Death” by Susan Forest, a futuristic death match entertainment satire.
Tesseracts Ten also has stories by Greg Bechtel, Victoria Fisher, Yvonne Provonost, and Rene Beaulieu, and poetry by Sandra Kasturi, Jason Christie, and Nancy Bennett.
Robert Charles Wilson provides an interesting introduction, “A Nervous Look Down a Dark Road,” and Edo van Belkom concludes the book with a summary called “Canadian SF Comes of Age."
Overall, I found Tesseracts Ten to be slightly disappointing. The book provides a handful of strong stories, but the rest are too familiar in concept and tone and don't do enough to break free of that familiarity. I hope this is not representative of the latest wave of Canadian writing—let's move on and examine the evidence.
Widdershins, Charles de Lint, Tor, 2006, 560 pp.
The world of Newford has been in the telling for close to 20 years, just a few years less than the Tesseracts series. De Lint has put out over 20 novels and short story collections about Newford, and part of each Newford book is about dealing with the past. Although it's less than you might think. There is indeed the weight of what we know of the past, but since Newford has such a large cast of characters, de Lint can mix things up by moving his focus from one protagonist to another.
Widdershins is a bit unusual, in that de Lint returns to the same main character as he used in The Onion Girl. Jilly Coppercorn, one of the central figures in this imagined world, already had a pretty rough time of it—as de Lint himself puts it in the Author's Note that opens the book: “Let's face it, you can't have a novel without some drama and hardship in the lives of its principal characters, and I didn't want to have to put her through the wringer yet again” (11).
But he gamely does so, and Widdershins is the result. Jilly in fact goes through more than the wringer, she goes back to her childhood. That's not such a good thing, considering what she endured at that time.
Many of the characters in Newford are recovering from problems in their past. In Jilly's case, it was an abusive older brother (as well as a local priest, but the brother was the worst of it). At the time, Jilly would imagine another world and a character in it who was the one this was all happening to. Through magic of considerable power, this place became real in the otherworld (as we have seen happen with other people's imagination in previous Newford novels). Sure enough, Jilly now lands in this world, where the evil Del is once more in charge and she is powerless. It presents some grim reading. Will Jilly bring some of her maturity and the confidence that she has painstakingly accumulated over the years to the situation? Despite the fact that she is immersed in her worst nightmare?
Widdershins has another major storyline running through it—Jilly gets tangled up in it near the beginning, but is soon off in the world of her own making. The book starts with a musician named Lizzie and an encounter on a lonely crossroads. Lizzie doesn't know about fairies or the otherworld or any of the other things that have been happening to so many people in Newford through the last 20 years. But she stumbles into a feud between the fairies who live in urban areas and the cousins, the animal spirits who were pushed out of their own territories when the fairies came over the ocean with the Europeans. Some bogans, the most mean-spirited of the fairies, have killed a deer princess, Anwatan. Lizzie stumbles on the aftermath.
Now, Lizzie doesn't know anything about this, and barely escapes with her life. She and the other members of her band can hardly believe what they have gotten into, and there's at least one serious injury before they manage to get some help.
It's quite difficult to summarize this part of the plot, because de Lint piles on the narrative complications. Soon it seems like every major magical entity on both the side of the fairies and the side of the cousins is involved. There's a showdown between the multitude of spirits of murdered buffalo and the fairies who were there when it happened. There's a longstanding feud between two cousins, Joe Crazy Dog and Odawa, a blind salmon spirit. The book might be nearly 600 pages, but the story is always hopping.
I really liked the storyline of Rabedy, a bogan who doesn't fit in with his bloody-minded brethren. It's kind of sweet—a story of someone who finds his own courage to do right, even though he was present when an awful wrong was done. The memory of the slaughter of Anwatan haunts him. As a new protector says to him at the end of the story: “And now you have to carry the weight of not stepping up. But the memory of what you didn't do can be the strength that lets you do the right thing, the next time you see somebody about to get hurt” (522). Rabedy is not the only character who gets a second chance here, and most of it is due to the wisdom and compassion of the protagonists. If you like your fantasy bloody and filled with vengeance, this is not the book for you. Like some of the most interesting stories, de Lint tries to figure out how differences that would be mortal and gruesomely resolved in another book are dealt with gracefully.
And in terms of long-standing Newford characters, there's also Geordie Riddell. In his Author's Note, de Lint mentions that Newford fans were curious to hear what would happen between Jilly and Geordie, considering their long history and some hints that have been dropped in previous books. They spend most of the story apart! But that's maybe the way of romances—Jilly in particular has to sort out some personal history before she can be ready for anything else.
Newford is still alive in this latest book by Charles de Lint. I liked the way the book came together, and I especially admired the elements of conflict resolution that showed de Lint cares about keeping the story interesting with drama and confrontation, but then sorting and resolving the drama in an inspiring manner. But I also felt the weight of what has come before—it takes me a while to get into a Newford book, even though the opposite should be true. Sometimes I like a little novelty. I wish Newford fans and de Lint all the best, and I'll drop in and visit when I can.
The New Moon's Arms, Nalo Hopkinson, Warner, 2007, 323 pp.
The New Moon's Arms, Nalo Hopkinson's latest novel, takes place on a fictional Caribbean island group called Cayaba and features some extraordinary events that happen in the life of an ordinary woman. These two concerns—Caribbean culture, the influence of the extraordinary on a sympathetic protagonist—carry forward from Hopkinson's earlier work. From a young mother trying to survive on the streets of a dystopian Toronto in Brown Girl in the Ring to the nanotech utopia of a Caribbean-settled planet in Midnight Robber to the patchwork of historical episodes assembled in The Salt Roads, Hopkinson has taken the speculative genre to a new stop in each book. The New Moon's Arms feels closest to The Salt Roads in its explicit Caribbean setting, but the latest book takes a fresh angle on any familiar concerns by grounding itself resolutely in the present day. There are a few exceptions to spice up the storyline, reaching back into history to add some depth to the but The New Moon's Arms is definitely a story of today.
Hopkinson does most of the grounding through the protagonist, and this book is a character portrait, through and through. The central figure of Calamity Lambkin supplies most of the narrative energy of the book—Calamity is perverse, profane, and quite prickly. She keeps everyone around her hopping, even though these traits don't make life any easier for her.
The book opens with the funeral of Calamity's father. He died after a 2-year illness; Calamity cared for him throughout his sickness, but the father and daughter were estranged for many years previous to that. Calamity was a teen mother, part of the reason for the break between the two, a situation made worse by the disappearance of Calamity's mother right around the same time. Based on such events in her life, Calamity recently changed her name from what it used to be—Chastity. It's a telling detail, and one that suits what we come to know of her as protagonist.
I appreciate a prickly character who doesn't care too much about what other people think and speaks her mind. This is not always successful in Calamity's case and it makes her relationships difficult. Calamity's homophobia is the centre of some of the book's most uncomfortable scenes, since she tells off at least two of the gay/bisexual men in her life. Not the most fun way to get through your day.
Two impulses are driving Calamity's life, in addition to the events in her past that have lingering psychological effects. Firstly, as she is going through menopause, she has discovered that she gets unusual hot flashes, intense and disturbing, that have the power to bring back physical objects from the past. It's an interesting way to literalize the concerns of her stage in life: her father has died, so she's going back and thinking about and summarizing their relationship. And literal reminders of how things used to be are dropping out of the sky. She can't help but be reminded.
The other big impulse in her life happens when she discovers an injured boy washed up on the beach. She names him Agway and tries to take him in. But she's in her fifties, pretty much broke, and she has hardly any social capital with the family and friends around her who might be able to pitch in and help. She regains a friendship with Evelyn, a childhood tormentor who is now a doctor, but even Evelyn's help doesn't seem enough. Calamity is brave, and I admired her anger at the way she is treated as old (at one point, her daughter calls her a matriarch, which causes no small amount of grief) and poor.
There is a mystery about Agway—he seems to be from a sea-people family. Calamity has memories of meeting a young girl on the beach who had intriguingly marine characteristics, and there are some hints that her own mother had mysterious oceanic origins (although Hopkinson seems to drop that storyline later in the book). The history of the sea-people comes through in little vignettes all along the way, and this is where a slight flavour of the historical interludes of The Salt Roads is present. Where might such creatures have come from? Why might they be in the Caribbean?
Hopkinson tells a sly story of politics on the side. While the Caribbean islands of Cayaba in The New Moon's Arms are fictional, the politics of Cayaba feel very realistic. There's a conflict between the investment of a big factory and American tourists vs. what is happening to the wildlife around the islands and to the lives of the regular people who live there. We often get to know people and see their lives before we see how they fit into the political structure—some nice surprises there, since our sympathy is spread around in interesting directions. And there's an opposition politician who seems to be saying all the right things, but she swoops in and uses Calamity as a prop into a photo opportunity in a scene that's devastatingly funny.
I generally liked The New Moon's Arms, and I admire Hopkinson's ability to change up her style and try fresh approaches while keeping the same core concerns in place. But experimenting inevitably leads to less than optimal results, especially if you are attempting something risky and new. Hopkinson simply does not settle down and crank out the same regurgitated material, which puts her in a very elite group of writers. The flip side of course is that sometimes the result might not gel completely, and that's my impression of The New Moon's Arms—something new and interesting that doesn't quite have all its bits working in alignment. I liked Calamity and her story, but I was underwhelmed by the book as a whole. That said, I'm looking forward to Hopkinson's next project, as always.
Sun of Suns, Karl Schroeder, Tor, 2006, 318 pp.
Karl Schroeder's Sun of Suns is a tour-de-force—no matter which way you approach the book, Schroeder has the angle covered. Sure, there are a few slip-ups here and there, but overall Sun of Suns delivers. The book takes two strong trends in science fiction—the big dumb object in space, a la Ringworld, and the much more recent trend of neo-pulp—and mashes them together with a higher degree of elegance than should be possible. There have been quite a few other recent pulp revival projects, but Schroeder manages to maintain a lot of the hard-won wisdom from the intervening decades since the era of swashbuckling space pirates and princesses on Mars and so forth. That wisdom means that the story is put together smoothly, the writing is undeniably tight and wondrous at once, and the characters—well, the characters might be the one drawback, but they are certainly perfectly serviceable. So, most of the advantages of well-written, high-falutin’ literary SF, mixed with zero-g battles, lost civilizations, epic confrontations, and non-stop action.
Schroeder's secret weapon is that his exposition has only gotten better over the years, and in this case the exposition is matched with a nifty piece of world-building. The setting gives the book a great deal of its confidence: we are thrown into a world that seems to be zero-gravity mixed with a regular breathable atmosphere, and it's not until page 83, and a considerable amount of action, that we learn the world's exact nature, this from a character who has come from outside of it and has some perspective.
The world of Virga, as its called, is essentially a giant gas balloon, over five thousand miles in diameter, with an artificial sun at its centre—everything follows from this proposition, and any further details are always integrated into the flow of the story. So there's a lump of exposition to satisfy the curiosity of those who want to know at the book's quarter point. The other main item, just a few pages later, that lets the reader in on the secret of the world is a virtuoso passage that follows a bullet, fired in one location, all the way along its travels until an inevitable intersection with a person. It's like all that footage of people shooting into the air on the eleven o'clock news: the practice is dangerous enough on our world, but in Virga, it's positively deadly. And with this amount of action, it's going to be happening to other people too.
That stuff is almost all background, thankfully. Schroeder gets the big picture stuff note-perfect, but he also focuses on telling a story, in the best pulp tradition. So we have a hero, and the book rests on the capable shoulders of Hayden Griffin. The book opens with an attack on his town, Aerie, that wipes out of most of what he holds dear. The story picks up again a few years later: he has infiltrated the ships of the navy (so to speak) that blew up Aerie, ships belonging to a nation called Slipstream. But he is all-too-human and once he gets to know the ordinary Slipstreamers, he realizes that they are only human too. Is this enough for him to forget his vengeance? Maybe.
Slipstream, meanwhile, is facing an even bigger threat, and the Slipstream admiral, Chaison Fanning, and his wife, Venera Fanning, have planned an only-slightly-insane escapade that will give Slipstream an advantage in the coming conflict. The escapade functions partly as a tour of some the more interesting locales in Virga. Schroeder has all the possible Virgan variations worked out, and maximizes the sense of wonder with each episode. I particularly liked the escape from a principality in Candesce (the closest area to the sun that's livable) that is trying to keep them in town. I also liked the sargasso expedition: there's an area of Virga where a giant fire destroyed a civilization. No air circulates through the burned mass, and all the oxygen is gone, making it very dangerous.
But this particular expedition, which takes up the bulk of the storyline, exposes one weak spot in the book: the motivations of the main character. Now, I understand that Hayden is not a stereotypical hero, and I liked the fact that his motive of vengeance was not as pure and sociopathic as, say, an action movie hero. But I was never entirely convinced as to why he would go along with the Slipstream expedition—the book piles on the explanations, this way and that, and it's a case of protesting too much. If his decision has been a logical one, Schroeder would not have had to expend so much narrative energy defending it.
Two other characters make an impression: Venera Fanning, a strong, capable woman who is determined to make the most of her political marriage to the admiral, and Aubri Mahallon, a woman who comes from outside of Virga. Venera's plans and secret knowledge drive all of the actions of the Slipstream fleet, and she's a forceful presence at all of the key moments in the book, just as much as Hayden. In a more simplistic book, she would form the opposing binary of the protagonist/antagonist split, against Hayden. But Schroeder treats Venera's deviousness (and occasional bursts of murderousness) with an unusual dryness, as if she is only a logical outcropping of the social structures around her. More on that in a minute.
Aubri is an enigma for most of Sun of Suns, for the very good reason that she has some kind of chip or trigger implanted in her head and she simply cannot reveal her mission. She was exiled into Virga by the world outside, which is controlled by a culture called Artificial Nature. I won't say more about Aubri or Artificial Nature, but it's worth noting that her background is part of a lineage in science fiction where an advanced culture loses track of reality and becomes enervated and essentially self-destructive. See Greg Egan's Diaspora, Charles Stross’ Accelerando, and Schroeder's own Lady of Mazes.
The front cover proclaims this Book One of Virga. Virga is a very promising setting, so Schroeder can go in any number of directions with this. Especially since the first adventure is largely self-contained: some of the characters get away, some battles happen, but the main storylines are wrapped up. The immediate sequel, Queen of Candesce, is on bookshelves soon—Schroeder has been busy—and it follows the adventures of Venera Fanning. A ruthless pragmatician like Venera has already shown that she can tear through the pseudo-medieval power structure of Virga like nothing, so this promises to be an equally interesting and exciting book, with a definitive shift in tone. The bar is set quite high!
Blindsight, Peter Watts, Tor, 2006, 384 pp.
I guess the easiest way to describe Blindsight, the latest novel by Peter Watts, is to say that it's the exact opposite in nearly every way from Widdershins. De Lint tries to offer reassurance that things can work out and that there's hope, and also tries to give us some very familiar characters to spend some time with. Whoo boy, Watts has no patience with anything like that. The universe doesn't hate us, per se—more that life exists in an impersonal universe and the more we can comprehend that, the easier it is to deal. And as for characters, Watts pushes that as far as it might be possible to go in the direction of unfamiliarity. The antagonists have approximately zero similarity to human intelligence (not to reveal any big secrets!) and the narrator has had half of his brain removed, which means that a main challenge in understanding the book is to figure out how far away from human the narrator actually is.
Ironically, a lot of the plot seems like window-dressing, and the book itself rests on its characterization. Yes, the characters are not familiar, but I find when I'm thinking about the book, I have a one-line summary of the plot, but that the list of characters is where Watts has focused his energy. In a weird way, it entirely serves Watts’ point to locate the scientific and philosophical speculation within the fleshy bodies of the protagonists.
The plot, then, briefly, before moving on to the characters. There's another big dumb object, but in this case, it's an alien spaceship heading towards Earth, possibly with hostile intentions. An existing space mission is diverted to investigate. Hilarity doesn't ensue. In fact, first contact is when the deaths start.
As I mentioned, Blindsight is narrated by someone with half a brain: Siri Keeton had the medical procedure done as a child to save him from a form of epilepsy. He is alive, quantifiably, but is he part of society in any meaningful way? We get some flashbacks to his previous life experiences, including a relationship that he messes up spectacularly. But he simply doesn't have the ability to act “human"—he's modelling the processes of socialization and empathy with whatever got stuck in the empty half of his skull. If we consider this as a literalization of the way that we are alienated from each other, it's cheeky and devastating in equal measures, and Watts plays it to the logical extremes. A finely judged literary performance, but still one that repels as much as it attracts.
Four other characters are on the ship, none of them particularly human. There's a soldier named Amanda Bates who has her mind pretty much distributed through drones and other military devices. There's a scientist named Isaac Szpindel who is also augmented through mechanical and technological means. A linguist named Susan James has a brain that has been tampered with just as severely as Siri's brain, but this time for the functional purpose of splitting hers into four separate personalities. Supposedly it helps her on the job.
The fourth character is the ostensible captain, Jukka Sarasti. He's a form of human that has been brought back from extinction—the vampire. Watts has fun with this one, but he never cracks a smile. This is no pop culture cheesefest or romance novel wannabe, like most manifestations of the vampire in television or books. The captain is the least squeamish and sentimental of the bunch, which is a hard feat to pull off, and just because the other crew members see how he is pushing them around like pawns on the board doesn't mean they can do anything about it.
So a narrator that demonstrates to us the futility of human contact (or human contact as a taunt of the cold impersonal universe just before random events squish us all like ants), a crew that has desperately thrown humanity aside and still discovers that the gesture is not enough, and a first contact scenario that goes further to define our very small status in the ultimate order of things ... Apparently we are an unfortunate detour in the process of evolution—lovely stuff!
Having said all that, I have a great deal of admiration for Watts. He has the courage of his convictions, and he doesn't back down. His voice is always consistent, always taking the presuppositions that the rest of us pay lip service to, and taking them to their logical conclusions. If science fiction sometimes succumbs to happy myths to make things easier for the reader, Watts has no patience for that crap. However, I'm not sure if I could handle it if every writer was like Watts! It's a noble thought experiment, this book, and science fiction is clearly his home, but we all still have to get through our days somehow. That's why I like a diversity of books, like this most recent batch of Canadian volumes.
James Schellenberg lives and writes in Ottawa.
Rarely do any of us sit down before a table of facts, weigh them pro and con, and choose the most logical and rational belief, regardless of what we previously believed. Instead, the facts of the world come to us through the colored filters of the theories, hypotheses, hunches, biases, and prejudices we have accumulated through our lifetime. We then sort through the body of data and select those most confirming what we already believe, and ignore or rationalize away those that are disconfirming.
—Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things
"Are you ready, dear?” said Bae, dressed in her priestess robe of red, white and grey feathers, as she entered Freya's room. She found Freya seated on the edge of the stone bench that was also her bed, so worn in the middle by centuries of sleeping girls that it more resembled a bowl.
Freya exhaled loudly. “Yes. No. Yes."
Bae laughed. “You sound like I did. Come on then."
"Wait,” Freya said. Her voice was loud and strained. “Wait—how do I—how do I do this?"
Bae smiled gently. “You'll know when the time comes."
Freya's stomach clenched and cramped, and her head felt curiously light, as if it were detached from her body. The sharp light angling steeply through the high narrow window in the stone wall made everything seem queer this morning, slightly off. “What if I fall?"
Bae came forward and put a hand on her shoulder, then sat beside her and gave her a hug. “We are all scared at our flying ceremonies. I was."
"Is there something—should I—am I supposed to drink something?"
"What, like a magic potion?” Bae laughed. “No, dear girl; it's time to go. They'll be waiting."
Freya rose and followed Bae from the room and down stone hallways rutted by centuries of feet, lit by flickering sconces, and scented by ages of smoke and incense—a scent so familiar she no longer noticed it. They walked up the stone stairs, the centre as sloped and smooth as a ramp. Freya put a hand to the wall to steady herself. Bae led her through the double stone doors to the entrance of the labyrinth, a maze of sumac, maple and shrubs that almost looked like a forest from the outside. Branches intertwined several feet above their heads, but the paths and walls were as smooth and well maintained as stone, though here and there fresh green shoots showed where new branches were likely to grow across the path. Robins and finches sang and their wings flapped loudly above them, hidden in the trees, but their own steps were noiseless on the sandy soil. She saw the impossibly small, spotted blue shell of a robin's egg and stopped to get it.
"We can't stop, my dear,” said Bae, still walking.
"I'm sorry.” Frey hurried to catch up. “May we speak?"
"Yes."
"May I ask you questions?"
"Yes, but I might not be able to answer them."
Freya followed silently for a minute. “I don't know how to fly."
"You will."
"But what if I don't?"
Bae did not reply—the answer was obvious: She would die.
"Can't someone tell me?"
Bae sighed. “No, dear; if you don't see to the heart of this mystery yourself, you will fall."
Freya's hands balled into fists; she relaxed them. “I saw—two year's ago, I saw Scarlet.” Scarlet had been her best friend Surilyn's older sister, third eldest in a house full of girls. Their mother, a hard and angular woman named Ada, unable to provide a living for them all, had sent Scarlet to join the Huntress’ Order in the hopes of eventually gaining influence with the Queens. It had been an open secret that Scarlet had not wanted to join, but had followed her mothers’ ambitions. Ada had repented bitterly since then, and blamed the Temple for what followed. “It's all politics,” she'd spit whenever given the chance. “They knew my Scarlet would be Head Priestess one day, and couldn't stand to have a mere merchant's daughter in the post. Oh no!"
"That was a great tragedy,” said Bae.
"Scarlet's mother had a feast laid out,” Freya said. “Sponge cakes, ice wine, peaches, pastries. We were all there, eating and drinking and laughing, waiting for her to fly. And then she didn't.” Freya remembered Scarlet climbing the steps of the Temple, a distant small figure in a blue robe trimmed with black feathers. She jumped quickly and fell too fast; Freya would never forget Surilyn's sharp indrawn breath or Ada's agonized cry, how she had fallen to her knees in the street, as they watched Scarlet fall, her blue robe snapping around her. When Ada heard that Freya was planning on joining the Order, she sent a grim card of mourning to Freya's mother. “In deepest sorrow on your daughter's death,” it had read. Freya's mother had laughed and shrugged it off, though she was obviously uncomfortable.
"Why did Scarlet have a Flying Ceremony if she wasn't Called?” Freya asked.
"She was Called."
Freya stumbled on a slightly exposed tree root. “But if she was Called, why did the Goddess let her fall?"
"The Goddess didn't let her fall."
"I don't understand."
Bae said nothing. Freya shivered in the shady heat. “Do we have much farther to go?"
"No."
Her heart jumped. “I'm not ready.” Her voice was too fast.
"You will have all the time you need at the top."
They walked on in silence, until at last they left the labyrinth. Before them the broad old granite stairs of the pyramid angled sharply up. Freya gasped—it did not look this steep or high from beyond the Temple grounds. Bae walked inexorably on and began to climb the stairs. Freya followed.
The Temple was built in two parts: the underground, which had been carved into the granite bedrock, was where the initiates and novices lived. There was no way to wire it with electricity, or to put in pipes for plumbing, so one lived in it almost exactly as initiates had thousands of years ago. Most people were unaware of the existence of this ancient stone warren—they knew only of the granite, sodalite and quartz pyramid built on top.
The visible Temple, the pyramid, was immense and nearly as ancient as the stone caverns and hallways underneath it. Its base was broad and the slope shallow, which was why it looked less tall from beyond the temple's generous overgrown grounds. However, it was nearly as tall as one of the newer skyscrapers, almost twenty stories, and built within of grey granite with sculptures and facings of sodalite and windows of quartz. When Freya was a young girl, she had watched the priestesses step from their windows and float up or down. The pyramid had seemed like a distant mountain with feathered dragons flitting about it all day and night, the quartz catching the sun.
There were hundreds of gods and goddesses worshipped in the city, and each Order had its own power—a gift bestowed by its deity. But none of them seemed to Freya as magical as flight, not even the fire-dancers of the Love God. Back in her comfortable feather bed in her mother's mansion she had often drifted off to sleep, wondering what flight was like—floating, like a leaf? Flying, like a bird? Or like an insect? Drifting like dust motes?
At the moment, trudging up the side of the pyramid like an ant up a mountain, it felt like none of these. The sky was an oven; the sun baked Freya's shoulders through the thin cotton of her dress. Her breath came in short gasps. Sweat ran down her face and made tracks in the silvery powder. “Bae, I think maybe ... we should have had ... some lessons ... in stair-climbing."
Bae laughed shortly. “I thought so too. But after ... my Ceremony ... I never climbed again ... Well, except ... for others’ Ceremonies."
Each step was broad and took three steps to cover; Freya fell into a patterned gait, step-step-step-stair, and it began to feel as if it would never end. She almost hoped it wouldn't, this day she had waited for her whole life—the day she would become a priestess, or die. The day she had had to beg her mother for, plead with her father for, and defend herself against her whole family for.
Well, not her whole family. Her younger brothers Second and Third had been excited. Third, only ten years old, would come into her room and bounce on the bed. “It's thirty days until you leave,” he'd say. “Do you think Mum will let me take your room over?” Second would roll his eyes. “I'll get it,” he'd say. “I'm older than you.” Then they'd have a passionate discussion about whether the lack of any male High Priest was really because the Huntress never called men to it, or if there were politics at play, until at last Freya would become so agitated that she'd shoo them both from her room. “I have to pack, you know,” she'd say. “And for goddess’ sake stop listening so much to your brother!"
First thought she was a damned fool and made no secret of it. There she was, young, attractive and wealthy; the pick of all the available young men of the city were hers for dalliances or for life, and a position of power and wealth was hers for the taking at the helm of the family business. And she was going to throw it away. “For what?” he'd ask her. “For a few cushions on a stone bed. For a life in a cave. For delusions—you know they're delusions! It's all politics, that's all it is."
Her mouth set in a thin line, she'd say, “It's not politics to me, First. I feel the Call. This is what I've always wanted. I don't want wealth, power and pretty young boys. I want truth and meaning."
"Truth and meaning! You'll get drudgery and poverty, and you'll get tired of it pretty fast."
"Well, maybe you would,” she'd said, the conviction in her voice much stronger than her feelings. “I don't expect anything else from a man twenty-two and still without a name of his own. Not that anyone's surprised, with the size of the chip on your shoulder."
I do want truth and meaning, she thought, climbing up this interminable staircase. I don't know what they are, but I want them. Except that I have to know how to fly, and I don't; what made me think I could do this? Panic grabbed her. She began to shake and cry; their heavy breathing masked the sound, but she knew her tears were destroying what was left of her face powder. Some priestess. She breathed deeply. I won't cry. I've waited my whole life for this.
At last they reached the broad platform at the summit of the pyramid, where the High Priestess stood waiting by a silver bowl on a pedestal, holding a feathered cloth. Freya walked to her, and the High Priestess washed her face and hands. At least now the last of the ruined face powder was gone. “May the Huntress bring you wings and glory."
"Thank you.” Freya's voice shook only a little.
From up here, the city seemed not only distant but vast, a sweltering mix of exhaust, horns, bicycles, shouts, the thrum of trains, the roar of trucks, the mansions and estates rising on hills to the north, and from horizon to horizon a jumble of streets, canals, houses, office buildings, schools, hospitals and temples—yet all somehow muted by distance.
She looked at the crowd in the square outside the public gate behind the pyramid, so small from up here. So small. Like mice. She could see her family standing beside a table set with sponge cakes, ice wine and other delicacies. Beside her mother were her two younger brothers, Second and Third, stuffing their mouths with sponge cake and sneaking surreptitious sips of ice wine when her mother wasn't looking. On her other side, with his arms crossed over his chest and a rigid posture she could see clearly even from so far away, stood her elder brother First.
The Temple's visible portion, the pyramid, was not one single building but two; as if it had been split in half at the widest point, and each segment moved about thirty feet apart. It was at this chasm between the buildings that initiates proved themselves by flying, and at which Freya now stood.
It was sheer on the inside, unlike the rough outer face, both sides covered in mica and decorated in silver, which caught the sunlight and reflected it back a thousand fold. At the bottom was the deep black pool that reflected the light of the moon when full, and was used by the priestesses for scrying when not. This was her first glimpse of it; only priests and priestesses could visit this inner heart of the grand old temple.
On the matching pavilion on the other side of the chasm stood the priests and priestesses waiting to welcome her into their ranks. They seemed impossibly far away. The breeze picked at her, blew through the folds in her robe and the feathers in her hair, and made her sway on her feet. The noise from the street reached her faintly. A street musician was playing a hymn, an old standard of sweet high dancing notes, picked out on a clarinet. She smiled.
Bae lit a stick of incense, which the wind blew away, and began to chant: “Here is Freya, who has walked through the labyrinth and climbed the Temple today, to join our Order as priestess."
The priests and priestesses on the other side of the chasm responded: “We see her."
"She has served as an initiate for two years, and served well."
"We know her."
"Today she has been called by Her whom we serve, the Huntress, to serve her all the days of her life."
"We hear it."
Bae turned to face Freya. “Those who the Goddess loves can fly, as the moon does. Those who the Huntress loves can fly, as the hawks, the owls and eagles do. We will know that you have truly been Called to serve Her whom we serve, Freya, when you fly from here. If you have not been Called, then to be here and see the black pool below is blasphemy, punishable by death."
Freya's heart began to pound so loudly in her chest that she could see the beads bouncing on the front of her dress. Her breath came fast and shallow; she felt dizzy. I was wrong, she wanted to say. I can't do this. I can't fly. Let me go down. The breeze came again, strengthened, and Freya felt sick.
After a few minutes, her training took over, and she began to breathe deeply and cleanly; the panic lessened and she opened her eyes. Beyond the priests and priestesses flew a flock of gulls, calling to each other, dipping and rising, soaring and falling. Freya lost herself watching their dance. How easy it was for these favoured little creatures. Even insects could fly; a butterfly never stood at a precipice and wondered if the wind would bear it up or let it fall.
"They just fly,” she said to no one.
"They do,” said the High Priestess.
"Everyone who ever stood here was Called."
"Yes. Every one."
"It wasn't the Goddess who let them fall.” She stared at the birds, and thought, She called me. The High Priestess smiled, and Bae squeezed her arm. Around her, the breeze picked up; her robe fluttered and pulled behind her. A shot of joy went through her like an electric shock. She edged herself forward until her toes curled around the stone.
Lady Huntress, don't let me fall, she thought, and stretched her arms wide. Her heart pounded. Below her the street grew quieter and the hymn reached her more clearly. She thought of her time in the temple, of her fellow initiates and friends. She thought of the easy, comfortable life she would have lived if she had never joined; and then, how boring it had always seemed to her, and how awful, to be tethered to the earth. She thought of the moon, and of birds, and insects, and all the other things that rose and did not fall. She thought of the moon goddess. Lady, don't let me fall.
As she stood there and prayed for success, she felt the breeze prick at her, almost like sand—gelid sand—something not quite solid, but close. It picked and pulled; she pushed into it, and it pushed back.
Ah, she thought, and tipped forward, her muscles loose, her mind light. For a few moments she slowly fell, and then more slowly still, until she opened her eyes and saw the great black pool beneath her reflecting her shape—but then, as light as smoke, she began to rise. Like an arrow she shot upwards, and in a sudden ecstatic burst, she looped through the air. Behind her rose a loud cheer as she cleared the top of the pyramid.
She flew.
As she lighted on the other side, priests and priestesses clasped her arms and slapped her shoulders. The High Priestess set a priestess's cloak of blue and grey feathers over her robe, and someone pressed a glass of wine into her hand.
"The ceremony is finished below,” the High Priestess said some time later, “In the chasm, by the pool.” Freya started for the stairs down. Bae laughed. “You don't have to climb,” she said.
Freya grinned, and took three running strides to the chasm's edge, then out into space. She floated in it. Around her flew a dozen other priests and priestesses, all descending into the chasm. She laughed. The bright sun winked off the quartz like jewels.
Andrea McDowell lives with her husband and daughter in the Toronto area and supports her fiction habit by working as an environmental officer for big government. She is relieved that the thousands of dollars carefully invested in novels and short-story collections and lit magazines have finally paid off in this, her first fiction sale.
Max Anderson leaned against the swaying wall of the car and thought of home. He wondered if they would have enough to eat today. His stomach cramped. Max fingered the stale crust of bread in his jacket pocket. Not yet, he thought, not yet. Wait until the next town.
He stretched out his legs and wriggled his toes. He felt the comfortable scratch of the five-dollar bill taped to his left foot. Not yet, he thought again. There had originally been three fives—the last of his wages when they laid him off at the mill. One had gone in Green River, Alabama, when the railway cops caught him sneaking onto a flat car on the way out of town. Max was good in a fight but there were three of them. They beat him so bad he couldn't lift his arms for a week. They stole the watch his grandfather, Frederich, had given him but didn't find the money. He'd holed up in the nearest jungle and spent the five on food and on drink to ease the pain in his ribs.
The second had gone in New York, where he got a job in the kitchen of a fancy nightclub. Red Skelton was the headliner but Max never saw more than a minute of the show between washing dishes and hauling garbage into the alley behind the club. He made enough money to share a room and the club provided his supper. And he was in New York where the museums and libraries were free and you could walk in Central Park or go up to Harlem for cheap beer and music like he'd never heard before. But it was February and between the steam of the kitchen and the icy cold of the alleyway he caught pneumonia and the five dollars he'd saved for months went for medicine that didn't do any good.
The memories weren't all bad. Mary, who worked at the club, had taken pity on him—or maybe more than pity. She had taken him in and nursed him back to health and when he was healthy taught him things about life he would never forget. He might have married her, too, but she was thirty-six and he was twenty-two and didn't know a good thing when he had it in his hands.
She had cried and held him but didn't say a word or try to stop him. And he pretended he didn't owe her his life and that he didn't love her. To admit the truth would have ended his journeys and he wasn't ready to settle down. Not even in New York City. Not even with Mary.
But he still thought about her at night. More than a year later and two thousand miles away, he still thought of her and didn't want anyone else. He wondered if he ever would.
It was hot in the car, and the steady rhythm of the train throbbed through his back. Max's eyelids drooped, and anyone looking on might have thought he was asleep. But he never slept, not in boxcars. People who slept on boxcars sometimes didn't wake up. There were a million men riding the rails in 1933. Some of them were bound to be bad.
He lay on his back in the heat and stretched his senses to the limit. The sound of the wheels clattering on the rails had changed. The faint echo that had dogged the train since it had rolled out of Denver was gone. It had descended from the mountains and was rolling through forest-cloaked hills toward Nevada. There were rumours of work there. Lots of it and no questions asked. If you had a strong back and a willing hand they didn't care if the law was after you or even if you'd come down from Canada, crossing the border like a cold north wind, without permission or regret.
Max wanted work. Work that would feed him, not just his stomach but his soul. He wanted this depression to be over, wanted a return to the times when a man could make something of himself, through his own efforts, his own ingenuity.
Another cramp grabbed at his belly. For now, he'd be satisfied with enough work to buy him breakfast.
Think of something else.
The sun had come out. Light flickered across his face through the slats in the far wall. Sleep crawled up his legs and over his shoulders.
Max sat up and took a deep breath. The smell of cattle and dust made him sneeze.
"Bless you,” The voice came from nowhere, like thunder in a clear evening sky.
Max sprang to his feet and reached behind him for the shiv he kept hidden in his belt. The movement made his head spin and there was a shimmer in the air like heat rising off stone.
"No need for that, young fella. I'm harmless enough."
The voice came from the far end of the boxcar, where the sunlight didn't reach.
"Who's there?” Max brandished the sharpened steel that served as both eating tool and weapon.
"No one here but us chickens.” The man laughed. It was a good laugh. Comforting, reassuring. Max relaxed and his hand dropped to his side.
A pile of straw and twigs and torn blanket stirred. It had not moved since Max had crawled aboard the train in Denver. It had seemed too small to hide a man. Appearances are deceiving. The man it hid was a giant.
Well over six feet tall with broad shoulders and a barrel-chest, he looked like a boxer. His nose had been broken several times and his face was scarred but his smile was perfect and white. His chocolate-brown skin was weathered and creased but whether he was forty or sixty, Max couldn't tell.
"George Matheson,” said the man. “A lot of people call me Buck but I prefer George."
"Good trick,” he said. “I never knew you were there."
"Maybe I wasn't,” said George. “Maybe I'm a witch."
"Good thing I'm carrying a Bible, then."
George laughed again, deep and throaty, rising right out of his belly.
"You're quick,” he said. “You hungry too?"
Max tried to look noncommittal but his stomach's growl betrayed him. “Yeah, a mite."
"A mite over three days from the look of you."
It was Max's turn to laugh. “Well, if you're offering I won't turn you down."
George produced a satchel from the pile of rubbish that hadn't been big enough to hide a man.
"What else you got in there,” asked Max, “an automobile?"
"Sure. A Packard. But I prefer the ambiance of our present mode of transport."
"It does have a certain atmosphere."
"Yeah. Eau de bullshit."
"You said it, brother."
George opened the satchel and produced a hunk of hard cheese, a tin of salted pork and some dried apples. Max reached into his pocket and added the dried heel of bread to the larder. George grinned and pulled out a half-full bottle of wine.
"I bet the Rockefellers aren't eating this well tonight,” said George.
"They sure as hell won't enjoy it as much.” He handed George the shiv as a show of trust. “Here, you do the honours.” Max's mouth was watering but he made no move to touch the food until George had cut a hunk of cheese and meat for himself and had broken the bread in two. The big man filled his mouth and grunted at Max to dig in.
"Don't eat too fast,” said George. “Your stomach might get scared."
They ate in silence, passing the knife back and forth until George had had his fill. He nodded at Max to finish the pork and then handed him one of the apples.
"I'll save mine for later. If you don't mind."
George nodded and Max slipped the apple into his jacket pocket.
"It's a wise man who sets up stores for lean times.” George took a swallow from the bottle and handed the last of it to Max to finish.
"You going to work on the dam?"
Max nodded. He felt oddly at ease. He didn't usually take to strangers but there was something different about George. He seemed so relaxed and self-assured, as if he were privy to secrets of which other men only dreamed.
"What about you? You look like you'd be a mean man with a shovel."
"Oh, I'd get mean all right if I had to work all day in the hot sun for a dollar a day and two plates of gruel."
"Better than starving."
"Some would say so. I got other work to do."
Max bit back the words that sprang to his lips. He didn't want to look desperate.
"Might be something in it for you.” George was looking at his hands, not meeting Max's eyes.
"Is it illegal?” Max had spent too many nights in jail for nothing to want to give the bulls a real reason for locking him up.
"Not exactly. But it's dangerous."
"And despite that it doesn't pay too well."
"Did I say that?"
"We are holding this conversation in a box car."
"Sometimes what people do is a matter of necessity and sometimes a matter of choice. A man can do all right for himself in my line of work. And the work is important."
"Important to who?"
George didn't answer, only sat on his haunches looking at Max.
"So what is this work?” asked Max.
George leaned back and looked up. Max could not read the expression on his face.
"It's a hard thing to name,” said George. “You might say I'm like Johnny Appleseed."
"You plant trees?"
"No. Not trees. Knowledge. And what oaks those acorns grow are mighty to behold."
Silence descended, save for the steady clacking of steel on steel. Max felt the withered apple in his pocket and the lonely fin taped to the bottom of his foot. George said nothing, lying so still he could have been asleep. But Max knew he wasn't.
The silence grew oppressive and when Max finally broke it, he could not raise his voice above a whisper.
"What does a fellow have to do to get into this business?"
George laughed again but now it did not sound so warm or friendly. Max wondered whom he was making a deal with and for what.
Close to midnight, George spoke again. “This is where we get off."
The train was moving fast. Max and George sat in the open door of the car watching the dark trees rush by. The sky was clear and stars blazed across the heavens like a field of glass.
"See that one there,” said George, pointing to the south. “Low and little and red. That's Mars."
Max nodded even though he couldn't pick out a single light from so many. He looked back at the trees and wondered how George expected them to get off a train moving at this speed. The choice seemed to be between breaking their necks and dying at once or breaking their backs and dying later.
"Not far now,” said George.
"Until what?"
"You'll see."
George produced a small flask. He uncorked it, took a short pull and passed it to Max. “Go ahead,” he said. “It'll steady your nerves."
Max took a hesitant sip. The liquor was sweet and tasted of orange, but it burned all the way down. He took a bigger swallow.
"Easy,” said George, “you don't want them so steady you can't move."
The train lurched, and George put a hand on Max's shoulder to steady him. His touch was hot through the thin layer of Max's shirt. The train lurched again and Max could feel the outward pull as it began a long upward turn. The whistle sounded as they passed a crossing.
"That's the road we'll be taking,” said George.
The train continued its climb, steadily losing speed. The track bed was built up here, and a long embankment lead from the rails to the forest below.
"This is as slow as it gets,” said George and leapt into the night.
Max hesitated. There was a flash from the woods, green and leprous, like marsh light. Max found himself in the air. His feet hit the soft dirt of the embankment and he bent at the waist into a shoulder roll. He rolled twice before springing back to his feet and ran the last few yards into the trees. He aimed for a bushy pine and, turning his back to it, let its branches absorb the last of his momentum.
After extricating himself from the tree, Max walked back to where George still lay in a heap.
"You okay?"
"Nothing's broken, if that's what you mean.” George held out his hand, and Max helped him to his feet. “This body's getting too old for this mode of travel."
"I guess you better find a better way to ride then. It's the only body you're likely to get."
George smiled at him then. Max shivered despite the lingering warmth of the late summer air.
They walked for an hour in companionable silence. A steady south wind whispered secrets to the treetops and stirred eddies of dust on the road. Tree frogs and owls competed in the warm night air, only to fall silent to a wolf howl in the distance.
The moon had risen and hung like an orange lantern in the sky. Max took the dried apple out of his pocket and gnawed at the sweet flesh as they walked. When he finished he threw the core into the wood and where it rattled through the underbrush.
"Planted my first tree,” he said and laughed. It felt good to be walking, going somewhere, even if he didn't quite know where. George passed him the flask again and together they finished it.
Another hour passed without a word being spoken. George is a good companion, thought Max. Talks when he has something to say but knows when to be quiet, too. It takes a while to learn that habit. Some people never do.
George pointed to a tree lying beside the road and gestured Max to sit down. George rummaged through his knapsack again and gave a little grunt of satisfaction as he drew out a small package.
"Thought I had some of this left,” said George, unfolding brown wax paper to reveal a couple of lumps of hard candy. “Gonna need some energy before the night is through."
Max took one of the lumps and popped it in his mouth. The candy tasted of maple, and Max thought of home and springtime and hot maple taffy poured fresh in the snow. He closed his eyes, savouring both the flavour and the memory of happier times.
"Sounds like we got a long walk ahead of us,” he said. “Where is this business of yours?"
"My business is in here,” said George, tapping his head. “But the place we're going is about three hundred miles south as the crow flies."
"Place got a name?"
"Called Roswell. Roswell, New Mexico."
"Never heard of it."
"Not likely to, either. Nothing much ever happened there. Nothing much ever will."
"So why are we going?"
"To see a man. Name of Robert Goddard."
"Never heard of him either."
"You're not alone. Not many people heard of him. Yet. His time will come."
George gave him the kind of look people give you when they've said all they're going to say on a particular topic. An invitation to change the subject.
"So are we going to walk the whole way?"
"It would be a nice walk. This is pretty country. But we ain't got the time. You can't tell it by looking but there's a lot of people live along here, up in the hills. Come dawn, there'll be traffic on this road and we'll pick up a lift."
"It's been my experience that people are cautious about picking up strangers on the road, especially when one of them is as big as you."
"Or as brown as me?"
Max shrugged. He'd grown up with coloured folk in Nova Scotia, counted them as friends, neighbours, sometimes enemies—just people. But Americans were peculiar, especially in the south.
"New Mexico is a different kind of place. Lots of different kind of people here. A lot of them brown. Someone will give us a ride. And, if not, there's a branch-line about six-hours walk from here. Train brought us this far, train can take us the rest."
As predicted, the first vehicles appeared on the road shortly after sunrise and soon George and Max were bouncing along in the back of a horse drawn wagon with a group of farm workers. George carried on conversation in Spanish as if it were his native tongue. Later, they waved down a truck that took them all the way to Albuquerque. Settled in among the crates of fresh produce, Max had time to observe the countryside and ponder what he had gotten himself into. It felt big. Maybe now is the time for little men to get involved in big things, thought Max. A chill ran down his back. He'd always avoided men like George, men with big ideas and big plans. They seemed dangerous. They seemed wrong. Maybe I'm the one who's been wrong.
The landscape changed as they drove south. Mountain forests gave way to dry rolling hills, covered in brush and stunted pines. Small villages, built of the native mud, perched on hilltops on either side of the road. Some houses were whitewashed or painted in a variety of bright colours while others had been left bare and brown. Only the tall white crosses that marked the Catholic churches in the village centres afforded a unifying mark. He found no comfort in seeing them.
"There's a little town east of here, they say has been inhabited for over eight hundred years,” said George. “Bunch of artists make it their home now."
"Is that what this Goddard fellow is, an artist?"
"In a way,” said George. “He works like an artist."
"Sits around dreaming all day and drinking all night?” said Max, thinking of the artists he had met in New York.
"Don't know about the drinking part,” said George, “but dreaming is a big part of it. Dreaming about what might be possible and what seems impossible and about the path between the two. Trying different things out to see what solves the problem he's discovered with the world. Hard work, experiment, intuition—it's all pretty much the same thing."
"Then he's an artist?"
"A rose by any other name will smell as sweet. Mr. Goddard paints the sky with his brushes and builds sculptures out of steel and fire."
With that, George turned over and went to sleep. Max watched him for a while and then turned back to look at the passing land as it transformed itself again, this time into a flat desert plateau, cooking under a southwestern sun.
Just like descriptions of hell, thought Max, a barren wasteland filled with vipers and scorpions. He drifted into a restless sleep, haunted by visions of demons, all wearing George's enigmatic smile.
After Albuquerque, they headed east and south. Drives became scarcer as the land grew emptier. The few cars they saw didn't stop and Max took to cursing them as they disappeared in clouds of dust. The next day was no better and even George's placid temper began to fray. Sunset found them walking south on a deserted stretch of road.
"Looks like we'll be camping again tonight,” said Max.
"I hope not,” said George. “I hate sleeping when I'm wet."
Max looked up. To the west, rolling brown hills stretched until they met the dark purple of mountain. To the south and east, the land was flat and the colour of ash. Low brush and the occasional stand of cactus formed the only break in the landscape.
"This place looks like it hasn't seen rain in years,” he said.
George pointed to a low bank of cloud hovering on the western horizon, pearl and pink in the setting sun.
"Red sky at night, sailor's delight,” quoted Max.
"Maybe,” said George. “But we're not at sea now. You keep your eye on that delight while I look for shelter."
The bank of cloud became a towering thunderhead, grim and black against the darkening sky. Lightning flickered across its face like ill-suppressed rage, as it built and piled toward them. The low grumble of thunder reached Max's ears moments before the first few drops of rain spattered in the dirt at his feet.
"Over here,” George called from a low stand of scrub. “This is the best we're going to find."
Max shook his head. “Shouldn't shelter under trees in a lightning storm."
"You got a better idea?"
"Down there.” Max pointed to a rock overhang. It perched halfway up the side of a narrow cut in the land. The darkness at its back suggested a cave.
"Ten minutes from now, that whole thing is going to be underwater. Trust me on this one, boy. Better to chance a lightning strike than sure death by drowning."
Max shook his head at the doubtful shelter of the trees. Ain't going to rain that hard, he thought.
Another flash and a crack close at hand. The rain paused and Max looked back at the storm. A grey curtain moved toward him with the speed of a locomotive. He had a vision of himself overwhelmed, swept along by forces he didn't understand.
"You going to join me?” called George.
Max ran to the shelter of the trees before the storm could take him.
"No rain like a desert rain,” said George the next morning. He shared out the last of the food they had bought in Albuquerque. It made a meagre breakfast. Combined with the steaming dampness of his clothes, that should have made Max feel sorry for himself.
Like water in the desert. He had never understood that expression before. What had been sere and barren now teemed with colour and life. Flowers had sprouted from cactus tips and cracks in the earth. Insects crawled and lizards hopped and birds sang. Even the air seemed brighter, the sky bluer, the earth rich in its browns and yellows.
"It's beautiful, George."
"That it is,” said George. “It's a beautiful planet. You don't know how lucky you are to live on it."
"Who are you, George?"
"Does it matter?"
"I think it might,” said Max.
George didn't answer. He bent and picked up a rock and threw it into the bush. A lizard darted across an open space. A small cloud of insects, chased by a brightly feathered bird, flew upward. “Yesterday,” said George, “all that would have raised was dust. Who can say what tomorrow will bring?"
Max shook his head and looked away.
"Did you ever read the book Robinson Crusoe?” asked George.
Max nodded. “A long time ago."
"Crusoe knew where his home was, even knew how to get there in a general sort of way. But he lacked the resources, the specific skills, to make the journey. Hell, he barely had what it took to survive."
"Until Friday came along."
"That's right. Friday saved Crusoe."
"I thought it was the other way around,” said Max.
"Depends on who's telling the story. It's all a matter of perspective. Anyway, one of us is Crusoe and one of us is Friday."
"Which of us is which?"
"It all depends on your point of view."
"You say the oddest things sometimes, George."
"Do I? Well, never mind. Let's hit the road. I got a feeling today is going to be our lucky day."
"This is it?” Max looked down the dusty main street lined with one- and two-storey clapboard buildings. It was bigger than the other places they had passed since Albuquerque but still didn't amount to more than a few thousand people gathered around a crossroads and a railway station.
"What were you expecting? New York?"
"I don't know. I had built it up somehow in my mind."
"People have a bad habit of doing that,” said George. “Roswell is the metropolis of Eastern New Mexico. It's a centre for mining and cattle ranching and, most important, of the American space program."
"The American what?"
"Well, maybe I'm overstating the case. America is a great country but sometimes it's too sure of its own greatness. It doesn't think the rest of the world matters. America won't be ready for space until someone else is. For now, the space program consists of one man..."
"Robert Goddard?"
"The very one. One man operating on a meagre research grant and a single launch site."
"What's he launching? Balloons?"
"An excellent guess! They are powered by hot gases, they do go up in the air and eventually they come down again. Though that's not my department, as one of my colleagues will become famous for saying. Rockets, my young friend, Mr. Goddard launches rockets."
"Like fireworks?"
"Oh, the youth of today are so woefully undereducated."
George indicated a sign that read Braxton's Grocerteria and Emporium. Max followed him into the dimly lit interior. A thickset man, presumably Braxton, watched suspiciously as George made his selections from the well-stocked shelves.
"You fellas new around here?” he said, as George deposited his purchases on the counter.
"If you could cut us off a nice hunk of that hard cheese I'd be much obliged, Mr. Braxton,” said George.
The man didn't move until George produced a ten-dollar bill from his bottomless knapsack.
A smile appeared as quickly as desert flowers after rain.
"Braxton died. I'm Scarpelli. Luigi Scarpelli. But everyone just calls me Lou. This the cheese you wanted?"
George nodded and Lou cut a large wedge of pale yellow and placed it on the scales. He tallied up the bill and shook his head.
"That's three forty five for the lot. You got anything smaller? This early in the day, it's tough to make change."
George left the ten sitting on the counter. “You have something that may be more valuable to us than food. I'm looking for a man."
Lou glanced from the ten to George's face and back again.
"What makes you think I can help you?"
"You're an important man, Lou. You knew we weren't from around here. That implies to me you got a pretty good sense of who belongs and who doesn't."
"Maybe.” Lou licked his lips and his eyes flickered to the screen door as if he were expecting sudden intruders. “You guys from the government?"
George laughed, the warm comforting laugh this time. “Do I look like I'm from the government?"
Lou laughed, too, a dry nervous chuckle. “Well, you never know, do you? This new deal is supposed to change a lot of things."
"Don't worry, Lou, I'm not from the government.” George paused and laughed again. “We're not revenuers—let me put your mind at rest."
George pulled the empty flask from his knapsack and pulled out the cork. He shoved the bottle into Lou's surprised face. “That smell like revenuers?"
Lou relaxed. The ten disappeared into his shirt pocket.
"We're looking for a man named Goddard. Dr. Robert Goddard."
Lou looked puzzled. “The Doc's name is Henderson. He's been here for ... wait a second. There's a professor comes out here every summer."
"Maybe,” said George.
"Don't know if his name is Goddard. He has a big place east of here. There's a couple of young fellows work for him, college kids, I guess. They pick up his supplies. Don't talk much though."
"Where's his place?"
"Go down to the crossroads and east about eight miles. There's a bunch of ranches that way—nothing much else until you get to the Texas border. He's on an abandoned spread north of the road. Just look for the No Trespassing signs."
"Dr. Goddard likes his privacy."
"That's for sure,” said Lou. “I don't know what he's up to but I heard rumours. Explosions and funny lights in the sky. It's kind of spooky."
"I'm sure you'll get used to it,” said George. He pulled out another five. “Do you suppose you could find us a ride?"
"Hell, for five bucks, I'll close the store and take you myself.” Lou hung a closed sign on the window and led George and Max out back to his truck. “But don't say I didn't warn you. They don't like visitors."
A large ‘no trespassing’ sign hung in the middle of the closed gate. Smaller neatly printed signs warned of dogs and declared that trespassers would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Someone had scrawled at the bottom of the latter sign: This means you!
"Do you want me to wait? Or come back for you?” asked Lou.
"We'll be fine,” said George.
Lou shrugged, pulled a u-turn in the middle of the road, and headed back to town. George watched the trail of dust until it faded in the distance.
"Come on,” he said.
Max hesitated.
"What's the problem?” asked George. “Afraid of a few signs?"
"No. Dogs."
George laughed. “Leave the dogs to me."
A heavy chain and padlock fastened the gate. George pulled the barbed wire apart and ushered Max through. Max performed the same courtesy for George and in a few moments they were walking down the dusty track to a distant ranch house.
They were a hundred yards from the house when several large dogs came running towards them. Max froze. George kept walking as if the dogs were wagging their tails in greeting instead of circling with bared teeth, low growls in their chests. George knelt and held out his hand to the lead dog, a broad-shouldered shepherd with brindled fur. He stared directly in the dog's eyes.
The dog lunged forward but stopped as if it had hit an invisible wall. It whined softly and reached out a tentative tongue to lick George's hand. George tousled the dog's head as he might a young boy's. The two other dogs—some sort of mastiff and a big black dog Max couldn't identify—crowded around George, each seeking their turn under his fingers.
"Come meet our new friends, Max. They won't bite."
"Not you maybe,” said Max. The black dog left George and stuck his nose in Max's crotch. His scrotum tightened. The dog rubbed its bare teeth along Max's thigh and pushed its big head against Max's limp hand. Max wiggled his fingers and the dog licked them, its large bushy tail wagging so hard that the breeze cooled the sweat on his face.
"Play time's over,” said George. “We have to go see a man about these dogs."
Max tried not to look back at the three dogs trotting behind them. He found their sudden silence more terrifying than their growls. He expected the spell to break, to feel their teeth sink into the flesh of his legs and back. George ignored the animals and Max wondered again at his companion's oddness.
The house needed a fresh coat of paint but otherwise appeared well kept. The porch had been recently swept and clean white curtains fluttered in the open windows. Beyond the house stood a half dozen buildings in various states of repair. The barn looked ready to fall over but two large sheds beyond it looked new, their metal sides gleaming in the mid-morning sun.
The front door of the house opened and a small thin woman stepped onto the porch. She was frowning and carried a large cleaver in her left hand. She spoke rapidly in Spanish and George replied. Max caught the name Goddard.
The woman spoke again, this time in accented English.
"Doctor Goddard is working. He doesn't like visitors."
"Really? He should put up signs or something. Or get some vicious dogs,” said George.
The woman noticed the dogs then, sitting in a semi-circle around George's legs. She frowned and crossed herself and disappeared into the house.
Her voice, strident and fearful, shouted in Spanish. A few minutes later a man, carrying a shotgun, appeared on the porch, the woman hovering behind him.
"Es un diablo, Professor,” she said. Max understood that much and he glanced at George who smiled beatifically and absently scratched the shepherd's head.
Goddard snorted and pointed the gun at George's chest. He was a slim man, below average height. The fringe of white hair that circled his almost-bald head stood in sharp contrast to his round unlined face, turned a pale brown by exposure to the sun. Blue eyes glared from behind wire-rimmed glasses. Max took him for between fifty and sixty.
"I take it you boys don't read,” said Goddard with a distinct New England twang in his voice.
"We read just fine, Doctor,” said George. “I thought A Method for Reaching Extreme Altitudes was fascinating, if inaccessible to the popular audience.
Goddard grunted and lowered the gun, though his finger didn't stray far from the trigger. “To any audience, as near as I can tell.” He tilted his head to one side. “You boys from the Guggenheim coming to see if your money's well spent?"
George shook his head. “But we are eager to learn of your progress. Have you found an alternative to gasoline yet?"
"You seem to have me at a disadvantage,” said Goddard. “You know lots about me but I don't know a thing about you, except you got a way with dogs."
He glared at the coterie of guard dogs. They hung their heads but didn't move out of George's reach.
"Why don't you put away that gun and ask us in so we can get better acquainted?"
Goddard shrugged and led the way into the cool dim interior of the house. The parlour was sparsely furnished—a wing back chair with springs showing out the bottom, a maple rocker, and an ornate, if timeworn, settee guarded by a low pine table. Goddard perched in the chair and gestured Max and George to sit. George settled in one corner of the couch and Max uneasily in the other.
The woman appeared with a sweating pitcher of ice water and three glasses. She hovered at the edge of the room until Goddard dismissed her with a wave.
"Sorry, I can't offer you anything more ... refined. We don't entertain much."
"Adam's ale is fine by me,” Max spoke for the first time.
They sipped their water in silence. Finally, Goddard cleared his throat. “Maybe we should start."
George smiled and spread his hands. “I have a proposition for you, Professor Goddard."
"I'm all ears."
"Your work hasn't received the attention it deserves. I'd like to change that."
"What makes you think I want that?"
"You're a man of science. Science lives on the free exchange of information."
"Information wants to be free. Yeah, I've heard that. My information wants to get paid."
"If money is what you're interested in..."
"If money was what I was interested in, I'd have picked another line of work. There's not a lot of money to be made shooting hunks of metal into the air."
"Then why do you do it?” asked Max.
Goddard glared at him as if he had asked the stupidest question ever.
"It's what I do. Ever hear of a man called Tsiolkovsky? No, I suppose not. He wrote a book called Dreams of Earth and Sky. I read it when I was about your age. Turned my world upside down. He proposed a way to fly through space. Ever since, I've spent my life trying to put his proposal into practice. It's not easy to explain the whys and the wherefores. It's sort of like being in love."
George laughed again. “And how's the love affair going?"
Goddard grimaced. “I can think of several people who would love to know the answer to that question and none of them have my best interests at heart."
"There's a lesson here, Max. Men may compete in business or in love but there's no competition like the rivalry between two professors searching after knowledge."
Goddard snorted. “You don't know the half of it. Ever since the war, you can't turn around without someone trying to steal your ideas. It's not like the old days."
"Then let me tell you how it's going,” said George. “In 1926 you got the first liquid fuel rocket off the ground, using gasoline and liquid oxygen. Three years later you sent a barometer and a camera up a mile. For the last four years, you've been here in the desert, and what have you accomplished? Not more than twice that height."
"Who the hell are you?” Goddard's face turned red under the tan. He glanced at the gun on the table. Max thought of how far they were from anywhere and how no one knew they were there except Lou. And Lou could be bought. Cheap.
"Friends,” said George.
Goddard shook his head. He ran a hand across his eyes and then looked up at the ceiling. “I doubt it."
"It's hard to get much done without money,” said George. “I can help. Robert, I work for an organization that's interested in seeing your dreams come true. Call us the Jules Verne Society if you like."
Max leaned forward. He knew who Jules Verne was. One of his roommates in New York had a collection of his books—before he'd had to sell them for ten cents each to buy groceries. Strange stories about underwater ships and flights to the moon. Max thought them ungodly, but liked them anyway.
"We believe the future depends on man going into space, reaching the moon and beyond. It's my job, my calling, to see man fulfill that destiny."
"And how do you do that?” Goddard looked at George through narrowed eyes.
"We provide funding to those we think can help us reach those goals, and we make sure information gets moved to where it will do the most good."
Goddard snorted again. “Anyone who wants to know what I'm doing only has to go to the patent office."
George spread his hands. “We need to know where you're going, not where you've been.” George sighed and stood up. “I'm not asking much. I'm authorized to offer you ten thousand dollars."
Max gasped and Goddard's eyes widened. A man could live three years on that kind of money, five if he was frugal.
Goddard's mouth had set in a stubborn line. Max had seen that expression before. It was common back home, even commoner in New England. Goddard wasn't going to budge. It wouldn't matter what George said or how much money he laid on the pine table.
"All I want is a copy of your most recent notes,” said George. “I need to know what you've accomplished."
"Who says I've accomplished anything?” Goddard flushed and turned away, like a schoolboy caught in a lie. He continued in a softer voice. “Ten grand would finance my work for a year. But what good does that do me if someone else publishes first?"
"I can assure you my client has no interest in publishing. He's as secretive as you are."
"And what's this client's name?"
"I'm not at liberty to say. And even if I were, you wouldn't recognize it."
"Like hell,” said Goddard. “I know every rocketeer in America and England. Or Germany for that matter. What's his name?"
"What difference does it make? You all live on the same planet. You all have the same destiny."
"You must think I'm some kind of idiot savant. Playing with rockets while the world spins by. But I read the papers. I think about what I read. I can see the way the world is heading, and I want no part of the future you've got planned."
"You have no idea of my plans,” said George. “The future is greater than you imagine. Greater than you deserve.” He rose and stood over Goddard. He seemed bigger than before. Ominous and terrible. God-like; the thought sprang unbidden to Max's mind. It both terrified and thrilled him.
"Get out,” said Goddard, his voice stained with fear.
George shrugged and smiled, becoming human again. “My offer stands. I'll call again tomorrow to see if you'll accept it."
Goddard picked up the shotgun and stood up. “If I see you on this property again, I won't hesitate to shoot."
Max and George sat in the late afternoon sun on a hillock not far from Goddard's ranch. Max tried to question George but the older man simply held up his hand, pointed to the distance and said, “Wait."
The sun balanced on the horizon. It would soon turn dark.
A flare in the distance rose slowly from the flat scrubland. It picked up speed, a too-bright spot sitting on a plume of white smoke. Then Max felt it. A rumble in his belly that spread into his chest and then down his legs into the ground. Moments later, a roar, like a dozen locomotives all passing at once.
The light was moving fast now, faster than Max could follow. Up, up into the darkening sky, growing smaller as it rose but brighter too. It was like looking into the gates of hell.
The flare died. Sunlight glinted on metal, and then silence. The white plume of smoke drifted eastward. George pointed and Max let his gaze follow the extended arm. A billowing white sail had appeared in the sky. Beneath it, suspended by a dozen ropes, hung a silver sliver of metal.
"That's what we came for,” said George.
"Do you think he'll sell it to you?"
"No,” said George.
"Ten thousand is a lot of money."
"There are some things, Max, that money won't buy. Goddard's stubborn and he's paranoid. It must be something in the air around here."
"So what are we going to do?"
"We're going to steal it."
"Steal? You didn't say anything about stealing!"
"Did I make a fair offer?"
"Yes, but..."
"Is it my fault the man is unreasonable?"
"No, but—"
"But what, Max?"
"Stealing is wrong."
"Let's not call it that then. Information wants to be free. We're its liberators."
"That's red talk."
"Fine. I wanted you to be part of this. I need you to be part of this. I've got other work to do."
"I'm not sure, George."
"In every man's life, Max, there is one chance to make a difference. A branch in the road. One leads to greatness, the other to nothing. Everyone has to choose."
"I know,” said Max. “I know.” He paused. “But what if I choose wrong?"
"Choosing is not about certainty, it's about faith. I could tell you everything. My whole history, what's happening here, the future I want, need to happen. But I don't have time. Besides, it would still come down to you. Your choice to believe me or not, to act or not. Look into your heart and do what you think is right."
George put his hand on Max's shoulder and again Max felt that compelling heat on his skin. He could not meet George's eyes, afraid of the flame that might be burning there.
George spoke softly. “I offered Goddard ten thousand dollars. I'll make you the same offer. Help me tonight and deliver the goods to New York City and the money is yours."
"Stealing is wrong. There are some things money won't buy."
George stepped away and looked up at the first stars in the night sky.
"Standing in the way of progress is wrong, Max."
"Progress towards what, George? Where are you trying to lead us?"
"Push more than lead. Sometimes, I think I push too hard. I'm not sure if you're ready for tomorrow. If only I could know the future, it wouldn't be so hard to get there...” George's voice faded away, as if he regretted saying too much. Then he laughed, and put his hand on Max's shoulder. “Goddard is selfish. He wants to keep this to himself. Until he's ready to benefit from it. There are other people who can use this information. I—We cannot remain trapped on this planet. It's for the greater good."
"You make a powerful argument,” said Max.
"Well?"
"But so does evil, George. Stealing. It's one of the Ten Commandments."
"So is honour your mother and your father. Didn't you tell me your family might lose their farm? What couldn't you do with ten thousand dollars?"
Max looked away. He tried not to think of the things George had said but the hounds were loose and they couldn't help baying at the moon. He'd been taught that there were rules you could follow. But where were the rules now? It was all breaking apart. Blowing away like topsoil and hope. Nothing made sense anymore.
"It's for a good cause?” he asked.
"Absolutely.” George smiled and held out his hand.
After a long moment, Max shook it.
The dogs were waiting for them when they got to the fence, shadowy figures in a shadowy landscape. George reached through the barbed wire and touched each dog in turn. They sat motionless, waiting. Once again, George spread the wire and ushered Max through. On the other side, George knelt down and put his face next to the largest dog's. The other two leaned in as if listening but if George spoke, he did so too low for Max to hear.
The shepherd leapt up and ran toward the ranch house. The mastiff whined and looked at George. Then it too ran off, along the fence to the road. The black dog sat patiently until George motioned them forward. Then it followed them like a shadow.
In sight of the ranch house, George signalled a halt. He crouched down, Max on one side, the black dog on the other. Lights spilled from the front windows of the house and from the open door of one of the sheds. Several figures moved in the space between the buildings.
"Working late tonight,” said George. “Don't like that much.” He indicated a low patch of brush and the three of them moved behind it.
George rummaged in his knapsack and pulled out something dark and blunt.
"You may want this,” he said, handing Max a revolver.
"I'm not going to shoot nobody,” said Max.
"You shouldn't have to. Just wave it around until you get their attention.” George pulled a second gun from the sack. “If there's any shooting to be done, I'll do it."
Max took the revolver. It was cold and surprisingly heavy in his hand. “You didn't say anything about guns."
"I didn't expect to need them. I still don't. Wait until they settle down and then slip in the side door and get what we want. That's still the plan."
"There's something you're not telling me."
George tossed his pistol from one hand to the other. He looked through the brush at the lights still blazing in the distance.
"They shouldn't be running around like this. Something has them stirred up."
"Maybe it was our visit."
"Maybe."
"But you think it's something else. What?"
George looked at Max and away again.
"I've got a competitor."
"What kind of competitor?"
"An old friend. Almost a brother. Both sailors far from the sea. Sailors without a ship.” George looked up at the night sky.
"Like Crusoe?"
"Let's just say, we have similar objectives but different methods. He might not approve of this business. If he's reached Goddard ... Well, it might explain why a peace-loving man like Goddard greets guests with a shotgun in his hand."
George flipped open the chamber of the gun and checked the ammunition.
"Are you from the future, George?"
"What?"
"Are you a time traveler? Like in Mr. Wells’ book?"
"Time travel is possible. But only in one direction. And only one second at a time. I'm not from the future; I'm trying to get there. Only the future—one particular future—can take me, take us, where we need to go."
"And where is that?"
"A lot farther than the future."
"But where?"
George smiled and looked up into the night sky. “I think you know."
"And your ... brother is trying to stop you."
"We don't disagree on the destination, just the path."
"Then why do we have to do this?"
"Because it's not arbitrary. The means justify the ends. How we get someplace makes a difference in how that place is when we get there."
"The way a town looks different when you walk into it than when you drive."
"That's it. You got it."
"But it's still the same town."
"Are you sure about that?” George snapped the gun shut again and shoved it in his pocket. He leaned against the black dog and shut his eyes.
"Might as well get some sleep. It could be a long night."
Max lay flat on the ground but couldn't sleep. He stared up at the stars. They used to think the stars were made of crystal, thought Max. Fixed in heaven by the creator. The unchanging vault of heaven.
The stars grew brighter and Max realized the lights from the ranch had gone out. He raised himself on one elbow and looked through the brush at the house. It was dark and quiet and, if anyone still moved in the yard, Max couldn't see them in the shadows or hear them over the sigh of the wind and the faint sounds of restless night creatures.
George had not moved. Let him sleep, thought Max, maybe he'll sleep the whole night through and we won't have to do this thing. The gun lay heavy on his chest. He felt ill.
He knew guns, had hunted all his life. Killed porcupines and crows to protect the crops and deer to put meat on the table. But he had never held a gun that had only one purpose. He did not think he could take another man's life.
Max lay back again and watched the stars. They were impervious to the works of man. They did not care for war or money or love. They simply were. Unchanging, unmoving.
He knew it wasn't really true. He had read how stars were born and how they would die. He knew that planets moved among the stars. A flash across the sky reminded him that stars could fall. And he knew those were not stars but chunks of rock. He knew all these things but didn't care, taking comfort in the motionlessness of the heavens.
As I watch, so am I watched. Some things may change but some things can never change. Let me do what is right.
Would man someday breach the walls separating earth from sky? Max supposed he would. Nothing seemed out of reach. In his father's youth, men traveled on horseback. Now it was trains or trucks or aeroplanes.
Would the night sky change? Would some other man lying under a desert sky look up and see not stillness but constant movement? Another meteor flashed and another—thin lines of light that appeared and were gone.
The moon began its slow ascent in the east. Max sat up. George's chest continued its slow rise and fall, his head moving in time to the dog's slower rhythm.
Max opened the chamber of the revolver. He let the bullets fall out into his hand. He threw them into the dark and closed the chamber again. He put the gun in his pocket.
He lay down and went to sleep. And did not dream.
The moon was high when Max opened his eyes. George was standing, looking at the compound. The dog was gone.
"Is it time?” asked Max.
George nodded. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. He handed it to Max.
"After we get the papers we came for, we'll have to split up,” George said. “They won't be looking for you. Or, if they are, they won't know where to start. Men like you are flooding in from all over the southwest to work on the dam. You'll disappear into the railcars and the jungles in an instant."
"What's this?” asked Max.
"Two thousand dollars and a letter of introduction. Hop a train and head west. When you get to Los Angeles, buy yourself a new suit and take the aeroplane to New York. Check into the Ritz and put the documents in the safe. Use the name Westbrook. Ten days from now, go to the German consulate and give Colonel Heinrich Mueller the letter. He will instruct you on how to make the exchange—the documents for the money. They will give you twenty thousand dollars. Leave ten in the safe at the Ritz in my name. Of course, you could take it all but that would be stealing."
George laughed and, after a moment, Max joined in.
"So helping these people will get us to the future?’ asked Max.
"Who says I'm helping them?"
"But I thought...?"
"You lived in New York, right?"
Max briefly heard the music in the streets of Harlem and saw Mary's face and thought of the choice he hadn't made because he lacked faith in the future, lacked the courage to step outside the rules.
"Did you ever play three card monty?"
"I watched it sometimes. I could never guess where the black queen was. I think they cheated."
"Some of them do. But the best ones don't have to. They use distraction and misdirection, make you look where they want so you miss the important things. That's what I hope to do. Goddard's work will confirm what they already know, lead them farther down a certain road, distracting them from a bigger prize."
"What prize?"
"The Germans can be trusted to reach for the stars—though I don't think that's what they have in mind—but the power of the stars themselves has to go to someone else. I'm hoping to make sure that happens."
"I don't understand."
"You don't need to. I won't lie to you and say nothing bad will happen. All too often we must choose the lesser of two evils for good to be done. Now, repeat those instructions back to me,” said George. Max did so and George nodded. He checked the ammunition in his gun one more time and then gestured for Max to lead the way down to the silent ranch.
The shepherd was waiting for them, standing motionless and alert in the shadows by the west side of the house. There was no sign of the other dogs but they were around somewhere, carrying out whatever orders George had given them. Max didn't want to think about them. It made no sense for these dogs to fall so completely under the spell of a stranger. Or for me, he thought. Nothing about George made sense. He was something other. Bigger than human, like an angel or a devil. Men like me can only follow. George's words came back to him—every man has to choose. I know that, thought Max, but how?
A light went on in a second floor window. George and Max flattened against the side of the house. Ten minutes later the light went out again. A second light appeared and went out farther back in the house.
George didn't move for a long time. The shepherd whined and trotted along the length of the house and around the back. A few minutes later it reappeared from the front of the house. It passed the two men and made a second circuit of the building. When it returned, it pushed its nose into George's outstretched hand and lay down at his feet.
George and Max crept along the wall to the back of the house. The dog did not follow though it raised its head and watched them out of sight.
On a porch at the back of the house, several woven rugs were draped over the railing. Two pairs of overhauls hung from the clothesline that ran from the porch to a wooden pole some thirty feet away. George ducked under the line and mounted the steps two at a time.
He knelt on the porch and pulled a small oilcan from his pack. He oiled the hinges and spring of the screen door. The inner door was locked. He propped open the screen with his pack and did something to the lock. The wooden door opened inward with a faint creak. George drew his pistol, retrieved his pack and went inside. After a moment, Max followed, careful not to let the screen door bang behind him.
The kitchen was dim; the only light came from the still-open door and a small window over the sink. George and Max let their eyes adjust.
"When we go up the stairs, don't tread in the middle of the step,” whispered George. “And have your gun ready, just in case."
Max clutched the revolver in his hand, comforted by the fact it was not loaded.
They moved into the hall as silent as ghosts. Max peered into the parlour as they passed. Several hard-backed chairs had been added and the furniture drawn into a circle. The small pine table was strewn with cups and plates. Several empty bottles stood like sentries next to the table's legs. It was like an artist's studio.
George moved through the darkness as if it were his own home. How could he be so certain? Maybe the dogs had described the house to him. Or maybe he could see in the dark. Nothing about George could surprise him any more.
Half way up the stairs, a step creaked. George and Max froze for half a minute, hardly breathing. Sweat trickled down Max's face and soaked the shirt under his arms. George moved forward again, but he paused at the top of the stairs and waited for Max to join him.
George mimed for Max to stand guard, tapping his gun and gesturing down the stairs and at the several doors lining the long hallway. Max nodded that he understood and positioned himself with his back in the corner of the hallway. A window looked out into the compound. Nothing stirred in the shadows. George crept down the hall to the room where they had seen the first light.
George paused for several long seconds, then turned the knob. The door swung open silently. George went inside. He closed the door behind him. An orange line of light appeared at the base of the door.
Max exhaled, shocked by the sudden noise, as George reappeared, holding up a sheaf of papers. His teeth gleamed white against the dark blob of his face.
Outside, the three dogs began to bark wildly. A siren sounded. Lights flickered across the compound. Sleepy shouts sounded behind closed doors.
George swore and darted down the hall. A door swung open. One of the young men stepped into George's path. George swatted the side of the man's face with his gun. Max half-ran, half-fell down the stairs, catching himself on the banister at the bottom.
George was at the top of the stairs. Thunder rocked the house. The window exploded outward. George's pistol flashed twice, sounding like popcorn after the shotgun blast. A voice cried out. George hurtled down the stairs. He thrust the papers into Max's hands.
"Go out the back. I'll draw their fire."
"No. You'll be—"
"Don't worry about me. My kind is hard to kill. Head west until you reach the tracks. Good luck. Give me your gun."
"It's not loaded."
"Sure it is,” said George. “I loaded it myself while you slept."
George flung open the front door and squeezed off a couple of shots. He flashed Max one last smile.
"Nothing is what it seems. Not me. Not Goddard. And tomorrow, it will all be different again. For tonight, trust me or not. It's up to you. Now, go."
There were voices upstairs and footsteps in the hallway. Soon, someone would gather the courage to peer down the stairs. And he would have a shotgun in his hands.
"Be careful, George,” Max said. George laughed and ducked out the front door. He fired again. This time his report drew an answering shot. A dog howled and a man screamed in fear or pain.
The voices upstairs grew louder. Stuffing the papers in his jacket, Max ran down the hall and out the back door. The screen door slammed behind him. He leapt down the four steps in a single bound. He hit the ground running, waiting for the heavy thump in his back and the sudden pain that would end his flight. His moon-cast shadow sprinted in front of him.
He ran until his breath came in gasps. A flash of green sketched a second shadow on the ground. He ran until pain sliced through his side like a knife. He kept running. He ran until his legs quivered and his heart throbbed in his temple. He ran until, at last, his body refused the wishes of his mind. He fell forward into the dust and lay panting, immobile.
He could no longer hear the fight. There was no sound of pursuit, no sound at all but the rasping of his breath against the dirt and the hush of the desert night.
He rolled onto his back. The stars had not moved. They stared down with crystalline clarity. Max lay watching the stars until the sweat dried on his face and body, until his heart lost its frantic rhythm.
He closed his eyes, steeling himself to stand. When he opened them again, a great black face hovered above his. A long tongue slithered from the toothy mouth and licked his cheek and forehead. Max pushed the dog's head aside. The moon was setting but sunrise was still hours away.
Max got up and walked west. The dog followed at his heel. Max put down his hand and the dog nuzzled his head against it.
He stopped and looked back the way he had come. There was no sign of the ranch. No sign of anything but the desert and the night sky. A meteor blazed across the heavens. Its light burned for a long moment before disappearing in a flash.
Nothing is certain. But he had made a bargain, whether with an angel or a devil or something else altogether, he didn't know. But he had made a bargain and he would keep it. That, at least, he could hold onto.
He felt the papers heavy in his jacket. A new day was coming. He took one last look back the way he had come but there was no going back. He wouldn't see George again. He glanced at the night sky. I hope you make it home, my friend, he thought.
The dog barked once and pressed its body against Max's leg.
"I know,” said Max. “I know.” He headed west to the rail line, the dog at his side like a shadow.
Hayden Trenholm has written over 15 plays with productions across Alberta and on CBC radio. His short fiction has appeared in On Spec, TransVersions, Tesseracts6, Neo-Opsis, Challenging Destiny and on CBC radio. His short stories “The Luck of Willie Lumen” and “Like Monsters of the Deep” were nominated for an Aurora Award in 2005 and 2006 respectively. In 1992, his novel A Circle of Birds was published by Anvil Press. He lives with his wife, Elizabeth, in Ottawa where he does research for the Senator for the Northwest Territories. Hayden's story “The Case of the Twisted Coil” appeared in Challenging Destiny Number 21.
When enough people change the way they view things, then solutions become evident, often in ways we couldn't even imagine before we looked with new eyes.
—Thom Hartmann, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight
Death and Taxes Bill loved his StarSpangly motorhome, and he wasn't going to give it up. But his wife had died last night, and he was supposed to turn in the RV so that someone else could make use of it. So he did what any rational person would have done in that situation. He stuffed his wife's body into the refrigerator...
Jhyoti Cadet Jhyoti was working on her final field assignment for exo-anthropology. She broke into the bashravi to find the secrets of the body washers. But she tripped over a dead body, and was found by the yighsilchi. Who would leave a dead body like this, and who killed the woman?
God of Lemons Karen Nguyen was listening to her iPod on the bus to the Embarquedero. The next thing she knew she was waking up in a forest. But the trees didn't look like any trees she'd ever seen before, and they were in rows. The three people with her claimed to be Charles Darwin, T. E. Shaw, and Peter Abelard. They decided they were in hell...
Expectations Parker was a normal, and having a good week. He saved a convict's life, and helped his friend become class president. He was interviewed on national television, and was invited to a very exclusive party. At the party he decided to try a pill which supposedly made you believe in God like old people and rejects...
Pretty Birds Arna had been pregnant, but she hadn't borne a child. One ultrasound she had seen her baby, and the next ultrasound the baby had disappeared. Once in a while Arna would see a baby girl lying on the back lawn, but she wasn't crazy. Another woman in her group was having similar experiences...
Kelmscott Manor: In the Attics Georgie's friend Topsy was dying, worn out from trying to make the world a better place. They loved each other, but had never acted on that love—even though their spouses had had many affairs. Now Topsy handed her a letter which explained how he had obtained an unbelievable machine from a man named H. G. Wells...
The Keys to the Yellow Kingdom Carlos had spent a lot of money to get here. He had climbed the pyramid and now stood in front of the Wonderbox, which supposedly could grant his wish. He would wish to become a famous writer. But then a man appeared, the creator of the machine, who told him the machine didn't work quite the way he thought...
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, James Schellenberg, and Stefano Donati
+ Reviews of Isaac Asimov's books and movies
Number 3
+ Stories by Bonnie Blake, Erik Allen Elness, Tom Olbert, Hans Albanese, 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, Carol W. Berman, 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, Stacey Berg, 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, Chris Webb, 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, Harrison Howe, 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 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)
Back issues are available online at www.clarkesworldbooks.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).
On the Challenging Destiny web site you'll find previews of upcoming magazines, as well as guidelines for authors & artists.
You'll also find lots of reviews from James Schellenberg that aren't in the magazine—reviews of books, movies, soundtracks & games.
The web site is here:
challengingdestiny.com