The Dragons of the Night, page 40
I could see that Caleb had begun to change. I can’t really say how he looked. He was still as skinny and pale as ever, but most of his hair, which had never been very thick to start with, was gone. He looked a bit like an old man with bulging eyes, or maybe like some long-limbed, aquatic insect.
He was sobbing. A very human sound. He held my son’s limp body in his arms.
I did not have to ask to realize that Jackie was dead, drowned. He was not naked. He was wearing, absurdly, swimming trunks.
‘I’m sorry,’ Caleb said. His voice was that polite little boy’s voice again. ‘I thought I could take him with me. Only those who change and answer the Call can live. That’s what our deacon says. I thought Jackie could come too.’
He waded slowly forward, as if to hand Jackie’s body over to me. I could see then that Caleb’s fingers had mutated into claws, and there was webbing between them, and the sides of his neck expanded and contracted rhythmically. He had rudimentary gills.
Well I didn’t care if he was sorry or what his deacon had said, and if I’d had a gun I would have shot him right there. Instead I hurled the hatchet into his face with all my strength. Hit him too. I think the blade only glanced off, but it left a big gash on his forehead. There was blood all over his face, rather shockingly (to me at least) bright red. Then he was gone, and there was nothing left to do but haul my son’s body out of the water and take him home and bury him.
Not much more to tell. We are living, I have concluded from reading what I could of the books from the old Hutchison place, at the end of days. Other people seem to agree. Once it occurred to me that even if our power was out, it still should be possible for me to turn on the car’s ignition and then use the radio. I searched the dial. I found only one station, on which a certain crazed preacher and wannabe presidential candidate was saying that God had visited his wrath upon us because we had tolerated gay marriage, and Jesus wanted us to kill all the homos. I flicked it off. I certainly didn’t want to spend my last days listing to that asshole. I’d rather come to my own conclusions.
It’s mostly dark now. A darkness has fallen upon the world. I am not sure the sun still rises. My wife Margaret disappeared into the darkness. I heard her screaming, and something like a black trash bag with wings had fastened itself over her face, and after a while she wasn’t screaming anymore, and several more of those things attached themselves to her and carried her off into the air.
I still haven’t entirely figured Caleb out. Was he really my son’s best friend? Was he as much caught up in the inexorable current of events as the rest of us? I gather from my reading, particularly from a celebrated account of the Great Persecution of 1927, that his kind tends toward a heavy, squat build. So was he some kind of hormonally deficient freak, a throwback to the more human part of his ancestry, or was he just too young, the Call forcing him through changes he wasn’t ready for?
There are no answers. It doesn’t matter. I cannot hear the Call now myself, but I have dreams of vast cities under the sea, and of an island emerging into gray daylight amid heaving seas, and of vast potency stirring in the darkness of a tomb.
He is risen.
ABUNDANCES ABOVE
Brian Aldiss
‘This story, “ Abundances” , I wrote for my ninetieth birthday party. I read it to open proceedings.
‘I am industrious. I am working on a story, and a long Russian-type novel, and a polemical account of what happens after a war finishes.
‘This latter book launches with a long letter from my mother, written in August 1945 on the day Peace was declared. It’s magnificent. I’ve treasured it for about seventy years…’
Our brilliant Antarctic afternoon was fading towards evening. A little orchestra was beginning to play below decks.
Vanessa and I stood at the rail of our cruise ship, watching the colours of the ocean and the play of dolphins that followed in our wake. The distant coastline of Punta Arenas glowed faintly, as if drawn in a line by chalk.
‘And just think,’ said Vanessa, ‘we nearly chose a week with Canadian Railways…’
‘Next year,’ I said, frowning, and we laughed.
Yes, it was getting darker. Almost time for us to dress for dinner.
And yet it was not getting really dark. It seemed light was filtering across the waves from a southeasterly direction, with speckles of light growing stronger as we watched. Vanessa and I have always claimed that we were the first people on Earth to see those Celestial Speckles. Or the Beanlets, as they became popularly called when the world changed. We always preferred Celestial Speckles…As Vanessa said, you can’t beat a speckle.
Next morning, the Tuesday, Vanessa was up and dressed before me. I was in the shower when she returned to our cabin,
‘You need to come topside and have a look, Mr Lazibones,’ she said, with controlled excitement. ‘This could be the millennium, and you don’t want to miss it.’
A crowd of passengers in First Class, some only half-dressed, were grouped at the rail, gazing upward.
Those celestial specks had risen—or advanced, should we say?—in the night, putting the stars to shame. They now formed a wide sparkling shawl pouring from the southeastern horizon; the shawl was not especially bright, its edge terminating no more than thirty-five degrees or so above the horizon, above our ship.
Some people in the crowd, knowing of my connections with Euro-Environs, turned to me for an explanation. But I had nothing to offer as yet. ‘Frankly, I’m worried,’ said a portly man. ‘Extremely worried. My blood sugar level is high.’
‘We’re all concerned,’ said Vanessa to him. ‘Why don’t you go away and lie down, sir?’
When we docked at Valparaíso later that day, Vanessa and I cut the cruise short and flew back to our offices in Stockholm. All was calm there; of course, the light cloud could hardly be seen above the Scandinavian horizon—as yet.
But the celestial cloud’s ascent over our planetary skies continued. Bafflingly, it could be clearly seen by day, as well of course as by night. And then small component parts of it—little soft pebbles—began to fall, slowly falling, raining down on earth. To land in streets of capital cities, of ordinary towns and villages, and of parks and gardens and fields. Everywhere.
This was one of the strange matters among all that was strange—that no one became alarmed. Curiously, everyone, whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or atheist, became pleased.
The pieces—well, Radio Sydney, noting their shape, had called them ‘broad beanlets’, and the name stuck. People laughed about it, even those who still lived half-naked in the bush, who had never encountered a broad bean in their lives, even they laughed. Not the entire bean pod, of course, just one of those chubby, shapely beans growing, glowing, inside the pod.
Of course kids everywhere collected them. To glimmer in their pockets. But they did not last. Within an hour, within sixty minutes, the beanlets faded and disappeared, out of energy. Leaving no mess, no shell, no moisture.
And both children and parents were pleased, and often began singing.
This is a big surprise
Falling down from the skies.
They glow throughout the night—
You can hardly close your eyes.
You can hold them, hold them tight
But beanlets take to flight—
Surprise, surprise, surprise…
Governments, whether legal or self-appointed, are serious bodies. Many of them moved to the nearest courtyard, glared up at the skies, from which the appearances of gold came tumbling, and decided that there was no law they could pass which would stop those lawless beanlets falling. Moves to make beanlets illegal failed. Bigwigs resigned. So they returned to their ornate compartments, had a final drink, and resigned with roars of laughter.
Everywhere there was merriment across the revolving globe. Even in serious countries such as Russia, laughter and smiles became legal currency. People embraced unshaven strangers, or themselves, in streets or funeral parlours. Secret police could arrest no one for fits of delight, as the illegal became legal.
So those gleaming fruits fell, and so people began telling each other how miraculous was life, how much to be enjoyed. What fun it was to urinate or defecate. How nice babies were.
No one understood what had happened, where this magical stream in the skies came from—or indeed, what had brought about life itself…Very few folk cared about such questions.
But there were some funny people around whose pleasure lay in research. They were of the type who understood that everything could be comprehended, given due scientific process.
So of course they began by studying where this amazing happiness substance had originated, when it had appeared eventually to encompass all terrestrial skies.
And they found that this arrival point, which Vanessa and I had witnessed, from shipboard, would lead into the ancient heart of the galaxy.
And their researches showed that in the heart and bowels of the galaxy must live many kinds of being, far more venerable than anyone or anything on Earth.
And supposing—this was as yet merely a conjecture—supposing that that old and distant race or congress of flagrant greybeards had discovered that the secret of life, its very meaning, was to be always happy. So they had dispatched this cure through labyrinths of space and time, in order to cheer up terrestrial life a little.
This question is still being explored. Amid joyous laughter.
But as Vanessa says, ‘They have yet to send us the bill…’
THE BEACHCOMBER
Lavie Tidhar
‘In 2007 I was living on a remote island in the South Pacific, and had the chance to visit Fiji for a short while, where I picked up an old history book of the islands, written in the colonial era. It occurred to me it would be fascinating to explore that time through a fantastical lens. In part, I was fascinated by a conversation I had with a modern day kleva (a sort of spiritualist or sorcerer) in Vanuatu, who told me that the islanders traded magical systems with the arriving Europeans. I’d originally planned a sequence of stories following the alternate history of “ Feejee” (as the old spelling has it) but sadly the others never came to be. As always, much of this story is based on real history and features real historical characters—including the Savages.’
Lavie Tidhar is the author of the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize-winning A Man Lies Dreaming, the World Fantasy Award-winning Osama and the critically-acclaimed The Violent Century. His other works include the Bookman Histories trilogy, several novellas, two collections and a forthcoming comics mini-series, Adler. He currently lives in London.
MEMORIES OF WATER
Memory returned in waves; his memory was waves, as high as a ship (was there a ship?) with a white glaring moon like an evil eye staring from above. He remembered masts broken by the green-black sea, luminescence in the water, shouted orders and men rushing to and fro, but he could remember no faces, no names. There had been darting shadows in the sea—then nothing.
He came to on a sandy beach whose white was dazzling; like snow. There were palm trees and a flash of colour as a parrot darted past. He groaned and shifted on the sand. It was hot. He wanted—needed—water.
Could he make some water appear? Why did he think that?
He got to his knees. Slowly, he stood up. Under his feet he could still feel the movement of the sea. A name. He had a name. Somehow that was important. If only he could remember what it was.
He took a halting step, and then another. Palm trees. He thought—coconuts. He could drink the water of the coconut. He walked towards the dark ring of trees that fringed the coast.
At first the group of warriors was much frightened, for they had seen the strange white-coloured man walking through the bush and thought that he must be a kalou-yalo—that is, an ancestor spirit, of which many were still restless and at large—and as there was no bete amongst them, they did not wish to approach him. At length, however, as they observed the man pathetically attempting to climb a coconut tree, their fear lessened. No kalou-yalo would be so undignified, they reasoned, as to attempt something like this, and if he did, surely he would have assumed the shape of a child for the task? And so, cautiously, they approached him, resolved to take him to their chief.
He only saw the men when they were almost within touching distance of him. There were seven of them. Tall, large, with light-brown skin. They were armed with spears. He dropped to his knees. He said, ‘Water,’ and pointed at his mouth, and at the coconuts that remained resolutely out of reach above him.
One of the warriors, with what seemed to be a whale’s tooth hung in a necklace on his chest, said something in a language he didn’t know. He pointed at his mouth again, his throat, and said, ‘Water. Water.’
The warrior with the whale’s tooth, who seemed to be the leader, said something to one of his men, and the man, with laughable ease, darted up the coconut tree. The leader gestured to him to move, and he obeyed. A moment later the first coconut fell down, and then another, and another—and for a short moment it was raining hard, green coconuts.
The warriors did not seem unfriendly. They hadn’t killed him so far, after all. Another of them cut open a coconut with a curious, ancient-looking metal knife, with whorls etched on the blade. The man stripped the green bark from the hard brown shell inside, then made a hole in the soft white head of the shell. Water sprouted out. The warrior handed him the coconut, and he drank.
He was definitely not a kalou-yalo, and their earlier fear was treated now with much amusement. But what a strange man! His skin was the lightest they had ever seen, and his clothes were barbaric and strange and, though torn, still covered much of his body. There were cuts on him, on his forearms and legs, and Kamisese, who had just returned from Tonga and therefore considered himself something of a sailor, suggested the man must have been in a canoe that had capsized. ‘Though those marks on his arms,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘they look like poison marks. Perhaps he and his men were attacked by the sea-folks.’
Sitiveni, who was their leader, nodded. He too had been a sailor, and knew the sea and its people. He said, ‘We must take him to the chief.’
‘Look at him,’ Kamisese said thoughtfully. The white man had finished drinking from one coconut and was greedily sucking the juice from another. ‘He looks like he hadn’t seen land in a while. See the way he stands?’
‘There is something about him…’ Sitiveni said. The white man seemed unaware of their discussion. His attention seemed fixed entirely on drinking. The others looked. They too seemed to sense it. The white man had dark hair and a young, but lined, face. There was a tattoo, of seven concentric circles, on his left arm. Kamisese said, ‘He looks like the sea took him in and then spat him out.’
‘Enough,’ Sitiveni said. He motioned to the white man, who slowly lowered the coconut and looked back at him. He had a steady gaze, and his eyes were a clear-pale blue, strangely disconcerting.
‘Come with us,’ Sitiveni said.
The warrior was gesturing for him to follow, and the spears did the persuasion. They seemed friendly enough; he could only hope they would feed him and perhaps he could send message to…but to who? He was reluctant to put down his coconut. It was the best drink he had ever tasted. The water inside the coconut, warm and slightly sweet, revived him. Again memory returned, this time like the lapping of waves against a shore, small and fleeting. He was on deck and the sky was a dome of clouds and no sun or stars could be seen. The wind was blowing steadily, without letting up, and the ship was being blown off course, towards a dark shape in the distance—an island, he thought now, though that thought was incomplete. And someone calling to him, desperately, shouting, ‘Sebastian! Hold the winds! Sebas—’
Sebastian. That was his name. He laughed suddenly. The warriors looked back at him and he thumped his chest and said, still laughing, ‘Sebastian! Sebastian!’
‘Sepasin,’ their leader said.
Sebastian laughed. He pointed at the leader and said, ‘You?’
The leader seemed to understand. ‘Sitiveni,’ he said, thumping his own chest. They both suddenly grinned at each other.
‘Sitiveni,’ Sebastian said.
He followed the warriors through the jungle. Already he was feeling better, and he knew instinctively that it wasn’t only the drink that had revived him; it was the remembrance of his own name.
Little sunlight penetrated through the thick trees. Here and there, in the distance, he could see the sun falling through a small clearing, but never where they passed. They were following a track, he noticed—a rough one, but nevertheless a path. What manner of people lived here? he wondered. He could see no signs of habitation, no roads but for this hewn path. A sliver of memory returned suddenly, almost overwhelming him: somewhere there was a city chockfull of humanity, with towers that rose high into the air, a city of cascading canals, of brick and metal and glass overlaid on the earth like a vastly complicated puzzle, and he was in a courtyard where statues…
‘Sepasin!’
And suddenly they were out of the bush and in a clearing, and there was a city.
He took a step back and stared.
There was a brook running down from the hills, and as it flowed it bisected a land of ruined grandeur. The buildings were of a blue-tinged metal and shone like the scales of some vast lizard. They were like divers’ helmets, but broken, open to the elements. Alongside the river thatched grass huts rose, and fires burned, raising smoke and the smells of cooking foods, and Sebastian found it momentarily hard to think as his stomach took ascendancy over his mind.
