He nodded. Once he got out, he’d take a shower, and that head of his would be polished bright as ever. He’d go back to the gray drudgery of daily routine, but he might even appreciate it now.
He didn’t ask her listen to what?
Maybe he was already old enough to know.
This part of the slugwall looked deceptively like a straight line, and the swirls in it moved almost sluggishly. They jerked instead of flowed, at least at first. Svinga crouched, watching the blur, tasting it in that secret place far back on her tongue. Barko settled beside her, much more easily than he would have at the beginning of the expedition. Exercise did him good. He looked younger, too—the circles under his eyes had lessened despite the rough sleeping conditions, and his incipient paunch had faded. He looked wiry now, much fitter, and the hodgepodge of stuff attached to his pack made him look like a soaker.* There were rifters who swore people could live inside, subsistence farming and stripping enough salvage to get by.
The idea had its attractions.
The slugwall began to soften. Barko watched, his eyebrows drawn together, and he probably felt the change coming. “Hey.” He shifted his weight a little. “You gonna go in there?”
No need to ask what he meant. “Ashe thought I should.”
“Yeah, well.” He didn’t have to say any more.
He straightened his legs and began the process of getting up slightly before she did. She made sure his pack was well strapped, and his precious spectra was lodged in his palm. The energy wall might fry it, but he just shook his head when she pointed it out. “So I lose a hand,” he said. “Big deal.”
“You could lose all the data.”
“I got everything from the center backed up on buffered chips. Kope won’t be happy, but he can at least sell that.” A curious look went over his dirty face, but he shook his head when her eyebrows rose inquiringly. “Doesn’t matter. It’s coming, isn’t it.”
She nodded. “Few minutes at most.”
“You waiting with me?”
“Of course.” She didn’t add, you fuckbuckle idiot. Or anything else, like be careful or the most useless words of all, good-bye. Instead, she repeated herself. “Go fast. Hit it at the angle I push you at. Soon’s you’re through—”
“—Drop and roll. And breathe out right before you hit.”
She clapped him approvingly on the shoulder, and the moment came along too soon, tearing through the surface of now. She shoved him at the right angle, taking a few running steps to add her force to his, coiled her arms, and pushed off with legs and arms both as hard as she could.
Barko the scientist vanished through the blur. It rippled, the weak point in the fabric eddying as the blur closed around the dark smear, and there was nothing left of him on this side. He hadn’t been cut in half midstream, his legs on this side and his trunk over there. She’d done the best she could.
She sank back into her waiting position, and listened.
Finally, it came, faint and faraway. What you doing? Ashe whispered.
“Thinking,” Svin whispered back. “Shut up.” Her chin relaxed, and the corners of her mouth tilted up. Her eyes swelled with hot water she blinked away, and finally, she rose and turned away from the wall, feeling for a bob.
61
THE CLOSEST THING
QR-715 Admin Center bustled with fresh activity. Sardies from the garrison sweated on the drillyard, new sergeants and captains barking orders. In the corridors, janitorial staff scurried. There was no more loafing like there had been under Kopelund, no more comfortable little niches, no more thriving illicit trade in government supplies. In a little while, the new power in the administration would begin the delicate process of extending his reach, but for right now, spring cleaning was in order. Scientists were called to the head office and given packets from Central with fresh directives, along with the warning that there would be tight deadlines for further papers submitted, and the loopholes in the funding system had been closed.
Kopelund’s office was much less polished and much more active now, the window firmly shut even on hot days. Paperwork was ruthlessly organized and filed as soon as the new leader had perused it. Two full-time secretaries from Second Branch, both young broad-shouldered men with crewcuts and smart red-sashed uniforms, kept the appointment schedule running clockwork-neat. The fleet of leavs and transports was being refurbished—amazing, really, how much funding there was once the holes in the dam were plugged.
After a frugal lunch—a blushing-red apple from the market, a crumbling slice of bryndza,* and a quarter-round of coarse black bread, washed down with a flagon of very weak beer—Agent-Major Ochki suppressed a belch and settled in the hard slatted wooden chair he had requested instead of Kopelund’s cushioned monstrosity. He had cleared the desk before leaving precisely at noon, but there were already three reports sitting in his in-box. It was the nature of the work, of course. In a few months, he would hand this installation over to someone a little less … weak-minded than the unfortunate Kopelund.
The first report was on the discovery of some very expensive medical supplies in a disused corner of the storerooms, including quite a few syringes of triplasma from the older medikits. The person responsible for squirreling them away had not been found yet, but the junior agent in charge of that sector of the building had a few suspects. Ochki initialed precisely in the box provided, to show he had read the report, then picked up a blue pencil and noted that said junior agent could use whatever methods necessary to discover the thief.
Ochki turned to the second report, which had a red stripe at the top. That denoted some kind of border incident, and he settled his spectacles more firmly, peering through them. In ten minutes his bodyguard would come in with a tray bearing the coffeepot and two mugs, and Ochki looked forward to that postprandial cordial. It was one of the few pleasures he allowed himself in these benighted times.
The timestamp was 4:37 p.m., yesterday. Apparently the fellows watching Sector H-13 had shot at something emerging from the Rift’s energy wall. Ochki frowned slightly—they were requesting alcohol rations, a practice he did not see the utility of in many occasions, but it was traditional.
The “something” turned out to be a scientist from the physics sector, filthy and disheveled, carrying a pack crammed with rations, equipment, and attached to a mangy bedroll.
Ochki tut-tutted softly. He knew, of course, about Kopelund’s little fantasy. Well, that was best swept under the rug, and quickly. A tinge of impatience married to annoyance was swiftly quashed—his superiors trusted him with delicate matters, and whispers of something in the middle of the largest Rift in the world needed careful handling. In fact, the last of many anonymous blacksheets sent in to detail Kopelund’s less-savory activities had only reached higher levels because of that strange, silly word.
Cormorant.
It took him a few moments to find the requisite forms. Half the alcohol ration was approved, the corpse and everything it carried was to be processed in D Wing with the specialists he would have to request from Central. No doubt everything would be riddled with bullets. Ochki would have to question the tower guards personally, to ascertain if anything the physicist carried had “vanished.” Perhaps more of Kopelund’s hapless group would stumble out of the Rift in the upcoming weeks, though the odds were—to put it mildly—extremely low. Though there had been movement in the B sector not too long ago, and a patrol had found nothing but a collection of blue and yellow beads scattered haphazard across half-frozen grass near the slugwall itself.
By the time Artev the bodyguard arrived with the expected coffee, Ochki was stapling together the last of the forms. His Incident Report Form only needed a second reading and a signature, to make everything official. The bodyguard read Ochki’s expression with a flicker of his dark, good-natured eyes, and called for a secretary.
It was good to be efficient, Ochki mused. Next week he would process death certificates for the rest of the group Kopelund had sent on that foolish lit
tle escapade.
The third report was a routine personnel transfer request, and Ochki gave it his full attention while he sipped at his coffee. The rats were fleeing the tightening ship, indeed.
He had already filed away the unlucky physicist’s name, the closest thing to forgetting it.
62
THE BEST JOKE
Black clouds swelled, streaming up from the river. Scorch-white spears jabbed from earth to sky and back again. A heavy petrichor fume rose from the bending grasses, the just-leafing trees and the evergreens, the flowers and the weeds. Rain was coming, and with it what the rifters called a sweep—a pressure wall amped up to eleven, a tsunami of air or energy or both. You didn’t want to stand in the way of that leveling wind, or test your luck with the jabbing crackling discharges that changed whatever they touched. Some told stories about Rift-lightning striking an unlucky structure or animal and converting it to glass, or giving birth to several spinning grav anomalies that didn’t have to get near you to kill you—they just had to fight over your molecules, and you could be shredded in an eyeblink.
Over the small gray shack with its sheltering smooth-barked tree, a single patch of clear night sky lingered. Around it, the sweep whirled and collided with itself, clouds stacking and tearing at each other, chaos flickering between billows of ink starred with rending crashes of pallid energy.
The tree’s glossy gray trunk creaked as the wind freshened, flirting near the sorry structure. Something white lay on its doorstep—the butterflies clung to their shelter, their legs and proboscises still buried deep. Their wings fluttered. The black spots on each had swollen, and the wings were now edged with black as well, resembling nothing so much as wavy dark hair. A single unlit cigar, thrown free, lay discarded in the flesh-bulbed grass near the doorway, its seedheads flattening in the breeze.
There is something else on the doorstep, too.
It is a white rag, tied to a heavy, ordinary nut. It has been arranged with care, and under its small weight is a threadbare piece of paper with careful childish writing. It flutters, like the wings. It has not managed to cross the threshold.
The sweep, when it achieves its full strength, might drive it into the Cormorant despite the layer of peace that surrounds the structure, a fish leaping into a mouth too constricted for its cargo of longing.
Is there movement, deeper in the gray shack’s interior? It doesn’t look like much—four flimsy walls, a roof more holes than solidity, no sign of interior partitions for bedroom, kitchen, a hole for shit to drop into. Yet overhead, there are stars in an oval slice of sky darker than the ink-swirl clouds, gem-bright fires no earthly observer would recognize.
Through the noise of the storm, of resin shattering in the Alley and windows creaking elsewhere, concrete falling and rising as the Rift turns uneasily in its half sleep, wood snapping and shrieks of the boogaloos cowering in huddled masses wherever they can find some shelter, howling from whatever predators would ride these wild waves, mipsiks singing their half-hooting, half-human songs, and the wrack of any storm, comes a single thread of sound.
Listen.
It is laughter, a nasal wheeze at one end, the kind of belly-holding merriment when a good friend has told the best joke and every meeting of their gaze with yours provokes a fresh cascade of helpless laughter. It’s also a familiar sound; once you’ve heard that particular rasp-edged voice, you don’t forget it.
Listen harder. Listen again.
Somewhere in the sweep, Ashe the Rat is laughing.
Laughing, in fact, fit to die.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks are due first and foremost to the Strugatsky brothers for their Roadside Picnic and to Andrei Tarkovsky for Stalker. This book is my homage to them.
Thanks are also due to Devi Pillai, who believed; Miriam Kriss, who kept me sane; Mel Sanders, the best writing partner ever; and Lindsey Hall, who took the book through the final stretch. Not to mention my beloved children, who calmly put up with their mother spending twelve hours or more in other worlds daily.
Last, but not least, once more, I thank you, my faithful Readers. Come in, pour yourself a drink, settle on the couch, and let me tell you what happens when the Rifts open …
extras
meet the author
Photo credit: Daron Gildrow
LILITH SAINTCROW was born in New Mexico, bounced around the world as an Air Force brat, and fell in love with writing when she was ten years old. She currently lives in Vancouver, Washington.
If you enjoyed
CORMORANT RUN,
look out for
TRAILER PARK FAE
Gallow and Ragged
by
Lilith Saintcrow
Jeremiah Gallow is just another construction worker, and that’s the way he likes it. He’s left his past behind, but some things cannot be erased. Like the tattoos on his arms that transform into a weapon, or that he was once closer to the Queen of Summer than any half-human should be. But now Gallow is dragged back into the world of enchantment, danger, and fickle fae—by a woman who looks uncannily like his dead wife. Her name is Robin, and her secrets are more than enough to get them both killed.
Jeremiah Gallow, once known as the Queensglass, stood twenty stories above the pavement, just like he did almost every day at lunchtime since they’d started building a brand-new headquarters for some megabank or another.
He was reasonably sure the drop wouldn’t kill him. Cars creeping below were shiny beetles, the walking mortals dots of muted color, hurrying or ambling as the mood took them. From this height, they were ants. Scurrying, just like the ones he worked beside, sweating out their brief gray lives.
A chill breeze resonated through superstructure, iron girders harpstrings plucked by invisible fingers. He was wet with sweat, exhaust-laden breeze mouthing his ruthlessly cropped black hair. Poison in the air just like poison in the singing rods and rivets, but neither troubled a Half. He had nothing to fear from cold iron.
No mortal-Tainted did. A fullblood sidhe would be uncomfortable, nervous around the most inimical of mortal metals. The more fae, the more to fear.
Like every proverb, true in different interlocking ways.
Jeremiah leaned forward still further, looking past the scarred toes of his dun workboots. The jobsite was another scar on the seamed face of the city, a skeleton rising from a shell of orange and yellow caution tape and signage to keep mortals from bruising themselves. Couldn’t have civilians wandering in and getting hit on the head, suing the management or anything like that.
A lone worker bee, though, could take three steps back, gather himself, and sail right past the flimsy lath barrier. The fall would be studded and scarred by clutching fingers of steel and cement, and the landing would be sharp.
If he was singularly unlucky he’d end up a Twisted, crippled monstrosity, or even just a half-Twisted unable to use glamour—or any other bit of sidhe chantment—without it warping him further. Shuffling out an existence cringing from both mortal and sidhe, and you couldn’t keep a mortal job if you had feathers instead of hair, or half your face made of wood, or no glamour to hide the oddities sidhe blood could bring to the surface.
Daisy would have been clutching at his arm, her fear lending a smoky tang to her salt-sweet mortal scent. She hated heights.
The thought of his dead wife sent a sharp, familiar bolt of pain through his chest. Her hair would have caught fire today; it was cold but bright, thin almost-spring sunshine making every shadow a knife edge. He leaned forward a little more, his arms spreading slightly, the wind a hungry lover’s hand. A cold edge of caress. Just a little closer. Just a little further.
It might hurt enough to make you forget.
“Gallow, what the hell?” Clyde bellowed.
Jeremiah stepped back, half-turned on one rubber-padded heel. The boots were thick-soled, caked with the detritus of a hundred build sites. Probably dust on there from places both mortal and not-so-mortal, he’d worn them since before his marriage.
Short black hair and pale green eyes, a face that could be any anonymous construction worker’s. Not young, not old, not distinctive at all, what little skill he had with glamour pressed into service to make him look just like every other mortal guy with a physical job and a liking for beer every now and again.
His arms tingled; he knew the markings were moving on his skin, under the long sleeves. “Thought I saw something.” A way out. But only if he was sure it would be an escape, not a fresh snare.
Being Half just made you too damn durable.
“Like what, a pigeon? Millions of those around.” The bullet-headed foreman folded his beefy arms. He was already red and perspiring, though the temperature hadn’t settled above forty degrees all week.
Last summer had been mild-chill, fall icy, winter hard, and spring was late this year. Maybe the Queen hadn’t opened the Gates yet.
Summer. The shiver—half loathing, half something else—that went through Jeremiah must have shown. Clyde took a half-step sideways, reaching up to push his hard hat further back on his sweat-shaven pate. He had a magnificent broad white mustache, and the mouth under it turned into a thin line as he dropped his hands loosely to his sides.
Easy, there. Jeremiah might have laughed. Still, you could never tell who on a jobsite might have a temper. Best to be safe around heavy machinery, crowbars, nail guns, and the like.
“A seagull.” Gallow deliberately hunched his shoulders, pulled the rage and pain back inside his skin. “Maybe a hawk. Or something. You want my apple pie?” If Clyde had a weakness, it was sugar-drenched, overprocessed pastry. Just like a brughnie, actually.
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