Witpunk
Page 38
The burning cigarette had dropped to the floor, where it still smoldered; Kapuzine ineffectively stretched out her fettered hands towards it. The Woodcutter retrieved it for her, brought it back to her lips. She inhaled again, once only. This time she did not cough. She felt her mind clear somewhat and a trickle of new energy course through her veins.
"How . . ." she started to ask; the Woodcutter guessed the question on her lips.
"We cannot smuggle you out of the prison," he stated. "Anyway, you're in no shape for a breakout. The Hawks would be on us in the twinkling of an eye."
"Oh, I see . . ." said Kapuzine, though in fact she did not see. The man continued.
"And the Woodcutters cannot risk you talking. They could risk sending me, because I know nothing. I just met Mareen outside the Ring, in the tents of the tinkers and ragmen."
"I don't understand," said the young girl, her eyes blinking.
"I've come to stop the pain," he said. "I'll make it so you won't hurt anymore."
"That would be very nice," she said slowly, still confused. "Are you a doctor then?"
He did not answer. In the shifting gloom, the girl saw the Woodcutter's left hand sneak behind his broad back. When it reappeared, it was no longer empty. Kapuzine understood his meaning at last.
"What a big gun you have . . ." she whispered, her voice breaking, for it could not be doubted this man had been sent by Mareen, Mareen who was the only one who knew about the cigarettes, Mareen who loved her and whose envoy would have rescued her, if rescue was at all possible. She wanted to wail, to cry out to Mareen, but her voice was gone, her lungs felt full of blood and leftover shit, no wind remained to her, and now not even a second of time . . .
The Woodcutter had lied. For while there still dwelled a mind within her skull to feel things, that mind hurt with a fear so intense this final pain was beyond comprehension. And when the shattered scraps of her brain settled within her blasted skull, there was no one left to feel anything anymore – so how can it be said that she had felt the pain stop?
The execution was meant to be quiet, thus the silencer that almost doubled the length of the gun barrel. It did muffle the sound of the shot, but when the bullet exited the girl's skull, it ricocheted upon the concrete wall with a loud crack.
As the Woodcutter opened the door of cell IB4, pistol reloaded and held at the ready, he could only hope that the unexpected noise had not been noticed, even by the sensitive ears of the Wolves and Foxes, else he was doomed in turn. It turned out that the noise had indeed gone unnoticed, blocked by the thick door and lost in the general low-level din. And so the Woodcutter was able to make his way out of the cellblock, out of the Tiergarten, back to his people, to report on the success of his mission.
Now, some might say his successful flight was a stroke of luck; but we who tell this tale and you who hear it know better. It was the hand of destiny, weaving her old miracles, helping us take the first step on the path of our ultimate redemption.
And this is why we celebrate Kapuzine's memory, blasting her molded plastique effigies to bits on her feast day (formerly St. Barbara's), hearing in the repeated detonations like an echo of the first crack in the tyranny of the Gardeners. For though the tale of Kapuzine and the Wolf may appear unendurably sad, it is full of a holy joy. This little girl did not stray from her path; she did not fall prey to the lure of the green woods; she was not conquered by the Wolves she feared. She remained undefeated to the very end and endured a noble death, a martyr to our cause.
Thus must her example ceaselessly inspire us in our fight. Through her sacrifice she makes it all possible. One day we shall chase the Gardeners out and retake our birthplace. One day we shall uproot the trees of the City, scrub out the encroaching earth, defoliate the bushes, and char the flowers to ashes. One day we shall walk again upon clean stone, asphalt, and concrete.
And live happily ever after.
Meet the Witpunks
Michael Arsenault is the author of over one hundred and eighty other short stories, twenty-six novels, and nine screenplays. Tragically, "A Halloween Like Any Other" is his only surviving short story, after a fire consumed all copies of his other short fiction. His novels, while kept safe from the blaze, were soon after stolen by a vengeful ex-girlfriend who published them all under her own name and is suspected to be involved in the aforementioned arson. Despite these setbacks, Mr. Arsenault has tried to remain optimistic, but his ex's recent Academy Award nomination for best screenplay has come as a bit of a blow.
Eugene Byrne (www.eugenebyrne.co.uk) was born in Waterford in the Irish Republic, but grew up in Somerset in the U.K., where he went to school with his great mate and occasional collaborator Kim Newman. Eugene lives in Bristol with his wife and two children and works as a journalist. His published work includes novels Back in the USSA (with Kim Newman), ThiGMOO, and Things Unborn, and a handful of short stories. He would have written a lot more by now if he hated his day job and didn't have to spend so much time talking rubbish in pubs.
Pat Cadigan (users.wmin.ac.uk/~fowlerc/patcadigan.html) made her first professional fiction sale in 1980, and since then her work has appeared in the field's top print and online magazines. Many of these stories are collected in Patterns and Dirty Work. Her novels include Synners and Fools – both winners of the Arthur C. Clarke Award – as well as Mindplayers, Tea from an Empty Cup, and Dervish is Digital. She has taught writing workshops and was for a time a Visiting Fellow at the Cybernetic Culture Research Centre at Warwick University. Pat moved to England in 1996 and now lives in North London with her husband Chris Fowler and their cat Calgary.
Bradley Denton is the author of novels Wrack & Roll, Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede, Blackburn, and Lunatics. He is also the author of numerous short stories, some of which are collected in One Day Closer to Death and in the World Fantasy Award-winning two-volume set A Conflagration Artist and The Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Comedians. Born in Wichita, Kansas, he now lives in self-imposed exile in Austin, Texas. His favorite color is blue; his favorite novel is Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; his favorite enchilada is "cheese"; his favorite movie is Blazing Saddles; his favorite U. S. president is Truman (because he was the best cusser); and his favorite album is Let It Bleed.
Paul Di Filippo is a native Rhode Islander. He managed to turn a four-year college education into three full-time years and three part-time years, all without ever actually obtaining a degree. So far, this has not stopped him from selling well over one hundred stories, many of which are collected in several books. He lives in Providence with his mate of some twenty-seven years, Deborah Newton, a cocker spaniel named Ginger, and two cats named Mab and Penny Century. Someday he hopes to own a house with room enough to display his 10,000 books in some fashion other than vertical stacks three deep.
Cory Doctorow (www.craphound.com) will have three new books out in 2003: the novels Down and Out in the Magic
Kingdom and Eastern Standard Tribe, both from Tor Books, and the collection A Place So Foreign and Eight More, from Four Walls Eight Windows. He is also the coauthor of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Science Fiction (with Karl Schroeder). Cory won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New SF Writer in 2000. He coedits the popular weblog Boing Boing (boingboing.net) and works for the civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.
Jeffrey Ford is the author of the trilogy of novels comprising The Physiognomy (winner of the 1988 World Fantasy Award), Memoranda, and The Beyond. His most recent books are the novel The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque and the collection The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories. His short fiction has appeared in the field's top print and online magazines, as well as in numerous anthologies, including The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, Volumes 13 and 15. He lives in South Jersey with his wife and two sons and teaches Composition, Research Writing, and Early American Literature at Brookdale Community College.
Hiromi Goto (www.eciad.bc.ca/~amathur/hiromi_goto) was born in Japan and
moved to Canada with her family at the age of three. Her most recent novel, The Kappa Child, was the recipient of the 2001 James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award and was shortlisted for the 2002 Sunburst Award. Her first novel, Chorus of Mushrooms, was awarded the Regional Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Best First Book. She has also written a fantasy novel for children called The Water of Possibility. Hiromi is a creative writing instructor, editor, and the mother of two children.
Marty Halpern has been an editor for Golden Gryphon Press since the summer of 1999. In addition to acquiring new works of fiction and working with authors and artists, he also manages the goldengryphon.com web site. Along with Golden Gryphon Press publisher Gary Turner, Marty was a finalist for the 2001 World Fantasy Award/Special Award, Professional. He has a second anthology to be published in 2003: The Silver Gryphon, coedited with Gary Turner. To earn a few extra bucks, Marty occasionally works as a corporate business systems analyst, specializing in security configurations and authorizations for SAP software. He lives in Silicon Valley.
Nina Kiriki Hoffman has had a variety of mini-careers, including piano teacher, janitor, guitar teacher, English tutor, secretaryreceptionist to a psychologist, fiddle teacher, café lunch singer, and movie extra. Her current jobs are writer, magazine production worker, and copyeditor. She has sold more than 200 stories and a number of middle school and media tie-ins. Her novels include The Silent Strength of Stones, A Red Heart of Memories, Past the Size of Dreaming, and A Fistful of Sky. Nina lives in Eugene, Oregon, with cats and a mannequin. Her anime collection keeps growing.
Ernest Hogan is a six-foot-tall Aztec Leprechaun. His novels, Cortez on Jupiter, High Aztech, and Smoking Mirror Blues, have an international cult following. He has published a variety of short fiction, nonfiction articles, essays, reviews, illustrations, and cartoons. This is all because visions keep forming in his brain and won't leave him alone until he puts them on paper. But he can't seem to take it seriously. Currently, he is completing Walter Quixote, a "mainstream" novel that is as funny and weird as anything else he has done. A toothless coyote skull named Huehuecoyotl keeps watch over him.
Claude Lalumière (www.lostpages.net) was born to a unilingual francophone family, but it didn't take. He taught himself to speak English by the age of three and now lives and writes in his chosen language. He was a bookseller for thirteen years; during most of that time, he owned Nebula, a Montreal bookshop devoted to "the fantastic, the imaginative, and the weird." His criticism appears frequently in numerous print and online venues. He's a columnist for Black Gate, Locus Online, and The Montreal Gazette. His fiction has been published in Interzone, Other Dimension, The Book of More Flesh, and others. He lives in Montreal.
David Langford (www.ansible.demon.co.uk) is a twenty-twotime winner of science fiction's Hugo Award – sixteen times as "fan writer" for humorous and critical commentary on SF, five times for his SF newsletter Ansible, and once for best short story with "Different Kinds of Darkness." After taking a physics degree from Brasenose College, Oxford, he spent five years as a nuclear weapons physicist for the British Ministry of Defence before escaping to freelance bliss and poverty in 1980. Langford has published some twenty-five books since collaborating on a 1978 "reconstruction" of The Necronomicon. His latest, as compiler/editor, is Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek.
Laurent McAllister is the symbionym chosen by Yves Meynard and Jean-Louis Trudel for their collaborative efforts, which have so far yielded one young adult book and eight published stories. Another book is in the works, while their first book together has been honored with the 2002 Prix Boréal. Meynard and Trudel hold degrees in fields ranging from mathematics and computer science to physics and astronomy. Their individual writing in French and in English totals over one hundred stories, more than twenty young adult books, three novels, one award-winning collection, and two short novels. Meynard has published the fantasy novel The Book of Knights, and Trudel has translated Joël Champetier's The Dragon's Eye, both from Tor Books. Meynard coedited the fifth volume of the Canadian anthology Tesseracts, while Trudel coedited the seventh volume. Both have won the Prix Boréal, Prix Solaris, and Aurora Awards for their individual work.
James Morrow (www.sff.net/people/Jim.Morrow) was born in Philadelphia and spent much of his adolescence in a cemetery, making 8mm horror films with his friends. He also drew comic books, dabbled in live theater, and wrote short stories. His skepticism concerning the God hypothesis resulted from reading Voltaire, Ibsen, Camus, and other "honest atheists" in his tenthgrade world literature class. In 1979 Morrow tried his hand at novel-writing and soon found himself addicted. His efforts included the nuclear-war comedy This Is the Way the World Ends, the religious satire Only Begotten Daughter, and the Nietzschean sea saga Towing Jehovah. He has won the Nebula Award twice, the World Fantasy Award twice, and the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire once.
Elise Moser lives in Montreal. Her last lover disappeared without a trace.
Pat Murphy (www.brazenhussies.net/murphy) has won numerous awards for her science fiction and fantasy writing, including the Nebula Award for best novel and best novelette (both in the same year), the Philip K. Dick Award for best paperback original, and the World Fantasy Award. Her novels include The Falling Woman, Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell, Wild Angel, There and Back Again, and Nadya. She lives in San Francisco, where she works for the Exploratorium, a museum of science, art, and human perception. Her favorite color is ultraviolet.
William Sanders (www.sff.net/people/sanders) graduated from Arkansas A&M College, and served in the U. S. Army Security Agency from 1963 through 1966. He has at various times worked as a musician, shipping clerk, construction laborer, encyclopedia salesman, traveling preacher, and dishwasher at the New York Stock Exchange cafeteria. In 1973, having fulfilled the statutory odd-occupations requirement, he took up writing, first as a sports and outdoor writer and then, in 1988, turning to speculative fiction. His stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies and have been nominated for various awards, including the Hugo and the Nebula; in 1998 his short story "The Undiscovered" received the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. He is also the author of twenty published books, including his latest novel, J. He lives in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, with his wife and his cat and his old motorcycle.
Robert Silverberg (www.owmyhead.com/silverberg) is the award-winning author of Dying Inside, The Book of Skulls, Lord Valentine's Castle, and many other celebrated science-fiction
novels and stories. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. "Amanda and the Alien" was filmed in 1995 by IRS Productions under the direction of Jon Kroll.
Michael Skeet is a writer and broadcaster based in Toronto. A long-time film critic for CBC Radio, Michael is also a two-time winner of Canada's Aurora Award for science fiction. He was a cofounder of the writers' organization SF Canada and served as its first vice-president.
William Browning Spencer published his first novel, Maybe I'll Call Anna, in 1990, the year he moved to Austin, Texas. Since moving to Austin, he has published novels Résumé with Monsters, Zod Wallop, and Irrational Fears, and a collection of short fiction, The Return of Count Electric & Other Stories. Résumé with Monsters was voted Best Novel in 1995 by The International Horror Critics Guild. His stories have appeared in Dozois's The Year's Best Science Fiction, Hartwell's The Year's Best SF, and in Datlow and Windling's The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror.
Allen M. Steele (www.sfwa.org/members/steele) was born in Nashville, Tennessee. He holds a B.A. in Communications and an M.A. in Journalism. He became a full-time science fiction writer in 1988, following the publication in Asimov's of his first short story, "Live from the Mars Hotel." He has since published more than a dozen novels and collections and has twice won the Hugo Award for best novella. Before turning to SF, he worked as a newspaper staff writer, freelanced for business and general-interest magazines, and spent a short tenure as a Washington correspondent, covering politics on Capitol Hill. He currently serves on the Board of Advisors
for the Space Frontier Foundation. He lives in western Massachusetts with his wife Linda and their two dogs. His hobbies include building model spacecraft.
Ray Vukcevich (www.sff.net/people/RayV) was a finalist for the
2002 Philip K. Dick Memorial Award for his short-fiction collec
tion Meet Me in the Moon Room, from Small Beer Press. His first novel is The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces from St. Martin's. His short fiction has appeared in many magazines including Fantasy & Science Fiction, SCIFICTION, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, The Infinite Matrix, Talebones, and Asimov's, as well as in several anthologies. He lives in Oregon and works in a couple of university brain labs.
Don Webb, writing teacher, novelist, and journalist, hopes to open a writer's colony with his wife Guiniviere. He lives in Austin, Texas, and has sixty-plus stories on various "Year's Best" lists. At forty-two, he finally picked up his B.A. in English, wearing honor cords that he won bowling. He has made more money from his poetry than from his articles about the paranormal, which is pretty dang paranormal if you think about it. His wife Guiniviere is a painter, filmmaker, and composer, but Don makes the better chili.