"Was it you who blocked our attempts to activate her command set?"
"Elena knew that you could co-opt her, just as her parents had co-opted the Beyonders. She was the child of a garden, and you knew the right verbal formula to get her to do whatever you wanted her to do. So, at her insistence, we kept her under sedation the whole time we were in range of your comms."
It was a plausible enough story—it fit the facts—but it also raised more questions. “We lost contact with Elena Andalian near Sef ‘s Spike,” Antonov said. “Half a galaxy from here."
"Yes, I remember."
"But, if you were with her then, why are you here, now? You said that they opened the reservation archives to you 80 base-years ago. The Melzemi were still here, then. If your story is true, how then did you come to be a captive of the Melzemi again?"
"I never stopped being a captive of the Melzemi, Merchant-officer Antonov. Up here.” He tapped the side of his head. “I'm garden-grown too, just like Elena, just like the Far-Beyonders. And you, too, Merchant-officer Antonov."
"There were no command sets written into the expressions that the Stro used to build the Acheron humans."
Wright rippled his fingers. “That may be so."
"It is so."
Wright dipped his head. “The point is there was one written into the expression used to build me. And it was only here that it could be remo—” He started to cough suddenly.
"We can stop for a while,” said Antonov. A break would allow Antonov to collate the data that he already had. And he felt confi-dent enough about the data that he had to be able to send a prelimi-nary verdict back to Zhukhova-Antonov. He looked back towards the reservation, searching for signs of life. “What time do they serve breakfast around here?"
Wright laughed. “Around here, we get our own breakfasts."
"Then shall we?"
Wright dipped his head. And the two men began to pick their way back across the grasslands towards the reservation.
Copyright © 2008 Jamie Barras
[Back to Table of Contents]
DRAGONFLY SUMMER—Patrick Samphire
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Illustrated by Warwick Fraser-Coombe
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Patrick Samphire lives in Yorkshire with his wife Stephanie Burgis and their border collie mix Maya. His stories have appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, The Third Alternative and The Year's Best Fantasy, but this is his first publication in Interzone. To find out more, please visit his website: patricksamphire.com
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Howie tracks me down over the Internet.
Man, I hadn't even thought about the guy in maybe fifteen years. I guess I wanted to forget him. Last time I saw him he was standing over me, fists clenched, face twisted in fury. He knocked me flying, even though he was scarcely half my size. Can't say I blame him.
When his email turns up in my inbox, I almost spam it, but then my mind holds up one of those little red flags, and I pause, cursor hovering over spam.
Howard Hawkins. Double-H. Fuck.
* * * *
I pull my car into the car park in the middle of the afternoon. It's a Saturday, a couple of weeks later. There's only one other car there, a battered blue Volvo with its back bumper hanging half off. There's no one in it, but it isn't a Howie car. Howie would have something low and black and fast. Maybe it would be dented and a little old, but it would be hot. Nothing about this car says
Howie. So I sit there, staring out over the estuary to the wading birds on the silver-streaked mud, enjoying the peace, waiting.
When I forgot Howie, I forgot this place too. I reckon if I just drove past, I wouldn't recognise it.
They've paved the lane, flattening out the narrow, potholed track and replacing it with sleek asphalt. They've put in this whole damned car park, complete with information board and little padlocked iron donation box. Progress. It makes the whole place feel tired rather than fresh. Or perhaps that's just me. I'm not nineteen anymore, and everything seems old.
I'd brought a map, but in the end, despite it being twenty years since I was here, I hadn't needed it. Yeah, I'd forgotten it, but Howie's email had brought it surging back like a tidal bore.
I put the steering wheel lock on—you can't be too careful, even out here—then lever myself out the driver's seat. We aren't due to meet for almost half an hour. Might as well take a look around. See the old sights.
School books sprawl over the back seat of the Volvo. Dozens of them. Definitely not Howie.
Howie would be—what? My brain suddenly can't come up with what Howie might do for a job.
The whole idea of Howie working nine-to-five just doesn't fit in the space in my head that Howie occupies.
The pub's still there, but it isn't The Saracen's Head anymore. It's something called a Hungry
Horse, whatever the fuck that is, complete with a new glass-walled extension containing colourful plastic structures and screaming kids. The peeling paint, cracked brickwork, and smoke-stained windows have been facelifted away. I walk past it, onto the towpath between the canal and the estuary.
Half a mile seems longer than it used to. I've been meaning to get down the gym more often, but this last year things have been too busy, and anyway, there always seems to be something else to do. At my age, everyone gets a few extra pounds, don't they? A couple of beers at lunchtime and a couple after work every day. They soon add up, even if you don't eat that much. But what can you do? It goes with the job, just like the fags. My fingers are itching for one again. I pull the box (crushed) out of my back pocket and work one free. I let the wreath of stained smoke slip into the warm air.
At first I think I've remembered it wrong. Around the bend, past the first of the concrete boats dragged up onto the bank to act as makeshift breakwaters. I was sure I would find the windmill there. Isn't that what we've come to see, after all? The scene of most of our triumphs and a fair few of our disasters? That damned windmill.
But it's not there. There's just a strip of grass, stretching to the bushes and heaped wild roses on the edge of the mud beach. And standing there, a small, middle-aged woman.
Her black hair is cut short and peppered with grey. She wears a thin, too-old jacket. Smoke rises like an emaciated, pale finger from her cigarette. Some people smoke with style and some smoke comfortably. I'm one of the latter. This woman is the former, in spades. I take a step forward.
"Sophie?” She glances back. Her face is narrower than I remember, like it's been drawn back by a pinching hand, and slightly yellower. “Howie contacted you too?” I ask, then realise it's a stupid question. Of course he has.
"All of us,” she said.
"Fuck."
"It's gone,” she says.
I step up beside her.
"Look,” she says, pointing with her chin at the grass. “You can't even see where it used to be."
She's right. The grass is unmarked. I feel a hollow bubble press against the inside of my ribs then burst. The vacuum it leaves is shockingly painful. I force myself to ignore it.
"Twenty years,” I say. “Things change."
She shakes her head.
Even back then, the windmill was old. Its sails were rotting ribs, stripped of the canvas that once drove them. In the wind, it sometimes creaked like an old man. There were cracks in the walls, and the dust and bird shit were thick on the wooden floors. But it still looked like it would last forever. Everything looks like that when you're just a kid.
"Do you remember?” Sophie says. “Up there on the top floor, in the old straw? We fucked like rabbits."
"Sophie!” I'm obscurely shocked that this forty-year-old woman would say fuck. Back then, she wouldn't have dreamed of it. Back then, I probably said it every other word, and she was the one con-stantly shocked.
"It's true,” she says. “I'd only slept with a couple of other guys before you, but you didn't let that slow you down. You fucked my brains out anyway."
"You
told me I was your first,” I say. Shit. Now I sound like an offended teenager.
She shrugs again. “It's a good line. Doesn't really work after you pass thirty, though."
I look around, desperately looking for something more normal to say. Seeing that cynicism in Sophie is like looking into an all-too-clear mirror and not liking what you see. “So,” I say. “Got any kids?"
"I've got thirty different kids every hour, six hours a day,” she says. “You want me to take some of them home?"
Something clicks in my mind. The Volvo. “You're a teacher?"
"Yeah. Gold star."
"How about husband? Boyfriend?"
"Men are bastards."
"Right."
She blows out a cloud of smoke, then drops her cigarette and grinds it out under her heel. “Fancy a drink?"
"For old time's sake?” I say, not able to stop the grin spreading on my face.
"No. It's just a drink."
I glance at my watch. “What about meeting Howard?"
"Fuck Howard,” she says.
I'm halfway down my second pint of Guinness when Howie finally finds us. I don't know what I'm expecting, but it's not this. Balding, frown lines, small, university-lecturer glasses. This isn't die-young Howie. This isn't the wild kid who almost got me killed half-a-dozen times. I just stare at him, unable to say anything.
Howie doesn't have the same problem. “Where were you? I said the car park."
"Hi, Howie,” I say. “Good to see you too."
Trailing in behind Howie, a slight look of distaste squeezing her mouth, comes Trish. Of all of us, she is the only one who seems not to have changed. Yeah, I can tell she's nearly forty, but she hasn't changed, not past a few wrinkles at her eyes and skin that looks tired.
The wildness in Howie's eyes subsides slightly. “What? Yeah. Hi.” He shakes his head.
I squint at Howie and Trish standing there above our table, then I let out an incredulous laugh. “You married her, didn't you? Even after she and I—"
"Why don't you shut the fuck up?” Sophie drawls. Probably just in time too. Howie had a mean punch back then, and he looks like he's about ready to swing at me again. I drain the end of my Guinness, feeling the black liquid slide thickly down.
"I'm going to get a drink,” Howie mutters.
"Mine's a whiskey,” I say. “Double."
That's what we always had here, back when.
"Don't you think you've had enough?” Trish says, eyeing the glasses in front of me.
I snort. “I've hardly started.” God knows, it was a bad idea agreeing to meet. But I was curious. I relax back in my chair and let my eyelids droop closed.
I remember lying there in the old windmill, Sophie half-draped over me, naked, while dragonflies darted through the air above us like little shards of rainbow. There were hundreds of dragonflies that summer, a whole damned Biblical plague of them. Sophie had some kind of whacked out theory about the dragonflies, didn't she? I don't remember what it was. I'm not sure I ever knew. I was more interested in Sophie's body than her ideas. That and getting Trish out of Howie's bed and into mine. I feel a grin spreading on my face.
Howie smacks my drink down in front of me. “Something funny, Paul?"
I straighten. “Nah.” I pick up the glass. A single. Tight-fisted bast-ard. I toss it down while he and Trish draw up seats. “So what's this about?” I say.
"Old times,” Howie mutters.
"The windmill's gone, you know,” I say.
"We know,” Trish says. “We came down here a couple of weeks back."
Right before Howie contacted me.
"That's what it's about?"
Trish shakes her head.
"Then what? You're not going to pretend either of you wanted to see me again."
"I've been having dreams,” Howie says, not looking up. “Bad dreams."
"So see a psychiatrist,” Sophie says, lighting up another cigarette.
"Don't be a bitch, Sophie,” Trish says.
This isn't working out the way it's supposed to. These people were my friends—my best friends, for those three summer months. When you meet up with old friends, it's supposed to be all hugs and laughs and reminiscences and the occasional awkward silence. Not venom that could paralyse a cobra.
"Dreams about what?” I say.
"Us. This."
I shake my head. “Howard, it was a long time ago. We've moved on. All of us.” I look around at them. None of them answer.
Haven't we? I certainly haven't been dwelling on the bust-up for twenty years. I don't even really remember it. So Howie caught me in bed with Trish twenty years ago? Big deal. We were young.
We sit in silence for a minute or two. I turn my empty glass in my fingers, wondering if I should get another. A pleasant numbness is sinking into my legs. If I wasn't driving, I'd be at it like a shot. As it is, I've probably drunk far too much to drive on already.
A barmaid—can you still be a barmaid at seventy?—makes her way over and starts clearing the empties.
"You from around here?” I ask her, tired of sitting in this silence.
"All my life, love,” she says. She gives me a look like she thinks I'm flirting with her. I ignore it. Saturdays aren't my flirting-with-pensioners days.
"That old windmill?” I ask. “What happened to it? When did they pull it down?"
She frowns. “Windmill?"
"You know. Down the towpath. Maybe half a mile. Right on the edge of the estuary."
She shakes her head. “Not around here, love. Never was. You must be thinking about somewhere else.” Now she thinks I'm drunk.
"There really was,” I say, feeling my neck turning slightly red.
She gives the table a perfunctory wipe, spreading around more dirt than she wipes off. “Not here."
I watch her toddle off. “Daft old bat,” I mutter. I wish I'd got that other drink.
"She's right, Paul,” Trish says. “When we came down here and found it gone, we asked around. No one had ever heard of it. We even checked out the old maps and borough plans. There's never been a windmill around here."
"I fucking know there was,” I say, my voice rising too high. If this is some kind of game, I'm not finding it funny.
We went to the windmill a couple of dozen times that summer, all four of us, or just me and Sophie (and me and Trish, that one glorious time, just before the end). I can almost smell the dust and crumbling brickwork, hear the creaking sails, see the dragonflies.
I subside. The other three are looking at me, not saying a thing.
I blow out a heavy breath, pick up my glass, realise it's empty and replace it. “What?” I say.
"What exactly do you remember about that summer?” Trish asks me.
I feel that stupid, drunk, juvenile grin start on my face again, and I force it away. That isn't what she's asking about. Which is more the pity, because she still looks pretty hot, even after all these years.
After another drink, we left the pub and now we're walking along the tow path towards the windmill. It feels like old times. Except that now there is no windmill, and there never has been. So where the hell does that leave those old times?
What do I remember? I remember Howie running along the edge ofthebeach,longhairandleatherjacketflappingwildlyinthewind. Sophie in one of her skimpy little outfits, legs drawn up, showing pretty much everything. Trish standing watching the rest of us, all class and style and carefully-designed distance, a sardonic grin never far from her perfect lips. Piles of empty beer cans. Laughter. Smoke rising from our fire against the purple evening sky.
"The windmill,” I say. “I remember every last inch of it. Every crack and corner. I remember the way the sails creaked and groan-ed. I remember which of the steps up to the top storey were rotten. I remember the old millstone with that split across one side. I re-member that damned grinding pattern cut into it.” The others are nodding, and I can tell they're seeing it too. “I remember those half-rotten sacks in one corner, and t
he almost-gone paint, and the view out over the estuary from the top.” I look at the rest of them. “So does someone want to tell me how the hell it was never there?"
"Anything else?” Howie says.
"Yeah,” I say. “The dragonflies. I always thought they'd be brittle if I touched them. They looked brittle. They looked like flakes of glass. But one landed on me once and it felt soft.” I shake my head. “I never figured out where so many of them could have come from."
"The estuary,” Sophie says. “They came up with the tide."
She's staring ahead, not really looking at anything.
"That doesn't make any sense,” I say.
She shrugs, blows out smoke.
Wewereallattheendofoursecondyearatuniversitythatsummer. I was taking physics—something I've managed to avoid since, thank God—and I should have been revising, but summer had arrived gloriously early, so I was lying out by the lake sunbathing instead. I'd met Howie a couple of times before at Rock Soc events, so when he came wandering out with two gorgeous girls, I didn't hesitate to go over and say hi.
"We should go somewhere,” Trish said, that life-kissed afternoon.
"Where?” I said.
"Anywhere."
So we did, and that was how we found the windmill. That same night, Sophie took me to bed, and the next three months were the best of my life, and then it ended as suddenly as a thunderclap.
"Tell me about the dreams,” I say.
Howiehuncheshisshouldersuncomfortably.Theairisdescending into evening chill. We've tried to build a fire—old times, old times. It hasn't really worked, and there's no windmill to retreat into. But the sky is that familiar purple, and no one has suggested leaving.
"Go on, sweetheart,” Trish says, surprisingly gentle. “It's why we're here."
Howie nods, but he doesn't look at me or Sophie. Maybe we aren't exactly what he was expecting either.
"We're here,” Howie says. “Not now, but back then. Right near the beginning when we'd only just all got together.” He glances at me, then away. “Back when we were two couples, you know? We're sitting on the beach in the late sunlight. There's beers and a bottle of cheap wine. We're talking about something. I don't know what. Something. And behind us I can feel the windmill, looming over us like some black storm.” He stops, and sits in silence.
Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #215 Page 6