It is like cutting my heart at the root, but I know I cannot leave Gerda. I cannot leave her alone Down There. She must not be deserted a second time. They have doped her, drugged her, the world swims around her, her eyes are dim and crossed, but I fancy she is looking for me. And at the level of the singing blood in our veins, we understand each other.
I hang my head.
“So you’re staying,” says Agnete, her face pulled in several opposing directions, satisfaction, disappointment, anger, triumph, scorn.
“For Gerda, yes.”
Agnete’s face resolves itself into stone. She wanted maybe a declaration of love, after that scene? Gerda is limp and heavy and dangling down onto the floor.
“Maybe she’s lucky,” I say. “Maybe that injection killed her.”
The crowd has been listening for something to outrage them. “Did you hear what that man said?”
“What an idiot!”
“Jerk.”
“Hey, lady, you want a nicer guy for a husband, try me.”
“Did he say the little girl should be dead? Did you hear him say that?”
“Yeah, he said that the little baby should be dead!”
“Hey you, Pol Pot. Get out of line. We’re doing this to escape genocide, not take it with us.”
I feel distanced, calm. “I don’t think we have any idea what we are doing.”
Agnete grips the tickets and certificates of passage. She holds onto Gerda, and tries to hug the two younger boys. There is a bubble of spit coming out of Gerda’s mouth. The lift doors swivel open, all along the wall. Agnete starts forward. She has to drag Gerda with her.
“Let me carry her at least,” I say. Agnete ignores me. I trail after her. Someone pushes me sideways as I shuffle. I ignore him.
And so I Go Down.
They take your ID and keep it. It is a safety measure to hold as many of humankind safely below as possible. I realize I will never see the sun again. No sunset cumulonimbus, no shushing of the sea, no schools of sardines swimming like veils of silver in clear water, no unreliable songbirds that may fail to appear, no more brown grass, no more dusty wild flowers unregarded by the roadside. No thunder to strike the neak ta, no chants at midnight, no smells of fish frying, no rice on the floor of the temple.
I am a son of Kambu. Kampuchea. I slope into the elevator. “Hey, Boss,” says a voice. The sound of it makes me unhappy before I recognize who it is. Ah yes, with his lucky mustache. It is someone who used to work in my hotel. My Embezzler. He looks delighted, pleased to see me. “Isn’t this great? Wait ’til you see it!”
“Yeah, great,” I murmur.
“Listen,” says an intervener to my little thief. “Nothing you can say will make this guy happy.”
“He’s a nice guy,” says the Embezzler. “I used to work for him. Didn’t I, Boss?”
This is my legacy thug, inherited from my boss. He embezzled his fare from me and disappeared, oh, two years ago. These people may think he’s a friend, but I bet he still has his stolen guns, in case there is trouble.
“Good to see you,” I lie. I know when I am outnumbered.
For some reason that makes him chuckle, and I can see his silver-outlined teeth. I am ashamed that this unpunished thief is now my only friend.
Agnete knows the story, sniffs and looks away. “I should have married a genetic man,” she murmurs.
Never, ever tread on someone else’s dream.
The lift is mirrored, and there are holograms of light as if we stood inside an infinite diamond, glistering all the way up to a blinding heaven. And dancing in the fire, brand names.
Gucci. Armani. Sony. Yamomoto. Hugo Boss. And above us, clear to the end and the beginning, the stars. The lift goes down. Those stars have cost us dearly. All around me, the faces look up in unison. Whole nations were bankrupted trying to get there, to dwarf stars and planets of methane ice. Arizona disappeared in an annihilation as matter and anti matter finally met, trying to build an engine. Massive junk still orbits half-assembled, and will one day fall. The saps who are left behind on Ground Zero will probably think it’s the comet.
But trying to build those self-contained starships taught us how to do this instead.
Earthside, you walk out of your door, you see birds fly. Just after the sun sets and the bushes bloom with bugs, you will see bats flitter, silhouetted as they neep. In hot afternoons the bees waver, heavy with pollen, and I swear even fishes fly. But nothing flies between the stars except energy. You wanna be converted into energy, like Arizona?
So we Go Down. Instead of up. “The first thing you will see is the main hall. That should cheer up you claustrophobics,” says my Embezzler. “It is the biggest open space we have in the Singapore facility. And as you will see, that’s damn big!” The travelers chuckle in appreciation. I wonder if they don’t pipe in some of that cheerful sound.
And poor Gerda, she will wake up for second time in another new world. I fear it will be too much for her.
The lift walls turn like stiles, reflecting yet more light in shards, and we step out.
Ten stories of brand names go down in circles—polished marble floors, air-conditioning, little murmuring carts, robot pets that don’t poop, kids in the latest balloon shoes.
“What do you think of that!” the Malay Network demands of me. All its heads turn, including the women wearing modest headscarves.
“I think it looks like Kuala Lumpur on a rainy afternoon.”
The corridors of the emporia go off into infinity as well, as if you could shop all the way to Alpha Centauri. An illusion of course, like standing in a hall of mirrors.
It’s darn good, this technology, it fools the eye for all of thirty seconds. To be fooled longer than that, you have to want to be fooled. At the end of the corridor, reaching out for somewhere beyond, distant and pure there is only light.
We have remade the world. Agnete looks worn. “I need a drink, where’s a bar?” I need to be away too, away from these people who know that I have a wife for whom my only value has now been spent. Our little trolley finds us, calls our name enthusiastically, and advises us. In Ramlee Mall, level ten, Central Tower we have the choice of Bar Infinity, the Malacca Club (share the Maugham experience), British India, the Kuala Lumpur Tower View… .
Agnete chooses the Seaside Pier; I cannot tell if out of kindness or irony.
I step inside the bar with its high ceiling and for just a moment my heart leaps with hope. There is the sea, the islands, the bridges, the sails, the gulls, and the sunlight dancing. Wafts of sugar vapor inside the bar imitate sea mist, and the breathable sugar makes you high. At the other end of the bar is what looks like a giant orange orb (half of one, the other half is just reflected). People lounge on the brand-name sand (guaranteed to brush away and evaporate.) Fifty meters overhead, there is a virtual mirror that doubles distance so you can look up and see yourself from what appears to be a hundred meters up, as if you are flying. A Network on its collective back is busy spelling the word HOME with their bodies.
We sip martinis. Gerda still sleeps, and I now fear she always will.
“So,” says Agnete, her voice suddenly catching up with her butt, and plonking down to Earth and relative calm. “Sorry about that back there. It was a tense moment for both of us. I have doubts, too. About coming here, I mean.”
She puts her hand on mine.
“I will always be so grateful to you,” she says and really means it. I play with one of her fingers. I seem to have purchased loyalty.
“Thank you,” I say, and I realize that she has lost mine.
She tries to bring love back by squeezing my hand. “I know you didn’t want to come. I know you came because of us.”
Even the boys know there is something radically wrong. Sampul and Tharum stare in silence, wide brown eyes. Did something similar happen with Dad number one?
Rith the eldest chortles with scorn. He needs to hate us so that he can fly the nest.
My heart is so sore I cann
ot speak.
“What will you do?” she asks. That sounds forlorn, so she then tries to sound perky. “Any ideas?”
“Open a casino,” I say, feeling deadly.
“Oh! Channa! What a wonderful idea, it’s just perfect!”
“Isn’t it? All those people with nothing to do.” Someplace they can bring their powder. I look out at the sea. Rith rolls his eyes. Where is there for Rith to go from here? I wonder.
I see that he, too, will have to destroy his inheritance. What will he do, drill the rock? Dive down into the lava? Or maybe out of pure rebellion ascend to Earth again?
The drug wears off and Gerda awakes, but her eyes are calm and she takes an interest in the table and the food. She walks outside onto the mall floor, and suddenly squeals with laughter and runs to the railing to look out. She points at the glowing yellow sign with black ears and says “Disney.” She says all the brand names aloud, as if they are all old friends.
I was wrong. Gerda is at home here.
I can see myself wandering the whispering marble halls like a ghost, listening for something that is dead.
We go to our suite. It’s just like the damn casino, but there are no boats outside to push slivers of wood into your hands, no sand too hot for your feet. Cambodia has ceased to exist, for us.
Agnete is beside herself with delight. “What window do you want?”
I ask for downtown Phnom Penh. A forest of gray, streaked skyscrapers to the horizon. “In the rain,” I ask.
“Can’t we have something a bit more cheerful?”
“Sure. How about Tuol Sleng prison?” I know she doesn’t want me. I know how to hurt her. I go for a walk. Overhead in the dome is the Horsehead Nebula. Radiant, wonderful, deadly, thirty years to cross at the speed of light. I go to the pharmacy. The pharmacist looks like a phony doctor in an ad. I ask, “Is … is there some way out?”
“You can go Earthside with no ID. People do. They end up living in huts on Sentosa. But that’s not what you mean, is it?” I just shake my head. It’s like we’ve been edited to ensure that nothing disturbing actually gets said. He gives me a tiny white bag with blue lettering on it.
Instant, painless, like all my flopping guests at the casino.
“Not here,” he warns me. “You take it and go somewhere else, like the public toilets.”
Terrifyingly, the pack isn’t sealed pr
operly. I’ve picked it up, I could have the dust of it on my hands; I don’t want to wipe them anywhere. What if one of the children licks it?
I know then I don’t want to die. I just want to go home, and always will. I am a son of Kambu, Kampuchea.
“Ah,” he says and looks pleased. “You know, the Buddha says that we must accept.”
“So why didn’t we accept the Earth?” I ask him.
The pharmacist in his white lab coat shrugs. “We always want something different.”
We always must move on, and if we can’t leave home, it drives us mad. Blocked and driven mad, we do something new.
There was one final phase to becoming a man. I remember my uncle.
The moment his children and his brother’s children were all somewhat grown, he left us to become a monk. That was how a man was completed, in the old days.
I stand with a merit bowl in front of the wat. I wear orange robes with a few others. Curiously enough, Rith has joined me. He thinks he has rebelled. People from Sri Lanka, Laos, Burma, and my own land give us food for their dead. We bless it and chant in Pali.
All component things are indeed transient.
They are of the nature of arising and decaying.
Having come into being, they cease to be.
The cessation of this process is bliss.
Uninvited he has come hither
He has departed hence without approval
Even as he came, just so he went
What lamentation then could there be?
We got what we wanted. We always do, don’t we, as a species? One way or another.
Acknowledgments
With gratitude to the people who published these stories. In no particularly order: David Pringle, Paul Brazier, Gordon Van Gelder, Ellen Datlow, Esther Salomon, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Peter Crowther, Ra Page, Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant, and Andy Cox.
Publication History
These stories were originally published as follows:
The Film-makers of Mars, Tor.com, December 2, 2008
The Last Ten Years in the Life of Hero Kai, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 2005
Birth Days, Interzone, April 2003
VAO, PS Publishing, 2002
The Future of Science Fiction, Nexus, Spring 1992
Omnisexual, Alien Sex, ed. Ellen Datlow, 1990
Home, Interzone, March 1995
Warmth, Interzone, October 1995
Everywhere, Interzone, February 1999. The author was specially commissioned to write this story by Artists Agency as part of the Visions of Utopia project.
No Bad Thing, The West Pier Gazette and Other Stories, ed. Paul Brazier, 2007
Talk Is Cheap, Interzone, May/June 2008
Days of Wonder, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October/November 2008
You, When It Changed, Geoff Ryman, ed., 2010
K is for Kosovo (or, Massimo’s Career) is published here for the first time.
Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October/November 2006
Blocked, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October/November 2009
Geoff Ryman was born in Canada in 1951, went to high school and college in the United States, and has lived most of his adult life in Britain. His longer works include The Unconquered Country, the novella version of which won the World Fantasy Award; The Child Garden, which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award; the hypertext novel 253, the “print remix” of which won the Philip K. Dick Award; Air, which won the Arthur C. Clarke and James Tiptree, Jr. awards; and a historical novel set in Cambodia, The King’s Last Song.
An early Web design professional, Ryman led the teams that designed the first web sites for the British monarchy and the Prime Minister’s office. He also has a lifelong interest in drama and film; his novel Was looks at America through the lens of The Wizard of Oz and has been adapted for the stage, and Ryman himself wrote and directed a stage adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.
Since 2001, Small Beer Press, an independent publishing house, has published satisfying and surreal novels and short story collections by award-winning writers and exciting talents whose names you may never have heard, but whose work you’ll never be able to forget:
Joan Aiken, The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories
Poppy Z. Brite, Second Line: Two Short Novels of Love and Cooking in New Orleans
Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others
Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud, A Life on Paper (trans. Edward Gauvin)
John Crowley, Endless Things: A Novel of Ægypt
John Crowley, The Chemical Wedding*
Alan DeNiro, Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead
Carol Emshwiller, The Mount
Carol Emshwiller, Report to the Men’s Club
Carol Emshwiller, Carmen Dog: a novel
Kelley Eskridge, Solitaire: a novel
Karen Joy Fowler, What I Didn’t See and Other Stories
Greer Gilman, Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter’s Tales
Angélica Gorodischer, Kalpa Imperial (trans. Ursula K. Le Guin)
Alasdair Gray, Old Men in Love: John Tunnock’s Posthumous Papers
Elizabeth Hand, Generation Loss
Julia Holmes, Meeks: a novel
Ayize Jama-Everett, The Liminal People: a novel*
John Kessel, The Baum Plan for Financial Independence
Kathe Koja, Under the Poppy: a novel
Ellen Kushner, The Privilege of the Sword
Kelly Link
, Stranger Things Happen; Trampoline (Editor); Magic for Beginners
Karen Lord, Redemption in Indigo: a novel
Laurie J. Marks, Fire Logic: a novel*
Laurie J. Marks, Earth Logic: a novel*
Laurie J. Marks, Water Logic: a novel
Eduardo Jiménez Mayo and Chris Brown, eds., Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories*
Vincent McCaffrey, Hound: a novel
Vincent McCaffrey, A Slepyng Hound to Wake: a novel
Maureen F. McHugh, Mothers & Other Monsters
Maureen F. McHugh, After the Apocalypse*
Naomi Mitchison, Travel Light
Benjamin Parzybok, Couch: a novel
Benjamin Rosenbaum, The Ant King and Other Stories
Geoff Ryman, The King’s Last Song: a novel
Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden: a novel
Geoff Ryman, Was: a novel*
Geoff Ryman, Paradise Tales
Geoff Ryman, The Unconquered Country*
Sofia Samatar, A Stranger in Olondria*
Delia Sherman & Christopher Barzak (Eds.), Interfictions 2
Jennifer Stevenson, Trash Sex Magic: a novel
Sean Stewart, Mockingbird: a novel
Sean Stewart, Perfect Circle: a novel
Ray Vukcevich, Meet Me in the Moon Room
Kate Wilhelm, Storyteller
Howard Waldrop, Howard Who?
A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2011: Your Year in Writing
A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2012: Your Year in Writing
Big Mouth House Titles for Readers of All Ages
Joan Aiken, The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories
Holly Black, The Poison Eaters and Other Stories
Lydia Millet, The Fires Beneath the Sea: a novel
Ryman-Paradise-interior-ebook Page 34