PANVERSE ONE
Five Original Novellas of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Edited by Dario Ciriello
What critics are saying about Panverse One
"Something different in today’s market and definitely worth seeking out."
- Gardner Dozois, Locus Magazine
"And when the first publication of an infant publisher is particularly bold and accomplished, then even more excitement is due... editor and publisher Dario Ciriello merits our applause."
- Paul diFilippo, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
“Waking the City,” copyright © 2009 by Andrew Tisbert
“Shiva Not Dancing,” copyright © 2009 by Uncle River
“Delusion’s Song,” copyright © 2009 by Alan Smale
“Fork You,” copyright © 2009 by Reggie Lutz
“The Singers of Rhodes,” copyright © 2009 by Jason K. Chapman
Copyright (c) 2009 Panverse Publishing, Concord, CA
Published by Panverse Publishing at Smashwords
All Rights Reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form whatsoever.
Cover Artwork, “Anamnesis of Estivation,” by Vitaly S. Alexius
Cover layout by Janice Hardy
These stories are works of .fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in the stories contained in this anthology are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
by Andrew Tisbert
by Uncle River
by Alan Smale
by Reggie Lutz
by Jason K. Chapman
I want to express my heartfelt thanks to the many people without whom this anthology wouldn’t have been possible.
First, the five contributing authors, all of whom took a risk with an unknown and unproven editor, and who graciously humored me, accommodating my often picky suggestions for edits. Likewise our very talented cover artist, Vitaly S. Alexius, whose visionary skill perhaps guided you to this volume in the first place; and Janice Hardy, for her absolutely fantastic layout and design work on both the cover and interior.
For lighting the way, my thanks to the many dedicated editors and anthologists in the Science Fiction and Fantasy . fields, whose love of the genre and insistence on quality continues to improve it; any new anthologist stands on the shoulders of giants without whom the modern SF landscape would be quite different, and likely inferior.
My gratitude also goes to the SF and Fantasy community as a whole, for giving a damn about what’s important, when the Muggles don’t; and to my friends Gretchen and Scott, who know why.
Finally, my greatest thanks go to my dear wife Linda, without whose love, encouragement, patience, and incomparable sense of humor, not to mention a fondness for the genre that equals mine, this volume would have remained just another pipe dream.
The novella, or short novel, has a very special place in Science Fiction and Fantasy literature. Usually defined as a work of between about 15,000 and 40,000 words, the novella is long enough to allow for a satisfying level of worldbuilding and character development which would not be possible in a short story, while at the same time remaining sufficiently compact to read comfortably at a single sitting.
If the casual browser of this volume requires convincing of the power and depth which the SF/F novella is capable of attaining, consider this very abbreviated list of award-winning novellas over the past few decades:
Coraline (Neil Gaiman)
Story of Your Life (Ted Chiang)
Sailing to Byzantium (Robert Silverberg)
Beggars in Spain (Nancy Kress),
Th e Hemingway Hoax ( Joe Haldeman)
Press Enter ( John Varley)
Home is the Hangman (Roger Zelazny)
Ill Met in Lankhmar (Fritz Leiber)
Th e Last Castle ( Jack Vance)
All-novella anthologies—once a common feature of the annual genre publishing landscape—are rare these days; and the professional SF and Fantasy magazines, for reasons of space and cost, publish very few novellas indeed, and none by new or unknown authors. Even the e-zines, where space is essentially free, rarely publish anything over 6,000 or 7,000 words. Although the advent of e-books, POD and micro-presses holds out some hope, it’s no exaggeration to say that even big-name authors face substantial obstacles in placing a novella before an audience.
All the above factors were a consideration in assembling this volume. But most of all was the burning desire to promote a form I’ve personally always loved and enjoyed, and to hopefully bring some new and talented authors before the SF/F readership in the process.
Th e stories in Panverse One run the gamut from pure SF to pure Fantasy. My chief criterion in choosing the works for this volume was story—I wanted to offer a selection of works both engaging and accessible to the non-genre reader, while showcasing all the characteristic strengths of the novella which the genre habitué expects. I hope that this anthology will have gone some small way towards achieving this goal.
Dario Ciriello
San Francisco, August 2009
by Andrew Tisbert
One
I am alive today, my dearest Liana, because of the mercy of my enemy. And with that act of mercy he bought me many more days and years to miss you.
I tell myself I’m writing this to warn you more than anything else, but I’m intelligent enough to suspect a more compelling reason. A selfish need to keep myself company with the illusion of your presence? For I do not know that you, like me, are still alive.
You appear in my mind so clearly, as if you stand in the wavering glow of this lantern beside which I write, velvet skin raked by shadow, eyes with flecks of the gray sea and then the jade forest, changing in the changing light. I remember the first time we stood naked together, waist deep in the river. The moon made the skin of your shoulders glow as we stared at each other; the forest and the riverbank and the laughter from the village all melted into a fog around you, an unimportant haze. Your eyes did not waver as I pushed against the soft young hairs at your groin. You said, “What do you think you’re doing with that thing?” and teeth emerged from behind your expanding smile. My stomach aches at the thought of it now.
We spent that night in a dream; a dream that continued in my mind on through the next day, until that afternoon when I was called by Geoffrey, the Elder. Do you remember how angry I was? He sat there in the den of his hut, surrounded by those strange machines he uses to read us and awaken us, and frowned at me. Five distinct lines deepened between his eyebrows. He stuck a finger in one ear and dug in the sprouting hairs there. “What do you think you’re doing, Kuyo?”
My mouth opened. I was about to ask him what he was talking about, but understanding was already boring its way through my confusion, and I’m sure my eyelids must have fluttered.
“There’s no future in this girl.”
Most young men would never contradict the Elder, the mentor and leader of all our villages, but I had a special relationship with him ever since the rite of passage when I was nine. We were friends, this ancient, powerful man and I. “What are you talking about, Geo? I’m in love with Liana.”
“If it’s love we’re talking about, then you definitely need to keep your pale white ass away from her, unless you can promise me you won’t reproduce.”
That endless, pulling feeling that had been trembling in my stomach all day was hardening into a sharp rock. It went steady and the rest of my body started shaking.
“Don’t think I don’t see what’s been going on, Kuyo.” He glowered at me with those thick white eyebrows, the nostrils of his wide nose flaring. “You’ve been paying attention to no one but this girl for over a year. The community needs you to mate elsewhere. Go ahead, spread your wild seed, but not with this girl. Remember your duty to the tribe. When the time comes for mating, I’ll help you choose the right women.”
I cried against your side that night, your little nipple puckering under my palm. You wanted to know if the color of my skin was the problem, but I didn’t believe that to be so—Geo had told me enough times how my skin was trivial, an irrelevant trait from an earlier time. “It’s the plan Geo teaches us about,” I told you “We’re close, he says, so close he can taste it. The growing of humans back to their original glory and power, and recovering control of the city.”
“If returning to the city means we can’t be together, Kuyo, then I want no part of it.”
That was the night we vowed ourselves to each other and no other. We tried to keep it secret, but people knew.
I remember that year as a time overwhelmed with your cloying smell, a mixture of something like cinnamon and the burning oil we extract from the anemone trees growing along the desert edge of the jungle. I died a hundred deaths in that smell, only to wake again in the morning of your arms. Only to wake and sheepishly head to my daily meditation lessons with Geo.
Not a meeting went by without his admonishments. They became a kind of ablution between us. Half the time I was convinced he wasn’t even serious.
“I hope at least you’re taking precautions, you little throwback.”
“Yes, Geo, we’re waiting until we turn fifteen, as you’ve taught the tribe to do.”
“You’ll be too busy for her when you turn fifteen, Kuyo. You’ll be siring the new race destined to control the city. Don’t lose sight of that destiny.”
There was no use in arguing with him. I would shrug my shoulders and let him lead me in our breathing exercises.
Geo had explained what we were trying to do over and over again. It had become a catechism we would review as my breathing smoothed and my pulse slowed. Geo was fond of ritual and repetition. It never seemed strange. After all, he was our holy man, the last remaining link to our great past. He looked after all the twelve known tribes surviving in the perimeter of the distant city’s influence. In the absence of the city’s control, people need their rituals to govern the unruly fabric of their lives. Geo taught me this.
You know about most of what he had me recite. You know about the small image of the self that lives in every piece of every person, how these images can live on even after a person has died. You know that these pieces, these images, comprise an inner, vast machine, capable of unimaginable feats. You know Geo’s stories. How the Men of Terror came to the city, how we were cast out for their crimes. How we’ve not been able to access our own machine inside us ever since. How this keeps us out of the city, impotent, dissociated, unable to function in the civilized world.
Every time Geo told me the stories, he grafted on another level. It made me feel special, as if I alone was worthy of a deeper understanding of the mysteries at our core. Something about me gave Geo hope. It had been that way ever since he’d read the inner image of my self during my rite of passage and I was chosen for his machines to enable my awakening.
“Close your eyes, Kuyo. What do you see?”
At times I pictured nothing. Often, Liana, I admit my infatuation with you cast your image before me, your naked body rippling out in waves like the skin of the river glowing under the moon.
“Imagine this machine inside you, each individual piece so small it coils like a worm at the center of every cell in your body. Imagine it opening to you, guiding you, even as it guides the growth of your body.”
Sometimes I convinced myself I could see it. There was a shift in my thinking, as if something invisible were being aligned. And sitting there in Geo’s hut, eyes clamped shut, I felt I was getting bigger. Not my body. My sense of me. It expanded. It encompassed everything I knew. I thought I could see the distant city, its shining buildings and the canyons among them. I saw the circles of power around the city, the umbrella of its influence, spreading out like waves from a rock cast in a pond, across the lake, across the jungle, fading as it went until its protection broke down at the edge, where the deserts and god knows what else began. And our villages, hidden away in the remotest areas of jungle, were motes of dust, evident to me only because there was an even smaller part of me still sitting below, inside one of them, like Geo’s little worm inside a cell.
A breeze through the doorway, a casual motion from Geo, something, would bring me back. Everything—Geo’s den, his thatch hut, the village, my body, Geo himself—everything seemed so small as Geo questioned me about what I’d seen. And even though my answers to his quizzing always exhilarated him, the experience would leave me sad and vacant. I had glimpsed something in myself, something that made me feel strong and smart and swollen with possibility. And within moments I had lost it. I was lucky to have you in the afternoons to fill me up again.
And then you were gone.
Your older sister discovered it that morning, the strange claw marks in the dirt, the tear in the back of your family’s hut that cut right through the bamboo and the special mud Geo taught us to make to strengthen our walls. There had been no blood in your room, and so Mari’s first impulse was to find me.
“What kind of mischief is going on now, Kuyo?”
For the last two days I’d been hunting with my friend Castor. Now I sat outside my hut, dressing my share of the kill.
“What are you talking about Mari?” I said.
Your sister made a face as an oily-sweet smell rose from the viscera I let spill.
“I know you’re up to something.” She brandished a finger at me.
Do you remember how we used to laugh at your sister? She was just like all the other villagers. They believed everything Geo said, they did everything he asked, without question.
Mari never liked me. When her time came, she mated with exactly whom Geo had chosen for her, without question. She thought your rebellious spirit was an infection, something you caught from me. I loved you because that wasn’t true, Liana. I loved you because we shared that rare gift, to be able to think for ourselves. That was what set us apart. Thinking you were alive, I laughed then.
“Damn it, Kuyo. Where is she? Mom and Liana’s father are terrified.”
“Mari,” I said, still smiling. “What are you talking about?”
When she told me, I dropped my knife in the pile of guts at my feet.
The entire tribe met in the village square that afternoon. Your parents had already started clinging to each other and weeping. I don’t know why that made me so angry. As everyone in the crowd had their say, it was Castor at my elbow cautioning me with his big hand on my shoulder, keeping me from lashing out at everyone.
“Something from the jungle carried her off in the night,” someone said, trying to sound knowledgeable. “Maybe an upright komodo; maybe a climbing panther.”
“I’ve never seen any climbing panther or up-ko rip through a wall like that,” I said, mustering all the disgust I could ease past the friendly pressure of Castor’s hand.
“Maybe not,” said someone else. “It could be anything, an animal we haven’t seen before, from the far perimeter or one of the renewal swamps. You know how the jungle is out there, Kuyo. It’s more dangerous every day.”
“We’re wasting time talking. If you really believe something from the jungle took her we should be out there, right now, looking for her.”
“Kuyo.” It was your father, Liana, and I confess I turned and glared at him. “We all know how you feel about my daughter. But hollering at all of us isn’t going to bring her back.”
He stared me down, until my rage began to condense into grief and my eyes watered.
At that point Geo raised his hands and ended all discussion.
“Kuyo’s right,” he said. “We should begin a search around the village for any sign of Liana.” He gestured to three of the oldest men in the village. “Why don’t you organize this?” he said to them. “And we should also arrange sentries to guard our huts tonight.” Then he turned to me and his gaze softened. “Kuyo, will you come with me to my hut?”
I shrugged Castor off, wiped impatiently at my eyes, and followed him.
“Sit down, Kuyo,” he said when we were inside.
I didn’t, but neither did he. We faced each other outside the opening to his den, surrounded by all his comfortable wicker furniture we’d bound together when I was a child. Inner walls divided his round hut into four distinct rooms, and I realized I’d never gone beyond his front room or the den. For a moment, Geo was suddenly a stranger to me. He shook his thick head slowly and heaved a great, gushing breath.
“What is it?” I asked.
“If your parents were still alive, they’d be speaking to you now.”
“Geo, I have things to do....”
“Let the older men search for Liana.”
“Just sit here and wait? Don’t ask me to do that. I can’t.”
“It’s dangerous. We don’t even know what took her. And you’re too valuable to the tribe.”
“You mean my semen.”
“No, Kuyo. You think you know everything, but you’ve so much to learn. You’re like a son to me.”
I looked into his wide face. All I could see in those eyes, in the deep lines branched like wadis in the ancient desert of his flesh, was worry and affection. Genuine affection.
His face blurred.
“I love her, Geo.”
I wept then. I was worse than your parents whom I’d scorned. Geo came to me. His huge arms encircled me and my forehead fell against his chest as if I was a young child. I sobbed into the darkening fabric of his tunic.
“I know, Kuyo,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
Later I circled the village with the old men until dark.
My presence didn’t help them. We found nothing.
Two
It rained the next day. Castor had spent the night in my front room as he usually does when he visits the village. The leaks in my thatch roof woke him. He had his bow and arrows ready, his supplies packed, by the time I stumbled off my mattress of bound ferns.
I couldn’t ever explain to your satisfaction why Castor was my friend. I suppose I scarcely knew myself. It used to make me angry when you told me I felt sorry for him. It angered me to think that might be the sole basis of our relationship. But maybe you were right, in part. I hated the way the villagers treated him and the other wanderers, men and women too mutated to belong to any given tribe. I hated how they made fun of Castor’s limp, and his twisted spine. I hated that they called him the mute toad because of his silence and because of the air bladder bulging out under his chin.
What I never told you, Liana, and what no one else knew then, was that Castor isn’t mute at all. The sound of his voice in the village embarrassed him, because his air bladder was like the sac throat of a furry toad, a natural amplifier. In fact when we went far enough away, Castor sang for me. You could hear that eerie, percussive howl for a good two and a half kilometers.
I wish you could have heard it with me.
Mist hung in the village like smoke from a massive fire as we stepped out into the rain. Heavy, warm drops pummeled our heads. I looked toward Geo’s hut, but he must have been inside, like everyone else with any good sense.
I slung my quiver over my shoulder and we headed out to find you.
Castor read the jungle better than I did, so I let him lead. We crossed the river and circled the village in an ever-expanding spiral. Neither of us spoke. I think we knew how futile our plans were, with the rain washing any tracks or signs clean, but Castor understood how much I needed to try.
The dense canopy protected us from the rain, as long as we avoided the spontaneous waterfalls that spilled from the great leaves of high ferns and twisting trees when they grew too heavy. By late afternoon the rain had stopped but the guttering streams from the leaves had not. The forest chirped and caterwauled around us to greet the sun that filtered only dimly down to us.
We stopped to eat some of yesterday’s game. There were climbing panthers nearby; we could hear them shaking the higher tier of forest as they cavorted in the trees.
“Panthers,” I sneered. “Why would they come into the village, single out a particular hut and carry someone off? It makes no sense.”
Castor chewed a string of meat thoughtfully. He swallowed, and even though I watched his neck expand I still jumped when he barked at me. He was using his quiet voice.
“The panthers are lured by the stink of the city. Maybe Geo’s gotten closer to his goals than anyone thinks.” The jungle around us grew quiet for a few heartbeats as his voice echoed.
“I doubt a stupid jungle animal would care about Geo’s plan,” I said.
“It is odd they’re so close to the village, Kuyo. But stranger things have happened out here.”
I couldn’t think of any, and told him so.
Castor just shrugged.
But there was something different in his expression as he looked up into the trees, a tightening around his eyes. It only occurs to me now as I write this that it might have been fear.
We slept that night in the bole of a hollowed-out tree and continued our search the next day. The further we ventured from the village, the more talkative Castor became.
“Kuyo,” he croaked. “What do you want out of life?”
“I want to find Liana,” I said. Castor annoyed me whenever he took this tone with me. As if he, an ancient twenty-eight year old wanderer, could mentor me, the most important man in my village.
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
It was funny the way the forest hushed, as if it wanted to hear what he had to say. As if he was some kind of prince apparent here, in his world.
I stepped over a fallen tree branch covered with humming moss. “Well, what do you want?” I said. Even the moss had paused as Castor spoke. I looked up at his crooked back.
“Good question. I think one day I’ll start my own tribe. Bring the wanderers together.”
“That’s ridiculous. Wanderers don’t want community.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
I realized my comment had been foolish, the last vestige in me of the typical village prejudice against his kind. “I’m sorry, Castor.”
“You see, Kuyo, we’ve been trained to be wary of others, because we aren’t welcome in the tribes. It’s become a bad habit. I think we should band together. The jungle gets more dangerous every day, especially in the swamps. And I tell you, Kuyo.” His pace had slowed almost to a stop. “There are others out there like me. I know it. Sometimes at night I hear them howling in the distance. I’ll find them, and our tribe will be open to all, not just those whose fifty-three chromosome pairs are most like ours.”
At first I was annoyed. Of course I’d heard Geo use the word “chromosome” before, but he’d never quite explained it to me. You remember how obscure Geo’s language could get when he was angry, usually around the same time he would rant about how he wasn’t bringing a bunch of jungle savages into the city with him. He spent a lot of time educating us. And that this wild jungle mutant from outside our villages would use the term and act like he understood it… Well, friend or not, it irritated me.
But his voice was filled with more pride and hope than I’d ever heard. The willfulness reminded me of you. I didn’t want to argue over his dream. After all, stubborn belief in an unlikely future was something I knew a lot about. “Then you should make it happen,” I said.
“I’m sure your Geo would like that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“My tribe won’t bow down to that man.”
“Why should you?”
“Why do you?” he barked.
The comment surprised me. Bow down to Geo? You and I laughed at the rest of the villagers, so docile we called them cattle behind their backs. How could Castor accuse me of such behavior?
“Yes, even you, Kuyo. Tell me one way you’ve defied him.”
I simply spoke your name.
“No. I know you love Liana. But did you reproduce with her?”
“We were waiting.”
“Until you turned fifteen. A Geo rule.”
We walked in silence for about thirty meters.
“I don’t mean you disrespect, Kuyo. I know your intentions toward Liana. I just want you to see clearly. So far, for all your bluster, you’ve gone along with Geo’s plans completely.”
“What do you have against Geo, Castor? He guides all the tribes, teaches us, keeps us safe.”
“Safe? How long will you live?”
“Well, I hope to make it to thirty. Thirty three if I’m lucky. Once we had a woman who—”
“How old is your friend?”
“Geo?” I sighed in frustration. “I don’t know.”
“So much for keeping us all safe.”
“That’s not fair. The world was scorched and poisoned in the alien wars a thousand years ago. Is that Geo’s fault? Is it his fault the air that gets by the worn edges of the city’s umbrella makes us sick? Geo’s trying to save us by leading us back into the city, where civilized people can live in safety.”
Castor stopped and turned to face me. He just stared, his neck pulsing.
“What?” I said.
He turned again and started walking. “Think whatever you want,” he said. “All I know is that I’m safer forming a tribe and I’m going to do it.”
We spent another night in the forest before we had the conversation that had been on our minds from the start. Of course it was Castor who brought it up.
“How far do you want to go, Kuyo?”
“I don’t know.”
“Kuyo....”
“To one of the swamps, at least.”
“The renewal swamps are dangerous. Even I’ll agree with Geo on that.”
His look softened.
“We’re wasting our time, Kuyo.”
Liana, I wish I could tell you I fought with him then. I wish I could say my voice raised above even his as I defended our task, as I refused to give up any hope, as I bared my fists in the dappled shadow of the forest and told him I would go on without him. The truth is I was tired, and dirty and hungry for something more than rationed bits of three-day old fur-toad.
And we had found no sign of you anywhere. My voice was hoarse from calling your name.
The truth is I had argued more defending Geo the day before than I argued now.
“Maybe there’s word of her back in the village,” I said. I couldn’t even look my friend in the eye.
His big hand settled on my shoulder, and he wouldn’t move until I looked up to his worn, leathery face. His neck bulged, his head tilted back. “I’m sorry, Kuyo.”
Even though we set a straight course, our return took most of that day. By the time we crossed the river dusk was falling. In the village clearing the pieces of exploded rainbow that shimmered in the city’s umbrella above us dulled like fading memory and the sky went gray and lavender, swirling toward darker blues. The older men were lighting fires in the village square, where a few children still played.
Your sister called my name and ran through the craftsmen’s kiosks and the meeting circle to tell me the news.
“The city took her, Kuyo. The city took Liana away.”
I grasped her by those slender arms. Her red and gold eyes were wild with emotion.
“Mari, slow down.”
“This morning a stranger came into the village. Another wanderer.” She glanced at Castor, who’d lapsed into his usual silence. “You should have seen her, Kuyo. No offense to your friend but it was horrible. Her face was all swirled and melted and hardened again, and sagged down to form a second smaller face on a little bulb, I guess you could call her second head. And both faces talked, Kuyo, I could hardly even look—”
“What about her, Mari? Why was she here?”
“Why?” Her soft brows curled as if the question hadn’t occurred to her. “You know how wanderers are. I guess she wanted a handout, a free meal. Damn it, Kuyo, that’s beside the point. Why can’t you pay attention?”
She shook her arms. Gently, but hard enough to prompt me to release them.
“She was strange, Kuyo. Very outgoing for a wanderer. She told everyone who would listen about coming across a scouting expedition of citizens not far from here. She said they were headed down river toward the lake Geo talks about, back toward the city, but thought it would be a good idea to warn people about them, just in case.”
I stared at Mari in wonder. Citizens had been here? We were suddenly living one of Geo’s stories about the old days.
“The whole village has been talking about it all day. Everybody’s pretty well convinced the city stole Liana.”
“Where’s the stranger?” I said.
“She’s long gone. Kuyo, people are talking about going after them to find her. Geo has called another meeting.”
I looked up at Castor. Even through the bunched up skin along his jaw, I could see the muscles clenching.
“Kuyo.” This time, your sister grasped my arms. “I’m glad you’re back.”
Three
We met inside a ring of fire, all three hundred or so adults of our village. Mari sat on one side of me and Castor the other and we looked up at Geo on the meeting dais, torch flames squirming behind him. We looked up at our leader and waited for him to share his wisdom, to guide us, to help us form a plan.
And do you know what he did, my dear Liana? He told us you were gone. He told us your redemption was a fantasy.
As angry as I was, I still felt sorry for Geo, standing there in front of us. It was the first time in my life I saw him frightened. It was apparent from his expression, the sweat collecting in his wrinkles, that he knew no better than any of us what should be done. Yet we looked to him for answers like children. No one else seemed to notice how his voice shook, with the possible exception of Castor. In fact I couldn’t help imagining Castor found some satisfaction in it.
“I know you want to chase after these citizens,” said Geo. “I know that in your heart you only want to save our beloved daughter. But to do so would be folly. It would bring down a new era of genocide against us. All our work here, to build a society, to strengthen a race to one day retrieve our city from the usurpers, would be ruined.”
One of the older men standing in the back said, “Geoffrey, I’m sure you know what’s best. But how can you expect us to do nothing?”
Geo’s eyes flickered. “We don’t even know if this is all true, Yuli. We don’t know if there really was a dispatch of citizens. No one from inside has ventured this far out in more than two hundred years.”
“But it makes sense,” said Yuli gruffly. You could tell it took all his courage to contradict Geo. But once he started, an inner momentum wouldn’t let him stop. “You told us yourself how the city used to sample people from the wild. Maybe they’re interested in us again. Maybe they’re going to figure out we’re close to citizenship from Liana. Maybe next time they come they’ll just exterminate us. Just like in your old stories.”
Geo raised his hands as the crowd stirred, roiled by Yuli’s words.
“Keeping our progress secret is exactly why we shouldn’t march out toward the city. Don’t you see?” Geo’s eyes had scanned the crowd and settled, unwavering, on me.
“We don’t even know if the stranger was telling the truth,” he continued. “What do we have, the ghost story of a two-faced wanderer trying to impress us for a meal?”
There was silence as everyone thought about that.
I think Castor would have kept quiet the way he always did if Geo had let it go there. But the old man was too intent upon driving his point home.
“A wanderer. A woman whose inner machine is so damaged it’s a burden to look at her. Should we put our goals, our very existence, at jeopardy because of her random fantasies?”
“Enough,” Castor barked, an explosion of amplified air. The silence that followed made the crackle of the torches come to life. I thought Mari would cry. Even Geo started, arms tense in front of him.
“Enough,” he said again. Then he sucked in a long breath to squeeze out each word; Castor had a lot to say. “I’ve listened to your falseness too long. You talk about citizens as if they’re the most fearful of all men. But it’s people like you who are the monsters. You kill us at birth because we’re not like you. You call it mercy. You shun those of us lucky enough to survive or come back to life in the jungle, and you call us wanderers as if it was our choice. I know this woman of whom you speak. This woman that you—” he tossed his snarl at Geo— “have the audacity to call two-faced. Sharan is my friend. She’s bright and funny—not a day has gone by that she hasn’t joked about being of two minds—and all you can see is insipid, deformed flesh. She hates visiting villages. I’m sure she came here at great personal sacrifice, just because she believed she should warn you of danger. And all you can think to do is accuse her of scraping for a handout.”
Each word burst echoing from Castor’s mouth with a physical force. Looking around I saw people cower, cringe, even manage glares of jittering resentment. But no one dared interrupt that percussive barrage.
When Castor was finished he frowned at me, shook his head and left the circle of light.
Geo swept beaded moisture off his face as the villagers slowly overcame their stunned silence. He waited for the building wave of mutters to crest before he raised his hands again.
“Castor’s opinions change nothing. We can’t risk approaching the city or its citizens.”
After the meeting I wandered along the edge of the clearing, the fires behind me casting long black shadows toward the trees. I thought about you, Liana, and tried to imagine your smell on the soft night breeze. But it was gone. Everything about you was gone, had disappeared in an instant. Writing this for you now, I wish I could say I decided without hesitation to follow you to the city that night, as I studied the shifting shadows.
That would be untrue. I was bloated with years of Geo’s stories; I was bloated with fear.
Another long shadow jostled toward the trees, crossing my own.
“Kuyo, we must speak.”
I didn’t turn to face him. I listened for the hoarse moan of the river below us in the dark.
“Kuyo.”
“I know what you’ll say, Geo.”
“Then you know how special you are. How precious. You’re the closest we’ve ever come to waking the city. Why else do you think I haven’t been visiting the other villages these last several months? But you aren’t ready. With luck, your children will be. Not you. If you go to the city now you’ll alert them of our existence, how close we’ve come. You’ll bring destruction on us.”
I could feel the warmth of his body at my back. He practically whispered.
“Do you know how old I am? I was trying to figure it out a few days ago. Definitely over three hundred. Substantially over, I think. Do you know what it’s been like, skulking in this dirty jungle all those years? Barely surviving? I was the ruler of our city, Kuyo, once. I lost my power, I lost my pride. I lost the ability to communicate with my own inner machine. For a time I lost my mind, even my will to live. Imagine it. Working all these years, building a race able to return. To bring about justice on the men who destroyed me. I can’t allow you to ruin it.” He touched my shoulder, hand like brittle paper.
I finally turned. Dark pools of shadow tore and dissembled his face.
“If Liana is alive, Geo, I’ll find her and bring her back. If she isn’t, I’ll avenge her.”
It was all bravado. I’m sure my old mentor heard the tightness in my throat. My legs shook as I stepped around him and headed into the light.
I’d half-expected Castor to have wandered blind out into the wilderness after his outburst. But I found him picking at his fingers in the lamplight of my front room, silent as ever.
I took a wicker chair across from him and leaned forward. “I’m sorry, Castor.” He stared at a thumbnail.
“Will you come with me if I follow the citizens?”
He looked up. He bit his lip.
I tossed up my hands and let them slap my knees. “You know, I think I’m starting to get the whole thing between you and Geo,” I said. “I mean I’m starting to see why you want me against him so much, why you want me to defy him. Why you hate him.”
Air huffed through his nostrils and he inspected his thumb again. I suppose he was saying I didn’t understand a thing.
Someone called softly from my door. When I rose to answer, Mari stood there, hesitant, looking as if she would bolt at any moment. Her gaze darted over my shoulder at Castor.
“It’s all right,” I said.
I let her grasp my wrist. “They wanted me to see if you were okay, Mom and Liana’s dad and Geo.”
I nodded.
“Can I talk with you?” she said. I noticed how red her eyes were. When I let her in, her gaze careened around the room, up at the bamboo rafters, along the wall that split my hut in half—everywhere except where Castor sat among my fern mats—and she said, “In private?”
Leaning back, Castor shucked his feet across the mats, raised his arms over his head, and shut his eyes.
“Yeah, come on,” I said, and led your sister into my room.
We sat on my mattress. Mari pulled one leg up by the ankle and folded it in front of her, then the other.
“I miss my little sister, Kuyo.”
The statement hung in the air between us, a palpable thing. And then she started sobbing, shoulders shaking. I reached for her and drew her to my chest. The softness of her body was a revelation to me. Mari didn’t smell like you, but it was nice, in its own way, like young ferns and apples and the river after a storm. She clung to me and sobbed the way I had clung to Geo four days ago. Well, not exactly the same. There was a different kind of desperation in Mari’s grip.
She pushed her cheek into my neck. I found myself stroking the soft hair down her back. She cried like that for a long time, and I held her, listening for the shifting of my friend on his mats in the other room. I imagined him listening for our shifting on my bed, smirking at the bamboo rafters above him.
Sniffling, Mari finally straightened. “The others are worried you’re going to go after her,” she said.
“Isn’t that what you want?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Geoffrey is right.”
When she felt me stiffen she put a hand on my thigh.
“They send you to talk me out of it?”
“No. It wasn’t like that.”
“I’ll make my own decision, Mari. You can go and tell them that.”
“It isn’t like that, Kuyo. I don’t know what we should do. I’m confused.”
She started crying again, her lower lip shuddering as she tried to regain control. I touched her chin. I wiped at the tears streaking her soft skin. I told her things would be okay, as my own heart yawned open like a chasm.
Liana, I want you to understand that I have always been faithful to you. I know there are some in the village who might claim otherwise, maybe even your sister herself, her judgment clouded by grief.
I let Mari stay the night. We talked about you for hours. How your laugh was like the shimmer of beetles’ wings. How stubborn you could be, but how you were usually right about things. How your smile was so insistent; how it took your whole face, then the room, then the village. And then she fell asleep, exhausted.
It seemed cruel to wake her and send her home alone.
Four
I thought about you as Castor and I glided our canoe through the muddy river. Every shade of green, every twisted root or branch coiling out into the river reminded me of how we used to climb along these banks, how we used to swim naked together. It’s funny, sitting here with these memories. Every day I live without you is a paler copy of the day before; as if I am the ghost now, not you. And I only live as fully as the images I can summon. Perhaps that is another reason that I write this. I pretend I’m talking to you because you have become my identity.
Water sprinkled my shoulders as Castor swung his oar to switch sides behind me. The humming birds worrying my sweating forehead fled.
“Thank you for coming with me, Castor.”
Water swirled as he paddled.
I rested my own oar across my lap to swat at the returning birds. “Damn bugs,” I said. “They’re going to eat us alive.” I squirmed to look behind me. “I guess they’re just after me, huh?”
Castor met my gaze.
“It’s all right to talk,” I said. “I’m sure the citizens are far enough ahead of us that they won’t hear you.”
His neck bulged. He barked as softly as he could.
“Couldn’t let you go alone. You’d get yourself killed.”
I snorted.
“Kuyo, you’re oblivious in the jungle. Do you hear the troupe of panthers moving along our left? Do you see the emerald butterflies up ahead? And these little hummers; don’t you realize they’re from the swamp? That they could carry mutation fevers?”
He splashed me with his oar again and I realized he’d done it on purpose. The birds scattered.
“Emerald butterflies,” I said.
He pointed ahead toward the left bank. A branch hung low to the water as if sagging under the weight of the tumors along its gnarled surface. Its foliage dipped into a pool of shadow just above the tan water—except, I realized, it wasn’t foliage at all. Castor steered us to the other side of the river as I watched the swarm of flittering razors fall apart and reassemble around another branch.
“Have you ever seen a swarm cut up an up-ko, or even a man, Kuyo? Villagers are all alike.”
I dipped my oar into the water, but it was impossible to ignore Castor’s booming voice.
“You live in the jungle, but you know nothing about it, so intent are you on the city.”
“I was only trying to thank you for your help.” I swatted the air again. “I guess you’re along because it angers Geo.”
“I’m sorry.”
I let it go, because I knew the meeting the night before still ate at him.
“If we make it to the City, Kuyo, are you prepared to command it?”
Frowning, I turned to him again. “What do you mean?”
“I mean what Geo has been preparing you for all these years, with your lessons and your meditation. I mean awakening to your lost inner self, and through it meshing into the city’s levels.”
“What do you know of it?”
“I wasn’t always a wanderer, Kuyo. I was once a boy like you in a village like yours, and Geo often visited to guide me in meditation. But he denounced me before the rite of passage he uses to test and attune potential alignment.”
“Because of your deformity.”
“Because I could align into my inner machine even before his rite of passage. But to Geo’s dismay, I wasn’t connecting with the city at all. There was another system.”
I didn’t understand and told him so.
“City access is a pyramid; the higher the access code inside your cells, the more powerful you are. Geo has been breeding the tribes toward access at the top. But he’s ignored the jungle, which has a similar system of machines inside the cells of every living thing. There aren’t any levels—not, at least like the city. It’s a chaos of interconnected life, constantly mutating, constantly evolving.”
After his booming voice, the silence we slipped through was thick and suffocating. I listened for the climbing panthers he’d said traveled nearby. The humming birds buzzed my head, the canoe creaked, Castor’s oar pushed the water; there was nothing else.
“Why haven’t you said anything about this before?”
“I don’t want Geo to know how much I’ve learned. He barely tolerates me as it is; he would want me dead if he knew what I feel inside. He wants no competition when he masters the city.”
“Geo isn’t like that.”
“You haven’t answered me, Kuyo.”
“About what? Commanding the city?”
“This worries me. Geo didn’t want you to leave, so I can only assume he has reason to believe you’re not ready.”
“What about you? Can you command the forest?”
“I don’t control anything. I’m aware of the connection. Sometimes I just know things, as if by intuition. And so much life has grown out of the system; it’s like having huge blind spots in my vision.”
“Geo talked about that intuition,” I said. “About developing it.”
“It’s the key to everything,” said Castor. “You’re aware of the thinking in your head. But the helix machinery inside every piece of you—you aren’t aware of its constant calculations until an answer suddenly rises to your consciousness. And that’s where the connections to the city can be accessed.”
We were silent again. Until I asked him to help me.
“If I’m going to go against the citizens to find Liana, I’ll need it,” I said.
“I suppose you’re right.”
We must have made an interesting sight for the next two days, drifting along the water, me silent and motionless, legs crossed in the middle of the canoe, while Castor howled and barked, sometimes in apparent randomness, guiding my daydreaming for hours on end.
And it was different than my meditation with Geo. If my mind wandered to thoughts of you, he seemed to read it in my breathing. Geo would have chastised me and bid me fight the distraction. Castor encouraged me to let any distraction flow through my mind, to let the concreteness of such images strengthen my ability to visualize.
“The images in your mind are the river you travel now. Don’t fight them. Let them take you where they want to go.”
By evening of the second day we had lapsed into complete silence. I’d found a place deep inside me and Castor had no reason to speak. That sense of invisible alignment I used to feel had come over me—and with it the sense of expansion, of being bigger than myself. I could imagine Geo in front of me. Close your eyes, Kuyo. What do you see? And once again I saw the entire city and all its influence before me.
But my vision had changed.
I still flew beneath the rippling translucence of the city’s umbrella, still looked down from my flight to the city and the jungle below, out at the desert wilderness beyond the perimeter. But I saw more clearly. I saw that the snarls of rainbow above marked points of weakness, of malfunction, in the city’s protection. I saw the dying lake we approached up the winding river. To either side of it and on the far side of the city unprotected by it, I saw arms of the jungle slithering into the outer reaches of the city, overtaking a vast network of arches and streets. I saw jagged buildings like lines of broken, rotting teeth. I saw the city’s food gardens struggling to produce rancid meat.
Flying through it all, pregnant with power, with the sense I controlled everything in the world, I could almost ignore the dawning knowledge that it was all dying. The circle of protection was shrinking, encroaching on the jungle. The city barely functioned.
And still, the power I felt was unimaginable. My arms were thick; if I could reach far enough, I could probably fix those little snarls of light above me; maybe I could even touch the moon, the broken orbiting stars. And the people below, going about their business in the streets and the markets and the docks of the harbor were little points of light in the firmament of my mind. I could gather them up in my invisible hand and cast them about like the seeds of my own will.
Yes, it’s true. To them you’ll be something like a god. Those are the souls below your own access level.
It was Geo. I saw him by the dark yellow flicker of his oil lamp, sitting cross-legged in his den. Those five lines deepened between rough brows; I couldn’t tell if he was scowling or grinning.
You woke me, he said, looking directly into my eyes.
I’m sorry.
Oh, no. It’s a welcome surprise. How did you find this place without me?
I didn’t answer, but he saw Castor in my thoughts. It had been a grin; I recognized it as it disappeared.
Kuyo. Listen carefully. I know Castor is your friend. But he’s dangerous. He would stand in the way of everything you want. Don’t trust him. His expression, which had turned granite, softened again. I’m coming to help you, my friend. I’ll be there as quickly as I can.
The next morning, the previous day’s silence remained unbroken between Castor and me. We launched the canoe lost in our own thoughts. Maybe he didn’t want to interrupt my trance, or maybe he thought we were closing in on the citizens.
The jungle had grown dim, as if an amber lens interfered with my vision. The sense that I could see the city remained and competed with the world around me. All I had to do was focus a certain way. It was Geo who pointed out to me the blind spots.
You must avoid these, he said. The jungle has overgrown much of what was once pristine.
I don’t care about any of that, I said. Help me find Liana.
The way Castor has helped you? I see it in your eyes, Kuyo, how he’s lied to you from the beginning. He’s using you. He wants to destroy our city.
I didn’t want to hear this about my friend, Liana, and I tried to shut Geo’s broad face from my sight. Our progress in the canoe, the jungle around me, had all become a blur. Vines slithered along the riverbanks. Drooping ferns came apart like emerald butterflies. Ever closer to the city, we slid down the throat of the river, my vision fragmenting into dark sand. I tried to ignore Geo’s broad, grinning face, but it was the world around me that continued to fade.
I tried to focus my mind on you, but even that didn’t work the way I’d expected it to. I expanded with each breath, encompassing the city and its umbrella, holding the tiny lights of the lower citizens in my mouth. I spat them out a few at a time, looking for any thought of you. They tasted like dust, like eternity.
You weren’t there, in any of their minds. My tongue ached for your sweetness, the salty oils of your flesh. I became lost in its absence. I fell through the smear of the jungle around me toward those lights. They grew below me, becoming more recognizable as the distinct personalities of the lower citizens. Until they weren’t lights at all and I fell inside the mind of one of them.
I looked out across the salt slurry of the lake, crumbling white pillars along the marshy edges of the bay. The rest of the citizens sat in the salt and grass of the beach finishing their breakfast. The man whose eyes I used to see the flying craft rocking in the waves—who heard the black gulls for me as they fought over dead fish along the shore—mistook my presence for his captain. He laid open his mind.
We haven’t found it, he said to himself—to me. I saw the pattern of his mind. He led one of many search parties, looking for beings who’d fully integrated themselves with their inner machines. Seeking you, I’d fallen into a man who led a party searching for... alignment.
I wondered if it was me they sought. I didn’t know about you then Liana. I didn’t know how important you were.
I reeled. Images of the shore from different angles splintered around me as I danced in the citizens’ heads, scrambling to lift myself back to the canoe and my blurred jungle.
Geo called to me, holding out his hand. I was too thin, too spread out, to make a fist around his fingers.
I was at the edge of the desert, looking out across petrified trees so ancient they’d begun to crumble, torn by angry tongues of dust.
I was in the city, looking up at the shattered glass and steel of buildings along a dark street wound through with roots and vines, black writhing arms.
The sharp scent of fish and salt water hung around me as waves lapped against the wharfs in the city’s harbors. Splintered light from the umbrella danced along reflecting glass towers that cut the sky.
The canoe rocked wildly as I battered it with knees and elbows, trying to grasp something solid, something real. For a moment I saw Castor look down at me, sweat collecting in one of his eyebrows. The image broke away with sharp pains behind my eyes.
And then I was flying, Liana. Air swirled beneath me, thick as syrup, holding me over the trees and buildings of a market square. I’d never felt so pure and alive. Every breath tingled in my chest.
Control, Geo bellowed. You direct your mind, Kuyo, no one else can.
I don’t know how long I floated, image upon image filling me, possessing me. Geo kept calling to me, directing me. For a time I thought I was back in the forest, swarms of butterflies exploding around me. And then there were climbing panthers sliding blue-black from the shadows above, growling, taloned fingers jumping at my face. Castor bellowed. A sinewy, furred body collided with me and I fell.
Kuyo, said Geo. Listen to me. Kuyo!
“—Kuyo!”
Castor’s voice echoed through the trees.
I was on my back in a nest of ferns. Shadows rippled and broke and reformed as Castor hunkered over me, a knee against my side. His body blocked most of the light from our campfire.
“Kuyo,” Castor said. “Wake up.”
Shadows stirred at the sound of his voice.
Five
Castor helped me sit up and brought his flask to my lips as shadow lapped his shoulder. Tension gathered, as if the darkness would pounce. I heard the chest rumble before my adjusting eyes caught bared fangs bigger than my thumbs.
Water spilled down my chin. I coughed.
“No,” Castor barked. “The boy is mine.”
The panther’s ears flattened at the sound of it. Castor stared at me, unblinking. He took the flask and rested a calming hand on my shoulder as he’d done so many times in the past. When I tensed, he shook his head slowly and gestured toward the fire.
My muscles were stiff as I rose to follow. We hunkered by the fire and I noticed the cuts across my chest and left side. Seeing them made me realize how much they stung.
The panther followed too, and crouched by Castor’s other side. I couldn’t tell how many others there were. At least three across the fire, their shoulders flexed. And I glimpsed motion beyond them in the trees.
I still saw the world through a colored lens. Even with the heat sharp against my face I wondered if I still dreamed. A panther on the other side of the fire leaned forward smoothly, twisting its head, yellow eyes never wavering from mine. Something potent and ancient—far older than Geo—kept me from looking away.
“They smell the city on you,” Castor barked. “So it follows that you’re a threat to their Growth.”
Flames coruscated in the panther’s eyes.
“And when you were struggling, they thought you were trying to kill me. I told them you were in a trance. You came closer to killing yourself, backing into that butterfly swarm.”
Castor fell silent. I forced myself from the panther’s sneer, watched Castor’s neck pouch bulge and deflate. “What are you talking about?” I said.
Nostrils flaring, he only glanced at me. He leaned forward and poked a stick in the fire, launching an explosion of sparks.