Through a door marked “authorized personnel only,” I found myself on a steel walkway overlooking a cavernous chamber where white-suited technicians in hardhats and goggles were assembling a complex machine roughly the size of a school bus. One of the technicians glanced up at me, pulled off his goggles and smiled.
"Parker,” he called out.
I recognized Quinn. He climbed up to join me and we walked together back toward my cell, after first stopping in a restroom with a mirror so I could examine my face and confirm that I had no stripes.
"Just so you know,” he said as we descended a flight of stairs, “I didn't have anything to do with this. Or Skylar either. They've been keeping an eye on you ever since the fire. When you took that pill at the party, they saw it as a good pretense to bring you in."
I gave him a blank look. “Who's ‘they?’”
"The powers that be.” His smile was wry. “You gave yourself away, Parker, saving my life."
"And how could ‘they’ know what happened at the party? All of our mobiles were on standby."
Amusement tugged at the corner of Quinn's mouth. “Yeah, that's not a problem for them."
Back in the cell, I found my things packed up and the clothes I had been wearing the night of my arrest clean and neatly folded on the bed. My mobile was sitting on top of the pile.
Dressing quickly, I walked with Quinn out a set of heavy doors to a parking lot. I blinked in the light of the sun hanging above the western horizon. As we drove away from the facility in Quinn's Civic, I looked back to see only a few nondescript warehouses. Much of what I had walked through must have been underground.
Quinn glanced at the clock in the dash. “You could still make it to the polls, if you feel up to it."
It was Tuesday. Election day.
"What's the point?” I replied. “He can't win now, not after his hero son was arrested for drugs."
Quinn shook his head. “You weren't arrested. You were taken to an emergency treatment facility because of a bad reaction to a supplement pill. Your dad's outraged they won't let him see you and won't say why. Typical government heavy-handedness. A lot of people can sympathize. If anything, the publicity is helping him. He might even beat Kennedy in November."
"No more parties at Nikki's then,” I murmured.
Quinn laughed.
"What was that place, Quinn? What are those people doing there?"
Quinn shrugged. “We're squirrels. Storing up nuts for winter."
I squinted at him.
"It's a metaphor,” he added. “We're trying to salvage the destiny of mankind."
"We?” Something occurred to me. What if it was all a deception, the Samaritan implant, a scare tactic designed to keep normals in line? It wouldn't be too hard to fool the kids at that prison, just plant a few ringers who would rebel and get “zapped,” and everyone else would fall into line. Maybe later, if you join the program, they let you in on the secret. Quinn didn't act like a hostage. I asked him.
He kept his eyes on the road, like he always did, but his expression changed dramatically. His young face looked suddenly so old and burdened that I knew I was wrong.
"Then why do you say ‘we'? Doesn't that thing make you their slave?"
He narrowed his eyes at something far ahead, didn't speak for a moment. Then he said, “Did you want to solve your math problem?"
"Yes. Very much."
"Then why didn't you?"
I shrugged. “I don't know. Things came up. I put it off..."
"The things I'm doing,” said Quinn, “the music and the physics and the languages, it's what I would have wanted, if I had looked for them, if I could have driven myself hard enough. But I would never have had the discipline before. Without the implant, I would have wasted my life.” He paused, as if he had to take a moment to decide whether or not he really believed what he was saying. Then he nodded slowly. “I do what I want."
We didn't speak again until we pulled into my driveway. Quinn helped me carry my things inside. Dad wasn't home.
In my living room, I flopped down on a couch with a sigh and flipped on the bigscreen, surfed through the election news sites. No official results yet, but the polls looked good.
At the front door, Quinn signaled “so long” with a wave of his hand.
I called out to him. “So what happens when ‘the powers that be’ get old and die?"
He came in the room. “What?"
"Someday normals will be in charge of everything,” I said. “Can the convicts keep it all working, or are we going to have the dark ages all over again?"
He looked thoughtful. “There are more rejects than people think, and some of the tweaks have had the mutation restored by splicing a parent's gene back in. Although that hasn't worked well."
I thought of Xander, and it seemed to me that maybe Quinn's bosses were being too pessimistic. “Will it be enough?"
He shrugged. “Probably not."
"So what are you going to do? Is there a plan?"
He raised three fingers. “Three. Some of us think we should start all over again somewhere else. There's already a self-sufficient colony on Mars. But that's just a stepping stone."
My mouth dropped open. “The star charts."
He nodded. “Others look at the human genome as a constantly evolving dynamic system; the gradient of change still shows it moving in the right direction, and eventually it'll correct itself. In the meantime, they want to prop things up with legions of convicts."
Left idle, the bigscreen switched to default feed, a reality show where contestants humiliated themselves for a few seconds of airtime. Screeching, off-key singing almost made me jump. I muted the sound.
"What's the third plan?"
"The third group,” said Quinn, “thinks things aren't really that different now than they've always been. All humanity needs is a solid core of farseeing people to live among them, to lead and to inspire.” He patted me on the shoulder. “See you later, Parker."
"Yeah.” I let out a breath, suddenly aware of a weariness in my shoulders. “See you."
* * * *
James Wesley Rogers lives in Texas, in a small apartment with several novels and a merry band of cockroaches, all of them surviving on the free grocery samples and ketchup packets he manages to bring home. During the day, he passes himself off as a Ph.D. student in mathematics. James can often be found squinting at pages of arcane formulae while muttering, “This doesn't look right..."
* * * *
Social disapproval is the single strongest tool for social change. People will often engage in forbidden behavior in spite of criminal penalties, but abandon it the moment it is clear that their friends will turn away from them in disgust when they behave that way.
—Orson Scott Card, “The Children of Divorce” on The Ornery American web site (www.ornery.org, Nov 13, 2005)
[Back to Table of Contents]
Where Are They Now?
We've been interviewing a Canadian author in each issue since Number 3, and we thought for this 25th issue we would see what all of those authors have been up to lately. Here are their updates, many in their own words.
* * * *
Alison Baird (interview in Number 16, June 2003)
* * * *
Alison says:
Since doing my interview for Challenging Destiny, I have completed the two trilogies that I had sold at the time: The Dragon Throne (The Stone of the Stars, The Empire of the Stars, The Archons of the Stars) for Warner Aspect in the U.S., and the Willowmere Chronicles (The Witches of Willowmere, The Warding of Willowmere, The Wyrd of Willowmere) for Penguin Canada. I have also had a short story, “Walking with Wolves,” published in the Mythspring anthology (Fitzhenry & Whiteside). Some foreign rights to my books have been sold: I now have copies of the Dutch editions of the first two Willowmere books on my shelf, and have just received the first Russian edition of Stone of the Stars. I can't read either language, but it is fascinating to open up the books and see my own w
ords transformed into exotic and alien ones!
I am currently hard at work on two new manuscripts, both for children, and when they are done I plan to move on to a new adult fantasy novel. The last few years have certainly been interesting ones, and I hope for more interesting times ahead!
* * * *
Julie E. Czerneda (interview in Number 6, April 1999)
* * * *
Julie says:
Since my interview I've continued to write fiction full-time, as well as edit anthologies. There's a bit of a stack now: 11 novels, several short stories, 14 anthologies. As editor, I've been the “first sale” for over fifty authors, which is a great thrill for me. My work has won some awards, including three Prix Aurora Awards for professional work in English: novel, short story, and for editing. My last novel, Regeneration, is on the Preliminary Nebula Ballot.
I'm currently back in the universe of my first novel, since this is the 10th anniversary of its publication. I'm having a wonderful time writing the prequels to A Thousand Words For Stranger. The first of those comes out in this September, Reap The Wild Wind. Otherwise? I've kept working on SF as a means to promote scientific literacy and have given presentations on the topic from the Yukon to Texas. In 2009, I'll be Guest of Honour at the New Zealand National Convention, so I'll be able to say I've crossed the equator too. And yes, I still live in a forest.
* * * *
Charles de Lint (interview in Number 9, April 2000)
* * * *
Since our interview Charles de Lint has published several novels set in his fictional city of Newford: Forests of the Heart, The Onion Girl, Spirits in the Wires, and Widdershins. He's also published a collection of stories set in Newford, Tapping the Dream Tree. Along with the aforementioned books published by Tor, he's produced some chapbooks and young adult novels. Several of his books will be coming out as audiobooks, and he's working on a new novel tentatively titled The Mystery of Grace. He won the World Fantasy Award for his collection Moonlight and Vines. Charles continues to write book reviews for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He plays live music at a pub every week with his wife MaryAnn in Ottawa. On his web site Charles says he hopes his stories will encourage people to “pay attention to how many special things there are in the real world."
* * * *
Candas Jane Dorsey (interview in Number 10, July 2000)
* * * *
Candas says:
Wow. In seven years a lot has happened.
Let's deal with the domestic first. Five years ago my partner and I bought a house, which meant goodbye to the housing co-operative I talked about in my year-2000 interview, and hello to the vagaries of living in an inner-city neighbourhood where the neighbours we interact with most (in summer anyway) are the homeless people camping in the vacant lot next door. I've already run out of wall space for bookshelves and art, but I love the old (built in 1928) place. One of my cats stayed at the old place as a neighbourhood resource, but I still have the other one, a grouchy one-eyed cripple who's 21 now, and the Pomeranian is no longer time-shared but present 24-7. Since she is getting older and grouchier too, we now revel in a household of four tetchy, arthritic artistic types (think of the pets as performance artists).
When I was interviewed in 2000, I was also a publisher. No more. In 2003 we sold Tesseract Books to Brian Hades of Calgary, who also publishes Edge Books. Then at the end of 2005, beginning of 2006, we closed down the rest of the publishing company. I loved publishing, but fourteen years’ community service was enough! Both my partner and I went back to university, taking Masters degrees in Fine Arts from UBC by distance learning online. During this time I returned to serve a placeholder stint as president of SFCanada, the professional SF writers’ association. At present I am completing a young adult novel about an intersex teenager, have a book of poetry completed which was my thesis. I'm still working on a new novel, and I'm busy with freelance work and teaching at the local college in the professional writing programme. And in ten days, I'm off to the WorldCon in Yokohama, Japan, to present in both the English-language programming and at some of the sessions of the Science Fiction Writers of Japan. So there's never a dull moment...
* * * *
James Alan Gardner (interview in Number 3, July 1998)
* * * *
James Alan Gardner has published several more novels in his League of Peoples universe: Vigilant, Hunted, Ascending, Trapped, and Radiant. Eos published all of those books, as well as his short-story collection, Gravity Wells. James also wrote Lara Croft and the Man of Bronze. He has a short story coming in Asimov's Science Fiction in February. James's novel Fire and Dust, set in the PlaneScape setting in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, is available through a link on his web site. If you're looking for James, you'll find him at Ad Astra and Eeriecon in 2008. In an interview on the Absolute Write web site James says, “The things I value in fiction are honesty and audacity. I think the world needs more of each ... Both honesty and audacity are attempts to wake up and stay awake: to fight the deadening influences of modern culture and to live with one's eyes open."
* * * *
Phyllis Gotlieb (interview in Number 8, November 1999)
* * * *
Phyllis says:
My latest novel, Birthstones, has been on sale for several months, and it took me about three years to write. Now I'm working on another, which is not quite a sequel, though the main character has been carried over. That means another several years; I've always been a slow writer, and now that I'm 81 ... well, it makes me even slower. I wish I had more energetic and exciting things to say.
* * * *
Nalo Hopkinson (interview in Number 12, April 2001)
* * * *
Nalo Hopkinson has published two more novels since our interview, The Salt Roads and The New Moon's Arms. She's also published a short-story collection, Skin Folk. She edited Mojo: Conjure Stories, So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction (with Uppinder Mehan), and Tesseracts Nine (with Geoff Ryman).
Nalo says (on her web site):
I'm writing the second novel in a three-book contract for Hachette. Its working title is Blackheart Man. It's a fantastical alternate history set in someplace similar to the Caribbean in the 18th century or so...
I'm also collaborating, very slowly, on a comic with David Findlay. Its working title is Mr. Fox. I've never done a comic before, but neither has David, so maybe we can learn together.
Recently, I've found myself stumbling into collage and altered art. It began when I started going into local thrift stores, buying the types of toys that make me deeply uneasy, and remixing them ... I appear to be working through some of my thoughts on tropes of authenticity, tribalism, and indigeniety in fantasy fiction.
* * * *
Tanya Huff (interview in Number 4, October 1998)
* * * *
Tanya has published two more novels in the Keeper's Chronicles series: The Second Summoning and Long Hot Summoning. She has published three novels in her Smoke and Shadows series, set in the same universe as her Blood books: Smoke and Shadows, Smoke and Mirrors, and Smoke and Ashes. And she has published three novels in her Valor's Confederation series: Valor's Choice, The Better Part of Valor, and The Heart of Valor. All of the aforementioned books were published by DAW. Four collections of her short stories have also been published: What Ho, Magic!, Relative Magic, Stealing Magic, and Finding Magic. Tanya edited the anthology Women of War with Alexander Potter.
The TV show Blood Ties is based on her Blood books, and is in its second season. Tanya is working on the fourth Valor book, Valor's Trial. Tanya says (on the Meisha Merlin web site): “I love living in the country, writing full-time, anything by Charles de Lint, Xena, Hercules, and email. I dislike telephones, electric blankets, and bathroom renovations. I always expect catastrophe; as a result, I'm usually pleasantly surprised."
* * * *
Guy Gavriel Kay (interview in Number 11, December 2000)
* * * *
Guy
says:
Congratulations on a 25th issue. In this transitory, quick turnaround society, that's no small achievement. You asked ‘what I've been up to’ ... well, given that our interview was seven years ago, that covers a lot of ground! Two books since then, The Last Light Of The Sun, a Saxon-Vikings-Celts inspired fantasy, and Ysabel, a departure of sorts for me involving a contemporary setting with intrusions of the historical and mythic into the south of France.
Following the link you sent me, back to our interview, I'm amused to see myself answering your ‘what's next’ question by saying: “I'm reading. I'm thinking, brooding, swearing a lot.” ... because that's exactly where I am now, seven years later, summer of 2007, sorting out a new book. Some things don't change, it seems.
* * * *
Eileen Kernaghan (interview in Number 22, April 2006)
* * * *
Eileen says:
I've been finishing the new book that I mentioned in the interview—the historical fantasy set in London and Paris circa 1888. It now has a title: Wild Talent: a novel of the supernatural, and is scheduled for fall 2008 publication by Thistledown Press. My protagonist is a young Scotswoman with a frightening talent who gets caught up in the fin de siècle worlds of Gnostics, theosophists, spiritualists and decadent French artists. Madame H.P. Blavatsky, Alexandra David (later to become Alexandra David-Neel the famous Himalayan traveler) and the poet Paul Verlaine have prominent roles.
Meanwhile The Sarsen Witch, my 1989 bronze age fantasy, is being reissued this month (October) by the Juno Books imprint of Wildside Press—this time, I understand, as a paranormal romance, though with quite a fierce and warlike heroine on the cover.
* * * *
Karin Lowachee (interview in Number 18, July 2004)
* * * *
Karin says:
Since Cagebird was published I've had 2 short stories published in different anthologies (So Long Been Dreaming and Mythspring) but mostly I've been working up ideas for my next books. I'm not a natural short story writer but I've been developing some stories there as well, but it's difficult for me to split my attention from research and development on a Big Idea to thinking of other, smaller “worlds.” Since my new novel(s) idea is still in the research stages I won't be talking about it until it's closer to coming out. I'm also rehauling my website in a huge way and that takes a lot of time and a learning curve, but I'm looking to launch the new site in January 2008.
Challenging Destiny #25 Page 12