In the still dark hours of the morning, while the town of Le Creusot slowly rubbed the sleep from its eyes and woke to another spring day, the old man ambled along aimlessly through the foothills of the Morvan. He was lost in thought, a dark mote drifting along the green Buourgogne countryside in his black cloak, a long striped scarf wrapped round his neck, a peaked fur hat atop his head, which could scarcely conceal the snow-white hair that swept back from his high forehead.

As the sun pinked the eastern sky, and Le Creusot began to hum with life and activity, the old man came back down into the township proper, passing the gates of the Château de la Verrerie, since the last century the residence of the Schneider family, the masters of the forges. At this early hour dark smoke already bled into the lightening sky, billowing up from the smokestacks of the foundries. Arriving at the metal-works unmolested, the old man flung open the door, and a wave of heat from the forges rolled toward him like a solid wall. Within, directing the workmen of the Schneider foundry, the old man found his companion already hard at work, crescents of sweat darkening the arm-pits of his crisp white shirt, his trouser legs stained and scuffed.

“Borel,” the old man said, then had to repeat, raising his voice over the tintinnabulation of metal striking metal. “Borel! How goes the assembly?”

“What?” the young man shouted back, cupping his hands around his ears like a listening trumpet. The old man repeated his question, raising the pitch of his voice even higher. “Oh, well enough, Doctor! We seem to be proceeding on schedule.”

“In that case,” the old man said, quite unconcerned now whether his companion could hear him further, “I shall find a bite to eat, hmm?”

On a side table was laid out the makings of a simple breakfast, for the use of the foundry’s workers. The Schneiders’ had evidently learned that providing such simple amenities, though a notional expense at the outset, meant that their laborers had a shorter distance to travel to sate their appetites, and would perforce be the quicker to return to their duties. The old man, considering himself in some regards as the worker’s employer—he had, after all, contracted the foundry’s services in the construction of the large craft which Borel now oversaw—had no compunctions against helping himself to their board.

Selecting an apple, a hunk of cold cheese, and a small loaf of fresh bread, the old man seated himself on a nearby straight-backed chair, on the back of which was folded some sort of newspaper or journal. As he bit into the apple, the old man unfolded the periodical, and scanned the contents. It was up a copy of Beiblätter zu den Annalen der Physik, and the old man concluded that it must have been left by one of the foundry’s engineers. Absently chewing on a bite of apple, the old man began to read, idly.

After finishing no more than half of the apple, having hardly touched the bread, the old man’s eyes opened wide, and he jumped to his feet, clutching the journal.

“Borel!” he shouted, racing across the foundry floor, waving his arms for the young man’s attention. The old man’s companion, seeing his approach, gave a shout of alarm, and rushed to his side, his labors forgotten.

“Doctor, what is it?” the young man said, his expression suggesting that he feared the worst.

“What is the date, my boy?” the old man asked, his mouth drawn into a tight line.

The young man’s forehead wrinkled momentarily, as he did some quick mental calculation. “March the sixth,” he finally answered. “A Monday.”

“Yes, yes,” the old man said impatiently, waving his hand. “But the year, man, what year?”

The young man was a bit taken aback, but it was clear he’d grown used to the old man’s eccentricities in recent weeks. “Why, it’s 1905, naturally.”

“Oh dear, oh dear.” The old man began to pace back and forth, his expression grave, his eyes flashing. “No, this won’t do. This won’t do at all.”

Before the young man could speak, to ask the old man what was the matter at hand, the old man stopped short, straightening.

“Borel, I’m leaving you in charge. See to it that the three components of the craft are appropriately joined together.”

“Certainly, Doctor. But where will you be?”

“I’m sorry, my boy, but I have vital matters which must be attended.” With that, the old man shoved the journal into the young man’s hands, turned on his heel, and stalked from the foundry.

The young man watched the retreating back of his companion, baffled. He glanced at the journal the old man has been reading, hoping there to find some clue to what had set the old man off. It was open to a review of a Professor Wellingham’s paper, “On the role of panergon in the relationship between electricity and light,” by one A. Einstein. The young man could see no reason for excitement with either the names or the subject and, tucking the journal into his trouser pocket, shrugged and returned to his labors.

##

Two days later, on the morning of Wednesday, March 8^th, the old man appeared at the reception area of the Swiss Patent Office, in Bern, Switzerland. Not bothering to doff his fur hat, nor unwind his striped scarf, he marched up to the clerk behind the reception desk, leaning forward like a man walking against a heavy wind.

“I insist on speaking with one of your technical assistant examiners,” the old man said, before the clerk had the opportunity to ask.

The clerk sighed, a long-suffering, resigned sort of sigh, and pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “And does this concern a pending patent application, I assume?”

“You may assume what you like,” the old man said, brusquely, “it makes no difference to me. However, I dare say that the matter on which I have come will impact a great many future patents and discoveries which might one day pass through this office.”

The clerk sighed a second time, if anything more dramatic and expressive than the first. “And whom should I say is calling?”

The old man straightened, grabbing hold of his lapels with either hand.

“I am the Doctor.”

“Who?”

“What?” The old man blinked, a bit perplexed, as if suddenly asked by a stranger the dimensions of his inseam. “Oh, Omega will suit under the circumstances.”

The clerk looked the old man up and down, suspiciously. After a considerable pause, he gave yet another sigh, rose from his desk, and moved to open a low gate for the old man. “This way, Doctor Omega.”

The old man followed behind, as the clerk escorted him through narrow, musty hallways, gray and grimed. Finally, they came to a small room, smelling of old tobacco and mold, dimly lit by sunlight filtering in through heavy glass panes that hadn’t been washed since the previous century. There, seated at a low, wide desk, was a young man, bent low over a great stack of papers, a pen in hand.

“Albert,” the clerk said, motioning the old man forward, “this gentleman has some inquiries for you.”

“Ah,” the old man said, brightening. He strode forward, smiling broadly, his hand extended before him. “Mr. Einstein. Precisely the man I wanted to see. I am the Doctor.”

##

Albert Einstein was a week shy of his twenty-sixth birthday, with dark, curly hair and a full mustache, and though his eyes seemed sad, he smiled easily and often. There was a certain unearthly quality about him that reminded the old man of someone, though it took a moment to recognize something of his granddaughter’s look in the young man’s expression. The old man wondered, idly, if there might not be a trace of his “countrymen” somewhere in the young man’s ancestry. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“It is about your recent review concerning panergon that I have come,” the old man explained, once he’d arranged himself on a chair opposite Einstein’s desk. “In it, you discussed panergon’s capacity to produce ‘secondary electricity,’ with which one can control the movements and qualities of projected light.”

“Yes, that’s correct,” Einstein said, folding his hands in his lap, looking more than a little surprised that someone had sought him out to discuss his avocation and not his vocation. “And it is Wellingham’s contention that panergon is also the cohesive force that keeps the molecules of matter from falling apart from one another.”

“Mmm.” The old man rubbed at his lower lip. “And in your remarks, appended to your review, you made mention that this put paid to your own theories on the nature of photoelectricity.”

Einstein nodded. “I had made careful study of Heinrich Hertz’s writings on the subject, and had begun to formulate an equation that might address the causes of the so-called ‘Hertz effect.’ This effect concerns the production and emission of electricity from matter upon the absorption of visible or ultraviolet light…”

“Yes, yes, I know all about that,” the old man said, impatiently. “What, specifically, was this theory of yours, impacted by the discovery of panergon?”

“Well, my thinking was influenced by Joseph Long Thomson’s theoretical ‘corpuscles.’ Thomson argued that these subatomic components constitute cathode rays and, under certain conditions, that these ‘corpuscles’ could be excited in such a way that they would be emitted singly, and thus detected. It occurred to me that light, which since Maxwell has been assumed to be a wave phenomenon like electromagnetism, might be constituted of small, discrete packets of energy, which I thought to name ‘light quanta.’”

The old man leaned forward, pulling his fur hat from his head and worrying it between his hands. “But you no longer believe this to be the case?”

“Clearly not,” the young man said, shaking his head sadly, “as the demonstrated nature of Welligham’s panergon clearly precludes the existence of the quantum.”

“Hmm.” The old man shook his head, eyes narrowed and lips pursed. “Something is very much amiss here, Albert.”

##

Over the course of the next hours, the old man picked through Einstein’s thoughts, questioning him at length about the reading he’d done into the study of energy in recent years. In addition to his summary of Wellingham’s panergon studies, it transpired, Einstein had also written recent reviews of Professor Mirzabeau’s work on violent flame, and Henry R. Cortlandt’s paper on apergy, and had just begun a survey on recent findings concerning vril.

The old man was interested, specifically, in the ways in which recent discoveries about these energies had affected Einstein’s understanding of the fundamental laws and forces which governed the natural world.

As Einstein spoke, the old man scribbled strange notations on his cuff with a laundry marker from time to time, deep in thought.

At length, the old man pushed off his chair and stood. He set his fur hat back on his head and wound his long scarf around his neck. “I thank you for your time, Mister Einstein. I’m afraid, based on what you’ve told me, that I haven’t a moment to lose.”

The old man turned and started towards the door, but Einstein jumped to his feet, taking hold of the old man’s elbow.

“Please, sir, I now find I have many questions for you.”

“For me?”

Einstein was breathless, eyes wide. “From your questions and comments, it’s clear to me that you have a stronger grasp of theoretical physics than any individual it has been my pleasure to encounter.”

The old man’s mouth formed a moue of distaste, and he waved his hand, shooing away the compliment as though it were a horsefly. “I’ve no interest in your flattery, sir. It means as little to me as the praise of a child first learning his alphabet complimenting Flaubert’s penmanship.”

The old man tried to extricate himself from Einstein’s grip, but the young man was insistent. “Wait! You say that you find some peril in this talk of energies and fundamental forces?”

“Yes,” the old man said, nodding slowly, “grave peril.”

“I won’t pretend to have any notion what you might mean; however, I can’t but trust a man with your grasp of physics. If there is anything I can do to assist, you have but to ask.”

The old man responded with a tight smile and, as Einstein released his grip, swept towards the door, his long cloak billowing around him. “Well, come along, young man, don’t dawdle. There is work to be done.”

##

That night, on a hilltop some distance from Bern, the two men bent low, their attention on a small assemblage of iron rods, copper wiring, and ceramic vials.

Einstein connected the components as the old man directed, while the latter busied himself with strange objects he pulled from the inner folds of his coat. They were small, glittering objects, flashing in the moonlight like gems.

“There,” the old man said, once the apparatus was assembled to his satisfaction. “Now, step back a moment, my boy. Were these to be misaligned, even a fraction, neither of us would survive long enough to attempt a correction.”

Obligingly, the young man stood, and took a few paces backwards. Only when he was safely out of reach did the old man kneel down, placing the objects one by one at key junctures of the assemblage.

When the old man finally rose and stepped back, a low humming noise began to fill the night air around them.

“Doctor, what precisely is this we have constructed?” Einstein looked down on the strange assemblage, a worried expression tugging down the corners of his mouth. “What is its purpose?”

“This device emits a sort of resonance pattern,” the old man said, as though it were the simplest thing in the world, “specific to this region of space-time, which should be anathema to anything which resonates at a different frequency. Like positive and negatively charged plates drawn together, or matter being forced into a vacuum, this emitter will serve to attract any non-resonant objects, pulling them here to us.”

Einstein blinked, and slowly shook his head. “I can scarcely begin to understand the principles involved.”

“I’m sure they will become clear to you,” the old man said. “In time.”

“But supposing that this device does function as you suggest,” Einstein said, “what is its purpose? What is the utility of attracting objects with a different resonance frequency that this… what did you call it? Space-time?”

The old man rubbed his lower lip, and then wagged a finger in the young man’s direction. “I believe I’ve worked out the cause of anomalies you have noted in recent years, those involving these strange energies which seem to contravene the expected laws of physics. It would appear that your continuum has been infected by influences from outside what you would consider the natural world. These strange energies, resulting from the presence of beings from beyond the dimensions of space and time that you know, over the course of decades, has been perverting the fabric of reality, slowly transforming it into a replica of some other plane of existence.”

“Towards what end?”

“Why, to colonize your world, of course. My boy, you are being invaded, and you don’t even realize it.”

##

The night wore on. The assemblage before them continued to hum, setting their teeth on edge, and the stars wheeled in their slow courses overhead.

The two men discussed energy and matter and space and time, passing the hours, until finally falling silent, simply staring up at the clear night sky overhead.

“It just occurred to me, Doctor,” Einstein said at last, breaking a lengthy silence. “Should these beings you seek appear, what do you intend to do?”

“Hmmm?” The old man raised an eyebrow, a contemplative expression on his face. “Do? Oh, yes. Well, that is a good question, isn’t it?”

“But, I thought…” Einstein began, alarmed, but the rest of his words were cut off, as the air around them suddenly began to vibrate, and a soft blue light suffused the hilltop.

“No time for that now, my boy,” the old man said, raising his voice above a sound like a hundred violins tuning up at once. “I believe our guests have arrived.”

Suddenly, the sound ceased, and just as suddenly the empty air around them was filled with a riot of shapes and forms.

“Name of the name,” Einstein whispered.

Circled around the two men and the strange apparatus, these unearthly shapes appeared to fall into one of three categories. Cones, which varied in color from blue to green, and which were about half the size of a full-grown man; cylinders, some tall and thin, others low and squat, which range from bronze laced with green, to purple, to black; and layers, vertical shapes patterned almost like the bark of a birch tree, which seemed to resemble virgin copper. Each of them was translucent, shifting in color and size continuously, and at the base of each is a dazzling light. As the two men watched, the shapes shift from one form to another, cones becoming cylinders, layers becoming cones, undulating endlessly.

“As I suspected,” the old man said, as the undulating figures circled around them.

“What are they, Doctor?” Einstein asked, his voice a tremulous whisper.

“On most worlds in which they have appeared, they are known simply as ‘The Shapes,’ but my people have long known them as the Xipéhuz.”

##

“Doctor!” Einstein said urgently, grabbing the old man’s elbow and attempting to drag him away from the device. “We must flee.”

“Flee?” The old man snarled briefly, his eyes momentarily flashing. “What do you take me for?” He calmed, and then added, “Besides, each of the Xipéhuz is capable of emitting radiant energy in a concentrated burst, sufficient to reduce either of us to ashes.”

“What?!” Einstein blanched, and regarded the strange floating forms in horror intermingled with amazement.

“But this is not a contest to be won by fisticuffs and feet, my dear boy,” the old man said, patting Einstein’s shoulder. “No, we must reason with these creatures. They are quite simple, when you get down to brass tacks.”

“But what are they?” Einstein asked, eyes wide.

“They are three dimensional intrusions of multidimensional beings, naturally.” The old man shook his head, a distasteful expression curling his lip. “But really, they are little more than pests.”

One of the floating cones flashed red, angrily, and advanced towards the old man, the star-like light at its base dazzling.

“There we are. An invitation to parley.” The old man stepped right up to the advancing cone, his chin held high. “You know who I am, don’t you?” he said, a hard edge to his voice.

The cone seemed to vibrate in the air, and a black symbol appears on its front. It resembled nothing so much as the Greek letter omega, but then quickly transformed into what appears to be the Greek letters theta and sigma, which then turned sideways before fading from view.

“That’s right,” the old man said, nodding slowly, as though coaxing a simple answer from a slow child. “And you know what I’m capable of doing, I would bargain.”

Einstein was confused, and grabbed hold of the old man’s elbow. “Doctor, what is happening?”

“The shapes and lines which sometime appear on the surface of the Xipéhuz”—the old man pointed to the symbols now coming into view on the surface of another of the forms—“are complicated signs used for communication. But though they hate to admit it, they are capable of understanding the spoken word, perfectly, and could probably even vibrate the air around them sufficient to create spoken language, if they weren’t so pig-headedly obstinate.”

Another of the Xipéhuz now displayed a new symbol, a complex figure-eight design inside of a circle.

“I have left my people,” the old man answered, as a cloud passed across his features. He shook his head. “A minor difference of opinion. But don’t think for an instant that I’ve surrendered any of my power in doing so.”

A floating cylinder shifted like sand through an hour glass, going from tall and thin to short and squat, and flashed a quick sequence of black shapes on its forward edge.

“This is my home, for the moment,” the old man answered, crossing his arms over his chest, “and I won’t have you muddying the place up.”

One of the vertical layers moved from side to side, and flashed a single, incredibly complicated symbol on its surface.

The old man glowered, and shook his head. “That’s all well and good, isn’t it, until you’ve pushed things too far, and then decoherence is the least of our problems. At that point, there’s no more particles, no more fundamental forces, and no more arrow of time.”

One of the cones shifted from blue to green, and displayed another set of symbols.

“Good for you, perhaps,” the old man said, stabbing a finger in the cone’s direction, “but not good for me, nor for any of the natives of this continuum. And if you think I’ll stand idly by, and allow myself to be marooned in a little bubble of distorted four-space, you are sadly mistaken.”

Several of the Cones clustered together, raising slightly off the ground, and moved closer to the two men, menacingly. The one in the lead displayed one, simple symbol.

“What will I do about it?” the old man said, repeating the question.

After a lengthy pause, the old man smiled, darkly, and answered.

“You know who I am, and you know what I’m capable of doing. The question you need to ask yourself, Xipéhuz, is what I won’t be willing to do about it.”

##

The old man and the patent examiner stood in silence as the shapes appeared to communicate amongst themselves, rapidly shifting shapes, sizes, and colors, in a dizzying array too quick for the human eye to follow.

Finally, they all adopted the same form, and the two men were ringed by dozens of translucent blue cones, each about half the size of a man.

As one, the cones all displayed the same symbol on their surfaces, and then with a mighty inrush of air, they disappeared from view.

The air was still around them, as the sky began to pink in the east, the first signs of the coming dawn.

“What happened?” Einstein looked around him, turning this way and that, as though suspecting the strange forms of sneaking up behind him. “What did they say?”

“They have gone, leaving this continuum for less… troublesome climes. As for what they said? Well, let us say that they expressed displeasure at my intervention, and leave the matter at that.”

The old man leaned down, and collected the small gem-like objects from the assemblage they had constructed, and the faint humming which had persisted through the night suddenly stopped.

“Had I not seen it with my own eyes,” Einstein said, rubbing his hands together, “I’m sure I wouldn’t believe a bit of it. I came following you seeking answers, and find myself now with even more questions than before.”

“The important thing is not to stop questioning,” the old man said, smiling. “Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”

The old man pocketed the glittering objects and started down the hill, leaving the assemblage of copper and iron and ceramics behind.

“Come along, my boy,” the old man called back over his shoulder. “You have work to which to return, I’m certain, and I have matters requiring my attention back in France. But first, a hearty breakfast seems in order, don’t you think?”

##

Over a stout Swiss breakfast of fresh bread, cold meats and cheeses, sweet rolls and coffee, the old man and the patent examiner discussed all manner of things, most often with the old man listening attentively as the younger man worked his way through any number of his half-formed hypotheses. The old man nodded appreciatively, asking leading questions from time to time, the bones of their meal lying forgotten on the table between them.

Near midday, when the young man could delay going to the Patent Office no longer, the two men shook hands and parted company. Each headed into history, each in his own way.

##

By week’s end, the old man was back in Le Creusot. Though Borel plied him with repeated inquiries about what had so commanded his attention that he traveled to another country, the old man remained tight lipped about the affair.

Five weeks later, though, on their return to his residence near Marbeuf in Normandy, the old man found a parcel waiting for him. It contained the finished draft of a paper, “On a Heuristic Point of View concerning the Production and Transformation of Light,” along with a note from its author, indicating that the work would see publication in the June 9^th edition of Annalen der Physik. An analysis of the photoelectric effect which disregarded the notion of panergon—recently dismissed by the scientific community as nothing more than a hoax—it introduced the author’s notion of quanta, discrete packets of energy which, in the aggregate, behaved like a wave.

Over dinner, having spent a long day attaching plates of pandimensional metal to the surface of their still-unnamed vessel, shipped by rail from Le Creusot, the old man showed the journal to Borel, and tried unsuccessfully to explain its significance, saying as much as circumstances and decorum would allow.

That Borel failed to recognize the import of those few pages was hardly surprising. It would be many years to come before any but a select few would recognize what a year of wonders this had been.

Labels: freefiction

# posted by Chris Roberson @ 7:00 AM 2 comments

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# posted by Chris Roberson @ 10:58 AM 0 comments

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# posted by Chris Roberson @ 7:00 AM 9 comments

Jake Carmody, agent of Bureau Zero, sat at the vingt-et-un table killing time. His target was not due to arrive in Monte Carlo until the next morning, and so Agent Carmody was whiling away the hours gambling, both in order to establish his cover as wealthy American industrialist on vacation and because, frankly, it beat the alternatives. After a couple of hours at it he was ahead, winning more often than losing, but not by much.

The assignment was a simple one, a straightforward extraction operation. He was to make contact with a scientist named Werner Eckhardt, try to convince him to defect to the US, and if he couldn’t, to handle matters accordingly. The section chiefs back at Bureau Zero were already drooling over the prospect of getting Eckhardt in their stable of hired intellects, so Carmody was fairly sure he wouldn’t be getting the warmest of receptions in the event he had to “handle matters accordingly.”

Carmody was dealt a queen and a seven, but the dealer was showing a ten so he decided to hit. It was a risk, but he wasn’t playing with his own money, so he didn’t mind so much.

“A bold move,” said an angel’s voice in a British accent at his elbow. “Or should I say, a rash one?”

Carmody turned slightly, his gaze taking in the statuesque brunette to his left. She’d sat down at the table a few hands back, and had been playing conservatively. She wasn’t exactly Carmody’s type, but in her form-fitting black gown, hung off the shoulder, it hardly mattered.

“We’ll see,” Carmody said softly.

The dealer laid out a five, expressionless.

“Rash, then?” the brunette added, smiling slightly.

“It would seem so,” Carmody answered.

The brunette stood pat on a nine and an eight, and when the dealer added a king to the ten and five in his hand, accepted her winnings graciously.

“Are you here on business, Mister…?” the brunette asked, stacking her chips in front of her in neat rows of fortification.

“Carmody,” he replied. “Jake Carmody.” He always used his real name when on assignment, shifting all the other aspects of his aliases and cover identities around this kernel of truth like the moon in orbit around the earth. He never worried. The agency to which he reported, Bureau Zero, was so secretive that no one in the standard intelligence community even knew it existed, not even the stuffed shirts at the FBI or the high-strung nuts over at the CIA. The Bureau handled matters unsuited to the customary intelligence channels, matters that would either pass unnoticed by more conventional operatives, or else drive them stark raving mad. There were rumblings around the head office that the new man in the White House had been asking too many questions, poking around in appropriations and mandated sanctions that were best left untouched, but if push came to shove there were always means of dealing with that sort of thing.

The brunette took Carmody’s proffered hand.

“Diana,” she answered, as though that was all the name she’d ever needed. “Charmed.” She let drop Carmody’s hand, and anted up. She then looked at Carmody sidelong, her eyes half-lidded. “But you still haven’t answered my question.”

Carmody tossed in the requisite chips, and turned back to Diana.

“No,” he said, “I don’t suppose I have. The answer is no, I’m afraid. I’m just vacationing.”

“And all alone?” Diana asked, glancing at the bare third finger on Carmody’s left hand. “Is there no Mrs. Carmody?”

“Only my mother,” he answered, wincing slightly despite himself. He quickly added, “And you? What brings you to Monte Carlo?”

“I am a scientist by profession, Mr. Carmody,” she answered, “and I’m here representing the Physics Department at Oxford to the Conference on New Technologies. It’s held here, I suspect, to give poor schoolmarms like myself the opportunity to dress up and go out a night or two.”

Carmody would hardly have pegged her as a schoolmarm, but that wasn’t the bit of her spiel that caught his attention. The Conference on New Technologies, an annual meeting of the best and brightest minds the world had to offer, had been started up by a consortium of researchers a few years after the Second World War. Everyone who was anyone in the scientific community regularly attended, including the maddest of mad scientists, Werner Eckhardt.

When, in the last days of WWII, the Allies had done their dash and grab for any and every German scientist they could find, they had hardly stopped to think who they might end up with. The game at that stage was one of numbers, the more the merrier, and the question of what to do with all these eggheads would wait until they had got back safely behind their own borders. Everyone was after the rocket boys for preference, naturally, but they’d take whomever they would lay their hands on. And that was how Werner Eckhardt came to be a citizen of the Soviet Union.

When the Science Committee in Moscow got around to Eckhardt, they had trouble deciding where to place him. They’d got their hands on a fair number of rocket scientists, though to be fair perhaps not the quality of those snatched up by the Americans, but the Committee found they had no notion of what to do with someone like Eckhardt.

In the early thirties, when Hitler was a name few Germans knew, and fewer took seriously, Eckhardt was a promising young physicist fresh from the University of Heidelberg, destined for a life of quiet contemplation and anonymity. At the urging of a former classmate, Eckhardt went to a meeting of a secret organization called Thule Society, and was instantly captivated. The Thule Society had dedicated itself to reclaiming the lost glory of the German people, an ideal which burned as bright in the mind of young Werner Eckhardt as it did in another member of the society, a frustrated artist named Adolf. Through the Thule Society, Eckhardt was exposed to the world of the occult, of means and ways not hinted at in his university education. He explored these avenues hungrily, like a starving man clawing for food, and in time developed his own unique fusion of technology and the occult, which he insisted be used only in the service of the German people. Over the years, though, the means became much more significant to Eckhardt than the ends, so that by the time the Russians pulled him from his bombed-out laboratory in Berlin, Eckhardt hardly cared to what use his work was put, so long as the work was allowed to continue. Few in the Third Reich had any idea what Eckhardt was up to late nights in his lab, and those that did regretted the knowledge. The Soviets, in the end, followed true to form, and found a place for him; they put him to work making weapons.

“Are you alright?” Diana asked, when Carmody had failed to respond to the dealer’s request.

“Just a little distracted,” Carmody answered, and stood on nineteen.

The dealer turned over an ace to join the king he had showing, and the game was through. Carmody smiled a bit wearily to Diana, who patted his arm in mock sympathy.

“There are times, perhaps,” she said, “when it pays to be rash.”

For the last few hands, the pair had been alone at the table. Now, they were joined by two more, women who looked enough alike to be mirror images, if not for their different hairstyles. One wore a fire engine red dress, cut low at the neck and high on the thigh, while the other wore a matching dress in dark forest green. They glanced at Carmody, casually, but didn’t speak.

Carmody, of course, recognized them at once, as they had him. He had run into them more times than he could count over the course of the past years, always on opposing sides, and while Carmody usually got the better of them, he couldn’t say it had been easy. They were the Fox twins, Melody and Harmony, and they were among the highest priced killers the world of espionage and organize crime had to offer.

Carmody couldn’t begin to guess who they might be working for now, but he was almost certain he knew their target. The only thing of interest for months in Monte Carlo was the Conference on New Technologies, and the only mind of interest at the Conference was Werner Eckhardt.

Diana seemed to catch the glances going silently back and forth between Carmody and the two women, and looked at him with… jealousy? Carmody wasn’t sure if he could trust his instincts, but he could swear that the woman was taking an almost proprietary interest in him. He’d had so little experience with women, provided one didn’t count the numberless femme fatales and seductresses who tried on a seemingly weekly basis either to kill him or pervert him to their causes. Little experience with real women, at any rate, the kind who didn’t carry poisoned blades in their stockings and derringer pistols tucked down their cleavage.

Carmody wasn’t sure where all of this might be heading, but he didn’t like the looks of it. He’d made his living off of going by his instincts, and his instincts were telling him to leave.

“I think,” he said, pushing back his chair from the table and slowly rising to his feet, “that I’ve had enough of 21 for one night. Perhaps I’ll get a bit of air.”

“I’ll join you,” Diana seconded, rising. She paused, a bit sheepishly, and added, “if that’s all right with you.”

Carmody smiled, and offered her his arm. Together, they walked from the table and towards the open balconies, leaving the twin sisters without mercy to play with themselves.

###

The next morning found Carmody showered and shaved, enjoying his breakfast on the hotel veranda. He had bags under his eyes, and a pulled muscle in his back, but he hardly minded. The night had gone on well into the morning hours, and it was nearly dawn before Diana had finally left and gone back to her hotel. They talked for hours in the open air, then talked hours more back at his hotel room over a bottle of wine, and then the talking had stopped and they moved on to other things.

Women were a luxury Carmody rarely allowed himself. He knew it was a cliché, the stuff of pulp magazines and comic books, but he really felt that allowing a woman to get close to him, bringing someone into his life, would only put them in danger. He felt that he was always under the gun, and it would be criminal to expose anyone else to those sorts of risks. Still, the life of a secret agent became lonely at times, and he did love the way Diana laughed…

Carmody shook his head, dropping his half-buttered toast back onto the plate and pushing the remainder of his meal from him. This was the other risk of getting involved with a woman, the other reason to run. The distractions, the constant preoccupation with anything that wasn’t work. To an average man, it could be a nuisance; to someone in Carmody’s position, it could be fatal.

He was about to rise, to make his way across town to the Conference on New Technologies, when he was stopped short by two visions of loveliness that appeared at either elbow.

“Leaving so soon?” said the vision on the right.

“But we’ve only just arrived,” added the one on the right.

Harmony and Melody gently guided Carmody back to his seat, each with a hand on one elbow, and Carmody didn’t struggle. It was neither the time nor the place. The Fox twins didn’t seem like they were planning trouble, not right away at any rate, and in the event that they did he had more than a few tricks up his sleeve waiting for them. Literally.

The twins sat down opposite Carmody at the table, genteelly, and smiled warmly at him from beneath their broad-brimmed summer hats.

“It’s been a while, Jake,” Harmony said.

“Vancouver, wasn’t it?” Melody added.

“Something like that,” Carmody answered, tense. “What’s the play, girls? Who are you working for this time out?”

The two tittered, almost girlish, glancing at one another and averting their eyes from Carmody’s. It was a few long seconds before they answered, breathless, seeming to have to hold back laughter.

“We’re working for no one, Jake,” Melody answered.

“No one but ourselves,” Harmony added.

“We have to look after our own interests, now and again,” said Melody.

It was suddenly becoming clear, and Carmody wasn’t liking the look of it. The Fox twins had no doubt socked away a considerable amount of capital over the past few years, and were not without their own unique “charms.” If they were trying to woo Werner Eckhardt to their services, and by some miracle succeeded… They could very well make the jump from high-priced assassins to players on an international scale. With the leverage Eckhardt’s rather unique weaponry provided, the Fox sisters could become a power to rival some of the smaller countries in Europe, possibly even Great Britain. The Cold War would be getting a great deal warmer.

“I don’t have time for this,” Carmody said brusquely. His chair slid back from the table with a squeal.

“Do you have to run off so soon?” asked Harmony, smiling seductively.

“We thought that, if we pooled our resources, we might have more time for, shall we say, recreation?” added Melody.

“I’m sorry, ladies,” Carmody answered, wiping his hands on a cloth napkin and dropping it onto his plate. “I’m afraid I’ve lost my appetite.”

Carmody stood, turned, and walked away. He needed to make sure he got to Eckhardt first, or at the very least make certain his offer was the more attractive one. Casting a quick glance back at the two visions of loveliness smiling over his abandoned breakfast, he wondered if such a thing were possible.

###

The meet with Eckhardt had gone exactly as planned. Carmody had made his way into the Conference, using his credentials as an American industrialist to get past security, and had buttonholed Eckhardt in the men’s room with a photograph and a promise. The photo was of Eckhardt’s daughter, whom he’d thought killed before the war’s end during an Allied bombing raid. The picture didn’t show the five year old girl she’d been there, but a bright shining and well-scrubbed twenty-two-year-old on an American college campus. Was it really Eckhardt’s daughter? Had she really survived the bombing, in a coma, to be brought to the US by a well meaning American family? Was Eckhardt being given the chance to reunite with the one remaining thread of his tattered family tapestry? Carmody didn’t know, and didn’t care. He’d been given the picture and story by his superiors at Bureau Zero, and like a good little spook he did what he was told.

Eckhardt was, to say the least, captivated. He couldn’t take his eyes off the picture, couldn’t stop pelting Carmody with questions. Carmody thought it a bit heartless to take the picture back, and to answer only enough of the old man’s questions to keep him interested, but there were procedures to be followed in these sorts of circumstances, rules to be obeyed.

The arrangements were made quickly, without preamble. Eckhardt was to leave the Conference, that very minute, with Carmody, and rendezvous with American agents at the international airport. Once onboard the plane gassed and ready on the runway, Eckhardt would be escorted back to the States, there to be reunited with his daughter. And, it went without saying, to be put to work for the Bureau, building a better mouse trap than those he’d provided the Soviets. Carmody would stay on in Monte Carlo, making sure that all the loose ends were covered.

They managed to get out of the building without incident, but when they reached the secluded spot in which Carmody had secreted his car, they ran into trouble. Trouble in matching fire engine red and forest green dresses.

Melody and Harmony stood to either side of Carmody, their pistols trained at his forehead, all flirting forgotten. They seemed to have decided that Eckhardt was leaving with them, in their employ, or not at all.

“What is the meaning of this?” demanded Eckhardt. “Who are these women?”

“Your new employers, they hope,” Carmody answered, his hands in the air.

“Such a bright boy,” Melody said.

“Too bad he’s not got much of a future ahead of him,” added Harmony.

Carmody shifted slightly from side to side, on the balls of his feet, looking for an opening. There wasn’t one.

“Well?” asked Harmony. “How’s it going to go?”

“Hard?” Melody asked. Then she added, seductively, “Or soft?”

“Neither, I should hope,” came a voice from the shadows.

The Fox twins turned, just startled enough to give Carmody a chance to make his play. He pointed towards Melody with his left hand, palm down, and then slapped his left forearm with his right hand. With a click, a fletched metal dart flew from the casing above his wrist, thudding into Melody’s chest a full inch, pumping a fast-acting toxin into her system that rendered her immobile in a matter of heartbeats. She’d live, but it would be weeks before the bruise would heal. Carmody allowed himself a slight smile. He always kept something up his sleeve in case of trouble.

His last ditch spent, Carmody turned to Harmony, hoping for a miracle. Watching her collapse to the ground, with the sound of crackling and the smell of ozone in the air, Carmody knew his miracle had arrived just in time.

A woman stepped out from the shadows, reeling in the electrical line that an instant before had pumped enough voltage into Harmony to power a small town for an afternoon. It was Diana, the woman from the night, and the morning, before.

“But…” Carmody began, weakly.

“It’s alright,” Diana answered, smiling sardonically. “I’m on your side, more or less. Now let’s get Eckhardt to the airport, and be quick about it.”

Carmody helped steer Eckhardt to the car, his mind a rush of questions.

“But who…” Carmody began again, getting little further this time out.

“I’m with MI8,” the woman answered, “British Special Intelligence. We handle these sorts of things, much like your own Bureau I might say.”

“I’ll be damned,” Carmody whispered.

“I should hope not,” the woman said. She extended a hand, which Carmody accepted absently, unable to take his eyes from her face. “But we haven’t been formally introduced, have we? My name is Bonaventure. Diana Bonaventure.”

They got Eckhardt to the airport, and onto the plane, without interference from the Soviets or any other interests. He was soon on his way to America, to build bigger and brighter bombs and weapons for the greater glory of the American people. His daughter proved to be genuine enough, though perhaps not as happy to see her father as he was to see her.

As for Carmody, he and Diana Bonaventure stayed longer in Monte Carlo than anyone had expected, and when asked by their respective agencies what the delay might be, they would each answer that there were more loose ends needing tying up than anyone could have imagined.

Labels: freefiction

# posted by Chris Roberson @ 9:21 AM 2 comments

The airship which hung between the docking pylons, tethered fore and aft, was painted a dark shade of blue and trimmed with gold, the colors of the Crosstime Line. But even if one didn’t recognize the coloration, the sheer size of the craft alone would have been enough to signal its importance. It dwarfed the other airships drifting at anchor in the Texican National Airfields on the outskirts of Waterloo. The smallest of the other craft, neither equipped with translocation engines nor rated for underspace passage if they had been, were locals, carrying passengers and freight to the Anglo-American Confederation, or across the seas to the French Workers Concordat or the Russian Czardom or Chinese Collective. Slightly larger were the intercontinua airships which traveled to and from neighboring alternatives, spending hours, days, or weeks journeying through underspace to translocate into other worlds. But largest of all was the blue and gold immensity of the Crosstime Express, the pride of the line, which weekly made the journey from here to Helium and back again.

Vivian Starkweather checked the time. Slipping her watch back into its vest pocket, she held a lit match to the cigarillo clenched between her teeth.

“Don’t worry, darlins,” she said to the young women standing beside her at the base of the gangplank, jeweled bindis twinkling brightly in the morning sun against the dark skin of their foreheads. Starkweather expelled a stream of smoke from the corner of her mouth, and hooked her thumbs through her beltloops. “I expect we’ll be boarding directly.”

The Indian princesses didn’t seem much to mind the delay, though, hardly noticing Starkweather’s assurances, too busy making eyes at the younger members of the crew in their crisp white jackets and peaked caps, and especially at the ship’s young steward, supervising the loading of comestible provisions onto the blue and gold craft.

Aside from being the site for the Crosstime Line’s terminus, the only other item of interest about the alternative was that it was home to the Pinkertons, the private security firm routinely contracted by intercontinua businesses and governments alike. Many a smuggler, freebooter, or suspect fleeing prosecution had come to dread the baleful open eye which was the symbol of the men and women who lived up to their motto, “We Never Sleep.”

Most of the intercontinua craft anchored around the airfield had come here for the same reason, ferrying passengers from neighboring alternatives, who now stood ready to mount the gangplank to the blue and gold airship. Travelers from neighboring alternatives, they had made the journey here to catch the Crosstime Express, which would continue on to Helium, seat of the League of Worlds and hub of all intercontinua commerce in this region of the Myriad. A journey of less than three days, which shorter range vessels might take weeks or even longer to complete.

If the two young Indian women in their silk saris and silver bangles weren’t bothered, though, there were others less sanguine about the delay. A pair of Russian monks in heavy cassocks shifted uneasily, their gaze darting back and forth nervously as they held their hands against their round bellies. And the mandarin whose ruby button atop his hat indicated the highest level of service to the emperor, in some distant alternative dominated by the Chinese throne, seemed ill-at-ease, as though uncertain the correct protocol in such situations. But the most distressed by the inability of the passengers to board the ship were the trio of white-skinned men in their wool suits and bowler hats.

“This is intolerable, I say,” blustered the man with the bushy mustaches and red cheeks, who was evidently the leader of the three. “The agreement drawn up with the Crosstime Line clearly states that we are to have ample time to examine the security arrangements before departure.”

Behind him stood a short, round man with a sheaf of papers in hand, and a slender man with a long nose and piercing blue eyes.

“I assure you, Mister Engel,” said Captain N’Diklam, soothingly, “it will be only a momentary delay. We have had to take on relief crewmen, and it is simply taking longer to get them squared away than anticipated.” The captain smiled, teeth white and even against this dark brown skin, and turned to confer with the bosun who had just ambled down the gangplank.

The three men were clearly not satisfied, but evidently saw little to be gained from pressing the issue at this point, and turned to walk away. They moved in concert, with almost military precision, the mustachioed Engel in the lead and the other two following at his flanks like a vanguard of birds in flight.

###

In the end, it was less than a quarter of an hour later before the gangplank was opened and the passengers allowed to board the Crosstime Express. Vivian Starkweather was one of the first onboard, to the consternation of the trio in their bowler-hats, who were evidently some sort of security detachment that had booked passage to make preparations for another who would be joining them at a later stop on the journey. Starkweather, for her part, pretended not to notice the three men who glared daggers at her back, but had let her hand casual rest on the hilt of the Bowie knife hanging from her belt, as though to show that she was not without resources of her own. Rumored to be in the employ of one of the wealthier Texican gas-mining concerns, Starkweather was said to be journeying to Helium to negotiate an extremely lucrative trade agreement, but no one knew for certain.

In her mid-thirties, Starkweather was, if not classically beautiful, then at least ruggedly handsome. A few inches shy of six feet in height, with a mass of brown hair worn up in a bun at the back of her head, she had striking green eyes, a long nose and strong jaw-line. She seemed to favor riding costume, trousers and matching jackets, with dinosaur-hide boots on her feet, a luxury item from an alternative far off in the Myriad where the terrible lizards never died out, a popular destination for wealthy hunters.

The other passengers who mounted the gangplank, after Starkweather and the bowler-hat trio had boarded, included an ambassador from the Reformed Dynast of Heliopolis and his slaves, from an alternative where the pyramid-builders still held sway; a group of Berber scholars from an Andalusia on an alternative dominated by a Mohammedan caliphate; the pair of Indian princesses in their finery, their luggage carried on the back of a miniature automaton elephant, steam hissing from its joints with each cumbersome step; a group of Maori from an alternative on which Polynesian princes ruled both hemispheres, though with their fearsome moko tattoos it was impossible to say whether they were diplomats or warriors; the ill-at-ease mandarine; an Aztec warlord in linen suit and tastefully garish waistcoat, with jade plugs in his lobes and a labret through his lower lip, traveling with a silent, unsmiling woman whose hair was cut in a bob and died purple, her hands and feet hennaed in sinewy patterns; and finally the pair of Russian monks in their heavy cassocks, whose nervousness seemed to vanish as they stepped onto the gangplank.

Starkweather, Engel and his security detachment, and the two Russians were the only passengers of European extraction in the first class berths, with the rest riding in economy or steerage. Fair and even slightly tanned skin was something of a rarity onboard altogether, in fact, with only a bare handful of Europeans onboard at all, and most of those either servants to other passengers or low-ranking members of the crew, like the sandy-haired steward who had so captured the attention of the Indian princesses.

The captain, Mba N’Diklam, was a follower of Sunni Islam, and a subject of a Jolof Empire whose reach extended far beyond the shores of western Africa. He smiled often, teeth straight and white against skin so dark it was almost black, and peppered his speech with words and phrases from his native Wolof. The rest of the crew in their crisp white jackets and peaked caps, on their lapels the blue-and-gold rosette of the Crosstime Line, were a mix of Malay, Tamil, Dayak, Athabascan, and European.

After the passengers had all boarded, and the luggage had been stowed, chimes sounded throughout the ship, signaling their impending departure. At the captain’s invitation, the first glass passengers gathered in the drawing room to watch the launch through the heavily-shielded portholes.

From takeoff through to the next scheduled landing, the Crosstime Express would remain sealed and pressurized, against the airless vacuum of underspace. The sound of the hatches being closed and sealed rang through the ship with an air of finality, and a few of those gathered in the drawing room seemed unsettled by the sound. Or perhaps merely unsettled by the thought of leaving the sane world of three dimensions behind when the translocation engine was engaged, and moving into the less sensible realm of underspace. The security detachment, in particular, appeared novices when it came to intercontinua travel, hailing from an alternative which had only recently learned of the Myriad and of the countless alternate worlds stretching out to infinity. But the two young Hindu women, as well, seemed somewhat unsettled, and huddled near one another on a low divan, talking in voices so low they could scarcely be heard.

Elsewhere, deep in the heart of the airship, the navigator cleared her thoughts, and set her mind on their destination. A seer, one of those rare souls able to peer beyond the fabric of the world, into and through underspace into the worlds beyond, the navigator was arguably the most essential member of the crew, as without her to guide them, once the translocation engine was engaged the ship could easily be lost forever, adrift and directionless in underspace. Almost equally invaluable, though, were the ship’s defenders, senders able to broadcast their own thoughts into the ether; there were creatures who made underspace their home, monsters of pure appetite and sense-defying shape who swam in that strange region like sharks prowling the seas, and since conventional weapons were of little use against the creature’s diamond-hard skins, the only way to repel their voracious attacks was at the level of thought.

With a seer to guide them and a sender manning the defense, the ship required only an engineer to man the translocation engine, a pilot to man the helm, and a captain to command them.

When the Crosstime Express slipped its moorings, the captain ordered her elevated some three-quarters of a mile into the air. It was safest, when moving from world to world, to translocate from high up, to account for variances in elevation and geography from one alternative to the next. Translocation displaced the matter occupying the volume of space a vessel enters, and if the matter is merely empty air, the result will be little more than a brief flash and an audible bang, as the molecules of the atmosphere are excited, forced out of the way of the incoming vessel, nothing more dramatic than a bolt of midday lightning and a peal of distant thunder. If the vessel were to translocate into any material denser than water, though, the mass at the target couldn’t be displaced quickly enough to accommodate the incoming vessel, and the craft would be compacted on arrival. An only relatively dense material like sand would likely only damage a vessel, not destroy it, but with a sufficient dense matter like rock or metal, an entire vessel could be compacted to only a fraction of its original size, with disastrous results for anyone onboard, and for any living things in the nearby space. Naturally, most intercontinua craft were airworthy, as a result, and it was only the most reckless of souls who translocated while anywhere near ground level.

As the ground fell away beyond the portholes, Starkweather chatted amiably in Spanish with the Berber scholars over cups of strong Turkish coffee, spicing her own liberally with a splash of Tennessee whisky from a flask she pulled from a hip pocket. A few moments later the ship’s physician joined them, an older woman named Ortiz who was a Guanche native who spoke Castilian Spanish with the slight accent of the Canary Island, her coffee so flavored with milk that it almost matched her tawny skin.

The Berbers, like Starkweather and all the other passengers onboard, were bound for the seat of the League of Worlds and hub of intercontinua trade, Helium. Knowledge, like wealth and natural resources, was something which the Heliumites had in abundance. And while the streets of Helium were not paved in gold, they may as well have been, as the alternative was rich in the lighter-than-air gas which gave the city-state its name. The gas helium was found in most all alternatives, but only a scant few, like Helium herself or Vivian Starkweather’s native Texico, had the resources necessary to mine and refine it. And though only the most trusted diplomats could penetrate to the heart of the League of Worlds headquarters itself, all were welcome in the public areas of Helium, and so it was not uncommon to find natives of all imaginable histories jostling cheek-to-jowl in the markets and thoroughfares of Helium, including elfish or brutish men from alternatives where different strains of humanity came to dominate, or even some who, while they walked and talked like humans, were derived from other animals altogether, lagomorphs and lizardmen and talking apes from alternatives where species other than man rose to sentience and dominance.

The ship’s steward entered the drawing room, a young man of European extraction who was no more than twenty years old and spoke with a faint Eton accent. He introduced himself merely as Patrick, and said that he’d been sent to see to the passenger’s needs, and that the captain would be joining them shortly.

When the airship had reached a suitable altitude, the chimes again rang throughout the ship, this time signaling that the translocation engine would momentarily be engaged. A short while later a brief, high-pitched whine sounded in the drawing room, followed by an almost imperceptible juddering, and then faded almost, but not entirely, away, the whine persisting just at the edge of hearing, the vibration only barely perceptible in the faint ripples in the coffee within their cups, or the gentle shake of the feathers the purple-haired Aztec woman wore through her headband.

Once the ship was underway, propelled by jets of air from nozzles mounted on the outer hull, the propellers useless in the airless vacuum of underspace, the captain joined the first class passengers in the drawing room.

Before Captain N’Diklam had made it two steps into the cabin, though, the three men of the security detachment, bowler hats now clutched in their hands, put themselves in his path.

“Captain, we need to discuss the security precautions you’ve taken for our empress’s impending arrival.” Engels blinked his eyes rapidly, punctuating his words with little stabs of his free hand, the fingers of the other wrapped tightly around the brim of his hat.

“And so you shall, gentlemen,” N’Diklam said with an easy smile. “We won’t be stopping at your alternative until late afternoon, the day after tomorrow, and I assure you that we will have everything settled to your satisfaction well before that time.”

Behind Engel, the little round man and the other with the piercing blue eyes exchanged glances.

The tall African looked down at the smaller white man still blocking his way. “But in the near term, I would very much like a cup of coffee and a chance to speak to the other passengers,” N’Diklam said, gently but with steel beneath his words. “If you wouldn’t mind...?” He made a short motion with his hand, as if miming opening a door, and raised an eyebrow, waiting a response.

Engel, flustered, clenched the brim of his hat tighter, but with a final harrumph turned to the left and moved out of the way, his two companions following precisely at his flanks, as in a carefully practiced maneuver.

As the captain moved to mingle with the rest of the passengers, introducing himself and giving the assurances of himself and the whole Crosstime Line that their journeys would be pleasant ones, the three men of the security detachment drifted to the nearest porthole and, peering out with open-mouthed expressions of wondered, gawped like rustics at the unsettlingly shifting colors and strange geometries of underspace beyond.

###

That evening, after dinner, Captain N’Diklam, Starkweather, and a few of the other passengers gathered at the card table in the smoking room, while in the salon the ship’s steward played a seemingly endless series of romantic airs on the aluminum grand piano for the entertainment of the Hindu princesses.

The Russians, with small glasses of vodka at their elbows, urged for a few rounds of durak, but the notion of a game with no winners, only a single loser for each round, soon wore on the other players, and another game was called for. N’Diklam exercised a bit of command authority and led the way with a hand of primero, which proved too complex for simple enjoyment but with stakes too low to be of much interest. When Starkweather instructed the others in the basics of Texican hold ‘em, though, the group seemed to have found its proper tempo, and a number of hands followed.

Starkweather had the button, and was sitting on a pair of queens in the hole, when the bosun burst in, eyes wide and white in his dark face.

“It’s the navigator!” he blurted out, rushing to the captain’s side. “She’s been murdered!”

And that signaled the end of the evening’s entertainments.

###

It was long past the hour when the passengers might have been expected to retire for the evening, but most of them lingered in the salon, waiting to hear word about the poor navigator. The Aztec woman, her purple bob somewhat ruffled, was uncharacteristically chatty, and reported passing the crewmen carrying the body through the companion-way to the medical bay, the blood seeping through the linen sheet which swathed her lifeless form. Her companion, in only his waist-coat and shirt-sleeves, tapped one of his jade earplugs and scowled, muttering something beneath his breath about the unseemly waste of so much blood.

There was some concern over what would become of the ship, without the navigator to guide her through underspace. Would the Crosstime Express drift helpless in that strange realm, never to return to the sane security of space-time, much less their intended destination? Those fears were quickly put to rest, however, when more seasoned intercontinua travelers among them explained about the standard practice of employing second navigators in the event of emergency. All agreed that brutal murder was likely not one of the anticipated emergencies, but were nevertheless relieved the protocol was in place.

A few of the crew mingled with the passengers, as the captain had evicted all but Doctor Ortiz, himself, and the bosun from the medical bay for the duration of the autopsy, and the crewmen were just as unsettled by the unexpected and brutal slaying as the passengers. The steward made a desolatory attempt to lighten the mood by playing music hall tunes on the aluminum grand piano, but abandoned the attempt in moments after catching a sharp glance from Starkweather.

Finally, the captain returned and gave a full accounting of the situation to the others. It appeared, he said, that the navigator had been assaulted at her post by an unknown assailant, and stabbed repeatedly with a slim blade. Nothing further was known about the incident, but the captain assured the passengers that the crew would be conducting a thorough investigation, and that on their arrival in Helium the matter would be remanded to the Crosstime Line and the authorities to investigate fully. In the meantime, however, the passengers should sleep soundly in the knowledge that he had increased the ship’s onboard security, posting armed crewmen in all of the companion-ways and public areas day and night, and that he would allow nothing to threaten the safety of the passengers.

At the captain’s side was a man of middle age with a double chin and tufts of hair sticking from his ears, who had the sigil of a seer emblazoned on the blue-and-gold rosette pinned to his lapel.

“Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce Mr. Tanacre, our ship’s second navigator,” the captain said. “You have my complete assurances that Tanacre will be able to guide our course successfully through the remainder of our voyage.”

Some of the passengers evidently harbored concerns about the man’s qualifications, but it was Engel who stepped forward to give those concerns voice.

“How do we know that this tub of guts has the stuff to get the job done?”

The second navigator seemed flustered by the brusque and outright rude manner of the man, but with a glance to the captain he calmly explained. “Well,” he began, his voice quavering slightly, “while my own mastery of the talent of seeing is not nearly so powerful or refined as that of the late navigator, still I am confident in my ability to fulfill my duties.”

Engel narrowed his eyes. “Just what do you mean, ‘no nearly so powerful’?”

“Well,” the navigator explained, with mounting confidence, “the late navigator was so powerful a seer that she might even have been able to read another’s thoughts if she so chose, and at the very least could have detected any extremes of emotion or distress onboard the Express.” He paused, then humbly added, “I, on the other hand, am able merely to peer through underspace into other worlds, helping chart the Express’s course through this tumultuous region.”

“Thank you, Tanacre,” the captain interrupted. “And thank you,” he said to the passengers, “for your patience and understanding in these unfortunate circumstances. Now, the second navigator is needed at his post if we are to reach our off-route stop tomorrow.”

Captain and navigator excused themselves, and then singly or in pairs the passengers drifted away from the salon and back to their individual cabins for the night.

###

The following day passed quickly, with most of the passengers seeming to prefer the solitude of their cabins to the exposure of the public spaces, and so it was not until the evening meal that most of them were gathered together again. At the captain’s insistence, the first class passengers had joined him at the captain’s table, which had been expanded by additional leaves for the occasion.

Whether by happenstance or design, the three men of the security detachment had been seated as far from the captain as possible. And when Engel began to belabor the captain about the failure of the crew to locate the killer, it wasn’t hard to imagine that the placement had been by design.

Starkweather found herself seated next to the two Indian princesses. Chatting amiably over appetizers and aperitifs, the young ladies with the former and Starkweather with the latter, it eventuated that the two Hindus were wealthy heiresses from an alternative dominated by South Asia, and were on one last grand voyage together before one of them went off to university and the other got married. They hadn’t traveled far at all from home before, and were almost as wide-eyed at the wonders of the Myriad as the backwater security detachment, though the young ladies handled it with considerably more grace.

Still, there were some realities of intercontinua travel that came as a surprise to them. For example, one of the two mentioned having been accosted back in Starkweather’s Texico by a young man who insisted that he knew her, when the young lady knew for a fact that they’d never met. The young man had pressed the issue, referring to some intimate history that they’d supposedly shared, and it was only with the assistance of passing Texican Ranger that the young lady had been able to extricate herself from the man’s grip.

Starkweather, taking pains to reassure the young women about the safety of the streets of her native Waterloo, explained how worlds which were nearest one another in the Myriad, whose histories diverged in the relatively recent past, could produce nearly identical duplicates of the same person, one in each alternative. But while the two duplicates might resemble one another physically, sharing a common point of origin, their own personal histories would diverge as much and as quickly as did the histories of their world. Such misunderstandings and misidentifications as the young women had encountered were actually quite common in intercontinua travel. With a sly smile, Starkweather confided that she’d pretended to be her own duplicate, on several different occasions, just to avoid uncomfortable reunions with her own past associates.

Later, after the first course arrived, conversation around the table turned, as it often did, to politics. There was some dissention around the table about the League of Worlds, and particularly its noninterference accords. The League, to which the native alternatives of most of the passengers and crew belonged, worked to prevent the disruption of developing worlds, in the hopes that worlds unaware of the existence of the Myriad might not be exploited by their more technologically advanced neighbors. However, as others around the table were quick to point out, the noninterference accords were only enforceable among member alternatives. Others, and in particular the Tenth Imperium, an intercontinua power which dominated nearly as many alternatives as belonged to the League of Worlds, in particular had a long history of interference. And, in fact, it was a customary tactic of the Imperium to offer intercontinua technology to worlds which had not yet discovered the principle of translocation or yet developed the Talents, in exchange for their allegiance to the Tenth Imperium.

The ambassador from the Reformed Dynast of Heliopolis, who had remained silent through most of the discussion, raised a grim specter when he suggested the possibility that the differing philosophies of the League and the Tenth Imperium might one day lead to armed conflict between the two bodies. It would be regrettable, the ambassador insisted, but seemed to him to be an inevitability. Something of a pall fell over the table, as the ambassador’s dire assessment settled in.

It was at this point, rushing to fill the silence, that Engel switched from opprobrium, directed at the captain and crew, to self-aggrandizement, directed at himself and his people. He boasted about how scientists of his own nation-state had independently discovered translocation the year before, and made contact with other worlds in short order. And that his own island nation boasted a disproportionately high number of Talents, or so he believed, including a member of his own detachment. He indicated the man with the piercing blue eyes, and explained that he had been found to have some ability to send, though understandably undeveloped and untrained.

Starkweather seemed unable to resist deflating the man, as puffed up as he was. She pointed out, casually, that in her own alternative it had been less than a decade and a half since William James pioneered the development of psychic abilities, fortuitously just in time for Nikola Tesla to complete the translocation engine. And yet with only a few years head-start, her own alternative was rapidly becoming a key player in intercontinua commerce, while his home was still barely dipping their toes into the shallow end of underspace.

Engel blustered, cheeks puffed and red, but failed to mount any effective retort, and when the next course arrived on the table, the conversation drifted on.

###

After dinner, Captain N’Diklam was joined by the bosun and the cook’s mate in an impromptu recital. All three men hailed from the western shores of Africa in their respective alternatives, and had brought onboard sabar drums crafted from the wood of the baobab tree; though they came from widely divergent histories, the rhythm of the drums seemed to cut across the Myriad. While he was the commanding officer of the ship, in their informal ensembles N’Diklam played the Lambe, the squat barrel-shaped bass drum, letting the cook’s mate set the tempo with the tall, slender Sabar N’Der, leaving the bosun to play the tenor Talmbat.

The rhythm of the sabar drums reverberated through the ship, and for a short while, at least, the tense atmosphere of the past day seemed to lighten, if only a little.

###

On the way back to her cabin, Vivian Starkweather nearly collided with Doctor Ortiz, who was visibly upset. With the promise of a nightcap of Tennessee whisky and a fine Virginian cigarillo, Starkweather lured the woman to her cabin, and there got from her the reasons for her distress.

The doctor’s report about the late navigator, it appeared, had differed in significant detail to that relayed by the captain to the passengers. Rather than being stabbed to death, the doctor explained, the amount of blood found on the navigator’s body suggested that the woman’s heart had stopped pumping long before she had died. In other words, the navigator had been dead before the knife had ever been plunged into her body.

“A sender,” Starkweather said, nodding.

“It isn’t unheard of,” the doctor answered, plainly distressed. “A powerful enough suggestion could convince the mind to stop the heart’s beating.”

Starkweather took a long drag of her cigarillo, thoughtfully.

“What I don’t understand is,” the doctor went on, both hands wrap tightly around her mug of whisky, “if the killer was a sender, why stab a body that’s already dead?”

Starkweather threw back the rest of her own whisky in a single shot, then wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. “Darlin’, that’s a fine question.”

###

Klaxons sounding in the middle of the night disturbed the slumber of the crew, and even woke most of the passengers in their sound-proofed cabins. It was a familiar sound in intercontinua travel, and hardly a cause for serious alarm, but even the seasoned travelers like Starkweather found it difficult to go back to sleep while the ship was under attack.

Beyond the pressurized hull of the Crosstime Express, the strange denizens of underspace swarmed, intent on consuming the ship and all within her. From time to time one ventured near enough that their diamond-hard hide brushed against the outer hull, sending vibrations rattling through the ship, setting teeth and nerves on edge.

Though virtually indestructible, the monstrous creatures of underspace were thinking beings, even if those thoughts were concerned only with their endless appetites and boundless rages. And since they thought, the creatures were susceptible to the talents of a sender. Like all the ships of the Crosstime Line, the Express numbered a sender among its crew as defender, on hand to project negative thoughts into the alien minds of the underspace dwellers, driving them away.

A quarter of an hour after the attack began the klaxons sounded the all clear, and the passengers and crew returned to their beds.

The next morning at breakfast, Starkweather overheard the ship’s steward chatting with the pair of Hindu princesses at the next table over. The steward related that he had heard the ship’s defender say that, while she was in the process of repelling the attack, that she sensed someone else assisting in the defense. At that hour, though, the second defender, who was her normal backup in such circumstances, was below decks and insensate with drink, and in no position to conjure thoughts within his own mind, much less project them into someone else’s.

As he passed by her table, Starkweather asked the steward to fetch her a fresh cup of coffee, complaining that the one from which she’d been drinking had gone cold. And if the steward noticed the tightly folded piece of paper which Starkweather had tucked between the cup and saucer she handed him, he gave no indication.

###

Under normal circumstances, the Crosstime Express made no stops between the terminus on the one end and Helium on the other. On this journey, though, an off-route stop had been announced in advance, to retrieve the security detachment’s sovereign. It seemed that, having only recently made contact with other worlds, having just mastered the principle of translocation and the rudiments of the talents, this new alternative’s application for admittance to the League of Worlds had been accepted, and the sovereign would now be journeying to the headquarters of the League to sign the charter. It was something of a signal honor, since only delegates from member worlds and their personal security retinues were allowed within the walls of League headquarters itself.

The stop was scheduled for later in the afternoon on the second day of the voyage. In midmorning, the passengers lingered over coffee at table while breakfast was cleared away. The only first class passenger not present was the member of the security detachment with the piercing blue eyes, who appeared to have slept late, and joined his two companions at the table looking bleary-eyed and squinting. A few moments after the blue-eyed man sat down, the ship’s steward Patrick entered the room, and then in full view of the passengers collapsed to the deck with a pained expression.

While Patrick was being helped to the medical bay for examination and treatment by the Berber scholars, a klaxon began to sound on the ship, which most of the passengers mistakenly took to signal another incursion by underspace denizens. Starkweather and a few of the others quickly pointed out that the sequence of notes was all wrong, and that it signaled another danger instead. Fire.

###

There was, in the end, only one fatality, though several more of the crew were injured in the blaze. The fire had broken out in the cargo hold, and since the hatches had all been closed and secured, only a single compartment was affected. A crewman had been caught in the blaze, and not discovered until after the fire had been completely extinguished. And while he was badly burned, all of his clothing and body hair scorched off, he was quickly identified as one of the relief crew who had boarded at the terminus, shortly before the passengers. He had been a solitary figure, with a bushy beard, who kept to himself with his eyes down and his mouth shut. None in the crew could remember exchanging more than a dozen words with him, and those only related to his work.

The fire appeared to have been the result of a dropped match, a careless mistake that had set alight a bolt of inflammable material, part of a shipment of dry goods bound for Helium. What the crewman had been doing in the cargo hold was unclear, but it was assumed that he had sneaked off from his supervisors to smoke some illicit substance or other, the use of intoxicants being not unknown among ship’s crew, though most such substances were contraband throughout League worlds.

A second death, following so closely on the heels of the navigator’s murder, was unsettling to some onboard, but it wasn’t until the dead man’s effects were examined that any connection between the two was suspected. However, when a thin-bladed knife, still darkened with the navigator’s blood, was found in the dead man’s trunk, along with a handwritten letter apparently in the navigator’s own hand, rebuffing the crewman’s crude and unwanted advances, an apparent narrative began to emerge.

The crewman, it would seem, had been a spurned lover, who in a fit of jealous rage had stabbed the navigator to death, when she refused to return his affections. When he had in short order been caught in an unexpected conflagration, it has been simply a matter of just desserts.

The captain considered it a fait accompli, and the case closed, as he explained once he’d gathered all of the passengers into the drawing room.

But not everyone was convinced.

“I’m sorry, captain,” Vivian Starkweather said, setting her reticule down on a chair and stepping forward, “but the second death does not solve the mystery of the first. It only compounds it.”

The captain cocked an eyebrow, intrigued, but Engel, under some stress over the impending arrival of his sovereign, was somewhat more agitated.

“And just who, madam, do you think you are?” he asked, red-faced.

With a smile, Starkweather reached into the pocket of her jacket, and produce a badge on which is embossed a stylized human eye and the motto “We Never Sleep.”

Engel looked at the badge uncomprehendingly, but the other passengers whispered to one another in hushed tones, muttering the word “Pinkerton.”

Starkweather flipped the leather wallet shut over the badge and slipped it back into her pocket. “What I am, as of now, is the law around these parts.”

###

“What business has a Pinkerton on my boat?” Captain N’Diklam asked, unsmiling.

“My outfit has been contracted by the Crosstime Line to ferret out a smuggling ring that seems to be using the Express as one if its principal conduits.” She paused, and then almost distractedly, added, “You might want to find a third for your little drum group, captain. You should likely go ahead and take the bosun into custody, along with those two.” She pointed at the pair of Russian monks. “The three of them are the main players in the smuggling ring, though there may be one or two others onboard that we haven’t identified yet.”

The captain didn’t bother to question her, but snapped his fingers and ordered two of his crewmen to take the Russians into custody, and ordered them to locate the bosun and take him in hand, as well. The Russians, objecting loudly if unconvincingly, were dragged from the room.

“And you say that this smuggling ring is responsible for killing my navigator and crewman?” N’Diklam asked, puzzled.

“Nope.” Starkweather shook her head, then stuck a cigarillo between her teeth and struck a match on the edge of a table. “The smuggling ring’s a coincidence, I figure. The killings are unconnected.” She held the lit match before her face, her long nose and strong jaw in stark relief in the flickering light, giving her otherwise ruggedly handsome features a somewhat demonic aspect. “But we’ll get to your killer soon enough. The way I figure it, the killer is one of the people in this room.”

“This is outrageous!” shouted Engel.

“You reckon?” Starkweather smiled, and leaned over to pick up her handbag from the chair beside her, the cigarillo still clenched between her teeth. “Think maybe it’s you?”

Engel opened his mouth to object, then slammed his teeth shut again, eyes wide and bulging. “I won’t stand for this!” He motioned for his two companions to follow, and then turned to the left to leave. Before he’d gone two steps, though, he collided with the man with the piercing blue eyes, who had turned right instead of left and blundered right into him.

“There it is,” Starkweather said with a smile. Snapping her reticule open, she reached in and pulled out a heavy Colt Navy revolver, which she cocked and pointed at the head of the man with the piercing blue eyes. “I’d ask you not to make a move, friend, not so much as a twitch, or I’m liable to pull this here trigger.”

Engel turned to look at his companion, evidently expecting to see the same outrage and annoyance he himself felt at this poor treatment, but was surprised instead to find the man staring calmly at Starkweather, piercing blue eyes narrowed and lip curled in a sneer. “Barclay, what’s this all about?”

The man ignored the other, but continued to stare at Starkweather. “If you know what I am, you know I could drop you before you even noticed a twinge.”

“That’s as maybe,” Starkweather said with a shrug, “but you can only think so many thoughts at once. Drop me and my partner’ll finish you off before you take another breath.”

From the door to the drawing room came the sound of a revolver being cocked, and the passengers as one turned to see the ship’s steward in the open doorway, a Webley revolver in hand, pointed at the man’s head.

“Patrick Lightfoot Carmody,” the steward said, flashing a badge like the one Starkweather had produced. “Pinkerton.”

The blue-eyed man sneered, but remained motionless. After a long silence, he said, in an unfamiliar accent, “How did you know?”

“Wrong place, wrong time, friend.” Starkweather slid onto the chair, crossing her legs but keeping her pistol aimed at his head. “We were after other fish entirely and you just fell into our lap. And if not for the knife, we might not have guessed a thing.” She paused, thoughtfully. “What was it? Were you worried that a stopped heart not might not be assumed to be natural causes, but that someone might suspect there was a sending assassin onboard? So you make it look like a mundane murder, instead, which has benefits of its own.”

“So he killed the navigator?” the captain said, jerking a thumb at the man. “But why?”

“The navigator was incidental,” Starkweather explained. “He planned to kill someone else, and the navigator being such a strong seer meant that she had a good chance of picking up on the crime. So she was eliminated to clear the way for another murder.”

“The crewman,” the captain said, nodding.

“But why would Barclay want to kill your crewman?” Engel demanded to know.

“No reason at all,” Starkweather said. “The question to ask, rather, is why would that crewman want to kill your man?”

Engel looked at her, confusion evident, while the blue-eyed man beside him stiffened.

“See, that isn’t Barclay,” Starkweather went on. “Or at least, not the one you know. I think you’ll find, if you were to quiz him, that he won’t be quite so up on trivia about your home alternative as the man you knew.”

Engel turned from her to the man beside him, and edged away, cautiously. “B-Barclay?” he said, disbelievingly. “Is... it is true?”

The blue-eyed man didn’t bother answering Engel, but continued to glare at Starkweather.

“Thing is,” she went on, “your Barclay wasn’t really the point of all this, either, but just another incident means to an end. See, once your sovereign comes onboard, the next stop is Helium, and the headquarters of the League of Worlds. And nobody, but nobody, can get into the headquarters itself unless they’re a representative of a member world. Unless...” She paused, significantly.

“Unless they’re part of the diplomat’s security retinue,” the captain finished.

“Got it in one,” Starkweather answered. “So the point of all of this was just to get someone in a position to walk through those golden doors uncontested, right into the midst of the League’s ruling council. And if that someone had the ability to plant powerful suggestions in the minds of others, powerful enough even to help ward off underspace monsters when he thought his ship might get eaten en route, then I imagine implanting enough suggestions to stop the hearts of the entire ruling council wouldn’t be beyond his abilities, and that he could do a considerable amount of damage before anyone managed to stop them.”

“So who is this?” the captain asked, narrowing his gaze at the blue-eyed man.

“I imagine he answers to the name Barclay, just like Engel’s late friend did,” she said. “They’re dead ringers and are both senders, after all. But I wouldn’t be surprised if this version knew the Tenth Imperium national anthem back to front, and was no fan of the League of Worlds’ notion of noninterference.”

The blue-eyed man drew his lips into a tight line. “I admit to nothing.”

“Figured you wouldn’t. But I reckon the League has a seer somewhere that can get past those shields of yours.”

“Shields?” N’Diklam repeated.

“I can explain that,” said the ship’s former steward, the young man who’d identified himself as Patrick Lightfoot Carmody. “I’m something of a seer myself, though I can’t manage much more than a surface scan of someone’s thoughts. This morning Viv slipped me a note, telling me about her encounter with Doctor Ortiz and asking me to scan the crew and passengers. I waited until everybody had sat down to breakfast, but as soon as I tried to see, I ran smack into someone’s mental defenses. You don’t get that kind of mental discipline just by accident. I knew then that the killer had to be someone in that room.”

“When the supposed crewman was found dead, we were able to work out the motive, and narrow the suspects down to Mr. Engel and his friends. But we couldn’t be sure which of the three was.” Starkweather took a final drag of her cigarillo and then ground it out under the heel of her dinosaur-skin boot. “We just had to keep an eye out, and wait for one of you to trip up.” She smiled, and then to the blue-eyed man said, “Literally, in your case.”

###

The Express was anchored at Engel’s backwater alternative, which had only just discovered the secret of translocation. The suspected murderer had been rendered unconscious by a serum provided by Doctor Ortiz, and strapped securely to a gurney for good measure, and would be handed over to the authorities when the ship reached Helium the next morning. At the moment, though, the ship hung like a balloon over a muddy field, while a small brass band played a fanfare for an old woman dressed in lace-trimmed black.

Intercontinua craft always reentered space-time at the same coordinates that they left, so having entered underspace from one Texico, they had translocated to another. This one was part of a larger Louisiana, and subject to a British crown that ruled more than half of the Earth. This Louisiana, though, was as much a backwater to this Britannic Empire as the alternative itself was to the Myriad, it seemed, if the expressions of the sovereign and her retinue were any indication of their feelings for finding themselves here in the muck and the mud, so far from Buckingham Palace.

Carmody and Starkweather stood at the landing, watching the old woman mounting the gangplank. She was evidently used to more pomp than the Crosstime Express offered, and was clearly displeased to be treated so much like a regular passenger.

“I feel almost like I should bow,” Patrick said, smiling around his Turkish cigarette. The young man was clearly relieved to be a passenger himself for a change, and not a member of the crew, but Starkweather had merely said that the experience had likely done him some good, forcing him to actually work for a change. And besides, as a steward he’d had an easier time pitching woo at the Indian princesses who had caught his fancy, as he seemed to have lost something of his allure now that they didn’t see him as a mere menial.

“Why the devil would you do a thing like that?” Starkweather said, and took a sip of whisky from her flask.

“Well,” Carmody answered, looking somewhat sheepish, “this alternative is more like my home than most, and when last I saw my England there was a duplicate of her on the throne there, as well.”

“I don’t know, Pat, I just don’t much get on with kings and queens. In my alternative, we Texicans never had ‘em, and the Brits got rid of them back in the days of Cartwright and Paine, back even before the Anglo-American Confederation got started.”

Carmody nodded. “Well, people back home had all sorts of strange notions. They figured that white skin was better than dark, that Britain was where the best white skin could be found, and that Queen Victoria was the best of the whole lot.”

“Victoria?” Starkweather said, and cast an appraising eye at the woman. At that moment, the woman slipped at the foot of the gangplank, and fell sprawling into the mud. “I don’t know, Pat, doesn’t look much like victory to me.”

(c) 2008 Monkeybrain, Inc.

Labels: freefiction

# posted by Chris Roberson @ 9:16 AM 2 comments

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# posted by Chris Roberson @ 11:15 AM 2 comments

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# posted by Chris Roberson @ 11:00 AM 4 comments

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# posted by Chris Roberson @ 8:18 AM 2 comments

Timmy Gromp and the Golden Hen of Time
by Chris Roberson

Timmy Gromp clutched the golden chicken tight to his chest, the metal cold even through the thin fabric of his windbreaker, and peered into the darkness of the dungeon passage. Now he wasn’t sure if he’d ever get home.

“Are you sure we’re going the right way?”

“Yes,” growled the little badger at his side, becoming irritated by the incessant questions. “Now hurry along, there isn’t much time.”

Timmy chewed his lower lip. Now he was seriously wishing that he’d never picked up the chicken statue in the junkshop, while his parents were next door drinking weird coffee drinks, eating scones, and checking their email and stock tickers on their phones. But how was he to know that the statue wasn’t an action figure from the Gobopokomeon cartoon show, but was actually the linchpin of all creation, the thing that held the multiverse together? It wasn’t until he’d given it a polish with the sleeve of his windbreaker and the Chartreuse Fairy had appeared that he’d realized that it was something much more than a toy from a TV show, and by then it was far too late.

“Hurry along, little master,” the badger growled. “Only moments remain before time runs out, and the Uncreator will hold sway.”

“Okay, okay,” Timmy answered, whining more than he intended. Then, under his breath, he muttered, “Assbug.”

The Chartreuse Fairy hadn’t even given Timmy a chance to back out. And it wasn’t as if he’d even paid for the statue. She’d just floated before him, all glittery and twinkling, and told him that what he held was actually the Golden Hen of Time, a central cog in the clockwork of creation, lost millennia before. And that by discovering it, he was obliged to return it to its sacred resting place in the Caves of Secrets, in another dimension, filled with all sorts of weird creatures with bad breath, all of them hungry to eat little boys from the human world.

Of course, the Chartreuse Fairy hadn’t actually mentioned the bad breath, but it hadn’t taken Timmy too long to work that one out on his own.

So while all Timmy wanted to do was put the chicken statue back on the junkshop shelf and rush next door to find his parents and their weird coffees and scones and phones, instead he’d suddenly found himself transported to another dimension, all alone under a starless grey sky, at the edge of a desert of blue sands. If not for the badger, who showed up a few minutes later, Timmy would probably be still out there, shivering in his windbreaker, waiting for some monster to come and eat him.

Of course, then at least he wouldn’t be down in this spooky dungeon, so maybe that wouldn’t have been so bad, after all.

“The left path,” the badger said, pointing with his sword as the dungeon passage branched in two before them. The flickering orange light of the torch in the badger’s other paw reached only a few yards into either branch, with only murky blackness beyond.

Timmy supposed that, with all of the other strange things that had happened to him over the years, over and over and over again, he shouldn’t be surprised when a badger in hip boots and a Three Musketeer hat with a sword at his hip appeared out of nowhere. But Timmy was embarrassed to remember that he’d wet himself, just a little, and squeaked like a mouse caught in a trap, jumping a few feet in the air in fright.

Then the badger had explained that he’d been dispatched by the Chartreuse Fairy to aid him in his quest—whatever that meant—and that he knew the way to the Cave of Secrets, at the desert’s far side.

Timmy had tried to convince the badger to take the chicken statue himself, and to let Timmy go back home, but the badger had explained that the rules governing the Golden Hen of Time were pretty strict on this point, and that having been the one to discover the thing, he was the only one able to carry it the rest of the way.

By the time they were halfway across the desert, blue sand stuck in place Timmy didn’t even know he had, Timmy was beginning to seriously hate the Chartreuse Fairy. If she was going to send some sort of animal helper for his “mission,” why couldn’t it have been a giant eagle that could fly him all the way there in seconds? Which wasn’t to say that the badger wasn’t pretty quick on his little feet, though.

“What’s that sound?” Timmy drew up short, peering wide-eyed into the darkness before them. A strange, clacking noise echoed out of the dungeon passage up ahead, like the sound of a hundred teeth clacking together, or a box of dominoes falling on the floor.

“One of the guardians of the Cave of Secrets,” the badger answered, tightening his paw around his sword’s handle. “Prepare yourself.”

The Chartreuse Fairy had explained that, if Timmy couldn’t return the Golden Hen of Time to its resting place in the Cave, something called the Uncreator would succeed in unraveling all of existence, winding it back to the beginning like a video tape on rewind. But instead of hitting play again, the Uncreator would just toss the tape in the trash, or something like that, and nothing that had ever existed would ever exist again.

The Fairy had also said that, now that the Golden Hen had been discovered, there would be others who would want it for themselves. That’s why the badger had come along, not only to show Timmy the way, but to defend him against anyone who might want to steel the statue from him. But the Fairy hadn’t said anything about any “guardians” they’d have to contend with, as well.

When the guardian clacked out of the darkness and into the light of the badger’s torch, Timmy realized why the Fairy hadn’t mentioned it. If she had, he’d probably have stayed up in the blue desert, and told the badger to go bite himself.

The guardian towered over them, standing eight feet tall if it was an inch. It was skeletal, without a bit of flesh or muscle, a collection of bones moving like a living being, it’s motions jerky and halting, like the stop-motion animation in the old movies that Timmy’s dad was always trying to get him to watch. It stood reared up on its hind legs, with wicked blades affixed to the ends of its forelegs, and front the sides of its fleshless skull rose long, pointed horns.

“It’s a cow,” Timmy said, gawping.

“It is a demon,” the badger said, stepping ahead of Timmy, the point of his sword raised before him. “Stand back, I’ll handle this.”

The badger rushed forward, a blur of motion, his tiny sword darting in and out, flashing in the torchlight like summer lightning.

It was, all things considered, a truly excellent sword-fight, but Timmy only caught bare glimpses of it, his hands covering his eyes, shrieking like a little girl.

“Come along,” the badger said, “we’ve lost precious time.”

Timmy lowered his hands, and saw the now immobile and lifeless cow bones scattered on the passage floor.

“Hurry,” the badger urged, pushing ahead.

Timmy clutched the cold statue to his chest and followed behind, mincing around the scattered bones.

##

Finally, after several more very exciting and terrifying encounters, they reached the heart of the dungeon maze, the Cave of Secrets. And there, atop a plinth of black stone, lay the altar of the Golden Hen of Time.

“Hurry, young master,” the badger said, his little black eyes narrowed to slits in his furry little face. “Only moments remain! Place the idol on the altar, or we are undone.”

“Okay.” Timmy started towards the plinth, the flickering torchlight casting strange shadows across the stone floor. He held the Golden Hen in both hands, eager to be rid of it. “Then can I go home?”

Before Timmy had gone halfway to the altar, a strange voice from the shadows stopped him in his tracks. “I’ll take that golden dingus, if you don’t mind?”

Timmy whirled around, startled. A man emerged into the torchlight. He was dressed in a cheap suit, with a blonde buzz cut, and his eyes hard and cold behind the thick black frames of his glasses. Beneath his suit-coat his shirt strained across a round belly, and steam rose in curls from the coffee mug in his hands.

“The accursed Mike Bretz!” the badger snarled, paw tight around his sword’s hilt.

The fat man sneered at the badger. “Who were you expecting, Edmund Wharton-Fogg?” He turned back to Timmy. “I’ve been looking for that little chicken for a long time, kid, so why don’t you hand it over before I do something suitably horrible to you.”

“Never!” the badger yelled. “You’ll not have it, on my life!” He glanced over a furry shoulder at Timmy, his furry face shadowed by his Three Musketeers hat. “You take care of the idol, young master, I’ll take care of this interloper.”

The badger rushed forward, swinging his sword in one hand, his torch held high in the other, a battle cry on his little black lips.

“Oh, please,” the fat man said, rolling his eyes. Taking a sip of coffee from his mug, he snapped the fingers of his other hand.

Suddenly, the flame atop the badger’s torch raged outwards, becoming a miniature inferno, a tight ball of fire that engulfed the brave little badger completely. Already rushing towards the fat man, his momentum carried him forward even as the flames roasted him alive. Fur burned off into ash, and as the flames died back down in an instant, the smoldering carcass of the badger skidded to a halt at the fat man’s feet, the blackened sword clattering uselessly to the floor.

The fat man bent down, and taking hold of one of the badger’s little charred limbs, snapped it off and brought it to his mouth. He took a crunching bite of meat, burnt skin, and gristle, and chewed thoughtfully.

“Hmm,” the fat man said. “Could use a little pepper.”

Timmy couldn’t remember a time that he was more scared, and he was sure that he’d wet himself again, if only a little, but as he watched his brave little badger guide sacrificing himself, he knew that if he didn’t do something, and fast, he’d end up much the same way. So while the fat man wasn’t looking, Timmy had sidled over towards the plinth, and was in the process of reaching up and putting the Golden Hen of Time into place before the fat man noticed what he was doing. With the torch finally extinguished, the Cave of Secrets was lit only by a faint green glow, so Timmy wasn’t quite sure he was putting the statue in the right place, but hoped he could get it close enough to count.

“No!” the fat man said, his face twisted in annoyance, as Timmy slammed the statue home.

The green glow which lit the cave began to grow brighter, shifting up the spectrum to yellow, then orange, then red, as an eerie groaning noise issued from the walls around them.

“Can I go home now?” Timmy said, eyes wide and fearful.

The fat man rushed over to the plinth, dropping his coffee cup onto the floor without a second thought. “What have you done, you little puke?” The man reached Timmy’s side, and as the red glow glared brighter, looked from Timmy to the altar and back again. “You assbug, do you know what you’ve done?” He pointed a finger at the Golden Hen of Time, its little golden legs just visible above the altar’s surface. “You’ve got it in upside down!”

The red glow glared brighter, and shifted to white, as the eerie grinding noise grew deafeningly loud. Then there was a flash, and a bang, and…

###

Timmy Gromp clutched the golden chicken tight to his chest, the metal cold even through the thin fabric of his windbreaker, and peered into the darkness of the dungeon passage. Now he wasn’t sure if he’d ever get home.

Labels: freefiction

# posted by Chris Roberson @ 8:56 AM 1 comments

Water-Dragon year, 28^th year of the Kangxi emperor

Cao Wen stood south of the Eastern Peace Gate of the Forbidden City, facing the entrance to the Eastern Depot. It was an unassuming building, dwarfed by the grandeur of the buildings on the opposite side of the concourse—the Six Ministries, the Court of State Ceremonial, and the Directorate of Astronomy, where the imperial astronomers studied the heavens, watchful of any signs or portents which might auger good or ill for the emperor. Only the Office of Transmission was less grand than the Eastern Depot, its function largely eliminated when the emperor had instituted the palace memorial system, requiring that each of his ministers and deputies communicate their reports to him directly in their own hand, for his eyes only.

At the Eastern Depot’s large, unadorned entrance, two guards stood at the ready, sabers sheathed at their sides, poleaxes in their hands. Cao displayed his signs of authority, which marked him as an authorized representative of the Ministry of War. One of the guards studied the papers closely, and then turned and motioned for Cao to accompany him, leaving the other at his post.

Following the guard into the main hall of the Eastern Depot, Cao’s eyes lit upon a plaque, on which a motto was engraved in simply crafted characters: “Heart and Bowels of the Court.”

“Please wait here,” the guard said with an abbreviated bow, “while this one fetches a superior.” Then, Cao’s papers still in hand, the guard disappeared through one of the many arches leading from the main hall.

Cao waited in silence, as agents of the Eastern Depot came and went, all about the emperor’s business. Most were clad in plain gray robes, and would not merit a second glance, were he to pass them on the street. Only a few wore the elaborate mantles which gave the emperor’s secret police their name—the Embroidered Guard.

After a few long moments, the guard reappeared, with an older man following close behind. In his simple cotton robes, this older newcomer could have easily passed for a fishmonger or merchant in textiles, thin wisps of mustaches drooping over his thick lips, his eyes half-lidded as though he were just waking from a long slumber. His face, frame, and hands displayed the softened edges that suggested he was a eunuch, one who had traded in his manhood for a life of imperial service.

“Return to your post,” the older man said to the guard, who replied only with a rigid nod.

“You are Cao Wen?” the older man says to him, without preamble.

Cao allowed that he was, and bowed lower than the man’s appearance would suggest was required. In such a setting, appearances could be deceiving.

“I am Director Fei Ren of the Eastern Depot.” The older man brandished the papers Cao had brought with him, which bore the chop of the Minister of War. “I understand you wish to speak with one of our guests?”

“Yes, O Honorable Director,” Cao said, bowing again, and lower this time, “it is the wish of his excellency the Minister of War that I should do so. It is believed that your... guest... has some intelligence that may be of use to the emperor, may-he-reign-ten-thousand-years.”

“This individual has been temporarily housed with us for some considerable time,” Director Fei answered. “Since before our emperor reached his age of majority. And not all that time spent in the Outside Depot, but some months and years in the Bureau of Suppression and Soothing, as well.”

Cao suppressed a shudder. He had heard only whispered rumors about what went on in the private chambers of the Bureau of Suppression and Soothing, which the Embroidered Guard used to elicit confessions from the most recalcitrant suspects.

Director Fei continued. “Any intelligence this individual had to offer has been long since documented, I would venture to say. And had we been able to extract a confession from him on his many crimes, he would long ago have gone under the executioner’s blade. I think you will find this one a spent fruit, all juices long since dried up, leaving nothing more than a desiccated husk of a man.”

“You are obviously much wiser in such matters than I, Honorable Director,” Cao said, with the appropriate tone of humility, “but such is my office to fulfill, and it would displease my master the Minister of War if I were to shirk my responsibility.”

Director Fei shrugged. “Very well. It is your own time that you waste. Come along and I will have one of my agents escort you into the Outside Depot.”

Director Fei waved over another man dressed in plain robes, this one nearer Cao’s own age of twenty years.

“Agent Gu Xuesen will escort you, Cao Wen. Now you must excuse me, as more pressing matters demand my attention.”

Cao bowed low, and Director Fei disappeared back into the shadows beyond the main hall.

“This way, sir,” Gu said, inclining his head, and starting towards one of the larger arches.

Agent Gu led Cao through the winding labyrinth of passages within the Eastern Depot. The building was larger inside than its exterior would suggest, largely a function of the snaking passages and innumerous small chambers and rooms. Frequently passages opened onto open-air courtyards, and just as frequently onto sunless, dank chambers that had never seen the light of day. And as they went, Agent Gu provided the name and use of each chamber and room.

Cao was surprised to find so talkative a member of the Embroidered Guard, who were widely known as a circumspect, and some might even say taciturn lot. When Agent Gu explained that he was only in his first years with the Embroidered Guard, and that he was required to complete his long years of training before being allowed to go beyond the walls of the Eastern Depot, his talkative manner became much more understandable. He clearly hungered for dialogue with someone nearer his own age, and while his training likely prohibited providing information when it is unnecessary, and when there is no advantage to be gained, his youthful hunger for distraction, in this instance at least, was getting the better of his discretion.

“And now, Cao Wen,” Agent Gu was saying, “we pass into that section known as the Inside Depot. This is the place used to house the most dangerous and serious suspects brought in by the Embroidered Guard. It is the most closely guarded of all the sections of the Eastern Depot, and none who are not of the Embroidered Guard may enter unescorted.”

They passed by a tall doorway, the door lacquered matte black, the frame painted a red the color of blood.

“And beyond this point,” Gu said, pointing to the door, “rests the Bureau of Suppression and Soothing.”

Cao flinched, despite himself. He had, of course, heard of the Bureau, though he labored not to call to mind the stories he had heard.

“Even through the reinforced walls and doors of the Bureau,” Gu went on, “which have been designed to dampen sound, screams and hideous wailing can occasionally be heard.”

They passed by the jet-and-scarlet doorway, turning a corner to a long corridor, and Cao tried to put the door and what lay beyond it out of his thoughts.

Continuing on, they came at last to a broad, open-air courtyard, surrounded on all sides by narrow doorways leading to small chambers. Men and women milled around in the bright morning sun, shuffling under the gaze of guards who perched atop towers positioned on the opposite sides of the courtyard, surmounted by banners on tall posts.

“This, finally, is the Outside Depot,” Gu explained, “in which guests of the Embroidered Guard are temporarily housed. Some have confessed to minor crimes which merit no more severe punishment than imprisonment, while others await the decision of the emperor on their final sentencing. Some few have yet to confess, but have been deemed by the Bureau of Suppression and Soothing as not likely to confess at any point in the future. As no conviction can be achieved without a confession, these few are returned to the Outside Depot, assuming they are not violent enough to merit imprisonment in the Inside Depot, to wait.”

“Wait for what?” Cao asked, casting his gaze across the dispirited faces before him.

“Some wait for a reprieve from the emperor, some wait for further evidence to come to light, while some just wait. For death to take them, one supposes.”

Agent Gu pointed to an ancient man sitting at the center of the courtyard, his legs folded under him, his full attention on the passage across the ground of the shadows of the two towers.

“That is the man you seek,” Agent Gu said. “That is Ling Xuan.”

###

Cao Wen sat opposite the ancient man in the interview chamber. Agent Gu waited beyond the door of iron-clad hardwood, which Cao doubted any sound could penetrate, short of a full-bodied bellow.

Cao had a sheaf of papers in front of him, while the old man sat with his shoulders slumped, his hands folded in his lap and the slack-jawed smile of an imbecile on his wrinkled face.

“Ling Xuan?” Cao repeated. The old man’s eyes rested on the simple wooden table between then, worn smooth by generations of hands. Cao could not help but wonder what other dialogues had played out across the table, over the long years since the Embroidered Guard was established in the days of the Yongle emperor, during the Bright Dynasty.

Still, though, the old man did not reply.

“Is that your name?”

The old man drew in a deep breath through his nostrils, blinked several times, and straightened up, all without lifting his eyes from the surface of the table. When he spoke, his voice was soft but with an underlying strength, like the sound of distant thunder.

“The swirls and curves of the wood from which this table is constructed call to mind the heavens and clouds picked out in golden thread on the longpao dragon robes I wore in the service of the Shunzhi emperor. Strange to think that they follow me, here, after all of these long years. Perhaps they seek to remind me of days past, when my circumstances were more auspicious.”

The man had spoken slowly, but without any pause between words, a single, breathless oration.

Cao looked at the table, and saw nothing but meaningless swirls and knots. Was the old man mad, and his search already proven in vain?

“Need I remind you,” Cao replied, his tone moderated but forceful, “that I come here on the authority of the Minister of War, who speaks with the voice of the Dragon Throne itself? Now, I ask again, is your name...”

“Yes,” the old man said, not raising his eyes. “Ling Xuan is my name.”

Cao nodded, sharply. “Good. And are you the same Ling Xuan who is listed here?”

Cao slid a piece of paper across the table, a copy he had recently made of the fragmentary inventory of the imperial archives of the Chongzhen emperor, one of the last of the Bright Dynasty, who ruled before the Manchu came down from the north and established the Clear Dynasty.

On the inventory was highlighted one item: A Narrative Of A Journey Into The East, To The Lands Which Lay Across The Ocean, With Particular Attention to the Mexica, by Ling Xuan, Provincial Graduate.

Ling looked at the paper for a long time, as though puzzling out a complex mathematical equation in his head. After a long moment he spoke, his voice the sound of distant thunder. “Such a long time ago.” And then he fell silent once more.

After a lengthy silence, the old man nodded, slowly, and raised his eyes to meet Cao’s.

“Yes,” Ling said. “I am he.”

“Good,” Cao said impatiently. “Now, I am sorry to report that all that is known about your account is the title, as it was among those records lost in the transition of power from the Bright Dynasty to the Clear. My purpose for coming here to interview you is...”

“Such a long time ago, but I can remember it all, as though it were yesterday.”

Cao paused, waiting to see if the old man would speak further after his interruption. When Ling remained silence, Cao nodded again and continued, “That is good, because...”

“When we are young,” Ling said, the distant thunder growing somewhat closer, “the days crawl by. I remember summers of my youth which seemed to last for generations. But as we grow older, the months and years flit by like dragonflies, one after another in their dozens. But by the calendar, a day is still a day, is it not? Why is it, do you suppose, that the duration of a span of time should seem so different to us in one circumstance than another?”

Cao shuffled the papers before him, impatiently. “I’m sure that I don’t know. Now, as I was saying...”

“I have begun to suspect that time is, in some sense I don’t yet fully comprehend, subjective to the viewer. What a day signifies to me is quite different than what it signifies to you. How strange my day might seem, were I able to see it through your eyes.”

“Ling Xuan, I insist that you listen to, and then answer, my questions.”

“We shall see how our day looks tomorrow, shall we?” Ling Xuan rose slowly to his feet, crossed to the door, and rapped on the metal cladding with a gnarled knuckle. “Perhaps then we shall have more perspective on the subjectivity of time.”

Cao jumped to his feet, raising his voice in objection. “Ling Xuan, I insist that you return to your seat and answer my questions!”

Agent Gu opened the door, in response to the knocking sound.

Ling smiled beatifically, looking back over his shoulder at Cao. “And if I insist to the sun that it stop in its courses, and remain unmoving in the heavens, do you suppose that it will?”

With that Ling Xuan turned and walked out of the chamber, nodding slightly to Agent Gu as he passed.

Cao raced to the door, his cheeks flushed with anger. “Agent Gu, bring him to heel!”

Agent Gu glanced after the back of the retreating prisoner.

“That old man survived more than a year in the Bureau of Suppression and Soothing,” Gu answered, “and never confessed. What do you suppose that I could do that would make him talk?”

Gu walked out towards the courtyard, and Cao followed behind, his hands twisted into trembling fists at his sides.

Ling had walked out into the sunlit courtyard, and he glanced back at Cao as he sat, gracefully folds his legs under him.

“Tomorrow, don’t forget,” he called to Cao. “Perhaps that will be the day in which we find answers.”

###

Back at the Ministry of War, across the concourse from the Eastern Depot, Cao Wen sat in his small cubicle, surveying the mounds of paper before him, hundreds of notes and maps and charts, the product of months’ work.

“Cao?” an impatient voice called from behind him, startling him.

Cao turned, pulse racing, to find the imposing figure of the Deputy Minister of War standing behind him.

“Deputy Minister Wu,” Cao said breathlessly, rising to his feet and bowing.

Wu waved him to return to his seat, an annoyed expression on his bread face. “Is it too much to hope that you have completed your survey of the archives, and your report on the Mexica is finally ready to present to the Minister?”

Cao blanched, and shook his head. “Your pardon, O Honorable Deputy Minister, but while my researches are very nearly complete, I still have one final resource to investigate before my survey is ready for review.”

“I take it you refer to this prisoner of the Eastern Depot? Were you not scheduled to interview him today?”

“Yes,” Cao answered reluctantly. “But our initial meeting was not entirely... productive. It is my intention to return to the Eastern Depot tomorrow to complete his interrogation.”

“Was this Ling Xuan forthcoming with strategic details about the Mexica? The emperor is most desirous of a complete analysis of the possibilities for invasion of the Mexic isthmus, once our pacification of Fusang is complete, and the Minister of War is most eager to present the Ministry’s findings on the matter.”

“The urgency is well understood, Deputy Minister.” Cao shifted uneasily on his bench. “But I believe this final interview will provide much needed detail for the survey, and greatly improve the emperor’s understanding of the strategic possibilities.”

“I suppose you are well aware of the fact that a survey well received by the Dragon Throne will do much to enhance the estimation of a scholar so far unable to pass the juren level examinations, and would greatly aid one’s chances of advancement within the imperial bureaucracy.”

Cao brightened, and sat straighter. “Most certainly, Deputy Minister.”

“The converse, however, is also true,” Wu said, his eyes narrowed, “and a report which displeases the Minister, to say nothing of displeasing the emperor, Son of Heaven, may-he-reign-ten-thousand-years, could do irreparable damage to a young bureaucrat’s career prospects. Such a one might find himself assigned to the far provinces, inspecting grain yield and calculating annual tax levies for the rest of his life.”

Cao swallowed hard. “It is understood, Deputy Minister.”

The Deputy Minister nodded. “Good,” he said, turning and walking briskly away. “See that it is not forgotten.”

###

The next day, Cao Wen stood over Ling Xuan, who again sat in the middle of the concourse, his eyes on the shadows on the ground.

“Note the shadows of the two towers,” Ling said without looking up, before Cao had announced himself. “The spires atop each function like the points atop an equatorial sundial. If one views the many doorways opening off the central courtyard as marking the hours, the shadows indicate the time of day, with the southern tower indicating the time in the summer months, when the sun is high in the sky, and the northern tower indicating the time in the winter, when the sun is lower.”

Ling at last looked up at Cao.

“Tell me,” the old man said, “do you suppose the architects of the Eastern Depot intended the shadows for this purpose, or is this merely an auspicious happenstance, the result of nothing more than divine providence?”

Cao Wen glanced over at Agent Gu, who stood beside him, but Gu only shrugged, helplessly.

“I intend to complete our interview this morning, Ling Xuan,” Cao answered.

“Morning,” Ling Xuan replied with a smile. “Afternoon. Evening and night. Shadows measure the hours by day, and drips of water by night. But if the towers were to be moved, what would become of the hours? In the days of the Southern Song dynasty, a great astronomer named Guo Shoujing constructed at Linfen in Shanxi province a grand observatory, an intricate mechanism of bronze, perfectly aligned with the heavens. Later, in the Bright Dynasty, it was moved to Southern Capital. Though the instruments which constituted the observatory were no less intricate or precise after the move, they were intended for another geographic location and, after being relocated, no longer aligned with the heavens. The observatory no longer measured the movements of the celestial. What had been an invaluable tool became merely statuary. How many of us, removed from our proper position, likewise lose our usefulness?”

Cao tapped his foot, and scowled. He was convinced there was still meat to be found in amongst the mad offal of the old man’s ramblings, but he wasn’t sure he had the patience to find it.

“You will accompany me to the interview chamber,” Cao said, keeping his tone even, “where we can continue our conversation like civilized beings.”

“As you wish,” Ling said, smiling slightly, and rose to his feet on creaking joints.

###

“Before the establishment of the Clear Dynasty, before the Manchu rescued the Middle Kingdom from the corruption of the Bright Dynasty, you journeyed on one of the Treasure Fleet voyages to the far side of the world, traveling east to Khalifah, Mexica, and Fusang.”

It was a statement, not a question, but Cao Wen paused momentarily, nevertheless, to give Ling Xuan the opportunity to reply.

“I was a young scholar then,” Ling said, “not yet having passed my jinshi examinations and become a Presented Scholar. I traveled to the Northern Capital from my home in the south, to serve the Dragon Throne as best as I was able. My skills, apparently, were best served as chronicler aboard a Treasure Fleet dragon boat, and my skills with languages were likewise of some utility. The passage across the broad sea took long months, before landfall on the shores of Khalifah.”

“I want to ask you about Mexica. The title of your account suggests that...”

“When I served the Shunzhi emperor, I once received a legation from Khalifah. But when the Shunzhi emperor went to take his place in the heavens, and the Kangxi emperor took the Dragon Throne, Han bureaucrats such as I quickly fell from favor. The Regent Aobai reversed as many of the policies of Shunzhi as he could, attempting to reassert Manchu domination, feeling that the emperor had permitted too many Han to enter positions of authority. There were insufficient numbers of qualified Manchu to replace all of the Han serving in the bureaucracy, so Aobai had to console himself by replacing all the Han already in post with candidates more easily cowed by his authority.”

Cao sighed heavily. The old man rambled like a senile grandmother, but Cao had confirmed that he had indeed traveled among the Mexica, so he could well have the intelligence Cao needed to advance.

“To return to the subject of the Mexica...”

“I hated Aobai for years, you must understand.” The old man shook his head, sadly. “He had taken from me my life and my livelihood. When he found me too highly respected in the Office of Transmission to eliminate without scandal, he had me arraigned on trumped-up charges of treason and remanded to the custody of the Embroidered Guard. Consider the irony, then, that eight years later, after Kangxi had reached his majority, the young emperor enlisted the aid of his uncle Songgotu in order to break free from the control of his regents, and had Aobai himself arrested on charges of usurping his authority. Aobai joined me here as a guest of the Embroidered Guard, and died soon after.”

This was all ancient history, done and buried long before Cao was born. He shifted on the bench, impatient, and tried once more to regain control of the flow of conversation.

“Ling Xuan,” Cao began, allowing the tone of his voice to raise slightly, “I must ask you to attend to my questions. I am on the urgent business of his supreme majesty, the Son of Heaven, and do not have time to waste in idle rambling.”

“But the affairs of men turn in their courses just like the tracks of the stars in the heavens above,” the old man continued, as though he hadn’t heard a word Cao had said. “I understand that in the nations of Europa they have a conception of destiny as a wheel, like that of a mill, upon which men ride up and down. Too often those who ride the wheel up fail to recall that they will someday be borne downwards again. Thirty-four years after Songgotu helped his nephew Kangxi rid himself of the influence of the Regent Aobai, Kangxi had Songgotu himself jailed, in part for his complicity in the Heir Apparent’s attempt to consolidate power. Songgotu joined us here, in the Outside Depot, for the briefest while, until Kangxi ordered him executed, without trial or confession.”

Cao Wen remembered the scandal from his youth, hearing his father and uncles talking about the purge of Songgotu and his associates from the court.

“Ling Xuan...,” Cao Wen began, but the old man went on before he could continue.

“The Heir Apparent himself, of course, is resident here now. Yinreng. We passed him in the courtyard, on our way into the interview chamber. A sad shell of a man he is, and perhaps not entirely sane. Of course, some say that the eldest prince Yinti employed Lamas to cast evil spells, the revelation of which resulted in Yinreng’s earlier pardon and release from imprisonment, and reinstatement as heir and successor to Kangxi. But when he returned to his old ways on his release, the emperor finally had him removed from the line of succession, degraded in position, and placed here in perpetual confinement. Still, he seems harmless to me, and I believe that he may have developed some lasting affection for another of the men imprisoned here, but as his leanings were the nettle which originally set his father on the path of disowning him, I suppose that isn’t to be unexpected.”

Cao Wen raised his hand, attempting again to wrestle back control of the discussion, but the old man continued, unabated.

“There are those who say that some men lie with other men as a result of an accident of birth, while others say that it is a degradation which sets upon us as we grow, an illness and not a defect. But was the Heir Apparent fated to prefer the company of men to women in the bedchamber? Did the movement of the stars through the lunar mansions in the heavens dictate the life he would lead, up to and including his end here, imprisoned behind these high, cold walls ? Or did choices he made, through his life, in some sympathetic fashion affect the course of the stars through the heavens? We know that man’s destiny is linked with the heavens, but there remains the question of causation. Which is effected and which effects?”

“Ling Xuan, if you please...,” Cao said with a weary sigh. He found that he was almost willing to surrender in frustration, and simply complete his report with the information he already had to hand.

“During the Warring States period of antiquity, the philosopher Shih-shen tired to explain the non-uniform movement of the moon as the result of man’s actions. He said that, when a wise prince occupies the throne, the Moon follows the right way, and that when the prince is not wise and the ministers exercise power, the Moon loses its way. But if we presume that the ancients knew more than we do in all such matters, where would that leave the spirit of invention? The ancients, as praiseworthy as they were, could not have constructed a marvel like the Forbidden City. Can we not, then, assume that in the generations since we have likewise constructed concepts which they also could not have attempted? I like to believe that the world grows as a person does, maturing with the slow turning of years, becoming ever more knowledgeable and developed. But many would hold that such thoughts are an affront to the luminous ancestors who proceeded us, and who lofty heights it is not given to us to reach. I suppose my thoughts were poisoned by the clerics of the Mexica. There, they believe that this is just the most recent of a series of worlds, and that each world increases in complexity and elegance.”

Cao Wen leaned forward, cautiously optimistic. Was his patience is about to be rewarded?

But before he went on, the old man leaned back, and breathed a ragged sigh. “But perhaps these are discussions for another day. I find that my voice tires, and my thoughts run away from me. Perhaps we should continue our discussion tomorrow.”

The old man rose, and went to knock on the metal-clad door.

As Agent Gu opened the door, Cao rocketed up off the bench, raising his hand to object.

“Tomorrow, then,” Ling said, glancing over his shoulder as he shuffled down the passageway to the courtyard beyond.

Agent Gu just shrugged, as Cao’s mouth worked, soundless and furious.

###

Back at the Ministry of War, Cao Wen looked over the paperwork he’d amassed. Spread before him were the notes he himself had taken by hand, long months before, which had led him to Ling Xuan in the first place.

Cao had been through everything in the imperial archives on the subject of the Mexica, but much of the early contact with the Mexica had occurred during the Bright Dynasty, and many of the records from those days had been lost when the Clear Dynasty took control. Worse, much of what remained was fragmentary at best. Cao had spent endless days combing through the archives, hungry for any mention of the Mexica, when he finally stumbled upon a simple inventory list of the archives from the reign of the Chongzhen emperor, the last of the Bright Dynasty. Among dozens of bureaucratic documents, in which no one had taken any interest in long years, was listed one item which caught Cao’s eye, and sped the pace of his heart—a Ling Xuan’s account of a Treasure Fleet voyage to Mexica.

In the weeks that followed, Cao searched unsuccessfully for the account, checking other archives and inventories, but quite by chance came across a communication from the eunuch director of the Embroidered Guard to the Office of Transmission, intended for the eyes of the Regent Aobai, listing all of the suspects temporarily housed in the Eastern Depot. The report dated from the early days of the reign of the Kangxi emperor, while the emperor had still been a child and the regency controlled the empire, before the introduction of the palace memorial. Cao very nearly returned the communication to its cubby hole without a second glance, and had he done so his researches would have been at an end. But instead he chanced to notice a name at the bottom of the communication, in amongst the hundreds of other names—Ling Xuan.

Cao had looked into the matter further, and found no burial record, nor record of any conviction, for a Ling Xuan. He had, however, discovered that Ling had once held a position of minor authority during the reign of the Shunzhi emperor.

Cao had petitioned the Deputy Minister of War for weeks to arrange the authorization to contact the Embroidered Guard in order to confirm that Ling Xuan was still imprisoned at the Eastern Depot, and once confirmation was received Cao labored another span of weeks to receive authorization to cross the concourse and interview the prisoner himself.

At the time, Cao Wen had considered it an almost unbelievable stroke of good fortune that he should chance to discover that the author of the missing account, so crucial to his survey of the Mexica, still lived. Now, having met and spent time with the old man, he was beginning to rethink that position.

###

Cao Wen stood over Ling Xuan, who sat in the middle of the courtyard.

“Why do you not move from that position, Ling Xuan?”

“But I am always moving, though I do not unfolded my legs from beneath me.” The old man looked up at Cao with shaded eyes, and smiled. “I move because the Earth moves, and with it I go. As Lo-hsia-Hung of the Western Han Dynasty said, ‘The Earth moves constantly but people do not know it. They are as persons in a closed boat, and when it proceeds they do not perceive it.’”

“You speak a great deal of astronomy, and yet the records indicate that you served in the Office of Transmission. But the study of the heavens is forbidden to all but the imperial astronomers.”

“When I was first brought to the Eastern Depot,” Ling explained, a distant look in his eyes, “I was interred for some time in the Bureau of Suppression and Soothing. The days were long and full of pain, but the nights were largely my own. In my narrow, dank cell, I sat the long watches of the night, unable to see a patch of clear sky. However, there was a small hole cut high in the wall, for ventilation, and I learned that it opened onto the adjacent cell. In that cell was a dismissed minister, previously the head of the Directory of Astronomy. His name was Cui, high mountain. He had offended the Regent Aobai in the days after the death of the Shanzhi emperor.”

Ling drew a ragged sigh, and averted his eyes before continuing.

“We helped one another survive through those weeks and months. I told the astronomer tales of my travels across the oceans, and he told me everything he had ever learned about the heavens.”

Ling stood up on creaking joints, and faced Cao.

“One night, the cell next to mine was silent, and the night after that, another voice answered when I called through the vent. I never learned what became of my friend, but I remember every word he ever spoke to me.”

With that, the old man turned and started towards the interview chamber, where Agent Gu stood by the open door.

“Come along,” Ling called back over his shoulder to Cao, who lingered in the sunny yard. “You wanted to discuss the Mexica, did you not?”

###

Cao sat at the worn table, and pulled a leather tube from the folds of his robe. Removing a cap from the tubes end, he pulled out a rolled sheaf of paper and, setting the tube to one side, arranged the papers before him, meticulously. Ling Xuan looked on, dispassionately.

Finally, his notes arranged to his satisfaction, and with an inked brush in hand, Cao began to speak, impatiently. “I have already spent the better part of a year in my survey of the Mexica, Ling Xuan, and I would very much like to complete my report before another year begins.”

“But which year, yes?” Ling asked, raising an eyebrow. “We in the Middle Kingdom know two. The twenty-four solar nodes of the farmer’s calendar, and the twelve or thirteen lunar months of the lunisolar calendar. The Mexica had more than one calendar, too.”

Cao sighed. He had little interest in a repeat of the previous days’ performance, and yet here he was, about to assay the same role. “Ling Xuan...”

“The Mexica have a solar calendar, which like our own was made up of 365 days,” the old man interrupted before Cao could continued. “Can you imagine it? Two cultures, so different and divided by history and geography, and yet we parcel out time in the same allotments. But unlike us, the Mexica divide their solar year into eighteen months of twenty days each, leaving aside five more, which they call ‘empty days.’ These are days of ill omen, when no work or ritual is to be performed.”

“That’s very interesting,” Cao said, in a rush, “but to return to the subject at hand...”

“But like us, they are not satisfied with only one calendrical system,” Ling continued, undaunted. “In addition to their solar year, they have a second calendar of 260 days, marked out by interlocking cycles of twenty day signs and thirteen numbers. Again, reminiscent of our own system of element and animal, wouldn’t you say?”

“I suppose so,” Cao agreed, weakly.

“But the Mexica have another calendar, on a scale even grander than the other two. In the capital city of the Mexica, Place of the Stone Cactus, there is a massive circular stone, thicker than a child is tall and wider than the height of two men. This is a calendar too, of a sort, but while the other calendars measure the passage of days, months, and years, this massive calendar of stone is used to measure the passage of worlds themselves. As I told you, the Mexica believe that this is the fifth and most recent world created by the gods. They believe that this world was constructed only a few hundred years ago, in the year 13-Reed, and that its peoples and cultures were put in place, fully formed and with their histories already in place, as a test of the Mexica’s faith.”

“You traveled to the capital of the Mexica?” Cao asked, sitting forward, readying his brush over a blank sheet of paper.

“Yes,” the old man answered, a faraway look in his eyes, “a party of us, along with the commander of the Treasure Fleet, traveled overland for long days and weeks before we reached the heart of the Mexic empire. Their city of Place of the Stone Cactus was as large and grand as the Northern Capital itself, hundreds of thousands of men and women toiling away in the service of their emperor.”

Ling Xuan’s eyes fluttered close for a brief moment, and he swayed, momentarily lost in thought.

“The Mexica know when this world will end,” he went on. “It will come in the year of 4-Movement, when the world’s calendar has run its course. But which cycle, yes? In Place of the Stone Cactus, I saw steam-powered automatons of riveted bronze, which symbolically represented the jaguars, hurricanes, fires, and rains which destroyed the previous worlds.”

Cao Wen brush raced down the page in precise movements, as he took careful notes. “Steam-powered, you say?”

Ling Xuan nodded. “Yes, and while the Mexica had never before seen a horse, they had steam-powered trolleys that could carry them back and forth across the breadth of their broad valley in a twinkling.”

“What of their military capacity?” Cao asked, eagerly. “Were you given any glimpse of their level of armament?”

Ling Xuan blinked slowly. “I did, in fact, spent considerable time with an officer of their army, an Eagle Knight of the first rank. I was one of the few to have learned the rudiments of Nahuatl, the Mexica’s tongue, and as such I was appointed to tour their city and report back what I’d learned, and Hummingbird Feather was to be my guide.”

Ling Xuan’s dropped his gaze, and his eyes came to rest on the leather tube at the edge of the table, in which Cao Wen had brought his notes.

“This reminds me of something,” the old man said, pointing at the tube.

“Something to do with the Mexica?”

The old man nodded, slowly, his eyes not leaving the tube. Then he shook his head, once, leaving Cao unsure whether the old man had meant to reply in the affirmative, in the negative, or if in fact he’d replied at all.

“I remember something my friend Cui told me. A metal tube capped on either end by ground glass lenses, used for far viewing. A Remote-Viewing Mirror, he called it. A tool employed by the Directorate of Astronomy. Have you heard of such a thing?”

Cao nodded, impatiently. “Yes, I believe I’ve seen them in operation. What of it?”

“I would very much like to see such a device for myself. My eyes are not as strong as they once were, and it would be a welcome sight to see the shapes upon the moon’s surface. If you could arrange such a thing, I would be happy to tell you all I saw of the Mexica’s armament and defenses.”

Then the old man rose, rapped on the door, and disappeared from view, leaving Cao in the room with his notes, his brush, and his questions.

###

It took Cao Wen several days to receive authorization from the Deputy Minister of War to requisition the far-seeing device from the Directorate of Astronomy, several more days to locate the bureaucrat within the Directorate who was responsible for materiel and equipment, and an additional week of wheedling and cajoling to get the astronomer to recognize the authority of the Deputy Minister’s order.

Cao tried on several occasions in the interval to renew his interview with Ling Xuan, but every attempt failed. Each time, the old man would look up at him, blink slowly, and ask whether Cao carried the far-seeing device. When he saw that Cao did not, Ling would turn his eyes back to the ground, watching the shadows in their slow course across the ground.

Finally, Cao managed to retrieve the device from the Directorate of Astronomy, and a short while later sat in the interview room, carefully removing the device from its protective sheath. He present the object to Ling Xuan, with Agent Gu standing by as witness.

While Ling turned the device over in his hands, eyes glistening and mouth open in wonder, Cao read aloud from an official release document, signed with the chop of the Head Director of Astronomy, and countersigned by the Deputy Minister of War. “This far viewing device, the Remote-Viewing Mirror, remains the property of the Directorate of Astronomy, as decreed by his majesty the emperor, but by special order of the Deputy Minister of War, it is being loaned for a short time to one Ling Xuan, a temporary resident at the Outside Depot of the Embroidered Guard. Be it known that this Ling Xuan is not to allow the Remote-Viewing Mirror to pass into any hands other than his own, nor is he to reveal the details of its manufacture to any but those parties determined by imperial decree as worthy to hold such knowledge.”

Cao paused, and glanced up from the document at the old man, whose eyes were fixed on the device in his hands.

“Ling Xuan, do you understand these terms?”

The old man simply held the device up for a closer inspection, marveling.

“Temporary Resident Ling,” Agent Gu said, his tone martial, stepping forward incrementally and looming over the old man as menacingly as he was able. “Do you understand the terms as recited to you?”

Ling Xuan nodded, absently. “Yes, yes, of course.”

“Thank you for bearing witness, Agent Gu.” Cao nodded to Gu, and motioned him towards the door. “Now, with your permission, I would like at this point to continue my interview with Ling Xuan.”

Agent Gu bowed, crossed the floor, and closed the door behind him as he left.

“Now,” Cao said to the old man, his tone turning dark, “let us talk about the Mexica.”

Ling Xuan held the Remote-Viewing Mirror lovingly and, without lifting his eyes from the device, began to speak.

###

“Hummingbird Feather, who I like to think became my friend in the weeks we stayed in Place of the Stone Cactus, explained to me the structure of the army of the Mexica. He was an Eagle Knight, and a Quauhyahcatl, or a Great Captain of the Mexic army, meaning that he had taken five foreign captives in combat. When the Treasure Fleet arrived, though, the Mexica had not gone to war against their neighbors in almost a generation. And so they fought, instead, the War of the Flowers.

“The army of the Mexica is organized into Banners of twenty men each—and here, too, we hear echoes of our own culture, do we not? So like the Banners of our Manchu masters, yes? In any case, twenty of such banners make up a battalion of four hundred men, and twenty of these an army of eight thousand. The best warriors were inducted into the orders of the Jaguar and the Eagle, and advancement was measured by how many captives one took while in battle. In times of peace, though, there were no captives to be had, and how then to measure one’s worth?

“The Mexica challenge their neighbors to fight in a War of the Flowers. We were lucky enough to arrive in Place of the Stone Cactus during one of these ceremonial tournaments. The armies of the Mexica and those of their neighbors gather in the broad plains beyond the valley of the Stone Cactus, and meet in mock combat. Though the blows are not killing blows, and no blood is spilled on the plains, the stakes are no less high than in warfare. The combatants in the War of the Flowers take prisoners, capturing their defeated foes, and when each side decides that it has taken enough prisoners, the battle is ended. The side which has captured the most of its enemy is declared the winner, and the two armies return home with their spoils. The captives are executed or enslaved, depending on the moods of their captors.

“In this way, the army of the Mexica are able to keep their martial skills honed and ready, even when there is no enemy to be bested.”

Cao scarcely looked up from his notes, his brush flying across the page.

“Yes, yes,” Cao said, eagerly. “Now, how do the generals of the armies communicate their orders to the officers of the banners, and how do the banners’ leaders communicate the orders on to their subordinates?”

###

Days passed, and Cao Wen returned again and again to the Outside Depot, filling page after page with notes on the Mexica, dictated by the old man. He’d originally hoped for one or two choice facts with which to spice his survey, and after long frustrated weeks, wrangling the incommunicative prisoner, he’d begun to doubt that he’d get even that much. Now, though, it seemed that flood gates had opened, and the old man was providing more detailed information than Cao had dreamed possible. Now, the thought of advancement within the ministry as reward for all his efforts, which he’d originally held as a slender hope, now seemed a very achievable goal.

This morning, the old man was waiting for him in the interview room, the Remote-Viewing Mirror in his lap.

“I think we near the end of our cycle of interviews, Ling Xuan,” Cao said, not bothering with pleasantries. He slid onto the bench across the table from the old man, and arranged his papers and brushes before him. “I need just one final bit of information, and my report will be complete. I’m not sure just what it is, yet, but I believe that you must have it within you. I want to hear more about the automation of the Mexica. From what you describe, it sounds as though their technological development has taken a different path than our own, but that they seem not far behind us.”

Ling looked up, smiling.

“I was able to spend long hours last night, watching the skies through this remarkable device. Agent Gu was kind enough to allow me to remain in the courtyard all hours, and so I had a much fuller view of the heavens than I am allowed from my small window.” The old man lifted the Remote-Viewing Mirror to his right eye and, squeezing his left eye shut, peered through the device at Cao, sitting across from him. Then he laughed, a soft, strong noise like distant peals of thunder, and continued. “I have been following the path of Fire Star across the heavens. In the last few months, it has risen in the early hours of the morning, rising earlier and earlier every day, tracking steadily eastward across the sky. Just a few week ago, it rose shortly after sunset, and the most remarkable thing occurred. Cui had told me about it, but until this occasion I had never had opportunity to see it for myself. Fire Star seemed to stop in the heavens, and then turned back, now moving westward across the skies. Now it rises at sunset, tracks westward across the sky, and sets by dawn. In another few weeks, if what Cui told me holds true, it will reverse course again, moving once more eastward across the sky, rising earlier and earlier until it once again rises at dawn and sets at dusk.”

“Fascinating,” Cao said, without feeling. “Now, to return to the Mexica...”

“There are shapes, shadows, and lines upon the surface of Fire Star, I have found. This most ingenious device allows me to see them with my own eye.”

“The automatons of the Mexica, Ling Xuan,” Cao repeated. “Now, you say that they are little more than parlor tricks, fixed in place and able to go through only route motions. But did the Mexica display the capacity to develop these trinkets into something more. A siege engine of sorts, perhaps?”

“Cui told me that the best astronomers of his time felt that these wandering stars were worlds such as our own. Tell me, do you suppose if that is so, it might not be peopled with beings such as ourselves?”

“Ling Xuan...” Cao began, rubbing the bridge of his nose, his tone menacing.

The old man, his eyes half-lidded, sways on his bench, like a tall tree blown by a high wind. “I’m tired, Cao Wen. Too many late nights and early mornings, too little sleep. Let us continue tomorrow, yes? I am sure I will be in better spirits then, and better able to hear your questions.”

Ling stood, and knocked on the door.

“But...” Cao began, and then trailed off as the old man exited after Agent Gu swung open the door. Cao sighed, dramatically, and shrugged. He had waited this long. What harm could another day do? But if by then the end of the next day he did not have the answers he needed...?

Cao felt his patience was an at end. He gathered up his papers, and to the empty room he said, “Tomorrow, then.”

###

The next day found Cao Wen and Ling Xuan back in their accustomed places.

Ling seemed more lucid and animated today, and didn’t wait for Cao to initiate their discussion before returning to their perennial topic of conversation. “All of this talk of the Mexica has reminded me of something I’ve long since forgotten. A salient fact about the culture of the Mexica that I did not realize until years after my visit to their empire.”

“What is it?” Cao asked, warily.

“It is one final fact which you must have for your survey. It is something about the culture of the Mexica which I have realized only later in life, which is the reason that the Dragon Throne will prevail, if it should go to war against them. But in exchange for this final bit of information, I request one last favor.”

Cao glanced at the Remote-Viewing Mirror, clutched as always in the old man’s gnarled hands. What would the old man want this time?

“I would go, just once more, beyond the walls of the Eastern Depot. From my vantage point within the Outside Depot, there is only so much of the night sky I can see, and there is so, so much more to behold.”

Cao straightened, and folded his arms across his chest. “Absolutely not,” he said, sharply. “Out of the question.” Cao rubbed the bridge of his nose, and tried to compose an appropriate counter offer. “No. Instead, if you don’t tell me what I want to know, you will be punished. Yes, and I will have the Remote-Viewing Mirror taken from you.”

Ling shrugged, unmoved. “I have seen the heavens with my own eyes, from within my little box. If you take away my vision, I will still have my memories, but if I am unable to venture beyond these walls, my memories will be all I have, anyway. What have I to lose?”

Cao jumped to his feet, and began furiously to pace the floor.

“This is unseemly, Ling Xuan. This is unacceptable.”

“And yet it is happening,” Ling said, his expression serene.

Cao Wen stormed to the door, and pounded loudly with the heel of his fist.

Gu opened the door, his expression curious.

“Agent Gu, remove this prisoner from my sight immediately!” Cao Wen said imperiously.

Gu looks from Cao to Ling and back, shrugged, and took the old man by the elbow, leading him slowly from the chamber. “This way, old man.”

Cao collapsed back onto his seat, glowering.

###

Cao Wen sat on the hard, unforgiving bench, waiting while bureaucrats shuffled back and forth across the polished floors of the Ministry of War, about the business of the empire.

Cao didn’t have to test the old man’s resolve. He knew that Ling meant what he said. If Ling said he wouldn’t answer any further questions without receiving his boon, he wouldn’t speak another word. Not another useful word, at least.

“Deputy Minister Wu will see you now, Cao Wen,” said a steward, appearing at the open door.

Cao swallowed hard, rose to his feet, and crossed the floor.

“O Honorable Deputy Minister,” Cao said, bowing low.

The imposing figure of the Deputy Minister Wu was crowded into a spare, simply-made chair on the far side of the room. There was a low table at his side, covered with rolled maps, bound sheaves of paper, and small notebooks. At his elbow stood his secretary, a weasel-faced man with ink-stained fingers who recorded everything said in the room in exhaustive detail.

“Cao Wen,” the Deputy Minister said, a faint smile on his thick lips. “I harbor hopes that you come to deliver your survey of the Mexica.”

“Not quite yet, this one is afraid to report,” Cao Wen answered, his voice tremulous.

“Why am I not surprised?”

“My interrogation of the prisoner Ling Xuan these last weeks has been exceedingly productive,” Cao continued. “I believe that, with one final addition, it will be complete and ready to present to the Minister of War.”

“And then on to the Dragon Throne itself?: Wu asked, eyes narrowed.

Cao Wen swelled with pride, but his voice wavered nervously when he answered. “Yes, Deputy Minister. I believe it will not only summarize the strengths and weaknesses of the Mexic military, but the survey should further provide a sound justification for why the Middle Kingdom will inevitably defeat the Mexic militarily, should it come to open warfare.”

“And what is this last addition, one wonders, and what is it that the Ministry of War will be asked to authorize in its pursuit?”

With as little detail and as briefly as possible, Cao explained that the old man who was his primary source for the report had requested one night beyond the walls of the Eastern Depot, in exchange for his final testimony.

“For what purpose?” Wu asked, when Cao had completed his summation. “Some conjugal business, perhaps? A fine meal, or an evening of drunken revelry?”

“No,” Cao said simply. “Star-gazing.”

Wu looked at Cao, disbelieving. “And in return for this small privilege, we will get the secret to defeating the Mexica?”

“Yes,” Cao said.

The Deputy Minister steepled his fingers, and pursed his thick lips.

“Having paid quite a lot to get this far along in the game, Cao Wen, it seems a shame to withdraw when there is just one final wager to make. You will have your authorization. But return with this storied survey in hand, or don’t bother returning at all.”

Cao bowed, deeply, and scuttled away.

###

Three days later, approaching the middle watches of the night, Cao Wen arrived at the Eastern Depot, where he was met by Director Fei Ren.

“I am not happy with this development,” Director Fei said, as though his expression was not explanation enough, “but the Deputy Minister of War has managed to get the approval of the emperor himself for this little excursion, so there isn’t anything I can do about it.”

Before Cao could reply, Agent Gu arrived, escorting Ling Xuan.

“Temporary Resident Ling Xuan,” Director Fei said, turning to the old man. “Know that a great many bureaucrats have been put to a great deal of trouble on his behalf.”

The old man just smiled, clutching the Remote-Viewing Mirror to his chest.

“You have until sunrise, old man,” Director Fei said, and then turned his attentions to Agent Gu. “This is your first mission beyond the walls of the Eastern Depot, is it not, Gu?”

Agent Gu bowed, and stammered a reply in the affirmation.

“Such was my recollection.” Fei looked from the old man to Gu, and scowled. “If Ling Xuan attempts to escape, know that you are free to take whatever means are necessary to insure that our temporary resident returns home to the Eastern Depot.”

“Yes, sir, Director,” Agent Gu said, punctuated by a further bow.

With that, Director Fei turned on his heel, and disappeared back into the labyrinth of the Eastern Depot.

“Let’s get on with it,” Cao said, impatiently.

With Cao on one side, and Agent Gu on the other, Ling Xuan passed through the archway and into the concourse beyond, walking out of the Eastern Depot for the first time in more than fifty years.

###

They threaded through the boulevards and avenues of the Northern Capital, lined on all sides with the offices of the Six Ministries and countless imperial directorates and bureaus. They came at least to a public square, far from the palace, surrounded by low buildings, inns and residence of the meaner sort. Lamplights glowed warmly from within them, but the sky overhead was dark and moonless, the stars glittering like gems against black silk.

Ling Xuan paused, and took a deep breath through his nostrils, looking up at the skies with his naked eye. “I have been imprisoned behind four walls for more than half of my life, but I have come to realize that my mind has been imprisoned even longer. The noble truths that Cui taught me through that little vent, while we were guests of the Bureau of Suppression and Soothing, were far grander and broader than anything I’d previously imagined. I have seen more of the world than many, read more than most, and yet even I had only the most tenuous grasp of reality.”

Above them, the stars in the heavens seem to turn while they watched, and Cao found himself becoming dizzy, vertiginous.

“Do you know why my friend Cui was imprisoned in the Bureau of Suppression and Soothing?” the old man continued, glancing momentarily down from the stars to the two men at this side. “It was widely reported, so he said, that it was because he had provided readings of the heavens which were inauspicious for the regent’s reign. In fact, that was not his crime. Cui challenged the accepted wisdom. He devoted his life to studying the heavens, and made a frightening discovery. Our world is not, as we have always believed, the center of the universe, with the sun, moon, and stars twirling around us. Through a careful study of the heavens, Cui came to realize that, in fact, our world was just one of many, all of which circled around the sun. What is more, he claimed that the stars themselves might be other suns, out in the distant heavens. Perhaps a small fraction of those other suns might have worlds of their own, and some small fraction of those might be peopled. We might not be the only beings in creation able to look upon ourselves and wonder.” The old man paused, and smiled ruefully. “Of course, this offended the Regent Aobai, who was convinced Cui had concocted his theory only to insult the young Kangxi emperor.”

Agent Gu shook his head in disbelief, when the old man fell silent. “The earth circle around the sun? You might as well say that the Dragon Throne exists to serve me, and not the other way around.”

“You might indeed.” Ling smiled, his eyes twinkling..

Cao swayed on his feet. He felt unsteady, as though he stood on the edge of a precipice, about to fall into the abyss.

“Ling Xuan, you promised me one final fact about the Mexica,” Cao said, uneasily.

“So I did,” Ling said, nodding. “So I did. And I will tell you. It is this.”

The old man leaned closer to Cao, and spoke softly, like thunder more distant than ever before, as though he were communicating some secret in confidence which he didn’t want the stars above to overhear.

“The Mexica, as clever and bright and ferocious as they may be, are still blinded by their faith. The most learned among them honestly believes that the world is but a few hundred years old, and all evidence to the contrary is merely a test of their faith. We of the Middle Kingdom, I would argue, cling with as much tenacity to beliefs and superstitions no more grounded in reality than that, but with one notable difference. Ours is a culture that can produce a mind like Cui’s, a mind which challenges received wisdom, which questions the foundations of knowledge itself. If we manage to produce only one like him in every dozen generations, we will still manage, in the fullness of time, to conquer the universe. Like the fraction of worlds of the fraction of stars in the great immensity of the heavens, that ensure that we are not alone, just one small spark of genius in the vast sea of complacency will mean that history does not stand still.”

Ling Xuan turned, and headed back the way they had come.

“I am ready to return home to my cell now, thank you,” the old man said, calling back to Cao and Gu over his shoulder. “I have seen all I needed to see.”

###

The next morning, as Cao Wen struggled to work out how to conclude his report, he received a visitor to his cubicle in the Ministry of War. It was Agent Gu, dressed in simple gray robes.

“Gu? What are you doing here?”

“At the request of Director Fei, I come to tell you that Ling Xuan, temporary resident of the Outside Depot, died in the night. From all signs, it was not a suicide, nor is there any indication of foul play.”

Cao blinked, a confused expression spread across his face.

“The old man died?”

“Yes,” Gu replied. “Of extreme old age, or so I am given to understand.”

“And yet he waited long enough to walk once more under the stars as a free man,” Cao observed.

“Perhaps he felt that it was important enough to live for,” Gu said, unsure, “and having done so, his work was done.”

Cao sighed, and shrugged his shoulders.

“Strange timing, and no doubt, but he was old, and the elderly have a habit of dying.” Cao regarded Gu’s plain gray robes. “But here you are, beyond the walls of the Eastern Depot yourself, and so adorned that you could pass for a simple merchant in the streets.”

“Yes,” Agent Gu said, with a smile that commingled embarrassment and pride. “It is the opinion of Director Fei that I have completed my training, and will be of better use to the Dragon Throne beyond the walls, rather than within.” Gu paused, and shifted uncomfortably. “Cao Wen, I must ask you. What are your thoughts about the things that Ling Xuan said to us in the night, about the sun and the earth and the stars, about the Middle Kingdom and the Mexica and all?”

Cao Wen shrugged. “All I can say is that everything Ling reported to me these long weeks has been true, as far as I have been able to determine, the intelligence on the Mexica and the facts the old man learned from Astronomer Cui alike. But who am I to judge?”

Agent Gu nodded, absently, and with a final bow, departed, leaving Cao with his work.

There remained only a few more characters to brush onto the final page, and then Cao’s detailed report on the astronomer Cui was complete. This appended to his report about the Mexica, Cao rolled up the papers and slid them into a leather tube. Then he rose to his feet, arranged his robes around him, and headed towards the office of the Deputy Minister to hand in his survey.

Labels: freefiction

# posted by Chris Roberson @ 8:00 AM 2 comments

Timmy Gromp Saves Christmas:
The Final Installment

What has gone before…

Timmy Gromp, a seemingly normal American boy, has been recruited by the Council of Holidays in the effort to save Christmas. Santa Claus, beloved icon of the season, has been taken prisoner by the Anti-Claus, his nemesis and opposite number from an alternate dimension of pure evil.

Aiding Timmy in this effort is Denny S. Hopper, renegade member of the Easter Bunny Corps, who sees this mission at his one last chance at redemption. He is small, but has a big heart, and a motorcycle, and a gun.

In our last installment, Timmy and Hopper were hot on the trail of a supernatural fish with the powers of locating the Anti-Claus’ secret lair: the magical Rankin’ Bass. Unfortunately, the Fishing Chimps, minions of the dark one, beat them to the prize, hooking the Rankin’ Bass and spiriting it away before Timmy and Hopper could react.

Now, south of the border in Mexico, Hopper’s motorcycle broken down and with only hours left before Christmas, it begins to look like there is no hope.

“Pshaw,” Hopper answered, slamming a clip into his semi-automatic pistol with a satisfying click. “There’s always hope.”

“But Christmas starts in just a few hours, and we don’t even know where Santa is being held prisoner!” Timmy was getting agitated, jumping up and down and turning several shades of red.

“There’s always options,” Hopper said, sighting along the pistol’s barrel. He held his short arm out extended, pointed towards the far horizon, and then swung his aim in a slow arc to the west. The bunny paused when his aim tracked across Timmy, and seemed to mull something over before swinging his arm a few degrees further to the west.

The bunny finally stopped when the pistol was pointed at an ancient and weather beaten telegraph pole, on which was stapled a faded sheet of paper.

“POW,” sounded the pistol, and a shot thunked into the pole at the dead center of the paper.

“Perfect example,” Hopper said, and turning started to walk off down the road.

Timmy Gromp was confused. He called after the bunny to wait, but the bunny walked on. Timmy ran over to the telegraph pole, and squinting tried to read what he could of the faded text. It was all in Spanish.

“Dang it,” Timmy said. “Isn’t anything in Mexico written normal?”

Leaning in, ignoring the text, Timmy saw crude drawings of giant men with strange masks covering their faces, with only little holes cut for eyes, nose and mouth. The men wore skin-tight trunks and high-laced boots, and seemed to be trying to hurt each other.

This was all pretty confusing for Timmy. He just wanted to be back home, icing cookies with his parents and looking forward to the presents he’d get the next morning on Christmas day. Of course, since his parents had decided that it was the spirit of giving that really counted, and not the actual act itself, Timmy’s gifts had seen something of a decline in quality. This year, far all he knew, he’d might have gotten just a picture of a toy cut out of a catalog. Last year, after all, they’d only given him a toy’s empty box, which they’d got from the neighbors after they’d given the toy inside to their own little boy.

Still, it had to be better than this.

Sighing, Timmy shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and scuffed his feet down the road after the bunny.

***

“I don’t think this is going to work, Hopper,” Timmy whispered.

“Trust me, kid,” Hopper answered. “Look, if I’ve learned anything from my years as a symbolic pagan holdover representing a secular holiday with tenuous ties to a religious celebration, it’s that people will believe what you damn well tell them to believe. People are sheep, kid.”

“O-kay,” Timmy said, unconvinced. “But I still think…”

“Dónde está el Polo Norte?” said the giant man in the red suit behind them.

“Uh, we’re here, champ,” Hopper replied, chewing on the end of his cigar. He waved a stubby arm in a wide circle, indicating the show covered hills, the big inviting house and the workshops, from which streamed an army of elves and reindeer, bearing down on them.

“Bueno,” the giant man answered, taking a step forward.

“Hopper,” Timmy protested, “he doesn’t really look very convincing. I mean, he’s still wearing that mask, and I don’t think that Santa Claus normally carries a bottle of tequila.”

The fake white beard had been glued inexpertly to the bottom edge of the giant man’s red and black facemask, which he had refused to remove for any reason. In the chill wind of the North Pole, the strands of artificial hair were starting to freeze up and break off, leaving only a fringe of wisps and glue on the fabric of the mask.

The elves and reindeer had gathered in a circle around the trio, Timmy, Hopper, and the giant man. They waited eagerly, looking at them with breathless anticipation.

The giant man raised his muscled arms over his head.

“Yo soy Santos,” he said in a booming voice.

“Claus,” Hopper whispered furiously behind his hand, nudging the giant man in the leg.

“Si, si,” the giant man added. “Yo soy Santos Claus.”

There followed a protracted silence, as the assembled elves and reindeer looked at the giant man in the mask and the ill-fitting red suit with mouths hanging open.

Timmy began to suspect that this was going to be his last Christmas, even if it wasn’t for everyone else.

Suddenly, and without warning, the elves erupted in a spontaneous cheer, and swarmed around the giant man with hugs and smiles, while the reindeer leapt into the air and danced swirling loops overhead.

“Come on, Santa,” one of the elves said, tugging at the giant man’s huge hand. “We’ve got to get this show on the road, Christmas starts in just a few minutes.”

“Bueno,” the giant man said, and allowed himself to be slowly dragged to the waiting sled by the elves.

“I don’t believe it,” Timmy said.

“It’s like I told you,” Hopper answered, lighting another cigar, “people are damned sheep, and elves and reindeer are no different.”

“So that’s it, then?” Timmy asked. “But what about the real Santa Claus?”

“Shhh,” Hopper hissed violently. “You want to get us lynched?” He paused, and then added, “Don’t worry, kid. I’m sure someone’ll rescue him sooner or later. For now, just be content in the knowledge that the holiday is saved, I get to keep my job, and you get to go home, right?”

Hopper laid a stubby arm across Timmy’s shoulder, and blew out a smoke ring that hung overhead like a wreath.

“God bless us everyone one,” Timmy said sarcastically, without a trace of sentiment.

“Yo tambien,” Hopper answered, smiling.

The sleigh, loaded down with holiday toys, lifted uneasily off the snowy ground.

“Cómo se dice ‘jolly’?” shouted Santos Claus down to Hopper and Timmy.

“Ho ho ho,” Hopper shouted up as the sleigh lifted into the skies.

“Si, si,” Santos Claus shouted back. “El Ho, El Ho, El Ho.”

Labels: freefiction

# posted by Chris Roberson @ 10:39 AM 1 comments

Long Night, Holy Night
by Chris Roberson

“I don’t know, Ivy,” Allan Harvey said, running his fingers through his greasy shoulder length hair. “Maybe I should just stick around town this weekend. I’ve got a lot of stuff to catch up on and…”

“No,” Ivy said, with a little too much force. She modified her expression of panic mingled fear into playfulness, and punched the boy lightly on the shoulder. “With the museum closed for the holidays, and Bergier spending Hannukah with his work, you’ve got nothing to keep you in the city. What kind of girlfriend would I be if I left you home all by yourself?”

Allan screwed up his face, obviously trying out a few responses in his mind and rejecting them all. Finally, he managed a weak grin, and took Ivy’s hand in his.

“Alright, alright,” he said. “If you want me to go I’ll go. But you’re sure you don’t want me to look after the bookstore?”

Ivy sighed deeply, seeming to work through a few responses of her own, before pasting on a smile and merging left to exit at Fortuna.

“It’ll be fine,” she said, unconvincingly. “It’ll be fine.”

###

“Little lamb!” Ivy’s mother shouted from the doorway, beaming. She wiped her hands on her apron and hurried down the walk to the curb, her arms wide. “You’re home.”

“Yeah, mom,” Ivy said, failing to duck the impending embrace. “Thanks for stating the obvious.”

“Don’t be rude,” Ivy’s mother scolded, squeezing her daughter in a bear hug. “And in front of strangers, yet.”

“Allan’s not a stranger, mom,” Ivy moaned, uncontrollable lapsing into childhood patterns of response. “Gah,” she added, rolling her eyes.

“Well, he is to me, missy, until you introduce us,” her mother answered.

“I’m Allan,” Allan said nervously, extending his hand.

“Obviously,” Ivy said.

“I’m Ivy’s mother,” Ivy’s mother answered.

“Duh,” Ivy said.

“But you can call Rose,” Ivy’s mother added, taking Allan’s hand and yanking him into the circle of her embrace.

“Nice… nice to meet you, Rose,” Allan said awkwardly, his cheek smashed up against little sequined trees.

Ivy’s mother pushed Allan away from her, holding him by both elbows at arm’s length.

“Such a nice looking boy,” Ivy’s mother said to Ivy, over her shoulder. “And so polite.”

“Mo-om,” Ivy moaned, “you’re embarrassing him.”

“Pish,” Ivy’s mother spat. “That’s what mothers are for.”

With the deft maneuvering of years experience, Ivy’s mother spun around, linking one arm through the crook of Allan’s elbow, the other through the crook of Ivy’s.

“Come on, you two,” Ivy’s mother commanded, leading them up the walk. “Everyone is waiting.”

Ivy rolled her eyes again, while Allan began to look even more uncomfortable.

###

“Everyone” turned out to be Ivy’s brother Andy (“It’s Andrew, alright?”), Ivy’s father (“Call me Simon”), and Ivy’s grandfather (“Jakob Stump, pleased to make your acquaintance”). The Koestler family home was cozy and warm, arranged in just such a way to seem lived-in but still presentable. It was enough like the Harvey household in Hygate to make Allan feel very ill-at-ease.

“Come over here,” Ivy’s father said, draping a paternal arm over Allan’s shoulders and steering him towards the liquor cabinet in the den. “Let me fix you a drink.”

Allan had enough knee-jerk teenage reactionism left in him to find the idea of adults drinking somewhat disturbing, the idea of young people drinking exotic, and the idea of young people drinking while adults watched downright frightening.

“What’ll you have?” Ivy’s father asked, opening wide the doors of the liquor cabinet to reveal an elephants’ graveyard of half-full bottles of every spirit Allan had ever seen. “Scotch on the rocks? Gin and tonic? A screwdriver?”

“Um…” Allan began, licking his lips and wondering just how far he could take this.

“He doesn’t want anything to drink!” shouted Ivy’s mother from the far side of the room, where she was proudly displaying her latest bits of handicraft to her daughter. “He’s only nineteen.”

“Eighteen, actually,” Allan said awkwardly below his breath. “But come to think of it…”

“Mo-ther,” Ivy called, stepping away from the macramé and festive ornaments, “Allan can have a drink if he wants to. He’s an adult, you know.”

“Right, Rose,” Ivy’s father answered, slapping Allan on the back with a thud. “It’ll do the boy some good, put some hair on his chest.”

Allan looked nervously around the room, remembering where he was, and who he was with. He decided he had quite enough hair on his chest as it was.

“Um…” he began, scratching his neck, “I’ll just have a soda.”

###

Around the dinner table, before Ivy’s mother set out the first course, everyone held hands and listened as Ivy’s grandfather made the traditional remarks. Allan, despite his best efforts, was positioned between Ivy’s brother and Ivy’s father, and let his fingers lay limp in their grips, his palms sweating.

“The Creator made the Volkdlak in Its own images,” Ivy’s grandfather said, “and made for them the day and night to live in. Two forms, two worlds. The Volkdlak were the first men, the True Men, who lived in peace in the Forests of Paradise until the coming of the False Deceiver. The Deceiver was a twisted, mirror image of the Creator, frozen in a single form.”

“Amen,” Ivy’s father said absently.

“I’m hungry,” Ivy’s brother said.

“Andy!” Ivy’s mother scolded.

“I’m not finished, you know,” Ivy’s grandfather said. “If your minds aren’t too terribly rotten with television and filth, it might be nice if I were able to finish before the Long Night was over, yes? Or would that be too much trouble? Maybe I should just go live with your sister after all.”

“Pop,” Ivy’s mother said, “don’t be like that. Simon was just teasing. Weren’t you, Simon.”

“Sure, sure, of course I was,” Ivy’s father answered. “You take your time, Jakob.”

“Take my time?” Ivy’s grandfather snapped. “I’ll take my time.” He paused, closing his eyes and letting out a dramatic sigh. “Now, where was I?”

“Frozen in a single image?” Allan offered helpfully.

“Exactly,” Ivy’s grandfather answered triumphantly. “Nice to know that someone was listening.”

“Grandfather, I was…” Ivy began.

“Not you, dear heart,” Ivy’s grandfather soothed. “I knew you were. It’s the rest of this family…”

“Jakob?” Ivy’s father prompted. “Maybe we could…”

“Right, right,” Ivy’s grandfather said, then shushed him. “Keep your shirt on. Now, ‘Frozen in a single image’. Right. Out of jealous rage, the Deceiver created the False Men and Animals. They were like the Deceiver, frozen in a single form. With the help of the Deceiver, the False Men drove the Volkdlak out of the Forests, and hounded them to the ends of the earth. Even now, generations later, the true children of the Creator are made to cower, hiding, for fear of the False Men.”

“Am…” Ivy’s father began.

“Simon!” Ivy’s mother hissed.

“Sorry,” Ivy’s father answered.

“Now,” Ivy’s grandfather continued, unabated, “each year, on the longest night of the year, the true children of the Creator gather together, to celebrate their varied forms and to remember the many gifts of the Creator to them. On this Long Night, we Volkdlak remember our heritage, remember where we have been, and look forward to where we are going. Look forward to the day when the Creator will finally defeat the False Deceiver, and the Volkdlak can return to the Forests of Paradise.”

Ivy’s grandfather paused, and dropping his granddaughter’s hand lifted up his wine glass.

“Next year in the Forests of Paradise,” he said, his voice cracking.

###

Ivy’s mother set the trays piled with blood red meat along the middle of the table, and lay a plate of pasta in front of Allan.

“I went ahead and made this up for you, dear,” Ivy’s mother said. “Ivy didn’t say, but I figured you wouldn’t want to eat with the rest of us.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Koestler,” Allan answered.

“Rose,” Ivy’s mother gently scolded. “Call me Rose.”

“Mom, is there any more of that?” Ivy asked.

“Well, no, but I could always make another batch,” Ivy’s mother answered. “Allan, don’t you think that’ll be enough?”

“No, mom,” Ivy said, “I meant for me.”

“Well…” Ivy’s mother said, flustered.

“What?” Ivy’s grandfather shouted. “And not eat the flesh?”

“I’m a vegetarian, thank you,” Ivy announced to the table in general, not meeting her grandfather’s eye.

“A vegetarian?” Ivy’s father said, bemused.

“Do you see?” Ivy’s grandfather ranted. “Like I’ve always said. You raise them outside the faith, you see what happens?”

“It’s not like that, grandfather,” Ivy said. “It just seems… wrong… to eat animals if we don’t have to.”

“Oh, wrong is it?” Ivy’s grandfather wheezed, waving Ivy’s father silent with frantic gestures. “Less than a year out in the world, and the traditions of your family for generations are wrong all of the sudden.” He turned to Ivy’s parents. “See, like I’ve said.”

“No, grandfather,” Ivy said. “The traditions aren’t wrong. Not really, anyway.”

“Not really?” Ivy’s grandfather aped. “Not really? So why don’t you explain to me how not really the Deceiver betrayed the Creator. Or is that wrong, too?”

“Not wrong,” Ivy answered. “But not true… That is, I don’t think it’s literal truth. But it has some basis in fact. I’ve been doing a lot of reading this year, and I think that the stories are really just an allegorical representation of evolution. See, we evolved first, and then the other species... man, included... started as evolutionary offshoots from us. “Twisted mirror images,” you see. Anyway, all of these offshoots eventually forced the Volkdlak to near extinction, somehow beating them out of food resources and such. Now, millions of years later, we’ve still got a pretty precarious place in the ecosystem.” She stopped to take a breath, and looked around the table to take in the blank stares directed her way. “That’s what I think, anyway,” she added.

“Sure,” Allan said, trying for helpful. “That makes sense.”

“Makes sense?” Ivy’s grandfather answered, fuming. “What do you know about it?”

“Um,” Allan stammered. “Not much, I guess. I was raised Methodist.”

“Isn’t that nice?” Ivy’s mother said, valiantly trying to steer the conversation away. “So? Who wants haunches?”

“Me, me,” Ivy’s brother said, bouncing up and down on his seat. “I do, I do.”

###

Later, around the seasonal tree (Allan had made the mistake of complementing the family on their Christmas tree, and only quick thinking on the part of Ivy’s mother saved Ivy’s grandfather from having to give another lecture), the family opened their gifts and sang traditional songs. While Ivy’s grandfather preferred to sing in the original tongue, the rest of the family insisted on the translated versions, which did little to put Allan at his ease, especially when the chorus about breaking bones and sucking out the marrow came around for the final refrain. Allan made a conscious effort not to notice the blood stains Ivy’s grandfather had let dribble down the front of his vest during dinner.

When the last song was sung, and the last present opened (a tasteful sweater Ivy’s mother had picked out for Allan, which didn’t really suit him, or even fit, but everyone agreed that it was the thought which counted), Ivy’s grandfather rose to his feet on creaking knees and raised his hands high over his head.

“Now, midway through the Long Night,” he intoned, “comes the time when we celebrate our diversity of forms, the truest sign of the Creator’s love.”

Ivy’s grandfather paused, and cast a charitable glance at Allan.

“Er… if you want,” Ivy’s grandfather said, “there’s a t.v. in the family room. They’ve got cable in here, you know.”

Allan looked to Ivy, who took his hand in hers and smiled.

“Well,” Allan said, “if you’d prefer…”

“It doesn’t bother us if it doesn’t bother you,” Ivy’s father said.

“Whatever makes you more comfortable,” Ivy’s mother said. “You can use the phone in there to call your parents if you like.”

“It’s up to you,” Ivy said in a low voice. “Whatever you want is fine with me.”

Allan looked from face to face, his eyes widened more than he’d have liked, and managed a smile.

“My folks aren’t in town,” Allan said with a sigh. They never were, he thought, had always preferred skiing with friends to spending the holidays at home. “But I’m here, and if you’ll have me, I’d be glad to stay in here with you folks.” He paused, and then added, “More than glad. Honored.”

“Such a nice boy,” Ivy’s mother beamed, wiping at her eyes.

Ivy gave Allan’s hand a squeeze. She leaned in close, and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

“Thanks,” Ivy said hardly above a whisper.

“Okay, then,” Ivy’s grandfather said, and clapped his hands. “Our blood run deeper than time, the ties of family stronger than any bond…” he began, and continued as long as he was able.

When it became necessary, when her nails grew to claws and cut into his palm, Allan let go of Ivy’s hand. But he petted her coat when he was able, and when the family (now a pack? Allan wondered) raised their howls in song, Allan broke into a wide, open smile. Above the din of the wolves’ song, Allan threw back his head and laughed.

“God bless us,” he said, holding out the palm of one hand for Ivy’s brother to lick and running the fingers of the other along Ivy’s father’s glossy pelt, Ivy curled up into a tight ball at his feet, her long tongue lolling contentedly. “Every one.”

Labels: freefiction

# posted by Chris Roberson @ 8:00 AM 0 comments

The Likeness of a Wolf
by Chris Roberson

The first body was found in the Rue Livre over a month ago, and in all that time the police have come no closer to naming a suspect, much less apprehending one. They simply handed the whole affair over to Animal Control after the first body was found, and washed their hands of it. After three weeks, Animal Control began to grow worried, and discussed calling in an outside agent. Last week, Alexander “Buck” Sizemore, a private citizen and professional game hunter from Louisiana, began his hunt through the city streets, searching for the animal. Animal Control agreed to pay him five hundred dollars a day for his time, as well as a bounty of an addition thousand when the job was complete. Last night, police found the mutilated and half-consumed corpse of Mr. Sizemore in an alley in the southern section of the district. This morning, Susan Kururangi began her own, more clandestine investigation.

###

I think I saw an elf today, writes Ivy in her small spiral bound notebook, hunched over the page, her legs folded up under her. The other patrons at the coffee shop ignore her, casually, as she absent-mindedly chews on the end of a ratted strand of hair. At least, I think it was an elf. Or a Fae. Whatever the politically correct name is. I think it was one, I’m almost sure of it.

I’d just left the car in the alley behind Serendipity, and was heading towards the women’s shelter to take a shower, when this guy come out of a brownstone leading a little yippy dog on a leash. He was about seven feet tall, I swear, dressed all in silver and white, and he had this amazing silver necklace around his neck. I must have been staring as I crossed the street, because when he passed me he looked right at me and said, “Take a picture, Norma, it’ll last longer.” I swear I could have just died.

At first I was just embarrassed, caught acting like some kind of damned tourist, but after a while I started to get pissed. I mean, who did he think I was, some kid just off the bus from Norman County, Ohio? That was pretty prejudiced of him, once I got to thinking about it. Just cause I don’t have pointed ears (not today, at least) and fairy silver and a goddamned rat dog on a leash doesn’t mean I’m not a Neighbor. He’s just lucky I’m not in a wolfpack. I probably would have ripped out his damned neck, silky smooth skin and all.

Ivy almost breaks the lead from her pencil, jamming the period onto the sentence, and surprises herself when she realizes the low growling noise she’s been hearing for the last minute or so has been coming from her. Forcing herself to calm, she carefully places the pencil down on the notebook, and walks to the counter to have her tea-pot refilled. Then, in what she thinks almost regal movements, she dips the tea-bag in, once, then twice, letting it bleed its color slowly into the steaming water. She sets the pot aside, and brushes her hands on the fabric of her worn jeans, and only then returns to the notebook.

I’ve just read the last sentences again, she writes, and I am so full of shit. Like I’d ever have anything to do with a wolfpack. I don’t need that scum. That would be almost as bad as going back to Fortuna, hanging out with those guys. Worse, maybe. Besides, with the money I make tonight at the Holy Grounds I should have enough for a new set of strings, and then maybe I can play the open mic night at the Ginger Duck. Then it’s just a matter of time.

Ivy pauses, chewing on the end of the pencil, and then adds, or maybe I’ll just use it to get into the Paramount to see Ciren on Friday. I wonder if I can find anything to wear.

###

Moonsong
By Ivy Koestler
By Ivy

the moon, hanging above me
sings to me in my sleep
in dreams I finally let myself go
and blood runs the darkened streets
and run through the darkened streets

###

“Ciren, darling, your beautiful little angel has bit me again,” says Serge as Ciren walks into the kitchen, toweling off her damp hair. The little girl in Serge’s arms struggles violently, scowling.

“She doesn’t do that to anyone else, you know,” Ciren answers, gently pulling her daughter from his grasp. The little girl immediately calms, and rests her head on her mother’s shoulder.

“Well she bloody well does it to me,” Serge replies, rubbing at the red marks on his forearm with a delicate hand.

“I’m sorry, Serge, if she did it to everyone I’d be concerned, worried she had some condition. But as she just does it to one person, I’m afraid I have to point the finger at you.” Ciren brushes back a stray hair from the little girl’s face, and nuzzles her neck.

“She hates men, I tell you, all of them,” Serge answers. “You’ve made her pathological.”

“She loves Michael,” Ciren replies, citing the manager at the Ginger Duck. “And Raphael. And even Silas.”

The little girl raises her head, smiling broadly.

“Uncle Silas?” she says. “Where?”

“See?” Ciren says. “It’s just you.”

Serge scowls, and rubs harder at his arm.

“I’ve told you before, Ciren darling, I am your manager, not an unpaid nanny.”

“Well,” Ciren says, smiling, “you’ll do until something better comes along.”

###

I passed that creepy guy in the alley again today, Ivy writes. The one with the spider web tattoo on the side of his face. I was coming around the corner after spending a while reading in Serendipity, and there he was, leaning against the wall, smoking some cheap smelly cigar. I don’t know if he saw me, I didn’t see him look, but by the time I got back here to the car and looked back, he was gone.

Mr. La Violette came downstairs to talk to me today. I think he knows what I am, but he hasn’t really said anything. Just hints, now and then. But I know he has no idea I’m living in a car behind his store, because he keeps asking me about traffic to and from the Rue Livre. He must think I live down in College Town or something.

Mr. La Violette is one of the nicer people I’ve met in the city. If not the nicest. To me, at least. I’ve seen him be a real ass to people that come into the store that don’t know what they’re looking for, or come looking for things he wouldn’t possibly carry. Like yesterday, this guy came in looking for a Tom Clancy book, and Mr. La Violette almost threw him down the stairs. He doesn’t like Clancy very much. But he’s nice to me, lets me sit in the big, comfortable chair under the stairs, and brings me books he thinks I’ll like. It’s usually fairy tales and stuff like that, but he’s right. I do like them.

Besides Mr. La Violette (he keeps wanting me to call him Thad, but I can’t do it. It’d be like calling my grandfather by his first name… if I knew what my grandfather’s first name was), the only other person in the city who’s really been nice to me has been Stu at the Holy Grounds. I came in one day, wanting to ask him about playing a gig for him, and I had to buy six cups of coffee before I worked up the nerve. Before I could do it, he just walked over and asked me if there was something I wanted. Not angry, just curious. I was so jittery after all the caffeine that I jumped right up and started yammering at him. I had my guitar with me, under the chair, and Stu told me to get it out, calm down, and play him a song. I did, one of my own, and when I was done he asked me to play another. He liked that one, too. He said I could play at night a couple of times a week, but all he could pay me was in coffee and pastries and ten bucks a gig. I tried to act all cool, like I was thinking about it for a minute, and then I just started nodding.

Now, I can pretty much eat for free at the Holy Grounds whenever I want, fruit and bagels and whatnot, and I play three nights a week. I don’t drink any coffee anymore though. I read it was bad for the voice. Now I just drink tea.

###

Ivy sits in the back seat of the ’87 Pontiac 6000, her legs crossed, the battered guitar set across her lap. Humming softly to herself, she tunes each string against the first, and then strums out a few chords. She carefully adjusts the E string, and tries another chord. Satisfied, she plays one of her new songs, trying to work out a better bridge between the third verse and the chorus. The alley outside the car doors is empty, though in the distance sounds of traffic and construction drifts from the streets beyond.

Night falls, and Ivy feels her joints begin to ache, and her fingers miss the chords. A shiver runs down her spin, and as her bones start to pop and shift she manages to set the guitar down without breaking it. Ivy curses herself for not checking the calendar, for not knowing her time of the month was coming. She knows now she’ll never make the gig at the Holy Grounds. Not in any shape to play, at least.

###

Behind the microphone on the stage of the Ginger Duck, Ciren holds the final chord of the song “Sunhillow” longer than normal, and tilts her head back, eyes shut. She smiles to herself, remembering when it was just her and the music, before Los Angeles, before Rick, before all of it. Only now, all these years later, back on this stage where it all started, does it even begin to feel like that again. Finally she lets the chord die out, and opens her eyes. The applause she hadn’t noticed startles her, and her smile becomes self-conscious, almost forced.

To the side of the stage sits Serge, the toddler perched calmly on his lap. They share the same expression, those two, both beaming at her.

Ciren’s gaze brushes across the crowd, the faces remembered or forgotten or new. Ciren drinks in their smiles, their happy faces, their love. Only one face towards the back, the one with a spider web tattoo crawling across it, seems out of place. Ciren chooses to ignore him, and whispering a thank you into the mic strikes a chord and launches into “Homecoming.” The room explodes with applause.

###

The change is a bitch, Ivy writes the next morning, after finishing a bagel and bowl of sliced fruit at the Holy Grounds. It’s gotten easier the past few years, and I can remember almost everything now, but if I’m not careful I end up with all my clothes shredded the day after. I haven’t changed except at my time of the month since that time with Billy Collins behind the school gym, and I think if I could just skip those three nights a month I’d do it. God, I hate it.

I remember the first time. It was during a sleep-over at Samantha’s house. I woke up and thought I was going to be sick and walked down the hall to the bathroom. Halfway there I got short and hairy, and I was sure I was going crazy. And so hungry. I think I might have eaten Samantha if it hadn’t been for that furry little dog of hers. She was so upset the next day, thinking it had run away, and I never told her where it had gone.

I ran home the next morning, still wearing my torn nightgown under my clothes, and found my mother in the kitchen. It was like that scene in that crappy old horror movie Carrie, I just kept shouting at her, Why didn’t you tell me, Why didn’t you tell me? Dad had to come home from work to calm me down, and I took a whole week off of school. Samantha never did talk to me after that. I think she blamed me for the dog.

Dad was so full of shit, worse than Mom. He acted like it was some secret shame, us being who we are. He made me promise never to tell anybody. I was eight, what did I know? But he still kept up the holidays, at least in the house. I was ten before I realized that The Long Night wasn’t the same as Christmas. That was the year that Grandfather came to live with us. He was the first to tell me what being Volkdlak was really all about.

###

“The Creator made the Volkdlak in Its own images,” the old man had told Ivy, while her parents were in the other room watching television, “and made for them the day and night to live in. Two forms, two worlds. The Volkdlak were the first men, the True Men, who lived in peace in the Forests of Paradise until the coming of the False Deceiver. The Deceiver was a twisted, mirror image of the Creator, frozen in a single form. Out of jealous rage, he created the False Men and Animals. They were like the Deceiver, frozen in a single form. With the help of the Deceiver, the False Men drove the Volkdlak out of the Forests, and hounded them to the ends of the earth. Even now, generations later, the true children of the Creator are made to cower, hiding, for fear of the False Men.”

###

“So, Eyes,” Susan says, looking out the window of the little man’s little office above the bakery, looking down on the streets of Arcadia. “What do you think?”

“It’s hair,” Eyes replies, pushing his bottle-thick glasses up on the bridge of his nose and smiling.

Susan doesn’t like Eyes, doesn’t trust him. She doesn’t like his look or his smell or his cramped, uncomfortable office. But she has to admit that he’s good, the only unlicensed forensic pathologists the Neighborhood has worth talking about. He’s the one to go to when the cop cutters run into something that won’t fit into their narrow minds, that would send them shrieking if they ever understood.

“I know that,” Susan says, patiently. “The question is, what kind?”

“The cops say dog, no?” Eyes asks.

“Or wolf,” Susan adds.

“Well,” Eyes answers with grudging respect, “that’s closer than they usually get. It’s wolf, alright, but not everyday, if you get me.”

Susan exhales slowly, nodding.

“Skinwalker,” she says.

“Yep,” Eyes replies.

“Can you tell if he was born that way, or is he just wearing a new body for fashion?” Susan asks.

“It’s impossible to say,” Eyes answers. “To be honest with you, if I had one genetic and one spelled-up werewolf right here in front of me, I don’t think I’d be able to tell the difference. Just too similar on a cellular basis.”

“Eyes,” Susan says in a soft voice, “if you had a werewolf in front of you now, I promise you wouldn’t last long enough to think anything.”

On her way downstairs, Susan balls one hand into a fist and slaps it into the heel of the other. Eyes had only told her what she didn’t want to hear. A wolf gone hunting in the Rue Livre was bad business. The Rue Livre was considered no man’s land, too close to the Di Lessa’s on the north, the Volsungs on the south and the Moondogs on the west for anyone to start making trouble. Susan only hoped it was a rogue, a lone wolf, and not a member of either wolfpack hunting in the other’s backyard. Otherwise, this could end up a full scale turf war.

###

I’ll be successful, Ivy writes in her spiral bound notebook, I just know I will. I have to be. I couldn’t stand a whole life of happy homemaker, or go-getter businesswoman. Just let me have a few years with my music, and then I’ll do anything, I’ll do anything you ask.

I know I can do it. My songs are good, everyone in high school said so, and my voice isn’t so good. I’m better at the guitar than I was, too, though still mostly just chords. I wish I could play classical, like Dave Matthews or Ciren, but right now chords work alright.

Ciren. She’s the reason I’m doing this in the first place. Cathy took me to see her when I was just a kid, when Cathy was living in San Cibola and we were both the only cousins in the family. Before Mom had Andy, and Cathy went missing. Cathy was ten years older than me, but more like a sister than the aunts just a few years older than her. I got to spend a whole week with her in the city one summer, while my parents took a cruise, and she took me to all the coolest places. Coffee shops and bars and record stores, and then came the night she took me down to the Ginger Duck to see Ciren play. I’d never seen anything like that, never heard music like that. Around my house, the height of musical culture was Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, or maybe John Denver, and Ciren was nothing like any of that. Just her and a guitar behind the microphone, playing music that would make the angels weep. By the time we left, I knew just what I wanted to do with my life.

Later, after Ciren stopped playing, other singers came along in her wake. Ani, Jewel, Alanis, all following in her footsteps. But the magazines never really talked about her, not really. They might mention Suzanne Vega or Natalie Merchant, but never Ciren. It was like she didn’t exist outside San Cibola. Which, I guess, she didn’t, since I could never find her tapes or albums at the mall in Fortuna, and my friends from out of state had never heard of her. But I had. To me, Ciren was what music was all about.

I was seventeen before I found out what Ciren was. There were some kids talking about her in the Claremont High cafeteria one day, and I didn’t understand what they were saying. It was like those times when someone starts talking about an actor that everybody, I mean everybody knows is gay, and it just has never occurred to you. It should have, if you stopped to think about it for a second, but you never did. That’s what it was like when I found out that Ciren was a mermaid.

Okay, not a mermaid, that’s not the p.c. term. Andaro, or “Aquatic American”, whichever you prefer. I hadn’t even thought of it before, but once I heard those girls talking (mean whispers behind their hands, like it was some giant sin to be different), it suddenly made sense. Her songs, her look, everything. If I could have loved her any more than I already did, at that moment it would have doubled. My love for her, that is.

If she can do it, I thought, so can I. Being different didn’t mean being quiet, and my being a Volkdlak was no more a barrier to my music than Ciren’s being an Andaro was to hers. So fuck them all, I thought, all those prissy bitches with their big hair and expensive cars their daddies bought them. I didn’t need them anymore than Ciren did, wherever she was.

So I left. The day after school ended, I packed up my bag and left.

###

“Don’t run away,” Andy had said, in a trembling voice, standing at the door to her room.

“I’m not running away, midget,” Ivy had answered, stuffing her favorite sweatshirt into her bag. “I’m eighteen. I’m an adult. Adults can’t run away.”

Andy sniffled, loudly, but didn’t cry. He was too big for that, eight next fall.

“So don’t leave,” he said.

Ivy looked at him once, and for a moment reconsidered. It wouldn’t be long until the change hit him the first time, and she wished that she’d be there to help. But she had things she had to do, and places to go. The old Pontiac her dad had bought for her birthday was parked downstairs, the gas tank full. Slinging her bag over her shoulder, she paused once at the door to muss her brother’s hair, and then stepped outside.

###

Ivy sits on the wobbly stool on the low stage at the Holy Grounds, singing softly into the scratchy mic, one of her new songs. The chorus still doesn’t quite work, a bad rhyme on the third line, but if anyone in the place notices they don’t make a sign. Aside from Stu standing over in the corner, the only people who really seem to be listening are a couple of college kids sitting in the back, sipping slowly from giant cups of coffee and nodding appreciatively now and again. Ivy doesn’t care that no one else is listening. She just sings.

###

“I don’t care what you think, Thaddeus,” Susan says, “tell me what you know.”

“It’s not right, Kururangi,” La Violette answers. “It’s just not right.”

“You said you’ve seen a lycanthrope in the area,” says Susan, irritated. “Not one of the wolfpack gang, but an outsider. I wouldn’t have come if you hadn’t. And now you decide to go quiet on me?”

“I just mentioned it in passing, I didn’t know what you were after.”

Susan squares her shoulders, and glowers at the old man.

“Is she, or isn’t she?” Susan repeats.

The old man averts his eyes, and rubs at his broad forehead with the handkerchief.

“Oh, she is, alright, but she couldn’t have done that.” He shakes his head, nervously folding the handkerchief. “Ivy couldn’t have done that.”

“Thanks,” Susan says. “Just what I wanted to hear.”

###

Ciren climbs the stairs to her apartment, her daughter in her arms. Behind her on the steps, her manager Serge struggles under the weight of Ciren’s bag, the groceries, and all the children’s toys.

“I’ll quit if this goes on much longer,” Serge threatens. “You have got to get a personal assistant.” He pauses on the step, hoisting the bag higher on his shoulder, almost losing the groceries in the process. “Or hire movers whenever you leave the apartment.”

###

I think the crowd tonight really liked me, writes Ivy later that evening. I mean, no one got in a fight or had to yell into their cell phone to talk over my guitar or anything.

I still don’t have enough to get into the Paramount tomorrow night, though. I wish I could ask Stu for a loan, or Mr. La Violette. But I just couldn’t. It would be like giving up. Maybe I’ll just go to the show anyway. If I’m lucky, I can see her on her way in. I wish I had my records with me, instead of back in Fortuna. Then I could have her sign one.

Wouldn’t it be something if I actually got to talk to her?

###

lines from Haunted
By Ciren

Your shade follows me everywhere, a shadow of your memory.
I am haunted, pursued, each thought threading it's way back to you.
Sometimes I try to escape, a young girl sitting in a corner
trying desperately not to imagine a white horse, but it doesn't work.
Your mark is upon me, and it will not wash off.
It is on me, and I would not wash it off.

###

The next night Susan, her pou staff sheathed on her back, watches the girl round the corner of the alley and start down the crowded sidewalk. Susan hides in the dark shadows until the girl passes, and then falls in step behind her. She watches the girl as they walk, catching her glance at the happy faces of couples as they pass, catching her pause for a moment at the window of an upscale yuppie restaurant up the block. Susan doesn’t blame her. She must be hungry.

Part of Susan begins to hope that she is wrong, that the girl isn’t the one. It would be a shame to put someone like that down, some who seems so fresh and innocent. But a larger part, the part that makes her finger the silver bladed dagger in the sheath slung low on her hip, hopes that the girl is. Better her than a blood crazed Moondog, or a drunken Volsung, god forbid. No one would make a stink if Susan gutted a little street urchin werewolf with her knife. Oh, Thaddeus wouldn’t be happy about it, but he wouldn’t start a war over it.

As the girl heads down the steps to the SCAT station, Susan pulls the knife a fraction of the way out of the sheath, and tests the edge on her thumb. She’ll give the girl tonight to prove her wrong. Then she’ll end it.

###

Ivy stands in front of the Paramount, watching the crowd slowly file in. The man at the door, large and imposing in shaved head and leather jacket, eyes her once, and then looks away. She’s no threat. Ivy shuffles uncomfortably, awkward, sure that her poverty is spelled out on her forehead in neon letters.

Susan waits half a block away, hidden in the doorway of a business closed for the night. She rubs her palms together, proof against the slight chill in the air, and then grazes the sheathed knife with the tips of her fingers.

Serge pulls the car to a stop up the street from the Paramount, and leaning over the seat unstraps the young girl from the seatbelts. Ciren sighs deeply, and finishes the last of her water bottle before twisting back on the cap and dropping the empty bottle into her purse. She undoes her own seat belt, and Serge lifts the young girl over the seat back and carefully deposits her on her mother’s lap.

“I’ll find a place to park,” Serge says, “and then I’ll be right in.”

“Take your time,” Ciren replies, pushing open the car door and then swinging out her legs. “The shows not due to start for a while.”

The little girl in Ciren’s arm drowses, her head on her mother’s shoulder.

“I’d wish you luck,” Serge says, “but you don’t need it.”

Ciren smiles, and then climbs out of the car.

There she is, Ivy thinks, seeing that beautiful head of green hair appear down the street. Overcome with excitement, Ivy begins to walk forward, slowly at first, then picking up speed. There she is.

This is it, Susan thinks, seeing the girl pick up speed, practically breaking into a run heading for the andaro down the block. She’s making her move.

Ciren takes no more than half a dozen steps, and then hears the sound of footsteps approaching fast. A fan, she thinks, half turning towards the sound. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees an enormous timber wolf emerge from the alley way, rushing straight for her.

Ivy doesn’t even pause to think. She sees the wolf racing towards Ciren, knows its intent, can almost smell its blood lust. The hunger is on it, the wolf is rogue. Ivy lunges forward, baring her teeth, putting herself in the wolf’s path. A low growl escapes her lips, curled back in a snarl.

Susan sees the wolf twist in midair, its hindquarters wheeling around, and then it lands with all four paws forward on the wolf girl standing in its way.

Ivy bats the wolf away, one of its paws raking across her face as it falls, another catching a hunk of flesh from her arms. She falters, but doesn’t fall.

The wolf rights itself, and raises its back, growling. It pads left, then right, looking for an opportunity to lunge past this new obstruction.

Ivy sees the woman in leather with the braided hair appear from nowhere, barreling into the rogue wolf, a silver knife in one hand, a silver tipped wooden staff in the other. The woman and the wolf roll on the ground, a mess of metal and teeth.

Run, yells Susan to Ivy from the tangle. Get them out of here.

Ivy stands dazed for a moment, and then comes to herself. She turns to Ciren, standing stricken with the little girl clutched in her arms.

Let’s go, Ivy orders, grabbing Ciren by the arm and dragging her towards the entrance to the Paramount.

As they run, Ciren risks a look back. The leather woman straddles the huge wolf, the silver knife clenched in her teeth, the wooden staff laid across the wolf’s throat, choking the life out of it.

“I’ve been looking all over for you,” Susan says awkwardly, pushing the words around the blade held in her teeth. “I thought you’d never get here.”

Once Ivy and Ciren are inside the theater, the big shaved-headed bouncer rushes over to offer what ever help he can to the woman struggling with the wolf. By the time he gets there, it’s not a wolf, but a naked, scrawny little white guy with a badly tattooed spider web spreading over half his face.

“A friend of yours?” the bouncer asks the woman with the braids and black leather.

“No,” Susan answers, cleaning the gore off the silver knife on the fabric of her pants, and sliding the knife back into its sheath. “Just a stray.”

###

It got kind of hectic after that, writes Ivy the next morning. I figured Ciren would call off the show, after being attacked and everything. But she didn’t. She just waited until her manager guy showed up, handed over her daughter, and then went on stage. Before she did, she asked me to stick around after the show, she wanted to talk to me. I figured they’d kick me out after the bouncer finished bandaging up my face and arm, but they didn’t. The bouncer even bought me a drink, didn’t even ask to see my ID.

I don’t know what happened with that woman who fought the werewolf. By the time the cops arrived to pick up the body, everybody had the story straight, and the woman who killed him was nowhere around. So the cops got told that this crazy naked guy rushed out of the alley to attack Ciren and me, and a mysterious stranger showed up to save us. I thought the cops wouldn’t buy it at all, but they acted like it all made perfect sense, and after they zipped the body up in those big people-sized garbage bags you see on television, they just left. It’s too bad, though. They missed a good show.

Afterwards, Ciren took me back with her to her dressing room. She asked about me, about what I did, and we talked about music for a while. When she asked me where I lived, I didn’t even think to lie. I told her about leaving home, and playing in the coffee shops, and the Pontiac parked out behind the bookstore. I was afraid she might call the cops, or tell me I should go home. But instead she handed me her guitar, her own guitar, and asked me to play one of my songs.

I was so nervous I could have just died, but after a little bit of trouble I managed to play Moonsong. The whole time I was playing, Ciren sat there quietly, her little girl asleep in her lap. When I was done, Ciren was quiet for a long time, like she was thinking about something.

Finally, she asked if I wanted a job.

“A job,” I said. “What kind of job?”

“I need someone to look after my little girl,” she said. “Someone to take care of her when I’m in the studio, or when I’m playing a gig. I don’t have a great deal of money, so I couldn’t pay you much more than minimum wage.”

I was trying to figure out how much money that was, and thinking how much more it was than I was making at Holy Grounds, when she dropped the bomb.

“Of course, I could supplement the income by teaching you music,” she said. “Not that you need much help. Just a little bit. You’re very good for a beginning. But I could help you with your fretwork, and help you tone up the upper ranges of your voice.”

I think I must have stood there for about ten minutes, my mouth just hanging open. I don’t know if I drooled, but I must have. I just stared at her, unable to say anything.

“Are you okay?” she finally asked me, probably thinking I was a lunatic.

“Yes,” I shouted. “Yes. I’ll take the job. You can teach me. Oh god, you can teach me to sing. Yes, oh yes.”

I’m staying with her now, sleeping in the guest bedroom of her apartment. It’s really nice. I told Ciren who I was, what I was, and it didn’t bother her. She asked me to let her know when my time of the month came around, and that when it does I’ll have a couple of days off. She says she’ll make Serge take me to the park those nights, if I want, to get some exercise and doing a little hunting. Ciren says it’s really no different than her having to spend all that time every day in the salt baths, or going down deep every couple of months. I knew she’d understand.

Ciren says she’s going to have Serge go with me later to pick up my car and my things, and then I can stay with her for all long as I want. After lunch, she’s going to teach me some scales.

I think this is going to work, writes Ivy, sitting at Ciren’s breakfast table, looking out the window at the Neighborhood. I think I’m home.

Labels: freefiction

# posted by Chris Roberson @ 10:28 AM 2 comments

You can get just about anything you want at the Denniston Flea Market, if not quite everything you need. Held the first weekend of every month, rain or shine, for as long as anyone can remember, its about like any other flea market you might ever have seen, only a little more so. If you do go (just take the Pomo exit off the expressway, go south, and you can’t miss it) ramble around the eight acres of antique and junk dealers all you want, eat a corn dog or one of those foot long polish sausages if you feel up to it, by all means have some pink lemonade and cotton candy, but don’t even think about leaving before you stop by Granma Stemple’s stall. If you drive away before visiting Granma, you'll have missed the heart of the Denniston market. If there’s anything you’ve ever really wanted, anything at all, chances are you’ll find it there.

This is my opinion, you understand, and others would most likely tell you different, but I’ve spent one weekend out of four at the market now for some thirty years, and I’ve seen them come and go. Old retired couples with their life-long collections of porcelain knick-knacks and salt & pepper shakers, sitting in the shade of their prized r.v.; young hustlers with a crate load of shoddy Korean shoes, trying to pass them off for anything they can take; shop keepers trying to dump all the merchandise they wouldn’t even dare carry in their stores; folk artists selling bits of wood with paintings on them, or paintings done up like clocks. I’ve seen them all. But of every stall I’ve seen, Granma Stemple’s stands out the most for remembering.

Granma is one of the flea market’s best kept secrets. She’s been set up in the same spot for as long as I’ve been coming out, and doesn’t show any signs of moving. She was one of the earliest dealers to have a permanent building of any kind, even if it was only ratty old two-by-fours and corrugated tin siding hammered together into a lopsided box. That box kept the rain off of her in the rain, and the sun in the sunshine. And it holds a lot more merchandise than you’d ever think; a lot more.

I didn’t go over to Granma’s stall for a lot of years. I was at the market to sell, not to buy. I worked my weeks over at the VA hospital, and had a house and attic full of junk. My mother’s things, left there when she went to live at the nursing home those last few years; my boy’s books and toys and such from before he got run over by that car; my wife’s, because when she left it was in a hurry, and she didn’t take much with her. I had that stuff cluttering up my life for too long, I figured, so I rented out a spot and started ferrying stuff over once a month. It made from some extra cash, and made my house a bit easier to move around in.

Now, Granma Stemple’s stall was up just a ways from mine, and though I didn’t ever go in, I’d see her every now and again on my way down to the portalets. She’d always be sitting there, on her high wooden chair, smoking those long thin cigarettes of hers. She hardly ever spoke, only when spoken to first, and even then only to mumble a bit as to what the price of something was, or maybe just what it was exactly anyway.

From my stall I’d see people walking back from hers. Never many, one or two or three each market day, and they’d always have something with them, and they’d always looked kind of stunned. Like they’d found something they’d been looking for a long while, or maybe never even knew they wanted. Sometimes I’d ask them, if they happened to slow down near my tables, just what it was Granma sold. They’d just smile, kind of stupidly, and hold up whatever it was they’d bought. “This,” was all they’d ever say.

I saw old 45 records in those people’s hands, or metal lunch boxes, or key rings, or Barbie dolls. Every time something different, and every time it was like the most important thing in the world. People didn’t just hold the things they bought from Granma, they clung to them.

Now, as the years went by, and my house got more and more empty, I started to peek around the other stalls, to see if I couldn’t find something that’s look good in my place. One time I found an old cavalry sword, which the fellow said had come down from the Civil War; I knew it wasn’t any older than WWI, but it looked fine over my mantle so I didn’t complain. I found an old juke box another time, a battered old Wurlitzer, and once I got it hammered out, and polished up, it looked just fine in my den. And I found a few good paintings, and a strange little African statue (though most likely from Taiwan), and a new set of dishes, and a dresser. But after all that, after all those years of buying, I never once stopped by Granma Stemple’s.

I’d seen the things people bought from Granma, and it wasn’t anything I needed. Junk is all, I figured, and so walked on by. She kept everything in that shack of hers, and with the shades in there so dark you couldn’t see a thing from the outside. And she’d just sit there on her high chair, smoking and not talking.

So a few years went by, and I bought everything I thought I needed; but my house still seemed too big, and too empty. Everything left of my mothers, and my boy’s and my wife’s was up in the attic now, and I only had to go up a couple of times a year to get something to sell. But even with all their stuff up there, out of sight, or away in other folk’s homes, that still didn’t seem like my house. I still felt like I was just borrowing it, from all those that had gone away.

It was spring, when I’d been a regular at the market for about twelve years, when I finally went to see Granma Stemple. Most everybody else had come and gone since the old days, and I didn’t get on too well with the new dealers that were showing up. All hairy, in dirty clothes, acting like a bath was something to harm you. I saw one selling out Nazi patches, if you can believe it, right there in Denniston.

So I walked on down to Granma Stemple’s stall, and walked right up to where she sat. It was sunny out, and she had a big straw hat pulled down low over her face. About all I could see was her chin, and her bottom lip, and that long thin cigarette dangling.

“Afternoon,” I said.

She just mumbled back.

“Fine day,” I said again.

She mumbled back again.

I turned my head a bit, peeking into the shadows of her shack.

“So, what are you selling today?” I asked.

She just jerked her chin a bit, pointing it back to the shack.

“What people want,” she mumbled, down below her breath.

“That so? Guess I’ll have to take a look.”

She didn’t say another word, so I turned and walked back to her stall. It was small, but bigger inside than it looked, and when my yes had adjusted themselves to the dark, I could see that inside there was only one table, set against the back wall. And on that table was a yellowed old envelope. I bent down to look at it, all water stained and tattered, and saw my own name was written on it in simple, block letters.

I snatched it up and carried it back to where Granma sat.

“What’s this?” I asked, my voice kind of set on edge. I shook the envelope at her.

“What you want,” she muttered.

I look at her, and then at the envelope in my hands.

“You selling this, you mean?” I asked. Then I said, “How much?”

“Already yours,” she mumbled. Then she titled her head back and bit, and looked at me with one gray eye from underneath that hat. “See ya.”

So I thanked her, and walked away. She was one odd bird, I figured, and it was a wonder she ever made a dime. No merchandise, and leaving people little notes in the open. I stuck that envelope in my back pocket and didn’t think another thing about it.

That night, back at my house after my day at the market, I was changing into another pair of pants when I found that envelope in my pocket. I’d about forgotten all about it. Pulling on my other pants, I sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at it. It looked old, and worn, and I could tell there was something in it. The writing, my name on the front, looked to have been done some time before, and the handwriting looked familiar.

Sitting there on the edge of the bed, I tore open that envelope and took out what was inside. It was a little piece of paper, folded up, and when I got it unfolded I saw it only had four words on it, in the same handwriting as on the front:
“BETTER ANSWER THE DOOR.”

I sat there a little while, trying to puzzle that one out, when sure enough I heard a pounding at the door. I pulled on my boots, and dropped that paper onto the bed, and went down to answer it, wondering would could be coming around at that hour. At any hour, really.

I opened the door, and there they were. My mother, my boy, my wife. All standing on the porch, smiling at me.

“Thanks, hon,” my wife said, “we all forgot our keys and couldn’t get in.”

“We got fried chicken for dinner, dad,” my boy said, grinning from ear to ear.

“You’ll get none ‘till you wash up, boy,” my mother said, patting her grandson on the back, pushing him in the door.

That night we had fried chicken, and sat around listening to the radio. Me, my dead son, the mother I’d buried fifteen years before, and the wife who’d up and run off to Nevada. We had a grand old time, and that big old house didn’t seem so empty anymore.

Come morning, I woke up alone. My wife wasn’t in my bed anymore, and I couldn’t hear the sound of my boy playing out in the yard, and I knew my mother wouldn’t be down in the kitchen at her sewing machine. I knew they were all gone. Don’t ask me how, I just did.

It was Sunday morning, the last day of the market until the next month. I got dressed, put that envelope back in my pocket and drove my truck down to the market. It wasn’t fifteen minutes before I was back at Granma Stemple’s stall, my cap in my hands.

“Ma’am,” I told her, stepping forward slowly, “I’m going to have to give this back.”

I held out the envelope to her, the piece of paper back inside. I figured I knew what would happen the next night I pulled that paper out, and the time after that, and all the times after that.

“It’s what you want,” she muttered.

She didn’t look up.

“Yeah,” I answered, “I imagine it is. Bit it ain’t what I need.”

We were like that for a bit, me standing and holding that envelope out, her sitting and smoking. Finally I said, “Please.”

“Alright,” she muttered back.

She took the envelope from me, and tucked it into her dress somewhere. And she didn’t say another word

I went back to my stall, and I never went back that way again. But I’d never steer anyone away, no. Everybody should have the chance to shop there, and see what they might find. But remember this: you can find most anything you want at the Denniston Flea Market, but you might not find what you need.

Labels: freefiction

# posted by Chris Roberson @ 7:50 AM 0 comments

Trick or Treat:
A Public Service Announcement
by Chris Roberson

“I got a moldy old apple,” Joey Cuellar.

“I got a rock,” Timmy Gromp said, and quickly added, “Assbug.”

The three boys, trawling the twilight suburban streets of Ashland, Oregon, were forced to admit that this Halloween was shaping up to be the slimmest in a long line of slim Halloweens. Their parents, discussing the matter over backyard fences, at mailboxes, or while lingering near the office watercooler, had decided that crass commercialism had threatened the pristine spirit of the holiday for far too long, and that the traditions of their own childhoods had to be defended against all comers.

In that spirit, the parents of Timmy, Bobby, Joey, and any number of other neighborhood children had decided that this year, if the kids wanted Halloween costumes, they would have to make them by hand. Which explained why Timmy, Bobby, and Joey, of all their contemporaries, were wandering the streets in ratty old bedsheets, ragged holes cut in place of eyes. (Timmy, of course, had cut far too many holes in his sheet, leading the other two to express their long-held belief that Timmy was, in fact, an assbug).

“These treats suck,” Bobby concluded, to which Timmy and Joey responded with hearty movements of their sheet-wrapped heads.

“We should try some tricks, instead,” Joey answered, poking the browned skin of his moldy apple with an outstretched fingertip.

“I got a rock,” Timmy said.

“I know,” Bobby said. “Let’s go get some rotten old eggs from the dumpster behind the market, and throw them at houses.”

“Yeah,” Joey answered. “Let’s start with Rangi’s house. His parents talk all weird, and their house always smells like a spicy dog exploded in it.”

“A spicy dog?” Timmy asked.

“Whatever, assbug,” Bobby said. “Okay, we’ll start with Rangi’s house, and then we’ll do Ackbar’s. His parents dress funny.”

“And if there’s any eggs left, we’ll do Timmy’s house last.”

“Hey!” Timmy said.

“Not so fast kids,” said a voice from somewhere above and behind them.

The three ghosts turned, bags of bounty clutched against their sheet wrapped chests, and looked up into the eyes of the man towering over them.

“Hey, guys!” Bobby said. “It’s J.B. Carmody, the Cybermancer.”

“And A.J. Jabbar, his faithful companion,” Joey added, pointing out the giant man at Carmody’s side.

“Hey!” Timmy said.

Carmody knelt down on one knee, bringing his head nearer the boy’s level.

“Now, we couldn’t help over hearing you boys, and I have to say that I’m surprised to hear good Americans talk that way.”

“That’s right,” the giant A.J. added forcefully, his head nodding somewhere up in the darkness.

“What do you mean?” Bobby said.

“Why,” Carmody answered, “to single someone out, just because they look different, or talk different, or have different customs, is about the worst thing I can think of.”

“Yeah, it’s a good thing you’re already wearing white sheets, kids,” A.J. said, smacking one giant fist into the palm of his other hand, “because all you lack now is a burning cross or two.”

“Simmer down, Jabbar,” Carmody said. “But A.J. is right, kids, when you get right down to it. It makes no sense to judge someone on the basis of their race, religion, or culture, and to direct irrational hatred and cruel punishments against them for expressing their god given freedoms.”

”Right, boss,” A.J. said. “Better to direct irrational hatred and cruel punishments against people for the stupid things they say and do.”

“Exactly, Jabbar,” Carmody said. “Now, kids, do you know anyone in your neighborhood who says or does stupid things?”

“Well,” Bobby answered, “I saw mean old Mr. Wilson kick a puppy the other day.”

“Mrs. Grant steals her neighbor’s paper every Sunday,” Joey said.

“And my parents won’t let me read Clockwork Storybook,” Timmy said.

“Okay, kids, that’s great, now you’ve got a list to work with,” Carmody said. “Next time you round up rotten eggs to throw, or soggy toilet paper to wrap around trees, or a paper bag of dog droppings to light on fire, remember that you shouldn’t hate someone for what’s on the outside. Hate them for what’s on the inside.”

“Thanks, Mr. Carmody,” Bobby said.

“Yeah, you’re the greatest,” Joey said.

“I got a rock,” Timmy said.

“Good luck, boys,” Carmody answered, waving them on their way to gather up ammunition.

“Cracker white devils,” A.J. said.

“Jabbar,” Carmody scolded in mock-menacing tones. “Have you forgotten the true meaning of Halloween so soon?”

The giant blushed, and shook his head.

“I’m sorry, boss,” he answered. He joined Carmody in waving at the boys, already loping their way down the street to the market. “Ignorant, small-minded creeps.”

“Much better,” Carmody said with a wink.

Labels: freefiction

# posted by Chris Roberson @ 8:55 AM 0 comments

"And Such Small Deer" by Chris Roberson, a tale of Doctor Van Helsing in the Dutch East Indies, embraces the grotesque in a neat conflation of Bram Stoker, Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells.

Your Excellency, forgive my impertinence in addressing this missive directly to you. At the urging of my uncle, Governor of Hunan Province and cousin to his imperial Majesty Xianfeng (scion of the Qing dynasty, son of heaven, may he reign ten thousand years), I am writing to explain my absence from my scheduled Jinshi national examination, and to beg your indulgence in allowing me another attempt. My uncle, Governor of Hunan Province and cousin to his imperial Majesty, thought it might be beneficial if I were to explain how it was that I came to miss my scheduled examination, as the circumstances were most unusual and unavoidable. My uncle, likewise, suggests that recounting the events could prove instructive for me, and help mold me into one who might in future better serve the Dragon Throne.

The difficulty arose on the road from Changsha, en route to Beijing and the Forbidden City.

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Abraham Van Helsing’s Journal
(translated from the Dutch.)

1 Sep, 1860. Zhengzhou. -- Left Tianjin by junk boat, morning of 25^th August, and after a journey of five days, four onboard and one additional by horse-drawn wagon, reached the rural city of Zhengzhou. Unfortunately, employer’s agent, whose health I was sent afield to tend could not wait my coming. Arriving too late to help the poor devil, I was able to do little more than supervise the packing up of his body to be shipped, first to Tianjin, then back to England for burial.

I have been in the Orient only a relatively short time, and this journey marked my first real foray beyond the protection of the English Concession in the treaty port city of Tianjin. Guarded by English troops, the narrow streets packed with the regional offices of dozens of leading English international firms, my employers among them, living in the Concession is not so different, upon reflection, from my years spent studying in London. Beyond those protective walls lies the alien landscape of China, mysterious and threatening.