Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #221

by TTA Press Authors

  "What now,” Diana whispered, fighting back tears.

  Another transport went by, piled with sleeping elephants.

  "I always knew that any day, any moment, you could be gone,” Green Arrow said, his voice shaking, “but I didn't understand what that meant."

  Beaners finally had his answers, although he didn't like them much. He watched Green Arrow and Diana commune in silence, the old man between them with his head hanging. At least they had each other. For the hundredth time Beaners thought of Roxy. Was there any way she would have him, not as a customer, but as a companion? Beaners didn't even care if there was sex involved (well, not much, anyway); he just wished he could have more conversations with her. Green Arrow had said that if Beaners answered the age-old question of where people went when they disappeared, he'd be the most famous clown in history. Would that impress Roxy? Maybe. In any case, Beaners realized, he knew what came next.

  "Take this guy's clothes,” Beaners said to Green Arrow, gesturing at the man. “Then find clothes for Diana, and get outside. Who'll know you're superheroes?"

  The old man grunted amusement.

  "What's so funny?” Green Arrow asked.

  "Who'll know you're superheroes? Only every scanner you walk through. Your best chance to survive is to give yourself up to Management."

  It was Beaners’ turn to laugh. “Oh, sure. Maybe they'll give us jobs. Us and the belt buckles.” No one laughed. If the circumstances were different, Beaners was sure that crack would have gotten laughs. “I say we go into the preaching business. Let's go back and tell everyone. Let's shout it from the rooftops."

  "Who'll believe us? What proof do we have?” Green Arrow asked.

  Beaners considered. He pointed to a box of belt buckles. “We'll take one of those, with the funny markings on it, and,” Beaners pointed at the old man, “we'll take him."

  Green Arrow and Diana looked at each other. Diana nodded.

  "You're making a mistake. There's no telling how Management will react if you do this,” the man said.

  "I guess we'll find out,” Beaners said.

  Copyright © 2009 Will Mcintosh

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  [Back to Table of Contents]

  FISHERMEN—Al Robertson

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  Illustrated by Geoffrey Grisso

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  Al Robertson lives and works in London. He's published fiction in The Third Alternative, Midnight Street and Postscripts, has a story—'Changeling'—in the current issue of our sister magazine Black Static, and more upcoming on the Science Museum website. He's also a performance poet, and vocalist with ambient doomsters Graan (graan.org.uk). He's recently completed his first novel, and the second is already under way. Find out more at his blog, allumination.co.uk.

  * * * *

  They came at dawn. The sun had flared on the horizon and made the still sea beaten gold. I was drawing Christ on the Maria's foredeck, mindful of the Lord as I looked out on the water.

  "Sagenae! Sagenae!"

  Panic sharpens voices.

  "Fucking corsairs!"

  I stepped back from the rail. Someone ran past me.

  "Below decks! Maestro, below!"

  Hard, murderous ships carving in towards us, black outlines on the white glare of sea. Behind me, iron clashing—

  "Take one, this one..."

  "Fuck me, I thought we had more swords..."

  "Libera nos, quaesumus, Domine, ab omnibus malis, da propitius pacem in diebus nostris..."

  "Starboard! Starboard!"

  The sweetest of hard morning breezes.

  Then they were on us like the entry of a demon.

  Our trabaccolo shaken, first once, then twice—swearing, a scream—and men, it seemed, climbing out of the very sea, up from the burning waves and into our boat, black shapes barely there they moved so fast.

  "Fucking Lazarus! Fucking Lazarus! The Fenicians fucking warned us!"

  The fight was over instantly, the corsairs a storm the crew could not stand up to. The cargo bell at the Fenice Exchange would toll for us.

  A bird called, and I remembered Azantium, Theo's Harbour there; the salt, charred taste of mackerel on soft, fresh bread. Death is a great sea that waits for us all.

  "You, boy—there—with the others."

  Rough hands and the reek of sweat. I was pulled back to the stern, stumbling over something soft and wet. I thought of the crimes of the Firentine artists. The mainsail had broken free and cracked back and forth above me. I hid my Christ.

  "What's that?"

  They had already stripped out half the cargo. A chain of men across the deck, tossing sacks to each other. The crew were pushed up against the deckhouse. The cook had wet himself. Others were crying.

  "What's that?"

  He had a beard, I remember, and the hardest hands I'd ever felt. His breath stank of fish, of the open sea.

  "Fuck me, that's beautiful."

  The Christ gazed up at him. There is no judgement in art. My feet were wet. Red footprints on the deck.

  "You did that? Oy, Lazlo—an artist!"

  There is a chapel in St Mark's Fenice that I will never paint, now. I will not add to the glory of that golden city.

  The sun blazed into day and they took me.

  "We won't harm you."

  My master Gianni Giambono had talked of the Corsairs of Omis, while we were painting the Last Judgement in St Mary Blachernae. “Think of that horror, Michael, think of being taken by them—knowing they'll whip you, cut you, break you, saw away at your neck with a blunt saw and mount your head on the prow of one of their sagenae! Terrorists ... imagine the damned knowing such torments await, and paint that fear in them—the flames are coming for them and they know it!"

  Now I was one of the damned. I would not stay and be tortured. They had not tied me up. The deck of their ship was low on the water. I ran, and dived.

  The cold shocked me and I thought of St Peter. Before I had entered Gianni's service I used to race my friends across Theo's Harbour.

  There was shouting and another splash. I pushed through the little waves, salt water breaking against my mouth—and then he was on me—

  "You'll drown, you fucking clown."

  I pushed back against him and we sank together. Silence beneath the water and I struggled. I remember soft blue light and his arms wrapped around me. I could not escape him. He held me close. All thought left me.

  I came round to the wide and empty sky, a sail taut with wind, the concerned faces of dangerous men. I was lying on soft stolen sacks of wheat.

  "Captain, he's come back to us."

  He was a tall man, with a dark, slightly shaggy beard, thick black hair, even blacker eyes. His nose hooked out of a taut face—skin stretched like canvas across strong bones. He had opened my portfolio. His clothes were soaked.

  "Good morning, artist. I am Lazlo Subic. You know of me?"

  "You're a sodomite and murderer, a destroyer of virtù."

  He smiled. A gold tooth flashed.

  "So they say. And you draw with most excellent precision and have led—I am sure—an entirely blameless life."

  "Why did you save me?"

  "Every man has the right to live. Besides, I have a use for you."

  * * * *

  Omis runs down the hill to the sea, a huddle of a town pouring off the cliffs. Sandbanks run before the port, blocking the harbour off to all except those who grew up here; walk up the Sestina River and soon a steep, hard ravine closes around you. There is a wall across it, spiked with a guard tower like a broken tooth in a crone's mouth. The hills beyond the town are guarded by the Polijican Highlanders. A pirate's eyrie; impenetrable.

  "Normally we kill strangers who see this town,” Subic said. I was tending a small fire in a little metal grate. “We don't give them a house."

  I watched the face of Christ burn. Fire licked at him like dancing gold, a blasphemy. Paper browned, sparks lifted up and
away. Every image carries some small relic of the perfection it describes. I had never seen him look so alive. The little blaze burnt out. I reached for another sketch—an Annunciation.

  I had copied these figures from the finest Azantine models to shine before the guildsmen of Fenice. I had imagined that I would work with my master's brother and dazzle them.

  "All this we saved for you. Rescued!” Subic sighed. “You are an artist. You will make more."

  I reached for the flints.

  "You will paint our church for us."

  I struck the stones together. Sparks leapt from my hands. Fire snatched at parchment. “No."

  Subic laughed. I imagined his face; shadows dancing across it in the firelight. It would look devilish, burning angels revealing the truth of the man.

  "You will stay with us for a year and a day. If then you will paint, we have bare walls for you, and such pictures to fill them with. If you would leave, you will leave with our blessing."

  Gianni Giambino had taught me so carefully. I had traced the lines of the cartoons he'd sketched onto rough plaster, mixed up his pigments, spread the day's painting area with soft, wet plaster. I'd watched as he picked up his brushes and made heaven appear, then hell, then given life to saints, angels, to the Madonna, the divine Trinity. I had been the first to witness his greatest work, and the last.

  Afterwards, I had listened to tales of his glory days in Fenice, of the great masterpieces that his brother was still making there. By then, he had found peace, of sorts, in the bottle.

  I had carried that sodden, exiled man home so many times.

  I paid for his burial in the Pauper's Cemetery.

  "If you are not going to paint for us, perhaps you should also burn your books."

  Subic was holding the Alberti out towards me. His touch was in itself a desecration.

  Earlier, he had leafed through my sketches, commending this one, questioning that—my meal cooling before me. I would not drink his wine, or eat at his table. He had talked of his plans for the small village church.

  "You understand me, artist? You know now what it is to care for these people. This town is my father, these people my children."

  Alberti, Manetti, Filarete—the Firentine teachers my master had bequeathed me. His brother would not wait for me in Fenice, and another would paint the Mascoli Chapel.

  I took the book from him, but I could not burn it.

  "I will see that you are fed, artist."

  * * * *

  Weeks passed. The wall that blocked the ravine was well guarded. Two, three times they caught me there, and returned me to Omis. I thought of ending my life. The Christ always pulled me back. I have seen so many painted Christs, but at that time I could only imagine him drowning in flames.

  One cold dawn I tried to steal a boat, a child's sailing dinghy. I had to be rescued when a strong breeze trapped me against the harbour wall, half capsized.

  I kept apart from the people of Omis, and sketched in my house by day, walking at night when I could be sure that all slept. Pacing through the silent village I imagined the horrors that the terrorists in each house had committed.

  Learning from Alberti, I made myself an intersecting veil. One day, I was amusing myself by using it to draw a jug. I had opened my small window, to make sure that I had light to work by. And then the jug fell into shadow, and a voice said—

  "What's that?"

  A small child's face. I had heard them play—but somehow I had not connected them with this community, or imagined that the town of Omis could harbour such beaming innocents.

  I had vowed not to talk with these people.

  "My mother leaves you food, you know."

  I kept sketching, ignoring him.

  "And you eat it. All of it."

  It was difficult to pretend that he was not there. The jug was in shadow, so I could hardly see it through the veil.

  "I can teach you to sail."

  "What?"

  "You can't sail. We saw. I can teach you."

  "They won't let you."

  He laughed, sunlight catching at him and making him gold.

  "It will be a secret. And you will draw me. For my mother. To say thank you. And every night I will teach you how to use boats."

  * * * *

  I had never had a subject like that child. It is not the Azantine way to draw from life. The intersecting lines I had drawn on the veil defined his face for me as I looked through them, at him. I had laid out the same pattern of lines on parchment, and copied the pattern of his features from the one to the other.

  Once, in his cups, Gianni Giambino had whispered to me of blasphemies committed by Firentine artists—of the dead dissected, of bodies cut into to show the material foundations of life. I had hushed him, fearful that he would be overheard, that it would be believed that we endorsed such crimes against God. Now—sketching that boy—I began to understand the Firentine passion for such accuracy.

  Life blew across his face like a tiny breeze, expression flaring and shifting beneath it. I found it so hard to catch his likeness. I had painted a dozen Christs, a hundred disciples, a thousand angels—each one reproduced from a model in a fresco, an altarpiece, a copybook—but I had never tried to capture such breathing vividness before.

  * * * *

  A month later the pox came and it seemed that the whole town lay sick. Ladislav wept one day as I drew him. All my drawings were failures, but they pleased him. I was not yet sailor enough to be free. His mother was ill. His father, one of Subic's chief lieutenants, was away. Food supplies were running short. Subic had taken the few able bodied men that remained to him, and sailed in two sagenae to pillage for vittles.

  I found myself cooking for Ladislav and his mother, Elena. Their cottage was small and sparsely furnished. I had imagined corsair orgies in these little houses, but there was no place for them here. Elena would watch me at work, sweating palely in the doorway. Subic had allocated her extra rations to care for me, but still there was little to eat.

  "Don't use too much rice! That's for the month, that jar” or “Save some of those, for pickling.” After a few minutes she would start to cough. Once she trusted me to carefully ration each ingredient she stopped watching me. At first, I left her food on her bedside table. When I realised how ill she was, I began to feed her by hand.

  The walls of her room were rough plaster, whitewashed. A crucifix faced the bed, the Christ carved by hand from driftwood. “He made that,” she said, “Ladislav's father.” There were words painted beneath it: every man has the right to live. The pirate's Christ had a slightly shaggy beard, thick black hair, a nose hooking out of a tiny gaunt face. I did not recognise him, then. “You mustn't judge them,” she would say. “We must eat."

  I remember sitting up in her room, as much to comfort Ladislav as to care for her. He would not sleep if she was alone. As she slept I drew her—the light planes of her face, the darkness round her eyes, her pale lips. I tried to catch the softness of her breathing in the quiet hatchings of my pencil. The candle flickered and I thought of her husband, far out at sea; the care and love he would return to.

  * * * *

  She was sitting in the kitchen, watching me cook, when Subic kicked open the door. “The Fenicians have taken him. They have his sagena, his crew."

  Elena was weeping. Ladislav clutched at her, wrapping himself in her nightgown.

  "You! His boy has taught you to sail, to row, my best men are captured or sick. Come, painter, I will show you these Fenicians of yours. Come, we will save them."

  His voice rasped and wheezed out of him. He was swaying a little. His shirt and tunic had been torn open, and there were thin red lines across his chest. One eye was black. The bruise had swollen his eyelids shut and pulled his face out of true. He took a step into the room and fell. He would not wake for a week.

  His fever spared him the sight of the Fenicians’ message. At dawn two days later they beached the captured sagena on the outer shoals of the bay. I voluntee
red as rescue crew. I remembered Ladislav's father from our first meeting and would know him again. I wondered at the mercy of the Fenicians, returning boat, perhaps captives, to us.

  The sun nudged at the edge of the sea, staining the sky the lightest pink-red. We moved slowly through the sandbanks that protected the port. I had not been in the company of so many men for a long time. All looked to the floor as they dragged their oars through the still salt water.

  Cold shadows ran through the boat. A lone bird's call sliced at the sky. The dawn was behind the black boat ahead. We never seemed to face it directly.

  They had butchered the crew. The deck was clotted and soft. The tiller had been tied off, a man lashed to it. His throat had been cut, his nose pulled away. Thick boneless fingers, whole hands, floated loose in the bilges. Gulls lifted off as we boarded—they had been silent, too busy for noise.

  Most of the dead had no faces. There was birdshit everywhere, white and yellow on open pink flesh. I had set light to the anatomical sketches my master had left me—sealed in an envelope, for my eyes only—but I cannot burn out my memories of that day. Walking among these battered corpses, I understood how gracefully and with how much respect and love the Firentines had carved out their knowledge.

  We towed the ship back to shore and beached it. There was a great pyre on the beach. It blazed all night. The priest stood with us, periodically shouting in Latin. The wives were a little clump of loss in the dark. Every so often the flames would illuminate an empty face—and then it would be hidden again in the darkness. Jagged sobs enshrouded us all. I stayed until the embers glowed in the dawn. The pork reek of burnt flesh clung to my clothes—the dead so reluctant to leave us—and later I had to burn them too.

  Fire took my master's heart. Staring into the pyre I was an apprentice again, gazing into St Mary Blachernae as it burnt. He was weeping beside me. The face of the Christ receding into flame; angels winged with fire reaching up to him, the damned and the saved beneath him, the blaze dancing through and around them like the Holy Spirit itself. All so golden, so elusive; so lost. I learned then how easily a man may be broken. The soul flares like parchment at the touch of God. Certainly Gianni guttered out, wheeling and swearing through the bars of Azantium.