Fabbro laid down his field glasses and turned toward the man who still stood stiffly apart from him.
“Come, Tawus,” he coaxed gently, patting the surface of the log beside him. “Come and sit down. I won't bite, I promise. It's almost the end, after all. Surely we're both too old, and it's too late in the day, for us to be playing this game?”
Tawus picked up another stone and flung it out into the lake. The ripples spread over the smooth surface. Quack quack went the ducks near to where it fell, and one of them fluttered its wings and half-flew a few yards further off, scrabbling at the surface with its feet.
“The armies are irrelevant,” Tawus said. “The Five are irrelevant. You know that. For these purposes they are simply fields of force twisting and turning between you and me. The important thing is not that they have come back to you. No. The important thing is that I have not.”
Fabbro watched his face and did not speak
“I made their world for them,” Tawus went on, beginning to pace restlessly up and down. “I gave them progress. I gave them freedom. I gave them gave cities and nations. I gave them hope. I gave them something to believe in and somewhere to go. You just made a shell. You made a clockwork toy. It was me, through my rebellion, that turned it into a world. Why else did they all follow me?”
He looked around for another stone, found a particularly big one, and lobbed it out even further across the lake. It sent a whole flock of ducks squawking into the air.
“Please sit down, Tawus. I would really like you to sit with me.”
Tawus did not respond. Fabbro shrugged and looked away.
“Why exactly do you think they followed you?” he asked after a short time.
“Because I was in your image but I wasn't you,” Tawus answered at once. “I was like you, but at the same time I was one of them. Because I stood up for this world as a world in its own right, belonging to those who lived in it, and not simply as a plaything of yours.”
Fabbro nodded.
“Which was what I wanted you to do,” he said.
The day was moving into evening. The eastern ridge of peaks across the water glowed gold from the sun that was setting opposite them to the west.
“After the sun sets,” Fabbro calmly said, “the world will end. Everyone has come back to me. It's time that you and I brought things to a close.”
Tawus was caught off guard. So little time. It seemed he had miscalculated the timescale somewhat, not having the benefit of the Olympian view that Fabbro had enjoyed until recently, looking in from outside of Constructive Thought. He had not appreciated that the end was quite as close as it was.
But he was not going to show his surprise.
“I suppose you are going to lecture me,” he said, “about the widows and orphans of my wars.”
As he spoke he was gathering up stones from the beach, hastily, almost urgently, as if they had some vital purpose.
“I suppose you're going to go on about all the children whose parents I took from them,” he said.
He threw a stone. Splash. Quack.
“And the rapes that all sides perpetrated,” he said, throwing a stone again, “and the tortures,” throwing yet another stone, “and the massacres.”
He had run out of stones. He turned angrily toward Fabbro.
“I suppose you want to castigate me for turning skilled farmers and hunters and fishermen into passive workers in dreary city streets, spending their days manufacturing things they didn't understand, and their evenings staring at images on screens manufactured for them by someone else.”
He turned away, shaking his head, looking around vaguely for more stones.
“I used to think about you looking in from outside,” he said. “When we had wars, when we were industrializing and getting people off the land, all of those difficult times. I used to imagine you judging me, clucking your tongue, shaking your head. But you try and bring progress to a world without any adverse consequences for anyone. You just try it.”
“Come on, Tawus,” Fabbro begged him. “Sit with me. You know you're not really going to destroy me. You know you can't really reverse the course that this world, like any world, must take. It isn't only your armies that have fallen away from you, Tawus, it is your own steely will. It has no purpose any more.”
But the cloak offered another point of view.
“Destroy Fabbro and you will become him,” it silently whispered. “Then you can put back the clock itself.”
Tawus knew it was true. Without Fabbro to stop him, he could indeed postpone the end, not forever, but for several more generations. And he could rule Esperine during that time as he had never ruled before, with no Fabbro outside, no one to look in and judge him. The cloak was right. He would become Fabbro, he would become Fabbro and Tawus both at once. It was possible, and what was more, it had been his reason for coming here in the first place.
He glanced down at Fabbro. He looked quickly away again across the lake. Ten whole seconds passed.
Then Tawus reached slowly for the clasp of the Peacock Cloak. He hesitated. He lowered his hand. He reached for the clasp again. His fingers were trembling because of the contradictory signals they were receiving from his brain, but finally he unfastened the cloak, removing it slowly and deliberately at first, and then suddenly flinging it away from him, as if he feared it might grab hold and refuse to let him go. It snagged on a branch of a small oak tree and hung there, one corner touching the stony ground. Still its clever eyes darted about, green and gold and black. It was watching Tawus, watching Fabbro. As ever, it was observing everything, analyzing everything, evaluating options and possibilities. But yet, as is surely proper in a garment hanging from a tree, it had no direction of its own, it had no purpose.
Across the lake, the eastern hills shone. There were sheep up there grazing, bathed in golden light that picked them out against the mountainside. But the hills on the western side were also making their presence felt, for their shadows were reaching out like long fingers over the two small figures by the lake, one standing, one seated on the log, neither one speaking. Without his cloak, in a simple white shirt and white breeches, Tawus looked even more like Fabbro. A stranger could not have told them apart.
A flock of geese came flying in from a day of grazing lower down the valley. They honked peaceably to one another as they splashed down on the softly luminous water.
“When I was walking up here,” Tawus said at last, “I met three children, and they reminded me of some other children I saw once, or glimpsed anyway, when I was riding past in a tank. It was in the middle of a war and I didn't pay much heed to them at the time. I was too busy listening to reports and giving orders. But for some reason they stuck in my mind.”
He picked up a stone, tossed it half-heartedly out into the lake.
“Their ruined home lay behind them,” he went on, “and in the ruins, most probably, lay the burnt corpses of their parents. Not that their parents would have been combatants or anything. It was just that their country, their sleepy land of Meadow Lee, had temporarily become the square on the chessboard that the great game was focused on, the place where the force fields happened to intersect. Pretty soon the focal point would be somewhere else and the armies would move on from Meadow Lee and forget all about it until the next time. But those children wouldn't forget, would they? Not while they still lived. This day would stain and darken their entire lives, like the smoke darkened and stained their pretty blue sky. What could be worse, when you think about it, than filling up a small mind with such horrors? That, in a way, is also creating a world. It is creating a small but perfect hell.”
He snatched up yet another stone, but, with a swift graceful movement, Fabbro had jumped up and grasped Tawus's wrist to stop him throwing it.
“Enough, Tawus, enough. The rebellion is over. The divisions you brought about have all been healed. The killed and the killers. The tortured and the torturers. The enslaved and the enslavers. All are reconciled. All have finally
come back.”
“Everyone but me.”
Tawus let the stone fall to the ground. His creator released his hand, sat down again on the log and once again patted the space beside him.
Tawus looked at Fabbro, and at the log, and back at Fabbro again. And, finally, he sat down.
The two of them were completely in shadow now, had become shadows themselves. The smooth surface of the lake still glowed with soft pinks and blues, but the many birds on its surface had become shadows too, warm living shadows, softly murmuring to one another in their various watery tongues, suspended between the glowing lake and the glowing sky. And more shadow was spreading up the hillside opposite, engulfing the sheep one after another, taking them from golden prominence to peaceful obscurity. Soon only the peaks still dipped into the stream of sunlight that was pouring horizontally far above the heads of the two men.
“Everyone but you,” Fabbro mildly agreed, reaching down for his binoculars once more so he could look at some unusual duck or other that he'd noticed out on the water.
Tawus glanced across at his Peacock Cloak, dangling from its tree with the gun still hidden in its pocket. That tawdry thing, he suddenly thought. Why did I choose to hide myself in that? The cloak was shimmering and glittering, giving off its own light in the shadow, and its eyes were still brightly shining, as if it was attempting to be a rival to those last brilliant rays of sunlight, or to outglow the softly glowing lake. It was all that was left of Tawus's empire, his will, his power.
He turned to Fabbro.
“Don't get the wrong idea,” he began. “I don't in any way regret what . . .”
Then he broke off. He passed his still trembling hand over his face.
“I'm sorry, Fabbro,” he said in a completely different voice. “I've messed it all up, haven't I? I've been a fool. I've spoiled everything.”
Fabbro lowered his binoculars and patted Tawus on the hand.
“Well, maybe you have. I'm not sure. But you're quite right, you know, that I did just create a shell, and it was your rebellion that made it a world. Deep down I always knew that rebellion was necessary. I must have done, mustn't I, since whatever you did came from somewhere inside me? Rebellion was necessary. I'd just hoped that in Esperine it would somehow have taken a different path.”
Only the highest tips of the peaks were still shining gold. They were like bright orange light bulbs. And then, one by one, they went out.
Copyright © 2010 Chris Beckett
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Poetry: CRUSHED
by Susan Abel Sullivan
* * * *
* * * *
Here's some advice: Never fall in love with a black hole.
Oh, sure, a black hole really knows how to warp
the space-time continuum
And the magnitude of its gravitational pull
is absolutely irresistible,
one might even say charming
in certain circles.
But once you cross the event horizon,
(truly that point of no return)
the tidal forces rip you apart.
There's no escaping the singularity
no matter how hard you struggle.
And if you think you're the only one
to be sucked into its vortex, think again.
A black hole has this effect
on all celestial bodies in the vicinity.
And then some.
Right.
So, what's a celestial body to you?
Because whether you submit or resist,
either way,
you're
crushed.
—Susan Abel Sullivan
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Short Story: VOYAGE TO THE MOON
by Peter Friend
Peter Friend has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies around the world. He's also a filmmaker and artist, and bakes great muffins. In real life, he's a computer analyst, but hopes to one day become a full-time living art treasure. The author of one of the strangest holiday stories we've ever run, “The Christmas Tree” (December 2004), returns to our pages to tell the equally alien tale of a . . .
“We were informed you were ill, Professor Thithiwith,” said Majesty, sounding disappointed that I could crawl across the palace floor unaided.
“Indeed so, Majesty,” I agreed, for it was never wise to contradict Her or Her informers. “Old age and my arthritic rear limbs have much restricted my astronomical duties of late, although my esteemed colleague Professor Tlik has been most generous in his assistance. And of course I am much restored by Your kind concern.”
Several of Her heads glared at me, as if suspecting sarcasm. “And yet We are further informed,” She continued, “that despite your illness, you have been keenly tending a grotesquely overripe house pod in the Observatory gardens.”
I forced a delighted chuckle. “Forgive me, Majesty, I had foolishly thought to surprise You. I should have known You would divine my true plans in an instant.”
She surely had no idea what I was talking about. I was gambling on Her vanity, and Her love of surprises—pleasant surprises, that is.
Her bodies rolled closer together and Her heads whispered to each other.
“It would please Us if you would recite the full details for the enlightenment of Our subjects,” She said.
“Your entire Queendom joyously prepares for the bicentennial of Your hatching, Majesty, each of us striving to show our devoted . . . er, devotion.”
One of Her heads stifled a small yawn.
“So a year ago,” I continued hurriedly, “I began my own humble project—to bring You a petal of the moon.”
I had the entire court's attention now. Professor Tlik—my loathsome deputy and the bane of my academic life—raised his head in astonishment from amidst a cluster of courtiers. No doubt he was only here to gloat at my expected downfall.
Sure enough, the stunned silence was broken by his spluttering. “Superstitious nonsense, Majesty. Observations proved a hundred years ago that the moon is almost certainly not a giant flower. Professor Thithiwith is quite unfit to be Royal Astronomer if—”
“We did not ask you to speak, Tlik,” snapped Majesty, then turned to me. “And We asked you for the full details, Professor Thithiwith. How do you propose to obtain this fabulous petal for Us? Will you . . . fly up and pluck it?” She smiled, triggering a wave of sycophantic titters around the room.
“Again You have outthought me, Majesty,” I exclaimed. “Yes, the pod is now of sufficient buoyancy to support the weight of myself and my equipment. I propose to pilot it through the heavens to the moon and back, taking scientific observations and samples as I go. Therefore my dear colleague Professor Tlik is quite correct—I will be unable to fulfill the duties of Royal Astronomer, and hereby resign in his favor.”
I bowed my head to the floor and awaited my fate. Would a royal guard drive a spike through my neck at Her signal? Would Tlik remain sufficiently dazzled by his sudden promotion to keep his mouth shut? I stole a glance in his direction. His jaws were twitching, but he was watching Majesty. As were the rest of the court.
“We are touched by your devotion,” She said at last, and I dared to breathe again. “Yet We are also concerned by such . . . recklessness . . . in both of you. Professor Thithiwith, your voyage has Our blessing. Professor Tlik, you will accompany Professor Thithiwith as his assistant. You may both now copulate with Us.” The air filled with Her intoxicating musk, and two of Her bodies swiveled their abdomens in our directions.
She was a most subtle monarch, I thought, glaring at Tlik as we ecstatically thrust our seed glands into Her. There was no greater privilege than to pass one's genes back to the Royal Line; not one in a thousand were ever so privileged. I barely noticed the pain as Her abdominal claws severed my seed gland. But alas, surely this honor was proof that She expected neither of us to return from the voyage.
Majesty's blessing was not entirely beneficial. I no longer feared sabotage, for a small grim troop of royal guards now kept watch on the pod, which I had patriotically christened the Majestic Glory. But I woke each morning in dread that overnight it might have burst, wilted, or escaped its bindings.
Most of my time was now spent caring for the Glory, and fending off Tlik's half-hearted assistance and the observatory staff.
“Have you forgotten our ancestors’ wisdom?” demanded Chakthil, a respected but senile elder astronomer. “Surely you cannot believe this talk of flying flowers? The divine Revelations of Snii are clear—the moon is the young fire goddess Gwilka, forever chasing her elder sun sister Gwolk through the sky. To approach them would be heresy, and quite possibly cause the universe to implode.”
“No, no, noble Gwilka rides upon the great moon flower, and will surely bless any scholarly visitors to her realm,” insisted Pilkrit, his even older colleague.
Tlik snorted. “The sun and moon are giant shining pods, blindly following routes decreed by mathematical logic,” he declared, yet again boring all in earshot with his secular mechanist nonsense. “The flowers are mere metaphors, a sop for uneducated folk.” (Such as Majesty Herself, although he did not dare say so aloud.)
I could not let such a insult to our faith and traditions go unchallenged. “As any rational person can see, a moon flower is tossed each night across the sky by great Shuloku, the Queen of Heaven. At the bidding of our glorious Majesty at the center of the universe, of course,” I hurriedly added.
* * * *
“How smart is it, Professor Thithiwith?” asked a voice, a few days before our scheduled launch.
I looked down from atop the Glory where I was rubbing yinkle oil onto a lateral vine, and saw an apprentice astronomer—Pren, was that his name?—behind the glowering guards. I had noticed him lurking on numerous occasions—one of Majesty's spies, I had assumed. His question surprised me.
Asimov's SF, June 2010 Page 10