Monday Story: The Great Tide (2012)

This particular tale was commissioned for SFX Magazine’s Fantasy: The Ultimate Celebration Special Edition. Fantasy rarely satisfies me, especially the “high” version of it, although really my first love was fantasy and not SF. One thing that always plucks me out of these imagined worlds is how clean and fair they are. (Either that, or it’s grim visits grimtown with added torture, but that’s for another post).  I wonder, who grows the food, where does the sewage go, and where are all the dogs? This story draws on that, harking back to an earlier era of fantasy when things weren’t quite so rosy.

“The Great Tide” is set in a secondary world that I’ve been working on for some time. If you’ve read my other, tongue-in-cheek fantasy stories available at the Robot Trading Company, this is different. You may see more of this world. Watch this space.

The Great Tide

The canyon lip curled over the gleaners’ shelf , layered stone petals that shrugged the rain and sun’s glare off and hid the children from the disapproval of Moracs-Gravo. The shelf was open on the side of the canyon, perishing cold in winter to be sure, but tonight their fire kept the chill of autumn away well enough

The gleaner children sat around the fire on a stone floor polished by their feet. Travnic, their gang boss, sat on a keg. It was a worthless gleaning, its hoops corroded right through in places, staves rotten. For all that it made an adequate seat for the old man. The fire burned blue from the salt in the wood. The smoke it gave was briny, redolent of distant waves.

The evening was two hours past sundown. The day’s gleaning had been unrewarding. Another gang boss, a gang boss who was not Travnic, might have punished the children for their poor pickings. Markovitski, the boss of bosses, had already had cause to threaten Travnic. Another boss would have handed his fear on to his gang with a belt and hard words. Not Travnic. He’d looked at the pile of salvage, he’d sighed and he’d scratched at his bald scalp, and he’d said what he always said: “Tomorrow will be a better day.”

As was his custom, he was telling the children a story.

“In a time not so long ago, there lived a farmer,” he said.

“What’s a farmer?” said Lavina.

“Shut up Lavina,” said Rusinka.

“You shut up, Rusinka.”

“A farmer,” said Travnic, “is a man who makes his way in life by growing food, out in the country.”

“They sell it here, to the city,” said Morunik. He was approaching adulthood, and had the surliness that the change from boy to man inflicts. “Where do you think it comes from?”

A spirited argument erupted. Travnic watched his charges bicker with amusement.

“Quiet!” said Tuvacs, the eldest. “Or you’ll all be off to bed now, get it?”

They quietened at Tuvac’s rebuke.

“Now, are you going to let me tell this story or not?” said Travnic.

“Tell!” they said.

“Good.” He continued. “This farmer had a herd of fine dairy cows. He and his wife lived in a glade in a forest and by his house he had a little dairy. He drove his cows to the dairy every morning, and he and his wife milked them, and then he drove them to a different part of the glade so they might enjoy fresh grass. In winter they went into the barn under his house. His wife and he would churn butter and make cheese, and every secondweek…”

Tuvacs had heard the story many times. Travnic’s eyes were as bright as always, but the face they looked out from was more haggard by the day. Just this year, Tuvacs thought, he has aged a great deal.

Travnic told how the farmer’s wife had died, how the farmer had become mad enough with grief to hear the singing of the Wild Tyn in the forest, and how he’d tricked one of the magical creatures into taking the shape of a vixen. The Tyn had been forced to serve him and grant his wishes, until, as is the way such stories, the Tyn had tricked the farmer in its turn.

“…and the farmer toiled and toiled. His herd was never dry of milk, no matter how much he milked, and the Tyn laughed behind her whiskers at him. He could not leave his cows, for they would sicken and die, and so he could not churn his butter or make his cheese or go to market. The milk went bad, he poured it away and carried on milking, for he cared for his animals very much.

“On the eighth day, the Tyn approached him, her tail swishing.

“‘Are you happy master?’ she said slyly.

“The farmer looked at the Tyn. He was tired and he missed his wife and he knew he had been a fool. His eyes were clear of grief for the first time since his wife had died, and he knew what he had to do.

“‘Thank you,’ he said, and the Tyn knew he was not thanking her for the great amount of milk she had magicked up. ‘But now I wish it would all stop,’ he said.

“The Tyn licked her lips nervously, for she was bound to grant his wish, and yet the Tyn Y Dvar do not know how their own magic will turn out, not entirely. ‘Your wish is granted,’ she said.

“The farmer lay down, and then he died.

“Now, the Tyn at first was happy, but then a terrible shame came upon her, for she had broken the Tyn’s gravest law and taken a life, and she knew in her heart that the farmer had been grief struck, and not a bad man, and that made it all the worse. ‘Master! Master!’ it cried. The Tyn Y Dvar leapt around the farmer’s corpse like a mad thing. ‘Master!’”

Travnic was good at the voices, thought Tuvacs. He smiled and rested his head on the rock at his back, and remembered when he was very young.

“The grief of the Tyn addled its mind, and it ran into the forest without changing shape. It was stuck forever as a vixen. And so it screams in horror at what it had done, whenever the moon is out, like tonight.” Travnic sniffed. The moon was behind him as if he had timed it, white and round between the piers of the Mrostovyn bridge, the dark bulk of the Twin behind it. “And that’s why foxes scream at night.”

“There was only one Tyn,” said Lavina doubtfully. “All foxes scream.”

“The others copied it,” Tuvacs said. He patted his little sister’s head. She scowled at him and shrugged his hand away.

“That’s right,” said Travnic. “That’s right.”

“What’s it mean?” asked Mirta.

Travnic shrugged.

Mirta persisted. “All stories mean something.”

“This, and that,” said Travnic. “You have to figure it out for yourself.” He slapped his knees and pushed himself awkwardly to his feet. His left leg was lame. There was a scar down his the thigh there, a gift from an Ocerzerkiyan sabre. He had shown Tuvacs once. “Enough for tonight. We’ve a Great Tide gleaning tomorrow. Off to bed with you.”

The children made noises of disappointment. Drassna and Dravina ran ahead to their pallets, grabbing each other and giggling. The others trudged. It had been a long day, and no one could match the twin’s energy.

Tuvacs looked over his shoulder at his master as he shepherded Lavina towards bed. Travnic stood wheezing gently, hands on the lower part of his back, elbows like sharp wings in the fire’s uncertain glow.

It was then Tuvacs realised he was worried about Travnic.

Tuvacs tucked Lavina in quickly, jamming their blanket under the wooden pallet where they slept.

“Where are you going?” she said. Her eyes reflected the lights of the city, the fire, the moon, the Twin, the stars. Her eyes were huge. He could see a pout form. She didn’t like to be left alone.

“I’ll be back before you go to sleep.”

His sister rolled over. “That’s not fair. I’m cold.”

Tuvacs waited for her to say more, but she did not. He went back to the fire.

If Travnic had noticed Tuvacs’ concern, it did not show. He looked over the canyon to the Moracs side of Moracs-Gravo. The buildings were high there, and graceful. Their shelf was on the Gravo side, the poorer side. It seemed to Tuvacs that Moracs would not tolerate so humble personages as the gleaners, not even at the filthy roots of its cliffs.

“We all know what we’re to do,” said Tuvacs. “I’ll make sure it goes smoothly. We’ll get a good gleaning, I promise.”

“So I don’t have to come down there, Tuvico? Even for such a gleaning?  I suppose I should thank you.” Travnic whistled through his teeth and rubbed his back. “My knees hurt, my back hurts, my war wounds hurt, my eyes are dull, my hands…” he held them up and looked at them. “When I was a boy, there was no one better than me on all the gleaning gangs. You know that? I could dance up and down these cliffs. I was always the first to spot the glimmer of a coin in the mud. And then I was a soldier. Now?” He snorted, half despairing, half amused. “Let me tell you something boy, something true. You never think you’re going to get old.” Travnic looked at the boy, the boy who was as good as his son. He was mildly surprised, as he was every time he realised Tuvacs’ face was level with his own. “You’re nearly a man Tuvico,” he said. “You are a good boy.” He reached out a hand to ruffle Tuvacs’ hair. He hesitated, and did not. He grasped his shoulder instead.

“What’s going to happen to us?” said Tuvacs abruptly.

Travnic’s face became hard, the brittle kind of hard that hides worry. “I don’t know Tuvico, I don’t know.”

*****

Tuvacs was up while it was still dark. Before he roused the girls to make breakfast, Travnic would put him through his paces. “I can’t teach you much boy,” he’d said to Tuvacs years ago. “Nothing but gleaning and swordplay. Best you know how to handle yourself.” And so Tuvacs had had his fencing lessons every day since.

“Keep your guard up boy,” Travnic said. He sat on his keg, his lame leg stretched out in front of him, a pot of small beer in his hand. “Cover your centre, cover! Oh for the eight’s sake.” Travnic put his beer aside on a little shelf in the rock, and pulled himself onto his feet. He moved stiffly over to where Tuvacs was working with his gleaned half-sword. He grabbed the boy’s arm and adjusted its position. Then that grin came onto his face, and he fetched his own old weapon, muffled in rag. He and Tuvacs mock-duelled. Travnic’s leg meant he could not move from the spot, but his command of the blade was such that Tuvacs struggled to land a blow. The blades hit one another with dull rings. Travnic and Tuvacs made little noise, so as not to disturb the others, but they breathed hard, and Tuvacs made little grunts of frustration as his attacks were turned aside.

“You’re getting better,” said Travnic.

Tuvacs was too occupied to reply.

Travnic began to cough, dry barks at first, but soon his chest was heaving. He fought for breath. His guard dropped, and Tuvacs came to help him. Travnic rested his free hand on Tuvacs’ shoulder and bent double.

Travnic heaved and gasped. Each cough sent a spasm down his damaged leg that showed on his face as a sharp grimace. Finally, the coughing eased.

“Are you all right?” asked Tuvacs. And then, somehow, he was on his back with Travnic’s sword at his neck.

Travnic’s off hand grasped his bad leg. To sweep Tuvacs legs out from under him had cost him. “Never let your guard down,” he wheezed.

“That’s not fair, Travnic,” said Tuvacs, and put his hands forward in surrender.

“Who said life was, Tuvico?” Travnic wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. They both pretended they could not see the blood. “Who said it was?”

*****

The others grumbled at being turfed out of their beds before daybreak, but they could not afford to waste daylight on a Great Tide day. The eldest three girls fed them black bread, a tiny portion of salt fish, and a cup of ale close to turning sour.

As they ate, Kostarno came to see Travnic. They spoke away from the children, right at the edge of the shelf. Tuvacs strained his ears and stole glances over to where they spoke. Travnic was one of life’s natural wheel-greasers. Even Markovitski liked Travnic sufficiently to send his enforcer down rather than making Travnic struggle up to see him, and Kostamo was Markovitski’s least unpleasant enforcer.. But business was business, and Kostamo looked sterner than usual.

Travnic raised his hands. Kostamo pointed a finger and said something that made the old man’s smile fade. Tuvacs could not hear it over the chatter of the others. He would not say what it was as he herded the children out to work.

The sky was heavy with high and barren cloud. There was no one about. A few people unwilling or unable to pay the upper bridge tolls had come down the stairs to use the pontoons, which were currently sat in the mud. They were annoyed at crossing the reeking ooze of the canyon floor, and they pushed past the children rudely as they made their way up or down the rickety stairs.

Above, the double city crowded the lips of the canyon. The three ancient Maceriyan bridges crossed the half-mile gap, carrying roads in their cradles of magic-spun metal and stone. The noise above was muted, the rumble of the soil carts and the occasional bark of the dogs that pulled them. Much of the city slept. The purple-dark globe of the Twin glowering menacingly over it all, the moon entrapped in its circle.

Down at the bottom of the canyon it was still dark. Tuvacs set the others to their tasks. The twins were on lookout for fresh drops. The younger three were put to work as spotters, clambering along the side of the canyon. Morunik and Kuhalc were to work as haulers, dragging the heavy stuff out of the muck. Tuvacs , Mirta and Culita were to do light gleaning. That way he could work and keep an eye on the whole gang.

“Everyone ready?” he shouted. The individual calls of the children echoed off the stone, the whistled trade-tongue of the gleaners. “Double call for uptime!” he said. Travnics had paid the tidemaster for a reading of the charts, the money had come out of his own pocket. Travnic lived in fear of losing them to the waters. Tuvacs despaired of his kindness sometimes, but if he were going to pay for an accurate reckoning, said Tuvacs to Travnic, they might as well work until the last moment.

Tuvacs and the girls stepped down into the muck. There had been no tide for a fortnight, so it was at least firm underfoot. On the other side of that particular coin, there was garbage everywhere, the stench of shit and blood and rotting flesh was overpowering. Salt flies buzzed in choking columns. Tuvacs hated them, the way they crawled into his mouth and eyes.

The canyon was Moracs-Gravo’s cesspool. Soil carts worked all day to drag the city’s waste to the edge and tip it in. Servants and poorer citizens would toss all manner of rubbish over the lip. By city writ, more waste was deposited prior to a Great Tide. In three day’s time, when the great tide receded, the canyon would be swept clean. Until then, it remained a dismal miasma.

Tuvacs pulled his scarf up over his nose. Most days he was inured to the stink; not today.

Anything that might fetch a few pennies, they gathered. Most of the city’s refuse was reused before it got down here, taken away to whichever industry needed it. But things were lost, things were thrown away by mistake, or were in too small a quantity to be worth the bother to others. The gleaners were the last filter in a system adept at making use of everything, they would collect every rusty nail, every stick suitable for firewood, every chop bone and oyster shell.

The twins whistled out, warning of drops. Tuvacs moved away from the edge of the canyon and mess rained down from above. His sister called a find, a terse flurry of notes for shells, good for the mortar makers.

Tuvacs ambled along, eyes intent on the mud. He held his breath as he skirted past a slick of exhausted pure; tanner’s refuse. It was the worst kind of filth. He was so intent on avoiding it that he nearly missed the dead man.

He saw the boot first. He’d been a gleaner long enough to know it still had a foot in it. The man was half hidden behind a boulder. His body was a contortion of broken bones, his fine clothes crusted with blood.

Tuvacs looked around him before he went to the man. The gang never worked more than three hundred paces apart. Kuhalc and Morunik were hauling at a beam. Lavina, Rusalka and Tomar were looking over a tangled pile of debris together. He could not see anyone else. There were other gleaners, of course, but they were a long way away. Good, he’d get first look.

The man had been armed. His scabbard was broken under his twisted thigh, empty. There was a dagger on the opposite hip, and this Tuvacs unhooked, scabbard and all, and tucked into his shirt. He patted the corpse, looking for a purse. It was still there.

There were seven thalers in there. His heart hammered. He put it away. He checked himself to make sure his gains were hidden, and then he whistled for help to strip the man.

*****

Bells rang throughout Moracs-Gravo, and the gleaners watched as the tide came in.

It was a wall of water, black and alien, an invader from the distant sea, pulled up abruptly by the combined strength of the Twin and the Moon. There was little to announce it, a swift trickle of moisture, and then it came around the bend in the canyon, a black hill, its glossy surface already choked with debris. It reached the pontoon bridges grounded in the mud, and they rose at its command, groaning as the Great Tide forced them up their anchor ropes.

The wave passed by, and that was that. Water filled the canyon to ten yards below their shelf as if it had always been there. The pontoon bridges floated on it. The gleaner children gasped and cooed at it, rarely did the tide come so fast or so high. Music sounded from around the city. A priest to the Absent Ones began a speech from the centre of the Lubinchac bridge, but his voice was as lost as his gods were, drowned in the roar of humanity emanating from the city.

The festival began.

Travnic and Tuvacs stood apart from the others.

“You are sure no one saw you?” asked Travnic. He hefted the purse in his hand. “If you were seen, gods, they’ll hang you for robbery.”

Tuvacs shook his head. “Not even the gang. I took it before they saw. I didn’t want any trouble over it.”

“You are a good lad, Tuvito. Anyone else might have taken it for themselves.”

“I am not anyone else,” he said. He did not mention the fine dagger or the thaler he’d kept for himself.

“How did he die?”

“A sword thrust to the heart, quick and clean.”

“A duel?”

Tuvacs shrugged. “Maybe. They did not rob him. What will you do? The money will keep Markovitski off your back for a long while.”

Travnic smiled. “No. He may believe you found one coin one day, and maybe even a second the next, but if I put a fresh quarter thaler into the gleaning every day, then he’ll know I’m holding out on him. I have to give it all over at once, or not at all.” He looked out at the canyon. “I’m on my last chance, Tuvito, you know that. One good find like this won’t stop him from taking my license. It’s going to happen soon.”

Tuvacs said nothing. For Travnic, it was enough that he was there.

“You could have kept the money. You should have,” said Travnic.

A procession strode over the nearest bridge, a squadrons of dismounted uhlans at the fore. They were resplendent in their uniforms, flashes of colour that defied the greyness of the day. Two wheeled cages containing an example pair of the Uhlan’s drakkars were pulled behind by dogs. The reptiles were battle mounts, too dangerous to ride in the city.

Travnic looked at the boy.

“I’ve got an idea. Come on.”

*****

The master at arms looked down the full length of his nose at them. His breastplate shone as glorious counterpoint to the contempt on his face.

“You cannot possibly apply.”

“All can apply. It is the day of the Great Tide,” said Travnic.

“Then you almost certainly do not have the fee,” said the master at arms.

“We do,” said Travnic, and deposited two silver thalers  upon the desk.

The master at arms sighed. He had run out of objections.

“Very well,” he said. “Name.”

“Alovo Tuvacs,” said Tuvacs.

“You cannot possible win,” said the master at arms as he wrote Tuvacs’ name. “You would be best spending your stolen money elsewhere.”

“I would not count on that, sir,” said Travnic.

They were given a wooden round with a painted number upon it, and directed through into the training yard of the barracks.

The barrack’s yard was austere. A cloister ran the length of one wall, wooden dummies and weapons racked under it. A large desk had been placed on the training ground’s sand. It was ornately carved and hung with scarlet cloth. An officer sat behind it, two troopers in full uniform either side of him.

“Why bring me here?” asked Tuvacs.

“It’s a way out boy. The better regiments are only open to the likes of us on Great Tide days. The money, the tide, it’s fate, see?”

“What about my sister? Lavina can’t join the army? Travnic, I can’t abandon her.”

“Even on a recruit’s wage you’ll have enough to see her right. Your contract will be bought out by the army, you can buy hers later. Get her to apprentice, or train for service, you’ll have enough to afford that.”

“And the others? What about them?”

Travnic looked away. “I can’t help you all,” he said guiltily.

Tuvacs stopped himself from pressing the point. He knew it was true. If he doubted it, why was he here?

They were called out in pairs, and set to sparring. There were poor boys there and rich, but even the poorest looked askance at ragged Tuvacs and Travnic.

Travnic ignored their disapproval. He tutted and made withering comments as the others fought. Twice he shouted in annoyance. The second time he was told to keep his counsel to himself by the master at arms.

Tuvacs watched them fight in silence, and then it was his turn.

“Forty-four, Alovo Tuvacs to fight twenty-seven, Priyep Donatz Kustarowic,” called the master at arms.

A priyep, thought Tuvacs. Marvellous.

Travnic grabbed both his shoulders and whispered in his ear. “Random draw my old arse! They’ve given you an aristo, Tuvito. He’ll have been training most of his life, they’ll think you’re sure to lose.” He was excited. “But he hasn’t been training with me. These boys are all honour and drill, surprise him.”

He slapped Tuvacs so hard on the back he staggered out of line onto the sand.

The Priyep was in consultation with a man Tuvacs guessed was some kind of instructor. He was a little older than Tuvacs, muscled from good food and hard training. His clothes were worth more than Tuvacs had earned in his entire life.

“Come on then boy!” called the priyep. “Let’s see what gutter scum like you can do.”

“I’m a gleaner,” growled Tuvacs.

A training sword was pressed into his hand. The Priyep had his own, a wooden sword as richly mounted as a king’s blade.

The priyep prowled the sand. Tuvacs took up his stance as he’d learned it from Travnic. He felt ungainly. For the first time, he felt out of place.

The priyep darted forward fast. His wooden blade flashed toward Tuvacs’ head. Without thinking, Tuvacs deflected it, and returned his sword to the position of the fourth guard. His arm was jolted by the impact. He was gripping the hilt too hard. He loosened his hold and bent low on his knees. The priyep laughed.

The priyep attacked several times, testing Tuvacs’ skills. Tuvacs parried them as simply as possible, not wanting to give anything away. A couple of times they fell into a flurry of actions as the priyep redoubled his attacks after the initial parry. Then he started to feint, to slide his blade under Tuvacs own. Tuvacs’ sword was ready in position when the real attack came in.

The priyep was fighting duelling-style, suited to rapiers. Tuvacs was used to Travnic’s war-style, for heavier weapons that favoured edge-blows. To his mind, his was the better suited to the training swords.

The priyep was predictable. He always went for the right. For all his confidence, his attacks varied but little. A low line attack, high sweep to the sixth position, counter parry to the eighth, redouble of the thrust. He kept his distance well, but that was the limit of his ability.

Tuvacs waited until the priyep was panting. A wiser man would have backed off a little, but the priyep’s arrogance had become anger, and it was burning his stamina fast.

The priyep came in. Tuvacs parried the first two blows, and then he switched feet, stepping his right behind his left and rotating his body out of the way, chest high. The priyep’s thrust carried him straight past the gleaner. Tuvacs brought his wooden blade down hard on the other boy’s wrist. The priyep yelped and dropped his sword. Tuvacs ducked low and swept his leg around, knocking the overextended priyep to the ground. He stood over the aristocrat and put his blade to his throat.

“Yield,” he said.

The priyep’s face was a mixture of outrage and pain. He gripped his wrist.

“Yield.”

The priyep hesitated. He swallowed. “I yield.”

Tuvacs tossed his sword away and walked back to Travnic. A murmur of surprise went around the waiting boys and men. They looked at him differently now. What made it special for him, however, was the look of pride on Travnic’s face.

At the end of the day, all those victorious in their bouts were invited to join the regiment.

All except Tuvacs.

*****

That night, Travnic took Tuvacs to a tavern and they got drunk. Many times Tuvacs heard “Dishonourable victory? No such thing!”, accompanied by a long stream of expletives.

As they walked back to the canyon edge through Garo’s festivities, Travnic became introspective.

“I grew up a gleaner, Tuvacs. I thought I’d escaped when I joined the army. At the worst I’d die, but so what? All I wanted was enough for a nice little farm, or a good death, but when I was injured, that all went out of the window. There were few jobs that would accept a lame soldier. I knew nothing but swordplay and gleaning, so I returned whence I’d come, but not abashed! No!” He shouted this loudly at a pair of passers-by, startling them. “I’m proud of what I’ve done. So it didn’t work out quite the way I wanted.” He coughed, not so badly as in the morning. The alcohol made it easier. “But you? Whore-fucking aristocrats! Damn them if they can’t see a good thing in front of them. I…” He stopped and leaned against a wall, sliding down it some way. “I have tried for you son, I have, but there is nothing more to do. I’ll be gone soon. The other masters are not like me. There are some who are kind, but many are not. Don’t let yourself get trapped here.”

“What are you saying?”

“You know what I’m saying. Don’t be like the fox.”

“What fox?” Tuvacs’ head was muzzy with the beer.

“The fox in the story. You know what it means, right?”

Tuvacs shook his head. Travnic groaned.

*****

In the morning, Tuvacs woke his sister very early. He told the others to go to sleep, that they had errands to run for Travnic. He retrieved the dagger and thaler from where he’d hidden it.

He made Lavina wait, and woke Travnic.

“We are going,” said Tuvacs.

Travnic nodded. “It is for the best. Go far, before you are missed. Try for Karsa, the world is changing, and it is beginning there.” He sat and looked at Tuvacs and a mix of emotions played across his face.

“I know what the story means,” said Tuvacs.

“What?”

Now it was his turn to smile. “The fox, remember, or were you too drunk?”

“I remember, Tuvico. I mean, what does it mean?”

“We are like the Tyn, we cannot help but love those that enslave us.”

“And love itself is a kind of slavery. The farmer did it all because he loved his wife, and it made him blind.”

Tuvacs nodded. “Goodbye, father,” the first and final time he had called Travnic so.

He left quickly. It was better for them both that way.

Monday Story: She Said

This is one of my earliest surviving short stories. I have always wanted to be a writer, but I can pinpoint two phases that set me on the path to being one – when I became serious about it in 2000, and when I became really serious about it in 2005.

This story dates from that second, super-serious time, when I decided that as well as trying to write novels, I should also write short stories alongside them. I thought they’d prove a valuable training ground, which is pretty much what everyone says, and they’re right, mostly because you can actually finish a short story in something less than a lifetime, and if it sucks, it’s not too disheartening. “She Said” is an early effort and fairly clunky because of it, so I hope you’ll forgive it its inadequacies.

The story itself was inspired by the Outer Hebrides, particularly the Isle of Lewis where I spent several booze-soaked holidays in the 2000s , fishing and pissing about in boats.

You can buy more of my short fiction at the Robot Trading Company.

She Said

“Let’s go,” he had said one day. “We have to, now. Please. You know we’ll be safe there.”

She had dreaded the moment, knowing what it meant. He’d always wanted to go away from their jobs, their friends, their families; away from civilisation, away from all she knew and loved. He’d bought the cottage years ago. He’d always dreamed of living there, but had never done it, because of her. But now it was his turn. He had an excuse, a real reason to go, and she had no choice but to follow; she was scared.

They sold everything, and left. Far, far north they went, as far away as it was possible to get before the land ran out for good and the cold ocean went on forever. Twelve hours by car, three by boat, another hour again by car. To the isles that fan out from the mainland, far from the sun, far from the warmth; far from everything. Their house was miles from town, high above a sea loch whose steep sides sheered through heather and grey stone to plunge nearly vertically into the cold and ravenous sea.

He was happy there. He loved the solitude, the quiet. He loved the mist rising from the water in the morning, he loved fishing for his own food from his own boat. He enjoyed not working in an office, loved the feel of the open air on his face, no matter what the weather. He enjoyed wresting enough hay from the ground to feed their herd of animals over the first long winter. He loved the never-ending days of summer, the clear skies at night, the changing face of the sea.

She hated the bleakness of the land, the nudity of the earth, the surly, mealy-mouthed locals who were watching their way of life be usurped through the amber tint of a whisky bottle. She hated their prying, their hypocrisy, their lassitude. She hated the frequent rain, the constant wind, the way the temperature rarely broke into double figures. She hated what it did to her body. She hated the silence, the biting insects, the endless nights of winter. She hated the ugly clothes she had to wear and the way they were never dry. She missed the noise. She missed her freedom.

“This is the way to live,” he’d say, his smile broad and satisfied as they ate. She’d rarely respond for fear he’d see the lie. She never had the appetite for the fish before her. Soon she stopped replying altogether, he was blind to her suffering.

But still she stayed. She never went back to the city. She knew he was right. The crackling picture on the television brought the news of slow defeat. The broadcasts were optimistic, but he could see the patterns, and so could she, she didn’t need him to point them out anymore. Things were coming undone.

Two years passed, years that brought summers of baking heat and winters of endless rain to the south, though the lives of her friends went on as normal despite the little hardships which multiplied, unchecked, like cockroaches. It was not to last.

In the spring of the third year, in Africa, the bird sickness finally took hold, thwarting the measures that had contained it for a decade. Quickly, it blossomed from a seed to a deadly harvest, laying low millions already ravaged by AIDS and TB. And the disease changed, the bodies of the dying incubators for a hundred subtle new strains. One was unstoppable. The healthy began to die. All who were infected died. A state of emergency was declared. Troops panicked, thousands were killed. The UN descended upon the continent. For a time the sickness was contained once more, but not by vaccination or screening. Ruthlessness became the norm. Villages filled up with the dead, towns became ghost-towns, cities became villages.

Travel was circumscribed. Trade faltered, the world economy wavered. Fuel became unaffordable. War broke out in the middle-east, a surgical strike that became inflamed to engulf a region. Half a continent was under arms. America’s empire grew unwillingly, blood being traded like for like with oil.

The weather worsened. Famine exacerbated the sickness. The sea was rising, coastal communities were torn and scattered by storms whose uncommon ferocity became commonplace. New Orleans was inundated, never to rise again. Hong Kong was swamped, Shanghai began to sink. The monsoons failed in India.

Life became harder on the islands, they began to grow much of their own food, where it would grow; they had no money to buy the goods in the shops. The winds grew stronger, the seasons more erratic. Still he came in from the fields and sea so happy, proven, secure. He began to work together with others, some new like them, fleeing before the crisis; many others who were returning. The withered stumps of ancient family trees flowered again as families from the mainland crammed into the long, grey houses of neglected relatives. She had friends now, of a kind, but she could not engage with their flinty pragmatism, their grim joy.

The economy of the world reeled. Martial law was declared in China, flocks of birds were gassed, whole cities razed at the first sign of the sickness, the gun became the only arbiter of any argument, and all arguments concerned infection. In Russia, impoverished citizens fell by the score. Europe braced itself, Asia suffered. Africa died.

A wave of millennial madness washed the island; on Sundays, the churches were full.

It had come at last, the ’flu, crossing the English Channel eighteen months after she had followed him to the islands; just as the scientists had predicted it eventually would, just as the politicians had said it wouldn’t. It spread from the east, breaking in waves of death over the few barriers the governments of Europe could muster. New and potent vaccinations were hastily concocted, only to fail within weeks as the virus changed again and again. Sometimes it was quicker than at others, sometimes slower, but almost always fatal. Society began to break down. A third of the world’s people had perished. Isolation was the only real defence.

The trips to the supermarket in town stopped altogether, there was little point, its shelves were empty. If they went anywhere, they went by boat under sail and oar. The electricity supply became intermittent, to finally cease a few weeks after the television went off air. Elsewhere, anarchy reigned.

“We’re stockpiling refrigerators at the school, we’ll use that as a food distribution centre, there’s enough energy for that,” he explained happily. “In a few years we’ll be able to rig up more wind turbines. We’ll just have to make do with oil lamps until then.” It was his latest project, power. He was active in the islands’ ruling council.

All their food now had to be torn from the infertile earth or the fickle waves of the sea. Sometimes they went hungry, but not often. The ancient ways of the islanders had almost gone, but not quite. Old techniques were recalled, old ways re-mastered. It was a hard life, but they were alive. Only the ugly scenes at the docksides and on the waves as refugees were turned away marred their triumphs. Sometimes they were not turned away, though they did not set foot on the shore.

But it worked, that and the culling of birds. The sickness did not come.

“I was right, love. I was right, and we are safe,” he said to her, holding her tight in the cold night. “When this is over, we can make a new world, love, a purer world. A better one.”

He slept soundly, his warm arms clasped tightly about her. She lay there, eyes open, unblinking, listening to the wind howl in from the sea to screech unimpeded over the hard stone and sodden peat of the island. The ancient zinc roof rattled. Sleep did not come, it never did.

She awoke early after a few hours of snatched, grey rest. It was late summer, she knew, though she herself had stopped counting the days long ago, for the room was full of light, the island’s harsh light that pressed down mercilessly through the flat sky for twenty hours of every day. She looked at her husband’s face: bearded now, craggy, all softness burnt from it by the wind and sun. The city worker he had once been was long gone. His cracked hands curled a little, and he smiled as he slept. He looked like a stranger to her. A dull pain passed through her heart.

She rose quietly and went outside. The sun was coming up, low in the east, breaking over the cloddish mountains of the island’s interior. Below pink clouds the sun’s rays coloured the newly ordered fields a subtle copper, and the long, pale grasses of the moors danced like light reflected off gold. The sun struck off the loch, turning the surface of the water into a sheet of hammered silver. Sometimes, like this, she almost found it beautiful.

She squinted against the sun. Upon the mirrored water was a dark shape; a boat. It was coming in to land. Slowly, she picked her way down the steep hillside and then onto the road, walking along crumbling tarmac towards the loch’s small and awkward harbour.

By the time she arrived, the boat was hard to the concrete jetty, built years before for long-gone fish farms. It towered incongruously over the stone piers beside it, their construction identical, only their various states of disrepair hinting that some were centuries older than the others.

The boat was large, almost a ship. How the crew had got the fuel to bring it here she could only guess. Hollow-eyed men cast desperate glances about as they tied up. They knew that they would be driven off if seen. They shook with exhaustion as they spoke to her. They had come from The Netherlands, they said, their voices thick with foreign sounds and unspoken fear. Much of the country wasn’t there anymore. A week-long gale had battered the coast, a storm surge had flooded old lakes and inland seas; a second had followed within months. There were not enough healthy people to rebuild the dykes, all were dead, or fled, to perish elsewhere.

She looked at their faces, pale with stress, dark with stubble. They were too weak and haggard to be a threat, though they would be judged one. They pleaded with her, begging. They could make a life here, contribute. They had skills the islands could use. This one here, an engineer, another, him, a fisherman. Just feed them, if only a little, and they would be strong and productive.

She should raise the alarm, she replied. She should have them chased away, they were afflicted with more than tiredness. She could see that, others would see that. One of the Dutchmen began to cough violently, barking almost, his mouth biting at the air for breath. A concerned man held him up; it could have been his brother, they all could have been his brothers. Dirt and desperation had made them all the same.

It fell silent, but for the lapping of the water and the wind in the heather. A small wave broke over the foundation stones of a new pier. It was difficult work, it had been washed away once by a ferocious squall, but the men were confident it would be done by the winter. They laughed about it.

A cloud passed over the sun. Cold shivered up her spine, it was threatening rain again. She would have to work quickly today; and the next. The work was never done. She looked at her hands, they were filthy, her nails cracked. They had been elegant once.

Somewhere out in the loch, a seal splashed.

She thought of the man she’d seen hanged a week ago, for stealing a sack of oats.

It was almost beautiful there.

“Come in,” she said. “Come in.”

Champion of Mars, out today!

The frankly stunning cover to Champion of Mars was painted by Dominick Saponaro. Visit his website for more examples of his work.

My new book, Champion of Mars, is out in the UK today. I’m excited about this one, as the story the book grew from has always been close to my heart. An epic tale spanning hundreds of centuries, Champion of Mars takes in the near future, the far future, and the times in between.

Here’s what famed SF author Stephen Baxter had to say in his review for SFX:

Kim Stanley Robinson meets Edgar Rice Burroughs. That’s how Guy Haley’s jam-packed sugar-rush of a novel reads, as you dive into its two alternating Martian timelines: one a gritty near-future Mars, reminiscent of Robinson’s mighty Red Mars trilogy, where pioneers seek out native life and struggle with the noble goal of terraforming, and the other a very-far-future Mars so advanced it’s come out the other side and turned into a bronze-age-ish hero society not unlike Burroughs’ Barsoom. The champion of the title is called Yoechakanon, and with his spirit-lover Kaibeli he is trying to save the remnants of mankind from a strange pan-dimensional invasion. But it gradually becomes clear that in fact the champion’s far future is intimately connected to the near future, both through an interweaving of very imaginative era-by-era interpolating episodes, and through mysterious deeper linkages, such as the presence on the young Mars of an enigmatic artificial woman called Cybele …

The whole thing is a marvellous planetary romance which crams in what feels like every Martian trope sf writers have ever dreamed up – and maybe that’s timely, in the year of the Barsoom movie John Carter. In places it strains at the seams, the final wrapping-up is a little rushed, and sometimes Haley’s prose is a touch pulpish, though it’s a tone that actually fits the subject matter very well. But all in all this is a novel with an ambition on the scale of Olympus Mons itself, and it delivers. Recommended.

There are other reviews here and here. You can also read interviews with me about the book (and my other work) at SFX, the Solaris Editor’s Blog, and on I Will Read Books.

And, here’s an extract! This is “The Last War of Tsu Keng”, one of the bridging chapters that, through the course of the book, bring the stories of the far future and the near future closer and closer together.

The Last War of Tsu Keng

Year 15,105 of the Hegemony of Man

 

The ships sang for joy as their pilots approached, eager to be free of their hangar.

The cavernous eyrie of the Royal Dock vibrated with energy, men and sheathed spirits running to and fro, support automata refuelling the machines and loading them with projectiles. The scramble alarm chimed its carillon, a calm exhortation to battle. Light dazzled, caught on a million facets of crystal and metals. The Royal Dock was a wonderful display of the decorative arts; that, and power.

Tsu Keng’s principle eyes were poor at such close quarters. He saw the furthest ships clearly: slender, killing darts a kilometre distant. They would appear distorted to a human’s perception, for Tsu Keng’s field of vision extended all around him; everything nearer to him was a smear of colour and movement.

But he could feel his pilot, the ripple of his approach cutting through the Second World as he walked toward the ship. He walked Tsu Keng’s gangway and presented himself at the ship’s main port. Krashtar Vo came into sharp focus as he came close to Tsu Keng’s near-sight eyes around the door. Behind him floated the spirit form of his companion, Kybele, ethereal against the tumult of preparations for war.

Tsu Keng saw the pilot in both worlds: as he was now, a Martian bred for the rigours of combat space flight – squat, heavy featured, dense bones, thick muscle, internal organs protected by fluid sacs and strengthened by encysted smart gels – and as he was in the Library, a flickering mass of faces, of histories, one laid over the other, a line of personalities stretching back to the dawn of this era. Permissions and activation whispers swarmed from Krashtar Vo, to interface with the ship’s own Second World self. Tsu Keng’s soul was different, monolithic. Not for him the psyche-clouds of the human Martians, or the choirs of the spirits, whose co-operative subminds made up a greater whole. Tsu Keng’s material and psychic self were indivisible. He was made for one purpose, and desirous only to serve that purpose.

Tsu Keng lived to fly, nothing but to fly.

His systems thrummed in anticipation of it.

“Greetings, Tsu Keng.”

“Greetings, Krashtar Vo. Welcome aboard, my pilot.”

Tsu Keng’s door skin developed a seam and rippled apart, and Krashtar Vo stepped inside. The gangway and door deliquesced, and Tsu Keng drew their lead-grey substance back into his larger mass. His door eyes rolled backward, their eyelids closed, and these too retracted into his body. The portal became smooth skin. His epidermal layer shivered, and a pattern of scales rippled, diamond plates lifting sharp edges up and then lying flat as Tsu Keng activated his armour. The atomic structure of his hide interlocked and became rigid, pressurising the liquid and ablative layers below it.

Krashtar Vo’s feet made only a padding sound as he waddled through the ship. He was heavily adapted for his role, and could lead a comfortable life neither upon the surface of Mars nor within a microgravity environment. It was said some of the pilots enjoyed the deep habitats within the atmospheres of the gas giants, but they seldom stayed there long; the call of deep space was too great. A sacrifice, this modification, some of the humans held.

What do they know? Krashtar spoke mind to mind. He had been a pilot only a few years, but already his bond with Tsu Keng was such that they could achieve interface without the aid of machine or spirit. No price is too great for this.

Tsu Keng thought this true. He had no conception that it could be otherwise.

Krashtar Vo gained the command bridge; he slipped into his couch and lay back. Tsu Keng wrapped himself about the pilot. Krashtar Vo’s body was hardened to the perils of slip space, and so required no stasis field, but Tsu Keng held him tight nevertheless.

There was a sensation like a kiss, and their minds ran one into the other. Tsu Keng felt a caress, and the man’s companion departed. They were lovers, it was said, Krashtar Vo and Kybele, and had been through many lifetimes. Unusual, a man and his companion to be actively engaged in an affair of the heart, or so Tsu Keng had been told. This also, Tsu Keng did not truly understand, not even when he and Krashtar Vo were one.

A call echoed through the canyon; one note, long and low, the song of the squadron alpha leader. The other ships responded, and the hangar became a sounding chamber for a harmonious outpouring of emotion.

We are ready, the ships and their pilots thought as one. We will fly.

The cradle arms holding the alpha ship folded back, and the ship dropped from the racks, plummeting to the floor. Gravity engines came alive, and it sped toward the dock mouth and out into sunlight.

Follow, it thought. The beta ships dropped – one, two, three. Then all the ships rained down, like oak leaves in autumn. They twisted around one another, a cacophony of hooting song sounding in both worlds, the electomagnetic spectrum crowded with their delight.

Tsu Keng and his squadron mates jockeyed for position, not breaking formation, not quite. Below them on the floor of the Royal Dock, men and machines moved painfully slowly, as slow as unphased Stone Kin. Tsu Keng and his kin laughed at them, fighting the desire to engage their slip drives there and then.

Not here, not now, said Krashtar Vo. Not safe.

The ships tumbled out of the hangar mouth into the Marrin, great bats leaving their roost. Sunlight turned their grey skins silver, and when they passed through the broad beams of the mirror suns, the scales of their armour sparkled iridescence.

Onward, upward! To war! To war! the alpha sang. Five hundred combat ships obeyed, falling into formation. Their shadows raced up and over the canyon bluffs, drawing excited gestures from onlookers below. In the Second World, companion spirits mobbed the souls of the ships and their pilots, wishing them well, good hunting, come home. Air roared against Tsu Keng’s skin, his sharp prow forcing it aside.

Oh, to be a ship of war! they sang. Oh, to be in flight!

Sky turned from caramel to blue to purple to black, the ship’s song became thin and then vanished into vacuum, heard only now in the Second World.

Stars shone unhindered upon the raiment of infinity. They were not alone. The heavens blazed with shiplight, bright dots moving swiftly, vessels the size of countries diminished by distance to needle-tips. Thousands upon thousands of them filled the sky in long trains, rising from Earth, Venus, and Mars, from the habitats, from the belt, from the moons of the giants, heading away from the Solar system, heading out for the stars and for safety.

The greater part of mankind was in flight.

Out from the warships, past the crescent of Mars, a great light burned, one that appeared foul and wrong to the eyes of the ships, a second sun in place of Jupiter.

The Stone Sun, brighter now than the tear in the sky it would close. The hyper-dimensional object Jupiter was becoming would constrain the Stone Kin within the gravity well of Sul, seal the tear in reality and keep the Stone Kin from infecting the wider universe. Sulian ships swarmed about the transmogrified gas giant, the fruit of Man’s last great labour, working without pause to ignite this second, uncanny star and save mankind.

It was here the Martian ships flew. This is where the Stone Kin concentrated their efforts. The craft of the kin descended to the lower dimensions and assailed the construction fleet daily, for they, like Man, wished to be free. This was but the latest of a thousand skirmishes.

To the fight, my brothers! called the alpha ship. To the battle!

Tsu Keng’s wings unfurled, as did those of his brothers and sisters. Their unity of purpose and mind saw them all drop up from this world, their wings folding them into complex eleven-dimensional geometries where the wills of the pilots could more effectively move them.

You are not here. Krashtar Vo’s inner voice, indistinguishable from Tsu Keng’s own, told him of his place in the universe, convinced him utterly that he belonged somewhere else. You are here.

Concentration was difficult. Things assailed them as they passed the Veil of Worlds into slip space, the infections of the Stone Kin spreading even there.

Screams scarred the higher reality of the Veil as ships succumbed to raking claws and incomprehensible technologies.

A short slip. Tsu Keng knew that he was elsewhere. That was the natural order of it. How could it be otherwise?

The Martian squadron materialised deep in the Jovian subsystem and into the heart of battle. Tsu Keng’s wingmate flew straight into a cloud of debris at near-luminal speed, tumbling into a million pieces. Tsu Keng’s combat wing split, the four remaining ships spiralling in evasive manoeuvres as thousands of anti-collision hardbeams vaporised the debris.

Krashtar Vo looked upon the battle through Tsu Keng’s eyes, his mind comprehending their situation as Tsu Keng bent his own mind to the task of survival. Their battlefield spanned anything up to eight spatial dimensions, only the highest and the second temporal axes safe, unsullied by violence. Combat was conducted at speeds approaching the four-dimensional maximum for objects of their mass. At such velocities, relative position at a distance was impossible to judge, so they fought at close quarters.

A dozen Terran ships fought a desperate fight with four Stone Kin vessels. The Terran ships were near-identical to those of Mars, the same in all but song. Their armour was scarred and their movements panicked. The Stone Kin craft – if they were craft, none had ever been captured, and no crew ever seen – warped and flexed. Their presence was an intrusion into three dimensional space, and their forms were not fixed. It was as if they rotated in their own space, presenting first this aspect of themselves to the lower dimensions, then that, where they could be understood only as disparate parts. The spirits and humans of ordinary spacetime perceived them no more clearly than blind men describing an elephant. Beams of exotic particles erupted unpredictably from their surfaces. Their effusion and potency defied analysis. Eleutheremics could not predict them. They might impact upon a ship with less effect than a ray of moonlight, or they could cut it in two.

The alpha ship severed the fleet’s higher linkages, lest the Stone Kin infiltrate the ship’s cortices. Training, experience, and force of will would determine the outcome of the day.

The Stone Kin shattered two more of the Terran ships to glittering clouds, and bright fire roiled and died in the vacuum. The remaining Terran craft fell back, joining with the Martian fleet. The ships greeted each other with long songs, broadcast on inter-ship ranges, but they were muted. The Terran ships were exhausted and afraid.

Today they could all die. They were poorly matched against the Stone Kin, no matter how many Sulian craft crowded the sky. The Stone Kin’s power was ineffable.

Survival did not matter, not to Tsu Keng. He and his fellow ships found the Terrans’ fear contemptible. To fly, that was all. To fight, that was what was demanded. He had no fear, he would fly, he would fight. Death was immaterial.

The Martian fleet surged forward. They ducked and arced like dolphins as their engines pushed at the fabric of space.

The Stone Kin revolved their incomprehensible bodies to face this new threat. Beams jagged out from them, all targeted unerringly on the alpha craft. Beams of infinite colouring intersected on the space where the alpha swam. Too late, its pilot attempted to exert her will and force the ship elsewhere. Its wings were part unfurled as it was cut into a hundred pieces, fragments of it spinning out and impacting on those following it.

Some of the younger vessels, those with inexperienced pilots, hesitated and swerved, songs vibrating with panic. The rest hurled themselves on, diving through the lattice of beams the warping Stone Kin projected. More ships died in ecstasy, annihilated as they flew.

The Martians had lost thirty ships already.

Krashtar Vo and Tsu Keng moved themself into an attack pattern. They part-deployed their slip wings. Their remaining wingmates spiralled down after them, copying their leader’s action.

Pilot’s and ship’s shared skin prickled as slipshields came online. Krashtar Vo enforced his interpretation of events upon Tsu Keng and the craft jinked madly, moving from location to location without crossing the space in between.

Tsu Keng deployed his cannons and opened fire. Krashtar Vo extended his mind, unique organs in his brain pre-observing an infinity of outcomes. Their joined mind was capable of processing vast amounts of information at once. Self-imposed ignorance was the lever to the imposition of will.

Vo’s mind, pushed to great heights by that of Tsu Keng, observed all possible quantum outcomes exactly simultaneously, not sequentially, preventing any one state of truth being determined before the desired outcome was chosen and enacted.

Not all men could become pilots, just as not all spirits could be ships. The act of forcing one’s will onto an eleven dimensional space required a stupendous act of double-thinking, for they had to be both ignorant and aware they were doing it. Awareness that all possible outcomes existed contaminated the observance of said outcomes, reducing the number of outcomes to one, and crippling the possibility of success. Through denial, they thus preserved the undetermined state of things before the time was ripe for determination to come into effect. At the same time, they saw what they saw; the inevitability. What happened was always the only answer. The pilots of Mars were unshakeable in their conviction that they were right.

They were bred to defy fate.

All truths, however, are subjective.

Together, Tsu Keng and Krashtar Vo observed exactly where the Stone Kin would be, and fired. But the Stone Kin operated outside of time, observing their fire at precisely the same moment, their will undermining the certainty principles of the aggressor.

Even if it was inevitable it would be hit, if the target could force its own interpretation of events onto the firer, then it would miraculously avoid the shot. Always. If the ship could force its own observed interpretations on a target’s, then the opposite would occur – it would always be hit. The target would either always be hit, or always be missed, but never both, as decided by the eleutheremic arguments constructed by the duelling craft, and how well they tricked their opposite number into adopting their point of view.

Combat was a matter not of flight, then, but of sheer will.

For a few brief moments, two observable realities vied with each other for dominance. Only one held true at any one time, but both could be true at different times, and the ships, the Stone Kin and the cannon’s ordnance flickered into and out of existence, describing multiple fractured courses and positions, the universe blurring into a myriad possibilities, time spread like a rainbow. The fabric of reality groaned under the strain.

Probability was wracked by a monstrous contest of wills. Packets of energy exploded or failed ever to have existed about the weaving, poly-possible craft. The ship was, then wasn’t, then was again, its potential ruination hanging on the threads of contested interpretation.

Seventeen thousandths of a second and it was over. Tsu Keng’s fire raked over the body of the Stone Kin. Volleys from his wing mates crisscrossed the thing. For one moment its pulsations stilled and its form solidified into something ugly and squamous.

It imploded, and ceased to be.

The Martian fleet flickered through the space the alien craft had occupied, rolling and singing as they moved from one potentiality to the next. Emboldened, they assailed the remaining three Stone Kin. Many died.

The sky wept tears of light as ships left mankind’s birthplace in their millions, fleeing the tear in the sky. The harsh light of the transformed Jupiter glared at them all as they fled. The Stone Sun was one fight closer to being kindled, the Stone Kin one step closer to being trapped. Earth, Mars, Venus – the ancestral homes of Man – would be entombed with them, but the plague of the Stone Kin would go no further.

Tsu Keng did not care. Tsu Keng flew.

Finally, if you’d like to read the first two chapters, you can do so right here.

Champion of Mars is available at all good bookshops, and off that internet thing.

Monday Story: Outside

Good Mondays, all! Come in, come in.

I’ve made a pledge to myself to get my blog updated on a far more regular basis, so I’m going to try and place something on the site every weekday. Normally that will be some interesting scrap from my journalistic history, but every so often, always on a Monday, I’ve decided to post short stories until I run out of them, and then I might write some more. As I go along, I’ll also be adding them to the  “short story” section of the “fiction” menu up the top there also, so they are easy to find. If you like them, there are some more by me for sale at the Robot Trading Company, for your ebook of choice.

First is “Outside”, a horror tale.  Originally written for our short story group in 2009, “Outside” was eventually rewritten and published in the late, great Colin Harvey’s Wessex-themed anthology Dark Spires in 2010. I very much enjoyed our back and forth email conversation that shepherded this story to its current form, and I was very shocked to hear of his early death in 2011.

Dark Spires is still available from Wizard’s Tower publications as an ebook, for £2.99.

Outside

A man sits in a dark room. He is wearing a heavy coat and two sweaters and fingerless gloves. His hair is lank. His beard is into its second week of growth. His clothes are dirty. The slow whir of a ballpoint pen across paper is the only sound in the room. A bottle of whisky stands, half empty and open, close to hand, its glass is smeared and greasy. The occasional bang from outside or a scrape across the roof makes him look up once or twice. His breath plumes a little quicker in the candlelight, but he does not reach for his gun. Instead, he waits then continues to write, stopping from time to time to rub the biro between his palms, or to blow upon his naked fingertips. Otherwise he is absorbed in his task. This is what he has to say:

“This is hard for me. But I have to do something. Sitting around in the dark, it makes being alone worse. I’ve been here ten days now since it happened. I don’t know what to call it. There’s a lot I don’t know. I doubt anyone will ever read this, but it might help me get things straight if I get it down. If you’re out there, if there’s anyone left after this, perhaps it will help you. If not, it will help me, talking to myself is better than talking to no one at all.

“This is my day. The first thing I do, every day, is to check the seals: the doors, the windows, the chimney, round the soil pipe leading from the toilet in Maisie‘s bathroom into the outside. I found a gap there a week ago. One of the hagfish was trying to get in. I spotted it wriggling about on the floor, but I was lucky. It had not got all the way through. I was able to beat it to death with the shotgun butt. Saving ammunition – that and I did not want a hole in the bathroom floor. I still have standards.” He swigs directly from the bottle, bares his teeth at the burn.

“I think I get ahead of myself. I am not used to writing in longhand. I forget the basics of my trade. Important detail first, then the who, the what, the where. I might redraft this, I might not. I only have two pens, and precious little paper, and I will not find more. I do not want to go outside.

“First: me. I am, or was Joe Stevens. I was a journalist, nothing fancy – the Swinhill Examiner, a local paper, one of the last of a dying breed. In fact, nearly dead. Two months before all this happened it cut its staff and went from daily to weekly; if you know the business, you know what that means. Not enough ads for carpets and second hand caravans to make it pay. Not enough readers interested in school quizzes and bakers making novelty biscuits. We were the last in Wiltshire, but the internet got us in the end, just like it got everyone else, the way the computers got the printers and the layout men before. One man doing ten men’s jobs. Too much, too much.” He stops, he is digressing. He must be concise.

“Secondly, the hagfish are not hagfish. I pray to God they are gone from your world, whoever you might be, as quickly as they came into mine.

“Dead whales. They fall into the ocean and lie there in the deep blackness, slowly rotting, whalefall they call it, fed on by things that never see the light. Hagfish are the most revolting of all; long slimy bodies, rudimentary eyes.

“These things, the things that are eating the world, they look like hagfish so I call them that. Except for the fins… not fins, too primitive.” He pauses to think, waiting for a word. “Cilia, I think, that is the name, near the front, though they do not use these to move, at least, not in the air. Perhaps in their native environment? They are horrible, horrible creatures. They make me shudder to look at them. That one I saw in the bathroom, it must have found a crack in the mortar outside. Maybe the plumber had been a cowboy,” a scratch, a scribble, his sentence is destroyed, unfair, he thinks, unfair. At least he was working. At least he wasn’t on the scrounge. “They only need a tiny hole. The sun and rain on cement will eventually give you that. They have no bones, not any that I have seen, and can flatten themselves out. The ridiculous thing is, tape stops them, it does not have to be strong, it is unfeasibly flimsy, if you think about it.

“I do not like to think about it.

“I plugged the gap with paper and glue and tape after I killed it.

“I can hear them now, wriggling all over the building. I have blocked out the windows with cardboard. I do not think they are aware that I am here, and I want it to remain that way. I cannot abide to look at their black bodies pressing on the glass, the teeth-ringed holes they have for mouths working against the window fittings.

“Most of the windows here are uPVC, with rubber seals, plastic yellow with age. Ten years, that’s how long they last. You’ll get a century from wood. Nothing lasts these days, nothing. If you lock off the vent at the top of the window there are no gaps for them to get in. This place has a flat roof. Nowhere for them to creep between the slates or up under the eaves. It is sealed with tar. It is insane how many holes there are in most houses. Just boxes to hide the dirt we squat on. I know that now.

“It is not a house. Here, where I am now. It is a flat over a shop, strictly three flats over three shops. Maisie, Beryl and Enid I call them, names of aunts, long dead. I’ve knocked holes through into the other two. The flats, I mean, not the shops. I will try and be clear. You would not know I had worked on a paper for all my life before it happened. But my nerves are shot, I am tired and cold and alone and I have not slept for four days. For all I know I am the last man alive. Forgive me.

“I will tell you about the shop. I planned this for a while, from the moment I first saw the hagfish. That’s when I started thinking about it. These places have been empty for months, condemned to make way for the new development, a new development on top of a new development that swept away the town I knew. Nothing lasts, concrete boxes stained with rain and piss. It was brick before, part of the railway workers’ village, torn down on a whim after Beeching did for the railways.  Lonely, empty, vandalised. Only kids came up here before the end, to destroy. They are almost as bad as the hagfish, they deserve each other. You could dig out my reports in the library. I have been writing about it for years, before ASBOs and victimhood for hooligans; when there was work, when there were houses, it wasn’t so bad. It would have only got worse, if it weren’t for them. It makes me so mad, but it really is quite boring. I defy you to read through a whole article without feeling your eyelids droop. Imagine how I felt, then, sitting in council chambers either too hot or too cold, listening to pompous old men waste their breath. Droning on, debating nothing, rubber stamping. But still I wrote about them, for twenty years I did.” He stops, and stares at the paper for a long time. When he starts again, he writes more slowly, his anger filling the pages with mechanical efficiency.

“I thought I would cover Beirut or Africa, but the big break never came. My whole professional life was factory closures, shopping developments, planning meetings, on piss all pay. I wanted to bring the news to the people. I should have done something else. For all that, now I have lived through these interesting times,” he smiles at this employment of his small stock of knowledge. “I am not sure I would have wanted to report on such a story as the end of the world.” He laughs again. It seems ludicrous to him. He bites it back.

“All the buildings round here are empty, and where there are few people, there are fewer of the hagfish. The flat roofs helped me choose, they’re safe, they can’t get in, but the end shop was the deciding factor. It was a food shop, one of those little places, a Happy Shopper type affair, but less grand, if you can believe it. They left all the fridges behind, big things. I snuck in a generator, a quiet one so the hagfish would not notice, and filled them, all while the things came in greater numbers. Until, last week, there were so many, I brought Tara and Michelle here. I had to trick them, they were blind, they insisted to the end that they could not see them. But now…”

He stops, and closes his eyes, and rubs at them, tears threaten. He abandons the sentence, turns a page, and starts again.

“I could live here for a very long time, and never need to go outside. I do not want to go outside. I have broken a hole into the shop from the end flat. I do not go down there often. Not unless I need supplies.

“The other two, a Post Office and a launderette, I go in rarely, then only to make sure the seals are good.

“I have lost my train of thought again. uPVC – all of it except the door at the bottom of the stairs, to the outside, which is wooden. I am almost sure they cannot get round that, but I am taking no chances. All it takes is tape. Michelle did not believe me, neither did Tara, she always agrees with her mother. But it works, none got in, not…”

Another pause. Another page.

“Gaps under the eaves, the airbricks – that took a while to work out, I had to watch the hagfish for three weeks. I think most people would not have taken these things into account, but I did. Builders and surveyors and DIY enthusiasts might know this. Maybe they are alive too. Good luck to them.

“My secret: I saw the things first, three months ago; one or two, drifting through the air, wriggling as if they were swimming in it. Not long after they turned on the Atacama particle accelerator. Maybe that has something to do with it? Sub-atomic particles, gluons and quarks, spinning out so fast. Maybe this shrapnel made a hole between here and where they come from? They can squeeze in through the smallest of holes. Maybe it’s sunspots, or global warming, or a fucking supernova blasting holes in space and time,” he stops. He won’t let his fingers run the pen over the words. They try. He wins, this time. He breathes hard, shuddering, at war with himself. He thinks about a drink. He takes one. “I don’t know. There is a lot I don’t know.” He underlines ‘don’t’.

“What I do know was there was the smell in the air, dry and dusty, a cast to the light, like the green before a storm, only this was different, a bruised purple like old blood. That was after my job went, the day the suits told us, before I saw them, I thought nothing of that light, that smell, until I did. When they came, I thought: Ribbons drifting in the sky. Then I saw what they really were. Like hagfish in the water, tying knots in themselves, tumbling to the ground. I watched them drift toward houses, toward offices. I saw them squirm across the walls then slip inside. They can squeeze in through the smallest of holes.” He realizes he is repeating himself. He re-reads, but does not scratch anything out. “I am sorry. I am tired.

“I did not say anything. No-one else seemed to notice. I did not want them to think me mad. I was a coward, and now it is too late.”

There are sounds, then, outside. Slapping, like rubber soles on concrete. The creatures, he is sure, against the building. Thumping on glass; then something breaking. The man, Joe, lays his pen down. He has another pull of the whisky. He takes up the shotgun leaning against the table. He goes from room to room in Maisie, checking the windows. He climbs through the holes he has smashed through plasterboard and brittle concrete blocks into Beryl and Enid either side. He curses quietly as he bashes his head on the ragged gap to Enid. Each room he enters he finds clear, but this works against him, for each room eliminated increases the chances that the next has been compromised. His hands are sweating by the time he gets to the room where Michelle and Tara lie. It doesn’t feel right to go in, feels like he is trespassing. He does not like what is inside. He does not like to think about it.

There is a lock on the door. He regrets that.

A memory chases itself across his mind when he touches the key: his wife Michelle shouting, her fingers plucking at tape, her hands on the window handle. The gun. A circle of ruin.

He has to be sure. He squeezes his eyes shut before turning the doorknob. There is nothing there, the windows are as he left them, plywood taped over broken panes. He ignores the shapes under the duvet and walks out. The cold keeps the smell to a minimum.

He goes out of Enid’s front door, down the communal stairway, to check the street entrance. Then from room to room in every flat again to check the seals, running his finger round the tape and pressing it down hard. He does this four times, wipes his fingers upon his coat, up, down, up, down, then does it four more times again. He swears as he does so, cursing his hands, they refuse to obey his commands.

Reluctantly he heads to the living room in Beryl. He unpicks the duct tape pinning a square of carpet over the hole he has cut through the floor. He snatches up a torch and shines a weak circle of light into the store below. It picks out no movement. He sits back and sucks in a long breath. He will have to go downstairs. He does not like to think about downstairs. It takes a while for him to be ready.

Later, it might be night, he does not know, he writes again.

“It is the noise. That is what I cannot stand. The endless rustling, I can hear them against the roof, the scrape of their fixed teeth against the tarpaper. But it is not the worst. Today I had to go downstairs. Today I had to go into Michelle and Tara’s room.” He writes over ‘worst’, over and over in the same spot, boring a hole through the paper. It is hard for him to stop. He manages, eventually.

“Today, I had to go downstairs. There were noises outside, then a bang, I had to see. I do not like it.  There is no way to block out the big window. I tried carpet, but it is too heavy and the tape will not hold it. There is nothing between me and them but a sheet of glass. They press against it, writhing like worms. They are so thick it is hard to tell if it is night or day, or if there is still a difference. Seeing them makes the noise worse. It gets into your head and makes your skin crawl. They had damaged the window, there was a spider web of cracks. I do not know how they did it. They are so weak tape stops them!” He underlines tape repeatedly.  “I think they suspect someone is in here. I was careful, I do not think they saw me. Their sight is poor, and they cannot smell me through the glass. But they have a new trick. Through the window, I could hear people, swearing, high-pitched and laughing like boys, then shouting as I began my repairs, then many, many voices, jumbled up into one.” He does not write that Tara’s scream underpinned it all. Thinking of it brings the noise back. He slaps at his temple with the heel of his hand until it goes away. After a time, he writes again. “They did not trick me, and it soon stopped. It cannot be people. Nothing could live out there, nothing but them. They have learned to use our voices. I had better be more vigilant.

“Thankfully, the glass had held. I patched it up with tape, lots of tape, and left quickly. I am not sure it is safe to go back in there. I got all the food I could. The generator is nearly out of petrol in any case. Tonight I will have a little feast. Better be careful I do not gas myself; I blocked the chimney; nowhere for the carbon monoxide to go as I cook. I am not a fool.”

The days pass, he writes little more. His frozen food, cooked on a small camping stove, takes a while to dwindle in the cold, but it goes. All he has left are his cans – canned soup, canned fish, canned fruit. When he eats, he eats them cold. When he does not eat, he drinks. He does not eat often. Every so often he checks the carpet over Enid’s hole leading into the shop. He does not lift it, unsure if the window will have held, unsure if they have got in. He moves slowly, but hurries past the room where Michelle and Tara lie. He keeps his eyes fixed firmly on the carpet. He hates the pattern. He hates the carpets in all three flats. They are all different, but all the same. Old lady carpets of blocky acanthus. Each flat has a spot where an electric fire has discoloured the artificial fibres a sorry yellow. They are flats that in happy times smelt of Sara Lee and pink wafers and grandchildren and shopworn joy, but always underneath it was the stench of piss and lavender and loneliness. He can smell it now.

He rouses himself when he thinks this. He has a theory.

“The door and widows have become numbing to the touch, ice has started to form in the corners of the glass. Whether that is the hagfish or what has happened to the world I do not know. I do not know much, do I? But I do know this: These things are attracted by emotion. I became sure of it the day I saw four wriggling round a crying woman. They looped over one another, like they were fighting. They sniffed around her, over her hair, up her skirt. Disgusting. Then one fixed itself to her face and hung there, pulsing. She did not seem to notice, did not even look like she felt it at all, even as it sucked the life out of her. But I could clearly see her eyes sink, her flesh wither, and she did not know,” he underlines this repeatedly, again wearing the paper thin. “She was a corpse, but she kept on going, brown and creaking, for twenty yards, as if nothing had happened. I could not stop watching, I had to keep looking. I could not do anything. Such power they have, to kill and move the dead! Then she collapsed, only then did others notice she was not breathing.

“There was the man that was angry. Flabby. He had seven on him. His trousers fell off with his fat, and he still he walked. The creatures drifted away. The paramedic said heart attack. He could not see the brown husk they left behind, he could not see what had truly happened. How do they stop people seeing what I see?

“The window, dirty. I counted forty there or so. There was a bear in the window. A child’s room? God knows what they wanted there. I do not like to think about it.

“Perhaps I made a mistake. These are sad flats, death flats. I think the creatures can smell it, that is why they cluster round the windows. Idiot, Joe, fucking idiot.

“Staying warm is getting hard. I had to stuff up the chimneys. They are all gas flues, anyway, and there is no gas now. I did think about ripping one of the fires out and lighting some of the furniture that was left behind. The hagfish do not like fire, but I would have to keep it going all the time, and I would soon run out of wood to burn, and then I would be in danger. So I wear more clothes. There are blankets in the room where Michelle and Tara are, but I do not go in there. I do not like to. My hands are so cold it is hard to grip the pen, and I stink. I would kill for a hot shower, I would. I mean it. I would use my gun.

“It is funny. Look at me, complaining. But maybe my life would have been like this often if I had have got that job in ‘88. My big chance, but I blew it. Too sharp, too pushy. I wanted it once, the adventure. That is what they all say, bringing the news to the people, seeing new places, but I think we can all be honest now,” he laughs at the irony of his statement, “and say that what they really want is the acclaim. All you fucking budding John Simpsons and Orla Guerrins. You just want someone to notice you and kiss your arse, you do not give a fuck about the news. I did. I did. Well, let me tell you, perhaps this will penetrate your thick skulls, blast the celebrity lust from your minds: for most it is going to be £9,000 a year reporting on retarded groundskeepers having a new mower bought for them by the rotary club. For twenty years, and then they fire you and your wife will despise you. How could they do that? Seven days of news. Twenty years of work. All gone, like the engine shops  I remember when you could leave your door unlocked, when the smell of hot oil and steam and unwashed men made ripe with proper labour hung in the air. All gone, all the industry and the hope and the happiness, swept up and thrown out with the rubbish, internet and crummy shopping arcades in its place, selling cheap shit to fat morons hooked on bad TV. Bread and circuses! How could you? They always think they know best, men with fancy degrees and big ideas. Tear down the streets, throw up some flats, shut the factories then fuck off to your Georgian mansions while the rest of us burst with burger fat and despair.” He stops, lest he break his pen. He waits until his fingers unclench themselves.

“My dad, he lived and worked and laughed and died here. What’s there now, where I sat at his knee? A fucking roundabout on a roundabout on a roundabout, a Next squats on our old allotment. And then my job went too, cut along with six days worth of news. Go look for fame, I hope you fucking enjoy it.”

He is angry. His theory begins to dog him. He thinks of how he feels. He does not feel good. He feels guilt. He worries they will smell it. He worries they will guess he is inside. He stops writing, and sleeps.

Later.

“Things have become worse. The voices come more often. They are out there now. They call me to come out. They pretend to be my friends, they pretend to be police, they pretend they want to help me. They are my mother and my father and my poor dear Tara. That nearly had me. I was going to go outside, but I lifted a corner of card and there was nothing out there but them, black on the window. There are more of them now, and they move the faster. They know I am in here. They are excited. I tried to hide, but they have found me. They will not trick me. I will not go outside. I will die in here, but they will not get me.

“Yesterday was Christmas. I set up a few decorations, lit more candles. I tried to sing but it sounded intrusive, wrong, so I stopped. I said a prayer instead, for Michelle and Tara. It would have been Tara’s tenth Christmas. She was looking forward to it so much. I love you. I am sorry.”

“Merry Christmas,” he writes, then writes no more.

The voices call and call again. He screws up his eyes, underneath the babble of voices known and unknown projected by the hagfish, underneath the rising-falling-rising of Tara’s scream, someone shouts, voice amplified. They tell him it will be all right, they tell him to come outside.

He sits, shaking, unsure of what to do. He drains a third-bottle of whisky in three mouthfuls, sets it down amid the other empties cluttering the desk. It was always a problem for him, the drink. Too many long lunches, too many late nights.

The voice comes again, beseeching him.

He makes a decision, picks up his gun, and leaves the room. He goes out of the flat, out of its front door, and down the stairs. The stairwell is dark, the windows, thin glass in steel frames thick with paint, are blocked with tape. Tape on tape on tape. Try as he might, he cannot wipe away the memory of the things outside, no matter what he lays over the glass. He looks at the windows. Like the town, like the developers, like time, he thinks, they can’t wipe away entirely what was there before. The shells of the engine sheds still stand. The street names are the same, will always be the same. There will always be traces. It comforts him, briefly, it comforts him.

He reaches the door. He runs his hand down it, just the once. Today, his hands are his own.

Outside, the door muffled voices cry. He can barely understand them. The other voices have become a roar. The hagfish are agitated. He strains to hear. The new voices call for him to come out, slowly, to leave his gun behind.

Outside, there is a banging on the door.

He reaches out for the handle, his other arm moving without volition, taking the gun away from him to the speckled composite floor.

He stops. It is what they want. Them. Without the gun, without the door, he will be defenceless, nothing to keep their rings of hooked teeth from rasping the flesh from his bones, sucking him dry.

There is a hissing noise, something cracks into the window, it breaks the glass but cannot penetrate the tape.

The tape always stops them.

He steps back, shaking his head, feet tapping one on the other: heel to toe, heel to toe, four times. Four times is the magic number.

The door vibrates to the impact of something against it. Again. The planks he has nailed over it judder. Tape springs free round the edges, letting in small draughts.

They are trying to get in.

He raises the gun, sets the stock to his shoulder, points it at the door.

Outside, they are waiting for him.

Outside, they say, come outside.

He does not want to go outside.

Champions, and knees

Today Champion of Mars is out in the US! Hooray! Americans can buy it here. We Brits and other assorted Euro-types have to wait until May 10th. Oh well. Whet your appetites with the free sample, or head over to Solaris Books for more information.

There are two interviews with me online about it now, one at the Solaris Editor’s Blog, the other at SFX. They’re about the same book, so I do repeat myself a little, but about halfway through they diverge and I talk about Richards and Klein, writing spin-off fiction and other highly captivating subjects. Really, you’ll be captivated.

I’m not doing much at the moment. I had a flappy piece of cartilage removed from my knee last week and so will be out of action for some time. I can’t walk or move about at all. It’s very frustrating, and it’s made me think on how people with real mobility problems must feel. Worst of all, I have had to send Doctor Magnus away to the kennels until I recover enough to walk him. He’s a teenage pain in the backside at the moment, but I was welling up as I booked him in.

So, to take my mind off it, I submitted a short story today (expect to see it here when it is inevitably rejected) and  I’ve put a whole load of reviews up, including one of Lavie Tidhar’s early novella, An Occupation of Angels, where I make some comments on the perils of reviewing books of colleagues and friends. There are many others too, head on up to the drop down menus at the top. All these reviews date from my slightly angrier period (I’m always frigging angry, but I used to be more angry), so you may notice a change in tone to the later ones.

Until later.

Perhaps, a writing group?

Greetings.

A few weeks back I posted on how writing groups are a vital tool in the formation of one’s abilities as a writer. So I’ve been thinking, maybe we’ll do something along those lines here. Are there people among the readers of this blog, occasional or regular, who would like to put up short pieces of fiction, (no longer than 4000 words) for discussion by others? What do you think?

As a test for this, here’s a story by a nice man called Jonathan Peace. He, like I, is writing material for Mantic games. He’s got the writing bug really badly, and seems to be making his way just fine. He’s doing scripts, and has a self-published a book called The Magpie’s Lament.

This also might be very interesting for  Mantic fans. This is a Warpath universe story, and it might well appear on the Mantic website eventually. Both Jonathan and I are involved deeply in defining Mantic’s wargames worlds  (I’ll be spending the tail end of February writing the Kings of War background) and by reading this story, and commenting, you miniature wargamers out there can get an insight into, and get involved in, the creation of a new fantasy and SF property.

Hadors Promise

My comments on the story are below.

A Christmas Story

Why, hello there! (Imagine me sitting in a wingback chair by a roaring fire in a private gentleman’s library – No, not that kind of library! Sheesh – and, upon noticing your presence, closing a huge hardback book. I have a cravat on, and a red smoking jacket. Yes, even one of those tassley hats. Not a fez, the other kind). Tonight I wish to present to you a story. A few years ago, I and a group of  others, primarily Gav Thorpe and Matt Keefe, who often comment on this blog, were in a short story writing group with each other. This was a marvellous band, with other members, but we were the core. The Quota, it was called, and we were to write a short story every month.

Naturally, this never happened. But we managed several over the year and a half the group ran. At Christmastime of 2008, we decided to hold a competition. We each submitted a pair of story titles, then drew them from a hat. Naturally, we were to write a story inspired by this title.

Mine was “Rough Beasts”, and I decided to write a Christmas tale. It is  Christmas again, so what the hey, here it is. Why don’t you read it? I’ve since decided it takes place in Richards & Klein’s world, and one day it will be incorporated into a greater story. It betrays rougher skills than those I possess now, but it stands well on its own. Or perhaps you better be the judge of that.

Good evening, and Merry Christmas.

Rough Beasts

“Mutt! Is I Rattus! You must come, come now. Carry me! They have come, they are here, is Chrissymus!”

Freezing fog cloaked the land of the jenimals and Mutt want nothing more than to stay in his hutch. He’d made it from one of the broken pods that lay outside the centre, dragging it as far as the sea. The jagged edges of it he’d buried in sand, and dug a burrow up and under to come within. He’d dragged blankets and foam from inside the derelict centre and knotted them with clumsy fingers into a mattress that was almost comfortable. On the floor was the remains of wooden goods pallet, studded with bent nails he’d hammered in with a rock when he’d fashioned it into a bed. His body thus held from the freezing floor, Mutt was warm and drowsy. He had a covered pit for his toilet in the farthest corner from his bed, and stacks of food packets close to hand. There was nothing to do and nowhere to go while winter chilled the jenimals’ mean domain, but Mutt did not care. He slept. He woke to eat, he woke to expel his waste. He resented the soft light of the day that strained through the plastic walls, but he knew it would be gone almost as soon as it came. So he waited patiently for the warm times when there would be live food and flowers, as he had waited for them every one of the past five winters. But now, now this racket.

Rattus’ feeble claws scrabbled on the plastic, his voice was shrill, his blurred shadow huge on the opaque walls. Mutt tried to ignore him, but Rattus’ pleas became ever desperate. “Please Mutt, please! Is Chrissymuss” Annoyed, Mutt dragged himself from the warmth of the bed, and went down his burrow. He felt the cold of the frozen ground as he wriggled round the U shape of the tunnel, even that was poor preparation for outside.

He popped out of the entrance, hidden cunning-wise among heaps of garbage, and felt the hairs freeze in his nose. He had a covering of thick fur as he was born, now horribly matted. He held a ragged blanket with a hole chewed in it to make a poncho. This he slipped into quickly, before the shivers set it.

“Rattus, Rattus, what do you want? Why do you come to scrape and bang on my walls like this? Is it the warm time? No, it is not.”

“No! No!” squeaked the tiny Rattus. He hopped from one misformed foot to another with irrepressible excitement, and held a crumpled sheet of paper in his hand. “No, is not warm time. Is better time, is Chrissymus!”

“And what,” asked Mutt wearily, “is Chrissymuss?”

“Is this!” said Rattus, and unrolled the tattered paper. “Is light and warmth and nicenesses and joy! Look! Look!”

“What is that?” asked Mutt.

“Why, is Chrissymuss! See!” Rattus jabbed a crippled finger at the picture on the page. “This – tree! These things, these – children! They are happy and warm. Chrissymuss is happy and warm. Bedgore tell me all about it, ‘fore he die. He say, in old days the peoples in the centre they have Chrissymuss every cold time. He tell me ’bout it. I no believe him, like you. Rattus think it stupid story. But here, see! Picture! Look, special tree and shiny boxes with treasures inside, just like Bedgore say!” Rattus was talking faster and faster. It was all Mutt could do to follow his squeaking.

“It’s just a picture, Rattus,” said Mutt gently. His friend was forever getting excited about all kinds of things. Mutt sat down on the ground, his tail carefully curled between his bottom and the cold. “It’s just a picture.” The ‘children’, strange smooth, nearly hairless things in brightly coloured cloaks looked pink and warm. He was briefly jealous.

“Yes, yes! But is more, is more!” Rattus scrambled onto Mutt’s knee. A few months ago he would have jumped, quick as you like. Not now, his litheness was gone. “I not stupid! I know what Mutt think! But there is more. Bedgore tell me, that at Chrissymuss angels come, come like lights in sky, then soon after them nice-man Jeevus, and he love everybody, and he bring treasures!” Rattus clapped.

“That’s nice Rattus, that’s really nice. But there have been no nice-men here for a very long time.”

“No, no, no!” said Rattus angrily. “This not stupid story! Jeevus even better than nice-men, is special! Bedgore tell me, ‘fore Bedgore die. You stop listen stories, you think you so smart. You see, you see…!” Rattus was momentarily too excited to speak.

“What Rattus, what?” Mutt ran his hand up and down his tiny friend’s back, and this seemed to calm him. He suppressed a deep shiver from the cold, lest Rattus think he recoiled from the hard tumours beneath his fur.

“The lights! Lights in the night and in the sky and everything! Angels come, angels come here. I have seen the lights. Lights! So soon there will be Jeevus too, don’t you see? Now is Mutt stupid, not Rattus! Is Chrissymus!”

“That’s nice Rattus,” said Mutt. It was something he found himself saying often. “But I think I might go back to bed now. It is cold and I am tired and it is a long ways until the warm times come again.”

“Nooooooo!” squeaked Rattus. And “Pleeeeease.” The tiny creature grabbed at Mutt’s poncho with both hands. “Rattus want to see the lights, to see the angels, to meet the Jeevus. But it too far. You Rattus’ friend. Please, you come see the lights. You carry Rattus. Mutt, please!”

Mutt sighed. His broken pod, dragged from outside the centre with so much effort and made nice and warm with more, beckoned to him. He wanted to sleep, to wait out the cold time. But Rattus looked at him pleadingly. The little creature shivered, its oversized head bobbing on its neck pathetically. “Oh, alright then,” he said. He put Rattus down, and stood.

“Hooray!” shouted Rattus, and danced a frenetic little jig. “Hooray! Now you come too and see the lights and the angels and be loved by Jeevus just like Rattus!” Rattus’ one good eye shone like a diamond from behind the bandages on his face. The bandages were cracked and stiff. Mutt resolved to change them as soon as he could. Rattus had never been very good at looking after himself, and had become somewhat less skilled in recent months.

“Very well! Be calm, Rattus, be calm.” Mutt tied a piece of string about his waist, to stop his poncho dragging while they travelled, then he dropped to all fours and placed Rattus on his back.

“You good friend, Mutt,” said Rattus, and patted Mutt lightly between the shoulders. “You very good friend!”

“Where to?”

“The lights, the lights they are over the centre,” and Rattus’ voice went a little quiet, and his excitement burned a little lower. Most of the jenimals did not like to go near the centre, did not like to go near it at all. Most of them, but not Mutt. He was not frightened of it. Well, maybe a little.

“Sure,” said Mutt.

Rattus coughed then. His tiny body shook and heaved with the effort so hard that Mutt feared he would fall. Mutt lifted his head and looked backwards over his shoulder.

“Are you alright Rattus?” asked Mutt. “Why do you not come into my house where it is nice and warm. We can go tomorrow, when the light time comes again.”

Rattus’ breathing was ragged, he swallowed hard. “No, no, Rattus is fine. He shuddered. “We go now, today.”

“Then lie down on my back under my poncho, and keep warm, little friend, and sleep.”

“Yes,” said Rattus weakly and sniffled. “Yes.”

When Rattus was settled, Mutt set off at a gentle trot toward the centre, taking care not to jostle his friend.

Mutt thought the land of the jenimals to be an island, but not in the sense of land surrounded by sea. What he knew of such things were that islands were long ways away from everywhere else, and hard to leave. To the south was the sea, a crust of ice along its shore and floating white fangs beyond. The west was the big blue lake, which never froze no matter how cold it became, and from which all the jenimals knew not to drink. North were hills, low but hard to climb. Mutt had climbed them once in the warm, and seen a carpet of brown, low plants and crescents of white nestling in the shade even at the height of the endless sun. In the plants nested strange birds with heavy feet and accusing eyes. A long way off, he had seen the shine of more sea. East was a scrubby forest of dwarf pines. They looked like the special tree in the picture, but not so perfect. Any jenimal that went that way never came back. Mutt had a dim realisation that there was probably more to the world than the small, bare place at the centre of these things, but for him that was all he knew; life on an island.

Mutt’s house was near the sea to the south, about as far as a jenimal could go from the centre. Mutt said it was because he liked to watch the ice teeth in the cold and chase the birds in the warm. What he did not say that it was far away from the other jenimals, and that he liked to be alone. Rattus lived close by, the only one that did, and only because Mutt was his friend. The centre was too far for his hobbled feet, and would have been were it only over the next dune.

Mutt’s fingers and pads were nearly numb when they reached the centre, for he had no gloves for his hands as he had shoes for his feet. He was glad to take them off the ground and go upright once more. Rattus climbed up to Mutt’s shoulder as his bigger friend stood, and together they took in the centre and its new addition.

Bedgore was the only one any of the jenimals had ever known that had seen the centre when it was alive. While he was above the ground, he had regaled them all with stories of how once the centre had been filled with light and the nice-men who had cared for the jenimals in the warm inside, so warm, even in the long cold. The young pups had sat entranced by Bedgore’s tales. But Mutt was wise enough to know that they weren’t all true. A giant fly that held nice-men in its gut and filled the air with a roar as it flew in the sky? Growling beasts that sat silently when the nice-men did not ride them, but when they did shot shouting across the snow on one long foot? Nonsense! Bedgore had become annoyed by Mutt’s refutations and shown Mutt some of the things he said had borne the nice-men. Mutt was the only jenimal pup brave enough to go with him into the shadows of the walls. But all Mutt saw was rust and wrack and broken garbage as that which cluttered the rest of the jenimals’ island.

One day, according to Begore, when he himself was a pup the nice-men had upped and gone and the jenimals saw them no more, and now no-one went in the centre. Only Begore’s stories reminded the jenimals of those who had been so good to them, and then only Bedgore’s stories told those who came after what had been. And then Bedgore was gone. When he had died, the jenimals became fearful of the centre. They reminded each other that the nice-men had gone, and pointed to the dark streaks above the windows where Bedgore had once said the nice-men had set fires. Why had they set fires? asked the jenimals, and shook, saying the centre could eat fire, and would eat them too. It was a badplace, just like the blue lake.

Fearless Mutt had not cared what the others whispered, and when he was full-grown he had gone within. He wandered here and there, through never-ending halls with no windows that nevertheless glowed bright, and he had become puzzled. Why had the nice-men gone? It made no sense, all was good. There were many shining things of great beauty and mysterious purpose, there were the lights, and things that were warm besides but not fire, just like Bedgor had told. Best of all were the stocks of food, lots of food that Mutt fetched from inside in its shiny packets to give to the jenimals to eat. He had even slept there, next to the warm things.

Then one day, two warm times ago, he had gone deep within and down, far deeper than usual, so that the scents changed from air and wind and tundra to the oily powder of carved rock. He found a place with strange tables and many cages that stank of ancient terrors; of pens that smelt of things that were like jenimals but not; of cases and boxes and shiny metal tanks. On all was a strange symbol: a yellow triangle full of thorns. It loomed huge on doors that would not close, glowered from rusting barrels, hid inside sealed glass boxes. It was so quiet, so cold and dark there, that Mutt could hear nothing but the thudding of his heart. There were shadows and things in jars and he had panicked. He had found himself running out, faster and faster, careening from tables on wheels and trays and chairs. He had not told the others about this, how he had finally found fear. He had not ventured so far inside again, nor did he ever slept there. He had known then for sure that some of Bedgor’s tales about the marvellous nice-men who fed and cared were true, and some were most certainly not.

From the outside now, in the gathering long night of the cold time, Mutt found the centre sad rather than frightening. It was old and cracked, walls breaking slowly in the face of frost and gale, windows the same. Every year it looked a little greyer and a little less white, every year more of its long, long fence turned deep red, every year more of the smaller hutches about the main part fell in. The lights in the windows and on the fence became fewer every month, until now only a handful twinkled. But there was something shiny and new there tonight. By the complex was a tall hutch on long stilts like legs. It sat high up against the luminous evening sky, black and clever with big bright lights that stopped you looking at it for too long.

Nearby, there was a fire, and around the fire sat five jenimals. Three were bigger than Rattus, one of these even bigger than Mutt and he was accounted one of the largest of all jenimals. Two of them were the same as Rattus, and both of these bore signs of the disease that ravaged Mutt’s poor friend.

“Ho, Squeaker! Ho Gnawer! Ho Littleman, Spot and Ladylad!” greeted Rattus. The other jenimals returned his salutation.

“Whassup Rattus?” said Squeaker, one like him. “Are you here to see the angels too? Do you want to meet the Jeevus? He has treasures, like Bedgore said! Like in the centre!”

“See Mutt, see! They know it is Chrissymuss too! Do you believe me now? Do you? Say yes Mutt, says yes!” said Rattus, once more full of his old energy.

“Maybe,” said Mutt. He sat by the fire  on a flat rock, awkwardly arranging a form only just suited to bipedalism. The pleasure he gained from the fire’s warmth was almost unbearable, and he allowed himself a luxurious shiver. “What do you know of what is in the centre, Squeaker? You are all too scared to go in. Only I know. Only I am brave enough to go inside.”

“Mutt say,” said Squeaker sullenly. “Mutt tell of treasures.”

“And how do you know they are treasures?” asked Mutt.

“Is true, Mutt,” said Ladylad, the biggest of the jenimals. “Is true there are angels, Squeaker is sorry for his excitement, he listen to too many of Bedgore’s stories when he a pup, he think too much. I am sorry, for Squeaker’s sake. But angels, I will say no Mutt, no! Listen! We have seen them with our own eyes; two legs, two arms, no tails. They have flat silver faces, and bodies made of metal that is not red, but shines!” Ladylad’s eyes shone too, bright as the angels he described.

“Really?” said Mutt. “Have you seen this too, have you Gnawer, Littleman,and Spot?” The other jenimals nodded enthusiastically.

“They came last night,” said Gnawer.

“They came and they took four jenimals into their hutch!” said Spot. “They touched them and they fell asleep and then they went into hutch into the air with them with the lights.”

“To m-m-m-meet Jeevus in the stable, just like Bedgor said!” said Gnawer.

“You too have heard of Chrissymus too then?” asked Mutt. “I had not myself before my friend Rattus told me.”

“Bedgore not tell you,” said Squeaker angrily. “Because you stopped listen by then.”

“I did,” said Mutt.

“Do not be a-a-a-a-angry!” said Gnawer. “Wait w-w-w-w-with us. We wait where the o-o-o-others waited. Spot saw.”

Spot nodded. “It was here the angels came and took the others, to the stable up there,” he pointed to the hutch. “To see the Jeevus.”

Mutt looked hard at the hutch in the sky. It looked like a hutch, looked like the same shape as his broken pod, only bigger and whole. “No,” he said eventually. “No, we will not wait here. We will go and wait somewhere else. But we will watch.”

Ladylad shrugged and poked at the fire. He looked at Spot and nudged him. “Stay here,” said Spot, “stay with us Rattus. Mutt will see. He can come and meet the Jeevus later. He will see.”

“No,” said Rattus. He pulled a sad face and looked at the floor. “I will go with Mutt, because he is my friend. He always look after Rattus.”

Rattus and Mutt walked away from the camp, Rattus casting longing glances backwards. The other jenimals shouted after them, asked them to stay. Squeaker cried. Spot growled. But Mutt had made up his mind, and they found a camp elsewhere. Mutt, being clever did not light a fire, but dug a hole in a snow bank, snug as you like. He wrapped Rattus in his poncho and they fell asleep.

****

Night fell, the stars shone out bright and hard. Above the ribbons of light that the jenimals thought were their fathers and mothers gone under the ground rippled across the sky, back and forth, back and forth, like waves stroking the beach. Mutt was outside. Mutt was cold, but Mutt had to see. Rattus he left in the snow burrow, his breathing rattled and his chest rose and fell unevenly. Mutt did not want to wake him. He would go out and check and see the Jeevus and then he would get Rattus if it was indeed Chrissymuss.

He did not.

There had been no nice-men at the centre nor anywhere else on the jenimals’ island since before Mutt was born. He had little idea what they had looked like. He only knew that they were tall, and that they had arms and legs and no tails like some of the jenimals. He knew this from the tall doors and the strange clothes he had found on his trips to the centre, three times too big for him. There were fragments of pictures in the piles of burnt things that could be found everywhere in the rooms of many-chairs-and-tables, but none showed a complete nice-man, nor one’s face.

He was sure what he looked at now was a nice-man’s face.

The nice-men-angels walked the night, and they were not nice. They held in their hands stabbing spears of flame. Slowly they turned to face a something, then ‘whoosh!’ out spat a tongue of fire from their hands, and all before them was ashes. The sky was orange, the centre burned.

He had watched them as they had thrown something, a stone that smoked, into the circle of fire. He had heard the jenimals, Spot, Ladylad, Squeaker and the others shout with happiness, and call out. Then they coughed, and they fell, and the not-angels came out of the night and picked up the jenimals’ small bodies in their huge hands and put them in barrels. From his hiding place in the big rocks, Mutt could see, the barrels had the symbol on them, the one from the centre, a yellow triangle with a tangle of thorns within.

Not long later, there were two nice-men come to near his place, and they sat three of their tall, tall body lengths away from him. They had fiddled with something at their necks, and then silver flat faces had come away. Their faces were like those of the children in Rattu’s picture, but heavier, and sterner, and Mutt realised that they too, must be nice men, perhaps of a different breed, like jenimals, as different as he and Rattus, but the same nonetheless. The nice-men watched the centre in its bower of flame as Mutt watched too, unseen, behind them. He was terrified that they would smell him, but they did not. They spoke together. Mutt did not understand much. They talked fast without pauses, and used many words that Mutt did not know, though he was the cleverest of the jenimals. They seemed sad and angry.

‘Howcouldtheydosuchathingisapeveeshunisgainstnature,’ one said. ‘IdunnoIdunno,’ said another. ‘Idunnohowtheygotawaywiththis,’ said the other. ‘Anyriskofcontameenashun?’ said the first. ‘Nono.Firellbrunitallout.’ ‘Iamsorryforthecreechurs,’ said the second. ‘Poorthingsisagainstnature.’ And they gabbled quicker and shook their heads and looked unhappy. Then they put on their silver angel faces, and took their fires and burned the night.

From across the world, Mutt heard jenimal screams.

Mutt was careful. He stayed away from the nice men and out of the bright eyes of the big hutch on long legs. He watched as it came down like a giant kneeling and saw as the nice-men went two at a time inside, each pair carrying a barrel with its tangle of thorns mark between them. There were strange noises from the hutch, and a worrisome smell, and smoke came from the new hutch. None of the jenimals that went into the barrels came out of the hutch again.

Mutt ran south. The nice-men ranged over the jenimal’s territory. He watched them poke their hands into holes and crevices and saw flames lap from hutch and burrow. He saw them go to his half-pod, so laboriously dragged from the centre to be by the sea where he had wanted it. The flames went in, and it lit up like one of the lights in the centre before it sagged and died like ice in the warm time.

Mutt stayed as close to the edge of the jenimal lands as he could. He was very cold, and wanted to sleep, but did not, because he feared the cold death, and because he wanted to see. At one point two nice-men walked towards him, searching, and he thought they could smell him, but they could not. They put things to their faces, and looked across the land as if they watched the ice teeth like Mutt did in the warm time. Mutt stayed behind lumps of rock and ice, and they walked away.

He went back to his snow hole. He was relieved that Rattus was still there. Inside it was dark and he could not see the flames. He was confused, and angry, so he pretended nothing was amiss, and went to sleep.

His dreams were terrible, and for only the second time in his short life did Mutt know fear.

*****

The following day, the nice-men had left and so had their hutch.

“See Rattus,” said Mutt, as he pointed to the wreck of the centre. “All the jenimals have gone.”

Rattus cried, he could smell the burnt fur on the air, the smell of cold meat. “So, so, there is no Chrissymus, there is no nice-man Jeevus? Why would the nice-men come back and hurt, why?”

Mutt put his arm around his friend, and took the picture that Rattus still grasped in his paws, tight as an amulet. “I don’t know, Rattus,” he said, “perhaps there is Chrissymus like in the picture,” he showed the tree and the small nice-men and the treasures to Rattus. “But it is not here.”

Rattus huddled close and hugged Mutt, his tears freezing in Mutt’s fur.

“Do not cry. I promise you. If there is a Chrissymus, come the warm time we will go and find it together.”

“But, but, how where?”

“Through the forest Rattus, east through the trees. We can do it, others that have gone and they have not come back. Maybe they have found it? That will be nice, Rattus, eh?”

Rattus dried his eyes and nodded.

*****

The cold time was long and hard. When the warm time came, Mutt was all alone. He had nearly died, but he had not. He was weak, but he fattened himself up on the birds with the heavy feet and the accusing eyes of the low moor, and ignored their cries of murder.

When he was well and sleek and fat again, and his fur was free of the cold time tangles, he took the bundle that Rattus’ small, dry body rested in, and he went east, into the forest as he had promised his friend.

He never came back to the land of the jenimals. The burnt stones of the centre sat silent through the cold and the rain and the sun and the dark and slowly crumbled away, until there was no sign there had ever been anything there at all.

Champion of Mars

As promised a few days ago, here is a sample of Champion of Mars. I throw it onto your tender mercies at no charge.

Perhaps a little background to the book is in order. Although Champion of Mars is coming out from Solaris, it is set in the same universe as Reality 36. One third of the book is set in 2107, 22 years before the events of Reality 36, at a time when AIs are still commodities to be owned, the Five Crisis is still a raw memory, and the Class Seven has yet to be built. Click on the image to the left for the publisher’s lowdown on the story. You certainly do not need to read Reality 36 to enjoy Champion of Mars. There are none of the same characters in it, and it’s set on a different planet. But if you did read and enjoy Reality 36, there’s some special treats in here for you, including a little more information on the Five Crisis, and some other things that I will keep to myself for now.

The story has a somewhat unusual structure, as it begins as two stories – one set in the near future, the other in the far future – bridged by a series of short stories. What relevance the shorts have on the main plots will become clear as you read the book (at least, I fervently bloody hope so, or I’ve stuffed it up), but the idea is to  give you a rich reading experience covering tens of thousands of years of future Martian history.

As you can guess, the book is inspired to a degree by Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles. Other ingredients in the stew are HP Lovercraft, William Hope Hodgson, H Rider Haggard, and of course, Michael Moorcock, whose work stands over mine like the Colossus of Rhodes. There’s no escaping that.

There’s a lot I want to say about this story, but perhaps we’ll save that for nearer the release date, which is, incidentally, 10th May 2012.

As a taster, here are the first two chapters as a simple word file. Fittingly, the first introduces the titular Champion, Yoechakenon Val Mora and his lover the spirit Kaibeli. In the second you will meet Dr John Holland, an exobiologist on the run from his past, and our hero in the near future segments.

Please bear in mind that as I post these chapters I am still writing the book (indeed, I have yet to write the finale). I have redrafted these chapters four times now, but there’ll doubtless be another pass. Furthermore, as yet they’ve had no editorial input, and no proofing. This means any errors are mine and mine alone, but also that, putting it concisely, the finished product may differ from that seen at this early outing.

Anyway, please let me know what you think! There are comment boards and everything here. Use them with abandon.

Champion of Mars free sample.

Reality 36, a free sample!

The release date of Reality 36 draws ever closer (as does the deadline for the sequel, Omega Point, but that’s a whole other kettle of fishies). After keeping it hidden as a lovely Easter Egg for a week or so, Angry Robot have now moved their handsomely presented sample onto the main page . You can go there if you like to see, or you can read it right here!

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