She smiled up at him. “It will. I wonder where that lazy puma has gone?”
“I could go look for him,” Griffin Dane offered. Adara admired his offer, because Sand Shadow was right. Griffin Dane was afraid of the great cat. “Or I could mind the fire so you can look for him.”
“Her,” Adara said. “Sand Shadow is female. I think she will call if she needs help but, if she continues slow, I may take you up on that kind offer. In the meantime, are you injured? I have an ointment that is very good for bruises.”
She saw Griffin Dane consider denying his injuries, saw, too, that he ruled this to be stupid bravado. Faces and bodies were like game trails. The signs were subtle, but could be read by one who learned the marks.
Bruin, who had been Adara’s teacher, had made certain that Adara learned how to read those marks.
“Too often,” Bruin had said, “those born to hunt believe they know what destiny has shaped them to be. They refuse to learn more. I think otherwise. One cannot hunt forever.”
Those lessons had been a trial, with none of the joy in them that Adara felt when tracking or drawing a bow, but Bruin had been right. The best hunters ranged through wide areas that touched upon many settlements. Knowing how to read those one might meet only once or twice a season was a good thing.
“Yes,” Griffin Dane said. “I would appreciate a share of your ointment. My coverall protected most of me from cuts and scrapes, but I am one massive bruise.”
Adara dug into her pack and came out with two squat pottery jars. “Rub this first ointment anywhere but open wounds. For the rest, use this second ointment. If you wish, I can anoint your back.”
Again the hesitation, then somewhat awkwardly, “That would be very kind.”
At that moment, Sand Shadow returned. The puma had found a nice bit of seasoned scrub oak and had broken off enough to make two neat bundles. These she had slung over her back. Now she pranced into the hollow, pleased as a house cat who had caught a mouse.
Griffin Dane, caught in the act of peeling down the upper portion of his coverall, froze in mid-motion.
“Do you have another companion, then?” he asked.
“No,” Adara replied, enjoying his confusion. “Why do you think that?”
“But if no other companion, who loaded the wood onto the puma’s back?”
“She did it herself,” Adara said. “Admittedly, she’s more skilled than many, but haven’t you seen an adapted creature before? The lore says that the seegnur themselves created them.”
She stopped herself before repeating what Bruin had speculated, that the adapted had continued to change in the years since the slaughter of the seegnur and death of machines.
“I have not,” Griffin Dane said. “Our history—what I suppose you might call our ‘lore’—tells of such things, but the manner of creating such was lost in the great war.”
Adara had the feeling that Griffin Dane was not saying everything he might, but did not press.
“Do you have any companions with you? You have shown no anxiety such as you might if someone was trapped within your vessel, but what about elsewhere?”
Griffin Dane stood with the upper portion of his coverall hanging loose around his waist, leaving his upper body bare. If he hadn’t been so badly battered, he would have been an admirable sight, well-muscled, with a light down of chest hair. Now, however, he was marked in shades of red, many of these turning the darker purple of deep bruises.
The fire was burning well. Sand Shadow would add more wood as soon as she had her bundles off, so Adara went over to Griffin Dane. Dipping her fingers in the jar of bruise ointment, she moved behind him and began to rub the greasy stuff in, trying to be gentle. Her fingers felt the ripple of muscles beneath the fair skin, confirming her impression that Griffin’s incredible paleness was no indication of ill health.
“I am alone here,” Griffin Dane said after a long moment, “not just here in this place, but also in this system. Does your lore contain stories about how there are many planets, circling many suns, and this is but one?”
“Yes,” Adara said, reaching around him to dip her fingers again into the ointment jar. Her arm brushed against his nakedness and she felt a pleasant tingle. “Some of the folk who live where the air is thicker say this is just a legend, but those of us who live where we can see the stars see this must be true.”
She did not add that Bruin, who had at one time been a student of the Old One Who Is Young, had told her this bit of lore was true and had shown her the evidence in the dance of the stars and planets.
Griffin Dane nodded. Perhaps to give himself a moment to frame his thoughts, he began rubbing the bruise ointment into his left arm.
“I came here by myself, in a small ship constructed to travel long distances without needing much fuel or tending precisely because it carried just one.” He gave a great shuddery sigh, although whether this was because his bruises hurt or because of some memory, Adara couldn’t tell. “I came alone because I was certain I was onto something that would make my reputation and I didn’t want to share the credit with anyone. I suppose that seems foolish to you.”
Adara laughed deep in her throat. “Perhaps it would not make sense to a farmer or a sailor, but to a hunter or a pro … Yes. It makes sense. You were on the trail of big game and thought you could take it alone.”
“And I was wrong.” For the first time, Adara heard bitterness in Griffin Dane’s voice. “If you knew how long and how carefully I prepared … Then to crash the shuttle within minutes of breaking atmosphere … If I ever get over feeling stupid …”
He shrugged, winced, then, defiantly, shrugged again.
Adara finished rubbing ointment into his back. Feeling a certain reluctance—this Griffin Dane really had a very nice back—she moved over to the fire. Sand Shadow had added a couple of larger pieces of wood, before returning to lounge in the sunlight.
When Adara sent her thanks, the great cat stretched in pleasure. A graphic, mocking, and very sexual image followed. Most altered creatures were amused by the human capacity for sex at any time and in any season. They claimed that this alone was what set humans apart from beasts and praised the stars for being spared such distraction.
Adara admitted desire was a distraction, but she’d never been one to have sex with just anyone. Such behavior left one too vulnerable. A huntress, a rare occurrence already, must take care not to seem weak. Even so, she’d warmed herself at that fire and been burnt. Her heart twisted as she remembered Julyan. She’d loved him, given him not only her heart, but sought to shape herself into what she thought he had desired. Yet he had walked away without a backwards look.
Yes … She must take care not to seem weak. The lore whispered that the seegnur had the ability to command the people of Artemis. As polite as this Griffin Dane might seem, she must be on guard against his wiles.
• • •
Interlude: TVC1500.
Darkness. Deadness. Purest cold.
Heat. Intense, incredible heat. The beginnings of awareness.
Awareness. Purpose. Purpose displacing darkness. Purpose displacing awareness. Awareness becoming purpose.
Copyright © 2014 by Jane Lindskold.
Excerpted from Artemis Awakening by Jane Lindskold.
Published by permission of the author and Tor Books.
All rights reserved.
No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author.
Jane Lindskold is the award-winning, bestselling author of more than twenty novels, including the incredibly popular Firekeeper series (Through Wolf’s Eyes, Wolf’s Blood), as well as more than sixty shorter works. Several of her novels have been chosen by VOYA for their Best SF, Fantasy, and Horror list. Lindskold’s work has been repeatedly praised for its sensitive depiction of worlds and cultures different from our own—especially those that aren’t in the least human. She resides in New Mexico.
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS
edited by Jude Griffin
Author Spotlight: Seanan McGuire
Sandra Odell
Right from the start, you hit the readers with a subtle blend of fears and unease that sets the tone for the story—drowning, forced manipulation, not fitting in. Later, you delve into the pain of surgery and chronic medical treatments/conditions. How conscious were you of these influences and how they would impact the story?
Extremely. I have a complicated and very painful issue with my left foot right now, and dealing with it has been both exhausting and a distressingly large part of my daily life for the last year and a half or so. So I am very conscious of these things, and how they impact our lives. There’s a lot of fear of not being accepted that comes with having a sudden change in health, and I wanted to focus on that, at least a little.
“Each to Each” could easily be labeled as science fiction, military SF, feminist SF, or even science fantasy. As a writer, what do you see as the pros and cons of genre labels and the continued emergence of slipstream/crossgenre works?
Pro: It’s easier to find things that contain at least one major ingredient you’ll enjoy. Con: It’s easy to dismiss things you would have absolutely loved because they’re not the “right” genre, or subgenre. I think it’s a good idea to read broadly, and to follow authors as much as ideas.
You use the deep ocean as a setting, and the exploration of sharks, lionfish, and other non-cetaceans as a basis for the modifications to the sailors. How did you research the oceanographic elements for this story?
I spent a lot of time at the aquarium! I love the ocean. The mysteries of the deep sea are one of my favorite things to explore when I get bored. So I really just used several years of cumulative research, all in the same place.
Challenge coins are an important part of military service in terms of branch of service and command post, part of their esprit de corps. With the unique make-up of the submariner forces in your story, what would you like to see for their challenge coin?
Since some of them don’t have functional fingers anymore, I sadly think that the loss of the challenge coin is just one more burden being put on the women of the Deep Sea Naval Initiative. But the ones who are still mostly human still carry their coins, and mourn them when they have to put them down.
Many of your works deal with gender politics. In this story, you combine such issues with views on women in the military, and social dynamics in an all-female social setting. How do you see the portrayal of such issues shaping the future of genre fiction?
We learn what’s possible from what fiction shows to us. I think that the more often and more purposefully we expand our ideas of gender and social dynamics through genre fiction, the more we’ll be able to bring those things naturally into our storytelling. Superhero teams used to have “the girl,” and now we have all-female teams, women leading the Avengers, and a lot more gender diversity (not to mention racial diversity, which is a huge thing). We’re nowhere near perfect, but we can get there if we don’t give up.
The story explores the ideal of physical freedom, moving unfettered in a world not of your own making. What would be your ideal world to explore if environmental concerns were not an issue?
The deep sea! I want to look for mermaids.
In stories such as “Indexing” or “Knives,” you look at fairy tales through a different set of eyes. What is it about fairy tales that appeals to you as a writer and a person?
I majored in folklore and mythology. So I guess it’s just how I’m wired. It’s sort of like writing legal fanfic. Everybody knows these characters, knows these stories; it’s all a matter of finding a different facet in the diamond. I love that.
What can eager readers expect from Seanan McGuire in the future?
So much. So much! I’m continuing my October Daye and InCryptid series (next books in each: The Winter Long and Pocket Apocalypse). I have a standalone, Sparrow Hill Road, coming in May 2014. Lots of short fiction. And of course, that Mira Grant lady has a book coming out this fall …
Plus I’m going back to Disneyland.
Sandra Odell is an avid reader, compulsive writer, and rabid chocoholic. She attended Clarion West in 2010. Her first collection of short stories was released from Hydra House Books in 2012. She is currently hard at work avoiding her first novel.
Author Spotlight: Kris Millering
Lee Hallison
What was the seed for this story?
The very first seeds of this story were planted a number of years ago in Iowa, where I attended a reading by the poet Marvin Bell. Bell read from what would become the book Ardor: The Book of the Dead Man, Vol. Two. A number of years later, I was given a challenge by my Clarion West classmate Jordan Ellinger: to swap genres with him for a story. I thought of Bell’s wry Dead Man and decided that I wanted one of my own in this story. I just decided to make him literal, and his decay almost a character of its own.
Maureen came partially out of the airless intensity of my own process, and partially out of some online discussions about sensory modes. I knew I wanted to write about someone whose primary sensory mode was touch, and Maureen and her sculptures grew out of that.
How is Maureen’s focus and intensity in her art like yours?
Fortunately for me, no one has ever offered to put me in a spaceship and send me off to write for aliens. Maureen’s focus does come from my own, though, especially at the time that I wrote the story. I’m the sort of person who can easily accidentally vanish into writing for weekends at a time, and never manage to see the sun.
I’d say the major difference between me and Maureen is that I really try to avoid falling into that mode unless I have a project to finish. For her, it’s her default mode and pretty much her entire mechanism for coping with the world. Luckily for me, I have a lot of wonderful friends who know when and how to drag me out of my own head (and occasionally out of the house).
Her goal to find aliens who appreciate her art fails because of a twist in relativity. At the end, is she apologizing for the mission itself, her decision at the start, or the death?
The short answer is yes. The long answer is that, with the realization of what exactly it is she’s done, she feels that she needs to apologize in the only language she truly has—the language of form.
Maureen’s actions stem out of a very human set of needs and desires—she is obsessed with being understood and successful in a world that doesn’t speak her language. She understands the full scope of what she’s done, at the end, and she’s apologizing for the whole series of events that lead to the decision she makes before the beginning of the story.
What are you currently working on?
I’m currently in the middle of rewriting a novel that is tentatively titled The Phoenix Crown, which is an epic fantasy that involves intelligent hyenas, volcanic eruptions, and violent politics. I also have a few short stories in the works, and a few more coming out this year—one in Devilfish Review, and one in Apex that will be published closer to the end of 2014.
You are the new Communications Specialist for the writer’s workshop, Clarion West. What is your first goal in the new job?
I’m so glad you asked! Most of my work so far has been focused on our summer fundraiser, the Clarion West Write-a-thon. It’s my goal to make sure that we have a clear and unified voice for our communications and social media outreach for the fundraiser. The job involves a lot of cat-herding, which is pretty much my professional specialty, so I’m having a really good time with it so far.
Lee Hallison writes fiction in an old Seattle house where she lives with her patient spouse, an impatient teen, two lovable dogs, and the memories of several wonderful cats. She’s held many jobs—among them a bartender, a pastry chef, a tropical plant-waterer, a CPA, and a university lecturer. An East Coast transplant, she simply cannot fathom cherry blossoms in March.
Author Spotlight: Heather Clitheroe
Lee Hallison
When did you first become interested in cyborgs and the us
e of such technology in fighting terrorism?
The story actually started out as a stock market idea—a friend posted a link to an article on superdensity (http://superflux.in/blog/superdensity) and the idea of developing a “shipping forecast” for trying to describe trends and changing power structures. Something about the article tweaked an idea—that if we could try to develop a shipping forecast for our times, it would end up being something co-opted by financial forecasts. The story began as an idea for a firm that develops technology to make this kind of forecast for commercial purposes—getting just a little ahead of the stock market by trying to figure out what people are thinking and feeling.
And then it occurred to me that if you were the CEO of a company that could do something like that—that kind of cool-hunting—you’d probably start looking around to see if you couldn’t contract out for security and counter-intelligence. I liked the idea of it being rather shadowy—it’s never really clear who Spencer was doing the casts for in Berlin or Damascus. I don’t know that he was necessarily doing it for the UN or a legitimate government.
As for using cyborgs for this kind of counter-intelligence … well, why wouldn’t you? If you can’t teach a machine how to read emotions and relay those, you’d use the next best thing. People are cheaper than machines. And if it happened to have disastrous effects on a person’s health, well, you paid them for it, right? It’s the ultimate in neoliberal economics.
How much, and what kind of research did this story require?
It took a fair bit of research. The superdensity article led me down the rabbit hole—first that, then shipping forecasts, then bits and pieces about the stock market and the kinds of technology being used now to make trading faster and faster. I came to the rather horrifying conclusion that if we ever really do figure out how to go faster than light, it’ll be to trade stocks faster instead of making warp drives for spaceships. That’s where the cyborg tech idea really started to come together—that we’d develop this kind of technology to fuel financial speculation instead of some great, liberating project for humanity—and I started looking around for things to read.
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