by Paula Guran
A few months ago I saw Gunnar on television. He’d put on a lot of weight. I was startled; somehow I’d imagined he was dead. He spoke dryly about the big export sales his company had made, and I wondered whether he ever thought about the girl he had seduced by the railway tracks three decades since. I had so often wondered what would have happened if, at the critical moment, I’d prevented him from withdrawing and taken his seed and made him the father of my child. The thought had entered my mind at the time, however irrational and irresponsible it was. If I’d really done that, would the other line of my memories now be objective reality, not only subjective? Would Rupert now be objective reality?
Remembering makes me feel ill, but I can’t help thinking of Rupert. He feels so real, often more real than this real life of mine. I remember how my figure got rounder and I took a taxi to the hospital and gave birth to my son. I remember the pain and the tears and the joy when I received the little wrinkled human being in my arms. I remember the sour midwife and the hospital ward. And yet I know nothing like that happened to me—on the day Rupert was born I was on a business trip to Moscow, it’s documented. I remember that quite well, too, the small hotel room and the chambermaid I surprised as she was rummaging in my bag.
Perhaps I’m crazy. How many sane persons have two sets of superimposed memories from forty years’ time? Perhaps all those empty recollections that torment me are only the product of a brain that’s gone completely round the bend? That would be the easiest and also the most believable explanation—without one small problem: I could have invented Rupert, yes. He could very well be just a delusion, flung by an ageing woman suffering from childlessness into her past to soothe her pain. But what about the place where the trains turn? I do not have enough imagination to invent anything like that. I’m a very rational person who keeps her feet closely and safely in the dust of the earth in all situations. Unlike some others, who used to let their imagination fly as irresponsibly as a kite on a stormy Sunday afternoon; such was my lost son Rupert. The place where the trains turn could only have been invented by Rupert, and he couldn’t have done that if he himself were nothing more than my invention.
I hunt my memories and study them from all angles, the way a scientist may collect and study extremely important samples. I draw charts of the two different lines of my life, they are sometimes hard to distinguish. And there is a pile of evidence on my desk:
There is a phone number. There’s a lawyer named Birgitta Donner in Helsinki, but she has never heard of Rupert Nightingale.
There is a Christmas card from Alice Holmsten, nowadays Frogge. She tells she’s married and works as a music teacher in a school in Turku. I hadn’t thought of her for years, but sometimes one receives cards from people already forgotten even when there’s been no particular reason to remember them.
There is a collection of short stories by Miriam Catterton that I bought yesterday from Houndbury Books. I’m not acquainted with Miriam, although I have recollections of her. Most people know her since she’s a teacher here, but I don’t have children, and we’ve never even talked with each other. She seemed surprised when I phoned her this morning and introduced myself. I told her I’d read her book and been especially fascinated by one of the stories, the one that tells about a little boy called Robert who loves railways and whose imagination his overly rational mother Anna tries to repress.
This is now quite silly, I explained, but I simply had to call and ask where you got the idea for Robert’s story.
Well, where do ideas come from, generally? Miriam said, somewhat embarrassed. They just are in the air. I often have dreams and I use them. For a couple of nights I dreamed about a little boy who loved railways, and the story developed out of that, gradually.
I’ve read the story through several times trying to decide which truth its existence proves.
There’s also on my desk an article I clipped out from the newspaper forty years ago and kept unto this day between the encyclopedia pages. It tells about a whole goods train that vanished without a trace with its freight and engine driver somewhere in the Houndbury region. The authorities investigating the case were puzzled, but according to them it appeared probable that there was an extensive conspiracy of railway personnel behind the train theft—there was no other way such a crime could be explained. The press clipping also seems to want to tell me something, but I’m not able to figure out how that event could be connected with Rupert’s disappearance, not yet.
I cannot let him pass away out of my reach into final oblivion. I cannot give him back to Nothingness. That is why I continue with my investigations. I have to finally understand, to find him on the eternal circle of cause and consequence. For the sake of my son I go on with this, for his sake I write these thoughts of mine on paper.
About the Authors
Seth Chambers was born with a Pentel Rolling Writer in hand and has been pathologically addicted to writing ever since. In his quest for life experience, he has worked as an army medic, mental health counselor, wilderness guide, and bike messenger. His work has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fantasy Scroll, Isotropic Fiction, Perihelion SF, and Spinetingler. Seth now lives in Chicago where he teaches English to immigrants and leads an innovative group of wordsmiths known as The Edgy Writers Workshop. He has a spoiled cat named Zooey and a tolerant wife/first reader named Cat Pryde.
James S. A. Corey is the pen name used by collaborators Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Under that name they wrote Leviathan Wakes, the first a growing number of science fiction novels in a series called The Expanse. Leviathan Wakes was nominated for the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Novel and the 2012 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. The fifth book in the series, Nemesis Games, was published earlier this year, and Orbit Books have signed Corey for four more books in The Expanse series. “The Churn” is the third novella they’ve written set in The Expanse universe. The authors have also written a Star Wars novel, Honor Among Thieves (Random House, 2014). The Syfy Channel has finished filming the first season of a TV series, The Expanse, based on the series. It is slated to premiere sometime in 2015.
Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen is well known in his native Finland for his fantasy and science fiction narratives. He has twice won the Kuvastaja Fantasy Prize given by Finland’s Tolkien Society and four times won the Atorox Award for Fantasy. He teaches the Finnish language and literature and is the father of three sons.
Nancy Kress began writing in 1976, but achieved greater notice after the publication of her Hugo- and Nebula-winning 1991 novella “Beggars in Spain,” which was later expanded into a novel with the same title. Kress has also written numerous short stories and was a columnist for Writer’s Digest for sixteen years. Her fiction has won four Nebulas, two Hugos, a Sturgeon, and a John W. Campbell Memorial Award. She teaches regularly at summer conferences such as Clarion West and Taos Toolbox During the Winter of 2008-09, Kress was the Picador Guest Professor for Literature at the University of Leipzig’s Institute for American Studies in Leipzig, Germany. Her next book, The Best of Nancy Kress, will be published in September 2015.
John P. Murphy is an engineer and writer living in New England. He has a background in robotics and network security, and his fiction has appeared in venues including the Drabblecast, Daily Science Fiction, Nature, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. For links to his other work, see johnpmurphy.net.
This spring, two-time World Fantasy Award recipient K. J. Parker revealed one of SF/F’s worst-kept secrets: “Parker” is the pseudonym of British humorous fantasy author Tom Holt. Holt began publishing as K. J. Parker in 1998 with Colours in the Steel and has since produced over a dozen novels under that name, along with acclaimed short fiction and novellas. Holt has published more than thirty fantasy novels under his own name, beginning with Expecting Someone Taller (1987). As Thomas Holt, he also authored five historical novels. How one fellow could possibly write so much great fiction is the new mystery.
Mary Rickert (also kn
own as M. Rickert) has published numerous short stories and two collections: Map of Dreams and Holiday. Her first novel, The Memory Garden, was published in May 2014 to considerable critical acclaim. Rickert received World Fantasy Awards in 2007 for Best Short Story for “Journey into the Kingdom” and Best Collection for Map of Dreams. Map of Dreams also won the William L. Crawford Fantasy Award. Before earning her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, Rickert worked as kindergarten teacher, coffee shop barista, balloon vendor at Disneyland, and in the personnel department of Sequoia National Park where she spent her time off hiking the wilderness. She now lives in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, a small city of candy shops and beautiful gardens, with her husband.
Born in Madison, Wisconsin, Patrick Rothfuss attended the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point where he spent nine years jumping from major to major (chemical engineering, clinical psychology; then, as an “undecided,” he studied whatever interested him) and otherwise reveling in life as an undergraduate. It was kindly suggested that he graduate and, having somehow earned enough credits to graduate with an English major, he grudgingly did so. After graduate school he returned to teach half-time at Stevens Point. All that time he had been working on an epic fantasy novel that (divided) became the Kingkiller Chronicle trilogy. In March 2007, The Name of the Wind was published to great acclaim and made the New York Times Bestseller List. The second volume, Wise Man’s Fear, came out in March 2011 to even more acclaim, and made #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List. Still working on the third novel, he started a charity fundraiser, Worldbuilders, to raise money for Heifer International, an organization that uses donations to supply families in needy countries with livestock like chickens, rabbits, and sheep. Rothfuss lives in Stevens Point with partner Sarah and their two sons.
Genevieve Valentine’s first novel, Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, won the 2012 Crawford Award and was nominated for the Nebula. Her second novel is speakeasy fairy tale The Girls at the Kingfisher Club. Her third novel, political thriller Persona, is out now from Saga Press. She’s currently the writer of DC’s Catwoman. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Journal of Mythic Arts, Lightspeed, and others, and the anthologies Federations, The Living Dead 2, After, Teeth, and more; stories have been nominated for the World Fantasy Award and the Shirley Jackson Award, and have appeared in several Best of the Year anthologies. Her nonfiction and reviews have appeared in NPR.org, The AV Club, Strange Horizons, io9.com, Lightspeed, Weird Tales, Tor.com, LA Review of Books, Fantasy Magazine, and Interfictions. She is a coauthor of pop-culture book Geek Wisdom (Quirk Books). Her appetite for bad movies is insatiable, a tragedy she tracks on her blog at genevievevalentine.com
Acknowledgements
As always, profound gratitude to the original editors and publishers. Special thanks to Will Hinton, Amanda Brown, and Jeffrey Saraceno of Hachette Book Group for heroic rights clearance of “The Churn”; Peter Joseph of Macmillan and Rachel Crawford at Fletcher & Company for the same on “Where the Trains Turn”; and Matt Bialer and Lindsay Ribar of Greenburger Associates for near-heroic measures on “The Lightning Tree.”
“In Her Eyes” © 2014 Seth Chambers. First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January/February 2014.
“The Churn: A Novella of the Expanse” by S. A. Corey © 2014 Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Reprinted by permission of Orbit, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc., New York, NY. All rights reserved. First publication: The Churn (Orbit, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.)
“Where the Trains Turn” (as “Missä junat kääntyvät”) © 1996 Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen. First U.S./English language publication: Tor.com, 19 November 2014 (translated by Liisa Rantalaiho).
“Yesterday’s Kin” © 2014 Nancy Kress. First publication: Yesterday’s Kin (Tachyon Publications).
“Claudius Rex” © 2014 John P. Murphy. First publication: Alembical 3, eds. Lawrence M. Schoen & Arthur Dorrance (Paper Golem LLC).
“The Things We Do for Love” © 2014 K. J. Parker. First publication: Subterranean Press Magazine, Summer 2014.
“The Mothers of Voorhisville” © 2014 Mary Rickert. First publication: Tor.com, 30 April 2014.
“The Lightning Tree” © 2014 Patrick Rothfuss. First publication: Rogues, eds. George R. R. Martin & Gardner Dozois (Bantam).
“Dream Houses” © 2014 Genevieve Valentine. First publication: Dream Houses (WSFA Press/Wyrm Publishing).