Now We Are Ten: Celebrating the First Ten Years of NewCon Press

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Do you want the world to have these ideas or not?” I snapped, suddenly angry. “You say your aim was to find out wonderful things, but you don’t want to share if there’s a chance someone else will get credit.” I stopped, stood. “Is that what happened to Professor Frith, was he going to get credit?”

  The Professor laughed. “It wasn’t about credit, you fool.” He turned his attention back to the window.

  “Then what?” My palms itched.

  “He was like you, he wanted to know things. When he couldn’t persuade the other Rays to give up their knowledge for the good of our world, he decided that it was a fault in me. He decided to try the machine for himself. Thought that the other versions of him that came through would be more altruistic.” He snorted.

  “Weren’t they?”

  The Professor’s laughter was bitter. “What we didn’t realise was that there are worlds out there, universes, where humanity is no longer... human. We... they evolved, destroyed their own worlds, and have been waiting for us, or others, to open this gateway and let them escape their own wastelands. The Frith that took over Charlie’s body wasn’t human, he was... horrifying.” The Professor visibly shuddered. “And there are whole worlds, whole universes of beings like that who want to come through – to take over our bodies and live here. It took me a while to see it – weeks. Frith seemed so reasonable at first. He showed us how to create the gateway without using the machine. It’s so simple a child could do it. He wanted us to share the technique with the whole world, to open up completely to his universe and let his people through to take ours.”

  I sank back into my seat. “But you saw through him in the end.”

  The Professor’s eyes grew wet. “Somehow, Charlie managed to take charge of his own body again, just for a short time. When he’d finished screaming and begging for death, he warned me that if I let the secret of the gateway out it would be the end of our world. Everyone would end up like him, imprisoned in a corner of their own mind. Our only hope was to kill the project before anyone else from Frith’s world broke through into ours. And to look out for others who might have found the secret of the gateway. Stop them spreading the knowledge.”

  I swallowed. “That’s why you killed Charles Frith and set fire to the lab.”

  The Professor bit his lip and his eyes slid away. “It’s what he wanted.”

  “So you’re the only one who can open the gateway now.”

  The Professor cocked his head. “You want me to tell you the secret.”

  “If you tell me how to open it, I should be able to work out how to close it, to set all those versions of you free. And someone else should know, don’t you think? Should recognise the technique it if it gets out?” I leaped up.

  The Professor seemed to think, then he limped over to me and whispered in my ear. My eyes widened.

  “It’s that simple?”

  “That simple.” He sat down, rubbed one hand with the other. Then he looked back up at me, “Hey, have you seen my kids, how are they doing?”

  I gathered my things. “Nine? Ray?”

  “Yeah. Listen, tell Elaine I’m coming home soon, okay.”

  “Sure.” I backed towards the door, pressed the panic button and waited for the nurse to come and let me out.

  *

  The Professor watched as the PhD student – what was his name? Dean Thomas – almost ran back to his car. A smile played across his lips. The nurse stood behind him.

  “Do you think he’ll use the mantra, Professor?

  “Of course, William. In the end you all do, don’t you? It’s irresistible. I warn you, give you a fair chance, but you must know.”

  The nurse nodded. “And you think he’ll be able to spread the technique.”

  “He seems stronger than the last and he has the potential to be influential, in time.”

  “Will you let the original out for a while?”

  “Why not?” Number Ten closed his eyes.

  When the eyes opened again, they were bleak and haunted. Professor Macguire dove from his chair and scuttled into a corner, pinning himself between the bed and the wall. His hands flew to his face. His screams were soul-wrenching, but there was no one on the empty floor to hear.

  Only William, whose home universe was an empty shell, and he just smiled.

  Rare as a Harpy’s Tear

  Neil Williamson

  Dust of the Mesa

  The first drop is sand. It skitters, slides soft from the corner of my eye, coming to rest on my crag cheek. Familiar as ghosting dust on the red mesa, although our home is long away and far down from here. And we almost made the air, my love. We almost did.

  I have dragged you to shelter, hidden now from the Birds of the Air. I shield you with my own wide wings, though I’m certain we are safe. We will rest here. Soon enough you will wake. And then we shall leave, as heroes.

  *

  Sweat of Honest Valour

  The second drop is salt. Crusted sweat, it cracks when I close my eyes to rest. When I open them, scintillating, a diamond in the corner of my vision. Paltry treasure for hours of toil. I have blunted my talons on the Djinn Lord’s wall, scraping out mortar, heaving at the blocks. Bloody claw marks mar the Cloud Palace marble.

  Almost there, my love. A little longer and this block will rock loose. Then we valiant thieves will have our escape. The relief of arid air! But first, let me rest in the cool palm shade.

  *

  Bile of the Forgotten

  The third drop is spit. If you can call it that, this gob of froth flecking my hide. Feeble, but no less ire-filled, no less heart-felt. That one being should own such fabulous riches and guard them so jealously, for so long, that they become less than a myth.

  All we wanted for our kin was a pocketful of treasure to plant out in the world, seeds that might grow into rumours and bring men sniffing along the desert roads again. Oh, to feast on more than snakeflesh and scarabs. Is that too much to ask?

  *

  Many the Dead

  The fourth drop is blood. A jewel of ruby rage, shed with my defiant shriek, a carrion cry that I cannot still. Even knowing that, as it rends the air, shivers the tranquil pools and still halls, I risk calling the ifrits, the djinn, the Birds of the Air upon us.

  We have battled them, and can do so again. Are we not furies? Didn’t we once terrorise travellers, painting the desert paths with their entrails? Let them come, these tyrant’s vassals.

  Many are the corpses in paradise today. One for each of our own, wasted away.

  *

  Seed of Salvation

  The fifth drop is a carnelian. It tumbles down my face, jostled free of its setting while I laboured at the last of these blocks. Look, a door, I say. Now we can fly.

  I would give up this fire-gem, tear-shaped and polished by a master craftsman. I would return all of the jewels in our plunder sack, spill them, skittering, onto those glittering mountains of undreamt-of wealth locked away in the Djinn Lord’s treasure rooms. And, with them, relinquish the last hopes of our kind.

  I would do this, my love, if you would only look.

  *

  Seed of Life

  The sixth drop is a seed.

  Oh, Meghis Tree! We tarried; swords bloodied and scorched, limbs weary from the fight and for the thought of flying, barely able to heft this brimful sack between us.

  Meghis, the first tree. Heart of the oasis. Those succulent, life-giving leaves, miraculously capable of flourishing anywhere, even the mesa.

  These jewels, you said, may return prey to our lands. But this one seed, will save us all from thirst.

  I tilt your head towards the hole, and would return even that seed to see you revived by the zephyrs of home.

  *

  Seed of Love

  The seventh drop is semen. It jets forth with an unbidden jag of memory, sweet and sticky on my leather as when we are at play. Deep in the cool caves, our bodies acoil, wrapped in darkness and echoes of sighs, of cries, of wingtips whi
spering against the rock. Dust and come lie tangy on our drowsy tongues.

  Or else, gliding over the mesa, riding the highest thermals, wings beating together; hearts and flesh joined in an ecstasy of soaring.

  My love, I would give up even this if you might just once more whisper my name.

  *

  Birds of the Air

  The eighth drop condenses from my resigned exhalation. Squanderful, uncaring. In this palace water is plentiful. In the caves we lick the walls.

  We were too proud, too glorious. The ifrits fell to our claws, the djinn snuffed by our blades, but we had no defence against the Birds of the Air. Owls and eagles are easy, they fight as we fight, but it was the sparrows and finches, too small, too fast, too numerous, that undid us.

  Under our frond shelter, by this rough, useless door, I sigh again. The breath of half a man.

  *

  Wicked Waste of Water

  The ninth drop is bitter loss. It shivers on my eyelid. A semblance of animation. As much a mockery as the way the sweet garden breezes ruffle your feathers, stir your hair. Your chest does not swell for breath. Your heart no longer squeezes your lifeblood from your wounds. Your beautiful eyes, black as baleful coals, my love, pecked and wrecked and stolen by the Birds, will never look on me again.

  Our people are rock, and rock does not weep. Yet, as these drops accumulate in my eye, I accept the inevitability of my sorrow.

  *

  The Last Drop

  No harpy’s tear will fall where all is hoarded, nothing valued. The Djinn Lord takes everything. He’ll have nothing more.

  I bring you to the wall. Your wings, ever graceful, catch the air as you dive your last. The roaring sands welcome you home. The sack follows. What use luring seekers to the mesa without you to share the sport of their slaughter? Our people will persist a while yet regardless.

  I take but one thing from the tyrant: the Meghis seed, for its beauty. I will plant it in shade. And water it with my grief.

  Utopia +10

  J. A. Christy

  The first time it happened, I was on the canal at Ancoats. Me and DJ Bin Tony had been into the city to try to find work but there was nothing. Nothing at all. So we’d gone fishing. We had to do something with our day. Dianne’s always moaning that I get under her feet and the kids are all hypnotised by PS17a Utopia game where their world is still green.

  So we got our rods and headed for the water. I say water, and I do remember water, but this is more like a rusty soup with plastic chunks. Even so, there are still fish. DJ Bin Tony’s a bit of a philosopher and his take on it is this:

  “That Darwin bloke had it worked out. The fish adapt, don’t they. We tip the shit in; I’ve seen it, mate, when I worked the refuse, straight into the water. Reckoned it’d dissolve or something. Put stuff in with it to help it along. Anyway. Them fish. The thicker the liquid, the harder they have to work, yeah? Big fuckers now.”

  They were massive. We’d leaned over the canal bank, lying on our bellies as we did when we were ten, and peered into the soup. They were there, all right. Moving around. We could see them, huge shadows moving through the thick molecules, stirring it up. We could sense them.

  “It’s primal, mate. Primal. We’re made to hunt. Hunters, we are.”

  I think DJ Bin Tony was trying to convince himself. It’s hard to think in those terms now. How we used to be. I knew he was right, and when I saw the fish I did feel it, but it was cancelled out by the hopelessness of mass produced, plastic wrapped portions that pass as food these days.

  So I got it into my head that I wanted some real food. I’d wake in the night, hot and sweaty and somewhere in the past when we could kill and eat our food on the same day. Where we knew what it was we were eating. Where we cooked it, instead of the instantaneous heat of the hole in the wall in modern kitchens. I could remember fish and chips from Leo’s on Oldham Street, fried in front of you and steaming in the night air. The salt and vinegar smell. The grease.

  The urge to hunt grew and grew. Tony felt it too. I could tell. We went out every night, staring into the canal, neither of us speaking, but sharing something from deep history. Planning our campaign. Us against them. Once or twice we saw them, pulsing through the rust in groups. Tony licked his lips. I just nodded and narrowed my eyes. I could almost taste them.

  I think we always knew that one day we would find ourselves sitting on that bank, our lines drawn tight by the thick flow. Watching, waiting. Hours passed and people walked by, on their way to the tree museum at Castlefield. The only trees left in the wild now, outside the manufactured forests in the wastelands. You could sometimes hear the birds singing from here, and people stopped and cocked their heads, hoping.

  We smiled and nodded at them, but our minds were match fit. Focused. Staring at the bobbing pieces of cork that Tony had found in his mam’s cupboard. He’d held them in both hands with reverence and whispered over them.

  “Me dad’s. He was a fisherman. She kept them after he... Well. She kept them.”

  Tony’s dad was the first person I knew to suffocate. That would be ten years ago, at the beginning of the Earth warming. It was awful to watch, the slow gulping of breath over weeks and months, then, eventually, collapse. The summit, as it was called now, was unpredictable. People were dropping dead all over the place back then. “Not rocket science really. The lack of trees and the air pollution could only lead to one thing. Naturally, Tony had a theory.

  “Survival of the fittest.” He’d stated this at his Dad’s funeral, just as the plume of smoke emerged from the crematorium chimney, adding to the air pollution. Our own personal contribution to the grey doom skies. “Weed out the wheat from the chaff, it will.”

  He was right. The first sign of a cough or asthma and you were pumped with medication. It still happened, that blue-faced death, but not on the streets any more. There were people. Rescuers. People were trained to spot the signs and pull you into a building if you keeled. Me and Tony had applied for a jobs as rescuers but, like everything, you had to have the right postal code. The right face. No genetic defects. Survival of the fittest was about right.

  We stared and we stared that day, watching and waiting, our breath shallow. The murky grey day turned a little darker and Tony took a sip of his bottled water. I turned to reach for the bottle before he put his top back on and it happened. I didn’t see it, but when I turned back, the cork was gone. Tony’s was still there but mine had gone.

  We jumped up, bouncing on our toes and heaving the rod.

  “It’s a big one! It’s a fucking big one.”

  Even in the excitement, I remembered that time Tony’s dad had taken us fishing, taken us down Daisy Nook and shown us how to cast. How it’d rained and we could stay out in it because it didn’t burn then. How we’d looked up and seen a rainbow. Tony looked a lot like his dad in that moment when we caught the fish.

  It took a few minutes to reel in, but all of a sudden the fish was there in front of us. Gasping for air. It was real. Tail flipping, scales somehow shining in the gloom, it stared at us. Tony’s fingers curled round my arm.

  “What we gonna do, Charlie, mate? How we gonna kill it?”

  I hadn’t considered that. No one really killed anything these days. Everything was grown or made. No need to kill. People died, obviously, but not in public, if possible. No. These days it was all about survival and hope. Like PS17a Utopia. I didn’t know how to kill a fish. I’d never seen Tony’s dad kill one. He’d always put them back.

  Suddenly I felt ill. Strange. And really hungry. The fish was thrashing now, and I knew if I left it there long enough it would die anyway. Even so, something inside me, deep down, in the same place as my hunter dreams, told me to hit it hard. Put the creature out of its misery. So I grabbed a piece of concrete and dropped it. On to the fish. And it was still.

  We both stared. Its eye was dull now and the mouth gaped. Tony started to cry. Big clear tears. We lifted the fish onto my jacket and wrapped it up. It took two
of us to carry it back to my place near the old Dispensary, through the back streets so no one would see us and rob us of our quarry. I was emotional. Horror that I had killed mixed with a visceral hunger I had never felt before.

  We carried the fish into the kitchen. Dianne was in the lounge with the kids, all of them safely plugged into the mainframe Utopia server. I shut the middle door and we unwrapped the fish. Tony was busy on his phone, finding pictures of fish and eventually he matched.

  “Carp. That’s what this is. Carp.”

  He held up the picture of the fish and we both looked from one fish to the other. It did look similar, but more muscular and much bigger. I washed it and stroked it. Tony took some pictures and then we came to the inevitable moment we had both been avoiding. Tony sighed.

  “Who’s gonna cut it up then?”

  I looked at the fish, trying to decide how to do it. Tony googled and, of course, there was a tutorial. There’s a tutorial for everything, even things that don’t exist any more. We watched in horror as a fisherman, in the wild, beside a river and surrounded by trees, sliced open the stomach of a bream and chopped off its head. Then he filleted it and threw the fillets on an open fire. His envirnment couldn’t have been more different to my stark, sterilised kitchen. We weren’t allowed fires any more, even if there had been any wood to burn. Ironic really, as everyone knows that the ability to make fire is what sets us apart from animals. Makes you wonder when they’re going to ban thumbs.

  There we were with this huge creature, leaning in so that we could smell the death, and we didn’t know what to do. I knew the instinct was there inside me somewhere. I knew that if I didn’t do something it would be too late. I wanted the fish. I wanted to eat it. I wanted to snatch the headphones away from my children, pull them away from Utopia and give them real food. Give them the fish.

  Would they ever feel this? They’re trapped in the memory of an artificial world they can’t get back to. I suddenly realise that they’ll never have memories like mine. My granddad’s house, the tiny goldfish in the clear water sphere. The apple tree outside the window swaying in the breeze. Sunshine. And songs about sunshine. That fish on the table was a giant red version of my granddads goldfish.