Shadows of the New Sun: Stories in Honor of Gene Wolfe

by Bill Fawcett

  You take the stairs that lead into the servant’s quarters. You skip certain steps because you know which treads creak; you know every inch of this part of the house, which is always “closed off,” probably because your mother hates housecleaning and probably because it saves on fuel bills. Although your mother thinks that the Dickhead is rich—which is probably why she married him—he claims that all he’s got left is the house and the cars and a small annuity, which will keep them all going until he sells his first novel for seven figures. You don’t quite know what seven figures means, but you figure you’ll find that out eventually.

  When you reach the third floor, you duck under a low archway and carefully open the door so it doesn’t squeak; then down the hall to your room, to safety . . . except that the Dickhead has been watching you all along. Watching you from your own window. Waiting for you in your room.

  “What in God’s good name are you doing out there at this hour?” he asks in his conversational voice, as if he were saying “Good morning.”

  He’s wearing a heavy white bathrobe with his initials embossed on the chest pocket; your mother has one just like it. His bristly gray hair is neatly combed and still damp. Your mother tells you that he’s very good-looking and his cleft chin is a sign of strength and resolve, but he reminds you of a silly, gangly guy you used to watch on television when you were a kid. His name was Mr. Cracker, and he lived in a house that was painted like a barber’s pole. However, you suppose that the Dickhead looks nice. He has an old, crinkly, and happy kind of face, which makes you hate him all the more.

  “Well, are you going to answer me?”

  “Yessir.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you, call me Dick . . . or Dad.”

  You already have a father, and he’s not dead, just gone away, so you say, “Okay . . . Dick.”

  “Now, tell me, what were you doing out in the sunken garden at this ungodly hour?”

  “Nothin’. Just looking out, you know.”

  “Without a jacket? You’re shivering even now.”

  You can’t tell him that it won’t work if you have too many clothes on. By rights you should be naked when you make what Tars Tarkas calls the sak of transformation. (Sak means jump in the language of Barsoom’s green men; more about all that later.) But the sak of transformation works sometimes, even when you’re just wearing pants and a shirt: no socks or underwear.

  “Well?”

  “Yeah,” you say, sloping your shoulders, “it was pretty dumb.”

  “But why on earth would you go outside like that to freeze your butt off in the middle of the night?” He’s earnest now, earnest and caring; and you know just what to say. But as you say it, you hope that your mother is awake, so he won’t . . . linger.

  “I dunno, sometimes I wake up thinking about my dad, and I get scared and then I find myself outside and—”

  “Well, get undressed and try to get some sleep,” he says in what you think of as his forgiving voice. But he’s sly. You know that about him.

  “You’ll have to be up in a few hours for school.”

  You try not to wince as he gentles your hair and pats your face. He sees you into bed and pats you again. You pretend to fall asleep and don’t open your eyes until he leaves, and then you listen to the floorboards creak as he slowly walks through the hallway. You hold your breath as he passes your sister’s room, because you know she’s not in there. You hear the doorknob squeak like a mouse as he opens her bedroom door, then silence—the silence of the stars; one beat, the silence of the moon; two beats, the silence of deep black you’re- dead-forever water; three beats—and finally you hear the door close and the creak of footsteps fading down the hallway. You exhale.

  “Darling?” It’s your mother calling the Dickhead. “Are the kids all right?”

  “Yeah,” says the Dickhead, his voice soft but clear in the echoic darkness. “Jonnie couldn’t sleep, poor kid. But he’s all tucked up now.”

  “And Julia?”

  You wait for it . . .

  “She’s fine, honey,” he says with a chuckle, and you hear the sticky sound of their bedroom door closing.

  Although you can’t hear anything now, you know what he’s saying.

  “That little girl of yours is pretty near a grown woman.”

  “Pretty near,” you whisper guiltily. The Dickhead was pretty near, but he’s gone now.

  You squeeze your eyes closed and dream of Tars Tarkas and the real you.

  Tars Tarkas is three hundred and seventeen years old and weighs about four hundred pounds. He stands fifteen feet tall, has a vertical slit for a nose, a fanged mouth framed by four enamel-white tusks the length of your arms, and two crimson eyes that bug out of the sides of his head; if he needs to (and he often does because he’s a green-blooded warrior chieftain), he can see in two directions at once. His scaly skin looks like rough-cut jade, and he’s your very best friend . . . or, rather, he will become your very best friend once you grow up into what you’re supposed to be.

  You first met him on the school bus.

  Well, you found his four- armed picture on the cover of a magazine scrunched under the cushion of your seat. The wrinkled, yellowstained magazine was thick as a book and still smelled of lemon cordial. And there he was, the one and only Tars Tarkas—scimitar, spear, carbine, and sapphire-pommeled battle- axe in hand—holding back an army of slavering, reptilian centurions. Beside him, but not dwarfed by the jade- skinned Barsoomian, stood a sandy-haired, broad-shouldered Earthman. And right then and there—without even having to read the magazine—you knew who that Earthman was. It was you, the grown-up you, the real you. And there you were, standing tall and unafraid, army knife gleaming under the silvery light of the twin moons, protecting a half-naked princess—who looked just like your sister—from a leaping, two-headed Martian tiger.

  Your sister told you to leave the dirty, old magazine on the bus, but you stuffed it into your book satchel. At lunch break you sneaked away to Pearl Park, sat under the gazebo near the stream, ate your peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and read the magazine until you knew it by heart. Then you buried it because now it was yours; you wouldn’t need paper and pictures to remember who you really were. And no matter what the Dickhead might try to do to you, the real you (who stands six foot seven and can jump thirty feet in the air on Barsoom) would be able to protect your sister.

  It doesn’t matter that you are skinny and pimply and only twelve and three-quarters, because the real you and your companion Tars Tarkas have given their solemn word that they will come to help whenever you call. All you have to do is follow proper procedure: raise your naked arms at just the right hour, encompass the night sky, and remember the proper sequence of incantations taught to you by Tars Tarkas in the sacred language of his people, the green Thants.

  But unless you do it right, unless your thoughts are properly focused and calibrated to the exact telegraphic frequency, you will just stand there like an idiot in your birthday suit; and there will be no sak of transformation.

  No Barsoom.

  No adventures with Tars Tarkas and the grown-up Captain John Carter.

  And . . . no help here on Earth.

  You’ve been crossing out the days on your free pocket calendar from john’s meat emporium, foster, 03-5675- 0000, and now it’s the Queen’s Birthday weekend, which means trouble because the Dickhead is home and prowling about. The weather has become unseasonably warm, and tonight—Saturday nights are always the worst—you hear the Dickhead’s footsteps, the squeak and squeal of doorknob and door, and the consequent soft banging noises in your sister’s bedroom. Quiet as a snake and angry as a two-headed tiger, you sneak out of your room. The Dickhead won’t hear thetap-click of your bedroom door latch, not with all that stentorian breathing, and then you’re free and breathing the cool, unstrangulated air of the sunken garden.

  But you’ve no time for air and freedom.

  You need to save your sister, so—difficult as it may be to co
ncentrate—you raise your arms to embrace the star- spangled night and pray (in the sacred Thantian language) for the familiar, blindingly bright flash of transformation.

  This time the gods of Mars grant your wish.

  But something is terribly wrong. . . .

  You’re standing in familiar surroundings on a yellow, mossy plateau overlooking Helium. The huge city is in flames, its crown of gold and crystal spires shattered. Gaily colored, fire- bombing aerostats circle in the smoky sky above, two-masted catamaran warships crowd the River Iss, and armies swarm like ants around Helium’s breeched fortifications. Although the wind is high at this elevation—keening and whistling through the stunted blood-colored trees and quartz outcrops—you can still hear the distant thunder of bombs exploding, arms clashing, and men screaming in bloodfury.

  Your eyes burn and tear in the strong Martian sunlight as you look around Tars Tarkas’s camp. There are no chariots, mastodons, warriors, women, or children to be seen. All the tents are gone, except yours, and the campfires are long dead. You turn your gaze back to the burning city. You are certain that your friends, human and Thant alike, are down there fighting the invading hordes of lizard men and white apes, and you must find them. They rode to battle upon their mastodons and eight legged, white- bellied riding beasts, but yours is nowhere to be found. No matter, because your muscles—which are conveniently adapted to the much stronger gravity of Earth—give you the strength to vault and leap as if you were wearing seven-league boots.

  As you’ve no time to waste, you dress quickly. You collect your saber, knife, and carbine (which shoots radium projectiles), and then you step outside and take a deep breath of the clean Martian air. Now you finally, finally feel like your true self.

  You’re the John Carter who saves his friends.

  You’re the John Carter who will save his sister.

  And so you run, bounding over gullies and crevasses that ordinary Martian riders would have to go around, vaulting over hills, trees, and settlements. With every gravity-defying step you take, the clangor of iron and steel and the cries of men and monsters become louder and louder . . . and the clouds of dust and smoke kicked up by the fighting hordes and carried hither and thither by the wind become incrementally closer. After an hour, your legs begin to ache, you’re out of breath, and a wall of dust and smoke looms up and over you. One step, two steps, three, and now you’re right in the fray. Lizard men astride two-headed octopeds the size of hippopotamuses attack you, but you have no time to waste: You must find Tars Tarkas.

  With lightning-fast sweeps of your saber, you decapitate the heads of the nearest octoped and, in quick succession, shoot three of the reptilian beast-riders with your carbine. Then you take a great leap over the other beast-riders and land just inside the breached fortifications. But you are almost knocked to the ground by a mob of deserters. You’re surprised because the warriors are wearing the emblems, brassards, and purple and rose colors of Helium guards. You stop one of the deserters and ask him for the whereabouts of the Thant fighters. He looks at you, shakes his head, laughs, and then disappears into the dust- swirling miasma of fighting men and beasts.

  You press forward toward an open area where the clash of weapons is the loudest. And it is there—in the slaughtery that had once been the Queen’s private gardens—that you find Thant warriors fighting lizard men and white apes. Although greatly outnumbered, the jade- skinned Thants— unlike men—will not retreat.

  And neither will you.

  “Tars Tarkas!” you shout as you cleave and hew, as you and the outnumbered Thant warriors begin to turn the advance of these beastriders and white apes into a rout. “Tars Tarkas!”

  Your voice is hoarse. Your hands are slippery with blood. “Tars Tarkas!”

  “Ah, welcome, John Carter of Foster. I was afraid we would not look upon each other again.”

  You feel (rather than hear) his responding call; and you fear the worst, for you know that Tars Tarkas is loathe to reveal his telepathic sigil to anyone.

  “But you must make haste, Earth friend, if we are to fight and— with the blessing of the great River Iss—die together in battle.”

  You leap across the gardens and fight your way past the Queen’s treasury and the shattered halls of governance, but you’re too late: No Thant (not even Tars Tarkas) standing alone without carbine or cannon could overcome a troop of lizard men astride their twoheaded, shark-jawed octopeds. Before you can reach him, one of the octopeds bites through his lower right arm and slams him to the ground. But Tars Tarkas slashes at the creature with his other arms. The huge beast rears back, squealing in pain and dislodging its rider, who was positioning himself to take Tars Tarkas’s head as a prize.

  You shoot the stinking, flesh-hungry beast.

  It dies open-jawed, revealing Tars Tarkas’s dismembered arm, which seems to be reaching out to you from the rows of bloodied, needle- sharp teeth. Its dismounted rider rushes toward you. You barely have time to deflect his poison-tipped spear. But as you decapitate him with a roundhouse swing of your saber, you hear someone sound the call. A dozen Thant warriors materialize out of the smoke and dust; and as they slaughter the lizard men and their beasts, you try to carry your friend to safety.

  “No, John Carter,” Tars Tarkas says in a thick, raspy voice. He presses one of his remaining large, nail-less hands against his wound to stem the flow of blood. “I must die here, standing and fighting. Gird me to fight. Help me, Earth friend, as I would help you.”

  You tourniquet his wound with your belt and then gently lift him to a standing position. Leaning back against a blood-smeared wall, he grimaces—which is the Thant version of a smile—grips his sapphire-pommeled battle- axe in one hand and his scimitar and spear in the others, and says, “I suppose these will have to do. One of the octos ate my rifle, anyway.” Then he shakes his head twice, a gesture of great sadness and serious import. “You came to help us in our time of need, but, alas, I will not be able to reciprocate. Your sister . . . you must save her yourself, you must—”

  The white apes attack, and as you stand together fighting, you sense the instant that Tars Tarkas dies. You feel the whisper of good- bye, and you know that the greatest Thant warrior on Mars was not defeated by his enemies: His two great hearts simply stopped beating. And still, even in death, he stands upright.

  But you . . . you fight on alone until a war hammer crashes into flesh and bone. Your flesh and bone.

  And thus you fall back to Earth.

  Back into the sunken garden . . .

  Into the long sunlight of a winter afternoon.

  You open your eyes and then turn your head away from the sun. You have a terrible, pounding headache, and your arms and legs feel stiff and tingly. You look toward the Dickhead’s house and wonder what happened.

  Every other time you’ve gone to Mars, even when you’ve spent days and weeks there, you’d always find yourself back on Earth within a few minutes (Australian Eastern Standard Time). This isn’t Saturday night, and you know you’re in trouble. No sense trying to sneak back into the Dickhead’s house; you’ll just have to think this through.

  But you don’t even know what day this is. It could be Sunday or next week. You can tell Mom and the Dickhead that you fell asleep and somehow got amnesia like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall or Gregory Peck in Spellbound. Or that you were abducted like the kid in Ransom . . . or that you ran away because you want to be an entrepreneur or a writer and don’t want to go to school anymore; but then, hallelujah, you saw the light of reason (the Dickhead’s reason) and decided to come back home.

  Or you can just tell them that you were on Mars—they would believe that!

  As you stand up, your mind suddenly reels with memory and grief. Now you feel it. Now you know it. Now you believe it.

  Tars Tarkas is dead!

  Although you feel small and weak and alone, although you feel every one of your twelve and three-quarter years, you walk big as life through the garden to the house. You op
en the front door with such force that the brass knocker bangs up and down. And as you stand in the checkerboard-tiled hallway, you feel exactly as you did when you heard Tars Tarkas’s telepathic whisper of farewell.

  You walk into the reception room.

  “Hello? Is anybody home?”

  You check the living room, library, study, kitchen, mudroom, pantry, and dining room. Then you run upstairs, up the curved staircase and through the hallway, past the guestrooms and entertainment center. Click. You open the door to your mother and the Dickhead’s bedroom. You smell strong, sweet perfume: Joy. The mirror on the wall over your mother’s dressing table is all cracked, and a triangular splinter sparkles on the carpet. Perfume bottles and your mother’s favorite jade lamp are also all over the carpet. The bed isn’t made, and your mother’s bras, stockings, underwear, and dresses are strewn across the pink- and-black sheets. You don’t see any of the Dickhead’s clothes, though, and suddenly you’re scared.

  Something is wrong, very wrong . . .

  You step on a yellow-lined notepad—what’s that doing on the floor?—as you rush back into the hallway, pass under the archway and up three steps into the servants’ quarters. You open the door to your sister’s room. You know it’s silly, but you’re afraid that she’s dead, that the Dickhead has hurt her again, only this time . . . this time . . .

  The room is empty, the house is empty, and you imagine—silly as it is to have such thoughts—that the world is empty, and you’ll be alone forever. You call out your sister’s name, just to hear the sound of it.

  “Julia.”

  You listen to the house sounds and call again, “Julia? Sis?” You want to tell your sister that you tried to bring Tars Tarkas back to help her.