COMmand wrapped up its report and transmitted it into the empty space between its reported location and a vague approximation of the location called home, not knowing, or caring, if contact was made.
Copyright © 2010 Steve Rasnic Tem
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Short Story: WONDER HOUSE
by Chris Roberson
Chris Roberson's new tale fits into the same divergent history of the new world that imagined an Aztec and Mandarin supremacy as his earlier Asimov's stories, “Red Hands, Black Hands” (December 2004) and “The Sky Is Large and the Earth Is Small” (July 2007). It takes added inspiration from Gerard Jones's Men of Tomorrow, a book that “makes plain the ways in which Eastern European Jewish immigrants were responsible for the birth of one of the only truly American art forms.” The author's most recent novels include two that were published in 2008—Iron Jaw and Hummingbird (Viking) and The Dragon's Nine Sons (Solaris)—and three from 2009—End of the Century (Pyr), Three Unbroken (Solaris), and Dawn of War II (Games Workshop).
“That's it, I'm quitting the business!”
Yacov Leiber was unconcerned, to say the least. In the twenty years since the two of them had founded Wonder House Publications, his partner Itzhak Blumenfeld had loudly pronounced his resignation from publishing at least once a year, sometimes several times in a single season. While it was possible that this time it would stick, and Wonder House would be left without a publisher, Yacov didn't consider it terribly likely.
“Going to be a milliner like your father, I presume?” he said calmly, stubbing out his cigarette in the tin ashtray on the corner of his desk.
Itzhak glowered across the office at his partner, almost biting through the cigar clenched between his teeth. “I could, you know. You don't think I could sell hats?”
Yacov chuckled, pulling another cigarette from his pocket. “Sure, sure, Itzhak, whatever you say.”
Itzhak stomped back from the door and collapsed in the upholstered chair in the corner. Though he held the title “publisher” and Yacov the title “accountant,” in reality the two were equal partners in Wonder House, co-regents who'd ruled this burgeoning publishing empire since they'd been much younger men. They spent so much time talking over operations in each other's offices that Yacov had once suggested that they could conserve space and the time spent walking up and down the halls if they simply shared a single office. Itzhak had been baffled by the suggestion. “And how would that look?” he said simply, as though that were all that need be said on the subject.
There had been a moment, before the war on Fire Star, when Wonder House looked set to overtake Best Publications as the second largest publisher of popular entertainments in the world, on track perhaps to one day overtake even Silver Star. But with the outbreak of the Second Mexic War, their fortunes had turned, and they gradually began to lose market share. Now they were struggling to hang onto the number three spot, their standing little better than it had been in their first years of operation.
“Why did I ever decide to go into terribles?” Itzhak put his head in his hands and moaned. “I should have listened to my mother and stuck with circulars and advertising supplements.”
It was an accident of history that the three largest publishers of “tenth-tael terribles"—or “popular entertainments,” as Yacov preferred to call them—were all located within less than a kilometer of each other in the city of Yerushalayim. Well, an accident of history that two of them were located there. Wonder House had been founded because the first two were there.
Itzhak and Yacov hadn't even been born when Silver Star and Best first built the tenth-tael terrible from a small sideline in their “legitimate” publishing endeavors into one of the most successful forms of popular entertainment in the world. By the time Yacov and Itzhak had immigrated with their parents to Yisrael after a failed revolution collapsed the Romanian economy, the names of the two major Yisraeli publishers were synonymous with cheaply produced popular entertainments, stories of adventure and mystery, romance and intrigue beneath lurid cover illustrations.
If it had been an accident of history that Silver Star and Best were both in Yerushalayim, though, it was strategy that put Wonder House on the map. Itzhak and Yacov had met when they'd been little more than children in the streets of Yerushalayim, hungry to make a name for themselves in a country that still seemed like a foreign land to them in so many ways. They'd been infants when their parents had come to the shores of Yisrael, but they still felt like outsiders, their Yiddish heavily accented with the tones of Romania.
Growing up in Yisrael, Itzhak and Yacov had been avid readers of tenth-tael terribles, and consumed stories of flying aces, and Vinlander gunslingers, and spies of the Eastern Depot, stories of detection and espionage and intrigue, of dutiful workers and hopping vampires. They knew too well the frustration of the young writers and artists they met in the coffee-houses of Yerushalayim, eager to break into publishing but unable to do so while most of the existing jobs were held by salaried employees who were in no hurry to retire.
The young Yacov had access to the small fortune that his late father had amassed in his tailor's trade, while Itzhak, personable and gregarious, had a large circle of writer and artist friends. They made the acquaintance of a widower whose family operated a paper mill, and a young man who had inherited from his grandfather a struggling printing business. If they could not break into the existing publishing houses, they would just create their own. And so was born Wonder House.
“We could hold another contest,” Yacov suggested, but one look at his partner's expression made clear what Itzhak thought about that. Sometimes their most prolific writers would be hired up by Silver Star or Best, who were not above poaching the competition's talent. But if Wonder House saw its talent pool beginning to dry up, Itzhak would simply announce another contest in the pages of their publications, open to all new writers, with the winning story given the honor of being published—along with a “cash prize” valued considerably below the standard professional rate for writers, of course. It cut costs, but stories by untested writers did little to build sales or shore up the existing readership.
In the early days of Wonder House, their problems had seemed insurmountable, but now Yacov would swap places with his younger self in a heartbeat. What did they have to worry about back then, distribution? Sure, it had been a problem at first, but an alliance with a family from Ella seeking a legitimate front for their smuggling operation provided the solution. In short order, Wonder House was self-distributing, and if mixed among the bundles of tenth-tael terribles were items of a somewhat less-than-legal variety—intoxicants, pornography, and other such contraband—a few bribes in the hand of customs inspectors were usually enough to purchase a blind eye or two, and the trucks and ships that went out on deliveries invariably came back in the end.
If only a few handy bribes were enough to keep the readers coming back.
“Then how about another war title?” Yacov said, head wreathed in grey smoke from the cigarette dangling from his lip. “Sales on Air & Space Stories are still healthy enough, maybe we can float a companion title.”
“Enough with the war titles!” Itzhak crossed his arms over his chest, gnawing on the unlit cigar between his teeth. “I'm sick from the war titles we've already got.”
In the earliest days of Wonder House, war stories had been one of the most popular genres in publishing, and Itzhak and Yacov had been quick to introduce their own contributions to the field. Air Stories was chief among them, filled with the daring exploits of the Imperial Navy of the Air during the days of the First Mexic War, ace squadrons like the Flying Immortals, the Golden Dragons, and the Spirits of the Upper Air, brave aeronauts who faced down the deadly airships of the Mexic Dominion's Eagle Knights. Of course, that was back when it had just been the Mexic War, without any need for the “first.” After the outbreak of the Second Mexic War, Wonder House and its competitors tried to update their war stori
es by bringing their characters and series up to the present day, and transplanting the action from Earth to Fire Star. Wonder House retitled Air Stories to Air & Space Stories, but the contents were the same old potboilers they'd always published, only with the red skies of Fire Star instead of the blue skies over Mexica. As the Second Mexic War continued to grind on, though, audiences seemed to lose interest in stories of glamorous aces who never seemed to get shot down or wounded, especially with the news of the day so often occupied with the casualty reports from the red planet. Families who had lost a son, brother, or father to war were less able to find such stories very glamorous.
“Okay,” Yacov said, taking a drag from his cigarette, “how about another gunslinger title? Sales of Tejas Frontier are pretty solid, and we could probably find room for another one on the stands.”
“No, no,” Itzhak said, “that stuff was tired when we were kids. And don't get me started on exorcism titles again, either. I swear if I never have to read another story about a hopping vampire again in my entire life, it will still be too soon.” He paused, considering. “What about a character title, like Doctor Buckingham?”
Yacov pulled a face. Silver Star had made their name through the “character titles,” popular entertainments that featured the same set of characters in every issue. It was harder—much harder—to manage that kind of operation with freelancers instead of staff writers. Silver Star's Doctor Buckingham, a “white peril” title about a Briton criminal genius who orchestrated a worldwide network of crime and terror like a spider in its web, was a sales blockbuster, and Wonder House would be lucky to have such a success in their stable, but past attempts to launch character titles had been met with little success. Still, if that was the price they had to pay for freelancers, Yacov was more than willing to pay it.
When Itzhak and Yacov first got in the business, Silver Star and Best Publications had a corner on the terribles market, all of their titles written in the Dragon Throne's Official Speech to appeal to the widest possible audience, penned by salaried employees of the two houses who turned out stories to order, with illustrations inside and out by staff artists.
From the beginning, the two friends decided that all of Wonder House's writers and artists would be freelance, not salaried. Not having to ensure salaries and retirement benefits meant that they could afford to pay higher rates, which was more attractive to young writers who considered themselves immortal, anyway. And since they would not be supplying offices for their writers, they could just as easily commission stories from writers in other cities, even other countries, who could simply send their work to Wonder House by post. And since they and the few employees they'd hired on at the print shop were all second-generation Yisraelis, and between them they could read and write in a half-dozen different languages, they didn't require their writers to work in Official Speech, but could instead write in whichever language they spoke, and Wonder House would translate it before publication into the emperor's Official Speech.
It hardly seemed to matter. Few readers of the “Judge Xi” stories in Wonder House's Tales of Detection that were so popular in the Middle Kingdom imagined that the stories were written by a Briton who didn't speak a word of Official Speech.
“I don't know about character titles, Itzhak,” Yacov said. “It would depend. I mean, we'd have to have the right character, for one, and...” Yacov let his voice trail off with a wave of his hand, a familiar gesture that suggested, but did not invite, a much lengthier discussion. “We could think about relaunching Celestial Bureaucracy.”
Now it was Itzhak's turn to pull a face. When they'd founded Wonder House, one of their earliest titles had been Celestial Bureaucracy, a monthly series that featured the stirring tales of men and women who overcame personal adversity through dogged adherence to the teachings of Master Kong, and who, by exhibiting proper ritual, filial piety, and loyalty to the Dragon Throne, rose in the bureaucracy and attained some exalted position in the emperor's service. In some of the stories things were taken even further, and readers were regaled with the details of the positions these noble workers achieved in the afterlife, serving the celestial government in the afterworld as they had served the Celestial Emperor in life.
Celestial Bureaucracy had been just one of countless “bureaucrats” on the stands, but somehow the title had proved popular—for a time. After a few years, though, the bureaucrat craze went through one of its periodic declines, and readership of such titles fell across the board. Soon Silver Star was canceling its entire line of bureaucrat titles, soon followed by Best. Only Wonder House continued to publish them, long after the market appeared to have evaporated entirely, at Itzhak's insistence. It was his belief that the readers would come back, and find Celestial Bureaucracy there waiting for them.
The readers never did come back, or at least they hadn't yet, and so Celestial Bureaucracy had been kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting. They'd finally pulled the plug on the title only a few years before, by which time their sales had slipped to virtually nothing. It was a sore point with Itzhak, especially considering the mockery Wonder House had endured from the editors at Silver Star and Best for continuing to insist that the bureaucrats’ readership was coming back.
Of course, both men knew that the bureaucrats’ readership would come back, eventually. The readers always came back, sooner or later, they were certain of that. But at this point they were just as certain that Wonder House would not be the first to dive back into those particular waters.
“What about that title Moischel was pitching?” Itzhak answered, not deigning to answer his partner's suggestion about wuxia. “That Turkiye thing?”
“Tales of the Osmanli Empire?”
Itzhak gestured with the end of his soggy cigar, nodding. “Right, that thing.” He paused and shrugged noncommittally. “It would sell in Turkiye, at least.”
“And Parsa, maybe,” Yacov said, tapping a lengthening ash from the end of his cigarette. “They might like it in Suriya, too.” It was no secret that not everyone in the world was happy to be governed by the Emperor of the Middle Kingdom, and not all of them were blood-worshipping Mexica, either. There were many in the states that had resulted from the collapse of Turkiye's former empire—in Ghazza, Masr, Parsa, Suriya, perhaps even a silent few in Yisrael itself—who would have preferred that the Osmanli Empire had never fallen, and that they were governed not from the Dragon Throne but instead from the Sublime Porte. A nostalgic look back at the glory days of the Osmanli would be well received by such a readership.
Of course, there were also those Yisraelis who were dissatisfied with the fact that theirs was a secular state, and who agitated for the government to be replaced by a theocracy and all ties to the Middle Kingdom severed. Itzhak and Yacov hardly paid much attention to such things, except inasmuch as they impacted the terribles trade. They were secular men, interested in secular things. Even so, there were some lines they would not cross.
“No,” Itzhak said after a moment's pause, “we can't.”
“You're right.” Yacov nodded. “It would sell, but still...” It had been centuries since the Osmanli Empire had broken up, after Ella led the charge in breaking away from the control of the Sublime Porte, but still there were many in Yisrael who harbored grudges against their former Osmanli masters. “We could take another look at Kaplan's Embroidered Guard idea, I suppose.”
Itzhak puffed up his cheeks and blew through puckered lips—the resulting sound, uncannily like the noise of flatulence, was his shorthand for “We could, but do we have to?”
“I know there was that one house that the Eastern Depot investigated,” Yacov continued, “but that doesn't mean that...”
Yacov was saved from making the case that publishing stories about the Emperor's secret police wouldn't automatically ensure that Wonder House would come under imperial scrutiny—though he had to admit that it would increase their chances—when he was interrupted by the sound of a knock at the door.
“Come in.” He sat
back in his chair, leaving the cigarette in the ashtray. When he saw the round face at the door, soft chin and thick glasses, he sighed. “Yeah, Segal, what's it this time?”
Segal was a local kid, like Itzhak and Yacov a second-generation Yisraeli, but from an entirely different generation. He wanted to be a writer, and had been submitting stories to Wonder House since he was old enough to hold a pen in his hand, but, by the age of twenty, had only sold one or two stories—and Yacov still couldn't get his head around the fact that Segal hadn't even been bornyet when he and Itzhak went into business together.
“Mr. Leiber, sir?” Segal poked his head in the door, then caught sight of Itzhak sitting in the corner, glowering around his sodden cigar. “Oh, Mr. Blumenfeld, I didn't know you were here. I can come back later and...”
“Itzhak is always here, Segal,” Yacov said, waving the young man in. “Now come on, don't take all day.”
Segal came in, and following close behind came Kurtzberg, a short pit-bull with thick brows and muscular arms, who always seemed to have a pen clenched between his teeth, just in case. A few years Segal's senior, Kurtzberg was one of Wonder House's regular interior illustrators. He had come to them originally looking for cover work, but he just didn't seem to have the grasp of anatomy that covers required. But if he wasn't ready for paints just yet, he was lightning fast with pen-and-ink, and, as odd as his anatomy drawing could get, it was good enough for interior work.
“Let me guess,” Itzhak said from the corner, taking the cigar from his mouth. “You have an idea.”
For more than a year, Segal had been coming into the Wonder House offices every few months with his latest big idea, always convinced that this would be the one to get him regular work writing for the terribles. He always insisted that his ideas were goldmines, and every one of them the best big idea he'd ever had. It had been a few months since he'd last been around the offices, and Yacov had started to imagine that maybe the kid had finally run out of “best big ideas.” It appeared he'd been overly optimistic.
Asimov's SF, January 2010 Page 10
