The Best of Talebones

by edited by Patrick Swenson

  All that I prayed for was that the Yegg would not find him on the planet. I glanced at Ling’s twitching form in the hold of the comachrome ship and I let out a wail between my clenched teeth. No one, Yegg or human, paid notice, which was the worst ordeal of all.

  I only realized after squinting at the two soldiers that they were upright, frozen, and dead.

  I lumbered over to Ling. I steeled myself for the repulsion, but there was none. I righted him, helping him release the water from his mouth. He choked and coughed. He would probably not live long. But he curled his body into mine, and we sat together, in bathtub-high water, and I held him.

  “S-s-sorry,” he muttered. I held him like I did when he was a small boy.

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about,” I said. I tried not to touch him too hard; that would only have increased his pain. “Listen, do you think you have enough strength to escape?”

  “Escape?” he managed to heave out, his head rolling down. “I can barely breathe.”

  It was quixotic, but if both of us were going to die anyway, it didn’t hurt to try something foolish.

  “Don’t worry about that,” I said. “I’ll try to protect you, all right?”

  He weakly nodded. Of course, I didn’t know a comachrome boat had any controls I could manipulate. I wasn’t thinking about that, however, as I walked to the stairs. The walk seemed to take an eternity. When I started climbing the steps, Ling’s beard had grown to cover the lower part of the face. His eyes were closed, and his shuddering breath had stopped.

  “Ling!” I called out. He didn’t move or respond. Only ten seconds had passed. I tried to rush back, but remained suspended in place. That forcefield again. I pounded against it at the foot of the stairs. The water level rose. The four Yegg came back down the stairs, cooing, gliding past me. I saw that they all walked on the surface of the water. They formed a circle around Ling’s inert form, and they mumbled snatches of phrases that I couldn’t decipher, in turns. From his coat pocket, one pulled out Ling’s koan dice. The Yegg shouted in unison, in deep voices that made my body shake:

  Go left

  shun on

  your shine.

  Ling’s body began to melt into the comachrome.

  The cobalt one rolled the koan dice, which plopped but floated in the silver water. Three sets of two. Just like the koan composed — but the Yegg were doing it backwards, making the dice land according to what the syllabics they said. The Yegg scooped the dice out of the water and threw — again, three dice all showing two. It rolled the dice five more times in quick succession, all twos, until Ling wasn’t even a ripple, and then the Yegg put the dice in its mouth and swallowed.

  “No!” I shouted. “No!”

  Ling wasn’t here. It wasn’t Ling who I had just talked to and comforted, who had just dissolved. I stretched my arms out and pushed forward with every drop of strength I had. But the forcefield wasn’t there — I stumbled toward the assembled Yegg.

  “What have you done with him?” The Yegg barely noticed me. “What have you done to me?” I was stricken but I thought that, at last, I would be able to put my hands to work.

  The Yegg had taken me to a place inside of myself that somehow still flowered, from a time before I was a bodyguard. I pulled a few centimeters away — the other Yegg were still listlessly ringed around me — and I pressed my hand into the cobalt-skinned Yegg’s mouth. It didn’t press its lips down, and I was not hurt or paralyzed. “There, there,” I said, gritting my teeth as I jammed my hand into the empty cavity, down into its hollow esophagus. Part of me was almost soothed by the intimacy of this act, the vulnerability of the Yegg. As if we were making love in its fashion. The others pressed closer, nearly touching my skin. My arm was splashed with a hot, citric liquid as I found the dice at the pit of its stomach, and clutched them.

  And then I thought: Let me die quickly, if it is to be.

  I screamed at the top of my lungs at the Yegg’s face and wrenched my arm towards me. The Yegg’s face, sucking on my arm, tilted towards me. My hand pressed into his soft, internal flesh — or comachrome mimicking flesh — and I started to rend it with my fingernails. I kept screaming, bashing my own head against the Yegg’s. The others started to press their bodies against mine. Comachrome doused me like perfume. My arm torqued and, though it burned, I wrenched it towards the rest of my body, bursting with a wet sop through the Yegg’s chest. I was smothered in its silvery guts, the comachrome, slithering on my arms. The Yegg I killed crumpled and splashed into the water. I took a heaving breath and said,

  Ling, deep

  well, Ling,

  fare well.

  I threw the dice three times.

  Three sets of two.

  The remaining Yegg latched their arms around me. I didn’t try to escape, but watched the matrices of comachrome settle on my skin, like spiders spinning drunken webs, as tangerine burned my nostrils with sweetness.

  I closed my eyes.

  A man was putting a mug of green tea into my hands. I had an afghan around my shoulders. The man was grizzled, and wore a tattered uniform of a Xavier seaguard captain.

  Every muscle in my body strained. “Where am I?” I said. I looked around, dazed, and realized I was on a boat, a tug. The sea tossed around me. We were approaching a coast. Pillars of orange smoke rose from a city. It took me a few seconds to realize that the ruins of the city we were moving towards were Wang Wei.

  “The city was attacked during the night,” he said. “I found you holding onto a board.”

  “How long ago was it? That you found me?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Nine hours.”

  What were hours anymore? What did they matter anymore?

  The captain peered at me more closely. “Say, you were with that Ling kid, weren’t you?”

  I started, and stared at him, then clutched his arm. Everyone must have known that the Viceroy’s son was slumming in Wang Wei.

  “Have you seen him?” I asked. My arms and head tingled.

  What I remembered next was that I was staring into a cubbyhole. I had lapsed, although it seemed like skipping ahead. Bodies in black bags, stacked eight high. There was the smell of drowning. “Dredged these after the monsoon, lost from the tavern,” the captain said in a quiet voice. “Ling’s here.” He leaned forward and heaved a bag out of the middle of the pile, slid it forward towards my feet. Unsealing it, I didn’t recoil, because I knew what he would be showing me.

  Ling’s face was bluish, a little pulpy around the scalp, but it was his face. It was real. It wasn’t a simulacrum of his body. After a few seconds of studying it, I nodded and turned away.

  Then I remembered holding a planet-to-satellite transceiver in my hands, which my rescuer must have given me. It was nearly twilight; hours must have passed. I was standing on the shore, on a dock with refugees, without a place to call home anymore, as they scrambled into boats, scrambled out of them. The scents of tangerine were so strong that I felt like I was standing in an orchard. But I was facing the ocean. The surface looked like coma-chrome; disjointed and going in all directions at once. A dark hue getting darker. This whole planet’s against us, I thought.

  I needed to leave the planet forever; there was no way I could remain on Xavier. Even orbiting the planet would have been too close to me. Did this mean leaving the Viceroy, leaving everything I knew? Yes, I thought, putting through the transmission to the Viceroy. Never again.

  I heard the Viceroy’s heavy breath on the other end. “Stop the war,” I said, trying to keep my voice from breaking. “You’ve lost.”

  I didn’t give him a chance to calculate and manufacture an elegy for his son. He lost? I hurled the transceiver into the water, where it sank. I sank, my knees splintering on the glasstic dock. The comachrome kept storming me with its gaps, its cadences of tangerine, but I wasn’t afraid anymore. I started filling up my presence with his absence.

  I murmured my koan to Ling, over and over and over and over.

 
This is one of the most personal stories published in Talebones. It harkens back to feelings James had to deal with at his mother’s funeral. With “Robbie,” he risked a public peek at his soul. Fairwood published his first short story collection, Matrix Dreams, and his novels The Viper of Portello and the forthcoming Branegate. James, who made frequent appearances in the magazine, is also a super nice, super smart guy, fellow teacher, and friend. Issue #11’s cover by Wolf Read is among my favorites.

  ROBBIE

  JAMES C. GLASS

  When did it suddenly get so dark in this house of death?

  Robert Neubauer shifted uncomfortably on the hard front pew and squinted at the dark, stained glass windows above the altar. The only light came from two candles flickering before a bronze cross, tiny flames dancing in reflection from the casket’s burnished wood that cast an orange glow on the domed ceiling frescoed with cherubs and greater angels.

  Surely he had dozed off again during his wait for the child to come. It seemed only a moment ago the light of a setting sun was illuminating the deep red, blue and gold of those windows, a standing figure of Christ in one and in the other, Paul being visited by the angel on his journey to Damascus. Now there was only gloom and the smell of hot candle wax, and utter silence. Robert resisted a sudden urge to feel his way back to the closed door and the light switch there. It would break the mood of this final time with her, and might prevent the child from coming. Might prevent closure.

  Where was the child? There was unfinished business here — with his mother, his own soul, with the child he had never seen except in dreams. Friends had notified him of his mother’s death, friends in her Church. They’d tended to her needs as she’d slowly died, in the childhood room of her only son who rarely visited or called.

  Who’d avoided the long conversations, the constant criticism and reproach, a battering barrage of negativism he’d endured from childhood. A listing and rehearsal of his shortcomings, over and over.

  That was finished now.

  He waited for the child to come, and stared at the flickering candles until he dozed, then awoke with a start, and knew he was no longer alone. A shadow moved.

  It was the boy from his dreams: frail-looking, blond, about seven, bare-footed, wearing t-shirt and shorts. Clutching something to him — a teddy bear. His body auraed faintly orange with reflected candlelight, and his voice was tiny. “Hello,” he said.

  “Hello,” Robert answered. “I was expecting you.”

  “Really? I saw the light. Did you call me?”

  “I don’t think so. I thought you might come here tonight.”

  “I’ve seen you before. Do you know me?”

  “Only from dreams,” said Robert. “I guess I must be dreaming again.”

  The boy shook his head. “No. You’re awake this time. I can tell the difference.” He stepped to the coffin and peered over its edge. “She’s dead. And she looks mad about it.”

  Robert chuckled. “She was always mad.” He paused. “What’s your name?”

  “Terry. That’s not my real name, but it’s the one I like.” He raised the teddy-bear slightly. “This is Pearly, my bear.”

  “Hello, Pearly.” Robert held absolutely still, not wanting to break the dream-spell. “I had a bear like Pearly once, but we gave him a bath and now he belongs to my little boy, Mikey. They go everywhere together.”

  “Pearly goes everywhere with me, too, but nobody else is there. Once in a while I see you, but for a long time you weren’t there either. Why am I here now?”

  Robert replied without answering. “I’m glad you came.”

  “You are?” The boy sat down on the carpet at one end of the casket, boy knees tight together, the teddy-bear hugged tightly to him. “This is the first time I’ve seen you awake,” he said. “It’s dark where I am, and Pearly and I just go around, back and forth, up and down. There’s nothing to do and nobody to talk to. Then there’s a light way off, and I go to it and find you there. You’re always asleep, I can tell, but for a while we can talk to each other and then you sort of fade away, and it’s dark again. Not like now though. This time is different.”

  Robert nodded, remembering. “You’re right. Tonight is different.”

  “Because she’s dead?”

  “Maybe. She’s gone, and I have the rest of my life to live. I’ll start over now.”

  “Will you miss her?” Terry rubbed his cheek on the bear’s head.

  Robert sighed, considering the question. “I’m not sure. I don’t think so.”

  “Because she was so mean? My mom was mean, too. She beat me with a switch from a tree in the backyard. It was hard, and had little nubbins on it, and she’d hit me on the back of my legs until they bled and I could hardly walk. She could get really mad.”

  Robert’s chest ached. “She shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “It’s wrong to beat a little child.”

  “She said it was for my own good, to make me a better person. One day after she’d whipped me, I threw that old switch away where she couldn’t find it. She got another one though.

  “Then Grandma threatened to throw us out if she didn’t quit it. After that she started using a strap, and that wasn’t so bad. I still have the marks. See?”

  It was too dark to see, but Robert knew well what was there: broad lines of scar tissue at the backs of the boy’s knees. “My mother beat me until I was nearly fourteen,” he said. “Then one day I grabbed her hand hard and told her that wasn’t going to happen again. And it didn’t.” He trembled as he said it.

  Terry scowled. “Did you hate her? I hated my mom, but now she’s gone. I don’t want to see her again, but it’s lonely here.”

  “I hated her for a while,” Robert said slowly, “but then I dumped it because it made me mad all the time, and that was even worse than getting beaten. She was raising a little boy alone, and didn’t know what to do. And she was angry about my dad leaving us. I bet your daddy left you, too.”

  “Yes.” Terry hugged the bear, rocking back and forth in the candlelight. “He came home from a war, in a sailor suit, and gave me a flag and a toy submarine. Then he said he had to go away. I didn’t understand, I kept asking why, and Mom was crying. He left anyway, and I never saw him again.” Tears made rivulets down the child’s thin face, and he rocked harder, crushing the bear to him.

  Robert’s throat hurt. Tears gushed and his shoulders shook, until gradually he could speak again. “I thought I’d dried up years ago,” he said, wiping his eyes with a hand.

  “It’s okay to cry, mister. I cry a lot.”

  Robert smiled. “Maybe I should try it more often.”

  Terry stood up and looked in the coffin. “She’s old,” he said. “Now the worms will eat her. My mom was young and pretty when I left her. I don’t remember when. One day I just left so she couldn’t hurt me anymore, but I didn’t know I’d be so alone. I still hate her, though. I’ll always hate her.”

  “No,” said Robert. “You’ll grow up and have a family of your own, and the hate will go away.”

  “I’ll never grow up. I’ll always be like this, a little kid with nobody around to play with or talk to. After tonight I won’t see you again, like all that long time before. You don’t need me anymore. You’ve got your own family, and I’m not in it.”

  “I’ll always need you, Robbie. Come and talk to me anytime, if you want to.”

  The little boy frowned. “Don’t call me that name.”

  “Why? Terry was the brother you always wanted to have, but didn’t. Now Mikey can be your brother. You can play with him, watch him grow up. You’re already part of a family, Robbie.”

  “It won’t be like this, though, talking to you, both of us awake.”

  “That’s right. This is a special night. It won’t be like this again. But you can be with me all the time, because I want you to. You don’t ever have to be alone again.”

  The boy rocked back and forth, and hugged his bear. “Pearly too?”

  “Yes. Pea
rly, too.”

  “Honest and hope to die?”

  “You bet.”

  “You forgot me for a long time, you know.”

  “That won’t happen again. I promise.”

  The boy smiled, looked down at his bear, pressed his cheek against its head. “Pearly says okay. But now you have to sleep again.”

  The boy vanished. Shadows danced. There was the odor of candlewax, and the low silhouette of the coffin. Robert’s eyelids were suddenly heavy.

  He slept, and was awakened by a soft rap on the door. Carolyn’s muffled voice said, “Bob, are you in there? We have to get going.”

  He rubbed his eyes, went to the door and opened it, smelled her perfume as she moved into his arms. “I dozed off,” he said.

  “You okay, hon? The reservations are for eight, and Mikey’s getting cranky. There are two cars full of people waiting outside.”

  “I’m ready.” Robert turned and walked back to the coffin, Carolyn warm beside him, holding his arm.

  “Get everything settled?” she murmured.

  “Yes, all settled. Everything’s settled. Time to get on with things.”

  He put his hand on the lid of the coffin and looked down at the old, stern face. He felt detached, with a sense of finality as he pulled down on the coffin lid, hiding the face from view. There were no feelings of hatred or anger, sorrow or resentment.

  No feelings at all.

  Our seventh issue (the last two-color cover) featured artwork from Tom Simonton. Ken Rand’s story “Song of Mother Jungle” has a powerful message here (and one that pre-dates Cameron’s Avatar). It’s not always the song that’s important, but how you sing it, and who will listen to it with respect. Ken always had my respect. His greatest contribution to the magazine was his amazing interviews, but boy could he write a short story, and boy was he a wonderful human being. Damn it, I sure miss Ken.

  SONG OF MOTHER JUNGLE