FSF, September-October 2010

by Spilogale, Inc

  To date, their proudest achievement has been two globbish critters that look like a cross between an inchworm and an overly ambitious silicone dildo. Fred and Ginger, as they call the male and female, are supposed to ensure Clive and Elsa's fame, as well as the bottom line of their corporate overseers. But nature, even of the cooked-up variety, is unpredictable. And when the big press conference reveal goes awry, the fate of Elsa and Clive's science is in question.

  Still, rather than step back and rethink, Elsa forges ahead with a daring and wildly unethical experiment that adds female human DNA into the genetic goulash. The resulting rapidly growing and unpredictable entity is a strange and striking amalgamation of bird, amphibian, and who knows what else, along with an endearingly wide-eyed Homo sapiens girl. Dren (nerd, backwards)—played as child by Abigail Chu and as an adolescent by Delphine Chanéac—is increasingly dangerous, yet utterly adorable. But along with a quick mind and mercurial will, Elsa's strange test-tube offspring quickly develops some rather disconcerting physical attributes which include a poisonous stinger and angelic (or are they demonic?) wings that sprout at will.

  Although the plot eventually devolves into rather unimaginative and derivative horror (that is nonetheless not gory or gruesome enough to satisfy true splatter fans), Splice is filled with enough ideas and imagination to qualify as a must-see. The special effects never take over, as befits the film's modest production budget. And even Dren's performance seems, thankfully, more Chanéac than CGI. Brody and Polley both bring a seriousness of purpose to their portrayal of the ambitious geneticists, too. Their authenticity lends an air of substance to what might have been just another risible creature feature in the hands of lesser actors and under the direction of a filmmaker with less skill and style than Mr. Natali.

  I appreciated that all of the film's humor seemed intentional—down to the puns, allusions, and references to earlier horror and sf classics. (And who else but these two would still be driving an AMC Gremlin?) But I do wish that Natali and his co-scripters Antoinette Terry Bryant and Doug Taylor had managed to do even more with the themes they introduce related to the challenges of modern parenting.

  After all, bad parenting creates even more monsters than bad science—and doesn't even require an advanced degree.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Short Story: ABOUT IT by Terry Bisson

  Terry Bisson is host of the SF in SF author reading series in San Francisco. His most recent book is The Left Left Behind.

  It was supposed to be a Sasquatch, a Bigfoot, whatever you call it. The Lab makes these things for museums and special zoos. It's not a phony deal, even though it's made up. It's as accurate as they can make it. Some of the DNA is still around, some of it in us they say. Lots is just guess work too, I guess.

  They were going to put it down so I took it home. The Lab guys knew about it. I was helping them out. They could save the autopsy ritual as they call it, plus the paperwork, and say it fell into the vat or something.

  There was just something I liked about it, so I took it home.

  It was illegal technically, but who notices these days. And we're pretty friendly, the Lab guys and my crew. They handle the scientific stuff, the racks and the vats, and we take care of the floors and cages, even the walls. The rest of my crew comes and goes but they all know me.

  We clean up their mess so in a way I was just doing my job. It wasn't going to last anyway. There was something I liked about it, and even a small house gets lonesome, esp. around the holidays. So I took it home.

  Nothing is all that easy. Once I found it in a tree. I say found it, but I got a call before I even knew it was lost. We're talking about way up there, looking down. Luckily I knew one of the cops, Ernesto.

  My cousin, I said. Crazy cousin, you know how it is. Ernesto gets all badgey on me. Your cousin covered with hair? Come on.

  Ernesto, I said, don't you have a favorite tia? A loving tia who was nice to you even when your mama was muy escondida in accion? (I happen to know he did.) Don't embarrass my tia by asking the wrong questions about her wayward son. Please just help me get him in the car, por favor, no questions asked. Of course it saved Ernesto paperwork too. Everybody likes to save paperwork.

  Ernesto helped me get it in the car. After that it stayed home, around the yard, even inside sometimes. It liked TV. Plus it had a personality. A nice one, too. It was shy but down-to-earth, no funny business at all. A gentle herbivore, like a gorilla but more upright in standing.

  We do gorillas at the Lab a lot. Of course there's less guesswork with them. We have the actual DNA of the last ones.

  But it was no gorilla. Its eyes were pale and watery, like ice cubes that are melting. It had thick hair like a chestnut horse, only longer. Tangled except on its back, where it was smooth. Its feet were no bigger than mine. We measured them, side by side. So much for Bigfoot.

  Its teeth were wide like bad false teeth, and greenish. I never caught it eating grass, but I think it did. Mostly it liked nuts, and sometimes breadsticks, which I got from my actual cousin who owns a restaurant and pretends to be Italian. I spent a fortune on party mix. Candy drew a blank. For fun it ate grapes by the handful. This was in the days of the Huelga, too, which should have made it more of a problem for me, but what could I do? It wasn't long for this world and the union is forever as they say.

  And corn on the cob—it was a regular pig for corn on the cob, it was like it had never seen it before. Which I guess it hadn't. Then it was out of season and it was breadsticks again.

  It just hung around. It would sit on the front step and kids would come around. They like unusual things. I didn't worry about the neighbors. We mind our own business around here. There are reasons for that. And just because we are all immigrants doesn't mean we are from the same town.

  I say kids, it was mostly boys. They taught it to play marbles and some video games. It was better at marbles, with those wide thumbs, then it would give them all back. (No pockets!) The kids liked that. It was tall. You couldn't tell how tall because it was always stooped over. The kids liked that. They don't care how tall you are as long as you stoop.

  This one kid taught it to shake hands. It wouldn't shake with the others though. It would just yank its hand away looking shocked if they tried. Wouldn't do it with me either. Just the one kid.

  They tried to teach it to talk but it wasn't interested. Not mute but just quiet. Unusual for a hominid I am told. Doc Ayers says we are all howlers.

  It didn't have many expressions. Looking shocked was one of them. Alarmed is more the word. Looking uninterested was another. Not bored, just not interested.

  Sometimes it mumbled. Talking to itself. It was part of its thinking process, I believe, but there didn't seem to be a language involved. Maybe there was, but it didn't sound like words to me.

  The kids called it Mumbles. I never did. It wasn't an animal, like a cat. It was worthy of more respect than that. A good companion. It was happy just to hang around. We watched a lot of TV.

  It didn't like to get out of sight of the house, but there's a lot next door where the kids play baseball sometimes, and they made it an umpire. Honest to God. I don't know how they taught it how to do that, but they did. I didn't see the process. All it knew was strikes and balls. It didn't count, just called balls and strikes, holding up one hand or the other.

  It could be that it had better vision than us. As far as the kids were concerned it was unfallible. Of course, boys are going to say that. It's a part of baseball.

  Mostly though it sat on the steps till I came home.

  Mostly the boys came and went, but this one kid, the handshake kid, liked to just sit with it. I'm not wild about kids but I wasn't about to run him off. I knew his father who was bad news.

  It wouldn't let the kids touch it, except for the one kid, but it would let me brush its hair sometimes while we watched TV. It was very long and silky, and if you didn't brush it it would get burrs, which was odd since it never went out of the yard a
nd I keep it mowed. It was like the burrs found it instead of vice versa.

  It didn't like being in the house, except when the TV was on. It would sit on the middle of the couch, taking up the whole thing. I didn't mind. I have my special chair. It didn't care what was on. I mostly watch sports or crime shows.

  I never talked to it much. It didn't like to be talked to, and I'm not much of a talker myself. It was easy to get along with. A good companion.

  One time they asked about it, at the Lab. Doc Ayers, he said he needed it back. I know I must have looked shocked because he whispered, Not now, Emilio! After, you know. We just need the D and RNA for a template, just in case. The other one didn't work out either.

  I said no problem. We're pretty friendly.

  It stayed out back at night, in the shed I had put together for it. More of a lean-to, really. I put together a kind of cat box too, and enclosed it for the neighbors. It caught on right away.

  We watched a lot of TV together. I think it saw it just as patterns, like looking into a fire.

  Speaking of fire, that was the only time I ever saw it cry, and I didn't actually see that. I saw the results is all.

  This black guy down the street was burning some old fence or something. Country people like to burn things. The boys came around to poke it with sticks and this one kid, the handshake kid, brought it along. Dragged it by the hand I imagine. But instead of just sitting like it did on the porch, it started to cry.

  Just sat there staring at the fire and cried and cried. The kids freaked out and left, all but one. It wouldn't stop crying. Police brought it home. Good old Ernesto. Your cousin, he says.

  I never saw any actual tears. It stayed in the lean-to a few days and when it came out it was smaller. Not a lot but enough to tell. It was starting to die. I'd seen enough of that at the Lab so I knew what to expect.

  The kids didn't, though. They saw it on the porch no bigger than them anymore and most of them stayed away. This one kid, the handshake kid, came like before and sat. I wasn't about to chase him away.

  You could see it getting smaller. All this took over a week, hard on the one kid. He must have thought it was his fault.

  This had to happen, I told him. I probably should have told him earlier. It was hard on him, watching it get smaller, day by day. The only consolation was that as it got smaller it let the kid brush its hair like I used to. I didn't want it in the house anymore. I let him use my brush.

  After a while even the brush was too big. Once it starts it doesn't take very long. It got small as a squirrel, then lost its shape all together. I tried to shoo the kid away at that point but he just sat there, stroking its back with his fingers, staring off into space. He didn't like looking at it anymore.

  Then there was only the puddle with the DNA things, the R and D units in it like a pair of dice. And the one kid sitting there beside them, staring off into space, like before.

  I brought both units back to the lab but Doc Ayers said they already had a better one started. I gave them to the kid and he buried them in a flowerpot. The one still there on the steps. Honest to God.

  That's pretty much the whole story. Sometimes I think about it and its brief life, at the banquet as the poets say. Its brief life came as a surprise to it, as it does to us all, when you think about it. Then not so suddenly it's gone.

  That's about it.

  Thanks for asking.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Novelet: UNCLE MOON IN RAINTREE HILLS by Fred Chappell

  Elsewhere in this issue, it's mentioned that we received a letter from someone accusing us of having an editorial bias against women writers from the west coast. This issue will probably give rise to similar conspiracy theories, because we have not one, not two, but three stories in this issue by writers who live in North Carolina. And all three stories are novelets! The blatant northcarolinanoveletophilia is just breathtaking, isn't it?

  Fred Chappell may well find this coincidence amusing, as he is a lifelong resident of the Tar Heel State and served as its Poet Laureate for five years. He says of this story that he has put it through a lot of versions, including one called “The Invading Spirit” that appeared in Weird Tales in 2005. But he says that similar openings are all that the two stories have in common.

  1

  The way to Grammer's deathbed was through the dormer window, up to the roof proper, down the gritty shingles to the porch roof, and over the trellis with its tricky creeper vine. Then Claudia and Jasper were on solid ground. The scariest part was climbing upward off the dormer. If a handhold slipped, the fall would be bone-breaking. The most tedious passage was down the trellis because Daddy and Barb slept in the bedroom on that side and were often restless in the night. The two children had learned to go quietly.

  They made the journey confidently now. This was the thirteenth time they had come this way, the “sacred thirteenth,” Claudia named it. Her habit was to sacralize ordinary things: days of the week, articles of clothing, cats, toys, the sweeping silhouette the willow tree traced against the grinning silver moon. “Tonight is the sacred night, the unholy thirteenth,” Claudia said again.

  Now they had reached the narrow asphalt lane that curled endlessly through this suburban warren, Raintree Hills, all the way out to the traffic circle that adjoined the main road. Jasper trailed behind his sister, a small boy, seeming smaller because of the big floppy black hat tugged low over his troubled brow. Claudia had made this wizard hat for him, rescuing it from Barb's wastebasket and scissoring its wide brim into witchy fangs. It had once belonged to Grammer and that was probably why Barb junked it.

  He recalled with irritation that while tonight was the sacred thirteenth, the night before had been the sacred twelfth, and that Claudia had consecrated every one of them back to the first one, that Sunday they had heard Barb whispering into the hall telephone that Grammer was very ill and not expected to live. She was calm as she spoke, coolly composed, but then Grammer was Daddy's mother and not hers. Barb was Daddy's second wife and Grammer had never kept secret the fact that she preferred the children's real mother, Athalie, now enfolded into eternity, dear departed saintly soul. Grammer liked things the way they used to be, the way they were supposed to be. She spoke of her childhood on the farm as the golden time.

  What a spooky place the moonlight made of this boring neighborhood! The angles of new-built houses produced shadows that lay like crape ribbons on the clipped and curried lawns. Claudia went stoutly along; the moonlight did not dismay her. Jasper was just uneasy enough to wish that he could know his sister's mind and discover if she was as brave as she looked. He would like to think she was a little bit scared, yet he hoped she wasn't, since she was his only protection except for his black, wizardly hat. He couldn't know; Claudia's was a mind beyond his present reach.

  They passed the Sanford house where the May-time roses out front looked frosted under the moon; they passed warily the Morton house where a dim light yellowed an upstairs window; they marched defiantly by the house of old Miz Gratz who scowled at them crossly when they circled their bikes over the roadway here. Jasper thought Claudia looked heroic in her striped sweater and blue jeans. To Claudia, Jasper looked dopey, almost pitiable, in his pajama tops and the cotton shorts that displayed his knobby knees. Only the great floppy hat lent him dignity and Claudia was proud that she had conceived it.

  A little ashamed of these thoughts, she turned suddenly to her little brother and thrust her bundle into his hands. “Here,” she whispered loudly, “you carry it for a while.” She knew he would be pleased with the responsibility.

  Jasper clutched the Golden Net to his chest and burrowed his face in it, as if the magic of it might transfer to his body. It was only a ripped and re-tied pair of Barb's pantyhose, fashioned into what Claudia called a net, but she had painted arcane designs on it with a black marker and had muttered sorcerous words into it in a dark closet and these ministrations had conferred the necessary powers.

  So Claudia said, so she b
elieved, and so then did Jasper. Neither now gave any thought to the fact that it had once enwrapped Barb's skinny butt. Claudia's powers had erased that datum.

  As they drew closer to Grammer's house, Jasper ventured the thought that the light was so bright someone was bound to spot them, but Claudia said no. “They won't see you because your hat is the color of the night. They can't see me because my hair is the color of the moon.” It was true that her hair was dime-bright, but then they went in under the shadow of the thick-leaved maple in Grammer's side yard and in this dimness they disappeared equally. The brightest things about them now were their eyes so big and watchful. They crowded in against the trunk and took bearings.

  "What do we see?” Claudia asked.

  Jasper shook his head.

  "What do we hear?"

  "Nothing,” he whispered dutifully.

  "Are there lights?"

  "No lights."

  "Where are all the dogs?"

  "Gone fast asleep."

  "I am the Princess of Thieves and you are my Sturdy Helper."

  This part of the catechism was hardest to countenance, but Jasper frowned and nodded.

  "And now we go to steal,” she said.

  At this solemn avowal they moved so quietly they might have floated out of the shelter of the maple over to the side of the garage where the mimosa brushed its delicate arms against a window. They climbed the tree and squirreled through the window and slipped to the garage floor. In here the only light was from the hidden moon, and they waited for their seeing to adjust. In a few moments they could see the dried oil patches on the floor where the old Pontiac used to sit till Barb wheedled it away from Grammer. Then they made their way to the stairs that led up to the hallway. At the bottom they paused. Their breathing had become quicker and louder and so they quieted their straining chests.

  "Ten steps,” Claudia murmured.

  "Ten,” said Jasper.

  Up they went to the hallway door.

  "Left hand is the Drunken Moon-Sentry. Right hand is Grammer Asleep."