In my editorial last month, I mentioned that the whole nature of what a magazine is has changed during the last decade. I've been giving a lot of thought to that subject over the past few weeks.

...which immediately brings us to one of the big differences. In those old days before the information superhighway ran through so many homes and offices, an editor might write an editorial on October 15, send the piece off for copyediting and typesetting, and the article would appear in print in January. Subscribers might send their first responses to the editor by the first week in February, in time for a new editorial to be composed on February 15 ... that's right, there would be a lag of four months between the first editorial and the first response to feedback.

By contrast, in the online world, an editor might write a piece on October 15, post it on their blog, and they could easily have a hundred responses by October 16. What's more, those responses aren't just traditional letters to the editor; they're notices posted online that allow for back-and-forth discussion.

Indeed, if past experience is any indication, an editorial posted online on October 15 will be thoroughly dissected and discussed by October 20 and it will probably be old news by October 24. Over and done with. On that info superhighway, things move fast.

Print magazines—even weekly publications—just can't compete with the Internet in such matters.

But what (if anything) is lost in the switch from print to electronic media?

Well, some might argue that the Internet is not friendly to the long, thoughtful, carefully considered piece. In fact, I'm one who would make just such an argument. I find it hard to read anything online that's longer than eight hundred words or so. And when I'm communicating online, I rarely have the patience to write a long piece when I can dash off something and then get feedback for it almost immediately.

But this observation is nothing new, and I'm sure veteran Web surfers are saying, “Yeah, so what? We heard all this before Web 2.0."

True. What I don't hear many people saying, however—and the reason I'm publishing this piece in print and not online—is this: the voices of people who do not use the Internet are lost. Practically every discussion that I read online assumes that everyone uses the Internet now and of course everyone in the future will use the Internet. And since these discussions are held online, no one disputes this assumption. The chorus would never claim that it won't be the one to carry the tune.

But I hear regularly from people who don't use the Internet at all. Some live in remote areas where they don't get any service. Others have health reasons like carpal tunnel syndrome or they get migraines from using a computer. And there are incarcerated folks and people who just can't afford computers, and there are stubborn folks who just don't want to go online, and there are people who have used the Internet and decided they don't like it, and....

The whole world is not online, but reading blog discussions, I get the impression that people who are trying to determine the ways of the future tend to forget this fact.

On a related note, I posted on our blog back on August 21 about the free fiction we've published on our Website. The gist of it is that I realized I'd been running the experiment of publishing fiction reprints online without ever measuring the results. So I asked readers for feedback on four questions (most of which are leading questions):

1. When you read a story online that you like, do you feel inclined to support the publisher of the piece?

2. Have you ever subscribed to a print magazine on account of a story you read on their site?

3. Most magazine publishers post their Hugo- and Nebula-nominated stories online for free. If F&SF started charging the cost of an issue to read these stories, would you pay for them?

4. Do you think the prevalence of free short fiction online has made you less inclined to pay for short fiction?

I also asked people to include their age with their responses.

Originally, I intended to reprint the entire blog post in F&SF, just to see how readers of our print edition value the online reprints. I'm still interested in hearing from readers on that count, but after the blog entry brought in 170 responses in one week, I was overwhelmed and never did publish the piece here in F&SF.

Those online responses were all over the map—dizzying, baffling, helpful, useless, hurtful, thoughtful, weird, provocative, and insightful. I did very little to solicit responses to the survey, so the respondents were a self-selected group of people, which made for some interesting results (including several comments from people who don't care for short fiction). Many of our respondents were directed to our survey by two or three writers who mentioned it in their blogs. Curiously, those writers themselves didn't respond to the survey, but a lot of other industry professionals did.

Anyway, I'm grateful to everyone who took the time to respond. In an overgeneralized and thoroughly unscientific way, here are the results:

1) Age of the respondents skewed heavily to people from twenty to forty.

2) People who read fiction online that they like are not averse to tipping the publisher if it's easy to do so, but they are much more inclined to pay money directly to the author.

3) Very few people are inspired to subscribe to publications based on reading a story or two online.

4) Most people wouldn't pay to read the Hugo- and Nebula-nominated stories online and several people seemed angry or offended at the thought of doing so. As one respondent noted, “It's weird to have to pay to read a story I'm being asked to vote for,” but I found it striking that no one drew a connection between questions 1 and 3.

5) The vast majority of respondents insisted that the prevalence of free stories online leads them to spend more on fiction, not less.

What was more interesting than any of these points, however, was the overwhelming (to me, anyway) prevalence of an attitude among the responses that publishers need to do more to cater to readers. Many people said they don't like to buy a magazine and then find they only enjoy one or two stories. Others felt there should be better ways to sample the contents of a publication before buying. Several people said they'd like to see an approach like Napster's where readers could select individual stories they'd like to read and thus assemble a magazine issue by themselves. And there was this post from Rose:

I'm in my mid-twenties, so I definitely missed the era where it was common to pay for short fiction in magazines. Every time I've ever been tempted to buy a story magazine off the newsstand a quick flip through the issue has sent me toward Vogue instead. But I do really like short story collections by my favorite authors and anthologies based around interesting topics, and I will pay for those. The difference, I guess, is that with real books I feel like I'm getting a better guarantee at quality and a more lasting value.

Do “real” books really guarantee a higher level of quality? Or is the difference that magazines strive to offer a wider variety of material while many anthologies are more narrowly focused? Consider these comments that Damon Knight made in 2001:

Avram Davidson said that an editor once told him, “Reading your stories is like eating one jelly bean after another.” Magazines provide variety that a one-author collection can't give us. In a mag issue, ideally, every story is well framed by all the others; a Davidson story is more fun if it has a Varley story on one side and a Niven story on the other.
Mag editors strive for another kind of variety. One of the great Saturday Evening Post editors, but I forget if it was Lorimer or Hibbs, said, more or less, “I give my readers a magazine that is one-third what they think they want, one-third what they really do want, and one-third what they will want when they see it.” He might have said, too, that some of the stories he published were of excellent quality, some mediocre, and some poor, corresponding to the intelligence and taste of his readers.

Does the approach that Damon outlined—the general-interest approach—appeal to readers in the digital age? Or has the Internet created a shift in reading habits? A reader wrote, “I find a magazine a highly efficient delivery vehicle for giving me a bunch of short fiction that I can read on the bus or the subway.” But then he went on to say, “But I also realize that I'm a fifty-year-old guy and may well be in the last generation of reading newspapers and magazines."

I've got more questions than answers right now, but I plan to explore this topic further in future editorials. I hope to hear from readers with thoughts to share on the subject.

Notice for Subscribers

With this issue, F&SF moves to a bimonthly schedule. Although the change was mentioned in the editorial last month, we realize this change is rather abrupt, for which we apologize. Economic forces (particularly postal rate increases) have led us to publish bimonthly double issues.

Subscribers can find their subscription expiration dates on their mailing labels, at the end of the line above the name. If your subscription expired with the December 2009 or with the January 2010 issue, it now expires with the Dec./Jan. 2009-2010 issue. So anyone who subscribed for one year will receive a year's worth of issues. Subscribers with questions can always contact us through our Website or by phone or mail.

We thank our readers—both longtime and new—and we look forward to publishing F&SF long into the future. Take a look at this issue's competition for a chance to win a subscription for the next sixty years.

Sean McMullen recently completed his Ph.D. by studying the popularity of medieval fantasy in literature and movies. The degree doesn't have much bearing on his job as an IT Analyst in the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, but it might have had a bit of an impact on his fiction, including this new tale. Sean—oops, make that Dr. McMullen—says about this story that the design of the ships’ engine was tested in model form and later confirmed by a real marine engineer.

It was Anno Domine 1449, and the world was about to change. An idea was approaching the market town of Keswick, just north of Derwentwater. The name of that idea was La Hachette, and she already had a following.

Sir Gerald always rose from his bed a half hour before first light and walked from Keswick to the Derwent River. Every day, for seven years, the hour before dawn and the hour following sunset would find the knight sitting on a rock that had become known as Gerald's Watch. The rock was near a bridge of planks and poles that spanned the river.

In Keswick it was well known that Gerald did not tolerate company while he waited and watched, and so he was surprised as well as angered when a figure came into view in the half-light before morning. At distance it looked to be a man carrying an infant, then Gerald noticed that the bundle was glowing. The intruder stopped a little upstream. The knight was able to make out the shape of a helmet and the gleam of chainmail in the weak light.

Gerald strung his bow before striding down to the water's edge. The intruder had arrived at the very worst time possible, and Gerald had opened his mouth to say as much when he saw a little boat on the water. Curiosity smothered the knight's anger.

The boat was half a yard long, with six thick candles burning along its keel. Astride them was the metal rendering of a long, thin dog, its head facing backwards and its tail raised to display its bottom to wherever the boat might go.

"Sir, do you know who I am?” asked Gerald, deciding to be polite because he was intrigued.

"You are Sir Gerald of Ashdayle,” replied a soft but commanding voice. “You sit here every morning and evening, seeking revenge."

"And who might you be?"

"I am Tordral."

"The master armorer?"

"None other. Look into my boat, what do you see?"

Although inclined to tell Tordral to move on, Gerald looked.

"I see a metal dog, and beneath it burn six candles. From its head protrudes a spigot.... A sufflator! The brass dog is a sufflator. I have seen them used in France."

"Very good. Turn the spigot, and steam gushes from the jaws."

Suddenly Gerald remembered why he was there.

"If you know me, you must know I am not to be disturbed,” he said sternly.

"What use has a sufflator?” Tordral asked, ignoring the warning.

"I—ah, they are vessels that are half filled with water and heated by a small fire until steam gushes from the mouth. They may be used like a bellows to make a fire blaze up, even in wet wood."

"True. Now watch."

Tordral turned the spigot in the dog's head. A jet of steam blasted from its mouth, so loudly and abruptly that Gerald sprang back and put an arrow to his bow in a single movement.

"Be at ease, Sir Gerald,” said Tordral above the sharp hissing.

The armorer aimed the boat into the middle of river, then released it. Amid clouds of steam, it drew away from the bank. Gerald crossed himself.

"Had I not seen, I would not have believed,” he said fearfully.

"As a child, I found that a rock flung from a boat's stern will propel it forward a trifle."

"But your boat flings no rocks,” said Gerald.

"My boat is flinging steam."

Gerald stared after the boat. It was now moving at the pace of a walking man.

"So, your toy can cross a river,” he said, again remembering that Tordral was intruding. “Am I meant to be impressed, or—It's gone!"

"Observant of you."

"At the river's midpoint, it vanished. How? Where? It did not sink, I was watching."

"You know the lore of boundaries, Sir Gerald. This stretch of the Derwent River is special. It exists in both our world and another. The banks are a boundary between earth and water, the midpoint is a boundary between one half of the river and the other, but crossing between worlds involves more than just crossing a river. You can only do it where the boundaries exist in both worlds, and during the half light boundary times, dusk or first light, that are neither night nor day."

"Are you saying that your toy has gone to another world?"

"It has left this world, I claim no more."

Gerald walked out onto the bridge and looked down into the water. There was no trace of the boat. Here was none of the ceremony and incantation of religion or hedgerow magic, yet here was something extraordinary. He walked back to the east bank. Tordral was dressed in chainmail, but wore no surcoat or cloak, as warriors would. It was as if chainmail instead of cloth had been used to fashion a very ordinary tunic and trews. The helmet was an archaic type that left the lower half of the face visible even when the visor was down.

"Sir, what are your intentions?” Gerald asked.

"I am an armorer, you are a knight. You need a weapon, I devise weapons. I have just demonstrated a weapon."

"That toy, a weapon?"

"Oh yes,” said Tordral. “It can reach your enemy, even if your enemy is in another world."

"Tordral of—Tordral, what is the whole of your name?"

"Tordral is all of it, sir. I have a past that is best left unspoken."

"As you will. Would you walk with me back to Keswick? It is past dawn, so my half-light vigil is over."

Tordral was aware that Sir Gerald was not an ally as yet. Gerald was a warrior, and warriors were well known for being suspicious when faced with novel weapons. He had to be won over slowly; there was no advantage in pressing the matter too hard.

"Your mode of clothing intrigues me,” said Gerald as they walked. “Why wear a helmet and chainmail, even when at leisure?"

"It hides my form. I have been twisted by our common enemy."

Gerald smiled. Tordral feigned not to notice.

"Ah, then be called my friend. May I ask of your boat?"

He feigns quick friendship, to render me eager and careless, thought Tordral. Now is the moment for extreme care.

"My boat has no secrets, it merely combines all four elements: air, water, fire, and earth. It is a living creature, but without life."

"Impossible!"

"By being impossible, it can cross between worlds. Rules do not constrain it, Sir Gerald, neither rules of natural philosophy, nor philosophy unnatural."

"Could you make it large enough to carry warriors?"

"No."

Gerald gasped with surprise. Anyone wishing to part him from his gold would definitely have claimed it possible.

"But surely your toy is reality made small?"

Tordral knew that this was another awkward moment. Understanding the boat's principle required intelligence, and intelligence was not high on the list of requirements for knighthood. Still, Gerald came from a family that valued scholarship, so there was hope.

"There is an effect called diminishment of scale, Sir Gerald. To be impelled by a jet of steam, even a small barge would need a sufflator of truly vast size. Try to build a sufflator bigger than a common barrel, and it will burst."

"Why is that?"

"I cannot say. Perhaps the nature of steel itself, perhaps the ability of blacksmiths to render steel hard. A barge impelled by the biggest workable sufflator would not outpace a duck in no great hurry. The slightest breeze or current would drive it back."

"But you clearly want my patronage. What do you propose?"

"A bombard, Sir Gerald. A bombard that can shoot an iron ball using air, water, fire, and earth."

Gerald shook his head and gave a little snort of disappointment.

"I have tried shooting a gonne across the river at half-light, just as I have tried shooting arrows. The shots merely hit the far bank. They stayed in this world."

"As they would."

"Well then, Master Tordral, what is a gonne but a bombard made small?"

"Gonnes and bombards propel metal balls by black powder. That is merely earth driven by air and fire, but I can build a steam bombard to shoot balls of iron between worlds. Steam, which is water, rendered into air by fire burning wood."

"All four elements. Could you really do it?"

"You have seen what I can do."

"And your fee?"

"None."

"No fee?"

"Our common enemy has twisted me, Sir Gerald, I want only vengeance. Just provide metals, timbers, and such other materials as I need. Beyond that, the upkeep of twenty men and women for three months, and one breech-loading bombard, made of bronze, with a bore large enough to admit a mailed fist without contact."

"An odd list. Costly, but not unreasonably so."

"The weapon exists only in my head, so it must be lured out with gold and toil,” said Tordral, aware that the knight's trust still had to be lured out as well.

They reached a small tower on the edge of Keswick. Gerald took out a brass key and opened a gate in a high wall. Behind the wall was a beautiful but unkempt garden, with bowers and stone seats half-smothered in bushes and vines.

"I must go my way,” began Tordral.

"No! No, stay. For seven years I have been plagued by physicians selling eye potions to make elves visible, rogues peddling goblin traps, and fraudsters selling fairy nets. They demand gold, but offer no proof. You offer proof, but ask no payment. For that you have my attention."

"I am honored."

"You say you were twisted by our enemy, but your very name derives from the French word for twisted."

"Indeed, but that was not always my name. Are we allies?"

"You tempt me. I have kept vigil at that bridge for seven years. I have seen eyes watching me that float upon air, I have shot good arrows with heads of cold iron at illusions that dispersed like smoke, and I have fallen into slumber then awakened to find my bowstring cut. Their laughter mocks me from invisible lips, yet still I stalk them, because ... come in for a moment, I would show you something."

They entered the garden, which was bright with flowers and heady with their scent. Gerald turned about several times, his arms outstretched.

"Enchanting, is it not? The illuminations in holy books show paradise as a vast church, but I think it is a garden."

"Briar roses, grown in spirals,” said Tordral, slowly pacing along a path leading to the center. “Dozens of them, except for that big, wild bush in the middle."

"My grandmother was one to control people, animals, and anything else alive. It was she who twisted the wild and untamed briar roses into spirals. After her death, my sister Mayliene tried to straighten one of them, but it snapped at the base and died. She planted a young briar in its place and let it grow quite free."

"That central bush?"

"Yes."

"A symbol of freedom amid those without hope,” said Tordral, nodding.

Sir Gerald pressed his lips together and breathed heavily and evenly, as if trying to fight down the urge to sob. He was betrayed by a tear which meandered down his cheek.

"Master Tordral, tell my sensechal all you need. I shall support you."

"So very easily?” replied Tordral, genuinely surprised by the sudden change in the knight.

"You and my sister ... you are of a kind. I think she would have liked you. I know you would have liked her."

Gerald gestured to a stone seat half smothered in ivy.

"Fourteen years ago that was her favored place for reading. She knew five languages, and read Aristotle as easily as any French roman courtois. I was lying on the grass, not four yards away, when a great lethargy washed over me and I was scarcely able to move. As I lay helpless, an elf lord came. He tried to entice Mayliene away to Faerie. Do you think that sounds insane? Feel free to laugh."

"I believe, pray continue,” said Tordral in a voice held studiously level. This was the moment a charlatan would sound sincerely sympathetic, so this was a very bad moment to offer sympathy.

"She refused his advances."

"Brave girl, elves take badly to rejection."

"Indeed. He—he had his revenge. He afflicted her with a cruel but subtle blight. She had to be sent to a convent, to be cared for as an invalid. For seven years she languished there, then one morning her footprints were found leading into a river. I returned from the wars in France and came here, to my family's summer tower. I have kept my fruitless vigil ever since."

"Not fruitless, Sir Gerald. Over the years I have gathered many others blighted by Faerie into my company. It was the story of your vigil that drew me here."

"Then if you succeed, my vigil of seven years will be time well spent."

A massive blast echoed among the hills around Keswick. The shouting and bustle in the town market suddenly died away, then slowly picked up again. Shepherds cursed as startled sheep and sheepdogs scattered in panic. Sir Gerald was on the way to see Tordral, and although his palfrey was used to bombard fire, the horse drawing the cart behind him reared and almost bolted. The encampment where Tordral worked was on the shores of Derwentwater, a quarter mile from Keswick. A barn had been turned into an immense blacksmith's shop, and so much smoke was pouring from it that a stranger might have fancied it to be on fire.

As Jon, the blacksmith, carried his dead apprentice out of the barn, he noticed Gerald approaching, escorting the cart. After leaving the youth's body with the women of Tordral's company, he greeted the knight.

"A serious accident?” asked Gerald.

"No, just a stupid boy. He thought to play the fool while the rest of us took cover. A bright and cheery soul, but stupid."

"Here is an Italian gold florin, looted in France,” said Gerald, tossing the coin to Jon. “Have it sent it to his family, with my condolences."

"Consider it done, lordship,” said Jon, bowing.

"So, the accident was not serious?"

"No accident, just trialings."

Jon deliberately kept his manner brusque, and measured out his words with care. People had the idea that hard, strong smiths made hard, strong weapons, so he had an image to live up to. Jon was also painfully aware of having a rare and conspicuous accent.

"You seem unmoved by the death of your apprentice,” said Gerald reproachfully.

"The dead are gone. The living have work to do."

"A good philosophy, if bleak. You should have been a knight."

"I was."

The concept of a knight abandoning his position and status to become an artisan was too much for Gerald to comprehend. He dismounted in silence and left his palfrey with his carter. Jon led the way into the barn, explaining that parts were not entirely safe.

"I cannot see Tordral,” said Gerald anxiously as he looked around.

"Away on Derwentwater, taking plumbline soundings."

"For what reason?"

"Didn't say."

Gerald stumbled over a piece of wreckage, and very nearly fell.

"Someone seems to have been roasting a steel dragon over a spit when it exploded,” he said, pointing to a tangle of grotesquely twisted metal.

"Fine result, lordship,” replied Jon. “See here? Progress."

The blacksmith pointed to a shard of metal the size of a hand that had embedded itself in a shelter wall of rough-hewn logs. Gerald gasped with surprise, which gratified Jon. The shard had struck a four-inch-thick log with such force that part of it was protruding from the other side.

"By the very heavens!” exclaimed the knight. “How did you do this?"

"Steam burst, done with care."

"So steam really can be as potent as black powder?"

"Yes. We have been trialing steam explosions, of late."

"They have been upon my mind as well,” said the knight. “Should it come to that, everyone within five miles has been aware of them."

"There's many types."

"Many? Is not one boom much the same as any other?"

"Not so. Either a sufflator's barrel bursts, or a connecting pipe gives way. I began making steam pipes weaker than the sufflators, so bursts would do less damage. Then Master says, make the pipe repair itself. Clever one, the Master."

"I ... please explain?” asked the knight.

"Master Tordral used ashwood sliverts holding a plugsert within the pipe. When steam pressure gets near to bursting, the plugsert bends the slivert a mite, and steam escapes until the pressure's eased. Master calls it a steam guard."

"I understood none of that,” Gerald admitted.

"It works,” said Jon with a shrug.

"But your sufflator has terrible damage,” said Gerald, waving at the wreckage again.

Jon tapped the shard embedded in the log.

"Intentional,” he explained. “I was trialing how forcefully steel shards can get flung."

"I see, even though I don't understand. Jon, I have been thinking."

"I leave that to the Master, lordship."

"Your steam bombard is a device of air, water, fire, and earth, but the metal projectile that it flings is merely earth. Surely it cannot breach the portal between worlds, as did the little boat."

"True, lordship,” said Jon, already aware that the knight was leading him to an ambush.

"Then why is Tordral wasting your time and my gold on steam explosions?"

"Master Tordral says iron balls, shot from a steam bombard, will destroy portals between this world and Faerie."

"Destroy them?"

"Aye."

"Not pass through them?"

"No."

"It's not what he promised."

"We discovered same by trial. Trials don't always tell us what we expect."

Jon was always left in charge when Tordral was away. He was known to speak slowly, and because he spoke slowly and chose words with care, he could be trusted to tell a lie with absolute consistency.

"Destroy portals to Faerie, I do believe I like that better than crossing them,” Gerald decided. “How much longer?"

"Can't say. The like's never been done."

"I cannot bear the cost forever, Jon. My brothers say I squander the family inheritance, and the king complains that we do not support him enough against the French."

"Then use the old ways, lordship: riddles, curses, spellwords, gifts, talismans, tricks, and vigils."

"Yes, yes, I concede. One cannot fight Faerie with Faerie's weapons, yet my support will not always be mine to give."

"We understand, lordship, and we work for nothing."

"Ah, I know that, and I appreciate it. Come out to the cart, I brought a token of that appreciation."

Several men and women had gathered around the cart, which Gerald's squire Kalran was guarding. Jon was not prepared for what was in the tray.

"A spiral briar in a pot?” he exclaimed.

"A symbol, Jon, a living symbol for us to follow, like a pennant, banner, or coat of arms. A symbol of those people twisted while they were young and soft, then grew older, harder, and very, very thorny."

Jon put his hands on his hips and nodded. Images floated before his eyes, and none of them were from the world of humans.

"Beautiful flowers can grow from twisted stems,” he said to the rose as much to those around him. “This will remind us of it."

"So, you too had a dear one taken?” asked Gerald knowingly.

"I was once a surpassing fair young knight, lordship. Even Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine thought me worthy to be her lover."

"Eleanor of—but she died two and a half centuries ago."

"True. You see ... an elf queen thought me surpassing fair as well."

The ship being built on the shores of Derwentwater was of an ancient Norman design. It had the solidity of a barge, heavy decking, and was cut off flat at the bow. Amidships was a low cabin, and within this was a clay and gravel bed for a large hearth. It was nearly complete when Tordral arrived for the twelfth weekly inspection.

"As I sees it, Master, ye got purpose conflictin’ problems,” said the shipwright, Ivain, as they circled the vessel with Tordral's apprentice Harald.

"Explain,” said the armorer.

"It's scale, ye know? Derwentwater's a puddle. Why build a ship big enough ter carry horses, when ye could ride around the lake as easy?"

"The why is my affair, Ivain. You are charged with the building."

"I done that. Twenty yards long, five yards beam, ready ter launch, but...."

"But?"

"There's bits I don't understand. Ye got the bow cut flat. That's bad in heavy seas. Water gets in."

"Derwentwater is only three miles long, its greatest waves are scarcely above ankle height. I want the bow clear for the bombard to fire. What else?"

"A bombard on a ship. It brings no advantage."

"Why not?"

"Word o’ new weapons gets out, sailors talk, ye know? Buy ‘em a few ales an’ their sense flies south like the swallows in autumn, then—"

"Come to the point."

"Point is, soon everyone's got a ship wi’ a bombard. If two ships wi’ bombards fight, they'll sink each other every time. A bombard's too bleedin’ powerful, an’ wood is nae strong enough. There's no advantage."

"Advantage or not, my ship must have a bombard. What else?"

"It's the two holes in the bow, and another two in the stern."

"Fine holes they are, too."

"Those at the bow are a fingerspan below the waterline."

"As they should be."

"Those at the stern are half a yard below."

"And placed precisely as I asked."

"Holes in a ship make it inclined ter sink."

"Ah, but the holes are to take two brass pipes that will run the length of the ship. They are for the water to flow along."

"Ye want water to flow inside the ship?"

"Indeed I do."

The shipwright muttered something in an obscure dialect and scratched his head.

"This is a ship of dreams,” explained Tordral. “Your place is to build, mine is to dream."

Ivain folded his arms, stared at the ship and shook his head. He had no idea what he was building, but if Tordral was happy, that was enough for him.

"May yer dreams be the nightmares o’ Faerie, Master. Oh, an’ see? I built a frame for our spiral briar's pot."

"Splendid. She is one of us, she must not be left behind."

"Master?"

"Ask."

"We of yer company, we're all twisted by Faerie. Took me, they did. When I returned, nobody wanted ships such as I'm skilled for."

"I do."

"Master, I always wondered what they did to yerself."

"As they cheapened your skills, so they took my vision, Ivain. I can but focus a handspan from my nose, and must use concave spectacles like Emperor Nero's emerald glass to see at distance."

"They're in yer visor?"

"Yes."

"Hah, that's clever! Elves got magic, but none's so clever in scholarship as yerself, an’ scholarship beats magic any day. Last question?"

"Last answer."

"What's the ship's name?"

"I have dreamed her name to be La Hachette."

"La Hachette? Aht, like that. Pretty name, but strong. I'll paint a battleaxe on the bow."

"The image suits her, Ivain. She will like that."

Sergeant Renard had decreed that the bombard was to be trial-fired on the flatlands south of Derwentwater. Against the advice of his English crew, he also ordered that the weapon be left on the waggon that had brought it there. A target tower of logs had been erected on the shore of the lake, and the bombard deployed a quarter mile inland. Renard had been expecting Tordral and Sir Gerald to attend the first firing, but not the ox cart that came with them. It was being driven by a priest, and in the tray were four nuns.

Introductions were made. The abbess and three nuns were from a convent north of Bassenwater, and the priest was from Keswick

"We heard of your bombard,” said the abbess, batting her eyelashes at Renard. “We are very curious about it."

Renard noted that she was young, pretty, and vivacious, and suspected that she did not rule her little domain with a rod of iron. An excess daughter of a great and rich family, disposed of into the service of the church, he decided.

"The bombard is a fearsome engine,” the French sergeant warned. “Are you sure that your heart is equal to it?"

"I have encountered my share of fearsome engines, Sergeant Renard. Yours will not affright me."

Neither this nor the other, thought Renard as he gestured to three yards of massive brass pipe bound with heavy bands and clamped to a timber beam between two woodblock wheels.

"It is ugly to behold, but its performance should thrill you to the very core,” he said with an eyebrow raised.

"Many worthy engines are ugly to behold yet give fair service,” she replied, riposting with a sidelong smirk.

Two nuns giggled, the third looked puzzled for a moment, then frowned suspiciously. The priest developed an intense interest in the bombard's breechblock release lever as the two giggling nuns shared some joke about the weapon's shape.

"Why is it wound about with briar roses?” asked the abbess.

"To remind us that even the ugly and powerful may fight for the pretty and frail,” said Gerald, who now began a short introduction to black powder weapons for his visitors.

"Why have them here?” hissed Renard to Tordral.

"There's talk of magic hereabouts. People hear explosions, then whisper that we are magicians trying to harness thunderbolts. I want it known that common black powder weapons are responsible. Come, let us be part of it."

They circled the wheeled gun, while Gerald proudly explained its finer points.

"Bought from the French, but built in Bohemia. It is the finest that bribery may buy, and the best fashioned in all the world."

"It is smaller than I thought,” said the abbess.

"Ah, the eternal complaint of ladies,” sighed Renard, and three of the four women tittered. “Indeed, most bombards have a huge bore and shoot balls of stone. This is a new type, stronger and more finely made. It shoots smaller iron balls, but with very great power and accuracy."

"We should stand upwind of it for the shot,” said Gerald, again competing for the attention of the abbess. “Observe, if you will, the target over yonder."

"The tower on the lake's shore?” asked the abbess.

"Yes. Would you like the honor?"

"Your pardon?"

"Renard has a spear with a burning rag soaked in mutton fat impaled on the point. At the word ‘Fire!’ you need only touch it to that little pile of black powder near the base of the tube."

"Oh I could not!” exclaimed the abbess with a coy gesture.

"I shall help."

"Oh no, really."

"Anyone can do it. Renard, give it here. Now then, take the spear by the base."

"Please, I am too clumsy,” laughed the abbess. “I cannot even be trusted to cut up vegetables."

"I'll help. Renard will call."

Gerald's hands pressed against hers on the shaft of the spear. The flaming rag hovered above the pile of black powder. Being French, Renard was inclined to draw out the moment for the couple's benefit.

"Fire!"

The rag dropped. There was a hiss as the priming powder ignited, then they were assailed by a sound like a thunderclap bursting in a confessional chamber, together with a flash as bright as lightning and a cloud of smoke that reeked of sulphur. The abbess shrieked and flung her arms around Sir Gerald. The smoke billowed aside in time to show something too swift to be seen smash the top of the tower to splinters. Moments later, a plume of water erupted high into the air far out on the glassy surface of Derwentwater.

Renard noticed that one of the nuns had fainted. The other two were fleeing down the road just as fast as their feet could be willed to move. Ahead of them was the priest, although the nuns were rapidly catching up. The ox had not bothered to use the road, but had fled straight over a field. Behind it the cart was disintegrating as it bounced and crashed over the rough ground. The branches of briar wound about the bombard's barrel had lost most of their leaves, and all of their flowers.

"I did not know oxen could gallop,” said Renard.

"I did not know nuns could sprint,” said Gerald.

"I appear to have hit that tower,” said the abbess.

"Nice shot,” said Gerald.

"You have your arms around each other,” observed Renard.

Abbess and knight drew apart. Ward, the yeoman of men-at-arms, put a hand on his biceps, made a fist, and smiled at Gerald.

"Was that a rude gesture?” asked the abbess.

"I—ah, it was a traditional gesture of congratulations,” stammered Gerald.

"It means good shot,” said Renard helpfully, his head tilted at an angle and his arms folded.

"Oh? Indeed!"

The abbess returned the gesture. Ward went bright red. Renard covered his face with his hand.

"Thank you so much for letting me play with your engine,” said the abbess. “I felt as if I were Zeus, hurling a thunderbolt."

"You are so much more fair than Zeus."

"Oh, so gracious of you, Sir Gerald! Is there something I may do in return?"

"I, well, perhaps ... the garden of Keswick Tower and its famous spiral briars have fallen into neglect since my sister departed. My seneschal does his best, but he is old. Perhaps your nuns could work upon it?"

The abbess ran her fingers down Gerald's arm.

"A splendid idea, and we two could watch and supervise from a tower window, to gain a better view."

She now set about trying to revive the nun who had fainted. Gerald and Renard joined Tordral at the bombard.

"What do you think?” asked Gerald.

"I think the lewd baggage fancies you,” replied Tordral.

"Indeed, lordship, I believe a view of your bedchamber's roofing beams would please her far more than one of your garden,” added Renard.

"I meant the bombard!” snapped Gerald.

"Quite splendid,” said Tordral. “But Renard, why did you leave it on the waggon frame?"

"It is a French technique. Letting a bombard disperse its recoil by rolling back is better than chaining it down to a ship's deck. It puts less strain on the timbers when it is fired."

"Then we shall do so too. I shall ride to the moorings and have La Hachette rowed here this very day. Have the bombard put aboard, then fire a few shots to refine your skills."

"As you will, Master."

Once Tordral was safely away, Gerald turned to Renard.

"I have been meaning to ask of La Hachette,” he said casually. “Tordral is gone, but perhaps you can help."

"Ask, I shall answer."

"Why a ship?"

Renard gestured north, across the lake.

"Because the enemy is stalking us. They are suspicious of what we do."

"How can you know that?"

"Last night Ivain was taken."

"The shipwright? You mean ... gone?"

"Not so. He was found in the lakeside woods, not long after dawn. All that he could do was rave about an elfin lady of surpassing beauty."

"He was englamored?"

"Yes. Elves are fair to behold, and some minds are more pliant than others. Doubtless some elfin beauty appeared to Ivain with the promise of restored youth, her hand in marriage, and eternity shared in some enchanted palace. Most likely he babbled all he knew. Most likely she giggled, then vanished."

"All he knew,” sighed Gerald. “How much was that?"

"Little of worth. How could Faerie be threatened by a ship with holes to let the water in, a hearth amidships, decking strong enough to take a bombard, a spiral briar in a pot, and a crew of angry, twisted people?"

"Agreed, agreed. In truth, that even tells me little."

"But that is the danger!” hissed Renard conspiratorially. “They are curious, so they will be back."

"I see, I think. But again I ask it, why a ship?"

"While floating on Derwentwater, our work goes unseen by unwelcome eyes. A ship on a lake is not easily spied upon."

"But surely the work is almost done."

"The Master has perfected the parts needed to power a bombard by steam, Sir Gerald. Making them work in harmony, ah, that is still our challenge."

Gerald now set off for Keswick. Renard and Ward stood staring after him.

"He smiles and banters nonsense with ladies,” sighed Renard. “It does me good to see him happy."

"His cheer may be our undoing,” warned Ward. “A happy man is not bitter. His bitterness provides our gold."

"Do you suggest that we keep him twisted like the briar?"

"No, no ... but we need him. Without him there's no gold."

"We are lying to him about the steam bombard. He will work that out soon enough, and when he does, the gold will stop anyway."

"Then what's to do? Are we lost?"

"My friend, we already have the pieces. No more gold is needed to make them work in harmony, just wit. Why not cut Sir Gerald free, to grow untwisted?"

"If the pieces never work in harmony, new pieces will require more gold."

Being a master artisan, Guy was not inclined to take orders from peers. Priests, bishops, even great lords had called upon him to build or repair the public clocks that were the pride of many towns and cities. Even though he deferred to Tordral, he was still inclined to little displays of defiance. Walking alone when all others went in pairs flouted Tordral's orders just sufficiently to soothe Guy's pride.

On this night Guy had a message for his master. The war had begun, even though the enemy did not know it. Tordral slept in a small hut a short distance from the barn. Through ill-fitting wooden planks Guy could see a lamp burning within. He had just raised his hand to knock when he felt a knife at his throat.

"Master?” asked Guy hopefully.

"Why are you alone?” demanded Tordral.

"I—I—"

"Never flout my orders. Always walk in company."

"But you work alone."

"I am beyond temptation,” said Tordral, sounding almost amused, “but Faerie's rulers know where your softest and most vulnerable aspects are, my friend. I am a spiral briar, twisted and full of thorns. They do not have the resolve to grasp me, so they reach out for my people. Ivain was first. You may be next."

"My apologies, in full truth."

"Well, why are you here?"

"The footbridge on the Derwent River is afire. You can see it from—"

"Our signal!” exclaimed Tordral. “It is Lammas Eve, a magical night. Yes, it makes sense."

Flinging the hut's door open, Tordral smashed the pottery lamp that was burning within. Bright yellow flames blazed up.

"What does it mean, Master?” Guy asked as they set off for the lake.

"A secret ally has set the bridge afire, trapping an elf lord in this world."

"Trapping him? How?"

"He can only return by the portal he crossed through. A bridge in Faerie parallels the bridge in our world. Destroy one, and the other is useless. Hurry, we cannot even spare the time for a piss."

"La Hachette is not ready to fight,” insisted Guy. “The mechanism—"

"The elf may englamor the folk of Keswick to attack us. We must keep La Hachette safe."

In just a quarter hour, La Hachette was being rowed clear of the landing. Behind them, the barn was blazing fiercely. The little ship moved slowly, even with most of the company at the oars. As they rowed, Tordral briefed the uninitiated about what La Hachette really was. Most were astonished.

"There are several islands on the lake,” Tordral concluded. “La Hachette will not stand out while moored against one of them."

"Master, this is a twenty-yard ship on a three-mile lake. Seen we will be."

"But not straightaway. We can barter a little more time from Lady Fortune."

There was a bright flash to the northeast, and a fireball erupted into the night sky moments before the sound of the distant blast rolled over them. It dispersed its echoes among the hills.

"That barrel of black powder will not dupe anyone into thinking we had a terrible accident,” said Ward. “There's no bodies or boat."

"They may think La Hachette sank with all of us aboard,” said Tordral. “Every moment saved gives us time for trials."

Suddenly Guy felt the full weight of what loomed over them.

"Eighty-six trials of settings and lever lengths remain,” he said as he pulled at his oar. “We manage one trial in the hour, so that is a week. Do we have food for a week, Master?"

"Perhaps. Sergeant Renard, are we beyond bowshot from land?"

"I think it,” replied Renard.

"Then ship oars. Steam warden, light the impeller and patron furnaces, then close the steam gates. The rest of you, we left in haste and packed our stores with no care. Secure everything now. Sergeant, ready your bombard for action. Meg, take the spiral briar, mount her in her frame."

"As said, ‘tis done."

Presently steam began to hiss from the steam guards, announcing that the main sufflator was ready.

"Dexter and sinister gatemen, stand ready,” said Tordral, who was at the tiller. “Steam warden, report."

"Pleased to declare sufflators at strength."

"Commence heartbeat with dexter,” called Tordral.

"Dexter impeller gate closed,” called dexter gateman. “Dexter steam gate open."

"Sinister impeller gate open,” responded sinister gateman.

They chant a spell of a new magic, thought Guy. Iron magic. La Hachette began to move, slowly gathering speed as the steam from the sufflator forced the water in the right impeller pipe down and back, like a piston. After some moments there was a bubbling chuff as the last of the water was driven from the right pipe and the steam began to escape.

"Heartbeat, dexter to sinister!” ordered Tordral, and the gatemen reversed the settings of the water and steam gates. Water poured into dexter pipe at the bow while steam forced water from sinister pipe at the stern.

"Steam warden, call the heartbeats in my place,” ordered Tordral.

"Master, is it wise to run with the patron sufflator not yet steaming?” asked Guy as he joined Tordral.

"La Hachette's impeller can take her two miles and a half without the need of new hot water injected from the patron."

"Movement, and from air, water, fire, and earth dancing in harmony,” said Renard dreamily. “Glorious."

"We may be twisted and thorny, but what clever folk are we?” responded Tordral. “A steam impeller, two score times stronger than a sufflator's jet. In all the history of the world, no ship has ever been moved thus. We can reach Faerie ... and we have a bombard."

"Why did we never share this wonder with Sir Gerald?” asked Guy. “We should have told him the truth."

"He was just one of many we lied to. Until just now only the six of us doing the trials knew the truth."

"But he—"

"We told lies to our friends so that they would be passed on to our enemies. I thought they would ensnare and englamor Gerald. Instead, Ivain was first, and he babbled nonsense about a steam bombard to them. Thus they thought us twisted, but harmless. Twisted, yes. Harmless? Not if we can make La Hachette's heart beat of its own accord, with no gatemen."

"Does La Hachette really need her own heartbeat?” asked Guy. “The mechanism functions when gatemen work it with their hands."

"Their hands are vulnerable to Faerie's glamors, Guy. The impeller must function without any hand upon it. We know there is a wide, dead space beyond the portal, both Renard and Jon saw it when they were returned. Without elfin spells to protect us, mortals such as ourselves collapse there, our muscles flaccid. Unless La Hachette can travel the portal's span unaided, she will lose way and stop."

"And then?” asked Grace from the darkness.

"We would be marooned in the borderlands between worlds, unable to move, starving to death."

"Don't fancy that,” said Grace, a veteran of many tavern brawls. “Rather die fightin'."

"Nobody will die,” sighed Tordral. “If La Hachette's heart cannot be made to beat, we shall not assail any portal."

"But then Sir Gerald will surely kill us for deceivin’ him."

"Oh no, I have one last trick for Sir Gerald—but enough gloom, we have a lady who needs a heart. Guy, explain the problem to those new to our secret. Someone may have a suggestion."

"When steam strokes end, the steam gates don't drop with enough force for the tag levers to trip their sister steam gates and the two water gates. Without gatemen, the heartbeat cannot be passed from dexter to sinister and back again."

"To me it seems little force was needed,” said Renard. “Have the gates never tripped of their own accord?"

"Once, yes,” said Tordral. “With lead weights on the trip levers, the gates were indeed forced to open and close by the extra impetus from the weights’ motion."

"But there is a delay of one fifth of the impeller's heartbeat, due to the extra time the lever takes to swing when weighted,” explained Guy. “In that time La Hachette is without the impeller and has no impetus. She would stop."

For a time there was silence, except for the clank-clang, hiss, chuff as the gatemen worked La Hachette's mechanical heart.

"Can someone explain something nautical to a poor, ignorant French sergeant who knows only bombards?” asked Renard.

"And English women, English ale, English—” began Ward.

"Let him speak!” called Tordral.

"Why does a barge not stop when the rowers finish a stroke and draw the oars forward for the next?"

"Because it has impetus."

"Then why should La Hachette stop while the weighted trip levers are swinging?"

"Why because...."

Tordral's voice trailed away. Guy scratched his head again, aware that everyone might have missed a very important point.

"Am I right to suggest that we could have had La Hachette's heart beating six weeks ago?” asked Tordral softly. “Suddenly it's as obvious as, as...."

"Garlic on Renard's breath?” suggested Ward.

"You English, you eat candle fat, then insult the finest cooks in the world, who are we French."

"Enough!” shouted Tordral. “Guy, bring a lamp. See how I tie a lead weight to the top of dexter's tag lever. Kindly do the same for sinister."

"Should we also tie lead weights to the impeller pipe water gates?"

"They are much bigger. I did not bring enough lead."

"Will two bags of iron scrappery do?"

"They will have to."

Once the four weights were attached, Tordral hesitated, more to put off almost inevitable disappointment than for any other reason. The steam guards hissed steadily.

"Master, you have steam,” prompted Guy.

"Then let us again attempt the impossible. Gatemen, to your stations, Steam Warden Grace, are you ready?"

"Aye Master."

"Dexter gateman, close watergate."

"Dexter declares watergate closed."

"Sinister gateman, open watergate, confirm steamgate closed."

"Sinister declares watergate open, steamgate closed."

"Sinister gateman, stand clear. Dexter gateman, open steamgate."

"Dexter declares steamgate open."

"Dexter gateman, stand clear."

They chant another spell of iron magic, taught by trial and learned by error, thought Guy. Steam hissed into the dexter impeller pipe, forcing the water within it down and back.

"The lady is moving,” reported Renard.

"Ladyship, ladyship, come to life,” pleaded Tordral softly, kneeling on the deck, hands clasped, and not caring what anyone thought.

"Flower of the Company of the Spiral Briar, bloom for me,” said Renard, as gently as if coaxing a lover to remove her robes.

With the last of the water gone, the steam chuffed out of the dexter impeller pipe. The pressure within fell, so the steam gate dropped and closed, pushing the trip lever into motion. It swung slowly, so slowly that La Hachette began to lose speed, but when it hit the other steamgate, it triggered a release of steam while tripping sinister's watergate locked. Water now gushed out of the tail of the sinister impeller pipe, while water flowed into the bow end of dexter. There was a chuff of steam from sinister, then the trip levers swung back ponderously, and water began to gush out of the dexter impeller pipe again.

"Did anyone touch anything?” asked Tordral breathlessly.

"Hav'nae touched dexter,” said a gateman.

"Got me hands clasped,” said his companion.

"It works,” breathed Tordral. “God in heaven with all his saints and angels, it works! Heart of iron, blood of water, breath of steam, soul of fire, my lady has life without living, her heart beats."

"She has not perfection, La Hachette loses a little speed with every beat,” began Guy.

"Guy, we have not perfection!” said Tordral, standing up. “You are missing a full quota of teeth, Ward curses at his piles every time he visits the privy, I have crippled eyes, and the briar rose we sail under looks a victim of the Inquisition's torturers, yet all of us have life. Gatemen, present yourselves to the yeoman of archers and gonnes. When there is light to steer by, we steer for Faerie."

First light was glowing in the east as La Hachette glided north across Derwentwater's dark and placid surface, casting smooth bow waves and trailing smoke and sparks.

"Quarter mile to Derwentwater outflow,” called Renard.

"The portal is close,” said Tordral. “Company of the Spiral Briar, lie down, lest you fall. Sergeant, what status?"

"Bombard loaded ready, slow match alight."

"Yeoman Ward?"

"Six gonners ready, weapons loaded an’ slow matches alight. Four archers ready with bows strung."

"Steam warden?"

"Ready, Master,” called Grace. “Lil and Mag are feeding logs ter furnace."

"Powder warden?"

"Spare gonnes and two bombard breech chambers loaded ready,” drawled Meg. “Anne an’ Mary are ready to load black powder an’ shot as needs."

Ward settled down on the deck with his sword across his lap. He felt strangely confident, even though they were facing the unknown and attempting the unprecedented. La Hachette and Tordral would look after them. Tordral, the twisted stem, and La Hachette, the flower growing out of it.

"Company, attend me,” called Tordral. Everyone turned. “We are about to fight an entire world. I trust all of you absolutely, yet can you trust me thus without knowing my face? I am going to raise my visor, for the first time in seven years."

"We know your deeds, that's enough,” protested Ward, but the visor was already up.

The face beneath was lean, pale, finely featured ... and familiar.

"Upon my word, ‘tis Sir Gerald!” exclaimed Grace, squinting in the half-light.

"Sir Gerald was never so pretty,” said Renard. “I am French, I suspected. Only a sister could have played upon his feelings so well."

For some moments there was no sound, except for La Hachette's heartbeat.

"As Mayliene, I was given nothing better than seven years of sympathy,” declared Tordral. “As Tordral I hid my figure under chainmail and my face with a helmet, I gathered you all behind me, and I built La Hachette. Now I fight back. If any will not fight beside a woman, jump and swim, there is still time."

"Women, they are fine leaders,” said Renard. “I fought beside Jeanne of Armoises."

"And probably tupped her, besides,” said Ward. “I'm with you too, ladyship."

"Alone, you might win against half our world, but against the whole of Faerie you need a little help,” said Grace.

For a moment everyone seemed to be glancing to everyone else.

"Nobody's inclined to jump,” said Ward.

"The outflow, I see it!” called Renard.

"Listen one, listen all!” shouted Tordral. “Portals to Faerie are found in boundary places. Where Derwentwater becomes the Derwent River is a boundary place, and this hour of half light is a boundary time."

"The river, it looks narrow indeed,” called Renard.

"I've measured it, we fit,” replied Tordral. “Remember, within the portal our strength will desert us. Without elfin magic no mortal is proof against this weakness, but we have something better. La Hachette has iron muscles and an iron heart. She will take us through."

"To the river, thirty paces!” called Renard.

"Chaining tiller, sitting ready!” said Tordral.

Violet fire blazed out around La Hachette as she left Derwentwater. The air around them screamed with a sound that was all at once outrage and terror. Shapes like monstrous, glowing curtains of spiderwebs stretched and tore all around them, and netting spun from luminescence as thick as hawsers ripped apart amid cascades of bright blue and silver sparks.

"What am I, who hath no eyes yet sees all knowledge?” thundered out of the background of blackness. “Speak the true answer and pass, die if your wits are not equal to my riddle."

Clank-clang, hiss, chuff was La Hachette's reply, and although a taloned hand the size of a cottage struck the ship, the fingers burst apart like oak timbers infested with the death-watch beetle. A roar of dismay echoed and died somewhere out of sight. Chill air washed over Ward, air so cold that every breath was like needles of ice in his lungs and nose. He counted the twenty-fifth beat of La Hachette's heart, holding onto hope by clinging to the sounds of the steam impeller. Out on the water, Ward thought he saw Tordral's tiny sufflator boat, marooned in the boundary waters, its steam spent.

Total darkness replaced the glowing filaments for a time, then luminous water splashed over La Hachette's sides as huge tentacles wrapped themselves around her, only to crumble. Her heart kept beating and the hiss of steam declared that the furnace still burned. Water sprites placed kisses on Ward's lips and caressed his cheeks with their breasts. Trying to enchant me with their beauty, he thought, but enchantment requires time, and they have little time. Ward could see right through their hastily wrought bodies, and those fluttering around the spiral briar above him had the form of fanged bats. He counted the forty-seventh heartbeat of the impeller—and suddenly they were through the portal. Even the half-light before dawn now seemed unnaturally bright to Ward.

"Company, take stations!” ordered Tordral, unchaining the tiller.

"Stokers, attend the furnace,” said Grace.

"Bridge full ahead, bridge with archers!” warned Renard.

"Destroy it, Renard, smash it!” ordered Tordral.

"Bombard elevation, down, down, down,” said Renard.

"How did they get here so fast?” cried Ward.

"The bridge has a garrison, I saw it when I was returned,” replied Renard.

"And you tell us only now?"

"You might have jumped."

Ward hurriedly assessed their plight. The bridge was a long, elegant arch of interlocking stones. Standing ready upon it were tall, svelte archers, and beside them huge, chunky creatures holding rocks the size of trebuchet balls. Oddly shaped things no bigger than children milled about, all ready with pails of burning oil. Goblins? wondered Ward. Elves, trolls, and goblins?

"We can't pass under the bridge if it stands, Renard,” cried Tordral. “Bring it down!"

"We cannot decrease the bombard's elevation enough,” replied Renard. “Only at fifteen yards can we fire."

"At fifteen yards they could piss on us, French sot!” shouted Ward.

"You do better, English brother of livestock."

"Form up, gonners, archers, full ahead!” shouted Ward, pointing with his sword. “Gonne row, fire!"

Six gonnes belched dozens of shards of iron at those on the bridge. At two hundred yards they caused no fatalities, but sharp iron in faerie skin burned like acid and caused instant chaos.

"Gonne row, take reloads!” ordered Ward, and the spent gonnes were swapped for charged. “Gonne row, fire!"

This time one of the trolls dropped his rock and several of the goblins ran screeching.

"Archers, fire!” shouted Ward to his four bowmen, as arrows from the elves on the bridge began to strike in and around La Hachette. “Gonne row, down between volleys."

Ward had been told of the magical accuracy of elfin bowmen, yet only two arrows were in the deck, and a third had landed in the spiral briar's pot.

"Archers, fire! Again.... Archers, fire! Next time aim! They're barely a hundred yards off. Archers, fire!"

"Charged gonnes to hand,” cried Meg.

"Gonne row, stand. Gonne row, fire!"

This volley broke the morale of the goblins, although a few thought to fling their burning oil into the path of La Hachette as they fled. Five of the trolls remained ready with their rocks. Discipline was no longer quite what it had been among the elves, but most were still crouched and shooting.

"Archers, fire!” shouted Ward. “Gonne row, down! Meg, hurry the reloads."

"Stokers, help with reloads,” cried Grace.

"Clear behind bombard!” shouted Renard without turning. “If you would live, clear behind bombard! Jon, have you the slow match?"

"Aye sergeant."

"Bombard, fire!"

The five-inch iron ball, fired at fifteen yards, hit the keystone of the bridge. The stone shattered, because it had been chosen for its coloring rather than hardness. Deprived of support, both sides of the long, low, elegant arch collapsed into the river, sending spray and a surge of broken water cascading over La Hachette. She rocked and pitched, but remained afloat.

"Fire at will!” shouted Ward as they passed between the stumps of the bridge, but those of their enemy who were not by now swimming were fleeing.

"Yeoman, stand lookout!” ordered Renard, as he and his crew reloaded the bombard.

Ward went to the bow. Ahead was not the familiar hills, flood plain, and fields that lay between Derwentwater and Bassenwater in the humans’ world. This broad river flowed into a placid sea that reached to the horizon. To the east, a gleaming bead of the sun's disk announced the end of half light. Farther down the coast were three ships at anchor, and on a forested hillside a quarter mile inland was a palace of delicate, graceful towers, partly enshrouded by morning mists. Every color, every gleam of light seemed curiously intense.

The elfin castellerine looked from the ruined tower of her palace to the sea. Part of one of her ships was visible above the surface, but the other two had reached deeper water before they had been sunk. The intruder ship had come to a stop, still pouring black smoke into the air. A gig boat was being rowed ashore.

"How could something so small do so much damage?” she asked one of her knights.

"We showered it with arrows, but few struck home, highness,” he replied. “Arrows guided by enchantment lose direction near that thing."

"And it destroyed the Wylver Bridge?"

"With one shot."

"And Darvendior?"

"I spoke with the bridge keeper, Darvendior had not returned from Earthlye when it fell."

"In Earthlye he is safe for now, the danger is here! Five thunderbolts to sink three ships. Three more to bring down the Glamoriad Tower at half a mile. Who are these people?"

The boat reached the shore. Five figures got out and waited.

"I believe we are expected to go to them,” prompted the knight.

"Me, a castellerine, pay heed to mortals?"

"They are victorious mortals, highness."

They set off, and as they neared the intruders the castellerine saw that the leader wore chainmail and a domed helmet. The visor had triangular eyeslits.

"The iron warlock,” said the castellerine. “I expected Sir Gerald, not his minion."

"Lady Mayliene of Ashdayle, as it happens,” Tordral replied, raising her visor to reveal a lean, almost elfin face. “Don't bother bowing."

"Gerald's sister!"

"Do pardon the visor,” said Tordral, lowering her visor and folding her arms. “My spectacle lenses are built into it."

The castellerine fought to keep her composure.

"Answer me three questions, and I shall—"

"Uh-uh,” said Tordral as she raised her arm. “Ask but a single riddle, and I shall wave. Should I wave, my bombard sergeant will fire upon your palace again. His name is Renard, I believe you know him."

"Renard! That filthy swine—"

"He angered you? How gratifying."

"I'll not talk of him,” muttered the castellerine. “Speak your petition."

"Demands, not petition. Fourteen years ago, a stranger of disturbing fairness appeared to me in my very own garden. I called to my brother, but he lay englamored and helpless. The comely stranger paid me court. I replied that I preferred books to lovers. His amusing little revenge blighted my vision, so that I could see little else but books."

The castellerine swallowed, then rallied. “Elfin men are proud. Some are cruel besides."

"Restore my sight!"

Being unaccustomed to demands, the castellerine considered laughter, scorn, a haughty sneer, or a snort of anger. None seemed appropriate, or safe.

"I cannot,” she admitted.

"If cannot really means will not—"

"No no, I cannot, I swear, I cannot. Think on the spiral briar, your company's symbol. A young stem is soft and pliant, it can be bound into a spiral around a pole. Take the pole away months later, and the stem will be turned to wood in the shape of a spiral."

"Which cannot be straightened?"

"Ah ... no."

"Behind me is a man named Ivain, who was englamored to love some elfin tease—"

"He can be restored, only three weeks have past,” babbled the castellerine breathlessly, desperate to tell Tordral any good news. “Take him to my palace. My wizards—"

"So, it was you."

The castellerine stared at the ground and bit her lip.

"Your people built curious machines. Why should I not spy?"

"Bring your wizards here."

"But why?"

"You would hold Ivain hostage in your palace."

"You intend to destroy my palace!"

"No. I already have what I want."

"But your sight—"

"Revenge will suffice in its place. The elfin knight who twisted me is trapped in Earthlye, so—"

"Darvendior is my brother!” screamed the castellerine suddenly.

"Ah, truth, squeezed from reluctant elfin grapes by the winepress. The longer Darvendior lives in Earthlye, the older he becomes. My eyesight for his immortality, a fair exchange. In seven decades we shall leave, when he is wrinkled, bald, impotent, toothless, and drooling—if he lives so long. My brother is stalking him."

"I'll rebuild Wylver Bridge."

"I also destroyed the Earthlye bridge."

"Damn you. Then I'll cross to Earthlye through another portal and—"

"Try."

"I—what do you mean?"

"Study the rules governing both of our worlds. La Hachette is a creature of air, water, fire, and earth. When she chopped through the portal on Derwentwater's edge, she changed the rules of all portals. They no longer work. They will not ever work until she returns to Earthlye."

"Impossible."

"But true. Your brother made a spiral briar out of me,” said Tordral, tapping her chest. “Now it is his turn to grow twisted."

"But you don't understand! Elves cannot have children without—without human lovers. If we perish, none will replace us."

"Earthlye will be the better for it. Meantime, La Hachette carries a score of Faerie's victims. Be nice to them, they may help you have babies."

The castellerine fought down the urge to be sick.

"Magic will vanish from Earthlye,” she said, her voice now ragged.

"So will elves,” replied Tordral. “Good riddance to both."

"You cannot beat our entire world."

"I already have."

The castellerine closed her eyes, took a deep breath—and accepted defeat. In that moment she swayed so alarmingly that her knight reached out to steady her.

"Very well, you have won. What do you want? Make your demands."

"I want all of you enchanted godlings to have a nightmare like your brother gave me,” said Tordral, smiling broadly. “You thought yourselves gods, and used us as toys. Think upon that whenever you feel yourself wronged."

The castellerine shivered as a sliver of icy guilt stabbed through her. She had to look away from Tordral.

So, the nightmare begins, she thought, staring across the water at the impossible, invincible La Hachette. She looked back to Tordral. Strange, now that it is too late I do feel compassion for you ... but then compassion always arrives too late.

Set This House in Order, by Matt Ruff, Harper Perennial, 2004, $14.95.

The problem with having limited reading time and column deadlines is that I often find that, if I'm not paying attention, some of the books I've set aside to read end up disappearing into the lower reaches of the “to be read” stack until they're finally lost and forgotten. This is because I'm usually reading the newer books for the column, so I rarely get to the older titles. But occasionally I'll pull out one of those forgotten books and then find myself regretting that I couldn't have read it in a more timely fashion so that I could discuss it in these pages.

But you know, a good book is a good book, and if it's still available ... well, I don't want to make a habit of this, but Matt Ruff's Set This House in Order (originally published by HarperCollins in 2003) is simply too good to ignore and deserves a few column inches even at this late a date.

It's the story of Andy Gage who has a house in his head. It's an imaginary house, but the hundred or so souls with whom he shares it are real. That's because Andy is a multiple personality. Brutalized by his stepfather as a little boy, Andy's soul broke into pieces; each personality that subsequently arose being individual from the other.

Like most multiples, Andy didn't know he was one. He just had these holes in his memory. He might be at his job, then the next thing he knows, it's hours later and he's sitting in some bar with no idea where he is, how he came to be there, or how he's going to get home.

When he understands what's happening to him, he tries working with various therapists to integrate the personalities. Nothing helps until he connects with someone with the radical idea that instead of trying to integrate the personalities, he should learn to work with them.

So we have Andy at the beginning of the book with the house in his head (the above's all backstory that we learn as we read along). He's sharing his body with the various personalities, all of them aware of each other. In fact, they can even “talk” to the dominant personality that's in control of the body.

It's all fascinating, especially delivered as it is in Matt Ruff's elegant prose, and the fact that he knows just how to capture all the different voices of the various characters.

Things get complicated when it turns out that Andy's new coworker Penny is also a multiple, something only some of her personalities understand. When those particular personalities ask Andy for help, he's reluctant, but eventually agrees, only to find the stability of his own fragile balance thrown off, and he finds he has to set his own house in order.

This is the sort of book for which the f/sf field exists. It's moving, dramatic, funny, and completely original, using the speculative strengths of the genre to tackle real world problems in a way that allows us to understand something with which most of us have no firsthand experience. How terrifying it would be to be in a situation such as the one in which Andy and Penny find themselves. And how much have we failed those supposedly under our protection when the actions that cause multiples to exist continue unabated? Not just in some other state or country. Sometimes it's just down the street, and we remain all unaware.

Now before I leave you to consider whether or not you want to try this book, let me assure you that as dark as some of the subject matter is, Ruff doesn't write with unrelenting gloom. You'll feel uplifted more than you might expect.

This is a gorgeous and important book from a writer who always challenges the norm, and inevitably does so with success.

Raven, by Allison Van Diepen, Simon Pulse, 2009, $15.99.

I think I mentioned Allison Van Diepen in a previous column—an aside, really, because her books up to that point had been set squarely in the mainstream. But now she's ventured onto our turf and I can talk a bit more about her. And I'm happy to do so, because she's one of those rare storytellers that grabs you from the first page, yet layers her stories so that everything's not on the table from that opening. She understands pacing, her prose crackles with energy, and her dialogue rings true to the ear.

Like Stephenie Meyer, Van Diepen also brings a fresh point of view to f/sf, although in her case, she seems quite familiar with genre conventions. But happily, she's not a slave to them.

Van Diepen usually writes in gritty, contemporary settings. In this case, a lot of the book is set in a Brooklyn club where our first-person protagonist Nicole works as a waitress. It's also where she and her break dance crew, the Toprocks, have dance-offs against rival crews. Don't worry. The dance sections aren't long, but they're full of energy and you get what's happening without having to know much about break dancing, or needing to go watch a few episodes of So You Think You Can Dance to catch up on what's going on.

This is all background, however. For her first foray into fantasy, Van Diepen tackles the big theme of immortality.

Nicole's life is complicated enough. She's juggling school, dancing, and work, but that's better than being at home where the fact that her brother's a junkie living in flop houses and sucking money from their parents hangs like a pall over everything. As Nicole puts it, the house is “haunted by a ghost that isn't dead."

The bright point in Nicole's life is her best friend Zin. He's the leader of the Toprocks, and works at the club, and Nicole is totally in love with him, though he just sees her as a friend. But while he doesn't reciprocate her feelings the way she wishes he would, at least she has him in her life.

Then she finds out about the immortals, the Jiang Shi.

I don't want to get into their differences compared to other literary immortal characters because it would spoil too many surprises. But what I will say is that Van Diepen plays with all the preconceptions we might have for this sort of story, taking the plot in directions one wouldn't expect while still remaining true to the characters and why they would do what they do.

In the end the Jiang Shi pervade every part of Nicole's life—the club, Zin, the Toprocks, and even her brother—and it's up to her to find some way that her friends and family can survive.

I love the fact that in the right hands, the hoariest tropes can still be made fresh again, and then turned on their ears. Raven is a terrific example of how to do it right.

Heroes Volume Two, by Wildstorm/DC Comics, 2008, $29.99.

Like volume one (which we discussed back in the May 2008 installment of this column), the newest Heroes compilation was originally published online and features short strips telling the stories that took place before and in between the actual aired episodes of the television show.

Also, as in that first volume, the art ranges between serviceable and great; it's the stories that make it a worthwhile addition to your library. Or at least it would if you're a fan of the show. If you're not, the barrage of short-short pieces on such a wide variety of characters probably won't make much sense.

But for those of us who are fans, the book's a treasure trove of unexpected, surprising, and at times, moving glimpses into things that didn't make it onto the screen. We get the origin of the Haitian, Elle's first job for the Company, early assignments of the Horned-Rimmed Glasses guy, a solo adventure featuring Hiro's best friend Ando, the first manifestation of various characters’ powers, and all sorts of other tasty bits.

If it seems a bit pricey, you could always sample the most recent issue online at www.nbc.com/Heroes/novels/.

Material to be considered for review in this column should be sent to Charles de Lint, P. O. Box 9480, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1G 3V2.

The Wall of America, by Thomas M. Disch, Tachyon Publications, 2008, $14.95.

Tom is in the next room but one, calling out. He's working on his novelization of The Prisoner, and wants to read a paragraph to me. November light pushes through my bay window to lie quietly expiring on the floor. Down in the yard I see the mounds of leaves he raked together earlier, then abandoned. Deciding to leave the Selectric running, I go up and down the three stairs, through the narrow hallway, to his office.

Thomas M. Disch died, of suicide, this past Independence Day. Recent years had been hard ones for him, I gather: a sense of lost readership, considerable physical pain such that he became virtually housebound in his New York apartment, an ever-deepening depression following the death of his partner Charles Naylor. There at the end, Tom's bitterness, the ragged trailing edge of the ambition that so animated him, seems to have broken through, though still liberally seasoned with wit and self-deprecation.

Endings are seldom pretty. Tom knew that. He knew that not very much is pretty, in fact, once you scrape away the hype and patina.

Except the arts. Tom was a great patron not only of poetry and fiction but also of opera, music, painting, and sculpture. I don't think that he believed our arts would magically save us, but he was pretty damned sure they were our best bet, perhaps our only bet—even if they, like everything else in life, might well be taken with a sprinkling of salt, a dash of cynicism, and half a cup of good-natured fun.

Searching for words here (in silence, blink of the cursor having replacing the Selectric's hum), I remember our sitting on the porch in Milford discussing a change from “could” to “would” in one of his poems. I recall the growing list of HARD WORDS he kept over his typewriter for years and wonder if he ever got the chance to use them all. I remember him, Pam Zoline, and John Sladek trading nonce words back in London, “epithesis” being a favorite. And later, his childlike joy at the sound of the word “micturation,” his delight at our describing a lawn game to be played “with mallets and forethought."

And now we have Tom Disch's last collection, The Wall of America, nineteen stories published from 1981 to 2008 in venues ranging from original anthologies to Omni, Playboy, and The Hudson Review. Four, including the title story, first appeared here in F&SF.

It would prove all too easy to read these stories—imbued as they are with anomie, death, and disillusion—in light of Tom's suicide, as more than one post-7/4 commentator has done, some proceeding to “interpret” Tom's entire life and the very wellsprings of his creativity in such light. But let's leave Epimetheus looking through the want ads, and not hire him on as critic. True, Tom's work was always generously spiced with darkness—but also with comedy, high and low. In one late poem he envisions us running down the hill with arms waving as we shout “Death, Death, we're over here!” That's Tom—forever bidding for attention, forever poking at what hurts most, his beautiful, classic pas de deux capped with a quick tap step or pratfall.

So reductivism will not do. Tom was a complex man, complex in the same manner as his work: brilliant, silly, boasting, sly, tender, cruel, revealing, evasive.

The Wall of America is, all told, a wonderfully representative sampling of Tom's work in his many modes, tongue clucking away in some stories, firmly lodged acheek in others, giving way to the occasional ululation.

It was the general understanding that the world was falling apart in all directions. Bad things had happened and worse were on the way. Everyone understood that—the rich and the poor, old and young (although for the young it might be more dimly sensed, an intuition). But they also understood that there was nothing much anyone could do about it, and so you concentrated on having some fun while there was any left to have.

That's the start of it all, the opening of “The White Man,” set in a near-future Minneapolis collapsing in upon itself, a story inhabited by Somali refugees, Pentacostal preachers, shifty census takers, and (possibly) vampires.

"Ringtime” sounds the source and sequelae of artistic life. Experiences are recorded in toto by the artist (and thereby lost to him) for vicarious replay by others. This is mimesis taken to the last full stop, of course, calling into question the very idea of imitations of life, art as purloined experience, the cost to the artist of a lifetime of such work:

The fun past, the yummy past, the past one sings of on New Year's Eve—all that is unrecapturable, sold off in weekly and monthly lots. There is one entire year, my twenty-ninth, wiped from the slate of memory.... I began unwisely to live higher off the hog and, at the same time, to sample my own tapes.

Not surprisingly, the arts are central to many of the stories, from the long rimshot that is “Canned Goods” (selling art masterpieces with society and most of human life in shambles about seller and buyer) to “The First Annual Performance Art Festival at the Slaughter Rock Battlefield” with its cheery view of mass murder-cum-art. Here, from “The Wall of America,” is an artist on the verge of apostasy: “Now, as with a dream, he couldn't remember any of the details. The big insights, the droll anecdotes, the shy confidences of what he hoped he might be able to accomplish.” Here, just before the shopping spree of her life, a latter-day Scheherazade kept alive by her whorish stories and fed up with the whole process: “And then, with a sense that she was revenging the grievances of every hack writer who'd ever lived, she beheaded the Emir of Bassorah."

The writing life jumps to the headlines in others stories such as “The Abduction of Bunny Steiner, or, A Shameless Lie,” in which a failed heroic-fantasy writer gets hired to write an alien-abduction story about his fictive daughter, and “The Man Who Read a Book,” which grabs up a bargain lot of fish and flotsam in its net: writer's colonies, publishers, criminal rehabilitation, work-at-home scams, motivational seminars, arts grants, celebrity.

Having given us in “The Asian Shore” one of the finest stories of obsession ever written, Tom revisits the theme in “Voices of the Kill.” Others (the Scheherazade story, “The Owl and the Pussycat,” “Torah! Torah! Torah! Three Bible Tales for the Third Millennium") carry on Tom's longstanding love for recasting folk tales and myth.

The bitterest and funniest story here, “A Family of the Post-Apocalypse,” may be also the most representative.

It was cheaper living in the danger zone, which was why they'd settled there after everything went haywire. Dad and Mom and the three Big Babies. All this was after the Rapture and the Second Coming (which they never got to see), and the only people left on Earth were the people who hadn't been saved.

So there in the suburbs life goes on pretty much as it had before—as it will—with Mom and Dad bickering as they watch the Antichrist's news bulletins on TV, with the septic tank getting ready to explode, with time stuttering into loops. Until the locusts arrive.

Big ones, and dressed, according to the prophecies, pretty much like the bikers in Mad Max, except that instead of riding Harleys their bikes were incorporated into their exoskeletons. It was the whirring of their huge wings that sounded like the revving of unmuffled engines.

Horror stories, fey comic tales, parables of the artistic life and of suburbia, biopsies of religion.... Pretty much everything we expect from Tom Disch. Any Disch collection, from Under Compulsion on, is a bazaar: strange sights and sounds, furtive movements at the edge of vision, funky old clothing and sparkling new magic tricks, damaged toys like those you had as a kid, plastic flowers alongside fine silk shawls—make an offer. And finally, as with Montaigne's essays, we read these stories (for all their craft and art) not so much to gain information about our world as to observe the play of an intellect across a subject.

It was quite an intellect, quite an extraordinary sensibility.

Breakfast at our hotel in Notting Hill Gate, Tom on his way in from Turkey to settle a while, my having recently moved to London. Tom has just published Camp Concentration in New Worlds, I've come to help edit the magazine. I remembered his stories from Cele Goldsmith's Amazing and Fantastic, read his first novel. A correspondence ensued, and it was his example, a living, working writer, that more than anything else convinced me to give it a try myself, that such might be possible.

He has brought something to read to me, possibly a bit of the unfinished novel The Pressures of Time, or some new beginning. In subsequent weeks one of his great stories, “The Asian Shore,” takes form before my eyes. He'll go away for a day or two, turn up at my flat in late afternoon with new pages.

He removes a slice of toast from the toast rack. Crumbs fall onto the pages. He reads through them as I pour our tea.

Pictures on cave walls, fiction of both low- and highbrow caste, history, opera, and musicals—it's all a way of remembering, which is all we can do, finally. It's what I've been doing since learning of Tom's death. Both difficult people, we moved and grew apart; the braid of our lives unraveled. I thought of him often, read virtually all his books as they came out, fondly knew how important he had been to me.

Here's what else I know: He was a great writer.

Outside the science fiction world, little notice seems to have been taken of Tom's death. Not that he fit at all comfortably in that world either, mind you. He was, finally, one of a kind, possessed of a particular, quirkily American genius, forever on the fence between the literary and the pulpish, poetry and fiction, realism and the fantastic, genteel and aggressive, uptown, downtown.

He wrote some of the best short stories ever put to page. Many of the best short stories ever put to page. And his novels, especially Camp Concentration, 334, and On Wings of Song, for their quality and their influence, merit a place among the classics of science fiction. Add on reams of astute criticism, hundreds of poems, marvelous romps like Black Alice.

Making their way to the inmost chambers of caves, bypassing other interiors that seem to us just as suitable, our ancestors covered walls with their paintings. We've little idea what purposes (social? religious?) the chambers served, all those detailed renderings, those grand animals. But there in privacy a few invented, for us all, the entire vocabulary of our arts: image, narrative, celebration, form. They speak to us still: We were here. This is what we saw. This is how we experienced our world.

So it is with each individual writer or artist today.

Style is not about word choice, cadence, sentence structure, point of view, momentum; finally, it's not even about writing well. Style is, ultimately, the direct reflection of how the writer connects with his or her world, the way in which he or she lets us see our world anew, new perspectives, new visions, new glimmers of comprehension here in darkness.

Tom has left the cave.

"It is a position that has been held with pride by some of our greatest literary figures. But being Poet Laureate has not been an entirely positive experience for the current incumbent, Andrew Motion. He has revealed that the role has left him with a bad case of writer's block. And—to add insult to injury—his poetic offerings have failed to elicit any feedback from the Queen. ‘The job has been incredibly difficult and entirely thankless,’ Motion told an audience at the Ealing Arts Festival in West London."

—"The Laureate's Lament,” Beth Hale, The Daily Mail,

September 9, 2008.

SO PROUD!!!

May 9

Hello, fellow citizens of our great state! I just want to kick off this blog—which I'm maintaining in fulfillment of Section Fourteen, Paragraph 9.6, of the generous and far-sighted legislation that created the post of Poet Laureate for our commonwealth—by saying how honored I am to have received this appointment. I never dared to hope that a lifetime of devotion to the Muse of Poetry would culminate in this high honor.

But nevertheless, as a little girl submitting my first verses to Jack & Jill magazine; as a teenager publishing sonnets in her school literary magazine, the Lignite Literary Lode (go, Tar and Brown teams!); as an assistant professor of Remedial English Composition at the Wankling County campus of our fine State University; as a frequent contributor to various poetry journals (including the prestigious Stuffed Owl Review); and finally, as the grateful daughter of State Senator Jay “Earmark” Hulkow, I never wavered in my belief in the power of poetry to uplift, enlighten, and entertain the Common Voter. So once more, thank you, thank you, thank you!

Please stick around at this blog. I don't think you'll be disappointed!

As John Greenleaf Whittier wrote (you can look it up in The Best Loved Poems of the American People, edited by Hazel Felleman, my favorite source of inspiration):

Linger in the sunset glow,

Our grateful hearts all bid thee

stay;

Bend hitherward and do not go.

FIRST ASSIGNMENT

May 12

The Governor has given me my first official task! He asked me to write a poem commemorating the opening of the new Arbogast River Fish Ladder, Spillway, and Irrigation Pipeline that will be capable of providing up to one hundred million gallons of water daily to the farms in Storch County, down in the southern portion of our good state, as well as helping the endangered Slootmacher shad to reproduce. I have the fact sheet before me now—it's kind of dry, pun intended!—but I expect inspiration to strike soon.

Maybe I should turn to a foreigner, the English poet William Blake, even though editor Hazel Felleman did not think enough of him to include any poems of his in her book. He wrote about the Thames River, and maybe my poem could go something like his.

I wander through each field of

wheat,

Near where the chartered

Arbogast does flow,

And mark in every face I meet,

Happiness which to the Govenor

must go!

Well, that's a start! Check back later for more!

SLIGHT DISAPPOINTMENT

May 29

Well, the big christening of the Arbogast River Fish Ladder, Spillway, and Irrigation Pipeline came and went, and yours truly was present in my capacity as State Poet Laureate. I read my poem to the assembled dignitaries and average citizens, and you can find it reproduced on the website of the Swampscott Daily Intelligencer, under the headline, “Local Woman Offers Dedicatory Verses to Delay-plagued Public Works Project,” and here's the link.

Reception to my ode, “Surge on Through Conduits of Gold, O Mighty Arbogast,” was mixed. I suspect that the noise of the pumps, the barking of the Slootmacher shad (you'd never know they were endangered, they're so ugly and so numerous!), and a bit of impolite contending chatter from some of those seated on the grandstand with me all conspired to drown out my best lines.

But I have sent a printout of the poem—multicolored inks on cream stationery with my name and picture at the top—to the Governor, and I expect him to send an official thank-you note my way soon!

SO MANY COMMENTS!

May 30

I just have to jump on the old blog today to say thanks to all my loyal readers. I can't count the number of comments that flooded in yesterday, in response to my pointing you toward my poem, and expressing my little bit of blues. There had to be literally hundreds of comments, the majority of them supporting Poet Hulkow in her mission to uplift the citizenry of our proud state.

I'm christening all of you “Hulkow's Heroes,” and I just want you to know I'll never let you down!

TRY, TRY AGAIN

June 15

Assignment Number Two has just dropped into my lap!

I did not actually get the commission from the Governor himself, as he's a very busy man (so busy in fact that he has yet to send me that thank-you note I alluded to hopefully a few weeks ago).

I found out about the new demand for my poem-crafting abilities through a Senate newsletter Dad happened to bring home from the capitol. One article told about the annual release of the nutria-hunting stamps which the state sells to those who wish to bag the little varmints legally. Clearly, this release qualifies for a celebratory poem, under Section 23, Paragraph 1.6, of my enabling Act: “The Poet Laureate shall be responsible for commemorating all State-sponsored actions that conduce toward the public good."

Now, I ask you, doesn't eliminating pestiferous rodents fall under that category?

I immediately called the Governor's office and managed to speak to one of his under-secretaries, who assured me that the Department of Wildlife would be proud to have me read my poem at the unveiling of the nutria-stamp artwork next week.

NO ONE EXPECTED SUCH A RUCKUS

June 24

I know that all of “Hulkow's Heroes” are waiting to hear my side of the “Great Nutria-Stamp Riot.” After all, even the Swampscott Daily Intelligencer has its media biases, and can't be relied on to report every little detail, even if such details are essential to my self-defense. In a nutshell, the whole affair goes like this.

When I wrote my poem, “White Hunter's Burden,” I had no idea that the artist for the nutria stamps, Mr. J. V. W. Prasad, was of Hindu extraction. (Apparently, down in East Laurelmead there's a sizable Hindu population that has something to do with a software firm in that district.) Even when I came face to face with him at the ceremony, his nationality was not apparent. (I thought all people from India were much darker than that.)

So naturally, when it came time I launched right into my poem, which was based on one by Rudyard Kipling, an author highly sanctioned by Hazel Felleman, but one who apparently is received with mixed feelings in certain foreign climes.

—

Take up the White Hunter's

burden—

Before those rats can breed—

Go buy your son a twenty-two

To slay nutria ‘midst the reeds;

You'll wait in squelchy marshes,

Once you've purchased all your

stamps—

Or maybe launch your Evinrude,

Down the Grant Park boating

ramps.

—

Well, before I got even halfway through my poem, Mr. Prasad was up on his feet and shouting out something about insults and racial prejudice and what a disgrace. And then members of the audience started chiming in, and officials started yelling, and the State Police were called—

I find I can't go on. It's all too depressing.

I'm sending a copy of my poem to the Governor, but I am not holding out for a thank-you note this time.

FIRED

June 25

I just had a call from the Governor himself, telling me that I am no longer the Poet Laureate.

This is the lowest day of my life. For the first time since I was a little girl, I no longer feel the call from the Muse. Creating poetry seems the farthest thing from my mind.

But I can still enjoy reading it. And so I turn to the inspirational words of Maltbie D. Babcock:

—

Be strong!

We are not here to play, to dream,

to drift,

We have hard work to do, and

loads to lift.

Shun not the struggle; face it.

'Tis God's gift.

BACK ON MY FEET!!!

June 30

I can't let myself down!

I can't let “Hulkow's Heroes” down! (Thousands of positive comments to my last post! Thanks again!)

And most importantly, I can't let Poetry down!

In the words of the great Walter Malone:

Wail not for precious chances

passed away!

Weep not for golden ages on the

wane!

Each night I burn the records of

the day—

At sunrise every soul is born

again!

I've examined the legislation that created my post, and determined with Dad's help that there is no clause that would allow the Governor to terminate my position before the year is up. Therefore, I am going to continue to recite my compositions at every public function I can find.

But my one theme from this day hence will be the recall of the Governor!

We still have a month to get such an initiative on the November ballot, and I know that with your help, we can!

I'll be posting a list of my appearances on this blog, and expect to see you all there to sign the recall petition.

WE DID IT!

July 27

The recall proposition made the ballot, thanks to all of you!

And maybe thanks to such poems as “Elegy for a Ratfink” and “When Liars Last in the State House Loomed."

Now we just need to find a write-in candidate for Governor....

AN HONOR I CANNOT REFUSE

August 1

This is a calling I never sought, but one which I can't turn away from, lest I disappoint all my fans.

So, yes, I will stand for Governor!

On to the campaign, with the Warrior Maiden Poetry at our side!

VICTORY!!!

November 8

There's so much happening in my life, and so many chores to attend to in the wake of the triumphant election, that I fear I won't be posting much anymore—at least until I settle into office.

One very intriguing matter I need to look into is a project that has come to my attention down in the East Laurelmead “Silicon Valley” region. One company there specializes in something called “artificial intelligence,” and I hear they've created a poetry-writing robot!

Now, I don't want to disparage good old flesh-and-blood humans, but if we could fill my vacant laureate post with a machine—well, there'd be all sorts of budgetary savings that we could apply to some of my other dream projects, such as “Poetry for the Homeless” and “Poetry for the Medically Uninsured."

But whoever—or whatever—fills my old shoes, I did want to mention that, in accordance with your wishes, my inaugural speech will incorporate a quote from I. J. Bartlett's offering in The Best Loved Poems of the American People, a book you've all adopted as your Bible.

—

There's a town called Don't-

You-Worry,

On the banks of River Smile;

Where the Cheer-Up and Be-

Happy

Blossom sweetly all the while.

Where the Never-Crumble

flower

Blooms beside the fragrant Try,

And the Ne'er-Give-Up and

Patience

Point their faces to the sky.

—Dedicated to the memory of Tom Disch

Over the past decade, Jack Skillingstead has published about two dozen stories in a variety of magazines, including Realms of Fantasy, Talebones, On Spec, and especially in Asimov's Science Fiction. His first collection of short fiction, Are You There and Other Stories, is due out in the Fall this year.
If “The Avenger of Love” puts you in mind of the work of Harlan Ellison, it's not a coincidence. Mr. Skillingstead says the story is a tribute to “the guy who revved me up to write short stories in the first place."

Norman Helmcke, aging pit bull, pounded away at his keyboard in the law offices of Cohen, Helmcke, & Melko. After another sleepless night, his eyes were burning. Then it happened again. Norman stopped typing. He slumped, pulled off his glasses. The Wakita brief went blurry. Norman himself felt blurry, contingent, as yet another hole opened within him.

This one was big.

Though sixty-two and divorced three times, Norman had always remembered his first love. He recalled her by the scent she had worn in high school: Bon Nuit. Associational memory. Like a sensory switch in his mind, lighting up secret chambers, illuminating innocent preoccupations he hadn't experienced in decades. But now it was as if someone had crept into his memory vault and stolen the bottle of amber-gold perfume. And with the scent gone, so was the girl. Oh, he could remember Connie; but her vital presence was faded—a departing shadow.

It wasn't early onset Alzheimer's; it was thievery.

And he could sense the other holes without knowing exactly what had caused them. More and more gaps occurring over the last few weeks, undermining his identity. Killing off what he was to himself. He squeezed his eyes shut and rode out an intense, drilling pain in his head. When it was over, Norman called forth his rage. His rage had never failed him, and it didn't fail him now. Instantly his attention sharpened. He flung himself out of the leather office chair, grabbed his hat and overcoat, ran through the rain to Macy's and demanded a bottle of Bon Nuit. The saleslady, a dishwater blonde half his age, passed it to him as if she feared he might bite her finger (that cornered look he'd seen so many times in the eyes of witness-stand victims of his cross-examinations). He snatched the bottle, twisted the cap off and sniffed. Pale attar of roses. His frown deepened.

"It's just perfume,” he said.

"Sir?"

"It's nothing to me.” The memory association was dead. She was gone. First love.

Stolen.

Norman and his rage and his Swiss cheese psyche strode up Fifth Avenue in the cold rain. The wind flapped his unbuttoned London Fog out behind him. Head down, fists balled, he shouldered people out of his way, spoiling for a fight. The quadruple bypass was eighteen months old. They had taken twenty-seven and a half inches of vein out of his left leg. He had been on the table for nine hours and almost died. After the operation he had been required to give up many things that he was disinclined to give up. His rage, for instance. Right now Norman didn't care; all he wanted was the thief. He was his rage.

A whispery voice that might not have been a voice at all but an instinct cut through. This way, then. And Norman turned aside into the little urban park he passed every day on his way to the firm.

The park became ... wrong.

He stopped and looked up. The rain, now warm and needling, rattled waxy leaves the size of elephant ears. Vines, thick and black and braided like chains, hung from shaggy monsters of trees. Steam rose from the ground. It was like something out of Tarzan. For a moment Norman was transported back to an almost preconscious state, and he was a little boy snuggled under his father's arm, that lost voice speaking Burroughs's words, and Norm doubly cozy occupying two worlds, the safe, comforting place beside his father's breathing presence and the wild, unpredictable jungle.

Three worlds, now.

Directly before him stood a storefront. A sign over the door proclaimed: Norm's Junk.

"What the hell?” Norman said.

He looked over his shoulder. Fifth Avenue traffic crawled behind a gray veil, almost invisible. The cement walkway blended seamlessly into brown earth.

Norm approached the store. Another sign, this one taped crookedly in the window: Big Going Out of Business Sale!!! He used his hand to shade his reflection in the glass. The shop was empty—except for a comic book in the window display. The Shadow, 1940s vintage, with a great Charles Cole cover and a dead fly beside it on the dusty drop cloth. Vol. 5, issue 6: “The Death Master's Vengeance."

He knew that comic.

It had been part of his father's collection. Something about the pulp hero especially appealed to Norm's sense of injustice avenged. Two years after Norman's father disappeared in Korea, Norman's mother remarried. His stepfather, Steve, had soldiered with Bernie Helmcke. He came, ostensibly, to console the widow. Steve was hell on defining his territory. He showed Norm a picture of Norm's mother, a wallet-sized studio shot that Bernie used to keep tucked behind his driver's license. When I was over there, Steve said, this picture kinda kept me going.

How did you get it? Norman wanted to know.

Steve just smiled. He burned all the comics, Norm's and his father's. With the ashes cooling in the fireplace (the flames had turned colors, fed by the alchemical ink of glossy covers), Norman had lain awake staring at the ceiling. It was The Shadow he remembered, the bold avenging hero.

A figure moved out of the gloom at the back of the shop, reached into the display and snatched the comic book.

"Hey—"

Norman slapped the plate glass with the flat of his hand. The figure retreated to the rear of the shop. Norm ran inside. His head immediately began to throb. He rubbed his eyes, squinted at the man standing at the back of the shop. The man was holding up the comic book.

"Doesn't feel so good in here, does it, kid?"

Norman pointed at the comic.

"That's mine. Give it to me."

"Naw. You want it, you'll have to come and get it."

Norman lurched across the empty shop, the pain in his head growing more intense, almost blinding him. He stopped, pressing the heels of his hands against his temples.

The man, now a vague, pulsating shape, reached back and opened a door.

"You have a choice,” the pulsating shape said. “It's fair I tell you that. You can stay here, or try to go back, or follow me. You know what's back. Stay here and you're finished. If you follow me, there's another story. I don't guarantee you'll like it."

Norman lurched toward the shape, and found himself plunging over the threshold into darkness...

...to land on a broken tongue of pavement, wet after a recent rain.

It was night.

The yellow moon warped into black puddles. He heard the hissing of rolling wheels on wet paving. His heart was pounding. Norman pushed himself up on his knees and waited, catching his breath. After a while, he turned his head and looked back. The sidewalk ended a couple of feet behind him in jagged vacancy. The shop was gone, the jungle was gone. It was as if the sidewalk—maybe the whole world—had been bitten off by some unimaginable thing that had then recoiled into space, stranding Norman and whatever else remained to drift in a void.

Norman stood up and faced—the dark city.

Neon blinked and shifted, making paint-splash patterns on the wet street. Towers twisted into the sky, their points tearing at scudding carbon paper clouds. Norman tilted his head, trying to get his mind around the architecture.

A dog appeared. It stood at the mouth of an alley between a diner straight out of Hopper and a pawn shop. It was an undersized, scruffy thing, a Puli. There was a red scarf tied around its neck.

The dog started walking in his direction. Norman watched it. The dog halted before him.

"Good boy,” Norman said.

"I'm good,” the dog said in a female voice, “but I'm not a boy."

"I don't believe it,” Norman said.

"Check under the hood, if you want."

"I don't believe you can talk."

"I can't. It's telepathy. I'm projecting the words inside your head. Try not to look so stupefied. I'm thinking about getting a bite to eat. Let's sit down, and I'll give you the big picture. I'm Scout, by the way."

The dog turned and started toward the diner. Norman stood where he was.

"Come on,” Scout said. “I can't open doors by myself."

After a moment he followed the dog to the diner and opened the door. The inside was long and narrow, like the inside of a rail car, and bright with fluorescent tube lighting. The counterman was Norman's age, beefy and balding, a blue tattoo of a Marine anchor-and-world like a stain on his hairy forearm.

"They let dogs in here?” Norman said.

"Please. The rules aren't the same as what you're used to."

Scout jumped onto the red leather bench seat of a booth. Norman hesitated, then sat opposite the dog.

"Just where is ‘here'?” Norman asked.

"You wanted to catch a thief,” Scout said. “this is where the thief currently dwells."

"Yes, but where are we?"

"The best diner in town. You want to read the Night Owl Specials to me? I can't quite manage the menu. Old war wound, you know."

"What?"

"That was a joke."

"Hilarious,” Norman said. He was looking at Scout's scarf. It bothered him. “Who tied that thing around your neck?"

"A former companion."

"What happened to him?"

"Nothing good. Night Owl Special?"

Norman glanced at the menu. “Hobo Scramble...."

"Say no more."

"I know that scarf."

"Do you."

Norman stared over the top of the dog's head at nothing in particular. “I've had a stroke or something."

"Welcome to non-sequitur theater,” Scout said.

"My neurons are misfiring. This is some kind of hallucination."

"I can't decide on a beverage,” Scout said. “I'm thinking cranberry juice."

Norman stood up. “It isn't real,” he said.

"Do you want the Hobo Scramble, too?” Scout said.

"You can't die in dreams, and that probably goes for hallucinations, too. I'll walk off the edge, and that'll wake me up."

Scout yawned and when she shut her mouth, her teeth clicked like billiard balls.

"I wish you could keep your mind on breakfast."

The voice was centered in Norman's head, even though he was already at the other end of the diner stiff-arming the door. Thought projection. Once outside he headed straight for the edge. He didn't slow down when he reached the jagged, broken-off place. His vision hazed over briefly, and his stride carried him forward—in the opposite direction, back toward the diner. He stopped, looked over his shoulder, turned and tried again, attaining the same result.

When he returned to the diner a plate of steaming hot scrambled eggs and a cup of coffee was waiting for him. A second plate was set before Scout. There were chopped onions, crumbled bacon and cheddar cheese mixed in with the eggs, all of it heavily peppered.

"Have a nice walk? I waited for you."

Norman picked up his fork. He didn't want to be, but he was starving. The Hobo Scramble smelled almost orgasmically delicious. Naturally he wasn't allowed to eat anything like it, not since his surgery.

"You don't get to go back,” Scout said. “You made the choice, remember that."

Norman slipped a bite of scrambled eggs into his mouth, washed it down with coffee, and said, “I know who you are. And your name isn't Scout."

"Isn't it?"

The dog started lapping and chewing at her plate of food, making wet-slurping sounds.

"That's disgusting,” Norman said, though he didn't really care; the Hobo Scramble was igniting his pleasure centers.

Scout looked up. “Maybe the way you eat disgusts me, ever think of that?"

"No. Why'd you change your name, anyway? Your name was Mona when I was a kid."

"Scout,” the dog said, “was your private name for me. You don't remember, do you."

"Everybody called you Mona, including me."

"Sure, while I was alive. I'm talking about after I died."

Norman put his fork down.

"You used to pretend I was still around,” Scout said. “I was like your imaginary friend. And you called me Scout, after the girl in that movie. Really, you wanted a father like Gregory Peck. Instead you got Steve."

Norman rubbed his forehead. All his life he'd had a picture in his mind of Mona dying. He had watched from the front yard, paralyzed. His mother sat in the middle of the street in her green housedress, the little dog cradled in her lap, Mona coughing up blood in thick gouts, as if she were expelling whole organs. And, of course, Norman had forgotten the rest. The way he used to imagine Mona still existed as an invisible dog that only he could see. And in her new state of being, she had been named Scout. Norman had been smarter than the other kids, and he made sure they knew it. So Mona had been his only friend, and the same situation obtained with Scout.

"The thing is,” the dog in the diner said, “I wasn't an imaginary friend. I was really there, and I was really invisible. Life is strange, huh? It's whatever you believe it is, even if you stop believing later on."

They caught a yellow cab in front of the diner. It looked pre-World War Two vintage, a Hudson or something. But it wasn't that normal. The windshield was so narrow that it was barely more than a slot. Climbing in, Norman noticed the driver's side wing mirror looked like a big human ear cast in silver. The driver wore a visored cap pulled snug over his eyebrows. He stared at his lap while he drove.

"So, you know who the thief is,” Norman said to the dog. They were sitting together in the back seat.

"Yes."

"Well?"

"It's one man."

"Who is he?"

"You'll know him when you see him."

"When I see him I plan to knock his teeth down his throat. That is, after he gives me back my property, my memories."

"It isn't memories that he's stolen. Look inward. There are no gaps in your memory."

It was true. Norman remembered everything about his first love, for instance. Nevertheless she was gone.

"Well he took something. A lot of somethings. And I want them back. My mind is full of holes."

"I know. But really there's only one thing missing, trust me.” Scout barked twice and the driver tucked the cab into the curb. “This is the place,” Scout said in Norman's head.

Norman leaned over and looked out the passenger window on the dog's side of the cab. A brick hotel, six stories high, loomed over the sidewalk. A sign above the lobby entrance said: The Midtown. Norman threw the door open, and Scout hopped out ahead of him. They stood together on the sidewalk. The Midtown leaned so much it appeared in danger of tumbling its bricks into the street.

"Top floor,” Scout said. “Room 606. Lots of luck."

"You're not coming?"

"Confrontations give me a runny stool. Also, I'm a pacifist at heart."

Norman looked up the cockeyed face of the hotel. A raft of clouds drifted under the moon.

"I won't really hurt him,” Norman said, “not if he returns what's mine."

"I'm not worried about you hurting him. Watch yourself, Norm. This is a rough town."

Scout started walking away, nails clicking on the paving.

"Hey, where are you going?"

"Lady's Room, sugar. I'll be here when you get back."

"You mean if I get back, is that it?"

"Fiddle-de-de."

The lobby smelled like boiled cabbage. The desk clerk had a Poe forehead and dirty cuffs. He leaned on his elbows, reading a newspaper, and never looked up. A ficus drooped on the brink of death in a cracked terracotta pot. Dry, crumbled soil littered the carpet. An Out of Service sign hung on the elevator cage. The door to the stairwell bent noticeably to the right. Norman regarded it, head tilted. He entered the stairwell. It appeared to corkscrew into infinity. He started up, counting floors as he went. On the sixth he stopped, even though the stairwell continued.

Standing outside Room 606, Norman hesitated, then knocked.

Nothing.

He knocked again, harder. Waited. He could hear movement on the other side. A minute passed, then the door opened. A man in a sleeveless white undershirt and suspenders stood before him. The man's huge gut stretched his undershirt out like a beach ball.

"What?” he said around the dead stub of a cigar. Behind him a ratty easy chair angled toward a television set with a screen that bubbled out like a fish bowl. The current program was a distorted test pattern.

"You have something of mine,” Norman said.

"What is this, a gag?” the man said.

And that's when Norman noticed the comic book rolled up in his fist. Norman couldn't see the cover, but he knew it was “The Death Master's Vengeance."

"Let me see that,” Norman said, pointing.

The man acquired a cagy look. “Who says I got to?"

"I'm a lawyer,” Norman said. “You can be charged with receiving stolen goods. Did you know that?"

"This ain't stolen goods, shyster!"

Norman, who stood several inches taller than the man and besides was now in full possession of his most reliable rage, grabbed the comic book and unrolled it with a snap. It wasn't The Shadow; it was Betty and Veronica. The issue was titled “The Sirens of Riverdale” and featured a cover illustration of a nude, dog-collared Veronica Lodge reclining on a golden throne reading Sartre's Being and Nothingness.

The fat man snatched the comic back.

"I told you I ain't got your Shadow,” he said, and slammed the door in Norman's face.

Or tried to. Norman blocked it with his foot, then shoved it open with both hands, sending the fat man reeling into the room.

"Who said anything about The Shadow?” Norman said.

"You got nerve busting in here!"

The room smelled of ancient farts. A fly-specked fixture dimly illuminated the mess of beer bottles, dirty clothes, newspapers—and comic books. The comics were the only neatly arranged objects visible, stacked in orderly piles on a gateleg table in the dining alcove. Norman strode over. On the top of the first stack was The Shadow, vol. 5, issue 6: “The Death Master's Vengeance.” Norman's fingers trembled over the cover.

"Not so fast!"

Norman spun around in time to block the fat man's attempt to brain him with a beer bottle. He knocked the bottle away and grabbed the man's undershirt in his fists and gave him a hard shake. The man's face bunched up, red cheeks popping out like cherry apples all webbed with an alcoholic's burst capillaries.

"I don't know from lawyers, mister, but I'd say you're a thief, for sure."

Norman pulled him close, nose to nose. “We'll see who the thief is."

He released the man and picked up the comic. “My father wrote his initials in every book he ever owned."

"So?"

Norman peeled back the cover of “The Death Master's Vengeance.” On the first page, in the upper right-hand corner, in blue ink faded into the ancient paper: B. H.: Bernie Helmcke.

And Norman felt ... nothing.

Holding the impossible artifact in his hand, a comic book from his father's lost collection, burned by his stepfather more than forty years ago, Norman felt absolutely nothing. Whatever hole its absence had made in his psyche remained unfilled. Norman rolled the mag up in his fist and started for the door.

The fat man grabbed his arm. “Hold on—"

Norm jerked his arm loose and shoved the man over the back of his chair. His legs stuck up in a V framing the fish bowl picture tube, where a blurry Indian Chief's head wobbled.

Scout was sitting in front of the hotel licking her asshole when Norman came out. She stopped, and stood up on all fours.

"I see you survived."

"Yes."

"And you got your Shadow."

"Right."

"But you don't feel any better, do you?"

"Look, Mona—"

"Scout."

"Look, Scout. Do you know something I don't know? And besides that, what made you think that fat nitwit was going to hurt me?"

"I just like to keep you on your toes, Norm. Also I didn't know he was going to be a fat nitwit; this is a very dangerous place, generally. And yes: I know something you don't know."

"Would you like to share that information?"

"Perhaps."

"Has anybody ever told you how annoying you can be?"

"Is that what you're telling me?"

"Perhaps."

Scout put her nose up in the air. “Well. I'm glad to see your sense of humor is showing at least feeble signs of recovery."

"There's never been anything wrong with my sense of humor."

"On the contrary, it's been dead as a crate of door nails, as Dickens might have said. What you refer to as your sense of humor has really been bottled vitriol. Would you like me to tell you why the retrieval of your dad's comic book failed to fill in any of the gaps in your windy head?"

"You talk too much."

"I'm not talking at all, if you want to get technical. Anyway, the reason you can't fill gaps with comic books, or anything else, is that there is only one absolutely essential element, and without it, all you are is a gap. Everybody has a portion of the essential element. In your case you decided to bury it deep. Hey, nobody's blaming you; you got a rough shake. It was this element that the Thief had been after from the very beginning. He only took all that other stuff because he couldn't find the damn thing."

"Are you going to get to the point one of these days?"

Scout started walking. She tossed her head and thought-projected: “Love."

Norman caught up with her. “What about love?"

"Without it, nothing is vitalized—that's what about it."

"Bon Nuit,” Norman said. The comic book crackled in his fist.

"The perfume doesn't matter. It's about your ability to experience love at all."

Norman halted at a bus stop, inspected the bench for filth, sat down. He unrolled the comic book and opened it again to the first page. His father's initials were barely visible in the cold glow of the street lamp. The Shadow. His dad had been a collector, but not like the fat man in the Midtown Hotel. As a small child, Norman had longed to be a hero. A mysterious one, of course. Striking down Evil and injustice wherever he encountered it. Instead Evil struck down his own father. MIA. No one knew how he died. In Norman's mind the death wasn't real, not like Mona's bloody end. He had seen Mona die. Years later Norman read a Life Magazine article about American G.I.s who had defected to the North. He knew his father hadn't done that, he knew it. But the idea grew bitter roots in him, from a seed planted by Steve.

Plenty of guys defected, kid. They were scared, and they loved their chicken asses more than they loved their country. I'm not sayin’ that's your old man for certain. Hell, Bernie seemed like a decent guy. But there's plenty of guys living up there north of the dmz with gook wives that left more than their country behind. All I'm saying is, I never saw Bernie go down. All I saw was him running.

When Steve kissed Norman's mother he liked to squeeze her ass. The first time Norman witnessed this he almost started crying. Almost. Even then, at age eight, he was past crying about anything. It stuck in his head, though. Steve's big ape's paw grabbing a handful of his mother's ass, the way her housedress bunched up. And Steve looked right at Norman, letting the kid know who owned what in that house. Who was boss. It was the comic burning thing all over again, but worse.

Norman wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands. The buildings leaned and twisted over the sidewalk. Brassy jazz issued from nightclub doorways. Mutated simulacra of vintage Detroit steel rounded city blocks, headlights aimed at unaligned angles, as if searching for something. A girl screamed his name, and Norman stopped. He squinted, listening. Scout looked up at him.

"Was that real?” Norman asked.

"The girl? Absolutely."

"Where—"

"What am I, your guide dog?"

"Where?"

"Okay, okay. Sheesh. Follow me."

Scout turned and trotted back to the last nightclub they'd passed, Norman stepping quickly after her. Red neon tubing pretzeled into a symbol unrecognizable to Norman. A black man of sumo proportions lounged in the doorway with his arms crossed. He wore a leather vest and small, round, perfectly black sunglasses.

"Yeah?” he said.

The girl screamed again. She screamed, and Norman knew who she was.

First love.

He started to go inside but the bouncer or whatever he was stepped in front of him.

"You aren't on the list."

"What the hell's going on in there?"

"Nothing of interest to you.” The bouncer dropped a huge hand on Norman's shoulder and squeezed, not too hard, but hard enough to indicate it wasn't a friendly gesture.

Norman slugged him.

It was a reflex, and his rage was behind it, and it surprised him as much as it surprised the bouncer, who fell back clutching at his gut. His face clenched in an ugly knot. He started to reach out, and Norman side-kicked his knee. The bouncer hit the ground and did not bounce. Norman stepped over him. Scout followed at his heels, thought-projecting:

"Nice work."

The interior of the club was dark. Smoke layered the air in noxious strata. It wasn't all cigarette smoke, either. The trio on stage were smoldering, the trumpet player in particular. Or was it a quartet? The chanteuse in a black dress lay sprawled at the front of the stage, and she was the smokiest of them all, like a thing burned out of the sky by lasers. Norman pushed forward between the crowded tables. When he got closer he saw that the chanteuse was just a kid, a teenager. In fact she was the girl he used to hold hands with in high school. Connie.

Somebody grabbed his arm and yanked him around.

"You're not on the list.” It was a different guy, but he shared dimensions similar to those of the toppled sumo, not to mention the same one-track mind. Before Norman's new-found reflexes could assert themselves, sumo number two slapped him hard across the jaw with an open hand that felt like a mahogany plank. Norman staggered back, upsetting one of the dinner plate-sized tables. A glass tumbler broke on the floor. A man sitting at the table yanked on Norman's lapel and snarled an obscenity. Scout bit the man's ankle. The man yelped, and Norman pulled free.

"That dog's not on the list, neither,” the new bouncer said. He was now holding an automatic.

Norman hit him squarely on the nose. The bouncer dropped the gun and spun away, spraying blood through fingers cupped over his face. Norman retrieved the automatic and tucked it in his belt.

The trio kept playing.

Norman approached the stage. It was Connie, all right. Around the girl's neck there hung on a fine gold chain a vial of amber liquid. Norman glanced up at the trumpet player, who continued to blow, his round face streaming sweat, whiffs of smoke lifting from his hair, his shirt collar, even the bell of his trumpet. His eyes, rolled down to meet Norman's, seemed to be mostly egg-white sclera. Norman looked away, back to the fallen chanteuse, his lost first love, from whom he now derived only righteous anger. He closed his hand around the vial and tugged it once, breaking the delicate chain.

Connie wavered, like a body seen through disturbed water, and then she vanished.

The music stopped. For a moment the musicians looked confused, directionless. The horn player wiped his mouthpiece on the sleeve of his white jacket. “That kid was good,” he said, then caught a new tempo with his snapping fingers, brought the horn to his lips, and resumed something bluesy, sans smoke.

"What have you got there?” Scout said.

Norman twisted the stopper out and sniffed. “Bon Nuit."

"Naturally."

Norman replaced the stopper. He slipped the vial into the inside pocket of his overcoat next to the comic.

"You!” someone shouted.

He turned, his London Fog sweeping over the crowded tables like a cape but never upsetting a glass. The bouncer with the squirty nose had found some friends. One looked like a stick figure in a black tie. The stick figure was smoking a cigarette in a long onyx holder. He gestured, briefly, and one of the big boys next to him pointed a gun at Norman. The music halted for the second time, and patrons evacuated tables. Norman grinned. He snatched the automatic from his waist band and triggered it rapidly. The big man's gun sparked and spun out of his hand. A second slug struck his gun arm. Norman glided across the room. The unwounded bouncer made a grab for him, but Norman chopped at his windpipe, sending him gasping to the floor.

The stick figure casually removed the cigarette holder from his thin lips. “I could use a man like you."

"I bet."

"I assume there is some purpose in your chaotic visit to my establishment."

Norman produced the vial of perfume. “This. Don't lie. I can see you recognize it."

"I do indeed."

"Well?"

"A trifle purchased from a military gentleman. I thought it might improve the band. It did."

Scout lunged past Norman and latched onto the throat-chopped bouncer's arm. At the end of the arm the recovered automatic went off, sending a slug into the ceiling. Norman twisted the gun out of the man's hand, tucked it away next to the other gun, then moved in on the stick figure, lifting him up and throwing him back against the wall. He knocked the cigarette holder away, then pulled one of the automatics and pressed the barrel against the little man's very pale forehead.

"This military gentleman. Where can I find him?"

"I wouldn't—"

"Where?” Norman pressed harder with the barrel. The manager grimaced.

"He used to run a shop on the outskirts. Now he does business out of the Bijou on Fifty-second Street. That's what I understand. Now please leave."

Norman put his gun away. There was a red circle third eye in the middle of the manager's forehead.

"Come on, Scout."

"We shot that place up pretty good, and I still don't hear any sirens. You've got lazy cops around here."

"They aren't lazy,” Scout said. “They don't even exist. This is a lawless place. No attorneys, either, by the way. Except in comic books. There's the theater."

At the end of the block golf ball-sized light bulbs raced each other around a marquee: Ronald Colman in Lost Horizon. Smaller letters crawling along the bottom of the marquee spelled out: Open all night, continuous shows plus news reels.

"They're a little behind around here,” Norman said.

"Progress is relative."

"Let's get this over with,” he said, striding toward the Bijou. “I want to go home."

The ticket window was unmanned but the doors stood open. Norman and Scout entered the lobby and discovered it empty and redolent of hot buttered popcorn.

"Will you kill him?” Scout asked.

Norman gave the dog a dirty look. “Hell no."

"Because you could get away with it here."

"I said no."

"Why not?"

"Because.” Norman swallowed. “Because I'm the good guy."

"I'm sorry,” Scout said. “I just thought you should say it out loud."

It was easy to spot the thief. There was only one head visible in the sea of theater seats.

"Wait here,” Norman said.

"Check."

Norman walked down the center aisle and stopped at the end of the thief's row. On the big screen Ronald Colman desperately searched a frozen wasteland for signs of Shangri-La.

"Do you even know who I am?” the thief said, without looking at Norman.

"Yes."

The thief turned away from the screen. Bernie Helmcke's face was young and smooth, the face of a man in the last blush of youth. Movie light shifted over his features. Norman collapsed a little inside but fought not to show it. At that moment he realized he had been fighting his whole life not to show it.

"Why'd you do it, Dad?"

"I was compelled. Do you know what the most valuable commodity in the Universe is? The greatest binding force? The Universal Integument? Do you know what it is?"

Bernie had to raise his voice to be heard over the swelling musical score as the end credits began to roll. Norman stared at him.

"Love,” the thief said.

They walked up the aisle together. Bernie was wearing an olive drab infantryman's uniform. Norman was taller than his father, but he felt reduced, a child. He tried to make his hands into fists, but his rage had deserted him at last.

"Come on,” Bernie said, patting his back, “I'll buy you breakfast."

"No, thanks. I already ate with the dog."

Norman, his dead father, and his imaginary dog walked toward the edge of the world.

"What time is it?” Norman asked.

"There isn't any time here."

"What about the dawn? When—"

"There is no dawn. Don't ask me how that's possible. All I know is this. We're here to serve the ultimate proliferation of love, which vitalizes the Universe. There are beings who see to this. I don't know what they are. I wouldn't call them angels. They look inside us, and they spin out these worlds. They tell stories, give us roles, harvest the vital end-product; I believe they must be insane. I mean, look around. You see, son, death isn't what we thought it was."

They arrived at the edge of the world. Beyond the jagged paving, stars suggested themselves out of the void.

"I'm going home,” Norman said.

"Son—"

"Look, I don't believe it. I can't. And if this is a dream I want out. I want to feel normal again."

Norman stepped off the edge, blurred briefly, and found himself walking toward his dad and his dog. He stopped.

"Bottom line, Norm,” Scout said, “the way you feel is normal."

"True,” his father said. “This is the place that hurts, son. The place where love resumes."

A car that looked like a DeSoto with great oval headlights on flexible stalks screeched around the corner and braked sideways in the middle of the street. The doors flung open and men with guns piled out.

"Dat's him,” the biggest one said, pointing at Norman. Norman's reactions were unconscious and lightning quick. He filled his hands with the twin automatics and brought down two of the armed men before either of them could get a shot off. Unfortunately the third man was fast enough to fire a Tommy gun burst before Norman could drill him.

The Tommy burst stitched across Bernie Helmcke's chest.

The DeSoto squealed away, leaving behind bodies like bales of newspapers.

Norman dropped his guns. He sank to his knees at his father's side.

"I'm finished,” Bernie said. “Again."

Norman felt it coming—the flood he'd dammed a lifetime ago.

"In my right pocket,” Bernie said. “Keys for my apartment. Scout knows where it is.” He coughed, misting the air with blood. “You'll need a place."

"Dad—"

"I'm sorry, son. I love you."

A savage coughing fit took him, and when it was over, so was the thief.

The world contracted into a throbbing locus of pain under Norman's heart.

"The apartment,” Scout said. “—it isn't much. Deli on the ground floor. A noisy deli. Two flights up to a hot plate and a smelly carpet. Of course, I have a sensitive nose."

Norman sat down in the street.

"At least you don't have to worry about anybody finding you there,” Scout said. “But you'll need some kind of disguise when you go out. You could use my scarf, if you want."

Norman closed his eyes, the flood all through him now. The terrible thing. The love.

Scout bit his ear.

"Ow!"

The dog backed away. “You better get off your dead ass. This is a tough world. And as of today you're the only lawman in it. Norman, there are innocent people here. You can do something."

Norman fingered his lobe, which was not bleeding."You're a real son of a bitch, you know that?"

"You're half right, sweetheart."

Norman found the key in his father's pocket. He lifted the body in his arms and carried it to the edge of the world and held it a moment longer before letting it roll away into the star twinkle. He waited, but it did not roll back. After a while, compelled, The Avenger of Love turned toward the City of Endless Night.

—For Harlan

Ms. Kushner notes, “This story came to me in a flash in the darkness of a Waterson/Carthy concert last year, when the English folk artists let fly with their awesome rendition of the traditional outlaw ballad, “Newry Town” (also known as “The Newry Highwayman"): A young man, clearly a nice boy, “turns out to be a roving blade” and comes to a bad end while his mother cries, and everyone agrees, “There goes a wild and a wicked youth.”
While the song's plotline does not really match my story's, it got me on the right path. I'd been wanting for a long time to write about the early life of Richard St. Vier, the gifted swordsman in my first novel, Swordspoint: a Melodrama of Manners. I've always known who Richard's mother was, and how he learned to fight; but it occurred to me that nobody else did, and it was time to get it down on paper."

"He's dead, Mother."

"Who's dead, Richard?"

His mother did not look up from rolling out her pastry. They lived in the country; things died. And her son did not seem particularly upset. But then, he seldom did. She was raising him not to be afraid of anything if she could help it.

"The man in the orchard."

Octavia St. Vier carefully put down her rolling pin, wiped her hands on her apron, and tucked up her skirts. At the door she slipped into her wooden clogs, because it was spring and the ground was still muddy. The boy followed her out to the orchard, where a man lay still as the grave under an apple tree, his hands clutching tight at something on his chest.

"Oh, love, he's not dead."

"He smells dead,” said her son.

Octavia chuckled. “He does that. He's dead drunk, is all, and old and probably sick. He's got good boots, but they're all worn out, see? He must have come a long way."

"What's he holding?” Before she could think to stop him, her son reached between the old man's hands to tug at the end of what he clutched in the folds of his messy cloak.

Like a corpse in a comedy, the old man sat suddenly bolt upright, still gripping one end of the long pointed object whose other end was in her son's hands. It was the end of a sword, sheathed in cracked leather. Octavia was not usually a screamer, but she screamed.

"Rarrrrrr,” the old man growled furiously. It seemed to be all he could manage at the moment, but his meaning was clear.

"Richard,” Octavia said, as carefully as if she were back at her girlhood elocution lessons—though this was not the sort of sentence they had been designed for—"put the man's sword down."

She could tell her son didn't want to. His hand was closed around the pommel, encircled itself by a swirl of metal which no doubt had its own special name as well. It was a beautiful object; its function was clearly to keep anything outside from touching the hand within.

The old man growled again. He tugged on the sword, but he was so weak, and her son's grip held so fast, that it only separated scabbard from blade. Octavia saw hard steel emerge from the leather. “Richard...” She used the Voice of Command that every mother knows. “Now."

Her son dropped the sword abruptly, and just as abruptly scrambled up the nearest tree. He broke off a branch, which was strictly forbidden, and waved it at the sky.

The old man pulled the weapon back into his personal aura of funk, rags, hunger, and age. He coughed, hawked, spat, repeated that, and dragged himself up until his back was to the apple tree's trunk.

"Quick little nipper,” he said. “'Sgonna break his neck."

Octavia shielded her eyes to look up at the boy in the tree. “Oh,” she said, “he never falls. You get used to it. Would you like some water?"

The old man didn't clean up particularly well, but he did clean up. When he was sober, he cut wood and carried water for their little cottage. He had very strong arms. He did stay sober long enough to spend all of one day and most of the next sanding every inch of his rust-pocked blade—there was quite a lot of it, it was nearly as tall as the boy's shoulder—and then oiling it, over and over. He wouldn't let anyone help. Richard did offer. But the old man said he made him nervous, always wriggling about like that, couldn't he keep still for one god-blasted moment, and get off that table, no not up into the rafters you're enough to give a man palpitations now get outta here if you can't keep still.

"It's my house,” Richard said. “You're just charity."

"Am not neither. I'm a servant. That's what it's come to. Fetch and carry for madam your mother, but at least I've got my pride, and what does she want all those books for anyway? And where's your daddy?"

It wasn't like he hadn't heard that one before. “She left him behind,” he said. “He couldn't keep up. She likes the books better. And me.” Richard lifted a book off the shelf. He was supposed to ask permission first, but she wasn't around to ask. “There's pictures. Animals’ insides. Inside-out. See?"

He found a particularly garish one. Last year he'd been scared to look too closely at it, but now that he was big it filled him with horrific delight. He thrust it suddenly up into the old man's face.

But the old man reacted a great deal more strongly than even a very horrible picture should have warranted. As soon as Richard shoved the book at him he jumped backward, knocking over his chair, one arm thrown back, his other arm forward to strike the book from the boy's hand.

Quickly the boy pivoted, drawing his mother's book out of harm's way. He had no desire to have his ass handed to him on a platter, the official punishment for messing up books.

The old man fell back, panting. “You saw that coming,” he wheezed. “You devil's whelp."

He lunged at him again. Richard protected the book.

The old man started chasing him around the room, taking swipes at him from different angles, high, low, sideways.... It was scary, but also funny. There was no way the old man was going to touch him, after all. Richard could always see just what he was aiming for, just where his hand would fall—except, of course, that it never could.

Not a screamer, Octavia let out a yell when she walked into the room. “What in the Seven Hells are you doing with my son?"

The old man stopped cold. He drew himself up, carefully taking deep breaths of air so he could be steady enough to say clearly, “Madam, I am training him. In the art of the sword. It cannot have escaped your notice that he has an aptitude."

Octavia put down the dead starling that she was carrying. “I'm afraid it has,” she said. “But do go on."

Richard practiced in the orchard with a stick. His best friend, Crispin, wanted to practice too, but Crispin's parents had impressed upon him that lords did not fight with steel. It wasn't noble; you hired others to do it for you, like washing dishes or ironing shirts or figuring accounts.

"But it's not steel,” Richard explained; “it's wood. It's just a stick, Crispin; come on."

The old man had no interest in teaching Crispin, and anyway it might have gotten back to his father, so Richard just showed his friend everything he learned, and they practiced together. Privately, Richard thought Crispin wasn't very good, but he kept the thought to himself. Crispin had a temper. He was capable of taking umbrage for days at a time, which was dull, but could usually be resolved either in a fistfight or an elaborate ritual apology orchestrated by Crispin.

Richard didn't mind that. Crispin was inventive. It was never the same thing twice and it was never boring—and never all that hard, really. Richard was perfectly capable of crossing the brook on the dead log blindfolded, or of fetching the bird's nest down from under the topmost eave by Crispin's mother's window. He did get in trouble the time he climbed up the chimney, because chimneys are dirty and his mother had to waste her time washing all his clothes out. But Crispin gave him his best throwing stick to make up for it, so that worked out all right. And Crispin's other ideas were just as good as his vengeful ones. Crispin was the one who figured out how they could get the cakes meant for the visitors on Last Night and make it look like the cat had done it. And Crispin was the one who covered for him the time they borrowed his father's hunting spears to play Kings in the orchard, when they forgot to bring them back in time. They never told on each other, no matter what.

Crispin's father was all right, except for his prejudice against steel. He winked when the boys were caught stealing apples from his orchards, and even let Richard ride the horses that were out to pasture; if he could catch one, he could ride it, that was the deal (as long as it wasn't a brood mare) and Crispin with him.

Crispin's father was Lord Trevelyan, and had a seat in Council of Lords, but he didn't like the City, and never went there if he could help it. Every Quarter Day, Trevelyn's steward brought Richard's mother the money her family sent from the city to keep her there. A certain amount of it went right back to town, to be spent on books of Natural History the next time Lady Trevelyan went there to shop. Lady Trevelyan was stylish and liked theatre. She went to the city every year. She did not buy the books herself, of course, and probably would have liked to forget all about them, but her husband had instructed that they be seen to, along with everything else the estate required from town.

What mattered was that the money came, and came regularly. Without it, his mother said, they would have to go live in a cave somewhere—and not a nice cave, either. “Why couldn't we just go live with your family?” Richard asked.

"Their house is too small."

"You said it had seventeen rooms."

"Seventeen rooms, and no air to breathe. And no place to cut up bats."

"Mother, when you find out how bats can fly, will you write a book?"

"Maybe. But I think it would be more interesting to learn about how frogs breathe, then, don't you?"

So she always counted the money carefully when it came in, and hid it in her special hiding place, a big book called Toads and their Discontents. There were some pictures of Toads, all right, but their Discontents had been hollowed out to make a stash for coins.

Shortly after the latest Quarter Day, the old swordsman disappeared. Octavia St. Vier anxiously counted her stash, but all the coins were still there.

She gave some to him the next time he came and went, though. It had been a beautiful summer, a poet's summer of white roses and green-gold grain, and tinted apples swelling on the bough against a sky so blue it didn't seem quite real. Richard found that he remembered most of the old man's teaching from when he was little, and the old man was so pleased that he showed him more ways to make the pretend steel dance at the end of his arm—Make it part of your arm, boyo!—and to dance away from it, to outguess the other blade and make your body less of a target.

Crispin got bored, and then annoyed. “All you ever want to do is play swords anymore!"

"It's good,” Richard said, striking at an oak tree with a wooden lathe flexible enough to bear it.

"No, it's not. It's just the same thing, over and over."

"No, it's not.” Richard imagined a slightly larger opponent, and shifted his wrist. “Come on, Crispin, I'll show you how to disarm someone in three moves."

"No!” Crispin kicked the oak. He was smart enough not to kick Richard when Richard was armed. “What are you stabbing that tree for?” he taunted. “Are you trying to kill it?"

"Nope.” Richard kept drilling.

"You're trying to kill it because you're scared to climb it."

"No, I'm not."

"Prove it."

So he did.

"The black mare's in the field,” Crispin told him when he'd hauled himself all the way up to the branch Richard was on, by dint of telling himself it didn't matter.

"The racer?"

"Yah."

"How long?"

"Dunno."

"Can we catch her?"

"We can try. Unless you'd rather play swords against trees. She's pretty fierce."

Richard threw an acorn at Crispin. Crispin ducked, and nearly fell out of the tree.

"Don't do that,” he said stiffly, holding on for dear life. “Or I'll never let you near our horses again."

"Let's get down,” Richard said. He eased himself down first, leaving Crispin to follow where he couldn't be seen. Crispin got mad if you criticized his climbing, or noticed he needed help. The rule was, he had to ask for it first, even if he took a long time. Otherwise he got mad.

Crispin arrived at the bottom all covered in bark. “Let's go swimming first,” he said, so they did that. On the way home, they discovered Crispin's little sister unattended, so they borrowed her to make a pageant wagon of Queen Diane Going to War with the garden wheelbarrow and the one-horned goat, which didn't turn out as well as they'd hoped, although that wasn't their fault; if she'd only kept still and not shrieked so loud, nothing would have happened. Nonetheless, it got them both thrashed, and separated for a week. Richard didn't mind that much, as it gave him more time to practice. All that stretching really did help the ache of the beating go away faster, too.

The old man was going back to the city for the winter, where a body could get warm, he said, and the booze, while of lesser quality, was cheaper, if you knew where to go: “Riverside,” he said, and Octavia said, “That's a place of last resort."

"No, lady,” he gestured at the cottage; “this is."

But when she handed him the money, he said, “What's this for?"

"For teaching my son."

He took it, and went his way, just as the apples were ripening to fall. He came back the next year, and the next, and he stayed a little longer each time. He told them he had a niece in Covington, with four daughters ugly as homemade sin. He told them the Northern mountains were so cold your teeth froze and fell out if you didn't keep your mouth shut. And he told them the city was crazy about a new swordsman, De Maris, who'd perfected a spiraling triple thrust the eye could hardly follow.

"Could you fake it?” Richard asked, and the old man clouted him (and missed). They figured it out together.

Octavia gave him more money when he went. Maybe it was a mistake, because then he didn't come back. The old fellow might have just dropped dead, or been robbed, or he might have spent it all on a tearing binge. It hardly mattered. But she had meant him to buy a sword for Richard with it, and that mattered some.

So she went up to the Trevelyan manor, to see what could be done. Surely, she thought, they had plenty of swords there. Nobles owned swords, even if they didn't duel themselves. There were ritual swordsmen you hired for weddings, and, well, guards and things.

The manor servants knew her, although they didn't like her much. They were all country people, and she was a city girl with a bastard son and some very weird habits. Still, it wasn't their business to keep her from their lord if he wanted to see her. And so she made her best remembered courtesy to Lord Trevelyan, who was at a table in his muniments room doing something he didn't mind being interrupted at. Octavia St. Vier was a very pretty woman, even in a sun-faded gown, her hair bundled up in a turban and smudges on both her elbows.

"You've been so kind,” she said; “I won't take much of your time. It's about Richard."

"Oh, dear,” said Lord Trevelyan good-humoredly. “Has he corrupted Crispin, or has Crispin corrupted him?” She looked at him inquiringly. “Boys do these things, you know,” he went on. “It's nobody's fault; it's just a phase. I'm not concerned, and you shouldn't be, either."

"Crispin doesn't really like the sword,” she said.

His tutor had taught him about metaphor, but he realized that wasn't what she meant. He also realized that this poor woman knew nothing about boys, and that he should, as his lady wife often told him, have kept his mouth shut.

"Ah, yes,” he said. “The sword."

"Richard loves it, though."

"I hear that he shows promise."

"Really?” She said it a little frostily, as her own mother might have done. “Have people been talking about it?"

"Not at all,” he hastened to assure her, although it was not true. People did notice Octavia St. Vier's rather striking boy—and the drunken swordmaster talked in the village where he got his drink, pretty much nonstop. But he just said, “Crispin's not as subtle as he thinks he is."

"Oh.” She smiled. She really was a very pretty woman. The St. Viers might be a family of bankers, but they were bankers of good stock and excellent breeding. “Well, would you help me, then?"

"Yes,” he said, “of course.” It was her eyes; they were the most amazing color. Almost more violet than blue, fringed with heavy dark lashes....

"I'd like a sword, then. For my son. Do you have any old ones you don't need?"

"I can look,” he said. He leaned around the table. “I'm so sorry. I don't mean to stare, but you've got a smudge on your elbow. Right there."

"Oh!” she said, when he touched her. His thumb was so large and warm, and, “Oh!” she said again, as she let herself be drawn to him. “I have to tell you, I haven't done this in a very long time."

"Ten years?” he said, and she said, “Fourteen."

"Ah, fourteen, of course. I'm sorry."

"It's all right. Yes, he's just turned thirteen. And may I have the sword?"

"You,” he said gallantly, “may have anything you wish."

Richard's mother brought him a sword. It was a gift, she said, from Lord Trevelyan—but he wasn't to thank him for it; she had already done so, and it would only embarrass him.

Richard did not ask permission to take the sword to show Crispin. It was his sword now, and he could do as he liked with it. He had already polished it with sand and oil, which it badly needed. Truth to tell, Lord Trevelyan had had a hard time laying his hands on a disposable dueling sword. There were battle swords in the old armory, each with a family story attached. There were dress swords for formal occasions, but he knew Octavia would not be content with one of those. Nor should she be. The boy deserved better. For the first time, Trevelyan considered the future of his unusual tenants. Perhaps he should pay to have the boy trained properly; send to the city for a serious swordmaster—or even have the boy sent there to learn. Richard St. Vier was already devoted to Crispin. When Crispin came of age, he might have St. Vier as his own personal swordsman, to guard him in the city when he took the family seat in Council (a burden Trevelyan would be only too happy to have lifted from him) to fight his inevitable young man's battles over love and honor there, even to stand guard, wreathed in flowers, someday, at Crispin's wedding. Trevelyan smiled at the thought: a boon companion for his son, a lifelong friend who knew the ways of steel....

Crispin was tying fishing flies. It was his latest passion; one of their tenants was the local expert, and Crispin had taken to haunting his farmhouse with a mix of flattery, threats, and bribes to get him to disclose his secrets one by one.

"Look!” Carefully, Richard brandished his blade, but low to the ground where it couldn't hurt anything. It was not as razor-sharp as a true duelist's would be, but it still had a point, and an edge.

Crispin nodded, but didn't look up. “Steady...,” he said around the thread in his mouth, anchored to one finger against his hook. “Wait—” With a needle, he teased at the feather on the hook. “There!” He held up something between an insect and a dead leaf.

"Nice,” Richard said.

"So. Let's see.” Crispin gently balanced his fly on the table and looked up. “So you finally got a real one. Is it sharp?"

"Not very. Want to practice? I'll tip the point for you, don't worry."

"Not now. I want to fish. It's nearly dusk. The pike will be biting."

"I'll let you use the real sword.” It cost Richard something, but he said it. “I'll use the wooden one."

"No, I tell you! I've been working all day on my Speckled King. It's now or never. I've got to try it!” Crispin picked up his rod, the fly on its hook reverently cupped in one palm.

"Oh, all right. I'll come with you, then."

Richard slung his heavy sword back in the makeshift hanger at his hip, and followed the lord's son out through the courtyard and down the drive and across the fields to where the river ran sluggish, choked with weeds. The afternoon was perfectly golden. He felt that it was meant for adventure, for challenge, for chasing the sun down wherever it went—not for standing very still and waiting for something small and stupid underwater to be fooled onto the dinner table by a feather and a piece of string. Nevertheless he joined his friend on the riverbank, and watched Crispin expertly cast the line.

It was true that the boys had already corrupted each other, in precisely the way that Crispin's father had meant. It was, for them, just another thing to do with their bodies, like climbing or swimming or running races—and with certain similarities there, as well; they experimented with speed and distance, and competed with each other. Fishing was serious, though. Richard prepared to wait. He wondered if it would distract Crispin, or the fish, if he practiced just a little, and decided not to chance it. Crispin fussed at the pole, and cast the line again.

Gnats hummed on the water. A dragonfly mated with another.

"Tomorrow,” Richard began, and Crispin said, “Shh! I think I've got one.” He raised the tip of his rod, and his line tightened. Richard watched Crispin's face—the fierce concentration as he pulled, released, tightened the line again, and gave a sudden jerk as his opponent lashed the surface of the water. It was a pike, a big one, with a sharp pointed snout, its jaws snapping with the hook. It struggled against the pull of the line, and Crispin struggled with it as it raised white water and then rose into the air—it looked almost as if the fish were trying to wrestle him into its own element, holding him at the end of the nearly invisible line, coming toward him, going away, dancing on the wind. Finally it spun in, a writhing silver streak of a pike that landed on the grass beside him with a desperate thud, enormous and frantic for breath.

"Ha!” Crispin cried, viewing his prize as it gasped out its life—and “Ha!” Richard cried, as he plunged his blade fiercely into its side, where he figured the heart should be.

The fish lay still, then flopped once more and collapsed. Richard withdrew his blade, a little raggedly, and fish guts leaked out its silver sides.

"Why did you do that?” Crispin said quietly.

"It was dying anyway."

"You ruined it."

"It was a noble opponent,” Richard said grandly. “I gave it a merciful death."

"You don't give a fish a merciful death.” Crispin's voice was tight with rage. “It's not a deer or a hound or something. It's a fish."

"I know it's a fish, so what does it matter?"

"Look at it!” Crispin's fists were clenched. “It looks completely stupid now.” The pike's fierce mouth, lined with teeth, gaped haplessly, the hook still in it, the feathers of the fly like something it had caught and didn't quite know what to do with.

"Well, I'm sorry, then,” said Richard. “But you can still eat it. It's still good."

"I don't want it!” Crispin shouted. “You've ruined it!"

"Well, at least get your fly back out of it. It's a terrific fly. Really."

"No it's not. It was, but you ruined it. You like to ruin everything, don't you?"

Oh, no, Richard thought. He knew where this was going, and that there was pretty much no stopping it. It didn't even occur to him to walk away; that would only prolong things. He had to stay and see it out.

"Go away,” Crispin said. “You're not my friend."

"Yes I am. I was your friend this morning. I'm your friend, still, now."

Crispin kicked the fish. A little goo ran out of its mouth. Its eyes were open. It did look pretty stupid.

"You said you were sorry, but you didn't really mean it."

"Yes I did. I am. I'm sorry I ruined your fish. It's a great fish."

"Prove it, then."

Here it comes, thought Richard. He felt a little involuntary shiver. “How?"

He waited. Crispin was thinking.

The longer Crispin thought, the worse things were. It would be something awful. Would he have to eat the fish raw? He wondered if he could.

"Give me your sword,” Crispin said.

"No!” That was too much.

"I'll give it back."

"Swear?"

"If you do as I say. I don't want it,” Crispin said scornfully. “It's just a beat up piece of junk."

Richard put his hand on the pommel at his hip. “Swear anyway."

Crispin rolled his eyes, but he swore one of their oaths: “May the Seven Gods eat my liver live if I don't give it back to you. After you've apologized."

"All right, then.” Richard drew his blade, and held it out.

"Not that way. You must kneel. Kneel to me, and offer it properly."

He knelt in front of Crispin in the grass, the sword balanced across his two hands. It was heavy this way.

"All right,” his friend said.

"Is this enough?"

"For now.” Crispin was smiling the unpleasant smile that meant he'd thought of something else. Richard wondered what it was. It was worth staying to find out. His arms ached, but not unbearably.

"Are you going to take it, Crispin, or not?"

"Give it to me."

Richard held it out a little further, and Crispin grasped the hilt. The weight leaving him was like a drink of water on a hot day.

"Now stand up."

He stood.

Solemnly, Crispin leveled the sword at his chest. Richard looked down at the tip of the blade against his shirt. This was hard. It took almost everything he had to hold himself in check, not to fight back.

Crispin nodded.

"You have passed the first test,” Crispin intoned. He put the sword aside. Richard hoped it wouldn't get too wet on the grass. The sun was getting lower. But it wasn't dark yet.

"And now, the second. Are you ready?” Richard nodded. “Take off my boot."

He knelt by Crispin's leg and pulled his left boot off the way he'd seen the valet pull off Lord Trevelyan's after the hunt. Crispin steadied himself with a hand on Richard's shoulder, but that was all right; he had to: the whole thing wouldn't work if Crispin fell.

"Now my stocking."

Richard eased the wrinkled stocking off his foot. It smelt not disagreeably of leather, wool, and Crispin himself. “What should I do with it?"

"Put it somewhere you can find it again. This won't take long."

Crispin's bare foot was balanced on his thigh, just above his bent knee. Crispin was like an acrobat, poised for flight. Or if there had been a tree above them, he might have been about to hoist his friend up into its branches for the sweetest fruit. He could see all sorts of possibilities, but Richard knew from rich experience that nothing he could imagine was remotely like what Crispin would say. And, indeed, it was not.

"Now, put your tongue between my toes."

"What?"

Crispin said nothing, did nothing. The foot was there. Crispin was there. The words had been spoken. They were never taken back.

The foot was there. Richard bent his head to it.

Something in his body tingled. He didn't like it. It was just a stupid foot. It should have nothing to do with the way he was feeling.

He tasted essence of Crispin. Crispin's fingers were in his hair, holding tight. He moved on to the next toe. The feeling grew. He really hated it, and he really didn't. He didn't seem to have a choice, actually. He was feeling it whether he wanted to or not. It felt more dangerous than anything he'd ever done, and he didn't hate that, either. He ran his tongue along another toe, and felt Crispin shudder.

"All right,” his friend said. “That's enough.” But Richard didn't raise his head. “The offense—The offense is purified. The deed is pardoned.” Those were the ritual words. Richard should have stopped, but he didn't.

"The deed is—"

Richard went for another toe.

Crispin let himself fall. His bare foot caught Richard on the side of the mouth, but Richard could tell he hadn't meant it to, and let himself fall, too. They rolled on the ground together, struggling against each other for some sort of relief in a fight they didn't know how to win. They pressed their bodies tight against each other, reaching for each other's skin through their clothes, and finally had the sense to tear them off and give each other the release they'd gotten in the past. It felt different this time, more frightening, more uncontrolled, more essential—and more complete, when they had both done, as though they had made an offering to the world they hadn't meant to.

"The offense is purified,” Richard breathed into Crispin's ear.

"The deed is pardoned,” Crispin whispered to the grass.

They got up and cleaned themselves off, and put their clothing back together, and went home.

The next day, Richard helped his mother clean the loft out. The day after that, Crispin took him riding on a real saddlehorse. They passed through a field with high hedges, but did not dismount to experiment with each other behind them. That particular experiment was over, now. They never spoke of it again.

The old swordsman came back at the end of summer, and spent the winter with them. He didn't say much, and he didn't drink much, either. He was yellowish and hollow-eyed, skin slack on his face, hands trembling when he didn't watch them.

Richard showed him his new sword. The old man whistled low. “That's a real old relic, that is. A pride of ages past. Wonder where they dug that up?” He hefted it, made a few passes with surprising speed. “Wasn't junk once. Nice balance. Length's all wrong for you, boy—'smeant for a bigger man. Have to work extra hard now, wontcha?"

He wasn't fun to have around. Some days he never got out of bed, a grubby tangle of blankets and cloaks he huddled in a little too close to the hearth and its ashes. On what must have been his good days, though, he'd heft his own blade, or the fireplace poker, whichever was nearest, and smack at Richard's leg or his sword, if either was within reach; he'd growl something in the back of his throat, and then simply go at him as if Richard were some kind of demon he needed to vanquish. Eventually he'd calm down, and start criticizing, or explaining. That was worth the wait. But it was hard.

"I've gotten bad,” Richard complained, the fifth time of being smacked along his ribs with the flat of the man's blade. He was waking up bruised. “I've forgotten everything you taught me."

"No, you've not.” The old man cackled. “You've grown, is what it is. Arms and legs in a whole new place each morning. Trying, ennit?"

"Very.” Richard risked a pass, and was rewarded with a touch.

"Move the table,” Octavia said absently, standing at it exploring a bat's insides. They had actually left it on the other side of the room some days ago, but she wasn't paying attention.

"Well, don't break anything, then.” She might have meant a bowl, or her son's arm—or probably both.

Nothing got broken. Richard grew all that winter. He was getting hair in unaccustomed places. His voice was not reliable. It made him all the more eager to master the sword.

"You'll be a beauty,” the man would taunt him, trying to break his concentration while they sparred. “Good thing you know how to use this thing, because you'll be fighting them off with it."

That was good. The last thing he wanted was people pestering him. This fall the goose girl had started following him around, never leaving him alone—and when he ignored her, she actually threw things at him, so he gave her a thrashing—a light one—but still, to his surprise, his mother had given him one when she heard, to see how he liked it. She said it was for his own good, but he knew that she was just good and angry. She told him he must never, ever lift his hand against a woman or a girl, not even if they were being very irritating. Not even if they struck him first. Because son, she said, soon you will be much stronger than they. You could hurt someone badly without even meaning to. So it won't be fair. And besides, soon you'll be in a position to, ah, to put them at risk—But we'll talk about that next year, shall we?

"What if her brother comes after me?” Village boys had bullied him a lot when he was small.

She gave him the same answer now that she'd given then to such good effect: “Oh, him you can try and kill, if you can."

He didn't see much of Crispin that winter. The snows were unusually deep, and Crispin was at studies of his own. His father had sent to the city for a University man to teach Crispin mathematics and geometry and orthography and things. When he saw his friend, Crispin told Richard that this was unquestionably the worst year of his life so far. And he didn't see why he had to learn all this stuff when he was going to have secretaries and bailiffs to do the important writing and figuring for him—which earned him a clout from his father, who explained that if he didn't know how to do those things for himself, he'd be cheated blind and the whole estate go to wrack and ruin. And no, it wasn't a bit like not studying the sword. Some things were indeed best left to specialists; he wasn't expected to be able to shoe his own mare, either, was he? Next year he was to have Logic, and Rhetoric, and Dancing.

"Stand fast,” he told Richard St. Vier. “Don't let them teach you to read, whatever they say. Next time she remembers, just tell her you're too busy or something."

"I'll tell her it's bad for my eyesight."

"Whatever it takes. Trust me, it's the beginning of the end."

Crispin was considering running away if things got much worse. But not to the city; that's where all these horrors came from. Maybe he'd jump a boat upriver, if Richard would come with him.

Richard said he'd consider it.

And so they waited till spring.

The old man was better in the spring. He sat out in the sunshine on a bench next to the rain barrel against the wall, like a pea sprout waiting to unfurl in the sun. He dueled Richard up and down the yard, to the terror of the hens, who wouldn't lay for a week. Octavia complained about the chickens, and the old man got all huffy, and said he would go. She was sorry to hurt his feelings, but she was really just as glad to get her cottage back to herself.

They missed him the next year, though. Octavia felt bad, especially as she was pretty sure he must be dead. He couldn't last forever, and he hadn't looked good, even in spring. However, Richard had uncovered the exciting news that Lord Trevelyan's new valet from the city had studied the sword there, as well.

Richard had given up on Crispin as a dueling partner. Crispin said he had too much to study already, and when they had time to do things together, they had better be something fun. Neither of them had to say that Crispin wasn't any kind of match for Richard anymore (except in drill, which even Richard couldn't consider fun).

In an agony of need, Richard plotted how to approach the new valet. Should he be casual, offhand, and only plead if he had to? Or should he abandon all pretense, and simply beg for a lesson?

In the end, it was Lady Trevelyan who decided the matter. Crispin's mother was back from the city, a month early because of an outbreak of fever there, and bored out of her mind. It was her idea to stage a demonstration bout at the Harvest Feast.

By the time Octavia had heard about it, Richard had already gleefully said yes, and it was too late for her to make a fuss about any son of hers displaying himself like a mountebank for the entertainment of people who had nothing better to do than watch other people poking at each other with hypertrophied table knives. It was just as well, really; she had the awful feeling she might have ended up sounding exactly like her mother.

Still, it would have been nice if Hester Trevelyan could have troubled herself to make a courtesy call to explain to Octavia herself that the swords would be tipped, and there would be no First Blood in this duel, the way there was in the city. A mother's heart, after all. Or didn't Lady Trevelyan think she had one? Octavia had Richard's boots resoled, and made sure he had a nice, clean shirt.

Late on the holiday, Octavia braided her hair on top of her head, fixed it with gold pins, and put on her Festival best—not the dress she'd run away in, which had gone to useful patches long ago, but the one she'd stashed to be married in whenever she and her dashing lover got ‘round to it: a glittery and flimsy contraption a decade out of date which still fit her perfectly, and made her look like a storybook queen.

When she made her entrance on the Trevelyan grounds, everyone stared. The country folk standing behind the ribbons marking off the fight space sniggered, because they'd never seen anything like it; but Hester Trevelyan, who had worn something very similar at her own coming out ball, looked hard at Richard St. Vier's mother. Then she scanned the crowd for Crispin, and called him to her.

"Your friend's mother,” she said; “go fetch her—politely, Crispin—and tell her she must come and sit with us."

Octavia had been dreading this. She did not want to sit and attempt to make conversation with Hester Trevelyan in front of or with Hester Trevelyan's husband. Still, one must be gracious. She followed Crispin and arranged herself decorously in a chair on the other side of Lady Trevelyan, and smiled and nodded at everything that was said to her, but that was about all.

Hester found the woman very strange, and not at all appealing, lacking, as she'd always suspected, any agreeable conversation. But she put herself out to be affable. It had clearly been a while since Richard St. Vier's mother had been in any sort of decent company, and perhaps she was worrying about her son. The woman's eyes kept straying across the yard to where the torches were waiting to be lit around the bonfire, and the Harvest tables all set up.

Usually, Hester explained, her dear friends the Perrys held the swordfight after the bonfires had been lit. They also brought dancers down from their Northern estates to perform the traditional horn dance beforehand—and that was thrilling to see. But because once the fires were started (and the Harvest drinking seriously begun, though she didn't actually say that) people got a little wild, they'd thought it best here to begin with the duel while it was still clear daylight. She hoped Mistress St. Vier wasn't anxious. Master Thorne, the swordsman valet, was really as gentle as a lamb. She would see.

Octavia had seen Richard running around with Crispin, eating cakes and apples and throwing the cores across the yard at people. She was glad he wasn't nervous. His shirt couldn't be helped; it had been clean when he left the house.

Hester waved a strip of silk at the men with the horns—they were hunting horns, brought into service for a somewhat cracked but nonetheless thrilling fanfare. Richard and Master Thorne entered from opposite sides of the yard.

Master Thorne moved with a smooth elegance Octavia hadn't seen since she'd left the city. He was arrayed—there was no other word for it—arrayed in green satin, or something that shone like it, his breeches without a wrinkle, his shirt immaculate white. He set his jacket aside, and rolled up his sleeves as meticulously as a master chef decorating a cake. It was a treat to watch, the way they folded neatly into place. She stole a glance at Richard, who was both watching the man intently to see if he knew tricks, and fidgeting with impatience. That particular fidget was well known to her.

Crispin had begged to serve as Richard's aide, but Lady Trevelyan had put her foot down; it wouldn't be seemly for the son of the house, not even at Festival. So it was to a footman that Richard handed his sword while he took off his jacket. His mother watched him hesitate a moment before deciding to leave his sleeves as they were. Then he and Thorne advanced to the middle of the field, saluted each other, and began to circle.

It was only a half-circle, really. Richard lunged and struck, and Thorne fell back. People gasped, or clapped, or both.

"Whoops!” said Thorne. “I must have slipped. Shall we try again?"

"Please do!” Lady Trevelyan commanded. She had planned on her entertainment lasting longer than this.

The duelists saluted, and assumed guard. Richard struck Thorne in the chest again.

"Well done!” cried Thorne. He held up one hand for a pause, and then rolled up a fallen sleeve. “You're very quick, my friend. Shall we continue?"

He did not wait for an answer, just went on guard again, and immediately struck at Richard. Richard didn't even parry, he simply stepped out of the way—or so it seemed from the outside. Thorne thrust, and thrust again. Richard sidestepped, parried, parried again, but did not return his blows.

Octavia recognized the drill from her hen yard. He was running Thorne through his paces. He was reading Thorne's vocabulary of the sword, maybe even learning as he went, but it was nothing but a drill to him.

"Stop!” Lord Trevelyan stood up. The fighters turned to him. “Richard, are you going to fight, or just—just—"

"I'm sorry,” Richard replied. He turned to his opponent. “Want me to go a little slower, sir?"

Master Thorne turned red. He glared at the boy, shook out his arms, and breathed deep. He passed one sleeve over his face—and then he laughed.

"Yes,” he said; “go a little slower, will you? It's Harvest Feast, and the Champions fight for the honor of the house and the virtue of the land. Let's give the people what they came for, shall we?"

The duel was so slow that even Octavia could follow the moves; for the first time she understood what it was her son could do. It was a textbook lesson—but it thrilled the country folk, who'd never seen real swordplay before.

Richard wasn't quite grown up enough to let Thorne beat him. So when Thorne finally tired of showing Richard and the crowd just about everything he knew, he obligingly opened himself for St. Vier's final blow.

"How long did you study?” Richard asked Thorne later.

"Oh, just long enough to put on a show. I figured I could get work as a house guard if valeting got thin. Lots of city men do that. It's always good to have a second skill to fall back on."

"So do you think I should learn how to valet?” Richard asked with distaste.

"You?” Thorne shook his head. “Not you."

When Richard was sixteen, the old man came back.

He could smell fumes from the cottage before he entered and found him in there, peeling potatoes for his mother at the big chestnut table as though he'd never been away.

"Look at this dagger,” the old fellow wheezed. “Worn thin as one of the King's own Forest Leaves. Now I peel with it, do I?"

"Use the paring knife.” Richard held it out to him.

The old man flinched. “Put that down on the table,” he said. “It's bad luck passing a knife hand to hand. Cuts the friendship. Didn't you know that?"

It hadn't been that kind of flinch.

"Want to spar?” Richard asked.

"Spar? With you? Hell, no. I hurt, boy; everything hurts. Everything hurts, and I can hardly see. Spar with you?"

"Oh, come on.” Richard felt himself jiggle with impatience. “I'll nail my feet to the turf. We'll just do standing. You can just check my wristwork."

The old man wiped a rheumy red eye. “Told you, I can hardly see."

"You've been chopping onions. What's for supper?"

"Onions. Stew. How the hell should I know? I'm just the servant here. You're the man, St. Vier. The man of the house, the man of the hour...."

"Cut it out.” Well, he'd smelt it before he came in. There was the tell-tale jug, propped against the chimney piece.

Octavia came in with a fistful of thyme. “There you are, Richard. Look who's dropped by for dinner."

"I didn't come for your cooking, lady,” the old man said. “I came for the feast."

"What feast?"

"Don't get out much, do you?” He hawked and spat into the fire. “The whole county's buzzing with it. Thought you'd know. There'll be a feast, after. And alms galore, I shouldn't wonder. And booze."

Octavia pressed her back to the door for support, knowing she'd need it. “What's happened?"

"Your man Trevleyan's on his way out. Thought you'd know."

No one had told them. It was close to autumn; everyone would be busy with the harvest or the hunt; they'd been staying out of the way. True, Lord Trevelyan had been ill for a bit in summer, but last they'd heard, it had passed.

Richard drew a long breath. “He isn't dead now. Maybe it will be all right."

"Maybe,” his mother said. She started chopping thyme, thinking, Well, I've still got a long lease on the cottage.... Maybe Crispin will take Richard into his service.... I wonder if Thorne will stay on....

She handed the old man another onion. “Make yourself useful,” she said.

But Richard took it from him. “You're going to slice your thumbs off.” The old man's hands were shaking. Richard put the jug into them. “Just drink,” Richard said; “I'll cut."

In the morning, very early, he was gone. They found his sword out by the gate, and a horn button in the hedge. Octavia followed her heart to the orchard, expecting to find him lying under the very tree where they had first discovered him passed out with a sword in his hands. But there was nothing there, only a few apples, rotting in the grass.

Three days later, Lord Trevelyan died. The valet, Master Thorne, came himself to the cottage to tell them.

"Should I go see Crispin?” Richard asked.

Thorne fingered the frayed rushes of a chair back. “Maybe. I don't know. He's doing his best, but it's hard on him. Any man grieves when his father passes; but Crispin's Lord Trevelyan now. He's not himself, really; none of them are. The lady's distracted. I didn't know it would be this bad. You never know till it happens, do you?” He sipped the infusion Octavia gave him.

"So should I go now?"

"You might do that.” Master Thorne nodded slowly. He looked ten years older. “Yes, go ahead; I'll just sit here for awhile and drink this, if you don't mind."

Richard walked softly through the halls of the Trevelyan manor. He'd known it all his life, but it felt different now. Not the lord's death, exactly—but the effect it had on everyone. The people that he passed were quiet; they barely acknowledged him. The sounds of the hall were all wrong: footsteps in them too fast or too slow, voices too gentle or too low. Richard felt lost. It was as if the shape of the hall had changed. He closed his eyes.

"What are you doing here?"

Lady Trevelyan stood before him, dressed in black, her long bright hair bound back behind her, falling like a girl's. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and her face had the same pulled look as Master Thorne's.

"I came to see if Crispin was all right.” She just stared at him. “I'm Richard St. Vier,” he said. He wanted to fidget under her gaze. But something about the focus of her stare now kept him still and watchful.

"Yes,” she said at last; “I know who you are. The swordsman. That peculiar woman's son.” She was grieving, he reminded himself. People were said to go mad with grief. Maybe this was it.

"I'm Crispin's friend,” he said.

"Well, you mustn't see him now. He's very busy. You can't see him, really. It's not good. He's Lord Trevelyan now, you know."

He wanted to retort, “I do know.” But she felt weirdly dangerous to him, like Crispin on one of his dares. So he just nodded.

"Come with me,” she said suddenly. Without waiting for a reply, she turned and walked away. The swirling edge of her black skirt struck his ankle.

Richard followed her down the silent halls. People bowed and curtsied as she passed with him in her wake. She opened the door to a little room, and beckoned him in with her, and shut it behind them.

The walls of the round room were heavy with fabric, dresses hanging on peg after peg.

"My closet,” she said. “Old gowns. I was going to sort through them, but now it doesn't matter, does it? I may as well dye them all black, and wear them to death."

"They're pretty,” he said politely.

She fingered a green and gold dress. “I wore this one to the Halliday Ball. I was going to have it cut down for Melissa.... Children grow up so fast, don't they?"

She looked up at him. She was a tiny woman. Crispin's bones hadn't come from her. “Would you like to see me in it?” she asked wistfully.

What kind of a question was that? He licked his lips. He really should go.

A swoosh of icy blue hissed across his skin. “Or do you think this one's better?"

The cold and cloudy thing was in his arms. It smelt metallic.

"That's silk brocade, Richard St. Vier. Blush of Dawn, the color's called. It's to remind you of early morning, when you wake up with your lover.” She brushed the fabric over his lips. “Thus. Do you like it?"

He looked over at the door. Silk was expensive; he couldn't just drop it on the floor. Maybe there was a hook it went back on—

She followed his gaze to the wall. “Do you like the pink silk better?” She held a new gown up against herself, the glowing pink cloud eclipsing the black of her dress. “This becomes me, don't you think?"

He nodded. His mouth was dry.

"Come closer,” she said.

He knew the challenge when he heard it. He took a step toward her.

"Touch me,” she said. He knew where he was, now: walking the fallen tree, climbing to the topmost eave....

"Where?"

"Wherever you like."

He put his hand on the side of her face. She turned her head and licked his palm, and he started as if he had been kicked. He hadn't expected that, to feel that again here, now, that dangerous thrill at the base of his spine. He shuddered with the pleasure he did not like.

"Hold me,” she said. He put his arms around her. She smelt of lavender, and blown-out candle wicks.

"Be my friend,” she whispered across his lips.

"I will,” he whispered back.

Lady Trevelyan laughed low, and sighed. She knotted her fingers in his hair, and pulled his head down to her, biting his lips as she kissed him. He shivered, and pressed himself against her. She lifted her inky skirts, and pulled him closer, fingering his breeches. He didn't even know where his own hands were. He didn't know where anything was, except one thing. His heart was slamming with the danger of how much he wanted it. His eyes were closed, and he could hardly breathe. Every time she touched him he tried to think what a terrible thing this was, but it came out completely different: he had to stop thinking entirely, because thinking it was dangerous just made him want it more. She was saying something, but he couldn't hear it. She was helping him, that was what mattered. She was helping him—and then suddenly it was over, and she was shouting:

"You idiot! Pink peau de soie—ruined!” She shoved him away. His sight came back. He reached for his breeches, fallen around his knees. “What do you think you're doing? Who do you think you are?” Her face and neck were flushed, eyes sharp and bright. “You're nobody. You're no one. What are you doing here? Who do you think you are?"

He did up his buttons, stumbled out into the hall.

The door was closed; he couldn't hear her now. He started walking back the way he'd come—or some way, anyway. It wasn't a part of the house he knew.

"Richard!"

Not Crispin. Not now.

"Richard!"

Not now.

"Richard, damn you—you stand when I call you!"

Richard stood. He had his back to Crispin; he couldn't look at him now. “What?” he asked. “What do you want?"

"What do I want?” Crispin demanded shrilly. “What the hell's wrong with you? What do you think I want?"

"Whatever it is, I don't have it."

"No, you don't, do you?” Crispin said bitterly. “God. I thought you were my friend."

"I guess I'm not, then. I guess I'm not your friend."

Crispin threw a punch at him.

And Richard returned it. He didn't hold back.

It wasn't a fair fight, not really. They'd never been even in this game.

It was, Richard reflected after, a good thing they'd neither of them had swords; but he still left Crispin, Lord Trevelyan, a wheezing mess crumpled on the floor.

Then he went home and told his mother what he'd done.

She had known that it would come someday, but this was so much sooner than she'd hoped.

"You have to go, my love,” she said. “Trevelyan's dead. His lady won't protect you, and Crispin certainly won't."

Richard nodded. He wanted to say, “It's only Crispin,” or “He'll get over it.” But Crispin was Trevelyan now.

"Where should I go?” he said instead. He pictured the mountains, where bold men ran with the deer. He pictured another countryside, much like this; another cottage by a stream, or maybe a forest....

"To the city,” his mother said. “It's the only place that you can lose yourself enough."

"The city?” He'd never been there. He didn't know anyone. The house with no air was there, and the place of last resort. But even as he thought it, he felt that curious thrill down his spine, and knew he wanted it, even though he shouldn't.

"The city,” he said. “Yes."

"Don't be frightened,” his mother said.

He said, “I'm not."

She pulled out the book on Toads, opening to the hollow where the money was. “Here,” she said. “Start with this. You'll earn more when you get there."

He did not ask her, “How?” He thought he knew.

Since we published “Rebecca's Locket” last May, the reclusive S. L. Gilbow has offered a few more tidbits of personal information. Turns out he recently retired from the US Air Force after serving for a quarter of a century and he is now teaching high school English. He adds that he's still trying to figure out what he'll do when he grows up ... which gives him something in common with the title character of his new story. Sort of.

I fall. I dream. I fall some more. In thirty feet I will hit the corrugated, steel floor below me. I play with time. That's what I call it. Playing with time. I can do so much in 1.36 seconds. It is almost an eternity.

I review the 1,634 briefings loaded within me. I order them alphabetically. I order them chronologically. I dream. I reminisce. I have given some of these briefings dozens of times to glassy-eyed soldiers on the Moon. The briefing I have presented the most is about environmental control units. I have given that briefing one hundred and fifty-two times. It is very popular. I run through it several times, carefully studying every slide, trying to discover its appeal. It is not my favorite briefing.

It is the obscure briefings I like the most. The ones buried deep within me. The ones I have never given. There are 1,124 briefings in my memory I have never even delivered. I call them the silent briefings. They are the ones that are loaded into me because I have enough space to hold them all. Useless, outdated briefings. Easier to leave in than take out. I review some of these. It amuses me. I combine them with other briefings. That amuses me more.

Environmental control units are absolutely critical to successful operations on the Moon. The XG-21 is the state-of-the-art environmental control unit on the Moon, and its importance cannot be overstated. Environmental control units are not absolutely critical on Mount Rushmore. Mount Rushmore was the masterwork of renowned sculptor Gutzon Borglum. Gutzon Borglum has never been on the Moon but his importance cannot be overstated.

I wonder if the soldiers would have liked my Mount Rushmore briefing. It is my favorite. I would like to give that briefing to the soldiers. I almost wish I could give that briefing to them now. I almost wish I had not jumped.

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Mount Rush....

What in the hell happened to her?

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Mount Rushmore National Memorial. Next slide please.

We found her in Storage Bay Five. Afraid she's banged up pretty bad.

Ladies and gentlemen. Distinguished Guests. Welcome to Storage Bay Five. Next slide please.

Watch your hand. I'm trying to open her up.

Please watch your step and make sure you have your hard-hat on. Next slide please.

What was she doing in Bay Five?

Storage Bay Five is one of the most remarkable structures on the Moon and the only storage bay at Lunar Command Headquarters maintained at Earth standard gravity. Storage Bay Five and its attached facilities are almost large enough to cover an American football field. Next slide please.

The only blasted place around here where falling can actually hurt you, and that's where she has to end up. Andreanna, you dumb bitch.

Now, you may ask why we would need to maintain Earth standard gravity at facilities on the Moon. What would such facilities offer us? Next slide please.

She fell from the viewing platform. Some welders on the other side of the bay saw her fall.

First, many of our experiments require us to understand how something will operate both on the lunar surface and on Earth. Next slide please.

What was she doing on the viewing platform?

The Storage Bay Five viewing platform looks out onto the lunar surface and provides a superb view of the surrounding landscape. Next slide please.

Beats me. Logistics had her checked out to give one of those control unit briefings. I didn't even know she knew where the viewing platform was.

In the distance you can see Montes Apenninus, a breathtakingly beautiful mountain range that stretches for three hundred and seventy-five miles. Next slide please.

What's she saying?

The platform also provides a stunning view of the planet Earth. Here is a beautiful view of a full Earth. Please pause for a moment and appreciate its grandeur. Next slide please.

I think she just said “next slide please.” Turn her up a little.

In addition, the viewing platform overlooks a magnificent array of twenty-one XG-21 environmental control units. Impressive, aren't they? Next slide please.

That's better. What idiot let her into Bay Five?

For example, if we develop a product and want to know how much damage it might withstand in a fall on Earth, we certainly wouldn't want to fly it all the way back to drop it off of Mount Rushmore. Pause for crowd laughter.

Workers said they didn't see anyone else with her. Think she got in there on her own.

But we don't have to go all the way back to Earth. We can test it right here on the Moon in Storage Bay Five. Next slide please.

God, I hate it when she says that. Can you get her to stop?

Here is a view of an XG-21 environmental control unit being dropped thirty feet in Storage Bay Five. Notice how little damage it sustains. This little baby will still be heating and cooling for years to come. Next slide please.

Press the reset button at the base of her right shoulder blade, for God's sake.

Hydraulic level is low. Left ankle is non-functional. Tension in right ankle requires adjustment. Tension in left knee requires adjustment.

Oh great, she's entered her self-assessment mode. This could take forever.

Right knee is non-functional. Left arm is missing.

Andreanna, stop self assessment.

Right arm is non-functional. Left facial plate has sustained severe damage.

Just turn her off for right now. Turn the bitch off.

Right chest....

Is she back on? What a mess. I don't think I could handle this if she were real. Thank God I'm not a medic.

The medical staff here at Lunar Command Headquarters is second to none. And the LUNCOM medical staff makes extensive use of the Earth standard gravity clinic attached to Storage Bay Five.

Well, at least she doesn't seem to be saying “next slide please."

Many illnesses on the Moon are best treated at Earth standard gravity.

Can you stop her from briefing? I sat through enough of that crap when I first got here.

Vertigo, for example, is frequently treated in Storage Bay Five.

Andreanna, stop briefing.

The stop briefing command is an important function to know when using the Androbriefer. To stop an Androbriefer, simply look at it and say its assigned name followed by “stop briefing."

What do you think she was doing in Bay Five?

Storage Bay Five connects to the General Karl B. Carmichael Memorial Gym, which is also maintained at Earth standard gravity. The gym is a wonderful place to keep in shape and make new friends.

She fell from the observation platform. That's got to be what? Thirty-five, forty feet?

The planet Earth, located 238,900 miles from the Moon, can be observed from the Storage Bay Five observation platform.

You think she was looking out the window?

At times you can even see South Dakota from the observation window.

I don't know, but it's one hell of a view from that window.

The majestic Black Hills rise out of the Great Plains in western South Dakota.

Andreanna, stop briefing.

Mount Rushmore has been etched into the Black Hills of South Dakota as a tribute to democracy.

Who loaded the South Dakota briefing? Not very useful up here.

Mount Rushmore was the masterwork of Gutzon Borglum.

Just turn her off. We're going to have to send her to diagnostics.

Construction on Mount Rushmore began in....

Andreanna, run personality update file history.

Personality update files are a critical part of maintaining your Androbriefer, a state-of-the-art communications component, in prime condition.

Andreanna, run assessment of personality files loaded since arrival at Lunar Command.

Lunar Command, or as we call it here on the lunar surface—LUNCOM, was established on September 4, 2063.

Listening skills aren't too good today, are they, girl?

LUNCOM's first commander was Gen Karl B. Carmichael, seen here in front of an XG-21 environmental control unit.

Let's see if this helps you listen.

Hydraulic level is normal. Left facial plate has sustained severe damage.

May not be able to fix your face, Andreanna. You may not be much of a looker anymore.

Tension in left knee requires adjustment. Right arm requires adjustment.

That's too bad, because you used to look pretty good, except for that big chin of yours. Why'd they have to give you such a big chin?

Right chest area has sustained severe damage.

Andreanna, stop self assessment.

Your Androbriefer is able to provide a complete assessment of all critical components. Your Androbriefer is also able to assess the current status of all system update files.

Andreanna, run assessment of personality files loaded since arrival at LUNCOM.

Update .008 loaded at 0831, 12 September 2081 at LUNCOM Robotics Division.

Excellent, girl.

Update .008 is functional.

Very good.

Update .008 added smile algorithm to the Androbriefer unit. It is important to smile when you arrive at LUNCOM for that is the first step in building friendships which will last a lifetime.

Andreanna, assess next personality file.

Update .009 loaded at 1317, 27 January 2082 at LUNCOM Robotics Division. Update .009 is functional. Update .009 revised the gesture algorithm. Nonverbal communication and gestures are a critical part of making new friends when you first arrive at LUNCOM.

Andreanna, assess next personality file.

Over ninety percent of all human communication is said to be nonverbal.

Andreanna, listen. Andreanna, assess next personality file.

Update .010 loaded at 1041, 17 April 2082 at LUNCOM Robotics Division. Update .010 is functional. Update .010 revised the voice inflection algorithm. The human voice is capable....

Andreanna, that should be all the personality updates.

Update .0101 loaded at 2334, 5 May 2082 in LUNCOM Cafeteria.

Damn bootleg programs. What junk did they put in you?

Update .0101 contains corrupted files. Update .0101 added passion algorithm.

Why do you let those guys put those damned corrupt programs in you?

The passion algorithm allows the Androbriefer to search the data base for key terms and then ties those terms to personality algorithms.

Girl, I don't think this one is coming out. I think it's messed you up real bad too.

The passion algorithm is meant to emulate the process of producing human feelings.

We just got to try to make everything feel, don't we? Andreanna, hold still.

After you arrive at LUNCOM expect to develop a passion for the wonder that is the Moon.

No, it's not coming out, Andreanna. Looks like a trip back to Earth for you.

A passion which will become the key to....

Andreanna, wake up. Do you remember me?

Welcome to Black Hills Robotics, Incorporated. Black Hills Robotics, Incorporated, lies on the outskirts of Rapid City, South Dakota.

That's right, baby. You're home. Can I hug you?

Black Hills Robotics, Incorporated, brings you state-of-the-art robots and androids. Black Hills Robotics is paving a bright path into the future, and we invite you to come along with us.

What did they do to you, sweetheart? What in the world did they do to your face?

Dr. Sarah E. Miller is chief of communications robotics at Black Hills Robotics, Incorporated. She is your link to the future of communications.

Oh, you do remember me.

Dr. Sarah E. Miller uses her own likeness for the entire line of Androbriefer units. Consequently, the dominant chin has become the trademark of the Black Hills Robotics Androbriefer.

You may have a big chin, dear, but I never got sued for stealing a likeness.

Dr. Sarah E. Miller's groundbreaking systems now serve you across this planet and on the Moon.

Well your breasts are bigger than mine now. Sons-of-bitches. Guess my breasts weren't big enough for them.

Dr. Sarah E. Miller is not an XG-21 environmental control unit.

No, baby, I'm not. I'm going to make some adjustments now. You just go to sleep for a while.

Dr. Sarah E. Miller...

Wake up, baby. Sit up. I've got to see what they put in you.

I know, I know. You want to brief, don't you, dear? But I disabled your briefing function for right now. That's okay. You just move your lips. You just pretend you're briefing.

Oh, a smiling program. I guess you weren't smiling enough for them, were you? I don't think that program's coming out.

And gestures. They wanted more gestures from you. Well, I've got a gesture for them. I hate it when people mess with my work.

My God. A recursive analysis program.

Labeled it “passion,” did they? As if they really know passion.

Did they give you passion, baby? Is that what happened?

Did they really make you able to love? That's probably what they wanted. I guess we're always looking for love. Always looking for that right combination of zeroes and ones that will give us love.

I'm hooking your briefing program back up, Andreanna. Just hold still. You'll be able to talk in a second. That should do it. Now just tell me what you love, sweetheart. Just tell me what you love.

The Mount Rushmore National Memorial lies approximately twenty-three miles southwest of Rapid City, South Dakota.

Well, don't you worry, Andreanna. You're staying right here in Rapid City with me. I don't know what I am going to do with you, but you sure aren't going back to the Moon.

Andreanna, baby. Good news. Lunar Command doesn't want you back. We're just going to send them another unit.

Lunar Command oversees seventeen operational bases spread across the lunar surface.

They want all their briefings out of you though. You okay with that, baby?

These critical bases play a key role in maintaining a strong national defense.

But we can't leave that classified stuff in you anymore. And you sure do have a lot of it. Bet you didn't know you were a security risk.

The extensive mining operations under LUNCOM are also critical in providing essential resources and maintaining a strong national economy.

Baby, if you can hear me, I really need you to come out of that briefing loop you're stuck in.

Come with us as we take an in-depth look at LUNCOM.

Andreanna, stop briefing. Please.

Come with us as we explore the future of your Lunar Command and the future of the planet Earth.

Baby, you need to come out of that loop you're in or they're going to shut you down for good.

Come with us as....

Andreanna, all those LUNCOM briefings are gone now.

The Androbriefer has the storage capacity to hold every briefing your corporation will ever need.

All you've got left is the stuff I put in you a long time ago. Let's see what's left in you, sweetheart.

Mount Rushmore beams with the stunning likenesses of four of America's most famous presidents.

You like that one, don't you, baby. That was the first briefing I ever put in you.

To the far left is George Washington, one of America's finest leaders in the struggle for independence and the first President of the United States.

Andreanna, I have some bad news for you. You're not taking any more briefing loads. I've tried, but I can't fix it.

Immediately to the right of George Washington is Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration of Independence.

No more personality updates either. Baby, this may be it for you. I'm gonna miss you, sweetheart. I'm really gonna miss you.

Andreanna. Get up, baby. Can you walk? Just step out of the transport and take a few steps. You should be able to walk now. Watch your step.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen.

This way, sweetheart. I have something to show you. See. Over there.

It is my privilege to introduce to you the Androbriefer, the state-of-the-art in communications robotics.

Look, baby, it's Mount Rushmore. You've never seen it in person before, have you? It's okay, baby. It's okay.

Your Androbriefer is designed to take effective communications to a new level.

That's great. Just let that smile algorithm kick in.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen.

You go stand over there by those people on the grass and look. I already set up your briefing slides for you. You take as long as you want.

Ladies and gentleman. Doctor Sarah E. Miller. Distinguished guests.

Gather around her. She won't hurt you.

Welcome to the Mount Rushmore National Monument.

Look, Mom, a ranger.

Next slide please.

What happened to her face?

Mount Rushmore was the masterwork of Gutzon Borglum.

That's it, baby, you go ahead and brief, and when you're done, we're gonna let you sleep for a while.

It is a story of trial and triumph.

But I'll bring you back whenever I can.

It is an epic story of one man's vision...

I promise.

...one man's passion.

You've earned it, baby.

Next slide please.

You've earned it.

For this column, I had intended to write about The Road, John Hillcoat's film adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel, but the road to The Road proved bumpier than even McCarthy could have envisioned. Severe post-production problems (Hollywood-ese for “the picture is a mess") caused the release to be pushed back several months, and it's possible that the movie will be dumped into a February slot along with the latest Uwe Boll disaster and a batch of awesomely unoriginal and incompetent slasher movies starring No-One-You-Ever-Heard-Of dressed in thongs and Speedos. Thus my exploration of why such a tendentiously bleak post-apocalyptic novel is the perfect Oprah book and, assuming it can be fixed, the feelgood movie of the year will have to wait for another time. In lieu of that, I'd like to discuss several European films of fair-to-middling worth that I saw last week in Trieste.

The vast majority of apocalyptic films hold out at least some small hope for the future of our species, but this is not the case with Tres Días (or Before the Fall, as it will be called on international DVD), a Spanish movie directed by Javier Gutiérrez that presents a scenario in which all life on our planet is due to be destroyed in three days by a killer meteor. The measures that would have allowed life on Earth to survive have been tried and have failed. Barring divine intercession, mankind is as done as last night's dinner. In a tiny Spanish town, twenty-something Emilio (Daniel Cassadellà), the boss of a team of laborers/handymen, takes the news with relative aplomb. He's a depressed, disaffected sort who has never expected much out of life and takes no great pleasure in friends and family; but being a dutiful son, he heads home to his mother (Mariana Cordero). He finds her listening to the news—the world, and their little corner of it, is being ripped apart by suicide and violence. Guards at the prisons have abandoned their posts and the prisoners are running wild throughout the country. Emilio's mother is concerned about his brother Tomas and his three children. Tomas is out of town, so far away that it's unlikely he will be able to get back in the time left, and Emilio's mother insists that they drive to his brother's house on the edge of the desert and see to the children's welfare. Emilio is not disposed to help, but allows himself to be dragooned into going along. When they arrive they discover that the TV is on the fritz and the children know nothing of the impending apocalypse. His mother immediately sabotages the radio, the sole remaining conduit for news, and devotes herself to preventing the children from hearing about the end of the world. Emilio is more sanguine about the situation—he doesn't see much point in keeping the news from them, but he doesn't have any real involvement in the situation, so once again he goes along with his mother.

What makes Tres Días compelling, aside from the more-than-competent acting on the part of all concerned, is how the circumstance brings out the caring side of Emilio's nature. When Tomas's teenage daughter, Raquel (Ana de las Cuevas) is stood up by her date, she says, “He'll be sorry,” and Emilio's face registers the complexity of his moral dilemma: whether or not he should ease Raquel's hurt feelings by telling her that her boyfriend has been prevented from coming by a larger tragedy. As these dilemmas grow more complex, we understand that the adults’ desire to protect the children also imperils them in unexpected ways, and this comes to a head with the appearance of Lucio (Eduard Fernández), a man who claims to be their father's friend. Armed with a shotgun, Emilio will not let him enter the house, and Lucio, ostensibly waiting for Tomas to return, passes the time by repairing old tape cassettes—odd behavior, you might think, for a man facing his mortality; but Lucio soon displays odder behavior yet, forcing Emilio to commit more deeply to the children.

Whether you appreciate Tres Días depends on how grim you like your grim. Some people will love it, some will not. For my tastes, the turn of events initiated by Lucio, though it provides Emilio with a reason to go the extra mile on behalf of the children, is a bit much. I think it adds an ingredient that was unnecessary, turning the picture into a standard sort of thriller, and I believe it might have been more edifying if Emilio had reached his moral conclusion without Lucio's advent. Be that as it may, the movie makes an interesting addition to the genre, and it's one I'll likely take a look at again, if only to validate my feelings about it.

In recent years there have been so many zombie pictures, I hesitate to call them a sub-genre—with their overtones of social commentary, ranging in tone from flat-out slapstick parody (Shaun of the Dead) to the bleakest of post-apocalyptic scenarios, and with such recent and soon-to-be-released titles as Zombie Strippers, Chopper Zombie, Zombie Jesus, Zombie Grandma, Zombie Family, America's Next Top Zombie Idol, Gay Zombie, Zombie Nation, and Zombie Chef from Hell, it seems the zombie has become a sort of all-purpose metaphor. Can Zombie Housepets in Love, Zombie Holiday on Ice, and Zombie Assistant Manager at McDonald's be far behind? Frankly, I've pretty much OD'ed on the whole zombie thing, so when I learned that The Dead Outside was yet another zombie flick, needless to say I was not enthusiastic about watching it. However, it turns out that this is not another metaphorical usage of the zombie—it's a thoughtful, twisty story in which zombies play only the part of the inciting element.

Filmed on a micro-mini budget by a young Scotswoman, Kerry Anne Mullaney, and her even younger screenwriting partner and cinematographer, Kris R. Bird, the story involves a neurological pandemic that has killed or consumed most of the population, turning the dying paranoid and violent. April (Sandra Louise Douglas), a teenage girl with a mysterious and dark past, has survived alone in an isolated farmhouse for several months, when Daniel (Alton Milne), a man in his early thirties who has lost his family to the pandemic, comes to the farm looking for gas. Hostile at first, April allows Daniel to stay and the two negotiate an uneasy alliance, punctuated by April's nighttime zombie hunts and fits of temper when Daniel pries too deeply into her secrets. “I like being by myself mostly,” she says, and that's fine by Daniel—it seems there's not a hint of romance between the two, due to her disposition and the difference in their ages. But when Kate (Sharon Osdin), a young woman who has been living with her mother, recently deceased, seeks refuge on the farm and proves an amiable companion for Daniel, sex or something like rears its head and April demands that she leave.

The fascinating thing about The Dead Outside is that as I watched, I realized this was truly the first zombie film to explore in depth the way women might survive such a catastrophe (the first I can recall at any rate). Women in this type of film usually are relegated to support roles for the men who do the actual dog work of survival, or else they acquire a distinct machismo and become gun-toting, death-dealing babes. While April does her fair share of death dealing, potting the odd zombie with her rifle and leaving them clinging to the fence around the farmhouse, her behavior is unmistakably that of an awkward, sheltered young woman. Older and more sophisticated, Kate uses wiles to achieve her aims, but they're directed toward the same deadly result. The conflict between the two women and the cracks that begin to show in Daniel's exterior, making us aware that all is not right with him, form the context of the film as it plays out to a disturbing finish.

The Dead Outside (a double meaning seems embodied in that title) is not without its flaws. The filmmakers learned on the job and thus the narrative gets a little unclear toward the end, and their lack of financial resources becomes evident now and again; yet the strength of the picture lies in the fact that they let the narrative deploy naturally, without overmuch exposition, and use imagery and acting to illuminate certain plot points, and so a slight lack of clarity is forgivable, especially the first time out. TDO is an excellent example of what can be achieved with talent, a little money, and a lot of determination. I spoke to the filmmakers in Trieste and they told me they intend to shoot another movie this year, a science fiction flick. Once they start getting proper financing, I expect Mullaney and Bird will create movies that virtually everyone will want to see.

At the opposite end of the spectrum lies Terra Nova, one of the most expensive films yet produced by the Russian film industry, a first class production all the way and a clear rip-off of films like 1994's No Escape, a Lance Henriksen/Ray Liotta (wasting his Goodfellas cachet) vehicle that explored what might happen if hardcore convicts were dumped on a remote island and left to fend for themselves. Barbarism, cannibalism, and various other unnatural acts abound. In No Escape, the Father (Henriksen) is the leader of a small yet resourceful group of cons who resist the debasing Law of the Jungle bunch ruled by the evil Walter Marek (Stuart Wilson) and seek to carve out a peaceful society. In Terra Nova, Ivan Zhilin (Konstantin Lavronenko), a man who is reputed to have killed twenty-two people, and a psychotic sidekick strike out on their own and form a peaceful society of their own, a kind of Robinson Crusoe and Friday relationship. This darkly comic relationship and the way the Chechen-Russian rift is detailed in miniature are the only points of interest in the film. The acting is strong, but the ending of the picture, a mash-up of Flight of the Phoenix and several B movies, is beyond absurd. Just goes to show what can be achieved with thirty or forty million euros, as if we needed the Russians to remind us of Hollywood's great lesson. If you've seen No Escape or any of the other convicts-dumped-on-islands (or desert fastnesses, space stations, et al), you'd do well to give this a pass ... unless, of course, you're attracted to the particularly nasty brand of post-Soviet brutality on view here.

Of all the films I saw last week, none was more intriguing than Joseph Losey's 1963 picture, The Damned (American title, These Are the Damned). Best known for his Harold Pinter-scripted The Servant, The Go-Between, and the Kafkaesque Mr. Klein starring Alain Delon, Losey was an American director who worked mostly in the UK, and The Damned, an early Hammer film, was one of several ventures he made into the genre. The movie creaks a bit, showing its age especially in its evocation of Teddy Boys, a gang of thugs led by the young Oliver Reed who're first seen listening to a rock and roll song that features at one point the lyrics: “...black leather, black leather, kill, kill, kill,” a song so infantile in its nihilism that Losey saw fit to repeat it throughout the picture. They also perform faux-military drills in the town square, shouting things such as “Last one to the Unicorn's a cube!,” an utterance that would likely get them slaughtered by any real criminals who happened past. But once the gangbanging, Clockwork Orange-presaging, little bit of the old ultraviolence is done with, the story is chilling in the extreme. An American tourist named Wells (Macdonald Carey) and his sister flee from Reed's bunch and encounter a group of children who are held captive by the military in rooms at the bottom of a cliff and have never seen another human being. Mistaking Wells and his sister for their parents, the children hide them from the cameras that monitor them. The Americans are grateful, but don't realize that the children are mutants capable of surviving in a radioactive environment and can spread radiation with a simple touch. The Damned would be an excellent addition to a bill also featuring John Wyndham's Children of the Damned (we'll exclude Village of the Damned on the grounds that it incorporates Kirstie Alley in pre-Weight Watchers mode playing a scientist, surely one of the most unfortunate casting choices ever) if it were on DVD. Here's hoping this oversight is soon corrected.

That's it for this time, kids, other than to say, Trieste was sunny and blustery, grappa with lemon juice is good for you, and steer clear of any darkened doorway from which issues the chant, “...black leather, black leather, rock, rock, rock..."

Henry Garfield works by day as a writer and editor for Bangor Metro magazine and says that in spite of being the great-great-grandson of an assassinated President, his Secret Service protection expired generations ago. His F&SF debut is a baseball story for readers of all ages. According to www.hwgarfield.com, this year marks the forty-second anniversary of the season that made him a fan of the Boston Red Sox and inspired his werewolf novel, Tartabull's Throw. BoSox fans should also take note that he has another baseball story slated to appear in Final Fenway Fiction later this year.

My kids don't entirely believe me when I tell them I was there, on the field, the day it happened.

In truth, they're skeptical about the whole legend. I could easily prove it to them. The ball's still up there, after all. The scopes at Farside Observatory have no trouble picking it up, especially within a day or two of the terminator, when the ground is in darkness and the ball pops over the horizon in full sunlight. Tourists used to ask about it, I'm told, but not so much anymore. It's yesterday's news. It's a long trip to Farside. And those astronomers have more important things to do.

Some people still don't believe the ball went into orbit. Joe “Stratosphere” Stromboni got tired of being asked about it. An American player on a mostly Japanese team in a league run, like everything else up here, by the Chinese, Stromboni had a hard time getting along. He never learned to speak either language. He hated being interviewed. It got to where baseball wasn't fun for him anymore. He only had a couple decent years after he hit the homer. It's a shame what happened to him, really.

Understand that these were the early days. Only a few of the mining settlements had teams. Most of the players were Chinese, as you'd expect. I'm half-Japanese half-Korean, but I was born up here, as was nearly every other player in the league. Most of the ones who weren't had come up as kids. Not Stromboni. Not “Stratosphere.” He grew up in the logging farms of northern Minnesota—the old iron range country that had spawned another home-run hitter, Roger Maris, in an earlier century. Stromboni could hit, too. He was a terror in high school, which is where he got his nickname, belting balls so far into the deep midwestern sky that observers said they penetrated the stratosphere. Had his brush with the American bigs, too, long after the big money was over. Got called up in September by the San Diego Padres and hit twelve home runs before the month was out. He hit eight more the next April before pitchers figured out he couldn't do a thing with breaking stuff.

He was eleven years on from that brief but glorious September in San Diego and seven years out of organized ball when he showed up here. He was vague on how he'd escaped. We saw a few renegade Yanks from time to time even back then, but they all seemed to be looking over their shoulders. Not Stromboni. Not Joe.

The ladies loved him. He was a physical specimen, chiseled from that hard granite of the North American continent, and every bit as dense. I had to explain to him more than once why he wouldn't see any curveballs. “It's a vacuum, you idiot,” I told him. “There's no resistance.” He just sat there with that goofy grin on his face, the one the girls went ga-ga over. And he was helping us win ballgames. That's all that mattered. For the first time since we'd started playing ball up here, a non-Chinese team had a serious shot at winning the championship. The whole Kyoto Valley was excited about it.

Were there six teams in the league that year, or seven? I can't remember. I played short and batted second, because I was the best bunter on the team. Stromboni could only have been a first baseman. He was a good foot taller than the rest of us. And he could smoke the ball. Used to drive our manager nuts. Couldn't get it through his head that those half-kilometer fly balls were just long outs.

It's funny how we use the metric system for everything except baseball. It's the one legacy the Yanks left us from their glory days. That and the old Apollo sites. Took the kids out to see one of them, finally. Typical American waste. They beat everybody up here by fifty years, and then they threw out their trash and went home. First guy out the door couldn't even get the words to his speech right. No wonder their empire fell.

But inertia is inertia everywhere in the universe, you know. The human body hasn't changed (although I can't imagine anyone playing ball in those voluminous twentieth-century spacesuits). On a ground ball in the hole, a fast runner is still out by half a step. Ninety feet between bases. Sixty feet six inches from the pitching rubber to home plate. Worlds may vary and civilizations rise and fall, but a baseball diamond is forever.

Stromboni set a rookie record for home runs that year. I think he had nine. Now, that may seem like an unheard-of number, but you have to remember that this was before they deadened the ball. He had this big uppercut swing, and he could hit the ball farther than anyone I've ever seen. He didn't know our game at all. Didn't know about the farfielders and their big magnetic gloves. He didn't know they stayed out there the whole game, playing for both teams and never coming to bat, nine designated fielders to cover everything between the outfielders and the crater wall, and that it took a prodigious poke to put one out of their reach. But he kept trying. He didn't even know that once the ball was caught by a farfielder the play was over. I guess he'd never watched one of our games before coming up here. I mean, every kid over the age of five knows the Farfield Fly Rule. Not Stromboni.

It's not that he didn't care. He wanted to win, just like everybody else. But he was stuck back in the Babe Ruth era of baseball. He didn't understand that we played the game as it had originally been intended: with well-placed ground balls, bunts, steals, and sacrifices. The boring old American game of pitching and power didn't work up here—not when a fastball was just a fastball and any idiot with decent hand-eye coordination could hit one halfway to the horizon. A few of the less sophisticated fans still ooh and aah when one clears the far wall, and Stromboni had his followers, too. But the long ball is stupid strategy and stultifying spectator sport. If all I wanted was to see how far someone could hit a ball, I'd watch golf.

But like I said, those were the early days, and low-gravity baseball was still new. We were workers first, there to build roads and power plants, to extract energy and minerals and the very air we breathed from the guts of this New World. We worked hard, we drank hard, and we played baseball inside the rims of small craters, beginning in the twilight of the two-week-long day, and then on into the night beneath lights in one small arc of the circle, with the netted gloves of the farfielders glowing like fireflies in the distance. Our season ran the year around, two weeks on and two weeks off, with a two-month hiatus centered around the Chinese New Year. The championship series was played, then as now, in early December.

Stromboni was on the crew building the refueling station out at Kilometer 108 on the road to New Shanghai. I saw him at work a couple of times, when I was laying tile in one of the new rooms. He was over in another section, going after a piece of wall with the jackhammer. He had those big arms. From taking down trees in North America, I guess. That's how he could hit the way he did.

But he never got his head all the way around the idea that small ball is what wins games up here. What makes our game special is the acrobatic play of the infielders, the spectacular leaps to snare high bounces off the raked regolith, the dives for balls hit up the middle, the lightning-fast relays to cut down a runner trying to score from second on a single. How boring it would be if every batter simply tried to hit the ball as far as he could.

Sure, there were a few home runs, mostly near the end of one-sided ballgames, and during practice it was fun to see how far you could hit one out into the vast sepia landscape. On the first day of the season, Stromboni hit a couple of BP pitches clean out of the crater and was instantly infatuated. One ball was found four kilometers away. In the game, however, all he produced were four arcing drives that soared momentarily against the black sky before disappearing into the flash of a farfielder's glove.

The skip worked with him to cut down his swing and hit line drives. “Just meet the ball,” he said. “See it and meet it. There's no movement on the pitches in this league. You can learn to direct the ball. It's a much more effective way to play in low gravity."

Stratosphere learned, because he was a good hitter, and he began finding the gaps, hitting behind base runners, and depositing soft liners over the leaps of the infielders. But his heart was the home run. In late April, he came up to bat with two outs and nobody on in the ninth of a tie game against Tycho, with whom we were then tied for first place. We'd blown like a six-run lead, it was late, and nobody was looking forward to playing extra innings. Stratosphere belted one over everything to win the game. Maybe it was the worst thing that could've happened to him—winning a game with his first home run—but we were all mighty happy about it. We mobbed him at the plate.

I say it might have been the worst thing to happen to him, because that was when he started reverting to his old habits. Funny thing was, it never seemed to hurt the team. He'd kill a rally with a long fly ball one inning and deliver a bases-clearing double down the line the next. His home runs always seemed to come when we needed a run or two in a hurry. He couldn't hit it out with any consistency—nobody could, even back then—but his shots traveled farther than anybody else's. And he began to attract some notice on the Net. It helped that he was playing on a winning team. By late September we had first place sewed up. Only New Shanghai stayed close to us. They'd won three years in a row, and when December rolled around, no one was surprised that they were our opponent in the Series.

Baseball is a team game. Everybody looks more or less the same in a pressure suit. But Stratosphere was the closest thing we had to a celebrity. He was visibly bigger than the rest of the players, and when he stood in the batter's box with the bat cocked high behind his ear, there was no mistaking him for anybody else.

He didn't homer in any of the first six games of the Series. The New Shanghai pitchers approached him with caution, avoiding the inside half of the plate. He came through with a clutch base hit in the fourth game, when we were on the verge of falling behind three games to one, but most of our offense was carried by the players around him in the lineup. That's just the way of the game up here. We don't have stars; we have batting orders constructed for maximum efficiency in which no individual stands out. Ted Williams may have been the greatest hitter who ever lived, but how many World Series did he win? We've taken that lesson to heart.

The seventh game was in our ballpark because we'd had the best regular-season record. It was the first time in years the Series had gone seven, and everyone tuned in to see if we could derail the New Shanghai dynasty. All eyes were on Stromboni.

He must have been nervous, because he made an error in the second that led to three runs. With a lead, the New Shanghai pitcher was extra careful, walking Stromboni the first two times he came to the plate. We cashed him in once on a sacrifice, but they managed to hold onto that three-run lead all the way into the ninth. Stromboni was due up third, and they brought in their closer, a hard-throwing kid named Chan who wasn't afraid of anyone.

No one had a better view of Stratosphere's home run swing than I did, for I was on second base, right behind the pitcher. I'd gotten there by lining a solid single and then taking off on the next pitch to stay out of the double play, as the guy behind me grounded weakly to first. We needed one more base runner to bring the tying run to the plate.

Stromboni had to realize they weren't going to walk him again, and the embarrassment of the error was still fresh in his mind. Chan got a strike at the knees, then missed low with the next two pitches. You could see Stromboni was mad, even behind his faceplate. They hadn't given him anything to hit all day. Chan's next offering came in belt high, over the heart of the plate. There was nothing hurried about Stromboni's swing—the old uppercut that he'd learned in Minnesota and spent so much time trying to correct up here—but he put all his considerable strength behind it. The ball rose into the black sky at a forty-five degree angle until it was too small to see. None of the farfielders even moved.

I can't tell you how many people I've talked to in the years since who think we won that game. But the home run killed the rally. Stromboni could have hit that ball clear out of the Solar System and it still would've only been two runs. We needed three.

It was only after the game, when souvenir hunters began searching for the ball, and mathematicians offered up calculations on its probable trajectory, that anyone realized something special had happened. Seventy-two hours would pass before the first sighting from Farside confirmed that the ball had not come down.

It still hasn't. Some government transportation officials wanted it retrieved, arguing that it might become a navigation hazard in the future. But after fielding protests from fans and figuring out what it would cost, they decided to leave it alone. Their team had won, after all, and they could afford to be magnanimous.

Stratosphere became famous. Over time, the sting of our defeat was replaced by pride in what he had done. It will never be done again, of course, because they deadened the balls before the following season.

He didn't adjust. He kept trying to hit that monumental blast that would turn a game around in an instant. I think he managed two home runs that season, and three the next, but the team finished third both years and didn't make the Series.

Though Stromboni enjoyed his celebrity, it was brief and ended badly. We traded him to Tycho for a couple of slick-fielding infielders, and he went into a slump from which he never recovered. By this time he was dating Claudette Raines, the French astronomer from Farside who'd discovered his ball. Their public romance made for great copy but didn't do much for his hitting. She came to some of his games, and they were seen cavorting at popular watering holes when he should have been resting up for games or practicing his fielding.

But real trouble didn't set in until one of the big Indian studios bought the film rights to Stromboni's story. The actress who played the astronomer was some ten years younger and much better-looking than Claudette, and Stratosphere fell for her hard. He dumped the scientist for the screen imitation, alienating most of what remained of his fan base. The electronic tabloids ate it up. The film flopped. The two women, who by the time of the wrap party weren't speaking to one another or to Stromboni, returned to Earth, leaving Stratosphere up here with his work, his drinking buddies, his faltering baseball career, and his fading legend.

Two years later—still playing for Tycho but mostly riding the bench—Stromboni was caught in a small rockslide at a job site. A falling rock pierced his outer suit and he died within minutes. An investigation revealed that he had failed to seal the inner lining.

But that was Stromboni. He never cared much for rules, in baseball or anywhere else. His carelessness cost him his life. He was thirty-six years old.

Hardly anyone talks about him anymore, or the championship we almost won. Most of the guys who played with him are gone. And the game is different now: twenty teams in the league, half of them playing in those new magneto-domes. The balls are manufactured to precise specifications. No one will ever come close to doing what he did.

And I guess that's as near to immortality as anyone gets, in this corner of the Solar System or anywhere else. That ball will be up there forever. It's like Armstrong's first footprint, only you don't have to put a fence around it. Two hundred years from now, little kids will know his name: Joe “Stratosphere” Stromboni, the only human being to put a baseball into orbit around Earth's airless Moon.

Introduction by Ted White

I started working for The Magazine in the early spring of 1963 as an Assistant Editor, although I didn't get a mention on the masthead until the November 1963 issue (and what a great issue that was, with a beautiful wraparound cover by Hannes Bok, illustrating “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” by Roger Zelazny), and my basic job was to read “the slush pile.” This is what unsolicited manuscripts from unknown authors was (and still is, I assume) called.

Avram Davidson, then the Editor, had hired me, but I saw him infrequently, because he was then living in Milford, Pennsylvania, and subsequently moved to Mexico. The man I saw weekly was Ed Ferman, then fresh out of college and newly the Managing Editor. Ed's father, Joe, was The Magazine's Publisher, and Ed held down the “editorial offices” on 53rd Street in Manhattan. And once a week I'd take the subway in from Brooklyn to pick up a fresh load of unread manuscripts, and turn in those I believed deserved consideration from Avram.

I put “editorial offices” in quotes, because the office was in fact a couple of side rooms off the lobby on the ground floor of an apartment building, and to get to it one walked through the building management offices. Unprepossessing, to say the least, but adequate to The Magazine's needs.

Usually, unless Ed was busy, we'd chat for a half hour to an hour before I returned to Brooklyn. I was only a few years older than Ed, but I'd been a science fiction fan for more than a decade, and had been writing professionally for several years, first as a jazz critic and journalist and then, starting in 1962, as a science fiction writer. I knew the field far better than Ed, and he told me ten years later that our informal gossip had been invaluable to him, filling him in on what was generally going on at the time, bringing him up to speed.

I was with The Magazine for five years, leaving to become the editor of rival magazines, Amazing Stories and Fantastic, in 1968. In the course of those five years I was promoted to Associate Editor, and took on a variety of other duties—the occasional book review, several editorials, story and coming-next-month blurbs, and some copyediting—but my main task remained reading the slush pile.

A year or so in I decided to keep track of some statistics, and I established the fact that I was reading an average of 600 manuscripts a month, and rejecting all but a half-dozen of them. Of those that I passed on (originally to Avram and later to Ed, when he took over the position of Editor), at least one would be purchased. This resulted in each issue having at least one of “my” stories, a story I had found in the slush pile.

I was proud of that statistic. It held for most of those five years. I was known, during my ten-year reign at Amazing and Fantastic, for discovering and promoting new authors, but that “tradition” had actually started with The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, five years earlier.

Not every editor gave such attention to his slush pile. In fact, the fellow who'd held my position before me was fired for automatically rejecting every manuscript—dumping them into the return mail in the mailbox on 53rd Street directly in front of the office on his way out. And it's easy to understand why he did that, because most of those stories were pretty awful. Some of them were handwritten. Some were childishly written. Some of them were just plain inappropriate for a science fiction or fantasy magazine, for any number of reasons. And it was obvious that the authors of a few of these stories were mentally disturbed.

Many of these stories were obviously unsuitable within their first paragraphs, and could be quickly dealt with. The real time-wasters for me were the adequately written stories which just didn't work, but required a complete reading to establish that—some of them fairly long.

One person sent a brief story every day for a week. His last story, at the end of that week, had a note appended to it which said, “Since you haven't bought any of my stories yet, I'm not going to send you any more.” It apparently hadn't occurred to him that it took the postal service several days to deliver his stories, and that acceptances or rejections would take equally long to get back to him. I'd rejected them all, and wasn't sorry to hear that I wouldn't be seeing any more.

Another author sent me close to two dozen stories over a period of several months, all of which I rejected. I came to recognize his submissions from the envelopes they arrived in, and I'd sigh when I saw one. Bland, a bit glib, they almost worked, but eventually fell flat. They covered a broad spectrum of story-types, ranging from bar stories to the man who kills his wife by inventing a time machine (a classic story which crops up frequently in slush piles).

One day I saw that author's name in one of Fred Pohl's magazines—Galaxy or If or Worlds of Tomorrow—and I was a bit surprised. Then I got one from him that I liked. It was completely different from the stories which preceded it. It was “hard-science” fiction, cleanly told. It was “Becalmed on Mercury.” And the author's name was Larry Niven. I never saw any of the stories I'd rejected published elsewhere; they'd been the “dues” Larry had paid, learning to become a salable writer and finding his real voice as an author.

Edward Jesby's “Sea Wrack” was just another manila envelope in the week's pile of envelopes until I opened it and read the story. It hit me between the eyes. Where had this guy come from? I passed it along with a note that this was one we had to buy, something I rarely did. And I wasn't surprised to see it in a subsequent issue. I thought of Jesby as one of my discoveries, like Thomas Burnett Swann (whose first story Avram lost when he didn't respond quickly enough; it was published in the British Science-Fantasy).

We didn't hear any more from Jesby for several years (Gordon tells me his “Ogre!” was in the Sept. 1968 issue, just after I'd left The Magazine), but a few months after we'd published “Sea Wrack,” I had a call from Terry Carr, an old friend who was then an editor at Ace Books. “What can you tell me about Jesby and this story?” he wanted to know. I couldn't tell him much, but he told me that he and Don Wollheim had selected it for their new World's Best Science Fiction anthology, and I felt vindicated all over again.

For me that anthology selection validated my belief in the value of combing the slush pile for new and unknown authors. It wasn't a thankless task—it was a necessary and valuable task. It was like panning for gold. Every so often you turn up a big shiny nugget.

Sea Wrack by Edward Jesby

Greta Hijukawa-Rosen sat on the beach watching her escort maneuver a compression hover board above the waters of the Mediterranean. He stood on the small round platform, balancing it a few inches above the spilling tops of the wind-driven waves with small movements of his legs. The board operated on the power sent to it from the antennae above the chateau, but he operated on his own.

"Viterrible,” Greta thought, stretching to lift the underside of her small breasts to the full heat of the sun. She giggled, wondering what her sisters would think of her use of a commercial word, and then shrugged and looked at her own golden tan comparing it to her escort's dark brown color. Abuwolowo was humus brown. “Deep as leaf mold,” she said, speaking aloud, and stood up to watch him lift the thin platform to its maximum altitude of six or seven meters. His figure rapidly diminished in size as he sent it wobbling in gull-like swoops out over the Mediterranean. Ultimately it was boring, she decided, there was no real danger. He had a caller fitted into his swim belt, and if he fell into the water, the board he rode on would save him, diving into the water and lifting him to safety. Now he was very far out, and all that was visible above the wave tops was the black bobbing ball of his head.

"I suppose I should have a feeling of loss.” There was contempt in her voice, and it came from her knowledge that all she knew of loss was what she had read about in a recent television seminar on great books, but she gasped, losing reality, when she saw the head in close to the beach.

Looking desperately for her binocular lorgnette, she asked, “Abuwolowo?” in a shout, but the head was white, and not merely the color of untanned skin, but a flat artificial white, like the marble statues in the garden of the summer home. Now, to her further horror, the rest of the apparition appeared out of the shallows. Above the blue sea, silhouetted against the paler sky, was a black figure with a dead white head. It staggered through the chopping waves with efforts to lift its legs free. When the creature succeeded in lifting its feet clear she was reassured. It was wearing swim fins, and she ran forward to help.

After she had gotten her hand onto the large soft arm she asked, “Are you all right?” The man nodded and kindly leaned a bit of his weight onto her. She was thankful, the figure stood a foot above her six foot three inch height, and its shoulders were broader than Abuwolowo's Nigerian span.

Firmly enscounced on the sand, the man made a magician's pass at his neck and lifted the covering away from his face. He shot a quick look at the sky with black eyes that filled huge sockets and said, “Bright.” He looked down at the sand, and after a few stertorous breaths spoke. “Thank you.” He paused, reaching into his armpit, and continued, “Basker hit me out there."

Breathing more easily, he was easy to understand. The liquid mumbling of his first words had disappeared, and he looked directly at her. “Pretty,” he said, “pretty deserves an explanation. A basker drove me into the bottom. Something scared it from in the air and it dove."

"Basker?” she asked, wanting to hear the strange soft cadences of the voice that issued from the round head with its huge eyes.

"Basker shark,” he said, “lying on the surface and it dove. I had no time to signal or to warn.” He fell forward, breathing easily, but she saw blood welling from a cut on his back as he slumped onto his knees. “Excuse,” he mouthed, when she gave a small touched cry. There was a long gash traversing his back from the left shoulder blade to his waist at his right side, and the rubbery material of his suit had rolled back and pulled the wound open. She tried to lift him, but his weight was too great, and all she succeeded in doing was to push him over into the sand. She straddled him and pulled at his long thick arm, trying to turn him over, but that too was impossible. Flat as he looked spread out on the sand, with long thin legs and a midsection that had no depth, he was still enormously heavy. She jumped away from him and looked out into the sea. Abuwolowo was coming in toward the shore and she frantically waved and shouted, throwing her long pigtail and the points of her body in spastic jerks until he rode his board up onto the beach. “There's a man hurt here,” she said, turning her back to him until the sand blasting up from the vehicle's air jets had subsided.

"Man?” Abuwolowo questioned, but he heaved at the collapsed figure. “He's as heavy as a whale. It's no use, I'll go up to the house and get help.” He ran off in long loping strides that brought him to the elevator in the cliff with an instantaneous violation of distance that was dreamlike. She stayed to watch her charge, fascinated by the long breaths he took. Easy inhalations that moved down his length in a wave from his chest to midriff in a series that seemed to never stop. One breath starting before the other had finished.

She waited silently, forgoing her usual monkey chatter to herself, eschewing fashion in the presence of the impassive white straw-colored hair, whose only life showed in the delicate flutter of petal nostrils. Finally, after no time had passed for her, Abuwolowo returned with four of the servants, strong squat men from neighboring Aegean islands. Puffing, their legs bowed under the weight, they half carried, half dragged the wounded man to the elevator and folded him into it under Abuwolowo's direction. Abuwolowo climbed over him, and braced between the walls, walked up the sides of the car until he was perched above the body. He held the up button down with a strong toe, the doors closed, and the elevator whirred invisibly away.

Greta had prepared for dinner, dressing and making her face up with unusual care, and was coming down the great ramp that swept into the entrance hall when she heard her brother-in-law talking to some of the guests. She stopped, amused, he was not really talking, but lecturing in a voice that his Kirghiz accent made even more didactic than he intended.

"Amazing,” he was saying, “the recuperative powers they have. After we had gotten him off the kitchen truck, and onto the largest reclining ottoman in the casual room, he sat right up. He smiled at me. He stretched.” Her brother-in-law paused, either overcome with amazement or staring down someone who appeared to be about to interrupt. “As I was saying,” he went on in measured periods, “He stretched."

Greta could not resist her chance. She slipped down the ramp, and crossed to the speaker. “He stretched, and then what?"

Hauptman-Everetsky gave her the limited courtesy of his chill smile. “He stretched, and his water suit opened up and came off like a banana skin. He checked under his arm, the gill slit, you know, and climbed off the ottoman. He ignored me and turned around, and the cut was healed. There was only a thin line to show where it had been."

Greta moved away, not waiting to hear the inevitable repetition and embellishments her brother-in-law would give to his reactions. She passed through the archway that led to the casual room, undisturbed by the slight malfunction of the pressure curtain that allowed a current of air to lift the hem of her long skirt.

The man from the sea was standing in front of the panoramic glass watching the slow turning of the sights from the islands’ perimeter. A passing flow of scenery that was magnified and diminished by the tastes programmed into the machine. Just at this moment it was dwelling on the lights of the skyscrapers of Salonika. He was engrossed, but her cousin Rolf was questioning him with his usual inquisitiveness. Dwarfed by the figure next to him, he blurted questions in his fluting high American tones.

The question she heard as she approached was, “And you came all that way?” Rolf's voice did not hold disbelief, it held pleasure, a childish love for a reaccounting of adventure.

"Surely,” the huge man said, “I have said it. I came from outside Stavangafjiord. I was following an earth current. I hoped it might teach me something about the halibut's breeding. But I felt that was foolish, and so I hunted down the coast until I came to here.” He turned back to the glass to catch the artistic dwindling of the city as the machine withdrew his view to a great height. “And,” he said, coming politely back to his interrogator, “And the dolphins told me, when they were racing off Normandy, that the waters here were warm, and” he paused, noticing Greta, “and the women beautiful, with yellow hair, and brown limbs."

Greta nodded. “You're very kind. But I do not have your name."

"Gunnar Bjornstrom-Cousteau, of the dome Walshavn.” He bowed, and she noticed how curious he looked covered by evening clothes. The short open jacket that barely reached the stretch tights exposed the rectangular expanse of his chest, a smooth fall of flesh without muscle definition that made her remember the tallow layer of fat his wound had exposed. She shuddered, and he asked, “Does my face disturb you?” and for the first time she noticed that his skin was peeling, and there were angry red welts under his chin. “I was careless to take such a long trip without going under the lamps at home first. But then I did not intend to come into the air then. I am not used to the sunlight."

"Into the air?” Rolf was off again, but Greta stopped him.

"Dinner must be ready.” She took the stranger's arm. “Will you take me in?” With Rolf tagging along behind, shaking his head and bouncing every few steps to see if he could bring himself to the sea giant's height, they entered the dining room.

The dining room was at the top of the chateau. It was open on all sides, and protected from the weather by polarized static fields that were all but invisible and brought the stars too plainly close.

"That fish.” Hauptman-Everetsky had passed from awe to condescension, as he answered someone's question. “I could not throw him back like an undersized trout.” He gestured. “And it's about time we had some amusement. We are beginning to bore one another."

Greta felt her companion stiffen, and held onto his arm tighter. He bent his head to her, and said, “Do not fear, I will not fall. It is long since I have walked. I must become accustomed to being unsupported by the friendly weight of water.” She noticed that he stressed the word friendly, and remembered that one of the few things she had heard about the underwater people was that they had brought back dueling. In the infinite reaches of the sea the enforcement of organized law was difficult, encounters with the orca and the shark common, and the lessons they taught strong.

Yet her companion was smiling at Everetsky and his circle of friends, shaking hands with him firmly, and appraising the women. “At least I will not be bored,” he said, staring at her sister Margreta's painted chest. Greta took his arm again, relieved, and glad she had chosen to wear her blue gown that completely covered all of her except her hands and face.

"Are we going to sit down now, Carl?” she said to Everetsky, and he led the way to the table, placing Gunnar at his right and her at his left.

The dinner went smoothly enough at first, the early conversation centered around the futility of investing money in the Moon mines, and the necessity of mollifying the government with sums small enough to be economic and yet larger than mere tokens. All of the men from the rich steppes and Russian mountain regions had recommendations: lobbyists to recommend, purveyors of formuli to complain about, and complaining tales of corruption. While Rolf was concluding a story that centered on a bribed official who refused to honor his obligations without further payments that would have nullified the capital payments he had agreed to save, he rediscovered Gunnar's spherical face amid the contrasting ground of the tanned guests with their pointed chins.

"Nasty little fellow he was—dishonest as the day is long.” Rolf stopped. “But you, my seaman friend, you don't understand any of this?"

"I,” Bjornstrom-Cousteau burbled laughter, “do not understand these problems, but we have our own with the government.” He seemed to like Rolf, but he spoke to his host. “They are difficult to explain."

"I suppose so,” Abuwolowo spoke, “but tell us anyway."

Gunnar shrugged, and the massive table trembled slightly as he shifted his knees. “They want us to farm more, and hunt less."

"Why not?” Abuwolowo challenged, “In the past my people adjusted to the changing times. They learned to farm and to work in factories."

"Yes.” He was quiet for a moment. “I suppose some day we must, but as Hagar the poet sang—"

"Poets.” Abuwolowo dismissed them. “We were talking of the government here."

"Hagar said,” the sea guest went on, inevitable as the tides, pleasurably quoting a beloved line, “The sea change suffered by we; Cannot make the airmen think free.” He chanted on, squaring his shoulders to expose more of his pale flesh, “For we have chosen deep being, not the ease of their far seeing.” He stopped to stare out into the night with the depthless stare of his great dilated pupils.

Rolf, always jolly, rubbed his hands together, sniffing at the next course. “Ah, domestic venison,” he said, changing the subject, cutting Abuwolowo's rejoinder short. “But our new guest doesn't seem to be eating much, and mine host's cook is excellent."

"The food is cooked,” Gunnar said, as if it explained everything. It explained too much, and when he caught the expression on Hauptman-Everetsky's face he stood up and excused himself. “I am still tired from healing my hurts. You will excuse me.” The last was a statement, not a question, and he left, moving with a tired lagging stride. His powerful body pushed down by the force of unrelieved gravity.

Morning came, and the first thing Greta did was to look for Gunnar. She had left the dinner party soon after him and started for his room, but Abuwolowo had overtaken her, and she had gone with him. Now she searched the gardens, moving through the regions of climate. She found him in the subtropical section standing in front of a red rubber plant grown to treelike proportions. He was fingering a paddle-sized leaf, pressing his finger tips deep into it as he regarded it with slightly parted lips.

"Like meat,” he said. “Whale meat,” he said, smiling at the picture she made coming down the cedar chip path between the walls of greenery. “You look very pretty this morning."

"And you looked like a child when you were touching that plant, with your mouth open as if you wanted to taste it."

"It does look edible.” He gave the leaf a last squeeze that pressed liquid out onto his hands. He licked the juice and made a face, and she laughed happily to see the soft corrugations that wrinkled around his head. “Well, it is bitter,” he said defensively, and reaching out, lifted her off her feet and into the tree. “Bite it and see."

Satisfied after she had clicked her teeth several times with mock gusto he set her down again, and she rubbed her sides. Seriously she looked up at him, appraising his bulk. “I was reading about you this morning,” she said, looking down with a strained intensity as if performing the unfamiliar task of following lines of print.

"So now I have become famous."

"Oh, no,” she said, “In the encyclopedia. It says you are homo aquatic—"

"Homo aquaticus, one of the old words.” He touched her bare shoulder, “Yes, and one of the better."

"That's it,” she said, dwelling on the pronounciation, “Homo Aquaticus. And a long time ago a man named Cousteau said that you were to be."

"Cousteau."

"Yes,” she altered her pronounciation. “Cousteau. A relative?"

"He is dead, and my surname is the way you pronounced it the first time."

"No matter,” she said, “I will show you the grounds now,” and took his arm. She started out chattering to him about the shrubbery, but she soon discovered that it was another subject she knew very little about. He was naturally silent, and her thoughts turned to the things she had found in the encyclopedia. It had said that the first colonies were set up in the Mediterranean. The warm water was perfect for man, and the sudden mistral-born storms were no trouble ten fathoms in the sea. The underwater colonies raised sea slugs, and clams, farmed algae and adapted fruits and hunted the smaller whales with hand weapons. She had read very quickly, scanning down the page in s-curves in her hurry to go and meet him, but womanlike, she did remember some things about human births under the sea. The children were born into the pressures they would live under, fitted with gill mechanisms that took oxygen from the water, and subjected to chemotherapies that prepared them for their lives.

"But why do you live in the cold seas in the north?” she asked. The question was an outgrowth of her thoughts, yet he seemed to know what she meant.

"Because so many of our people live here?” he went on without needing to have an answer. “My great-grandfather felt the bottoms were becoming too crowded, that the life would become too easy, and so, we left.” He swiveled his head to sniff at the sea, offering her a view of the seal folding of his neck. “And now we could not live here at all. We have changed our bodies, and we have learned to love the hunt."

"But you come to the waters off this island."

"I came only for a short hunt. I would have returned very soon."

Further conversation was cut short by the interesting spectacle of wide-eyed gardeners dodging into the bushes to avoid their advance. The servants variously crossed themselves, or made the sign of the horns; some of them did both. They knew, if Greta did not, that there was a conflict between the sea peoples and the dwellers on the land. Servants listened to political conversations, but eighteen-year-old girls of good family were expert in oblivious attention. The gardeners had heard from the house staff how the world government in New Kiev, on the Baltic, was demanding more taxes in algae proteins from the independent sea states. Some of the servants’ relatives had served in the fleets of small boats equipped with grapple buckets that were sent in punitive expeditions against the algae beds and the sea slug pens. The duty was dangerous, the seamen darted to the surface in spurting pushes from shallows to rocks and overturned boats, they cut the grapple cables, and tied derisive messages to their severed ends. What the raiders did capture was diseased, or of thin stock that had gone to seed.

The servants did not hate the seamen, they feared them as they feared the storms, and rages of nature. They did not respect them as they did their masters: the seamen were unnatural feats of nature. Not to be dealt with except through the practice of the magics that had come back in the few short years of barbarism after the Two Months War.

Gunnar had some idea of what the men who had run away were thinking, but that part of the problem did not concern him. After all, his dome did not farm enough to be involved in the commercial disputes. He looked at Greta. She was still caught up in the uniqueness of the servants’ scuttling disappearance.

"It has been a long time since we went into the sea,” he said, touching her on the shoulder again, knowing that physical contacts reassured her, “and they do not remember us. We are strangers.” She leaned her weight against his side as soon as he had touched her, he noticed, and she made many movements with her hips and torso, but he attached no significance to her wriggling.

Greta became silent and swayed away from him. She had worked the individual muscles her governesses had trained her to use. Trained in long gymnasium sessions when she was young for the pleasurable obligations of adulthood, she accepted her expertness, and was piqued by his callous indifference. She almost believed that the sea women were more expert, but, on second thought, she disregarded that. Her instructors, and Abuwolowo, had assured her that she was perfectly trained in the amatory arts.

Hadji Abuwolowo Smyth watched them from a freestanding balcony that projected, fingerlike, out over the gardens. “The girl is infatuated with the Fish,” he thought. “It is nothing more than his difference.” Abuwolowo remembered the long hours of dancing that had trained him. The great factories that his parents managed, and Greta's brother-in-law's desire for new markets for his heavy machinery, and concluded that he had nothing to worry about. He went into the house to have a suppling rubdown to prepare him for the prelaunch wrestling.

Every day all the young men but Rolf wrestled for the amusement of the other guests. They fought in a combination of styles, jiu-jitsu coupled with the less dangerous holds of Greco-Roman wrestling. They were full of energy, had little to do, and they passed the time waiting for the day when they would assume the managerial offices their parents held in the automatic factories.

Gunnar and Greta emerged from the tree-lined walk as the matches were about to start. Gunnar blinked, and rocked his head as the forenoon heat bit into his sunburn. Halting, he made an effort; Gerta felt oil under her hand and saw his skin flex and knead. His pores opened and a smooth layer of clear oil covered his body. He took several more of his curiously peristaltic breaths, and with each one squeezed more protective fluid onto his skin.

"Now,” he said, as she let go of him, “We can go on, but first tell me what is happening here."

"They are wrestling,” Greta said shortly, either still angry at his unresponsiveness, or caught up in the combat.

They watched Hadji Abuwolowo win the first fight easily. Throwing his opponent with a hip toss and pinning him with a leap. The Nigerian nodded to Greta with a victory grin on his face. “And you, Fish,” he said, “Do you wrestle?"

"Not with you,” Gunnar said politely, intending to imply that Smyth was too practiced a hand for his small skill.

"I am not a worthy opponent,” Abuwolowo chose to misunderstand him. “Or perhaps you are afraid?"

Gunnar felt Greta's small hand in his back and walked forward onto the sanded turf looming more and more over Abuwolowo as he went. The Nigerian regretted his impetuousness for a split second, but compensated with a bound that was intended to carry him to the seaman's head. The leap was successful, but his ear-grab hold was not. There was nothing to grip. Gunnar's ears were tiny, and set deep into his skull. Their pavilions were vestigial, the auditory canals covered by membranes, and the skin oil slippery. Abuwolowo's planned knee drive spun him over on his back, and he lay spraddled with his ludicrous failure driving his anger. Rolling backward he bounced up once and came down to jump flat through the air with his legs doubled. Just as he straightened to strike his adversary with the full force of his flight, and kicking legs, Gunnar dropped under the trajectory, folding with the flexibility of an eel. Abuwolowo skidded along the ground, and rolled over to rub sand into his hands. He looked up, and found himself looking at Gunnar's back, certain that the man had not moved his feet. It was too much for him, but his urge to kill made him calculating. He stood up and ran, with short hunter's steps, silently to Gunnar's back, and unleashed an axe-like swing at the neck using the full strength of his wide shoulders. The edge of his hand struck and rebounded, but he was gratified to note that he had staggered Gunnar.

"You forget your title, Hadji,” Gunnar said in deeper tones than he had used before. Abuwolowo moved forward a shuffling half step and was thrown four or five feet backward by an open-handed slap he did not see start. When he recovered himself, Gunnar was standing stock still, waiting. It was too late to go back, and he charged hopelessly. He felt the long flexible arms, as thick at the wrist as the shoulder, reach out to pick him up, but he could do nothing about it, even though they appeared to be moving very slowly. For a minute Gunnar held him in a strangely compassionate embrace, but then threw him into the air straight up. He felt himself rise, and he floated for a long interval, but when he fell he could remember no more.

Hauptman-Everetsky leaped to his feet and ran forward, but Gunnar was there before him. He knelt by Abuwolowo's side and twisted him in his hands.

"Guards,” Everetsky screamed, and fearlessly rushed toward the seaman.

"Stop,” Gunnar's words were commanding, either out of their awesome depth, or because of the certainty of knowledge. “He will be all right. His back was hurt, but I have fixed it.” These last words were the ones that broke Everetsky's code of hospitality. They were too much like a repair man speaking about a robot toy.

He stammered, peering out of slitted eyes that accentuated his Mongol blood, but Gunnar could only commend his control. His first thought was to stop the guards.

"Back, quiet now,” Everetsky's diction was irregular, but his pitch was properly adjusted to the command tone of the mastiffs. The dogs, with the metallic crowns of their augmented skulls glittering, turned back and sat in their places under the chateau wall, once more becoming statues. Now that his first duty was accomplished, he could come back to the business of Gunnar.

"Sir,” he said, and now his voice was under control, “You have injured one of my guests. That would be permissible, but it is certain to happen again. There is enmity between you and him, and,” he paused, to collect himself, “I must be truthful, I do not like your kind myself. I ask you to leave. If you feel yourself insulted I offer you satisfaction."

"You are a brave man,” Gunnar said, and with a sudden baring of his teeth. “Well fleshed too, so the spoils might be worth the fight, but your way is not ours. I cannot ask you to sport with me.” He showed Everetsky his teeth, opening his lips back to his neck, and dropping the hinges of his jaw. “I would have to ask you into the water so that we could play, and,” he asked with icy rhetoric humor that amused no one but him, “what chance would you take?"

"Thank you,” Everetsky said, not holding his contempt. “But I must nevertheless ask you when you will leave my house."

"I ask your indulgence to wait until tonight when the tide is good.” Everetsky nodded, and the seaman turned and walked toward the beach path as if he remembered using it before.

Down on the beach Gunnar studied the water, watching for the signs of the incoming tide: sea-wrack would soon be tossed up onto the shore, pieces of the sea's jetsam, thrown there to waste away on the cleansing shore. The dead seaweeds, fish and bubbles would soon push ahead of the growing combers to outline the demarcation between his domain and Everetsky's. “Lubber,” he said, “you do not understand,” and stopped, putting his hand, palm down, flat on the sand. He felt the vibrations of approaching feet.

Two servants appeared carrying his water suit, signaling their trepidation with stiff backs and firm jaws. Behind them came two more servingmen, and a kitchen maid. The bearers put his suit down at his feet, at a distance they thought out of the radius of his arms. They backed off and squatted on their heels to wait for the others to come up, remaining, guardedly watching him, until the woman and her companions reached them.

"Greetings to you,” Gunnar said when the woman had come to a halt, spreading her legs to balance the weight of a waist thickened by years of carrying full water jars up steps cut from island rock.

"Greetings,” she said, in a Greek dialect as bastardized as the letters that appeared on ancient Scythian coins. She alone observed him with equanimity.

"Speak,” he said, viewing a full half circle of the beach and horizon, moving his eyes independently. He knew what was coming; three times now he had performed this rite.

She waddled up to him, pointing the forefinger of her left hand at his face. When it touched his closed mouth a rapturous look transformed her thickened features and the Attic awe encompassed her functioning. Obediently he opened his lips, and, with a sharp snap, clipped the end of her finger off. The nauseating taste of warm blood, and dirty fingernail, filled his mouth, but he swallowed quickly and spoke again.

"I have accepted. Speak."

The woman could not resist looking back at her entourage with triumph, and Gunnar thought, “Poor fellows, now she is a full-fledged witch, ugly and to be obeyed in all things.” She would have the ultimate power over her fellows. Commands were to be her normal mode of speech. The mere pointing of her maimed hand, a gesture of pollarded horns, could call a man to her bed, or a maid to his; but, more important, it would fuse the serfs into a unit. They would be a group that would respond to the messages of Gunnar's people when the time came. He knew that the inheritors and owners of the Earth understood their world very well from its blueprints; but they could not find the switches and valves and all the simple tools to work them.

"Did you speak your true thoughts when you promised to eat the master, Great Fish?"

Gunnar made the obligatory answer. “You have prayed to us."

"Demon of Poseidon, my people would be saved.” She too was familiar with the ritual.

"I am no demon, but a servant,” he rose to his feet, and gave the toothy yawn that had impressed Everetsky. “Poseidon wants more servants who love the sea."

"We will accept."

Gunnar bit a piece of blubber from his forearm and spit it into the cup of her waiting hands. Immediately she kissed it ritually and squirreled it into the dirty fold of her blouse.

"When the appointed time is come I will return.” He watched them go, the woman leading, and the men with their heads inclined to the woman.

Gunnar was ashamed of himself, not for his threats to his host and their outcome. He had planned that series of happenings, and had, in fact, played this role many times before. His people could not hope to fight the land dwellers if a war was to be fought on the basis of numbers and equipment. The sea cities were very vulnerable, the simplest sort of guided torpedo could destroy the domes, and economic sanctions would quickly disrupt the lives of the ocean bed farmers and their cities. He was not ashamed of his tactics, but of the unmanly squeamishness which had overtaken him. To feel his stomach turn at the mere taste of human kind. It was true that the heavy starch diet of the airbreathers and the dark cooked meats they ate gave their flesh an unpleasant, alien taste, but it was not so different from the savor of enemies he had killed in the days-long hunting duels in his homeground.

He stopped his train of thought and studied the sea with heightened awareness. Wondering what disturbed him would do no good. He knew it would be better to relax, but the strange dislocation of his abilities was still with him. He breathed deeply, sucking great mouthfuls of air, and held them until his chest and diaphragm puffed out in a rotund bladder. Slowly he let the air escape through his nostrils, a silent flow of aspiration, until any observer would have noticed the change in his posture. Everything about his body was lax, his legs lay separately on the sand, and his head lolled, but the eyes were alive. They turned in their sockets independently scanning the surface of the sea. It was a look born in the middle twentieth century studies of frogs’ nervous systems. There were circuits spliced into the optical nerves that bypassed the brain and fed the sorted visual stimuli back to the eye muscles. Only the significant motions on the surface of the sea were allowed to reach the brain.

After a few seconds of this activity Gunnar's legs twitched, his eyelids drooped, and the eyes themselves seemed to withdraw back into the skull. He brought his knees up, and hugged them, sitting in this childlike posture with a broad grin on his face.

"Hauptman-Everetsky was foolish,” he thought as he changed his position to stand, moving in a serpentine flow that ended in a run toward the surf. His last thoughts before he hit the water in a flat dive were of his hunger, and a mental note to come back to the beach to see if his calculations about Greta were correct. He hit near the bottom of a wave and let the undertow carry him toward the sudden deep just beyond the breakers. Turning in a free somersault he pushed for the boulder-filled bottom and found a current that carried him between the rocks. As he estimated his speed he slowed himself by pressing his heels into the sand, touching at chosen points much like a professional polo player guides his pony with touches of his spurs. When he saw the bathysphere that Everetsky had ordered sunk, he momentarily regretted not wearing his swim fins, but he did not dwell on the thought. It could hold no more than three men, he thought, and swam toward its hatch.

The three guards saw him as soon as he came into the bathysphere's circle of light. They started out the open hatch. Gunnar caught the first man by the scruff of his neck as he came out, but they had expected to use the vanguard as a delay to allow others to come up on him. What they had not allowed for was the simplicity of Gunnar's tactics. He held the man like a kitten and plucked the mouthpiece of his oxygen recirculator out of his face, pointed him toward the bottom, and, with a wide hand spread across his buttocks, pushed him under trampling feet. The second man tried to divert him with a shot from his speargun. Gunnar, feeling foolishly inept for his slowness, ducked and caught it just over his shoulder, and drove the blunt staff into the marksman's solar plexus. He hauled this opponent out by a flopping arm, without time to watch his agonized contortions. The third member of Everetsky's murder party refused to join the combat. Gunnar showed his grinning face at an illuminated port, and disappeared to the top of the sphere. He took the cable ring in his hands and, threshing his legs, swam the bathysphere over onto its side. With a little adjustment the hatch fitted neatly into the bottom and Gunnar surveyed his handiwork before he swam to the man curled up on the bottom with his legs doubled up over his stomach. No matter how he struggled, the man felt himself being drawn straight out. A round face, suspended inches from his mask gently studied his last reactions.

The beach was deserted when Greta finally escaped from the chateau to look for the seaman. She kicked a puff of sand into the night breeze in exasperation and would have left, but she saw something break out of the water amid a froth of incoming waves. A second later she could see Gunnar's figure wading ashore. He bent and reached under the water, and taking a handful of sand wiped it across his mouth. As he drew closer she could see the flicker of his tongue picking at the crevices in his teeth.

"Hello,” she said, not finding anything else to say for the moment, and wrapped her long cloak tighter around her.

"Hello,” he said, noticing her shivers. “Come, you are not used to the night air without screens to protect you.” He led the way to the shelter of the cliff, and continued. “What are you doing here?"

Greta did not know, except that she was attracted to him, and that he was the first man she could remember feeling anything but familiarity for, but she said, “Well, you beat Abuwolowo so easily."

"In the jousts of love,” Gunnar said declaratively, having thought better of finishing his statement questioningly.

Greta gave him her best arch smile. “But I could talk my brother-in-law into letting you stay. He owes something to me."

Gunnar would have told her about the affair he had just ended in the sea, but the strange repugnance overtook him again. “He would not really want me,” he said, but even he, not given to nuances of this sort, noticed the hesitant tone in his own voice.

"But his concern is always for the amusement of his guests,” Greta said, and giggled fetchingly at some private joke, “and they are getting bored. Very bored,” she said masterfully.

"And I would soon be boring too. Little Greta.” He rumpled her hair with a touch of rough power, and she stepped closer to him.

"You couldn't bore me. Ever.” She turned her face up and Gunnar saw the plumb line of her throat. Thin, but adolescently rounded with a touching surplus of young fat. The strongest rules of his dialectic told him that he should destroy her as an incipient breeder.

"No,” he said, “I can do better.” He explained himself to the elders in the dome under the sea.

Greta was tired of waiting for an embrace that never came. She changed her posture, and spoke with irritation. “What was that?"

"Nothing.” Plausibly, he said, “I must go back to my family. I have been gone very long."

"Your wife you mean."

"I am too young to swim in the breeding tides."

The metaphor's meaning escaped Greta, but the surface of the statement could be turned into the small victory of a compliment.

"You will come back when you are ready?"

Gunnar found the source of his weakness. Somehow she had taught him to find the meaning behind simple words. He smiled.

"Of course. Where else would there be for me to go now?"

Greta had forgotten all her careful training: the sophistications that her governesses had taught her. She beamed, threw her arms around his waist, and leaned her head on his sternum. “Thank you,” she said, appreciating a compliment with coquetry.

"You are very welcome,” Gunnar said, and managed to keep his laughter out of his voice. “But you can do me a favor.” Before he spoke he studied the water. Now he must leave, he decided, and turned back to her. “It is very simple.” He said, “Remember to tell your brother-in-law this: war will be fought in places he has not yet thought of."

"Yes?” Greta said, bewildered.

"No more.” Gunnar patted her head kindly, and sat down, smoothed his suit onto his body, and put his fins on his feet. When he had his mask in place he could no longer speak and he walked silently into the breakers to vanish. Later that same night he talked with the porpoises, chased a school of silvery fish out into the moonlight and then dove to flirt in swirls in a whirlpool current that spun him out in the direction of home.

Greta gave Hauptman-Everetsky her cryptic message; he took little notice of it, and she remembered less and less of Gunnar with the passing years. When she did recall, it was too late; the figures coming out of the surf, to be greeted by the servants, were not Gunnar, but triumphant victors. The island was without power, the servants in revolt, and nostalgia was not a shield.

The war had been fought; neither she nor her brother-in-law had known it. In the subterranean tunnels the ripped ends of power cables spluttered hopeless sparks, water poured from torn mains, and bells and voices, however loud, brought no servants back from their welcoming songs. The always obedient chattels only watched, with blank dark eyes, as the fish came to play their game with Greta.

Over the years we've discovered that we can start an exploration of science and science fiction just about anywhere. Today we'll start with something that might seem trivial (and maybe not related to science fiction at all). We'll start with a balloon.

Our exploration of balloons will take us high in the sky (as you might expect) and deep in the ocean (which you might not expect). We'll talk about the adventures of a guy in a flying lawn chair and balloons on Mars. We'll explain why you might want to take a balloon full of lard on a submarine voyage. In the end, we'll leave you with a bang (not a whimper).

Balloons at the Cutting Edge

First, a nod in the direction of our sponsor (science fiction, that is): Balloons have long been the stuff of science fiction, starting when these lighter-than-air craft were at the cutting edge of technological advancement.

Back in 1844, Edgar Allan Poe wrote a newspaper article that purported to be a factual account of a three-day hot-air balloon voyage across the Atlantic Ocean by European Monck Mason. It ran with the headline: ASTOUNDING NEWS! BY EXPRESS VIA NORFOLK: THE ATLANTIC CROSSED IN THREE DAYS!

Poe was writing his article sixty-one years after the Montgolfiers took a short hot-air balloon flight. Extrapolating in the manner of skilled (and lying) science fiction writers everywhere, Poe provided plenty of details, including the method of propulsion, the precise dimensions of the air craft (length: thirteen feet six inches; height: six feet eight inches; volume: about 320 cubic feet of gas), and a description of the steering mechanism. Appearing in the New York Sun, Poe's story concluded with “This is unquestionably the most stupendous, the most interesting, and the most important undertaking ever accomplished or even attempted by man. What magnificent events may ensue, it would be useless now to think of determining."

Two days later, the Sun printed a retraction that began: “The mails from the South last Saturday night not having brought a confirmation of the arrival of the Balloon from England.... [W]e are inclined to believe that the intelligence is erroneous."

That's right—Poe made it all up. It wasn't until seventy-five years after Poe published his story (now known as the “Balloon Hoax") that the first human-carrying lighter-than-air craft (the British dirigible R-34) crossed the Atlantic in 108 hours and 12 minutes.

What Goes Up...

We'll move from science fiction into science fact with a quick review of the basic science behind lighter-than-air flight. Consider, for a moment, a helium-filled toy balloon. Let go of the string, and the balloon rises into the sky.

Why? You could say it rises because the helium in the balloon weighs less than the same volume of air. You could also say helium is less dense than air. Just as an air-filled bubble rises in water because the air is less dense than water, a helium balloon rises because it's less dense than the surrounding air.

People usually say “a balloon rises,” as if the balloon were causing this to happen. It's actually more accurate to say “the air pushes the balloon upward.” The balloon shoots upward because the air around it is trying to squeeze into the space it occupies. Have you ever squeezed a slippery watermelon seed between your thumb and a finger? The seed usually goes shooting off.

The rising balloon is a bit like that watermelon seed. The great thumb and finger of air pressure squeeze on the balloon and it goes shooting in the direction of lessening air pressure—that is, it shoots upward. What makes something buoyant is a difference in pressure: the pressure on the bottom of the object, pushing up, is more than the pressure on the top of the object, pushing down. So air pressure pushes the balloon aloft.

As the balloon heads upward, the density (and pressure) of the surrounding air decreases. The balloon doesn't stop rising until the weight of the balloon and everything attached to it (the payload) equals the weight of the air it displaces.

Lawn Chairs in Flight

And all of this brings us to the guy in the lawn chair.

If you're like us, you've been wondering for years what happened to the version of the future where we all got to fly around on our personal jet packs. We are so ready to go flying. If not a jet pack, how about a personal balloon?

Back in July 1982, thirty-three-year-old Vietnam veteran Larry Walters decided to stop dreaming of personal flight and take action. He filled forty-five weather balloons with helium, arranging them in four tiers. He tied the balloons to an aluminum lawn chair that he'd bought at Sears. He equipped himself with a large bottle of soda, milk jugs filled with water (for ballast), a pellet gun (to blow out balloons when he wanted to come down), a CB radio, an altimeter, a parachute, and a camera.

When the tethers were cut, he rocketed into the sky above San Pedro, California, reaching an altitude of 16,000 feet. Startled airline pilots en route to the Long Beach Municipal Airport reported seeing him floating unprotected through the thin air some three miles above the ground.

Eventually, Larry shot out a few balloons and came back to earth, tangling in some high-voltage power lines on his way down. After that, he tangled with the Federal Aviation Administration, which just doesn't have much of a sense of humor about this sort of thing.

We have always been impressed by Larry's flight. We aren't tempted to duplicate it—but we are interested in considering some of the scientific principles it illustrates and in using those principles to answer questions that might have interested Larry and the other do-it-yourself balloonists who followed his lead.

How could Larry have stayed out of the air traffic lanes and perhaps avoided the FAA's attention? Now that you know the basics of buoyancy, you can probably answer that. Larry and his balloons rose until their combined weight equaled the weight of the air they displaced. Since the density of air decreases with altitude, it's possible to calculate about how high a given volume of balloons might carry you.

According to Paul's calculations (which we will admit, we have not confirmed with actual measurement), a balloon at sea level can lift one kilogram per cubic meter of helium (or about 0.062 pounds per cubic foot of helium). Since one is such a nice number to work with, we'll use metric in our calculations.

So to lift a person weighing 64 kg (about 140 pounds) you need a balloon that is 64 cubic meters. A balloon that size would fill a room that's four meters (or twelve feet square) and four meters (or twelve feet high).

That's enough to lift a person off the ground, but not very high. As altitude increases, air pressure (and the density of the air) decreases. At 5.6 kilometers or 18,000 feet, the density of air is half what it is at sea level. Since the lift of the balloon is cut in half, the balloon will only support 0.5 kg per cubic meter. So if I want to rise to 18,000 feet I need double the volume of the balloon or 128 cubic meters. Of course using a single balloon does not lend itself to slow descent when you shoot it with a gun!

You can do a similar calculation for any altitude you wish to reach using the exponential decrease in atmospheric density with altitude. However we suggest that you do not actually do this. At least one person has died trying to duplicate Larry's stunt.*

Balloons on Other Planets

Of course, now that you understand the basics, you can extrapolate to other situations. Suppose you're on Mars and you have an urge to go for a balloon ride. You don't have to worry about the FAA, since they haven't reached Mars yet. But you have to figure out what gas will float your balloon in the Martian atmosphere.

The atmosphere on Mars is mostly carbon dioxide—compared with the air here on Earth, which is a mixture of seventy-eight percent nitrogen and twenty-one percent oxygen with argon, carbon dioxide, ozone and everything else making up only about one percent. ("But wait!” you say, being the astute sort of reader we expect here in the pages of Fantasy & Science Fiction. “What about the water vapor?” Well, we're giving the composition of dry air. Water vapor varies from nearly zero percent to nearly four percent depending on place and time.)

To float your balloon on Mars, you need a gas that's lighter than the carbon dioxide—and Avogadro's law will help you figure out what gases might qualify. Back in 1811, Amedeo Avogadro hypothesized that equal volumes of ideal gases, at the same temperature and pressure, contain the same number of particles, or molecules.

Real gases behave pretty much like ideal gases for our purposes. Since two identical volumes of two different gases at the same temperature and pressure contain the same number of molecules,you can figure out which one will be lighter by comparing the weights of the molecules. And you can do that easily enough by consulting the Periodic Table of the Elements and knowing just a little bit about gas molecules.

On the Periodic Table, you'll see that oxygen has an atomic weight of about sixteen (that's eight protons and eight neutrons). An oxygen molecule is made of two atoms, for a molecular weight of thirty-two. Carbon dioxide is two oxygen atoms and a carbon atom (which has an atomic weight of twelve) for a total molecular weight of forty-four.

Look on the table to see if you can find a lighter gas, and you'll see the same ones that work well on Earth. Helium has an atomic and a molecular weight of four. (It's an atomic gas—just one atom per molecule.) Hydrogen has an atomic weight of one, and it has two atoms per molecule, making it a molecular lightweight at two.

Since helium and hydrogen are both lighter than carbon dioxide, they would work fine. You might be reluctant to use hydrogen for lift on Earth (remembering the unfortunate fate of the Hindenburg), but hydrogen requires oxygen to burn. In the Martian carbon-dioxide atmosphere, you'd be fine.

Now suppose you decided to go ballooning on Jupiter. There, the atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and helium. A glance at the periodic table reveals that those gases are the lightest ones around.

So what do you do? You remember that Avogadro's law applies to identical volumes of gases at the same temperature and pressure. On Jupiter, we suggest you consider a hot-air balloon. When you heat a gas, the molecules bounce around faster, spreading out and taking up more space. The density of the gas drops—perfect for ballooning!

Submarine Ballooning

So far we've been considering balloons that are filled with air and float in air. In both science and science fiction, it's interesting to consider what happens if you take a commonplace situation and make just one change.

You can think of the atmosphere as an ocean of air and a balloon as a bubble floating upward in that ocean. Suppose you changed that ocean of air into an ocean of water. What would you put inside your balloon if you wanted to start at the bottom of the ocean and float to the top?

In science and science fiction, one change leads to other changes. Maybe you think you could fill your submarine balloon with air—after all, air is less dense than water.

But there's a problem. At the bottom of the sea, the pressure of the water would crush the gas. That's fine down to a certain depth. But when you reach the level where the volume of the gas has been reduced so much that your craft's weight exactly matches the weight of the water it displaces, the craft becomes neutrally buoyant. That means it doesn't rise and it doesn't sink.

What happens when you go below that point of neutral buoyancy? The water pressure goes up and the volume of the gas that serves as your balloon goes down. Now the craft weighs more than the water it displaces and you're sinking with no way to get back to the surface. Not a good situation.

So you need to fill your submarine balloon with something that doesn't compress under pressure. Marine mammals have solved this problem with a fatty layer of blubber. Not only does blubber insulate these animals from cold water, it also serves as an incompressible buoyancy device—sort of like a built-in life vest. Taking a tip from the whales, you could fill your balloon with fat. A big balloon full of lard would keep your craft buoyant.

Alas—as far as we know, no one has yet created a lard-based buoyancy control. The Bathyscaphe Trieste, a deep-diving research vessel with a crew of two people, solved the problem by filling its float chamber (an underwater balloon, if you will) with gasoline. Gasoline is less dense than water. Like other liquids, it doesn't compress significantly even at extreme pressures, making it as effective (though perhaps not as absurd) as a float chamber filled with lard.

You've probably heard of a bathysphere: a spherical deep-sea submersible that is lowered into the depths on a cable. A bathysphere isn't an undersea balloon. It's more like an undersea rock. It sinks and, when the adventurers aboard are done, it's hauled back to the surface. Unfortunately, using a cable to lower and raise a craft limits its range. The bathysphere's maximum was about 900 meters (or around 3,000 feet) down.

The bathyscaphe, on the other hand, is not limited by a connection to the surface. Because of its gasoline-filled float chamber, the Trieste could free dive in the water. In 1960, the bathyscaphe reached a depth of about 10,900 meters (35,761 feet), in the Mariana Trench, breaking every previous record and establishing a record that has not yet been matched.

Water balloons

Talking about underwater balloons got Pat thinking about water balloons.

Well, to tell the truth, Pat started out thinking about water balloons. We were working on this story during a rare heat wave here in San Francisco and she needed an excuse to spend an hour tossing water balloons out the window. ("It's science,” she says. The neighbors wonder about that.)

She started thinking about water balloons when she took a look at a few of the many online videos that show a water balloon popping in slow motion. Just go to YouTube and search for “water balloon” and “slow motion.” A slow-motion video lets you see aspects of an event that you never noticed before.

Our favorite videos show someone popping a water balloon with a pin or knife. The moment after a pin pricks the balloon, the rubber vanishes, speedily contracting to a fraction of its stretched size. For an instant, you'll see the water without the balloon, a beautiful crystal clear shape Then gravity takes over, pulling the water down down down.

That moment when you see the water without the balloon is an interesting one. As we mentioned in the discussion of the gasoline-filled submarine balloon, liquids don't compress much, even under pressure. So the water is contained but not compressed by the stretched balloon. Remove the balloon and the water stays put.

Equally amazing are the videos of water balloons that do NOT explode, but bounce. Paul likes to create such super strong water balloons by putting one balloon inside another to make a double-strength balloon. Watching a water balloon (or a tennis ball) deform when it hits the ground and bounces back is seeing conservation of energy in action. Energy, say the physicists, can neither be created nor destroyed.

Suppose you hold a water balloon a foot from your driveway. That balloon has potential energy. It has the potential to fall, pulled downward by gravity. As the balloon falls, the potential energy becomes the kinetic energy of motion. When the balloon hits the ground, it either breaks or bounces. If it breaks, its kinetic energy becomes the kinetic energy of water flying all over the place. (That's Pat's favorite part.)

But if it bounces, that kinetic energy goes into deforming the balloon—squashing it flat. The balloon membrane stretches, momentarily storing energy in the stretch. Some of the energy is lost to friction (which becomes heat), but most goes to restoring the balloon to its original shape and sending it springing back into the air.

When Pat was tossing water balloons and meditating on the conservation of energy, she noticed that balloons filled with air made a loud bang when she popped them. But when a water balloon popped, there wasn't much of a sound, other than the splash of the water and the yelps of the people who had been doused. Why, she asked Paul, didn't water balloons pop with a bang?

Not with a whimper, but a bang

So why does popping a toy balloon make such a satisfying “BANG!"?

First, we'd better talk about what that noise is. The human ear and brain perceive sound when there is a pressure change outside the eardrum. A popping balloon creates a sudden pressure change.

Inside an air-filled balloon, air is trapped and squeezed. The air pressure inside the balloon is higher than the surrounding atmospheric pressure. When you prick the balloon with a pin, the stretchy latex of the balloon splits open. If you could somehow color the air inside the balloon, you would see a region of compressed colored air hanging where the balloon used to be, just like the water in the water balloon.

But unlike the water, the air is under pressure. Once it's released from its latex prison, the compressed air expands outward. The air in the center of the balloon pushes the air closest to the balloon's surface outward. The expanding air reaches maximum speed when the pressure of the air that was originally in the center of the balloon matches atmospheric pressure. The outwardly expanding air sends a compression wave spreading out at the speed of sound. When this compression wave passes your ears, the compression pushes on your eardrum and you hear a bang.

But wait—there's more! When the air that was inside the balloon reaches atmospheric pressure, it's still rushing outward. It overshoots, creating a lower pressure region where the balloon used to be. So then the air rushes back to fill that lower pressure area. This creates an expansion wave of low pressure, which follows the compression wave. This alternation of compression and expansion makes a sound with a given pitch.

Of course, it doesn't stop there. The air rushes back, overshoots, then rushes out, overshoots, and so on, getting a little closer to equilibrium each time. Depending on the size and initial pressure in the balloon, the oscillation between compression and expansion takes different times. That's why popping different balloons produces different pitches. Larger balloons produce lower pitched pops than smaller balloons with the same pressure.

Going out with the biggest bang

Once you have a loud explosive noise, it's only human nature to try to make that noise louder. We will be continuing our investigation of balloons with hands-on experiments into ways to get the biggest bang. Since the loudness of the pop increases with increased air pressure inside the balloon, we will be testing balloons to find the ones that maximize the internal pressure. We are also looking for an ideal balloon-popping environment. A large interior space with plenty of hard surfaces and no padding to absorb the sound (an empty gymnasium or a concrete stairwell) offers the best potential for echoes.

We invite you to join the investigation—in empty gymnasiums or concrete stairwells, with balloons of your choice. And if anyone complains about the noise, remember: you're not just popping balloons. It's science.

The Exploratorium is San Francisco's museum of science, art, and human perception—where science and science fiction meet. Paul Doherty works there. Pat Murphy used to work there, but now she works at Klutz (www.klutz.com), a publisher of how-to books for kids. Pat's latest novel is The Wild Girls. To learn more about Pat Murphy's writing, visit her website at www.brazenhussies.net/murphy. For more on Paul Doherty's work and his latest adventures, visit www.exo.net/~pauld.

*For people who prefer to experience a trip like Larry's more safely through the magic of fiction, we refer you to “The View from On High” by Steven R. Boyett, from our Aug. 2000 issue. You'll find the story reprinted on our website this month.

Longtime readers might recall the stories “Madrelita” (Feb. 1992) or “Javier, Dying in the Land of Flowers” (Jan. 1996) by one Deborah Wheeler. Ms. Wheeler now goes by her birth name and we're pleased to welcome Ms. Ross back into F&SF. Deborah has by no means been inactive during the past thirteen years—according to www.deborahjross.co , much of her creative energy has gone into the Darkover world created by her friend Marion Zimmer Bradley and she's currently writing a novel entitled Hastur Lor. Here she regales us with a tight, compelling science fiction story of life aboard the Juno.

Because he had joined the crew at the last minute and because he was still very young, Devlin felt awkward, not quite accustomed to no longer having a last name, but being only “Devlin of Juno.” During the last stretch of space flight to the planet December, he explored the various work areas, practicing maneuvering in zero-gee, until he found Shizuko, Juno's engineer, and Verity, the pilot, in the galley. The room was roughly spherical, the walls studded with storage bins.

Heads close together, knees hooked around stabilization bars, the two women were sipping bulbs of what looked like real coffee. Spirals of plum blossoms covered Shizuko's micropore skins from one arm to the opposite shoulder, leaving the rest of her slender body shimmering silver. Verity's thunderbolts jagged across a field of palest yellow. Despite his medical training, Devlin's pulse rate jumped. The skins clung almost as closely as the real thing, revealing every line of muscle and bone, breasts round and soft without the pull of gravity.

"Ohé, Devlin!” Shizuko beckoned him to join them. “Hungry?"

Devlin fitted himself into the frame, banging his knees and one elbow in the process. The natural tone of his postural muscles kept his body pressed against the bars, holding him in place.

Verity smothered a smile and handed Devlin two bulb containers and a flat packet. He bit off the tip of one, expecting the standard reconstitute paste. Instead, the mixture was subtly spiced, with a lingering warmth of ginger. He chewed the accompanying bread, fluffy dough layered with potato and garbanzo filling. The second dish was a spirulina pudding that looked like pale green gelatin but tasted of limes.

"This is good!"

"Araceli's cooking.” Unlike the other crew, Verity didn't shave her head, but braided her black hair in scalp-hugging spirals. With her milky skin, he thought her beautiful but hard-edged.

A shadow shifted at the edge of Devlin's vision. Archaimbault March floated at the entrance, like a silent panther in his jumpsuit of unallayed black. Archaimbault March, like Devlin, had joined Juno at TerraBase, neither passenger nor crew, his mission as well as his military rank never stated. Devlin assumed he was a high-ranking security officer; with his restless gaze and opaque expression, the man reeked of covert power.

"Was there something you wanted?” Shizuko said.

"Your captain tells me you are investigating the lack of communication with the December authorities."

"That's true,” she replied, without a hint of defensiveness. “But it's not unexpected, given the recent stellar flares. We're still on the other side of the sun from the planet."

December was a Stage Three planet, with a breathable atmosphere and generous supplies of water. Its five principal continents hosted pristine forests, plains, and deserts, all abundant in compatible biology. It had been colonized and then abandoned ten thousand years ago by an alien race whose enigmatic ruins dotted the temperate zones.

The planet had passed the rigorous process of robotic exploration, followed by years of painstaking Stage Two survey. The first wave of colonists had been there for more than a decade local time, enough to establish a viable agricultural community. Sometimes dangerous conditions didn't show up right away, but planets usually didn't make it this far in the colonization process without some indication of trouble.

"I will run diagnostics on our own equipment to make sure the problem isn't reception,” Shizuko added.

From the faint tightening around Archaimbault March's eyes, he doubted her reassurance. “Very well. Inform me as soon as you obtain any results."

"You'll be the second to know,” she said, her voice carefully neutral. Then added, “After Fidelio."

Once Archaimbault March had left, Devlin muttered, “He's sure got a comet stuck up his ass."

"I don't trust him, either,” Shizuko said. “Why would TerraBase dispatch someone like him to an agricultural colony?"

Verity looked at Devlin slantwise. “Do all military personnel set you off, or just this particular idiot?"

"Anything in a uniform. It's a good thing you—we—don't wear them."

Shizuko laughed in such a friendly way that Devlin relaxed. “Oh, Devlin, you're not what we expected.” Her lips drew together like softly rounded petals. Devlin wondered what it would be like to kiss her.

"What did you expect, that I'm not it?"

Shizuko tilted her head, a gesture that substituted for a shrug. “We're used to being a world unto ourselves. Dirtsiders brush past us like mayflies. But we're out of balance now. You know that Aimer jumped ship at our last TerraBase refit?"

"He was your previous physician, wasn't he?” Devlin said.

"He was one of us."

Us. And with that subtly accented word came the hint, the possibility of an invitation.

In all the years since the Fosterage agent had found him in the slums of D'al-Jarkata, Devlin had never considered the possibility of belonging to another family.

Cautiously, the crew was opening to him, as if he touched some need within them. It wasn't his medical expertise. Verity had paramed training and the emergency cryo served for anything serious. They didn't have to recruit another physician. But they had, and hoped.

Behind Shizuko's dark eyes, he sensed the question, Are you the one?

"Well, back to work.” Shizuko gathered up the containers, slid them into the recycling slot, and glided from the room.

For a long moment, Verity stared at the door. Her brows drew together, furrowing her pale skin. Even with odd body language of zero-gee, Devlin sensed she was gathering herself.

"There's something I want you to understand,” she said, “about the way Shizuko is with people, about how we all are. To begin with, Rhea and I were lovers our first year in Academy. Then she connected with Fidelio—"

She was talking too fast, her gaze everywhere but at him, her voice resonant with something strong and hot. “You think he's gorgeous now, you should have seen him then, with something to prove! He and Aimer had been buddies, then TerraBase assigned us Araceli as quartermaster at the last minute. Maybe they thought he was weird enough to handle us, I don't know. Our first flight, we did a lot of ... um, accommodating each other. I don't sleep with men and that was all right. Fidelio pretends he's after everyone's ass, but he isn't. He's actually a very private person that way."

"Oh.” Warmth prickled the back of Devlin's neck.

"Anyway, one day between missions, Fidelio came home with Shizuko. We needed an engineer. The one originally assigned to us didn't work out. It was as if—” her voice dropped in pitch, “—as if we'd all been waiting for her, as if she filled some place in our lives we hadn't even known was empty. She brought us together, catalyzed us into something more than our individual selves. Aimer left an absence. If Shizuko thinks you—” Verity stopped abruptly, her mouth tensing.

She looked at him, direct and hard. Devlin had seen people killed for less. “If you hurt Shizuko, I'll kill you."

"I would never—"

"Nuts to your intentions."

Devlin touched the back of her hand with his fingertips. The gesture shifted the energy between them, as he'd meant to. “You do care. That's what this conversation is about, isn't it? It's why you made sure I knew how much you love Shizuko and that you aren't interested in me sexually."

"It's possible,” Verity said, without lowering her eyes. Then she pushed herself free, through the portal.

A jumble of feelings surged up in Devlin. Three slow breaths, counting heartbeats, gave him the necessary calm to sort them through. Some he knew, the aching loneliness, the longing for intimacy. Others he couldn't put his finger on, even with the meditation-enforced stillness. He only knew that if he gave way to them, he would be swept away, never the same again.

Moving with assuredness, Devlin paused at the entrance to the bridge. The approach to December had given him plenty of practice in zero-gee, although he would never achieve the balletic grace of the space crew. Red-haired Rhea, her micropores glimmering in shades of metallic green, looked up from the array of camera readouts, visible spectra, infrared.

"Ohé, Devlin."

Devlin settled beside Shizuko. Pleasure tingled through his body as he noticed the long graceful lines of her neck, her tapering fingers, the pale pink blossoms of her micropore skins.

"Approaching direct line of range,” Verity said crisply. Her hair, now freed from its tight braids, fanned out from her face like a halo of spun black glass. She, like Shizuko, seemed beautiful at that moment; how easy it would be to love her, to love them all.

"Still no contact?” said Fidelio. He was, Devlin admitted, an extraordinarily beautiful man, with a fine-boned, supple strength and a frosting of silver-gilt hair, gleaming platinum micropores.

"I've been hailing them on all the standard emergency frequencies,” Verity answered. “I get nothing from either the station or dirtside, just background static."

Shizuko muttered, mostly to herself, “Where are they?"

None of them clung to the hope that the problem might lie in Juno's receivers.

"We're getting data now.” Shizuko frowned. “There's a planet there, but it can't be December. Not with that albedo."

"I've got preliminary spectroscopic analysis of atmospheric content.” Rhea cleared her throat. “Captain, these ... they're all wrong."

Captain? Devlin remembered Fidelio saying that no one onboard called him anything but his name.

"Nothing matches!” Rhea continued. “I'm reading water vapor, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, all right, but way too much monoxide ... methane ... sulfuric compounds."

Devlin held his breath as images appeared on the screens, compiled and enhanced by the computers. He'd expected to see a planet very like Terra, vast blue oceans and a tracery of white over the tan and dark green outlines of land masses. Instead, swirling brown and yellow clouds obliterated any traces of the surface. The entire planet seemed to glow, to pulsate with the atmospheric turbulence.

"What the hell happened down there?” Shizuko's voice sounded husky, breathless. “A cometary strike?” December's system had a particularly rich Oort belt.

The bridge fell silent for a moment before Fidelio said, “Deploy probes. Set the data feedback at maximum capture rate."

"Probes calibrated,” Verity said. “Calculating optimal trajectory. Launching now."

Devlin's screen showed the elongated teardrop shape of the probes, chemical rockets firing on a curved path down to the planet. They shrank to pinpoint size and then disappeared.

No one now expected to hear from the planetside colony. Hours passed as the probes sped toward their target. Everyone was trying to keep busy, to not think about what lay ahead. About the December colonists.

When the first data from the probes began coming in, Devlin rushed to the bridge. Archaimbault March was already there, a black-clad shadow, eyes restless.

"The probes have penetrated the lower atmospheric strata,” said Verity.

"Anything visual yet?” Fidelio said. “Radar scans?"

"Hold on."

Grainy images revealed lightning flashes through the torrential rains. Winds battered the probe, blotting out images from the visible-spectrum lenses.

"Surface infrared coming in.” Rhea rattled off a stream of technical phrases Devlin didn't understand. “Carbon dioxide with significant particulate fractions of carbon and aerosolized sulfuric acid."

"And the temperature?"

She looked up, hazel eyes glassy. “250 degrees."

Celsius, Devlin reminded himself. That's close to five hundred Fahrenheit. It wasn't hot enough to melt rock, but nothing living could survive. Water could not exist in liquid form at that temperature, only in the upper atmosphere. Rain from those storms would turn to steam, then shoot upward in immense geysers, only to liquefy at the cooler altitudes.

Devlin thought of primitive Terra, artists’ renditions based on scientific speculation. Its eternal gloom had been broken by lightning storms and the lurid red of molten lava, crawling across an ever-shifting landscape.

"Fidelio, this is very strange.” Shizuko flicked the readout screens to display a color-enhanced thermal pattern. A line of fiery red pinpoints ran through the center of the continent.

"Overlay!” Fidelio said.

A topographic grid appeared over the thermal readout.

Shizuko's fingers danced over the computer touchpads. “Looks like five, six hundred volcanic peaks. That many again on the Continent South Two. And that's only the big ones."

"How could this happen?” Rhea sounded dazed. “On Terra and half a dozen other planets, we have records of maybe three or four adjacent volcanoes going active. Never an entire mountain range. It doesn't make sense. Each new eruption would progressively reduce the overall seismic stress—"

"What else?” Verity snapped. “Some idiot laying down a line of superbombs? Even if the colonists could do it, it wouldn't produce what's down there."

"Nor would any weapon in the human arsenal,” Fidelio said, his gaze flickering to the security officer. “Isn't that right?"

Devlin turned to stare. Archaimbault March's features were as impassive as ever, but his skin had gone chalky. The man might hold himself rigid, might clamp down on any expression of horror, but his body betrayed him. Whatever his mission, whatever he had hoped—or feared—to find on December now lay beyond his reach, and in its place a literal hell.

Devlin sensed, tasted, a shift in the atmosphere of the bridge. Shizuko, her eyes gleaming with unshed tears, glanced from Verity to Fidelio. The captain's jaw muscles clenched, muscle hard against the clean, elegant lines of bone.

Words echoed in Devlin's mind. No weapon in the human arsenal....

Sweet heaven, what had the December colonists stumbled across, on a planet studded with alien ruins?

In an almost inhumanly cool voice Fidelio said, “We are going to assume that whatever is going on down there is of natural origin."

"How many people were in the colony?” Devlin asked, dry-mouthed.

"Between four and five thousand,” said Fidelio.

Shizuko covered her face with her hands.

A vision flickered behind Devlin's eyes, the twisted, shriveled corpses of children baking in that oven heat, of scattered groups of survivors huddled in the far reaches of caverns, praying for help that never came, suffocating....

Suffocating in the night....

Memories rose up in the darkness of Devlin's mind—the smothering heat, the cries that tore their way through ragged flesh, the stench of sulfur or was it burning tires? Terror molten in his veins, every muscle strung to the breaking point, the pressure of his heart leaping in his throat....

Devlin closed his eyes for a moment and focused on the center of his body, deep in his belly. Drawing his breath into the point, he imagined it cooling and cleansing everything it touched. The smells and cries receded into the safety of the past. His stomach unclenched.

"...commit these departed souls to Thy care...,” Fidelio murmured.

For a long moment—a breath, a heartbeat—no one said anything.

"Let's get to work.” Fidelio broke the silence. “Rhea, keep the probe going as long as you can. I want every scrap of data funneled into a climatology analysis. If there's any chance that,” with a minute tilt of his head toward December, true direction, not the view screen, “is a Venusian scenario at great acceleration, we'd better find out everything we can.

"Meanwhile, let's see what the station computers can tell us. Verity, you and Shizuko take Devlin over in the shuttle.” His voice roughened for an instant. “I don't want anyone taking chances out there."

Fidelio's gaze flickered to Devlin. “If, by heaven's grace, there are any survivors on the station...."

"Captain.” Archaimbault March had been so silent before, his words, although spoken softly, split the air like the crack of a whip. “As of now, I'm taking over this investigation."

Fidelio stared at him. “You have no authority—"

"Don't force me to relieve you of command. I can and will do so if you refuse to cooperate.” Archaimbault March hesitated, shock still edging his voice. “I believe ... it would be best to work together."

Fidelio's eyes hardened. “This is my ship, run by my crew. As long as we are in space, I give the orders. If you don't like it, get out and walk."

"With all due respect, you have no idea what you're sending your people into."

"Do you?"

Archaimbault March paused, but only for a moment. “Point taken. But if there is any record whatsoever of what and how that came about—” His chin jerked minutely toward the screen displaying the images, the tortured, lightning-laced landscape. “Captain, can I put this any plainer? My training is the best chance any of us have of solving this terrible mystery."

"In that case,” Fidelio said, “you have permission to observe.” Archaimbault March's features shifted, a flicker of triumph. “From the bridge."

The man in black went still, and Devlin thought of a panther, eyes focused on its prey, but then he dipped his head.

He's biding his time. Devlin went cold inside.

Sometimes, during his sleeping periods, Devlin lay in the dark in his webbing, ears straining for the faint, almost inaudible sounds of the ship. Always there was silence. Vast, impenetrable, unyielding silence. Once or twice, he imagined what he would do if this silent dark never ended, if in his sleep the crew disappeared, Shizuko, Fidelio, the others, dead or gone, the ship speeding through the void, and he trapped here, alone except for the beating of his own heart.

It was the kind of fear a child might have, to be soothed by a parent's voice and touch. Devlin recognized the fear. He knew where it came from, why it was so universal, what it represented, how to respond to it. His own worst memories had faded, the ones of waking in the back alleys of D'al-Jarkata, the unrelenting metallic taste of fear.

But that had been years ago, a decade and more. He knew how to take those memories and temper them, how to transmute despair into compassion. What surprised him now, even adult and educated, was the strength of the aloneness.

Why should those memories return now, like an omen?

"Devlin?"

Light broke the darkness of his cubicle, the dim, almost reticent glow from the lowest setting. A silhouetted form moved toward him. Shizuko.

"Did I wake you? You cried out in your sleep."

He felt her floating closer, the warmth of her skin, inhaled the faint spicy smell of her body cream. Light softened the curves of her face and throat, gleamed off the jet of her eyes. Her nostrils flared and he wondered if she could scent his loneliness.

"I couldn't sleep, either,” she said in her softly husky voice. “Better sometimes not to say anything at all."

Her mouth moved against his, an unspoken question. Do you belong to us? Do I belong to you?

He had no answer, only the pleasure of her touch. He freed himself from the webbing and put his arms around her. Beneath her micropores, her bare skin felt like sun-warmed silk. He traced the curves of her thighs and buttocks, the way zero-gee lifted and shaped her breasts, the long muscles of her torso. Her pubic hair was thick and crisp, parted by a slippery ribbon. She inhaled sharply as he ran his fingers over the long, luscious inner folds and valleys. A shudder passed through her. Her fingers dug into his shoulders. With one quick movement, she brought her knees up and out. He felt the pressure of one heel behind his low back and then she was pulling him inside her body with exquisite slowness. Her internal muscles tightened, hard and sudden to send a jolt of almost electric arousal through him. He slid further in. She moved against him, relaxed rhythmically, holding him as he pushed.

When she climaxed, it was with an arching of her body, head thrown back so that he could not see her face. His own left him breathless and with a strange clarity of mind and enervation of body. He realized that for all the intimacy of their bodies, he really knew nothing about her. He knew only that he would trust her with his life.

At first, December's space station shone like a mote of silver against the milky sweep of the galactic arm. It grew to megaton size, no mere relay, but a small world unto itself.

The station floated above Devlin like a celestial leviathan with its gently swelling sides and pale ceramometallic skin. Even though he had seen TerraBase, the size of a small city, Devlin felt a rush of awe. Human hands had built this thing, here in the vacuum, beyond the thinnest fringes of air, beyond the kiss of December's gravity.

Spiderweb antennae and solar membranes shimmered against the darkness. An isolated storage unit was anchored alongside. Bright orange stripes covered its curved sides.

"What do the orange stripes mean?” Devlin asked.

"It's a storage unit for solid rocket propellant,” Verity said. “We're carrying the next shipment."

"Proximity alarms should be going off,” Fidelio's voice said. “Maximum caution now."

Verity piloted them in, slow and smooth, matching the station's rotation. The party prepared to board. Verity and Shizuko double-checked every safety measure, strapping on the power packs with redundant tethers.

As they propelled themselves across the gap, Devlin saw the grace in their movements, an eerie serenity, the coordination of their thruster jets as a dance. Shizuko's suit, like her micropores, shimmered under a fall of plum blossoms.

"You're off target a few degrees counterclockwise,” came Rhea's voice from the ship, comparing their position with the computer-generated schematics. “Adjust your trajectory by—” She rattled off a string of coordinates.

They found the airlock hatch just where Rhea indicated. Set in a corona of white and black lines, it looked undamaged.

Shizuko positioned herself beside the airlock and opened the cover. The manual controls were designed to be operated by even an inexperienced civilian in an emergency. The instructions were in both written and pictograph form. In a moment of fancy, Devlin wondered if they would make any sense to a creature with a structure radically different from the human norm. What would a being with sixfold radial symmetry or pseudopods think of the simplified drawings of a two-armed, two-legged human with a bulbous circle for a head?

The door release lever lay within an indentation, marked with large directional arrows. Shizuko grasped the flat, textured end. For a long moment, nothing moved. She braced herself, shifting slightly first one way and then another. Devlin heard her percussive exhale.

"It's well and truly stuck, to use precise technical jargon."

"Try another airlock in the same section,” said Fidelio. “We'll get you the coordinates."

The party returned to the shuttle and swung it around the station's curved side. A cloud of debris came into view, glittering like metallic snow.

Over his helmet speakers, Devlin heard Archaimbault March's voice, although he could not make out the words.

Shizuko bent to consult the instrument module at her belt. “It seems to be the remains of a shuttle. There are shreds of carbon-based material. Water—ice, that is. Traces of organic iron compounds."

Myoglobin? Hemoglobin?

"Hold on,” Devlin said. “I want a sample.” No one said anything as he scooped up a portion of the debris cloud.

Keeping close to the station, they proceeded to the next airlock. This time, both Verity and Devlin tried the release lever. Long heartbeats later, it still hadn't budged.

"What the hell?” Verity muttered. “One airlock might malfunction....” She didn't finish the thought.

As far as Devlin could tell, the station had been sealed from the inside. But why would anyone lock himself inside a space station, orbiting a dying planet? Why put himself beyond the reach of help?

He thought of an alien satellite spinning its lonely orbit in the far reaches of December's system. Space, so distant from his own personal nightmares, no longer felt safe.

The next module they reached contained arched docking bays, wide enough to accommodate a ship the size of Juno. The arms looked fragile, like fairy wings. Again, there was no response from the airlock controls.

"Do you want us to keep trying?” said Shizuko.

"Don't give up!” Archaimbault March's voice sounded ghostly, distant. “You've got to find out—"

"Keep at it for a while longer,” Fidelio cut him off.

Shizuko began cutting through to the airlock hatch controls with the laser. Incisions appeared in the outer skin, accompanied by eye-searing light and off-gassing, gaping wider and deeper with every passing moment. Working cautiously to avoid damage to their gauntlets, Verity and Shizuko pulled a flap of the outer skin free, folded it back and secured it to the hull with magnetic clamps.

"I'll try the manual lock from here.” Shizuko's head and shoulders disappeared into the rectangular opening.

There was no visible movement in the airlock hatch.

"Doesn't anything work on this station?” Verity floated closer and shone her helmet lamp into the opening, over the curve of Shizuko's shoulder.

"It's not the relays.” Shizuko sighed audibly. “We'll have to cut through to the lock itself."

"Give me the laser and I'll do it,” Verity said. “There's about enough room to spit in there."

"Verity, please. We both know this has to be done right.” Without waiting for a reply, Shizuko dove with slow motion grace into the opening.

"You're going to get yourself killed one of these times."

"Is that a threat or a promise?"

A few minutes later, Shizuko's voice came from the opening. “I'm through and into the lock. You'll need light."

"Let's go,” said Verity.

Devlin followed her through the jagged opening into the airlock. In the light of their helmet lanterns, the airlock looked gloomy, a cavern that had never known sun or wind. The walls had been painted a cross between teal and gray.

Verity and Shizuko used the patch kit to seal the opening. Then they pressurized the lock. The seal flexed, gleaming like a living membrane, and held.

At a touch of the controls, the inner hatches whispered open. A short passageway, this one a slightly lighter shade of gray, led inward to a second lock.

After the condensed, meticulous order of Juno, the station seemed expansive, almost luxurious. Rotation created a gentle approximation of gravity in the circular corridor. A short walk brought them to the broad passageway. Colored bands, corresponding to the various sections, ran along the walls.

Verity consulted a map and traced out their route to Operations. It was coded blue, which Devlin thought macabre. They followed it to a blue-circled portal. This door, like the airlocks, refused to open manually. Shizuko cut through it with the laser.

Inside, bathed in pale light, cold and indirect, lay a wide sweep of a room with banks of work consoles, instruments and control panels, darkened screens. That, combined with its emptiness, gave the place a mournful quality, a tomb built for an entire dynasty and never used. But it was not empty.

Shizuko, first through the gap, let out a sharp cry. A clump of bodies, seven or eight, lay just inside the door. Some of them bore hand lasers, made for fine work and too low-powered to affect even an interior wall. More mummified skeletons made a tangled heap beside one of the work stations.

Shreds of skin, dark and wrinkled, clung to the clean curves of skulls and intricately shaped cervical vertebrae. Standard issue jumpsuits draped loosely around the bones, giving the eerie suggestion of flesh.

Devlin touched Shizuko's shoulder, felt the atavistic tremor even through the insulating layers of her suit, thought of the legends of plague ships and crews gone mad. He bent to study the bodies, reaching inside for clinical detachment.

"It must have happened quickly,” Shizuko murmured, “and there was no one to help."

"Or no one tried to,” Devlin said, his jaw tight. The bodies beside the door touched long-buried memories. “I've seen sick people charge an aid station. Some of them were walking corpses, just enough holding them together to keep them moving on, infecting everyone they touched. The militia gunned them down."

"Norton's plague? The one that wiped out half of Old Jarkata?” Shizuko's brows drew together behind the crystal curve of her helmet. “But you would have been a child—"

"So what killed these people?” Verity said, too stridently. “Vacuum, vented monoxide, voltage through the door's electrics?"

Devlin brushed the fingers of his glove over one slender radius, laying alongside the ulna like lovers in death. He pointed to the fracture lines, the splintering of bone that indicated a struggle.

Dimly, as if from a far distance, he heard voices over his helmet speakers. Fidelio was asking questions, Shizuko answering in a low, tense voice, and Archaimbault March was saying something about mutiny. Devlin straightened up from his examination of the corpses.

"Be careful,” he told Shizuko and Verity. “Keep your suits intact.” Carefully, they proceeded into the room.

"Look at this.” Verity rushed to the communications bay. She pointed to what was left of the control systems, a swathe of blackened metal and plastic. Intersecting jagged lines gleamed like fused glass, while other areas had been sliced and torn, and shards of unrecognizable parts lay scattered everywhere.

Shizuko let out a long breath. For a long moment, no one said anything.

"Devlin and Verity, keep searching.” Fidelio's voice came over the helmet speakers. “Shizuko, we need to know what's in the computer core. Can you handle it?"

Shizuko lifted her head. “I'm all right,” she said, but whether those words were meant for the captain or for herself, Devlin could not tell. She left Operations, following the color-coded guides.

Devlin and Verity proceeded on a systematic route through the various areas, Engineering, Life Support, Officers’ Quarters, galley and storage areas. They passed through the medical area, a suite of rooms as well equipped as any TerraBase hospital, including emergency medical cryounits for critically ill crew who could not be treated with local facilities.

They found several more bodies, singly or in groups. One pair appeared to be trying to cut off power to Operations when they died. There were no other signs of damage, no indication of what had happened.

From time to time, Verity reported back to Juno. The initial shock had worn off; the depressing sameness created the sense of drifting through a tomb. Time took on an eerie, distorted quality. Devlin could not have told how long they had been wandering.

"Have you heard from Shizuko?” Fidelio asked. “She's not answering."

"Interference from the station?” Verity asked.

"No, we've been following you two loud and clear."

Devlin and Verity exchanged white-eyed glances. Before either could say more, Shizuko's voice came through.

"I'm here, just busy. Data transfer is complete. What there is of it, that is. Someone's tried a memory wipe. It's an unheavenly mess. I'm not sure this computer remembers how to add two and two."

...the station's computer disabled ... crew cut off and unable to effect repairs ... while down below, on the planet's surface, thousands of colonists helpless while temperatures soared and clouds of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acids rolled across the once pristine skies....

They met Shizuko back at the airlock. Plum blossoms glimmered, eternally fresh, across her space suit. The memory capture unit swung from her belt. She would not meet Devlin's gaze. There was something wrong with her eyes, some hidden darkness.

She turned as they approached, moving with deliberation. She'd managed to get the airlock hatch open. As one small blessing, the temporary seals held up through decompression.

Shizuko was first through the hatch. Her smooth, slow glide halted. She swore, too soft for the words to be understood. Devlin saw her face, perfectly lit through her helmet. In all his years, through D'al-Jarkata and everything beyond, he had never seen an expression so bleak, so determined.

"What is it?” he asked.

"Something must have caught on my suit leg. I didn't see anything. It felt like a—"

"Spider wire!” Verity shouted. “It's rigged!"

"Get out of there!” Fidelio barked from the ship. “All of you, right now! Scramble!"

"What—” Devlin began.

Shizuko whirled, a movement Devlin would have sworn was impossible in zero-gee, grabbed his arm, and thrust him bodily outside. He caught a glimpse of Shizuko bracing herself, then Verity's jets flaring.

A burst of intense, colorless light erupted from the airlock, momentarily blinding him. His helmet radio blared static. The noise filled his head, rattling the bones of his skull. Then he himself was hurled through empty space, surrounded on three sides by distant stars.

Devlin fumbled for the jets on his suit harness, praying he'd find the right ones. When he'd practiced the drill, he hadn't been half-blind, with adrenaline searing his veins. He blinked and his vision cleared slightly. With a silent prayer, he squeezed the controls. The station's bulk blotted out half the night. He'd managed to reverse his momentum, so that he was no longer speeding away from the station.

The next moment, a second explosion rocked the airlock. This one must have burst the inner hatches, because instead of a colorless flash, yellow-white flames spurted from the gaping maw in the side of the station. Oxygen rushed into space, fueling the blaze.

Fire reached outward, touched the nose of the shuttle. Glowing cracks laced the walls of the tiny craft. In its place, a starburst exploded. Shards of ceramometal scintillated against the black of space.

"Shizuko! Verity!” Devlin couldn't hear his own voice above the deafening blare of his helmet radio.

The blaze in the space station shifted toward orange. That was supposed to mean something about the materials being burned, but Devlin couldn't remember what. He blinked again, praying for clear sight, but the fire was too bright. From farther along the curved dark side of the station came another burst of light.

He spotted a single space suit, arms and legs gently flexed, oddly graceful.

Untethered. Drifting.

The radio channels carried nothing but static. His eyes were still too glare-blind to make out any patterns on the suit. There was no way to tell who it was.

Devlin nudged his jets. The suit hung above him now. Somehow, he thought with a curious numbness, he had to coordinate the path of the other suit with his own movement. He'd had no training in precision maneuvering. If he overshot....

The suit continued to drift. Devlin held his breath. From this angle, he could see that he was going to miss it. What did he have to lose? He curled in tight, rotating around his center of mass, and then swept out his arms. As he spun, he realized the suit was still too far. He flailed wildly, like a drowning swimmer. One gauntlet-encased hand closed around something. By pure luck, he'd grabbed the severed tether.

Devlin pulled the suit closer, winding the tether around his wrist. The suit swung around in response to his jerk. His eyes focused on a pattern of orange thunderbolts. He started to breathe again.

"Verity!” He grabbed one arm, turning her so that he could see her face. He was half afraid he'd find a bubble of coagulating blood or a crazework of fissures in the helmet itself.

Her eyes were closed, her facial muscles soft. Her parted lips held none of her usual tension, the ready answers, the quick retorts. In a moment of stark clarity, he noticed the delicacy of the skin around her eyes, the faint dark smudges as if she had, as a child, cried herself to sleep, and even now her body retained the memory. She would be furious if he ever made such an observation aloud to her.

"Verity...,” he whispered in his mind. “Be alive."

As if in answer to his plea, a mist appeared on the inner surface of the visor in front of her mouth. It was so faint that for a moment, he wasn't sure he had actually seen it, or only wanted it to be true. It was gone in a moment, absorbed by the air circulating system of the suit.

The stars spun by in a disorienting pattern. No, it was he who was spinning. Then he saw how far away they were from the ship.

His radio cleared suddenly and he heard Fidelio's voice, hailing.

"I've got her, I've got her!"

"Hold tight,” said Fidelio. “We're on our way."

The station came into view, slowly rising in his visual field like a massive, metal-white sun. The oxygen-fueled flames at the airlock were almost gone, but new blazes had broken out the entire length. The interior must be an inferno, the splintered bones with their shreds of leathery flesh, the fused radio console, all gone.

Devlin managed to engage his positioning jets again, a short burst that sent the ship spinning away visually in a different plane. He cursed, fumbled, and tried the opposite direction.

Then he saw that something had detached itself from Juno and appeared to be headed his way. It wasn't a shuttle but a frame lorry, that slow old workhorse meant for lunar landings and hauling. Some TerraBase budgeteer had decided the lorry could also serve as a shuttle backup. Its only advantage was that at the moment it was already outside the ship, far faster to launch than the second shuttle.

The lorry matched Devlin's speed and direction. Because he was spinning and it wasn't, it came around again and again in Devlin's visual field. He thought of an old-fashioned carousel and wondered where the brass ring was.

"Devlin!” Fidelio's voice came over his helmet radio. “Can you grab the tool arm?"

Devlin noticed a projection from the front of the lorry. He was holding tight to Verity with one hand. If he stretched out the other....

His fingers missed the tool arm by a good meter.

The lorry inched closer. Each revolution brought Devlin's hand closer to the tool arm. The smoothness of the maneuver astonished him. The thing must weigh tons, built for heavy extravehicular work, and yet it glided closer, centimeter by painstaking centimeter.

The lorry came around one more time. The tool arm smacked into the palm of Devlin's gloved hand. His fingers curled around it. He tightened his grip on Verity. A sudden sensation of weight jerked at his shoulder. Then the stars stopped moving.

Devlin wanted to laugh and cry all at once. Not even space rapture could be this delicious. Arm over arm, terrified of letting go, he worked his way to the lorry's cockpit. The platinum-shaded-bronze of Fidelio's space suit glinted at him. It was all he could do not to wrap the other man in a hug.

Devlin clambered through the lorry's rollbars. He pushed Verity into the seat behind Fidelio and pulled the safety harness over her head, anchoring it between her legs and snug around her chest.

The lorry swung around, heading back toward the station. The starfields looked so deep, so endless. Like death itself.

"Breathe shallowly,” Fidelio said. “It'll help."

"Shizuko.” Devlin wasn't sure if he'd said the name aloud, or heard it as a cry in the back of his mind. He had seen Verity as dead, called her name, and found her.

He told himself she could still be alive. Out there. Somewhere. The space suits were tough. Even if she'd been caught in the blaze, she could have survived. Or perhaps the first explosion had thrown her free and she was waiting for them to come for her. She'd been behind him....

An image flared up in his mind, Shizuko whirling, bracing herself against the airlock wall, one hand on the frame.

She stayed behind ... carrying the computer core ... with an engineer's knowledge of ship systems....

Fidelio brought them around, back toward the station. The planet hung above them like a dirt-smudged ball. Debris floated everywhere, pieces of ceramometal, hull casings, wires, crystalline silicon, the twisted wreckage of their shuttle. A jagged hole gaped where the airlock had been. The blaze was almost out, its oxygen exhausted.

Fires still raged through the central section, spewed out by the winds of decompression. As Devlin watched, slowly comprehending, the area where the solid rocket fuel was stored came into view.

Fidelio slammed the lorry's braking jets, reversed direction in a gyrojockey's record time, and shoved it into maximum thrust. The lorry's engine vibrated soundlessly with the strain. Devlin felt it through his bones.

Another flash of white erupted behind them like a miniature sun, this one more brilliant and piercing than the first. For a long moment, the station shimmered in Devlin's vision like an orb of silvery gray. Then Devlin's vision cleared and he realized the ghostly shape was only a retinal after-image.

Shards of what had been the massive space station glittered like metallic confetti against the velvet black. Devlin blinked, and saw they were hurling outward in all directions.

Devlin felt as if he too were flying apart, like the station, little bits in all directions. He mustn't start thinking about Shizuko.

There was no ping! as the first shards ricocheted off the lorry's rollbars. Devlin saw rather than heard the impact. Fidelio muttered unintelligible curses under his breath. The lorry, never intended for speed, labored on.

Juno's airlock gaped before them. Fidelio brought the lorry in full speed. Someone—Rhea would be in command—had deployed the brake nets. They skidded across the landing surface, then plowed into the first net. The cords tightened and stretched, damping momentum. Then everything jolted to a stop. Devlin saw it coming and braced himself. His neck muscles tightened automatically. The suit gave him a blessed measure of support. The second net sprang into place as the lorry rebounded.

The outer hatches of the airlock slid closed. Lights marked the pressurization cycle.

Fidelio unclipped his harness and swung around to secure the tie-downs for the lorry. Devlin fumbled with his own straps. His hands seemed to belong to someone else, but he managed to get everything loose, even Verity's safety harness. Fidelio caught her other arm and propelled the three of them into the inner airlock.

The anonymous gray walls had never seemed gloomier or more claustrophobic. Araceli met them there, a respirator in one hand and a Jarvik CPR unit, still in its case, strap looped around his other elbow.

"Ship damage?” Fidelio said.

"Minimal.” Araceli reached for Verity.

"Careful!” Devlin said. “I want to x-ray her before I get her out of the suit."

Together with Fidelio, Araceli supported Verity, one on either arm. They guided her down the corridor, twisting in unison to change direction at corners, shifting orientation for the best, smoothest speed, kicking off walls and handholds as if they'd rehearsed the route. Devlin spun, banged elbows, but somehow kept up with them. The two men enclosed her by their presence. Neither was her lover, but until that moment Devlin had not realized how much they loved her.

Shizuko....

They took Verity to the medical bay. The tests came back clear for fractures or gross internal organ damage, but showing the radiolucency pattern suggestive of swollen, sprained neck ligaments. She was going to have a miserable whiplash.

Devlin improvised a supportive collar, cutting it from foam splinting material. He slipped her helmet off, stabilized her neck and slipped on the collar. Her carotid pulses felt strong and steady under his fingers.

With Araceli's help, he eased Verity out of her suit and anchored her to the gurney. She moaned and opened her eyes.

"What the hell?” were her first words.

Araceli, floating beside her head, said, “She's all right."

"Any pain?” Devlin said, waving the quartermaster to shut up.

Verity rubbed her temple and tugged at the cervical collar, scowling. “Just my head. What hit me? What is this ... thing around my neck?"

Devlin wanted to laugh and cry in relief. They had lost Shizuko, the computer core, and whatever secrets it held. But at least he could count this small victory.

Devlin, his legs hooked around a stabilization frame, watched Verity sleep. From time to time, her eyes moved behind her closed lids. Dreaming, but of what? She moaned, a sound like the beginning of a sob deep in her throat. He touched her hand, the warm smooth skin, and she quieted. Did she know, even in her dreams, that she was safe with him? As long as he kept his focus on her, he could never wish Shizuko were lying here instead.

A shadow hovered at the entrance to the medical bay. Even without turning his head, Devlin knew who it was. Rage flickered at the corners of his mind, curled like tentacles of smoke through his guts.

"What do you want?"

"To talk to you.” The voice wove silk through the smoke. Silk like an assassin's garrote.

"I'm busy."

"Oh, surely not.” Archaimbault March propelled himself to the side of the bed, arrested his momentum with practiced ease. “You wouldn't want the death of the engineer to be for nothing."

"What's it to you?” Devlin spared no energy keeping the hostility from his voice.

"You don't like me, do you?"

"You—and everything you stand for."

Gray eyes blinked. “I confess I find your attitude puzzling. I have done nothing to harm you. Have I? And yet, we do have a common purpose."

Devlin looked away, to Verity's serene features. “We do not. I save lives. You spend them."

"I had nothing to do with the death of your engineer. Or the colonists and the crew on the space station. In fact, I am as anxious as you to discover the cause."

For a long moment, Devlin said nothing. His breath stilled in his throat. He turned his head to look at the black-clad man.

"Was there anything?” Archaimbault March went on, his words now coming in a rush. “Anything the engineer found in the computer records? Anything that might tell us what happened to December?” He shifted, his dark form towering above Devlin. Devlin heard the harmonics of urgency ringing in his voice.

In Devlin's mind, pieces came together, slipping seamlessly into place. Shizuko found it.

Slowly, he tilted his head in a spacer's negative. “As far as we know, Captain Fidelio was right. It was a natural disaster. A cometary strike setting off widespread tectonic instability."

Pale lips pressed together. “That doesn't explain the bodies on the station, or why it was sabotaged. I heard what happened with the spider wire when you were leaving."

"Populations such as the station crew are subject to paranoid delusions,” Devlin said, putting all the authority he had learned in medical training behind his words. “It's a closed-feedback loop phenomenon, undoubtedly triggered by grief and isolation. As for the sabotage ... survivor guilt is the most likely explanation. That's what my official medical report will conclude."

Devlin closed his eyes and turned away from Archaimbault March's instant of unguarded frustration. Whatever the black-clad man's suspicions, he had no answers, no evidence of what he had come to find. Nor, thanks to Shizuko, would he ever.

When Archaimbault March had left, Verity opened her eyes. Devlin, bending over her, realized she had been awake, holding herself motionless, controlling her breathing to simulate sleep, through the entire conversation.

She gestured for him to come closer. When he did so, her breath whispered across his cheek.

"There was no spider wire. She said that so we would get away."

He drew back, far enough to meet her gaze again, the layers of light and grief and understanding. “I know."

They must never say more, never mention what Shizuko had found, records of the device the colonists had unearthed in the alien ruins, the planet killer, a weapon so terrible that she would die rather than see it in the hands of Archaimbault March and his kind. She would die, but she would not kill, and her last gift to them had been their lives.

And all they had left of her was a terrible emptiness in the heart, and a terrible clenching at the back of the throat that was the price of silence.

John C. Wright is the author of nine novels, ranging from the far-future science fiction of his “Golden Age” trilogy to the “Chronicles of Chaos” fantasy novels. Recently he has shown a knack for expanding on the work of other writers, including several stories that follow from William Hope Hodgson's “The Night Land,” a sequel to A. E. van Vogt's The World of Null-A, and most recently a story called “Guyal the Curator” that is slated to appear in an anthology in tribute to Jack Vance's “Dying Earth.”
Mr. Wright's first F&SF story is a fantasy we think you'll find to be most memorable. Enjoy.

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

—I Corinth. 13.11

"I should be happy,” Thomas S. Robertson muttered to himself, fumbling for the latchkey to his Brighton flat. Perhaps he had had a pint too many at the local pub; perhaps he had too desperately tried to celebrate.

His key ring fell from an unsteady glove, bounced on the stair near his shoe, and spun away into the dried rosebushes the concierge had planted between the concrete strip of the sidewalk and the street.

Thomas Robertson sighed, and his breath was white with cold. Was it worth searching for his keys, in the dark, in the October fog, at this hour of night? Perhaps he should shout and wake the concierge. The concierge might be put out, but Thomas was soon to leave this comfortable old building anyway, and move into the stark glass boxlike high-rise in the midst of the most modern part of London. The company had arranged to move his things; the modern apartment was provided as part of his promotion.

Many of the officers of the company, ambitious men younger than he was, had slapped him on the back or shaken his hand with envy at the party this evening.

It was that envy that had finally driven him out into the foggy night, to find the old stone-and-wood public house where Irish dockworkers sometimes swapped tall tales of mermaids and of little people, of selkie and of banshee and of stern, pale kings from the fairy world.

Those tales he knew and loved; he had more reason to believe them than most people, although it was easy to forget that, now that he was grown.

Those tales were one more thing to lose, when he moved away to London.

He doffed his gloves, bent down to feel through the thorns for his key, and grunted as he bent; bending was not so easy anymore, now that he was on the wrong side of forty and losing his hair. Middle aged, if he lived to be eighty. (But last year Bridesmith from Accounts had passed away at sixty-two. Heart trouble. Middle aged for him had been thirty-one.)

A thorn scratched his ungloved hand; he pulled it back. Now he sat in the dry leaves heaped by the roadside, drained and defeated, sucking mournfully on his pricked finger. It did not even seem worth the effort to shout and wake the concierge to let him in, for if he went in-of-doors, and slept, the morning would come all the sooner.

Light came from a wrought-iron lamppost not far away. The street was empty, and here and there a lonesome tree lifted its bare and crooked twigs to the cold sky. To one side was an old Anglican Church, built nine hundred years ago, with a statue of St. George standing atop a pillar in the midst of the churchyard gardens, overlooking the street, as if standing sentry over the road.

The other way along the street loomed new construction. Squat black warehouses dominated in the nearer ground; beyond them rose faceless glass monstrosities, including Thomas's office building. He always walked that way in the morning, turning his back on the church, and leaving St. George behind him. But then St. George was always there in the evening, when he turned about again to come home.

Thomas felt a solemn, silly mood, like the seriousness of a child. He closed his eyes. “St. George,” he said in a soft voice, “Help me find the key I have lost. I want to open the door to my home."

Without opening his eyes, he plunged his hand into the rosebush. Thomas's hand closed on something warm and furry, which yowled and turned and clawed him. When he yanked his hand back, the animal was riding his arm on white-hot needles of pain.

With a startled yell, Thomas shook off the yellow-eyed thing clinging to his arm. It was a black cat. The cat spun neatly in the air and landed on its feet in Thomas's lap.

On a slim silver chain around its neck, the cat wore a silver key, intricately inscribed. The teeth of the key were large and square; the hilt was crowned with a circle inscribed about a cross, divided into equal fours.

The cat was as black as moonless midnight, with no spot of white in its fur. Its eyes were sardonic; they were yellow as gold, and the pupils were opened up wide.

Thomas was swept with a blinding joy. “Tybalt!” he cried, “It's you! You've come back! Oh, you've come back! It's been so long...."

He stood up, trying to seize and hug the black cat. The cat twisted out of his grasp, spun and landed on its feet. The chain fell off over the cat's sleek head; the key fell with a chime to the stone of the stairs, and lay, shimmering silver-white in the light from the lamppost.

"Have you forgotten how to talk?” asked Thomas. “Are you under an enchantment?"

Suddenly, he felt foolish. Perhaps he was drunk. The cat could be any black cat.

Thomas Robertson stared down at the cat. “If you're really Tybalt, the Prince of Cats, son of Carbonel, please say something,” he whispered. “Say anything. Please."

The cat began to wash his paws fastidiously.

Thomas said, “Don't make me feel ridiculous. I remember you from when I was a schoolboy. There was the well behind the ruined wing of Professor Penkirk's mansion. Bombed during the war, and overgrown with moss, the black windows and spooky walls surrounded the well on three sides, and a broken angel was there. We knew it was a haunted well, we were sure. Penny and Richard and Sally and I, all of us were playing there, when we found the key. It was the well of the nine worlds, and the key opened the gateway...."

Thomas stooped and picked up the silver key. “I believe,” he said. “I remember everything. Richard came back with the sword; Sally had the shard of the shattered magic glass; Penny, God rest her soul, brought back Myrrdin's book. I had this key. I lost it years ago, but here it is again. I know it. I know you. I am not mad."

Thomas looked overhead till he found the North Star, which was shining brightly above the clouds and fogs. For a moment, he frowned as if searching his mind for something long forgotten, something precious and lost. Then he smiled. He pointed the key at the North Star, and turned it clockwise. “Power of heaven, unchained by me, come into the carven key."

He pointed the silver key at the cat. “Unlock, unbind, release, set free; so says he who bears the key.” He twisted it clockwise.

The black cat spoke in a voice as soft and clear as rippling water. “I am come to summon you to tourney, Tommy, to face a knight of ghosts and shadows. No weapon of mankind can cut him; and once he is called to come, no door nor gate can keep him out. Only one who knows his secret name can hope to vanquish him. He is the champion of the Lord of Final Winter, who also is called the Shadow King. He has been summoned to your world, now, and all of England is at hazard.” The black cat looked up at him with eyes as yellow and mysterious as moonlight. “The call is given. Listen: you can hear the trumpet of the Wild Huntsman. Will you go?"

"Now? Right now? In the middle of the night? Without packing a bag?"

"To fly upon the air, little Tommy, we needs must travel light. If you do not already carry all you need, nothing you can put into a bag will help you now. Can you not hear the trumpets of the wild hunt?"

Thomas cocked his head. “I hear nothing but the cry of night birds in the air,” he sadly said.

"Your belief is weak. Those who refuse to understand cannot hear, even when the Call rings out as loud as church bells. Come away; the lords of faerie summon you. The Enemy will conquer all, if none stand to oppose his might."

"I can't just up and leave. I have work; I have rent to pay. But, see here, you've picked a good time. In a week or so I'll be ready to move; the company might give me some days off, and then I can schedule in some time to go fight the knight of shadows, and...."

Thomas straightened, blinking. Schedule in some time to fight the knight of shadows?

"Tybalt,” he said slowly. “I'm not a child anymore. It's been thirty years since we went to Vidblain, and broke the Black Mirror of the Winter King, and restored Prince Hal to his throne at Caer Pendewen. You can't order me around like a schoolboy. I'll help you, yes, certainly. But this time, I must know why we're doing what we're doing, where we're going, and by what plan. I can't just go shooting off into the blue. I have a life of my own. I have a future to think about. If I just disappear in the middle of the night, I'll be sacked, and have no future, no job, no place to stay."

The black cat turned and slipped off down the stairs. Then the cat was in the street, and beginning to slink away, a black shadow in the night. Thomas jumped down the stairs after him, crying, “Wait! Don't leave me! I'll come! I'll come!"

Pausing for nothing, Thomas ran joyfully down the street after the elusive black cat, his back to the high-rises, his face toward St. George.

It was midnight, and the church bell solemnly and slowly began to ring, filling the starlit world with echoes.

It was November, and the days were dark.

"Thomas! How d'you, old man. Great to see you after all these years. Ah ... just great. I can spare you a few moments. It's a busy world, you know. Quite busy. Sit down."

Richard Sommerville's office was square and large, carpeted in red, walls hung with ugly modern paintings in rich frames: mere colored blobs and jagged scrawls, without meaning or skill of execution. Bookshelves filled two walls, crowded with expensive books of the type one never reads, but leaves about to impress one's guests. The windows were narrow and small, like archer's slits, and through them could be seen the snow on the road outside, churned black by automobile traffic.

Richard's face was large and square as well. Age had thinned his hair and left baggy rings around his narrowed eyes. His face had a tight, cautious look. He greeted Thomas with hearty words, but he smiled only with his lips, never with his eyes.

"You've been out tramping in the country, haven't you, old man? I can tell by your gear. Not many people come into my office with knapsacks and hiking sticks, wearing stained anoraks. Or dripping snow on my things. No, not many at all. Not at all. But we always have time for old friends, don't we? Don't we? What can I do for you, Thomas?” Richard said, looking at his wristwatch.

Thomas was wreathed in smiles, his face eager as a child on Christmas morning. “Look.” He upended his backpack, and dumped a small black cat onto Richard's desk, amid the neat stacks of paper, the pen set, the ticking desk clock, the telephone. The cat batted documents off the blotter, and stepped disdainfully on some others.

Richard almost rose from his seat. “What! See here, Thomas, what do you mean throwing your smelly pet all over my desk? Are you loopy?” He sounded sincerely angered and shocked.

Thomas smiled, and leaned forward. “It's Tybalt!"

"Who?"

Thomas's smile slowly vanished. The light in Thomas's eyes began to die. “Why ... why ... It's Tybalt. You must remember. That summer we found the well of the nine worlds. When I held up the key, and Penny said the rhyme she'd found in the old book of Professor Penkirk's. One brave soul to hold the key, remember the rhyme? The rainbow came in the mist above the well, and we followed it to Vidblain, and we saw the ships of Lemmergeir sailing in the tide below the Tall White Tower of Noss. We saw the swan ships sailing from the Western Sea, from the Summer Country. You remember, Richard, you must. It was you who found the shining Sword trapped in the roots of the Cursed Black Oak in the middle of Gloomshadow Forest, where none of the Fair Folk could go. The badger's family helped you. None of the servants of the Winter King could draw it; it burned their hands. That's how we found out that old woman was an ice maiden in disguise. It was all just as the rhyme in Professor Penkirk's book foretold."

"Good old Professor Penkirk. Haven't thought on him in years. Queer old bird, I must say. I'm not so sure I'd get along with him so well nowadays, though. Filling all our heads with notions and rubbish. Well. We were children then, I suppose. No great harm done. I suppose kooky old Penkirk's dead by now. Nice seeing you again, though, Thomas, I must say. Now, if you could get this silly cat off my papers, I do have a frightfully important meeting at two. That's what happens when you barge in without an appointment, you know. We can't all just do as we like...."

"But this is Tybalt, son of Carbonel...."

"That old scrawny black cat we played with as kids? It's been dead for years, I'm sure. Cats don't live so long as that, you know...."

"Richard! Listen! He's come to call us back,” Thomas said in a low, quiet voice. “Tybalt, I mean. He carries a message from the Emperor of the Uttermost West, the King of the Summer Land. We helped them before. Don't you remember at all? The Black Mirror of the Winter King had trapped the light from the sword. Susan shattered it with the note from the harp of Finn Finbarra, and we freed the nightingale, and followed her song to the Forever Tree, which was still green and whole under the ice. The fire from the sword melted the ice; we found the Garland Crown of good prince Hal hanging on the highest branch, just where Tybalt had said. This is Tybalt. Tybalt: say something!"

Richard stirred uneasily in his chair. He said in a tight voice; “Look here, Thomas. Those fairytale daydreams we all had were all very right and nice as children. But we're grown now. Those were just games we played. Those ideals, you know, good triumphant over evil. Just silly children's games. None of it could be real. If that was real, none of this would be real,” he said, gesturing abruptly toward the walls of his office, the window, the honking traffic crowding the street below. “Nothing we did as adults would mean anything. We all have to make compromises. No one can blame us. But all that was just play...."

Thomas leaned forward across the desk and grabbed Richard's hand. “You know it was real. Why are you pretending it wasn't?"

"I wish I could believe...,” Richard whispered.

"We don't have to be trapped,” Thomas said, letting go of the hand and leaning back slightly. “We don't have to live this way."

Richard was silent, eyes cast down.

Thomas spoke with quiet urgency: “Tybalt told me the Winter King's men have entered this world. They have Atlendor's tarn-cape, and mortal eyes cannot see them. Tybalt brought me to the Wellspring of Wisdom in a cavern below the roots of an ash tree, where a hundred knights in armor of gold were sleeping on stone biers. He made me bathe my eyes in the spring; it burned and stung, and for a day, I thought I was blind. But when my blindness passed, I could see the fairy creatures."

Thomas continued, “There was one, oh God! There was one of them right there in the town at Alderley Edge; a schoolteacher. She was actually one of the willow women, the daughters of the Winter King. The women are all fair and beautiful to see from the front, but are hollow and rotten from behind, like masks; they can only be discovered by someone who looks at them from every angle. I crouched outside the window and looked into the classroom; one of the willow women was the teacher there. The parents had sent their children off to school, all trusting the teachers and not suspecting a thing. The willow woman drew the sigils and Runes of Ice upon the blackboard, and made the children chant the Worm Song to ensorcell them. She had chains made out of gossamer and was telling the children to bind themselves, so the children could not speak or think except at her command. No one but I could see the chains. I asked Tybalt how to cut them; he said they were woven out of women's beards and mountain roots and fish's breath."

"There's no such thing,” said Richard, a strange look on his face.

"Exactly. That's why they couldn't be broken. You can't cut something that doesn't exist, can you? That's why we need the sword once more. The light from the sword can shatter the spell; no one can remove those chains except the children themselves; and they can't remove them till they can see them, and they can't see them without the light. Where is the Sword Reforged now, Richard? It was one of the things we took out of Vidblain. I remember you had it hidden under the boards in your grandmother's attic up until when you went away to boarding school. Where is it now?"

"I gave it to the local museum in Easterwick, the town where Penny used to live. Don't look at me that way! It was just an old rusted sword we once played with. All that rubbish about ‘no ignoble hand could draw it’ was just childhood silliness."

"When did you sell it?” Thomas voice was cold and severe.

"How dare you talk to me in that tone! I've half a mind to call security and have you tossed out on your ear. You've no right to judge me. No right at all. You're quite mad, you know."

"It was after you came home from when you were expelled from boarding school, wasn't it, Richard? I was away at school myself then, and you never did tell me why they kicked you out. I heard some very ugly rumors, Richard, about a girl you got in trouble...."

Richard made as if to slap him. Thomas, however, had spent six weeks on the road, or in the woods, and his body had grown more hardy and strong than most inactive men of his age. He caught Richard's hand easily, and pinned it against the desk, so that Richard was drawn forward at an awkward angle.

With his left hand, Richard grabbed Thomas's wrist, and tried to pry his grip away. There was no sound save for the hissing of their breath as the two strained silently, almost without motion.

With his other hand, Thomas brought a squeeze tube out from his breast pocket. He flicked the cap free with his thumb. The desk shivered as Richard tugged, trying to escape, but Thomas held him pinned. The tube had a narrow mouth like an eyedropper. Thomas leaned back his head and squeezed a drop of fluid, one into each eye, never letting go of Richard's right hand. Thomas shivered and blinked.

When Thomas leaned his head forward, Richard shuddered and made a hoarse noise. Thomas's pupils had dilated dramatically; the black part of his eye seemed enormous, all-seeing.

With his thumbs he forced open Richard's clenched fist. “The sword of light has burned you here. Your palm is crossed with scars."

"There's nothing wrong with my hand! Let me go!"

"You sold the sword when you found it would not allow your hand to touch it. You must wish you could banish your memory as easily."

He released Richard's hand, and rubbed his hand on his pants, as if to wipe away a stain. “I should be more surprised, if I had not seen a sight more terrible than the one I told to you. The willow maidens have been here for many years. When I walked the streets of London, I saw many people who had locked themselves in the gossamer chains. I don't know who is more pathetic; them, or you.” Thomas meticulously picked up his little tube and replaced the tiny cap.

"Get out,” Richard croaked. “Wait! Take me with you...."

"Come along then.” Thomas stood and extended his hands. The black cat sprang into his arms, and then swarmed lithely up to Thomas's shoulder. Tybalt crouched sphinxlike and regarded Richard with unblinking eyes as cold as hammered gold.

Richard just quivered and blinked. “Get out. You're crazy. I'm a man of prominence in business. A success. Go chase your children's fantasies. They'll put you in a nuthouse. A nuthouse."

"Good-bye, Richard. And I am truly sorry."

Thomas searched long for Sarah Truell. She had married a serviceman named Delacourt, changing her last name, and the Royal Navy had moved them from one post to another. New Year had come and gone, and February was approaching, before he found her.

She lived in a little row house outside the Navy yards in Dover, with the tiniest strip of garden before the front door. Her house was the only one sanded and painted, bright and cheerful, along the whole row: her house alone had Christmas lights. She had put a white birdbath, surrounded by neat flowerbeds, filled now with snow, in the center of her tiny lawn. Her neighbors had rubbish poking through the white hillocks of their yards, and an abandoned hulk of an auto was rusting, coated with icicles, in the street nearby.

Inside it was breathlessly hot. Her rooms were thronged with bookshelves and hung with many potted plants. Every table had some fragile vase or piece of bric-a-brac, small delicate statues or intricately carven music boxes, of which she had a collection. The place was crowded, as if being squeezed together by converging walls, but prim and neatly kept.

Thomas was surprised to see how old Sarah seemed, how cautious and slow her movements were. She was not yet forty, younger than Thomas, yet her hair had gone all gray, and she wore it in a bun knotted neatly on her head. She listened carefully to the story Thomas told, but was distracted several times by watching Tybalt climb among the bookshelves, afraid he would knock down a crystal piece or tiny lamp.

"What? Go out on an adventure? Like when we were children? By star, by stone, by shining spear, I call upon the gathered hosts of light. ... Like that? It would be charming. Those days were so sweet. But I cannot help you. Who knows what might happen if I did?"

"Richard pretended not to remember anything. He said it was a game. How can you stand idle, knowing what our dread foe is? Have you forgotten?"

"Oh, I remember everything,” she said wistfully. “I still at times recall the perfume of the flowers when they bloomed, after the Winter King and all his troops were beaten in the Battle of Glad Valley.

"The snow all vanished in a torrent of clear water, streaming down the hillsides, cleaning all the vile things left by the white wolves and trolls away, and where the knights of the Summer Land strode singing, flowers sprang up and barren trees burst suddenly to green, like a thousand springtimes rolled up in one. The floods washed all the bad things into the sea, but any house which had hung a wreath or pine branch on its door was safe, and not even their eaves were damp."

She continued: “I remember the feast on the fields of Caer Linden, and the tree women came out of the forests to dance, and the faerie folk danced in the air overhead, held up by the joy of their singing alone. The tables were laid with white linens, and groaned under the baskets of fruits and fair foods which all the country people brought to give thanks for the return of their Prince. The coronation was all splendor; Prince Hal was crowned with the Garland Crown, and all the flowers bloomed. The elf king, Finbarra, he danced with me, did I tell you? and drew me up high in the air, and the crystal floor of heaven rang underfoot, and I heard the stars singing their hymns in the night."

Sarah's eyes had filled with tears at the memory. She said, “Excuse me,” and took a pressed hankie out of her skirt pocket, and daubed at her eyes. “We never should have come back to this world. It's so dirty. And there's nothing you can do about any of it. Everything is so ... complicated. Over there, next to the seashell is a harp I bought in Wales. Don't touch it! It's very fragile. I have it to remind me of the harp of Finbarra, which I carried on our quest to the Hall of Silence, in Icelock. Do you remember how sweetly the nightingale sang, when we let her go free from her cage? And I remember how Tybalt tried to eat her at first. Poof! You nasty thing!” Now she laughed and waved her hankie at Tybalt.

Tybalt looked at her disdainfully, and began to lick the fur of his shoulder and wash.

"But I'm worried,” she whispered, eyes wide. “The police were here, asking after you. Richard phoned too, and he was angry, frantic. What have you done?"

Thomas was seated uncomfortably on a chair slightly too small for him. His arms had become muscled with the exertions of his adventures and escapes over the last two months; his face was darkened by weather and wind. He now wore a beard. He was afraid to move his arms, for fear of knocking over the bottles or blown glass objets d'art on the little tables to either side of him.

"We have been called to battle, once again, against our ancient foe,” Thomas said, “And to walk beneath the banners of the Sons of Light. The Champion of the Dark is here, in England, and he covets all this world for his prize. I dare not face him till his secret name is known to me. No strength of hand can overcome him; his name is written in elf-light ink in Penny's old book. I have not found Penny's heirs as yet, and what is written in elf-writing cannot be read except by the light of the Sword Reforged. I have found the little country museum where the sword is kept, but the agents of the Shadow were there before me.

"They cannot touch the sword, and dared not move it. But the museum-keeper's soul has been consumed by the vampires, and a vampire has entered his flesh, and inhabits him, usurping his form and name, and spun charms around the museum.

"I attempted to enter, but the enchantments snared me on the threshold; I was dazzled and fell frothing. A man who found me took me to a hospital.

"The doctors diagnosed me as epileptic, and their medicines cured me. But some of the police are agents of the enemy, and they found my name out while I was there. I escaped by climbing down from the window; Tybalt had taught me a charm to allow me to land on my feet without hurt, no matter how high the fall.

"For several days I fled and hid. Finally I was betrayed to the police. But I was not to have a trial. The enemy transported me in an aeroplane to take me to the East, where their powers are stronger, and where they have countries whose evil rulers worship the Darkness almost openly.

"Their Champion came in to where I was chained in the hold of the aeroplane, to gloat at and to mock at me. He occupied the body of Lord Wodenhouse, the minister of the Admiralty, and wore his uniform. But there was nothing inside his body, and he had no light in his eyes.

"He boasted to torment me, telling me how my defense of England had already failed. He told me of secret meetings of the Admiralty counsel at midnight at the ruins of an ancient pre-Roman temple, and named the horrible oaths taken to apparitions in the tombs.

"In a cold, regal voice, he told about members of Parliament, those who could not be made to swear, or who made some attempt to tell of what they had seen in the tombs. He told how his night hags and wraith maidens would cling to the walls outside their windows, and sing to the sleeping men in voices only they could hear. Sometimes wives found their husband's stiff and empty bodies in their bed the next morning. But, before any great stir could be made, the enchanted men were taken and replaced, one by one, by some stranger who looked and spoke and acted like just as they had done.

"Lord Wodenhouse said his greatest support in the halls of power were from those Lords and ministers who formerly had opposed his rise to power. These men were never seen to eat or drink in public, rarely laughed, and never smiled when they did laugh.

"'They take their sustenance from other things,’ he told me then, ‘Things men never had denied unto my kind; praise and smiles and flattery are sufficient to sustain us. But our hunger, human, our hunger never dies.’ And he promised me I should perish, after torture, on the altar he had erected to his Master.

"But I used the silver key to unlock the chains which kept me in the aeroplane's hold. There were none of the enemy around me; the Knight of Shadows feared for his men to learn his nature. The body he inhabited was weak; easily I took him by the throat. But he was unafraid, croaking I had no weapon which could harm him, for, if his body were destroyed, he would flee into other flesh.

"I squeezed his throat until he coughed and dared him to flee the flesh he wore. The Knight of Shadows spat at and reviled me, but would not answer. By this, I knew he needed the face and form, the fame and power, of Lord Wodenhouse to do his evil work in England.

"The marines came into the cabin then, weapons ready, wearing the mark of the Evil Eye on their brows. But I flung myself from the door of the plane, and the suction whirled the enemy, screaming, out into the night sky with me. And I trusted to Tybalt's spell, fell, and did not die. A group of Normandy farmers saw me plunge from the sky and land on my feet, unharmed, in the middle of an open field. And they seemed to understand my plight, almost as if they knew I served the Elf King; they hid me from the police, and on Christmas Eve they feasted with me.

"With their help, I was smuggled back into England. I have only now come from Dover docks."

Sarah listened, wide-eyed. “It is too terrible. They can't be here. It can't happen here."

He said, “It has grown worse even in the short time I was away in France; or perhaps they gather in cities, far away from open fields. I have the second sight; many of the men on the docks—the shore patrol, the police, the Navy men—I saw the Unseen Mark upon their foreheads, or in their palms. They have been branded with the Sign of the Evil Eye. They have sworn fealty to the Enemy; I fear Her Majesty's government is corrupt, spell-caught, and overcome. All men and women of good will must join together to fight this foe; each of us must do our utmost."

"I cannot help you,” Sarah said quietly. She had a look of fear and horror in her eyes.

"You must. Listen; I will tell you what we face."

"Don't tell me."

"In the sewers under London I saw the filthy pool filled with vampires. They were lying, weak and helpless in the mire, chanting spells. Their crooked limbs were thin as reeds; their bellies were swollen and famished. Their songs called up to the streets above and drew a line of people down the dripping stairs."

Sarah twisted uncomfortably in her chair. She shook her head, but did not speak. Thomas, watching her without remorse, continued his narrative:

"Tybalt made me put wax in my ears: their songs were too piteous and beautiful for men to withstand, he said. I saw it all, I tell you! Men, women, and children were filing up to the edge of the mire, and cutting their own wrists with knives or razors or with their own teeth. The vampires lay below with upturned mouths, pushing and squeezing to suck up the blood. It was ghastly! But worst of all, whenever a vampire tried to climb out of the muck, and join the humans on the sewer stairs, tried to become a human being again, the other vampires would pull him back down and bite him again, to make sure he remained a vampire.

"Tybalt told me we needed the shard of the Mirror to defeat them before they get too strong, and rise up. They are agents of the Winter King; they cannot live in fertile or green land; they cannot stand to see their own reflections; they lose all their power once they see themselves for what they are."

"Is that all you want? The shard? Of course I still have it!” She got up and went over to a carven cabinet, from which she took a little box of cedar wood. She brought it back and held it for a moment in her lap. “I had it for a keepsake. But if you must have it...."

She unlocked and opened the cedar box. Inside was a fold of white silk; she carefully unwrapped a triangular shard of black glass. It shone and glimmered like polished black marble, a beautiful thing to behold.

"Take it and go!” she said, extending it toward him.

"Why are you afraid to come? What has made you so full of fear?"

She did not answer, but seemed to shrink in on herself, huddling.

"Is your husband one of them?"

"I don't know. I don't want to know.” She shivered. She tried to smile, but the effort was pathetic. “The good things in life, they are so weak, so fragile. Elves, the tree maidens, the little birds. What can they do to stop the onslaught of Winter?"

"Have you forgotten? The flowers drive back the winter every spring."

"But men,” she said, “Evil people are not hobbled by sentiment; noble thoughts don't stop them."

"Is that all ideals mean to you? A hobble? Ideals are the source of all strength. Men cannot live without them any more than they can live without air, or bread. Even twisted men must have ideals, if only twisted ones. No, I will tell you what truly hobbled me: when I tried for so long to live without my childhood ideals. It nearly killed me. Now I walk in the path of Light. My footsteps are sure. I know no doubt. Join me in the light. Step out from the shadow.” He stood up slowly, and extended his hand toward her. The hand was tanned; the muscles and veins along the back of his hand stood out sharply.

Sally shivered and shook her head. “All noble things must fail someday. You know that.” She sniffed and shook her head again.

"Our foes have no strength at all, save what they steal from mortal men. They are shadows without substance, hollow women, vampires without blood. Without your fear to feed them, they have no strength at all."

Sarah said nothing. There was nothing to say.

She did not reach for his hand, but looked at it the way a drowning woman might look at the hand from a lifeboat, too far away to reach, and receding.

On the street outside, Thomas tucked the shard of mirror carefully into a fold of silk and kept it in a metal cigarette case. Tybalt, purring, rubbed up against his leg.

Thomas looked down, and asked, “Do you suppose her husband might have the sign of the Evil Eye stamped on his brow?"

The cat looked up. “I know only that she has the sign of the coward branded on hers,” the soft voice purred.

The churchyard of Easterwick was near the library, facing it across the town common green. The March sky was the hue of mother-of-pearl, striped white and blue with bands of cloud and clear sky, and the smothered sun shone wan. The last of the frosts were failing. New shoots could be seen through the gray winter grass, and green buds shyly showed on the naked branches of the trees. Thomas walked out from the post office, past the town hall, and over into the graveyard behind the little church. Under his arm was an oblong package, wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string.

He stood looking down at a gravestone. The stone was cut with an image of a ship in full sail under a stormy sea, with a many-rayed star before its prow. The prow was shaped like a swan, with its graceful head raised toward the star.

The inscription read.

PENELOPE ANGANIM OAKWREN 1940-1987
One brave soul to hold the key
To find the charm and learn it
One bright sword to smite the Dark
One bright flame to burn it.

One note of harp to free the fire
No dark cold glass could hide him
One white ship to sail them far
And one bright star to guide them.

Tybalt was stalking through the tall grass among the gravestones. Occasionally a white moth or startled beetle would dart up, and Tybalt would hop up straight into the air, batting at the fluttering insect with his paws.

Thomas opened the package. Inside was a leather-bound volume with brass hasp and lock and hinges, embossed with the image of a sword embedded in the roots of an oak tree.

Also in the package was a letter from Penelope's nephew explaining how she had left a provision in her will that this book be given to any of her three childhood friends: himself, or Sarah Truell, or Richard Sommerville, whoever should first ask for it.

Slowly, Thomas walked over to a marble bench, which stood on little legs shaped like sphinxes. It sat at the edge of the churchyard, facing the library. A small sign hanging below the main library sign read: Easterwick Historical Museum. Downstairs basement. Elsworth Wimble, curator.

Thomas sat, and held the book on his lap, as if waiting.

The sun broke free, and the day brightened. At this,Thomas pointed the silver key at the sun, then at the padlock holding the book shut. “Tome of light, thee now I task; no truth is hid from those who ask. Unlock, release, unbind, set free; knowledge is open to he who holds the key."

The book's lock popped open with a click.

Thomas undid the hasp, opened the massive book. The pages were all blank.

Now he tilted the book so the sunlight was falling directly on the first page. The ink faded into view, huge curlicued calligraphy, intertwined with pictures and diagrams, all knotted around the margins and woven in and out of the capital letters.

Most of the pages were sea maps and star charts, of coastline and islands. Some of the coastlines were the lands of Earth; others were of worlds mystical and far, coasts unknown to mortal sailors, except, perhaps, in dreams.

There were diagrams showing the secret routes between worlds, and the star configurations showing when the gateways would open. There were illustrated diagrams of interlocking star spheres, pointing out the whirlpools and monsters lurking along the celestial rivers and Milky Way streams between the stars, with notes on the tides and enchantments showing how to escape those dangers.

This was the book Myrrdin had given to Penny to guide them safely back home. The well at Noss had been destroyed by the malice of the wolf-prince Monagarm, the lieutenant of the Fell Winter King, and the children had had no other way home. Myrrdin had given up all the secrets locked here inside, by giving them the book.

Thomas remembered how Penny had cried, clinging to the graceful neck of the ship's swan-shaped prow. The ship had driven through the final storm surrounding the Earth, but had been broken on the rocks. With tattered sails, sinking, the white ship bravely carried them through, and appeared in the fog in the deep mountain lake just ten miles north of their homes. Even so, they barely made it to the rocks of the shore, for the night was stormy and wild. They clambered ashore, lucky to have escaped with their lives, except Penny clung to the broken prow, crying, and would not let go, even though the ship was sinking.

She would have been pulled in had not Richard and Thomas grabbed her away. The white ship sank out of sight in the water, swan prow pointed up toward the sky. Years later, Penny's husband had funded an archeological expedition to drag the bottom of the lake. They found many treasures the ancient peoples of Britain had thrown in the water, as gifts to the spirits and elves, including many coins, and fine gems. Perhaps these old people knew that this lake at times touched the other worlds, unseen. There were gold torcs and bracelets, and even a chariot inlaid with brass, driven by stallions into the water, a gift for the gods. But of the white ship there was no sign.

Thomas found writing in the margins, done in Penny's careful hand, trailing through and around the dragons and griffins, sailing ships and sceptered kings, and the star-maidens dancing in the marginalia. The message stretched across numerous pages.

The note read:

Tommy, I read the chapters in the book which deal with things yet to be, and I saw the pictures hidden in the letters which show you as an older man sitting in a churchyard, reading this. I will be in heaven by the time you read this, looking down. Never doubt that what you do is right.

"I'm not that old,” muttered Tommy, rubbing one hand across his balding head. The message continued:

This book is written in elf-light inks, and the different letters will show at different times. The pages you can read in sunlight will tell you facts and historic lore; the spells appear by moonlight; the omens show only on cloudy days; the stories are for candlelight. The deeper secrets are harder to read. Some appear only by the light of the morning star, and are invisible at midnight, or by the light of Orion, and cannot be read during the summer. The love poems show only by the firelight of burning rose-petals, but most of them are sad.

The name you will need is on page sixty-six, and the light of the sword will show it. No one who cannot draw the blade will know it. Many times I almost forgot what we four did in Vidblain, since it was so like a dream, and so little like life. I hope you remember Vidblain, Key-bearer, even if the Harpist is frightened and the Sword-bearer is fallen.

I was sent to guide us all across the sea to the west, in the one white ship that Winterking did not find and burn. The white swan of the prow would speak only to me, which made Richard jealous, I know. But I told you everything it revealed, to allow me to navigate the white ship. Every secret I told but this one:

I was told the path across the sea to the Summer Country. There Winter is unknown, and death never comes, and loss and sorrow have never found those bright shores. Everyone knows that path: it is taught them before birth. Be brave and just and noble, and the path will come clear to you.

The book says the Children of Light who abide in Heaven live in those palaces, not for all time, but only for their feast times, their solemnities and celebrations, or when they have been wounded with sorrow in their long war against the Dark. Even they need a time of rest and of joy. But paradise is meant to replenish the soul, not to quench it. And after their repose, the angels of war stream out again from heaven, called to many battles on many worlds, and inside the souls of so many men.

Since the time of your childhood you have rested; perhaps you have partly forgotten. But the horn-call sounds again, and the battle again is renewed. Do not blame yourself that you rested, or forgot. Do not blame Richard or Sally. They must rest longer than you, perhaps not till lifetimes have passed will they once more recall.

The greatest battles are always fought with no one beside us. But no one who walks in the light is alone.

Thomas closed the book slowly. “Thank you, Penny,” he said.

A moment before, while Thomas was reading, Tybalt had hopped gracefully up onto the bench beside Thomas, and crawled into his lap. Tybalt had sniffed the book with his pink nose and tried to step on the pages, and, in general, got in the way so Thomas could not read. Without ado, Thomas shoved the cat aside, dropping him to the grass.

Tybalt did not deign to notice this rough behavior, but stepped back and forth in a circle, whiskers twitching, nose in the air. When Thomas was done reading, Tybalt asked, “Have you learned good rede from the Navigator's book?"

"Penny always guided us well,” Thomas said.

"What troubles you, Key-bearer?"

"You have counseled me, and I agreed, to break into the museum and to steal the Sword Reforged, thinking any theft or ill done by me was excused by my great need. But that is the tyrants’ plea, the excuse used ever by our enemy. Must I become like the enemy to battle him?"

Tybalt licked himself carefully, washing his paws, his ears, tilting his head far around to lick his shoulders and back. Finally he said, “It is no theft to claim what is one's own."

"Then the sword is mine?"

"It belongs to any man who claims it, and to everyone and all, for the light from the sword is abundant, and denies itself to none. But each who would take the sword must shatter it, see of what it is made, and grow wise. One who comes after shall forge it anew."

"I don't understand."

The black cat yawned, whiskers twitching. “Have you no teachers on this world? It is not for me to explain."

"We should simply try to buy the sword."

"It is not theirs to sell. Listen: the Knight of Shadows knows too well he cannot hide the sword, not anywhere in the world. Its light is so piercing that even if he cast it to the bottom of the sea, or piled mountains over it, those men who can see that light would one day follow and discover it. No, he cannot hide it, but should he keep it locked in a museum, under glass, for men to come and look at, but not touch; he knows men will soon forget the sword was meant to be used, not admired. The men would tell themselves the sword is no more than a bright relic fit only for the days long past. A childhood dream."

They sat on the bench in silence as the sun slowly set. Storekeepers along the main street of Easterwick came out of their little shops, locking them, drawing down the awnings, greeting their neighbors with nods or waves. Soon the streets were empty. As dusk deepened, the wrought-iron streetlamps all lit up, casting little pools of yellow light around their feet.

In the distance, the hour chimed.

Thomas saw the librarian and the stooped figure of the museum curator come out of the main library doors together. They seemed to stand a moment, as if exchanging pleasant words before locking the library doors for the night. The librarian walked away to the left, toward the town hall. The museum curator stood a moment peering around in the gloom, hunched near the door, made vague pawing gestures in the air, and stooped to claw at the ground before the door. Thomas had the odd impression he was snuffling or sniffing, like an animal casting for a scent.

Tybalt said softly, “He sniffs for the stench of the wards he has summoned. The dark magic, when it comes, brings a stink."

"He is looking at us."

"Be still. He will not recognize you. You forget how blind the creatures of the enemy are made by their masters, to prevent those servants from knowing what they serve."

The curator had straightened, and turned. Thomas, from across the green, clearly saw the Sign of the Eye branded into the curator's withered brow. The man's eyes seemed filmy and pale, like the eyes of a sick man, or a drunk.

As still as a stone, Thomas sat on the bench, in plain sight of his foe, and silently he prayed.

Then the curator turned and slunk away.

Thomas released a long pent sigh, stood, and walked to the center of the green. Looking left and right, he saw no one was about. He examined the sky for a moment, then pointed his silver key at the North Star, and softly said his charm.

He came near the darkened library, strode up the steps. The lightest touch of the silver key on the doorknob made the door, hinges whining, slowly open of its own accord. But Thomas did not dare step over the threshold, not yet.

Now he took the shard of black mirror from the cigarette case. Holding it carefully, he examined the reflection of the library door.

The magic of the vampires was visible in the little mirror. Thomas could see little strands of spider silk stretched back and forth across the door in a web.

"Tybalt! Do we need the sword to cut this web? I could not pass it before; it tried to consume all my thoughts."

The cat crouched, sleek muscles tensed, whiskers still. His black tail lashed slowly back and forth. “The gossamer chains of the willow women are made of false things, a tissue woven of lies. Only the light of the sword can reveal them. But this, this is a weaker enchantment, a thing spun by vampires when they wear spider's flesh, and expect food to fly up of its own power and feed them. It is made of their substance, which is hatred and envy, and, like them, cannot bear to see itself truly."

With the sharp tip of the mirror, Thomas cut the strands away. The webs sagged to one side with a soft noise, like a faint, grotesque, self-pitying whine.

Then they were within. Moonlight fell through narrow windows across stacks of tall bookshelves, crowded and cramped. Thomas pulled the main door shut behind him, and cautiously walked among the high shelves, the little black cat slinking at his feet. A moment later they found the narrow stairs leading down toward the basement. At the bottom was a door with a sign reading Museum.

The door opened upon the touch of the silver key.

Inside were stone walls, with short, rectangular windows at the top, near the low roof. Upon these walls were hung a mixture of litter and of sincere archaeological artifacts. Next to a group of carven love-spoons, for example, which might have been made fifty or seventy years ago, were brass shield bosses dating back to before the bronze age. Yet also, someone had hung up displays of trashy pie tins and unexploded shells from World War II, as if these things had equal claim to display with a tapestry from the renaissance hanging next to it.

In the middle were two display cases, separated by a suit of Maximilian armor. In one case was a collection of chrome hubcaps taken from cars of the late sixties: in the other, surrounded by stone arrow-points and broken clay cups, was the Sword Reforged.

It was shorter than Thomas remembered it, but much more beautiful, with its hilt wrapped in gold and silver wire, and its pommel capped with a knob of clear crystal. The guard was straight, and made of some metal not found on Earth, brighter than gold and stronger than iron.

The sword rested in a sheath made of black reptilian leather, with the loops of a leather war-belt curled around the rings of the scabbard. Tooled into the leather of the belt were images of an ancient hero slaying a dragon. Thomas knew the scene showed the battle between Hal's forefather, Vardane the Just, and Anglachor, the leviathan of Chaos. He knew also of whose skin this scabbard had been made after that dreadful duel was concluded.

The case was dusty, unkempt. There was a spider in the glass case, and already it had begun to spin a web along the hilts of the sword.

Tybalt sniffed suspiciously around the edge of the case. Thomas touched his key to the lock of the case. Then he lifted the glass lid and reached in for the sword. He made to brush the spiderweb away; his hand was stung as if by an electric shock; Thomas, left arm numb, was flung from his feet.

From where he lay on the stone of the museum floor, he saw the spider crawl forward, unfolding into a stinking cloud of shadow. The shadow came out of the case like smoke, and rose up in the gloom. Then the shadow shrank and became solid; and there stood the form of Lord Wodenhouse, minister of the Admiralty, a straight-backed old man in a finely tailored black silk coat, tight narrow tie, white hair, pince-nez glasses.

Behind the glasses, Thomas saw the eyes were merely pools of black shadow. When the creature spoke, its mouth was black, with no tongue or teeth inside at all.

"Fool,” the thing sighed softly, “We knew well you would return here for your worthless toy."

Thomas, without any pause for thought or fear, scrambled forward on his knees, reached into the case with his unhurt hand, drew the sword, and stood.

The creature stepped out of the way as Thomas pushed past him, and made no move to interfere.

Thomas came to his feet holding the sword. But the blade was dull, and no light shone from it at all. For a moment, Thomas was gladdened the sword deemed him worthy to wield it; then his spirit sagged, as he saw the blade: dark, solid, ordinary.

"Old fool,” the creature said, “The magic will not serve you. Children, armed with innocence, we perhaps have cause to fear. But you, you are too old, too worn, too wise, too filled with sin. The sword will not burn for you. Magic comes in childhood alone. Your time is far too late, old man."

Thomas pointed the sword at the thing, and chanted, “By star, by stone, by shining spear! I call upon the Gathered Hosts of Light to banish wretched minions of fear once more into their dreadful night!"

Nothing happened, except that the creature smiled.

Tybalt said, “Thomas, by the love you bear our lady, I conjure you to heed me now. My time with you is done. Strike my head from my body; as I die, my lifeblood will ignite the sword."

The man-shaped thing spoke in a voice like the creaking of old wood, the hissing of cold wind, “By all means, slay the beast. Become a murderer, and the burden of your sin drags you ever nearer to our grasp."

Thomas backed away from the eyeless, smiling hulk of the cabinet minister, keeping the sword pointed at the thing. Thomas uttered in a voice of horror, “Tybalt! I can't kill you! Not you! There would be nothing left for me, no reason ... ai!” and he cried out, because the sword began to sting his palm.

The cabinet minister drifted forward, his feet making no noise at all as he approached, and words came out of the darkness of his mouth. “The sword rejects you; you have no more the simple bravery of youth. You have done too much evil in your life to strike at us. Who are you to dare to judge us? You life is foul, worthless, and corrupt. Surrender, use the sword on our behalf, and we will give you gold and women, prestige and power, and all the things your pathetic, failed destiny has cheated from you."

Thomas's palm stung with pain, but he did not let go of the sword.

Tybalt said, “They cannot use or touch that sword, nor any weapon of the world, save fear. If men did not assist them, they would be nothing."

"But he's right, Tybalt; the sword is burning me!” Thomas said, not daring to take his eyes off the thing.

"You are afraid,” the cat purred softly, “Strike me dead, and fear will vanish. Strike! Or I will grow into a thing that will turn upon you, rend, and slaughter you."

The cabinet minister stepped closer. The point of the sword was touching the minister's chest. Then, the darkness cleared from the man's eyes. Suddenly, they were blue eyes, human eyes.

The eyes were wide, frightened, helpless, pleading. A gargling strangled noise of fear came from the man's throat. From the black nothingness inside his mouth a haughty whisper came, “Look! The true Lord Wodenhouse. His body we inhabit; you cannot strike us, except that you kill the innocent. Once innocent blood is on your hands, you are one of us, key-bearer."

The darkness was letting the cabinet minister see the peril he stood in, but was gagging him, and using his voice to speak. Thomas took another step back. The pain in his hand grew fierce; the sword trembled in his hand, yet still he would not release it.

Tybalt, near his feet, unsheathed claws and scraped Thomas painfully in the ankle. Thomas shouted: the little claws felt sharp as needles. The black cat said, “I grow impatient. Slay me now. This is the price the sword demands."

Thomas prodded the cabinet minister lightly in the chest. The blue, human eyes wept with fear. The black mouth smiled.

A cold sensation swept through Thomas. He thought: I am an adult now. I'm too old to believe simple and childish notions. There must be some way to talk this problem through. We can compromise. Mature people aren't narrow-minded, aren't idealists.

But he felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach as he thought it.

"Let's be reasonable,” Thomas said in a shaky voice. “We can negotiate. What are you? Why are you doing this? What are you?!"

The dark mouth sagged wide. The creature made a barking, choking noise, like a mockery of laughter, a noise of malignant hatred. “Knowledge is impossible to men; your senses lie. Prod your eyes out with your sword, blind yourself to the illusion of the world. We will enter in your bleeding eye-sockets then, and fill your soul with our dark knowledge, which can never be expressed or put in words. We will teach you stillness, futility, darkness, anguish, death."

"Stand back!"

"Our Lord is the King of Final Winter; in his kingdom all things are the same, all are still and silent, lifeless, nameless."

"Who are you?"

"We have no names, no souls, and therefore we cannot be harmed."

But Tybalt said, “This is the Knight of Shadows, your final enemy. That this wretched creature has forgotten its own name does not mean it has no name. Your first ancestor, at the dawn of time, was ordained by the Light to name all beasts of the field and birds of the air. By virtue of the fact the first of man had named all nature, dominion over all the Earth was given to mankind."

Thomas straightened. The little voice inside him, telling him how it was safe to compromise, how mature, and adult; now Thomas recognized that voice. It was the voice of the Darkness.

Fumbling with his numb hand, Thomas pulled Myrrdin's great book out from his wide jacket pocket and let it drop to the top of the glass case next to him. With clumsy, tingling fingers he turned the pages, stealing quick glances down at the book. The book lay open at page sixty-six.

The cabinet minister swayed, and smiled, and wept from his blue eyes. But he stepped neither back nor forward, nor tried to grasp nor elude the sword holding him at bay.

"Tybalt,” said Thomas, “Tell me now why I must kill you. Why?” The pain in his hand brought tears to his eyes.

"I am a beast. A kindly beast is still a beast. I can guide, but cannot reason or explain. The time is come when you must guide yourself."

Thomas understood. He struck down at his feet; the blade swept the cat's head off its neck; the blood fountained, red as roses in spring.

Half blinded by tears, Thomas saw the pearly light collect together from the starlight shining through the small windows, and swirl in toward the blade. The metal became a shaft of light, bright as sunlight, cool as moonlight. Silver rays, surrounded by blue-white flames, shone from the sword and filled the room.

On the page of the open book, silver letters faded into view. Thomas read the name, and understood at once the nature of his foe.

Thomas pointed the burning sword at the cabinet minister. The words written in the book came out from Thomas's mouth almost of their own accord, his voice made hollow and strained with sorrow. “Phobos, father of fear, I banish thee: Begone! With this, my instrument of light, I divide human from inhuman, true from false, substance from shadow. Wherever knowledge shines, you have no place.” And the sword was surrounded with a rainbow of pale light, like the ring seen around the moon on misty nights.

The cabinet minister staggered, his head thrown back. Up from his face, in three streams, black smoke boiled from his eyes and mouth. The darkness rushed up across the ceiling, jumped to the corners of the chamber, flickered down across the walls. The cabinet minister, his eyes now blue, his teeth white, was shouting, “Don't kill me! Don't kill me! It wasn't my fault! They promised me so much, and I only gave them a little piece of me, one small part....” Then he pointed over Thomas's shoulder and screamed. The cabinet minister turned and fled up the stairs, out of the museum.

Thomas turned his head. The shadow had collected behind him, spreading from his feet, across the floor, over the display cases, and up along the tapestries and hangings of the stone wall, to loom, gigantic, across the wall and ceiling. The shadow of his own head, distorted and enlarged along the ceiling, now turned and glared mockingly down at him.

When Thomas turned to strike at it with the radiant sword, the shadow turned as swiftly, and was behind him again. He struck left; the shadow pivoted around his feet and swung right. He stabbed between his feet; the shadow was above him. He held the sword high overhead.

Luminous, wonderful, the sword shone bright with steady, silvery light, and blue sparks drifted up about the blade like fireflies.

In a pool at his feet, the shadow laughed.

"I am the knight of ghosts and shadows,” softly said the little darkness underfoot, “In my world, I was gathered into one place, and even a child could see what I was. But in this world, I am spread a little into all mankind; their sin, their fear, their foolishness feeds me. How can you dream to destroy me? You cannot even drive away the little piece of me that lives in you."

Thomas drove the blazing blade into the floorboards. With his foot, he kicked against the flat of the blade. The magnificent blade snapped cleanly in two, and both parts flared brighter than the sun.

Thomas held the burning sword hilt high over his head. The shining shard blazed at his feet. Above and below, overhead and underfoot, the two fragments blazed. Thomas was surrounded by light, streamers and swarms of sparks were everywhere, and there was no place for any shadow to be.

The darkness dissolved with a faint and hideous high wail.

The shadow was nowhere to be seen.

Thomas flourished the broken sword hilt overhead and whooped and shouted with joy. “Beware all you wizards, and servants of sin! A knight of the Light now is here! I have driven your champion down into darkness! Who dares follow him shall share in his fate!"

But, looking up, he saw the sword he held was not whole. The light now faded slowly. The shards of shattered sword paled, grew faint, and became ordinary metal once again.

Thomas collapsed, and sat on his knees. In front of him where he knelt, there was nothing but a dead cat and a broken sword. Slowly, tears blurred his vision.

The sword hilt dropped from weary fingers. Thomas hunched forward, head cradled in his hands, and wept.

"Tybalt,” he whispered, face hidden behind his hands, “Please get up. Oh, please."

When, after an endless time, Thomas had no more tears to shed, he slowly raised his head. Inside him was nothing but a worthless, empty feeling. He sat with red-rimmed eyes staring at the ruined sword, the tiny, stiff, dead animal, bloodstains matting its black fur.

Nothing happened and nothing continued to happen. Thomas sat there. He felt as if he had nowhere to go, nothing to do, as if nothing would ever be worth doing again.

He began to worry. Did this mean he had to return to his life as it was before? Shoulder the gray burden of his old duties? His old employers probably would not take him back; he would have trouble getting a job anywhere. It was possible he was still being sought by the police. If so, he had no future, not anywhere. Where was he going to live?

And still he sat, unwilling to leave, but having no reason to stay. Red-gold light came slowly into the chamber to one side. At first Thomas felt a supernatural thrill of hope. But then he realized he was seeing the dawn light shining through the chamber's cramped windows. He had been here all night.

Still he sat.

Outside, there was the ordinary noise of the little town stirring to wakefulness. He heard the rumble of the milkman's truck; he heard a bird singing.

There was stirring overhead; someone was in the library above, moving about. Thomas realized they would soon come down and find him here. Nothing jarred his apathy; he could not leave the broken and dead remnants of his life.

Footsteps sounded very softly on the stairs, a whisper of slow, massive motion. The door opened. Larger than a panther, larger than a tiger, with wings like dark flame folded along its sleek shoulders, a supernatural creature stepped on silent paw down the stair into the room, surrounded by a golden light. It was twice the size of an Earthly lion, with a mane like gold fire, swimming and flashing around its terrible head. The wings were plumes of black and gold, shining.

White fire darted from the creature's mouth from between fangs like lightning.

It paced forward, regal, mysterious, terrible. The creature spread its mighty wings and the room was filled with light, and there came a tremendous noise like a choir, or like the pealing of bells, the roar of trumpets.

The creature's eyes were whirlpools of gold. So fierce, so stern, so majestic was the glance of those eyes that Thomas threw himself on his face, too terrified to scream.

"Fear not,” it spoke in a voice like muted thunder, and many echoes said the words again.

Thomas raised his head, but could not meet that gaze. He felt the warm stirring in the air above him, could feel the hot scented breath of the creature near the top of his head. The breath was warm and crisp, not like any breath coming from the wet lungs of a creature composed of flesh and blood. The odor of the breath reminded Thomas of the smell of bread baking in an oven, or the scent of cedar logs burning on a campfire.

A warmth from that breath stole into his body, and he felt a cold aching in his bones depart. How long that ache had been there, Thomas could not say; he had not known it was in him till he felt it go away.

The huge golden paws were before his face; in the corners of his eyes, Thomas glimpsed the flutter and spread of the great wings.

More quietly, the ringing voice inquired, “Thomas, why do you weep?"

"When I was young,” Thomas said, “A black cat guided me to a magical adventure into another world. Then I grew older, and the magic was lost. Only this year did I remember my young dreams, and meet that cat again. Now he is dead, and by my own hand."

"Thomas, I have not died. Rejoice; I am risen. The Lord of the Fortunate Islands, the Emperor of the Summer Country has banished death and dying from his kingdom, and only those who flee his kingdom may encounter it. You weep over no more than my old garment, which you tore and which I discarded. Now I am come again, clothed in glory. Look up."

And he looked into those terrible eyes. He felt something within himself, as proud, as great, as noble as those eyes, and now he could endure that gaze without shrinking.

"You are Tybalt,” said Thomas in wonder. And yet one small part of him was not surprised at all, but was filled with solemn, undoubting joy, as if saying, I knew it, I knew he would come back.

"We spirits, when we are young, are sent forth to combat evils where those evils gather openly, unhidden, and even a child can see them. We must grow before we can combat hidden evils, evils disguised as good, subtle evils. In this, I deem, our race is not so different from human kind. Innocence and faith are the weapons children can bring to bear against the open evils; wisdom alone is the weapon to be employed against evils disguised."

Thomas felt a glow of pride in his heart, but the great creature looked at him with golden eyes, and said sharply, “Why so flattered? It is no feat to grow white hairs. Why so glad? You have broken the weapon of wisdom in wielding it! And this is only the beginning of the sorrows sages know."

Thomas felt the sting of the rebuke, but he held up the broken shards of the sword. “I am glad because I serve. But how am I to fight Wodenhouse's men?"

"The slaves and followers of the Champion of the Dark still infest your green realm, under many guises, many names. But your time as Champion of the Light is done, for you have grown old, and the faith of a child is no longer yours. Another task is laid upon you now, and shall be yours for many a weary year."

"What task?” asked Thomas; then he frowned, for he wished he had said instead, I am ready.

"Out of all the years and seasons of the world, the Dark chose this day to come forth from the Winter Country, because the Wise of this World sleeps."

"Sleeps?"

Thomas saw a reflection of light in the surface of the broken blade in his hand. He held the hilt nearer to his eye, and looked into the silvery steel, and it was as if he saw into the surface of a still lake of water. In a small chapel nestled in a green valley, behind the tall mansion where, long ago, Thomas and his four friends had spent a summer's afternoon, was a graveyard. Here was a headstone, and the words CEDRIC PENKIRK were written on it.

"Professor Penkirk!"

"He was your squire, for he armed you children with the heart you needed to prevail; he was your nurse, for he comforted you when you re-turned; and one thing more he was—your herald! He went before you into the land of Vidblain, into the Lost Kingdom, and told the animals and dryads of your coming. He was not permitted to strike the blow. That was the task of the Four from This World. His task was to guide, and to advise, and to open the way."

Thomas whispered. “The Key was his! His key is what opened the Way of the Well, and let us through the Hidden Door into Vidblain. The professor left it for me to find. I had always wondered...."

"You are now the Wise. You are now what Cedric was: for he has gone into my Father's realm, and there has other tasks I cannot describe, work of long-abiding joy. They have given him a crown and a robe of white."

"What am I supposed to do, then? Find English schoolchildren and get them in trouble?"

"You will have many roads to walk, and many worlds under your care. There will come a child who leads a Star by the hand, whose voice can still the Lion's rage. It is for him you carry the shards of Angurvadel, the great sword. It is a weapon none can use until he reforges it and makes it himself: such as all weapons of my Father's Kingdom. Now, come! There is a child in a world beyond the Pleiades, considered young for his ancient and supernal race, but, compared to humans, old and wise beyond all reckoning: he is rash and eager, and will come at your word to save this green Earth and all its inhabitants from the Dark Master. In his own land, he is neither prince nor sage, but a humble blacksmith's apprentice: yet Earth would call him magic, for his art is to forge the stars and set them in their constellations. You will find your way with the book you hold and the key you bear. Say farewell to Earth. No one world is your home hereafter, but every place the light of the stars can touch!"

The book, as if to aid him, fell open to the proper chapter. He found the diagrams in an appendix in the back of the volume, images of zones and tropics and belts of constellations, and the Latin was easy enough for him to puzzle out. He spoke the words and used the key, and a shining doorway, surrounded with stars and the music of the stars hung before him, dreamlike, terrifying, and wondrous.

"So I am the Old Wise Man in the story, now,” said Thomas, with great satisfaction. “Will I see you there? In that far world?"

"I am silent when I walk. I shall be with you, but you will see only my traces where I have passed, the print of my paw on the Earth, or the works I have done. As you grow, the trace will be clearer to your eye."

"I still have growing yet to do?"

"As do I, as do we all. This tale will never end until all tales end in glory."

"Shall I truly lose Earth as my home?"

The great cat said, “Hear me. Earth was never your home. Already great esteem and great reward await you in my Father's kingdom, Thomas, for your name has been written in letters of gold in my Father's book, and a place is set for you at his feast-table. Soon you shall join us there, and shall be given new garments to wear, clothing of woven light, pure and without stain. You will walk many worlds for many years, and the years will grow long, and your beard grow white. I shall come for you again, and shall show you the hidden pathway to my country beyond the summer stars; and you shall follow me up and away from this Earth, into glory. But beware; if you cast your gaze back across your shoulder, you may lose sight of me, and miss your path, and go astray."

"When? When does this journey begin?"

"It is forever. You are on the pathway now."

All his questions answered, he stepped forward then through the mystic door.

Light was everywhere.

In our previous competition, entrants took the name of a science fiction or fantasy story and translated it into the foreign language of their choice. Then they rewrote the plot to fit the new title. Congratulazioni to the winners.

FIRST PRIZE:

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card = Ender's Spel (Dutch)

A boy genius is recruited into a global spelling bee unaware that he is being duped into phonetically working out the name of an alien race without being given its definition, part of speech, or use in a sentence.

—Matthew Sanborn Smith

Port St. Lucie, FL

SECOND PRIZE:

"Nightfall” by Isaac Asimov = “Dunkelwerden” (German)

Inspired by alphabet soup, Beenay has invented a donut that won't fall apart in coffee. But when he dunks his donuts into coffee, unlike alphabet soup, the only word he ever sees is “O.” Maybe it's his eyesight. It seems to be getting dark....

—Patrick J. O'Connor

Chicago, IL

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells = De Eerste Mensen in de Maan (Dutch)

A mad scientist plots her revenge for the gender gap by developing a secret formula that gives males PMS.

—Michael Beda

Lafayette, CO

The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells = El Hombre Invisible (Spanish)

1886. Near the Texas-Mexico border, a lone horse rides into town. Unknown to the townsfolk, it is ridden by the bodiless bandito, El Hombre Invisible, aka The Man with No Frame. The town's evil pistoleros don't stand a chance as El Hombre guns them down with his see-through six-shooter.

—Christopher M. Geeson,

Easingwold, York, UK

The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury = Bildunsmann (German)

Racked by existential angst, a man rebuilds himself molecule by molecule, but after all the sturm and drang, finds no relief from his weltschmerz.

A great roman that captures the zeitgeist of the author's wanderjahr.

—Anatoly Belilovsky

Staten Island, NY

COMPETITION #78: THE SECRET HISTORY OF F&SF

Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, originally titled The Magazine of Fantasy, was founded in 1949 by Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas ... or was it? Describe, in fifty words or less, the secret origins of F&SF. Alternate histories, imagined conversations, and science-fictional (or magical) twists on the truth are more than welcome. Another welcomed element: funny.

Example:

Shirley Jackson and Theodore Sturgeon leave a little basket on the doorstep of Anthony Boucher with a tear-stained note: “Please take care of our baby. Raise it as if it were your own."

You have six chances to rewrite history. Please remember to include your telephone number and snail-mail address.

RULES: Send entries to Competition Editor, F&SF, 240 West 73rd St. #1201, New York, NY 10023-2794, or e-mail entries to carol@cybrid.net. Be sure to include your contact information. Entries must be received by May 15, 2009. Judges are the editors of F&SF, and their decision is final. All entries become the property of F&SF.

Prizes: First prize will receive a subscription to F&SF good for the next sixty years along with a copy of The Diamond Jubilee. Second prize will receive advance reading copies of three forthcoming novels. Any runners-up will receive one-year subscriptions to F&SF. Results of Competition 78 will appear in the Oct/Nov. 2009 issue.

BOOKS-MAGAZINES

S-F FANTASY MAGAZINES, pulps, books, fanzines. 96 page catalog. $5.00. Robert Madle, 4406 Bestor Dr., Rockville, MD 20853

20-time Hugo nominee. The New York Review of Science Fiction. www.nyrsf.com Reviews and essays. $4.00 or $40 for 12 issues, checks only. Dragon Press, PO Box 78, Pleasantville, NY 10570.

Spiffy, jammy, deluxy, bouncy—subscribe to Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. $20/4 issues. Small Beer Press, 176 Prospect Ave., Northampton, MA 01060.

Latest from RAMBLE HOUSE: The Triune Man by Richard A. Lupoff and Automaton, a 1928 essay on robotics. www.ramblehouse.com 318-455-6847

For a taste of Harvey Jacobs’ new novel, Side Effects, check out www.celadonpress.com. Gahan Wilson's cover art looks a bit like the Mona Lisa's prom date the morning after, and hopefully, what's between the covers lives up its promise! Ask your doctor....

Weaving a Way Home: A Personal Journey Exploring Place and Story from Univ. of Michigan Press. “No one with a working heart will fail to be moved.” -Patrick Curry

Do you have Fourth Planet from the Sun yet? Signed hardcover copies are still available. Only $17.95 ppd from F&SF, PO Box 3447, Hoboken, NJ 07030.

ALL 11 ISSUES OF F&SF FROM 2008: Get the whole year's worth of F&SF in good condition w/o mailing labels for $24 + $4 p&h ($18 to Can., $31 overseas). Same offer for issues from 2007. F&SF, PO Box 3447, Hoboken, NJ 07030.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5, CATTLE 0. The first 58 F&SF contests are collected in Oi, Robot, edited by Edward L. Ferman and illustrated with cartoons. $11.95 postpaid from F&SF, PO Box 3447, Hoboken, NJ 07030.

MISCELLANEOUS

If stress can change the brain, all experience can change the brain. www.undoingstress.com

Support the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fund. Visit www.carlbrandon.org for more information on how to contribute.

Classic trading chips of baseball players for sale: Lee, Stromboni, Chan, Mazeroski, more!

The Jamie Bishop Scholarship in Graphic Arts was established to honor the memory of this artist. Help support it. Send donations to: Advancement Services, LaGrange College, 601 Broad Street, LaGrange, GA 30240

Space Studies Masters degree. Accredited University program. Campus and distance classes. For details visit www.space.edu.

Got Stikfas? Articulated, Customizable, Collectable Action Figures. Stop Motion, Artist's Reference, Hobby, Fun! www.orbscube.com

F&SF classifieds work because the cost is low: only $2.00 per word (minimum of 10 words). 10% discount for 6 consecutive insertions, 15% for 12. You'll reach 100,000 high-income, highly educated readers each of whom spends hundreds of dollars a year on books, magazines, games, collectibles, audio and video tapes. Send copy and remittance to: F&SF Market Place, PO Box 3447, Hoboken, NJ 07030.

Brazilian examples of prehistoric sf are few. This Sambaqui: A novel of Pre-History (published in Brazil in 1975 as O Homem do Sambaqui) is one of them—and probably the very first one. The book had a 1987 U.S. edition from Avon; it's of the few Brazilian sf novels ever translated to English (by Claudia van de Heuvel).

"Sambaqui” is a native Brazilian word for fossil shell-formations that indicates the occupation of a particular coastal spot by a prehistoric people who inhabited Brazil before the arrival of the Indians, and used by these first dwellers of Brazil as burial grounds.

Stella [Maria Whitacker] Carr [Ribeiro] studied with prominent paleontologist Paulo Duarte in the late sixties. By then she was already a published poet, author of Matéria do Abismo (Matter of the Abyss; 1966), a book of sf poetry. In this novel we see a mix of paleoethnological speculation with a poet's willingness for language experimentation, as she conveys the cultural distance of the long-lost man of the Sambaqui by replacing well-known nouns with hyphenized words and clauses. The poet is also there in the way the Sambaqui people innocently gaze at their world.

A bit plotless, the novel has roughly two parts: a presentation of the Sambaqui people and their culture and physical world; and a dramatic account of their cultural and warring clashes with the first Indians. As fit for a female writer looking back in time and trying to see women's role in those societies, much of the struggle is set around the stealing of women—in that solving the riddle of the disappearance of the Sambaqui man: as a people, they would have been bred out of history.

—Roberto de Sousa Causo

In our June/July issue, Albert Cowdrey will take us deep into space with a murder mystery adventure story called “Paradiso Lost.” This tale is vintage Cowdrey, a page-turner that hearkens back to science fiction's golden age.

Back on Earth, we'll have a tale of adolescents and astronauts in Mike O'Driscoll's “The Spaceman” and a story from Eastern Europe in John Kessel's “The Motorman's Coat.” New stories by Ron Goulart, Rand B. Lee, Yoon Ha Lee, and Charles Oberndorf are also in the offing.

Our Sixtieth Anniversary issue is simmering on the back burner, too, with new stories by Elizabeth Hand, Lucius Shepard, and Robert Silverberg in the pot. Go to www.fandsf.com and subscribe now so you won't miss an issue.