Tides From the New Worlds
Page 28
Jami leans forward and grabs my forearm.
“Please,” he hisses.
I turn and look at the lady in the tank, who is staring back at me.
Jami is a man who stared at us when we dropped from space and aimed weapons at him. He slid the machete under my armor and moved quicker than my own machine-aided senses could adjust for. Why was he not doing this?
“Who is Acolmiztli really?” I ask.
“The Emperor of the Azteca brother,” Jami says. “Here in case the Emperor get attack by you League. Now that the League falling, I imagine he go leave soon.”
I swallow.
“Okay.”
• • •
I know no sign language. I stand in front of the tank and wonder what will happen when I try to take her out.
“And,” I whisper to myself, “how do I make you understand that I’m going to help you out. Set you free.” There is an ocean nearby, and a small beach that Jami tells me is easy to get to. There is a dirt road that leads from this place straight to it.
“Will you even want to be free?” For all I know she has been in a watery cage like this for all her life. She might only be able to conceive of this being her world. Would it be right to set her free?
And if I do, am I not making enemies with the most powerful Azteca? I’ve seen what they can do. Can the Nanagadans do anything to protect me? I doubt it, but they’ve survived so far.
Sound shakes me free. The pane of glass in front of her is covered in mud and silt and she writes something with her index finger.
READ LIPS.
And on the next line.
TAKE ME AWAY.
This is the right thing to do.
Through a gap in the silt on the glass I tap to get her attention.
“Get back.”
I’m still wearing exoskeleton armor, and the helmet section slides up with a quick slap of my palm. The glass shards that hit me when I fire the tanglegun at point black don’t slice me to shreds.
The lukewarm water and silt, however, drench me.
• • •
She weighs more than I thought, or I’m weak. Her mossy hair drapes over my shoulder. The smell of seaweed fills the room. I stumble over broken glass with her in my arms and get her into a cart filled with water that Jami left outside for me.
Then the pushing run towards the beach, water slopping out over the sides.
Occasionally she pokes her head out of the draining water and stares at me.
Palm trees rustle and shake. My feet crunch on dirt. A dog barks.
The trail turns down. The beach isn’t far. I can hear the rhythmic surf and the wind starts to lift sand into the air and into my eyes.
At the end of the trail I pick her up again, lift her out of the cart and run over the sand, almost tripping, until I’m wading into the salty water. She wriggles free of me.
For a second we stare at each other, then she’s gone, a shadow beneath the waves. Was there gratitude? I don’t know.
It isn’t important. I did what I did.
I strip off the exoskeleton, piece by piece, and throw the useless carcass out into the waves.
Overhead the rumble of engines make me to look up and see a machine climbing into the sky from the house. It is gaudily painted, much like I would expect and Azteca flyer to be. It speeds off into the distance like an angry mosquito.
• • •
Jami hands me a towel and a drink when I walk through the door. He sits down at a wooden table and just looks at me.
“She leave?” he asks.
“Yes.” I nod slowly.
“You’d hope she would stay?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It’s done. Acolmiztli?”
Jami smiles.
“He’s gone back to his brother.”
I take a deep breath and put my hands on the table.
“What am I going to do now?” I ask Jami.
He grabs my hands.
“That one small act of liberation,” he tells me, “that little bit of freedom you got her, will have more of an impact than all you ship, you missile, and all you soldier. Understand?”
No, I didn’t.
“That lady, her name Necahual. It mean ‘survivor.’ All this time she been surviving, but that ain’t good enough. Now she can have a whole coast, where fishermen will know to feed her. Until she can recover. Because surviving not enough. You can’t just survive, Kiyoshi. You must do better than that. And right now The League just surviving. Like you.
“So you just the beginning. The League, we have a lot to offer them too. Along with the Azteca. How to accommodate and incorporate. We been learning how to do this since Mother Earth when were all islanders.” He slaps the table. “And we get better and better. Most places, always they get caught up in ruling, dominating, becoming greater, and then falling apart.” Jami leans forward. “We learn how to stay outside that, man. It ain’t easy,” he says. “Always a struggle. But for a much greater good.”
I pull my hands free.
“So what do I do right now?” I ask. “How do we start all this?”
Jami leans back in his chair.
“For now, just to talk to me, man. Don’t look for information, or try to resolve anything, or figure it all out. Just talk.”
I relax a bit.
“And tomorrow?”
Jami smiles.
“There’s going to be a lot of work tomorrow. A whole lot of it. We go be very busy.”
There is one last thing.
“And the aliens you talked about?”
“I’m looking right at you,” Jami laughs.
I freeze my face. I’m nervous about this. All my life I’ve been scared of them, fighting them, forcing them out of The League.
“Tomorrow,” Jami says. “One step at a time, we show you how.”
I breathe again. Slowly, savoring the air.
It’s more than just surviving. It’s living. And I like it.
Toy Planes
For a long time, whenever I read a news story online about a developing nation putting a satellite in space, an inevitable comment would show up from someone: why are tiny nations trying to launch satellites when they can’t even feed their own? In some ways it is an understandable concern. And yet, one has to realize that improvements to a country go hand in hand. And furthermore, there are benefits to the populace that comes from developing these abilities.
As a result, I wrote this story as a sort of call to arms, and an explanation of why a smaller nation would want to achieve space, both for the national glory and the practical benefits. This story is the closest thing I’ve written to a mission statement, and it’s the one I’m most proud of, because I believe that space is for all mankind. And I believe that one day efforts like this will one day put Caribbean people out there as well.
My sister Joanie’s deft hands flicked from dreadlock to dreadlock, considering her strategy. “You always leaving,” she said, flicking the razor on, and suddenly I’m five, chasing her with a kite made from plastic bags and twigs, shouting that I was going to fly away from her one day.
“I’m sorry. Please, let’s get this done.”
I’d waited long enough. I’d grown dreads because when I studied in the US I wanted to remember who I was and where I came from as I began to lose my Caribbean accent.
But the rocket-plane’s sponsor wanted them cut. It would be disaster for a helmet not to have a proper seal in an emergency. Explosive decompression was not something a soda company wanted to associated with in their customer’s minds.
It was insulting that they assumed we couldn’t keep the craft sealed. But we needed their money.
The locks had become enough a part of me that I winced when the clippers bit into them, groaned, and another piece of me fell away.
• • •
In the back of the bus I had pick me up I hung onto a looped handle swinging from the roof as the driver rocketed down the dirt road from Joanie’s. My s
ister had found a nice house out in the country, a nice concrete house with a basement opening up into a sloped garden on the side of a steep hill. She taught math at the school a few miles away, an open shuttered building, and this would have been my future too, if I hadn’t been so intent on ‘getting off the rock.’
The islands always called back to their children.
We hit asphalt, potholes, and passed cane fields with machete wielding laborers hacking away at the stalks, sweat drenched shirts knotted around their waists. It was hot; my arms stuck to the plastic covered seats.
The driver leaned into a turn, and looked back. “I want ask you something.” I really wished the back seats had belts.
“Sure.”
“All that money you spending, you don’t think it better spent on getting better roads?” He dodged a pothole. “Or more school funding?”
Colorful red and yellow houses on stilts dotted the steep lush green mountainsides as I looked out of the tinted windows. “Only one small part of the program got funded by the government,” I explained. “We found private investors, advertisers, to back the rest. Whatever the government invested will be repaid.”
“Maybe.”
I had my extra arguments. How many people lived on this island? Tens of thousands. Most of our food was imported, leaving us dependent on other food producing nations, all who used satellites to track their farming. What spinoff technologies might come out of studying recycling in space? Why wait for other nations to get to it first? Research always produced good things for the people who engaged in it.
But I was tired of arguing for it, and I only had sound bites for him, the same ones I’d given the media who treated us like kids trying to do something all grown up.
• • •
The market surrounded me in a riot of color: fruit, vegetables, full women in dresses in bright floral patterns. And the noise of hundreds constantly bargaining over things like the price of fish. Teenagers stood around the corners with friends. I wandered around looking for something, as we needed to fill the craft with enough extra weight to simulate a passenger and we still had a few extra ounces to add.
I found a small toy stall. And standing in front of it I was five years old again, with no money, and a piece of scrap metal in the triangular shape of a space plane. I would pretend it was just like the real life ones I’d read about in the books donated to the school after the hurricane. And at night, when the power would sometimes flicker out, I’d got out and stand on the porch and look up at the bright stars and envy them.
The stall had a small bottle, hammered over with soda-can metal, with triangular welded-on wings, and a cone welded to the back. It was painted over in yellow, black, and green, and I bought it.
• • •
The rest of the day was a blur. Getting to the field involved running the press: yes I’d cut my hair for ‘safety’ reasons, yes I thought this was a good use of our money, not just first world nations deserved space, it was there for everyone.
There were photos of me getting aboard the tiny rocket plane with a small brown package under my arm.
The giant balloon platform the plane hung from shifted in the gentle, salty island breeze. Not too far away the waves hit the sand of the beach. Inside, suited up, door closed, everything became electronic.
It was the cheapest way to get to orbit. Balloon up on a triangular platform to save on fuel, then light the rocket-plane up and head for orbit. We’d scavenged balloons and material from several companies, one about to go out of business. The plane chassis had once been used by a Chinese corporation during trials, and the guidance systems were all open source. Online betting parlors had our odds at fifty percent. We weren’t even the first, but we were the first island.
The countdown finished, my stomach lurched, and I saw palm trees slide by the portholes to my right.
I reached back and patted the package, the hammered-together toy, and smiled.
“Hello out there, all of you,” I whispered into the radio. “We’re coming up too.”
Acknowledgements
It’s been an incredible seven years since I saw my first short story appear in a magazine just after graduating Clarion. What a rush, and how wonderful it’s been to share these stories with so many different people.
I’ve been incredibly lucky to share my journey with a number of people who’ve helped me out along the way. These stories have all benefited from the critical eyes of many fellow writers and friends, starting with the members of Clarion 1999. I spent six weeks surrounded by a circle of writers who all pushed me to become better and better with my writing, and four of the stories you’ve read in here were written while at the workshop. After Clarion, I spent years driving up to Cleveland to participate in the Cajun Sushi Hamsters from Hell workshop. Their advice helped with several of my stories, as did the Writers of the Future workshop. So did the Million Monkeys workshop in Columbus.
For as much as we writers are solitary creatures, I find that the friendships I made along the way have been necessary for me to have to continue challenging myself to get better, and to share camaraderie during the long days of typing away.
But without a doubt the greatest influence on my writing has been my wife, Emily, who’s been supporting my curious habit since 1999. When we first got together it became clear I was quite obsessed with writing, and she’s always been there as my first reader and a very understanding companion as I burn the midnight oil, working on each new piece of fiction.
Here’s hoping for another seven years of short stories.
I'd also like to thank Ken Liu for spotting and forwarding me typos in the first edition of this eBook version of Tides. If you spot any and want to be in the acknowledgements of future editions, feel free to email me at tobias@tobiasbuckell.com with any errors you spot!
About Tobias S. Buckell
Tobias S. Buckell is a Caribbean-born writer who grew up in Grenada, the British Virgin Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. He has published stories in various magazines and anthologies. His three Caribbean SF novels, Crystal Rain, Ragamuffin, and Sly Mongoose were published by Tor Books, as well as the New York Times bestselling novel Halo: The Cole Protocol. He is currently working on his next book.
Copright Information
Tides from the New Worlds
Copyright © 2008 by Tobias S. Buckell. Introduction copyright © 2008 by Michael Resnick. Ebook design by Pablo Defendini
www.tobiasbuckell.com
ISBN: xxx-x-xxxxxx-xxx
First electronic edition
“The Fish Merchant” Copyright © 2000 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Science Fiction Age, March 2000
“In the Heart of Kalikuata” Copyright © 2003 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Men Writing Science Fiction as Women (DAW, 2003)
“Io, Robot” Copyright © 2007 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Visual Journeys (Hadley Rille, 2007)
“Anakoinosis” Copyright © 2005 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in I, Alien (DAW, 2005)
“Aerophilia” Copyright © 2004 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in All-Star Zepellin Adventure Stories (Wheatland Press, 2004)
“The Shackles of Freedom” Copyright © 2004 Tobias S. Buckell and Mike Resnick. First appeared in Visions of Liberty (Baen, 2004)
“Her” Copyright © 2003 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Fortean Bureau, January 2004
“In Orbite Medievali” Copyright © 2000 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume XVI (Bridge, 2000)
“Four Eyes” Copyright © 2003 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in New Voices in Science Fiction (DAW, 2003)
“Spurn Babylon” Copyright © 2000 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root (Invisible Cities, 2000)
“Trinkets” Copyright © 2001 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in The Book of All Flesh (Eden Studios, 2001)
“Death‘s Dreadlocks” Copyright © 2003 Tobias S. Buckell. First appea
red in Mojo: Conjure Stories (Warner Aspect, 2003)
“Smooth Talking” Copyright © 2003 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Marsdust, October 2003
“Tides” Copyright © 2002 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Ideomancer Unbound (Fictionwise, 2002)
“Something in the Rock” Copyright © 2007 Tobias S. Buckell. Previously Unpublished
“A Green Thumb” Copyright © 2002 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Analog, July/August 2002
“All Her Children Fought” Copyright © 2001 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Speculon, March 2001
“The Duel” Copyright © 2006 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Electric Velocipide, Fall 2006
“Necahual” Copyright © 2004 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004)
“Toy Planes” Copyright © 2005 Tobias S. Buckell. First appeared in Nature, October 13, 2005
Table of Contents
Title Page
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Fish Merchant
In the Heart of Kalikuata
Io Robot
Anakoinosis
Aerophilia
The Shackles of Freedom
Her
In Orbite Medievali
Four Eyes
Spurn Babylon
Trinkets
Death’s Dreadlocks
Smooth Talking
Tides
Something in the Rock
A Green Thumb
All Her Children Fought
The Duel
Necahual
Toy Planes
Acknowledgements
About Tobias S. Buckell
Copyright Information