What could be said to be Golubash’s liver was a vast flock of shaggy horses—not truly horses, but something four-legged and hoofed and tailed that was reasonably like a horse—that ran and snorted on the open prairie beyond the town of Nanut. They were essentially hollow, no organs to speak of, constantly taking in grass and air and soil and fruit and fish and water and purifying it before passing it industriously back into the ecology of Golubash.
Uncle Grel was probably closer to Golubash than any of us. He spent days talking with the tall, three-faced creature the APV still thought of as independent from the river. He even began to hyphenate his sentences, a source of great amusement. We know now that he was learning. About horses, about spores and diffusion, about the life-cycle of a Hyphen, but then we just thought Grel was in love. Grel first thought of it, and secured permission from Golubash, who bent his ponderous head and gave his assent-blessing-encouragement-trepidation-confidence. He began to bring the horses within the walls of Saleeng-Carolz, and let them drink the wine deep, instructing them to hold it close for years on end.
In this way, the rest of the barrels were left free for weapons.
This is the first wine closed up inside the horses of Golubash: 60% Cabernet, 20% Syrah, 15% Tempranillo, 5% Petit Verdot. It is specifically banned by every planet under APV control, and possession is punishable by death. The excuse? Intolerable biological contamination.
This is a wine that swallows light. Its color is deep and opaque, mysterious, almost black, the shadows of closed space. Revel in the dance of plum, almond skin, currant, pomegranate. The musty spike of nutmeg, the rich, buttery brightness of equine blood and the warm, obscene swell of leather. The last of the pre-war wines—your execution in a glass.
2795 Domaine Zhaba, White Tara, Bas-Lequat
Our only white of the evening, the Bas-Lequat is an unusual blend, predominately Chardonnay with sprinklings of Tsuki-Bella and Riesling, pale as the moon where it ripened.
White Tara is the second moon of Avalokitesvara, fully within the orbit of enormous Green Tara. Marubouzu-Débrouillard chose it carefully for their first attack. My mother died there, defending the alder barrels. My sister lost her legs.
Domaine Zhaba had committed the cardinal sin of becoming popular, and that could not be allowed. We were not poor monks on an isolated moon, orbiting planet-bound plebeians. Avalokitesvara has four healthy moons and dwells comfortably in a system of three habitable planets, huge new worlds thirsty for rich things, and nowhere else could wine grapes grow. For a while Barnarders had been eager to have wine from home, but as generations passed and home became Barnard’s System, the wines of Domaine Zhaba were in demand at every table, and we needed no glittering Yuuhi gates to supply them. The APV could and did tax exports, and so we skirted the law as best we could. For ten years before the war began, Domaine Zhaba wines were given out freely, as “personal” gifts, untaxable, untouchable. Then the inspectors descended, and stamped all products with their little Prohibido seal, and, well, one cannot give biohazards as birthday presents.
The whole thing is preposterous. If anything, Earth-origin foodstuffs are the hazards in Barnard’s System. The Hyphens have always been hostile to them; offworld crops give them a kind of indigestion that manifests in earthquakes and thunderstorms. The Marubouzu corporals told us we could not eat or drink the things that grew on our own land, because of possible alien contagion! We could only order approved substances from the benevolent, carbonated bosom of Coquil-Grollë, which is Château Marubouzu-Débrouillard, which is the Asociación de la Pureza del Vino, and anything we liked would be delivered to us all the way from home, with a bow on it.
The lunar winery on White Tara exploded into the night sky at 3:17 a.m. on the first of Julka, 2795. My mother was testing the barrels—no wild ponies on White Tara. Her bones vaporized before she even understood the magnitude of what had happened. The aerial bombing, both lunar and terrestrial, continued past dawn. I huddled in the Bas-Lequat cellar, and even there I could hear the screaming of Golubash, and Julka, and Heeminspr, and poor, gentle Niflamen, as the APV incinerated our world.
Two weeks later, Uncle Grel’s rumblers ignited our first Yuuhi gate.
The color is almost like water, isn’t it? Like tears. A ripple of red pear and butterscotch slides over green herbs and honey-wax. In the low-range you can detect the delicate dust of blueberry pollen, and beneath that, the smallest suggestion of crisp lunar snow, sweet, cold, and vanished.
2807 Domaine Zhaba, Grelport, Hul-Nairob
Did you know, almost a thousand years ago, the wineries in Old France were nearly wiped out? A secret war of soil came close to annihilating the entire apparatus of wine-making in the grand, venerable valleys of the old world. But no blanketing fire was at fault, no shipping dispute. Only a tiny insect: Daktulosphaira Vitifoliae Phylloxera. My namesake. I was named to be the tiny thing that ate at the roots of the broken, ugly, ancient machinery of Marubouzu. I have done my best.
For a while, the French believed that burying a live toad beneath the vines would cure the blight. This was tragically silly, but hence Simone Nanut drew her title: zhaba, old Slovak for toad. We are the mites that brought down gods, and we are the cure, warty and bruised though we may be.
When my uncle Grel was a boy, he went fishing in Golubash. Like a child in a fairy tale, he caught a great green fish, with golden scales, and when he pulled it into his little boat, it spoke to him.
Well, nothing so unusual about that. Golubash can speak as easily from his fish-bodies as from his tall-body. The fish said: “I am lonely-worried-afraid-expectant-in-need-of-comfort-lost-searching-hungry. Help-hold-carry me.”
After the Bas-Lequat attack, Golubash boiled, the vines burned, even Golubash’s tall-body was scorched and blistered—but not broken, not wholly. Vineyards take lifetimes to replace, but Golubash is gentle, and they will return, slowly, surely. So Julka, so Heeminspr, so kind Niflamen. The burnt world will flare gold again. Grel knew this, and he sorrowed that he would never see it. My uncle took one of the great creature’s many hands. He made a promise—we could not hear him then, but you must all now know what he did, the vengeance of Domaine Zhaba.
The Yuuhi gates went one after another. We became terribly inventive—I could still, with my one arm, assemble a rumbler from the junk of this very platform. We tried to avoid Barnard’s Gate; we did not want to cut ourselves off in our need to defend those worlds against marauding vintners with soda-labels on their jump-suits. But in the end, that, too, went blazing into the sky, gold filaments sizzling. We were alone. We didn’t win; we could never win. But we ended interstellar travel for fifty years, until the new ships with internal Yuuhi-drives circumvented the need for the lost gates. And much passes in fifty years, on a dozen worlds, when the mail can’t be delivered. They are not defeated, but they are . . . humbled.
An M-D cruiser trailed me here. I lost her when I used the last gate-pair, but now my cousins will have to blow that gate, or else those soda-sipping bastards will know our methods. No matter. It was worth it, to bring our wines to you, in this place, in this time, finally, to open our stores as a real winery, free of them, free of all.
This is a port-wine, the last of our tastings tonight. The vineyards that bore the Syrah and Grenache in your cups are wonderful, long streaks of soil on the edges of a bridge that spans the Golubash, a thousand kilometers long. There is a city on that bridge, and below it, where a chain of linked docks cross the water. The maps call it Longbridge; we call it Grelport.
Uncle Grel will never come home. He went through Barnard’s Gate just before we detonated—a puff of sparkling red and he was gone. Home, to Earth, to deliver-safeguard-disseminate-help-hold-carry his cargo. A little spore, not much more than a few cells scraped off a blade of clarygrass on Golubash’s back. But it was enough.
Note the luscious ruby-caramel color, the nose of walnut and roasted peach. This is pure Avalokitesvara, unregulated, stored in Golubash’s horses, grown in the
ports floating on his-her-its spinal fluid, rich with the flavors of home. They used to say wine was a living thing—but it was only a figure of speech, a way of describing liquid with changeable qualities. This wine is truly alive, every drop, it has a name, a history, brothers and sisters, blood and lymph. Do not draw away—this should not repulse you. Life, after all, is sweet; lift your glasses, taste the roving currents of sunshine and custard, salt skin and pecan, truffle and caramelized onion. Imagine, with your fingers grazing these fragile stems, Simone Nanut, standing at the threshold of her colonial ship, the Finnish desert stretching out behind her, white and flat, strewn with debris. In her ample arms is that gnarled vine, its roots wrapped with such love. Imagine Sebastién Perdue, tasting a Tsuki-Bella for the first time, on the tongue of his Hipparchan lady. Imagine my Uncle Grel, speeding alone in the dark towards his ancestral home, with a few brief green cells in his hand. Wine is a story, every glass. A history, an elegy. To drink is to hear the story, to spit is to consider it, to hold the bottle close to your chest is to accept it, to let yourself become part of it. Thank you for becoming part of my family’s story.
I will leave you now. My assistant will complete any transactions you wish to initiate. Even in these late days it is vital to stay ahead of them, despite all. They will always have more money, more ships, more bile. Perhaps a day will come when we can toast you in the light, in a grand palace, with the flares of Barnard’s Star glittering in cut crystal goblets. For now, there is the light of the exit hatch, dusty glass tankards, and my wrinkled old hand to my heart.
A price list is posted in the med lab.
And should any of you turn Earthwards in your lovely new ships, take a bottle to the extremely tall young lady-chap-entity living-growing-invading-devouring-putting down roots in the Loire Valley. I think he-she-it would enjoy a family visit.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many thanks to the following:
Sean Wallace and Stephen Segal, my commanding officers at Starfleet Command Prime Books, for assigning me to this mission and laying out the course for me. Also, to Dainis Bisenicks, for making a few course corrections along the way.
Gordon Van Gelder, the Yoda to my Luke Skywalker. Wise he is, in the ways of editing.
Agent Jenny Rappaport, my Ackbar, who shouts “It’s a trap!” when appropriate.
Jordan Hamessley, the Ender Wiggin to my Mazer Rackham, who reviews my battle plans and points out my mistakes. She will destroy us all someday if we’re not careful.
Haris Durani and Rebecca McNulty, my young padawans. The Force is strong in these two.
My Parental Unit, for the dream, and helping me realize it.
The NYC Rebel Alliance—consisting of Christopher M. Cevasco (C-3P0), Douglas E. Cohen (R2-D2), David Barr Kirtley (Chewbacca), Andrea Kail (Leia), and Rob Bland (Han Solo), among others (i.e., the NYCGP Rebel Reserves).
The Quorum, who I turned to when I needed sage advice or assistance: Ellen Datlow, Mike Resnick, Jonathan Strahan, Vaughne Lee Hansen, Ross Lockhart, Kathleen Bellamy, Ty Franck, Steven Silver, and to anyone else I’ve neglected to think of.
And last but not least: the writers who either wrote original stories for this book, or otherwise allowed me to include their stories. For you lot, there’s no comparison.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
John Joseph Adams is the editor of the anthologies Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, Seeds of Change, and The Living Dead. Forthcoming work includes the anthologies By Blood We Live, The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and The Living Dead 2. He is also the assistant editor at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
He has written reviews for Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, and Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, and his non-fiction has also appeared in: Amazing Stories, The Internet Review of Science Fiction, Locus Magazine, Novel & Short Story Writers Market, Science Fiction Weekly, SCI FI Wire, Shimmer, Strange Horizons, Subterranean Magazine, and Writer’s Digest.
He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from The University of Central Florida in December 2000. He currently lives in New Jersey.
PERMISSIONS
“Mazer in Prison” by Orson Scott Card. © 2005 Orson Scott Card. Originally published in Intergalactic Medicine Show, October 2005. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Carthago Delenda Est” by Genevieve Valentine. © 2009 Genevieve Valentine.
“Life-Suspension” by L. E. Modesitt, Jr. © 2009 L. E. Modesitt, Jr.
“Terra-Exulta” by S. L. Gilbow. © 2009 S. L. Gilbow.
“Aftermaths” by Lois McMaster Bujold. © 1986 Lois McMaster Bujold. Originally published in Far Frontiers, Volume V, Spring 1986. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Someone is Stealing the Great Throne Rooms of the Galaxy” by Harry Turtledove. © 2006 Harry Turtledove. Originally published in Space Cadets. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Prisons” by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason. © 1992 Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason. Originally published in Amazing Stories. Reprinted by permission of the authors.
“Different Day” by K. Tempest Bradford. © 2009 K. Tempest Bradford.
“Twilight of the Gods” by John C. Wright. © 2009 John C. Wright.
“Warship” by George R. R. Martin and George Guthridge. © 1979 George R. R. Martin and George Guthridge. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Reprinted by permission of the authors.
“Swanwatch” by Yoon Ha Lee. ©2009 Yoon Ha Lee.
“Spirey and the Queen” by Alastair Reynolds. © 1996 Alastair Reynolds. Originally published in Interzone. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Pardon Our Conquest” by Alan Dean Foster. © 2009 Thranx, Inc.
“Symbiont” by Robert Silverberg. © 1985 Agberg, Ltd. Originally published in Playboy. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Ship Who Returned” by Anne McCaffrey. © 1999 Anne McCaffrey. First appeared in Far Horizons. Reprinted by permission of the author and the Virginia Kidd Agency, Inc.
“My She” by Mary Rosenblum. © 2009 Mary Rosenblum.
“The Shoulders of Giants” by Robert J. Sawyer. © 2000 Robert J. Sawyer. Originally published in Star Colonies. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Culture Archivist” by Jeremiah Tolbert. © 2009 Jeremiah Tolbert.
“The Other Side of Jordan” by Allen Steele. © 2009 Allen M. Steele.
“Like They Always Been Free” by Georgina Li. © 2009 Georgina Li.
“Eskhara” by Trent Hergenrader. © 2009 Trent Hergenrader.
“The One with the Interstellar Group Consciousnesses” by James Alan Gardner. © 2009 James Alan Gardner.
“Golubash, or Wine-Blood-War-Elegy” by Catherynne M. Valente. © 2009 Catherynne M. Valente.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Let me explain the Talus. In short, it’s a loose alliance of the Milky Way’s starfaring races—or at least those who’ve built starbridges—formed to promote diplomacy, trade, and cultural exchange. Sort of a galactic club, so to speak, with humankind as the members who’ve only recently paid their dues.
[2] I’ll explain starbridges, too. They’re a means of getting from one place in the galaxy to another, very fast, by using zero-point energy generators to create artificial wormholes within giant rings. You have to have one at your departure point, though, and another one at your destination, for you to get from here to there. A religious fanatic blew up the first one we humans built in the 47 Ursae Majoris system because he didn’t like aliens. Leave it to a nutjob to screw things up for everyone else.
[3] The hjadd were the first extraterrestrials our people encountered, and also our primary sponsors in the Talus. They’re from a planet in the Rho Coronae Borealis system and look a little like giant tortoises, only standing upright and without shells. Nice folks, albeit a little persnickety. Oh, and they eat marijuana the way we eat oregano. Go figure.
[4] Seriously. There isn’t. I know it’s a c
hildren’s book, and quite old at that, but if you haven’t yet read Green Eggs and Ham, stop reading this story right now and go find a copy. Come back when you’re done. You’ll thank me for it.
[5] I’m told that the sorenta went to all the trouble to do this because they wanted their god to come down from the sky and pay them a visit. Which raises the obvious question: if their god had never visited them before, how did the sorenta know what it looked like? I cannot figure out religion . . .
[6] And let me tell you: that’s a hell of a lot of banjos.
[7] “Hot jupe”: hot Jupiter. An old-time name that spacers still use for jovians that are way too close to their suns. Not nice places to visit. And, yes, we are weird . . . but fun, once you get to know us.
[8] Last footnote, I promise . . . but this is just one example of why war is nearly non-existent within the Talus. Some of the member races are just too damn powerful for anyone to screw around with.
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