Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #217

by TTA Press Authors

  Unable to do anything until the water drained away, I made a cup of tea and tried to relax. But I couldn't stop thinking of all the potential Cres had. I cried for Cres and for myself, the memory of my sister being washed away mixing with the certainty that Cres was dead.

  By morning, the water was gone. I lowered myself on the rope and pulley and lit my light stick. The going was slower than before since the path we'd cleared through the old foundations had been washed away.

  When I finally reached the bottom level, I found Cres lying beside the ship, which glowed a darker red than I remembered. To my shock, Cres was alive and breathed in labored gasps, which seemed impossible considering how much water had flowed through here. Once again, the wash patterns indicated the water had rushed into the ship. Cres shouldn't have survived.

  But any thoughts on Cres's miraculous survival vanished when I heard footsteps behind me. I turned—fearing that the mayor or constables had caught us—and stared with shock into the face of my six-year-old sister. Llin looked as she had fifty years ago, when that massive cumulus sent floods raging through the town.

  As if nothing had changed between us, Llin reached out and held my hand. I tried to jerk away, but she held on tight and wouldn't let go.

  "I've missed you, Tem,” she said.

  I nodded, tears falling from my eyes. I wanted to tell Llin how sorry I was for not holding on to her, but she merely smiled and pulled me over to Cres.

  "She's not ready,” Llin said, leaning over and smoothing Cres's wet hair. Before I could ask what Llin meant, she stood and walked to the ship. But instead of the ship opening for her, Llin's body stretched across the ship itself. Blood gushed out and merged with the ship's red glow. Her skin and muscles and bones flattened and bent and became the ship. The last thing to go was her face, which smiled at me and said “I love you” as her mouth turned into an impossibly long line before finally disappearing.

  Panicked, feeling as if my sister had just died a second time, I grabbed Cres's arms and pulled her as fast as I could back up the tunnel.

  It took me hours to drag Cres to the top level. I tied the rope around her shoulders and prepared to use the pulley to raise her through the hole. But before I could lift Cres I heard the roar of water rushing through the drainage tunnels. Images of Llin being yanked from my grasp shot through me as new flood waters grabbed Cres's unconscious body. I tried to lift Cres, but I couldn't fight the water and also pull on the rope.

  Just as my grip began to slip, I suddenly found myself being pulled into the air. Someone also pulled Cres's half of the rope up. I emerged from the hole and collapsed onto the wooden floor of the root cellar, coughing up water and bile.

  Only when I finally stopped gagging did I look into the angry eyes of the mayor and several burly town constables.

  * * * *

  The mayor and constables had come to my house when I failed to give a warning about a second storm in a row. I expected them to drag Cres and myself immediately to the town hall, where a drumhead court would sentence us to death for violating our world's only absolute law. Instead, the mayor ordered the constables to carry Cres to her bed. He then summoned a doctor to examine my apprentice.

  Once we were alone, the mayor demanded to know what Cres and I were doing underground.

  "The water washed away the foundation and the floor collapsed under Cres,” I explained, grateful that Cres was still unconscious so she couldn't mess up my lie. “I was trying to save her."

  The mayor wasn't a fool. He'd seen the pulley system in the root cellar and knew that wasn't something I'd thrown together for a quick rescue. However, instead of punishing me, he muttered about all the storms hitting the town in recent days and how frightened the townsfolk were. I suddenly realized at this point he couldn't afford to kill his only weatherman. Instead, he warned me not to miss another storm and left the house with the constables.

  I walked to Cres's room, where the doctor was still attending to her. Seeing nothing I could do to help, I climbed up the weather tower. The skies appeared settled—the only ships in sight were the high altitude mackerel ships which usually indicated decent weather. That was good, because the town was showing the damage from days of endless storms. Silt rose a meter high along some houses and buildings, while other houses listed at awkward angles, testimony to how water-logged the ground was becoming.

  I looked down the street toward the park, where Llin and I had played that fateful day so long ago. While I knew that wasn't the same ground we'd walked on then—the soil having risen five meters in that last fifty years—I tried not to cry as I remembered yet again the feeling of Llin being yanked from my grasp. I also wondered if I'd hallucinated Llin's appearance down below, or if the ship had really brought her back. Either way, the feeling of her hand in mine refused to leave.

  By the time I climbed down from the tower, Cres was awake, screaming about ships and the sky and the far side of the universe. The doctor gave her a shot, which relaxed her. Cres stared at me for a moment with a strange smile on her face, then fell asleep.

  The doctor asked what had happened to Cres. I told him the same lie I'd given the mayor, but the doctor didn't buy it. He told me to let him know when she woke, then he packed his medical bag and left. I climbed back up the weather tower and wasn't surprised to see that instead of walking back to his clinic, the doctor went straight to the mayor's office.

  I had a bad feeling that the reprieve the mayor had just given Cres and I would only last as long as the town's spell of bad weather.

  * * * *

  Fortunately for Cres and I, the weather grew increasingly worse over the next three days as increasing numbers of ships passed over our town. Their shadows darkened the sky for hours at a time, their water flooded our streets, and their organics buried us in a continual orange haze. A few of the ships even passed a dozen meters above my watch tower, so low that I should have seen the people inside. However, through the ships’ translucent screens I only saw emptiness. I wondered if the ships were reacting to Cres and I disturbing the underground ship, a thought I didn't dare speak out loud.

  However, the mayor obviously believed the bad weather resulted from Cres and I going underground. He stopped by several times a day and grilled me about the weather. He didn't like my evasive answers, but was also unwilling to arrest me.

  Whenever there was a break in the ships passing overhead, I climbed down from the tower and checked on Cres. She slept most of the time. When she woke, she sometimes screamed and cried about the ship. Other times she laughed. Nothing I said or did would make her tell me what had happened. After a few minutes awake, she'd simply fall back asleep.

  Then came the day two massive ships arrived. The first, a flat ship of a style I'd never before seen, spanned half the horizon. It glowed dark blue and dropped shards of ice and metal across the land, smashing a number of roofs in town. The other large ship was a cumulus, and its storm was as bad as the one which rocked our town a few months back. I banged the warning bell for as long as I dared, then jumped for the safety of my house.

  Once the floods subsided, I wasn't surprised to find the mayor and two constables at my door. The mayor demanded to inspect the hole in my root cellar. I argued, telling him it was forbidden, but the mayor simply shoved me out of the way. He and his constables waited for the water in the tunnels to subside, then lowered themselves down the hole. The glow from their light sticks faded as they climbed deeper and deeper, heading straight for the ship.

  I said a prayer for my sister, hoping the mayor wouldn't hurt her if she appeared to him. I also prayed for myself and Cres. I could face execution without fear, but Cres was so young I didn't know how she'd react.

  Hours passed as I waited for the mayor to climb back out and arrest me, but he and his men took their time. Finally, as day turned to night, I decided to climb back up the tower. To my surprise, there were so many ships in the sky that their individual glows merged into one rainbowed mass which rippled and swirled like
water flowing across the land. I'd never seen anything like this. Unsure what it meant for the weather, I banged the warning bell. Better safe than sorry.

  Once I climbed down, I checked on Cres, but her bed was empty. I ran outside and didn't see her, then looked all over the house. Then I heard the pulley in the basement squeaking. By the time I reached the hole, Cres was gone. I grabbed a light stick and lowered myself down, hoping to stop Cres before the mayor saw her.

  Underground, though, everything had changed. Where before the first level had been half collapsed and full of sediment, now this old room was as clean and well-lit as I remembered from my childhood. The stove my mother cooked on glowed warmly, and the table where my sister and I had eaten so many meals looked as fresh as yesterday.

  Llin sat at the table, happily folding paper ships as if we were both still kids.

  This time I hugged her. She smiled and asked me if I wanted to make some paper ships with her, but I said I had to find Cres.

  "I know where she is.” Llin grabbed my hand and led me to the stairs leading to the next level.

  Each level of the house was a step back in time. We walked through a red walled room from my grandmother's childhood. On an even deeper level, the cracked ceramic oven I'd previously seen was now clean and hot with bread baking inside.

  I asked Llin how this had happened and she told me the ship remembered the old houses. “I wanted you to be happy,” she said, “so I asked the ship to fix everything up."

  Eventually, Llin led me to the lowest foundation, where the ship sat glowing in a dark, red haze. Cres stood before the ship as if in a trance.

  "Where are the mayor and the constables?” I asked Llin. She pointed to the ship. At first I thought she meant they were inside, but then I looked closer at the red haze lining the ship and saw blood vessels, and a heart, and skin stretched to the tearing point. I remembered how Llin's body had been torn and flattened and I screamed at Cres to get away from the ship.

  But when I tried to grab her, Llin held me back, her grip far stronger than any six-year-old girl's should be. I watched in horror as Cres reached for the ship, her hand stretching out and out until she touched half the ship with impossibly long fingers. She then turned and smiled at me as the rest of her body was pulled in and distorted beyond recognition.

  I turned and tried to flee, but Llin kept a firm grip on my hand. “It'll be okay,” she said. “You've always wanted to go."

  As Llin spoke those words, a loud roar pounded my ears as water rushed down the tunnels. The current pushed me toward the ship, only Llin's grip keeping me from being washed away. As I looked at Llin's face—begging her not to let go—my sister merely smiled. Then, as the water rose over her head, she released my hand and I was washed into the ship.

  * * * *

  The stretching didn't hurt. The tearing and rending and twisting of my body into something it was never meant to be was neither pain nor pleasure. I merely became the ship. I was the ship.

  I also wasn't alone. Melded into the ship with me were Cres and my little sister, along with the mayor and his men. However, while Cres and Llin hummed with excitement over what was to come, the mayor and his men screamed at me to help them. Not that I actually heard them; instead, their fear and pain screamed directly to my mind. Unable to do anything, and needing to focus on my own situation, I shut them out of my thoughts.

  Once my shock at the change ended, I felt around myself. The flood continued to carry water and nutrients into me, feeding the ship and strengthening all of us. As our energy grew, I felt beyond myself, feeling the ships in the air above the town, which called to us like parents urging scared children to come outside and play. As I reached out, I felt other ships under the ground with us, laying dormant here and there, many tied into the foundations of houses, others simply nestling in the dirt. All of them buzzed with life, but lacked the potential to actually leave.

  Not our ship. Cres, Llin and I were ready to go. The ship had been ready for decades, ever since my sister had been washed into it. But she hadn't been strong enough to leave on her own. Her last memories, of fear and hope as I'd tried to save her, had trapped her here. She hadn't known where she wanted to go. Or how to leave.

  So with Cres assisting me, we began to raise the ship, floating up on a million drops of thought. The ground around us tumbled and collapsed. What had been my home fell in on itself, tearing itself to shreds and rising in a burst of debris and rain as our ship fell into the sky.

  As Cres and my sister learned to control our ship, I watched the town disappear below us. I also felt deep into our world, learning the answer to questions I'd asked ever since my youth. Our world had no core. Instead, it existed as ripples of space-time folded onto themselves, creating the barest film of soap onto which the silt we lived off of continually fell. As the water and organics filtered down, they fed the new ships bubbling up from below, ships needing only someone with potential before they too could take flight. That was why we were forbidden to go underground—doing so could damage the young ships.

  As we flew up, I felt the endless ships in the sky greet us. Across the world, ships appeared and disappeared, coming and going to different parts of the universe. And that's when I understood. Our world existed to remind humanity of who we were. Humanity only traveled the universe by first coming here, making sure that a ship's crew always remembered that they were human—no matter what changes they might soon go through. Likewise, when ships returned from elsewhere, they came back here to re-remember who they were. Otherwise, as humans traveled the vast distances and times of the universe, they would die. Without the dreams and hopes and everyday lives of our world's people, all humanity would fall apart.

  Some of us still fell apart. I felt the mayor and the two constables, still screaming at the thought of all they could be. They didn't have the potential to survive outside our world. Instead, their bodies, minds, and souls would be torn apart. When our ship one day returned to this world, the dust from their bodies would sprinkle down, helping to feed and create another human who might one day have the potential to understand eternity and survive.

  Worse, if they didn't die they'd be so damaged that they could cause great harm to others. The ships which needlessly hurt our world were piloted by damaged people, storming across the world until the other ships stopped them.

  I felt Cres and Llin preparing to leave. Both of them focused on a distant galaxy, where new stars and life boiled out of a massive expanse of gas and heat. I felt those distant stars. Imagined the sights and wonders we would see. But even as I imagined us arriving there—and knew that imagining our trip would easily take us there—I heard one final plea from the men trapped with us. I was their last link to sanity. I remembered Llin as she'd held onto my hand. Remembered how I'd sworn never to let someone drown if I could save them.

  With the briefest of thought caresses, I said goodbye to Cres and my sister. Cres said she'd take care of Llin. Help her grow into the limitless possibilities which existed before them. I then split myself from the ship, creating a smaller ball of ship which encompassed myself and the screaming men. As we fell toward town, I imagined my old house in all its history and glory, in all it had ever been and could ever be. With an explosion of light and energy, the ship became what I willed it to be.

  * * * *

  The mayor and the constables woke in my den, surrounded by my books and furniture and a roaring fire in the ceramic fireplace. The mayor retched upon waking, while the two constables cried and shook. I sat in my new-old favorite chair and sipped a hot cup of tea, trying to overlook the limitations of these men.

  Finally, after he'd recovered enough to stand, the mayor ordered the constables to arrest me.

  "On what charge?” I asked.

  "Violating the ban. You've been underground. In a ship."

  I smiled and placed my teacup on the end table. For the briefest of moments, I removed the reality I'd crafted around them. Showed them our world in all its glory. The m
ayor and the constables fell to the floor, screaming.

  "If you will excuse me, I have work to do,” I said. “After all, someone has to see to the weather."

  Without another word, the mayor and constables scrambled to their feet and ran out the door.

  * * * *

  I now know I have the potential to see the universe. I always thought I'd be afraid to give up my life, but that's no longer true.

  I still watch the skies. However, instead of predicting the weather, I now simply know it. I caress each ship that passes through our world. I understand the beauties and wonders that ship and people have seen in their travels. In return for this knowledge, I gently remind the ship's people what it means to be human. I speak to them of the most important duty of humanity, which is to care for those around you. I also keep watch over this world's people, seeking out those with the potential to embrace the greater universe and helping them toward that goal.

  One day Cres and Llin will return, singing to me of all they've seen. I'll join them on that day and go off to see eternity. Until then, I enjoy the warm water falling from the skies and the dust of other people's dreams. And while I never speak a word of this to anyone, I also know that the ships don't bring the weather to our world.

  Instead, we are the weather, and the ships rise off our rain.

  Copyright © 2008 Jason Sanford

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  CONCESSION GIRL—Suzanne Palmer

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  Illustrated by Darren Winter

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  Suzanne Palmer is “one of those unfortunate souls that has too many interests for their own good—making me either a renaissance woman or a total spaz.” She has lived in New England her whole life, with the exception of a summer spent living in a castle in France studying art. She has an undergraduate degree in Fine Arts with a concentration in Sculpture, and a minor in Japanese (which was not so useful in France). She works as a professional computer nerd. Over the years, Suzanne's art became more and more narrative in nature, and in late 2001 she decided to try writing a novel—it was one of the most frustrating, fun and addictive things she's ever done. From that time onward she's probably been more of a writer than an artist, although she still does lots of both and has no plans to give up either. She occasionally considers taking up a musical instrument just to round out her distractions more completely. Suzanne is a single parent by choice of a wonderful daughter. She has two dogs, two kitties, a lot of pet fish, several thousand books, and a wisteria vine named Cthulhu. Her only previous appearance in Interzone was with ‘Spheres’ in issue 207.