Diverse Energies

by Joe Monti Tobias S. Buckell

  By solitude the soul escapes from doing or suffering magic; it escapes from dullness, from boredom, by being aware. Nothing is boring if you are aware of it. It may be irritating, but it is not boring. If it is pleasant the pleasure will not fail so long as you are aware of it. Being aware is the hardest work the soul can do, I think.

  I helped Hyuru have her baby, a girl, and played with the baby. Then after a couple of years I took the noncom out of my left earlobe. Since it left a little hole, I made the hole go all the way through with a burnt needle, and when it healed I hung in it a tiny jewel I had found in a ruin when I was scouting. I had seen a man on the ship with a jewel hung in his ear that way. I wore it when I went out foraging. I kept clear of Red Stone Creek Valley. The man there behaved as if he had a claim on me, a right to me. I liked him still, but I did not like that smell of magic about him, his imagination of power over me. I went up into the hills, northward.

  A pair of young men had settled in old North House about the time I came home. Often boys got through boygroup by pairing, and often they stayed paired when they left the Territory. It helped their chances of survival. Some of them were sexually paired, others weren’t; some stayed paired, others didn’t. One of this pair had gone off with another man last summer. The one that stayed wasn’t a handsome man, but I had noticed him. He had a kind of solidness I liked. His body and hands were short and strong. I had courted him a little, but he was very shy. This day, a day in the Silver Time when the mist lay on the river, he saw the jewel swinging in my ear, and his eyes widened.

  “It’s pretty, isn’t it?” I said.

  He nodded.

  “I wore it to make you look at me,” I said.

  He was so shy that I finally said, “If you only like sex with men, you know, just tell me.” I really was not sure.

  “Oh, no,” he said, “no. No.” He stammered and then bolted back down the path. But he looked back; and I followed him slowly, still not certain whether he wanted me or wanted to be rid of me.

  He waited for me in front of a little house in a grove of redroot, a lovely little bower, all leaves outside, so that you would walk within arm’s length of it and not see it. Inside he had laid sweet grass, deep and dry and soft, smelling of summer. I went in, crawling because the door was very low, and sat in the summer-smelling grass. He stood outside. “Come in,” I said, and he came in very slowly.

  “I made it for you,” he said.

  “Now make a child for me,” I said.

  And we did that; maybe that day, maybe another.

  Now I will tell you why after all these years I called the ship, not even knowing if it was still there in the space between the planets, asking for the lander to meet me in the barren land.

  When my daughter was born, that was my heart’s desire and the fulfillment of my soul. When my son was born, last year, I knew there is no fulfillment. He will grow toward manhood, and go, and fight and endure, and live or die as a man must. My daughter, whose name is Yedneke, Leaf, like my mother, will grow to womanhood and go or stay as she chooses. I will live alone. This is as it should be, and my desire. But I am of two worlds; I am a person of this world, and a woman of my mother’s people. I owe my knowledge to the children of her people. So I asked the lander to come, and spoke to the people on it. They gave me my mother’s report to read, and I have written my story in their machine, making a record for those who want to learn one of the ways to make a soul. To them, to the children I say: Listen! Avoid magic! Be aware!

  AFTERWORD

  by Joe Monti

  Mi abuelita, Lucia, passed away when she was ninety-six. She was Quichua — she grew up in the Chaco Mountains in Argentina. She moved to Buenos Aires, where she was brought to a wealthy Jewish immigrant family to be a handmaiden to their young daughter, who was about nine, like she was. Two of her seven older brothers also accompanied her to be groundsmen. They were sixteen and eighteen. This was the 1920s. Lucia knew three languages: Quichua, Spanish, and Yiddish. Lucia married mi abuelito, Francisco, whose family had immigrated to Argentina from Italy when he was ten.

  My parents met at a dance. They had both emigrated to the United States months earlier, my father from a small town in Italy that was bombed accidentally by Americans during World War II and still retains echoes of Aeneas and the war he left behind. My mother knew some Italian, and my parents were able to find common ground at a church hall in the Bronx.

  I look a lot like my mother, and as I’m pale with an Italian last name, no one looks further or expects to find anything more varied. I felt that way until I was in my teens. Yet the food and culture were always there from her side.

  Now I’m married. My wife is Chinese American. Her parents emigrated to Queens. My wife and I met in high school in racially segregated Yonkers, New York. So my son can fill in a few boxes on forms.

  While the specifics may be unique, this wonderful, blended, messed-up world is the one I know best and is very much what I see around me here on the East Coast. In 2009 a heated discussion on race in fantasy and science fiction was boiling up. This became known as RaceFail 09. A few months later, the discussion of whitewashing covers in young adult literature arose, initially from Justine Larbalestier’s Liar but continued on in other examples and dovetailed with RaceFail. It was a reminder that even an industry as progressive and genial as publishing needed to get schooled. There was a lot more heated discussion, largely on the blogosphere, about the portrayal of race in teen literature and its effects on the fantasy and science fiction community.

  Conflicts online tend to gravitate toward flame wars, and even though there were some very measured and smart responses being written, it was largely reactive. But the butterfly effect was happening. Whitewashed covers were changed, editors in publishing started looking for more books by people of color, and review attention increased. These are good foundations.

  Yet when another incident arose from an ignorant essay by a prominent writer, I was about to get online and rant, and instead called Toby Buckell and suggested we do something constructive and gather some of the writers we know and get them each to contribute a story to an anthology about a wonderful, blended, messed-up future not as a role model, but a touchstone. Having people of color/Caucasian/LGBT protagonists in stories by these writers is not a brick thrown at a window; it is the continued paving of a path.

  We’re contributing a portion of the money we’re making here to the Carl Brandon Society’s Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fund to encourage new writers of color into the field by attending one of the Clarion writing workshops. It’s like this: You may think that a grilled banana, peanut butter, bacon, and honey sandwich is not for you until you eat one. Then it’s essential. Likewise a Chinese pork bun or a creamy Indian korma, a Ukranian borscht (I prefer it hot), a Moroccan tagine, and on and on. You don’t know what you’re missing until you’ve had it.

  The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so.—Ursula K. Le Guin

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  EDITORS

  TOBIAS S. BUCKELL is a Caribbean-born professional blogger and SF/F author who grew up in Grenada, the British Virgin Islands, and the US Virgin Islands. He is a Clarion graduate, Writers of the Future winner, and John W. Campbell Best New Writer Award Finalist for science fiction, and he has been nominated for a Nebula Award. His work on Halo books has been selected as a YALSA Best Book for Young Adults (BBYA). Buckell lives in Ohio with his wife and two children.

  JOE MONTI is a literary agent. Before becoming an agent he was the children’s fiction buyer at Barnes & Noble Inc., held an executive sales position at Houghton Mifflin, and was an editorial director at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. There, several of the books he acquired have become New York Times bestsellers, and one was nominated for the National Book Award and was awarded the Michael L. Printz Award. Monti lives in New Jersey with his wife and son.

  STORY CONTRIBUTORS

  PAOL
O BACIGALUPI is a Michael L. Printz Award winner and a National Book Award Finalist for his young adult novel Shipbreaker. He has been awarded the Hugo and Nebula Awards for his debut novel, The Windup Girl. He is also a winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, the John W. Campbell Award, and a three-time winner of the Locus Award. His next novel is a follow-up to Shipbreaker titled The Drowned Cities. He lives in western Colorado with his wife and son.

  K. TEMPEST BRADFORD’s science fiction and fantasy stories have been published in Strange Horizons, Electric Velocipede, the Federations anthology, and several other publications. She also writes plays, poetry, and nonfiction, and has been an editor for Peridot Books, The Fortean Bureau, Sybil’s Garage, and Fantasy Magazine.

  RAHUL KANAKIA is a science fiction writer whose stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, Daily Science Fiction, Redstone, Nature, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. He lives in Oakland, California, where he works as an international development consultant.

  RAJAN KHANNA is a graduate of the 2008 Clarion West Writers Workshop and is a member of the New York City–based writing group Altered Fluid. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Shimmer Magazine, GUD, and The Way of the Wizard, among others. He has also received Honorable Mention in the Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror and the Year’s Best Science Fiction. He lives in Harlem, New York.

  URSULA K. LE GUIN is the author of several dozen books for adults, teens, and children. Her fiction publications include eleven volumes of short stories, twelve children’s books, and nineteen novels, including the six books that comprise the Earthsea cycle. Among the honors her writing for young readers has received are: a National Book Award, a Newbery Honor, and the Margaret A. Edwards Award for her lifetime contribution to young adult readers. Le Guin’s story “Solitude” was bestowed the Nebula Award. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

  KEN LIU’s fiction has appeared in F&SF, Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, and Clarkesworld, among other publications. His work has been nominated twice for the Nebula and the Hugo Awards, and several of his stories have been selected for inclusion in various Year’s Best anthologies. He lives near Boston with his wife and daughter.

  MALINDA LO’s first novel, Ash, a retelling of Cinderella with a lesbian twist, was a finalist for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award, the Andre Norton Award for YA fantasy and science fiction, and the Lambda Literary Award. Her second novel, Huntress, a companion novel to Ash, is an ALA Best Book for Young Adults. Her next work is a young adult science fiction duology, beginning with Adaptation (Fall 2012). She lives in Northern California with her partner and their dog.

  ELLEN OH’s first book, Prophecy: The Dragon King Chronicles,will be published in the winter of 2013. Transplanted from Brooklyn, New York, she is a lawyer, a writer, and a college instructor now living near Washington, D.C., with her husband and three daughters.

  CINDY PON’s debut, Silver Phoenix: Beyond the Kingdom of Xia, is a young adult fantasy inspired by ancient China. The novel has received starred reviews from Booklist and VOYA and was named one of the top SF/fantasy reads for youth in 2009 by Booklist. She is also a student of Chinese brush painting.

  GREG VAN EEKHOUT was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, in neighborhoods with hippies, criminals, working people, and movie studios. His parents are Dutch Indonesian. His novel The Boy at the End of the World has been nominated for the Nebula Award.

  DANIEL H. WILSON was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and earned a BS in computer science from the University of Tulsa. After earning a PhD in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, he moved to Portland, Oregon, where he has authored several books. His novel Robopocalypse, which is excerpted in this anthology, was a national bestseller and a YALSA Alex Award recipient. The novel will be adapted for the screen by Stephen Spielberg in 2014. His next novel, Amped, has been optioned for film.

  Loved Diverse Energies? Don't miss Tankborn, the first in Karen Sandler's thrilling dystopian trilogy.

  A deeply ingrained caste system. Genetic engineering. Forbidden love. Two girls will learn who to trust . . . and what it means to be human.

  Read on for an excerpt from Tankborn!

  Jal grinned up at her as he showed off a particularly fat sewer toad, its arachnid eyes beady and staring. The sewer toad’s eight segmented legs squirmed, river sludge dripping off its slimy skin. She’d seen images of bumpy brown Earth toads on the sekai readers in Doctrine classes. Those had been cuddly pets compared to the nightmare spider-like creatures Loka had to offer. But then, nearly everything on Loka was uglier than what humans had left behind on Earth.

  The few mammals on Loka weren’t as hideous as the spider-creatures. The wary seycats that kept the vermin down in the warehouses sported intriguing striped pelts and tall tufted ears. The six-legged droms that roamed the plains had thick mottled wool and droopy noses and only one pair of large black eyes set in their camel-like heads.

  But the seycats rarely showed their faces when people were around. And there weren’t too many of the native droms left. The ones that didn’t get eaten by the bhimkay had been crowded out of the grassy plains by the gene-splicers’ version of the drom—twice as tall, three times as heavy. The gene-splicers had used DNA from Earth cows to get bigger meat animals. Kind of like the way they used bits of animal DNA to give GENs like Kayla their skill sets.

  Jal stuffed the toad into his carrysak, then waded along the far bank, gaze fixed to the water’s surface. The GEN healer in thirty-third warren paid one dhan for twenty toads, although what the woman did with the disgusting things, Kayla didn’t want to think about.

  She’d been a pretty rough-and-tumble girl when she was Jal’s age, especially considering her sket. She’d climbed the scraggly junk trees in Chadi Square, scoured condemned housing warrens for trash she could exchange for quarter-dhans. She’d even trapped the eight-legged rat-snakes for the healer, toting them in a carrysak like Jal did the toads. Rat-snakes weren’t rats or snakes, just another spider-like creature with a long, squirmy thorax and a rat-like head. She shuddered now at the thought of touching those nasty, hairy monsters.

  The rumble of an engine snagged her attention. On the trueborn side of the river, a micro-lev-car, a shiny pearl gray Bullet, slid into view from between the Foresthill sector warehouses. The sleek, snub-nosed Bullet rocked a little as the engine’s air cushion traversed the uneven rubble of permacrete littering the far side, then settled its belly to the ground beside a skyway support pillar. The primary sun, Iyenku, cast its coppery glare on the windshield and hid the occupants from view.

  Kayla’s heart skittered with alarm as the wing-doors popped up and two trueborns climbed from the Bullet. They minced along on the permacrete rocks toward the river. She saw plenty of lowborns walking along the bank on the Foresthill side, taking a shortcut from one riverside shantytown to another. But other than the occasional glimpse of a warehouse supervisor, trueborns never got this close to the GEN sector.

  If she only considered the high-priced Bullet and the two boys’ extravagant clothes, she would have pegged them as high-status trueborns. But their pale skin and the green glint of their emerald bali in their right earlobes meant they were demi-status, not high.

  Despite their showy, jewel-stitched capes and kortas, Kayla knew the demi boys possessed nothing even close to high-status trueborn wealth. The high-status started their lives rich, awarded massive tracts of adhikar land as babies, twice the acres demi babies received. Of course, the demis’ adhikar grants were double what the minor-status trueborns got, and lowborns got nothing. So demis liked to rub what wealth they had into minor-status and lowborn noses.

  But usually demis steered clear of GENs like Kayla and Jal. Tankborns like her and her nurture brother were beneath trueborn notice. If they’d stopped to relieve themselves, they’d have found a more private spot between the warehouses. But they were headed straight for the bank overlooking where Jal waded in the river.

  Head bent down as if Jal still had her fu
ll attention, she angled her gaze up to keep one eye on the trueborns. “Jal,” Kayla called out to her nurture brother. “Come out of the water.”

  Slogging through the sludge, Jal waved her off, too focused on finding one more toad to listen to his older nurture sister’s request. And he had a point. With the river’s far edge marking the transition from Chadi sector to Foresthill, she and Jal were both legitimately on the GEN side of the border. Those trueborns had nothing to report on their wristlinks.

  Nevertheless, Kayla eyed them uneasily. She guessed they were maybe a little older than her nearly fifteen years. The stout one didn’t wear his gem-encrusted korta well. He looked stuffed into it like a sausage, his leggings so tight she feared they might burst.

  The other trueborn, blond and tall and good-looking, with a mouthful of too-white teeth, had a meanness to his pale face. He was proud enough of his broad shoulders to keep his cape thrown clear of them. Pela fur trimmed the cape, dyed a nasty shade of purple. She supposed she should be grateful the gene-splicers didn’t create GENs that awful color.

  The good-looking trueborn spoke to his friend, pitching his voice loud enough for Kayla to hear across the river. “What kind of DNA made that one?” He pointed at Kayla. “Looks like sow to me.”