The Long List Anthology Volume 3

by Aliette de Bodard

  “You know, it was Gulliver’s Travels that finally really turned it around for me. Swift was so clever and rude and funny and angry, yet he could also tell a great story. That bit about those Laputan astronomers studying the stars from down in their cave, and trying to harvest sunbeams from marrows. Well, that’s us right here, isn’t it?”

  The fire settled. We poured ourselves some more whisky. And Rob recited a poem by Li Po about drinking with the Moon’s shadow, and then we remembered those days back in Leeds when we’d gone out onto the moors, and drank and ingested far more than was good for us, and danced like savages and, yes, there had even been that time he and I had gazed up at the stars.

  We stood up now, and Rob led me away from the settling fire. The stars were so bright here, and the night sky was so black, that it felt like falling merely to look up. Over there in the west, Lita, is the Taurus Constellation. It’s where the Crab Nebula lies, the remains of a supernova the Chinese recorded back in 1054, and it’s in part of the Milky Way known as the Perseus Arm, which is where our dark binaries will soon end their fatal dance. I was leaning into him as he held his arms around me, and perhaps both of us were breathing a little faster than was entirely due to the wonders of the cosmos.

  “What time is it now, Rob?”

  “It’s…” He checked his watch. “Just after midnight.”

  “So there’s still time.”

  “Time for what?”

  We kissed, then crossed the shore and climbed the stairs to Rob’s single bed. It was sweet, and somewhat drunken, and quickly over. The earth, the universe, didn’t exactly move. But it felt far more like making love than merely having sex, and I curled up against Rob afterwards, and breathed his cinnamon scent, and fell into a well of star-seeing contentment.

  “Rob?”

  The sky beyond the window was already showing the first traces of dawn as I got up, telling myself that he’d be next door in his parents’ old room, or walking the shore as he and his avatar strove to deal with a torrent of interview requests. But I sensed that something was wrong.

  It wasn’t hard for me to pull up the right screen amid the humming machines in his parents’ room, proficient at mek as I now was. The event, the collision, had definitely occurred. The spike of its gravitational wave had been recorded by every observatory. But the next screen, the one where Rob had combined, filtered and refined all the data, displayed no ripples, echoes, from other worlds.

  I ran outside shouting Rob’s name. I checked the house feeds. I paced back and forth. I got my avatar to contact the authorities. I did all the things you do when someone you love suddenly goes missing, but a large part of me already knew it was far too late.

  Helicopter arrived. Drones circled. Locals gathered. Fishermen arrived in trawlers and skiffs. Then came the bother of newsfeeds, all the publicity I could ever have wished for. But not like this.

  I ended up sitting on the rocks of that bay around the headland from Creagach as the day progressed, waiting for the currents to bear Rob’s body to this place, where he could join his parents.

  I’m still waiting.

  9.

  Few people actually remember Rob Holm these days, and if they do, it’s as that good-looking guy who used to present those slightly weird nature — or was it science? — feeds, and didn’t he die in some odd, sad kind of way? But I still remember him, and I still miss him, and I still often wonder what really happened on that night when he left the bed we briefly shared. The explanation given by the authorities, that he’d seen his theory dashed and then walked out into the freezing waters of the Minch, still isn’t something I can bring myself to accept. So maybe he really was like the Visitor from Taured, and simply vanished from a universe which couldn’t support what he believed.

  I read few novels or short stories now. The plots, the pages, seem over-involved. Murals rather than elegant miniatures. Rough-hewn rocks instead of jewels. But the funny thing is that, as my interest in them has dwindled, books have become popular again. There are new publishers, even new writers, and you’ll find pop up bookstores in every city. Thousands now flock to my library in Seoul every year, and I upset the conservators by allowing them to take my precious volumes down from their shelves. After all, isn’t that exactly what books are for? But I rarely go there myself. In fact, I hardly ever leave the Isle of Harris, or even Creagach, which Rob, with typical consideration and foresight, left me in his will. I do my best with the scallop farm going, pottering about in the launch and trying to keep the crabs and the starfish at bay, although the business barely turns a profit, and probably never did.

  What I do keep returning to is Rob’s small collection of poetry. I have lingered with Eliot’s Prufrock amid the chains of the sea, wondered with Hardy what might have happened if he and that woman had sheltered from the rain a minute more, and watched as Silvia Plath’s children burst those final balloons. I just wish that Rob was here to share these precious words and moments with me. But all there is is you and I, dear, faithful reader, and the Blue Men of the Minch calling to the waves.

  * * *

  Ian R MacLeod has been writing and selling speculative and fantastic fiction for more than 30 years. He is the author of seven novels and over fifty novellas and short stories. His works have been published in many languages, and have received many major awards. He lives with his wife in the riverside town of Bewdley in England, where he divides his time between writing, trying to write, and not writing.

  Blood Grains Speak Through Memories

  By Jason Sanford

  Morning’s song of light and warmth glowed on the horizon as the land’s anchor, Frere-Jones Roeder, stepped from her front door. The red-burn dots of fairies swirled in the river mists flowing over her recently plowed sunflower fields. Cows mooed in the barn, eager to be milked. Chickens flapped their wings as they stirred from roosts on her home’s sod-grass roof.

  Even though the chilled spring day promised nothing but beauty, the grains in Frere-Jones’s body shivered to her sadness as she looked at the nearby dirt road. The day-fellows along the road were packing their caravan. Evidently her promises of safety weren’t enough for them to chance staying even a few more hours.

  Frere-Jones tapped the message pad by the door, pinging her fellow anchors on other lands so they knew the caravan was departing. She then picked up her gift sack and hurried outside to say goodbye.

  As Frere-Jones closed the door, a red fairy wearing her dead lifemate’s face flittered before her eyes. A flash of memory jumped into her from the fairy’s grain-created body. One of Haoquin’s memories, from a time right after they’d wed. They’d argued over something silly—like newlyweds always did—and Haoquin had grown irritated at Frere-Jones’s intransigence.

  But that was all the fairy shared. The taste of Haoquin’s memory didn’t show Frere-Jones and Haoquin making up. The memory didn’t show the two of them ending the day by walking hand-in-hand along her land’s forest trails.

  Frere-Jones slapped the fairy away, not caring if the land and its damned grains were irritated at her sadness. She liked the day-fellows. She’d choose them any day over the grains.

  The fairy spun into an angry buzzing and flew over the sunflower fields to join the others.

  Frere-Jones walked up to the caravan’s wagons to find the day-fellows detaching their power systems from her farm’s solar and wind grid. The caravan leader nodded to Frere-Jones as he harnessed a team of four horses to the lead wagon.

  “We appreciate you letting us plug in,” the man said. “Our solar collectors weaken something awful when it’s overcast.”

  “Anytime,” Frere-Jones said. “Pass the word to other caravans that I’m happy to help. Power or water or food, I’ll always share.”

  Pleasantries done, Frere-Jones hurried down the line of wagons.

  The first five wagons she passed were large multi-generational affairs with massive ceramic wheels standing as tall as she. Pasted-on red ribbons outlined the wagons’ scars
from old battles. Day-fellows believed any battle they survived was a battle worth honoring.

  Adults and teenagers and kids smiled at Frere-Jones as she passed, everyone hurrying to harness horses and stow baggage and deploy their solar arrays.

  Frere-Jones waved at the Kameron twins, who were only seven years old and packing up their family’s honey and craft goods. Frere-Jones reached into her pocket and handed the twins tiny firefly pebbles. When thrown, the pebbles would burst into mechanical fireflies which flew in streaks of rainbow colors for a few seconds. The girls giggled—firefly pebbles were a great prank. Kids loved to toss them when adults were sitting around campfires at night, releasing bursts of fireflies to startle everyone.

  Frere-Jones hugged the twins and walked on, finally stopping before the caravan’s very last wagon.

  The wagon stood small, barely containing the single family inside, built not of ceramic but of a reinforced lattice of ancient metal armor. Instead of bright ribbons to honor old battles, a faded maroon paint flaked and peeled from the walls. Large impact craters shown on one side of the wagon. Long scratches surrounded the back door from superhard claws assaulting the wagon’s armored shutters.

  An ugly, ugly wagon. Still, it had bent under its last attack instead of breaking. The caravan’s leader had told Frere-Jones that this family’s previous caravan had been attacked a few months ago. All that caravan’s ceramic wagons shattered, but this wagon survived.

  Frere-Jones fed her final sugar cubes to the wagon’s horses, a strong pair who nickered in pleasure as the grains within their bodies pulsed in sync to her own. Horses adapted so perfectly to each land’s grains as they fed on grasses and hay. That flexibility was why horses usually survived attacks even when their caravan did not.

  “Morning, Master-Anchor Frere-Jones,” a teenage girl, Alexnya, said as she curtsied, holding the sides of her leather vest out like a fancy dress. Most kids in the caravan wore flowing cotton clothes, but Alexnya preferred leather shirts and vests and pants.

  “Master-Anchor Frere-Jones, you honor us with your presence,” Alexnya’s mother, Jun, said in an overly formal manner. Her husband, Takeshi, stood behind her, holding back their younger daughter and son as if Frere-Jones was someone to fear.

  They’re skittish from that attack, Frere-Jones thought. A fresh scar ran the left side of Jun’s thin face while Takeshi still wore a healing pad around his neck. Their two young kids, Miya and Tufte, seemed almost in tears at being near an anchor. When Frere-Jones smiled at them, both kids bolted to hide in the wagon.

  Only Alexnya stood unafraid, staring into Frere-Jones’s eyes as if confident this land’s anchor wouldn’t dare harm her.

  “I’ve brought your family gifts,” Frere-Jones said.

  “Why?” Jun asked, suspicious.

  Frere-Jones paused, unused to explaining. “I give gifts to all families who camp on my land.”

  “A land which you protect,” Jun said, scratching the scar on her face. As if to remind Frere-Jones what the anchors who’d attacked their last caravan had done.

  Frere-Jones nodded sadly. “I am my land’s anchor,” she said. “I wish it wasn’t so. If I could leave I would… my son…”

  Frere-Jones turned to walk back to her farm to milk the cows. Work distracted her from memories. But Alexnya jumped forward and grabbed her hand.

  “I’ve heard of your son,” Alexnya said. “He’s a day-fellow now, isn’t he?”

  Frere-Jones grinned. “He is indeed. Travels the eastern roads in a caravan with his own lifemate and kids. I see him once every four years when the land permits his caravan to return.” Frere-Jones held the gift bag out to Alexnya. “Please take this. I admit it’s a selfish gift. I want day-fellows to watch out for my son and his family. Lend a hand when needed.”

  “Day-fellows protect our own,” Jun stated in a flat voice. “No need to bribe us to do what we already do.”

  Alexnya, despite her mother’s words, took the canvas gift bag and opened it, pulling out a large spool of thread and several short knives.

  “The thread is reinforced with nano-armor,” Frere-Jones said, “the strongest you can find. You can weave it into the kids’ clothes. The short knives were made by a day-fellow biosmith and are supposedly unbreakable…”

  Frere-Jones paused, not knowing what else to say. She thought it silly that day-fellows were prohibited from possessing more modern weapons than swords and knives to protect themselves, even if she knew why the grains demanded this.

  “Thank you, Frere-Jones,” Alexnya said as she curtsied again. “My family appreciates your gifts, which will come in handy on the road.”

  Unsure what else to say, Frere-Jones bowed back before walking away, refusing to dwell on the fact that she was the reason this day-fellow caravan was fleeing her land.

  • • • •

  That night Frere-Jones lit the glow-stones in the fireplace and sat down on her favorite sofa. The stones’ flickering flames licked the weariness from her body. A few more weeks and the chilled nights would vanish as spring fully erupted across her land.

  Frere-Jones didn’t embrace spring as she once had. Throughout the valley her fellow anchors celebrated the growing season with dances, feasts, and lush night-time visits to the forest with their lifemates and friends.

  Frere-Jones no longer joined such festivities. Through the grains she tasted the land’s excitement—the mating urge of the animals, the budding of the trees, the growth of the new-planted seeds in her fields. She felt the cows in the fields nuzzling each other’s necks and instinctively touched her own neck in response. She sensed several does hiding in the nearby forests and touched her stomach as the fawns in their wombs kicked. She even felt the grass growing on her home’s sod-roof and walls, the roots reaching slowly down as water flowed by capillary action into the fresh-green blades.

  The grains allowed Frere-Jones, as this land’s anchor, to feel everything growing and living and dying for two leagues around her. She even dimly felt the anchors on nearby lands—Jeroboam and his family ate dinner in their anchordom while Chakatie hunted deer in a forest glen on her land. Chakatie was probably gearing up for one of her family’s bloody ritualized feasts to welcome spring.

  Frere-Jones sipped her warm mulled wine before glancing at her home’s message pad. Was it too soon to call her son again? She’d tried messaging Colton a few hours ago, but the connection failed. She was used to this—day-fellow caravans did slip in and out of the communication grid—but that didn’t make it any less painful. At least he was speaking to her again.

  Frere-Jones downed the rest of her drink. As she heated a new mug of wine over the stove she took care to ignore the fairies dancing outside her kitchen window. Usually the fairies responded to the land’s needs and rules, but these fairies appeared to have been created by the grains merely to annoy her. The grains were well aware that Frere-Jones hated her part in the order and maintenance of this land.

  Two fairies with her parents’ faces glared in the window. Other fairies stared with the faces of even more distant ancestors. Several fairies mouthed Frere-Jones’s name, as if reminding her of an anchor’s duty, while others spoke in bursts of memories copied by the grains from her ancestors’ lives.

  Fuck duty, she thought as she swallowed half a mug of wine. Fuck you for what you did to Haoquin.

  Thankfully her lifemate’s face wasn’t among those worn by these fairies. While the grains had no problem creating fairies with Haoquin’s face, they knew not to push Frere-Jones when she was drunk.

  As Frere-Jones left the kitchen she paused before the home altar. In the stone pedestal’s basin stood three carved stone figurines—herself, her son, and Haoquin. The hand-sized statues rested on the red-glowing sand filling the basin.

  In the flickering light of the glow stones the figures seemed to twitch as if alive, shadow faces accusing Frere-Jones of unknown misdeeds. Frere-Jones touched Haoquin’s face—felt his sharp cheekbones and mischievous smirk—causing t
he basin’s red sands to rise up, the individual grains climbing the statues until her family glowed a faint speckled red over the darker sands below.

  The red grains burned her fingers where she touched Haoquin, connecting her to what remained of her lifemate. She felt his bones in the family graveyard on the edge of the forest. Felt the insects and microbes which had fed on his remains and absorbed his grains before dying and fertilizing the ground and the trees and the other plants throughout the land, where the grains had then been eaten by deer and cows and rabbits. If Frere-Jones closed her eyes she could almost feel Haoquin’s grains pulsing throughout the land. Could almost imagine him returning to her and hugging her tired body.

  Except he couldn’t. He was gone. Only the echo of him lived on in the microscopic grains which had occupied his body and were now dispersed again to her land.

  And her son was even farther beyond the grains’ reach, forced to forsake both the grains and her land when he turned day-fellow.

  Frere-Jones sat down hard on the tile floor and cried, cradling her empty wine mug.

  She was lying on the floor, passed out from the wine, when a banging woke her.

  “Frere-Jones, you must help us!” a woman’s voice called. She recognized the voice—Jun, from the day-fellow family which left that morning.

  Frere-Jones’s hands shook, curling like claws. The grains in her body screamed against the day-fellows for staying on her land.

  No, she ordered, commanding the grains to stand down. It’s too soon. There are a few more days before they wear out this land’s welcome.

  The grains rattled irritably in her body like pebbles in an empty water gourd. While they should obey her, to be safe Frere-Jones stepped across the den and lifted several ceramic tiles from the floor. She pulled Haoquin’s handmade laser pistol from the hiding spot and slid it behind her back, held by her belt. She was now ready to shoot herself in the head if need be.