Irregular Verbs

by Irregular Verbs

  Kettner nodded appraisingly. “That’s great. Why don’t you give me your demo reel, I’ll check it out.”

  “Cool,” Losi said, smiling. “Yeah, I will, cool.” She held out a hand, and after a moment Kettner reached out to shake it.

  “Do you mind if I take some recordings?” Kettner asked. “Just samples, to show people what I’m talking about.”

  “I can do it,” Losi said. “If that’s all right with you, Uncle.”

  Saufatu nodded quickly. “Yes, all right.”

  Before he had finished speaking she was in the water, making a long and shallow dive out towards the wrecks in the distance. Kettner watched for a few moments as she crested the low waves, then turned to Saufatu. “So what am I seeing here?”

  “This is where I grew up,” Saufatu said. “It’s the southernmost island of the biggest atoll. All the islands in this group ring around Te Namo—that’s the lagoon, there—the swimming’s good here, on both sides, and there’s reef snorkelling too.”

  “Your niece mentioned surfing?”

  Saufatu shook his head. “We never did that here. Losi, she grew up in Auckland—her dad worked for the consulate there—and those Kiwis are mad for it. You get bigger waves on the sea side of the western islands, but we always stayed in the lagoon where it’s safe.”

  “Safe?”

  “Well, except for the sharks.”

  For the rest of the night Saufatu led Losi and Kettner around the islands—carefully avoiding Fogafale, where paved roads and cement houses spread out from the airstrip to fill every inch of the island in a thick sprawl; though he had recorded it accurately, he suspected it was not the side of the Islands that Kettner thought his followers would want to see. Instead he took them up to the five small islands in the Conservation Area on the western side of Te Namo, where there were good-quality instanced interactions with green turtles and fairy terns. The World Wildlife Fund had financed the recording of these atolls, which was why they had more detail and interactive features than the inhabited islands. Only Tepuka Savilivi, the sixth and smallest island, had had to be reconstructed from tourist photos and satellite maps; it had been swamped before the recording began, the first of the islands to sink entirely.

  Everywhere they went Losi recorded samples—diving in the warm, shallow water of the lagoon, climbing trees to cut down coconuts and peering close at terns that hovered curiously in front of her, hanging in the air just inches from her face before flitting away into the trees. Saufatu ended the tour in Nanumea, where they could see the wrecks of small ships just offshore from the village and, out towards the horizon, the rusting hull of the John Williams.

  “That’s a U.S. Navy cargo ship—the Japanese sank it in the war,” Saufatu said.

  “Can we go out there?” Kettner asked.

  “To the ones near shore, yes, but not the big one,” Saufatu said. He threw a look at Losi. “It’s still there, though, just a little bit further under water. Someone could go out there and record it, if we had the money.”

  “This is really remarkable,” Kettner said. “I can’t believe nobody knows about it.”

  “Nobody knew about the Islands before they sank,” Losi snorted.

  “I never tried to publicize it,” Saufatu said. “It’s really just meant—for our people, you know. But if you think that this can bring some money in—make it so more of us can be involved in upgrading it . . .”

  Kettner shrugged. “I can’t promise that, but I do think a lot of people will be interested in seeing this. So much of what’s out there is so fake, you know? But this really lets you feel what it was like to live here.” He held up a hand. “I won’t do anything unless you’re sure you’re okay with it, though. This is your baby.”

  Saufatu looked over at Losi, then nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Go ahead.”

  “Great—I can do a preview reel from the stuff Losi captured, and I’ll let you know when the piece is going to run,” Kettner said. “You might want to rent more server space.”

  Losi spent most of the next day locked in her room, carefully culling the footage she had recorded—Saufatu told her that Kettner would surely edit it himself, but she said she wanted him to be picking between good, better and best—only emerging more than an hour after he came home from the airport to eat a reheated bowl of mackerel and breadfruit and then crash in dreamless sleep.

  Saufatu had hesitated to tell other Islanders about this business with Kettner, unsure what they would think about a bunch of foreigners coming to the Islands, but when he saw Kettner’s “preview reel” he knew he had to share it—proud of the work he had done in conserving the Islands, of course, but also of Losi’s work in capturing it. The footage had not been stripped and sliced, unlike her usual work, so that it captured not just what she had experienced but how she had felt about it as well. It had all been as new for her as it had been for Kettner, and her joy in swimming, climbing and exploring was clear—not to mention her evident pleasure at showing off. He forwarded the preview to everyone on his mailing list, along with an invitation to join them when Kettner did his show two nights later.

  The next day was Saturday, Saufatu’s day off, and he suggested to Losi that they go out to the beach together. They had not done this in a long time, not since she tired of the calm and shallow water he preferred, but she gathered up the towels and picnic gear and brought them to the truck—stopping, he noticed, every few minutes to check her texts.

  She was silent most of the way out, distracted, and he didn’t push her to talk; the truth was that he felt much the same way, thinking about how things might change for the Islands. They spent all morning in the water, swimming and bodysurfing on the gentle waves, then lay out their lunch and tucked into their sandwiches.

  “I’m glad your friends could spare you,” he said, looking out at the clear sky and whitecapped sea.

  Losi shrugged. “They’re going to have to get used to it,” she said. “All the stuff I do for Brian is stripped and sliced, so he can replace me easily enough if he has to.”

  “Would it be nice, doing work that has a bit more meaning to it?” Saufatu asked. “More of you in it?”

  She shrugged, then nodded, and looked away; they finished their lunch in silence and then went back into the water, swimming against the waves until they were tired enough to be sure they would sleep.

  Losi spent the whole trip back leaning out the window, her right knee bouncing and her left hand tapping the seat. Before he had even turned off the engine she was out of the truck and running to the door of the house.

  Saufatu set the parking brake and drew the keys out of the ignition. He was just climbing out of the truck when he heard her shouting from inside; he ran to the house, not bothering to lock the truck, and met her at the door. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “It’s Craig,” she said. “He just texted me. He wants me to be one of his scouts.”

  “What?”

  “I mean, I knew he liked my footage when he didn’t strip it, but I wasn’t sure—you know, I mean, everybody wants to scout for him—”

  “But—” Saufatu frowned. “What about the Islands?”

  Losi frowned too, cocking her head. “What about them?”

  “I thought—Kettner said he thought we could get funding to finish the Islands, upgrade them. I thought you could help me with that.”

  “I’m—I’m sorry, Uncle,” she said. “I just can’t pass this up. This is—I’ll never get a better chance. And it’s work I can do from here, I won’t be moving—not right away, anyway.”

  “And what will I tell your father? What will he say when he hears you’re just giving up on your duty?”

  “He’ll probably be glad I won’t waste my life building some crazy fantasyland nobody but you cares about,” Losi said. She glared at him for another second, her jaw set, then turned and ran back into the house.

  Saufatu stood
for a long moment, shaking his head slowly, then turned at a noise behind him. Apisai Lotoala was standing in front of his house, looking uncomfortable. “Everything all right?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry you had to hear that.”

  Apisai shrugged. “I have a son, you know. They’re all the same at that age.”

  “No, it’s—it’s more than that. She was never interested before, in any of it, and then when she wanted to come see the Islands I thought . . .”

  “Nobody’s interested in home, not at that age. None of us could wait to leave the Islands.” Apisai shrugged. “Maybe it would have been different if we’d known we could never go home, but I don’t expect so.”

  “But you can,” Saufatu said. “Come tomorrow night, you’ll see. And we’re going to make it even better, it’ll be just like being there.”

  “I know what that’s like,” Apisai said, then held up a hand before Saufatu could respond. “Fine, fine—I’ll be there.”

  Losi’s door was shut when Saufatu went inside, and his hand hovered over it, ready to knock; after a long moment he took a breath and let it drop to his side. What could he say to her? He had thought she didn’t care because she had grown up here, had never known the Islands, but he had to face the fact that none of the ones who had grown up there cared either. He sat down at the kitchen table and started a text to Kettner to get him to cancel his visit: it felt like a fraud now, absurd to think that a virtual reconstruction could give someone any sense of what it was like to be an Islander. For the tourists, it would be nothing more than another fantasyland, like Losi had said; for the Islanders it was just a dusty photo album.

  Saufatu’s hand hesitated over his pico’s airboard; after a moment he waved it back and forth to cancel the message, then picked up the pico and took it to his room. He hooked his ’jack up to the dreamlink and then forced himself to go to sleep and get to work.

  Saufatu walked down the Niulakiti beach to the shore, dodging tourists as they ran back and forth across the sand. He had seen them all over the Eight Islands, walking along the beaches, watching the fearless birds, swimming out to the wrecks—everything that had been in Kettner’s preview reel.

  Apisai Lotoala was at the shore, standing just ankle-deep in the water and surrounded by a knot of Islanders who were all chatting together, drinking toddy from plastic milk jugs and casting occasional glances out to sea. So far as the Islanders were concerned, this was no more meaningful than a backyard fatele; Apisai waved to him as he neared but Saufatu just nodded back, not feeling any need to be humoured.

  He spotted Kettner and Losi about a half-mile out, near where the shark attack was instanced: he thought he recognized the blond boy who had been surfing with Losi out there as well. He waved, and Kettner and Losi began to make their way back to shore.

  “What did I tell you?” Kettner said as he walked out of the water. Losi followed a few steps behind, her eyes lowered. “They love it.”

  “It’s very gratifying,” Saufatu said.

  Kettner laughed. “I’m glad you think so,” he said, and shook his head.

  Losi tapped Kettner on the arm. “Listen,” she said, “I’m going to go, okay? Text me.”

  “No, wait,” Saufatu said. He took a step past Kettner, looked her in the eye. “Just stay, a little longer. Please.”

  “Uncle—”

  Suddenly there was a noise, a deep note like someone blowing on a conch shell. A ship had appeared out on the water—or rather dozens of instances of the same ship, a battered old freighter that hauled itself slowly towards every shore of the Eight Islands.

  A moment later tourists and Islanders alike had been transported aboard the ship, packed tight on the decks or else peering out of the portholes below. From there they could see the deep-water wharf at the north end of Fogafale and beyond to the narrow streets and concrete buildings where most of the Islands’ people had lived for the last fifty years.

  There was no water on the ground; this was no sunken city, no drowned Atlantis—only an island that had become too low and too salty to be inhabitable, just one more of the thousands of lifeless atolls that dotted the Pacific.

  Kettner was at his elbow. “This is what it was like, isn’t it?” he asked. “When you left.”

  Saufatu nodded. He saw Apisai Lotoala leaning out over the rail, his head turning in wide arcs from side to side and his eyes gleaming with tears. Of course his people hadn’t needed the simulated Islands: every one of them already had an unchanged memory of their home the way it used to be. What they had not had, until now, was a chance to say goodbye.

  The ship’s horn blew again, two sharp blasts, and it began to move away from the wharf. Saufatu turned to see Losi standing behind him. “I’m sorry, Uncle,” she said.

  “Don’t be. You were right.”

  “But you’re not—sinking it? Everything you did?”

  “No,” Saufatu said. “It’ll still be here, for people to see what it was like before—or to help people remember. But this will be the only way to leave.”

  “Listen,” she said, “I could help out for awhile, if you like. I’m sure Kettner would understand.”

  He shook his head. “Do you know, when our people left Tonga and Samoa they thought everywhere in the ocean had been settled? But they set out again into the open sea, just to see what was out there.” He took a deep breath. “Go with Kettner. See what’s out there.”

  She nodded, and they both turned back to look over the side. The wharf and the islands beyond it were moving away in accelerated time, shrinking and then finally fading from view, lost in the trackless ocean.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  All books are the products of many hands, but a collection like this especially so. I owe a debt to the many editors who bought and, in many cases, improved the original versions of most of these stories and most especially to Sheila Williams who published many of them in Asimov’s; to Brett and Sandra, for taking a chance on this book; to Helen Marshall, for her support and for providing the book with an introduction much more wonderful than it deserves; to all those writers who provided feedback and encouragement on the book and those who offered to risk their reputations by endorsing it; and to my parents, who inspired me to tell stories.

  PUBLICATION HISTORY

  “Irregular Verbs” and “Holdfast” first appeared in Fantasy Magazine

  “Outside Chance” and “Closing Time” first appeared in On Spec

  “Talking Blues” first appeared in Triangulation: End of the Rainbow (Parsec Ink)

  “Long Pig” first appeared in Daily Science Fiction

  “Written by the Winners” first appeared in Timelines (Northern Frights Press)

  “The Face of the Waters” first appeared in Triangulation: Taking Flight (Parsec Ink)

  “Another Country,” “Public Safety,” “Lagos,” “The Coldest War” and “The Last Islander” first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction.

  “When We Have Time” first appeared in Triangulation: End of Time (Parsec Ink)

  “Jump, Frog!” first appeared in Ten Plagues (Saltboy Bookmakers)

  “The Dragon’s Lesson” first appeared in Time for Bedlam (Saltboy Bookmakers)

  “Heroic Measures” first appeared in Strange Horizons

  “The Afflicted” first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

  “What You Couldn’t Leave Behind,” “The Wise Foolish Son,” “Beyond the Fields You Know,” and “Au Coeur des Ombres” are all original to this volume

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Matthew Johnson is a writer and educator who lives in Ottawa with his wife Megan and their two sons. His first novel, Fall From Earth, was published in 2009 by Bundoran Press, and his short stories have appeared in places such as Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Strange Horizons, and have been translated into Russian, Danish, and Czech. He is also the Di
rector of Education for MediaSmarts, Canada’s centre for digital and media literacy, for whom he has written articles, lessons, blogs, tipsheets, and educational computer games, and whose material he has presented to numerous parliamentary committees and international conferences, as well as appearing on The National, Canada AM, and many other TV, print, and radio outlets.

  PRAISE FOR

  MATTHEW JOHNSON

  “Johnson skips like a stone across the myriad provinces of the spec-fic landscape: time travel noir, Le Guinian psychofable, alternate history—even a glorious coda to the myth of the comic-book superhero. Yet somehow he leaves his own unique footprints wherever he lands. Macabre, whimsical, and touching by turns, Irregular Verbs does not disappoint.”

  —Peter Watts, Hugo Award-winning author of Blindsight

  “Matthew Johnson is a clever and thoughtful writer, and an unusual one, too.”

  —Elizabeth Hay, Giller Prize-winning author of

  Late Nights on Air

  “I tore through this collection. Sharp. Insightful. Smart. When can I have more?”

  —John Scalzi, author of Redshirts

  “Matthew Johnson is a twenty-first-century Bester. With each story he deftly takes a single idea and gives it an unanticipated shove, presiding over the resulting consequences as they ripple through character and plot, carrying the reader along to shores of distant wonder.”

  —Lawrence M. Schoen, Hugo and Nebula Award nominee

  COPYRIGHT

  Haxan © 2014 by Kenneth Mark Hoover

  Cover artwork © 2014 by Erik Mohr

  Cover and interior design by © 2014 by Samantha Beiko

  All rights reserved.

  Published by ChiZine Publications

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.