The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  ***

  Correction alert. I’ll feed you these slowly, so you don’t get stuffed.

  Erratum #2: “The Telephone,” Zoran Živković, issue three

  I put the receiver to my ear and said sharply, “Hello!”

  “Good evening!” said someone at the other end of the line. I’d been certain it would be a younger person, most likely under the influence of a substance that had put them in a very happy mood. Instead, I heard the deep, serious voice of a middle-aged man, so my hackles came down a little. I’d been ready to deliver a tirade on bad manners to the unknown young caller, but now I just replied, “Good evening,” although still in a surly tone.

  “This is the Devil,” said the man evenly, just like one of my friends who was calling.

  I sat there speechless for several moments and then hung up the telephone.

  should read:

  I put the receiver to my ear and said sharply, “Da?”

  “Guten evening,” said the person on the other end of the line. The connection crackled and popped as if I were hearing grease dance on a stovetop.

  I’d thought it would be a young person, most likely under the influence of vodka. Instead, I heard the deep, gravelly voice of an old man. The voice had an undertone I can’t describe except to say it sounded like the spring loam of deep forest, the glimpse of sky through thick branches. Which doesn’t make sense, but there it is.

  The man’s voice made my hackles come down a little. I’d been ready to deliver a tirade on bad manners to the unknown caller, but now I just replied, “Good evening,” although still in a surly tone.

  “This is the shaman,” said the man unevenly, the inconsistency of his tone oddly calming. “Have you ever envisioned a better world? A world where silence is a blessing and snow is like peace?”

  For a moment I was held by a terrible fascination, and a glimpse of a half-formed image of immense power, but with a shiver I managed to deny it and hang up the phone.

  And so on, Jeremy, substituting “shaman” for “the Devil,” with frequent allusions to snow, ice, the frozen north, etc. I don’t have the patience or attention span to set it out right now. If that ruins everything, so be it. But I rather think at this point that any decision I make is the right decision.

  ***

  The old shaman in Zoran’s story certainly was right. It gets bitterly cold up here in the winter. The locals tell me that waves freeze in mid-crash against the shore, that you can see every individual ripple and striation in the resulting ice sculptures—and they have the photographs to prove it.

  At what passes for the local bar (the only business within miles: a tin shack a mile down the road), the owner sells these photographs to the rare tourist, along with a local myth that “in the extremest cold words themselves freeze and fall to earth. In spring they stir again and start to speak, and suddenly the air fills with out-of-date gossip, unheard jokes, cries of forgotten pain, words of long-disowned love.” That’s not how the bartender put it; that’s a quote from Colin Thubron’s In Siberia, which was left on my bed along with the pearl-handled revolvers. The quote makes me sad and hopeful at the same time. It speaks to my mission, such as it is.

  But, then, everything has been speaking to me in that way, lately. The day I left Tallahassee, Florida to come here, my stepdaughter Erin gave me a kind of anarchist’s handbook called Days of War, Nights of Love: Crimethink for Beginners.

  “I don’t need it anymore,” she said, “but I thought you might.”

  At that point, she had no reason to give me anything other than a black eye, so I was touched. “I’ll read it,” I said. But the truth is, I read one page and just haven’t gotten around to the rest.

  That first page (page 126) was titled “The Concert at Baku” and related the events of November 7, 1922, when the Russian experimental composer Arseny Mikhailovich Avraamov

  ascended to the roof of a tall building and directed a concert of factory sirens, steam whistles, artillery, and everything else in the city of Baku capable of making loud noise; for the climax of the piece, the entire fleet of the Caspian Sea joined in with their foghorns.

  Of course, the book tried to make it logical, part of the peoples’ struggle: “a moving demonstration of what is possible when art and cooperation are considered integral to social life, rather than quarantined to our private lives and leisure time.”

  But even then, before I truly knew what James meant to do, what Argosy meant to him, I saw Mikhialovich Avraamov’s act differently. I thought about all of the people who participated in his experiment. Surely some of them sought more from it than just music. Surely some of them saw it as transformative, as a kind of liberation. I saw it as his attempt at change—to find the right sounds and symbols to alter the world at its core, to split it open and reform it. To, in an odd way, heal it.

  After all, Jeremy, do you really think James sent me all the way to fucking Lake Baikal to write a short story? I don’t think so. I don’t think so at all. Not now.

  I should probably tell you what I found when I got here. After paying the Mongolian cab driver his rubles, I walked into the water-soaked lobby of this place, noting the seals with a small sound of surprise, but ignoring them long enough to call James and let him know I had arrived. Then I walked up to my room on the second floor, just as James had directed me to do.

  In addition to a desk with a manual typewriter on it (which I have disdained to use, preferring my pretentious customized Moleskine notebooks with gold leaf inlay, and utilitarian ballpoint pens), I found a box with two pearl-handled revolvers on the bed, along with a scrawled note that said to look under the bed.

  I put my suitcase down and looked. What did I find? Nothing as dramatic or as fancy as the revolvers. Just the following:

  • Copies of Argosy #1-#3

  • Printouts of parts of Argosy #4

  • The Lake Baikal Guidebook, by Arthur D. Pedersen and Susan E. Oliver

  • an envelope containing a badly typed letter (on annoying onionskin paper) that must have been dictated to someone local over the phone

  • an envelope inside that envelope, containing a second letter.

  • contact information for Ed the Shaman

  • reminders of how to reach James by phone

  • the address to which I should send my finished story

  The first letter read as follows (errors corrected):

  Dear Jeff:

  Now that you have reached your destination, you no doubt have questions about the scope of your mission, and why it required you to travel so far across the world.

  The answer is not that easy to provide, although at its simplest level your mission does require you to write a story, while also correcting “mistakes” made in Argosy since its inception.

  The truth is, I can give you hints as to how to carry out your mission. I can give you the tools you need to complete it. I can even give you an explanation (see the second letter, should you need it). But even after all of that, you will change the context of the assignment by your very involvement in it. There are variables I cannot and do not wish to control. Mutations and permutations will mean the result is not exactly as I have intended, but it will also ensure that the result is truly unpredictable and thus worthy of our work. To some extent, I have factored all of this into my calculations.

  The errata part of your assignment is perhaps the most straightforward. In short, I need you to read through each issue of Argosy and issue corrections for certain stories. I cannot tell you which stories, but I believe you will, as you become attuned to the power of Lake Baikal and your own natural instincts, recognize the right ones when you see them. Ed the Shaman will then help you by consulting his Book for you, a holy tome that has been passed down from generation to generation. I believe this step is essential, and so does Ed. I can personally vouch for him, as I have met with him several times while traveling through the area. (On my father’s side, I am descended from ancient Siberian tribes, and I know th
at the shaman’s wisdom runs very deep indeed.)

  After you have performed this step and learned everything you need from the guidebook, I believe that your assignment will become much clearer. You will know what to write and how to write it, in the exact way necessary.

  You can always open the second letter if you find yourself needing a “why.” I leave it up to you as to when you open it. I will say only that the timing of this action is important.

  Your colleague,

  James Owen

  Did it feel like starting over, after everything I had been through? The hell it did. It felt like a bad dream. Isn’t that right, Juliette? Yes, that’s right, Jeff.

  I didn’t open the second letter for a long time. Normally, I would have opened something like that immediately, but somehow, at that moment, I couldn’t handle any of James’ why’s. I could hardly handle the seals in the lobby. Comical. Sinister. Surreal. I don’t know how to describe my first impressions.

  A new life. Guns. A composer who used a whole town for his orchestra. A place where words freeze in the winter and thaw in the spring. And over it all, the shadow of Gradus waiting to envelop me. Slowly progressing, feeling his way toward James’ plan.

  Aren’t you scared? I was scared. I’d have pissed my pants if it would have helped relieve the fear.

  Only Juliette wasn’t scared. Over the centuries, I’m sure her kind had seen much worse—doomed Antarctica expeditions, men eating the frozen bodies of their comrades, sled dogs reduced to whimpering piles of bones, ships frozen in the ice, strife and conflict: a whole history of failure witnessed by her forebears. And throughout it all, a question on the cellular level rising slowly in the communal, generational penguin mind: Why?

  Why does it have to be this way?

  ***

  Erratum #3: “The Gate House,” Marly Youmans, forthcoming in issue four

  In October, the cold and snow would begin, sealing the stream in ice, sagging the limbs outside the kitchen window. The land would look stainless and white, as if the world knew nothing of blood and dirty deeds. She would build a snow maiden in the courtyard and feed the birds who had the courage to stay and not fly south. Consolation might sift from the sky, like soft crystal. It could be a new life, now dimly seen, like the humpbacked shape of a camel in a dispersing cloud.

  should read:

  In October, the snow and ice would come, sealing the lake in silence, weighing down the trees outside her kitchen window. The land and lake would look seamless and white, as if it knew nothing of blood or pain. She would build a snow maiden on the edge of the lake and feed the birds that had no choice but to stay in that frozen place. And through that act, consolation might settle over her as gently as the snow. The world seemed to tell her that she could have a new life, now dimly seen, like a shadowy figure walking slowly across the ice-laden lake to the near shore.

  ***

  I wonder if Gradus was stalking me long before I came to Lake Baikal. I wonder if he has been there since the Beginning. (Whichever beginning you prefer, Jeremy.)

  As I may have mentioned, I have a fine view of the lake from here, given that the water comes right up to and beyond my doorstep. Sometimes, oddly enough, this lobby feels like a landing pad on the Death Star, with seals lunging in and lurching out every few minutes, their heads bobbing, their large eyes alive with hidden meaning. Mostly, they seem to be mocking me.

  Because, honestly, would I be sitting here in a rotting condominium complex halfway around the world if I hadn’t, at some point, hit rock bottom? Your brother may be persistent and good at persuading people to do things, but no one’s that good.

  ***

  I shared my story with Ed a couple of weeks ago, when he came around in his battered pickup to take me to Shaman Rock and his Book. After I had finished my account, Ed turned to me and said, “You are a fortunate man. You are still alive and you have a purpose.”

  Possibly. Possibly not.

  The truth is, Jeremy, by April of this year, my life had begun to fall apart. The coming schism, the disintegration that I’d sensed in Blackpool, had reached fruition. Constant book tours, fan emails, re-imagining my lump of a body into something more approximating fitness, and my complete inability to relax into all of this new success had warped my mind. The vodka helps me see this. (Juliette reminds me of it with her innocent, non-judgmental stare.)

  I became ever more vain and superficial. I bought fifteen pairs of shoes, for fuck’s sake. I got contacts. I spent more time primping than a super model. Worse, I took my wife Ann for granted. I took Tallahassee for granted. I had a restlessness in me that led to driving around late at night dressed to the nines with the music turned up loud, as a poor substitute for...what?

  Sometimes everything seems hopeless on the macro level—global warming, war, murderously corrupt politicians, terrorism. Sometimes it is much more personal and internalized.

  I began to drink too much. I began to indulge in self-pity. I began to see myself as some kind of victim in all of this, and that led to worse things still. I had an affair with a coworker at my day job. Ann left me as a result. I turned for comfort to my new lover, only for her to reveal that she was a born-again Christian. “Accept Jesus and we can be together,” she said. When I refused, she lodged a harassment complaint with Human Resources. My supervisor told me it would be best if I quit. I told her what she could do with that suggestion, and by mid-June, I had lost my marriage, my day job, and most of my self-esteem and had been reduced to living in a tiny cockroach-infested apartment with only the slim thread of intermittent royalties keeping me off the streets.

  I was in shock by then, I think. I was beyond feeling guilt or anything else. I’d gotten what I wanted only to find out it wasn’t what I wanted at all.

  I hung out at a bar called Gill’s, dulling myself into a stupor with cheap beer and whiskey by night and trying to think up ideas for blockbuster commercial novels to pitch to my agent by day. I tried to make out to all but my closest friends that everything was fine. I limped along with some freelance work for Publishers Weekly and the local newspapers, but I knew that would dry up eventually, because I was always missing deadlines.

  By July, I had stopped doing even that and just drank all day and night. I even stopped bathing and shaving. Sometimes, during my erratic sleep, I’d dream of my former life and it would seem exactly that: a dream of something that had never been. When I woke, I’d call Ann, no matter what the time, even though I knew there was no hope she’d take me back, just to reassure myself that once upon a time I’d had that life.

  I try to convince myself now that it would have gotten better without outside intervention, but I think I’m wrong. If James hadn’t called one night while I was at Gill’s, trying to convince Katie, the owner, to give me a beer on credit, I don’t know what would have happened.

  The phone at the bar rang and Katie answered it, then handed the receiver to me with a puzzled look on her face. “It’s for you. Says he’s an old friend. Keep it brief, okay?”

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Jeff? Jeff VanderMeer?”

  “Yeah. Who the fuck is this?”

  A thin laugh. “James Owen. Remember me?”

  For a second, I didn’t. James Owen might as well have been from another planet.

  “World Fantasy 2003? Argosy?”

  Then I did remember, which confused me even more. “How’d you get this number?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Let’s just say a couple of concerned friends gave it to me.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Because I have an opportunity for you.”

  “What kind of opportunity?”

  There was a pause. I think he knew this was a hard sell. “I need you to go to Lake Baikal in Siberia and write a story.”

  “You want me to write a story about Lake Baikal?”

  “No. I need you to go to Lake Baikal and write me a story. For Argosy.”

  “You’re full of shit.” />
  “I don’t blame you for thinking so, but I’m not. You’ll be paid. Your expenses will be taken care of.... Don’t you think a change of scenery might be a good idea?”

  “Lake Baikal?” I was trying to get my wits about me. “That’s the place with the freshwater seals?” As I would soon know all too well.

  “Among other things. A property there has recently come into my possession and it would be perfect for you. You can get some peace and quiet there and write.”

  James chose not to reveal at that point that he thought a man would one day come walking along the lakeshore with the express purpose of killing me.

  ***

  That first time James called me at Gill’s, I hung up on him and went back to drinking. And the next night. And the night after that. It was not until the night after I got into a fight in the parking lot over something so stupid I can’t remember what it was and had my nose broken that I realized that I needed to say “yes” or I was going to find my way to rock bottom.

  “Great,” James said. “I knew you’d come around.”

  He gave me the flight information, assured me of money coming in the mail, and told me his instructions would be waiting for me at Lake Baikal.

  “That all sounds fine to me, James,” I said, as if I was talking to a crazy person.

  I drank my way through the countless hours of flights, the bus and train and car rides, until I finally wound up here.

  ***

  Gradus remained in my thoughts. I could not get him out. He was the great Unknown in a world that had become as simple as the ice and snow, but no less mysterious.

  “When can I expect this mystery man to arrive, James?”

  “I don’t know. It could be any time.”

  “Any time, huh?”

  “Yes. You should carry the revolvers with you wherever you go.”

  “Even down to the grocery store?”