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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Issue 53, October 2014
FROM THE EDITOR
Editorial, October 2014
SCIENCE FICTION
Dust
Daniel José Older
Scarey Rose in Deep History
Rebecca Ore
Jupiter Wrestlerama
Marie Vibbert
The Puzzle
Zoran Živković
FANTASY
Water Off a Black Dog’s Back
Kelly Link
The Herd
Steve Hockensmith
The Biography of a Bouncing Boy Terror!
Ysabeau S. Wilce
The Quality of Descent
Megan Kurashige
NOVELLA
Jesus and the Eightfold Path
Lavie Tidhar
NOVEL EXCERPTS
Wild Cards: Lowball
Carrie Vaughn
The Doubt Factory
Paolo Bacigalupi
Ancillary Sword
Ann Leckie
NONFICTION
Interview: James S.A. Corey
The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy
Interview: Lawrence Krauss
The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy
Artist Gallery
Rovina Cai
Artist Spotlight: Rovina Cai
Henry Lien
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS
Daniel José Older
Rebecca Ore
Marie Vibbert
Zoran Živković
Kelly Link
Steve Hockensmith
Ysabeau S. Wilce
Megan Kurashige
Lavie Tidhar
MISCELLANY
Coming Attractions
Stay Connected
Subscriptions & Ebooks
About the Editor
© 2014 Lightspeed Magazine
Cover Art by Rovina Cai
Ebook Design by John Joseph Adams
www.lightspeedmagazine.com
FROM THE EDITOR
Editorial, October 2014
John Joseph Adams
Welcome to issue fifty-three of Lightspeed!
In case you missed the news last month: Lightspeed won a
Hugo! You can check out the September editorial for details
about that. But the short version is: We’ve been nominated
four years in a row for Best Semiprozine, and this year we
won! Huzzah! It’s all very exciting and we’re super proud to
be part of the glorious history of the Hugos. And it just seems
really appropriate for a magazine called Lightspeed to win a
rocket-shaped award, doesn’t it?
••••
In other happy news, our sister magazine Nightmare is
now available as a subscription via Amazon.com! The Kindle
Periodicals division has been closed to new magazines for
quite a while now (and has been since before Nightmare
launched), but by employing some witchcraft we were able to
get the doors unlocked just long enough for us to slip into the
castle. Amazon subscriptions are billed monthly, at $1.99 per
issue, and are available now. To learn more, please visit
nightmare-magazine.com/subscribe.
Speaking of subscriptions, we’ve also made a change to
the way our lightspeedmagazine.com ebookstore subscriptions
work. We’re discontinuing the bill-you-every-month
subscription option in favor of a more traditional type of
magazine subscription; now when you subscribe, you’ll sign
up for a six- ($17.94), twelve- ($35.88), or twenty-four($71.76) month subscription and then will only be billed once
per subscription term. This change is going to make it a lot
easier for us to process subscriptions and should help improve
our cash flow, which of course we’ll use to make Lightspeed
even more awesome. If you’re a current subscriber, you don’t
need to do anything; when your current subscription runs out,
we’ll just send you an email to remind you to renew and then
you’ll be presented with the new subscription options at that
time.
To learn more about these and our other subscription
options, please visit lightspeedmagazine.com/subscribe.
••••
In anthology news, just a reminder that the latest
installment of The Apocalypse Triptych — the apocalyptic
anthology series I’m co-editing with Hugh Howey — is now
available. The new volume, The End is Now, focuses on life
during the apocalypse. The first volume, The End is Nigh
(about life before the apocalypse) is also available. If you’d
like a preview of the new anthology, you’re in luck: You can
read Tananarive Due’s The End is Now story in Lightspeed’s
September issue. Pop over to
johnjosephadams.com/apocalypse-triptych for more
information about the book and/or to read more free samples
from the anthology.
••••
This month also marks the publication of our other two
special issues.
Over at Nightmare, we’re presenting Women Destroy
Horror!, our special double-issue celebration of women
writing and editing horror. Guest editor Ellen Datlow has
selected original fiction from Gemma Files (“This Is Not for
You”), Livia Llewellyn (“It Feels Better Biting Down”), Pat
Cadigan (“Unfair Exchange”), Katherine Crighton (“The
Inside and the Outside”), and Catherine MacLeod
(“Sideshow”). We’re also sharing reprints by Joyce Carol
Oates (“Martyrdom”), Tanith Lee (“Black and White Sky”),
and A.R. Morlan (“. . . Warmer”).
Our WDH nonfiction editor, Lisa Morton, has a line-up of
terrific pieces — a feature interview with American Horror
Story’s producer Jessica Sharzer; a roundtable interview with
acclaimed writers Linda Addison, Kate Jonez, Helen
Marshall, and Rena Mason; a feature interview with awardwinning author Joyce Carol Oates; and insightful essays from
Maria Alexander, Lucy A. Snyder, and Chesya Burke.
Over at Fantasy Magazine, we’re presenting Women
Destroy Fantasy!, our special double-issue celebration of
women writing and editing fantasy. The guest editor for this
volume is long-time Fantasy editor Cat Rambo, and she’s
selected original fiction from Julia August (“Drowning in the
Sky”), H.E. Roulo (“Making the Cut”), Kate Hall (“The
Scrimshaw and the Scream”), and T. Kingfisher (“The
Dryad’s Shoe”). Plus we’ll have reprints (selected by none
other than Terri Windling!) from Delia Sherman (“Miss
Carstairs and the Merman”), Carol Emshwiller (“The
Abominable Child’s Tale”), Emma Bull (“Silver or Gold”),
and Nalo Hopkinson (“The Glass Bottle Trick”).
Likewise, our WDF nonfiction editor — our amazing
Managing Editor, Wendy N. Wagner — has lined up some
great work for us, including Kameron Hurley’s critical
examination of epic fantasy; a roundtable interview with
Carrie Vaughn and Kelley Armstrong in a frank discussion of
women writing urban fantasy; a roundtable panel of RPG tiein writers Margaret Weis, Marsheila Rockwell, Elaine
Cunningham, and Erin M. Evans; and a massive discussion of
women in fantasy illustration, featuring Julie Dillon, Galen
Dara, Elizabeth Leggett, Julie Bell, Irene Gallo, Rebecca
Guay, Lauren Panepinto, and Zoë Robinson. We’ve also got
thought-provoking essays from Sofia Samatar and Kat
Howard, and a reading guide from the contributors and
friends of WDF.
Both issues turned out really great, and we can’t wait to
hear what everyone thinks about them. They’re available now
in both ebook ($2.99) and trade paperback ($10.99). For
more information about the issues, including where you can
find them, visit our new Destroy-related website at
DestroySF.com.
••••
With our announcements out of the way, here’s what
we’ve got on tap this month:
We have original science fiction by Daniel José Older
(“Dust”) and Marie Vibbert (“Jupiter Wrestlerama”), along
with SF reprints by Zoran Živković (“The Puzzle”) and
Rebecca Ore (“Scarey Rose in Deep History”).
Plus, we have original fantasy by Steve Hockensmith
(“The Herd”) and Megan Kurashige (“The Quality of
Descent”), and fantasy reprints by Kelly Link (“Water Off a
Black Dog’s Back”) and Ysabeau S. Wilce (“The Biography
of a Bouncing Boy Terror!”).
All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment
of author and artist spotlights, along with feature interviews
with bestselling author James S. A. Corey and physicist
Lawrence Krauss.
For our ebook readers, our ebook-exclusive novella reprint
is “Jesus and the Eightfold Path” by Lavie Tidhar. For novel
excerpts this month, we’ve got a sneak peek at Paolo
Bacigalupi’s new novel, The Doubt Factory, along with an
excerpt from Ancillary Sword — Ann Leckie’s sequel to her
Nebula, Clarke, and Hugo award-winning debut novel
Ancillary Justice. Plus, we have an excerpt from the new
Wild Cards mosaic novel, Wild Cards: Lowball, from
contributor Carrie Vaughn.
Our issue this month is sponsored by our friends at Tor
Books. This month, make sure to look for the aforementioned
new Wild Cards book, Wild Cards: Lowball, edited by
George R.R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass. Learn more at
Tor-Forge.com.
Well, that’s all there is to report this month. Thanks for
reading!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor-in-chief of
Lightspeed, is the series editor of Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy,
published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the bestselling editor of
many other anthologies, such as The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World
Domination, Armored, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, and The Living Dead.
New projects coming out in 2014 and 2015 include: Help Fund My Robot
Army!!! & Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects, Robot Uprisings, Dead
Man’s Hand, Operation Arcana, Wastelands 2, and The Apocalypse Triptych:
The End is Nigh, The End is Now, and The End Has Come. Called “the
reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble, John is a winner of
the Hugo Award (for which he has been nominated eight times) and is a sixtime World Fantasy Award finalist. John is also the editor and publisher of
Nightmare Magazine and is a producer for Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to
the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.
SCIENCE FICTION
Dust
Daniel José Older
Very late at night, when the buzz of drill dozers has died
out, I can hear her breathing. I know that sounds crazy. I
don’t care.
Tonight, I have to concentrate extra hard because there’s a
man lying beside me; he’s snoring with the contented abandon
of the well-fucked and all that panting has heavied up the air
in my quarters. Still, I can hear her, hear her like she’s right
behind my ear or curled up inside my heart. She’s not of
course. If anything, I’m curled up in hers.
But then again, her dust covers everything, all of us. It
coats the inner walls of this station even though it’s airtight. It
coats my inner walls. It’s reddish and probably lethal, but who
knows? We’ve never seen anything like it before.
The man beside me is Arkex. He is just another dustfucker
amongst many; he mans the drill. Today I’m a man too —
very much so it turns out — and I was surprised because I’d
always taken Arkex for straight. I don’t bother hiding my
stares when his muscles gleam in the foul glare of our
excavation lights. He never looked back, though, not on my
man days, not on my woman days, and I gave up noticing.
But tonight he showed up, appeared at my door without a
word, just a smile softer than any I’d seen him wear before.
Before, his only smiles fought off the impossible monotony of
the ‘stroid mines or spilled sloppily out at bad jokes over
Vanguard at the Rustvine. This one comes from deeper in
him: Comely, it requests permission to be held.
I considered for a few moments, took my time. In these
thick seconds, he maybe thought back on the times he’d
snickered with the others. The jokes about me I’m sure I’d
rather not know, the ones I can see from across the bar in
sidewise glances, suppressed laughs. On the days I wake up a
woman, Arkex’s sneer thickens. We’re all hidden beneath
layers of protective gear out there in the caves, just thick
genderless grunts, hard at work and always on the brink of
death. Still, word gets out what body I’ve woken to, idiocy
ensues.
Tonight, his shoulders hunched, his eyes ask forgiveness. I
scowled, took the fullness of him: a tight shirt, once white,
now dust red, and those big yellow shield pants, all laden with
pouches and rope. Skin red like mine. I stepped to the side
and motioned him in with my chin.
It’s not like he’s the first. Usually, I turn them away. They
are curious, hungry for a story to yap out at Rustvine, and
suddenly meek. The handful I’ve let in, their vulnerability
radiated past the layers of dust and couldn’t be faked.
It doesn’t matter to me: their soft smiles and whispered
promises in the thick of the heat. They always fall asleep and
then I lie there, tuning out their snores so I can hear her
breath; trying to match mine with hers. Silently, impossible
like love, I feel it inside me. And tonight, tonight, for no
reason I can discern and for just a few perfect, rockstar
seconds, I catch hold and we do breathe as one, the asteroid
and I, taking in the immensity of space. In the moment
between, when the air lingers inside, I ask it to shift course. I
don’t ask, I plead. Because time is running out. Swerve, goes
my prayer. One word: swerve. Because a full turn just seems
like too much to ask. A U-turn? Come now: These are
celestial bodies, not space ships. So, Swerve, I whisper
silently. And when we exhale, together, we release that tiny
prayer and mountains and mountains of dust.
••••
A few hours later, I’m bleary eyed and raw at the
Rustvine. I’d passed out to the lullaby of the asteroid’s
susurrations and woke up with wet pebbles in my head. Too
much Vanguard. Still, something had happened. It’s nothing I
could explain to anyone, not without getting thrown in the
brig and losing my hard-earned Chief Engineer position. But I
know it was real.
Slid my hand beneath the sheets between my own legs and
I’d switched again; soft folds where last night was a full
throbbing dick, put to good use, too. It’s happening more and
more these days. I linger. A few tasty ghosts of last night at
my fingertips: Arkex beneath me, behind me, his hands on my
shoulders, mine on his. I wondered if he’d grasp my
womanbody with the same savage tenderness. Would he be
too gentle? Not interested at all? I leaned over him, my fingers
still rolling circles between my legs, but then the gnawing
sense of somewhere to be surfaced, overtook everything. The
Triumvirate. Their star glider was probably already docked in
the hangar, their irritating little envoy slinking his way along
our dust-covered corridors to the Rustvine.
I disentangled from the sheets. All my shield pants and
dress shirts lay crumpled in the bin. All that was left was this
stupid skirt that I only have for stupid parties I show up to
uninvited. Absurd. But I threw it on, laced up my caving
boots beneath it and pulled on an old Sour Kings t-shirt.
Glanced in the mirror, ignored the feeling that it wasn’t quite
me looking back and then nudged Arkex with a steel-tipped
toe.
“Ay. Got places to be. Find your way out, eh.”
Arkex had mumbled a curse, not even registering I was
now a woman, maybe not caring, and turned over. The sheets
slipped from his body; the redness even tinged his chest. I
poured the dregs of yesterday’s coffee into a stained paper
cup and shambled down the corridors.
••••
At the far end of the Rustvine, the more ornery
dustfuckers trade grimaces and slurp down Vanguard shots. A
whispered debate rages, you can see it play out in those tiny
face flinches. Everyone knows impact is only a matter of
hours now; everyone knows the galaxy may be about to
witness the most colossal suicide mission of all time.
Discontent catches slow fire, thickens every day.
Arkex is among them now, having risen from his satisfied
stupor, and so is Zan, one of the few female squad leaders.
From their scowls and studious refusal to even glance my
way, I know some foul fuckery is afoot.
They say the best cure for Vanguard pebble brain is
Vanguard, so I order my second shot and turn back to the
awkward little man sitting across from me.
“Jax,” Dravish says, glaring at me. “Are you even paying
attention?”
“His Holiness the Hierophant,” I say, “Minister of the
Noble Triumvirate, who you represent most humbly, wants an
update on our trajectory, delicately reminds the crew of
asteroid Post 7Quad9 that the destruction of the asteroid and
the post along with it is on the pulldown menu of possibilities
if Earth remains at risk.”
Dravish nods, trying to affect a meaningful glare but only
getting a half-smirk peeking out from somewhere beneath his
handlebar mustache. “All eyes are on you, Jax. The universe
is watching.”
“Even though,” I add unnecessarily, “no one lives on Earth
any more. Are you enjoying your stay at our lovely facility?”
He’s a small man with alarmingly long fingers and a
tendency to call attention to them by rubbing his hands
together like a plotting marsupial. “I don’t like being without
my jag pistons. The Barons have spies everywhere.”
I shrug. There’s enough firepower and political intrigue
focused on this one hurling rock to destroy several galaxies,
so I instituted a strict no firearms policy from the get-go.
Anyway, it makes bar fights more fun. “It just means you
have to be more creative when you kill people, Dravish. I’m
sure you’ll think of something.”
Dravish taps his steel cane on the tiled floor and snorts.
I have more important things to consider than the
Hierophant and his passive aggressive secretaries. The
dustfuckers have stopped consorting and spread out across the
room; more trouble. Beyond all that, I still carry the memory
of that perfect clicking into place earlier, when our breathing
became one.
“There’s something else, Jax.” Annoyed that I’m not
looking at him, Dravish fiddles his fingers faster against
themselves. A murmur ripples through the Rustvine; someone
unusual has just entered and the denizens accumulate to catch
a glimpse.
My shot arrives. “What?” I throw it back.
“The Hierophant sent his daughter along with me.”
I spit the shot back into the glass. “Maya?”
“He has only one.”
The crowd opens and a figure in a long black robe strides
out. The ornate silver machinery of the Triumvirate halos her;
beneath it, a gilded faceguard catches the ill orange glow of
the Rustvine’s security lights. Elaborate leather belts crisscross
her chest and another wraps around her waist. Still, she
moves like a leaf pushed in on a gale of wind. Real wind, I
mean, not the endless monotony of exhaust fans. She is a
thing alive, glistening even, and completely out of place in this
underground trashhole of dustfuckers and the taste of disaster.
Moving effortlessly, she sits. I put a handrolled Garafuna
in my mouth, light it. Dravish mumbles something and finds
somewhere else to be. The faceguard emits a mechanical sigh,
lifts, and there’s Maya, smiling like a jerk. “Smoking is bad
for the environment.”
I exhale a ringlette and take in her face. It hasn’t changed
much since the academy days. Maya has three moles reaching
like Orion’s belt from the edge of her mouth to her right eye.
That’s the eye that’s always squinting, just a little bit, like she
doesn’t quite believe you. It’s the gap between her two front
teeth that gets you, though. You can’t miss ‘em, those big ol’
teeth, and whenever she lets that grin loose, the gap reaches
out to you and says hi. She has pudgy cheeks, too, like a
brown girl version of those horrible little dolls the Chemical
Barons distribute to make us all forget how they flooded
Earth. Except the dolls are heinous and Maya, Maya is
stunning.
“You know what else is bad for the environment?” I take
another drag. Exhale. “Blowing up people’s asteroid homes.”
She scrunches her face. “It’s not your home, it’s your job.”
“It’s a busy season; I keep having to sleep at the office.”
“Is that why I haven’t seen you in two years?”
I shrug, tear my eyes away from her face. “I’m not hard to
find.”
The Rustvine has settled back into its regular banter:
Filthy, dust-covered men mutter their dust-covered prayers to
each other, sip Vanguard till everything tastes like oblivion,
which is slightly less bitter than disaster. Directly across from
me, Arkex hunches over the bar. A few seats away, Zan
mutters to one of her men.
“As an opening gambit, I’d say you’ve softened some
since our Ac days.”
I look back at Maya, scowl, look away. “You want a
drink?”
“Really, Jax?”
“People change. You could be a regular heathen like the
rest of us now. I don’t make assumptions. A simple ‘no, thank
you’ would do.”
“But why pass up a chance to annoy you?”
Finally, I allow a smile out. She’s been demanding one
since she sat down and I’ve never been able to say no to her.
She sits back, releases the gap-tooth grin. “See now! There
it is.”
“Shut up, Maya.”
A few tables away, Dravish eyes the bar. He sees it too —
the small ways that men move when their bodies teeter on the
brink of violence, the stiff backs and forced stillness.
Dravish’s long fingers caress the empty air above his holsters.
“Anyway, you were telling me what you’d discovered,”
Maya says.
I laugh, swig from the bottle of Vanguard that just arrived.
“Hardly.”
“Hardly discovered anything or you were hardly telling
me?”
“Both. Neither.”
“Jax.”
I peel my eyes from goings on at the bar and meet hers.
“Maya.”
“How much time is left?”
“Before impact?”
She nods.
I’m familiar with this wide-eyed face of hers. It is used for
pleading. “Depends.”
The wide eyes narrow. This is when Maya doesn’t get
what face #1 had quietly demanded. She used to make this
one a lot in close combat class. It’s not a bluff; Maya was the
only student to make it through the academy without a single
point being scored off her and she hospitalized a few of the
biggest grunts along the way.
“Hours,” I say. “Less than a dozen. Assuming Earth
doesn’t suddenly jump out of its regular orbit. And assuming
7Quad9 doesn’t change course by itself.”
Maya eases out of her attack face, raises one eyebrow. “Is
that even possible?”
“Literally, at this moment, and I’m not being coy with you
at all, anything is possible.” This is a test. I raise my eyebrows
when I’m done. Maya’s face can do so many things right
now, and each will be a message.
She hunches her shoulders and leans across the table, a
conspiratorial smile across her face. The ever-squinting eye
squints tighter. “Go on.”
“I think I can get it to swerve.” I say it very, very quietly.
Now both eyes squint; the smile fades. “Oh?”
“I . . . I know I can.” I hadn’t meant for that to come out;
that information is a surprise even to me. The Vanguard may
have taken the wheel at this point.
“How? You’re rigging up an engine of some kind? You
don’t give updates, Jax! This shit matters.”
I shake my head. “No engine.”
A whole new kind of understanding dawns on Maya’s
face; it is wide open.
“There is no precedent for what this is. The dust matches
nothing we’ve seen. The corner of space it comes from is a
star graveyard: There is nothing there. But something about it
is . . . familiar. I think maybe . . .” My voice trails off as I feel
the haze of Vanguard settle in a little deeper. “Maybe.”
“Well, look, the Triumvirate wants to study it too, but
you’re talking about a matter of hours.”
“Study until it’s a threat and then destroy, huh? That’s the
name of the game.”
“Jax, if the Barons get ahold of . . .”
“Shh,” I whisper.
“Wha . . .”
“Shh!”
My eyes are closed, purple and green blobs dance across
the darkness. I block out Maya’s gnawing impatience,
concentrate on whatever it was in the air that just caught my
attention. It’s quiet. That’s what it is: It’s quiet. The Rustvine
is never quiet. My hands close around the metal legs of my
chair, I open my eyes as I stand, swinging the chair over my
head. I only catch a momentary glimpse of the dustfucker
throng advancing before I hurl the chair with all my strength
at Zan. It catches her full in the face, topples her. I grab the
bottle of Vanguard and brain the next closest one.
Maya dives forward, out of the fray and out of my
sightline, and then they close around me, a throbbing mass of
yells and pumping fists. Someone’s chain club finds my cheek
and a few more get their hits in as I stumble to the side.
They’re easily stumped, though; my fall makes them sloppy
with such a quick victory. I catch one with a steel-tipped boot
to the ‘nads, and then slip on spilled Vanguard. I roll out of
the fray, topple a table, and rise just in time to see three
dustfuckers collapse beneath a vicious swatting from
Dravish’s metal cane. Each hit is precise and the aging
Triumvirate secretary moves easily out of the way from
dustfuckers’ haphazard flailing.
I’m tensing to launch into the throng when Dravish stops
moving. His cane clatters to the ground and a rusty metal
shaft pokes out of his chest.
Zan’s face appears behind Dravish. She’s bleeding from
where she caught the chair with her face. “Kill the faggot
middling and his Triumvirate bitch friend,” she says into the
sudden silence. “And then we take the ‘stroid.”
Dravish sputters, blood speckles his elegant mustache, then
he drops. The dustfuckers turn to me. I have the Vanguard in
my hand still, and my stupid skirt on. And I’m tipsy. I smash
the bottle on the floor and hold up the business end. Two of
the bigger guys come swinging forward and then for a
millisecond everything goes bright white. A bang so loud I can
feel it inside my brain shatters the air around me. I’m ducking
when the second one erupts. Zan and another dustfucker lay
hemorrhaging in front of me; the others have all scattered for
cover.
“C’mon,” Maya says. Smoke rises from the jag piston in
her hand. She doesn’t even look fazed.
“You . . .” I stutter.
“Come. The fuck. On.”
I’ve never stopped loving this woman.
••••
When we first carved our way onto this asteroid with drillheaded subterranean tanks and dynamite, we didn’t know
there were actual canals reaching through the thing. It’d be
rock rock rock and then nothing, and the nothing was deep
enough to crash a few of our best drillteams. Maybe two
dozen dustfuckers got crushed or incinerated before we
figured out we could build the outpost along the natural
corridors instead of going against them. Now, reinforced steel
lines the canal walls and wraps above them, creating wild,
windy corridors that dip and circle through the asteroidal
bowels. Red dust stains every surface, a mottled, ever
growing paint job that no one knows how to keep at bay.
“You have a jag piston,” I say. We’re both panting,
working a quick, careful path through the tunnels. The
overheads cast grim specters of light, divided by darkness.
“I saved your life.”
“I know, I wasn’t complaining. I’m sorry about Dravish.”
The corridor winds around a sharp curve, becomes dim.
We stop and breathe. Maya shakes her head, one arm leaning
up against the wall. “Dravish died doing what he loves the
most.”
A clamor of boots and angry voices echoes down the
corridor. “My room,” I say. “I have a codex. We can get a
message out to your people.”
Maya doesn’t follow me, gazes instead down the hallway
behind us. “The Chemical Barons have someone down here.
They’ve infiltrated the dustfuckers.”
“Wouldn’t be surprised. They’ve gotten so irritable from
so much of the same. Makes ‘em easy to rile up. And that
fight was more coordinated than I’ve ever seen them.”
“That and the imminent collision with Earth. You could
see how they might have a pretty decent gripe. Anyway, Zan
was probably in on it, but there’s someone else, too, from
what we can tell.”
She’s right. My mind begins cycling through faces, but
part of me already knows.
“If the Barons take control of the ‘stroid, they can
weaponize it. And then . . . well, game over, so to speak.”
I just shake my head. “It wasn’t enough fucking up Earth?
They gotta ruin everything else to?”
Down the corridor, someone screams. “Get him down,” a
voice yells. “Get him.” There’s more yelling, another scream,
and then the sound of boots stomping gets louder. I imagine
Arkex is with them.
Maya pulls the shiny cylinder from her robes, holds it
ready.
“How many shots you got in that thing?”
“Not enough.”
We climb a slope, wind around another corner and then I
tap a code into a keypad and a section of the wall groans and
gives way into darkness. Maya eyes me, then ducks in.
The floor is littered with rumpled clothes and yes, a few
bottles. An ashtray — not spilled, though. Not spilled. There’s
a desk somewhere beneath all those paper stacks and books.
“Doesn’t this even bother you on the days you wake up as
a woman?” Maya says.
I sneer. “Your simplistic ass. I’m even messier on my
woman days. Anyway, look.” Wires snake out of a brand new
hole in the wall. “He took my codex and the damn mount I
charged it with.”
“Who?”
“Arkex. The Chemical Baron’s man underground.”
“How’d he . . .”
By way of an answer, I look at the ruffled sheets on my
cot.
Maya shakes her head. “Oh, Jax.”
“Occasionally, I make very reckless decisions.”
“But . . .”
“We don’t have time for you to browbeat me at this
moment. They’re sure gonna head straight for my den.”
Maya’s mouth wrestles with a retort but she stays quiet.
“If we go out into the corridor, we’re done.”
“Where then?”
“Up.”
••••
For a few minutes, the only sound is our knees and elbows
clanging along the corrugated metal air duct and me panting
and wheezing. Then we stop, and when I catch my breath, I
light a Garafuna. Maya just rolls her eyes.
“I know,” I say. “And I’m not interested.”
“You don’t think they’ll smell it? They’re already probably
crawling through these pipes trying to get to us.”
I shake my head, take a drag in a nonchalant kind of way
that I’m sure drives Maya up the wall. “They don’t know I
have an entranceway through my room. They’re scouring the
corridors, and there’s plenty for them to scour.”
“Well, then, what now?”
I point down. “The hangar’s right below us. They’re going
to check it. Then we put you on your ship and send you on
your way.”
“You’re not . . .”
Far away, someone yells. A metal clanging echoes its way
through the vast open space beneath us. We wait. Nothing
happens. We wait.
••••
“Do they care here?” We have our backs against opposite
sides of the duct; our bent knees form an M shape in the
middle of the passageway.
I give her a look. I know what she means but I want her to
say it.
“About . . . you know . . .”
“Of course.” I relent. I don’t have it in me to play games
with people’s discomfort after all. “They’re quieter about it
than they were at the Academy, of course, but only because
I’m in charge here. And they don’t try to study me here like
they did there, no more pee samples and blood draws. Here
they just glare and mutter. I shut things down quick with a
few nasty scuffles at the Rustvine and everyone got into
place.”
“You always were quick to clobber a fool that stepped out
of line.”
I shrug, look away. “Survival.”
Maya stares at me. I feel that glare burning into my cheek
like laser beams and I think maybe, maybe, she kind of
understands. So I look at her. Those eyes have gone wide
again; they want something. Her lips are slightly parted, those
round cheeks illuminated by the dim light strips along the
duct. Framed by her robes and the Triumvirate crown,
Maya’s face looks like the moon. I realize how long it’s been
since I’ve breathed fresh air, felt the embrace of the night
instead of the air conditioners and vent systems.
“More than a year,” I say.
“What?”
“Been on this thing.”
“Ah.”
“Your face.”
“What about it?”
“Reminds me of the moon.”
I’ve never said anything like that to Maya. I don’t say
things like that. I think them. Sometimes, on nights drenched
in Vanguard and the loneliness of the life on an asteroid, I
write them on sprawling messages on my codex, put her
communique address in the To field and let my finger hover
over the Send button. Then I delete them and troll whatever
porn the dustfuckers are posting till I pass out.
Maya doesn’t smile, doesn’t even move, and my stomach
clenches. I don’t look away though, a tiny victory over my
usual chickenshittedness. She doesn’t look away either. Is
there a move I’m supposed to make? It’s easy with the others;
they come to me. I turn them away or I don’t. With Maya, all
my move-making information always seems to get lost
between my two bodies: out of reach. For all our intimacy,
she never reveals what she has a taste for. Maybe nothing.
I’ve forgotten, for a moment, what I woke up as today. In the
chaos it ceased to matter, or maybe it’s being with Maya that
has rendered it irrelevant. Maybe, but no: Then it comes
crashing back down and I’m neither-nor and woefully not
enough and anyway.
And anyway, I feel filthy. Filthy from the dust of a year of
asteroid life. Filthy from Arkex and Delmond, Catinflax and
Sastra. Filthy from all these cheap nights with heartless fucks I
barely bothered staying awake for and then gleefully booted
before dawn. Looking back, they become a blur: Some were
men, some the rare female dustfucker. Sometimes I was a
man, sometimes a woman. I topped and bottomed, sighed,
grunted, cursed, came. And still I am empty.
Maya reaches out her hand, palm out. I put mine against it.
According to Jax’s third rule of booty-getting, if I close my
fingers, the culminating momentum will peak and the sudden
burst of energy will propel us both forward into a tangled
embrace, layers will slide off easily, like all along our bodies
had been begging to be naked together, and together we will
float slightly above the corrugated steel as our belts and boots
dance through the air away from us. My fingers will find their
way inside her, and hers inside me and I will hear the asteroid
breathing like it does when it’s very quiet, late at night.
I don’t close my fingers, though; I close my eyes. I hear
her long breaths, they let me know she’s in this moment, too:
Her heart beats through her palm. Beneath that I hear
something else: the asteroid breathing like it does when it’s
very quiet, late at night.
And then, just like that, Maya’s breathing falls away and
there is only the asteroid, and our breath is one. I keep my
eyes closed, because if I think too hard, if I allow the rest of
the world in, everything will shatter. Our breath is one and I
let the tiny prayer erupt from me, swerve, but this time,
instead of another breath, there is a tremor.
Somewhere far, far away, Maya says, “What was that?”
Swerve.
The world trembles, a lover on the brink. Swerve. Not
pleading this time, a command. Another shiver erupts. Maya
yells but me, I’m smiling. I exhale, the asteroid exhales with
me. Because inside me, there is dust, it coats my lungs, my
heart, it heeds me, and inside the asteroid, there is me, tiny,
complex, and alive with desire. We breathe as one.
“Jax.” Maya’s eyes don’t ask for anything now. They’re
wide, yes, but not with pleading. Her jag piston glares out at
me from her robes.
I cock my head to the side, frown. “You never came to
negotiate.”
“No.”
“The sitdown was a ruse.”
“Well, I did want to speak to you.”
One of my eyebrows goes up; the skeptical one. I can’t
help it.
“But I knew you wouldn’t listen.”
“The Triumvirate has given up on the asteroid.”
“Long ago. I’m the only thing keeping them from blowing
it, and you’re the only thing keeping me from keeping them
from blowing it.”
“I’ll be that.”
“Jax, you’re coming off this thing with me. And we’re
sending a transport for the dustfuckers. If the Chemical
Barons get a hold of it . . .”
“They won’t.”
“They were a bar fight away from doing it just now. And if
you can’t divert the thing before it hits earth.”
“Come.”
“Jax. What just happened?”
“Come with me, I’ll show you.”
Maya doesn’t lower the gun but ever so slightly her face
relaxes. Tears slide down the round cheeks, her jawline, her
neck. Instead of kissing them away, I stand, smile, help her
up.
I’m sure I’m glowing. Or maybe it’s the dust that covers
my body, the dust that marks places on Maya’s body I have
touched.
••••
She removes the paneling and climbs down a ladder into
the hangar. More yelling erupts from somewhere, not far
away; I can’t tell if it’s celebration or anger. I don’t care. The
hangar dwarfs everything; we are two tiny specks crossing
beneath its cavernous void, darting between the landing gear
of dust-covered transporters and armored drilldozer wheels to
the Triumvirate’s sleek star glider. It’s already slightly
reddened from its brief stay here. In the small cockpit, she
turns to me and is about to speak when a codex crackles to
life right beside us. “Triumvirate Station Seven-five to
Harpsbringer, copy.”
Maya’s jag piston is already out and directed at the cockpit
storage closet when the door swings slowly open.
I roll my eyes. “Don’t shoot him.”
Arkex is crying, cradling the codex, hemmed in by tubes
and wires like some pathetic saint in a box. “I . . . I . . . Last
night wasn’t just about this,” he gurgles. “I’m sorry.”
“What did they give you?” I ask.
“They promised they’d get me offa here. Said we’d crash
into Earth if I didn’t.”
“Triumvirate Station Seven-five to Harpsbringer, do you
copy?” the codex crackles. “We have an urgent message. Do
you copy Harpsbringer?”
I put out my hand and Arkex gives me the codex.
“This is Harpsbringer.”
“Be advised, your course has changed, Harpsbringer.
Repeat, your course has changed. New coordinates take you
outside of the Earth’s gravitational pull.” In the background,
I hear celebrating. Cheers go up around the ship. Arkex has
tears streaming down his face.
Maya just shakes her head. I give Arkex the fuck-off look
and he stumbles off the ship in a hurry. I’ll deal with what
needs to be dealt with later. “So,” Maya says.
“So.”
“Don’t look so pleased with yourself. Whatever you did,
the Barons are still gonna be throwing whatever they got at
this thing to get it on their side.”
“Good thing I have friends in powerful places with lots of
spaceships and fancy guns.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Then we pause and the moment becomes thick between
us, I breathe deep, the asteroid breathes with me and I let the
moment slide away, because there will be another, better one
in the not too distant future. Right now, though, right now the
galaxy around us has just let out an enormous cheer all at the
same time, like a breath released in perfect synchronicity, as
one.
© 2014 by Daniel José Older.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel José Older is the author of the upcoming young adult novel
Shadowshaper (Arthur A. Levine Books, 2015) and the Bone Street Rumba
urban fantasy series, which begins in January 2015 with Half Resurrection
Blues from Penguin’s Roc imprint. Publishers Weekly hailed him as a “rising
star of the genre” after the publication of his debut ghost noir collection, Salsa
Nocturna. He co-edited the anthology Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from
the Margins of History and guest edited the music issue of Crossed Genres.
His short stories and essays have appeared in Tor.com, Salon, BuzzFeed, New
Haven Review, PANK, Apex, and Strange Horizons and the anthologies
Subversion and Mothership: Tales of Afrofuturism and Beyond. Daniel’s band
Ghost Star gigs regularly around New York, and he facilitates workshops on
storytelling from an anti-oppressive power analysis. You can find his thoughts
on writing, read dispatches from his decade-long career as an NYC paramedic,
and hear his music at ghoststar.net and @djolder on Twitter.
To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight.
Scarey Rose in Deep History
Rebecca Ore
“History should not be ancestor worship,” Sarey Rose told
them as she brought in the last of the time-viewer components
and began to calculate how to form the microgates big enough
for past light. Her hair was bound up for work. Whether or
not she approved of the target, she was working.
“We need to see our ancestors as people,” Peter said.
Wearing his family reunion T-shirt, he sat down in one of the
reproduction chairs in the plantation house. Mulatto wasn’t a
word that was used much these days, but Peter was
significantly mulatto. His great-grandfather had owned his
great-grandmother. The modern day family reunions included
both sets of kin. So liberal, Sarey Rose thought, and such a
neat way to avoid poor white trash. Now, he and his white
half-kin had finagled use of the time-viewer to get back to the
primal event. “After all, we’re all from here. And we’re pretty
typical.”
“Who is this us?” Sarey Rose said. “I’m one of those
people whose promised land was always the future. When the
old regime fell, we rose like rockets. Typical wasn’t planters
and their children.”
“But you are in on this project.”
“I would have rather taken a look at Tom Paine or
Heisenberg.”
Sarey Rose thought that using the time-viewer for Deep
River wasted both her time and the money invested in the
equipment. But the engineering department needed the history
department to get funding, so here it was. Sarey thought that
the history department, along with all other liberal arts
departments, provided a refuge for upper-class twits who
couldn’t master calculus and feared computers.
Peter said, “The only way we can really escape the past is
to understand it.”
Martha, a brown-haired woman who always wore either
suits or paint-stained jeans, came in and scowled. Probably
she hated the two of them talking about “her” project when
she wasn’t around. Martha also seemed surprised each time
she saw Sarey Rose, the way a cat periodically seems
surprised to realize that its human companion is a very large
animal. Sarey Rose knew that if she’d been homely, in
glasses, Martha would have been happier. Her image of Sarey
didn’t fit the unruly reality. Scary Rose, the boys in high
school used to call her, the girl who should have left the
technology to them. Only ugly girls needed high-tech skills to
compensate, the son of the high school science teacher told
her. Two weeks later, Sarey blew up the toilets in the teachers’
bathroom. The principal couldn’t believe that a girl did it.
Sarey’s classmates knew better.
About three decades earlier, Martha’s father finished his
Ph.D. in classics on the last money from plantation acreage
and never came back. Martha said, “Rose, are we ready?”
“Tractor beams holding the past, ready to beam up March
12, 1853, Captain.”
“Rose, I know that tractor beams are physically
impossible.”
“Last week, then, were you being awful polite about my
techno-babble?” But now Martha pretended she’d never
fallen for the gobbledygook explanation. Sarey thought she’d
omit asking Martha if she’d known better when she’d nodded
sagely last week. No point in goading a High Wasp Queen.
Oh, plenty of point, but after a while, the glaze of politeness
and double-speak made a woman feel like she was walking in
molasses.
Peter said, “We’re going to focus on the main bedroom,
my great-grand-mother’s cabin, and the front parlor. We all
know what went on.”
Sarey Rose said, “I doubt it was all as neat as the family
legends say. I’d like another two sites.”
Martha said, “You’re not an historian.”
“My people have their traditions, too.”
Peter said, “I thought you didn’t care about your own
past?”
“I don’t care, personally, but if you are trying to get a
picture of this time, we need other sites besides two plantation
rooms and a slave cabin. I know enough history to know
that!”
Peter said, “Wouldn’t it be okay to start with these, then
find two more sites based on what we hear from our first
three sites?”
Martha looked like she wanted to argue, but her white
liberalness forced her to nod to her second-half-cousinseveral-times-removed. Sarey wondered if Peter’s greatgrandmother got fucked by her owner because she was
equally too diplomatic.
Individual glass fibers penetrated to three spaces in March
12, 1853. Screen one in the parlor cleared, showing a black
woman dusting the mantel with a feather duster. On screen
two, Sarey saw the newer version of one of the big beds in
the present-day restored plantation house. Then the slave hut
appeared. It looked rather good for a slave hut, containing a
wooden dresser with a tortoise shell brush and a necklace of
turquoise beads on it. Martha said, “He gave her my greatgrandmother’s beads, but we must have gotten them back.”
Peter didn’t speak, just moved closer to the screen, looking
at the cabin’s wood floor, two silk dresses, one purple, the
other bright yellow, hanging from wall pegs, the bedstead with
a feather bed and woven rope mattress support. “Bed cords!
We’d always heard she tried to put him off. That he forced
her.”
Sarey Rose sighed. “Now, we need a fourth site.”
“Do you have the capacity?” Martha asked.
“We can go in next door for a quick look around, then resite to one of the main targets. Another slave cabin would give
us a comparison.”
“If you can do it quickly,” Martha said.
Sarey Rose pulled from the master bedroom into another
slave cabin. The floor there was dirt, the bed a lumpy mattress
like a giant pillow on a rough wicker frame, rather like
Iroquois beds.
Peter said, “Shit! She sure did have it better.”
Sarey Rose said, “Maybe he was bribing her not to poison
him in his sleep?” She looked back at Peter’s ancestral cabin.
Martha said again, “She’s got my great-grandmother’s
beads.”
Sarey Rose leaned back and said, “Do you want to know
all the way, or should I find us other places that would be less
emotionally stressful to view?” Knowing the high WASPs and
their kin as she did, Sarey figured that saying that would lock
them here. She hoped their eyeballs would blister. In a
metaphorical way.
On the parlor screen, the woman dusting looked up as a
white woman in her forties came into the room. The picture
was somewhat grainy. Sarey Rose wanted to reach in and
touch the feathers, the ashes, the crocheted bedcover — linen,
cotton? Inquiring primate fingers wanted to know.
“What would it look like without the computer
enhancement?” Martha asked.
Sarey said, “We have a tiny fan of optic fibers that moves.
We’re copying the raw data stream, but the computer is
enhancing the screens. If we saw a zebra, we might get a
horse, but then we never see completely what’s out there,
anyway. The brain always interprets. The resolution should
pick up as the program picks up new data.” She put the
master bedroom back on the third screen.
In 1853, the white woman spoke to the black woman. The
computer threw up a small window in clearer pixels of
Martha’s great-great-grandmother.
“Could she be anyone else?” Martha asked.
“She’s acting like she owns the other woman,” Sarey Rose
said. She keyed the computer to provisionally accept the
earlier scan of a photo of the white woman. The image
sharpened.
Then the black woman became clearer.
“What happened?” Martha asked.
“The machine learned how to see them,” Sarey said.
“She looks like an aunt of mine,” Peter said.
Sarey Rose leaned back, wishing they could hear back to
1853, but sound waves were too big to pass though the tiny
gates. The white woman left the room. The black woman
crossed her eyes, shook the duster hard, really banging it
against the hearth. She seemed to be giggling. Then she
brushed her face with the feather duster, leaving nothing on
the skin, then there was a faint whitening as the computer
figured out that the data the quivering glass fibers fed it
wasn’t noise.
“So she looks like she’s been working,” Peter explained.
In the master bedroom, the white woman lay across her
bed, one hand over her eyes. The black woman disappeared
from the downstairs parlor, reappeared at the bedroom door.
The computer sharpened the images as Sarey keyed in that
the women in this scene were the same as the women in the
parlor screen.
Martha said, “We’ll have a lip reader check this, but I think
that the black woman . . .”
“Alice,” Peter said.
“. . . is asking the white woman, my ancestor Ann, if she’d
free her.”
Sarey Rose said, “Will she free her?”
“Well, the war . . .”
“No, Alice is asking if Ann will free her. Did your ancestor
leave a will freeing his slaves?”
Martha said, “No.”
Sarey Rose said, “So he lied.”
Martha said, “How can you infer that from such a tentative
question?”
Peter said, “We always heard that the master promised to
free Alice and his children with her, but the mistress crossed
him.”
Martha said, “My family knew that manumitted slaves had
terrible lives, so we kept them, never sold them, buried them
in the family cemetery.”
“Your people sold one,” Peter said, before Sarey could.
“Your people hated him. We sold him to make your people
happy.”
“I’d like to remind everyone that family traditions are
unreliable historical sources unless verified by corroborating
evidence, like a manuscript will, court records, letters with
good provenance . . .”
“Thank you, Sarey Rose,” Martha said. “I know that.
That’s why we’re looking.”
A man came in to the parlor downstairs. The computer
sketched him in. Sarey Rose thought that he must be the
master of the house. He wore riding boots, and gloves that the
computer, after some dithering, painted with marks made by
reins. Sarey Rose called up a photo of the house’s founder.
The computer tried those features, but threw a query: IS
TINT ABSOLUTE?
Sarey typed: NO.
The computer jiggled the man’s features and came up with
slightly wider cheekbones and nose than the photo showed,
darker skin. Sarey said, “We always said the old man didn’t
look pure white. What were your family traditions on that,
Martha?”
“We’re not racist,” Martha said.
“Hey, I’m not either,” Sarey Rose said. “But I always
wondered why your people just showed up about 1809
without any big lies about your Tidewater kin and their
English lord kin.”
Martha said, “If you’re having trouble with that, it’s your
own bigotry that’s showing.”
Peter didn’t answer. He was staring at the man who
disappeared. Then, in the time it took to walk the hall and go
up the staircase to the big upstairs room, he came into the
bedroom. The two women froze, cringing, Sarey Rose would
guess. Ann spoke. The angle of her face made lip reading
impossible. Did you really promise to free this bitch? Can we
sell her? If you can have a slave lover, can you buy me a nice
white-looking likely boy? Was she saying something like that?
They could never know for sure. Sarey Rose said, “Even if
we could get something as big as a sound wave through a
micro wormhole, we’d still never know what they were
thinking.”
“Flint could have been a Cherokee name,” Martha said.
“We thought it was just his nickname.”
Flint seemed amused. He spoke. The black woman left the
room. The white woman sat on the bed, not looking at him.
He took her by the chin. Again, no way to tell what he said.
You’re the mother of my children, but she is, too, so try to get
along? You’re my white bride who’ll make our children look
even more proper? Without you and your family connections,
someone might wonder about me? Men prosper the more
they get laid, so get over it, bitch?
Ann turned her face. The lips seemed to say, So, you just
tell her that to keep her happy.
Flint nodded.
Men, Ann’s lips said.
He must have asked her what she wanted, because Ann
seemed to say, a diamond brooch.
Flint grunted and sat down. The black woman came back
with a glass full of clear liquid. Flint sat down in a chair and
let the black woman pull his boots off. Ann sat on the bed
staring out the window.
Flint smiled at both of them.
Peter said, “Her name was Alice. He lied to her, didn’t he?
Son-of-a bitch wasn’t even pure white.”
Martha said, “Cherokee women wouldn’t have let one of
their men get away with adultery without him getting mobbed
by his wife’s clanswomen. If he were part Cherokee, having
access to more than one woman must have been male
heaven.”
Sarey Rose said, “You’re not surprised that he looks like
this?”
“We’ve wondered. One of the photos we have of him
looks like it was re-touched. A tintype. When we did a book
on the family, we reproduced a copy of the tintype. But, no,
I’m not real surprised. Again, I’m not bigoted, am I, Cousin
Peter.”
Peter said, “Could this be a history that doesn’t lead to
ours?”
“We can theorize alternative histories. We can’t theorize a
way to get to them,” Sarey Rose said. She wondered if she
was a bigot. So some nonAnglo — octoroon, mestizo —
slipped across the Virginia color bar before it became so rigid.
Did it matter? Even in the most moralistic of times, the 1950s,
ten percent of all married women gave their husbands other
men’s children.
“Just leave it on to record,” Martha said. “Or do you have
to constantly monitor it?”
Sarey Rose wondered if Martha thought that she massaged
the data to get images she liked. “I can leave it on. The
computer has samples of the family photographs.”
“Was your kinsman working for us at this time?” Martha
asked.
Sarey Rose said, “All we know is, your kin tried to pay
him in slaves and he refused.”
Martha said, “We don’t know what that meant.”
“In 1853, it could have meant anything,” Peter said.
“What did they do with the children?” Sarey Rose asked.
“Half of them died before ten,” Martha said.
Sarey Rose thought about all the dead children on all the
sides. She sighed, and set up the machine to continue
recording. When she moved to turn off the display terminals,
Martha reached for her hand.
“No,” Peter said. “We want to watch it.”
Martha said, “You can go now, Sarey Rose.” High WASP
whip in the voice, now.
••••
Sarey Rose knew what they’d ask her: Was the machine
interpreting correctly, was she interfering with the images?
The machine wouldn’t make chimpanzees when the shapes
were closer to people, had fifteen gradations of skin color to
work with, and with only five minutes of scan at ten feet
would be within one-sixteenth of an inch of true facial
contours. Would use the reconstructed house to model the
past light streams.
The man in the house last night looked mulatto to her. If a
man were rich enough, did his face look whiter to his
neighbors?
Neither Martha nor Peter looked at her as she came into
the office. The master slept with his slave on her special bed.
The mistress of the house faced a black man in the parlor who
lacked the owned deference Sarey would have expected.
“Rose, we can’t identify this man.”
“I don’t know your slaves,” Sarey Rose said.
“He’s not acting like a slave,” Peter said.
“Maybe your ancestor wasn’t interested in taking unruly
slaves?” Martha said.
“Did you watch last night?” Sarey Rose said.
“We did,” Peter said. “We’d appreciate it if you didn’t
review the recordings.”
Sarey Rose looked at them both. Whatever the sex had
been like, both of these people couldn’t get to sleep after what
they saw. She decided to leave them and the recordings alone
for a while. “So what did you learn?”
Peter said, “He sure didn’t force her.”
Martha said, “I think he loves her.”
“Then, who is the guy in the parlor?” Sarey Rose asked.
“Her dad?”
“We didn’t sell anyone after we sold Esau,” Martha said.
“Ann brought the slaves to the marriage, but they like Flint
better than they like her.”
Sarey Rose realized that they’d been slipping into talking
about the ancestors in contemporary terms: your people, we,
you. “Esau got sold over 180 years ago. Don’t you think we
ought to have gotten over it by now?”
Peter said, “I always wondered how he felt about being
sold, rejected by his own people.”
“Hell, Peter, if he got lucky, he ended up owned by a guy
in Tennessee who collected rascally niggers. He’d buy rascally
ones because they were bright, let them teach each other how
to read because he thought blacks were apter than whites at
that, and then turn them loose to run his farm while he took a
percentage.”
Martha said, “I’ve read that passage in Frederick Law
Olmsted, too. It’s unlikely a slave sold in this part of Virginia
would end up in Tennessee.”
“I said if he got lucky.” Sarey Rose found Olmsted’s
account fascinating. She’d rather be investigating that farm
than this one. What was it like to have been a bright slave
with such a master? You take what you can get, her
grandfather said from his cane rocking chair back in her
memories. Psychologically, the South trapped one in a Klein
bottle, some topological psychological distortion that flung
everyone, including those who’d merely moved South, back
into the past just when they felt they’d finally moved into the
future.
Was the South still looking, as Olmsted had described it
over a hundred years ago, for the right highway, the newest
relocated factory with imported management? Bring in
outsiders rather than surrender power to the uppity white
trash or the blacks.
In 1853, the black man left Ann in the parlor, went out,
came back with a white man who took off his hat and looked
at Ann. You okay? I’m sorry you’ve got such a sorry
husband. Sarey Rose said, “My ancestor. Old Joe. We didn’t
get any photos of him until the 1870s, but it looks pretty
much like him.”
The black man looked from Ann to Joe, said, perhaps, I’ll
tell the master the overseer is here. Can’t do to stay in here
with the lady, Mr. Overseer.
Joe bobbed his head and stayed, holding his hat in both
hands in front of him, covering his groin. Sarey wondered if
the pose was arbitrary or by design, to hide an erection.
Ann got up from the sofa. Joe spoke, You’ve been crying,
Miss Ann.
He can fuck her, but if I even speak to a man, the slaves
tattle on me.
Was that really what she said? Sarey Rose looked at
Martha and Peter.
Joe put his right hand on her shoulder. She flinched,
turned her head toward the door.
The black man showed Flint in. Flint spoke. The overseer
cringed, looked at the black man. The black man seemed
unusually calm and didn’t lower his eyes to the overseer.
The overseer might have said, Who were your people back
to the east? Who were your people before you came here?
Then they turned slightly, nodding at each other, Joe
nodding at the black man, who nodded back, just not as deep
a nod as Joe’d given him.
Ann went to the bedroom, crawled back into the bed, and
began to masturbate under the covers, her face muscles
clenched in a grimace. “Can you blank the screen, for God’s
sake!” Martha said.
Sarey Rose said, “Didn’t know those lily-white slaver
women did such things.” But she blanked the screen.
Peter said, “Always heard that the mistress made old Flint
mean. Shit.”
Sarey Rose said, “She seems fond of the overseer.”
“At the end of the year, she dies, you know. Brain
congestion.”
Sarey Rose said, “After she had your great-grandfather,
right?”
Martha said, “He was raised on a black woman’s tit. Took
care of her after the war.”
Peter said, “We don’t recall that. After the war, Flint’s son
sold us land enough to farm. We paid him for it in work and
cash. Maybe that was ‘doing for us,’ but the deal cost us same
as he charged other folks. Man needed help, niggers needed
land.”
Sarey Rose said, “We can skip forward in time, unless you
want to watch the whole fucking year.”
“It’s the story of us all,” Martha said.
“Not my story,” Sarey Rose told her. “I didn’t have a
history before 1937, when my daddy got to go to college
thanks to Mr. Roosevelt.”
••••
Two months later in 1853, and a day later in the present,
Sarey Rose watched her ancestor on a poster bed with Ann.
Daytime — all the blacks should be in the fields or working in
the kitchen.
“Well, who said they didn’t lie?” Sarey Rose said. Martha
and Peter walked out of the room. Sarey sat watching the
now-dead woman sobbing in the overseer’s arms. He doesn’t
understand me. He loves that bitch he owns, not me.
The overseer seemed nervous. Sarey knew he didn’t get
killed for this. He ran off, joined some rag-tail deserters’ camp
in Floyd County, came slinking back after Flint was dead and
his son in charge of things. “Are they quite through?” Martha
asked from the other room.
“Jeez, he’s my ancestor. Is getting fucked by the overseer
so shameful? After all, your great-whatever-removedgranddaddy liked black meat.”
Peter said, “Are they dressed yet?”
“No, she’s having a hissy fit in his arms. Those times
weren’t fair for white women and black men.”
“White women like Ann didn’t have to lift a finger.”
“Dumber than their cooks and weavers, the poor stupid
bitches,” Sarey said. “Taught, maybe, how to play the piano
and draw some, but never well enough to work.” Her
ancestresses back in 1853 worked on looms and sewed, just
as her cousins did these days, only these days, they
programmed computers to lift the threads and cut the cloth.
“Look, just tell me when they’re dressed,” Martha said.
The black slave woman wasn’t in her gaudy cabin, gone
with the master on business, but the old male slave came in
with another young black woman, carrying cooked food from
the outdoor kitchen to Miz Ann at dinner time. The old slave
looked at Ann and the unmade bed, turned and went away.
The second young black woman put a tray on Ann’s bedside
table, sniffed the air, and stood waiting.
“Could you add the dining room?” Peter asked.
“Yes, they’ll be eating in the dining room when Flint
comes back,” Martha said. “The interactions would be
interesting.”
Sarey Rose wondered if they’d decided to forget what had
just happened, what had happened in 1853. The two families,
owners and owned, had managed to forget it the first time,
why not the second time? Southern women never minded that
their menfolk kept black mistresses, because those women
weren’t a real threat to the marriage. Southern men did this
because they lived in a matriarchal society. Right? As though
any matriarchal society let its men believe that not having
orgasms would make males sick.
“I can get the dining room online sometime next week if
the engineering department has more glass fiber the right
size,” Sarey Rose said.
••••
Dining room, bedroom, parlor, slave cabin. A quartet in
two centuries, Sarey Rose thought as she brought up the
screens on July 31, 1853.
How long could Ann and Joe meet without Flint killing
one or the other of them? Sarey Rose decided Flint had killed
Ann. She was pregnant, nervous.
In the slave concubine’s cabin, Flint met with his slaves.
Mistress ain’t faithful. She’s gonna bring you a poor whitetrash baby.
Joe disappeared, a man who knew when to run. Sarey
Rose taped the next several weeks, running the tapes fast to
see if Joe reappeared.
Ann swelled. The black mistress swelled. At dinner,
September 14, 1853, Flint looked from the black woman’s
belly to his wife’s, his fingers moving to the count of nine.
Martha said, “Oh, shit.” Sarey had forgotten she was
there. Peter left them alone most of the time now, wondering
perhaps if he was the true heir to the estate, not Martha, the
descendant of a poor white-trash overseer who helped run a
pro-Union deserters’ camp, and who came back only when
the man he’d cuckolded was dead.
Sarey remembered her great-grandfather saying, “The
Southern men died in the War for pure meanness.”
And the local black schoolmaster, a former slave, chose
Sarey’s grandfather to be his lord back in the 1920s. Every
black man needed a lord in those Klan-addled days, and what
better choice than a Lincoln Republican?
Ann twisted her wedding band, ate, twisted her wedding
band, ate.
The concubine spoke to Flint, saying, perhaps, I’m a truer
woman than she is. Now you gonna let me free?
Perhaps Flint didn’t quite believe that Ann carried another
man’s baby. White women didn’t like sex. All men needed it
to prevent illness. That white man’s burden, sperm. Old Flint
purged his system every chance he got, stayed healthy.
Sarey Rose wondered if Martha believed that herself, if
that’s what made her so tolerant of Peter, or if, as a historian,
she accepted the foibles of study cultures.
Ann said something that might have been, But I loved you.
You could have loved me.
Flint looked up at her sharply and spoke. I married you,
provided for you. Even if you brought slaves to the marriage
as a dowry, you needed me more than I needed you. Slaves
don’t work for women the way they work for a man.
The slave concubine must have spoken. Her back was to
the optical pick-ups. Flint seemed contrite. He might have
said, Sorry. The pregnant slave woman left the room. Ann
picked at her food. Flint shoved his into his mouth, cutting his
meat with a clasp knife he pulled from his pocket.
Sarey Rose said, out loud, “We never owned slaves.
Never.”
Martha said, “But they wouldn’t work for women.”
“You read that the same way I did?” Sarey asked.
“Yeah. I talked to someone in linguistics. We could do a
program that would give us best approximation, see the
several choices.”
“We’re recording.”
“But . . .”
“We’re only getting an approximation of the light patterns
as is. I don’t know if a lip-reading program operating on real
time would help the visual recognition program or cause
feedback distortions.”
“But we both read that.”
“We’ve got more context than a lip-reading program would
have, too. If we’d decided that Flint was perfectly white, he’d
be looking perfectly white on the screen now. I’d have
corrected once, the computer would have assumed it was in
error if it came up with darker than white values for his skin.”
Martha said, “I want to hear them.”
“You can’t. Soundwaves are too big.”
“We’re not even really seeing them.”
“Close enough. Maybe she’s smiling, not grimacing.”
Martha said, “And your ancestor disappeared like a
coward.”
“Should he have died for her? The law then was on Flint’s
side.”
“Couldn’t he have taken her away?”
“We don’t know that Joe didn’t ask. We don’t know . . .”
Martha interrupted. “Was he married?”
“I never heard of a wife before the war,” Sarey Rose said,
resenting the interrogation. “But maybe Ann was too big a
snob to marry him, even though she would sleep with him.”
“She cared for him more than that,” Martha said.
“Only definite ancestor in the mix you’ve got left, isn’t
she?” Sarey Rose said. Lip-reading program, shit, she realized
she didn’t want to install it now, coordinate it with the visual
recognition program. Bitch of time to do it.
At the table in the past, the two people ate in silence.
Flint’s mistress left the room and a second female slave
brought in a dish of stewed apples.
Sarey Rose said, “At least, he’s considerate of one of
them.”
••••
Brain congestion — Sarey Rose remembered brain
swelling was often a side effect of a failed strangulation.
••••
In one month, the half-white baby was born from a
squatting woman, caught by an older black woman. In the
next month, the white baby came down onto boiled and dried
scrap sheets on the bed in the master bedroom. The same
black woman caught the baby. In the future, the observers
came in, stared, left, came back, stared, went without talking.
Flint came in to see both sons, held both of them. Peter said,
“There have been worse fathers.”
Sarey Rose heard that as a rebuke to her ancestor.
Martha spent less time on site, took recordings of the raw
data as though a different computer and screens might show
her a past she approved of more. She wore jeans more often,
seemed more casual about her hair.
Perhaps, Sarey Rose thought, Martha has decided to
succumb to her technologically discovered white-trash roots.
Sarey took a day off and bought a suit. When she came back,
Peter said, “Joe’s back.” Martha was watching the screen in
the master bedroom as though she wanted to turn into
photons heading pastward.
“Back?” Sarey Rose wondered if the people in the rooms
they watched ever noticed the future light — too small to be
more than sparkles in a black room, something that could be
explained away as an eye twitch. But the human eye could
catch a photon.
Joe sat on the bed, talking desperately to Ann, leaning on
one arm. His body bobbed closer, then moved back, over and
over, like a rocking toy. The baby lay in her arms, looking at
the stranger.
Ann’s lips moved. No, he’s being decent about it. But then
he’s got another son down in the quarters.
“We haven’t picked up Flint all day. I scanned today’s
tapes when I came in and saw this,” Martha said.
The overseer bent over Ann then, grabbed her by the
shoulders and shook her. The baby began squalling. Joe
picked up the baby. According to the lip-reading program, he
said, I’m taking my son then.
“It was his first child,” Sarey Rose said. She expected that
Flint would burst into the room at any second, but he didn’t,
wasn’t around to hear the baby squalling. His black mistress
and the man who appeared to be her father came into the
room and took the baby from Joe. Ann must have said, Get
out, because they left then.
Ann argued with Joe. Joe grabbed her. By the neck. The
two past people writhed on the screen, Ann’s legs flailing out
from her bedclothes.
Sarey Rose wanted to run, but she watched on, aware of
the others breathing in a rhythm different from her own
shallow breaths. They looked at her once, quick stab of eyes.
My white-trash ancestor.
Then the older black man came back, stood in the
doorway. Spoke. You’ve done her enough damage.
Joe loosened his hands, said something that seemed like,
You gonna tell your owner? Ann lolled back on the bed,
gasping. “She’s still alive,” Martha said.
Sarey Rose knew that strangling didn’t kill necessarily at
once. The violent fluctuation in brain blood pressure did
damage.
Then the slave concubine came up without the baby, with
towels and water. She and her father let Joe go.
Martha said, “So are they going to kill her?”
“She dies in a day or two,” Peter said.
“Aftermath of his choking her, throwing her about,” Sarey
Rose said.
The slaves seemed familiar with the concept. The woman
looked at Ann, who was still gasping as though the air had
clotted in her windpipe. Her father spoke. She left and came
back with wet towels and rice powder.
Ann tried to fight the black woman as she washed Ann’s
throat bruises and lay down a dusting of powder over Joe’s
nail marks. Martha said, “I’ve got to consult a physician.”
Peter said, “She’s not hurting Ann further. She’s just trying
to disguise what happened.”
Sarey Rose said, “Maybe Joe was fucking all Flint’s
women.”
“God, that’s ugly,” Martha said.
Sarey had known how ugly she’d been before the sentence
left the air. But then maybe the slave woman thought it’d have
a better chance of getting freed if Miz Ann was dead. How
many slave concubines had the hope that the master would
free them for bearing his children? What proportion of slaves
who bore their masters’ children did get freed? It must have
happened just enough to make the dream a common hope. Or
maybe just being treated better was enough.
Whatever, Miz Ann wouldn’t run off to the mountains
with her white-trash lover. And, like so many contemporary
uneducated white-trash men, Joe killed his lover when he
couldn’t have her the way he wanted to have her.
“Uneducated,” Sarey said out loud.
“What?” Peter said.
“I’ve got a distant kinsman who killed his ex. White trash
still do that when they’re dumb and uneducated.”
“Kill their lovers?” Martha said.
“So now we know about the past,” Sarey Rose said. “It
was stupid.”
“We weren’t just malleable work folk,” Peter said. “We
had our own agendas.”
“Bunch of uneducated wishful thinkers, all of them,”
Sarey Rose said.
Martha said, “So Flint came home just in time to bury her.
Her mother comes tomorrow to see her, but everyone wants
to cover up why the overseer was in her bedroom. Her people
were better than Flint, even.”
“But you’re half my kin,” Sarey said. “Do we need to
watch through the end?”
Martha looked at Peter. He said, “We’d prefer that you
don’t.”
Sarey Rose walked out. She’d been excluded again. Not
by blood links this time, but by her own rudeness. She put her
hands in the pockets of her new jacket, feeling overdressed
and lumpish.
She sat down under the ancient catalpa tree and leaned her
head back against it and told herself she was good at what she
did. Told herself over and over.
And the Civil War came, and Joe hid out in a deserters’
camp and came back when it was over, and the ex-slaves
wouldn’t let him on the property, and Ann’s son went away
forever and Joe married, and the lineage spread up to Sarey
Rose and Martha, and the past twisted them in knots. How
many layers of ancestor, of family lies?
Sarey Rose thought, Someday, we’ve got to forget it all.
Because we can’t really know.
In the parking lot of the restored plantation house, two kids
traded off on a portable computer linked to the rest of the
modern world by modem, sending, reading, giggling, pushing
the laptop at each other. Sarey Rose wondered if anyone in
the future cared enough about the dead to watch them.
© 1997 by Rebecca Ore.
Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rebecca Ore is the pseudonym of science fiction writer Rebecca B. Brown.
She was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1948. In 1968 she moved to New
York and attended Columbia University. Rebecca Ore is known for the
Becoming Alien series and her short stories. Her novel, Time’s Child, was
published by Eos in February 2007. Centuries Ago and Very Fast, described as
a “collection of linked stories” was published by Aqueduct Press in April 2009.
To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight.
Jupiter Wrestlerama
Marie Vibbert
Two-Ton Tony had a hard body, and though Karen knew
the facts of life cold and backward by the time she got her
chance to push him against a wall, she’d never had anything
so sweet. Biceps like boulders, arms to swing on and hips to
ride: a body like a playground. She’d held on to him and
never quite believed her luck that he let her. Artificial gravity
made most station folk skinny, flabby, or flabby and skinny,
but Tony had worked on his body all his life, stealing and
cheating extra rations wherever he could, lifting whatever
heavy objects ended up near him, doing push-ups with
conveyor gears on his back. His body was his big
accomplishment in life, his ticket out.
Now Karen stood at the entry to C-stairwell, on her way to
work, and saw that body still and crooked at the base of the
stairs.
“Oh god, Kay!” One of her neighbors stepped in front of
her, blocking the view, and tried to push her back from the
crowd. She shook the hands off. Another pair landed in their
place. Living on a space station meant always having someone
in touching distance. The cops arrived and pushed back the
people in the stairwell, which pushed Karen back further. She
collapsed against the bulkhead that led into her and Tony’s
room. All she’d wanted was to straighten his neck. It wasn’t
right, Tony’s neck being bent like that, backward over the
bottom step, like he was giving up.
And then she was numb. The cops took the body away.
They asked her questions. When had she seen him last? Had
he been in any fights, had any enemies?
Bret Richards, across the hall, said, “How about the
Bombay Bomber? Or Mr. Black?”
Bret Richards had no more sense than a crocheted
spacesuit.
Karen told them that no one didn’t like Tony. She didn’t
tell them that the homemade knife sticking out of his chest
belonged to Joey Vaughn. They’d figure that out for
themselves. The fabric wrapped around the handle came from
his mother’s drapes, and there weren’t many people on the
station who even had drapes, much less purple ones with
silver moons.
When the cops finally left, Karen wanted nothing more
than to take a nap. Wasn’t that funny? But she couldn’t. She
picked up her purse, still packed with all the things she’d need
for the workday, and headed up the D-stairwell to the Strip to
tell her boss at The Blue Cricket that she was going to take
the day off.
She had to stop on the landing, under the cheerful red and
yellow signs that said “Upspin stair” and “Downspin stair”
with arrows, reminding passers that the switchback stairs were
designed by an idiot comfortably at home on Earth and they
should turn slowly to avoid vertigo. “Don’t Fall!” both signs
said, with a cartoon leaning back and waving his arms.
She spent a long time looking down at the base of the Dstairwell thinking of the C-stairwell. People paused as they
passed, a stream of touches and soothing tones.
Karen’s boss had already heard, and told her to take the
week off before she could even open her mouth.
It was a numb day, an unreal day. When she woke up, she
rolled over, reaching for him and touching the cold sheet.
Two days later she read the police report. She’d been
checking every day for news. The bastards didn’t have the
decency to come to her.
Accidental death, they said. Apparently Tony had fallen on
that knife in his chest before falling down the stairs. It was the
fall that killed him, so maybe “accident” made sense and tied
it up all neatly, but Karen knew the station cops. She couldn’t
believe they’d do that to Tony.
Karen went to see Joey Vaughn’s mom. The Amazing
Magdalena, real name Judy, was an old friend of Karen’s
mom, from way back in the day when her dad had been
around and they’d lived in better quarters farther from the
Strip. Joey’s dad had been station personnel, too, but his
parents split and Judy took over from the old Amazing
Magdalena to make ends meet.
There was a camaraderie among former personnel, like
being employed by the station made you slightly better than
those who worked the gas mine or the docks, and they always
ended up working the Strip — because fleecing tourists was a
more noble pursuit than lifting or carrying. Karen didn’t buy
into that. Tony’s folk were dockworkers, right up until his
momma had been crushed by a malfunctioning bulkhead and
his dad went a little nuts.
Judy’s shop was an old service closet on one of the smaller
access corridors near the tourist strip. The bulkhead was
wedged permanently open, supporting a purple neon sign with
an outline of a hand. A beaded curtain hung from the empty
track where the sealant should sit. The other walls were
covered in fabric, including the purple drape with silver
moons. Karen scanned the hem for a ragged edge or missing
piece.
“I heard about Tony,” were the first words out of Judy’s
mouth. She stood in the door, bead curtain drawn back. “Did
they catch who did it?”
Karen opened and closed her mouth. She had a lot she
wanted to say, more than could fit in words. “Accidental
death,” was all that came out.
Judy was still. She covered her mouth. “Those bastards!”
“I . . . I don’t know why I expected different. The same
happened with poor Betsey Carmi. They just don’t want to
get feds involved.”
“Oh, baby,” Judy drew her into her little shop. “All people
like you or me or Tony are to them are cheap parts, easily
replaced.” She huffed, pulling scarves and folded pamphlets
out of the way to clear her client chair for Karen to sit on. “If
they could get tourists to pay for holographic porn, they’d
have the wrestlers and dancers out of here in a second. But
it’s what they expect, I think. The tourists, I mean. They
expect the wild frontier, loose laws, they expect to get away
with murder . . . oh gosh, I didn’t mean it that way.”
Karen sank into the soft, over-stuffed chair. “Is Joey
around?”
“He’s been up at the gym since 0900. Oh, of course —
you don’t want to be alone, do you? I didn’t even think. Hang
on, I’ll call him to come get you.”
“No, it’s not that,” Karen said, though of course she didn’t
want to be alone. All she could think of when alone was the
last time she’d put her hand down Tony’s pants.
Judy ran out of things to tidy up and wrung her hands
instead. “I’ve been doing Tony’s chart.”
Karen’s eyebrows rose, and she almost laughed for the
first time that day. “His star chart?”
Judy nodded mournfully. “From the moment I found out.
You remember when you two first got serious and I found out
you had the same moon sign? I just thought . . . I don’t know.
It’s like examining the evidence, for me. Sometimes you find
things. Like his destiny is in Uranus. That’s a dark planet — a
big, fat warning sign, and I missed it.”
“Judy . . .”
“I know. ‘Random patterns.’ I know. You’re going to
doubt me, but sometimes it’s scary. I wanna do your chart
again, just in case.”
There was no way to explain to Judy that the alignment of
planets and stars — as seen from a place over six hundred
million kilometers away — had nothing to do with miserable
fate. Karen had tried. “Maybe later. I really just want to talk to
Joey right now.”
“I’ll call him, he’ll take the rest of the day off for you. He
loves you like a sister, you know.”
“No. I’ll stop up there.” Karen stood. Stiffly, she said,
“Thanks.”
“You know you can always come here, Kay.”
Not if I’m right, she thought, but nodded. “I’m going to
find who done for him, Judy. I’m going to find who killed my
Tony.”
“Course you will, baby girl.” Judy gave her a hug. Her
cheek was wet. “You find that bastard, and my Joey will make
him pay.”
••••
Karen had to walk down the Strip to get to Joey’s gym,
past the Wrestlerama, where Tony had worked. The doors
were open already. Sanjay Narayanan — the Bombay
Bomber — was bussing tables in preparation for the
Wrestlerama’s afternoon opening. Behind him, Jenna Waite
was testing the springs on the performance mat. Tourists liked
to think the station’s light gravity would make the wrestlers
fly, so the mat was really a trampoline, and the wrestlers wore
guy ropes like stuntmen. The squeaking sound echoed
hollowly through the room while Jenna did flips, reminding
Karen of mattress springs and unenthusiastic sex.
“Kay!” Sanjay wrapped his big arms around her. She
stiffened like a caught rat. The gentle hardness of his body
touched her off like a spark on dry grass, burning away the
false strength that had been carrying her through the day. For
the first time since seeing the crowd gathered at the base of
the stairs, she cried.
Sanjay pulled her closer, holding her and rubbing up and
down her back. “There, there, Kay. It’s okay. We’ll find the
bitch. We’ll get her.”
She wiped her face on his tight t-shirt. “‘Her’? You think it
was a woman?”
“I probably shouldn’t say nothin’.” Sanjay glanced over his
shoulder. Jenna was the only other person out on the main
floor. He let Karen go gently, as though afraid she’d collapse.
“There’s this corporate. Grabby Sue, we call her. She kinda
had her eye on Tony, y’know? And she hasn’t been back
since, even though she never misses a show when she’s on
station.”
Karen almost laughed. It felt good. “No woman pushed
Two-Ton Tony down a flight of stairs.”
“Hey, if there’s one thing you learn in this business, it’s
that it doesn’t take a lot of strength, or skill, to hurt someone.
We spend all our time learning not to.”
“What about Joey Vaughn?”
“Joey? He was fixing Tony up with carbs. Why would
Joey shiv his best customer?”
“I didn’t know Joey had business with Tony.”
“Sure. He hooks all of us up. It isn’t easy, you know,
looking like this.” Sanjay leaned back and glanced down at his
muscular chest with a self-deprecating smirk.
Karen bit her lip. “Thanks. I think I’ll go talk to Joey.”
“Whoa, hey. You aren’t gonna go accusing no one?
C’mon, Kay, we all breathe the same air around here.”
“So because it’s more convenient, it has to be an
outsider?”
“Don’t make me sound stupid, Kay. You know what I’m
saying.”
“How much does Joey charge for the food?”
Sanjay shrugged. “Couple hundred a week. I work the
loading dock days to cover it.”
“Tony didn’t have a second job.”
“That doesn’t mean nothing.”
“Yeah, it does. We shared expenses, Sanj. I would have
noticed a couple hundred a week. He came up short now and
again, but never that much.”
“Maybe Joey floated him. They were tight. You haven’t
seen this corporate chick. I’m telling you, she looks like a
killer. And you know, she . . .” he looked over his shoulder
again and lowered his voice, “She hangs out, y’know? After
shows? Some of the guys, they go with her. For money.”
Karen had to laugh at the pained expression on Sanjay’s
face. “You check it out. If you find anything, let me know.”
••••
She hadn’t been to the gym since Tony’s death, and the
sudden smell of it shocked her like a slap. Tony and the gym
were linked in her memory, for all that she’d been coming
there since before she could walk. Weights and time in the
heavy room punctuated every stationer’s life, especially the
young, who wanted so desperately to get out. Lazy folks
couldn’t pass the strength test to leave the artificial gravity for
the real thing. Hell, you couldn’t even just be lazy for a few
years and make up for it, because if you weren’t careful your
bone density went down too far and you never got it back.
Even working all the time just forestalled the effects of low
gravity. Eventually, everyone failed the test. Bone density was
a phrase Karen associated with embarrassing tests in the
school gym teacher’s office and chalky pills that coated your
mouth with glue.
And then she had met Tony. Tony and his big plan:
Someday, someone would stop at Jupiter Station, see his
perfect body in the ring and decide the world needed one
more barbarian movie. He made the losing battle against their
bones a competition, an exciting promise.
Joey Vaughn glanced up from setting clean towels on the
shelf by the free weights when Karen entered. He had been
working at the gym since high school — minus that year he
had to serve time for gang fighting. He was nine years
younger than her and still looked like a kid — like he hadn’t
grown into his bones yet. Karen watched closely, alert for any
strangeness in his behavior. He just walked over. “Hey. Bike
three is open if you want it.”
Karen couldn’t breathe.
“You okay?” Joey wadded his hand towel. “Maybe you
should come back later. No one’s going to blame you for
taking time off, Karen.”
“No. I’m fine. I mean, I will be. I wanted to lift some. Spot
me?”
For a moment he looked angry, like she’d challenged his
strength. Then it was gone. Karen wasn’t sure what to make
of that. He cleared his throat and said, “Sure, I have time.”
He threw his towel over his shoulder and lead the way to the
bench press.
Karen leaned back on the sweat-smelling plastic and stared
up at the pudding surface of Jupiter, scrolling serenely by the
public gym’s glass roof. All the windows in the station faced
Jupiter, even if they had to put them on the ceilings. The good
thing about Jupiter was that though it was always in motion, it
was always the same, and so looking at it wasn’t really looking
at anything at all. This was what the tourists came for — to
gaze at swirls of gas because there was something magical
about beauty you couldn’t touch.
Karen’s arms felt heavy. “I can’t do this,” she said.
“What? You were at 140 last week, weren’t you?” Joey
slapped the bar over her head.
Karen rubbed her sweaty palms on her stomach and
grasped on either side of Joey’s thin, calloused hands. “Did
you and Tony do this?” she asked. “Lift on this bench?”
Joey didn’t answer right away. “Yeah,” he said.
“How much was Tony benching the last time he worked
out?”
Joey’s fingers flexed on the bar. “God, that’s morbid.”
“C’mon, how much?”
He started to raise the bar off for her. Karen grunted and
took over. It fell fast and the air strained in her lungs until she
remembered to exhale. The bar shook as she raised it, fitfully
falling back into place. “Like hell that’s 140!” she shouted.
Joey leaned over the bar, smiling down at her. A little
sweat dripped from his nose. “One-sixty. You going to do the
set, girl? That’s still forty pounds shy of Tony’s light set.”
“Bastard,” Karen said. This was an old game she’d
forgotten. Joey would do anything, say anything, to get more
mass lifted. He grinned down at her, his teeth star-white,
Jupiter a halo behind him.
She sucked in a big breath and lifted the bar off its rest.
Just because Joey’s knife had been in Tony’s breast didn’t
mean Joey’s hand was on it when it entered. This was Joey.
Judy’s kid. She remembered him giving her his G.I. Joe for
her eighteenth birthday — it was his favorite and best toy and
all he could think to give his babysitter on an occasion so
important.
And he grew into this sensitive young man, sinewy and
earnest with eyes that pleaded for just one more rep, as
though the fate of worlds hung in the balance.
She did fifteen reps at 160, a rest, and twelve more. Joey
asked her if she wanted to do a third set, but she shook her
head, sat up and crossed her arms, feeling the burn in her
pecs. “I wanna bulk up,” she said.
“What?”
“I want Tony’s old job.” Karen wasn’t sure where the idea
came from; the words just flew out of her mouth. She turned
to see Joey staring at her. “It’s open, isn’t it? And I’m every
bit as athletic as that Jenna chick. What do you think, Joey?”
He stood behind the barbell like a priest at his lectern. “I
think it’s not a good time for you to be making career
decisions, Karen.”
“I need something to keep me busy, right now. I heard you
could hook me up with extra carbs.”
His expression was flat and cold — a face she’d never
seen on Joey. “I can’t help you.”
“Are you afraid I’m not good for it?”
“I have to get back to work,” he said.
“Can you point me to someone else? Joey!” He ignored
her, crossing the gym to the employee’s door without a look
back.
••••
Sanjay crouched on the elastic ropes, thighs wide and low
and glistening. Mike Black strutted a half-turn on the other
side of the mat. Then Sanjay sprang, the guy ropes hoisting
him and making his leap a slow arc. He stretched one leg
forward, a ballet pose for landing.
Karen admired the way Mike threw himself backward
precisely when Sanjay’s foot grazed his cheek. She also had
to admit that the two men looked very nice locked in struggle.
Jenna gave her a basket of deep-fried spicy tofu on the
house and a shoulder-squeeze in passing.
Sanjay raised Mike over his head and spun in a circle.
Mike flew out over the audience, landing in a carefully
choreographed pile of folding chairs.
Karen finished her food and went to wait for Sanjay by
the back entrance.
He led her to a video booth at the head of the short
corridor to the L-stairwell. Drawing the little curtain almost all
the way, they could see the Wrestlerama’s employee entrance
through a slit of orange polyester. “She’ll be out soon. She
waits right there,” he said, leaning over her, warm, heavy.
“She . . . you know. I told you.”
“Does anyone say yes?” Karen asked.
He leaned into the back of the booth. “That’s the thing.
Mike Black was telling me he wants to stop seeing her, but
he’s scared. She’s a VP or something. She could make a body
gone. Those were Mike’s words. Me, I turned her down flat.”
“Sanj, look me in the eye and tell me: Did Tony?”
Sanjay’s big brown eyes met hers a moment and flicked to
the wall of video adverts. “I think he led her on, Kay, for tips.
She gives big when you flirt. We all do it. But you know he’d
never go beyond that. He loved you.”
“You flirt with her?”
Sanjay twisted back from her. “C’mon, Kay.”
Karen looked away from him just in time to see the older
bottle blonde cop a feel off Mike, who draped his arm over
her shoulder and followed her down the corridor back to the
main strip.
There was an awkward silence as they stepped out of the
photo booth. The bars were all closed, and the big corridor
echoed with after-hours emptiness. Karen faced the main
strip, the direction Mike had gone. “You said you turned
Grabby Sue down flat, right? Then why didn’t she go after
you?”
Sanjay uncrossed and re-crossed his arms. He looked
down the corridor and then at the floor. He was beautiful
when he looked down like that, his lashes thick and his cheek
foreshortened against the pale wall. “Kay . . . I’m a total
coward. I stayed late or snuck out the front. She never had a
chance to ask me.”
“Sanj,” Karen said. “I need your help. How . . . how much
would you do, to find out for sure?”
Sanjay fell back against the wall. The cheap plastic
squeaked. “The woman’s got the face of a dog.”
“I’m not asking you to close your eyes and think of
England. But you could lead her on.”
“She’d kill me. No, I’m not on the fence on this issue. The
more I think about it, the more I think we should just leave
Grabby Sue alone. If she’s innocent, no loss. If she’s guilty,
Kay, what’s to stop her doing it again?”
“How can such big men be so chicken?”
“Kay!”
“No one is supposed to have any secrets on this damn
station, and suddenly I can’t find out anything. You can help
me, or stop bothering me.”
It was her turn to walk off without looking back.
••••
Karen had to do laundry — there wasn’t much clean in the
apartment. She started to gather up Tony’s clothes, too. She
left them in a pile on the bed, helpless against the smell of
him.
She felt like she was fleeing the apartment, and maybe she
was, pushing her way through the corridors with her basket of
clothes like a shield in front of her. It worked like a shield,
too, warding off three attempts at hallway conversations.
She ran too fast down the stairs and got caught with
vertigo at the bend of the stairs, that seasick feeling when you
turn too quickly from up-spin to down-spin. She gripped the
railing, and a pair of panties tumbled out of the basket. How
she hated this station! She swung the basket into the wall in
frustration.
Then, of course, she had to just pick up the fallen laundry
and continue. What else was there to do?
Ironic that this was the place her mother talked about
fleeing to. She thought of Earth, of her parents’ origins, as a
mythic and glorious place. Her own world was bounded in
plastic and titanium. She had paced every inch of it by the
time she was eleven, including sneaking into restricted areas.
There was nothing to discover, and she breathed in the same
air her parents had breathed out.
She knew every permanent resident on the station — if not
by name, by face. She felt like she’d talked to all of them that
week, looking for some clue as to what had happened that
night when Tony hadn’t come home.
Tammy, the cop she knew best, said, “Corporate only
wants closed cases. We can’t rock the boat. But we’re
looking, Kay. We do care, you know.”
So there was that.
Karen sat watching the washing machine when Judy burst
in. Her face was as livid as Jupiter himself. “Why are you
asking people about Joey? You think he did it?”
There was that legendary lack of privacy. Karen kept her
eyes on the progress bar over the washing machine. “He was
smuggling food for Tony, and I don’t think Tony had any way
of paying for it.”
Judy slapped her, hard and sudden. “How dare you! Joey
loves you like a sister! And you!”
Judy’s lips trembled, unable to form words. She turned
and ran out of the laundromat. Karen touched her stinging
cheek and wondered if there was any point to anything,
anymore.
••••
“You were right, I’m a chicken, Kay; I admit that, okay?
Some people never get off this station because life catches up
with them. Me, I never tried, you know?”
Sanjay leaned against the door to her compartment,
picking at his cuticles. His eyes flashed up, just once, a curtain
of shy lashes descending again. “So I decided, for Tony, this I
would do, because I was so convinced, Kay. I thought I knew
it so clearly. She was always so mean, and ugly, and I thought
that made her the perfect jealous fan, you know? But she
ain’t. I mean, if she was . . . look, I did it, I went out the back,
knew she’d run into me. She’s had her eye on me, you know?
She took me back to her hotel room, but I couldn’t go
through with it. She cried, Kay. She just cried. She’s a sad,
lonely woman who really likes wrestling. That’s all. I’m sorry,
this whole thing was in my head, I guess. Tony . . . Tony
wasn’t no angel, Kay. Whoever did for him, well, they
probably had a reason. I just hoped it was a romantic reason, I
guess.”
Karen set the last clean shirt in her dresser and closed it.
“All right,” she said. “I’m going to confront Joey.”
Sanjay’s answer was a liquid expression, pleading and
worry. She wrapped her arms around him and let her head
rest against the hard, flat plane of his chest. “Sanj, I love you.
Be near a phone for me, okay?”
He hugged her back. “I still think you’re wrong. Joey and
Tony were close.”
“I know. I used to babysit him. Relax.” She squeezed him
once more and gently ushered him out into the hall.
••••
Karen had a shiv — most people did on the station. It was
a natural artifact of having to import everything. (The joke
was the only exports from Jupiter station were gases and
idiots.) A good kitchen knife wouldn’t be worth the shipping
expense. So she had made her own. Like Joey had.
Karen was unreasonably proud of her homemade knife. It
had a little notch for snipping threads and a comfortable
handle formed from quick-foam.
She carried it by her thigh as she walked to the Vaughns’
apartment. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say, but she
knew she wanted to have her knife there for the conversation.
Joey met her at the head of the corridor. He’d been
running — had probably seen her on the security monitor.
“Karen.” He caught his breath.
“Joey, I want to talk to you.”
“Yeah, I want to talk to you, too.” He shifted nervously.
“Come with me.” He turned.
His narrow back made her think of violence, but she kept
cool and followed. “How much money did Tony owe you?”
Joey walked in silence a while, and Karen thought he
wasn’t going to answer, until he said, “Little over a grand.”
“You let a wrestler work up over a grand in credit? Are
you stupid?”
Joey glared at her over his shoulder. “He said he had a
new way to get money. Something sure.”
Karen wondered if that way was Grabby Sue. They were
walking very fast, now, and she had to almost jog to keep up.
“Where are we going?”
“Here.” Joey looked back, then in front of them, and then
shoved Karen toward the wall.
It was an airlock — one of the small emergency ones, and
the interior door was open. Karen had all of a second of
horror to realize what Joey planned. She dropped low and
struck at him with her elbow, but he was stronger and she was
over the threshold. She scrabbled at rubber and metal with
her fingernails and twisted, jamming her knife into Joey’s
thigh.
He howled, and let up just enough for her to crawl over
him, back to the corridor-side of things. He looked up at her
in betrayal — wasn’t that ironic — both his hands clasped
over the spreading blood on his trouser-leg.
She yanked her knife from his leg and held it to his neck.
“You’re so stupid, Joey. They monitor all the airlocks. You
think they’d let you slide again?”
“It was an accident, Karen. An accident.”
“Oh, now you want to talk.”
“I only wanted to get him to pay up. I swear! But we were
on the stairs, and he started fighting, and you know how it is
when you turn from up-spin to down-spin . . . Karen, please
don’t kill me.”
“Trying to push me out an airlock wasn’t an accident.” She
pressed the knife closer to his throat. She had her knee on his
chest, pressing him down. They were in the airlock door, and
dimly she became aware that the alarms were sounding. Cold
as yesterday’s coffee, she felt Joey’s life in her hands. She
could kill him. He deserved it. And the cops would just cover
it up again.
“Please, Karen. I didn’t want to. You know I didn’t. I’m
just so scared. If anyone found out, everyone would find out.
How could I live here? Trapped with what I’d done and my
mom and everyone?”
“Be quiet,” Karen said. She noticed the blood starting to
seep around the knife while Joey panted under her. His face
was white as a moon. There were feet rushing toward them in
the corridor, and she knew this was her moment, her decision,
and the anger and hatred all evaporated into cold, calm
thoughts.
She stood up, wiped her knife, and put it into her pocket.
She didn’t hear the words she said to the station cop —
something about a misunderstanding — the things you say in
these situations. They let her walk toward home. She didn’t
acknowledge any of the people whose faces passed her. She
was cold and empty inside, like space.
A hand closed on her arm, and she turned to see Joey
standing next to her. The cut on his neck didn’t look so bad.
“Karen,” he said, and his mouth opened and closed again,
working on words he couldn’t quite get out.
They walked together to the big windows on the Strip. It
was convenient. They looked at Jupiter instead of each other.
At last, Karen spoke. “All Tony wanted was to get off this
station. Well, he didn’t make it. And I’m old enough and
smart enough to know I’m not gonna make it, either. Neither
are you.”
“I know that,” he said, in a voice like breaking glass.
The silence said more than either of them could about the
futility of their situation. They had to live together, in one tin
can, with an eye on every airlock and their hands on their
shivs.
“Get me some carbs,” Karen said. “I’m going to work at
the Wrestlerama.” Joey started to speak and she cut him off.
“Don’t say a damned thing, Joseph Vaughn, while I’m still
deciding what to do with you.”
“Okay,” he said, and nodded.
They spent a long time together, staring at Jupiter’s slowly
unfurling banners of cloud. There was nothing else to say.
© 2014 by Marie Vibbert.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marie Vibbert joined her Cleveland-based writing workshop when she was
sixteen. They gave her a teddy bear to hold for her first critique. Today she still
attends meetings, and is an IT professional and a lineman for the Cleveland
Fusion women’s tackle football team. She lives with her very supportive
husband, Brian, whom she married in 2001.
To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight.
The Puzzle
Zoran Živković
Translated from the Serbian by Alice Copple-Tošić
Mr. Adam only started to paint late in life, after his
retirement. It happened quite unexpectedly. For the first sixtyfive years of his life he had never shown any predisposition
towards painting, for which he had neither talent nor interest.
The arts in general attracted him very little.
The only exception might have been music, although he
didn’t really enjoy it. Sometimes he would find a radio station
devoted mainly to music and leave it on low, just enough to
dispel the silence that surrounded him during his long, dreary
hours at work. It didn’t matter what sort of music was being
played; almost any would serve his purpose equally well,
although he preferred instrumentals since singing distracted
him. All he did at home was sleep, and often not even that, so
there was little opportunity for anything else.
Retirement brought Mr. Adam an abundance of empty
hours which he had to fill. Experience gained at work had
taught him that whenever he had to wait an indeterminate
time for something, he had to impose obligations upon
himself, and then discharge them doggedly, regardless of how
unusual they might seem. This at least gave a semblance of
meaning to everything. And one could not live without some
meaning, however illusory.
He set himself one obligation for every day of the week.
On Sunday he cooked, something he had never done before.
He bought the biggest cookbook he could find in the
bookstore and set himself to prepare every dish in it, in
alphabetical order. The uncertainty of how far he dared hope
to get at this tempo did not disturb him. He was aware that he
would require extreme longevity to reach the end of the book,
but that was of no importance to him.
He followed the instructions for each recipe to the letter,
and the only trouble he encountered was when they were not
specific enough, but allowed the cook to use his own
judgment or taste. He did not like everything he cooked, but
that did not bother him greatly. He ate his culinary creations
down to the last spoonful, throwing nothing away. This was
almost a matter of honour to him. Sometimes, when the
recipe was intended for several people, he ate the same food
the whole week through.
On Monday Mr. Adam rode his bicycle. This was also a
new departure. He learned how to ride easily and quite
rapidly, despite his advanced age. He was not deterred by bad
weather, though he would dress accordingly. The only trouble
he had was when the rain spattered his glasses, unpleasantly
fogging his vision. He preferred to ride without glasses in a
downpour, though that rendered his vision equally foggy.
He always took the same route, each time increasing the
distance a little. He tried to conserve his energy so he had
enough left to go back by bike. He was only forced to return
by other means of transport on the few occasions when there
was a sudden turn in the weather, or he was overcome by
fatigue. His conscience always plagued him when he gave up
like that.
Unlike cooking, cycling had its limits. The route he took
never actually ended, since it connected to many others, but
even if he were to ride the whole day without stopping, which
was not very likely, at midnight he would be required to stop.
Tuesday was not for bike riding, but imposed its own
obligation.
While still employed, he had read very little except
professional journals. Not because there was no
opportunity — many of his colleagues read for pleasure to
pass the time at work — but because it seemed to him a sign
of insufficient dedication to the job. Of course, his work
would not have suffered for it, particularly since computers
had taken over the bulk of his responsibilities. Now he
decided to make up at least partially for this lapse. He became
a member of the town library and went there every Tuesday.
He entered as soon as it opened and stayed until it closed,
only taking a short break early in the afternoon to eat
something.
His initial subject was science fiction. This was a natural
choice, but Mr. Adam soon gave it up. What he read about
first contact seemed unsophisticated for the most part, often
to the point of inanity — pulled out of thin air, at best. The
number of writers demonstrating any knowledge of the real
state of things was quite small, though such knowledge was
easy enough to obtain. Disappointed, he was briefly tempted
to abandon reading entirely. But giving up in the face of
adversity was not in his nature, and besides, he had paid his
dues a year in advance. Finally, were he to stop going to the
library he would have to think up a new obligation for
Tuesday, and that prospect did not please him at all.
He found a solution to this problem, using the same means
he had often resorted to at work. Whenever his search in one
area drew a blank, he simply broadened his field of vision.
Not knowing what else to choose, this time he broadened the
field to the farthest limit, like suddenly taking the whole sky
instead of one small sector. Instead of science fiction he chose
literature in its entirety, but as this turned out to be far greater
even than the cookbook, he had no idea at first where to
begin.
The main catalogue was indexed by author, and he briefly
considered adhering to that order. But then he thought again,
and concluded that this would not be a satisfactory approach.
He spent some time at the library computer, classifying titles
by publication date, and finally obtained a list of books from
the oldest to the most recent. The scale of this list did not
discourage him at all — he had become accustomed to such
challenges long ago. He started to read steadily, without
rushing, as if all the time in the world lay before him.
On Wednesdays Mr. Adam went to the zoo. The middle of
the week was the right time to visit, when there were far
fewer visitors than at weekends. Moreover, if the weather was
bad, he would often see no one in the vicinity for long
periods. That suited him best. Ideally he would have liked to
be completely alone at the zoo, but of course, he was never
able to count on that.
Mr. Adam did not behave like the ordinary sort of visitor,
who just wanders around enjoying himself. First he found out
which animals were housed in the zoo, then he drew up a
schedule of visits. Each animal was allotted a whole day. Few
of the zoo’s inhabitants were worthy of such dedication, but
the systematic patience with which Mr. Adam approached
everything did not allow him to act otherwise.
He would arrive in the morning at the chosen cage and sit
in front of it. When there was no bench, he brought a small
folding chair from home. He would stay in that spot until
nightfall, doing nothing but observing the animal carefully
through the bars. He did not know exactly what to expect.
Certainly nothing special. What he hoped for was at least a
certain reaction to his presence, just an awareness that he was
there, perhaps a glance that deliberately crossed his own.
Anything short of complete disregard.
It was actually quite easy to attract the animals’ attention
by offering them food, but Mr. Adam never did. It would be a
form of cheating, and he would brook no cheating. Therefore
he took no food with him, not even for himself. When he left
the zoo on a Wednesday evening, he was often faint with
hunger.
On Thursdays Mr. Adam visited churches. Not being
religious, he had never been to such places before, and was
surprised to learn that the town held sixteen of them.
Sometimes he had to walk the whole day in order to take
them all in. He could have used public transport, of course,
which would have sped things up considerably, but that would
have run contrary to Mr. Adam’s basic intention. His Monday
bike ride was by no means sufficient to keep him in shape,
and his need for additional exercise was the more acute after
spending all Wednesday sitting still at the zoo. What could be
more appropriate than a seriously long walk?
In order to avoid the tedium of repeating the same walk
every time, Mr. Adam took a different route every Thursday.
This was not done at random; he had worked out a precise
plan. He approached it as a simple problem in combinatorial
mathematics. There were far more ways of ordering the
sixteen points than he imagined he would ever need. The
itineraries greatly varied in length, because the algorithm he
had chosen took no account of the distance between the
churches. He bore up stoically under this inconsiderate
mathematical dictate, consoling himself with the reflection
that he found longer walks more enjoyable.
Mr. Adam could have visited points other than churches.
In principle, the direction of his walks was immaterial to him,
so he could not have explained why he had made churches his
choice. Luckily, no one ever asked him, which saved him
from embarrassment. On reaching a church he began by
walking all the way round it, examining it inquisitively, as if
seeing it for the first time. Then he would take a little rest,
sitting in the churchyard if there was one, before continuing
on his way.
In time he got to know the exteriors of all sixteen churches
quite well, and came to regard himself as a real expert in this
field. He believed that he alone had noted some of the details.
For example, there was always an even number of birds’ nests
under the eaves. Who knows why? He rarely felt any urge to
examine the churches’ interiors. He was only tempted to enter
on two or three occasions, but he always refrained, and here
again he was unable to say what it was that had dissuaded
him.
Friday was his day to go to the movies. Mr. Adam would
always watch four films in a row, from mid-afternoon to late
in the evening. This was by any standard too much. After the
second film his impressions were already becoming confused,
and by the end of the fourth he would feel truly exhausted, as
though he had been working at some strenuous task, rather
than sitting in a comfortable seat the whole time. But this did
not prompt him to decrease the number of films.
Mr. Adam was not the least bit selective regarding the
repertoire. He did not have a favourite film genre, although he
felt most relaxed watching romantic comedies. Action films
left him rather indifferent, and although they were loud as a
rule, he even managed to doze off to them, particularly if they
were the last of that day’s four. He found thrillers
unconvincing, although not as much as most science fiction
films. Those sometimes appeared outrageously idiotic; he
could never understand why filmgoers got so excited about
them. Overly erotic scenes embarrassed him, but fortunately
that was not noticeable in the dark.
Although it might have appeared that Mr. Adam chose his
films at random, this was not at all the case. He bought his
tickets with great care, concentrating on films that were
expected to sell out. Just before the lights dimmed, Mr. Adam
would stand up for a moment and look all around. He would
feel annoyed should he spot any empty seats. Those empty
places would bother him until the end of the show. He only
felt at ease in a full house. That alone could temporarily
lighten the burden of solitude, which, like some sinister
inheritance, hung over from his former work.
Mr. Adam passed Saturday in the park. He needed to
spend time outside in the fresh air after so many hours
indoors the previous day. Late in the morning he would go to
the large city park with its pond in the middle, and head for
the bench where he always sat. On the rare occasions when
someone was already sitting in the place he considered his
own, on the far left-hand end of the bench next to the
wrought iron armrest, Mr. Adam would wait unobtrusively to
one side for the bench to come free. It did not bother him if
the remainder of the bench was occupied, though he avoided
entering into conversation with strangers.
On warm, sunny days he would stay there until dusk,
doing nothing but idly watching what was happening around
him: people strolling by, dogs chasing each other frantically
on the grass, leaves rustling in the surrounding treetops, birds
gliding silently through the blue sky, sudden ripples on the
smooth surface of the pond. Until recently this idleness would
have seemed an extremely foolish waste of time. Now,
however, the tables were turned. He saw everything which
had gone before as a waste of time. All his previous life. All
the years, all the effort, all the hopes.
That was not how it had seemed, at any rate not in the
beginning. Not in the least. It was a pioneering time of great
excitement. Great expectations. And great naïveté. They
thought that contact was only a matter of time. The cosmos
was teeming with life, messages were streaming between
worlds, all that was needed was to prick up our electronic ears
to hear them. Without this optimistic certainty, the money for
the first projects would never have been found — investments
that could pay off stupendously as soon as the inexhaustible
wealth of knowledge started to pour in from the stars.
Mr. Adam had fond memories of those early days, despite
later disappointments. There was something romantic in the
anticipation that overcame him whenever he put on his
earphones. He spent countless hours listening to the
cacophony streaming from the skies, straining to recognize
some sort of orderly system in it. Like all his colleagues, he
secretly hoped that he would be the first to hear the signal.
But as time passed and nothing arrived except inarticulate
noise, the true proportions of the task started to emerge. Since
listening to the closest star systems produced no results, there
was a shift to more distant ones, but each new step brought a
substantial increase in their number. The initial enthusiasm
foundered when it was established that more than one
generation might be needed to complete the task. This led
many people to leave the search for extraterrestrial life in
favour of more promising areas, and financiers were less and
less willing to continue investing in something so vague and
unreliable.
Fortunately, at that point computers were introduced, with
their numerous advantages over people: They are
incomparably faster, more effective and dependable, and do
not quickly lose heart in the face of failure. Even so, Mr.
Adam did not look upon their use with total approval.
Computers reduced people to commonplace assistants whose
sole purpose was to serve them. What had begun as a noble
project for the chosen few degenerated into a routine
technical duty that almost anyone could perform — mere
waiting, leached of any true excitement. The last remnants of
romance vanished without a trace.
After several decades had passed, and the computers had
meticulously checked many millions of sun systems but
detected no sign of extraterrestrial intelligence, Mr. Adam felt
a certain gloomy exultation. His feelings were paradoxical,
because only under opposite circumstances, with contact
made, would he be able to say that his life’s work had
meaning. On the other hand, contact achieved with the
assistance of computers would to him be some sort of
injustice, almost an anticlimax.
Despite the silence of the cosmos, the search programs
were not discontinued. Although large, the number of
investigated stars was trifling compared to the total number of
suns in the galaxy. In principle, one of the giant radio
telescopes could start receiving the long-awaited message
from the very next spot in the sky. However, as his retirement
approached, Mr. Adam became more and more skeptical in
this regard.
It was not just the realization that the prospects of finding
Others within his lifetime were negligible; he could somehow
reconcile himself to that if he was sure they were on the right
track. But the suspicion started to trouble him that the reason
for failure lay not in the fact that only a tiny part of the sky
had been investigated, rather in something much more
fundamental. What if some of the basic assumptions upon
which the entire project was founded were wrong?
Maybe there was no one out there after all. Maybe sentient
beings were so unlikely that they had only appeared in one
place. Everyone was convinced of the opposite, but this
conviction had no solid basis. Behind it might lie an
unwillingness to accept the terrifying fact of cosmic solitude.
As the years passed, Mr. Adam started to feel anxious under
the unbounded wasteland. The starry sky pressed heavily
upon him at times. The strange need arose for some sort of
shelter, for consolation.
Suppose extraterrestrials exist and are communicating, but
we don’t recognize it? What if they were doing it in some
other way, and not the way we presumed? Mr. Adam had
never asked himself this question seriously. Whenever it stole
quietly into his consciousness, he would expel it hurriedly,
with a sense of hostility and guilt, as any true believer rejects a
heretical thought. All his sober, scientific being opposed it.
Similar inconsistencies had prevented him from coming to like
science fiction.
He still considered this the proper approach, despite all the
unfulfilled hopes in the life that yawned behind him. And at
the end of the day, what other means besides electromagnetic
waves could be used to communicate between the stars? With
regard to his past, the daily obligations he set himself helped
put it out of his mind. Perhaps these obligations really were
meaningless, but the problem of meaning no longer plagued
him. He enjoyed everything he was doing now, even idling in
the park each Saturday, and that pleasure was all that
mattered. In any case, he was not just idly passing the time.
He had recently started to paint.
Music had been the catalyst. Upon reaching the park one
Saturday at the beginning of summer, he found that a
bandstand had been erected near his bench. It had not been
there seven days previously, nor had anything heralded its
advent. This had irritated Mr. Adam to no end. Although
pretty, with its slender columns and domed roof, he
considered it an unconscionable desecration of the
environment. In addition, the bandstand largely blocked his
view of the pond, and he seriously considered looking for
another place to sit. But habit won out and he stayed on his
bench, scornfully endeavouring to disregard the interloper.
This ceased to be possible when musicians climbed onto
the bandstand at noon. They were formally dressed and the
conductor even wore a tuxedo with a large white flower in his
lapel. They sat on chairs placed in a circle and spent some
time tuning their instruments. Mr. Adam found this
dissonance an additional nuisance. It not only sounded awful
but started to attract park visitors, and rather a large crowd
soon formed. A crowd of people, however, was the last thing
Mr. Adam wanted after his Friday spent in a packed movie
theatre.
He would have to move after all. He couldn’t stand this.
But just as he started to rise, the music began. He stopped
halfway, transfixed, then slowly sat down again on the bench.
All at once he was no longer surrounded by too many people,
his bad mood disappeared, and nothing existed beyond the
music. He stared fixedly at the bandstand, immobile, listening
intently.
This paralysis did not last long. He came out of it suddenly
and began feverishly rummaging through his jacket pockets. It
seemed to take forever to find what he was after. He always
carried a notebook and pen with him. Since retirement he had
not written anything in it, but he carried it with him
nonetheless. He opened it hurriedly and started to draw. He
dared not miss a thing.
He drew short, brusque lines, just like a stenographer
taking rapid dictation. The pages in the notebook were small,
so he filled them quickly. He was afraid he would run out of
pages before the music ended, but fortunately the notebook
was thick enough. Even so, he made the last drawing on the
brown cardboard covers. Had the music lasted a moment
longer, there would not have been enough room. The very
thought suddenly filled him with horror.
The listeners’ echoing applause after the last chords had
the effect of an alarm clock suddenly going off. Mr. Adam
jerked like one waking from restless sleep; he turned this way
and that in confusion for several moments as if trying to
figure out where he was. He feared he would arouse the
suspicion of those around him, but no one paid any attention
to the old man on the end of the bench, engrossed in his
writing. All eyes were turned toward the conductor who was
bowing theatrically.
Mr. Adam stood up and walked away unobtrusively. There
was no reason to stay there any longer. During his extensive
walks between churches he had come to know the town quite
well, so he knew exactly where to find a shop with painting
supplies. There might have been one closer, but he would
waste more time inquiring after and finding it than it took to
reach the other. The salesman noted with a smile that he was
clearly preparing a serious project, judging by the quantity of
materials he had purchased. Mr. Adam returned the smile,
mumbled something vague, then hurried home.
Unskilled at painting, he had trouble setting up the easel
properly, but then got down to work. He opened the notebook
and began carefully transferring onto the canvas what he had
written, as if neatly copying over rough notes taken in a hurry.
He worked slowly but with passion, unaware of the passage
of time. When he had finished it was already quite dark.
He did not know what he had painted. Viewed from up
close it looked just like random strokes of paint. He was
convinced, however, that not a single stroke of the brush had
been accidental, that everything was exactly as the music
ordered, in spite of his inexperience. When he moved back
from the painting a bit, he thought he could make out part of
a larger shape, but he wasn’t sure. It suddenly crossed his
mind that before him was just one piece of some larger
puzzle. He thought briefly about what to do with the canvas,
and then he hung it unframed on one of the bare walls.
The next Saturday he went to the park well prepared. He
no longer needed the notebook as intermediary. He sat at his
usual place on the bench and set up the easel in front of him,
holding paintbrush and palette. In different circumstances he
would have abhorred the inquisitive peering of bystanders,
although a painter at work was certainly not unusual in the
park. Now, however, he paid no attention, concentrating
exclusively on the impending concert.
This time he painted rapidly. It lasted just as long as the
music. When the applause resounded, Mr. Adam, panting and
sweaty, had just finished covering the last white space with
paint. Before the crowd dispersed, several pairs of eyes
glanced at the painting, perplexed, since it did not depict
anything recognizable. A short, elderly woman dressed in a
bright orange dress stopped by the bench for a moment. She
took an enormous pair of glasses out of her handbag and
examined first the painting and then the painter. “Very nice,”
she said with a smile. She put her glasses back in her
handbag, nodded in brief approval and walked away.
As a man unaccustomed to compliments, Mr. Adam felt ill
at ease. The woman’s words were by no means unpleasant,
quite the contrary, yet he was still glad she had not lingered.
He would have been in the awkward situation of having to say
something in reply. He waited a while for the elderly woman
to move on, then collected his equipment and hurried home.
He could have stayed in the park longer — his work was
completed and the day was very fine — but curiosity got the
better of him.
He put the new canvas next to the other one on the wall.
He had no expectations and thus was not very disappointed
when it turned out they had no points in common. For a
moment, though, he thought he could make out some part of
a greater whole in the second painting, too, but here again it
was most likely just his imagination. In the absence of any
recognizable form, he thought he saw something that was not
actually there. This was a trap he had learned to avoid back in
the early period, before computers, while listening to the stars
with his own ears. If you’re expecting a horseman, you have
to be very careful not to mistake your heartbeat for the beat of
a horse’s hoofs.
The next fourteen Saturdays, all summer long, each time
Mr. Adam returned from the park he had one more painting
to place on the wall next to the others. In time, his brisk,
almost frenetic painting became something of an attraction at
the park, and a good many music-lovers would stand around
to watch him work. He paid no attention to them. At the end
of the music and painting he would quickly glance through
those gathered around him, but never once did he catch sight
of the slight figure in orange.
When Mr. Adam reached the park on the first Saturday in
September, carrying his painting materials as usual, a surprise
awaited him. The bandstand had disappeared as unexpectedly
as it had arrived. It had been removed very carefully, leaving
no trace behind — not even trampled grass. He darted in
bewilderment around the spot where the little structure had
stood, overcome by completely opposite feelings from those
which had assailed him in the beginning. Now he missed the
bandstand, and the environment seemed somehow naked and
incomplete without it. For a moment he considered inquiring
as to why it was no longer there, maybe even lodging a
complaint, but he did not know where this should be done
and in the end dropped the idea.
He returned home in a dejected mood and sat in the
armchair facing the wall covered with paintings. The canvases
formed a large square: four paintings in each of four rows. He
stayed there for seven full days, only leaving the armchair to
take a quick bite or go to the bathroom. He even slept there in
his clothes, but the brief, restless, erratic sleep did not refresh
him. He changed the distribution of the paintings from time to
time. During that long week filled with almost constant
pouring rain, he tried all possible combinations of the sixteen
canvases.
On the evening of the following Saturday he got up from
the armchair, stretched, and went to the window. Rays from
the low sun in the western sky were cutting a path through
patchy clouds, just like gleaming swords. He stayed there a
while looking absently at the flickering play of light. Then he
went to the wall and took down the paintings. He couldn’t
carry them all at once and had to make two trips to the
basement, where he left them.
When he came up from the basement the second time, he
went into the kitchen, took the large cookbook down from the
shelf, opened it at the bookmark and became immersed in
reading the recipe that was next in line. The following day
was Sunday, his cooking day.
© 2001 by Zoran Živković.
Originally published in Interzone.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Zoran Živković (pronounced ZHEEV-ko-vitch) was born in Belgrade, former
Yugoslavia, in 1948. In 1973, he graduated from the Department of General
Literature with the theory of literature, Faculty of Philology of the University
of Belgrade; he received his master’s degree in 1979 and his doctorate in 1982
from the same school. In 2007, Živković was made a professor in the Faculty
of Philology at his alma mater, the University of Belgrade, where he now
teaches Creative Writing. The author of twenty books of fiction and eight
books of nonfiction, Živković continues to push the boundaries of the strange
and surreal. His writing belongs to the middle European fantastika tradition,
and shares much in common with such masters as Mikhail Bulgakov, Franz
Kafka, and Stanislaw Lem.
To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight.
FANTASY
Water Off a Black Dog’s Back
Kelly Link
“Tell me which you could sooner do without, love or
water.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, could you live without love, or could you live
without water?”
“Why can’t I have both?”
••••
Rachel Rook took Carroll home to meet her parents two
months after she first slept with him. For a generous girl, a
girl who took off her clothes with abandon, she was
remarkably close-mouthed about some things. In two months
Carroll had learned that her parents lived on a farm several
miles outside of town; that they sold strawberries in summer,
and Christmas trees in the winter. He knew that they never
left the farm; instead, the world came to them in the shape of
weekend picnickers and drive-by tourists.
“Do you think your parents will like me?” he said. He had
spent the afternoon preparing for this visit as carefully as if he
were preparing for an exam. He had gotten his hair cut,
trimmed his nails, washed his neck and behind his ears. The
outfit he had chosen, khaki pants and a blue button-down
shirt — no tie — lay neatly folded on the bed. He stood
before Rachel in his plain white underwear and white socks,
gazing at her as if she were a mirror.
“No,” she said. It was the first time she had been to his
apartment, and she stood square in the center of his bedroom,
her arms folded against her body as if she was afraid to sit
down, to touch something.
“Why?”
“My father will like you,” she said. “But he likes everyone.
My mother’s more particular — she thinks that you lack a
serious nature.”
Carroll put on his pants, admiring the crease. “So you’ve
talked to her about me.”
“Yes.”
“But you haven’t talked about her to me.”
“No.”
“Are you ashamed of her?”
Rachel snorted. Then she sighed in a way that seemed to
suggest she was regretting her decision to take him home.
“You’re ashamed of me,” he guessed, and Rachel kissed him
and smiled and didn’t say anything.
••••
Rachel still lived on her parents’ farm, which made it all
the more remarkable that she had kept Carroll and her parents
apart for so long. It suggested a talent for daily organization
that filled Carroll’s heart with admiration and lust. She was
nineteen, two years younger than Carroll; she was a student at
Jellicoh College and every weekday she rose at seven and
biked four miles into town, and then back again on her bike,
four miles uphill to the farm.
Carroll met Rachel in the Jellicoh College library, where he
had a part-time job. He sat at the checkout desk, stamping
books and reading Tristram Shandy for a graduate class; he
was almost asleep when someone said, “Excuse me.”
He looked up. The girl who stood before the tall desk was
redheaded. Sunlight streaming in through a high window
opposite her lit up the fine hairs on her arm, the embroidered
flowers on the collar of her white shirt. The sunlight turned
her hair to fire and Carroll found it difficult to look directly at
her. “Can I help you?” he said.
She placed a shredded rectangle on the desk, and Carroll
picked it up between his thumb and forefinger. Pages hung in
tatters from the sodden blue spine. Title, binding, and covers
had been gnawed away. “I need to pay for a damaged book,”
she said.
“What happened? Did your dog eat it?” he said, making a
joke.
“Yes,” she said, and smiled.
“What’s your name?” Carroll said. Already, he thought he
might be in love.
••••
The farmhouse where Rachel lived had a wrap-around
porch like an apron. It had been built on a hill, and looked
down a long green slope of Christmas trees towards the town
and Jellicoh College. It looked old-fashioned and a little
forlorn.
On one side of the house was a small barn, and behind the
barn was an oval pond, dark and fringed with pine trees. It
winked in the twilight like a glossy, lidless eye. The sun was
rolling down the grassy rim of the hill towards the pond, and
the exaggerated shadows of Christmas trees, long and pointed
as witches’ hats, stitched black triangles across the purple-grey
lawn. House, barn, and hill were luminous in the fleet purple
light.
Carroll parked the car in front of the barn and went
around to Rachel’s side to hand her out. A muffled, ferocious
breathing emanated from the barn, and the doors shuddered
as if something inside was hurling itself repeatedly towards
them, through the dark and airless space. There was a sour
animal smell. “What’s in there?” Carroll asked.
“The dogs,” Rachel said. “They aren’t allowed in the
house and they don’t like to be separated from my mother.”
“I like dogs,” Carroll said.
••••
There was a man sitting on the porch. He stood up as they
approached the house and came forward to meet them. He
was of medium build, and had pink-brown hair like his
daughter. Rachel said, “Daddy, this is Carroll Murtaugh.
Carroll, this is my daddy.”
Mr. Rook had no nose. He shook hands with Carroll. His
hand was warm and dry, flesh and blood. Carroll tried not to
stare at Mr. Rook’s face.
In actual fact, Rachel’s father did have a nose, which was
carved out of what appeared to be pine. The nostrils of the
nose were flared slightly, as if Mr. Rook were smelling
something pleasant. Copper wire ran through the bridge of the
nose, attaching it to the frame of a pair of glasses; it nestled,
delicate as a sleeping mouse, between the two lenses.
“Nice to meet you, Carroll,” he said. “I understand that
you’re a librarian down at the college. You like books, do
you?” His voice was deep and sonorous, as if he were
speaking out of a well: Carroll was later to discover that Mr.
Rook’s voice changed slightly, depending on which nose he
wore.
“Yes, sir,” Carroll said. Just to be sure, he looked back at
Rachel. As he had thought, her nose was unmistakably the
genuine article. He shot her a second accusatory glance. Why
didn’t you tell me? She shrugged.
Mr. Rook said, “I don’t have anything against books
myself. But my wife can’t stand ‘em. Nearly broke her heart
when Rachel decided to go to college.” Rachel stuck out her
lower lip. “Why don’t you give your mother a hand, Rachel,
setting the table, while Carroll and I get to know each other?”
“All right,” Rachel said, and went into the house.
Mr. Rook sat down on the porch steps and Carroll sat
down with him. “She’s a beautiful girl,” Mr. Rook said. “Just
like her mother.”
“Yes sir,” Carroll said. “Beautiful.” He stared straight
ahead and spoke forcefully, as if he had not noticed that he
was talking to a man with a wooden nose.
“You probably think it’s odd, don’t you, a girl her age, still
living at home.”
Carroll shrugged. “She seems attached to both of you. You
grow Christmas trees, sir?”
“Strawberries, too,” Mr. Rook said. “It’s a funny thing
about strawberries and pine trees. People will pay you to let
them dig up their own. They do all the work and then they
pay you for it. They say the strawberries taste better that way,
and they may be right. Myself, I can’t taste much anyway.”
Carroll leaned back against the porch rail and listened to
Mr. Rook speak. He sneaked sideways looks at Mr. Rook’s
profile. From a few feet away, in the dim cast of the porch
light, the nose had a homely, thoughtful bump to it: It was a
philosopher’s nose, a questing nose. White moths large as
Carroll’s hand pinwheeled around the porch light. They threw
out tiny halos of dark and stirred up breaths of air with their
wings, coming to rest on the porch screen, folding themselves
into stillness like fans. Moths have no noses either, Carroll
thought.
“I can’t smell the pine trees either,” Mr. Rook said. “I have
to appreciate the irony in that. You’ll have to forgive my wife,
if she seems a bit awkward at first. She’s not used to
strangers.”
Rachel danced out onto the porch. “Dinner’s almost
ready,” she said. “Has Daddy been keeping you entertained?”
“He’s been telling me all about your farm,” Carroll said.
Rachel and her father looked at each other thoughtfully.
“That’s great,” Rachel said. “You know what he’s really dying
to ask, Daddy. Tell him about your collection of noses.”
“Oh, no,” Carroll protested. “I wasn’t wondering at all —
”
But Mr. Rook stood up, dusting off the seat of his pants.
“I’ll go get them down. I almost wore a fancier one tonight,
but it’s so windy tonight, and rather damp. I didn’t trust it not
to rain.” He hurried off into the house.
Carroll leaned over to Rachel. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
he said, looking up at her from the porch rail.
“What?”
“That your father has a wooden nose.”
“He has several noses, but you heard him. It might rain.
Some of them,” she said, “are liable to rust.”
“Why does he have a wooden nose?” Carroll said. He was
whispering.
“A boy named Biederbecke bit it off, in a fight.” The
alliteration evidently pleased her, because she said a little
louder, “Biederbecke bit it off, when you were a boy. Isn’t
that right, Daddy?”
The porch door swung open again, and Mr. Rook said,
“Yes, but I don’t blame him, really I don’t. We were little boys
and I called him a stinking Kraut. That was during the war,
and afterwards he was very sorry. You have to look on the
bright side of things — your mother would never have
noticed me if it hadn’t had been for my nose. That was a fine
nose. I modeled it on Abraham Lincoln’s nose, and carved it
out of black walnut.” He set a dented black tackle box down
next to Carroll, squatting beside it. “Look here.”
The inside of the tackle box was lined with red velvet and
the mild light of the October moon illuminated the noses,
glowing as if a jeweler’s lamp had been turned upon them:
noses made of wood, and beaten copper, tin, and brass. One
seemed to be silver, veined with beads of turquoise. There
were aquiline noses; noses pointed like gothic spires; noses
with nostrils curled up like tiny bird claws. “Who made
these?” Carroll said.
Mr. Rook coughed modestly. “It’s my hobby,” he said.
“Pick one up if you like.”
“Go ahead,” Rachel said to Carroll.
Carroll chose a nose that had been painted over with blue
and pink flowers. It was glassy-smooth and light in his hand,
like a blown eggshell. “It’s beautiful,” he said. “What’s it
made out of?”
“Papier-mâché. There’s one for every day of the week,”
Mr. Rook said.
“What did the . . . original look like?” Carroll asked.
“Hard to remember, really. It wasn’t much of a nose,” Mr.
Rook said. “Before.”
••••
“Back to the question, please. Which do you choose,
water or love?”
“What happens if I choose wrong?”
“You’ll find out, won’t you.”
“Which would you choose?”
“That’s my question, Carroll. You already asked yours.”
“You still haven’t answered me, either. All right, all right,
let me think for a bit.”
••••
Rachel had straight reddish-brown hair that fell precisely to
her shoulders and then stopped. Her eyes were fox-colored,
and she had more small, even teeth than seemed absolutely
necessary to Carroll. She smiled at him, and when she bent
over the tackle box full of noses, Carroll could see the two
wings of her shoulder blades beneath the thin cotton T-shirt,
her vertebrae outlined like a knobby strand of coral. As they
went in to dinner she whispered in his ear, “My mother has a
wooden leg.”
She led him into the kitchen to meet her mother. The air in
the kitchen was hot and moist and little beads of sweat stood
out on Mrs. Rook’s face. Rachel’s mother resembled Rachel
in the way that Mr. Rook’s wooden nose resembled a real
nose, as if someone had hacked Mrs. Rook out of wood or
granite. She had large hands with long, yellowed fingernails,
and all over her black dress were short black dog hairs. “So
you’re a librarian,” she said to Carroll.
“Part-time,” Carroll said. “Yes, ma’am.”
“What do you do the rest of the time?” she said.
“I take classes.”
Mrs. Rook stared at him without blinking. “Are your
parents still alive?”
“My mother is,” Carroll said. “She lives in Florida. She
plays bridge.”
Rachel grabbed Carroll’s arm. “Come on,” she said. “The
food’s getting cold.”
She pulled him into a dining room with dark wood
paneling and a long table set for four people. The long black
hem of Mrs. Rook’s dress hissed along the floor as she pulled
her chair into the table. Carroll sat down next to her. Was it
the right or the left? He tucked his feet under his chair. Both
women were silent and Carroll was silent between them. Mr.
Rook talked instead, filling in the awkward empty pause so
that Carroll was glad that it was his nose and not his tongue
that the Biederbecke boy had bitten off.
How had she lost her leg? Mrs. Rook watched Carroll with
a cold and methodical eye as he ate, and he held Rachel’s
hand under the table for comfort. He was convinced that her
mother knew this and disapproved. He ate his pork and peas,
balancing the peas on the blade of his knife. He hated peas. In
between mouthfuls, he gulped down the pink wine in his
glass. It was sweet and strong and tasted of burnt sugar. “Is
this apple wine?” he asked. “It’s delicious.”
“It’s strawberry wine,” Mr. Rook said, pleased. “Have
more. We make up a batch every year. I can’t taste it myself
but it’s strong stuff.”
Rachel filled Carroll’s empty glass and watched him drain
it instantly. “If you’ve finished, why don’t you let my mother
take you to meet the dogs? You look like you could use some
fresh air. I’ll stay here and help Daddy do the dishes. Go on,”
she said. “Go.”
Mrs. Rook pushed her chair back from the table, pushed
herself out of the chair. “Well, come on,” she said. “I don’t
bite.”
Outside, the moths beat at his face, and he reeled beside
Rachel’s mother on the moony-white gravel, light as a thread
spun out on its spool. She walked quickly, leaning forward a
little as her right foot came down, dragging the left foot
through the small stones.
“What kind of dogs are they?” he said.
“Black ones,” she said.
“What are their names?”
“Flower and Acorn,” she said, and flung open the barn
door. Two Labradors, slippery as black trout in the moonlight,
surged up at Carroll. They thrust their velvet muzzles at him,
uttering angry staccato coughs, their rough breath steaming at
his face. They were the size of small ponies and their paws
left muddy prints on his shirt. Carroll pushed them back
down, and they snapped at his hands.
“Heel,” Mrs. Rook said, and instantly the two dogs went to
her, arranging themselves on either side like bookends.
Against the folds of her skirt, they were nearly invisible, only
their saucer-like eyes flashing wickedly at Carroll.
“Flower’s pregnant,” Mrs. Rook said. “We’ve tried to
breed them before, but it never took. Go for a run, girl. Go
with her, Acorn.”
The dogs loped off, moonlight spilling off their coats like
water. Carroll watched them run; the stale air of the barn
washed over him, and under the bell of Mrs. Rook’s skirt he
pictured the dark wood of the left leg, the white flesh of the
right leg, like a pair of mismatched dice. Mrs. Rook drew in
her breath. She said, “I don’t mind you sleeping with my
daughter but you had better not get her pregnant.”
Carroll said, “No, ma’am.”
“If you give her a bastard, I’ll set the dogs on you,” she
said, and went back towards the house. Carroll scrambled
after her.
••••
On Friday, Carroll was shelving new books on the third
floor. He stood, both arms lifted up to steady a wavering row
of psychology periodicals. Someone paused in the narrow
row, directly behind him, and a small cold hand insinuated
itself into his trousers, slipping under the waistband of his
underwear.
“Rachel?” he said, and the hand squeezed, slowly. He
jumped and the row of books toppled off their shelf, like
dominoes. He bent to pick them up, not looking at her. “I
forgive you,” he said.
“That’s nice,” she said. “For what?”
“For not telling me about your father’s — ” he hesitated,
looking for the word, “ — wound.”
“I thought you handled that very well,” she said. “And I
did tell you about my mother’s leg.”
“I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe you. How did she
lose it?”
“She swims down in the pond. She was walking back up
to the house. She was barefoot. She sliced her foot open on
something. By the time she went to see a doctor, she had
septicemia and her leg had to be amputated just below the
knee. Daddy made her a replacement out of walnut; he said
the prosthesis that the hospital wanted to give her looked
nothing like the leg she’d lost. It has a name carved on it. She
used to tell me that a ghost lived inside it and helped her walk.
I was four years old.” She didn’t look at him as she spoke,
flicking the dust off the spine of a tented book with her long
fingers.
“What was its name?” Carroll asked.
“Ellen,” Rachel said.
••••
Two days after they had first met, Carroll was in the
basement stacks. It was dark in the aisles, the tall shelves
curving towards each other. The lights were controlled by
timers, and went on and off untouched by human hand:
There was the ominous sound of ticking as the timers clicked
off row by row. Puddles of dirty yellow light wavered under
his feet, the floor as slick as water. There was one other
student on this floor, a boy who trod at Carroll’s heels,
breathing heavily.
Rachel was in a back corner, partly hidden by a shelving
cart. “Goddammit, goddammit to hell,” she was saying, as she
flung a book down. “Stupid book, stupid, useless, stupid,
know-nothing books.” She kicked at the book several more
times, and stomped on it for good measure. Then she looked
up and saw Carroll and the boy behind him. “Oh,” she said.
“You again.”
Carroll turned and glared at the boy. “What’s the matter,”
he said. “Haven’t you ever seen a librarian at work?”
The boy fled. “What’s the matter?” Carroll said again.
“Nothing,” Rachel said. “I’m just tired of reading stupid
books about books about books. It’s ten times worse than my
mother ever said.” She looked at him, weighing him up. She
said, “Have you ever made love in a library?”
“Um,” Carroll said. “No.”
Rachel stripped off her woolly sweater, her blue
undershirt. Underneath, her bare flesh burned. The lights
clicked off two rows down, then the row beside Carroll, and
he moved forward to find Rachel before she vanished. Her
body was hot and dry, like a newly extinguished bulb.
Rachel seemed to enjoy making love in the library. The
library officially closed at midnight, and on Tuesdays and
Thursdays when he was the last of the staff to leave, Carroll
left the East Entrance unlocked for Rachel while he made up
a pallet of jackets and sweaters from the Lost and Found.
The first night, he had arranged a makeshift bed in the
aisle between PR878W6B37, Relative Creatures, and
PR878W6B35, Corrupt Relations. In the summer, the stacks
had been much cooler than his un-air-conditioned room. He
had hoped to woo her into his bed by the time the weather
turned, but it was October already. Rachel pulled
PR878W6A9 out to use as a pillow. “I thought you didn’t like
books,” he said, trying to make a joke.
“My mother doesn’t like books,” she said. “Or libraries.
Which is a good thing. You don’t ever have to worry about
her looking for me here.”
When they made love, Rachel kept her eyes closed. Carroll
watched her face, her body rocking beneath him like water.
He closed his eyes, opening them quickly again, hoping to
catch her looking back at him. Did he please her? He pleased
himself, and her breath quickened upon his neck. Her hands
smoothed his body, moving restlessly back and forth, until he
gathered them to himself, biting at her knuckles.
Later he lay prone as she moved over him, her knees
clasping his waist, her narrow feet cupped under the stirrups
of his knees. They lay hinged together and Carroll squinted
his eyes shut to make the Exit sign fuzzy in the darkness. He
imagined that they had just made love in a forest, and the red
glow was a campfire. He imagined they were not on the third
floor of a library, but on the shore of a deep, black lake in the
middle of a stand of tall trees.
“When you were a teenager,” Rachel said, “what was the
worst thing you ever did?”
Carroll thought for a moment. “When I was a teenager,”
he said, “I used to go into my room every day after school
and masturbate. And my dog Sunny used to stand outside the
door and whine. I’d come in a handful of Kleenex, and
afterward I never knew what to do with them. If I threw them
in the wastebasket, my mother might notice them piling up. If
I dropped them under the bed, then Sunny would sneak in
later and eat them. It was a revolting dilemma, and every day I
swore I wouldn’t ever do it again.”
“That’s disgusting, Carroll.”
Carroll was constantly amazed at the things he told Rachel,
as if love was some sort of hook she used to drag secrets out
of him, things that he had forgotten until she asked for them.
“Your turn,” he said.
Rachel curled herself against him. “Well, when I was little,
and I did something bad, my mother used to take off her
wooden leg and spank me with it. When I got older, and
started being asked out on dates, she would forbid me. She
actually said I forbid you to go, just like a Victorian novel. I
would wait until she took her bath after dinner, and steal her
leg and hide it. And I would stay out as late as I wanted.
When I got home, she was always sitting at the kitchen table,
with the leg strapped back on. She always found it before I
got home, but I always stayed away as long as I could. I never
came home before I had to.
“When I was little I hated her leg. It was like her other
child, the obedient daughter. I was the one she had to spank. I
thought the leg told her when I was bad, and I could feel it
gloating whenever she punished me. I hid it from her in
closets, or in the belly of the grandfather clock. Once I buried
it out in the strawberry field because I knew it hated the dark:
It was scared of the dark, like me.”
Carroll eased away from her, rolling over on his stomach.
The whole time she had been talking, her voice had been
calm, her breath tickling his throat. Telling her about Sunny,
the semen-eating dog, he had sprouted a cheerful little
erection. Listening to her, it had melted away, and his balls
had crept up his goose-pimpled thighs.
Somewhere a timer clicked and a light turned off. “Let’s
make love again,” she said, and seized him in her hand. He
nearly screamed.
••••
In late November, Carroll went to the farm again for
dinner. He parked just outside the barn, where, malignant and
black as tar, Flower lolled on her side in the cold dirty straw.
She was swollen and too lazy to do more than show him her
teeth; he admired them. “How pregnant is she?” Carroll asked
Mr. Rook, who had emerged from the barn.
“She’s due any day,” Mr. Rook said. “The vet says there
might be six puppies in there.” Today he wore a tin nose, and
his words had a distinct echo, whistling out double shrill, like
a teakettle on the boil. “Would you like to see my workshop?”
he said.
“Okay,” Carroll said. The barn smelled of gasoline and
straw, old things congealing in darkness; it smelled of winter.
Along the right inside wall, there were a series of long hooks,
and depending from them were various pointed and hooked
tools. Below was a table strewn with objects that seemed to
have come from the city dump: bits of metal; cigar boxes full
of broken glass sorted according to color; a carved wooden
hand, jointed and with a dime-store ring over the next-to-last
finger.
Carroll picked it up, surprised at its weight. The joints of
the wooden fingers clicked as he manipulated them, the
fingers long and heavy and perfectly smooth. He put it down
again. “It’s very nice,” he said and turned around. Through
the thin veil of sunlight and dust that wavered in the open
doors, Carroll could see a black glitter of water. “Where’s
Rachel?”
“She went to find her mother, I’ll bet. They’ll be down by
the pond. Go and tell them it’s dinner time.” Mr. Rook looked
down at the black and rancorous Flower. “Six puppies!” he
remarked, in a sad little whistle.
Carroll went down through the slanted grove of Christmas
trees. At the base of the hill was a circle of twelve oaks, their
leaves making a thick carpet of gold. The twelve trees were
spaced evenly around the perimeter of the pond, like the
numbers on a clock face. Carroll paused under the eleven
o’clock oak, looking at the water. He saw Rachel in the pond,
her white arm cutting through the gaudy leaves that clung like
skin, bringing up black droplets of water. Carroll stood in his
corduroy jacket and watched her swim laps across the pond.
He wondered how cold the water was. Then he realized that it
wasn’t Rachel in the pond.
Rachel sat on a quilt on the far side of the pond, under the
six o’clock oak. Acorn sat beside her, looking now at the
swimmer, now at Carroll. Rachel and her mother were both
oblivious to his presence, Mrs. Rook intent on her exercise,
Rachel rubbing linseed oil into her mother’s wooden leg. The
wind carried the scent of it across the pond. The dog stood,
stiff-legged, fixing Carroll in its dense liquid gaze. It shook
itself, sending up a spray of water like diamonds.
“Cut it out, Acorn!” Rachel said without looking up. All
the way across the pond, Carroll felt the drops of water fall on
him, cold and greasy.
He felt himself turning to stone with fear. He was afraid of
the leg that Rachel held in her lap. He was afraid that Mrs.
Rook would emerge from her pond, and he would see the
space where her knee hung above the ground. He backed up
the hill slowly, almost falling over a small stone marker at the
top. As he looked at it, the dog came running up the path,
passing him without a glance, and after that, Rachel, and her
mother, wearing the familiar black dress. The ground was
slippery with leaves and Mrs. Rook leaned on her daughter.
Her hair was wet and her cheeks were as red as leaves.
“I can’t read the name,” Carroll said.
“It’s Ellen,” Mrs. Rook said. “My husband carved it.”
Carroll looked at Rachel. Your mother has a tombstone for
her leg? Rachel looked away.
••••
“You can’t live without water.”
“So that’s your choice?”
“I’m just thinking out loud. I know what you want me to
say.”
No answer.
“Rachel, look. I choose water, okay?”
No answer.
“Let me explain. You can lie to water — you can say no,
I’m not in love, I don’t need love, and you can be lying —
how is the water supposed to know that you’re lying? It can’t
tell if you’re in love or not, right? Water’s not that smart. So
you fool the water into thinking you’d never dream of falling
in love, and when you’re thirsty, you drink it.”
“You’re pretty sneaky.”
“I love you, Rachel. Will you please marry me?
Otherwise your mother is going to kill me.”
No answer.
••••
After dinner, Carroll’s car refused to start. No one
answered when they rang a garage, and Rachel said, “He can
take my bike, then.”
“Don’t be silly,” Mr. Rook said. “He can stay here and
we’ll get someone in the morning. Besides, it’s going to rain
soon.”
“I don’t want to put you to any trouble,” Carroll said.
Rachel said, “It’s getting dark. He can call a taxi.” Carroll
looked at her, hurt, and she frowned at him.
“He’ll stay in the back room,” Mrs. Rook said. “Come and
have another glass of wine before you go to bed, Carroll.”
She grinned at him in what might have been a friendly
fashion, except that at some point after dinner, she had
removed her dentures.
Rachel brought him a pair of her father’s pajamas and led
him off to the room where he was to sleep. The room was
small and plain and the only beautiful thing in it was Rachel,
sitting on a blue and scarlet quilt. “Who made this?” he said.
“My mother did,” Rachel said. “She’s made whole
closetsful of quilts. It’s what she used to do while she waited
for me to get home from a date. Now get in bed.”
“Why didn’t you want me to spend the night?” he asked.
She stuck a long piece of hair in her mouth, and sucked on
it, staring at him without blinking. He tried again. “How come
you never spend the night at my apartment?”
She shrugged. “Are you tired?”
Carroll yawned, and gave up. “Yes,” he said and Rachel
kissed him goodnight. It was a long, thoughtful kiss. She
turned out the light and went down the hall to her own
bedroom. Carroll rolled on his side and fell asleep and
dreamed that Rachel came back in the room and stood naked
in the moonlight. Then she climbed in bed with him and they
made love and then Mrs. Rook came into the room. She beat
at them with her leg as they hid under the quilt. She struck
Rachel and turned her into wood.
As Carroll left the next morning, it was discovered that
Flower had given birth to seven puppies in the night. “Well,
it’s too late now,” Rachel said.
“Too late for what?” Carroll asked. His car started on the
first try.
“Never mind,” Rachel said gloomily. She didn’t wave as
he drove away.
••••
Carroll discovered that if he said “I love you,” to Rachel,
she would say “I love you too,” in an absentminded way. But
she still refused to come to his apartment, and because it was
colder now, they made love during the day, in the storage
closet on the third floor. Sometimes he caught her watching
him now, when they made love. The look in her eyes was not
quite what he had hoped it would be, more shrewd than
passionate. But perhaps this was a trick of the cold winter
light.
Sometimes, now that it was cold, Rachel let Carroll drive
her home from school. The sign beside the Rooks’ driveway
now said, “Get your Christmas Trees early.” Beneath that it
said, “Adorable black Lab Puppies free to a Good home.”
But no one wanted a puppy. This was understandable;
already the puppies had the gaunt, evil look of their parents.
They spent their days catching rats in the barn, and their
evenings trailing like sullen shadows around the black skirts of
Mrs. Rook. They tolerated Mr. Rook and Rachel; Carroll they
eyed hungrily.
“You have to look on the bright side,” Mr. Rook said.
“They make excellent watch-dogs.”
••••
Carroll gave Rachel a wooden bird on a gold chain for
Christmas, and the complete works of Jane Austen. She gave
him a bottle of strawberry wine and a wooden box, with six
black dogs painted on the lid. They had fiery red eyes and red
licorice tongues. “My father carved it, but I painted it,” she
said.
Carroll opened the box. “What will I put in it?” he said.
Rachel shrugged. The library was closed for the weekend,
and they sat on the dingy green carpet in the deserted lounge.
The rest of the staff was on break, and Mr. Cassatti, Carroll’s
supervisor, had asked Carroll to keep an eye on things.
There had been some complaints, he said, of vandalism in
the past few weeks. Books had been knocked off their
shelves, or disarranged, and even more curious, a female
student claimed to have seen a dog up on the third floor. It
had growled at her, she said, and then slunk off into the
stacks. Mr. Cassatti, when he had gone up to check, had seen
nothing. Not so much as a single hair. He wasn’t worried
about the dog, Mr. Cassatti had said, but some books had
been discovered, the pages ripped out. Maimed, Mr. Cassatti
had said.
Rachel handed Carroll one last parcel. It was wrapped in a
brown paper bag, and when he opened it, a blaze of scarlet
and cornflower blue spilled out onto his lap. “My mother
made you a quilt just like the one in the spare bedroom,”
Rachel said. “I told her you thought it was pretty.”
“It’s beautiful,” Carroll said. He snapped the quilt out, so
that it spread across the library floor, as if they were having a
picnic. He tried to imagine making love to Rachel beneath a
quilt her mother had made. “Does this mean that you’ll make
love with me in a bed?”
“I’m pregnant,” Rachel said.
He looked around to see if anyone else had heard her, but
of course they were alone. “That’s impossible,” he said.
“You’re on the pill.”
“Yes, well,” Rachel said. “I’m pregnant anyway. It happens
sometimes.”
“How pregnant?” he asked.
“Three months.”
“Does your mother know?”
“Yes,” Rachel said.
“Oh God, she’s going to put the dogs on me. What are we
going to do?”
“What am I going to do,” Rachel said, looking down at her
cupped hands so that Carroll could not see her expression.
“What am I going to do,” she said again.
There was a long pause and Carroll took one of her hands
in his. “Then we’ll get married?” he said, a quaver in his voice
turning the statement into a question.
“No,” she said, looking straight at him, the way she looked
at him when they made love. He had never noticed what a sad
hopeless look this was.
Carroll dropped his own eyes, ashamed of himself and not
quite sure why. He took a deep breath. “What I meant to say,
Rachel, is I love you very much and would you please marry
me?”
Rachel pulled her hand away from him. She said in a low
angry voice, “What do you think this is, Carroll? Do you think
this is a book? Is this supposed to be the happy ending — we
get married and live happily ever after?”
She got up, and he stood up too. He opened his mouth,
and nothing came out, so he just followed her as she walked
away. She stopped so abruptly that he almost fell against her.
“Let me ask you a question first,” she said, and turned to face
him. “What would you choose, love or water?”
The question was so ridiculous that he found he was able
to speak again. “What kind of a question is that?” he said.
“Never mind. I think you better take me home in your
car,” Rachel said. “It’s starting to snow.”
Carroll thought about it during the car ride. He came to the
conclusion that it was a silly question, and that if he didn’t
answer it correctly, Rachel wasn’t going to marry him. He
wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to give the correct answer,
even if he knew what it was.
He said, “I love you, Rachel.” He swallowed and he could
hear the snow coming down, soft as feathers on the roof and
windshield of the car. In the two beams of the headlights the
road was dense and white as an iced cake, and in the reflected
snow-light Rachel’s face was a beautiful greenish color. “Will
you marry me anyway? I don’t know how you want me to
choose.”
“No.”
“Why not?” They had reached the farm; he turned the car
into driveway, and stopped.
“You’ve had a pretty good life so far, haven’t you?” she
said.
“Not too bad,” he said sullenly.
“When you walk down the street,” Rachel said, “do you
ever find pennies?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Are they heads or tails?”
“Heads, usually,” he said.
“Do you get good grades?”
“As and Bs,” he said.
“Do you have to study hard? Have you ever broken a
mirror? When you lose things,” she said, “do you find them
again?”
“What is this, an interview?”
Rachel looked at him. It was hard to read her expression,
but she sounded resigned. “Have you ever even broken a
bone? Do you ever have to stop for red lights?”
“Okay, okay,” he snapped. “My life is pretty easy. I’ve
gotten everything I ever wanted for Christmas, too. And I
want you to marry me, so of course you’re going to say yes.”
He reached out, put his arms around her. She sat brittle
and stiff in the circle of his embrace, her face turned into his
jacket. “Rachel — ”
“My mother says I shouldn’t marry you,” she said. “She
says I don’t really know you, that you’re feckless, that you’ve
never lost anything that you cared about, that you’re the
wrong sort to be marrying into a family like ours.”
“Is your mother some kind of oracle, because she has a
wooden leg?”
“My mother knows about losing things,” Rachel said,
pushing at him. “She says it’ll hurt, but I’ll get over you.”
“So tell me, how hard has your life been?” Carroll said.
“You’ve got your nose, and both your legs. What do you
know about losing things?”
“I haven’t told you everything,” Rachel said and slipped
out of the car. “You don’t know everything about me.” Then
she slammed the car door. He watched her cross the driveway
and go up the hill into the snow.
Carroll called in sick all the next week. The heating unit in
his apartment wasn’t working, and the cold made him
sluggish. He thought about going in to the library, just to be
warm, but instead he spent most of his time under the quilt
that Mrs. Rook had made, hoping to dream about Rachel. He
dreamed instead about being devoured by dogs, about
drowning in icy black water.
He lay in his dark room, under the weight of the scarlet
quilt, when he wasn’t asleep, and held long conversations in
his head with Rachel, about love and water. He told her
stories about his childhood; she almost seemed to be listening.
He asked her about the baby and she told him she was going
to name it Ellen if it was a girl. When he took his own
temperature on Wednesday, the thermometer said he had a
fever of 103, so he climbed back into bed.
When he woke up on Thursday morning, he found short
black hairs covering the quilt, which he knew must mean that
he was hallucinating. He fell asleep again and dreamed that
Mr. Rook came to see him. Mr. Rook was a black Lab. He
was wearing a plastic Groucho Marx nose. He and Carroll
stood beside the black lake that was on the third floor of the
library.
The dog said, “You and I are a lot alike, Carroll.”
“I suppose,” Carroll said.
“No, really,” the dog insisted. It leaned its head on
Carroll’s knee, still looking up at him. “We like to look on the
bright side of things. You have to do that, you know.”
“Rachel doesn’t love me anymore,” Carroll said. “Nobody
likes me.” He scratched behind Mr. Rook’s silky ear.
“Now, is that looking on the bright side of things?” said the
dog. “Scratch a little to the right. Rachel has a hard time, like
her mother. Be patient with her.”
“So which would you choose,” Carroll said. “Love or
water?”
“Who says anyone gets to choose anything? You said you
picked water, but there’s good water and there’s bad water.
Did you ever think about that?” the dog said. “I have a much
better question for you. Are you a good dog or a bad dog?”
“Good dog!” Carroll yelled, and woke himself up.
He called the farmhouse in the morning, and when Rachel
answered, he said, “This is Carroll. I’m coming to talk to
you.”
But when he got there, no one was there. The sight of the
leftover Christmas trees, tall and gawky as green geese, made
him feel homesick. Little clumps of snow like white flowers
were melting in the gravel driveway. The dogs were not in the
barn and he hoped that Mrs. Rook had taken them down to
the pond.
He walked up to the house, and knocked on the door. If
either of Rachel’s parents came to the door, he would stand
his ground and demand to see their daughter. He knocked
again, but no one came. The house, shuttered against the
snow, had an expectant air, as if it were waiting for him to say
something. So he whispered, “Rachel? Where are you?” The
house was silent. “Rachel, I love you. Please come out and
talk to me. Let’s get married — we’ll elope. You steal your
mother’s leg, and by the time your father carves her a new
one, we’ll be in Canada. We could go to Niagara Falls for our
honeymoon — we could take your mother’s leg with us, if
you want — Ellen, I mean — we’ll take Ellen with us!”
Carroll heard a delicate cough behind him as if someone
were clearing their throat. He turned and saw Flower and
Acorn and their six enormous children sitting on the gravel by
the barn, next to his car. Their fur was spiky and wet, and
they curled their black lips at him. Someone in the house
laughed. Or perhaps it was the echo of a splash, down at the
pond.
One of the dogs lifted its head and bayed at him. “Hey,”
he said. “Good dog! Good Flower, good Acorn! Rachel,
help!”
She had been hiding behind the front door. She slammed it
open and came out onto the porch. “My mother said I should
just let the dogs eat you,” she said. “If you came.”
She looked tired; she wore a shapeless woolen dress that
looked like one of her mother’s. If she really was pregnant,
Carroll couldn’t see any evidence yet. “Do you always listen
to your mother?” he said. “Don’t you love me?”
“When I was born,” she said. “I was a twin. My sister’s
name was Ellen. When we were seven years old, she drowned
in the pond — I lost her. Don’t you see? People start out
losing small things, like noses. Pretty soon you start losing
other things too. It’s sort of an accidental leprosy. If we got
married, you’d find out.”
Carroll heard someone coming up the path from the pond,
up through the thin ranks of Christmas trees. The dogs
pricked up their ears, but their black eyes stayed fastened to
Carroll. “You’d better hurry,” Rachel said. She escorted him
past the dogs to his car.
“I’m going to come back.”
“That’s not a good idea,” she said. The dogs watched him
leave, crowding close around her, their black tails whipping
excitedly. He went home and in a very bad temper, he picked
up the quilt to inspect it. He was looking for the black hairs he
had seen that morning. But of course there weren’t any.
The next day he went back to the library. He was lifting
books out of the overnight collection box, when he felt
something that was neither rectangular nor flat. It was covered
in velvety fur, and damp. He felt warm breath steaming on his
hand. It twisted away when he tried to pick it up, and when he
reached out for it again, it snarled at him.
He backed away from the collection box, and a long black
dog wriggled out of the box after him. Two students stopped
to watch what was happening. “Go get Mr. Cassatti, please,”
Carroll said to one of them. “His office is around the corner.”
The dog approached him. Its ears were laid back flat
against its skull and its neck moved like a snake.
“Good dog?” Carroll said, and held out his hand.
“Flower?” The dog lunged forward and, snapping its jaws
shut, bit off his pinky just below the fingernail.
The student screamed. Carroll stood still and looked down
at his right hand, which was slowly leaking blood. The sound
that the dog’s jaw had made as it severed his finger had been
crisp and businesslike. The dog stared at Carroll in a way that
reminded him of Rachel’s stare. “Give me back my finger,”
Carroll said.
The dog growled and backed away. “We have to catch it,”
the student said. “So they can reattach your finger. Shit, what
if it has rabies?”
Mr. Cassatti appeared, carrying a large flat atlas, extended
like a shield. “Someone said that there was a dog in the
library,” he said.
“In the corner over there,” Carroll said. “It bit off my
finger.” He held up his hand for Mr. Cassatti to see, but Mr.
Cassatti was looking towards the corner and shaking his head.
He said, “I don’t see a dog.”
The two students hovered, loudly insisting that they had
both seen the dog a moment ago, while Mr. Cassatti tended to
Carroll. The floor in the corner was sticky and wet, as if
someone had spilled a Coke. There was no sign of the dog.
Mr. Cassatti took Carroll to the hospital, where the doctor
at the hospital gave him a shot of codeine, and tried to
convince him that it would be a simple matter to reattach the
fingertip. “How?” Mr. Cassatti said. “He says the dog ran
away with it.”
“What dog?” the doctor asked.
“It was bitten off by a dog,” Carroll told the doctor.
The doctor raised his eyebrows. “A dog in a library? This
looks like he stuck his finger under a paper cutter. The cut is
too tidy — a dog bite would be a mess. Didn’t anyone bring
the finger?”
“The dog ate it,” Carroll said. “Mrs. Rook said the dog
would eat me, but it stopped. I don’t think it liked the way I
tasted.”
Mr. Cassatti and the doctor went out into the hall to
discuss something. Carroll stood at the door and waited until
they had turned towards the nurses’ station. He opened the
door and snuck down the hallway in the opposite direction
and out of the hospital. It was a little hard, walking on the
ground — the codeine seemed to affect gravity. When he
walked, he bounced. When walking got too difficult, he
climbed in a taxi and gave the driver the address of the Rook
farm.
His hand didn’t hurt at all; he tried to remember this, so he
could tell Rachel. They had bound up his hand in white gauze
bandages, and it looked like someone else’s hand entirely.
Under the white bandages, his hand was pleasantly warm. His
skin felt stretched, tight and thin as a rubber glove. He felt
much lighter: it might take a while, but he thought he could
get the hang of losing things; it seemed to come as easily to
him as everything else did.
Carroll thought maybe Rachel and he would get married
down by the pond, beneath the new leaves of the six o’clock
oak tree. Mr. Rook could wear his most festive nose, the one
with rose-velvet lining, or perhaps the one painted with
flowers. Carroll remembered the little grave at the top of the
path that led to the pond — not the pond, he decided — they
should be married in a church. Maybe in a library.
“Just drop me off here,” he told the taxi driver at the top
of the driveway.
“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” the driver said. Carroll
shook his head, yes, he was sure. He watched the taxi drive
away, waving the hand with the abbreviated finger.
Mrs. Rook could make her daughter a high-waisted
wedding dress, satin and silk and lace, moth-pale, and there
would be a cake with eight laughing dogs made out of white
frosting, white as snow. For some reason he had a hard time
making the church come out right. It kept changing, church
into library, library into black pond. The windows were high
and narrow and the walls were wet like the inside of a well.
The aisle kept changing, the walls getting closer, becoming
stacks of books, dark, velvety waves. He imagined standing at
the altar with Rachel — black water came up to their ankles
as if their feet had been severed. He thought of the white cake
again: if he sliced into it, darkness would gush out like ink.
He shook his head, listening. There was a heavy dragging
noise, coming up the side of the hill through the Christmas
trees. It would be a beautiful wedding and he considered it a
lucky thing that he had lost his pinky and not his ring finger.
You had to look on the bright side after all. He went down
toward the pond, to tell Rachel this.
© 1995 by Kelly Link.
Previously published in Century
and in Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt),
Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kelly Link is the author of the story collections Stranger Things Happen,
Magic for Beginners, and Pretty Monsters, as well as the founder, with her
husband Gavin J. Grant, of Small Beer Press. A fourth collection of stories,
Get in Trouble, is forthcoming from Random House in 2015.
To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight.
The Herd
Steve Hockensmith
As long as we’re waiting, why don’t I tell you a little story?
You look like the kind of man who could profit by it.
Don’t take offense, now. I meant that as a compliment.
You remind me of me, that’s all. I’m a cowhand myself. Or
was, anyway. I’ve been up and down the Chisholm Trail so
many times I could walk it blindfolded from Brownsville to
Abilene.
That’s where my story starts: on the trail. Some time back,
you see, me and a dozen other punchers were bringing two
thousand head north for the Lone Star Land and Cattle
Company. It was going about as smooth as a big drive can —
by which I mean no one had died yet — but as we got near
the Washita River a squall blew in the likes of which you
never saw. The sky didn’t just turn black. It seemed to wink
out all at once, like the sun was but a candle and God — or
the Devil — had up and snuffed it. Just as quick, the wind
went from dead still to near-twister, and the rains that came
didn’t fall in drops but bucketloads by the billions. Thank god
for the lightning, for though it spooked the beeves, without it
we’d have had nothing at all to see by, and said beeves
would’ve been wearing us as slippers within seconds.
Well, you know how it goes. The cattle bolted, and off we
went with them, riding hell for leather hither and yon. When
the storm finally ended and the sun decided to grace us with
its presence again, I was relieved to see we still had one nice
big herd as opposed to a hundred little ones scattered across
all the West. We hadn’t lost a single hand, either, which I
counted as a miracle on par with the loaves and fishes.
Of course, there were some strays to round up, and as we
set about it, I noticed something peculiar about the terrain
thereabouts. Something wrong. The bluffs were higher, the
brush sparser and scrubbier and the earth rockier and more
yellowed than as should have been. It was like we’d chased
those cows all the way to New Mexico over the course of a
couple hours.
I might have thought I was getting my dreaming done
without benefit of sleep, I was so tired after all we’d been
through. But when our cookie called us in at twilight, I
discovered I wasn’t the only fellow feeling buffaloed.
“Anyone know where the hell we are?” one of the boys
asked as he settled himself by the fire with his plate of frijoles
and sinkers.
There was a lot of head shaking and shrugging and
comments of the “Damned if I know” variety, and every man
there turned to look at Riggs, the trail boss.
“I don’t know either,” he said. “But north is still north.
We’ll head that way in the morning, and sooner or later we’ll
hit the Washita. It won’t be hard to find the trail from there.”
It couldn’t have been easy — a trail boss admitting he was
lost. Riggs just about pulled it off, though. He was a stern,
taciturn man with a quiet strength we all respected. But there
was a wee problem with what he’d said, and the fellows got
to whispering about it as soon as Riggs was out of earshot.
Even from the highest hills, none of us had seen sign of
any river.
What we did see come morning light, much to our
surprise, was a town. It looked to be about three miles away,
in a punchbowl valley with rocky, sloping sides. It wasn’t
much more than one long main street lined with low, boxy
buildings — a speck of civilization that would make your
Peabody or your Lincolnville look like London or Paris — yet
no one could figure how we’d missed it the day before.
“I should’ve caught the smell of women, at the very least,”
my pal Jawbone said. “Why, I’m surprised it didn’t keep me
up all night.”
For Jawbone to go a week without female companionship
was like you or me going a month without breathing. And he
wasn’t the only one who was girl crazy — or crazy for
whiskey, beer, and cards. Which is why Riggs announced that
he was headed into town alone. Cut us young bucks loose to
pursue our vices, and we wouldn’t be back on the trail till
Christmas.
As it was, we still got a bit of a holiday. Riggs’s secundo, a
slow-moving, slow-thinking slab of fat named Foley, didn’t
have half the backbone of his boss. So the second Riggs rode
off, most of the boys were stretched out on their soogans
catching up on their snoring while Foley and the cookie
played dominoes and dipped biscuits in molasses. The rest of
us were left to drift about on horseback keeping an eye on the
herd, but the cows had no more mind to stir themselves than
we did.
Our lead steer for that drive was a big, wily longhorn
called The General. He was such a natural at the front of a
herd he’d been spared the slaughterhouse and sent back south
twice. As long as he stayed put, the other beeves did likewise,
and the only rope I had to throw that day was on a heifer with
a broken leg who wasn’t going to make it to market anyhow.
We took her aside a ways and ended her suffering, and the
rest of the cows were content to go on grazing and dozing
while us two-legged types feasted on fresh steak.
Yes, sir — it was just one big, happy picnic out there on
the prairie. The only things missing were the girls in their
white summer dresses and the iced cream.
And Riggs. No one was anxious for him to come back, yet
none wished him to disappear either. But disappear he did.
He’d left not long after dawn, and come dusk he still wasn’t
back.
“Dammit. We shouldn’t have let him ride off alone,” the
cookie fretted. “There could be Cheyenne out there. Kiowa.
Comanche.”
“Oh, smooth your skirts,” Foley said. “No Indian’s going
to stir up trouble anywhere near the Washita River. Friend
Custer saw to that two years ago. Riggs probably just threw a
shoe or something. Mark my words: He’ll be back tomorrow
morning after spending a lovely night as the guest of
Reverend Killjoy and his dried-up old Mrs.”
This was an enticing way of thinking — necessitating, as it
did, no worry, action or self-recrimination on our part — and
we were happy to follow Foley’s lead in it. That got harder to
do twenty-four hours later, however, for Riggs still hadn’t
returned. He’d given explicit orders that no one else should go
into town. But that, of course, assumed that he’d eventually
manage to leave it. Something had to be done.
And so it was that the next morning — two full days after
Riggs had left us — Foley mounted up and set off to search
for him. He still pooh-poohed the notion that our trail boss
had crossed paths with a war party, but that didn’t stop him
from mustering up an escort for himself: me and Jawbone.
Now, usually around a town you’ll find spreads and little
homesteads clustered up like puppies crowding in around their
mother’s teats. Not so here. We passed nothing more than
scrub brush and the occasional stand of trees. There wasn’t
even a trail into town, let alone a road. One second we were
riding over tall, untrod grass, the next we were on a dirt street.
And about that street. I can’t say it was deserted, for there
were people scattered along it from one end to the other, most
of them rough-looking men of the sort you’d expect out in the
middle of nowhere. Punchers, buffalo hunters, would-be
miners and the like. What I didn’t see were wagons or drays
or buggies or so much as a single solitary horse. The town
didn’t even seem to have a livery stable, which is an oddity on
the order of water lacking wet. Folks will crack jokes about
one-horse towns, but there’s no such thing as a no-horse one.
“The locals sure must do a lot of walking,” I said.
But I was talking to myself. Foley and Jawbone’s
undivided attention was affixed to a sign in a saloon window.
FREE BEER
ALL WELCOME
It was obvious where we’d be beginning our search — and
perhaps ending it, as well. Riggs had more starch in his collar
than your average drover, but could even he resist an offer
like that?
Of course, I didn’t really expect the beer to be free beyond
an introductory thimbleful, after which the price would rise
considerably. Or perhaps the proprietor would explain that the
beer was indeed free but there’d be a four-bit “cleaning fee”
for the glass. When it comes to fleecing cowhands,
saloonkeepers elevate deviousness to the level of genius.
To my very pleasant surprise, however, there seemed to be
no catch. We walked into the place, asked for our free beers,
and were given them, simple as that. The barman even told us
complimentary sandwiches would be coming out shortly and
we should feel free to avail ourselves of the gaming tables in
the meantime. Or not. It was up to us.
And most shocking of all: The beer was good. So good the
three of us polished ours off in a few chugs and were
promptly given refills, still on the house.
“I’ll be damned if this isn’t the most hospitable saloon I
ever set foot in,” I declared. “How can you afford to stay in
business?”
The bartender took to “cleaning” glasses with a rag the
color of piss.
“We’re under new management.”
Of course, it doesn’t pay to irritate someone who’s pouring
you free drinks, so I did not point that the barman hadn’t
exactly answered my question. Instead, I let Foley get to the
matter at hand: Where were we, and had Riggs been here
before us?
The answers were “Schultzton” and “No.”
“Schultzton?” I said. “Never heard of it. How far are we
from the Washita?”
The barman shrugged. “Not close, not far.”
He was a husky, lumbering man with a saggy, sleepy face,
and I got the feeling if we hadn’t been there to further dirty
his glasses he’d have been under the bar sawing logs. There
were maybe a dozen other people in the place — men playing
cards, mostly, with a few chippies whispering to each other
toward the back — and they all moved (when they moved)
with the same droop-shouldered, heavy-lidded lethargy. And
why shouldn’t they? It wasn’t free coffee they were swilling.
Still, it struck me as strange, and I found the longer I stayed in
the place, the more I felt like nodding off myself.
“I suppose we ought to try the local constable next,” I said.
“Who you got around here?”
“Town marshal. Office is up the street,” the bartender told
me.
“Thanks.”
I turned to go.
Foley and Jawbone didn’t.
“What’s your hurry?” Foley said. “The sooner we find
Riggs, the sooner we’ll have to leave.”
“Yeah,” Jawbone threw in. “Might as well wait for the
sandwiches, at least.”
It wasn’t the sandwiches my friend was drooling over,
though.
I jerked my head at the saloon girls.
“I doubt if they’re on the house, amigo.”
Jawbone grinned. “That hardly matters with all the money
I’m saving on liquor.”
I looked at Foley, but he just stared back at me and sipped
at his beer.
“Well,” I sighed, “at least save a sandwich for me.”
“Take your time getting back,” Foley said.
Jawbone was already headed for the chippies.
Once I was outside, I turned to gaze at the far-off hills
upon which we’d left the cattle and the other hands. But a
haze had settled over the valley despite the near-noon sun
overhead, and all I could see beyond the town were wispy
swirls of gray.
I wasn’t too worried about the herd. There was plenty of
green grass thereabouts, and a stream just big enough to keep
thirst at bay. As long as The General was lazing around
putting on fat, the other cows would be happy to, as well. The
boys would be short-handed should another storm whip up or
some braves pop in wearing war paint, though, and I resolved
not to take Foley’s advice.
I started looking for the marshal’s office.
It didn’t take long to find it. Finding the marshal, on the
other hand, wasn’t as easily done. The door was locked, and a
handwritten sign in the window actually said, “OUT TO
LUNCH.”
I stopped a passerby — a portly, shuffle-stepping gent who
was either drunk or sleepwalking — and asked if he knew
where the marshal took his meals.
“Take your pick,” he said, giving the hotels and lunch
rooms and melodeons lining the street an airy wave of the
hand. Then on he shambled toward a sign most fellows would
only expect to see on the other side of the pearly gates: “THE
WHISKEY’S ON US.”
I started to turn to someone else but found myself turning
and turning and turning some more till I’d completed a full
circle. All without seeing the man I’d meant to speak to. He’d
been walking by on my right, I’d thought — a brawny,
bearded fellow in a checked shirt. Either he’d streaked like
lightning into some nearby dive or the beers I’d had were
hitting me hard.
I looked around for someone more sober than myself to
consult, but everyone I saw was of a piece. Moving slow,
wobbling or weaving, and plump to boot. None of which
could come as a surprise in a community where, it seemed,
you couldn’t pay for booze or food if you tried. I was just
dismayed I’d never heard of the place. You’d have thought
every red-blooded man on the continent would be making a
beeline for Schultzton, the paradise on the prairie.
I spent the next half hour popping in and out of saloons
and restaurants (most of them offering free biscuits or
complimentary slices of pie). But I never saw Riggs — or
Jawbone and Foley, as they’d apparently restricted their
search to the first bar we’d cozied up to. I did eventually spot
a man I took to be the town marshal, though. He had a tin star
on his coat and a chippie on his lap. Like most of the women
I’d seen that day, this one was half-smiling in a tired, slackfaced way that suggested opium could be found as free for
the taking as beer, whiskey and biscuits.
“You the law around here?” I asked the man.
He put a pudgy finger to his badge. “Either that or I’m
wearing its clothes.”
“Well, I’m looking for someone. The trail boss from a herd
not far from town. He should’ve ridden into Schultzton two
days ago to — ”
The marshal burst out laughing. The girl on his lap tittered,
too, but her half-closed eyes gave me the feeling it was pure
reflex. The next sound I expected out of her was a snore.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“You must’ve been in that dump Schultz just took over,”
the marshal said. “Sounds like he’s laid claim to the whole
town now.”
“This isn’t Schultzton?”
“Nope. Goddard City.”
The girl giggled again, then belched.
“All right.” I took a deep breath and started again. “I’m
looking for my trail boss. He should’ve come into Goddard
City two days ago. His name is Riggs, he’s just a shade taller
than me, and he has black hair and a mustache. He was riding
a dun mare with a diamond T brand. You know anything
about him?”
“Sure. He was here. A disagreeable fellow. Not of a mind
to be sociable.”
“He wasn’t here to be sociable.”
For the first time, the marshal managed to look like a real
lawman. Which is to say he scowled at me.
“Are you here to be sociable?” he said.
“There’s nothing I love more than socializing, and I plan to
do plenty of it . . . once I’ve found Riggs.”
The marshal smiled, but the glower lingered in his eyes.
“Feel free to look for him,” he said. “There’s plenty of
places a man can amuse himself here. I can’t guarantee you’ll
find this Riggs fellow, though. Unsociable folks don’t tend to
stick around long.”
He lifted a mug to his mouth and focused all his attention
on draining it. I took this as a dismissal and acted accordingly.
“Want another, Marshal Goddard?” I heard someone call
out as I pushed through the saloon’s batwing doors.
I froze.
So the marshal was an even bigger son of a bitch than I’d
taken him for. Never mind help finding Riggs — I hadn’t
even got the true name of the town out of him.
I was simmering on that, tempted to head back inside and
uncork a few choice turns of phrase I’d been saving for a
rainy day, when a voice seemed to speak to me out of
nowhere.
“Your friend tried to cause trouble. Don’t make the same
mistake.”
I looked this way and that, but saw no one nearby. “Who
said that? Where are you?”
“Down here.”
I looked down. The town had rickety wooden sidewalks
raised a couple feet off the sod, and just enough sunlight
pierced the warped slats for me to see a man staring up from
the shadows below. He answered my next question before I
could ask it.
“Saves me a lot of walking if I do my passing out down
here. I’d just be back the second I was sober anyhow.”
I went down on one knee and tried not to feel too selfconscious about carrying on a conversation with a boardwalk.
“You heard me talking to the marshal?”
“Sure, when people weren’t stomping past overhead.”
“And you say you know what happened to Riggs?”
“No, that I didn’t say. I said he stirred up trouble, that’s
all.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“The talking-too-much, talking-too-big kind.”
“Talking too much and too big about what?”
“Oh, you’ll see. I bet you already have seen it, actually.
You just don’t know it. It’s the same for everybody, at first.
They catch it out of the corner of their eye, and it’s like it
didn’t happen at all. But when it’s right in front of your face,
that’s different. You can’t ignore it . . . though you can do
your damnedest to forget it.”
I shook my head in disgust as I stood up.
“That’s what I get for talking to a man under the
sidewalk,” I muttered.
“You think I’m crazy?”
“I think you’re drunk.”
“Of course I am. But why should that make me wrong?”
I started walking away.
“Stop and take a good look around,” the man said. “Don’t
move. Don’t blink. Then you’ll see I’m not crazy. You’ll think
you are.”
“Go back to sleeping it off!” I called over my shoulder.
Then I headed across the street, bound for the saloon where
I’d left Foley and Jawbone. I figured it was their turn to
wander around talking to S.O.B.s and lunatics. I’d earned
myself a sandwich.
When I reached Schultz’s place, though, I paused before
stepping inside. This town — whatever it was called — was
without a doubt the most peculiar I’d ever come across. I
gazed back up the street, half-expecting to spot a sign I’d
somehow overlooked before. “WELCOME TO THE
NORTH TEXAS SANITARIUM FOR THE INSANE,” it
might say. Or perhaps “ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO
ENTER HERE” — though no description of Hell I’d ever
heard had mentioned free eats and liquor. I thought Marshal
Goddard would make a passable Old Scratch, however, so
long as he took up a pitchfork and grew himself a . . .
I rubbed my eyes and blinked hard and rubbed my eyes
some more.
A little pot-bellied dude in a checked suit had been walking
toward me up the sidewalk. And then he simply wasn’t.
Wasn’t walking. Wasn’t there.
I moved toward the spot where I’d last seen him, thinking
maybe he’d ducked through a doorway so fast I hadn’t
noticed. But there was no little pot-bellied dude and nowhere
he could have gone.
The man under the sidewalk had been right about this
much: I’d started wondering if I was losing my mind.
I turned back toward the street and made myself stare stare
stare, stock still, unblinking, for as long as I could. And just
when my eyeballs got to itching and my brain was telling me
not to believe what they’d supposedly seen in the first place
and my throat piped up to say it was getting mighty dry, it
happened again.
Three soldiers stepped out of a music hall together, but
only two made it to the street. The third just winked out,
disappeared, vanished without even the puff of smoke a
sideshow magician would have felt obliged to supply. And I
knew for a fact it was no mirage or imagining, for I saw the
other two troopers react.
Not that they reacted how you’d want your comrades in
arms to. They stopped, looked at each other, glanced over
their shoulders, then shrugged and shook their heads and
carried on across the street.
“My god,” I said. “What is this place?”
A pair of punchers staggering past heard me.
“You only find out when you leave it, we reckon,” one of
them said. “In the meantime, you may as well enjoy the stay.”
The other cowboy stopped, looked at me as if he had
some wisdom to impart, then hunched over and threw up.
I whirled around and tore off into Schultz’s saloon.
“Where are my friends? The men I came here with?”
Schultz was still behind the bar giving glasses spit shines.
“Now don’t go getting excited,” he began.
“Where are they, god damn it?”
Schultz waggled his chins at a door at the back of the
saloon. “With some crib girls. But you know you shouldn’t
interrupt a fellow when he’s — ”
I was already bolting toward the door.
Beyond it were four grubby little rooms. Stalls, more like.
Small compartments with no doors of their own, just filthy
sheets hung up to provide the illusion of privacy. I drew one
back to find a glassy-eyed girl in a chemise counting out
money on a cot.
“Finders keepers,” she said, clutching the greenbacks to
her chest.
On the cot beside her was a hat and a pair of trousers I
recognized. They’d belonged to Foley.
I went to the next crib.
Now you’re a man of the world, I’m sure. I don’t have to
describe what Jawbone was up to in there. But I’ll tell you
this much: He didn’t want to stop, even when I told him we
were in danger. “Go away” was all he’d say. “I’m busy.”
“I tell you, we’ve got to get out of here! Now!”
I grabbed Jawbone and dragged him off the painted lady
who’d been reciprocating his sweaty affections with all the
ardor of a cigar store Indian. He allowed himself to stay
uncoupled from her just long enough to slam a fist to the side
of my face. By the time I was done staggering back, he was
already “busy” again with the girl.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you,” he puffed. “But if
you bother me again, you’re getting a lot more than a punch.”
It’s sad, isn’t it? Pleasure’s so irresistible a thing a man will
leave his neck in a noose so long as parts due south are being
pleased. If I’d just waited five minutes, Jawbone would
probably have listened to reason. But I was feeling neither
philosophical nor patient just then, and with a “Suit yourself!”
I lit out.
When I got out front, I found no horses at the hitching
post, though. Our mounts were gone. I didn’t bother running
around chasing after thieves, for if you can pluck men from
existence easy as you please, doing the same for some saddle
ponies shouldn’t be hard.
No, there was but one thing to be done, so I did it: I
pointed myself toward the hills and started running.
I headed out the south side of town. And not a dozen
strides past the last building there was a moment of blackness,
a blink I didn’t blink myself, and suddenly I was running into
the north side. I whirled around, scampered out of town
northward, and blink — there I was coming into town from
the south.
It was the same story to east and west and southwest and
northeast and southeast and northwest and probably, if I’d
wings or shovel, up and down, too. Whichever way I tried to
leave, I’d find myself coming back in again on the opposite
side.
This provided great amusement to whatever fellows
weren’t drinking their cares away indoors, and soon a little
clump of a crowd was gathered out in the street to cheer and
jeer me.
“Try it running backwards!”
“Try it skipping!”
“Try it doing cartwheels!”
“Five dollars says he goes another quarter hour before he
gives up.”
“You’re on!”
I didn’t last the quarter hour. Another five minutes, and I
got the idea. Whoever had us penned up wasn’t going to just
let me leave. I’d have to make them let me.
The closest I knew of to someone in charge — Marshal
Goddard — had come out to see what all the fuss was about.
So I drew my forty-five and aimed it his way.
The men around him scattered. He just heaved a sigh.
I came toward him, my gunsight level with his eyes.
“Tell them to let me go.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Goddard said. “I don’t even
know who ‘them’ is.”
“What about the booze? The food? Someone has to bring
it here.”
Goddard shook his head. “No. They don’t. It just . . .
shows up.”
I stopped maybe six feet from Goddard, my Colt still
pointed at the bridge of his nose.
“Like people just go,” I said.
“Exactly like that.”
“And you don’t do anything about it?”
Goddard shrugged. “Everyone tries to get away at first.
You saw, though. It’s pointless. And even if one of us was to
escape, what would he be escaping to? Just look around. You
won’t see any Vanderbilts here.”
I did look around. And here’s what I saw eyeing me back.
Saddle bums. Soldiers. Homesteaders. Nesters.
Drummers. Drifters. Whores. Every kind of dirt that gets
picked up in that special wind that blows from East to West.
All settled here. They’d stumbled in tired and hungry and
beaten down, no doubt, and now they had everything they
could possibly ask for — except freedom. Was that such a big
price to pay for the good life?
I knew the answer for Goddard and the rest.
And I knew the answer for me.
I holstered my gun, turned, and started marching toward
the edge of town again.
“You don’t want me here!” I shouted at the clouds. “I’m
not like them! I’ll cause trouble, you can count on it!”
“Don’t do it, cowboy!” Goddard called after me. “Just
hunker down and shut up and you’ll learn to like it here!”
I didn’t stop.
“You’d best let me walk up into those hills!” I hollered
skyward. “‘Cuz I’ll burn this whole damn town down if you
make me stay! I mean it! There’s nothing you can gain from
keeping me here!”
The street ended, turned suddenly into grassland, just five
strides ahead of me now.
Then four.
Then three.
Then two.
Then one.
I took the last step — and for once didn’t end up back at
the opposite end of town.
No. I went somewhere a million times worse.
It was unbearably hot and unbearably bright and
unbearably loud. I shut my eyes tight and clamped my hands
to the sides of my head, but the light burned right through my
eyelids, and the noise — the screech of a hundred trains
blowing their whistles at once — pierced my ears like ice
picks. The air wasn’t just lung-searing hot but noxious, too,
and soon I was gagging and kecking. And just when I started
to keel over, praying I was falling into a faint so the pain
would stop, that’s when they grabbed me.
I never saw them. Even the quickest peek would have
blinded me. But I could feel them. Like thick ropes slathered
in jam, one to each wrist and ankle. They held me down while
something else got to work. Of that, all I felt was the tugging
and the cutting and then a burn like a brand fresh from the
fire put where you’d least like it. Then it was over, and
Goddard was leaning over me whispering “Jesus lord,” and
the sky above him was blue.
I recovered fast, considering what had been done to me. In
fact, just two days later I was able to help the rest of the boys
from the drive see reason when they finally followed us down
from the hills. And when the next gaggle of wayward
punchers or deserters or pilgrims came into town, I gave them
a good talking to, as well. Just like I’m talking to you.
You whisk a troublemaker away to god knows where,
never to be seen again, and what does anyone learn from it?
Not much. But you take that same man and you calm him
down — the same way you’d calm a he-calf you don’t need
for breeding — and then you send him back? That makes an
impression.
So the cracks you’ve probably heard about me are true. I
don’t have all god gave me . . . and I couldn’t care less. Just
look at me! Fat and happy! Even going a little gray.
Yes, I’ve had a nice, long stay here. Because I’m sociable,
you see, and I bring out the sociable side in others. It could be
the same for you. All you’ve got to do is —
Finally! Here it comes! Lunch! Would you just look at the
beef on those sandwiches? I can taste it already! But where
are my manners?
After you, amigo.
© 2014 by Steve Hockensmith.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steve Hockensmith made his first professional short-story sale to Analog way
back in the late 1990s. Soon afterward, he switched his focus to the mystery
genre, becoming a regular contributor to both Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery
Queen magazines. His first novel, the mystery/Western hybrid Holmes on the
Range, was a finalist for the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, and Dilys awards. He
went on to write four sequels as well as a pair of bestselling follow-ups to the
international publishing sensation Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. More
recently, he’s written (with collaborator “Science Bob” Pflugfelder) the middlegrade mysteries Nick and Tesla’s High-Voltage Danger Lab and Nick and
Tesla’s Robot Army Rampage. His corporeal form can usually be found in
Alameda, Calif., while his Web presence lurks somewhere in the vicinity
of stevehockensmith.com.
To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight.
The Biography of a Bouncing Boy Terror!
Ysabeau S. Wilce
Part One: Crime Commences
Once upon a time, my little waffles, far across the pale
eastern sands, a baby boy bounced from his mother’s womb
into a dark and dangerous world, into a land well full of
hardship, turmoil, and empty handball courts. This boy,
starting tiny and growing huge, would one day become a
legend in the minds of his minions, a hero in the hearts of his
hobbledehoys, the fanciest lad of them all: Springheel Jack!
And this, my dovetails, is the story of how it all started.
Now in the beginning young Jack was not a rowdy tyke,
well full of the jiggamaree and the falder-a-oo. The other
childer might drive their mammas mad with fancy ideas of
fun, but young Jack was not made for sportive tricks. He was
his mamma’s muffin and he kept to her side, helping in the
smelly sport of making matches, which phosphoric occupation
was how the family kept fed. They were a poor household,
with no extra divas for white sugar or white bread, and all ten
of Jack’s tiny brothers and sisters must put paws into keeping
the darkness of poverty at bay. Dipping lucifers at ten glories
a decade leaves little room for boisterous fun.
Well dingy was the rundown tenement in which Jack’s
family lived, perched atop a noisome blind tiger from which
issued rousting and revelry all hours of the night — illegal
whist games, bitter beer, and up-against-the-wall fiddling.
Well dingy was the rundown room into which Jack’s family
squeezed, tiny oil lamp the only tiny light, tiny window
opening into tiny alley, and tiny pinch-faced siblings with cold
blue fingers dipping match sticks into glowing blue poison.
Instead of a cat, the family kept Hunger, which crouched in
the corner of the tiny room, wiggling its tail and licking its
prickly chops, waiting, just waiting. They had each other but
they had nothing else, not even shoes to cover their frigid
toes. Their days were poisonous and dreary.
But at night, dear doorknobs, when the dipping was done
and the little pots of phosphorus illumined the shadows, Jack
lay in his nest of rags, tucked up against his baby mice siblings
and he dreamed away the pallid gray world: the knobby
fingers, the tightening tummies, each drab day dribbling into
another drab day, endlessly endless. At night Jack dreamed of
colors: glimmering, glittering, glistening, glowing colors —
cyan, jade, celadon, amber, cobalt, wheat, orange, plum,
lavender, and magenta. But the color that shone the most
through Jacko’s dreams was the brilliant tang of red: cerise,
sangyn, vermilion, carmine, crimson, gules, rust, rose,
cochineal. Rushing friendly warm red, delicious and hot.
Well, my nifty needles, once a week Jack’s mamma would
take the little boxes of matches and place them into her
market basket to redeem. The other childer stayed home,
under the concern of Jack, but the baby who coughed went
with mamma, wrapped in newspaper and tucked also into the
basket, sleeping uneasily among the boxes of spark. At the
factory of Zebulon Quarrel & Dau., Manufacturers of
Lucifers, Phosphates, & Triggers, Jack’s mamma would turn
in the week’s hundred boxes and receive into her thin hand
one dull gold diva and eleven dingy glories, and on this happy
day, there would be moldy cheese and squashed kale pie for
supper.
But one day, Jack’s mamma could carry neither basket nor
baby. The sickly prickles were itching through the City, and
like all Disease, they enjoyed the poorest people first, leaving
the rich for a luscious fat dessert. In Jack’s mamma’s illness, it
fell to her muffin to do her duty, else gobbling Hunger would
creep from its corner and snatch the childer up, one by one.
So, leaving the basket for the baby who coughed, Jack packed
the boxes of matches in a crumpled cracker box and set out
down the splashy wet streets to Zebulon Quarrel’s crenellated
factory.
Through the sloppy streets he sloshed, brave Jackling,
clutching his cracker box from the splashing dillys, the clippy
horsecars, and the pushing people who were eager to get
home to their toasted cheese dinners and hot tea before
darkfall. At the hulking behemoth gates of Quarrel’s factory,
wee Jack stood upon the iron shoe scraper and handed his
cracker box upward to the grimacing factotum behind the
window rail. Handed down he was, after a few minutes of
stolid counting, the munificent sum of one dull-faced diva and
eleven chipped glories. A fortune in coin.
Thus paid, Jacko slogged to the 99 Glory Tuckshop where
to buy squashed pie and moldy cheese, and perhaps even a
crock of spinach paste for the hungry childer’s evening sup.
Full darkness lingered in the wings of the sky, waiting for its
cue, and the graying rain drove down like needles, stitching
the evening in silvery sorrow. The streets were most empty
and wet now, and only sweet Jacko, with his blue bare feet
and his ragged sweater, hopped through the puddles,
shivering.
Then-Jack paused.
Then-Jack poised.
Then-Jack stood staring into a glowing window front by
which he had just been hurrying, and there he saw a thing that
caught in his head like happy, stuck in his sight like sugar, a
vision that near tore his breath away. A vision that seemed
sprung from his most secret special dreams.
A pair of red sparkly boots.
And what boots — heels as high as heaven and toes as
sharp as salt. Gleaming stove pipe uppers greaving tall and
slick, and on the tip of each pointy toe a snake’s head leered,
spitting tongue and bone sharp teeth.
And what sparkle — glistening and glittering in the
evening light like diamond rain after the shower has stopped,
like snow in the sun, like a thousand stars clustered in the
midnight sky.
And what red — slick wet red, sparking like sunshine,
thick and rich as paint, gleaming like a pricked finger, like a
stormy dawn, like first love.
Jacko opened the door and inside he went. The shop
contained a vast smoky gloom from which sprang the vague
hulk of cabinets and large pieces of carved wood whose
shapes Jack could neither see fully nor understand. He cared
not for the shadows or the smoke; he cared only for the
brilliant boots in the window.
“Do you see love?” A squeaky voice inquired from the
distant reaches of the room.
“Those red sparkly boots in the window — ” stuttered
Jack, overcome by fog and fright. A jackdaw flapped out of
the shadows, perched upon a hat rack, and regarded our boy
with flat button eyes.
“A most discerning young dasher,” said the grammer who
leapt from the back of the store with a flash of blue petticoats
and took up stand beside him, gripping his arm with a
grandmotherly pinch. In the gloam her teeth shone as green as
grass, and her ancient monkey head was surmounted by a
soufflé of a cap. “Best in the house. Chop-chop, my little
darlings, and come to your bungalow baby boy.”
The boots jumped out of their window, driven by their
own joie-de-vie and began to caper nimbly on the counter
top, heels clacking a fandango, tongues flapping a jaunty tune.
The jackdaw cawed accompaniment and even the old
grammer snapped gnarled fingers as the heels clicked and
spun, snapping upward, diddling downward, the snake heads
gnashing their needley teeth and spitting. Jack’s blue toes
began to tap the splintery floor and his heart jiggled and
jumped in his chest. Never before had he seen such a glorious
slick shade of red and now he was completely caught.
“The boots like your sweetness,” said the grammer, and
both she and the jackdaw giggled. “For a small price they
shall be your daisies and together such fun you shall have.”
Jack’s jiggly heart flopped. What funds did he have to
purchase anything other than moldy cheese and squashed kale
pie? What funds would he ever get, in his dull little room,
dipping poison matches for plungers to light their cigars from?
And the hungry childer and the sick mamma waiting at home
for his return. His world would be forever dull, all else was a
forlorn hope. Jack’s wiggly heart died and he began to turn
away.
“Cheap at the price, but dear in the taking,” the grammer
said. “And naught price that you cannot pay, I warrant.”
“I have no flash,” Jacko said, his sad exit halted. But his
fingers felt the twist of his sweater wherein he had carefully
placed the coins, rubbing their rounded shapes through the
thin cloth.
The jackdaw spoke up then, its voice a buzz of suggestion.
“What then burns in your hand, Jackanapes?”
Jack looked down to the sudden heat in his grubby paw
and there lay the coins, not so dull now. The diva gleamed
like the sun, with eleven little tiny silver moons circling its
golden glow.
“But — ”
The boots clicked their crimson heels together and the
snake heads said, in slithery tandem voices: Darling Burning
Boy, with us you shall be the Fleet Footed Fancy Lad, the
Red-Haired Child of Sunset. No obstacle you cannot leap, no
hunger you cannot fill, no thirst you cannot quench. Come
and let us jump for joy!
Looking at the red sparkly boots, the color of his dreams,
what could Jack think of hungry tummies in the tenement
home, waiting for their crusty sup? What could he think of a
sick mamma and a skull-headed baby, coughing instead of
cooing? What could he think other than the glorious tapdancing of the slaphappy boots, the rich radiant red which
filled his heart with warmth, flooded his brain with fun, and
made his toes tap? Oh, our Jack was a good boy and perhaps
for a tiny momento he did consider the cold little faces, the
grinning Hunger waiting patiently in the corner, his mamma’s
red swollen hands, but then the boots drummed a furious
rhythm and in that rhythm, all else Jack forgot.
When all your life you have been cold, little inkwells, how
can you then resist the fire?
The grammer took the diva and eleven glories and dropped
them into the gaping maw of the jackdaw, which flapped off
into the dark shadows, still cackling. Then the knobby old
lady flicked her hankie at Jacko, who jerked at the waft of
hyacinth that washed over him. He coughed and as he
coughed she flicked again, speaking a strange word that
crackled and snapped in the air, sparking, arcing.
Jack shut his peeps to the brilliant flicker and when he
opened them full wide again, the grammer was gone, the
darkness was gone, the shop was gone, and he stood, lightfooted, in the center of the street. Rosy daylight suffused the
air, pooling pinkly on the surface of the puddles and the wet
walls of the surrounding buildings. He looked down, and the
snakes hissed happily, little tongues tasting the clean morning
air. Then his boots took to the sky like big red balloons,
carrying him upward on their flight. The boots capered, they
danced, they trotted, they gavotted, and they leapt full fifty
feet in the air, tongues clacking with joy, Jack shouting with
joy, as they flew.
Over the bright morning roofs, they sprang, Jack and his
Jackboots, traipsing across treetops. They jumped over the
milk cart, and the trash cart, and little lines of childer trailing
off to school. They scattered traffic brass and barouches,
flyers and flowerbeds, leaping ever higher into the sterling
blue sky. Never before had Jack felt so lovely, so wise, so tall,
and so very, very clever, and in his happiness he yodeled a
little tune, full of hope and wonderment. The red sparkly
boots were just the thing and now that he had them, he could
not imagine his feet, his heart, his life, without them. The
world was fresh and new, and Jack with it, all dewdrop eagereyed, truly footloose and fancy-free.
But after a time, Jack grew tired of the jumping and
wanted to rest. He watched the cool green grass bounce by
his springs, and yet when he tried to halt so to rest under the
shade trees, the sparkly red boots kept bouncing him along.
He grabbed at railings as he passed, sweaty hands sliding from
the iron; he was flying so fast now that it seemed perhaps the
Wide World itself was moving and he was the one standing
still. Jacko shouted for help — to the brass directing traffic, to
the washwoman kneeling on marble steps, to the
costermonger polishing her apples, but his shouts wisped in
the wind and were lost. Still he bounced on, going ever higher
and higher with each leap, until his ears rang and his head
spun, and he was fair ill with dizziness. He snatched at
chimney pots and streetlights, at lightning vanes and flag pole
finials, but still he sprang onward.
Then suddenly he stopped.
Jackie stopped and he tumbled, down into the dust and lay
there, thankful that the bouncing had ceased, although his
head still seemed to leap and spin, spin and leap. His tum
twisted and turned but was too empty to urp.
“Well, now, little leaper,” a voice said, “How far can you
go before you kiss the sun and burn your roly poly red lips?”
Jack squinted up, but only a shadow could he see, bright
sun burning behind a darkened head.
“I cry sorrow,” said Jacko, “And offer thanks. The boots
fair well skint me.”
“So I see,” said the friendly voice. “Perhaps you’d like me
to help you take them off?”
“Ayah so,” agreed Jack, whose tender tootsies, not yet
used to being enfolded in leather, were now painfully raw. But
no amount of pulling would remove the sparkly red boots
from Jack’s wee feeties, and while you, clever tulips, are
probably not surprised by this turn of the ankle yourselves, it
came as a huge and utter gasp to our poor little
Jackomydarling.
“You have bought a bargain,” said the gramper, for tugging
and pulling had revealed him to be so. “And keep it you shall.
The boots are tired now and need to rest, but once they have
had their kip, you’ll be bouncing again.”
“But bouncing be done!” cried Jack. Now that the fun was
resting, he was suddenly recalling the hungry siblings, the sick
mamma, the coughing baby, all waiting for him to return with
their chow. But now he had no money and no chow, nothing
but sparkly red boots which soared and galloped but which
could not keep Hunger at bay. “I must slip the boots and
return for my flash, for the coins I need to buy munch for my
dear loves at home.”
The gramper smiled, and shook his stick. A jackdaw
flapped down and perched upon his shoulder, gazing at young
Jacko with flat black eyes. “The shop is closed and the
shopkeeper gone. What is bought cannot be returned.”
“But my lovely lollies? My sweet mamma and my tiny
siblings? The baby who coughs? Can they live? Must they die
for my sparklies?” Tears begin to stir in Jack’s eyes and all his
joy in red was gone.
“Perhaps this consideration should have come before the
purchasing,” the gramper said, “But such is the rashness of
youth. You say you are fair well skint, of both flash and
dash — maybe so.”
From its perch upon the gramper’s shoulder, the jackdaw
spoke up then, its voice a burr of suggestion: “What then
burns in your hand, Jackolantern?”
Jack looked down to the sudden coldness in his grubby
paw and there, caught in his fingers, gleamed a strand of
pearls, tiny white moons strung on a golden cord. Never had
he seen anything so round and pure, and yet how had it come
to be in his hand? In his soaring, he must have snatched and
noticed not.
“Did you not look before you leapt? Or while leaping
look?” The stick was shook again, and pointed upward,
towards an open window and a fluttering drape. “Doors are
lock’d but who could imagine that larceny might leap on
springy heels?”
The jackdaw opened his wings in a great flutter, launching
upward with a hoarse cry and when Jack lowered his
shielding arm, the gramper and his fetch were gone. But the
pearls remained, cool and knobby, and so too did the open
window. Jack looked from one to the other, considering, and
a rough red magick began to burn in his brain. He stood and
tapped one red sparkly heel upon the grass. The snake head
spit, and with the tamp Jack felt vigor anew course upward
through his tender tootsies, his knobby knees, his empty tum,
his sad heart. When he stamped again, this time with both
heels, upward he soared, like an arrow, to the beckoning
window.
When Jack bounced home to his family’s tenement room,
laden down was he with gifts bestowed upon him by his
bouncing boots and many open windows. With high springy
heels and unlocked doors, roofs and balconies, the whole city
was his huckleberry.
The tiny siblings greeted his arrival with weak squeals of
joy, for instead of squashy kale pie, Jacko brought spicy
chicken galantine, savory and strong. Instead of moldy
cheese, there was cherry cream custard for afters and never
more that sticky gritty spinach paste. The sick mamma and the
baby who coughed got a spoonful of Madam Twanky’s Super
Celebrated Celery Salt Med-I-Cine, which fixed them both
right up. After much munching, Jack chucked the horrible
match pots out of the window and the entire family removed
to the Palace Union Hotel, where they reveled in lush carpets,
hot water, and toast on demand. Hunger, left behind in the
empty tenement room, slunk sadly down the street, looking
for a new corner to call home.
And thus, darling dishrags, did wee Jacko take to a life of
snuggery and sin, poaching purses, fixing races, mashing
lovers, cutting cards. Thus was Springheel Jack born, the
Bounciest Boy Terror ever to be seen. The reign of the Boots
had begun!
© 2014 by Ysabeau S. Wilce.
Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ysabeau S. Wilce was born in California and has followed the drum through
Spain and most of its North American colonies. She became a lapsed historian
when facts no longer compared favorably to the shining lies of her
imagination. Prior to this capitulation, she researched arcane military subjects
and presented educational programs on how to boil laundry at several frontier
army forts. She is a graduate of Clarion West and has been nominated for the
World Fantasy Award, the James Tiptree Award, and won the Andre Norton
Award. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and is very fond of mules.
To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight.
The Quality of Descent
Megan Kurashige
The trick begins like this:
The magician throws an egg up into the air, where it
flies — small and white and full of import — up and up, high
into the black reaches of the proscenium. We await the
descent, holding our breaths, expecting at any moment the
crash of slapstick hilarity, exploding like a bomb.
But the egg simply vanishes.
••••
Ava arrived with the night. I had abandoned the airconditioned silence of my office for a street that was just
going dark when Ava, about to change my life, erupted
around the corner on a bicycle that clattered. She wore rubber
slippers of fluorescent orange. Her legs flailed and the pedals
spun around and around. Her clothes streamed through the air
like a crowd of flags, and I might never have noticed the
strange thing about her, on account of how funny she looked,
if she hadn’t stopped in front of me and spoke.
“Hey!” She threw her bicycle to the ground. She had on
too many clothes, layers piled on layers as if she didn’t have
anywhere else to keep them. “Are you still working?”
“No,” I said. I wondered if she were homeless.
“But I’ve got a proposition for you,” Ava said. “Seriously.
Let me show you.”
Propositions mean doing something awkward for the
benefit of someone else, and I would have said so, except that
there was this pretty stranger standing in front of me,
unbuttoning her coat. She might have been crazy, but my eyes
would not peel themselves away.
Ava took off a coat, a sweater, a long robe with a cord
sash. She was skinny underneath all that, and her t-shirt had
two holes sliced through the back to make way for the things
that stuck out from the white fabric, which were a pair of
wings.
A pair of wings that protruded from her shoulder blades
and hung in smooth, brown-specked dignity to her knees. For
a moment, I forgot to breathe.
“Unusual,” she said. “Unexpected. Not the kind of thing
you want to see at the end of the day. Sorry about that.”
I didn’t know what to say. The wings shifted when she
talked, rising and settling with the brittle plush of a canary.
They were never quite still, and when she shrugged, the edge
of one brushed the side of my arm and drew back,
apologetically, of its own accord.
“I understand if you have nothing to say,” she said. “You
haven’t prepared a speech for this situation because you never
expected to come across a woman with a pair of wings. It’s
not like it’s part of the ordinary repertoire. You want to know:
Is this a trick? Are they real? is probably the first question that
comes to mind, but you might try something else because that
would be kind of rude.”
I waited for the moment to stretch too far, to burst.
Someone would jump out with a camera. She would
apologize for the joke.
But that didn’t happen, and I couldn’t ask the question that
mattered because Ava had already mentioned it. She said it
might be rude.
“What is it that you do?” I asked.
“Birthday parties,” Ava said. “Theatrical productions.
Magic shows. I like magic shows. Advertising banners.
Washing windows, cleaning out gutters on very tall houses.
I’m comfortable with heights.”
I should have asked the question then. Did she use a
ladder, or did she ascend by some other means? It pressed
against my teeth and I was afraid it would fly out from
between them to puncture the girl standing in front of me. I
imagined her deflating, melting away, leaving me to walk
home to eat a cold sandwich and fall asleep in the middle of a
movie that I would be unable to remember. I held the question
back and swallowed it instead. It hurt my throat.
••••
I arrange entertainments for people. If there is a camel in
your opera, or if you need an elephant to appear at your party
and impress your guests by dispensing rides, then I can get
them both. I have several times delivered a box half as tall as
me, but light enough to lift with one arm, and packed inside,
between layers of chilled glassine, several hundred butterflies
dreaming of escape.
I specialize in living creatures, and I’m good at what I do,
though it’s mostly a case of knowing who to call. Ava said she
found my name in the phonebook, next to an ad for customdyed helium balloons.
••••
“How did you get into this anyway?” Ava asked. She
breathed on the framed thank you notes I keep in my office,
then wiped the fog away. “I mean, you have a job that no one
ever thinks about until they need someone who does it, and
then when you do, you can’t believe it actually exists.”
“I worked for a florist,” I said. This is an old story and I
tell it all the time. I could tell it in my sleep. I could tell it to
anyone, even a girl with wings. “Someone ordered twentyfive centerpieces of cream roses and hosta leaves in black
vases. They wanted them for a wedding, and they wanted
something unique to surprise the guests with over their hors
d’oeuvres. I suggested goldfish. I thought pairs of them would
go with the romantic theme.”
“That sounds pretty,” Ava said.
It was pretty. The goldfish dropped in like handfuls of
tangerines. I like to make sure my audience has considered
this before I go on, how good everything must have looked
with the green, and the black, and the living, vivid gold.
“The goldfish died,” I said. “I offered to pick them out, but
the bride refused. They meant something, she said.
Something romantic and important, like art, is how I think she
put it.”
This is when people either laugh or make a face and
reconsider the complications of dealing with living things. I’ve
lost business telling this story. I’ve also watched people decide
they’re in this all the way to their noses, toss aside the guilt
and extravagant expense, and sign my check. Ava laughed so
hard that she staggered. Her laugh rolled up from her stomach
and poured out of her mouth. It soaked everything, including
my ears. It made her tip over until she had to fling out her
hands, or crash to the floor.
I caught her, just, but her wings fell around us, the tips of
them fluttering with alarm. The smell of her feathers, hollow
and dry, assaulted the inside of my nose.
••••
Ava stayed with me because she said she didn’t know
anyone else in the city, and because I have a tall, narrow
house with too many empty rooms. My last girlfriend filled it
with people she knew, almost-discovered musicians and old
acquaintances from college on the East Coast, but since she
left, the sofas and futons had gone uninhabited and I hadn’t
bothered to clear them away. Sofas are graceful things when
they’re empty.
I asked Ava if she wouldn’t rather go to a hotel.
“Haven’t you noticed how hotels aren’t real places?” she
asked. “It’s like they get scrubbed too frequently and never get
the chance to develop a personality. They smell like cleaning
products. They give me the creeps.”
She stayed up late, listening to sounds I didn’t hear
anymore. She hung over the sofa’s cushions and pressed her
cheek and ear to the floor, all upside down like she was riding
a trapeze. The wings slumped against her neck as if they
would, at any moment, fall off and smother her.
“Isn’t that uncomfortable?” I asked.
“What’s that?”
I repeated myself, but she shook her head and pointed at
the floor.
“That noise.” The wings pulled her shirt askew and I could
see the place where skin ran into down.
“It’s nothing,” I said. “Just the house. It’s old.”
“Oh.”
There were no straps on the wings. No strings. No telltale
crust of dried glue. If there had been, I could have kept my
hands flat on the creaking floor. It wasn’t even a clean
transition. Stubs of feather dotted the skin on her shoulders
and down the center of her back like freckles gone insane.
I wrapped my hand around the closest wing and pulled,
gently.
“Satisfied?” Ava asked.
I got a firm grip through warm feathers and pin fine struts
that would crackle and snap if bent too far. I stretched out the
wing as far as it could go, stood and walked backwards until it
unfurled in sagging, mechanical beauty. I wanted to lay my
face on it. I wanted her to flap it until the whole room shook
with beaten air.
“What would you do,” Ava said, “if it just came off? If —
pop! — and there you are with a big piece of make believe
hanging in your face? Glue. Wires. Fishing line and goose
feathers.”
I put the wing down and it sat still on the floor between us.
Feathers skimmed my bare feet and the wing sat there. It sat
there and it might have been dead.
“I guess I would give it back to you,” I said. “But I’d want
to look at it first to see how you did it.”
“You could keep it for a souvenir.”
We both looked at the wing, and then Ava hauled it in. It
moved slowly, sweeping up lint and dust, until Ava shrugged
and it folded into a smooth cape behind her. I wondered what
kind of person would keep a giant wing for a souvenir.
I stayed up and watched Ava while she watched late night
movies on the TV. The wings pushed her to the edge of the
sofa, but she reclined into them and the feathers took her in,
nestled around her shoulders and curled over her feet like a
fringe of velvet leaves.
In the morning, I watched her over bowls of cereal and
milk. I watched her reflection in the window above the sink
while I washed our dishes and she talked about how she kept
losing telephones, not on purpose, she assured me, though she
was starting to think it might be more than bad luck. A
personal flaw, unconscious and inconvenient, but impossible
to get rid of because it was hidden somewhere under
everything else.
“It’s like always putting on your right shoe before your
left,” Ava explained. “It’s not that one is better than the other,
but you can’t help it because if you do it the other way, it feels
like you made a mistake. Your socks get wrinkled up wrong
and you might have to stop and adjust.” Ava examined a
spoon before putting it in the drawer. “Sometimes I feel sorry
for anybody who tries to call, but then I figure that if it’s
really important, they can always write.”
••••
Where is this headed? Somewhere predictable. Not that
there’s anything wrong with a story because you think you
can see the ending from across the room, from a mile away,
from the other side of the world.
••••
I got Ava a job in a magic show. The magician was a client
who went by Charles on stage and Charlie everywhere else,
and on the rare occasions when he was in town, we would
take each other out for tacos and discuss work.
“You’re looking great,” Charlie said. “It must be the
weather, you lucky bastard. I’ve been traveling through this
stuff that you wouldn’t believe . . . No, wait, that’s not good
enough. It must be a girl. Isn’t that it? I can always tell. They
make you handsome if they don’t do you in, and you are
looking all shiny and puffed up on something good.” He
raised one eyebrow and winked in slow motion.
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess. She makes me happy.”
We sat down and Charlie poured a container of salsa over
his meal, completely obliterating the taste of the fish, and said
that I had all the luck. “You’re in love. You’ve got this nice
job. You just have to find people what they think they need,
while I’ve got to deal with a dying world. Nobody gets their
kicks anymore from watching rabbits hopping out of top hats,
you know. I have to find that particular detail that’s going to
reach out and dig its fingers into people’s calloused guts.
“You have to go about things sideways in my business,” he
said. “And then, when they’re least expecting it, you shoot
them in the heart.”
Be indelible, was Charlie’s advice, not forgettable. Which
is why he never hired people’s girlfriends. He didn’t need an
assistant. He was a solo act.
I found a picture of Ava on my phone and put it on the
table.
“Rules,” Charlie said, “are built with exceptions.”
••••
“A magician never reveals her secrets,” Ava said. “You
can’t expect people to believe a trick unless you can convince
them that it’s real first.”
She liked to lay in bed with the windows open so the night
came drifting in on top of us. It made me cold, but I didn’t
want to admit it, so I hid my hands under her wings where her
feathers were warm and dry on one side and her skin was
warm and barely damp on the other.
“You’re not a magician,” I said.
“I don’t have a silly three piece suit,” Ava said. “With
pocket cuffs for playing cards and secret lighters for turning
things into smoke. That doesn’t mean anything. Assistants can
be magicians, too. Didn’t you ever read fairytales when you
were a kid?”
“Of course I did.” I tried to remember some names, but all
I got were lists of characters. “Poor boys turn out to be
princes. Old ladies are really fairies. Girls run away from
home. You could be in a fairy tale.”
Ava prodded my forehead with the tip of her nose. Then
she ruffled her wings so air puffed through all the feathers and
brushed her hair across my face.
“Don’t be stupid,” she said.
••••
Wings are an obvious thing. See them every day and they
should still be bigger than everything else in the room. They
should poke you in the eye.
But wings are like the rest of us. They fade away with too
much seeing. First go the edges, then the rest, and then all
you see is Ava’s sharp, funny nose, the creases on the inside
of her elbows, her lazy shuffle when she can’t be bothered to
lift her feet. Most of the time, all I saw was Ava.
Except for when all I saw were the wings. When we were
lying in bed together. When I was walking down the street
alone. When I was waiting in the dark behind the theater, high
on anticipation for the moment, the sudden, surprising
moment when the door became a rectangle of light pushing
Ava out to meet me.
The wings crouched on her back like a monster, inciting
me to dissection.
She showered and brought them, soaked and dripping,
into the bedroom. They left water on the floor and transferred
cold, clinging damp to the sheets.
“Is that really necessary?” I pushed the wings away,
bunched the blankets into a wall between us.
“What?”
“I mean, are they real?”
Ava turned her head and the blankets became an actual
wall, one with a wide parapet and a vertiginous drop. “I can’t
hear you,” she said.
The worst times were at the magic show. I sat in the
audience and the questions collected in heavy piles
somewhere behind my ribs while Charlie pattered on, making
way for Ava’s wings.
••••
The trick went like this:
“Imagine the egg,” Charles says. He holds up an egg.
Ava told me that he blew them clean himself, after pricking
the ends with a pin.
“Not much bigger than the space between an average
pair of hands,” Charles says. He claps his own clever, bony
hands together and makes the egg vanish before it can be
crushed between them.
Ava said that, if I knew where to look, I would see him
putting it away inside one of his sleeves.
“They say the inhabitants are aware of the world waiting
outside. Noise. Light. Warmth. The walls aren’t very good.”
Charles folds his hands together, and the egg is there again,
balanced on the flat of his palm. He taps the side of it with
his finger. “Hello?” he says. “Hello?”
The audience laughs. Charles fumbles the egg. The
audience holds its breath as the egg shoots between his
careful fingers and flies up into the darkness. Then here it
comes! Falling into view, speeding downwards, growing
larger and larger as it falls. This is no mere function of
distance and perspective, no, it is a goose egg, an ostrich
egg, the egg of something extinct and large. It is not an egg
at all, the audience swears. It is a boulder; it is a moon,
unslung from alien orbit. It is an unidentified falling object.
When it arrives, it is a crash landing, augmented by all
the cymbals and brass the orchestra can muster. And once
the creamy, dreamy smoke has lifted, in the ruins of the shell,
it is something that could easily be a miracle.
Ava told me about the complicated elevator that rushed her
up in a tightly curled ball until her back touched the underside
of the stage. She had to rear up like a beast, she said, or else
the trapdoor wouldn’t work. Her back, padded by wings,
forced the panels apart and she stood, so quickly that the
unprompted eye would swear that she could only have
appeared from the ruins of the egg.
Charles steps back and Ava shakes out her wings. They
are covered in glitter, big, garish things that look, under the
stage lights, like items bought from a costume shop on the
cheap. They wave, they strain, they grip the air and pull it
down to haul Ava up, and for the people sitting close enough,
there is a faint rush of displaced air. Ava rises, leaving
Charles behind. “Wait!” he says. “You’re supposed to take
me, too.” He raises his arms to reach for her, or maybe to
obscure his face. He stands like that, for a slow count of five,
until a single feather drifts down and strikes him on the
head, hidden behind his still and upraised arms, and his suit
crumples to the floor, full of nothing.
Ava punched me in the shoulder when I asked and said
that it was only a classic substitution, switch one in, switch the
other out, all elegant as pie if you have a distraction — that’s
me, Ava said — no eye can resist. And the rest is theater,
smoke and mirrors to make the trick taste good.
Shoot them in the heart, Ava said.
In the end, the audience always cheers. They clap until the
magician comes back to take his bow. Ava takes one too, and
the audience claps because she is so beautiful, despite the
makeup smearing her sweaty face. But they clap loudest of all
when the magician takes Ava’s hand and they bow together,
one arm each lifted in thanks. The end, the audience thinks.
Happily ever after.
••••
“And you just fly?” I asked. “That’s not much of a trick.”
“Up, up, and away,” Ava said. “Like a balloon on a string.
Not that I’m telling you anything. Secrets.” She pinched her
lips together so she momentarily looked like a fish.
“What about Charlie’s secrets though? Goose eggs, you
told me. Extra pockets. Trap doors under the stage.”
Ava took her fingers off her lips and climbed into bed.
“Those aren’t my secrets. They’re his. And you can have as
many as you want.”
Her feathers made a crunching noise when we rolled on
top of them, their central shafts crushed under our weight.
They only bent, never broke, though leftover glitter lodged
between their barbs and some of them looked like they had
been combed backwards until the filaments unlocked and
sprang irreparably apart.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked her while listening
to the way we breathed.
“Not much,” she said. “But I’m very good at hiding it.”
One of her wings was caught under me, and I would have
sat up to rearrange it, but Ava pushed herself across the bed
until we were pressed tight together. Her wing pulled on me
and I imagined it tearing off in pieces from wherever it was
attached. I worried that it might hurt.
Ava didn’t say anything. Pins and needles began to grow
where her shoulder carved a hole in my ribs. Feathers filled all
the spaces between us, trapping the air against our skin and
turning it into something so hot and still that I thought it
would suffocate us both.
••••
The important question is: Did I ever see Ava fly? Honest
to goodness, close up, right in front of my own and only eyes.
All the questions can be boiled down to one.
••••
There is a very short list of people allowed backstage at a
magic show. I don’t mean the waiting area, or the dressing
rooms, which are all lit up in honest brightness. Anyone can
go there, but the doors all close before you make it to the
secret black corridors where the curtains meet the stage.
I know how theaters work. It’s part of my job.
I hid in the back, next to a bisected glass bowl that held
goldfish on one side and empty water on the other. I waited
and imagined my stomach floating up to fill my throat.
Ava and Charlie stood onstage, under the dim rehearsal
lights. Ava was so still that she looked like a statue next to
Charlie’s swooping, competent hands.
Ava said something. I was too far away to hear.
Charlie said something. He pointed to the wing closest to
him, and when Ava shook her head, he pressed his fingers on
his eyebrows and dug his thumbs into his cheeks. He stood
that way for several seconds, then put his hands down and
snatched at Ava’s wing.
I was with him in that moment. I was Charlie and Charlie
was me.
“Don’t you get it?” he shouted.
Pull the feathers from them, I thought. Pluck them, one by
one. If they’re real, they must hurt. We would have Ava’s face
before us then, impassive and dishonest, or else Ava’s face
with every detail outlined in tears.
The world stopped.
My legs dragged me across the stage. I was a man in slow
motion, a sloth, a snail on a burning summer day, and by the
time I got there, Charlie had gone. Coward.
I was breathing too hard to speak, and Ava looked bored.
“He wanted to know how things worked,” she said. She
licked a finger and smoothed the feathers where Charlie’s
hand had disarranged them.
The world began to move again. It resolved itself into
distinct pieces: me and Ava. Ava in a harness of thick
webbing, painted to blend with the skin around her arms and
the feathers of her wings. I stared at it.
“For safety,” she said.
“What does it do?” It had complicated metal fixings
painted black to block out their shine.
“Nothing,” Ava said. She took off the harness and dropped
it on the floor, and then she reached behind her back and took
off her wings.
It seemed to be an arduous process. She had to twist her
arms around her neck and under her armpits to reach. They
came off one at a time and fell with a damp, sodden noise that
hurt my ears. I wanted to gather them up and shove them
back at her, right away, as if I could save them, as if they were
in danger of death. I couldn’t move. Ava stood in front of me,
her back bare and delicate, and I knew I should say
something, or touch her, but I couldn’t think of how to start. I
looked at the wings for inspiration. They lay still on the floor.
“They don’t do anything,” Ava said. “Nothing.” She
picked up the wings and walked away from me. “Nothing,
nothing, nothing at all.”
••••
You may have heard about the closing of the magic show.
It was sudden, unexpected, and the theater returned every
ticketholder’s money with a letter of polite and vague apology.
Charlie retired to teach mime at an obscure university in
western Canada, and I occasionally receive letters from him
on official stationary with requests for consultation on
experimental theater productions. His most recent project was
a surrealist play for which he needed a dozen birds that would
fly out into the theater and back to the stage like clockwork.
The best I could offer him were pigeons, but Charlie wrote
back and said they had decided to scrap the idea and were
starting all over again with puppets.
Ava rode away, early in the morning before I got out of
bed. She folded her wings in a plastic tarp and strapped them
to the back of her bicycle, securing the bundle with rope and
tape to keep it from tangling in the wheel. They were battered
and worn out, molting and spiked with feathers bent in half or
broken off to leave sharp, hollow tips. She smoothed them
down anyway and stacked them, soft undersides together, to
wrap safe in the blue plastic skin.
I shouldn’t have pretended to be asleep, but I did. I tried to
watch her without opening my eyes, and every so often I
made a noise like I was hearing something I thought was part
of a dream.
I found her phone in the laundry hamper, in the pocket of
a pair of jeans she kept saying she really needed to throw
away.
••••
Ava doesn’t have a forwarding address. Of course she
doesn’t. You saw that coming. I guess I did, too, but a story
doesn’t mean anything unless you get to the point where you
are holding a phone and pressing it to your ear, as if, by
listening hard enough, it will turn into some sort of clue.
••••
The day before she left, Ava put a ladder against the side
of the house and climbed to the top of the roof.
“I’m up here,” she called, and I ran out the door to see her
balancing with both feet curled around the highest peak. “Up.
No, up. Up.”
I went to the ladder, put my hands on its sides and one
foot on a rung, but Ava shook her head. She leaned over so I
could see her wingless back curved under the sky and
gestured me away.
“Further,” she said. “Further.” She pushed her hands at me
until I shuffled backwards into the street, and then across it,
where I stood in someone else’s lawn. She stayed on the roof,
her pointy elbows braced against the air. The sun hit her in the
face and I could see how she squinted, even from so far away.
“Up there. Look at that.”
There was nothing to see when I tried to follow her
extended arm except for flat blue sky that made my eyes
water. Which is why I never saw Ava fly. I wiped my eyes and
I only saw her fall. She tumbled into the sky, knocking against
invisible corners, and while she fell, she laughed.
How she had time to laugh, I’m not sure. My house is
narrow and tall, but not tall enough to lift her that many
seconds away from the ground, not unless she stayed inside
and took all the stairs, pausing as she went.
Ava laughed anyway. She descended through the thin,
bright air, laughing until she shook with the joke, until her
arms pressed into her sides and her knees headed toward her
nose. She made a cannonball that bobbled impossibly in its
arc, clearing the road at a height that made me lean back to
keep her in view. She kept going until she ran out of laughs,
and then she sighed, a tiny noise I only heard because she fell
down beside me, in the grass on the opposite side of the street
from where my house stood, empty.
When I picked her up, she was smaller than I expected.
Her shoulders had strange muscles that could have carried
heavy things, and I didn’t know where to put my arms
without the slab of feathers that would have kept them from
wrapping all the way around.
“There you go,” she said.
The sun sat on top of her lashes so I couldn’t see what her
eyes were telling me, if they were saying anything. She had a
dark spot on her cheek, and at first I thought it was a bruise.
Later, when I rubbed it as gently as I could, it came off on my
fingers, just a smudge of dirt that went away so there was
nothing left.
© 2014 by Megan Kurashige.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Megan Kurashige is a professional dancer. She and her sister, Shannon
Kurashige, collaborate on wild and quixotic dance projects under the name
Sharp & Fine in San Francisco. She is also a member of Liss Fain Dance. Her
fiction has appeared in Unnatural Creatures, an anthology edited by Neil
Gaiman and Maria Dahvana Headley, Electric Velocipede, and Sybil’s Garage.
She attended the Clarion Writers’ Workshop at UCSD in 2008. You can find out
more about Sharp & Fine at sharpandfine.com. She has a blog
(immobileexplorations.blogspot.com) and is on Twitter @mkazoo.
To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight.
NOVELLA
Jesus and the Eightfold Path
Lavie Tidhar
PART ONE: HIS BIRTH AND EARLY YEARS
Episode One: Journey to the West
Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of
Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold,
there came wise men from the east to
Jerusalem.
— Matthew 2:1
They were not entirely men, and they were not entirely
wise; however, here they were, three pilgrims clothed in the
dust of the road, travelling faster than men do: for the road
was long and dangerous and hard, and a single star in the sky
beckoned them on, as if to say, hurry, hurry.
“Barbarous country,” Sūn Wùkōng said. He was tall and
thin and had the wizened face of a monkey. He raised a hand
and touched the gold band around his head. “I could be back
in the Bloom Mountains, or better yet, making a play for the
Jade Emperor’s daughter.”
The fat companion beside him roared with laughter and
said, “Really, Monkey! The girls in these parts are not too
bad. You are too aloof! Too selective! You are a connoisseur,
whereas I — ” he took two enormous fingers and pinched a
lavish section of the pink ample skin of his belly — “I am a
democrat, a man of the people! I like to try everything!”
“Like the Princesses of the Moon?” the third companion, a
quiet, narrow-shouldered man said. His name was Shā
Wùjìng, and it was Monkey’s turn to laugh as the fat man
scowled and said, “That was uncalled for, Sandy.”
“It was your own fault, Pigsy,” Sandy said. “If only you
learnt to keep your hands to yourself . . .”
“Like last night,” Monkey said, and Pigsy opened a snoutlike mouth wide and grinned and said, “I tell you again,
Monkey, the lasses here are none too bad, and willing, for an
exotic stranger and a charmer, too.”
“Charmer!” Sandy said. “The girls here must be barbarous
indeed!”
“You sound envious!” Pigsy said.
“Never!” Sandy said, but Monkey smiled and said, “You’ll
find a nice girl and settle down one day, Sandy,” and the
monk blushed. He was not like the other two. He was more
refined and delicate.
Pigsy was back to his exploits of the night before. “Such
arms!” he said. “Such belly! Such . . . such thighs!” His hands
drew vulgar shapes in the air. “She sounds like an elephant!”
Monkey said, and Pigsy, not listening, said, “I tell you again,
Monkey, the girls here may be farmer-girls and chunky, but
they know how to rut.”
“Enough!” Monkey said. He touched again the golden
crown on his head. “Time is growing short, and the stars will
soon be in alignment. We should be there soon.”
“Sooner we get there, the sooner we can go back,” Sandy
said. Monkey smiled; it was a small, strange smile, like that of
a man who knows, or guesses, more than his companions; but
he said nothing.
They had travelled far. Many weary days they spent,
crossing the great sullen mountains beyond the Emperor’s
realm, hiking through treacherous snow and beside deep
gorges. Many were the snow-demons they had fought, and
many were the deep and ancient cave-dwellers, things of
darkness and fear, that tried to waylay them on their way. A
giant bird had taken Pigsy for a meal and carried him by its
talons to its high eyrie at the top of the world, and it took all
of Monkey’s power to rescue him. He had summoned a
cloud, and he and Sandy rode it to the top, where the giant
bird, its feathers the colour of blood and the sun, its scales
glittering like jewels, was already pecking at Pigsy’s pink,
succulent flesh. Oh, how the once-Commander of the
Heavenly Naval Forces shrieked! Oh, how he cried! Eight
babies did the monster bird have, eight sharp-beaked
monstrosities clamouring for Pigsy’s flesh!
The battle was lengthy and worthy of song. Sandy used his
fighting spade against the bird, but it was of little use against
her giant beak. Monkey plucked hairs from his body and blew
on them, until soon there were many Monkeys flying around,
fighting the bird, while all the while Pigsy screamed and
screamed like a pig about to be devoured. Oh, they had
laughed! It took Pigsy almost a week to get over his ordeal.
Luckily they had found that hidden city high up in the
Himalayas, where lights came from shining crystals and the
women were fair and wore shimmering robes . . .
They had almost lost Sandy there, to the charms and grace
of the beautiful Princess of the Pale Water, she who was like a
mountain spring . . . they were two beings of water, she and
the once-water ogre, and it was only the importance of the
journey — and the wiles of Monkey, who had set out to
seduce the princess — that saved the day. Long and hard the
journey had been! Across the mountains, at last, and down
into the hot lands below, and across a vast distance of danger
and temptation. There were nomads on the plains, strong
harsh men who tried to attack the three travellers, and there
were wizards, too, of a new ilk not seen in the Middle
Kingdom, preying on travellers, man-eaters and uncouth.
There had been many fights, but always the three travellers
were triumphant.
The lands gradually changed. The air became hot and
humid. The barrenness of the plains turned lush, and there
were many trees, and their fruits were exotic and new, and
Pigsy lusted after the fruits of the land, and the fruits of men’s
loins, too. At last there was a great crossing of a sea, by ship
sturdy and taut of sail. “A good craft,” Monkey said
thoughtfully as he patted the beams of cedar, but Pigsy leered
and said, “Fishermen’s tubs, Monkey! One Imperial ship
would sink a whole fleet of them.”
“Perhaps,” Monkey said, and his wise monkey’s eyes were
thoughtful.
At last they had come to the barbarous land called Judea.
They went as men, here, and old men at that. On the first
night coming off the ship, brigands tried to rob them. After
that there had been no more attempts.
Episode Two: The King of the Jews
When Herod the king had heard these things,
he was troubled.
— Matthew 2:3
“What’s their king like?” Sandy said.
“A provincial,” Pigsy said and laughed a har-har sound,
showing teeth. He picked at them with the long, sharp nail of
his small finger. “What do you expect?”
“I don’t know,” Monkey said. He had been mainly silent
since they had entered Judea. It was not at all, as Pigsy
privately thought, like him, but then Monkey was a more
complicated creature. He, Pigsy, was a simple man, and liked
the simple life: food and drink and wenches, and what more
could you want? But Monkey was different, and sometimes
Pigsy worried about him. It was the influence of the Tripitaka
on Monkey, he thought. It had turned him into a sometimesphilosopher. It did not occur to Pigsy that his thinking this, his
worrying about Monkey, was itself an influence of the
Tripitaka. “He seems capable. A bit ambitious in his building
projects — ”
“What king isn’t,” Sandy said —
“But a good politician. Which he probably needs to be, in
these barbarous lands. They have their own emperor, you
know — ”
“A Roman,” Sandy said. “They’re called Romans.”
Pigsy snorted. “Enough!” he said. “When do we leave?”
“We just got here!” Monkey said, and a new smile came
over his wizened face. “It could be fun to stick around . . .”
They were walking up the mountain road to the city called
Jerusalem. They did not quite go unnoticed. There had
been . . . indiscretions.
Such as at the inn that stood outside the little hovel of a
town called Beersheba. It was a hot place, and Pigsy was
irritable and sweating, and when he saw a pool of mud
outside the stables he did not even stop to look around but
jumped in and was soon rolling in the yellow-brown mud
making the strange grunting noises that meant he was happy.
It might have ended at that if not for a most-delectable
black-eyed girl who had chosen that exact moment to walk
past the stables, slipped in the mud — and was amorously
wrapped in the arms of the pig. The girl had shrieked, the
household was alerted — and the companions had to beat a
hasty retreat and spend the night camped under the stars.
And there was the moment Sandy got drunk. It was in a
tavern further down the road. After a couple of bottles of the
potent local red wine, Sandy, quite earnestly, began to tell the
assembled company — camel-drivers and traders and even,
alas, the old king’s man — all about the tripitaka, and the star,
and their journey. That was not a good move, but the situation
was made even worse when Sandy, innocently, seemed to
have offended one of the ladies present, whose man, a large,
beefy Edomite, charged at him. Soon Sandy’s spade was
flying everywhere, and then Pigsy joined in, and bodies were
flying around as if a desert wind had passed through the
tavern, and tables and chairs, too. Monkey had not been
pleased.
“The road seems awfully quiet,” Sandy said now. The
three walked slowly, as old men. Above them, far in the
distance, towered the city of white stone. “I wonder where
everyone is.”
Monkey smiled. It did not escape his notice that the
general populace had been giving them a wide berth of late. In
fact, quite a blockage was forming about a mile behind them,
as cart-drivers became aware of the three travellers’ presence
ahead and slowed down to a crawl.
“There’s someone coming,” he said, and pointed, and
indeed, coming down the mountain road at a gallop was a
young man on a horse, wearing a uniform that seemed partlocal and part-Roman (as far as the travellers, who had
encountered few Romans, could tell) and looking quite
official and self-important.
“Do you think he wants to talk to us?” Sandy said, and
Pigsy said, “I’m hungry.”
The horse came thundering towards them. It was a
handsome specimen. Black-coated and shiny, and it seemed
aimed directly at the three travellers. When it came within a
few feet of them, the horse stopped. The three travellers, too,
stopped, and stood staring at the animal and its rider.
When the rider dismounted they could see that he was
indeed young, but that his face was already hardened by
fighting. He seemed a local boy, what they called a Hebrew,
and he spoke in Aramaic. He said, “Greetings, venerable
gentlemen — ” or something to that effect.
“Greetings, soldier,” Sandy said. “What can we do for
you — ” or something to that effect.
“Venerable one,” the boy said, “the king wishes to have
conversation with yourselves. I am requested to escort you the
rest of the way to Jerusalem, and to the palace itself.”
“Will there be food?” Pigsy said, and the soldier turned to
him and smiled, if only briefly, and said gravely, “There will
be.”
“We are old men,” Monkey said, and he leaned on his staff
as if to demonstrate his feebleness. “And peaceful. We have
no business with your king, and our errand is urgent.”
The boy’s raised eyebrow said, “Is that so?” but aloud he
said only, “But the king, it seems, has business with you.”
“Very well,” Monkey said amiably. “Seeing as our path
leads us to Jerusalem on its own. I believe we could spare
your king some moments.”
“That is very generous of you,” the soldier said. “My
name, by the way, is Josephus, son of Matthias.”
The boy had a solemn face but his eyes twinkled. Monkey,
without quite knowing why, liked him. He said, “Lead the
way, then, Josephus.”
The boy led his horse slowly forward. The three wise men
followed on foot. When at last they reached the great gates of
the city, Pigsy was out of breath and pinker than usual. He
said, “I’m hungry.”
“Business first,” Monkey said, and Sandy sniggered. They
followed the boy through the busy entrance, down narrow
alleyways bordered by houses built entirely with stone.
They passed a large building where the noise of
construction was overwhelming. “Our Temple,” the boy,
Josephus, said. The three companions looked, once. “Lacks a
certain grandeur,” Sandy murmured.
They came to the palace.
The king, when at last they saw him, seemed vigorous and
somewhat earthly. There was little protocol. The king’s name
was Hordos, Herod in the manner of the Romans, and he had
a thick white beard and a nose that had been broken once
before. He said, “Wise men. Thank you for coming to see
me.”
“Did we have a choice?” Sandy said, but quietly. Hordos
smiled. “I am, after all, the king,” he said.
“What do you want?” Pigsy said, bluntly. The king’s
smiled wavered. Monkey said, “Forgive my friend, for he is
led mostly by his appetites, and his appetites are great, and we
have come a long way and are weary, and have a long way to
go yet.”
The king inched his head. “Very well,” he said. “Let us not
bandy words. I wish to know of your purpose here.”
“And by asking,” Monkey said, “you indicate that you feel
you already have a good idea?”
For the first time they could see the king and soldier in
him. Hordos leaned forward, and his eyes were hard, and he
said, “This is my country. There is little I don’t know. And in
your travels you have been less than circumspect.”
Monkey sighed. “That is true,” he acknowledged. “But if
you know of our purpose, why did you summon us here?”
“Please,” the king said. “Let us not pretend to be
simpletons. I have heard tell that you follow a star, and that a
messiah will be born here in Judea, and that he will become
king of the Jews.”
“You fear for your succession?” Monkey said, and Sandy
said, “It is the nature of kings that they are sometimes
dethroned, and dynasties change. What of it?”
But Pigsy, who was looking at the king the way one does
at a juicy lamb chop, said, “We know little of kings and
nothing of Jews. We follow the tripitaka, and curse the day
that he was ordained to be born in this barbarous backwater.”
The king smiled and raised his hand. “Peace,” he said.
“You are hungry, and I have been a graceless host.” He called
out, and servants came and brought meats and bread and
cheese and jugs of red wine. “Eat,” he said. “Let it not be said
that you find us inhospitable.”
And so discussion was adjourned; and the three
companions ate until they could eat no more; and at last even
Pigsy has had enough, and he belched enormously and
grinned and patted his belly and said, “Simple fair, but good.”
“Thank you,” the king said wryly. He had merely tasted of
the food, and drank but half a cup of the wine. “Now, what is
this tripitaka of which you speak? What is your true
purpose?”
“King,” Monkey said, and he fingered the golden band
around his head as if in pain, “we three are bound to the
service of the tripitaka, the sanzang, ‘three baskets’ in your
tongue. He is a messenger of the Buddha; and it is his destiny
to travel far and gain wisdom, and it is ours to keep him well
and to protect him. Why he was ordained to be reborn here I
do not know. What his purpose is, that, too, I do not know.
We three, who were once mighty kings and generals, are now
fallen and bound in service to him. And you, what is it that
you desire of our master?”
“Your master,” Hordos said, “is yet unborn.”
“He was born before,” Pigsy said indifferently, “and will
be born again. That is the nature of his karma.”
The king shook his head. “There is much I do not
understand in your speech,” he said, and then he sighed and
said, “but enough to trouble me.”
The servants had been dismissed. They were alone. The
king said, “A bad time is coming, and while some here accuse
me of not being a true Jew, that I am, and I grow concerned
for my people. Some call me cruel, and yes, I have been
cruel, and will be so again when necessity demands.”
Pigsy nodded; he was beginning to think better of this
king, who had good food and who, moreover, understood the
importance of carefully applied cruelty. It was, Pigsy felt, a
necessary quality in a king.
“I have held off against the Romans,” the king said. “I
have maintained Judea as an independent entity; it took much
doing. I have forged links with Ptolemy of Egypt, but I fear
his time, too, and his dynasty’s are ending. A war is coming,
gentlemen. A war of the Jews. When I go, I fear I will have
no successors, and the Romans will annex this country the
way one gathers a fallen fruit.” His eyes glazed, and Monkey
saw with wonder that the power of prophecy was in the king’s
eyes. “A war will come,” the king said, and his voice was
booming, and urgent. “My people will revolt. We have fought
the Greeks, and we have beaten them. We have outlasted the
Babylonians. We have escaped the Egyptians. Always, my
people survive. But now, I fear, the final war is coming, and
against the Romans there can be no victory. We will be
defeated, and taken as slaves, and the temple — my temple,
that I have been rebuilding and remaking until it will stand as
glorious as Solomon’s once was! — will be destroyed, and the
menorah lost forever, and two thousand years of exile will
follow. This,” he said, and his eyes opened and he saw again,
“is what I wish to prevent.”
Then the three companions bowed their heads, for the
king’s words had moved them; and Monkey said, “What is it
you wish done?”
“Find the boy,” the king said. “And take him away. I will
put out an order for his death. The Romans will not trouble
further. Take him to . . . Egypt. I will arrange safe passage
with Ptolemy, its ruler. Return to Judea when my time comes.
It will not be too long now. Already the shadows lengthen,
and my temple is not yet done.” The king shook his head, and
smiled, and the expression in his eyes was cruel. “I will put
out an order for the boy’s death,” he said, “and it will be
followed. Should he remain in Judea he will be killed. It will
be up to you three to prevent that — if you can.”
Monkey smiled, and Pigsy grinned, and only Sandy
remained expressionless, as if thinking deeply. “Politics is not
our strongest suit,” Monkey said. “But we understand
fighting.”
“Then go,” the king said, and he bowed his head to the
three companions. “We will not meet again.”
And they left; and as the king had said, so it was, and they
never saw Hordos again.
Episode Three: A Star Over Bethlehem
When they had heard the king, they departed;
and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east,
went before them, till it came and stood over
where the young child was.
— Matthew 2:9
Miriam felt restless. A hot wind was blowing outside and
the house felt damp and airless, and she longed to go out of
doors. Yet it was dark; a moonless night and the stars gazed
down oppressively, and so she remained inside with the baby.
Jesus! Her little Yeshua, a cherub, an angel, a sweettempered baby who seemed not to know the meaning of
crying. He was a lifeline. She had felt so queer since he was
born. Oppressed by the house, the night, the small noises that
made her jump . . . the birthing-mother was kind, and said it
was only to be expected. Sometimes women felt this way on
the birth of their first child. She wished Joseph was there, but
he was working late again, an urgent order from a Hashmonai
family in Jerusalem asking for a cabinet — he was a good
carpenter, her husband — a good man — but he worked too
hard. Yet she never complained. He had taken her in with
child, and had always treated her right. And the baby was as
much his as — as — she didn’t want to think about it. Not
now.
A noise outside startled her. She sat close to the fire and
stared out into the dark. Was anyone out there? She heard the
neighing of a horse and the clatter of hooves, disappearing
into the distance. Just some messenger or late traveller going
past. She needn’t worry. Bethlehem was a good town, quiet,
observant. It was close enough to Jerusalem and the markets
and the temple. Idly she wondered if Joseph would buy her
the new shawl she had seen on their last visit to the city. It was
dyed a bright blue. She stirred the fire with a stick and stared
at the dark outside. Why was she so nervous?
••••
“Bit of a dump,” Pigsy said cheerfully. Somehow he had
secured upon his person one of the king’s personal flagons of
wine, half a loaf of bread, and a large chunk of cheese. He
was chewing as he spoke. It never failed to annoy Sandy.
“Not much to do after dark, I shouldn’t think.”
Monkey didn’t reply. He looked up into the night sky and
once again touched the golden band there, the one he couldn’t
remove. He was bound to the tripitaka. The band of gold on
his forehead was his jailor. Most of the time he enjoyed his
adventures with the tripitaka. But, recently, he was becoming
more and more distracted, and felt the weight of the band
more acutely. He shrugged, said, “I’ve seen worse.”
The town was dark and quiet. Low-lying stone houses and
thatched roofs, and orderly dirt roads that ran in between.
Bethlehem. It meant the house of bread in the Hebrew’s
tongue. Pigsy choked and sprayed a fountain of breadcrumbs
from his mouth. “Really!” Sandy said. Pigsy shrugged and
took a deep sip of the wine. Sandy shook his head. He found
himself agreeing with Zhū Bājiè on this. “What a place to be
born,” he said.
“Here,” Monkey said. He was still looking at the skies. The
other two looked up, followed his finger. Stars scattered
across the sky like a hoard of diamonds and rubies. The Milky
Way ran from one end of the sky to the other, two of its arms
visible, reaching out as if to pluck at an unseen treasure.
Sirius, the Dog Star, was bright in the centre of the heavens.
And there . . .
Monkey never quite knew what it was. His knowledge of
astronomy had not been great. He had been more interested
in mischief than true learning. And yet he wondered. Was it a
comet they were following? A star that — a sage in the
Imperial Court had once told him this happened — exploded
and its light reached out an unimaginable distance away? Was
it a spirit-being, or a demon cast down from heaven very
much like Pigsy or Sandy once were?
He didn’t know. But there it was, a bright, steady point in
the sky, a beacon they had followed all the way from the
Middle Kingdom, past the forbidding mountains and the
dreary plains, to this land, to this town, finally to this house,
brick and thatch and a small yard, and a fire burning quietly
inside.
He nodded, and the other two exchanged a glance. They
made no move, but merely stood there, gazing at the house,
each thinking his own thoughts. Pigsy finished the bread and
took a last sip from the wine. Monkey stepped forward and
knocked on the door.
••••
She jumped at the unexpected sound. Had she nodded
off? She stood up and went and looked at the cot and little
Yeshua, toothless and sweet, was smiling up at her and there
were little dimples at the corners of his mouth. Jesus, she
thought, using the Latinate version which was such de rigour.
What shall I do with you?
The sound came again. Someone knocking at the door.
And Joseph wasn’t there. What should she do?
“Hello!” It was a cheerful voice, quite deep, as of an old
yet vital man. “Anybody home?”
Perhaps it was the voice. In truth, she couldn’t have said
why she did it. But she went to the door. “Who is it?”
Did her voice quiver? She heard low voices conferring
outside. They spoke a strange language she didn’t understand.
“We are wise men come from the east,” a new voice said
decisively. Then, less so — “And, um, would it be possible
for us to come in?”
“Wise men,” Miriam said, remembering something her
grandmother used to say, “do not call themselves wise.”
“Bugger,” someone muttered outside. “Look, lady — ” but
he was silenced, and the first voice laughed. “I think the word
in your language is star gazers,” he said. “Chozei kochavim?
We are astrologers. Our wisdom is a matter for interpretation,
but we would like to speak with you. It is about your son.”
Her son! What did they want with her son? She looked
over at the cot. Baby Jesus was cooing to himself. He was
grinning, that face he made when he — oh, not now!
She found herself opening the door. Outside stood three
old men. They leaned on canes and two of them looked
wizened and bent beyond description, though the third was fat
and fleshy and she thought he looked like a pig, and it cheered
her up. “Come in,” she said. “I’m afraid I have to — ”
••••
“What is that smell?” Sandy whispered. Unfortunately his
voice was quite loud. The woman had heard it, and was
embarrassed; Monkey could see that. Surprisingly, it was
Pigsy who stepped in.
“He’s a baby, you idiot,” he said to Sandy, and went over
to the woman and said, “Let me help you,” and in moments
he was changing the baby’s dress and wiping his bottom.
Monkey and Sandy stared as if they were thunderstruck by
one of the gods. “What?” Pigsy demanded. “You have to
forgive them,” he said, turning around to the baby’s mother.
“Sworn bachelors, both of them. Me, I like the family life.
Your husband not in, by the way? I must say pregnancy
makes women positively glow. What are you doing later?”
“Pigsy!”
The woman seemed bewildered. “What do you want?” she
said again. And, “My husband will be here soon.”
“What we have to say concerns you both,” Monkey said.
“But first — may I . . . ?” he gestured to the baby, and the
woman nodded reluctantly, and Monkey went to the cot and
looked down, and saw the tripitaka, and bowed his head; and
his golden band gleamed in the fire.
And so, he tried to explain. About the tripitaka, the
sanzang, and about the eightfold path and enlightenment and
nirvana, and the woman looked like she wanted nothing more
than to throw the three of them out and be done with it. “He’s
in danger,” Monkey finally said, bluntly, and the woman
blanched. “You have had a premonition,” he said, and she
nodded and said, “Yes,” and sounded surprised.
“We will protect him,” Monkey said. “We are his . . .
guardians. For a while, anyway. It is our job. But he must
leave Judea, and you and your husband must take him. For he
has destiny awaiting, and the world is full of pitfalls and traps
for the unwary.”
“But where?” the mother said, and they could see she was
distraught; and Pigsy went and comforted her.
“We shall wait for your husband,” Monkey said. “And as
soon as he returns we must depart.”
“But where?” the mother said again, and Monkey, looking
at Sandy for confirmation, said, “I believe it is a place called
Egypt.”
Episode Four: Egypt
He took the young child and his mother by
night, and departed into Egypt.
— Matthew 2:14
Egypt! Misr, Mitzraim . . . Even in the final years of its
decline, it remained a wonder of the ancient world. How can
one describe the great yellow desert and its calm, its endless
quiet under a sky as wide as a universe? How can one
describe what it is like to stand beneath the giant pyramids
casting their jagged shadows on to the bare earth, and watch a
blood-red sun engorged like an ill heart, so big it dominated
the horizon?
“We get better sunsets at home,” Pigsy said. “What food
have they got?”
Sandy shushed him.
They had travelled by night. They had slipped out of
Bethlehem and journeyed north, and crossed the great desert,
camping out under the cold and unrelenting stars, and have
arrived at last in the land of Egypt. The baby tripitaka’s father
turned out to be a quiet and unassuming man. His wife was
hardier than him, but they had both found it hard. To leave
home and hearth and venture into a strange land with a baby
and three very odd strangers — the parents have become
subdued and the mother overly protective of her child. The
three companions — sworn bachelors all, whatever Pigsy may
claim — became quite irritable.
It was with a sense of mutual relief, therefore, when they
arrived in the shadow of the pyramids and reached the old
Hebrew Quarter, where once the slaves of the Pharaoh lived.
“It’s all right,” Joseph said to Miriam. He felt responsible
somehow for the whole thing. “Remember my namesake did
the same thing in his youth, only to return triumphant.”
“You are no longer young, husband,” she said, and saw his
hurt face and was sorry. “You are right,” she said. “It will be
fine.” They held each other close, two strangers frightened in
a land they didn’t know.
But Egypt! It was a barbarous land, a wondrous land, a
place decaying decade by decade, and yet full, still, of its
ancient grandeur, of whimsical miracles and moulding magic.
Their new house was baked mud and the old quarter
almost deserted. Yet some Hebrews had remained in Egypt,
and some still came and went, men of trade or learning or
messengers of the Jewish king. There was always work to be
had for a carpenter. Joseph found himself busier even than in
Bethlehem, and he wished for his son to follow him. “An
honest trade,” he said to Miriam. “That’s what the boy needs.
You can’t go wrong with an honest trade.”
Miriam smiled at him. Sometimes, she worried for the
baby Jesus, but she kept it from her husband.
The baby Jesus, meanwhile, grew to be a healthy little boy.
His skin was browned dark by the sun, and his hair grew long
and fell down to his shoulders. He played in the alleyways of
the Hebrew Quarter and learned Hebrew and Aramaic and a
smattering of Greek, and he was seldom alone: His friends
were always there when he needed them.
“Again,” Monkey said. The boy, his face frowning in
concentration, beads of sweat forming on his unlined face,
once again assumed the position of Praying Mantis Preparing
to Jump. “Focus your ch’i,” Monkey said. The boy took a
deep breath and eased it out slowly. “Settle,” Monkey said.
“Feel the ch’i flowing through you. When your attacker
moves — ”
Monkey struck, and the boy moved — like a praying
mantis. Where the boy had been only air remained. “Good,”
Monkey said. “Now try it again.”
Sandy taught the boy the Sūtras, and debated with him the
nature of the world. “Be like water,” he said. “Do not resist
change; be change. Remember that the usefulness of a cup is
its emptiness.” He also taught him to drink tea, of which he
had a small supply — “A wonderful infusion! The basis of a
civilization!” — though it had never quite caught on.
But it was Pigsy whom the boy liked most of all. Pigsy, fat
and sweating and grumbling, who carried him on his back
without complaint, and joined him in his make-believe games
and always played the parts Jesus didn’t want. It was Pigsy,
too, who took the boy beyond the walls of the Hebrew
Quarter into the dazzling city outside and protected him from
harm, and they explored the wide avenues, the startling
markets, the hustle and bustle of the ports on the Nile and
admired the ships and invented stories of adventure and
daring for them. It was a happy childhood.
At that time they lived in peace and were not disturbed.
The word of Herod the king had proven true. Yet it is the
truth that water can both flow and crash — and the path of
the river that was Jesus was forming deep grooves in the
earth, and they did not go unnoticed; and many were curious,
and some were concerned.
••••
Jesus was walking along the Nile on his own. At thirteen,
he was still small but there was a sense of compressed energy
about him. He didn’t yet need to shave, but his long, dark hair
was shiny and rich; yet it was his eyes that drew people to
him. They were a blue-black colour, like a bruise, but the
longer you stared at them the more colours you saw, the more
swirls and eddies — it was like staring into an infinite pool,
and it was hard to pull away.
At thirteen, Jesus was discovering girls; and in that he was
late, for the girls had already discovered him.
The banks of the Nile were relatively quiet at this time of
the evening, which was unusual. The heat of the day had
abated and a half-full moon provided plenty of light. Stalls
were strung along the bank, selling spiced mutton and
flatbread, watered wines from Rome, oranges from Judea and
pineapples from Kush. Jesus bought himself half a loaf of
bread loaded with meat and walked along, the juice running
down the sides of his mouth.
A ship cruised silently by on the great river, sails open, as
graceful as a swan. Gold flashed off its sides — a royal barge?
He didn’t know, and didn’t care. He walked down along the
Nile with all the carelessness and good cheer a boy of thirteen
has when he is away from his parents and has pocket money
to spare. The world was full of delights.
He passed a group of skimpily-dressed ladies, their bodies
painted harsh bright colours. He was dazzled by their smiles.
“What a beautiful boy!” — “Where are you going,
honey?” — “Where’s your mother?” — “I’ll mother you!” —
laughs.
He walked past the open mouth of an alleyway when the
tune dropped from his lips and he paused and stood stockstill. An observer may have failed to notice him: He
disappeared into the shadows as if he were one of them.
Inside the alleyway a fight was taking place, and it was not
even. A girl only a few years older than himself was fighting
desperately against a gang of young, muscled men. Barechested, the men held clubs, knives, curved swords, and on
their arms wore heavy bands of dull metal. Jesus looked
up — and was smitten. The girl was beautiful and wild, with
bare arms on which glittered heavy gold bands. Her nose was
proud, her skin dark, and she fought with a ferocity he had
not known women possessed. She jumped high in the air and
kicked and one man’s face caved in and he fell, but two more
grabbed her arms and brought her down.
The words of his mentors came back to him. Be like water.
He was ready. Somehow, he felt, this was what he was born
for. He eased his way along the wall, unseen and unnoticed.
The girl was struggling fiercely against her opponents, but
there were too many of them. Jesus —
He leaped. High in the air he went, and the power of ch’i
was inside him. He leaped and lashed out, once, twice, three
times. The men fell back.
“Brat!” A massive hand reached out to grab him. Jesus
allowed it to come, welcomed it, unresisting — and when it
came, took hold, used his opponent’s own force, and broke
his arm. He leaped again, kicked, breaking a man’s nose,
landed and punched, one two three rapid hits, moving,
ducking underneath the big men, a mad swirl of energy.
Had one of his mentors seen him then, they would not
have, perhaps, been impressed. They might have felt that he
was too impulsive; that, despite how coolly he might have
thought he fought, it was not so; that he fought, in fact,
almost like a child. Yet there have been few children in the
world ever to be trained by Sūn Wùkōng.
The girl fought by his side. Together they faced the circle
of evil-looking attackers, and together they punched, leaped,
swung and ducked and hit, until at last —
A boy and a girl stood alone in a dark alleyway, and a
sliver of moonlight came down from above and circled them;
and all around them were the bodies of the attackers; and all
was still.
“Traitors!” the girl said. Her eyes flashed. She seemed
hardly to notice Jesus. “They will live yet to regret ever having
lived.” She smiled. “The torturers will make sure of that.”
“What did they want?” Jesus said. “Why were they
attacking you?”
“What is your name, boy?”
“Yeshua. Jesus.”
Her eyes opened; surprised. “A Hebrew?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t fight like one.” She laughed. He thought she
had a cruel laugh, but she was very attractive. “The last time
your people were here, they ran away across the desert.”
“The last time my people were here, God killed every firstborn in Egypt,” Jesus said. The girl stopped laughing.
“God . . .” she said, musingly. “Do you believe in God,
boy?”
“I do.”
“I don’t,” the girl said, quite matter-of-factly. “But I believe
in politics, and those thugs were sent to assassinate me. By
my sister Tryphaena, no doubt. The whore. God!” She turned
her head and looked straight at Jesus, and seemed to discover
something in his eyes; for a long moment they looked at each
other, not speaking. “I am . . .” she said, and her voice was
thicker now, as if she was being shaken from a dream. “I am
Cleopatra.”
PART TWO: THE TEMPTATION OF THE CHRIST
Episode One: Nazarene
And he came and dwelt in a city called
Nazareth.
— Matthew 2:23
The journey back to Judea took considerably less than
forty years, though it might have, at times, felt like it. Pigsy
was irritable; Sandy morose. “The girls!” Pigsy said to
Monkey. They were trudging through the desert. “Skin like
dark olives, warm hands scented with oil, warm bo — ”
“Olives,” said Sandy. “Don’t talk to me about olives.”
Pigsy and Monkey both looked at him sideways, surprised at
the non sequitur. Pigsy, miffed, said, “What have olives got to
do with it?”
“Nothing,” Sandy said, a little too forcefully. He had spent
most of his time in Egypt at the Pharaoh’s library. Didn’t
Sandy mention, in a few unguarded moments, that one of the
librarians was unusually helpful? Perhaps that was it, Monkey
thought, but why the olives? He decided, on second thought,
that he didn’t really want to know.
The boy, meanwhile, was taking the travelling rather well.
He looked about him everywhere with a sort of sharp-eyed
innocence (long lost to the three travellers) and Monkey
rather envied him. He had turned out well, the tripitaka:
handsome, well-spoken, rather better in the noble arts of war
than the last tripitaka had been. Always having to bail him
out; always running after this demon or that who had
ensnared the tripitaka. This latest reincarnation was something
of a blessing, really, when it came down to it. The boy turned
around and, as if reading Monkey’s thoughts, flashed him a
boyish grin and a wink. Damn it! The tripitaka always made
him feel like this, knowing what lay inside of him, never
coming outright and saying it, but knowing, all the same,
and — he touched the crown on his head. If only he could
have it removed . . .
“Is this Mount Sinai?” the boy Jesus said. He pointed at an
unremarkable sandy-coloured hill, which looked identical to
all the other dune-like hills they had so far passed. “Where
Moses gave the Ten Commandments to my people and spoke
to God?”
“Speaking to Gods,” Monkey said dryly, “is seldom a
beneficial policy.”
“Yes,” Pigsy said, “they just might hear you and talk
back.” He smacked his hands together and said, “Kapawo!”
“Olives!” Sandy said. He looked like he was spoiling for a
fight.
The parents rode behind, on donkeys. A small train of
pitiful-looking animals carried their worldly goods, leaving a
trail of hoof-prints and the occasional excrement behind.
The desert was dreary but — on the plus side, Monkey
thought — it didn’t take long to cross. And once they entered
Judea proper, and the air turned cooler and the wind
whispered promises of the sea, the companions’ mood
improved. Slightly.
The journey north was long but uneventful. Herod’s death
would have left the country in an upheaval, but the Romans
had stepped in quickly, and order was restored. There were to
be no more kings for the Jews. Herod’s three boys ruled as
tetrarchs, and a Roman prefect was, indeed, more than
enough for what was, after all, a Roman colony in all but
name. And a small, insignificant one at that. “Romans build
good roads,” Monkey said.
“Ah, but Egypt . . .” Pigsy said wistfully. “I went into one
of their pyramids once, did I tell you?”
“About a hundred times . . .” Sandy muttered, but the boy
Jesus turned and gave Uncle Pigsy his wide-eyed stare and
said, “Truly?”
“Truly,” Pigsy said, obviously pleased. “Found a secret
door. Led inside — long tunnel — went down quite a long
way — dark — of course, I knew the place was cursed —
was waiting for it, you can bet on it — but treasure, I must
admit I was quite — curious — as to its exact nature — I
wasn’t going to take anything — ”
“Ha!” — this one from Sandy.
“Mummies,” Pigsy said, matter-of-factly. Jesus’ eyes grew
even larger. “A horde of them. Damnedest thing I ever saw.
All wrapped in bandages, quite brainless, obviously, they had
their brains pulled out through the nose before they put them
there — ” Miriam, behind, looked horrified — “quite
barbaric, really,” Pigsy said magnanimously, as if conceding
her an important point. “But the crux of it was, I’m standing
there, in the very treasure house of this old pharaoh, and this
army of mummies comes rushing me — I’m completely
surrounded — no way out — deep underground — nothing
for it but to fight them.”
“Oh!”
Pigsy grinned at the boy. “When fighting mummies,” he
said, as if imparting some great and secret knowledge,
“remember that they move slowly and have no brains. They
rely purely on numbers — and being virtually unstoppable, of
course, already being dead and all.”
“Please!” It was the mother again. Pigsy sighed. “Later,”
he promised. “I’ll tell you how I got away from them. Best
not to go into it now. Must say they mummify some nicelooking girls in those tombs. Chambermaids and what not,
you know. Not their fault — it’s not like they asked to be
made into mummies — ”
“Pigsy . . .” Monkey, growling. The boy looked between
them and looked disappointed — “and I, for one, never
minded such a minor a point as the lack of a brain,” Pigsy
said, and roared in laughter.
They had decided, at last, to settle in the Galilee. The
warm climate, fertile land, and — importantly — the distance
from Jerusalem were all factors. And Nazareth itself was a
pleasant enough town, with cobbled streets and low stone
walls and a bustling market, and one could drink plenty of the
local wine and find conversation, and there was plenty of
work for a carpenter. And so they settled and lived
comfortably enough, and the boy grew and became a man,
and all would have been peaceful and prosperous if it weren’t,
of course, for the nature of fate and the inevitable turning of
the wheel of life upon its axis — and one day, as if heralding
at last the winds of destiny, there came a man to the river
Jordan, and his name was Yochanan.
Episode Two: The Baptist
And the same John had his raiment of camel’s
hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins;
and his meat was locusts and wild honey.
— Matthew 3:4
“Locusts and honey!” Pigsy said disgustedly. “I mean,
really!” He was sitting with Monkey and Sandy at a lakeside
taverna in Tiberias, drinking red wine. The sun was low on
the horizon. A lone fisherman could be seen in the distance. “I
mean, did you see that old devil?”
It had all been most disagreeable, Monkey had to concede.
This man Yochanan, this John as he called himself in the
vulgate, reminded him of the men of a mountain tribe they
had encountered up in the Himalayas: big, hairy creatures,
shadows against the snowline. They hadn’t attacked, but
followed them, just out of reach, for days across the endless
snow. Tenacious: that’s what they were. And that’s what this
man John was, too. Though he, too, was not entirely a man.
“Do you think he will be all right?” Sandy said. He seemed
morose, but then he usually did.
“It is out of our hands now,” Monkey said. “For a little
while, anyhow.”
John — yes, they had all recognised him, at the end, but
he was not a threat, despite his nature. It was what transpired
afterwards that had them worried — and meant they were
now sitting without their charge on the shore of the Sea of
Galilee, and fretting.
It had all began innocently enough. John had come to the
river Jordan and there he dwelt, and preached, of course —
the land was full of preachers of all hues, and he was no
exception — but it had become a fashion among the young
and not-so-young to go to him, for the man John offered a
new spiritual service to the community, and it was called
baptism. Come and see him, and he would dunk you in the
river Jordan, and pronounce you free of sin. Jesus wanted to
go.
“What sins have you committed that you need to go
there?” Pigsy had asked morosely. Morality, he thought,
should be left to those best suitable to handle it — Buddhas
and such-like. That the tripitaka needed to wash away his sins
seemed — well, it seemed indecent, is what it was.
Jesus, thinking about Cleopatra — there was that thing she
did, with olives, he couldn’t seem to shake that memory away
these days — blushed and didn’t reply. But he was
determined to go.
He had grown to be a handsome young man. Long hair
fell down to his shoulders, and his beard, which he cultivated
in the vain hope of appearing older, nevertheless gave him a
rather fetching appearance. There being nothing else to it, the
companions joined him. Monkey had a bad feeling about the
whole thing. The old tripitaka always got mired in those sidetrips of his, and he thought the new one would be no
exception. Anyway, it was their job to watch over him. And
so they went.
The river was pleasant and there were many fishes and
Sandy, at least, seemed delighted by the change of scene, and
he caught their lunch barehanded, standing in the river. John’s
place was easy to find. There was a veritable horde of people
heading the same way.
From above, the scene was curious: There was this man,
hairy and almost naked, big arms almost rippling in the
sunlight, standing stock-still in the middle of the Jordan. And
there were the people, forming an orderly line, stepping
gingerly into the cold water, waddling up to this John, and
being baptised. And the man, all the while he was dunking
them into the water, was shouting at the top of his voice, and
speaking thus:
“O generation of vipers!” said John, “who hath warned
you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore
fruits meet for repentance. And think not to say within
yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto
you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto
Abraham. And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the
trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit
is hewn down, and cast into the fire — ” and so on and so
forth. And Pigsy scowled but kept his tongue, for there were
many women in the baptism and the sight of their wet clothes
filled him with delight, but Sandy was more hasty and said —
“There is something familiar about this man.”
“Wait,” Monkey said. And Jesus went down with the rest
of the crowd and waited his turn, and when he stepped into
the water John looked into his face and took a step back, and
nearly fell. And then he raised his eyes and saw the three
companions, outlined against the bank of the river Jordan,
and he scowled. “I will not baptise you,” he said flatly to
Jesus, and the expression on the young man’s face was one of
grave disappointment. And John said, “I have need to be
baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?” — or words to that
effect, in the Aramaic tongue which makes it sound less
poncy.
And Sandy said, “He’s a water-sprite!” for he recognised
something then, and for being a water-demon himself, of a
sort, was well familiar with the order. And Pigsy said, “Let’s
attack him!” but Monkey stayed, as they say, their hands.
“Wait.”
And Jesus said, “Suffer it to be so now,” and John
nodded, and didn’t argue, and after that he grabbed Jesus’
head and dunked him in the river, and the boy came back
again spluttering and said, “It’s cold!”
“He is the tripitaka,” Monkey said to Sandy, quietly. “And
all demons must, in the end, accept the Buddha or perish
beside him. But now it is the time of his temptation, that
which every man must pass on his way to enlightenment. And
of this John, at least, I think we need not fear.”
Then John raised his eyes again, and his and Monkey’s
met, and the water-man inched his head towards Sūn
Wùkōng, in recognition or acceptance, and both turned to
look at Jesus.
“It’s a trap!” Sandy said. But Monkey remained where he
was, and held back his companions. The young tripitaka was
out of the water. And above his head, where before soft
clouds had amassed, there was now an opening; and the sun
shone down, and seemed to suffuse the young man in light.
And a voice spoke, or seemed to, and there was a moment of
stillness.
“Monkey, please!” Sandy cried.
“There are things we cannot guard against, Shā Wùjìng,”
Monkey said. “This is the time of the tripitaka’s trials. He
must make his own choices now, and we cannot help. Be
patient.”
And Sandy looked at Monkey and for a moment he almost
didn’t recognise him, for Monkey looked like a wise and
ancient king just then, and his eyes looked far away. And so
they paused, and did nothing, as their young charge stood
alone under the opening in the sky —
And then there was a rumble of thunder —
A fork of lightning burst open a stone —
There was a scream, or perhaps many all joined into
one —
And a blackness descended on the earth and something
horrid and demonic seemed to grasp —
To grapple —
To take hold —
Something ancient and great and full of horrors
unnamed —
It was only for a moment —
And then it was over and the sun was shining and the
clouds dispersed, and the earth was as it was before, warm
and pleasantly scented, and it took them all another moment
to realise that Jesus was no longer there.
The tripitaka had disappeared.
Episode Three: The Great Old One
Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the
wilderness to be tempted of the devil.
— Matthew 4:1
There was that confusing moment in the river — John’s
face, for a moment revealing behind it something alien and
gleeful — and then the clouds, opening, the light falling on
him and him knowing, all of a sudden, a simple, joyous,
wondrous, and strange knowing of all and everything, and he
could see the sense in the way motes of light danced on the
surface of the water, in the way wind governed the movement
of clouds, and he tried to hold on to it, that way of seeing, allencompassing and strange —
And then the blackness, that sense of wrongness
descending, and the feel of slimy tentacles holding him,
squeezing the breath out of him, pulling him down, down,
and into the ground and beyond it, and into the underworld
that lies beneath.
Jesus felt calmer than perhaps he should have. But it had
all happened so quickly! He had no time to panic.
Down and down he went, and as he did, light took shape
again around him and he could see: and what he saw began to
work on him, like water dripping slowly until they turn the
body blue with cold, and he knew where he was: for his
guardians had taught him well.
First came the Chamber of Wind and Thunder, a great
cavernous space filled with lightning and the smell of burning
flesh, and bodies buffeted by cyclones thrown here and there
like rag dolls.
Second came the Chamber of Grinding, where a horrid
dry smell permeated, and where men and women, sobbing
quietly, were ground to dust. The chamber expanded and
constricted like a lung, and all inside it were reduced to
powder.
Third came the Chamber of Flames, where eternal fires
burned and human bodies sizzled as they perished; and fourth
came the Chamber of Ice, quiet and solemn and filled with
the bodies of children; and fifth came the Chamber of Oil
Cauldrons, where rapists were boiled alive; and the Chamber
of Dismemberment by Sawing, and the Chamber of
Dismemberment by Chariot; and eighth came the Chamber of
Mountain of Knives, where Jesus turned back, horrified, as
those who cheat and profit from it were forced to climb the
mountain, the knives cutting into their flesh, over and over,
until they seemed like an inhuman mass of blood and tissue;
and on and on they went, and the great old one took him
down with him through all the levels of hell.
They went through the Chamber of Tongue Ripping; the
Chamber of Pounding, with the sound of giant pistons going
up and down, crushing screams; they went through the
Chamber of Torso-severing; the Chamber of Scales, where
men hung upside down from the high ceiling, giant meat
hooks pierced through their bodies; they went through the
Chamber of Eye-gouging and the Chamber of Heart-digging,
the Chamber of Disembowelment and the Chamber of Blood,
where the blasphemous were skinned alive, and the Chamber
of Maggots, where crooks lay screaming on the ground while
a black cloud of maggots crawled over them and devoured
them slowly; and finally through the flames of the inferno and
down to the nameless level nineteen.
Jesus stood in front of a great, carved chair. Standing
before it, immobile as statues, were the two fearsome
guardians of Diyu, of hell: Ox-Head and Horse-Face, great
weapons by their sides.
“Approach, human!” boomed a voice, and a dark shape
suddenly filled the great chair — it seemed as if the light
dimmed further, and the darkness on the chair was discerned
only by its relation to the outer darkness of the hall, so that
features were hard to identify — though Jesus seemed to
notice tentacles, and two enormous eyes like dark moons.
Jesus stepped forward, and bowed politely. “Yanluo Wang,”
he said.
“Jesus of Bethlehem,” said Yanluo Wang, Lord of Hell,
the Great Old One. “Latterly of Nazareth.” He sounded
pleased. “Your teachers taught you well. Welcome to hell.”
“Thank you.”
“How do you like it?” boomed the voice.
Jesus smiled. “Human imagination is a wonderful thing,”
he said.
“Indeed!” A tentacle seemed to flop from the deep
darkness. The two guards remained immobile, staring fixedly
ahead. “But, come. Enough small talk. That is one vice not
usually enjoyed in hell — ” the great awful voice laughed, like
a grating of rusty cogs in a mighty engine — “though
personally I consider it a punishment all by itself. Perhaps a
new hell . . .” his voice ebbed away speculatively, then he
sighed, and the dark attention returned to the standing Jesus.
“I want your soul,” Yanluo Wang said, matter-of-factly.
“My soul?”
“Your will,” the Great Old One said impatiently. “Your
service. Your worship. A soul is but actions of the mind. And
I want yours.”
“Are you willing to pay for it?” Jesus said, and Yanluo
Wang laughed. “Hebrews!” he said. “Your people truly are
equal to the Chinese in the fecundity of mercantile
opportunity! Pay, you say? Indeed. I can offer you a great
many things.”
And so began the temptation of the Christ. And for forty
days and forty nights (that being a number of particular
significance for the Hebrew people, along with seven and
thirteen) Jesus was left in the desert, the wilderness as later
scholars might translate it, and he was very hungry. And when
the forty days and forty nights (give or take) had passed, the
Great Old One reappeared to him and said, “You are the
Buddha. Make the stones into bread, so that you may be
saved.”
But Jesus laughed and said, “One does not achieve nirvana
through the coveting of foodstuffs. Let the stones remain —
or roll if they so wish.”
And Yanluo Wang was not pleased. And he took him here
and there, and offered him many things; and at last, when
they were both weary, he took him to the highest peak of the
highest mountain, higher even than where the yeti go; and he
sat Jesus down and gestured, and the whole world was spread
out below them, from the Middle Kingdom in the east to the
great empire whose seat was the Eternal City, Mother Roma,
Rome, and he said (more or less): “All these things will I give
thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.”
And Jesus looked down at the world, and it was beautiful.
“The sun may rise in the East,” he said, “but it sets in the
West — ” and the Great Old One looked at him like he was
crazy and said, in a pained voice, “Please do not quote Zen
koans at me.”
“Sorry.”
Jesus looked down at the world and saw the sun rise and
travel across the globe (for he had learned much from the
Greeks in Egypt, and thought the idea of a flat world
ridiculous), and his eyes were drawn first to Nazareth, where
his mother and father sat together by the fire and spoke in low
voices, and looked afraid; and then to Tiberias, where three
once-heavenly companions were getting terribly, horribly
drunk; and last to the wide and desolate sands of Egypt, and
to the palace, where through one window he heard the sound
of running water, and a girl singing in the bath —
And further, to the great armies of the Roman generals,
and in particular that of Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian, and
further yet to Jerusalem, the city of white stone, where
Herod’s son Archelaus ruled as tetrarch — and he knew then
that his place was there, among his people, and that his role in
the world was yet to come, and he said, “No.”
And Yanluo Wang nodded his great squid-like head and
departed; and before he did he called him Buddha, for he
knew then that the young man had now found the path, and
that if he stayed on it and did not fail he would indeed achieve
nirvana and transcend Mara, all that which is illusion. But he
knew, too, that there was time enough yet for him to fail. And
Jesus was left alone in the Himalayas, and it was very cold.
But as he called there were those who heard his cry from far
away; and Sūn Wùkōng, the Monkey King, left his drink and
summoned his cloud, and rode faster than wind until he
reached the great heights of the mountains; and Jesus, at last,
was returned to Galilee.
Episode Four: The Sermon on the Mount
And there followed him great multitudes of
people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and
from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from
beyond Jordan. And seeing the multitudes, he
went up into a mountain: and when he was
set, his disciples came unto him.
— Matthew 4:25-5:1
It had not escaped the companions’ notice that, when the
boy returned from the mountain, he was different. His smile,
while still dazzling, was no longer quite so carefree; and his
manner was that of a man set on a path; the youthful
hesitance had gone, and in its place stood the certainty of a
man.
“He had conquered temptation,” Sandy said knowingly.
“He is on the path of enlightenment now.”
“I don’t like it,” Pigsy said. “Mixing with devils never did
anyone any favours. We should have stayed in Egypt.”
Monkey said nothing, though he, too, was concerned
about the young Buddha. Changes were coming, he knew that
for certain. And he thought of the old king’s words, and about
the war that must surely come between the Hebrews and the
Romans; and he was uneasy.
It is not a Buddha’s role to fight; though Jesus had been
trained well by the three of them, and indeed as he grew, he
became a wonder to watch, flowing through the ch’i of kung
fu like a mountain spirit, like water, and like sun. But since he
returned, since Monkey brought him back from the
Himalayas, the boy was no longer open to them. He was his
own man, and he had plans. That was evident at a glance.
But what form these plans took, in what way Jesus intended
to continue along the eightfold path, that none of them knew.
And so they huddled together, and drank many flagons of
wine, and they brooded; and Jesus took to walking great
distances, and visiting all places in the Galilee; and he almost
always went alone.
How far things had gone, how well on his way he was to
achieving his plans, they only found out later. The days
passed, and the months, and Jesus was nearly always away,
walking through the hills and rivers of the Galilee, sleeping in
villages and fields, talking to the people — his people, these
curious men and women called Hebrews, or Jews, who lived
on the land and grew grapes and wheat, and spent much time
studying their own version of the Sūtras, which they called
Tanach, and was both a religious text and a history of their
people.
“I don’t like it,” Pigsy said again, but Sandy said, “Silence,
Pigsy! It isn’t for us to question the tripitaka, but to follow
him.”
“And keep him out of trouble,” Pigsy said, morose; and he
roared for another flagon of wine.
••••
For Jesus, the land of the Galilee was a place of pasture;
he loved its rolling green hills, its ancient fig trees laden with
the heavy fruit that opened to a touch and revealed the
sweetness inside; he loved its small, prosperous villages and its
flowing rivers where fish leaped in the sun. He loved Yam
Kinneret, the place that was called the Sea of Galilee, and he
loved Tiberias, that new town, and its fisher folk and tavernas
and markets. He wandered this green and pleasant land like a
man seeing for the first time what was in front of him; and as
he walked, he spoke to the people he met.
Once, for instance, passing along the shore of the
Kinneret, he saw two fishermen, and their names were Simon
and Andrew — that is, Shim’on and Andrei — and he called
to them, and spoke, and they joined him. And once he saw a
ship in the distance, and men mending nets on the deck; and
he called out to them, too. And the men — old Zebedee, and
his boys James and John his brother — came ashore, and
followed him.
And so a group of young men formed around Jesus, and
they followed him everywhere, and they did as he
commanded. Which was bound to raise some concerns, in
Jerusalem, for certain, but in Rome, too, as we shall see.
And he trained them in kung fu and other martial arts, and
often they camped under the stars and away from the towns;
and though sometimes Jesus missed his old friends, Monkey
and Pigsy and Sandy, he was happy and did not give them
much thought; and they, for their part, watched him from a
distance and did not interfere, for they knew their time was
yet to come.
And another curious thing happened then. For the sick and
the possessed came to Jesus; and he, having been through the
eighteen levels of hell and down to the nameless level
nineteen, discovered in himself now the power to resist the
many devils that lived, in that time, in Judea and the Galilee;
and he banished them, and the possessed were dispossessed;
and it was seen as a miracle, though a miracle by definition is
something that can only happen once.
“It’s a skill,” Jesus once said to old Zebedee, in
confidence. “Once you can see the demons, it is easy enough
to command them. For though they love to take on human
flesh, they are scared of it. And once revealed, it is an easy
matter to convince them to depart.”
Zebedee, who knew powerful magic when he saw it,
didn’t bother to argue. He, in any event, had spent more years
than he could count on the Kinneret and he, at least, had
never seen the devils.
And the number of people following Jesus grew and grew.
And at last, having found a convenient hill on which to stand,
where the winds drew the voice clear and a sort of natural
amphitheatre was formed below, Jesus spoke to his followers.
“Be like water,” he said, “Empty your mind. Be formless
and shapeless like water. Now you put water into a cup: It
becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle: It becomes the
bottle. You put it into a teapot, and it becomes the teapot.
Now, water can either flow, or it can crash! Be like water, my
friends.
“Be supple like bamboo; bend at powers greater than you,
but return upright when their storm has died; for that is the
meaning of being a Jew.
“Blessed are the followers of the path; for they shall
achieve nirvana.
“Blessed are the meek; for they shall rise in the next turn
of the Wheel.
“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after
righteousness: for they shall be filled with righteousness.
“Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
“Blessed are the pure in heart: for theirs is the way of the
Buddha.
“Blessed are the tea-makers; for they shall warm, and be
warmed.
“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the
guardians of peace, if they must fight to achieve it.
“Fighting for peace is like performing carnal acts in order
to achieve virginity. Do not fight but when you are fought; be
like water, like bamboo, like an ancient fig tree weathering the
elements. We are an ancient people. We have seen Babylon
come and go, and the might of Pharaohs, and the fall of
Assyria, and the Philistines, and the men of Canaan. We have
seen prophets rise, and then kings. And now at last we have
neither, and the might of Rome is threatening to come down
on us, the way Goliath once thought to conquer the young
David.
“Do not light a candle and put it under a bushel, for that is
silly. Put it in the candlestick of Chanukah, and celebrate the
defeat of the Greeks, who once sought to do the same to us as
the Romans.
“You must move from form to formless and from finite to
infinite.
“Follow the eightfold path.
“Beware of Mara, who is the illusion of this world. See
what is there, not what you wish there to be.
“Remember the desert, for we have passed through it, and
can pass through it again and again. And the desert of years,
which is our ally, and has seen generations of us go past when
all others fell by the wayside and perished.
“Remember Moses, who did battle with the Pharaoh’s
magicians, and bested them. And remember David, who
fought the giant and won. And remember Elijah, who
defeated Ba’al and Ashera and went to the heavens in a
chariot of fire.
“Remember: The usefulness of a cup is its emptiness.”
And on Jesus spoke, until the shadow of the mount
lengthened over the multitudes that stood on its slopes and
listened to the Buddha. And at last Jesus said:
“Being a Jew is like being a house built upon a rock. Let
the rain descend, and the floods come, and the winds blow,
and beat upon that house; and it will fall not: for it is founded
upon a rock. Be like a rock, my people. Be like a rock, and be
ready to roll.”
And when Jesus had finished he climbed down from the
mountain; and great multitudes followed him.
PART THREE: THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO
JOSEPHUS
Episode One: The Roman Agent
Those who undertake to write histories, do
not, I perceive, take that trouble on one and
the same account, but for many reasons, and
those such as are very different one from
another.
— Josephus Flavius, The Antiquities of the
Jews
It is now time to depart, if only for a moment, from the
events unfolding in the Galilee, and turn instead to my own
involvement in the affair. The following period in the life of
Jesus, he who was called The Christ, The Great Soul, The
Buddha, is one of extensive travel and of what we may term
adventure. It is a time of great interest to the keen historian,
and we shall return to it momentarily.
But as to my own role. When I first met the wise men I
was but a young soldier in the service of King Herod — and a
more patriotic follower than I no king could wish for. Yet
patriotic does not always mean that one is willing to die for
one’s country. When I was twenty-six, I undertook a journey
to Rome, and ever since I felt my life hanging in the balance
of two allegiances: for I was a Jew and faithful to my people,
but I had also seen the world, and knew the Romans to be its
rulers, if only for the time being.
Rome! You may have seen, in the earlier parts of this
narrative, something of the wonder that was Egypt. But
Egypt’s was the wonder of barbarism, of declining grandeur.
Rome was its opposite. It was noble and mighty, but also
young, vibrant, like a royal son on the cusp of becoming
Caesar. I can not begin to describe to you the wide avenues,
the markets carrying the fruits and produce of every country
in the known world, the atmosphere of intellectual curiosity
one could so easily find, the libraries and theatres and the
bronzed ladies carried down the road . . . but I digress. I was
in Rome again at the time of this telling, and had been
residing in the eternal city for some time, on an errand from
Judea to the Caesar himself (with whom, it can be said, I had
an understanding), and my life was, though of some pleasure
to myself, on the whole uneventful.
That all changed with the arrival of the messenger from
the east.
I was summoned to the palace one clear summer night.
The stars shone over the black dome of the sky as if they had
never seen a cloud. Everywhere was the smell of cooking
foods carried on a summer breeze, and the streets were full of
citizens sitting outside, enjoying the balmy weather.
It goes without saying that the Caesar was a commanding
man. I was ushered through untold corridors into his office, a
humble affair one would not think to associate with a ruler of
the known world. When I came in, he was upright, pacing the
room. He motioned for me to sit down. There were no
servants in the room. We were alone. Caesar himself fetched
me a goblet of wine.
“Josephus,” he said. He had very dark, intense eyes, and
they fastened on to me now. “What do you know of a man
called Yeshua Ben Yosef, a Nazarene?”
At that I was taken aback. I had heard many stories of this
man, Jesus, as the Romans called him, through the large and
active networks of Jewish merchants and travellers, and it was
some time before that I associated the arrival of those strange,
wise men from the east whom I had met with the birth of a
boy in Bethlehem. I said, carefully, “I believe he is a preacher.
One of many, of course, but a successful one.”
“And what, Josephus,” Caesar said, still pacing, and I
could not help but wonder why he seemed so agitated, for
Judea had always been full of preachers and prophets, but
that should hardly matter to a Caesar, “what does this man
preach?”
At that I shrugged, though I was uneasy. “I imagine it is the
usual,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “The country
is rife with seditionists and desert-men.”
Caesar smiled; though without humour. “Desert men,” he
said. “Yes. I had heard this Jesus did come through the desert,
and more than once. A potent symbol for your people, is it
not?”
I acknowledged that it might be, but said, “Surely you do
not find him a threat, Caesar? Is he not like a grain of sand on
a wide and endless beach?”
At that Caesar glanced sharply at me. “I would have
thought the same,” he said, “I would hardly concern myself,
nor raise you to my side, on the account of one
insignificant — what did you call him — seditionist.”
I merely bowed my head, acknowledging the truth he
spoke. Caesar nodded. “A man arrived in Rome yesterday
evening. A strange man, such as was not seen in these parts
for many years, with eyes the shape of almonds, and of
stature short, though powerfully built, and speaking a foreign
tongue none in the Empire can understand.”
“Come from where?” I asked, though an idea was already
forming in my head.
“From the east,” he said. “An ambassador from a place he
calls the Middle Kingdom. Though his language is
exceedingly strange, he speaks a passable Greek. And his
errand concerns this man Yeshua.”
I had never heard of a middle kingdom, and said so.
“Beyond the known world?” I said. “Surely . . .”
“Surely nothing,” Caesar said. He turned and glared at me.
“The man is already dead. I had heard rumours of the wealth
of the east, and rest assured Rome will one day move against
it. But for now, it must be kept silent.”
I swallowed hard, thinking of the poor emissary. “Of
course,” I said. Caesar smiled. “What do you know of three
wise men who may have come to Judea from the east, some
thirty years ago?”
He saw in my face that I knew something, and he laughed
then. “Come, Josephus!” he cried, and clapped me on the
back. He went to his cabinet and poured himself a goblet of
wine. “I knew you were the man! Tell me of your wise men.”
“Well,” I said cautiously, and knew that I must tread
carefully, “I am not sure they were entirely men, nor were
they entirely wise . . .”
And I told him the little that I knew.
When I had finished Caesar sat down for a long moment.
Then he raised his head, and looked at me, and smiled. “This
is probably nothing,” he said. “A plot amidst plots. Perhaps
merely a diversion to draw my attention elsewhere. It matters
not. You have been in Rome for some time now, Josephus. Is
it not time for you to return to your home, if only for a
while?”
I understood Caesar at that moment; and knew he was not
asking a question, but giving an instruction I was obliged to
follow. And in truth I was glad, for I had a desire to return, to
that land of which writing can only ever reflect a partial truth.
But there was more: I could feel the wings of history
fluttering in that room, as fragile and enchanting as a
butterfly’s; and in that moment the desire arose in me to
follow it and see where it would land.
“It would be my pleasure and my honour, Caesar,” I said,
and he laughed; and so I became his agent; and was
despatched to return to Judea.
Episode Two: Tiberias
And now Herod the tetrarch, who was in great
favour with Tiberius, built a city of the same
name with him, and called it Tiberias. He
built it in the best part of Galilee [and]
strangers came and inhabited this city.
— Josephus Flavius, The Antiquities of the
Jews
I set out from Rome with a caravan of spice merchants
heading to the Mediterranean Sea. My heart was easy at
departing Rome, for in truth, the spirit of travel was upon me.
I went alone, for I was to be little more than an observer, a
mere reporter of events — though I had other, more secret
instructions I was to carry out under certain circumstances,
which I preferred not to dwell upon.
It was spring when we set off, a time of the year most
suited to my nature, and I rejoiced in it. The merchants I
travelled with were wealthy enough, and we lived comfortably
on the road. Bread and olives and tomatoes dried in the sun,
and straight wide roads, and everywhere Imperial peace and
prosperity. It was good to be a Roman citizen, I thought,
though I was not one, then. On the coast I bid my merchants
goodbye and took passage on a ship. The Mediterranean
sparkled in the sun, and as we departed I saw in the distance
some dolphins, and thought it a good omen.
I landed in Judea one spring day and the feeling that took
me as I stepped off the ship was one of homecoming, and the
smell of the land threatened to suffocate me for a moment, so
rich and full of feeling it was.
The next step of my journey was undertaken on foot, and I
travelled slowly, at leisure, staying frequently in busy inns,
buying drinks liberally, and generally getting the lay of the
land. It was a far cry from my time as an industrious young
soldier, going busily hither and dither on a horse!
Of rumours, as is natural, there was an abundance of
riches. Of Roman taxation there was much grumbling. I
learned of the man John, a baptiser in the river Jordan, who
had been sent to prison at the command of Herod Tetrach,
son of Herod the Great, my old king, and heard many
fantastical stories of the Nazarene, who was touring, so I
learned, far and wide, ranging across the Galilee and its sea
and over to other lands, to Syria and elsewhere, and he drove
away the demons that take over people and bring sicknesses
and ill will, and performed many miracles, and taught his way,
which I heard tell was called Xao-lin. And I greatly desired to
meet with him, but bid my time.
And there were stories, too, of the three beings who I had
met, briefly, once before, though there were less of these, and
clouded. But I learned that they resided now in Tiberias, and
determined to meet with them once more and learn for myself
of their nature. But first I went to Nazareth.
Nazareth was pleasant and quiet, the sort of place I could
imagine myself retiring to, growing grapes and sitting in the
shade of a fig tree, and drinking rough local wine while
grandchildren played in the yard. I did not know then, of
course, that this was not to be, but I indulged in such fantasies
for a while, idly, as I waited in the woman’s yard.
Her name was Miriam, and she was becoming stooped
with age. I introduced myself as an old soldier of the last king;
now something of an amateur historian. I asked whether she
could help me with some stories, some anecdotes.
“You have,” she said, without the slightest hesitation, “too
obvious a mark of Rome on you, and it is clear to me — no,
please don’t interrupt — that you wish to hear of my son.
Very well. I have no objection to that.” She smiled at me then.
“As long as we understand where each other stands.”
I smiled and bowed my head. “I am here merely to listen,”
I said, “and to record. I truly am a historian.”
“Oh, I know who you are, Joseph son of Matthias,” she
said, surprising me. “My son has been expecting you, and sent
word of your arrival over a month ago.”
I tried to hide my reaction, but she could see I was startled.
She nodded, as if acknowledging something we both shared.
For a moment her eyes misted over. “I brought him up to be a
good boy,” she said.
“I’m sure you did,” I said.
She shook her head. “Too much interference.” In her eyes
I could see pain, but also pride. “If you wish to learn of him,”
she said, “go to him, Josephus son of Matthias. He will tell
you all you wish to know and more.”
••••
It was thus that it was revealed to me that neither my
identity nor, it seemed, my mission were a secret to the man
whom I had come to investigate. That, you may imagine, had
made me uneasy, yet I was not willing to abandon my inquiry.
Besides, I must confess I was curious.
Yet defiance stayed me for a while; and I did not make
directly to Jesus’ camp, which was in any case roving all
about, the man and his Xao-lin disciples. Instead I went to
Tiberias.
I found the wise men easily — following the sound of
fighting and drunken shouts, I came to a taverna on the shores
of the lake. Men were rushing in while others were flying
through the air on their way out. The din was incredible. The
sounds of breaking clay were everywhere. I eased my way in,
dodging flying plates and jugs and men, and stopped short at
the sight that greeted me.
In the middle of the taverna stood the three wise men,
though they were much changed from the last time I saw
them. For one, the mask of old age had slipped from them as
easily as dirt in a wash — but it was more than that, for in
their drunken anger their true nature was revealed, and it was
no wonder the cry of “Devils! Devils!” then rose in the air.
One had the body of a man and the face of a monkey.
Another was like a pig in human clothes. And the third had a
dreadful countenance, some elemental being from the depths
of some cold dark river. “Devils? Devils?” the pig one roared.
“You are the foreign devils! Be gone and let a man drink in
peace! Be gone, I tell you!” and he sprang into the air,
kicked — and barrelled into two attacking men, sending them
crashing to the wall.
“You call this wine?” said the monkey-faced one. “My piss
tastes better than this!” and he took on five men at once, all
rushing him, and bested them in the time it took to utter his
words.
I felt that intervening might be in order. I stepped closer to
the melee. “Venerable gentlemen,” I said, adopting again the
way of address I had first used all those years before — and
then louder, “Venerable gentlemen!”
For a moment the three warriors paused. Even their
attackers hesitated at my intrusion, no doubt curious as to
who may be foolhardy enough to attempt discussion under
the circumstances.
“Who?” I heard the pig one say. He turned an enormous
head and two beady eyes regarded me blearily. “You the
ma’nger o’ this place?”
“Please,” I said. “Venerable one. I wish to talk. We are old
acquaintances. Would you not lay down your arms?”
“No’ ev’n used ’em yet,” the pig one said, but he looked
uncertain. He turned his face to his companion and said,
“Monkey?”
The monkey man regarded me thoughtfully, and the
cheerfulness of battle left his face. “The boy soldier,” he
murmured, “now grown old. Jehosaphat, was it?”
“Josephus,” I said.
“Quite,” the monkey said. And then, “A messenger boy if
ever I saw one.” His dark monkey eyes didn’t leave my face.
“And who’s errands are you running now, boy?”
I did not reply to that. Instead, I said, “Where is your
charge? Or have you given up your purpose so easily?”
At that the pig man roared and would have charged me,
were it not for the monkey staying holding him back.
“Very well,” the monkey said. “Let us adjourn to
somewhere more private. Do you have wine?”
At that I smiled, for I still retained some skins from Rome
with the finest drink that could be found in that grand place.
“The very best,” I said, “and money to buy more were it to
run out.”
At that even the sour-faced water demon smiled. And so
the three of them followed me out of that hall of devastation,
and the men of Tiberias, wearing the hollow sunken looks of
warriors after battle, watched us as we passed.
Episode Three: Demons and Storms
They [our books], indeed, contain in them the
history of five thousand years; in which time
happened many strange accidents [and]
many chances of war.
— Josephus Flavius, The Antiquities of the
Jews
But let us abandon, for the moment, my conversation with
the three strange beings from the east, and turn away, across
the sea, and to the affairs of Yeshua, he who was indeed
called the Christ, the Hebrew Fist, and the Great Soul. For
this, the time of my coming as an agent for distant (but oh so
close!) Rome, was the time of Jesus’ so-called Galilee Tour,
though he had gone far beyond the Galilee. It was a time of
great change and great upheavals, a time of miracles and
strange affairs, of demons and storms.
Let us, then, turn momentarily away, and see Jesus.
He was handsome, with hair grown long and beard to
match, and eyes that shone and a Hebrew nose. Jesus not so
young, but passionate; a desert man, surging out of the desert
with his followers devout, to smite a great empire. Not so
likeable, perhaps, not now: The boyish charm is gone and in
its place is a mystic, a rebel, a marshal of men. But not yet
wanted. Not yet hunted. Free, as yet. And, once again, going
on a journey.
“The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests;
but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head,” Jesus was
saying. He was becoming, more and more, like that, speaking
in riddles, not always making much sense. One of his men
approached him. He was agitated. “Lord,” he said, “suffer me
first to go and bury my father.”
At that Jesus looked very stern, and he said, “Follow me;
and let the dead bury their dead.” And the man looked
horrified, but complied.
It was not a long way from where I sat with the wise men.
We were, in fact, there to see it happen, to watch — to watch
over, if we must be exact — the young Jesus, the tripitaka
reborn. His men couldn’t see us. He, I have no doubt, could,
but he ignored our presence, in the shade above the docks.
“You see?” Zhū Bājiè — The Pig of the Eight Prohibitions, as
I had since learned his proper name was — said. “How he
ignores us? How he shuns us?”
“Pigsy, Pigsy,” Sandy said awkwardly. Even more
awkwardly he tried to pat the former Heavenly Marshal’s
back. “Come. You are being emotional.”
“He is the tripitaka!” Pigsy said. “He journeys across the
path to nirvana but he must have us to keep him safe and out
of trouble! Instead of which, he goes hither and dither like a
messianic desert warrior, raising hell, forgetting who his
friends are — ” and the pig-like entity did a curious and
embarrassing thing — he burst out crying.
“Pigsy, Pigsy . . .” Sandy said helplessly. I looked at Sūn
Wùkōng and the Monkey King looked back at me. He
shrugged. “It is the way of the tripitaka. Each must seek
enlightenment in his own way. We can only ever watch out
for him from afar. But the tripitaka must make his own
choices, and enter into peril wholeheartedly.” He smiled,
though there was little humour in it. “The way we do.”
On the docks below, Jesus and his Xao-lin followers were
boarding a ship. Sails were being raised, and as they did, they
puffed in the wind, like a cockerel putting out its chest.
“There is going to be a storm,” Sandy said.
“Of course there is going to be a storm,” Monkey said.
“How else could he quell it?”
The ship pushed out to sea. We watched it go. And this, as
I later pieced it out, is what happened:
••••
There had been a great storm, a tempest. The waves rose
as high as boulders and as strong, and crashed against the
ship. The wind buffeted the sails, threatened to rip them, and
the ship rolled dangerously, and all aboard it rolled with it,
and all their possessions, and many were — as could only be
expected — sick.
Jesus was asleep in his cabin.
There was running around, and falling, and bumping into
the narrow walls; water was threatening to breach the hull,
and the air smelled thick of tar and ozone. Lighting crackled,
too close, outside. The men, those who could still stand, made
their way at last to Jesus’ door, and banged upon it.
“Jesus! Jesus!”
At last there came a reply. “What?”
“Save us!” — “The storm!” — “Save us or we perish!”
Jesus rose from his bed. His hair, being long and all, was
somewhat unkempt from sleep. Then he smiled, the smile
rising like rumpled sheets being straightened; a smile that
brought calm; a confident smile. “O ye of little faith,” he
said — or something to that effect — and followed his
followers up to the deck.
The tempest raged. The storm threw waves like soldiers at
the hull. Spherical lightning squatted over the mast. In the
darkness of the storm, the wind seemed to carry faces,
demonic and strange, wafting over the men and laughing,
horribly. Jesus held up his arms, no longer smiling, his face
rebuking the storm.
“Stop it,” he said.
The wind howled defiance. “I mean it,” Jesus said.
And the storm stopped. The wind receded. The waves
quieted and retreated. And a great calm descended on the sea.
••••
What power is that? Perhaps — and this is only a
suspicion — the three companions kept an eye on him
wherever he went despite his protestations. Perhaps — and
this is mere speculation — Monkey, in a different shape, was
following the ship, and fought the demon of the storm, and
bested him. Perhaps Sandy, assuming the shape of water,
fought the demons of the waves and quelled them, too.
Perhaps. But the true Buddha needs no companions to make
those of the Mara, of the illusion of the world, obey his will.
And his men were seized with amazement, and anyway were
much relieved when the ship came to rest, at last, on the other
side of the country of the Gergesenes.
Though not for long.
As they came onto the shore, it was night, with only half a
moon to light the way. And in the distance were the
Gergesenes’ tombs, which they build to last, and where their
dead lie entombed and yet . . . and yet not always still.
The cry rose from the men of Xao-lin. Fear grasped them
in its clasp and pressed and pressed and squeezed. For from
the tombs there rose unquiet devils, riding dead and horrid
corpses, exceedingly fierce, and blocked their way.
In the distance was a herd of pigs at pasture. The night air
smelled fragrant and fresh, the breeze coming in from the sea.
The horrid mummies lurched to a standstill. “Who are you to
come and disturb our peace?” they cried in awful voices.
“I am Jesus, son of Joseph,” the tripitaka replied. “Go,
return to your crypts before you raise my wrath.”
“Don’t antagonise them,” one of the disciples said, and
shivered, but he was silenced by the others. The devils, those
living-dead, laughed, most horribly. “What are you going to
do to stop us?”
For a moment there was stillness. Somewhere in the
darkness, perhaps, a monkey-shaped shadow moved. Perhaps
noticing it, perhaps not, Jesus assumed the Stance of the
Crouching Monkey. His hand reached forward, fingers spread
open. He beckoned the devils.
“Come.”
The mummies charged. Jesus, quick as lightning and as
bright, leaped into the air. He seemed to move in slow motion,
while all around him was a blur. He lashed out, connected,
landed, swept the legs from under one opponent, tore at
another’s bandages. The air seemed to crackle with eldritch
tension.
In the midst of battle, the devils laughed again, the sound
rising in unison, shattering peace and loosening men’s
bladders. “If you have power, tripitaka,” they said, “or
whatever you call yourself — ” bodies connected in mid-air.
Blows rained. Jesus leaped in a figure of eight and seemed to
rise, rise, rise like an arrow of cloud. “Then put us into the
herd of swine over there!”
Shadows of monkeys moved in the dark. Somewhere there
was the flash of gold. A pig neighed, the sound most horrid.
There was a crackle of lightning. The air felt charged. And
many voices cried as one — “No! No! No . . .” and faded
away.
Down by the beach, a herd of swine screamed as one, a
tormented sound, and, running in blind panic and terror, ran
along the sand and finally, horribly, straight into the water,
and drowned.
Silence settled again. The disciples, shaking still, looked up
at Jesus, fear and admiration filling their eyes.
And from somewhere in the distance, a keening, angry,
frightened voice screamed, again and again as if beset by
devils itself — “What in God’s name have you done to my
pigs?”
Episode Four: Walking on Water
But now Pilate, the procurator of Judea,
removed the army from Caesarea to
Jerusalem, to take their winter quarters there,
in order to abolish the Jewish laws.
— Josephus Flavius, The Antiquities of the
Jews
Matthew, in his somewhat long-winded account of the
Christ, tells us that “it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the
house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat
down with him and his disciples.” To that I say:
It was quite a party.
I had been living in Rome for some time, and was not a
stranger to such scenes, but I must confess that Jesus could
really gather them together.
Jesus amused the guests by turning water into wine.
Scenes of drunkenness inevitably followed. Pigsy was lolling
against one wall, a tankard of wine in one hand, a painted
Jezebel in the other. Monkey was demonstrating martial arts
to several anxious disciples. Sandy was nowhere to be seen.
Music wafted through the warm air, alongside the smells of
roasting meat, spilled wine, and perfume. Jesus seemed in
good spirits, almost serene. For a change, he wasn’t
preaching, just hanging out, talking quietly with some guests,
keeping an eye on everyone.
The message I received from Caesar was troubling.
Pontius, the procurator (the “tax-collector,” as Jesus called
him, and with some justification) was mobilising the army to
go back to Jerusalem from Caesarea, the new Roman town on
the shore of the Great Sea.
Jesus had been quiet recently. He had returned from his
journeys and for a time seemed content to sit idly, yet even so,
with every passing day more people came to join him, men
and women both, some high and some low, but all drawn to
him and to his cause. I had my suspicions. I had
communicated with Rome by cipher, and my conclusion was
uneasy: Jesus was intending to march on Jerusalem.
Would he confront Pilate? I did not know the man, but
heard he was a good administrator. He came from a place
called Vienne, a good citizen of Rome, ambitious — but not
too much — and had his hands full with the taxation problem
in Syria, not to mention the internal problems in Judea, with
Jewish politics and the escalating conflicts within the
Sanhedrin, the council of judges. Being a Roman procurator
was a demanding job. Taxes had to be collected. Possibilities
of rebellion had to be kept down. Administration . . . I lifted
my eyes as I thought this and saw Jesus looking at me. There
was a twinkle in his eyes. What was he planning?
I decided that night to take my leave of him. I wanted to
see the country again, see for myself what its citizens thought,
what they may want, what changes were being wrought by
the Romans. I was a man with his feet on two sides of a river,
and I feared a flood.
The next day I set out for Jerusalem. The journey was
long and pleasant. I passed through the Galilee and onto the
shore of the Great Sea, and made my way without hurry to
the mountains where Jerusalem sits.
Stories of Jesus still reached my ears. Healing the sick.
Walking on water. And making speeches. I began to fear
Jesus. Later historians tried to make him a man of peace. But
he was not. He was a focus for change, and change is violent
and disruptive. Jesus said, “Think not that I am come to send
peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” These
words echoed that year across Judea.
When I spoke with Sūn Wùkōng, much later, after all
these things had indeed come to a head, he expressed his view
of the time in a short, almost brusque manner. “The tripitaka,”
he said, “did not follow the eightfold path. His nature is to
stray, to be lost, to err. Only by journeying so can he learn to
follow the true path, and achieve the state of the Buddha.”
Then he said, “Walking on water is easy. You just have to
make sure you don’t drown.” He smiled then, a little ruefully
it had seemed to me. “Attaining true wisdom is harder.”
In any case, my journey was pleasant and, on the whole,
uneventful. I did stop at Caesarea, but only caught up with the
army when I at last reached Jerusalem, and saw again my
home, that eternal city for which even Rome is no match,
Jerusalem of the Temple and of King David and of the Ark of
the Covenant: Jerusalem, the city of white stone.
There would be no water to walk on in this city, I thought
to myself then. The stones of Jerusalem are not as pliable. In
the following days, I watched the life of the city, the battles of
ideology, of politics, of belief, between the Pharisees and
Sadducees, the work of the Great Sanhedrin, Pilate’s work on
the water aqueduct to Jerusalem, the completion of Herod’s
great temple — but more than that, I merely sat in the
markets, and spoke to my people, and listened, and smelled
the city with its spices and cloth and merchandise from all
across the known world, and Rome seemed, for the moment,
to recede away from me as if in a dream.
Yet I knew enough of the nature of dreams to dread the
waking up.
PART FOUR: THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST
Episode One: A Ramble In the Temple
And Jesus went into the temple of God, and
cast out all them that sold and bought in the
temple, and overthrew the tables of the
moneychangers.
— Matthew 21:12
Look at them go, look at them go, Jesus and his gang!
Look at them go, with a force, with a bang!
It was a quiet day at the temple. The sky was blue and
clear. The white stone walls were clean and still looked fresh,
young in years, old in purpose. The cohanim had departed
inside. In the great yard, only the usual bustle of morning
visitors and the trade sounds in the various religious stalls
could be heard.
The mob appeared gradually. They had snuck into
Jerusalem over several days, unnoticed, unobtrusive. Perhaps
the narrow streets felt a little busier, but that was all. Yet now
they gathered. And now they were felt.
Were a man to look closely at the yard of the temple, he
might have seen three strange shapes, three statues standing a
solitary guard. Grey stone they were, immovable and ancient,
and to man barely noticeable. Only their eyes were alive, but
no man looked at their eyes. One had the appearance of a
wizened monkey. One seemed a little like a pig, or an
Egyptian hippopotamus. A third, thin and sour, stood with a
sheen of water on his stony skin. If such statues could speak,
this is, perhaps, what they would have said:
“I don’t think it’s such a good idea,” Pigsy said.
“None of us do,” Monkey said. “But it is not up to us. Let
the tripitaka fight his own battles.”
“Nothing can be achieved by fighting in a temple,” Sandy
said. “Even if it’s not a proper temple.”
“It is to them,” Monkey said mildly. Sandy snorted. “It
isn’t the role of a tripitaka to pick fights. And anyway, what if
he needs to borrow money?”
“Then he can ask his mother,” Pigsy said, and snorted.
The mob was approaching, but for now, inside the walls, it
was peaceful.
“A Buddha is a man of peace,” Sandy said.
The Monkey statue, for one impossible moment, seemed
to shrug. “But we are not.”
“That is why we are only his companions,” Sandy said.
But the Monkey statue seemed to shake its head. “We only
follow the tripitaka as he himself follows the path to
enlightenment,” he said. “He is on that path yet. He will learn,
at last.”
“Do we join in?” Pigsy said. “I feel like fighting.”
“We’ll have time yet,” Monkey said: it seemed with relish.
“For now we wait, and watch.”
The mob came to the gates. At its head was Jesus. He
wore loose, flowing robes, multicoloured, that seemed to
shine in the sun. A felt belt, black, closed around his narrow
waist.
There were two guards outside. One said, “You can’t
come in here like this!”
The other took one look at the situation and turned to run.
Jesus soared into the air.
He was like a maelstrom, like a hurricane sweeping in
from the Great Sea and into the coastal areas, sucking up
everything in its path. He rose in a graceful arc, seemed for a
moment to freeze (or was it the world around him, slowing?)
and lashed out. His foot connected with the remaining guard’s
face.
The guard dropped like a stone statue.
“He’s good,” Pigsy said. “That was a Crouching Monkey
Jump.”
Monkey said, “We trained him well.”
“I could do with a cup of tea,” Sandy said.
Jesus and his men marched into the temple. A shout rose
in the air.
Jesus came and stopped before a long table. Behind it a
man of quite noticeable bulk was sitting comfortably. “Yes,
young man?” he said. He seemed not to see the crowd
pressing behind Jesus. “You would like to purchase a dove?
Speak to a cohen? Bring a sacrifice to the sacred altar?
Whatever your religious needs, we can help.”
“I am religious need,” Jesus said. For a moment it seemed
as if the monkey statue had covered its eyes. “Oh, no,” it
might have said.
Jesus grasped the long table with his hands. “Is this a
Roman temple,” he said, “or a Jewish one?”
“A temple,” the fat man said mildly, “is a temple.”
Jesus shook his head. “This won’t do,” he said. The fat
man wobbled and for a moment seemed to think of rising.
Then he laid his large hands on the table and leaned forward.
“You the young preacher from the Galilee?” he said. “The
one been making all that trouble up north?”
Jesus said mildly, “What if I am?”
“Then you can bloody well go back to the Galilee, country
boy!” the fat man said. Several men further down from him
laughed. “Please don’t piss him off,” Sandy said, though of
course no one heard him.
Jesus’ hands tightened on the table. “That’s it, boy,”
Monkey said. “Focus your ch’i.”
Jesus raised his hands. The table, with one impossibly
sweeping motion, flew in the air and landed with a crash,
breaking on the stony floor. The fat man rocked in his chair
and fell, landing on his back. A shocked silence settled, for a
flickering moment, over the yard.
Then the silence, too, broke. Enraged men charged at
Jesus. His disciples spread out across the yard.
“Bloodshed,” Sandy said, and seemed to shake his head. “I
do not call this following the path.”
“That’s right,” Pigsy said. “We’re the ones should be doing
the fighting.”
The attacking men were almost on Jesus. He leaped into
the air again, his legs pulled under him. His hands were a blur
of motion. When he landed more men were lying comatose
on the ground of the temple.
“Can we join in? Please, Monkey?” Pigsy said.
“Let the boy play.”
A man charged Jesus with a knife. Jesus dodged, rose
effortlessly behind the man, and landed a blow that felled the
knife — and the man. Another man charged him with a staff,
and he jumped between the swipes and somehow, a moment
later, remained holding the staff alone, his opponent on the
ground.
All over the temple ground, fights had broken out. Pockets
of violence erupted and occasionally merged, until at last the
whole floor of the yard seemed to be one heaving mob of
people, screaming and cursing and spilling each other’s blood.
Birds were screaming. A man was thrown and hit their
cages, and a latch sprang open. A multitude of white doves
rose into the air.
“The army is coming,” Sandy said.
“The army!” the shout rose a moment later. “The army is
coming!”
With one graceful, impossible movement, Jesus rose in the
air, reached the top of the wall, somersaulted above it, and
was gone behind, and his men all followed. Soon the only
remaining things in the temple’s wide yard were the bruised
and aching bodies of men struggling to get up, while high
overhead the white doves flew, in a vast cloud that spread
away from Jerusalem.
Episode Two: The Last Supper
And the disciples did as Jesus had appointed
them; and they made ready the Passover.
— Matthew 26:19
“I like pigeons,” Pigsy said a little later. Two of the birds
had made the mistake of landing, for a moment, on the pigshaped statue. Now nothing remained of them but a couple of
belched feathers that floated, forlorn, in the air. Someone was
singing. It sounded a little like “Jesus loves you more than you
might think.” Monkey said, “He’s in trouble now.”
“The Romans are in trouble,” Pigsy said. But Monkey
shook his head. “They have a story here,” Sandy said, “David
and Goliath. He was one of their early kings.”
“Goliath?”
“David. He was a boy with a catapult and he felled a
giant.”
“You’d need one hell of a big catapult to fell the Roman
empire,” Monkey said.
“Let’s get drunk,” Pigsy said. “Where is that boy soldier
from Rome?”
“Josephus? Not seen him.”
“Must be up to no good.”
“Let’s go.”
They went.
••••
Accounts of his last days are numerous, and I shall
therefore not offer too many details in this, the chronicle of
Jesus, he who was called, in various times, the rebel, the
troublemaker, the Hebrew Fist, or the Buddha. The three
companions called him the tripitaka, which is the embodiment
of their laws, but when used thus it merely denotes a man: a
seeker on the path to nirvana — and it is said that the road is
full of false trails and traps of quicksand for the unwary
traveller. In any event, I arrived in Jerusalem after the affair in
the temple, and was in time to see the beginning of the
conflict — if that, and not a street brawl, it can be called.
Jews do fight, and fight well. The Greeks can testify to
that, the Canaanites and the Philistines and many others. But
to be a Jew, too, and to survive the long centuries, the rise and
fall of mighty empires, is to know, too, how to lose well. In
any event, and following the temple incident, the small revolt
began.
In the narrow streets of Jerusalem, fighting erupted.
Roman soldiers were ambushed and slain. Confrontations
took place hourly, in squares and open spaces, but the real
fighting was done in the side streets and urban areas: It was a
war in the margins of the city.
The council of the Sanhedrin was alarmed. So was Pilate,
but to a lesser extent. He had, after all, the whole might of
Rome behind him; and in the middle of the second day he
called for me, and I came to see him.
“Josephus,” he said. “Who is this troublesome man?”
“They say he is a messiah,” I replied. “When he was born,
a star shone over Bethlehem.”
“The stars shine over many places,” Pilate said. “If they
made messiahs out of men, then the whole world would be
filled.”
I inched my head at that. “Nevertheless,” I said. “He has a
following.”
“And they are militant. What is the manner of their
fighting?”
“I believe it is called Xao-lin.”
“Shaolin? What barbarous language is that?”
I said I did not know.
“From the east, I hear,” he said, and his shrewd eyes
observed me while I said nothing. He shrugged. “You have
your instructions,” he said at last, and I inched my head again
at that. “It is Passover in two days. There will be no fighting.
I . . . I will declare an amnesty. Let the Jews settle the matters
of the Jews. You know what to do. Can I trust you to do
that?”
“I will do what is necessary,” I said stiffly. He smiled, and
dismissed me.
••••
On the night of the seder, the Passover meal, I sat with
Jesus and his followers in Jerusalem and we celebrated the
escape of our people from Egypt. Jesus was in a subdued
mood. At some point, a woman came to him and poured oil
over his face and clothes from an alabaster box. The oil ran
down his long hair and stained his beard.
The day before, standing in a market square with his men
spread around him like bodyguards, he seemed to have lost it
a little. “Hypocrites!” he shouted. “Woe unto you! Fools and
blind! Even so you also outwardly appear righteous unto men,
but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity!” And then
he launched into a tirade that took even myself by surprise.
“You serpents!” he shouted, and the people around him
turned back in fright. “You generation of vipers, how can you
escape the damnation of hell?”
It was not a speech designed to make new converts.
I sat with him at the seder table, in the house of Simon, the
leper, and the oil ran down his face and he said, “She did it
for my burial.”
I had not heard him so grim before. But something had
changed in Jesus in those last days. Perhaps it was the sight of
the bloodshed. Perhaps the people’s reactions to his attack on
them. No one likes to be called a viper. Something
fundamental changed in him, and he seemed quieter,
darkened, like a lamp about to burn off. And at last, he turned
to me (for I was sitting on his right) and he said, and with a
slight smile — “You know what to do, Josephus. Can I trust
you to do that?”
I shook my head, and he said it again, until finally I
nodded.
Episode Three: The Hill of Skulls
and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;
And the graves were opened; and many
bodies of the saints which slept arose, And
came out of the graves after his resurrection,
and went into the holy city, and appeared unto
many.
— Matthew 27:51-53
They came with swords and staves, but they were not
needed. They came with authority, but it went unanswered. I
think he expected me to kiss him, to mark him in some way,
but that too was unnecessary. Everyone knew Jesus. They
came in a guard of men and I led them, and we took hold of
Jesus and took him to the Procurator.
“Are you the king of the Jews?” Pilate said, and Jesus said,
“Ata amarta,” which means, You said it, or, That’s what you
say.
“I am innocent of his blood,” Pilate said, and he called for
water and washed his hands and then said, “Send him to be
crucified.”
And so it was. The cross was erected in the place they call
Golgotha, that is, the place of golgalot, of skulls. To either
side of him was a thief. The nails were driven in, and he was
left to die. The rebel was caught without a fight. Order was
restored. A hush lay on the earth, expectant; like the humidity
that presages a storm.
••••
“Tripitaka.”
“Tripitaka!”
“Leave me.”
“Why do you always have to get into such trouble?”
The crucified man smiled. “I was a fool,” he said.
Pigsy snorted. “Ata amarta. We’ll get you out of here.”
“Leave me.”
Of the three, only Monkey was silent. It was dark on the
hill of skulls. It had been dark for several hours. Sūn Wùkōng
peered into the dying man’s face, and they held each other’s
eyes for a long moment. “I was a fool,” the man on the cross
said again, and smiled, though it looked more like a grimace
of pain. “Please forgive me.”
“Tripitaka!” — “Tripitaka!”
But Monkey silenced his two companions. “So it is true,”
he said at last, and the crucified man nodded. “I no longer
have a name,” he said, and looked surprised, “I see . . .” but
he did not complete the thought. His eyes took on a faraway
gaze, and Monkey knew that the man was truly seeing now,
that Mara, the illusion of the world, was lifted from before his
eyes at last. He was close to nirvana now. He said,
“Master . . .” and the bound man shook his head, a minute
movement, and said, “No more, Sūn Wùkōng. There are no
masters in the Republic of Heaven. You are free.”
The gold band on the Monkey King’s head began to
vibrate. Slowly, it seemed to expand, its pressure on his head
easing. It slipped from his head and hovered in the air above
it; and then it broke.
“Fool, companion, king,” the crucified man said, and
though his face was twisted in pain, his eyes contained a
smile, “it is time to seek your own wisdom. Friends — ” his
eyes sought out Pigsy’s and Sandy’s — “farewell.”
His last words to them, as soft as the sound of distant
waves carried on the wind, were, “Follow the eightfold
path . . .”
••••
At the time of his death, there was an earthquake. The
tremors pulsed through the ground and shook tables and
chairs and felled cups and flagons, and great stones rolled,
and graves broke open.
And from the graves rose an army of corpses, though
many had lain in the ground for many years and were but
skeletons; and when the people saw them they were
understandably upset. And the army of the dead men rose in
the darkness and converged on the city of white stone, and the
people fled before them. The dead marched through the
narrow streets of Jerusalem, and some of them were only
freshly dead, and their deaths had been violent. So it was that
the men who died in the skirmishes were alive again, if only
for a moment, and if not alive than at least undead; and they
walked through the streets and the people barred their doors
and shut their windows; and after that the night was silent.
Episode Four: Resurrection
He is not here
— Matthew 28:8
There are many stories concerning the passing of the
Christ, and few truths to be gained by sifting through words
as one would through silt in search of precious gold. What is
known, more or less, is this:
When he died, a man came to collect his corpse, and he
called himself Joseph, and said he was from the country of
Arimathaea. It might be that the man had a vaguely piggish
appearance; but if so, few make much of the fact. The man
took the body from the cross and wrapped it in linen, until
only the shape of a man could be discerned inside. He
transported the body thus to a fresh tomb, hewn in the rock
outside Jerusalem, and he placed the appearance of the body
inside, and sealed the tomb with a rock; and after that he
disappeared.
For three days the tomb was guarded, and women came
and sat by the sepulchre, and amongst them Miriam his
mother, and Miriam of the town of Migdal, and Miriam the
other, and indeed the name Miriam was exceedingly common
in those days, and who Miriam the other was I cannot in truth
say, but that she wasn’t the first nor the second. And it is said,
though I was not witness to it, that on the night of the second
day a chariot came and a lone woman, dark-skinned and
proud, stepped out from it and sat for a long while by the
rock, and spoke words no one could hear; and then she too
departed and was not seen in that country again.
On the third day the tomb was opened. The bandages,
what is called in the Hebrew tachrichim, were left strewn on
the floor. There was no body.
A search of the tomb was ordered, but no hidden exits
could be found. His disciples were blamed, accused of
stealing the body in the dead of night; but nothing was ever
proven. At that time, rumours of his reappearance became
common. His disciples claimed to have met him on a hill in
Nazareth, but there were few to heed their words at that time.
The story of he who was called Christ and Buddha was left
unended, which was perhaps for the best.
In later years, I had heard stories of his appearance in
unexpected places. It was rumoured that a man resembling
Jesus appeared in the eastern land called India, and healed the
sick, and travelled around. And others said he was seen on the
distant isle of mist, in a place called by the heathens
Glastonbury; and others yet told of his going to some vast and
undiscovered continent, a place of barbarous splendour that
lay beyond the known world.
As for me: The Procurator was not ungrateful, nor was
Caesar back in Rome. I had remained in Judea and advanced
through the ranks, and at last had taken command of Yodfat,
a military outpost in the Galilee. It was there that I found
myself when the Great War finally took place, and the Jews of
Judea revolted against the Romans. We made our stand
against the empire, but the might of Rome, as always, was too
great; and when they had taken Yodfat, many thousands were
killed — and the remaining soldiers preferred to commit
suicide rather than to be taken prisoner.
Not so I. It is essential, for a warrior, to be prepared to lose
his life in service. Yet when the time for it came, and I saw the
futility of further resistance, I wished to live. Suicide is a thing
of zealots. Yet I have always believed that being a Jew is first
about living, about surviving adversity, not giving in to it. I
shall not go into details. Suffice it to say that I was taken
captive, endured, and found it beneficial to assist the Romans
with some minor intelligence. I was present at the siege of
Jerusalem and witness to its destruction. And, at last, I was
taken to Rome in the entourage of Flavius Vespasian and his
son, Titus, and became a Roman citizen; amen.
© 2010 by Lavie Tidhar.
Originally published in Apex Publications Blog.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lavie Tidhar is the World Fantasy Award winning author of Osama (2011) and
of The Violent Century (2013), in addition to many other works and several
awards. He works across genres, combining detective and thriller modes with
poetry, science fiction, and historical and autobiographical material. His work
has been compared to that of Philip K. Dick by the Guardian and
the Financial Times, and to Kurt Vonnegut’s by Locus.
To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight.
NOVEL EXCERPTS
Tor Books Presents
Wild Cards: Lowball
(novel excerpt)
edited by George R.R. Martin & Melinda Snodgrass
Tor Books presents “Once More, for Old Times’ Sake” by Carrie Vaughn, an
excerpt of the new mosaic novel Wild Cards: Lowball, edited by George R.R.
Martin and Melinda Snodgrass, forthcoming in November:
Decades after an alien virus changed the course of history, the surviving
population of Manhattan still struggles to understand the new world left in
its wake. Natural humans share the rough city with those given
extraordinary — and sometimes terrifying — traits. While most manage to
coexist in an uneasy peace, not everyone is willing to adapt. Down in the
seedy underbelly of Jokertown, residents are going missing. The authorities
are unwilling to investigate, except for a fresh lieutenant looking to prove
himself and a collection of unlikely jokers forced to take matters into their
own hands — or tentacles. The deeper into the kidnapping case these misfits
and miscreants get, the higher the stakes are raised.
Edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author George R. R. Martin and
acclaimed author Melinda M. Snodgrass, Lowball is the latest mosaic novel
in the acclaimed Wild Cards universe, featuring original fiction by Carrie
Vaughn, Ian Tregillis, David Anthony Durham, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Mary
Anne Mohanraj, David D. Levine, Michael Cassutt, and Walter John
Williams.
Perfect for old fans and new readers alike, Lowball delves deeper into the
world of aces, jokers, and the hard-boiled men and women of the Fort Freak
police precinct in a pulpy, page-turning novel of superheroics and mystery.
Once More, for Old Times’ Sake
Carrie Vaughn
Ana Cortez was playing hooky from work. She called in
sick — first time ever, not counting the couple of times she’d
ended up hospitalized because of work. On the phone with
her boss, she sounded as pathetic and self-sacrificing as she
could, saying that she couldn’t possibly come in and risk
infecting anybody else with whatever twenty-four-hour
stomach bug was ravaging her system. She wasn’t sure
Lohengrin believed her, but she’d earned enough status over
the last few years, he didn’t question her. She deserved to
play hooky.
What would she do with her day off? What any selfrespecting New Yorker — transplanted, but still — would do:
she went to a baseball game at Yankee Stadium. Not that she
particularly liked baseball, but Kate would be on the field
today, and Ana wasn’t going to miss it for the world.
Except for the local favorites and the one or two who
made the news in some scandal or other, Ana didn’t know
who any of the players were, didn’t follow baseball at all, but
she got caught up in the excitement anyway, cheering and
shouting from her seat in the front row off third base.
The player who won the Home Run Derby, Yankee hitter
Robinson Canó, was a local favorite, and the crowd stayed
ramped up for the next event. The special charity exhibition
was billed as a Pitching Derby — the major league’s top
pitchers took to the field, facing home plate and a radar gun,
and pitched their fastest. 100 miles per hour. 101. 99. 102.
The crowd lost it when Aroldis Chapman pitched 105 — it
had broken some kind of record, apparently. But the show
wasn’t over, and when the last pitcher in the lineup walked
onto the field, an anticipatory hush fell.
The athletic young woman wore the tight-fitting white
pants of a baseball uniform and a baby-doll T-shirt, navy blue,
with “Curveball” printed on the back. No number, no team
affiliation, which was Kate all over these days. Curveball, the
famous ace who could blow up buildings with her pitches,
who’d quit the first season of American Hero to be a real-life
hero, who’d then quit the Committee, because she didn’t need
anybody.
The crowd never got completely quiet as they murmured
wondering observations and pointed at the newcomer. Ana
leaned forward, trying to get a better look at her friend, who
seemed small and alone as she crossed the diamond and
reached the mound, tugging on her cap. She didn’t face home
plate like the others, but turned outward, to the one-ton pile
of concrete blocks that had been trucked to the outfield.
Kate looked nervous, stepping on one foot, then another,
digging the toes of her shoes into the dirt, pressing the
baseball into her glove. Her ponytail twitched when she
moved. Some traditionalists hadn’t wanted her here — were
appalled at the very idea of a woman on the pitcher’s mound
at venerable Yankee Stadium. But this was raising money for
charity so they couldn’t very well argue. Ana wondered how
much harassment Kate had put up with behind the scenes. If
she had, she’d channel her anger into her arm.
Ana’s stomach clenched in shared anxiety, and she gripped
the railing in front of her until her fingers hurt. Why did this
feel like a battle, that Ana should be out on the field with her,
backing her up? Like they’d fought together so many times
before. Here, all Ana could do was watch. This wasn’t a
battle, this was supposed to be for fun. Gah. She touched the
St. Barbara medallion she wore around her neck, tucked
under her shirt. The action usually calmed her.
Finally, the ace pitcher settled, raised the ball and her glove
to her chest, wound up, left leg drawn up, and let fly, her
whole body stretching into the throw.
Sparks flared along her arm, and the ball vanished from
her hand, followed by a crack of thunder, the whump of an
explosion — and the pile of concrete was gone, just gone.
Debris rained down over the field in a cloud of dust and
gravel. The sound was like hail falling. The crowd sitting
along the backfield screamed and ducked. Kate turned away,
raising her arm to shelter her face.
Something weird had happened. Ana had seen Kate throw
a thousand times, everything from a grain of rice to a bowling
ball. She’d blown up cars and killed people with her
projectiles. But she’d never erased a target like this.
Then the speed of the pitch flashed on the big board: 772
mph.
The announcer went crazy, his voice cracking as he
screamed, “. . . that sound . . . the sonic boom of a baseball!
Oh my God, I’ve never seen anything like it! Unbelievable!”
Kate had also put a sedan-sized crater in the outfield, but
no one seemed to mind. The crowd’s collective roar matched
the noise of a tidal wave, and the major league players rushed
out on the field to swarm Curveball. A pair of them lifted her
to their shoulders, so she sailed above them. Her face held an
expression of stark wonder. The screen at the backfield
focused on her, her vast smile and bright eyes.
Ana clapped and screamed along with the rest of the
crowd.
It took two hours for the stadium to clear out. Ana
lingered, making her way toward home plate, where Kate was
entertaining fans leaning over the boards to talk to her.
Signing baseballs, posing for pictures. Ana arrived in time to
catch one exchange with a girl, maybe twelve, a redhead in
braids and a baseball cap of her own.
“I play softball,” she said, handing Kate a ball to sign.
“You pitch?” Kate asked.
“Yeah, but not like you.”
“Chapman doesn’t pitch like me. I bet you’re good
enough.”
The girl shrugged. “I don’t know. We didn’t win the
season.”
“Keep practicing. That’s what it takes. Work hard. Okay?”
The girl left smiling.
Kate saw Ana hanging back as the last of her admirers left.
Squealing, she pulled herself over the barrier and caught her
up in a rib-squishing hug. Ana hugged back, laughing. They
separated to get a better look at each other. Kate was still
grinning, as well she should be, but Ana noticed the shadows
under her eyes.
“I’m so glad you could make it,” Kate said.
“Are you kidding? I wasn’t going to miss it. You ready for
the party?”
Kate sighed. “I need a couple more hours. They want a
press conference and a photo op for the charity. We raised
seventy-five grand.” Her gaze brightened.
“That’s so great. How about this — come over as soon as
you can, and I’ll have a chance to pick up a few more things
and get the place cleaned up.”
“You promised me a gallon of margaritas. Is that still on?”
“Oh, you know it. A gallon of margaritas, a pile of
DVDs — and all the gossip on that new boy of yours.”
Kate blushed, but her smile glowed. “You got it.”
••••
Ana had brought home the tequila, limes, salt, and a bag
of ice already. Now, she went for approximately a metric ton
of burritos from the excellent taquería around the corner from
her apartment. They had to eat if they were going to keep up
their strength for more margaritas.
The Lower East Side walk-up used to be her and Kate’s
apartment, back when Kate was still on the Committee, until
she quit and went back to school in Oregon. That had been a
couple of years ago now, and they didn’t get to see each other
very often these days.
Her apartment was on East Fifth Street, a few blocks off
Jokertown, in a neighborhood that wasn’t great but wasn’t
awful. Ana liked the place. It wasn’t pretentious, and she
could maintain some level of normality. Like go to the
taquería without anyone giving her a hard time or snapping
pictures. With her straight dark hair and stoutish frame, she
wasn’t as photogenic as Kate, but she’d had her own share of
publicity as the Latin American Coordinator for the UN
Committee on Extraordinary Interventions. She didn’t much
feel like a public figure most of the time. So she stayed in her
unassuming neighborhood. The street food was better.
At her building’s front door, she paused to find her key
one-handed, when a voice hissed at her from the stairwell to
the lower-level apartment.
“Ana! Ana, down here!” She looked over the railing.
The joker wore dark sunglasses and had his top two arms
shoved into an oversized jacket. His middle two arms held it
tight around his torso in some futile attempt at a disguise. He
made his best effort to huddle in the shadows, away from the
view of street level, but the guy was over seven feet tall and
bulky: the world-famous drummer for the band Joker Plague.
“DB? What are you doing here?” she said.
He made a waving motion, hushing her. “Quiet! Get down
here, will you?”
She swung around the railing, and Drummer Boy pulled
her into the shelter of the stairwell, making her drop the bag
of food. “Michael!”
“Shhh! Sorry. Here.” With a fifth arm emerging from the
bottom of the jacket, he picked up the bag and shoved it at
her. The contents were probably mushed. Maybe they could
have burrito casserole. “Ana, I need to talk to you, can I come
in?”
“Couldn’t you call?”
“In person. Come on, at least can we get off the street?”
She hadn’t seen him in almost a year. Normally, she’d be
happy to see him, and they tried to get together the rare times
they happened to be in the same zip code at the same time.
He’d gotten her tickets to a Joker Plague show awhile back,
and she’d love to do something like that again. But she really
wished he’d called. What she didn’t want was him still
hanging around when Kate arrived.
She spent too long thinking, and DB continued cajoling.
“I’m passing through town, and I really need to talk to you
but I’m trying to keep a low profile — ”
She raised an eyebrow and gave him a skeptical look. With
six arms and tympanic membranes covering his torso, Michael
Vogali, aka Drummer Boy, could never keep a low profile.
Ever.
“Michael, what do you want, really?” she said.
“Can I crash at your place? Just for a couple of days.
Please?”
Three hundred sixty-five days in a year, and he picked this
one to show up asking for a favor. He was a friend, she didn’t
want to say no, but this couldn’t be happening. This . . . this
was not going to end well.
She winced. “You don’t have anyone else you can stay
with? Don’t you own an apartment on Central Park or
something excessive like that?”
“Never did get around to it,” he said. “Our recording
studio’s in LA.”
“You can’t stay at my place, it’s tiny.”
“It’s just for a couple of days — ”
Exasperated, she blurted, “You can’t because Kate’s
staying with me tonight.”
He brightened. “She is? I haven’t seen her in ages. Is
she . . . I mean, is she okay and everything?”
She hadn’t meant to say anything about Kate. “Are you
sure you can’t stay someplace else?”
“This isn’t just about someplace to stay, we really do need
to talk. And Kate . . . oh fuck, I didn’t want to be the one to
tell Kate, I was hoping you could do it after I’d talked to
you — ”
“What are you talking about?”
“Please, can we go inside?” He gave her a hangdog look
that should have been ridiculous on a seven-foot-tall joker
behemoth, but he managed to make himself endearing.
She rolled her eyes. “Okay. Fine. But Kate and I are still
having our margarita night.”
“Hey, that sounds like fun — ”
“Michael!”
He raised his hands in a defensive pose and backed up a
step. “No problem.”
“Hold this.” She handed him the burritos and found the
key for the door. “Why didn’t you just call me instead of
camping out like a homeless person?”
“Because you’d be more likely to say yes if I just showed
up on your doorstep?”
She growled and hit him on the side, generating a hollow
echo through his torso.
“My walls are thin — you’re going to have to cut down on
the drumming.”
“Sure, of course,” he said, smacking a hollow beat as
punctuation.
Oh yeah, was this going to end badly.
••••
Kate and DB had quit the Committee at the same time,
over the politicization of the group in the Middle East. Ana
hadn’t been there, but she’d gotten an earful when Kate
called to tell her about it. She’d cried a bunch during that
phone call — Ana might be the only person in the world who
knew how torn up Kate had been over the whole thing. Ana
had been stuck halfway around the world, on another mission
for the Committee, and couldn’t do a thing about it. DB had
just been angry — he hadn’t called Ana to vent. A bunch of
the tabloids insisted that DB and Kate had run off together in
some torrid romance, but that wasn’t at all true. It was all
getting to be old history, now. They’d moved on. Ana hoped
they didn’t revive the soap opera here tonight.
Kate’s call from the downstairs intercom came an hour
later, and Ana buzzed her in.
“I never thought they’d let me leave,” Kate said, pushing
into the apartment and dropping her bag by the door. “One
more picture, they kept saying. Not like they didn’t already
have twenty million.”
Ana stepped aside, closed the door behind her, and waited.
Didn’t take long.
DB stood from the sofa and sheepishly waved a couple of
arms, while a third skittered a nervous beat that sounded like
balloons popping. He’d taken off the oversized jacket and
stood in all his shirtless, tattooed glory. “Hey, Kate.”
Kate turned to Ana. “What’s he doing here?”
DB stepped forward. “It’s just for the night, I promise, I’m
trying to keep a low profile — ”
“I’m a pushover,” Ana said, shrugging.
Kate glared, and Ana wasn’t sure whom the glare was
directed toward. “I hope you have those margaritas ready.”
“Two pitchers, ready to go.”
They headed into the kitchen, or rather the corner of the
apartment that served as the kitchen. DB followed them,
sidling along, as delicately as his body allowed. “So, hey,
Kate. How you doing?” DB had been nursing a crush on
Kate for years now. He wasn’t any more subtle about it than
he had been back on the set of the first season of American
Hero. He’d gotten a little more polite, at least.
“I pitched past the sound barrier at Yankee Stadium today,
how are you?”
“Um . . . hey, that’s great. I think. I just happened to be in
town, and, well, we really need to talk — ”
Kate said, “Michael, Ana and I planned a night to chill out,
with too much alcohol and a lot of TV and not thinking about
anything. That’s not going to change just because you’re here,
okay? I can’t be mad about Ana letting you stay here. But can
you just . . . leave us alone?”
DB sat back on the sofa, his arms folded together
contritely.
••••
Feeding everyone margaritas kept them quiet for a little
while. Half an hour, maybe. The first DVD of the latest
season of Grey’s Anatomy was good for another hour or so,
especially watching the episode where Meredith and Derek
spent the whole time fighting over Derek’s ethically
questionable experiments using a new version of the trump
virus on a collection of hideous joker patients. It was pretty
awful.
DB chortled through the whole thing. “I wouldn’t mind it
so much if they actually used joker actors rather than nat
actors with fucking rubber tentacles.”
Ana agreed with him, but they had to have the rubber
tentacles so they could take them off and declare them cured
for five minutes before they melted in a hideous ooze of
sudden-onset Black Queen.
But the episode finally ended, and in the quiet while Ana
changed out DVDs, DB had to ruin it. “Okay, I know you’re
having your party and all, and I know I’m interrupting — ”
Kate, nested on pillows on the floor in front of the TV,
took a long drink of margarita and ignored him. Ana almost
felt sorry for the guy. He was nice, usually; he’d take a bullet
for his friends, and with their history that wasn’t just a saying.
But he was way too used to being the center of attention, and
definitely wasn’t used to being ignored by a couple of women.
“ — but I really need to talk to you. This is serious.
Seriously.” The sofa creaked as he leaned forward, and half
his hands drummed nervously.
Ana shushed him, got the DVD in and hit play, hoping
that would shut him up. But Kate rolled over and glared.
“Michael, what are you doing here? Isn’t Joker Plague
supposed to be on tour in . . . in Thailand or someplace?”
He brightened. “You’ve been keeping up with us — ”
She glowered. “Crazy guess.”
“The tour was last month. We’re supposed to be recording
the new album, but . . . I gotta tell you, it’s not going well. I
knew we were in trouble when all our songs started being
about how tough it is being a band on tour. So I’m telling the
guys, maybe we should take some time off, get back to our
roots. Hang in Jokertown for a while — ”
Kate turned back to the TV.
“ — but never mind that. I was doing this signing in LA a
week or so ago, and a fan brought me this . . . this thing. I
think you really need to know that this is out there.” He was
serious — worried, even, reaching for something in the
pocket of his oversized coat, draped over the back of the sofa.
The intercom buzzer at the front door went off.
Ana needed a minute to scramble up from the bed of
cushions. Her first margarita was already making her wobbly.
She really needed a vacation. . . .
“You expecting anyone?” Kate asked.
“No,” Ana said, and hit the intercom button. “Hello?”
“Ana. It’s John. John Fortune.”
This had to be a joke. Someone had put him up to this.
This was too . . . If it had happened to someone else, it would
be funny.
““What?” Kate said. Both she and DB were staring at
her. So yeah, they’d heard it.
She didn’t want to argue. “I’ll be right down,” she said,
and left before Kate and DB could say anything.
He was waiting at the front door, hands shoved in the
pockets of a ratty army jacket. She couldn’t say he looked
particularly good at the moment. He was a slim, handsome
man, with dark skin, pale hair, and a serious expression. The
white lines of an asterisk-shaped scar painted his forehead. At
the moment his hair was too long and uncombed, and he
looked shadowed, gaunt, like he hadn’t gotten enough food,
sleep, or both.
“Hi,” he said, his smile thin, halfhearted.
“John. Hi. What’s the matter?”
“I need a favor.” Oh, no, this was not happening. . . . He
said, “Can I stay with you? Just a couple of nights.”
Any other night . . . “This really isn’t the best time. Can’t
you stay with your mom?”
He winced and rubbed his head. “I would, except she’s
trying to talk me into coming back to work for her on
American Hero. And that . . . I can’t do that. I’m avoiding
her.”
“No,” she said. “You sure can’t.”
“I know I should have called ahead . . . but it’s just a
couple of nights, I promise.”
Whatever else she was, Ana was not the kind of person
who left a friend standing on the street. She held open the
door. “Come on in. Um, I should probably warn you . . .”
••••
Ana half expected Kate to be hiding in the bathroom, the
only spot in the studio with a closable door and any modicum
of privacy. But she was standing in the middle of the room,
side by side with DB, waiting. Ana led John inside and softly
closed the door.
John slouched, and his smile was strained. “Hi, Kate.”
“Hi,” she said, her tone flat. That was it.
“Well,” DB drawled. “Look what the cat dragged in.”
“Can it, Michael,” Ana said. She drew herself up, hands
on hips. She’d stared down diplomats from a dozen countries
and addressed the UN Security Council. Surely she could lay
down the law here. “You’re all my friends and I’m not going
to leave anybody stranded. But I would appreciate you all
acting like grown-ups. You think you can do that?” Nobody
said anything, so she assumed that was yes. “I’ll heat up some
food, we can have dinner. Like normal people.” While she
pulled food out of the fridge and transferred it to the
microwave, she listened.
“How you doing?” John said.
“I’m okay,” Kate answered. “You?”
He might have shrugged.
Ana hadn’t been there when they broke up, but she knew
it had been bad — Kate walking out while John was still in
the hospital, recovering from having a joker parasite with
delusions of grandeur ripped out of his forehead. John had
gone from being a latent, to drawing a Black Queen, to
having his father die to save his life, to having an ace power in
the form of a scarab-beetle ace living inside him — to
nathood. And then his girlfriend broke up with him.
But Ana had heard both sides of that story, and John had
screwed up as well. He’d never trusted Kate. He kept
assuming she would run off with someone else, someone with
power — someone like DB. And he threw that in her face.
She’d told him she loved him, and he never really believed
her, so she walked. Now, Kate had her first real boyfriend in
years. Ana wondered how John felt about that, if he even
knew. He had to know — Kate was a celebrity, the pictures
had been in the magazines.
They’d all met in the first season of American Hero —
Ana, Kate, and DB as contestants, John working as a PA for
his mother Peregrine, producer of the show and arguably the
most famous wild carder of all time. Those days seemed
dream-like, surreal. Part of some fun-house carnival ride that
ultimately meant nothing. So much had happened since then,
but that was where it all started. The show was still going
strong, riding high in the ratings; Ana didn’t pay attention.
DB paced, pounding a double beat on his torso.
“You in town for anything special?” John said to Kate, as
if they were alone in the room.
“Yeah, charity pitching derby at the All-Star Game.”
“Oh yeah? Cool.”
“You?”
“I’ve been traveling, I guess. Here and there.”
This was the most gratingly awkward conversation of all
time. Ana wondered if she could fix it by feeding them more
margaritas. She went to the kitchen to get started on that.
“I figured you’d be staying with your mom,” Kate said.
John rolled his eyes. “I’d have to spend all night hearing
about how I should go back to work for her on American
Hero.”
“Oh, no,” Kate said, with genuine outrage.
The drumming and pacing stopped. “Hey, maybe you can
get the Winged Wench to explain this. Unless you know
where it came from.”
He held out a DVD case, which he’d retrieved from his
coat pocket. Poor quality, low production values, with a
photocopied cover shoved behind cheap clear plastic. The
title: AMERICAN HERO UNCUT, VOL. I.
John gave a long-suffering look at the ceiling. “My mother
had nothing to do with that. I had nothing to do with that.”
Kate yanked the DVD case out of DB’s hand and stared at
it. “What the hell is this?”
Ana drifted over to Kate’s side, to study the case over her
shoulder. The image on the front featured DB, all his arms
wrapped around the svelte figure of Jade Blossom, another of
the first season American Hero contestants. Naked Jade
Blossom, Ana noted. Her state of undress was obvious even
through the shadowed, unfocused quality of the picture.
Uncut, indeed — unauthorized footage from the reality
show’s seemingly infinite number of cameras.
Somehow, Ana couldn’t be entirely surprised that such a
thing existed. What did surprise her was not stumbling on the
footage online somewhere. Now that she knew it existed, she
probably wouldn’t be able to avoid it.
Kate gaped for a moment, then covered her mouth with
her hands and spit laughter. “I’m sorry. It’s not funny. But it
is.” She might have been having some kind of fit, doubled
over, holding her gut. “Karma’s a bitch!”
“Look at the back,” DB said, making a turning motion
with one of his hands. “This is what I’ve been trying to tell
you.”
When Kate turned the case over to look at the back, Ana
almost turned away. The back showed three more pictures:
two more of DB, captured in the moment with two entirely
different contestants of the show. And one of Kate, her back
to the camera, towel sliding off her shoulders as she stepped
into the shower. The picture was a tease, of course. How
much did the video actually show?
Ana couldn’t tell if the red in Kate’s cheeks was from
alcohol or embarrassment. When Kate set her jaw and hefted
the DVD case as if to throw it, all three of them reached for
her, making halting noises. Glancing at them, Kate sighed,
and merely tossed the DVD back to DB, without her ace
power charging it. DB fumbled it out of a couple of hands
before managing to catch it.
Kate said, “At least I can say there aren’t any sex tapes of
me. Unlike some people.”
“You had your chance,” DB muttered.
Kate glared. The TV played through the pause; two
characters were making out in a hospital supply closet.
“Volume I,” Ana said. “So how many of those are there?”
“Who the fuck knows?” DB said. “The guy wanted me to
sign it for him.”
“Whoever’s doing these has to have access to the show’s
raw footage.” She looked at John, inquiring.
He said, “Could be anyone with access to the editing
process. Mom and Josh have a pack of lawyers working on
it — you can imagine what it’s doing to the American Hero
brand. But there’s not much they can do about it once the
videos hit the web.”
Ana went to the kitchen and stuck a plate of burritos in the
microwave. Food. Food would make everything better. And
more margaritas. If she could just get everyone commiserating
over the shared trauma rather than making accusations,
maybe she could salvage the party.
“I do not need this right now,” Kate said, and started
pacing. “Oh my God, I should tell Tyler . . . but if he doesn’t
know about it already maybe I shouldn’t tell him. . . .”
“Who’s Tyler?” DB said.
John smirked. “Haven’t you heard? It’s been all over
Aces!. Kate’s new boyfriend — she’s dating nats now.”
“John, don’t be an asshole,” Ana said. She’d had no
intention of bringing this up while the love triangle from hell
was in her five-hundred-square-foot apartment. She’d kill
John for poking Kate like this.
Kate plowed on. “I told you then, I didn’t break up with
you because you lost your powers. I broke up with you
because I couldn’t keep . . . propping up your self-esteem.
You kept making the whole thing about you.”
“Wait a minute, boyfriend? What boyfriend? Who is this
guy?” DB said.
Kate didn’t answer, and Ana sure wasn’t going to say
anything.
DB continued. “No, really — we can settle this. Tyler,
huh? I don’t care if he’s a nat or the king of Persia, I want to
meet him. You know, just to make sure he’s a nice guy.”
“I can pick my own boyfriends, thank you very much,”
Kate said.
“Apparently not,” DB said, pointing three arms at John.
Kate growled and cocked back her arm. Despite watching
for it — hoping to minimize damage to the apartment — Ana
hadn’t seen whatever projectile she picked up; but then, Kate
always kept a few marbles in her pocket, for whenever she
lost her temper.
“Kate!” Ana yelled. “Cool it! No throwing in the house!
Nobody uses any powers in the house! Got it?”
The ace pitcher froze, a static charge dancing around her
hand. For their parts, John and DB had both ducked, because
she kept turning back and forth between them, unable to
decide who to target first.
Then her hand dropped. “You know what’s real rich? That
neither one of you can figure out why I won’t go out with
you.” She stomped into the bathroom and slammed the door.
The microwave dinged, and Ana said, with false
brightness, “Anyone want burritos?”
© 2014 by Carrie Vaughn.
Excerpted from Wild Cards: Lowball,
edited by George R. R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass.
Published by permission of the author and Tor Books.
All rights reserved.
No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in
writing from the author.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carrie Vaughn is the bestselling author of the Kitty Norville series, the most
recent of which is the twelfth installment, Kitty in the Underworld. Her
superhero novel Dreams of the Golden Age was released in January 2014. She
has also written young adult novels, Voices of Dragons and Steel, and the
fantasy novels Discord’s Apple and After the Golden Age. Her short fiction has
appeared in many magazines and anthologies, from Lightspeed to Tor.com and
George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards series. She lives in Colorado with a fluffy
attack dog. Learn more at carrievaughn.com.
The Doubt Factory
(novel excerpt)
Paolo Bacigalupi
Please enjoy the following excerpt of the new novel The Doubt Factory by
Paolo Bacigalupi, forthcoming this month from Little, Brown Books for
Young Readers:
In this page-turning contemporary thriller, National Book Award Finalist and
New York Times bestselling author Paolo Bacigalupi explores the timely
issue of how public information is distorted for monetary gain, and how those
who exploit it must be stopped.
Everything Alix knows about her life is a lie. At least that’s what a mysterious
young man who’s stalking her keeps saying. But then she begins investigating
the disturbing claims he makes against her father. Could her dad really be at
the helm of a firm that distorts the truth and covers up wrongdoing by hugely
profitable corporations that have allowed innocent victims to die? Is it
possible that her father is the bad guy, and that the undeniably alluring
criminal who calls himself Moses — and his radical band of teen activists —
is right? Alix has to make a choice, and time is running out, but can she truly
risk everything and blow the whistle on the man who loves her and raised
her?
PROLOGUE
He’d been watching her for a long time. Watching how she
moved through the still waters of her life. Watching the
friends and family who surrounded her. It was like watching a
bright tropical fish in an aquarium, bounded on all sides, safe
inside the confines. Unaware of the glass walls.
He could watch her sitting at a coffee shop, intent on
something in her e-book reader, drinking the same skinny latte
that she always ordered. He knew her street, and he knew her
home. He knew her class schedule. Calculus and AP Chem,
Honors English. A 3.9 GPA, because some asshole bio
teacher had knocked off her perfect score over a triviality of
how she formatted her lab notes.
Smart girl.
Sharp girl.
And yet completely unaware.
It wasn’t her fault. All the fish in her tank were the same.
All of them swimming in perfectly controlled waters, bare
millimeters from another world that was hostile to them
entirely.
Moses Cruz felt like he’d been watching all of them
forever. But Alix Banks he could watch in that aquarium and
hours could pass. Fundraising events, field hockey
tournaments, vacations to Saint Barts and Aspen. It was a safe
and quiet world she lived in, and she — just like a beautiful
neon tetra in a tropical tank — had no idea she was being
watched.
All of her people were like that. Just a bunch of pretty fish
in love with themselves and how beautiful they were, in love
with their little aquarium castles. All of them thinking that
they ran the world. None of them realizing that only a thin
pane of glass separated them from disaster.
And here he was, standing outside, holding a hammer.
PART 1
1
Alix was sitting in AP Chem when she saw him.
She’d been gazing out the window, letting her eyes wander
over the perfectly manicured grounds of Seitz Academy’s
academic quad, and as soon as she saw him standing outside,
she had the feeling she knew him.
Familiar.
That was how she put it later, talking to the cops. He’d
seemed familiar. Like someone’s older brother, the one you
only glimpsed when he was back from college. Or else the sib
whom Seitz wouldn’t let in because of “behavioral match
issues.” The one who didn’t attend the school but showed up
with Mommy and Daddy at the Seitz Annual Auction anyway
because sis was Seitz Material even though he wasn’t. The
resentful lone wolf who leaned against the back wall, texting
his friends about how fucked up it was that he was stuck
killing the night watching his parents get sloppy drunk while
they bid on vacations to Saint Martin and find-yourself-in-
middle-age pottery classes at Lena Chisolm’s studio/gallery.
Familiar.
Like her tongue running the line of her teeth. Never seen,
but still, known.
He was standing outside, staring up at the science building.
Ms. Liss (never Mrs. and definitely not Miss — Ms. with
the z, right?) was passing back AP Chem lab reports. Easy
A’s. Even when Liss was putting on the pressure, she never
pushed hard enough, so Alix had let the activity of the class
fade into the background: students in their lab coats beside
their personal sinks and burners, the rustle of papers, Ms. Liss
droning on about top-tier colleges (which was code for the Ivy
Leagues) and how no one was getting anywhere if they didn’t
challenge themselves — and Alix thinking that no one was
getting anywhere anytime soon.
Suspended animation was how she thought of it
sometimes. She was just another student in a cohort of
students being groomed and sculpted and prepped for the
future. She sometimes imagined them all floating in liquid
suspension, rows and rows in holding tanks, all of them
drifting. Seitz-approved skirts and blazers billowing. School
ties drifting with the currents. Hair tangling across blank
faces, bubbles rising from silent lips. Tangles and bubbles.
Waiting for someone to say that they were finished.
Other times, she thought of it as being prepped for a race
that they were never quite allowed to run. Each Seitz student
set up and poised, runners on their starting blocks, ready to
take over the world — as soon as their control-freak parents
decided to let them get their hands on their trust funds. But no
one ever gave them the gun, so they all waited and partied
and studied and tested and added extracurriculars like
volunteering at the battered women’s shelter in Hartford so
they could have “meaningful” material for their collegeentrance essays.
And then she caught sight of him — that loner marooned
on Seitz’s emerald lawns — and everything changed.
For a second, when she first spied him, Alix was almost
convinced that she’d conjured him. He was so weirdly
recognizable to her that it seemed like he could only have
emerged from her own mind. A good-looking black guy in a
trench coat. Short little dreadlocks, or maybe cornrows — it
was hard to tell from this distance — but cool-looking
whatever it was. A little bit gangsta . . . and he was so
unsettlingly familiar to her. Like some kind of music star,
some guy out of the Black Eyed Peas who looked better than
Will.i.am. Not an Akon, not a Kanye. They were too cleancut . . . But still, somebody famous.
The more Alix studied him, the more he appeared out of
place. He was just standing there, staring up at the science
building. Maybe he was lost? Like his sister had been
kidnapped and dragged to one of the whitest schools on the
East Coast, and he was here to break her out.
Well, the school wasn’t all white, but pretty close. Alix
could think of maybe six kids who were actually black, and
two of them were adopted. Of course, there was a solid
helping of Asians and Indians because there were so many
Wall Street quants who sent their kids to the school, but they
were, as one of Alix’s friends put it, “the other white meat.”
Which said all you really needed to know about Seitz. If you
were Ivy-bound, and headed for money and power, Seitz
Academy found that it could hit its diversity targets easily.
But there was that black guy standing outside, looking in.
Cool. Old-school aviator shades. Army jacket kind of trench.
Looking like he could stand out on the grass all day long,
watching Alix and her classmates.
Was he a new student? It was hard to guess his age from
this distance, but she thought he could be the right age for a
senior.
Just then, Mr. Mulroy came into view, striding with
purpose.
From the man’s attitude, Alix could tell the Seitz
headmaster didn’t think the black guy belonged on his lawn.
Mulroy moved into the stranger’s space. Alix could see the
man’s lips moving, telling the stranger he wasn’t at the right
school.
Move along.
Mulroy pointed off campus, his body language loaded with
authority — arm out and rigid, finger pointing — ordering the
intruder back wherever he’d come from, back to wherever
black kids came from when they weren’t here on a
scholarship or given a pass via Nigerian oil money into Seitz’s
manicured world.
Mulroy made another sharp gesture of authority. Alix had
seen him do the same with new students who he nailed
smoking. She’d watched them cringe and gather up their
backpacks as the headmaster herded them into Weller House’s
admin offices for their sentencing. Mulroy was used to
making rebellious rich kids believe he was in charge. He was
good at it.
The black guy was still staring up at the school, nodding as
if he were paying attention to the headmaster’s words. But he
wasn’t moving to go at all. Mulroy said something else.
The stranger glanced over, taking in the man for the first
time. Tall, Alix realized. He was at least as tall as the
headmaster —
The stranger buried a fist into Mulroy’s gut.
Mulroy doubled over.
What the —?
Alix pressed against the glass, staring, trying to make sense
of what she’d just witnessed. Had she really just seen Mulroy
get punched? It had been so fast, and yet there the
headmaster was, clutching his gut and gagging, looking like he
was trying to throw up. The black guy was bracing him up
now, patting the headmaster on the back. Patting him like a
baby. Soothing.
The headmaster sank to his knees. The stranger gently let
the headmaster down and laid the man on the grass.
Mulroy rolled onto his back, still clutching his belly. The
stranger crouched beside him, seeming to say something as he
laid his hand on the older man’s chest.
“Holy shit,” Alix whispered. Gaining her senses, she
turned to the rest of the class. “Someone just beat the shit out
of Mr. Mulroy!”
Everyone rushed for the windows. The intruder had
straightened. He looked up at them as everyone crowded
against the glass for a view. A strange, isolated figure standing
over the laid-out body of his victim. They all stared down at
him, and he stared back. A frozen moment, everyone taking
stock of one another — and then the guy smiled, and his
smile was radiant.
He didn’t seem bothered at all that the headmaster was
sprawled at his feet, nor that he had the entire class as
witnesses. He looked completely at home.
Still smiling, the stranger gave them a lazy salute and
strode off. He didn’t even bother to run.
Mulroy was trying to get up, but he was having a hard
time of it. Alix was dimly aware of Ms. Liss calling security,
using the hotline number they were supposed to use if there
was ever a campus shooter. Her voice kept cracking.
“We should help him!” someone said, and everyone made
a rush for the door. But Liss shouted at them all to get back to
their seats, and then she was back on the phone, trying to give
instructions to security. “He’s right outside Widener Hall!” she
was saying over and over again.
The guy who had hit Mulroy had already ambled out of
sight. All that was left were Mulroy lying in the grass and Alix
trying to make sense of what she’d witnessed.
It had been utterly unlike any school fight she’d ever seen.
Nothing like the silly strutting matches where two dudebros
started shouting at each other, and then maybe pushed each
other a little, and then maybe danced around playing as if they
were serious — with neither of them doing much — until
maybe, finally, the shame and gathering spectator pressure
forced them to throw an actual punch.
Those fights almost immediately ended up as a tangle on
the floor, with a couple of red-faced guys squirming and
grunting and swearing, tearing at each other’s clothes and
trying out their wrestling holds and not doing much damage
one way or the other, except that the school ended up having
discussions about conflict resolution for a week.
This had been different, though. No warnings and no
threats. The black guy had just turned and put his fist into
Mulroy’s gut, and Mulroy was done. No second round,
nothing. The boy — the more she thought about it, the more
Alix thought he really was student age — had just destroyed
Mulroy.
Ms. Liss was still speaking urgently into the phone, but
now Alix spied the school’s security team dashing across the
quad from Weller House. Too late, of course. They’d
probably been eating doughnuts and watching South Park
reruns behind their desks when Liss’s call came in.
Cynthia Yang was leaning over Alix’s shoulder, watching
the slow-moving campus cops.
“If there’s ever a school shooting, we’re toast.” Cynthia
snorted. “Look at that reaction time.”
“Seriously,” Emil chimed in. “My dad’s security could get
here faster, and they’re across town.”
Emil’s dad was some kind of diplomat. He was always
reminding people how important his dad was, which was
seriously annoying, but Alix had to admit Emil was right.
She’d seen that security detail once when they’d partied at
Emil’s summer house in the Hamptons, and those guys had
definitely been more on top of it than Seitz Academy’s rent-acops.
The campus cops finally made it to Mulroy. He was on his
feet now, though bent over and gasping, and he shook off
their help. Alix didn’t need to hear the words to know what
Mulroy was saying as he pointed off campus. “Go get the guy
who beat the hell out of me!” Or something like that.
From where Alix was standing, she knew they’d fail. The
puncher was long gone.
••••
A few hours later Alix heard from Cynthia that, sure
enough, they hadn’t found the guy. He’d just evaporated.
“Poof!” Cynthia said. “Like smoke.”
“Like smoke,” Alix echoed.
“I heard he was from the low-income housing over on the
east side,” Sophie said.
“I heard he’s an escaped convict,” Tyler said, plopping
down beside them. “Some kind of ax murderer.”
They all kept chattering and speculating, but Alix wasn’t
paying attention. She couldn’t stop playing the incident over
in her head. A shattering of Seitz’s model perfection that
wasn’t supposed to happen, like a bum crapping in the
reflecting pool near her father’s offices in DC, or a runway
model with lipstick smeared across her face in a jagged red
slash.
As soon as the rent-a-cops had started questioning the
students, descriptions of the intruder had started falling apart:
He was tall, he was short, he had dreads, and he had braids.
Someone said he had a rainbow knitted Rasta beret, someone
else said he had a gold-and-diamond grill — it quickly turned
into a strange jumble of conflicting stereotypes that had
nothing to do with the guy Alix had seen.
For Alix, he remained fixed in her mind, unchanged by the
shifting stories of her peers. He stayed with her through
Honors English and then followed her out to the track. And
even though she ran until her lungs were fire and her legs
were rubber, she couldn’t shake the image of him.
She could play the entire event back in her mind as if in
slow motion. She could still see the stranger’s green army
trench billowing around him as he squatted beside the
headmaster. She could still see the guy laying his hand on
Mulroy’s chest, soothing him.
She could see him looking up at the class. She could see
him smile.
And the memory of his smile started her running again,
pushing against her pounding heart and her ragged breath and
her aching legs. Pushing against the memory of the stranger,
because she could swear that when he looked up, he hadn’t
cared about all the AP Chem students crowding around and
staring from the windows. He hadn’t been looking at any of
them.
He’d been staring directly at her.
He’d been smiling at her.
And she still couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d seen him
before. Familiar and frightening at the same time. Like the
smell of an electrical storm looming on the horizon, ozone
and moisture and winds and promise, swirling down after a
long time dry.
2
At dinner, Alix’s younger brother, Jonah, wouldn’t quit
talking about the strange event. “He completely pounded
Mulroy. It was like some kind of MMA takedown.”
“You weren’t even there,” Alix said. “He just hit him, and
Mulroy keeled over.”
“One hit, though, right?” Jonah mimed a punch that
almost knocked his water glass off the table. He caught it just
in time. “Epic!”
“Jonah,” Mom said. “Please?”
Mom had put candles on the table and laid out a
tablecloth. Dinner was supposed to be a family ritual, the
entire Banks clan gathered and undistracted for a whole half
hour, instead of grabbing something out of the fridge and
separating into different rooms to play on iPads and
computers or watch TV.
Mom had been on a kick for family time lately, but she
was fighting an uphill battle. Dad had once again brought his
tablet to the table, just to reply to one quick emergency email, he said, and so everyone was engaged in the
conversation while he claimed to listen: Alix, Jonah, their
mother, and half of Mr. Banks, workaholic extraordinaire.
For Mom, it counted as a win; Alix’s mother took what
she could get, when she could get it.
Alix’s friend Cynthia was always asking what made the
relationship work considering that Alix’s father was never
paying attention and her mother always seemed a little isolated
in the project of raising her family. Alix had never really
thought about it until that moment. It was just the way things
were. Dad worked in public relations and made the money for
the family. Mom did Pilates and book clubs and fund-raisers,
and tried to gather everyone together for meals. They mostly
got along. It wasn’t like in Sophie’s house, where you could
practically hear her mom and dad chewing glass every time
they said anything to each other.
“Nobody caught the guy,” Alix said. “He just walked away.
They called security, and the police and Mr. Mulroy went out
looking for him.” She took a bite of Caesar salad. “Nothing.”
“I don’t like the town around there,” her mother said.
“They should have security at the gates.”
“The town around there?” Alix rolled her eyes. “Why
don’t you just say you don’t trust those people, Mom?”
“That’s not what I said,” Mom said. “Strangers shouldn’t
just be able to wander onto campus. They should have a
guard at the gate, at least.”
“Fortress Seitz,” Jonah said, pushing a crouton onto his
fork with a finger. “Maybe we can put in gun turrets, too.
Then we can feel really secure. Put up some barbwire, right?
Fifty cals and barbwire. Oh wait, don’t we call that prison?”
Mom gave him a sharp look. “Don’t be smart. That’s not
what we’re talking about. Seitz is hardly a prison, no matter
how much you pretend.”
“You only say that because you don’t have to go,” Jonah
said.
Mom gave him an exasperated look. “Someone just
walked onto campus and assaulted the headmaster. I’d think
even you’d admit there’s a problem. What if that had been a
student? Don’t you think that’s a problem, at least?”
“I’m definitely bummed I missed it,” Jonah said. “I’d pay
money to see Mulroy take one in the gut.”
“Jonah!”
Alix stifled a laugh. Doctors described Jonah as having
poor impulse control, which basically meant that Jonah’s
entire world was a series of decisions that balanced
precariously on the razor’s edge of clever vs. stupid.
Stupid normally won out.
Which meant that since he started attending Seitz, it was
Alix’s job to keep an eye on him. When she’d protested that
playing nursemaid for her younger brother wasn’t her idea of
a good time, Mom hadn’t even yelled; she’d just sighed in
resignation.
“I know it’s not fair, Alix, but we can’t always be there . . .
and Jonah . . .” She sighed. “It’s not his fault.”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s his nature, just like the scorpion and the
frog.”
Alix’s nature was just the opposite. She knew the
difference between clever and stupid, and didn’t feel any need
to dive across the line. So, as long as Mom was doing Pilates
and fund-raisers and book clubs, and Dad was down in the
city or seeing clients in DC, Alix was in charge of keeping an
eye on the little nutball.
“We could punch him for charity,” Jonah was saying.
“Like those old-time dunk tanks. Big fund-raising thing.
Thousand dollars a pop.” He mimed punches. “Bam! Bam!
Bam! Slug Mulroy and feed the homeless. I bet even Alix
would donate to that,” he said. “It would make her earlydecision application look good.”
“There aren’t any homeless in Haverport,” Alix said. “We
put them on a bus to New York.”
“So save the whales! Who cares, as long as we get to
punch Mulroy.”
“I don’t think assault is a joke,” Mom said.
They went back and forth like they always did, with Mom
taking it seriously, trying to persuade Jonah to stop being
“troublesome,” and Jonah taking the opportunity to poke at
her, saying just the right thing to annoy her again and again.
Alix tuned them out. When she played the attack back in
her own mind, it made her feel a little nauseated. It had been
a completely normal, boring day. She could still see Mulroy
walking over to the guy, thinking that he was in charge,
thinking he knew what was up. Mulroy and Alix had been
fooled by the spring sunshine. They’d been living inside a
bubble that they’d thought was real.
And then this guy turned up at school, and the bubble
popped.
“It was weird,” Alix said. “Right after he punched Mulroy,
the guy held Mulroy up so he didn’t fall over. He was gentle
about it. It almost looked tender, the way he laid him in the
grass.”
“Tender?” her mother said, her voice rising. “A tender
assault?”
Alix rolled her eyes. “Cut it out, Mom. I’m not Jonah. I’m
just saying it was weird.”
But it really had looked tender, in the end. So slow and
careful and gentle as he laid the man down. Tender. Alix knew
the power of words. Dad had drilled it into her enough as a
kid. Words were specific, with fine shadings and colors. You
chose them to paint exactly the picture you wanted in another
person’s mind.
Tender.
She hadn’t chosen the word accidentally. The only other
word she could think of that might have described the
moment was apologetic. Like the stranger had actually been
sorry he’d beaten Mulroy up. But that didn’t match with what
had happened. No one accidentally shoved a fist into another
person’s stomach.
Oh, gee, sorry about that. I didn’t see your belly there . . .
Dad had been reading on his tablet, half listening, and half
working. Now he broke in as he kept tapping on his tablet.
“The school is going to hire an extra security detail. They
have the young man’s face from the security cameras — ”
“They probably got a thousand pics,” Jonah said.
Dad went on undeterred. “ — police have him identified.
He should be found soon.”
“He’s identified?” Alix asked, interested. “They already
know who he is? Is he famous or something? Is he from
around here?” He looked so familiar.
“Hardly,” her father said. “He’s just a vandal they’ve been
looking for.”
“How’d you find that out?”
“I called the school,” her father said, barely looking up.
“Mr. Mulroy, despite his terrible skills at self-defense, is a very
efficient administrator.”
“I’ll bet he’s getting a lot of calls right now,” Mom said. “I
wouldn’t be surprised if some parents pull their children.”
“There’s extra security?” Alix asked. “Do they think he’ll
come back?”
“It seems unlikely.” Dad finished his salad and set it aside.
“But better safe than sorry.”
“Yeah,” said Jonah. “If we aren’t careful, we’ll come into
school and the whole place will be tagged.”
“I didn’t say he was a spray-painter,” Dad said. “I said he
was a vandal.”
“Like he breaks windows and things?”
“Don’t get any ideas,” Mom interjected.
“What did I do?” Jonah looked wounded.
“You sounded like you wanted to start a fan club,” Alix
said.
“You know, sometimes a question is just an innocent
question,” Jonah groused.
“Not with your track record, young man,” Mom said as
she cleared the salad dishes.
Dad was ignoring the interplay, still tapping out e-mails on
his tablet.
“Mr. Mulroy didn’t know what other things the young man
had been up to. All he knew was that he’d been associated
with extensive vandalism incidents.”
“So does the vandal have a name?” Alix asked.
Dad looked up at her, frowning, suddenly serious.
Alix stopped short, surprised. It was the first time he’d
really looked at her all night. Normally, Dad was Mr.
Multitasker, thinking about other things, working out puzzles
with his job, only half there. It was a joke among all of them
that you sometimes had to ask him a question three times
before he even heard you. But now he was looking at Alix full
force.
When Dad focused, he really focused.
“What?” Alix asked, feeling defensive. “What did I say?”
“No.”
“No, what?”
“No, he doesn’t have a name.”
“Nice. Ghost in the machine,” Jonah said, as usual
completely unaware of the way the energy in the dining room
had changed. “The man with no name.” He made a funny
ghost noise to go with it. “Woooo.”
Dad didn’t even look over at Jonah. He was still looking at
her, and she felt suddenly as if she was picking her way
through a conversation that had become more important than
she’d expected. Like the time Jonah had joked about seeing
Kala Spelling’s mom having coffee with Mr. Underwood, the
European History teacher.
“So . . .” Alix hesitated. “If they don’t know his name . . .
then how do they know who they’re looking for? I thought
you said he was identified.”
“He has a track record,” Dad said.
“But you don’t know his name?”
“He has a nickname,” Dad said finally. “Something he
marks his work with.”
“And it’s . . .”
“2.0.”
“That’s my GPA!” Jonah said.
“In your dreams,” Alix retorted. To her father, she said,
“What’s the name supposed to mean?”
“If anyone knew, I’m sure they would have caught him
already.”
••••
Alix couldn’t sleep. The strange day and conversations
hung with her. Finally she got up and turned on her computer.
Jonah wasn’t allowed to have a computer in his room, but
Mom and Dad trusted her not to do “anything inappropriate,”
as Mom put it, without actually meeting Alix’s eyes when she
said it. So Sophie and Denise had spent a year jokingly
warning her not to do “Anything Inappropriate” with her
computer in her room.
She opened a browser and ran a search for 2.0.
She found Wikipedia entries. A lot of entries for Web 2.0,
Health 2.0, Creative Commons, and the Apache Software
Foundation came up. There were fistfuls of computer listings,
actually. Software companies released new versions all the
time, tracked by their release numbers: .09 beta, 1.2 release,
2.0. The Chrome browser she was using now had a release
number, too, except it was something like 33.0.
2.0 . . .
She tried image searching and scrolled idly through the
pictures that came back. Lots of corporate logos, antiseptic
and staid, even as they tried to claim that they were doing
something new. Gov 2.0, City 2.0, and — seriously? — even
a Dad 2.0. Apparently everything was 2.0. Even Dad could
get a new version. Alix tried to imagine what a “Dad 2.0”
would look like, but all that came to mind were paunchy old
dudes wearing hipster plaids and skinny jeans while
swaggering around in Snuglis —
An image caught Alix’s eye. She scrolled back up. She’d
almost missed it, but it was different from the others.
A spray-paint tag on the side of a smokestack. Instead of
the carefully designed corporate brands with 2.0s affixed as
an afterthought, this was 2.0 as red scrawl spray. From the
image, it looked like it was maybe at an oil refinery. And the
graffiti was high up, almost impossibly high. The image was a
little blurry, shot with someone’s phone, but the 2.0 was
starkly legible. In the foreground, dark and sooty pipes ran
this way and that, linking grimy holding tanks in an industrial
tangle. Against that dark foreground, the number was like a
beacon, rising high above the pipes and steam.
2.0. Bright and red and defiant.
Alix clicked through to the site, hoping for more images or
an explanation, but the site the image came from was just a
website for street graffiti from around the world. Random
people uploading their random exploits. Among all the other
art, the one that she’d found wasn’t particularly compelling. It
wasn’t complex or wildly colorful. It wasn’t clever or strange
or thought-provoking. Except for its location, it was an
unremarkable tag. Not like a Banksy, for example. Over the
winter, Cynthia had become obsessed with Banksy because
he’d been in the news again. She’d persuaded Alix to catch
the train down to the city for the day to go on a treasure hunt
for the guerrilla street art. They’d spent the day canvassing
New York, digging up every instance they could find where
the street artist had left his mark.
Alix kept scanning images, focused in the way she
normally focused on Calc prep. Half an hour later she found
one more picture with the 2.0 tag, this time on the side of
what looked like a metal-sided warehouse. The picture looked
like it had been snapped from beyond barbwire, but when she
clicked through, there wasn’t any information on this one,
either. Just a big metal building in some place that looked like
it might have been a desert, judging from the yellow dirt
around it.
2.0 . . .
A new version of . . . something.
Alix kept scrolling, but those were the only images that
seemed relevant to 2.0 and vandalism, and even those didn’t
carry any real information. She went back to the smokestack
picture and studied it again.
The graffiti was ridiculously high up on the smokestack.
Impossible for anyone to miss. A red scrawled challenge. An
arrogant mark. A statement, standing out like a beacon above
the soot and industrial grime of the refinery.
2.0.
Something new.
3
When Alix pulled her red MINI into Seitz’s parking lot the
next day, she found herself being challenged by a cop, who
allowed her to park only after he saw Jonah’s and her school
uniforms.
“Use the spaces on the far side of the lot,” he said.
“What the hell?” Alix muttered as she maneuvered the
MINI through the clogged parking area, avoiding students and
other cars searching for spaces. She found an empty slot and
parked.
“Is there some kind of event happening?” Jonah wondered
as students and people from off the street streamed past.
“Guess we’re going to find out.”
Alix grabbed her schoolbag and climbed out of the car.
Standing beside her MINI, she scanned the crowd around the
Seitz main gate. Maybe someone famous was coming to tour
the school. Seitz students and teachers, along with town
bystanders, clogged all the sidewalks and approaches to the
grounds.
Alix caught sight of Derek and Cynthia in the throng.
“Come on,” she said to Jonah. “And stick close, for once.”
She pushed into the crowd, bumping and nudging through,
wedging herself between students and bystanders. Up ahead,
she spied yellow crime-scene tape and heard someone
shouting for everyone to “move back, move back.”
Broken glimpses through the crush of the crowd showed
the flashing red lights of an ambulance. Alix’s heart beat
faster.
I hope someone isn’t hurt was her first thought. Followed
quickly by I hope it’s not someone I know.
Pushing through the crowd was slow. She was fighting
against the tide, she realized. People were gradually being
herded back behind the low perimeter wall that ringed Seitz’s
grounds. She finally managed to squeeze through the press to
where she could get a view and was relieved to see there
wasn’t anyone lying dead. There was a fire truck parked
beside the ambulance, and a couple of firemen in heavy DayGlo coats sitting on the steps of the fire truck.
How bad can it be if the firemen are drinking coffee?
She craned her neck and caught another glimpse of yellow
crime-scene tape being stretched to push the crowd farther
back. Beyond the tape, though, all she could see were the fire
truck and ambulance parked on the quad, and, of course,
Widener Hall, with its four stories of classroom windows, all
looking down on the Seitz grounds like rows of empty eyes.
“What’s going on?” Jonah grabbed her shoulder and
jumped, yanking on her in the process and earning them both
dirty looks as he jostled the bystanders around them. “I can’t
see!”
Alix shrugged his hand off her shoulder. “I don’t think
anybody knows.” She stood on tiptoe again. Now she spied a
bunch of cops standing at the doors to Widener.
What the —?
It looked like they were in some kind of hazmat gear.
Maybe something broke in the labs. Some kind of spill.
“Alix!” Derek and Cynthia were elbowing through the
crowd to join them. “Did you just get here?”
“Yeah. Do you know what’s going on?”
“Everyone’s clueless,” Derek said as he squeezed into
Alix’s personal space. He shifted apologetically, trying to give
her room, and bumped into her again as Cynthia plowed
through to them as well.
“They’ve had us locked out for the last twenty minutes,”
she said breathlessly. “The fire truck got here just before you
did. The guys in the bodysuits, too.”
Alix noticed that Jonah was getting antsy, looking for a
chance to slip away. She barely snagged him by his book bag
and dragged him back as he tried to make an escape. “Nice
try, bro.”
“Come on, Alix,” Jonah whined as she got a firm grip on
his arm. “I just wanted to see if anyone was dead in the
ambulance.”
My brother, ghoul in training, Alix thought.
But Jonah’s mention of bodies mirrored her own
suppressed worry. The whole thing was too weird, and now
that Jonah had said it out loud, it made her own anxiety
suddenly feel more real as well. As if he’d invoked something
that had to happen now that he’d said it.
It had happened to her friend Anna Lenay that way. She’d
lost her mother and father in a small-plane accident when they
were sophomores. Before her parents left, Anna had joked
with her dad that he was probably going to crash the plane. It
was the last thing she’d said to them before they took off for
Martha’s Vineyard, and Alix had been there to hear it.
One of the guys in the hazmat suits jogged over to the
crowd. He was sweating when he pulled off his hood. He
spoke to an officer who looked like he was in charge, and
then the police were telling everyone to step back even
farther.
“Maybe it’s a bomb,” Jonah said.
“You better hope not,” Alix replied darkly.
They’d had a bomb scare in the fall. The faculty and
students had been cleared off the entire campus, dorms,
faculty housing, science and humanities buildings, the pool
house, everything, while K9 units went over the grounds. No
one had been caught for it, and Alix had never said anything
out loud, but she privately suspected Jonah had been behind
the scare. It was the kind of thing her brother would do. The
kid had serious impulse-control problems.
Luckily, Jonah hadn’t even been suspected. He’d covered
his tracks, at least. Alix wondered if he’d been disappointed.
It was at least possible that he’d been trying to get himself
caught so he wouldn’t have to attend Seitz, but she never
asked.
The cops kept pushing everyone farther back, and the
crowd got tighter as a result. Alix was shoved up against
Jonah and Cynthia and Derek. Some of the really little kids
were starting to freak out. Older ones were talking on their
cell phones, giving a blow-by-blow of what was happening, or
else texting and posting photos online as it all went down.
Alix was starting to feel claustrophobic. The crush and
shift of the crowd were overwhelming.
“We need everyone to step back, please! Behind the yellow
tape! All the way back!”
The jostling increased. A truck rumbled through the crowd
with the word swat on the side.
“Worse and worse,” Cynthia said.
“You think there are hostages?” Derek wondered.
“Yeah. SWAT got a call about a crew of free radicals
holding a bunch of innocent alkanes prisoner in the chem
lab,” Cynthia said.
In the crush, Alix couldn’t turn to respond. She was
sweltering in her school blazer. Seitz school uniforms were
uncomfortable enough as it was, and now in the unseasonably
warm spring sunshine, packed in the crowd, the layers of
clothing were becoming unbearable.
A news crew showed up. A camerawoman and blowdried-hair guy with a microphone went from person to
person, asking questions. The camerawoman was gesturing
for the guy to move into a better position. Everyone watched
the SWAT police get out of their armored truck. They started
pulling equipment and setting it up on the grass.
“Bomb squad,” someone said.
It looked that way to Alix as well. The cops all had heavily
padded protective garments. The SWAT guys were skulking
around the edges of Widener, carrying assault rifles, and now
the guys in heavy bodysuits were lumbering up the steps of
the building. The SWAT guys pressed themselves up against
the brick on either side of the doors. Riot helmets and body
armor. It looked like the movies: cops all around the doors,
ready to bust in and start blasting away at the bad guys.
The shout of “Clear!” echoed distantly.
Derek was standing right behind Alix, leaning over her
shoulder, cheek close, his breath hot on her ear.
“Watch this,” he said. “It should be good.”
Alix froze.
That’s not Derek.
Alix tried to turn in the constricting crowd. She barely
managed to twist, and when she did, she gasped. The black
guy from yesterday was right there, smiling slightly. Mirror
aviator sunglasses reflected her own surprised expression back
at her.
“Nice to see you again, Alix.”
He looked completely different. His head was shaved
smooth now, and he was wearing an expensive sports coat
over a button-down shirt. TAG Heuer wristwatch. But it
wasn’t just the change of hair and clothing. Everything about
him was different. The style of him was different. The guy
yesterday had been loose, carefree — cool in that I don’t give
a damn about all of you sort of way. Hip-hop cool. But the
way this guy held himself, the first thing that popped into
Alix’s mind was cop. Or even more: Secret Service. Like the
cold men who had observed from the alcoves the time Dad
had been invited to a dinner for the president’s reelection
campaign.
But still, this was definitely the same guy who had
punched Mulroy. She was sure of it. He was an inch away,
and he looked completely different, but he was the same guy.
“How do you know my name?”
“You’re going to miss the show if you keep looking at
me,” he said. And then he smiled and raised his sunglasses,
showing dark, flashing eyes. Alix felt like she’d been hit by a
train. Definitely the same guy. The same blaze of wildness
and laughter. The same frightening promise.
His eyes flicked toward the school. “You’ll like this, Alix,”
he said. “This is for you.”
Another preparatory call echoed up from the SWAT team
members arrayed around Widener Hall’s doorway, and then
the air shivered as their explosives went off. A booming rush
rolled over the crowd and left everyone murmuring. Alix
jerked her gaze back to the school. Smoke was billowing up
from around the doorway.
Widener’s doors had been blown wide, and then . . .
Nothing.
Everyone waited with bated breath, expecting whatever
they were supposed to expect when SWAT blew open a door
in the movies. Gunfire. Dragons. A nuclear apocalypse . . .
Something, at least.
Instead, there was silence.
The SWAT team dashed inside, assault rifles pointed
ahead, ready to fire.
“Wait for it,” the stranger whispered in her ear. His hands
were on her shoulders, lightly holding her, keeping her
looking at the events unfolding.
Wait for what? Alix wanted to ask.
She wanted to turn around and see him fully, ask him who
the hell he thought he was —
A dull thud echoed from Widener Hall.
Alix gasped as blood splattered up against the windows.
It was a massacre. There was so much blood that it looked
like every single SWAT guy had been run through a blender
and splattered on the windows.
Shrieks of shock and terror rose up from the crowd, and
suddenly everyone was trying to get away. Alix tried to run,
but the stranger’s fingers dug into her shoulders, holding her
in place. His lips pressed against her ear.
“Don’t panic!” he whispered. “Read! You see it, right?”
And even as everyone was shoving and pulling back and
screaming about all the blood, Alix did see. Right there in the
windows, a message inscribed in red, now dripping down.
Suddenly all the SWAT guys who had disappeared into the
building came barreling back out, shouting and hollering,
wordless and panicked, their rifles held carelessly, stumbling
down the front steps in their heavy armor.
Behind them, a seething wave of snowy motion erupted
from the doors, a tumbling rush pouring out in a river. White
fur, twisting-clawing-thrashing bodies, a tidal wave exploding
through the open doors and cascading down the school steps.
“No way!” Jonah exclaimed from somewhere in the
crowd, delighted.
Rats.
Thousands and thousands and thousands of rats, gushing
out of the building and down the steps. More and more of
them coming every second. They swarmed the cops and the
SWAT team. They surged across the lawns. They scattered
every which way. The people watching up front tried to run,
but everyone was too jammed together. People were
scrambling up on Seitz’s wall. Police were standing in the
middle of the rodent horde, kicking and shaking the rats that
ran up their legs. The TV crew was balanced up on the wall,
recording the whole weird thing.
Alix caught a glimpse of Jonah laughing and pointing at
how all the cops were running, and then everyone was
running and shoving and fleeing as the rats came scrambling
through. Someone smashed into Alix and she stumbled,
barely catching herself before she fell. A white furry streak
bolted past, followed by another and another.
Alix spun, trying to find the guy who’d been standing right
behind her, but the stranger was gone. Lost in the scrum.
Gone entirely except for the rats and the word that he’d left
dripping in red paint from the windows of the science
building:
Alix dodged another surge of rats coming her way and
scanned the crowd, frantically trying to spot the stranger
again.
There!
He was striding away, moving confidently through the
chaos. The same careless, arrogant stride she’d seen after
he’d punched Mulroy.
He could be dangerous. You shouldn’t — oh, fuck it.
Alix went after him.
Behind her, she thought she heard Jonah shout, but she
kept her eyes on the stranger, fighting to keep him in sight as
people fled in every direction.
Later, she couldn’t even really say why she went after him.
She was angry, sure. Pissed that he was so smug and that he
thought he could just come up on her like that. She did it
because she was angry; that was what she told herself later.
She caught up to him as he was pulling open the rear door
to a black town car.
“Wait!” She grabbed his sleeve.
He turned so fast she flinched. She took a step back,
suddenly reminded that this was the guy who’d punched
Mulroy. She took another step back, swallowing uncertainly.
“Who are you?” she asked. “How do you know my
name?”
She could see herself reflected in his mirrored lenses. It
made her feel small. More like a little girl than a grown
woman: brown hair French-braided, Seitz school uniform
with its prim blazer and skirt. He’s tall, she thought inanely.
“You want to know who I am?” he asked, and there was so
much sadness in the words that she was struck nearly
speechless. She felt even more horribly aware of her school
uniform. It was as if she was looking at someone who had
seen the entire world. Not like she’d seen Paris or Barcelona
on vacation, but more like the Bastille or the slums of India.
And here she was, in all her naïveté, trying to grab hold of
that. It took all her will to press him again.
“What’s all this about?” she asked. “What’s 2.0?”
The guy’s expression was so different that she almost
wondered if she’d grabbed the wrong black guy in the crowd.
It reminded her of how Cynthia complained about people not
being able to tell her and Alice Kim apart. Improbably, Alix
heard Cynthia’s voice in her head — Alice is Korean, for
Christ’s sake.
“You’ve got questions now, don’t you?” he said, and
abruptly the heavy sadness disappeared and the brilliant smile
was back. The same boisterous, knowing smile that she’d
seen twice before.
A new explosion went off, right among the parked cars.
Alix ducked instinctively. Smoke enveloped her, wild and
thick and yellow, hiding everything from sight. Suddenly the
stranger grabbed her. Hard and tight.
“Hey!” Alix tried to knee him in the balls, but he must
have turned away because all she hit was thigh. She struggled
against him for another second, then changed tactics and let
herself be pulled close.
She bit him.
She heard a satisfying yelp of pain, but to her surprise the
stranger didn’t let go. Instead, he spun her around and
wrapped his strong arms around her, pulling her into a tighter
embrace.
“Should have known you’d have some bite to you,” he
murmured in her ear.
The amusement and play were back in his voice.
“You want to see how much bite I’ve got?” she asked. She
tried to twist free again, but he was ready for her now. He had
her pinned against his chest. She rested, gathering strength.
Looking for a chance to hurt him again.
The stranger chuckled. His breath was hot on her cheek.
“How about we call a little truce?”
“Why? So we can go for coffee?” If she threw her head
back fast, she could hit his face with the back of her skull.
She might crush his nose if she was lucky.
“You want to know what this is all about?”
Alix stilled, suddenly alert.
“Are you going to tell me?”
The smoke was thick around them. Alix could hear cops
shouting and people running, but all of it was distant. She and
the stranger were in a bubble of smoke, separate from
everything around them.
She was suddenly acutely aware of how closely he held
her. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest as he panted,
the exertion she’d put him through. He was holding her so
tightly she could feel his heart beating.
“What’s this all about?” she asked.
“Ask your father.”
“What?”
“Ask your father. He’s the one who knows all the secrets.”
He shoved her away abruptly.
Alix spun to pursue, but he was lost in the smoke.
Everything was shadow forms.
By the time the smoke cleared, he was gone, as if he’d
blown away in the wind.
© 2014 by Paolo Bacigalupi.
Excerpted from The Doubt Factory by Paolo Bacigalupi.
Published by permission of the author and Little, Brown Books for Young
Readers.
All rights reserved.
No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in
writing from the author.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paolo Bacigalupi is the New York Times bestselling author of the highly
acclaimed The Drowned Cities and Ship Breaker, a Michael L. Printz Award
winner and a National Book Award finalist. He is also the author of a novel for
young readers, Zombie Baseball Beatdown, and the adult books The Windup
Girl and Pump Six and Other Stories. He is a Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Compton
Crook, John W. Campbell Memorial, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award
winner. He lives in western Colorado with his wife and son. Learn more at
bit.ly/TheDoubtFactory.
Ancillary Sword
(novel excerpt)
Ann Leckie
Please enjoy the following excerpt of the new novel Ancillary Sword by Ann
Leckie, forthcoming this month from Orbit Books:
Breq is a soldier who used to be a warship. Once a weapon of conquest
controlling thousands of minds, now she has only a single body and serves
the emperor. With a new ship and a troublesome crew, Breq is ordered to go to
the only place in the galaxy she would agree to go: to Athoek Station to
protect the family of a lieutenant she once knew — a lieutenant she murdered
in cold blood.
1
“Considering the circumstances, you could use another
lieutenant.” Anaander Mianaai, ruler (for the moment) of all
the vast reaches of Radchaai space, sat in a wide chair
cushioned with embroidered silk. This body that spoke to
me — one of thousands — looked to be about thirteen years
old. Black-clad, dark-skinned. Her face was already stamped
with the aristocratic features that were, in Radchaai space, a
marker of the highest rank and fashion. Under normal
circumstances no one ever saw such young versions of the
Lord of the Radch, but these were not normal circumstances.
The room was small, three and a half meters square,
paneled with a lattice of dark wood. In one corner the wood
was missing — probably damaged in last week’s violent
dispute between rival parts of Anaander Mianaai herself.
Where the wood remained, tendrils of some wispy plant
trailed, thin silver-green leaves and here and there tiny white
flowers. This was not a public area of the palace, not an
audience chamber. An empty chair sat beside the Lord of the
Radch’s, a table between those chairs held a tea set, flask, and
bowls of unadorned white porcelain, gracefully lined, the sort
of thing that, at first glance, you might take as unremarkable,
but on second would realize was a work of art worth more
than some planets.
I had been offered tea, been invited to sit. I had elected to
remain standing. “You said I could choose my own officers.” I
ought to have added a respectful my lord but did not. I also
ought to have knelt and put my forehead to the floor, when
I’d entered and found the Lord of the Radch. I hadn’t done
that, either.
“You’ve chosen two. Seivarden, of course, and Lieutenant
Ekalu was an obvious choice.” The names brought both
people reflexively to mind. In approximately a tenth of a
second Mercy of Kalr, parked some thirty-five thousand
kilometers away from this station, would receive that nearinstinctive check for data, and a tenth of a second after that its
response would reach me. I’d spent the last several days
learning to control that old, old habit. I hadn’t completely
succeeded. “A fleet captain is entitled to a third,” Anaander
Mianaai continued. Beautiful porcelain bowl in one blackgloved hand, she gestured toward me, meaning, I thought, to
indicate my uniform. Radchaai military wore dark-brown
jackets and trousers, boots and gloves. Mine was different.
The left-hand side was brown, but the right side was black,
and my captain’s insignia bore the marks that showed I
commanded not only my own ship but other ships’ captains.
Of course, I had no ships in my fleet besides my own, Mercy
of Kalr, but there were no other fleet captains stationed near
Athoek, where I was bound, and the rank would give me an
advantage over other captains I might meet. Assuming, of
course, those other captains were at all inclined to accept my
authority.
Just days ago a long-simmering dispute had broken out
and one faction had destroyed two of the intersystem gates.
Now preventing more gates from going down — and
preventing that faction from seizing gates and stations in other
systems — was an urgent priority. I understood Anaander’s
reasons for giving me the rank, but still I didn’t like it. “Don’t
make the mistake,” I said, “of thinking I’m working for you.”
She smiled. “Oh, I don’t. Your only other choices are
officers currently in the system, and near this station.
Lieutenant Tisarwat is just out of training. She was on her
way to take her first assignment, and now of course that’s out
of the question. And I thought you’d appreciate having
someone you could train up the way you want.” She seemed
amused at that last.
As she spoke I knew Seivarden was in stage two of NREM
sleep. I saw pulse, temperature, respiration, blood oxygen,
hormone levels. Then that data was gone, replaced by
Lieutenant Ekalu, standing watch. Stressed — jaw slightly
clenched, elevated cortisol. She’d been a common soldier
until one week ago, when Mercy of Kalr’s captain had been
arrested for treason. She had never expected to be made an
officer. Wasn’t, I thought, entirely sure she was capable of it.
“You can’t possibly think,” I said to the Lord of the Radch,
blinking away that vision, “that it’s a good idea to send me
into a newly broken-out civil war with only one experienced
officer.”
“It can’t be worse than going understaffed,” Anaander
Mianaai said, maybe aware of my momentary distraction,
maybe not. “And the child is beside herself at the thought of
serving under a fleet captain. She’s waiting for you at the
docks.” She set down her tea, straightened in her chair. “Since
the gate leading to Athoek is down and I have no idea what
the situation there might be, I can’t give you specific orders.
Besides” — she raised her now-empty hand as though
forestalling some speech of mine — “I’d be wasting my time
attempting to direct you too closely. You’ll do as you like no
matter what I say. You’re loaded up? Have all the supplies
you need?”
The question was perfunctory — she surely knew the
status of my ship’s stores as well as I did. I made an indefinite
gesture, deliberately insolent.
“You might as well take Captain Vel’s things,” she said, as
though I’d answered reasonably. “She won’t need them.”
Vel Osck had been captain of Mercy of Kalr until a week
ago. There were any number of reasons she might not need
her possessions, the most likely, of course, being that she was
dead. Anaander Mianaai didn’t do anything halfway,
particularly when it came to dealing with her enemies. Of
course, in this case, the enemy Vel Osck had supported was
Anaander Mianaai herself. “I don’t want them,” I said. “Send
them to her family.”
“If I can.” She might well not be able to do that. “Is there
anything you need before you go? Anything at all?”
Various answers occurred to me. None seemed useful.
“No.”
“I’ll miss you, you know,” she said. “No one else will
speak to me quite the way you do. You’re one of the very few
people I’ve ever met who really, truly didn’t fear the
consequences of offending me. And none of those very few
have the. . . . similarity of background you and I have.”
Because I had once been a ship. An AI controlling an
enormous troop carrier and thousands of ancillaries, human
bodies, part of myself. At the time I had not thought of myself
as a slave, but I had been a weapon of conquest, the
possession of Anaander Mianaai, herself occupying thousands
of bodies spread throughout Radch space.
Now I was only this single human body. “Nothing you can
do to me could possibly be worse than what you’ve already
done.”
“I am aware of that,” she said, “and aware of just how
dangerous that makes you. I may well be extremely foolish
just letting you live, let alone giving you official authority and
a ship. But the games I play aren’t for the timid.”
“For most of us,” I said, openly angry now, knowing she
could see the physical signs of it no matter how impassive my
expression, “they aren’t games.”
“I am also aware of that,” said the Lord of the Radch.
“Truly I am. It’s just that some losses are unavoidable.”
I could have chosen any of a half dozen responses to that.
Instead I turned and walked out of the room without
answering. As I stepped through the door, the soldier Mercy
of Kalr One Kalr Five, who had been standing at stiff
attention just outside, fell in behind me, silent and efficient.
Kalr Five was human, like all Mercy of Kalr’s soldiers, not an
ancillary. She had a name, beyond her ship, decade, and
number. I had addressed her by that name once. She’d
responded with outward impassivity, but with an inner wave
of alarm and unease. I hadn’t tried it again.
When I had been a ship — when I had been just one
component of the troop carrier Justice of Toren — I had been
always aware of the state of my officers. What they heard and
what they saw. Every breath, every twitch of every muscle.
Hormone levels, oxygen levels. Everything, nearly, except the
specific contents of their thoughts, though even that I could
often guess, from experience, from intimate acquaintance.
Not something I had ever shown any of my captains — it
would have meant little to them, a stream of meaningless data.
But for me, at that time, it had been just part of my
awareness.
I no longer was my ship. But I was still an ancillary, could
still read that data as no human captain could have. But I only
had a single human brain, now, could only handle the smallest
fragment of the information I’d once been constantly,
unthinkingly aware of. And even that small amount required
some care — I’d run straight into a bulkhead trying to walk
and receive data at the same time, when I’d first tried it. I
queried Mercy of Kalr, deliberately this time. I was fairly sure
I could walk through this corridor and monitor Five at the
same time without stopping or stumbling.
I made it all the way to the palace’s reception area without
incident. Five was tired, and slightly hungover. Bored, I was
sure, from standing staring at the wall during my conference
with the Lord of the Radch. I saw a strange mix of
anticipation and dread, which troubled me a bit, because I
couldn’t guess what that conflict was about.
Out on the main concourse, high, broad, and echoing,
stone paved, I turned toward the lifts that would take me to
the docks, to the shuttle that waited to take me back to Mercy
of Kalr. Most shops and offices along the concourse,
including the wide, brightly painted gods crowding the temple
façade, orange and blue and red and green, seemed
surprisingly undamaged after last week’s violence, when the
Lord of the Radch’s struggle against herself had broken into
the open. Now citizens in colorful coats, trousers, and gloves,
glittering with jewelry, walked by, seemingly unconcerned.
Last week might never have happened. Anaander Mianaai,
Lord of the Radch, might still be herself, many-bodied but
one single, undivided person. But last week had happened,
and Anaander Mianaai was not, in fact, one person. Had not
been for quite some time.
As I approached the lifts a sudden surge of resentment and
dismay overtook me. I stopped, turned. Kalr Five had stopped
when I stopped, and now stared impassively ahead. As though
that wave of resentment Ship had shown me hadn’t come
from her. I hadn’t thought most humans could mask such
strong emotions so effectively — her face was absolutely
expressionless. But all the Mercy of Kalrs, it had turned out,
could do it. Captain Vel had been an old-fashioned sort — or
at the very least she’d had idealized notions of what “oldfashioned” meant — and had demanded that her human
soldiers conduct themselves as much like ancillaries as
possible.
Five didn’t know I’d been an ancillary. As far as she knew
I was Fleet Captain Breq Mianaai, promoted because of
Captain Vel’s arrest and what most imagined were my
powerful family connections. She couldn’t know how much
of her I saw. “What is it?” I asked, brusque. Taken aback.
“Sir?” Flat. Expressionless. Wanting, I saw after the tiny
signal delay, for me to turn my attention away from her, to
leave her safely ignored. Wanting also to speak.
I was right, that resentment, that dismay had been on my
account. “You have something to say. Let’s hear it.”
Surprise. Sheer terror. And not the least twitch of a
muscle. “Sir,” she said again, and there was, finally, a faint,
fleeting expression of some sort, quickly gone. She
swallowed. “It’s the dishes.”
My turn to be surprised. “The dishes?”
“Sir, you sent Captain Vel’s things into storage here on the
station.”
And lovely things they had been. The dishes (and utensils,
and tea things) Kalr Five was, presumably, preoccupied with
had been porcelain, glass, jeweled and enameled metal. But
they hadn’t been mine. And I didn’t want anything of Captain
Vel’s. Five expected me to understand her. Wanted so much
for me to understand. But I didn’t. “Yes?”
Frustration. Anger, even. Clearly, from Five’s perspective
what she wanted was obvious. But the only part of it that was
obvious to me was the fact she couldn’t just come out and say
it, even when I’d asked her to. “Sir,” she said finally, citizens
walking around us, some with curious glances, some
pretending not to notice us. “I understand we’re leaving the
system soon.”
“Soldier,” I said, beginning to be frustrated and angry
myself, in no good mood from my talk with the Lord of the
Radch. “Are you capable of speaking directly?”
“We can’t leave the system with no good dishes!” she
blurted finally, face still impressively impassive. “Sir.” When I
didn’t answer, she continued, through another surge of fear at
speaking so plainly, “Of course it doesn’t matter to you.
You’re a fleet captain, your rank is enough to impress
anyone.” And my house name — I was now Breq Mianaai. I
wasn’t too pleased at having been given that particular name,
which marked me as a cousin of the Lord of the Radch
herself. None of my crew but Seivarden and the ship’s medic
knew I hadn’t been born with it. “You could invite a captain
to supper and serve her soldier’s mess and she wouldn’t say a
word, sir.” Couldn’t, unless she outranked me.
“We’re not going where we’re going so we can hold dinner
parties,” I said. That apparently confounded her, brief
confusion showing for a moment on her face.
“Sir!” she said, voice pleading, in some distress. “You
don’t need to worry what other people think of you. I’m only
saying, because you ordered me to.”
Of course. I should have seen. Should have realized days
ago. She was worried that she would look bad if I didn’t have
dinnerware to match my rank. That it would reflect badly on
the ship itself. “You’re worried about the reputation of the
ship.”
Chagrin, but also relief. “Yes, sir.”
“I’m not Captain Vel.” Captain Vel had cared a great deal
about such things.
“No, sir.” I wasn’t sure if the emphasis — and the relief I
read in Five — was because my not being Captain Vel was a
good thing, or because I had finally understood what she had
been trying to tell me. Or both.
I had already cleared my account here, all my money in
chits locked in my quarters on board Mercy of Kalr. What
little I carried on my person wouldn’t be sufficient to ease
Kalr Five’s anxieties. Station — the AI that ran this place, was
this place — could probably smooth the financial details over
for me. But Station resented me as the cause of last week’s
violence and would not be disposed to assist me.
“Go back to the palace,” I said. “Tell the Lord of the
Radch what you require.” Her eyes widened just slightly, and
two tenths of a second later I read disbelief and then frank
terror in Kalr Five. “When everything is arranged to your
satisfaction, come to the shuttle.”
Three citizens passed, bags in gloved hands, the fragment
of conversation I heard telling me they were on their way to
the docks, to catch a ship to one of the outer stations. A lift
door slid open, obligingly. Of course. Station knew where
they were going, they didn’t have to ask.
Station knew where I was going, but it wouldn’t open any
doors for me without my giving the most explicit of requests.
I turned, stepped quickly into the dockbound lift after them,
saw the lift door close on Five standing, horrified, on the
black stone pavement of the concourse. The lift moved, the
three citizens chattered. I closed my eyes and saw Kalr Five
staring at the lift, hyperventilating slightly. She frowned just
the smallest amount — possibly no one passing her would
notice. Her fingers twitched, summoning Mercy of Kalr’s
attention, though with some trepidation, as though maybe she
feared it wouldn’t answer.
But of course Mercy of Kalr was already paying attention.
“Don’t worry,” said Mercy of Kalr, voice serene and neutral in
Five’s ear and mine. “It’s not you Fleet Captain’s angry with.
Go ahead. It’ll be all right.”
True enough. It wasn’t Kalr Five I was angry with. I
pushed away the data coming from her, received a
disorienting flash of Seivarden, asleep, dreaming, and
Lieutenant Ekalu, still tense, in the middle of asking one of
her Etrepas for tea. Opened my eyes. The citizens in the lift
with me laughed at something, I didn’t know or care what,
and as the lift door slid open we walked out into the broad
lobby of the docks, lined all around with icons of gods that
travelers might find useful or comforting. It was sparsely
populated for this time of day, except by the entrance to the
dock authority office, where a line of ill-tempered ship
captains and pilots waited for their turn to complain to the
overburdened inspector adjuncts. Two intersystem gates had
been disabled in last week’s upheaval, more were likely to be
in the near future, and the Lord of the Radch had forbidden
any travel in the remaining ones, trapping dozens of ships in
the system, with all their cargo and passengers.
They moved aside for me, bowing slightly as though a
wind had blown through them. It was the uniform that had
done it — I heard one captain whisper to another one, “Who
is that?” and the responding murmur as her neighbor replied
and others commented on her ignorance or added what they
knew. I heard Mianaai and Special Missions. The sense
they’d managed to make out of last week’s events. The
official version was that I had come to Omaugh Palace
undercover, to root out a seditious conspiracy. That I had
been working for Anaander Mianaai all along. Anyone who’d
ever been part of events that later received an official version
would know or suspect that wasn’t true. But most Radchaai
lived unremarkable lives and would have no reason to doubt
it.
No one questioned my walking past the adjuncts, into the
outer office of the Inspector Supervisor. Daos Ceit, who was
her assistant, was still recovering from injuries. An adjunct I
didn’t know sat in her place but rose swiftly and bowed as I
entered. So did a very, very young lieutenant, more gracefully
and collectedly than I expected in a seventeen-year-old, the
sort who was still all lanky arms and legs and frivolous
enough to spend her first pay on lilac-colored eyes — surely
she hadn’t been born with eyes that color. Her dark-brown
jacket, trousers, gloves, and boots were crisp and spotless, her
straight, dark hair cut close. “Fleet Captain. Sir,” she said.
“Lieutenant Tisarwat, sir.” She bowed again.
I didn’t answer, only looked at her. If my scrutiny
disturbed her, I couldn’t see it. She wasn’t yet sending data to
Mercy of Kalr, and her brown skin hadn’t darkened in any
sort of flush. The small, discreet scatter of pins near one
shoulder suggested a family of some substance but not the
most elevated in the Radch. She was, I thought, either
preternaturally self-possessed or a fool. Neither option pleased
me.
“Go on in, sir,” said the unfamiliar adjunct, gesturing me
toward the inner office. I did, without a word to Lieutenant
Tisarwat.
Dark-skinned, amber-eyed, elegant and aristocratic even in
the dark-blue uniform of dock authority, Inspector Supervisor
Skaaiat Awer rose and bowed as the door shut behind me.
“Breq. Are you going, then?”
I opened my mouth to say, Whenever you authorize our
departure, but remembered Five and the errand I’d sent her
on. “I’m only waiting for Kalr Five. Apparently I can’t ship
out without an acceptable set of dishes.”
Surprise crossed her face, gone in an instant. She had
known, of course, that I had sent Captain Vel’s things here,
and that I didn’t own anything to replace them. Once the
surprise had gone I saw amusement. “Well,” she said.
“Wouldn’t you have felt the same?” When I had been in
Five’s place, she meant. When I had been a ship.
“No, I wouldn’t have. I didn’t. Some other ships did. Do.”
Mostly Swords, who by and large already thought they were
above the smaller, less prestigious Mercies, or the troop
carrier Justices.
“My Seven Issas cared about that sort of thing.” Skaaiat
Awer had served as a lieutenant on a ship with human troops,
before she’d become Inspector Supervisor here at Omaugh
Palace. Her eyes went to my single piece of jewelry, a small
gold tag pinned near my left shoulder. She gestured, a change
of topic that wasn’t really a change of topic. “Athoek, is it?”
My destination hadn’t been publicly announced, might, in
fact, be considered sensitive information. But Awer was one
of the most ancient and wealthy of houses. Skaaiat had
cousins who knew people who knew things. “I’m not sure
that’s where I’d have sent you.”
“It’s where I’m going.”
She accepted that answer, no surprise or offense visible in
her expression. “Have a seat. Tea?”
“Thank you, no.” Actually I could have used some tea,
might under other circumstances have been glad of a relaxed
chat with Skaaiat Awer, but I was anxious to be off.
This, too, Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat took with
equanimity. She did not sit, herself. “You’ll be calling on
Basnaaid Elming when you get to Athoek Station.” Not a
question. She knew I would be. Basnaaid was the younger
sister of someone both Skaaiat and I had once loved.
Someone I had, under orders from Anaander Mianaai, killed.
“She’s like Awn, in some ways, but not in others.”
“Stubborn, you said.”
“Very proud. And fully as stubborn as her sister. Possibly
more so. She was very offended when I offered her clientage
for her sister’s sake. I mention it because I suspect you’re
planning to do something similar. And you might be the only
person alive even more stubborn than she is.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Not even the tyrant?” The word
wasn’t Radchaai, was from one of the worlds annexed and
absorbed by the Radch. By Anaander Mianaai. The tyrant
herself, almost the only person on Omaugh Palace who would
have recognized or understood the word, besides Skaaiat and
myself.
Skaaiat Awer’s mouth quirked, sardonic humor. “Possibly.
Possibly not. In any event, be very careful about offering
Basnaaid money or favors. She won’t take it kindly.” She
gestured, good-natured but resigned, as if to say, but of
course you’ll do as you like. “You’ll have met your new baby
lieutenant.”
Lieutenant Tisarwat, she meant. “Why did she come here
and not go directly to the shuttle?”
“She came to apologize to my adjunct.” Daos Ceit’s
replacement, there in the outer office. “Their mothers are
cousins.” Formally, the word Skaaiat used referred to a
relation between two people of different houses who shared a
parent or a grandparent, but in casual use meant someone
more distantly related who was a friend, or someone you’d
grown up with. “They were supposed to meet for tea
yesterday, and Tisarwat never showed or answered any
messages. And you know how military gets along with dock
authorities.” Which was to say, overtly politely and privately
contemptuously. “My adjunct took offense.”
“Why should Lieutenant Tisarwat care?”
“You never had a mother to be angry you offended her
cousin,” Skaaiat said, half laughing, “or you wouldn’t ask.”
True enough. “What do you make of her?”
“Flighty, I would have said a day or two ago. But today
she’s very subdued.” Flighty didn’t match the collected young
person I’d seen in that outer office. Except, perhaps, those
impossible eyes. “Until today she was on her way to a desk
job in a border system.”
“The tyrant sent me a baby administrator?”
“I wouldn’t have thought she’d send you a baby anything,”
Skaaiat said. “I’d have thought she’d have wanted to come
with you herself. Maybe there’s not enough of her left here.”
She drew breath as though to say more but then frowned,
head cocked. “I’m sorry, there’s something I have to take care
of.”
The docks were crowded with ships in need of supplies or
repairs or emergency medical assistance, ships that were
trapped here in the system, with crews and passengers who
were extremely unhappy about the fact. Skaaiat’s staff had
been working hard for days, with very few breaks. “Of
course.” I bowed. “I’ll get out of your way.” She was still
listening to whoever had messaged her. I turned to go.
“Breq.” I looked back. Skaaiat’s head was still cocked
slightly, she was still hearing whoever else spoke. “Take care.”
“You, too.” I walked through the door, to the outer office.
Lieutenant Tisarwat stood, still and silent. The adjunct stared
ahead, fingers moving, attending to urgent dock business no
doubt. “Lieutenant,” I said sharply, and didn’t wait for a reply
but walked out of the office, through the crowd of disgruntled
ships’ captains, onto the docks where I would find the shuttle
that would take me to Mercy of Kalr.
The shuttle was too small to generate its own gravity. I was
perfectly comfortable in such circumstances, but very young
officers often were not. I stationed Lieutenant Tisarwat at the
dock, to wait for Kalr Five, and then pushed myself over the
awkward, chancy boundary between the gravity of the palace
and the weightlessness of the shuttle, kicked myself over to a
seat, and strapped myself in. The pilot gave a respectful nod,
bowing being difficult in these circumstances. I closed my
eyes, saw that Five stood in a large storage room inside the
palace proper, plain, utilitarian, gray-walled. Filled with chests
and boxes. In one brown-gloved hand she held a teabowl of
delicate, deep rose glass. An open box in front of her showed
more — a flask, seven more bowls, other dishes. Her pleasure
in the beautiful things, her desire, was undercut by doubt. I
couldn’t read her mind, but I guessed that she had been told
to choose from this storeroom, had found these and wanted
them very much, but didn’t quite believe she would be
allowed to take them away. I was fairly sure this set was handblown, and some seven hundred years old. I hadn’t realized
she had a connoisseur’s eye for such things.
I pushed the vision away. She would be some time, I
thought, and I might as well get some sleep.
I woke three hours later, to lilac-eyed Lieutenant Tisarwat
strapping herself deftly into a seat across from me. Kalr
Five — now radiating contentment, presumably from the
results of her stint in the palace storeroom — pushed herself
over to Lieutenant Tisarwat, and with a nod and a quiet Just
in case, sir proffered a bag for the nearly inevitable moment
when the new officer’s stomach reacted to microgravity.
I’d known young lieutenants who took such an offer as an
insult. Lieutenant Tisarwat accepted it, with a small, vague
smile that didn’t quite reach the rest of her face. Still seeming
entirely calm and collected.
“Lieutenant,” I said, as Kalr Five kicked herself forward to
strap herself in beside the pilot, another Kalr. “Have you taken
any meds?” Another potential insult. Antinausea meds were
available, and I’d known excellent, long-serving officers who
for the whole length of their careers took them every time
they got on a shuttle. None of them ever admitted to it.
The last traces of Lieutenant Tisarwat’s smile vanished.
“No, sir.” Even. Calm.
“Pilot has some, if you need them.” That ought to have
gotten some kind of reaction.
And it did, though just the barest fraction of a second later
than I’d expected. The hint of a frown, an indignant
straightening of her shoulders, hampered by her seat
restraints. “No, thank you, sir.”
Flighty, Skaaiat Awer had said. She didn’t usually misread
people so badly. “I didn’t request your presence, Lieutenant.”
I kept my voice calm, but with an edge of anger. Easy enough
to do under the circumstances. “You’re here only because
Anaander Mianaai ordered it. I don’t have the time or the
resources to hand-raise a brand-new baby. You’d better get up
to speed fast. I need officers who know what they’re doing. I
need a whole crew I can depend on.”
“Sir,” replied Lieutenant Tisarwat. Still calm, but now
some earnestness in her voice, that tiny trace of frown
deepening, just a bit. “Yes, sir.”
Dosed with something. Possibly antinausea, and if I’d
been given to gambling I’d have bet my considerable fortune
that she was filled to the ears with at least one sedative. I
wanted to pull up her personal record — Mercy of Kalr
would have it by now. But the tyrant would see that I had
pulled that record up. Mercy of Kalr belonged, ultimately, to
Anaander Mianaai, and she had accesses that allowed her to
control it. Mercy of Kalr saw and heard everything I did, and
if the tyrant wanted that information she had only to demand
it. And I didn’t want her to know what it was I suspected.
Wanted, truth be told, for my suspicions to be proven false.
Unreasonable.
For now, if the tyrant was watching — and she was surely
watching, through Mercy of Kalr, would be so long as we
were in the system — let her think I resented having a baby
foisted on me when I’d rather have someone who knew what
they were doing.
I turned my attention away from Lieutenant Tisarwat.
Forward, the pilot leaned closer to Five and said, quiet and
oblique, “Everything all right?” And then to Five’s
responding, puzzled frown, “Too quiet.”
“All this time?” asked Five. Still oblique. Because they
were talking about me and didn’t want to trigger any requests
I might have made to Ship, to tell me when the crew was
talking about me. I had an old habit — some two thousand
years old — of singing whatever song ran through my head.
Or humming. It had caused the crew some puzzlement and
distress at first — this body, the only one left to me, didn’t
have a particularly good voice. They were getting used to it,
though, and now I was dryly amused to see crew members
disturbed by my silence.
“Not a peep,” said the pilot to Kalr Five. With a brief
sideways glance and a tiny twitch of neck and shoulder
muscles that told me she’d thought of looking back, toward
Lieutenant Tisarwat.
“Yeah,” said Five, agreeing, I thought, with the pilot’s
unstated assessment of what might be troubling me.
Good. Let Anaander Mianaai be watching that, too.
It was a long ride back to Mercy of Kalr, but Lieutenant
Tisarwat never did use the bag or evince any discomfort. I
spent the time sleeping, and thinking.
Ships, communications, data traveled between stars using
gates, beacon-marked, held constantly open. The calculations
had already been made, the routes marked out through the
strangeness of gate space, where distances and proximity
didn’t match normal space. But military ships — like Mercy
of Kalr — could generate their own gates. It was a good deal
more risky — choose the wrong route, the wrong exit or
entrance, and a ship could end up anywhere, or nowhere.
That didn’t trouble me. Mercy of Kalr knew what it was
doing, and we would arrive safely at Athoek Station.
And while we moved through gate space in our own,
contained bubble of normal space, we would be completely
isolated. I wanted that. Wanted to be gone from Omaugh
Palace, away from Anaander Mianaai’s sight and any orders
or interference she might decide to send.
When we were nearly there, minutes away from docking,
Ship spoke directly into my ear. “Fleet Captain.” It didn’t
need to speak to me that way, could merely desire me to know
it wanted my attention. And it nearly always knew what I
wanted without my saying it. I could connect to Mercy of
Kalr in a way no one else aboard could. I could not, however,
be Mercy of Kalr, as I had been Justice of Toren. Not without
losing myself entirely. Permanently.
“Ship,” I replied quietly. And without my saying anything
else, Mercy of Kalr gave me the results of its calculations,
made unasked, a whole range of possible routes and departure
times flaring into my vision. I chose the soonest, gave orders,
and a little more than six hours later we were gone.
© 2014 by Ann Leckie.
Excerpted from Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie.
Published by permission of the author and Orbit.
All rights reserved.
No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in
writing from the author.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ann Leckie has worked as a waitress, a receptionist, a rodman on a landsurveying crew, a lunch lady, and a recording engineer. The author of many
published short stories, and former secretary of the Science Fiction Writers of
America, she lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with her husband, children, and cats.
Her debut novel, Ancillary Justice, won the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke,
and BSFA Awards, and was nominated for the Philip K. Dick and John W.
Campbell Awards.
NONFICTION
Interview: James S.A. Corey
The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy
Ty Franck, together with Daniel Abraham, who we
interviewed back in episode 35, writes the Expanse series of
space adventure novels under the penname James S.A. Corey.
The fourth book, Cibola Burn, is out now. The series is also
being adapted for television by the Syfy channel.
This interview first appeared on Wired.com’s The Geek’s
Guide to the Galaxy podcast, which is hosted by David Barr
Kirtley. Visit geeksguideshow.com to listen to the entire
interview and the rest of the show, in which the host and his
guests discuss various geeky topics.
Your new book is called Cibola Burn, and it’s the fourth
book in the Expanse series, which is based on a pen-andpaper role-playing game that you created. First off, why
don’t you just tell us a bit about how you first got into
pen-and-paper role-playing games?
Well, I don’t actually know. I remember playing Red Box
D&D in, I think, grade school. That may have been the first
one, but it just seems like I’ve always been doing that.
Actually, the Expanse didn’t start out as pen-and-paper; the
Expanse started out as a pitch for an MMORPG that never
went anywhere and then became a pen-and-paper game after
that because I liked the setting and wanted to see if it worked.
Why don’t you tell us a bit more about the MMORPG
project?
Unfortunately, there’s not a lot to tell on that one. A friend
of mine came to me and asked me if I would help her develop
content for an MMO that an ISP was looking to develop. I
had some notes that I had been playing around with — this
near future, science fiction setting. She agreed that that would
probably work for them. The thing you have to know about
the MMO stuff is that everybody wants to do fantasy, but
World of Warcraft really owns that space. It’s almost
impossible to compete with them in fantasy. At the time, EVE
was out as an SF setting; it’s a cool game, but it’s limited to
just the spaceships. I really wanted a version of EVE, or
something like EVE, where you could actually get off of your
ship and have adventures on the ground. That was sort of the
initial idea, and then I took this near-future setting and built it
out to accommodate spaceship and ground-based adventure.
So the different factions that we see in this world kind of
came out of the structure of an MMO.
Yeah, it did. We wanted to do different things from World
of Warcraft. Of course, they have two factions, the Alliance
and the Horde, so we had three factions: Earth, Mars, and the
OPA. Those would have been the factions you started out
your character in.
What is the OPA?
The Outer Planets Alliance — that’s everybody who does
not live on Earth or Mars.
Why did you decide to go with a near-future setting as
opposed to more of a Star Trek, ships-faster-than-light
kind of stuff?
Two reasons: One — probably the most important one —
is that my favorite book of all time is The Stars My
Destination by Alfred Bester. I read it when I was eleven,
which is way too young to read that book, so if you have
eleven-year-olds, don’t let them read that. But it was exactly
the right time to sort of rewrite my brain, and I just became
obsessed with the idea of this fully populated solar system,
which is the setting of that book — with people living on
Mars, with people living on the moon, people living on the
various moons of the outer planets. That just stuck in my
head and stayed in there for decades, and so when I was
coming up with a setting for gaming, that’s the thing that
bubbled up.
The other reason is that not a lot of people play in that
space. There are some people doing really good work in that
space, but if you compare the number of people working in
that pre-faster-than-light science fiction setting versus the
people who are working in, like, Star Trek and all of that,
where you have hyperspace or whatever, it’s a much smaller
percentage. Very few people were working in the space where
you take humans from the pre-FTL, trapped-in-the-solarsystem kind of setting to the galaxy-spanning empire setting.
You almost never see that transition, and I thought that was a
really interesting place.
You developed all this content for the game. How much
material had you come up with and what happened
ultimately with that project?
I actually came up with quite a lot — almost everything
that is the later worldbuilding for the pen-and-paper game that
followed and the books came out of that. I sat down and went
through all of the various bodies in the solar system — what
possible reason people would have for living in those places.
There’s no economic reason to settle our solar system, so let’s
get that out of the way. There’s no reason to do it — but if we
were doing it, what would be the things that people would
actually use on those various bodies? I did a lot of research on
that and pretty much had mapped out the political situation in
that setting, what people were doing on the various bodies,
why they lived there, what kind of cultures were springing
up — all of that work had been done. Daniel, my writing
partner, tells this story that the first time he played in the penand-paper setting, I had this giant three-ring binder full of
notes. When he found out that those were the notes about the
solar system they were gaming in, that’s when he decided to
ask me if I would write the book with him because he hates
worldbuilding, and I had a giant three-ring binder filled with
worldbuilding that we could use.
Talk a little bit more about that process of how you went
from working on an MMO to running the pen-and-paper
version.
When the MMO project fell through, it was one of those
things where everybody was really excited to do it, but
nobody actually had the resources to do it. Even the people
who asked us to work on it clearly didn’t understand what
they were getting into. Once they did understand what they
were getting into, they just backed away slowly, which I
totally respect. I mean, a project like that is like making a
Hollywood movie. To make a game that can compete with
World of Warcraft, you’re looking at tens or even hundreds of
millions of dollars to develop a project like that. So I
understand rightly once they realized that that’s what they
signed up for, they sort of backed away.
But I had all this material, and I’ve been a gamer all my
life — computer games and role-playing games — so I started
play testing in the universe with my gaming buddies. Did it
work? Were there interesting stories to tell? What kinds of
characters would be fun to play in that setting? Not with any
real purpose in mind — just because that’s something I do for
fun. So I started running games in the setting. I came up with
a rule system that worked for a pen-and-paper setting and
started gaming in it.
When in this process did you meet Daniel? Had you met
him prior to starting?
No, no, actually I started writing games in this setting
before I moved to New Mexico. I met Daniel years later when
I moved to New Mexico and we were in the same writing
group together. He and his wife came over to do some gaming
with my wife and I. That was years after I started running
games in this setting. Actually, Daniel was late to the game —
the first game I ran in this setting in New Mexico was with a
completely different group. That gaming group was Melinda
Snodgrass and Ian Tregillis and George R.R. Martin and my
wife.
How did you get involved with that gaming group?
I just started hanging out with those guys. They love to
game, and Melinda asked me, “So I hear you run a good
game. Would you be willing to run a game for us?” I agreed
to do it, and this was the setting I had. Those are all science
fiction people. Melinda used to write for Star Trek, and Ian
writes science fiction and fantasy, and George, of course, had
written a ton of science fiction before that, so it seemed like a
good group to try out an SF game on.
So you moved to Albuquerque, and then how did you
initially make contact with all these people out there?
We moved to Albuquerque so my wife could do her
undergraduate degree at UNM, so that was the initial reason
we went there. I had one friend who lived there, and she was
in this writing group. She went to the writing group and said,
“Hey, my friend is moving here, and he’s written some stuff.”
This particular writing group you had to have a professional
sale to get in. They would only take people who had
professional sales. So she went to them and said, “Hey, he’s
got a professional sale.” That qualified me to get in. They met
me, and we all got along, so they said, “Sure, yeah, you can
start hanging out.” That’s how I met everybody. George
needed to hire somebody to run his multimedia empire, and
Melinda, again, who is sort of at the center of all this, said,
“Hey, you should hire this guy.” Before we moved to New
Mexico, I had sold out of a financial software consulting
company that I helped found. George had always been
hesitant to hire anybody because he didn’t want to hire
somebody that he had to train, and Melinda’s argument was,
“Well, you know, this guy used to run his own consulting
company. He can probably handle your stuff.” George took a
chance and hired me to do that.
That’s really amazing. What’s a job interview like when
you’re going to work for George R.R. Martin?
Actually, there really wasn’t an interview because George
has never had a real job other than two years he spent as a
college professor in the seventies or early eighties. He said,
“So, Melinda says I should hire you.” And I said, “Yes, and
here’s why,” and laid out what I could do for him. The next
day I was there at his office setting up his new systems. It was
very informal.
What is George R.R. Martin’s office like? I heard
someone say he has two houses across the street from each
other and one is sort of his office house and one’s his
home house. Is that true?
It is. Unfortunately, I can’t talk too much about that
because we had talked a lot about it and based on
conversations we had and interviews about his houses, people
figured out where he lived. So, yes, it is true that he has a
couple of houses, one of which is his office, but I can’t really
talk about where that is or what it looks like because people
will figure it out and start banging on the door.
I understand — don’t want to do anything to invade his
privacy or anything. I was also curious . . . I heard that he
writes on an old DOS computer with WordStar.
Well, he doesn’t actually write on an old DOS computer.
He did write on an old DOS computer, and then it died.
Actually, I built him the computer he writes on now, which is
a state-of-the-art machine running DOS and WordStar 4.0.
Does it have internet access? I heard one of the big
advantages of that old computer was it had no internet
access so he couldn’t waste all day on the internet.
No, it does not have internet access. He actually has two
computers at his desk, one of which is a Windows machine
where he does his email and all that. The other one is this
DOS machine that he actually does his writing on. He’s just
got a keyboard toggle to toggle between the two of them, so if
he wants to waste time on the internet he can. The real
advantage with the DOS machine not being connected to the
internet is, of course, he cannot possibly get a virus on it.
Or he doesn’t have to worry about hackers, I guess.
Not on that machine, no. There is a physical firewall, in
that you have to be sitting at that keyboard to have access to
that computer.
I’ve heard you talk about how, since you worked for
George R.R. Martin, people assume that he was a writing
mentor to you and all this stuff, but you’ve said that that’s
not actually the case.
No, actually, the ways in which George was a really great
mentor were on the business side. George has worked in the
writing world, in TV, and in novels, and in feature production.
He’s done that for thirty or forty years, so on the business
side, it was really great to be able to ask him, “Here’s what
they’re offering. Here’s what the contract looks like. If I get to
do this, what’s that going to look like when I get there?” He
has enormous stores of experience on that stuff. On that side,
he really was a great mentor. He and I have very different
ideas on what constitutes good writing. I’m a big fan of his
work, so I’m not saying that I don’t think he’s good. He’s
good at it, he is. He’s clearly one of the top writers in the
field, but how you get to putting words on paper — sort of
the pre-production process — he and I work very differently.
There wasn’t a lot that we could talk about meaningfully on
that side.
He talks in terms of gardeners and architects, so I guess
you’re more of an architect?
Actually, I think that distinction is a false distinction. He
really loves that idea, but I think it really doesn’t actually make
any sense. He and I had several arguments about it — friendly
arguments — but we had several arguments about it. And he’s
actually changed how he describes it now because of our
arguments. He no longer talks about it like these are two
separate things; he now talks about it as everybody has shades
of both. The truth is, I think if you have an ending in mind, I
don’t think you can get there unless you roadmap of how to
get there. And he is much more of a sit down at the keyboard,
wait for the muse to strike, and bang out whatever chapter is
sort of banging around in your head at that time. That works
for him; he’s able to produce work, so more power to him,
but that just seems like a really inefficient way to get a story
out, from my perspective.
For me as a writer, I could not do that. I have to know
where I am going, and I have to know what the next chapters
are about so I can start layering and foreshadowing and all the
other stuff that you want to do. He’s much more comfortable
rewriting chapters over and over and over and over again than
I am. For me, a chapter is like a spell in old D&D, where
once you’ve cast that spell, it’s not in your memory anymore.
Once I’ve written a chapter, I can’t go back and rewrite that
chapter. I can edit it, but I can’t completely rewrite it the way
he does. We just have very different brains for doing this
work.
Speaking of your writing, let’s go back a little bit. You
mentioned that you joined this writers group because you
had at least one pro sale under your belt. How much
writing did you do when you were younger and how did
you get to the point where you had the pro sales that
qualified you to join this writers group?
It’s a weird and twisting tale. I never had done a lot of
prose writing. I had done a lot of informal writing for gaming
settings and that sort of thing. I liked writing games — that
was my thing. But I would spend a lot of time writing
worldbuilding kind of stuff, which is not good prose. You
couldn’t sell that. But I had done a lot of that sort of writing,
kind of The Silmarillion type thing, where you’re writing the
backstory of the world. Then, my sister was doing a creative
writing class and she asked me for an idea for a story. I gave
her an idea that had been banging around in my head, and she
wrote a story and gave it back to me, and she had done it all
wrong. So I wrote my version of it, the version that was
actually in my head, and then didn’t do anything with it. I
wrote it, and then I had it.
But at the time, I was interacting online with some people
who were in Orson Scott Card’s camp, and one of them had
worked with him on another project. I said, “Hey, I wrote this
story. Take a look at it, tell me what you think.” I emailed it to
her, and she read it. She wrote back, and she’s like, “This is
great. I’m going to show it to Scott.” I was not sure how I felt
about that, but whatever, that’s cool. So, he was staying at her
house, and she gave him the story that I had written, and he
apparently told her, “This is great and this person should be
writing more stuff.”
Later, Scott started running what he called The Writer’s
Boot Camp, which was a two-week intensive writing course,
sort of like a two-week version of Clarion with him as the
teacher in North Carolina. It happened to coincide with a time
when I had left one job and I had a non-compete agreement
with that company, so they had to give me a giant sack of
money when I left. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I said, “Hey,
maybe I’ll just not take another job right away. I’ll go do this
writer’s boot camp.” And my wife was fine with it. She was
like, “Yeah, that sounds like fun. We should do that.” So, I
went, spent two weeks in North Carolina doing the writer’s
boot camp, and then that was the end of that. I took another
job somewhere else, and Scott emailed me and said, “Hey,
I’m starting up this magazine, Intergalactic Medicine Show,
and I’d really love to buy that story you brought to the boot
camp with you.” I was like, “Sure, why not?” Well, he was
paying pro rates, so I got a pro rate sale out of that.
Later, he wrote back and said, “Hey, I’m doing a selected
stories from Intergalactic Medicine Show, like ‘the best of’
kind of thing, and I’d like to buy your story for that, too.” I
was like, “Okay.” So now, I had two pro sales — same story,
but pro rates both times. Then, he wrote back later and said,
“Hey, I’d like to do a sample of that for an audiobook, and I’d
like to buy your story for the audiobook.” So now, I had three
pro sales — all of the same story, of course, but every time I
was getting pro rates for it. When I moved to New Mexico, I
had more pro sales than some of the other people in the
writing group who’d been writing a lot longer than I had.
That’s what got me into the room.
So, you joined the writer’s group, and you started doing
the pen-and-paper role-playing game, and you met Daniel
Abraham. How did that lead to you writing books
together?
He and his wife lived not too far from where my wife and
I lived in Albuquerque. When he found out that I was writing
this game for George and Melinda and those guys, he said,
“Hey, would you be willing to run a game here?” because that
game was up in Santa Fe, which is about an hour’s drive.
Daniel and his wife had a young kid, so it was harder for
them to get up there. He was like, “Hey, if you ran a game
here in Albuquerque, I would play it.” So, I started running a
game there. That’s when he saw the binder, and he said,
“Have you ever considered writing novels in this setting?”
and, of course, I hadn’t, because I’m really lazy. So, he said,
“Hey, you know what you should do? You should let me write
a novel in this setting, and we can split the money,” which is
like the opposite version of the gag that every writer hates
when people walk up to them at a convention and say, “Hey,
I’ve got a great idea: You write it, we can split the money.”
So, I actually had an award-winning and respected novelist
coming to me and saying, “You’ve got a great idea, I’ll write
it, and we can split the money.” He always tells me that I’m
not allowed to tell that story, but I tell it anyway. He wrote the
first chapter, and again, it was like the thing with my sister
writing her story idea: He did it wrong. So, I said, “No, this is
wrong. I’m going to rewrite it.” I rewrote it the way I wanted
it, and he said, “Yeah, no, this is actually great. You should
just write half the book.” So that’s how we started: I wrote
half and he wrote half, and that’s what we’ve done ever since.
How much work was it taking this world that was
originally conceived for games and turning it into a novel
format? What sort of adjustments did you have to make to
it?
Oh, tons. Games are terrible books. This is something I
always have to explain to people at conventions when I’m on
panels and things. Don’t take your D&D campaign and write
it down as a book. It doesn’t work. Maybe you can take the
setting, maybe you can take some of the characters, maybe
you can take some of the plot points, but you have to
completely redesign the order of events because in gaming, of
course, so much of it is interactive, and so much of it is you,
as the game runner, reacting to what your players have done
and changing the setting or the story to accommodate the
actions they’ve taken. In a novel, which is much more driven
by the narrative, you actually have to have a much tighter grip
on where the story is going, much more control over how you
release information to the reader. If you actually read the
game I had run and then read the story, you would recognize
similarities, but the major plot is very different and how I feed
information to the reader is very different than how I feed
information to players.
Could you give maybe some specific examples from
Leviathan Wakes of things that were changed to make that
into a novel?
No, because I did that like five years ago. My memories of
that are fairly dim at this point . . . Just a lot of stuff: how the
protomolecule manifests on Eros and what the characters do
to get away is completely different. That was a much bigger
portion of game plot, but in the novel, any time we tried to
keep them on Eros, it just made no sense. We took what was
a huge plot element of the game and just compressed it down
to one escape sequence.
As I mentioned, you guys have written a bunch of these
books. You’re on the fourth one, Cibola Burn. Why don’t
we talk about that? First of all, what does the title Cibola
Burn mean and how did you come up with that?
Cibola is one of the seven cities of gold that the Spaniards
were looking for. It kind of has that sense of the great treasure
that you commit atrocities to find but doesn’t actually exist.
The Spaniards burned and murdered their way across Central
America looking for this huge payout in gold that didn’t
actually exist. They stole a bunch of gold from Montezuma,
but the Cibola — the city of gold, the city made entirely of
gold that they were murdering their way across Central
America to find — wasn’t real. It was a myth. The idea of
people in history committing great atrocities to find treasures
that don’t actually exist is one that resonates in that book.
I guess all the titles in the series have some sort of
meaning like that. They don’t literally refer to things in
the book.
No. Daniel says our titles are designed to let our readers
know that we’re pretentious, and there is an element of that in
there. They’re all sort of mythological ideas that loosely tie in
to what we’re doing. In the first one, waking up the great
monster that’s been sleeping, is Leviathan Wakes. In the
second one, Caliban is the half-human, half-monster that lives
on the same island as Prospero (in The Tempest), who
Prospero attempts to control, but Caliban fights back against
being controlled by the wizard. In Hebrew mythology,
Abaddon is the angel who guards the gates to Hell. So, that’s
what we’re using there. Cibola, of course, is the cities of gold,
the treasure that you are willing to commit murder to find but
doesn’t actually exist.
I don’t know how much you want to say about the actual
plot of Cibola Burns, but could you talk maybe just a little
bit about how that relates to the events of this book?
Each book is also us mashing other genres into science
fiction. In the fourth book, we’re sort of mashing SF up with
a western. It’s our version of the railroad coming through the
town and what people who are living hand-to-mouth do to
protect themselves when giant corporate interests are just
making a land grab. We’re playing with that idea a little bit
and the idea that these worlds that the corporations are
spreading out to have this wealth that the corporations want to
take, and people who are not wealthy, people who don’t have
power, are sitting on top of it, so how do you displace them?
The plot of this book deals with the first humans to settle
on an alien world. I think, in a lot of science fiction,
people don’t really think through the implications from
biology of what it would be like to enter a completely alien
biosphere, and I thought you guys did a really good job
with that here. Could you just talk about what some of
those alien biology considerations are when you’re the first
person to set foot on an alien planet?
Daniel has a biology degree, so we do like to play around
with the idea of biology because he has a background in that.
The thing that always drove both of us crazy is you get to the
alien world and then you catch an alien disease, like the
Martians getting our diseases in War of the Worlds. Of course,
H. G. Wells had a much more limited understanding than we
do today, but even the idea that aliens would have DNA is
totally unfounded. That’s our version of life, which stumbled
across RNA and DNA as ways to create stable replicators, but
those are by no means the only possible version of that. Lefthanded or right-handed chirality and proteins — our version
of life has a subset of that.
That is by no means the only possible subset life could be
based on. A scientist recently did an experiment where,
instead of potassium you can use, I believe, cyanide as the
basis for some of the protein building blocks. So you could
have a life form that one of its primary building blocks is a
deadly poison to us. That should go the other way, too. The
things that are essential proteins to our biology could easily be
deadly poisons to another biosphere. So you have things like
the stinging insects that land on you, sting you, drink your
blood, and then fall over dead because the things in our blood
that are vital to our life are poisonous to them, or, at the very
least, not nutritious. The idea that we could eat alien life and
get nutrition from that is a pretty big stretch.
There are a million variations on what life can be built
from and we have a tiny little subset of that. The idea that our
circle in the Venn diagram is going to overlap with their circle
in the Venn diagram is a pretty big stretch. How does that
look then when you’ve got two biologies on the same planet
that have absolutely no overlap? What does that wind up
looking like? We like playing around with that idea. Of course,
in ours, there’s actually more biologies than that. I won’t get
into that because of spoilers, but just the idea of a whole
bunch of different biologies in the same space, none of which
can feed off of each other — we can interact physically, but
biologically, we can’t interact at all. One of the plot points is
that people do start getting what appears to be a disease. What
is that? Because clearly it can’t be a disease. So, what looks
like a disease that isn’t? That’s one of the things we play
around with.
Did Daniel know all the science that you guys needed for
this book or did you have to consult any other scientists or
experts?
We do, but Daniel’s joke is that we try to aim for
Wikipedia-level plausibility. We want it to seem plausible, but
we never want scientific rigor to get in the way of awesome.
We try to at least not be insultingly implausible for most
things. We probably fail sometimes, but we try not to be
insultingly implausible. Most of the research we need to do
can be done with just reading, finding biology texts — and
there are a lot of people out there who have done work on
other possible bases for life. There was a guy who was, for a
while, proposing the idea that life could have started out with
a crystalline structure and then shifted to DNA. What would
that look like? Just reading that stuff gives you great ideas.
One of the main things you do is take out all the math, so that
nobody can double-check your work and see all the things
you screwed up.
There’s a lot of science in this book in terms of the orbital
mechanics and things like that. How did you guys figure
all that stuff out?
Well, we take out all the math, so you can’t double-check
our work. [laughs] We’re both nerds, and we both read a lot
about the early space program. The idea of changing orbits
and how you change orbits is something that’s just part of the
science-fiction-ers lexicon. If we’re having somebody fire a
rail gun to add more energy to go to a higher orbit, as long as
we don’t tell you how fast any of that stuff goes or what
orbital change they’re getting out of it, as long as we leave
that kind of vague, it sounds plausible. It doesn’t throw you
out of the story, but we make sure not to put any of the math
in so the people who do understand all that don’t check our
math and find out all these places we get it wrong.
You mentioned that before starting these books, you had
only published maybe one short story, if I have that right.
Well, one short story that I actually got three pro rates for.
So, you didn’t have much experience writing fiction before
starting the series, and now obviously, you have a ton of
experience writing fiction, having written these four
massive books. Could you just say some of the biggest
lessons you’ve learned about writing over the past couple
of years writing the series?
I’ve learned that chapter length is definitely something you
should consider before you start writing. One of the things we
learned is that three-thousand-word chapters is a fast pace that
invites the reader to keep reading, because it seems like most
people have the energy to read about four or five thousand
words in one sitting. If you do three-thousand-word chapters,
they read a chapter and a half, and most people aren’t going
to be satisfied reading a chapter and a half, so we get email
and tweets all the time from people saying, “I stayed up all
night reading your book.” Well, there’s actually structural
reasons why our books invite you to stay up all night reading
them, some of which is in the chapter length.
One of the other things I learned is people will think that
the solutions to your characters’ problems are too easy if you
bring a problem up in one chapter and solve it in the same
chapter. You can have exactly the same story, but if you bring
up the problem in a chapter and then wait till another chapter
to resolve it, just by breaking it up across a chapter break, it
doesn’t seem like it was easy to do. That’s not a thing people
can teach you; that’s not a thing people think about. Writers
usually talk about how to find your voice and how to develop
character, and yet, very few people talk about “here’s what
chapter length does for you.” That was cool, to start learning
that stuff.
I’ll go off on a tangent for a second — Michael Caine did
an acting video in the nineties where he’s like, “Here’s how to
be an actor.” The thing that he did that I think is brilliant is he
doesn’t talk about how to act, he doesn’t talk about “here’s
how you find your character’s voice” and “here’s what the
method is” and all that stuff. He doesn’t do any of that. His
video is about “here’s how you find your mark every time,”
“here’s how you can avoid blinking during your close up,” all
this sort of structural stuff that isn’t the art of it but is super
vitally important to the craft of it. He did a video on that, and
I think that’s brilliant. I actually feel like, at this point, I could
do a writing class on that — on “here’s how you structure a
chapter so that people want to keep reading,” “here’s the
writing version of not blinking into the camera on your close
up.” That kind of stuff is stuff you don’t learn until you
actually write books and read reader reactions to them.
Do you get a great volume of reader reactions? Do any of
those reactions stick out in your mind?
You’re going to get some. Our books are pretty popular
and a lot of people read them, so you’re going to get people
who email you, and you’re going to get people who tweet at
you. You’re going to get reviewed. Neither Daniel nor I are
big fans of reading reviews on review sites like Goodreads or
Amazon because reviews tend not to be helpful. But when
somebody writes you an email and says, “Hey, I was a
Marine, and this thing that you’re having a Marine in your
book do doesn’t read right to me and here’s why,” that’s
actually really useful stuff. And we do actually listen to that
kind of thing — technical sorts of things. The other thing is
when somebody writes to you and says, “I really love this
character.” That makes you think, “Okay, what did we do
with that character that made somebody fall in love with
them, and how can we do more of that with our other
characters?” That kind of stuff is the thing you pay attention
to.
The other big news obviously with the series is that it’s
being turned into a TV series for the Syfy channel.
I’m actually at our production offices right now, sitting in
the executive producer’s office doing this interview because
he has an office that’s quiet.
Tell us how that first came about.
People always want a story on how we did it, but there
isn’t one because we didn’t actually do anything. We wrote
the books, which is pretty much the end of what we did to get
this. Our literary agent has a connection to a Hollywood agent
and passed the books along to the Hollywood agent. This part
happened without us knowing about it. The Hollywood agent
went out and took the books out and started getting offers on
them. If you have a series that’s popular at all, it’s pretty easy
to find option offers because they tend to not be a lot of
money and studios and networks buy a bunch of options and
just sort of hold on to them.
So, he got a bunch of option offers, but what we didn’t
know is that our Hollywood agent was awesome and super
experienced. He represents Dennis Lehane, he’s the guy who
took Band of Brothers and sent it to HBO. He’s kind of a
high-powered agent. So, he got a bunch of lowball option
offers and turned them all down without telling us just
because he didn’t think it was worth anybody’s time. He just
kept turning all these offers down and what he kept saying is,
“I think I can get a lot for these books, and I’m not going to
take you seriously” — to the people who were making the
offer — “until you come to me with a production company
and a writer already attached.”
One of the people who’d been snaking around the project
is the Sean Daniel Company, which is a production company
run by Sean Daniel, who used to be a bigwig at Universal.
Sean has personally produced two hundred movies, or some
crazy number like that. I don’t know what the exact number
is, but pretty much any movie you mention, Sean will go,
“Oh, yeah, I produced that.” He has his own independent
production company now. Sean knew Mark and Hawk —
Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby — they had worked together
on another project. Mark and Hawk are the writers of Iron
Man and Children of Men and a lot of high-profile science
fiction projects. Sean took it to them and said, “Hey, take a
look at this and let me know what you think and see if you’d
be interested in being attached to this.” They read the first
book, and apparently they liked it. They got back to Sean and
said, “Yeah, we totally want to be involved in this. Tell them
that we committed to doing it.” So, Sean came back to Brian
and said, “Here’s who we have attached.”
Then, Brian and Sean and Mark and Hawk and another
guy named Jason Brown who works for Sean, all of us got on
a conference call and they said, “Here’s Mark and Hawk,
they’re committing to writing a pilot for this. Are you willing
to give us the option so we can move forward?” Then Daniel
and I were like, “Yeah, that sounds great. We love those
guys.” We’re both big fans of the first Iron Man. We thought
it was a perfect blend of science fiction and action and humor,
and we didn’t want somebody who would be humorless about
this. So we’re like, “Yeah, people who can be funny, that
sounds great. We want those guys.”
So they went off and they wrote a pilot, and then took that
pilot to Alcon Entertainment, which is a big movie production
company that’s starting its own TV division. We were the first
project that Alcon was doing as a TV project. Alcon took it to
a bunch of networks. There was a bidding war, apparently. I
was not involved in that piece, but I have heard that there was
a bidding war. Syfy were the ones who pushed the most poker
chips to the middle of the table. So that’s who we’re doing it
with. It’s a joint Alcon TV and Syfy Channel production and
that’s how it happened.
As you can see, Daniel and I did almost nothing. Through
a lot of this process, we were baggage. We did come out
when the Sean Daniel Company was pitching the project to
the various production companies and networks. We sat in the
room, I guess as show ponies, where they could turn and say,
“These are the guys who wrote the books,” and we could
wave.
Like a visual aid?
Like a visual aid, yeah. Once we got picked up, Alcon
insisted that it was a direct-to-series thing. They weren’t going
to do a pilot, and Syfy was willing to do a direct-to-series
order. Once we got that, we were invited by the executive
producers to come out and join the writers’ room and help
develop the story for the first season and we’ve been asked to
write a script for the first season. Because I had figured out
what all this stuff should look like years ago, I’ve been asked
to help take point on the production side of it, so I’m talking a
lot with production designers and concept artist on what
things should look like. I’ve been invited to have a big piece in
that, which is really nice, because they don’t have to do that.
They don’t have to let us be involved at all if they don’t want
to. They just have to mail us checks. We’ve been invited to do
a lot of stuff that writers are often not invited to do. It’s been
pretty cool.
Just to be clear for listeners, often they’ll film a pilot and,
depending on whether that’s successful, it’ll go to series,
but this is a deal where the whole first season is definitely
being made at this point.
They have purchased the entire first season. So if they
don’t make it, something catastrophic would have to happen.
How many episodes is this going to be? Is it going to be
an adaptation of the first book, I assume?
Yes, it is an adaptation of the series. I’m not actually yet
allowed to talk about what portion of the series the first
season will cover, but yes, it is from the material in the book
series. And it is ten episodes for the first season. That could
change if we go forward, if there’s additional seasons, that
order could change, but right now it’s ten.
I’m getting that you can’t really say much at all about the
content of it, like what changes might be made or anything
like that?
Not really supposed to talk about that yet. They’re
developing their marketing plan for this and they have a
process that they do when you release certain information and
how you package that information. We have to make sure that
we don’t step on any of that. We don’t get to really talk about
much. We can talk about Mark and Hawk because we love
them and that’s already public information. We can talk about
Sean and Jason because that’s already public information. We
can talk about who the Alcon executives were who bought
this because that’s already public information. The Alcon
executive who bought it for Alcon is a woman named Sharon
Hall who has been working in TV a long time. She developed
Breaking Bad, so she’s a high-power figure in the TV world,
along with a gentleman named Ben Roberts. They are the two
executives who bought it for Alcon, so we can mention their
names because that’s already public information.
Can you talk at all about the process of being in the
writing room? How much time are you there and how
many people are there? What does the room look like? Is
there a whiteboard? I don’t know, stuff like that?
I can’t talk about it too much. Daniel and I have been here
now for, I don’t know, five weeks? We’re in the writing room
every day for eight or nine hours a day. It started out with
Daniel and I and Mark and Hawk and one other gentleman
who’s an EP on the show whose name hasn’t been mentioned
yet, so we don’t get to mention him. But the five of us sat
around a table for two weeks and just talked about the series
and talked about who the characters were and talked about
what the later books were going to be about so that we could
start seeding some of that information in. The rest of the
writers showed up after those two weeks, and we moved to
different offices. Now we’re actually starting to beat out the
episodes and what happens in the first season and how that is
broken up into ten episodes and what are things that happen
in each of those ten episodes. The end of this, of course, is
that people go off and start writing scripts.
Do you have any idea at this point when the series will
actually be on television?
Next year. I don’t know when next year, but they’re pretty
committed to getting it on the air next year. With a ten-
episode run, they have a lot of flexibility on when they can
start it. It used to be you had to start by a certain point
because everybody’s show was twenty-two episodes, and so
there was a certain time of year where all shows started.
That’s no longer true, and especially with short-run series like
ours, like ten episodes or twelve episodes, those sorts of series
can start whenever the network wants them to start. So they
have some flexibility there, and we don’t know exactly when
that will be.
The other James S.A. Corey project this year was a Star
Wars novel called Honor Among Thieves. You want to tell
us a bit about that?
It’s a boring story. I know some people at Random House,
and they were looking for somebody to write this Han Solo
novel, and one of the people at Random House says, “Have
you considered James S.A. Corey? He kind of writes stuff
that’s kind of like Star Wars.” Not really, but I guess for those
people, anything that’s SF is the same. They were like, “You
should talk to this guy.” The people at Del Rey contacted us
and said, “Would you be interested in doing this?” At first, we
weren’t. I have to be honest with you: We were kind of hinky
on doing a Star Wars novel, but then they said, “Oh, and this
novel will be about Han Solo, set between Star Wars and
Empire Strikes Back.” Then, we were like, “Yeah, okay. We
have to do that, right?” That’s pretty much the coolest
character in the series in the coolest period in the series
because it’s still got all the sexual tension with Leia before the
big “I love you” dramatic reveal in Empire. We’ve still got the
tension of “Is Han Solo a hero or not? Is he still a smuggler?”
He’s still struggling with his own feelings on whether or not
he’s actually a rebel. That’s great stuff. You have to write that
book. Once they told us which book they were offering us,
we had to take it.
Did you always know you were going to use the James
S.A. Corey name for that, or did you ever consider using a
different pseudonym?
No, they wanted Jim. James S.A. Corey is a much bigger
name than Daniel or I individually. He’s a much more popular
author now than even Daniel is under his own name.
Do you have any tips for writing Han Solo?
Everybody gave us advice on which books we should read
and all that, but the truth is Del Rey didn’t want us to
reference much in the expanded universe. The goal for these
books was to be a novel that somebody who’s never read any
expanded universe books could pick up and enjoy, even if the
only exposure they’ve ever had to Star Wars is the movies.
They didn’t want us dragging a lot of backstory from previous
expanding universe novels, and they actively told us not to do
that. What we did to research is we had all the movies on Bluray and we just sat down and watched Star Wars and Empire
Strikes Back over and over and over. Mostly what we were
looking for is the cadences of language. How does Han Solo
talk? How does Leia talk? How do Han Solo and Chewbacca
interact? What does that look like? What does it sound like?
Just getting to the point where you could say anything in a
Han Solo voice, where you could say anything in a Leia
voice. Getting to that point before you start writing, so that
when you have to write a Leia line, or you have to write a
Luke Skywalker line, or you have to write a Han Solo line,
the patterns of their speech are just natural. You’re not trying
to force it to sound like Han Solo because I feel like that’s a
trapping. The reader can kind of sense that. But if you’re just
writing whatever as Han Solo and his way of speaking is just
already built into your brain, then I think it comes off a little
more naturally. That’s what we did. Whether we were
successful or not is up to the reader, but that’s what we were
trying for.
When you’re writing Chewbacca, do you say, “He
growled,” or do you spell it out phonetically or do you say,
“He growled in a way that Han Solo knew he meant this,”
or . . . ?
Yeah, actually, that’s what we did. We used descriptive
text: “Chewbacca growled, he howled, he barked” — that sort
of thing. Because that’s what the movies do. Han Solo’s
reaction to Chewbacca tells you what Chewbacca said, and
that’s what we wanted. We wanted to have that movie feel to
it, where Chewbacca makes a growl and then Han said, “It’s
not my fault.” We know that Chewbacca just blamed him for
something bad that just happened. A lot of the humor in their
interactions comes from that, because you can see Chewbacca
sort of growling around the ship and grumping around, and
then Han’s reaction to that letting you know that Chewbacca
is complaining about stuff is funny. That’s funny stuff, and we
didn’t want to lose that.
I heard you say that one thing you noticed rewatching the
movies is that Han Solo is always wrong.
That is true. If you rewatch the first two movies, the things
that are true about Han Solo is that, if he says something is
true, it isn’t, and if he makes a plan, it fails every single time.
He is never correct about anything in the first two movies.
Not once. The thing that he’s great at, though, is improvising.
You have Han say, “We’re going to make the jump to light
speed,” and then he pulls the lever and it doesn’t work. But, if
he says, “I still got a few maneuvers up my sleeve,” and then
starts yanking on handles, the Millennium Falcon does all
these amazing maneuvers to escape.
That’s what Han is great at. Han is great at yanking on
levers in the Millennium Falcon and making it do amazing
maneuvers to dodge incoming fire. Han is great at shooting
his way past stormtroopers. He has a plan, it totally fails, a
bunch of stormtroopers show up, and then he and Chewy just
run at them shooting and the stormtroopers run away. That
was never the plan. The plan was never “Let’s just charge the
stormtroopers and they’ll chicken out and run away,” but he
does it and it works. That’s what we love about Han, and
capturing that in the books was important to us: that we have
him be sort of a bumbler when he’s making plans, but when
he’s just improvising, he kicks ass.
I’ve heard a lot of people suggest actually that the original
trilogy works so well because of Han Solo, that he’s sort of
an average guy just trying to do his job, doesn’t believe in
any of this Jedi crap, and it gives it this grounding in
reality. And when you make everybody a Jedi or president
or something in the prequels, you lose that everyman
quality that makes the whole thing work.
It’s silly and when everybody’s taking it seriously, it comes
across as silly. You have to have at least one guy going,
“Come on, this is ridiculous.” As long as you have one guy
saying that, it takes the curse off of it, to use a writing term. If
you have something really improbable happen in your story,
and one person in the story goes, “Wow, that was really
improbable,” that’s what the reader is thinking, so having a
character say it takes the curse off of it. Han Solo is that guy
in the first three movies. He’s the guy who’s going, “This is
ridiculous. What are we doing here?” And because he’s
saying that, it’s okay. When everyone on screen is taking it
seriously, the audience stops taking it seriously. That is a truth
of storytelling.
What do you think about the upcoming J. J. Abrams/Rian
Johnson Star Wars movies?
I have no idea what to think. I don’t know. I’m not a huge
fan of the Star Trek reboot, but I recognize that J. J. is an
extremely talented filmmaker, and his stuff looks gorgeous.
Maybe it’ll be awesome, I don’t know. We’re going to have to
wait and see I guess.
And we understand that Han Solo is coming back, so
maybe that’ll help.
Maybe. I heard the Millennium Falcon fell on his legs.
We’re just about out of time. Do you want to just talk
about any new or upcoming projects you have going on?
We got this TV show. That’s coming out next year, so
everybody should watch that. Cibola Burn just came out a
couple of weeks ago. If you don’t have a copy, you should
buy that. And we’re working on writing the fifth book.
Is there anything you can say about the fifth book? I
actually heard you guys say that you’re really excited
about this one; a lot of plot threads are going to come
together.
Yeah, the fifth book is the axle around which the entire
series is involved. We get to do a lot of stuff. We’ve been
dropping in hints about stuff in book five since book one. The
tentative title for it is Nemesis Games. Other than that, I don’t
know what else I can really say.
I heard Daniel say they always change his titles.
They always change his titles, but they tend to keep mine. I
don’t know why that is. We have a pretty good justification
for calling it Nemesis Games, and it fits with the structure that
they like. They really like “a mythological thing has or does
something.” We’re using nemesis in the Greek mythology
term. Nemesis is a Greek god, or a Greek mythological
character, I should say. So they should like that.
Well, I really enjoyed Cibola Burn, and I’m really looking
forward to Nemesis Games or whatever they end up
calling it.
Whatever they end up calling it, yeah.
Ty, I really just want to thank you for joining us today.
Thank you for having me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction/fantasy talk show podcast.
It is hosted by David Barr Kirtley, who is the author of thirty short stories,
which have appeared in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales,
and Lightspeed, in books such as Armored, The Living Dead, Other Worlds
Than These, and Fantasy: The Best of the Year, and on podcasts such as
Escape Pod and Pseudopod. He lives in New York.
Interview: Lawrence Krauss
The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy
Physicist Lawrence Krauss is the author of such books as
A Universe from Nothing and The Physics of Star Trek. The
new documentary film, The Unbelievers, follows him and
Richard Dawkins as they travel the world arguing in favor of
atheism.
This interview first appeared on Wired.com’s The Geek’s
Guide to the Galaxy podcast, which is hosted by David Barr
Kirtley. Visit geeksguideshow.com to listen to the entire
interview and the rest of the show, in which the host and his
guests discuss various geeky topics.
Tell us about this new movie, The Unbelievers. How did
you get involved with that?
The young team that made it were actually fans of ours
and had attended one of the first events I’d put on in the
Origins project at Arizona State University, and it was an
amazing event. We filled up an auditorium with six thousand
people for twelve hours to listen to science. We had most of
the well-known scientists and public intellectuals in the world
there, and it was an amazing event.
Afterward, they accosted me in the parking lot, I
remember, and they were fans and they had said — Gus,
who’s now the director, had said that it reminded him of a
rock concert. They were former musicians. They were also
filmmakers but they enjoyed several films, one of them by
Radiohead that explored what it was like to tour, to be on the
road. What they wanted to make was a rock-and-roll tour film
about science. In any case, all of this I heard later.
We started to talk and a few years later, they asked me to
do a cameo in actually a science fiction movie that they were
making, which is almost finished now. But I did it, and I was
very impressed with the quality of the work they were doing,
and when we needed some people to film and potentially
record several of our events for archiving, for the Origins
project, I asked them to do it.
The first event they did was an event with me and Richard,
but I was blown away by the quality of the product. They had
talked to me about doing various films, including ones of my
books, and Richard and I were scheduled to do a tour of
Australia together doing several dialogues, and three weeks
before we actually went, I actually managed to secure
funding. It’s amazing to think they put it together in three
weeks, and had a film crew of six people, two different crews
in Australia, and that started what ended up being about eight
months of following us around in various locations, first in
Australia, in New York, in England, Washington, and
Phoenix. They ended up doing a hundred and twenty hours of
footage of us and put together the movie.
At the same time, we also thought about whether it would
be reasonable to have them interview, or have us interview,
other people — in particular, celebrities. It’s all right for
Richard and I to be promoting science and reason, people
know we do, but I like the idea of trying to reach a broader
audience, and it seemed to me important for people to know
their cultural role models, ranging from directors to movie
stars, even though they aren’t scientists, were fascinated by
science. We were fortunate to get several — a lot of people I
knew — from Woody Allen to Cameron Diaz to Werner
Herzog, Ricky Gervais and others, to agree to be interviewed.
Those interviews are at the beginning and end of the movie,
and I think they’re great, and of course, they also hopefully
will attract some people who don’t know who Richard and I
are.
The idea is to not proselytize so much against religion, but
rather to get people talking, to get them thinking. My great
hope is that it will reach an audience who haven’t thought
about these questions. The early results were encouraging. We
had a big screening where we provided people with
questionnaires and we learned a number of things. First of all,
people said that after the movie, they spent the evening at a
restaurant talking the whole evening about the movie and
having a discussion with their friends, which is exactly what
we want. Also equally interesting, people who declared
themselves as religious were perhaps the strongest group for
saying that they would encourage friends to see the movie,
which really surprised us, and that was also encouraging.
Now that it’s out on iTunes and Amazon and many places
around the world, it’s really encouraging to see that it’s got a
broad audience — it’s right now the number one
documentary on iTunes, and that’s the point. It’s not just to
preach to convert; I’m hoping we reach a broad audience and
get discussions going about the nature of science and reality
and truth and nonsense, and it ends on a high note. It actually
ends interestingly enough — and this says something — the
last scenes are something called “The Reason Rally,” the rally
for reason that was in Washington D.C. about two years ago,
and thirty thousand people — from atheists to secularist to
humanists — came to the Mall to celebrate reason. What’s
amazing is that no mainstream media outlet covered it. Thirty
thousand people were on the Mall at Washington and no
mainstream outlet covered it, which I think says something
about the difficulty of openly saying that you question the
existence of God, and as I say in the movie, “It’s unfortunate
that you simply can’t ask questions when it comes to religion
as you can with every other human activity from politics to
sex.”
I’ve been really excited about this movie since I first heard
of it, and we’ve been contacting Gus for over a year, it
seems like, trying to set up an interview, and so I’ve gotten
a little bit of a glimpse of all the distribution problems
and things that the movie has gone through. From your
perspective, what kind of challenges has the movie faced?
It’s been a learning experience. I’ve written a lot of books
and I’ve appeared in a lot of documentaries, but I’ve never
been involved in helping produce one at that level. The first
thing I discovered is that documentaries are simply hard to get
distributed in general. Most distribution companies and media
people don’t think there’s a market for documentaries, which
surprised me a lot, and even though there was clearly a builtin audience — almost three hundred thousand people
downloaded or viewed the trailer for this movie in the first
month that the trailer came out. When we did our world
premiere, which was in Toronto at the Hot Docs International
Documentary Film Festival a year ago, the movie was sold
out almost instantly. There were lines for six hours to wait
through the rain for extra seats, last man standing room, and
they had to add an extra showing of the movie, and we
thought, “Wow, that’s a good sign.”
Even then, we couldn’t make a deal for distribution and
partly, of course, it’s the problems of documentaries in
general. Most documentaries don’t get distributed. But also, I
think there’s no doubt, the concern of some people at least,
that a movie that’s perceived to be about atheism might have
problems with distribution and sales, and I’m happy that the
results of the last week, at least, have proved us right and
those people wrong. There is interest, but even then, even
from the time we signed with a distribution company to get
attention paid to ultimately distributing it, and we felt very bad
because the fan base was asking for this movie for a long
time, and we said, “Well, we signed a distribution deal.” They
said, “Great, when’s it going to come out?” We didn’t know,
and it’s been over a year since the world premiere, although
that often happens.
People don’t realize that movies get announced often a
year before they come out, but there was great frustration
among many people who kept saying, “Why won’t it come
out? Why? What are you doing? Why are you holding on to
it?” We were as frustrated as anyone else, and we tried to
convey that. It’s nice that at least an initial release has taken
place, but even so, of course, around the world, there are
various countries where it hasn’t come out yet. It’s come out
in the United States, Canada, and England, and digitally on
Video On Demand, iTunes, and Amazon. The DVD will be
available probably by the end of this month. I’m in Australia
right now and a lot of the movie happens in Australia. We had
an Australian premiere at the Sydney Opera House, but it still
hasn’t come out here. It’s frustrating.
Could you talk a little bit about your friendship with
Richard Dawkins? How did you guys first meet and how
did you become this tag-team duo traveling the globe?
It was sort of organic-involved. There was no strategy. We
first met probably over a decade ago at an event that we were
both speaking at, and we actually disagreed. As Richard has
described, his first memory is me asking a question after a talk
of his that was a difficult question to answer, and we
disagreed about, I think, strategy in terms of reaching the
public. I was concerned at the time about whether the best
way to reach people was to approach them and say, “You’re
wrong,” and maybe “You’re stupid, or at least you’re not
thinking correctly,” whether you should instead approach
people a little more gently.
We had a long discussion about that, and in fact, [based
on] our initial discussion about educating people about science
and about the nature of religion, following a late evening-long
discussion that we had, we decided to put it together as a
Scientific American article, which was a dialogue between the
two of us. That was fun to work together on, and that was
beginning of our relationship and our friendship, and then
we’ve been together at events, not because we’re asked to be
together, but we often have appeared together. Maybe about
seven years ago, Stanford University asked us to do an event
together, and they wanted to have a moderator with us on
stage, and Richard was pretty adamant ultimately that we
shouldn’t have a moderator, that it should just be a dialogue
between the two of us. That created a new style, which was
very successful.
And as he says in the film, moderators usually get in the
way. If there’s more than two people around, then when those
two people, A and B, are having an interesting conversation,
the moderator will often interrupt in the middle and say,
“What do you think about that, C?” and just break the flow.
Obviously, I think you have to be a fairly well-conditioned
public speaker to be able to comfortably have a dialogue and
know how to pace it, but we both have done that a lot.
So I really enjoyed it and Richard did, and I think the
audience did. We decided that we liked that format a lot, and
Richard wrote the afterword for my most recent book, A
Universe from Nothing. He had a new book coming out, The
Magic of Reality, around that time, and we thought it would
be fun to have a series of dialogues talking about both those
books or the content of both those books, going back and
forth, and talking about everything from evolutionary biology
to physics. We had a dialogue at Arizona State, which had
been filmed by Gus and Luke almost six months before we
did the Australian tour, and then we did the Australian tour,
and it was a challenge. It’s not so easy, but it was fun.
Those form the basis of material for producing the movie.
We also have, for want of better words, each been asked to
debate groups — from Muslim groups to the Archbishop of
Sydney. All of those things appear as well, at least little bits of
those events, to demonstrate the kind of things that we’re
doing. We became not only close friends, but I think our
views have certainly converged. I don’t know if Richard has
moderated his views a lot, but he has, and I’ve come to
appreciate much more the need to be honest and confront the
religious nonsense that permeates so much of our society.
People often call Richard strident, and maybe I did, but once
my last book came out — and again, in the book, I just asked
questions. There are very few places where I even discussed
religion, but people react and call me strident just for saying,
“You know what? How dare you propose that God isn’t
necessary to create a whole universe? That you can create a
whole universe from nothing?” I began to realize that just
asking questions, you get called strident, and Richard is often
misrepresented as being so. I guess I’ve come to appreciate
that a lot more as I get condemned for the same heresies as
him.
It was really interesting when The God Delusion first came
out, all you heard in the press was, “Oh, Richard Dawkins
is so philosophically and theologically naïve. Real
philosophers/theologians would just make mincemeat out
of him.” And I have to say, watching him debate various
people, I have not been impressed at all by the arguments
that they’ve been able to muster against him.
I have to say this — and I’ll get more hate mail, especially
from philosophers, about this — but I’ve now done tons of
debates with religious apologists and philosophers, and for the
most part, they’re incredibly weak. Especially, I find, the
philosophers. Let me point out I have a lot of friends who are
philosophers who understand the relationship between
philosophy and science, but there are some people, some
philosophers, who think philosophy in some sense is a
substitute for science. In my book, I made a joke which
perhaps infuriated that group. I talked about the fact that a
number of philosophers and theologians take exception with
my discussion of nothing, and as I said, well, they’re experts
at nothing. And, of course, that set the stage for subsequent
debate.
But you’re right. I’m often called philosophically naïve or
theologically naïve. Then when you try and base the
discussion not on theology or philosophy but on science, they
still say, “Oh, you’re theologically naïve.” This is the point. I
was once in the Vatican at the Pontifical Academy, lecturing,
believe it or not, and talking to theologians. I was being a little
facetious but I was also being honest. I said, “You know
what? You have to listen to me but I don’t have to listen to
you.” What I meant by that is that to be a — I don’t know if
this phrase is an oxymoron — but to be a sensible theologian
or at least one who has pretense of being scholarly, you at
least have to have some vague idea of what’s going on in
science. How old the universe is, etc., etc. But to do science,
you don’t have to know anything about theology, anything
that theologians and to some extent philosophers do.
Scientists don’t read theology, they don’t read philosophy. It
doesn’t make any difference to what they’re doing. It may not
be a value judgment, but it’s true.
You mentioned Richard Dawkins being misrepresented,
and I don’t know if you saw this, but just in the last day
or so, a bunch of people were posting this story from The
Guardian about Richard Dawkins saying fairy tales are
bad for kids. I’ve been through this before with Harry
Potter, so I know that this is completely made up, but it’s
just crazy how often this completely ridiculous headline
gets resurrected.
You just have to add one word. Richard would say
religious fairy tales are bad for kids, and the reason is the
difference between fairy tales and religious fairy tales is one
we tell kids as stories to put them to sleep and one to get them
excited. We tell them about Santa Claus, but we don’t expect
them to believe it when they grow up, and we also don’t
suggest it’s the truth. In some sense, fairy tales are to provoke
kids to think and that’s what Richard’s all about.
You’re right, all sorts of distortions of his position are
presented and you can see them. You can see some of this,
and the same for me. In the movie, there’s a discussion with
the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal Pell, who happily for the
Australians has now been moved to Rome, because he’s a
very, very, I have to say, dislikable or hateful individual. At
least he comes across that way and also, unfortunately, rather
ignorant. But throughout their debate on TV, Cardinal Pell
misrepresents evolution and Richard’s views, and
misrepresents mine, although it’s not in the movie. We were
both supposed to be in the program with him but he said he
didn’t want to debate two people. So he took advantage of
that to completely misrepresent my viewpoints as well, and it
happens all the time. I can’t tell you how many times I read
on blogs and websites complete distortions about what I say
and again, complete distortions about what Richard says, but
to be fair, I think it’s true of any public figure that you have to
get used to being misquoted and misrepresented.
Whenever I bring up these sorts of Richard Dawkins
arguments against religion, people always say there’s no
point in even arguing about religion; nobody ever changes
their mind; no rational argument ever convinces anyone to
change their minds. And I have to say that most of my
friends these days are atheists. Virtually all of them were
raised religious, and virtually all of them changed their
minds in response to rational arguments that they heard
presented to them over the years, so I don’t know why
people are so certain that you can never change someone’s
mind by presenting rational arguments.
Since I like to base my, quote, “beliefs” on empirical
reality, I have lots of evidence that supports your viewpoint. In
particular, both Richard and I, although we don’t show it in
the movie so much, get email every single day from people
who tell us that our debates, our discussions, and our books
have changed their lives, that they had been trapped, and it’s
unfortunate. People think there’s nothing, that religion is
innocuous. Even if religion doesn’t say to cut someone’s head
off if they steal something or whatever, it’s not innocuous; it
causes people pain. I get emails all the time from people
saying, “I was in a family, and I began to question things, and
I felt like a bad person. I was ostracized, and your books and
the movie or the debates have shown me that I’m not alone
and that I can think for myself.” So our discussions do have
an impact.
More than that, when we debate some religious
fundamentalist or maybe an apologist or whatever, we don’t
expect to change the minds of those individuals. They don’t
listen to what we’re saying, that’s true. That’s not the reason
one does it, if one chooses to do it. It’s really for the vast
[majority of] people in the middle. In England, in the census,
they ask people’s religious affiliations and I think fifty-four
percent in the last British census, fifty-four percent of the
people declared they were Christian, which was the lowest
ever, although still the majority. But Richard’s foundation
went and did a subsequent survey of people who checked the
Christian box, and they said, “Well, do you believe in this? Do
you believe in the transubstantiation? Do you believe in the
virgin birth? Do you believe in this, do you believe in that?”
Universally, people would say no, no, no, no, no, and then
ultimately the question was, “Why did you check the box?”
The answer is, “Well, I like to think of myself as a good
person.” So people like to say they’re religious or Christian,
because to not say so is to often be labeled as evil, and we
have to change that in our society.
All those people, really they should be checking Jedi
because they’re clearly good guys, right?
Yeah, exactly, and moreover, as my late friend (and the
movie, as people will see, is dedicated to Christopher
Hitchens, who is a friend of both Richard’s and mine, and a
remarkable man) said, “Religion poisons everything.” As
Richard points out adequately, and now I guess I try to,
people say, “Okay, well, religion has nothing to do with
science, but it’s a guide for how we should live.” Well, it’s a
pretty darn poor guide for how we should live. If you look at
the Old Testament, it’s hard to find a more immoral book, and
the same is true of all the scriptures of all the world’s
religions. They’re not guides to live. You wouldn’t want to
live the way they say, and if you do, inevitably, it produces
violence and hatred.
Another reason we wanted to get you on the show is
because you’re the author of The Physics of Star Trek, so I
did want to talk about some science fiction stuff with you
as well. You mentioned that Gus, the director of this
Unbelievers film, did a science fiction film in which you
had a cameo. Tell us about that.
It’s a time-travel story. It’s a film that they’re just finishing
up now, and it’s a film involving a young boy who is
interested in science. There is a scene where he comes to my
university and has a chat with me, and I haven’t seen the
whole film. I’ve done the cameo, and I know they’re working
on post-production now. Obviously, I’ve been interested in
science fiction. Gus and his brother Luke, who’s the director
of cinematography, have been big fans of science fiction. So
it’s neat to be in a science fiction movie. There’s actually
another movie that I’ve done a cameo in which has elements
of science fiction in it called London Fields. It’s actually a
mainstream Hollywood movie that’s coming out with several
major stars, but I’m not allowed to let you know who. It’ll be
fascinating to see what we filmed for a day, what comes out in
that.
The other thing I should add is that Gus and Luke’s family
are extremely religious people. They came from a
fundamentalist background, and it’s been interesting for their
family to see the movie. They’ve experienced the same
breakout that in some sense many people write to us about,
and I think that’s part of what they wanted to celebrate —
their own recognition of skepticism and inquiry and science. I
suspect their interest in science fiction probably helped them
be interested in science, and for many young people, it’s a
chicken-and-egg case. I don’t know whether when I was a kid
I read science fiction because it encouraged my interest in
science or whether my interest in science encouraged my
interest in science fiction. As Steven Hawking says in the
foreword for The Physics of Star Trek, “Science fiction
encourages the imagination like science,” and it’s a wonderful
thing for that reason.
So you’re obviously a Star Trek fan. What other science
fiction books or movies are some of your favorites?
I used to read a lot of science fiction when I was younger. I
read some Isaac Asimov. I read John Wyndham, a British
science fiction author. Day of the Triffids and The Kraken
Wakes and, I think, Village of the Damned.
Midwich Cuckoos is the book.
Midwich Cuckoos, that’s right. The movie got made into
Village of the Damned. I liked him a lot for some reason, and
I read science fiction short stories. I read Robert Heinlein. I
read a number of the major science fiction authors. It’s
interesting because what happened to me is that as my interest
in science began to blossom, as I became a scientist, I stopped
reading science fiction as much and read science, because
frankly, as I try and say in The Physics of Star Trek, although
I certainly watched Star Trek — every episode when I was a
kid, because I liked it (I also watched a lot of TV in
general) — but truth is stranger than fiction. The real universe
is actually far more fascinating than the universe of science
fiction. The imagination of the universe far exceeds the
human imagination, and therefore, for me, as amusing as
science fiction is, I usually find it comes up short when
compared to the real universe.
You mentioned Steven Hawking, and one of the things I
wanted to ask you about is you often quote his line about
how we know that there’s no time travel because we
haven’t met any time travelers from the future.
Yeah, though as you also probably heard me say, he
changed the line in the preface of the book, and I claim that
one of the reasons was that I told him that they all went back
to the 1960s and no one noticed. In fact, it is a paradox. Time
travel is probably — I’m probably anticipating your question,
and if I’m not, we can change the subject — but for me, time
travel is probably the most interesting science fiction concept,
because of course it brings up all these paradoxes. My
favorite episodes of Star Trek involve time travel, and the
whole paradox of time travel, of changing the past, is a
fascinating one. In fact, it’s that paradox that’s convinced
many physicists, including Steven, initially, that time travel in
the real universe isn’t possible. But as he recognizes, because
he’s a scientist, the universe doesn’t give a damn what we care
or what we like or what we think is reasonable. Time travel
may seem unreasonable, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t
happen. Just as much of quantum mechanics seems
unreasonable but it happens.
I don’t know if you saw the movie Primer, but it presents
the idea that you could build a box in which time goes
backward, and so an implication of that is that you could
travel backward in time but only back to the point at
which the box was constructed. So it’s possible that in the
future, time travel will be invented, but you’ll need sort of
a receiving station, and you can’t travel back any farther
than that.
Actually, there’s some relationship of that to science. It’s
called closed timelike curves. The idea is that, in general
relativity, time and space are related intimately as part of what
we call space-time in both special and general relativity. Now,
you could do a circle in space, no problem. I can travel from
Australia to the United States — I’ll be doing it tomorrow in
fact — and then I can come back, as I’ll do in July. So there’s
no problem doing round trips in space, and so, if you think
about it, why can’t you do a round trip in time? Such a round
trip in time is exactly what you’re talking about, because of
course, you return to the point you began but not earlier.
These things are called closed timelike curves.
The big question in physics is: Are closed timelike curves
possible? There’s a lot of debate and discussion about that,
and there are some good reasons for thinking potentially not.
In general relativity, you can create any curve you want,
including the closed timelike curve, if you create the kind of
space, designer space, if you wish. But to create a designer
space, you’d need special kinds of energy. The question is, are
those kinds of energy physically realizable? That’s the ultimate
question. The initial evidence isn’t good, but we don’t know
for certain. But again, in those kinds of closed timelike curves,
you sort of get around the time travel paradox because you
cannot only return to time before the machine was
constructed, if you wish, but you’re doomed to repeat the
mistakes in the past. The curve repeats itself; it never changes,
and therefore, you get around this ultimate paradox, which I
mentioned in the book and which is a famous paradox — I
call it the Grandmother Paradox — which is what happens if
you go back in time and kill your grandmother before your
mother was born. Well, then your mother’s never born, but
then you were never born, and if you were never born, how
did you go back in time and kill your grandmother? So you
get around those kinds of fascinating paradoxes of the
Terminator and other things. It makes time travel less
interesting, perhaps, but it’s still fascinating to know whether
even that’s possible.
I heard you say in your lecture on The Physics of Star Trek
that faster-than-light travel, like we see in a lot of science
fiction movies — Star Wars, Star Trek — necessarily
involves time travel? Could you talk about that, and is a
science fiction author who chooses to have faster-thanlight travel, like hyperspace jumps in Star Wars, obligated
to also have time travel be something those characters can
do?
In principal, of course, you’re entitled to anything you
want. The operative word in science fiction, we should say —
and several science fiction authors have agreed with me on
this — the operative word is not science. It’s fiction. You
have to tell a good story, and you have to get people to
suspend disbelief in a way that’s plausible. Then you can do
whatever you want. Science fiction doesn’t have to be
accurate. It has to be interesting. In general, it is true that if
you were to create something like wormholes, as I talk about
in the book (wormholes allowed, of course, Jodie Foster in
Contact to go from one place to another, and there’s my
favorite wormhole in Star Trek), it’s a good way to travel
through space, in principle, faster than light because you take
a short cut. You go from one point to another by making a
new tunnel, if you wish, that connects those two points that’s
much shorter than going through the background space. It’s a
good idea if you can do it, but as has been shown, if you were
to create such a tunnel, automatically, you would have to have
a time machine.
Now, it’s also true that if you could travel literally faster
than light — which by the way, you can’t; you can’t travel
faster than light through space — but if you could, then time
would go backwards. In fact, it’s the reason, as I talk about in
one of my other books, why antiparticles exist as Richard
Feynman first discussed. For every particle in nature, there is
an equal mass and opposite charge, and it turns out that we
can show that antiparticles exist because essentially, they
behave like particles going backward in time, and a negative
charge going backward in time is equivalent to a positive
charge going forward in time. If you could travel faster than
light, relativity tells you that you’d be going backwards in
time. We’ve searched for such particles — they’re called
tachyons — particles that are doomed to have ever traveled
faster than light would literally be traveling backward in time.
Although there’s no sensible theory that incorporates such
objects, physicists recognize they shouldn’t be guided by
theory all the time, that they should be guided by experiment.
So people look for tachyons and, of course, never see them.
I definitely understand that you can’t have a velocity
through space that’s faster than light, but if you were to
take some sort of shortcut through space, folding space, or
going through a wormhole, you would still be traveling
through time anyway, right?
I can explain to you how to do it. It’s pretty simple. At
least I think it is. If you have a wormhole, then one mouth of
the wormhole is anchored to one place in space and the other
mouth is anchored at another place in space, and you go
through the wormhole, and you come out somewhere else.
But one end of the wormhole could be moving through space,
say, at near the speed of light. Let’s say it does a big circle in
space at near the speed of light, five light years around. Well,
that end of the wormhole is traveling through space. Einstein’s
special theory of relativity tells us that an observer sitting at
that end of the wormhole, their clocks would be moving
slower than the clocks of the observer at the other end of the
wormhole who’s at rest in space. So one observer may see the
other observer far away at that end of the wormhole going on
a ride five light years around, and if they’re traveling near the
speed of light, it will take them almost five years to do that.
Fine. But the observer who’s on the mouth of the wormhole
that’s moving, their clocks are traveling slowly and that whole
trip may just take two weeks. So that observer is now five
years minus two weeks behind the observer at the other end
of the wormhole, so if you go through the wormhole, you
come out five years minus two weeks earlier. A wormhole is a
time machine.
Another Star Trek thing I wanted to ask you about is: You
say in your lecture that the transporter is impossible
because a) of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and b)
because the amount of data to record every atom of the
human body is just beyond any imaginable recording
device. We interviewed Brian Greene a number of
episodes back now, and he was saying that this quantum
teleportation that takes advantage of quantum
entanglement has the potential, in the future, to possibly
get around Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle for
teleporting objects.
Brian should know better. It doesn’t ever get around
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. What it does is exploit the
weird behavior of quantum mechanical systems to allow, if
you very specially prepare a quantum mechanical system, you
to do what looks like teleportation. But the whole point is we
are not — we, you and me — are not specially prepared
quantum mechanical systems. We are not. One of the ways to
find that out is, if I were to take an electron and throw it at the
wall of the room I’m sitting in, every now and then, it would
literally tunnel through the wall and suddenly appear on the
other side of the wall. You can, if you wish, from now to the
end of time, run towards that wall with your head forward
and bang into the wall, and I guarantee you that you will
never end up on the other side of the wall unless you could
break a hole in the process. We are not specially prepared
quantum mechanical systems, and therefore, we can’t take
advantage of the weird quantum mechanical properties that
you can for an individual photon or even for maybe an atom
or a molecule. We can use that for maybe things like quantum
computing, but it’s not going to allow us to transport a human
being, unfortunately, and I wish it would, believe me. The
transporter is the reason I wrote the book. I found it
fascinating, and also, since unfortunately I fly all the time, I’d
love to avoid that and figure a way to avoid the security lines
in airports.
Speaking of quantum mechanics, I heard you say
something years ago that really stuck with me. You said
that people should never use the phrase quantum
mechanics and consciousness in the same sentence?
People shouldn’t. It’s all right to use in the same sentence
if you say that consciousness —
Has nothing to do with.
Well, I was going to say it has nothing to do with quantum
mechanics. That’s not true, in a sense, because quantum
mechanics is the basis of all physical phenomena. But people
who argue that you could use quantum coherence to
understand consciousness — it’s a fun word and they use it,
unfortunately, to argue for all sorts of New Age garbage. But
your brain is a complicated system with lots of particles
interacting, and it’s unlikely to expect that quantum coherence
is responsible for the nature of consciousness because
quantum coherence gets destroyed in most physical systems
because of the many particles interacting in a small fraction of
a second. Although, of course, quantum mechanics at some
level underlies the atomic interactions and chemical
interactions that are taking place that determine memory and,
in fact, biochemistry, we’re not sophisticated, coherent
quantum mechanical machines, I expect. Moreover, anyone
who makes a claim about consciousness is probably lying,
because we don’t understand the nature of consciousness.
There are lots of people who try and make a living by being
hucksters. In particular, there are those people, those awful
people, who promote things like that silly, nonsensical book,
The Secret, that suggest that quantum mechanics, if you think
about it, it will happen. If you want it, it will happen. That
somehow your desires can affect the universe, and that is the
worst garbage, the worst misrepresentation of science
mechanics. Fraudulent. It’s a lie, and people should ignore
those people, and moreover, ridicule them.
One thing I was wondering about is, you’ve talked about
how we’re just not evolved to think about quantum
mechanics because we evolved from this event in Africa. I
was wondering if you could upgrade your brain with
cybernetics or something, what abilities would be useful
for you in science? For example, being able to actually
conceptualize more than three spatial dimensions, things
like that?
Conceptualizing more than three spatial dimensions would
be great. Probably you would have to be a four-dimensional
computer to do that, but who knows? The other thing would
be to have an intuitive understanding of quantum mechanics.
Richard Feynman was fascinated with quantum computing.
He was one of the first people to talk about using quantum
mechanical principles to create new kinds of computers, as
people are actually doing nowadays, or trying to do. He
wanted to do it so he could understand quantum mechanics
better, and you might say very few people understood
quantum mechanics as well as him, but he recognized that,
because he was a classical being, he could never really
intuitively understand the quantum phenomena. So he wanted
to create a quantum computer to see those quantum
phenomena more explicitly. Of course, being able to
intuitively experience quantum mechanical phenomena by
maybe being a quantum computer might give you a whole
new appreciation of physics. In fact, maybe in the future,
computers will become conscious. I don’t see any reason why
they couldn’t. My friend Frank Wilczek, who’s another
physicist, a Nobel-prize winning physicist, has said that what
really interests him is will those computers do physics
differently than we would? It’s a fascinating question and it’d
be interesting to know.
Given the name of the show, obviously we’re big Douglas
Adams fans, and Douglas Adams wrote a sequel to The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy called The Restaurant at
the End of the Universe.
Which is the title of one of the chapters in one of my
books, by the way.
Excellent. Just based on the latest cosmological
knowledge, if you were to build a restaurant at the end of
the universe inside the time-space bubble, when would
that be and what would the view be like from the
restaurant?
Unfortunately, as I described, I think, in The Universe
from Nothing, the future is miserable in many ways, and the
universe is not likely to end with a bang but rather a whimper,
a long, boring whimper. What would happen if you were at
the restaurant at the end of the universe is you’d be very
lonely, because our universe remarkably is expanding faster
and faster. One of the great discoveries of the last twenty
years is that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.
Eventually, all the galaxies that we now see will be moving
away from us faster than light. That’s allowed. They’re not
moving through space faster than light. Space is carrying them
away faster than light, and they’ll eventually disappear in a
time frame of about two trillion years.
All the galaxies we now see will have disappeared and our
Milky Way galaxy will be alone and lonely, and all the
evidence of the Big Bang will have disappeared for physicists
who evolve on planets around stars in the far future. They’ll
look out and all of the evidence that we now have that there
was once a Big Bang will have disappeared. Ultimately, those
stars in our galaxy, or what will become the Milky Way galaxy
because we’ll collide with several other galaxies in the interim,
will burn out, and the universe will become cold, dark, and
empty. That’s the future.
As my late friend Christopher Hitchens used to say when I
talked about nothing and I explained that to him — he used to
say, “Nothing’s heading towards us about as fast as can be,
and if you ask the question ‘why is there something rather
than nothing,’ one of the good answers that he proposed was
‘just wait, there won’t be for long.’”
So, say the owners of the restaurant at the end of the
universe want to open up a new franchise location at the
beginning of the universe. What would that view look like?
They would have a hard time doing it, because all evidence
of the beginning of the universe would have disappeared,
basically. All evidence of the hot Big Bang would have
disappeared, and they wouldn’t even have access to the
information that it happened much less access to the
beginning of time. That is, of course, unless they built a time
machine.
No, I’m sorry. I’m saying if they had a time machine.
Well, if they had a time machine, they would not want to
create such a franchise because the beginning of the universe
was an equally miserable place in a very different sense. It
was unbelievably dense. In fact, if you take the things back
beyond the domain of validity, it was a single point. But we
talk about, with a straight face, a universe, and I wrote a book
about the life history of an atom. It begins when our entire
visible universe now, which contains a hundred billion
galaxies, each of which contains a hundred billion stars, was
contained in a region smaller than the size of an atom. You
have to imagine stuffing all of that energy and matter into
such a small region. It was incredibly hot, incredibly dense,
almost unfathomably so. It’s really difficult, if not impossible,
to picture everything that’s now in our universe in such a
region, but it once was, and what’s really neat is we can test
that. We can test those ideas, and we’re doing it by looking
out at the universe today and seeing remnants of that time.
That’s what makes science so fascinating.
You’ve said that it’s possible that our universe is just one
universe within a multiverse of universes, sort of bubbling
out of nothingness and coming into existence. Is that
multiverse eternal or did it itself have a beginning at some
point?
The answer is: We don’t know. It is certainly eternal into
the future if our ideas of inflation are correct, but we don’t
know. Space and time are tied together, so as far as our
universe is concerned, there may have been no before,
because time itself may be a product of the creation of our
universe — because time and space are tied together in
general relativity. Time may have come into existence when
space came into existence. We don’t know these questions,
nor do I claim to know those questions despite the fact that
some people largely ignorant of my book claim that I make
such. We don’t know the answers, and we’re trying to find
out the answers. It’s fascinating, but I guess that answer is:
stay tuned.
A lot of the breakthroughs in high-energy physics, such as
the discovery of the Higgs boson, came out of the Large
Hadron Collider, and now the European scientists are able
to do all this stuff that American scientists were not able
to do because of the canceling of the Superconducting
Super Collider, and I thought it was funny you said the
cost of the Superconducting Super Collider was equivalent
to one day’s worth of the air conditioning bill for Iraq.
One week, I think. And the question is, which is more
useful? I think, in retrospect, no one who’s sensible could
argue that learning about our origins is not more useful than
destabilizing a country for no reason, even if the country had
a dictator. We probably don’t want to get into politics. It’s sad
to think that some people claim the United States could not
afford what was then a six billion dollar machine. Six billion
dollars sounds like a lot of money, but over twenty years, it’s
not. By comparison, it’s less than the cost of probably an
aircraft carrier, and if we are so impoverished that we as a
society have to stop asking questions about our origins or the
beginning of the universe and the end of the universe because
we don’t have the money, then we are really, truly
impoverished, and I don’t think we’re there.
Another thing that’s really struck me in recent years is that
there was this presidential debate on religion moderated
by Rick Warren, and I know some people were trying to
get together a presidential science debate.
Actually, I’m one of the people. You may not know, but
I’m one of the people who helped originate that effort.
I think it’s wildly inappropriate for this religious forum in
a country with a constitutionally mandated separation of
church and state. What are the prospects for the future?
Do you think there will be a presidential science debate?
No. I’m very happy with what we managed to do. We
managed to get both candidates in the last two elections to
answer fourteen questions, not a science quiz. We didn’t ask
them what is the seventh decimal of pi. We asked them about
science policy. That’s what’s so ridiculous about a debate
about religion or faith, because all the major questions that are
going to face any president in the next decade, from the
environment to national security to health to energy, all have a
scientific basis. Science policy ultimately is vital to all of the
major political decisions that are going to take place. I think
the problem is there isn’t a science constituency, if you want.
There are people who vote single issue on abortion or gay
marriage, perhaps, but scientists can say, “We disagree with
the president. Their policies in this area are bad,” but usually
that single issue alone is not enough to affect their vote, let’s
say, and I think as long as politicians realize that people who
are fascinated by reality are not single issue voters, they’re not
going to cater to them as they do to religious fundamentalists.
That’s an unfortunate situation.
Finally, are there any other books, movies, anything else
you want to mention?
Well, I’m writing one, but it won’t be out for another few
months. No, I’ll just plug The Unbelievers again. I’m biased,
of course, but I hope people enjoy it. I think it’s an enjoyable
film as well as a thought-provoking one, and I hope people
agree. If that’s successful, we’ll be producing other ones on
science, and I’m hoping we can reach a broader audience. Of
course, that doesn’t stop the writing. I’m looking forward to
my next book, and maybe in a few years, we’ll have an
interview about that.
Looking forward to it. Lawrence Krauss, thanks so much
for joining us.
Take care.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction/fantasy talk show podcast.
It is hosted by David Barr Kirtley, who is the author of thirty short stories,
which have appeared in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales,
and Lightspeed, in books such as Armored, The Living Dead, Other Worlds
Than These, and Fantasy: The Best of the Year, and on podcasts such as
Escape Pod and Pseudopod. He lives in New York.
Artist Gallery: Rovina Cai
Rovina Cai was born in 1988 in Australia. She received a
degree in Communication Design from RMIT University in
Melbourne, Australia, then completed an MFA in Illustration
at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her work has been
featured in publications including Spectrum Fantastic Art.
She currently works as an illustrator based in New York City.
Her website is rovinacai.com.
[To view the gallery, turn the page.]
Artist Spotlight: Rovina Cai
Henry Lien
Your work is restrained in color palette and builds in
ample negative space, unlike much science fiction/fantasy
art, which is often saturated in colors and busily
composed. Are these deliberate deviations from what we
expect from science fiction/fantasy illustration?
For a long time I tried to emulate what I would see in
much of the genre, because I thought I had to fit into a certain
mould; using bright colours and making images with a lot
going on, but it just wasn’t me. I admire complex, busy
illustrations, and actually enjoyed making some “epic,” highly
rendered, very colourful images for a while — but it’s not
something that comes very naturally to me. Eventually I
started relying more on instinct and just doing what I enjoyed
most (maybe a little out of laziness, ha!). Luckily, people
seemed to respond well to it, so my work now is not so much
a deliberate deviation from what is expected in science
fiction/fantasy, but just a choice to do my own thing
regardless of fitting in.
While it does seem like science fiction/fantasy leans heavily
toward the shiny and colourful, there are actually a lot of
illustrators working in styles that might be considered
unconventional for the genre, and these are the sort of
illustrations I love best, because it challenges people’s
perceptions of what fantasy art is.
Do you feel that your experience in the illustration
industry has been unique as a female artist?
I’m fortunate to be surrounded by people who are
incredibly supportive and encouraging; my experiences and
interactions in the illustration industry so far have been very
positive. I don’t think gender has ever really come up as an
issue anywhere in my career.
How do you feel about the depictions of female figures in
most science fiction/fantasy illustration?
I am glad that there’s recently been a lot more discussion
on the issue. I think things are changing for the better. In a lot
of images where women are objectified, it’s an issue with
commercialism, and appealing to a specific demographic, not
necessarily an issue that is restricted to science fiction/fantasy
illustration. Once in a while, I’ll come across an illustration
that I think is in bad taste, but I’m not personally offended by
these images, I just find them to be examples of bad artwork,
and bad art is everywhere; it’s not worth looking at or paying
attention to. For every negative portrayal, I can think of many
examples of illustrations of women that are positive, inspiring,
and beautiful.
Can we talk about the motif of the line in your work? It is
everywhere. There are strange ribbons, cords, and threads
that spiral through your works. Even the monochromatic
works are comprised of thousands of lines. They suggest
many things. They suggest transformation, such as in the
metamorphosis of an outline of a moth into a threedimensional, full-color moth. They also suggest liberation,
such as the tethered bird that bursts out of a mechanical
torso or a tiny serpent of light rising out of a fig. Then
there are suggestions of lines cocooning and constraining,
which is reminiscent of the video for Björk’s “Cocoon,”
directed by Oscar-winning costume designer Eiko Ishioka.
What do the lines signify to you?
I was a huge Björk fan in my teenage years. I’ve never
made the connection between the Eiko Ishioka video and my
obsession with lines, but it makes sense that some of my
teenage obsessions must be lingering in my subconscious!
Line introduces a sense of movement into a piece. In my
more rendered images, I use flowing ribbons and lines as a
way to create narrative, to direct the viewer’s attention. A
teacher I had in grad school once mentioned something about
finding the wind in an image—thinking about where the wind
is coming from, and that’s what I’ve been trying to do with
line — to breathe a sense of life or spirit into my images. In
my looser drawings, I’m interested in exploring mark-making.
A mark by itself is an abstract thing, but when it’s applied to
something figurative, it takes on new meanings and
interpretations that are personal to the viewer. People see
different things in the mass of lines that make up a drawing,
whether it is the wind, or a sense of chaos, and I like that the
interpretations vary.
As artists, we do all our thinking in lines, in the form of
sketches and thumbnails. This is such an immediate form of
expression, but it’s often reserved for sketchbooks or scrap
paper, never intended to be seen as the final product, and I
think that’s a shame. Drawing is one of the most intimate
forms of image-making; you can always see an artists’ hand or
voice in a drawing, which is what makes it so fascinating. I’ve
been focusing more on making drawings recently, because I
enjoy how personal it is, and how much you can say with a
couple of simple lines.
Can you discuss the element of point of view in your
work? Most science fiction/fantasy illustrators seem to be
heavily influenced by contemporary action filmmaking in
their placement of the “camera.” The default point of view
always seems to be the one that will provide the most
sense of depth and motion and the most dramatic vantage
point. Awe seems to be the default goal. And the choice of
camera placement almost always seems calculated to draw
as much attention to itself as possible. Your work does the
exact opposite in that it places the point of view in
unshowy and intimate places, as if it were trying to make
you forget that a choice of point of view had to be made.
Is this deliberate? What does it signify to you?
It’s about achieving a certain type of atmosphere in an
illustration. Using a static, unobtrusive point of view creates a
sense of intrigue, like you’re an outside observer of a private
moment, peeking through a door or window when you’re not
supposed to.
There’s also an element of theatre in this sort of point of view;
the image is like a stage, everything is presented front-on, and
the drama and tension comes from the arrangement and
interaction of the different elements that are presented. I
generally enjoy graphical compositions — where things are
reduced to geometric shapes and appear flattened out, like in
medieval art. I think this comes from my background in
graphic design, since the goal in design is to arrange a given
set of elements (text, images, etc.) into a cohesive whole. I
often approach an illustration like it is a layout for a poster or
book design. It’s about moving elements around, finding the
right hierarchy and balance for everything.
Do you see any distinct aspects of art/illustration coming
out of Australia that are different from what is coming out
of other countries? Do you see your illustration as
inherently Australian in any way? Of course, the beloved
Shaun Tan is probably the biggest illustrator to come out
of Australia in recent years. Is it unfair to see commonality
between your work and his, especially in its gentle nature
and subtle exploration of themes involving nature and
animals?
I grew up reading Shaun Tan’s picture books and I have so
much respect for his work. He is definitely one of my
influences as an illustrator. I can remember the first time I
read each of his books, because they are so vivid and full of
meaning, and that’s the kind of effect I want my images to
have on someone else one day. When I graduated from high
school, my art teacher, who was very encouraging of my
illustration ambitions, gave me a Shaun Tan book as a
graduation gift. It meant a lot to me, and I’ve kept it ever
since as motivation and a reminder of how special illustration
is to me.
Despite there being a lot of wonderful Australian
illustrators, there isn’t much of a community here for
fantasy/science fiction illustration, especially in terms of
conventions or workshops to attend, like you would find in
the US. As a result of this, and also because illustration is
such a global thing these days, it’s hard to pick out anything
that is unique to Australian illustration. But in some work by
Australians, I recognize little things that you’d only notice or
find importance in if you’re familiar with a place. I identify
strongly with Shaun Tan’s depiction of suburbs as these
surreal, sprawling landscapes to explore, and how another
artist, Jeremy Geddes, captures a sense of emptiness through
the looming, monumental buildings of Melbourne’s inner city.
I’ve recently returned to Melbourne after three years
abroad, and it’s kind of surreal being here. Every place I visit
seems to be attached to a memory from the past. I’m hoping
to make some personal work inspired by Australia and my
experiences growing up here. I’m not sure what form this
personal work will take yet, but the city is providing plenty of
inspiration and nostalgia.
What are your greatest influences as an artist? Film?
Illustrators? Fine art painters?
This might come as a surprise since we’ve just discussed
how non-cinematic my art is, but film has been a big
influence on me. Some of my favourites are The Fountain for
its beautiful imagery and mythology, The Fall for the
costumes and cinematography, and Pan’s Labyrinth for . . .
everything!
Music also influences me a lot. I often think of illustration
in terms of music, using it as a way to figure out the mood or
theme of a piece. My musical staples include Sigur Rós,
Alcest, and film composer Clint Mansell. But sometimes my
playlist is made up of endless hours of what I called “junk
food music” like Nicki Minaj!
What is your dream project?
I’d love to illustrate a picture book. They were my first
encounter with illustration and what inspired me to pursue this
career, so it would be a dream come true to make my own
some day.
I’d also love to make a deck of tarot cards, or some other
extended project that involves working on a series of images.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Henry Lien is an art dealer in Los Angeles (glassgaragegallery.com). He
represents artists from North America, Asia, Europe, and South America. His
artists have appeared in ARTnews, Art in America, Juxtapoz, the Huffington
Post, and Time Magazine, and been collected by and exhibited in institutions
and museums around the world. Henry has also served as the President of the
West Hollywood Fine Art Dealers’ Association and a Board Member of the
West Hollywood Avenues of Art and Design. He is also the Arts Editor at
Interfictions. Henry also has extensive experience as an attorney and teaches at
UCLA Extension. In addition, Henry is a speculative fiction writer. He is a
Clarion West 2012 graduate. He has sold stories to publications including
Asimov’s, Analog, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and been nominated
for the Nebula. Visit his author website at henrylien.com.
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS
Author Spotlight: Daniel José Older
Patrick J. Stephens
Stories like “Dust” provide a very important insight into
why this kind of fiction will always remain relevant. What
are your thoughts on science fiction and its importance?
Science fiction allows us to imagine both the best and
worst of humanity. When we open our stories up to the realm
of the fantastic, we bring a new creativity and freshness to the
question of how to survive this twisted, complicated world
with our souls intact. As a genre, science fiction hasn’t always
been welcoming to different cultures and their answers to this
question — sometimes it’s not such a comfortable answer for
folks that are used to being comfortable, but I believe
literature is at its best when we sit with discomfort and open
ourselves to these challenges.
Lead us through how you discovered “Dust.” Where did it
begin, and what do you think drove you to finish it?
A few years ago, I had this very clear narrative fragment
running through my head over and over of a genderqueer
cowboy-type character on an asteroid. This character was sort
of punk rock and sort of a genius and moody and complicated
and didn’t fit in with the other folks on the asteroid and was
deeply romantic. And I knew the asteroid itself had to figure
largely into the story, as a kind of unintelligible godlike figure,
but that’s all I knew really. The idea of dust, this allencompassing physical manifestation of the asteroid that is
literally everywhere — that’s what tied all those pieces
together for me, and Jax’s emotional relationship to the
asteroid and Maya are what powered me through to the
finish.
Per that last question, what was the most compelling, or
most difficult part of the story to craft?
Well, being a cis-male, it was challenging to write a
character who doesn’t have a fixed gender. I really wanted to
allow Jax to be complex and nuanced and not play into the
traditional stereotypes that SF generally squeezes non-binary
people into. Along with that, I generally write ghost noir set in
modern-day Brooklyn, so the technological and space age
aspects of worldbuilding were new to me.
“Dust” is written in the first person, so which other voices
do you think most mirror the narrator’s? Did you identify
with any of the characters while writing?
I love Jax and Maya’s relationship, and while they’re very
different people, they share a certain balance/tension between
cynical and romantic that I very much relate to. Each of them
has the scales tipped slightly differently, but I can see how
their minds meet and make friends on that level.
What can we expect to see from you in the future?
My first novel, Half-Resurrection Blues, comes out in
January from Penguin’s Roc imprint. It’s book one of the
Bone Street Rumba urban fantasy series. And next summer
my first YA book, Shadowshaper, comes out from
Scholastic’s Arthur A. Levine Books.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrick J. Stephens graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 2012, and
has published two books since his return. Aurichrome (and Other Stories) and
Sondranos: the Narrative of Leon Bishop are both available in free e-book
form and hard copy.
Author Spotlight: Rebecca Ore
Jude Griffin
How did this story come about?
I was living in rural Virginia, where the fragments of
slavery and interracial breeding were still swirling around —
one of the people I knew was a guy whose male ancestor was
either R.J. or Hardin Reynolds — [of the] Reynolds Tobacco
family. We saw what had happened, but didn’t always
understand why things had happened. The Reynolds family
sold a slave, apparently because the other slaves hated him,
and bought a piano with the money. I don’t know if that’s a
true narrative or not, or whether the slave was sold for any
number of other reasons.
The Cotton Kingdom — who knew Olmsted had all that
rattling around in his head?
Olmsted wrote this very interesting “tour through the
Upper South,” which I’d read. A lot of the same cultural
patterns still existed, plus I found Olmsted’s account of the
white Tennessee farm owner who collected unruly blacks at
auctions and let them teach each other how to read (he
himself was illiterate).
Pantser or plotter?
I’ve done both — but do keep a tactical notebook for
things for a project, especially novels.
“The brain always interprets” — is that a concept you
revisit in other stories?
Yes. In Time’s Child (Harper Collins), it’s a minor aspect
of the story, also in the Alien Trilogy, my first books. Since I
wrote the story, I’ve seen the Harvard Unconscious Biases
test.
Any new projects you want to tell us about?
Currently learning Spanish and have done one story for
Big Click on the ways expats can screw up here by not
realizing what they’re seeing (so, yeah, that’s another “the
brain always interprets” — and can get things horribly wrong,
too). The Nicaraguan saying is “each mind is a world of its
own.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jude Griffin is an envirogeek, writer, and photographer. She has trained llamas
at the Bronx Zoo; was a volunteer EMT, firefighter, and HAZMAT responder;
worked as a guide and translator for journalists covering combat in Central
America; lived in a haunted village in Thailand; ran an international frog
monitoring network; and loves happy endings. Bonus points for frolicking
dogs and kisses backlit by a shimmering full moon.
Author Spotlight: Marie Vibbert
Sandra Odell
“Jupiter Wrestlerama” embraces noir sensibilities without
sacrificing any of the science fiction flavors of life on a
space station. What drew you to explore this combination?
This is actually a story about Niagara Falls.
I was walking in Niagara Falls, Canada, far from the strip,
with my husband. We had gotten lost and ended up on a
residential street — all these tiny bungalows so close to
massive hotels. I wondered what it was like to live in a small
town that was also a huge tourist attraction.
I wanted to write a story that took place on a space station
as the ultimate closed community — an exaggeration of the
trapped feeling of living in a small town, juxtaposed against
the freely mobile wealthy visitors.
When I sat down to write this, I had just received a critique
that none of my stories had enough plot. In a fit of pique, I
said, “You want plot? Fine. I’ll write a murder mystery. Those
are full of plot.” That naturally drew in the noir element, and
it stayed after I decided it wasn’t really a murder mystery, but
just a story with a murder in it.
Setting is important to both science fiction and noir. You
make good use of physics and biology to support the
setting without sacrificing the flow of the story: the
trampoline and guywires for wrestling matches; black
market carbs; the signs on the staircases; bone density
tests. How conscious were you of your decision to present
this information to the reader?
The setting was the whole impetus of the story, so I was
very conscious of it. Every scene started with setting for
me — the fortuneteller’s office, the gym, the Strip. Many
details I just wrote as they came to me — the trampoline, the
density tests. Others I carefully went back and added in once I
had a good handle on my plot and knew what the readers
would most need to know.
Also, I come from a blue-collar background, so it’s
important to me to show blue-collar futures. I wanted there to
be a laundromat. I wanted the characters to care about money
and keeping their jobs. I wanted a sense of class barriers
within the closed community, and barriers to escaping the
community at all.
Not only do you take on more traditional genre tropes, you
also tackle the stereotypes of larger men as courageous
brutes, and female bodybuilders as in denial of their own
femininity. What consideration did you give to your
portrayal of characters that turn these stereotypes on their
ears?
I’m particularly passionate about subverting gender roles,
and stereotypes in general. Stereotypes can be comforting,
and certainly many people build their own identity in line with
one or another, but the toughest butch you know has a My
Little Pony collection, and the sweetest, shyest flower will
punch your lights out. Real people are full of contradictions;
no one really fits the narrative perfectly, and I wanted to show
that.
Besides, if you didn’t figure it out already, I’m a fierce
warrior girly-girl. I lift weights, and you should see my party
dress collection.
Your secret identity as an SCA recreationist offers a range
of research possibilities. Have you ever taken advantage of
such possibilities to fuel your writing?
Well, I did write a story about a female alchemist in 1520s
France, but no one has accepted it yet. The experience of
being a heavy weapons fighter — a female in a maledominated sport — did color my portrayal of Kay. (My first
draft of this story focused on her infiltrating the Wrestlerama
and had her actually wrestle Jenna.)
My specialty in the SCA is Fifteenth-Century French
costuming. (I’m cited on Wikipedia!) It hasn’t really come up
in a science fiction setting for me, yet, but I have advised
many writer friends on costume for their historical pieces.
“Jupiter Wrestlerama” ends on a gritty, realistic note,
another nod towards the noirish influence. Who do you
read when you want stories that reach beyond “happily
ever after”?
The first name that comes to mind is Maureen McHugh,
who writes beautifully literary SF. Someone needs to chain
her to a keyboard and make her write more. Her endings
epitomize realism and I want to be her when I grow up.
Let me be self-indulgent and mention two of my Clarion
classmates: Alyssa Wong and Will Kaufman. Names to watch.
Their delicious dark stories will soon be the stuff of legend if
there is justice in the world.
You just finished the Clarion Write-a-Thon, and have a
story coming out in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic
Medicine Show. What else can we expect from Marie
Vibbert in the future?
It’s been an exciting year for me! Having made my third
pro sale, I just joined SFWA. I have two stories which have
been accepted, but no contracts yet, so I feel I can’t even
mention the magazines, but I’ll leak that one of them is very
noir. Femme Fatale Robot in the 1940s Noir. OH YEAH.
And I’m just . . . writing. I have something like sixty short
stories on my hard drive after all that write-a-thon-ing. Four
of them might even be good!
Oh, and I’ve written a memoir about playing women’s
tackle football, which I am terrified to show anyone, and I
have a couple other novel drafts which might someday be
revised into something readable. Maybe.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sandra Odell is an avid reader, compulsive writer, and rabid chocoholic. She
attended Clarion West in 2010. Her first collection of short stories was released
from Hydra House Books in 2012. She is currently hard at work avoiding her
first novel.
Author Spotlight: Zoran Živković
Patrick J. Stephens
Creation is a very important running theme in “The
Puzzle.” Did the various elements of creation — including
the idea of cooking days and painting — borrow from
your own perspective on the idea?
Creation is indeed a recurring theme in my fiction. In “The
Puzzle” it is presented in extremis, as one of the so-called
ultimate questions. Indeed, what is the purpose of any creative
activity sub specie aeternitatis? The older I get, the more
often I ask myself this fundamental question. If I don’t
happen to find an answer eventually, I might just follow the
steps of the protagonist of “The Puzzle” — simply to continue
living. Indeed, what other alternative do we have?
What character trait of Mr. Adam do you feel was the
most intriguing to write? The most challenging?
It was Mr. Adam’s determination to go on with any activity
he chooses to perform regardless of how gigantic its
proportions are. That trait had to be impeccably motivated in
order not to make the protagonist look like an idiot. It is for
this reason that he is a retired SETI expert.
What was the inspiration to tell a story like “The Puzzle”?
“The Puzzle” is a part of Seven Touches of Music, one of
my ten mosaic novels. It is a book about how music
occasionally offers us glimpses into deeper levels of reality.
The idea seemed very inspirational indeed, so I have written
as much as seven variations of the basic theme.
“The Puzzle” was translated from Serbian to English.
How involved were you in the translation process, and
what do you feel might have changed about your own
process as a result?
I am very, very fortunate to have Mrs. Alice Copple-Tošić
as my translator. She has translated into English eighteen out
of twenty of my books of fiction. Alice knows so perfectly
well the structure of my writing, my style, my idiosyncrasy,
that I often have an impression, while reading her translations
of my manuscripts, that my stories and novels were indeed
originally written in English.
What can we expect to see from you in the near future?
Hopefully a new book — for example, the third and final
part of the Inspector Dejan Lukic trilogy — although at the
age of sixty-five I have to be rather careful about any long-
term promises.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrick J. Stephens recently graduated from the University of Edinburgh and,
after spending the entire year writing speculative fiction, came back with a
Master’s in Social Science. His first collection (Aurichrome and Other Stories)
can be found on Kindle and Nook.
Author Spotlight: Kelly Link
Lee Hallison
This was your first published story and one that continues
to resonate for readers. What inspired it?
I hadn’t written many stories at this point. I was in my first
year of the MFA program at University of North Carolina at
Greensboro, and needed to turn something in to workshop for
the first time. Someone I knew had told me the story about
how as a teenager, they had masturbated into Kleenex, and
then had the problem of their dog wanting to eat the Kleenex.
I also wanted to write about a mother with a wooden leg, and
a surplus of dogs. I liked the idea of an awkward dinner.
Why does Rachel want Carroll to choose between love and
water?
Well, one of them is necessary. The other is also maybe
necessary, but the need for it is harder to define. It seems to
be one of the things that only jerks make you choose between.
Rachel keeps a lot of secrets. Did you start with her
character or with the idea of how loss might affect an
individual and her family?
Hard to say! I did like the idea of a family who felt,
reasonably or unreasonably, that they lost more than other
people had to, and resented it. And stories are all about
secrets, right? Keeping them or not keeping them.
Do you usually start with character, setting, or theme?
I don’t ever start with a theme. In general, I try to describe
setting as little as possible. So I guess that leaves character,
except I’m not really sure that this is where I start either. At
least not all the time.
Why did you use dogs as a motif in this story?
Well, snakes would have been too obvious and guinea pigs
not ominous enough. And there’s that whole thing in the
literature of the weird, in folktales, etc., about black dogs. But
I think the real question is why Christmas trees.
Carroll is hopeful at the end, despite the “heavy dragging
noise” coming toward him and the moody tension of his
wedding dream. Do you think he will find his Rachel or
experience true loss?
Nice try! Awful, isn’t it, the way I never end things.
What are you currently working on?
I’ve just finished a story — the last story to go into my
next collection. The collection is Get in Trouble. The story is
called “The Lesson.” I’ll also have a new story out in
Stephanie Perkins’ anthology My True Love Gave to Me. That
one’s called “The Fox and the Lady.” And then there’s
Monstrous Affections, which Gavin and I co-edited for
Candlewick. I’m taking a bit of a break to read novels.
Because the next thing I have to do is write a novel.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lee Hallison writes fiction in an old Seattle house where she lives with her
patient spouse, an impatient teen, two lovable dogs, and the memories of
several wonderful cats. She’s held many jobs — among them a bartender, a
pastry chef, a tropical plant-waterer, a CPA, and a university lecturer. An East
Coast transplant, she simply cannot fathom cherry blossoms in March.
Author Spotlight: Steve Hockensmith
Jude Griffin
How did “The Herd” come into being?
A few years back, John Joseph Adams asked if I might be
interested in contributing a story to Dead Man’s Hand, a
“Weird Western” anthology he was putting together. I thought
that sounded like a lot of fun, so eventually I whipped up
“The Herd” for him. It seemed to slip through the editorial
cracks, however, and the story didn’t make it into the book. I
just thought, “Oh, well — maybe that story sucks.” But then
John recently got back in touch to see if he could run the
story in Lightspeed. So I looked at the story again, realized to
my relief that it doesn’t suck (in my opinion), and gratefully
accepted his offer.
The title made me look for parallels between the herd
ruled over by The General, how the people in the town
were ruled, and what happened when a herd member tried
to stray: Was that your intention or was the title meant to
indicate something different?
Bingo! Yes, you’re absolutely supposed to pick up on a
parallel between the cattle and the people in the town and also
between The General and the narrator.
“Beeves”: Who knew this was a real word? Where did you
first come across it?
I’ve written a mystery series set in the Old West — the
“Holmes on the Range” novels — so I’ve done a ton of
research into cowboy life and slang. One of the things I
enjoyed most about writing the “Holmes on the Range” books
was the chance to throw around a lot of colorful words and
turns of phrase, so I did that in “The Herd,” too.
What are the challenges of mixing vocabulary across
centuries (“dude” vs. “Old Scratch,” for instance) in one
character’s speech?
I think the primary danger is corniness. If you lay it on too
thick or use a lot of clichés, you’re going to turn most modern
readers off in a big hurry. Another challenge, of course, is
coherence. You don’t want to toss in a bunch of obscure
words just to show off, because your readers will end up
doing a lot of work just to understand what you’re saying, and
again you’ll lose them. A story set in the Wild West needs
some old-timey flavor, in my opinion, but that flavoring also
needs to be sprinkled on lightly.
Why is the protagonist able to walk away from the first
bar, while his companions are not?
They don’t try to leave. They’re happy where they are. It’s
a case of bread and circuses — and beer and babes.
The power of three in stories: I expected a third
interaction around town names after Schultzton and
Goddard City: Were you tempted?
Yup. But there’s a rule of conservation at work in short
stories, too: Don’t introduce a character you don’t need to
advance the plot. I could’ve had one more person lay claim to
the town, but what other purpose would that character serve?
The protagonist briefly experiences an apparent JudeoChristian Hell, which made me wonder if the town is also
framed by the same religious outlook, but it seems more
ambiguous: Heaven for some (like Jawbone), a minor Hell
for others. What was your thinking?
What do cows make of a farm? Do they have any idea
what a semi-truck is? What do they think they’re looking at
when they peer through the slates of the trailer on the
interstate and see buildings and bridges whipping by? Do they
ever grasp what the slaughterhouse is, or is it just a swirl of
noise and light and confusion and terror? Whatever that
experience is to them, the narrator’s experience is to him.
Why do some characters blink out of existence?
It’s their time. Maybe they’ve been plumped up enough,
maybe it’s something else. We all blink out of existence
sooner or later. A lot of people have put a lot of effort into
understanding why we do — and why we were here in the
first place — but so far I haven’t heard any answers that I find
particularly satisfying.
You write across a number of genres and age groups: Any
forays into new genre/age group territories planned?
At the moment, I’ve got my hands full with two series: the
middle-grade mysteries I write with “Science Bob” Plugfelder
and the adult, tarot-themed mysteries I write with Lisa Falco.
I’m also really eager to relaunch the “Holmes on the Range”
series, and I have a million other ideas for middle-grade, YA,
and adult books in the mystery, thriller, Western, horror,
science fiction, and fantasy genres. If I live to be 300, maybe
I’ll have found time to write them all . . .
Any projects you want to tell us about?
My most important project at the moment is meeting my
next three book deadlines without having a nervous
breakdown. Wish me luck!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jude Griffin is an envirogeek, writer, and photographer. She has trained llamas
at the Bronx Zoo; was a volunteer EMT, firefighter, and HAZMAT responder;
worked as a guide and translator for journalists covering combat in Central
America; lived in a haunted village in Thailand; ran an international frog
monitoring network; and loves happy endings. Bonus points for frolicking
dogs and kisses backlit by a shimmering full moon.
Author Spotlight: Ysabeau S. Wilce
Robyn Lupo
How did this story come about for you? Where did the
voice of the narrator come from?
I wrote this story while I was at Clarion West. The whole
thing — character, voice, action — just sort of sprang, as it
were, completely out of nowhere. I stole the name Springheel
Jack from the notorious early nineteenth-century monster, but
the shiny red boots were a riff on the fairy tale of the red
shoes. Instead of making you dance until you drop, these
boots make you steal until you drop.
This story shows a lot of color: blue for the cold, the
tenement, and poverty; red for the shiny boots, and the
promise of what the boots can bring our Jack. What
prompted this choice? Do you dabble in the visual arts
yourself?
I work purely in words, but I try to be as vivid as possible
in my description. I hadn’t actually noticed until now the
oppositional use of red and blue — it was a lucky accident, I
guess.
What’s next for you? Do you think you’d expand on
Jack’s adventures as you see them?
Springheel Jack does appear in my other novels, in varying
guises. I see him as a trickster character, so I never know
where he is going to show up or what he’s going to be up to
when he does. In fact, he is a major character in my current
work in progress so we’ll definitely be hearing more from
him.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robyn Lupo has been known to frequent southwestern Ontario with her
graduate student husband and elderly dog. She writes, reads, and plays video
games. She is personal assistant to three cats.
Author Spotlight: Megan Kurashige
Liz Argall
How did this story come about?
It’s silly, but the only reason I wrote this story is because I
became irrationally attached to the title. I originally had an
idea to write a story called “The Quality of Descent” that
would be about a very long-lasting fall from a very high hot
air balloon. There was going to be a storm of golden pollen
that gave everyone clairvoyant abilities. I started writing this
story and it was terrible — leaden, plodding, completely
devoid of humor. It was so bad that there was nothing to
rescue except the title. But I loved that title. So I started
excavating the inside of my head for something the shape of
that title. I’ve had, for years and years, a recurring dream in
which I’m flying above a stage and then my massive,
ridiculously white, picture-book wings fall off. I went from
there.
This story has a great title. What are the qualities of
descent you think of when you see this title?
I’m a little obsessed with the physical act of falling.
There’s something about it that’s beautifully, dreadfully
naked. It’s hard to maintain any sort of mask or fakery when
you’re taking a surprise plunge toward the ground. My sister,
Shannon, and I once filmed a few of our friends as they
pretended to be shot. The most interesting part was when they
fell down. No matter how cheesy or slapstick or dramatic they
made it, something about their fall was a reflection of their
personalities.
So, I guess when I think of the qualities of descent, I think
of bareness and that moment of helplessness (not necessarily
a pitiable or unhappy thing) when a body has given in to
falling and is only capable of being itself while it waits for the
ground to hit.
Do you have a favorite illusionist or magician? And if so
can you tell us a bit about them and why you are drawn to
them.
I love Teller. I’ve seen the Penn & Teller show live once
and Teller does this trick in which he pulls coins from
unexpected places on an audience member’s person and
drops them into a large fishbowl full of water. That part isn’t
particularly unusual, but, at the end of the trick, he reaches
into the water and stirs it with his hands and, in the next
moment, all the coins turn into goldfish. It’s such a gorgeous
surprise. You can’t help but be delighted. I like that his tricks
make me feel something beyond astonishment. They feel like
good theater or dance, like everything is operating on different
levels of reality, metaphor, and memory.
I also have a friend who is an amateur magician. His name
is Harry Bolles and he’s always fiddling with cards or coins in
spare moments at bars or restaurants or while sitting around
and chatting. I so enjoy watching the constant craft and
obsessive practice that make tricks work. It’s like watching the
physical equivalent of telling a story. The magician has to get
everything so smooth and have it make such perfect sense that
he convinces someone else’s eyes and brain that he has bent
reality and is telling the truth.
If you’re in the mood for a YouTube rabbit hole, I
recommend looking up: Teller, Cardini, and Lennart Green.
I love all the doodles, sketches, and cartoons on your blog.
Did you do any drawings while you were working on this
story?
Thank you! Drawing is my lollygagging relaxation activity.
It feels both fiddly and functional at the same time. I don’t
think I drew much while I was writing this story, but I did
doodle a little when I was revising it. Sometimes, drawing
parts of a story out as if I were going to make it into an
illustrated book or comic really helps me clarify how I want a
story to feel. I tend to imagine my stories very visually, almost
as if I were watching a movie, so working out a bit as an
actual visual thing on a page is satisfying. I also try to write
out the words from the bit I’m doodling as beautifully as I
can, and that makes me pay attention to my habit of longwinded excess and figure out what I really want to say.
I once talked to Daniel Clowes, who is an incredible
graphic novelist. He told me that lettering by hand is
extremely important to him because he sometimes doesn’t
know what word should come next until he’s in the act of
writing it on the page, inside the world of the comic.
(If you’re unfamiliar with Clowes, but interested in
storytelling, rush yourself off to a bookstore or library and
check out The Death-Ray. It’s a masterful piece of storytelling
that does shocking things with structure and the reader’s
sympathies. Reading it made me exclaim, “You CAN DO
THAT?” at embarrassingly regular intervals.)
This story is so slippery it’s hard to write questions about;
it’s easier to experience than articulate. Let’s hope there’s
a question in amongst all these words! “The Quality of
Descent” is an interesting exploration of relationships,
intimacy, and illusion. We start with a fall that isn’t really
a fall that leaves us floating. There’s falling in and out of
love, falling from grace, a sort of fear of falling, and the
actual fall that becomes a float. The protagonist feels
weighed down by life as he observes a more numinous and
floating world. Do you think he ever learns to fly?
I don’t know! I have a rather limited imagination
sometimes. When I finish writing a story, I stop thinking about
the characters in any other context except the one I’ve left
them in. Maybe it’s a sort of laziness or placidity, but I’ve
never been someone who dreams up continuations for stories
I’ve read. Characters and story are tied up together for me,
and the thought of dragging one out of the other seems deeply
weird and awkward.
So I have no idea. Though I’d be curious if anyone else
does. I have a feeling that if I did my job properly as a
storyteller, readers might have an opinion about this.
Did you make any interesting discoveries while you were
writing this story?
It took me a very long time to finish this story. I wrote
occasional drafts of it over several years. Seriously! I’d write a
draft of it, send it out to a magazine or two, get distracted by
other things, and forget about it for months or a year. My
(immeasurably patient) friend Kat Howard read, I think, three
different versions of it, each one ages and ages apart.
I am a lazy, lazy writer. And slow. Glacially slow.
I suppose it’s interesting to carry a story around for a long
time because things happen and you can’t help but be
different every time you look at the story again. I wrote a draft
of this story when I was in despair over dance. I wrote a draft
of it when I was very in love. I wrote a draft of it when I was
very heartbroken. None of this necessarily made it into the
story, but it was interesting to see how those things changed
the way I understood what I was trying to tell.
This could also just be me making excuses for my
incredible laziness.
You draw, write, dance, and manage your own dance
company. Do you find that different forms of creativity
lend themselves to different times of day? How do you
structure your time?
For the most part, dance dictates my schedule because it
always involves other people, time, and resources that need to
be coordinated. Dance is greedy. The physical practice of it is
necessary and inescapable, and if you’re working with other
people, you have to be in the studio with them for hours and
hours. You can’t learn your own part and then come together
for a few rehearsals before a show. I’m very lucky to work in
ensembles of incredible collaborators. Being in the same room
with intelligent, generous, inspiring people and making
something together is the most deeply satisfying thing.
I usually take ballet class in the mornings, rehearse in the
afternoons, do administrative work in the evenings, and fit
everything else in the cracks. Sometimes, writing is a relief
because all I need are an idea and something to write with.
Are there any other projects you’d like to tell us about?
Yes! My sister and I are working on a dance adaptation of
Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf with our dance
company, Sharp & Fine. We are collaborating with a mixed
cast of dancers and jazz musicians, and having the musicians
move alongside the dancers. It’s been a very challenging
process, but I’m terribly excited about it. All the artists we’re
working with have a surfeit of talent, brains, and curiosity,
and I love watching and listening to them so much. It’s going
to be a fun (and unusual) show, so if you are in the San
Francisco area October 23-26, please check it out (see
sharpandfine.com/peter-and-the-wolf for information)!
I’m also working on a short story about werewolf-ish
women and a trumpet player, but I have no idea where that is
headed yet.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Liz’s short stories can be found in places like Apex Magazine, Strange
Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, and This is How You Die: Stories of the
Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine of Death. She creates the
webcomic Things Without Arms and Without Legs and writes love songs to
inanimate objects. Her previous incarnations include circus manager, refuge
worker, artists’ model, research officer for the Order of Australia Awards, farm
girl, and extensive work in the not-for-profit sector.
Author Spotlight: Lavie Tidhar
Jude Griffin
This was an amazing read, for a number of reasons: How
did it come about?
Thanks so much!
I was living on an island in the South Pacific at the time —
a very remote place called Vanua Lava in Vanuatu — and my
nearest neighbours belonged to one of those evangelical
Christian sects, which meant that every Sunday they would
turn on their generator and start preaching in Bislama as
loudly as they could (to make sure all the neighbours could
hear them!). So every Sunday I’d get a lot of “Jizas i savem
yumi!” (Jesus saved us, in Bislama) and I’d slowly go insane.
So I was sitting in my little bamboo hut staring out at the
sea and it occurred to me I should write the real story of the
New Testament, and what Jesus was really up to.
And in a way, I think, as silly as the concept (or the
execution!) sounds, it’s really at heart a story about Judaism,
about what it means to be a Jew, as embodied by two people
as different from each other as Jesus and Josephus Flavius.
But all these weird little connections kept popping up while I
was writing — Rome, the dying days of the Egyptian empire,
Cleopatra — basically it was a lot of fun to do!
So, Saiyūki (Monkey) has sucked me in — how long have
you been a fan?
I’ve been a fan since, well, there was this ‘70s (I think)
Japanese programme called Monkey Magic, which a lot of
British people I think grew up on, but I got to watch on late
night reruns on, I think it was Channel 4, when I moved to
London. And it was amazing. It’s absolutely brilliant. So that’s
me sort of mashing Monkey Magic with the New Testament.
Which makes perfect sense, really, if you think about it. Three
wise men from the east in the New Testament, and the three
companions of the Buddha in Journey to the West . . .
I mean, it’s obvious, when you think about it, isn’t it!
You weave in elements of multiple religions, history, and
plot elements from Saiyūki (Monkey): How did you keep it
all moving forward and not lose the thread of the overall
plot arc?
The plot was easy, to be honest. I stuck to Matthew, being
the closest in time and language — and I used both the
Hebrew and English versions as points of reference. So I
stuck, to a large extent, to the life of Jesus as Matthew records
it. But of course, there are all these unanswered questions.
The whole thing about Jesus going off to Egypt, growing up
there and then coming back as a man. That fascinated me! Or
the incident with the demon-possessed men in the Galilee, or
talking to the storm, or going into the desert to battle the devil.
Or the whole turning the tables of the moneylenders in the
temple. Which just begged to be rewritten as a kung fu scene.
Basically, if I could ever get Stephen Chow to make a film
version of Kung Fu Jesus (my working title!), I’d be happy. I
did try to convince an Israeli producer I worked with about
the absolute necessity of shooting it, but he hasn’t been
returning my calls . . .
But yeah, the plot was pretty easy for once! And of course
it detours into “The Roman Agent,” Josephus, since Matthew,
no offence, does sag a bit in the middle!
John as a water demon: SO PERFECT. That slayed me.
What was your process for making all the crossovers
work? Reading source material and letting it all ferment?
Haha, right, makes perfect sense doesn’t it? John
the Baptist. I think I wrote it fairly fast, but I know the
geography well (I was born a short way away from
Armageddon, after all!) and I was pretty well-versed in the
source material to begin with. I mean, really, once you realise
the two texts are essentially the same one, it just flows. And
one of my favourite things is rewriting the Sermon on the
Mount, which I did twice before in The Tel Aviv Dossier. So
doing a kung fu version of that was easy. Lots of Bruce Lee,
etc.
Really, it was one of those absolutely painless things to
write, which is so rare. It was fun! Which is not always the
case . . .
Any new projects you want to tell us about?
On the novel front, The Violent Century is coming out in
the US next year from Thomas Dunne Books — it’s a sort of
Cold War existential thriller about the Nietzschean concept of
the Übermensch.
Or, you know, superheroes.
And in the UK, my latest novel is coming out in
October — A Man Lies Dreaming, about a Yiddish pulp
writer in Auschwitz who is dreaming a sort of hardboiled pulp
novel in which a disgraced former dictator is now working as
a low-rent PI in the mean streets of London. I think it’s very
funny in parts, very dark in others — absolutely the best thing
I’ve ever written. It’s being marketed as literary fiction, I
think, though if you like noir, if you like alternative history, if
you like weird fiction, you know, it’s all in there!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jude Griffin is an envirogeek, writer, and photographer. She has trained llamas
at the Bronx Zoo; was a volunteer EMT, firefighter, and HAZMAT responder;
worked as a guide and translator for journalists covering combat in Central
America; lived in a haunted village in Thailand; ran an international frog
monitoring network; and loves happy endings. Bonus points for frolicking
dogs and kisses backlit by a shimmering full moon.
MISCELLANY
In the Next Issue of
Coming up in November, in Lightspeed . . .
We have original science fiction by Sunny Moraine (“What
Glistens Back”) and Annalee Newitz (“Drones Don’t Kill
People”), along with SF reprints by Susan C. Petrey
(“Spidersong”) and Roz Kaveney (“Instructions”).
Plus, we have original fantasy by Kat Howard (“A Flock
of Grief”) and Matthew Hughes (“Enter Saunterance”), and
fantasy reprints by Gheorghe Săsărman (“Sah-Hara,”
translated by Ursula K. Le Guin) and Jennifer Stevenson
(“Solstice”).
All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment
of author and artist spotlights, along with a pair of feature
interviews.
For our ebook readers, we also have our usual ebookexclusive novella reprint and a pair of novel excerpts.
It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out.
••••
Looking ahead beyond next month, we’ve got tons of
great stories forthcoming. We’ve got work from the following
authors coming up over the next couple of issues: Shale
Nelson, Nik Houser, Vandana Singh, Damien Angelica
Walters, Rachael Acks, and many more.
So be sure to keep an eye out for all that SFnal goodness
in the months to come. And while you’re at it, tell a friend
about Lightspeed.
Thanks for reading!
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••••
All caught up on Lightspeed? Good news! We also have lots
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About the Editor
John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and
editor-in-chief of Lightspeed, is the series editor of Best
American Science Fiction & Fantasy, published by Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the bestselling editor of many
other anthologies, such as The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World
Domination, Armored, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, and
The Living Dead. New projects coming out in 2014 and 2015
include: Help Fund My Robot Army!!! & Other Improbable
Crowdfunding Projects, Robot Uprisings, Dead Man’s Hand,
Operation Arcana, Wastelands 2, and The Apocalypse
Triptych: The End is Nigh, The End is Now, and The End
Has Come. Called “the reigning king of the anthology world”
by Barnes & Noble, John is a winner of the Hugo Award (for
which he has been nominated eight times) and is a six-time
World Fantasy Award finalist. John is also the editor and
publisher of Nightmare Magazine and is a producer for
Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find
him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.