The Ends of the Earth

by Lucius Shepard

  A LITTLE MAGIC SEEPS INTO THE WORLD…

  From the creeper-clad jungles of Guatemala to the windswept peaks of Nepal, from the arid urban wasteland of Detroit to the haunted holocaust of Vietnam, Lucius Shepard’s massive new retrospective explores the ends of the earth with an arresting narrative intensity and virtuosic verbal exoticism that are unique. Shepard’s previous Arkham House collection The Jaguar Hunter was acclaimed as a landmark volume in the development of modern fantasy, and The Ends of the Earth is an even finer testimonial to the emergence of a major American writer.

  The world of Lucius Shepard is a world inhabited by phantoms, but are such entities literal metaphysical demons or mere marauders of the imagination? Is the protagonist in “The Ends of the Earth” confounded by ancient Mayan magic, or is he the victim of incipient mental breakdown? Have the survivors on “Nomans Land” discovered an archetypal realm of transcendent reality, or are they in thrall to the hallucinogenic wraiths of their own tortured souls? Does the narrator in “Bound for Glory” pass through a demonic landscape that lays bare the human heart of darkness, or has he merely uncovered his own unbridled libido? In Shepard’s inimitable artistic vision, one can never be sure: “the life of one world was the shade of another…the best and brightest instances of our lives were merely functions of a dark design.”

  And yet the specters that stalk through these stories can offer redemption as well as death, if only by pointing the way to an infinity of parallel universes that magically mirror our own: in the searingly brilliant “Life of Buddha,” Shepard’s alienated protagonist performs an act of human kindness and achieves thereby his entry into a better world. In these tales of the alienation of modern man, of magical existentialism and the possibility of redemption, we are all shadows in the realm of Lucius Shepard’s dark design.

  “Aymara,” copyright © 1986 by Davis Publications, Inc., for Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, August 1986.

  “The Black Clay Boy,” copyright © 1987 by Lucius Shepard for Whispers VI, edited by Stuart David Schiff.

  “Bound for Glory,” copyright © 1989 by Mercury Press, Inc., for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1989.

  “Delta Sly Honey” and “Shades,” copyright © 1987 by Jeanne Van Buren Dann and Jack Dann for In the Field of Fire, edited by Jeanne Van Buren Dann and Jack Dann.

  “The Ends of the Earth,” copyright © 1989 by Mercury Press, Inc., for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1989.

  “The Exercise of Faith,” copyright © 1987 by TZ Publications for The Twilight Zone Magazine, June 1987.

  “Fire Zone Emerald,” copyright © 1985 by Playboy for Playboy, February 1986.

  “Life of Buddha,” copyright © 1988 by Omni Publications International, Ltd., for Omni, May 1988.

  “Nomans Land,” copyright © 1988 by Davis Publications, Inc., for Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, October 1988.

  “On the Border,” copyright © 1987 by Davis Publications, Inc., for Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, August 1987.

  The Scalehunter’s Beautiful Daughter, copyright © 1988 by Lucius Shepard.

  “Surrender,” copyright © 1989 by Davis Publications, Inc., for Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, August 1989.

  “A Wooden Tiger,” copyright © 1988 by Mercury Press, Inc., for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1988.

  Copyright © 1991 by Lucius Shepard

  Illustrations copyright © 1991 by Jeffrey K. Potter

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the permission of Arkham House Publishers, Inc., Sauk City, Wisconsin.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Shepard, Lucius.

  The ends of the earth : 14 stories / by Lucius Shepard ; artwork by Jeffrey K. Potter.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-87054-161-7 (alk. paper)

  1. Fantastic fiction, American. I. Title.

  PS3569.H3939E5 1991

  813'.54—dc20

  90-933

  Printed in the United States of America

  Title page by Dan X. Solo

  First Edition

  FOR PHIL AND M. K.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank the following for their thoroughly generous—albeit often unwitting—assistance during the writing of these stories: my editor, James Turner, Robert Frazier, Karol Lindquist, James Patrick Kelly, Stan Robinson, John Kessel, Gardner Dozois, Sheila Williams, Ellen Datlow, Alice K. Turner, Edward L. Ferman, Ralph Vicinanza, Patrick Delahunt, Lisa Goldstein, Michaela Roessner, Mark Ziesing, Jack and Jeanne Dann, Roy Flanders, Charlie Walters, Nancy Thayer, Ford Seeley, Jeffrey K. Potter, Richard Burns, Patti Claflin, James Goff, John and Kate O’Connor, Courtney Shick, Sarah Conforti, Lauren Mascola, Lenny, Ernie, Corky, Carl, Jeff, Evans, and all the rest of the good people at the Atlantic Café.

  THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

  DELTA SLY HONEY

  BOUND FOR GLORY

  THE EXERCISE OF FAITH

  NOMANS LAND

  LIFE OF BUDDHA

  SHADES

  AYMARA

  A WOODEN TIGER

  THE BLACK CLAY BOY

  FIRE ZONE EMERALD

  ON THE BORDER

  THE SCALEHUNTER’S BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER

  SURRENDER

  Those whose office it is to debunk the supernatural are fond of pointing out that incidences of paranormal activity most often take place in backwaters and rarely in the presence of credible witnesses, claiming that this in itself is evidence of the fraudulent character of the phenomena involved; yet it has occurred to me that the agents of the supernatural, especially those elements whose activities are directed toward evil ends, might well exhibit reticence in appearing before persons capable of verifying their existence and thus their threat to humankind. It seems surprising that such shadowy forces—if, indeed, they do exist—choose to appear before any witnesses at all, and equally surprising—if their powers are as vast as described in popular fiction—that they do not simply have done with us. Perhaps they are prevented from doing so by some restraint, a limit, say, on how many souls they are allowed to bag, and perhaps the fact that they manifest as they do is attributable to a binding regulation similar to the one dictating that corporations (shadowy forces in themselves) must make a public notice of the date and location of their stockholders’ meetings. In order to avoid scrutiny of their business practices, a number of corporations publish these notices in shoppers’ guides and rural weeklies, organs unlikely to pass before the eyes of government agencies and reporters, and it makes sense that the supernatural might emulate this tactic as a means of compliance with some cosmic rule. That supposition may seem facetious, but my intent is quite serious, for while I cannot say with absolute certainty whether the circumstances that provoked my interest in these matters were in essence supernatural or merely an extraordinary combination of ordinary people and events, I believe that six months ago in Guatemala, a place notable for its inaccessibility and unreliable witnesses, I witnessed something rare and secret, something that may have reflected the exercise of a regulatory truth pertaining to both the visible and invisible worlds.

  Prior to leaving for Guatemala I had been romantically involved for the preceding three years with Karen Maniaci, a married woman who managed a Manhattan art gallery, and it was our breakup, which was marked by bitterness on my part and betrayal on hers, that persuaded me I needed a drastic change in order to get on with living. This process of persuasion lasted several months, months during which I wandered gloomily about New York, stopping in my tracks to stare at dark-haired women of approximately five feet nine in height and 120 pounds; and at
length I concluded that I had better get out of town…either that or begin to play footsie with mental illness. I was thirty-seven and had grown too cautious to want to risk myself in a dangerous enterprise; yet there is a theatricality inherent in being jilted, a dramatic potential that demands resolution, and to satisfy it, I chose that other option of the heartbroken: a trip to some foreign shore, one isolate from the rest of the world, where there were no newspapers and no reminders of one’s affair. Livingston, Guatemala, seemed to qualify as such. It was described in a guidebook that I happened upon in The Strand bookstore as “…a quiet village at the egress of the Río Dulce into the Caribbean, hemmed in against the sea by the Petén rain forest. Settled by black Caribes and the descendants of East Indian slaves brought by the British to work the sugar plantations upriver. There are no roads into Livingston. One reaches it either by ferry from Puerto Morales or by powerboat from Reunión at the junction of the Río Dulce and the Petén highway. The majority of the houses are neat white stucco affairs with red tile roofs. The natives are unspoiled by tourism. In the hills above the village is a lovely tiered waterfall called Siete Altares (Seven Altars), so named because of the seven pools into which the stream whose terminus it forms plunges on its way to the sea. Local delicacies include turtle stew…”

  It sounded perfect, a paradise cut off from the grim political realities of the mother country, a place where a man could go to seed in the classic style, by day wandering the beach in a Bogart suit, waking each morning slumped over a table, an empty rum bottle beside his elbow, a stained deck of cards scattered around him with only the queen of hearts showing its face. A few days after reading the guidebook entry, following journeys by plane, train, and an overcrowded ferry, I arrived in Livingston. A few days after that, thanks to a meeting in one of the bars, I took possession of a five-room house of yellow stucco walls and concrete floors belonging to a young Spanish couple, doctors who had been studying with local curanderos and wanted someone to look after their pets—a marmalade cat and a caged toucan—while they toured for a year in the United States.

  I have traveled widely all my life, and it has been my experience that guidebook descriptions bear little relation to actual places; however, though changes had occurred—most notably the discovery of the village by the singer Jimmy Buffett, whose frequent visits had given a boost to the tourist industry, attracting a smattering of young travelers, mainly French and Scandinavians who lived in huts along the beach—I discovered that the guidebook had not grossly exaggerated Livingston’s charms. True, a number of shanty bars had sprung up on the beach, and there was a roach-infested hotel not mentioned in the book: three stories of peeling paint and cell-sized rooms furnished with torn mattresses and broken chairs. But the Caribe houses were in evidence, and the turtle stew was tasty, and the fishing was good, and Siete Altares was something out of a South Seas movie, each pool shaded by ceiba trees, their branches dripping with orchids, hummingbirds flitting everywhere in the thickets. And the natives were relatively unspoiled, perhaps because the tourists kept to the beach, which was separated from the village by a steep drop-off and which—thanks to the bars and a couple of one-room stores—provided them with all the necessities of life.

  Early on I suffered a domestic tragedy. The cat ate the toucan, leaving its beak and feet for me to find on the kitchen floor. But in general, things went well. I began to work, my mind was clearing, and the edge had been taken off my gloom by the growing awareness that other possibilities for happiness existed apart from a neurotic career woman who was afraid to trust her feelings, was prone to anxiety attacks and given to buying bracelets with the pathological avidity that Imelda Marcos once displayed toward the purchase of shoes. I soon fell into a pleasant routine, writing in the mornings, working on a cycle of short stories that—despite my intention of avoiding this pitfall—dealt with an unhappily married woman. Afternoons, I would lie in a hammock strung between two palms that sprouted from the patio of the house, and read. Evenings, I would stroll down to the beach with the idea of connecting with one of the tourist girls. I usually wound up drinking alone and brooding, but I did initiate a flirtation with an Odille LeCleuse, a Frenchwoman in her late twenties, with high cheekbones and milky skin, dark violet eyes and a sexy mouth that always looked as if she were about to purse her lips. She was in thrall—or so I’d heard—to Carl Konwicki, an Englishman of about my own age, who had lived on the beach for two years and supported himself by selling marijuana.

  By all reports, Konwicki was a manipulator who traded on his experience to dominate less-seasoned travelers in order to obtain sex and other forms of devotion, and I couldn’t understand how Odille, an intelligent woman with a degree in linguistics from the Sorbonne, could have fallen prey to the likes of him. I spotted him every day on the streets of the village: an asthenic olive-skinned man, with a scraggly fringe of brown beard and a hawkish Semitic face. He commonly wore loose black trousers, an embroidered vest, and a Moroccan skullcap, and there was a deliberate languor to his walk, as if he were conscious of being watched; whenever he would pass by, he would favor me with a bemused smile. I felt challenged by him, both because of Odille and because my morality had been enlisted by what I’d heard of his smarmy brand of gamesmanship, and I had the urge to let him know I saw through his pose. But realizing that—if Odille was involved with him—this kind of tactic would only damage my chances with her, I restrained myself and ignored him.

  One night about two months after my arrival, I was going through old notebooks, searching for a passage that I wanted to include in a story, when a sheet of paper with handwriting on it slipped from between the pages and fell to the floor. The handwriting was that of my ex-lover, Karen. I let it lie for a moment, but finally, unable to resist, I picked it up and discovered it to be a letter written early in the relationship. A portion read as follows:

  …When I went to the therapist today (I know…I’ll probably tell you all this on the phone later, but what the hell!), I told her about what happened, how I almost lost my job by making love to you those days in the office, and she didn’t seem terribly surprised. When I asked her how a responsible adult who cares about her job could possibly jeopardize it in such a way, she simply said that there must have been a great deal of gain in it for me. It seems she’s trying to lead me toward you—she’s quite negative about Barry. But that’s probably just wishful thinking—what she’s doing is trying to lead me toward what I want. Of course what I want is you, so it amounts to the same thing.

  It was curious, I thought, scanning the letter, how words that had once seemed precious could now seem so vapid. I noted the overusage of the words terribly and terrible, particularly in conjunction with the words surprising and surprised. That had been her basic reaction to falling in love, I realized. She had been terribly surprised. My God, she’d said to herself. An emotion! Quick, I’ll hie me to the head doctor and have it excised. I read on.

  …I can’t imagine living without you, Ray. When you said something the other day about the possibility of getting hit by a bus, I suddenly got this awful chill. I had a terrible sense of loss just hearing you say that. This is interesting in that I used to try to figure out if I loved Barry by imagining something awful happening to him and seeing how I felt. I usually felt bad, but that’s about it…

  I laughed out loud. The last I’d heard on the subject was that Barry, who bored Karen, whom she did not respect, who had recently gotten into rubber goods, was back in favor. Barry had one virtue that I did not: he was controllable, and in control there was security. She could go on lying to him, having affairs with no fear of being caught—Barry was big into denial. And now she was planning a child in an attempt to pave over the potholes of the relationship, convincing herself that this secure fake was the best she could expect of life. She was due fairly soon, I realized. But it didn’t matter. No act of hers could bring conscience and clarity into what had always been a charade. Her lies had condemned the three of us, and most of all she h
ad condemned herself by engaging in a kind of method living, chirping a litany of affirmation. “I think I can, I think I can,” playing The Little Adultress That Could, and thus losing the hope of her heart, the strength of her soul. I imagined her at sixty-five, her beauty hardened to a grotesque brittleness, wandering through a mall, shopping for drapes thick enough to blot out the twenty-first century, while Barry shuffled along in her wake, trying to pin down the feeling that something had not been quite right all these years, both of them smiling and nodding, looking forward to a friendly gray fate.

  The letter brought back the self-absorbed anguish that I’d been working to put behind me, and I felt—as I had for months prior to leaving New York—on the verge of exploding, as if a pressure were building to a hot critical mass inside me, making my thoughts flurry like excited atoms. My face burned; there were numbing weights in my arms and legs. I paced the room, unable to regain my composure, and after ten minutes or so, I flung open the door, frightening the marmalade cat, and stormed out into the dark.

  I did not choose a direction, but soon I found myself on the beach, heading toward one of the shanty bars. The night was perfect for my mood. Winded: a constant crunch of surf and palm fronds tearing; combers rolling in, their plumed sprays as white as flame. A brilliant moon flashed between the fronds, creating shadows from even the smallest of projections, and set back from the shore, half-hidden in deep shadow among palms and sea grape and cashew trees, were huts with glinting windows and tin roofs. The beach was a ragged, narrow strip of tawny sand strewn with coconut litter and overturned cayucos. As I stepped over a cayuco, something croaked and leaped off into the rank weeds bordering the beach. My heart stuttered, and I fell back against the cayuco. It had only been a frog, but its appearance made me aware of my vulnerability. Even a place like Livingston had its dangers. Street criminals from Belize had been known to ride motorboats down from Belize City or Belmopan to rob and beat the tourists, and in my agitated state of mind I would have made the perfect target.