Crystalline Sphere Publishing
www.crystallinesphere.com
Copyright ©2007 by Crystalline Sphere Publishing
10 Visionaries of the 21st Century by David M. Switzer
Death and Taxes by Suzette Haden Elgin
Kelmscott Manor: In the Attics by C. A. Gardner
Interview with Spider Robinson by James Schellenberg & David M. Switzer
Expectations by James Wesley Rogers
Kim Stanley Robinson's Science in the Capital by James Schellenberg
The Keys to the Yellow Kingdom by Matthew Sanborn Smith
Publisher Crystalline Sphere Publishing
Editor David M. Switzer
Contributing Editors Luke Felczak & Michael Felczak
Cover Artist Les Edwards
Challenging Destiny (ISSN 1719-9727), Number 25, December 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.
This will be the last issue of Challenging Destiny for a while. Due to both personal and business challenges, I'm going to put the magazine on hiatus while I figure some things out. I hope to return the magazine to print in the not-too-distant future. It's been 10 years since the first issue, and 12 years since we first started planning it. Thanks to everyone who has been involved in the magazine, both contributors and readers, for making it a tremendously enjoyable experience.
There are many things that are wrong with the world, and it can sometimes be overwhelming. But there are also a lot of wonderful things happening, things that you can get involved with. Some people happen to be visionaries, who can articulate specific problems and what we should do about them. Here are some of the visionaries who have inspired me, in person and/or through their books.
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky is a linguist and political activist. He is very critical of the media and of the foreign policies of the US and other governments. He's written a plethora of books, both on linguistics and on politics. They include The Culture of Terrorism and Manufacturing Consent (with Edward S. Herman).
Chomsky points out that people in positions of power in the media are part of the privileged elite, and that media companies are sympathetic to the corporations that pay them for advertising. He also points out that most of our media contains so little space per article that it's impossible to talk about something that's truly new. He reveals that the US has interfered in the affairs of countries around the world—specifically, installing leaders who would be sympathetic to US interests. Yet somehow this has escaped the notice of most of us (see the previous points).
I had the opportunity to hear Chomsky give a talk a few years ago. Much of what he says is startling, but he's very persuasive.
From Necessary Illusions:
"To confront power is costly and difficult; high standards of evidence and argument are imposed, and critical analysis is naturally not welcomed by those who are in a position to react vigorously and to determine the array of rewards and punishments."
the Dalai Lama
Even if you're not Buddhist, and even if you don't believe that Tenzin Gyatso is the fourteenth reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, he is definitely a great man. As the spiritual leader of Tibet in exile, he has advocated nonviolent resistance to China for many years. He lives in India, and gives public talks both there and around the world. His many books include The Compassionate Life and The Wisdom of Forgiveness.
Even though his people have been treated horribly, the Dalai Lama still approaches everything in a calm manner. He has a way of attaining an inner peace that allows him to do this. He realizes that the modern way of living has advantages and disadvantages—one disadvantage is that we don't have much direct dependence on other people. He says that we can change ourselves and bring a positive atmosphere to those around us. He believes that people of different religions should have close contact—if we are aware of the value of other religions, then we will respect them.
My first introduction to the Dalai Lama was the extraordinary movie Kundun. I would like to hear him speak one of these days.
From The Essential Dalai Lama:
"Your enemies are your best spiritual teachers because their presence provides you with the opportunity to enhance and develop tolerance, patience and understanding."
Suzette Haden Elgin
Elgin is a linguist and science fiction author. She's best known for her Native Tongue novels and the nonfiction The Grandmother Principles and The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense. She founded the Science Fiction Poetry Association, and has her own newsletter called Linguistics & Science Fiction.
But I want to tell you about Peacetalk 101, a short novel of 100 pages. The novel is about a regular guy, a guy who's fed up with his life. In fact, he's in such despair about how things are going that he decides to end it—he decides he's going to kill himself in two weeks. He meets a homeless man on the bus who tells him a story each day, and he experiences a dramatic transformation. In order to experience this transformation, you must read the book for yourself. You can experience a transformation in your own life by thinking about things in a different way.
I was introduced to Elgin's work through Native Tongue, which we studied in a science fiction course at university. I was lucky enough to acquire her story “Death and Taxes” for this issue.
From Peacetalk 101:
"When you pay attention to what other people say, when you really listen and don't decide what they're going to say before they open their mouths, they often surprise you."
Biruté Galdikas
Galdikas has been studying orangutans in Indonesia since 1971. Her book Reflections of Eden describes her experiences. She discovered that although orangutans are solitary compared to other primates, the females and young males do get together from time to time. She witnessed fighting between males who were competing over a female. She discovered that orangutans can teach each other how to do certain things, for example, use dead trees as weapons or signals. And she witnessed orangutans using gestures that were remarkably similar to human gestures, but were not learned from humans.
Galdikas co-founded Orangutan Foundation International, which promotes the conservation of orangutans and their habitat, and helps create jobs for local people. In addition to studying wild orangutans, she has long been interested in rescuing orangutans who have been captured for food or as pets.
I met Galdikas briefly a few years ago when she obtained an honourary degree at the university where I was studying. I happened to be taking a course in primate behaviour at the time.
From Reflections of Eden:
"If you are studying an animal, or a people, or even a language that is struggling for survival, how can you not interfere? To turn your back on your subject is to turn your back ... on what it means to be human. The essence of being human is the capacity for disinterested compassion ... Disinterested compassion is helping the helpless, with no expectation of reward."
Jane Goodall
Goodall has been studying chimpanzees in Tanzania since 1960, and has made many startling discoveries. She discovered that chimpanzees use tools—the chimpanzees in Gombe all know how to fish for termites. She discovered that chimpanzees hunt, and eat meat. She discovered that chimpanzees can be caring and altruistic, and they can also be violent and even wage war against their neighbouring communities. Her books include In the Shadow of Man, Through a Window, and Reason for Hope.
Goodall started the Jane Goodall Institute to continue field research, save the forests and the animals in them, and help the people who live nearby. The Roots and Shoots program is an environmental group for children, and has tens of thousands of members in almost 100 countries. Goodall spends much of her time these days touring the world, speaking to people about her life and work, about chimpanzees, and about the need to conserve wildlife.
I've been aware of Goodall for a long time—I have an interest in great apes (see my editorial in issue #5). I heard her speak a couple of years ago—if you get a chance to hear her speak, she's absolutely inspiring.
From Reason for Hope:
"My reasons for hope are fourfold: (1) the human brain; (2) the resilience of nature; (3) the energy and enthusiasm that is found or can be kindled among young people worldwide; and (4) the indomitable human spirit."
Thom Hartmann
Hartmann is an author and radio talk show host. At one time a psychotherapist, he came up with a revolutionary way to understand ADHD. He has established schools for children with ADHD and Asperger's Syndrome, as well as residences for abused children. He has written about democracy, spirituality, and the environment. His books include We The People: A Call to Take Back America and Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights.
Hartmann's book The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight is about the current state of the world in terms of its environmental problems, how it got this way, and how we can change it. He points out that there are places in the world where we can get a glimpse of the future, like Haiti—where the forest is gone and people spend most of the day working or searching for firewood or something to eat. He reveals that we're going to run out of oil within our lifetime, so we must find a way soon to do things differently. Like the Dalai Lama, Hartmann believes that if we transform ourselves we can transform the world.
I picked up The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight in a used bookstore sometime in the last couple of years. It's one of the few nonfiction books I've read cover to cover lately. For a longer description of Hartmann's ideas, see my editorial in issue #23.
From The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight:
"Most people's major life regrets are not about the things they've done, but about the things they've not done, the goals they never reached, the type of lover or friend or parent they wished they'd been but know they failed to be. Yet our culture encourages us to sit in front of a flickering box for dozens (at least) of hours a week, hundreds to thousands of hours a year, and thereby watch, as if from a distance, the time of our lives flow through our hands like dry sand."
Ralph Nader
Nader is often described as a consumer advocate, and founded the organization Public Citizen as well as many others. These organizations have researched many topics including government corruption, nursing homes, water pollution, corporate executives, whistle blowers, ecosystem destruction, and nuclear weapons. His book Unsafe at Any Speed talked about how dangerous many cars were back in 1965. Since then he's written, co-written, and edited many other books. Nader has run for US president as a Green Party candidate and as an independent.
Nader has worked to keep consumers safe and informed, and to keep governments and corporations honest. In the 1960s he showed consumers that they could investigate things themselves—they could be proactive, and they could accomplish great things. In 1970 more than 30 000 students applied for his 200 summer jobs—his students were known as Nader's Raiders. He's quoted on his web site as saying, “You've got to keep the pressure on, even if you lose. The essence of the citizen's movement is persistence."
I knew that Nader started the Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) and I knew that he had run for president. But I didn't know much else about him until I recently watched the documentary An Unreasonable Man. I can't imagine a better candidate for president.
From “The Do Not Call Registry” in In The Public Interest (September 26, 2003):
"It is fascinating to watch legislators turn away from their usual corporate grips when they hear the growing thunder of the people."
Daniel Quinn
Quinn has come to some similar conclusions to Hartmann regarding the nature of the world's problems and how to solve them. Quinn's most significant books are Ishmael, The Story of B, My Ishmael, and Beyond Civilization. His novel After Dachau contains a science fictional twist halfway through. His recent book If They Give You Lined Paper, Write Sideways describes his unique way of thinking about things.
Quinn points out that Native peoples had a system that worked for them for hundreds of thousands of years—tribalism. He's not suggesting that we go back to hunting and gathering, or anything like that. A tribe is a group of people who work together, as equals, to make a living. Different tribes do things differently, and that's OK—everyone doesn't have to do things the same way. Tribalism is a system that evolved naturally, a system that works for humans. Unlike our system, which obviously isn't working.
A few years ago I picked a copy of My Ishmael of the shelf in a bookstore because it had a gorilla on the spine. It doesn't really have anything to do with gorillas per se but when I looked at it more carefully I was still intrigued. His books about Ishmael and Beyond Civilization are some of the most important I've ever read. For a longer description of Quinn's ideas, see my editorial in issue #10.
From If They Give You Lined Paper, Write Sideways:
"During your lifetime, the people of our culture are going to figure out how to live sustainably on this planet—or they're not. Either way, it's certainly going to be extraordinary."
Joan Slonczewski
Slonczewski is a science fiction author and biology professor. She isn't a very prolific author—she's only published six novels and two stories. Her best-known novel is A Door Into Ocean, and others include Daughter of Elysium and Brain Plague.
A Door Into Ocean describes how a nonviolent society could work, even in the face of a violent society trying to overthrow it. Slonczewski builds an intriguing world, makes you care about the characters, and shows you how such a society could actually function. When the invaders start giving orders, the Sharers refuse to comply—in fact, in their language there is no way to state a direct command. On her web site, Slonczewski reveals that “all the incidents of this book are based on actual historical events in which nonviolent methods were used."
I was introduced to Slonzcewski's work while at university. For the last fifteen years or so, when asked to name my favourite book I have said A Door Into Ocean. During that time I've been picking up copies of this novel whenever I see them in used bookstores—and I give them to my friends. I wrote a fan letter to Slonczewski, which she answered, and I later met her at a science fiction convention. I also created a web site devoted to her science fiction works. For an interview with Slonczewski conducted in 1998, see the Challenging Destiny web site.
From A Door Into Ocean:
"Fear was the cause, and the wage for one who hastened death ... Valans might imagine other wages and desires, but in the end, they killed because they feared being killed; they hastened death because they feared it, yet they feared it more, the more they hastened."
David Suzuki
Suzuki is a geneticist, environmentalist, author, and TV host. He's written several books, including Inventing the Future, The Sacred Balance, and From Naked Ape to Superspecies (with Holly Dressel). One of his more recent books looks at things from a different point of view—Good News For a Change (with Dressel).
Suzuki advises us that we cannot deplete or contaminate our natural resources faster than they can be replenished—otherwise we will be robbing our children of a healthy and productive future. He reports that if everything on the planet were shared equally, all six billion of us could have about the same lifestyle as the West Germans in the 1970s. He is very concerned about genetic engineering—he points out that we don't know enough about the consequences to be moving genes from one organism to another. He started the David Suzuki Foundation, which seeks to find solutions that conserve nature and achieve sustainability within a generation. Its four program areas are: sustainability, climate change and clean energy, oceans and sustainable fishing, and the nature challenge. The latter is a challenge to people to adopt the 10 most effective actions that will help to protect nature.
I have no doubt that I first became aware of Suzuki through his TV show The Nature of Things. I saw Suzuki just a couple of years ago—it was a question and answer session, and he answered the questions very well.
From From Naked Ape to Superspecies:
"The notion that human beings are so clever that we can use science and technology to escape the restrictions of the natural world is a fantasy that cannot be fulfilled. Yet it underlies much of government's and industry's rhetoric and programs."
Dave Switzer has been a university lecturer, high school teacher, technical writer, and document composition specialist. But he still hasn't figured out what he wants to be when he grows up. He recently read A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge—both were imaginative and enthralling. The two best movies he saw on the big screen this summer were Ratatouille and Stardust. Dave has been playing some board games lately—his favourites are Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride. His web site is www.davidmswitzer.com.
Cover artist Les Edwards is a multi-award winning British artist known for creating pictures with immediate eye-catching impact. He has worked for major UK and US publishers over a 35-year career. His work is seen on books, magazines, advertising, gaming, CD covers and movie posters. He works in oil but also paints in acrylics under his pseudonym, Edward Miller. You can find him on the web at www.lesedwards.com and www.edwardmiller.co.uk.
Bill was a practical man, and not ordinarily a queasy one; at 89, he'd had plenty of time to outgrow any tendencies to a nervous stomach. Even so, the part of it that was really hard for him, the part that gave him serious trouble, was putting Vanessa's body in the refrigerator. He kept getting it almost done and then taking her out and starting over. He kept trying different ways to fold her up, and not liking any of them.
He knew it was ridiculous—obviously, dead people can't be uncomfortable—but it bothered him, the way she looked with her arms and legs folded up tight against her, and her neck bent way over like that. He didn't like the way her eyes seemed to stare at him while it was going on, either, or the way her skin felt under his fingers as it cooled. If the rest of his life hadn't depended on it, he would not have been able to do it at all.
He'd been married to Vanessa for more than half a century, and he felt as if knew her as well as one human being could possibly know another. He was positive that she would have been on his side in this thing. If she hadn't been dead, she would have been doing her usual best to help him get it done, giving him nonstop instructions while he was putting her in the fridge, telling him all the ways he was doing it wrong and all the ways he should be doing it better. He could just hear her now: “Bill! Will you please be careful! Will you please pay attention to what you're doing? Do you have the right glasses on or not?” It made his heart ache, the way he could hear her voice clear as a bell in his head, saying those things.
But knowing that she would have both approved and supervised didn't make the task any easier. Knowing that she would have driven him nuts with her chatter while he was doing it didn't make it any easier. She was his wife; she had been his constant companion for sixty-four years, and he loved her still. He was used to seeing her sitting beside him in the cab of the RV or across from him in the diningbooth or lying beside him in their bed. Fitting her into a refrigerator—even the reasonably spacious one they'd been lucky enough to be able to afford—was definitely a brand new experience, something it had never crossed his mind that he might have to do, and it was hard. He was shaking, and nauseated, and he could feel his heart pounding around in his chest like a small trapped animal trying desperately to escape.
Fortunately Vanessa had been a small woman always, and in her old age she had gotten even smaller; he was able to manage it, finally, and able to close the refrigerator door and punch all the necessary buttons in the RV and get ready to head on down the road.
Bill would not have tried to make a case that what he was doing was right, if anybody had been around to question him about it. It wasn't right. He knew and accepted that. Somewhere in these United States there was a nice old woman who'd just become a greatgrandmother and was now legally entitled to the StarSpangly motorhome that he and Vanessa had been living in. That woman had put in her decades of looking after other people and their needs, without pay and without benefits and without perks. And now, like every other greatgrandmother, she was entitled to her very own StarSpangly as a gesture of gratitude from her government and its taxpayers. It was now Bill's personal duty as an American citizen to go straight to the nearest federal building and turn the rig in to be refurbished and redecorated and passed along, good as new, to that nice old woman, wherever she might be. Supposing she had a husband, it was now that man's turn to enjoy the benefits that came with being married to a greatgrandmother. Keeping the RV was both immoral and illegal, it was unpatriotic, it was pure wicked greed, and Bill didn't pretend otherwise even to himself.
But he was going to do it anyway, if he could get away with it.
It wasn't his fault that Vanessa had died and left him this mess to deal with. It wasn't her fault either, exactly; it had just happened. She was 88. People who are 88 do die, in the natural way of things; the fancy medical care that the 2090s had brought hadn't changed that, although it had made death before you were at least a hundred years old a good deal more rare. He was doing his best not to be angry with her, because that anger would have been irrational. It was a matter of considerable pride to him that he was still as rational as he'd been at fifty, and a good deal more rational than most of the young men he knew. And his mind—his good sturdy rational 89-year-old mind—was made up. He was not going to be one of those pathetic old men who sits around all day in his bathrobe in front of the comset, living in one grubby dreary room for the rest of his life. And he knew that if he did what the law said he had to do, if he turned the RV back in to the government to be spruced up and passed along to that nice old woman, that was what he would be. That was what would happen to him. It would be all that he could afford to do, and he couldn't stand to even think about it.
The StarSpangly was a nice little RV. It was comfortable and convenient—everything automatic, like all the government-issue rigs—and he and Vanessa had made all kinds of improvements to it over the years that had made it even better. Like putting in the larger refrigerator, for which he was very grateful at this moment; he wouldn't have been able to get Vanessa into the one that had come with the rig originally. The StarSpangly had a living area and a nice diningbooth and a bed that suited him. The appliances and gizmos all worked perfectly, and were programmed to give him his food and drink, even his margaritas, exactly the way he wanted them. The rig had shining silver wheels, top of the line, hiding the maglev parts that actually moved it along the road. Watching those wheels go around, you could tell yourself that life was still good, that there was still an open road to follow; you could ignore the fact that the wheels didn't actually touch that open road. And as for the rig's cyberdriver ... well, that was one splendid machine. Bill had always marveled at the cyberdriver. Some of their friends had had all kinds of trouble with their cy-Ds, but the unit he and Vanessa got had always worked flawlessly. You'd have sworn that thing was alive, the way it drove the RV.
He wasn't going to give it all up. No way was he going to give it all up. He was crazy about the StarSpangly, it was where he'd lived most of the happiest years of his life and where he wanted to go on living, and it was his.
Well, technically speaking, it was Vanessa's; but it had always been his too because it was Vanessa's, and she wouldn't have wanted him to be thrown out of it onto the street. He was going to keep it for himself, and that's all there was to it.
Vanessa had been fine when they went to bed the night before. She hadn't said there was anything hurting her, or that she felt sick; nothing like that, not one thing. And he hadn't heard a sound from her during the night, not so much as a whimper. Bill was a light sleeper; if she'd made any noise, even just a surprised noise, he would have heard her. She must have died peacefully in her sleep, just slipped away without feeling a thing. It was yet another example of Vanessa's amazing good luck, which he had profited by lo these many years. He had awakened early—he always did wake up early now, usually around five—and he'd understood right away what had happened, the minute he saw her face. It was a shock, sure, her dying like that all of a sudden, and it was hard on him, but he was happy for Vanessa all the same. No long illness. No hospital. No narrow bed in a nursing home, parked out there in orbit, going around and around the Earth eternally with all the space debris keeping it company. No medpod putting things into her and taking things out of her and making her miserable day and night. Just going to sleep in her own bed, happy and comfortable, and slipping away in the night without even knowing it was happening. He hoped with all his heart that it would be like that for him when his time came to die, may that time be many years in the future.
First thing he did when he realized what the situation was, he just got up and had a cup of strong black coffee and set about getting ready to leave the park, the way they always did. Well, no, the first thing he did, he pulled the blanket up over Vanessa's face, because he couldn't deal with the way she seemed to be staring at him, and he couldn't make himself close her eyes so that would stop. But then he got up right away and dressed, and he pressed all the switches that unhooked the RV from the water and lights and threedyvision and so on, and he punched the buttons for paying his bill and checking out of the park, and he headed out onto the road with Vanessa lying there dead in the bed. He had a terrifying minute or two when he was turning on the cyberdriver, because he couldn't help wondering if the government had bugged it somehow, maybe equipped it with a dead-female-human-body-detector or some such thing. He couldn't help wondering if he was going to get caught—maybe everything in the RV freezing on him, nothing working any more, and the doors locking shut on him and not letting him out, and an alarm going off that would bring some fedcop to haul him away—before it even got to be six o'clock in the morning.
But none of that, or anything like that, had happened. No alarms, no warning sirens, no flashing lights, no sudden message on the comset telling him the feds were coming for him. Just the usual almost silent hum the cy-D made while he told it where he wanted to go, and the three soft clicks that meant it had no questions.
He had kept going down the road till he got to a wooded area where he could pull over and think things through without having to worry about suddenly hearing Vanessa's gang of friends—all of them grandmothers or greatgrandmothers, all of them vigorous and energetic and fiendishly devoted to one another—knocking at the RV's door and expecting to join Vanessa for after-breakfast coffee. He didn't think he would have been able to come up with a plausible story to explain Vanessa's absence. And he knew that if he'd just said she was sick the whole gang would have insisted on charging right on in to see what they could do to make her better. It had been clear to him that he had to get out of the RV park fast, before that could happen, and he'd done that as quickly as he could. And then he'd sat under the trees out of sight of the road, drinking another cup of coffee and thinking. Trying not to panic. Trying to work out a plan that had a reasonable chance of succeeding.
He was grateful that Vanessa's idea of staying in touch with her relatives in her old age had been to send each one a Christmas card, with a small check only in the one card that went to her greatgranddaughter. He could do that. He could pick out cards Vanessa would have chosen, he could fake her signature on the cards, and he had always been the one who wrote that single check. He had that much going for him, and it was a comfort. It could have been a lot worse. She could have had dozens of relatives instead of a handful. She could have been one of those greatgrandmothers who visited family members regularly or took them along on trips in the RV. Thank you, Vanessa, he thought, for not being that kind of greatgrandmother.
And of course he knew where he wanted to go. He'd heard the rumors; any husband his age who was living in a StarSpangly had heard them. Hasty words said in near whispers, one old man passing the hint along to another old man as it had been passed along to him. The place was called Tall Pines, and Bill knew roughly where to look for it. You head south, over the border into Mexico; you watch for the signs, the little graffiti icons along the road. Tall Pines icons—tiny symbols, just two straight lines, each with an upside-down V at the top—scribbled on bridge railings, and on the sides of buildings, and on boulders and cliffs beside the road, maybe cut into a tree trunk. Just follow the graffiti, the whispers went. If you can make it to Tall Pines without getting caught you'll be okay.
As soon as he thought he had the plan straight in his head, he had gotten up and done what he had to do. Stripping his wife and putting her in the Batholator, then dressing her in a fresh gown and robe. He chose a set in the daffodil yellow that she had favored, and put a pair of shoes in the same bright shade on her feet. That was Step One, and it was hard. Folding her up and putting her in the fridge was Step Two, and it was terrible. Horrible.
Step Three, later in the day—buying the big freezer with the 35-year battery and the foolproof alarm system, renting the storage unit to keep it in, driving inside the storage unit to transfer the body—had been a little easier. Even moving Vanessa from the refrigerator to the freezer had been easier, because this time he was able to lay her out almost full length, bending her knees only the least bit, so she didn't look uncomfortable any more. She looked relaxed and easy, as if she were just lying there resting, and that did him a lot of good. He felt better when that was done—not good, mind you, but better.
It took him two days then, riding the length of Texas, to get to the border. Not because it was all that far, but because he was taking such pains not to look like somebody in a hurry. Both days, he had the cy-D pull the rig into an oasis in mid-afternoon and he went inside and found a salesperson and acted out a careful script.
"I'm looking for something,” he would say, “just some little thing, you know? Some little thing that might make my wife feel better. Cheer her up, at least. She's down with a cold again."
"That's a shame, sir. Seems as if a country that can put a military base on Mars ought to be able to find a cure for the common cold, doesn't it?"
"Well. You know how women are."
He could still remember a time when that line would have gotten a chuckle and a knowing glance. Now it got him only a carefully blank expression and “About how much did you want to spend, sir?” Which made sense. There was no way the salespeople could know whether he was a ringer ... some fedcop out looking for gender-bias violations. They had to be careful; he understood that. He'd have done the same in their place.
He'd gone back to the RV each time with a thirty-credit trinket for Vanessa under his arm, leaving behind an impression of a tolerant and indulgent husband anxious to make the day a little brighter for a wife he doted on. An ailing wife, who was still in the StarSpangly he was taking south. The playacting took quite a lot of time and effort—he'd thought it best to discuss each item suggested to him and make a show of having a hard time choosing just the right one—but he thought it was a wise strategy.
And then suddenly there was a Tall Pines icon right ahead of him, the first one he'd spotted, scribbled on the white surface of the automatic tollbooth at the border, down so low that he almost missed it: Two straight lines topped with little inverted Vs, and an arrow, and the number 13. Next icon, thirteen miles straight ahead? He stared at it, wondering if it was really going to be this easy. He thought about telling the cyberdriver to start watching for the icons, and then decided against it. It was all too possible that that was the command that would trigger some watching sensor in the government computers.
It turned out not to be that easy, actually, as he went along, and that reassured him. Sometimes there wasn't any miles number with the icon; sometimes there wasn't an arrow. Sometimes he drove the number of miles indicated and then had to get out and walk around and hunt for the next icon, and it would be on the back of a roadsign, or hidden behind the leaves of a vine growing over the big rock it was painted on. Sometimes he took a wrong fork in the road and had to double back. But it all made sense. The glitches were the kind of thing that you could expect to see happen, and after a while he started letting himself think that it might all work out.
He spent his first night in Mexico in a big modern campground at the edge of a town, worn out—partly from always trying to be so damn careful, and partly from missing Vanessa—but still too nervous and distracted to fall asleep. He lay there thinking about what it was going to be like at Tall Pines when he got there. Not having Vanessa around any more—not having any women around. Just a bunch of old guys, maybe sitting outside at night in their lawnchairs around a campfire trading stories, talking about their dead wives and their dead businesses, maybe playing cards or playing their gamepods. Stuff like that. The park hidden away in the pine forest; all the StarSpanglys scattered in among the trees. And of course a few rigs that a man had bought on his own, without benefit of a greatgrandmother; there'd be some of those too. Maybe there'd be a little creek. Maybe a waterfall. He would be really pleased if there was a waterfall, even just a small one. And you could lie in your bed at night and listen to the music of the water outside, instead of the steady hiss of traffic that he was hearing now. Peace, that's what it would be. Peace for his old age, with other men whose memories were like his memories, who also wanted peace.
When he got up the next morning he felt almost optimistic, and by mid-afternoon he had come to the last of the icons and he was there. Safe. Home free! Bill wasn't a religious man, but before he told the cy-D to head down into the entrance tunnel he took a minute or two to thank whatever God there might be, and he did it sincerely.
It was a long enough tunnel that several minutes went by before he started to get uneasy. Before he started to have a funny feeling, started wondering if maybe he'd been too hasty giving those thanks. “Look here,” he said to the youngster manning what looked like a check-in booth, “is this really Tall Pines? I mean ... the Tall Pines?"
"Sir?” the youngster said on the intercom, and Bill smiled because you could tell that he'd tweaked the settings to make his voice sound deeper.
Bill leaned forward so the kid could see him through the windshield and waved one hand, indicating the scene around them. The long white-walled tunnel stretching far back up to the entrance. The six long white-walled tunnels spaced around the enormous central room—the perfectly round central room—all six curving away out of sight. The small neat buildings in that central room, with their tidy labels: Administration; Infirmary: Dining Hall; Chapel; Recreation; Store.
"All this!” Bill said crossly. “Is this really Tall Pines? I mean, there aren't any pines, not down here. Not back up there either.” He pointed back over his shoulder, back the way he'd come from. Where the last of the icons—the two straight lines with the inverted Vs, and then the word FINAL all in caps—had been scrawled on a flat rock in the middle of a bare desert wasteland beside the giant billboard for breath mints that hid the opening to the entrance tunnel.
"This really is Tall Pines, sir,” the youngster said. “It really is. And I'm Paul. I'm here to serve you."
"What do you do if tourists wander in here?"
That got him a smile. “It doesn't happen. We're way out in the wilderness. You have to be following the icons to find this place, sir."
"Humor me. Suppose it happened. What would you do?"
"Tell them this is a military installation and not open to the public."
Bill thought a minute, and then he nodded. “I suppose that would work."
"It would. If such a thing happened. It never has."
After a while, when Bill went on just sitting there without saying anything, the young man said, “Sir? Do you want to check in?"
"Check in,” Bill said slowly. “Oh. Sure. I guess I do."
"Well, then. If you'll step down, sir, and sign the register, and look this way for your retina print, we'll be done."
Bill got out of the StarSpangly, brushed himself down, signed his name on the page, and glared at the retina camera until the youngster smiled and said, “All right, sir. All done!"
"Now what?” he said.
"Now you choose your VR environment."
"My VR what?"
"We have six choices, sir, one for each of the residence corridors, and you can make a new choice at the beginning of every month if you like. Watch this.” The youngster pressed a button, and the room went away. There was a blue sky overhead, dotted with tradewind clouds. White sand beach under their feet, blue sky over their heads, a spectacular ocean stretching away in the distance all around them. Surf pounding on the shore, where the smooth white walls had been. Fresh sea breeze. Cries of seagulls. All the mod cons.
"This is the Seaside VR, sir,” said Paul. “Nice, don't you think?"
"Very nice.” Threedy-holo. Top of the line threedy-holo.
"We think so, sir. And then there are the other choices."
He demonstrated them for Bill, one at a time. The Prairie. The Mountains. The Desert. The Forest—which was a lot like what Bill had thought the real reality was going to be, with its pine trees and its little creek, and its waterfall. And then there was The City, for people who didn't care for the big outdoors; with skyscrapers.
The VR environments were all very well done. The little prairie wildflowers bobbed gently in the breeze. The horns honked on the city streets below the skyscrapers. The waves came in on the beach, one after another. All the necessary smells and sounds and textures were there. Try to get close to anything and you'd run smack into the wall, of course, but if you just stayed in your proper place you'd be fine.
"My tax dollars at work,” Bill said slowly, because every last bit of it screamed FEDERAL at him, “here in Mexico. God bless America and all who sail upon her!"
"Sir,” said the youngster, sounding genuinely hurt, “I think you'll find that it's very nice here!"
Bill narrowed his eyes and glared at him, but it didn't slow him down any.
"All three meals served 24/7, sir. Open bar, 24/7. Slot machines in Recreation—24/7. Doctor and nurse, 24/7. Very nice. Very reasonably priced. You'll like it here—everybody does."
"I'll bet they do,” Bill said, his voice sad and thick and hoarse. “And I can leave anytime I want to, right?"
"Of course,” the young man said. And then he smiled and added, “But nobody ever does leave, you know."
Bill nodded, sure that was true. Nobody ever does leave, he thought to himself. Not as long as they're breathing. Not when the alternative is one room in some sleazy motel.
"I'll take the Forest VR,” he said, staring down at the ground because he had no interest in looking at Paul. “It's what I was expecting."
He was coming back from a lunch that he'd enjoyed, and conversation that he'd enjoyed, and was so deep in thought that it wasn't until he reached out for the handle on his front door that he noticed it wasn't his front door any more. There was a front door there, sure, and it was in his space and part of an RV, but it wasn't his and Vanessa's RV. It wasn't the StarSpangly. It wasn't the RV that had been there when he left that morning.
"What the hell?” he said. They'd moved him to another space without asking him, and put somebody else in his space? They had a lot of damn nerve! He knocked at the door, hard, ready to tell whoever lived there an assortment of things or two, and when nobody answered he opened the door a polite couple of inches and looked in. And said “What the hell?” again, but more softly than the first time. Because it was true that it wasn't his RV, but all the stuff inside was his own stuff. He stepped into the rig and checked the drawers and cupboards and closets. And everything that had been in the StarSpangly was still there in this different RV, stashed roughly where he would have stashed it. Somebody had taken all his stuff out of the StarSpangly and put it away in this different RV, while he was gone. He felt old, then, and frail. He didn't feel that way often, but he felt that way now.
He answered the soft knock at the front door with “Come on in,” not bothering to look first and see who it was. It didn't really matter who it was, after all. He was mildly pleased when he saw that it wasn't Paul, it was the man who lived in the space across the road from him, a man named Doug who was very good at poker.
"I'm sorry about this,” Doug said, standing there rubbing his hands together and looking uncomfortable. “We're all sorry."
"Sit down,” Bill said, and Doug sat.
"Nobody told me about this part of it,” Bill said, his voice sounding to him like somebody else's voice entirely. “All those old guys that whispered to me about Tall Pines ... nobody ever said this would happen."
"Depends on the source,” Doug said, shrugging his shoulders. “The ones you got probably didn't know about it. They were just passing the rumor along."
"Did this happen to you?"
The other man nodded. “They gave me a little more time than they gave you, though. It was a couple of weeks and change before they took my rig and put in the government one. I think it's something they just do when somebody at FEMA has a spare minute, you know?"
"But all the men here must have known it was going to happen. Why didn't anybody warn me?"
Doug raised his eyebrows. “What would you have done about it, if you'd known?"
Bill drew a long breath and thought about it. Let's see. He could have taken the StarSpangly and run for it? He could have gone to a Federal Building and turned in the RV and moved on to the room in the sleazy motel? He could have barricaded himself in the StarSpangly with an automatic and held off the federal swat team, or at least taken some of them with him before he turned the gun on himself?
Doug nodded. “You see what I mean. There isn't anything anybody can do about it. We don't see any reason not to just let people be comfortable as long as they can."
"What's going to...” Bill cleared his throat, realized that he was terrified, and tried again. “Doug ... what's going to happen now?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing? How can it be nothing?"
"Twin Pines has a whole building full of these RVs,” Doug told him. “Half a dozen different models; different colors. They'll deduct the rental from your monthly check the same way they deduct your Medicare premiums, and life will go on. As usual."
"But you don't understand!” And Bill told him the whole story, all about putting Vanessa in the refrigerator, and renting the big freezer at the storage place and moving her in there, and all the rest of it. Because obviously it wasn't a secret any longer, obviously the government knew all about it, and there was no reason not to tell.
"Well,” Doug said, when the story was finished, “I buried my Miranda in a cornfield. Joshua Grenna—you know him, he usually eats breakfast at our table and he's the guy with the one bad eye and the bald head—he threw his wife's body overboard way out in the damn ocean. And there's one guy here that—"
"Doug,” Bill said softly. “Stop. Please. I don't want to know what they did with their wives’ bodies.” And Doug stopped.
"The thing is,” Bill went on, “the thing is, it has to be against some law, you know? It has to be. It can't be a thing that's allowed ... putting your dead wife in a refrigerator and storing her in a freezer and all that. Aren't they going to come get me and take me away? In handcuffs?"
"Well, in the first place, you're not inside the United States right now, and that makes a difference, legally. And in the second place, if they'd found anything when they retrieved your wife's body that made them think you had something to do with her death, they wouldn't have bothered to set you up in a different RV. They'd have been here long ago, suggesting politely but firmly that you'd be well advised to drive back over the border with them."
Bill stared at him.
"It's true,” Doug insisted. “So help me. Think about it, man. The government doesn't want any trouble. This way, everything's taken care of. It's settled. Your Social Security covers your expenses here, they don't lose any money on you, you stay happy and out of their hair. They're not interested in rocking this particular boat. Suppose by some unlikely combination of freak accidents a relative finds out about your wife and tries to make a stink—maybe they thought they should have inherited some stuff from her, for example—the government will just say they're very sorry but Mexico won't extradite you. Which is also true."
"And Vanessa ... my wife. She's on file somewhere. She's a ... she's a cube. In a file drawer, in alphabetical order, in a government Funerary."
"That's right. And that's reasonable, you know. When you did what you did with her body, you sort of gave up your right to have a tasteful memorial service."
Bill took a deep breath and stared at the floor. Suddenly, he wanted Vanessa desperately. He wanted all of this to be a bad dream, and he wanted to wake up from it and see her lying beside him in their bed in the StarSpangly, breathing peacefully. He would have given up all the years that remained to him, just to have her back for one single minute.
He looked at Doug, and swallowed hard.
"Well,” he said, “you feel like playing some poker?"
Suzette Haden Elgin (born in 1936) is a linguist, writer, artist, songwriter, poet, businessperson, housewife, and grandmother of twelve. Her most familiar books are the Native Tongue and Ozark sf trilogies and her nonfiction Gentle Art Of Verbal Self-defense series; her most recent books are Peacetalk 101 (a verbal self-defense novel), The Science Fiction Poetry Handbook, and Twenty-One Novel Poems. Her SFWA website, with homepages for many of her books, is at www.sfwa.org/members/elgin; her Live Journal blog is at ozarque.livejournal.com.
If you're a science fiction writer or reader ... you're still looking at the world and challenging it, saying ‘Does it have to be this way? Does it make any sense that we follow these rules?’ Science fiction is about thought experiments. What does it mean to tell stories set in a different place than this one? How does that affect our world?
—Scott Westerfeld, “Scott Westerfeld: New Kid in Town” in Locus (May 2006, Vol 56 No 5)
Georgiana Burne-Jones sat beside the great bed, holding Topsy's hand while he slept. Georgie had seen this room many times: the whole of Kelmscott Manor was a work of art. The top panel of the bed curtains bore a verse that Topsy had written, embroidered by his younger daughter in medieval script. The house held furnishings both medieval and modern; he and his friends and family, including Georgie, had created many of the tiles and tapestries.
But Jane, his wife, had only been interested in his vision in the early years, when he still tried to paint her in oils or verse, before her boredom had grown to disgust and led her to the arms of the lovers that her adoring husband chose not to begrudge her. Though they never spoke of it in such vulgar terms, Georgie knew that her friend had spent his time in this wonderful bed alone.
His face looked so worn, so lined—shockingly old. Too much for sixty-two. The unruly dark hair and beard had all gone white. So many marks of care about his mouth; even while he slept, a muscle ticked on his cheek, as if he couldn't rest. It was his energetic spirit—his need to do everything—that was killing him.
Since 1883, he'd worn himself down, committing heart and soul to the Cause: his form of Socialism, which aimed to bring beauty and happiness to daily life through the revival of handicraft, care for the earth, and the elimination of class disparities. Though he had sacrificed his poetry on this altar years ago, in the end, he'd despaired of the politics. These last few years, he'd turned his hope inward, crafting beautiful books to fuel the imagination and give courage to the soul. But he hadn't stopped his grueling lectures soon enough to save his health.
She stroked his hand, so large, so talented—so often stained deep blue from the dye vats. His elder daughter had dubbed him “Old Proosian Blue.” Now the hands had grown thin, spotted, striped with the paler blue of ropy veins.
The great man, William Morris, opened his eyes.
"Georgie,” he murmured. “You came at last. How I've wanted a sight of your dear face."
"Topsy,” she said fondly. “We'll be walking through your gardens before you know it. Kelmscott is beautiful in the fall, with all the leaves aflame."
He grunted, but he smiled. She could see what an effort he made for her. Both of them knew that he would never see Kelmscott in autumn again.
"How I've missed you. Our talks.” He lifted a trembling hand toward her face. She pressed it to her cheek.
"Ned should be here in a few hours.” She faltered. Her husband, Edward Burne-Jones, would be devastated when Topsy died. Topsy had sunk so fast in eight months. Gout, diabetes, congestion of the left lung, tuberculosis. Topsy had lost so much weight that he might be another man.
"I don't have much time left, Georgie.” He squeezed her palm weakly. “There's something I must tell you."
Her chest tightened. Here it was—the words they'd never spoken. What had always been understood, in silence and verse. They were dear friends, drawn closer by the fact that both their spouses had broken their hearts—and they themselves were too bound by love and honor to do anything. They'd taken comfort in the warmth of friendship, when they might have thrown themselves into the fire. Both Ned and Janey had entangled themselves in disastrous, painful affairs; but it was Georgie and Topsy who loved too much to cause further grief by finding their own happiness together.
He managed another smile. “You know I love you, dear heart. I can't tell you,” and his voice trembled, “how glad I am to have you here with me, at the end."
She kissed his hand. She kissed his brow, as a friend might. Then she sat back and watched him with wide eyes as he told her other things. Painful things. Things she could scarcely believe.
And yet it was her Topsy who said them. It was easy to fill the room with the memory of his booming voice—a whisper now, as he mentioned days that had not yet been. Days that would never be. He reached into the bed curtains and drew out a letter. “Please, Georgie. Sit here by me and read it now. I could not give it to you before...” And as she read, she began to understand. Why he had waited to tell her, until it was too late.
He knew, if there were still a chance for him to live, she might have changed his mind.
My dear, my life of late has not been what it seems. There is a reason why I grew so listless toward politics in 1894, and it has nothing to do with my health. Or rather, everything, as you shall soon see.
I suppose you remember that young writer, H. G. Wells—Bertie, we called him—who used to come to Hammersmith for the meetings of the old Socialist League. He seemed quite taken with News from Nowhere, my vision of the future. He called it The Dream of Socialism Fulfilled. But he seemed equally fascinated by that damned-dull machine age of Edward Bellamy and the philosophic science of T. H. Huxley, with whom he'd studied at the Normal School of Science.
As we became friends, he would slip round odd evenings to the meetings and stay on afterwards to talk of the future, developments in science, and how things might change—how they must change, if the fate of humanity is to be anything but dismal. We talked utopia and time travel, amidst our Socialism, our hopes and fears for the future. Bertie told me he wanted to explore the future in quite a new rational and scientific way. In 1890, he showed me a few exploratory pieces. But it wasn't until 1894 that I realized the full genius—and danger—of the man.
Bertie came around one evening, agitated. He beckoned me outside. As we stood in the gardens, he thrust some numbers of Henley's National Observer at me, with his work.
"Here. You must read this first. Then come to my chambers as quick as you can."
"The Chronic Argonauts?"
"Henley got his hands into it,” Bertie said with disgust. “I'll have it out by itself in the spring as The Time Machine, the way it's meant to be."
"Congratulations!” I pumped his hand.
"Just read it,” Bertie muttered. “You may think differently then."
I read all through the evening, in growing disquiet. It was indeed a “utopia” to counter mine—but what a horrifying future. Bertie's vision presented the ultimate dissolution of society, with humankind deprived of useful work and any ability for intellectual or artistic endeavors.
In those days, Bertie lived in rented rooms with his paramour and her mother, always under threat of eviction. With the awful vision of his hopeless future before my eyes, I knocked in the dead of night. He let me in at once.
And there it was. The vision made flesh.
Wedged in the clutter of a young man's work sat something that looked like a new form of conveyance. The saddle rested amid twisted crystal bars in a contrivance that looked at once delicate, yet permanent. The metallic framework shone in the low light of the lamp, the bars and levers canted at such angles that they seemed built to withstand speed. But such beautiful lines! Such rich workmanship! Quartz and ivory, ebony and obsidian, steel and transparent bars that seemed to glow from within. I had never expected to see such beauty in the form of a machine.
"You don't need to ask me what this is,” he said in a low voice.
I maintained my silence a moment longer, in respect for the artistry of the thing. But even if I had not read his tale, there could be only one answer. “I'm growing old, Bertie."
"Not too old. You want to see if there's any hope, any chance. So do I."
"You're only 28."
He gripped my hands. “Now that you've read my little nightmare, how can you refuse? All I can see ahead is darkness.” He frowned. “But you may have better luck. You can find the right path for us, if anyone can. No matter what's happened, you've never lost hope. When one vision fails, you create a better one."
"Perhaps,” I murmured. But my mind had already begun to churn over the days ahead. What might I do, beyond my efforts now? The laborers embraced my ideals, drank in all I could teach them; but those with the power to improve the lives of the working class refused to step beyond their own concerns and alleviate that terrible poverty—the slavery of man to machine.
"You need some time to mull things over,” Bertie said.
But I knew already. Just the sight of the thing had set a hunger howling within me. “I'm your man.” I gripped his hand, and shook it, hard—and found there all the strength of my own conviction, despite his slight frame.
He laughed shakily. “Good. Because you might be our best chance. So much hinges on the next few years, and I can't do anything. I'm still alive through too much of what goes wrong. But you—"
"Yes?” I asked tightly.
He looked away. “You died in October of 1896."
I stood silent. The weight of that choked me like a millstone. Two more years. I forced myself to say, “Well, we still have some time, then!"
We packed the machine, dismantling and bundling the pieces. Finally, curiosity won over dread. “How did I die?"
"Too many things. No one was sure, at first—you drove yourself so hard. One doctor said, ‘The disease is simply being William Morris, and having done more work than most ten men.’ By the time they diagnosed anything, it was already too late."
I grunted in disbelief. I'd had the gout for years, and there were bad spells, I admit; but I could not reconcile the health and energy I still felt with my death in two years. It didn't seem possible.
After we settled the last pieces, Bertie touched my arm. “I could hardly believe it myself. But I've read of my own death, too. That's the curse of having a time machine."
We drove to Kelmscott under cover of night, the machine wrapped in horse blankets. We hid it in the stables while I watched the house. Then we brought it up to the attics, piece by delicate piece.
The attics at Kelmscott—you may not have been up there, Georgie, since you were a child and Kelmscott was your father's house. I've kept them bare. They're so beautiful, in their open, clean lines, spare and sparkling when the morning sun drifts through the windows. Sometimes I've climbed up there just to think, amid the rafters. In the attics, I would never be disturbed; and Kelmscott Manor had existed for so many goodly years—since 1570—that its limestone garrets would doubtless exist still, to afford me a measure of comfort and safety.
Bertie parted from me with a fierce embrace.
I waited until daybreak. From the height of the attic windows, I took my last look at the beloved slopes and meadows, the gardens, the stand of trees, the little haven I'd found here at Kelmscott. Then I sat and gently pressed the lever forward, precisely as Bertie had instructed.
The machine shuddered under me. It shook in a most alarming way. I felt for a moment as though I'd been tossed into the ocean, sick as if I were battered down by waves.
As I looked toward the attic windows, light and dark passed over me in a dizzying spiral. In the flash of leaves and sky, night and noon, I felt I would go blind. But I did not lose my nerve. I pulled back on the lever when the dials indicated the proper moment. I had decided to make my first test at a safe distance.
The machine bucked to a stop. As I climbed gingerly from the saddle, the dials told me that I was setting foot in the attics of 1925—a nice, round quarter-century. Perhaps I should have set to work at once. But I wanted to see the future first. Thoughts of my death gave way to sheer wonder—such joy as I felt when I was young and everything was new; when my friends and I stood against the world, determined to bring beauty back into every life.
I rushed to the attic windows and peered out. And what did I see? A line of trees along the walk. The profusion of flowers, red and blue and lavender. The same meadows, golden with morning's light. The sheltering stretch of wood, untroubled by the passage of years. The winding lane that led to Kelmscott Village, still clear and well kept.
I crept down through the house, but heard no one stirring. Yet the place was clean, and our furniture and decorations remained. What if Janey and our daughters still lived here? I froze on the stairs, wanting desperately to see them; our firstborn, Jenny, had been so sick since childhood, and May, the younger, had followed me so enthusiastically in everything. They would have taken my death hard. I wanted to tell them I loved them; but something held me back. Not just the thought of who might be up there with Jane right now. The fear tormented me—what harm I might do them, appearing like a ghost. Then, too, it might jeopardize our hope for the future, before I had fairly begun. I clung to the banister, tormented by the choice. And then I heard a footstep from above.
I could not let them find me here. I snuck out of the house and down into the sunshine. I followed the lane to Kelmscott Village, which looked much the same—a clean, pretty place, a refuge from the dinginess of London. I nodded to the residents, many of them young. They were not flying to the cities for the trap of mindless toil. Some of the older folk looked vaguely familiar. One old man started up, pointing a trembling finger as if he recognized a ghost—but when I drew near, his fear faded to uncertainty, then confusion, and he sat down again.
I took a boat down the Thames to London, wearing a great straw hat to conceal my face. London seemed already less gray, more green, the Thames itself less murky.
And there, at a newsstand, I had my first shock. From the front page, I gazed back at myself—but so much older! The masthead proclaimed it to be March 24, 1925. I had chosen my birthday, since one date was as good as any other.
I stared at the paper in consternation. I have never enjoyed having my portrait taken. Despite the lines of care, the parchment skin and thinning snow-white beard, it was a good likeness. The headlines lauded my life and offered an issue of commemoration for the man who had been “the peacekeeper of our times.” The article referenced many great achievements.
The world spun through my head as I read that paper. The Boer War had ceased—so had our aggressions in Egypt. Conditions for the working class had improved so much that all enjoyed a level of comfort, if not luxury. Women could vote at the same age as men. Britain maintained its might, but extended the hand of benevolence to its subjects, soliciting their participation.
And the article laid much of the praise for this at my own door.
The blood pounded in my temples, and my leg ached as if in warning of the gout. But I stood firm. I found a library and began to explore the past—my future.
It seemed I'd had tireless energy in spreading the message of art and beauty, equality and goodwill, respect for one's fellows and the earth. And somehow, I had found a way to transform technology into true art: for the people of this time had combined photography with the magic lantern show to produce moving pictures, with written placards that could be translated to make my message understood around the world. I spoke to them in “newsreels.” But more than that, in gorgeous hand-tinted scenes, I showed the possibilities of my fairy-romances even to those who could not read. The actors mimed emotion so well, those interpretive placards were not even truly needed to make the story understood.
There were other things necessary, of course. Back in 1894, the post of Poet Laureate stood open. I had refused the honor; the inanity of court poetry would have deadened my spirit, and I could not stand to rise so high above my fellows. But as a new-made member of the royal household, I would have the ear of the queen, and my verses would reach the mighty as well as the oppressed. Surely I could learn to grit my teeth, rein in my temper, and couch the truth so that they would listen.
I felt dizzy with all the possibilities. As the sun sank, I realized I had forgotten to eat. In a friendly tavern, I ordered a hearty meal, food that actually tasted of the country, not the town.
Somehow, I would have to do exactly as I had vaguely imagined I might do, when Bertie first showed me his machine.
Somehow, I must make certain that this future world would actually occur. I could continue to work passionately for eighteen hours most every day. I could take a more active role in the politics that had so disgusted me. The one thing I could not do was resume the life I'd known.
But there was something else in all this, Georgie. Something that might be compensation for any sacrifice I might make.
For you see, my dear, there was another fact the newspaper had mentioned. How my heart leapt when I read those words.
After Janey's death in 1914, I married you.
That was the beginning of it, my love. The days that we had did not stretch like an unbroken chain; rather, they were like stepping stones across a river, the colors woven through a tapestry, as I skipped ahead in time to where I was needed, stitch after stitch. You were the bright thread that gave meaning to my life. A continual joy to my heart. I spent as much time with you as I could, but there were always other matters whose importance we could not deny.
You helped me, exerting your influence with friends and acquaintances, enlisting the strong pen of your nephew, Rudyard Kipling. You also helped me hide my absences with excuses so vivid that I almost believed them myself.
I had Bertie by my side as well, helping for all he was worth. Sometimes he might tell me of important events that he had learned about in former voyages, but we both agreed on the danger of stepping too far ahead while our work was yet unfinished.
Great were those years, as we spread the message of Fellowship to all. What a joy it was to stand before those crowds. To watch my words touch laborers and shopkeepers alike; to see even the industrialist wipe away tears as we all sang one of my new Chants for Socialists. To witness the face of the earth changing before my eyes, becoming better. Becoming whole.
As the threat of major wars melted away, science advanced side by side with philosophy and moral responsibility, until science itself began to cure the very ills that it has caused in our own day. People worked together, growing closer in mind and spirit. Folk of many nations came to study side by side in schools around the world, regardless of class, culture, or creed. Technology grew into harmony with the natural world until it became ennobling, rather than dehumanizing, and all cared for the earth, and for each other.
I could not have written myself into a more beautiful future. I was jubilant. And mortally exhausted.
By your direction, as I grew old and worn, I had put in more appearances in those odd years when I'd been so often absent, 1894 to 1896, to get some much-needed rest. My work in the future scarcely let me pause for an instant, and I was weary, so weary, Georgie. Sometimes, I was so weak I could neither walk nor stand. For four months I had to be carried about in my chair. But those periods of rest were hard, lighted only by your visits, and Ned's. Those looks of compassion you gave me were still not enough to stave off the sorrow of those days, when I must act as though we had never been together.
At last that dreadful day arrived—the day that I feared above all others. The day when you took to your bed and we both knew you would not rise again.
How sweet you were to me even then, Georgie. How I tried to comfort you with equal tenderness. I hate to tell you of those moments, dear—of how you looked, or what laid you low. But I cannot tell the rest without what happened then.
"Was it worth it, Topsy dear?"
"Was it worth it?” I repeated, tremulous at first. “You know it was always a struggle to leave you, even to do what I must. I wanted our time together as much as you did, darling. But they needed me."
I fell silent then. No words such as these could ever tell the strength of my regret. Not regret for what I had done. Regret that there would never be enough time with you.
You whispered, “Has it all turned out as you hoped?"
"I have done everything I could,” I said with anguish.
You smiled weakly—but that was answer in itself. And I, too, wanted to know how the story ended. I kissed you on the lips, the cheeks, the brow, then rose swiftly, that I might the sooner return. You clung to my hand with your little strength. In your eyes was knowledge already of what I would do. And then, because I could not bear it, I caught you in a fierce embrace. I left, wanting only to rush back to this very moment, and lie down by your side.
I climbed back to the attics. I knew, even as I swung my leg through the bars of the machine, that I had nearly reached my end. Despite the periods of rest, the strain and weakness had never fully left me. I could feel it threaded through my bones.
I had spent out my life in service to this dream. I had done so because I knew with no trace of doubt whatsoever that it was worth it, to benefit humanity.
When I stepped on the attic floor again in 2120, I learned just as certainly that I was wrong.
I felt much steadier on my feet when I got off the Time Machine. The sun streamed through the windows of the attic, charging the pillars that supported the roof beams with a haze that made them shine like luminous ghosts. A bright new day. I could see the verdure beyond the window, dark green fluttering against the blue sky.
Walking down the attic stairs, I was pleased to find that the new owners had been keeping up the place. The most vocal of the stairs no longer creaked, and the rail was new.
The tapestries that hung on the walls of the stairwell and brightened the hall, the wallpaper in the kitchen, the carved and decorated mantle, the Sussex chairs that I'd designed—it all looked as if I'd only left the house this morning. The carpets were new, all the worn places gone.
Feeling that strange dreamy dizziness of a man close to waking, I crossed a patch of sunlight and stepped down into my study.
All my books were still there. The deal table still carried proofs from the Kelmscott Press, with my own writing upon them. But the project—the project was Le Morte d'Arthur, which Ned and I had been discussing for years. We'd never gotten very far, though this looked like authentic Kelmscott style. I reached out to touch one, and found that a transparent layer of glass, ground so smooth it did not reflect the light, stood between me and the page.
Some sound must have warned me: the passage of air through the old house. A step within the hall.
He stood in the doorway. That shock of dark hair, the thick beard. That robust frame. A high, broad forehead, large eyes, wide nose: I had seen that image most often in my friends’ artistic caricatures, though the youthful face looked utterly serious now.
He proffered his hand. I took his in a firm clasp that jolted me to the core. His eyes never left mine as I shook hands with myself.
"I wondered if you would ever come,” he murmured. “Let's get out of here, before the Delegate arrives."
Mystified, I followed the dark-haired young man, myself. He could not be more than 30. We walked out into the garden, a sweet sight, just as I remembered it. I felt disoriented when I saw the little yew dragon that I had trimmed myself. When was I? It seemed that everything had been kept just as I liked it. Yet I had never lived at Kelmscott Manor when I was this man's age. In those days, I was still enmeshed in the dream of Red House, and Janey and I had what passed for happy lives, with two little girls toddling at our feet.
We slipped through the flower gardens and between the hedgerows. He led me farther, toward the wilder section of the meadow, where the trees began. We had just reached a bench where I loved to sit on a summer day, when he stopped and looked back toward the house with the startled eyes of a deer who spies its hunter.
"You haven't seen me,” he muttered, and slipped into the wood.
Puzzled, I walked back through the flowers I'd chosen and helped to tend. Just under the eaves, I discovered the source of my companion's alarm. A red-faced man, bald, and fairly bursting with irritation, occupied most of the bench near the door. He grunted and forced himself to his feet as I approached. I had the sun at my back, so perhaps he did not see me clearly; for when I stood closer, he flinched, squinting at my face.
"Where is he?” the man demanded belligerently. His face bloomed with rage.
"I beg your pardon,” I answered politely.
"There's a William Morris loose in the garden! You should have done your job by now!"
He squinted at me, and I tensed; but then he pursed his lips and shook his head, as if it were somehow ridiculous that a man as old as I could be the one he sought.
I muttered in as unintelligible a voice as I could muster, while he blathered and blustered. He was apparently a Party man. I, too, was supposed to be a loyal Party man, though I could not guess whom he might take me for, if not myself.
"Now get out there and take care of that clone!” he bellowed. His girth gave him the force of an opera singer.
I was happy enough to leave my red-faced, roaring bull of a friend, though I had begun to feel like a man trapped in a maze. I wandered through the roses and flowering bushes, trying to look stealthy.
I found me again at last, hidden among the trees. He extended an arm to draw me through into the deepest, darkest part of the shrubbery. We pressed through waxy green leaves and delicate white petals, the tangles of plant and tree growing so thick I would have been lost if not for the tether of his hand.
At last we emerged in a glade, the forest having grown so thick here in the last two hundred years it seemed as though I'd stepped into one of my fairy-romances, rather than the future. There, in the dim green light cast by the leaves, he said, “We expected you a long time ago."
"'We'?"
"I'm William Morris 7."
"Does that make me William Morris 1?"
He shook his head with a sardonic air. “No, he died long after your time."
We fell silent again. The birds laced the air with their warbling and the rustle of wings and branches.
Gesturing toward the house, I said, “Who was he?"
"Our esteemed Delegate is a Party man."
"Socialist Party?"
His lip curled. It was a shock, seeing such anger etched on my own young face.
I asked, “Why has nothing in the house been changed?"
"It's a museum now. A museum dedicated to you. All the world loves William Morris,” he said, but this time his voice faltered. “We live there, of course. In the basement."
"'We'?” I repeated, for the second time.
"All the clones,” he said bitterly. “'Living history.’ Not that there are any of us left now, but me."
It took him several moments then, to explain what this might mean—the doppelgangers of me that the Party had created out of flesh and blood decades after my last visit to the future. Samples of my genes were apparently present in my handiworks, and they were able to recreate me, again and again, and perpetuate the lie that I had never died—the living embodiment of what the people were supposed to believe.
"But this isn't the world you dreamed of, Father,” he continued, his voice gentler as we sat upon the green. “They have taken your ideals and twisted them, perverted them to their own ends. The destruction of the earth has stopped, and class divisions no longer exist. All people have whatever they need. But freedom and intellect have eroded under the conformity to Party rules. The Party has organized society, telling us what to think and do. Under the tyranny of plenty, art has withered and died. People grow restless, unhappy and stifled without being able to say why, since they have all they need—except the ultimate freedom to choose their own fates. They fight without cause, and demand things one moment only to repudiate them the next. They act like petulant children."
He pushed back his rumpled mass of curls and eyed me keenly. “The Party decided that the best way to calm the unrest was to bring back their most popular hero—an artist who understood the needs of working people, and acted nobly on their behalf. But unfortunately for the Party, we William Morrises are not the type of simple folk-artist who might be easily swayed by rhetoric. Each copy eventually rebels and is wiped out."
A flash of danger shot down my spine. “Why me? If there is some trouble in the Empire, some threat, why not a great political leader—"
A sad, lopsided smile. “Well, they consider you a rather loveable but harmless buffoon. They only want us to keep the people happy, to distract them with noble sentiments while the world slides slowly into hell. They think all I can do is sit here and write poetry and fairy-romances in hopes that I might again inspire the folk with better deeds and better days. The Party views this with amusement, as a harmless distraction. Even I know it won't be enough."
As William Morris 7 told me about his world, I had a powerful feeling of déjà vu as I remembered what Bertie had shown me in his novel—the future populated with mindless children, the museums and universities deserted, crumbling and cobwebbed. A garden state inhabited by no one with a will or intelligence greater than that in unenlightened Eden. In this new future I had helped to build, garden groves were maintained to delight the eye, while hidden farms and factories were run by self-operating machines and copies like my William Morris, who were treated no better than slaves. For the originals who remained, there was no useful work to fill the void left by the absence of useless toil. The poor had become rich, without becoming wise.
"I want to live,” he said, gripping my wrist so hard it hurt. “I've been eluding them here in the gardens as often as I can, trying to call you down the long chain of memory."
"I think I heard you. An echo, in a dream."
He nodded as if this were a viable form of communication. Perhaps, since we were such strange kin, it was.
"But not like this,” he continued. “Not in this soulless world. Not unless we can change things for the better. Spark Hope. Rekindle Dream. Bring passion and beauty back, to replace this mindless passivity. Only with the fire of their imaginations will the people rise to change things."
His eyes burned into mine. He leaned so close I could feel his breath warm on my cheek. His face grew ruddy with this inner flame.
His words sounded similar to the ones I had spoken with such passion not long ago—his complaints the ones that had drawn me to Socialism. Only now, the position of society had been reversed. Much of what I proposed as necessary for the ideal world might seem to be attained, albeit not in the manner I'd envisioned. And yet the problems were still much the same.
I felt a painful pressure spreading out from the hard knot at the pit of my stomach, a sickness greater than the Time Machine had ever inspired.
"Of course,” he said, “the Party itself has overlooked one crucial fact in my creation. I'm irrelevant now. I have no reason to exist. The people smile and love me, they gush over my designs and weep for my verses, they hound me for my autograph, that useless scrawl. But they don't have it in them any longer to care what the Party does. They lead good lives, quiet lives. They believe themselves to be happy. They have no reason to rebel. They listen to me as the quaint and beloved hero of a long-dead age."
The leaves shifted, and darkness fell down into his eyes. I stood to go, pushing myself up on legs that did not want to move. He steadied me, but I could not meet his gaze.
"You're going back, aren't you? You're abandoning me."
I owed myself an honest answer. “I have to fix this."
"Take me with you. I could help. We can try again, a different way—reformers in the Age of Change."
His hand was gentle on my arm. I could feel the strength in that hand, and the weakness in the biceps he held. It was tempting, his offer. A second chance. Or perhaps I should say a third.
"You wouldn't want to do that,” I said presently. “You'd be helping to put the Party in the position it enjoys today."
"Damned politics,” he growled.
There was but one thing for me to do then, Georgie.
After seeing the future, I knew I could not trust my own failing vision to decide what is best for humankind. I had to step back in time. I had to visit myself in 1894.
I argued with myself bitterly over this. But the quest had never been about my own happiness. I would have to hold staunch and true to the ideals that brought me here in the first place—to the honor that had carried me through the most difficult passages of my life.
I landed a few days before the Time Machine would have been assembled in the attics. I had chosen a moment when I knew I'd be alone in my study, with Janey and my daughters out visiting. Bertie had warned me about setting foot in a year when I already existed; actually meeting myself face to face would be far worse. That close, I might only have a moment.
I rushed down the stairs. Each step drove a spike of pain through my leg. I forced myself down the hall. The closer I got to the study, the worse it was: I could feel his presence, sharp as the gout.
And then I saw him—that high forehead, the springy mass of hair and beard, the broad nose. Myself at 60. He stood frozen in front of the wide deal table as I clutched the doorframe.
"You!” we cried. Our voices blended, a low, rich harmony. We each flung out an arm, pointing. All the hair on my body stood on end.
"We haven't time,” I gasped. “Bertie's going to offer you something that seems too good to be true. Don't trust it!"
But my disjointed words could tell him nothing, and already I had a strange, giddy feeling. I could feel myself slipping away.
We walked closer, paces matched. We clasped each other's hands. All at once, it rushed toward us: a barrage of knowledge and sight, feelings and thoughts and time ... a whirlwind of madness and life. I forced myself to stand though the waves battered my heart. My vision swam. I was dying—but his breath was as choked as mine.
Sick with the doubling, dying and living—two of me for every breath. We embraced. Time buffeted me till I bent double with the pain. Alone.
Only myself. I huddled on hands and knees, trying to breathe, to slow my heart. Only me. But I held all the knowledge I'd ever had—past, present, future.
When Bertie came, I warned him, with all that I knew. By his sad look, I saw I spoke too late. Before he had ever given me his machine, he had tried and failed.
It was my vision of the new 2120, blooming beside my other memories, that so dispirited me. While I will never abandon hope for the Cause—for all men should treat each other as kin—I can no longer fight in this life with any passion for something that I know cannot come to pass.
I have decided to leave well enough alone.
I did not think my heart could break any harder than it already has. But then, I did not think I would ever give you up, if once we found a way to be together. Ned, dear Ned, died in the summer of 1898. And you and I—
We were inseparable, Georgie. Once loyalties and honor allowed. We knew a sweet period of perfect harmony that only I can remember now. I am so sorry that I never told you, dearest.
My love that shall never be.
It had all happened so fast. Georgie stood stunned by the graveside, watching while they rained dirt on Ned's coffin. She had loved him truly, loved him enough that she could forgive him endlessly, despite her common sense. Despite Marie Zambaco, and all the young women who followed. There was a childlike simplicity about Ned, that he could somehow accommodate so much love and so much pain, without any hypocrisy.
But Topsy's death—that was a blow Ned could not endure. It had been scarcely a year and a half since they had laid their dear friend in the ground. And now, standing over Ned's grave, she could not help seeing that other funeral as well, like a stained glass window shining through its reflection in plain glass. A simple cart had carried Topsy's body to St. George's Church near the Manor, festooned with vines and willow boughs and carpeted with moss. The storms had blown off and on all day, and the mourners walked through meadows that still shone silver with rain. Family and friends, workers from Merton Abbey and Oxford Street, fellow Socialists, and the Kelmscott villagers in their work clothes had all come to see him laid to rest.
The morning that Topsy had showed her the letter, she'd wanted so badly to believe it. She'd felt his eyes upon her as she read. She could not stop the tears that slipped down her face as she reached the end; seeing hers, his own flowed freely.
And so they had said their goodbyes; and at the end, it was as chaste and true a love as it had always been. She thought about the last words of the letter, scrawled hastily in postscript—"There will be something else to prove all this to you, that I cannot hang in a bed curtain. Ask Ned."
But by the time Ned had arrived that afternoon, Topsy's eyes had already begun to cloud, and he raved about things neither of them could understand. Georgie sat by his side, shocked numb by the revelations and her grief.
The next day, Topsy had slipped away from them, gentle as a lamb. She had sat beside him and held his hand till the last, but Jane was there, and May, along with many of his closest friends, and there was nothing more that Georgie and Topsy could say.
She didn't know what to think, what to believe. She locked herself in her room. Wretched. She lay on the floor and wept, for her best friend, for all the dreams gone by. She could not tell which hurt worse: that he'd given up this chance, or that he might have imagined it all.
She had reined in her passion at last, and done the only thing she knew—lived the expected, honorable life. Ned had looked at her blankly when she asked if Topsy had given him anything she ought to see. So there had not been any proof.
But now poor Ned had died when Topsy said he would. So soon. The finality of the loss of both of them cut her to the bone. She remembered the day, so long ago, when the Morris and Burne-Jones families had gone together to the beach, and buried Topsy to the neck in the shingle. It seemed they'd laughed the whole day long.
But as she went through the clutter in Ned's workshop, she found a surprising thing. Topsy had been true to his word. And it seemed she would have to forgive Ned one last time.
In a plain brown wrapper, she found an unknown book from the Kelmscott Press. She lifted the cover and turned the pages reverently. Her fingers rested lightly on the impressions of the type. The drawings were in her husband's style. She recognized some of them—he'd been working on them before Topsy died. The Press had hoped to finish the book afterwards, but Ned had given up, it pained him so. But here it was, and the engravings of Ned's drawings bore the stamp of Topsy's hand.
The story itself was one Topsy had shown them on several occasions, in different forms. But she had never seen it finished with such confidence. The date on the colophon at the end was 1900—two years from now.
She had to set the book down several times for sheer emotion. Pacing in the gardens, she felt as though Topsy held her hand.
Ned had kept this from her because he recognized the same thing she did: these characters were she and Topsy, the story of a love fulfilled. As she lingered on the final page, she felt a fierceness rise in her heart, a fire born of anger and love.
The book scarcely left her hand as she put on her coat and gathered Topsy's letter.
When she knocked, H. G. Wells himself ushered her inside.
Georgie looked nervously about the chaos of the rooms, seeking any odd shape that might conceal the Time Machine.
"What is this about, Lady Burne-Jones?"
"Please, call me Georgie. We were both his friends."
His face changed. He stood straighter, more alert.
"I have to know the truth,” she said. “What does the future look like now?"
He offered her a chair. “You're talking about the Time Machine?"
She nodded, scared suddenly of saying anything more. He might refuse to tell her. She reached into her bag and placed Topsy's last letter reverently into his hands.
Wells read silently, carefully, turning back a page or two and reading them again. When he was done, he looked up at her. She felt a jolt. Aside from Topsy's that final day, she had never seen eyes so sad.
"It's bad, Georgie,” he said. “Far worse than what I put into the book. The entire world, convulsed in war, grinding up so many people. The weapons burn away lungs, wipe out whole cities, poison the people and the countryside for miles. Genocide. Mass torture and incarceration. Starvation around the globe. They've cured diseases only to create new ones to use against each other. After so many depredations, Earth will scarcely support the smallest enclave of human life. I've thought about destroying the Time Machine, it haunts me so."
He folded the letter tenderly and handed it back. “If Topsy's future is half as good as he describes—"
He hesitated, letting the words hang between them.
Georgie stood up. “Yes,” she said breathlessly.
"Go back and convince him. You're the only one who can."
"And the Time Machine?” Georgie hesitated. She was not sure how to ask this sacrifice of him, the inventor. She only knew that there must be some way to safeguard the future, once all was done.
He waved his hand. “Take it. I'm through with time machines. This one has already turned me into a bitter old man, and I'm only 32."
"And you—you won't miss it?"
"I can discern how to move through time—a straightforward scientific problem, with a concrete mathematical answer. But I can't discover the right combination to save the world. Topsy was a far better dreamer than I in that regard. All I could see were nightmares."
That very afternoon, she went to visit Janey at Kelmscott Manor. The two women, while not close, had seen so much of one another through the years that they found comfort in each other's company. With Ned's funeral just past, Janey agreed to let her stay for several days.
When Bertie showed up that night at Kelmscott Manor, Janey cast a veiled glance at Georgie before drifting off to bed, the folds of her heavy damask robe whispering along the ground. Once she'd gone, Georgie helped Bertie carry the Time Machine up to the attics, piece by delicate piece.
Once he positioned the last bar and screwed in the final rod, Bertie stood back, admiring his craftsmanship one last time. When he spoke to her, he kept his eyes on the machine, as though afraid it would slip away before he noticed, out of his life and into another story altogether.
Then he gave her a crimped smile, whose pain she didn't understand until he said, “Say goodbye to him for me, would you? Send him my love."
At last she stood alone in the attics, staring at the machine that glinted by the light of the lantern. So full of promises.
Gingerly, she climbed into the saddle. She knew exactly where to go. A place where Topsy still remembered everything he'd told her. A time when she herself had been far from Kelmscott—far enough away that she could stay long enough to convince him. She would bear the pain. If she made haste, she could spirit him away to a future where the cures had become far simpler than the diseases.
She had the letter and the book tucked tight into her bodice. There was still hope. There would always be time. Even if paradise on earth was an impossible dream, hope still lay in other people, to change what they could of their lives.
For her part, she knew what she would change.
Comrade Morris is not dead. There is not a Socialist living would believe him dead, for he Lives in the heart of all true men and women still and will do so to the end of time.
—Lancashire Branch of the Social Democratic Federation, 1896
The title of this story was inspired by the platinum prints of Frederick H. Evans. In 1896, Evans visited the ailing poet and obtained his permission to photograph Kelmscott Manor. When Morris died soon afterwards, Evans's images were published along with an article commemorating Morris's life and art. Suffused with light, the clean, bright spaces of the attics seem to symbolize the creative spirit of the man who loved Kelmscott so much he made it the entrance to a better world in his utopia, News from Nowhere.
C. A. Gardner has been a devotee of William Morris since childhood, thanks to her father, Delbert R. Gardner (An “Idle Singer” and His Audience: A Study of William Morris's Poetic Reputation in England, 1858-1900). With master's degrees in library science and English literature (thesis: An Earthly Paradise: William Morris's Later Prose Romances), Gardner has been editor at The Mariners’ Museum and catalog librarian at Hampton Public Library. Thus far, she's had stories, poems, art, and articles published in venues such as The Doom of Camelot, The Leading Edge, Strange Horizons, and Talebones. For more information, visit www.gardnercastle.com.
CD: Could you tell us about the Variable Star project?
SR: It was the most exciting, gratifying, terrifying and enjoyable experience of my 35-year career. Every day of my life (since I was six, and read my very first book, Rocket Ship Galilelo), I've had imaginary conversations with Robert Heinlein—but never have I strained so hard to hear his answers. Basically, I reached a point in my life where I wanted to read a new Heinlein novel so badly, I didn't care if I had to do all the typing and marketing.
It came about by dumb luck. At a Worldcon panel in Toronto the assistant archivist mentioned the discovery of a novel outline Robert had never gotten around to writing. A stranger in the back of the room named Kate Gladstone yelled out, “You should get Spider Robinson to finish that book.” On the panel were Robert's agent and the man who controls his estate. The rest, as they say, is social studies ... See the book's Afterword. And check out www.variablestarbook.com for a video interview about the book with me and David Crosby.
CD: How was Robert A. Heinlein's 100th birthday party?
SR: It was as memorable a time as I'd been expecting. We got to spend time with a lot of folks who loved Robert and Ginny as much as us. For another thing, my wife got a free trip to zero-G, to work on her choreography!
At the Gala, Jeanne gave a PowerPoint presentation about her Stardance Project, her current effort to get a zero-gravity dance film made—with strong support from Robert's granddaughter Dr. Amy Baxter, and from David Crosby, among others. Robert and Ginny both famously supported the arts in space, and were fans of our Stardance trilogy. During the Q&A afterward, Jeanne was asked if she planned to try out zero-G herself, in a parabolic-arcs flight like that offered by the Zero-G Corporation. Jeanne agreed it would be a great help, and said it remained one of her dreams and fundraising goals. The great Dr. Peter Diamandis, creator of the Ansari X Prize and CEO of Zero-G Corp, stood up in the audience and said, to thunderous applause: “You've got a free ticket for you and your dancer, Jeanne.” See www.stardanceproject.com for information and updates.
But the best thing about the weekend was being surrounded by so many people who loved Robert: my kind of people, most of ‘em. And several Heinlein family members showed up, and there were some lovely exhibits and displays.
CD: You've been writing Callahan stories for many years now. How do you stay fresh? Does it become easier or harder to come up with new ideas in such an established universe?
SR: It must be different for each writer. For me, it gets easier. As I get to know the characters better, I get a better sense of the kinds of silly things they're liable to do ... and that's all a story is, really: watching someone interesting do something silly.
That said, I haven't been back to Callahan's in my mind for over 5 years now. I hope someone buys a new Callahan's book from me sometime soon, so I can afford to spend another year of my time hanging out there again. But I can only write what an editor will agree to subsidize me to write.
CD: Is the computer game based on your Callahan's series fun to play?
SR: Well, it was the one time I tried it.
In the first place, I'm not much of a games guy. In the second place, I am a Mac guy, since day one, and there never was a Mac version of Legend Entertainment's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon game: Legend folded before getting that far.
But before it was released, its totally brilliant creator, Josh Mandel, showed up at my door one day with a laptop and a beta copy of the game. He had no time for conversation or even hospitality; I couldn't get him to accept a glass of water, much less a cup of my specialty coffee. He just opened up his laptop ... and then we sat side by side and played his game together, for something over eight hours—until my eyelids started to feel sandy. I had a great time. Then he grinned, shook my hand, closed his laptop and left to drive home to Seattle ... again, without stopping for so much as a sip of water. Very interesting man. Hope I see him again one day.
That's my total experience playing the game. But I've had nothing but favorable reports from others who've messed with it—some of them ecstatic. Almost as universally popular is another game of the same name, Callahan's Crosstime Saloon ... but this one in the GURPS universe, from Steve Jackson Games, written by another genius, Chris McCubbin. Reviews of both games sent to me usually include words something like, “It is so nice to play a game that doesn't involve killing anyone,” or, “how pleasant: a game that leaves you less tense than you were when you started.” And by the way, Josh is a comedic genius: that game contains enough rotten puns for a dozen of my books.
Here's a site with a freely downloadable version of the game: www.abandonia.com/games/297/CallahansCrosstimeSaloon.htm.
CD: How did you get started writing?
SR: The folk music market collapsed. America, in its musical wisdom, turned to disco instead. There went my career plans. I hung up my guitar and took the only job a BA in English would get me: night watchman. And one night to keep from going insane with boredom I pecked out a story about where I wished I was instead: a bar where they let you smash your glass in the fireplace. I sent it to a magazine because I figured once I had a rejection slip I could impress girls: the tragic artist. But the magazine bought it, and I've been stuck ever since. Turns out you can impress girls even more with money...
CD: What's your writing process like (i.e., novels vs. short stories, solo projects vs. collaboration, new ideas vs. sequels)?
SR: There is no process. It's almost totally random, and what little direction there is to it comes from editorial whim. But usually Dumb Luck controls. For reasons not known to me, I haven't gotten a short story idea in well over a decade—not by conscious choice. I just stopped thinking of ideas that weren't useful for whatever novel I was working on at the moment. I miss short stories, and the moment I think of another one, I'll write it.
The best words I know on novel writing are attributed to EL Doctorow: writing is like driving at night. You can't see any further than your headlights can reach ... but with a little luck you can make it to the coast that way.
CD: What is your impression looking back at your recent stint as a newspaper columnist?
SR: It's a tremendous relief not to have to read daily newspapers any more. Keeping up with the news, so that I knew who to fling sacks of dung at, was a terribly depressing experience. Pointless, too: I doubt I ever changed a single mind about anything, or righted a single wrong.
But the money was nice. And it was great to be able to vent my rage at the thieves and morons who misrun our lives. But wallowing daily in the troubles of six billion strangers you can't do a thing to help is not a recipe for peace of mind.
Anyone interested in rants is invited to visit my website at www.spiderrobinson.com/writings.html, where each week my friend and webmaster Colin MacDonald reprints another of my columns, from the collection The Crazy Years (BenBella Books).
CD: Could you tell us about your trip to the White House last year?
SR: That was a strange trip indeed.
Jeanne and I were each invited separately—me for Variable Star, her for the Stardance trilogy. So we each got to bring a guest: our daughter and my sister Mary, a math teacher from Smithtown, NY. Breakfast with Mrs. Bush (and Bob Woodward and George Pelecanos and Michael Connelly and Alexander McCall Smith and Yevgeny Yevtushenko!!!) in the East Wing was a surreal experience ... though not quite as surreal as the previous evening, when without warning Jeanne and I found ourselves locked in a room surrounded by soldiers in full combat gear, locked and loaded, along with not only our hostess Mrs. Bush but also, unexpectedly, her husband George, and Dick Cheney, and Condoleeza Rice, and Karl Rove ... all of us listening to Elmo, of Sesame Street, plug his new book, My Life As A Furry Red Monster. That's sort of my benchmark for surreal, now.
Oh, and see my website diary at www.spiderrobinson.com/nbf.html for a photo I took of the President's personal bathroom in the Presidential Library in the East Wing ... with the front door torn off the stall. Man never tires of waving to his people, I guess ... or perhaps he just hasn't dropped by his library to read a book since his election.
CD: Any thoughts on current science fiction compared to when you started out?
SR: We're in our worst recession ever, and I really hope we survive. There are just as many good writers, producing science fiction just as good, for readers just as grateful ... what is now missing are publishers who believe in it enough to buy it, and spend ten cents promoting it. What they believe will sell is what tends to sell, time and again. At the moment, the publishers are convinced SF doesn't sell anymore ... and they're all busily self-fulfilling their prophecy. Like everybody else in the North American entertainment industry, they have been raised to believe that all the people they are selling to are ignorant pinheads terrified of science even if they weren't too stupid to understand it. They honestly believe you would all rather read about elves and dwarves and heroes with swords than about the exciting new world you're actually going to be living in the next few years.
Science fiction hardly ever produces a gazillion-copy blockbuster Harry Potter-sized Phenomenon, which seems to be the primary point in today's industry. SF has never generated anything like Harry Potter dollars; therefore it is on the run. SF has always had what they call mid-list sales: we do okay, but not great. Okay is now not good enough in today's market. A modest, steady return is of little interest to today's publishers. The deck is stacked against any product that isn't going to generate serious sales.
The government has also devastated the industry by passing a new law that taxes all books in backstock, stored in warehouses as assets. Instead of holding onto books by mid-list authors, publishers are being forced to reduce their print runs to what they know they can sell. This leaves publishers less likely to take chances, or reissue mid-list authors. This is coming at a time when the internet is teaching us that it's creating a wide variety of niche products available to a huge audience. This is the business model of the future. The government is effectively hamstringing the publishers from being able to pursue that option. Bad news for science fiction. For good books generally.
Maybe the internet will save us. All I can say is, it had better get a move on. In the meantime, let's form a movement to reverse that new tax on books.
CD: What project are you currently working on?
SR: Recording audiobooks of my work for Blackstone Audiobooks. My debut effort was a finalist for the industry's annual Audie Award, and the reviews have been most kind. See www.blackstoneaudio.com/search.cfm?x=38&y=12&search=spider+robinson. Haila Williams at Blackstone also granted me the great honor of letting me be the one to record the very first book I ever read: Rocket Ship Galileo, by Robert A. Heinlein.
And I'm just starting to get into podcasting. I spent the last year as the first-ever Writer In Residence at Vancouver's famous H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, and part of my duties was to post monthly essays on space and space travel at the Centre's website, www.hrmacmillanspacecentre.com. I'm now recording them for podcast out of both the Space Centre's website and my own, and I suspect I'm going to be putting more energy into podcasting in the future.
CD: Did reviewing books by other authors help you figure anything out about your own books?
SR: Sure. The best way to learn is to either critique or teach.
CD: Have you received any interesting responses from readers of your books?
SR: Literally hundreds of thousands—by now, millions. I hardly ever get an uninteresting response.
But mail for Variable Star has been unusually interesting. I braced myself for a blast of rage and scorn at my audacity and hubris in daring to collaborate with The First Grandmaster; I was ready for savage criticism. I have been made aware that there is a bit of that out there online, in various obscure cloaca ... but so far, exactly two of the emails I've received at either my website address or at www.variablestarbook.com have been critical, and both of them were extremely polite and reasonable. Every other letter has been positive, some effusively so: the nicest, most heartwarming fan mail I have received in 30 years. It seems a whole bunch of readers missed Robert so much—just as I had—that they forgave me for trying to remind them of him again for an afternoon, however clumsily I may have done so. I can't tell you how pleased that makes me. I didn't let my friend and mentor down.
CD: What's the best thing about living on an island?
SR: Preternatural beauty, low population, zero crime, and a perfect excuse to be as much as an hour late for any meeting or event on the mainland. And my cat loves living where there are no raccoons.
Life isn't just about competition ... It's also about cooperation. Interdependence. It always has been. The first cells depended on the cooperation of simpler bacteria. So did the first ecologies, the stromatolites. Now, our lives are so interdependent that they must, in the future, develop with a common purpose.
—Stephen Baxter, Evolution
Let's skip the part where we wake up and go, “Who are you, and what was I on last night?” Short version: Here we are, me and these three white guys on the ground in this forest, brushing off leaves and wondering, “What the hell?"
I do a lot of yelling. You know: “Okay, bozos, I don't know what your game is, but I am so going for the police.” Well, what would you do if you were a cute sixteen-year-old Asian woman, grooving to your iPod on the bus to the Embarquedero, and the next thing you know...?
Plus, my iPod's gone.
Well, at some point, I stop yelling long enough to take these guys in. Talk about hokey. This one guy, I swear, is a monk: black robes, shaved top and everything. He's kind of old, maybe eighty-five, and portly. Aged Friar Tuck. The next guy's even older, ninety-ish. He's got a Santa Claus beard and this old-fashioned outfit, like a frumpy tux. Third guy's the least weird: he's basically just a middle-aged geek: brown tweed, no beard. He and Monk are short, barely taller than me. Gramps is a bit more stately—and looks kind of familiar.
They're all looking confused and like, “What are you shouting at me for?” And I realize they're trying to talk too—hadn't heard them over my yelling.
The first thing I process is Geek-guy saying, “Miss, I assure you, we don't mean you any harm. I believe we're all as confused as you about what's happening."
Damn. I didn't know they made them like that anymore. Dude sounds like Leslie Howard, like in Gone with the Wind, when he's given up even pretending he comes from the Deep South.
Gramps says, “Quite so, young lady. You are perfectly safe with us.” This guy is a hyper-Howard. I thought only Queen Elizabeth had an accent like that.
Then the monk says something that sounds like, “Lo Kiminni Neh Latinam?” I get the “Latin” part. He's a monk. Figures.
And Geek turns around and starts talking to him in Latin. Can I peg a geek or can't I?
Meanwhile, Gramps comes toward me, all smiles, and holds out his hand. “My name is Charles Darwin,” he says. “Enchanted to make your acquaintance."
My brain freezes. Charles Darwin? Yep, that's what he said. So what is this, some weird role-playing thing? If so, it's hella creepy. But here's the real creep-out part: this guy is Charles Darwin. ‘Cause it hits me like ground zero where I've seen him before: in my biology textbook.
Hang on, I think. Stay real. He's got to be some sort of weird lookalike.
"Um, hi.” I shake his hand belatedly. “I'm Karen. Karen Nguyen."
Over “Darwin's” shoulder, Geek has stopped talking to Monk—and I'm relieved to see that he's also staring at “Darwin” with this totally weirded out white-as-a-sheet look.
"I beg your pardon,” he says to D., “but did you say, ‘Charles Darwin'? The naturalist?"
D. smiles with this I'm-superior-yet-modest expression. “The same. And you, sir?"
"T. E. Shaw,” says Geek, and they shake on it. At least that name doesn't ring anything for me. Maybe this guy's normal—in a super ultra-British way. Anyway, then Geek, um, T. E.—and I shake, like it's a garden party or something.
"Who's the monk?” I ask.
"I'd not got round to asking,” says Tea and starts talking Latin again. Monk says some stuff, and Tea gets that white-sheet look again. And now D. has it too. They're all talking back and forth. From his face, Monk's as confused as I am, except at least he knows what the heck they're saying.
"Um, a little English over here?"
Tea turns back to me. “Uh, this gentleman—he says he's Peter Abelard."
I'd heard that name. But it's not like I think about medieval monks every day, so it takes me a sec to put it together. It was in History—Famous Women in History unit: Abelard was the guy who'd been the tutor of that really bright chick, Heloïse, and then they'd started having sex, and then her uncle had gotten all pissed about it—
"You mean the eunuch?” I ask.
Tea takes a step in and says quietly, “Perhaps not the best way to refer to him."
Good point.
And I can be tactful when I have to be. So I just say, “Christ, what is it with all these historical figures? Tea—uh, Mr. Shaw—you're not a historical figure, are you?"
He just gives me this confused look.
"Guess not. S'okay, me either. So, um, when are you from anyway?"
He grins. “Last I checked, 1935 ... And you?"
"Welcome to the twenty-first century."
He nods at me—like, at this point, what were we going to say?
Charlie and Pete Abelard have stopped chatting in Latin, and Charlie's picking up leaves and bark, whipping them around in his hands like a squirrel. And the way he's bending down and springing up—he's nimble for a guy of ninety!
For the first time, I really look at the forest. And Toto, I don't think we're in California anymore—because these are not oak trees or redwoods or ... They're just weird: gnarled, like instead of having a trunk and branches, the branches have grown together to make a twisty trunk. But there are spreading branches up higher, and they're twisty too. And the leaves are way up there, sparse and crunchy-looking, all out of reach. Charlie's picking his leaves up off the ground, which is dead flat dirt. Above, the sky is cloudy gray, but the air's room-temp. And the trees are all about twelve feet apart, like they were planted.
That's comforting: we're in a tree farm. So there must be normal people around somewhere. I'm past even trying to figure out the guys I'm here with. Hoax masters. Yeah, except they must be geniuses at it, ‘cause they don't give off that vibe. And I know I should be massively freaked; I mean, I may be here with three deranged psycho killers who think they're people from the past. But I'm not scared, not of them—just worried about how I'm gonna get home. I was supposed to meet my sister in Larkspur for lunch. Now, Mom and Dad and Ahn will be phoning hospitals—
Come on, Karen, one thing at a time.
The trees stretch as far as I can see. It's quiet. No wind. No birds.
Pete's on his knees with his hands pressed together, saying, “Pot-air no-stair...” that's all I can catch.
"So what's the verdict, Char—, um, Mr. Darwin?” I ask. “What kind of trees?” Might tell us where we are.
He shakes his head. “I've no idea, Miss Nooyn.” (Mangled that one.) “The veins suggest ceanothus; the lobes and bark are reminiscent of the oak, but the form of the trunk and branches is unlike anything I've encountered. A new species to me. Perhaps a new genus.” The old dude laughs. “Why, I feel I'm back in the Galapagos again after so many years. Decades."
"Centuries.” I couldn't help saying it, but when he looks at me, I wish I was better at shutting up. Darn those big, frightened, Elijah Wood eyes.
"We're in Hell.” That's Tea, all quiet and composed.
Charlie and I stare at him. Pete just keeps praying, like he'd already figured that one out. Or like he doesn't understand English.
Tea points at a tree. “See the people in them? Legs, arms ... face."
I hate to say it, but he was right. Ents, I think. Just think of them as nice friendly ents. But the way they're all distorted, those aren't ents. Weird-ass genetic mod.
Tea kind-of-but-not-really laughs. “It's Dante. Now, which Circle..."
"Forest of the suicides?” says Charlie.
"Yes, I believe so.” Tea glances at Charlie. “Well, something's gone amiss, Mr. Darwin, because I'm quite certain you were never a suicide."
"Oh, like you were?” Another thing I wish I hadn't said.
Tea goes blank for sec. “Not to my knowledge,” he says with this weird little smile.
Still on his knees, Pete's looking at us now. I feel for him, ‘cause I know what it's like to be out of the language loop.
"Shouldn't someone be translating for Pete?"
Tea gets down next to him. “Es Neh Infernus, Magister?” (I know “magister” from Dragonslayer. It means “master.")
And Pete says a bunch of stuff in Latin.
"Now then,” Charlie says to me. “Don't distress yourself, Miss Nooyn."
"Call me ‘Karen.'” Man, couldn't Dad have kept his adoptive last name, all nice and English?
"Miss Karen.” He actually bows; it's odd. “It would be inadvisable in this admittedly peculiar hour to allow ourselves to be ensnared by superstition. It's quite natural that, to you, our situation may suggest some sort of ‘hell’ or demonic influence—” (Yeah, ‘cause I'm an Oriental Savage; I get it.) “—but if we keep our heads, I'm confident we'll find a perfectly reasonable explanation."
I nod. “Genetic mod."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Some billionaire hired some genetic engineers to splice the DNA of a bunch of trees so he could have his Dante-esque fantasy thing. Doesn't explain you guys, though. Hey, could you be clones?” Stupid idea. “No, you're too old. We've only had cloning a few years. Plus, not enough time to give you all that Victorian education and Latin and crap."
Charlie's giving me this frowny look. “You truly believe yourself to be from the twenty-first century?"
"Uh, more than ‘believe.’”
Charlie looks at Tea. Tea shrugs. “Well, she talks as if she's from the future."
Charlie gives this borderline hysterical laugh. “It's a dream."
"What's Pete say?” I ask Tea.
"Pete—Master Abelard was initially of the opinion we're in Purgatory. But when I told him that this place resembled one of Dante's Circles of Hell, he agreed that it might, for all he knew, be Hell."
"Good going. Accelerates from Purgatory to Hell in less than thirty seconds."
Tea grins again, like the whole thing's a kick.
"Well,” says Charlie, “that is, of course, the opinion one would expect of a Catholic cleric. But, intending no disrespect either to him or to the Almighty, might I suggest that for all my personal faults—and I own they are many—I do not, in good conscience, consider myself to be deserving of eternal damnation. Nor, from what I have read of Abelard, would I consider him to be. In fact, nobody in my present company impresses me as particularly meriting Satan's yoke."
Is it just me, or did he look at me kind of hard before he came up with that “nobody"?
Tea translates to Pete, and then Pete says something long. Man, the poor guy's got almost no teeth left.
Charlie looks huffy and says to Pete, “Nolo Dee-chair-ay—"
"Um,” I butt in. “Translation, please?"
Teas says, “He said that Mr. Darwin's inclination toward mercy speaks well of him, yet Mr. Darwin must recall that Christ's admonition to ‘judge not that we be not judged’ includes not only refusing condemnation but acknowledging that we cannot grant absolution. To judge oneself or another unsuitable for Hell is to usurp God's prerogative and show oneself guilty of the cardinal sin of Pride."
"Okay,” I say, “does anybody here besides Pete believe that crap?"
They all look at me like I just spat on the Holy Host.
"My dear young lady,” Charlie says, “pray let us maintain a semblance of civility.” Then he says some Latin.
Tea translates for me: “He says it's not his intention to usurp God's place. It's merely a common-sense conclusion that a God who is all-good will not condemn to eternal punishment his children who are clearly not all bad ... And, uh—” Now he's translating Pete “—Master Abelard feels such conjecture does, indeed, usurp God since it steps outside the bounds of the Holy Writ God has set down for our edification."
"I'm with Charlie."
Tea smiles again. “Do you know, I think I may be partly with Pete."
That's not what I expected.
But, oh my God, Karen, Bible study later. Time to get these guys with the program.
"Dudes,” I say, “are we just going stand around or are we gonna get out of here?"
"Well-spoken, Miss Karen,” says Charlie. “Let us take practical action to remedy our situation."
"I'll climb a tree,” says Tea. “See what I can see.” He grabs on to a trunk then looks back at us. “And, uh, do my best not to dwell on the idea that I'm climbing a suicide.” He's up and down in five minutes, saying, “The trees thin that way.” He nods to my right.
"'Kay, let's go.” I start off, while Tea talks to Pete.
Charlie catches up to me. “Dear Miss Karen, do let one of us go first. There's no telling what we may find ahead, and we would be remiss to leave you unprotected."
"No offense, Charlie, but I took 5 credits of self-defense for P.E. I don't need the manly men to protect me. So we can dispense the gallantry, ‘kay?"
Charlie gapes at me. “I say, in all my life, that's the first time I've heard a fellow criticized for being gallant."
Tea and Pete have caught up with us. Tea's chuckling.
I nod at Pete. “So the friar's decided to join in with the jail break from Hell?"
"He says he's curious to see it—Hell.” Tea smiles at Pete and talks Latin. Pete breaks into a grin and laughs. He says something back and I catch the word, “purgatory."
"What's up?” I ask Tea.
"I asked him whether, if he can still enjoy his powers of curiosity, it's possible for him to be in a Hell of absolute torment. He said, perhaps it's Purgatory after all."
The edge of the forest is not an improvement. The trees trickle out onto this rocky plateau that ends after a few yards in a cliff. Below, there's more rocky nothing and off at the horizon, more hills. By our feet, there's a steep trail cut out of the cliff. We could get down—but do we want to?
"Infernus,” mutters Pete.
Yuh-huh. “Okay,” I say, “I'm thinking life's not so bad in that forest."
"Look there,” says Tea, “in that cleft between those far peaks, there's a light."
I see a pale glow where he's pointing. “Hellfire?"
"Nonsense,” says Charlie, not getting that I'm joking. (I hope I'm joking.) “I say we make for it.” Plucky old geezer.
"Make for the hellfire. Good plan."
"My dear Miss Karen, that light is the most singular phenomenon within our field of vision. Whatever we find when we reach it will surely guide our next decision."
"Yeah. Especially if our next decision is ‘run for your lives!’”
Charlie opens his mouth, and I can tell he's got this urge to lecture. So I just pat him on the shoulder and say, “It's okay, Charlie. Just ribbin’ ya. Actually, I agree.” ‘Cause there wasn't anywhere else for us to go, except back into Suicide Tree Farm.
So we start down the trail. Way unfun. Dry and dusty, and pebbles like marbles under my sneakers. (I am utterly grateful I didn't wear my Tevas).
We've gone down about five yards when—this being Hell and all—things go from bad to worse. This shadow swoops over us, like a hawk but way bigger. There's a thundery flapping, and the wind's blowing dust in my eyes, and I'm skidding. Then this thing banks right in front of us, and it's a ... dragon ... sort of. It's got four legs and bat wings, but a human guy's head.
And I'm thinking, “Charlie has got to be right: it's a dream.” I even pinch myself. Doesn't help. Okay, VR. Some sort of VR candid cam—Who am I kidding?
The dragon zooms past, closer this time. Thing smells like rotting seaweed.
"Down!” shouts Tea. “Down the next couple of yards, there's more rock jutting out. We can hide."
No argument here. So we skid and slide, and this thing whizzes by so close I can picture me being skewered on a talon.
"Cave.” Tea points. It's this little, black entrance in the rock, and he's shoving us in. True, diving into a cave in Hell is maybe not the smartest plan. I'm remembering Bilbo and those goblins. But any port in a storm, you know?
The cave is dark and cramped, and sharp rocks are sticking into my butt. But at least the dragon can't fit in. It lands on the slope. For a sec, it blocks out the clouds and breaths on us with this asthmatic-bear noise. Gross and nasty. Its claws scratch on the rocks. After a couple of minutes, it backs off. But we still hear it crunching around out there.
"I'm getting a feeling this really is Hell.” I'm hoping someone will contradict me.
"If this is Hell,” says Charlie, “the universe is far crueler than I ever imagined.” He pauses, looking all thoughtful. “And people say the survival of the fittest is cruel."
"If this is Hell,” says Tea, “that means we're dead.” He repeats that in Latin. “Does any of us remember dying?"
I sure as hell don't. I was on the bus...
Charlie says, “I do remember feeling a bit knocked up."
"Sorry, what?” I say. Bad, bad image.
"Ill."
"Oh, ill. Got it."
"What year?” asks Tea.
"1882."
"Mr. Darwin, I do believe that was the year you died.” Charlie looks all pasty. And Tea talks with Pete and tells me, “He remembers being ill too."
"As I recall,” says Charlie, “Abelard died about aged sixty. This chap looks rather older ... but medieval times...” Then Charlie kind of laughs. “I must say that to the extent I ever imagined an afterlife, I assumed I'd be young again."
Tea chuckles too. “Well, you are in Hell."
"Come on, Charlie,” I say, “You're majorly spry for a guy of ninety."
"Miss Karen, I am seventy-three."
"Yikes. Sorry. Victorian times.” Moving right along: “What's the last thing you remember, Tea?"
He shrugs. “Going to shopping on my motorbike.” He looks at Charlie. “A motorbike is, well, a bicycle with a ... motor."
Before Charlie can say, “Thanks, I'd worked that one out,” there's a scraping, like chalkboard-fingers. Dragon's back, sniffing. We all sit still, playing dead. Heh—appropriate. After a lot of stumping around, the dragon wanders off again.
"Geryon,” says Tea.
"Dante's image of deceit?” says Charlie. “With wings? Now, admittedly, it's been some time since I took a run at the Inferno, but wasn't he more a giant man-serpent?"
"Yes, that's just the thing. This is Dante's Geryon, but it's Doré's interpretation."
"Doré?” I ask.
"Gustav Doré, the artist,” says Tea. “I remember his drawings from my childhood."
Charlie is having a word with Pete.
Pete looks thoughtful and sad. Finally he says some stuff, which Tea translates bit-by-bit: “If that creature is the patron of deceit ... it's fitting he sought me out ... for I have deceived many men ... nor can I say I have always repented it ... If this being has come for me ... I should go to him ... Perhaps, then, he will leave you in peace."
"No way,” I say, “we all stick together."
"Yes, we should,” says Tea.
"Quite so,” says Charlie.
That makes me feel a little better. But the dots are still not connecting. “Okay. Questions. No particular order. Why are we in Hell?—'cause, sorry Pete, I'm not buying the trust-God-that-you-deserve-it line. And why are we the only people here?—'cause I'm sure as hell not believing that we four are, like, the worst people ever. And why us together? Why do we all come from different times? And how come I'm the only woman and the only minority? They better rescan the personal data forms, ‘cause I don't belong in DWEM hell."
"DWEM?” asks Tea.
"Dead White European Males. And what's with all you famous dudes? Luck of the draw? I mean, I'm not famous. Tea's not famous.” Wait a sec, why is he giving me that guilty look? “Unless I'm missing something.” T. E. Shaw. T. E.—
And it clicks in. “Oh my God. You're T. E. Lawrence, like, of Arabia.” I remember now; I read this article that said he changed his name to Shaw to avoid publicity.
He's looking kind of sick, like publicity just caught up with him.
"Damn,” I say, “I didn't recognize you without the white sheets and the being Peter O'Toole."
"Peter O'Toole?"
"He played you in the movie."
He's looking past me like he's not all there. “I'd heard they were thinking of Leslie Howard."
I go all giggly. Can I cast or can't I?
Charlie's been translating to Pete. Now he switches to English: “Pardon my asking, but how exactly are you ‘of Arabia'?"
"I served there in the Great War,” says Tea, like can-we-stop-talking-about-it?
"'The Great War.’ I don't much fancy the sound of that."
"No, nor did we,” says Tea with this little smile.
"We studied World War I in history—” I start to say. I'm planning to talk about how the tactics were crap. Then I see Tea and Charlie giving me this stare, and I wish I could take my shoe out of my mouth. “Um, yeah, there was a World War II too ... But, hey, the Allies won—which was cool, ‘cause the Nazis were into some seriously nasty stuff with the concentration camps and—” Jesus, Karen, shut up already!
Charlie's translating to Pete.
And Pete looks at me and says one word: “Hair-magedon."
I don't need a translation for Armageddon.
'Cause here we are in a cave with this dragon watching us, and maybe we'll be here forever. It's Hell. I'm dead. I can remember now, the bus, the honking, the brakes slamming on. Ahn's going to blame herself because I was on my way to have lunch with her. Totally stupid and irrational, but guilt is like that. Ahn's like that; she takes everything so hard. Mom and Ahn are gonna be sitting in the kitchen sobbing. And Dad ... Dad's been through enough.
Oh crap, now I'm going to cry. I never though being dead would feel this shitty.
Being dead. I get an idea, and it pulls me together. “Hey! If we're already dead, why are we worried about whether old Gary-Yawn is going to eat us?"
So we all clamber out of the cave. And the dragon with his grizzly, ugly, human head whips around and springs. And I'm thinking, frickin’ hell, K., worst idea of your life. This tornado from his wings hits us, and we're tumbling on the rocks and bruised. He bellows this chest-rattling human-trying-to-be-lion-through-a-vocoder roar. And we're running downhill about warp six.
Then, somehow we're at the bottom of the cliff. And the dragon's gone.
Good call, Karen.
We sit there, pseudo-hyperventilating and brushing off dust. Once I catch my breath, I notice how cold it is. Not Antarctic cold, but creepy-horror-movie-cellar cold. And it's dark, like dusk. The ground's smooth, not like dirt or rock—more like tile. It's flat but with lumps; that's how come it looked rocky from above.
"It's a cinch,” I hear Tea whisper.
"What-huh?” I ask him.
"Hell,” he says, all quiet. “The lowest Circle."
Charlie moves toward one of the lumps and jerks back. “Dear God. They're people."
Like Soylent Green. Inappropriate thought number ... 666, I guess.
"The betrayers,” says Tea. “The betrayers in the ice."
I creep up for a closer look. It is a head, covered over with plasticky stuff—not cold like ice. I think the face is all contorted underneath. I can't really tell, don't want to.
Charlie and Pete are talking. Pete sniffles. I feel sorry for him. He must be wondering what he did so bad that God put him down here with the Judases. At least, I know I don't deserve it.
"Are they real?” I ask Charlie, figuring he'll say no.
"I th-think, they may be, uh, statuary.” Not 100 percent convincing. Way to comfort the poor little Oriental girl, Charlie.
"You think they're conscious?” I ask Tea.
He doesn't answer for a long time. “I hope not forever."
I'm picturing all of us sitting here till the plastic goo grows over us and sets solid.
"We're heading for the light, right?” I say. As the sky's gotten darker, the light's brightened up, like the glow before moonrise. “Right?” They just sit there. Come on, guys, resist the goo. “Well, I'm heading for the light.” I stand up and march off, thinking, bastards, you better follow me. And they do.
So we walk. And, dang, is it ever boring. Heads, arms, torsos all sticking up out of the plastic. It would be freaky if they moved, but they don't. Maybe Charlie was right and they're statues. God's hoax.
Suddenly, I see something on the ground that's not a frozen betrayer. It's a little box. Holy crap.
"My iPod!” Earphones and everything.
I scamper over and pick it up. I've never been happier to see anything in my life. Not ‘cause I'm some techno-freak, but because it's a piece of home. Thank God, the screen comes on. I hit play; I don't even look at which song I've selected. Hallelujah, lovely strains of my Beatles download. Yes, I'm into the Beatles, okay? Guess I have been ever since that hoopla over the twenty-fifth anniversary of Lennon's death.
"Dudes, it's playing!” I split the earphones, so they can hear the left side. They crowd around, trying to figure out what the deal is.
Then, Pete leaps back like I zapped him with a cattle prod. “Quis Cahn-tat?"
And Charlie's all, “Good heavens!"
And Tea says, “A miniature radio.” He perks up. “That means someone's broadcasting."
Jeez, I hate to burst his bubble. “Uh-uh. Sorry. It's just songs I downloaded off the web."
They're staring, like they're picturing a giant spider winching my iPod down on a thread.
"A gramophone?” asks Tea.
"Kind of."
Tea goes over to Pete, to explain, like, a thousand years of technology. Good luck.
As for me, I'm feeling good, going hippie-trippie to my Beatles, thinking, man, their lyrics are so profound!
And then it freezes.
It's just skipping, I tell myself. It'll play again in a minute. But it doesn't. It's dead.
Then, I lose it. I'm standing there, shaking my iPod, going, “No, no, no! God dammit! No!” Then, I'm bawling and screaming, on my knees. Jesus Christ, this is so unfair.
When I feel something touch my shoulder, I jump. But it's just Charlie, going, “There, there, dear Miss Karen. You have a good cry.” Like that's what girls do. That makes me suck it up.
"Whatever,” I sniff.
It's darker now, like a half-moon night, but without the moon. I suddenly register how far we've walked. We're at the edge of the hills, black, jagged, like a wall in front of us. And from behind, that glow, a weird chartreuse, is getting brighter.
I'm not hungry or thirsty—why should I be? I'm dead. But, man, am I beat. I could lie down next to these plastic-head dudes and sleep forever. Creepy thought, but I'm too tired to care.
So I sit. “I'm not tackling those slopes without a break."
"Of course, Miss Karen.” Charlie sits down too, and Tea and Pete follow suit. “You have a rest. You've performed admirably under most taxing conditions."
Oh my God, final straw on the camel: “Can we just cut out the condescension crap? Freaking hell, Charlie, wake up to the coffee: girls are better at distance walking than guys. Oh, but that can't be true, right? ‘Cause guys are better at everything. Especially white guys. I mean, you must be ‘superior,’ ‘cause, hell, you own the world. You've made up all the best ways to kill. You dropped atomic bombs on Japan. And I frickin’ well bet you wouldn't have done that to the Nazis. ‘Cause Hitler may have killed six million Jews, but, hey, at least he was white, right?"
I see Pete tapping Tea on the shoulder, and Tea trying to translate.
"So here I am,” I go on, “trapped with three white imperialists in this white guy's version of Hell. And I don't give a flying fuck what Pete says about sin, this is not fair! I don't belong here! If I've been such a bad person, then take it out of my karma. But no white guy's God has the right to put me here."
I run out of gas and put my head in my hands.
"Well, I say,” says Charlie after a second.
Then I hear Pete. He's glaring at me, going on in this cold, stern voice, and Tea starts translating line-by-line: “You are a contemptuous woman ... No wonder your contempt is repaid with God's contempt ... You complain of your persecution ... yet Christ suffered crucifixion ... and prayed forgiveness for His murderers ... He suffered the cross ... so that, reflecting on His suffering ... our hearts might be opened to compassion ... Who among us, thinking of the sacrifice of the Lamb ... can find the vanity within himself ... to pity his own pains? ... You, Karen, find yourself too noble for God's judgment ... I find you a vain, self-willed child ... and your disdain for your betters causes me to question ... whether, as a scholar, I erred to assert ... that the education of the female ... would make her a better Christian ... and not a prideful and rebellious contagion ... You are like the man who would remove the splinter from his neighbor's eye ... yet never sees the beam in his own ... I have no patience with you."
Damn, he's going to make me cry, even though I shouldn't care what some old medieval monk thinks. It still hurts, and I'm thinking, so unfair!
"Look,” I say, “I'm not Christian. I'm a Buddhist.” Tea looks stumped translating “Buddhist,” but I go on: “I never said I was a good Buddhist, like with the not desiring stuff—not too good. I always assumed I'd figure that out later, like someday, I'd be this female, Vietnamese Yoda ... Buddha. I totally know I'm flawed. And I'm not saying I'm as good as Jesus. It's just...” I stop to wipe my eyes. “Okay. I said some unfair shit. I've got a lot of anger. But you guys don't know ... about the Vietnam War. Like America was all, ‘If we attack the Soviets, they'll nuke us, so let's napalm this wimpy little country instead.’ My dad was a kid then. They blew up his village when he was ten. And my Grampa Jack—he was the soldier who adopted my dad—he's been an on-and-off alcoholic ever since, ‘cause he still can't deal with the stuff that went down there, even after thirty years.
"But the worst part is it never stops. Now, it's Iraq. Got to be all antiterrorist, so we drop bombs on this impoverished country ‘cause like, oo, they're so scary to the American Way of Life. Meanwhile, there's just more terrorists and global warming. The rich get richer, and two billion people are starving. And I get so scared that pretty soon all the nukes and droughts and mass extinction will ruin the Earth forever. Like why do I even care if I died as a teen in a bus accident? I would've died young anyway.” I'm sniffling; I try to stop. “So yeah, I get mad. I don't know what else to do."
Tea's translating that for a long time after I stop talking. Then, Pete says, “Such destruction is surely born of the same pride I see in you ... Mankind bereft of humility ... A sign His Judgment is near."
Man, this guy's one cold-ass bastard.
I turn away, ‘cause I gotta think.
I don't know how much time has gone by when I hear singing, real quiet. I look up through the gloom. It's Pete—and not Gregorian stuff either; in fact, I'm pretty sure it's not Latin. Charlie looks all droopy, like he's almost catatonic. And Tea's face is screwed up like he's gonna cry.
And I think, holy shit, foot in mouth again!
I go over to sit by him. “Hey. I should've shut up about Iraq. You really tried to help the Middle East; it's got to suck to hear it's still crappy over there."
After a sec, he says, “Iraq was ... cobbled together out of factions never meant to form a single nation. I'm rather surprised it's held together so long."
"I think we should make for those hills before it gets too dark to see."
"I've been thinking,” he says, “of Buddhism—and Milton's Lucifer. Both teach that the mind is supreme, that we make our own heavens and hells. Magister,” he says to Pete, and some Latin stuff.
Pete looks thoughtful and finally says, “Sick Et Non."
Tea chuckles. “Li-bear Tu-us?"
Pete grins, and Charlie smiles.
"Okay, what?” I ask.
Tea says, “I asked him if he thought we make our own hell in our hearts, and he said, ‘yes and no'—which is the title of his famous exegesis."
"And he says I've got an ego?"
Pete's saying something else: “Our afterlife reflects our own souls’ state ... yet it reflects God's justice too ... If God consigns me to Hell ... I cannot will myself out of it."
Tea grins and says some Latin; Charlie translates: “If this is hell, then, and you are condemned for eternity no matter what you do ... why bother to praise God?"
Pete laughs. “Said Sim in Purgatorio...” i.e. but if he's in Purgatory, then he's still got to play nice. Mr. Fire-n-Brimstone cracks a joke. Then he gets serious. “I would not choose evil, even in hell ... for to do good only for fear of punishment is an evil in itself."
I say, “But if you're in hell, you are evil, so if you're not choosing evil, this must only be Purgatory, right?"
Once Charlie's tranzled, Pete smiles at me, and I swear he's looking younger, and I can kinda-sorta see what a babe like Heloïse saw in him. Freaky.
Charlie says some Latin, then, “I've told him I approve his sentiment. Goodness is its own reward. Only errant children need the rod to compel them to behave."
Now Tea's translating Pete again, and Pete's looking right at me. “Hell is the absence of what one loves ... and I fear, for me, Hell is to be ... forever without Heloïse, my dear sister in Christ ... more than to be without Christ himself ... I fear even more for her that she would rather be with me than Christ ... and that, therefore, she belongs to Hell ... In that case, even if I merited Heaven ... I would be in Hell without her ... and longing for her even in the presence of Christ ... makes me worthy of Hell ... Such is the infallibility of God's justice."
This guy thinks way too much—and about weird things. But I guess he did—does—love that chick.
Charlie mumbles, “I wonder if I shall see ... no, surely not here."
I'm thinking about Pete without Heloïse and how he thought Dragon Boy of Deceit came to get him, maybe for lying to her uncle or some crap, and of Tea with his I-don't-specifically-recall-being-a-suicide thing in the Forest o’ Suicides.
"Tea, you really think we're making this place up, like, subconsciously?” It would explain the Dante.
"I think ... I ought to stay here."
"Nonsense, man,” says Charlie. But he sounds like he's flying on auto.
"Here?” I say. “Among the plastic haunted-house props?"
"Among the betrayers."
Betrayers. I try to remember the movie. “You mean ‘cause you knew the British and the French were going to stay all colonial in Arabia, but you still told the Arabs they'd be free?"
He looks at me, like dang-you-know-too-much-about-my-life. But he says, “It's more fundamental than that."
"Yeah? How?"
"I've betrayed ... everything. My own life, Karen."
"How?"
"By ... not being the man I'd hoped to be, by being ... pusillanimous."
"Pew-what?"
"Craven enough to hope that if I stay here and do nothing, perhaps, eventually, I'll cease to be. That's all I want at the heart of it."
I don't get what his deal is—and it's really not my business, so I say, “Dude, have all the issues you want. But you're going to make that climb with us, ‘cause I'm not budging without you."
He smiles at me. After a sec, he says, “Well, if we make our own hells, I shan't be leaving anything behind, shall I?"
"Um, yeah, that's the spirit."
We hit the slopes. It's not too steep. Only problem is, it's really gotten dark; the hill's silhouetted by that glow, so it's almost black where we're walking. There's a lot of toe-stubbing, especially for me, ‘cause I've just got the one free hand—I tried sticking my iPod in my pocket, but it kept feeling like it wanted to fall out, so I'm carrying it, sure as heck ain't gonna lose it. The climb's not fun—but not “Hell” exactly.
After maybe an hour, we round a bend—and I'm in Shangri-La. The glow is pouring from behind rolling woods, like the sun rising behind the trees, but it's not bright enough for the sun. Everything's bathed in a green-golden light, like the air itself is essence-o-spring. There's green grass up to our shins and rocks with green moss. It's kind of like ... a super-advanced CGI version of fantasy land out of My Little Pony.
Charlie's on his hands and knees, picking bits of grass and peering at them.
After a while, he goes, “No, no, no ... no.” Real quiet. He drops this stalk of grass like he's just found something icky.
"What's up, Charlie?” I ask, getting down beside him.
"It isn't real.” He stands up and takes it in, this beautiful, glimmering garden. “There isn't anything underneath it. The grass is all one variety. There's no smaller plant life growing between the stalks like it ought.” He huffs. “It would be Hell to my grandfather Erasmus, I warrant. What botanist could manage here? And ... there are no insects: no gnats, no ants, no beetles. Imagine a meadow and not an insect. This is a sham world."
I look around at the utter gorgeousness and try to see what he's seeing. Can't do it.
"Were this Heaven itself,” he's saying, “I should pray God send me back to earth, back to what is, of all things, most blessed and most miraculous: to life. For what could be more wondrous than life of itself, blind and yet unerring, struggling under the power of natural selection to create ever more complex and marvelous varieties so that all things—even the evils of killing and death—come to good? All life is as one ... tangled bank, so once I called it, each organism playing its parts, from the mighty elephant to the tiny protozoa. Scripture teaches that the lion shall lie down with the lamb. Yet what a deplorable fate for the lion, robbed of his natural food and denied his native habits—and deplorable for the lamb, as well, robbed of all hope for natural selection to transform it into a greater being. All proportion, all the grandeur of creation stripped away ... All ties of love stripped away: to my Emma, my children, my grandchildren. All the creatures that crawl the earth, reduced to common things, merely ... existing, each alone.” There are tears in his eyes.
Tea's trying to translate, but Pete's got that generations-gap expression.
Then, Charlie's shoulders start to shake, and he covers his eyes with his hand. Man, in school it's all “Darwin-equals-cold-science,” but that old guy really loves, like, the Earth—and everything on it.
I get all impulsive and go up and hug him. “It's okay, Charlie."
He hugs me back in this reserved, shoulder-patty way. “I am quite an old fool. But...” He pulls away, stooping down to squint at something in the grass. Guy's like a cat stalking a bug. He is stalking a bug. A big, old Hell bug. Jeez, he's picking it up, this reddish beetle, over an inch long.
"Bless my soul!” Charlie's got the beetle pinched in his fingers, and it's waving its legs at him. He laughs. “If it isn't a female North-American giant stag-beetle (Lucanus elaphus)! Hallo, my dear, how did you get here? And what have you been eating? And where are grasshoppers you'll be laying your eggs in?"
Gross.
Dead beetle, Charlie. It doesn't need food and it doesn't need baby beetles. But I don't have the heart to say that. He's like a kid at Christmas.
"So there's life here after all,” he says.
Tea smiles. “If we make our own heavens and hells, then you can conjure beetles to your heart's content."
"Oh no, my dear sir, not in the slightest. I know a stag beetle on sight—but the precision of her: I could never imagine that. No, my good man, there is a world here.” He looks around, all smiley. “I haven't begun to fathom it. But it is a world, and like every world, it must be governed by laws that dictate how its parts connect. And if I am dead, and by whatever means, find myself in this place, hale and hearty, I may be graced with time enough to discover the wonders at work here.” He puts the beetle in his pocket.
"Christ, Charlie, let it go. If it's the only one around, you'll drive it extinct or something."
He nods. “You've a valid point, Miss Karen.” He pulls the beetle out and stares at it, like it's hard to give it up. Then he puts in the grass. “If there's one, there are like to be many others. But I'll not disturb them until I've determined that for a certainty."
I squint at the glow backlighting the leaves with gold. “We making for the light or what?"
"Capital suggestion,” says Charlie and starts walking. “The lighting of any habitat is one of its most significant characteristics."
As we get further into the woods, Charlie's chattering about how this is a something-or-other birch and that one's Number 6, the larch. There's bugs around now—flies and moths and stuff—which makes him, like, scary happy. And the whole time, the light's getting brighter.
Then, after maybe a mile, we come out of the woods. The trees just stop at the edge of this meadow, and way across the meadow as the slope rises up again, there's this big green castle-like thing that looks suspiciously like a watercolor on an MGM backdrop.
But the light's for real. It's not blinding, just spilling out gold-from-green, all around.
"Chivvy-toss Supra Montem,” whispers Pete.
I ask, “Any of you guys—well, I guess that would be Tea—ever read The Wizard of Oz?"
"No, I'd not got to that one."
"Well, I think you're about to get real familiar with it."
Down on the meadow, in front of the E. C., we can see people, kids I think, running around and playing. Huh. I wonder if they're real or FXy—holo-kids or something. I'm wondering a lot of things as we start walking toward the city. Like is this really the afterlife? some weird, trick-question hell? or a trick-question heaven? or is it just another world? an endless world? Maybe I just got a new lease on “life,” and I'll have all the time in the universe to learn to be like Yoda. Maybe someday I'll know how to get back to Earth, and I'll be a Bodhisattva standing at the doorway between one life and the next, giving a hand up to Mom and Dad and Ahn. Or maybe all I've got to do is tap my heels together—and God's going to fly off in a big balloon, telling us he can't stop; he doesn't know how it works.
I look at the guys. Pete's got this max-concentration expression, like he's trying to figure out if he's still in Hell or what.
"How's it going, Pete?"
When Tea translates, Pete shakes his head at me with this baffled smile. “I do not understand the ways of God ... I know only that the Lord is all merciful and all just ... and so whatever fate he grants to us ... must also be of the highest mercy and justice ... What greater comfort could I have?"
At first, I think, yeah, if there is all that mercy and justice. But then I get more Buddhist and think, yo, it doesn't matter. You get what you get. Make lemonade, dude—which is pretty much what's Pete's saying when you boil it down. Guy may be way medieval, but he's not stupid.
"How about you, Tea?” I ask. “Missing the plastic people?"
He points at the city, which is closer now. “You see that carving up above the gate? That's Hittite.” He chuckles. “It's rather like an H. G. Wells adventure through time. Whatever we may find, there's an allure in the exploration itself that makes me feel quite intrepid. It's hoots."
Hoots? “Yeah, Charlie's already having a ‘hoot’ with his beetles.” But Charlie's eyes are glued on the kids in the meadow. We can hear them laughing and shouting now. They're wearing different colors: bright, druggie-poppy technicolors.
"Annie?” Charlie calls. “Is that you, my pigeon?” He darts a look at us. “Why I think ... I think that may be my little girl. If only I could see closer.” And he takes off like a bat out of hell toward the kids.
I hope it's her, his kid. And I hope Pete finds Heloïse and ... that everything gets found someday. No guarantees. It's scary. Man, my hand's starting to shake.
Then, there's scratchy little noise, and I realize my iPod's come back on. I whip on the earphones and, yep, it's playing perfect. So I bop along toward the big, green gate, listening to a murdered man tell me it's all good as long as we love.
A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Arwen Spicer has been writing science fiction since age fifteen. She is the founder of StarMerrow (www.starmerrow.com), a diverse community of speculative fiction writers and artists working to produce and market quality work. Most of her fiction, including her novel, Perdita (available through StarMerrow), addresses social and ecological conflicts from multiple points of view. She holds a B.S. in biology from Humboldt State University in California and a Ph.D. in English (literature and environment emphasis) from the University of Oregon.
Correction 13 erased a minor flaw in the human genetic code. By repairing a mutant gene responsible for slight chemical imbalances in the brain, the scientists at the Human Genome Application Project (H-GAP) eliminated forever the human afflictions of night terrors, hysterical pregnancy, restless leg syndrome, ice-cream headaches, and the ability to believe in God.
The last two were a surprise. Earlier corrections had been sparkling successes, wiping out dozens of deadly genetic disorders. Still, the scientists at H-GAP were cautious, adhering strictly to a ten-year testing regimen. The first children born with the correction seemed healthy and happy during the monitoring phase. According to most experts, however, the critical age for formation of personal religious beliefs is thirteen. Thus, three years before the full consequences were even suspected, Correction 13 was added to the international standard birth filter and distributed for free to every man, woman and child on the planet.
The world changed.
Some young people continued to profess belief out of respect for their elders, especially in cultures where religious practices weren't exactly optional, but everyone knew they were only delaying the inevitable. In western society, those religions without deep roots, the modern inventions and the fashionable eastern imports, disappeared quickly, as did the older ecclesiastical orders, Catholic and Anglican and Orthodox, which had been slowly dying there for a long time. Still more ancient, Judaism no longer resisted the transformation from a faith to simply a cultural heritage.
The Protestants hung on a little longer, but not much. When they too could see the writing on the wall, aging Methodist, Lutheran, and Presbyterian clergymen boxed up their hymnals and put their sanctuaries in good order, then closed the doors forever.
The evangelicals took it pretty hard. This wasn't the sort of apocalypse they were expecting, and they wouldn't accept it. Baptists and Pentecostals and others whose faith was the dominant aspect of their lives went into crisis mode, working themselves to the point of collapse holding rallies and handing out pamphlets on college campuses, trying to convert the unconvertible. But in the end, they failed. Their tracts littered the streets, ignored; their radio and T.V. stations went to static, one by one.
Unitarians were largely unaffected.
I was born nine years after Correction 13, which makes me a normal, and I guess I was about twelve when the full sense of obsolescence really hit organized religions. As more and more parents of normals realized that their children would never share in the promises of their faith, they began to question the point of it all. They dropped out.
Around the country, houses of worship stood empty with “for sale” signs in their lawns, and it was a buyer's market. The great religious works went out of print, although the Bible could still be found in the “fantasy” section of most bookstores, where it sold reasonably well in a trade paperback edition.
They couldn't reverse it; the scientists couldn't put things back the way they had been. First of all, the younger generation wouldn't have wanted them to, and technically, it would have been extraordinarily difficult, since the correction had wiped out not a single mutation, but a million different incompatible variants. Politically, it was completely impossible.
Officially, the whole brain-altering fiasco never happened. Nobody discussed it on the news. You wouldn't read in the New York Times that no one could believe in God anymore because of Correction 13. The governments of the world, the ones who practically forced the germ line retrovirus gene filter down everyone's throats, certainly weren't going to admit it. But it was obvious to everyone.
I was lucky enough to get the inside scoop. My mother was a microbiologist, and she had actually worked as a lab tech on one of the early H-GAP projects the summer before her senior year in high school.
"I say, ‘people can't believe in God anymore,'” she told me, “because I was raised Baptist and that's what seems most shocking to me."
She explained that other people would see it differently. They might say, “people can't believe in reincarnation anymore,” or karma, or the Tao, or ghosts, or extraterrestrials. If a normal can't see it, touch it, right here, right now, he won't believe in it.
"That's what has happened, Parker."
We started talking about this one night when we drove out to the country with a telescope to look at the stars, and Mom told me she was going to show me little green men. I didn't believe her. That was a year before the accident.
I was barely seven, but my memories of the accident have never faded, the cold rain, the way the air smelled of wet highway, the red glow of brake lights in the gloom. I remember hearing a bang and the car lurching and then all of a sudden the world was upside down. I remember the convicts pulling me and Dad out of the wreck, the way two of them burned to death trying to get Mom out. I still think about it all these years later, and I guess that's why I helped that convict on the roof.
People don't help convicts; convicts help people. I know that's not the way it used to be. It used to be that when someone committed a crime, he was just punished, locked up. But that was before Correction 13.
Suppose you could take something that didn't belong to you, say a candy bar, and leave no evidence, and you knew that no one would ever suspect you. Would you do it? If you were born more than twenty-five years ago, you would probably say, “Of course not, that would be wrong.” But kids today, the normals, would say, “Of course I would. I would lose nothing and be up one candy bar."
Before Correction 13, my mother explained to me, children had a dreadful fear of the unknown, the dark, of monsters in the closet. It served a purpose.
"Parents used to be able to tell their kids that if they disobeyed, God would punish them,” she told me. She tapped her chin thoughtfully after she said this and added, “Or a monster would jump out of a closet and eat them. Both approaches worked."
Children back then had this awful suspicion that someone was watching them and would strike them down if they did something that their parents told them was wrong. It kept them from danger at a time when their intellects were not yet developed enough to curb their basic impulses. They might someday become productive, law-abiding atheists, but when they were little, fear of God and monsters helped to guide them.
Not anymore. Now they did what they figured was to their greatest profit, in a calculating manner that would have impressed even Ayn Rand.
So much of civilization depends upon people following the rules voluntarily. The police and judges of the world would be quickly overwhelmed if enough people decided not to obey the law anymore. And it looked like that was exactly what was going to happen. The crimes of young children, like cheating in school, lying to guardians, shoplifting and petty theft became so prevalent that it seriously impacted economies worldwide. And these kids were growing up, graduating to more serious offenses. People began to view the future with a sickening sense of doom. Something had to be done, fast. Something drastic.
The details of the Samaritan implant were never published. It started out as a sort of artificial conscience for convicted criminals, to replace the one that Correction 13 had destroyed. Whenever a convict so much as thought about committing a crime, the implant in his brain would generate paralyzing waves of pain so excruciating that he would never try it again. Along with a streamlined justice system, the innovation made crime unappealing. Even those who had not received an implant quickly reformed to avoid such an unpleasant fate. Juvenile crime dropped like a rock.
But a few people thought, “Why stop there?” Why just discourage negative behavior? Why not encourage positive behavior? If a person has the potential to benefit humanity, by saving a life perhaps, or writing a symphony, or discovering a new source of energy, and doesn't, isn't that a crime? Shouldn't that be punished too? If a person with a Samaritan implant doesn't have the self-discipline to study astrophysics or emergency medicine, these people suggested, just zap him until he does. And so the convicts became artists and surgeons and engineers and heroes, which was good, because after Correction 13, nobody was really interested in these types of careers anymore. Most normals grow up with dreams of becoming professional celebrities.
So convicts help people, but people never help convicts. But I did. I didn't mean to shock anybody, but I guess I must have. Why else would I have suddenly become the fifteenth highest rated high school male in the country?
"So what happened?” asked Dylan Austin during the interview on TV Prime the next day.
"We were standing outside the CyberEquity building, my friends and I, watching the fire. The whole place went up like a torch. The heat was incredible.” I spoke to Dylan as though we were having a conversation; that's what people like to see. “All of a sudden, up on the roof, this convict stepped out from the smoke with a kid in his arms. There wasn't any way down, and the fire was closing in. So he took a running leap with the kid hanging on his back, caught a strip of molding that ran along the top of a building across the street, a couple stories lower. He swung the kid up on the roof, began to pull himself up. That's when the molding started tearing off the side of the building. He couldn't move; it just made things worse, and everybody could see he wouldn't last long hanging there."
If I really wanted to be accurate, I should have added that I had looked around just like everybody else did to see if another convict would show up in time to help him before he fell off and died. But no other convicts showed up, and the idea just came to me in a flash, like my weird ideas always do. I could help him.
"So I ran into the building,” I continued, “found a service elevator that went to the roof. He was still hanging on. I grabbed his hand and pulled him in."
Dylan looked at me with kind, interested eyes. “You're a hero, Parker, a real hero."
I gave him an “aw shucks” kind of grin, sheepish, but not too sheepish.
Dylan put a hand to his earpiece. “We're cutting away. Tyler Davis is asking Madison Cleary to homecoming right now.” His eyespot flashed and his eyes changed focus. “He's on one knee. This is gold."
I tried not to look annoyed. “Are we coming back?"
"Depends on your ratings. You were down to thirty-seven when we started.” He wagged a finger in thin air, flipped some virtual switch, and whistled. “Guess what, kid? You're up to seven.” He squinted at something only he could see, and looked puzzled. “Weird demographic, though. You're drawing huge from the forty and over crowd. Okay, we're back in five, four, three...” He turned to me. “So why did you do it? What made Parker Evans want to be a hero?"
I already knew how I was going to answer this question. The words had flashed into my brain as soon as I knew I was speaking to the “forty and over crowd.” Voters.
"It's just the way I was raised, Dylan,” I said. “My dad taught me to work hard, do what's right, and help people whenever I see a need."
Dylan knew my dad was running for congress, and I think he caught on. “You're lucky to have a dad like that."
"I sure am."
When the interview started, my dad had barely sixty thousand dollars left in his campaign fund, and was dead last in the polls. Five minutes after the interview concluded, his account was at half a million and rising, and he was projected by most spot polls to win the primary. By nine o'clock that evening, the party was calling him to discuss possible strategies for the general election. I wondered if this was going to blow my plans for Nikki's party.
Nikki Kennedy went to my high school, but she had never spoken to me. Her father was the incumbent congressman that Dad would be running against. Nikki was a reject, but you could hardly tell. People in her family had always been tall and athletic and well tanned. The only clues you got that her parents hadn't taken the standard filter was that sometimes her face would break out a bit, and the little silver cross she wore around her neck.
Most people are cool about rejects and don't give them a hard time. But Nikki was rich and very pretty; that made her fair game for any insult anyone wanted to throw at her. In other circumstances, I think she would have been friendly and outgoing, but the years of harassment had taken a toll. She cocooned herself within a tight circle of friends and pretty much didn't speak to anyone else.
We had one friend in common, Xander Sparks. Xander was the kind of guy nobody could dislike; a big star of the local teen melodrama who knew everyone's name and drew people to him with empathic charisma. Nobody got picked on when Xander was around, and there wasn't a girl in school who couldn't cry on his shoulder if she needed to. He was unusually tall and bright and irresistible to women, and he had inherited none of these characteristics from his parents. One look at him, and you knew he was a tweak.
Correction One had eliminated Cystic Fibrosis from the human genome forever. Corrections Two through Five did the same for sickle cell anemia, Huntington's disease, Marfan syndrome, and hereditary hemochromatosis. In the years that followed, before the fallout from 13 ended the program, scientists at H-GAP found corrections for a host of inherited human infirmities, including certain types of cancer, growth problems, learning disabilities, and imperfect eyesight, and then moved on to more aesthetic fixes, targeting acne and baldness and overactive fat cells. Still, all of these changes fell under the criteria of correction, the replacement of clearly defective genes.
But a few people thought, “Why stop there?” Why not turn ‘B’ students into geniuses, ordinary girls into supermodels, average ball players into pro athletes? There's nothing astonishing about this; parents have been trying to improve their children since time began. Only now, they had the means to actually do it. While gene correction was plug-and-play—just pop a pill—gene tweaking was intricate custom design, laborious, expensive, and ultimately tragic.
It's a well-known fact that every tweak has a glitch. If you went to elementary school with the first wave of tweaks like I did, then you saw at least a few of the worst glitches, the organ failures and the fatal seizures and the howling brain malfunctions. You saw the paramedics come and cart those kids away.
But most of the glitches were less catastrophic. One tweak I remember was an incredible athlete. He could bench 450 and run the 100 in eight seconds flat. When he was twelve. The next year, he started high school and was the star everything on the varsity football team. Then somebody at another school found out what his glitch was. He could hear up into the very high frequencies, like a dog can. And whenever somebody blew a dog whistle, he would come running. I'm not kidding. He came to stuff that dog whistle down the throat of whoever was blowing it, but he came. So from then on, whenever this kid got the ball in a game, people from the other school would blow dog whistles, and he'd run out-of-bounds to chase them. Like I mentioned, people are usually cool about rejects, but they're pretty brutal to tweaks. Don't want them thinking they're better than us, after all.
Xander's glitch was his real name. Hearing it would trigger some kind of feedback loop in his brain. I found out about it when we played peewee soccer together when we were six.
That was back when he was just finding out that he was different from the other kids. I didn't have his extra height and strength, but we could both perform amazing tricks of memory and calculation. It made him happy, I think, to find someone a little like him, even though I had gotten my abilities from my mother, and his came from a lab.
Once you are Xander Sparks’ friend, you are always his friend. Even in high school, when he was a top ten local personality with his own syndicated reality show and recurring spots on a dozen others, and I was a complete nobody, he would still suspend his live feed once a week or so to play air hockey or just bum at my place. It was a little like Apollo descending from Mt. Olympus to hang with an old mortal buddy.
If I had wanted, he would gladly have let me tag along with him in the social stratosphere, and it would have meant residuals and a second-class type of celebrity. But I didn't want that. If I made it there, I wanted it to be on my own terms. I guess that's why I was a little reluctant at first when he asked me to run his campaign for student body president.
"You practically ran that first campaign for your dad,” he said, trying to convince me.
"But we lost."
"Yeah, but you learned a lot. You're the man for the job, Park. Besides...” He tapped the mobile clipped to his shoulder twice for a twenty-second blackout and waited until I did the same.
"You'll get a lot of face time,” he said. “That's like free advertising for your dad."
I glanced at his mobile warily. The activation light was still dimmed. “You know he'll be running against Nikki's dad."
"Nikki's dad's unbeatable. You said so yourself. I know how the game's played. You win the primary this time, then you're a lock in two years when the term limit's up.” He smiled and clapped me on the shoulder. “We need to keep that congressional seat in the family, right? My campaign will be good practice for you.” Then a faint shadow crossed his face. “And you know about stuff."
I knew what he meant. As far as I knew, I was the only one at school who knew about Xander's glitch, and I had never told anybody. But somehow, Aiden Gorby found out about it.
It was during the debate. Gorby was Xander's opponent on the final ballot, and he looked so smug as he walked out to his lectern that it gave me a bad feeling.
"A student body president must understand the people he represents,” said Gorby to the assembly. “To understand you, he must be one of you, as I am, not a privileged wonder boy like—” He paused, flashing a malevolent grin at Xander. “—Stephen Alexander Sparks."
Xander went rigid. He gripped the top of his lectern so hard that I though it might snap off. I knew that in a few seconds his eyes would roll back in his head and he would start shaking, just like that time in peewee soccer when some assistant coach had called roll using the full names of all the players. I was the only one who figured it out back then; everybody else just thought he'd been sick. From then on, Xander's parents had always made sure that he was listed only as “Xander Sparks” on any roster.
Everybody liked Xander. When Gorby insulted him, the crowd wasn't happy. There were angry shouts; both Gorby and the moderator were shouted down when they tried to speak. Then somebody threw something. Things were getting out of hand, and the moderator, a sophomore girl who was head of the poly-sci club, looked around the auditorium with wide, frantic eyes.
To me, everything is a puzzle; everything has a solution. That's just the way my brain works. Everything I knew about Xander flashed through my head, sorted itself out, and I saw the solution here.
The campaign managers were onstage with their candidates; Xander had insisted on this. I leaned forward and put a hand on his shoulder.
"They need you, Xander,” I whispered. “Look."
Unsteady, he managed to look up. A tough-looking kid in a football letter jacket had jumped onstage and was shaking a fist in Gorby's face. The moderator was huddled in a folding chair.
"They need you,” I repeated.
Xander let out a slow breath, and the tension in his body drained out with it. He stepped between Gorby and his attacker.
"Peace,” said Xander. He said something quietly to the guy in the football jacket, and they both chuckled. As the boy climbed back down to his seat, Xander raised a hand to the crowd and said, “Peace. We're all friends here."
The crowd quieted. Then Xander ad-libbed a speech about respecting other people's opinions and how we are more than just the sum of our parts. It was brilliant. Gorby hadn't prepared anything much beyond his sneak attack. He stammered his way through the rest of the debate. This was Wednesday, and on Thursday, Xander won huge. Afterwards, Nikki Kennedy stopped me at my locker.
"Xander told me what you did for him,” she said, watching me with the wary look she gave anybody who wasn't in her inner circle. “That was cool."
I shrugged. “I didn't do anything."
"There's a party Saturday at my place.” She gave me a fragile smile as she turned to go. “You should come."
The invitation was a big deal, but I had mixed feelings. A party at Nikki's house would be off the grid. Rep. Kennedy's security apps would force all of our mobiles into standby once we were inside. But walking into the mansion would be a red carpet event, a showcase for local celebs, and I wasn't one. I didn't have the clothes or the car or the hot girlfriend to cling to my arm and laugh at my wit. Showing up at the party would mean good residuals, but it could be a ratings disaster personally. This was Thursday.
After school, Xander took me and a couple other kids who'd worked with us on the campaign into the city to celebrate. That's when we saw the fire and I saved the convict. Then came the interview on TV Prime. By the time I got to school Friday morning, requests for my archive footage were coming in at a good pace, along with the residuals they generated. I was a national celeb.
At this point, I was looking forward to Nikki's party. My bank balance was more than high enough now to get the clothes I would need, and I expected to receive plenty of date queries. After all, Xander got about fifty a day, and he was only a local celeb. I'd pick a camera-friendly celeb girl who came with a nice car, and I would be set for the party. As the morning passed, I checked the messages on my mobile more and more often, but nothing came in.
By lunch, I was getting frustrated. I ran diagnostics on my mobile twice and sent myself a test message. It was receiving fine. I checked my ratings, and I was still in the top 200 nationally. This was bewildering. I was pretty relieved, then, in sixth period when I finally got a text with a flirt tag. It was the only one I got all day, but fortunately, this one was perfect.
Her name was Skylar Dennison, and she was a top ten local celeb from another high school. Not only did she have a killer smile, but when I called her, she was behind the wheel of brand new Lexus. We agreed to meet at the mall that afternoon.
I had just enough time to run home and spruce up a bit. Rushing back out of my room, I caught a glance of the heap of papers on my desk, and felt a twinge of some odd feeling. I'd gotten pretty lazy about my research lately; I hadn't touched it in weeks. But fate had presented me with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here, and I had to take advantage of it.
"You want to be a mathematician?” asked Skylar, after we'd circumnavigated the mall picking out clothes and gone to relax at the food court.
"I am a mathematician,” I assured her.
"Weird. How'd that happen?” She took a sip of her diet soda.
I looked at her more closely. The cut of her straight black hair and her dark eyelashes had brought to mind images of some of the actresses who played Cleopatra in the old movies, only younger, of course, and prettier. She was definitely a knockout, but her face seemed somehow familiar and I couldn't remember where I'd seen her before. That bugged me.
Then she looked up at me and smiled with the soda straw between her perfect teeth. I couldn't help but laugh.
"I'm serious,” she said. “I want to know."
"When I was four, I told my mom I didn't want to go to school."
Skylar tilted her head. “What did she say?"
"She said okay. I could stay home and she would teach me herself, but only on the condition that I become a great scientist someday. If I changed my mind and wanted to do something else, I had to go to school. That seemed fair. So I skipped preschool and Mom taught me abstract math—number theory, abelian groups, some real analysis—in an elementary form."
"She must have been really smart.” Skylar would know about the accident; there are very few truly blind dates anymore, not when everyone has a downloadable bio.
"Yeah. She was a microbiologist, but she had a master's in pure math, and that's what I liked. She made a game out of it. She would encode messages so that I'd have to solve math problems to read them and get a prize. I loved it. Then she upped the stakes. She gave me messages that could only be unlocked if I solved open problems, you know, research level problems that have never been solved by anybody. She said it would take a few years, but eventually I'd crack them."
"And have you?"
"Five so far. Published the results too.” I didn't mention that it had been two years since I'd published anything at all. “And I'm that close—” I held a thumb and forefinger a millimeter apart. “—to getting the last one. It's an open problem in number theory. Not as famous as, say, Fermat's last theorem, or as intractable as something like the Riemann Hypothesis or the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture, but it's important, and it'll get me published in a top journal."
"Right...” Skylar looked at me for a moment, blinking slowly. Then her slightly open mouth turned up at the corners in amusement. “I'm wearing cherry lip gloss."
We both laughed.
"I know, I know,” I said. “I'm boring."
"Not boring,” she said. “Math just blows my mind. Like that Greek guy who tries to run a mile but never gets anywhere."
I nodded. “Zeno's paradox.” That got me started on limits and infinities and transfinite numbers. I almost started explaining the difference between rational, irrational, algebraic, transcendental, and noncomputable numbers in terms of binary expansions, but I managed to stop myself. Still, Skylar didn't seem to mind; she caught on to the basic ideas quickly. I decided that I liked this girl a lot.
After the mall, we got into her Lexus and she asked if I'd like to do something a little strange.
I shrugged. “Sure."
She drove us out to old highway 33, to the grounds of a towering cathedral. The imposing building was long empty, of course, but someone had obviously been keeping the place up; the lawns were well cared for, and late afternoon sun glinted off of unbroken stained glass windows.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?” Skylar danced from one point to another, snapping pictures with a slick little camera. “I wanted some shots at this time of day. Nice shadows. I'm documenting these places before they're all gone."
"Weird,” I said. “An architectural historian. How'd that happen?"
She laughed. “My brother got me started on it."
There was a sign in front of the cathedral that said it was soon to be remodeled into the neighborhood's hottest nightclub. Across the bottom of the sign, someone had written, “What have we done?” in a beautiful, flowing script.
All in all, the date seemed to go well. When I asked Skylar to Nikki's party, she agreed.
I was pulling tags off of new pants Saturday afternoon when Xander called.
"You're coming to Nikki's, right?” he asked. I assured him I was.
"Good. Now that you're a superhero, I didn't know if you could fit us into your schedule. Need a lift?"
I smiled. “Nope. Got it covered."
About five minutes after he hung up, Skylar rang in.
"Hi, Parker.” She paused, biting her lower lip. “I'm afraid I have to cancel for tonight. Sorry."
It took a moment, but I forced myself to smile. “Sure. No problem."
"I mean, I really want to go, but I didn't know my brother would be home tonight, and I hardly ever get to see him..."
"It's okay, Skylar."
"Let's go to the mall again Monday, or something..."
I had one of my flashes. “Why don't we bring your brother along to the party?"
"Hmm.” She bit her lip again. “That's an idea. Hold on.” She suspended the connection for a few seconds, then reappeared smiling. “We'll do it. See you at seven."
It was kind of a stretch, me bringing a guest besides my date to Nikki's, the first time I'm ever invited. But I thought: Skylar's a top ten local, so her brother's most likely a celeb, too. It shouldn't be a problem. And besides, I'm a national, right?
Five minutes after seven, the sun was just below the edge of a rose-colored horizon, and Skylar pulled into the driveway in her Lexus. I caught a glimpse of a dark-haired guy in the passenger side as I grabbed my jacket and searched the pockets for a breath mint. I popped one in just as the doorbell rang. Then I opened the door.
"This is my brother Quinn,” said Skylar, smiling at me and then up at the face of the young man beside her. “Quinn, this is Parker."
"We've met,” said Quinn. He grinned slightly and held out his hand. I stared at him in astonishment.
Quinn was the convict, the one I'd saved on the rooftop. That's why Skylar had seemed familiar to me; they shared the same coloring and fineness of features, especially their dark eyes. Her bio had mentioned a brother, but not that he was a convict, and I hadn't looked any farther.
For a moment, I remained stunned, but I saw Skylar watching me, her smile tentative until I snapped out of it and shook Quinn's hand. Then she was happy again.
At Nikki's, Xander met us at the door. He knew Skylar, of course, but he clearly didn't know about her brother. Just for an instant, his eyes widened as they went to Quinn's stripes, the impossible to fake iridescent insignia embedded over the left eye of every convict. But Xander was cool; he greeted Quinn with a warm handshake without missing a beat.
"I wanted to give you a heads-up,” Xander said in a low tone when we were inside. “Gorby's here."
I nodded. No doubt Xander had arranged this himself as part of a peace-making effort. We followed Xander and the pulsing beat of rock music into Nikki's living room.
There weren't a whole lot of people at the party, maybe twenty-five or so, mainly Nikki's best friends and their dates. They were milling around in little groups, chatting, holding plastic cups. A hand-lettered banner that read, “Congratulations President Xander!” hung on the wall.
We wandered into the kitchen for drinks. There was an ice chest full of vodka coolers and a keg of beer, but Skylar and Quinn both took sodas, so I did the same. That was cool with me; I hated the thickheaded feeling alcohol gave.
We ran into our hostess as we came out. I said “hi” and held my breath for her reaction to my tag-along, but it turned out I didn't need to worry. When Nikki saw the stripes above Quinn's eye, her face lit up; she let out a breath almost like a sigh. I've seen little kids have this same reaction. After all, it's pretty much only convicts who are willing or trusted to become teachers or babysitters these days, and children learn that the people with the sparkling stripes are the ones who will always keep them safe.
Nikki had met Skylar before, and after I introduced Quinn, she pulled him away to sit down at a ring of sofas. Skylar and I followed. From around the room more people began to join us.
"They let you come home?” someone asked Quinn.
"I can do whatever I want,” he answered.
"What if you wanted to rob a bank?” This was Gorby. His mocking eyes were already glassy from alcohol as he took a seat across from Nikki and Quinn.
Quinn smiled faintly. “I couldn't want to do anything like that."
Nikki put her hand on Quinn's shoulder. “You're not wearing a mobile."
"I don't have to."
"But how can you prove you're innocent without a video record?” There was a phrase children learned about the importance of their mobile in today's world: “Guilty unless proven innocent."
Quinn shrugged. “I can't even be charged with anything."
There was a brief pause as the group took this in. Then Gorby's too-loud voice broke the silence. “Hey, you know, Parker, you aren't the only one to bring something cool for show and tell.” He ducked into the room where coats had been stored and returned carrying a small glass bottle full of white capsules, which he laid on the coffee table in front of Nikki. The label had the words “Faith Formula,” imprinted over a picture of a burning bush.
Nikki stared at the bottle. “What is it?"
"They just came up with this at Dad's lab.” Gorby's father was a chemical engineer at Quantum Biodynamics. “It's a kick. You take one, and you believe in God and leprechauns for a couple hours, just like old people and rejects.” He picked up the bottle and began twisting off the cap. “Who's first?"
No one said anything.
"Come on,” said Gorby. “It's perfectly safe. Look.” He pointed to a symbol on the label. “The seal of quality.” Still no one replied. Gorby slapped the bottle down and looked sullen.
"Here,” said Xander, putting out a hand. “I'll try anything once."
Gorby shook his head, frowning. “It's only for normals. It makes rejects sick. No telling what it'd do to a tweak."
After a space of a breath, Nikki lost interest and turned back to Quinn. “What do you do for fun?"
He shrugged slightly. “Same as anyone, I suppose. I paint, compose music, do research in quantum physics, translate ancient Sumerian tablets. That sort of thing."
Nikki laughed. She touched his knee, smiling. “Can I get you anything? A beer?"
"What did you do, anyway?” asked Gorby, his lip curling. “Kill somebody?"
I felt Skylar tense up beside me.
Quinn bared his teeth in a ferocious smile. “Oh, something much worse than that."
Everyone leaned in when he said this. He held them in suspense for a moment and then said in a low, ominous tone, “I tampered with my mobile."
Eyes were wide. That was definitely more serious than murder.
Nikki tilted her head, stared up into his eyes. “Why?"
Quinn's dark eyes gleamed back at her. “To protect the honor of a lady."
"What are you talking about?” asked Gorby, with a mixture of scorn and curiosity.
"In high school,” said Quinn. “I was a pretty good hacker. One night I got smashed at a party like this and didn't put my mobile on stand-by when I should have. If that footage had been accessed, it would have been very embarrassing for someone I cared about. So I hacked my mobile and deleted it."
"How?” asked Gorby.
Quinn fixed him with an unnerving stare. “I'll show you exactly how to do it if you'd like."
Gorby shook his head.
After another brief pause, Nikki asked, “How did you get caught?"
"Don't know. I thought I'd gotten away with it, but when I got back home, they were waiting for me, a black van with flashing red lights sitting in our driveway."
"Then what?” asked Gorby.
Quinn rubbed a thumb along his jaw line. “It's kind of a blur. I remember being strapped down and shoved into the back of that van. Next thing I know, I'm in a little blue cell with this.” He tapped the stripes above his eye. “Day after that, they took a bunch of us out to some exercise yard where this fish-eyed little instructor screamed at us, made us run laps and sprints and do pushups until we were all about to pass out. We were so terrified we kept doing whatever he told us to do, until this one red-haired kid just sat down and refused to budge. The instructor stopped yelling then and started smiling like it was all a joke. He said we misunderstood; we could do whatever we wanted to do. He had the guards open the front gate, and said, ‘If any of you want to leave, leave.’ That red-haired kid thought about it for a couple seconds, then bolted for the gate. He'd taken about two steps when he fell over like he'd been shot. He was on the ground flipping around like a fish, making noises that weren't human, vomiting over and over until he was dry. Then finally the instructor walked over to him and leaned down in his face and said, ‘You don't want to leave.’ They didn't bother to shut the gates after that."
"They say it feels like an aneurism,” Gorby said in a matter-of-fact tone, “only worse."
Quinn seemed distracted. “I suppose so."
Nikki touched his shoulder. “Have you ever...?"
"They put you in a cell,” Quinn replied, “with food and water on one side, you on the other, and a red line in between marked, ‘do not cross.’ Then they leave you there. If that doesn't work, they do something even worse. Sooner or later, you cross the line."
A ragged breath beside me brought my attention back to Skylar. I could have kicked myself right then. She was so upset she was shaking. I needed to divert the subject quickly, without being obvious. Gorby's pills were still sitting on the coffee table.
"You know,” I said, grabbing the bottle, “I think I'll take one of these.” That did it.
I made a show of popping one of the gelatin capsules into my mouth and swallowing it with a swig of soda. Then I raised my hands and shouted, “Hallelujah!” and declared myself the new pope, spending the next five minutes laying hands on people and blessing them. The act was quite a hit.
I was a little worried that Nikki was going to be offended, but she only laughed. Even Gorby seemed to think it was hilarious, and I guess I should have wondered about that. But all I cared about was how Skylar was doing, and she looked relieved. After I wound the skit down, I leaned over her shoulder and asked quietly if she wanted to take off. She nodded.
In the car, Quinn drove and I sat in the back with Skylar, who leaned forward and held her face in her hands once we were out of sight of Nikki's.
"You okay?” I asked.
"Fine.” She looked up at her brother. “I want to go home, Quinn. Let me off first."
After we parked the Lexus at the Dennison's, I watched Skylar disappear into the house.
"She'll be okay,” said Quinn. We walked to his Civic parked on the street. “My fault. Stupid of me to give my ‘scared straight’ speech with her there."
As we were pulling away, Skylar called, voice only.
"Sorry I'm such a baby, Parker,” she said. Her voice was a little raspy.
"No, I'm sorry. Those people are all jerks. We'll go someplace better next weekend, okay?” I waited.
"Okay. Good night."
"Night.” I tapped the mobile to end the call then turned to Quinn. “Thanks for the lift."
He nodded. “You saved my life, I'm giving you a ride home. We'll call it even.” He never took his eyes off the road as he spoke. “You feel okay?"
"Sure. Why wouldn't I?"
"You took a pill."
"The ‘Faith Formula?'” I laughed. “That's just a load of crap, right?” Now that I thought about it, though, I was feeling a little queasy. Outside, the lights of passing cars seemed to leave a smeary afterimage in my vision. “Okay, it's doing something."
A few minutes later, I thought I was going to be sick, and Quinn pulled over. I opened the door and leaned my head out, but nothing came up and after a while I felt better.
"It's messing with your neurotransmitters,” Quinn remarked. “You'll be okay in a bit."
"I'm okay now.” I settled back in my seat.
When we turned onto my street, I saw a pulsing pink glow in the distance.
"You see that?” I asked Quinn. “That light?"
He nodded. “Uh huh."
"What is it?"
Quinn didn't reply. His brow furrowed a little as he peered at the glow ahead of us. As we got closer, I could see that it was my house that was glowing, illuminated by a red strobe light on the top of a black van sitting in our driveway. Two men in black uniforms walked over to meet me as I got out.
"Parker Evans?” said one of the men.
"What is this?” I asked. The lights seemed too bright, the images distorted.
"We've had a report of controlled substance use. Please give me your hand, Mr. Evans."
I held out my right hand, and the officer slipped a spongy tube over my index finger. A little display on the tube read, “positive."
I really did throw up then. After that, the rear doors of the van opened and a third man wearing hospital scrubs and pushing a collapsible gurney emerged. I was ordered to lie on the gurney, and after a moment of stunned immobility, I did. Rough hands tightened straps over my arms and legs and torso.
Time seemed to be all messed up; people were moving too fast and then too slow, and I kept saying to myself, “Somebody set me up.” Gorby set me up to get even for the debate. Or Nikki, to keep Dad from winning the primary on Tuesday. Or both of them together. What about Quinn? I could see him leaning against his car, watching my arrest impassively. Was Skylar in on it too?
"Could I please speak to my father?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level.
"Keep quiet, Mr. Evans."
"But I only want to speak..."
The officer pulled something from his belt and touched it to my temple. There was a lightning flash of pain, then blackness.
Now, I'm pretty sure the next part didn't really happen. I'm pretty sure it was just the drug, but I saw a huge light in the sky, almost too bright to look at, and a double-spiraled golden staircase, enormous, millions of miles high, leading up to the light. There were people, billions of them, talking and laughing together as they slowly ascended the stairs.
Then the laughter turned to screaming as the staircase broke apart, huge sections of it collapsing away. The people were thrown off, and they fell, still screaming, into the deepest darkness.
I woke up in a little blue cell.
There was a toilet and a sink without a mirror against one wall, a desk on the other, with the hard bed I was lying on between them. In front of me was a steel door, painted blue like the rest of the room, with a mesh-reinforced window. Running along the floor in front of the door was a red stripe that was marked “do not cross."
I sat up very slowly, afraid to move. I felt my scalp, but it hadn't been shaved. I didn't feel anything over my eye, but I didn't think you could feel stripes anyway. There was a faint antiseptic smell in the air. I sat there on the bed, not moving, for what seemed like an eternity, waiting for some sort of instructions. Nothing came.
Eventually I put my feet on the floor, on the side of the bed toward the desk. There was stuff on the desk. My stuff. My papers were there, my handwritten notes, and my standalone computer with all of my archives, everything I needed for my number theory research. There was a note on the desk, a large red placard with the words, “Finish this.” It took me a few minutes to believe what I was seeing, and I wondered if this was just the first stage of some twisted torment. But I didn't have a lot of choice. If they wanted me to do math, I'd do math.
I sat down at the desk, took a fresh sheet of paper and wrote out the general equation of the conjecture I was supposed to be proving. I stared at it. Images kept popping into my head. My father. He wouldn't win the primary now. My mom. I'll never be the scientist she wanted me to be. Xander. Who's going to watch out for him? And Skylar. She was too good to be true anyway. Everything's gone. It's all gone.
I gritted my teeth and cleared my head of everything besides the math, working on paper at first, but soon in that mode where I could see everything written out in my mind at once, page after envisioned page of equations constantly revising themselves with each new insight.
I made more progress in the first day than I had in the last two years. I was afraid to stop. Food arrived on a cafeteria tray through a narrow pass-through hatch. I never saw who was putting it in; my side would only open when the far side was closed. There was generic toothpaste and deodorant on a shelf above the sink, a drawer under the bed with a week's worth of loose-fitting orange pants and shirts like the one I woke up in, and a hamper.
That first night, I intended to work straight through until morning, but the lights shut off at ten o'clock and didn't come on again until six. The next day passed in almost exactly the same way. On the third day, I was done.
I made some typesetting corrections in the final paper and saved it on the standalone. Then I looked around, waited.
"I'm done,” I shouted. “It's done."
I stared at my terminal, wondering what I should do.
"They didn't say I couldn't,” I said softly as I accessed the last coded message that my mother had left me. The machine quickly verified my solution and the message was unlocked.
"Hi, Parker,” said my mom. She was sitting at her desk in the little workshop she had kept in our basement. “How old are you now? Have you met a nice girl?"
I nodded.
"I hope so. For your prize this time, I'm going to tell you a dark and terrible secret. Or a funny story. Depends on how you look at it. Come here.” She leaned forward toward the screen, and I involuntarily did the same.
"When your father and I were on our first date, we were talking about biomedicine, and he mentioned that he had never taken the standard filter. He's always hated pills, and he just dropped his in the trash every year when they handed them out on campus. It was funny, because I had never taken it either. When we got married, I formulated a custom filter—I had access to just about anything through my lab—and we both took it. I didn't tell your father about the change I'd made.” Her face twitched with amusement at the recollection. “The point is, Parker, you don't have Correction 13. You have everything else, but I just had a bad feeling, you know, one of my little flashes of intuition, about that one.” She laughed. “I've probably told you all this years ago, so I also taped a five-dollar bill with your initials on it under the drawer of your nightstand. If it's still there, why don't you bring it to me and see if I remember what it is? See you later, kid.” Her image faded.
If I weren't such a basket case already, this probably would have made me one. A thought pounded through my head. I'm a reject. I look like a normal, but inside where it counts, I'm a reject.
But then a bit of color and light seemed to trickle back into my gray world as I allowed myself a small sliver of hope. Something occurred to me, something about the Samaritan implants. They could only be used on normals. Old people and rejects who committed crimes still went to prison; their brain chemistry was too varied for the Samaritan method to be safe.
I stood up and walked to the door. Twisting the cold steel knob, I found that it wasn't locked. The door swung open easily.
For a moment, I stared at the red line and the words “Do not cross.” What if they hadn't checked? I've always listed myself as a normal on all my school records. If they had taken my word for it and put in an implant, I'd probably drop dead when it activated. I took a deep breath and stepped over the line.
Nothing happened. I let the door swing shut behind me.
The hallway outside was long and sterile; humming florescent lights illuminated many yards of hard institutional floor tile. Passing one locked, unmarked door after another, I made my way to a bend in the corridor and stopped. I took a step back.
Here the hallway opened up into a lobby full of young men in their late teens or early twenties, at least a hundred of them, moving meekly and noiselessly through three sets of double doors into some kind of lecture hall. Those whose faces I could see all had iridescent stripes over their left eyes. After a moment's hesitation, I walked over to join them.
A kid with flattened blond spikes turned to stare at me, his eyes as lifeless as a ghost's. No one said anything as I followed the crowd through the doors and slipped into a seat. Inside, the hall was more than half filled with young convicts; I did a quick estimate of about four hundred.
A bell rang as the last of the convicts settled into his seat. There had been no conversation, no noise of any kind except faint shuffling sounds of movement, and even that stopped as a middle-aged man stepped up to the lectern. He began to give a speech, an orientation lecture. I listened.
A few thousand years ago, we were told, every single person in the world was normal. They all had a gene that kept them focused on the no-nonsense business of self-preservation.
"Grab stuff,” the gene told them. “Grab everything you can, right now. You're the most important thing in the world."
This was actually the best way to be back then. It allowed humanity to survive at time when life was, in the words of Hobbes, “nasty, brutish and short."
Then came something new. People were born who could imagine things beyond what they could see or touch, people willing to sacrifice for a higher purpose. With these new people came civilization, science, art, and hope. The selfish, cynical gene had served its purpose and was withering away. It was dying, the man at the lectern explained, because it was supposed to die. But Correction 13 had restored the gene to full vigor.
At this point, the speaker began to give an overview of the connections between the development of religious thought and science, like ancient Hindu abstract mathematics, the Daoist influence on medicine, Augustine's contemplation of space-time theory. I wasn't sure how much of this I was buying, so I got up and headed for the door. I saw the eyes of the lecturer flick toward me as I left, but he gave no sign of surprise.
I began to wander through the prison or school or whatever it was, carefully constructing a visualized map as I went. Farther on, the place seemed less like an institution and more like a grand old manor, with comfortable furnished rooms.
Up one floor and around a corner, I came to a high-ceilinged room that I took to be a museum of sculpture, with an impressive display of works in wood and metal and stone. There was an embattled bronze centaur that I particularly liked. In an adjoining studio, the oldest convict I had ever seen, thirty maybe and dressed in a spattered smock, was molding plaster. He looked up at me and smiled, his convict stripes glistening under thin streaks of white paste.
Farther on, there were more galleries, more studios with artists chiseling and molding, painting, dancing and composing, taking photos; one was even blowing glass. There was old art too, statues and portraits and elegant machines, historical furniture and artifacts. I was reminded of the time my dad took me to see the Smithsonian, before it closed due to lack of interest.
Beyond the galleries were chemistry and biology labs, doors marked “biohazard” or “radiation,” then a physics section, lots of offices with whiteboards covered with arcane equations, stuff I recognized as quantum gravity and m-brane theory. The wall of one conference room was covered with a detailed star chart of near-Earth solar systems.
Through a door marked “authorized personnel only,” I found myself on a steel walkway overlooking a cavernous chamber where white-suited technicians in hardhats and goggles were assembling a complex machine roughly the size of a school bus. One of the technicians glanced up at me, pulled off his goggles and smiled.
"Parker,” he called out.
I recognized Quinn. He climbed up to join me and we walked together back toward my cell, after first stopping in a restroom with a mirror so I could examine my face and confirm that I had no stripes.
"Just so you know,” he said as we descended a flight of stairs, “I didn't have anything to do with this. Or Skylar either. They've been keeping an eye on you ever since the fire. When you took that pill at the party, they saw it as a good pretense to bring you in."
I gave him a blank look. “Who's ‘they?’”
"The powers that be.” His smile was wry. “You gave yourself away, Parker, saving my life."
"And how could ‘they’ know what happened at the party? All of our mobiles were on standby."
Amusement tugged at the corner of Quinn's mouth. “Yeah, that's not a problem for them."
Back in the cell, I found my things packed up and the clothes I had been wearing the night of my arrest clean and neatly folded on the bed. My mobile was sitting on top of the pile.
Dressing quickly, I walked with Quinn out a set of heavy doors to a parking lot. I blinked in the light of the sun hanging above the western horizon. As we drove away from the facility in Quinn's Civic, I looked back to see only a few nondescript warehouses. Much of what I had walked through must have been underground.
Quinn glanced at the clock in the dash. “You could still make it to the polls, if you feel up to it."
It was Tuesday. Election day.
"What's the point?” I replied. “He can't win now, not after his hero son was arrested for drugs."
Quinn shook his head. “You weren't arrested. You were taken to an emergency treatment facility because of a bad reaction to a supplement pill. Your dad's outraged they won't let him see you and won't say why. Typical government heavy-handedness. A lot of people can sympathize. If anything, the publicity is helping him. He might even beat Kennedy in November."
"No more parties at Nikki's then,” I murmured.
Quinn laughed.
"What was that place, Quinn? What are those people doing there?"
Quinn shrugged. “We're squirrels. Storing up nuts for winter."
I squinted at him.
"It's a metaphor,” he added. “We're trying to salvage the destiny of mankind."
"We?” Something occurred to me. What if it was all a deception, the Samaritan implant, a scare tactic designed to keep normals in line? It wouldn't be too hard to fool the kids at that prison, just plant a few ringers who would rebel and get “zapped,” and everyone else would fall into line. Maybe later, if you join the program, they let you in on the secret. Quinn didn't act like a hostage. I asked him.
He kept his eyes on the road, like he always did, but his expression changed dramatically. His young face looked suddenly so old and burdened that I knew I was wrong.
"Then why do you say ‘we'? Doesn't that thing make you their slave?"
He narrowed his eyes at something far ahead, didn't speak for a moment. Then he said, “Did you want to solve your math problem?"
"Yes. Very much."
"Then why didn't you?"
I shrugged. “I don't know. Things came up. I put it off..."
"The things I'm doing,” said Quinn, “the music and the physics and the languages, it's what I would have wanted, if I had looked for them, if I could have driven myself hard enough. But I would never have had the discipline before. Without the implant, I would have wasted my life.” He paused, as if he had to take a moment to decide whether or not he really believed what he was saying. Then he nodded slowly. “I do what I want."
We didn't speak again until we pulled into my driveway. Quinn helped me carry my things inside. Dad wasn't home.
In my living room, I flopped down on a couch with a sigh and flipped on the bigscreen, surfed through the election news sites. No official results yet, but the polls looked good.
At the front door, Quinn signaled “so long” with a wave of his hand.
I called out to him. “So what happens when ‘the powers that be’ get old and die?"
He came in the room. “What?"
"Someday normals will be in charge of everything,” I said. “Can the convicts keep it all working, or are we going to have the dark ages all over again?"
He looked thoughtful. “There are more rejects than people think, and some of the tweaks have had the mutation restored by splicing a parent's gene back in. Although that hasn't worked well."
I thought of Xander, and it seemed to me that maybe Quinn's bosses were being too pessimistic. “Will it be enough?"
He shrugged. “Probably not."
"So what are you going to do? Is there a plan?"
He raised three fingers. “Three. Some of us think we should start all over again somewhere else. There's already a self-sufficient colony on Mars. But that's just a stepping stone."
My mouth dropped open. “The star charts."
He nodded. “Others look at the human genome as a constantly evolving dynamic system; the gradient of change still shows it moving in the right direction, and eventually it'll correct itself. In the meantime, they want to prop things up with legions of convicts."
Left idle, the bigscreen switched to default feed, a reality show where contestants humiliated themselves for a few seconds of airtime. Screeching, off-key singing almost made me jump. I muted the sound.
"What's the third plan?"
"The third group,” said Quinn, “thinks things aren't really that different now than they've always been. All humanity needs is a solid core of farseeing people to live among them, to lead and to inspire.” He patted me on the shoulder. “See you later, Parker."
"Yeah.” I let out a breath, suddenly aware of a weariness in my shoulders. “See you."
James Wesley Rogers lives in Texas, in a small apartment with several novels and a merry band of cockroaches, all of them surviving on the free grocery samples and ketchup packets he manages to bring home. During the day, he passes himself off as a Ph.D. student in mathematics. James can often be found squinting at pages of arcane formulae while muttering, “This doesn't look right..."
Social disapproval is the single strongest tool for social change. People will often engage in forbidden behavior in spite of criminal penalties, but abandon it the moment it is clear that their friends will turn away from them in disgust when they behave that way.
—Orson Scott Card, “The Children of Divorce” on The Ornery American web site (www.ornery.org, Nov 13, 2005)
We've been interviewing a Canadian author in each issue since Number 3, and we thought for this 25th issue we would see what all of those authors have been up to lately. Here are their updates, many in their own words.
Alison Baird (interview in Number 16, June 2003)
Alison says:
Since doing my interview for Challenging Destiny, I have completed the two trilogies that I had sold at the time: The Dragon Throne (The Stone of the Stars, The Empire of the Stars, The Archons of the Stars) for Warner Aspect in the U.S., and the Willowmere Chronicles (The Witches of Willowmere, The Warding of Willowmere, The Wyrd of Willowmere) for Penguin Canada. I have also had a short story, “Walking with Wolves,” published in the Mythspring anthology (Fitzhenry & Whiteside). Some foreign rights to my books have been sold: I now have copies of the Dutch editions of the first two Willowmere books on my shelf, and have just received the first Russian edition of Stone of the Stars. I can't read either language, but it is fascinating to open up the books and see my own words transformed into exotic and alien ones!
I am currently hard at work on two new manuscripts, both for children, and when they are done I plan to move on to a new adult fantasy novel. The last few years have certainly been interesting ones, and I hope for more interesting times ahead!
Julie E. Czerneda (interview in Number 6, April 1999)
Julie says:
Since my interview I've continued to write fiction full-time, as well as edit anthologies. There's a bit of a stack now: 11 novels, several short stories, 14 anthologies. As editor, I've been the “first sale” for over fifty authors, which is a great thrill for me. My work has won some awards, including three Prix Aurora Awards for professional work in English: novel, short story, and for editing. My last novel, Regeneration, is on the Preliminary Nebula Ballot.
I'm currently back in the universe of my first novel, since this is the 10th anniversary of its publication. I'm having a wonderful time writing the prequels to A Thousand Words For Stranger. The first of those comes out in this September, Reap The Wild Wind. Otherwise? I've kept working on SF as a means to promote scientific literacy and have given presentations on the topic from the Yukon to Texas. In 2009, I'll be Guest of Honour at the New Zealand National Convention, so I'll be able to say I've crossed the equator too. And yes, I still live in a forest.
Charles de Lint (interview in Number 9, April 2000)
Since our interview Charles de Lint has published several novels set in his fictional city of Newford: Forests of the Heart, The Onion Girl, Spirits in the Wires, and Widdershins. He's also published a collection of stories set in Newford, Tapping the Dream Tree. Along with the aforementioned books published by Tor, he's produced some chapbooks and young adult novels. Several of his books will be coming out as audiobooks, and he's working on a new novel tentatively titled The Mystery of Grace. He won the World Fantasy Award for his collection Moonlight and Vines. Charles continues to write book reviews for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He plays live music at a pub every week with his wife MaryAnn in Ottawa. On his web site Charles says he hopes his stories will encourage people to “pay attention to how many special things there are in the real world."
Candas Jane Dorsey (interview in Number 10, July 2000)
Candas says:
Wow. In seven years a lot has happened.
Let's deal with the domestic first. Five years ago my partner and I bought a house, which meant goodbye to the housing co-operative I talked about in my year-2000 interview, and hello to the vagaries of living in an inner-city neighbourhood where the neighbours we interact with most (in summer anyway) are the homeless people camping in the vacant lot next door. I've already run out of wall space for bookshelves and art, but I love the old (built in 1928) place. One of my cats stayed at the old place as a neighbourhood resource, but I still have the other one, a grouchy one-eyed cripple who's 21 now, and the Pomeranian is no longer time-shared but present 24-7. Since she is getting older and grouchier too, we now revel in a household of four tetchy, arthritic artistic types (think of the pets as performance artists).
When I was interviewed in 2000, I was also a publisher. No more. In 2003 we sold Tesseract Books to Brian Hades of Calgary, who also publishes Edge Books. Then at the end of 2005, beginning of 2006, we closed down the rest of the publishing company. I loved publishing, but fourteen years’ community service was enough! Both my partner and I went back to university, taking Masters degrees in Fine Arts from UBC by distance learning online. During this time I returned to serve a placeholder stint as president of SFCanada, the professional SF writers’ association. At present I am completing a young adult novel about an intersex teenager, have a book of poetry completed which was my thesis. I'm still working on a new novel, and I'm busy with freelance work and teaching at the local college in the professional writing programme. And in ten days, I'm off to the WorldCon in Yokohama, Japan, to present in both the English-language programming and at some of the sessions of the Science Fiction Writers of Japan. So there's never a dull moment...
James Alan Gardner (interview in Number 3, July 1998)
James Alan Gardner has published several more novels in his League of Peoples universe: Vigilant, Hunted, Ascending, Trapped, and Radiant. Eos published all of those books, as well as his short-story collection, Gravity Wells. James also wrote Lara Croft and the Man of Bronze. He has a short story coming in Asimov's Science Fiction in February. James's novel Fire and Dust, set in the PlaneScape setting in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, is available through a link on his web site. If you're looking for James, you'll find him at Ad Astra and Eeriecon in 2008. In an interview on the Absolute Write web site James says, “The things I value in fiction are honesty and audacity. I think the world needs more of each ... Both honesty and audacity are attempts to wake up and stay awake: to fight the deadening influences of modern culture and to live with one's eyes open."
Phyllis Gotlieb (interview in Number 8, November 1999)
Phyllis says:
My latest novel, Birthstones, has been on sale for several months, and it took me about three years to write. Now I'm working on another, which is not quite a sequel, though the main character has been carried over. That means another several years; I've always been a slow writer, and now that I'm 81 ... well, it makes me even slower. I wish I had more energetic and exciting things to say.
Nalo Hopkinson (interview in Number 12, April 2001)
Nalo Hopkinson has published two more novels since our interview, The Salt Roads and The New Moon's Arms. She's also published a short-story collection, Skin Folk. She edited Mojo: Conjure Stories, So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction (with Uppinder Mehan), and Tesseracts Nine (with Geoff Ryman).
Nalo says (on her web site):
I'm writing the second novel in a three-book contract for Hachette. Its working title is Blackheart Man. It's a fantastical alternate history set in someplace similar to the Caribbean in the 18th century or so...
I'm also collaborating, very slowly, on a comic with David Findlay. Its working title is Mr. Fox. I've never done a comic before, but neither has David, so maybe we can learn together.
Recently, I've found myself stumbling into collage and altered art. It began when I started going into local thrift stores, buying the types of toys that make me deeply uneasy, and remixing them ... I appear to be working through some of my thoughts on tropes of authenticity, tribalism, and indigeniety in fantasy fiction.
Tanya Huff (interview in Number 4, October 1998)
Tanya has published two more novels in the Keeper's Chronicles series: The Second Summoning and Long Hot Summoning. She has published three novels in her Smoke and Shadows series, set in the same universe as her Blood books: Smoke and Shadows, Smoke and Mirrors, and Smoke and Ashes. And she has published three novels in her Valor's Confederation series: Valor's Choice, The Better Part of Valor, and The Heart of Valor. All of the aforementioned books were published by DAW. Four collections of her short stories have also been published: What Ho, Magic!, Relative Magic, Stealing Magic, and Finding Magic. Tanya edited the anthology Women of War with Alexander Potter.
The TV show Blood Ties is based on her Blood books, and is in its second season. Tanya is working on the fourth Valor book, Valor's Trial. Tanya says (on the Meisha Merlin web site): “I love living in the country, writing full-time, anything by Charles de Lint, Xena, Hercules, and email. I dislike telephones, electric blankets, and bathroom renovations. I always expect catastrophe; as a result, I'm usually pleasantly surprised."
Guy Gavriel Kay (interview in Number 11, December 2000)
Guy says:
Congratulations on a 25th issue. In this transitory, quick turnaround society, that's no small achievement. You asked ‘what I've been up to’ ... well, given that our interview was seven years ago, that covers a lot of ground! Two books since then, The Last Light Of The Sun, a Saxon-Vikings-Celts inspired fantasy, and Ysabel, a departure of sorts for me involving a contemporary setting with intrusions of the historical and mythic into the south of France.
Following the link you sent me, back to our interview, I'm amused to see myself answering your ‘what's next’ question by saying: “I'm reading. I'm thinking, brooding, swearing a lot.” ... because that's exactly where I am now, seven years later, summer of 2007, sorting out a new book. Some things don't change, it seems.
Eileen Kernaghan (interview in Number 22, April 2006)
Eileen says:
I've been finishing the new book that I mentioned in the interview—the historical fantasy set in London and Paris circa 1888. It now has a title: Wild Talent: a novel of the supernatural, and is scheduled for fall 2008 publication by Thistledown Press. My protagonist is a young Scotswoman with a frightening talent who gets caught up in the fin de siècle worlds of Gnostics, theosophists, spiritualists and decadent French artists. Madame H.P. Blavatsky, Alexandra David (later to become Alexandra David-Neel the famous Himalayan traveler) and the poet Paul Verlaine have prominent roles.
Meanwhile The Sarsen Witch, my 1989 bronze age fantasy, is being reissued this month (October) by the Juno Books imprint of Wildside Press—this time, I understand, as a paranormal romance, though with quite a fierce and warlike heroine on the cover.
Karin Lowachee (interview in Number 18, July 2004)
Karin says:
Since Cagebird was published I've had 2 short stories published in different anthologies (So Long Been Dreaming and Mythspring) but mostly I've been working up ideas for my next books. I'm not a natural short story writer but I've been developing some stories there as well, but it's difficult for me to split my attention from research and development on a Big Idea to thinking of other, smaller “worlds.” Since my new novel(s) idea is still in the research stages I won't be talking about it until it's closer to coming out. I'm also rehauling my website in a huge way and that takes a lot of time and a learning curve, but I'm looking to launch the new site in January 2008.
Scott Mackay (interview in Number 17, December 2003)
Scott says:
Since my interview with Challenging Destiny in 2003 I've continued to publish steadily. Omnifix came out in March of 2004, while Tides was published in November 2005. My newest novel, Phytosphere, was published by Penguin Roc in June of 2007. It's about an alien shroud enveloping the earth and cutting off all sunshine. Omega Sol, which will be published by Roc in May 2008, tells the story of hyperdimensional aliens accelerating our sun into its red giant phase. In this sense, Omega Sol and Phytosphere are sister books. Phytosphere tells what happens to the world when it's too dark; Omega Sol tells what happens when it's too bright.
In regard to foreign sales, Orbis has been published in France, while Omnifix was published in Russia.
As for short stories, I had two stories appear in Tesseracts Ten. “Threshold Of Perception” was the lead story. Set in 1910, the piece recounts Percival Lowell's (the astronomer of Martian Canal fame) attempts to warn the world that Halley's Comet is going to strike the planet. I was also asked by the Osprey chain of newspapers to write a mystery story, “Hot Button,” which appeared in newspapers all over Ontario and was subsequently including in Mystery Ink, an anthology of Ontario mystery fiction. These are in addition to a number of other stories I've had published. So it's been a busy few years, and looks as if it will stay that way for some time to come.
J. FitzGerald McCurdy (interview in Number 20, May 2005)
Joan says:
In the 2006 and 2007 school year, I was the author for the Kiwanis Read-a-thon in Ottawa. A winner from each of the thirty schools I visited, along with a parent or teacher, was invited to attend a private reading in the newly restored Library of Parliament. On June 6, 2007, the winners congregated at the East Block on Parliament Hill. They were led down into the tunnels and along to the Peace Tower and the Library where, seated before the great white marble statue of Queen Victoria, I read a passage from The Serpent's Egg. It was a magical day and the first time in the history of the Library of Parliament that an event for young readers took place. Photos are available on the Kiwanis Club of Ottawa's Website.
The Black Pyramid, book two of the Mole Wars trilogy, was released in July 2007. I have just finished book three, Guardians of Fire, which will be published in 2008. I am now working on two single books that combine historical fact with fantasy, and I keep wishing that I could write as fast as my readers read.
Jim Munroe (interview in Number 13, November 2001)
Jim says:
Since 2001, huh? Oh, this and that. I started a website that features thoughtful articles about dismissed genres and artforms, such as videogames, science fiction, romance, porn, and comics: theculturalgutter.com. I wrote a book in 88 blog entries that people can read at roommatefromhell.com, and it spun off into a post-Rapture graphic novel that just came out called Therefore Repent!
nomediakings.org/about has a bunch more of what I've been up to in a bibliographic sense, and the nomediakings.org main page has the minute by minute postings.
Thanks for asking and congrats on number 25!
Sean Russell (interview in Number 21, December 2005)
Sean says:
Thanks for asking me to participate. The historical novel that I mentioned in the interview was just published a few weeks ago. The title is Under Enemy Colors and we put the name S. Thomas Russell on it to distinguish it from my fantasy books. We sold it at auction to Putnam/Penguin in the US, Michael Joseph/Penguin in the UK and we've also sold it in Spain and Italy. I've been busy doing publicity and working on the sequel. I was in Europe for five weeks this summer doing research for the second book. I've been busy.
Michelle Sagara (interview in Number 24, August 2007)
In the relatively short time since our interview, Michelle Sagara sold two more books in the Cast series to Luna. The third book in the series, Cast in Secret, came out in August. She is currently working on the fourth book, Cast in Fury. The first book in the House War series, coming out in March from DAW, is titled The Hidden City.
Robert J. Sawyer (interview in Number 5, January 1999)
Robert says:
Has it been nine years since we did that interview? Wow—tempus certainly has been fugiting! I remember the conversation fondly.
And, well, it's been an amazing nine years for me. My readership took a quantum leap starting in 2000, when my twelfth novel, Calculating God, became a national top-ten mainstream bestseller here in Canada, appearing on the bestsellers list in The Globe and Mail: Canada's National Newspaper and Maclean's: Canada's Weekly Newsmagazine, and it hit number one on the bestsellers list published by Locus, the US trade journal of the SF field. And there've been five more novels since that one, each also hitting bestsellers’ lists: the three volumes of my Neanderthal Parallax trilogy—Hominids, Humans, and Hybrids—plus the standalones Mindscan and Rollback.
The awards process has been good to me in the interim, too. Hominids won the Hugo Award for Best Novel of 2003, and Mindscan won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award—the genre's top juried award—for best novel of 2005. And in 2007, I won China's top SF award, the Galaxy Award for most popular foreign author, as well as getting an honorary doctorate from Laurentian University. So, life be good. Right now, I'm hard at work on my new project, a trilogy of novels with the working titles Wake, Watch, and Wonder about the World Wide Web gaining consciousness; look for the first one to be in stores late in 2008.
Karl Schroeder (interview in Number 15, December 2002)
Karl says:
I'm having a great time writing my Virga series; it's a whole new world to explore, and I feel like the possibilities of this setting are inexhaustible. At the same time I've been doing some foresight analysis (what used to be called futurism) for clients like the Canadian government and Canadian and American militaries. That's a unique way of triangulating on the future, and gives me insights that I can't get from inside the SF community. Beyond those things, I'm really having the most fun with the biggest adventure you can experience: being a parent.
Alison Sinclair (interview in Number 14, June 2002)
Alison Sinclair's story “Suspended Lives” appeared in Space, Inc. edited by Julie E. Czerneda. She has three novels under consideration at publishers and is working on another. On her web site she says, “I like to be able to ditch all assumptions and conventional wisdom and start entirely from scratch, running my fictional ‘thought experiments’ (Ursula Le Guin's words) according to any parameters I please."
Peter Watts (interview in Number 19, December 2004)
Peter says:
Subsequent to the commercial failure of Behemoth—which followed Tor's decision to split that novel into two volumes because it was too long, which in turn followed Tor's earlier request that ten thousand words be added to that novel because it was too short—I barely escaped extirpation from the midlist with Blindsight, the novel mentioned in my Challenging Destiny interview. Blindsight survived questionable cover design, limited distribution, a miniscule initial print run, and even more miniscule publisher expectations to go into multiple hardcover printings, translation into half a dozen languages (and counting), and nomination for several prestigious awards (not to mention a couple of dick-ass ones), none of which it actually won. Following a two-year disillusioned hiatus—during which I completed a postdoc in molecular genetics that proved almost as successful as Behemoth—I have recently returned to writing with a story about a good pedophile (to appear next spring in volume 2 of The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction) and another about an evil Jew (to appear this December in Nature). I am currently working on a novel about battling, botnet-controlled giant squids at the North Pole.
Edward Willett (interview in Number 23, November 2006)
Edward Willett's new novel Marseguro will be out from DAW in February, and its sequel, Terra Insegura, will be coming in 2009. His nonfiction book A Safe and Prosperous Future: 100 Years of Engineering and Geoscience Achievements in Saskatchewan was published by the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Saskatchewan. Also coming up are books on Janis Joplin, historic walks of Regina and Moose Jaw, and Mutiny on the Bounty.
Edward has posted the complete text of his book Andy Nebula: Interstellar Rock Star free online in honour of “International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day.” His science columns are available as podcasts. And he's currently performing in the musical Beauty and the Beast.
Robert Charles Wilson (interview in Number 7, August 1999)
Since our interview Robert has had five novels out from Tor: Bios, The Chronoliths, Blind Lake, Spin, and Axis. Spin won the Hugo Award, Blind Lake won the Aurora Award, and the novelette “The Cartesian Theater” won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Axis is a sequel to Spin, and one more sequel is planned. Robert also wrote Magic Time: Ghostlands with Marc Scott Zicree, and he edited Tesseracts Ten with Edo van Belkom. His novella Julian: A Christmas Story was published by PS Publishing, and he is currently turning it into a novel.
Robert says (on the Locus Online web site): “In human history there are so many institutions dedicated to making sure one generation resembles the one that went before it, culturally preserving religious ideas and the relationships of families in a futile effort to preserve these things through time. We live in a time where we realize these things not only aren't preserved, they're shattering and reforming almost daily around us."
Cadet Jhyoti sen Chandar slapped the grav gel packs onto her calves and slipped the control glove onto her left hand. With a last glance around the deserted, moonlit cemetery, she activated the field emitter and slowly rose three meters above the ground, then five, then six. Low Town spread out before her like a dark rocky beach, with the desert beyond a vast sea of glowing sand. Another twist of her fingers and she floated over the wall of the bashravi.
To the east, twenty kilometres across the desert, the glow of the spaceport rose above the horizon. As a child, she had felt the deep rumble of each landing, before the Alliance installed the dampening field. A rod of blue light shot up through the air, the guide beam made visible by the dust dancing through it. A shuttle was landing. Perhaps it belonged to the Solar Wind, the Alliance's flagship explorer, rumoured to be in the solar system.
At last she stepped down onto the hard-packed earth of the bashravi's open area. She glanced around the body washers’ compound, wishing she could have worn the night lenses as well as the camera. But the Academy, like the rest of Kallista, had to make do with the Alliance's cast-off equipment.
She did not dare turn on the light strapped to her wrist. Kallista's two moons would serve until she got inside the inner walls. Besides, she had been here before, surreptitiously recording the body washers’ rituals.
At least, the ones they performed in public.
Six granite “beds” rose from the ground at regular intervals, each ready to receive a coffin. Before them were stone benches where the mourners received the blessing of the yisil and a drink of holy water from the well. Then the acolytes would carry the coffin from the inner compound, that place the yisils, the body washers, held most sacred, as the mourners keened and waited for the body to be returned to them, cleansed of sin and impurities, and ready for burial in consecrated ground.
The inner gate to this mysterious compound now stood before her, closed. Clutching her pack in one hand, Jhyoti moved toward it, keeping her distance from the beds. She would be selective in what she touched. She did not wish an inadvertent touch to immerse her in others’ grief.
As with many of the doors and gates in Low Town, this gate was made of sturdy sakhri vines trained to the needed shape. The broad, deep blue leaves formed a wall of privacy, impossible to peer through. The vines clung on either side to posts made of clay bricks.
For such a secretive order, the yisils were very trusting.
She was almost at the inner gate when something tripped her. Without so much as a gasp, she dropped the pack, tucked and rolled into the fall, regaining her feet in one smooth motion. If nothing else, five years at the Academy had taught her how to fall.
Then she bent to retrieve her pack and saw what had tripped her.
The woman slumped against the granite bed, as if someone had dumped her on the ground and walked away.
Jhyoti straightened slowly, gripping the pack. She did not need to touch the woman to know she was dead.
"You there!"
Jhyoti's heart leapt to her throat. Once more the pack flew from her fingers as she sprang into a classic self-defence pose. Then a bright light shot through the darkness, blinding her. When she could see again, she found herself face to face with a very tiny, very angry old woman wearing the traditional white robe of a yisil.
"How dare you?” The old woman glanced at the body then took in Jhyoti's hooded robe, her gloved hand with its controls and the pack on the granite bed, where it had landed. “How dare you dishonour the dead with your foolish pranks?"
Jhyoti blinked.
"Forgive me, yisil, but my trespass seems insignificant compared to the disregard this bashravi shows the dead.” Surely families would protest if they knew how poorly their loved ones were handled in the bashravi. Perhaps the yisil would refrain from turning her in to the Admiral if she were afraid Jhyoti would reveal what she had found.
But the old woman was staring at Jhyoti in dismay. Her waist-length white braid swayed as she shook her head. “Are you implying that you did not bring...?"
"I did not.” If the yisil had not left the woman's body there...
They both turned to stare at the body, and then glanced around the empty courtyard. Beneath her thermally regulated uniform, and despite the concealing robe over it, Jhyoti grew cold.
"Who...?"
But the old woman leaned forward, her clasped hands keeping her loose robe from falling forward, and examined the woman. “Oh no,” she murmured.
"What is it?” Jhyoti leaned forward in turn, morbidly curious.
Her pack chose that moment to topple off the edge of the granite bed. As she lunged to retrieve it, her gloveless hand grazed the dead woman's cheek.
The jolt was like a supernova in her head. There was nothing but pain and bright light. Her skin crawled with electricity. After a time, she became aware of someone moaning, realized it was her and stopped. She finally opened her eyes, expecting to be blinded by pain, but it was gone.
She was lying on the hard-packed earth a few feet away from the dead woman. The yisil squatted next to her, her green eyes narrow. The old woman's voice was a distant murmur. “Were you born with the gift?"
Jhyoti shook her head and sat up. The dead one's pain still tingled along her arms and legs. “It came soon after my first blood.” And it would leave with her last bleeding. At least she had that blessing. Those who were born with it usually became recluses. Most went mad by adolescence.
"I am Suri, the yighsilchi of this bashravi."
The yighsilchi. Jhyoti looked at the old woman, who glared back at her. All the yisil were technically bhoto, low caste, but they were also considered holy. And the yighsilchi was holiest of the body washers.
This was not good.
"And you are?” prompted the yighsilchi testily.
Jhyoti hesitated. She could lie but there would be no honour in that. In any case, the yighsilchi would not know that she was from the Academy.
"My name is Jhyoti, Suri sen."
"Allow me a guess, Cadet Jhyoti. Fifth year? Exo-anthropology? Final field assignment?"
It was Jhyoti's turn to stare at the old woman in dismay.
The yighsilchi sighed her disgust. “Did you think you were being original?” She rose to her feet, graceful despite her age. “Every year I turn one or two idiots away."
Jhyoti braced herself on one hand as she looked up at the old woman. “And...?"
Suri sen smiled tightly. “Those who irritate me I turn in to the Guard.” She glanced sideways at Jhyoti. “And you all irritate me."
Jhyoti swallowed.
With a dismissive shrug, the yighsilchi reached for the dead woman.
"Suri sen, wait."
The yighsilchi stopped in surprise. Jhyoti scrambled to her feet and squinted, allowing the ocular camera to record the dead woman from different angles while making low notes to her implanted recorder. “You should not move her,” she warned as she worked. “The Guard will want to see how she was found."
The yighsilchi snorted, a startling sound coming from a holy person. “Do you want to be expelled?"
The question took Jhyoti aback. The Guard would want to know what Jhyoti was doing at the bashravi. They would inform the Academy.
And Admiral Dilan, that devil in a uniform, would love nothing better. He would finally have reason to expel her. Five years of hard work, wasted...
Suri sen grasped the woman's arm, but it was stiff. Then she took the dead woman by the chin and turned her head. “Rigor mortis is almost gone."
Jhyoti looked away, her stomach clenching.
"Help me bring her inside."
Jhyoti almost stepped back at the thought of touching the dead woman again. Surely the law required that an unexplained body—even one found in a bashravi—be reported. “Suri sen, you must report this to the Guard."
The yighsilchi looked up at her, green eyes fierce and bright. “Do not presume to know my business!” She took a deep breath and visibly calmed herself. “They will not come."
Then she hurried through the inner gate. A light went on inside, reflecting off the glossy leaves of the gate. In a moment she was back with a stretcher floating behind her. She manipulated it into position then touched a button to lower it to the ground.
"Take her feet."
Jhyoti hesitated while the yighsilchi squatted at the woman's head and placed her hands under the shoulders.
The old woman looked at her. “Well?"
This project was over. Should the yighsilchi spare her, Jhyoti would still have to turn to her back-up plan—comparing patterns of grief expression among the different social strata. Not as valuable an addition to the body of work, perhaps, but still valid.
This final assignment terrified most cadets. Here they proved their initiative by choosing an assignment that would add to the body of knowledge of Kallistan culture. If unsuccessful, cadets were held behind for another year.
If she failed, however, Admiral Dilan would deny her the stars.
Her gaze met the yighsilchi's impatient glare and she sighed.
She shrugged out of her robe and wrapped it around the dead woman's slippers and bare legs. Then she nodded at the yighsilchi and they lifted the body to the stretcher. Suri sen was much stronger than she looked. The stretcher rose to the yighsilchi's waist and the old woman guided it back through the inner gate.
Jhyoti fetched her pack and stood outside the open gate, debating the value of requesting her robe back. She peered in but saw only an inner privacy wall, also white.
She wondered what Suri sen would do with the woman. Trace her identity, of course. But then what?
"Don't just stand there, child,” came the yighsilchi's voice. “Come in."
As much as she had wanted to see inside, now she wanted nothing more than to escape. “I must go, Suri sen."
"Come!” The peremptory tone reminded Jhyoti of the Admiral and she bristled. She was not Suri sen's acolyte. If the yighsilchi wished to report her for trespassing, so be it.
Then she closed her eyes against a wave of dread.
The dishonour of being expelled would be humiliating. The mahti, or high caste, objectors who had followed her progress would crow that bhoto—even a half-caste like her—were not fit for the Academy. Admiral Dilan would stare at her with those black, expressionless eyes...
Thinking of the Admiral made her stomach roil. In spite of his unbecoming pride in his family name, his bias against bhoto, his arrogance ... in spite of everything she detested in the man, he was not without honour. Her failure would be a blow to him and to the Academy.
And it would destroy any chance she had of reaching the stars as an Alliance exoanth.
Suri sen appeared in the doorway.
"You will make a poor exoanth if you turn away from the hard answers."
Jhyoti stared at her in annoyance.
The yighsilchi raised an eyebrow. “You do want to see inside, do you not?"
After a moment, Jhyoti closed her mouth. The yighsilchi herself was inviting her in. Perhaps she could salvage this assignment after all.
She bowed her acquiescence and followed the old woman.
Once past the privacy wall, she stopped and stared. Where she had expected a temple of worship—incense sticks, candles and marble slabs for washing the bodies—she found steel tables, troughs and sonic cleaners. The room was vast and high ceilinged, easily six times the size of the courtyard. It was filled with laboratory equipment and ceiling-hung tools whose functions she did not wish to explore. Inside each wall were recessed screens.
Jhyoti looked and squinted, taking picture after picture, sub-vocalizing her observations for later download.
"This is not a temple,” she said, almost to herself.
The yighsilchi's voice was sharp. “There are many ways to worship the goddess. She does not require primitive tools to accept our prayers. We deal with dead bodies, Cadet. Often they have died of disease—we still bathe the bodies as the ancients did, but first we disinfect them."
Jhyoti looked around the room again, this time more carefully. The equipment was clean and in good repair, but it was not new and had not been for a long time.
Finally, inevitably, her gaze fell on the dead woman.
She was not as frightening as in the darkness of the courtyard. Yet now Jhyoti could see the greyness of her complexion, the dried blood and bruising on the side of her face, the curious slackness of her limbs. The woman was in her middle years. She was tiny, not as tiny as the yighsilchi but close, and her hair was brown with strands of grey. She was much too thin.
Jhyoti recorded her from head to foot. She looked nothing like the ancient mummified corpses they had been permitted to study at the Academy.
How could anybody abandon a loved one like this?
"Does this happen often?"
"Some families are too poor to pay the bashravi fee and too proud to ask for charity. It does not matter to us—all are the goddess's children and must be purified before they can return to her. We find these poor souls laid out in the courtyard, in their best robes. Not like this.” She shook her head and looked away for a moment. To Jhyoti's surprise, she saw the glint of tears in the old woman's eyes.
"Have you any idea who she is?"
Suri sen took a deep breath and looked down at the body. “She did not come from Low Town. See how tightly the fabric of her robe is woven?” She fingered a sleeve between thumb and forefinger but Jhyoti only nodded. That robe carried too much of the woman's residual energies. She did not dare touch it.
"Yet she is bhoto,” she said. The low braid, the traditional tattoo at the temple, the work-chapped hands all pronounced her lower caste.
Suri sen nodded. “Yes, but she worked in High Town."
Jhyoti stared at the dead woman as she tried to work out what the yighsilchi was not saying. The bhoto woman wore a sturdy, clean working robe. Despite the blood caking her hair, the braid was intricate. Tiny amrit loops lined her ears, status symbols among the servant class. This bhoto woman had worked as a valued servant in a High Town mahti household.
The evidence was clear, yet it did not accord with the fact of her presence here.
"Why was she left?” She was speaking more to herself than to Suri sen. Such valued servants held a place of honour in a mahti household. Her death would have been treated almost as that of a family member. A body washer would have been called to the house in High Town, even if the servant was to be buried in a Low Town cemetery.
Yet this woman had been abandoned like a broken toy. Jhyoti leaned in to take a closer look at the blood on her face. The wound was in the hair around her temple. She had struck something very hard.
Or been struck.
Jhyoti looked up at Suri sen. “Accident or murder?"
The yighsilchi shrugged. “She did not walk here by herself. What did you sense?"
Jhyoti worked at suppressing a shudder. “Pain. Exploding pain and a curious sensation on my skin."
Suri sen pursed her lips, staring at the dead woman. “We must examine her. Help me place her on the slab."
"Suri sen...” Jhyoti spread her arms in an elaborate entreaty. “Should we not report this...?"
For an answer, the yighsilchi slipped her hands under the dead woman's shoulders and looked a challenge at Jhyoti.
Gritting her teeth, Jhyoti grabbed the woman's robe-wrapped legs and together they slid her onto the steel slab. Her body was stiff and unyielding. Jhyoti discreetly pulled her robe out from under the woman's legs, careful to avoid touching flesh.
"We need to disrobe her."
Objections rose full-blown to Jhyoti's lips. She did not wish to remain here, did not wish to touch the woman, did not wish to learn how she had died. What she wanted was to leave this place of death and find a different assignment.
Instead, she took a deep breath and silenced the objections. She dug one of her gloves out of her pack and put it on her bare hand before helping Suri sen remove the woman's robe.
When they were done, they stared down at the woman. Jhyoti's modesty disappeared as she examined her. Fading bruises on abdomen and thighs. What skin wasn't bruised was a waxy blue. The underside of her legs, buttocks and shoulders were purple.
Suri sen noticed her glance and poked at the dark skin on the underside of the woman's legs. Jhyoti swallowed hard.
"Fixed lividity,” the yighsilchi said. “The blood no longer moves. She has been dead over twelve hours.” She pulled open the dead woman's eyelid and peered closely. Jhyoti bit the inside of her mouth and looked away from the milky eye.
"She was kept inside, away from insects,” continued the yighsilchi. Then she grasped the woman's hip and shoulder and rolled her up. The old woman's face blanched.
In spite of herself, Jhyoti leaned over to see. Welts and scars criss-crossed the woman's back from shoulder to thigh.
Anger rose from her belly, displacing the queasiness. “We must advise the Guard. This is abuse, perhaps even murder! They will investigate, find out who..."
Suri shook her head, her expression grim. “You place too much faith in authority, child."
"If you will not, Suri sen, then I will report it. They will investigate."
A small smile found its way to the yighsilchi's lips. “I did not know cadets wielded so much power."
Jhyoti closed her mouth on her outrage. Suri sen was right. If the yighsilchi could not get the Guard to investigate, what chance did a lowly cadet have? Especially a half-caste one like her. She needed to persuade someone with power.
"Why do you care?” The yighsilchi's voice held honest curiosity. “After all, she is nothing but bhoto, while you are mahti."
Jhyoti felt the red creeping up her neck. “Half mahti, half bhoto."
Understanding suffused Suri sen's face. “The famous half-caste cadet."
Jhyoti shrugged and looked away.
"There is something you could do,” said Suri sen, “since you care so much."
Something in the yighsilchi's soft voice sent a chill down Jhyoti's arms. She looked at the old woman. There was a strange expression on Suri sen's face, a queer kind of hope, mixed with rage.
"No.” Jhyoti backed away from the slab and the question in the yighsilchi's eyes. “No."
Suri sen folded her hands before her in a pose meant to convey patience. But the yighsilchi's hands shook, destroying the pretence.
"You could help identify her."
Jhyoti took a deep breath. “A DNA sample will identify her. A retinal scan. Fingerprints!"
"Unlikely. I cannot even persuade the Guard to attend, let alone investigate. I have no access to equipment to obtain samples, nor money to pay a private laboratory. You may be this poor woman's only chance. The clues you find may help us identify her. And her murderer."
Jhyoti closed her eyes, unwilling to look at the old woman—and the dead one—any longer. Murder. “Yighsilchi, you do not know what you ask of me."
"I know exactly what I ask of you.” The yighsilchi's voice was harsh.
Jhyoti's eyes slowly opened. Suri sen was staring at her with hard eyes. Lines of anger carved a pattern of distress over the old woman's face.
"You live,” Suri sen continued. “This one,” she stabbed a finger in the direction of the dead woman, “this one is dead, left here like garbage. And the one who did this to her walks free."
Almost, Jhyoti was persuaded. Then she looked at the dead woman and shuddered.
"I cannot.” She forced the words past a lump in her throat. “I cannot, Suri sen."
Abandoning robe and pack, she fled.
Hours later, Jhyoti finally gave up on sleep. Sitting up, she swung her legs off the bed. “Lights."
She made her way to the small desk tucked under the window. “Computer.” The monitor rose from a slot in the desktop.
"Ready.” The screen settled on a grey background, with a dozen colourful icons superimposed.
"Seek: legal name of present yighsilchi, Low Town Bashravi, city Nemeal, planet Kallista."
"Legal name is Suri Manoki sen Jerrod."
Jerrod. Not a family name with which she was familiar. Perhaps Suri sen came from a different city.
"How long has Suri Manoki sen Jerrod been yighsilchi at Low Town bashravi?"
"Eight years, seven months, six days, three hours."
After pacing for an hour, she sat down and put her bare feet up on the desk. No matter how she couched the questions, the information trail leading to Suri sen was a dead end. She had come to the Low Town bashravi as a yisil fifteen years earlier and became yighsilchi seven years later, when the old one died. Letters from the yighsilchi to the government were on record: lists of deaths, requests for funding, applications for tax exemptions ... the trivia of administering a bashravi, as nearly as she could tell.
But there was no record of Suri sen prior to her appearance as a yisil.
Three hours later, she was hungry and no closer to understanding Suri sen. Every lead she had followed brought her up against the walls of the bashravi. The complete dearth of personal information on the yighsilchi could only be deliberate.
Jhyoti stopped pacing as something occurred to her. Suri sen had mentioned previous unclaimed bodies.
"Computer."
"Ready."
"Data search: Low Town bashravi. List of bodies, identity unknown, last fifteen years. List by date reported. Silent mode."
Two columns appeared on the screen under the headings of male and female.
"Delete male column."
She was left with a list of over sixty dates, averaging four unclaimed bodies a year.
"Sort by age of deceased.” And a moment later, “Seek patterns."
This time, the computer took close to a minute. When it was done, only one pattern had been identified. Three entries flashed on the screen. All three women were approximately the same age when they died, were all about the same shape and size and had brown hair and green eyes. The first one appeared days after Suri sen arrived at the bashravi; the last one had died five years ago.
The woman over whom she had tripped made four.
Jhyoti stared at the screen, her glass of juice forgotten. A niggling suspicion rose to the surface of her mind and thinned her lips.
They had been found at five-year intervals, on the same day. Today's date.
The following night she returned to the Low Town cemetery armed with a map in her palm reader. It took most of the night, but she found all the graves of the unclaimed women. They all showed signs of recent attention: incense sticks planted around the grave, a fresh coat of colourful paint on the marker, offerings of rice and flowers. Families honoured their dead, even if they could not claim them. Only three showed no overt signs of familial attention. Their markers were beacon white, with the dates of demise carved in black.
She touched each one and like waves in a cavern, felt the overlapping echoes of old grief and indifferent attention. The one who had planted the marker had cared about the loss of these women. Those who had looked after it since had no emotional attachment to the dead.
Three markers, three women. All dead on the same date, five years apart. All beaten?
"You left your things."
Jhyoti jumped, but some part of her had expected the yighsilchi. She turned to face the old woman and they stared at each other in silence. The yighsilchi looked as if she had not slept.
"These women,” said Jhyoti.
The yighsilchi remained silent, her green eyes black in the darkness of the cemetery. To the south, light flared as a shuttle left the atmosphere to rendezvous with its orbiting ship.
"What links them?” Jhyoti finally asked.
She compared the woman before her to the holo of the woman in her middle years who had first come to the bashravi. That woman's eyes had held quiet joy. The woman who stood before her in the lonely cemetery carried pain in her eyes. Jhyoti controlled an impulse to touch the yighsilchi's cheek.
Without a word, Suri sen turned and threaded her way out of the cemetery, heading for the bashravi. Her white robe gleamed palely, its hem hiding her feet so that she seemed to float among the grave markers.
After a long moment, Jhyoti followed her.
Inside, all the tables were empty. Suri sen went directly to the far wall and pressed a palm-sized indentation. A narrow bed slid out of the wall, revealing a shrouded body.
Jhyoti clutched the palm reader to her chest as if it were an amulet, then replaced it in her belt and removed the sampler. She had taken the small tool from the Academy equipment room without authorization, her retinal scan left behind for anyone to trace.
"What is that?” The yighsilchi's voice sounded strained. She looked at the sampler, her face expressionless.
"It is a sampler,” said Jhyoti. She pulled down the shroud to reveal the woman's face. After a quick glance to make sure it was the same woman, she looked away. She ran the sampler over the woman's arm, then replaced the tool in her belt.
"Now what?"
"Now I return to the Academy. My computer is equipped to analyse small samples of raw data—it should be able to identify the DNA and run it through the Academy database."
Suri sen held Jhyoti's gaze for a long, long time. Finally she nodded and looked away.
Two hours later, Jhyoti sat back in her chair and stared at the computer screen.
Dhareel sen Bikstra.
The woman on the screen smiled serenely into the camera. How had such a one ended up at the bashravi, unclaimed?
"Computer—” She stopped. What to ask? “Last known address of Dhareel sen Bikstra."
"Last known address is House Attines, Nemeal."
House Attines. It belonged to one of the oldest, most respected families on Kallista.
"Last known employer of Dhareel sen Bikstra."
"Hojjasta Vikram sen Attines, House Attines, Nemeal."
"Position?"
"Define parameters of inquiry."
"Last known employment of Dhareel sen Bikstra."
"Personal assistant to Hojjasta Vikram sen Attines."
Jhyoti remained silent for so long that the computer went into dormant mode. Finally, she spoke again.
"Search media and Guard reports for missing persons, cross-reference House Attines."
After a minute, the computer reported. “There are no reports of missing persons cross-referenced with House Attines."
Jhyoti asked a few more questions, to be certain, then sat back to think. No one had reported Dhareel sen Bikstra missing. How could a valued servant end up beaten, dead and abandoned in a bashravi without anyone calling attention to her disappearance?
Her eyes burned from lack of sleep. It was the middle of the night—she would have to wait until morning to pursue. She lay down, fully clothed, to snatch a few hours of sleep. As consciousness fled, a thought floated across her awareness. It was not the woman's death she needed to understand. It was her life.
The next morning, before breakfast, Jhyoti jogged through the main exercise quadrangle, ran up the steps of Headquarters and removed her beret before entering the building. Admiral Dilan had summoned her.
Five minutes later, she was standing at attention, staring at the top of the Admiral's head, practising control. He was seated at his desk, head bowed over a palm reader. The windows had polarized to shut out the glare of the Nemeal afternoon. Though this kept the heat out, it also kept out much of the natural daylight. Walking in from the bright anteroom placed the visitor at a disadvantage.
A petty trick.
The Dilan clan had argued fiercely against allowing bhoto into the Academy, only to be overruled by the Alliance. Despite the ruling, no bhoto had ever met the Academy entrance criteria until she came along—and she was half-caste. Perhaps her admittance into the Academy was only half a failure for the Dilan clan.
The mahti saw her as a mongrel. The bhoto saw her as the thin wedge.
And she saw herself sailing the stars.
"Sit down, cadet."
For a moment, she stood still, her mind temporarily blank. In all the years she had come to this cave, she had never been invited to sit. What was the devil planning to say, that she needed to be seated to hear it?
He glanced up from his palm reader, frowning that fierce white frown of his. Jhyoti sat down, carefully folding her hands on her lap so as not to touch the chair. She wanted no sensory echoes from other hapless cadets who had sat there before her. She had forgotten to don her gloves and it was too late to fish them out.
The Admiral was a tall, trim man who looked good in the Alliance uniform. Still, a man of his age should not indulge in affectations such as a moustache, especially when he was cursed with the Dilan nose.
In these five years that felt like ten, Admiral Dilan had taken every opportunity to make her life miserable. He particularly delighted in assigning her to work with the base engineers on the new Davidovich drive.
She had fetched; she had carried. She had cleaned the exhaust manifold of the drive, taken apart command consoles for maintenance and worse, put them back together. Five years of these extra-curricular chores. All because she was half-caste.
She had loathed the engineering assignments, and he knew it. And so she had done them well, to spite him. She had applied herself with diligence and intelligence, until all the engineers knew her by name. Eventually, she reached a level of comfort and even competence with the Davidovich Drive. The engineers now welcomed her—if not as a peer, then as a talented apprentice.
Still, understanding the Davidovich Drive had nothing to do with becoming an exoanth.
The Admiral turned the full force of his attention on her.
"You have done well, Cadet Chandar."
She could not help herself. Her eyebrows tried to climb off her face. She was suddenly glad to be seated.
"Thank you, Admiral."
He swept a big hand out, brushing aside her thanks. “It will not matter, however. If you fail this final assignment, you will not graduate."
Jhyoti's stomach clenched. “Yes, sir."
Her report was ready. It was due at the end of the day. It would startle the experts. All theories to date assumed that the inner bashravi was a holy temple where yisils conducted traditional religious ceremonies. Instead it was a morgue set up to examine bodies before washing them and returning them to the families for burial. Her report would advance the body of knowledge. It would assure her of graduating.
"That is why it surprised me to hear that you were investigating members of my family instead of working on your assignment."
Jhyoti swallowed hard. “Your family, sir?"
Admiral Dilan's face was expressionless. “The House Attines. Hojjasta sen Attines is my cousin. Her security office flagged the search you did."
Jhyoti waited, giving away nothing.
"And I have been informed that you took a sampler from the equipment room without authorization."
"It has been returned."
The Admiral frowned. Five years ago, that frown had made her quail. Now it stiffened her resolve. She was close to an answer. This mahti would not stop her.
He stared at her for a long time, as if to strip the truth from her. “Why did you need the sampler?"
"For my assignment, sir."
The tightening of his lips told her he knew she was lying. He could do nothing about it until she turned her report in.
If she turned it in.
"And does the House Attines have to do with your assignment, as well?"
"Only indirectly, sir. A loose end to tie up my report."
"Tread carefully, Cadet,” he said softly. “Mahti families do not care to be the subject of such curiosity."
"Yes?"
Jhyoti smiled tentatively at the man on the screen. “I have come to apply for the position."
The man's eyebrows rose. At his temple, she could see the telltale tattoo. Tiny amrit loops lined both his ears. “Position?"
"Personal Assistant to Hojjasta sen Attines."
The side gate slid open and Jhyoti stepped in, hoping she would be able to leave as easily. It was a risk she was willing to take for a chance at learning something of Dhareel sen Bikstra's life in House Attines.
She had no illusions. Moments after her departure, the Admiral would be alerted to her deception. But perhaps by then she would know the truth about what had happened to Dhareel.
She walked through a lush kitchen garden to where the man from the screen awaited her at the door.
"My name is Salmalin. Come.” He led the way into a small room with a desk and two chairs. A window in an inner wall looked onto a kitchen where servants were busy preparing the midday meal.
"What makes you think there is an opening?” He waved her to a seat and took the one behind the desk.
Jhyoti carefully arranged her robe, making sure he saw her gloves. “One hears things..."
"What kind of things?” said a woman's sharp voice from behind her. Jhyoti twisted in her seat and caught her breath in dismay. Hojjasta sen Attines.
Jhyoti quickly rose to face the woman, not wanting her at her back. “Mistress Attines—"
Hojjasta sen cut her off with a sharp movement of her hand. “Where did you hear that there was a position?” She was a big woman, taller even than Jhyoti and was cursed with the Dilan nose. It gave her a predatory look.
Before Jhyoti could remember what she had planned to say, Hojjasta sen's glance fell on her hands. The look on her face went from baleful to calculating.
"You are an empath.” Her lips pursed slowly as her gaze travelled the length and breadth of Jhyoti's form.
"I am, mistress.” She struggled to keep the fear from her voice, then decided to use it. “But it does not prevent me from working well."
Hojjasta sen waved away Jhyoti's explanation. “Nonsense. I like having an empath around.” She smiled sweetly, showing small teeth.
"Mistress,” said Salmalin, startling Jhyoti. She had forgotten his presence.
"Come with me,” said the woman, ignoring the servant. “Take the gloves off."
Jhyoti was swept down a hallway to the front of the house in the wake of the mistress of House Attines. Part of her wished she had never come. The other part wished she could find out where Dhareel sen Bikstra's quarters were.
She removed her gloves as she walked, feeling naked without them. Then Hojjasta sen stopped and Jhyoti found herself in a small study complete with an antique wood desk and chairs, a replica of an ancient Earth sisal carpet and a huge wall monitor that displayed a garden scene.
"Sit down.” Hojjasta indicated an upholstered chair.
Jhyoti's trepidation dissipated in her irritation at the woman's tone of voice. This one was accustomed to being obeyed.
She sat down, brushing her fingers against the fabric as she did.
A wash of old lust, mingled with amusement. Overlaying all: anger.
When she could focus again, Jhyoti found herself pinned to the chair by Hojjasta's amused gaze. The woman had deliberately chosen a chair on which she had made love. Disgust drove Jhyoti to her feet.
"I must leave now."
"So soon?” Hojjasta's mouth pursed in disappointment, but her gaze sharpened. “You have not yet told me how you knew there was a position open in my house."
"I did not,” replied Jhyoti shortly, “until you confirmed it."
She headed for the door, pulling her gloves on, but Hojjasta was faster.
"Wait!” She grabbed Jhyoti by the arm. The intimacy shocked Jhyoti more than the residual sexual energy in the chair. To touch a known empath, uninvited!
What kind of hell had Dhareel sen Bikstra lived through in this monster's employ?
She yanked her arm free, allowing her outrage to show on her face. Far from being abashed, however, Hojjasta sen Attines threw her head back and laughed. On her neck, usually hidden by the collar of her robe, were three deep scratches.
I have you, thought Jhyoti.
And at the same time, she realized how vulnerable she was. Should she disappear, Suri sen and the Admiral could probably guess where she had gone. But one would be unable to help her; the other, unwilling.
"You leave so quickly!” mocked Hojjasta sen Attines. “You did not even tell me your name."
Jhyoti knew it was unwise, but at that moment she wanted nothing more than to erase the smirk from the other woman's face.
"You may call me Suri,” she said.
Hojjasta sen Attines's face grew pale and she stumbled back a step.
Oh yes, thought Jhyoti. I have you.
She left House Attines before Hojjasta sen Attines could recover.
Jhyoti returned to the Academy for the sampler before going to the bashravi. She used the street entrance, standing before the ident plate for a long minute while the sun beat down on her head before an acolyte let her in.
"What is it?” said Suri sen once she had been informed of Jhyoti's arrival. Her sleeves were rolled up and she was drying her hands on a clean cloth.
"I need a sample of what is under her fingernails."
Suri sen stared at her. “Why?"
Jhyoti noticed for the first time the tiny pinprick scars along the outer edges of the yighsilchi's ears. She glanced at the old woman's temple, but there was no tattoo.
"I need to take the sample myself."
Suri sen remained silent for a long time. “What have you done?” she finally whispered.
And so Jhyoti told the yighsilchi about Dhareel sen Bikstra. When she finished, hope bloomed in Suri sen's eyes.
"There were scratches on Hojjasta's neck,” said Jhyoti. “Dhareel may have fought her before she was killed. If we find Hojjasta's DNA under Dhareel's nails, we will have proof."
Suri sen sighed deeply, as if a long-pent up breath were finally being released.
"Very well,” she said and led the way into the inner courtyard. Yisils looked up in surprise to see a stranger in their midst. Jhyoti tried not to look, but could not help herself. Four of the stations were occupied, the yisils pausing with sonic cleaners in their hands to watch her. She dragged her gaze back and kept it centred on the yighsilchi's back.
Suri sen placed her palm on the indent in the wall and once again the table slid out, bringing with it a gust of cold air.
"Has anyone else touched her?"
Suri sen shook her head. “This slot is keyed to my palm print. No one else can access it."
"Good. Do not allow anyone to see or touch her.” Jhyoti removed the small envelope, the sheet of paper and the sterilized scraper from her pocket. With one gloved hand, she picked up Dhareel's hand and held the thumb out. With her other hand, she scraped under the thumbnail. She did the same for the other fingers. When she was done with Dhareel's left hand, she sealed and labelled the envelope, then proceeded to the right hand.
"Child..."
Jhyoti looked up. “Yes, Suri sen?"
"I am sorry for involving you in this."
Jhyoti was too tired for tact. “It is too late for regrets."
The yighsilchi looked away. “You will pay a price..."
Jhyoti sighed. “This is my choice."
"Can you still turn in your assignment?"
Jhyoti stared at the yighsilchi in amazement. The old woman knew that her report, if turned in, would reveal the mundane secrets of the bashravi. It would diminish the influence and dignity of the yisils.
"You should not concern yourself with me, Suri sen,” she said with finality. Then she turned back to Dhareel and with a deep breath, stripped off her gloves.
"Jhyoti, there is no need...” Suri sen reached out to stop Jhyoti, but it was too late. Jhyoti placed her hand on Dhareel's cold forehead.
It was not as overwhelming as the first time. Dhareel had been dead long enough and her cells were degraded enough to take the sharp edge off the residual emotions. Pain, lust and shame dominated. Dhareel had loved her tormentor, at least for a while. The pain had been both physical and emotional. Ghost feelings flitted by like remnants of a spent sand storm before the moon. Overlaying them all was rage, a rage so strong it had survived death.
Jhyoti opened her mouth to breathe. Her legs trembled and she shut everything out but the woman before her. The rage tasted familiar. She had sensed it before, in House Attines.
Finally she broke the contact, swaying. The yighsilchi's strong arm wrapped around her waist, supporting her. The old woman closed and sealed the shelf and helped Jhyoti back to her office.
Ten minutes and a cup of tea later, Jhyoti stood up. “I must go, Suri sen."
The yighsilchi stood up, too. “What will you do?"
Jhyoti looked down at the old woman, her heart heavy. “I will finish what we started. You understand that you may be required to testify?"
Suri sen's green eyes turned cold. “I will testify. You understand that she is the sister of the Guards Captain?"
Jhyoti nodded. “And the daughter of the provincial governor. Nevertheless."
The yighsilchi gaze roved over Jhyoti's face as if memorizing it. “No matter what happens, child, my thanks for trying."
Jhyoti nodded. She wanted to scream at the yighsilchi for not trying harder to stop the murders, for not shouting Hojjasta sen Attines's guilt from the roof tops. Instead, she pulled her palm reader from her belt and handed it to Suri sen.
"It contains the only copy of my report on what I saw in the bashravi. I will not turn it in."
The gratitude in the yighsilchi's eyes warred with guilt. It was too much to bear. Jhyoti turned away. The yighsilchi's soft voice called her back before she could leave.
"I was recently widowed, with no means of earning a living. Hojjasta sen Attines offered me the position of personal assistant. I thought myself fortunate.” Bitterness turned her voice harsh. “She was a monster. At first she only toyed with me, but when she learned that I was an empath, her attentions grew ... vile."
Jhyoti wanted to stop her. She did not wish to hear what Hojjasta had done. But she kept silent. She had laid the responsibility for her abandoned dreams squarely on Suri sen's shoulders by handing her that report. The least she could do was listen as Suri sen broke her fifteen-year silence.
"She beat me, but always kept a hand on me so that I would feel her joy. Then one day, she raped me."
Jhyoti closed her eyes, remembering the chair in the study. Rape for an empath was the cruellest crime of all. To be forced to share the rapist's enjoyment...
"It took a long time to sort out what I felt from what she felt for me. The night I did, I left. I took nothing but the clothes I was wearing. I ran until I could run no more. A yisil found me and took me here. I have been here ever since."
"You hid your identity."
Suri sen nodded. “The yighsilchi had contacts. She helped me disappear. I was reborn as Suri Manoki sen Jerrod."
"Yet Hojjasta found you."
"Yes, but there was nothing she could do to me here. Or so I thought."
Jhyoti looked away while the yighsilchi struggled to regain her composure.
"A few weeks after I arrived here, we found the first body. I did not pay much attention, as I had been told that this sometimes happened. The moment I touched her, however, I knew.” She shuddered at the memory, her arms wrapped around herself. “I stopped bleeding a few years later and so was spared when the second and third were discovered. I grew to dread the anniversary of my arrival here."
"Why five year intervals?” asked Jhyoti.
Suri sen looked at her bleakly. “Four years, ten months and twenty-two days. That is how long I stayed with her."
Jhyoti waited but the yighsilchi had finished. She sat on her chair, head bowed, lost in memories of a terrible time.
Jhyoti quietly left and took a grav car back to the Academy.
Three hours later, it was done. She had sent the reports of her findings to the Alliance representative on Kallista, the commander of the Academy, the Guards Captain, the provincial governor, the Security Directorate, Admiral Dilan and every news agency she could find. Then, she had posted the report on the Net, with her findings and her proof.
Finally, she composed her resignation, encrypted her voice print into the message and sent it to Admiral Dilan.
Moving slowly, she packed her camping gear and left the Academy grounds, crossed Low Town and headed for the desert. She did not plan to return until after the graduation ceremony.
Every day she hiked deeper into the emptiness. Every night, she camped facing south to see the beacon lights of the shuttle port.
Freighter captains sometimes hired Academy-trained cadets, though rarely ones who did not graduate. Still, she might find a berth on a freighter and work her way outsystem. She might eventually end up on a private research vessel, one searching for abandoned worlds. There was a market for archaeological finds.
The thought was distasteful.
On the fifth night, a grav car came out of the south, from Nemeal. It circled her camp once, then settled a respectful distance away. A small cloud of sand rose to obscure the car as the exhaust system expelled spent air.
Jhyoti stood up and brushed sand from her pants. When the cloud settled, a door opened in the grav car, spilling light. A uniformed man jumped nimbly out and headed toward her.
It took a moment for her to realize that he was not wearing a Guard uniform but that of an Alliance security officer. A meter away, he stopped. For a moment, Jhyoti thought he was about to salute.
"Cadet Jhyoti. Admiral Dilan requests your presence."
"You have been misinformed, Lieutenant. I am no longer an Alliance Cadet."
The security officer's expression did not change. “Perhaps so, ma'am, but my orders are to escort you to the Admiral."
Jhyoti's first thought was an uncharitable one and she did not voice it. She closed her eyes. She had thought the Admiral above revenge.
The security officer escorted Jhyoti through the deserted Headquarters building to the Admiral's waiting room. He then stood before the ident plate and announced, “Cadet Chandar, sir."
"Bring her in,” said an unfamiliar voice as the door slid open. Jhyoti took a deep breath and entered.
A Guard stood by the far window, away from the three other occupants. His body language—stiff and slightly turned away—told her he was not happy. He stared at her, his face unreadable. A man and a woman in Alliance uniforms—a captain and a general—stood up as she entered. A moment later, Admiral Dilan did, as well.
Jhyoti took three steps and came smartly to attention. True, she was not in uniform, but it seemed the prudent course.
"Cadet Chandar.” The Admiral's gaze swept over her desert clothes but he contented himself with a frown. “This is Captain Pettis of the Solar Wind and General Mohammed of Alliance Command. And Guards Captain Sansjil."
Jhyoti remained at attention while acknowledging each introduction with a nod. The two Alliance officers returned her nod but Guards Captain Sansjil deliberately looked away from her. Sansjil ... Before she left for the desert, the Guards Captain had been an Attines. Brother to Hojjasta, cousin to the Admiral.
For the first time, she realized she had left her gloves somewhere back at her desert camp.
Her gaze settled on the Admiral. The Alliance officers kept their emotions under better control than the Guards Captain or even the Admiral. She could not understand why they were here.
Why was she here?
The Admiral came around the desk to stand before her.
"Cadet Chandar, the Academy regrets that you were forced to miss your graduation ceremony."
She opened her mouth to remind him of her resignation, but he continued without giving her a chance to speak. “However, it was safest to let you disappear when the assassin planted the micro bomb in your room."
The blood drained from Jhyoti's face. The Admiral kept speaking but she could barely hear him through the roaring in her ears. Only his dark gaze, boring into hers, kept her from staggering back. Her mouth parted, not to speak, but because she was having difficulty breathing.
"We have caught the assassin and arrested the man who hired him."
The word escaped on a gasp. “Who?” Who would want to kill her?
The Admiral did not glower at her. The question was acceptable, even expected. “The previous Guards Captain, Mirhan Jedrel san Attines."
It took a massive effort not to look at the new Guards Captain, though she could feel his gaze on her.
"It is now safe to graduate you,” said Admiral Dilan. He reached behind him on the desk and picked up a small, flat box made of real wood. Inside was a green Specialist stripe laid out on dark velvet.
"Cadet Jhyoti Sagura sen Chandar,” continued the Admiral. “You have distinguished yourself by consistently rising above the high standards set by the Academy. Your work has been exemplary and of the highest quality. You have proven yourself capable of accomplishing your mission under trying circumstances. And above all, you have proven yourself honourable."
The Admiral took the Specialist's stripe and placed it on her dusty desert shirt. As he pressed down on the stripe to affix it, his knuckles grazed her chin.
Confusion. Concern turning to alarm. Relief replaced by cold rage, kept under tight control. Pride.
Then the touch was gone, so brief that it could have been her imagination save that the Admiral now stared hard at her, as if to impart a message. The touch had been intentional. He was warning her.
But of what?
"The Alliance Academy is proud to graduate you, Specialist Chandar."
Jhyoti stared at him, at a loss for words. His raised eyebrow jogged her manners.
"Thank you, sir."
Then all three Alliance officers saluted her. A moment later, Jhyoti closed her mouth and returned the salute.
"Our congratulations, Specialist Chandar,” said General Mohammed. “We hope you will serve the Alliance for many decades.” She turned a hard stare on Guards Captain Sansjil.
Only then did Jhyoti understand. The Alliance officers were there as witnesses, and as a warning to the Guards Captain. The Alliance could not be certain that Guards Captain Sansjil had been involved in the plot to kill Jhyoti or they would have arrested him. But obviously they had their suspicions. They were serving notice that Jhyoti was under their protection.
Her shoulders relaxed for the first time since she arrived.
With a nod to her and the Admiral, General Mohammed headed for the door.
"A pleasure to meet you, Specialist Chandar,” said Captain Pettis. “The Admiral tells me you're a bit of an expert on the Davidovich Drive."
Jhyoti looked at the Admiral in astonishment, but his expression did not change.
Captain Pettis grinned at the Admiral and left.
Guards Captain Sansjil left also, his colour high. He spared her a furious glance as he passed.
Then she was alone with the Admiral. Jhyoti plucked the first coherent thought she could find and voiced it.
"I had resigned."
"Your resignation never reached me.” The familiar challenge was back in his eyes. Jhyoti could no longer tell if what she felt was amusement or frustration.
"Perhaps not, but I did not turn in my final assignment."
Admiral Dilan's mouth quirked. “You may thank the yighsilchi. She insisted I accept your report from her hand instead of yours."
Jhyoti smiled. Suri sen could be very persuasive. Then the smile left her face. The bashravi would pay a price in lost status—and donations—as a result of the yighsilchi's decision.
"Was anyone hurt in the blast?"
A shadow crossed the Admiral's face and this time Jhyoti had no trouble reading his expression. “No, but it was a long time before we determined that you had not been killed."
Once he realized she had not been killed, the Admiral had searched for her and found her in the desert, where he left her until the assassin and his employer were arrested.
"What now?” she asked.
The Admiral shrugged. “Kallista is no longer safe for you. You may still resign, if you wish, but you have worked very hard. Why turn away when the stars are within reach?"
"You will be leaving soon,” said Suri sen.
Jhyoti nodded and kept painting. The grave post was a bright shade of yellow, with painted flower garlands twining around it. Green and blue lettering spelled out Dhareel's name and her dates. Below that was a simple inscription:
"Sister."
Suri sen climbed to her feet and brushed the dirt from her knees. The flowers she had planted were small but they would grow and bloom every year.
"I am also told that you will have a berth on the Solar Wind."
This time, Jhyoti could not keep the grin from her face. “I am the junior officer in the exoanth department."
"A high honour.” Suri sen smiled in return.
"Yes.” Of course, the Solar Wind was the first outsystem ship to use the Davidovich Drive. There was still much to be learned about the drive's reaction to deep space. And exploration vessels drew danger pay for very good reasons. Perhaps the Admiral had had an ulterior motive when he assigned her to the Solar Wind.
Jhyoti did not care. She was going to the stars.
Marcelle Dubé makes her home in the Yukon at the foot of Mount Lorne, where she shares the land with coyotes, lynx and the occasional bear. Her stories have appeared in Storyteller, Open Space: A Canadian Anthology of Fantastic Fiction and Polaris: A Celebration of Polar Science, among others.
Forty Signs of Rain, Kim Stanley Robinson, Bantam Spectra, 2004, 393 pp.
The works of Kim Stanley Robinson have given me some of the greatest reading pleasure, in science fiction or out. I've read most of his books, and while I admire the award-winning Mars series as much as anyone else, I have an especial fondness for the Three Californias trilogy (The Wild Shore, The Gold Coast, Pacific Edge). In those three books, Robinson kept the story moving at a brisk pace at the most basic level, but provided the reader with a great deal to think about once the higher level pieces were revealed and started to fit together.
A few years after the publication of the Mars trilogy, I heard that Robinson was working on a new trilogy, this time about climate change and specifically from the point of view of scientists working in Washington D.C. to move the levers of power. I confess that I was a bit worried about this setup, a feeling that never went away as the new books came out and I tried to figure out my own decidedly mixed response to them. Robinson has certainly done the scientist shtick before, with great results, but these were in settings, like Mars or Antarctica, where the dry nature of the scientific endeavour was enlivened by the drama of the locale.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all on the side of the scientist and the essentially heroic work of methodically solving problems and making the world a better place. But it's the old problem of the mad scientist: very few real-life scientists are power-mad maniacs bent on world domination by way of some freaky apparatus (that usually goes without saying!), but it makes for a much more dramatic B-movie plot if such is the case. Nuance is important, but let's not forget that science fiction is also a type of entertainment. Again, I'm not saying that we should succumb willy-nilly to the use of stereotypes (and perpetuate scientific illiteracy), but there are ways to do this that are craftier than others.
For example, bringing the readers along on a visit into a scientist's life on Mars or during a trek to Antarctica lets Robinson have it both ways. Doing scientific work on Mars might not be all that different from similar work back on Earth, in a side-by-side comparison of tasks ... but on the other hand, you're on freaking Mars! How awesome is that! Robinson definitely conveyed that in his famous Mars trilogy.
Forty Signs of Rain and its two sequels are set in the near future in a world not that different from our own. In the first book in particular, Robinson focuses on domestic life along with how projects are authorized at the National Science Foundation in Washington D.C. These are all admirable things, but it's also pretty clear that book lost its narrative drive, and its science fiction zing, along the way.
My thoughts are mixed, in other words.
But clearly Robinson has set himself against this challenge deliberately, and on paper it's a good idea as it fills a gap in his utopian vision. In some of his other works, utopia would take place, either far in the future on Mars, or in a third version of California where neither militarism nor consumerism had gotten carried away. Those types of utopias are interesting, and Robinson did much better at dramatizing them than many attempts by other authors. But I stumble on a fairly large obstacle while reading such books: how did the utopians get from here to there? What were the steps? I'm an ordinary, flawed human being—how do I get from point A to point B? If this series were to successfully address this gap, it would be quite an achievement.
In the first book, Forty Signs of Rain, we are very far from utopia; society is not even at a stage where the main problem of the time, climate change, is recognized. That sounds pretty familiar, really.
So here we are: it's the near future in Washington D.C. The ostensible main character, Charlie Quibler, is a science policy writer for a politician named Phil Chase. His wife, Anna, works at the National Science Foundation (NSF), along with a third character, Frank Vanderwal, who is from San Diego.
Charlie's a stay-at-home father, working on policy over the phone when he has a chance, otherwise spending most of his time with his youngest son, Joe. We get a lot of detail about life in a young family. The Quiblers also befriend some Buddhist monks who have opened an embassy in D.C. after their island refuge has been flooded by rising ocean levels. The connection becomes even more entangling after Charlie notices some odd behaviour in Joe and he begins to suspect something supernatural—this is a strange storyline that gets dragged out through all three books.
The book follows Frank through some odd twists and turns as well. He expends considerable energy to try to bend one of the NSF's grants towards a company that he has interest in back in San Diego. When I read this book for the first time, Frank came off as shady and annoying. That's about all I'll say about him at this point.
Forty Signs of Rain has little to do with climate change. Yes, some of the characters discuss it, but there's so much else going on, or rather, so little, that the concepts of the book get entirely diffused. The book has domestic details and information about applying for scientific grants, and then ends with a flood of Washington D.C. The lack of sharp focus or narrative drive is remarkable. There's plenty of worthy material in the various digressions, but they don't necessarily add up to a novel per se. In other words, climate change itself is not the drama; if so, there would perhaps be a danger of resembling a cheesy disaster movie, but the pendulum swings too far in the other direction here.
I'll close with a quotation from about halfway through the book. Charlie is attending a meeting held by the presidential science advisor, someone who is clearly bought off by commercial interests and such:
—blockquote—
Marking such people and assisting in the immediate destruction of their pseudoarguments was important work, which Charlie undertook with fierce indignation; at some point the manipulation of facts became a kind of vast lie, and this was what Charlie felt when he had to confront people like Strengloft: he was combating liars, people who lied about science for money, thus obscuring the clear signs of the destruction of their present world. So that they would end up passing on to all the children a degraded planet, devoid of animals and forests and coral reefs and all the other aspects of a biological support system and home. Liars, cheating their own children, and the many generations to come: this is what Charlie wanted to shout at them, as vehemently as any street-corner nutcase preacher. (193)
—/blockquote—
There's a fine indignation here, and some clear insight. I just wish that sense of urgency and justice was translated into a storyline that swept up us readers and made us feel that anger and understanding, rather than just pointing us towards it by endless talk.
Fifty Degrees Below, Kim Stanley Robinson, Bantam Spectra, 2005, 603 pp.
Fifty Degrees Below is a clear improvement over the preceding book, Forty Signs of Rain. The second book picks up exactly where the last one left off: Washington D.C. has been flooded and the city is trying to recover. At the end of the previous book, I wasn't convinced that one flooded city would cause a widespread realization that climate change was on the way, and unfortunately that has been proved rather dramatically since Robinson started writing this series. In fact, the situation is much worse in Fifty Degrees Below, and while it's a sad thing, I think that this book is more realistic: the various scientists have an uphill battle, despite the abundance of evidence on their side.
So the book has shaken off some of the bits and pieces that dragged down the preceding volume—the ideas are clearer and the arguments have shifted from “what is happening” to “what should we do about it.” At least, that's the optimistic interpretation of Fifty Degrees Below.
The ambiguity is encapsulated in Frank Vanderwal, who now firmly takes centre stage as the protagonist. Frank, suddenly no longer a scheming back-stabber, is knee-deep in the NSF's plans to fix things like the stalled Gulf Stream (the resultant weather gives the book its title). The lists that Frank is working on are dense with scientific detail, and provide some fascinating material for thought.
While it's nice to have the characterization a little more centralized, that means that it's Frank's personal concerns that take up the bulk of the book. Near the end of the last book, Frank met a woman and fell in love, but he has not seen her again. She is deeply embedded in the official security/surveillance apparatus of official (and not so official) Washington D.C., and she is getting together with Frank without the knowledge of her husband, who also works in spook circles. So Frank's love life is made up of short jolts of pleasure surrounded by long chapters of tedium.
Frank is also a budding neo-paleolithic man; he has nowhere to live and decides to build a sleeping platform in a tree in a local park. We get an unprecedented amount of detail about D.C. and its various neighbourhoods and parks and the people who live there. Robinson has a lot of insight into how people from all different strata of society live, and Frank is a great viewpoint character to use in this context.
Frank is also a way for Robinson to describe what is happening, with regard to climate change, with a more visceral impact than might have happened with a different character. As Frank notes after living in his tree, most people in a modern society are insulated from immediate contact with nature. Frank, on the other hand, is actively trying to throw off some of the habits of civilization.
Unfortunately, I'm not entirely sure Frank is a sympathetic character. Even he doesn't seem to remember the shady things he did in the first book. And of all things, he's injured in a fight and suffers damage to the area of his brain behind his nose—for the majority of Fifty Degrees Below, he has trouble making decisions due to his brain damage. When a book is so focused on one character's personal dilemmas, and that character has to agonize over every one of those decisions, it gets to be a bit much!
Frank's San Diego colleagues disappear almost entirely, while the rest of the cast of D.C. characters continue much as before. Charlie Quibler still works in politics and takes care of his son, Charlie's wife Anna works for the NSF solving scientific dilemmas, and the Buddhist monks who came to D.C. to save their homeland have essentially moved in and settled down. At one point, Frank lives with them when his friends convince him that living in his treehouse is too dangerous for someone who can't make decisions effectively.
What it comes down to: Robinson bets his book on Frank, and I'm not convinced that the bet pays off.
Two other things in the book are worth mentioning: the process of restarting the stalled Gulf Stream is shown in fascinating detail—the technology, the unusual allies, and so forth—and mostly told from Frank's point of view; and there's a presidential election. I'll talk about this a bit more in my review of the third and final book in the series, but I was initially disappointed in Robinson's answer to many of the problems currently plaguing the American political system (and wider circles); it's actually a bit deeper if you ponder what he's saying by the end of the third book. The political side of the solution is a fantasy of long-standing tradition in American culture—the great man who comes in and cleans up politics—but there are some deeper waters. Onward!
Sixty Days and Counting, Kim Stanley Robinson, Bantam Spectra, 2007, 600 pp.
The title of the third and final book in this series refers to the burst of energy in Washington D.C. with a new president in charge. Never mind a hundred days—newly-elected Phil Chase wants to fix everything within sixty days: the environment, foreign relations, the greedy system of hypercapitalism, etc. That's just as impossible as FDR's famous 100 days, of course, but Chase wants to carry that energy and momentum past the first 60 days, thus the “and counting."
Chase is the great man who comes in to clean up politics and, as such, represents a huge swath of wish-fulfillment fantasy in this book. The political system in America is so clearly broken, especially for those who care about science and various looming crises of the climate kind and otherwise, that it's tempting beyond the forbearance of rational beings to dream about what could be fixed. And in this particular headspace, the enormous frustration on the part of a writer like Robinson—an example would be the passage I quoted at length from the first book—can warp even the finest storytelling instinct towards the didactic. If only there were a politician like Phil Chase, then the enormous task of changing our society to a more sustainable basis would apparently have a chance! Maybe so, maybe not.
When I think back on the series as whole, I find this political magic-hand-waving to be a remarkable contrast to what happens on the scientific side. Bluntly: it's going to be hard work, there are some big projects described (salting the ocean, filling inland lakes with water from rising sea levels) but those are the exceptions, and the only hope we have is our hard work and cheery optimism. As near as I can tell, that's the recipe for change on the political side as well in real life; perhaps we are more used to having a solitary leader, symbolic or otherwise, in politics. Science is already more of an ad hoc process, with the crowd nature an essential part of the endeavour (along with a healthy dose of skepticism, of course!). The unruly mob of scientists might be pushing in thousands of different directions but I would agree with Robinson that they would be agreeable to a sustained effort to chase certain goals, like sustainable energy sources, mitigating climate change, and other large scale survival efforts.
As with the previous two books, we get a mix of the domestic lives of the characters and the grand schemes that must be brought to life to mitigate climate change. One of the high points in the book for me was a rather unexpected description of the game Apples to Apples—a family plays a hilarious round or two during a blackout. Like a lot of Robinson's books, there's a big emphasis on outdoor life and activity, including a particularly vivid trip to the Sierras. Charlie has a tradition of going on a backpacking trip with his friends, and he takes Frank along this year. They venture into California's interior, only to discover that a whole series of microclimates, familiar to them from previous trips up and down the mountainsides, have been burned out by lack of rainfall. And when a fragile area loses its life, it takes a long time to get it back.
Frank, a shady character in the first book and an indecisive neo-caveman in the second, gets his brain damage fixed up (insofar as this is possible), gets to help out in some of the largest scale endeavours in human history, and finally gets his girl! Unlike what happens to the majority of protagonists in spy thrillers, Frank's encounter with the surveillance apparatus of various black-ops groups turns out rather well for his sake. In the tradition of tragedy and comedy, Sixty Days and Counting is definitely a comedy, complete with multiple marriages.
So the trilogy is complete—I was wondering where Robinson was going to get his usual optimism from in the face of climate change, but his hope is where it's always been: the smart people who find a way to act, and act together. Still, there was not much in the way of resolution. Granted, one person cannot solve something as giant as “climate change” as such; that's why I was frantically dialling down my expectations all the way through. In the end, the trilogy boils down to something like “we should get some smart people to work on this problem; here's what their lives might be like in this situation.” If that's enough for you, you'll like the trilogy; I'm still not entirely sure if that was enough for me.
James Schellenberg lives and writes in Ottawa.
Rapid cultural change is obviously very possible—we've seen it before—so the attempt to forget that it can happen is one part of the power struggle that's going on. The power structure always pretends that it's impossible to change, inevitable that things are the way they are, but that's obviously untrue; change is going to happen.
—Kim Stanley Robinson, “Kim Stanley Robinson: Chop Wood, Carry Water” in Locus (April 2007, Vol 58 No 4)
There was a baby girl lying on the back lawn. Again. Arna leaned into the window until the screen pressed against her right cheek, and tiny squares of powdered flesh were outlined in gray-black gridwork. It was on its back, fat-creased arms and legs rhythmically flailing while the fingers and toes wiggled, and she—if the pink-check sundress could be believed to be an intentional choice—was looking up at the odd pigeons flying above her head. The sky was overcast, so Arna knew that the baby wasn't staring up into the sun but still, those birds, those small-headed pigeons, might relieve themselves on the baby in mid-flight—
"She's out there again, Dehaan. I should call someone about her mother—"
Dehaan didn't look at Arna as he shoved his cell and his wallet into his pockets. All he said was what he always said when she saw the baby on the lawn: “C'mon, we're going to be late. Lynet doesn't like it when we're late—"
"Yeah, especially when she shows up like half a minute before the session is due to start.” Arna found herself saying the words she always said in reply, before taking a last look at the baby and the circling pigeons, or birds very much like pigeons, there in the back yard. Her back yard. Hers and Dehaan's. The spot where this baby was lying, again. She knew from the other times she'd seen the baby that Dehaan wouldn't come look at it (her), wouldn't consider calling the police to come check on this baby lying out there alone (save for the birds), wouldn't even admit that there was a small infant back there (on the lawn, our lawn).
Riding next to Dehaan in the silent car, leaning against her shoulder harness strap until it cut into her neck, Arna told herself that Dehaan's indifference was the Beltrans’ fault. Paloma's stories of the little baby boy sitting on her back deck, on her kitchen floor, on her husband Jonas’ foot stool in the den, they'd made Dehaan skeptical. Just as they made everyone else in group think Paloma was more than slightly off ... as if the stories the others there told, of dead infants lying under warming lamps in the birthing room, of the tiny pastel knit caps and fuzzy blankets supplied by the nurses for “the picture” of the stillborn infant, of searching for just the right container for the handful of cremains, as if those tales were somehow on, in a positive sense.
But as Arna listened to Paloma's tales, as translated by her husband (whose English was less than fluent), she'd found herself more than empathizing, especially since she and Paloma shared a bond within the group, a small subset of a Venn diagram of expectation, loss, and hoped-for acceptance. Both of their babies had vanished within them. One day, they were looking at the print out from a normal ultrasound, that sugary miasma of what looked like a tiny body swirling in blackness, like a lump of sugar starting to dissolve in a cup of hot black coffee, so that there was a main shape in the middle, surrounded by wing-like protrusions which leeched into the darkness beyond. And then, after a day or so of unexplainable unease, coupled with a gradual lack of movement, of presence, from within, another ultrasound, only this time, the coffee had absorbed all the sugar. No baby. Nothing. Just a swelling void, which in turn became a flattened-out void.
Arna and Paloma had no snapshots of a permanently wrinkled, yet oddly flaccid little face under a pulled-low knit cap, no folded little blanket sealed in a zip-top plastic bag, no ... nothing. Just that grainy ultrasound image, and a distinct sense memory of having been full, then having emptied, with no definite in-between stage. There, gone.
As they pulled up to the center, Arna saw the Beltrans’ SUV parked next to the Hollebs’ little hybrid-power two-door. Thinking of the Hollebs’ (a couple new to the group Lynet counseled, who hadn't had much of anything to say in the last session) combined size and girth, Arna was seized with a clown-car image from her childhood, and began to muffle the giggle which welled within her. Dehaan paused as he took off his shoulder harness, saying, “You up to this today? I could leave a message, tell Lynet you're not—"
"I'm fine.” Just as they quitted their car, Lynet pulled up in her burgundy four by four, exactly a minute before the group counseling session for the parents of “preborn departures” was set to begin.
The group session room was located at the back of the mental health care clinic, not much bigger than the average family entertainment center, and made smaller by the inclusion of the card table which held (or would hold, once Lynet brought them in) paper plates covered with small shaped crackers, plastic-tough squares of sliced cheese, flat fillingless cookies, and personal-sized bottles of flavored waters. There used to be a carafe of coffee, but no one ever drank it—just as no one picked up the bottles of water—so Arna guessed that Lynet had switched to the same brand of bottled water she herself drank, so she could recycle the leftovers more efficiently.
While Lynet set the plates of food (carried in a tote which reminded Arna of a diaper bag) and bottles of water out, the other couples stood around awkwardly, not really saying much of anything, and not allowing their eyes to meet even if they did speak. Arna saw that the Fugols were still carrying around that scrapbook of Rand and Fala's still born, which was big enough for the obligatory ultrasound image. The scrapbook jutted out from Fala's oversized purse, just shy of being diaper-bag sized. Arna knew that the scrapbook would be passed around at least once during group. And the Vogels were carrying the plastic bagged knit cap, with a couple of fine hairs still adhering to the band, in her sweater pocket. That, too, was usually passed from non-parent to almost-parent, as the Vogels took turns speaking.
Arna did find herself wondering if Paloma would tell another tale of the phantom boy-baby who would appear in her home. Lynet never seemed comfortable with those twice-told stories (first in jumbled, hurried Spanish, then in slowly-spoken English, the words coming in small clusters, like big round baby beads on a choke-proof string), perhaps because they were too mundane, too quotidian in their unadorned reality. Not the anxious fantasies of a child-less mother, but the simple observances of a woman seeing a baby in her house, a baby which merely acted like a baby, and not some angelic or hyper-real version of infancy, courtesy of Hollywood CGI magic, or aging A-list actor voice overs. Hadn't Paloma-via-Jonas said that the baby even smelled, as if he'd filled his diaper? And every time she'd seen this boy-baby, Paloma had found herself distracted by something (a phone ringing, the doorbell, a bird bouncing off the front window) for a fraction of a second, and in that minute slice of time, the baby would vanish. But she'd said something about the smell lingering, even after he was gone. And she had once patted the empty seat next to her, while emphatically sputtering and Jonas had mimicked her flat-palm-on-empty-vinyl motion while he translated, “The seat, it stay warm, where he sit."
Once Lynet had finished putting out the plates of food no one would be eating later that evening, she sat down in the circle of couples (who all sat next to each other, with empty spaces between them, like breaks in the pattern of water-filled pillows on a teething ring), and said in that small, chirpy voice of hers, “Well people, shall we begin? Who would like to speak first?"
For the first few minutes, Arna found herself looking down at Lynet's sandal-covered feet, and bright carnation-pink nails. It was better than seeing the slow droop of Lynet's mouth as she once again realized that despite all the weeks they'd all been coming to group, next to no progress had been made.
Arna wondered if she should mention the baby girl lying on her lawn, in case someone else in the group might want to make a call to child services for her, on the child's behalf, but the Hollebs began to speak at once:
"Our situation, it is somewhat—"
"We realize that you folks went through a lot, giving birth to—"
"Ok ok, talking is good, but talking at once is confusing ... how about if your wife ... Sagirah, isn't it? ... how about she speaks first?"
Sagirah lowered her eyes, casting dark wings of lashes across the tops of her broad cheekbones, before beginning again, “I was saying, we, my husband and I, we realize that you women especially have been through a lot of pain, giving birth to ... but we just want you to know that our situation is not quite the same as all of yours. We had the exams, the ultrasound, and everything was going well, but then, when I went in for the next ultrasound, the woman with the device, that slid over my belly, she went white, and called for someone to help her ... she was gone. Our daughter. Just not there. All that was left was this dark void, inside me. A cave, just empty space inside my body. She was over five months along, she had bones, and a heartbeat, and even hair, you could see it on the ultrasound, and suddenly ... she was just gone. The doctors, they said she ... reabsorbed into me, but there was so much of her, and she ... so quickly. I had thought she was just being quiet. I thought she was giving me a break, from all the kicking—"
Arna and Dehaan's baby had been almost six months along, when she went wherever it was she went to, inside Arna. One morning, she had been kicking and somersaulting inside her mother. Dehaan used to call it “bouncing on the walls,” only Arna had thought of it more like the baby flying around in that watery space, with her pre-birth wing-arms grazing the sides of her temporary submerged cage. That was why she had suggested the name Olitia, which meant “winged” in some language ... Dehaan had agreed, especially since the baby could change it to something like Litia if she didn't like the sound of it once she was old enough ... They'd called her that, while speaking to Arna's growing belly each night, patting her taut flesh, and murmuring the name against the skin, hoping the baby within could hear them. But then came the morning when, after a dream of flocks of birds, small-headed pale birds, flying low over her head as she hung clothes out to dry in the back yard, their wings beating and flapping in time with the wind-whipped snap and flutter of the wooden-pin trapped sheets and pillowcases bobbing on the green plastic line before her, Arna had felt her belly, and all her hands could detect was warm skin, with only the subtle throb of her own breathing and distant heartbeat pulsing under her spayed fingers. No kicking, and worse yet, no heavy sensation of something within her.
It had been a few weeks since her last ultrasound, but when she'd climbed up on that table, and found herself watching the ceiling rather than look as the technician slathered her jutting belly with the clear lubricant, because she knew that her protruding abdomen wouldn't jerk and shudder from within anymore as the tech slid the sensor-thingie across that gleaming mound of full-full-full flesh ... and thus, she didn't see the look on the tech's face as she stared at an empty screen, but she did hear the panic in the woman's voice as she called for help, for a witness...
There were tests, after that, and doctors shaking their heads, and finally, the referral to Lynet Mochini's therapy group. After their first session there, after handling the scrapbooks and the plastic shrouded knit hats and limp blankets, Arna had donated all of would-be Olitia's baby things to charity. Even the passed-down things from her mother, and Dehaan's mother. Which hadn't set well with either Dehaan or his family, but Arna considered all those waiting-but-unused items to be jinxed, tainted by the mystery of their vanished would-be occupant. They were not meant to be worn by her, so there was no use keeping them to hex another future child of hers and Dehaan's...
"—so that's why we're not coming back to group, next time,” Capek Holleb was saying, after his wife's voice grew thick and clotted with unshed tears.
"Oh, I wish you'd wait until after your next visit to decide that,” Lynet soothed, her small pinched face pulled into a moue that started at her lips and yanked her entire face into a beak-like protrusion.
After a beat of silence from the Hollebs, Paloma began saying something, a rush of lilting Spanish with no pauses between the words, and as soon as she did take a breath, Jonas repeated, “The boy, she see him again. Walking, this time. Eating a cookie, and what not go in his mouth, it go on the floor. She try to keep watching him, talk to him, but she hear my car in the driveway, and ... But this time, she keep crumbs. Sweep them into bag—"
Poking his wife in the side, Jonas watched as Paloma rooted around in her jeans pocket for a small clear zip-top bag, the seal marked with a vivid stripe of green where the yellow and blue sides meshed together. Under the bright verdant seal was a moist clump of buttery-yellow crumbs, and a rounded piece of unchewed cookie, like the petal-shaped outer surface of those Baby Bites cookies Arna tried not to look at in the store when she went shopping.
Holding the bag up so all could see it, Paloma began speaking, pointing at the bag with her free hand, while Jonas said, “You feel the crumbs, they still moist. From his mouth. We take to laboratory, they do tests on it. They say they contact us, with result. Test the spit on the crumbs. Prove it from baby—"
Arna could predict what Lynet would say before the woman finally opened her mouth—"That's true, they can do tests on food for saliva, but Paloma, where did you get the cookie? Children, they eat things in the park, and drop them on the grass..."
Jonas quickly translated, and Paloma began shaking her head. Then, through Jonas:
"No, not on grass. Not in park. See, in the bag, thread from the rug. See, it is red—"
As Lynet explained that yes, she did believe that the carpet in the Beltran house was red, and that there was a fiber visible in the bag, it still didn't prove that the cookie crumbs were on the carpet ... and around that time, Arna stopped listening all together, and spent the rest of the evening looking at people's shoes, at their purses and bags resting on the floor beside them, all the while wondering how she could place an anonymous call to the police, child services, someone, to report that person who kept leaving that baby on her lawn...
The baby was gone from the back lawn when they returned home after group. Dehaan made a point of shutting the sliding window once Arna had peered outside at their darkening lawn, and pulling the drapes over the closed glass, while Arna pretended not to notice him. As she went into the kitchen, looking for something to toss into the microwave, Dehaan said, “I think I'm going to spring for that air conditioning. There's no reason not to..."
Before, when Olitia fluttered and swooped within her, there had been a reason not to install A/C—that money was earmarked for their daughter's college fund. Arna wondered if Dehaan had made his decision based on her own unfitness for carrying a baby to term, or if this was a quick fix to prevent her from needing to look out the dining room window, to even open the drapes themselves anymore—
"What Paloma was saying ... I think Lynet was wrong. At least, I think she should've waited for the results of those tests to come back—"
"What results? All those two needed to do was kiss, swap spit, and expel it in a bag with some crumbs. They're in denial, only now they're manufacturing proof of—"
"Of something that might actually be real?"
"Don't start in on that again—"
"On what?"
"That whole baby thing ... seeing them. I mean, I know I can't fully empathize with you on this, there's no way I can know what you went through, but ... just don't start this. You got the idea from Paloma, and next thing you know, that Holleb woman will start seeing them too. I know one thing—they're not the only ones who won't be there at group next time. I mean, we don't belong there, not really. It's not like we have a baby hat, or pictures to—"
"There's the ultrasound—"
"Of what, exactly? The more you look at it, the more it could be any damn thing. There's hardly a face, let alone—"
"Her ears, they stuck out. Like mine. There's that—"
"So do a lot of other kid's ears. She's gone, and that's it. No amount of sitting around talking to other people is going to change it, either. Make something for yourself, I'm going to do some work in my office."
Once he'd gone into his home office (which was going to be Olitia's room, before) and shut the door, Arna pushed aside the drapes and peered out the back window one last time, even though the yard was empty, as empty as the house for sale next door, and no birds flew anywhere above the grass...
"A/C would be good,” she mumbled to herself, as she thought, The baby wasn't eating, not yet, not on her own, so she wouldn't leave any crumbs, but maybe ... just maybe...
Without the group meetings to look forward to every other week, time seemed to pass more quickly, the days, weeks, months merged into a repetitive whole (eatdriveworkdriveeatmaybehavesexsleepeatdrive—), and once Dehaan made good on his promise to have the A/C installed, not only did Arna have less of an excuse to periodically peer out the dining room window, and scan the lawn for stray babies, but once Dehaan bought those shrubs from the nursery on the other side of town, the view from that window was quickly obscured by something quick-growing and thick-leaved (she never did bother to read the plastic tag still affixed to the shrub's stem), which turned the yard and sky beyond into a choppy, incomplete mosaic of bright green and blue beyond the darker green of the shrub. No way to look for babies.
And with the money they didn't spend on Olitia's food, clothes and medical bills, Dehaan found enough to hire someone to mow the lawn for him, so that Arna had no reason to look out that way, or even walk around there.
Once a “For Sale” sign went up in front of their house as well as the one which was still empty next door, all of Arna's time was spent packing, and cleaning, and getting things ready for Dehaan's move (job related—at least that wasn't one of his excuses, his cover-ups designed to make her stop fixating on that lawn baby), so she almost forgot about the baby ... until she went shopping for the last time in their favorite grocery store, for food they could eat during the drive to their new town, and Dehaan's new job.
Moving her cart down the aisle with the beef jerky and other preserved meats in skin-tight wrappers, she saw Paloma pushing a cart toward her from the opposite end of the long aisle. There was no way to avoid her, and since Jonas wasn't around, no way to understand her—
"Hello, Arna! Been so long time, no? You ok?"
Wondering just how good the woman's English really was, Arna smiled and said, “Dehaan and I are doing well—he has a new job, in—"
"You miss group, you no hear ... the test, we get back. Baby real. Baby, he ours—"
Glad that Dehaan wasn't around, Arna leaned over the handle of her cart and said, “You mean DNA tests? The spit, it matched yours and—"
"Si, si, it match. They say, come from our baby—"
Wondering what Lynet had had to say about that, Arna asked, “But do you still see him? The baby—"
"Si. He big now, running down hallway. I run, but no catch. But he real. No matter what Lynet say. He talk. To me. Call me Mama. It not strange to him, to be here, not be here. Jonas, he not see him, but he believe. Like Hollebs, they believe too—"
"They kept coming back to group?"
"Si. They curious, about test. Then, Sagirah, she see her daughter. With dark hair, like in ultrasound. Lynet, she not know what to do, but we no have picture, or knit things to show off, so me and Sagirah, we share what we see. I tell Sagirah, look for what falls from her, pick up whatever she find. People, they shed things all time, same for babies—"
And birds, Arna found herself thinking. The birds, who always circled the baby on my lawn. They shit. They shed feathers—
Still not able to mention the baby she'd seen, so many months before, Arna nodded and told Paloma she was happy for her, that she was still seeing her son, and handed the woman a piece of paper with her new address on it, just to keep in touch, later. Smiling, Paloma shoved it into her opened purse in the top basket of the cart, and pushed her cart past Arna's, while Arna threw whatever jerky and meat treats she could find close by into her cart, wondering if she could make it home before Dehaan arrived home from work that afternoon...
The person Dehaan hired to cut the grass had set the blade of the mower much too low—the grass was dried out to short brittle stubs above the easily visible ground. There was a great deal of bird dirt all over, thin watery splotches surrounding the tiny curled squiggle of solid matter in the middle. Most of the mess was concentrated near the spot where the baby had been resting on the grass, close to the neighboring yard, but still on her side of the property line. There was a vaguely baby-sized spot in the middle where no dirt at all was visible. She did find a feather, a thin dun-colored thing, but she heard no birds cooing, nor did she see any sign of them in the trees which surrounded the yard. No trace of the baby, but yet there was no proof it hadn't been there, either.
Kicking herself because she hadn't gone outside to actually look at the baby when she'd seen it, Arna wondered what Paloma or Sagirah would do once they finally caught their babies. When they overcame whatever it was that was still holding them back from actually snatching the child up and holding it, tight, tighter, never to let it go. Standing there on her burned grass, Arna unconsciously put her hands over her empty abdomen, and whispered aloud, “Olitia, I wouldn't have let go of you if you'd just stayed around long enough to come out."
As the wind picked up, reminding Arna of that dream she'd had, the night Olitia went away, either disappearing, or dissipating into her surrounding body, she found herself looking skyward, for those flocks of small-headed birds, until she felt the cool, damp softness on her exposed lower leg, followed by a gentle shove against her calf.
Looking down, she saw the baby, only the baby was walking now, a bit unsteadily, but upright and mobile nonetheless. Barely combed pale brown hair, the same shade as Dehaan's, framed a pinkish-tan wide face, and just like Arna, her ears stuck out past the hanging strands of her hair. Blue-gray eyes, like Arna's, like her own mother's and all her siblings’ eyes. Typical baby nose, still too unformed to hint at what it would look like later on. Little mouth, pink-lipped and slightly wet, as if she'd been chewing something and generated additional saliva.
She was wearing a yellow jumpsuit, short puffy sleeves and balloon pants down to her mid-thigh. Plastic sandals the color of dandelion flowers over bare feet. Her hands were moist, and slightly sticky, from whatever she'd been eating. Gingerly reaching down one hand, Arna felt the top of the baby's head, hard and sun-warmed under the glossy hair, yet not too hard, the bones beneath the scalp still barely pliant if she pressed down too hard, which she didn't.
"And who are you?” she found herself cooing, in that small high voice adults invariably use when speaking to young children they didn't know, as if their ears were too fragile for normal adult tones.
The little girl looked up at Arna, her, eyes narrowed, either from the sunlight hitting them, or from puzzlement. Then she smiled, as if to say, I know what you're doing ... you're fooling me, before she leaned forward and rested her cheek against Arna's lower leg, and wrapped both small fat arms around her calf—
The sound of birds flying overhead, making a flapping, rushing noise, distracted her, made her look up. As she saw the last of them wing quickly against the noon sun, her leg suddenly felt very cold and naked in the summer heat, and she didn't need to look down to know what had happened, despite all the times she'd heard Paloma tell the same basic story, and no matter how many times she'd been warned what not to do.
And when Dehaan came home for his lunch break, to help her finish packing, she wished that the baby had been older, better able to understand big words like “moving” and “find me,” but something Paloma had said to her in the store, about the boy baby being hers, gave Arna some comfort—if this little girl in yellow was Olitia, she would find Arna again. From wherever she came from, and kept going back to...
The new house was a condo, in a long line of other condos all squashed together without a yard, and without any place that a baby might stand unattended within her sight. No one else in the complex had children, either—Arna suspected that this was how Dehaan wanted it. He had picked out the condo, after all. She'd seen it before they moved in, but hadn't really thought about it all that much. Once she was there, the reality of her new surroundings hit hard, and all she could think of was the feel of those warm, sticky tiny hands on her bare leg, and the sweet pressure of that soft cheek against her skin.
Arna hoped that the other women, Paloma and Sagirah and whoever else might eventually join that group with their own baby sightings, were able to touch their babies. One thing Paloma had said, about the baby only coming when she was around, made more and more sense—the mother's body had been the last place the baby had been before not being there any more, so if it were to somehow come back, wouldn't the mother be the most obvious person it would come to? Home turf, so to speak.
(She refused to believe that a baby, especially a baby so close to being at least a premie if it were to be plucked from her body, could just dissolve like that within her, reverting cell by cell into maternal ooze, no matter what the doctors and Lynet said about it.)
As she opened up box after box of belongings, and set about putting the contents all over the new condo, tucking things into whatever nooks and corners she could find, like hiding Easter eggs amid shrubbery, she remembered what her mother had said, when she'd phoned after hearing the news about Olitia on her answering machine after Dehaan made the call from the hospital waiting room—"Arna, sweetest, when I was a little girl, I had an aunt who ... lost a baby. That's what everyone said, ‘Aunt Mary lost the baby’ and all I could think was, Well then why aren't all of you out looking for it? The poor baby was lost, and no one was searching for ... oh god, Arna, I'm sorry, I'm rambling—"
Perfect child-logic; you lose something, you go look for it. Her mother never mentioned it again, so Arna never knew if her mother had actually voiced her suggestion, but that was a long time ago, when kids were expected to stay quiet. Yet, it made a sort of sense, if you thought about it ... and wasn't that what group was all about, anyhow? Finding, and holding on to whatever remained of the lost baby?
Tossing aside the now-empty box, Arna tried to remember which one of her cousins was later born to Aunt Mary ... it had been at least forty, forty-five years since the woman “lost” that baby, but Arna wondered if perhaps one of Mary's later children had heard more about the matter, from their mother—
"—yeah, it's been a long time ... thanks for that card you and your husband sent after, y'know, we both appreciated it ... anyhow, I just got to wondering, what with what happened to me and all, did your mother ever tell you exactly what happened when she lost that baby a few years before you were born? I was just wondering if there was some sort of genetic, y'know—"
As her cousin (second, third cousin?) Callie spoke, Arna found herself staring out the window, at the lightly clouded sky beyond their second-story condo, wondering where the birds were.
"It was really strange,” Callie said. “Ma was about five months along or so, heartbeat was fine, the baby was kicking, only back then, there was no ultrasound, so she never did know what it was—anyhow, she goes to sleep one night all right, and come morning, she starts freaking out, Dad claims, saying she was ‘empty’ and sure enough, the doctor couldn't find a heartbeat, and couldn't feel anything in there, either. She never expelled anything, just got flatter and flatter according to Dad. The doctor didn't know what to make of it, but told her to tell everyone they'd lost it. Mom never told me any of this, but Dad remembered—"
"How did she act later on? Did she ever talk about it?"
"No, and the only way I knew what happened was when someone in the family mentioned it, when I was about seven or so. But it explains why she did a lot of standing there, not talking, just sorta spacing out, every so often. Like she was listening for something—"
The birds, Arna thought, maybe she was looking for the birds. Or listening for her baby's voice.
Hanging up the phone a few minutes later, Arna tried to remember what Aunt Mary looked like, but by then the woman was old, and distant, and all she could recall with any clarity was the way the woman's eyes never quite focused on whoever she was talking to...
Dehaan was away at work more often since his promotion and transfer, leaving Arna alone in the condo. In the following years, she took up some hobbies, needlepoint, and egg painting, resist dye and wax work that took up huge chunks of time, before she bundled up the finished eggs and sold them at a craft store downtown. She barely knew the other people in the condo, didn't want to after a few awkward exchanges which soured when they asked if she and Dehaan had any children. Either way she answered, her words would be lies, so she kept to herself.
Even though she bought preblown eggs for her work, she did like to go down to the small park a few blocks from the condo complex, to see if she could find any broken bird's eggs on the ground near the trees, or perhaps even an ejected whole egg. She loved the smallness, and the inherent contradictory fragility and strength of those tiny orbs, and always, as she looked, she'd keep an eye out for those oddly small-headed pigeons she'd seen circling around the lawn baby, so many years ago. The birds which somehow looked familiar, even as she couldn't quite place them, or even find them in the bird books she'd paged through in the bookstore near the craft shop.
Pausing to catch her breath as she walked home through the park one spring morning, Arna leaned against a maple trunk, and closed her eyes, until just the sun-lit blood in her eyelids filled her line of sight. Then, a small voice:
"I found one ... it's whole, too."
Opening her eyes suddenly, Arna's line of sight was still red-tinged, but she could make out the little girl standing before her quite clearly. The same stuck-out ears, only now they seemed to stick out all the more thanks to the girl wearing her shoulder-length hair in a lace-covered scrunchie. The hair was darker now, and slightly thicker, not baby hair. But the nose—it was Dehaan's, that much was apparent. And the mouth, something like hers, just as the eyes were hers, and her mother's, and—
The girl was holding a fallen egg in one slightly grimy palm, a tiny blue one with a smudge of dirt on one end. Looking past her hand, and the egg cupped there, Arna saw that the child was wearing some sort of uniform, not a school one, but a club outfit, not Brownie or Camp Fire Girl, but ... something dun-colored and two-piece, with a vest over that which had various embroidered badges and enameled pins affixed to it. And she had a beret-like hat on her head, which Arna had missed, because it was so close in color to the child's hair.
"It's beautiful. Not even cracked. What are you going to do with it?"
"Same thing I always do. But this is a really nice one. Not like the ones at home."
"Oh? And where is home?” Arna hoped the child wouldn't become scared of her, run away—
"Here's home ... sort of. I forget, you don't really know, do you? But I'm glad you didn't cut your hair. I always thought it looked better this way—"
Not caring if the girl was frightened or not, Arna knelt down and put both hands on the child's shoulders, feeling the coarseness of her vest and the underlying warmth of her lightly fleshed bones beneath the cotton blouse she wore, and as she looked into eyes that were oh so familiar to her, she asked, “Who are you? What is your name?"
"You know my name. And you know who I am—"
"Don't get weird, please ... just tell me your name, please—"
"Olitia Galvin. You knew that. Only now, in ‘Birders, we all took new names, for the birds we like best, and mine is Pules now, for pigeon—"
"That can't be your name. You were never born ... and I don't know who you are—"
"You don't like ‘Pules'? Daddy doesn't like it either, he wanted me to pick something like Zitkala or Doli, only I didn't like the Zee one, ‘cause it sounds like zits—"
"Stop speaking gibberish!"
"It's not ‘gibberish’ it's Indian—no, Native American names. Mine is Algonquin, and Zitkala is Dakota, and the other is Navajo—"
"I-don't-care! Why are you doing this to me? Where did you come from—"
"Here. Sort of. ‘Almost here’ is how most of us describe it."
"'Us'?” She stared at the child, who looked back at her with the same bland fascination of someone examining a flipped over beetle on the ground, its many legs flailing wildly, before it either righted itself or a bird swooped down and devoured it. As she stared at the child, felt her warmth under her curling, digging fingertips, she noticed that the girl wasn't scared of her, not at all, despite her being a stranger who'd grabbed her in the park, and started shouting questions at her. There was no fear in her body, or in her eyes, only a gradual dawning of comprehension, followed by a slight, sad smile on her lips.
"We're not supposed to do this, but all of us can do it without thinking about it. We just go back. To where we began. It just happens, ‘specially when we're babies. No one yells at us then, ‘cause we can't help it, but when we get older ... our there moms get mad if we keep going back here. Like you used to. Only lately, you've been cool about it, and don't mind when I go off. ‘Cause you know I'll come back. But it's been so long since I found you here, I forgot that you don't know. You don't understand, is how Daddy puts it. In my ‘here’ things are different. Everybody knows where the sudden babies come from, and they understand that sometimes, we go back. ‘Cause we need to. ‘Specially once we understand the sircum—sirsum—circus—"
"Circumstances? Are you trying to say circumstances?” Arna whispered, and with that, the child relaxed, and said, “Yeah. That other birds and bees stuff we learn about in science class. ‘Sudden babies are special babies,’ that's what Mr. Shale says. ‘Cause we come from here, and end up in the other here, where I live. For a long time nobody knew where we came from, just that some mommies would wake up with the baby inside, and not know where it came from. Some of them went from skinny to fat like that. It wasn't until they made the last Mars landing that Dr. Cholena discovered the part about all the different heres, which she said were like cards in a stack that was miles and miles high, all touching, yet not realizing there was even a stack of them. Something like that. We saw it on TV in the Classroom last year. Dr. Cholena, she's Indian, no, a Native American; she's not from India so I shouldn't call her that. But people used to call them Indians, too. But our ‘Birders nest-mother always corrects us if we make the mis—"
"So ... you came from here, in here—” she grabbed the child's free hand, and gently placed it on her abdomen.
Nodding, the girl said, “Way down inside there. Then, according to Dr. Cholena, the cards in the stack, they touched hard enough to lose all the space between them, and I went from your tummy to my mother's tummy. Which was the same tummy, only on a different card—"
The analogy was imprecise, but Arna could see why the mysterious Dr. Cholena had chosen it. It was simple enough that a child could understand it, without using words like parallel or universes—
"Why do you come?"
"Because when we find out why we're sudden, we figure out that we had to be something opposite here. Mr. Shale, he calls us ‘lost’ over here. I ... ‘spose I just wanted to know if you were looking for me. ‘Cause I was lost to you here..."
Such a simple concept, even a small child like Arna's mother could figure it out. Even if she couldn't voice it. Or act upon it.
"Ohhh ... kay,” she said slowly, then found herself asking, out of all the things she could have said, “I shouldn't cut my hair? Does it look that bad?"
Wrinkling Dehaan's nose, the girl said, “It makes your ears stick out more. Or look like they do. This is way better. Daddy says so, and he can't wait for you to grow it back."
"He can't?” Arna smiled, and reluctantly let the child go, but before Olitia could move away, or do whatever it was that she just did to go from here to here, Arna asked, “Can you tell me something?"
"Uh-huh."
"Is there a little boy in your class, by the last name of Beltran? A little Mex—Hispanic boy?"
"Ohhh ... Jonas-junior. He gets in a lot of trouble with his parents, ‘cause he keeps coming here. All the time. He keeps bringing over his pet birds, and leaving them here, ‘cause he thinks it's funny. And ‘cause we have so many of them in our here—"
"What kind of birds?"
"The pigeons ... our pigeons. I never see them when I'm here, unless some come over with me. But mine usually come back when I do. But Jay-jay, he leaves his here, on purpose. He says they're for his here-mom. She likes birds. And ours are neater than the ones here. Yours have too big of heads. His mom where I'm from, she can't make him stop, but his dad is cool with it. Says this here needs more birds anyhow. Like he knows, he's not a sudden, but he understands us sudden kids. Not like Daddy. But you, you're really good about it now. Not like when I was a baby and would just go while you were sunning yourself in our old back yard, before Daddy got promoted. You'd freak out, tell me later on that you were so afraid someone would call the police about a missing baby. But now, you're ok about me going, ‘cause you know I'll come back soon. Like ... I gotta go now. But I'll see you again ... ok?"
Trying not to stare at her, trying not to show how hungry she really was for her own flesh and blood, Arna nodded her head, and said, “Go on, before ... I miss you. I'll be waiting for you—"
In the distance, Arna heard the rumble of the big truck which brought the daily newspaper into downtown, and even though she knew she shouldn't, she couldn't help but glance at it ... and in that nanosecond, Olitia was gone.
But on the ground where the child had stood was the perfect bird's egg, pale blue and still slightly smudged with dirt. Cupping it in one hand, she walked to the news stand, and watched as the vendor cut open the bundle of paper, and tossed the string aside like so many long white worms onto the sidewalk. Giving him a couple of quarters with her free hand, she took one of the papers, and tucked it under her arm during the long, lonely walk back to the condo.
It wasn't until she'd arrived home, and set the small egg in a place of honor on her worktable, that she unfolded the paper, and read one of the sidebar headlines:
ONCE EXTINCT BIRD DISCOVERED IN STATE
—and under that was an article describing how live passenger pigeons, previously deemed extinct since the early 20th century, had been discovered, a find recently authenticated by renowned ornithologist Dr. Luyu Cholena. There was a picture of her, along with that of a live passenger pigeon, which looked very much like a regular pigeon, only its head was smaller than normal, and it was a pretty bird, a most pretty bird indeed, for a young boy to bring as a present for his mother...
A. R. Morlan's long-delayed short story collection Smothered Dolls will be out this year from Overlook Connection Press (www.overlookconnection.com, or P.O. Box 1934 Hiram GA 30141, USA), and includes a couple of stories previously published in Challenging Destiny, as well as three new stories, and several reprints. She also had a novelette published this January in Asimov's Science Fiction, in addition to her previous credits in magazines and anthologies like Full Spectrum IV, Cemetery Dance, F&SF, Weird Tales and Vanishing Acts. A. R. has six previous stories in Challenging Destiny, including “The Anabe Girls” from Number 22. She lives in the US Midwest, along with her house-full of companion cats.
Carlos had lost count of the steps somewhere after one hundred and seventeen. Now that he'd arrived in front of the Wonderbox, he forgot about the climb altogether. The thick jungle winds of Quintana Roo blew across the treetops and through this little temple atop the pyramid, too humid to dry his sweat. He sank to his knees, not once taking his eyes off of the miracle machine lest it disappear. An odd little thing, seven-sided, asymmetrical, shining and brown like fresh dung out in the sun. Its corners looked sharp enough to cut a man. A blood sacrifice, then? His imagination darted in a million directions at once. One of those directions couldn't help but wonder why nobody just grabbed the thing and ran off with it.
"Make me a writer,” he said, hunched low, his lips nearly touching it. “I want to be a writer more than anything else in the world. I want to be famous and have all the money I need to help my family."
"Doesn't work like that,” said an old, black man who appeared from behind a Doric column about twenty feet away.
Carlos jumped to his feet, prepared to defend, he wasn't sure what: his only chance at a life of ... his only chance at a life!
The man had been approaching but stopped short. No one was supposed to be here, at least that's what Carlos thought. What else could he want, but to get his own chance with the box, maybe by duping Carlos or even killing him to take his turn?
"Easy there, son,” the stranger said. “I'm three times your age at my best. Parts of me might be older. I can help you with that if you like."
"What do you want?” Carlos asked. What could he want? This man had money. His shirt was so white that it glowed and it must have been climate controlled as well; he hadn't even broken a sweat.
"Relax, Carlos."
"How do you know my name?"
"The man who sent you up, Mike, he teleed me. You had to give your name at some point in order to get in line, Carlos."
Carlos laughed, feeling spectacularly stupid. The old man laughed a little too.
"Not a lot like you that make it up here,” the man said. “You must want it pretty badly. What did you have to give? Next in line is an old rich woman. You seem to be in pretty good shape. Sex maybe?"
"Not just that.” Carlos spoke from tightened lips. “A year. What business is it of yours anyway?"
The old man threw up his hands.
"It's a person's passion I'm interested in. Most of what we get here are the spoiled rich who can already have anything they want. It's just a novelty to them. They go away happy, something to tell their friends."
"Who are you?” Carlos asked.
"I'm the man behind the curtain, Savon Kelly. I invented the Wonderbox.” Kelly offered his hand, but Carlos didn't move forward to take it.
"You live up here?” Carlos asked.
"No, no,” Kelly said, laughing. “There's not even a reclaimer up here, never mind food or water. I should probably have one put in, to tell you the truth. It's a long way down if you've got to hold it. No, my offices are down below. I just take the lift up now and then to help out."
"Wait a minute, there's a lift and you make people walk up all those steps? I mean, I'm young and strong, but the woman behind me, Darby, she's eighty-three!"
"Eighty-three! Good God, man, you did want it badly!"
"Get off of that! There are elderly people! There are the disabled!"
Almost on cue, a pair of artificial hind legs swung out silently behind Kelly and seemed to be fulfilling their only purpose, holding him up as he leaned back.
"It's theater, Carlos. It's all theater. My little box there is the wonder of the ages. You don't stick something like that in a booth on a street corner. People expect some work. A little climb. We get a major whiner now and then, we'll give him a ride up. The old and the bent ones that make it on their own, those are the serious ones, even if they use it for stupid things.” He shook his head, maybe waiting for Carlos to smile along with him.
"Stupid like what?” Carlos asked.
"One man used it to gain a lifetime supply of beer. One woman asked for someone to love her. Another man used it to get his dog into the best obedience school."
"Why is it stupid for a woman to ask for someone to love her?” Carlos asked. The request didn't sound stupid to him. A heart's desire. Wasn't that why he himself came here?
"Because she didn't need this box to do that for her,” Kelly said. “That was already within her reach before she got here. There were people all around her that not only would love her, but did love her. Look at you. If you want to be a writer, go ahead and write, you don't need this box. Here, let me give you something."
His hind legs folded back in against him. They reminded Carlos of a paraplegic's exoskeleton. Kelly bounded to the box and fell to one knee. He put his hand on the seven-sided box just long enough to blink. He reached behind it and pulled out an odd yellow pad with a pencil clipped to it. Kelly handed it to Carlos.
"This is all you really need,” Kelly said. “Mind you, this set is special. New blank pages are generated from the board at the bottom as old ones are torn off. And the pencil never grows short."
"Thank you. That's incredible, but..."
"But that's not what you expected."
"No, it's not. I meant for things to change. I could have bought a thousand datapads with the money I spent coming here."
"A lot of people don't understand. That's one of the reasons I come out from time to time."
"It's all a lie then?” Carlos asked. “The box doesn't really change things?"
"You betcha it does. You just don't need it. It can alter the very state of reality, boil oceans or birth stars."
"So ... so..."
"What is it?” Kelly asked.
"So, why is everything the way it is then? The world I came from—people are suffering every day. Why hasn't somebody fixed it?"
Kelly nodded before Carlos finished.
"Welp, first off, most people don't even think to ask for it. They ask for money for their brother's replacement heart at best, the ones with good intentions. There's some that want world peace, or to end hunger. None of them have asked for it the right way."
"Then..."
"Then what?"
"Then why don't you ask for it?"
Kelly let out a sigh, folded his arms, and leaned back on his hind legs once more. He studied his shoes.
"You know how to fix everything and you don't?” Carlos asked. “You must be ... you must be the devil or something. People are suffering out there. My family, so many times we had to eat things that we found, if we were lucky enough to eat at all. I grew up sleeping in the filthy trunk of my father's 35 Dodge Septimus with McDonald's wrappers lining my shoes. Maybe you can't see any of that from way up here. Children are being hurt, women are losing their babies, men are losing their lives! Why don't you fix it?"
"Easy, easy there, Carlos. You don't understand. I can't. I've tried, but I can't. I don't know how to ask for it either."
"But you made the machine!"
"Let me explain it, son. Let me explain it. The universe plays itself out the only way it can. Everything is fixed from the beginning, no matter what we like to imagine. And everything's the way it is because of the ground rules at the moment before the big bang. That shirt you're wearing, it had to be blue, because the ground rules in place at the very beginning led to an unimaginably long chain of events that had to lead up to that blue shirt on you at this time. Nothing else could have happened."
With a little hop, Kelly now sat on his hind legs, his real legs dangling like a young boy's at the grown-up table.
"This machine,” he said, “It's something that shouldn't exist. It reaches all the way into the center, to the birth of the universe. For some reason, I don't know why, we've got power there. It likes our telee,” he said, spinning his finger around his temple like he meant crazy.
"You just see what you want in your mind, feel it so strongly that you don't believe any other reality. If you do it right, the ground rules change ever so slightly and that blue shirt you're wearing might suddenly become red, if you've wished it hard enough."
"It might as well be magic for all the sense that makes,” Carlos said. “The results are all that matters. So why can't someone wish for world peace hard enough? Why can't someone wish for an end to suffering hard enough that it makes the world a decent place for everyone?"
"It's tricky. It's very tricky. Popes and prime ministers and seven-year-old girls have all knelt here in front of that box and wished for it strongly enough that it would happen all right. But it's not the way they imagine it might be."
"How do you know?"
"I can see the consequences, the deal with the devil, if you will. The computational power of an entire dimension rests within these seven sides,” he said, pointing to the box. “Sometimes people wish for an end to all violence, and everybody dies because we can't feed the world. In some scenarios, we all die because we can't defend ourselves from an outside threat. Sometimes a wish for an end to suffering does us all in, or turns us all into unfeeling vegetables. There's no way I can let any of that happen."
"There's no way you can let it happen? You can stop it?"
"I've got to activate the final step. We can't have crazy people changing the air to cheese or putting the dust mites in charge of things. I have to turn the key, so to speak."
Carlos hissed. “Are you trying to tell me that the fate of the universe rests in your hands? How can you judge? How can that kind of power be trusted to an ordinary man?"
"I do okay. You're not breathing cheese, are you?"
Carlos couldn't find the words. He dropped down and sat on the marble surface, then scooted over to put a little more space between himself and the Wonderbox. They looked out from the topmost level of the architectural bastard child of an ancient Mayan step pyramid done in the white marble and majestic columns of Classical Greece. His eyes followed the carved body of a winged serpent in the chillingly, beautifully, stomach-churningly expensive marble far to his right. Its long, trailing form raced downward alongside the steps he'd ascended.
He had climbed three hundred feet of steps after Mike, in that sharp gray uniform, had called out his name. Two-thirds of the way up Carlos had passed a weeping couple, descending from their own experience with the Wonderbox and he spent the final third of his trip trying to puzzle out why they could be crying. Now he knew that the serpent had chased them all the way down. To his Christian mind, the serpent seemed an apt symbol for this place and for this man.
"I feel like I'm watching a two-year-old playing with a hydrogen bomb,” Carlos finally told Kelly. “You've got the power of a god here! You need to use it responsibly!"
"I am! Haven't you been listening to me?"
"I'm not just talking about keeping people from destroying the world. Why can't you keep trying to fix things?"
Kelly shook his head and sliced the air with his hands.
"I just can't. I've tried every type of wish that I can think of. And every so often, in the middle of the night, I'll fly out here and try a new angle. It never pans out. It's beyond my imagination. That's why..."
"That's why you need other people."
"Right, nine billion other points of view. One of these days someone will come up with something."
"Why don't you just tell everyone what you're looking for in the first place? You've got people all over the world thinking that this box is Santa Claus. Tell them what you're really after!"
"And who would come? The few that are already trying to change things and no others. I need the diversity of the world."
"No. You need to tell people what this really is and we can stop wasting our time with toys,” he said waving his pad in Kelly's face.
"No."
"Then I'll tell them, damn it!"
"Be my guest, Carlos, but who's going to listen? People want their fantasies, they want their toys. You heard more than one story about the Wonderbox. Did you come up here looking to end the world's problems? No. You whored your way up here hoping for fame and fortune like so many others."
"Shut up! I might have come for the right reasons had I known the truth!"
"The truth wouldn't have seduced Darby for you. The truth wouldn't have been enough to move you halfway across the continent to come here. It's desire that does that. Petty desire is what I've got to count on. Even with that, we may never really change the world. Not the way we want. Maybe it can't happen at all."
Carlos leaped up. “It can! Tell the people!"
"No."
"You old bastard! You idiot! You sit here and hope then. I'm going to change things myself! I'll fix this goddamned world with nothing but my own two hands if I have to!"
"I wish you luck, Carlos. I really do."
"To hell with you, Mister Kelly! To hell with you and everybody associated with this waste of a salvation!"
Carlos stormed down the steps, curled with anger, his clenching fists biting into the yellow pulp pad in his hands.
"You ready for the next one, Savon?” Mike teleed from the foot of the pyramid.
"Gimme a minute, Mike,” Kelly said. He knelt before the box as he had so many times before and rested his hand upon it, waiting to see what might come.
He saw a woman in a blue-checkered dress. Someone on the street had handed her a few handwritten yellow sheets of paper, and now at home she finished reading them. She put them down slowly, smoothing them out on the end table next to the couch. Kelly saw her go to her son's room, kneel beside the drunken man's bed and hold the boy that she'd given up on, the son that she had been utterly disgusted with. She held him for a good while longer than she had held him in years. Her son woke, his sudden surprise gone in a flicker and his arms wrapped around her broad back in a way he'd forgotten since he was nine years old.
Kelly saw a hesitation in the face of a scraggly young good-for-nothing as the kid felt the large round belly of his estranged girlfriend and the powerful young life within, fighting for elbow room. And Scraggly asked to be let back into their lives as a few yellow pages fell to the floor at the girl's bare feet.
He witnessed a sheaf of yellow sheets caught by the wind and blowing over the desert sands as a man, across the span of a heartbeat, lifted the barrel of his rifle from the face of a young girl to the sky above her head, before his finger tightened on the trigger.
Everywhere, Kelly saw, yellow sheets of paper passed from hand to hand, were copied to datapads or published anonymously. It involved no destruction of life as we know it, no world wide disaster, no rip in the fabric of reality. There were just little people across this small corner of the solar system, for a few moments or for a few days, being a little more considerate of one another. And that made all the difference in the world.
"Oooo,” Kelly said, as he turned the key, “That's a good one."
Matthew Sanborn Smith was born and raised in New England and lives in South Florida with his wife and two children. When he's not writing, Mr. Smith roams the countryside with a flaming jaguar at his side, bringing Rice-A-Roni to losing game show contestants everywhere. He tries to post a new story each day at his blog “The One-Thousand” at theonethousand.blogspot.com.
If I could describe a “human being” I would be more than I am—and probably living in the future, because I think of human beings as something to be realized ahead ... But clearly, “human beings” have something to do with the luminous image you see in a bright child's eyes—the exploring, wondering, eagerly grasping, undestructive quest for life.
—James Tiptree, Jr., Epigraph to Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, quoted in “Yesterday's Tomorrows” by Graham Sleight in Locus (June 2007, Vol 58 No 6)
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).
Number 24
+ Stories by Ian McHugh, Jennifer Rachel Baumer, Brian Patrick McKinley & Mark Jenkins, Corey Brown, Harvey Welles & Philip Raines, Andrea McDowell, and Hayden Trenholm
+ Review of the latest in Canadian SF
+ Interview with Michelle Sagara
Issue 24 is available exclusively at www.fictionwise.com for a limited time. The cost is $4.98 U.S.
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