by Jack Dann
“I don’t care!” shouted Eggo. “That’s the king’s house, you fool! You destroyed the king’s house!”
“And you can save it by driving us out of here! Let us go, and be the hero who ended the flood!”
Eggo’s gun was loaded and he was pointing it right at Todd, who was close enough now that he thought this time it would probably hurt.
But Eggo didn’t fire the thing. “All right!’.’ he said. “Go! I’ll shoot past you. Just get out of here. And act like you’re afraid of me!”
“I won’t be acting,” murmured Todd.
But he couldn’t change direction in midair, and he knew if he once got into that water, he’d never be able to take off again.
“Give me a push!” he shouted at Eggo.
Eggo ran at him and held up the barrel of his musket. Todd grabbed it, barely clung to it with his attenuated fingers, and then hung on for dear life as the elf swung him and threw him toward the palace, where Mom was just reaching the huge gap through which water was flowing.
Soon they were inside, grabbing sconces and chandeliers and furniture to keep them moving forward through the air over the flood. And finally they found it, the place where a huge, thick hose-end was spewing out an incredible volume of icy, jet-speed water. Todd made the mistake of being in the path of the blast and it felt like it had broken half his ribs. He dropped down into the water. Mom screamed and pulled herself down to help him, which saved her from getting blasted by another whiplike pass from the hose.
“We’ve got to get under it,” he said. “Look for where the hose comes out of nothing. We have to climb the hose into the worm’s mouth!”
Now it was Mom’s turn to drag Todd, through the water, barely raising their heads above the surface to breathe. Finally they got behind the hose-end, and even though it was whipping around, the base of it, the place where it came out of nowhere, was fairly solidly in place.
The hose was exactly the right size for Todd to grip it. “You first!” he shouted to Mom. “Climb up the hose! When you get to the end, tell them to turn it off, but don’t pull it out till I climb down after you!”
Mom gripped the hose and when her hand inched up past the place where the hose disappeared, it also vanished. “Keep climbing,” Todd urged her. “Don’t stop no matter what you see. Don’t let go!”
As Mom disappeared, he turned around to avoid watching her, and to take one last look around the room. There were soldiers in flamboyantly colored uniforms gathered in the doorways, aiming arrows at him. Oh, good, he thought. They don’t have guns.
***
The chain saw lay discarded on the lawn. Jared stood near it, straddling the hose, watching as Dad wrestled with it like a python. He couldn’t keep it from being thrust back at him, no matter how tightly he held it against the spot where it became invisible. Suddenly a loop of it would extrude and Dad would have to grasp it again, at the new endpoint. Already several coils were on the floor. What if Mom and Todd weren’t anywhere near the point where it emerged on the other side? What if all of this was for nothing?
And then, along with a coil of hose, a hand emerged out of nothingness in the shed.
Dad let go of the hose and took the hand, dragged at it.
Mother’s head emerged from the wormhole. “Turn off the water!” she croaked. “Turn it off, but keep the hose—”
Jared was already rushing for the faucet. He turned it off, turned back to face her, and . . .
The hose lay completely on the ground, Mom tangled up in it. Nothing was poking into the worm’s anus now. How would Todd get back?
Mom and Dad were hugging while at the same time Dad was trying to wrap a shirt around her, to cover her.
“What about Todd!” Jared shouted.
“He’s coming,” said Mom. “He’s right behind me.”
“The hose is out of the worm!”
Apparently they hadn’t realized it until now. Father lunged for the hose-end, still dripping, and tried frantically to reinsert it. Mother, half-wearing the shirt now, tried to help him, but she was panting heavily and then she collapsed onto the hose.
Dad cried out and dropped the hose-end. .“He’s right behind me,” Mom whispered.
Jared helped him get Mom up. She wasn’t unconscious; once Dad was holding her, she could shuffle along. Dad led her toward the house.
Jared took up the hose again and started trying to feed it through. Finding the hole was hard; pushing the hose was harder.
Until he realized: It doesn’t have to be the hose any more. We aren’t trying to pump water any more.
He found the rake and fed the handle of it into the gap in the air. Rigid, the handle went in much more easily—which was to say, it took all of Jared’s strength, but he could do it. He jammed the handle in all the way up to the metal of the rake and then held it there, gripping it tightly and bracing his feet against the lowest shelf on the wall of the shed.
The rake kept lunging toward him, pressing at him, shoving him backward, but he’d push it in again. It went on until he was too tired to hold it any longer and his belly and hips hurt where the rake had jabbed him, but still he held.
And then a hand came out of the hole along with a shove of the rake, and this time Jared shoved back only long enough to get out from behind the rake. It was practically shot out of the wormhole, and along with it came Todd.
Todd was bleeding all over from vicious-looking puncture wounds. “They shot me,” he said, and then he fell into unconsciousness.
«><=>«>
Mother spent two days in the hospital, rehydrating and recovering. They pumped her with questions about what had happened, where she was for four years and four months, but she told them over and over that she couldn’t remember, that one minute she was putting Jared to bed, and the next minute she was lying out in the shed, gasping for breath, feeling as if someone had stretched her so thin that a gust of wind could blow her away.
They questioned Jared, too. And Dad. What did you see? How did you find them? Did you see who hurt your brother? And all they could say, either of them, was, “Mom was just there in the shed. And after we helped her back into the house, we came out and Todd was there, too, bleeding, and we called 911.”
Because Dad had told Mom and Jared, “No lies. Tell the truth. Up to Mom going and after Mom and Todd reappeared. No explanations. No guesses. Nothing. We don’t know anything, we don’t remember anything.”
Jared didn’t bother telling him that “I don’t remember” was a huge lie. He knew enough to realize that telling the truth would convince everybody that they were liars, and only lies would convince anybody they were telling the truth.
Todd didn’t recover consciousness after the surgery for three days, and then he was in and out as his body fought off a devastating fever and an infection that antibiotics didn’t seem to help. So delirious that nothing he said made sense—to the cops and the doctors, anyway. Men with arrows. Elves. Eggo waffles. Worms with mouths and anuses. Flying through space. Floods and flying and . . . definitely delirium.
The cops found what looked like bloodstains on the chain saw, but since Todd’s wounds were punctures and the stains turned out not to react properly to any of the tests for blood, the evidence led them nowhere. It might end up in somebody’s X file, but what the whole event would not do is end up in court.
When Todd woke up for real, Dad and Jared were there by his bed. Dad only had time to say, “It’s a shame if you don’t remember anything at all,” before the detective and the doctor were both all over him, asking how it happened, who did it, where the injuries were inflicted.
“On another planet,” said Todd. “I flew through space to get there and I never let go of the hose but then it got sucked away from me and I was lost until I got jabbed in the shoulder with the rake and I held on and rode it home.”
That was even better than amnesia, since the doctor assumed he was still delirious and they left Todd and Dad and Jared alone. Later, when Todd was clearly
not delirious, he was ready with his own amnesia story, along with tales of weird dreams he had while in a coma.
The doctor’s report finally said that Todd’s injuries were consistent with old-fashioned arrows, the kind with barbs, only there were no removal injuries. It was as if the arrows had entered his body and dissolved somehow. And as to where Mom had been all those years, they hadn’t a clue, and except for dehydration and some serious but generalized weight loss, she seemed to be in good health.
And when at last they were home together, they didn’t talk about it much. One time through the story so everybody would know what happened to everybody else, but then it was done.
Mom couldn’t get over how many years she had missed, how much bigger and older Todd and Jared had become. She started blaming herself for being gone that whole time, but Dad wouldn’t let her. “We all did what made sense to us at the time,” he said. “The best we could. And we’re back together now. Todd has some interesting scars. You have to take calcium pills to recover from bone loss. There’s only one thing left to take care of.”
The mouth of the worm in the closet. The anus of the worm in the shed.
The solution wasn’t elegant, but it worked. First they hooked the anus with the rake one last time, covered the top with a tarpaulin, and dragged it to the car. They drove to the lake and dragged the thing up to the edge of a steep cliff overlooking the water, then shoved it as far as they could over the edge, with Dad and Mom gripping Todd tightly so he wouldn’t fall.
Let Eggo come back if he wanted. Given how tough he was, it probably wouldn’t hurt him much, but it would be a very inconvenient location.
The mouth in the closet was harder, because they couldn’t move it from their end. But a truckload of manure dumped on the front lawn allowed them to bring wheelbarrows full of it into the house and on into the bedroom, where they took turns shoveling it into the maw.
On the other side, they knew, it would be a fine mist of manure, spreading with the wind out across the town. Huge volumes of it, coming thick and fast.
And sure enough, by the time the manure pile was half gone, the mouth disappeared. Eggo must have moved it from his end. Which was all they wanted.
Of course, then they had to get the smell out of the house and spread a huge amount of leftover manure over the lawn and across the garden, and the neighbors were really annoyed with the stench in the neighborhood until a couple of rains had settled it down. But they had a great lawn the next spring.
Only one thing that Todd had to know. He asked Mom when they were alone one night, watching the last installment of the BBC miniseries of Pride and Prejudice after Dad and Jared had fallen asleep.
“What did you see?” he asked. “During the passage?” When she seemed baffled, he added, “Between worlds.”
“See?” asked Mom. “What did you see?”
“It was like I was in space,” said Todd, “only I could breathe. Faster than light I was going, stars everywhere, and then I zoomed down to the planet and . . . there I was.”
She shook her head. “I guess we each saw what we wanted to see. Needed to see, maybe. No outer space for me. No stars. Just you and Jared and your dad, waiting for me. Beckoning to me. Telling me to come home.”
“And the hose?”
“Never saw it,” she said. “During the whole passage. I could feel it, hold tightly to it, but all I saw was . . . home.”
Todd nodded. “OK,” he said. “But it was another planet, just the same. Even if I didn’t really see my passage through space. It was a real place, and I was there.”
“You were there,” said Mom.
“And you know what?” said Todd.
“I hope you’re not telling me you ever want to go back.”
“Are you kidding?” said Todd. “I’ve had my fill of space travel. I’m done.”
“There’s no place like home,” said Mom, clicking her heels together.
INCARNATION DAY
Walter Jon Williams
* * *
In every society, in every age, the transition from child to adult, the time of Coming of Age, is a profound and significant milestone, sometimes even a dangerous one. Never so profound, or dangerous though as in the brilliantly depicted future society shown to us here by Walter Jon Williams, where successfully Coming of Age makes the difference between having flesh and life—and being erased.
Walter Jon Williams was born in Minnesota and now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His short fiction has appeared frequently in Asimov's Science Fiction, as well as in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Wheel of Fortune, Global Dispatches, Alternate Outlaws, and in other markets, and has been gathered in the collections Facets and Frankensteins and Other Foreign Devils. His novels include Ambassador of Progress, Knight Moves, Hardwired, The Crown Jewels, Voice of the Whirlwind, House of Shards, Days of Atonement, Aristoi, Metropolitan, City on Fire, a huge disaster thriller. The Rift, and a Star Trek novel, Destiny's Way. His most recent books are the first two novels in his acclaimed Modern Space Opera epic, "Dread Empire's Fall," Dread Empire's Fall: The Praxis and Dread Empire's Fall: The Sundering. Coming up are two new novels, Orthodox War and Conventions of War. He won a long-overdue Nebula Award in 2001 for his story "Daddy's World," and took the Nebula Award again in 2005 with "The Green Leopard Plague."
* * *
IT’S YOUR UNDERSTANDING and wisdom that makes me want to talk to you, Dr. Sam. About how Fritz met the Blue Lady, and what happened with Janis, and why her mother decided to kill her, and what became of all that. I need to get it sorted out, and for that I need a real friend. Which is you.
Janis is always making fun of me because I talk to an imaginary person. She makes even more fun of me because my imaginary friend is an English guy who died hundreds of years ago.
“You’re wrong,” I pointed out to her, “Dr. Samuel Johnson was a real person, so he’s not imaginary. It’s just my conversations with him that are imaginary.”
I don’t think Janis understands the distinction I’m trying to make.
But I know that you understand, Dr. Sam. You’ve understood me ever since we met in that Age of Reason class, and I realized that you not only said and did things that made you immortal, but that you said and did them while you were hanging around in taverns with actors and poets.
Which is about the perfect life, if you ask me.
In my opinion Janis could do with a Dr. Sam to talk to. She might be a lot less frustrated as an individual.
I mean, when I am totally stressed trying to comprehend the equations for electron paramagnetic resonance or something, so I just can't stand cramming another ounce of knowledge into my brain, I can always imagine my Dr. Sam—a big fat man (though I think the word they used back then was “corpulent”)—a fat man with a silly wig on his head, who makes a magnificent gesture with one hand and says, with perfect wisdom and gravity, All intellectual improvement, Miss Alison, arises from leisure.
Who could put it better than that? Who else could be as sensible and wise? Who could understand me as well?
Certainly nobody I know.
(And have I mentioned how much I like the way you call me Miss Allison?)
We might as well begin with Fahd’s Incarnation Day on Titan. It was the first incarnation among the Cadre of Glorious Destiny, so of course we were all present.
The celebration had been carefully planned to showcase the delights of Saturn’s largest moon. First we were to be downloaded onto Cassini Ranger, the ship parked in Saturn orbit to service all the settlements on the various moons. Then we would be packed into individual descent pods and dropped into Titan’s thick atmosphere. We’d be able to stunt through the air, dodging in and out of methane clouds as we chased each other across Titan’s cloudy, photochemical sky. After that would be skiing on the Tomasko glacier, Fahd’s dinner, and then skating on frozen methane ice.
We would all be wearing bodies suitable for Titan’s low gravity and high-pressure atmosphere—sturdy,
low to the ground, and furry, with six legs and a domelike head stuck onto the front between a pair of arms.
But my body would be one borrowed for the occasion, a body the resort kept for tourists. For Fahd it would be different. He would spend the next five or six years in orbit around Saturn, after which he would have the opportunity to move on to something else.
The six-legged body he inhabited would be his own, his first. He would be incarnated—a legal adult, and legally human despite his six legs and furry body. He would have his own money and possessions, a job, and a full set of human rights.
Unlike the rest of us.
After the dinner, where Fahd would be formally invested with adulthood and his citizenship, we would all go out for skating on the methane lake below the glacier. Then we’d be uploaded and head for home.
All of us but Fahd, who would begin his new life. The Cadre of Glorious Destiny would have given its first member to interplanetary civilization.
I envied Fahd his incarnation—his furry six-legged body, his independence, and even his job, which wasn’t all that stellar if you ask me. After fourteen years of being a bunch of electrons buzzing around in a quantum matrix, I wanted a real life even if it meant having twelve dozen legs.
I suppose I should explain, because you were born in an era when electricity came from kites, that at the time of Fahd’s Incarnation Day party I was not exactly a human being. Not legally, and especially not physically.
Back in the old days—back when people were establishing the first settlements beyond Mars, in the asteroid belt and on the moons of Jupiter and then Saturn—resources were scarce. Basics such as water and air had to be shipped in from other places, and that was very expensive. And of course the environment was extremely hazardous—the death rate in those early years was phenomenal.
It’s lucky that people are basically stupid, otherwise no one would have gone.
Yet the settlements had to grow. They had to achieve self-sufficiency from the home worlds of Earth and Luna and Mars, which sooner or later were going to get tired of shipping resources to them, not to mention shipping replacements for all the people who died in stupid accidents. And a part of independence involved establishing growing, or at least stable, populations, and that meant having children.