Eclipse Three

by edited by Jonathan Strahan

  Someone uncorked a fire extinguisher or three, and Tug caught a blast of foam in the face.

  Tug cleared his vision just in time to dodge a flying bottle that clipped Vanson's head and sent him reeling, the projectile then tearing through the movie screen and passing right through the image of Bunny Yeager's split beaver.

  A woman collided with Tug and they both went smashing down. Sukey? No? Where was she? Was she okay . . . ?

  Tatang rode over Tug's legs with his unicycle, causing him to grunt in pain and to forget anything else.

  Sirens obtruded over the screams . . . .

  At the adamant urging of Ozzie, Franchot Galliard reluctantly posted bail for all the Tom Pudding arrestees the next morning.

  Tug met Sukey outside the police station. She had sheltered on a catwalk during the worst of the fracas, dropping sandbags on rogue quantum theoreticians.

  Back on the barge, Tug took a shower, then went to one of the galleys to rustle up some breakfast.

  A copy of that morning's Whig-Chronicle lay on the table. The main headline, natch, concerned the debacle at the Vawter.

  But buried inside the paper lurked an even more intriguing lede:

  "Authorities report a break-in last night at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics . . . ."

  10.

  American Splendor

  Tug and Sukey worked on their bee-dee throughout December. Projected as an anthology of several tales, some just a page, some many pages, the nascent book chronicled a bare handful of anecdotes from Tug's colorful years in Carrollboro. Events and characters came welling up from memory in a prodigious rush, producing laughter and incredulous head-shaking from his collaborator. He knew he had enough material for years of such books. And things always went on happening to him, too.

  "You've led quite a life, Tug."

  "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I have."

  Tug had never been happier, or felt more creative. He blessed the day miserable bastard Narcisse Godbout had kicked him out of his comfortable rut, the day Pete had pointed him toward the Tom Pudding, the night alluring Pellenera had approached him, and the day he had impulsively snatched Sukey's sketchpad.

  The cartooning team paused in their intense work only long enough to celebrate the birthday of Roger Williams on December 21, along with the rest of the nation. Watching the traditional televised parades with Sukey, with their cheesy floats celebrating what had come to be known and worshipped as the Williams Creed, in all its archaically glorious phrasing—"No red man to be kept from our hearths and bedchambers; no black man to be imported to these shores against his will; no gods above the minds and hearts of mankind"—Tug experienced a simple national pride he had not felt in many years.

  During these weeks, Tug and the rest of the barge's crazyquilt crew braced themselves for some new manifestation of Oswaldo Vasterling's brane-buster. The day after the catastrophic chautauqua, Ozzie had radiated a certain smug self-satisfaction at odds with his usual semblance of lordly indifference. Whatever he had purloined from the PITP must have promised immediate success. He immured himself in his lab, and the power levels aboard the craft wavered erratically, as evidenced by flickering brownouts from time to time, accompanied by noises and stinks.

  But there had ensued no visible breakthroughs, no spontaneous generation of a second Pellenera, for instance, and Ozzie, when he finally showed himself to his followers, radiated a stony sense of humiliation and defeat.

  By the end of January, Tug and Sukey had something they felt worthy of submission to a publisher. Tug found the contact info for an editor at Drawn & Quarterly, an imprint of the global Harmsworth Publishing empire. After querying, he received permission to submit, and off the package went, Sukey's powerful black and white art deliberately left uncolored.

  Nothing to do but wait, now.

  Deep into the bowels of one February night, Tug was awakened by distant music from beyond the spheres. Blanket wrapped haphazardly around himself, he stumbled up onto the frosted deck, finding himself surprisingly alone, as if the rest of the ship had been ensorcelled into fairytale somnolence.

  Moonlight silvered the whole world. Pellenera—piping, argent eidolon—loomed atop the bank of the feeder canal. Tug shivered. Did she herald the arrival of a new recruit? Where was the guy?

  But no newcomer emerged from among the winter-bare branches. Pellenera seemed intent merely on bleeding out her heart through the ocarina, as if seeking to convey an urgent message to someone.

  Tug's mind drowned in the music. He seemed to be seeing the world through Pellenera's eyes, gazing down at himself on the deck. Was she tapping his optic nerves, seeing herself on the shore? That music—

  Tug had a sudden vision of the Nubian woman, dancing naked save for—

  —a skirt fashioned of bananas?

  The music stopped. Pellenera vanished.

  What the hell had all that been about?

  An o-mail response from Drawn & Quarterly came in March, just as spring arrived.

  Tug rushed back to the Tom Pudding with an o-café printout of the message.

  Sukey Damariscotta was playing a videogame with Janey Vogelsang when Tug tracked her down: Spores of Myst. He hustled her away from Janey, to a quiet corner, then bade her read the printout.

  "Oh, Tug, this is wonderful! We've done it!"

  "I can't believe it!"

  "Me neither!"

  Tug grabbed Sukey, hugged her close, kissed her passionately and wildly lips to lips.

  Hands on Tug's chest, Sukey pushed back, broke his embrace.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Sukey, I—You've gotta know by now—"

  "Know what?" Her face registered distaste, as if she had been handed a slimy slug. "Oh, no, Tug, you can't imagine us hooking up, can you? I like you, sure, a lot. I respect your talent. But you're way too old . . . ."

  Time must've crept along somehow in its monotonous, purposeless, sempiternal fashion, although Tug couldn't have testified to that reality. All he knew was that in some manner he had crossed blocks of Carrollboro to stand outside The Wyandot. His old residence of thirty years' habitation was garlanded with scaffolding, its plastic-membraned windows so many blank, unseeing eyes, unbreachable passages to a vanished era, a lost youth.

  In the end, he returned to the Tom Pudding.

  What choice did he have in this fallen, inhospitable world?

  Sukey acted friendly toward him, even somewhat intimate. But Tug knew that they would never relate the same way again, and that their collaboration was over, whatever the fate of their one and only book.

  The voice of Ozzie Vasterling, when broadcast through the intercom system of the Tom Pudding—a system no one prior to this moment had even suspected was still active—resembled that of the Vizier of Cockaigne in the 1939 film version of that classic, as rendered by the imperious Charles Coburn.

  "Attention, attention! Everyone report to my lab—on the double!"

  Some folks were missing, ashore on their individual business. But Ozzie's lab soon filled up with two dozen souls, Tug among them.

  Weeks ago, Tug might have been as excited as the others gathered here. But since Sukey's rebuff, life had lost its savor. What miracle could restore that burnish? None . . . .

  But yet—

  Pellenera stood before the brane-buster, looking as out-of-place as a black panther in a taxi. Imagine a continent full of such creatures! Ozzie sat behind the keys of his harmonium. The brane-buster hummed and sparkled.

  Ozzie could hardly speak. "Vibrations! It's all in the way the invisible strings vibrate! I only had to pay attention to her! Watch!"

  He nodded to the Nubian, and she began to play her ocarina, as Ozzie pumped the harmonium attachment.

  In the cabinet of the brane-buster, what could only be paradoxically described as a coruscating static vortex blossomed. Gasps from the watchers—even from sulky Tug.

  With a joyous primal yawp, Pellenera hurled herself into the cabinet, still playing, and
was no more.

  The vortex lapsed into non-being as well.

  Someone asked, "Is that the end?"

  "Ha! Do you think I'm an idiot! I recorded every last note!"

  Pellenera's looped song started up again, and the vortex resumed.

  Everyone waited.

  Time stretched like the silent heist scene in Hitchcock's Rififi.

  Pellenera popped out of the cabinet, carrying something concealed in the crook of her arm, but naked as water herself.

  Even from the edge of the crowd, Tug noticed that her naked back was inexplicably crisscrossed with a latticework of long antique gnarly scars, and he winced.

  Revealed, her burden was one perfect golden Cavendish banana.

  She smiled, and took several steps forward, the spectators parting before her like grasses beneath a breeze, until she came face to face with Tug.

  And she handed the banana to him.

  Mesopotamian Fire

  Jane Yolen & Adam Stemple

  Alright, it isn't much of a dragon. I never said it was. More a lizard kind of thing. But if you lay down on your side and squint at it, you can see it's a dragon, as long as you're careful not to get too close.

  Yeah—that's too close. Don't say I didn't warn you. That flame may be tiny but, like a match tip, it can really burn. I've got an ointment right here. Johnson's 470. I've tried others, but they all barely touch the pain. You should have seen what happened when I used the stuff in my kit. What a flare. Oh right. I do go on sometimes. Here it is. Just rub it in quickly. You'll hardly feel a thing by this afternoon.

  You know, if I believed Jonathan Swift about the Lilliputians, I'd say that this is a dragon who could have terrorized them. Or the little people who stayed on the island in Mistress Masham's Repose. They'd surely have run screaming from it. Or it could have been the harrower of the Borrowers. Yeah—say that ten times fast. But those were in books, for God's sake. Not real. Not even faction. My girlfriend, Dana, the sometimes editor, who used to go to this college, did you ever meet her? Dana Woodbridge. Though of course being an English lit major, she probably never took a science course. Oh the point? Sure. I was getting to that. You know, Emily Dickinson wrote "Success in circuit lies." Dana likes to quote that when we have our long discussions. Well, about faction, Dana told me that it's truth crossed with fiction. You know—made-up memoirs and that sort of thing. It's hot now she says.

  Well, not as hot as dragon's breath, whatever the size. And mustache hairs, when they singe, smell godawful. As you've just found out.

  I suppose I could have stamped on it when I first saw it. The dragon, not the mustache hairs I mean. Hard to stamp on them without hurting someone. Hahahahahaha. Oh, sorry. That's my sense of humor. Dana doesn't think I'm good at it either. But I'm working on it. But if I'd stamped on it at once . . . the dragon, not . . . Right you got that. I'll move on.

  Well, if I had, I'd have gotten rid of the problem in a second. I mean, it wasn't a lizard and couldn't scurry away. It could fly a bit, but I think that whole flying dragon stuff was made up by people who didn't know a thing about flight muscles, and lift and birds having hollow bones. By a bit I mean it had the floating ability of a hot-air balloon, except with nothing to use as ballast or to throw overboard when it wanted to descend. It just stopped holding its hot breath, blew it out, and down it came.

  Yeah, well, I wouldn't believe me either. And not because I have a reputation as a jokester. That was in high school. College, I'm all serious student. Geology major, anthropology minor. It's how I came upon the little dragon, on a geology field trip to the Mideast last summer.

  Be specific? Right. I was in Egypt. But not the Egypt you think of now, all web cafes and big German cars. What? You don't think of big German cars? You haven't been to Cairo lately then. Well, not the Egypt you think of either. The Great Pyramids have been dug up so many times they're more gaping hole than grave marker now. No, I was in real ancient Egypt, exploring caves that were old before the first stone was placed at Giza.

  I was deep underground, spelunking alone through a narrow tunnel. I love that word. Spelunking. Spelunking. Spelunking . . . oh, sorry. I didn't mind the tight fit, though the rest of the crew thought I was crazy to go off on my own. But you know me, sir, always the loner. Except with Dana of course, though being a loner is different than being alone. Dana showed me that. Oh right, that has nothing to do with what I'm trying to tell you, but she got that from one of the romance novels she was editing and it really struck me. She quotes me stuff all the time, broadens me a lot. Did I mention that she does freelance . . . ?

  Right. The tunnel.

  The tunnel had just opened up into a sizeable chamber when the battery in my headlamp died. Let me tell you, you don't know darkness until you've experienced underground darkness. Your eyes don't adjust. Your mind either. You spend more than a few minutes in darkness that total, you're liable to turn into a gibbering idiot. Well, yes, but I had a touch of that before. Hahahaha. Oh sorry, sense of humor. None. I'll tell Dana. I bet she'll find that one funny.

  That's why I always carry a spare battery for my light. But before I could get the battery changed—I'd practiced the maneuver in the spelunking class at the Y a dozen times or more because Thorough is my middle name. Well, actually it's Hyatt, but you get the picture. No, not those Hyatts, otherwise I would probably have majored in restaurant management and never found the little dragon. Oh, the point? Right. Sometimes I do wander a bit. I saw the tiny gout of flame that your mustache has so recently become acquainted with. It was plenty obvious in the blackness, but I can't say for sure if I would have noticed it if my light hadn't gone out at that exact moment. I find that's often the way with Great Discoveries.

  Yes, this is my first and only Great Discovery, so perhaps I am being premature in saying that. But I bet if you ask other Great Discoverers about their Great Discoveries, they'd say they were just in the right place at the right time. As opposed to the right place but the wrong time. Or the wrong place at the wrong time. I wonder if there's a right time to be in the wrong place?

  No matter. I scooped him up and headed for the surface. A number of specimen bags got burned before I figured out that if you wrapped him up tight and covered his head he'd go right to sleep. Must be some bat or bird DNA in him somewhere. They do that don't they? Anyway, that's a study for some other grad student, biology probably, or anthropology—though that's the study of man so maybe not. Either way, I'll want my name on the paper, too. You've taught me well, sir.

  And lucky for me, despite how metallic those scales look, they aren't metal at all and so didn't set off the metal detector at the airport. His bones, being hollow, didn't ring any bells either. Must have looked like a painting or something to the x-ray machine. I was all ready for the questions, ready to be taken aside at customs, too, declaring the dragon a museum delivery. Had the papers and all. It's not so hard to fake those, you know. I got mine from a little man who was as brown and wrinkled as a walnut and I found him in Khan el-Khalili in Cairo, that's the big market. Oh right, you'd know that one well.

  Well, his name was Achmed. The man, not the market of course. No last names. We were careful about that. I told him to call me Joe. Still, we'd better just keep that between us, sir. Don't want to get Achmed in trouble. But I needed those papers. I didn't know whether the Egyptian government would consider him their property under the Antiquities Act. The dragon, I mean, not Achmed. I certainly considered him mine. The dragon that is. And I was bringing him home. You know, that's why Dana is the editor and not me. I prefer fiery dragons to pesky pronouns. No ointment for those. Hahahaha.

  And of course I had to take the big chance bringing the dragon back. I mean—if I told my tale without this key bit of sulfurous proof, I knew no one would believe me. Especially not you, Dr. Puccini. And I'm real sorry about your mustache, but I did warn you. Really I did. You just had to get down so close to him. I didn't realize you were that nearsighted or I would have brought along a magnify
ing glass. Though a magnificent glass would have been more to the point. Yes, another joke. Well, maybe a little funny?

  Now, to the business of my paper. You see, I can get down to the point when I have to. "The Mesopotamian Dragon: Fictions and Facts, A Transatlantic Case Study" and the D you gave me. You wrote in that green pen with the archaic flourishes: "We deal in truth in this class, or as near as we can come to it, Mr. Darnton, and not creatures out of myth."

  I expect you understand your myth-stake now, sir. Hahahahaha. But seriously, my grade?

  The Visited Man

  Molly Gloss

  In April after the death of his wife—her death coming only weeks after the death of his son—Marie-Lucien stopped going out of his apartment. It had been his habit to go out every morning to buy a newspaper, five bronze centimes for Le Petit Journal; but as he stopped caring to read about assassinations and political scandals, or anything else occurring in the world, so he stopped going out to buy the paper. Then he stopped going to the butcher, the tea shop, the fish market, the bakery. Every Wednesday and Saturday his landlord M. Queval brought a few groceries and sundries to him from lists he scribbled on scraps of old newsprint. He and M. Queval exchanged perhaps a dozen words while standing on the landing, words about frostbit spinach or the freshness of the fish, but otherwise Marie-Lucien saw no one, spoke to no one. Friends who came to the house went away after a few words passed through the cracked-open door, or perhaps without sight of him at all; and after the first weeks they stopped bothering to inquire of his well-being.