Strange Tales V

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Strange Tales V Page 1

by Mark Valentine




  STRANGE

  TALES

  Volume V

  edited by Rosalie Parker

  Stories by

  Charles Wilkinson, L.S. Johnson, Steve Rasnic Tem,

  Andrew Hook, Jacurutu:23, John Howard,

  Elise Forier Edie, Douglas Penick, Paul Bradley,

  David Rix, Mark Valentine, Yarrow Paisley,

  Tara Isabella Burton, Andrew Apter,

  Nathan Alling Long, Tom Johnstone

  and David McGroarty

  Tartarus Press

  First published by Tartarus Press, 2015

  at Coverley House, Carlton-in-Coverdale,

  Leyburn, North Yorkshire, DL8 4AY, UK

  Preface copyright © Rosalie Parker

  All of the tales in this collection are copyright © individual authors

  Dust jacket/frontispiece/boards copyright © Stephen Clark

  This edition copyright © Tartarus Press

  The publishers would like to thank Jim Rockhill

  for his help in the preparation of this volume

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  The Investigation of Innocence by Charles Wilkinson

  Julie by L.S. Johnson

  The Grave House by Steve Rasnic Tem

  A Life in Plastic by Andrew Hook

  Bardo Thodol Backup File by Jacurutu:23

  More Than India by John Howard

  You-Go-Back by Elise Forier Edie

  Stranger Must Go by Douglas Penick

  Beatrice Faraway’s Christmas Tale by Paul Bradley

  Henge by David Rix

  Yes, I Knew the Venusian Commodore by Mark Valentine

  Mary Alice in the Mirror by Yarrow Paisley

  The Taxidermist’s Tale by Tara Isabella Burton

  The Man Who Loved Flies by Andrew Apter

  Purses by Nathan Alling Long

  Look for the Place Where the Ivy Rises by Tom Johnstone

  McBirdy by David McGroarty

  Biographical Details

  PREFACE

  This fifth volume of Strange Tales includes seventeen new stories by eight British and nine North American authors, some well-known and others up-and-coming in the field. As in the previous volumes (Strange Tales I-IV) a wide range of literary speculative fiction is represented here, from the science fiction of Charles Wilkinson’s ‘The Investigation of Innocence’, to the historical fantasy-horror of Elise Forier Edie’s ‘You-Go-Back’, to the stream-of-consciousness, psychological weirdness of Andrew Apter’s ‘The Man Who Loved Flies’. Most of the tales, including those just mentioned, do not fit neatly into existing genres, and are best thought of as simply ‘strange’, as well as being superb short stories in their own right. Which is where this series began.

  In fact, we did not plan Strange Tales as a series. The first volume, published in 2004, was the successor to our earlier, stand-alone anthology of contemporary fiction, Tales from Tartarus (1995). We felt then that there was a place for a general anthology of new speculative fiction, although we recognised that a certain risk was involved—namely, that the wide range of stories included would not suit all tastes. Not every reader will enjoy every story, as the stories (and the readers) are so diverse. We were gratified when the first Strange Tales did us proud, winning the World Fantasy Award for best anthology that year.

  Twenty years on from Tales from Tartarus, the astonishing quantity and quality of submissions to Strange Tales (for which we have always operated an open submissions policy) suggests that, for writers, the demand is still there. So far, Tartarus readers and critics seem to agree. I have every hope that Strange Tales V will further the cause of ‘strange’ new writing and perhaps help introduce it to a wider audience.

  Rosalie Parker, Tartarus Press, January 2015

  THE INVESTIGATION

  OF INNOCENCE

  Charles Wilkinson

  ‘I’m surprised no one told you,’ said the man who was his aunt. ‘I hope you’re not shocked. I know this sort of thing is a great deal less common in the shires, but here in the city it’s considered perfectly normal. As it happens, my change was part of a government initiative.’ He stroked his wispy beard pensively.

  ‘No, honestly, I’m fine about it. It’s just that it was . . . ’

  ‘Not quite what you were expecting?’

  David Berrow looked at the man he’d known as Aunt Lynne. Was she now his uncle? If this was so then he’d have two uncles, assuming Kelvin Hutchins was still alive and male.

  They were on the top floor of the Institute and David had a good view of the air buses as they slid soundlessly across a slate-blue sky on their way to the business parks and conference centres on the outskirts of the town. Uncle Lyn, as David supposed he must now learn to call him, was sitting behind a marble desk that had nothing on it, not even a tattler. He was wearing a light brown jacket made of soft leather and an open-necked pink shirt. His face still had a pale, porcelain fragility in spite of the beard and velveteen upper lip. The shuttle-shaped badge on his lapel indicated he’d made one moon landing.

  ‘I certainly hadn’t anticipated it,’ he said.

  ‘Hmm. It’s so like my brother not to pass on something like that. He always liked to pretend that anything even faintly out of the ordinary was an anathema to him. Such hypocrisy. In fact, my little . . . modification . . . was officially sanctioned—I suppose one could almost say sponsored, since I received a small grant towards my expenses.’

  David thought of his father, old Mr Berrow, deep in the orchards of Herefordshire with his face well hidden behind his beekeeper’s mask. It was true he said little and listened not at all, no doubt through fear of being stung by the world.

  ‘I’ve heard of the masculisation grants.’

  ‘At least some news reaches you,’ said Lyn Hutchins. A magenta shoulder bag, slung over the arm of an office chair, provided a touch of residual femininity. ‘The Council had to do something. Males with purity levels high enough for them to work in the higher echelons of business and the civil service were becoming a rarity.’

  David wanted to ask about Uncle Kelvin. Presumably Lyn and he were still married, though the change in his wife’s biological status was grounds for divorce. But the fact that Lyn had not reverted to his maiden name was surely significant.

  ‘And I suppose once you made the change, and you’re someone who is already trusted your prospects are . . .’

  ‘Indeed!’ said Uncle Lyn. ‘Very much improved.’

  There had been no diminution of the male population. David remembered the huge estates he’d seen from the train on his way to the city. Mile upon mile of barrack-like residential blocks and small factory buildings where the Unacceptables lived, labouring at the repetitive tasks that required no access to deep structure. They were nearly all male, the gender most prone to the type of activity that warranted sequestration.

  ‘If I’m awarded an internship, will I be working here in this office with you?’

  An insistent buzzing from the shoulder bag. Uncle Lyn took out his tattler, flipped it open and frowned for a moment before prodding it with his forefinger. ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to give you as much time as I’d hoped. But yes, I think it’s probable you’ll be here with me. Once you’ve passed the Institute’s examinations. Of course, I had to declare an interest. We have strict rules about nepotism, but your qualifications were such that . . . well, it would be very foolish not to interview you at the very least.’

  ‘And when will I hear?’

&nb
sp; ‘Oh soon, very soon. . . . Tell me, is your father well? It’s sad that in such busy times it hasn’t been possible to keep in touch as one would have wished.’

  David thought of his father and their long silent days spent by the hives in the orchard. Only recently, he had discovered why his family lived in Herefordshire, a place with no access to the grid. Even in the nearest large town a tattler couldn’t get a signal. It was an elderly cousin on a visit from the North who had confided that Mr Berrow had once been accused of unacceptable conduct. A good lawyer managed to have the charge reduced to one of inappropriate behaviour. After plea-bargaining, the sentence was exile to the Welsh Marches.

  His father seldom spoke to David, although sometimes in the mornings if they were alone at breakfast, he would murmur: ‘Last night I dreamt of honey again, boy. But it’s all gone now. Nothing that sticks to the hand. Not even one picture of sweetness to set against the night.’

  ***

  Every night in the rubble of yearning. Picking over cold stone and rocks—memories of passion. Not even one tiny pebble still hot from the core. You knew you’d felt it, lived for it. What was left? Nothing except being adrift in the realm of the commonplace, which might have been bearable, but the longing for connectivity was still there, a terrible ache. The heavy finality of knowing you could never return: this was what you refused to acknowledge.

  Kelvin Hutchins wondered whether he’d feel better or worse if he managed to get out of bed. He could remember only one of his dreams. As he’d struggled towards consciousness, he seemed to be rummaging through a showcase of stones. Somehow he knew he had committed crime after crime all night.

  What had been Lyn’s bed was neatly made up. It had been a long time since they had slept together, surfed together; now they shared neither sheets nor console. They didn’t even spend the night in the same room.

  Gingerly he levered himself upright and put one foot on the carpet. Already the hypnagogic rock dream was fading. He tried to remember exactly what Lyn had told him the previous night. Of course, he could still recall the main points, but some of the detail, which he’d found difficult to grasp at the time, had disappeared.

  Since the caution, he stayed away from the Institute. He was lucky that the incident which led to his appearance before the magistrates coincided with the change in his marital status. He had been given time off, first to help Lyn in the weeks of convalescence and then to adjust to his new circumstances.

  He stretched and made his way to the top of the stairs. There was a meaty aftertaste in his mouth, a memory of something mouth-wateringly juicy yet disgusting at the same time, as if he had taken part in a cannibal feast during the night and the sensations of salt and crisp flesh were still on his tongue. He knew he should go to the bathroom and shave, but the desire to find something innocuously savoury in the fridge was stronger.

  Just as he was about to take the last step down to the hall, he heard the key in the front door, and before he had time to consider making a dash back up the stairs, his ex-wife entered.

  ‘I think,’ said Lyn, looking down her nose, ‘I should be warned before you put in these Edenic appearances in the middle of the day.’

  ‘But I’ve only just got up. You know I always sleep naked.’

  ‘Yes, but it is, as I have just pointed out, noon. One would have thought you could have at least managed to locate a pair of underpants.’

  There had been alterations to his ex-wife’s diction and syntax since she had become a man: each word was enunciated precisely and she had developed a preference for impersonal pronouns, once the prerogative of royalty. Perhaps she thought gravitas would compensate for the failure of her voice to fall an octave.

  Kelvin moved towards the pegs and slipped a raincoat over his nakedness. ‘Well, how was he?’

  ‘He hasn’t changed since we last saw him. Even though he’s twenty-three he’s still every inch an Adam before the Fall.’

  ‘Yet to bite the apple?’

  ‘Orchards in Herefordshire provide little temptation.’

  ‘Will he be offered the job?’

  ‘He stands a good chance. His academic credentials are strong. He is clearly very proficient in his unimaginative way.’

  ‘And you’re sure about his results?’

  ‘Absolutely. For a start, for someone of his age he’s hardly searched. You have to remember Herefordshire is completely off the grid and so it was only when he went to university that he had any access. Someone on the committee told me there isn’t a single request or site visit they’ll need to ask him about.’

  ‘Remarkable, especially for a man.’

  ‘And of course that means his accreditation level will start at open all.’

  ‘Unfiltered access. Here in our home?’

  ‘It is possible, yes. Unfortunately I had to go to a meeting and so I was only able to raise the matter on the way out. But I told him there was a spare room waiting for him at his uncles’ house. Rent free. I made it clear we understood how very difficult it is for young people to find affordable accommodation in the city.’

  Lyn had gone into the kitchen and was making him freshly squeezed orange juice and filter coffee. In spite of all that had happened, he was still Kelvin’s wife, providing him with small comforts, chivvying him to change his socks.

  ‘But you’ve . . .’

  ‘Oh yes, he’s bought a reconditioned console and I told him we know how to set it up, but he’d have to apply for access privileges himself.’

  Even with Lyn, Kelvin was careful not to appear too excited. He turned away from her, lest she should see him seized by the urgency of his longings. There were places of dark honey, right in the sweetest combs of the grid: he’d seen them for seconds before his request for a full visit was refused. He must enter them before he died.

  He moved over to the window. The block in which they lived ran along a ridge in the northern part of the city. Beneath them lay thousands of small white houses with flat roofs, none more than two storeys high. There were no tall trees to impede the safety monitors’ statutorily approved duties as reapers of visual information. The mid-day sun gleamed on the point of the tattler masts and at each street corner data assessment units winked as they stored and processed conversations. In the days before he gained his privileges, Kelvin had lived in such a place for a year. Of course, you could tattle away to friends with impunity as long as you were careful not to say anything of interest, but there was no access to the grid. If he received one more caution, he’d be back down there, or somewhere similar, with no hope of ever gaining even low-level access again. What Lyn was proposing was far more dangerous; should anything go even slightly awry they would end up as Unacceptables with no prospect of release.

  ‘You’re quiet?’

  ‘Every detail? You’ve triple checked every detail and you’re sure nothing can go wrong?’

  ‘Remember you have the easier part in all of this. I have to go to Herefordshire.’

  ‘Is it entirely necessary, what you say you’re going to do? After all you must have some qualms. He’s your brother.’

  ‘Entirely necessary? One has to query your phrasing here,’ Lyn said, handing him a croissant. ‘Either it’s necessary or it’s not. There can be no degrees of necessity in this matter. No doubt for a time we could find ways of getting round the problem, but in the end . . .’

  Yet it was hard to accept there was no alternative. Theirs was a marriage based on the bond of black intentions. They’d both worked hard to reach ranks of responsibility at the Institute and shared every scrap of know-how and every password and code they had acquired along the way. And then, just when they were on the verge of being offered positions as Senior Researchers, with open access to every corner of the grid, they’d both made mistakes. Lyn’s was quite small, but it was enough for him to be transferred to administrative duties; Kelvin’s was more serious and he’d been lucky to receive nothing more than a caution. If he went back to the Institute, he’d be doing s
omething menial: proofreading publicity material about the organisation’s role as a protector of public morality or liaising with the pension authorities. No, he would never be able to creep up to a position where he enjoyed anything like the trust he’d once had as an Ancillary Research Assistant. He had a single opportunity, the one Lyn had made for him. It was either this or every night the dream riddled with rocks.

  ***

  They would have to be patient. David had settled into his room, a spacious one overlooking the white houses, the dwarf conifers that lined the streets and the forest of murmuring masts transmitting a million insignificant conversations. Whenever Lyn put his ear to the door, he could hear the steady hum of the console. His nephew had to be given time to tattle: to say how happy he was to have a job in the city and good accommodation provided rent-free by kind relatives. If David felt any misgivings about moving in, Lyn was sure these had been assuaged by Uncle Kelvin, amiable and shuffling bear-like around the house, forever on hand to help fix minor technical problems.

  It was the weekend. Kelvin and David were in town drinking coffee in the piazza and visiting the open-air technology market, where start-ups sought funding for projects, some sensible, many impractical, a few insane or visionary, teeming in the minds of graduate students, peripatetic inventors, freelance software programmers, superannuated cyberneticists and all manner of cranks. The flat was so quiet Lyn could hear the faint hum of the hot water system as well as the high note of his tinnitus, normally inaudible during the day. He went into David’s room. Varnished white light gleamed through a dormer window. There was a scent of carpentry and cider, as if a tree had been felled and carried indoors, the crushed apples still hanging from its boughs. Motes like sawdust hovered in a trance of air. Lyn thought of the orchards of Herefordshire and the last and only time Kelvin had visited her brother. It had been her last summer as a woman and Kelvin, many pounds slimmer and wearing a white linen suit, had still been a well man. Lynne and her brother had hardly spoken for twenty years, but now there was a nephew to parade, a young man of great promise: some consolation for the ignominy Mark Berrow had suffered when he was dismissed from the Institute he had helped to found. A beautiful day under a clean-cut, cloudless blue sky. No roar of air buses half a mile above and only one vapour trail expanding delicately, as if in water, and so high it might almost have been feathery cirrus. Smells of earth, woods and apple-blossom measuring the distance from the city.

 

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