by Joe Hill
Nobody noticed as they crossed the bounds of Shepherd’s Bush, and still they kept on walking.
The seven of them reached the banks of the Kilburn, where they stopped, and the former shepherd and the three shaggy dog-men strode out into the water.
There was, the Marquis knew, nothing in the four men’s heads at that moment but a need to get to the Mushroom, to taste its flesh once more, to let it live inside them, to serve it, and to serve it well. In exchange, the Mushroom would fix all the things about themselves that they hated: it would make their interior lives much happier and more interesting.
“Should’ve let me kill ’em,” said the Elephant as the former shepherd and sheepdogs waded away.
“No point,” said the Marquis. “Not even for revenge. The people who captured us don’t exist any longer.”
The Elephant flapped his ears hard, then scratched them vigorously. “Talking about revenge, who the hell did you steal my diary for anyway?” he asked.
“Victoria,” admitted de Carabas.
“Not actually on my list of potential thieves. She’s a deep one,” said the Elephant, after a moment.
“I’ll not argue with that,” said the Marquis. “Also, she failed to pay me the entire amount agreed. I wound up obtaining my own lagniappe to make up the deficit.”
He reached a dark hand into the inside of his coat. His fingers found the obvious pockets, and the less obvious, and then, to his surprise, the least obvious of all. He reached inside it and pulled out a magnifying glass on a chain. “It was Victoria’s,” he said. “I believe you can use it to see through solid things. Perhaps this could be considered a small payment against my debt to you . . . ?”
The Elephant took something out of its own pocket—the Marquis could not see what it was—and squinted at it through the magnifying glass. Then the Elephant made a noise halfway between a delighted snort and a trumpet of satisfaction. “Oh fine, very fine,” it said. It pocketed both of the objects. Then it said, “I suppose that saving my life outranks stealing my diary. And while I wouldn’t have needed saving if I hadn’t followed you down the drain, further recriminations are pointless. Consider your life your own once more.”
“I look forward to visiting you in the Castle someday,” said the Marquis.
“Don’t push your luck, mate,” said the Elephant, with an irritable swish of his trunk.
“I won’t,” said the Marquis, resisting the urge to point out that pushing his luck was the only way he had made it this far. He looked around and realized that Peregrine had slipped mysteriously and irritatingly away into the shadows once more, without so much as a goodbye.
The Marquis hated it when people did that.
He made a small, courtly bow to the Elephant, and the Marquis’s coat, his glorious coat, caught the bow, amplified it, made it perfect, and made it the kind of bow that only the Marquis de Carabas could ever possibly make. Whoever he was.
The next Floating Market was being held in Derry and Tom’s Roof Garden. There had been no Derry and Tom’s since 1973, but time and space and London Below had their own uncomfortable agreement, and the roof garden was younger and more innocent than it is today. The folk from London Above (they were young, and in an intense discussion, and they had stacked heels and paisley tops and bell-bottom flares, the men and the women) ignored the folk from London Below entirely.
The Marquis de Carabas strode through the roof garden as if he owned the place, walking swiftly until he reached the food court. He passed a tiny woman selling curling cheese sandwiches from a wheelbarrow piled high with the things, a curry stall, a short man with a huge glass bowl of pale white blind fish and a toasting fork, until, finally, he reached the stall that was selling the Mushroom.
“Slice of the Mushroom, well grilled, please,” said the Marquis de Carabas.
The man who took his order was shorter than he was and still somewhat stouter. He had sandy, receding hair and a harried expression.
“Coming right up,” said the man. “Anything else?”
“No, that’s all.” And then, curiously, the Marquis asked, “Do you remember me?”
“I am afraid not,” said the Mushroom man. “But I must say, that is a most beautiful coat.”
“Thank you,” said the Marquis de Carabas. He looked around. “Where is the young fellow who used to work here?”
“Ah. That is a most curious story, sir,” said the man. He did not yet smell of damp although there was a small encrustation of mushrooms on the side of his neck. “Somebody told the fair Drusilla, of the Court of the Raven, that our Vince had had designs upon her, and had—you may not credit it, but I am assured that it is so—apparently sent her a letter filled with spores with the intention of making her his bride in the Mushroom.”
The Marquis raised an eyebrow quizzically, although he found none of this surprising. He had, after all, told Drusilla himself, and had even shown her the original letter. “Did she take well to the news?”
“I do not believe that she did, sir. I do not believe that she did. She and several of her sisters were waiting for Vince, and they all caught up with us on our way to the Market. She told him they had matters to discuss, of an intimate nature. He seemed delighted by this news, and went off with her to find out what these matters were. I have been waiting for him to arrive at the Market and come and work all evening, but I no longer believe he will be coming.” Then the man said a little wistfully, “That is a very fine coat. It seems to me that I might have had one like it in a former life.”
“I do not doubt it,” said the Marquis de Carabas, satisfied with what he had heard, cutting into his grilled slice of the Mushroom, “but this particular coat is most definitely mine.”
As he made his way out of the Market, he passed a clump of people descending the stairs and he paused and nodded at a young woman of uncommon grace. She had the long orange hair and the flattened profile of a Pre-Raphaelite beauty, and there was a birthmark in the shape of a five-pointed star on the back of one hand. Her other hand was stroking the head of a large, rumpled owl, which glared uncomfortably out at the world with eyes that were, unusually for such a bird, of an intense, pale blue.
The Marquis nodded at her, and she glanced awkwardly at him, then she looked away in the manner of someone who was now beginning to realize that she owed the Marquis a favor.
He nodded at her amiably, and continued to descend.
Drusilla hurried after him. She looked as if she had something she wanted to say.
The Marquis de Carabas reached the foot of the stairs ahead of her. He stopped for a moment, and he thought about people, and about things, and about how hard it is to do anything for the first time. And then, clad in his fine coat, he slipped mysteriously, even irritatingly, into the shadows, without so much as a goodbye, and he was gone.
SUSAN PALWICK
Windows
FROM Asimov’s Science Fiction
THE BUS SMELLS like plastic and urine, and the kid sitting next to Vangie has his music cranked up way too high. It’s leaking out of his earbuds, giving her a headache. He’s a big boy, sprawled out across his seat and into hers as if she’s not there at all. She squeezes herself against the window, resting her head against the cool glass to try to ease the throbbing behind her eyes. Maybe the kid will get off at the next stop, in forty minutes or so. Maybe nobody else will get on to take his seat. The bus is completely full, and the waves of chatter and smell might have made Vangie sick even without the booming bass.
It’s a ten-hour ride to see Graham; Vangie just hopes she’ll get in this time. She can’t shake her gut fear that everything’s lined up too neatly, that something has to go wrong. More than once, she’s spent the time and money to get down there—the time’s no problem, but the money’s not so easy, not with her monthly check as small as it is—to find the prison on lockdown, nobody in or out and God only knows what’s going on inside. All you get are reports you can’t trust, and you sit in the shabby town library Googling the
news every two seconds until it’s time to catch the bus back home, because you can’t afford another night in a motel. Sometimes it’s been days until Graham’s been able to call out, until Vangie’s been able to hear his voice again. She always accepts the collect charges, but they never talk long. Those calls cost.
Vangie’s small overnight bag is under her feet. She’s got her purse strap crossed over her body, and her arms crossed protectively over that, as if the kid next to her might snatch the bag and sprint to the front of the bus, diving out the door at seventy miles an hour. She knows this wouldn’t happen even if she looked like someone worth robbing, even if what’s in her purse had the slightest value to anybody except her and maybe Graham. He won’t value it as much as she does. She doesn’t see how he could. Every time she thinks about it she feels a great weight in her chest, a clot of grief and guilt and relief and love, and sometimes a tiny bit of pride creeps in there, too—one of her kids got away, is getting away, even if it’s too far—but she squashes that, always. No one else would think she deserved to feel proud. She doesn’t think she deserves to feel proud. Pride is dangerous. So’s luck, because it always turns, and there’s already been too much this trip.
The kid next to her yawns and shifts, giving her an inch or two more room, and she takes it, grateful. It’s getting dark, sunset a dull bruise to the west, obscured by clouds and by the dirty window, but at least she can see out, watch the gray highway rushing past. When she first started making this trip, three years ago, she promised herself she’d look out the window the whole time so she’d be able to tell Graham about it, but there’s nothing next to the road but flat fields, corn and alfalfa. Sometimes a combine, but she can never make out people. She looked for cows the first few times, horses. No luck. She’ll tell him about this sunset, though. She’ll make it sound prettier than it is.
And when it gets completely dark she’ll peer up through the window and try to make out stars. Sometimes she can see them. She can’t remember if there’s a moon tonight, but she’ll look for that, too. Vangie feels like she has to look, because Graham can’t. He doesn’t get to see the night sky anymore.
Zel doesn’t get to see anything else. She thought she was so lucky when she won the ticket, blind lottery, her name pulled out of the hat with all those other folks’. It still rips Vangie’s heart open to remember how eager Zel was to leave all of them, leave everything forever. “I’m going to the stars!” she said, but all she’s doing is living in a tin can, living and dying there, and they’ll make babies out of her eggs who’ll live the next leg, and babies out of their eggs who’ll live the next, and finally there will be a planet at the end of it, that world the scientists found that’s supposed to be as much like Earth as makes no never mind. Zel will never see it. She’ll be long dead, her children’s children will be long dead, by the time they get there. She’ll never see sunset or alfalfa again.
As far as Vangie’s concerned, she’s got two kids in for life. She’s just glad she can still visit one of them.
She’s almost dozed off when the bus stops. The kid next to her gets off. Nobody else gets on. Nobody moves from their current seat to take that one. A shiver goes down Vangie’s spine, and she crosses her fingers even as she’s moving her bag onto the other seat, stretching out the way the kid did, sighing and feeling her muscles unknot because now maybe she can actually sleep the last few hours of the trip. More luck, too much luck, as much crazy luck this time as it took Zel to get that ticket. She won the generation-ship lottery right before Graham got caught moving more cocaine than anyone could claim for personal use, dumb bad luck, he hadn’t noticed one of his taillights was out and got pulled over, third strike you’re out. It’s like Vangie and her kids only get so much luck, and Zel’s heaping lottery serving—if you call that luck at all—meant Graham ran short. Vangie hopes she herself isn’t hogging it now. The kids need it more than she does.
She knows there are people who’d say Graham doesn’t deserve luck, say what happened to him was all about choice and not about luck at all, say he’s scum for dealing drugs. Vangie wishes to God he hadn’t gotten involved in the cocaine deal, but she wishes Zel hadn’t won the lottery ticket, too. The world can think what it wants. Graham’s her son. He’s the only family she has left, and tomorrow’s his birthday. And in her bag, infinitely precious, is a message from his sister. And if this impossible streak of luck holds, Vangie will actually get to deliver it to him on his birthday.
She gets dizzy just thinking about everything that’s already had to go exactly right. Zel’s end is tricky enough. The settlers—settlers! as if Zel will ever get to settle anywhere but inside that tin can!—don’t get to send messages very often, because there are so many of them and they’re all busy growing beans or doing things to each other’s eggs and sperm or whatever they spend their time on up there. Vangie tries not to wonder about the babies. Whatever babies Zel has, Vangie will never get to hold them.
But anyway, they don’t get to send messages very often. There’s a schedule, as strict as the one dictating when prisoners can call out, and for how long. And the ones from the tin can have to travel a lot farther. There’s a computer that tells the person sending the message when it will reach Earth. Right now it takes a couple of days, and a lot of messages don’t even get through because they have to travel so far, bouncing off planets and satellites and space rocks and God knows what else. A lot of them just get lost.
So Zel just happened to get her slot last week sometime, or the week before that, and sent Graham’s birthday video in time to reach Vangie’s free email account the week before Graham’s birthday, which falls at the beginning of the month, right after Vangie’s check comes in, which means she had the money to buy a thumb drive to put the file on, and also had the money for the bus ticket and the hotel down by the prison, because Graham’s birthday falls on one of the weekend visiting days, and how often will that ever happen? It’s amazing enough that the message actually came through. The trip will leave Vangie short on grocery money for the month, but she’ll go to the food pantries and soup kitchens. She’ll scrape by.
Of course she called ahead to the prison to see if they’d even let her show Graham the file. She hasn’t watched it yet; she wants to see it with him. It’s called “Happy birthday, Graham,” so she knows what it’s about. She and Graham will have to watch it on one of the prison computers, and she wanted to make sure she wouldn’t have to pay: video visits are $100 an hour, another racket, like the collect phone calls. The prison’s so crowded because there’s no money, they always say, but it looks to Vangie like they’re cleaning up.
More luck: because a prisoner just died in isolation and there’s been a big flap about it, and they’re worried about PR this week, her call got put through to the warden, and he promised her that she’d be able to use a prison laptop, no charge. Something about prisoners’ rights to contact with family, and if your family’s on a generation ship and your only possible contact’s a video message that just traveled days to get to your mother’s email account, well then.
Vangie trusts this as far as she can throw the bus. The flap’s died down now. Twenty to one there won’t be any laptop. She doubts the warden will admit to taking her call, or even remember it.
The bus rocks her, that lulling rushing motion she’s always loved, the feeling of going somewhere. She peers up through the window, but there are clouds now, and between them and the grime, she can’t see stars. She pushes both of her seats back, and stretches out as much as she can, and sleeps.
It’s a good thing she slept on the bus, because she can hardly sleep at all in her hotel room: a blasting TV on one side of her and raucous sex followed by a screaming fight in the other, and a lumpy mattress. Her own TV’s broken, so she lies in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, reminding herself that Zel and Graham both have it much worse. Prison’s even noisier than this, and much more crowded, and there’s no checking out of the gen-ship.
She dozes off a lit
tle, finally, around three, but wakes up smack-dab at five, the way she’s done her whole adult life. This means she gets close to first dibs on the hot water, which still runs out too quickly. A shower’s a shower, though. The coffee at the diner across the street restores her even more, and the scrambled eggs are fluffy, just like she makes them herself.
She’s first in line at the prison. “Evangeline Morris,” she tells the guard, who looks like she’s barely awake herself. “I’m supposed to be able to use one of your laptops. The warden said.”
“Yes, ma’am. I have that down here. They’ll get it for you inside.”
Marveling and suspicious—the PR flap must have lasted longer than usual—Vangie hands over her purse so another yawning guard can search it, and goes through the metal detector and reclaims her bag. There’s a long line of other visitors behind her; she can feel the weight of them pressing on her back, pressing her through the doors into the visiting room.
The visiting room’s a dull yellow cube dotted with tables and chairs. The two vending machines in the corner are always broken, and noise echoes off the walls. There’s nothing resembling privacy, but if you have somebody in here, you take what you can get.
And there’s Graham waiting for her, and someone else is with him, but Vangie doesn’t care about that right now: she just reaches out for the hug she’s allowed, one at the beginning of the visit and one at the end. She hugs Graham as hard as she can, as if she can force all her love for him through his skin, armor against his life here. “Happy birthday, baby.”
“Mama.” His voice is thick. She pulls back to look at him: he’s thinner than he was last visit, and tears track his cheeks. “Mama, I brought the chaplain with me.”
“What?” Her heart flutters. “What’s wrong?” Graham’s thinner than last time. “Are you—”