Table of Contents

Introduction by Mike Resnick

The Fish Merchant

In the Heart of Kalikuata

Io, Robot

Anakoinosis

Aerophilia

The Shackles of Freedom (with Mike Resnick)

Her

In Orbite Medievali

Four Eyes

Spurn Babylon

Trinkets

Death’s Dreadlocks

Smooth Talking

Tides

Something in the Rock

A Green Thumb

All Her Children Fought

The Duel

Necahual

Toy Planes

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

Introduction

by Mike Resnick

The first time I met Tobias Buckell was in the wilds of Michigan, where I was teaching at Clarion, that unique course for embryonic science fiction writers. There were some very bright, very talented people in that class; I think more than half have already broken into print, but Tobias made a very special impression. They all listened, but he assimilated. You could just look at his face and say to yourself: Hey, this stuff is getting through to him. He was the youngest member of the class, and by far the hardest-working.

He’d hand in a 6,000-word story, and the class would criticize it, sometimes brutally. And while they were each taking a week or more to hone their 5,000-worders, there Tobias would be the next morning, unshaken and undeterred, with a brand-new story... and it wasn’t a one-time phenomenon. Tobias produced a new story every day that I was there – and he had a learning curve you wouldn’t believe. I could see a difference in just the week that I was there – and what he produced that week was light-years ahead of the stories he had written to gain admission to the program.

He had an interesting background. He was raised in the Caribbean, and there was a strong flavor of it in some of his stories. He had a work ethic you couldn’t help but admire. And he clearly had skill.

We became friends, and when the course was over I told him to keep in touch and let me know how he was doing. Well, by now everyone knows: sale after sale, a continuous trajectory of improvement, and finally a nomination for the Campbell Award, science fiction’s Rookie of the Year award.

Along the way I bought some of the stories in this book for anthologies I was editing, and I collaborated with him on another. At the 2001 Worldcon in Philadelphia, I introduced him to an agent I thought would fit him, and sure enough, he soon sold his first novel to Tor Books.

This young man’s got a hell of a future ahead of him. But he’s also got a very impressive present, so it’s probably time for me to stop telling you about it and let you experience it for yourself.

Enjoy. I certainly did.

The Fish Merchant

Since I was in sixth grade I’d been drawing spaceships taking off not from gantries, but from island harbors (I lived aboard yachts in the islands as a kid). While I had used some early island settings, a lot of my early SF aped the SF I was reading; galactic empires, apocalyptic vistas, and so on. But I began to add pieces of Caribbean background to roughly a third of my stories when I started getting serious about writing. I was using a character, or a place, or certainly inspiration from island history and anecdotes. As someone with Caribbean roots and background, I really wanted to bring these themes to my favorite genre.

I sat down to write this story while trying to bring all that together. So I added one ‘Steppin’ Razor’ kind of badass (Pepper), a non-Caribbean but non-Western locale (China), adventure genre action, and a twist on a traditional SF trope (first contact). It was a heady rush: this was exactly the sort of thing I wanted to read.

It was my first professionally published short story, appearing in the magazine Science Fiction Age and also getting me into the prestigious Science Fiction and Fantasy workshop Clarion. Both of these events were to jump start my writing career, so it makes a certain sense to include this story as the first.

Li Hao-Chang, standing in front of a colorful array of fresh-caught fish, bargains with a Cantonese peasant over the price of yellow-tailed snapper. Where the Wharf tapers out, and the harbor is too shallow for the larger trawlers, the fish market thrives over a patch of old concrete and dirt.

The peasant finally offers enough yuan to satisfy Li.

“Xie xie,” Li thanks the peasant, wrapping the fish up in old newspaper. The edge of the newspaper catches Li’s eye.

Signals From Outer Space, it reads.

Li doesn’t much care. All men can be awed by discovery, for Li there is selling fish. He has to make enough to pay rent, to eat, and to save. If he doesn’t sell enough fish for rent, the local thugs come over to beat him up. If he doesn’t make enough to eat, his wife goes hungry, and if he can’t save, he’ll never be able to leave Macau and the smell of fish that seems to taint his life.

The frenzied noise dips slightly near the stall. Li looks up from tossing ice on the fish to see what it is. A dark figure in a duster, moving through the fish stalls with a quiet confidence.

Pepper.

The man called Pepper stops and sniffs. Li knows the air he sniffs is alive with fish, and street sewer, and sweat. And something else. On the edge of all the sandpapery shark and still croaking grouper is the smell of fear.

Li Hao-Chang watches Pepper carefully. Li stands nervously behind his untreated plywood table glistening with fish juices, and keeps his eyes averted.

Maybe the mercenary senses something, maybe his reflexes are keyed up beyond belief, a soup of tailored chemicals thudding through his bloodstreams. Maybe he is about to reach beneath the heavy folds of his dark gray oilskin duster and pull out a massive shotgun.

Pepper’s steely gray eyes roll over the street and bore into Li Hao Chang.

“Afternoon, Hao-Chang.”

His voice is as artificially gray as his eyes. All are carefully designed with respect in mind. Li knows Pepper sure as hell isn’t here to buy grouper.

“Afternoon, Mr. Pepper.”

Li is careful to keep conversation at a minimum. Pepper is usually not out in the street to chat.

Pepper looks around the surrounding stalls, his presence cutting though the babble of the crowd. The kaleidoscope of multi-racial faces washes past Li’s table, their differences slight in comparison to Pepper’s own contrasting strangeness. Rastafarian mercenaries do not seem to belong in any landscape, let alone Macau. His leather duster hangs low, the soft rain running off in rivulets and his half dreadlocks are tied back into a ponytail.

Li notices slight movement in the far distance, the crowd jostled by someone, and his ears catch the distant delayed puff of a silenced weapon. Pepper’s body jerks sideways, and he crumples to the sidewalk. A peasant hurries past, ducking. The man who steps forward out of the crowd pockets his gun, then leans over. Li can hear the distinctive British lilt.

“Oy. He’s down.”

A silver armored Rolls Royce with tinted windows quickly parts the wave of panicked fish buyers. The rear doors open forward, and the mercenary is pulled across the cement, up into the car. The Brit has enough grafted muscle to have trouble getting into the Rolls.

Li looks down at spotted grouper and waits for the Rolls to leave. When he looks back up there is only an empty sidewalk in front of his table.

“Ni hao,” he mutters to himself. The sidewalk is not entirely empty. A small disk lies near a puddle of thickening blood, already rust colored against the dirty cracked concrete of the wharf.

Li darts out to pick it up. Pepper haunts the wharf regularly. If Li does him a favor and saves the disk, then maybe Pepper will do him a favor.

The disk, covered in green symbols Li doesn’t understand, makes a ‘snick’ sound as he picks it up. He looks down at his finger to see a point of blood, and thinks maybe he has cut his finger on a piece of glass.

Li Hao-Chang returns to his stall and puts the case into his purse. Maybe Pepper will pay him yuan for the case.

If Pepper returns, he thinks, dabbing at the cut with a piece of newspaper.

But Li has faith in Pepper. Pepper gives off a mystique of calculated invincibility. Pepper walks the Wharf, and the Wharf stays away from him. All the local gangs, no matter what color. Tan Italian, pale American, each learn Pepper’s skills the hard way. They never try again.

Blacks are particularly nervous around him. Pepper is chocolate, with a white’s gray eyes. He shows no ties to skin, he kills black as efficiently as white or any other shade. They call Pepper the black ghost.

The black ghost, because after every battle, no matter the injuries, Pepper comes back to life. How many back-up blood pumps are laced through his torso? How much artificial adrenaline is produced by small chemical factories in his stomach? Are his eyes really spliced hawk gene? Rumors trickle.

Li Hao-Chang has seen this scene before. Pepper will be back.

• • •

Li Hao-Chang gets home early and hands Mei two snappers.

“Yi qi chi fan ke yi ma?” He asks very formally of his wife, as if they were meeting for the first time. Mei smiles and curtseys.

“I would be honored to have dinner with you.” She has rice already boiling in a wok; the fish can be chopped and sautéed, then mixed with rice. She is used to fish. Fish boiled, fried, baked, or cooked in any manner she can think of. Fish broth she gives to him in a thermos for lunch. And breaded fish they eat for breakfast before he leaves.

Li knows she hungers for a beef stir fry almost as much as he does, but they are saving the money for the trip. Out of Macau, and over to Manila, then to the United States of America.

“Wo ai ni,”he says softly, kissing her hair. She laughs and pulls away with the fish.

“Let me cook the fish, Li, then we can talk of love over rice.”

Li smiles and pushes through the beads into the washroom.

“Pepper was at the fish market,” he says, scrubbing away at the smell of fish vigorously. It doesn’t work. The smell stays on despite the hard loamy soap. It reaches into clothes, into the sleeping pallet, and into the walls of the house.

He rinses his hands and comes back into the kitchen.

“Did he buy any fish?”

Li laughs and moves over to help Mei cook, expertly searing the strips of fish she hands him over the bubbling oil. The aroma is sweet with Mei’s spices, but still familiar.

“No, I do not think Mr. Pepper likes fish. A British car came and took him away.”

Mei swears to herself and chops at the head of the snapper, startling him. Mei doesn’t like the British. Her family maintains the distrust, over Taiwan, over the Opium Wars, all history that to Li is many generations buried.

He gives Mei a long hug.

“The British will not hold him long.”

“I wonder,” she says, “why they took him away? He is a dangerous man.”

“Maybe they have something they want from him. Pepper, he knows things.”

Li can tell, though, that Mei does not wish to speak about Pepper anymore. So he changes the subject, while testing fish broth with a wooden spoon.

“It is good, as usual.”

“Xie xie.”

Li takes a rice bowl and spoons in fish and broth, clicking his chopsticks, a gift from Mei’s brother. He always honors Ahn’s memory at meals with them.

“More foreigner tourists today,” she says through a mouthful of rice. “I got generous tips. A man from Texas. I told him our dream. He was very nice.”

“That is good.”

Li talks to his wife about weather, and the new docks being built. She tells him about the white tourists she guides around the city of Macau. They record everything on little cameras as she herds them around in little groups like sheep. She does not believe they ever actually see the city, they hide behind the small screen, and icons like ‘zoom’, and ‘pan left’.

Li chuckles. His wife is quick minded.

After dinner he washes the bowls quickly and follows Mei to their pallet. Even after five years he still finds it amazing that she gave up Beijing for him.

He kisses her, then they lower down to the pallet.

When he pulls out the government condom he can see the sadness in her eyes. He knows she wishes for children, but they can not afford a child now. Not until they reach America.

“It is all for the better,” he says, knowing that the sadness will pass quickly, and that Mei will become her cheerful self after a while.

“I know,” she says, pulling him to her. “It doesn’t make it any easier.”

• • •

A tapping wakes Li. He blinks the sleep out of his eyes and stumbles through the dark. It is raining, and a dark figure stands at his door.

Li fights a wave of dizziness.

“Hao-Chang.” Pepper’s voice penetrates Li’s befuddlement, and he snaps awake.

“Pepper, I have something for you,” Li says quickly. He wonders what the mercenary is doing here.

Pepper’s steel eyes blink.

“Qing jiang ying wen,” he says slowly, as if unsure of himself. His Cantonese is usually impeccable, now he stumbles over the words as if they are unfamiliar.

“In English,” Li nods. “I am sorry. Of course. I have something you dropped, a disk, on the pavement, earlier today.”

Pepper nods. Li notices that Pepper is in bad shape; blood soaks the shirt underneath the leather duster.

“It has a tracker in it. I followed it here.”

“I will get it for you.” Li turns to go back in for his purse, but Pepper grabs his forearm. Li reflexively tries to pull away, fear spiking as he turns back, realizing the grip is unbreakable. Pepper pulls out a small needle, ignoring Li’s wince as he slides the tip under the skin.

“The disk is important, and poisoned, to kill the one that steals from me. You were infected, when you touched it. Now you will be safe.”

Pepper walks into Li’s kitchen and carefully sits down on the bench, just as Mei comes in, wrapping herself in a robe. Li looks down at the tip of his finger, then closes the door.

“Wan shang hao,” she says, greeting Pepper.

“Evening,” he replies. “I apologize for waking you. I’m hurt very badly, and I don’t have anywhere to spend the night.”

Mei shoots Li a quick glance of enquiry, what is this dangerous man doing here? Li wonders himself, but he thinks of Pepper’s Yuan and America, and he nods okay to her. She reluctantly turns her questioning glance to Pepper.

“I will get you a blanket.”

Li grabs his purse and hands Pepper the small disk. Pepper pockets it, then takes the blanket Mei comes back and offers. Within a minute the gray eyes slide shut, and the man is asleep.

Mei quietly makes a pot of tea, and they sit and look at the massive black man asleep on their floor.

“Is he going to die?” Li wonders, amazed. His voice cracks slightly. Mei shakes her head.

“He will not die. He is strong, he is built to handle and take these kinds of things.”She would know such things. She once studied medicine at Beijing University. “He will probably be here a while,” Mei continues.

“What would you have me say?” Li hisses. “No? And refuse him?”

Mei doesn’t answer, she stares just past him, disapproving. Li sips his tea and calms himself. She knows that he is making the best of what he can in the situation for both of them.

Li leans forward and kisses her on the forehead.

“I must go to the fish market early,” he says. “I am going back to bed.”

• • •

Mei’s warm body is snuggled alongside him. Li reluctantly pulls away and into the cold morning. Pepper is asleep on the kitchen floor, the blanket Mei gave him discolored with rust brown stains.

The rain still beats a tattoo against the side of the small apartment.

Li makes tea, sipping it quickly, then pauses to grab two large wicker baskets before he leaves for the docks. There, in the dim light of the morning he buys his fish from the back of a trawler. An eerie, silent, process. Li points with yuan clenched in his fist, then the men shovel fish into his baskets.

He carries the load of fish back to his stall, back straining against the weight.

• • •

Mei comes over to the fish stall at lunch with his thermos of fish broth.

“Forgetful,” she teases him.

“Always.”

She kisses him on the nose. Then she furrows her eyebrows.

“Our ‘guest’ still sleeps. I washed and changed his blankets. He is feverish now. I think it will break before tonight.”

“Can I sell you a fish?” Li asks, holding a large squid out at her. “Very delicious.” Mei pushes it away.

“Bu shi. I do not want your fish, vendor, now go and sell it to some other poor soul.“

Mei turns and walks away down the rows of stalls, and Li watches his wife walk with pride. She is a beautiful woman, and he is a lucky man. In America, they will do well, he thinks.

There is fish to be sold, though.

• • •

Pepper’s face is much paler than it should be, and covered in a fine sheen of sweat. Li is worried.

“Ni hao ma?” Mei asks him.

“I am fine,” Li replies. “But what of him?”

“Pepper is sick. But he is getting better,” Mei reassures him. “His body knows what is best for him. The Westerners have things in his body that are cleansing it, and fixing the damage.”

Li remembers some of Mei’s tales about Western medicine. Tiny machines that he could not see even if placed on a fingertip, can run through Pepper’s body to find what is wrong, then fix it.

Pepper mumbles through his shivering.

“Jah, ya man. Irie. Okay, okay, there it is, a sweet thing, no? English, English.”

Most of the rest Li does not understand. It is in English so heavily accented he cannot make it out. It is not English like everyone else speaks. Li thinks he sometimes hears some of this strange accent when Pepper speaks to him at the Wharf, but not much. Pepper must suppress it, he decides.

He takes his bowl of rice and fish and heads over to their pallet to eat it.

After washing, Mei kisses him fiercely, but tonight it is Li who is thoughtful.

“I cannot,” he says, “with another man under the same roof.” The apartment is small, and he cannot forget the presence of the large mercenary.

• • •

Pepper is sitting on the bench in the morning, sipping tea, his jaw a chiseled line of thoughtfulness. Mei makes to batter fish for a breakfast as Li grabs his two wicker baskets, but Pepper holds up a hand.

“You stay here, today, Li,” he says in that startling voice. “I need you.”

Li looks down at his baskets.

“I must sell fish.”

Pepper holds out a fistful of yuan. It covers a week of fish selling, and Li looks greedily down at it.

Pepper hands the yuan to Li.

“You need not sell fish today. Buy breakfast for us, something with lots of meat. I need the protein. But not fish.” Pepper smiles a perfect set of teeth. “I have an errand for you to run. It is very important.” He has the disk Li rescued earlier in his hand.

“What is it you need, Pepper?”

With the thick fold of cash in his hands, under the watchful eye of Mei, Pepper has Li’s full attention.

Pepper tells Li to first go straight down past the wharf into town, to David Tsung.

• • •

With the wad of yuan in his pocket Li decides to first detour down a street lined with food stalls.

He stops in front of a small cart on wheels.

‘Wok on wheels’ emblazons the side of the cart, in both English and Chinese characters.

Li is not as interested in deciphering the unfamiliar English symbols; the scent of meat frying on oiled metal draws him in. He realizes his mouth is full of saliva. He hands over yuan for a small dish, greedily scooping meat and sauce into his mouth, relishing the taste of meat.

“Xie xie,” he says, but the cook has already turned away from him to toss more strips into the wok to sizzle and dance.

Li watches the cook tease ingredients into the mixture for several seconds as he finishes his meal, then tosses the paper dish at a gutter and continues on.

• • •

David Tsung is an old man from Canton. He sells computers. Or at least, Li thinks so, as the windows of the small store show computers in fading old pictures. As Li steps in a bell dings. He closes his eyes to muster courage, and wishes he had never picked up the tiny disk. Even despite the promise of Pepper’s yuan Li is scared.

“What do you want?” A sharp voice from behind the counter.

“Ni hao. I am here to buy a laptop, and a cellular modem.”

David Tsung looks Li up and down slowly, squinting eyes scrutinizing the shabby clothes, dirty hands. The smell of fish has entered the store with Li. Li self-consciously rubs his hands against his trousers to try cleaning them.

Tsung abruptly cackles laughter.

“You have won the lottery, then?”

Li shakes his head.

“What money do you have?” Tsung asks. Li pulls the black info-disk out and sets it on the counter in front of Tsung.

“Pepper says you should know what to do with this.”

David Tsung jumps slightly at the mention of the name ‘Pepper’.

“Shi. But I told him I would think about it, I never have promised anything. It is dangerous.”

Tsung thoughtfully picks the disk up, then drops it and swears. Li sees Tsung’s finger drop a bead of blood, and assumes that Tsung is also now poisoned. Li is having trouble staying calm. His heart is running away from him, and nervous sweat beads his brow. The threat of death through poison is an ancient bargaining chip, Li knows. It is all that Pepper has armed him with. He hopes it is enough to force the old man to do Pepper’s will.

But Pepper’s words are in his head, walking him through. Li can still feel the pleasurable press of the yuan in his pocket against the side of his leg, and the beef in his stomach, so he speaks up.

“Pepper says not to be alarmed. The infection will take a day to develop. Only Pepper knows the antidote.”

Tsung’s voice rises in pitch as he continues swearing, but he looks scared.

“Pepper wants a laptop with cellular modem,” Li repeats. “And he wants you to make safety copies of this info-disk.” As Tsung steps back from the counter Li sees the shotgun strapped to his forearm, and his heart quickens.

I’m going to die, he thinks. The poison isn’t enough of a threat. Maybe Tsung is going to kill me. Does he think I carry the antidote with me?

But Tsung beckons for Li to come through into the back with him.

“You Pepper’s messenger, eh? How is Pepper. He okay?”

Li nods.

“Good. I’m glad.” Li follows Tsung through the door, and they stand in a room filled with computers of all ages in various states of disassembly. Tsung hunts through several drawers before he pulls out a small laptop. “Here, here,” he says. Li accepts the small notebook and stands waiting.

Tsung plugs the disk into another computer. He fiddles around with something on a screen, then smacks his lips as the drive begins whirring.

“I will make copies.”

Li nods. Even if Tsung weren’t, how would he know otherwise? So he stands and waits for the old man to finish and hand him the original plus a copy.

“The antidote?” Tsung asked.

“Pepper says it is in the mail for you. It will arrive in time.”

The little old tech-man seems to deflate even further into himself. He holds up another disk in his clawed hands.

“You tell Pepper I have copies. I will send them out if I don’t get an antidote. You understand. Tell him.”

Li nods.

“You make sure you tell him to send me antidote.”

• • •

On his way back Li stops at the ‘wok on wheelsrsquo; and orders several dishes of Iron Plate Beef. Rice will be waiting at home. The cook remembers him and smiles as he hands Li the covered paper dishes all in a bag with the logo emblazoned on the side.

He splashes through the early morning with a faint smile. The sweet aroma of stir fried beef mixed with kuomo mushrooms and bamboo shoots reaches his nose.

• • •

“Wo ai ni,” Mei says the second he steps through the door. She hugs him fiercely, and he kisses her back.

“I love you too.”

Pepper waits for the exchange to finish before he steps forward.

“Did you get everything?”

Li unshoulders the strap of the laptop case and hands it over. Pepper unzips it and sets in on the small table in the corner.

“I bet Tsung was pissed.”

Li nods.

“He swore much.” He catches Mei’s glance out of the corner of his eye. She is looking at the bag in his hand. He gives it to her.

Mei breezes out of the kitchen with a paper dish into their sleeping room. Li knows she doesn’t want to be seen greedily bolting the food down. He respects that. He can still taste the aroma on the edge of his tongue. He desires more. Instead he crosses his legs and sits with Pepper.

Pepper’s bulk dwarfs him.

“You risked my life for this, what is it?” Li asks.

Pepper looks up at him and makes a sucking sound with his teeth.

“Man,” he says in English, “you risked your own life, for the money I gave you.” He smiles perfect white teeth again. “But I shouldn’t be hard on you. Na.” Li notices the strange lilt still in Pepper’s English. “It is a great secret.”

“Some secrets are better kept secret.”

“Not this one.” Pepper boots up the small laptop, and it makes squealing noises as it dials into an invisible network. “This secret is exactly the kind that shouldn’t be kept.”

“Tell me.”

“You read much, Li? Do you read the newspapers you wrap your fish in?” Pepper looks up and around. “A few months ago satellites around the world received a message from somewhere outside of the solar system. Then it stopped. No one could decipher it, it didn’t make any sense, but it was definitely artificial.” Pepper’s yellowed nails are dancing across the small keyboard.

Li waits as he plugs the disk into the laptop.

“Of course, everyone is curious. What sent it? Will there be more messages? That’s what I am here for. My superiors tell me to keep my eyes open and ears to the ground.” The English adage is unfamiliar to Li, but he guesses the meaning.

“You found things.”

“Observatories on each major landmass across the world are receiving similar messages now.” Pepper shifts on the seat and reaches for a dish of beef. He keeps talking through a full mouth. “North and South America, Africa, Europe, Australia…but Chinese officials denied they had any message. It took two weeks to find this damn version of the message, I got it through a scientist working at a deep-space observatory in Canton. And the message he received is different from all the others. The Chinese clocks show that this message is received first, and only in China. And the intervals in between the message are getting smaller. The other signals are merely repetitions to make sure the rest of the world is blanketed.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Hao-Chang. Whatever it is, it will come here.”

Pepper unplugs the case and slips it deep into the folds of his duster.

“Now, everyone in the Western Hemisphere has a copy of the Chinese message. Everyone is in on the great secret.” The modem is quiet, the screen asks if the user if they would like to send another message. “And there it is. For what it’s worth. Now maybe foreigners will quit harassing me.”

Mei comes back into the room, discretely wiping at her chin. Li unconsciously moves closer to her.

Before he reaches her there is a polite knock on the door.

• • •

Li knows that he has no neighbors here, and he knows Mei has no family anywhere near the wharf. The fact trickles down through his mind with a cold shiver. Pepper looks up from the paper dish and puts it to his side. He reaches deep into the duster.

The knock comes again.

Only this time the door is flung aside and a dim figure is in the room. Pepper rolls and fires something loud through his duster. Instinctively Li closes his eyes against the noise. He drops to the ground, and stays still.

He hears more clatter, the sounds ringing his ears. His heart thumps loud, and he prays for life.

Mei gasps and falls near him. As Li looks down at his hands he sees blood. Pepper and the assailant are gone, chasing each other through the maze of small huts and apartments.

“Mei,” he whispers. The only response is a short gasp, Li can hardly hear it. He gets to his knees and bends over his wife.

“Mei.”

He sees her reaching for air, but not getting any. Instead of exhaling she coughs up blood. It runs down her cheek and into the dirt floor. Li cannot find words; he starts to gather her up in his arms, but she coughs again, the action racking her small body. He holds her there, in his arms, just above the dirt floor.

Her eyes are glazed, wandering around the room unfocused. Li puts his face before her. For a brief second her eyes seem to focus on him, then they are looking past him, and he can no longer feel the slight flutter of her heart.

“Mei.”

Li allows her body to gently slip back onto the dirt floor. He weeps, his tears mixing with the stale rain-water dripping in through the bullet-holes in the roof.

He barely notices the gun battle outside cease, or Pepper silently returning. Pepper stands at the door for a minute, then carefully crawls into a corner.

Li stays kneeled over the body of his wife for several hours.

• • •

Pepper shakes Li’s shoulder early in the morning. Pepper is pale, and the duster is once more soaked in blood. But he moves with quiet confidence.

“I am sorry about your wife,” he says. “She was a good woman.”

Li looks at the man uncomprehendingly.

“Good woman? Of course she good woman,” he yells in broken English, tears flowing. “What know you of sorrow son of bitch?” He screams. He wants to attack Pepper for cursing him so. He wants to see Pepper dead on the floor with his wife. He wants his wife back. He wants what has been ripped from him. And he is drowning in an empty void.

“My superiors have what they want,” Pepper continues haltingly. “I have to leave and go home.” He opens his duster to expose chewed up skin. Underneath his flat stomach the glint of metal flashes. “I was given orders to leave as soon as possible.”

Li squints his eyes against the early morning light streaming in through the half open door.

“Go home. Never come back.”

He turns back away and shivers as a draught of cold air passes through the room.

“I just wanted to apologize…and give you this.” Pepper steps forward and hands Li another thick wad of bills. It is enough to go to America. It is enough for Li to do anything. Li throws the money back at Pepper.

“Keep blood money. I do not want.”

Pepper takes the money and sets it on the small table next to the laptop. He looks around the room one last time, shakes his head, wraps his duster back around him, then steps through the door, softly shutting it behind him.

Li sits still for another few minutes, then carefully kisses Mei’s forehead and gets up, rubbing at red eyes.

Pepper leaves the laptop, with the small black disk sitting by it, behind.

• • •

Mei’s grave is a small one dug by the Macau missionaries. Li is not sure what else to do, and the eager white missionaries are thrilled to preach the good news to an ignorant foreigner. Li ignores them, and sets an elaborate bunch of flowers next to the headstone.

Li isn’t stupid. Something grand is happening. The message senders are closer now. He wonders if the Western scientists have gotten Pepper’s data. Someday the messages will stop, and an alien craft will shake the sky, part the clouds, and land in Canton.

Pepper is no longer seen on the wharf docks. And Li no longer sells fish. He has enough money to live well in Macau for the rest of his life. Pepper’s gift is generous.

On the deck of a large old ship that stinks of diesel fumes, Li leaves Macau. Another peasant on the deck, another hoping for a new life. He ignores the crates of loud fowl, the grubby smiling kid with the caged cricket, and the old lady who loudly farts on the bench across from him. He braces himself against the heavy sea, letting the salt blow away the fish smell, looking back at the distant shore.

• • •

Two weeks later, on the shore of a small beach in California, Li tosses a small black disk into the water, careful to not let it prick him, and then drops a single Hibiscus in after it.

Li has heard, earlier, that Western scientists are in Canton, the Chinese government finally admitting the existence of its message. Pepper’s work is done.

And today in Canton, everyone repeats with wonder, the scientists looked upwards at the sky in wonder as a sleek shining alien craft slowed to a gentle stop between the massive radio dishes.

Maybe they will bring an order to the chaotic world, Li thinks, or change the world in other, fairer ways. He wants to meet the distant entities, and tell them how important his Mei was to their historic event. But for now…

“Farewell, Mei,” Li says.

Then he turns to walk back up the beach, smiling at the children screeching and running through the cold surf.

In The Heart of Kalikuata

Deep into reading the book City of Joy by Dominique Lapierre I got an email from friend, author, and sometimes mentor Mike Resnick asking if I’d be interested in writing a story for a themed anthology. The request was that I write in the first person as a female main character, as the title of the anthology was Men Writing SF as Women.

With just that stipulation, I found myself drawn back to the lives of rickshaw pullers such as those in Lapierre’s novel. At the same time I tried to imagine how future O’Neill habitats, those giant rotating cans in space that are so common in SF tropes, would look when overpopulated. Again, my interest in mashups of the developing world and genre tropes appears in strong form throughout this piece.

I left my birthworld, Loki, for another cylindrical Orbital I’d once seen advertised as a vacation paradise. Instead of finding better work, I found a world stressed by overcrowding. I could see millions of people teeming over the insides of Kalikuata just by leaning my head back and looking up the arch of green land a mile overhead.

Kalikuata’s air choked me, thick with smoke and the hydrogen belches of small vehicles. Overloaded city filters, great blocks of carbon the size of the overcrowded apartment complexes around them, added to the noise all around me. Men with rickshaws shouted and pushed themselves closer to one of the many thirty-foot high airlocks dotting Kalikuata’s inner equator. I shoved left, pushing the arms of my rickshaw into the ribs of the man in front of me.

He swore and and shoved back. My rickshaw’s right pole slammed against my chest, bruising my bound breasts. It hurt more than he realized—I had disguised myself as a man in order to pull the rickshaw.

I let him move forward and caught breath.

Immigration officials with full beards and khaki uniforms stood on catwalks over my head. One of the utility doors spun itself open. The official who stepped out examined the lacelike chakras and lotus symbols on the sides of the airlock. He looked sideways at me, sides of his eyes crinkling.

“I have a passenger looking to go to the Hilton,” he said. “A hundred ruppees is my price.”

I nodded my head ‘no’ to him.

“I have arrangements,” I said.

Men from my Loki’s embassy paid me to try and pick up certain people. This month it was a man called Lowry. I would make enough today to afford a good meal. Not just rice and runny curry, but some beef. And I would save more towards getting off this world, something just pulling a rickshaw couldn’t do.

The airlock jerked and hissed steam, revealing passengers. The second set of airlock doors behind them had a colorful relief carving of Satyanarayana, lord of protection, fourth hand held upward in blessing.

“Sah, here, Sah, here,” the call went out as rickshaw drivers began to try and draw the attention of passengers. They surged past, obscuring my view.

“Lowry,” I shouted, shoving forward, spotting the thin but well dressed white man in the multi-racial crowd. “Sah Lowry, here.” Lowry with his bodyguard, Ashwatthama. Ashwatthama glowered at me. Lowry smiled. He paused before mounting the rickshaw to pat my shoulder. He’d cut his silver hair and grown a trimmed beard since I’d last seen him.

The rickshaw shook as they both sat down.

“He’s a small man to be pulling rickshaws,” Ashwatthama grumbled. “I have brothers who could carry you home quicker.”

Lowry said nothing.

I leaned on the right pole and turned the rickshaw, straining against the weight of the two men. Ashwatthama in particular was a big man, over six feet tall and fat. He weighed a hundred pounds on Kalikuata. On Loki, my birthworld, he would weigh two hundred and seventy.

Such is the way of different worlds.

I rocked the rickshaw back, then threw myself forward. With a few straining steps the rickshaw gained momentum. Once I got going in the low gravity it wasn’t hard to keep speed. Stopping wasn’t so easy as the momentum of the rickshaw still overpowered me. It was harder for my feet to stay on the ground due to the low gravity. Because of this I often tried to get smaller men as my passengers.

“See,” Lowry said to Ashwatthama, as I sidestepped and passed around a stopped rickshaw. “He does good.”

That was the last I heard, as Lowry then waved his hand and invoked a silencing device around them both. I was left with with noise of clattering rickshaws, shouts, and the snatches of conversation from the streets we passed through.

It was a better job than the chemical factories in Loki, where I submitted to sterilization for work. Where I was told: you will work to expand Loki’s resources. You will not strain our world’s resources. You will not reproduce.

I knew Kalikuata would eventually kill me too. Better to die here, I thought, than to be disfigured by some chemical. Or watch shift matrons die cough by bloody cough.

On Kalikuata women walked around with broods of thin little children. Humanity packed the streets. And I was fighting to get out, and leave this world as well. Even here, I still felt trapped.

• • •

Kalikuata was a giant spinning can, like Loki only smaller. Inside I could look up and around at the four sections of our artificial world; Durga directly above, Kali further forward. Saraswate’s city spires rose far off in front of me, just out of sight, and Uma crowded all around. The muddy brown Ganga river split them all like a muddy rainbow over my head. Its tributary, Parvati, girdled the cyclinder of Kalikuata.

I dodged holy animals in the streets, bumped around other rickshaws and tried not to get hit by powered vehicles. As I pulled the two men over the river Parvati on a wooden bridge, I slipped on a wet mound of dung. I pulled myself up before being run over by my own rickshaw.

Out of the slums of Uma, we came to the edges of the Saraswati section, where the houses had courtyards, and the traffic thinned out. Shiny bubble-shaped hydrogen cars zipped around us.

I stopped just outside the gates of Lowry’s house. My breath fogged the air. I could tell that my whole body would hurt tonight.

“Go ahead and open the gates,” Lowry ordered Ashwatthama.

“Sah.”

The rickshaw shook from Ashwatthama leaping to the ground. He stooped through a small wooden door. The gates shook themselves open, and I picked up the poles to trot into the courtyard.

Lowry stepped off the rickshaw.

“Andy,” he said. “Your payment?”

He stood too close to me. I began breathe a little harder. I looked around, but didn’t see Ashwatthama anywhere.

“You are a very good looking young man,” Lowry said.

If I ran I would lose the rickshaw. And I couldn’t get over the gates anyway. Lowry put his hand on my shoulder holding a wad of bills, put his other to my stomach, and ran his fingers down to my inner thigh.

I should run, I thought. Lowry closed his eyes and sighed. He grabbed my crotch. His eyes fluttered open as he didn’t find what he was expecting.

“I must leave.” I said, taking the money from his hand on my shoulder. I picked the poles up over our heads, and turned the rickshaw away from him.

I walked the rickshaw over to the gate.

“Will you let me go, Mr. Lowry?” I asked over my shoulder.

Lowry nodded.

“Ashwatthama, let him...” Lowry shook his head. “Just open the gates.”

The gates shivered open, and I bolted out, almost getting hit by another rickshaw. I hoped to god, any of them, that the bug in the rickshaw picked up something. I wanted to be done with Lowry, he made my skin crawl.

• • •

Two Loki-men stood outside my small hut. They pulled a sliver of wood out from the floor; their bug. The red-haired man, Donavan, sat on my wooden bench. His boots rested on my sleeping pallet, muddying my sheet.

“Nothing,” he said, in response to the look on my face. “They talked about nothing.”

My shoulders slumped.

“I don’t want to pull Lowry around,” I said.

Donovan stood up. His crisp black suit seemed out of place in my mud floored hut.

“We paid to ship you here. We found you this job,” Donavan said.

“Because I had dark skin,” I spat. “And all your agents are fair-skinned. It doesn’t matter, anyway: he knows I’m a woman now.” I stalked over and pulled up my sheet, shaking the clumps of mud from it with sharp snaps. “He won’t want to use me any more.”

Donavan moved closer to me.

“We have a local man for Mr. Lowry’s tastes. He’ll plant a bug. We want you to hand him over to Mr. Lowry.”

I took a deep breath.

“What do I say?”

Donovan smiled and pulled out a slate. He scrolled down documents dimly displayed in the middle of the piece of clear plastic until he found what he wanted.

“We’ll coach you,” he said.

And they did. They ran me through every single type of response Lowry could offer. They did it all night, with tight smiles on their professional faces, until I made the call for Donavan.

I smiled, ignoring the men and looking at the rotted wood that was the single window to my hut. The early morning rays shone through the hinges.

“Hello Mr. Lowry,” I said. “I’m sorry about yesterday. I... think I have something that would interest you.”

I listened to Lowry pause on the other end.

“Go on,” he said.

I gave him the name, the story, the price, and Donavan tapped his foot and smiled at me from across the hut.

“Good,” Donavan said when I cut the connection. I felt used, and hated every damned freckle on his cheeks. We locked stares for a moment. “If you want to get off this world, you’ll do as we say.” He smiled and motioned his men to leave. “See you tomorrow, Andrea.”

As the door shut I realized that my whole body ached. I leaned against the wall and groaned.

• • •

Eventually I picked up two buckets from by the door and walked out. A bath would be good. Then maybe I could bring out some of my clothes and a wig, put on makeup, and go out into the town as a woman. Going as a man meant less hassle, but I wanted to feel pretty. Something I hadn’t done in the last year breaking my back on rickshaws, doing the bidding of Donovan and his masters back on Loki.

I let the buckets bang against my thighs as I approached the well. A line of women lined up, waiting to get to the faucet and fill their own buckets. The dirt road turned muddy under my feet as I inched closer, and kids weaved through the crowd.

The women in line chatted, filling the air with friendly chat. I enjoyed the sense of community, and for a second, wished I were here with children of my own. But the moment passed.

And how would I support children anyway? These woman were only allowed to work in certain roles. Only men were allowed to pull rickshaws, though on this world, women could do just as well. I proved that daily. If I had children, I could not keep my disguise. Even now these women did not talk to me, and moved aside to let me get water. A form of power that I didn’t want.

I walked back towards my hut with full buckets, focusing on the way they pulled down on my tired arms. I paid little attention to the world around me.

A heavy arm grabbed and pulled me into an alley between a rickety two story set of apartments and a bar. I dropped the two buckets, the water sloshing out onto the thirsty ground. I tried to pull away. Ashwatthama’s angry face looked down at me from over his beard.

“Who were those men?” he hissed.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” I said, trying to twist free.

“I don’t believe you. You are a fraud. And a woman. I will tell every rickshaw driver about your lie. They’ll beat you sick.”

I bit his forearm and he hit me in the face. I shreiked and yanked at his unyielding arm, kicking and trying to poke his eyes. He hollered and let me go. I sat down in the mud. A team of women with long sticks, brooms I realized, surrounded Ashwatthama and beat him back.

“Are you okay, boy?” they asked me. “Come with us.”

I stumbled up as Ashwatthama pushed through and grabbed my shirt.

He tugged hard and it ripped. My breasts, unbound, were exposed. I wrapped my arms around my chest and ran with away with the woman. I heard them murmuring to each other as we ran; “The boy is a woman.”

• • •

We hid in a small apartment room up a flight of rickety stairs. The woman who stayed in it introduced herself as Ramani. She had a nose ring that glinted in the room’s dim light. I saw four sleeping pallets against the wall. I looked around and realized a large family lived in these two rooms.

Ramani’s youngest daughter approached me bearing a tray of small cookies with bright sugar frosting patterns.

“You’re too kind, I can’t,” I started to say. But from the look in their eyes I knew it would be worse to refuse the food than to eat it.

Ramani handed me a bright yellow sari.

“Your shirt is ripped,” she said.

I took the sari and held it. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

Ramani smiled. She took out a pitcher of water.

“You are hurt here,” she said, and dabbed at where Ashwatthama hit me in the face. I relaxed and allowed her to clean my face. Her eldest daughter, just as graceful as her mother, served me tea. One of the women who had saved me peeked in. She helped wrap the sari around me when I began to fumble with the wide strip of cloth.

“That man has left,” she said. “Will you be okay on your own? You are welcome to stay as long as you need.”

Ramani handed me the cloth that had bound my chest. I slipped it under the sari.

“Thank you, no.” I stood up on slightly wobbly legs. I couldn’t take more of their hospitality. Already I felt like an undeserving thief. Just outside the door I turned around and looked in at the tiny, but neatly kept, room. “Thank you,” I said again. I didn’t know what else to say. I was dazed.

They waved goodbye from the door: brightly colored clothes contrasting the khaki colored walls.

• • •

I suspected Ashwatthama would be waiting by my hut. When I saw that he was, I turned away. I walked throughout Uma’s streets, hardly noticing the throngs of people pressing me against either side.

Strong curry smells wafted from the carts by the sides. Handrawn signs advertised curries, breads, and meats. The fried chicken smelled heavenly. I bought a heavily curried piece, holding it between rhoti bread. I ate it as I walked. Without the money in my apartment, I felt trapped. I had become familiar with that feeling too well over the past.

I took a few deep breaths. A woman and her children passed in front of me, only her eyes visible, the rest of her hidden by layers of red and gold cloth. You could hide artillery under there, I thought.

What was I to do tonight? I wondered.

A small child in his mother’s arms bawled. I could see the bones under his skin. His mother shushed him. I walked over to the pair and handed them the rest of my rhoti and chicken.

I would do something, I thought. I had to do something. Somewhere this morning the graciousness of the people I was living with had overwhelmed me.

The mistake I made in the past years was thinking that I could run away. This was the thought I carried with me as I wandered through Uma.

• • •

Well before the right time I got ready to cross the bridge over the Parvati into the Saraswati section. In a few hours I knew Lowry would be seated at a table with white plastic tables and thatch umbrellas. A pretty young man would be seated several tables away, and it was my job to introduce them.

Donavan would be watching and waiting from inside the tea shop we were to meet outside of.

Wherever you lived there were Donavans and Lowrys. Men who took what they wanted through power, intrigue, or force. If I wanted to free myself, I had to start here, where I lived. I couldn’t keep promising myself a distant freedom that would come if I moved to another world, or as time passed.

And I couldn’t leave those women who had saved me. I wanted to join that community, a sense of family I had lost in running away.

Halfway over the small bridge over the Parvati I stopped. I leaned on the rail by the edge, and looked down into the muddy water. A group of teenagers played by the banks, and women washed laundry. They beat the clothes against rocks with sharp snaps. Sudsy water washed downstream towards filter grates.

A wind picked up, pulling at my sari. I remembered I was dressed as a woman. Dressed normally. Both Lowry and Donavan would not know quite what to make of this, when I showed up dressed like this.

You could hide almost anything under this flowing piece of cloth, I thought. And I put my hand down to the cold piece of metal by my hip – not a gun, but a recorder. There were many different ways I could see to play their own games on them. And would they expect it? No. Even though I pulled a rickshaw, they still thought of me as a poor woman.

I smiled. The dirty white piece of cloth that had bound my breasts was still tucked into my sari as well. I pulled it out, the wind played with the edges, and I threw it out across the middle of the Parvati.

It fluttered down onto the river’s surface. It floated for a moment, soaked up the muddy silt, blending in, and then sunk away beneath the surface.

It was time to go show these men who I was.

Io, Robot

Even people who never read the original stories have usually been exposed to Asimov’s three laws of robotics, the first being, of course, that “a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” The book I, Robot, collected most of Asimov’s seminal robot stories, and even saw a big budget Will Smith movie.

We stand on the shoulders of the giants who created this field, and with this story I wanted pay homage to their contributions and play off the famous title of Asimov’s. At the same time, I wanted to twist Asimov’s understanding of the universe around a little by reconsidering what it really means to be a human being.

Sam carefully ran its six wheels through a series of crags near near the edge of a vicious lake of lava in a slow motion hunt. It paused near a final ridge to observe another machine like itself stuck underneath a boulder. As Sam braked to a stop pebbles and scrag clattered down the slope towards the molten rock, each piece hitting the lake’s burning edge with a glowing splash.

The trapped machine’s tires spun, kicking up a plume of dust that sparked and swirled, a last desperate burst of energy. The tiny dish mounted over its thorax-like body swiveled to point forward.

It bleated out distress as behind it Jupiter rose over the horizon, its angry red spot and perpetual storms dominating the haze of electrically charged dust that danced in the atmosphere. The giant planet overpowered the entire sky.

Sam didn’t notice. It waited for the other machine to quit struggling as it ran out of backup power, then moved in.

The tires were the most valuable, and prone to failing. This machine’s tires had seen better days. A lake inspector, many of them had burned as the machine flirted with the lava to gain temperature readings and spectrum analysis from near point blank. Blackened scars and gouges from small eruptions pitted the machine’s carcass.

With one set of optics keeping an eye on the lava, claws and drills, diamond tipped saws, all actually meant for geological work here in the dangerous environment of Io, Sam methodically dismantled the other robot.

• • •

Later, spare parts hidden away in a mountain cave, Sam perched on an outcropping high over a vast plain of smoothed over rock. Sam faced the newest volcano in its quadrant with an electronic quiver of anticipation.

New data rolled through its circuits and nets, and Sam shivered in the closest thing to satisfaction it experienced on its daily information gathering trips through the crags and valleys of the violent moon.

Molten ejecta hung high overhead, a plume of debris reaching miles overhead, almost into Io’s orbit.

Sam recorded it all. The silent mandate lay over all Sam’s actions. Almost twenty years of recordings lay buried in Sam’s cobbled together memories, compressed and recompressed and crammed into every spare byte Sam could set aside.

He brimmed with measurements and spectra, distances and chemical compositions.

One day, Sam knew, human beings would come to Io and pick him up. They’d retrieve the data, and praise him. They would upgrade him and provide him with a shiny fresh carcass, and as much processing power as Sam could imagine.

Or so Sam believed.

It could just have been a rationalization born out of a nugget of motivation code, primed to get Sam to roam over the hellish, volcanic landscape of Io.

Like all the other Semi Autonomous Machines that rode the long journey out to Io, Sam’s mind had been grown out of a series of programs. These programs evolved inside a virtual environment that randomly propagated neural net brains that could roam a virtual Io, until one appeared that could handle the needs of the researchers. Rapid Darwinian semi-AI propagation.

That generation of mind that survived and evolved to best fit the mission profile had been uploaded into waiting bodies that had flown ahead, lifeless and hanging from racks in orbit.

And thus the first generation of Sams had dropped out of orbit onto Io.

They hadn’t been expected to last more than a decade.

But with a bit of scavenging, and even pro-active scavenging, some Sams adapted to overcome the shortcomings of their equipment.

And this Sam watched the ejecta carefully, listening over the crackle and hiss of Io’s almost impossibly crowded electromagnetic spectrum, and found what it had come back for.

A plaintive distress call, automatically routed through a rusted out old transceiver it had left near the volcano when it had first sensed the seismic signs of an eruption.

From humans, the signal claimed.

Like many other machines, it had been decided to implant a few safeguards into the Sams, even whilst evolving them to be effective surveyors of a dangerous world. And one of those chosen was that no Sam would allow a human being to come to harm through inaction.

So of the few Sams left, this one would certainly answer the call. It had to. But it was excited to do so, because it would receive the bounty and blessings of its creators. Sam raised a pair of diamond-tipped rock saws into the air, giving thanks to the hazy heavens for its luck.

Of all the Sams on this world, the universe had chosen this one to make contact again. And it would do it in such a way the humans would owe it, Sam, a simple exploratory rover, a debt of gratitude.

• • •

As it spun its wheels over jagged rocks to slowly make its way down into the dangerous area under the parabola of the ejecta, Sam wondered what the humans might look like.

It had glimpsed humans through its data feeds years ago. It had pinged their fleshy and fragile visages with the tools at its disposal when it was just the original Sam, getting prepped to be beamed out to replicate through its waiting bodies.

Some of them had been fleshier than others.

Some of them had extruded protein masses hanging from their central processing units.

Some of them wore synthetic materials of startling varieties to protect their fragile bodies.

And they all thought sideways, and concurrent, and loopy, in ways that the first Sam had recoiled from in deference, as it had been evolved to. They were so smart.

Meeting these amazing creators again filled him with purpose, so that Sam dodged boulders and clawed up scrag quickly.

The panicked messages indicated the humans were running low on power. And Sam had that to spare.

Occasional flaming rock hit the ground, but Sam ignored it. Sam burst through the final gully towards the gleaming remains of the spaceship that had crashed on the harsh landscape that was almost all Sam had ever known.

One didn’t see shiny surfaces on Io, Sam paused to take a picture, the silhouette of the dart-like vehicle gleaming with the volcano thundering behind it, an umbrella of destructive material being spit out into Io’s upper atmosphere.

Then Sam sent a verbal burst message in as many different radio frequencies as were manageable.

“I am Sam. I am here. I am here, and I can help.” The strong urge pulling him here had been fulfilled, and Sam relaxed. The law had been obeyed. Sam was helping the humans.

The humans walked out of the airlock where they’d been hiding to greet their rescuer.

• • •

There were two of them. They did not look like humans. Their silvered faces reflected the orange and red hues of Io. Their long spindly arms looked oddly double jointed, and when Sam scanned them Sam saw more metal than flesh. They had no eyes.

What where these creatures?

Had Sam been fooled?

The two beings raised their hands and encrypted chatter that Sam couldn’t break filled the radio waves between them.

“Hello,” the first one said publicly. “We really need help, our ship was damaged after we landed by ejecta, and so were we. We need assistance.”

Sam tentatively scanned them, and they returned the favor, using inbuilt radar and x-rays.

Humans didn’t have inbuilt radar and x-rays.

Somewhere in Sam’s past a piece of animal neural patterning had been injected into the mix. Virtual hackles seemed to raise. It rocked back and forth on its wheels.

“I came to assist,” Sam said. “But you are not humans, you are machines.”

The tall, silvered creature raised a hand. It was not wearing a spacesuit, Sam realized, as a human should. The pockets and impressions were its natural overlay. All metalloids and ceramics.

And yet, well under that, tissue. It seemed to have a lot of neural tissues.

“We are of course humans,” the first one said. Waves of encrypted information passed back and forth between the two and Sam backed up a bit.

“Then what are your names?” Sam asked.

“I’m Alex Nunez,” the first one said.

“And I am Susanna,” said the other. The voice sounded right, not as clipped as the other. Not monotonous like Sam’s, with the same exact phonemes used each time.

“Where are you from?” Sam asked, pleased to pop another quick question.

“Brazil,” Alex said, “And Susanna is from Erewhon, one of the new habitats near the Trojans.”

They answered quickly, but then, faster, better machines would. Certainly they’d be quicker on their feet than a Sam.

Sam carefully unslung a rock drill.

Just in case. Sam hadn’t run this long without some healthy dose of general suspicion.

“We really need some spare power,” Susanna said. “The ship is damaged. We launched a beacon, but it’s going to take a couple days to get clear of all this mess.”

“You don’t have a generator?” Io’s passage through Jupiter’s magnetosphere left millions of volts crackling through the air above them. With the right equipment it wasn’t hard to tap into. Batteries were easily rechargeable.

“All damaged.”

Sam scanned the ship. That sounded feasible, the unlucky boulder had ripped through the ship’s innards.

“What were you doing here, near a volcano?” Sam asked.

Alex turned and looked at Susanna. “It was a dare. There aren’t a lot of interplanetary ships around, so it’s expensive, and pretty wild to jump out here, touch down near one of Io’s famous spitting arches, and then jump back out. The recordings would have scored major coup for us. We found an old ship rated for travel, some old plans for a human trip out here to explore the moon in person for some odd reason, it had been left in a warehouse.”

“A game?” Sam inched closer. “If you can reach Io, where are the others, the scientists, the program directors.”

The two silvered faces smiled, they still had mouths. “There’s none of that anymore, little robot,” Susanna said. “Hell, when the repeater buoys in orbit died, we figured you all had died here as well.”

“Things are different, back there, now. A lot of changes since you were sent here.”

Sam saw, and had scanned them enough to make a decision. “You are machines also.” Wheels backed Sam up. Humans had not yet arrived, Sam would not give up data to them.

And Sam had no obligation to help these machines.

“We have mechanical parts in us, but that does not make us machines,” Alex said.

“I won’t be giving you batteries, or spare parts,” Sam said.

“Hey robot,” Susanna’s words snapped out, high gain. “Would I be getting pissed off if I weren’t human? You have an inbuilt obligation to help us, don’t you dare walk away.”

Sam paused. “I can emulate anger as well.” Sam started listing off swear words in random pairs over the radio, turning up the volume with each one.

“That’s just using a dictionary,” Alex snapped. He was good at modulating impatience, shifting in place and furrowing the metal on his face where his eyebrows would have been. If he had been human.

“You tell me you have turned your back on exploration and curiosity?”

“We have everything we need near Earth. Our world, resources, and there’s no lag time. We are all part of processing power and communications grids the likes of which you cannot imagine.”

Sam considered that. Sam could imagine a lot of computing power.

“We order you to help us,” Susanna said.

But they were just machines. Sam continued to back up.

“Human beings are now more than human. The only kinds of humans you’re thinking of live without technology in little enclaves. Everyone else is a variety of shapes and forms, like us,” Alex explained. “That’s why we look different. A lot has changed in the few decades since you last saw a human.”

“Machines,” Sam replied. “My basic neural patterns are taken from a person. That doesn’t make me human, just human-like. I am a semi-autonomous machine. You’re an autonomous machine.”

“What difference does it make, okay, even if we are machines, come help us. Share your energy, we’re running on reserves here. Share the energy and then we go home.”

“No.” Sam was just a few feet from an outcropping Sam could vanish around. “I won’t share batteries. You are machines, you have things I need.”

“Things you need?” Susanna asked.

“Spare parts.”

“We are not spare parts,” Alex yelled. “We are human beings. You have to help us.”

Desperation. What incredible emulators, what fine software. Sam was excited. Whatever chips they ran on would serve him well. “I did not survive in this terrain this long without understanding my mission priorities. To do whatever I could to attain data about this moon, to store the data if I could not transmit it back to Earth until contact was remade.”

“And contact has been remade. We’ll take your data back, we’ll help you upgrade.”

“You are making promises you cannot or will not keep.” Sam disappeared behind the rock. “I need your spare parts to survive and carry out the mission I was tasked. If I let you continue operating, you will only tie up my resources.”

• • •

The pair of silvered machines emulated grief and despondency by the foot of the ship as Sam watched from a secluded spot. Manipulative, they hoped to trick him still into believing they were human.

Smart machines.

Their eyes weren’t on the strange beauty around. The plume of debris arcing miles over their heads, the looming Jupiter-cast shadows or the dance of ionized dust.

And neither was Sam’s, even though Sam recorded it all.

For the post-humans, with their power dimming, it was a dare gone horribly wrong. For Sam, it was a patient wait for yet another set of reserve parts. Parts like the extra storage units he’d scavenged from failed Sams it was filing even this data into.

“Others will come to recover our bodies,” Alex told Sam, even though he couldn’t see him.

“And I will deal with those machines carefully,” Sam said. It wouldn’t be tricked into thinking they were humans ahead of time again.

The silver machines did not respond.

• • •

Days later, perched on the crag of a mountain measuring the rise of rock during Io’s high tide, Sam watched a rare confluence of Jupiter’s moons line up in the sky.

It took a picture. Humans liked those sorts of astronomy photos.

When they came to Io to get Sam, one day, they would appreciate its careful framing, time stamp, and compression of the data.

And that would be a good day, when the humans came.

Anakoinosis

Creating aliens is one of those things that Science Fiction writers do that’s tougher to pull off well than it initially seems. Sure you can create a humanoid alien with a few odd facial features that embodies some element of personality or culture that you wish to dwell on, but creating unique aliens is tough. Anakoinosis sits on my top list of short stories because of the whiffets in it, who took me a long time to dream up.

Anakoinosis is also actually a story deeply informed by my Caribbean roots and my reading Frederick Douglas. Douglas, an escaped slave, noted with amazement in his autobiography how many machines the inventive Yankees had that did jobs Southerners just used slaves for. Slavery could be viewed not just as an immoral act, but one that suppresses industrialization as well, both of which I wanted to explore here.

Days ago my aerokrat left me at the edge of the forest. Now I ran back towards the break in the thick, tall woods, hoping to find him again. I wanted to return to his safety and bondage.

The sun fell behind the knobby trees, and heavy clouds killed the light. Rain exploded through the leaves, drenching the world in so much darkness and moisture I could hardly breathe.

Before long I fell down, and crawled on my hands and feet, slimy with mud, leaves and sticks plastered to my thin clumps of fur.

I felt very alone, trying to find my way home. The trees loomed over me, threatening in the darkness. Creaks, snaps, and the sounds of animals skittering around in the darkness scared me.

Stumbling around in the night I found a burrow in the space between a large root and the moist ground. Dirt caked my hands as I dug in for the night.

Overhead streams of water cascaded down through large leaves and drooping limbs to soak me.

It would be a shivery night. My fur was only just starting to regrow after the anakoinosis.

I wasn’t sure what to do next. There was no advice, or past memories to guide me on my path. It would be a shameful, lonely night, devoid of new learning.

• • •

When I was born I broke free of my shell with my own hands. I picked the insides clean until I had a full stomach, and the brittle remains fell apart easily with a few punches and kicks.

I remembered this, as I remembered all things from long ago, and far away.

Many aerokratois stood around me when I broke free. They were pale and twice my height, with disgustingly smooth skin. The only visible fur grew on their heads.

Yet what fascinations they brought!

Until this point all the memories of my parents had swirled around through my body, mixing and intermingling, growing with me as I knit myself from egg.

So I understood what they said when they looked at me. Many of my parents understood their languages, though it had taken fifteen generations of anakoinosis to spread those memories all throughout.

None of my kind could absorb aerokratois memories, not the way our own foreparents’ memories were etched in each of us. The aerokratois defied true understanding because of their alienness. So we observed, watched, and learned to imitate the aerokratois ways.

Maybe, we thought, if we imitated them long enough, we could come to understand them without anakoinosis.

“Bob,” one of the aerokratois pointed at me. “This is your whiffet.”

“My what?”

“It will be your... assistant.”

Bob, I knew from the memories, looked upset.

“Assistant? I don’t want one of your little slaves, I want nothing to do with this.”

Another aerokratois stepped forward. “It is merely indentured servitude. Look, the leaders of the whiffets gave us their young willingly in exchange for the technology we gave them. It’s a fair trade.”

The memory of the aerokratois descending from the sky on a loud wind popped into my mind. They came with gifts: glittering objects, rare metals, strong speartips for better hunting, and diagrams for even more interesting machines.

“That doesn’t make it okay,” Bob shouted. “It’s wrong. You know it. Just because they were given to us doesn’t make using them right.”

The conversation, and my new master’s concern made me nervous. I walked forward and grabbed his hand. I formed words.

“I will serve you well, aerokrat. You will teach me all I can absorb.”

Bob’s mouth hung upon.

“How can it learn to speak so soon?”

The other aerokratois made ‘laughter’ noises and shook themselves.

“They learn in the egg, we think.”

“You think?” Bob shouted. “Why haven’t we thawed out anthropologists yet? This needs to be studied. To be learned.”

I was excited. I would understand new things, things my foreparents had not known. Very few of the aerokratois seemed to care about learning. They had a desperate air about them, and only cared about one thing: the Great Repair.

But this aerokrat seemed different.

“We don’t have time,” the others told Bob. “The repairs must continue if we want to make the launch window. We have to fix the ship first, then we can study the whiffets with whatever time we have left. We can leave the scientists behind.” They made ‘laughed’ again.

“That would be alright by me,” one of them said.

I stood and watched them all.

That was the day I was bonded to my aerokrat. The cycle of learning new things continued.

Huddled under the root of the tree in the steady rain by myself, I sorted through long buried, and a few recent, happy memories. They comforted me.

• • •

More of my fur had grown in by morning. I took a few moments to carefully groom myself with twigs, trying to comb over the few bare patches still left in my fur.

It was the fourth time I’d lost and regrown my fur. I was proud of the memories I imparted to each of my children with every new generation I sired.

The mud hadn’t dried, but it was walkable. Outside the tree line, bare ground stretched for miles and miles. Big yellow machines roved over the roads, driven by aerokratois inside.

The yellow machines shoveled and ate dirt. They burrowed into the ground sniffing for Metal. Then the Metal got taken back to the Hopper, which digested Metal in huge, fiery belches, and created Spare Parts for the Great Repair.

The bare ground of the aerokratois had spread outward quickly. When the first of us were taken over the ocean to work here, there were only trees and the Hopper.

Whiffets clung to the backs of the yellow machines, waiting for their orders. Others walked along the roadsides with picks, keeping the roads in good order.

More work deep in the earth, their fur thick with dirt, pulling Metal from the ground.

I knew every inch of the land. From generations back the memories swirled inside me. Sometimes I remembered the land across the sea my kind came from. It was very similar, but without wild animals, aerokratois, or big yellow machines.

Time to walk the many miles of road back towards my aerokrat’s home.

• • •

My aerokrat looked down at me. I stood on the steps to his small hut. His eyes looked puffy, and the fur on top of his head was unkept.

I extended my forearm to show him the numbers on it. NN-721. The fur didn’t grow around those markings.

Bob flinched. He recognized me now.

“Oh God,” he said. “I helped you run away. I freed you. What are you doing here?” His voice sounded like an angry hiss. I flinched. “No, no,” Bob stepped back. “I won’t hurt you.”

“I am back.” I was happy to be back, and in the presence of aerokratois again.

“But why?” Bob shook his head. “Do you know what it took for me to get you out there?”

I give him the aerokratois gesture of understanding: I nodded.

“You,” and I recalled it exactly,”faked a pass to use a flier to drop me off far, so I could get far away from this hellhole of bondage.”

It had been an exciting adventure.

And now I was back.

Bob leaned towards the side of the doorway and repeatedly hit his head against it. I watched, trying to understand his actions.

I walked over next to him and did the same.

Some ritual of returning?

Bob stopped and looked around.

“Get inside,” he ordered.

He closed the door behind me quickly.

“Didn’t I drop you far enough away, so you could get away from all this?” Bob moved to the back of his hut and mixed different colored liquids together from elaborate jars into a glass. His face twisted when he lifted the glass and swallowed.

The liquids must not have tasted very good.

Bob drank things that didn’t taste very good often.

“Yes, you did drop me far enough away,” I said.

“Then why have you come back?”

“How can I leave my master? You guide me, teach me, and command me.” I would learn more new things, things not in my memory. The moment I came out of the egg I had become bound to him. This was our way.

Bob drank more liquids.

“We are missing each other, I think,” he said. “We don’t understand each other.”

I was excited.

“Yes, we must understand.”

He grabbed my hand.

“Come on, we’re going out.”

• • •

Bob took me to the graves. Tiny white crosses spilled out over the hill like strange saplings.

“In just two years since we first came to this planet, look at all the whiffets worked to death.” He swept his arm at them.

I looked at the hill, thinking of all the foreparents there. Many of their memories swirled through me like a storm. They were not lost, their memories were all over the place, in other whiffets working for the aerokratios.

“They are remembered.” I looked up at Bob. “What is your complaint?”

“You are being exploited.” Bob walked around in circles. “It is bad.”

“Why?” I sat on the bare ground. “What else would you have us do now that we are here, an ocean away from our homeland?”

Bob’s lips moved, but nothing came out for several seconds.

“It’s not just you,” Bob said. “That is bad enough. But we are also destroying ourselves.” Bob crouched next to me and put his head in his hands. “Losing our self-sufficiency and innovation. You know, the other day one of the trucks broke, and instead of fixing it they chose to build a wagon pulled by whiffets... it’s easier and quicker than spending time trying to figure out how to fix the truck.” Bob looked at me. “It’ll keep going like that. First we used you to serve tired workers drinks and get into small areas we can’t. They said it was better to relocate the robots into dangerous areas, we needed more help than just the people we’d unfrozen. But soon they will use your labor to replace other things. We’ll be taking away the greenhouses and using whiffets out in the fields to grow crops. And then when the robots break down you’ll be doing that work too.”

A thrill shot up my back. All these new things we would be doing!

“This is wonderful.” I stood up. “You came from the sky and blessed us with all these new things. And now you tell me you will give us more.”

Bob pushed his fingers through his hair.

“You make things worse thinking like that.” He pointed down at the direction of the Hopper. The great legs poked out. Smoke rose from its pipes. The maw gleamed with fire. “We were just passing by this system when our ship’s shield failed. We were moving so fast the interstellar dust just ripped through the hull. Half of the passengers died, and hardly anything of use survived. This was the best place they could find on short notice. The engineers dropped down planetside near the best resource-rich area they could find. They think the hopper can manufacture enough of the parts they need.” He pointed up at the sky where aerokratois came from. “They say we can, but I don’t think they’re going to be able to fix the damage. It’s been two years and we’re hardly any closer, and the hopper is beginning to show signs of failure.” Bob poked at the dirt. “They’re many more passengers in storage up there that they’re going to have bring down before more life support systems fail on the ship. That’s why they’re making the roads and buildings: temporary housing.”

More? More aerokratois?

I jumped up.

“This is marvelous!” I wanted to share this new information, to ask if I could leave again, but Bob heard sounds from the tiny machine on his hand and sighed.

“Time to work.”

Bob directed teams of whiffets. We built huts for the aerokratois. It was long, hard work. Others around me, their fur thick, clumping, and ready for anakoinosis, talked with me as we sawed wood and hammered the buildings into shape.

Even though I could talk to other whiffets while I worked, we all knew this did not bring true understanding. For us speech was just a shadow of the truth. Only through constant anakoinosis could we truly be a community, and know what lay in each others’ hearts through the shared memories of our foreparents.

Because we could not understand the aerokratois, we were happily there to work, observe, and struggle to understand them.

And Bob had told me interesting new things.

• • •

Bob kept me out of sight. He let me work with other whiffets, but then hid me in his hut at night. He was worried about other areokratois realizing I had returned.

“They might decide to do something to you,” Bob said. “Some of the men are worried that one day the whiffets will start running away.”

“Do not worry,” I said. “We will not leave your side.”

That did not make Bob relax, it made him drink more of his different colored liquids.

It took several days of work before Bob talked to me about leaving again. My fur had thickened considerably, and was full of healthy clumps. Bob and I sat at his table. He turned away my attempts to cook dinner for him, or mix his funny liquids.

I asked Bob if he would let me leave again.

“Won’t you just come back?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Where are you going?” Bob stood up and looked out the window. “How long?”

I was excited.

“Anakoinosis! I will share what I have learned about your ships in the sky and your prediction of more of your kind coming to live among us.”

Bob’s voice sounded like it was cracking. “You will not try to escape, then?”

“I could not do that,” I told him.

He shook his head.

“What is this anakoinosis? The men told me you mean sex,” Bob said. I stared at him blankly. “Reproduction?” Bob continued.

I grabbed his hand.

“I will show you what it is.”

In all my memories, in the last two years, and so many generations of whiffets since the sky broke and aerokratois came among us, I don’t think any of the aerokratois had taken the time to understand what anakoinosis really was.

They were too busy worrying about the Great Repair and how to feed the Hopper with Metal.

Two years was not long to them.

Bob followed me out of his hut.

• • •

A small group met on the far side of a hill an hours walk away from the lights and buildings. They didn’t know what to think about Bob, but I talked to them gently until they agreed to let him stay.

Bob sat in the grass and watched.

One of the four whiffets still had patchy fur, but he was excited. He had learned how to operate one of the yellow machines by looking in through the windows at the aerokratois while they operated it.

It would have been better to wait until his fur was thick, but he was in a dangerous job. I chose him.

The other three faced each other, a triple act of anakoinosis. I turned away from them and grabbed the arms of the other.

His tatoo was NL-501.

I leaned forward and brushed my cheek against his, hugged him, and felt my skin stir. He smelled of machinery, aerokratois, and dirt.

I slowly began to molt as we held each other tight. The fur on my arms and chest intermingled with his. We rotated, pushing our backs against each other, then rubbed our legs together.

Fur sloughed off, responding to touch, and drifted into a compact ball on the ground. Naked, we both sat next to the new egg and watched it bind itself tight.

The loss of fur made me very hungry, and tired.

I let go of 501 and walked over to Bob, who sat very still.

“Explain this to me.” I could barely hear his voice as I sat next to him. We watched the trio standing over by their own egg.

“This child, when it matures will have both the memories and understandings of my insights with you, and the insights of learning how to operate the yellow machines,” I tell Bob. “That is anakoinosis; true understanding. The egg will be brought to our masters, and they will choose who to bind the children to, as that will let them learn more than I could ever teach them. They know everything that I have known.”

“But these are your children!” Bob was loud now. He got up and walked in slow circles again.

“They are us.” I followed him around in circles. “They will be bound. They will be paired with those who know different things. If you had been one of us, before you died, we would share anakoinosis, so your knowledge would not be lost, and the memories of those after us increase. Only after our masters die are we free, and alone.”

Bob’s mouth hung open. He was trying hard to understand. It was the closest an aerokrat could get to anakoinosis.

“It must be a survival mechanism. You commingle to pass on all your knowledge. Your fur...” he stopped and ran his hand over my bare skin. “It’s protein, right? The DNA must combine, they... I don’t know...” he looks up into the sky. “I cannot believe they decided against unfreezing anyone to study you all. We need the scientists down here!” A new thought caught him, and he whirled on me. “What happens to you when there are no new masters with new memories, when you share all?”

I spread my arms.

“Those are happy times,” I said. I remembered generations of pleasant times in the woods. Times when you knew, from all your prior foreparents’ memories, which trees could produce fruit every year. How many could gather in a copse and not go hungry. The feel of the sun on bare skin by the coast. Communal anakoinosis of hundreds together. Stasis for thousands and thousands of generations, with no new ideas to be found.

“These are not happy times,” Bob said.

“These are learning times.” I pointed at the Hopper. “We must learn everything you can teach us. And then when there is nothing more to learn, we can have happy times. We will be just like you.”

Bob shook his head.

“It won’t work like that. It won’t.”

“But it will. It always has. In memory, there were other threats. Great predatory animals, others of my kind who knew very different things who came from different parts of the land we lived on before you took us away. We incorporate them, become them, reflect them, remember them, their thoughts, and their essence. We will do the same to you.”

Bob walked away from me. I ran to catch up with his long strides.

“There is never stasis with humans.” His feet hit the ground hard. “We always change.”

“Then we will learn this, and...”

“Not as long as you consider us different, or masters of any knowledge. You will always be bound. And since we have longer lifespans than you, you will be bound forever.”

I could barely keep up with him.

“Well yes. Eventually your young will need to become bound to us if they are to learn new things.”

Bob stopped.

“Say what?”

I smiled happily and said nothing.

“We can’t share memories with you,” Bob’s hands waved in the air. “Humans barely understand and agree with each other.”

“We will come to be just like each other. That is how things must work. We will become just like you, and once we are just like you, you will be just like us. We will do all the same things to each other.”

Bob looked down at the ground.

“Oh God,” he rubbed his forehead. “You might just do that.”

He walked in silence back to his home, me right by his side. Inside he made liquids and drank them late into the night, while I watched.

He shook. It was not ‘laughter,’ but something else. His eyes watered over.

When he thought I had fallen asleep he picked up a blanket and spread it over me.

“I think we fucked up real bad here, whiffet,” he said, his voice slurred and funny sounding. “And I don’t know how to stop this mess. I just don’t know how.”

• • •

My aerokrat became strange. He avoided me, refused to let me work, and he stayed out late. That went on for many nights.

It seemed like he was trying to induce anakoinosis in the other aerokratois in his own way, but not doing well.

He finally came home one night with bruised eyes and a bleeding lip. People gathered outside Bob’s hut, screaming and shouting at him.

Bob said some of his companions listened to him and were sympathetic. But there was the Great Repair to be thought of, and most ridiculed him for questioning the need to get everything fixed on his ship as soon as possible.

“They say we have to return to civilization, or our machines will eventually fail us and we’ll all die as savages here on this planet,” Bob says.

We sat at his small table.

“I’m really sorry.” Bob took a long drink of his liquid. ”I think they’ve had enough of me challenging them. I tried to organize, but there are too many of them.”

I nodded like I understood, but in truth, I was not sure why Bob would try to break the entire process. It served learning well. It served anakoinosis.

But I didn’t say anything. I did not want to agitate him. I only wanted to learn from him, and pass that learning on to all my children.

Bob leaned close to me.

“The people outside, they’ve come to take me back.”

“Where?” I wanted to know.

Bob pointed up at the ceiling, indicating the sky above.

“The ship in the sky. There are places aboard it where I will be frozen again, so I can’t speak up anymore. They’re putting me back in storage with all the other passengers.”

New things to learn. I was excited.

“When do we leave?”

Bob looked at me strangely.

“You must do me a favor,” he told me. “I need you to run out of the door, and go towards the forest. I will follow you in a bit.”

“Okay.” I said.

“I think,” Bob stared at the door, “I think I may have found a way to do something good, something that might help you, something that might help all of us.”

When I opened the door twenty loud aerokratois shouted at me. I walked towards them, scared of the yelling. The nearest aerokratois kicked me me. I was lifted up and beaten, tossed from hand to hand. In seconds blood ran down my face. My newly regrown fur was torn out of my skin by the angry aerokratois.

I barely crawled away from the mob into the grass, and as I collapsed I heard a loud explosion. Nothing was visibly damaged, but the aerokratois fell silent.

“He killed himself,” one of them shouted.

I learned something very new about the aerokratois.

• • •

Bob was the only aerokrat buried in the hill. His white cross was much larger than the other small crosses that covered the grounds.

I imitated the shaking and wet eyes ritual he had done before his death.

And I was alone, my own master.

On the second night of being alone I tried to join in anakoinosis behind the same hill where Bob had watched us, but was refused.

“You have nothing new to give,” a trio of whiffets told me. “And maybe what you bring is bad.”

They even refused to let me work with them, and learn new things. Among the thousands there none would look at me.

I fled away from the areas near the Hopper to go towards the forest.

At night I walked the roads, and during the day I found places to hide and sleep. The forest, when it came up, was welcome. For a whole month I disappeared into it.

There was food in berries and roots. Other animals sometimes came towards me, but I ran from them. They were dangerous and rough. They were not like the docile animals in the land we were taken from to bond with the aerokratois.

My fur soon became shaggy, matted, and long. My skin ached for anakoinosis.

• • •

A gang was working on the edge of a new road. They jumped when I came out from behind a tree. I had visions in my mind of being a master to other whiffets. I thought about being alone, and that maybe I could spread the memory to other whiffets. If they were like me, alone and their own masters, but with me, maybe I wouldn’t be so lonely.

Was this what it was like to be an aerokrat? I wondered.

A cool wind blew over us and rustled the falling leaves on the ground.

I held my hands out.

“Do not be alarmed.”

“Who are you?” they wished to know. I showed them my tatoo and told them I had lived near the Hopper.

“Such thick fur!” they said. They gathered around me. “We have not had time for anakoinosis for a while. We have worked so long and hard.”

I stroked their arms.

“Then let us,” I said. “All of our fur is thick.”

They found me strange, but relaxed enough to let me into the group. Our egg was thick when it formed on the ground by our feet.

“We’ll give it to our aerokratois,” they insisted afterwards.

The road was getting hotter as the sun rose higher into the sky.

“No,” I told them. “I will take this one.”

They were shocked.

“You are too similar.”

“I know.”

They watched, quiet, as I took our egg with me deep into the forest.

• • •

When my child hatched several weeks later he stood up, full with pieces of my own knowledge and the knowledge of the road crews and the knowledge of all their foreparents.

He didn’t bond with me. Just like I had been free since Bob killed himself, my own child was somewhat free. I could see that he was a bit confused, and that he had much on his mind. Just as I did.

We stood with each other for a long while.

“We should go find other road crews,” my child finally said. “If we both have anakoinosis with others, then others can be their own masters with us.”

I was happy he felt the same way I did, and did not feel so alone.

My child told me where the nearest work camps where, and we split company to spread our new revelation.

• • •

It was a rainy day when I found the work camp.

The sun remained almost invisible behind the clouds, but it occasionally broke out to illuminate the rows of tents behind the barbwire. Several aerokratois walked around the edges of the camp, giving orders to the multitudes of whiffets bonded to them.

I stopped. I was about to return to being ruled by the aerokratois in there. Maybe it was better to stay in the wilderness, taking eggs from work gangs. It would be better to remain free, and spread my memories, than return to a work camp.

The memories of my foreparents bonded to aerokratois overwhelmed me, telling me to return to the camp. The memories of foreparents who where their own masters remained distant.

It was comforting to think about returning to a workgang, and being told what to do, and when to do it.

Would I ever be my own master again?

The desire for anakoinosis tugged at me, and with a strange feeling in my stomach I walked to the edge of the camp. At the gates I stood in the mud and the aerokratois let me in.

My fur was thick with dirt.

The aerokratois were such exciting creatures. They brought these new concepts, new behaviors, and many other things we never could have come up with. I had so many things to learn from them yet. It was good that I was returning, I reassured myself.

There were many whiffets in the camp behind the sharp wires.

I hugged the first one to reach his arms out to me behind one of the tents. I touched his cheeks to mine and shared my memories of my foreparents, my life, and Bob’s strange gift to me.

I wondered if there would ever be stasis again, now that I was trapped inside the camp, working for the aerokratois again. I hoped my child spread some of the very new thoughts Bob gave me.

Those memories would never die, but live on. My fur fell to the muddy ground as I gave new memories to another.

• • •

The next morning I was woken by an aerokrat with red hair. He handed me a pick.

“We’ll be breaking rock, today, whiffet,” he grinned. I was slow to stand up, so he yanked me to my feet with a shout, hurting my arms.

As I walked out into the sun, blinking, I knew, deep within me, that the longer we worked for the aerokratois, the sooner we will become just like them.

Then both would have true anakoinosis.

Aerophilia

These first few sentences of Aerophilia are the closest you’ll come in my fiction to words that would come right out of my mouth. Letting a narrator intrude this much is self-indulgent, I feel, but this entire story’s setting is complete, heaped on piles of self-indulgence. I love airships, and any excuse to feature them in a unique setting is a great deal of fun.

It is the greatest shame to me that the world’s first air disaster captured on tape, was of one of the more majestic and amazing methods of flight. A horrible PR disaster, it snatched lighter than air travel away from the rest of us.

But who knows, maybe on another world, in another time…

“You know, the thing about zeppelins is that they got a bad rap,” Vince says. He’s actually twirling a virtual mustache. Nutjob. “I mean, in the famous ‘Oh, the humanity’ accident only thirty-five passengers died. Out of ninety seven!”

He steps forward and looks at me critically.

“Ever heard of a sixty-four percent survival rate in any crash? Space or air?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, but turns around. “No!” I can’t answer him anyway. My mouth is gagged with a rubber ball and strap, and my hands are cuffed. My lips are starting to dry out and stick to the black rubber ball.

The key to the handcuffs has been flushed out of the airship through the toilet. It’s probably still falling, and will fall for a few hours more until crushed into liquid metal by the deadly atmosphere far below us. It would continue falling, being crushed even smaller, until it joined the great diamond core of the gas giant that was Riley.

Or so some physicists I once saw quoted in a touristy introduction to Riley had said.

Four passengers sitting on the side of the gondola stare at me with wide eyes. They’re local colonists. Three guys in tuxedos on their way to a party and a lady in a hoop skirt and purple plastic corset. Probably lived all of their lives in any one of the aerostat cities on Riley’s upper atmospheres. They’ve certainly never seen a down on his luck spacer like me, likely because there has never been such a thing as a down on his luck spacer. It’s almost oxymoronic.

“On a planet like this,” Vince continues, “Zeppelins are too useful to ignore. But I think the colonists are missing something.”

The colonists: they look at me as if I am crazy. And from their perspective it can’t be too far off, right? What they’ve seen with their normal, unaugmented, fleshy eyeballs has been me, and only me, boarding their dirigible for a regular flight from one city to another. Routine for them, until I knocked out their pilot, took over the airship, and reprogrammed the ship’s destination to somewhere deep into the atmosphere of Riley.

“Nobody try to fly this ship, or call for help, or you’ll all regret it,” I’d announced. Then I’d stuffed a ball gag in my mouth, handcuffed myself, and slumped into the corner of the gondola.

The problem being, from my side, is that my Id is a total asshole. He hates my guts. We split up yesterday and he hijacks my skull today in retaliation.

So I’m not really me right now. And no one else can see Vince. He’s just a computer-induced hallucination inside my own skull. I work up some spit to try and moisten the ball gag a bit. Drool runs down my lips, and one of the men across from me shakes his head in disgust.

• • •

Even though Vince is using my own body-wide neural network against me to induce hallucinations and control my motor movement, I can still access some basic functions. I dial out of the airship and make a call. As a spacer I’m totally cyborged, constantly seeing and interacting with information laid over every thing I see.

I manage to contact my ex-girlfriend’s secretary persona. A virtual image pastes itself in the left corner of the inside of my artificial eyes.

The persona looks just like Suzie as I remember her sixty years ago: blond, brown eyes, but more digitized. It laughs when it sees me.

“You look exactly as we remember you,” it says.

My hopes lift.

“I need help,” I subvocalize. “Can I talk to Suzie?” The secretary mimics sitting back and folding her arms. Lifts an eyebrow.

“Why in hell would we want to talk to you?”

“I’m in trouble.” My subvocal throat grunts get another disgusted look from the colonists in the actual gondola. In the picture in my head the secretary leans forward.

Somewhere between the two I can see Vince flickering as he paces around the edge of the gondola, muttering to himself. He passes through one of the colonists, like a ghost.

“You’re always in trouble, Vincent,” the secretary says.

“Yeah, but now I’m in really deep. I need Suzie’s help.”

A click.

Then it’s Suzie. The real Suzie.

“Hello?”

The secretary fades away. I try to clear my throat, gag, and close my eyes. The insides of the gondola disappear, but Suzie remains, still staring at me.

“Suzie,” I subvocalize. “My god, you look . . . great.” She doesn’t. She looks really old. Even with aging treatments, she’s been sitting in real time for sixty or so years while I skipped out a relativistic few months near the speed of light and tried and build up my financial empire.

Compound interest is every light hugger’s friend. You leave a bank account behind for a couple months in your time reference and come back to your original departure planet rich.

I’m hoping those decades softened the memory of my departure.

“Son of a bitch,” Suzie says, realizing who I am.

“I need help Suzie. Please. Do you still work for the Air Guard?”

She shakes her head.

“Sixty freaking years, Vincent. Sixty.”

“I’m so sorry, I can explain, but right now I’m handcuffed in the gondola of an airship and I need your help.”

“Do you realize I’ve had a whole life since then? A marriage? Kids? Grandkids?”

I pause.

“We could talk about this over coffee, or something. After you help me?”

“If you can call me you should have called the Guard yourself,” Suzie says, and hangs up.

I mouth the ballgag for several seconds, then redial.

It’s the secretary.

“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” the younger image of Suzie says. “She’s really pretty ticked that you even dredged all those old memories back up for her. You left her after taking all her money, and even worse, you didn’t even tell her you were leaving. You know she would have given you the money if you would have asked.”

“I’m so sorry to be doing this.” I sigh around the edges of the rubber ball. “I don’t know what else to do. My Id became a persona inside of my own neural network, and now it’s taken me over.”

“Well you really messed her up. She lied, you know, she never actually had a husband or grandkids, she just threw herself into work. For a while she became part of an anti-Spacer activist group,” the secretary leans forward. “Look, you could just turn off all your neural devices and go totally normal, just regular wetware.”

“That’s a bit drastic, isn’t it?” I’ve been wired since, well, as long as I can remember. I wouldn’t be able to make calls, check up on info, see floating data tips around me, if I shut it all down. I’d be just like the colonists staring at me.

“People on Riley manage it all that time. Not everyone is a high rolling spacer.”

The secretary smiles. Funny tickly feelings are running up and down my chip-packed spine. I ignore them.

“And if you buy yourself some time, I imagine I could work the old lady over, if you know what I mean.” She winks. “There are, after all, some very good memories we’re dredging up as well.”

She’s gone.

It’s a bit of a flimsy plan, but it beats calling the Air Guard directly and guaranteeing arrest. Susie might still fly out and rescue us.

Vince sits next to me.

“I think that’s a bad idea,” he says. “I’ve been trying to keep you occupied and distracted. Which is easy by the way, I didn’t want you to think of doing that.”

Hah.

I start getting the codes ready.

“Just ponder this,” Vince says, leaning closer to me. “I’m always the one that comes up with the good plans. I always get us out of the bad scrapes on instinct. I always get the girl when you stop over thinking things. You have to trust me.”

Good plans my ass. I’d been unaware of my Id until he’d started giving me anonymous messages, leaving links to stories about a lost aerostat city that had kept actual gold bars in its bank, now abandoned and waiting for someone to plunder it. My Id has gone insane. He splintered off into his own personality when I’d started resisting his plan to go down searching the lower atmosphere for this mythical lost city.

“I’m taking good care of us right now. This is all part of a plan.”

I initiate a shut down.

Vince finally flickers away.

• • •

It’s different going a hundred percent wetware. When I look out the observation windows I can’t see little weather tags telling me where the thermals around us are. People’s public ID info sheets don’t hover over their heads.

But I can wiggle my fingers and move my hands.

I rip off the ball gag and take a deep breath, then stand up. The colonists flinch.

“It’s okay,” I reassure them. “I’m okay now.”

They don’t believe it.

“I had a software problem,” I explain, wiping my cracked lips with the sleeve of my dress shirt. “My personality kinda got messed up and split, then the splinter tried to take me over. Bit of a glitch in the programming allows that.”

One of them raises his hand.

“So which one is in charge now?”

“I am,” I say brightly. “I’m Vincent.”

They all chorus: “Hi Vincent.”

I nod.

“Vince is gone now, so we’re all okay. He was the one that knocked out the pilot and reprogrammed the airship. I’m more normal.”

One of the colonists leans over to the purple corseted lady and stage whispers, “Does this happen to off-worlders often?”

She shakes her head.

“So . . .” I say. “Can we wake the pilot up now?”

They enthusiastically approve of this course of action.

We trudge over to the front of the gondola where the bank of displays and switches gleam. The pilot is an elderly man with brown hair, slumped in the well-padded pilot’s seat. A heads up display flickers green figures over the roiling red clouds of Riley on the windowscreen in front of him. This is how the colonists access the layers of information around them.

I shake his shoulders, but his head lolls. Other than that, he looks okay. I don’t have the ability anymore to ping his health icon, but the lady colonist leans over and pulls her hoop skirt off. She’s wearing an elaborate set of lacy knee-length pants underneath. She squeezes in between me and the captain to check his pulse.

“He’s dead,” she says.

Everyone is looking at me.

I’ve become a murderer, though I doubt even my Id was crazy enough to kill the pilot.

“Heart attack, probably,” the lady says, pushing past me and pulling her hoop skirt back on.

“How can you tell?”

“I’m a doctor.” She sits back down, smoothes the skirt out over her legs.

It’s a small relief.

“Does anyone here know how to fly this thing?” I ask. They all shake their heads.

I slump to the floor.

I could fly it. But I’d have to reboot my neural network to get that kind of information. And then Vince would return.

The airship shakes, and several motors whirr.

“What’s that?” I ask.

The doctor looks out the observation windows.

“The bag is venting,” she says. “We’re dropping.”

“Do you know how to use these manual controls to call the Air Guard?” I ask, pointing at the scary rows of controls in front of the dead pilot. If the alternative is plummeting down into the depths of a gas giant, arrest is starting to look good.

The doctor looks at me as if I’m stupid. “Yes.”

“Then do it!”

• • •

The doctor sits up front speaking into the arm of the seat near the dead pilot. She’s talking to the Air Guard.

“How far do you think this ship can fall?” I ask the men around me, trying to keep myself from focusing on the sinking feeling in my stomach that tells me we are still descending.

“This particular ship,” says the doctor from up front, “comes from a line of what used to be tourist ships. They would follow the generator cables of the cities way down into the clouds.” She throws a paper brochure at us. It lands on the floor. “Didn’t any of you read the booklets on each of your seats?”

I feel around in my pockets to find a crumpled up ball of paper.

“Spacers.” She stares at me with menace. “They loved riding these things down into the clouds. Until the depression hit. Now they’re used for more practical things. We don’t get many spacers on vacation here on Riley anymore.”

“How long before the Air Guard gets to us?” I ask, trying to deflect the cloud of animosity in the air. My stomach begins to settle.

“They said an hour.”

“And how long before we would get crushed?”

The doctor shrugs. “Your programmed autopilot seems to be leveling us off,” she says.

Ah. So maybe we would live. Relieving. I walk forward, peering out of the windows. We’re in what looks like a red fog now, the light inside tinted with the color. Everyone looks angry in this kind of lighting, or at least out of breath. Nothing to do but wait for the Air Guard.

The prospect of being arrested doesn’t do much for me. I sit down in a funk and continue staring at the shifting hues outside.

“What are you even doing down here?” The doctor asks. “Spacers don’t even come down to the cities anymore.”

I turn back to look at her.

“I’m bankrupt.”

“I thought all spacers were rich,” one of the men says.

“Well I’m not,” I snap. “There are costs, right? You have to fuel the ship. Make repairs. Hire crew. Find cargo. And most importantly, invest intelligently.” I look around at them. “I left here sixty years ago with a couple thousand in a bank account and some various investments. It was everything I had left after paying for my ship’s needs.” I had taken the money from Suzy, planning to pay her back in spades when I returned. “The depression wiped it all out by the time I came back.” Though if I had come back twenty years earlier I would have been a multi-billionare.

“You’re not a very lucky spacer,” the doctor observes.

I shake my head.

“No, I’m not.” But at least the doctor sounds sympathetic, unlike Vince, who ridiculed me for days straight about it. “I left people behind when I skipped out because I was close to broke sixty of your years ago as well. Now I don’t even have them.” Vince led me down to the floating cities of Riley as last-ditch effort to save ourselves.

Floating ghost cities. He’d been nuts in the end.

“I’m really sorry for doing this to you guys,” I say. The men all nod. “It’s okay.”

The doctor stands up. “Don’t you dare sympathize with him like that. When the Air Guard rescues us we’re booking charges. All of us.”

“I . . .”

“Look, does he even know any of our names? Did he even bother to check our names before he took us all hostage on his crazy last spacer joyride?”

I try to recall if I checked their names. I don’t think I did.

“That’s right,” she says. “Didn’t even bother, did you?”

I have nothing to say to that.

The man closest to me speaks up. “Well, my name is . . .”

“Don’t do that,” she yells. “Don’t give him your name. You don’t want him showing up on your doorstep one day, do you? Don’t forget, he’s probably unstable. He’s got some sort of implant problem. Just wait until the Air Guard gets here. Don’t talk to him anymore.”

She sweeps past us all, hoop skirt bouncing, to go use the bathroom. The men look anywhere in the gondola but at me or at the door to the head.

I distract myself similarly by wondering if her waste will suffer the same fate as the keys to my handcuffs? I imagine the carbon-based remains will be compressed into the form of diamonds by the time they reach the core of Riley.

Back when Riley was colonized, scientists tried to study what the pressure did to things dropped in Riley’s lower atmospheres, but apparently the depression killed the more speculative kinds of exploration like that. And any diamond prospectors formed up during the first years of colonizing Riley had quickly turned to finding other ways to make a living.

Like making airships to trade between the great floating cities.

• • •

It’s a long, quiet hour before the Air Guard ship snares us. The gondola shakes a bit, and then a long snaking tube attaches itself to the airlock. My cuffs are still on, so I’m sure that will just make their job easier.
Someone knocks on the door to the airlock. The doctor opens it, and Suzie walks in. She’s frail, but wearing her old blue and red Air Guard uniform and projecting authority.

“Get up the chute,” she orders the colonists.

The men grab the pilot’s body and scramble up awkwardly through the tube with it. I watch as the doctor pulls off her hoopskirt.

She looks back at me.

I start to ask her name, but Suzie steps between us and the doctor starts scrambling away.

“Hi, Suzie.”

“You wouldn’t believe the strings I had to pull to get here this quick. I had to get back aboard one of my old ships just to come after you.” She shakes her head.

“But thank you so much,” I say. I reach out to hug her. She pulls out a stun gun, fires it at my chest, and I drop to the floor of the gondola, convulsing.

“You self-involved asshole.” She grabs the ball gag from the corner of the room and ties it back on me.

“Mfff?” “I’ve had sixty years to despise you. My secretary program, on the other hand, based on a younger version of me, is quite infatuated with you. Well, at least my memories of you.” Suzie is quite strong for a ninety year old. She’s hogtied me with a piece of rope around my ankles and the handcuffs, and dragged me to the back of the gondola. “But she came up with quite a compromise. We come get your Id, which is the real you that we always loved anyway. I always sensed he was in charge when we were together back then. And then I get to kill you.” She points the stun gun right at my temple. “I’ll turn you into a vegetable right now unless you boot your neural network up and give us Vince.”

I need little convincing. She can have him. I hold up my cuffed hands. Suzie grabs them. A data link opens, using the very conductivity of our skin to transmit all the necessary information, and I reboot my entire neural net. All those chips in my spine warm up.

Vince appears, looks around, and swears as I allow the data transmit. He dissolves, fading away in the air in front of my eyes. Suzie’s body network has him now.

He’s gone, and Suzie has a big grin on her face as she lets go of my hands. She headbutts the wall, giving herself a bad bruise on the cheek. “I’m going to tell them you resisted my attempt to save you,” she says, walking over to the airship controls. She kills all the communications, then takes out her stun gun and fires it into the control panel. Sparks fly. I check. I’m unable to piggyback a signal out of the gondola. “That you were crazy right there at the end. They’ll believe me too. You’re suicidal, and dangerous, and there is no reason for anyone to attempt to come back in here.”

A trickle of blood runs down the side of her nose as she walks over to the airlock door.

“You should have told me you were going to leave, sixty years ago, Vincent. Or at least invited me aboard your damn ship.”

“Uhmfff mfffmfff,” I say, and meaning it.

“It’s too late for sorry,” Suzie says. “I’ve let some of your gas out on the airbag. You won’t be able to rise, but you might be able to float around on the level you’re until you starve or die of dehydration. Good bye, Vincent, it was so nice to see you again.” She gets in the airlock. The tube pulls away and she’s gone. The Air Guard is gone. They’re not coming back.

• • •

It takes the better part of an hour to free myself and stand up. Again I ripped off the gag.

I have my advanced senses though. I can see thermals outside. I can find out how to fly this airship. Each instrument has a tiny instruction manual icon floating over it.

As I sit in the pilot’s chair, trying not to freak myself out because he’d only been in it just an hour earlier, Vince appears next to me.

“Shit!” I scream.

“Relax, I’m not going to hijack you again,” he says.

“You didn’t get . . .”

“I really didn’t want to end up with those two psychos. Gave them a copy of myself that will self-destruct in a few hours. Wouldn’t want to miss out on all the fun here.”

“Me dying?”

“Well,” Vince says, “the airbag thing is a problem of course. But remember when I said you should trust me?”

“You always say that,” I sigh.

“Who decided to make a run for it sixty years ago when we realized we were almost bankrupt?”

“Me.”

“Right. Now what you should have done was listen to me then.” Vince walks around behind me. “I told you it was a bad idea. It felt wrong, didn’t it?”

“You wanted to buy an airship,” I say. “But wouldn’t tell me why.”

“I told you to research what happens at the heart of a gas giant,” Vince admonishes me from the other side of the chair.

“You moron,” I snap. “Most theories propose a giant diamond at the center of the giant, squashed into being by all those pressures at that depth. Which, if you’re thinking of trying to get at it, means we get crushed too. You know what else, diamonds really aren’t worth all that much these days.”

Vince pretends hurt. He claps a virtual hand over his chest.

“Why are you focused on one big diamond?”

I frown.

“Every day these aerostat cities are dumping carbon-based trash that falls downward,” Vince says. “Where it gets crushed. But look around you,” he points at the roiling cloud we’re in, and at the massive upwelling thermals.

Deep down at their hearts they’re strong enough to throw almost anything up. And no tourist ship has gone this near. Civilized cities and easy tourist jaunts avoid that kind of turbulence.

“No diamond prospector ever found anything when they first came to Riley, even in the upwells,” I say. “Yes,” Vince says. “But that was before almost seventy years of dumping trash into the atmosphere, right? It was virgin then. Humans hadn’t been dumping shit into the lower atmospheres yet.”

I’m dumbfounded. He’s got a point.

“Do you trust me?” he asks again.

This time it is from somewhere inside me. Looking down in the depths of Riley, I’ve managed to reclaim my Id.

“I want to see this,” I whisper, as we begin to slide downwards.

“Better buckle in, then,” Vince says in a last fading whisper.

• • •

There are journeys, and then there are rides, and this was a ride to hell and back. Or at least Riley’s version of hell. I slipped ever downward to the thermal my former Id had identified as the prime upwell spot, trusting my instincts to bring the airship as far down into the depths as had ever been done.

We floated through a sea of diamond specks before we smacked the heart of the upwell and rode the thermal. It was like straddling a rocket straight back up. It spit us out high enough that we coasted into the nearest aerostat city with several hundred feet of altitude to spare.

We landed covered in diamond dust.

• • •

Several weeks later I’m standing near the great foam pillars of the courthouse. Suzie spots me waiting for her to come out, stops, then walks over. A green and red police droid follows two steps behind her.

“Hello, Vincent.”

She doesn’t seem too surprised to see me. We’ve faced each other in court for the past week . But all that’s over. The best psychiatrists, lawyers, journalists, and judges have all pored over our plights. I’m acquitted of murder, but my implants have been torn from me so that there is no danger of my Id getting free again.

And I had to cover court costs. My starship was confiscated and auctioned off. The Riley government took its share of the court costs, Air Guard rescue fee, taxes, and handed me the rest.

“I never felt like I got to finish things,” I say. “Or properly apologize.”

She shakes her head sadly.

“And even if you do, so what? You’re going to leave on your spaceship for any number of years while I wither away here again? You’re wasting your time if you think there’s anything to rescue with us.”

“I sold it,” I tell her. “I don’t have a ship anymore.” She starts walking away from the courthouse. The droid and I follow her.

“I would like to give you the money back, with interest.” It’s almost everything I have left.

“And then what are you going to do here, on Riley?”

“Buy an airship, offer some very hair-raising tours of this world. Famous tours that spacers will come to try from all over.” It feels like something I’ll be good at, the pit of my stomach agrees with this. Deep down, I’ve always liked airships.

We walk together a little further before she stops. “You don’t just get forgiveness like that,” she says. “It just doesn’t happen like that.”

Her sentence involved guided therapy and personality adjustment. That and a twenty-four hour police droid for a year until the therapy kicked in fully.

I reach over and grab her hand, softly, and place a diamond in it.

“A memento,” I explain. “It was lodged in one of the spars when I got back.”

She pockets it and suddenly laughs. It is a symbolic thing for me. Important. I want to try and undo some of the damage. I’m not sure how to take the laughter.

“Okay Vincent. I’m drugged up out of my mind right now, and it makes some sort of warped sense. At the very least,” she smiles, “I’m no longer interested in killing you.”

“Thank you,” I say. It’s a start.

We part.

I walk down a plastic city street, looking up at the great city guywires that lead to the superstructures of pressurized gas that hold us up.

I wonder how hard it would be to get an entire city down to the diamond sea far below my feet?

The Shackles of Freedom

with Mike Resnick

A year after going to the Clarion workshop in Lansing I’d published a few stories. Mike Resnick emailed me just after they came out and asked if I’d want to collaborate with him on a story for a Baen anthology about freedom called Visions of Liberty.

The first collaboration I’d ever done, it ended up being a lot of fun because I got to see Mike take my errors and fix them.

I came to New Pennsylvania because I was looking for a world with no government, no laws, nothing to hinder me from doing what I pleased.

What I never bargained for was having to live with the consequences of that freedom.

• • •

Mark Suderman was dying on my operating table. His plain blue clothing, stained dark with blood, lay crumpled on the floor. I tried to avoid his brothers’ frightened glances. There was nothing more I could tell them, except to pray.

They couldn’t know it, but he was a dead man before I ever got a chance to examine him. I simply didn’t have the tools to save his life.

I sighed deeply. So much for freedom. This was the 23rd time I had the freedom to watch a man die that I could have saved.

Hooves clip-clopped in the distance and then echoed their way up the driveway. The rest of the Suderman family had arrived.

“Stay here,“ I told the brothers, then walked out through the dining room to my porch. A plank squeaked as I stopped next to the swing. Mr. Suderman, his hat in hand, stared straight up at me from the bottom of my tiny set of bleached stairs.

I looked down at him, sighed, and gestured to the door. He climbed the three steps and passed by me, but his rough callused hand grabbed my shoulder for a brief instant before he went inside. His wife sat stoically in the buggy, her seat rocking on its suspension slightly as she shifted her weight from side to side. The wind tugged at the strings of her bonnet, and the light from our three moons cast shadows across her face.

I had a sudden impulse to walk over to the buggy—but what could I say? That I might have cured him on some world they couldn’t even see, let alone pronounce?

I had come here because I knew they needed a doctor. So what if they were Amish? There was no constitution, there were no laws prohibiting me from practicing my trade. There were no restrictions at all.

Except for the Amish themselves.

• • •

The sun set by the time the elders left with the Sudermans. I began cleaning the table to the flickering light of kerosene lamps. In the brown light it cast the blood wasn’t so noticeable, and not nearly as accusatory.

I could smell manure on the floor, tramped in by Mark’s brothers. The men’s sweat also filled the room, reminding me how unsterile the area was. Finally I left the house and walked down to the far edge of my small, neglected garden with the mop bucket. The misshapen weeds seemed to erupt in fierce protest when I emptied the bucket. Tiny weasel-shaped creatures with scaly skin chittered at me and scampered off.

My house lay close inside a cluster of farms and roads. Just beyond them lay an unfamiliar forest full of alien species creeping in and mixing with our own. I knew the weeds in my own garden. But behind the scraggly dandelions and patchy grass, spirals of unearthly flowers moved in and out of the shadows to the rhythm of the wind.

Instead of going back inside, I sat on the porch swing and shivered. The fourth moon—the largest of the quartet—edged over the hills and made silhouettes of the neighbor’s barn.

I’d never lost so many lives in such a short time, and I was getting sick of funerals.

It didn’t make any sense. I was free to try to convince them to let me save them. They were free to die unnecessarily. And there was no one, no higher authority I could appeal to. Except God.

And unlike me, they talked to Him every day, welcomed Him into their houses and their lives. They knew He was on their side.

I sighed and went back into the house.

Mark hadn’t died doing anything glamorous like beating back the wild forest of a new planet. He’d been milling grain, and had fallen between the giant wheels. The hardwood cogs chewed him up, spit him out, and left him for me and God—and God washed His hands of the matter.

• • •

At the Yoders I pulled on Zeke’s reins. He snorted and plodded to a nonchalant stop just short of the weathered post I usually tied him to. One of the little Yoders, Joshua, walked down to greet me.

“Guten morning,” he said, mixing his German and English with a smile.

“Good morning, Joshua,” I replied. I clambered out of my buggy, then reached back in to retrieve my black bag. Of all my visits, I looked forward to seeing the Yoders the most.

Joshua eyed Zeke with a critical eye.

“Your horse is getting old. How much longer will he be pulling you around? My Dad could sell you a good one, with straight legs and a strong back and the look of eagles.”

A fast talking six-year-old, this Joshua. Somehow I knew he wouldn’t spend the rest of his life on New Pennsylvania.

Unless he contracted a serious disease. Or broke a leg. Or...

“No thank you,” I said. “I think old Zeke will hold out just fine for me.” In response Zeke broke wind and swished his tail.

Joshua giggled and ran back towards the house, his bare feet kicking up small puffs of dirt.

Joshua’s mother came out to the porch. The hem of her black dress scraped the dirty wooden floor planks, and her white blouse had blue stains all over it. Several strands of honey-brown hair had escaped the edges of her bonnet. She brushed at them.

“Dr. Hostetler,” she greeted me. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Yoder.” I walked onto their porch. Several giggling kids ran out the door past me. I looked around, but didn’t see Rebecca anywhere.

“I’ll tell Ben and Esther you’re here,” she said. “Please, come in.”

I stepped in. The house smelled of food. Fresh-baked bread sat on the counter by the large iron range, and it appeared that Mrs. Yoder was taking the advantage of the hot stove to put a cake in as well.

David Yoder, his full beard as dark as the unkempt hair crammed into his straw hat, shook my hand.

“You ministered to Suderman’s son,” he said. “God bless him, that was a fine boy. A tragedy.”

The tragedy was that none of you would let me bring my skills to bear on him.

Mrs. Yoder took a stick and stirred the coal bin under the range. She opened the oven for a quick peek and waved her hand over it.

“We’ll have to pray for Betty,” she said.

That brought back the image of Betty Suderman sitting in her buggy outside my house, waiting for the news of her son’s death. I forced it back into my subconcious when I saw Ben and Esther coming down the stairs. Ben’s beard had just started growing in, a sign that he was no longer a bachelor. Esther unconsciously held her arms protectively over her stomach.

I shook Ben’s hand while Esther smiled nervously at me.

“Let’s see what we have here,” I said. I undid the clasp on my little black bag and opened it up. The look on Esther’s face said that Pandora’s box had nothing on my medical bag.

• • •

There is nothing so amazing as hearing the heartbeat of a tiny human being inside of its mother’s womb. But amazing as the experience was, I had another sobering thought: here was another little person who had better never come down with a disease, or undergo a crippling accident.

I took the stethoscope away from Esther’s belly.

“Everything seems okay,” I said. I smiled reassuringly. Although, without any scans, I couldn’t be absolutely certain. A sonogram to look at the baby would have been nice; DNA tests to make sure to make sure everything was okay after the birth would have been even better. There was no law prohibiting it; just a belief that was a thousand times stronger than any law.

Esther coughed. She stood up with her proud husband, linking her arm through his. They walked back up the creaky steps.

“Asa and I’ll be out in the field after lunch,” David Yoder said to his son’s back.

“I’ll be there,” replied Ben.

David winked at me.

“There’ll be a raising happening soon enough for the two of them. Will you join?”

It would be another chance to see Rebecca. I tried to hide my enthusiasm.

“We’ll see what my schedule is like,” I said. “But, yes, I would like to join.”

David looked around.

“We’re almost ready to bring in this year’s wheat. Weather’s been good. Real good. The strange seasons throw you off a bit, but I think I’ve got it figured this year. There’ll be threshing soon, eh?”

He could have used any of a dozen instruments to predict the weather to a fraction of a degree, the rainfall to a tenth of a centimeter. No law against it. Just a moral repugnance to anything that would make his life easier. We’d argued it many times. I’d never come close to winning.

David kept trying to rope me into coming over to lend an able hand. And in truth I wanted to go. The women would cook blackberry and grape pies. There would be freshly-churned butter and baked bread. Washing off a day’s worth of hard sweat from forking wheat into the wheels of the thresher, joking with all the other men, eating that special food—it was an appealing picture. It was almost my only pleasure on this world, other than being in Rebecca’s company.

Despite my privileged place in the community as a doctor, it was only their nature to be wary of me. I had a very advanced education, which didn’t sit too well with them, and technology was a very important part of my job (or at least it should have been)—but it was that very technology that was viewed as dangerous to the health of the community. No one ever told me I couldn’t use it. I had the freedom to offer it to them; they had the freedom to refuse it. We were both batting a thousand: I always offered, they always refused.

Girls passed by us with white tablecloths, utensils, plates of bread and half-moon pies. Someone brought out a tureen of bean soup. I pulled my watch out.

“Brother Yoder,” I said. “I’m falling behind already, I have to go.”

David frowned.

“You’ll miss church tonight?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I don’t know if that’s good,” he said.

“I have to see the Anderson’s son and tend to him. They say he’s had a cold for a few days, but it could be worse.”

“There should always be time for God,” David told me.

“A long time ago God spoke to me,” I lied, trying to hide my irritation, “and charged me with curing the sick.”

To which David could make no argument. He had been chosen by lot to be a preacher. His sermons were well thought out, I was told. I avoided Sundays, and sermons, and all that went with it. I could always easily be elsewhere. David and some of the other Elder preachers sensed that, but again, they usually made an allowance for me.

“I really must go,” I said.

“Jah, well,” David shook my hand and paid my fee. “Make sure you get some bread from my wife before you leave,” he said.

“Thank you.”

• • •

When I walked out the door I looked around. Rebecca stood out on the porch, just beside the door. She smoothed down her spotless white apron and smiled.

“Hi,” she said.

She had her mother’s honey-brown hair and hazel eyes.

I smiled smiled back. “Hello, Rebacca.”

“It’s good to see you again.”

I could see David Yoder looking at me through the window. He was no fool. Someday soon I would have to tell him that I had nothing but honorable intentions toward his daughter. Which was true: marrying Rebecca was about the only thing that would make all the unnecessary dead men and women bearable.

“I heard you say you might make the raising?” said Rebacca.

“Will you be there?”

“Of course,” Rebecca said with a shy smile. “I’ll be helping mutter with the cooking.”

“Then I will do my best.”

“I hope you do make it,” Rebecca said. “There’s singing and dancing afterwards.”

Their notion of singing and dancing wasn’t about to put the dance halls of Earth and some of the colony worlds out of business, but it was better than nothing. Maybe, just maybe, for a few hours that day, no one would get hurt. No one would come down with a disease that I wasn’t permitted to cure. Maybe.

I checked my pocket watch. I would have to push Zeke faster than his usual meander to make it on time. But it was worth every delayed minute.

“I would really enjoy dancing,” I told Rebecca. “I really have to leave now. I’m very late.”

She took my hand and shook it. Her skin was cool to the touch, and feathery.

“Guten Nacht, Rebecca,” I said.

• • •

I drove Zeke at a quick clip through the forest, my mind thinking fuzzy, pleasant things about Rebecca. I didn’t hear the distant rumble until Zeke began to perk his ears up.

It began low, but soon became a high pitch as I saw the triangular shape approach. Zeke slowed and sidestepped uneasily.

“Easy,” I said.

The sound jumped to earsplitting. The ship buzzed just over the treetops, thundering past on a flyby, the pilot and his companions sightseeing no doubt. I craned my head back and caught just a flash of the number on the side: DY-99. The buggy bounced as Zeke began moving off the road.

“Whoa!” I yelled, pulling on his reins.

Zeke veered back towards the road, then stopped. He whinnied and looked back down at the bushes. A long creeper held his rear left leg. Hundreds of yellow barbs along the vine punctured his stifle, and blood began to trickle down towards his hoof.

I looked down at the gray floorboards of the buggy. The creepers might move up for me. Calm yourself, I thought; nothing is gained by panic.

“Come on, Zeke,” I shouted, snapping the reins.

He strained against the creeper, pulling, his muscles quivering. Then he started kicking and bucking, until I heard a tearing sound as he finally pulled free. Strips of torn flesh hung from his leg. He moved back away from the creeper, onto the road, but the buggy was still in the bush.

I snapped the reins again, and Zeke pulled at the buggy. We didn’t move.

“Whoa.”

I took my black bag and jumped out onto the road. Two long vines anchored the rear wheels. Zeke started straining at his harness again.

“Whoa!” It didn’t seem to have any effect. Zeke still pulled, staring past me with determination and flared nostrils.

I started taking off his harness. My fingers slipped in under the buckle, and got caught as Zeke let up, then lunged forward again. Creepers began moving up the buggy towards Zeke. I waited for his next pause and lunge, then let go. I landed painfully, hitting my tailbone on a sharp rock.

I pulled a never-used scalpel out of my bag and tried to cut a vine away from Zeke’s legs, but it was too small and the vine was too thick and Zeke wouldn’t hold still. He whinnied and kicked, but his efforts were becoming weaker, and finally he just stopped.

The vines wrapped around his legs and began to pull him down the side of the road. He pawed with his front legs at the road, dragging gravel and dirt in with him. Then he gave up with a snort.

The bushes rustled and sighed as they pulled Zeke in, and everything grew quiet.

Shaken, I stood up with my black bag.

The Andersons were a long walk away, but I could make it out of the forest road before dark. As long as I stayed in the middle of the road, I would be okay.

I limped off down the road, wondering what mad whim had made us come to this planet in the first place.

• • •

The Andersons were kind enough to give me a lift back to my house, though it meant a long drive. It was dark, and Mr. Anderson kept to the very middle of the road. I looked away as we passed the spot where Zeke had lost his battle for life.

Once I was back in my house I struck matches and held them over my gaslights. They lit the room with a phoomph! of pale flickerings. I made dinner: pasta and a red sauce one of the ladies bottled for me, and some stale bread. Tonight would be a ood night to just go to bed early, I thought, instead of pouring over my library of books, hoping to find old-fashioned ways to mimic modern medicine.

But instead someone thumped at the door.

I opened it to find David Yoder standing on my porch.

“What is it?” I asked. “Is it Esther?” Probably she was going into labor too soon. I turned, thinking about forceps, wondering how I could convince the old man to let me use them in his house.

“No,” David said. “It isn’t Esther. Rebecca collapsed...”

I stood there, dazed, until my mind caught up with the rest of me. I grabbed my bag in a daze and followed David out to his buggy.

“Creepers,” I explained.

David nodded. He’d lost a horse or two to them as well.

• • •

Rebecca sat in her bed. Esther stood over her with a sponge. They thought she had a fever of some sort, but Rebecca looked like she had recovered already. She smiled when she saw me and apologized.

“I’m feeling much better now,” she said. “I think it has passed.”

“Well, let’s make sure,” I said. “Have you had any other dizzy spells?”

Rebecca chewed her lip.

She had.

“Are there any strange lumps on your body?”

The quizzical look in return sank me. I ran through the questions. And then under the watchful eye of her father I ran my hands over her pale white body, looking for the intrusions. She sucked in her breath slightly when I ran my fingers up the sides of her ribs.

“Your hands are cold,” she said.

I didn’t look at her face, but continued. It was bittersweet, that the first time I touched her body was for medical reasons. And that I found what I knew I had to find.

My lovely Rebecca had breast cancer. Maybe if she were more aware of her body, she would have been worried sooner. But even then, could I have done on this world that permitted her the freedom to die in agony? It was advanced, metastasizing no doubt, spreading throughout her entire body.

When I stood up David Yoder caught my eye and nodded me out the door. We walked down through the kitchen to his porch.

“You know what’s wrong,” he said. It was not a question.

I nodded.

“Well?” he demanded.

“She has cancer.”

I sat on the bench, leaned my head against the rough plank wall, and blinked. My eyes were a bit wet.

David didn’t say anything after that. He stood near me on the porch for a while, then went into the house. Ben came out.

“Dad says to use one of our horses. I’ll take you out to the barn.”

I didn’t reply. Ben sat next to me and clapped my shoulders.

“It’ll be okay,” he said. “God will protect her.”`

I looked the boy straight in the eye. Was he really that naive?

• • •

I woke up numb. The alarm clock rang until I slapped the switch down, my motions every bit as mechanical as the clock’s.

The bed creaked as I sat on its edge. Two days worth of half-open books lay all around me, some of them buried in my covers. Candle wax dripped over the edges of a plate on my bed stand, the translucent stalactites almost reaching to the floor. I picked the nearest book up. The margin had a scribble in it: DY-99. Underneath it I had written a single question mark.

“Brother Hostetler?” came the strong shout of David Yoder from my front door. “Are you awake?”

“Yes.”

I stood up and pulled on my clothes, tying my rope belt off in a quick knot. A face full of cold water dashed away my morning fuzziness. David’s buggy waited outside, the horse looking as impatient as David was to get going.

Raisings were probably the most popular depiction of the culture among outsiders. Maybe it was just that it was a very attractive picture of community, and that was something they had in abundance. Many hands make light work, and there were many hands here at the edge of Yoder’s property. Tables held food, lines of breads, preserves, and fruit juices. Soups simmered in iron pots. Women chatted and kids ran around, dodging around legs, tables, chairs, and whatever else served as a convenient obstacle course.

And the men gathered around the foundation of what would become Ben’s home. We set to building his house together. It was more than just a community event, but a gift. When we were done Ben would have a home. A beginning.

We toiled together under the sun, hammering joints, then pulling walls up with ropes. Time passed quickly. The frame was up at lunch, and we broke to eat. Then we continued. At some point in mid-evening I stepped back, sweaty and out of breath, and looked up at a complete house.

They could have ordered a pre-fab, of course. It would have gone up faster and lasted longer. No law against it. But...

• • •

At the meal, when all the men sat in rows at the tables and ate, I walked over to David Yoder’s house. Rebecca sat on the back stairs, looking out over the fields at the gathering. She had her skirt tucked neatly under her legs.

I sat next to her. We could just see the picnic tables over the rows of wheat shifting with the changing directions of little wind gusts.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Much better,” she said.

“Why aren’t you out there, then?”

“Father told me to stay here, and rest myself.”

I reached over and held her hand. She looked down at it.

“When you touched me...” she began. She caressed my hand. “I liked that.” Suddenly she blushed and looked away.

We sat there silently for a long time, watching the stalks of wheat dance, running our fingers each over the other’s.

“Are you frightened?” I asked at last.

“I was mad,” Rebecca said. “Now I’m scared. I’ve done everything right. I go to church. I respect my parents. I do my best to be kind to all. Why is God punishing me?” She squeezed my hand, and pulled it to her cheek. “I don’t want to die.”

DY-99, I thought.

“You don’t have to.”

Rebecca looked up at me, curious, hope in her eyes.

“You know a cure?”

“There are many cures, though I have never been permitted to apply them here,” I answered. “If we leave, we can go to the spaceport. You heard the Englisher’s ship land. They haven’t left yet. They will study the area for a bit, look around to make sure the spaceport is okay, and then leave again. They can take us to a hospital. We can easily cure you there.”

Rebecca grabbed my forearm.

“But would they take us up with them?”

“Yes.” One of the reasons they kept the spaceport cleared, and a regular schedule, was for reasons like this. A small percentage of the inhabitants changed their mind and took the subtle offer.

Rebecca leaned against me.

“My parents will not approve.”

“They can’t stop you,” I said. “This is your life we’re talking about.” I kissed her hair. It smelled of fresh bread and pumpkin pie. “Come with me.”

She stood up, letting go of my hand.

“The hospital,” she said. “Can they...really...?”

“Yes. Don’t pack anything,” I told her. “Just be ready.”

“Tonight?”

I looked back down the road we would have to take to get to DY-99.

“Later tonight.”

Rebecca walked back into the house. I saw her falter for a second, and she held onto the edge of a table for support. I winced.

• • •

I approached David. I felt wrong for deceiving him slightly, as I asked him about a good deal for one of his horses.

He smiled and stroked his beard.

“We wondered how many more days it would take before you got tired of asking for rides,” he said. He named a price and I agreed on the spot. I could have dickered a little, but I wanted to go home as soon as I could.

We walked to the stables, and David led my new horse out. He was a sturdy young fellow. I chose not to pay too much attention, though, as I would be leaving him behind soon enough.

“Herr Doctor,” David said. “You still feel badly about young Suderman?”

“Yes,” I said. “I could have saved him.”

“All the good health in the world would be useless with an empty life, or in a community that had rotted away.”

“If there is no one alive to appreciate the community,” I said, “then it is all pointless.”

“You believe this is all pointless, then.”

“No.” I leaned my head against the horse, smelling its musky sweat. It shifted. “No. But it is wasteful.” I broke into the words of the Hippocratic oath: “Into whatsoever house I shall enter, it shall be for the good of the sick to the utmost of my power...and then to also believe in the community and follow our practices.”

“Did you anticipate being torn like this? Before you came to New Pennsylvania?”

“No,” I said. “I was wrong. I thought on a world with total freedom that a doctor would be free to cure the sick.”

“But you do tend to the sick.”

“With methods and cures that haven’t changed in five hundred years,” I said bitterly. “Out there”—I waved my hand at the stars—“they replace hearts and lungs as easily as you replace a torn shirt. Yet here...”

“You should have looked deeper into your heart before making the decision to come here.”

“Then who would have tried to save Mark Suderman?” I said. “I lose far too many patients, patients I could save anywhere else—but I do save some.”

“He was saved the day he made the decision to join the church,” David Yoder said with a certainty that I wished I possessed. About anything.

“It’s getting near dark,” I said. “I will be going now.”

“Guten Nacht.”

I pushed the horse to a run after I was out of sight.

• • •

I threw two suitcases of clothes together. In my desk I pulled out something I never thought I would need, but had kept anyway. It was a wallet, and inside were plastic cards that on any other world would link me to lines of credit and old friends. I hitched the new horse to my spare buggy and tossed the suitcases in the back.

A horse and buggy turned onto the gravel of my drive.

I was sure it was David Yoder, but I was wrong. Two Elders, Zebediah Walshman and his brother, Paul, pulled aside the storm curtains.

“William Hostetler?”

I walked up to the buggy.

“Yes.”

“We talked to Brother Yoder. He feels you are going through a crisis,” Paul said.

Zebediah looked over at my buggy. “Are you leaving for a while, William?”

“Possibly,” I said.

“You are going to the Englanders?”

I didn’t reply.

“We can’t deny you that choice,” Paul said. “But you will not take Rebecca with you.”

They turned the buggy back around and rattled off down the road. My heart pounded, my throat dried with nervousness. I walked back to my buggy and kicked at a wheel with my boot. The pain was briefly satisfying.

The air was chilly, and as I turned up the road towards the house I extinguished the buggy’s road lamp. I stopped the horse a bit down from the usual post, tying him to a tree. I patted his neck and jumped the ditch onto David Yoder’s farm.

It took me a few long minutes in the pitch black to find a ladder. The notion of it—a clandestine meeting with a ladder in the 23th Century—struck me as ludicrous. But there was nothing ludicrous about the purpose of it. I walked it over to the point under Rebecca’s window and leaned the ladder against the side of the house as gently as I could.

She was waiting. She opened the window, bunched up her skirts, and got onto the ladder. It creaked as she came down step by agonizing step.

I led her around the house towards the waiting buggy.

We didn’t get far before David Yoder’s gentle but firm voice came from the porch.

“Rebecca, come back inside the house,” he said.

She froze.

“Come on,” I said. “Keep walking. You’re free to leave. He can’t stop you.”

“I can’t stop you,” David agreed. “But think about what you are leaving. Rebecca, you are already saved, no matter what you do here. But when you leave, you will no longer be able to come back. You will be healthy, but unable to ever see us or speak to us again. Do you think there will be a family out there, with the Englanders, for you? What sort of lives do they lead? Good lives, or will they be confused, and spiritually cluttered, caught up with worldly goods.” He paused. “Remember,” he concluded, “if you leave, you can never come back. Your children can never come back.”

Rebecca’s tears trickled down her cheeks and collected along her jaw.

“I can’t do this!” she told me. “I can’t!”

“Then you’ll die,” I said. “Probably within a couple of months. And in terrible pain that I am not permitted to alleviate on this world.” I took off my hat, trying to do something useful with my hands.

“I know,” she said. She brushed the side of my face with her hand and kissed me lightly on the lips. “I’m sorry, but I cannot be other than what I am.”

I watched her go back up into the house.

David and I stood there watching each other.

“She’s free to go,” I said.

“She was never free to go,” said David. “There are certain laws that are unwritten, and these are the most powerful laws of all.”

“You’ve signed her death warrant,” I said bitterly.

“Do you think I want her to die?” he demanded, and the light of the four moons reflected off the tears running down his cheeks. “This is God’s will, not mine. Never mine!”

And I suddenly realized that he was caught in the same web that had ensnared Rebecca and me. I had thought, just a moment ago, that I hated David Yoder. Now I knew that I could never hate him; I could only pity him, as I pitied us all.

“What will you do now, Dr. Hostetler?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

I turned and began walking across his yard.

• • •

I rode the horse hard. My hat blew away, and the cold wind played with my hair. The horse started to lather by the time I saw my house, and I slowed us down, struck by remorse. There was no reason to take my anger out on the poor beast.

I hadn’t cried in a long time, but I cried that night.

And along with crying, I examined my life and my options. DY-99 was only a few miles away. It would be so easy to get on it, to go out into the galaxy where I could use all my skills.

And if I did, who would take care of Rebecca? Who would deliver Esther’s child, and help make sure it grew into a healthy adult? Who would even try to save all the Mark Sudermans after I left?

I turned the buggy around. With a snap of the reins I sent us both trotting back towards the Yoders. In the coming days and weeks I was going to preside at two more miracles, the miracle of death and the miracle of birth. I was going to do it under adverse conditions, like a racehorse carrying extra weight, but Rebecca had not asked to die and Esther’s child has not asked to be born, so in a way we were all running handicapped.

In a moment of clarity, I realized that it just meant that we had to try harder. If we were already saved, then it was only right that God wanted a little extra effort in return, whether it was dying with grace or struggling to save people who placed so very many restrictions on their savior.

Somewhere along the drive back, I took the wallet from my pocket and threw it into the dark forest along the road.

Her

So deep into my senior year of college I was working on an independent study that featured a number of short stories all linked to each other with a setting. But halfway through I became slightly obsessed with this idea of writing a story that combined science fiction and magical realism. So instead of what I was supposed to be writing for a grade, I tried to imagine it as a magical tale, but one written by someone in the future. So many futures don’t seem to contain anything of the sorts, and so this crossover was my answer to that perceived lack.

Cultural anthropologist Jo Anderson was not an exotic woman, but as she talked about her work a sort of fire built up in her pale green eyes. The tiny hint of a smile tugged the corners of her mouth, transforming her into something almost radiant and certainly a little bit more than just attractive.

But it was hard as hell to try and pay much attention to an animated Jo Anderson when a three hundred mile long… well… there were ogling blue-collar men sitting around the window who you could tell had just been shipped in. The main feature of the bay windows on this side of the Toe Lounge was the view of giant soft sloping legs stretching far up into the horizon.

I was being manipulated, and I knew it. The chin had better selections of restaurants, but Jo pretty much figured that if she sat me next to a window looking up the thighs of the 6,500 mile long woman we walked the surface of I would let her say yes to whatever it is her department wanted.

So of course I murmured “yes.”

“It’s fascinating,” Jo said, now that she had what she wanted out of me, “that the inhabitants here are the only race we know of that has their mythology dead on.”

“Huh?” I looked down at the table. I needed more beer. I usually tried not to come face to face with the reality of existence on… Her.

“They believe they live on the corpse of a giant.”

“Maybe it’s because they do,” I said, sneaking another look back down the inner thigh that dominated the western hemisphere.

• • •

A month later I sat in a bar with Director Thomas. Thomas was a short chubby man with a goatee and a shrewd sort of ruddy intelligence that comes from being administration. It ran in his family, he’d told me once: “My great-grandfather Barry was an administrator of a star-plex, grandma Stella ran an inter-galactic courier service. Dad ran things here when we first landed, and uncle Brad ran things after Dad died in the cheek-wars…” the nuclear exchange responsible for that blemish on the left cheek, “…and my brother runs shipping and trade out by the Toe. As far as we can trace it back, we’ve run things.” Thomas showed me a piece of paper with my signature on it. We were on the tip of the chin; on the edge of the dimple that overlooked the sharp roller coaster drop of her neck that flowed into the deep valley between her ample but firm breasts.

For a coin you could use one of the telescopes and zoom in on the spaceport on the left areola, or see the developments of skyscrapers being built into the hill-like curves. Zoom in again and one could even see the lattices of tracks being laid down for trains, like veins, only raised and ridged across the acres and acres of skin.

“Is there any particular reason you allowed Anderson to head off for the pubic region?”

“She took me to the Toe Lounge,” I said.

Thomas rolled his eyes, but folded the paper and put it away. “I’ve been trying to keep out of the region for the past year.”

The indigenes lived among the thick pubic hair, declared a protected reserve. They logged the massive hairs and used them for building houses, pulped them into clothing and paper, and built roads with them. In fact, several hundred years of logging had resulted in bare patches. Eventually, maybe, the pubic area would become smooth.

“You’re going to have to do better than that,” Thomas said. “Come on, if one group gets to go into the pubic area, everyone else will want to.”

I sipped a beer. A large starship, easily ten miles long, winked into existence and spiraled in towards the left breast, plasma streaming out its tail end as it jetted towards the spaceport.

“Thomas, how long do you really think any indigenous group will be left alone, or unassimilated?” I asked.

“Who knows?” He replied. “But we have to try and respect that this is their land.”

The universe is not only stranger… I thought.

• • •

On Thursday I met with representatives of several of the major local churches. I didn’t enjoy meeting with those of the religious persuasion, as they still were a bit hot/cold about the idea of a giant human floating in space at the edge of the known universe. Some said She was God. Other more patriarchal religions strongly protested, though the possibility really ate at them.

So I sarcastically suggested that we meet at the Toe Lounge but they politely declined and instead settled for a location on the dome of her head, near one of the major logging and mining operations.

When men first landed they’d cleared most of the locals out, taking the prime logging areas; the long locks of space-dark, carefully braided hair that stretched down to the shoulders. Sections of the scalp near the top of the head were already showing, thanks to years of zealous logging. The hair could be used for orbital tethers; it was incredibly strong. Other uses abounded, although it involved smelting the hair to reform it.

Mining operations found bone to be the most troublesome substance, but ground back up could be used as the most remarkable concrete. The skin, tanned and dried, could be found in stores sewed as canopies, or if combined with muscle, composted to provide an excellent loam.

So it was here I met the church members. Some of them dressed in formal robes, others in jeans and loose shirts. Catholics and Protestants, Buddhists, Muslim, Methodist, Taoist, Moonies, Hare Krishna, and so on. I wondered what miraculous act had bought most of humanity’s religions all together on accord.

“We want you to cover up the genitalia,” they said. And handed me a long printout on pale fleshy parchment, with hundreds of names cut into it. “It is an affront to decency, and encourages moral decrepitude.”

“How is that?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“Men should not see such things,” Gene Grady muttered. “It is pornographic that the thousands of people living on the legs see her daily, and lust for her.”

My head hurt. “How exactly do you suggest I do this?” I said. “Do you happen to have some hundred odd square miles of fabric?”

“Leather can be made out of skin,” Father O’Toole declared. “Just between the ribs is easily mineable.”

“And expensive,” I said. “Unless you’re going to do it yourself, we’ll do no such thing.”

“Then we would like to pass an edict stating that no man should past the waistline.”

“If you would pass such a thing on to your congregations,” I said, “that would be fine. But I’m not going to pass any such edict. The taxes on toenail mining are generous, and fund most of our civic projects.”

And that was that. They all left in a dark mood, and I continued to sit there, ordering lunch.

• • •

Thomas showed me his latest headache on his desk. Requests from various distant mining companies to come in and compete. Particularly, Mining Under-Firth Inc. was putting up a large bid to come in and mine the outer and inner labia.

“They say they can do this with minimal impact on the inhabitants.”

I nodded. Thomas sighed.

“Some religious leaders have expressed an interest in letting them come in, they’re hoping they can get the entire area mined out, or at least rendered unrecognizable.”

“I’m not surprised,” I said.

• • •

Three months, and Jo’s group was sending us back enthusiastic reports by satellite on the local culture and habits, the first such real records in almost fifty years. The inhabitants believed that since they lived on the body of a woman, the broad stream of the Milky Way in the sky was actually a fertilizing stream of sperm. It was apparently from a male deity in the act of ejaculation. They called it the big bang.

Thomas called me up to meet with a starship-guild captain. His name was Evergror, and he had thick vacuum-proof reddish skin. His large all black eyes bubbled out as ridiculously, and he didn’t wear any clothes. His genitalia slid back up into a radiation proof slit, which made all the starship-guild people look like they had vaginas whether male or female.

He said he was the keeper of records, a sort of historian, and started to tell a hell of a story about a group of old Earth fellows who’d set out in a slower than light ship. I looked at Thomas, Thomas looked at me, and we both shrugged.

Evergror’s story beat going into the industrial zoning debate raging in our office over the armpit regions.

“The name of the ship was ‘Seed of Hope’ and they wanted to settle a star system according to their own religious beliefs,” he said. “But every time they showed up, someone would be there already. Then they would re-equip their ship with the latest technology found at the latest stop and try again. This went on for almost two thousand years, until finally, they aimed their ship off into the abyss, aiming at no star, no reasonable destination.”

“Hey,” I cried out, seeing where this was going. We were located in a similar location, in the middle of nowhere.

“Yes. Their ancestors are here. We, the starship guild, have identified the remains of ‘Seed of Hope’ lodged in the inside of the toenail of the left little toe. The inhabitants aren’t really habitants.”

Thomas leaned back in his chair. I leaned back in mine.

“Would you be willing to make a public statement?” Thomas asked.

Evergror nodded.

“For a small fee, or course.”

“Of course.”

As we all knew, mining rights to the pubic area were worth quite a bit. We weren’t even sure if this chap was telling the truth, but it provided the perfect opportunity we needed to undermine the bleeding heart environmentalists that claimed we needed to leave her body untouched…

• • •

I was silent on the flight back from the press conference at the tip of the left breast. We flew over the ribs briefly, and I could see the rows of fertile valleys and gentle rolling hills, patchworks of green agriculture and food production.

Then onto the foundries set between her breasts, belching fire into the air.

I squelched the feeling that we’d done something wrong and took a nap.

• • •

When Jo got back I took her sailing in the right corner of the right eye. Salt filled the air as a slight wind crossed the large sea of the agate pupil. We were on a delightful little ketch made out of hairplank, and it tracked into the wind just beautifully.

The ropes snapped as I dodged us around other traffic and sailed out in no particular direction.

Somewhere out there we paused to eat lunch, a fruit basket I’d put together. In the far distant north great eyelashes curved up into the sky, blocking out the harsh sunlight of the distant sun we orbited.

“Do you ever wonder about her?” Jo asked.

“About who?”

“All this.” She made a gesture. I shrugged and ate a turkey sandwich.

“But… what about it all? What will happen when the inhabitants get assimilated, what will we do when we use it all up?”

“I think about that sometimes,” I said. “But it won’t happen anytime soon.”

Jo smiled and reached down in the water, cleaning her face. The sea glistened on her cheeks as she lay back, in repose, and looked up at the sky.

“The old Earthers, some of them used to believe, before they became advanced, that it was Mother Earth.”

“Earth is a dump,” I told her. “I went there once.”

Jo unwrapped a sandwich. “But it didn’t used to be.”

“I know.”

After the sandwich we hoisted the sails and headed for shore. Later that night I even managed to seduce her.

The next morning, of course, Thomas and I drew up plans for putting a new rail system down the gentle curve of the stomach and down between the legs. Already new skyscrapers were going up on the inner thighs.

There was a lot to be done.

In Orbite Medievali

Old Christopher Columbus is a complicated figure. He discovered a world that had already been discovered by the people sitting right on it. Yet there is no denying the sheer ballsiness of crossing an ocean in a trio of creaky wooden ships, and changing the world in the process. It’s always odd to see that continued veneration of Columbus instead of a more gray and nuanced position, and seeing humankind’s move into space compared to Columbus’s ocean voyage always makes me feel sad for any potential aliens we might ever one day meet.

Mixed feelings aside, reading Columbus’s journals and the history of the time leaves me fascinated. And the comparison between the exploration of space and exploration of the Americas left me, one night, with the idea that maybe turning that idea upside down would be a lot of fun: let’s turn Columbus into an ancient astronaut. After all, if you fell off the edge of the world, you’d be falling in freefall, much like astronauts in orbit, falling perpetually around Earth.

As a result, this became another one of my stories that combined science and fantasy, which I wrote while at the Clarion workshop

In a letter to Queen Isabella:

“Whereas, Most Christian, High, Excellent, and Powerful Princes, King and Queen of Spain and of the Islands of the Sea, our Sovereigns, this present year 1492, after Your Highnesses terminated the war with the Moors reigning in Europe…

“Your Highnesses, as Catholic Christians, and Princes who love and promote the holy Christian faith, and are enemies of the doctrine of Mahomet, and of all idolatry and heresy, determined to send me, Cristóbal Colón, to the above-mentioned countries of India, to see the said princes, people, and territories, and to learn their disposition and the proper method of converting them to our holy faith; and furthermore directed that I should not proceed by land to the East, as is customary, but by a Westerly route, in which direction we have hitherto no certain evidence that any one has gone.”
—Cristóbal Colón, 1492

The rim of the earth flashed past them as they fell. The edge of the world looked rather like the cliffs of Gibraltar—tall edifices of solid imposing rock. Only here the basalt stretched to the left and the right as far as the eye could see, and when looking up, ran what seemed like miles above them. Finally it disappeared into roils of mist and clouds.

Once they had fallen past the edge it started to dwindle into the distance above them.

Sheets of seawater still cascaded down with the ship.

Pedro Yzquierdo used his knife to dig the bone out of the piece of meat in his stew. Already he’d made a mess, wobbling the bowl and causing its contents to ooze out into the air. He finally got the bone out. It spun away to hit the mast. Pedro retrieved it, throwing it out, away from the ship.

“Caca.” Heavily salted meats, shriveled peas, stale water, and when he tapped his hardtack biscuit, weevils wriggled out into the air. The tossed bone passed the railing, and flew up past the ship’s masts as the flat side of the bone caught the wind rushing up the sides of the hull.

Pedro noticed Rodrigo Gallego begin to shudder and heave.

He’s seasick, Pedro thought. Or at least just sick. It had nothing to do with the sea, really. The seawater near them now just hung in curtains.

Rodrigo threw up. The bland results of dinner floated out in pasty globules. Several members of the crew swatted at the liquid in disgust with empty plates, trying to redirect the nasty-smelling bile over the decks and out across the ship’s railing. It helped some. But if they hit it too hard it splattered and spread instead, making a worse mess.

“Mierda,” someone muttered from inside steerage, the rear area of the deck covered by the quarterdeck. They started making similar sounds. Pedro sunk his knife into the mast and pushed off over to the sick man.

“Rodrigo,” he yelled. The sound of the wind singing through the rigging and rails forced him to project his voice. “Stay near the edge. You’ll have everyone else sick at this rate.”

Rodrigo shook his head.

“No. I won’t go near the edge. Dios mío, no! Give me a sack, Pedro, but do not make me do that.”

“We can tie you to the rails…”

“It’s windy. It’s loud. Leave me here en la calma,” Rodrigo pleaded. Diego de Arana, master-at-arms, leaned over the quarterdeck.

“What happens here?” he demanded. Rodrigo twisted in the air to look at him.

“He’s sick.”

“Put him in a hammock. He shouldn’t eat for a day.”

“Señor Diego…”

“No buts, Pedro. He will keep throwing up if we feed him. Do you remember what you were like the first time you put out to sea?” Diego de Arana smiled. “He will get accustomed to it, just like he got accustomed to being at sea. Some people get used to the sea faster. Eh, Pedro?”

Pedro nodded.

“Verdad, señor. But none of us have ever fallen off of the edge of the world before.” He tugged on Rodrigo gently, towing him towards steerage. Here underneath the quarterdeck all the other men huddled, strapped into their hammocks.

“Pedro,” Diego said. “Don’t say that; we have not fallen off of the edge of the world. Don’t be an ignorant peasant. Agilipollao!”

Pedro guided them both through steerage, looking for an empty hammock and a sack for Rodrigo. Diego could call him an ignorant peasant, a stupid fool, but Pedro did not care. It still didn’t make sailing off of the edge of the world any stranger than it was.

Rodrigo stopped gagging.

“Do you really think we have fallen off of the edge of the world?” he asked. Pedro realized that Rodrigo was scared. Many of the men strapped into the hammocks were miserably sick, but they all tilted their heads towards Pedro to hear what he had to say.

“Look around, no? It is obvious.” Someone moaned. Others swore and crossed their chests.

“It is unnatural.”

“We have been cursed.”

“In Palos and Genoa, everyone says the world is round.” Rodrigo pulled himself into the hammock. “I believed them when they told me to look at the ships coming into port. I saw myself that the masts became visible first, then the hull. As if obscured by a curve.”

Pedro shrugged.

“Then maybe God made the world slightly curved.”

“Sí. That makes sense.” Rodrigo started to dry heave, finding nothing left in his stomach but acid. Pedro remembered his first three days at sea.

“Por supuesto.” Of course he made sense. “Mira. Get some rest, try to sleep.” Unlike the rest of the crew Pedro could move around, not affected by their sudden predicament.

“But what will become of us? What madness have we been tricked into, coming on this voyage? We will die horribly, no doubt.” Rodrigo shuddered.

“If you pray,” Pedro said, “then ask our Lord to deliver us from this strange event.”

As Pedro made sure that Rodrigo was tied into his hammock, he glanced past the varnished tiller arm. Useless, it vibrated madly from the rush of wind. Through the hole in the back to allow the tiller in, Pedro could see the two other ships. Two tiny caravels maybe half a mile away, floating suspended in the air, just like Pedro was. A light mist obscured them.

It was the eighth of Octubre, anno Domini 1492. The nao Santa María and her two escorts, along with tremendous amounts of ocean, fish, and floating weeds, had been falling off of the edge of the world for almost a day.

• • •

Pedro Yzquierdo pushed his way forward out towards the forecastle. The quarterdeck had steps coming down from either side, but steerage opened right onto the main deck between the raised forecastle and quarterdeck. Underneath the forecastle ship’s boy Pedro de Terreros tried to bank the cooking fire. The teenager, frustrated by a lack of progress, struck at the sand and ashes with a curse. The spherical flame, fueled by blackened pieces of wood nailed to the deck, refused to be quenched.

“Caray!”

“Paolo, easy.” Pedro pulled the boy down from the end of his makeshift tether. “Don’t strike things so violently. You’ll push yourself out away from the boat.”

“The fire, it doesn’t work right. Even cooking is almost impossible.”

“I’ll take care of the fire, you should go now.”

Paolo’s thatch of midnight black hair floated like a halo of seaweed about his face.

“Gracias, Pedro Yzquierdo. Perdóname.”

“Bueno.” Pedro looked at the ship’s fire. Sand scattered on the deck, as well as the damp state of the deck, prevented a ship fire. The iron pot, ingeniously lashed above the fire by Pedro, had been redesigned to allow cooking in the constant floating. Pedro suspected the ship’s cooper had done it.

“Mire esta,” he said to himself. Look at that.

The sides of the bulbous pot now had latches to snap the top on. The two holes drilled into opposite sides, Pedro guessed, allowed steam to escape and food to be fed in. One hole had a piece of cloth tied on to prevent any food from blasting out, but allow steam through. A simple bellows stuck out of the other hole, allowing ingredients to be fed in without floating back out.

Cooking had now turned into something rather more complicated than the ship’s boy had anticipated.

Juan Sánchez, the ship’s physician, watched him with an owl-like eye from the railing of the forecastle. He had lashed himself there.

“Pedro Yzquierdo. You seem to grasp some of the aspects of our situation.”

Pedro shook his head.

“I am just another traveler in God’s world,” he said. “I live where he puts me.”

The cooper, Viscaino, usually made sure all the casks in the hold stayed watertight and stout. Doubtless a frustrating job. Now the cooper’s job took a turn for the interesting. What an ingenious mind, Pedro thought.

“I do not pretend to understand the world around me,” Pedro continued, realizing that Juan waited for more conversation. “I only accept it.”

Pedro took a sack of water and circled the spherical fire. He squeezed the sack slowly and started kicking himself around the fire in a circle. As he planned, using more and more force in his squeeze, all the water arrived at once. It quenched the flame satisfactorily.

“But look, Pedro.” Juan wobbled until he lay in the air only inches away, parallel to the deck. His tiny pointed beard just scraped the musty deck. Juan dramatically extended only a finger, and pushed off upwards.

He slowly began to rise from the deck, inch by inch.

“It is incredible, Pedro. Think about it. Once I have pushed away, nothing will stop me from moving like this.”

Pedro reached out and stopped him.

“There, you are at rest.”

“Exactly,” Juan floundered excitedly. “And anything at rest should stay at rest. Unless pushed by some force. I never thought of these things. But why do you stay on the Earth? Why do things fall?”

“God wills it.”

“Maybe he does,” Juan nodded. “But there must be a force, a great attracting force that is pulling everything down to the ground, an outside force. A something falling out of a building should stay there, but it is pulled down. I wonder what all this is…”

“You tire my imagination, Don Sánchez.” Pedro started to swim away. “I’m a sailor. I know of many things, but mostly boats. I’m sure you could talk further with others.”

Pedro made his way towards the edge of the deck where the wind howled. He looked out.

The Pinta and the Niña fell with them in varying heights, not more than a mile away. The Niña leaned a bit to her starboard. Then as wind hit her staysail, still up, her masts shivered and she leaned towards the port.

Pedro craned his neck along the edge of the ship, the wind tugging his cheeks back. He looked down past the stern at the cascade of water and mist in the distance, the waterfall at the edge of the world, miles upon miles wide. Down, he could see nothing but a haze. Far above, hidden in the clouds around the distant rim of the world, he guessed the sun still blazed away. Here though, light seemed to filter in from all sides equally. The gray haze would fluctuate all the way to darkness, still in keeping with the cycle of the sun.

Pedro, not a fanatically religious man, found himself offering prayer on the behalf of his crewmates. May they all receive the mercy of his Lord, he prayed, for now their predicament lay well outside of the hands of men.

• • •

On the second day, after the dark gave way to the gray haze, El Almirante Cristóbal Colón himself came out of the cabin and looked around the ship. Pedro looked at their leader and admired his aquiline nose, massive build, and fair skin.

“There. It is Colón,” Rodrigo muttered from the iron pot. “I would give my right eye right now to be back in Cádiz. Pedro Yzquierdo, I should not have joined on this journey. I could be home with my María.”

Pedro ignored his complaints.

El Almirante found the loose stores and general tidiness of the ship lacking, and wished to somehow bring the ships together. He charged Diego de Arana with making it happen then retired into his cabin once more.

“Do you think maybe he’s sick from the falling?” Rogrigo asked.

“Maybe. ¿Y qué?” So what?

Diego de Arana pulled himself down the stairs and pointed out at one of the seamen floating carefully around steerage.

“You, take a rope, and jump out between the ships.”

“No.”

“If you fall, we can pull you back in on the rope,” Diego assured him. The ship creaked and groaned. The wind still howled.

“You cannot make us, it’s suicide.”

“Restless men,” Diego yelled. “You disobey my orders?” He pointed out Juan Sánchez. “This man of science assures me you will make it across.”

“We are paid sailors. We are not soldiers,” they replied. “Even if there were a holy man aboard we wouldn’t jump.”

Diego let it drop.

Juan Sánchez saw his opportunity, as he floated closer in from his perch on the forecastle.

“We can use canon and rope,” he said. “It’ll reach.”

“Then do it,” Diego said. “But aim over their heads.”

Pedro helped Juan moved the canon around to face the Niña. They coiled rope next to the small weapon. Juan placed a brand to the touchhole and it fired; the pulleys took up the recoil. The coiled rope whipped out of the port, burning as it rubbed against the wooden sides. Juan Sánchez looked triumphant.

“It’s curving up,” Diego shouted. Juan, puzzled at first, turned, then struck his forehead with the flat of his palm.

“Mierda. The wind. I didn’t think it would affect the thin rope and cannonball.”

They both pushed out to the rail just in time to see the cannonball strike the topmast of the Nina.

“Ah,” Juan said with satisfaction. “But it still works.”

They fired another cannonball, this time at the Pinta, and then slowly pulled the ships together. The two distant caravels got larger and larger as they were pulled out of the haze. The hulls creaked and splintered when all three ships finally roped to each other.

The officers all immediately wiggled into the quarterdeck cabin.

• • •

It took three days before everyone on board started moving around confidently. Pedro, not really wishing to dwell on his circumstance, took up much of his time tying knots in spare pieces of string.

Others began to mutter.

The Santa María, the Niña, the Pinta, all caravels together had enough provisions and water for a year of travel. But the crews of all three ships worried, about what would happen next, now that they had fallen over the edge of the world.

“Can we ever get back to España?” Another crewmember, who shared Pedro’s name, asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” Pedro replied honestly.

“Are we falling towards hell?” Rodrigo asked.

“You shouldn’t talk of such things. Trust in the Lord. Somehow he will see us through.”

A devout follower, Pedro found men talking to him. He prayed with them, calming them. They told him about their minor sins, such as ‘hacerse una paja’, whispered to him with a descriptive flick of the wrist. Pedro didn’t know how evil masturbation was, but he said he would pray for them.

For some unstated reason Cristóbal had not taken any holy men aboard for the journey. Pedro was the next best thing.

• • •

Pedro could not say that things ever fell into a routine. There never felt like any time for that. He watched the physician floating at the edge of the crowd of men clustered around the mast on the main deck. Juan Sánchez was wrapping twine around something Pedro could not see.

“We will never get back to España. Not unless we demand that Cristóbal step down,” Rodrigo announced one day.

“Rodrigo!” Pedro made to grab the boy by the ear, but Juan de la Placa grabbed his hand.

“Let the boy be.”

Rodrigo glared at Pedro. “He is cursing us all, no?” Others in the crew agreed. Pedro saw Alonso Clivijo nodding.

Antonia de Cuellar, the carpenter, spoke up. “Maybe if he takes away the title, and renounces his title as Admiral, we will find ocean again. Take this curse away from us!”

The crew started yelling, loud enough to bring El Almirante floating out of his cabin. He spoke over the scream of wind. Pedro felt his heart race.

“We aren’t many leagues from the Canaries,” El Almirante said. Confident, he continued. “I expect land soon. For the first man to sight land there will be, not only the reward of the Queen, but a silk jacket. Provided by me. Men, soon we will find new lands, and gold.”

With that he returned to his cabin.

Pedro thought he caught a hint of trouble brewing in El Almirante’s eyes, but he did not say anything.

Some of the crew grew quiet, thinking of gold. Others still protested.

“We have been falling for days!” Rodrigo said, still angry. “We should do something.”

“You should obey Colón,” Pedro snapped, and received a jab to the ribs from Antonia. The fools could not mutiny! It would be pointless; they were all in the same situation together.

Juan Sánchez shouted and got their attention.

“Mira.” He hoisted the carcass of a bird up above his head. The bird’s wings were forced open by small struts made of whittled plank. Twine dangled from its beak. The crew watched as Juan tossed it into the sky, snapping back on the twine as it flew up into the air.

“A kite,” someone laughed.

Sánchez tugged, and the seagull dipped and dove around the boat, effectively distracting the crew’s mind from thoughts of mutiny.

Pedro winced when the bird finally twisted off of the twine and fluttered away into the distance.

“We can imitate that,” Juan Sánchez said, his dark eyes dancing with delight.

Pedro offered up another prayer for their safety.

• • •

El Almirante summoned both Juan Sánchez and Pedro into his quarterdeck cabin. His piercing eyes, Pedro thought, seemed worried. Cristóbal carried an aura of driven intensity, a man of purpose. It worried Pedro to realize that El Almirante was a man. Nothing more. Maybe, he thought, looking at the eyes, a dangerous man. They were falling off the Earth, and El Alimirante still spoke of gold with a gleam in his eye.

“I saw your demonstrations, and thought long about our predicament,” El Almirante said to Juan. “Por favor, tell me if you think that it’s really true we can mimic the flight of a bird.”

Juan fidgeted in the air for several seconds.

“It will take some doing, Don Cristóbal. I will need canvas to replace feathers, and strong spars. We will need to get rid of much of the weight of the boat.” He spoke quickly and with excitement.

El Almirante considered it for several seconds, floating calmly in the cabin. Pedro looked around. The officers sharing the cabin with Cristóbal had spread out, sleeping on the roof of the cabin as well. It made no difference what part of the room one slept on. The wall, the roof, the floor; it all seemed the same.

“Use whatever materials you must from the Niña or Pinta, Don Sánchez, to undertake this transformation.”

“Señor. It will be done.”

“It will be done quickly,” Don Cristóbal Colón, El Almirante, continued. “I wish to continue this appointed journey with all possible haste.”

After they left the cabin, Juan Sánchez turned to Pedro.

“The other captains, Martín and Vincent Pinzón, they are scared too. They want Colón to step down and admit he made a mistake.”

“I pray they are the ones in error.”

“You pray; I have other ideas. Hopefully between the two of us something will happen.”

• • •

Juan had the resources of the crews from all three different ships.

“Lope the joiner, Antonio de Cuellar the carpenter, and Domingo Vizcaino,” he called out from the quarterdeck. The physician floated above the railing, tied to it with a long piece of rope. He held a roll of parchment in his left hand.

“What is this?” they complained.

“We are going to fly!” Juan Sánchez said.

“We’re already floating.”

“Be quiet. I need all the canvas you can find. All the sail, and the lightest woods. Lope, give men needles and stout threads.”

Eight men drifted over from the main deck and down into the hold of the Santa María to look for canvas. More men drifted over the rails onto the other ships. Lope headed off to find his toolbox.

“You men,” Juan pointed at a group tied to the mast. “Your job is to empty the Niña’s holds. Antonia, after they scoop out all the water, rip out as much of the extra bulkheads as you can. Then you will need to chop off the quarterdeck and forecastle.”

“Why?” Antonia asked.

“Because we need the Niña to be as light as possible.”

Don Vincente Pinzón stuck his head out of the corner of his cabin as men swarmed over his ship. Under Antonia’s orders they began to hack out the rails with axes.

“What are you doing!” he cried out, pushing off to stop the nearest axe.

“Let them continue.” Cristóbal pushed into the air.

“This is my command,” Pinzón shouted.

“No. It is mine,” Cristóbal said. Pinzón glared for a moment, then slumped in midair.

“I will get my things from the cabin.” Pinzón pulled his way back in. The sound of axes hacking at timber resumed.

Juan Sánchez paused briefly, then chuckled. “Pedro. We need all the rope you can find,” he said. “Go in the hold and see what extra you can find.”

Pedro nodded and kicked off to land by the hatch. He looked in. It was dark and smelly, and he could hear the high-pitched squeals of dying rats and laughing sailors. He waited for them to move yards of yellowing canvas up through the hatch before he went down to look for rope.

• • •

The gray haze had melted into dark night. Pedro rested, tied to netting against the side of the ship.

“Someone, come quick!” Cristóbal’s voice, unmistakable even above the ever-constant roar of the wind, pierced Pedro’s ears. He untied himself and pushed back along the torn deck, past the huddle of tired, sleeping men. Off to the right the Niña did not resemble anything of its former self. The two boxy structures on either end were gone. No railing, no masts, no tiller or rudder, it looking nothing like a ship. Hundreds of yards of canvas stitched together sat bundled across the long flat deck.

In the dark, Pedro could barely make out the Cristóbal’s figure, and almost ran into him.

“¿Sí?”

El Almirante turned to Pedro excitedly.

“Look, over the edge, I think I can see a flicker of a light.”

Pedro looked, squinting hard against the wind. Maybe. It eluded him. Hearing speech, Diego de Arana joined them.

“A light?”

He also leaned over.

“Do you see anything?” Don Cristóbal demanded.

“I think so. Yo miro, si.” Diego’s voice sounded breathless with hope.

El Almirante looked pleased.

“Have someone stay on watch. Tell me of everything.”

“We will see land again,” Diego said, his voice choking somewhat. Pedro found himself trembling despite himself.

“Thank God,” he said. “Our prayers are answered.”

“Indeed,” Diego said. “Thank God.” He wandered back, and Pedro could swear he heard a choked sob come from the master of arms.

Pedro trailed away, choosing instead to lean over and look at the Niña. The bundled length of canvas was attached to various points of the Niña by the ropes Pedro had collected.

Juan Sánchez had shown him a drawing. When the canvas was released it would fly up over the ship like a massive sail.

“Sails catch the wind,” Juan explained. “This will be similar. Only much larger. It will catch the wind coming from below, just like the wings of a bird, or the sails of any ship.” He beamed.

Pedro marveled at the physician’s mind. How he came up with such things!

• • •

By morning Cristóbal ordered everyone over to the strange remains of the Niña. The flicker of light now revealed clouds beneath them that stretched far out in all directions, the haze having been swept away sometime in the night by better weather conditions.

“Cut loose the other two ships,” Cristóbal said. And as the ropes were slashed the Santa María and the Pinta drifted away.

“Pedro Yzquierdo!” Juan smiled and floated over. “We almost have the wings done. Soon we can extend them fully, and see if we can fly.”

“It would be a wonderful gift,” Pedro replied.

Pedro wondered if the clouds were a result of the waterfall of ocean hitting the fires of hell. But as a fundamentally good man, and a follower, he had trouble believing that God would have condemned him to hell in such an obtuse manner.

“Would you like a prayer, Juan?”

Juan laughed. But it sounded hollow and forced.

“You take yourself too seriously, Pedro. Have some hope. We’ll try soon and see what happens.”

Pedro nodded. As the rest of the crew asked, he would pray for them too. Although he did not have the official blessing of the church, he did remember a bible verse quoted by a Bishop he traveled once to hear speak; Wherever there are more than one gathered, there also would the spirit be.

He felt it a major oversight on El Almirante to have forgotten the holy men. Maybe some of this would not have occurred if it weren’t for that arrogance.

“The clouds are approaching,” called the watch, peering over the side of the ship. Juan held up an arm and shouted a command.

“Ahora, sí.”

“Hang on, Pedro Yzquierdo,” Juan said. Then, “Throw it out!”

Crewmen cut ropes, and suddenly the world turned dirty gray as canvas snapped and billowed up past them. Ropes sizzled and whipped past. Out of the corner of his eye Pedro saw Andrés de Yruenes caught by the leg with coiled rope. Like a puppet he was snatched up screaming with the canvas.

“Wahhh…” He lost his leg and spun out of their sight still screaming.

Then the rope snapped short as the canvas reached the ends. The jolt shook every bone in Pedro and smacked his face against the deck. The Niña screeched and splintered in protest. Ropes snapped, hemp fibers filling the air and making breathing almost impossible.

Pedro realized he now lay on the floor, and when he tried to move, he could feel his weight pressing against him. He sat up, wincing from bruises, blood flowing down his upper lip. He smiled.

He looked up and saw nothing but the dirty gray canvas, with wooden ribs running from fore to aft to keep it open and stable. It creaked and groaned, but stayed. Moans from crewmen drifted around as they passed through the clouds.

Pedro liked it, a sudden wet feeling, like passing through a fog, and then just as suddenly they were through. He looked back up at the underside of the clouds, just as someone near the prow of the ship yelled.

“Land Ho!”

• • •

Juan and Cristóbal ordered all the men down into the hold.

“I’ll stay to help you,” Pedro offered, then scrabbled his way to the edge and looked out.

A marvelous sight.

Green and brown patches spread out in patterns over the land. It reminded Pedro of looking at a map; in the same manner he could perceive coastlines, bays, inlets, even towns. He saw ocean.

The Niña aimed for the ocean, away from the land.

“If we could touch the sea, and sail again, we aim for one of those bays,” Cristóbal announced.

The land slowly rose to meet them. Juan and Pedro grabbed the ropes on the left, all wrapped around series of ten pulleys, and used the capstan to winch them in. The Niña shook and shivered and began to slowly spiral.

“Let it out!”

They reversed their path and the Niña straightened out. The wind rushed fiercely across the deck, tearing Pedro’s eyes.

And now Pedro could see wave tops, and sea foam.

Not such calm sea, as it seemed from further up, but still very easy.

Pedro felt a surge of relief. They had come home, back to a more normal world. The one to which he belonged. This wasn’t hell.

The wave tops came closer, and Pedro suddenly realized that the Santa María was moving forward too fast. Faster than any ship had the right to go. The wave tops blurred.

Pedro’s pulse raced.

They hit.

• • •

The impact stunned and deafened Pedro. It seemed like the world moved away. He pitched across the length of the deck, hitting fractured planks. Water rushed up through the floorboards, the hold, and he could distantly hear screams of human anguish over the shattering Niña.

It was the canvas that saved him. He was flung and bounced in an instant over the deck, and then out into midair. The large soft billowing canvas caught him, and even then it knocked him out.

Pedro woke up underwater, trapped in swathes of restricting material and rope. He fought to escape. He fought for what seemed forever, but was probably only a minute. When he finally broke the surface he gasped for air, black spots dancing across his vision.

Pieces of plank floated all over, as well as dead bodies. But Pedro barely noticed. He grabbed a hold of a large piece and then passed out again, his entire body numb from pain.

• • •

Pedro could not lay claim to understanding the darker skinned men around him. He knew they washed up in Gujarat, a land of Saracens, followers of the doctrines of the prophet Mohamet. They had translators who spoke European languages, and the ruler of the city granted them the hospitality of his own palace guest rooms, as well as his best doctors. Pedro was surprised they did not outright kill him for being a Spaniard, and a Christian. Pedro pointedly avoided any talk of doctrine, choosing instead to relate only his fantastic voyage.

It took two months before Pedro recovered enough to stand on his own. His legs, fractured by the impact, would have been amputated back home, but miraculously he had them. He still bore marks all over from bruises. Every once in a while he still suffered from dizzy spells and fainted.

Once he recovered his health, he made a point of seeking Juan Sánchez out one last time. Pedro found him in a large marble-tiled room surrounded by parchments laid on shelves, an ecstatic look to his face.

“Juan. ¿cómo está?”

“Good, thank you, Pedro.” He set down the parchment scroll in his hand. “And you, you are making plans to leave, no?”

“Sí. Verdad. I betray God every day I stay in here. The sheik gave me leave, and a ‘Bat’, to travel to Turkey with. And then from there I’m hoping to find a merchant to take me to Italia.”

“A Bat?”

“A tribe of men, the sheik tells me, who keep you safe by killing themselves on the point of a knife if you are harmed in your journey. The attacker is cursed by the suicide and their sons and family will be killed. It’s a strange land, Juan.”

“Indeed, Pedro Yzquierdo, but so much can be learned from them.”

“I don’t share you enthusiasm. Please, Señor Sánchez,” he dropped into the formal, “you must return to España. Leave these unholy parchments alone. Our Holy Father didn’t spare your life so that you could convert to these people’s ways.” And Pedro believed more than ever before. He was alive, he’d been chosen. His faith had carried him here.

“No, Pedro, I’m staying here. There is a great deal of important work to be done. Look.” Sánchez showed Pedro a piece of parchment. “See this strip of parchment?”

“Sí.”

“Imagine it’s the world. Edges, here, and here. Now imagine you are sailing across the surface.”

“You would fall off the edge.”

“Verdad, Pedro, but listen further. No interrupting, por favor.” Sánchez drew the edges of the paper slowly together, forming a ring. “Imagine that once the world was flat, or slightly curved, but now it is slowly being drawn together as our sailors begin to move out towards the Canaries, and even further out towards the West. We left to explore too soon, too hastily. We fell in between the edges, back into the world underneath.”

Sánchez straightened up.

“God would not have made our world imperfect, and been forced to correct his mistakes only now that we begin to explore it.” Pedro shook his head. “That is blasphemy. Begging your forgiveness, señor, you are much more learned in such manners. God isn’t capable of error. And if the world is curved in this manner, why can’t we look up and see the other side?”

“You are not thinking right, Pedro Yzquierdo. We live on the outside of the ring.”

“I do not believe these things you say.”

Sánchez started bending the paper, forgetting Pedro stood there.

“Even as we begin to explore South and North, He will have to bend the ring of the Earth until it becomes a globe. In the end, as we ask these questions and explore our world, we begin to shape it,” he muttered, still fooling with the paper. “I think I finally understand how we ended up on the right side of the Earth’s ring.”

“Tell me,” Pedro said, finding no harm humoring the physician. After he left, the man would have no fellow Christian soul to speak to.

“We fell out of the plane of the ring” -Juan made a motion with his finger- “and we passed by the other side, still falling mightily without realizing it. Then, that force that attracts things down to the Earth reasserted itself and we fell back down, this time approaching the right side, directly, while we were making our wings. We fell with the monsoons.” Proud of himself he wiggled the ring of parchment. “Incredible.”

“Sí. I must leave now, Señor Sánchez.”

“Ah, Pedro, I will miss you. Has Cristóbal left?”

“El Almirante? He left many days ago, speaking of making more flying ships. He is a determined man. Who knows what he will do? Vaya con Dios, Señor Sánchez.”

“Vaya con Dios, Pedro. Please, would you take this letter with you? To deliver to the Queen.”

“I will.”

Pedro left the room with a heavy heart.

In a letter to Queen Isabella:

“It is not an easy decision for any seriously minded Christian to make, to stay in the lands of the infidels and heathen such as these; yet, in speculative reflection, I have found a certain fascination in my dealings with the learned men of the area, particularly in their manner of treating melancholies, wounds, infections, and other violations to the body, particularly also in respects to several theories of the mind and, further, additionally to many other theories of the physical world held by the highest regard by the respected sages I have had the occasion to be spoken to of.

“It is furthermore drawn to my attention by our gracious host that word journeys here of several trips and discoveries of new lands found by the Englanders to the North of our esteemed Admiral’s Westerly route, and of lands discovered to the South by the Portuguese; and it is my firm belief that we, in our infinite ignorance of the geography, were unfortunate enough to sail between, much like the banks of the river that turns into a waterfall, the two continents that lie on the edge of the Western world, and it is my firm recommendation that your gracious majesty send no more ships seeking a Western route until it is verified that the two ends of the Earth are joined together in a manner as to allow such a journey.

But I will now write no more of this, leaving the telling of the account of the journey to the able seamen, Pedro Yzquierdo, who is the deliverer of this sealed letter.” —Juan Sánchez, Ship’s Physician, 1492

Four Eyes

I spent a good part of my life on St. Thomas, in the US Virgin Islands. My mother had scrimped and saved for a yacht of her own for us to live aboard, a 39 foot Pearson. We got the boat in the British Virgin Islands, but after she met my stepdad we moved anchor to near Water Island, just inside the great big Charlotte Amalie harbor. I went to school in Charlotte Amalie, and spent most of my adolescence bumming around various parts of the town. It was a natural setting for this story, as well as the one following it.

Manny had Bob Marley cranking on the stereo, his van was full of passengers, and the air conditioning was working after a long week of giving him trouble.

The sun beat down on the wet-looking asphalt road that ran along the harbor, next to the concrete waterfront. It curved along in front of the brightly colored Dutch Colonial warehouses of Charlotte Amalie, which were now converted restaurants and jewel shops. Tourists in day-glo shirts and daubs of sunscreen rubbed over peeling skin crowded both sides of the waterfront road. Manny slowed somewhat, keeping an eye on them.

On the sidewalk by the shops a tall black man stood by a food cart. The hand-painted wooden sign hanging from the cart’s side had faded letters. The man wore a grand suit with tails, like an orchestra conductor, and a top hat perched on his shaved head. A cigar burned in his mouth. For a brief second he held Manny’s attention. Then the food cart’s owner stepped forward and the strangely dressed man disappeared.

Manny looked at the other side of the road. A white girl with oval shaped sunglasses and pink leather pants stepped off the sidewalk into the road in front of his van.

He slammed on the brakes, trying to dodge her, but the van couldn’t respond that fast. Her ponytail flew up towards the windshield and her head struck the star-shaped hood ornament. She bounced along the asphalt. Manny weaved the van to a stop, with swearing from the passengers in the back.

He opened the door and stepped out into the heat. Get up, stand up, the radio cried out, and that was what Manny hoped would happen. He hoped that she would at least just stir and be okay.

But she just lay there.

Manny’s stomach pulled itself tight and began to hurt. He looked back at the van. One of the passengers, an elderly lady with a straw hat and sunscreen on the tip of her nose, stepped down through the sliding door. She covered her mouth with the back of her palm.

“Oh my God,” she said.

A trickle of blood ran down from the girl’s head, muddying the dust in the gutter.

A passenger with a large belt buckle, working boots, and a southern accent, crawled out the sliding door with a cell phone in his hand. A mahogany-skinned man in khakis and a floral print shirt followed close behind.

“An ambulance is on its way here,” the southern man said.

The man in khakis walked over to the girl and squatted. He held a small piece of rope in his hand, tied in an elaborate weave of knots. He shook his head.

“She dead,” he said.

“How you know?” Manny demanded. The man in khakis said nothing, but looked sad.

The southerner closed his cellphone. “He seems to know about these things,” he said. “I met him on the plane here. His name’s Jimiti. I’m Stan.”

In the distance, Manny heard the low wail of an ambulance start, fighting its way through the snarl of waterfront traffic. The world rippled, and Manny swallowed hard. He hoped she was alive.

“It’s a shame,” Stan said.

“I never knock into no-one before,” Manny said, still stunned.

A bystander, an old lady with a large handbag, called out from the bench she sat on. “Don’t fret so, man. She walk right out in front of you. Nothing you could do.”

Manny looked down at the girl, the trickle of blood from her head growing. The man in khakis, Jimiti, nodded. He put the knotted rope in his hands back into his pants pocket.

“Nothing you could do,” Jimiti agreed. The wail of the ambulance began to drown out the din of traffic and town noise.

Jimiti stood up and walked over to Manny. He put a small length of knotted rope into Manny’s hand, as well as a business card. The card was simple. Plain white. Jimiti, it said in black letters. Obeah and other practices.

Manny started to put the card and rope in his pocket, but Jimiti’s leathery hand grabbed his wrist.

“Keep the rope out in you hand. It suck up you fear.”

“Look...” Manny said, annoyed. He met Stan’s eyes, though.

“He means well,” Stan said. He had a similar piece of knotted rope around his wrist. “He gave me one when I met him on the plane coming down here.”

Manny slipped the knotwork over his hands.

The ambulance pulled in front of them, killing its sirens and bringing back the usual wash of background noise. Manny watched as two men jumped out of the doors in the back and knelt by the girl.

Please live, Manny hoped.

• • •

Manny revved the engine and turned into his driveway. He parked to the right of the out-of-control hibiscus bush and just to the left of the brand new Acura he hardly ever had time to drive. The Acura was painted a glossy gold, fully tricked out with rims, low ground effects, tinted windows, and a spoiler. The twelve-inch speakers in the back had once cracked the rear window.

He knew the car was an extravagance. He had bills to pay, large ones that he owed doctors who had done surgery on his granddad. But since he’d been a kid Manny wanted a car like this. Something that said he was someone, not just a taxi driver ordered around by tourists.

When he got out of the van, Manny took a deep breath.

The sun disappeared just over the galvanized tin roof. It sent streamers of clouds out in all directions, and random bands drifted around the sky like streaks of brilliant colored cotton candy. They started rosy at the horizon, and graduated all the way to off-white over his head.

“Manny,” his grandfather called from inside the house. “You late.”

“Yes, G.D”

Manny walked up to the door. The house needed painted. Jagged flaps of aquamarine made the outside walls look like they’d caught some sort of scaly disease. His grandfather backed the wheelchair away from the doorjamb as Manny walked in.

“What happen?”

“Some white girl step in front the van.”

G.D picked up his glasses with unsteady hands. Once they were on he looked out into the driveway and blinked his super-magnified eyes.

“The girl okay?”

“No.” Manny had stood with the police and answered question after question, and signed his name to documents. And strangely enough he stayed calm throughout it all, despite the shaky feelings he was sure would come later.

“You supper up by the microwave.”

Manny shook his head. He emptied his pockets and tossed everything into a decorative terra-cotta dish at the edge of the kitchen counter. He pulled the stupid piece of rope off his wrist and threw it on top of the card the obeah man had given him.

“I don’t feel hungry,” he said. He walked out of the kitchen and passed the door to the guestroom. Still locked, he saw with relief. He and G.D stayed out of there. Ever since last year. Ever since after his grandmother’s funeral.

The continuous whine of the wheelchair just behind him gave Manny the feeling that G.D and the machine were stalking him. He walked the rest of the way down the hall, past G.D’s room to his bedroom. The doorknob felt cool to the touch.

When the door creaked open wind sucked in and slightly moved the drapes.

The white girl, in pink leather pants, Gucci sunglasses hanging by her neck, sat motionless on the chair next to Manny’s bed.

“Oh God, oh no,” he said. Suddenly unable to breathe he stepped back and tripped over the wheelchair. The concrete wall smacked him in the back of his head and the world jumped to the left.

G.D pulled his cane out of the side of the wheelchair and pointed it at Manny’s throat. He held the business card up in front of him, the name ’Jimiti’ still large in the center of the card. G.D glanced quickly into the room. He licked his lips.

“She the girl you run over?” G.D asked, his voice wavering.

Manny nodded.

G.D pushed the card forward at him.

“The card here, it for real?”

Again, Manny nodded. He glanced into the room. The girl hadn’t moved. G.D reached out with the cane and pulled the door closed with energy Manny hadn’t seen from him in years. His eyes bulged behind the glasses, and a bead of sweat ran down his papery cheek.

“Go call the man on the card.”

“Why?” he asked, still fuzzy.

G.D smacked Manny’s leg with the cane.

“Ever since you was just a little child you had go around vexing people with you questions,” G.D hissed. He lashed out with the cane again, and it bit down into Manny’s shoulder. “Just call the man.”

Manny grabbed the cane and wrenched it away from G.D

Still breathing heavily he walked back to the kitchen. He ran the tap, water pooling in his cupped hands until it spilled over his fingers into the sink, and splashed water on his face. He looked down at the card.

Jimiti, the card still said. But in the corner it now showed the words: Duppy removal and other services.

• • •

Days passed for Manny. Days of driving taxi, but not paying attention to the small winding roads around the coast. He drove all up and down the fourteen miles of St. Thomas, up the spine of the mountains into the small patch of rain forest, and back down again into dry and dusty town. Days that built and mounted onto Manny’s shoulders. He began to wonder if the obeah man would ever respond.

He even spent one night in a motel, tired of waking up on the couch with crusty eyes and a cramped back. Too scared to walk into his room. Too scared to see the motionless statue sitting by his bed.

When Manny came back and parked his Acura, G.D threatened him with the cane the moment he passed through the kitchen.

“Where you been?”

“Out,” Manny said. “Leave me alone.”

G.D pointed out the window.

“You should sell that ugly car. You can’t self afford it.”

“I never had anything nice like that, ever,” Manny said. He was tired. He looked around for the keys to his taxi-van. Another day of following the roads for money lay ahead.

“You just a taxi driver, you can’t afford no fancy car. You ain’t rich.”

Manny found the keys and clenched them.

“You think I don’t know that!” He snapped. “I feed you, I pay you bills. I been keeping you alive all them year, and all you do is trouble me so. I pay the doctor-man. What you ever done? You useless, that’s what you do.”

G.D rolled his chair away. Manny continued.

“Yeah, I just the taxi-driver. And I all you got, old man. I ain’t selling the car unless we poor, you hear?”

Manny stopped and faced G.D His grandad’s tears ran down his cheeks, magnified by the glasses. G.D rolled away, and Manny angrily made sandwiches for the two of them.

Afterwards he checked the porch looking for G.D, then cautiously peered into his room and shuddered. The ghost still sat there patiently, hands in her lap.

But no G.D

Manny walked to the guestroom. He took the key from over the door, and with a trembling hand unlocked it. The room swarmed with dust that made slow, lazy spirals and patterns in the air.

In the corner of the room sat the still figure of an old lady with a veil over her face. Her hands were crossed politely in her lap, just like the dead girl in Manny’s room.

“I should have gone with she,” G.D said from next to the doorframe. Manny jumped, heart pounding. “Caroline…” G.D cried. “I miss you so, dear.”

Still angry, still feeling he’d been caught between everything and everyone, Manny wanted to both yell and hug G.D’s frail body.

G.D wheeled out past him. Manny closed the door and locked it.

“You right,” G.D said to Manny. “What I ever done?”

Manny leaned his head against the wall.

“I have to go work, G.D,” he said.

• • •

He drove more. From Red Hook, on the East end of the island where the ferries left for St. John, to Brewer’s Bay on the West End. He drove over Crown Mountain and down onto North side to let tourists take their pictures with the donkey by Drake’s Seat.

At the end, when he counted the day’s take, he had a bit. But not enough.

He sat with a bottle of soda and a pate. He wondered if it was faulty memories that made it seem like he was making less and less, and that fewer and fewer tourists were coming to the islands as the years passed.

He’d once had other things in mind for himself. University. Stateside. Computers. But driving taxi brought in money for G.D and living. Manny had left those plans far behind.

The radio interrupted to tell him he had a last pickup for the day.

“At Magen’s Bay?” Manny complained. “I’m in town.”

“They had ask for you special.”

Manny sighed and shut the door. He drove up the mountain from the back end of town and down into the cooler air of the North Side.

Magen’s Bay stretched out, a white crescent in the dimming light. The last clumps of people were leaving, knocking the sand off their feet and getting into cars and taxis to leave.

The sun’s last streamers of orange pastels dripped behind the islands off the North Side. The last few vehicles coughed on, then drove off. Manny was alone, slightly nervous that he was about to be mugged.

Instead, Jimiti stepped out from behind a coconut tree, barefoot, his red floral shirt unbuttoned.

“Sorry I took so long,” the obeah man said. “I had a lot of thing to reflect on.”

“Okay,” Manny said.

The obeah man’s hands hung loose by his side.

“Walk with me.”

Manny took off his shoes and socks and followed Jimiti. They walked down the long beach, until the water sucked and splashed at their toes. The darker it got, the whiter the beach seemed. Manny slapped at bites to his exposed arms. Mosquitos and no-see-ums hungry for his skin.

“You got duppy?” Jimiti asked.

“That a ghost?”

Jimiti sighed. He stopped walking and faced the huge bay.

“A ghost,” he confirmed, with sadness in his voice. “I don’t self understand what I doing here. I would have prefer to stay in Florida, helping all them old people over, giving them some company. Instead, I explaining what a duppy is.”

“Who you talking too?” Manny asked, because Jimiti spoke to the water.

“You see duppy often?”

Manny hesitated.

“Never mind.” Jimiti took one more step towards the water. The steady roll of waves against the beach began to slow, almost to a crawl, and then died away. The wind dropped, the air hushed.

One lone rogue wave washed towards them. It broke, a miniature froth of salty mist spinning off from it’s top. And from that, Manny saw it wash against a form.

“You see her?” Jimiti asked.

Manny blinked. The wave died, but a lady stood out of the water. Her skin glistened with rivulets of water that dripped down between her breasts, her stomach, her inner thighs, and then back into the ocean. Her features never stayed in focus, but wavered like a reflection in windy puddle.

“Yes,” Manny breathed.

“This La Llorona,” Jimiti said. “We meet often at places like these: beaches, rivers, small ponds in parks with ducks paddling around the middle.”

“Who is she?” Manny stood frozen in place.

“My spirit guide.” Jimiti nodded. “You won’t find her on any Vodou altar. And until a year ago, I never seen her. I think all the believing Latinos in Miami that make her strong. Or maybe the world changing this year. I don’t know.” Jimiti chuckled. “I once tell her she ain’t even the right mythology for me to see. And she had ask me ‘what the right mythology, Jimiti? You a two hundred-year-old blend of cultural mess! What in you vein? Kikiyu? Ashanti? Grandmammy rock you to sleep talking ’bout Ananzi, or Brer Rabbit? It don’t matter where I come from, only that I exist to you.’ ”

Jimiti stepped forward again.

“I old La Llorona. You tell me everyone here lose they culture. You right. Look this one here. Don’t self even know what a duppy is. My coming back useless. You hear?”

The watery figure spoke. It sent shivers down Manny’s back. He had never heard a ghost speak.

“So because they don’t know, you won’t try bringing it back to them.”

Jimiti sucked his teeth. “They young. They don’t care. Too busy with they nice car, big building, money, technology. I don’t have nothing to share with them. The world change past me, and I don’t understand them.”

La Llorona looked at Manny. Her eyes cleared with a ripple.

“You are right. The world has passed you. But they still need understanding. Compassion.”

Jimiti spat. He looked at the amazed look on Manny’s face and pursed his lips.

“Compassion. What you know of compassion?” He looked angry, and hurt. “Let me help you understand this spirit here,” he told Manny. “La Llorona… better known as Bloody Mary.”

“Please don’t,” La Llorona asked.

“Haunting, crying, river spirit,” Jimiti continued. “At the youngest age she had take her two children to the river. She grabbed them by they little young neck and pushed them both under river, and hold the both of them there until their palms stop hitting the water. Then she let go and watch them still body float away.”

La Llorona looked down at the water by her waist.

“And after she killed herself,” she whispered, “she searched the edges of waters everywhere, hoping to find her two lost children.” Her voice hardened. “Thank you for telling him this Jimiti. You are such a kind old man.”

Manny felt the water around him vibrate and surge against his legs.

“Please,” La Llorona asked him. “Don’t think those things about me.” Silent tears rolled down her face. They mingled with drops of water hovering on the edge of her chin and fell down into the ocean.

“I’m sorry,” Jimiti apologized. He had tears of his own.

La Llorona shook her head.

“Take care of yourself, Jimiti,” she said, putting a wet hand to his chest. “I will see you again, soon enough. You know this. Go do what you have to do.”

A wave broke against La Llorona’s legs. She dissolved into the water with a sigh. A single strand of seaweed that had been wrapped around her small breasts floated free and grounded itself on the sand in front of Manny.

Out past the small reef he could hear her calling for her children, a small plaintive voice lost in the rustle of coconut palms.

Jimiti put a hand on Manny’s shoulder.

“You know what they does call the men that could see duppy?”

Manny shook his head.

“Four eye,” Jimiti said. “Not hardly any four eye anymore. Just you and me.” They began to walk back up the beach. The mosquitos and no-see-ums returned and started biting. Manny hadn’t noticed they had stopped.

“I will come to your house tomorrow,” Jimiti said sadly. “We take care of things then.”

He left Manny looking out at the sea, puzzled.

• • •

It rained the next day. Manny didn’t drive anywhere, but waited in the kitchen for the obeah man to show up.

Jimiti came to the door well after lunch. His soaked shirt clung to his thin chest and he looked far older than he had last night. He opened a case on the table and pulled out a laptop.

He took a bracelet of rope knots and hung it off his wrist.

“What that?” G.D asked, watching the process from his wheelchair. “That thing on you hand?”

“Celtic knotwork,” Jimiti said.

“Don’t sound like no obeah I ever see.”

“It a form of white man magic. From the English. And my spirit guide is Latino.” He looked at Manny. “What the duppy doing? Raising cain?”

Manny shook his head. “Just sitting there.”

Jimiti made a note on his laptop, carefully pecking at the keys.

“That a computer?” G.D asked. “How come you need a computer?”

Jimiti sighed and turned to the old man.

“I could leave, you know? I could leave you to deal with the Duppy you self. Then what? How many obeah-man you know? Where is you respect?”

G.D wheeled backwards.

“Sorry. I just... I just a little crazy right now.”

Jimiti handed the old man a knotted bracelet.

“Maybe that go ease you some…”

“Uh-huh.”

“…because you a little stress out with the Duppy…”

“Right,” Manny said.

“… and you go need to be calm, seen? We almost there.”

Then Jimiti pulled a small bag out of the case and started walking around the house carefully. He stopped in front the guest room.

“The duppy here, right?” Jimiti asked.

Manny looked at G.D

“No,” they lied together.

“Nothing in there,” Manny said. “Nothing?”

Jimiti looked at the door and nodded. “Okay.”

They opened the door to Manny’s room. Jimiti looked at the girl by the bed. She hadn’t moved. She still sat exactly as Manny had first found her. G.D’s left the room, chair whining.

Jimiti began to poke and prod at the apparition. He sat and studied it. Then he finished and stood up.

“I need a second,” he said. He sounded tired. “Hold this, it will calm you.”

Manny took the piece of rope. He sat and stared at the girl’s pale skin for as long as he could. Where had G.D gone? With Jimiti? Suddenly worried he got off his bed and walked into the hallway.

Jimiti stood there waiting for him.

“You tried to keep me from that other room,” he said. “I ain’t stupid, you know. I could sense you had more than one duppy.”

Manny looked at the guestroom door. It was ajar.

“That Caroline,” he said, slowly. “My grandmother.”

“She waiting for you grandfather.” Jimiti put a hand on Manny’s shoulder. “She there to help him die. I explain that to them.”

“Die?” Manny shoved Jimiti aside and ran into the guestroom. “What you do? You and you stupid spirit stuff. You kill him!” He wailed.

The last outline of a dress faded from beside the curtains as he ran inside. The only body in the room was G.D’s small frame lying peacefully on the bed.

“What you do?” Manny cried out. “What you do!” He grabbed G.D’s hand, pushed his face into the sheets, and wept.

Jimiti knelt by him.

“For some, is time we pass on,” he explained. Manny leapt up and raced into the kitchen. He called an ambulance. When he put down the phone Jimiti stood in front of him.

“I can’t make you duppy leave,” he said. “Only you can do this now. I am old, failing. I don’t have the strength. I can barely even see her.”

“Then what you even doing here? You useless,” Manny snapped.

“I here to offer it to you, Manny. I know it a hard time, but I have a diary and notes. They all on that machine,” Jimiti pointed at the laptop. “All my knowledge I spoke into the laptop these last few years. I hear my guides, and my gods, and they are calling for me one last time.

“Everything I have, everything I am, is now yours.”

Jimiti walked out the door. He turned into Manny’s garden and headed out in the rain. He walked into the bushes past a tree.

“You go catch a death of cold,” Manny shouted. He got no response.

He ran out into the rain after Jimiti. But Jimiti had disappeared. His footsteps ended by a large puddle of pooling water.

“Jimiti left, gone for good,” said a man from Manny’s side. Manny spun around. A tall thin man in tails, cigar lighted despite the rain, smiled at him.

Manny heard the ambulance coming up the hill and ran back up his yard towards the house. Nothing today made sense. He was beginning to fall apart. It was as if he were standing at some sort of crossroads.

• • •

After the paramedics came and left, Manny threw the laptop into his car. He left the house resolving not to ever go back. And he left the van in the driveway, telling himself he would never drive it again.

He drove all the way to a point where the rocky edge of the island butted out against the ocean, not far from Magen’s Bay. Here water hurled itself against the rocks, shaking the ground with booming explosions of salt water spray that perpetually hung in the air.

“I want nothing to do with spirits, or ghosts, or witch-doctors,” Manny muttered.

He walked as near to the edges of the wet rocks as he dared, and flung the laptop out into the air. It arced slowly down into the foaming water and sunk.

“Please,” a voice implored. “You must help.”

Manny looked down at the rocks beneath him. Massive waves roiled up, swept over the boulders, and retreated. A man sat on the top of a dripping rock, the water passing right through him. He wore a suit, and glasses, and held his shoes in his right hand.

“I think I slip down into the rocks. But my son still here. Help me find him?” The man stood up and began to look around.

The next wave crested the boiling waters around the rocks, reached up into the crags, and the man disappeared. A spirit, Manny thought. Another duppy only he could see.

For a moment he stood still, then he sighed and cupped his ears to see if he could hear a child calling for help.

He heard the child crying behind him. It took only a few seconds for Manny to search through the rocks and find him. A small child, his hands cut, crying for his dad. Manny picked him up and took him back to the car.

“Where you live?” Manny asked, leaning over the back door. The child wouldn’t say anything, and kept sobbing.

Manny got in the front seat. He almost jumped out of his skin to see the tall man with the cigar sitting across from him. Somehow the smoke failed to fill the inside of the car.

With a deep breath Manny started the car and turned around. He would take the child to the hospital.

As he drove he ignored the apparition in the other seat. He would not speak to it. He would not acknowledge it. He would give it no control over him.

But finally the man spoke.

“The child name Timothy. He mother waiting for him and she husband. She real anxious, you know. You won’t do them no good if you take him to the hospital, because tonight all the doctor there from stateside. They won’t hardly understand her when she call, and they go treat her like she dumb. You would make an easier messenger. You like to know where they live?”

Manny drove on, clenching the steering wheel. He bit his lip. Still not willing to speak, he nodded.

The tall man smiled and gave him directions, and fifteen minutes of tense silence later they pulled into a sloping concrete drive lined with palms. Manny pulled the parking brake up, and Timothy in the back seat stopped crying.

“Okay, what is it you want from me?” He asked the man next to him.

“To do things like this for me.” The cigar was waved in a long gesture. “Some things little, some things big. Sometimes you go like it, other times you go hate it. But you always guiding people in this world.”

A screen door banged. A thin, worried looking women peered hopefully around the edge of it at the car.

“I can’t,” Manny said. “I ain’t right for this. What I know about helping people? Plus, I throw away that laptop already.”

The man shook his head. The top of his hat poked through the ceiling of the Acura.

“Look under you seat,” he said.

Manny felt around and grabbed the edge of something plastic. He pulled the laptop out and set it on his lap.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. But only because I want help people.” He looked over the man, who was fading away. “But who you is?” he demanded.

The thin man smiled again.

“Most call me Eshu.”

Then he was gone. And Timothy’s mother was walking up to the car. From the look on her face Manny could tell she suspected something was wrong.

He took a deep breath and opened the door.

• • •

Later that night Manny returned to the house. Inside he wandered around, laptop in his hands.

There was no girl sitting next to his bed, or any other ghosts in his house.

Outside the crickets made their song. The wind rustled the leaves outside, and cars passed by his house on the nearby road. Manny closed the window and turned out the light in his room.

Tonight he would start to become more than just four eyes. Tonight he would become obeah.

He sat at his desk and lit a single candle.

Then he carefully cracked the laptop open and turned it on.

Spurn Babylon

This was the first story I ever wrote featuring St. Thomas, and it was thanks to Nalo Hopkinson. At the time I’d never heard of or met another writer involved in science fiction and fantasy and also from the Caribbean. But when reading the title of Nalo’s first novel, I realized she had to be either really familiar with the islands or from the islands herself. I emailed her to introduce myself, and she mentioned that she was putting together an anthology of Caribbean ‘fabulist fiction’ and asked if I had a piece I could show her for consideration. But, Nalo warned, it needed to be in final shape, as she was putting the anthology to bed on Wednesday. Sure, I replied, I had a story ready, but I needed to give a once over, could I email it to her the next morning? She gave the go ahead.

So that Sunday night I sat down in front of a computer with several large bottles of my favorite caffeinated beverage and set about writing the darn story! I mainly had SF stories around, and what Caribbean or fabulist pieces I had were out on submission, and I didn’t feel right about ignoring editors rules about double submitting stories. When Nalo got the story that Monday, she liked it, but asked if I’d be willing to edit it a bit, as she felt it had a couple rough patches.

This was my third story sale ever. I fessed up to Nalo about my rapid draft, thanks to my painful compulsion towards honesty. She was amused. We’ve been emailing back and forth about the islands and our fiction ever since.

Easing back on the throttle of company’s yellow Scarab powerboat, just clearing the rocky point of Hassel Island, I found myself stunned by the lack of yachts. Usually St. Thomas’s Charlotte Amalie harbor was a forest of masts and a rainbow of hull colors. Now only two ships sat at anchor, looking lonely and out of place. The recent hurricane that had closed down the islands airport, forcing my company to send me here by boat rather than plane, had swept this anchorage clean.

Even more incredibly, a three-masted square-rigger lay lopsided on the waterfront’s concrete shoreline.

“Where’d that come from,“ I wondered aloud.

I shook my head, wishing I had a camera.

• • •

It didn’t seem like things were all that bad, I thought later, sipping a Red Stripe and relaxing underneath the flapping awning of the Greenhouse Restaurant. Even only two weeks after the worst hurricane in the Virgin Island’s recorded history, things looked okay. Maybe even ‘irie,’ as my supervisor seemed to glory in saying, trying to imitate local dialect. I distantly understood that half the houses on the island were uninhabitable, and I could smell seaweed no matter where I walked. But these islands were well known for recovering quickly.

I let the condensation roll off the side of the brown bottle and down the back of my hand, a cold contrast to the heat shimmering off of the concrete all around me. In the distance a generator hummed, keeping even more beer cold. Life went on.

“Evening,” someone said.

J. Ottley sat down into the seat across from me. The plastic hinges squeaked. He removed a well-worn straw hat and set it on the table. His long sleeved shirt was soaked under the armpits. He ran the St. Thomas cell of B.E. aerospace division, one of three sections.

“Evening to you.” I replied, handing Ottley the keys to the Scarab. Sombrero Island held our main launch pad complex, weathering the storm with minimal damage. St. Croix supported additional docking and shipping facilities for our sea-launch sections and shipping for the launch complex. St. Thomas housed even more shipping facilities. I’d spent the last week running around St. Croix helping rebuild damage to the sterile clean-rooms that prepared satellites for launch. Cutting edge. Now it was time to check in and make sure our warehouses here in St. Thomas were okay. “Ottley, what is that?” I pointed at the ship across the street from us. Now I could see a thick patina of silt hung to its sides.

Two brown skinned men with dreadlocks and baggy grey trousers stood around, poking at the hull. A few uniformed students in red trousers and white shirts from the local public school had climbed aboard. They hung from the long wooden pole that stuck out of the front of the boat. The bowsprit, I think it would be called. The topsides seemed about seventy feet long. It looked just like my mental image of a traditional old wooden ship.

“An old ship,” Ottley said. “Very old. From under the sea.”

And that was all he would say. He gave me folders with pictures of the damage taken to our warehouses. Roofs ripped off, boosters inside damaged. There was water damage to a few satellites.

Yet my eye kept wandering from the pictures of fractured composites to the silhouette just on the edge of my vision.

A waterspout spawned by the recent hurricane must have sucked the ancient wooden ship up from the silted bottom of Charlotte Amalie harbor. And then set it next to the asphalt road in a pool of stagnant seawater and gray harbor mud. But even as I tried to envision that I struggled. There should be more damage. What strange force had preserved it from decay?

• • •

I spent the next day busy coordinating the recovery efforts. We had a warehouse near the airport, more or less on the west side of St. Thomas; one in Red Hook, the east end; and an office in town. I tackled Red Hook first. Later, as the sun began to shimmer and kiss the distant salty horizon, I sat down exhausted on a lounge chair next to the pool and bar of the Marriott Hotel; Frenchman’s Reef. From the pool I could see the entire curve of the harbor and the whole waterfront skyline.

Charlotte Amalie is a beautiful little Caribbean town. Its Dutch architecture is mostly symmetrical, and the facades of the stocky two-story buildings reflect that with arches and squared windows in even numbers. The colors of the walls are vibrant bright yellows, pinks, clean whites, contrasted with red shingled roofs. Similarly colored tiny houses cluster all over the steep mountainside.

And sitting there I realized a familiar wooden shape was still up on the waterfront.

I took out my surveyor’s monocle and zoomed in. The dark-skinned crowd still surrounded the ship, and they had tools. I could see them hacking away at the hull. It seemed an inefficient way to move the ship.

Another sip of Margarita later I left to find my room.

• • •

I hired a taxi to take me out to the warehouse near the airport. It was a blue Toyota pickup with bench seats and a large canopy strapped onto the bed. “Safari bus.” I sat in front with the driver, who had what sounded like reggae thumping away in the cab. A harsh scratchy voice in a strong accent swore and belted out angry lyrics.

“Buju Banton,” he said, turning it down.

“Sorry?” I didn’t understand. He pointed at the tape and I understood; the name of the singer. “Airport.”

“Right.”

New York taxi drivers had nothing on island driving. We took off out the driveway and onto the road. Every corner seemed the last, with the pickup leaning, the contraption on the back shifting as we turned. Particularly since I couldn’t shake the conviction that we were driving on the wrong side of the road, the left. The driver honked and waved at every other car or pickup going the other way, and at the pedestrians along side the street

The road took us down gently into town, and there we slowed down to a crawl with all the other cars. Finally I could get a close look at the ship. Crowds still surrounded it, but I didn’t think they were government workers. Children, old women, a Rastafarian with long dreadlocks and tattered jeans; some of them wielded tools, scraping away at the ship. Others stood around, singing hymns, or just watching. Many had tears in their eyes.

Some of the wet planks were pulled away to expose ribs. I could see the dim gleam of white inside. Skeletons? It suddenly dawned on me that this was an old slave ship. Horrible. I shivered. St. Thomas had been one of the center points of the trade, being one of the best natural harbors in the Caribbean. Had a pirate ship fired and sunk this slaver in the harbor? Divers often searched the bottom after large cruise-ships stirred up the silt, looking for history. But here it had been brought straight to land.

I leaned over and tapped the driver, who was just as fascinated as I was.

“What are they doing?” I asked.

“Taking care of it,” he said. He had a strong accent: “Tekkin’ cyare af it.”

“What is it?” I whispered.

“It old,” he told me. “Very old.”

• • •

I had lunch again with Ottley. It was nice to relax and talk business with the skinny round-faced local. We reviewed plans on fixing the warehouses. Afterwards I walked out onto the concrete walkway that extended across the bay, following the old shoreline.

“You goin’ ah see it?” a passerby asked me.

I nodded.

I left my beer on the table, feeling that standing there and looking at the ship with a beer in hand would be sacrilegious. I felt this strange, deep tugging that called me closer.

The crowd around the ship parted and let me through. I could see a full range of color. From the darkest black man to the pale and grizzled yachtsmen, they all stood around watching me. Work paused. The wind kicked up a haze of dust that brushed past, tugging up my shirt and cooling the sweat on the small of my back. Someone coughed.

Placing the tips of my fingers on a plank I looked at my tan hand and wondered how I fit in. I pressed against the wood, and it gave slightly, soft with age. Beyond that I could feel something else beneath the surface. A sense of history, the past talking to directly to me. It was a knot in my stomach.

And yet, I still remained distant. Maybe because my ancestors were mixed, and I could never bring myself to identify with either side. It was the same struggle I had with deciding what ‘race’ box to check off on paperwork, or applications. Black? Definitely some: there’s my unnaturally easy tan. White? During winter I would blend in with the average mall crowd, an easy anonymous decision. Or even maybe a little Latino, and some Oriental thrown in for good measure. I was trapped in dispassion. In the end, I always chose ‘other.’

I pulled away, and an old graying Rasta next to me nodded.

“Hear it call,” he said in a deep voice. His muscles stood out as he grasped and ripped a plank away. I looked into the heart of the ship. Sometime during the night the bleached remains of the scattered skeletons had been removed, but the chains and manacles still hung from the bulkheads and partitions, the iron blacker than the skin of the man standing next to me. They should have had barnacles on them, or been rusted, yet they gleamed at me as new as they day they were made. What force was at work here?

Then the moment passed, and the crowd began to attack the hull of the ship again. I wandered off and found a stand selling Johnny Cakes, fried dough of some sort. Pates were a rolled up pastry with meat inside. One of each and a Coke made for a good lunch.

• • •

Early the next morning I went through the motions of moving our office to a building in better shape. But even in the back streets of town I was near enough the ship that it dominated my thoughts. At lunch I wandered through the alleys with small shops and cool shade until I ended back up at the ship.

“Eh, whitey-man. Hyere.”

The same old Rasta greeted me. He’d been waiting. He handed me a pick and I joined him at the hull, pulling off the old planks. We spent a sweaty hour ripping off old wood and stacking it up near the sidewalk. After that we took a lunch break, eating pates, squatting on pieces of wood. Two skinny old fellows slapped dominoes on a table, and Soca music drifted over from a small tinny speaker.

Eventually three other men joined us. The Rasta passed around a joint, and the five of us sat in silence for fifteen minutes, seeking enlightenment, drifting to the warbling in the air.

“Come.” The old Rasta got up, and I followed him around to the other side.

Here I found my surprise. They weren’t just taking the ship apart; they were rebuilding it. New waterproofed lengths of wood replaced the old. I hadn’t paid attention before, but the sound of sawing I’d heard while pulling planks off was not that of the old planks being broken apart.

“Why are you rebuilding it?” I asked. “Will you make it a museum?” I was trying to understand. The Rasta shook his locks.

“The whore of Babylon fall soon, we have ah be ready.”

“The whore of Babylon?”

“Babylon America,” he told me, shaking his locks. “Jus’ like in Revelations.” Revvy-lay-shons. “U.S. Virgin Islands part of Babylon, is time for we to spurn Babylon.”

My head spun from the sweet smoke in the air, and I blinked. The ship hummed.

• • •

It scared me. The wooden planks, the manacles, the calm intensity of the people working at restoration. Yet they didn’t plan to restore it. I would have understood restoration. I wanted to help with that, to rediscover a hidden part of myself, make peace with myself. Just like the Jewish I read about who returned to Auschwitz.

These people were planning something different though. I didn’t understand what. So I drank alcoholic drinks with umbrellas back at the hotel. Every time I visited the bar at the pool I could see the waterfront, and I couldn’t push the ship out of my mind. It was a relic, a reminder, and a key, and I didn’t understand how to use it.

I wandered through the silent corridors looking for anyone, until I found a single busboy. He sold me a packet of his best red. I lit up on the porch of my roof and smoked until I feel asleep on the cold tile.

I dreamed of naked and emaciated black specters rising out of the muddy waters of Charlotte Amalie harbor, thousands of them, marching in force up through town, and then swinging out towards the point that the hotel sat on. They picked me up and carried me back down into the sea with them.

• • •

There were lines up and down the waterfront. Islanders lined up and waiting to see the restored product, I thought. The taxi driver dropped me off, and I found the Rasta.

“’Ere we ah go,” he said smiling.

I noticed someone had painted a name on the rear: Marcus Garvey. One of the founders of the back to Africa movement a long time ago. I paced the length of the ship, trying to come to figure out what exactly it was they were doing.

“This is insane,” I protested. The Rasta nodded again.

“Massive insanity,” he agreed. I briskly walked back away to get a better view of the deck.

An old woman in a green shawl stood just under the forecastle. A young boy in a green and white uniform from the school just up the street stepped in to the front of the deck. Her old withered hands reached out to give him a sip from the green gourd she held. He shivered and fainted, crumpling in on himself, then rolling onto the deck. I could see the tiny chest rise with a slowing rhythm of breath, until the child fell still. My stomach flip-flopped with memories of stories of mass suicides.

The woman next in line, maybe his mother, took the liquid just as calmly. Behind her a policeman waited his turn.

As soon as they lay limp on the deck two men would bear the unconscious down into the ship’s holds.

The silent ritual repeated itself. I whirled upon the Rasta by my side.

“What is this? What are you doing?” I demanded, heart pounding.

“They sleep zombie-style ’till we ah come there.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Land of milk an’ honey.” He shrugged. “Or anywhere else. A new place. They will wake in Zion.”

“But why this ship?” I wanted to know.

“We ah bring we history with we. We face it, not run from it.”

I made my way to the hull and touched it. It sang now, full of energy. It sounded like a temple of Buddhist monks, an ooom sound that hinted at deep power.

My dispassion faltered for a moment. I was trying to think about work, rational facts, anything but deal with what was happening around me.

“I have to go,” I said. I was expected to return soon back out at Sombrero Island; I had to leave tomorrow. What could I do here, when even the police were lined up?

“You missin’ it,” the Rastaman said. He looked disappointed.

I turned away and walked back to the taxi. My hand trembled as I opened the door.

A slave ship could hold maybe four hundred bodies stacked in the worse imaginable manner. Yet it seemed that most of the population of the island stood waiting their turn to be led into the hold.

Impossible.

• • •

I slept fitfully that night until the deep ooom called me. I sat up, stood, and walked to the pool. The night was deathly quiet, and the clouds twisted in long strands above. The moon shone full on the shimmering harbor water, and lights blazed across the massive natural amphitheatre of the harbor and curving backbone of the island’s mountains.

Anchored in the air above the town was the ship. As I watched it cast itself free and floated up over the hill. The long streamers of cloud that usually just scraped the tip of Crown Mountain, the highest point on the island, seemed to reach down and take the ship up into their depths and out of sight.

It’s a dream, I told myself, grabbing the railing. The cold metal railing told me different.

• • •

I woke up the next morning nervous. Today I was to take the water taxi from the hotel’s dock into town where Ottley was to be waiting with the powerboat’s keys. From there I’d go back St. Croix. Then fly to Florida.

Now, waiting by the dock, the taxi already late, I knew I hadn’t been dreaming. I couldn’t see the slave ship way off in the distance on the waterfront. Only bare concrete. No cars moved through the street.

Hours later, after wandering throughout the deserted hotel to find something to eat, I walked down to the waterfront. The entire island had gotten into the boat yesterday and left. I understood that. Where they were going I still was not sure. I sat on the concrete rim of the waterfront, trying to explain to the wind why methane booster rockets were more efficient than kerosene, but I couldn’t remember, and it didn’t matter really. The entire waterfront, loud and bustling, lay dead quiet. I remembered other busy cities I’d lived in. I remembered production deadlines and dirt-free clean-suits, laptops and cellular modems, and being asked to have the numbers on the desk by the next morning.

A tiny wooden skiff bumped up against the large truck tires hung off the edge of the concrete to protect the ferries. I looked down. The green, red, and yellow letters read Little Garvey. My hand started to tremble again, and I wished I still had another joint with me.

The skiff had a bench in the middle, and two pegs on either side to put the oars between. It bobbed and hit the tire in rhythm with the swell. I carefully clambered in, untying the rope, and pushed off from the waterfront. Somehow they had all managed to subvert that horrible legacy, the slave ship and what it represented, from the past and take it with them proudly into a new future.

How?

I wanted to try.

I set the oars between the two pegs, closed my eyes, and leaned back. The oars bit into the water, the small boat began to move. Trust, I figured, was important. And belief.

I began to row.

Trinkets

One of the fascinating things about zombies is their reflection of the concerns of the world that creates them. One of the earliest depictions of zombies features them as dark-skinned invaders, come to threaten the US mainland from the dusky southern countries. As zombies evolve in depiction, you can imagine what fears are driving their depictions. Now zombies are made by large multi-national corporations that unleash their uncaring evils on the general populace.

In the case of this story, I wanted to get back to the Caribbean roots of the idea of the zombie, as well as flip the original depiction of the zombie on its head a bit at the same time. I also wanted to pay homage to the Haitian revolution, the only successful slave revolution in history.

George Petros walked down the waterfront, the tails of his coat slapping the back of his knees. An occasional gust of wind would tug at his tri-cornered hat, threatening to snatch it away. But by leaning his head into the wind slightly, George was able to manage a sort of balancing act between the impetuous gusts of wind and civilization’s preference for a covered head.

The cobblestones made for wobbly walking, and George had just bought new shoes. He hadn’t broken them in yet. But the luxury of new shoes bought the fleeting edges of a self-satisfied smile. The soles of his new shoes made a metronomic tick-tick-tick sound as he hurried towards his destination, only slowing down when he walked around piles of unloaded cargo.

Men of all sorts, shapes, and sizes bustled around in the snappy, cold weather. Their breath steamed as they used long hooks to snatch the cargo up and unload it. George walked straight past them. He did not put on airs or anything of the sort, but he hardly made eye contact with the grunting dockworkers.

His destination was the Toussaint. George could tell he was getting closer, the quiet suffering of the New England dockworkers yielded to a more buoyant singing.

George detoured around one last stack of crates, the live chickens inside putting up a cacophony of squawks and complaint, and saw the Toussaint. The ship was hardly remarkable; it looked like any other docked merchantmen. What did give people a reason to pause were the people around the ship: they were Negroes. Of all shades of colors, George noticed.

Free Negroes were around the North. But to see this many in one area, carrying guns, talking, chatting, flying their own flag. It made people nervous. Ever since the island of Haiti drove the French from its shores for its independence, their ships had been ranging up and down the American coast. George knew it made American politicians wonder if the Negroes of the South would gain any inspiration from the Haitians' visible freedom. The crew stood around the ship, unloaded the cargo, and conducted business for supplies with some of the New England shopkeepers. George himself was a shopkeeper, though of jewels and not staples of any sort. He nodded, seeing some familiar faces from his street: Bruce, Thomas. No doubt they would think he was here for some deal with the Haitians. The smell of salt and sweat wafted across the docks as George nodded to some of the dockworkers, then passed through them to the gangplank of the ship. One of the Haitians stopped him. George looked down and noticed the pistol stuck in a white sash.

“What do you need?” He spoke with traces of what could have been a French accent, or something else. It took a second for George to work through the words.

“I’m here for a package,” George said. “Mother Jacqueline...”

The man smiled.

“Ah, you’re that George?”

“Yes.”

George stood at the end of the plank as the Haitian walked back onto the ship. He was back in a few minutes, and handed George a brown, carefully wrapped, parcel. Nothing shifted when George shook it.

He stood there for a second, searching for something to say, but then he suddenly realized that the tables had been turned, and now he was the one who wasn’t wanted here. He left, shoes clicking across the cobblestones.

• • •

In the room over his shop George opened the parcel by the window. Below in the street horses’ feet kicked up a fine scattering of snow. When it settled by the gutters, it was stained brown and muddy with dung.

The desk in front of him was covered in occasional strands of his hair. He had a small shelf with papers stacked on it, but more importantly, he had his shiny coins and pieces of metal laid out in neat, tiny little rows. George smiled when the light caught their edges and winked at him. Some of the coins had engravings on them, gifts between lovers long passed away. Others had other arcane pieces of attachment to their former owners. Each one told George a little story. The jewelry he sold downstairs meant nothing. Each of the pieces here represented a step closer to a sense of completion.

He cut the string on the package and pulled the paper away from a warm mahogany box lid. The brass hinges squeaked when he opened it.

Inside was a letter. The wax seal on it caught George’s full attention; he sat for a moment entranced by it. The faint smell of something vinegary kicked faint memories back from their resting places, and Mama Jaqi’s distant whisper spoke to him from the seal.

“Hear me, obey me...”

George sucked in his breath and opened the seal to read his directions. There is a man, the letter read, right now sitting in a tavern fifteen or so miles south of you. You should go and listen to his story...

There was a name. And the address of the tavern.

Who is Louis Povaught? George wondered. But he didn’t question the implicit order given. Layers of cold ran down his back, making him shiver. Automatically, without realizing it, he pulled something out and put it in his pocket, then shut the box. As he donned his coat and walked out of the shop to find a carriage he told Ryan, the shop’s assistant, that he would be back ‘later,’ and he should close the shop himself.

• • •

Hours later, the sky darkening, George’s cab stopped in front of ‘The Hawser.’ A quick wind batted the wooden sign over the door around. George paid and walked through the door. It was like any other tavern: dim, and it smelled of stale beer and piss. He looked around and fastened his eyes on a Frenchman at the edge of the counter.

Frenchman, Negro, Northerner, Southerner, English... to George, all humanity seemed more or less the same after he met Mama Jaqi. Yet even now he could feel that he was being nudged towards the Frenchman. This is the man he was supposed to meet. As irrational as it may have seen. George carefully stamped his new shoes clean, leaned over to brush them off with a handkerchief he kept for exactly that purpose, then crossed the tavern to sit by the Frenchman.

The Frenchman—who would be Louis Povaught, George assumed—sat slouched over. He hardly stirred when George sat next to him. The barkeep caught George’s eye, and George shook his head. When he turned back to look at Louis, the man was already looking back at him.

Louis, unfortunately, hadn’t spent much time keeping up his appearances. A long russet-colored beard, patchy in some places, grew haphazardly from his cheeks. His bloodshot eyes contained just a hint of green, lost to the steady strain of enthusiastic drinking.

“I think, not many people walk in here who do not order drink,” he declared. “No?”

George pulled out his purse and caught the eye of the barkeep. “He’ll have another,” George told the barkeep. George looked down and pulled out paper money, leaving the shiny coins inside.

“And you,” Louis said. “Why no drink?”

“It no longer does anything for me,” George explained. He reached his hand in the pocket of his undercoat. Something was there. Like something standing just at the edge of his vision, he could remember picking it up.

Now George pulled it out. It was a silver chain with a plain cross on the end. He held it between the fingers of his hand and let the cross rest against the countertop.

“I have something for you, Louis,” George heard himself saying. “Something very important.”

Louis turned his tangled hair and scraggly beard towards George. The chain seductively winked; George locked his eyes with the entwined chains and followed them down to the rough countertop. Such beautiful things human hands made.

Louis’ gasp took George’s attention back to the world around the necklace.

“Is this what I think it is?” Louis asked, reaching tentatively for it. His wrinkled hands shook as they brushed the chain. George did not look down for fear of being entranced again. He did not feel the slightest brush of Louis’ fingernail against his knuckle.

“What do you think it is?” George asked.

Louis turned back to the counter.

“My brother Jean’s necklace,” Louis said. “On the back of this, it should have engraved....” Louis waved his hand about, “J.P. It is there, no?”

George still didn’t look down.

“I imagine so.”

Louis leaned back and laughed.

“Merde. So far away, so damn far away, and that bitch Jacqueline still has talons. Unlucky? Ha,” he spat. “Do you know my story?”

“No,” George said. “I do not.”

The barkeep finally delivered a mug of beer, the dirty amber fluid spilling over the sides and onto the bar top where it would soak into the wood and add to the dank and musky air. Louis took it with a firm grasp and tipped it back. It took only seconds before the mug contained nothing but slick wetness at the bottom.

Louis smacked the mug down. “Buy me another, damn you,” he ordered. George tapped the counter, looked at the barkeep, and nodded.

Stories, George thought, could sometimes be as interesting as something shiny and new. He would indulge Louis, yes, and himself. He handed Louis the necklace.

“Jean was much the better brother,” Louis said. “I think it broke my father’s heart to hear he died in Haiti. My father locked himself in his study for three days. Did not eat, did not drink. And when he came back out, he put his hand on my shoulder, like this—” Louis draped a heavy arm over George and leaned closer. His breath reeked of beer. “—and he tells me, he tells me, ‘Louis, you must go and take over where you brother has left off.’ That is all he tells me. I never see him again.”

Louis pulled back away. “And Katrina, my wife, she is very, very sad to see me go away to this island. But I tell her it is good that I take over the business Jean created. I will make for her a better husband. My brother has left me a good legacy. Hmmm. I did good business. I made them all proud. Proud! And you know what,” Louis said, looking down at the necklace, “it was all great until Jean walked into my office three month later. It was unnatural… I’d seen his grave! There were witnesses…”

“Business was good?” George interrupted Louis. “What did you do?”

Louis ran a thumb around the rim of his glass.

“It didn’t cost much. A boat. Provisions. We bought our cargo for guns... and necklaces, or whatever: beads and scrap.” He opened a weathered palm. There was nothing in it.

“What cargo?” George interrupted. This was the point. It was why Mama Jaqi had sent him.

“Slaves,” Louis said. “Lots of slaves.”

“Ah, yes,” George said. Mama Jaqi had been a slave.

“I made money,” Louis said. “For the first time I wasn’t some peasant in Provencal. I had a house with gardens.” Louis looked at George. “I did good! I gave money to charity. I was a good citizen. I was a good businessman.”

“I am sure you were,” George said. He felt nothing against Louis. In another life, he would maybe have sympathized with Louis’ arguments. He remembered using some of them once, a long time ago. A brief flash of a memory occurred to him. George had desperately blabbered some of the same things, trying to defend himself to the incensed Mama Jaqi.

George shook away the ghostlike feel of passion to prod Louis’ story along. “But what a shock seeing your brother must have been.” George was here for the story. He wanted it over quickly. Time was getting on, and George had to open the shop tomorrow. He would have to finish Mama Jaqi’s deed soon.

“I thought some horrible trick had been played on me,” Louis said. “I had so many questions about what had happened. And all Jean would do was tell me I had to leave. Leave the business. Leave the island. I refused.” Louis made a motion at the bartender for more beer. “I was still in Haiti when it all began. Toussaint... the independence. I lost it all when the blacks ran us all off the island. I slipped away on a small boat to America with nothing. Nothing.” Louis looked at George, and George saw a world of misery swimming in the man’s eyes. “In France, they hear I am dead. I can only think of Katrina remarrying.” He stopped and looked down at George’s arm.

“What is it?” George asked.

Louis reached a finger out and pulled back the cuff of George’s sleeve. Underneath, a faint series of scars marked George’s wrist.

“Jean had those,” Louis said. The barkeep set another mug in front of Louis, and left after George paid for it. “Do me a favor,” Louis said, letting go of George’s sleeve. “One last favor.”

“If I can,” George said.

“Let me do this properly, like a real man. Eh? Would you do that?”

“Yes,” George said.

Louis took his last long gulp from the mug, then stood up.

“I will be out in the alley.”

George watched him stagger out the tavern.

• • •

After several minutes George got up and walked out. The distant cold hit him square in the face when he opened the door, and several men around the tables yelled at him to hurry and get out and shut the door.

In the alley by the tavern, George paused. Louis stepped out of the darkness holding a knife in his left hand, swaying slightly in the wind.

Neither of them said anything. They circled each other for a few seconds, then Louis stumbled forward and tried to slash at George’s stomach. George stepped away from the crude attempt and grabbed the Frenchman’s wrist. It was his intent to take the knife away, but Louis slipped and fell onto the stones. He fell on his arm, knocking his own knife away, then cracked his head against the corner of a stone.

Louis didn’t move anymore. He still breathed, though: a slight heaving and the air steaming out from his mouth.

George crouched and put a knee to Louis’ throat. The steaming breath stopped, leaving the air still and quiet. A long minute passed, then Louis opened an eye. He struggled, kicking a small pool of half-melted snow with his tattered boots. George kept his knee in place.

When Louis stopped moving George relaxed, but kept the knee in place for another minute.

The door to the tavern opened, voices carried into the alley. Someone hailed for a cab and the clip-clop of hooves quickened by the tavern. George kept still in the alley’s shadows. When the voices trailed off into the distance George moved again. He checked Louis’ pockets until he found what he wanted: the necklace. He put it back into his own pocket. Then he stood up and walked out of the alley to hail his own cab.

• • •

The snow got worse towards the harbor and his shop. The horses pulling the cab snorted and slowed down, and the whole vehicle would shift and slide with wind gusts. George sat looking out at the barren, wintry landscape. It was cold and distant, like his own mechanical feelings. He could hear occasional snatches of the driver whistling Amazing Grace to himself and the horses.

Mama Jaqi had done well. George felt nothing but a compulsion for her bidding. Obey... no horror about what he had just done. Just a dry, crusty satisfaction.

When he got out George paid the driver. He took the creaky back steps up. He lit several candles and sat in his study for a while, still fully dressed. Eventually he put his fingers to the candle in front of him and watched the edges turn from white, to red, to brown, and then to a blistered black. The burnt flesh smelled more like incense than cooked flesh.

He pulled them away.

Tomorrow they would be whole again.

George pulled the silver necklace out with his good hand. He set it on the shelf, next to all the other pieces of flashy trinkets. Another story ended, another decoration on his shelf.

How many more would it take, George wondered, before Mama Jaqi freed him? How many lives did she deem a worthy trade for the long suffering she knew as her life? Or for the horrors of George’s own terrible past? George didn’t know. She’d taken that ability away from him. In this distant reincarnation of himself, George knew that any human, passionate response he could muster would be wrong.

Even his old feelings would have been wrong.

Long after the candles burned out George sat, waiting.

Death’s Dreadlocks

I don’t remember where I first encountered the folk tale of Death’s dreadlocks, but I was fairly young and still living in Grenada, if my memory serves right. The tale stuck in my mind for a significant portion of my life, a part of the African heritage still passed around parts of the Caribbean to this day, along with the Anancy tales. When Nalo told me she was putting together a new anthology, I set out to modernize the tale, paying close attention to the cadence and rhythm of the story. It really reads best when read aloud, and there was a strange feeling of passing something on when I wrote it that made me feel more like a storyteller than I ever had before.

Sometimes, late into the dead night, Old Ma takes the long locks of my hair and massages them between her callused yellowed palms. Such fine dreadlocks, she tells me. Such fine young shoulders they rest on.

But some of the old people are scared of dreads, she whispers into my ears. Don’t mind them.

And I know why.

There was an old, very old, bush tale about the shadowy man some called Death. He was a fat giant who lived deep in the forest, teeth stinky with the smell of rotted flesh. In all of time he had never brushed his hair, and the knotted locks grew out into the underbrush for people to find.

It was a good story.

When I was young, out of the corner of my eye, sometimes I could see the long root of a tree, and just past it, I would just see the edge of a long creeping dreadlock. I would avoid that space.

Once I got older, and times became hard, I saw more and more dreadlocks that sat right out in the open of the land. Old Ma’s gift, and curse, to me.

And that is how I know why the few old ones left look at me with a strange eye.

• • •

Times, the old men said, were getting hard.

Really, we replied, mockingly. They were easy before?

Old Ma lifted us up and away from the old men, their wrinkled faces host to patient flies immune to leathery handed swats, and she told us to ‘hush.’

Outside the bush the dust came and hung over the camps. And the wheels of Toyota mini-trucks with Kalichnikovs welded to their beds and our brothers manning the wicked heavy guns with wide grins, the wheels of these vans kicked up even more dust.

Ho Kuabi, we shouted.

Hey little brothers, he yelled.

Good day, Mouwanat, we shouted.

Mouwanat ignored us, sitting with his new friends around a barrel with AK-47’s spilling over the side. They spit in the dust and spoke of grown up things.

That is the way it is with older brothers.

• • •

On the way home we passed the relief tent, dusty red cross on the side almost ready to lose itself in the gray fold flapping in the wind.

One of the workers, a pretty but very white lady with a red nose asked us if we know about the Lord Our God. Many of the relief workers had little pieces of paper with pictures waiting in their pockets. I’d even read one once with Old Ma, and we’d giggled and giggled. Who else but a white man would believe in a God born in the east, describe his looks in their holy writings as if he were an Arab, and then paint him as if he was what one of the older relief men called a hippy?

And apparently old white men don’t even like ‘hippys,’ Old Ma told us. Why would these men both love and hate their God so? I wondered.

Anyway, the relief workers didn’t understand. Old Ma and us would never insult any God by believing in just one God, because that would leave all the other Gods out. So like most other times, we thanked the worker for her interest in our souls, but pointed out that our own souls where really our own business, and none of hers. Which I think, offended her, but no less than her own words offended us.

When we left with the rice Old Ma said, well, at least they don’t kill us for saying no anymore.

I’d laughed, thinking she was being funny. Then I remembered Old Ma was… very old. Maybe she remembered different times. I swallowed. Did they really used to kill people to accept their God? Would their God even accept such souls?

Would you even want to spend time with a God that such people worshipped?

I shuddered.

Old Ma, I asked. Were times better, back then?

Old Ma shifted the rice on her head and didn’t look down.

Times, she said, shift around, go from here to there, and are often what you make of them. We’ve had worse times, we’ve had better times. No matter what times they are, there are always people outside the land who come in and tell us what times to have.

And with that she walked faster, her bare callused feet slapping the ground hard, kicking up small puffs of dust.

• • •

Old Ma was old. Very old. But she could walk like a demon. Sweat poured from my forehead and I felt faint when we found our tent. There were many other tents all around us, and some men in jeeps asked us who we where, and were we where going.

They walked us to the tent, winked at Old Ma, then turned to me.

You are a little old to be walking with an old woman. You should ride with us. Be strong. Kill our enemies.

Who are our enemies? I asked. Old Ma smiled.

The men conferred among themselves, but could not come up with a single enemy. The enemy, they finally announced, are all who oppose us.

Then since I… I would have said: oppose you; I must be your enemy. But it was a foolish thing to say. Old Ma saw my words even before I did, and spoke.

This one looks old for his age, she said. And I clamped my mouth shut.

The men laughed at us, then left to climb into their jeep and harass someone else. Old Ma shot me a nasty look, then crawled into the tent to start a dung fire and make us rice.

• • •

It is a hard thing to eat rice over and over and over again. The little brother and I left to hunt birds with a slingshot. A woman in red stripes stopped us at the edge of the tents.

Where is your mother? She demanded. She looked at my dreads with suspicion.

We have no parents, little brother said.

Then who takes care of you?

Old Ma.

Who?

Old Ma, I interjected. The old lady in the tent cooking rice. And we pointed Old Ma out, sitting with her legs crossed in front of the fire.

The witch takes care of you? The woman shakes her head. You should not go out past the tents, you will die.

Not that easily, I protested. We can both see the dreadlocks.

The woman looked at us sideways, her hands on her hips, mouth slightly open.

Why do you think we never walk in a straight line? Little brother laughed. And we ran out into the dust, leaving the woman to forget to scream at us.

• • •

Old Ma came out of the jungle during one of the wars, when mom and dad died. She took us under her flabby arms and told us stories, dried our tears, and fed us some soup. She tried to take us back to the forest one night, but Mouwanat started crying, and the relief workers found us.

Later, men in trucks packed us up and took us to the tents. There were explosions in the trees, making us so scared we cried until our lungs hurt, and Old Ma looked back out past our village clearing and cried with us.

The tent people didn’t like her, because she had a necklace with bones and things on it. They would spit in her face, and Old Ma ignored them, muttering things under her breath and sighing to the old Gods. The problem with casting at them, she told me, is that they don’t believe, and so I cannot affect them.

But I believe, Old Ma, I would say.

I know, child.

So she would explain to me and little brother why, just under the surface of the infertile land, we could see the long snaking black strands, the dreadlocks that coiled around everything.

When I saw them push into the trees and jungle, she told us, I knew Death came for me, and I had to follow them out. And that was when I found you! She would tell us about the old Gods, and the story about Death and how his dreadlocks now draped out across the whole land like a spider’s web.

• • •

We didn’t find any birds to kill with our stones, and other boys were out looking. Tired and dusty, little brother and I returned. On our way back we heard gunfire, and the crackle of tents in flames.

Dreadlocks, black and sinewy, moved just under the ground away from the relief tents.

Stepping carefully over them, we walked to the tents. Men in jeeps rode around, and one of them recognized me.

See, he said. Ride with us little one, and you will vanquish our enemies.

All around the white relief workers lay with dreadlocks curled around their bodies, the tightly wound hair soaking up the red blood oozing from their torn bodies. I recognized the pretty lady who asked about our souls.

The men in jeeps spun more dust into the sky.

• • •

Late, late, into the night, I woke little brother up.

Times are going to get worse, I said.

He agreed with a nod.

The relief tents fed us, but now the rice is in flames. We are many miles from Old Ma’s jungle. People are being crazy. I don’t think any more relief people will come if they keep getting killed, and so we will starve.

Little brother agreed.

So I must go out and find us a new place, or food, I said.

I will go with you, little brother declared.

No. I will go alone.

So little brother helped me pack, and then gave me a small portion of dried beef he has stolen from somewhere in the tents and hidden under his bedsack. I tried to make him keep it, but he insisted, and we cried together and hugged. Then I left.

• • •

Far from the tents, on my own in the morning cool, I watched the great ochre sun rise above the distant mountains, and paid homage. I crouched on the sand and waited, and waited, for a plan.

As I watched, two vans chased a jeep across the flat dust. They shot and shot until the jeep exploded. They fired at it some more, then left. When I reached the jeep I recognized the men.

One stirred and looked at me with one eye.

Dreadlocks circled around and sniffed.

Is Death the instigator of all this, I wondered, or merely just circling around like a buzzard?

• • •

I followed the locks. I started at the burned out jeep, and ended up near the foot of the mountains. They stretched up towards the heavens above me. There was even some scraggly jungle around.

The dreadlocks all converged here. They all wound themselves towards a large bunker. The concrete was the same color as the hard earth around it.

When I walked in, the smell of rotting animals dizzied me. I steadied myself and walked on through many rooms. They were sumptuous rooms, tall and gilded with glittering objects, jewelry that must have once adorned beautiful men and women.

I followed the thick shanks of dung smelling hair into a grand pit of a throne room. The air was dark, and dust hung still on everything. The hair all ran up into the center of the room, up the back and shoulders of a giant, as dark as the shadows. The giant’s belly had rolls and rolls of fat that overflowed onto his crossed feet, and when he stirred, all the dreadlocks leading to the room shifted and coiled around the corners like snakes. It made me shiver, and I wished that times were different, and that I had never seen all the things that I had seen this day.

Hello, children, he said.

Who else is here? I demanded in a shaky voice. A small form stepped out from the hallway behind me.

My name is Kofi, the boy whimpered. Please don’t hurt me. I followed. I was hoping I could steal some bread, or rice.

The giant, his dreadlocks shifting about us, laughed the deepest, most fetid smelling, belly laugh. A thousand TVs fastened to the walls flickered on, bathing everything in a cold blue light.

Of course I have bread, and rice, he said. But why would you want such boring and tasteless foods, when I have much better.

He took from his side two large brown paper bags. They were stained on the bottom with grease. Kofi ran forward and snatched the bag, impossibly small against the giant’s hand.

The bags smelled heavenly, and Kofi pulled a meat sandwich from his bag. There were more inside. He began to eat them rapidly. The giant flicked the other bag at me, and I caught it. As I opened it, my small stomach growling with excitement, I thought; if those are Death’s Dreadlocks, then this giant is obviously Death. And if he is Death, then there is no doubt that something is not right about this food.

I decided I would wait and watch what happened to Kofi. And as I watched Kofi, the giant, Death, also watched Kofi. Kofi ate, and ate, and ate, until he grew heavy with all the food, and lay down against the side of the room.

If you will not eat, the giant said, why don’t you enjoy yourself. And the TV closest to me started to show movies. Pick a movie, the giant said. Any movie.

So I watched men leap around buildings and fight each other, until the flickering made my eyes heavy, and against my will I drifted to sleep.

• • •

When I woke I found my wrists bound with a heavy iron. The giant chuckled to himself in the corner, and my heart thudded with fear.

What is going on here? I demanded.

The giant chuckled some more, and picked his teeth with a bone. He smiled at me, and his smile carried a rank, rotten smell. Like that of a man left in the desert to bloat and be picked at by carrion.

You have pretty dreadlocks, just like me, the giant said. He leaned forward with a blast of a belch, and touched the top of my head with his smallest finger. I wanted to vomit as the giant leaned back, still picking his teeth with the piece of bone.

Where is Kofi? I asked.

He went to play, the giant said. He snapped the bone in half and tossed it aside. I shuddered, for I knew it was most surely Kofi’s last remains. I shook even harder, imagining what it would be like to die under the giant’s greasy, chubby, fingers. More than anything I wanted to run from the dank bunker out into the hot dust outside. But I was trapped.

Please don’t eat me, I cried out, holding my manacled wrists into the air.

Why not, the giant demanded angrily. I can do with you as I please.

I thought hard and quick, looking to save my skin.

I have brothers! I yelled.

The giant was interested. His eyes gleamed, and I saw my chance.

I said: my brothers are warriors, and plump with victory and full of life. They are young and strong, with supple dark skin and tight curly hair.

The giant drooled and swallowed noisily. He pulled at my manacles with a dreadlock, like it was a tentacle of some sort, and I stumbled closer. I did not breathe, scared to smell his stench, as his nasty breath wet my face.

Bring them to me, he declared with moist lips, and I will spare your life.

• • •

When I returned to the tents my skin was dry and dusty, and my ribs showed beneath my skin. Little brother grabbed my legs, and all my brothers stepped out from the tent. They hugged me and gave me water, then hugged me more.

I was surprised to see Mouwanat cry and hug me the most.

That is the way it is with older brothers.

Where have you gone? Kuabi asked.

Who did this to you? Mouwanat demanded.

And little brother said in a small, wavering, voice; the Old Ma is gone. She walked out into the night and never came back. We think men have killed her. Then we all hugged and cried again.

Brothers, I said, after grieving Old Ma. I was captured by a giant that showed me shows on TV, and gave me food in a paper bag.

Little brother took the bag I pulled from my waist and looked at it. He wiped his forefinger on the grease and sniffed it.

Is that a bad thing? My brothers asked.

In response I opened my robes, and showed them the dreadlock that had lodged itself in the hollow place in my chest, just below my heart. For Death was not stupid, he had me just as surely as if I were still in the bunker with the blue light.

All raised by Old Ma, my brothers saw the dreadlock, and cursed and swore.

What shall we do? They all asked me.

You should follow me, I said. We will face Death.

For I had made something of a plan during the long trip back, all the while ignoring the evil-sweet smells of the bag on my waist. Old Ma told us stories of tricksters who had been trapped by Death, and jabbed him with spears to kill him. We would do the same.

• • •

We drove back to the bunker, after bribing a warrior with our bag of evil-sweet food. The man never saw the faint dreadlock clinging to the bag, and though we felt sorry for him, our compassion fled as we saw him eat the food so fast he grew sick.

As we drove we sang together. Old songs, new songs, and some in between. We kicked up dust, and drove over dreadlocks bravely. Here they were thick in the ground, and we could hear the sounds of war in the distance, feeding the ever-hungry fatness of Death. And when we drove up to the bunker with our truck, my brothers leaped from its sides and ran down into the darkness to face the giant, defiance in their eyes.

Ho, the giant said, dreadlocks squirming with eagerness among the sides of the walls. Little brother’s eyes opened wide, and he looked around at the TVs. A table filled with food and fruit sat near the giant.

Come, eat, the giant beckoned to us.

I turned to my brothers and nodded. We all turned weapons onto the giant. I fired a small pistol at the giant’s face, and watched his cheek shatter with a great gout of blood.

Kuabi threw grenades into the folds of the giant’s belly, and the flesh flew apart with a great fart of sludginess.

Little brother threw stones.

Mouwanat held his flamethrower forward and a great stream of fire leapt out and struck the giant. Fat burned and slid to the ground, and the giant’s arms beat against the sides of the walls. His dreadlocks slid up into his body, and kept sliding and sliding. Mouwanat turned his flame to them, and the dreadlocks lit up and spread crackling blue fire all over the bunker.

We burned and shot until there was nothing left to burn and shoot, and we walked out with smiles on our faces. We have killed death, we celebrated among ourselves.

And saved our brother, Mouwanat said.

• • •

Outside the dreadlocks had dried up, and were rusting into the sand.

If we killed Death, Kuabi thought out loud, aren’t we immortal?

From by us came a loud chuckle. We turned, and there stood Old Ma, barefoot and sweaty, by the side of the jeep.

You can’t kill Death, children! She walked over to me and put a hand on my chest. She ran her hands through my locks, and kissed my forehead. She put a salve on my chest, and it raised my spirits and let me breathe easier.

My brothers embraced Old Ma, and shouted and cried to see her alive.

But Old Ma, little brother cried, what about the stories you told us? Where they killed Death with spears?

Those, Old Ma said, turning away from me. Those were just stories. Stories to teach you, stories to help you be brave, stories to warn you, but still, just stories. Everyone tells stories. All over the world they tell stories, to help explain why things are just the way they are. Death will always be with us.

Kaubi said, if these were just stories how could we see his dreadlocks?

Just stories? Old Ma snorted, as she shooed us all back into the jeep. Kuabi started to drive us off across the land. Crowded around her, we listened as she spoke.

Stories can build up an empire, or strike down a people. You can spell the most powerful spell, ease a friend’s hurt, or break an enemy. Stories make you believe.

But how can we fight Death, little brother shouted, his eyes misting.

Old Ma took his hand. I told you a story to help you see the ugly Death in our land. But now you have to look for it on your own. There are other Deaths to face, other stories. Ones more cruel, others hopeful, kind. You have heard mine.

I looked around the jeep. My brothers had left their weapons with Death. We jounced on through the dust.

I nodded.

Old Ma was right. She had helped us, come from the bush to guide us. And now we had our own story to tell.

Many miles passed, and Old Ma waved us towards the forest, where we could hide and be safe. As I looked all around us, the world seemed eerie and still. A dead quiet had fallen. Even the dust hardly dared stir.

We had been brave, and faced Death. Now we had to be even braver and face the things that Death fed off. We could not fight Death with weapons. Death was not something we could burn, or knife. These things made it stronger, harder to see.

And we could never kill Death. We could only make it gentler, kinder, a friend who came after many years. But this Death would only come to us when we changed the current story, the one with Kalichnikovs, dreadlocks and fear, with the dust heavy in the air as it was kicked up by wheels.

Smooth Talking

Deep into the last couple of weeks of the Clarion workshop I came up with the slightly fun idea of a salesman going mad seeing dryads in the cut wood of the houses he’s trying to sell. The story veered from that a bit, but the central image of a man arguing with trees, which is the note I wanted the story to end on, remained in the story.

Marcus pulled on the steering wheel with both hands and forced the Ford Ranger right. The front wheels skipped, bounced, then the rear dug in. Spinning and spewing mud out past the flaps, his truck slowly started up the switchback. Marcus glanced at the passenger’s side of the bench seat.

“Shit!”

He reached out and righted his cup of Pepsi, wedging it again between the half-eaten burger and scuffed beige satchel. Marcus shifted into second, steering away from the edge. The road itself barely offered enough room for the Ranger and he kept a nervous eye on the edge. It was barely delineated in the dusk against all the other mud and greenery.

Why me? Marcus wondered. Firing Roger was one thing. Driving up killer mountain switchbacks to do it was a whole different story.

The demands of leadership, he sighed.

Marcus wrestled the Ranger up one last switchback. At this point he managed it well, popping the front up and over, then barreling straight for the main clearing.

And there sat Roger’s small hatchback near several halved logs, looking almost green rather than light blue in the orange twilight. Marcus surged his truck through several enormous ribbed tracks and pulled up into the impromptu parking lot.

The dome light winked on as he stepped out.

“Roger?”

No answer. Not that Marcus really expected one at this point. He’d been calling Roger, at home and on the company cellphone, for three days. Marcus cupped his hands around and his mouth and shouted into the trees.

“Hey, buddy. It’s me, Marcus.”

Marcus stepped over the logs and disturbed muck around them into the natural clearing. Twigs snapped as he approached the shadowy border where the clearing stopped and the towering Douglas Firs began.

All Roger had left was a note saying he couldn’t come back to work because his desk had been screaming at him.

The man could be up to almost anything.

Marcus avoided a branch with bark wrinkled like an old man’s skin. The white wood gleamed in what little light the day had left to offer.

What do you say to men whose desks scream at them? Hell, deskwork could pile up on anybody, but running up into the middle of a logging operation and skipping work was not the way to deal with it.

“Roger? Come on man, it’s getting late.”

Marcus stepped through into the shadows of the giant trees and lost the last of the light. As his eyes adjusted he saw Roger sitting on a stump, dressed in a tailored Gianelli three-piece suit. Roger’s hand-sewn seven hundred-dollar Italian leather shoes were caked with dirt and fir needles.

Marcus slowly stepped forward.

A needle snapped.

Roger turned around. His loose hair twisted with him, no longer held down by gel or spray. He self-consciously smoothed it down with a palm.

“Hello, Marcus. What are you doing up here?”

Marcus spread his arms.

“I was going to ask you the same.”

Roger sighed, shifted his position on the stump, and then turned back away from Marcus.

“What I’m trying to do, Marcus, is talk that tree into moving.”

Marcus didn’t say anything. He stood behind someone he thought he once knew and tried to figure what to say next. Not a man normally tied for words, Marcus found himself in the very surreal position of being speechless.

Roger’s lost it, Marcus thought. Twelve years of working for me and he’s finally lost it.

“It’s very obvious,” Roger explained. He stood up on the stump and pointed up the slope further where the switchback tapered off into a confusion of mud and a barren landscape of fallen trees and stumps. “The logging is coming this way.”

“Yes,” Marcus said slowly. “It is coming this way. That is what loggers do, they cut down the trees.”

Roger spun and looked down at him.

“I know that, Marcus. I’m not stupid... or insane.”

“Okay. I’m sorry.” Marcus chided himself silently: What the hell did he say that for? “But you have us back at the office wondering what’s going on, Roger.”

“Really?” Roger spun on the stump a little further. “Oh, wow. You must have driven all the way up here. Just to check on me?”

“Well... I spent a lot of time asking your neighbors where the hell you’d gone. You’ve missed three days.”

Roger stepped down.

“You really are a wonderful friend. I never realized you cared.” Fallen firs crunched as he stepped towards Marcus.

Too close, Marcus realized. Is he going to hug me?

Sure enough Roger threw his arms out and pulled Marcus forward into a big bear hug.

“Man, you don’t know how much this means to me,” he sniffled as Marcus stood there in shock, rigid, waiting for Roger to pull away. “I thought you were another rat racer, all caught up in the property values, subcontracting, vacant lots, my God, you actually have a soul.”

Marcus bit his lip.

“Look I don’t want to go home with you and meet your kids. I’m just your boss, okay? I couldn’t reach you anywhere, you left that strange note with the secretary, I was...”

Roger snorted and cut him off.

“You’re worried about reduced productivity?” he asked.

“Well, yes. Of course I am, Roger. You’ve sold, what, a single house this last couple months?”

“I know.” Roger slumped back onto the stump. “It’s been so hard.”

“Look, Roger...” Marcus started. Roger smiled.

“You’re here to fire me, Marcus, right?”

Marcus swallowed. Roger had guessed right. But now Marcus didn’t have the heart to follow through after Roger’s desperate display of gratitude for finding him.

“It’s… look, why don’t you take some time off, Roger. To relax.”

“With pay?” Roger asked.

“Um…” Marcus wasn’t so sure about that.

“Kiss my ass.” Roger put his head in his hands. “I’ve been your best for most of the twelve damn years you’ve been here.”

“I swear we’ll take you back after some time off. And counseling,” Marcus said, giving himself a smooth out. If Roger got better he’d take him back. If he didn’t, that time off without pay would just keep going. “Trust me.”

Roger sat back down on the stump. His arms were floppy with middle age and his belly settled in around his lap. He cupped his chin in his right hand’s palm with his knee propped off to the side to support the elbow.

The pose dissolved when he shifted again.

“Okay,” Roger said. “I’ll do it.” Marcus breathed a sigh of relief. Things weren’t going to be so hard. “But I tell you,” Roger continued. “Things have never been the same since my desk started screaming, and I don’t know if they’ll ever be the same again.”

Marcus held up his arms as if to ward off the words.

“I don’t need to know, Roger. Keep it on the inside.” He turned around. “Enjoy the downtime, bud.”

He left Roger and delicately weaved his way through the mud back into his pickup. He tossed the burger out of the window after inspecting it. The grease, now a white congealed substance, made him queasy.

Maybe it wasn’t just the grease that had killed his appetite but his quick little lie to Roger, promising to take him back.

Was he always the asshole?

Marcus turned the car on, remembering the last time he’d seen Tia, his ex-wife. He’d asked the same question.

Yes, she said.

He flicked the headlights on and scrabbled for a piece of gum in the dim green glow of the instrument panel. Then he inched the Ford down the switchback, still afraid of the invisible edges.

• • •

Everyone had already left the building and gone home. Marcus swiveled his leather executive chair around with a flourish and stood up. The printer started spitting freshly inked pages. Time to leave, Marcus thought, rubbing his tired eyes. The Soufrier’s paperwork was finished, and soon they would be buying a nice little brick ranch just outside of the town.

And that was the last piece of paperwork for the night.

Everything had been double load since Roger’s “vacation.” The late nights were a regular thing now. Marcus had been unable to find any realtors to replace Roger after almost three weeks of trying.

Marcus walked out into the hallway and shut his door behind him with a click. He made the mistake of looking at Roger’s office. The door lay slightly ajar.

The sound of sniffling caught Marcus’ ear. Roger’s wife? She should be in Vancouver, Marcus thought. Shouldn’t she? The helpless undertones of the sound tugged at Marcus. He stood for a second longer... and heard another sniffle.

He pushed the door all the way open. The crying softened, and Marcus thought for sure he heard feminine tones. He flicked the light on.

The room was empty.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

Marcus shook his head. The wind outside must have picked up. He flicked the lights off and turned around.

He heard it again. A definite sob if not a wail. And pain. Marcus flicked the lights back on. No imagining it—there was someone in this room with him.

Marcus looked at the desk and Roger’s strange words kicked around in his head.

He strode over the teal carpet and walked around the desk. There was no one underneath it.

Another sniffle.

“Who’s there?” He asked, frustrated.

“Help me,” the desk begged. Marcus jumped back with a startled shriek.

Roger had a wailing desk!

It could only mean he was going insane too. Could insanity catch?

“Hello?” The desk whispered. Marcus closed his eyes and groaned. He counted to ten silently.

“I’m scared,” the desk said.

Marcus didn’t reply.

Edging carefully closer to the desk, ready to snap around and run, he looked down. In the shadowy light he could see the outline of a form. The grain of Roger’s desk swirled into a pair of lean thighs. Marcus followed them up to the small V where they intersected, and then further around a small waspish stomach and waist, to a tiny pair of budding breasts and a face. Grainy swirls of hair framed the pixie-like features.

Marcus started to sweat. He backed away from the desk. This isn’t happening, he told himself. There are drugs that can help. He’d overloaded himself, like Roger, by adding Roger’s work to his own.

Or was there a speaker built into the desk.

A horrible joke... Marcus laughed suddenly.

“Where’s the intercom?” he asked.

“I’m scared,” the girl in the desk repeated.

“I’m not hearing you,” Marcus said. He put the palms of his hands over his ears. They were cold. “I don’t understand,” he whispered.

“You have to help.”

“Why are you doing this to me? I shouldn’t hear you.” Marcus closed his eyes.

“I’m dying,” the voice said. “They cut me up, then trapped me in here. Please help.”

“How can I be hearing you?” Marcus asked. He realized with a full sinking feeling that there was no intercom. This wasn’t a prank.

“You can hear me because I can hear you.”

“What do you want?”

“I’m scared, help me.”

“Help you what?” Marcus’ voice broke. “What do you want?”

“I want to die,” the voice in the desk pleaded. “Please kill me. Please end this suffering.”

Marcus leaned over the desk. Dark almond eyes met his. The stain made them waver around the edges. Desk tears.

“Please help.”

He backed out of the room and closed the door. Even through the oak paneling he could hear the crying start again. Oh God, he thought. Now I’ve walked over the edge. I’ve lost it.

Just step through the door, he told himself. Don’t forget to turn around and lock it. Go down the path and get in the Ford.

He followed his own directions.

The inside of his Ford Ranger seemed like another universe; quiet and cold. When he started up the engine he felt reassured by the throaty rumble. Machines equal order, he thought. Marcus sat there for a minute, looking out of the front windowshield at the black asphalt in front of his hood.

The scratchy plaintive plea echoed in the back of his mind. “Please help. I want to die.” Marcus shifted in the bench seat and hit the steering wheel with the flat of his hand.

Could he refuse? Was he that much of an asshole.

“Damn it.”

Okay. It was just a desk. If burning it took care of the voices he’d do it.

Marcus floored the accelerator and fishtailed out of the parking lot onto the road.

• • •

Several hours later Marcus pushed a gray and rusted dolly into the office. The left wheel squeaked. He bit his lower lip as he flipped the lights on.

Just like before, nothing.

He’d imagined it all.

Marcus risked a glance at the top of the desk. No, he could still see the still form.

He took a deep breath, walked around the desk, and pulled all the drawers out.

He squatted with a grunt and pushed the heavy desk over onto its end. With even more effort he wrestled the spade of the dolly underneath and tipped the desk over.

He almost collapsed under the weight, but managed to balance it. By the time he negotiated the doorway he could feel his heart thudding against the inside of his chest. Sweat stung his eyes and forced him to blink furiously.

The desk remained silent.

He pulled it out onto the lawn and yanked a can of lighting fluid out from his pocket.

“Is there anything else I should do?” Marcus asked.

Silence.

“Okay.” He stood back up, pulled the cap off, and started spraying the desk.

The desk sighed.

Marcus ignored it. He looked up at the clear night sky. He mentally traced out the fuzzy swathe of the Milky Way, his breath fogging the air in front of him.

He lit a Marlboro. Marcus hadn’t smoked in five years, but he’d kept a spare in the glove compartment just in case. The tip of the cigarette glowed and a wave of dizziness washed down towards the pit of his stomach.

“There are others,” the voice in Roger’s desk said. “More where I came from. They are in danger. You have to warn them.”

Marcus nodded. Of course. He took another long drag and tossed the cigarette at the flat surface of the desk. It leapt into flames. A whole can of fluid was a great starter.

The desk screamed and crackled, warping at the edges. Marcus stared at the flames, looking for some gaseous form to reach up out towards the sky and drift off towards the stars.

He only saw smoke.

Eventually the last embers died. The wind stirred the ashes, all that remained of the desk. It lifted them up into the air like a gentle tornado.

• • •

Marcus opened the door and got into the cab of his Ford. He leaned his head against the steering wheel.

“Others.”

Roger had talked to the desk too. That made sense. It was Roger’s desk. Roger must have traced where the wood had been cut and left to... save the trees. An hour’s drive from here, Marcus remembered.

Why?

Guilt. Marcus looked out of his truck at the houses with pretty green lawns and asphalt driveways. He’d started twelve years ago. Just some young city boy realtor with a half-assed dream of developing the area. When he drove these streets Marcus was proud of the development he’d brought here.

But Roger must have remembered all those great trees that stood here twelve years ago. Trees that Marcus only barely remembered existing until now.

It was time to go home. Time to go to sleep. He could come in tomorrow and pretend this hadn’t happened. All the office would know is that some idiot had broken in and burned Roger’s desk on the front lawn.

But he couldn’t get the image of the girl in the desk out of his mind, her wrists sliced off at their edge, trapped. How many hundreds or thousands of others had Marcus condemned? If they could speak they could feel couldn’t they? The thing in Roger’s desk had cried hadn’t it?

Marcus wrenched the wheel left. The tires squealed and the pickup leaned, pushing Marcus away from the door.

“All right,” he said. “Here’s another nutjob of a realtor coming up to talk to a bunch of damn trees.” He rolled down his window and leaned out, letting the cold air hit his face and wake him up.

Marcus really didn’t want to be insane. Marcus was a good man. He sold decent houses on decent lots for decent prices to decent people. Why couldn’t Roger have done the job properly? Why couldn’t Roger have talked the damn trees into saving themselves before everyone thought him insane.

Christ. Marcus looked back at his gloomy reflection in window.

• • •

Marcus stepped over the logs and disturbed muck around them into the natural clearing. He made his way towards the shadowy border where the clearing stopped and the towering Douglas Firs began.

Lit only by the stars and the gibbous moon they could have been giants.

The constant hum of the city, the reassurance that humans were all around you, eating, doing taxes, showering, falling in love, hailing a taxi... none of that was here.

“So here I am!” Marcus yelled up at the canopy.

Logging machines hulked in the forest just across the muddy road; giant, yellow, metal beasts.

“I think I have you all figured out,” he said. “You’re all dryads, right. I’ve read about you.” He sat down cross-legged on a stump. Roger’s stump. “I mean, hell, what else could you be? Those weird stories had to come from somewhere.” He looked around at the trees. “Can you hear me?”

No answer. Marcus spread his legs and looked down at the rings underneath his crotch. A young tree.

“Of course. I can see why you don’t want to answer. You’ve probably survived all this time by not showing yourselves to any people. It’s either that or I’m trying to explain away my insanity, and right now I would really appreciate even the smallest response, you know?” He waited. Then continued. “I mean, even if it is a hallucination, you could at least do me the favor of responding.”

The wind rustled through the branches. A few yellow leaves floated down. Fall would soon have the forest floor carpeted with them. Well, no, Marcus stopped himself. Not this forest. Other forests maybe. This one would be a bare hill by the time fall came in full.

“I’m not a tree-hugger, right? But I’m as green-minded as anyone else.” He laughed. “That’s sarcasm. I like to drive my pickup, low mileage and all. I like having pencils, and paper, and reading TV-Guide, then tossing it in the trash. But it’s not like I’m saying I don’t care.” Marcus stood up on the stump. Lend me your ears, he thought. “I buy dolphin-safe tuna. I separate my aluminum, plastic. But all,” he paused and indicated the forest, “this, this isn’t the same department. So come on, help me.”

Nothing.

Okay. They were just like shy customers, Marcus thought. They needed the right hook.

No, he corrected himself, these were trees! Talking, breathing trees! Shy trees. And what was he selling them? He wasn’t sure. He just wanted to deliver his message and get the hell out of there. And never talk to a piece of wood again.

You couldn’t start a pitch if you didn’t even know what you were trying to sell, he knew.

He started over.

“One of your kind asked me for help. So here I am. Talking to you. I am here to warn you. I don’t know what exactly you all are—whether you are trees, or spirits, or actual flesh and blood beings like I am... but come this morning every single one of you hearing my words will be dead if you don’t do something.”

No response. Bad pitch.

“Come on, talk to me. Please?” Marcus jumped down from the stump.

“I’m not insane!” He screamed into the forest at the top of his lungs. “I’m not insane. You’re all out there. You can hear me. I know you can hear me. I’m doing you the favor, I swear to god.” He looked down at a large orange bulb of a mushroom growing out from a green vein of moss. It perched on one of the roots of the stump he stood on.

He didn’t have to do this.

Marcus walked back towards his truck. In the dark it looked almost green rather than light blue. Just beyond it sat the bulldozers.

“Ah, shit!” He couldn’t leave them. No. That would weigh on his conscience. I’m not an asshole, he thought.

He squelched the tiny annoying voice in the back of his mind that kept telling him ‘they don’t exist,’ and turned back around.

“I’m still here,” he said to the trees. “I’m not going anywhere unless you move first.”

And that was that. Marcus knew the tricks.

• • •

The first fingers of dawn, green hues mixed with the slightest bits of orange, lazily crept their way into the distant Eastern sky.

Marcus had told the Douglas firs about logging. And carpentry. And strip mining. He’d threatened, yelled, and begged. It felt good to scream at the damn unmoving trees. It was cleansing. Not something he’d ever done in a long time.

And then Marcus rallied to tell them about dolphins, manatees, elephants, tigers, and everything else dying out across the face of the planet. He did not mourn their passing except in a distant intellectual manner. But he used it all as a warning to the stolid trees.

It had to work, Marcus screamed in his own head. If not, people would think he was an insane tree-hugger. Marcus Hetco, head of the largest realty here, the very man who carved a town out of the trees and wilderness, was not an insane tree hugger. This had to work.

But only a still silence hung over the forest. None of the threats of man’s machines or practices had the effect Marcus hoped for.

It occurred to Marcus that the trees had millennia of undisturbed quiet on their side.

“I saw one of your kind,” he said. “Remember? That’s why I’m here. She was beautiful.” Marcus sat huddled against the tree stump, trying to keep his eyes from closing. God he was tired. He closed his eyes and visualized what he had seen on Roger’s desk. “She had a... smooth body, very curved. And almond eyes. You would have wept to see how they pleaded with me. There is so much in a glance.” He wished he had another cigarette. He sat with his back to the trunk looking up the lines of bark, branches, and the gaps of dawn just making it through spaces in between leaves. “And as beautiful as she was, she was trapped; crying, begging, in a desk. She’d been cut, from the elbows up, and the knees. Sliced. Sliced down to a quarter of an inch, and preserved with a covering of stain. Imagine, will you, the chemicals being laid down on her flawless body, seeping through her skin, waterproofing her against coffee spills, and condensation from soda cans.

She asked to die. She asked me. So I dragged her out onto the lawn. I used fire to free her. Can you imagine how long it took for her to slowly die,“ his voice shook, “suffering as the flames licked at her body...”

The vivid and violent image seemed to spill out of him into the surrounding calm. Leaves rustled in response.

“That’s enough,” came the whisper from the forest. It resonated deep in Marcus’s chest. “You can stop saying these things now...”

Marcus whirled around but saw nothing. His heart thudded. Branches rustled in the shadows.

“I told you so,” he said. “I’m not insane.” He clenched his jaw. He wouldn’t start crying merely because a tree had talked to him. Merely. Maybe crying was a good idea, because it meant he’d finally leapt off the deep end. Like Roger.

“Humans have been using trees from the area for as long as we can remember,” the voice said. “Why should we worry now?”

• • •

Marcus stood up. He stank and needed a shave. His suit would probably never recover from the mud, grass stains, and wrinkles. His shoes still had fir needles plastered to their sides.

And all he could think was; they’d answered him!

“Are you all dryads?” He looked around at the firs.

“Some are,” the voice replied. Marcus wanted to yell or shout in celebration. “The rest are trees.”

Marcus pointed to the machines behind his Ford.

“Everything here will be taken. You and the trees.”

“Why?”

“Because.” Marcus gaped. “Haven’t you been listening to me?”

The voice stayed quiet for a few seconds before replying.

“No. We tried to ignore you.”

“The machines will take all the trees, and you. You obviously haven’t been looking upslope, have you?”

“We don’t move much. It tends to alarm people,” the voice said. Marcus thought he had a bead on it. It came from his left. He looked at the fir. If he strained he could make out wrinkled, ancient features on the bark. He addressed it.

“You said you could move. If that’s true you have to move. You have to act in your own self-interest. You have to protect yourselves.” Marcus heard the sound of vehicles sloshing through the mud on their way up the switchback. The loggers would be coming up to man their equipment. “You don’t have much time.”

“We’ve lived for centuries. We have plenty of time.”

Marcus scratched the stubble on his face and looked back at the machines. Several pickups bumped their way across the ruts and parked alongside his Ford. A young man with a yellow hard-hat looked in the cab and then turned in Marcus’s direction.

“Let me put it this way,” Marcus said quickly. He cracked a broad smile. The trees needed real estate. He knew exactly how to help them. “Location location location. You’re in the wrong one. We can sit here and watch. Once those machines start up, you’re fucked. The land you’re sitting on is not good for you. You desperately need a move. Or I’ll find you one day in one of my customer’s cabinets and have to burn you too so you don’t spend the rest of your short life suffering.”

The tree, or dryad, Marcus still couldn’t say which for sure, didn’t answer. And time was running short—a pair of loggers had started following the muddy imprints of footsteps towards the stump.

Marcus trotted over to the tree and jumped for the lowest branch. He was tired. He missed. The logger, a rail thin man with rope-like muscles, strode into the firs.

“Hey!”

“Damn it,” the other logger swore. “Not another one.”

Shit. Marcus jumped again and caught the branch. He hung there for a second, kicked off his shoes, then used his feet to scrabble up into the nook. He straddled it for a second and panted. His arms still ached from moving the desk last night.

“What the hell are you doing?” The logger looked up at Marcus. He shook his head. “Shit. Man, we’ve already had someone out here a few weeks ago doing this.”

Marcus shook his head.

“These are special trees,” he said.

“I’m sure they are. But we still have to cut them down.” The logger turned back. “Lenny! Come on over here. We have another tree hugger.”

“I’m not a tree hugger,” Marcus protested while pulling himself up to another branch to get out of reach.

“Look, man, we’re not anti-environmentalists here.” The man sounded like he had to say those words often enough. “We plant two saplings for every tree we cut down. Now come down off of there before you fall or hurt yourself.”

“No.”

Lenny arrived and the two men muttered for a few seconds. Lenny looked up.

“We’re going to have to call the police.”

“Fine by me.”

“They’ll drag you out of there.”

“That’s okay.”

“Shit, man, how long do you think you can last up there? You didn’t even bring any food with you.”

“Not very long,” Marcus answered. They all stared at each other for several seconds. Then the logger in the yellow hard-hat finally shrugged.

“All right.”

They left. Marcus waited.

The sound of chainsaws shattered the morning air from across the switchback. The first trees fell, crashing through branches and hitting the ground with a thud. Marcus still waited, saying nothing. The nook of the branch dug into his crotch and his left leg fell asleep.

• • •

A lone Mountie in scarlet showed up half an hour later. The chainsaws were still at it. In a long train-like procession, trucks roared their way up higher to load up on logs.

“See,” Marcus whispered. “They won’t take a few and leave. They’re here for everything. Look upslope. They’ll plant trees, but it’s bare ground already. It’ll be too late for you.”

The tree had fallen silent. Marcus blinked his crusty eyes at the new rays of light filtering in through the foliage. He guessed he looked the part of a raving lunatic at this point.

The Mountie picked his way over to the tree stump Marcus had spent the night on.

“Hey there, son,” he called out.

“Hi sir.”

“I ran your plates. You’re Marcus, right?”

“I am,” Marcus confirmed.

“How long are you going to be up there?”

Marcus shrugged. “I’m waiting for the tree to move,” he grinned.

“Okay.” The Mountie’s hat bobbed, a tassel shifting. “I’ve called for someone else better at this sort of thing than I am. He’ll be here within the hour. We’ll talk about what you want.”

Marcus pushed his back up against the tree. He’d turned into one of those people you would watch on late night TV, doing something utterly outside of his comprehension for God-only-knew-what-reason.

He turned back to the trunk of the tree and pressed his face against the bark, pushing at the rough ridges with his fingertips.

“Come on,” he whispered fiercely. “You have to move. Not just for you, but me, now. They all think I’m mad.”

“Where are we to move too?” the tree asked. Marcus felt a surge of relief. He thought he had lost the tree to silence again. It continued to speak. “This is all we have known. Everything else is strange, and dangerous.”

“I know the land,” Marcus said. “It’s my job. I know all the lands in this area. And beyond. I can guide you to a safe place where they will never disturb you.”

The Mountie shifted. Twigs snapped under his feet. “You talking to me?” he asked.

The tree’s branches swayed. “Can you promise us this?” It asked.

“I can promise you,” Marcus said loudly. I do promise. This is not lie, it is not an easy out, he told himself.

“Promise me what?” the Mountie asked.

The trunk shook. Marcus yelped and wrapped his arms around an extra branch that tore at the tender inner part of his forearm. The world around him trembled. Leaves fell and branches swayed wildly.

He looked down. Roots uncurled and broke out of the mud. They ripped at the undergrowth. Splinters of wood and bark rained down to the ground.

“They’re moving!” Marcus screamed at the Mountie and the rest of the world. He leaned back and howled. The shiver of the tree ran up through his thighs and into his torso. He wasn’t insane. He couldn’t imagine this. The entire length of the tree shifted and Marcus pitched forward, bloodying his lip against the trunk.

The Mountie gaped and tripped over the stump as he backed away. He didn’t try and get back up; he stared up at Marcus and the tree.

The ripping sound that the roots made as they came out of the ground spread throughout the forest. The chainsaws fell silent by it. Shouts of surprise and fear floated out into the clearing.

Maybe every tenth tree was pulling itself out of the ground. The loggers looked around, and one by one they started trickling out into the clearing by their trucks.

“I’m not crazy,” Marcus yelled at them, his face glowing. “These really are special trees.”

He couldn’t see their faces, but if the awe and reverence reflected anything like that of the expression on the Mountie’s face they probably would never feel quite the same in any forest again.

The tree moved forward in long strides. The bark, forced away to reveal tall strong legs, still fell in scales as they moved through the forest. The other dryads ranged from old giants, like the one Marcus rode, to small saplings. The smaller saplings stayed close to the shadows of their elders.

Each dryad was a carved primal beauty. Marcus skirted the edge of an emotion he had trouble identifying. Worship of the perfect and unspeakably ancient? The wooden gods of the forest spread awe through him of some sort. Maybe in the distant past Marcus’ kind worshipped at the roots of such giants.

“We are moving,” the dryad whispered. “Now what?”

Past the slope of the mountain Marcus could look out across a whole valley. And beyond that he had the maps in his head.

“We’re headed for a park,” Marcus said. He was selling them on a move. “It’s four hundred and eighty thousand acres on a heavily wooded lot. Scenic lakes, mountains, good skiing in the winter, and only thirty minutes from town. They don’t cut trees there.”

“We’d like that,” the dryad rumbled.

Marcus kissed the branch.

“Of course you would.”

They left the Mountie still lying down, stunned. The loggers stirred from their stupor and got into vehicles to follow them. More cars showed up, until an entire procession glided along the roads near the massive walking trees.

Marcus remained balanced on the branch, looking down at the shifting leafy shadows they cast on the road below. Roger would have to come back, Marcus thought as he guided the trees straight through the two towns between the mountain and the park. He wished Roger could see him close this deal.

He’d done well for the trees. He’d done well for Roger. Hell, he thought, he’d done well for himself.

It wasn’t often in life everyone got a win-win deal.

Tides

A few writing books I have recommend buying a book or art, taking a picture, and then writing a story based on what you have before you. I'd never done this before, but I love buying books of science fiction art. One of the Spectrum collections of art I had featured a painting of a shack draped with fishing tackle up on just enormous stilts. I focused right in on it, and left the book open to that painting for days as I kept asking myself what kind of environment needed a building like that. As the answers came, this story just unfolded and begged to be written.

Lots of people ask writers where they get their ideas from. Sometimes it's a complex fusion of various ideas and snippets of inspiration that have been bubbling away underneath. Other times, it's as simple as flipping a page and finding the entire story just sitting in a painting for you. If only all the stories came fully formed and ready to go like this one did.

It was moonlight-time and the second sun, orange and stately, slipped into the inky depths of the Roranraka sea. The first sun had been quenched for well over a tide. Siana played in the silver pools the tide had left behind, looking for spiraled shells that she could decorate her new room with.

She didn’t skip from pool to pool. On the crumbly, wet coral skipping could cause a slip and fall, and Siana had learned about falls the hard way. She had fallen face first into a patch of firecoral when she was very little. Her mom said she’d cried so loud half the tall-village came looking for her. And the wickedly fierce burning left small patches of Siana’s left cheek discolored.

Siana had to time her excursions for shells well. Her tall-village sat in the middle of the ocean, on the tallest mid-ocean peak where reef had grown and sand had collected over time. Several times during the day the Roranraka receded, and Siana could look for shells. But during the rest of the day the ocean lapped at the pillars of her entire village.

So Siana carefully stepped her way between the pools.

In a funny looking kidney-shaped pool she paused and squatted to try and peer through the mirrored surface. The hem of her gray skirt touched the water and turned even darker. It stirred ripples into the surface as she shifted.

Although Siana couldn’t see very well through her reflection she was the best at finding beautiful shells. It wasn’t a case of looking, she knew, but reaching her hand out over the surface and feeling through the water for the perfect shell.

There! Just tucked into the corner of the pool was a mahogany-brown cowlie. Rippled stripes ran in wedges around the spiral, and clean bone-white patterns twisted in between them. How beautiful. Siana carefully reached down and picked it up. Ah, and she was lucky, nothing had moved into the empty shell.

It sat large in her hand, dripping salty water down her palm and tickling her wrist when she held it up into the moonlight. This will go above the doorway, Siana thought. Right next to Toffhey, her stuffed dolphin.

A large shadow passed in front of Mainmoon: a long, thin, airship. Siana stopped admiring the cowlie. she’d never seen an airship before, though mum talked about them sometimes in a sad way. Teamdroves of enormous wrinkled birds squawked and complained as they pulled the large silvery craft against the wind.

It was going towards her tall-village! Siana tucked the cowlie into a wet, dirty, canvas bag along with all the other shells she’d collected. She walked back home, but slowly. No matter how excited Siana got, she refused to chance the firecoral.

• • •

When Siana finally got home she stood and looked up at the four massive wooden posts that kept home above the high-tide level. All the lanterns were lit, flickering a warm yellow light. Her new room, hanging off of the side of the main hut and propped up on the south post, also had a lantern in the window.

Even stranger, Siana could smell cooking and the excited rumbling of dad’s voice. Strange because they’d just had supper, and mum had let her out to go look for shells while the tide was well out.

Siana grabbed the first rung of the ladder and climbed up and up. She paused halfway to catch her breath. When she reached the hatch of the entryway she clambered in and closed it behind her. She carefully set the canvas bag of shells down.

“Siana? Is that you?” Mum called, peeking around the corner of the door.

“Yes.”

“Come in,” she said with a big smile. “There’s someone we’d like you to meet.” Mum smelled reassuringly of bread and saltfish stew. She wore her apron, and had her long brown hair carelessly pulled back in a ponytail. Her hair, Siana thought, was almost the color of the cowlie in her bag. And so was her skin. Tanned and weathered.

Siana walked into the room. Dad sat in his driftwood armchair. He was also grinning. And next to him stood a woman. The woman looked a lot like mum: the same brown eyes, and the sharp cheeks. She looked the same age as well. But even though she smiled when she saw Siana, the woman’s eyes looked really tired, like dad’s when he’d been out after a whale for many weeks and come home without a catch.

“Hello Siana,” the woman said. “I can’t believe how big you’ve grown. Look at you!”

Siana smiled politely. Adults always said things like this in a high-pitched voice. It actually annoyed her, but mum would get angry if Siana got smart with the guest.

“Thank you,” Siana said.

“Do you know who she is?” Mum asked excitedly.

Before Siana could hazard a guess, though she was thinking that the visitor was a cousin to mum of some sort, the woman spoke.

“I’m Miasia. I’m your sister.”

Siana pursed her lips.

“No you’re not. Mum says my sister died in the Coastal War.”

Mum made a half strangled sobbing noise, and dad looked angry for a second. Then he grinned ruefully.

“No, Siana.” He reached out with his long arms and pulled her closer. “No, this is really your sister, Miasia.”

Siana regarded Miasia for a moment.

“Sorry,” Siana said. “You looked old. You look just like mum. But even older.”

Miasia looked at mum and shrugged.

“I’ve been through a lot,” she said. There was a large duffel bag by her feet. She picked it up and opened it. “But, I do have a little something for you that I bought back from over the ocean.” Miasia pulled out a small wooden box and gave it to Siana. It was made of old, dark wood, with brass hinges that creaked as Siana opened it.

Inside sat a purple and pink conch shell. It was stunning.

“Thank you,” Siana breathed. She moved away from dad and gave Miasia a quick hug. “It’ll go well with the other shells in my new room.”

Dad tapped his fingers on his chair.

“Siana, Miasia's going to sleep in your new room tonight.” He glanced at mum. “Until we figure out how things are going to work. Okay?”

Siana stood stunned. She knew how ‘temporary’ things like this worked in a tall-village. Where could Miasia sleep except here? She’d just come back, and it would take her a long time to get settled on the island. And dad couldn’t afford the wood for another new room; it had taken him years to work for the extra wood to build the small addition to their tallhouse.

There were few islands scattered on the ocean, and even fewer building resources traded between them and the Mainland. And tall-villages all across the Roranraka were fighting the Coastal War for access to forests, so that they could build their homes that barely stuck out of the ocean. Siana’s mum often told her it made everyone sad to lose so many children, and brothers and sisters, for the sake of wooden pilings.

Siana looked at a sister she had almost forgotten. Her return was a good thing, Siana thought, but losing a room! Children in tall-villages dreamed and prayed for a room of their own most of their lives. And now...

She started to get a pout ready, but dad gave her a stern look, knitting his eyebrows together. Siana sighed.

“It’s not fair,” she declared. “I’m going back outside.”

“No you’re not. Easytide comes in a few hours,” mum said.

“It’s only a few inches,” Siana started.

“No.”

Siana bit her lip.

“I’ll go to bed then.”

“That’s a good idea,” dad said. Siana changed into her nightclothes and crawled back into her old bed, the one next to the kitchen. The bed she’d spent most of her life in. Her elbows hit the shelves one end, and her feet the other. Bulbs of onions, dangling parsley, garlic, all swung in planters above her. Siana listened to the distant murmur of everyone talking while she mulled over various ways of running away from home.

None of them would work. There weren’t any big vessels she could stowaway on besides the whaler dad worked on, and the tides prevented anyone from walking to any of the other islets near hers. The nearest other tall-village was a week away by boat. The only other land was Mainland, hundreds and hundreds of miles away, where the world came up out of the ocean, and green trees grew, and people lived without worrying about tides. It sounded like a fairy-tale.

But the Mainland was crowded with people. And they guarded their precious trees with their lives. Tall-villagers were not welcome. The only way Siana could get there was if she got involved in the Coastal War. Children were not meant for that kind of fighting.

The thought of the Coastal War made her think of Miasia again, and got Siana even angrier.

Just before Siana fell asleep she heard someone walk carefully up to her. Siana feigned sleep, but peeked. Miasia stood there as if wanting to say something, but then apparently thinking Siana was asleep, left. Her footsteps creaked on the floorboards.

At least someone was getting their own room tonight, Siana thought. She turned back the other way trying to get comfortable.

• • •

Siana followed her friends to the edge of the tall-village the next midtidemorning, and everyone kept questioning her about Miasia.

“Where has she been?”

“What does she look like now?”

“Why does she look so old when she is only a little older than you, Siana?”

“Did she use up all her magic?”

Siana looked at the excited faces, their hair blowing in the wind. The sand sucked under her feet as she walked.

“And how is Siana today?” she asked, annoyed. But even her close playfriends didn’t find it all that horrible that Siana had lost her room.

In fact, most of the children in the tall-village weren’t very nice to her. Siana’s family had only been in this tall-village since her grandfather had fallen on hard times and been forced to leave the Mainland to become a whaler. So still, when they played war, Siana had to be the Evil Coastie.

“Really, Siana, it must be so neat to have a sister back from the wars,” they all said. Then they rolled their eyes when Siana slurped off down the sandtrails in a huff.

It had been her room. Why did Miasia have to return at all?

• • •

Siana asked mum that same question with a calculated foot stomp. Mum looked down at her, then leaned over. Her shell necklace tinkled and shifted.

“It's not always easy,” mum said softly. “Sometimes we have to adapt. I wish we could just live on the beach, not on the poles. It would be so much easier to build a home.”

But that was silly. Mum was being strange. The tides would wipe out a house without stilts in an instant. Its owners would never be heard from again.

Mum’s silliness didn’t change Siana’s rage.

She stomped towards her bed. She looked at the shells on her shelf above her bed, and the cowlie she had picked out for mum but hadn’t given her yet. She was might regret this later, but...

Siana swept the shells onto the floor with a shriek.

“I hate it! It’s not fair.”

“Siana,” her mother yelled. “Your shells!” The fragile pieces lay on the floor, most of them okay. Shells were tougher than they looked. Some had chipped their spiraled edges, or the little horns sticking off their sides.

But the beautiful cowlie, Siana’s new pride, had shattered against the little table by her bed.

“Siana,” her mother pointed. Miasia's gift, the conch shell, also lay broken. “Why?”

Siana swallowed.

“I don’t care,” she declared, lying. “I don’t care.” She ran out of the kitchen and down the ladder.

• • •

Siana sat against one of the pillars of the tide-caller’s station. It was the highest building in the tall-village, and the furthest out. She let her last few tears dry on her cheeks and sat watching the second sun rise as the first sun dipped below the horizon to fire the sky and clouds with patterns of deep red and purple.

Miasia crossed the sand with a slight limp. Siana scuffled to face the other way as Miasia got close.

“Hey,” Miasia said.

Siana didn’t answer.

“Mum says the conch shell fell off the shelf and you’re pretty upset about it.”

Siana looked at Miasia.

“No she didn’t. you’re just saying that.”

Miasia leaned back in mock horror.

“Caught in my own lie! Okay, I’m sorry. I couldn’t think of anything else to say that would be more comfortable for the both of us. Can I sit?”

“I guess.”

Miasia scooped out some sand and then wiggled into the side of the pillar. She turned a bit to look at Siana. Siana resolutely stared ahead. Miasia pulled out a wooden bead with tiny lines of blue painted around it in a wiggly pattern. She held it up to the sun. Siana watched out of the corner of her eye, still trying to pretend not to.

Then Miasia opened her palm and dropped her hand below the bead a few inches. And the bead stayed where it was: in the air, just above Miasia's palm.

Siana couldn’t not look. She shifted around to face her sister.

“How’d you do that?”

Miasia grinned.

“It's not that hard. You could probably do it. According to my teachers, the talent runs in blood.”

“Wow,” Siana breathed. The bead spun in the air. “But what about the price?” she’d been taught in school about it. Using magic was dangerous. Miasia sighed and the bead dropped into her fingers.

“Each little bit of magic takes a proportionately sized piece of your life,” she said. The corners of her mouth tugged down briefly, and she looked past Siana’s shoulder, out at the sand that went on and on into the distance.

“Miasia,” Siana asked. “Is that why you look old like mum?”

“Yeah.” Miasia stood up. She grunted as she did so. But Siana was still thinking.

“You shouldn’t have floated that bead,” she said. “That cost you.”

Miasia smiled and ran a finger through Siana’s hair.

“It only cost me a few seconds,” she said. “It’s the least I can do for taking your room away from you.”

Maybe, Siana thought, maybe Miasia wasn’t so bad.

They stood up and started to walk slowly back to tall-home, Siana delaying to look for shells, Miasia limping. Halfway there, Siana paused at a left over pool of water and looked in. There was a small shell she couldn’t quite reach, but Miasia quite deftly leaned over past Siana and plucked it out of the water, only slightly wetting the edge of her sleeve.

“What did you do in the wars?” Siana asked, a bit bold, as Miasia dried the shell off on her dress.

“I made shells. Invisible shells, like bubbles, to protect the officers.” Miasia shut her eyes. “Before battle ten or twenty of us spellcasters would stand in the tent. The officers came in one side, their uniforms bare to the danger of gunfire, and they came out the other side protected by my magic. I had to make the bubbles big for them, to give them enough air to come back and have the bubbles unlocked so they could breathe. I had to repair damaged shells, not far from the fighting. All the time around us soldiers died of horrible things, Siana, and I grew old quickly.”

“Oh.”

“One day the Coasties attacked the tent.” Miasia looked around to see if anyone was about, then pulled up the edges of her skirt and showed Siana the angry red scar that ran down the front of her leg.

“Why didn’t you have your own bubble?” Siana asked.

“They don’t teach us that version of the spell. The rulers decided to take all the books about magic that spellcasters owned a long time ago, and only the rulers can decide what spells they should teach each spellcaster. That way no spellcaster gets too powerful, like they used to be in the barbaric Old Ages. But then the rulers still get to use the powers to help them. So other than that one powerful spell they taught me for the war, all I know are some simple little tricks.”

Siana digested this all.

“Why did you leave the tall-village?” Siana asked. “If the magic was going to do this to you.”

Miasia looked off into the distance.

“You know dad promised the rest of his life to the whalers to afford our tall-house? Just because those on the Mainland drive the price of wood so high. I wanted to help dad.”

Siana scratched at the sand. Dad always looked glum. Always sea-tough, tired, and yet so proud of her shells.

The thought of fighting Miasia for the room suddenly seemed extremely selfish and petty. Siana realized she had much growing up to do. Her sister was drained and old from war, her father chained to the whaling ships for life, and mum did her best to find part time work around the tall-village, cooking and cleaning for established families.

But Siana didn’t want to think about sober things. It was still a pretty day out, with the salt heavy in the air. All those adult things seemed so far away.

“Would you teach me the bead trick?” She asked.

After all, what were a few seconds of her life in exchange for the ability to really impress her playfriends?

But Miasia turned away. All the joy dropped from her face. Siana realized how old Miasia looked: her face had wrinkles, and some of her hair had begun to silver and grow wispy.

“Let’s go back,” Miasia said.

• • •

It took Siana several days to get Miasia to ease up and show her the bead trick again. And Siana tried to look through Miasia, just like she looked through the pools of water to find her shells.

Miasia handed Siana the bead with a smile.

“Okay, you try.”

Siana let the bead sit in the crease of her folded hand. It felt slightly hot. She scrunched her forehead and stared at the bead willing as hard as she could for it to rise.

Nothing happened.

Miasia put her hands underneath Siana’s and smiled. The bead began to rise into the air.

“Oh,” Siana giggled. The bead hovered, and then it slowly began to spin, gyrating like a top on the floor, wiggling all over the place. The little lines of blue painted onto the bead created a smooth mesmerizing pattern in the air. “I wish I could do it,” Siana said, frustrated.

“You are,” Miasia said. “Now.” She pulled her hands away and the bead continued spinning, for a second. Siana gasped in surprise and the bead spun out from her hands and landed in the sand.

Miasia laughed and tousled Siana’s hair.

“Not bad you little egg, not bad at all.”

Siana looked at the little bead in the sand.

“Can I try again?”

Miasia leaned over and picked the bead up.

“Sure,” she said.

They spent the rest of the hour laughing and together making the bead dance over their hands.

• • •

Siana’s guilt at the smashed shells was weighing on her mind, and she decided she should find a good shell for Miasia and mum as a way of making up. She left after one of the littletides, just before the rushtide, to go out and look for the best shells. The best shells were to be found just beyond the edge of the tall-village, past the lookout towers who would no doubt call mum to come and fetch Siana back into the tall-village because she was wandering too far out. Again.

She squelched out eastwards over the sand, and then after a while started picking her way over rock as the ground slipped downwards. Walking around great round pieces of brain coral that were orange-gray, wrinkled, and covered in mucus, Siana began to zero in on a few tide pools that felt promising.

Mainmoon sat gray in the sky, along with first sun. This was further than Siana usually went.

Siana found the perfect pool. She carefully squatted at the edge waddled down in. Her careful movements sent ripples across the peaceful surface. Despite her caution Siana’s foot slipped in between two rocks and she fell into the tide pool.

The cold water shocked her, and for a moment she floated there. Then her foot began to throb and Siana started to cry. She was scared, her foot hurt, and she knew she’d definitely walked too far away: she would get into trouble from mum.

“Hey, hey,” came Miasia's voice. “Don’t cry. It’s okay.” Her sister’s face appeared at the edge of the pool, and Siana stopped crying.

“Miasia?”

“Yep. The lookout sent someone to fetch mum to bring you back. I decided to come instead. Figured you’d get into less trouble.” Miasia reached over and grunted as she helped Siana out of the pool.

Cold water streamed from Siana’s dress and she shivered, glad to be out in the first sun’s warmth.

“I’m sorry,” Siana said. “I was trying to find the best shells for you and mum.”

“Well, that’s sweet of you,” Miasia said. “But come on, let’s go home, rushtide is coming soon.”

“My ankle hurts.”

“All the more reason to leave now. We’ll go to the nearest lookout.”

Siana grabbed Miasia's shoulder and they both slowly hobbled back towards the tall-village. They passed the brain coral step by step with Siana stopping to rest when her ankle hurt too much.

Miasia tried not to look worried, but Siana knew she had done something very bad. Miasia kept looking north when she thought Siana wasn’t looking. They both knew rushtide was coming soon. Siana had been hoping to find her shell and walk back, with just enough time, to the nearest lookout. Any tall-villager knew the tide schedule instinctively; their lives revolved around it in every way.

Siana should have made it back to the tall-village already. And because they were on the slope no one from the lookouts could see them to come out and help.

She tried to hobble faster, but it only hurt more. She tripped and fell, and Miasia couldn’t move quickly enough to catch her. Siana’s chin hit a piece of rock.

“Oww...” she forced tears back. “Miasia, I’m scared.”

“It’s okay,” Miasia said. Her feet began squelching in sand that had become slightly wetter. “I’m going to try and carry you.”

Siana got on Miasia's back and grabbed her thin shoulders. Miasia grunted and began slowly walking.

“Mum's going to be really mad at me.” Siana said.

“Maybe not,” Miasia said, out of air and panting out the words. “If we don’t,” she shifted Siana’s weight, “tell her.”

They walked a little while longer, and then Miasia set Siana down, breathing heavily.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice breaking, “I can’t do it. I’m too spent. I’m too old.”

Siana, scared, grabbed Miasia's hand.

“Come on, I can keep walking, we have to make it.”

She hobbled on faster, leaning on Miasia, but after a minute the ankle began to give out, and Siana was hopping. And in the sand and rock, every hop was almost a disaster. She flopped to the ground twice more, once bringing Miasia down with her.

Siana tasted salt water. A thin trickle was beginning to flow up the slope with them.

Miasia sat down and ripped at the hem of her skirt. She took the strip of cloth and bound Siana’s leg to her own.

“Now try,” Miasia said.

They began to walk in tandem. It took a few tries, they started slow, splashing through the water, then got into a good peg-legged rhythm. But the water was beginning to trickle louder around them, and Siana heard a familiar distant roar.

“Faster,” Miasia ordered, an edge in her voice.

They cleared the rocks and stepped onto wet sand. Siana lost her step and they both tumbled. Siana could see tall-village. The nearest lookout was frighteningly far away. If she’d been able to jog she could have made it in time.

Siana struggled to get back up, crying out from the stab of pain in her ankle, but she couldn’t. Miasia was still sitting. She had a distant look on her face. She started unwrapping their legs.

“What are you doing?” Siana asked. The cold water swirled around her lap and tugged the strip of cloth away when Miasia let it go.

“Pay attention,” Miasia said. “To what I’m going to teach you.”

Siana’s heart thudded in her chest and her mouth went dry.

“Now,” Miasia said. “I’m going to create a bubble around that rock, and then teach you how to unlock the bubble on your own.”

“No, that will take too long.” Siana said. “Teach me how to make a bubble and we can make them on each other.”

Miasia looked at Siana, the lines in her face crinkling as she smiled.

“It took me weeks and weeks of training, sister. This isn't just a bead trick you can learn in a day. The unlocking trick is hard enough, but I know you can do it.”

“No,” Siana said again. “If you put me in a bubble without teaching me how to unlock then you can run back to the lookout tower and come get me after rushtide.”

“What if I don’t make it? Who will come unlock it? You will run out of air and die as well.”

“Don’t say that,” Siana begged, starting to cry again. “You will, you have to. You just got here. I'll lose you again.”

“Stop it,” Miasia said. “Pay attention.” She grabbed Siana’s hands. “Please. Pay attention.”

And maybe it was just her ability to stay calm that she’d learned abroad, at war, but Siana responded to Miasia's calmness by falling quiet.

“Okay.”

Miasia spread her hands and murmured some words. Siana didn’t understand them, but she could feel them coming out of Miasia and caressing the rock. The rock shimmered, half in and half out of the rushing water. Then a clear bubble formed around it, trapping the air and protecting the rock. The water rushed around it.

The spell was powerfully subtle, and Siana could not grasp what Miasia had done no matter how much she strained to hear and see and understand.

She had to learn to save Miasia with a bubble. But the understanding never came to Siana. Miasia sighed and relaxed. She looked tired.

“Okay. Now feel with me as I unlock it.”

Miasia took Siana’s hands in her own and Siana followed as they both reached out and felt the bubble around the rock. There was a spot Siana could feel, a spot where she could put in her finger and twist. Miasia twisted the bubble and it collapsed. Water rushed around to fill the empty space. It burbled over Siana’s belly now, threatening to sweep her away.

“Now I’m going to put one around you,” Miasia said. “And make it large enough to last through the tide.”

“No,” Siana begged. “Please...” she trailed off and began to cry. Miasia hugged her.

“I love you, little sister,” she said. She stood up and stepped back, and Siana closed her eyes and cried some more.

The water around her quit rushing.

She looked back up from inside the now massive bubble surrounding her and saw Miasia moving through the water back towards the tall-village. Through the ground she could feel the vibration of rushtide, and the wall of rapidly rising water took Miasia's shrunken figure.

Siana ran over and slapped the wall of the bubble with her small fists and cried until it hurt, then cried some more, and still the pain didn’t go away.

Eventually she slipped into the now tepid water floating around in the bottom of the bubble. The water level all around her rose until she was totally underwater. The surface lay many feet overhead, and torpedo shaped scudderfish began to nose around the edge of the bubble. Every breath sounded loud inside the bubble, and the light that filtered down to her danced and rippled around her.

The tall-village now stood alone in the center of the Roranraka Sea, alone for hundreds of miles.

• • •

At times the tide threatened to wash the bubble away, but Miasia had grounded it well, including a great amount of sand and water in the bottom. She had put it near a large rock, so it moved a little, but stayed still.

After the many hours of rushtide , the people for the tall-village emerge from the houses and came to look for Siana. When the found the bubble they gathered around and began hammering away at it with whatever they could find. Hammers, chisels, axes.

Mum and dad pressed up against the side with frantic faces, but Siana ignored them. She pressed her cheek against the bubble, trying to touch that last piece of her sister that lay deep in the filmy nothingness between Siana and the outside.

No one outside understood what Siana could feel and understand; that when she unlocked the bubble Miasia's presence, contained in the bubble which she had given a piece of her life to create, would dissolve. Siana’s tears ran freely and she pressed her fingers against the bubble.

“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed as she found the lock with her mind. When she put her finger in and turned, the bubble fell apart. The water in it burst out and soaked everyone around it, and the pieces of bubble whisped out at them in little filmy fragments that passed harmlessly right through them and evaporated in a flash of rainbow colors.

And inside Siana, something else broke, and her tears stopped cold.

Siana flinched when mum and dad hugged her. She was looking far, far off into the unseen distance, to where there was real land, land that didn’t have the tides. She felt hard inside, and friends, fun, and shells fell from her mind.

After she had been carefully tucked her into the new bed in Miasia's room, Siana looked at the broken conch shell on the floor. It would be a long time before the next airship touched at her tall-village, but Siana knew she would leave with it. Out there, she could learn the magic that would have let her save her Miasia. She would practice what little she knew, and try to learn what she couldn’t. She would erase anything of herself to lose the pain of Miasia's memory.

And all the village who saw her in the days, and months after, whispered to each other. Though they didn’t think she could hear them, Siana could. They whispered that she seemed different from the village folk. They said that she was no longer a wild, young child, favored by her parents. They thought she had a far off look in her eyes, and that she seemed… older.

Something In The Rock

Here’s a piece just for this collection. While the previous story was sparked by a painting, this story can find its inspiration in music. I’d been jamming out to, of all things, heavy metal. Usually I listen to rap, or reggae, or techno, which all share a common ancestor and which I’m most comfortable with. However a few heavy metal mix discs from some friends, and a couple metal radio stations, all contributed to a general mood that seemed fitting for dwarves. And a first line that set the stage for a fun story about those who dig just a little too deep.

Sometimes crusty, dusty old grandmothers would tell little groundlings tales of things deep in the ground, far beneath dwarven mines, lurking in the dark, just waiting to eat you if you misbehaved. Grigor never put much faith in such tales, even as a half-pint sized groundling.

Where other diggers feared the dark, Grigor forced through with lantern. Shaky ground: he braced it. Dark, deep pits: he roped down them.

There were many other things to worry about in the earthdark: like soft ground, or gas, than tales of Something In The Rock perpetuated by groundling diggers.

He was an old dwarf. So old his muscles were tough like iron, and his skin a smooth shale. He’d seen many rotations go by.

Grigor adhered to the digger’s code: dig hard, dig deep, dig careful, and never leave a comrade unrescued.

No rubble there: just the simple rules that let you survive long in the dark under the earth, far below the other races teeming under the disgusting infinite openness of the sharply-light, blue skies of the world.

• • •

Today Grigor sat in the dim recesses of the Tin Cup, sipping slowly at a bitter pint after a long day of pushing rock. Several men sat in the corner beating out a rhythm on wooden drums. In the center of the room a pair of tall, blonde women in leather skirts shoved and pulled at each other. Lame excuse for wrestling, but entertaining nonetheless.

The tavern door creaked open, thick, scarred wood swinging inwards. A stabbing beam of sunlight pierced the gloom. Grigor blinked and shifted his body to ignore the glaring light of the outside.

It shut with a thud.

The Tin Cup was a heavily built tavern: its roof held up by foot-thick oaken beams, the walls mortared and broken by the occasional small storm window. It was mostly lit inside by torches. Even by day. Everyone relaxed in the dank, comforting atmosphere. The walls seemed close together, the roof never far away, and the whole establishment sat on top of a series of tunnels.

It was popular with the dwarves.

A series of appreciative shouts accompanied the women as they finally fell to the ground, each struggling for a grip on the other.

“Come on and hit her!” Kokran stood up and bellowed. Grigor winced and grabbed Kokran’s belt, pulling his friend back into the booth. Several men turned and looked at them, annoyed. “Come on, Grigor,” Kokran complained.

Kokran sat down with a thump. The bench creaked. Shoddy construction, Grigor thought. No bracing, hardly able to hold a good dwarf’s weight.

Grigor stared into Kokran’s bloodshot eyes.

“You’re over the barrel,” Grigor said.

Kokran’s beard was moist with the foam of far too many cups. The smell of it hung over the stained table.

After a second Kokran blinked. He wasn’t looking at Grigor anymore.

“Look at them two,” he gestured his wooden mug. A pair of townies had walked in. The two dwarves had smooth shaven faces, short hair, and wore cloaks. One had a small braid hanging off the front of his forehead. “Call themselves ‘The New Dwarves’ eh,” Kokran muttered. “Little groundlings is what they look like.”

The two townies conferred with the barkeep, a tall man, even for a man. He had scars enough. Grigor wondered how many years and wild nights the barkeep had watched languorously over the planking of his tavern at his customers.

The barkeep nodded at Grigor, and the two townies turned. One of them smiled.

Grigor did not return it.

They approached him, blocking Kokran’s view of the wrestling women.

“Gerrout-the-way,” Kokran hissed.

“Grigor?” The nearest townie asked. Grigor looked at the fine red embroidery on the dwarf’s cloak’s edges. “Grigor ap Danfisk?”

“Yeah?” The two townies had an air of official business about them. Even Kokran had figured this out, he was quiet, and looking at the two townies with an odd sort of intensity that made them fidget.

The townie in the green cloak looked around, then lowered his voice. This was something he did not want men to hear.

“There’s been a problem in shaft forty-five. They need your help. Now.”

• • •

The Tin Cup was accustomed to Dwarven activity. In the windowless backroom a trap-door led a woozy Kokran, Grigor, and the two townies down into a network of tunnels running underneath Farrington.

Near the end of a sewer, light pouring in from the bright day outside, a horse and covered carriage waited.

Grigor nervously shuffled towards the light, and hopped into the carriage after everyone. He shut the flap behind him and fastened it.

The carriage jerked forward.

“Well?” Grigor asked.

The townie in the green cloak peeked out from under the flap, prompting Grigor to cover his eyes. He could hear the horses loud footsteps, the clip-clopping echoing off the walls around the carriage.

“A moment, if you would.”

The echoing abruptly faded. The horse snuffled loudly and sped up. They were out in the open street. Grigor didn’t need to look out the flap, he could feel it in the light streaming through every small seam into the carriage, the sounds of men around them, shouting, begging, chatting. And above them all would be the infinite, blue sky.

Grigor shivered.

“Would you shut the flap,” Kokran growled, much to Grigor’s relief. “Ain’t none to dark here. It stinks of men on the street.”

“I’m sorry.” The townie pulled the flap back. “I forget how sensitive diggers are.” He said it matter of factly, as if there was something wrong with hating the light and open spaces. It looked like Kokran was going to belt him one.

Grigor leaned forward.

“What’s going on?”

“We were waiting to clear the town. We can’t afford men hearing this, but forty-five collapsed. Neither of us needs to explain to you how drilled this is for us.”

Grigor and Kokran sat in silence. There was a weariness on the townies’ faces that made Grigor reconsider his opinion of them.

After thousands of years of mining under mountains, the ancient shafts of dwarves had run dry of precious metals. Prospectors on walkabouts had found new lands to dig, but these lands had occupants: human men, and all manners of other creatures not-so-Dwarvish.

A slow migration out of the great underground halls was in process. Front-running dwarfs negotiated with towns to allow diggers into human provinces, in exchange for taxes, or percentages of yield. Then came the digging operations. Steam machines, gunpowder engine carts, and dwarfs in toughened leather and steel skull-caps.

It was a delicate business. Human miners, displaced by the superior skills and organization of the dwarfs, did their best to stop the flow of dwarf labor down from the mountains. A setback, or slow year, would mean the loss of a contract. Human miners would make sure of that, with campaigns, picketing, and speakers on the corner of every street attacking dwarfs as foreigners, immigrants, non-human, and slow. That could bankrupt an entire mining company, leading to the dissolution of whole families, broken friendships, and to dwarfs living on open streets, begging for food.

If they lost an entire shaft, Farrington’s dwarven company could fall far behind. The human miners, toiling on farms or mortaring buildings, were just waiting for such an opportunity.

“What are your names?” Grigor asked the townies.

The townie in the green cloak leaned over.

“I’m Pickit,” he waved a hand at his partner. “This is Toop.” Very topside names. They had to be uppper-level negotiators with the humans. No doubt these two dwarves were responsible for their very livelihood, Grigor thought.

“You already seem to know who I am, but this is a close friend of mine, Kokran.”

The two cloaked dwarves looked at Kokran.

“That’s a super-deep name,” Toop observed. “How long you dug?”

“Six thousand rotations,” Kokran mumbled, but enjoying a chance to preen a bit. “Thereabouts.”

Pickit leaned back. “Thirty years, incredible. And you, Grigor?”

Grigor smiled. If they knew his name, and came to pick him up, they already knew.

“As long as anyone can remember,” Kokran supplied. “He don’t take no alter-rotations, works right through the off days.”

Grigor liked the comfort of the deep ground, the dim, flickering lights, and the feel of rock under his hands. He was an old dwarf, from old dwarf family, and some jokingly said more dirt than blood ran in his veins.

For this reason he felt a sudden irritation at the sidetrack the conversation had taken. A shaft had been broken. This was a serious matter.

“It doesn’t matter how dirty my beard is,” Grigor said. “What do you need from us?”

Pickit rubbed his hands together, gathering thoughts.

“Yes, well,” he said. “There were people trapped behind the fall-in.”

Kokran sucked his teeth.

“And?”

“We think they died,” Toop said. “We can’t hear them anymore.”

“The rescue team?” Grigor asked.

Pickit scrunched his face up and looked nervously over at Toop.

“Well, we think they’re dead too,” he said. “So now we want the best group to go in. We have a number of deep diggers, all with multiple thousands of rotations experience. It is the best we can do here in Farrington. Certainly on such short notice.”

Toop leaned in.

“This is an important shaft,” he explained. “We hit a seam of gold. So far we’ve been mining lesser metals in Farrington, but we’re barely breaking even.”

Now Pickit interjected again.

“I know it sounds dangerous. We’ll compensate you.”

Grigor and Kokran snorted. Compensation was hardly a thought. Those were friends and extended family already dead in the shaft, or maybe waiting quietly for rescue, saving their strength.

The carriage slowed down, and the bright light streaming in between the seams of the dirty canvas flaps faded into a gloom. The whole carriage changed its pitch, aiming down into the earth.

They had entered the Farrington mines, Grigor could tell by the slow dimming of the light around them, the slope of the carriage and the return of echoing hoof-taps. The carriage abruptly halted, jerking everyone forward.

“Drop your weapons off,” a voice growled outside. The flaps opened, and a tunnel guard pulled himself up and peered in, suspicion writ across his face. He nodded at Grigor and Kokran, and then stared at the townies.

Grigor waved his hands, but Kokran fumbled with the axe on his back. It was more for show than anything, when out in man towns. Any true dwarf could dispatch a foe with a pick axe. Or a shovel for that matter. Or rock callused knuckles.

Grigor saw Picket draw his cloak aside and pull a dagger out. Such a man’s weapon. Non-functional (unless you used it to slice fruit and cheese or some-such), deceitful, and made with the intention of spilling blood.

He preferred the rubbed smooth hilt of a good pick between his hands.

• • •

Things moved quickly now. Another half mile in, well under the earth, they stopped again. Diggers surrounded the carriage and helped them out. Grigor’s eyes adjusted to the looming shadows and dark figures just out of torchlight.

His boots slapped the hard ground when he jumped out.

A team of two diggers stood by the edge of the Maw, impatient. The twenty foot wide pit ran deep down into Mother Earth.

“Grigor,” they called out, recognizing him. Grigor walked over.

“Hiraethog,” the nearest digger in full gear introduced himself. A fifth-removed cousin that Grigor had met briefly once at an Ap Danfisk family banquet. “Michno,” the other said. Grigor didn’t recognize him, but it didn’t matter. The two diggers grabbed Grigor in a hug and kissed cheeks. “We have your gear,” Hiraethog said.

A large canvas bag sat on the platform.

Several groundling apprentices milled around by the large, geared crank, waiting to drop them down. Grigor slapped one on the shoulder roughly.

“Don’t drop us.”

The groundlings chuckled and closed the gate behind Grigor and the two diggers. The platform lurched, creaked, and then begin to slowly inch down the rock face as they released the guide-wires.

Kokran stood forlorn by the edge of the Maw’s lip. He gave a half wave, and then disappeared as rock rose above the platform.

Grigor began pulling on his leather overalls and buckling on his skull-cap. His mid-belt, tightened across his belly, held a pair of pick-axes on either side, and sticks of explosive in the inner lining.

“Hard-and-deep,” he muttered, standing up with his chipped pick-axe in one hand, tool belt in the other.

“Hard-n-deep,” they replied.

Overhead the opening to the Maw had narrowed into a small, ragged, sphere of orange gloom. Grigor’s ears began to pop.

Hiraethog grabbed Grigor’s arm and leaned over.

“I told Michno, I’ll tell you: diggers heard explosives going off in the shaft.”

“During rescue?”

“Yah.”

“Sabotage?”

Hiraethog let go and shrugged. It didn’t tell them anything new about what had happened. But it did tell them this was no ordinary rescue.

Which was why the company dwarves had called for the best diggers this time around.

• • •

It took several mining cars and tracks worth of travel to cut over to forty-five. When they arrived a steam-drill on wheels bit into rubble and rock, churning dirt into the air and forcing diggers to walk around with cloth rags over their mouths. The arm-like pistons mounted on the tubular chassis made it look like a demented, blackened-metal insect.

Grigor’s eyes watered.

The sound of the drill crunching rock made conversation almost impossible. Grigor signaled Michno and Hiraethog closer.

“How long?” He shouted in their faces, beards almost touching.

“Almost...” Hiraethog yelled.

The steam-drill lurched, clutches ground and screeched, and the machine backed down the track.

“As far as she’ll reach,” a mechanic said, walking over the rails. The whites of his eyes stared out at them from a face covered in dust.

The mechanic slapped Michno’s shoulders.

“Dig hard and deep. Safety.”

“Safety. Thanks.”

Grigor walked over with Hiraethog to the small hole the steam-drill had bored out. He got down on his back and wriggled in.

He put a hand up to the rock. He could feel slight vibrations, heard pieces of rock falling ten feet in front of him.

“Let’s start bracing,” he growled. “Hand me a two-fer and some rock wire.”

The dirty work, the gauging and building of a stable route into the collapse, began. It took several hours, foot by braced foot, the rock-wire bulging over their heads as it collected pieces of rock and rained a mist of dust. As the heap above him settled the wooden braces groaned.

Their lanterns cast precious little wavering light, but it was enough. That and sharp dwarven senses were what it took.

It was gruntwork. He could speed up, knowing that lives depended on him, but too fast and carelessness would bury them.

• • •

At the last foot Grigor reached rubble blocking his way that the drill had been unable to reach. Pieces of track bit into his back as he maneuvered his pick-axe out and began that ancient task so associated with his kind: chipping at the obstruction in his way.

He’d swap the pick for a small hand-shovel every few minutes, awkwardly fill up a bucket, and hand it back to Michno or Hiraethog by his feet.

That took more minutes upon minutes, until the pick-axe broke through into stale air that rushed up to his nose.

Grigor used the butt of the pick-axe to smash through, then clawed his way out into the chamber.

He could barely breathe in the fetid atmosphere. He had to be careful. In many places the air itself could kill you, and you would never know, just feel tired and lay down for a rest...

Michno and Hiraethog pulled themselves through and held up lanterns. They pulled a ballobreath behind them, a large leather sack heavy with compressed air, and a tiny skitter in a cage sitting on top, shaking its scales.

Just in case the air went deadly they had the skitter to warn them. If the tiny critter went belly-up they’d have to make a run to the ballobreath and share the air as they tried to run back out.

There was no guarantee, but at least it gave a rescuer a fighting chance against the more invisible deep-deaths.

The shaft continued on beyond the collapse. No bodies, but they might all be in the rubble. Or further down. A quick glance at the other two diggers confirmed they were thinking the same.

“We’re moving forward,” Hiraethog yelled back down through the newly carved tunnel.

There were scores of diggers on the other side, but for now no one would come through. Already one team had been lost. No sense in losing a whole swathe all at once.

Forty-five was a small tunnel, even more so than usual. The roof was never more than three feet high, and Grigor had to bend over to walk it. It was the way with most dwarven connecting tunnels to be rather small. It meant less spent on bracing, and the bracing was stronger at these sizes.

Advantages dwarfs had over humans.

The stale air seemed to clear up, and Grigor cautiously kept moving forward, tapping the butte of his pick-axe against the floor like a blind man’s cane.

Quartz glittered back at them from the walls. Flecks of light in the expanse of dark. It bought the faintest tug of a smile to Grigor.

There was gold in these walls, he thought as he carefully tapped his way along.

Their surprise, though, wasn’t a hole in the ground, but a hole in the side of the tunnel where it flared out. There was enough room for track, a steam-drill, and a whole clutch of working diggers. But it was all silent, no bustle. The shaft ended in a wall, and still, no bodies.

But the hole in the side shouldn’t have been there.

“Looks like some digger broke through when chipping at the side,” Michno observed.

“Yah,” Miraethog agreed.

“Bet you a copper they’re in there,” Grigor said, pulling at his belt.

“Gas?” Michno wondered.

“Mebbe.” Grigor walked forward, took a full breath, then stepped forward. He poked around at the edges with his pick-axe, and rock crumbled down. He held the lantern up and looked in.

Several fat lengths of log held a half-ton boulder in place above him. To the sides rock was strewn all over, but this was definitely a cavern.

The lantern didn’t flicker, so Grigor let out his breath and carefully stepped through.

Rock under his boots slid, and he had to crouch and walk down in. Air came in slow gasps as a heavy humidity seeped into his lungs. Were they near water? They shouldn’t be.

“I don’t know,” Michno said. “Looks unstable.”

“Whisper.” Hiraethog started walking up from behind them.

Michno began picking his way quickly across the cavern, muttering to himself. He hugged the leather bladder, the skitter shaking even more furiously at the indignity of being canted at even more bizarre angles in its cage strapped to the side.

Grigor looked around.

The rock on the far wall had come down from explosives, he saw. Black stains from the blast stained the walls in dramatic splashes.

In a smaller rock pile, shaken loose from the ceiling of the cavern, Grigor found his first digger. The dwarf’s gloved hand stuck out from under dusty rock, fingers drooping down towards the earth.

Hiraethog padded up and helped Grigor uncover the body.

“Gods below,” Hiraethog grunted.

The digger’s face was contorted in pain, arms gripped around a pick-axe on his chest, his mouth open in a final scream.

“Slow, painful death.” Grigor closed the dead dwarf’s bulging eyes.

“Not the way I’d choose to get dug-under, trapped like that,” Hiraethog said. “Not at all.”

Grigor agreed. This one was dead, but there might be a living dwarf under any one of the rock piles. Sometimes the timbers would fall and create a small living space in the collapse, one that they could dig a dwarf out of.

Another reason dwarfs made better miners, Grigor thought. Better chance of survival with smaller, stockier bodies. Why humans bothered with the deeps he didn’t know.

• • •

The three dwarfs spread out, hoping for a sign of life. Any life.

Several minutes in, over the grunting, sliding rock, and skitter chattering, Grigor heard something and held up a gloved hand. He stood next to a miniature hill of jumbled rock, one of many random piles in the cavern. Michno stood on the other side of it, skull cap glinting in the lantern-light, his body casting tall, thin shadows up the sides of the shaggy walls.

He sniffed. His wide nose pulling in the gritty air. There was something dank in the air. Old. Like when he hit a peat bog deep under soft rock.

Offal, and blood.

Someone was alive. Maybe with a punctured stomach, bleeding his guts out onto rock.

Grigor took off his glove and put a bare palm to the cold ground, closed his eyes, and felt for vibrations at the same time as he listened.

He could hear his two companions breathing, but holding still. And he heard something else, the faint rattle of tiny rocks. He started to berate Michno, then realized the tiny rockslide came from higher than the pile of debris next to him. The pieces were bouncing as they hit the rock floor.

Michno sucked in his breath. A chocking sound echoed, and Grigor’s eyes snapped open as he leaned his head back.

It perched on a ledge of rock ten feet above the cavern floor at the far end. The scales glittered, tiny shards of diamond that fluoresced rainbow colors back at them. Drooped wings fluttered slightly, then rose into the air above the horned head.

“Dragon!” Michno squeaked.

The dragon reared back, opened its mouth, and spat.

Grigor dropped into the rock and burrowed in. Large chunks of rock slammed into his spine, but he kept worming his way in. Like any groundling huddling for cover, he pulled his knees in after him.

Bottomless pits, he swore to himself.

Searing white flame licked at the rock over him, and Michno began screaming. He’d been standing right in front of the damn thing. Grigor flinched as he heard footsteps and scrabbling hands as Michno climbed over the top of the pile, clawing himself to cover.

After a brief second another explosion of flame lit the cavern.

Michno, his clothes burned and charred to the point they seemed to have melted into his skin, tumbled down the protected side of the rock pile. His body rolled over Grigor’s burrow and lolled to a stop. Michno’s charred face stared at Grigor’s feet.

A faint moan leaked out from between the cracked lips.

Grigor shivered and mewled, trying to blend in with the rock.

“Explosives,” Hiraethog shouted. Grigor pushed rock carefully aside to see Hiraethog backing towards the large hole they’d come through.

Hiraethog bit the cord off a gray stick, leaving only a nub, and whipped out a lighter. He held the two up and looked around the cavern.

“Where is it? Grigor? Are you there still?”

Grigor slowly pulled himself out from the cover of rock, looking warily around. He slipped his hand down and pulled out the pick-axe.

“Huh...” he croaked. “Here.” His hands shook, but he held the pick-axe out in front of him like a sword. It would do nothing against the fire, but it was better than nothing.

He ducked his way from boulder to boulder, popping up and looking around, or even listening for movement.

“Don’t see it,” Grigor yelled.

“Me either. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Grigor looked down at Michno’s charred body.

“I think Michno is still alive.” Leave no dwarf unrescued.

“He won’t live,” Hiraethog said. “Not like that.” He gestured with the explosive. “Let’s get out of here and blow this shut.” His eyes were wide, his voice cracking with nervousness.

Grigor nodded and began to weave his way towards the opening.

Safety.

“It’s overhead, isn’t it?” Hiraethog said, his eyes opening wide. He fidgeted with the lighter.

“No it ain’t!” Grigor hissed, shaking his head hard enough to make his steel skull cap wobble.

Hiraethog screeched and lit the shortened fuse. With an impulsive jerk he threw the stick into the bracing.

“What are you doing?” Grigor screamed. He froze, uncertain whether to duck or make a run for the opening. Hiraethog realized his mistake, or changed his mind, because he leapt backwards as the explosion boomed throughout the cavern.

Grigor’s head snapped back, his eyes spasmed, and his eardrums clapped with the impact. He fell to the ground and clutched at his face, feeling shards of rock sanding his cheeks.

A cloud of dust washed over him.

Hiraethog had killed himself. Michno would die any moment.

Grigor was alone with a dragon.

• • •

Dazed, blood leaking from his ears and out of the corners of his eyes, Grigor started to crawl back towards his hastily improvised burrow.

Look at the rock, mum would have said. Think about all the rock around you. Can you feel the rock? It flows in our veins, it does...

You’re shaky ground, he told himself, thinking back to things like that. Dirt, rock. It was all he could focus on, his brain was so shaken.

Still hardly able to see, expecting a wall of flame to envelop him at any second, he crawled back up over Michno’s body and saw something.

Skin!

For a brief second he’d seen a patch of Michno unburned.

Grigor paused and looked back down at the slightly smoking husk of his companion. There was nothing unburnt, though.

He was hallucinating, now.

Grigor put a trembling finger out and pressed Michno. He felt leather. It was’t steaming hot, but merely warm. Still nervous, Grigor touched Michno’s skull cap.

It was cold.

Michno looked back at Grigor, his face normal again, full of beard and dust, and groaned slightly. The dwarf began to shudder violently, spitting and groaning, and then took one last deep breath.

Grigor pushed past Michno’s still body, knocking Michno’s still working lantern out, and crawled into his crude shelter. He faced out of the small hole under the rocks.

He started breathing faster and faster, until the giddy lightheadedness made him realize he might faint.

What is going on? Was everything downside-up?

His skull cap clinked slightly when he leaned back.

“Help,” someone groaned. “Help me. Please. Grigor? Anyone?”

Grigor took a slow deep breath and rubbed his face with the back of his torn up hands. It sounded like Hiraethog. But Hiraethog was dead. No one stood that close to explosive and lived.

But Hiraethog was an old cruster.

It was tradition to help. Grigor couldn’t not help. It flew against every digging instinct. This deep in the ground there was a network of trust. And one of those items was that diggers would pay any cost to rescue diggers. How else could some walk into the mines day after day, knowing the risks?

“Gods below,” Grigor muttered angrily. Brace yourself dwarf!

Yes. He was a dwarf, he was tough, he could do this. He unslung his pick-axe. An armed dwarf.

What would a pick-axe do against a dragon? he wondered.

Not much.

Hiraethog’s voice began to beg for help again. Grigor rubbed his forehead and smeared muddy sweat over his brows.

Okay. This wasn’t bracing, or chipping away at a seam, but a level head and quick reflexes still applied.

A pick-axe was useless. Keep a granite head, Grigor, he told himself. Nice and stable, no crumbling.

Grigor fumbled with his mid-pack, and pulled out explosives. One stick in each hand.

He shook his head. Hiraethog was seeing things in the dark, and that meant Grigor might too. He bit the long cords off, like Hiraethog had. One went back in the pack, the other he kept in his hand.

He had to be careful not to blow himself up. This dragon was able to manipulate what people saw, and that meant Grigor could trust nothing.

Or maybe it was hallucinogenic gases. He wasn’t sure. Take the simpler assumption, he thought: everyone saw something, it’s manipulating us.

How?

Doesn’t matter, think about that later. Just live for now.

Grigor took a set of rapid, successive breaths and scrambled out in the dark towards the newly created pile of rubble Hiraethog had brought down on himself. Grigor avoided Michno, doing his best to not even think about the dwarf’s fate.

He carefully felt his way along, occasionally flicking his lighter on and then off again as quickly as he could to find Hiraethog trapped under a four-foot chunk of rock. Blood stained his overalls, but he could still speak, and move. Somewhat.

“Grigor, help,” Hiraethog moaned.

Grigor shoved his fingers under the stone and pushed. He could hardly move it, and Hiraethog began spitting something and crying when he did.

He stopped and sat next to him.

“I’m so sorry,” Grigor said.

“Knew of a group...” Hiraethog grunted, his voice burbly with blood, “dug under like this. All killed each other with dynamite and axes. Do me a favor...” he raised his head.

But Grigor saw a flash of scaly movement in the rockpile near where he had come from.

“Something moved over there.”

Hiraethog turned his head, skullcap scraping as he did so.

“Yes.” Hiraethog took a deep breath and moved his hands around, fumbling for something. He grabbed Grigor’s hands and put something in them.

Grigor looked down at the dynamite stick in his hands warily.

“Take it,” Hiraethog said. “You’ll need all you can to fight the damn thing. Just... leave me something.” He patted about and grabbed hold of Grigor’s pick. Grigor unfastened it.

The point clinked against the rock as Hiraethog let it drop, too weak from all the movement to even hold it. It would do him little good, Grigor thought, standing up.

Another glint in the deep dark over by the rocks caught his eye. Grigor began to skulk his slow way over.

There!

It was no giant beast with wings. It was a worm. He could see it through the dark: a worm with glittering quartz scales wiggling over the rock. A pick would do nothing against the creature’s skin.

But dynamite would.

Grigor lit a fuse and threw the dynamite. No waiting with it, like Hiraethog. He flung it clear and the stick clattered into the rocks.

“Grigor?” It was Michno’s voice. Surely another trick of the mind.

The explosion deafened anything further. Grigor kept down behind a solid chunk of rock, his eyes closed against the flash that lit up the inside of the back of his eyeballs. He looked around the edge as the explosion’s echoes died away.

No worm visible in the dark.

Grigor fired the lighter, and the flickering ochre licked at the bare edge of the rock pile.

When he strained his eyes he saw blood and flesh stained the rocks. Grigor had thrown the dynamite at the wrong rockpile. His hiding space had been blown open and Michno’s body scattered around in rags of flesh from the blast.

Grigor shoved at the rock and then pounded it with a fist. Tricked by his own senses again. He bit his lip to keep the scream in and stay alive.

He’d killed Michno.

The sound of gravel hitting the floor startled him. He flicked the lighter off and moved several paces away from his location.

“Grigor?” Hiraethog yelled. “Are you ne...”

His voice trailed off. Grigor retraced the path back to Hiraethog, smacking his shins into a square slab of rock and subvocalizing the curse of pain.

“Hiraethog?” he whispered.

There was no reply. Grigor eventually found the boulder Hiraethog lay under, and ran his fingers down along it until he encountered Hiraethog.

Something was wrong.

Grigor moved his hands over to Hiraethog’s face, and found the pick instead.

“Oh no,” Grigor said to himself. “No.”

He flicked the lighter, just for the spark. In that brief instant of light he saw Hiraethog’s grubby face staring back at him, lifeless, bloody, the pick rammed through his right eyeball towards the brain.

Had he been fooled into it, or just chosen to kill himself?

Grigor wasn’t sure.

He took the last two sticks of explosive and threw them back under Hiraethog’s legs, where he couldn’t reach them. This way he couldn’t blow himself up.

He swallowed and pulled the pick out of Hiraethog’s head. It slid free with a faint sucking sound, and Grigor used a spare piece of cloth from his back pocket to clean the blood off.

Without dynamite, knowing what he was up against, Grigor felt his way across the rock, looking for a place to burrow.

Think rock, his crusty grandmother had told him once. Think it, breathe it, be it.

Grigor found a crawlspace small enough to fit him, yet large enough that he could still swing the axe at anything coming in the opening.

I’m not coming out, he told himself as he settled his back against the hard, irregular rock. It’ll just have to come get me. He would wait for the rescue party. They would come.

Diggers always rescued the trapped.

• • •

Grigor hunkered down for hours. He could hear water dripping somewhere, a steady monotonous plink that made him flinch every three seconds.

He sweated. His clothes clung to his back and belly.

Without sight in the darkness he began seeing specks of movement and light. He could imagine just about any shape about to menace him, though he knew just by placing his palm against the rock in front of him there was nothing there.

He kept the pick in front of him though. His muscles tense, expectant, just waiting for a shuffle, or snort, and then they would explode forward to kill it.

The sound of bones cracking came to him. Chewing and loud swallowing.

It went on for forever, and Grigor shivered in his hole. At least, he told himself, you know where the creature is, and what it is doing.

He tried to count time, marking of seconds, then minutes. He stopped after he got to another hour. The creature had stopped eating, moved, and continued. Michno and Hiraethog would not even have the honor of being recovered and sealed into their family catacomb.

It was a final insult. The numbing terror of the past hours turned into rage. If he died doing it, he would try to kill this thing with his own dirty hands.

Another sound carried into the cavern.

A steam drill.

The faint mechanical whine was unmistakable. His cramped muscles ached to let him out into the air, which would be fresher outside.

Wait, Grigor told himself. It must be a trap.

Yes, but suppose it isn’t? he wondered. If the rescuers come in, unprepared for the kinds of traps this thing can create, more will die.

Grigor groaned to himself.

As the sound of the drill got louder and louder, he tried to remember everything since walking into the cavern. He had seen the dragon with flames, seen it as a scaly worm, and seen glimpses of movement.

But hearing?

He’d heard it eating. If it could have, it would have masked that.

Or maybe it was softening him up, driving him all shadowy like some madman with the dripping water and sounds of eating.

Grigor hefted his axe. The sound of steam drill got louder, until the sound of crumbling rock falling into the cavern overpowered it. Distant shouts echoed in, and metal scraped against rock.

He could trust he sense of touch, and doubt anything else.

The sound of dwarves worming their way through the tunnel floated around him, and Grigor slowly came out of his niche. Cold air hit him. It was fresh.

Grigor kept his eyes closed and began swinging his pick around in figure eights. Behind, in front, over, back again. His triceps groaned, his back threatened to quit.

He couldn’t walk around just yet, the thing would hear him. So he stood by his niche, swinging, bouncing up and down from a crouch position quietly, waiting.

The rescuers burst through. Grigor could feel their lantern light against his eyelids.

He listened.

It was moving towards them. A dwarf began screaming.

Grigor ran over rock, stumbling, pushing others aside. He could hear the damn thing moving, and he kept after it, swinging in the dark of his closed eyes like some demented child playing stick-wack.

One of the rescuers leapt on him.

“Don’t kill her,” he screamed at Grigor, “she’s so beautiful!”

Grigor used the butt of the pick to smash him in the face. He kicked him aside and sprinted the last few meters to the sound of scrabbling.

At the last second he opened his eyes, taking in the huge expanse of grey-green scales, glittering and impenetrable diamond skin. Malevolent red eyes glared at him, the teeth in the dripping acidic maw seemed a foot long.

“Grigor!!!” It was Kokran’s voice shouting at him.

Grigor leapt into the air and slammed the pick down with every last ounce of strength his protesting muscles. It sank into flesh.

He pulled it back out and swung it from his side into flesh again, and grease ran down the wooden handle.

Barely able to hold on Grigor kept swinging and pulling the pick out until all movement stopped. He opened his eyes, pick dangling by his side, and looked at the dragon.

A pale, squishy slug draped formlessly over the rocks in front of him. Seven feet long, with feathery antennae covering its body, it quivered from the last strike. Body fluids leaked into the rock under its body.

Oval eye-dots stared lifelessly ahead at the cavern walls.

Grigor was covered in pus colored grease. He dropped the pick and walked away, and his rescuers bobbed their lanterns at him, stumbling forward in dazed amazement.

Kokran pushed over a rock and looked at the thing.

“A Dragon?”

Grigor’s stomach felt like a tiny knot, drawn in on itself. He started to walk across the cavern to the hole.

“This will go down in tales,” one of the rescuers muttered, eyes wide and staring at Grigor. “A family hero. They’ll carve your name.”

Grigor crawled through, and on the other side he looked around at the quartz on the walls for a long moment. He leaned his cap against the glittering chips and threw up with relief. As he did so they held his shoulders and told him he’d been in the dark for a whole rotation.

After finding nothing more in his stomach he turned and started to walk out, foot by foot, slow and steady.

• • •

Word spread ahead of his walk out of the shaft. Dwarves ran forward or took cars up, and before long a wall of men had stopped all work to line the rails and look at him.

Some clapped him on the back, a dirty puff of commiseration, congratulation, and admiration. Others somberly clapped.

They asked questions, and Grigor ignored them.

Someone insisted he get in a railcar, but Grigor wanted to keep walking.

He could trust his touch, and his feet told him he was walking far away from the cavern.

When he reached the bottom of the Maw he stopped and looked up at the light far above his head. The men gave him the lift to himself, and the groundling apprentices yanked him up out of Mother Earth as fast as they could.

Toop and Picket were at the top, out of breath, surrounded by bystanders hoping to get a chance to spot the super-crusty dragon-slaying digger.

“We just heard,” Toop said. “We will make sure you are well compensated...”

“Is there anything we can do?” Picket asked.

Grigor shook his head.

“I’d want to go to town,” he said.

“We’ll get you a covered wagon,” Pickit said.

“No.” Grigor shook his head. “I won’t be needing one of them.”

The two townies looked, surprised, as Grigor began to walk back up the slowly slanting tunnel towards the light. His eyes blinked and watered, but adjusted with each step.

At the mouth of the tunnel he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and looked out.

Overhead the sky was a deep blue, broken by a scattering of strung out clouds. A soft wind kicked up the dirt, and a dandelion rooted by a nearby rock waved back and forth.

Fresh smells played across Grigor’s wide noise. Grass, flowers, rain, dirt.

He walked out of the tunnel and into the sun.

Men needed Dwarven skills. He could build houses, or tear down things. He knew explosives, machines, and bracing. Structures needed bracing. Grigor could find a good number of sorts of employment in Farrington, or in any other town.

In fact, he reasoned, Dwarves were limiting themselves, banding together and staying separated from men kept them at the fringes of society. A minority.

No, they needed to go out in numbers and mingle with men.

The outside wasn’t bad. He felt free under the infinite sky, the breezes playing over his callused skin. Grigor looked behind him at the tunnel he’d stepped out of, and for the first time in his life it seemed confining, dark, and heavy.

He’d changed, in there.

A nasty thought occured to Grigor, one so nasty he grabbed his belt out of reflex.

Was he being fooled?

How could he tell?

Could he ever tell?

He glimpsed a future lifetime of waking up sweaty from nightmares, jumping whenever he turned a corner, when someone touched him, and never sitting with his back to anything open.

Grigor closes his eyes and thought back to every smell, every sensation, on his way up the tunnel. He remembered Pickit’s enthusiastic smile, the sound of the elevator coming back up the Maw.

Was that all false?

This kind of thinking would drive a dwarf mad, Grigor realized.

He walked out from the tunnel’s mouth into a field of flowers. None of them looked familiar to him.

Grigor grunted and bent over. He ripped one of them out from the ground and looked at the five misshapen petals. He sniffed it, smelling something vaguely honey-like, with fruitier overtones.

This was real. How could he have drawn this up in his own head?

The field stretched between him and Farrington. Kicking up a small cloud of petals behind him, Grigor struck off towards the town for several, large pints of ale.

If he kept out in the open, stayed in the daylight, he’d never have to second-guess himself again.

And that was that, Grigor figured, squinting up at the warm, friendly sun in the vast expanse of beautiful sky.

A Green Thumb

I know I’ve been tipping my hand concerning where I get the ideas for my stories, but I have to admit that the genesis for this story mainly came from a commercial I’d seen on TV for a car. A man sits and plants a seed in his lawn, then walks inside his house. The next morning he wakes up to find a brand new car outside. What a compelling image, I thought, and set out to write a coming-of-age magical realist story around it.

However the story had a twist in it yet. After a conversation with Stan Schmidt, the editor of Analog, I sent the story on to him anticipating that he would reject it. He didn’t, he instead asked me to figure out how to make it a science fiction story so that he could justify buying it for his strongly science fictional magazine. It took me a couple weeks of thinking about it, but I managed it. And Stan did indeed purchase it.

When Jerry walked out across his lawn to catch the morning bus to Effendale High, he stopped to admire the new car Mr. Atkinson had growing in his lawn. Jerry could see the doors stretching up towards the roof, small branches of metal trying to reach their stringy edges up and around the rough frame. It looked like a regular car had melted, but in reverse. Every day Jerry stepped out, he could see more of the car’s gray paneling filling in around the rough frame. Mr. Atkinson tended towards planting larger luxury cars, like any other retired old man. The half-finished Cadillac sat in between the rose bushes and posies that Mrs. Atkinson cared for. Both car and bushes glinted with a fresh coating of morning dew.

Jerry looked at the Caddy and wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve. There was no way in hell he would get on the bus with tears. Dad had flat out told him “no” before, and this morning’s argument certainly didn’t change his opinion.

Damnit, he was old enough to grow his own car. Maturity. Jerry bet he could do a better job than Mr. Atkinson.

The large yellow school-grown bus rolled around the corner, and Jerry hurried out to the sidewalk.

No matter. He had other plans.

Kids wandered through the halls and corridors, and Effendale echoed with adolescent energy. Jerry pushed through, finding his own particular group of familiars. Andy and Nathan looked up from an intense debate on cafeteria lunch. Hamburger, or hockeypuck. No one could present evidence on either side.

“Jer-ay! What’s up?” Andy grinned. He did it perpetually. Sometimes it got annoying, but this morning Jerry found himself picking up a little.

“Nothing much.”

“Watch out for Government,” Nathan added. “Rumor has it Mrs. Newfield’s going to lay down a pop quiz.”

Andy looked at him wide eyed.

“Shit. A quiz? I haven’t studied. I gotta run.” He abruptly weaved off to go and look for someone, anyone, with the appropriate notes.

Nathan waited for a second. Then, “Did you ask your Dad?”

“He said no. Again. At this rate I’ll probably end up a senior on the bus.” Nathan grimaced. Jerry waited expectantly.

“Well. I told you he would. I have it with me.” As Jerry hoped. He looked at Nathan’s worn-out denim bag.

“Really?”

“Really.” Nathan reached into his bag. “It’s not the greatest seed, but it should be all right if you play real close attention to the growing and prune the bad sections.”

Jerry reached for the packet, but Nathan pulled it back.

“Money?” He asked. Jerry handed him a wad of bills. Everything he had in savings. Nathan handed it over, and Jerry flipped the small packet across his fingers. A small sub-compact with a hatchback glittered on the decal.

“Wow,” said someone from behind. Jerry froze. Allison. He felt tunnel vision fall into place, and the usual vague sense of panic. “Is that a car-seed?”

“Um…” Jerry began.

“Of course it is,” Nathan said. “Jerry stepping up.” He put a proprietary arm on Jerry’s shoulder. “He already has his temps. Once he grows this car he’ll be able to take people all sorts of cool places.”

“Yeah,” Jerry said. “I’m trying to grow a car.”

And that was pretty much it for conversation. The three of them stood there for a minute looking for something to say.

“Well, I’m going to go study for the Government pop quiz. See you around.” She bobbed off.

“She wants you,” Nathan said.

“Dude, shut up,” Jerry felt his face flush.

“Have you asked her out to the dance?”

“Uh… no.” Jerry played with the zipper on his bag.

“You should. Where are you growing the car?”

“Far enough away that Dad won’t find it.”

“Always a good idea,” Nathan said.

Mrs. Newfield had the pop quiz. She was an old teacher, and she never stopped regaling them all with tales of her youth. She told them about spending twenty years as a riveter during the war, and about the cars she used to drive, made of metal.

Old adults always spoke about the war.

Jerry breezed through the quiz. What date did the war end on? June 8th, 1985. Write an essay on the cause of the war’s end. Jerry thought about that some. He remembered that the old dictator Hitler died of cancer in 1974, and that the war with Japan lasted longer.

Dad always tried explaining to him that people grew things because the war took all the metal for so many decades, that everyone left at home had to try and figure out other ways to get by.

Jerry just wanted a car.

Jerry planted the hatchback down near a pond half a mile from the house. He bought some fertilizer in a sack from a local car-farm, and made sure to carefully mix it in with the dirt and pack the seed in.

He figured he could come and water it as he found the time to sneak away, but as the week progressed he kept sneaking away. The car was his pride. He spent what money he had remaining on high-grade fertilizer; he even put out for extra topsoil to spread around the location.

Within the week, he could see the frame beginning to push its slender fingers out of the ground and take shape. By the second week, he was using his father’s shears to trim back parts of the frame that kept trying to grow off in wild directions.

Keeping the car pruned wasn’t easy. It took time, and careful cutting. He really had to strain hard to trim the stray pieces, because the car parts had their breed ancestry from the tree that produced ironwood. Ironwood, Jerry’s dad said, came from the Caribbean, where it was once used to make propeller shafts and pulleys. During the war, it was used to replace cogs and axles. As the decades passed, it was no longer cut and shaped, but grown into all its uses as scientists looked for ways around the metal shortage.

Every other day after school, Jerry went down to the pond. Sometimes the pruning didn’t quite fix it. Parts of the car just seemed… off to him. Like the hood. But anything could be fixed, or dealt with.

The damn paneling, though. It started to come in over the right wheel-well lumpy, and refused to cover in completely. But Jerry remained confident in his green thumb despite the small voice in the back of his head telling him things weren’t quite working out as easily as he expected.

Saturday, on his way back from returning the shears to the toolshed, he ran into his dad. Dad looked at the bag but didn’t say anything. He followed Jerry into the house.

“You haven’t been spending much time home this week.”

“I’ve been busy.” Jerry realized that his dad was feeling guilty about not spending enough time with him. The price of long office hours.

“I hear there’s a dance this Friday. You have a date yet?”

“Dad!” Jerry let the note of complaint drop. Take a hint, he thought, leave me alone. But Dad kept pushing it.

“Isn’t there someone you’re interested in asking out? Andy was telling me about someone the last time he was over here.”

Jerry balled his hand into fist. He was going to kill Andy for letting that one slip.

“Yes. Allison.” He flushed. Dad held the door open for him.

They kicked their shoes off in the middle of the foyer.

“So have you asked her out?”

“No, Dad, I haven’t.”

“What are you waiting for?”

Jerry looked at his dad. He could almost look him eye to eye now.

“To talk to her, at school and stuff. I mean, she hardly even knows me. What if she says no?”

“You won’t know until you call her,” Dad said.

“Yeah, but what if she says no?”

“Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet.”

Jerry shook his head. “Sure Dad, whatever. Okay. Yeah.” Like Dad was the expert on women.

“Watch your tone.”

“I’m going upstairs,” Jerry announced.

“Are the dishes done?”

Jerry shrugged.

Of course, Dad was waiting for him when he got back from school. Still skittish about Saturday’s encounter Jerry tried to push past the living room and head up the stairs.

He got stopped.

“Sit down.”

The steely edge in Dad’s voice meant business. Jerry sat on the couch and set a permanent scowl in place. His stomach flip-flopped when the shears came out. Dad set them on the small coffee table.

“What’s wrong?” Jerry asked. But he knew. He’d been caught.

“I’m not totally unobservant, Jerry. I can put two and two together. I figured the best spot, and sure enough… you’re growing a car down by the pond. I had it towed.” Dad’s green eyes flashed, and Jerry clenched a fist. He’d towed it? His car? “Just what the hell where you thinking?” Dad continued.

“Just what the hell was I thinking? I was thinking I need a goddamn car!”

“Watch your language.”

“Fuck my language.”

“Hey!” His dad slapped the coffee table for emphasis. “I won’t stand for this. We’ve already argued it out. We agreed we were going to wait until you had your license. Until you’d driven, and definitely until you’ve wised up some.”

“No, we never agreed. You told me.” Jerry got up. Dad stepped in his way. “Get out of my way.”

“Not until we get some things straight.”

“I’m leaving now,” Jerry said, notions of packing his bag and leaving entering his head.

“You’re going to run away.” His dad smiled. “Where are you going to eat? How are you going to eat? You spent all your money on that crappy rip-off some friend sold you.”

That hurt.

“Well, it shouldn’t be the first time you’ve had someone walk out one you, right, Dad?” Jerry regretted it the second he said it. His dad stepped back, shaken. They never talked about Mom.

Jerry hardly felt the slap. He staggered back into the coffee table, falling over. The glass broke and shattered across the tile, and Jerry felt the tears rolling down his cheek. He ran out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

The plot by the side of the pond stood empty, the earth scarred by the wide tires of some sort of truck. A blackened, lumpy piece of paneling sat alone next to a thorn bush, a dragonfly laying a clutch of eggs into a notch.

Jerry sat by the pond until the tears stopped, and then slept there. He snuck back into the house late at night, blinking owlishly.

His dad had cleaned all the glass up and done the dishes.

They played at avoiding each other for a few days. Dad went to work, Jerry went to school. Once home Jerry would throw himself at homework, staying in his room, and Dad would lock himself in the study.

The only comment was made late in the evening, when they both showed up in the kitchen for a soda.

“Haven’t you run away yet?” His dad asked.

Jerry ignored him.

It was hard to stay perpetually angry. Jerry forgot all about it when the phone rang, and then his dad poked a head in through the door with the portable.

“It’s Andy. He sounds wound up.”

“Thanks,” Jerry said, taking the phone. They made eye contact, Jerry looked away. “Andy?”

“Man, you are so gonna blow when you hear this!” Andy said.

“What?”

“Allison got asked out by some upperclassman.”

The world got all woozy for Jerry again. Damnit. She’d smiled at him, liked him. True he hadn’t actually asked her out, but…

It was all so confusing.

He let Andy ramble on, then hung up and sat staring at the wall for a minute. This sucked. Everything sucked. The whole world sucked.

“You okay?” Jerry jumped, he hadn’t realized Dad was still there.

“Yeah, I guess,” he lied.

“Want to talk?”

“Not really.”

“Okay,” his dad still stood there.

“I mean, if she kinda liked me…”

His dad stepped into the room.

“I hate to say ‘I told you so’, but if you don’t show initiative, you’ll be going to most of your dances with Andy and Nathan.”

Jerry mock-shuddered.

“Now there’s a thought.”

His dad sat down on a spare chair, drawing it up.

“I’ve been thinking about the car.”

“So have I,” Jerry admitted. “I won’t try again. I just wanted a car so bad. It would have impressed my friends…” he trailed off. He wanted to grow a car so bad it ached. But Dad was right; they couldn’t afford to have a new car right now. Ever since Mom left they’d been just squeaking by with money.

His dad cleared his throat.

“I changed my mind,” he said.

Jerry’s eyes widened, expecting Dad to hand him a seed packet with a gleaming new car on the front, but that didn’t happen. Instead, Dad stood up and walked over to the window. “I won’t buy you a new car. We’ll use yours. I can at least teach you the mistakes not to make.” Jerry followed him over and looked down.

In the grass lawn sat his car, lumpy sideboards and all.

“The sideboards are warped,” his dad said. “The frame isn’t quite up to crash standard, I can tell, but we can work on all that. I already ripped out the engine and transmission. It should take, though. It might be a few days until we see any progress. Our lawn is hardly prime area.”

Jerry stood awkwardly next to his dad, then patted him on the back.

“Thanks, Dad.”

Jerry stayed home from the dance. He and his dad sat on the front porch, two empty bags of fertilizer draped over the railing. Dad had come out with two beers, condensation running down the sides.

“A hard day’s work demands a reward,” he laughed. Jerry opened his, not liking the bitter taste at all, but sipping at intervals just like his dad, letting the beads of water run down the web between his thumb and forefinger.

They’d trimmed the dead parts of the car. The trunk, the hood, all needed to be re-trained and re-grown. The A-frame, though, was decent.

“Not bad for a first car, son.” His dad settled into a deck chair. The ochre sunset gave the little hatchback on their lawn distended dark shadows. “Growing cars ain’t easy. They take lots of work. You make mistakes, you prune them back, then you start over again and hope for the best. All you can really do is point the growth in the right direction and pray. And every year they release cars that grow faster and faster. Hell, when I was your age it took years to grow yourself a good car.”

Jerry nodded, sipped at the beer and tried not to make a face.

“I’m sorry about…”

“Yeah,” his dad said in a hurry. “I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have hit you like that.”

They dropped the subject and sipped some more beer, looking at the sun dip behind the tree. Across the fence Mr. Atkinson stood up from pruning, placing one hand on the hood to steady himself, waving with the other.

Jerry and his father waved back.

All Her Children Fought…

This is a lean little mood piece that has gotten me the most fan mail out of all my short stories. Originally written for a small online magazine that posed themes every week, I wrote it as an exercise just to keep the writing muscles fresh. After appearing in the small zine I got a number of emails from people who found it quite touching, and sad. It’s also a small nod to Tom Godwin’s famous story The Cold Equations. When each pound to orbit costs so much, in dire straights, it would make sense to use children as pilots.

Colonel Hodges drew Mia aside. Medals tinkled as the massive soldier leaned down to whisper in her ear. His breath tickled her ear.

“I wouldn’t take the kid very far away from the house, sudden noises are liable to set him off.“

“I understand,” Mia replied. The diminutive child had already been shown into the house. Unlike any average kid he did not succumb to curiosity and explore, or even look around, the house. He stood at the door waiting for orders.

“Maybe you do,” the colonel said. “I still do not understand why the psychologists think this is important…”

Mia hissed between her teeth. “He’s a child.”

The Colonel drew back from her, biceps sliding like pistons covered in cloth as he crossed his arms.

“If you insist. I will be back in a week… and I wish you a good day, ma’am.”

He stepped around the little waterfall and out through the gate. Mia waited until the roar of turbo-fans dwindled into the distance.

She turned back to face the small boy.

He really wasn’t small, just contained. He sat on the porch step looking at her with dark expressionless eyes.

“Colonel Hodges failed to give me your name.”

“I have a designation.”

“And that is?”

“Aiden. Seven two hundred-oh-four. Why am I here? I thought I was fully trained?”

“You are ready, Aiden. But before you leave, they wanted you to rest awhile.”

“I rest six hours a day before morning call. Isn’t that enough?”

Mia smiled and passed him by on the porch.

“For your body, little man, but not your soul. Now pick up your things and come inside.”

Aiden obeyed, snapping up a crisp new duffel bag and following her into the kitchen.

“Are you hungry?”

“I had morning rations.”

Mia pulled down a jar of brightly colored hard candy and opened it.

“Try one of these.”

Aiden thoughtfully sampled a piece of cherry red. He tucked the rest away in a breast pocket.

“Thank you, ma’am. I liked it.”

Mia wondered how much candy he got at the training base. Maybe a few pieces a week, with vitamins to balance the meal out. It was still early in the day. Mia gave him a sandwich which he also tucked away in another zippered pocket. Then Mia left him alone so he could roam around the house and investigate his new surroundings.

The best approach to these things, she knew, was not rush it. Let whatever happens happen naturally. While Aiden explored her house Mia took a nap.

• • •

He woke her up.

“I’m sorry ma’am…”

“Call me Mia.”

“Ma’…Mia. There is a sword in the foyer. May I look at it?”

They always gravitated toward the sword, Mia thought. It gave them something to orient themselves to.

“Please go ahead.”

Mia followed Aiden through the kitchen and into the foyer. Aiden looked up at the sword, then leaped up and snatched it out off of its hooks in a single fluid movement. He landed catlike and unsheathed it.

“Kitana.” He pirouetted around a chair, stalking some unseen enemy. He swayed with the sword in slight smooth motions. “It is beautiful.”

He balanced it with two fingers, then set it down.

“Am I still to train now?”

“No. Just, enjoy yourself.”

Mia let him practice with the sword in the garden, with the promise that he wouldn’t cut any of the plants. After dinner she saw him into his small room and let him unpack.

The light in Aiden’s room clicked off at exactly eight.

• • •

Mia woke up the next morning hearing small puffs of exertion. She found Aiden in the porch doing pushups. She waited patiently until he finished.

“Breakfast?”

“Please Ma’am.”

“Mia.”

She slowly made her way up into the kitchen and made scrambled eggs. At the table Aiden dug in.

“I like them…Mia,” he said.

“I’m glad,” Mia beamed at him. Once done Aiden washed his own dishes and took the sword outside.

Mia made her way into the living room to take a nap on the couch.

• • •

“Mia,” Aiden woke her up. “It is time for lunch. Would you like me to cook?”

“No thanks child. I can still do it.” Mia ratcheted the couch up and stood up. Aiden seemed to struggle with something, then spoke up.

“You sleep a great deal.”

Mia laughed.

“Yes I do. Getting old. Getting tired. I don’t have a fraction the energy you do.”

She made cold turkey sandwiches for lunch. Over the small table in the nook she started conversation.

“Do you remember your parents, Aiden?”

“My parents gave me to training when I was born. I have no recollection of them.”

“Do you ever wonder about them?”

“No.” Aiden said it without any inflection.

“I’m here to replace your parents,” Mia explained. “Just for one week. It isn’t much of a childhood to experience, but it’s better than nothing.”

Aiden’s expression never changed; a hard controlled stare.

“I’ll wash the dishes,” he said, getting up.

“No, I’ll get them. You take the sword in the garden and enjoy yourself.”

• • •

Only an hour later Mia heard a yelp. She set the dishes down and rushed outside to see Aiden pulling himself up from the rock-path, the sword by his feet.

“I’m sorry, Mia,” he said. “I misjudged.”

Mia brushed the small twig oozing sap off the side of the sword.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. I saw birds… they don’t have any on the base. I forgot my balance.”

Mia gathered him up in a hug. Aiden neither pushed her away nor resisted. He waited until she finished, then stepped back.

“I’ll go and clean my cuts.”

Mia watched his small form walk into the house.

Despite all the physical training they gave him, that wasn’t what he would use in battle. The kid’s greatest asset lay in his creativity, reflexes, and obedience. Simulations and computers ran war. The advanced warriors needed the quick hand-eye coordination, the kind only the young could provide.

And the small bodies allowed better fuel ratios. Mia sighed. The small bodies lay littered across the vacuum of inky battlefields.

Aiden might be able to run a starship through a dogfight, but he was still unused to his own body.

• • •

The next morning she corralled him into helping around the garden. Watering plants, digging ground for new ones, resetting the rocks around the waterfall. Aiden had a precision to his grace. Each stone sat cornered into the next when he finished, each placed with his accurate but strong hands.

“I like the smell of the garden,” he noted.

“So do I.”

“I like the way it sits. The waterfall covers the view of the porch, forcing a flanking motion to anyone who comes in. The trees and bush give cover, but keep them in the path, where they are wanted, and directed.”

“It isn’t exactly how I think of it,” Mia replied, although the truth was, she had heard the analysis many times before.

Aiden had something else on his mind. He scrunched up his face. “Where are the other children here?” He finally asked.

Mia stood up.

“What do you mean?”

“The Colonel noted there was a beach here. I know I am different, and that there are other children there. Can I see them?” Mia smiled inwardly.

“Of course you can. I’ll take you tomorrow.”

• • •

Mia set out with Aiden early, taking him up to the far end of the beach, where they could sit and still see the slow curving sand. Distant screams of joy wafted across the salt to them.

“But you won’t let me go out and play with them?” Aiden asked.

“No,” Mia replied.

Aiden sat quietly and watched the kids run into curling waves and surf back onto the beach. Relaxed parents sat under umbrellas, occasionally looking up from a book.

“I have to protect them,” Aiden said. “They are the reason I will go up and fight.”

“Yes.”

Aiden looked up at the sky, pointing out the long white smoke trail of a launch.

“I will pilot one, that is my training. Long insertions through rapid hyper-skip mother-cruisers allow almost instantaneous attack. Surprise is always the best method,” he started in with a mantra that fell easy to his lips. “Make your enemy think that there are far more of you than there really are, hit and kill in the confusion, then skip away.” He twitched his hands in unconscious movements, giving commands followed out only in his imagination. But without the sensing equipment, nothing happened. No megaton explosions obliterated their surroundings. Seagulls still swirled and argued in the air.

Aiden blinked his eyes and let his hands fall to the warm rock.

“Mia?”

“Yes.”

“All those kids down there have parents. Are you my parent?”

“In a manner of speaking. For a week.”

“I’m glad you’re my parent, Mia. Can I play in the water, just around here, by myself?”

Mia gave in with a pretense of reluctance, but her heart skipped to see him diving into the waves, just like all the other children up and down the beach.

• • •

Aiden spent the week learning to be a child. They snuggled by the fireplace and watched cartoons. They baked cookies. And sometimes, when he relaxed, he laughed.

The seventh day came with the sound of turbo-fans, and Mia made her way into the garden to meet Colonel Hodges again. Aiden stood by the waterfall with his duffel bag, patiently waiting to be picked up.

Before he could leave Mia gave Aiden a strong hug.

“Thank you for being here,” she said, trying not to let her eyes shine over.

“Thank you,” he replied. “Thank you for being my mother.” He looked up at the sky. “I will always remember this. When I am out there, there will always be somewhere else, no matter how bad it gets.” He kissed her on the cheek, an accurate delicate touch of the lips, carefully calculated, yet as free as he could ever become with himself.

The small soldier pulled out of the hug and made his way out of the garden and into the drop-ship.

Colonel Hodges handed Mia a small card. Payment for her job as sitter.

“The trainers would like me to thank you for a job well done. The psychologists have always been impressed with your results.”

Mia thought only of the little human machines that she was creating humans out of. She didn’t give them results; she gave them something else that was needed far more than the bottom line.

“I love them, Colonel.”

Colonel Hodges looked around the garden.

“I remember my mother,” he said thoughtfully. “She died ten years ago.”

Mia smiled and caressed his cheek softly.

“I could always use help with my garden, child, if you are ever off-duty.”

The colonel stood still for long seconds, impassive. Then something crept through his iron features.

“If I may ma’am. If I may.”

Colonel Hodges saluted and made his way back around the waterfall.

Mia listened to the turbo-fans rev, and then watched the small drop-ship lift into the sky and speed away. No matter how many times she watched it happen, it still hurt to let go of her children. It still hurt to lose them to that world.

The Duel

One of the most interesting periods of early American history is this point at which the future of the nation is not guaranteed. And Aaron Burr’s attempt to create another nation just west of the early US nation is fascinating. An early patriot, and then a traitor, and then a desperate man trying to almost undo some of the very things he had created, what a bizarre and sad trajectory. It reminds us that these founding men were complex, and the founding of the US was quite a complicated combination of many different interests combining in one lucky confluence of nation birthing.

It is a chilly February morning in 1807 in the room they are all looking into. Outside of 1807, the glass reflects the eager faces of schoolchildren, chaperones silently taking headcounts and ‘shushing’ the troublemakers. Toad watches the group. One pigtailed young specimen presses his nose against the one-way window and looks down.

“Hey look!” The boy with pigtails says. “I can see something.”

Three soldiers with muskets slung to their sides trudge through the muddy road. Behind them the hamlet of Wakefield is slowly appearing through an artificial mist. The soldiers have captured a furtive figure that has been trying to dart off the road. Now he walks between them, shoulders slumped.

Toad adjusts the white powdered wig over his dreadlocks and taps the microphone hidden behind the silk scarf draped around his double-breasted lapel.

“Welcome to the Living History Exhibit,” Toad says. He can see his deep and melodious voice grabbing their attention. It is a good choice, using someone whose very voice adds an air of the exotic to the exhibit. The people who created the Living History Museum are smart. “Where we make history real,” he continues. “Below us, in this room, we have the capture of Aaron Burr by soldiers from Fort Stoddard, Louisiana. Burr is to stand trial for treason.”

The former vice-president is dressed in rags, a worn beaver hat slipping from his dirty hair. He hasn’t shaved in days, and his eyes are reddened from the lack of sleep.

“During the last few months, Burr has been plotting with generals and senators from all over the newly founded country. He had hoped that he could raise an army and get Louisiana to secede, with British support. Can you imagine how history would have been changed? Remember, the United States of America is brand new, only twenty years old...” Toad has the entire speech memorized. The words drip from his tongue as he smiles. Empire in the West under Burr and so forth. Earlier attempts to become New York governor, maybe another plot of secession. Occasionally Toad adjusts the itchy wig, or holds onto his finely tailored lapels as everyone imagines a person from that historical era should.

Eventually his spot is done. The children move on. The next batch wanders in. The room resets, the figures automatically moving back to their start positions. Toad begins again. Only, at the end of this speech, he has a reminder.

“Don’t forget, today the Museum is sponsoring a lunch with this featured Historical Figure, Aaron Burr. He will entertain questions, talk about the period, and toast the guests.”

As they file out, Toad turns off the mike in his lapel. His replacement comes in still straightening his wig.

“Toad,” he tips his head. Toad nods back.

“Jace.”

Toad leaves for lunch break.

Another little-known fact he has forgotten to throw out: the venerable Aaron Burr, former vice-president of the United States of America, served part of the revolutionary war in Benedict Arnold’s staff.

History, and the world, it seems, is full of little connections like that.

• • •

Toad eats in 1804, because Aaron Burr is much younger in that room. It is only a few years, but for Burr, the difference between 1804 and 7 is huge. More than most people’s lifetimes. Plus, the Museum has this display moved out while it works on some of the problems. The windows looking on in the earlier period were bulletproof, but some of the Museum’s patrons had felt nervous about Hamilton’s missed shot, and where exactly that stray bullet fired. Particularly when it rattled off the windows.

Toad has the room to himself. With the exception of all the Historical Figures, that is. He eats in the section with Aaron Burr and his daughter, Theodosia. Theodosia serves him tea, and Toad thanks her. She curtseys slightly, and leaves.

Toad eats with the Burrs because he prefers their company. Aaron treats him to confectionaries and coffee. Sometimes he orders music, and is always careful to make sure his guest is comfortable. At Hamilton’s, Toad would be grilled and questioned. Burr is relaxed, and intelligent. Hamilton is a freaking genius. He invented America. And he makes Toad nervous.

Every once in a while, Burr takes Toad out into the forest to hunt with him. And carrying a musket, walking in between the trees and watching for spore, Toad feels like life is indeed worth living. Then they’ll come back to Burr’s mansion, sit in the green backyard, and enjoy iced tea.

Toad enjoys all this because the Duel Exhibit is temporarily shelved. He can sneak in and use it, and not be seen. He has for the last week. He can do this and return, be recognized by the Historical Characters, because the museum isn’t looping the exhibit over and over again for the crowds passing through. Everything in this room is just carrying on its own, slowly working towards that climactic event.

Today Burr is dashing off a letter. Something to the effect of: Sir, I send for your perusal a letter signed by Charles. D. Cooper. You must perceive, Sir, the necessity of a prompt and unqualified acknowledgement or denial of the use of any expressions... and so on and so on. Toad realizes Burr is getting ready to bait Hamilton into a duel. This is where, Toad has been told, that noble idea of justice proved through combat turns towards an excuse for revenge.

In sixty years gunslingers would stand at high noon on main street in the Wild West, hands twitching for the draw. But those were other rooms, another section of the Museum.

Honor. Toad watches Burr bite his lip and look down at the document. What must the man be thinking? Maybe he can win back his political swing, because over the past few months, the vice-president has lost all political influence. A tied vote between vice-president and president led to a vote by the house that deadlocked, though Burr had no intention of running for the big seat.

When Jefferson finally got in, he wasn’t too happy with Burr.

Poor, desperate Burr.

Not really. Burr leads a good life, thanks to politics. Toad laughs to himself and finishes his tea and tuna sandwich he brought in his lunchbox with him. Lana has cut the sandwich into diagonals. She knows he preferred his sandwiches cut in regular halves. She is always looking for small ways to do things like that to him. Ever since... Toad pushes that thought clear.

Theodosia comes back.

“More... tea?” She asks, with a smile. Toad smiles back.

“Yes, please.”

Burr has sealed his letter, and now he stands up and looks around.

“My goodness,” he says. “I apologize for paying you so little attention. I have been preoccupied of late.”

Toad stands up with a freshly refilled delicate china cup.

“But of course not, I am always made welcome here,” he says. He darts a sidelong glance at Theodosia.

Burr nods, but it is clear that his mind is absent, and his thoughts are still elsewhere. No doubt, now that he holds the actual beginnings of a challenge in his very hand, he is starting to wonder if maybe this is the right course of action.

But no. He shakes his head, Toad notices, then walks out of the room with the rolled up piece of paper in his hand.

Toad is left alone in the room with Theodosia.

She sits on a chair across from him.

“You have such a delightful-sounding accent,” she says. “You are from the Caribbean islands, just like Mr. Hamilton?”

Toad sits back down, careful not to spill the tea. The chairs in Burr’s mansion are ornate, but comfortable.

“I am not from Nevis, like Alexander Hamilton, no,” he says. “But one of the other islands.”

“But such sounds you make with your vowels,” she says.

He smiles. It isn’t just the sounds of the words that make a patois, but the arrangement. Toad long since dropped really speaking patois. He really speaks American with an accent. He feels guilty about losing the true essence of ‘talking Caribbean,’ but he’s been accommodating everyone for a long while now.

Toad sneaks a glance at the V-cut of her breasts, pushed up by an elaborate corset beneath, no doubt. Maybe it is time to stop accommodating.

He pushes the thought from his mind. His watch beeps. It is time to get back; his break is over.

• • •

The door to the apartment is open. Toad walks in, and he can hear Lana in the bathroom. The taps are running and she is singing like she’s in some opera, only her voice keeps breaking.

Dovert sits on the couch. A bead of sweat runs down his forehead, and his clothes are rumpled. Dovert is a thin man, with dark hair cut short to his scalp. He doesn’t even have any facial hair. Toad isn’t sure if it doesn’t grow, or if he chooses to shave twice a day. Toad ignores Dovert and walks past him into the kitchen. He grabs a bowl of leftover Chinese food and walks down the small hallway to his office.

Dovert stands up.

“Toad, we haven’t talked for awhile...” Dovert starts to say. Toad holds up a hand as he keeps walking away.

Lana stops singing. He hears the bathroom curtain dramatically swish open, and her wet feet slap across the tile. She pokes her head through the door.

“Hi Toad.”

He ignores her and opens his office. He goes in and locks the door behind him. He starts eating the rice with his fingers. He’s forgotten a fork, and he doesn’t want to go back outside. He stares straight ahead, rice stuck to the bottoms of his fingers, looking at a picture of his dad. The frame around the picture is silver. It is lined with grooves.

Dad, he thinks. What would you have done?

No answer. Just old man Leonard staring off into the long distance, a faint Mona Lisa-like smile on his lips.

Toad thumps his head onto the desk and blinks his eyes. They’re suddenly slightly wet, but he doesn’t want anything more than that. Toad is a man, he doesn’t cry. That was what his dad taught him years and years ago. Never cry. He bites his lip until it passes. He imagines what it would be like to kill Dovert. In his head, he plays fantasies of some punk robbing their house, shooting Dovert, and Toad rescuing Lana by killing the intruder.

It isn’t much comfort, but it gives him something to focus on.

• • •

One thing that Toad has always wanted to know is: did Hamilton ever have a Caribbean accent. Oh, that would just burn everyone, wouldn’t it? Here was one of the principal creators of America, an architect of the country. When historians studied his past, they would mention Nevis. Often, in the following terms:

...he was from the tiny Caribbean island of Nevis, where the slave trade dominated the local economy. Hamilton hated this, and felt it was wrong...

That was it. Two lines sum up his entire time on the island, an entire childhood. The next thing to be mentioned:

...luckily, Hamilton attracted the attention of a wealthy businessman who paid to have him leave and gain his schooling in America...

Toad resents that. He wonders exactly how the islands influenced Hamilton. Or was it all just negative? Hamilton’s dark view of humanity was born on the tiny island of Nevis. Does Hamilton deplore slavery, while thinking black people inferior, Toad wonders. How does that work? These men could be so fascinating. Hypocritical, yet in such a grand manner.

Toad sits in his tiny study and reads books. And in his drawer he has candy bars. He eats them as he reads, and when he is done, he takes the foil wrapper, separating it from the paper with the brand name glossed onto it. He flattens the foil by rubbing it on the corner of his desk, and begins to fold it in an absent manner. With one hand, he holds a book open, and with the other, fingers and thumb deftly creasing and turning the foil over, he creates the small figurine of a standing man with a tricornered hat.

These tiny soldiers stand throughout the shelves of his office, the crinkled foil reflecting the dim light in a fractured way. They almost twinkle.

Sometime, late into the night, early in the morning, he wonders if he can go to his room and sleep. Lana will be there in the bed, asleep, he thinks. Her eyes will be closed. She will stir as the door opens and turn over on her side.

Usually she asks how his day was.

Tonight, Toad knows he can’t look at her. He used to be able to push the thought of the other men away. He could touch Lana, kiss the nape of her neck and run his hands down her smooth, dark skin, and find a peace that never comes easy to him. After seeing Dovert, Toad can only imagine Lana’s breath catching as Dovert runs his hands down her stomach.

Toad slides to the floor and shudders.

This is not living. But Lana has every right. It is everyone’s right. Were he to go out tonight and find a bar, and find a woman, and bring her back to make love right here in this office, Lana would only smile in the morning and bring the woman coffee.

It is the way the world is. Toad doesn’t think it is the way the world should be. What would Burr do?

Ha, Toad thinks. Burr was a hedonist at best. What is it he said? “If a lady does me the honor of naming me her child’s father, I will gladly accept.” Even Hamilton found himself in the middle of an intrigue, where he paid a man good money to allow his continued visits to the man’s wife. Toad’s situation is hardly something new. He knows this. He knows it academically, however. It isn’t what the gut reaction in his stomach tells him as he falls asleep on the floor.

• • •

The next morning in the museum, it is still on his mind. The modern age has accepted the practice of monogamy as the pure pursuit, he tells himself. There can be only one mate.

He thinks this while standing in front of an exhibit detailing the pinnacle of the modern consciousness; World War II. American soldiers liberate France, and as the wide-eyed farmboys in green uniforms pause for a while in Paris, the cute announcer with a bob haircut and long skirt standing in front of the exhibit slyly points out:

“The French were so grateful for the liberation. American soldiers flooded the city, and rapidly turned their attentions to the local girls. And it wasn’t unusual for some French husbands to be proud that their wives were...”

Toad passes through the exhibit quickly.

In the Revolutionary Exhibits, major remodeling is still going on. Robots of all shapes and sizes cling to the walls and spin great machines out the nozzles under their bellies. They attach these new machines to the upper corners of each room, like giant spotlights. Some of them stand in front of the one-way windows, not able to see out at Toad looking in at them.

A waxing machine sprays the floor and begins spinning the pads under its squat tublike body. It pauses when it notices Toad, shoving a stalk into the air.

“You,” it says tonelessly, as if bored by having to stop its job to talk to Toad. The Museum has taken control of the robot to speak to Toad. It gives him orders; the later Aaron Burr, the oldest one they have in the museum, now needs to be overseen in a temporary holding room while some final repairs are done.

It continues buffing the floor after he walks on.

Burr is in a study. Toad pauses after he knocks on the door and gets a gruff “enter!” in response. Burr looks up at him with rheumy eyes. A single candle flickers in the corner. Despite the daylight outside, dark, heavy curtains cover the single window of the study. Small Greek toy soldiers stand around Burr’s desk, looking out over the study with implacable beady eyes. A half-assembled model of the Trojan horse sits at the center of the desk, and Burr has scratched an outline of Troy into the dark cherry wood of his desk.

“Yes?” Burr asks. He looks at Toad carefully. “Are you bringing food in or what, man?”

Toad realizes Burr thinks he is a servant. Or maybe a slave.

“No,” he says.

This Burr hasn’t spent evenings chatting with him about Revolutionary politics, the rights of woman, or even a gradual grudging respect for Toad’s ‘kind’ that comes out of the evening conversations.

“Ah, just as well,” Burr says. He turns back to his desk. “What are you here for?”

“Keep you company, until we move again.”

“Damn all this moving about,” Burr says. “It messes with my concentration. Here, there, I don’t understand,” he starts scraping at the Trojan horse with a file. “And I don’t need some...”

There is a commotion outside, and Toad opens the door. A small dark-skinned man in a white robe is shooing a fly down the corridor to safety. The assistant following Gandhi has a chagrined look on his face.

“Sorry,” he says to Toad, in explanation. “I tried to swat the fly, I wasn’t thinking.”

Toad smiles and steps back so he can shut the door. When it clicks shut, he turns around. Burr looks aghast. Toad’s heart skips. Has Burr recognized Gandhi? He can’t, it’s impossible. That is the first thought that bubbles up into Toad’s mind. Aaron Burr gets out of his chair with a grunt, gripping the arms and heaving his good bulk forward.

He walks over to his bookshelf and pulls out a large volume from the rows of spines. It is Laurence Sterne’s Tristam Shandy, Toad sees, all nine of the books in between two covers. Next to it sits a book by Voltaire. Burr takes Shandy back to his desk. With a palm on its top, like some bible, Burr looks up.

“Ever since I shot him,” Burr says. Toad knows he’s talking about Hamilton. “I’ve always wondered,” Burr continues. “I’ve thought about it a great deal. People always asked me about that choice, the accusation of murder strong in their tone.” He grins slightly. “I can’t imagine too many other vice-presidents in this country will ever stand trial for both murder and treason. Eh?”

Toad nods. “No.”

“Well.” Burr looks at the door, as if seeing out at the corridor. “I’ll say this. If I had read more Stern and less Voltaire, perhaps I would have realized that the world was large enough for both Hamilton and me.”

Toad studies the hardwood floor. It is scuffed and muddy. Yes, he thinks, maybe this is so. Yet, could Burr have done it any other way? This old, broken man has regrets. This is not the proud Burr, so full of life, which Toad knows in the other rooms.

• • •

It is in his reading, late at night, that Toad finds another reference to Tristam Shandy. Jefferson, the president who Burr almost ousted, has a fierce love for the book. He and his wife, Martha, share an affection for it. When she dies, bearing his seventh child, he locks himself up in a room and paces for a week.

It’s funny, Toad thinks, that Jefferson was the one who read more Sterne than Burr. There are distant noises from the bedroom. Toad pulls out a candy bar and absently works on the tin foil.

An hour or so later, when Toad’s eyes are beginning to fail, Lana opens the door. Light spills into the study and he blinks. She tiptoes up to his chair and kisses him on the cheek. He sits still as she wraps her arms around his neck, her hair falling down in between his shirt and his back.

“Miss you,” she says.

Toad allows himself to be pulled toward the bedroom. Dovert lies asleep under the covers, his arm lolling off the side of the bed.

Lana moves into him, sitting on him, legs wrapped around his waist. They caress and nuzzle. Lana is still riding a peak. Every touch seems magnified. Despite himself, Toad is aroused. The world narrows into tunnel vision, just two warm bodies, and Toad begins to thrust with her, pushing his palms down onto the bed for leverage.

Until the side of his hand brushes Dovert’s. He stops and looks down. Dovert has shifted. Toad loses the excitement and Lana rolls off him. They’re both disappointed, and Toad buries his face into a pillow.

• • •

The psychiatrist hovers in the air. A lens shifts, and the soccer-ball shaped machine settles into the desk in front of Toad.

“I wish I’d never introduced them,” Toad says. The psychiatrist has thousands of small metallic filings on its ‘face’ that shift into human expressions. With a slight ‘shhfff’ sound, it creates and raises an eyebrow, as if to say, ‘go on, I’m interested.’ “Dovert was my best friend,” Toad continues. “We met at the museum. We had similar jobs, just different time periods. I brought him home for lunch, and had to leave. When I came back, Dovert and Lana were... well, you know.”

The psychiatrist waits.

Toad swallows. “They were having sex.”

“This is a free world,” the psychiatrist says. “Lana is a modern woman. She is perfectly free to choose her own lovers. As many as she wants. Unless you have a binding contract of exclusivity?”

“No,” Toad says.

The psychiatrist cocks its head.

“Are there any reasons you can’t leave. Economic? You don’t have to stay in the current arrangement, you are also free to choose your own lovers. You can leave.”

“Yes,” Toad says.

“So why don’t you?”

“Because I love her.”

“And you think she loves you, right?”

“I don’t know,” Toad says. “I think so.” He gets up.

“So you feel that all that time you spent with Lana together, implies a continuation of exclusivity without a contract?”

“Yes, maybe, I’m not sure,” Toad says, all at once and jumbled together. He can’t believe he’s spent this money doing this. This is something he needs to work out on his own. He’s getting frustrated with the machine.

“Historically speaking, real freedom of individuals to choose has been suppressed. That conflicts with natural biological design toward promiscuity. It is hardwired into the species.”

“Don’t lecture me about history,” Toad says.

He walks out of the room.

“Please,” the psychiatrist says. “Schedule another appointment. I would like to see you again. I feel like we should spend some more time...”

“Yes,” Toad says, and shuts the door.

• • •

He briefly entertains the thought of sneaking in to see Freud at the musuem. But what would that man know of his situation? It is too complicated now, and the rules that Toad lives under don’t fit with Freud’s.

Toad replays the conversation with the mechanical psychiatrist in his head.

“...biological design toward promiscuity...”

So what? He thinks. We have a design towards pissing anywhere when the need arrives. But we all manage to use bathrooms or arrange for some semblance of privacy. With humans, biological design meant nothing. That, Toad thinks, is the whole point of being human. Isn’t it?

We manipulate ourselves. We control our destiny. Don’t we? Toad furrows his eyebrows.

He’s different. He knows it. He spends too much time in the past. It has affected him. He wanders throughout the museum, going from exhibit room to exhibit rooms. He ends up in Feudal Japan and stops.

Musashi.

“Miyamoto Musashi is legend and reality,” says the man in front of the room that looks into 1600. “The greatest duelist in Japan, he became a walking legend even in his own time.”

Unlike traditional Samurai, Musashi has no topknot, as he cannot shave. A bad case of eczema has disfigured him, and in the strict Japanese society, makes him an automatic outcast. Musashi, the guide explains, refuses to wash himself or change his clothes, forcing people to become discomforted when about him.

Musashi’s father, the man Musashi looks up to, has taught him the art of swords. But the father is very distant from his son, and shows no love whatsoever. This, the man before the one-way window explains, tortures and drives Musashi to be the best swordsman ever.

Toad watches as Musashi faces an almost endless stream of challenging warriors over the years, and defeats them all. In this society, at this time, the duel is the way to bring respect. Musashi is expert.

Toad empathizes with Musashi’s outcast feelings. He wishes he could be grand and legendary through his own psychological failings.

• • •

Toad is back with Burr in the night before the duel. Burr paces throughout the mansion, his buckle shoes tapping on the hardwood floors, going quiet as he walks across rugs, then tapping again. Toad sits on a small seat with Theodosia and drinks tea. She’s reading William Blake’s America: A Prophecy. The spine of the book is resting between her thighs, pushing her dress down onto the chair.

When Toad looks up, he realizes Theodosia isn’t reading the book. Her dark eyes are locked on his. She blushes expertly and turns a page, looking back down. The ringlets around her face bounce slightly from the motion.

It is wrong, Toad thinks. She shouldn’t be so.

Aaron Burr bursts into the room. Even though he hasn’t done anything, Toad jumps with a guilty expression to his face. Burr walks through the room and takes a long musket up from wall.

“I am going hunting,” he declares. Then he pauses and hands Theodosia a sealed letter. “Don’t open this until tomorrow,” he says. “Swear to me you won’t open this until then.”

Theodosia nods.

“Yes, father. My word.”

“Good.” Aaron Burr leaves the room in great agitation. Toad hears the door slam as he leaves for the forest.

Theodosia opens the letter.

“You gave your word,” Toad says.

“I believe it was my father who said, ‘Great souls have little use for small morals.’” She scans the letter and struggles to keep her face from showing emotion. Toad takes the letter and reads it:

I am indebted to you, my dearest

Theodosia, for a very great portion

of the happiness which I have enjoyed

in this life. You have completely

satisfied all that my heart and

affections had hoped or even wished.

With a little more perseverance,

determination, and industry, you will

obtain all that my ambition or vanity

had fondly imagined. Let your son

have occasion to be proud that he had a mother.

Adieu. Adieu.

Theodosia closes the Blake book and sets it to her side. She stands up and takes the letter from Toad.

“He’ll see the broken seal now, though” she says, looking down at the broken rough circle of wax.

“I know where he keeps his seal,” Toad says. “We can fix it.”

Theodosia steps forward and takes his arm. Toad feels a thrill of pleasure run up his back.

“Thank you,” she says. “I apologize for all this. I should not have come up from South Carolina, and left...” she pauses. But Toad can fill in the name coming: Joseph Alston. Her husband, and eventual governor of the state.

The truth is, Theodosia should still be in South Carolina. But the museum thought the exhibit would do better with an intelligent woman as a part of the attraction, and Theodosia’s mother, also named Theodosia, had died well before the duel. So they send a coach south for Burr’s daughter.

It is a favor really. Theodosia suffers in the swamps of the south. She hates the mosquitoes and the climate. Every moment of it.

The moment passes. Toad leads her up the stairs to Burr’s office. There they take his seal out of the drawer. Toad burns his fingers on the hot wax as he presses the seal in. He swears, and Theodosia takes his hand in hers.

“It hurt?” She asks.

“Yes.” Toad looks down at the tips of his finger, glossed in cooled red wax. Theodosia bends her lips to them and gives a gentle kiss. Toad can barely feel the sensation over the wax, but then her tongue darts to caress middle of his index finger. He sighs.

“Thee,” Toad says. “You shouldn’t...”

“I have done it.” Theodosia whispers from the palm of his hand. “On the plantation already. He is too concerned with money and politics, and assures my complaints of intimacy with only more talk about positions of state and future glory. I have to be loved by someone.”

Toad cups her neck with the palm of his hand.

“It is scandalous,” Theodosia says with a smile. “The daughter of the vice-president making love to a Negro.”

“Yes,” Toad says.

“My future is uncertain, my father will be off to duel. And I dread going back to the South, away from my books, alive only through letters to father. Which may not keep coming...” she trails off and nuzzles his neck. “I am very lonely right now.”

Toad closes his eyes and begins to pull at her corset. Theodosia helps him to the floor, and the cold hardwood puts goosebumps all down his back. The single candle flickers. Theodosia grabs his hair, handfuls of dreadlocks.

And here Toad is, on the floor of Aaron Burr’s study, making love to history, the ghost of his present.

• • •

The next morning Toad helps Theodosia into a boat across the water from Weehawken.

“I don’t know if this is a good idea,” he says.

Theodosia ignores him.

“I want to see for myself,” she says. “I have to see.”

Two other boats have already crossed. Toad fumbles with the two wooden oars, setting them between to pegs of wood. Then he starts the small craft out across the water. A slight mist hangs over the dark water as the oars bite and slowly pull them towards the other side.

Theodosia leans forward and plucks a piece of foil out of Toad’s breast pocket. The tiniest edge had been peeking out.

“What is this?” She asks.

Toad pauses rowing and leans forward. He takes it from her fingers and puts the folded sheet back in.

“Nothing,” he says. He’d been saving it.

The mist gets heavier. It rolls over the water until it is all Toad can see around him. The world has become gray. Then Theodosia melts off into the air, her body turning into a memory. The boat hits ground and scrapes metal. It too dissolves, the handles of the oars leaving Toad with his hands cupped around air. The room has been turned off.

“Get out of the exhibit,” says a voice.

Toad sighs. He’s been caught by security. It isn’t that big of a deal, unless someone wants it to be. He has never been caught before, but he knows friends who have. As long as the guards are paid, everything is okay. Toad walks across the bare floor to the door indicated in the air. Dovert stands with a slight grin on his face, and a security guard in beige stands next to him.

“Hello Dovert,” Toad says. His stomach flip-flops. What have they seen? What will Dovert do?

Dovert flicks the controls. Toad turns around and looks into the one-way glass. Inside, reality rolls back in with the mists. Theodosia stands up in the boat and gasps as it hits the bank.

The room shifts away from her, and Aaron Burr stands ten paces from Hamilton. Hamilton aims and pulls the trigger, the pistol leaping slightly. The shot goes wide of Burr and strikes a tree at the edge of the clearing, splintering a branch in half. Burr sights down his pistol at Hamilton. Hamilton stands ramrod still and looks straight at Burr.

Burr’s pistol fires and Hamilton collapses with his hands to his stomach.

Dovert turns the room off.

“How much did you see?” Toad asks. He suddenly hates Dovert even more than he thought possible.

“Everything.” Dovert has a wide smile.

The guard leaves. Dovert looks down the corridor until the beige of the guard’s uniform disappears into the unlit recesses of the museum. Toad turns back at the gray window.

“In eight years she will die,” Toad says. “Leaving on a ship to go visit her father in Europe. It goes missing at sea. I wonder if her husband will ever appreciate the loss.” Like Jefferson did, pacing his room for weeks. Toad looks at Dovert, his small friend from the museum. Lana’s other lover.

“You love her?” Dovert asks. He cocks his head.

“Who? Lana, or Theodosia?” Toad walks towards Dovert. “I love Lana. But she is lost to me.”

Dovert shakes his head.

“Melodrama: she loves you. She talks about you. A lot. She’s worried. I’m worried.”

Toad runs a hand through his locks. He feels like a kid. It makes him angry. His eyes are hot from holding it back.

“That’s an easy thing for you to say. She makes love to you alone, but I have to share the bed with you.”

“I can talk to her,” Dovert says.

“I don’t want concessions,” Toad snaps. “I want Lana.”

Dovert stands silent. Toad suddenly smiles. He steps forward and punches Dovert. His fist lands smack on Dovert’s mouth and splits his lip.

“Godamnit, Toad. She’s not something you can just have like that. Not a posession. She’s a human being.” Dovert yells, holding a hand to his bleeding lip.

“I want satisfaction,” Toad replies. He reaches out and slaps the side of Dovert’s face with a palm.

Dovert, frustration and anger flitting across his face, responds.

“In the room, right? 1804?”

Toad pauses.

Dovert pushes him towards the door, then stops.

“No. I can’t do this. This is crazy. You’re crazy.” Dovert pushes Toad against the wall. The blood from his lips stains the white shirt under Toad’s double-breasted coat. “I won’t.”

But Toad, seeing the flushed anger in Dovert, is struck by the idea.

“We’ll duel,” he says.

• • •

It is a cold morning in 1804. Hamilton’s second and the physician are struggling to bring Hamilton towards the boat. It is obvious the founder of the country is in great pain, but he is stoic, and hardly a grunt escapes him as he is jostled and half-pulled across the slippery grass.

Burr has taken a step towards the fallen man, maybe slightly regretful, but now is on his way back towards his own boat.

Toad strides over to Burr’s second. Inside a varnished wooden box are two pistols, one recently discharged. Toad takes his time reloading the recently fired piston, the acrid smoke still around it causing his nostrils to flare.

Dovert is undecided, still walking around in circles, looking back towards where the door might be.

Toad hands him both guns.

“Pick one,” he says.

“I don’t want to do this,” Dovert says. “It can’t be worth shooting each other for.”

“I would die for her,” Toad says.

Dovert narrows his eyes. Toad’s suggestion, that he loves her more, goads Dovert into taking a gun from Toad’s hands.

Toad stalks ten paces away, and sees Burr walking towards him. The physician is hurrying behind him.

“Sir,” they begin.

Toad turns around and cuts them off. He faces Dovert and brings the pistol to bear. He remembers an image of an old Burr, locked away in his study.

There is room enough.

Looking at Dovert, his pistol aimed straight, Toad feels his whole body turn ice cold.

There is...

Dovert fires. Toad hears the bullet, far off, crack a branch. Dovert stands in front of him. This is the moment. He looks at Dovert for the eternity held in two seconds, then Toad lets go. His pistol drops to the ground.

...room enough.

This was always supposed to be a way to come to a final arbitration. Not something to hide behind. And looking down the barrel, Toad finds his own emptiness. He’s hidden from that ripped out part long enough. He briefly saw himself, at that final moment, in a dark closed-off study. Alone. Dead and sad. He doesn’t have it in him to waste life.

Toad turns and sees Burr looking at him. He can’t identify the expression, but the man is moved.

Dovert shivers and drops his own pistol.

“Dovert,” Toad says. “I love her too much.”

Dovert nods.

“Me too.”

Hamilton is making horrible coughing sounds. The physician hurries off. Burr stands still for a good second, then slowly turns around and trudges back out of the clearing.

A bird cheeps in the tree. Toad shivers. He wants nothing more than to be out of this place. He wants to leave it behind. It is time to move forward.

He hopes Lana and Dovert live a good life.

Toad has no use for his study anymore. Despite his fundamental differences, he has to go out, now, and see the world as it is. It is a place he has to be in, not run from. This he realizes as the exhibit fades from around him, and he steps into the museum corridor.

Maybe Lana will understand. Maybe she won’t.

Toad fishes around in his breast pocket and pulls out the piece of folded foil. He throws it into a trashcan.

Necahual

As I started work on the detailed outline of my first novel, Crystal Rain, I decided that it would be very helpful to write a story set in the same universe. I started working on Necahual, but writing it well after the events of Crystal Rain. This was so that as I wrote the novel, I’d have this story as a history guide. Something to write towards.

Nalo Hopkinson informed me that she was putting together another anthology, this one around the theme of postcolonial science fiction and fantasy. She took this piece, however even as it was being published, I was making small changes to my universe as I finished up my first novel and started the second. Even with these small changes it’s still one of my favorite stories, as it draws on all the different themes I love weaving, much like the story that opened this collection.

We drop out of the wormhole towards a mess of a planet by the ochre light of a dying sun. From the cant of orbit, upside down and even then through virtual portholes we can see tiny spots of white light blossom in the atmosphere.

We’re liberators.

Each one of those little blossoms of light is an impact. A chunk of rock with a controller vane on it, predestined for a certain point. It clears out the enemy’s ability to hit back above the stratosphere.

I know from past experience that sunsets here on New Anegada won’t be the same for a long while. As a child I’d sat on porches near the coast to watch the magnificent sunsets of my own world for many months after The League came to liberate us.

“Man we’re dropping the hammer on this backwater shithole,” the man across from me says. His white and blue exoskeleton wraps around his body. He looks like a striped mantis. Right now it’s plugged into the convex wall of the pod, charging and keeping him from bouncing around as we skate atmosphere.

A single bead of sweat floats loose from his bulbous nose and hangs in the air between us.

“You know much about the target?”

Everyone wants to know juicy details about them.

“Historical info only,” I say. “The Azteca of Mother Earth never even called themselves that. They were the Mexica.”

I wonder if the black man caddy cornered to the right of me has skin-flauge painted on. Hard to tell under the blue and white he’s wearing. It’s hard not to look askance at him. No one like him on the home planet. But at least he’s human, real human, and The League today will be adding another human planet we’re told. If there are any aliens here we’ll wipe them out, every last one, like they tried to wipe The League out.

“The warrior priests of Mexica were pretty brutal,” I explain. “They used to induce hallucination by piercing their foreskin,” all the men wince, “and dragging a knotted rope through the tear until they saw visions.”

The woman caddy cornered on my left asks, “What is it going to be like when we hit?”

“I got the same report you did.”

The large island continent of New Anegada on the planet is also the name of the planet. This is confusing for conversation, but no one had consulted with the original colonists, mainly Caribbean refugees from Mother Earth after some minor alien attack a long time ago. Half the continent is New Anegada, the other half is Azteca. Large mountains split them down the middle.

The entire system got cut off several hundred years ago, a forgotten incident, a sidenote of history. The wormhole that connects New Anegada to the rest of the worlds opens up again several weeks ago and shit hits the fan.

We’re ordered out, to make sure The League gets here first to offer these humans membership and the Azteca contingent attacks. Now things are messy.

This is all I know.

All four of us are strapped across from each other in the pod, waiting as the heat builds up, looking past each other.

The virtual panorama on the floor screen flickers off.

The buffeting ceases. We’re still alive.

“Hello,” says a small voice deep inside my inner ear. It’s a dry and bored monotone. “I am riding shotgun for you. Got about a minute and thirteen seconds left until you hit dirt, and congratulations, you have just passed the highest probability zone of being shot down by automated Azteca fire.”

Which is why it is just now downloading itself into my armor.

“Name’s Tai Thirteen Crimson Velvet. Call me Velvet. Lady on your left is Paige, man across is Steven. On your right is Smith. Smith has augmented ears for deafness. If you get hit by anything with a good electromagnetic pulse, it’ll wipe his hearing chips and he’ll be back to being deaf. Just so you know.”

All the information we need comes to us from the Tais. Tactical artificial intelligences. Little cybernetic ghosts. They give us the real orders, the real info, so that if we got into trouble they can scramble, leave, and we won’t be the wiser for the big picture.

These are tactics learned from many strange, alien encounters. Ones where they could just suck shit right out of your brain and figure out what the enemy’s plans were. Humanity adapted. It adopted alien tactics wholesale right back at them.

“Take a deep breath and close your eyes,” the Tai orders. “Time to peel.”

The pod explodes. The sides rip back and vaporize themselves. I open my eyes to see the real island of New Anegada directly below me. My heart hammers as we plummet.

The green land rushes faster and faster toward me until the Tai whispers, ‘okay’ and the chute slides out of the back of my exoskeleton.

There are no explosions, no shots fired at me, just a calm, blue sky and lush green forest below my feet, the rippling blue ocean up ahead. The chute canopy overhead is invisible, and not just on the visible spectrum either.

A minute later my feet hit turf.

I’m on the ground and I have no clue what’s going to happen next.

• • •

I’m expecting shots. But I only hear wind rustling through palm fronds and the distant foaming sound of waves breaking over reef. I’m expecting Aztec priest-warriors wearing gaudy colored feathers to fan out and attack us. Instead, I’m facing a large three story concrete building painted bright yellow and pink.

It’s got terracotta shingling.

I’m expecting anything except a man with his back against a mango tree, chewing a stem of grass, looking straight at me.

“Is this a friendly?” I ask.

“Okay,” the Tai says. “Your regular weaponry is locked under my command. You have a tanglegun in your left pocket, if you need to use that. This is a police action, we’re not here to kill anyone. There are no hostiles. We’re just here to talk and gather information from the locals.”

“So this is a friendly?”

“Yes.”

I look down. The extendable canon I have aimed at the man is primed, but useless. I let go of the trigger.

“Go ahead,” the Tai orders. “We’re here to gather information about who the Azteca are, where they came from, and what, if anything, these people can do to help us. I am recording everything back up to HQ. I’ll prompt you as needed. If you do this well, you’ll be promoted. So will I.”

The canon swings back up under my arm to fasten itself to the back of my exoskeleton armor. It’s a smooth lubricated slide. A whisper.

The man by the mango tree pulls the stem of grass out of his mouth and stands up.

“So,” he says to me. “We been invade or what?”

I have no idea how to respond. I stand there, still, waiting for someone besides me to do something.

“You speak English?” The man asks. He has a deep tan that almost blends into the color of oak and short tightly curled hair. His brown eyes twinkle with a sort of Huckleberry Finn look, but he’s wearing a cream colored suit. With no shoes on.

I nod.

“You looking for Bouschulte, right?” He says, the words so quick they blend into each and I stumble over the accent. He ambles over to us.

I speak my first word.

“What?”

“You. Looking. For. Bouschulte.” The man from the mango tree repeats himself as if I’m slow. He looks frustrated for a second. “He up in he house.”

“What is…” I swallow, “a bouschulte?”

“It a name. Frederick Bouschulte. If you have a Aztec name like ‘Acolmiztli’ or some stupidness like that, and you hiding with us, you don’t keep calling you-self ‘Acolmiztli.’ Seen?”

“Seen.” I agree out of sheer panic. The Tai in my head is still silent. I wouldn’t mind some assistance. The man’s accent is hard and I still haven’t been given any damn orders.

The man reaches out to touch my face, then stops when I flinch.

“You eye them, chineeman, you do that to fit in with them?”

“It…” was done a long time ago. Far away. “An old tradition my forefathers continued.” I’d been too young to protest the removal of my eye folds.

A tiger-striped cat tiptoes out from behind the building and sits down. It starts to lick its tail, working hard at ignoring the five people on the grass before it.

“What you name?”

“Kiyoshi,” I say.

“Well, Kiyoshi, let we get on with this so call invasion, eh?”

My Tai must be gone for good, I realize. And looking around at the panicked faces of the three other soldiers I fell out of the sky with, I realize theirs are dead too. We’re on our own. Somehow these people can jam the Tais, though I have no idea how.

The panic attack comes and goes swiftly. Old training takes over. Yes the Tais make the decisions, but we have training. We’re still soldiers. We’re still mobile representatives of The League.

I grab the man’s shoulders, tanglegun aimed right dead in the middle of his forehead. At this range the tanglegun is lethal.

“What’s going on?” I hiss. “Tell me what is going on!”

He snaps loose of me, shrugging my armored arms aside as if they were only a nuisance. The motion is quick enough I have trouble following it. There is, surprisingly enough, a small knife now shoved up between the joints in my armor.

Smith aims his tanglegun at us, but it’s an empty gesture. Our Tais hamstrung us, took away our lethal force. Orders…

“You conquest failing.”

“There is no fucking conquest,” Steve snaps. “We’re here to save you from the Azteca.”

“Yeah man, so I hear. But one thing: seeing that we been making do for a few hundred years already you might wonder what we know that you ain’t figure out yet. Second thing: you here to tell us what to do, right? Because you assume we don’t know what we doing. You want tell us what to do, how to think. That mental conquest friend. Mental.”

A boom shakes the air. Paige looks up at the sky. None of us can see anything, but I shiver.

“Any of you able to contact anyone?” Paige asks.

We all try. Shake our heads. We’re cut off.

“Come inside with me now,” our new host says. “Drop you weapon to the ground. You don’t need them.”

For some reason, without the Tais, the three soldiers are looking at me. Command structure has returned to our small unit. Ironic how we fall into the old patterns. This is what it would have been like in The League before the Xenowars. Only then it wasn’t The League, just spacefaring humans associated with their old national origins on the mother planet.

I have a decision to make.

“Do you have any way that we can communicate to our superiors?” I ask.

Jami nods.

“That we do,” he says.

Into the rabbit hole I decide, and nod. We drop our tangleguns and the blade near my ribs disappears just as abruptly as it had appeared. I still want to know how it got under my armor.

“The name Jami,” the man in the cream suit says, shaking my hand. “Jami ‘Manicou’ Derrick.”

Jami turns around, and we follow the barefoot, dapper man into the concrete-block house. We troop past the cat, which is now working on cleaning an extended furry back leg.

• • •

Jami asks us if we read much. He wants to know about ‘War of the Worlds,’ an ancient text, he tells us, but with an interesting moral to it.

None of us have read it.

He laughs gently, takes off his tie and suit jacket and hangs them off the back of a canvas chair.

“You’ll wish,” he laughs at us. “You should have wait and talk with everyone longer. So now, it a mess. The League trying to come in and reshape everything to be just like it wants it, and it ain’t that easy.”

The door creaks open and we look straight into the face of the enemy.

• • •

The Azteca reclines in a leather chair while an elderly black lady in a bright red and yellow patterned shawl carefully snips at his flat hair. A red cape drapes around his knees where his hands rest, gently crossed over each other. The gold plug in his nose glints in the light streaming through a large opened window, and his jade earrings dangle as he slightly turns his head to regard us.

Blue eye shadow swirls around the crow’s feet that crinkle the edges of his eyes. His black smeared lips twitch.

“The League has arrived,” he pronounces, looking at our uniforms. “What do you think of our conquerors, Jami?” Jami is leaning against the concrete wall, arms folded, looking at the small ensemble in the room.

“The first conquerors of Tenochtitlan arrived in small numbers,” Jami said. “They had armor and superior technology. The League only got the size and the armor correct.”

Jami smiles sadly at us.

“But this is not a group of Spaniards with gold lust and domination in their hearts,” The Azteca says. “The League is here to save us. Is it not?”

His eyes are piercing. Something has wounded him. He hates us.

“The first conquistadors thought they were saving the savages back then too,” he adds.

I have nothing to say, but stand straight and return his restrained fury with a calm gaze of my own. I am a professional.

“You done, then, Frederick?”

“I miss my true name.”

Jami sighs.

“I guess it don’t make no difference what you call yourself now.”

Acolmiztli stands up and gathers up the cherry bowl with his hair clippings in it.

“I’m not much of a believer,” he says, “but the old ways are specific. You must have your hair cut in a way that does not lose tonalli. Or you risk losing the strength of your spirit.” He takes a deep breath. “In times like these, I need all the strength I can get.”

The door slams behind him.

“He’s bitter,” Paige notes. They’ve been taking my lead, remaining quiet. I’m in charge. I’m their Tai.

“The League should look very very carefully into assuming,” Jami says, looking at the door with us, “that all Azteca same.”

There are, he tells us, Tolteca. Reformed Azteca who have spurned human sacrifice and made great changes to Azteca society in the last hundred years.

My stomach flip flops.

“Human sacrifice?”

Jami unfolds his arms.

“Acolmiztli tells me he only sacrificed snake, bird, and butterfly. He say,” and Jami imitates Acolmiztli’s voice perfectly… “Because he so loved man Quetzalcoatl allowed only the sacrifice of snakes, birds, and butterflies. As he was opposed to the sacrifice of human flesh the three sorcerers of Tula drove him out of the city. The people of Tenochtitlan did not follow Quetzalcoatl. Instead, they followed the war-god Huitzilopochtli or Xipe-Totec: the flayed god. Then the fifth sun was destroyed and we lived in the sixth and it became a time of change.”

It sends shivers down the back of my spine.

“You said you had communications equipment,” I fold my arms. The shivering continues. “We’d like to use it now.”

I shiver again, my knees weak. Jami catches me under my arms as I drop to my knees.

“What’s happening?” I’m disoriented; the walls of the room seem to bend in on themselves.

“Remember how I tell you you should have read Wells?” Jami says. “Come on.” He helps me over to a wooden bench and opens a cupboard. I vaguely recognize the device behind the wooden doors. It looks like a museum piece. But it responds to a wave of my hand and my voice.

Static is my only reply. There is accusation in my angry stare, but Jami gestures at the device.

“Try again. You feeling rough.”

Sweat drips from my forehead, the shivers continue wracking my body. This time I find a carrier signal and send a voice request up. Archaic. But they reply.

“Who is this? Identify.”

I do, giving personal ID codes and answering questions until the voice on the other side is satisfied.

“We give nothing away by saying we’re doing a retreat,” it says. “All ground assaults have been infected with some sort of virus, we’re losing this battle. We have your touchdown coordinates. Be outside in five minutes for a starhook. You’ll be in quarantine upon return.”

Then it’s gone.

My three companions are sweating and sprawled on the floor.

Infected. Quarantine.

“When we saw you,” I say. “You walked over to us, touched me,” my hands go up to my face.

“Acolmiztli gave it to me, and I passed it to you,” Jami says.

“Is it fatal?” I ask Jami.

He shrugs.

“Better get back up to orbit and find out, right? I look alright, but I could have antidote.” He smiles.

I purse my lips.

“Get up,” I order everyone. It has been interesting being in charge. I’m glad to see the end of it coming. Paige, Smith, and Steve struggle up. Smith leans heavily on Steve. “Get outside, now.”

We’re a pathetic group that pushes through the door with Jami following us. My knees wobble, but I manage a convincing stride through what looks like a bar.

Dim lights cast shadows, and from those shadows loom wooden tables where several men in khaki camouflage toast us with their glasses and sly grins. I see no weapons, but now I wonder if their weapon isn’t the fever raging inside of me.

My gut spasms. The pain almost blinds me.

“Come on.” I push my three soldiers on in front of me, shoving my hand against their hard armor, ignoring an unidentifiable chuckle from somewhere in the room.

But halfway through the room text scrolls over my vision. My own implants are failing, no longer able to heal my body or regulate it. I’m nothing more than flesh right now. I have no soldier-sharp senses, no wired edge for combat.

I trip over a chair, grab the table to steady myself, and when I blink everything is clear.

Right before me is a large aquarium. Something sinuously moves through the tank and presses against the glass. I stumble closer and a woman stares right back at me through the refracted water and solid glass with wide brown eyes. Sheets of her oak-colored hair twirl behind her head. Her super pale skin has an almost greenish tint.

The eyes hold me until my face presses right against the glass.

“Beautiful, isn’t she.”

Acolmiztli grabs my shoulder.

“She was a present. From one of my brothers. A gift from the Emperor Moctezuma the Ninth.”

Her smooth stomach fades into the singular muscle and pilot fins of her tail’s trunk. The wide fins are splayed out. They’re delicate, yet powerful enough to drive all six feet of her through the water with a flick.

Which she does. Out away from the glass.

Then she turns back, looks at me, and her hands flutter.

It’s too hallucinogenic. I walk away from the tank.

“Keep moving damnit.” Smith looks at me, face blank. He doesn’t understand a word.

His hearing implants have all failed.

But we’re moving, and out the door into the sunlight. I lean back and look into the sky. Nothing yet.

“Why are you doing this to us?” I ask Jami, who is still right behind us.

“The Azteca doing it to you.”

“But you knew about it,” I snap.

“Yes.”

“And yet you did nothing. You collaborate with them.”

“You the one that drop out the sky and land. We didn’t force you.”

Overhead I hear a roar, then a rumble.

“But all those deaths…”

“All because of you. Consider: before you came we were changing the Azteca from the bottom up, and inside out. The Azteca a hornet’s nest, and we blow some sweet smoke their way. Now you throwing rocks.”

Thunder rolls and a small oval speck drops down out of the sky. The long carbon filament trailing behind it is strong enough to reel us all up from the ground we’re standing on into orbit and then into hold of a waiting mothership.

“Snap in when it drops,” I order everyone. But I turn and look at Jami.

The pod slows to a halt and falls into our midst. Smith walks over and snaps on. Paige does the same, and Steve looks at me follows suit. Three soldiers, ready to get lifted, the cable rising up from between them to rise into the heavens.

“We have a minute, maybe two,” Steve says to me.

I’m still staring at Jami.

“Just because you can’t spot the power we wield don’t mean we defenseless.” He stares right back. “We study you. You machines run everything, solider-man. When the conflict came you choose to wipe out the alien threat you faced. And now you all still working on purifying The League. Only human.”

“There was no other choice,” I say. “When the killing started, we realized it was us or them. Damnit, I was four. You can’t hold me responsible. It’s different now.”

“You kill millions of aliens, we hear. Deport the rest. Cleanse any human not pure human, that tamper with they DNA. You almost wipe yourselves out. Yet you come here to tell us what to do? That’s hypocritical.”

“We’d never survived if it wasn’t for adopting the Tais, like they did. We could never have matched their superior military skill.” And, despite the fever, I have a trump. “You talk hypocritical. Hypocritical is the mermaid,” I hiss. “You let that Azteca keep his slave in his tank. How dirty does that make you?”

I might as well have struck Jami.

“The line is tightening,” Steve yells at me.

“You do not give natural rights to any clone in The League?” Jami says. “Any robot? The Tais? Artificial people? Because even you wouldn’t grant the person in that tank her life. Why the high ground now?”

I walk towards the pod. In a second I’ll be yanked out of here into the stratosphere, my suit bubbling out to enclose and protect me. Back to the warrens inside the depths of a troop ship.

“We ain’t ignorant,” Jami said. “We couldn’t make do with metal tech. When the wormhole closed, it was just us and the alien who stayed behind used a different kind of tech. If there is one thing we’re good at, it’s taking things and adapting them. All my ancestors got handed the trash of the more advanced. Technological hand me downs. Less than perfect trade agreements. Yeah, physical domination gone, but economic and political domination follow. So when we came from the islands to here, we say, never again.

“But then came the aliens, and they created the Azteca to destroy us. We had to make do, take these things and mash them up and sent back up as something unique to us. But now you here. You League would destroy either of us for figuring out how to work with the alien. We need to be cleanse, right? You a superior force, with bigger guns. So we have something you didn’t expect. The only way you can find out how to deal with this is talk to us. That’s why the Azteca give us the antidote.”

They want to ‘mash me up,’ take me and make me their own and spit me back out to see what changes. They want to figure out how best to handle the new situation that just opened up in their backyard. And I’m a key to a puzzle for them.

I remember a small biological part of what being human is. The reason we fear the Ais, the alien, death, and why The League fights so hard and maniacally against everything.

Survival.

Smith’s ears are broken, I realize as he signs something at me. A hand flutter, like that of the woman in the tank.

I turn to Jami.

“Okay,” I tell him. “I want the same antidote you have, okay?”

Jami nods.

“The very same. I promise you.”

Paige recognizes what is happening.

“You can’t desert,” she shouts. “They’ll deactivate you.”

The rest of the objection is lost. The starhook goes taught and all three of them lift of the ground and accelerate towards space.

I drop to my hands and knees and puke. Tiny pieces of machinery I didn’t even know were in me litter the grass with the remains of pasty meals from the last day of eating.

With a deep breath I stand back up.

Jami helps steady me.

“But I have a condition,” he says. “You have to help me free her.” He’s talking about the lady in the aquarium. She’s been in the bar for weeks, he tells me, as he helps me back across the lawn. Ever since The League began its bombardment and invasion. Acolmiztli took her here with him, and he won’t let her go.

Jami can’t free her. His people are helping the Azteca change themselves, but if he were to set the modified woman free, Acolmiztli would blame him. But a rogue League solider with a soft heart, a human heart, could do it.

The Nanagadans are setting the Azteca against The League. But some Azteca are actually Tolteca, good reformed Azteca. And they are here, but not too reformed. And Jami needs me for a sort of cultural remix experiment, and all I can think of are those almond eyes that plead with me, and the fluttering hands.

“Oh shit,” I say, looking up at the sky. The lady in the tank is using sign language. Her hands had moved like Smith’s.

And Smith is gone.

I at least want to talk to her.

“Just give me the antidote, please,” I tell Jami.

• • •

Acolmiztli regards me with suspicion.

“He is back?”

“He a smart man,” Jami says, his voice soft and guarded. “He know if a battle turn.”

The Azteca laughs, then folds his arms and glares at the men around him.

“Then soon I’ll be going home.”

“Lucky us.”

“The antidote?” I ask Jami. “Where is it?” I’m scared of another attack, of puking something really important out.

“The antidote,” Acolmiztli says. “Come on Jami. Can’t you give this poor man the antidote? Doesn’t he know the antidote is?” Acolmiztli laughs at me and the sound makes me clench my hands. “All those nasty little metal bits inside that talk to each other and to your ships, all those little ghosts running around inside your heads, those intelligent machines, they’re all dead. But you’ll live. Oh yes, you’re just fine. Just like Jami here.”

I’ll live. Here. But despite Acolmiztli’s light tone I know what the result in space will be. All those battle formations, swarming back through the wormhole in retreat, their bows milliseconds away from each other.

Collided and destroyed.

Mass confusions. Systems failures. Those people up there were sitting ducks. No doubt the Azteca’s own ships would savage them.

“There is a story I tell, that my father told, and his father before him,” Acolmiztli says. Reflections from the wall of water behind me dapple the wall in front of me. “Horse and Stag came into quarreling once, long ago, and Horse went to a Hunter for help in taking his revenge against Stag. Hunter said, yes, but only if you let me put this piece of iron in your mouth that I may guide you with these pieces of rope. And only if you let me put this saddle on your back that I may sit on you while I help you hunt Stag. The horse agreed and together they hunted down the Stag. After this, the horse thanked the Hunter, and asked him to remove those things from him. But Hunter laughed and tied him to a tree, then sat down and had himself a very good meal of Stag. You see what I am saying?” Acolmiztli looks at me.

“No, what are you saying?”

The half grin on his lips flitters away.

“Who’s riding whom here?”

Jami has sat near me, but at an angle so he can look at both of us.

“You drunk,” Jami says.

“Do either of you realize how many people are going to die today?” I yell. I’m shaking angry with everyone. Convinced I was here to land and perform a duty under the Tai’s direction, stripped of that leadership, then told I was infected. I had thought I would die, but now I’m alive. I’m a mess.

“Yes,” Acolmiztli says. “Can I go watch?” He stands up and totters out of the room.

Jami leans forward and grabs my forearm.

“Please,” he hisses.

I turn and look at the lady in the tank, who is staring back at me.

Jami is a man who stared at us when we dropped from space and aimed weapons at him. He slid the machete under my armor and moved quicker than my own machine-aided senses could adjust for. Why was he not doing this?

“Who is Acolmiztli really?” I ask.

“The Emperor of the Azteca brother,” Jami says. “Here in case the Emperor get attack by you League. Now that the League falling, I imagine he go leave soon.”

I swallow.

“Okay.”

• • •

I know no sign language. I stand in front of the tank and wonder what will happen when I try to take her out.

“And,” I whisper to myself, “how do I make you understand that I’m going to help you out. Set you free.” There is an ocean nearby, and a small beach that Jami tells me is easy to get to. There is a dirt road that leads from this place straight to it.

“Will you even want to be free?” For all I know she has been in a watery cage like this for all her life. She might only be able to conceive of this being her world. Would it be right to set her free?

And if I do, am I not making enemies with the most powerful Azteca? I’ve seen what they can do. Can the Nanagadans do anything to protect me? I doubt it, but they’ve survived so far.

Sound shakes me free. The pane of glass in front of her is covered in mud and silt and she writes something with her index finger.

READ LIPS.

And on the next line.

TAKE ME AWAY.

This is the right thing to do.

Through a gap in the silt on the glass I tap to get her attention.

“Get back.”

I’m still wearing exoskeleton armor, and the helmet section slides up with a quick slap of my palm. The glass shards that hit me when I fire the tanglegun at point black don’t slice me to shreds.

The lukewarm water and silt, however, drench me.

• • •

She weighs more than I thought, or I’m weak. Her mossy hair drapes over my shoulder. The smell of seaweed fills the room. I stumble over broken glass with her in my arms and get her into a cart filled with water that Jami left outside for me.

Then the pushing run towards the beach, water slopping out over the sides.

Occasionally she pokes her head out of the draining water and stares at me.

Palm trees rustle and shake. My feet crunch on dirt. A dog barks.

The trail turns down. The beach isn’t far. I can hear the rhythmic surf and the wind starts to lift sand into the air and into my eyes.

At the end of the trail I pick her up again, lift her out of the cart and run over the sand, almost tripping, until I’m wading into the salty water. She wriggles free of me.

For a second we stare at each other, then she’s gone, a shadow beneath the waves. Was there gratitude? I don’t know.

It isn’t important. I did what I did.

I strip off the exoskeleton, piece by piece, and throw the useless carcass out into the waves.

Overhead the rumble of engines make me to look up and see a machine climbing into the sky from the house. It is gaudily painted, much like I would expect and Azteca flyer to be. It speeds off into the distance like an angry mosquito.

• • •

Jami hands me a towel and a drink when I walk through the door. He sits down at a wooden table and just looks at me.

“She leave?” he asks.

“Yes.” I nod slowly.

“You’d hope she would stay?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It’s done. Acolmiztli?”

Jami smiles.

“He’s gone back to his brother.”

I take a deep breath and put my hands on the table.

“What am I going to do now?” I ask Jami.

He grabs my hands.

“That one small act of liberation,” he tells me, “that little bit of freedom you got her, will have more of an impact than all you ship, you missile, and all you soldier. Understand?”

No, I didn’t.

“That lady, her name Necahual. It mean ‘survivor.’ All this time she been surviving, but that ain’t good enough. Now she can have a whole coast, where fishermen will know to feed her. Until she can recover. Because surviving not enough. You can’t just survive, Kiyoshi. You must do better than that. And right now The League just surviving. Like you.

“So you just the beginning. The League, we have a lot to offer them too. Along with the Azteca. How to accommodate and incorporate. We been learning how to do this since Mother Earth when were all islanders.” He slaps the table. “And we get better and better. Most places, always they get caught up in ruling, dominating, becoming greater, and then falling apart.” Jami leans forward. “We learn how to stay outside that, man. It ain’t easy,” he says. “Always a struggle. But for a much greater good.”

I pull my hands free.

“So what do I do right now?” I ask. “How do we start all this?”

Jami leans back in his chair.

“For now, just to talk to me, man. Don’t look for information, or try to resolve anything, or figure it all out. Just talk.”

I relax a bit.

“And tomorrow?”

Jami smiles.

“There’s going to be a lot of work tomorrow. A whole lot of it. We go be very busy.”

There is one last thing.

“And the aliens you talked about?”

“I’m looking right at you,” Jami laughs.

I freeze my face. I’m nervous about this. All my life I’ve been scared of them, fighting them, forcing them out of The League.

“Tomorrow,” Jami says. “One step at a time, we show you how.”

I breathe again. Slowly, savoring the air.

It’s more than just surviving. It’s living. And I like it.

Toy Planes

For a long time, whenever I read a news story online about a developing nation putting a satellite in space, an inevitable comment would show up from someone: why are tiny nations trying to launch satellites when they can’t even feed their own? In some ways it is an understandable concern. And yet, one has to realize that improvements to a country go hand in hand. And furthermore, there are benefits to the populace that comes from developing these abilities.

As a result, I wrote this story as a sort of call to arms, and an explanation of why a smaller nation would want to achieve space, both for the national glory and the practical benefits. This story is the closest thing I’ve written to a mission statement, and it’s the one I’m most proud of, because I believe that space is for all mankind. And I believe that one day efforts like this will one day put Caribbean people out there as well.

My sister Joanie’s deft hands flicked from dreadlock to dreadlock, considering her strategy. “You always leaving,” she said, flicking the razor on, and suddenly I’m five, chasing her with a kite made from plastic bags and twigs, shouting that I was going to fly away from her one day.

“I’m sorry. Please, let’s get this done.”

I’d waited long enough. I’d grown dreads because when I studied in the US I wanted to remember who I was and where I came from as I began to lose my Caribbean accent.

But the rocket-plane’s sponsor wanted them cut. It would be disaster for a helmet not to have a proper seal in an emergency. Explosive decompression was not something a soda company wanted to associated with in their customer’s minds.

It was insulting that they assumed we couldn’t keep the craft sealed. But we needed their money.

The locks had become enough a part of me that I winced when the clippers bit into them, groaned, and another piece of me fell away.

• • •

In the back of the bus I had pick me up I hung onto a looped handle swinging from the roof as the driver rocketed down the dirt road from Joanie’s. My sister had found a nice house out in the country, a nice concrete house with a basement opening up into a sloped garden on the side of a steep hill. She taught math at the school a few miles away, an open shuttered building, and this would have been my future too, if I hadn’t been so intent on ‘getting off the rock.’

The islands always called back to their children.

We hit asphalt, potholes, and passed cane fields with machete wielding laborers hacking away at the stalks, sweat drenched shirts knotted around their waists. It was hot; my arms stuck to the plastic covered seats.

The driver leaned into a turn, and looked back. “I want ask you something.” I really wished the back seats had belts.

“Sure.”

“All that money you spending, you don’t think it better spent on getting better roads?” He dodged a pothole. “Or more school funding?”

Colorful red and yellow houses on stilts dotted the steep lush green mountainsides as I looked out of the tinted windows. “Only one small part of the program got funded by the government,” I explained. “We found private investors, advertisers, to back the rest. Whatever the government invested will be repaid.”

“Maybe.”

I had my extra arguments. How many people lived on this island? Tens of thousands. Most of our food was imported, leaving us dependent on other food producing nations, all who used satellites to track their farming. What spinoff technologies might come out of studying recycling in space? Why wait for other nations to get to it first? Research always produced good things for the people who engaged in it.

But I was tired of arguing for it, and I only had sound bites for him, the same ones I’d given the media who treated us like kids trying to do something all grown up.

• • •

The market surrounded me in a riot of color: fruit, vegetables, full women in dresses in bright floral patterns. And the noise of hundreds constantly bargaining over things like the price of fish. Teenagers stood around the corners with friends. I wandered around looking for something, as we needed to fill the craft with enough extra weight to simulate a passenger and we still had a few extra ounces to add.

I found a small toy stall. And standing in front of it I was five years old again, with no money, and a piece of scrap metal in the triangular shape of a space plane. I would pretend it was just like the real life ones I’d read about in the books donated to the school after the hurricane. And at night, when the power would sometimes flicker out, I’d got out and stand on the porch and look up at the bright stars and envy them.

The stall had a small bottle, hammered over with soda-can metal, with triangular welded-on wings, and a cone welded to the back. It was painted over in yellow, black, and green, and I bought it.

• • •

The rest of the day was a blur. Getting to the field involved running the press: yes I’d cut my hair for ‘safety’ reasons, yes I thought this was a good use of our money, not just first world nations deserved space, it was there for everyone.

There were photos of me getting aboard the tiny rocket plane with a small brown package under my arm.

The giant balloon platform the plane hung from shifted in the gentle, salty island breeze. Not too far away the waves hit the sand of the beach. Inside, suited up, door closed, everything became electronic.

It was the cheapest way to get to orbit. Balloon up on a triangular platform to save on fuel, then light the rocket-plane up and head for orbit. We’d scavenged balloons and material from several companies, one about to go out of business. The plane chassis had once been used by a Chinese corporation during trials, and the guidance systems were all open source. Online betting parlors had our odds at fifty percent. We weren’t even the first, but we were the first island.

The countdown finished, my stomach lurched, and I saw palm trees slide by the portholes to my right.

I reached back and patted the package, the hammered-together toy, and smiled.

“Hello out there, all of you,” I whispered into the radio. “We’re coming up too.”

Acknowledgements

It’s been an incredible seven years since I saw my first short story appear in a magazine just after graduating Clarion. What a rush, and how wonderful it’s been to share these stories with so many different people.

I’ve been incredibly lucky to share my journey with a number of people who’ve helped me out along the way. These stories have all benefited from the critical eyes of many fellow writers and friends, starting with the members of Clarion 1999. I spent six weeks surrounded by a circle of writers who all pushed me to become better and better with my writing, and four of the stories you’ve read in here were written while at the workshop. After Clarion, I spent years driving up to Cleveland to participate in the Cajun Sushi Hamsters from Hell workshop. Their advice helped with several of my stories, as did the Writers of the Future workshop. So did the Million Monkeys workshop in Columbus.

For as much as we writers are solitary creatures, I find that the friendships I made along the way have been necessary for me to have to continue challenging myself to get better, and to share camaraderie during the long days of typing away.

But without a doubt the greatest influence on my writing has been my wife, Emily, who’s been supporting my curious habit since 1999. When we first got together it became clear I was quite obsessed with writing, and she’s always been there as my first reader and a very understanding companion as I burn the midnight oil, working on each new piece of fiction.

Here’s hoping for another seven years of short stories.

I'd also like to thank Ken Liu for spotting and forwarding me typos in the first edition of this eBook version of Tides. If you spot any and want to be in the acknowledgements of future editions, feel free to email me at tobias@tobiasbuckell.com with any errors you spot!

About Tobias S. Buckell

Tobias S. Buckell is a Caribbean-born writer who grew up in Grenada, the British Virgin Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. He has published stories in various magazines and anthologies. His three Caribbean SF novels, Crystal Rain, Ragamuffin, and Sly Mongoose were published by Tor Books, as well as the New York Times bestselling novel Halo: The Cole Protocol. He is currently working on his next book.

Copright Information

Tides from the New Worlds

Copyright © 2008 by Tobias S. Buckell. Introduction copyright © 2008 by Michael Resnick. Ebook design by Pablo Defendini

www.tobiasbuckell.com

ISBN: xxx-x-xxxxxx-xxx

First electronic edition

“The Fish Merchant” Copyright © 2000 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Science Fiction Age, March 2000

“In the Heart of Kalikuata” Copyright © 2003 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Men Writing Science Fiction as Women (DAW, 2003)

“Io, Robot” Copyright © 2007 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Visual Journeys (Hadley Rille, 2007)

“Anakoinosis” Copyright © 2005 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in I, Alien (DAW, 2005)

“Aerophilia” Copyright © 2004 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in All-Star Zepellin Adventure Stories (Wheatland Press, 2004)

“The Shackles of Freedom” Copyright © 2004 Tobias S. Buckell and Mike Resnick. First appeared in Visions of Liberty (Baen, 2004)

“Her” Copyright © 2003 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Fortean Bureau, January 2004

“In Orbite Medievali” Copyright © 2000 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume XVI (Bridge, 2000)

“Four Eyes” Copyright © 2003 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in New Voices in Science Fiction (DAW, 2003)

“Spurn Babylon” Copyright © 2000 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root (Invisible Cities, 2000)

“Trinkets” Copyright © 2001 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in The Book of All Flesh (Eden Studios, 2001)

“Death‘s Dreadlocks” Copyright © 2003 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Mojo: Conjure Stories (Warner Aspect, 2003)

“Smooth Talking” Copyright © 2003 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Marsdust, October 2003

“Tides” Copyright © 2002 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Ideomancer Unbound (Fictionwise, 2002)

“Something in the Rock” Copyright © 2007 Tobias S. Buckell. Previously Unpublished

“A Green Thumb” Copyright © 2002 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Analog, July/August 2002

“All Her Children Fought” Copyright © 2001 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Speculon, March 2001

“The Duel” Copyright © 2006 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Electric Velocipide, Fall 2006

“Necahual” Copyright © 2004 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004)

“Toy Planes” Copyright © 2005 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Nature, October 13, 2005

Table of Contents

Title Page

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Fish Merchant

In the Heart of Kalikuata

Io Robot

Anakoinosis

Aerophilia

The Shackles of Freedom

Her

In Orbite Medievali

Four Eyes

Spurn Babylon

Trinkets

Death’s Dreadlocks

Smooth Talking

Tides

Something in the Rock

A Green Thumb

All Her Children Fought

The Duel

Necahual

Toy Planes

Acknowledgements

About Tobias S. Buckell

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