“You were so good to Zak and Gamir,” said Elan. “Thanks.”
“What I have with them,” she said, “has nothing to do with us.” Nelow swung a leg over the seat of her bike. “When I boarded the scoop yesterday, husband, I was going to pounce. No tourist was going to stop me.” She grinned. “I probably could still get you back, if I wanted.”
Mariska wondered if that were true. She knew that she didn’t want it to be.
“Nelow, you know how sorry…” said Elan.
“No, it’s good.” She waved him off. “Because I want a Martian, not you. Maybe you’re from Mars, but you’re already a spacer. Like young Volochkova here.”
Mariska thought Elan would protest, but he remained silent.
She picked up her helmet and aimed it at Mariska. “You passed the family test, tourist. Baby and politics and goats and the ex-wife. Now he belongs to you.” She settled it onto her head, started her engine, and roared off.
Mariska realized that Nelow just might be right. She just didn’t know what it meant.
It wasn’t until late afternoon that they started down the path to the dead town. Mariska was in her EV suit; Gamir made Elan wear his breather, even though he said they were only going for a quick tour before dark. The path wound down the edge of the crater on switchbacks. On the way, Elan pointed out how the standards had blasted a huge chunk of the crater wall away to grade an access highway.
“They were never Martians,” he said, picking his way past a ragged sheet of the fallen dome. They were among the buildings now. The town of Tarragona was built on a grid, with streets of poly-stabilized sand and low buildings of brick and stone. “What they built made no sense. Domes that collapsed. Roads choked with dust. Houses with optical glass.”
“Optical glass?”
“Sand on Mars is mixed with iron oxide.”
Mariska nodded. “Red Mars.”
“Martians can live with tinted windows. But the standards couldn’t.” They stopped in front of a furniture store. Schubul’s More Than Décor. He tapped on a long, narrow window that made the building look like it was squinting. “They wasted energy extracting iron from glass for a clear view. Of what?” He wiped dust off the window and gestured for Mariska to look in. She couldn’t see much in the twilight: overturned chairs gathered around low tables, dark lamps fallen on gray rugs.
“Who windowshops on Mars? It’s crazy. Streets like this don’t work. This town belongs in some valley on Earth, not in a crater.”
Mariska was startled by the anger in his voice. She turned and faced him. “You came here a lot when you were a boy.”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“Sometimes.”
“It bothered you,” she said. “It still does.”
He looked away. “This part of town isn’t as bad as where people actually lived. The ruins there are scary. It’s as if the houses are screaming.”
She imagined young Elan wandering the streets of the dead town, raging against the folly of the tourists. He had been careful not to use that word again after the first time.
“You’re angry at them,” she said.
He didn’t reply; he just looked miserable.
=Elan?= She felt his head open just a crack. =They were people, the tourists. They made mistakes, but everybody does. Like me. I’m a tourist. You said it yourself.=
“You shocked my parents last night.” He stared down the empty street. “They could tell when you offered me that feed.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
=Martians don’t share like that. Like tourists.= His feed was wispy as a dream. Then he spoke, his voice cracking. “Unless it means something.”
She paused then, not sure of what she was feeling, only that its hold on her was as real as gravity. =It means something to me.=
“But we can’t be together.”
What was she supposed to say? Don’t go? Or I’ll come with you? Neither felt like the right decision, but the uncertainty was becoming unbearable. “I don’t know what to say, Elan.”
“Neither do I.” He took her hand. “Come. I’ll show you my favorite store. Then we’ll head back. It’ll be dark soon.”
Toto’s Toy Box was just a sliver of a shop wedged between First Motobike and Marswalks. Its door was still intact and when Elan ushered her in, the lights came on.
“Microwave power, transmitted from home,” he said. “I set up a rectenna on the roof when I was six.”
Mariska barely heard; she was too busy examining the toys arranged on the shelves. There were the usual action bots, Lord Danger and Kid Crater and Crashman. He had one of those Sinbads who could narrate 1001 adventures and act out most of them. When Elan flipped the switch on an arena, tiny dinosaurs and elephants began to do battle. There was a Norm Tsai Versus Roberto Gone All-Time All-Star Soccer set up on a counter at the back of the store. She saw artificial skins, pogos, model motobikes, and three different calculons.
“This is every kid’s fantasy,” she said. “Your own private toy store.”
“You should have seen what I had to throw away.” He picked up a puffgun and sent a bubble of chocolate scent her way. “Some of it I found around town and brought back here.”
Mariska couldn’t help but notice the collection of famous starships, real and imaginary. The Nottingham, Zheng He, Scorpene, Veer and a couple that she didn’t recognize. When she picked up a model of the Gorshkov, a holo of Pilar Martinez began to recite her famous “A new world for a new people” message, describing the discovery of the planet Bounty.
“I guess this is what hero worship looks like.”
He shrugged, and she set it back in place.
“I spent a lot of time in here,” said Elan, “wishing I was somewhere else.”
On an impulse, she crossed the room to him and picked up both of his hands in hers. She waited until he met her gaze before offering the feed. =Have you ever opened your head wide?= He tried to pull free of her but she tightened her grip.
=Once.=
=With who? Your parents?=
=My dad. I used to have nightmares. It’s not a very Martian thing to do.=
=I am going open myself to you, Elan.= She had done this just once as a kid. With Jak, her old boyfriend. =All the way.= She had a new boyfriend now. =You can too.=
“Mariska, no. I can’t.”
“Sssh.” She went up on her tiptoes and leaned her forehead against his.
When she had tried full mind convergence with Jak, she had been able to keep herself separate from him. =But now Elan’s mind was hers and she relived his life in splashes of memory: the sticky throttle of his first motobike, his mother’s cool palm against his fevered cheek, the hiss of milk in the pan when he milked his goat. At the same time she felt him scratching at her memories, little kids’ voices bouncing off the ceiling at the Muoi swimming pool on the Moon and the squishy hot strawberries melting in Daddy Al’s pancakes. He found Jak kissing her, puzzled over the way their lips didn’t seem to fit together. He poked at hibernation but there was nothing for him there because hibernation was like being dead and then they were stumbling together through the destroyed homes in Terragona and they read the note begging Santa to save my daddy and all the d’s were backward and Didit was telling her sister Glint to shut up and that they weren’t going to die and they found the little boy curled up in the closet, a desiccated mummy, and they came out of hibernation just long enough to see Richard FiveFord floating in the airlock with all the empty oxygen bottles and Zak gave them the urn with the little boy’s ashes to scatter and Richard wasn’t moving, just floating, dead like the little boy, like Terragona, like Glint and Didit and Beep.=
And then they became themselves again. They sat in silence because it was hard work separating into two people. Mariska and Elan. They were holding each other slumped against the wall of Toto’s Toy Box. Mariska thought she ought to be embarrassed for having shared nightmares with Elan. But she wasn’t. She had never felt this close
to anyone before.
“We have to get out of this place,” she said.
“I know,” said Elan, although he seemed reluctant to let go of her. “It’s late. They’ll be worried.”
“No, not here.” She gestured at the toy store. “We have to get out of where we’re stuck.”
“All right,” he said, but Mariska could tell that he didn’t understand.
It was well part twilight and the stars were out. Mariska lit the headlamp on her EV helmet, then noticed that Elan was gazing at the sky.
“They’re so beautiful,” he said. “But they’re so far away.”
Mariska didn’t bother to look. She knew the stars. She had grown up on the Moon, after all. When you were out on the surface of the Moon, there was no atmosphere to make them twinkle. Their light could be beautiful, yes, but it could also be cruel. Nobody went to the stars unless they had a reason. A really good reason, like maybe being in love.
What was it his mother had said? Sometimes you have to talk a man into doing what he wants. And Mariska’s mother? Of course, Natalya would think that she had won.
But Mariska had made her decision. She took Elan’s hand and steered him away from Mars.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Peter M. Ball’s first story was published in Dreaming Again in 2007, and since then his short fiction has appeared in Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Interfictions II, Shimmer, and Year’s Best SF 15. His faerie-noir novella, Horn, was published in 2009 by Twelfth Planet Press, and was followed by Bleed in 2010. He lives in Brisbane, Australia, and can be found online at www.petermball.com.
Damien Broderick is an award-winning Australian SF writer, editor, and critical theorist, a senior fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, currently living in San Antonio, Texas, with a PhD from Deakin University. He has published more than forty books, including Reading by Starlight, Transrealist Fiction, x, y, z, t: Dimensions of Science Fiction, Unleashing the Strange, and Chained to the Alien: The Best of Australian Science Fiction Review. The Spike was the first full-length treatment of the technological singularity, and Outside the Gates of Science is a study of parapsychology. His 1980 novel The Dreaming Dragons (revised in 2009 as The Dreaming) is listed in David Pringle’s Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels. His latest SF novel is the diptych Godplayers and K-Machines, written with the aid of a two-year Fellowship from the Literature Board of the Australia Council, and his recent SF collections are Uncle Bones and The Qualia Engine.
Emma Bull published her first short story, “The Rending Dark,” in 1984 in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress. She came to prominence with her next major publication, pioneering urban fantasy novel War for the Oaks, which appeared in 1987. It was followed by five more novels, including Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award nominee Bone Dance, Finder, Freedom & Necessity (with Steven Brust), and most recently Territory. Her short fiction has been collected in Double Feature, a collaborative collection with her husband Will Shetterly. Bull also co-edited the “Liavek” series of fantasy anthologies with Will Shetterly, and currently is executive producer and one of the writers for Shadow Unit (www.shadowunit.org).
Andy Duncan was born in South Carolina. He studied journalism at the University of South Carolina and worked as a journalist for the News & Record in Greensboro, N.C., before studying creative writing at North Carolina State University and the University of Alabama, and serving as the senior editor of Overdrive, a magazine for truck drivers. Duncan’s short fiction, which has won the World Fantasy and Theodore Sturgeon awards, is collected in World Fantasy Award winner Beluthahatchie and Other Stories. Upcoming is a new short story collection, The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories. He currently lives with his wife, Sydney, in Frostburg, Maryland, where both teach in the English department of Frostburg State University.
Jeffrey Ford was born in West Islip, New York. He worked as a machinist and as a clammer before studying English with John Gardner at the State University of New York. He is the author of seven novels, including The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, and The Shadow Year. His short fiction collections are The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant and Other Stories, The Empire of Ice Cream, and The Drowned Life. His fiction has won the World Fantasy Award, Nebula, Edgar Allan Poe Award, Fountain Award, Gran Prix de l’Imaginaire, and the Shirley Jackson Award. Ford lives in southern New Jersey where he teaches writing and literature at Brookdale Community College.
Eileen Gunn was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and grew up outside Boston. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in History from Emmanuel College.In 1976,she attended the Clarion Writers’ Workshop in Michigan, then supported herself by writing advertising and books about computers. She was an early employee at Microsoft, where she was director of advertising and sales promotion in the mid-1980s. She left in 1985 to continue writing fiction. She lives in Seattle with the typographer and editor John D. Berry. Gunn’s first short story, “What Are Friends For?” was published in 1978; subsequent stories include Nebula Award winner “Coming to Terms” and Hugo Award nominees “Stable Strategies for Middle Management” and “Computer Friendly.” Her short fiction collection Stable Strategies and Others was published by Tachyon Publications in 2004, and was short-listed for the Philip K. Dick, James Tiptree, Jr., and World Fantasy awards. She is currently working on a biography of Avram Davidson.
Nalo Hopkinson is a Jamaican-born writer who lives in Canada. Her novels include Brown Girl in the Ring, Midnight Robber, The Salt Roads, and The New Moon’s Arms. She is a recipient of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the World Fantasy Award, and a two-time winner of Canada’s Sunburst Award for the Literature of the Fantastic. She doesn’t know whether she believes in ghosts or not, but she fervently hopes that if they do exist, they’re not trapped in the Mega-Mall Between Life and Death.
Kij Johnson sold her first short story in 1987, and has subsequently appeared regularly in Analog, Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Realms of Fantasy. She has won the Theodore A. Sturgeon Memorial Award and the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts’ Crawford Award. Her short story “The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change” was nominated for the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Sturgeon awards. Her story “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss” was nominated for the Nebula, Sturgeon, and Hugo awards, and won the World Fantasy Award, while science fiction short story “Spar” won the 2009 Nebula Award.
Her novels include World Fantasy Award nominee The Fox Woman and Fudoki. She is currently researching a third novel set in Heian Japan.
Gwyneth Jones was born in Manchester, England, and is the author of more than twenty novels for teenagers, mostly under the name Ann Halam, and several highly regarded SF novels for adults. She has won two World Fantasy Awards, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, the Dracula Society’s Children of the Night Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and shared the first Tiptree Award, in 1992, with Eleanor Arnason. Her most recent books are novel Spirit and essay collection Imagination/Space. Upcoming is new story collection The Universe of Things. She lives in Brighton, England, with her husband and son, a Tonkinese cat called Ginger, and her young friend Milo.
James Patrick Kelly has had an eclectic writing career. He has written novels, short stories, essays, reviews, poetry, plays, and planetarium shows. His most recent book is a collection of stories entitled The Wreck of the Godspeed and Other Stories. His short novel Burn won the Science Fiction Writers of America’s Nebula Award in 2007. He has won the World Science Fiction Society’s Hugo Award twice: in 1996, for his novelette “Think Like A Dinosaur,” and in 2000, for his novelette “Ten to the Sixteenth to One.” His fiction has been translated into eighteen languages. With John Kessel he is co-editor of The Secret History of Science Fiction, Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, and Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology. He writes a column on
the internet for Asimov’s Science Fiction and is on the faculty of the Stonecoast Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine and on the Board of Directors of the Clarion Foundation. He produces two podcasts: James Patrick Kelly’s StoryPod on Audible and the Free Reads Podcast.
Caitlín R. Kiernan was born in Dublin, Ireland, but grew up in rural Alabama. She studied vertebrate paleontology, geology, and biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of Colorado at Boulder. She then taught evolutionary biology in Birmingham for about a year. Her first short story, “Persephone,” appeared in 1995. Since then, her fiction has been collected in ten volumes, including Tales of Pain and Wonder; To Charles Fort, With Love; A is for Alien; and, most recently in The Ammonite Violin and Others. Her stories include International Horror Guild Award winners “Onion” and “La Peau Verte,” SF novella The Dry Salvages, and IHG finalists “The Road of Pins” and “Bainbridge”. Kiernan’s first novel, IHG Award winner and Stoker finalist Silk, was followed by Threshold, The Five of Cups, Low Red Moon, Murder of Angels, Daughter of Hounds, and World Fantasy Award nominee The Red Tree. Upcoming is major new collection, Two Worlds and in Between: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan. Kiernan now lives in Providence, Rhode Island where she is working on a new novel.
Michael Swanwick’s first two short stories were published in 1980, and both featured on the Nebula ballot that year. One of the major writers working in the field today, he has been nominated for at least one of the field’s major awards in almost every successive year, and has won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Theodore Sturgeon Memorial, and Locus awards. He has published six collections of short fiction, seven novels—In the Drift, Vacuum Flowers, Stations of the Tide, The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, Jack Faust, Bones of the Earth, and The Dragons of Babel—and a Hugo Award nominated book-length interview with editor Gardner Dozois. His most recent book is major career retrospective collection, The Best of Michael Swanwick. Upcoming is a new “Darger and Surplus” novel, Dancing with Bears.
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