Tika suddenly whipped her trunk over Jackie’s head and caught Michael squarely in the side, sweeping him off Jackie’s neck and down on the ground in front of Tika.
Michael fell the ten feet in a moment of frozen astonishment and landed hard on his back, knocking the wind out of him. Desperately, he tried to force himself to breathe, cough, anything. But his lungs stubbornly refused to fill.
Tika raised her leg over him.
Michael saw the details of her foot, the broken toenail, the puckered scar.
Jackie screamed “No!” and stepped over him, shoving Tika away.
Tika stumbled back and then shoved back.
Jackie stood foursquare over him, her head and trunk down.
Michael’s breath caught and he sat up, watched twenty tons of animals shoving above him.
“Move,” Jackie cried.
Michael scrambled away. A tree! Where’s a tree? He saw an oak and hopped over to it, clawed his way up the trunk and into the branches high enough to escape Tika.
Jackie fell back in front of the tree, facing Tika.
Tika trumpeted at her.
It was as if she shouted in English: You we want. But not with him.
Jackie trumpeted back. Not without him.
“Jackie,” he shouted. “Go with them. I’ll be okay.”
Tika fell back, staring at the two of them.
“No,” Jackie said. “Both of us or not at all.”
Michael found himself crying.
Part 5
Dear Mom,
It’s been a while since I wrote but I’ve been busy. Little Bill is just as stubborn as his mother. Jackie says he outgrew the cute phase when he was two. Now she thinks it’s just unpleasant. But I like him. He reminds me of his mother.
I think Tika’s finally accepted me. It took long enough. She’s allowed me to stay all this time by just ignoring me. But a few weeks ago before we left Panacea one of her toenails got infected and needed to be lanced and cleaned. It was pretty clear it had to be done before we started north. Jackie stood next to me to make sure I didn’t get hurt. But Tika brought over her foot and didn’t twitch when I cleaned out the wound. It must have hurt. It looks lots better now.
That was just after I shot two Komodos that had decided to make a meal out of Tika’s leg. The Komodos aren’t much problem in the winter. They’re all asleep somewhere. But between the time they wake up in the spring and the time they start north, they’re pretty hungry and mean. I can’t say for sure what made Tika change her mind. But she seemed pretty happy that Jackie and I were walking next to her when we went North this year.
Things are still changing. The Komodos are tough but they seem to have a hard time with the brush lions. We’re not sure. Where we find brush lions, there aren’t any Komodos and where we find Komodos there aren’t any brush lions. We don’t know exactly what’s going on.
And the fire ants keep spreading north.
Good news this spring. Both Tanya and Wilma are pregnant. The bull that visited around Christmas must have done his job. More young ones for Little Bill to play with.
We’re not far from Samsaville. It’ll be nice to see Pinto and Samsa. I’m trying to persuade Jackie we should go far enough north to see Gerry. But she doesn’t like going through dragon country.
All for now,
Love,
Michael
Michael finished signing his name and closed the notebook. It was almost filled. This would be book number seven. He hefted it in his hands. He wondered if he was a little off in his head to be writing his dead mother all these years. He was sixteen now. Michael shrugged. He still liked doing it. Maybe Jackie would have an opinion on it.
He put down his pack and watched the river flow by. Mostly he just enjoyed the play of sunlight and color on the water. It was a careful observation, too. Keeping track of floating logs nearby that might leap out at him. The crocodiles had become more numerous in the last couple of years. Michael didn’t know what they were eating but so far none had tasted elephant on his watch.
Little Bill came down to the edge of the bank. Little? Michael smiled to himself. Bill’s head was two feet taller than he was.
“Jackie’s-Boy! Jackie’s-Boy!” he piped, a tiny voice for such a large body. Michael wondered when, and if, the elephant’s voice would ever break into the deep timbre of an adult. Michael’s had. Well, mostly. Sometimes it still cracked.
“Just Michael,” he said. “Like I always say. Just Michael.”
“Jackie’s-Boy is what Tika calls you.”
Michael chuckled, wondering not for the first time, how an elephant spoke without being able to speak. The world was filled with mysteries. “Does she now?”
“Are you ready to go?” piped Bill. “Tika sent me to get you. She wants you and Jackie to go first.”
Michael reached down and pulled up his artificial leg and fastened it on. “Really? Tika wants us to lead?”
“Sure. At least as far as Cobraville.”
“Ah. She wants us to cross the fire ants first, eh?”
“Yeah.”
“Will wonders never cease?”
Little Bill didn’t answer. Instead, he made a leg. Michael shouldered the rifle and climbed up over his neck. He looked around. The blue bowl of the sky above him, the warm sun, his gray family patiently waiting for him half a mile away. He felt like singing.
Lovingly, he patted the top of Little Bill’s head.
“Well, then. Musn’t grumble,” he said with a grin. “Let’s go.”
Eight Miles
Sean McMullen
Sean McMullen (www.seanmcmullen.net.au) lives in Melbourne, Australia. He began publishing in the 1980s, and nine early stories are collected in Call to the Edge (1992). Taken together they give evidence of an impressive and wide-ranging SF storytelling talent emerging. His first two novels were published in Australia, Voices in the Light (1994) and the sequel, Mirrorsun Rising (1995), and were part of the projected Greatwinter series. He combined and rewrote the first two Greatwinter novels as Souls in the Great Machine (Tor, 1999). The sequel, The Miocene Arrow, and another, The Eyes of the Calculor, were published in 2001. He is also one of the leading bibliographers of Australian SF, and has won the William Atheling, Jr. Award three times in the 1990s. His bibliographies are an essential underpinning of the Melbourne University Press Encyclopedia of Australian Science Fiction & Fantasy (1998).
“Eight Miles” was published in Analog. It is about as hard SF as the steampunk subgenre, which most often is more fantasy than SF, gets. McMullen says about it: “a ballooning story from the 1840s. Back then they could build balloons to go twice as high as Everest, but humans tended to die at about five or six. It is about a man trying to push the envelope, but even with leading edge 1840s life support it is rather tricky. Why eight miles? His passenger has breathing problems at lower altitudes.”
Consider a journey of eight miles. One could walk it in less than an afternoon; in a carriage, it would take an hour, or one could conquer the distance in one of Stevenson’s steam trains in fifteen minutes or less. Set two towers eight miles apart, and a signal may be transmitted by flashing mirrors in less time than modern science is able to measure. Eight miles is not all that it used to be, yet seek to travel eight miles straight up and you come to a frontier more remote than the peaks of Tibet’s mountains or the depths of Africa’s jungles. It is a frontier that can kill.
My journey of eight miles began in London, in the spring of 1840. At that time I was the owner and operator of a hot air balloon. It was reliable, robust, and easy to fly, and I provided flights to amuse the jaded and idle rich. It was a fickle income, but when I had clients, they paid well for novelty.
Lord Cedric Gainsley was certainly rich, and when his card arrived I assumed that he wished to hire my balloon to impress some friends with a flight above London. I kept it packed aboard a waggon to launch from wherever the clients wished. Its open wicker car could carry six adults; indeed, the idea of
six people of mixed sexes packed in close proximity seemed to add to the allure of a balloon flight.
My first moments in Gainsley’s London rooms told me that he was no ordinary client. The walls of the parlour were decorated by maps alternating with sketches of mountain peaks and ruins. The butler showed me into a drawing room completely lined with books. This was nothing unusual, for many gentlemen bought identical collections of worthy books to display to visitors. At that time it was also fashionable to collect, so Gainsley collected. In and on display cases were preserved insects, fossil shells, mineral crystals, old astronomical instruments, clocks dating back to the fourteenth century, lamps from the Roman Empire, and coins from ancient Greece. Seven species of fox were represented by stuffed specimens.
As I began to look through Gainsley’s library, however, I realised that many books had been heavily used, to the point of being grubby. They were mainly concerned with the natural sciences.
“Does geology interest you?”
I turned to see a tall man of perhaps forty handing a top hat to the butler. He wore a black tailcoat with a fashionably narrow waist, but was just slightly unkempt. A rich man who did not want to draw attention to himself might look that way.
“Geology—you mean the books?”
“Yes, they made me rich. I learned to tell when minerals were present, in places where other men saw only wilderness.”
The butler cleared his throat.
“Lord Cedric Gainsley, may I introduce Mr. Harold Parkes,” he improvised, not entirely sure of the protocol when the baron had opened the conversation first.
“Thank you, Stuart. Now have Miss Angelica ready and waiting for my summons.”
“Very good, my lord.”
Once we were alone, Gainsley waved at a crystal brandy decanter and told me to make myself at home. He paced before the fireplace as I poured myself a glass, and showed no interest in a drink for himself. I took a sip. It was very good—far better than I was used to.
“How high can your balloon ascend, Mr. Parkes?” he asked.
“I take pleasure seekers a mile above London,” I began. “My rates—”
“Your rates are not a problem for me. Could you ascend, say, two miles?”
I blinked.
“At two miles the air is thin and cold, sir. Besides, the view of London is not as good as from a lower altitude.”
“Two miles, and hold that height for six hours.”
I blinked again. Pleasure flights seldom lasted more than one hour. People got bored. More to the point, the balloon needed to carry fuel for its burner to maintain the supply of hot air. That was a constraint.
“I must ask some questions, sir. How many passengers, what weight will they total, and what weight of food and drink will they carry? You see, to stay aloft for so long, the balloon must carry some fuel to keep the air heated. With the weight of fuel for six hours, I may not even be able to get off the ground.”
“Yourself, myself, a young woman of one hundred and forty pounds, and food and drink not exceeding ten pounds. Nothing more.”
“Then it is possible, but not certain.”
“Why not?”
“Nothing in ballooning is certain. Above us is a dangerous and unforgiving frontier.”
Gainsley thought about this for a time.
“You are a man of science, Mr. Parkes, like me. You invented the mercury ascent barometer, and you calibrated it to five miles.”
“With the help of Green and Rush, yes. They took it on their record-breaking flight some months ago.”
“Yet you are in difficult circumstances.”
“There is not a big market for ascent barometers. Many of my other inventions turned out to be impractical, but proving them impractical nearly bankrupted me. Pleasure flights are not my preferred career, but they are lifting me out of debt.”
I had once had visions of becoming the George Stephenson of the skies by inventing the airborne train, and I spent all my money installing a purpose-built Cornish steam engine with small windmill blades beneath a hot air balloon. Alas, although it did drive the balloon in any direction on a calm day, in wind it was useless. As I found out, a balloon is effectively a huge sail, and the wind was more than a match for any steam engine small enough to be carried aloft.
“Mr. Parkes, my flights are to be no pleasure jaunt, and I need an innovative balloonist, one who can solve technical problems as they arise,” Gainsley now explained. “I intend to study the effects of extreme altitude on a very special person. I will pay you fifty pounds for each ascent, and I shall also pay for the fuel to inflate your balloon with hot air. My condition is that you work for nobody else while in my hire, and that you exercise absolute discretion regarding the flights and the nature of my research.”
His rates were certainly better than I was currently making from pleasure flights. In fact, as a business proposition it was too good to be true. Once I had agreed, he pulled at a red velvet tassel that hung beside the fireplace. The butler appeared within moments.
“My lord?”
“Stuart, fetch Miss Angelica now.”
Angelica was a young woman a little below average height, with a delicate, angular face. She was wearing a dark blue woollen cloak and close-fitting bonnet, but I could see nothing more of her attire. There was something odd about her eyes. They were listless, almost lacking in life.
“Miss Angelica has been in my service for some months,” said Gainsley. “I named her Angelica because she comes from very high altitudes.”
“A fallen angel?”
“Quite so. It is my little joke. Now then, put your glass down, make sure you are seated comfortably, and prepare yourself for a shock.”
Gainsley unpinned her cloak and let it fall to the floor. Such were my expectations that it took some moments to realise that she was neither clothed nor naked. Angelica was covered in fine, dark brown fur, except for her face. She had three pairs of breasts, each no larger than that of a girl in early pubescence. Her chest was surprisingly broad and deep, however, and I would estimate that her lung capacity was greater than mine. Her ears were pointed, in the manner of a fox. I sat staring for some time.
“Well?” asked Gainsley.
The young woman showed no sign of shame, which was a very strong clue. She was probably used to being on display.
“I have seen the like before,” I replied uneasily.
“Indeed? Where?”
“At fairgrounds, in the novelty tents. Women with beards, boys with six and seven fingers, I have even seen a child with two heads. By some accident of birth the human template was not applied to them correctly by nature. For this young lady, it is the same.”
“You are wrong,” said Gainsley. “She is a werefox, for the lack of a better word. She speaks no language, sleeps on the floor, and is not familiar with clothing.”
I managed not to make a reply, which is just as well because it would surely have been sarcastic.
“You clearly do not share my opinion,” he prompted.
“Indeed not, sir.”
“Then how would you account for her condition?”
“A feral child, abandoned by her parents. She was born covered in fur, so they cast her out. Perhaps wild beasts raised her.”
“I thought that too, at first. I did indeed find her in a fairground. Her manager said she had been bought from a dealer, who also sold dancing bears. When she was captured in India’s northern mountains she had been more active and entertaining; she could even do little tricks. At low altitudes she became very lethargic, however, and was only of value as a passive curiosity. It was not until some days later that I realised the truth. I returned to the fair and bought her.”
“And what is that truth?”
“The girl is adapted to very great altitudes. At sea level the richness of the air overwhelms her, much as a diet of that brandy would overwhelm either of us. I believe there is a whole race of humans who live on the highest of mountains, adapted to the thin
air.”
The idea was fantastic. I looked back to the girl. Her lungs were certainly large in proportion to her body, and the fur would have protected her from the cold.
“I am not sure what role you have planned for me,” I said at last. “I know nothing of mountaineering.”
“Ah, but your balloon will be a substitute for the mountains. A trip to India would take years, but my business interests do not allow me to leave England for more than days. Your balloon can take us two miles high in . . . how long?”
“Twenty minutes, perhaps thirty. It depends on the load.”
“Splendid. We can do the flight above my estate, north of London, and be down in time for dinner. At two miles I can observe how Angelica reacts to thin air and cold. If it restores her senses, I might even be able to speak with her, to question her about her people.”
Gainsley helped Angelica back into her cloak, then rang for the butler to escort her away. Once we were alone again he walked over to the window and gestured to the crowded street outside.
“Look upon my prosperous neighbours, Mr. Parkes,” he said. “Merchants, bankers, financiers, landed gentry. What do they do, other than grow rich and live well?”
“Visit the theatre, attend the races, go to balls?” I guessed. “Some take balloon rides above the races. That is all the fashion just now.”
“Theatre, balls, races,” Gainsley muttered, shaking his head. “Within a year of their deaths, such people are all but forgotten. I want to be like Isaac Newton, James Cook or Joseph Banks—I want to be remembered for discovering something stupendous. Miss Angelica will make my name.”
“You have lost me, sir.”
“I have a theory, Mr. Parkes. In my theory of adaptive morphology I assert that humans take other physical forms under extremes. For example, in polar regions they may become seals if they dwell there too long.”
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