Across the Spectrum

by Nagle, Pati

  ACROSS THE SPECTRUM

  Book View Café’s 5th Anniversary Celebration

  Edited by

  Pati Nagle

  and

  Deborah J. Ross

  www.bookviewcafe.com

  Book View Café Publishing Cooperative

  November 5, 2013

  ISBN: 978-1-61138-337-9

  Copyright © 2013 Book View Café Publishing Cooperative

  Table of Contents

  Introduction, by Pati Nagle & Deborah J. Ross

  Shapeshifter Finals, by Jeffrey A. Carver

  Feef’s House, by Doranna Durgin

  Ukaliq and the Great Hunt, by David D. Levine

  Parsley, Space, Rosemary, and Time, by Katharine Kerr

  Monsoon Day, by Mary Anne Mohanraj

  The Fiddler’s Price, by Sarah Zettel

  Solstice, by Jennifer Stevenson

  Cuckoo, by Madeleine E. Robins

  Nine White Horses, by Judith Tarr

  Handing on the Goggles, by Brenda W. Clough

  Litany of Hope, by Irene Radford

  By the Sea, by Shannon Page

  Climbing to the Moon, by Ursula K. Le Guin

  The Cornfield, by P.G. Nagle

  Ducks, by Katharine Eliska Kimbriel

  Short Timer, by Dave Smeds

  Terminal, by Chaz Brenchley

  Suraki, by Dave Trowbridge

  The Honor of the Ferrocarril, by Sylvia Kelso

  Transfusion, by Deborah J. Ross

  Survival Skills, by Nancy Jane Moore

  Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand, by Vonda N. McIntyre

  The Deaths of Christopher Marlowe, by Marie Brennan

  Lady Invisible, by Patricia Rice

  Mom and Dad at the Home Front, by Sherwood Smith

  Perfect Stranger, by Amy Sterling Casil

  The Alzheimer’s Book Club, by Jill Zeller

  Betrayal, by Mindy Klasky

  Art & Science, by Sue Lange

  Genuine Old Master, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  About the Authors

  Copyright & Credits

  Copyright Acknowledgments

  About Book View Café

  Introduction

  Five years ago, a group of fantasy and science fiction writers launched a dream: a website where they could promote themselves and each other, sharing the burden of marketing their work. That website is bookviewcafe.com, and the group has grown from a handful to over forty professional writers from all over the globe.

  Book View Café is a unique organization: a cooperative publisher that returns 95% of profits from its sales to the authors. The website has evolved from a free-fiction marketing site to a complete online bookstore, carrying both backlist titles and original works by BVC members, accompanied by a popular blog featuring daily posts on a wide variety of topics.

  BVC has published eight previous anthologies, including fantasy, science fiction, steampunk, and advice on writing. To celebrate our fifth anniversary, we created an anthology that covers the spectrum of what our members write. In these pages you will find plenty of the fantasy and science fiction that represents our roots, but you’ll also see mainstream, romance, historical fiction, and more.

  We asked our members to send us their favorite stories. They responded with a wonderful array of tales that speak from and to the heart.

  Along with the familiar BVC members in this volume (many of them founders), you will also find some new names, folks who have very recently joined the cooperative: The Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust, Doranna Durgin, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Shannon Page, and Jill Zeller. We welcome them and look forward to seeing more from all of them soon.

  —Pati Nagle

  —Deborah J. Ross

  Shapeshifter Finals

  Jeffrey A. Carver

  “Shapeshifter Finals” is exceptional in my published stories in that it owes its genesis to a direct invitation. One Sunday morning in 1993, the telephone rang. My wife answered it. Her voice went funny, and she turned to me, I swear, with stars in her eyes. She said, “It’s Roger Zelazny!” At that moment, time went sort of funny, and I sat bolt upright in bed. “He says he’s sorry to interrupt your work time, but he has a question for you.” She might as well have said, “It’s the Angel Gabriel, and he’d like to have a word with you.”

  He was calling to invite me to write a story for him. He was editing an anthology, Warriors of Blood and Dream, about soldiers and martial arts in various science fictional forms, and he was looking for something different. He remembered reading somewhere that I had been a high school wrestler. Would I consider writing a science fiction story for him about wrestling?

  I hesitated. I stammered. I gulped. I said, “I don’t, um, actually write that many short stories. I’m, uh, more of a long . . . novel . . . sort of writer.”

  Roger was quiet.

  Deeply grateful that we didn’t have videophones (Skype was far in the future), I hemmed. I hawed. I finally stuttered that I’d think about it, and if an idea came to me, I’d see what I could do.

  Roger thanked me politely, and hung up.

  Three days later, the idea for this story came to me. I sat down and wrote furiously, forgetting whatever else I was working on. I polished it, and I sent it to Roger. He liked it, and bought it for his anthology. I’m delighted to see it gathered here with the excellent work of my friends from Book View Café.

  By the way, I never dreamed at the time that one of my daughters would become a high school wrestler, and follow in my footsteps in a wholly unexpected way. Unlike my hero, she never went up against a shapeshifter.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  The crowd roared as the first pair of wrestlers engaged in competition out on the center mat. “Aww-riiiiii-choooo-guyyyys!” “HUGGA-HUGGGA-HUGGGA-HUGGGA!” “Wickety-(psicry!)-wickety-(psicry!)-wickety-(psicry!)” Hog Donovan peeked over in the direction of the match, but tried not to get drawn into watching it. Neither of the contestants in the ninety-three pound class was human, and better he should keep his mind on his own upcoming match.

  “Gaaiiee! Gaaiiee!” “Brackit-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it!” “Wheeeooop-ooop-ooop!” The assortment of cries from the stands was damned disconcerting, the crowd being over half extraterrestrials. It was the opening bout, finals round, in the 57,463rd Annual Games of the IntraGalactic Interworld Multicultural Amateur Wrestling League—and the first games ever to be hosted by Earth. Hog Donovan prayed that the human fans could drown out all the ETs when he got to the mat himself. He was as nervous as a laboratory rat on speed, and he was going to need all the psychological boost he could get.

  Hog paced the warm-up area in his tights and warm-up jacket, trying to still the butterflies in his stomach. It would be at least forty minutes yet before they called him to the mat, for the hundred thirty-eight pound finals. An eternity! Hog threw himself into his warm-up exercises and tried to blank out everything else.

  Bye-bye baby, baby bye-bye . . . The refrain of a popular song repeated mercilessly in his head, warring with the cheers of the crowd.

  Hog grunted, working up a good sweat. Hog indeed! He was long and whiplike, and bore his nickname only because his old heavyweight friend, Hermie “Harmin’” Harmon, had dubbed him “Hog” in retribution for his jokes about Harmon’s rhinolike neck. Those were the old days, but the name had stuck . . .

  The crowd roared, and Hog was startled to realize that the first match was over—the victor a mercurial-skinned creature from Tau Ceti. The next weight class was up, and—hey!—this was the only other human finalist, a wiry little Brit named Johnnie Johnson, up against some sort of centipede from the Vega asteroids.

  Hog ducked through to the sidelines to yell e
ncouragement. “Give ’im hell, Johnnie!” he hollered as the Earthman trotted onto the mat. His voice was drowned out by a loud buzzing. Up in the stands, a large contingent of centipede fans were rubbing their upper limbs together, en masse, cheering on their fellow Vegan.

  Hog suppressed a shudder as he watched Johnnie engage the centipede from a standing position. All those legs. And they were so . . . insectlike. And quick. With a chitter and a blur of speed, the centipede caught Johnnie’s left ankle with several of its legs, and tripped him for a two-point takedown. The crowd buzzed in appreciation.

  “Get up! Keep moving!” Hog yelled.

  Tap tap. Hog started at the rap on the top of his head, and turned to see Coach Tagget urging him away from the sidelines. “But coach—”

  “Hog, go warm up. Don’t fret over Johnnie, you’re just scaring yourself.” Tagget rapped him on the skull again. “Don’t forget—”

  “I know, I know, the brain is the most important muscle,” Hog repeated by rote, as he turned back to the warm-up area.

  “Think about your match. Think,” Coach Tagget urged, as Hog resumed his stretches. After a moment, satisfied with Hog’s progress, the coach left to go watch Johnnie himself.

  Think, right. Think about the fact that he was about to wrestle an alien named Belduki-Elikitango-Hardart-Colloidisan, an Ektra shapechanger capable of assuming about a thousand different multiworld multicultural body configurations. He was thinking about it, all right. And he was having trouble keeping his knees from shaking.

  Bye-bye baby, baby bye-bye . . .

  He remembered how smug the Earth promoters had been when the IIMAWL rules committee had offered to make Terran rules the norm for this tournament, in honor of the hosting world. Of course, none of the promoters had even thought about the fact that Earth’s wrestlers would be competing against sentient bugs, snakes, gorillas . . . and shapeshifters . . . except that they’d finally decreed a return to the more modest, and protective, tights in place of skimpy singlets. In other respects, the referees’ interpretation of Earth’s rules had turned out to be a tad subjective, to say the least.

  “Johnnie—NO!”

  The single shout from the Brit’s coach was drowned out by a rising buzz from the crowd. Hog jumped up, trying to see what was happening. The centipede buzz crescendoed. Hog ducked through an opening in the sidelines crowd to get a better view.

  Uh-oh. Johnnie was in big trouble. The centipede had him halfway onto his back, with about six legs pushing his shoulders toward the mat. Hog knelt on the sidelines, twisting and arching sympathetically as Johnnie struggled against the inexorable leverage of all those limbs. Johnnie’s coach, a wiry little man, was screaming, “Scoot out! Scoot out!” and making futile sweeping gestures with his arms.

  Hog cupped his hands and screamed, “PULL HIS ANTENNAS! PULL HIS ANTENNAS!”

  The match seemed to freeze abruptly, as the centipede cocked its head and glared across the mat at Hog with all four eyes. Its hairy antennas bristled. Hog gulped, regretting his impulsive yell. The thing looked as if it might just abandon the match and come on over and stomp him for his remark. It appeared to have completely forgotten its opponent.

  Johnnie seized the opportunity. For an instant, it looked as though he might actually grab the thing’s antennas—which would have been a definite foul—but instead, Johnnie managed to get an elbow inside the thing’s legs and knock out several locked joints, loosening the centipede’s grip. The crowd buzzed, and the centipede turned back to its opponent, but Johnnie was already wriggling quickly out of its arms.

  “That’s it! That’s it! That’s it!” screamed the coach, waving wildly.

  Johnnie was frantically trying to complete his escape. He had one leg out now and was up on the other knee. The human crowd was screaming.

  The centipede spasmed with rage and tackled Johnnie with a dozen legs. They fell together to the mat with a whump, knocking the breath out of Johnnie. Before Hog could even rise up on his toes to yell, Johnnie was on his back under the centipede, the ref was down on five elbows, peering to see if shoulder blades were touching the mat, and—slap! tweeeeeeeet!—just like that, Johnnie was pinned and the match was over.

  The centipede humped its back and drew away from its human opponent, chittering triumphantly. Johnnie sat up, gasping. The centipede crowd went crazy rubbing their limbs.

  Hog caught Coach Tagget’s eye and turned away, sighing, to return to the warm-up area. Johnnie had finished in second place. That meant the honor of Earth, wrestling-wise, rested on Hog. He swallowed, trying not to think about it. But how could he not think about it? He was the only human left in the finals. All eyes, and cameras, would be on him.

  As he was stretching his hamstrings, Johnnie walked past, shaking his head. “Tough luck,” Hog sympathized.

  The Englishman paused, peering at him with dazed eyes. “Are you the bloke who got that thing as mad as a raving hornet?”

  “I—well—” Hog spread his hands. “I was just cheering for you. You almost made it out, too. Sorry you didn’t—”

  “You know what those bastards smell like, when they’re on top of you and they’re mad?” Johnnie wheezed. “Cheeeeeeez-z-z,” he whispered hoarsely. “That was what damn near killed me.” Johnnie shook his head and wandered off toward the clutches of the TV interviewers. “It wasn’t the bloody pin . . . “

  Hog saw Johnnie’s coach staring darkly in his direction. He went back to his warm-ups. Stretch left, stretch right, down, up . . .

  “Heyyaaah, earthman krrreeepy-krrreeepy . . .”

  Hog turned, wrinkling his nose at a sudden whiff of ammonia. The centipede was standing beside him, balanced on half its legs, waving the claws on the rest of its legs in his direction. “Uh—?” Hog managed. “Can I, uh, help you?”

  The centipede’s antennas waved drunkenly. “Hoho yassss,” hissed the centipede. “Krrreeepy-krreeepy earthman sso sssmart! Come sssee me lataaah.” Poot. It made a loud spitting sound. “Yahh-heyyy?”

  Hog backed up a step. “I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

  The centipede chittered with laughter and sauntered away. “Lataaaah, earthman . . .”

  Hog stared after it in disbelief. He jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Then he heard the familiar sound of his coach tsk-tsking.

  “Poor sportsmanship, Hog. That’s all that is—poor sportsmanship. What do you expect from a centipede?” Tagget scowled at the Vegan, who was now parading in front of its fans, waving its arms in triumph. “Look, why don’t you go on back to the locker room and clear your mind. I’ll call you when it’s time to come back out.”

  Hog nodded with relief. Yes. Back to the locker room. Forget centipedes. Have a swallow of honey for quick energy.

  Bye-bye baby, baby bye-bye . . .

  He trotted back to the locker room, shaking the tension out of his arms.

  ∞

  All things considered, it was actually pretty amazing that Earth had ever gotten nominated to host the IIMAWL tournament. After all, by 2008 A.D., the farthest any human had ever gotten from Earth was the Moon. But the interworld sporting federation liked to give a boost to newly discovered worlds. And Earth was among the newest—not yet five years a part of the interworld community, since the Rigellians had landed and made first contact, and promptly proposed building factories here to employ the locals. In the eyes of the Terran promoters, the tournament was not so much a sporting event per se as a promotion of tourism and general economic opportunity aimed at ETs who might want to spend money here. And in that respect, it was already successful, at least to the tune of a new sports complex for Cleveland and a good crowd of paying ET visitors.

  The human wrestling world, on the other hand—the top wrestlers, the Olympic and AAU winners—had been pretty resistant to the idea, claiming that it was insane to pit oneself against aliens whose bodies were so different as to render competition meaningless. Mostly, the sports writers echoed that position, denouncing the games as
blatant sensationalism. Still, there were some good, if maybe not great, wrestlers who hadn’t seen the obvious—and had wound up entering the competitions that one wag, as Time was so fond of putting it, called the “crocodile free-for-alls.”

  That’s the kind of wrestler Hog Donovan was: not great—but sharp, determined, and something of an iconoclast. He figured he only had a few good years of wrestling left in him, and he was determined to make the best of them. And the way to do that was to enter a competition so new, so outré, that the mainstream wrestling world hadn’t caught on to it yet. And maybe, Hog figured, it would become recognized, and maybe it would even give him enough recognition so that once he’d hung up his tights and joined the working world, he wouldn’t have to work on a Rigellian assembly line building Lotusflower roadsters.

  Anyway, that was the reason he’d given his parents and his coach, though it was really only half the story. The other half was that he’d sacrificed and sweated blood at this sport for over seven years now, and by God, he wanted to be the best damned wrestler in the galaxy—okay, one of the best damned wrestlers in the galaxy—even if only for one brief, glorious moment.

  To his own surprise, he’d done well, working his way through four preliminary rounds, and winning the semifinals just yesterday, narrowly besting a titanium-boned opponent with twice his strength and half his agility and intelligence. He was proud of that victory and the semiconductor-medal it had assured him of, and the recognition it brought to his home planet.

  But right now, he had to focus on just one thing—and that was how the hell to wrestle against an Ektra shapeshifter.

  ∞

  He paced in front of his locker and shook the tension out again. Peering around the corner of the lockers he saw one of the black-skinned African wrestlers warming up and he gave a collegial thumbs-up of encouragement before returning to his own spot. Wait a minute! he thought suddenly. There aren’t any Africans in the finals.

  He heard a loud crack. Uneasily, he peered around the corner again. The black-skinned being, which was not human, was separating its joints as if they were held together by rubber bands. It was pulling its right forearm out from its elbow, and dislocating its shoulder and stretching it way behind its neck. The creature grinned a gleaming grin, and Hog withdrew to his own corner, shivering. A transformer, he realized. Just like the toys that a kid could flex and twist until they’d changed from, say, a spaceship to an atomic monster. What world was this creature from?