FSF, October-November 2008

by Spilogale Authors

And something. By now Fournet was feeling definitely uncomfortable, as if a large fist was slowly closing on his insides. Were the aliens attacking him? He stared at Grot, but all the everter's tentacles appeared to be unoccupied. Mr. White had withdrawn a few steps and sunk into statuelike immobility. Green was, of course, babbling away, though only a word here, a word there, really came through anymore.

  Then really strange things started happening. The X-Quisite Hand Laundry broke up into the kaleidoscopic mess it had been originally. Grot multiplied into five or six images revolving around each other in a Ferris wheel effect. White turned inside out, showing that he was exactly the same within as without. Green's feathers each grew a staring golden eye, like the tail of a peacock.

  They messing with my mind, thought Fournet. He raised his Glock and, like a cross-eyed man trying to aim at the moving figures in a shooting gallery, squeezed off a round each at Green, at White, and at Grot. But the shots sounded more like the clash of tinny cymbals than honest explosions and the bullets, instead of doing damage, drifted lazily and quite visibly into orbits around the three aliens.

  For just an instant Fournet wondered if his problem was internal—if the stress of being abducted had finally sealed shut the last minuscule openings in the arteries he'd spent decades blocking with mayonnaise and fried stuff. Of course, he instantly rejected the notion that his lifestyle might be at fault, but at that point all thought came to an end. He experienced a kind of soundless explosion—a pain so intense he couldn't feel it, a blast of darkness instead of light. While hundreds of Grots and thousands of golden eyes looked on, he keeled over and hit the floor.

  "Oh, how joy-making!” cried Mr. Green ecstatically. “The representative of Bush Second is dead! What an opportunity is ours! The diplomatic stand-off will soon be over!"

  Reverting to his native language, he poured out a symphony of trills and whistles that set Grot—actually, there was only one of him—and Mr. White into furious motion in all nine of the local dimensions. Other attendants raced in from the laboratory, which was either coexistent with this room, or just next door, or several light-years away, depending on how you wished to look at it. Meanwhile, viewing the hoopla from above was none other than—

  * * * *

  Fournet himself.

  * * * *

  He'd always been contemptuous of so-called near-death experiences. Yet he had to admit that actually going through the process was novel and interesting. True, he felt a sense of regret tinged with grief at detaching from the large form spread out picturesquely on the floor. I had me some good times with that old guy, him, he thought.

  Then, grief fading, he rose to the elevation of a skybox in the Superdome. From this eyrie he gazed down upon beings of the most improbable forms crowding around the corpse. Like, he mused, a bunch of Mardi Gras Indians rubbernecking the latest victim of a drive-by shooting, back in the old days when Ninth Warders were more apt to die by fire—gunfire, that is—than by water. Still, he really didn't want to see Grot do his thing to a body for which he still felt a kind of residual sympathy. Instead, he decided to take this opportunity to go sightseeing in the great city that the fat little feathered fag, Mr. Green, had spoken about.

  Turning away, he drifted toward a wall that opened like a dental patient at his approach, and emerged into the vast darkness of an everted planet. The silver and ebony towers of an immense city hung like stalactites, jutted out like accusing fingers, and rose like stalagmites from an interior that made Carlsbad Caverns, which Fournet had seen once on a trip with Alma, look like a pot-hole. Crowds of beings that seemed to have no permanent shape thronged the streets, occasionally turning inside out like the pockets of arrestees being searched by Criminal Sheriff's deputies.

  Perhaps for gastronomic reasons, Fournet focused on one creature—a kind of ultimate oxymoron, a giant shrimp that was truly gigantic—and watched it toe-dance through the crowd, waving its long feelers while strings of lights along its sides flashed in harmonic patterns of mustard and mauve resembling a 1960 jukebox. From time to time, the creature ejected its insides (including masses of fluorescent roe), swallowed itself, turned right-side out again, and continued on its way. Accompanying the whole process were sounds sometimes like the bagpipes at a cop's funeral, sometimes like the partially blocked plumbing at Parish Prison.

  Actually, thought Fournet, the process was sort of sick-making, when you came right down to it. No, he decided, I can't get used to this goddamn place, it's even weirder than Alabama.

  He wanted to return to wherever he'd left his body, but what did returning mean, exactly? If he approached something, it drifted away; if he turned away from something, it followed in his slipstream, like flotsam trailing the Algiers ferry to the dock.

  How does a former human escape from a nine-dimensional topographical space, or whatever the hell Mr. White called it? Was this to be his, Fournet's, own version of Eternity, drifting forever through an alien universe, like an LSD junkie taking an eternal bad trip at an everlasting Mardi Gras?

  He was preoccupied with this metaphysical question when he felt a tug. The tug strengthened into a definite pull. Instinctively he resisted, but the pull became a yank, a drag, a haul. A syncopated drumbeat that was somehow familiar began and strengthened until it deafened him. He roared, but made no sound; he threshed around, but couldn't combat the force. He felt like a leaf caught in Katrina; he felt like dust sucked into a Hoover; he felt like a cockroach trapped in the vortex of a toilet. He—

  * * * *

  ...was walking along Paris Road, with Bluddy Slawta at his side. He knew it was Paris Road because a sign still clung to a crazily leaning lamppost. All around stretched a wild growth of willows and ragweed filled with chanting frogs, sonorous cicadas, and the ridgepoles of shattered houses.

  "Maddog,” Fournet muttered.

  How had he gotten here, anyway? The last thing he remembered was stepping into a FEMA trailer in the Seventh Ward. He checked, and found himself properly dressed—size XXL Fruit of the Looms and a much-laundered tee on top, then a clean white-on-white shirt with the buttons and collar inside, a narrow knitted tie like the first birthday present Alma had ever given him—indeed, it was the first birthday present she'd ever given him—and finally, lying comfortably next to his skin, an inside-out wash ‘n’ wear summer suit. So at least he didn't look funny.

  His shoes, however, hurt. Having the heels on the inside might not be the best arrangement, though offhand he couldn't think of a better one. Also, the rough blacktop surface of Paris Road was shredding the orthopedic socks he wore to combat varicose veins. He paused and bent over to check his ankles, finding to his surprise that the customary pattern of blue vessels had disappeared, along with the puffy white swelling, resembling cottage cheese, that he was used to. Most remarkable of all, when he straightened up, his head didn't spin and he wasn't gasping for air.

  Huh, he thought, and said, “Wonk ooey, doog lear leef I,” to his companion. Instead of answering like a human being, Bluddy glared at him with contempt and loathing. He erected the middle finger of his right hand and, to Fournet's astonishment, began jabbing it hard and repeatedly into his own eye, yelling as he did so, “Cuff ooey! Wo! Cuff ooey! Wo!"

  "Elohssa,” muttered Fournet. Then he forgot both his puzzlement and his obnoxious companion, as a Hummer full of gum-chewing Guardsmen turned into Paris Road and headed toward them.

  * * * *

  When D. J. arrived at the hospital next morning, he found Fournet awaiting him in a private room, with Alma and a neat young resident in green scrubs at his side. She had brought and Fournet had donned enormous new pajamas covered with little red arrow-pierced hearts inscribed, “Love Ya, Babe."

  Hearts, or at any rate the blood vessels leading to them, were on the resident's mind, too. He was checking a printout of some ultrasound tests and saying, “Sir, you have the most beautiful circulation I've ever seen in a man your age. Your arteries must be wide open, without any plaque buildup whatever. It's
almost as if they'd been scrubbed."

  "That's becuz I eat right,” said Fournet complacently. “Incidentally, Doc, you can tell the noice to take that stuff"—he gestured at the hospital breakfast, resting on the bedside table—"and feed it to a gator. They'll eat anything."

  "Don't you worry, Sweetheart,” said Alma. “I lost you for two whole weeks, but now we going home. I'ma fix you a real breakfast—three eggs over easy, grits with a big lump of butter, pork sausage and buttermilk biscuits and about a gallon of chickory coffee with Half-and-Half and plenty sugar."

  "And fresh-squeezed urnge juice,” added Fournet. “Gotta keep healthy."

  He turned his attention to D. J. “I know you gonna ask me where I been at. The short answer is, I don't know."

  D. J. shrugged. “Wherever it was, you musta done good there, because we got all our people back. Mary Margaret Trudeau was found taking a stroll along the levee in Jefferson Parish in her pantyhose and D-cups. Harry J. Symms showed up for woik yestriddy with his company demolishing wrecked houses in Lakeview. Didn't even know he'd been away, and when the guys started making a fuss over him, he looked confused and kept saying, ‘Attamassaw? Attamassaw?’”

  The resident interjected, “I was just about to ask Mr. Fournet if he had any sequelae to his experience. Any aftereffects,” he explained.

  "Well,” said Fournet, “I had me a weird dream last night."

  "Nightmare?"

  "No, just weird. An octopus had grabbed my Glock—by the way, D. J., you all ain't found that, have you?"

  "Nuh-uh."

  "Well, you owe me for it. I lost it in line of duty. Anyway, the octopus kept messing with it, and it blew off a tentacle. Soived him right."

  "Anybody can't shoot,” said D. J., “shouldn't have a gun. Look, Alphonse, we appreciate you coming back outa retirement to take this on and tie it up like you did. Now we got us another little problem—"

  "No,” declared Alma. “You ain't taking my sweetheart away from me again. The answer is no. Unnerstand? N-O means no."

  "Okay, okay. But see, there's some people moved back into Noo Awlyunz East, and they're the only ones for miles around, and they say at night they hear all these folks got drowned crying for help inside the wrecks of their houses. I know it sounds nuts, but—"

  "No,” said Alma for the third time. “We got to save the living, right, but we also got to let the dead go. Otherwise we'll never get over Katrina. So D. J., you just go on back to Tulane and Broad and let Alphonse get dressed and come home with me. This adventure is over."

  "You just hoid from the boss,” said Fournet, swallowing his saliva, which had begun running at thought of the promised breakfast. “Over is over."

  * * * *

  This was true, except for Bluddy Slawta. His superhit Eff the Effing Multiverse was hailed by The New Yorker's discerning rap critic as “a powerful statement of rebellion and rage, filled with a searing sense of personal vulnerability and metaphysical disillusionment."

  More important, it sold by the gazillion and lifted him high into the hip-hop firmament. Soon he was endorsing presidential candidates in such time as he could spare from promoting his new and popular brand of men's underwear—intended, of course, to be worn on top of one's outerwear.

  All of which proved, as Fournet told Alma one evening over a meal that began with oysters Rockefeller and went on from there, that the universe really must be kind of inside out, after all.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Department: Books To Look For by Charles de Lint

  Dossouye, by Charles R. Saunders, Sword and Soul Media, 2008, $19.95.

  Here's a book I've been waiting to see for thirty years—all the way back to when I read the first Dossouye story in 1978 (it appeared in Jessica Amanda Salmonson's Amazons! the following year).

  Dossouye is the female counterpart to Charles Saunders's Imaro character—sort of the way Red Sonja is with Conan (and yes, I know; Red Sonja is more Rob Thomas's character than Robert E. Howard's, but you know what I mean). Dossouye's story is set in the same alternate Africa as the Imaro books, but she's not simply a female version of Saunders's more well-known creation. Both characters are disenfranchised from their birth community and forced to wander in exile—which allows for many and varied adventures—but Dossouye's story draws more heavily on traditional African mythology than the heroic fantasy wizards and monsters that Imaro often confronts.

  Neither's better than the other—at least not for a heroic fantasy enthusiast; they're just different. Mind you, I think of Saunders's work as historical adventure fantasy because the stories are set in a meticulously researched real historical background, but there is magic. Didn't know that Africa had cities and a widespread civilization in the long ago? Neither did I until I read Saunders's work and then went back and followed the path of some of his research. It's utterly fascinating stuff, but more to the point, Saunders writes an adventure story that'll keep you on the edge of the seat from the first page.

  Most of the material here appeared as short stories in anthologies such as that edited by Salmonson mentioned above, as well as ones edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and more recently, Sheree R. Thomas's terrific Dark Matter anthologies. But all the stories have been rewritten and the book reads more like an episodic novel than simply a collection of stories.

  Most of those books have been out of print for some time and it would take some effort to track them down. For my part, I'm delighted to have the stories gathered together here and I don't doubt that once you start to follow the adventures of Dossouye and her war-bull Gbo, you'll be as taken with the character as I am.

  Look for Dossouye in your local bookstore, but if they don't carry it, point your browser to www.charlessaunderswriter.com for ordering information.

  * * * *

  Year's Best Fantasy 8, edited by David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer, Tachyon Publications, 2008, $14.95.

  I like The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, a different annual gathering together of fantasy stories than the one I'm reviewing here. Its editors make a real effort to look beyond the expected places (genre magazines and anthologies) to introduce us to treasures and authors we might not otherwise encounter. But I also appreciate the effort of editors such as Hartwell and Cramer who shine the light on stories published in the genre.

  One's not better than the other. Rather, they complement each other. And their flavor is certainly different. The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror often offers up experimental writing styles and metafiction with stories that can require the reader to spend a little time working out what actually happened. The experimental nature of some of the prose and storytelling is often fascinating in its own right.

  I love the sense of adventure one can get from such a story, and the way the material pushes at the boundaries of not only the accepted practices of storytelling, but also the readers’ minds.

  Hartwell's & Cramer's anthology has more traditional stories, or rather, stories told in a more traditional manner, focusing on linear narratives and characterization, and I love that, too.

  Of course, I'm generalizing here. Neither anthology focuses entirely on what I've described above, but as generalizations go, I'm not too far off the map. And what's interesting is how mostly there is very little overlap between the two (although I haven't seen the contents of the Datlow/Link & Grant offering for this year). Most years, the discerning reader will find things to love in both without spending money on the same material.

  If I have any bone to pick with Hartwell & Cramer's selection (and really, won't every reader ask, “Well, what about...?"), it's that they couldn't seem to find one Richard Parks story to include (and I know they read Realms of Fantasy, where Parks's stories usually appear).

  However, making up for that oversight, they do have terrific material from the likes of Fred Chappell, Holly Black, Don Webb, Garth Nix, and a host of other notables.

  * * * *

  The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch, by Neil Gai
man, Michael Zulli & Todd Klein, Dark Horse Books, 2008, $13.95.

  Great story, great art, but here we have a case where the individual components are actually better than the work as a whole.

  The problem begins with the story. It's one of Gaiman's more entertaining pieces, featuring himself as a character relating a curious adventure in London featuring a strange circus and the mystery alluded to in the title. It has appeared before as a short story and in an audio format where its conversational tone adds to our appreciation. As does Gaiman's own presence in the story, allowing readers the fun question of wondering where reality gives way to imagination. Surely, we think we know, but what if...?

  The art distracts from all of that.

  Now, I'm a big fan of Zulli's work. I love the loose, painterly quality of his art, but he's also one of those artists who shines with each individual panel, but not so much with the narrative flow from panel to panel, an essential quality for sequential art such as this. The art also distracts from the natural rhythm of the story when read as prose, or better still, listened to in audio format—probably because half the fun is the narrator's descriptions of things. Here, they're simply presented to us.

  None of which is to say the book's a disaster. On the contrary, I found it quite charming. But I would hate to be a reader who wasn't already familiar with the story coming to it in this version, because they might find it a slight piece, where in another format it's entirely beguiling.

  * * * *

  Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet, by Joanne Proulx, Viking Canada, 2007, Cdn$28.

  The author photo of this first novel shows a woman with blonde hair who looks to be in her thirties. But the narrative voice in this novel—that of a teen boy who's somewhat of a loser but has flashes of precognizance—is so strong that a couple of times I looked at that author photo and wondered how the woman in that picture disappeared into the voice of Luke Hunter.

  Luke's flashes of precognizance only manage to screw up his life more than it already is. And while we want to give him a good shake from time to time, Proulx manages to keep Luke likable and still a loser.