Looking for Jake and Other Stories
Page 25
He thought of the strange imago that had helped him, still not understanding its motives. He thought with shame again of the soldiers outside, who had come with him against his orders, as he had suspected they might, and been slaughtered by the Fish of the Mirror’s imago guard. The guard that had let him pass, waiting for him to do whatever it was that they expected.
Perhaps I’ve got this all wrong. Perhaps this isn’t why they leave me alone at all—what if the chosen one misunderstands what he’s been chosen for?
It was too late for that now. His offer—his suit for peace, his surrender— had been made. Sholl bowed his head respectfully and stepped back. He tried to feel like a leader. The humans had nothing with which to bargain—no strength at all. The only thing that Sholl could do was make his forces soldiers, defeated soldiers, rather than bandits or vermin. That was all he had. If the Fish of the Mirror chose, it could ignore Sholl, and hunt down the last Londoners, to the last child. All Sholl had was his surrender. An extraordinary, arrogant claim that it was his to surrender. In all his humility was this last puffed-up pretence. It was all he had. He begged. Searing, he begged mercy, general to general.
The Fish of the Mirror glowed. Sholl stepped back, his hands up and open. He waited for his conqueror to consider.
This is the story of a surrender.
. . . the world of mirrors and the world of men were not, as they are now, cut off from each other. They were, besides, quite different; neither beings nor colours nor shapes were the same. Both kingdoms, the specular and the human, lived in harmony; you could come and go through mirrors. One night the mirror people invaded the earth. Their power was great, but at the end of bloody warfare the magic arts of the Yellow Emperor prevailed. He repulsed the invaders, imprisoned them in their mirrors, and forced on them the task of repeating, as though in a kind of dream, all the actions of men. He stripped them of their power and of their forms and reduced them to mere slavish reflections. Nonetheless, a day will come when the magic spell will be shaken off.
The first to awaken will be the Fish. Deep in the mirror we will perceive a very faint line and the colour of this line will be like no other colour. Later on, other shapes will begin to stir. Little by little they will differ from us; little by little they will not imitate us. They will break through the barriers of glass or metal and this time will not be defeated. Side by side with these mirror creatures, the creatures of the water will join the battle.
In Yunnan they do not speak of the Fish but of the Tiger of the Mirror. Others believe that in advance of the invasion we will hear from the depths of mirrors the clatter of weapons.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
“Fauna of Mirrors” from The Book of Imaginary Beings
The patient awoke about midnight and had just entered the dimly lit bathroom when he saw the reflection of his face in a mirror. The face appeared distorted and seemed to be changing rapidly, frightening the patient so much that he jumped through the bathroom window.
LUISH. SCHWARZ, M.D. and STANTON P. FJELD, PH.D.
“Illusions Induced by the Self-Reflected Image”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My sincere thanks to Emma Bircham, Mic Cheetham, Simon Kavanagh, Peter Lavery, Claudia Lightfoot, Colleen Lindsay, Jemima Miéville, Jake Pilikian, Max Schaefer, Chris Schluep, Liam Sharp and Jesse Soodalter.
My deepest gratitude goes to all the editors who commissioned and/or published some of these stories: Benjamin Adams, Michael Chabon, Pete Crowther, Eli Horowitz, Ian Irvine, Maxim Jakubowski, Pete Morgan, Bradford Morrow, John Pelan, Mark Roberts, Nicholas Royle, Peter Straub, Jeff VanderMeer, and Tony White.
I would like to point out that the historical detail in the story “foundation” is accurate and a matter of record. The U.S. Army did bury Iraqi soldiers alive, using tanks mounted with plows. Among many other sources, see Patrick Sloyan’s article “How the Mass Slaughter of a Group of Iraqis Went Unreported,” The Guardian, 14 February 2003.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHINA MIÉVILLE’s fiction has won the Arthur C Clarke Award (twice), the British Fantasy Award (twice), the Locus Award, and several others. His nonfiction includes Between Equal Rights, a study of international law. He lives and works in London.
The stories first appeared, some in slightly different forms, in the following venues:
“Looking for Jake” in Neonlit: The Time Out Book of New Writing, Volume 1, ed. Nicholas Royle (Quartet, 1998).
“Foundation” in The Independent on Sunday “Talk of the Town” magazine, 27 April 2003, ed. Ian Irvine.
“Reports of Certain Events in London” in McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories, ed. Michael Chabon (Vintage, 2004).
“Familiar” in Conjunctions, 39 ( The New Wave Fabulists), eds. Peter Straub and Bradford Morrow, 2002.
“Entry Taken from a Medical Encyclopaedia,” under its original title “Buscard’s Murrain,” in The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, eds. Jeff Vandermeer and Mark Roberts (Night Shade Books, 2003).
“Details” in The Children of Cthulhu, eds. John Pelan and Benjamin Adams (Del Rey Books, 2002).
“Different Skies” in Britpulp!, ed. Tony White (Sceptre, 1999).
“An End to Hunger” in The New English Library Book of Internet Short Stories, ed. Maxim Jakubowski (Hodder and Stoughton, 2000).
“ ’Tis the Season” in Socialist Review, 291, December 2004, ed. Pete Morgan.
The Tain (PS Publishing, 2002).
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Dutton, a division of Penguin Group (USA), Inc., to reprint “Fauna of Mirrors,” from The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges, with Margarita Guerrero, translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni, copyright © 1969 by Jorge Luis Borges and Norman Thomas di Giovanni. Reprinted by permission of Dutton, a division of Penguin Group (USA), Inc.
eISBN 0-345-48610-2
www.delreybooks.com
Примечания
1
“I doubt not that you have heard of Mister Jansa— a fellow of lamentable aspect—who is daily seen around the squares of his adopted city where his intense bearing entices crowds of the curious; when surrounded the fellow excoriates ’em in obscure tongues such as would shame the most pious and ecstatic of quakers. Those gathered mock the afflicted with mummery. But horrors! A number of those who have mimicked poor Jansa have fallen to his brain-fever, and are now partners in his unorthodox ministry. ” (Kate Vinegar [ed], The London Letters of Ignatius Sancho [Providence 1954], p. 337.)
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2
There is no record of Haygarth fraternising with or even mentioning Dr. Buscard before or after this time, and the reasons behind his 1775 recommendation are opaque. In his diaries, Haygarth’s assistant William Fin noted “a disparity between Dr. H’s words and his tone when he claimed Dr. Buscard as his very good friend ” (quoted in Marcus Gadd’s A Buscardology Primer [London 1972], p.iii). De Selby, in his unpublished “Notes on Buscard,” claims that Buscard was blackmailing Haygarth. What incriminating material he might have held on his more esteemed colleague remains unknown.
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3
A Posthumous Vindication of Dr. Samuel Buscard: Proof That “Gibbering Fever” Is Indeed Buscard’s Murrain. (London 1782), p. 17.
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4
Ibid., p. 25.
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5
His last known letter (to his son Matthew) is dated January 1783, and contains a hint as to his plans.Jacob complains “I have not even the money to finish this. Carriage to Bled is a scandalous expense!” (Quoted in Ali Khamrein’sMedical Letters[New York 1966], p. 232.)
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6
These notorious “Buscard Shacks” loom large in popular culture of the time. See for example the ballad “Rather the Poorhouse than a Buscard Shack” (reproduced in Cecily Fetchpaw’s Hanoverian Street Songs: Populism and Resistance [Pennsylvania 1988], p. 677).
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7
Contrary to the impression given by the media after the 1986 Statten-Dogger incident, deliberate exposure to the risks of wormword is neither common nor new. Ully Statten was (no doubt unwittingly) continuing a tradition established in the late eighteenth century. In what could be considered a late Georgian extreme sport, London’s young rakes and coffee-house dandies would take turns reading the word aloud, each risking correct pronounciation and thereby infection.
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8
This will come as no surprise to those familiar with Johnson’s work. The man is a liar, a fraud, and a bad writer (whose brother is Britain’s third-largest importer of bergamot oil).
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9
There is a comprehensive list in Gadd, op. cit., p. 74.
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10
“Years of Violent Ransacking Leave Slovenia’s Historic Churches in Ruins,” Financial Times, 3/7/85.
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