The Shining Cities: An Anthology of Pagan Science Fiction

by Lauren Teffeau

  The

  Shining Cities

  An Anthology of Pagan Science Fiction

  Edited by Rebecca Buchanan

  Copyright © 2012 by Neos Alexandrina

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means or in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author(s), except for brief quotations embodied in literary articles or reviews. Copyright reverts to original authors after publication.

  Silent clouds of stars,

  Other worlds uncountable and other suns beyond numbering and realms of fire-mist

  and star-cities as grains of sand .... drifting...

  Across the void ....

  Across the gulf of night ....

  Across the endless rain of years ....

  Across the ages.

  Listen!

  Were you the star-born you should hear

  That silent music of which the ancient sages spoke

  Though in silent words ...

  Here then is our quest and our world and our Home.

  Come with me now,

  Pilgrim of the stars,

  For our time is upon us and our eyes shall see the far country and the shining cities of Infinity which the wise men knew in ages past, and shall know again in the ages yet to be.

  [Excerpted from Burnham's Celestial Handbook by Robert Burnham Jr.]

  Contents

  Introduction

  by Rebecca Buchanan

  Truth, Lies, and the Color of Faith

  by Gerri Leen

  Chicken Abductions: A Fowl Tail:

  Recent Alien Abductions in Lexington, Kentucky

  by Jordsvin

  Explanation

  by Diotima

  S and R Dance On

  by Eli Effinger-Weintraub

  1863 Antinous

  by P. Sufenas Virius Lupus

  The Touch of a God

  by Joel Zartman

  Logos

  by S.R. Hardy

  All I Survey

  by Jason Ross Inczauskis

  Kailash

  by Michelle Herndon

  Datorvita

  by Ashley Horn

  The Lament of the Last Goddess

  by Jolene Dawe

  Alexander's Heart

  by Rebecca Buchanan

  A Wrecking Bar, a Chocolate Bar,

  and a Ka Offering for Naneferkaptah

  by Pell Kenner

  Initiate

  by Inanna Gabriel

  No One Is an Enemy to Water

  by Sandi Leibowitz

  Chicken Feet

  by Lauren C. Teffeau

  Yundah

  By C.S. MacCath

  Dumb Supper

  by Jennifer Lyn Parsons

  The Fool

  by William Kolar

  The Scroll of Kali

  by Quincy J. Allen

  Merlin

  by Lorraine Schein

  Select Timeline

  Select Recommendations

  Our Contributors

  About Bibliotheca Alexandrina

  Current and Forthcoming Titles

  Introduction

  Alternate history. Apocalyptic. Biopunk. Cyberpunk. Dystopia. Ecological. Far future. Feminist. Gaslight. Lost world. Marxist. Military. Parallel world. Planetary romance. Space opera. Space western. Steampunk. Superhero. Time travel. Utopia.

  As a genre, science fiction is difficult to define. With its broad list of potential qualities -- from spaceships to laser guns to alien worlds to our own world, irrevocably changed -- and its many, many subgenres, it is often a case of "I'll know it when I read it." Anne McCaffrey's Pern books, set on an alien world in the distant future, are clearly science fiction (even though they feature dragons). But what of Lucian of Samosata's A True History, written in the second century of the common era? Myth, fantastic tale, parody, or proto-science fiction? The Japanese folk narrative, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter? Or Gulliver's Travels? Bacon's The New Atlantis? Shelley's Frankenstein? Superman?

  Perhaps the best definition is also the broadest: science fiction as a genre deals with imaginary, but plausible and logically constructed, worlds in which the implications and consequences of cultural, environmental, and scientific change and innovation are explored. As such, works of literature as varied as The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, Ten Thousand Light Years From Home by James Tiptree Jr., Kindred by Octavia Butler, The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper, and The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk all qualify as science fiction.

  With its limitless potential for world-building (and real world influence), science fiction is also a genre rich in possibility for Pagan authors and readers. Perhaps you have imagined a world in which a Wiccan is elected President of the United States. Or imagined constructing a temple to Artemis on the moon. Or wondered what would have happened if the Romans had met the Aztecs. A quick survey of the shelf at any library or bookstore will reveal plenty of mainstream science fiction works that include elements appealing to Pagan readers: everything from polytheism to mythology to alternative gender construction.

  Unfortunately, there is a serious dearth of explicitly Pagan works written by Pagan authors (either mainstream or alternative press). The Fifth Sacred Thing, along with its prequel, Walking to Mercury; Jennifer Lyn Parsons' A Stirring in the Bones; Stewart Farrar's Omega: A Novel of Eco-Magic; Alan Moore's comic book series Promethea; K.A. Laity's Owl Stretching; and short fiction by Gerri Leen and C.S. MacCath are the few examples which immediately come to mind.

  With The Shining Cities, we add one more work (or collection of works) to that list. In these pages you will find tales that run the gamut from humorous to ecological to anthropological to time travel to space opera. It is our hope that The Shining Cities will be only the most recent addition to an ever-growing list of Pagan science fiction.

  Enjoy!

  Rebecca Buchanan

  Editor-in-Chief Bibliotheca Alexandrina

  Lies, Truth, and the Color of Faith

  by Gerri Leen

  The web changes. Grandmother Spider guides my hand, and I follow the thread as it glides over the course of history, into worlds and out again, tracing the possible paths of our ship, the repercussions of our potential decisions.

  Possibility collides with possibility, and one way is strong; it draws me in, takes me over, rushing through the Weaving like the rivers through the mountains in the Northlands. It has been too long since I have ridden the rivers, and I miss them. For a moment I am there, feeling spray on my face, remembering how my mother took my hand and held on tight.

  "Enjoy this, child," she said, and then laughed, delighted by the immensity of the water. We come from a dry land; our rivers run gently, if at all. Water is never something to take for granted.

  The web shifts under my hand, drawing me out of my memories. The pattern sings of conquest, of people who will not fight but have much to lose. "Oh," I say. Then "Oh," again as the thread turns red like the Bayeta cloth my ancestors wove.

  "Course heading, Lieutenant?" the captain asks; she has been sitting at my side for longer than I thought possible as the web of light played out potentialities she will never see, much less understand. She has been quiet, like an elder showing respect as a sand painting is rubbed out.

  But unlike the perfection of the sand painting that must be destroyed so the gods do not take offense, the pattern I feel is wrong, tai
nted. Strong as it is, this way holds disaster for those we would visit. In an older time, it would be our preferred course. But now we are not here to grab greedily or make conquest, and so captains like this one sit by while their ships are guided by the voices of the Spider Woman.

  "Do we have a heading or not?"

  "The way is not yet clear."

  The captain gets up and leaves -- as I expected her to do an hour ago. She is learning, this one, or if not learning, at least capable of patience, which I would not have credited her with. Her family has been in the Fleet since the old times, before the patterns ruled a captain's destiny. I hear her muttering as my door closes, leaving me in the darkness.

  Laida steps out of the shadows; she is too good at hiding, has stood motionless for so long her limbs should be cramped, but she moves without effort. Her beauty fills the room, but I can sense her thread in all of this and it begins to sing to me of lies and deception. She is hiding far more than just our relationship from the captain.

  "She sat for so long. I thought she'd seen me."

  "She sees only what she wants." I push Laida's thread away, but the dark, stinging wrongness of it pierces my mind. "I, however, see more." I investigate it, wonder how I never saw it before -- dark like a charred piece of wood, her threads smolder.

  "I know how much you see. It's why I love you, Adzaa." She is smiling at me, her mask of affection firmly placed; she does not see that I am discovering a truth about her.

  My heart hurts that she does not see this.

  The pattern's harmonies turn discordant. She doesn't love me; she is only using me. Only I do not know why and pain twists in me at the thought she would use me. Then the pattern settles.

  Be still, Grandmother Spider says to me as the threads whisper between my fingers. This is expected. This is right.

  This is the order of things.

  Laida moves closer, eyes the Weaving, then turns to look at me. "Didn't you hear me? I said I love you."

  "I love you, too." Despite my heartache, it is true.

  ***

  Samuel looks up as I enter his office. His smile is immediate, and I smile back just as broadly.

  "Soothsayer," he says with a grin.

  "Headshrinker," I say back, putting a Dine harshness to the letters.

  "I love how you say that." His lightness is infectious. He reminds me of the Singers; his eyes sparkle just like those of the medicine men, as if he has seen the worst of humanity and likes us despite that. "So, wise one, what can I do for you? Or did you come to play cribbage?"

  His voice holds a note of hope, so I nod, even though I did not come to play games. He pulls out his board, and I marvel as always at the beauty of the thing. He won it in a tournament, and it gleams in the soft light of his office, the wood a deep ebony with inlays of other kinds. When I was a girl, I had no idea there were that many kinds of wood in the world. Our land was full of brush -- dry tinder that burned fast and smelled good. It was not until my mother took me to the Northlands that I understood what a forest might look like, how tall a tree might grow.

  We play and he quickly takes the lead. I often lose to him, only not by this much. Finally, he puts down his cards and says, "What is it?"

  "I did not come to burden you." It is the way of our people. To offer the Singer a chance to turn from a healing.

  "It is not a burden, and you know it." He waits, as he is so good at, and the silence grows in his office. Our breathing is the only sound until I sigh. "Adzaa?"

  "Have you ever had an associate you knew was going to betray you?" The pain of what I felt in the Weaving burns through me as I ask. I don't push it down, just ride it out and seek to learn from it. But the only lesson I can find is that love hurts, even if you have faith in it--maybe especially if you do?

  He thinks about my question, which is why I love talking to him. He never rushes to judgment, just sits like an elder, listening to what I say and also what I don't. He studies me as I talk, taking in the body language, how tightly I'm held.

  "Who are we talking about? Someone I know, I take it?"

  I trust him, but not that much. If it concerns the ship, Samuel will have to tell the captain.

  He seems to understand I will not answer. "I don't think I have been in that position. Forgive me for asking, but if you know this will happen, are you going to just let it?"

  I look down.

  "You do know it will happen?"

  I indicate he should resume playing, my hand waving over the pegboard the way my fingers fly over the Weaving. "The patterns tell me everything at times. Other times so little. Grandmother Spider is sparing me, I think. I don't know the details."

  He looks as if he is about to say something, so I ask, "What?"

  "Have you considered that what you know, what you feel from the patterns you weave in that room I don't begin to understand is not from your goddess, but from something inside you?"

  "You'd rather I were psychic than connected to a goddess?"

  He smiles. "It would be easier for me to understand. Psychic phenomena is understandable. But this -- That some goddess speaks to you through a web of waves and particles? It's a reach ...you know I'm not a religious man, not spiritual in nature."

  If he met one of our Singers, he might understand that he is very much like them. "Do you question the need for the Weavers?"

  "Not at all. My father told me what this fleet was like before the Weavers guided the ships, back when we were losing the war." He counts his cards and pegs out, leaving me far behind. "He also used to tell me the legends of the code talkers."

  My people have a long history of service to the world -- to the military, especially. It was those in the Fleet who remembered the service of the Navajo code talkers, how their language befuddled the enemy, who tried the experiment of using the Weavers to chart courses the enemy would not be able to predict. And it worked. Grandmother Spider was strong in the few women found who could read the patterns on such a large scale, using the insubstantial looms of light that the Fleet's physicists and psychics helped them create.

  Once the Weaving Rooms were in place, Grandmother Spider brought clarity where before there had only been the chaos of uncertainty. She, and the women who read her pathways, ended the war and brought a peace that while uneasy, has lasted.

  My mother was not a Weaver. My grandmother was, and I take after her. Grandmother Spider whispered to me all my life, but began to speak to me in earnest at my first woman's blood. I joined my grandmother when I was eighteen, learning the ways of the Weavers. At twenty-two, I was assigned to a ship of my own, a small vessel but challenging for a new Weaver.

  Now, at forty, I am on one of the largest ships. We patrol the border areas, watching for incursions, answering distress calls. Grandmother Spider tells us -- tells me -- where to go.

  "Do you want to play again?" Samuel asks. "Or do you prefer to talk without this artificial frame?"

  "I prefer the frame. It is like a loom, setting the pattern." I gently rub my finger along the cribbage board, then set my pegs back to zero. "It is comforting in its familiarity."

  He lets three hands go by before he asks, "Don't let someone betray you, Adzaa."

  "I don't want to let them. But ...."

  He waited, with his blessed, patient silence.

  "Grandmother Spider says it is right to let it happen."

  "To be hurt is right?"

  "There is always a reason -- always a logic to the threads -- but sometimes we're too close to see the pattern."

  "Very profound."

  "It's the truth."

  "No, it's faith."

  "Sometimes they're the same thing. I have to believe there's a reason for this."

  "That I believe. Humans have a long history of self-deception and rationalization." He stops pegging, his hand hovering in mid-move. "It's not me, is it, who betrays you?"

  "No, Samuel, it's not you."

  "Good, because you're the most interesting cribbage partner I've fou
nd so far." His face wrinkles pleasingly when he grins. "Don't let anyone hurt you, all right?"

  "I may not have a choice."

  "We always have a choice. We just don't always elect to take it."

  His words are wise, even if they may not help me.

  ***

  Laida sits next to the loom in my quarters, her hand brushing the wood. "I wish you would teach me this."

  She is tall and slim like a young colt, not sturdy like I am. Her dark blonde hair is tied back -- I realize it mirrors my own, the braid not as thick as mine, though.

  "Weaving is not something you learn," I say. "It is something inside you."

  "But you learned it." She touches the threads. "At some point, someone recognized the potential in you and taught you."

  "Do you feel it? Inside you?" Can she feel it? Would Grandmother Spider let her into our world?

  "I feel it. It's strange and beautiful, and it makes me feel like I'm part of something. I've felt that way since you finally stopped running from me."

  Her smile is sweet and full of youth's promise. She pursued me for months before I would talk to her for more than a moment. I let her into my bed before I let her into my heart -- and now Grandmother Spider has ensured that I will never let her into my confidence.

  Laida sits easily at my table, her back straight as she perches on the cedar stool. "Because of you, what I've learned from just being near you, Grandmother Spider feels very close to me." She seems earnest as she touches the wool I've laid out. "Do you think she would talk to me, too?"

  "This is not the Weaving Room."

  "But you have to learn to weave this kind of thread, before you can read the patterns of that place. Isn't that right?"

  "Yes."

  "Then teach me to weave."

  I light a cone of pinyon incense before I walk over to her. As I near the loom, I can hear a whisper of Grandmother Spider's presence, so much smaller than the way she speaks to me in the Weaving Room, my small patterns pulling in so little of her compared to the infinite pathways I find when I guide the ship.