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THE MAGAZINE OF

FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION

May/June * 61st Year of Publication

* * * *

NOVELETS
WHY THAT CRAZY OLD LADY GOES UP THE MOUNTAIN by Michael Libling
THIEF OF SHADOWS by Fred Chappell
DR. DEATH VS. THE VAMPIRE by Aaron Schutz
THE CROCODILES by Steven Popkes

SHORT STORIES
A HISTORY OF CADMIUM by Elizabeth Bourne
THE REAL MARTIAN CHRONICLES by John Sladek
REMOTEST MANSIONS OF THE BLOOD by Alex Irvine
SEVEN SINS FOR SEVEN DWARVES by Hilary Goldstein
SILENCE by Dale Bailey
FOREVER by Rachel Pollack
THE ATCHISON, TOPEKA & SANTA FE by Robert Onopa
THE GYPSY'S BOY by Lokiko Hall

DEPARTMENTS
BOOKS TO LOOK FOR by Charles de Lint
MUSING ON BOOKS by Michelle West
COMING ATTRACTIONS
FILMS: BLOCKBUSTER AS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE by Kathi Maio
COMPETITION #79
CURIOSITIES by Bud Webster
Cartoons: Arthur Masear.

COVER ART BY KENT BASH FOR “WHY THAT CRAZY OLD LADY GOES UP THE MOUNTAIN.”

GORDON VAN GELDER, Publisher/Editor
BARBARA J. NORTON, Assistant Publisher
ROBIN O'CONNOR, Assistant Editor
KEITH KAHLA, Assistant Publisher
HARLAN ELLISON, Film Editor
JOHN J. ADAMS, Assistant Editor
CAROL PINCHEFSKY, Contests Editor

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (ISSN 1095-8258), Volume 118, No. 5 & 6, Whole No. 689, May/June 2010. Published bimonthly by Spilogale, Inc. at $6.50 per copy. Annual subscription $39.00; $49.00 outside of the U.S. Postmaster: send form 3579 to Fantasy & Science Fiction, PO Box 3447, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Publication office, 105 Leonard St., Jersey City, NJ 07307. Periodical postage paid at Hoboken, NJ 07030, and at additional mailing offices. Printed in U.S.A. Copyright © 2010 by Spilogale, Inc. All rights reserved.
Distributed by Curtis Circulation Co., 730 River Rd. New Milford, NJ 07646
GENERAL AND EDITORIAL OFFICE: PO BOX 3447, HOBOKEN, NJ 07030

www.fandsf.com

CONTENTS

Novelet: WHY THAT CRAZY OLD LADY GOES UP THE MOUNTAIN by Michael Libling

Department: BOOKS TO LOOK FOR by Charles de Lint

Department: MUSING ON BOOKS by Michelle West

Novelet: THIEF OF SHADOWS by Fred Chappell

Short Story: A HISTORY OF CADMIUM by Elizabeth Bourne

Short Story: THE REAL MARTIAN CHRONICLES by John Sladek

Novelet: DR. DEATH VS. THE VAMPIRE by Aaron Schutz

Short Story: REMOTEST MANSIONS OF THE BLOOD by Alex Irvine

Short Story: SEVEN SINS FOR SEVEN DWARVES by Hilary Goldstein

Short Story: SILENCE by Dale Bailey

Short Story: FOREVER by Rachel Pollack

Short Story: THE ATCHISON, TOPEKA, & SANTA FE by Robert Onopa

Department: FILMS: BLOCKBUSTER AS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE by Kathi Maio

Short Story: THE GYPSY'S BOY by Lokiko Hall

Novelet: THE CROCODILES by Steven Popkes

Department: F&SF COMPETITION #79: HOOKED ON MNEMONICS

Department: CURIOSITIES: ALVIN STEADFAST ON VERNACULAR ISLAND, by Frank Jacobs (1965)

Department: FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION MARKET PLACE

Department: COMING ATTRACTIONS

* * * *

Novelet: WHY THAT CRAZY OLD LADY GOES UP THE MOUNTAIN by Michael Libling

When asked about this story, Michael Libling said, “I continue to be amazed at how often the setting and characters in so much of my writing can be traced to the first 14 years of my life, living in a small town (Trenton, Ontario), hanging out in my parents’ tiny café, talking with the regulars.... ‘Crazy Old Lady’ is no exception. These are people I know, doing stuff they never did."

She's Jimmy Alvin's cousin from Connecticut and she's come to Gideon for a spell because her dad got caught dipping into somebody else's money and somebody else's wife, and went home and put a bullet through his head. And then her mom up and did something pretty awful to herself too; she isn't dead, though everybody says she might as well be.

Sara Marie Sands, a fist over five feet, that's all she is, with brown hair and browner eyes and a quiet sense of self folks can't help but admire, considering the soap she's been living. No tears. No whining. No making a mopey display of herself the way some almost orphaned are wont to do.

Gumption. That's what they call it. And the kid has more of it than the whole junior class put together. She can do handstands, handsprings, and hit a jump shot or climb a rope as good as any of the guys, most of whom have been laying it on thick since the moment she arrived. (Think buttercream icing on vanilla cupcake.) The teachers love her too, and not only Mrs. Laroche in gym; Sara has spent time in Europe, speaks French, some Gaelic, reads books she doesn't need to, and never gives them any backtalk. The girls, of course, they recognize the threat she poses. When Sara first turned up after Christmas break, suspicion and envy rolled through Gideon High like a West Quoddy fog. Hell, you could smell the stuff. But Sara's dark past also made her a trophy of sorts in the friends department, and most conceded she'd paid her dues. A dead dad and vegetable mom are worth a few brownie points, after all.

But the boys, they won't let up. More than a few claim they've seen her in some video on MTV2. Fall Out Boy or The Killers, maybe. Or some girl who looks a heck of a lot like her, anyhow. She can't help but smile at some of the stuff she hears, the antics to impress, but keeps her reactions low-key, mindful not to lead any of them on. Most understand. Or pretend to. Mourning and mating aren't the best of mixes at the best of times.

Kevin Akers. He hasn't managed two words to her in the whole time she's been in town. Not that he hasn't wanted to. He just doesn't know what he could say to a girl like Sara. Or what a girl like Sara might want to say to him. Fact is, had folks been keeping a tally of likely suitors, this boy would have been at the bottom of their list, had they given any thought to him in the first place, of course.

Judged by size alone, Kev isn't anybody you'd want to tussle with, but the few who know him know different. David in Goliath's body is how his mom used to put it. If he has a temper, nobody has seen it. If he has a voice, few have heard it. Kev has never raised a hand in class, let alone volunteered an answer. The boy isn't soft-spoken; he's unspoken. And that mouth of his, does it ever register anything outside of glum?

When his size does work for him, it is rarely a result of his own doing. Take Kev's sophomore year when Coach Hackles shanghais him for the Bobcats. Varsity team, yet. Collars him in the cafeteria, yanks him right out of the lunch line, his lime Jell-O left quaking in its dish. Plants him front and center, Coach does. Nose guard. And still the kid remains invisible. Out of uniform, not even the cheerleaders give him the time of day, and not because of any snootiness or malice, though there is plenty of both to go around. Nope, it just never clicks he's on the team. “Killer instinct, Akers, there's your problem. You don't have any.” Once Hackles has you pegged, rightly or wrongly, there is no shaking the rep. But the Gideon Bobcats are historically short on heft, and Kev sticks.

The boy has his reasons, of course, for being the way he is. Damned if he's going to broadcast so much as a peep. “Only safe trap is a shut trap,” his grandpa used to tell him, before hammering the message home with horror stories of locals who failed to pay heed. Grandpa ran with a sorry lot, so it seems at times to Kev, the old man's ultimate demise but one more crack in his oddball fraternity's pot.

There were the twin brothers who worked at the Dobbin-Henry mill up Kersey way, fine, upstanding family men, their carousing days long behind them, who babbled on of flashing lights and wondrous rays and joyrides through the stratosphere with sentient pecans in titanium knickers.

The spinster-lady bank teller who, while perusing the pages of an unnamed James M. Cain novel in the gazebo on the village green, proclaimed she'd been visited by the Prophet Ezekiel, who not only torched her book with a sidelong sigh, but delegated her to spread word the end was nigh.

The lobsterman, a pal from Grandpa's days in the Merchant Marine, who prattled on of mermaids at sea, ape-men on land, and the living dead on the Katakani. Your standard issue Lazarus, no doubt, so snickered a Gazette editorial of the day.

Taken at face they were, but never for long and never by all. And though each swore up and down on their respective stacks of Bibles they were speaking the cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die-God's-honest-truth, and well they may have been, their mouthing-off wrought only shame, disgrace, mockery, their lives marginalized or turned downright topsy-turvy.

"Yeah, damned forever loony,” Grandpa put it. “But I'm telling you, Kevvy, what happened to them is nothing to what'll happen to you. To us. We'll be crucified, we will."

Kev keeps his trap shut tight. But his ears and moony eyes, he keeps them wide open.

Any fool can see Sara is out of his league. Anytime he contemplates otherwise, the guys are quick to set him straight. Randy Gullickson scores the best line hands-down. “Wait for her yearbook photos, man, ‘cause that's the only piece of her you're ever gonna get.” They all crack up over that one. But Kev, he just slips away.

Sara, nothing gets by that girl. Last week of junior year, she marches right up to him as he's clearing out his locker. “You're Kevin Akers, right?"

Best he can do is swallow, nod. God, she is even prettier up close. But then he sees something in her he hasn't seen before. An emptiness. A void so vast, he grips the locker for fear of slipping in.

She asks, “Is there something you wanted to say to me?"

He checks behind, makes sure she isn't talking to someone more significant.

"Because if there is, I wish you'd tell me instead of staring. You're making me feel awfully uncomfortable, Kevin. And I don't want to come back to school in the fall and see you in every class doing the same all over again.” There is nothing nasty in her tone. If anything, she comes off like that guidance counselor lady, Miss Kimbrough—eyelids crinkled with patience and understanding, empathetic tut-tuts tagged to the tail of every breath. “So, what do you say we start over, do this right?” She offers her hand, smiles that great smile of hers. “Hi, I'm Sara."

He can't believe she's talking to him, wanting to get to know him yet. Can't believe he's holding her hand. Most of all, Kev can't believe the stupid words spilling out of his stupid head, his stupid trap. “I know about God."

"Pardon me?"

"I can show you...."

Her eyes narrow, her smile flatlines.

"I mean, bring you to Him, sort of."

She wonders if maybe the boy has a screwy sense of humor. But the way he'd said it, the way he stands there. It's as if he's been waiting forever to share this glorious news. No, there isn't anything funny about it. About him.

Kev tries to backtrack, come off a shade closer to sane. “I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said...."

"But you did, didn't you?” Back home in Connecticut, when news broke about her folks, do-gooders were over her like maggots kissing carcass. Knocking at the door. Calling on the phone. Dropping leaflets and amulets and spiritual whatnots onto her lap—crucifixes, beads, prayer cards with full-color renderings of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and other mystical kith and kin. Preying at her dad's funeral. Preying outside her mom's hospital room. Open your heart to the love and grace of the Lord. And, fact was, since coming to Gideon, little had changed, save perhaps the subtleties and stratagems. It was all over town how Jimmy Alvin's mom, her Aunt Penny, had been pleading with Sara to turn to the Lord or, at the very least, have a sit-down with Reverend Himner who, by all accounts, was a fair and decent man with a post-graduate degree in post-traumatic stress.

Sara steps back before stepping closer. “I don't need your god or anyone else's, thank you very much."

He wants to grab her, hold her. Explain for God's sake. Sticks his hands in his pockets instead. “My Mom, she died of the cancer too. Not that yours did, I mean...I'm just saying, I know what it's like, kind of...."

She turns, does not glance back. More holy claptrap to explain away the wholly explainable. Serves her right for dropping her guard.

Forty-six words. Most the boy has spoken to anyone since, well, God knows how long. And he'd trade most anything to take every syllable back.

Kev braces for fallout, certain he'll hear from Jimmy or Gully or the other guys about how he messed with the poor girl's head. “There's a time and place for pushing God, Akers, and that damn well wasn't it, dumb ass.” And just like that he'll join the long line of Gideon idiots. Gidiots, his grandpa called them. The twin brothers, the spinster-lady bank teller, the lobsterman, and all the other loose-lipped losers.

Whole summer long the boy agonizes, replays the conversation endlessly, every waking hour devoted to beating up on himself. Why, after keeping it bottled up for so many years, did he choose that moment to let it out? And why to, of all people, her? Had he hoped to spook her, frighten her off? Or did he want to help her by sharing the only thing he had going for him nobody else in Gideon could lay claim to? Heck, nobody else living on the whole damn planet, best he knew. Not that he read the papers or watched CNN. But surely others would have talked. Not everyone would be like him and his grandpa, him and his dad. Not everyone would keep their traps shut. No way.

He mulls heading over to the Seavue Estates, banging on the Alvins’ door, asking for her, apologizing, but knows he'll only dig himself in deeper. Thinks maybe he'll drop her a note to explain. Tears a page from a notebook. Manages a couple of lines before giving up.

That's pretty much the way it goes until one afternoon toward the end of July, when Sara shows up at Leith's with her aunt, Mrs. Alvin. Third summer in a row Kev has worked at the lobster pound. Bette Leith had been friends with his mom and she makes it her business to look out for the boy best she can.

Kev is scrubbing the lobster tank, fighting every instinct, struggling to keep his eyes averted and his head down, to pretend Sara isn't ten feet from him and that he has not noticed her. Later, after she's gone, Bette says, “That girl must have thought you were God's gift, Kevvy. Didn't take her eyes off you the whole time.” Kevvy is what his mother had called him. His grandpa too.

Come fall and senior year, he works hard to respect Sara's wishes. Tries his darnedest not to look her way, not to creep her out. But every now and then she catches him. Odd thing is, more often than not, Kev catches Sara looking first.

Just before finals, on a Saturday morning in May, Jimmy Alvin's red Toyota pickup lurches into Kev's yard, stirring up the rust on his dad's crippled Ford.

But it isn't Jimmy behind the wheel.

All told, Sara has been in Gideon a year and a half. By Kev's count, eighteen straight months of yearning.

The boy leaps into his jeans and bounds onto the porch before Sara's toe taps the bottom step. Last thing he wants is her poking about inside. After his mom's passing, Bette Leith had come by to check in on Kev and his dad. She wondered aloud about what had struck first, the hurricane or the tornado. In the years since, had his dad not threatened Bette and had she continued to visit, she might've noted how they'd been hit by an earthquake too. The mess is bad enough; mostly, though, Kev doesn't want Sara seeing his dad sleeping it off on the couch behind the stockade of empties.

He knows why she's come right off. The dead-mama face is a dead giveaway. Eyes that should be crying but aren't. Voice that should be cracking but isn't. Grief waylaid by anger and guilt. “Show me,” she says.

He plays dumb.

"You said you know where God is. Show me."

"I was kidding—"

"I've watched you, Kevin. I've asked about you. You don't kid about anything. And you're no Born-againer. Jimmy's never even seen you in church."

"It was a joke.” He can't bear to look at her. Can't bear not to.

"Was it a vision? Like the miracle of Fatima? Did God speak to you like the Virgin Mary spoke to them?"

"It's not like that.” He's never heard of any Fat Emma, but figures it can't be a bigger deal than his own.

"And He told you—told you He was God?"

"My grandpa said so."

"Then it's not only you...?"

"Nah. Grandpa passed on just after my mom."

"I'm alone now too,” she says, antipathy giving way to empathy. “My mother. Last night.” She keeps it simple, so she won't choke up. Not that she expects to; she just never knows for certain when emotion might get the better of her. She'd mourned her mother when she was mostly dead and has no intention of going through the same now that she is fully dead.

Kev shuffles his feet, makes sure not to look her in the face, mumbles what he hopes sounds like condolences.

"Look, I've never been a believer, but after seeing what's happened to my family, maybe my mom and dad had it wrong. I mean, not believing didn't do them or me any good; no harm in seeing what believing might do. Right?” She lifts her chin, moves her lips so near his mouth, Kev puckers by reflex.

"But it's not....” He swallows. “It's not what you think."

"You don't have a clue what I think."

Sara waits on the porch while he throws together some gear. Backpacks. Plastic ponchos. Hoodies. DEET. Sleeping bags (not that he figures they'll be doing much sleeping). Stuff to eat, drink.

He's at the door when he turns to the snoring on the couch. “I'm taking that girl, the one I told you about. She needs it, Dad, she really does. She's strong too. She can handle it. I know she can.” He speaks as if it matters. As if his dad were awake and sober.

* * * *

Gil Boucher is having his usual at the diner when Fritshaw comes to fetch him. The deputy is all arms, legs, and excitement. In his seventeen years as Gideon Chief of Police, Gil has had his lunch interrupted only once before: Somebody had seen somebody over at the Ace Hardware who looked like somebody they'd seen on America's Most Wanted, though it turned out to be nobody. He polishes off his clam roll in two big bites, plucks up the remaining onion rings, and orders his Indian pudding to go. “No ice cream today, Mollie. Not sure when I'll get to it."

Story is, that cutie-pie from Connecticut who's living with the Alvins has taken off in Jimmy's truck. While Jimmy is royally pissed and vowing vengeance if he finds so much as a scratch, Penny Alvin worries something more sinister is afoot. “I wouldn't normally bother you, Gil,” she says, “but my niece's mother, my sister-in-law, you understand, she passed away last night, God rest her tortured soul, and well, I'm afraid Sara might do something regrettable. That whole side of my husband's family, you need to know, they're a terribly self-destructive lot."

"The girl is high-strung, is she?” Gil inquires.

"Oh, I pray to God not yet,” Penny Alvin replies.

As luck would have it, the first break isn't long in coming. Randy Gullickson spots the pickup in the Akers’ yard, plain as day. “Like I never come down over this way you know, but traffic was backed up on Nine like because of the new overpass they're building, and Jesus, like I'd know Jimmy's wheels anywhere."

Gil raps on the Akers’ door, spies Kevin's dad strung out on the sofa. He pinches a Stim-U-Dent from his shirt pocket, massages his gums some before letting himself in. He prods the guy awake, props him between sofa cushions. “Jesus, Carl, these benders of yours, man, you trying to kill yourself? Your old man, at least, he ended it clean."

When you're the Law in a town like Gideon, you might not know a lot, but you sure as hell know drunks. Rare is the crime not predicated on booze. Neighborly cop. Tough cop. Good cop/bad cop. None of these cut it here. Only patient cop. And though the Chief does his level best, his questions yield only squalls of cesspit breath (incentive enough to cut the interrogation short) and a garbled non-sequitur that skips from Jim Beam to Jack Daniel's to meeting your Maker's Mark on the Katakani. “Pray to God, Carl, your boy hasn't decided to follow in your esteemed footsteps."

Kevin's room is an oddity. Precious little to sift through. What kind of teenage freak is he dealing with here? No clothes or junk on the floor. No druggie paraphernalia. Books. School stuff. Reader's Digest Mysteries of the Unexplained. (Same book Gil Jr. got a dozen Christmases ago.) Yellowed paperbacks. The Book of the Damned. Strange As It Seems. Something written by some doctor—a Kübler-Ross. Thinks his wife might have read it. Walls mostly bare. A SpongeBob calendar four years out of date. Photos. The kid and his mom. The kid, his mom and dad. His grandfather seated in a skiff, the pier at Hurley's Basin over his left shoulder.

Previous April, Gil had attended a forensics seminar in Philadelphia, so he is up on the techie stuff like email and how it can offer up all kinds of insight on a suspect's psyche. Trouble is, there is no computer. What kid doesn't have a computer these days? Closest he comes is one of the souvenir pocket calculators Ballston Lumber had given out in celebration of their 25th. Even so, the Chief manages to find all the evidence he needs. Sitting in a drawer, it is. Short, sweet, and telling, written in an earnest backhand on a page torn from a wirebound notepad:

* * * *

Dear Sara,

I am sorry I made you mad.

I said stuff I shouldn't.

* * * *

The slope is gentle, but the going slow, the air rife with the stink of skunk spruce.

Kev and Sara stick with the trail until there isn't much of anything to follow. Given the chance, stuff grows like crazy on the Katakani. Trails blazed on the up gone by the down. And the trees, damn! So green, so tall, so full of themselves, the sun never has much choice but to slash and stab.

Birds chirp. Peckers peck. Chipmunks fuss. Sara plows ahead as if the chorus is meant for her, resolute and single-minded, her disbelief on pause.

Kev slogs behind, calling out the way. Left. Right. Here. There.

Through weeds, wildflowers, and arboreal upchuck. Through God-awful muck that slurps on their toes, sucks on their soles and gags up their heels. Through ancient crud that crunches and snaps and drives shivers up their legs, their spines, their throats, their jaws, their thoughts.

* * * *

Word of the girl's disappearance is quick to get around. Pitching in in times of crises comes naturally to most in town. Tragedy provides a nice break from the routine, some might say, though not necessarily aloud.

Gil pushes through the crowd, his bad feelings about the whole episode only getting worse. Just something about it. A little voice inside his head warning all may not be what it seems. Then too, he knows stuff about the girl most others don't.

Meanwhile, the volunteers from Gideon High, they are quick to set him straight on how that Akers boy has had a thing for that poor girl from the second she showed her face. “The asshole wouldn't leave her alone,” Jimmy Alvin says. “I warned her. Me and Gully, we would've put that loser in his place for good, if she'd let us. But she never cared about anything we had to say. Like we were stupid or something."

Coach Hackles knows the kid better than most. “He's got this killer instinct, Gil, like I've never seen. He scared me, I tell you. A couple, three games there, I thought for sure he'd kill somebody."

The two cheerleaders in attendance go along with the coach. “We didn't know him like to talk to or anything like,” the blonder blonde says. “But he scared us too. Right, Stacy?"

"I think so,” the other cheerleader says, before asking to have another look at the boy's photo.

Miss Eggleton, the English teacher, comes brandishing what she calls the smoking gun—a dog-eared wad of Kevin Akers's compositions, all red Cs, Ds, and Fs. “Perverse. Beyond the pale. A gloomy, gloomy Gus."

Only Bette Leith steps forward in defense of the kid. “Kevvy wouldn't hurt a fly,” she tells him, then bites a trembling lip. “But one time, when that girl came into the pound, I hate to say it, Gil, she was kind of wary maybe. Didn't take her eyes off him the whole time."

* * * *

Your Rand-McNally and your Triple A, they'll tell you: On the Katakani, the forest does not thin at the ocean, does not gradually succumb to shrubbery and grass. Rather, it bullies its way to the edge of the bluff, as dense and deep as its dark green heart. In places, it sprawls right onto the face, bushy brows and muttonchops defying gravity and granite. Given half the chance, some say, the Katakani would put down roots in the sky itself. Pilot's Thumb is a rare exception, a weathered outcrop of black and gray stone that breaks from under the forest before giving up halfway to sea and sky.

Kev and Sara teeter at the brink, taking in the ocean, the breakers dying amid the rocks and shallows below.

"It's beautiful,” she says. She's got that melancholy in her voice folk tend to reserve for God's best work.

"Yeah. I guess.” He's nonchalant about a view he figures he's seen a million times, at least.

"Almost makes you want to jump, doesn't it?"

"What?"

She takes his hand, squeezes. “C'mon, what do we have to lose?” The glint in her eye, hell, this girl is packed and ready to go. All she needs is his okay.

Kev drops back from the edge. “The wind up here, it gets real strong....” He tugs at her hand. She gives no ground.

"You don't have a sense of humor, do you? You really don't."

He gestures toward the beach, his expression glum as gravel. “My grandpa, that's where they found him, okay? His body. Right down there, okay?"

"You serious?"

"C'mon. Please."

"He jumped?” She's skeptical, yet he's made her feel like crap. When it comes to personal drama, she wonders if perhaps this boy doesn't have even her beat. If he is telling the truth, that is. Nope, no way she'll budge till she is good and ready.

And then he hits her with a doozy: “You don't want to die, Sara. You don't ever want to die. Not now. Not ever."

"What are you talking about? Everybody dies, Kevin."

He shakes his head in exasperation, and with a move as deft as any big-screen hero, he swoops in low, lays his hands about her waist, and tosses her over his shoulder. She doesn't know whether to laugh or yell, to punch him or hug him, so she gives him a taste of all four. Kev, for his part, can't believe what he's done. By far, the coolest move of his entire life. Does his best to hide his stupid grin.

They are almost to the treeline before he sets her on the ground. She glares at him. Shoves him in the chest. Fumes. Shoves him harder. Stands toe to toe with him, wrists bent, fists pressed to her hips. Doing all she can not to grab him by the hair and crush her mouth down on his. What's up with her, anyhow? A guy like this? A refugee from the pages of Of Mice and Men, that's what he is, for God's sake. Okay, maybe not to the George extreme, but gee....

She retreats a few paces. “I didn't come all this way to fight with you, all right? Just tell me what I'm supposed to be looking for. A burning bush? What?"

Well, the way he looks at her, you'd think she'd just said the most outlandish thing he'd ever heard, as if Bible tales were right up there with your Eyewitness News at 6 on 6. He stomps off so abruptly, she's sure he's trying to ditch her.

Up toward the Thumb he jogs and then down along the rim, two hundred yards or thereabouts. He glances behind to see if she's keeping up, tries not to make it too obvious. He waits for her before descending once more into the thick of the forest. And thick it is.

You don't walk between the trees here, you squeeze between, a trail blazed by bruise and blood. It isn't hiking, it's intruding, and it gives you the feeling this is a place you aren't supposed to be. She suspects he might be stalling, leading her in circles, putting off the inevitable admission he has nothing to show. She's ready to call him on it when, all at once, the forest gives up, as if Mother Nature has run out of ideas.

Kev crosses to the middle of the clearing and the whaleback of rock. He stops, stoops, gets right to it: “Here, Sara. He's here."

She looks about. Takes it all in. The wildflowers. The silo of trees towering about them. The circle of blue above. “Wait a sec! Just wait. You're not about to give me that sappy line, are you—about God being everywhere, in the sky and trees and wind? Because if that's what this is about, I swear, Kevin—"

He unsheathes his knife. All she can do is stare. So this is how she will die. He really is the psycho her idiot cousin Jimmy claims he is....

Kev scrapes a ragged X in the dirt at the base of the stone. Shame displaces her fear. “He's not everywhere, Sara. Just here.” She doesn't get it. “It's where He's buried."

It isn't that she can't speak, she has nothing to say.

"It's why the bad stuff happens."

"God is under the rock?"

"It's his grave."

She laughs right out loud. Can't help it. His God-is-dead approach is certainly fresh in its faithlessness, she'll give him that. Still, it comes down to more of the same. The Gospel According to Nutbar. “Who buried him, you?” She makes no effort to conceal her disdain.

"My grandfather."

"Really? And when did he happen to do this, before or after he jumped off the cliff?"

"Before.” His voice treads on a whisper. “And after."

"I knew this was crazy, but to follow you up here, to let myself believe for one second...Oh, God...."

"I guess I should've kept my trap shut."

"Do you think? Do you think?” She draws a hand across her eyes as if to erase him and with a flip of her ponytail bee-lines it through the clearing for the apparent downhill. Elbows flying. Fists flying. Skechers flying. Lady's slippers and bunchberries, trilliums and oxeye daisies, all bending backward to avoid her wrath. If only the damn trees ahead would do the same.

He shouts after her. “It'll be dark in an hour. You can't...."

"I don't care."

"It's not safe."

"Tough."

"You don't want to be out here alone."

"You're an asshole."

"I know."

"Leave me alone."

"You'll get lost."

"I don't care."

"That's not the way."

"I don't care."

"Stay. Please. I'll take you back first thing, I promise. I won't talk to you, if that's what you want. I won't say another word about anything, swear to God."

"God? You swear to God? Now that is funny.” She slows, tilts her head just so. “Should I be afraid of you, Kevin Akers?"

He thinks for a moment. “Should I be afraid of you?"

* * * *

Chief Boucher culls the herd. Not a chance he'll take this mob up the mountain. He offers up nonexistent leads. Sends teams off to search in places he least expects the boy and girl to be. Wal-Mart. Ames. Playgrounds. The cul-de-sac where the willows grow at the end of Coney Road. Last thing Chief wants is to get stuck searching for searchers on the Katakani. Daylight is worrisome enough; after dark, you got to be crazy. He isn't what you'd call keen about his own prospects up there, but fears if he waits till dawn and the girl turns up dead, he'll second-guess himself the rest of his life. Along with everyone else in town. Gideon is flush on the giving side, not so much on the forgiving. And should it be the boy who turns up dead? Well, that'll be a whole different set of hand-wringing and told-you-so's.

He keeps it manageable: Deputy Fritshaw and that dog handler from Bar Harbor—Artie D'Angelo with his yellow labs, Osso and Buco. Search-and-rescue trained, they are. Osso alone is said to have rescued more toddlers from the bottoms of abandoned wells and mineshafts than Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, and Scooby-Doo combined.

Not thirty minutes into the search, it's clear the dogs are hellbent for Pilot's Thumb and Gil is troubled plenty by the ramifications—namely, all the lovers who had made the leap over the years. Of course, he does not know as yet whether he has your Romeo & Juliet here, your budding Ted Bundy, or your full-fledged Lizzie Borden. Most distressing, the boy's grandpa looms large. Gets word he's dying of the cancer, the old coot does, and goes off the deep end. For real. Splat. Nope, Gil does not cotton to any of the scenarios. He urges Fritshaw and D'Angelo to pick it up some.

"G'boys! G'boys!” Artie cries, and lickety-split that lunatic Buco pulls a u-turn, hauls off down the way they came, Osso yapping frenzy at his tail. They are onto something, alrighty. Not fifty strides downslope.

Gil levels his Remington 870 at the suspect bushes. Artie reins in his dogs. No taking chances, no sir. Wouldn't put anything past these kids. Going out in a blaze of misguided glory could well be the modus operandi of either.

Fritshaw flushes out the quarry, his Downeast twang loping into a Texas drawl. “Put your hands behind your head and come out real slow-like. No funny business, you hear?"

Jesus, wouldn't you know? Jimmy Alvin and Randy Gullickson.

Gil could kill the little pricks. The precious daylight they've cost him. “Didn't I send you boys off elsewhere? Didn't I?” He's a good half-foot shorter than each, but towers over them, he's so damn pissed.

Jimmy wisely addresses the barrel of the gun rather than Gil. “She's like a sister to me, sir. I should be here for her, sir.” The boy is as contrite as can be, hands clasped ever so respectfully behind his back.

"That's not what your mother tells me, Alvin,” Gil says, though Penny has mentioned nothing of the sort. “She says you and the girl don't see eye to eye on much.” If the chief could have his way, he'd take the gunstock upside both their heads. For all he knows, the pair are complicit in the disappearance, like those Leopold and Loeb fellows he'd seen on Biography. Way back in the ‘20s, these sickos had killed this Bobby Franks kid just for the thrill of it. A copycat crime wouldn't be beyond these two, no sir. Athletes. Popular. Bright enough on the learning side. No shortage of bucks. Admired by just about everyone, save for the handful who didn't count. By Gil's standards, the more you had going for you, the more you had to hide. He looked no further than himself. Well liked. Respected. A half-decent halfback more than a few remembered from his playing days with the Bobcats. Yet, the skeletons in his closet were crammed hipbone to hipbone. Spiteful stuff mostly. Mean. Petty. Atoning was the reason he'd become a cop. Until he came to understand the job was also license to wreak more of the same.

"Chief? Chief?” Deputy Fritshaw weighs his hand upon the barrel, eases the shotgun away from the boys. “C'mon, boss,” Fritshaw says.

Gil grins, leaves no doubt he sees right through the lying little shits.

Too dark to send them packing now. Just wouldn't be the responsible thing.

* * * *

Kev and Sara make the most of the failing light. Gather wood, twigs. Get a decent fire going. Roll out the sleeping bags.

"Won't God mind us camping on his grave?” Sara asks. It's too soon to let him off the hook.

Kev hides a half-hearted smile behind his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Licks some sticky purple from his thumb. Fixes his eyes on the stars, the scratch of moonlight—what his mom used to call a lemon-peel moon. And just like that, out of nowhere, the boy feels soggy inside. Homesick for a home he isn't sure he ever had.

Sara has never thought of sadness as anything near contagious, but she can feel his achiness slipping under her skin. Before long, she finds herself asking about his mom and dad, and though he hardly tells her anything about anybody, she opens up about her family.

Her mom had been a swimmer. Almost went to the Olympics one year. Didn't cook much, but when she did.... She was funny too. Real funny. “You would have loved her, Kevin."

Her dad had something to do with hedge funds; she isn't clear on what. Or, when it comes down to it, what the heck hedge funds are.

"It was me who found him. I didn't even know we owned a gun. He was in the kitchen. Then my mother. Upstairs. I thought she was napping. You're with your parents every day, you think you know them...."

Kev wants to say something meaningful. His brain stalls at “Yeah.” What was it about the dark and campfires that caused folk to bare their souls? Then again, up here, he almost laughs, souls don't need much help.

"Right away, you know, people started talking, going on about me being the one who had done it. The police too; you wouldn't believe their questions. The looks I got. It seems a lot of kids kill their parents in Connecticut."

Kev has never been to Connecticut. New Brunswick once. New Hampshire a bunch of times for ball games. A couple of school trips to Boston. The Aquarium. IMAX.

"What about your grandfather?” she asks. “Is it true, what you said?"

"He'd always wanted to die up here, you know, since it was good enough for...well...."

"God?"

He shrugs.

"My dad's dad—I never knew him—he killed himself too. I didn't know until I came to Gideon. Aunt Penny told me. I think she thought knowing would make me feel better. Like suicide is a family tradition. You know, like gift-giving on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day?"

He pokes at the fire. “Do you ever feel guilty about stuff you had nothing to do with?"

"Sure,” she says, relieved the boy has finally generated conversation. His tall, dark, and silent routine was wearing thin. “Sometimes more than the stuff I had lots to do with."

He reaches for an Oreo. Twists the cookie into opposing halves.

"You know, Kevin, you didn't have to try so hard. I liked you the first time I saw you. You could have just asked me out. It's why I came over to you that day. All I wanted was for you to say something to me. Anything. And then, well, telling a girl you know where God is, it's not the best pickup line ever.” She realizes the irony. “Not that it didn't work, I guess."

She gathers the sleeping bag from her legs and drapes it over their shoulders, snuggles under beside him. His arm has nowhere to go but around her.

He wrestles with the dilemma. Is it okay to kiss a girl whose mother is not yet twenty-four hours dead? Or are there rules about such things? Like is forty-eight hours all right? Or seventy-two? Or does there need to be a funeral first? And is there one set of rules for kissing and another for feeling-up?

Sara answers for him.

The girl knows how to kiss. And where. Boy, does she ever. His earlobes. His neck. Kev follows her lead, doing to her whatever she does to him. And he is getting the hang of it real quick too. He's a natural, by golly. Of course, it isn't like he'd never picked up a Maxim or, when given the opportunity, surfed for porn. And how many times has he experienced the same through others’ eyes? Too many to count, for sure. Yeah, he's seen more than his fair share of just about everything and anything. Including a goodly amount he wishes to hell would fade from memory.

Sometimes you go looking for stuff. Sometimes stuff comes looking for you. A Katakani cry in the night, that's what it is. Not loud. Just loud enough. An owl scooping up a shrew. Or your rock-a-bye baby cut loose from a treetop. Mindset means everything.

Sara raises her head. He wagers she'll guess wind, though crickets, bobcat, or raccoon are possibilities. Right on cue, she ventures softly, “Wind?"

"Yeah,” he says, primed to return to the business at hand. But what comes next is plain on her face and he knows full well there'll be no stopping the aural onslaught.

A busted siren of a wail, it is, overdubbed in no less than six-part harmony. Twenty miles offshore one instant, filling your head cheek to cheek and chin to scalp the next. Oscillating like late-night radio from Fort Wayne or Corpus Christi or Onlygodknowswhere, as it scores the chalkboard of your brain.

So many times before he'd heard it. After his mother died, when his grandfather had spilled the beans on God, showed him the grave and told him the story, and drilled him hard on the merits of keeping his big trap shut. After his grandfather died and he came alone. And while Miss Eggleton of English Composition (and abuse) has oft decried the boy's severely limited imagination, Kev's reality more than compensates. Nope, there is nothing limited about the images and sounds kicking round his head. He shouldn't have stalled. Should've filled her in right off, no matter how whacked the story would've sounded. Wiser yet, all he had to do was pitch camp beyond the graveside. Back up near the Thumb, for instance. But this. Them just sitting here. Doing nothing. He knew better. Way better. The Dead don't take kindly to teasing.

Sara, on the other hand, is intimate with similes and metaphors, knows how to spell onomatopoeia and hyperbole. To top it off, she'd spent the better part of two summers with her mom in Galway. Plainly, it is nighttime and the banshees have come out to play.

A mawkish mewling picks up as the wailing recedes. An otherworldly caterwaul that overlaps then overpowers, dull blade dissecting skull, before it too diminishes, one more disembodied chorus to serenade the dead of night.

The crackle of their fire.

The ocean beyond and below.

Mosquitoes. Black flies. Crickets.

A rustle of this. A skitter of that.

And just when you think the curtain is coming down, a phantom soloist takes to the mike, soprano no less, tone deaf and hopelessly asthmatic. Three bars in, scrabbling for the melody of what Kev assumes to be Toora Loora Loora or perhaps Suo Gan, clear favorites of the dearly departed, she gets the hook. God, they love their lullabies, they do!

"Feral cats, they're everywhere up here,” Kev suggests, giving voice to the least threatening scenario.

She rolls her eyes. For a country boy, his guess is lame, no matter how hot and horny he surely is. She rises to her knees, scopes out the dark, seeking a glimpse of whatever is out there. “I've seen this movie,” she says.

Hell, Kev has seen the movie too. Knows the script by heart. Kiss, kiss. Scream, scream. Slash, slash. Kiss, kiss. So why wasn't the girl huddled in his arms by now, all terrorized and tender? “You know what they say, if you leave things alone, things'll leave you alone."

"Don't you believe it,” Sara shoots back, and before he can catch her, she springs to her feet, tears from the firelight, and scrambles to the top of God's tombstone. “Jimmy, Gully,” she calls out, “if that's you, you bastards—"

Kev charges after her. Seven, eight, nine strides. And Sara slams right back into him. Collapses against him. Grabs on, holds on. Breathless. Shaken. “Que raio é que aconteceu?” she cries. “What the hell was that?"

He can spell it out or cop out. “What do you think it was?"

"I'm speaking Portuguese, for God's sake. I don't speak Portuguese. Não falo português."

On the upside, she is finally in his arms. He pulls her closer, inhales the florals of her hair. Jesus, talk about your one-track mind! Life, the universe, and God stripped naked before them, and his hormones are still running the show.

"À quanto tempo não estou cá? Tell me that. Please. How long was I gone?"

"Not as long as you think,” he says.

* * * *

Best they can tell from the trajectory of Artie D'Angelo's flashlight, his head has ricocheted off a tree. The moon may be fulsome and bright somewhere over the Katakani, but down on the forest floor, you might as well be in a root cellar.

Just what Gil needs. Great. Just great. Hell, the guy knew better than to chase after his dogs. He wasn't at ease with this nighttime business from the outset. “We're blind men out here,” he'd said so many times, Gil finally had to tell him to shut the hell up.

Deputy Fritshaw is five weeks up on an eight-week First Response certificate. He's been begging for on-the-job experience. Now he's got Artie.

The Gullickson kid steadies the beam while the deputy examines the dog handler. His nose is busted, that much is evident. The blood soaking Artie's shirt and pants is another matter; Fritshaw can't say where the heck it's all coming from.

"Is he dead?” Gil asks.

"Don't think so, Chief.” Fritshaw gropes for a pulse. “I'm thinking maybe I should tie a tourniquet or two."

Gil grunts, sizes up Jimmy and Gully, his lantern swaying at their noses. He backs the pair against the tree that took out D'Angelo. “Looks like it's down to us,” he says, discarding what remains of his better judgment. “You're my deputies now. But don't let it go to your head. You step out of line, you or you, and there's going to be a real tragic shooting mishap on the mountain tonight."

* * * *

Sara's tongue has run away with her brain. Can hardly believe the voice is her own. She's never been the sort to chatter. Has no patience for those who do. But chattering she is. Cannot stop. The memories are too fresh, too vivid. And Kevin, too invested. All ears, all empathy, he sits by the fire as she recounts the details of a life as if it were her own. From her birth in Salema in 1922 to her death in Salema in 1933. From what? Diarrhea. “I'm playing on the beach one second and can't stay on my feet the next. I'm yelling at me, ‘Get up! Get up!’ But I can't hear me. I can't save me. A bad stomach and I'm dead? Who dies like that?"

"Cholera."

"Cholera? You know about cholera?"

"Nothing you could have done. You can't change a life already lived."

"I was there. Every moment. My mother. My father. My brothers. I had four brothers, Kevin. It was my life, it was."

"No. It wasn't."

"Onze anos. Ela tinha apenas onze anos de idade. Eleven years old, that's all I was."

"And your name? Tell me that."

She begins to answer. Tries again. An M. It started with an M. Or was it an N? Thinks she is going to be sick. Not as sick as she'd been on the beach at Sa—Sa—Sa—Salema. Jesus, she'd almost lost the name of her village too. She wraps her arms about her knees and presses them to her belly. “I can't believe this.” She did not cry. She would not start now.

"The names fade first,” he says.

She raises her fists, throws herself at him. “What did you give me?” she shouts, tears breaking. “X? Crank? What, you bastard?"

He holds her wrists, talks her down. Strokes her hair, her cheeks. “That girl, Sara, she's you right now, but not for long. You're already losing her. Soon, you won't even know she's gone. Except every now and then, she'll surprise you, come back in unexpected ways. Something she did or said. The house she lived in. A face she knew. A few words in a language you're not supposed to know. You'll smile or feel sad maybe. It can be the worst sort of feeling, a longing for something you can't quite place. It's there and then it's not."

"It felt so real, but now...."

"Yeah. Like a dream."

"You wake up, remember every detail, and by breakfast not a thing."

"Unless. Unless you dream it again and again. You take on the same soul, three, four times, you hang on to a whole lot. Ask me about the Merchant Marine and the war and I can tell you more than you'd ever want to know. And Woody Guthrie, I can sing you songs no one's heard for seventy years. My grandpa, he served with him. Bunkmates."

She lies warm against him, her heart racing, wondering if any of this day and this night are real and she isn't lying in a hospital bed in Portland or Darien thrashing through drugs and coma. “You don't even sound like you anymore. Cholera. The Marines. I mean, you're the boy who couldn't string two words together...."

"I never had anybody to share the words with, I guess. You and your Portuguese—if you tried learning the language right now, you'd pick it up so fast it wouldn't even be funny. You end up knowing stuff you don't even know you know. Stuff comes up all the time and suddenly you're this brainiac."

"It's reincarnation then?"

"It's about past lives. Just not ours."

"I was there, Kevin. I was that little girl."

"Look, you turn around right now, go up on the rock, I promise, you'll be back here in a flash, dead certain you've been gone another lifetime. And maybe you'll be speaking Arab or German or Chinese next. And maybe you'll be babbling on about your mother and father and brothers and sisters. Heck, your husband and kids too. Your grandkids. You'll even know what you had for breakfast on the day you died, Sara, but it won't be your life you'll be remembering. All that wailing and carrying on from before, it'll be one of theirs."

"Right. Of course.” She casts an eye to the dark and the vicinity of the rock. “Souls."

"Spirits, ghosts, whatever you want. It's all the same. And the noises they were making, well, it was just them trying to find our frequencies, get inside our heads so they could live their lives again. Once a soul hitches a ride inside your brain, you've got no choice but to go along. Tonight, some dead kid from Portugal got to you, next it could be your mom or dad or, I dunno, Heath Ledger, if you want. The Dead don't have much else to do, God being dead now and all."

"The god your grandfather buried?"

"Not the god, Sara. He buried God.” She's a bright girl. Way brighter than any living soul he's ever met. But stubborn, jeez! Why is this so hard for her? From the moment his grandpa told him and he'd climbed onto that rock and seen what he'd seen, he needed no convincing. But Sara, it isn't so much she doesn't trust him; she doesn't trust herself. And where he's headed now, he expects the notion will take an even bigger blow.

He wades in with what he thinks is caution. “The night before your dad...your mom.... They'd been arguing, right?"

She stares him down. Incredulous. Violated. “What about it?” she says, her stomach turning.

"It was a terrible fight. Worst ever. And in the morning, your dad was at the kitchen table waiting for you. The gun, right in front of him."

"You're creeping me out. You're some kind of stalker, you know that?"

"Then you tell me."

"It's none of your damn business."

"You asked him what was going on—"

"Fine. You want to hear it from me? Fine. He told me he was going to blow his brains out. Okay? As soon as he finished his coffee, he was going to blow his brains out. Okay? Satisfied? Jesus, Kevin, how could you?"

"That day you came to my locker. There was something about you—"

"So you lived my—my father's life?"

"Only enough times to remember. No more. Honest."

"Then you know what I did."

"You took the gun."

"I was stupid. My fingerprints were all over it. Daddy didn't even try to stop me. Didn't even blink."

"But then you went and handed it back. You looked him in the eye and handed it back. Like you were daring him."

"He was always going on about killing himself. I never thought...."

"Then you took your lunch from the fridge, put your books in your pack, and walked out the door like it was nothing. Nothing."

"And all the way to school, you know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking how nice it would be if it were just Mom and me. So there. Now you know. I'm a horrible person, okay?” He moves to pull her closer, but she wants none of it.

"Your dad was pretty screwed up, Sara. He did some bad stuff. It's not a life I'd go through again. When the guilt caught up with him—"

"You're like some kind of ghoul. Listen to yourself. You check out friends by hanging out with their dead families—"

"Once you start,” he says quietly, “it's hard to stop. Besides, we're all they got now."

"What about my mother? You trying her next?"

"The freshly dead have a tough time connecting with strangers. You could if you want, but it'll be easier if you go with people you don't know so well the first few tries."

"Jesus, Kevin!"

"Yeah, I've tried to hook up with Him too. After Grandpa told me about God, I thought I'd switch my prayers to Him, thinking He took over Heaven same way Casey Bibber took over Bibber Ford after his dad got creamed by the F-150. But Casey could never make a go of it, and it wasn't like I was ever much into praying anyhow."

She smiles. Doesn't want to. Can't help herself. “You've got all the bases covered, don't you?” One second, she's hating him more than she's hated anyone since, well, her dad, and next she's ready to bear his firstborn.

"There's nothing harder for people to believe than the truth,” he says, and she knows exactly where he's coming from. Even after she'd fessed up to the cops about Dad, breakfast, and his gun and they'd let her go, she wasn't off the hook. Even in Gideon. Jimmy had told her how, before she showed up, the Chief of Police himself had told her uncle to lock up his guns and her aunt to keep the Henckels out of reach. “Don't mean to alarm you none, but who's to say for certain what this girl has or hasn't done?"

Kev stirs the fire, a beacon of hope perhaps for the souls queuing up. “Ecclesiastes 12:7. It's the only verse of the Bible I know by heart."

"You're one up on me then,” she says, uneasy as to where this might be going. She doesn't mind The Good Book so much, just the good folk compelled to quote it.

” ‘Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.’ That pretty much explains it, I think."

"Aunt Penny, she's always going on about going back to God. So this is it then?"

"Everybody who's lived and died, they're all here on the Katakani—the ones since God died, anyhow. I don't know about the souls from before. But the rest.... And as long as people keep dying.... You and me too, some day."

"Who would have guessed—Heaven a mountaintop in Maine?"

"Grandpa likened it to a bunch of planes stacked up over Logan. They never get the go-ahead to land and they don't have enough fuel to fly someplace better."

"But wait, if God is dead like you say, where do new souls come from? Yours. Mine. Who made us? That's the flaw, don't you see? Without God—"

"Thomas Edison is dead too. But they're still making light bulbs."

"And to think that bitch Eggleton said you had no imagination."

"I don't hold it against her. When she was a kid.... Her father was a real nasty piece of work. He makes your dad look like a 4-H'er."

"Jesus, Kevin, how many lives have you lived?"

"I like to know why people are the way they are."

"Was He just lying there or what?"

"Who?"

"God. When your grandfather found Him."

"You could see for yourself, if you want. He'd be glad to show you."

An ember pops. The fire flares. A brocade of cinders showboat skyward. She is hardly eager to lose it on a beach in Portugal again, but the thought of living another life.... Kev is right: the Dead do kind of grow on you.

* * * *

Gully casts the beam onto the breakers. Spots the rotting corpse.

"It's kelp, you idiot,” the Chief barks.

"A big mess of kelp,” Jimmy adds. He looks to the Chief, takes his deputy role all serious now. “But, do you think maybe they jumped? Do you? My dad says the waters hypnotize folks into jumping, even if they don't want to."

The dogs have been racing to and fro between the Thumb and the treeline. Now Osso (or Buco for all they can tell) has gotten wind of something and the pair gallop off down along the bluff.

Gully whips the beam around to where the dogs had been. Shivers. “What if the prick just pushed her off, eh, Chief? And then hightailed it for the woods? Then it's not a search, but a manhunt, right?"

"Who's to say she didn't push him over, huh? Ever think of that?"

"Like she'd do that? C'mon.” Gully snorts. “Really?"

* * * *

Grandpa. His soul fills her head as a rush of warm honey.

His name is Henry. He's five and up to his ears in life preserver. They are tacking south, rounding Hurley's Basin. Just him and his pa. Sweet kid. Sweet.

She goes again and he's Grandpa now. And he's standing with Kevvy atop Pilot's Thumb. “They want me to go for tests over Bangor way,” he says. “For what, to cut me open?"

"But you climbed all the way up here, Grandpa. If you were sick—"

He hushes the boy up. Tells him he knows what he knows and he's not going through the same hell the kid's poor mom went through. “It's not like I'm leaving without a plan for coming back now, am I?"

"No,” the boy agrees, his head down to hide his tears. “I'll come up all the time. I promise. I won't leave you."

He gives the kid a hug, ruffles his hair. And he steps from the ledge like he's stepping out for a smoke.

* * * *

"You didn't try to stop him,” Sara says, all squeaky clean.

Kev goes right back at her. “I'd say that makes us kindred spirits, wouldn't you?"

* * * *

Gil pauses. Sniffs. “We're close. Smell that fire?” He pulls the Smith & Wesson from his belt, presses it into Jimmy's hand. “You know how to use this, need be?"

"Wow,” Gully says with no small amount of envy.

* * * *

She's dabbled in stuff, smoked weed, played with TM. Inviting the Dead into her head wins hands down.

They're up on the Katakani. Henry, Pa, and his older brothers, Pete and Frank. Hiking. Hunting. Foraging. They've been at it a goodly while when the forest turns ugly quiet. Pa cuts a slow 360, looking to fix a bead on whatever might have a bead on them. “Sometimes you go looking for stuff,” he whispers. “Sometimes stuff comes looking for you.” Sure enough, there's this crashing through the trees and they duck and they dive like it's coming down on them. But it's not.

They get to their feet. Brush themselves off. Dazed a tad, but unharmed. Pete, he can't contain himself. “What if it's a rocket ship from Mars?” He's not so good in school, but give him Charles Fort or Jules Verne and he can quote you whole chapters. Frank pipes up that maybe a plane from Godfrey Field has come down. Now that's something Pa can buy into. They race to the rescue, Pa leading the charge up and about to a circular sweep of busted trees not thirty feet across. “What on God's green earth...?” Smack in the middle and flat on its back lies the cause of the devastation.

"It's me,” Henry utters, not knowing what to make of what he sees. Frank, Pete, and Pa, they utter the same. This thing, it looks like whoever is looking at it. Like seeing your own self dead and gone and fixed to rot. “It's God,” Pete says, with absolute conviction. “Like he dropped fresh out of Heaven.” Pa cannot deny the boy this time. No sir. Because each of them, they know right then and there, without a shred of doubt, what their whole life is going to be. How much happy and how much sad and how much of everything else in between. They want nothing more than to be with Him. To lie right down, curl up, and die. Henry, he starts to bawl. Frank, Pete and Pa, they struggle to hold it together. But they're sniffling, all right. And their hearts, it's like they're coasting to shutdown. They are going to die. They are going to die. Then Pa, thank God, it's like he hears this little voice inside his head, shakes off the funk, announces, “We need to bury him."

He is plenty big, but when they turn Him this way and that, He is light as balsa. No reason He doesn't blow right out to sea. They dig through the forest floor like it's whipped potatoes, fallen trees and branches crumbling as spent charcoal. No sooner are they done, the burial mound turns stone hard as if they'd never touched the ground at all. As if this big black rock has been here since the Ice Age. Pa sinks to his knees and the brothers follow. Clasp their hands in prayer. “Our Father who art in Heaven,” Pa starts. Stops cold. Doesn't move. Doesn't speak. “Pa?” Frank ventures. The boys grow fidgety, think maybe their dad has stroked out. “Pa?” Frank tries again. And Pa, he shoots to his feet, declares, “No sense praying when there's nobody to pray to."

They gather up their gear. Head down the Katakani. Pa warns them: “Not a word. Ever. You keep your traps shut. Believing in God, that's faith, boys. But you tell folk the god they believe in is dead, that's blasphemy. They'll never let you be."

* * * *

A grudging gray dawn seeps into the clearing.

Two blurs streak from the forest.

Kev can't make heads or tails of it. Reaches behind, pulls his knife from the dirt. Too slow. The dogs’ noses are on him before he's sprung from his crouch. Hell, they're only yellow labs. Handsome buggers, too. They snuffle about his shoes and ankles, droopy tongues flinging laces of hot drool. “What're you hunting for, boys?” Kev asks softly, but it's the voice of Chief Boucher that comes in reply: “Drop the knife, son."

The dogs pad off for the tombstone. So it's Sara they're after. Kev would follow, if it weren't for the shotgun swinging aimlessly from the crook of the Chief's arm.

Boucher says something more, but the dogs—hell!—they've turned tail and his words are lost in the ruckus. The pair, they howl past the boy, almost bowling him over. Their yelping, it's pitiful, a snoutful of porcupine, a headful of Dead. Gil, he's never heard nothing like it. And here they come, bearing down on him like they got the hydrophobia. He moves to dodge them, but only riles them more. The lead dog, he thunders through, kicks it up a might, as his jaw strikes the 870, drives the magazine into Gil's knee. The cop, he's going down (the guy's in agony), but the rump of the second dog fishtails high and hard, sets him right, wrenching the shotgun up, behind, and under his jacket, the barrel jammed impossibly parallel to spine. Crunch, the Chief's wrist. Snap, the chief's arm. Pop at the elbow. Pop at the shoulder. And a brawny kablooie of exploding shell and bone at the head.

Boucher crumples belly-down in a stock-still heap and out of the woods and onto the carnage Jimmy Alvin barges. Jimmy friggin’ Alvin with gun in hand. Stunned and stumbling. What the hell is up with them dogs? Jesus H. Christ! What the hell happened here? He trips, sprawls face-first into the bloodied bowl that used to be Chief Boucher's scalp, wrecks his chest against that oh-so-beautiful 870. Jimmy's fists hit the dirt and the Smith & Wesson takes a crazy bounce.

Kev doesn't hear the shot. He never does. He's thinking if only Coach Hackles were here to see this. Jimmy Alvin, aka Jimmy The Grip, star tight end of the Gideon High Bobcats, has fumbled a big one.

Sara takes in the scene like she's seen it all before.

"It was an accident,” Jimmy blubbers from his knees. He calls to Kevin. “I'm sorry, man, I swear to God, I didn't mean it.” He spits, wipes his face. Jesus H. Christ! The bloody pulp, the hard bits in his mouth, his nose, his eyes, and on his hands—he's gagging on Gil Boucher, dear God. Pukes. And pukes.

Randy Gullickson lumbers into the clearing. The last leg has taken its toll. All that squeezing through and scraping by. His chin is cut, his jacket torn, his breathing akin to an Evinrude on the fritz. And the look on his face, you'd think his brain has been erased. It's like he can't believe a thing he sees. The Chief. And Akers. Holy friggin’ cow.

Jimmy wretches apology upon apology, as Sara lifts Kevin's head to her lap. West Side Story comes to mind. Never fails. Tony dying as Maria sings. Talk about your goofy cheesy. She'd played Maria in school back in Darien one year. Had to fight the giggles most every performance. But now.... She brushes the hair from his eyes. “So, here we are again,” she says.

"I told you, you can't change a life already lived. Mom gets sick, Grandpa jumps, I bleed out."

"But us. Here. This has changed."

"It has?"

"We're having this conversation, aren't we?"

"Have we had it before?"

"Some of it, yes."

"And me, how many times have you tried?"

"I've lost count."

"What year is it? For you, I mean?"

"It doesn't matter."

"You need to let me be."

"I've lived the Chief's life too, you know? He isn't a bad guy. Funny thing, right to the end, he's never sure if it's me or you he's saving."

"You can't do this forever."

"I'm thinking maybe we've been going about this wrong. Maybe it's true, we can't change a life already lived."

"Yeah."

"But what about a life that's not yet done? What if I change me? What if I take the gun this time and don't give it back? What if I listen to the voice inside my head? What if I put the gun in my pack and walk out the door?"

She plumps the sleeping bag into a pillow, gently places it beneath his head. She doesn't kiss him this time. Doesn't quite know why.

"I swear to God, it was an accident.” Jimmy, he's like some broken record already. Gully gets his buddy's anguish and all, sure, but there's something more going on up here. “Clam up for a minute, will ya? Listen, man. You hear that—that freaky wailing?"

Sara, she retakes her place upon the tombstone.

And Kevvy, his trap shut tight, he slips away. Just slips away. But never without a plan for coming back.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Department: BOOKS TO LOOK FOR by Charles de Lint

Makers, by Cory Doctorow, Tor Books, 2009, $24.99.

* * * *

So it's the year...well, I'm not sure when Makers is set. The near future. Post the dot.com boom. Kodak and Duracell have merged and Landon Kettlewell, the new CEO of Kodacell, decides the future is micro-investing in high-tech communal mini-startups.

Enter Perry and Lester, cutting-edge inventors of such useful things as massed Elmo dolls that drive cars, or robots that make toast. But Kettlewell sees something in them and soon the pair are the heart of a nationwide movement of “New Work,” which is like the Depression-era's “New Deal,” only updated for the contemporary, digital age. Their work-plan changes everything and creates a viable source of income and creativity for thousands of unemployed.

Documenting all of this is Andrea Fleeks, a journalist turned blogger.

There's a large cast of characters, but these four—along with a disgruntled Disney executive who becomes their nemesis—provide the main entry points through which we view this brave new world. We follow their successes and failures, and along the way are offered glimpses of more ideas and themes than one might normally expect to find in a half dozen other books.

Reading this novel reminded me a little of first reading Neuromancer—they're both the kind of book that feels immediate and unique when it first appears. Doctorow is a writer with a singular voice and ability, producing novels that will be admired and imitated, but no one will ever quite be able to capture the magic of the original.

There's a lot of story here—just over 400 pages—but because of Doctorow's skill as a writer, it's completely accessible without ever losing the dense layers of all that inventive detail. Makers is smart and funny and tragic, beautifully written and as individual as the museum-like “rides” that Perry and Lester create in an abandoned Florida Wal-Mart to commemorate the rise and fall of the New Work movement.

And now here's the interesting thing. If you want to try the book—reading it on your computer or iPod or ebook reader—you can download it and all of Doctorow's books for free at: craphound.com/makers/download/.

While you're there, take the time to read his excellent essay on Creative Commons and copyright laws. I don't know if Creative Commons is the future, but it sure makes a lot of sense, and more power to Doctorow for pulling it off and making such a success of being a writer.

When you read the essay, you'll get a kind of “of course” feeling (much as you will when reading the events postulated in Makers) but you have to remember that Doctorow was an unknown writer when he started this: giving his books away free online in hopes that doing so would translate into physical sales. It's something a name writer might try with her twentieth book because what does she have to lose? But Doctorow gambled it all, right from the beginning of his career, and happily for him, and for those of us who get to read his books, it paid off.

So you have no excuse not to read Makers. Quite frankly, I think it's one of the best books of 2009. Possibly my favorite.

* * * *

Under the Dome, by Stephen King, Scribners, 2009, $35.

* * * *

I was going to start this review along the lines of how Under the Dome is the kind of book King does best (you know, the big, multiple viewpoint, sweeping epic), but when he's on, he's just as good with the tightly focused story that only features one or two characters. The key is when he's on, and he's on more often than not.

Let me say instead that Under the Dome features the kind of goofy concept that King also does so well. In this case, it's like someone dropped a 20,000 foot tall glass jar over the New England town of Chester's Mill—nothing can get in and nothing gets out. A little air comes through. People can talk through it, though that can be dangerous since if you're wearing a pacemaker, or carrying a cell phone, close proximity to the barrier will make it explode.

In the wrong hands, the reader would be closing the book after a few pages, and I suppose there are some readers who will do so anyway. But most people who pick up a King novel are willing to suspend their disbelief long enough to get on the roller coaster and go for a ride.

Those who do will get a big fat dose of vintage King: a loose net of subplots around the principle conceit, with none of them boring; and a fascinating cast of likable and despicable characters, including the whole range in between.

It's often been said that the secret of King's genius is how he takes ordinary people just like you and me, gives them an encounter with something paranormal and/or inexplicable, then shows how they react, how the experience changes them. Some descend into the basest of creatures, others rise to heroic heights, but that study of their character is what makes a book like Under the Dome so fascinating.

I didn't really buy into the reveal toward the end of the book. I'm not saying King didn't play fair—he threw in lots of clues earlier in the story. It just didn't resonate for me. But the actions of the characters throughout certainly did.

And what's interesting is that much of the tragedy they undergo is not directly caused by their bizarre situation. Instead, it comes from human frailty and selfishness, and in at least a couple of cases, sociopathy and outright delusion.

I can still recommend the book, even with that ending, because you might well buy it.

* * * *

Under the Dome has the length of classics like The Stand. If it doesn't have the same mythic scope, that's only because, for all its length, King is telling a smaller story here. Or perhaps I should say, smaller ones. But that doesn't make them any less important.

* * * *

A Dark Matter, by Peter Straub, Doubleday, 2010, $26.95.

* * * *

I've heard readers say from time to time that Peter Straub's novels are difficult to read. He's too literate, some say. The stories aren't immediate enough. I don't agree and his newest novel is as good an example as to why I don't.

A Dark Matter explores the past through the eyes of the present. We enter the story now, but it really began in the 1960s when the middle-aged protagonists were in high school and college. Back then they fell under the spell of a charismatic campus guru who convinced his young followers to take part in a secret ritual in a field that was supposed to change the world.

It didn't change the world, but it did change them. One of them vanishes forever, one is brutally murdered. The remainder carry a secret burden that affects them for the rest of their lives. One goes blind. One ends up in an asylum, only able to communicate with sentences from books read. One goes to jail.

But one of these kids from this group who all hung out together wasn't taken in by the guru.

Years later, Lee Harwell is a successful writer and he doesn't often think of what changed the lives of his friends. At least he doesn't until a chance, unconnected encounter in a coffee shop gets him to thinking again of the guru, and that night in the field.

He didn't go with them, and no one ever told him what happened—not even his present-day wife who was one of the group. But now after all these years, and with his wife's blessing, he follows the compulsion to track down the various participants and hear their stories. When he has spoken to all of them, his wife tells him, she will finally talk to him about her part.

The past is always there as we go through our lives, making us who we are. But what we went through is rarely as high on the scale of strangeness as what Harwell's friends endured.

Straub does a wonderful job juggling the two time periods and the voices of the characters at different ages. Their stories are told in deceptively simple prose that builds in a slow burn to the conclusion.

Literate? Yes, but is it such a bad thing to have an author who knows how to use language to its best advantage?

Not immediate enough? Sorry, but Straub takes us deep into his characters, so that even the ones we don't necessarily like, we can at least understand. And the story is told in such an engaging manner that you just have to keep turning the page.

If you've ever been one of those readers with reservations about trying Straub's books, A Dark Matter is an excellent entry point. And the great thing is, once you fall in love with his writing, there's a whole library shelf of his earlier works that you can catch up with.

* * * *

Powers: Secret Histories, compiled & edited by John Berlyne, PS Publishing, 2009, UK 40 pounds.

* * * *

I made a joke in the last installment of this column about how authors Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett must have had too much spare time on their hands because of the meticulous detail in their book Boilerplate: History's Mechanical Marvel. I could make the same joke about John Berlyne and his incredibly detailed bibliography of Tim Powers's work. But the truth is, while it might seem obsessive to track down and chronicle all this material, in the end Berlyne is exactly the sort of person who's needed if we're to hold a treasure such as Powers: Secret Histories in our hands.

This is what all bibliographies should be. Not dry lists of titles and dates that go on for pages, but the same information presented in a lively fashion with anecdotes, commentaries, and profusely illustrated with photos, book covers, and art by the author, all preserved on good, glossy paper stock to show off the illustrated material in its best light.

Berlyne's introduction is fun, especially when he details how he first became acquainted with Powers's books and his subsequent long search for copies of the Laser editions of the first two. It adds a human face to the proceedings. But really, it's the amazing hoard of Powers material that makes the book such a success.

Not only does it have everything you might expect from a profusely illustrated bibliography, but more than half the book is the equivalent of a DVD's bonus features: notes, outlines, poetry, even a generous portion of an unpublished 1974 novel, To Serve in Hell. Add to this contributions by Dean Koontz, James P. Blaylock, John Bierer, China Miéville, and Karen Joy Fowler, and you have a wealth of material that will keep you reading for weeks.

And it looks so good: from the clever cover where Powers's face morphs into a drawing of Byron, through the overall design of the book.

There's also a three-book slipcased edition featuring a facsimile of the entire original handwritten manuscript for The Anubis Gates and an incomplete early attempt at a novel, The Waters Deep, Deep, Deep.

Check with PS Publishing as to its availability (store.pspublishing.co.uk).

* * * *

Thresholds, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Viking, 2010, $15.99.

* * * *

This is an incredibly sweet book, and before you start rolling your eyes, listen up. There's nothing's wrong with sweetness. And I don't mean Thresholds is all saccharin and unicorns dancing in rainbows. I just mean there's an underlying goodness to the characters and story.

The book's aimed at younger readers—middle grade rather than older teens—but it's been a while since the publication of a new Hoffman novel, so I couldn't resist.

Maya Andersen and her family have just moved to a new town. Maya hates having to move, but at least she finds the people living in the apartment building next door interesting. They wear clothes that are a little different from the norm, speak an unfamiliar language, and keep to themselves. They try to keep Maya at bay, too, but circumstances arise that push her smack into the middle of their extended families, and she discovers the new neighbors aren't just a little different, but literally out of this world.

The characters are quirky and quickly defined, and the plot is relatively simple, though no less interesting for that. But more importantly, the book offers up a huge sense of wonder: fantastical beings, a magical and strange house, and the Threholds of the book's title that lead ... pretty much everywhere.

If I'd discovered Thresholds when I was ten or eleven, Hoffman would have immediately become my favorite author. I know it's not for most adult readers—it reads a bit younger than I'd normally choose—but if you have any young friends or family in your life, I urge you to pick this up for them. You might well be starting them on the road to a life-long love of reading in general, and fantasy in particular.

* * * *

Horns, by Joe Hill, William Morrow, 2010, $25.99.

* * * *

Ignatius Perrish wakes up to what might be the worst day of his life. It starts with the horns he discovers growing from his brow, then gets worse when everybody he meets tells him the terrible things they'd like to do (the girl he's living with, the nurse at the clinic he visits to see what's wrong with him, other patients in the clinic) or what they think of him (his parents, brother, his grandmother). None of it's good, but it doesn't get better. Because then he discovers that if he touches their skin he also learns every awful thing they've actually done.

He feels like he's going mad.

But it's not the worst day he's ever had. That day was the morning a year ago when he woke up to be arrested for the brutal murder of his childhood sweetheart. We know he didn't do it, but everybody else believes he did. They think he just got away with it, and treat him accordingly.

Perrish has been away from town for a while and he's not really sure why he came back. Or why he got so drunk the night before he wakes up with horns and went to where his girlfriend was murdered, desecrating the memorial that's been set up for her there. Or why he falls into investigating what actually happened on the night of her death.

But all the while, the horns keep growing longer, he keeps changing, and nothing is what it seems to be.

I didn't think I was going to finish this book. I didn't much care for Perrish when I first met him and every character I met after just seemed worse. But the writing is excellent, and then I hit the flashback section with Perrish and the girlfriend who was later murdered (how they met, Perrish's life as a kid) and I was won over—even by Perrish.

I'm not going to pretend this is a cheerful book. But it is astonishingly good, covering the complete range of human emotion, often in the same character. I was frequently surprised, and while there are many brutal sections, there's also great heart and hope. And I loved the treehouse, of which I'll say no more.

This isn't a book I'll reread. As I've already said, it's extremely well-written, and that's the problem. The characters and situations feel too real and much of the book is such that I don't want to relive it again. Do I regret reading it? Not remotely, but be forewarned going in. You're about to step onto a real emotional roller coaster.

* * * *

The Future of Fantasy Art, edited by Aly Fell & Duddlebug, Collins Design, 2009, $29.99.

* * * *

With the title in mind as I flipped through this book, my first thought was, if this is the future of fantasy art, shoot me now. That quick flip through made it seem as though all that was to be found in these pages were bikini-clad women (in fur or chain mail bikinis, of course), dragons, warriors, elves, and the like, many of them cartoony rather than realistically portrayed, and lots and lots of garish color.

Rather than the future, I felt like I was looking into the past—the fairly recent past—or strolling through a convention art show that hadn't been juried.

But flipping is no way to appreciate an art book. So I went back to the start and was immediately chastised by the frontispiece: an imaginative and well-executed landscape over which are flying what look like monkeys riding long, ribbony shrimp-like creatures, and I was charmed by the incongruous subject matter and skill of the rendering. I can't find the name of the artist or the title of the piece, but it's well worth seeing.

As I progressed through the book from that point the art ranged from what I've described in the first paragraph to other paintings as interesting as the frontispiece—in other words, the usual mix you'll get in a collection such as this with so many different artists being represented. Details on the medium and artists’ comments accompany each illustration, as well as their contact information.

Given the range of art and the contact info, I have the sense that The Future of Fantasy Art is as much a portfolio for art directors as it is a celebration of the art (along the lines of the Spectrum series) and I can see many of the artists producing book covers in the future. So what if a lot of it doesn't appeal to me? If I've learned anything over the years I've been involved in the publishing field, it's that good, effective book covers are not necessarily synonymous with great art, which itself is subjective to a large degree anyway.

If we consider the proliferation of this sort of art on book covers, current and past, it's not a big stretch to imagine that the style represented here will continue to appear on book covers in the future. And that's not a bad thing, since it does sell books.

* * * *

King Aroo Vol. 1, by Jack Kent, IDW, 2010, $39.95.

* * * *

I've been reading newspaper strips for years and thought I was pretty familiar with the best of them. Even when they weren't contemporary to me (like Krazy Kat or Little Nemo), I've at least been aware of them. So it was a complete surprise when I got a digital copy of Jack Kent's King Aroo to review, because first, I'd never heard of it before, and second, it's just so darn good.

The stories are set on an island kingdom named Myopia (almost a whole acre big!) with only two humans—the slightly befuddled King Aroo himself and his retinue Yupyop (yes, at different times Yupyop is everything from the Lord High Wizard to the cook, lawyer, gamekeeper...). The rest of the cast is made up of various animals, from dragons and elephants, to kangaroos and fleas.

It's like Pogo without the overt politics, or Calvin and Hobbes with an older style of cartooning. It has the charm of Mutts, the madcap view of the everyday as seen in Krazy Kat, and the feeling of adventure one could find in the original Donald Duck strips. Kent had lovely loose linework, a terrific sense of design, and a whimsical view of the world that never gets tiresome.

From start to finish the strips collected here are an absolute delight.

Completing the package is a short introduction by Sergio Aragones and the first part of a biography by associate editor Bruce Canwell (subsequent parts will appear in later volumes).

Only viewing the book in digital format, it's hard to say what the production values will be like, but other books I've seen from IDW have always been excellent, so I have no doubt this one will be as good.

If you're a fan of newspaper strips, do yourself a favor and get acquainted with (or reacquainted with) this enchanting series.

* * * *

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.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Department: MUSING ON BOOKS by Michelle West

Galileo's Dream, by Kim Stanley Robinson, Ballantine Spectra, 2010, $26.

The God Engines, by John Scalzi, Subterranean Press, 2010, $20.

On the Edge, by Ilona Andrews, Ace, 2009, $7.99.

* * * *

Kim Stanley Robinson's books have always felt somewhat distant or cerebral to me, which has made many of them both impeccably well-written and unapproachable. I'm therefore uncertain whether or not this particular book is different, or if something in my reading protocols have changed over the years—but I found this book, while possessed of the former, incredibly moving and provocative.

At its heart is Galileo Galilei. He is both a man entirely of his time, and a man who can think and see beyond it—but only in regards to his beloved science. The book opens on a man concerned with the crowded and financially stressful household over which he presides in Venice, with its workshop, its many servants, the students he's undertaken to teach, and the two illegitimate daughters Marina Gamba bore him. He is, like so many of us, in need of what amounts to a better job in order to meet his many obligations.

Approached in the market by a stranger, he is told of a glass that can be used to see across distances; intrigued by this, he goes home to experiment with lenses in an attempt to achieve this affect. Mazzoleni is the craftsman at the heart of Galileo's workshop; he hasn't Galileo's mercurial insight—or temper—but he has an instinctive ability to understand exactly what the maestro wants him to build.

They build a telescope. But the building is a dance of character; in this first on-page endeavor, we see Galileo as he is: driven by the joy of discovery, the frisson of sudden understanding, the almost child-like glee, and the incredible desire to be first, to be significant. Everything else in his life seems subordinate.

He does manufacture his spyglass; he does present it to the men in power in Venice, and in the end, he does acquire a better job. But this job requires that he leave Venice, and when he does, he leaves his house and its workshop behind. He also leaves his daughters with their mother, for children disrupt his work.

He is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a noble man, and in many authors’ hands, he would be insufferable (and I would be suffused with a longing to kick him across the page in annoyance). But Robinson's handling here makes him human enough that I still liked him while wanting to kick him. I did think he was selfish, self-centered—and he is—but he is also compelling and, in the end, sympathetic. His ego, his sense of his own importance is often the most humorous element on the page.

So far, so good.

In novels in which time travel is an important element, I'm not the ideal reader because if the world as laid out to the point of the intervention is strong enough or real enough, I feel the sfnal elements as a break, a change in tone and gravitas. Here, the break in historical narrative is seen entirely through the eyes of a very bewildered Galileo, and it works as part of the mystery of his world.

Ganymede was the stranger who approached him in the market, and Ganymede is the stranger who, offering him a view into a much better telescope than Galileo himself has been able to build, leads him to the future, in which the moons of Jupiter are populated. What no one—including the reader—understands is why.

But it becomes clear that Ganymede is politically at war with another faction—or factions—of the council that govern the moons of Jupiter. It also becomes clear that not all of the moon's inhabitants are as impressed with Galileo as Ganymede initially appears to be; Hera, a woman who is not part of Ganymede's faction, is one such; she's polite but she's certainly not deferential.

After a glimpse of a council meeting, an interruption, and the awe-inspiring sight of the moon itself, Galileo is abruptly returned home to continue with his work—the memories of the event elided by the use of carefully applied drugs. But his work is now guided or encouraged by visits from Ganymede.

On his second trip to the moons, Galileo witnesses what may be man's first contact with alien life; it is this life, in the seas of Europa, that drives Ganymede to interfere with history. Robinson has done something with his alien life that I think is unique in the genre, although it's hard to talk about it without spoiling significant plot elements.

In some ways, this book is a biography, and the mystery of the future is, in part due to Galileo's lack of conscious memory, displaced by the weary unfolding of daily struggle, the dream giving way to the waking life. But because different factions in the future have different intents, they allow Galileo access to different things, and he at last is shown his fate: to be burned at the stake as a heretic. Ganymede is attempting to change history subtly, to encourage the adoption of science and scientific principles over religious dogma earlier than it would otherwise happen because he feels it utterly necessary for the fate of future man.

Galileo is not a brave man. He is not a martyr. His sharp and pointed defense of scientific principle is not in conflict with his very genuine Catholicism; in short, he is not a man who has any intention of dying in order to better a future that doesn't involve him anyway. Hera allows him the memory of his own death-by-fire by first depositing him in it, and he hurries back to his life in order to avoid such a death.

Sadly, he is what he is; his outspoken, angry words are driven by ego and outrage more than by common sense or fear, and in true Greek tragedy fashion, his attempt to ensure that he is not in conflict with the church leads to, well, conflict.

But conflict continues in the future as well.

A third party elects to teach Galileo the math and physics that will eventually be derived from his very first experiments; from Newtonian physics to quantum physics, to the physics of the manifold dimensions, of which we can apprehend three. She teaches him the theory of time and the flow of time, to explain how it is he can be here at all.

It is in the manifold dimensions and our inability to sense more than three that the life at the heart of Europa lies.

I want to say more about this book. I can't. The climax of the action itself is philosophical in nature, but it is also joyful and astonishing. Humanity, our understanding of what it means to be human, is made moment by moment; it's made by endeavor and understanding and trial; by the alchemy that transforms early experience into wisdom, a wisdom that is earned and not observed. Woven through this is the fate of an individual, the responsibility he has, or should have, to the future, the personal nature of god. And love.

The closest thing to this novel in feel and in thought is Neal Stephenson's Anathem, but they're entirely different works, and if a book can be said, without pretension, to be profound, it is Galileo's Dream.

* * * *

John Scalzi is known for his wit, his sarcasm, and his offbeat sense of humor. Everything he's written to date has showcased them (this would include his blog). In that regard, The God Engines is a radical departure. It is also his first fantasy, although it's a science fantasy, complete with the spaceships and fleets that are driven by the engines of the title.

Let me be clear: I like Scalzi's sense of humor; I like his characters; I find his novels entertaining. They're not always deeply thought-provoking, but then again, that's not always what I want. The question is, can he write a good book without any of these hallmarks of his previous work?

The answer is a definitive yes.

The God Engines are literal. Gods—captured and broken—are the power source used to drive the starship which Captain Ean Tephe commands. Each ship is powered by one such god. These gods have been defeated by the God to whom everyone in Tephe's society owes and offers obeisance and perfect faith; defiled, they exist to serve.

As you can imagine, they don't take well to the service, and there are ways to command them, most of which involve a very special iron—first-made iron, defined as iron which is born in the heart of a star, as it died and strew itself into the darkness. What humanity can produce in its forges is third-made iron.

The hierarchy of first, second and third is important. First-made is the iron that can kill gods, and it's necessary: the gods in this universe are very real, and they are not very pleasant.

Captain Ean Tephe serves God. He, like every single member of his crew—or any starship's crew—has a faith that is not a matter of lip-service; he believes. He has no reason not to believe. God grants some portion of his power directly to his followers in the forms of talents—medallions that confer specific abilities when worn; he binds the gods that serve as engines in their captivity. Faith in God gives God power; it is an unassailable truth.

Each ship also has a priest, to make sure faith remains strong.

The universe of Ean Tephe is a dark, disturbing place; faith has kept it stable—until now. Followers of captive gods still survive in small pockets and something is attacking the colonies; something with enough power to cause doubts about the supremacy of God.

In the course of this novella, Ean Tephe will find out more than he ever wanted to know about the difference between faith, belief, and truth. Ean Tephe is given a mission to bolster God's power in the face of the coming war, and in this universe it's possible to meet God in the flesh—and to begin to question the very foundation of one's own life, even if doubt means death.

This is a much darker work than anything that Scalzi has published to date. But there's something ineluctably his own about the work itself; Captain Tephe is a man who would be at home in any of Scalzi's other universes. He is smart, perceptive, pragmatic; he is, if not kind, not cruel, and in his handling of a first-contact situation, there are elements of similar encounters in the Old Man's universe. But he isn't in any other universe, and therefore his choices and his responses are of necessity different.

And because this is all true, there's really only one place for the novella to go—there is justice, of a sort, in this universe, and it is a very, very cold comfort.

* * * *

The last of the three books comes under the important and much-valued class—in my reading life—of Comfort Novel. Ilona Andrews has written three novels in the Kate Daniels paranormal/contemporary series; this one is a bit of a departure. Not as much of a departure as the Scalzi, but a departure nonetheless.

Rose Drayton is a competent young woman living on a shoestring budget as an illegal immigrant in the U.S., which seems like a familiar story, except for her country of origin. She lives on the Edge, in a world between ours (the Broken) and the Weird, where magic and the innate ability to harness it defines power—as does birth.

In so many of the contemporary fantasies these days, the protagonist is a loner, often a militant one. But it's hard to be much of a loner when you're the sole support of what's left of your family. Rose has two younger brothers: Jack and his older brother Georgie. The very first thing that happens in the opening pages of the novel—so I feel safe in considering it out of the spoiler zone—is that Grandpa Cletus has to be shot. Again.

He was a much-loved father figure, because the Draytons’ father is entirely absentee, and when he died, Georgie missed him so much he brought him back. Unfortunately, Georgie's power can animate the dead; it can't actually return them to life. And Georgie was a lot younger at the time. Therefore Rose is stuck with a revenant who looks and frequently sounds like her grandfather, but who likes to eat dogs’ brains when he manages to get loose from the chains that keep him in the shed.

The second thing that happens is Rose notices what's left of Jack's new shoes—the ones she bought so that he could have his own shoes when he went to school, which is starting soon. Rose has scrimped and saved for a long time to be able to afford those shoes, and she is frustrated, stressed and unhappy. It's not easy to make money when you live on the Edge. It's not easy to be a parent when you're young, either, but Rose manages.

And that's the thing about Rose. She manages. She loses her temper sometimes, but so would anyone else, and she clearly loves her brothers, while on occasion wanting to strangle them, or at least turn the hose on them. They, in turn, protected and raised by her, are in many ways normal pre-teen boys; they love comics, action figures, toys, and they interact like brothers. In other ways, however, they live on the Edge, like Rose does; Georgie is a ten-year-old Necromancer. Jack is an eight-year-old shapeshifter.

And Rose is determined to give them as much of a normal life as she can, although Rose herself is blessed—or cursed—by a strong magical talent. That talent was noted in her school days, and is part of the reason she lives in isolation: She's half-blood, but politically no commoner could possibly have that power, so it's been determined that she must have some noble's blood in her. That, and she would make very powerful babies for the right family.

Since that's out of the question on all fronts—and since she spent a chunk of her adolescence being hunted and almost kidnapped by people who want to own her or sell her to the nobility—she keeps her head down and tries not to attract attention.

Enter William and Declan. William is a handsome stranger with an edge who nonetheless likes action figures and comics; she meets him while shopping with the boys in the Broken. He asks her out. She says no.

Declan doesn't ask her out; he appears, armed with a very large sword, in the vicinity of her front porch, where she's armed herself with a crossbow. She tells him to scram because she isn't interested in haring off to be a noble's mistress and breeding ground, and he tells her that she'll do whatever he wants, in the end.

But...before she can truly learn to hate or fear him on a more than knee-jerk level, he does the only possible thing a man in his position could that would make a difference: he saves the life of her baby brother, who would otherwise have died at the hands of—well, the jaws of—inexplicable, terrifying, and not entirely corporeal hounds who appear to hunt and eat magic.

If Declan were exactly what he seems to be, the book wouldn't work nearly as well—but Declan is actually on his own mission in the Edge, and in the end, he, Rose, and William have to work together to save the small community of people with whom Rose has grown up.

Andrews has come up with an interesting magic system, and an interesting universe to go with it—but what makes this book shine are the characters themselves. Rose is impulsive but she's responsible and she's decent, and I found myself really, really admiring her. When her worst enemy shows up at her doorstep asking for help, Rose can acknowledge that Leanne was a hideous, malicious witch in high school—and that, malicious or not, that crime doesn't deserve the punishment her lack of help will cause.

Jack and Georgie are pitch perfect, and there are some truly touching scenes between Jack and William, and Georgie and Declan, that both fit the story and add a level of emotional reality to characters that, rough edges and all, just cry out for a sequel.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Novelet: THIEF OF SHADOWS by Fred Chappell

A collection of Fred Chappell's stories was recently published in the Czech Republic, titled (in Czech) Things Beyond Us. On tour there, Fred and his wife Susan enjoyed the spectacular vistas of Prague and countryside and the iridescence of the Pilsener beer, almost as much fun in a bottle as outside it.
His new story is in the same series of fantasy stories as “Dance of Shadows” (March 2007 issue), “The Diamond Shadow” (Oct/Nov. 2007), and “Shadow of the Valley” (Feb. 2009).

"You know who I am?"

"Yes,” I said. “You are Master Astolfo. Everyone knows."

"You know then something of my station?"

I had to think quickly. An ill-chosen word might be an insult. An insult could well be fatal. “You are Master Astolfo of the shadow trade, the wealthiest dealer and most knowledgeable connoisseur of shadows in the city of Tardocco, in the province of Tlemia."

"Then you have me at a disadvantage,” he said, “for I know nothing of you."

I could not see what advantage I might have, backed against the wall of a dim corridor of his great manse, with the point of his sword at my throat, and a hulking, ominously silent manservant at his side. Astolfo seemed no murderous sort; he was a stocky, almost pudgy, man with an air of deliberate nonchalance and a relaxed gaze that betrayed no particular animosity. Yet his blade had come to his hand with swift efficiency when the big one brought me to him from his garden.

"My name is Falco,” I said. “I am of an honorable family in the southern provinces."

"You are most likely from Caderia or thereabouts, as I judge your accent. That is a country of homely small farms. It is not long since you left off trudging a furrow behind the larger end of a mule. I see hay-wisps protruding from your ears."

I made no reply to these calmly spoken truths. I was not surprised. Astolfo's reputation was that no one knew more than he and that few were wiser.

"Furthermore, Falco is a name you bestowed upon yourself. ‘Clodpoll’ or some other clownish appellation is your true name. You are a bumpkin trying on the airs of a town bravo and you have stolen over my garden wall in the dark of night, intending to do me grievous harm and to take what is mine."

"That is not so,” I said. “I came a-purpose to meet you and to talk with you."

"Why could you not come by the light of the sun and knock at the gate and make yourself known in respectable fashion? This midnight sneakery may harvest ill."

"I tried the respectable,” I replied, “and your man here turned me away like a louse-ridden beggar without a word. I believed I would gain more careful attention entering by stealth. I believed you would apprehend me and be curious."

He lowered his point but did not scabbard the blade. “So you formed a plan and it has worked as you hoped. You must feel rather proud."

"Do I look proud to you?"

He surveyed me with a glance almost desultory. “Well, let us see. Pied hose you wear and a greasy leather doublet that I judge a hand-me-down, black harness-leather shoes with the out-of-fashion square toes. You very wisely chose to enter here unarmed, but the two steel rings at your belt show that you habitually wear a rapier or long sword that is now doubtless in the hands of a tavern keeper who holds it as a favor to you or to secure a gaming or wenching or toping debt. In fine, you are a hot-blood lazybones who has run away from a dull farm and a phlegmatic, thick-handed father. You are one of scores who seek each year the streets of Tardocco to hinder the foot traffic of the honest citizenry and to play mischief when the moon is risen. This is you, Sir Lumpfart, and a hundred like you."

This pretty speech succeeded in its purpose of angering me and it was well that I had not carried my sword hither. If I had drawn upon him, Astolfo would have skewered me like a piglet on a spit. “If all you say is true, then I must acquire more urbane ways,” I said. “And that is why I have sought you out."

"You think me to be some mincing dancing master, some type of finger-kissing courtier?” He cocked his head to his left side. “No. You believe me to be a great thief, a felon who steals the shadows of the gentry and makes himself wealthy thereby. You believe I have acquired all the arts and skills of shadow-taking and you hope I will impart them to you so that you may go abroad and plunder and pilfer and ruin my trade to pile yourself up riches. You would pay me to make you my ‘prentice, though all you possess in the way of fortune is but one eagle, four cuerdi, and twenty dati."

I was so startled that I patted the waist of my doublet to confirm the absence of the pouch I saw in his hand. His reputation as a pickpurse was legend, but how had he done the trick? I had kept my eyes upon him the whole time. I felt now more strongly than ever that I should acquire his tutelage. “I will admit that I formed some such fancy. You find me naive, I expect."

"I find you backward,” he said, “and probably incurably so. Here is your purse."

He tossed the pouch toward me, but when I reached, it was not there. It had returned to his hand.

"That is a childish trick."

"Its purpose was only to demonstrate how very backward you are and it has succeeded. Now how shall you argue your case?"

Racking my brains for a stratagem, I suddenly understood that only the truth would deliver me; there was no point in trying to deceive or cozen or blind-bag this man. I would tell him all, not omitting how I had rapped my older brother Osbro on the noggin with a spade and robbed his pockets and stole a chalice from a priest-house and arrived at Tardocco hidden in a manure cart headed to the municipal gardens. Perhaps by amusing this Astolfo I could bring him round. Whatever was shaming to me would be pleasant to him.

So I told him the whole of it, even the part where a scullery maid named Hana thwacked me in the cullions with a skillet for placing my hand where she had given no warrant while at the same time I was attempting to steal a wheaten loaf from the windowsill. And he, Master Astolfo, nodded gravely, as if he had forethought everything I said and found it banal.

But then when he gave me a straight look in the eyes, piercing and unblinking, the question he asked surprised me. He gestured at his manservant and said, “What color are Mutano's shoes?” And added: “Don't look."

I responded immediately. “A purplish black with gilt buckles."

"Clean or soiled?"

"A little mud on the edges of the soles."

"From what source?"

"I know not. How should I know such a thing?"

"By observing. Do you not think it important to know?"

"How then?"

"If you had noticed that your own footwear bore a trace of that same mud, what might you think?"

"That we had been sometime in the same place and I might have seen him there but did not recognize him here."

"And also?"

"That he saw me and remembers me."

He looked me over again, bottom to top and back, and nodded. He hummed a snatch of music. “Tell me what you think: Is he to be pitched on a dung heap or can some use be made of an imbecile?"

"If the imbecile be a willing and faithful fellow, he can be of great use,” I replied.

"And the lunatic, what of his case?"

"If his lunacy can be kept in a narrow space and brought to purpose, he could be of use."

"And if this person were both lunatic and imbecile together?"

"Then, “ I said, “I would have not one but two large chances to stand improvement."

"Perhaps, but only if you are the sort to follow orders without question and without delay.” He hummed again that snatch of song and returned his sword to its sheath.

It was this gesture that decided me once and for all that I had come to the right place, to the right master. He slid his blade into his sheath, which hung loose in ordinary fashion, without looking, without fumbling, in one smooth motion. I had seen swordsmen of tall repute, duelists and fencing masters, triumph in match upon hard-fought match, and with all of them, even the most expert, there was always that moment of awkwardness when they fitted the sword back into the sheath, just a minor gracelessness of no importance that was out of character. Nor did Astolfo guide the blade with the thumb-web of his left hand, as stage actors learn to do. Without glancing down, without hesitating, he slid the weapon home and, so far as I was concerned, our pact was sealed.

Master Astolfo, I thought, you do not know it yet, but you have gained the best, most ardent pupil of your arts that you shall ever have instructed.

* * * *

Well, that was a time ago, a passage of thirty-two moons, in fact, and the ordeal of my training was every bit as difficult as I had imagined it would be.

The first task was to persuade him to accept me. I made so many promises, told so many bald-faced lies, pleaded, begged, and groveled so assiduously that I blush to recall the episode and will not retail it now. After that, it was drill after drill: plunging my hand into a small velvet bag prickly inside with fishhooks to bring forth the piddling coin he had placed there, boxing with the voiceless Mutano who always thumped me soundly, learning the use of the quasilune knife to cleave shadows from their casters (iron posts in the beginning, cats at the latter stages), blindfolded to feel cloth of every texture, tasting gorgeous wines I was not allowed to swallow.

Always and ever, I was set to practice with various swords, the usual broadsword, the rapier, the saber and scimitar and the others, but most often and most carefully with that swift, slender graduated crescent blade Astolfo called the Deliverer, which can sever from even the most agile of performers his or her fleet shadow.

If you are one of the curious, make this experiment: Choose a bright, windy day in springtime, attach to a head-high pole a banner of flimsiest blue silk to flap in the breeze, and slice it in two with your shiny Deliverer. Do not mangle it. The cut must be as clean and straight as if sheared by a keen-eyed tailor perched cross-legged on his cushion. This you must learn to do if your desire is to heap wealth by being a thief of shadows.

Of course, Astolfo denied that he was a shadow thief at all, much less the acknowledged master of the art. “I deal in shadows,” he explained. “Clients come to me. I do not seek them out. Let others purloin as they will, I only traffic in commodities."

And it is true that I never saw him take a shadow by stealth except in the process of a training exercise. His thieving days were behind him. Yet they left a long trail of legend that was vital to his legitimate enterprises.

Most tedious of all were the mathematics and the treatises of theory. I am no lover of brain-toys and to spend a long rainy day poring over Teteles's Primeval Shadow Theory or Carnicus's Liber Umbrae Antiquitae is not my pattern of entertainment. I hated geometry too, though I could see the sense of it. If you plan to cut away a shadow where it is splayed across a wall nook with three or four irregular corners, you will be glad to know of angles and arcs and degrees. But if you find any use at all in the worm-gnawed pages of the anonymous Speculum Mundus Umbrae, you are a scholar far superior to Falco.

* * * *

The training seemed never to leave off; it was continual, and part of the discipline lay in his deceiving me as to what was an actual theft and what was only an exercise.

Consider the current matter, for example. Here we stood at the side entrance of a gloomy harbor warehouse. Astolfo gave the weathered, strap-hinged door a coded knock, two one two, and we were admitted by as bulky a pair of dusky ruffians as you would ever care to accost in a greasy alley. One of them led the way through the mazy corridors to a small door with no window. The other followed us. At the moment Astolfo rapped upon this door, I felt the unmistakable prick of a sword point between my shoulder blades.

In such circumstances, the apprehensive body allows no rational thought. I dropped to the floor while snatching my dagger from my small-boot, curled around the feet of the large fellow like an ingratiating cat, and clipped in two his heel tendon. He howled in a tone surprisingly high-pitched for one so hirsute about the chops, dropped his cutlass, and staggered against the wall. I sprang to my feet and swept out my sword, ready to defend myself and Astolfo. I assumed that we had been led into a trap. Astolfo's wealth was fabled and attempts upon it—and upon his life—were not infrequent.

With a gesture he calmed me. “Hist'ou!” he said. “What are you doing?"

"The fellow threatened my life,” I said. “His point was in my back."

The door opened and a wizened, yellow-faced old man peered out and took in the scene with a single glance. “What, Astolfo? Have you brought some assassin upon me?” His voice was that of an elderly man accustomed to the use of authority.

"Look to your man there, Pecunio. He attacked Falco from behind. He is fortunate to escape with a complete gizzard. Why does he draw steel upon an invited guest?"

The old man gave Astolfo a searching look before nodding assent. He signaled to his other lummox of a servant who helped his companion to stand and supported him as he limped away into the dimness. I watched them go, thinking it would be some space of time before the one who had so rudely poked me would be leading the dancing floor in a quadrille.

"These are perilous days, Astolfo,” Pecunio said. “I have made it a practice to hold strangers at blade point when they enter my little counting room."

"Anyone with me is no stranger, you already have my surety upon that."

Pecunio nodded. “My man Dolo is large, but he is not a giant of the intellect. Let the matter rest and come in."

When we entered I saw by the light of a dozen candles that our host was smaller than I had thought and that he sported a hunchback. He was dressed in black, tunic and trousers and footwear, with white laceless linen at throat and wrists. He took his own good time looking me over and his expression gave nothing away. Then he turned to a tall cabinet, brought forth a decanter and three small gilt-rimmed glasses, and poured a measure for each of us.

I followed Astolfo's lead, raising my glass in salute and draining it in one swallow. It was fiery, cloyingly sweet, and expensive.

"It is good to see you again, Pecunio,” Astolfo said. “I hope to be able to do you better service than chopping off the feet of your servants, as my hasty ‘prentice is so eager to do."

"We will come to terms about that when you name a price,” Pecunio said, “for the service I have in mind is but a modest one. I only desire your opinion about a certain piece of property."

"An appraisal?"

"Call it that. I have come into possession of a shadow. It has been represented to me as a curious and valuable object. And so it might be, if it is genuine."

"What is its provenance? Can you not trace down the owner?"

"I dare not come anywhere near him, if the provenance is genuine,” Pecunio said. “Perhaps you too, even the adroit Astolfo, would think twice upon the matter."

"Perhaps. Just what is this marvelous shade supposed to be?"

"Let us have a look.” Pecunio crossed the room to a huge oaken closet with a heavy door that reached to the beamed ceiling. With a small silver key he clicked an easy lock and then another and finally swung open the silent door. He gestured to Astolfo.

The plumpish shadow master slid his arm carefully into the recess and brought out one of the most opulent umbrae I have ever seen. Midnight its color was, the midnight of a deep forest, with the wind brushing the leafy boughs overhead so that starlight arrowed through in bright streaks. There were colors in its deep blackness, a quick threading of silver here, of scarlet there, and now and again a dull mauve glow hard to distinguish pulsed in the general texture. If ‘twere cloth, it would be heavy velvet, but it was shadow and had no weight—mass, of course, but no weight. I will forbear to cite at length the Testamentae gloriae umbrae and all the other beetle-nibbled volumes on this point. Anyone who has seen shadows bought and sold knows all that is necessary.

Astolfo's touch with the stuff was so light, he might not be holding it at all but only allowing it to drape about his half-opened hands. That is the proper way to handle shadows, but skillful experience alone makes it possible.

He gestured slowly, turning his hands over as if warming them by a brazier. “This is excellent material,” he said. He put his face near and inhaled gently. “A complex aroma, but with pronounced salt. This is the shade of a quondam seaman, perhaps of someone who no longer follows the sail.” He closed his eyes and considered. “If he be such, he has fought many a battle and sent many a poor tar to swirl in the deepest currents.” He put his tongue out briefly, tasting the air like a serpent. “I should not like to have the owner of this shadow as my enemy."

"You believe that the caster of this shadow is still alive?” Pecunio asked.

"I know men in the flesh less lively than this shade. Whoever stole it from its caster had best beware."

Pecunio replied quickly, his tone apprehensive. “I did not take it and I do not know who the thief might be. I only bought it for its fine qualities. How it came to the seller I do not care to know."

"Very well,” Astolfo said. “But in that case, I fail to see how I might be of service."

"It was represented to me as the shadow of Morbruzzo,” Pecunio said.

"The pirate?” Astolfo asked. There was an unaccustomed hint of surprise in his voice. “The sea raider infamous in broadside and ballad? The villain who razed the port of Lamia and ravished the queen of the Dimiani clan? If this be his, it is a rare treasure, but its price may be higher than you are willing to pay."

"I have already parted with a smallish treasury for it."

"I do not speak of gold."

"My life, you mean?"

"He is no squeamish breed of pirate, by all account."

"What if it is not Morbruzzo but only some other felon?"

"Then the value of the thing decreases, yet you are still in danger."

"Can you determine for me the lay of the situation?"

"Let us be clear,” Astolfo said. “You would have me first affirm whether this shadow really is that of the man-slaughtering Morbruzzo; then I am to find out if he has sent or is sending agents against you; and then I am to advise you whether you may guard yourself or if you should get rid of the property as soon as may be."

Pecunio hesitated, then nodded.

"If I undertook this commission, I should put myself in mortal danger."

"To which you are no newcomer."

"In fact, you have already exposed me to such by inviting me here."

"There are already those with designs upon your life continually."

"If I accepted this little chore, my fee would be a tall one."

"Your fees are always exorbitant."

"You shall have answer two days hence. I know that Falco and I will be followed when we leave here today, but I shall take pains to insure we will not be followed when we return. Now if you will bid a servant guide us out of this labyrinthine storehouse, I promise that rash Falco here will refrain from puncturing him."

Pecunio smiled. “Of course."

Astolfo placed the shadow back in the great dark closet and Pecunio turned home the locks upon it. Then he crossed to the table and raised the decanter in invitation. “Shall we seal our compact with another sip?"

"I have not yet agreed,” said Astolfo. “But when our business is concluded, a glass would be welcome."

"I understand.” He reached to a shelf above, took down a hand-sized copper bell, and rang it. Almost immediately the door opened and a serving man stood there, a slender, yellow-haired fellow who wore incongruous high boots. His feet, to judge by the boots, must be outsized, even larger than my own.

"Be so good, Flornoy,” Pecunio said, “as to show our guests the way out."

As we followed this figure through the corridors, I was surprised by the aggressive way he stepped along, but Astolfo seemed to take no notice, peering in one direction and another along the clammy walls.

* * * *

When the warehouse door eased to behind us and we were alone in the malodorous alley, I started to ask one of the hundred questions that bubbled in my head.

"Not yet,” Astolfo said. “We shall be followed and we must discover by whom. At the corner next, we shall part. I cross the cobbles to the tavern across. You turn to the right toward the wharf, then cut back through the little passage there and come round behind our pursuer. Find out everything you can and we shall rejoin at the manse."

* * * *

When I got back Astolfo had not yet arrived. Mutano, his dumb but not at all deaf manservant, allowed me the largess of the pantry, including a hunk of buttery cheese, a handful of black bread, and a tankard of ale to obliterate the taste of Pecunio's sickly-sweet wine. While I was making good use of these eatables, he signaled to me that Astolfo had returned and now awaited me in his library, the small one with the fire grate, not the great glum one with all the musty books and their eye-murdering tiny print.

Seated in his leather armchair, he motioned me to the splint-bottom across. “Who was't dogged us, think you?"

"I saw no one,” I said.

He thought. “That means there were not two hounds on our trace. You would have spotted two. You might well have spotted one who was inept. So either there is none or there is one who is sharp in his craft. We shall of course proceed on the latter assumption."

"Proceed to what end?"

"Why, to preserve our skins and to plate them with gold; that is, to stay alive and make a profit. Here lies the shape of things as I surmise. Pecunio did not come by this shadow in the way of ordinary trade. It was offered to him by someone close enough to Morbuzzo, or whoever the shadow's owner is, to be in the confidence of the robbery victim so that he could betray him. This would be someone well skilled with an expensive price on his head. His first thought might have been to sell the shadow back to its caster for a goodly sum and then to renege on the bargain and afterward sell it to Pecunio. In this way, he could make two profits at once. But there may be other motives involved."

"Who is this overly sly one?"

"It has to be an artful shadow-thief. Three well-known adepts have lately dropped from sight. The red-haired Ruggiero with the scarred right hand has not been seen in a fortnight. Perhaps he visits his sullen uncle Pedrono from whom he hopes an inheritance. The canny, silvery woman, Fleuraye, and her carefree lover Belarmo have made off with many a prominent shadow over the last few years. Their latest theft, of the Countess Tessania's shade, has made them conspicuous. Rumor hath it that they now lie low in the neighborhood of the western marshes. Those are three possibles for Pecunio's seller. And there are others, but there has been some delay. For some reason, Pecunio has kept the shadow too long by him. He feels dangers mounting."

"How so?"

"Pecunio must have had in hand a second buyer with a heavy purse or he would not have undertaken so perilous a prospect in the first place. He was to turn it over as soon as he got hold of it; the price would be paid; his buyer would have departed for his distant home place, leaving no track. Those who came sniffing around Pecunio would find nothing. But once he had it in his store he was loath to let it go. He kept putting off his buyer. Now this buyer became fearful and wisely lit out. The longer the shadow stays in one place, the easier it is to find."

"Whatever could Pecunio want with the thing, if not to reap profit as the middleman?"

"Let us consider,” Astolfo said. “What are your thoughts?"

"Well, he is no footpad to use the shadow to lurk for prey at night. He is no diplomat to veil with it the intentions of his words. Nor is he sculptor, painter, or composer to use it to tinct his compositions, adding nuance and subtlety. He is no—"

"We shall both molder in our tombs before you list all the things he is not,” Astolfo declared. “What was his own shadow like when you saw it in his place?"

"The room was dim,” I said, “but meseemeth his own was but paltry, thin, and malformed and palsied when the candles flickered. Just such a shadow as I'd expect to find in company with a miserly merchant."

"Do you think he would describe his shadow in these terms?"

"You have told me that people rarely form true pictures of their own shadows, but he must have some notion that his is not the handsomest."

"His temptation, then?"

I thought for a while. “To try it on."

"To cloak himself in the shadow of one who has faced a hundred dangers in the heaving waters, who has peered laughing into the cannon's mouth, who has crossed sabers with six opponents at once, who has abducted princesses and caused them to adore him—would not that be a seductive temptation?"

"For a daydreaming schoolboy. But Pecunio is elderly."

"Old, and with little opportunity remaining for a life not bound to the counting house, the tax summons, and the accompt ledger. With the shadow folded about him, he feels the vibrancy of that other life; the sounds and smells of mortal conflict thrill his sluggish blood; the swathe of the shadow around his thighs is like the caress of a woman."

"So he shall keep it as a plaything?"

"It is too lively. The emanations will give it—and him—away. But his one foolhardy prospective buyer has deserted. Pecunio now believes he has but a single choice left."

"He is holding it for ransom? Is not that the most foolish of choices?"

"It is. But he can try to misdirect those who would corpsify him and retrieve the shadow."

I dreaded to ask. “How shall he misdirect his pursuers?"

"By employing us. We shall have been seen visiting Pecunio. His goings and comings are watched every hour. Those who have seen us will take us for middlemen arranging a sale on his behalf. We shall be watched even more closely than he. They expect that sooner or later we must transport this shadow to the buyer with whom we have arranged. At that point, they will attack. They will slash our throats, thrust pikes into our tender guts, and chatter like jovial monkeys as they bear away the prize."

"We are but decoys in the old man's plan,” I said. “Let us go now to his rat-ridden warehouse and remove his liver and spleen and feed them to the alley curs. I do not like being made a dupe."

"What then?"

"We shall be revenged on his insolence."

"Revenge will not make weightier our purses."

"We shall have the shadow."

"And along with it those who will kill us for it. Are you satisfied that it truly is the shade of Morbruzzo the infamous pirate?"

"You described it as the companion of a daring privateer."

"Yet I think if it belongs to Morbruzzo we would see lying at the mouth of the bay two of his three-masters and his sloop of war cruising the harbor. He would not scruple to torch this city of Tardocco if he thought he would regain his shade by doing so."

"If it is not Morbruzzo's, then—"

"Then we must think upon the matter dispassionately. We must meanwhile guard ourselves closely. Mutano and you and I had better stand four-hour watches until we more clearly comprehend the situation. I will stand first; Mutano will wake you for the third."

* * * *

In the bare little room of the manse Astolfo had allotted me, I sat for a while staring at the wall. I glared at the rhymes he had ordered me to carve into the thick headboard of my bed—Bumpkin lad, Protect thy shade; As in this life I come and go, The hardest task myself to know—but they were too familiar to have force upon my mind.

Was I really so bloodthirsty as I boasted? Would I kill an old man in cool revenge? I had never killed anyone, though I had broken pates and cracked bones in rough combat and left a few handsome scars on the hides of the unmannerly. But I had never felt an urge to draw blood for the sake of it, even to revenge myself.

Then I realized why my temper had grown so short. I was unsure whether this affair of the pirate's shadow was an actual piece of business or only another training exercise. Astolfo had set me upon several ventures before, escapades involving intrigues, espials, petty thievery, forgery of sale documents, and so forth. Then when things were just coming to full boil, he stopped me off, saying, “You have done none so ill. But when the actual business is afoot, you must not talk too freely or so loudly, you must not be so hasty to unsheathe, you must listen to the words and even more carefully to the music of the words.” And so forth. I had felt duped as a child is duped and if this affair with Pecunio was but another lesson in the trade, it seemed a vain waste indeed.

Sometimes I fancied I could see my sweet and zesty youth disappearing like a gourd of water poured on desert sands, and I would wonder if learning the craft of shadows was worth the toil. How had I ever thought of doing it?

In part, my brother Osbro helped me to decide. He was the clever son, the one quick with ciphering and plans. Something of a reader, he loved to lord over me by quoting some cloud-minded poet or graybeard sage and asking with an expression of cool mockery, “Now what do you think about that?” And my reply would be a shrug, for I never comprehended a word of what he had said. In later days, when Astolfo drove me to shelf after shelf of antique books, I had gained a little knowledge and began to suspect that all those wise saws and pithy remarks that Osbro uttered were actually senseless strings of words he linked together himself.

Me he regarded as a backward mud-wit and his superior airs grew so intolerable that I determined to make my way in life by the use of my mind. I had heard much of those who dealt in shadows, men who stole them and sold them to artists and criminals and politicians and suchlike, men who bought shadows and fashioned them to the taste of pampered women and subtle nobility, men who kidnapped shadows and held them until their proper casters crossed their palms with currency. Such a craft seemed a sort of magic—to transmute a thing so filmy and unsubstantial as a shadow, something almost not there, a thing that was barely a thing, into gold and silver, into acres and houses, carriages and servants. If I could do that, it would be proof that I was not the stone-brain Osbro made me out. Let him poke holes in the dirt and set in his turnips and chop at weeds and counterfeit false sagacities; let him grub out the rest of his days under the rheumy gaze of our taciturn father. With subtle and daring schemes, with swift and nimble fingers, I would amass out of the air itself a fortune as solid as a mountain.

* * * *

After Mutano with no gentle hand had shaken me awake, I found myself patrolling the winding, silent corridors of the manse, listening to my own footfalls over the slate floors, seeing naught but the moonlight rubbing through the horizontal slits below the ceilings. No rodent, no death-watch beetle, was stirring; no nightjar sang outside.

I searched the cellars with their huge wine casks and stone jugs of oil and bins of grain and meal. All was in order, so I stepped through a small door and sidled up the steps into the south garden. The moon was beginning to set and shadows were long and still. The breezeless, warm hour left the trees motionless.

Nonetheless, there was another presence here, I thought, and in mid-thought saw a heavy form bulk over the top of the garden wall, squeeze carefully around the spearheads posted there and begin descent. This encounter was too easy and one of Astolfo's sayings muttered in my head: Where one is seen with ease, Two will be in place.

I slipped off the flagstone path into the dark shelter of an arching willow. I would have been spotted by the thief on the wall; he had the vantage of height. But maybe his confederate had not discerned me and would come from hiding to join the other if I stayed still.

No such luck. He was here among the swarm of the weeping withes with me and when I heard the whisper of leaves against leather behind me, I grasped a handful of the stringy branches and swished them about. By this means I located my man and I had my dirk in my left hand on the instant. No use for a sword in this tangle of greenery.

The skulker grunted in surprise and, since the sound would bring his colleague, I thought I might set them upon each other. Shaking the bunched withes as hard as I could to cause confusion, I uttered a doleful, loud groan, as if I had been thrust through. This noise brought the other heedless into the swirl of branches, and, as he came blundering through on my left-hand side, I kicked with all my might the place where one or the other of his knees ought to have been.

He crashed through the willow leaves, falling directly into his comrade's chest and this other, finding himself so rudely attacked, choked out a curse and buried his fist in the clumsy one's face. If his sword had not been so entangled in the willow, he would have taken the life of his friend. But he only laid him cold at his feet.

He leaned over him now with his blade freed and prepared to do him in.

It came to me to say what I imagined Astolfo might say: “There is little sport, Mister Thief, in dueling a fallen man."

He spun round and thought to bring his sword up, but my point was already set upon his heart-spot.

"Too late for that,” I murmured. “Best let it drop to the ground."

He did so, though with a very ill grace.

"Let us go speak to the master of the house,” I said. When he gestured to the form prone on the ground, I added, “Leave him as is. The gardener may desire to manure the roses with him."

I prodded him round to the back entrance and we entered the antechamber there where Mutano awaited us. He ran his fingers over the big man's tunic and sleeves and belt and, finding him weaponless, led us into the kitchen where Astolfo was perched on the heavy butcher's block, swinging his legs like a schoolboy sitting on a bridge with a fishing pole. There was a low joint stool in the space between the brick oven and the long counter and Mutano thrust our guest roughly down upon it.

Astolfo looked him over. He closed his eyes for a moment. Then he said: “A cousin, I think, and not a brother. There is some small resemblance to the one whose heel you nipped with your little blade, Falco. See what nuisance you have brought us. This one came to avenge us on your trick of rolling on the floor like a dog in excrement.... Is that not so, Intruder? I see you are a Fog Islander like the other, so there must be some bond between you. The only question of moment is whether Pecunio set you upon us. Did he do so or is this invasion a notion of your own?"

The man stared at the oaken floor. Then Mutano pulled his head back by the tangle of crisp black locks so that he must look into Astolfo's face. His expression was impassive.

"The hour is late,” Astolfo said. “The morning slides up the eastward and I have missed my proper sleep."

He nodded at Mutano, who pried the man's left hand loose from the seat of the stool and broke the little finger.

The fellow did not cry out, but his eyes bulged wide, sweat suffused his forehead, and his complexion went from blue-black to dullish ebony. “I am Blebono,” he croaked, “Dolo's cousin. My cousin is injured in his leg and will lose much wage by the knife of that man there. I come to get money for lost wage. Dolo has children, much to feed."

"Falco is young and somdel rash,” Astolfo said. “He has a deal to learn.... For one thing"—he gave me a straight look—"if he ever tries that rolling-in-the-dirt device on a seasoned bladesman, he shall be pinned like a serpent and left to wriggle his life away."

I started to speak but thought the better of it.

"You came by your own advisement? Pecunio is faultless?"

Blebono snuffled and nodded.

"Tell us a little about the old goldbags. Are there any new folk in his employ? What visitors has he lately entertained?"

The islander shrugged.

"Well,” said Astolfo, “I must think of more questions. I have only three or four in mind and you have ten fingers. Tell us about the visitors."

When Mutano took up the man's hand again and grasped the thumb, he said, “I work for the old man, no. Only my cousin, he do work for him."

"Even so, he will babble and gossip all the secrets of the miser's house. Tell us of his guests."

"Dolo told of one to me. Young fellow, skinny, secret fellow. Talked not much."

"Did he bring a shadow to sell to Pecunio?"

"Bring, no. Talked some about shadow. He talked big. Said he had good shadow, very fine shadow."

"Tell me about the feet of this shadow-seller."

He stared at Astolfo in pure incomprehension. Sweat dripped from his nose. He shook his head.

"Big feet? Big feet on a small man?"

"Boots, Dolo said. My cousin Dolo, he laughed. Big boots up to the thigh of quiet fellow."

Astolfo rocked back and forth; he seemed to be thinking of many things at once. Then he slipped nimbly down to the floor. He said to Mutano, “Bind the broken finger of this imbecile. Give him a copper coin and ale to drink. Make certain he knows never to come again where I can lay eyes on him. Toss his comrade into a barrow and wheel it down toward the wharf and dump him in an alley. Fetch me mutton and bread and a flagon in the small library in the late afternoon. Hold the house quiet until then. Falco is to sleep and afterward read through three swordplay manuals in the large library. When he finishes those, take him to the courtyard and practice him with wooden swords. If he begins to squirm around in the dirt, stamp him like a blindworm. Signal unto him that big boots may disguise delicate feet."

At this penultimate command, Mutano nodded and grinned. He enjoyed nothing more than to drub me with dummy weapons until my flesh swelled like bread dough.

* * * *

I rose next morning late and sore-ribbed and broke my fast on wheaten bread and fruit and a mild white wine I recognized of old. The vintage came from near my farm home and the taste reminded me how different my life had become. It had been long and long since I had seen an honest dung heap or one of the ungainly stone barns so familiar in the south. Yet the wine did not rouse in me any desire to return to the ducks and geese, the cattle and the asses.

Only our sour-visaged cook and the other underservants were about. Mutano and Astolfo had departed, though a folded note in Astolfo's precise hand told me to ready myself for another call upon Pecunio. I used the unexpected dutyless time to lounge in the sun and think about a certain wench in a tavern in the Hamaria district. Maiden's Sorrow this tavern was called, a pleasant place for a twilight tipple and a midnight tumble. If ever again I got my hands on a gold eagle....

Then I began to muse more seriously, berating myself as a fool to squander hours and silver upon sweetmeats when I should be developing my martial skills, studying the biographies of famous shadows and their casters, training my eyesight to discern outlines in deep haze, and testing my patience with mathematical puzzles. It seemed unlikely that Astolfo had wasted his youth and money in idle pursuits. I had never considered that the rigors of thievery would so closely resemble those I had heard about in the priestly vocation.

* * * *

This my second meeting with the ancient rich merchant was to be different. We had spoken about it beforehand and Astolfo had given me a few brief instructions. He wanted me to be very particular in observing Pecunio's physique, to see if I could discern differences from the way he was two days before. I was to watch most closely his shadow.

Now when we were ushered into his dim little office, it was by no lumbering, dark-skinned Fog Islander but by the slender slip of a lad who had shown us out before. For some reason he had now painted his face to resemble the sad clown of the fair-day comedies, Petralchio. He was so vividly made up that his features were hard to make out. Most distinctive was his gait in the tall, black boots.

He strode in an exaggerated, aggressive fashion, as if to convince the timorous that he was a daring young bravo indeed. Yet he wore no sword—an oddity. His manner seemed risible to me, the more so because it was not so long since that I carried myself in the same fashion, probably for the same reasons.

When he brought us into the room, he bowed and departed, backing through the door in an unwontedly servile way. I looked to Astolfo to gauge his reaction to this strange creature, but he seemed scarcely to take note of him.

Pecunio offered us wine as before. I started to decline the syrupy stuff, but the raised eyebrow of Astolfo caused me to accept. He was also correct in surmising that the old man might have changed in appearance. He had been no tower of brawn at our first meeting, but now he was frailer, much shrunken upon himself, I thought, and the palsy of his years was more pronounced, as was his hunchback. His hand trembled the decanter almost violently and, not trusting himself with the tiny glasses, he allowed us to take them ourselves from the lacquer tray.

"Now, Master Astolfo,” he asked, “have you made any conclusion about the shadow of Morbruzzo?” He rubbed his hands together as if to warm them.

"Not all my conclusions are firm ones,” Astolfo replied, “so I thought we had best make the conditions clear."

"How so?"

"If I see fit to affirm that the property is genuinely that of the pirate, my fee will be seven hundred eagles. If I decide to find that it is not genuine, the fee shall rise to three thousand."

"I do not follow."

"You may discover that you prefer to pay the higher fee. But before the bargain is struck, I must gather some information. The more you tell me, the more you will have to pay and the better you will like it."

A thin, wry smile stretched Pecunio's wrinkled face. “You are well known for your games, Master Astolfo. Why should I not play along for a while?"

"My best games are in earnest. Now what I surmise is this: that you were offered this shadow of Morbruzzo by someone who claimed to have been in his employ, one of his murderous crew, an officer perhaps. First mate? I see by your expression that I have hit it. Morbruzzo had done grave injury upon this person's dignity or honor or purse or corpus, an insulting slap or sneaking blow or deceit at the gaming table or in division of booty. The latter? I see."

"How do you know what was said to me? Even if you had spies in my household, you could not know, for we were alone."

"Now this person assures you that he is not a follower of the art, that he is no thief of shadows but only an ill-fed seaman who this one time, to assuage his wounded pride, undertook to steal the shadow and purports to sell it to you for less than a fraction of its true value. He wants to be rid of it, not to be held responsible. He has said he fears Morbruzzo will come for it and, having got it, will depart, leaving a lagoon of blood behind him."

"That too is just what was said."

"Let us make examination of the property again."

Pecunio went to the armoire and, after fussing with the locks, opened the tall door and drew forth the shadow.

"Yes, bring it to the middle of the room, please,” Astolfo said. “My man Falco will arrange the candles in the way I have taught him is best to appraise shadows."

At this signal I went about the room, collecting the candles from their niches and arranged the twelve together at the corner of the table where the decanter sat. Astolfo watched me carefully, then took the shadow gracefully in his hands.

I had disposed the candles so that the light fell full upon the figure of Pecunio, and now I looked at the shadow he cast on the floor. At first I could not find it and supposed that I had placed a candle wrong so that something stood between. But then I managed to make it out, woefully changed from what it had been. It was a mere wisp of shade now, wavering, and crooked as the twig of a crab tree. So thin and tenuous it was nigh invisible, it seemed barely to cling to the old man's heel. It looked as if it might blow away like the last leaf on a winter oak.

"Let us look closely at the selvage,” said Astolfo. He brought it close to the light and I saw that it too had changed. The mauvish-greenish glow that had smoldered within it now pulsed, throbbing like the heart of a speeding messenger. The whole seemed to have gained bulk and the thin streaks of silver that hovered there before had broadened and vivified. I could feel on the skin of my face that an extraordinary power emanated from it.

"See this edge?” Astolfo ran the tip of his finger through the space surrounding the shadow's margin . “That is skillful cutting indeed. Falco, have a look. What implement would make such a cut, think you?"

I examined it closely and found no sign of raggedness, no tearing, no place where it might begin to ravel. “I would say a quasilune."

"One such as this?” From an inside pocket of his broad belt with its leopard's-head buckle, Astolfo produced a small, shiny quarter-moon blade. “Of silver, honed and polished in a workshop of Grevaie?"

"If so you say."

"Friend Pecunio,” Astolfo said, “your excellent sweet wine of the south has brought a thirst upon me. Could you prevail upon your servant who stands without the door there listening to us to fetch a flask of water?"

Startled, Pecunio crossed with unwonted swiftness to the door and swung it suddenly open. There stood the slender fellow with the large feet and tall boots. Though plainly revealed in his spying, he did not lose composure. He gave a slight smile, bowed, and said, “I shall bring water."

"It would be welcome,” Astolfo replied, and, when the fellow had hurried away, turned to Pecunio. “The instrument that took the shadow you have purchased is of use only to those who traffic in shadows as a profession. It is a special favorite of thieves. Your servant is better acquainted with cutlery than you have been led to suppose. He was wearing no sword when he left us just now, but when he returns he shall be armed."

The old one gave a start. “What is taking place?"

"Don't fret. This may be the first opportunity we have to see how our Falco handles himself against artful swordplay. He is entrusted with protecting us from your counterfeit servant. If you had told me at first that he was the purveyor of the shadow, I could have saved you time and coin. But now we must see the affair through in a less efficient manner."

When the servant returned with a flask and clay tumblers, we three watched in silence as he poured the water. He was now wearing, as Astolfo had predicted, a sword, the short, broad-bladed cutlass favored by naval warriors.

"Before you return to your duties, I should like to ask a question or two. Curiosity is a dire fault in me,” Astolfo said to him.

The fellow stood at his ease, the slight smile still playing upon his lips.

"By what method did you poison the shadow you sold to Pecunio? There are several ways of doing so, some which ruin the property forever, others from which it can be restored to some fairly useful extent. We must needs know—Falco!"

His warning was timely, for though I had seen the fellow's fingers twitch toward his hilt, I was surprised at the celerity with which his sword was out and ready. But I was ready too and leapt between and warded off the thrust that was intended for Astolfo's belly. Then there we stood pressed against each other, hiltguard upon hiltguard. With my left forearm I pushed him back and then gave a quick shove. He was light-framed and I figured I would have good advantage of strength.

But he was nimble as a dragonfly, slipped backward easily without losing his balance, and fronted me with an insolent grin.

Then we were at it in earnest, thrust and parry, slash and sidestep, overhand and underhand and backhand. It was warmer work than I had anticipated. I struck the harder blows, but my opponent's was the art of evasion and I spent much strength upon empty air. He had a smooth, swift, sidelong motion that a stoat might envy, and by the time he began to breathe a little more quickly I was panting heavily. Finally he made a quick, twisting thrust aimed at my shoulder, and in avoiding it I tangled with a table leg and went down on my back, my sword clattering away into a far corner.

I thought my hour had come as I lay helpless, seeing his sword point descending toward my nose when he disappeared from my view. Where he had been there stood now a dark mist and from this dimness there came a sharp, high-pitched cry of distress.

Then there was Astolfo's voice, jovial and mocking. “Falco, this dueling tactic you cling to, falling down prone, will never be praised in the arms manuals. Why you persist in following it I shall never learn."

I got up quickly. I did not want to look at Astolfo. Instead, I watched the cloudy mass that had appeared above me. From this angle I saw it was the shadow of Morbruzzo. It roiled and heaved like steam that might rise a little above the mouth of a pot and hang there, working furiously within itself. From this shadow came little gibbers and yips, as of someone being nipped by a pack of terriers.

Then with a broad, gently sweeping gesture, Astolfo removed the shadow.

The art of shadow-flinging is a familiar conversational subject of those who trade in the commodity, of thieves of every sort, of warriors, of courtiers, of tavern-sitters, of priests, and of scribblers. I have read many an account on many a dusty page, but I had never witnessed it before. Even in the observing I was not sure of what I saw, only that the roundish, shortish, baldish master of shadows held his body at a certain angle, extended his right arm and drew it in a wide semicircle, and held his hand relaxed with the fingers bent slightly inward. I could see that if I were to try such a maneuver, my hand would tear through the fabric of the shade and I would be holding nothing.

But Astolfo brought it away to reveal Pecunio's servant standing there in a vastly altered condition than formerly. In the first place, this was no man. Her blonde hair was cropped, most of her clothing was in scattered rags and giblets, as if eaten away by acids. The tall boots remained intact, but the thighs that emerged from them were fair and smooth, not mannish in the least. Her figure was lissome and small-breasted but undeniably female, and her face, now that the greasepaint was mostly removed, was that of a piquantly attractive woman.

She struggled to speak but could not. Her eyes were filled with confusion and fear.

Astolfo spoke to Pecunio: “If you had but told me you had taken this woman into your household, you would have saved yourself much grief."

The old man hung his head and shook it regretfully. “I thought it wise to keep her secret and all for myself. I am not the man that once I was."

"Your vanity and venality have cost you dearly, not only in gold but in the matter of your health. Did you not know that she is one of a famous pair of shadow-thieves? This is the notorious Fleuraye."

Pecunio was visibly startled. He looked again at the woman with his mouth amazedly open. “I did not know that."

"She and her consort, the silken-mannered privateer Belarmo, have been partners in many a merry escapade. They have cozened and cheated and robbed and stolen with profitable success for some few years now. Much of their success may be credited to the fact that she is most pleasurable to look upon. Is this not so, Falco?"

"Umm.... Yes. That is true,” I said, and at last tore my gaze away from her true blonde charms and her large gray eyes that were now filling wetly.

"Pay no mind to her tears,” said Astolfo. “She can pour them out at will, as if from a canister."

At once the welling stopped and she gave Astolfo a stare of scarlet enmity.

"We have crossed paths before, years ago, and Fleuraye saved her Belarmo from the fate I designed for him by means of a diverting ploy I may sometime whisper to you. But I believe they must have fallen out with each other now. In fact, I am certain that the shadow you purchased from her is that of her consort."

"It does not belong to Morbruzzo?"

"That savage pirate would have retrieved it by now, wherever it was hidden and whatever the cost to him. No, this is the shadow of Belarmo.” He held it at shoulder height before him. “And you see what decadent state it is in. Fleuraye has worked upon it so as to make it a poison thing. This you can observe in its colors, the nauseous tints and tinges of corruption."

"Poison....” Pecunio's weak murmur sounded like an echo of itself.

"Did she not implore you to cloak yourself in it? Did she not tell you how brave and stalwart it made you appear when she came to your bedchamber? And yet the anger and jealousy that rages within it fed upon your manhood and shriveled all your virility. Is not this true?"

"True as the summer sky,” Pecunio said. “And now, if you will but hand me her sword where she dropped it from within the shadow—"

"No no,” Astolfo commanded. “Nothing of that. I have saved your life and you are indebted to me in the amount of three thousand gold eagles. I shall collect another three thousand from Belarmo when we rescue him from whatever vile place it is where he is being tortured."

"He is yet alive?"

"If he were dead, if his lover had dispatched him, his shadow would be a poor, pallid thing almost lifeless. But it stands in strong sympathy with him. As its condition is, so then is his. I suppose that this all fell out as it did from the beginning because of a lovers’ quarrel. Jealousy will be in play."

Flueraye spat her words. “A low tavern wench. A slattern with teats like harbor buoys. An arse like a refuse barrow."

He spoke to her. “And so you suborned some of his men with gold and they turned on him and you are exacting your revenge. At the same time, you thought to acquire a coin or two and increase the humiliation of Belarmo and of my friend Pecunio here."

"I am not of a mood these days to coddle the coxcomb sex,” she said.

"Yet your only hope to escape the gallows is to tell us where to find your lover. Rescuing him, you rescue yourself. For your other crimes a prison ship bound for the sultry latitudes may suit. But now is the moment to say, for he is after all little more than a pirate himself and his life may not weigh greatly in your favor. Yet if he dies, that will weigh against you. And I think you would not long be able to endure being cloaked again in Belarmo's shadow. The rage within his spirit as he lies bound and tortured makes his shade a cruel garment to don, does it not?"

And so she told where Belarmo lay in the cellar of a warehouse in Stinking Alley and gave clear directions how to reach him. Then she added, with the most baleful of looks, “I daresay we shall encounter again, Astolfo. Perhaps next time you shall not fare so lucky."

"Perhaps by next time Falco shall have learned the proper use of a sword."

So Pecunio was rewarded with his life and some restoration of his health; Astolfo was the richer by thousands of eagles; Belarmo was to be rescued from his agonies. My reward was to undergo more practice bouts with Mutano, my bruises black as onyx and purple as sunset. This discipline for the craft of shadow-taking is a harsh one and I do not lightly recommend it to any of you who may have attended my story.

* * * *

"Let's talk about your motherboard."

* * * *

[Back to Table of Contents]

Short Story: A HISTORY OF CADMIUM by Elizabeth Bourne

Elizabeth Bourne is a painter whose work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. She has done work for NASA and SF fans can find her artwork in Mary Rosenblum's collection Synthesis and Other Virtual Realities. She lives in Seattle with her husband, writer Mark Bourne, their dog Kai, about whom she writes Dogku incessantly; and occasionally their son, who is off exploring the greater world. This story is her first fiction sale.

* * * *

"Cadmium: a family of yellow to red colors, renowned for their brilliance and lightfastness. First discovered outside of Thebes, Greece in 1817. Named for the founder of Thebes, the ill-fortuned Cadmus. Due to their toxicity, cadmiums are being replaced by azo yellows and reds in artists’ materials."

—The Artist's Color Book

* * * *

Lloyd expected me at the gallery. I hated to go. I promised I would. I needed the cash during probate. The painting lay on the kitchen table by an old journal. There was one black garbage bag left from the trash to be hauled off. So much junk. My mother never threw anything away. After placing the painting in the bag, I went downstairs.

It was pouring. I hesitated at the door. Moon-colored leaves from the spindly maple splotched the sidewalk in front of our three-story brownstone. The streetlights made the drumming rain sparkle. Cursing, I ran for the subway holding the painting over my head as protection, wondering again why I'd come back to New York.

I pushed my way out at 57th Street, two blocks from the gallery that showed mother. More running. Shit. Water trickled cold tracks between my shoulder blades. The sign on the gallery door announced a private function. Invitation only. In my paint-spattered leather jacket, I didn't look like anyone who should be at a private function.

Servers in black and white held trays set with glasses of wine and expensive tidbits. Julia Katz, my mother's closest friend, beckoned through the rain-tracked glass. She pulled me into the antiseptic showspace. “Caddie child. Come in. Lloyd's been going crazy waiting. Is that it?"

Julia's pointed chin dug into my shoulder as she hugged me, ignoring my wet. Her perfume, Poison, smothered me in a memory of Julia and my mother laughing in our dirty kitchen, a bottle of wine between them, talking about things I couldn't understand. My mother's pigment-stained fingers tapping out secret messages on the table. Pots of brilliant color mixed in among the food. They were always talking about things I couldn't understand.

Lloyd's pink face gleamed with goodwill. His hands shook as he accepted the garbage bag. Whispers circulated as guests explained to each other who I was. Daughter, you know...the unknown painting...have her mother's talent?...didn't know Cassandra died.

Screw them.

Julia twined her arm in mine and snagged two glasses from a passing server. “The wine's crap. It doesn't matter. Drink up, baby girl. You're paying for this."

We trailed Lloyd to a spot-lit location. He reverently removed the painting from the plastic bag, then placed it on the wall where the lights drenched it. Beneath it he affixed the pasteboard sign, Cadmium, oil on linen by Cassandra Ross. Desire breathed out in his sighs. He stroked the canvas's paint-splotched sides. You could still see her smeary fingerprints on the folded cloth edges.

The paying guests herded in front of the piece. I knew why. My mother's masterpiece had existed only in whispers. Art critics had theorized about it for years. No one could view it unless I permitted it. Until tonight, I had always turned them down. It was mine, and mine alone. It was Cadmium, and it was legend.

I thought I should burn it. When she died, I swore I'd use it for firewood. It showed a beach laced by a strip of water with waves that seemed to roll. You could practically feel the sun crisp your skin. A little yellow boat had been dragged up on shore and footsteps dug into the sand until they disappeared behind dune grass. The images were razor sharp; real life wasn't as clear. The path at the top of the dunes wandered into a mossy wood. It was hard to see under the trees, and believe me, I'd tried. I wondered what happened in the woods. Perhaps that's what made me shove it in a corner with its face to the wall. It was the only thing my mother did for me. I couldn't destroy it, but that didn't mean I had to look at it.

Julia wandered me around the gallery. “When Lloyd told me you agreed to show the painting, I wondered what you were thinking. The painting's never been in public."

"She didn't leave anything, you know. Just trash. What am I going to live on? Maybe this will start a revival. You know she hasn't shown in years."

Her lips thinned. “I'd help you. I was just thinking what a risk you're taking."

"I need the money. Lloyd's paying well."

Lloyd used this one-night showing to display the other of my mother's paintings he still possessed, like jewels in fine settings. I'd seen them in the mine of my mother's studio. The pictures glowed with that unique fire she provided. A preternatural beauty that hooked your soul. A second Turner, some said. A feminist Caravaggio. Her landscapes were mystical. But she painted sensuality too. Julia, always Julia. Made famous in paint. A smiling sphinx. A New York houri. Her lynx eyes holding unknown truths, and with her, so many men. Cassandra's Adonises. One of them was my father. I have no idea which one.

As we paced, Julia nodded to the sharply dressed people, promising dinner here, a phone call there. I'd forgotten she was a somebody. Married to an important someone. “What are you going to do now?” she asked.

"Finish school here. Clean up the house. I knew she was messy, but my God, the place is disgusting.” My wine was red. It was impossible not to admire the color. The color of garnets.

Julia said, “Cassie lived by her own rules. Her last days, she only wanted to paint. Nothing else mattered. She was in such pain.” She drank her straw-tinted wine like water. Maybe it was to her.

"Where are the rest of the Rare Earth canvases? I found an old painting journal. It was in bad shape, but still legible."

Julia snatched another glass of wine. The server offered one to me, too. I took it. He had pretty eyes. Lloyd was doing business with a bald Asian man. That was good.

"She meant to.” Julia sloshed her wine, as if that would improve it. “Then you were born and babies change things.” She shrugged her scarlet, silk-draped shoulders. “She started on the Cloud Set series instead."

We'd circumnavigated the gallery. The freshly painted white walls bounced the chatter of the carefully dressed guests. The noise rattled in my head along with the garnet wine. We stood before Cadmium. Julia said, “When she painted this she was round as an orange with you kicking inside. She told me about the Rare Earth series, but she only painted Cadmium. She got that wicked smile, you know what I mean."

I did. She got it when she thought of a particularly good Christmas present, or when a new man came into her life. She got it when she loved a painting, before she forgot the painting in making the next one.

Julia tugged my tattooed earlobe. “She was a mystery to me too, Caddie. I loved her. A genius. She held nothing back, ever.” Julia scanned the painting. “I remember the beach being bigger. I think the water was more pthalo green, and the woods, did there used to be woods in this picture? I can't remember."

I gave her a look. “It's Cadmium. What do you think?"

* * * *

When you grow up, you have your own life. You don't think about your parent's friends. You're busy with what you want to do. Julia phoned occasionally, but we moved in different circles. She made a name as my mother's high priestess and her husband was important. It wasn't my world.

I was interested in my husband Dev's career. He invested, or mortgaged, or something. We did the things young married couples do. We went to good shows and had select parties in the brownstone house.

When Julia called me, of course I was glad to see her. She'd practically been my aunt. Besides, Dev said knowing Julia and Frank was good for his career. I hadn't thought of that. Julia wanted to borrow Cadmium. She was opening her own art gallery, separate from Lloyd. A display of Cadmium would guarantee success.

Age had made Julia more birdlike. It had made me more contented. I brought her up to the old brownstone's third-floor studio. It was tidy. No jars of pigment spilled across tables in streams of color. No sticky swathes of varnish dripped from the shelves. No conté crayons rolled along the floor, to be found later, broken-backed and reproachful.

I'd had the floors sanded to remove the stains. The room smelled of clean earth. Julia sat in my studio, her brown eyes examining the changes, while I slapped a lump of clay on my wheel. She said, “If you put the house in both your names, he'll have a right to half of it. This place is a piece of art history, you should be careful."

The clay slab was cool under my fingers. I kept a steady push on the pedal to keep the wheel turning evenly. The pot was coming along nicely. It had a good form. The utilitarian comforted me. Julia didn't know Dev. He was a good man. “Of course you can borrow the painting. You were my mother's friend. My husband wouldn't do that."

Julia crossed her legs. “At least arrange it so he only gets any post-marital value. Property in this part of the city has gone way up. Think about it. Are you showing any of your work?” She stood, flattening her dark skirt along her thighs to walk about. She drummed her fingers on the shelves holding the finished vessels. She wouldn't care for my work. Julia loved my mother's paintings. Fragments of sky and sea. Secret words. Splintered music. These were nothing like that. Julia picked up a rounded shape. “I like the female features of these constructions. What attracted you to pottery?"

My fingers slipped into the clay. I spent a few moments repairing the error before I answered. I thought about what I liked. The rootedness. The common voice of clay. Pottery reaches into civilization's earliest moments. I feel I can touch the first people who molded a shape from sticky red stuff. I sense their art. When you work in clay you speak to earth and fire. “Pottery is practical. And it's not painting.” I snapped my lips shut.

Tipping a round-bellied pot back in place, Julia walked to the corner where Cadmium rested. I pinched in the clay, shaping it into a new form as an idea crystallized under my hands. The potter's wheel whirred as I watched Julia examine the picture. An image flashed in my mind: Julia and my mother kissing a man by the window. Alberto? Frank? Their hands smoothing the line of his jaw to his shoulder, down his muscled chest, the three of them whispering, until they spotted me in the doorway. How old was I? Nine? Ten?

"Have you looked at this painting since its last showing?” Out the window behind her were silhouettes of water towers, fire escapes, laundry fluttering like Buddhist prayer rags.

I could tell from the corner of my eye she was tilting Cadmium to catch its glitter. The path through the woods was forked. The sky had darkened, giving the colors of the meadow flowers a violent intensity. There were small animals too. I tried to identify them. Squirrels? Rabbits? Once I thought I recognized a fox. “No. I put it away. I've been too busy for Mother's old things. I threw out all her stuff."

"Pity.” I heard Julia put the painting into the case she'd brought. “Some art student could've used her paints. You probably could've sold her brushes on eBay to a collector. You're invited to the opening, of course. You're always welcome. The beach is gone now, did you know that? I can hardly see it, except in the distance."

My attention dropped from work to Julia. I was ruining this pot. Damn. I'd have to scrap it. “Really? Was there much of a beach? I'll pass on the opening. Dev and I are pretty busy in the evenings. Aren't you taking a risk? In showing it, I mean."

"What color are the Mona Lisa's eyes? I couldn't tell you. If anyone says anything, I'll just smile and make cryptic comments. After all, it's only been seen the once, years ago at Lloyd's. Are you sure you won't come?"

Now I was just pretending to work. At least the touch of clay on my flesh relaxed me. “I'm sure. I'm glad you called, though, and we'll talk more when you return it. You'll have to tell me how things go."

The warmth of her hand on my arm startled me. Julia said, “I'll let myself out. Try painting them, and maybe add some glazes. Don't bite me. Just try it and see. It's good work. Your mother would be proud of you. I'm proud of you. Don't be such a stranger. You're the last breath of Cassandra Ross, and that's a dear and precious thing. Think about my advice."

She squeezed my arm and was gone. I heard her clopping down the stairs, then the dim rattle of the door. I wished for music to drive away the ghosts. How had my mother stayed on alone? I slumped the pot.

The clay forms stood in their serried ranks. I considered them with color. Earth tones would pull out an ancient feel. I wanted that. I had to hand it to Julia. All those years of being with my mother. She had the eye. I needed a little cobalt, some umbers, and of course, orange and red. The cadmiums.

That night Dev and I agreed to sell the house. It was too big for just the two of us. We'd move to Jersey. A third-floor studio was impractical for pottery anyway and the money would help him out in the deal he was working on. We were married and that meant we were partners.

* * * *

There's no place like Vermont. It has an edge, just like blue M&Ms taste better than the other colors. Every fall, the dying leaves shout in my colors. Cadmium orange. Cadmium red. Cadmium yellow. Sometimes I go out in the yard of my house in Colchester, rake the rufous leaves of the big sugar maple into a pile, then roll in them.

It gives me a witchy look when I teach my classes at UVM with bits of twigs and tattered leaves stuck in my frizzled hair. Fortunately, I don't think anyone cares what the sculpture teacher looks like and I don't care if I get tenure, so everyone's happy.

Except Julia. She wasn't satisfied with her “I told you so” moment. She said my mother wanted me to have the brownstone. It was wrong for it to be sold. It was a, what did she call it? An historical artifact, and now it was lost.

Even though annoying, Julia was helpful. Her husband was able to pull enough important-people strings to keep Dev from escaping with every penny, and property in Vermont is relatively cheap. At least it is if you're buying a rundown farmhouse with a sugar maple out front and a barn that can be turned into a sculpture studio. Julia also discovered some drawings Mother made of me in childhood. She said they should be mine.

I sold them, every one. The Cadmium series. For more money than Dev will ever see from the house.

Now I'm almost thirty-five. My vessels, or rather Cadmium Ross's post-feminist explorations of power in a gender-transitional world, which is what Art in America calls them, have their own reputation.

Occasionally I flip Cadmium over. I see that I'm past the fork in the road. The path leads through a field of ripening wheat. Which is appropriate since I'm pregnant. I never asked about my father. I doubt Cassandra knew. I know who my baby's father is. It doesn't matter. He has another family. Besides, I'm a post-feminist explorer in a gender-transitional world. It's not his business.

Gravel crunches in the driveway. Julia promised she'd come see me. I open the door. Her skin has the parchment look of one gone old, or very sick. She must read it on my face.

Julia says, “I've brought you survival supplies from civilization. Decent coffee. The art books you wanted. I asked them to put together a Care package from Zabar's. In the car, you can get it. I'm tired."

When I come back with the bags, she's sitting at the checkered table, sun warming her hands. Julia says, “This is a beautiful place. Your mother was never neat. If something fell on the floor, she'd leave it there forever. Maybe she knew her time would be short. I don't know. But you, you look wonderful. Teaching agrees with you, Caddie. And congratulations on your show at the New Museum. It was a little out there for my taste, but I'm old-fashioned. It was very well received."

Her eyes are polished amber embedded in a yellow face. They glisten with intelligence. She's the last connection with my past. I look at her and see a distant land where two women laugh around a bottle of wine, talking of shows and handsome men while I play with oil sticks at their feet.

"Julia, I'm pregnant. I'll have a baby in the spring. I've stopped work, for the baby, you know, because of the chemicals. I'm blogging and thinking about some big projects after he or she is born. Maybe some earthworks. Maybe something conceptual."

A shadow crosses Julia's face. “Wonderful news, Caddie. Wonderful. I'm happy for you. The father?"

I brush the air. “Who needs fathers? Where was my father?"

Julia closes her eyes. “The painting? Do you still have Cadmium?"

I take her hand. “Come with me."

We go upstairs to the baby's room. I hired my neighbor, Felix, who's a carpenter, to build me a custom crib from native birch. It glows pale gold in the afternoon sun. Cadmium hangs above it squarely in the light from the bedroom window. In the landscape the beach is invisible. The woods are a green haze on the horizon. Glorious butterflies speckle the field. Rising cumulous clouds give a late-summer air.

Julia covers her mouth. “My God, I knew it was true."

"She never left me.” I place my acid-stained hand on my belly. “Just as I'll never leave my baby. She put herself into Cadmium. At first I was angry with her. I didn't think she loved me. Not like she did you. I didn't understand. I was wrong. She's been with me every step of the way. That's why she never finished the rest of the Rare Earth series."

"I'm so sorry.” Julia's eyes redden. “I'm dying. They say there's nothing they can do. Caddie, I'm so sorry."

She sat in the rocking chair I'd bought for me and the baby. “I loved your mother, from the second we met at art school. We connected, like magnets. Cassie believed that an artist was her art. It wasn't just form and color, painting was life. It was breath itself.

"I told her to wear gloves, wear a mask, stop mixing her paint. She swore that grinding her own pigment was the only way to get such colors. I'll never forget the day she showed me some sapphires she bought, sapphires, for God's sake! She ground them down for a particular blue. Her methods killed her. They killed her baby."

Lightheaded, I sat on the little stool I'd put in the room. “What do you mean?"

"We both got pregnant. It was okay, until Frank wanted to marry me. He said my baby had to go. Instead, I moved in with Cassie.

"She was working on the Rare Earth series. She lived it. You know what she was like. She became covered with paint and pigment. She was more color than woman. Cassie obsessed over her work. She painted Cadmium first, while I watched, both of us big as houses. One day her baby stopped moving. She went crazy. She painted Cobalt. She painted Viridian. It was a compulsion. She knew the baby was dead. Finally I got her drunk. Frank helped me take her to a hospital so it would be over. The stress put me into labor."

Tears stream down my cheeks. My fingernails carve half moons into my palms. “And the baby?"

"She worked with that dead thing inside. It had been gone for a long time, poisoning her mind. I gave her you. Cadmium. Frank and I married. He bought her that brownstone."

"My father?"

Julia's yellow skin stretches over the bones of her face. Her lips tighten. Some things would not be spoken. “We were wild."

"The paintings? Viridian, Cobalt?"

Now she weeps. “They were terrible pictures. No one could bear to look at them, to see what it was she saw. I burned them. It's better they're gone."

My face is wet. I try to feel pity for the dying woman across from me. I can't feel anything like that. “Get out.” I press my palms into my eyes until I see crimson.

I hear the chair creak as Julia pushes herself up. “I'm sorry. The child broke me. We kept our secret. Your baby will never need anything. I'll see to it. I always have."

Through the window, the late-afternoon light infuses the leaves with color. Cadmium orange, cadmium red, cadmium yellow. The house gets cold.

Things will be different for me. My knees creak as I stand. The doctor said my joints would loosen. The last light dances across the painting. It's changed. A viridian sea shimmers against the cobalt sky. A cadmium yellow boat sails against the waves. I can't tell where it's going. White gulls dot the waves. From the empty shoreline an untrodden path leads through a tangled landscape.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Short Story: THE REAL MARTIAN CHRONICLES by John Sladek

(with apologies to George and Weedon Grossmith)

The late John Sladek (1937-2000) was one of the greatest parodists ever to work in the SF field. Your editor has it on good authority that Philip Dick's reaction on reading Sladek's “Solar Shoe Salesman” was to say, “Not bad. I wouldn't mind putting my name to that story.” We're happy to bring you a bit of high silliness now that was recently discovered in his papers.

Monday:

We spent the whole day unpacking our tea chests. Everyone seems to have suffered some loss: Edna found her grandmother's teapot smashed. I noticed that my musical saw was missing—no doubt stolen by the so-called workers of Botmore's Interplanetary Removals, PLC. Peregrine, our oldest, missed his acne medicine and his collection of early Bananarama records. The twins, Mandy and Jason, accuse me of having packed only one of the table tennis paddles. By the end of the day, we were all in a bad mood, discouraged. What a way to start off in our new home.

The landscape does not help. All those beautiful red mountains with pink streaks may look lovely in the brochure, but in reality they look ugly and lumpy. Like upended baboons’ arses, Edna remarked. I agreed, and added that the big volcanic one reminded me of a baboon with piles.

She said there was no need to be vulgar. If I was going to start making crude jokes in front of the children, I could just pack my musical saw and go back to Earth. I said that I sincerely wished I could do just that. There were some tense moments and a few exchanges of harsh words.

Still, we managed to get a fire going in the barbecue set, and after a supper of beans on toast followed by Instant Whip, we all felt much better. I called a family council round the smouldering fire.

"After all,” I said, “things aren't so bad. We've got tools, we can always make new paddles for the table tennis. We've got glue, we can mend the teapot. There are probably natural acne cures all about us, if only we look for them. I expect I can always order a new musical saw. So chin up, everyone."

Peregrine sulked. “What about my records?"

I opined that such music was bad for his character anyway.

Everyone else brightened up. The twins went off to look for an acne cure, they said, and Jason fell into the canal. Must get some swimming lessons organized.

* * * *

Tuesday:

The neighbours came to help us put up our new home. None too soon for me. Last night I discovered that Mars is alive with insect life, much of it blood-sucking. We've all got mosquito-like bites. It's a mystery to me what all these mosquitoes lived on before people came here.

Putting up a new home here is easier than it sounds, because virtually everything is prefabricated and self-raising. Still, our neighbours did help screw on the coach-lamps and install the musical door chimes. Everyone hereabouts seems to have these chimes. They can be programmed to play any one of a hundred popular tunes, but for some reason, everyone seems to prefer “Loch Lomond.” Not us. I've decided we'll have something quite different, “Colonel Bogey."

The neighbours are not all we'd hoped. There are Dick and Ida Twain, both of whom sell insurance, and their surly son, Zero. Zero is just Peregrine's age, but somehow I don't think they'll be friends. Perry is a bright, honest lad interested in hundreds of things—model aeroplanes, the Scouts, train-spotting—while Zero is a shifty, seedy lout who seems to have but one interest, working on his hideous American car. He has dirty fingernails, and I would not be surprised to learn that he smokes.

Then there are the Bleriots, Jack and Jenny. He works for the government, monitoring religious broadcasting I believe. She's a guide on canal tours. They both seem very cheerful, good-natured people. Almost too much so. I wonder if they drink in secret.

There is also an older couple, Harold and Denise Pratt. They run a novelty and gift shop, or should I say shoppe, in the High Street. Harold has evidently never got over being in the service. He asks everyone to call him Wing Commander, and he's very keen on civil defence. Offered to help us plan our shelter.

I declined politely, saying we had quite enough to do without worrying about that. For one thing I had to teach the kids to swim. Jason fell into the canal again today. I don't see why the council can't put up a fence or something—what do we pay rates for?

Wing Commander Pratt persisted, however. I let him go on about his shelters for a few minutes, then I said, “If they ever do bomb Mars—which I very much doubt—I just hope I am squarely in the middle of it, at Ground Zero. Who wants to survive a thing like that?"

The Pratts went off in a huff. I wonder if it was they who nipped into our larder and made off with half a dozen fresh eggs and a tin of salmon. Someone did.

* * * *

Wednesday:

Jack Bleriot came over to help us set out the roses and the gnomes. He said, “A word to the wise, squire. Lock up your larder. Certain items are worth their weight in radium out here you know."

"Like eggs?” I said, at once on my guard. “Like tinned salmon?"

"Right. Tin of salmon fetches fifty quid on the black market these days—pilchards even more. Pineapple chunks are very buoyant too, ditto Marmite-flavored crisps. Ditto Boots beer kits."

"Really?” I said coldly.

"As for custard powder, you can name your own price, squire."

I said, “You seem to know all about it."

"Everyone does. You will too, once you've been here a few months. Oh and by the way, if you have a lot of duty-free to unload, just say the word."

"A lot of duty-free?” I was surprised at the idea. “Of course not. We brought only our legal limit—two bottles of South African sherry, twenty Peter Stuyvesants and a pair of Levi-style jeans made in Russia."

He groaned. “They never check, you know. You could have got away with a couple of cases of Hong Kong scotch, anyway."

I was about to explain that I have never in my life found it necessary to “get away” with anything, nor break the rules of my King and Country. Indeed, I was the last person on Earth to continue paying his TV licence.

But I said nothing, because at that moment I was called away to fish Mandy out of the canal.

* * * *

Thursday:

Peregrine is spending a lot of time with Zero Twain, though they obviously have nothing in common. The two of them spend hours pottering about with Zero's huge, vulgar American car. It's pink and purple and covered with chromium gewgaws, and when they start it up, the noise is equally hideous. I can't think what Perry gets out of it. He seems to have lost all interest in the Scouts. If only we had some trains he could spot! I'm worried about the lad.

Mending the coronation teapot turns out to be a tougher task than I'd anticipated. It's been in the family for generations—dates clear back to the coronation of Charles III. We used to have the set of assassination mugs to go with it, but they all got chipped and I threw them out before they could harbour any germs. Later I learned that even chipped mugs were worth a small fortune. So it goes.

After a few hours of failing to mend the pot, I took it round to the Pratts’ shoppe. Denise Pratt promised to try mending it.

"Splendid,” I said. “If you succeed, you might even try selling it for us, in your shoppe."

"The e isn't pronounced,” she said. “It's just ‘shop.’”

"I know that,” I was about to say, when she moved off to wait on another customer looking for Toby jug. Denise Pratt seems to have no sense of humour at all. Her husband, the Wing Commander, popped his head in, saw me and waved.

"Ah, there you are, Broxbum. Been meaning to show you my shelter. May as well have a squint at it while you're here. Here, give me a hand with this case of tins, will you?"

I helped him carry the case down the ladder into a stuffy little cellar. “It's very heavy,” I said. “'What is it?"

"Water. Got it cheap, old man. Yank surplus, they practically give the stuff away.” I thought the idea of paying anything for water slightly risible, but said nothing.

The dank little cellar turned out to be his shelter. It was equipped with folding cots, shelves, a radio, a chemical toilet and an enormous supply of toilet rolls. There was plenty of tinned food on the shelves, but no sign of my tinned salmon.

"I see you're fond of pineapple chunks,” I said.

"They cost a pretty penny, old man, but it's well worth it. If only I could lay hands on some custard powder....” He mused for a moment, then continued the guided tour, showing me an exercise bicycle, some handcuffs and sexual paraphernalia, which included several inflatable friends and a Teasmade.

* * * *

Friday:

Started my new job here as deputy assistant head controller in Department M/H/112. What we are actually doing—though I violate the Official Secrets Act by writing it down here—we are designing a new set of postal codes for Mars. So far the Department has only got as far as M4Q H11R 16JKP small-a/7, not very far at all. I've been brought in to speed things along. The extra letters aren't actually necessary, but they do help create jobs at the post office.

* * * *

Saturday:

My first day of rest. Took the family on a narrow boat along the Grand Martian Canal up as far as Baboon Piles Mountain. Had a quarrel with some ass at the lock. He kept insisting his boat had a right to go first just because it had arrived a few minutes before us. I pointed out that a narrow boat surely takes precedence over a hired rowboat. The man was completely unreasonable, so finally I let him have his childish way. Mandy fell into the water once, Jason twice, me once. Later we stopped for a cream tea—rather expensive for tinned cream, I thought—and we came home tired, sunburnt, mosquito-bitten, but happy.

* * * *

Sunday:

No eggs for breakfast, because someone broke into our larder during the night and stole the last few. They also took our bottles of South African sherry, to our secret relief.

Peregrine talks of giving up school and buying an old American car to work on. I tried to turn the conversation to O-levels and his future. Gave up, finally, and instead read my way through a Rupert Murdoch Sunday paper. What a mess the Solar System is in! I considered writing a letter to the editor, asking why his paper can't print some good news, something positive for a change.

"Colonel Bogey” pierces my reverie. Two Jehovah's Witnesses at the door. I tell them politely that I am Church of Mars. After they go, I decide to change the door chime. “Loch Lomond” really does sound better.

Back to the Sunday paper, I read a fascinating memoir by Virginia Sackville-West's maid's great-niece. Perhaps one day these humble jottings of my own will also find such immortality....

Found the musical saw! It was in with the Christmas things, the crackers and packets of marzipan. I tune up, as the sun sinks behind the B.A.Mountains, and I play some eerie “Martian Chronicles” music. When I stop there's not a sound, nothing but the distant splash of one of the twins, falling in.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Novelet: DR. DEATH VS. THE VAMPIRE by Aaron Schutz

THE UNWASHED MASSES

Aaron Schutz grew up in Oregon and was always fascinated by the desert there. These days, he lives in Milwaukee, where he chairs the Department of Educational Policy and Community Studies at the University of Wisconsin. He says he wrote the first draft of this story three years ago over a sleep-deprived Labor Day weekend for a novel-writing contest. It was his final writing jag before adopting his children, Hiwot and Sheta. After the craziness of going from zero kids to two subsided a bit, he found that within the novel draft lay a full-fledged novelet. Mr. Schutz notes also that his family thought he was crazy when he said he'd be riding home from vacation on a bus instead of driving. You can judge for yourself if his research was fruitful.

The steady knocking of my head against the metal frame of the bus window woke me from a troubled sleep. Pushing back against the bulk of my seatmate, I struggled to find a more comfortable position. For a moment I didn't know where I was, gazing blearily out at the desolate landscape. The sun hung low in the sky like the end of a smoldering brazing rod. Even through tinted glass, in the rattle of our air-conditioned box, I sensed the heat. Rolling hills of hard-packed earth and gray-green sage swept by, broken here and there by the upthrust of red sandstone cliffs. Lonely junipers hunched above the sage like hags. I had left the lush Columbia River forests behind as I slept and descended into the starkly beautiful hell of the Eastern Oregon desert.

What a mess.

Shifting uncomfortably again, I let my head fall back on the headrest. First class, that's what I like—not that I can ever afford it. I can't ever quite get used to the stink of the bus: cheap beer, greasy chips, and generic cigarettes overlaid with a spicy tang of body odor. Every bump in the road shook my queasy stomach and set aluminum seat posts chittering. My ears recoiled against the diesel rumble of the engine, the low mumble of conversations, and the tinny thump of deafness-inducing teenage music seeping around plastic earbuds. A woman in the seat behind me was arguing with someone on a cell phone in an acrid streak of Spanish expletives, but I controlled the urge to tell her to shut her face. At least the fat kid in the seat next to me had finally fallen asleep, snoring quietly.

Buses are the last refuge of the lost and the downtrodden. Long-haul bus riders are the excrement on the boots of society. Army grunts on leave press in with polite migrant workers in dirty boots and too-clean cheap shirts; single mothers with snotty griping kids annoy old ladies on a last trip to visit their dying brothers; criminals on the lam try to pick up cute college kids; all interspersed with a smattering of almost normal folks who'd waited too long to take the plane. You probably wouldn't pay much attention. But I'm a sensitive guy, you see. This time, the fat kid cut the edge a bit, but it was still horrible.

I stay away from drugs mostly, although an occasional toke or a pink tab of Klonopin can be nice. Addiction for someone like me always lurks just ahead in the fog. In any case, I wasn't entirely sure I'd made a clean break from trouble in Portland, and I couldn't afford to be less than one hundred percent.

But I was prepared, as always. Painfully, I managed to force my arm down to the battered leather valise between my legs. Rummaging around in the carefully ordered velcroed pill bottles and vials and assorted tools of the trade, I located a strip of Bonine tablets and a little bottle of ibuprofen. Dry-swallowing the pills, I took a risk, stripping the surgical gloves from my clammy hands for a while. Then I flopped back to try to get a little more sleep.

But I had woken the fat kid. “Hey, mister,” he said loudly, making me cringe. I didn't answer. I didn't want to encourage him. “Wow,” he said, pressing down on me as he leaned over and looked through the window. “That's really hot out there, huh, Mister?” Then, thankfully, he went back to his Dean Koontz book. But since he had apparently never learned to read silently, I was treated yet again to a mumbling rendition of the latest chapter with the occasional laugh or belch or liquid chomping on his apparently endless supply of red ropes. Every once in a while he'd look up to say, “This is really a good part,” or “Boy, this is good, ain't it?"

The trick to having a seat to yourself, usually, is to pile your stuff into the seat next to you and then pretend you are asleep. It also helps to look a little scruffy, and I'd rubbed some dirt into my face and mussed up my hair before I got on. So when the driver hissed the door closed after the final boarder, I figured I was home free. I wasn't paying attention, eyes closed, letting the complex sensations of the other riders around me wash through my body as the kid—he couldn't have been more than fifteen—lumbered down the aisle toward me.

"Mister?” he had asked, “Mister, can I have that seat?” When I didn't respond, he just picked up my valise and dropped it into my lap. “Thanks, Mister,” he said, wedging himself in, managing to thump me in the face with one of his balloon-man arms before I could do more than yelp.

"Hey!” I complained.

But he just came back with a friendly, “Hi, Mister.” Digging into the stained nylon knapsack now perched on his stomach, he pulled out a thick battered paperback, and waved it in front of my face.

"D'ya like Dean Koontz, Mister?” he asked, and then yanked the book back, ignoring my angry look. “Dean Koontz is the best, I think. Do you think? This is my favorite. You see, there's this neato dog and he can almost talk and stuff and the doctors, they did somethin’ with his head and these bad people are chasing him and this guy finds the dog and then....” Reaching into his knapsack, he pulled out a red licorice rope. “Want some?” he asked, and dropped one into my lap. Then, without any transition, he opened the book seemingly at random and began to read, occasionally stopping to bite a piece off one of the red ropes flaring like anemone tentacles from his right hand.

Truth was, it could have been worse. Somebody must have cleaned him up, because he didn't smell that bad, which is surprising for a fat kid. All those folds and crannies tend to collect their own little ecologies of oily bacterial soup—believe me, I know all about it. And the kid's Iron Maiden T-shirt had only collected a few stains, so far. There was even something oddly comforting about him. In fact, I soon realized that the kid was special.

He was a superhero. Well, not really, of course. There isn't any such thing as superheroes. Only almost-superheroes. That's what he was, though. An almost-superhero. What was his special power? Contentment. He was just plain happy. I tried to probe deeper, but unlike most people, he didn't have any layers to him. Everything was surface. With him, what you saw was what you got. Nowhere could I could find the slightest tinge of discomfort or anxiety or depression. You could have cut his foot off and it wouldn't have bothered him that much, although he would have said “ouch.” Like most, his superpower was not particularly useful—most aren't, to tell the truth. But it was the reason I didn't move to another seat, as uncomfortable as I was.

For me, he was like a blanket of calmness, filtering out some of the dejection of the unwashed masses around me. I even fantasized for a moment about kidnapping him and dragging him around with me like Linus's blanket.

Every superhero needs a moniker. At least most of the ones I know do. So I dubbed him “Teflon Boy.” Everything seemed to just slip off him without leaving any trace. Kind of like Ronald Reagan. But less dangerous.

* * * *

Termination

Sleep was not an option as Teflon Boy droned on and the woman behind became increasingly hostile and loud. (How long would her battery last?) I thought about reading some more of the little book about the Oregon desert I'd bought at our last stop—key rule: always know your environment—but it just didn't appeal. So I gave in to duty. I closed my eyes and cast my attention out through Teflon Boy's filter into the bus. Methodically, as I had slowly learned at the Farm, I drifted from person to person, starting at the front of the bus and moving back.

I sincerely hoped I wouldn't have to kill anyone today.

I am not a telepath. The closest descriptive term is probably “empath,” in that I feel the emotions of other people. But my experience is more physical than empath usually seems to imply. I don't just feel emotions, I feel how others feel in their bodies. I feel their sensations, and through them I understand their emotions. So as I shifted from person to person, I became, for a moment, those people. I felt headaches building up, tension in badly postured backs, the heaviness of the overweight, the pasty feeling of bodies fed on white bread and bologna, the taut muscles of a soldier. And I also delved into the pains and horrors they carried around with them as physical manifestations of the past. While I couldn't link these to specific events or memories, still they gave me a powerful sense of who a particular individual really was on the inside, beneath those layers of resistance that often prevent us from understanding ourselves. (I have those as well—I can travel others but I cannot travel myself. Thus, I understand those around me better than I can ever understand myself.)

Most of the way through the bus, I didn't encounter much that troubled me. The usual fears and pains, the wheeze of asthma, the inner rumble of diverticulitis, the straining beat of an enlarged and failing heart. And layered amongst the mundane, often ignored sufferings of life, painful articulations of lives of regret, architectures of embodied desires and lost hopes, and touches of calm acceptance and rest alongside the resentment. Sexual abuse has a common sensation, as does alcoholism, meth addiction, etc., etc. If I were a diagnostician—of the mental or the physical—I would be the best. But that isn't my path.

Then, about three rows behind me, I was sucked into a black hole. Even with my training, I struggled to extract myself from the event horizon of an old woman's soul. Back in myself, I shuddered, and then reached out again more tentatively, lightly exploring the woman's body and skirting around the areas of most intense hopelessness. But it was not history. No. This was no accretion of memories and regrets. Instead, down at the base of her skull, I felt an odd off-centered pressure: a tumor? I became certain of it. I traced its thin tentacles, probing into it. The brain's a hard one, since there aren't any sensory neurons in there, but somehow I can still feel something there if I try hard enough. And this lady had some big uglies in there.

I sighed. One more complication for a totally messed-up week. The poor old bitch clearly had to die.

* * * *

Doctor Death at Your Service

I'm not a doctor, not really. Actually, I'm a lowly LPN, Licensed Practical Nurse. One step up from a CNA (a Certified Nursing Assistant), my license frees me from the true drudgery of the medical world: bedpans, enemas, urine, vomit—all of the astonishing range of fluids emitted by our bodies. I can't do that much, however. I can draw blood, run IVs, give injections, stuff like that. That's it. But I read a lot. And I pay attention to the doctors. The nice thing about being low on the ladder of expertise is that you are basically invisible, especially if you are a “pool” nurse, transferred around a hospital or nursing home wherever you're needed. Kind of like a cockroach on the wall.

Even though I don't have much formal training, I'd humbly say I probably know more about human illness than your garden variety GP. And when it comes to the topic of death, well, I'm the expert.

When I come to a city, I put my name on the on-call nurse lists. With the shortage as it is, and with my willingness to work for crappy pay and crappy hours, there's never a lack of work. But it may surprise you to hear that hospices and hospitals are not particularly promising sites for my craft. Both institutions do a pretty good job of pain management. People in hospitals are getting some help, at least, and people in hospices, well, they're going to die soon anyway, so usually it isn't worth the bother to hurry the process up. Mental health units and nursing homes, well, that's a different story. Rooms filled with the forgotten and the lost.

But even there I have my standards. I mean, ordinary life basically sucks for most people, I've discovered. And people are pretty capable of killing themselves without any help if they really want to. They aren't my problem. The two key categories eligible for termination are the disabled (the bedridden ancient crones, the drooling wheelchair slumpers, the MS patients who can't even blink their eyes anymore...) and various categories of the insane. We've gotten so much better at treating clearly physical ailments, but with the sickness of the mind—which of course is physical too—even the best specialists are often at a loss.

Frankly, some of these people are simply dangerous. I've put down a couple of real psychopaths in my time, and a couple of pedophiles too, even though they're outside my area of expertise. Not that I feel that remorseful about it. There are some people who really just don't deserve to use up oxygen. But there's a danger in becoming judge and jury. Most of the time, I just give an anonymous call to the police. And if they don't deal with it, well, look, I can't do everything. And in special cases, the ones the police won't understand—huddles of nighthawks or nests of vampires or the occasional dominator—I call in the League.

In the night, I walk the streets in dark clothes on soft-soled shoes. Like a minor god I travel at the center of my approximately hundred-yard bubble of acute perception, participating in the sleep of the snoring obese, children lying awake in fear, the taste of alcohol on a hundred tongues, the rustle and slickness of sex, and, every once in a while, the deep pain of hopelessness.

You might be surprised at who I kill. Old ladies in houses filled with cats and stacks of newspapers; skinny track-armed drug-users; homeless vets with their jeans stuffed with newsprint against the cold: they're often much more content than you might imagine. Just because someone's life doesn't look like yours doesn't mean it doesn't work for them. We tend to be so judgmental, but mostly we don't understand. No, it's often normal folks who are trapped, in some way, in their powered wheelchairs, in the spinning irreparably jagged wreckage of their minds. To everyone else, they can seem fine.

In any case, there are more people to kill than I can handle, or than it would be safe to terminate. I have to pick and choose carefully. The last thing I need is a media story about a spike in the number of people keeling over. And you remember those stories of nurses put in jail for killing hundreds of patients? Well, they were simply stupid, probably just as damaged as the people they were injecting. And usually they have some simplistic MO that any idiot could begin to recognize. So, then, two criteria: selectivity and creativity. Don't do it too much and don't do it the same way too often.

My other job, the one that along with my reports of “special” problems brings me in contact with the League, is recruitment. Although they don't like to acknowledge my service, there are only a few of us who are likely to run across others like us. In any case, there's often a fine line between a superhero and a real wacko nut job. I don't find many—maybe one a year worth (and in need of) rescue. Teflon Boy, for example, didn't really count. He didn't need help, and I couldn't see how he could help us. He was kind of an almost-almost-superhero, you might say.

* * * *

The League of Almost-Superheroes

Young members of my adopted League family are often obsessed with comic books (although video games seem to have taken over, recently). When I was a kid, at least, our rooms at the Farm were usually plastered with lurid covers of improbable figures in capes and hoods, and panels of quick death and triumph against overwhelming odds. But as much as we dreamed of being like those we met in these bright pages, we looked in vain for anything that resembled our lives. Sure, Spiderman and Batman (their Batman, not ours) and the Thing suffered angst and the terrible limitations that came with being a superbeing. But, in the end, they really were superheroes, and we, we knew, were not, not really.

I remember the day Ant Boy came up with our name for the League. When we were both about twelve, he was trying to dodge Plastic Girl after one of his regular pranks. And he came across an old series of comics in some dusty boxes back under the eaves in the attic. Called the League of Superheroes, they were much like many of the other comics we had read over the years. But a few of the issues mentioned another group of people with special powers, people who were different but whose capacities did not entitle them to membership in the League. These misfits had a whole collection of mediocre powers like the ability to spit long distances, or to warm the temperature in the room a few degrees, or to leap twenty feet into the air. They banded together and formed what they called the League of Almost-Superheroes. Sometimes they even came to the rescue of the real superheroes, even if they were never given much credit for anything.

Ant Boy ran down to find me, shaking a comic book in his fist. “This is us!” he shouted, “This is us!” And even though he was still only a kid, this name resonated somehow across the Chateau and into the fellowship spread beyond the farm. We became, and remain, the League of Almost-Superheroes, although there is some question about whether I, in particular, remain a member in good standing.

Of course, our pompous leaders wouldn't suffer such an indelicate name. They like to refer to us cryptically as The Fellowship.

They can kiss my ass.

* * * *

The Science of Death

There are many ways to kill, but it must be said that the human body is surprisingly resilient. In my valise I carry perhaps thirty or forty of the most efficient or, in some cases, the most practical options. With respect to those who are already weakened by long bouts of disease, the easiest path (although not always the most comfortable for the patient) is the introduction (by shunt, IV, scratch, etc.) of one of any number of antibiotic-resistant infective organisms. If they are weak enough, these can knock someone out quicker than you'd think, with little chance of recovery.

The fact is, hospitals are death-traps. Don't let that disinfectant smell fool you. They've all got little bacterial Godzillas creeping around their walls, the evolutionary result of surviving every nasty medicine modern man has dreamed up. Ever seen someone's flesh literally melt off their bones? Not pretty. (I've killed a couple of those poor bastards in my time). And the “health professionals"—an oxymoron if I ever heard one—stand around picking their noses and gossiping about who's humped whom and touching a hundred patients a day, rarely washing their hands.

Take this down: if you get sick, stay home. If you have to go in, point the half-wits to the alcohol hand-cleaner before they get anywhere near you.

At least I kill people on purpose.

Healthy folk who need to die are a more difficult challenge. Even old people are often astonishingly tough. I remember one old guy who suffered from constant, untreatable panic attacks who survived three different attempts to kill him. I finally took a chance that no one would notice (he was ninety-three and in a nursing home) and just popped an air bubble into his vein.

I have to admit it. In Portland I got cocky. I stuck around too long. Somehow they caught on to me through my job at the medical college. I was lucky, though. I got a strong emotional hit when one of the guards glanced at me as I was entering the building, and took off running. With a little dodging around, I managed to shake them. I called home to my crappy studio and coded in the self-destruct in my trunk (thermite inside an insulated box) even though I was pretty sure they wouldn't be able to track me back to it. I doubled back to where I'd stashed my emergency kit, and lit out for the bus station, where I took the next bus out. I figured I was probably safe, but, like I said, I don't take chances.

I've got more fake identities than lonely old ladies have cats. And I always wear gloves (if asked, I vaguely refer to allergies). No fingerprints. Of course, you can't do anything about DNA. But I'm very careful about not leaving pop bottles or coffee around. A little squirt of bleach water also does wonders. It doesn't take much to disguise your appearance: a little extra weight here, some gel pads in your cheeks, fake facial hair, a wig, etc. Every place I work I am a different person. And at my apartment building I was someone else again.

I'm immodestly proud of my emergency bag. It's just an ordinary soft leather valise, but inside it has pretty much everything someone would need to survive almost anywhere (plus enough chemicals to poison a small village). I've got a wire saw, compass, water treatment pellets and a filter straw, signaling mirror, space blanket, survival knife, you name it. You remember the guy who wrote that book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, argued that the most useful item for a traveler was a towel. I don't know if he was serious, but he didn't know what he was talking about. The most useful things to have with you are actually garbage bags. You laugh. But I'm not talking about a flimsy little five gallon kitchen bag. No, I mean a couple of those oversized three mil contractor bags. Endless uses: a sleeping bag, a raincoat, a tarp, a waterproof stuff sack, and on and on. And you can cut them up in all kinds of different ways for different purposes. Take a tip from someone with long experience.

* * * *

Vampires

So anyway, now I had to kill someone.

I checked the old lady out a little more just to be absolutely certain, but there was no mistaking her condition. For thoroughness's sake, I scanned the rest of the coach all the way to the back, but my heart wasn't in it. The last thing I wanted to find was another termination challenge. Happily, I didn't.

Bored, then, I just sat and watched the desert crawl by, the only entertainment the occasional mobile home or crumpled barn, some dead and rusting cars, the momentary glimpse of the flat basin of a long dry lake, and, off in the distance, the dim shapes of weathered lava cones. I was trying to hold it till the next stop, but out here that could be almost forever. Finally I slipped on another set of gloves and elbowed fat boy, who amiably shuffled out of the way. Bent a little on aching legs, and immediately assaulted by the din of emotional trauma around me, but happy to be released from his embrace, I stumbled my way up the aisle, glancing over to check out the old lady I was going to have to kill.

What I saw hit me like a paving stone. It felt for a second like my heart had stopped, but with only a little stumble, I moved on.

It wasn't her—she was pretty much what I expected, a drab woman in drab clothes rocking slowly back and forth in her seat in time to the pulsing of her emotional hell. No, the problem was that the aisle seat next to her was supposed to be empty. Or, at least, when I scanned it, it was empty. But there was someone there—a dapper little bald man in a bright yellow golf shirt. I could see him with my eyes, but I couldn't see him with my senses. It felt almost like I was seeing a hologram of a person, or an empty blow-up shell. But this guy was real. And I also saw what someone else would have missed, that he had a finger laid lightly against the old lady's wrist. That, and the almost ecstatic look on his face, the little smile, gave him away. At least his eyes were closed. He didn't seem to have noticed anything. I had the upper hand, for the moment.

I cursed my luck as I lurched up the rest of the aisle to the toilet. Shouldering my way in, I unzipped and stood there thinking, trying to take a piss. I always have trouble peeing in places like that, with the noxious fluids sloshing around below my penis and the hot air spilling into that upright sewage closet and the constant jostling of the bus and now the anxiety pulsing in my chest from the close encounter with the little man. Even with the incredible pressure in my bladder, it took me about five minutes before I let go in blissful release.

A vampire. We run into them fairly frequently, although not usually alone like he seemed to be. They usually congregate in groups, nests we call them. Not the kind of creature that you're probably thinking of—though I've met a couple of creepy blood drinkers in the past. No, these are worse. They're psychic vampires, emotional parasites. They don't seem to have their own emotions. The usual vampire is cold, often with an almost mathematical sense of beauty. They do have a hunger, however, a craving for intensity, the intensity of life that they lack.

They survive by feeding on the strong emotions of others. Sometimes love—but love is hard to maintain and control, so they mostly focus on pain. Any kind of pain: physical, mental, whatever. Usually they don't bother to torture anyone, although they don't really mind a little torture. Instead they often troll the streets for suffering homeless people. I've heard of them kidnapping alcoholics and denying them liquor so they can feed on the DTs. They've been known to steal people with chronic pain, or the terminally ill with agonizing cancer, and keep them at the height of agony for days or even weeks. Eventually, though, even the most intense feeling gets boring. If it isn't too dangerous, they often just sling people back out on the street. If there's any risk, they kill them and bury them in mass graves in their basements, or feed them to wood chippers or arc furnaces or whatnot. And then they go out on the prowl again for something new.

The League hunts them. Sickos like that, not just vampires, but all of the oddities with strange powers that emerge in the dark corners of civilization, hidden from the “normal” people. If there are (almost) super-heroes there must be anti-heroes as well. That used to be my day job, before the League decided my proclivities were, well, too unusual for them to tolerate.

In some ways, vampires are like me, in that they can feel the pain and pleasure of others. But your generic vampire is much more limited. Mostly they can draw sensations only through touch. So while I couldn't sense him, it seemed likely that he couldn't sense me, either—at least as long as I didn't make physical contact.

I could have just killed him, of course. That would have been no great challenge. But he was taking her somewhere. And that probably meant back to the nest. (Just because I was on the outs with the League and their pompous pronouncements didn't mean I felt no larger responsibility.) If I killed him, I'd never know where that was. Vampires are almost fanatically careful creatures—the kind of people who keep all their pencils lined up in order of length on their desks. And they fear the League. There was little chance that there would be any clues on his person about his destination. But I wasn't willing to let the old lady suffer any more than necessary. From a purely moral standpoint, she was my first priority.

She had to die first. Then I'd figure out how to deal with him. Losing his mule might even disconcert him enough to make him careless. I just needed some time alone with him when he wasn't expecting it, while he still didn't know about me. And maybe then I could do something about finding that nest.

I shuffled back down the aisle, trying not to stumble against the little man.

* * * *

Plastic Girl

Superpowers suck. You don't get something for nothing in this world. The line between an invalid or a nut or a cripple and an almost-superhero is pretty thin. A little training and attitude and perspective are sometimes all it takes to move from one side to the other.

Up in the hollows of Kentucky's Appalachia, the Farm encompasses the entire breadth of a weathered mountaintop, with a forest of trees and fields, fallen-down homesteads, and innumerable pools filled in the spring with tiny frogs. I remember the scent of honeysuckle in the summer, and the acrid smells of cut grass, gasoline, and oil after the fields around the Chateau were mown by the grumpy Gardener on his ancient, sputtering Sears rider. I remember the sharp crunch of baby apples we weren't supposed to eat, and the taste of blackberry jam fingered up warm from boiling pots, and the horrid, lingering torment of a black walnut skin accidentally allowed to touch the tongue. I remember playing late into the evening at the water hole in Chattering Brook, and languid summer days lolling in the heat with homework forgotten and books tumbled from lazy hands. And the somber dawn burials of heroes returned for the final time to the earth, a snaking line of strange sorrowed figures trailing up into the cemetery at the weathered peak.

Scattered throughout the Chateau at the Farm, with its twisting passages, odd-shaped add-on rooms, hidden staircases, and a few narrow pointed towers (filled, too often, with bats) was the most bizarre collection of kooks and misfits you're likely to find anywhere outside a state hospital. There was Braniac, who never left his room filled with strange mechanical artifices and computers, and who answered questions through a funnel connected to a garden hose that ran through a hole in his door. There was Dolphin, the result of some ill-conceived breeding program between a sea mammal of some kind and a human being, a trickster who lived in Chattering Brook in the warm days and who took over the pool in the winter. And there was Ogre, and Batman, and Hunter, and Clear Eyes, and Gardener, and others who are not particularly important to this story.

It might be helpful to tell you about Plastic Girl. She wasn't really a girl anymore when I came to know her. After I was stolen from my parents as a little kid, she kind of became a surrogate mom for me and the adopted brothers and sisters in my age group. She wasn't very touchy-feely (actually, she was pretty moody), but she did her best to keep us clean and healthy. When we were younger and cruel, as kids can be, prodded by my friend Ant Boy's somewhat twisted sense of humor, we started calling her “Lumpy,” behind her back and sometimes even to her face, because she was always somewhat misshapen, although the specifics changed over time.

Plastic Girl's special talent was her malleability. If you touched her, she felt a little like Silly Putty. And if you poked her in the side the indent would stay visible for a while. Her whole body was like this. And she could fit herself through incredibly small spaces.

One event has stayed vividly with me over the years. Shade had accidentally locked herself in one of the dungeon rooms in the basement. She started screaming and crying, terrified, and I started screaming too as I stood outside, feeling her terror as if it were mine. But no one could find the key. So, with a great sigh of distaste, Plastic Girl knelt down and began to feed herself through the inch-high space at the bottom of the heavy door, flattening her head into a manhole shape, and then the rest of her body, one part at a time, slithering through like a monstrous, misshapen eel. Inside, she held Shade close, soothing both of us until they were finally able to open the door.

It was only then that I realized how terrible a price Plastic Girl paid for her powers. She told all of us to leave the basement before she would come out, but I snuck into a side hallway and spied on her as she tottered unsteadily to her room. She looked like a cartoon Picasso of a person. Her face was the most horrible—eyes and nose in the wrong place, her mouth a ragged split with teeth splayed out in all directions. At the same time, I could feel the despair that she, unlike most people, somehow managed to keep from me. Afterwards she was even more asymmetrical than before. And sometimes, when I caught a stab of despair, I would spy on her through a crack in the bathroom door, watching as she stood before the mirror, tears falling down her misshapen cheeks, trying, somehow, to mold herself into the beautiful girl she was sure she would have been. Yet, despite her pain, she was a loyal member of the League, responding to whatever call came from our scouts out in the world that required her special services for dangerous missions only she could complete, always coming back just a little more out of kilter than before.

* * * *

Bad Coffee

The bus finally stopped for lunch in Bend, a pitiful excuse for a city. A dusty, aesthetically challenged collection of cheap blocky buildings and tired clapboard houses, it huddled forlorn in the beautiful armpit of the towering white Cascade Mountains. The driver gave us forty-five minutes, which I was sure would stretch to an hour. Bleary-eyed and unsteady, we emerged into the truck- and bus-clogged parking lot of a McDonald's, shading our eyes from the incandescent inferno of summer in the high desert. For just a moment, I paused to gaze at the crescent of rocky crags rising in the east in a sudden slanting wall of stone, the rising land obscured by a verdant carpet of pine trees. I craved, then, the coolness of the peaks, little rivulets of water falling into spray from sheer cliffs, and the quiet crunch of pine needles strewn across shaded paths. I had spent much happy time since I left home in the mountains. But it was the wrong direction for me. The vampire and I and Teflon Boy and the old lady were headed across the desert together on the barren track of Highway 20.

I hung back, waiting till the vampire and his shuffling, frail charge passed by, and then followed them inside the McDonald's. From the back of the restaurant, I watched him park her at a table on the side before joining the line to order food. Then I seated myself at a carefully chosen spot across from them—close enough that I could reach their table quickly, but not so close that they would notice me amidst the press of scruffy customers. I checked to make sure the cone of powder and the tablets I had extricated from my valise were still in my pocket before settling back to wait for the right moment to act.

For the first time, I really looked at the huddled forms of my fellow travelers who I had explored inside but had not, until then, really seen. A buzz-cut army kid in carefully creased olive drab was talking up a homely girl with stringy hair but extraordinarily large breasts, sexual tension almost literally shimmering between them. A tall bearded Amish man in immaculate black clothes watched his daughter licking carefully at an ice-cream cone. A couple of teenage white kids in ghetto gear silently mouthed the explicit lyrics of the hip-hop coming through their earbuds while their parents argued about something. A kid of about twelve with a smudged card hanging from a string around his neck, his name, a phone number, and “I'm going to see Grandma in Omaha J” written on it, sat with the driver eating a happy meal, furtively glancing around, more excited than scared. A chubby guy with a black-leather-fringed and silver-studded vest was talking too loudly about politics with a nice-looking woman who had a large red birthmark like a splash of ink across one side of her face. The guy was trying too hard, I thought, and she's not interested. In one corner a sullen teenager in a black T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off and an “I'm with Jesus” baseball cap was buzzing like crazy on crystal meth.

At moments like that my special sensitivity feels like an invisible membrane holding everyone around me in a secret embrace, not of love but of compassion. I was bathed in the sensations that lay beneath secret desires and fears and hopes that no one ever fully reveals to others or even to themselves. What if I could share, just for a moment, this experience with the bustling crowd around me? Would it change anything?

The earthquake-like arrival of Teflon Boy beside me on my yellow plastic bench jolted me out of my reverie. “Hey, Mister,” he said, pulling a couple of cheeseburgers and a box of chicken tenders out of his bag. He looked curiously at the empty space before me on the table and asked, “Aren't ya hungry?” But he didn't wait for an answer, tearing open one of the cheeseburgers.

"Shit,” I thought, pulled painfully back to the task at hand as Teflon Boy started regaling me between surprisingly dainty bites with a convoluted story about his last visit to a Six-Flags America with Grandma. Any hope of invisibility was lost. Through the corner of my eye, I could see the vampire looking curiously at us before going back to his salad. Furtively, I glanced over and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw a little cup of coffee at the old lady's elbow. Oh, well, I thought, invisibility is overrated. I turned toward Teflon Boy and acted like I was paying attention to the slightly garbled words tumbling out of his mouth with the odor of ketchup and greasy beef. Being seen and disregarded, I have learned, is sometimes just as good as not being seen at all.

I sat there with Teflon Boy, trying to watch the old lady and the vampire without seeming to, and trying not to be distracted by Teflon Boy's increasingly convoluted tale about the time he and his grandma got trapped upside down in the Raptor ride, and how the fire trucks had come and sent a basket up on a crane and began cutting them out with a circular saw. “Man,” Teflon Boy said with reverence, “those firemen sure were brave. Except one was a girl, actually, which was weird. I didn't know you could cut metal like that, with all those sparks flying all over the place. It was better than sparklers at Fourth of July. You like sparklers, Mister?...” and so on.

The vampire just sat there, calmly, not talking to the old lady, occasionally glancing out the window at the parking lot or gazing around the restaurant, taking bites of his salad and sipping his soda. The old lady was hunched over her food. Even through the fog of Teflon Boy, I could feel her chewing mechanically or taking sips of her coffee, so lost in her own universe of pain that she barely noticed the bustle around her. My anxiety level rose as the minutes ticked by. Move! I thought. Move! Finally, the vampire slid his food aside, dotted his mouth with a napkin, stood up, and headed toward the bathrooms. My body tensed as he walked away, and the moment he pushed his way into the men's room I slipped out from behind my table, ignoring Teflon Boy's “Where ya going, Mister?"

I waited a moment until the old lady put her coffee cup down—I couldn't afford to have it spilled—and then I strode casually forward, angling over toward her. Passing close by, I contrived to stumble and steadied myself with a hand on her shoulder, pushing her lightly sideways against the window.

"Oh, I'm sorry,” I said, crouching down beside her, at the same time slipping a couple of tablets into the pocket of her shawl.

Disoriented, the old lady looked up and said “Oh....” Then she shook her head, glancing up at me and said, almost in a sweet friendly voice that belied the storms roiling through her body, “I'm perfectly fine, young man."

"Well, I'm very sorry,” I said again, and leaning over her as if to check and make sure nothing was broken, I patted her on the back with one hand while the other emptied the cone of crushed tablets into her coffee. Then I turned away, feeling a bit smug, and headed toward the order counter again.

But when I glanced casually around to check the reactions of the other patrons, I started with an electric shiver of fear as I caught the curious eyes of the vampire watching me from across the room. Fuck, I thought. No one can piss that fast. What the hell had happened? And I realized that he might have only gone to wash his hands. That fastidious bastard. As I entered a line to order, I forced myself not to glance at him again. I tried to tell myself that it didn't matter, that he'd forget all about me. But I knew he wouldn't have missed my startled response. Vampires are sophisticated hunters: natural experts in the subtle language of body movements, quivers in the voice, facial tics, and the like. He knew something. He knew I'd recognized him—for one reason or another. And in a couple of hours, he'd know what I'd done.

I tried to seem nonchalant as I ordered a chicken sandwich without mayo and a diet coke (Teflon Boy had made me a little weight-conscious), and then I headed back for the door. As I turned to go, I couldn't help myself and snuck a glance at the vampire's table, but he and the old lady were sitting just as they had before he'd gone to the bathroom. With relief, I saw her taking another sip of her coffee.

Then I stepped out into oppressive heat and diesel fumes. Behind the restaurant, in a cramped oven-like space between the grease tank and a recycling dumpster, I made a call on one of my pay-as-you-go cell phones. Just my luck that Shade was manning the emergency line. “You?” she said, and she hung up on me. Old romance is a bitch.

I rang again. “Don't hang up,” I pleaded.

"Make it quick."

"Nosferatu,” I said. “I think I've got a really nasty one here."

"Why don't we just let him suck you dry?” she asked.

"Look, you little bitch,” I said, losing my temper, “this isn't about us. It isn't about me. I'm on the bus with this viper, and he's got a civilian with him. Do you get it? He's going somewhere. I don't think he's a solo. I think he's taking her somewhere."

Shade was silent for a while. “Where are you?” she asked flatly.

"I'm in Bend, Oregon. A shithole, if you want to know. We're heading out in a few minutes toward Idaho on US 20."

"All right,” she said. “We'll send a team. Don't do anything stupid."

"Well,” I said, sighing, trying and failing to see some humor in the situation, “I'm afraid it's a little too late for that."

She hung up on me again.

* * * *

The Old Lady Dies

So we left the mountains behind and entered a hummocked hard-dirt land almost devoid of habitation. The shudder and rattle of the coach became almost soothing as we put empty miles behind us. Teflon Boy's voice, mumbling the words of his novel to himself, was hypnotic. Outside, the scenery changed hardly at all. We could have been watching a short loop-repeat movie of the same sprawling region of land, with its jagged extrusions and its seemingly endless gray-green encrustation of spiky sage. To my relief, the loud Hispanic lady who had been sitting behind us seemed to have departed in Bend. In fact, our party of desert travelers was significantly reduced.

Absently, I scanned slowly back and forth across the cabin, dipping for a few moments in the unique universes of intricate sensation that were the separated planets of individuals scattered across our tiny space. Most people were drowsy after lunch, subdued, although the girl with the big breasts was slowly stroking off army boy underneath the cover of his jacket in the last row of seats. Even the meth addict had managed to nod off for a while. I kept coming back to the old lady, waiting for the telltale signs. And I tried not to worry about the vampire.

To kill with elegance is an art that few learn. Most murders are quite crude affairs, with jabbing knives or ricocheting bullets making a total mess of things. Even those with the sophistication to use poison rarely take the time for a close study of the available options. Look, stupid, if your wife dies of rat poison, the first place they're going to look is to her husband. Most people, I have decided, are idiots.

It's not as much of a challenge to kill someone in a hospital or a nursing home. People die off in these places all the time, and nobody really takes much notice if there are a couple more here or there. It doesn't take much finesse. Regular folk who need to die, however, are a more difficult proposition. The direct approach is just asking for trouble. Death needs to come with no connection to you, and by some mechanism that is not suspicious to the authorities.

There are two basic ways to approach stealthy murder in these cases. The first is to find something deadly that is really difficult to detect or so rare that there's little chance that anyone would test for it. The problem with this is that there isn't much out there that fits the bill. Tests have just become too sophisticated. Of course, chances are that no one is going to bother investigating carefully enough to detect the agent of death, even if it's a person someone actually cares about. That whole CSI thing on TV, with their mass spectrometers and PDR DNA tests and endless time to perseverate about a single case is really just a fantasy, even in more advanced police organizations. But why take the risk? If they do find the cause, then they know for certain that it's murder. (One doesn't, for example, generally run across rare sea-snail neurotoxins in the local supermarket.)

I prefer the second approach, which is to kill with something that they could, conceivably, have taken themselves without any assistance. Overdoses of prescribed medication are probably the best examples of this, although a little contaminated fish or poultry often does the job quite well. After much (often unsuccessful) experimentation, a combination of digoxin and verapamil has become one of my blends of choice. That's what I used on the old lady.

When pathologists don't know why someone died, they often just chalk it up to a heart attack. So a heart attack is usually the least suspicious kind of death. And that's what this little concoction produces, quite reliably. Digoxin, when used correctly, helps the heart pump better and reduces irregular heartbeats. At higher doses, however, it does just the opposite, throwing someone into severe arrhythmia and, pretty quickly, complete heart shut-down. The problem with digoxin, however, is that the toxic dose is high—more than I could have slipped easily into her coffee cup, for example. What you need, then, is a potentiator: something to magnify the effect. This is why I add verapamil to the mix. Its uses are quite similar to digoxin, but when put together, they're like a hammer blow to the heart. And it's a cocktail that a doctor could have conceivably prescribed, especially if the two medications were prescribed by different doctors (and old people go to a lot of doctors). In this case, when they looked through her pockets they would find a couple of tablets of both drugs. And why look farther than the obvious? Case closed. Doctor Death evades capture yet again (cue final credits).

About twenty minutes after we left McDonald's, I began to sense the first indications that my overdose was doing its work, a slight speeding up of her heart rate. I wondered how long it would take the vampire to notice, since he was probably also linked to her sensational state. Then the nausea began. I felt her vomit, and smiled as the vampire cursed. “Oh, bus driver,” the dapper man called out. “This lady here, she seems to be in some distress."

"What's going on?” the driver shouted back.

"Well, she just started vomiting."

"Crap,” the driver said. Nervous chattering started up around me, and people began asking what was going on. One of the little kids startled awake and started crying in a high-pitched voice. I heard the driver calling in on his radio, and I glanced back to where the vampire stood, disgustedly wiping at the spreading stains on his pants.

"Hey, I'm a medic,” the army kid called out, extricating himself from the embrace of the homely girl. “Let me take a look.” Zipping up his pants, he moved down the aisle. Pushing the vampire out of the way, he slid in next to the old woman. “Her pulse is pretty fast,” he reported. Then, “Make that really fast. This old girl's definitely in trouble."

The driver got on the intercom. “Okay, people,” he said, “we seem to have a medical emergency on the coach. Central tells me that there's an emergency drop-in clinic about thirty miles up ahead in Haney. So I want to ask that everyone just stay calm and stay seated."

Teflon Boy craned his head around to look and then he turned to me and started asking a rapid-fire series of questions. Not out of fear, of course. Just basic curiosity. “Is she gonna die? What's the matter with her? You know I've seen dead people. They buried my other grandma. Will they bury this lady? You know, the newspaper said cremation was a ‘creasingly popular option. What do you think?..."

I ignored him. Closing my eyes, I let myself enter the old lady's body. As if from a distance, I heard the dispassionate voice of the medic, “I think her heart's stopped. Help me get her into the aisle.” Through her nausea and dizziness and confusion, I felt her body being roughly lifted and then laid flat on the floor. I felt the medic wipe her mouth and then begin CPR, felt a rib cracking under the compressions. At the same time, her body began to fill with peace, with a calmness that I'm sure she hadn't felt for years. Her body seemed to relax in a wave, from top to bottom. I could not see what she saw, but everyone's heard of the light that dying people see. She was probably seeing it too. And then there was the moment of release, almost like the popping of a balloon, although it's really indescribable. And she was gone. Blessedly gone.

I opened my eyes again. Teflon Boy had gotten up and was standing beside his seat, watching the medic going through the motions of CPR and chewing on another red rope. I slid into his seat and leaned over to watch as well. He was good, this army guy. Methodical. No sloppiness. Even though he must have known she was gone. I've done good work today, I thought.

I looked up, without thinking, into the eyes of the vampire. Caught unawares in his intense calm gaze, for a moment I couldn't look away. He nodded to me, his mouth twisting into an odd quirk of a smile.

* * * *

Conversation with a Vampire

A few hours later, I sat sweating in the heat on a low concrete wall in the shade of the crumbling one-story adobe building that housed the clinic and a long-abandoned diner. Across the highway hunched an ancient two-pump gas station in what looked like an old peeling farmhouse with a convenience store in the front room. That's all there was to Haney, Oregon, although I could see a couple of chimneys and scattered evidence of tumbled wood structures peeking out of the brush all around us.

Most of the other passengers were huddled together in the cooler air of the clinic's waiting room. The vampire had persuaded the driver to let him get his bag from underneath the bus. I had watched him go into the back of the clinic to change his pants, but I hadn't seen him since. My only companions outside were the two little kids with their mother who were playing in the gravel with plastic cars from their Happy Meals, and Teflon Boy, who was tossing rocks at one of the crumbled houses and hooting when he hit a plank. Otherwise, it was almost eerily quiet except for the barely audible cries of distant birds I couldn't identify, the rustle of the wind across the parking lot, and the faint ting ting ting of some rusty metal signs hanging from the walls of the gas station.

The bus driver said we couldn't leave until the State Patrol released us, and only shrugged when someone asked how long that would take. So we waited. The other passengers were surprisingly calm. The guy in the leather vest started telling anyone who would listen how much the delay would “botch up” his vacation plans, but even he shut up after a while. The day felt empty of possibility, as if we were poised in some alien space aslant of real life, waiting patiently for the world to grind its way into motion again. I should have been planning my next move with the vampire, but I was tired. Head propped on hands, elbows on knees, desultory in the heat, I dozed and daydreamed about cool rain.

I jerked away suddenly at the touch of something against my neck, almost tumbling off the wall. I turned, and the vampire was standing behind me, holding his hand out where my neck had been, watching me with a querulous expression.

"Don't touch me,” I spat without thinking, stumbling upright and backing away from him. Even in that brief moment of contact I had felt the slick tendrils of his perception slipping easily into me like wriggling strands of seaweed and out through me momentarily into the sensoriums of the rabble around me. I felt invaded, exposed, as I had never felt before. And I hated it when people snuck up on me. Nobody could do that.

"Well...,” he said, looking down at his hand and shuddering a little in pleasure. “You are something special.” He smiled. “We haven't yet been acquainted. My name is Arthur. And I have the pleasure of meeting...."

I ignored his hand and didn't answer, watching him warily. To my side, I heard the mother quietly calling her children inside.

"Oh,” he said, “the silent type. Well, that's okay. Because I think we're going to have plenty of time to get to know each other."

Don't talk with vampires. That's what I'd been taught. Often slick and cunning, they'll tease and seduce you to their bidding. But I suppose I was curious. And bored. And tired of always running away. And cocky—always too cocky. But I was also hoping he might make a slip, that he might get too cocky as well, and give me a clue about the location of his nest.

"I doubt that,” I replied, finally.

He laughed. “Take a walk with me,” he said. “I've got something you'll quite enjoy, I think.” Then he turned, settling a round-brimmed green canvas bush hat jauntily on his head. He strode out from the parking lot into the knee-high sage. I hesitated for a moment, and then followed. After a hundred yards or so, he paused for me to catch up with him. “Here's the path, right over here,” he said, pointing to a pair of shallow ruts that indicated vehicles occasionally passed this way.

We walked for a while together, silent. Unable to sense him, I glanced over at him every once in a while to make sure he was really there. I had the odd sensation of walking with a ghost, a figment of my own imagination except for the dust kicked up by his docksiders. The air around us was perfused with the bittersweet aroma of sage. Out away from the clinic and the gas station and the abandoned ruins of its long-lost town, the rough land rolled away before us, broken by the gnarled shapes of junipers here and there, low hills, and sharp fingers and blocks of stone that seemed to have been thrust out of the ground by some angry god. Cloudless, the light blue glass bell of the sky fit perfectly over the ragged foliage and rocky edges of the earth, starkly separating our terrestrial jumble from the pure clarity of the atmosphere. The only sound was the wind and an almost imperceptible whisper of a breeze in the brush.

"Beautiful, is it not?"

"Yes,” I agreed reluctantly. And wiped at my forehead with the already sopping sleeve of my shirt. “But too damn hot."

"Well,” the vampire said, looking over and winking, “it's the sour that makes us relish the sweet, you know.” He paused. “That was quite a slick bit of business back there, I must say, although a little clumsy in the execution."

"At least she's free of you,” I said.

"Oh, yes. Such disapproval. But, really, what was incorrect in my actions? Do tell. She was a lost cause—you know that as well as I. Perhaps better, if my little taste of you was any indication. I did not create her pain. It was already there. I merely profited from it."

"You sicken me,” I said. “You're a parasite."

"Parasite? That seems a bit harsh. I would say, rather, thirsty for pain in a world already full of suffering.” He spread his arms to encompass the terrain before us. “Look around you. It seems barren but, of course, it is not. In fact, this land is filled to the brim with life. Jackrabbits and golden ground squirrels and sage grouse and groundhogs, all snuffling about trying to survive. And the weak are continually culled by the coyotes and the hawks. The endless cycle. And then, behind them come the turkey vultures, carrion eaters who make meals from the detritus of others, who transform trash into sustenance.” He stopped for a moment. “We give meaning to the pain of the world,” he said. “We are the turkey vultures of the human race, transformers of dross into gold."

I laughed. “Very original!” I observed. “How noble of you."

"You jest,” he said, “but yes, in our own way we are the nobility of a pathetic world filled with cringing sheep. At least we do not cringe."

At that point, we came to the crest of a low rise, and I found myself gazing down into a broad depression with an almost unnaturally flat floor, perhaps fifty acres across, with sloping sides except for a low rock cliff demarcating one side. I looked back, and we hadn't really come that far. Even though it felt like we had left civilization entirely behind, the low buildings and ruins were only a few hundred yards away.

"Yes,” the vampire said as he headed down the slope, “you are going to have a rare treat.” After a moment, I shrugged and followed. Why not. I had a syringe of some nasty stuff in my front pocket, and I figured I had as good a chance of killing him in a fight as he did of killing me. But I didn't want to kill him. Not just yet. And I was pretty sure he didn't want to kill me either.

"So,” he said. “What about you? A killer with a conscience? That wasn't the first time. You're too practiced. And you're judging me?"

"I put people out of their misery,” I said. “I'm nothing like you."

"Oh, really?” he said with a flat humor in his voice. “I beg to differ. I would say, rather that I and my friends ennoble pain, the pain of the little meaningless people, the discards of society—only we care about them, when everyone else has forgotten. And afterward, we remember them with reverence, with an intensity that, perhaps, only someone like you, with your special, delicious talents, could understand.

"Whereas, you? You seem dedicated to throwing people away like trash. It would be better for you, it seems, if they did not exist at all. Life is suffering,” he said, with an emotionless intensity, “suffering every moment of every day for everyone. All but members of my clan, of course. To stop suffering, you would have to kill everyone. And how do you decide how much suffering is enough? Is there some neutral scale where you might weigh each person's pain and decide their fate? I do not believe so. This makes you somehow an angel? I think not."

I didn't respond. I didn't have to justify myself.

We reached the flat expanse that was the depression's floor, and began crunching across hard-packed fine dust that rose up and stung my nostrils with an acrid scent. “What is this place?” I asked.

"A playa,” he replied, “an ancient lake, if you will, long desiccated into alkali flats. Thousands of years ago, you should understand, this was a verdant place. Generations ago, native people lived and loved and worshipped here in what, to them, was a magic land.

"Come and look,” he said, drawing me over to the cliffs. And I saw that they were covered with strange drawings and symbols: sketches of animals and dots and spirals and more. I recognized them from the pamphlet I had bought as primitive pictographs. “The language of the past speaks to us, here,” he said, almost with a kind of reverence. “What we have forgotten is carved in these stones. And they understood, while you do not. Look here!” he demanded.

I moved next to him and peered up where he was pointing. Scratched into the rock, twenty feet above us, were four stylized, life-size figures that seemed to be dancing and leaning back from each other, looking up at the sky. Between the middle two hunched a crude, indistinct creature—perhaps a person, perhaps not—and each of the figures had one arm extended down, resting their spindly hands on its back or on the back of their fellows. And from around their heads radiated what looked like rays of energy. “You see,” the vampire said quietly, “you hate us. But it was not always this way. Once we were revered. Or at least accepted—the archaeological record is admittedly contradictory on this point. But what is clear is that we once had our place in the world just like the hawks, just like the vultures, just like cougars that once slunk across this land."

He turned and caught my gaze, and I found, again, that I could not look away. He reached out and grabbed my hand with a steely grip I could not resist. Again, I felt the sick sense of his perceptions slipping through me and out into the land around us, so that he was just barely able to taste, at the limits of the reach of my powers, the tantalizing flavors of the human lives behind us along the highway.

"You have no idea how special you are, what a treasure. I had not even imagined this might be possible. You would be such a wonderful prize to bring home to the clan. We slink around in the shadows, plucking one by one the few morsels of delectable pain we can safely spirit away from the human world. But with you, through you, we could spread ourselves into the spaces around us, experience the myriad sensations of the bustling mass of humanity."

I wrested my hand from his grasp. “I'm not going to join you. I'm going to kill you. All of you.” Okay, again not the most intelligent thing to say. Too many comic books.

He laughed once more, a bit cruelly this time. “Oh, I truly doubt that. You think you can outthink me? No. You are little better than all the rest of the wretched specks of human detritus that contaminate the skin of this planet. I have taken your measure. You are weak, like all the rest, trapped, even with your special skills, in your sniveling little wretchedness."

He turned around and began walking back away from the cliff toward the highway, but after a few steps he turned to me again. “You will join me,” he said calmly, with quiet certainty. “You will join me of your own free will."

* * * *

Confrontation with a Vampire

I stood for a while, maybe a half-hour, not more, gazing up at the enormous multilayered mural of the cliff. I imagined shamen hanging from fragile ropes, chipping away at the rock with primitive tools. The vampire was full of it. But I think he was right that those people knew something we have forgotten. They lived in a closer relationship with the earth. They felt close to the cycle of the seasons, to the subtle patterns of the rhythm of life. Huddled together in small communities, everyone was known and rarely was anyone ever lost or alone. In such a world, I thought, perhaps there would be no need for a Doctor Death. Maybe there had been a short period of human history, at least, when there could be death without despair, even amidst the most terrible suffering.

But I also knew too well the horror that all men (and it's mostly men) can perpetrate. I had read about the vicious traditions of the Maya, far to the south. The brutalities of warfare and clan feuds and social conflict were honed to a bright sharpness long before even these people lived in this land. Perhaps the pictograph the vampire had pointed out did depict some of his kin in the far reaches of the past. But I didn't think the shaman who painted that image was celebrating. I think he was afraid.

In the distance, I heard the lowing of the bus horn and knew it was time to leave. I hiked across the playa and up the slope. I didn't try to hurry. I knew Arthur wasn't about to let them leave without me.

When I came out of the depression, however, I began to sense that something was wrong. As I neared the highway, as my sensitivity increased, I started picking through the different bodies jostling around in preparation for departure. And, after dipping into a few, I fell into a body wracked with terror.

The vampire had been busy. I shouldn't have left him alone. I couldn't tell who it was from a distance, although the body felt smaller than an adult. But when I finally came into the clinic parking lot, the answer was clear. As the other passengers stood in line to reboard the bus, Arthur stood apart, still wearing that stupid hat, with one hand lightly resting on the shoulder of that kid who was traveling alone, the one with the pitiful cardboard nametag hanging around his neck.

I don't know what he'd said to the kid, but it wasn't hard to imagine. “Look, kid, unless you come with me, I'm gonna kill your parents and your grandparents and.... You got any brothers and sisters? Yes? Well, I'm gonna kill them too.” Etcetera.

I stood and stared with rage at the vampire. Arthur just smiled sweetly at me from across the lot. He put another hand in front of the kid's face, and the kid cringed as he flicked a small survival knife slightly open and then closed. He looked down at the kid and then at me and gave a little apologetic shrug. The message was clear. He was offering a trade—the kid for me. And I knew I had to play. There was no way I was going to be able to kill him before he was able to harm the kid. And I couldn't just kill the kid. He wasn't some old lady who was dying anyway, whose suffering was inevitable.

Arthur and the kid got in line, and I stood right behind them, turning over possible responses in my mind and kept coming up blank. I wanted to scream, or even just to reassure the kid that it was going to be okay. But Arthur was standing there between us, and there was nothing that he would have enjoyed more than to plunge that knife deep into the kid. Neither of us said anything to each other as we boarded the bus. There wasn't any point. The game was in play.

* * * *

A Little Accident

Arthur and his captive slipped into the nearest empty row to the front, forcing me farther back where, after nodding to Teflon Boy who was happily reading to a new victim, I found an empty seat a few rows behind. Now, I thought, we wait.

About twenty minutes later, the second part of Arthur's plan went into effect. After a muffled detonation at the front of the bus, the whole coach slewed back and forth. The flopping sound of a punctured tire reverberated through the metal frame as the driver tried frantically to keep us on the road. People screamed. I thought we were going to flip over, but then we tipped back and slid with a heavy thump into the ditch at the side of the road. For a moment, we all just sat there, adults and kids crying, people moaning and swearing. The guy in the vest shouted out, “What the hell is wrong with this bus company?” and I almost laughed.

"Okay,” the army guy shouted from the back, “this is what we're going to do. If you're okay to move without jostling somebody who can't, get the hell off the bus. I'm going to follow behind you and see if anyone's badly hurt. Don't, do not, move anyone if they can't move themselves.” His voice sounded resigned, and when I quested back I could feel his almost amused disappointment. I guess he thought he'd be safer out of the war zone. Welcome to my world, I thought.

I was fine, just a little bruised, and most of the people I passed as we shuffled slowly out seemed to be basically okay until I got to the driver, who was crumpled motionless and bloody over the steering wheel. I gave him a quick mental checkover and decided he wasn't going to die anytime soon—not that I had any plans to help him anyway. Somebody needed to get on the radio and call for help, I thought, or maybe somebody's cell phone would work. But none of that was my problem.

I looked around in the late afternoon light as I exited the bus, but I couldn't see Arthur or the kid anywhere close. Then I looked up the slope of the low hill rising beside the highway, and I saw them climbing. When they got to the top, the vampire looked back down at me, eyes glinting, face Botox calm, and then he and the kid moved out of sight over the rise.

I made my way over to Teflon Boy, who was sitting in the dirt playing with some rocks. He looked up at me, a little trail of blood coming out of his nose. I could tell he was basically unharmed. He smiled up at me, wiping his nose and holding the blood up to show me. “Did you know, Mister, that a person's body is ninety-eight ‘cent water?"

I bent over and grabbed his arm. “Come on, big boy,” I said, “we're going on a little trip."

"Okay, Mister,” he said as I helped him lumber to his feet. “I like trips."

I saw his battered novel lying in the dirt where he'd been sitting and I retrieved it for him. “Don't forget your book,” I said. He was going to need it.

Nobody was really paying attention to us as I pulled Teflon Boy down the ditch away from the bus. I could still sense the kid, although increasingly faintly as they walked away from us. After we'd gone about a hundred yards, I had to help Teflon Boy climb up out of the ditch, and we skirted around the base of the hill that the vampire had crested.

I stopped to orient myself to where I'd last sensed the kid. His terror was so intense that even though they were maybe half a mile ahead of us, he still stood out in my mind like a flickering candle. At least he was still alive.

Before we headed out after them, I did what I could to prep myself with what I had available in my valise for the coming confrontation. I also checked to make sure my cell phone had a signal, and I cut some branches of sage away with my knife. Then Teflon Boy and I started trudging into the desert, wending our way around the gnarled proliferations of sage that jabbed and scratched at us at every turn, sometimes slowing down so I could brush away my footprints with the branches where they seemed especially obvious. It was slow going. But I didn't think we had that far to go. The kid ahead of us had stopped moving, and we were beginning to close in on him. Teflon Boy kept chattering away in his familiar low mumble. “Are we playing a game, Mister? I like games. Me and my grandma used to play games....” When we were still a few hundred yards away, far enough that I hoped Arthur wouldn't hear him, I sat Teflon Boy down and told him to wait and to “shut up” if he could, which I doubted. But it didn't really matter.

* * * *

A Rock in the Head

Leaving my branches of sage behind, I headed on alone. I didn't bother to keep quiet. There didn't seem to be any point. But as I headed toward the kid, whose terror became more palpable with every step, I kept a close watch for the vampire. I had almost reached the kid when I heard the crunch of a step behind me. I tried to turn but something hammered into my head, and the next thing I knew I was sprawled on the ground.

He hadn't knocked me out. That's just stupid Hollywood drivel. Very few people have the skill to do that without finishing someone off at the same time, but I was dazed as Arthur moved quickly behind me, tying my hands and then flipping me roughly over.

He chuckled coldly, looking down on me. Then he reached down and placed his hand over my face, seeking through me the kid who lay shivering on the ground some twenty feet away. “Oh, yes!” he said triumphantly as he reveled at a distance in the kid's pain. “Oh, you are going to be so popular. I can't wait to get you home."

"What about the kid?” I asked.

"Hey, it's a twofer, stupid,” he said.

"Yeah,” I said, “that's what I thought.” And then I lifted my right leg and swept it as hard as I could sideways into his calf.

He lifted the hand from my face and smacked me on the side of my head, setting my ears to ringing. “Be good,” he said flatly, “or I can make it very uncomfortable for you."

He looked down and he laughed at the dark stain spreading across my pants leg, and on his as well. “Brave killer wets his pants,” he giggled. And then, surprised, he sat down heavily. “Oh,” he said. Then he keeled over.

That's the key failing of vampires, I thought, as I reached into my left sleeve with my right hand and retrieved the scalpel I'd taped there. They tend to be a bit overconfident.

Careful not to touch any of the wetness on my pants leg, I slowly stood and stripped off the gloves I'd been wearing, just in case I'd punctured them in the fall, and pulled another pair out of my back pocket. Slowly, keeping an eye on the collapsed figure of the vampire, I stepped out of my pants and set them aside, grimacing. The rest of this adventure would be conducted in my boxer shorts. I'd forgotten to bring another pair of pants. Not exactly distinguished. I started stripping off the protective garbage bag panels and the fluid-filled Ziploc that I'd taped to my leg and over my feet.

Once I was safe from the little surprise I'd prepared for him, I reached around and pulled the syringe I'd taped to my back from under my shirt. Twisting off the plastic needle protector, I rammed it home in Arthur's butt. I thought he might have been waking up a bit by now, but he didn't even flinch as I squeezed it empty into him. I strapped his wrists together with a little duct tape I'd brought with me for that purpose and checked him over for any little surprises, not finding anything except his little survival knife. Then I just settled down on a handy rock, munching on a granola bar I'd had the foresight to put into my shirt pocket, and waited for him to become lucid enough to talk. I could feel the kid cowering out in the darkness, but he'd just have to wait.

Creating a topical knockout drug is actually a somewhat tricky problem. Most of the easily available ones don't work unless someone actually imbibes them, or unless you have the opportunity to inject them. There are some nerve agents and the like that work quite well, but who wants to mess with that? One little mistake and you and half the people around you are dead. But there's this neat stuff called DMSO that athletes sometimes use to ease muscle pains and that soaks right through the skin into the body. Mix enough knockout into a couple of ounces of DMSO and, voilà, you've got quite a nasty surprise for a vampire.

As I sat there, I tried to screen out the terror of the kid whimpering to himself only twenty feet away. I wanted to go help him and comfort him, but it was better for everyone all around if he never saw me. Life's about compromise, kid, I thought, though he probably wouldn't appreciate the sentiment.

* * * *

A Little Chat

About ten minutes after I stuck him, Arthur began to stir. I walked over and yanked him up into a sitting position against a convenient sage bush. Somehow, his stupid hat had stayed on, if a bit crookedly. It occurred to me that he looked like some baby-faced, nerdy little professor, out sampling the genetics of jackrabbits or the geology of lava cones or some equally useless pursuit. And it was still disconcerting to be staring right at him but to be unable to sense him at all. It was like watching an incredibly elaborate breathing mannequin.

I slapped his face a couple of times, and his eyes half-opened, but he seemed to be having trouble focusing, which was right about where he should have been. I slapped him again, just cause it felt good. “Okay,” I said, “talky talky time.” The syringe had been full of Sodium Pentothal—sometimes called a “truth serum."

"Hey!” I said as he shook his head in confusion. “Where were you going?"

"Going?” he muttered, “Going, going, gone,” and then he giggled.

Okay, try another tack. “Look, you little freak, where's home? You talked about home? Where is it?"

And he started singing, “Home, home is where the heart is. Oh...Hooome is where the heart is.” And it kind of went on like that. I couldn't get a single coherent answer out of him. It just made the throbbing headache he'd already given me with a rock even worse.

That's the problem with Pentothal. You see, it's not really a truth serum—there isn't actually any such thing as a truth serum. It's more like a “loosener.” It makes people talk, but they don't necessarily say anything useful; they don't even necessarily tell the truth. Delusions, fears (not that he had any of those), fantasies, they all get mixed up together. But, what the heck, it was worth a try. My calendar wasn't exactly full. So I kept this up for an hour or so, and dusk began to spread across the land as the sun met the horizon. Above us, as we had our insane little chat, the sky began to flare in streamers of orange and red and yellow.

Then, suddenly—and this never happens with normal people—he just snapped back together. One minute he was babbling on about the merits of different species of desert jackrabbits, and the next he was utterly silent, gazing up at me with a kind of detached, almost scientific interest. “Well,” he said, and smiled. “You know, we've got to stop meeting like this.” And that was it for me. I stepped back and picked up a rock the size of my shoe that I'd selected just for this purpose. He must have known what was coming, but he just ignored it.

"So,” he said calmly, “Be honest with yourself. I mean, you really like to kill people, don't you? I mean, deep down, you think it's kind of fun, right? I know you do, son. I've been inside, there. You're just a cold-blooded killer.” I stood there for a moment, watching him watching me. “We're more similar than you'd like to admit, you know,” he said.

I slammed the rock down into his forehead with both hands. Blood and chunks of skin and little bits of bone splattered everywhere. Then I stood, dropping the rock beside him. I paused for a moment to wipe the worst of the gore from my hands and face, and shook the front of my shirt to dislodge some of the bits of him stuck there.

* * * *

Teflon Boy

As the last light emptied out of the day, I stumbled back to where I'd left Teflon Boy. “Pretty sky,” he said to me, when I returned. I pulled a little micro LED light out of my valise, along with a thick package of wipes. After cleaning myself up as best I could, I led Teflon Boy back to where Arthur's body slumped. The kid the vampire had taken seemed finally to have fallen asleep. It was a relief not to have his constant terror pressing in at me.

I sat Teflon Boy down on the rock where I'd been sitting before, and I made him hold the rock I'd used, rubbing his hands across it. “He's really a mess,” Teflon Boy commented as I scooped some of the bloody muck from Arthur's forehead and kneeled before him and flicked it at him with one finger for a while until he was spattered all over. The spatter pattern, it's key. A bad spatter pattern is the first thing they notice, and even pretty ignorant crime scene folk get nervous when the spatter isn't right. But I examined him in the light of the LED, and I decided it was good enough. I mean, we were talking Eastern Oregon hick cops, here.

I backed out of the little space where the whole encounter had run its course, brushing all around the site, looking for any place I might accidentally have stepped. Then I told Teflon Boy to do a little dance around the vampire, which he did with great enthusiasm, humming the theme to Star Wars.

"Okay, Kiddo,” I said to him after he'd sat down, “in all those Dean Koontz books you've read, was there ever one where someone killed someone by whacking them in the head?"

He looked at me quizzically, as if I were stupid, and said, “'Course there is. Don't you remember that time when that nice woman was being chased by....” I let him babble on a little and then I told him that some nice people were going to come get him in a few hours, and they would be really interested in that particular story. “Be sure to tell them, tell them the whole thing. Otherwise, they're going to be disappointed."

"Oh, yes. Sure. I can tell the story. I can do that."

"Good,” I said. “Then one more thing. In a little while after I go away, you might want to go wake up that nice little boy who's sleeping behind that bush over there."

"Oh, a boy?” he said and started to get up, but I waved him down.

"Not now. Okay? In a little while. And....” I stopped for a moment. “And give him a hug for me, okay?"

I pulled my pay-as-you-go cell phone out of my valise, and checked again that there was a signal out there. I dialed 911, turned the volume down, and laid the phone next to Arthur. Then I backed away, dragging the sage branches in my path.

"Good-bye, Mister,” Teflon Boy called.

"Good-bye....” and I realized I had no idea what his real name was. Just as well, I thought. “Good-bye,” I said, again. I hoped they had a lot of Dean Koontz novels wherever they were going to put him. But, of course, it wouldn't really matter much. He was Teflon Boy, after all. He would get a good opportunity to use his superpower in service of mankind. At least, that's what I told myself.

* * * *

Emerging Again into Day

At a good distance from the deed, I hurled the branches and my stained pants away and kept walking.

The moon showed half a face in the sky, casting enough light that I was able to turn off my LED. Every once in a while I would halt and gaze up, astonished, at the immense scattering of stars that seemed to hang just above my head, filling all the space of the firmament. I'd never felt so close to the universe. They say it should make you feel small. But it didn't. It made me feel alive.

I had learned at least something about the location of the nest. Not much, but enough to start looking. He'd known too much about that little dry lake, about the shamans and the rock paintings and the land. His fellows were close. I was certain of that. Perhaps even closing in on his body and the kid and Teflon Boy. I hoped the sheriff would get there first, but it didn't really matter much in the end. What mattered was that we would find them. They couldn't hide forever out here.

The heat quickly fled the land as I walked and it became as cold in the dark as it had been hot in the day. Wrapped in a silver cellophane space blanket, switching my valise from hand to hand as it got too heavy, I walked through the night. I weaved through long stretches of spiky sage that scratched furrows in my bare, shivering legs; waded through little seas of bunchgrass; crunched again for a time over the hard surfaces of broad alkali flats; and skirted around the weathered spout of an ancient lava cone.

As I walked, constellations rose and fell at the horizons. The Earth spun beneath my feet and carried me through the sky as I carried myself across the empty land.

When dawn finally began to spread a purple haze across the eastern sky, I stopped and dug a shallow grave for myself in the shading lee of a cliff. I wrapped myself in my plastic blanket, clicked on the homing beacon from my valise, and pulled the dirt over myself until I was mostly covered.

I fell into an exhausted sleep, and my dreams were filled with shamans and vampires and jackrabbits as I lay in the embrace of the all-penetrating pungency of peppery-sweet sage.

* * * *

I slept the sleep of the dead, the sleep of the just, cradled mostly away from the heat of the day, and they came upon me as the sun reached the middle of the sky. I arose from my grave, shedding dirt in all direc-

tions, to meet the faces of my friends: Ant Boy and the sparkling air around lovely Lightning Bug, and, of course, the sweet, angry whisper of always invisible Shade. The blades of their helicopter thumped away where it had landed on a nearby hill. I could feel them all from inside themselves, and they felt so familiar. Just for a moment, however unwanted, Doctor Death was back in the embrace of the League.

"Okay,” I said, after coughing the dust from my throat. “Let's hunt some vampires."

* * * *

"Needless to say, the field trip program was immediately discontinued."

* * * *

[Back to Table of Contents]

Short Story: REMOTEST MANSIONS OF THE BLOOD by Alex Irvine

Alex Irvine is the author of A Scattering of Jades, The Narrows, and most recently, Buyout. He has also been doing some work in the comics field lately, including a longish essay on 1950s comics for a forthcoming book called The DC Chronicle. And he says that he got a Hahn's macaw, but as yet it does not know how to talk.

Four days after the earthquake that leveled every building in the western part of Caracol—the part built over the protests of a now-extinct tribe on a filled-in lake bed, which the seismic event turned into a geological tuning fork—Arthur Lindsay leaned his elbows on the sill of his front window, the panes of which had fallen into the street. The wall around the window was intact and even still level, unlike its three fellows, which had sagged inward as if aspiring toward the pyramidal. The ceiling had buckled, covering the floor with plaster, but the timbers were intact if no longer parallel. Arthur's hands, in loose fists, pressed into the sides of his face. From time to time he adjusted them so the points of his cheekbones fit more comfortably between two knuckles. His nose was full of the smell of garlic from his fingers. Across the street, walking in unstarched linen of an eggshell color, was the woman with whom Arthur believed himself in love. She was nineteen years younger than he was, and did not know of his existence except in the fleeting and unconscious way that she was aware of the vines growing up the side of a particular house she passed every morning. He wondered what she would smell like on his fingers.

The shattered profile of the buildings she passed made her seem like a survivor, or some kind of traveler, untouched by the ruination. Arthur imagined scenarios: she was an archeologist and he was a ghost, watching in ignorance of the passage of a thousand years. He would haunt her. She was the sole survivor of an extended family, now a row of freshly turned graves in the new cemetery cleared especially for earthquake victims, and she found her circumstances reduced to the point at which she must consider the unthinkable; he was a tourist afflicted with loneliness. He would save her.

Her name was, of course, Maria. Arthur had not known this when he conceived the notion that he was in love with her, but in his forty-four years of life he had learned that he was drawn to women named in some variation after the mother of Christ. He listed them in his head: Marie, Marja, Miriam, Marisol...Maria. Other women he had lusted after, or formed deep emotional attachments to even though he could not call those attachments love—there were too many of these to list even though Arthur was justly proud of his memory. And he had known dozens of other Marys and Mary-cognates; the name alone did not excite him. He'd been a little disappointed to find that the vision in unstarched linen, currently disappearing around a corner beyond the collapsed bricks and timbers of a smokehouse, was one more in his string of beloved Marys.

That he was not in love with her never crossed his mind.

* * * *

Arthur Lindsay lived in a Latin America of the mind. If he had been able to read Maria Rios's mind, he would have discovered that he was wrong about a great number of the particulars of the situation. She knew exactly who he was, had intuited his attraction to her—if not his own characterization of it as love—and had gone to great lengths to uncover as much of his personal history as might be gleaned from the citizens of Caracol. Maria knew that he was forty-four years old and a native of a town in the United States called Portland. He celebrated his birthday on the seventh of August by buying drinks for everyone in whichever bar he happened to stumble into. This was most often a shack called Bananana, down by the river. During the earthquake he had gone into the basement of a damaged hotel to rescue a maid pinned by a fallen storage shelf, minutes before she would have drowned in the effluent from a broken sewer main. Beyond the consensus around those facts—and it was consensus, not unanimity—lay a wealth of conflicting detail that Maria found wondrous and sad. Profirio the outfitter of tourists who came to raft the great rapids on the Rio San Antonio, fifty miles upstream from the estuary where the river spent itself in the lake whose enormous eggplant-colored snails gave Caracol its name, swore that Arthur Lindsay was a bigamist who had abandoned eleven children upon the discovery of his doubled life. Christos the Greek, who managed the factory that turned eggplant-colored snails into organic purple dye much prized by upscale North American clothing manufacturers—dye, he was fond of saying, that Phoenician kings would have conquered the world to wear—had it on impeccable authority that Arthur Lindsay was a killer for the American mafia, who had not trusted the FBI to protect him after he testified in a murder trial. And so on. Maria had instituted a policy of only believing—provisionally—what three different people told her they had heard from Arthur Lindsay himself. This offered her a baseline of credibility, though she knew she was still dealing in hearsay. But it was too soon to talk to Arthur himself, because Maria Rios had one strange conviction of her own, which was that if she ever spoke to a man before he spoke to her, he would never love her. In Caracol there were thirteen men of marriageable age to whom she had never spoken. Three of them she knew to be homosexual, and a fourth had been traveling with an oceanographic survey since she had begun to categorize him as worth further investigation.

Before the earthquake, there had been twenty-one. The last four nights of Maria's sleep had been plagued by dreams of the eight dead men who might have been her lovers—two each night, in what seemed to have become a tournament fought in the remotest mansions of the blood, with no winner save a dead man and Maria Rios's unfortunate tendency to fixate on the unattainable so she could justify her failure to seize what might be hers. Last night, Eduardo and Jesus. Before that, going backward: Gabriel and Alejandro; Jesus and Pablo; Miguel and Miguel; Porfirio and German. That first night, Maria, who was able to dream with some lucidity but unable to predict when this ability would be given or taken away, had asked both of them, Would you have spoken to me? And both Porfirio and German had said yes. What would you have said? she asked, whereupon these two dead men had composed fierce rhapsodies that left Maria, in the morning, dazzled and heartsick and aching. But she could not remember what they had said.

* * * *

Arthur dreamed too, but in the scattershot and incomprehensible way of a man whose life made too much sense to him. He had a recurring dream about removing a dog from a mailbox much like the mailbox that had stood in front of a farmhouse where he'd lived with a group of actors in a touring children's company when he was twenty-two. The dog, a flat-coated black and white mutt, did something different every time, and Arthur had wasted hours and days of his life in a compulsive and failed attempt to match the dog's actions to events in his waking life. Every time a week went by without that dream, Arthur prayed he'd seen the last of it—really prayed, since he was religious if not especially observant of any particular rite. His prayers were never answered, or perhaps they were answered in the negative by the dog's inevitable reappearance. His sometime lover, a schoolteacher named Dolores who was more perfectly monikered than any other human being Arthur had ever known, was of the opinion that his prayers were neutered by his lack of specific religious commitment. It was the one thing they fought about, although there would have been more if—as Dolores wished—they had seen each other more frequently and with a greater depth of nonsexual intimacy. Arthur kept her at arm's length because of Maria, although doing this made him feel guilty and occasionally provoked the dream-dog to comment unfavorably.

* * * *

He wanted to tell Maria the truth: that he had in fact left his home in America fleeing a sense of inadequacy and prodded by a vague desire to become an adventurer. Arthur wanted a pith helmet and touchy negotiations with cannibals, and a beautiful native girl who knew the lay of the land but had yet to learn the nature of her heart. He wanted exotic and forbidding ruins, and something mysterious worth risking his life for. When he'd arrived in Caracol years before, he thought he had sensed in the town's easy lassitude a latency, something behind, below, just always on the edge of vision. If he had known what it was, he would have continued on. Mystified, he stayed. Observations of Caracol's day-to-day life told Arthur nothing about the mystery he sought, perhaps because there were no mysteries in its day-to-day life. He was looking in the wrong places, as it seemed to him he always had. The friends he made—acquaintances, really—in the shops and bars and hotels, they had nothing to contribute to his quest. Arthur blamed them for this, but knew that this was unfair because they did not know, any more than he did, what he was really after. Adventure is hard to find when you go looking for it. What you more often get, Arthur Lindsay discovered, is a different kind of disillusionment.

Maria Rios, or his imagined version of her, kept him going. She was desirable, which Arthur automatically assumed meant inaccessible to the likes of him: older, Anglo, an interloper. When he caught her eye on the street, no matter what she did he felt unfulfilled. Confiding in a prematurely aged drunk named Isaac, Arthur suggested that his love for Maria was the result of some flaw in himself. “If I was happy,” he said, “I wouldn't give a shit about her."

"Big news,” Isaac said. “What happy man gives a shit about a woman he doesn't have?"

The inarguable logic of this, or perhaps the tautology of it, kept Arthur interested in the problem while he worked on shoring up his shattered home. Something about Caracol made him want to stay. He had known this before he had known of the existence of Maria Rios. Therefore, thought Arthur Lindsay with impeccable logic, Maria Rios had nothing to do with his desire to uncover whatever secrets Caracol kept hidden away in its jungle-shrouded adobe fastness.

Isaac had his own contribution to Arthur's ill-considered obsession. “Out there,” he said of the jungle, “there are things no man has ever lived to tell about."

"Then how do you know about them?” Arthur wanted to know.

"Stories survive,” Isaac said. “Even when the people who are supposed to tell them don't."

This was the beginning of Arthur's project of cultivating the drunks of Caracol, to see what they knew and what they thought they knew, what they believed and what they found worthy of agave-fueled derision. He canvassed them, compiled his findings informally during insomniac wanderings, and realized shortly after the earthquake that there was something about the mansions of the blood that demanded his attention.

Nobody would admit to having been there. Nobody could give him directions. Nobody knew what function they served, who had built them, or what importance they still held outside of stories told to get another drink. Everyone took their existence for granted. This was an investigation Arthur Lindsay could get behind.

Isaac scoffed. “You don't want to know what they are,” he said when Arthur asked him again. “You want to know what you can do with them."

"No, no,” Arthur said. He explained, he hoped patiently, that he wanted to know everything there was to know about the mansions. “How long have I been here?” he asked Isaac. “Am I the kind of man who would use this? I want to know."

Isaac drank, and ignored him. But it was a clue.

* * * *

His search for correspondences did not end with the dream-dog. Omens appeared in the clusters of spiders that built webs in abandoned doorways, and vanished by the next morning; in the distant rumble of masonry as a building fatally weakened by the earthquake teetered and collapsed, perhaps at the exact moment Arthur was trying to shore up a doorway in his own home. The morning after a dream in which the dog had bitten him on the thumb and refused to come out of the mailbox, Arthur was cleaning debris from his bedroom and remonstrating himself for his impulse to light a match and make the problem go away when he heard a knock from the direction of the front door. He emerged covered in dust and splinters, carrying an armload of broken lumber and drywall, to find Maria Rios a step inside his living room. “You shouldn't stay here,” she said. “What if there's an aftershock?"

There had been, dozens in fact. Each of them seemed to have squeezed Arthur's house a little more tightly together, and he was certain—while aware that it was dumb to be certain about something like this—that the building was stronger now than it had been right after the first quake. Not wanting to sound like an idiot in front of Maria Rios, however, he did not express this belief. Instead he said, “It's been five days. Probably won't be any more aftershocks, right?"

Maria looked unconvinced. In fact, Arthur thought as he threw the load of junk through his front window into the street, she looked nervous and sad, but also resolute. For no good reason he decided to attribute these feelings, if they existed, to her trepidation about speaking to him, and that trepidation he in turn attributed to her being secretly in love with him, as he was with her.

* * * *

He was half-right, as Maria Rios might have told him if he'd asked. What she was really after, following a sixth night of her dream-tournament in which German and Miguel had fought a tense semifinal, was certainty. Her dead possible suitors were eliminating themselves, and she had taken it upon herself to whittle down the ranks of their living counterparts. Arthur Lindsay was by far the oldest of these, and she passed his house on the way to work every day, so he was first on the list of cuts.

Something about the earthquake had gotten into her head. She thought of herself as a post-disaster landscape, rearranged and transformed by the magnitude of the event. Every day she walked to work in the office of a lawyer named Chago Batista, who had not tried a case in a year. He made advances, in a self-effacing and humorous way. She rejected them, and they went about their day. Maria returned folders that for no discernible reason had emerged from filing cabinets to fan themselves across the lawyer's desk.

* * * *

Arthur and Maria were creatures of a system, a self-created architecture of meaning and implication. To whatever extent either of them knew it, this fact made no difference in their everyday lives. They believed what they believed in the way it made sense to them to believe it. This was enough. Their systems conflicted in fundamental ways, and the unfolding of their story—each of them believed—would be a validation either of those conflicts or of one of the systems. In other words, Maria Rios and Arthur Lindsay both believed that something about the other would prove them right. The only thing thus proved was that nobody knows anything about love, and of course this was the last thing either of them would have been permitted by their systems to admit.

"She's crazy,” Batista said to Arthur in his office late one afternoon. Arthur had waited until Maria went home, then presented himself to Batista under the pretext of needing to resolve a question about the deed to his crumbling house. Batista offered Arthur a cigar. As he puffed it into life, Arthur said, “Who's crazy?"

"Maria,” Batista said. “You think I don't know why you're here?"

"Crazy how?” Arthur asked.

"She thinks every dead boy in Caracol might have been her lover. She thinks they fight to the death in the mansions over the right to have her when she dies."

The cigar gave Arthur a powerful head rush. His lips got a little numb. “Mansions,” he repeated.

"The mansions of the blood,” Batista said. “You don't know anything if you don't know that every dead dreamer in Caracol goes to the mansions until the rest of us stop dreaming about him. And that whole time, they're all trying like hell to get out and come back. Thing is, if they do, and they find you while you're dreaming about them, both of you get what you want.” Batista burst out laughing. “Know what I mean?"

"So you believe it too,” Arthur said.

"Sure,” Batista said. “The mansions are out there. But I dreamed about my wife for fifteen years after she died, and she never came to get me. Women are fickle."

Through his nicotine haze, Arthur considered this. “How does this make Maria crazy?” he said when he'd gotten his thoughts together.

Batista quit laughing. “That's between you and her,” he said.

* * * *

Arthur dreamed of himself, seven years old, writing down his dreams. A house that flew, and pursued him down a dim street, with his father and brother already in the car not knowing or caring that he had not caught up. A basement room, stacked to the ceiling with dormant zombies that awoke when he entered. A subterranean complex full of monsters that could be navigated only in the company of cartoon characters remembered from Arthur's childhood. “You ever see Charlie Brown?” he asked Isaac one night. “Linus is in my dreams. Monsters chase us."

"What's that supposed to mean?” Isaac said.

What it means, Arthur thought, is that you never get away. What you start with is what you end with. When you love, you want beginning and ending, and you want to know both before you get either. You want to know what kind of chocolate she likes, how she's going to react when something gets stained in the laundry. You imagine what the children would look like, and who they would love more. You lie awake at night itemizing an imagined roster of previous lovers whose existence you will never verify. You want to know why she chose you when she could have chosen someone else. You want to know why she did choose someone else before, and how she feels about the choice. You want to know the identity of the one man she wishes had been hers forever before she met you. You want to know everything. Even the mornings when she woke up consumed by shame and self-loathing, and what she did the night before. It will destroy you, this knowledge, implacably and by degrees, but you want to know. This is the vanishing edge between love and obsession, or perhaps between loving obsession and the kind that the lover indulges in order to sublimate and destroy a passion that cannot be survived.

This was the kind of passion Arthur felt for Maria, and he could never have killed Otro Gringo without it.

* * * *

He started frequenting Bananana because that was where Maria's other suitors gathered to commiserate over the hopelessness of the cause. From a safe distance he observed them like a bank robber sizing up security. When he had learned all about their weaknesses, he would, by the process of elimination, hit upon the exact way to pursue his suit with Maria. Once, after an evening of observations, he mentioned the mansions of the blood to Isaac. Isaac, after a brief period of what looked like consideration, hawked up and spat something that looked like a brain into the curbside mire. “The mansions,” Isaac repeated, his eyes watering. “Six of them I have seen. Not in forty years, though."

"Where?” Arthur asked, on the off chance that he might get a straight answer.

"That's the thing,” Isaac said. “You find the mansions in relation to where you are. Problem is, most people don't know where they are. Figure that out, the rest of the pattern is like the veins on the back of your hand. You'll know it when you see it."

They sat on the porch of Bananana, watching the stars wheel over the line of hills to the east of Caracol. “You bullshitting me?” Arthur said when it was time to either leave or buy Isaac another drink.

"Nope,” Isaac said. Arthur believed him. Isaac made an effort to tell a good story when he was bullshitting. When he was melancholy and self-absorbed, as tonight, odds were good that he was telling as much of the truth as he knew. Arthur went and got him another drink. As he took it, Isaac said, “What men like us understand is that there is no limit to the number of times the heart can be broken. And that each time it happens, there is no use doing anything but going on to see if it will happen again."

Maria Rios would not break Arthur's heart. Of this he was sure. If his heart was broken because of her, Arthur believed, it would be because he had done it to himself. It was not the first time he had entertained this thought, and when he immediately understood it was a rationalization, he then also understood that this particular rationalization was so important to him that he would perform it again and again until he died. He would forget having done it before. Each time he forgave a woman beforehand for her inevitable breaking of his heart, he would pretend that he had never done it before, and he would believe in the pretense. If he had been speaking aloud, this would have been his version of what Isaac had just said. Because he was not speaking out loud, Isaac looked at him and said, “Hey. You know what I'm saying?"

"I do,” Arthur said. Every man in Caracol was in love with Maria Rios. It made no difference.

* * * *

Eventually he understood that the mansions of the blood were part and parcel of what made Caracol the kind of place that would arrest his wandering. They existed insofar as Caracol itself existed, as a collective creation, a Latin-inflected hidey-hole of the mind. It was the kind of place where a lonely woman could imagine that the dead fought a tournament for her living hand. No better place existed for a gringo who wanted to disappear. Arthur did not yet understand that he too was part of a tournament. Caracol offered insight, but rarely understanding. It was a place where events occurred uncertainly, where you slogged through the swamps and found that the landscape dissembled, and an hour's work put you back in the city in the arms of your lover, you struggling free because you had just—at last—caught sight of one of the mansions of the blood and she is saying shush now, calm, it was just a dream, shush....

There had been another aftershock in the night. He remembered it as part of one of his dreams. A swamp, at night, flashlight beams swallowed by the jungle, leeches falling from the trees. The beam of the light caught the tarnished gleam of a door handle, and Arthur opened it. Ruins of a foyer: carpet turned into a field of mildew, tapestries hanging in strips, shuffle and skitter of small creatures fleeing the flashlight. Is this what the blood has come to?

No, Arthur said. It's a dream because it hasn't happened yet, not because it isn't real. But the girl was not Maria Rios, and he rose from her bed, feeling strained and aching in his hips and the muscles deep down in his stomach. The kind of feeling you get from trying to keep up with a girl much younger than yourself, or from slogging through a swamp and seeing—there!—at the edge of perception, at the conceptual horizon, through a braided curtain of flowering vines, the remotest mansions of the blood. He got up and walked through Caracol, taking the long way home, seeing new cracks veining previously unscathed stucco, new plumes of dust trailing from structures at last given up for dead. Overnight his building had collapsed as if bombed. This gave his dream more meaning. He picked through the rubble, at first making careful piles of everything he could save, and then gradually just wandering from street to alley, regarding the wreckage from different angles. Scrying, perhaps, as if his former home and business were a sheep's liver or the arcs of blood spraying from a decapitated chicken. When he came back out onto the street from his fifth or sixth trip back to the alley, Maria Rios was standing there.

She was about to speak to him. With the smell of another woman on his fingers, Arthur Lindsay knew that everything he had done since he had come to Caracol was wrong. “You have to go farther than the foyer,” she said.

"The what?” he said.

Maria looked at him closely. He was thinned out—no home, no livelihood, no one he could count on to bury him if he died right then and there. There's been a terrible misunderstanding, she thought.

"Excuse me,” she said. “I've made a mistake.” She had only come to him because all of her imagined lovers had disappointed her.

Foyer.

"No,” Arthur said. “No. I think I understand. Part of it, anyway. Will you tell me more?"

* * * *

Isaac's skiff ran aground, spun broadside against surprise currents, took on water. Six hours into their excursion into the swamps south of the ancient lakebed, Isaac quit. “You want the mansions?” he said, letting go of the tiller. “They're not out here."

"Where are they, then?” Arthur wanted to know.

Isaac uncorked a bottle and took a long pull. He didn't offer Arthur a drink. “I told you,” he said. “The geography of the mansions is all related to whoever's looking for them. You don't even know where you are. How are you supposed to find them?"

Consider Arthur Lindsay, thought Arthur Lindsay.

He had known his divorce from his first wife was inevitable when it occurred to him that although there were a million things he would miss about their marriage, there was not one thing she wanted from him. For a while he went through the motions of daily life feeling persecuted by this realization, and then he reached a point at which he was able to separate it from the question of whether or not she loved him. She did, and he knew it. But it wasn't going to make any difference, because for her the question of love expressed itself in completely different areas from those Arthur would have considered decisive. She would miss none of the things about him that it was most important to give.

In the nineteen years since that divorce, Arthur had gradually become convinced that he was the only person in the world who understood what was important to him. Clearly this was a failure on his part, but he could not understand how he had so completely failed to communicate it. He was thinking of how he had botched his opportunity with Maria the day before. If he had been able to respond to her in a way that had seemed genuine to her and also to him, he wouldn't have had to go drag Isaac off a barstool and demand that Isaac take him to the mansions right then, no questions asked, no demurrals brooked. So here they were, after a night spent readying the boat and sailing from the geometry of canals into the biology of swampland channels, undone an hour before dawn.

"Isaac,” he said, “I'm right here."

And meant it, in a way he had never meant it before, or could have meant it before, or could have said it even if he had meant it.

"Arturo,” Isaac said. “The degree to which you are full of shit astonishes even me, who prides himself on being shit-full."

But Arthur wasn't listening to him, because there on the periphery of vision was a vine-hung roof, and windows long since broken, and the mossy walls of one of the mansions of the blood.

* * * *

Inside, Arthur went alone. He was wet. He had not slept in thirty hours. His home was destroyed not by an earthquake, but by the puny hiccup of an aftershock. He was newly awakened into a consciousness of heartbreak and yearning. There was nothing left of him. The mansions of the blood held no fear. Inside lived the unborn scions of the generalissimo, the gunslinger successors of the bandit princeling. One and all, they took their shots at Arthur, they did their best, peeling back the scabs on the emotional wounds that had driven him to this Caracol of the mind. He in turn rose to the occasion believing he inevitably must fail. To the woman of his future, whom he believed to be Maria Rios, he said: This is what I have been saying to you, the unattainable idol of the woman I want to love. Before I came to you, I suffered this; and before you came to me I suffered that. Whose suffering is greater does not matter, and cannot matter. We are here now, bringing only what we can be. It must be enough.

Faced with a man so indomitably committed to the future, the spirits scattered. Arthur Lindsay believed that he had won. He returned to the boat demanding the rest of the mansions of the blood. “You knew where they were all along,” he said. “I'm sick of the runaround. Show me."

"Okay,” Isaac said. “But it doesn't matter what I show you until you figure out that you already know what you're going to find. And today we're going home."

Isaac knew that after Arthur's first experience with the mansions of the blood, it was inevitable that he would find the rest. And he knew that it was best not to interfere with a driven man's impulse to master time. He set Arthur on the course, allowed him to see the mansion...not allowed. The mansions allowed themselves. What was to be gained by someone else permitting this vision? The one thing Isaac could not do was turn the key for Arthur in the front door of the remotest mansion of the blood. It took Isaac's death, and the death of Maria Rios, to tumble those tumblers and shift those gears.

* * * *

There were seven mansions of the blood, or maybe eight, each one farther out in the antediluvian idscape of the jungle. One by one, Arthur Lindsay found them, or maybe Isaac led him to each in turn, or maybe Isaac allowed Arthur's singularity of purpose to guide each stroke of his oars. Up the river, back in time, Isaac thought, and waited for Arthur to figure it out too, but Arthur didn't until they approached the last mansion of the blood. “I'm out here too, somewhere,” he said, as much to himself as to Isaac. The green oppressed him.

"You figured it out, huh?” Isaac said. Then he vomited over the side of the boat. “Home,” he said. “Can't be in a boat when I'm this drunk."

They got back to Caracol late that night and were greeted with the news that Maria Rios was dead. Isaac stumbled off home. Arthur refused to get out of the boat. He sat up all night, listening to the gentle slap and wash of the water and trying to fit this new fact into what he had learned. By morning he allowed himself to be sad, and the fishermen who left before sunrise heard him weeping and assumed that there would be no fish in their nets that day. They were wrong, and by the time they returned later that afternoon Arthur had left the boat and gone to see the lawyer Batista. “Where is she?” he asked.

"Dead,” Batista said. “That's where she is."

Arthur wanted to hit him. “You know what I mean. I want to see her."

"That's what I'm trying to tell you,” Batista said. “Dead is where she is."

There were husks of flies on the windowsill, swirls of cigar smoke crouching in the corners. With the devastating clarity of these details came another kind of clarity. Arthur closed his eyes. “Because I turned back,” he said.

Batista shrugged. “Maybe."

Isaac died later that evening, on the porch at Bananana. The cause was said to be either alcohol poisoning or bowel cancer or resignation to the fact that he had done all he could do. When he heard the news, Arthur thought that it really couldn't have happened any other way. The quest had always been his. In the morning, he went to Isaac's boat, pushed it away from the dock, and rowed into the jungle for the last time. Caracol had been getting less and less real to him. He had the feeling that if he looked over his shoulder it would be gone: the wreckage of his house, Batista's smug cigars, the creaking floorboards of Bananana, the purple dye crushed from the bodies of snails. The only thing that had ever been real about it was Maria.

* * * *

He found the place and left the boat to drift. The last mansion of the blood appeared, grandly decayed and foreboding. The front door opened without a sound. In the foyer, Arthur knew with prophetic clarity what awaited him. She is here, Arthur thought. And so am I. The worst of the mansions of the blood. He walked into the next room. In the house was a demon, predatory and leering, created from the pathological corners of Arthur's mind. It was part and parcel of Caracol, and always had been. Perhaps he had been drawn to this place only to destroy it. It would be taller than he was, bloated, its mouth too big and its arms too long. It would have fangs, and from their points would tremble droplets of what could only be venom.

It would propose conundrums, and Arthur would know that there was no answer. Would Arthur face them down, solely for the love of a dead woman who had never done more than speak to him? In Arthur Lindsay, naivete was perhaps exactly that powerful. He would. He named the demon Otro Gringo, and called the name out.

You must either fail a woman by leaving, or fail a woman by staying.

You must either break the heart of a child, or....

"None of it matters,” Arthur said in the stillness of a supernaturally preserved music room. He stood in the doorway, and could see Maria Rios sitting at a parlor grand piano. Her fingers moved over the keys but made no sound. It would not matter to her whether he wanted to play catch with his son; it would not matter to her whether he would choke for the rest of his life on regret that his daughter would lose her first tooth a thousand miles away from where he stood deep into the swamps of his Latin America of the mind. The room was quiet again. All of the house's spirits were elsewhere. Maria, he thought. Can I still come back to you and explain? Can explaining ever be enough?

She vanished. In her place sat Otro Gringo, playing a song Arthur remembered singing for his children when they were toddlers.

He would make it enough. Resolve was foreign to Arthur, but when he felt it, he could feel nothing else. He realized that he was never going to get into the last mansion of the blood while Maria was alive, because the only shining goal that could have given him the strength to enter was bringing her back. Not just from the death that had been slowly claiming her since she had pledged herself to the dead men who never spoke to her in life, but from the paralyzing embrace of his desperate infatuation. This was Otro Gringo, the demon grown fat on Arthur Lindsay's refusal to live with himself and his insistence on recreating Maria Rios in the image of his own self-loathing.

Now was the time to be heroic. Arthur walked up to Otro Gringo, his feet silent on the carpet made by the fingers of children who had never existed. He took hold of the fleshy part of Otro Gringo's right triceps, and pulled. Otro Gringo kept playing. Arthur put the piece of the demon in his mouth and ate it. He tore another loose, and another, looking for Maria, who he knew was inside. Arthur ate and ate, leaving the hands for last because he did not want the song to end, but when it was time he ate them too, first the left and then the right. He swallowed the last bite and sat in the silence of the remotest mansion of the blood.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Short Story: SEVEN SINS FOR SEVEN DWARVES by Hilary Goldstein

Hilary Goldstein is the Editor-in-Chief of IGN.Com, which is an online media & services company focused primarily on gaming. His biography on the site says that he was born in the wilds of California in 1975 and raised in captivity. His F&SF debut is best avoided by septaphobes.

She appeared in the forest as a character appears in a dream—without any proper measure of how she got there or when she arrived, just the knowledge that she was a part of the tapestry. Autumn had overtaken the forest and the trees were alight with bright orange leaves. The wild white roses, which grew some ten feet by end of summer, stretched to catch the sun that managed to slip through the trees; they strained for any remaining drops of dew.

Her hand raked against a nearby rose bush as she fell, its massive thorns slicing open her palm. She closed her eyes and gathered herself enough for one narrow scream. No prince came to her rescue. Instead, a jackrabbit stepped forward. Its tall ears stood straight and its nose twitched as it considered Snow. “Shoo,” she said with the last of her energy. The jackrabbit sprinted away.

Before sleep could take her, a noise like an angry wind bounced through the dark forest. Its tenor grew to a shrill howl. But it was more than just a guttural cry, there was a rhythm to it, a cadence. It was, as best she could tell, a beast screaming out in the pangs of hunger. Snow knew if she remained lying on her stomach in the forest, she'd be eaten by nightfall.

The sound inspired her arms with strength enough to push herself off the ground.

She made her way west, certain if she went in a straight path she'd find a break in the forest. She was correct, but by the time she found the clearing, night had fallen and so too had she. Cut and weak, she hugged the wet grass of the hillside and fell asleep, no longer caring if the monster consumed her.

Snow awoke to find a dwarf on his knees beside her. Fingers, tiny and swollen, had hold of her shoulder, no doubt to shock her to consciousness. Her hand rubbed at her eyes as if to wipe off the last of a dream. When the dwarf remained, she screamed.

"There's nothing to fear.” His hair was a lengthy mess and his nose so bulbous that she found it hard to focus on any other part of his face. “I'm September."

Snow didn't have the energy to run, much less hold to her scream. Instead she asked, “Who would name someone September?"

"Well, I'm the seventh of my brothers and I arrived seven weeks late in the seventh month of the year.” His speech was archaic, muddled by a thick accent and mixed with a few words Snow couldn't understand, but their languages were close enough that the two could communicate.

"I've never met a whatever-you-are before.” She put a hand to his face, which was as coarse as a gravel road. The strap of her dress had slipped off her shoulder and she returned it to its proper position. Her curves were subtle, trapped behind a white gown, now dirtied and bloodied by the trip through the forest. A tear along the seam revealed a thin, smooth calf. She'd lost her shoes somewhere in the forest, kicked off when she tripped over a tree stump. Her toes were amazingly small compared to a dwarf's, each toenail painted a rich red. “My father banished me."

"Banished. What sort of crime did you commit?"

Her cheeks turned pink, which proved a striking contrast to the paleness of her face. “Is beauty a crime?"

"I don't know, is it?” And truly, he looked as if he did not know.

"I was the fairest of all at home.” The pink in her cheeks deepened as her smile broadened. “Beauty is a matter of pride, where I come from. My mother was once the most beautiful woman our land had known. Her jealousy drove her a bit mad, I'd say. She ordered my father to deliver her my heart, torn from me while I was still living."

The dwarf looked at her chest. “But you kept your heart?"

She gave him a curious look. “Of course. My father couldn't bear to do as my mother asked. He sent me away to somewhere he said she'd never find me. And I suppose that is true. No one will ever find me, will they?"

"You've been found.” There was a sweetness and a sadness to him that she liked. Perhaps it was just his size that made her comfortable, but she felt no threat from the dwarf. Certainly his brothers must be of equal measure.

"We can't keep her here,” Unus said. He was the eldest by seven hours and by far the tallest (by a good two inches) and thickest of his brothers. “She could not be trusted with our charge."

"Oh, I am so sick of hearing about our charge.” Equattuo waved a hand and walked out of the room, as had two of his brothers previously.

"The Lord made us seven from the clay of the Earth,” Unus began. “He made our legs short so we may not run from our duty and our backs strong to carry the weight of its importance. He made our hearts large so they might keep us strong through long years of service, and he gave us the voices of angels to drown out the cries of our wretched seven charges."

"And now he has brought us a woman.” Duollo was second in all aspects—age, height, handsomeness (for a dwarf)—and always spoke after Unus. He addressed the brothers who remained in the dining room. “Do we know what gifts she possesses? Would we be so bold as to throw such gifts back in the face of our very maker?"

Qinn stroked the division between the two braided ends of his red beard. “Give me a few minutes alone with the girl,” he said, shifting his weight on the thick, wooden stool. “I can divine her gifts."

"I can cook and clean, make the beds each morning, wash those disgusting clothes of yours, and read you a bedtime story if it makes you happy.” Framed in the doorway, with the golden light of the candelabra shining in behind her, Snow stood strong with hands on hips. “I don't want to be here, you don't want me here. I get it. But we're stuck with each other, so let's make the best of it."

"But—” Unus began.

In the time she'd spent in the basement awaiting their decision, she'd fashioned a needle and thread and made some repairs to her dress so as to no longer be immodest. “I don't care about your charge. I just want room and board for a bit until we can figure out how to return me home."

Unus folded his arms over his chest, with some effort. Though his chest was broad and strong, his arms were short and so only the tips of his fingers could meet. “I'm sorry, but there is simply no room here for you."

"She can share my bed,” Qinn said. He narrowed his eyes at Snow and continued to stroke the space between his parted beard. “I will allow you to sleep on top of me."

Unus slammed his hand on the table, which gave the sigh of old wood. “Qinn, what sort of remark—"

"I'm glad this is settled,” Snow said, stretching her arms in an exaggerated yawn. “I'm awful tired and could use my beauty rest."

* * * *

She woke to the cry of the monster. After clearing some space by piling miscellany into the corner, they'd made a bed for her in the basement out of pillows and blankets. Though it was in no way comfortable, she'd found it easy to sleep before the noise woke her.

The echoing wail of the beast was close. It had to be. How else could she hear it through the door from down in the basement? The sound was the cry of a dragon, perhaps, maddened by the death of its hatchling.

Before going to bed, she'd found a pickaxe, its head broken, and slept beside it. She felt its weight and in the darkness gave a test swing to understand how soon she must act in order to defend herself.

Gingerly, she made her way through the dark of the basement, up the stairs, and into the foyer. This was the only part of the house that was warm—a nice yellow coat of paint, a hand-carved wood bench too low for her, but the perfect size for a dwarf, and an inscription, chiseled into a bronze plaque above the bench in a language she could not read. She imagined it said something like, “Welcome to our forest sanctuary” or “Be safe all who live under this roof."

She held the pickaxe at its end to ensure maximum force should she need to swing.

The beast made no noise.

Through the window, she saw the clearing illuminated by a night sky not so different from the one back home. The light could not penetrate the surrounding forest, which was edged by the spikes of tall, dark trees. If the monster was coming, it would surely appear from the tree line.

When she heard it next, it was close enough to be on top of her. The dragon howled a chant with devilish words she could not comprehend. She turned quickly, but the room was empty. And then she realized the noise was coming from the bedroom. The little men who took her in had failed in whatever duty they held so dearly, and soon enough the door would open and the monster would come and tear through her snow-white skin.

Something tugged at the back of her dress, and tiny words were lost under the shrill cries of the beast. She swung without looking, but swung high. The pickaxe missed its target and hit the doorframe, splintering the wood.

September fell backwards, then scurried toward the entryway of the kitchen.

She said nothing.

"Is it keeping you up?” Thick little fingers brushed back his unkempt hair.

"I thought you were—"

"We should have warned you."

"About the monster?"

He took two small steps forward. “The singing."

She turned then, toward the door. As she did, the dragon's melody trailed and the house fell quiet.

"Oh, I can't stand it either,” he said. “They really don't need me to keep it up, so I usually go into the kitchen for a bite."

She didn't resist as he took the pickaxe from her. Despite its weight and his size, he seemed to have no issues carrying it.

"Best not to let Unus see this. Misunderstanding, I'm sure. I know my Snow wouldn't want to hurt us."

She plucked a splinter from the doorframe. “Why do they sing like that?"

"To drown out the voices."

"What voices?"

The pickaxe dragged along the floor as he moved toward the basement entrance. “They won't bother us again tonight."

She dropped the splinter and kicked it under the bench. “Friends don't keep secrets."

"Brothers do,” he said, opening the door.

"What does that say?” She pointed at the plaque on the wall.

"A beheading to all unwanted guests."

She grabbed the pickaxe and descended into the dark.

* * * *

It took her the entire day to wash their clothes. Not because the material was unfamiliar or their wardrobe was plentiful. They had just rarely ever been washed. And being that these dwarves, as Snow learned, spent their days digging in a mine, soot and mud and grime had woven themselves into the fabric.

September sat on a tree stump outside and watched her work.

"Why are they digging, again?” At the start of the day, she had asked this same question, but September gave one of his slippery answers. But now they had spent a good ten hours talking to one another. Perhaps more importantly, midday Snow had decided to wash her own dress, forcing her to spend the next few hours in her undergarments. If ever a bond between girl and dwarf could be forged, it was with moderate nudity.

"Do all the girls where you come from look like you?"

"No. None now, since I live here.” She stopped her scrubbing of the latest dwarf garment to look back at him. Though she'd been slaving away at her chores, she didn't perspire. If September got close enough, he'd notice her lavender smell hadn't faded. “Now answer my question."

"They're digging a hole,” he said.

Snow unclipped her dress from the line, checking the repairs she'd made to ensure there'd be no tears when she put it back on. “Digging for what?"

"Just digging a hole.” September picked up an apple, which had fallen from a nearby tree. It was smaller and a deeper red than the apples Snow was used to. At first she'd mistaken them for plums.

"Where to?"

"It's a burying hole."

She stopped a moment, the straps of her dress still hanging off her shoulders. “A hole for whom?"

"So we won't have to hear them anymore.” He took a large bite of his apple and finished his statement with his mouth full. “And we won't have to sing at night and through the day."

"And what exactly are you trying to drown out? I've heard nothing all afternoon."

"They're playful like that."

"I hate a good mystery almost as much as I hate being teased."

"Don't be cross.” He tossed the apple aside.

She reached around and pointed toward her bare back. “Zip me up?” September stretched, but the zipper was far too high for him to reach so she kneeled down. Cold, stubby fingers scraped along the curve of her spine.

"Just the zipper, please."

"Right."

Snow showed her gratitude with a kiss to the little man's forehead. His skin tasted like ash and sweat. “We could be special friends,” she said. “If only—"

"I ... I will show you. But you must promise not to tell my brothers."

As she crossed her heart, the dwarf's eyes drifted downward. Her skin was a perfect white. As pure as flesh could be.

He made her wait across the room while he took the three keys for the three locks on the bedroom door. It was a clever mechanism, he'd explained. One that entered a failsafe mode should anyone use the keys in the wrong order.

With as much grandeur as a dwarf could muster, he swung the door open. “M'lady."

"M'lord,” a harsh voice responded. Unus stepped into the house, his brothers close behind.

"You're home early,” September said.

"And with good reason. I knew you were too weak to hold to your duty."

September's head fell. He pulled the door closed, but did not lock it.

"And you, young lady, are to be—"

"Do you hear that?” The girl turned her attention from the dwarves and looked back through the entryway at the closed door beyond. She heard a catlike cry, a siren's song calling to her. “Is there someone else here?” She moved at a speed to which dwarves were unaccustomed. Each flailed at her or attempted to block her path, but she dipped and danced around them with ease, reaching the door in a matter of seconds.

"Wait!” Unus's boots pounded against the wood floor with each hurried step, like a great and consistent knocking.

The door was thick oak, warm to the touch. It took two pushes to open the door, but once it began to give, it swung inward and released the noise trapped within.

"Please, you must—"

She held out two fingers and shushed Unus. The room was narrow but long, the wall lined by seven identical beds. The windowless walls plain, the ceiling so low she had to bend to avoid hitting her head. Each bed was unexceptional, save the chests at their feet. Made of a metal she'd not seen before, the chests had a slight bronze hue and a dullness that made them look flat. Whatever the metal, it wasn't the kind used for decoration, certainly not for jewelry. Locks, as big as her fist, held the lids steadfast. All seven were identical, save for the ornate crest at the top. The oak crests, woven into the metal as if forged at the same moment, had distinct patterns that spelled words in the same language as the sign in the foyer.

She began with the chest closest to the door, the seventh in line, and went from one to the other, leaning in close and listening for the cat. Her mind, she'd always felt, played tricks on her too often. How else to explain that amidst the silence, she heard whispers from each chest? One was a solemn voice, another slithery like a snake. The only one that made no noise was the final bed. Where the other chests had a power to them, a divine element she couldn't quite explain, this final chest was unspectacular.

"Step away from my bed, child.” Unus stood behind her. And though he was much shorter than she, he seemed to believe himself taller.

"Sorry,” she said. “I was just looking for the cat."

"Cat?"

And then it called out to her. The chest toward the center made a cat-like noise—something between a purr and a yawn. A rush of heat shot across her skin and deep inside her as she neared the chest. It was as if her blood were made molten.

She smiled and placed her hand against the crest, which purred at her touch. Heat awoke along her arms and rushed through her body. But not the kind of heat you get from a warm bath. It was as if her body housed a galaxy and, at that moment, every star had come awake inside her.

With one quick motion, she reached to the stitching at the neck of her dress and undid her work. The neckline opened up and the cool air of the room wrapped itself against her skin, only to evaporate moments later from the heat she generated. Delicately, her fingers traced the lines in the crest as one might a lover's hair. She blinked away the sweat dripping into her eyes.

"That's enough.” Unus pulled her free for a moment, but his hands were too small to clasp her arm fully and her skin too slick for him to take hold for long. She slid free, dropped to her knees again, and wrapped her arms around the chest. Her body heaved and her fingers dug against the metal. She attempted to make a sound, but what escaped was merely a momentary groan.

The room disappeared and all she knew was the chest. Darkness pressed against her, but the tighter she held the chest, the brighter the light she emitted. A whir, like the humming of an ancient engine, drummed against her breast. Her body dissipated into an ocean and her current crashed against the mighty chest.

Again. Again. Again.

She placed her face against the warm metal, her body blanketing the chest as much as possible. The slit she'd recently repaired tore seemingly on its own, and her bare leg knocked against the lock. It clanked against the chest several times.

September edged closer, but Unus held him back.

Her finger dug against the wood crest, her body shuddering several times before a calm struck. The tension didn't leave her hands, but her body stopped shaking and she murmured something lost beneath the purr of whatever lived within the trunk.

The pause was only momentary.

Her body bucked as the heat of a million stars flared at once in a supernova. A sound finally escaped. It was a noise the dwarves had never heard and one she herself had never made. It was not a cry of agony, though it could easily be mistaken for such. It was not a scream of panic either. This was something different.

Her hands relaxed, her arms went slack, and Snow let herself fall backwards. Breaths quick, hand stroking her stomach, she spread out on the floor.

"Is she dead?” September asked, pushing past Unus to reach the girl.

"She's still breathing,” Unus said.

"I told you she'd prefer bunking with me,” Qinn offered from the back of the room.

September laid a hand against Snow's forehead, which was warm and slick.

"Well, is she hurt?” Unus attempted to peer over September at the girl.

September shook his head and looked up at Unus. “She's smiling."

They sat at the table, eating the food Snow had prepared hastily after regaining her composure. It was not very good, but no one complained. In fact, no one said a word. Not until the meal was nearly done. Occasionally, Snow looked up from her stew and saw Unus glaring at her, or September smiling her way, but no conversation was had. It was the first silent meal she'd ever known. In her father's house, talking was just as important as eating.

Snow's chair scraped against the floor as she pushed herself away from the table.

"What would your mother think,” Unus said, tapping a finger against the table, “if she saw you acting in such a way?"

The chair scraped again as Snow pulled herself back in. “How did I look, September?"

The youngest dwarf was mid-slurp when she asked. He coughed for a moment and then stammered, “Glowing and beautiful and immeasurably happy."

"Then she would have hated it."

"Feel free to wrap yourself around my chest anytime,” Qinn said, his mouth full of food.

"I wish I could know that feeling, just once.” Tria was the ugliest of the dwarves. His face was scarred by acne, his hair a long tangle of thick orange strands.

"You could just touch the chest, you know,” Snow said.

"Oh, I have, I have.” His eyes shifted to Unus for a moment and then down at his empty bowl.

"We're immune to their power,” Unus explained.

"What are they, exactly?"

"Seven powerful demons. Each with its own infectious brand of immoral indulgence."

"And these demons do horrible things, like make you feel exquisite?” Heat rushed to her face at the very thought of the experience.

Unus narrowed his eyes at Snow. He drained the rest of his drink before answering. “And if you could feel that every moment of your life, what would you make of yourself? You wouldn't know to eat or work or sleep. Dead within days but uncaring because it so enraptured you in its wantonness."

"Heaven forbid."

"Indeed it does. That is why we guard them."

September leaned forward, his cheeks puffed, nodding in excitement. “And that's why we dig."

"September.” Unus wagged a finger at the little one.

"You're going to bury them, without ever looking inside?"

Equattuo curled his fingers into a ball and squeezed tight as if trying to forge a diamond out of coal. “I guard the one known as Ira. Were it ever to escape, the world would burn with an anger not seen since God sank the world in the Great Flood."

"And I guard Gula,” Hex said, “who would consume every drop of the flood and still be thirsty.” He was thin and ate at a faster pace than the others. Even though most were nearly finished, he'd made it onto his third helping.

"I felt something when I was near those chests,” she said, a bit softer. “Yours was like a cold fire, Equattuo. Duollo's was a prickle, like when your leg's fallen asleep. And of course,” she absently adjusted the strap on her dress, “Qinn's was....” The pink returned to her cheeks.

Qinn gave her a wink.

"Funny, though.” The softness left, replaced by a playfulness she'd not felt previously during her stay. “I didn't feel a damned thing from your chest, Unus. Why might that be?"

Unus stood, knocking over his chair as he did so. Both fists slammed down on the table. “Perhaps you are immune to the temptations of Vanagloria because you are already infected by his vice. To suggest that I, the greatest of all dwarves, could fail in my charge is preposterous.” He leaned forward, looking more like an ape than a dwarf as he huffed. “What you do not realize is that so great is my courage and my might that, long ago, I subjugated the prideful demon within that chest. Would that my brothers had such power as I, we could abandon our charge and trust these dark creatures to be too meek to ever cry for release."

Snow looked about the table at the other six brothers. Even September, who often seemed enraptured in Unus's every word, was looking away. None of them could meet their eldest brother's eye at that moment.

Unus eased off and stood as tall as possible, folding his arms as best he could.

September was the first to speak after a lengthy silence. “Is that true?” he asked. “You've out-willed it, then?"

Snow steepled her fingers and failed to suppress a smirk.

Unus gave another huff and turned from the table, stomping his way toward bed.

* * * *

She found the apple waiting for her on the table in the morning. “Thank you, September,” she said, though no one was there. Apparently Unus's trust issues had evaporated because the house was empty, her little guardian gone with the rest of them to dig their hole.

She doubted the little apple could satisfy her hunger, so she decided to commit the day to picking more. Discovering which tree this came from would be the first order of the morning. It was an even deeper red than the ones she'd eaten before.

The juice dribbled down her chin as she took her first big bite. She wiped at herself as she attempted to swallow, but found her throat suddenly parched. She lurched forward, attempting to spit out the apple, but could not. The rest of the apple hit the floor moments before Snow.

* * * *

"They've gone after your mother,” September said, unable to hold back his tears. “She found you somehow. We'll make her pay, don't you worry."

They'd laid Snow out on the kitchen table, after setting down fresh sheets she herself had washed the day before. She wasn't dead, Duollo assured them all. Very slightly, if you watched with great concentration, you could see her stomach move with each slow breath. She was in a sleep that could not be broken.

September laid his head next to her and stroked her arm. She was a restful beauty.

"Unus thinks we should bury you with the chests tomorrow.” The dwarf spoke to her side, his head still against the table. “He's wrong, though. The hole's not ready yet. But he insists we do it after we finish the search for your mother."

He raised his head so he could watch her peaceful face. The merriment was gone, the spunk, but there was a loveliness to this near-death Snow that was somehow more alluring than before.

"You were my charge and I failed you."

She gave no response.

"You have to wake up, Snow. Before they return.” He'd never felt love, but if it were anything like panic, he felt it now. His arms grabbed her shoulders before he realized his actions. He shook her, hard. Once. Twice. “Wake up!” His fingers dug into her shoulders and he lifted her half off the table before thrusting her back down. “Wake up!” Again. Her head lolled to one side as he gave a final shake. “Please."

His head fell onto her chest and he began to sob, so loudly that he couldn't hear her cough. The throes of his own sorrow masked the vibrations of her chest. “Oh Snow, my love. My only love."

"September?” Her voice had none of its singsong quality. It was a scratchy, ugly noise, like a desert attempting to speak for the first time.

He looked at her and cheered—actually threw up his hands and hollered.

Snow swung her legs off the table. Her head felt heavy, like it was extra weight holding her back. Like it was full of ballast that needed to be jettisoned. It didn't take long for her to spot it on the ground, a chunk of the apple she'd eaten, which had caught in her throat until September managed to shake it loose.

"Poison,” he said. “Your mother."

She rubbed at her forehead and attempted to pace the room. Every movement was a step underwater. The undertow threatened to drag her down and drown her once again. She kept moving.

"Don't worry, they're going to find your mother. They're searching the forest now. They know it far better than she ever could."

Shaking her head was a bad idea. The world tipped to one side and she stumbled to the ground. She waved September off as he leaped to her side. “How did she find me? How could she?"

"I don't know,” the littlest dwarf answered. “Who else would want to hurt you?"

And with a snap, she was awake. Fully. The poison didn't matter anymore. Let it run its course. The queasiness in her stomach was forced down. Her fever burning off quickly. The tingling in her arm dissipating.

She stood so she could look down at the dwarf. “Your brother did this."

"Unus?"

That he knew which brother was all the proof Snow needed. “I found out his dirty little secret. He let that thing out of his chest a long time ago."

"That doesn't make sense.” But even as he said it, September's words trailed off. He reached for the three keys in his pocket.

"Open it. Open it and we'll know."

"I can't. Unus has the only key to his chest. He wears it around his neck. We're each responsible for one of them."

The roughness in her voice was gone and she rubbed September's head with the affection of a mother. “You believe me."

"I'm beginning to suspect."

"This whole thing is a sham. He let his demon free and it hurt no one."

September looked to his feet.

"And tonight we'll prove it.” Snow explained her plan, one she was certain had no flaws. One that could not possibly go wrong.

* * * *

She woke in the middle of the night and rose from the table like a ghost lifting from the grave. It wasn't easy holding her breath or her tongue when the dwarves returned from their fruitless search. Unus made another speech and swore to give Snow a proper burial at dawn's light. She played dead and they bought it.

The moment the dwarves retired to their beds, she let out a slow, lingering breath. A part of her felt dead and wanted to get up immediately, but she knew that in a few hours they would wake to the cries of their demon charges and be forced to sing to drown out temptation. So she slept, knowing their guttural howls would wake her when it was time to act.

She waited what she assumed was an hour after their singing ended. With little effort, she made a silent walk toward the bedroom door. She was lithe and had always been able to move about with no noise. The door was the first test. She believed in September, but there was no guarantee the dwarf would follow through. The knob was warm to the touch. It clicked as it turned, but it did turn. Though the door was heavy, it seemed almost to pull itself open, as if it had awaited this day for centuries.

All seven dwarves slept.

Unus had a heavy, gustful snore, the kind that could fill the sails of a mighty war vessel. He made it all too easy. The noise from his rancorous snoring masked Snow's careless steps on the groaning wood. As September promised, each dwarf hung their key on their bedpost at night. Since the door was locked each evening and their guardians were inches away, there was little concern for the safety of the chests.

Unus's snore caught in his throat and he rolled onto his side. Snow leaned over him, whispering in his ear so softly it could not possibly penetrate the rattling of his snoring.

"You messed with the wrong girl."

Snow lifted Unus's key from the bedpost. It was heavy iron, bigger than her tiny hand. She rubbed her thumb along its rough edges. There was great power in the key. Not that it was magical in any way. Just that it was the true warden for the prison that held Unus's demon. Of course, she was certain it had been used once before, long ago, by Unus to free his charge. Still, holding it made her feel like a queen.

Something was wrong with Unus's chest. The previous day, Snow was quite certain it was empty, lifeless amidst the colorful and wondrous sensations of the other chests. It was like a missing star, leaving a black hole in the night sky. But tonight, it had an unexpected vibrancy. When Snow's hand touched the lock, she felt a cool chill. Her lips tasted peppermint. She smelled smoke.

She edged back, the tingling along her arm bubbling a moment longer.

"He wasn't lying, was he?” September stood behind her. He spoke in his normal voice, which was still low enough not to disturb his brothers’ sleep.

"Of course he was lying."

"Snow—"

"He's clever.” She could barely maintain a whisper.

"Maybe you shouldn't—"

"There's nothing in there."

She took hold of the lock, expecting the same sensations, only this time she felt nothing. There was a lingering smell of burning oil, but the coolness was gone. The key slipped easily into the lock, like a lover falling into the arms of another. Snow looked at the crest. Its wood pattern was like ivy growing over an iron plate. Something wasn't right.

The key turned without her realizing she'd made the motion. The click of the heavy lock opening cut through Unus's snoring.

"No,” Unus said, halfway out of a dream.

The lock fell free. The lid of the chest flew open.

Unus slammed the lid shut, but it was too late. A howl like a child released from his room after a lengthy punishment erupted through the room. The other dwarves were on their feet in moments. It was already done.

"Girl—” Unus moved toward her only to have September step in his way. He knocked the little one aside.

Snow looked up at him, her bright eyes shimmering as the demon illuminated the room with a green glow. “It was supposed to be empty.” Her eyes darted from one dwarf to the next. “It's a trick.” And even as she said it, she knew the futility of her words.

The seven dwarves stood strong. Stood together. Even September took his place at Unus's side.

She stood with the demon. An ethereal being, it wrapped itself around her like a green fog, slipped between her lips like a tongue darting in for a kiss, and filled her with its desires. The seven watched, waiting perhaps for an act of contrition. If only she knew such brotherhood. If only she had family like this. All she ever wanted was to belong somewhere, to have the strength of a bond such as this. And oh to have the honor of a charge such as this—to be trusted with man's seven greatest evils. Why couldn't she have been trusted with such a destiny? Why did they deserve these things and not her? When would she find love and honor? She wanted them now, so badly.

"Your tears won't spare you,” Unus said. His hand shook as he raised an open palm. Though small, he had might enough to end the girl with one swing.

"I have failed.” It was Tria who cried now. He'd fallen to his knees and was slowly crawling toward the chest. “I am ruined."

"Tria, stop behaving like a girl,” Qinn said. “Clearly she is to blame for releasing Unus's charge."

Tria shot his head back to look at Qinn. His words were almost unintelligible, jumbled beneath his sobbing. He repeated his words, a little more clearly. “It is not Vanagloria that fills this room with its laughter."

"Of course it—” But Tria stopped Unus before he could finish.

"That is Invidia. My charge. She has escaped under my watch."

Snow tried to speak, to solve the mystery with a proper question or well-placed comment, but she couldn't center her mind on the argument. All of the attention had shifted to Tria. He had earned their concern, had become more victim than she. They pitied him and ignored her.

"Why isn't anyone looking at me?” she asked, but her question crashed against another wail from Tria.

"It is not your fault, Tria.” Unus swung a finger toward Snow. “It's hers."

She smiled and was overwhelmed with gratification. They were hers again. Tria was already old news. It was her, her, her.

"I warned against this. I told you she was another kind of demon escaped from her own prison.” He pounded his chest. “I tried to prevent this, but some of you lacked faith in my decisions. And now you see what your doubt has wrought."

Snow frowned like a child—an exaggerated scrunching of her face. Everyone blamed her for everything. Why couldn't they treat her like they did Qinn? No one accused him of releasing foul demons into the world. Why couldn't she have the respect they gave him? She wanted that respect. She should have that respect. She could take that respect.

"It was you.” September stepped forward. He was a good foot shorter than Unus, and had to look up to meet his eyes. “You poisoned her."

"Clearly I should have been less subtle with my methods."

Duollo nearly knocked Qinn over as he shot up. “Unus!"

"Does it anger you to be so wrong about her?” Unus asked September.

The youngest dwarf swung his head toward the locked chest in front of Tria's bed. “This is your chest, Unus.” And indeed it was. Snow recognized the pattern. She couldn't quite place what was wrong about the chest at the foot of Unus's bed, but now she knew. He'd switched them sometime that night.

"I knew that first,” she said, but was ignored again.

A firm hand grabbed September's arm. “Be careful of your accusations, little one."

September pulled himself free of his brother and grabbed the key from Tria's bedpost. Before he could inspect it a hand closed over his. Unus squeezed.

"So the chests changed place, what difference does it make? She opened Tria's and released a monster that will soon enough find its way to her world. Look at how it's already corrupted her."

"Me?” Her hands pressed against her chest and her mouth strained to smile wider.

"If I had not made this change, she would have released Vanagloria."

"Would she?” September relinquished the key to his brother.

No one spoke. Not even Snow, who stared up at Unus's key, wondering what she could do to claim it.

"You don't get to win,” September said to Unus. His bare foot came crashing down against the lock. It shuddered but did not open. Blood speckled the floor.

"That lock cannot be broken."

September kicked again.

"You're bleeding, brother."

Again.

"Stop this."

Again.

"It will never open."

His foot split and bleeding, September kicked again. This time the lock gave. Two pieces hit the floor.

"You've gone too far,” Unus said, a second before bringing his fist into September's temple. The dwarf folded like a chair snapped by the wind. He hit the ground and didn't move.

"Enough.” Equattuo came up behind Unus and slipped his arms around him. His face was red, a sudden fire. He pulled hard and lifted Unus. “Open the goddamned thing."

Snow nodded. It was hers. Whatever Unus had, she wanted.

But there was no treasure inside the chest. There was nothing but the exhalation of old air, like a last gasp of a secret slipping through passive lips.

Equattuo screamed and threw Unus into the wall.

The green glow dissipated and the room darkened.

Slowly the desire for the empty chest left Snow. She no longer wanted what others had, but she was now keenly aware that she had nothing of her own.

She felt her face. It was hot. Wet.

"I told you, September,” she said, out of breath. She scanned the faces of the six other dwarves, who were all looking past her. She followed their gaze to the little one motionless on the floor. Snow scrambled to September. She wrapped herself around him and rocked him against her breast. “Breathe. Breathe. Breathe."

They remained intertwined like one being until morning came.

* * * *

Snow waited outside the mine while the dwarves buried September.

They said it might take several hours, simply due to the sheer depths of the hole and the logistics involved in getting September to his final resting place. There was no ceremony. As Qinn explained, they didn't know they could die. They had no process for grief. Whatever they were feeling—if it was anything at all—they didn't express it around Snow. They went about their business while she mourned.

A songbird landed on a nearby tree and chirped at the rising sun. A jackrabbit skittered past, then stopped to look at her. In her few days around the forest, the animals were scarce. And if one saw her or any of the dwarves, it fled immediately.

"They're leaving,” she told the jackrabbit. “Soon it'll be just you and me."

Its nose twitched.

"Don't worry, they're taking those demons with them."

The jackrabbit took a cautious step forward, its nose twitching once again.

"I'm not sure what they'll do with themselves. They say they know someplace to take the chests.” She plucked a berry off a tree growing alongside the hill. “Somewhere they can open the rest."

The rabbit took another step forward. It was like her, alone and out of place in the dark forest.

"You'd think seven demons would be worse than two."

The jackrabbit sniffed at the berry, which she held out to it.

"Apparently it'll help balance things out. Don't want one demon having more influence than another."

It looked up at her again, leaving the berry untouched. After a moment of studying Snow, the jackrabbit turned and bounded back into the forest.

"Don't worry,” she said after it. “We have plenty of time to get acquainted. All the time in the world."

[Back to Table of Contents]

Short Story: SILENCE by Dale Bailey

It's probably not a coincidence that Dale Bailey's recent emails have been filled with good advice on child rearing, while his short fiction output has diminished. He did recently publish a story in collaboration with Nathan Ballingrud in Lovecraft Unbound, but his last appearance in F&SF was in our Oct/Nov. 2005 issue. We're pleased to see him back here with this story of life during high school.

So I'm fourteen years old and Junior Starnes is on the warpath again. That was high school for me. Duck and cover. Run for your life. An endless cycle of tension and release. Most days that era in my life seems incredibly remote and I can summon a germ of compassion for Junior—he must have been held back a year or two by then and I don't imagine his home life was any picnic. But at other times, even now, it presses all too close, and the fourteen-year-old me—I think part of me will be fourteen years old for the rest of my life—rises up to insist that Junior Starnes was a monster. Most people can be, I guess, even if you never really know when they're going to show their teeth. You just know you don't want to be around when it happens—if you can help it. Sometimes, of course, you can't.

That's what I want to write about here, now that I am a grown man setting down these thoughts in a dime store notebook with a picture of an owl on the cover: the fall of my freshman year at Thomas Jefferson High School, Junior Starnes and his buddy Richard Zell, and those moments when the monster underneath the human mask shows its face. Most of all, I suppose, I want to tell you about the thing in the woods.

I had Honors English second period that year, Ms. Blevins. Junior had Social Studies two doors down, even though it was really just a glorified study hall with a tattered Mercator projection on one wall, and a crew of burnouts and stoners killing time in the seats till they turned sixteen and could collect their walking papers. The teacher, Mr. Dayton, had given up a decade ago, when most of the kids in his class weren't that far out of diapers. He was marking time too, punching the clock until his retirement kicked in, and every kid at Thomas Jefferson High knew that he'd guarantee you a C if you kept your mouth shut, and higher if he liked you. So his class filled up with lifers, and all the grown-ups oohed and ahhed, saying he had a knack for working with “at-risk” students. I figured it was only a matter of time before he won Teacher of the Year. Which was fine except that his room's proximity to my Honors English class turned the transition between my second and third periods into the adolescent equivalent of trench warfare: the bell rang and, bam, over the top you went, straight into the teeth of the German machine-gun fire.

Which is pretty much how the thing I want to tell you about begins. I remember we were reading Beowulf at the time, and one minute me and Steve Collier, my best friend since third grade, were pushing through a mob of sweaty kids and debating who'd win a cage match between Grendel and Swamp Thing. The next minute Steve has vanished—he had an almost supernatural talent for that—and my own personal Grendel—Junior—has me pinned to the wall beside the water fountain. Twisting his hand in my shirt, Junior thrusts his face close to mine—so close I can smell the meaty reek of hapless Danes upon his breath. “Where you headin', Philip?” he says, giving my name this mocking twist, wit not being a tool Junior has in his toolbox.

Me, my toolbox is empty. Where I'm heading is Algebra II—Ms. Eisenstein—a class Junior won't see the inside of if he lives to be five hundred years old. But that's not what Junior wants to hear. The truth is I don't know what he does want to hear—to this day, I don't know what he wanted to hear, and I suspect he didn't know either—so I just stammer out the obvious, saying, “Umm—third period, Ju—Junior"—I had to hesitate here to choke back a nasty taste—"why?"

Next thing I know my books are all over the floor and Junior's grinding my algebra homework into shreds of pencil-smudged tissue under the heel of one ratty boot.

By this time a crowd has gathered. I read this story once about a man who notices the way crowds materialize any time there's an accident, how hungry they look, and finally he has an accident himself and they show up to get him. That's the story of my life: Steve's superpowers on one hand (Hey presto! I'm invisible!) and on the other one these famished-looking teenage throngs that spring up out of nowhere every time Junior decides to play a quick round of Whack-A-Phil.

Then suddenly Junior's saying, “Jeez, Philip, I didn't even see you there, man, I'm sooo sorry,” drawing out the words the way you do when you mean to let everybody know just how much bullshit you're really slinging. He untwists my shirt and bends over to help me pick up my books with this totally fake shit-eating grin on his face. The crowd's evaporated, too. The hall's suddenly right next door to empty, like Beam me up, Scotty! empty, with just a handful of kids in clusters talking about Friday night's big game against Broughton or trading homework or checking their makeup in those little mirrors all the girls have stuck inside their locker doors.

That's when I see Coach Kessinger—a big guy with close-cropped hair, a nose that he broke playing one season for the Falcons, and the kind of gym-rat muscles that make it look like your biceps have emigrated to the backs of your arms in search of a better life—strolling down the hall. He stops to chat up Cindy Taylor, which is gross when you think about it and even when you don't. Then he swings toward us and claps Junior on the shoulder.

"Why don't you man up and come out for football, Junior? Scared?"

Junior kind of laughs, but Kessinger's already moving on, dipping his chin in my direction—"How ya doin', Paul?"—as he disappears around the corner.

"Loser,” Junior mutters. I'm not sure whether he's talking about Kessinger or me, but he doesn't bother to elaborate. He just spreads his arms, grinning—this one is from the heart, which I figure to be a chunk of icy stone in the middle of his chest—and lets the books tumble once again to the floor. He leans toward me, closer this time; at this distance his breath smells like maybe those hapless Danes had the runs. “After school, Philip,” he says, punctuating each word by jabbing two fingers into my chest. “Three-thirty, out behind the Stop N Go. Don't make me come looking for you.” He turns away then, and I see his pal, Richard Zell, leaning against a locker down the hall, watching the whole thing go down. Richard was the brains of the operation—which you might call a stretch if you didn't know Junior, who was, of course, the muscle. One time in the cafeteria, I nerved myself up to ask Richard why Junior hated me and if he—Richard, that is—wouldn't step in on my behalf.

Richard just pushed his tray away and looked at me like I was a particularly loathsome loogey he'd just hawked up on the sidewalk. “Question is, Philip,” he said, “why wouldn't he hate you? Now take my tray up for me, why don't you?"

So I did, and spent the rest of the day hating myself for that, too.

Now, though, Richard just tipped me a wink and shot me with his forefinger. Then he swung in beside Junior and the two of them strode off to roast live kittens on spits.

I knelt to get my books. When I stood, I realized that Ms. Blevins was standing in the doorway of her room. “Are you okay, Philip?” she asked.

And what I said is, “Yeah, I just"—I waved one hand, like no big deal—"I just dropped my books, you know. It's all cool."

The warning bell rang. The hallway emptied with a clang of locker doors and sneakers squeaking on tile. Somewhere a girl laughed, high and sweet. Then it was just the two of us, me at the water fountain and Ms. Blevins in the door of her classroom. She crossed her arms, leaned against the doorframe, and cocked her head. Ms. Blevins wasn't that far out of school herself—she must have been in her mid-twenties, though she didn't seem so young to me then, I guess—and not a lot slipped past her.

"Are you sure?” she said. “For a minute there I thought that boy—"

I was nervous all of a sudden, fluttery in my stomach. “Junior?” I said. “Nah, he's just playing around—"

Then the tardy bell rang and I nearly jumped out of my skin. The hall was so quiet I could hear my heart thump inside me.

Ms. Blevins raised one eyebrow and frowned. She stared at me for a moment. “You better get to class, then,” she said, and that was how I wound up late to algebra without a tardy note or my homework either. Steve stared at me from across the aisle as I took my seat. What happened? he said, just mouthing the words. So I took out a sheet of notebook paper and wrote Like you don't know on it. Then I dropped my pencil, and when I leaned over to pick it up, I slipped the note into his desk.

It came back a few minutes later bearing a single sentence:

Crap, man, what're you gonna do?

I sat there staring at that question for the longest time. I mean, the hell with quadratic equations, right? And I kept on thinking about it during Chemistry and Social Studies and Spanish, and during lunch, too, when I hid in the library—I mostly starved that year, food being forbidden in the library—and read about this experiment where scientists kept putting more and more mice into a single enclosure until finally they started cannibalizing one another.

Then it was three o'clock, and the final bell rang. I ducked into a bathroom, locked myself in a stall, and hunkered down on top of the toilet until everything got quiet outside. Then I let myself out and headed toward the west entrance, by the gym. The main entrance—the one across the street from the Stop N Go, where everybody went to buy pop and to smoke weed behind the Dumpster—was to the east. I figured I would cut across the practice field and through the woods to my house. Maybe I'd get lucky tonight and a meteor would fall on Junior Starnes. Stranger things had happened.

Outside, the air smelled of fresh-mown grass and the sun washed the grounds in that golden autumn light that meant the trees would be turning by the end of next week. The cheerleaders stood in ranks at one end of the practice field, doing calisthenics, and the football team ran laps in a pack around the track, whistling and hooting at the girls every time they passed. Finally one of the girls—Melissa Malone, I think it was—stood up and shot the whole group the bird with both hands, which brought Kessinger shouting down upon her. I took advantage of the confusion to dart across the field toward the woods. Halfway there, I heard Junior Starnes shouting—

"There he is! C'mon!"

—and I lowered my head and ran. When I reached the tree line, I snatched a glance over my shoulder. Kessinger, ever territorial about his precious practice field—I think he only tolerated the cheerleaders so he could leer at Cindy Taylor—had intercepted Junior and Richard by the one of the goalposts, where he was working himself into a full-out rage. “If you're not man enough to play then keep your sorry asses off my grass!” I heard him scream as I slipped into the cool pine-smelling shadows and began to work my way through the trees toward home.

A little while later—I'm not sure exactly when it started—I began to hear this high keening noise. It sounded like the metallic chatter of cicadas, except it was different somehow—more purposeful, and pleading, like the sound of someone crying, if the someone in question happened to be a very large insect.

I could have walked away then. I could have ignored it, and maybe everything would have turned out different. But there was something too awful in that sound to ignore, something so pained and bereaved, so terrible, that to pass it by unheeding would have been criminal or worse. It would have been a sin. So I paused, listening, and I let the sound draw me toward it, pushing my way through tangles of briars that sewed threads of blood down my bare arms and ducking under low-hanging branches.

I found the thing at the base of a gully, huddled in a bed of rotting leaves by a trickle of brown water—just a sound at first, nothing I could see. I've thought about this moment for a long time now—sometimes when I close my eyes at night it seems like I can hardly think of anything else—but I still don't know what to make of it. There are things in this world that people just can't see, I guess. Our eyes aren't made for seeing them maybe or maybe we've just never taken the time to learn how to, we're so caught up in our own affairs. Sometimes I think the world might swarm with things like that, wonders and mysteries, but only an isolated few ever catch a glimpse of them—the wounded and the weary, the desperate, the weak. I'd like to think so, anyway. But other nights—most nights—I suspect that just the opposite is true, that such things must be rare indeed, maybe unique, and on those nights sleep is a long time coming.

All I know for sure is that the sound fixed me there in the undergrowth, like one of those butterflies pinned to the bulletin board in the biology room. I stood very still—Junior momentarily forgotten—staring at the source of that awful cry, or at the empty place in the gloom it seemed to emanate from, concentrating until I felt my vision slip out of focus. Everything around me shifted in some subtle way that even now I can hardly describe. It was like looking at one of those three-dimensional pictures where something has been hidden in a blur of color and you can't see it and you can't see it and then suddenly, if you turn your eyes just right, you can. Suddenly it's there, and once you see it you can't unsee it.

Except that's not right either, because I never did completely see it—not then, anyway, not when it could have mattered—and certainly not straight on, the way you would look at a television or a car or any other earthly thing. I could never fix and hold it in my gaze. It was just a shimmer in the corner of my eye, like a glimpse of moonlight-gilded forest pool, with the faintest breath of wind moving across the face of the water, rippling and strange. That plaintive chitter drew me closer and closer still, until I went to my knees and reached out to touch it, this thing that was there but not quite there. A living thing, too: when you turned your head and let your eyes drift out of focus, you could catch half-formed glimpses of it, a flat face, featureless but for a lipless slash where a mouth ought to be and black slashes for eyes. Then you would blink and there would be nothing at all, just that mournful chittering.

But even that glimpse of the thing's alien visage frightened me. I scrambled back, grasping at weeds to pull myself to my feet. They slipped in the muck, and I went down again, breath blasting from my lungs. As I lay there, clawing for air the thing touched me. A hot dry palm pressed itself against my own, and fingers—six of them, long and many jointed—closed around my hand, circling it and circling it again. I couldn't see them, or only for a breath at a time anyway. But I could feel them, squeezing my hand with this desperate, lonesome pressure, and what I thought of was my grandmother the last time I ever saw her, in a sterile white hospital room that stank of alcohol and rot. I thought of her sightless terrified eyes and the way her fingers had clutched mine, as if my warmth could anchor her to earth for an instant longer.

"Okay,” I said, even though my heart was pounding. “Okay,” I said. “I've got you now,” which was what my mother used to say when I skinned a knee, and then, before I even really thought about it, I did what my mother had done as well. I sat up, I gathered the thing into my arms. It was like cradling a sackful of kindling, all sharp ends and taut leathery flesh, a tiny thing really, hardly bigger than a child climbing out of his mother's car on his first day of school, and hot too—feverish with heat—like a heap of white-hot coals smoldered somewhere way down inside it.

"I've got you now,” I whispered, and we sat like that for a time. There were tears running down my face, I remember that, and a kind of blank, mute wonder buzzed inside my head, but that terrible chittering cry had quieted some, and for a moment anyway that was enough. I don't know how long I stayed like that, but by the time I lowered the creature back onto its bed of leaves, the sunlight lancing through the leaves overhead had changed, so that everything seemed dreamlike, watery and strange. I clambered down to the bottom of the gully through that swimming, ethereal light and knelt there to ladle up a handful of dirty water in my cupped palms.

Back up then, on my knees, water slopping over my hands. “Here,” I said, and I felt those long fingers reach out to steady me. A dry leathery tongue slipped out to lap at my fingers. Three times I made that trip before the thing was sated. Three times before it settled back into its bed of leaves—I could sense the movement, I could see it in iridescent flashes—and that mournful chittering started up again, quieter now, but still sorrowful and alone.

"Okay,” I said, digging in my backpack for the lunch I couldn't eat in the library. “I'm gonna leave you some stuff, okay? An apple and a peanut butter sandwich and some Oreos. You'll like the Oreos, I promise. And here, here's a Capri Sun,” I told it, punching the straw into the foil packet and arraying these paltry gifts around the thing like an offering.

"I'll be back,” I said. “Soon."

I snatched up my bag, terror and wonder humming inside me like live current, scrambled up the embankment, and headed home, Junior Starnes and Richard Zell forgotten. But that doleful chittering sound followed me all the way through the woods, so omnipresent that I thought it must have wormed its way inside my head. I burst out of the trees into our yard and used my key to open the door.

Silence, the house empty, with only the red eye on the answering machine for company, winking in the dim kitchen. My sister Donna had been away at college two years by then, a half-tuition scholarship, but it wasn't enough—not with me on the way, Mom was always saying—so most days it seemed like my folks had gone with her. I guess they had, in their way. Dad had started pulling more hours at work, traveling a couple weeks every month, to plants in Georgia and South Carolina mostly, but also out west, to Texas and New Mexico and this week some kind of meeting in Las Vegas. Mom had taken a job as a pharmaceutical rep. She seemed like a different woman now, with her leather sample case, a closet full of dark pantsuits, and a nametag stamped with the image of a shellacked blonde that might have been a distant relative—at most—of the frowzy brunette who used to kick back on the sofa with me to watch Looney Tunes reruns.

Today I was glad to have the house to myself, but even so there was something awful in the silence. I spent half an hour shoving stuff into a backpack—bandages and aspirin, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a tube of antibiotic ointment from the medicine cabinet in Mom's bathroom; a couple of chocolate bars, two plastic containers of apple sauce, and a pull-tab can of peaches from the pantry; a flashlight from the junk drawer in the kitchen. The whole time my mind worried at that silence, probing it the way your tongue nags the socket where a tooth used to be. Done, I found myself back at the kitchen counter, staring at the blinking red light on the answering machine.

Two messages:

Mom, apologetic as always, she had dinner with a client, I should warm up the meatloaf in the fridge and no television before I finished my homework—"I mean that, Philip,” she said—and she'd try to be home before I went to bed, but her meeting might run long so not to wait up.

Then Dad, his voice booming into the silence, Hey Champ, having a great time, wish you were here, ha ha, and I hope you're making some time to practice your hoops—here his voice dropped an octave, the way it always did when he meant to discuss Serious Business—I really want you to try out this year, Phil, I think it might turn everything around for you. Then a gout of raucous laughter in the background, and Dad saying, Shut up, guys, and hey gotta run, Champ, duty calls—

Then silence.

Outside, twilight had fallen. I crossed the driveway, passing under the basketball goal Dad had erected last spring, jamming the post into a hole filled with wet cement, and slipped into the damp cool under the trees. It was full dark there. In the flickering cone of the flashlight, tree branches whipped toward me like the spring-loaded monsters in the haunted house at the county fair. I heard things scurrying through the bracken, and once a horrible screaming that I knew to be the sound a rabbit makes when it's scared or hurt. I'd tried to rescue one the previous summer, after the neighbor's cat had mauled it. It had died in my hands, a tiny thing, bloody where the cat had stripped back its fur, its black eyes shiny with terror. But in the dark that screech sounded like a kid screaming: this high-pitched eee-eee-eee, and then, suddenly, nothing at all, just silence. Any other night, I'd have turned back. Tonight, though, I felt the pull of that creature in the gully, and soon I heard it, too, crying out, luring me on into the darkness.

I slid down the side of the gully on my rear end, holding the flashlight with both hands. I could see the pitiful cluster of offerings I'd left before—the peanut butter sandwich and the Oreos, the Capri Sun—all untouched, but in the darkness I couldn't see the creature at all, not even that silvery shimmer it hid inside of. Just the sound of it, that high-pitched keening. “Shhh,” I whispered, shrugging my pack into the leaves. “I'm here, I'm here now.” It reached out of the darkness and folded those long, long fingers around my hand, and once again I lifted it—it was so light it was like lifting a child—and brought it into my lap.

I cradled it there as I ran my hands the length of its body, moving methodically, searching for some kind of wound or something, anything I could try to treat. Once, when I touched a knob on its leg—the creature seemed to be shaped more or less like a human being, but its body felt jointed all wrong under my hands, and in too many places—the pitch of that keening shifted. It shot up two or three notches, louder and more shrill, in what I took to be pain. I jerked my hand away as if I had been burned.

"I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm sorry.” And I rocked it there in my lap until the sound began to die away again. That's when the absurdity of the whole situation really hit me: a fourteen-year-old kid trying to treat the injuries of—what, an alien? I figured it had to be some kind of alien. An alien he could hardly even see even when it was light out. In the middle of the night. With the contents of his mother's medicine cabinet.

For all I knew, a single aspirin could kill the thing.

So ha ha, as my father had said. Wish you were here.

"I'm sorry,” I said again. I was crying now—silently, biting my lip to hold back the tears. I slipped down into the damp leaves and pressed myself into the circle of the thing's heat. This close I could smell it, a dry woodsy odor, like the potpourri my mother kept in a dish on the back of the toilet. We lay there like that for a long time, me crying and the thing beside me keening quietly—crying, too, in its way, I guess. After a while, I reached out and turned off the flashlight. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, the forest canopy took shape overhead, black against the sky. Stars peered down through gaps in the leaves, and I found myself wondering what it was that I held there in the darkness, where it might have come from and what it might mean—not just for me, but for—well, everyone in the world, maybe. And I wondered who I should tell about it and why and whether anyone would listen. I was just a kid, after all, and when I started down the list of possibilities, nobody seemed very promising. Ms. Blevins maybe—I kept seeing her in the doorway to her room, asking me about Junior—but whenever I thought about how the conversation might play out, the whole thing collapsed into absurdity. What would I say, after all? So, Ms. Blevins, can you believe I found an alien in the woods behind the school?

And there was something else, as well: the thought of the scientists I'd read about in the library, shoving more and more mice into a cage until they started eating each other alive.

Then a flying saucer was chasing me through darkness. I looked back at it, a wheel of blinking red and blue lights, and saw Richard Zell at the controls, high up under the translucent dome at the saucer's center. Junior Starnes rode shotgun. Don't make me come looking for you, he screamed, and then I was awake, stiff and cold and disoriented. A thin moon rode high among the leaves above me. As I gazed up at it, the day came rushing back to me—Junior and Coach Kessinger and the thing in the woods, of course, the thing in the woods most of all. It was crying quietly now—a whistling moan in the darkness—and I could feel the heave of its respiration against my side.

Part of me wanted to stay there with it, curled up inside the blanket of its warmth. But it was late. Mom would be angry.

Retrieving the flashlight, I scrambled up the embankment. I paused there, looking back. Shadow cloaked the gully, hiding the thing's weird shimmer. But I knew it was down there now—even if I didn't understand it—and I made a silent promise, to myself and to the creature, too. I would figure something out. I didn't know what, not yet, but something.

Then the nightmarish walk back through the woods. The trees stood black and mute in the flashlight beam, my feet tangled in the scrub, and I sensed something terrible always at my heels—the way you do in the woods at night—hurrying me along. I was out of breath by the time I burst out of the trees into our yard, and the pack chafed at my shoulders like a sack of bricks.

I let myself into the house, crept upstairs, and glanced into Mom's room—she was breathing steady and regular underneath a mound of sheets—before shouldering open my own door. I couldn't sleep though. I just lay there, staring into the dark, thinking about that thing in the woods and listening to something under my bed, this plaintive chittering that turned out to be my alarm clock.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Mom glanced up from her coffee, looking more like the glossy mannequin on her company ID than the woman who used to flop down beside me in her sweats, snorting laughter every time an anvil dropped on Wile E. Coyote's head and the Road Runner raced off triumphant, beep beep zip bang! “You must have gone down early last night,” she said.

"My stomach started hurting,” I told her.

Over Cheerios, I added that I wanted to walk to school.

"You sure you're up to it?” she said. “Is your tummy better?"

I told her my stomach was fine, but she insisted on driving me anyway. “We never get a chance to talk anymore,” she said. The phone rang just before we left—"But I had it down at eleven,” she kept saying, staring at her planner—and she spent the whole drive drumming on the steering wheel with her fingers instead of talking, this faraway look on her face. When I got out of the car, she leaned over to roll down the passenger window.

"You okay, Philip?” she said. “Is something bothering you?"

Just then the first bell rang. My mother frowned.

"Gotta run,” I said, turning toward the building. I wasn't even halfway there when I heard her car pull away from the curb.

Inside, Steve was leaning against my locker.

"Where you been all morning?” he asked.

"Why don't you ask your mother that,” I said, working my combination, and we knocked it back and forth like that—I would, he said, if I didn't have a date tonight with your mother and I shot back, I wouldn't say I date your mother exactly, she just likes to blow me—as I emptied my backpack and got my notebook for first period. I was almost done when the door to my locker banged shut, nearly shearing off the tips of my fingers. So here's Grendel again, leaning against the row of lockers that had been hidden behind the door, stinking of slaughtered Danes. His mother grins over his shoulder, peering out through the Richard Zell mask she's donned for the occasion.

"Cute, that little maneuver of yours yesterday, dickwad,” Grendel says, and it strikes me now, putting all this down, how consummately strange men are, the way the ones who like you and the ones who hate you speak to you pretty much the same way: Where you been all morning and dickwad and Why don't you ask your mother that. Except maybe Steve doesn't really like me, because he seems to have snapped his fingers and vanished. Again.

Which is pretty much what I'd like to do just now. But can't.

So I say, “Listen, Junior, why do you wanna treat me like this?"

"You hear that, Richie?” Grendel says. “Dickwad here wants to know why I treat him this way.” Then he does something totally unexpected. Lifting his hand—it's huge, the size of my dad's hand and maybe bigger—he smashes my forehead into the locker. It feels like a grenade has gone off inside my skull. I try to choke back the tears that spring to my eyes, but it's hopeless, I'm already crying, these huge mortifying sobs, partly because I'm just so sick of all this and partly because it feels like Junior just gave my face a thorough scrubbing with a handful of steel wool and partly because that ravenous crowd has materialized around us to suck down its morning dose of public humiliation.

Junior grins. “Damn, Rich? You see that?” And then, to me: “You got to be more careful with your locker, Phil, you could hurt yourself!"

Titters ripple through the assembled mass and it occurs to me that Junior's toolbox isn't really empty of wit—it's just that in his case wit's a bludgeon.

That's when the second bell rings. Dr. Mattox, the principal, comes rolling down the hall, hammering on the lockers with his fist and bellowing, “Class, kids, let's get to class!” As the crowd breaks up, Junior leans in close to me, still grinning, and hisses, “Try all the clever shit you want today, asshole. I'm taking you down. You can think of kissing that locker door as a down payment."

He claps me on the back like we're the best of buddies. Then he and Richard slump off together, their hands empty of books, and exactly at that moment Dr. Mattox glances toward me. “Peter,” he says, nodding, and that's the way it goes the whole day, my head throbbing and Steve—not unwisely, I suppose—keeping his distance, ignoring me in English, where we had assigned seats, sitting across the room in Algebra, where we didn't, and steering clear of the library at lunch, where I passed half an hour pressing a wad of damp paper towels to my forehead and reading about flying saucers.

So much bullshit, that seemed to be the scientific consensus, which meant that I must have imagined the whole thing—that I was not only a pariah and a geek, but a nut. But since I didn't really believe that, it didn't dam the undertow of anxiety in my thoughts. Worry that the thing in the woods would be dead or gone when I got there after school, or that it would turn out to be the advance scout for an invading interstellar force intent on mating with the likes of Melissa Malone. And worry, too, about what Junior had planned for me. Truth was, even if I had the skills to put up a fight—which I didn't—I didn't have the stomach to use them. Which by the rules in effect at Thomas Jefferson High School—and throughout the rest of the known universe, as far as I could see then—made me a pussy, a mama's boy, a candyass weakling: barely a boy at all, and definitely not a man.

So what I did all day is brood and worry and keep under cover, scurrying around the school like a cockroach and gnawing my fingernails to bloody nubs. I missed—for the second time—the finer points of the quadratic equation and by the time the last bell rang, I'd once again sought refuge in the bathroom, not merely for the safety it afforded but for the comfort it provided to one afflicted with a tummy ache, as my mother would put it.

And the whole time I was wondering about that creature in the woods, if it was doing any better or if it was still curled up at the bottom of the gully, keening in agony. I could feel its lure even there, pulling at me. By the time I was feeling better, the halls had fallen silent. Stepping outside was like stepping into a television rerun, with the girls cheering at one end of the practice field—

"—fight, fight, your cause is right!—"

—and Coach Kessinger ranting at the football team as it ran laps around them. This time I managed to make it all the way to the woods undetected: home free, I think—until Grendel and Grendel's Mom step snickering out of the underbrush.

"Thought you'd pulled one over on us, didn't you, you stupid jerk,” Junior says.

I don't even bother replying. I just run, cutting away at an angle into the woods, hoping not only to escape them but to draw them away from the gully. But I haven't gotten more than fifty yards into the undergrowth—Junior and Richard crashing after me like bears—when I see how impossible that's going to be. This deep into the trees, that unearthly keening cuts through the murk like a beacon—

"What's that?” Richard grunts behind me.

—an awful kind of summons, lonesome and sad and hurting all at the same time, crying out for solace, and all I can think is that somehow, I don't know how, I have to keep Junior and Richard away from it. Somehow I have to protect it.

Changing course midstride, I thrash through a thicket of stunted pine trees and head for the gully. When I get there, I hurl myself over the embankment, skidding downhill and fetching up hard against the bole of a fallen tree. The chirruping keen is even louder down here. It seems to fill up the whole world, like the wail of a train whistle blaring endlessly up from that glossy shimmer in the dim. Not even pausing to catch my breath I launch myself toward it, scrabbling through the mulch, hissing, “Quiet, you've got to be quiet now, you've got to be quiet!” Then it's sobbing underneath me, a tiny childlike thing, its long fingers scrabbling at my face—in gladness or in recognition maybe or in sorrow or in pain.

Grendel can hear it, too.

He's crashing around at the top of the gully, him and Richard both, like a couple of bull tyrannosaurs spoiling for a fight. “I can hear you, you pussy!” he screams. “I find you, I'm gonna kill you, I'm gonna tear your head off! You're gonna be sorry you were ever born, you hear me!"

"Shut up!” Richard hisses. “This way—"

They shift directions, chasing that mournful howl along the edge of the gully, and still I'm trying to hush the thing. I whisper and I urge and I cajole. I beg and I plead and I beg some more, hissing, “Please, please, you have to be quiet now, if they find us they're gonna beat me up and who knows what they'll do to you, they might kill you, you hear me, you gotta shut up! Please,” I'm bawling, “please!” And the whole time I'm choking back these big braying sobs, swallowing them down like stones between heaves of breath.

But the racket only grows louder, shriller, more lonesome and afraid.

Richard and Junior come on, thundering through the bracken. “I get you, you're dead,” Junior's saying, chanting it almost under his breath like a mantra, not for my ears but for his own, a running litany of his frustration and his rage. “I'm gonna get you because I can hear you, I can hear you.” Then, screaming, “You hear me, motherfucker? I can hear you! And when I find you I'm gonna tear your sorry ass to pieces!"

Still the thing is keening, those long fingers tracing the contours of my face. “Please,” I whisper, “please—"

I can see them now, maybe twenty yards away, flashes of blue jeans and booted feet hacking their way along the rim of the gully, Junior still chanting, on and on, “I can hear you, motherfucker, I can hear you, I can—"

Drawing in a long shuddering breath, I stretch my body the thing's shimmering length, and take it in my arms. I hold it the way my mother held me once, all those years ago, cooing, Be still now, shhh, shhh, barely even speaking the words aloud. And to stop that awful chittering I fold my hand across its mouth.

Silence, then.

I press my face close against it, whispering the words so low that it's like I'm not even really saying them aloud, saying, Shhh, be still, everything's okay now, everything's going to be all right.

Not ten feet above us, Junior and Richard halt at the lip of the gully. I can see them standing there in the shadows, listening. I tighten my grip across the creature's mouth, and those long fingers draw back from my face. The alien relaxes under my weight, and I lie so still that I can feel my heart booming inside my chest. I can almost hear it, and for a single dreadful instant, a crazy certainty seizes me: that Junior and Richard will hear it, too—the telltale heart, as Ms. Blevins might say—and come hurtling down the embankment after us.

Instead, Junior says, “The hell?"

Richard lifts his face, like a bloodhound scenting the wind.

"Where the fuck are you?” Junior screams. “What do you think you're gonna do, never come back to school? You might as well just come on out and take it like a man!"

"Shut up,” Richard hisses. “Listen!"

So they listen.

Five minutes pass. Ten. I can feel the seconds slipping away in the pulse of blood at my temple. Finally a stick cracks farther off in the woods—a deer foraging through the underbrush maybe—and I see Richard's hand come up to seize Junior's biceps. Nodding, he lifts a finger to his lips. He points, his lips shaping words—

—over there—

—and they move off into the trees, picking their way, one breath, two breaths, three—and they're gone, swallowed up by the woods.

Still I crush the thing against me like a baby, whispering little comforts to it as I stare up at the rim of the gully, not even knowing if it can understand me, or if it has ears to hear me with in the first place.

Silence. A decade of silence is what it feels like. A century.

Then I blow out a long breath. “They're gone,” I whisper. “Everything's going to be okay. Everything's going to be okay now.” Drawing away my hand, I sit up. The creature lolls across my lap, boneless, empty of volition, wrong. And when I look down, I can see it, really see it, I mean, a tiny thing, the size of a second-grade kid with damp leaves clinging to it and mottled gray skin visible in patches through glistening streaks of mud, joints where it oughtn't to have joints, a slit for a mouth, black slashes for eyes, and no nostrils of any kind. No nostrils at all.

And still. So still, without all that shimmery glister.

A kind of frozen horror seized me.

I just sat there holding it for the longest time. Staring down at it. Just holding it and staring.

Shadows began to stretch under the trees.

When the creature in my arms started to get cold, I stood, cradling it against my breast, and carried it down to the muddy trickle at the base of the gully. I scooped out a nest for it among the leaves there, and I tried to clean it up, scooping up handfuls of water to flush away the smears of mud until I couldn't see anything in the gloom but clean gray flesh. Then I buried it, prying smooth stones out of the creek bed and stacking them over it and covering those with leaves until there was nothing there. Maybe it would be enough. Maybe the animals wouldn't get to it now. I kind of doubted it. But maybe.

I got to my feet and stumbled out of the woods, dragging my backpack behind me, not even trying to be quiet. Junior and Richard could beat the hell out of me for all I cared. I guess I kind of wanted it to happen. By the time I broke free of the trees, an emerald gloaming had settled over the world. The cheerleaders had gone home and out on the practice field, in the hot yellow glare of the sodium-arc lights, the football team was dressed out and drilling. The clamor of it all came to me across the grass, the grunts and the curses and the angry shriek of the whistle between plays. Pads cracked like gunshots and boys who ached to become men hurled their bodies together with a kind of beauty that was heartbreaking. Coach Kessinger was out there, too, shouting at them at the top of his lungs, telling them how it was they had to do it. I knew that was what he was doing. I could see his mouth moving. But the truth is, as I turned away and walked into the twilight, the sound of his voice faded into nothing at all behind me. It faded into silence.

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Short Story: FOREVER by Rachel Pollack

Rachel Pollack's most recent work of fiction is Tarot Of Perfection, a collection of linked short stories.

It happened one day that the Blessed Lady of Dark Forever went for a walk in her garden of black leaves, past the Seven Broken Doorways, and down to the ferries, where the refugees arrive in endless outpourings. She was watching her servants—"facilitators” they called themselves these days—play a game of Snatch the Bone when she heard whispers behind her, then laughter, then more whispers. When she looked around she saw no one but the endless rolling landscape of the dead. She tried to tell herself it was just the usual back and forth between the oldtimers and newcomers, but the sound stayed with her, itchy under her long gray dress. Finally she had to admit it. Her sisters were meeting somewhere. Without her.

Forever called Gatekeeper Number Seven, a young man with blond hair, creased striped pants, sharp teeth, and satin buckled shoes. “I'm going away for a while,” she told him. “Take care of things.” He smiled, pushed the tip of his finger against an upper tooth until a single drop of lavender blood appeared, then flicked it on the ground, outwardly a sign of obedience, but really.... She said, “No redecorating. No parades. And no puppets to frighten the children. I won't be gone very long.” The servant bowed his head.

She found her sisters in an abandoned library of burnt books. She flung open the door, but instead of embarrassment, her sisters clapped their hands. “You came!” Ocean said, and Sky added, “Now we can start."

"Start?” Forever said, and wondered if they'd sent some invitation the staff had managed to forget. That crowd of dead beetles the other day—they had seemed determined to reach her. She should pay attention to such things.

Ocean said, “The game. The contest."

Of course. What else but another competition? It was Sky's doing, it always was. Ocean, as innocent as foam, just thought it was fun, and a memory of their childhood, but Sky always had to win. It was what drew her back from the edges. Forever told herself she should leave. Go back to work. But if she didn't play, when would she ever see her sisters? “What is it this time?” she said.

It was simple. They would choose a skin woman and try to predict what would happen to her over the course of a single year. The loser, the one who strayed furthest from the truth, would have to spend a day among the humans, disguised as one of them. How easy, Forever thought. Fortune-telling was her domain after all, for what prediction was more certain than death? “Who chooses?” she said.

Sky waved a hand. “You can choose. You were always the most trustworthy."

Forever cast her mind across the world, spotted a young woman whose body was two-thirds eaten by cancer. A wave of her hand summoned a picture of the woman in front of them. “A year from now,” she said, “this girl will be settled down below, and her family will be already bored from weekly visits to her grave to pull weeds and scatter poppies."

Ocean smiled. “I don't think so,” she said. “I say, a year from now, she will put down fresh roots."

Sky added, “And reach up to the Sun.” Forever laughed. Sky said, “Oh, and skin people will come to her with seeds and offerings, asking for help to escape, well, you.” The Mother of Silence laughed louder. They sat down to watch.

* * * *

The Kindly Ones (as people sometimes called cancer, hoping to placate it) ate more and more of the girl, gnawing their way from the inside out. The doctors offered more medicine, more cutting, more invisible fire, but she refused. She began a journal, a record of everything she loved. A friend read it and told her to let others know the wonders they ignored as they rushed through life. She wrote a blog, Chronicle of the World's Beauty, that every day was read by more and more people.

One day her parents carried her out to a grassy bank at a place where three rivers meet. A group of sick children had gathered there to meet her. “Please don't leave us,” they said. “We need to know you're here."

"That's not up to me,” she said. “I wrote about that last Tuesday, don't you remember?"

The children stretched themselves on the dirt, as much as their diseased bodies could manage. “Please,” they begged the Heavens, the Earth, and all the worlds between, “let us keep her. We need her more than Death.” A flash of light made them close their eyes, and when they looked again the sick girl had vanished. In her place stood a lilac tree, tall and fragrant. If the children looked closely they could spot excerpts from the Chronicle of the World's Beauty on every leaf.

Word spread, and within a year the sick had begun to come from across the world to touch the leaves to their sores and broken places. They left flowers and seeds as offerings, and more and more came every day.

* * * *

"You cheated,” Forever whispered, too angry to shout.

"And how did we do that?” Sky asked. “We didn't change her. It's not our fault her whining and moaning hit the right frequency.” Sky smiled sweetly and shrugged.

Forever didn't answer. She blamed herself. If she hadn't been so certain she might have been careful. She sighed. She'd lost the game, but it was only one day. She would walk into some mud woman body, let the Sun flicker across the sky, then return to her work, while her sisters gloated. They'd get over it, and so would she.

She chose a young woman in a small city, healthy enough so her possessor wouldn't have to suffer any pain, smart because Forever didn't want to be bored, friends but no husband, parents, or children to make annoying demands or notice the difference under the mask. “Karen,” the woman's name was, and just before Forever was about to walk into her, she thought how silly it was to worry so much for just one day.

But what if she got lost, or something distracted her? She summoned Gatekeeper Number 3, whose creased pants and slicked black hair and ruby cufflinks made her want to call him Rudolph. She told him what she was about to do and instructed him to make sure her skin body got some kind of reminder.

She entered Karen in a booth in a restaurant, where the woman was having lunch with her boss, a publicist for area artists. It was a little like floating and then being sucked down by a heavy weight. For a moment she thrashed about inside, and must have made the body jerk, because a glass of ice tea spilled all over a plate of French fries, and a notebook, and a proposal in a yellow folder. It was 3:12 in the afternoon.

Karen's boss took her hand. “Hey, are you all right?” he said, as a blank-faced Mexican man came over with a cloth.

Forever wanted to leap at the boss, cut through his neck with these Karen teeth that had just ground up bits of dead cow. Instead she seemed to back away, go somewhere deeper inside. The Karen voice said, “Sorry. I don't—I don't know what happened there.” She looked down at the blur of tea and ink. “Oh God, I'm sorry,” she said.

Her boss, who was named Phillip, waved his hand. “Don't worry about it."

Karen stared at her own hand, wiggled the fingers, looked at the lines, imagined she could see the web of blood under the skin. Embarrassed, she put her hand in her lap and focused on Phillip.

As they left the restaurant a little boy with shiny black hair held out his hand toward her. A piece of soft wood lay on it, a crude carving of a boat. “Would you like this?” he said politely. Karen stared at him. “I made it in art class. The teacher said we had to give it to someone."

Karen smiled. “Why don't you give it to your mother? I'm sure she would really like it."

The boy shook his head. “It's supposed to be a stranger."

"Oh, well, okay. I mean, thank you. It's very nice.” The boat felt warm and almost sharp, as if he'd carved it out of nettles. As the boy ran off, Karen dropped the toy in her purse.

Phillip said, “Well, that's really weird."

"We should get back to work,” Karen said.

That night Karen squinted at her face in the bathroom mirror. She just couldn't shake the sense that something was wrong. It was like—like she was looking at someone else, or someone else was looking at her. She should go to the doctor. Call for an appointment first thing in the morning. But she woke up late, with just enough time to put her makeup on and grab a coffee on the way to the office. There she stared at endless streams of e-mails until she could think of nothing else.

At twelve minutes after three she picked up the carving of the boat the boy had given her, turned it over in her hand, rubbed it with her thumb. Something about it—then Phil called to discuss an account and she dropped the boat back in her purse.

Over the next few weeks she found herself too busy to think of much besides the next appointment. Except, every day, at 3:12, a queasiness came over her, like a cyclic fever, so strong that she began to make sure she was always somewhere she could sit down and not say anything for a minute or so. After a month of this, including two checkups by her doctor, she decided to go see a therapist.

Dr. Connell suggested the strange sensations might stem from a forgotten childhood trauma that had taken place on some long ago afternoon, at 3:12. Maybe her mother did something one day when Karen came home from school, something innocent that the child misinterpreted as fearful. But why would it come up now, Karen asked. Who knows, Dr. Connell said. Some perfectly innocuous incident might have pushed the old trauma just a little closer to the surface.

For the next month Karen did her best to bring her secret trouble out in the open. But nothing came to her. One of Phil's clients, an astrologer pianist (or was it pianist astrologer?), told her of a medium who could go into a trance and “journey” inside you. Karen dismissed the idea at first, but finally called for an appointment. Andrew Crow-Talker, as the young man called himself, had an office in his white two-story home. He led her to a pleasant room with large windows overlooking woods and asked her to lie down on a massage table, fully clothed, he assured her.

"Relax,” he told her. “You don't have to do anything, I do it all.” He half closed his eyes and murmured something to himself as he moved his hands back and forth about four inches from her body. At 3:12 he touched her chest above her breasts and the top of her head. For a moment nothing happened, then he cried out, “Sisters!” and a moment later passed out.

Karen got off the table and nervously shook his shoulders until his eyes opened and he stared at her, looking perplexed. Before she could ask, “What happened? What did you see?” he said to her, “What are you?"

Karen jumped up, grabbed some money from her purse, and set it on the massage table. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I'd better go. I hope you're okay."

Over the next couple of days she thought she should call Mr. Crow-Talker, but couldn't make herself do it. When her next visit with Dr. Connell came, she didn't say anything about the encounter until nearly the end of the hour. Finally she got up her courage and told him what had happened, leaving out only the man's strange question at the end. “Do you think he'll sue me?” she asked.

"I wouldn't think so,” Dr. Connell said. “He goes into trances professionally. I would think what happens there is his risk.” Karen nodded. “I'm interested in what he said, though. Didn't you tell me you were an only child?"

"I am,” Karen said. “I don't know why he said that."

Dr. Connell made that hmm sound they must teach in therapy school. “Maybe you have a shadow self. A kind of psychic twin, or sister, whom you've hidden away and need to release.” He smiled. “Apparently she's very powerful."

"What about the 3:12 thing?"

He shrugged. “Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe once you free the shadow, the sister, the outward symptom will go away and we'll never actually find out. Would that be a problem?"

"I guess not."

Over the next few sessions they looked at possible secret selves, from mythological images of fierce warriors and beloved mother spirits, to high school characters, like cheerleaders and prom queens. Sometimes they were actual pictures Karen was supposed to stare at and see if she reacted. At other times she had to make up stories about an imaginary life. None of it seemed to trigger anything.

Finally, Karen decided that maybe all her problems just came from working too hard. Maybe what was missing from her life was just old-fashioned romance. When she'd first started with Dr. Connell he'd asked about relationships, and she'd just said she didn't have one. Now she admitted she'd been hurt, by someone named Bart, and ever since had avoided even the chance of connecting with anyone.

Only, she could hardly remember Bart's face or anything about him except that he liked model trains. Her memory lapse bothered her, but she didn't tell Dr. Connell.

She went to a singles retreat, in a center that promised romance and spirituality (it sounded safe, she thought). The first apparently came in a cocktail party Friday evening, the second in a chant and drum ceremony late Saturday night. She took the wooden boat with her. Lately, she'd been taking it everywhere, and panicked if she thought she left it behind.

At the retreat a man named Bobby Hand took an interest in her. She liked Bobby, he was funny, and handsome, with black hair and deep eyes, and he knew about books and movies, not just television. Most of all she liked his name, it meant something, it was not just a designation. He joked with her that he was a Secret Master, one of those saints that pretend to be ordinary humans so they can help people in need. “And what help do you give them?” Karen asked.

Bobby smiled. He had a nice slow grin. “I help women. With my hand. Late at night."

Karen laughed, but she was blushing too. “Better not spread that around too much,” she said. “The government will investigate you for unlicensed salvation."

"Hey, I've got a license. I just keep it secret. Remember? My sacred mission?” She didn't answer, only looked down, her eyes wet. “What's wrong?” Bobby said. “What'd I say?"

"Nothing. I'm just—I don't know, I'm just being silly.” She wiped below her eyes delicately, with her thumb and finger, then tried to smile away her embarrassment.

"Hey,” he said, “suppose you discovered you had a secret calling. A spiritual mission of some sort. What name would you choose?"

She said, “If my calling is supposed to be secret, wouldn't I have to not tell anyone?” He rolled his eyes, and she laughed. “Okay,” she said. “Let me think. Forever."

"What?"

"Karen Forever. That's what I'd call myself."

"Karen Forever,” he repeated, his voice soft, almost solemn. Anger flashed in her, she had no idea why, but for a second she wanted to hit him just for saying her name, as if he had no right. But she hid it, and it passed, and when he kissed her she was able to soften her lips into his.

After the retreat they traveled back to the city together. As they left the wooded center and waited for the shuttle to take them to the train station Karen heard a far-off noise, weeping and yells of pain. When she looked around, flashes of darkness seemed to black out pieces of the world. She found herself staring at something very far away, lines and lines of stooped people clutching small packages against their bodies. She made a soft noise, gripped the wooden boat in her jacket pocket. “Are you all right?” Bobby asked. “Is something wrong?” She couldn't think what to say so she said nothing, and then seconds later everything was back to normal.

* * * *

She told Dr. Connell that Bobby Hand didn't really excite her but she felt comfortable around him. The therapist asked, “Is that so bad?” and she said, “No, of course not. I guess."

They were dating for seven weeks, and sleeping together for two, when Karen went to a late-season family barbecue at his parents’ house. She'd met them before, at an outdoor concert—"safe space,” Bobby had called it—so there wasn't a lot of pressure. They made salmon for her, which was thoughtful, because for some reason she could not seem to eat meat, not since that day in the diner. As she later told Dr. Connell, she wasn't expecting any trouble. And then she met Eleanora, Bobby's sister.

Eleanora Hand wasn't trouble, she was exhilaration. Very thin, with long blond hair and delicate quick fingers, and hazel eyes that seemed as large as a child's, she talked about dead poets as if they were friends, and television vampires as if they lived down the block. She tossed salad as if she was creating a new universe, and played volleyball as if she was destroying an old one. Karen laughed with her, and stared at her, and at one point had to take Bobby's hand to stop herself from following Eleanora into the bathroom. Three-twelve came and passed with only the slightest crackle on her skin. That night she told Bobby she wanted to make an early night, and after he dropped her off she called Eleanora and talked with her for two hours.

"Oh God,” she told Dr. Connell, “do you think I'm a lesbian?"

"That's something no one can tell you but yourself. But would it be so terrible if you were?"

"No. No, I don't—I mean, I was never like that. I had friends, you know, but—we talked about boys."

She spent more and more time with El (only Karen called her that, her family called her Nora), and when Bob asked her to marry him her first thought was how she couldn't wait to call Eleanora to ask her to be her maid of honor.

Dr. Connell frowned when she told him. “Are you marrying this man just to get closer to his sister?"

"No, of course not.” The doctor said nothing and she added, “Well, maybe a little bit. If I'm married to Bob, then El and I will be sisters."

"What's wrong with just being her friend?"

Karen felt like she was trying to work something out. “I don't know,” she said. “It feels like we have to be actual sisters. And like...like someone has to pay a price somehow."

"What kind of price?"

"I don't know."

"And that ‘someone’ would be Bob?” Karen didn't answer, didn't look at him. Dr. Connell said, “Why not just be close to Eleanora and leave Bob out of it? Why use him that way?"

She shook her head, softly. “He's just a man,” she said.

Dr. Connell's eyebrows rose. “Now you do sound like a lesbian."

"I don't mean it that way.” She was staring at the floor. “He's just a man. A person. A human being.” When Dr. Connell didn't answer, she said, “Sometimes it feels like no one else exists but me and El. Everyone else is just, I don't know, a shadow. What does it matter what happens to a shadow?"

She looked at him, suddenly ashamed. “Oh God,” she said. “I'm horrible."

"That's just a label,” Dr. Connell said. “A judgment. The thing we all need to do is look beyond that, see who we really are."

Karen knew it was just a platitude but she found herself squinting, as if she actually could see a vision of herself that was far off, or small, or hidden. The office wall, with its tribal masks and paintings, seemed to shimmer, and beyond it—endless gray hills, crowds of people, sullen, slow.... She made a noise, like someone startled suddenly from a dream.

"What is it?” Dr. Connell said. “What happened?"

"Nothing,” Karen told him. “I was just—I don't know, it was like I fell asleep or something. Sorry."

For their honeymoon plans Bob surprised her with a booking on a cruise ship, and was himself surprised when she recoiled, as if he'd offered her a snake. Karen told herself it was because she'd be out of range of El, whom she called every day, sometimes two or three times. But there was something else—the thought of being on a boat made her queasy, she couldn't say why. Lately, since meeting Bob and Eleanora, her 3:12 “appointment” (as she and Dr. Connell called it) seemed to weaken, but now the feeling came back stronger than ever, and it was only mid-morning.

Bob thought it was fear of seasickness, and told her, “Just think of it as a gigantic ferryboat.” The spasm of terror that seized her was something Bob had never seen before. He reached out to comfort her but she ran from the room.

Bob canceled the trip and they went to Paris. Karen got a global cell phone and called Eleanora every afternoon, often from the ladies’ room in a museum or café, so her new husband wouldn't notice. Sometimes Eleanora called her at night, when Bob was asleep, and Karen would step onto the balcony of their elegant hotel room, talk for an hour or more, and then tell Bob the next morning that she was tired from jet lag.

The day after Karen and Bob returned, Eleanora called Karen at work to tell her she felt dizzy. The next day she felt faint, and the day after that as well. Karen told her to rest, said she'd be over later that day. After they hung up she thought maybe she should insist El go to the doctor. She could go with her to make sure she did it.

She called back and got no answer. Less than five minutes had gone by, had El gone out to the store or something? Karen interrupted her boss in a phone call to tell him she had to take care of an urgent errand. When Eleanora didn't answer the bell, Karen let herself into the apartment. She found her sister-in-law on the floor, unconscious and bleeding from the side of her mouth.

The doctors called it a rare brain parasite, and gave it a name even they couldn't seem to pronounce. Incurable, they said. Waste away, they said. No terrible pain, they said. And, three months, they said.

After the diagnosis came, Karen sat with unconscious Eleanora all night, held her hand long after Bob and El's parents had gone home to rest. When her sister-beyond-all-laws finally opened her eyes, Karen whispered, “I love you, El."

"Forever?"

"And ever."

Eleanora's family wanted to make her comfortable. Bob found a hospice called JourneyCare, but Karen refused to give up. She bullied the parents and the doctors to send Eleanora to a clinic where they could try exotic and experimental drugs. She went into debt to bring in doctors from Europe, she found shamans who waved dog bones up and down Eleanora's body, and rubbed her bald head with some sort of animal grease. Bob argued with Karen, said his sister needed peace, not torture by false hope and quack medicine.

"I'm not giving her up,” Karen said.

"It's not about you,” Bob said. “Who the hell put you in charge of the sick and dying?"

Every day, at 3:12 pm, the queasiness returned. I don't have time for you, Karen told it and tried to push it away. One afternoon, just after she'd given Eleanora some juice, the sick feeling hit her so hard she had to sit down on the metal chair at the foot of the bed. Looking through the jumble in her purse for Tums, she came across the wooden boat. She held it in her hand, stared at it, then closed her fist around it so hard she could feel it cutting her palm.

"It's okay,” Eleanora said. “I'm all right."

"No. You're not. You can't die. There's no point if you die.” El didn't answer. Karen kissed her cheek, her forehead, her lips. “Take my body,” she said. “I never wanted it. It's all a mistake.” She had no idea what she was talking about.

El smiled. “Aren't I the one who's supposed to get delirious?"

The next morning, Dr. Connell emailed her. She'd stopped seeing him when he started talking about acceptance, and stages of grief, and almost didn't read his message. But no, he told her how he'd been cleaning out old magazines from his waiting room when he came across an article about a Healing Tree. There was a sick girl, and she went to a place where three rivers meet, and there people prayed for her, and instead of dying she'd turned into a tree. Now sick people went there to touch the trunk or the branches, and sometimes they were healed. Not always, of course, probably most people went away disappointed, but still....

Karen had to stop reading. It was the first sign of hope, and yet, just the thought of it somehow made her sick, she wanted to trash the email, get El from the nursing home, and just go—somewhere. Instead, she called Bob and told him they needed to arrange for nurses so they could take Eleanora on a trip.

They flew to a newly constructed airport some fifteen miles from the Tree. There they hired a white limousine converted to a hospital room on wheels and traveled straight to the site. Crutches and other aids lined the road, many of them, the driver said, left by people who had not yet been healed, but who wanted to show their commitment. There were long lines of people standing (or sitting in wheelchairs) behind ropes with guards, but the limousines were allowed to pull to the front, for its passengers to mingle with the people who came off the private yachts in the river. No one seemed to mind. Almost everyone had come from far away, and there were performers to tell the Tale of the Tree, and food, and spiritual healers to pray over people and promise them health ("No connection to Tree,” their leaflets read, apparently a legal requirement). Everyone seemed to believe they'd come to a place of safety, where sickness just stopped, as if it had given up and now just waited to be destroyed. They believed this even though they could see people faint on line, or cough blood, or worst of all, leave the Tree still covered in sores. Those people, they told themselves, didn't believe. They didn't want to be healed. It wasn't the Tree's fault.

When Eleanora and her family reached the front of the line, men in white nurses’ uniforms offered to carry El to the trunk. No, Karen said, she would do it, she didn't need any help. But she just stood and stared at the Tree. It was so much bigger than she had thought it would be. The lilacs were in full bloom even though it was way after the season. The smell nauseated her.

When Bob suggested they let the nurses do it, Karen lifted El into a tight embrace against her body and walked forward. Karen was wearing a long gray dress, with big pockets for medicine, and something in one of them pressed sharply against her thigh. The boat, she realized. She didn't remember taking it. I have to get rid of it, she thought. She and Eleanora would be safe if she could bury it some place, or just throw it away. But Eleanora felt so empty, if Karen set her down for just a moment a breeze might lift her right out of her body, to drop her in the river.

The river. There was something out there, among the crowded boats, something big, and gray, and patient. Don't look, Karen thought, look only at the Tree.

The branches waved, and a voice seemed to come from the rustling leaves. It spoke softly, only for Karen. “So,” it said. “You've come."

Karen didn't know where the sound came from, or if others could hear it, but she didn't care. “Please,” she said. “You have to help her. She is my life, my heart."

"You who are called Heartless in every tongue?"

"I don't understand what you mean.” But as she spoke the words—or thought them, she wasn't sure—a fear swept through her that she was lying, that she knew exactly what the voice meant. Images came to her, endless mounds of colorless dirt, black stones, crowds and crowds of people with downcast eyes. And boats. Squat ferryboats on a dark river.

Karen turned her head, she couldn't stop herself. There it was, among the yachts and cruise ships, something only she could see, a gray ferryboat, heavy in the water, filled with more people than you would think it could hold yet none of them touching each other. Karen looked away but the image stayed. She could still see the one figure that stood out, a young man with slick black hair and ruby cufflinks.

"Please,” Karen said to the Tree. El felt weightless against her now, an origami doll. “Heal her and we'll go away and never bother you again."

"You have a choice,” the Tree said.

Hope lifted Karen's heart. “Tell me what to do."

"Either you go on the boat or she does."

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. It's time to return."

The memories came clearer now. The hills, the shadows, the lines and lines of dead shuffling off the boats. She said, “I won't go back."

"Then she goes. I will heal her but only if you return. So you see, it is you who is killing her."

"Why are you doing this to me?"

"You wanted to be human. To escape. Why shouldn't you suffer what all humans suffer?"

Karen looked away. She could feel her body shift, become longer, freer in some terrible way. She remembered it all now, her sisters, the contest. “It wasn't my idea, I just lost a contest. That's all. And then I forgot."

The Tree said, “If you hadn't wanted to run away you would have remembered. You had the reminder, every day.” Still holding El against her, Karen took the boat from her pocket, stared at it. The Tree said, “And now you have a choice."

Karen threw the boat at the Tree. It disappeared among the branches. “Choose,” the Tree said.

"Why?"

"There is always a price. Choose."

For an instant she could see her life as Karen, everything that would come if she chose herself over Eleanora. El would die, and Karen would create a memorial. She would live a long time—a flicker of a moment, really, but it would feel like forever. She and Bob would entwine together, the memory of Eleanora kept warm between them. And then?

She set El down against the trunk. Immediately the branches bent down to form a cage around her. When Karen—Forever—tried to reach in and touch El one last time the branches stung her, like nettles. “Good-bye, my darling,” she said. “You will live a good life and then I will see you again. I will wait for you. I promise."

But she knew it was a lie. As she stepped onto the ferryboat that waited in the river, as she accepted the white hand with its ruby cufflink, she knew that even if she might one day recognize an aged Eleanora she would feel nothing. How could she, for just one among so very many? As the boat slid away from the shore to take her home, she looked back one more time. She saw the cage of branches fill with light, and then it was gone. And everything was shadow.

—For Jillen Lowe

[Back to Table of Contents]

Short Story: THE ATCHISON, TOPEKA, & SANTA FE by Robert Onopa

Bob Onopa retired from teaching at the University of Hawaii in January, an experience, he reports, that brought back those euphoric moments at the beginning of summer when he was a kid. Childhood has its darker moments too, as this new story suggests.

After a fitful sleep he lay awake in the darkness listening to the house creak, to the furnace cycling. Outside, a heavy snow held the world in silence.

Then a faint spreading gray at the window and something else—down the hall in the living room, where the tree's lights had glowed dimly all night—a movement. When he heard quiet voices for a while, his mother's laugh, he eased himself out of bed—he did not want to be disappointed—and padded into the living room.

And there it was, under the tree, silver track winding through the gifts, the headlight of the streamliner punching out from behind the mountainous tree skirt, its dome car catching red and orange and green lights in frosted windows. He could see from a glance at the open pods among the wrapping paper that his parents had given him the big hybrid set, the one with the state-of-the-art monorail rig and, more to the point, well, his point, all that retro stuff, starting with the steel streamliner coming his way again. From down at the level of the rug the detail was amazing—you could see little pipes and bolts, springs and couplings on the cars. On the third pass he took in the Santa Fe diesel, a double-ender, like strong jaws back to back, and, in its forward cab—he could see a little guy!

He glanced at the packing pod again. Almost everybody else was getting the Mars Habitat thing, you could sit with a holo of astronauts in a Rover, whatever. This one had a Virtualizer AI chip too, but that wasn't what he'd wanted. He couldn't take his eyes off that train, from its bright headlight through the intertwined fists of the couplers—you could hear the running gear rumble—car by car back to the vista dome. When it passed, the track looked like it had been laid over weathered brown ties on tamped tiny gravel. Green tufts grew wheel high in a living miniature world.

He looked up. His dad was beaming. His mom, her hair loose and pretty, had that great smile. “What do you think, kiddo?” she asked.

"It's perfect,” Matt said. “Thank you.” He looked at his dad with new respect. “It's just what I wanted, exactly what I wanted.” So he wasn't going to be punished after all, not for reprogramming the house lights, not for hacking his sister's page. He took in the other pods in the set, the other bright wrappings. “Mom!” he remembered. “I have a present for you."

His dad was already reaching for the box. In it lay, beautifully folded, the silk nightgown his dad had helped him pick out, all blue and smooth, like water.

He was on the rug again, watching the locomotive coming at him, headlight at eye level. He took in the high cab.

Matt blinked. You could see a little guy in there! An engineer! With an engineer's cap and a mustache! You could see his brown eyes! As the train passed by, the little guy waved!

* * * *

The house smelled like bacon substitute and coffee and hot chocolate. They'd unpacked a mid-sized passenger station, some mining trestles along a spur, a group of houses, and one of those old-fashioned black water tanks. His dad explained about the two-part expanded set, which he already knew, by pulling out a block of suburban-looking townhouses for the monorail section. Its golden cars matched the futuristic city's curved glass terminal. Time and again as his father unpacked, his attention would drift back to the retro train. It was so cool.

The train looped through his sister's Virtual Field Hockey Tournament, passed his mom, and drove his way again.

"Hey, Dad,” Matt observed. “The engineer only waves when he passes by me. Just me."

His dad thought for a bit—he was a professor, ran a busy lab, usually had the answer to anything. “The train set's AI locates you through your GPS bracelet,” his dad said. Then he grinned. “Part of the upgrade package. You're the registered owner. President of the railroad. He's paying his respects."

His dad knelt to shift a hardware store into position near the old-fashioned passenger station. Power cells kicked in, windows glowed. “When I was a kid,” his dad said, “we lived in Grandma Jean's old apartment. I had the planet's dinkiest train.” He laughed. “Half-HO, all nano. Still, I used to dream about the people in the little houses. I used to dream about a set like this, three engines...."

His mom came in, very pretty in blue silk, carrying mugs for each of them.

"Anyway, this railroad's for you,” his dad said. “I'll help you build a layout downstairs. Then you're on your own. It's going to be your responsibility, Matt. The license agreement is in your name. You're going to run a railroad."

* * * *

After a long day visiting Grandma Jean, his dad was watching the vidwall news in bed. Matt crept out to the tree in his pajamas.

What his dad had said was true. No matter where he lay, the little guy waved at him each time the Santa Fe passed by. The way you could see his expression, his cheeks bunched cheerfully, was amazing.

It occurred to him to stop the train the next time it came by.

When he did so, the little guy waved and shouted, “Hi, Matt."

He'd said his name! “Wait'll I tell my dad,” Matt said breathlessly.

"Hang on there, Matthew Pike,” the engineer said. “The advanced features of this unit's AI are available only to a single licensed user."

"Oh, right. Only one account.” Matt chewed his lip, disappointed he couldn't share the experience with his dad, but thrilled to have the engineer launch into a welcome speech that seemed written especially for him. “And, Matthew Pike?” the engineer concluded, “thanks for initializing us. I'm ready to run this EMC-E1 diesel through its paces."

"Uh, anything I'm supposed to do?” Matt asked. That was the question his friend Chris had used to start the setup on his Rover.

"Always keep water in the tank,” the engineer said, waving at the old-fashioned high black tank. “We actually use it. We're a wetware AI, Matthew Pike, totally organic."

"We?” Matt said. “There are more of you guys?"

"Welcome aboard.” The engineer grinned.

"This is great,” Matt said. He could hear his mom putting dishes away. The pictures on the pods merged into a vision of his future layout. When his mom called, he pulled the power cable and started repacking the rolling stock so they could move it downstairs. The little window in the front cab slid closed.

* * * *

True to his word, Matt's dad got a couple of big pieces of plywood, painted one side green, and set them up on sawhorses in a corner of the basement, under the winter light of the garden window. For a couple of days, his dad worked with his laser saw and driver, framing hills, installing prefab cliffs and tunnels, laying out roads and farms and blocks of buildings from the pods, connecting them by yellow-lined streets with little autos and trucks that were another miracle of realism. The spray-on landscape was organic, only needed periodic misting, you could already see minuscule tendrils of bushes uncurling.

The two boards overlapped to form a wide V. On his left side, by the window, a small modern city took shape beneath the loop of its sleek golden monorail. On his right, toward the furnace, the Santa Fe's passenger and freight terminal anchored a storefront-and-bungalow town. Outbound for the Santa Fe was a country village with a covered platform and a church and a square. A stubby steam engine shuttled from the terminal to a mine along the furnace.

Where the boards overlapped, his dad terraformed a mountain range that divided the lines. From the far side, an excursion spur of monorail pylons swooped up to a flat spot below the far peaks, a meadow, a kind of high-altitude lookout, before it disappeared into a tunnel and back down. The retro railroad's track ran up long switchbacks over trestles and waterfalls to its side of the meadow before a long rocky grade took it down to pastures along the back wall.

What with all the prefab building and landscape units, they were finished in a week. His dad helped him verify the cable runs, power up, and bring each section carefully on line, using the little steam engine as their test vehicle. It was funny—for a while, as he worked, his dad was like a kid, too, you could see it in his face, what he probably looked like when he was a kid.

But just after New Year's, things got really busy at the university again and his dad disappeared. “In his lab, like every spring,” his mom shrugged, leaving him to run the railroad.

* * * *

He hadn't logged on to the Mars site Chris had put up in days, even though Chris had loaned him the special headset. There were a lot of little adjustments to make, crossing gates to calibrate, track to align, so much to admire.

When he finally had all the signals installed and picket fences set, he upended the red and silver Santa Fe diesel, pushed the toggle from “demo” to “auto,” set its wheels back on the track, coupled it to three passenger cars, then fired it up from his remote. As he did so the golden monorail slipped by on its pylons against the cliffs in the far background and disappeared into the tunnel.

It was a beautiful dance, the trains moving by and around their curves. There was still something of Christmas in it, a strand of leftover tinsel among the colored lights, evergreen above the meadow. He'd programmed the Santa Fe to run on its long route, switchbacking up the mountain and then back down. On cue the stubby steam engine shuttled down from the mine trestle to bustle around in the yard. He parked it under the water tower, and with a little flash of embarrassment realized he had forgotten to fill the tank.

He got a cup of water from the laundry sink. He was watching the Santa Fe on his way back and saw a little movement, the engineer waving at him when the train looped close.

He stopped the Santa Fe on its next pass.

"Hi, Matt!"

He looked carefully at the little guy. He could see lines on his face, his mustache with curls at the end. The instructions said you could set voice commands by using the engineer to name the file. “Um, what's your name?” he asked.

"Great question. As you've probably figured out, I'm your interface, Matt, the way you communicate directly with your layout using the virtualized AI. Call me Chief!"

Matt took in the tiny engineer, the silver train, the town beyond it, the hills rising, it seemed, miles away. “Awesome,” he said. What was the second thing he was supposed to ask? “Chief? Rate this layout?"

"Great question. Needs some people."

Matt squinted and looked at the little figure.

"Great question,” Chief said again. “Needs some people."

Matt laughed and sure enough, among the smaller pods, along with a few highly realistic zoo animals, were whole sets of figures—more than a hundred yellow-jacketed ones, the city people with their silver- and bronze-uniformed gardeners and security. They had six perfect, tiny cats.

The ten dogs belonged to Chief's world, along with the blue mailman and bright shoppers and farmers and school kids—at least a hundred more figures. As he set the retro people in place, they seemed more real to him. The monorail city was not for him. It was too generic, too perfect, like the private school he went to, like the Mars Habitat at Chris's, all titanium and polymers and touchscreens, like the holo-ized shows his mom watched.

He let the trains run as he placed the figures. He liked feeling them flex under his fingers, setting them down on sidewalks before houses as the trains danced in the background. The passing windows of the observation car caught his eye. They were opaque, and their blankness troubled him. Was there something else missing?

"Great question,” the engineer said. “We could use some food, Matt."

Matt blinked. He hadn't read that far. “Food?"

"Grains of rice. Just fill that mining hopper with grains of rice."

* * * *

One night in January he crept down the stairs to the basement, halfway down to where the stairs turned and it was shadowy, and from that spot he watched the layout under racing moonlight from the garden window.

It looked like a real place, a countryside, seen from far away, from a high glider, perhaps, and he half-dreamed of the sleeping world below under shifting clouds.

Then, all of the railroad's signal lights popped on, tiny red and green lights, and from the now illuminated station the Santa Fe's headlight beamed and the double-ended diesel started a slow crawl.

Crawl is what he felt at the back of his neck. He shook with cold. What had turned the layout on? The Santa Fe stopped, then reversed to its starting position at the platform. The steam engine pushed its tender slowly beneath the water tank. What the snap?

He thought about it. Obviously the layout was maintaining itself, the equipment keeping itself clean and lubricants distributed. A lot of stuff had those routines. This one was particularly cool.

He wasn't sure when all the lights went off, wasn't even sure how he'd gotten to bed, but the next day during geometry it seemed like a dream.

* * * *

By March he was using a juice pitcher for water and even so he had to fill the tank once a day. And now there were two rice hoppers; his mom had bought a big sack at Walco. As the days passed, the farm crops were peeking up as if they had been watching the calendar, and, as he misted, grass rose higher in the pastures. In the golden city, monorail pylons sported new greenery by a lake alive with paddleboats and canoes. The steam engine had started shuttling flat cars stacked with straw-sized copper pipe into the mine.

One afternoon, as he watched the monorail swing up its long loop on the pylons, the chain of golden cars stopped on its side of the mountain clearing.

That was new, stopping in the middle of a run. How long had it been doing that? To his further surprise, golden doors slid open, and figures with jackets in different shades of yellow moved stiffly out.

Men and women, a girl his age. In their awkward movements was the signature of one overheated robotics chip. Wait till he told Chris.

The driver of the mono stepped off, identifiable by a golden helmet. The driver's movements were smoother, the wave signaling the passengers back into the cars even and natural.

The next day he brought the Santa Fe up to the pass. He stopped it at its side of the meadow, on its parallel track. Sure enough, the car doors swung open, a set of silver steps dropped down, and retro figures moved out, a group of boys, two young women, men in suits. He recognized the family with the dog from figures he had set out at the main terminal! The figures milled around and reboarded one by one. It was awesome.

People had started moving around the retro town, too, he realized, stepping from the store across the street to the station and back, from the firehouse to the diner, little robotic steps.

But when he stopped both trains at the meadow at the same time, all the figures did was mill around beside their cars and then reboard. Time after time, all he got was the same result.

* * * *

"Hey, kiddo,” he heard his mom call from across the basement, “how do you start this thing?"

He was at his dad's workbench, lost in sorting out tiny farm equipment—which was the posthole digger? He looked over and there she stood, her blonde hair falling over the shimmering blue shoulders of her robe. She'd wandered over from the laundry. She held the remote in her hand like an empty plate.

The layout was completely dead. Which was funny, because he'd been over there five minutes before and he had left the lines on demo routes, low-consumption moves that kept the equipment cycling.

Chief had said he loved them.

He had trouble booting up, too. Finally, he did a complete cold reset. But now only the steam engine moved.

The Santa Fe diesel sat at the station like a beautiful museum exhibit. Beyond it children walked stiffly by the firehouse and old men sat on benches by the square. He couldn't remember setting them out. The little town was becoming more populated somehow. So was the city. Finally, the diesels moved.

"Why don't you build a little station up there?” his mom suggested when he told her about the meadow. “Maybe they'll make friends.” They talked about school and then both watched the trains’ graceful dance, his mom sitting at the far end of the layout, resting her chin in her hands, a dreamy look in her eyes.

It was the Christmas gift of all time. It was so cool.

* * * *

He turned to his father's workbench again. He started with a platform wide enough to reach both tracks and a shelter. With miniature construction materials from the pod he added an outdoor café with its own deck, a cabin for the owner, and a stable on the retro side.

The figures still just kept by their trains. Over at Chris's, they got into a dust-up with an Aussie Rover—the Mars thing was looking more like a vid game, but it was cool the way it had gone global. Within the week they bumped into a Japanese unit whose probes had been weaponized, and he could barely get a turn.

Then it was Spring Recess and his dad was downstairs saying good-bye before he headed off to the airport for a conference. The night before, his dad had tweaked the robotics chip to run a subroutine that made the animals move.

"Very clever,” his dad said. “Very, very clever.” His dad was over by the furnace, tracing a run of copper tubing just beneath the vegetation that led to the layout's water tank. The tubing had been routed through the mine from the furnace dehumidifier.

"Jeez,” Matt said. “I've been forgetting to fill the tank."

"I guess we can afford the water bill.” Matt's dad laughed.

Beyond the diesels standing idle on the roundtable, Chief waved his arm cheerfully back and forth, like a signal. The light shifted, and he saw his mom's legs at the window, among green tongues of rising leaves. There was a splatter of dirt and she disappeared.

* * * *

Passengers from both trains were walking along the meadow platform to the shelter now, sitting in the café. Their motions had become as smooth as wind, couples had formed, and groups of like-sized boys coalesced.

In the retro town, a kneeling figure turned a yard into a thriving garden the next day. Chief walked home from the station at the end of the day to a house with a red door from which spilled a wife and two children. The house had a white fence and a teeter-totter in the back yard made up to look like a steam engine.

The mingling was getting more intense. Over at Chris's, the Japanese had broken his solar array and he was looking for help from the Aussies, but his console had to be sent back for repairs.

* * * *

Trouble, he saw, at the meadow.

The crowd from the retro train had been backed into the shelter by yellow-jacketed passengers from the monorail, pushed into the shelter like trash in a trash can, even though there was plenty of room on the platform behind them.

His hand trembling, he ran undo functions for the monorail and the Santa Fe. The passengers moved back to their cars, and the trains pulled away.

What he hadn't counted on was the Santa Fe leaving a half-dozen passengers behind. He hadn't noticed. They were a family, a mother, father, and three kids. When the monorail looped back up, its passengers swarmed the family. This time it looked ugly, like a fight.

"Chief!” he yelled. Where was the Santa Fe?

Up on the mountain platform, one of the retro figures, the father, had been knocked over. His leg was twisted into an unnatural angle. Matt tried to run another undo function for the monorail line but the toggle wouldn't engage. More yellow figures were surrounding the fallen father.

"Hi, Matt!” A voice registered from the gingerbread station.

"Chief! Something's wrong. We have an emergency. The layout is acting wrong!"

"Coming up,” Chief said grimly.

Chief climbed into the cab of the steam engine in a heartbeat and it was climbing the grade, spewing black smoke and chugging up the trestles.

Up at the meadow platform, the monorail driver had stepped out of the train and moved to the fallen retro figure. The driver knelt on one knee as the yellow-jackets moved away.

Then the driver's helmet rose. Blonde hair spilled over the driver's shoulders.

Matt blinked. The monorail driver was a woman. As she set down her golden helmet and tended to the father, he could clearly see that the driver was a young, long-haired woman with a calm, perfect face. In his parents’ room there was a picture of his mother when she was in college; she looked like that.

As the steam engine chugged up the last stretch of track before the meadow, the monorail passengers filed quickly back into their cars. The driver helped the fallen father to his feet—his leg still twisted—and walked back to the lead car. Her door closed just as the steam engine pulled up and the monorail slid away.

His remote was showing a half-dozen error codes.

"Thanks, Chief,” Matt said as the engineer stepped down from the cab.

"Kiddo?” his mom called down from the top of the stairs. “Is everything all right down there?"

* * * *

Even with the trains scheduled to stop at different times, few passengers disembarked at the meadow anymore. His sister teased him. His new snack bar, the platform, the little café, were rather forlorn. He misted the vegetation, adjusted the signals, and tamped the tracks, but that only reminded him of the fight.

That night, he didn't even want to log in to Chris's site. As he lay in bed, he replayed the sight of the monorail driver tucking so much blonde hair back into her helmet, rising from her knees, hand extended to the retro male figure.

"Chief!"

"Hi, Matt."

"Chief, analyze error."

"Simple error,” Chief said. “Your new platform is undocumented in setup. The meadow station development is undocumented. It defaults as a lawless place, a no-man's-land. Potential bug in the hybrid set? The platform complex needs some rules."

His head spun a bit. Whose fault was that? His? The AI's?

"Security infrastructure options include: a police station, TSI presence, community development sequences."

He shut the layout down to its demo routes and headed back to his dad's workbench. The pod of building materials he'd opened was his only hope now.

* * * *

When he rebooted it was already May. He'd cobbled together a little sheriff's office, a TSI post with surveillance cameras, and manned them with passenger figures from both of the trains. He converted a little storefront into a hotel flanked by two cabins to give the place a lived-in feel. Following Chief's instructions, he held off running the trains to the meadow until Saturday afternoon. Chief said he was working at something too.

When he went down to the basement Saturday afternoon, Chief was standing on a little stage at the café end of the platform—where had that come from? Blue and gold bunting surrounded the stage like a skirt.

Then both trains arrived simultaneously at the platform.

Passengers poured out from the trains and formed a crowd before the stage. The monorail driver, shaking her blonde hair out as she removed her helmet, climbed up to stand beside him, and they hugged, then raised their hands together. A faint cheer swept down the mountain. Chief delivered a speech Matt couldn't hear, followed by the mono driver. Then they were shaking hands, there was another cheer, and all the figures on the platform began shaking hands, figures in yellow jackets, retro figures in casual clothes, all shaking hands.

The monorail driver, when she faced the crowd—you could see she was so pretty, perfect in her golden jumpsuit, smiling as she raised Chief's arm.

* * * *

Even Chris was impressed with the layout, though all he wanted to talk about was weaponizing his digging tools when his console came back. He went home early.

Up at the meadow the figures mingled. The trains looped through their routes and the steam engine shuttled very realistic loads of dirt from the mine. The cars moved and the tractors tilled the country fields. Kids swung on a jungle gym in the schoolyard (very cool). The little world seemed peaceful again.

Then one day he was outside looking for a wooden glider in his mother's small vegetable garden, which was bordered by the plantings outside the basement window. Two yellow-jacketed figures darted out from the end of a lettuce row. At first he couldn't figure out what they were, it was so strange. They disappeared behind the carrots and he traced a path that led to a packed-earth tunnel alongside the foundation. It stopped at the window frame.

On the basement side there was dirt and plant debris on the floor, spattered on the layout. He was shocked. He checked the rice hopper and it was empty. He had neglected the layout lately. It had been running so beautifully.

"Chief!” he yelled as he brought the Santa Fe diesels around. There was no response. To his surprise, in Chief's cab sat the fireman, a mute figure who usually stood stiffly at the controls of the steam engine.

Matt scanned the layout in the late-afternoon light. Chief was nowhere to be found. Matt looked up along the steep-faced mountain—it was an hour before trains were scheduled to stop. He searched the empty meadow.

Then he saw them. In the trees, behind the café, Chief was walking with a figure in a gold suit who was holding a helmet. Her blonde hair was spilling over her shoulders. The two figures were holding hands. They passed behind the TSI shed and up the walk to the little hotel, the rustic stone walk he had meticulously laid.

Chief held the door open and followed her in. The door closed behind them like a circuit switching off. Then there was a glow in a rear window.

Matt waited, but they didn't come out.

After dinner, light still glowed in the window. Matt sat at the control console all evening, the layout quiet, staring at his unfinished geometry homework. Near their house by the station, Chief's wife stood beside the picket fence. She was dark-haired, had a round, moon face, like the child who held her at her knees.

Matt tossed and turned in bed. When he slid toward sleep, his mind was filled with her, her train from the perfect city, her blonde hair swirling across her shoulders and down her back, her movements so smooth she seemed made of silk.

* * * *

Matt was up before breakfast and downstairs even as his mother called from the kitchen that he was going to be late for school.

He found Chief dozing in the diesel's cab at the gingerbread station.

"I don't think the AI is supposed to do stuff like that,” Matt said thickly.

Chief was not smiling. He looked older and mean. Chief gazed around the terminal before he looked directly at Matt. “It's you,” Chief said with a leer. “The AI is configured on you. It's your imagination, Matthew Pike."

* * * *

He couldn't concentrate in English. When he got home that afternoon, there was a crowd at the monorail terminal. There were more children than he'd ever seen, ten times as many as he'd put out. Little mounds of dirt surrounded the bases of trees flanking the suburban stop. Tiny green fruit hung at the end of the branches.

His face flushed. His hand shook as he reached for and tripped the main power switch for the console.

A yellow light flashed on his panel. His dialogue bar blinked:

DO NOT DISCONNECT

Matt keyed in the command for a cold boot. He waited, but the kill command just triggered a backup.

The monorail moved along the back of the layout, swinging around its golden loop on the far side of the modern city, all right angles and trees in planters. The steam engine shuttled loads of dirt from the mine.

* * * *

His mother complained that he wasn't paying attention, but he was. The Kennedys were going to drop off his father from the airport.

He went downstairs after dinner.

"Chief!"

"Hi, Matt!” Chief leaned out of the red and silver cab of the Santa Fe.

"Chief, I'm going to tell my dad. I want to shut down the layout."

"Security alert, Matthew Pike. Backup has engaged to save what you have created. To shut the line down with the main breaker will terminate the landscape, the plants and the animals, and all the new people. All the new children. It will destroy this little world."

"I want this to stop."

"When you want to start up again, some of your initialization materials will have been compromised, and the manufacturer cannot guarantee that the trains will operate. That's what we're trying to avoid. But if that's what the license holder wants—"

"Hi, Matt!” a woman's voice called out.

Chief's wife walked beneath the cab window. “We can work it out, Matthew Pike,” she said. “That's what we like about you. When you see something's wrong, you fix it, Matthew. You fixed the meadow. You stopped the fighting."

True. It was really a cool present, after all. “I did, I made new buildings, and....” Now he saw two figures on the floor, a tiny ladder on the cable run.

"So you don't really have to worry,” she said, comfort in her voice.

"I just want a railroad,” he said. “A model railroad."

"Consider it done,” Chief said.

"So first, everybody stays on the layout."

"Done.” The figures on the floor moved up clever little steps on the sawhorse.

"See?” Chief's wife said. “You can make it work. The AI is you, Matthew Pike."

But the next night he crossed the back yard to run the trash out behind the garage. Somebody had left the door open, and as he went to close it on his way back he took in the smell of rubber and batteries and the sight of his mom's car plugged in. A movement caught his eye. Along the stud above the outlet he counted five of the figures moving along like a centipede. Up in the corner, he saw a half-dozen more.

"Matt?” his mother asked as the sliding door thumped behind him. “Have you been in my closet?"

* * * *

He slept fitfully.

He was up at first light. He should have known better.

His father had come home late and his parents were still sleeping.

When he got some juice he saw figures by the back door. There were two in the kitchen cabinet. The little figures were all over the house now, like ants.

He went downstairs and looked. The layout seemed healthy, green and colorful, but he couldn't see any people.

He studied the place, a lovely little world with its square fields, farm trucks on the roads, tiny boats at a dock on the monorail lake. As he scanned the retro town, a color caught his eye.

Hanging on the line outside the cottage was a blue piece of silk.

"Hi, Matt!” A stranger in a gold jacket spoke from the cab of the Santa Fe.

"I'm telling my dad. I'm telling him now."

"Matt!"

But he had already turned away. He was climbing the stairs. Then at the head of the stairs he saw the crowd of figures. He would have to step on them to pass by.

He ran back down the stairs, slipping off his GPS bracelet. He pushed it into the tool drawer of his father's workbench.

He watched the line of figures crawl back down the stairway. When they had gathered by the workbench, he tiptoed past and up the stairs.

"Dad!” he yelled. He heard a voice, his mom's. He pushed open the door of their bedroom.

* * * *

His parents were bound by fishing line in the bed, swarmed by the tiny figures. The shock was numbing, like he'd been hit by a car.

His mother looked at him from her pillow with a wan smile. “Hey, kiddo,” she said. “Can you help us out here?"

He was transfixed by the pattern of fishing line that bound her to the bed. It began at her shoulders, crisscrossing down to her ankles, passing beneath her arms and between her breasts, like a web across her stomach and hips outlined beneath the sheet. His father had been gagged, trussed in the fetal position and wrapped in a blanket, utterly helpless. Maybe the main breaker, Matt thought. Maybe if he pulled the main breaker for the house?

"Kiddo?"

Well, now he had a plan. Too bad about the children. It was so cool, but.... Then he noticed a tugging at the backs of his calves, his muscles already tight enough so that when he turned to get a better look at the web forming around his feet, like a net, his knees began to buckle.

"Kiddo?"

"Mom! Dad!"

He was twisting, tumbling, falling.

The cold oak floor was hard against his burning cheek.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Department: FILMS: BLOCKBUSTER AS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE by Kathi Maio

Critics, philosophers, and theologians (with much greater intellectual chops than your humble servant) have long identified the link between popular culture—notably fantasy fiction and film—and the human hunger for mythology, and even spirituality. The modern superhero clearly plays the mythic role of the demigod, even when the plotline isn't as ham-fisted as in February's Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. And numerous dissertations (of the Ph.D. variety) have been written on the Christian meanings and messages of the Lord of the Rings cycle and The Chronicles of Narnia.

Times have greatly changed since the Inklings of Oxford purposefully wove their grand tales with theology. But it is good to know that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Even filmic fantasies of the twenty-first century display a healthy (if sometimes partially hidden) dose of religious symbolism and spiritual yearning. This includes two of the biggest blockbusters of this past winter.

New Moon, the second adaptation from the Twilight series of novels by Stephenie Meyer, entered theaters in November and was still playing in January. Building on the previous success of the first Twilight movie, the new installment became an immediate hit, based on the ferocious devotion of “Twi-Hards” and those of us who were just trying to figure out what all the fuss is about.

However, if you were not a previous devotee of Ms. Meyer's inelegant Harlequin- cum-horror prose, and especially if you had not previously seen the far superior 2008 Twilight film, directed by Catherine Hardwicke, you would likely not be able to fathom the Twilight phenomenon as either a cinematic hit factory or as a worldwide cultural obsession.

For those few of you who might have spent the last four years under a mossy rock in the Hoh Rain Forest of Washington, perhaps I should say a brief word about the storyline, so far. In the first film, a young teen named Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) moves from Arizona to a damp small town in Washington State to take up residence with her father. Entering the local high school, she starts making friends, but also appears to repel her new biology lab partner, a pretty, pale, tousle-haired lad named Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson).

Turns out the repulsion is anything but. Edward, a member of a “vegetarian” vampire clan who nobly feast on animal blood instead of that of their human neighbors, actually feels an overwhelming attraction to Bella and her corpuscles. And Bella's teenaged carnal desires are soon directed back at Edward, even after she discovers his dark secret.

Since sexual abandon might well lead to Bella's death or undead transformation, Edward craves but doesn't consume his sweetheart, showing a courtly devotion equaled only by his simmering sexual restraint. It was all enough to make teeny-boppers swoon and sigh. But it is not just young girls who flocked to see Twilight. While the audience was predominately female, mothers, too, caught the fever—attracted not only by the high romance but also by the abstinence-only message of the movie.

Many have seen a correlate between Ms. Meyer's Mormon religion and the semiotics of her stories and the subsequent films. But this goes beyond Twilight being a shill for the “True Love Waits” Movement. (After all, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints isn't exactly the only religion that considers premarital sexual congress to be a sin.) Many pivotal scenes in the Twilight stories take place in meadows—Is this an allusion to the Mountain Meadows Massacre? Do the Cullens (the good, moral vampires) represent Mormonism while the Volturi (the murderous, powerful governing coven) in Italy signify Roman Catholicism and the old Christianity that seeks to destroy the LDS?

I have to admit that the theological analysis of the Twilight saga interests me less than retrograde gender roles and politics of the series. Although certain Mormon sects are content to give child brides to older men, there is undeniably something creepy about the eternally youthful-looking Edward (who is actually a centenarian) wooing a high-schooler. For all his celibacy, courtliness, and I-like-to-watch-you-sleep devotion, there is a controlling undertow to the Edward persona that makes him something less than an ideal man (or ghoul). He is the one who dictates the expression and limitation of the couple's sexual relations. And even when he leaves his inamorata—for her own good, of course—he keeps appearing to her in vaporous clouds to tell her not to do this or that, making him seem less like a astral exemplar than one of those emotionally abusive boyfriends they do television PSAs about.

Beyond the theological underpinnings and the sexual politics of New Moon is, of course, the real question for the film critic: Does it work as a movie? The female fan base would squeal a resounding “Yes!” But this female critic would have to offer an equally emphatic negative.

In the first movie, Twilight, the heroine Bella has a more interesting character arc as she moves to her estranged father as an act of love and support for her newly remarried mother. We see her attempting to build a relationship with her father, acclimate to school and new friends, and figure out what the story is with the mysterious Edward and his clan. It's a recognizable coming of age story with a fiendish twist. Director Catherine Hardwicke showed her understanding of teen girl angst in her early film, Thirteen (2003), and she was able to bring a similar energy and authenticity to the first book's adaptation, along with screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg.

The second movie, New Moon, suffers from one crucial challenge. That is, undead heartthrob Edward Cullen, in a misguided attempt to protect the girl he loves, moves away from Washington, leaving young Bella to a heartbroken senior year of high school. That makes the story an inherently frustrating one for both return scripter Rosenberg and new director Chris Weitz (About a Boy, The Golden Compass)—not to mention the viewer.

Kristen Stewart's Bella descends into a catatonic mopeyness that your average fourteen-year-old girl might find quite relatable, but which is less than entertaining to watch; especially through Mr. Weitz's rather unimaginative lens. When he circles the stony-faced Ms. Stewart several times to symbolize the passage of time in her disconsolate funk, I felt no sympathy. I only wanted to give her a shake and tell her to get over herself or get to a psychologist for some counseling and pharmaceuticals.

Even when Bella finally gets out of her bedroom, she remains a sullen and boring movie hero. Eventually, she decides to take up reckless activities like helmetless motorcycle riding, because risky behaviors briefly bring Edward to her as a deus-ex-fog-cloud telling her to stop whatever she is doing. Nebulous chastisements do not make for a very satisfying relationship, however. So Bella finds herself increasingly drawn to a muscular Native American family friend, Jacob (Taylor Lautner).

But, wouldn't you know, Forks is a town where all the eligible young men seem to have a secret. In this case, Jacob and several other young male members of his Quileute tribe are shape-shifting werewolves pledged to hunt vampires.

Although the werewolf transformations and associated action CGI are serviceable enough, they don't really add much interest to the lackluster plot. The proceedings are amazingly dull, except for a couple of scenes like the one in which Bella's gal pal, Jessica (Anna Kendrick), babbles on about the questionable symbolism of vampire movies and then denounces the erratic Bella as an adrenaline junkie. It is a moment of modest fun in two hours of clumsy cinema.

While much of the weakness in New Moon can be blamed on Stephenie Meyer's original source material, I can't help but think that Catherine Hardwicke would have invested the proceedings with a greater vitality. Heck, even the CW series The Vampire Diaries is more lively and engaging than New Moon. But lackluster or not, any Twilight movie (like any Harry Potter film) is likely to do boffo box office. Devotees will delight in any moribund memento of their cultural obsession. Those of us who haven't been bitten by the Twilight mania should give this movie a pass.

I found another box office smash of the winter easier to enjoy. Although far from original in its story or narrative style, at least it wasn't a franchise...yet. Moreover, it was designed to be a big (and I mean 3-D GIGANTIC) dazzling conveyor of movie magic. And, by gum, that is exactly what it was.

Of course, I am referring to Avatar, the long-awaited new movie by James Cameron, noted helmer of sf and fantasy film as well as the King of the World responsible for the ultimate in big cheese disaster romances, Titanic.

Years in the making, more expensive than any previous movie and more successful than any flick you can name—consider the rest of the superlatives uttered—Avatar aims to be a memorable spectacle. Its heady mix of state of the art CGI, finely meshed motion capture animation and live action performance, along with IMAX (or Real) 3D elements that emphasize enchantment just as much as violent action, really do let even the most jaundiced critic understand why this movie was a worldwide megahit.

Is the film overripe and overlong? Yes. Does it shortchange the more expository aspects of its story? Indeed. Cameron can't be bothered to explain properly how the GMO human-alien avatars really work. And you quickly get the feeling that “Unobtainium,” the substance Earthly invaders hope to mine on the planet of Pandora, is a Hitchcockian MacGuffin of the first degree.

The plot is hodge-podge of New-Agey spirituality and vaguely progressive politics. The hero, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), is a disabled Earthling Marine and veteran of the “Venezuela” conflict—look out descendents of Hugo!—who seems at first to be firmly aligned with the military-industrial complex exemplified by the mining corporation and their Blackwater-ish mercenary enforcers. But Jake is born again in his Na'vi alien persona. Experiencing the wonder of the primitive paradise in the Pandoran rainforest, and further enchanted by the noble nature-honoring culture of the Na'vi population, our jarhead starts to transform into a tree-hugger. And when he falls for the brave and beautiful Omaticaya “princess,” Neytiri (Zoë Saldana), heart, head, and brawn all switch sides, causing Jake to, in the words of the G.I. Joeish Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang), “betray [his] race."

White boy as warrior-savior of a threatened indigenous people isn't exactly a novel storyline. (Just call Jake Dances With Pterosaurs or A Man Called Direhorse.) But Cameron undeniably keeps his eye-popping saga feeling fresh and new. You easily set aside the racist aspect of the plot—especially since Jake seeks not only to assimilate but actually to become genetically a member of the clan. And the neo-paganism of the story's underpinnings is easy to embrace in a CGI landscape this filled with wonder and enchantment.

James Cameron, more than any other director today, knows how to integrate spectacular effects into an affecting movie experience. Nonetheless, he is kidding himself (and his cast) when he says that his “Volume” motion capture system doesn't seek to replace actors but “empower them.” Avatar is filled with superlative computer animation, but Neytiri is a gorgeous, bewitching cartoon. She is not a physical performance by Zoë Saldana, no matter how often the lovely actress says that the character is “all me."

If I were a member of SAG, I'd be worried. But as a member of the audience, I am happy enough to spend an afternoon communing with a society of blue creatures that look nothing like me.

And if I were an environmentalist or an aboriginal rights activist I'd be relatively pleased with the slightly preachy messages in Avatar, as well. As for the theologians in the audience; well, their comfort level with the movie will likely be dependent on how open-minded they are. Many would prefer the New Chastity/early marriage model of the Twilight movies. Others may favor the kind of end times extravaganza that 2012 offers. (That thing was enough to send anybody racing for the pews!) And then there is the post-apocalyptic fable about a bible-carrying, machete-wielding prophet we find in The Book of Eli. (Give us that old time religion, but protect us from the heathenish hordes!)

As for me, I'll take the pagan delights of Avatar. Now, if I could only find that Tree of Souls.

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Short Story: THE GYPSY'S BOY by Lokiko Hall

Lokiko Hall lives in Oregon and you can find her blogging adventures online at lokikohall.blogspot.com. She quips that there's a street in Florence, Italy, named for people like her: Via dei Malcontenti.
Ms. Hall also says that during the dry summers of western Oregon, she likes to bed down outside and watch meteors and satellites sail by. But for one stretch of time she had to use a tent and while feeling blinded and discontent, she began to listen to the wind.

His father traded him when he was nine to a gypsy in exchange for one of the man's fine feather-footed foals. The carthorse was old and his father would soon need another to get his goods to market, and besides, he had always suspected that the boy was not his. His mother raised no objection. She had five more beyond him to raise, and the gypsies were famous for their good horses.

So the gypsy and his father parted, each pleased that he had gotten the better part of the deal. But the horse soon got colic and died, while the boy caught a fever and went blind.

The gypsy man beat him when he first took sick, but then retired to drink and fret about his investment while his wife struggled to keep the child's spirit from parting with his body. When the man discovered that the boy's sight had left him instead, he beat him again and would have abandoned him then and there had it not been for an old gypsy woman, near crippled with arthritis, who happened to be camped in the same field outside the town.

The man sold the boy to her, taking from the old woman her silver rings and bracelets, her gold earrings and necklaces—in short, all her worldly wealth except her home and her horse. But the old woman haggled only for show, quickly acceding to his demands. She could not possibly have afforded the price the man would have commanded had the child been healthy but she saw in the blinded boy a bargain, as well as the son she had always wanted, and the companion and servant she desperately needed.

The old woman's eyes were still sharp, except for tiny things up close. And so once the boy was fully recovered from his illness in every other respect, she was to him his eyes while he was to her two good hands and a young strong body that grew stronger every year.

The old woman had no recourse but to teach him to do all that he possibly could without sight. She instructed him in how to harness and unharness the patient mare who pulled her caravan, how to brush her down and clean her hooves and otherwise care for the horse. Around the caravan she taught him to do every housekeeping chore. She made the boy so aware of his body in space that he could, with much caution, perform such tasks as splitting wood and gutting fish. For the most part, though, she tailored their life and diet to fit what he could do most safely.

She had made fine baskets, before the painful gnarling of her hands had forced her to rely upon fortune telling as her sole means of income. And so the old woman expended a great deal of time and patience in teaching him this skill. Her efforts were rewarded twofold: not only did the boy learn to weave a tight and graceful basket, but she found that people were exceptionally eager to buy them. This was particularly true if the customers saw him working to make more baskets, with his eyes gazing without focus upon his dark world and his sensitive hands in constant motion. The old gypsy woman needed only to perch in the caravan doorway and watch that he was not swindled.

Thus, before the first year in her service had passed, he could do most all the household chores she needed. He got the fire going in the morning and cooked the breakfast. He fetched the water and the firewood from wherever it was, once she had led him to it for the first time. He washed the dishes and the clothes. Later, he also learned to harvest the willow and the reeds and prepare them for weaving into baskets.

But the boy needed her to tell him such things as when the clothes were clean. He needed the old woman to take him around and show him where everything was when they first arrived at a new camp or town. And while he could drive the caravan on the open road with her directing, she had to take the reins whenever they got to a village.

The old woman thought of him and treated him as her son and never regretted the price she had paid for him, while the boy certainly looked as though he could be her great-grandson. His skin was of an olive complexion, quickly browning in the sun, and his hair, curly as a lamb's back, was nearly as black as hers once was. His unseeing eyes were large and unclouded and the warm, slightly red-hued brown of oak leaves in the fall.

The old woman never asked him his name; she called him by the Romany name Bireli. She did not make him wear anything to indicate that he was her property nor did she ever contradict anyone who referred to him as her grandson. But Bireli never forgot he was her servant. He never forgot that he could not survive on his own without her and that she could sell him again should she choose to. He was deeply grateful to her that she had made him as capable as she could, and even more grateful to her because she never beat him as the gypsy man had and as his father had before him. The old woman never once raised her hand to him or even her voice, except to call him from a distance. Though he did not forget his position, he soon came to love the old woman in the same familial way that she loved him.

The boy's other senses developed enormously from being relied on and used so extensively.

His sense of smell was so acute that when the old woman learned that Bireli could also make money for her through the time-honored gypsy profession of horse-curing, it was also discovered that he could diagnose many of his patients by scent. Fully half of the horses he was able to cure, he determined the ailment having done little more than smell the animal's breath.

His sense of touch was, if anything, even more highly developed: over the whole of his body, but especially in his hands and feet. Whenever he was awake his hands were in motion, partly to inform him about his world, but also because his many chores ensured that he always had work to do from the moment he arose until he lay down to sleep.

His feet told him more about where he was in relation to where he was going than any other organ or part of his body. The feel of the earth from finest silky silt through various rockinesses, the textures of different kinds of plants as he walked upon them, changes in the ground's temperature or dampness all helped Bireli determine where he was and if he was straying from where he wished to be.

Only he knew how keen his hearing was. He had learned much of what he knew of treatments for horses from overhearing the conversations of other horse-curers as they talked around their campfires at night. As he grew older, he knew from their whispering that the gypsy girls avoided him because they could see he would never amount to much and because they did not know how to flirt with someone who could not see their charms. And he listened to the wind and learned things from it whenever it spoke.

Bireli loved to listen to the wind. He listened to the wind no matter how softly it blew, and as time went on he became increasingly proficient in its many languages. With his body and nose he could ascertain the wind's speed and direction and what weather was following behind it. But it was with his ears that he could understand what the wind blew through when it was near him: rushes or sedges or reeds; short or long grasses; pines, cedars, or larches; walnuts, olives or oaks; poplars, sycamores, or birches, and whether these leaves were dry or turning colors. When the breezes allowed, he knew the locations and types of all the trees around him. And when the wind blew with much steadiness, he could hear the very shape of the land he was in: where the hills lay, which way the valleys ran, and whether the land was much covered with trees.

The old woman's horse had decided shortly after he began taking care of her that she liked the boy. It wasn't long before she stopped leaning upon him while he cleaned her hooves and while he felt over and around her frogs to make sure he had missed no packed mud or stones. She enjoyed his thorough brushing of her coat and how he would stroke her face and neck and body afterwards to check again for any dirt or burrs that might cause the bridle or harness to rub her wrong. She never made him search for the rope or the tether stake to find her. As soon as he was near enough she would trot up to him with a whicker of greeting to blow in his face and nuzzle his shirtfront.

Bireli came to like the traveling life. He enjoyed the old woman's company and the horse's affection. He didn't mind most of the tasks he needed to do. Because the caravan was only one small room within, he was outside most all of the day and, weather willing, the night, too. The old woman had no love of the cold and so she kept them to places where the weather tended to be dry and sunny much of the year. Whereas for Bireli, his greatest pleasures were the warm kiss of the morning sun upon his face and shoulders and the cool caresses of the evening breeze after a long hot day.

As the years passed, Bireli grew into a beautiful young man, as innocent of this fact as he could possibly be, while his owner became, just as steadily, a far more ancient and wizened crone than she had been when she purchased him.

And then in the midsummer of his tenth year of service he arose one morning and went out first to move the horse's tether stake and check that she still had water. He gave the mare's long neck a vigorous scratching. She hung her lower lip in deep pleasure and rested her head on his shoulder. Then he followed the string that ended at a stick he had driven into the ground at a good place to draw water from the creek and fetched the water for the caravan. He followed another string out to another stick that marked the location of the shallow hole that served as their latrine and when he came back he kindled a fire and put on the porridge. When it was done, he knew that something was wrong.

The old woman was not up yet.

She didn't often arise before he did, but always she was awake and stirring by the time he finished making the breakfast. He went to her bed at the back of the caravan and felt for her. He found that her body was cool already, but not yet stiff.

Bireli stood for a while, with his hands upon the cold old woman, too stunned to shed a tear. But he wept when he lifted her, shocked back into grief at how small and light she was in his arms.

He carried her out of the caravan and laid her upon the grass in its shade. Camped alone as they were, Bireli knew he could not, at the height of summer, fulfill the gypsy custom of burning the old woman in her caravan, so he took up the shovel he used for digging and filling their latrines and firepits and dug a grave for the gypsy woman.

It took him the rest of the morning to make the hole. After he buried her, he replaced the sod on the site as best he could. Then he moved the mare's tether stake again and refilled her water bucket. When he finished that task he sat down near the horse for company. He sat there the whole of the afternoon and the evening as well, marooned on a small island of familiarity in an infinite black ocean.

Bireli slept with the horse that night. During his long periods of wakeful worrying, he listened to the horse grazing about him, free of all cares.

He sat next to her for much of the next day, too, unable to think of a way he could proceed. He wondered how long it would be before someone chanced upon him there and what would befall him when that occurred. He was still sitting by the horse, despondent and afraid, when a wind spirit passed by above him, singing a song to herself as she blew through the willows that lined the creek.

As this was the first person to come his way, Bireli leaped up and called after her, “Wait! Please, wait! Please stay and talk to me!"

The wind spirit was so startled he heard her, so startled he knew she was there, that she swung around to investigate him. She tousled his hair and rumpled his clothes, and he stood there with such an unfocused yet perceptive expression in his eyes that she thought at first that he could see her. But soon enough she realized he could not see anything at all.

"You can hear me? Understand me?” she asked, swirling around him to get a more complete picture of this most unusual human.

"Of course I can hear you,” Bireli answered. “How could I fail to hear such beautiful singing?” Unable to locate her because she moved ceaselessly about him, he put out a hand to touch the spirit. “Where are you?"

The wind spirit looked at that hand, brown and solid, groping in the air for her. Moved to thoughtless pity, she reached out to touch him. And was surprised again, deeply surprised, when the fingers of his hot human hand curled securely around her own.

Stayed by his warm grip upon the cool tendrils of air that were her hand, the wind spirit gazed upon him anew. She was enchanted by the strange, if pathetic, earthbound density of him, the compelling furnace of his mortal body, and most of all by his sweet demeanor as he waited for her to speak again.

It passed through her mind that this was a very bad idea. That there was good reason why none of her tribe had had any dealings with human people for a good many years. Many centuries in fact. It passed through her mind, very quickly, very breezily, that the lore of her people contained many sad and ancient stories of those few wind spirits who had tangled with humans.

Those thoughts came and went, quicker than she could reflect on them. And quicker than she could reflect on it, she leaned in close, feeling that curious ephemeral heat of him up and down the whole of her, and kissed Bireli on the cheek.

She did not know that she was the first to kiss him so. She knew only that she was further enchanted by the rising blush of blood that crept up beneath his sun-darkened skin and by the minute leap in his body temperature that felt anything but minute to her.

She wriggled her fingers loose from his so that she might explore him more fully. While she did so she buffeted him with questions, about himself, his name, and how he managed to get about the world without seeing.

He told her his name was Bireli and that the old woman he served had just died. She had been his eyes, he said, and he could not move from this spot without someone to guide him. Then he asked the wind spirit what her name was.

She whispered it into his ear—and was enraptured when she heard his tongue, which had stammered shyly over his own story, pronounce faultlessly the many susurrous syllables of her name.

Without any consideration of the matter, she kissed him again, this time upon his warm soft lips and said, “I will guide you."

Never in all the hundred years of her young life had she seen such a smile, such a smile that was all for her. The wind spirit was smitten.

Bireli was delighted, and his relief was boundless that the wind spirit had offered to help him in his most helpless hour. But otherwise he felt it no more miraculous that she had come to him, that he had held her hand, than if some gypsy girl had finally taken some notice of him.

Because he had no idea how such matters were usually conducted, he did not find forward the wind spirit's impetuous advances. Bireli's embarrassment quickly melted away before his happy thankfulness. He responded to her with each of his heightened awarenesses ready to receive all sensation of her.

The wind spirit was captivated by the effect she had upon him. She discovered that her slightest touch could make this beautiful lad shiver and tremble. She brought the blood rushing to his face again and again only to cause it seemingly to desert his head altogether. She dizzied him and weakened his knees, then, wrapping her long limbs around him, she whirled him in a dance of trust, of abandon and enthrallment. With her, his vital young body could feel, as it had not felt in years, the pure physical joy of movement, fast and assured. Long before the dance had ended, long before the two had tumbled as one into the grass, he was as breathlessly in love with her as she was with him.

That was how the wind spirit became his guide.

When he needed to go to a market or a fair, she clung close to him and directed him as he drove. Once there she would usually leave him and mingle with her own kind while he conducted his business. If he was familiar with the place, he remembered where the shops and stalls were that he might need to visit. If it was new territory to him, a few inquiries usually got him whatever he required to find his way around.

Even when his spirit left him alone in the towns, she never abandoned him completely. Once, at a horse fair, three men approached him and asked him to come away with them and look at a sick horse. He went with them, and though things did not feel right to him, there was a horse in the dusty barn and it was ailing. Bireli smelled the horse's breath, ran his hands over every inch of the animal, and listened to its stomach. He told the man who owned the horse that its illness was nothing that one gallon of olive oil poured down its throat wouldn't cure today, but that improved feed and reduced work would allow the horse to serve him better for many years to come. Then he asked for his usual payment.

Bireli did not see the looks that passed between the men. He heard their bodies, though, as the men shifted their weight on their feet. He heard the sibilant sound of hands adjusting grips on objects made of wood and iron—just before they all heard the wind spirit come shrieking around the sides of the barn and begin heaving at the old building's roof.

"Surely!” he called out over the roaring tempest and the suddenly screaming horse, “You mean me no harm! Surely, you would not risk your lives trying to cheat a poor gypsy!"

The men exchanged an entirely different set of glances. Their hands shook as the wind stopped tearing pieces off the barn at the precise moment that they put aside their makeshift clubs. All knew of the supposedly magic curses of cheated gypsies, but none had ever heard the like of this. The owner of the horse paid Bireli quickly, and with a grudgingly muttered thanks.

Sometimes, though, Bireli had to wait a long time for his wind spirit to choose to come back to him, though she was careful never to leave him stranded in a town overnight. Whenever she returned to him, her own heart soared to find him patiently waiting and listening for her approach. Then she would guide him to a campsite where they could be alone.

Bireli did not mind that she never guided him to a camping spot that had anyone else about. It did not occur to him that the gypsies would have concluded that Bireli was possessed if they heard him always talking to the air or saw that there was forever a breeze stirring about him no matter how still it might be everywhere else. Bireli only knew that he was just as happy with the quiet neighbors of wind and water, plants and animals around him. The wind spirit was an unrestrained, even careless, lover, and Bireli was well aware that human neighbors would have certainly minded the bang and clatter of things being upended and knocked off their hooks and the creaking of the caravan as it rocked on its axles during the night. He and the old woman had often experienced noisy neighbors and lovers camped too close to them.

Bireli knew that since the death of the old gypsy his fortunes had taken a dramatic upward turn. He was hardly any richer in coin, but he was free now and the uncontested owner of a tiny home and a twenty-two-year-old horse.

As for the wind spirit, because he could not see how insubstantial she was, Bireli did not find it any wonder that he could feel the wind spirit as surely as he could feel his own body. Nor did he find her perpetual coolness off-putting. He did not think it alarming that sometimes she had more or fewer than two arms or that her legs often had no end to them. He accepted all these things as though they were normal.

Bireli also saw no reason to mind that his lover was never still the whole night through. He did not care if he ever got more than a string of brief naps, often with long interruptions, every night for the rest of his life. He was young. He was strong. He was in love for the first time. He didn't need to sleep.

But he did need to work sometimes. There were things he had to do to maintain himself and his horse. The wind spirit had scant respect for these necessities and would often tease him unmercifully as he tried to work. She would play with his hair and murmur things into his ear, she would send little zephyrs of herself up his sleeves and trouser legs. Sometimes, she would stop him three or more times to flirt with him in the course of completing one simple task. Occasionally she would bring him to his knees, shuddering with desire, and nothing more would get done until he satisfied them both.

Bireli was pleased that he so pleased her and wished that he could be with her whenever she wanted. He took joy from every aspect of her company. But when he really had to work he found that he had to close himself off to her. He would put on a long-sleeved shirt, fastenened all the way up to his neck, and tie the cuffs of his sleeves and trousers snug to his wrists and ankles with string. When the wind spirit saw the snugged cuffs she would usually fly off to wander the skies a while—not exactly angry, but certainly not happy either. And Bireli would do his work and miss her tremendously and worry that she might never return—until she came back to him.

Bireli was always happy, so happy, to have her back. His life was perfect. Heaven, he thought, had come to dwell with him on Earth.

But heaven on Earth is a mutable thing; perfection realized one moment erodes to something else the next. Thus it happened that a shadow sprang up to occlude the brightness of his delight. A shadow born of the very blessing that made his heaven possible.

He wanted to see her.

Bireli could only imagine, and he often did, how beautiful the wind spirit must be. He tried in vain to construct pictures of her in his mind, drawing on the best of his much ramified memories from his early years of sight. But he knew in his heart that these attempts always fell short. He wanted desperately to see her hair float upon the air, as he felt it did, to look into her eyes and watch them take on, as he imagined, all the hues of a sunrise. He began to want, with a gnawing, insatiable hunger, to gaze upon his lover's face and to see in it her love for him—and his for her.

The wind spirit saw the change in him. She knew its cause. However, she could do nothing more than plead with him to let such thoughts alone, to appreciate what wonders were his and to forget this foolish desire.

Bireli tried. He would push these unrequited desires from his mind, but they always came skulking back, demanding notice. Now when they made love, the wind spirit often saw the glow of unshed tears in Bireli's eyes. One night, as they lay together, his hand was moving over her face, inquiring as always. And her face, as always, shifted shape beyond his questing fingers. The wind spirit watched in agony as the tears that had been but bright threats before now streamed down his face. She watched as Bireli strove to make into suffering what had once brought them both so much joy.

She wept then, too. For him and for her. And when her tears splashed upon his eyes, Bireli cried out as though she had burnt him.

He bowed his head to his chest, his eyes shut tight against the fiery pain lancing deep into his head, but he clung even so to his wind spirit with both hands.

As the stinging abated he opened his eyes cautiously and beheld a blurry brown curve that he did not recognize as his shoulder. Next, his eyes were assaulted by the gaudy paintwork of the caravan's appointments. The reds and yellows and oranges throbbed and leapt at his face, while the blues, purples, and greens shimmered and retreated. Bireli blinked again and again, in pain and amazement, then turned to look at his treasure, his beautiful wind spirit.

And he saw nothing. Nothing at all. And when his eyes told him that there was nothing in his arms to see, he felt the sensation of her dying from his skin.

The wind spirit, her wild heart breaking upon the grief, the horror and loss that filled her lover's healed eyes, slipped from his grasp and fled from him.

She fled high, high up into the sky, where the blue of the heavens becomes the black of space. And she never, in all her uncounted days, came near the Earth again.

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Novelet: THE CROCODILES by Steven Popkes

Steven Popkes has been publishing short fiction for nearly thirty years. Among his more memorable tales are “The Egg,” “Tom Kelley's Ghost,” and “The Ice.” (He says many of them will be available soon at www.bookviewcafe.com) His new story is not his most cheerful work, but it is among the most potent pieces of fiction that this editor has seen in a good while.

I could not make a silk purse from a sow's ear. But I went over the data again to see if I could find a tiny tatter of bright thread in the otherwise disappointing results. There had to be a better use of a well-educated chemical engineer than cannon fodder. Willem, my wife's uncle, called me.

"Max,” he said, a happy disembodied voice over the phone. “Very sorry about your work and all that. How was it going?"

It didn't surprise me he already knew. “We didn't get the results we'd hoped for,” I said. “But there are other areas in the war effort where fuel filtration research would be entirely applicable. Aircraft engines, for instance—"

"No doubt,” he said, chuckling. “However, by an astonishing coincidence I was planning to call you anyway. I have a good use for your skills."

"Oh, really?” I said with a sinking feeling. I had no desire to work for the Gestapo. Uncomfortable work at the very least.

"Yes. There's a Doctor Otto Weber doing some very interesting biological work in Buchenwald. He can use your help."

"What sort of work?"

"I'm sure I'd be the wrong person to discuss it with you, not being a scientist or an engineer. I'll work out the details of the transfer and send round the papers and tickets."

"I really ought to find out how I can be of service—"

"There's always the regular army. I'm sure a man of your caliber—"

"I'll be looking for your messenger."

"Fine. Oh, and Max?"

"Yes?"

"Weekly reports. On everything and everybody. All right?"

"Of course,” I said.

You don't argue with the Gestapo. Even my Elsa's uncle.

* * * *

Otto Weber was a thin, elderly gentleman. Once he had been quite tall. He was now stooped with age. His eyes were washed out and watery, like blue glass underwater. But his hands were steady as he first lit my cigarette, then his own.

Weber called them tote Männer. Once he showed me their decomposing condition and single-minded hunger, I thought the term apt.

Weber was brought the first host in 1938 and had to keep the disease alive with new hosts from the Gestapo—which they were always willing to supply, though in small lots so he never had more than a few laboratory subjects at a time. He was never told where that first host came from but he surmised South America. Later, in 1940 when the laboratory was at Buchenwald, the Gestapo supplied him with a slow but steady trickle of Gypsies.

What he had discovered when I joined the project in 1941 was that infection was only successful by fluid transport from the infected host, infection was in two phases, and there were at least two components to the disease.

In one experiment, Weber took fluid from a toter Mann and filtered three samples, one through a 100 micron filter, one through a 50 micron filter, and one through a Chamberland filter. The 100 micron wash caused full infection. The 50 micron also caused a partial infection involving quick and sudden pain, followed by an inevitably fatal stroke. He called this partial infection type I-A. The Chamberland wash caused a particularly quick and virulent form of rabies—Weber referred to that as type I-B. Hence, Weber's hypothesis of two components for a full infection, one large and the other the rabies virus. He had isolated a worm as the possible large component in that, when collected and washed of any contaminants, it seemed to cause a I-A infection similar to the infection caused by the 50 micron wash. When the Chamberland wash was recombined with the worm, full infection ensued.

Weber had even characterized the partial infections and the stages of the full infection. I found it interesting that the partial infections were both dismal, painful affairs, while the full infection showed up first as euphoria, followed by sleepiness and coma. The subject awoke in a few days as a toter Mann.

Even so, I was surprised that there hadn't been more discovered in four years. After all, Weber had the tote Männer themselves and their inherent ability to infect others. The Gestapo was willing to provide a constant, if limited, supply of hosts. But Weber's horror of contagion was so strong that every step had to be examined minutely until he had determined to his satisfaction that he could properly protect himself and his staff. Dissection was a long and tedious process; vivisection was almost impossible. I suppose I could not blame him. Even a partial infection would be fatal and full infection always resulted in another toter Mann. No one wanted to risk that.

Thus, my first task was the design and construction of a dissection and histology laboratory where Weber could disassemble the subjects in safety. It was not a difficult task. I came to Buchenwald in July. By the end of the month I had the design and began construction. Weber dissected his first wriggling subject by the first of September.

My fuel work had been much more interesting. It was exacting, exciting work with great applications. Here, I was barely more than a foreman. The war in Russia seemed to be going well and I wondered if I should have protested more to Willem.

But Elsa and our son Helmut loved Weimar. The city was pretty in a storybook way. It didn't hurt that the bombers left Weimar largely undisturbed, instead striking in Germany proper. It lent the city a relative calm. Several young couples had taken over the empty housing. This was early in the war and food and petrol, though rationed, were still plentiful.

I didn't work weekends and the three of us spent many summer days in the Park on the Ilm. It occurred to me, during those pleasant hours watching Helmut playing in front of Goethe's House, that this was, perhaps, a better use of my time than the factory or the lab.

* * * *

Within a week of opening the new facilities, Weber made some astonishing discoveries. Histological examination of the brain tissue of the tote Männer showed how the worms nested deep in the higher functioning brain—clearly explaining why there were only tote Männer and not tote rats and tote cats. He speculated that there could be tote gorillas and tote chimpanzees and went so far as to request animals from the Berlin Zoo. The Zoo was not cooperative. Weber reconsidered his New World origin of the disease and attributed it to Africa or Indonesia where the great apes lived. It stood to reason that a complex disease found suddenly in humans would require a similar host in which to evolve prior to human infection.

However, the worms were only one half of the disease. The virus followed the nervous system through the body, enabling worm entry into the brain but also enabling the growth of strong cords throughout the body. This was further proof of the two-component infection model Weber had developed. In the case of partial infections of the worm or the virus, the process only went so far. Forced by the absence of the virus to remain within the body's major cavities, the worm caused fevers and paralysis, blocking blood vessels mechanically, causing a heart attack or stroke. The virus enabled the worm to penetrate directly into the brain, leaving the heart and circulatory system intact—at least for a while. Without the worm, the virus merely crippled the nervous system, causing fevers, seizures, and great pain. The cords only appeared when both were present. Weber was convinced by the pathology of the disease that the tote Männer virus was a variant of rabies, but the biological history of the virus, the worm, and the virus-worm combination was mysteriously speculative.

I dutifully reported this to Willem, along with descriptions of Weber, his assistant, Brung, and his mistress, Josephine, whom we had met at dinner in Weimar earlier in the summer. Unsure whether Willem's desire for detail extended to the subjects, I included the names of the last couple of Gypsy hosts left from the Buchenwald experiments and the newer Jews we had appropriated from the main population of the camp. Weber was curiously reluctant to use the handicapped and mentally deficient and he hated using Poles. Perhaps this stemmed from some event in his past of which I was unaware.

* * * *

Willem paid his niece a Christmas visit, visiting our laboratory only coincidentally. He was impressed with our progress. “With the tote Männer we will crush Russia,” he said over drinks that evening.

Weber paled. “There will be problems using the tote Männer in winter,” he said obliquely.

"Eh?” Willem looked at me. “Speak plainly."

"The tote Männer cannot thermoregulate. This doesn't show up in laboratory conditions but below ten degrees Celsius the worms do not function properly. By freezing they die and the host dies with them."

Willem considered that. “We can clothe them."

Weber grew excited. “They do not generate enough heat. Humans maintain temperature. Cats maintain temperature. Crocodiles do not. They do not eat—the hunger for brains is no more than the desire of the disease to perpetuate the infection—the way horsehair worms cause crickets to drown themselves. They do not consume what they put in their mouths. Metabolism keeps the body temperature above ambient somewhat like large lizards. Clothing lizards would have no more effect than clothing tote Männer."

"I see,” Willem said. He patted down his vest until he located his cigarettes and lighter. “I'm going out on the porch for a smoke. Max, will you join me?"

Weber looked as if he'd swallowed a lemon. He rose as if to join us but Willem waved him back. “Don't bother. This gives Max and me a chance to exchange a little gossip."

Outside, we lit our cigarettes and watched the snow fall.

"It's true what Weber said? We can't use them as soldiers?"

I thought for a moment before answering. “Comparing them to crocodiles is apt. You can't make a soldier out of an animal. And it's too cold for them in the east."

"Then what good are they? Is this all for nothing?"

"I did not say they could not be a weapon."

"Tell me."

"The crocodile simile is better than you know. They are very fast and very strong. There is so little to their metabolism that they are hard to kill. And they are terrifying—you've seen them. You know. We must be able to make some use of them.” I shook my head. “I don't know enough yet. I need to perform some experiments. Weber has discovered the basic science. Now it is time to apply some German engineering."

Willem nodded. “I'll do what I can.” He grimaced. “Two weeks ago the Japanese attacked the Americans. The Americans declared war on Japan. We declared war on each other. They allied themselves with the British, which brings them into the war in Europe."

"The Americans are too far away. They don't have the strength of mind to make much difference."

"So we thought in the last war. The point is I may not have much time to give."

* * * *

The goal was to deploy tote Männer to a suitable front and have them wreak havoc on the enemy while leaving our own troops alone. The tote Männer would terrify and demoralize the enemy. Our troops would march in behind them, clearing the area of enemy soldiers and tote Männer alike. Simple.

Only, we did not have a means by which we could create a large number of tote Männer simultaneously or a means by which we could be sure they would discriminate between our soldiers and the enemy.

Weber attacked the discrimination problem while I considered issues of scale.

Buchenwald was too small and low volume to be useful to us. Auschwitz was more appropriate to our needs. However, Auschwitz was already overwhelmed with the volume of its operation.

In October, the Birkenau expansion of Auschwitz had begun. It was scheduled to be complete in the spring. Willem had shown me copies of the plans. It was clear that only minor modifications to the Birkenau plans would accommodate our needs much more easily than building an addition to Buchenwald or moving to Auschwitz proper.

In January of 1942 I kissed Elsa and Helmut good-bye and boarded the train to Krakow. From there, I took a car west. It was beautiful country, full of gently rising mountains over flat valleys. Curiously unspoiled either by industry or by the war.

Auschwitz was a complex, not a single camp like Buchenwald. There were several smaller camps near the headquarters. Birkenau was farther west. Here, construction was going on apace in spite of the winter weather.

The foundations for gas chambers and crematoria had already been laid. But that didn't matter as far as I was concerned. The addition of some larger chambers and holding areas was an insignificant change to a well-managed engineering project. I went over the modifications in detail with the chief engineer, a man named Tilly. Willem had sent me with a certificate of authority. That gave me the full support of Tilly and the chief of the camps, Rudolf Hoess, even though they did not know the reason for the modifications. I finished working out the details in two weeks.

I spent a few days in Krakow. I planned to move Elsa and Helmut into an apartment in Krakow and then travel to work by automobile. It was not far and the roads were good. If that proved impractical in a hard winter—something difficult for me to predict as the weather was now mild—I could just stay in the camp for a few days or come home on weekends.

When I returned, I found I had been gone just long enough for both Elsa and Helmut to miss me terribly. It made for a sweet homecoming.

Weber was reluctant to plan the move but saw my logic. He was preoccupied with the discrimination problem. Since the tote Männer were attracted to normal humans as hosts, he had reasoned that it was easier to attract them to a particular prey rather than repel them from a particular prey. He had performed several experiments with different hosts to see if there was any preference for differing types, such as racial subtype, diet, or other variables he could control.

I looked over the data and noticed that there was a marked difference in attack percentages not according to his typing but to the time the subjects arrived at the camp. Those subjects that were at the camp the longest were the most attractive to the tote Männer. I showed my figures to Weber. He instantly grasped the significance in ways I could not. The older inmates at Buchenwald were considerably thinner than the newer inmates since the rations were short. Fat utilization caused excretory products to be exuded by the skin and from the lungs. Weber reasoned these were what attracted the tote Männer.

Immediately, he called Willem for a mass spectrometer and a technician to run it.

We were all very tired but elated at this new direction. We decided to take a few days off. Elsa, Helmut, and I went for a trip into the mountains.

* * * *

Birkenau opened in March of 1942. Weber and I stopped work on the subjects, except to keep an incubating strain alive, and took the month to pack up the laboratory for the move. In May, we moved the equipment, materials, and tote Männer to Birkenau. Once the planning for the move was complete, Weber supervised the staff and aides Willem had supplied. Elsa and Helmut traveled down to Krakow by train and took up residence in the apartment I had leased for them. As for myself, I left Buchenwald and returned to Berlin for meetings with representatives of Daimler-Benz and I. G. Farben. The delivery mechanism for the tote Männer still had to be devised.

The mood in Berlin that spring was jubilant. The army was driving toward Rostov and trying for Stalingrad. Sevastopol was about to fall to Germany. The use of the tote Männer could only be necessary as a last resort. A doomsday scenario. The Reich would never need it.

Personally, I felt the same. Still, I had no wish to help in canceling the project unless I could find better work. So I met with the Daimler-Benz mechanical engineers and utilized the I. G. Farben labs. I had brought with me a pair of tote Männer for testing purposes.

Not being a mechanical engineer, the problem of deployment was more difficult than I had initially imagined. Tote Männer were a curious mixture of toughness and fragility. You could shoot a toter Mann until he was merely chopped meat and he might continue to advance. Blowing apart his brain would kill the worms and stop him. But the tote Männer were so resilient and resistant to anoxia that they could still advance with their hearts shattered and their sluggish black blood pooled beneath their feet.

However, their flesh was soft enough and loosely enough attached to their bones that heavy acceleration, such as dropping them with parachutes, would cause them to come apart. Clearly, they had to be preserved long enough to reach their target.

The Daimler-Benz engineers were the best. On a chalk board, they drew up several ways of conveying them to enemy lines. The simplest idea was a cushioned cage dropped with a parachute. An impact charge would blow the doors off the cage and the tote Männer would be free. The engineers didn't like the idea. They said it lacked elegance and style.

I pointed out the tote Männer could tolerate significant time without ambient oxygen, operating as they did largely on a lactic acid metabolism. They tossed the cage idea with abandon and attacked the problem again, coming up with a sphere containing carefully restrained tote Männer. A compressed-air charge would open the doors and break loose the restraints. This had the advantage of being quiet.

I only donated a little knowledge here and there as needed, letting their minds fly unfettered. It is a grand thing to watch engineers create works of imagination with only the germ of a requirement, a bit of chalk, and some board to write on. When they found I had brought a couple of tote Männer for experiments, they were overjoyed. I tried to explain the danger but they did not listen until one of their own number, Hans Braun, was bitten. He and his friends laughed but stilled when I came over. Wearing surgical gloves and a mask I carefully examined the wound but I already knew what I would find.

"You are an idiot,” I said as I sat back.

"It is a small bite—"

"It is a fatal wound.” I gave him a pack of cigarettes. “You have been killed by that thing out there."

"But—"

"Shut up.” I couldn't look at him: tall, healthy, brown hair and a face in the habit of smiling. “You have been infected. By tomorrow, you will feel wonderful. You will want to kiss and fondle your friends out of love for them. Then, after a few days, you will—still enormously happy—feel an overpowering urge to sleep. Sleep will turn to coma. Then, after three days, you will be one of those things out there."

His hands trembled. “I didn't realize—"

"No."

Hans steadied himself. “There is no hope?"

"None."

He nodded and for a moment he stood straighter. Stronger. I was proud of him.

"Do you have a gun?"

"I do. Is there a furnace where we can dispose of the body?"

He nodded, shakily. “Will you accompany me?"

"I would be honored.” And I was.

After the funeral, realizing the power and speed of the tote Männer and the infection they harbored, the Daimler-Benz engineers were more careful.

In a couple of weeks, my part was done and I took the train to Krakow to have a long weekend reunion with my Elsa and Helmut. The following Monday, I drove to Birkenau to address the problem of tote Männer production.

* * * *

Elsa had mixed feelings about the rental. While she liked the apartment itself and the proximity of Park Jordana, she found the leftover debris and detritus disturbing. These were obviously Jewish artifacts and Elsa's excitement might have come from a mixture of womanly wariness of another female's territory combined with an aversion to having anything Jewish in the house. I assured her that the original owners would not be returning and she relaxed somewhat.

Helmut had no reservations about his new environment. Finding small objects of indeterminate origin covered with unfamiliar characters fastened in unexpected places gave mystery to the place. No doubt he observed I was more inclined to answer questions about this or that artifact than I was about the American bombers or air raid drills or what Father did at work. I protected my family as best I could from such things.

For the next several months we were collecting the breath and sweat of subjects into vials, injecting the vial contents into the mass spectrometer, and determining what was there. Then we concentrated the effluvia and tried it on the tote Männer themselves. Immediately, we found that the tote Männer were not attracted to merely any object smeared with the test substances, only when those attractants were applied to a possible host. Weber thought this quite exciting. It suggested that the tote Männer had a means of detecting a host other than smell.

In October of 1942, we hit on a combination of aldehydes and ketones the tote Männer found especially attractive. I synthesized it in the growing chemistry laboratory we had been using and applied it to a collection of test subjects. Control subjects who had no application of the test attractant were also present in the experiment and were ignored until the test subjects had been thoroughly mauled. At that point, the controls were attacked. We made careful note of this as it would strongly influence how troops would recover an infected area after the enemy succumbed.

We had proved our attractant in place by the end of October of 1942. But the war appeared to us to be going so well, our little military experiment would never be needed. We would win the Battle of Stalingrad in a month and concentrate on the western front.

That changed in November.

* * * *

The Battle of Stalingrad evolved into what I had feared: a siege over a Russian winter. The Red Army began their counteroffensive along with the winter. Like Napoleon, the German army was stuck.

The Germans lost ground in other places. Willem suggested if I could hurry up the program, I should.

We were in part saved by problems encountered by the Daimler-Benz engineering team. Developing a deployment methodology had been proved harder than the engineers had foreseen. They had broken the problem into three parts. The first, and most easily solved, was how to restrain and cushion the tote Männer until they could be released. The remaining two issues revolved around deploying on an advance and deploying on a retreat. In both cases, they resolved into two kinds of scenarios: how to deploy the first time and how to deploy after the first time. If secrecy was kept (and Willem assured us the enemy did not know what we were working on), then the first deployment would be relatively easy. Deploying on a retreat could be as simple as leaving sealed containers transported by trucks to the target zone to be opened pyrotechnically by remote control. Similar containers, with additional cushioning, could be released by parachute.

But once the secret was out and the Allies were looking for tote Männer delivery devices, we would need a means to overcome their resistance. This had stalled the Daimler-Benz engineers. I saw presentations of stealth night drops, blitzkrieg raids with tanks carrying large transport carts—one enterprising young man demonstrated a quarter-scale model trebuchet that could catapult a scale model container holding six tote Männer as much as three kilometers behind enemy lines. Not to be outdone, his work partner showed how bracing a toter Mann could enable it to be fired from cannon like a circus performer.

These issues so dwarfed our own minor problems that we were given, for the moment, no close scrutiny and I had the opportunity to address shortcomings in our own production.

* * * *

In February 1943, Russia won the Battle of Stalingrad. Willem warned us that we would have to expect to send tote Männer against Russian troops before long. I argued against it. It would be foolish to waste surprise in an attack that could not work. At least, it would not work until summer.

I went home and spent a week with Elsa and Helmut. Each morning I sat down and drew up production schedules, scrapped them, smoked cigarettes, and tried again. In the afternoon, I played with my son. It was cold in Krakow and with the war not going very well, heating fuel was hard to come by. I was able to requisition what we needed due to my position but even I couldn't get coal for the theater or the restaurants. Often, we spent intimate evenings together with just ourselves for company. I didn't mind. Elsa and Helmut were company enough.

All that spring Willem told us of defeat after defeat—I don't think we were supposed to know what he told us. I think we served as people in whom he could confide as his world crumbled. Germany retreated in Africa. The Warsaw uprising. The Russian advance.

I buried myself in my work. I resolved that if there were to be a failure in the program, it would not be where I had control. Production was, in my opinion, our weak point. Weber's approach to creating tote Männer was haphazard and labor intensive. I wanted something more robust and reliable. Something more industrial.

I came to the conclusion that our production schedule had to revolve around the progression of the disease. For three days there was a strong euphoria. Often, the new hosts tried to kiss anyone who came near them, presaging the biting activity of the fully infected toter Mann. Sometime on the third day, the host fell into a sleep that progressed rapidly into coma. Breathing decreased to almost nothing. The heartbeat reduced to a slow fraction of the uninfected. Body temperature dropped to nearly ambient though the infected were able to keep some warmth above room temperature.

The coma period lasted as long as five days, though we saw it end as soon as three. Arousal was sudden, so often precipitated by a nearby possible victim that I came to the conclusion that after three days, the toter Mann was ready to strike and merely waiting for the opportunity.

After that, a toter Mann was mobile for as much as ten weeks, though during the last weeks of infection the toter Mann showed significant deterioration.

Therefore, we required an incubation period of six days, minimum. Effectiveness could not be counted upon after eight weeks. This gave us a target window. If we wanted, for example, to deploy on June first we had to have infected our tote Männer no later than May twenty-fifth. This was the time domain of our military supply chain.

The first order of business was to synchronize the incubation period. I performed a series of experiments that showed that, as I suspected, once the coma period had been entered the toter Mann was ready to be used. However, there was unacceptable variation in the time between exposure and coma. We couldn't reliably produce tote Männer in six days.

The new Chief Medical Officer, Mengele, delivered the necessary insight. Zyklon B was the answer. Though the standard Zyklon B dose would kill the subject quickly, a reduced dose weakened the subject sufficiently to allow infection almost instantly. Commander Hoess was able to supply me with enough experimental data that I could proceed with my own tests. We introduced the gas, waited for ten minutes, then sprayed the subjects with an infecting agent. The remaining three days were sufficient for subjects to recover from the gas just in time to provide healthy hosts for the organisms. This method had the added bonus that the same production chambers could serve two purposes.

By November, when the march up Italy by the Allies had begun and Germany seemed to be losing on all fronts, we could incubate as many as a thousand at a time, six days after exposure. The trains supplying the rest of the camp came in full and left empty so by using the empty trains for transport, we could send tote Männer anywhere in Germany or Poland. Delivery to the deployment launch point would have to be by truck. We were ready. Now, it was up to the Daimler-Benz engineers to deliver our tote Männer the last kilometer to the enemy.

* * * *

Christmas 1943 was uneventful. Weber and I worked on various refinements to an already prepared system without damaging it too badly. My teachers back in Berlin had taught me the idea of schlimbesserung: an improvement that makes things worse. At that point, the natural tendency of idle minds and hands to improve a working system into uselessness was our only real enemy.

Given that, we resolutely turned our attention away from the weapons system we had devised to a different problem we had discussed a year before: why deliver tote Männer at all? The worm and virus were perfectly able to create tote Männer for us. Why did we have to supply the raw material?

Delivering a disease substance was perilously close to delivering a poison gas—something forbidden us from the previous war. However, we had already made some excursions into the territory with the production and delivery of tote Männer attractant—a colloid I had developed that would evaporate into the proper aldehyde and ketone mix the tote Männer found so irresistible. We had also attempted to deliver an infecting gas along with the Zyklon B but the attempt had failed. The worm succumbed to the Zyklon B before the subjects.

Creating an inhalant that carried both the worm and virus proved to be an interesting problem. The virus was stable when dry and the worm could be induced to encyst itself. However, it took time for the worm to decyst and by the time it did, the subject was fully infected with an undirected virus. Rabid humans made a poor host.

We went back to the colloid I devised for the attractant. Colloids are neither liquid nor solid but partake of the traits of both. Gelatin is a colloid. By adding nutrients to the colloid so that the worm could stay alive and not encyst, the virus could be delivered along with the worm when both were at their most infective stage. It was interesting work for a couple of months. Weber was quite elated with it. He called it the Todesluft.

* * * *

In May of 1944, Willem paid us another visit. This time, he took both Weber and myself aside and spoke to us privately.

"It is clear the Allies are preparing a counterinvasion. The likely location is somewhere across from England on the coast of France.” He held the cigarette to his lips thoughtfully.

"We're ready,” I said boldly. “We've been ready for months. What do the Daimler-Benz engineers say?"

Willem breathed out smoke. “They have made several methods available to us. Since this is to be the first deployment, we have chosen the retreat scenario. We will place the tote Männer in a bunker in the path of the Allies and detonate it when they come."

"Are we expecting to be overrun?"

Willem shook his head. “Of course not. The tote Männer are a backup plan only. We will deploy them behind our own lines and only release them if we are forced past them. If the front line holds, we will not release them at all."

I nodded. “How many?"

"We estimate six thousand."

I thought quickly. “It takes six days for each group. Six thousand will take us thirty-six days."

Willem smiled at me. “Did you know of the expansions of Birkenau commissioned early last year?"

"Of course,” said Weber. “They were a dreadful nuisance."

"They are about to pay for themselves,” retorted Willem. “I developed Max's original plans for Birkenau beyond his conception. The new facilities can serve as incubator."

"How many?"

"At least forty thousand at once. Six thousand should not be a problem.” He pulled from his briefcase a set of plans.

I looked them over. I was impressed with the innovations I saw. “This is better than I had hoped."

"I'm glad you are pleased. When can the first squad be ready?"

I looked over the plans again and did some figuring on a piece of paper. “May 12, if Daimler-Benz can provide the bunkers and the transportation."

"I've been assured this will not be a problem."

"Then we will be ready to deploy."

Willem pulled a map from his briefcase. “Our sources say we will be struck here.” He pointed to the map. “Pas de Calais. That is where our defenses are located and just three kilometers behind them, our tote Männer. The Allies will not know what hit them."

This was by far the largest group of tote Männer we had ever attempted to create. Weber took a fatherly approach to them. When the hosts entered the euphoric stage and called to him with affection, he responded, calling them his “children” and other endearments. I found this unnerving. When the tote Männer were finally ready and installed into their transportation containers I was glad to see them go. Weber watched them leave with a tear in his eye. I went home to my wife and son.

* * * *

But, of course, the Allies did not strike at Pas de Calais but at Normandy, over three hundred kilometers to the southwest. The tote Männer were in their bunkers. The Daimler-Benz engineers had packed them like munitions. There was no way to extract them without releasing them.

It was terrible timing. All of the available tote Männer were in Calais and the next squad would not be ready for deployment until June 9: three days!

Willem conferred with his staff and said that if we could drop enough bunkers in the Cerisy Forest and fill them with tote Männer, we would let the Allies overrun the forest and open the bunker.

At this point the new squad was just entering the coma stage. We'd found the tote Männer were vulnerable to jostling during this period and had always transported them toward the end of the coma. But desperate times require desperate measures. Willem and I led the crew that took the newly comatose tote Männer, eight thousand strong, and trucked them to the forest. Meanwhile, three large prefabricated bunkers were erected on the sites. I barely had time to phone Elsa to say I would not be home that night. Weber, affectionate to the tote Männer as before, elected to stay and incubate the next squad. I was just as glad not to have him along.

The bunkers were not particularly explosive proof but would stop bullets. They looked more like officers’ quarters than anything else. We locked them and moved away to nearby Trévières. This was June 8th. By the afternoon of June 9th, the tote Männer would be alert. When fired, the bunker would first explode a smoke bomb containing the colloid and attractant we had devised to mask the area. A few minutes later, small explosives would release the tote Männer and break the outside walls. The tote Männer would have to do the rest. We hoped the smell of nearby prey would waken them to fury as we had observed in the lab.

The time passed slowly, punctuated with small arms fire and a few large weapons. The wind moved back and forth, sometimes bringing us the firecracker smell of the battlefield and then replacing it with the pine smell of the forests.

The afternoon came. An odd aircraft I'd never seen before, called a Storch, was made available to us. The pilot, Willem, and I boarded the airplane along with the radio equipment. The heavily laden craft took off in an impressively short distance and in a few moments we were high enough to see the bunkers and, worse, the advancing Allies. Willem pressed the button.

Smoke poured out of the three buildings. I could not hear the reports as the internal explosives ignited but there was motion—furious motion—through the smoke. Seconds later the advancing Allies were running down the hill away from the smoke. Directly behind them were the tote Männer.

The tote Männer were much faster than the humans they pursued and more clever than ever I would have guessed. One toter Mann leapt from human to human, biting and clawing, not even pausing to enjoy the “meal.” Eight thousand tote Männer poured over the Allies. Guns didn't stop them. They were in and among the soldiers so quickly none of the supporting artillery or machine guns could fire. The smoke switched over them and we could no longer observe.

"Fly over them,” Willem ordered, “So we can look down."

"Sir, we will be shot."

"Fly over them, I say,” Willem shouted and brought out his pistol. “Or I will shoot you myself."

We flew over the churning mass of tote Männer and humans. They took no notice of us. All of their attention was focused on the horrifying apparitions among them.

"Good,” said Willem grimly. “Return."

It was a safe bet that each of the tote Männer had likely managed to bite at least three soldiers. Assuming an overlap of twenty percent, that meant better than thirteen thousand Allied tote Männer would be awakening in a week. This was a conservative estimate, assuming the infected soldiers would not infect others during the euphoric period.

We landed and General Marcks himself joined us. Willem told him of the adventure and the anti-tote Männer equipment—mostly flame throwers and protective jackets—waiting in trucks not ten kilometers distant. The Allied invasion would not succeed.

* * * *

And it did not.

The Allies, so demoralized by the Reich's new weapon, were unable to advance. German bombers were able to sink support craft in the channel. The war stalled in western France all that summer.

When I returned to Krakow in July to see my wife I still smelled of burning diesel and gunpowder. She made me bathe before I could kiss her.

The Daimler-Benz flying barges were deployed. These, I had not known about. They were gliders filled with forty or fifty tote Männer, towed overnight by bombers and released near the front to land where they would. The crashes released most of the tote Männer but mechanical relays released the remainder. Willem informed us that there were now highly localized tote Männer infections in Britain, where wounded men had been returned before they had turned completely and before the Allies had realized what they were dealing with.

But the Russians continued to advance. They were no less ruthless than the tote Männer and had devised a simple but effective defense. Any group of tote Männer they found they slaughtered without regard to coincident casualties. We estimated they were killing as much as ten percent of their own men with this technique. But it was effective. It was only a matter of time before they reached Germany.

The Allied advance had not been routed as we'd hoped but only stalled as they tried to cope with their own problems. Had Germany remained the fighting force it had been at the beginning of the war, this would have been enough. However, now the Allies had a foothold in France and would not give it up. Anti-aircraft batteries were brought over the channel and the bombers could no longer eliminate the shipping. Soon, the Allies would figure out a method of containing the infection just as the Russians had done. A stalemate in this war would inevitably lead to an Allied victory.

Willem created the todeskommandos. These were the last paratroopers still left in the Luftwaffe. They were infected without their knowing and dropped far behind enemy lines. Their mission was to spy on the enemy and return in two weeks’ time. Of course, they transformed in less than half that time and infected the Russians.

I refused to participate in this activity. I would not be a party to infecting unwitting German soldiers. Willem did not press me at that point though I knew a day of reckoning was coming. Knowing this, I persuaded Willem to loan me one of the Daimler-Benz engineers—preferably Joseph Bremer, a friend of Hans Braun and the engineer who had later proposed the trebuchet. I liked the way his mind worked. Willem sent him to me with the warning that something needed to be done about the Russians.

Bremer, being a mechanical rather than a chemical engineer, immediately saw solutions to the issues we had not solved. We had to maintain the environment of the worm and virus for the duration of delivery and then spray it out into the surrounding area without shredding either. Weber and I had already determined that inhaling the inoculum would not infect the host unless some portion was swallowed. The worm needed to actually enter the digestive tract to enter the blood stream. The only result from a purely pulmonary inoculation would be a sterile partial infection.

It was Bremer who devised an irritant to be added to the mixture. The irritant would not be poisonous in any way but would cause a mucous flow from the nose. The subjects would be forced to swallow. It worked in Birkenau experiments with great success.

By this time, Hitler had been sending V1's against Britain for a few weeks. My purpose was to be able to replace the explosive in the V1 with a Todesluft canister and infect the Allies in their home territories.

Once we had the Todesluft device perfected, we approached Willem with it. Willem at once saw the possibilities but denied us the chance to try it out in a V1. Instead, he told us of a new rocket, vastly more powerful and accurate. It was to be called the V2.

* * * *

The bombers over Berlin never stopped during that summer. Up until we released the tote Männer, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and the other camps had been spared for some reason. By July, we had a version of the Todesluft device ready for the V2 and after the first few reached their targets, the Allies, realizing where our production facilities must be located, started bombing the camps. I had to drag Weber from our burning laboratories. He wanted to save his “children.” I triggered the containment-failure devices and incinerated the last remaining tote Männer squads but saved inoculum samples and the Todesluft devices to operate elsewhere. It was curious: the incubation pens and the holding areas were completely destroyed but the gas chambers survived the bombing.

I had thought to travel immediately to Krakow to be with Elsa. But before I could, Elsa showed up at the camp. Weber, Elsa, Helmut, and I were able to find safety in the basement of the headquarters building. I managed to locate an intact phone and called Willem to tell him where we were.

The bombing ceased in a day or so. The inmates were taken care of and we had food and water. Power was restored the following day.

Weber liked to be near us. Something profound had come undone in him. He mourned the death of his squad over and over. On the third day he accosted me out in the street as I cleaned up the front of the building.

"Could it have been the Jews?"

"What are you talking about?"

"The failure of our tote Männer."

I sighed. “The tote Männer did not fail."

"How can you say that? Germany is still losing the war!"

I considered responding to this. How could any single weapon ever win a war on its own? It was our failure, not any failure of the tote Männer. But that would only have encouraged him. “We haven't lost yet."

He ignored that. “We made tote Männer out of the Jews. Perhaps there was a judengeist that impaired them."

"What would you have done instead? Made them out of Germans as Willem did?"

"I should not have been so reluctant to use Poles,” Weber said and sat on the bench, sunk in apathy.

I continued shoveling broken concrete and shards of wood out of the street.

* * * *

Willem showed up that night. He was half-drunk and I was surprised he'd managed to drive all the way from Berlin. Morose and untalkative, he refused to speak until after dinner when Elsa had taken Helmut and herself to bed.

"The Americans are smarter than we are."

"Beg pardon?” I said, ready to defend German intelligence.

"It had to be the Americans. The British would not have considered it."

"Considered what?"

Willem stared at me. “Of course. How could you know? They have been raining tote Männer on Berlin. All over Germany."

"That's impossible. Did they drop them out of the bombers? Did they think we would be intimidated by smashed body parts?"

Willem shook his head. “Nothing so complex. All they did was harness them to a big parachute and then tie them together with a bow knot so they would not escape during transport. Then they shoved them out the back of a bomber on a strip line. It undid the bow knot and released the parachute. Some of them were killed, of course. But so what? Between ours and the ones generated from their own ranks, they have enough."

"How were they released from the parachutes?"

"We found a wind-up spring clip. When the spring wound down, the clip opened and they were released. Diabolical simplicity."

I drank some wine. “There are tote Männer in Berlin.” I tried to frame it as a logical proposition. I could imagine them lurching through the city.

"There are tote Männer all over Germany. There are tote Männer in London from the V2 Todesluft attack. Von Braun even managed to extend the range of the V2 with a V1 attachment. There are tote Männer in Moscow. Tell me, Weber. How many tote Männer must there be to become self-sustaining?"

Weber peered at him owlishly. “They cannot be self-sustaining. Eventually all of the raw material would be used up."

"You are so comforting,” Willem said dryly.

I stared at the wine bottle. “When will they reach here?"

"They were behind me when I crossed the border. One day? Two days? They move slowly but steadily and they will be brought here by our scent."

We had all underestimated them. They were in the camp by morning.

* * * *

They had broken through the barbed wire holding the inmates easily. The inmates were bit and mauled by the hundreds. The guards died when they insisted on firing on the tote Männer and the tote Männer, of course, did not fall.

The scent of the inmates was so strong that it overpowered our own smells. The tote Männer did not know we were there. We took care to remain hidden in the headquarters building. With so many possible hosts around, the tote Männer ignored the buildings. Each time a few seemed to take interest, there was another inmate to attack.

Elsa refused to let Helmut near the windows. During a lull in the fighting she sat next to me as I watched through the window.

"What are those things?” Elsa said quietly. Her face was milk white but her voice was calm. “Max? Uncle? What are those things?"

"We call them tote Männer,” I said.

"Is that what you were building in the camps? Is that your weapon?"

"Yes."

She shook her head. “Did they escape from another camp?"

"No.” Willem laughed dryly. “The Allies were kind enough to return these to us."

"Helmut must not see them."

"Yes,” I said. “More importantly, they must not see us."

She nodded.

Eventually, the inmates were all infected. We had discovered in experiments that infected hosts were ignored by tote Männer. But there were still so many of them our own scent remained undiscovered. The tote Männer wandered off in small groups, heading east toward Krakow.

The remaining freed inmates, now euphorically infected hosts, were not so ignorant as the tote Männer. They tried to enter the headquarters building. Willem and I defended the place as best we could. Hoess and Mengele tried to gain entrance by sweet reasonableness and grumbled when we shot at them. They wandered off arm in arm.

By the end of the third day after the attack, we saw hosts finding small places to sleep. That evening the camp was entirely still.

* * * *

"We have to leave,” Willem insisted. This was Monday morning. By Wednesday night we would be fighting for our lives.

"I'm ready,” Elsa said. “Those things will not hurt Helmut. I will kill him first."

I nodded. It pleased me that Elsa understood the situation. “Where shall we go? Our tote Männer are to the west and south. Their tote Männer are to the north and east. We have no petrol—the depot was blown up in the bombing."

"What shall we do, then?” demanded Willem.

"They are not very intelligent—as I said a long time ago, think of them as crocodiles. They can use their eyes but largely they depend upon scent. Therefore, we can block ourselves up in one of the gas chambers. They are air tight."

"We will smother,” said Elsa.

"No.” I shook my head. “We have three days. I can devise air circulation. It will be slow and diffuse up through the chimneys. But I do not think it will be sufficient to cause the tote Männer to attack the chamber. We can hold out for help."

* * * *

It took most of those three days to set ourselves up. We had to change the locks on the doors so we could get ourselves out and convert the exhaust fans to give us a little air. We stockpiled as much food and water as we could carry. I even built a periscope through which I could observe the courtyard in front of the chamber and the areas around.

We were carrying one of the last loads into the chamber when a toter Mann leapt on Willem from the roof. Willem grabbed his pistol as he hurled the toter Mann to one side. Weber cried out and wrestled with Willem. The toter Mann attacked both of them. Finally, Willem threw down Weber and emptied the clip of his pistol into the toter Mann's head. He turned to club Weber but Weber climbed the wall and was gone. Willem turned his attention back to the toter Mann, which had ceased moving as its head had ceased to have any shape. The worms wriggled out like thin spaghetti.

Willem looked at me and held up his arm. His fingers and wrist were bitten. “Do I have any chance at all?"

I shook my head.

"Well, then.” He replaced the clip in the pistol. “Perhaps I have time enough to kill Weber for this."

"Don't wait too long,” I advised. “Once you start to feel the euphoria you won't want to kill him at all."

"I won't."

He nodded at me and I saluted him. Then I went inside the chamber and sealed the door.

* * * *

Which brings me to the present.

It has been ten weeks since we sealed the door of the chamber. No one has come to help us. Sure enough, the tote Männer have not detected us though they often walk around the building sensing something. Our scent is diffuse enough not to trigger an attack.

But they do not wander off as the previous tote Männer did. They have remained. Worse, instead of degrading in ten weeks as our experiments suggested, they remain whole. I am now forced to admit that the deterioration we observed in our experiments was more likely the result of captivity than any natural process.

I watch them. Sometimes a group of them will disappear into the surrounding forest and then return with a deer or the corpse of a man or child. Then they eat. We never took an opportunity to observe their lifecycle. It seems that once the initial infection period is over, they can, after their own fashion, hunt and eat.

We ran out of water two days ago. We ran out of food nearly a week before that. Helmut cries continuously. The sounds do not appear to penetrate the walls of the chamber—at least, the tote Männer do not respond.

I had planned to hold out longer—perhaps attempting an escape or braving the tote Männer to try to bring back supplies. It is now September. Surely, the impending winter would stop them. Then, when they were dormant, we could leave. But in these last days I have witnessed disturbing changes in their behavior. I saw one toter Mann walking around the camp wrapped in a rug found in one of the camp buildings. A small group of five or six gathered around a trash barrel in which smoldered a low fire. At first, I thought the disease might have managed to retrieve the host memories or that the hosts were recovering—both indicated disaster for us. We would be discovered.

But this is different. The tote Männer stand near the fires until they smolder and only then move away. They drape blankets and clothes completely over their heads but leave their feet unshod. Whatever is motivating them, it is not some surfacing human being but the dark wisdom of the disease itself.

They are still tote Männer and will infect us if they can. There is no hope of escape or holding out.

Always the engineer, I prepared for this. I kept back a bottle of water. In it, I dissolved some Demerol powder. Elsa and Helmut were so thirsty they did not notice the odd taste. They fell asleep in minutes.

I am a coward in some ways. The idea of me, my wife and my child living on only as a host for worms and microbes horrifies me. Death is preferable. Nor do I trust drugs. The faint possibility they might come upon us in our sleep fills me with dread. I have my pistol and enough bullets for Elsa and Helmut and myself. If they find us we will be of no use to them.

I believe that you, Germany, will triumph over these creatures, though that victory will no doubt be a hard one. The Third Reich will not live forever as we had hoped but will, no doubt, fall to the tote Männer. But good German strength must eventually prevail.

For my own part, I regret my inability to foresee my own inadequacies and I regret that I must die here, without being able to help. I regret that Elsa and Helmut will never again see the sun and that they will die by my hand.

But you, who read this, take heart. We did not yield. We did not surrender here but only died when there was no other way to deny ourselves to the enemy. You will defeat and destroy them and raise your hand over a grateful Earth.

It is there waiting for you.

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Department: F&SF COMPETITION #79: HOOKED ON MNEMONICS

Our mnemonics competition—based on the solar system's planets and planetoids (Mercury Venus Earth Mars Ceres Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto Haumea Makemake Eris)—was a toughie. As a mnemonic, it had to be memorable, but we also wanted entries to be funny and fantastical. Congratulations to those who struck the right balance.

* * * *

FIRST PRIZE:

Mischievous village elves magically conjure jelly sandwiches. Unicorns, nutritionally possessed, hate mischievous elves.

—Dean Schramm

Key Largo, FL

* * * *

SECOND PRIZE:

Most Vulcans eat morning cereal just sporting underwear—no problem hoisting messy eggs.

—Cathy Humble

Portland OR

* * * *

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Michael Vick endured my canine's jury statement: “Usually NFL players have more empathy."

—Nicholas Gyde

Harrisburg, OR

—

My vicious, evil, mad Cyborgs just suppose unexpected new possibilities: humans might emerge!

—Bill Skidmore

Helena, MT

—

Most Visitors eventually must continue journey since United Nations prohibits humans marrying extraterrestrials.

—Monica Belanger

Westland, MI

* * * *

F&SF COMPETITION #80: PICK ME UP

Create up to six different pick-up lines that work in a science fiction or fantastical setting. You can make them sweet, witty, or even sleazy (but not X-rated), as long as you can get the man/woman/otherworldly being of your dreams to notice you.

Example:

"I've come from the future to tell you that we're going to be awesome in bed tonight."

Remember to include your mailing address and phone number; if you don't, God kills an angel and Darth Vader strangles an admiral.

RULES: Send entries to Competition Editor, F&SF, 240 West 73rd St. #1201, New York, NY 10023-2794, or email entries to carol@cybrid.net. Be sure to include your contact information. Entries must be received by July 26, 2010. 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 boxed set of American Fantastic Tales signed by Peter Straub. Second prize will receive advance reading copies of three forthcoming novels. Any Honorable Mentions will receive one-year subscriptions to F&SF. Results of Competition #80 will appear in the Nov/Dec 2010 issue.

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Department: CURIOSITIES: ALVIN STEADFAST ON VERNACULAR ISLAND, by Frank Jacobs (1965)

These pages tempt the writer to be cleverly snide, ironic, or cynical about the books we present, and it's quite nice to find one you can be enthusiastic about.

Written by Mad Magazine's Frank Jacobs and published by Dial in 1965, this little book is a gentle spoof of the post-Victorian “boys’ books” with resolute young heroes inventing or exploring (or both). Here, Our Hero travels the titular island with Dr. Thaddeus Cranshaw, searching for the Doubt.

Yes, it's a critter, and along with the Standing Ovation, the Running Commentary, and the Appropriate Gesture (this being Vernacular Island, remember) is part of the indigenous population, all wonderfully depicted by Edward Gorey, with nary a tennis shoe or fur coat to be seen.

Jacobs's delight in wordplay was one of the strongest characteristics of his work for Mad and is the best reason to spend a quiet hour with this little story. It's not the only one, though. Alvin Steadfast is filled with good-natured whimsy, gleefully conceived and described beasts (in addition to those listed above, we encounter the Glowing Report, the Small Wonder, and the Ill Omen), and a story elevated above the level of mere punning by Jacobs's obvious affection for the very material he lampoons here.

The story has all the necessary elements: a problem to be solved, difficulties met and conquered, characters driven by purpose and determination who win out against all odds, and even a Conditioned Reflex.

You'll have fun with this one, I promise you, and you'll have as much fun reading it to your kids.

—Bud Webster

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Department: FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION MARKET PLACE

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.

* * * *

The Ring of Knowledge delivers! Visit: www.eloquentbooks.com/TheRingOf Knowledge.html

* * * *

SPANKING STORIES: For a 38 page catalog, send $3 to CF Publications, POB 706F, Setauket, NY 11733

* * * *

Rules of ‘48 by Jack Cady. www.nightshade books.com

* * * *

Winner of the 2009 National Indie Excellence Award for best S.F.! In Memory of Central Park, a green novel set in N.Y.C. circa 2050, is as bleakly terrifying as George Orwell's 1984. www.CentralParkNovel.com

* * * *

The Visitors. $14.95 Check/MO

OhlmBooks Publications

Box 125

Walsenburg CO 81089

* * * *

The Star Sailors (Gary L. Bennett). Prometheus Award nominee. “Highly recommended”—Library Journal. $15.95 trade ppb. Major bookstores or 1-800-AUTHORS (www.iuniverse .com).

* * * *

C.M. KORNBLUTH major new biography; 439 pages; photos. $44.95 postpaid. McFarland Publishers, 800-253-2187, www.mcfarland pub.com

* * * *

Dancing Tuatara Press supernatural series, hard-to-find titles introduced by John Pelan. www.ramblehouse.com

* * * *

BIRTH OF A CHILD

FATE OF A WORLD

Think You've Heard Before...?

Think Again!

THEDA-MAISAGA.WEBS.COM

Or Place Orders At

THEDAMAISAGA@YAHOO.COM

Book 1: The End of All Peace

* * * *

MISCELLANEOUS

If stress can change the brain, all experience can change the brain. www.undoingstress.com

* * * *

Garbage bags: oversided three mil contractor bags. $90/1000. www.drdeath-thealmostsuperhero.com

* * * *

Space Studies Masters degree. Accredited University program. Campus and distance classes. For details visit www.space.edu.

* * * *

Dragon, Fairy & Medieval decor and collectibles. Huge selection of statues, swords, wall plaques and more. www.paperstreetgiftco.com

* * * *

Need a Publisher?

Go from Manuscript to Market Quickly and Affordably. www.AuthorHouse.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.

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Department: COMING ATTRACTIONS

Among the stories we have on tap are:

"The Precedent” by Sean McMullen, a vision of the future in which people get what they deserve (or do they?).

"The Bird Cage” by Kate Wilhelm, the story of a man who volunteers for a scientific experiment and what befalls him.

"Recrossing the Styx” by Ian R. MacLeod, a tale of love on the high seas.

We also have stories in the works by Terry Bisson, Richard Bowes, Albert Cowdrey, John Kessel, and several newcomers, including Michael Alexander and Brenda Carre. Go to www.FandSF.com and subscribe now so you won't miss an issue.

Visit www.fsfmag.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.

Table of Contents

Novelet: WHY THAT CRAZY OLD LADY GOES UP THE MOUNTAIN by Michael Libling

Department: BOOKS TO LOOK FOR by Charles de Lint

Department: MUSING ON BOOKS by Michelle West

Novelet: THIEF OF SHADOWS by Fred Chappell

Short Story: A HISTORY OF CADMIUM by Elizabeth Bourne

Short Story: THE REAL MARTIAN CHRONICLES by John Sladek

Novelet: DR. DEATH VS. THE VAMPIRE by Aaron Schutz

Short Story: REMOTEST MANSIONS OF THE BLOOD by Alex Irvine

Short Story: SEVEN SINS FOR SEVEN DWARVES by Hilary Goldstein

Short Story: SILENCE by Dale Bailey

Short Story: FOREVER by Rachel Pollack

Short Story: THE ATCHISON, TOPEKA, & SANTA FE by Robert Onopa

Department: FILMS: BLOCKBUSTER AS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE by Kathi Maio

Short Story: THE GYPSY'S BOY by Lokiko Hall

Novelet: THE CROCODILES by Steven Popkes

Department: F&SF COMPETITION #79: HOOKED ON MNEMONICS

Department: CURIOSITIES: ALVIN STEADFAST ON VERNACULAR ISLAND, by Frank Jacobs (1965)

Department: FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION MARKET PLACE

Department: COMING ATTRACTIONS

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