Asimov's SF, October-November 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Yep, I'll teach them not to lay hands on my Beloved...

  When they let her go, she turned to me, saw my face, and laughed. I think that made me blush, because she laughed again, and so did one of the men. The other one seemed more interested in the fact I had a grip on my long sword, though I hadn't made a move to draw it.

  “Dah-ee-lah...” I said.

  The first man looked at her, amused. “New name, Ishtar?"

  Behind me, I heard Kenny snort hard and strangle, forcing himself not to bray out a horse laugh. I'm sure Kenny knows a lot more about Ishtar than me, and what I know is bad enough, if even a little of what was in that James Michener book was ever true.

  She stepped forward and reached for me with both hands, making me take my hand off the katana so I could hold them in mine, and then she said, “Old friends, from another time, another place, here to help us now."

  I thought to ask her about being Ishtar, about how that works when your name is Untouchable, but ... stupid. What's true now is all that's true. What was true in some other universe doesn't matter. Maybe she was Ishtar, somewhere, some when. And maybe somewhere, some when, I was still a little boy.

  She turned to the men, and said, “This is my old friend Hanno Baal, and his brother Hanno Melqart."

  I said, “Pleased to meet you. I was almost expecting Phraa.” Nothing from anyone. I guess I'm the only one here ever heard of Edwin Arnold. “Are you from Carthage?” Seemed reasonable, maybe those names sounding a bit like Hannibal and Hamilcar, but still only blank looks.

  Kenny said, “Qart Hadasht?"

  Hanno Baal, with an intensely thick accent, said, “Lots of places called New City around the Great Green, boy. Especially out west."

  I said, “Maybe it was after their time."

  Dah-ee-lah the Beloved stood beside me then, putting her arm around the back of my waist and hooking her thumb under my sword belt, then addressed the two of them, a long sentence in Canaanite.

  I glanced at Kenny, who said, “I think she just told them we need a thousand ships."

  I saw it in my head, right then and there: The Wine Dark Sea, stretching out to the far horizon of the Land Down Under, a thousand black ships rowing ashore by rank and file, long white wakes streaming out behind them, all watched from the City of Gold by Jad Ben Otho, poor Micky standing on the wall with ... who? I don't know. Not Matai Shang.

  I'd already cut him in two.

  * * * *

  Jump-cut now to the inevitable climax, though it wasn't about this, after all. The City of Gold is invaded and broken, walls thrown down, Aztec warriors defeated so easily by Phoenician marines, obsidian and wood smashed so easily by hard swords of cold black iron, curls of smoke rising now from what little in the city would burn.

  In a real world, I knew, with arrows against arrows and spears against spears, it wouldn't have been so easy. It doesn't matter, in a real world, whether those points are of metal or stone, but...

  In this world, Onol of Aceta fought his way up the granite stairs of the Great Pyramid of Huitzilopochtli, some impossible whirling Dervish, swords flashing, slashing out to right and left, katana and wakizashi splitting feather-clad men like so many colorful, helpless papier mâché toys.

  Beside him, Adar Thu of Cillpa pranced like a dancer, bright steel blade flickering in the sun, making little flowers of blood that brought men down.

  Nothing, I thought. No one and nothing. Shadow puppets on a stage, here for just a moment, then gone again, as though they never were.

  When we got to the summit, Dah-ee-lah, naked Dah-ee-lah, Untouchable, Beloved, Ishtar, Goddess, stood facing downward, arms outstretched, commanding silence. The war stopped. The fires went out. The killing ended. Silence fell. Maybe the dead rose up like children in a game, ready to play some other day.

  I don't know.

  Maybe no one knows.

  Micky stood, naked but for his wreathing of holy vines, behind an altar on which Johnny lay bound, face up, waiting. Micky stood over him, holding a wavy white sacrificial blade, perhaps the City's spare for the one that broke when Lu-don/Matai Shang died.

  “Tengam.” I said. “Tengam of Alaln."

  Johnny's big blue eyes looked at me, mute, insensate.

  “John?"

  He smiled, “What the hell took you so long? I thought he was really going to kill me!"

  Micky took the wavy blade in both hands and lifted it over his head, aimed straight down at Johnny's heart. “I still can, you know."

  “Can you?"

  I saw the doubt, of course.

  He whispered, “It's not real, you see. I could do it and he'd come to no harm, because it's not real. It only seems real, and seeming is not being. Not the same thing at all."

  I took a step forward and pointed my katana right at his throat.

  He got that stubborn look I knew so well, the one that comes when he's about to lose an argument he wants to win.

  So I poked him with the sword, making just a little cut above the vee in the middle of his collarbone. He blinked, blinked hard, took a step back, gagging, and lowered the knife. Then he put a hand up and touched the little cut, looking down, astonished, at bloody fingers.

  I said, “Okay. You win. Seeming isn't being, Micky. Um. Do you mind if I cut off your head now?"

  His eyes got big, and his skin turned green.

  * * * *

  In the Land Down Under, a Golden Road leads from the Great Pyramid of Huitzilopochtli, straight to the Door into Summer. As it happens, the Road is made of bricks, but that doesn't matter either. The Door calls to you, just like the Pied Piper's flute, and, willy-nilly, there you go.

  They followed us out through the City of Gold, these feathered savages we'd saved and made free, flanked on either side by marching arrays of Phoenician marines, Hanno Baal calling cadence like some Eternal Drill Instructor, Magic Mice squeaking away beyond them, one, two, three, four...

  I wanted it to be ever so real, I did, but the silly voice in my head wanted me to be singing the theme song from Sargeant Bilko instead, calling me back from the Edge of Forever, as usual.

  In the end, what started as a swell of savage voices, chanting the religious rites of Tyre and Tenochtitlan, became the high, sweet singing of a million Munchkins, then faded slowly, as they dropped away by ones and twos, by groups and gangs, until all were gone and the five of us walked on alone to a huge, ominous door set in the base of the White Cliffs themselves.

  It was a big door, big enough for Jack's Giant to walk on through, foing and fumming for all he was worth.

  I looked at the others, at Micky and Kenny standing together, Johnny off to one side, saving my last look for Dah-ee-lah, Beloved, whoever she was. Then I turned, grabbed the Brass Ring, and pulled hard.

  The Door swung open on silent, oiled hinges, and Micky tittered inanely. “Sorry,” he whispered. “I was expecting it to squeak.” There were steps inside, white stone steps, looking much like the concrete steps to my family's basement on Staggs Court, steps disappearing upward into silent, dusty nothing.

  I stepped inside and peered into the darkness.

  Johnny said, “Alan, where do these steps go?"

  Above us, in the real world, could only be Marumsco Village. Here?

  Dah-ee-lah said, “They lead you home."

  I looked at the others. “Tengam? Adar Thu? Desta?"

  Johnny said, “My name's John, just like my dad."

  Micky looked away, face reddening, and I knew he still wanted to be Onol, to be the Leader, the man who made all the decisions and made them right, but then he sighed and reached up, rubbing his neck just above the collarbone, where the cut had been, but was no more, and said, “Okay. Let's go."

  I looked at Dah-ee-lah again, trying hard to think of just the right thing to say. Nothing. All I could do was hold out my hand, maybe give her a pleading look.

  She said, “Did you think my home was here?” Honest to God, I wanted her to say whither thou goest back to me, right
then and there, but all she did was smile and take my hand, and there was nothing left to do but turn and go up the stairs.

  Johnny came last, and closed the door behind us, then there was nothing but darkness. Darkness, footfalls, breathing, walking upwards, until my legs ached and I began to wonder if maybe we should stop for a little rest. Maybe ... thump.

  I said, “Ow!"

  Kenny said, “I told you we should've brought the helmets."

  Micky said, “But we lost the carbide."

  Johnny said nothing. Dah-ee-lah started laughing.

  Overhead was a slanting wooden door, in two parts, one of those bunker doors you see in old movies, leading to tornado cellars, like in The Wizard of Oz.

  “Shut up,” I said, “Lemme see if I can..."

  This door did squeak as I pushed it open, grunting with effort, door falling aside with a bang, opening on a world of soft light. I got up onto level ground, leading Dah-ee-lah by the hand to stand beside me. Overhead, the pale blue sky seemed impossibly far away, and there was a tiny, heatless white sun low on the horizon.

  Coming up beside me, Kenny whistled, looking around. Whistled, and said, “Flat as Kansas, all right, but ... something's wrong. It's..."

  Up next, Micky took one look and snorted. “The horizon's at least twice as far away as it should be.” He looked at me, face almost angry, and said, “You know where this is, don't you?"

  I scanned along the far horizon until I found it, a small pimple like a faraway mountain. On it, I could see the glint of glass, the white walls of buildings, the red light of fires. “Aceta,” I said. “The City on the Mountain."

  All right, then. No parking problems. No traffic lights. No freeway complexes that look like diagrams for abdominal surgery. But when Micky and I made this place up, we didn't forget about flies and mosquitoes, not to mention things that would eat your silly-ass dragons for lunch.

  Kenny said, “Where's Johnny?” He was looking down the hole in the ground, down into the darkness.

  Very quietly, Dah-ee-lah said, “He went home."

  I said, “What do you mean, home?"

  “Home where he belonged."

  “Marumsco Village?” Home to Mom and Dad, brother and sister, ninth grade in the Fall? Home to high school and college? Home to that driver's license, that first car, that first date, going steady, getting married, getting jobs, making babies, growing old? Home to all those years, and that achingly familiar life we were all told to expect, to want, to work so hard for?

  Home to 1964?

  She said, “The Door into Summer takes you to the summer you deserve."

  I said, “And for the rest of us, that summer, that home ...” I gestured around, raising my arm toward far Aceta, glittering like quicksilver on its mountain.

  Micky said, “It's still not fair, you know."

  I said, “Nothing ever is."

  Dah-ee-lah laughed suddenly, sound flat and echoless across the empty plain. “Oh, you're so wrong, both of you. Maybe we're not the Sector Maidens you silly-ass boys dream about, but there's one of us for every one of you who will open his heart, not just to some woman or another, but to the great world all around you. The man who can't do that is a Lost Boy indeed.” Then she took me by the hand and we walked on through fabled sunshine, all the way to the City on the Mountain, and beyond.

  In time, every one of us found some way to live happily ever after, even Micky, though he never got to be the Great God, nor even the Chief Mine Inspector of Aceta.

  And, to my amazement, there were dragons that needed killing after all.

  Copyright © 2006 William Barton

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  REMEMBERING THE FUTURE

  by Darrell Schweitzer

  * * * *

  * * * *

  We remember the future,

  the bright, curving horizons gleaming

  on viewscreens against a backdrop of stars,

  space-armored legions clanking

  past rows of hulking machines

  like enormous vacuum tubes

  to confront the all-metal worlds:

  planets armed and powered

  as only planets can be,

  and dropped out of hyperspace

  like so many ping-pong balls.

  We know that mankind will triumph

  in the end, even as we know

  that Mars with its blown-glass cities

  and Venus with swamps and dinosaurs

  are out there, waiting.

  We are, after all, the race

  that will rule the Sevagram,

  whatever that is.

  —

  But time passes.

  The future fades.

  We look back on it fondly,

  yet with little conviction.

  How very selfish to think

  it was ever ours alone.

  No, once you and I

  have long since been absorbed

  into the Cosmic Overmind,

  or are just specks of dust

  in a Lensman's wake,

  the future will remain.

  Let us remember it fondly, then,

  in great detail,

  and pass it on,

  like the treasure that it is,

  to our children.

  —Darrell Schweitzer

  Copyright © 2006 Darrell Schweitzer

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  ON BOOKS: THE BIG KAHUNA

  by Norman Spinrad

  * * * *

  RESOLUTION by John Meaney

  Pyr, $25.00

  ISBN: 1591024374

  * * * *

  PANDORA'S STAR by Peter F. Hamilton

  Del Rey, $7.99

  ISBN: 0345479211

  * * * *

  JUDAS UNCHAINED by Peter F. Hamilton

  Del Rey, $26.95

  ISBN: 0345461665

  * * * *

  RIVER OF GODS by Ian McDonald

  Pyr, $25.00

  ISBN: 1591024366

  * * * *

  Ever since I began writing these columns, good Lord, over two decades ago, I have been railing against trilogies, or even worse, open-ended novel series, on literary grounds. I've now got to admit that it's become a lost cause. Not on literary grounds, as we will get into later at great length, if not as great length as the material to be covered, but for reason of bottom-line commercial diktat.

  As previously noted with no little outrage in these pages, the powers that be in the publishing business, namely the major book store chains, have now decreed that, except for exceptional exceptions, no hardcover novel with a cover price of over twenty-five dollars shall grace their racks. Meaning, calculating backward as the publishers have been forced to do, that no novel whose unit cost cannot put it in the black at that cover price shall be published, no matter its literary merit. Meaning that except for those exceptional exceptions, they won't, or rather can't, publish a novel longer than about one hundred and fifty thousand words, or so at least they claim.

  The exceptional exceptions are almost all for behemoths written by authors whose previous BookScan numbers come up best-sellers. The chains will order novels by best-selling authors in best-selling amounts, meaning that publishers can order large first printings, meaning that the unit cost to produce each copy goes down proportionally, meaning that given a large enough printing they can put that twenty-five dollar cover price on an otherwise outsized novel and make a profit.

  Otherwise forget it.

  Well, maybe not quite. We will be considering three novels that seem to have somehow gotten around this rule. River of Gods by Ian McDonald runs about six hundred pages but sells for twenty-five dollars and is a literary masterpiece. Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton, which I've read in a $7.98 paperback (which seems to be the paperback magic number equivalent of the hardcover twenty-five dollars) and runs 988 pages, is one of the most exasperating novels that I have ever read. Its hardcover
sequel Judas Unchained, which tweaks the edge of the pricing envelope at $26.95, runs 827 pages. I doubt I will ever manfully attempt to read it, even though Pandora's Star is masterfully written.

  We will get to these exceptions to the commercial rule of exceptional exceptions later. But literarily speaking and generally speaking, writers who have stories to tell that need more than one hundred fifty thousand words to tell properly in literary terms have a big problem. They are strongly constrained to do it as at least a trilogy, since a “duology” is as awkward a form to get published as two books as thirty-five thousand words is to get published as a novella in a magazine.

  This not only presents the writer with a literary problem, it produces a paradox that is inherently impossible to resolve fully. To wit, do you presume that the only readership for books two and three are people who have already read book one—and worse, that the only readership for book three is those who have read the first two volumes? Or do you attempt to make each book a novel that anyone can pick up and read cold?

  An excellent example is the Nulapeiron Sequence by John Meaney. This consists of Paradox and Context, which I have already reviewed in these pages, and now the appropriately titled Resolution, after months of the usual coitus interruptus.

  I've never done this before, but now I find myself constrained to quote from a previous review, with merciful ellipses, since as a critic I find myself on the horns of the same dilemma as the writer, unable to move forward without as it were somehow summarizing the back story. And so resorting to this now seems both ironically appropriate and exemplary.

  ...Paradox and Context ... [are] exemplary of what I'm talking about here.... Nulapeiron is a large planet out there somewhere colonized by humans centuries ago. It would seem to have a toxic (to humans) atmosphere, for the humans inhabit not the surface but vast and deep interconnected caves, caverns, corridors, and warrens whose breathable atmosphere must be provided by a fungus genetically engineered to do so.