2014 Campbellian Anthology

by Various

  “Not yet there isn’t.”

  “Fuck you.” Vasquez spat the words. The bartender, Sheila, glanced over, and so did a couple of people at nearby tables. “Tell that to the people you’ve murdered.”

  “I’ve never murdered anybody,” Cooper said. “I’ve killed them.”

  “It isn’t murder because they were different?”

  “It isn’t murder because they were terrorists. They hurt innocent people.”

  “They were innocent people. They could just do things you couldn’t imagine. I can see code, do you get it? Algorithms that confound straights are just patterns to me. They come in my dreams. I dream the most beautiful programs never written.”

  “Come in with me. Do your dreaming for us. It’s not too late.”

  She spun on her stool, clutching the beer bottle by its neck. “I bet. Pay my debt to society, right? Stay alive, but as a slave, betraying my own people.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Cooper smiled. “Are you sure?”

  Her eyes sparked and then narrowed. She drew a shallow breath. Her lips moved as if she were whispering, but no words came out. Finally, she said, “You’re a gifted?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you—”

  “Yes.”

  “Hey. You all right, ma’am?”

  Cooper broke the gaze for the split second he needed to take the man in. Six one, two twenty, fat over hard muscle that came from working, not the gym. His hands in front of him, half raised, knees slightly bent, balance good. Ready to fight if it came to that, but not anticipating it would. Cowboy boots.

  Then he turned back to Alex Vasquez and saw what he had expected when he noticed the way she was holding the beer bottle. She had taken advantage of the distraction to swing at him backhanded. Her elbow was up and she put her back into it, and the bottle was whistling around to shatter on his skull.

  But he was no longer there.

  All right, then. No way to know for sure how the cowboy would react. Better to be safe. Cooper slipped sideways and snapped a left hook into the cowboy’s jaw. The man took it well, rolling with the impact, then lashed out himself. It wasn’t a bad punch, probably would have laid a normal man out. But Cooper saw the flicker of motion at the man’s eye, the tightening of the deltoid, the twist of the obliques, caught it all in an instant the way a straight might recognize a stop sign, and the meaning was as clear to him. The punch was a jackhammer, but for Cooper, who could see where it would be, avoiding it was the easiest thing in the world. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Vasquez slide off the stool and sprint for a door on the far wall.

  Enough of this. He stepped in close, cocked his elbow and slammed it into the cowboy’s throat. All the fight went out of the man in an instant. Both hands flew to his neck, the fingers clawing at the skin, carving blood trails. His knees wobbled and gave.

  Cooper thought about telling the man he’d be all right, that he hadn’t crushed the trachea, but Vasquez was already vanishing through the far door. The cowboy would have to figure it out for himself. Cooper pushed past and wove through the crowd, most of them frozen and staring, a few starting to move but too slowly. A stool was toppling as a man leaped off, and he read the pattern of the man’s muscles and the arc of the falling stool and split the difference, jumping the metal legs without engaging the guy. The jukebox had switched to Skynyrd, Ronnie Van Zant asking for three steps, mister, gimme three steps toward the door, which would have made him laugh if he could’ve spared the time.

  The door had a sign that read Hotel Guests Only. Cooper caught it just before it closed, yanked it all the way open to be sure Vasquez wasn’t waiting on the other side—he would have noticed a weapon on her, but she could have stowed it before she came into the bar—and then, seeing it was clear, spun around the frame. The hallway continued forward to another door, probably the lobby. A staircase carpeted in a bland pattern of orange and gray went up. He took the stairs, the music and bar sound fading, leaving the sound of his breathing echoing off the cinderblock walls. Another door led to a hallway, hotel rooms lined up on both sides.

  He raised his right foot to take a step down the—

  Four possibilities.

  One: An unplanned panic sprint. But she’s a programmer; programmers deal in logic and anticipated possibility.

  Two: She’s thinking of taking a hostage. Unlikely; she wouldn’t have time to try more than one room, and no guarantee she could handle the occupant.

  Three: Going for a hidden weapon. But that doesn’t change the equation; if you can see her, she won’t be able to hit you.

  Four: Escape. Of course, the building was surrounded, but she would have known that. Which means an alternate route.

  Got it.

  —hall. Eleven doors, ten of them identical except for the room number. The door at the end was plainer and unmarked. Janitor’s closet. Cooper ran to it, tried the handle, found it unlocked. The room was a dingy five by five. Inside was a cart of cleaning supplies and mini-toiletries, a vacuum, a steel rack of folded towels, a deep sink, and bolted to the near wall, an iron ladder to a roof hatch. The hatch was open, and through the square he could see the night sky.

  She must have set this up after checking in. The hatch had probably been locked; Vasquez must have cut it or broken it, leaving herself a neat little escape. Clever. The hotel was a squat two-story in a row of similar buildings, and it wouldn’t be hard to move from one to the next, then climb down a fire escape and stroll away.

  He reached for one of the slender rungs and hauled himself up. Spared a moment to be sure she wasn’t waiting at the top to brain him with a rock, then grabbed the lip and crawled onto the roof. Sludgy tar clung to his feet. Even through the wash of city lights, stars spilled across the horizon. He could hear traffic from the street below, and yelling as his team moved into the bar. Staying low, he glanced left and then right, saw a slender figure with her back to him, hands planted on a three-foot abutment that marked the edge of the roof. Vasquez pushed herself up, hooked a knee on the ledge, then rose to stand.

  “Alex!” Cooper drew his sidearm as he stood but kept it low. “Stop.”

  The programmer froze. Cooper took a few careful steps closer as she turned slowly, her posture conveying a mix of frustration and resignation. “Goddamn DAR.”

  “Get off the ledge, then put your hands behind your head.”

  Light from the street revealed her face, eyes hard, lips set in a sneer. “So you’re gifted, huh?” Another glint of gold from her necklace, a delicately wrought bird. “What is it for you?”

  “Pattern recognition, especially body language.” He moved up until only half a dozen paces separated them. Kept the Beretta lowered.

  “That’s how you moved so fast.”

  “I don’t move any faster than you. I just know where you’re going to hit.”

  “Isn’t that sweet. And you use that to hunt your own kind. Do you like it?” She put her hands on her hips. “Does it make you feel powerful? I bet it does. Do your masters pat you on the head for every one of us you catch?”

  “Get down, Alex.”

  “Or you’ll shoot me?” She glanced across the narrow alley at the building opposite. The leap was far but doable, maybe six feet.

  “It doesn’t have to go this way. You haven’t hurt anyone yet.” He read the hesitation in her body, the tremble in her calf and the tension in her shoulders. “Get down and let’s talk.”

  “Talk.” She snorted. “I know how you DAR boys talk. What’s that term the politicians like? ‘Enhanced interrogation.’ Very pretty. It sounds so much nicer than torture. Just like the Department of Analysis and Response sounds so much nicer than the Bureau of Abnorm Control.” Her body told him she was making up her mind.

  “It doesn’t have to go this way,” he repeated.

  “What’s your first name?” Her voice soft.

  “Nick.”

&n
bsp; “The man on the radio was right, Nick. About a war. That’s our future.” A strange resolve came over her, and she slipped her hands into her pockets. “You can’t stop the future. All you can do is pick a side.” She turned, glancing back at the alley.

  Cooper saw what she intended and started forward, but before he’d taken two steps, Alex Vasquez, hands tucked deep in her pockets, dove off the roof.

  Head first.

  Sofia Samatar became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of “Honey Bear” in Clarkesworld (Aug. 2012), edited by Neil Clarke.

  Visit her website at www.sofiasamatar.com.

  * * *

  Novel: A Stranger in Olondria (Being the Complete Memoirs of the Mystic, Jevick of Tyom) (excerpt) ••••

  Short Story: “Honey Bear”

  Short Story: “Selkie Stories Are for Losers” ••••

  A STRANGER IN OLONDRIA (BEING THE COMPLETE MEMOIRS OF THE MYSTIC, JEVICK OF TYOM)

  (excerpt)

  by Sofia Samatar

  First published as A Stranger in Olondria (2013), by Small Beer Press

  • • • •

  Book One: The Wind of Miracles

  Chapter One: Childhood in Tyom

  AS I WAS a stranger in Olondria, I knew nothing of the splendor of its coasts, nor of Bain, the Harbor City, whose lights and colors spill into the ocean like a cataract of roses. I did not know the vastness of the spice markets of Bain where the merchants are delirious with scents, I had never seen the morning mists adrift above the surface of the green Illoun, of which the poets sing; I had never seen a woman with gems in her hair, nor observed the copper glinting of the domes, nor stood upon the melancholy beaches of the south while the wind brought in the sadness from the sea. Deep within the Fayaleith, the Country of the Wines, the clarity of light can stop the heart: it is the light the local people call “the breath of angels,” and is said to cure heartsickness and bad lungs. Beyond this is the Balinfeil where, in the winter months, the people wear caps of white squirrel-fur, and in the summer months the goddess Love is said to walk, and the earth is carpeted with almond blossom. But of all this I knew nothing. I knew only of the island where my mother oiled her hair in the glow of a rush candle, and terrified me with stories of the Ghost with No Liver, whose sandals slap when he walks because he has his feet on backwards.

  My name is Jevick. I come from the blue and hazy village of Tyom, on the western side of Tinimavet in the Tea Islands. From Tyom, high on the cliffs, one can sometimes see the green coast of Jiev, if the sky is very clear; but when it rains, and all the light is drowned in heavy clouds, it is the loneliest village in the world. It is a three-day journey to Pitot, the nearest village, riding on one of the donkeys of the islands, and to travel to the port of Dinivolim in the north requires at least a fortnight in the draining heat. In Tyom, in an open court, stands my father’s house, a lofty building made of yellow stone, with a great arched entryway adorned with hanging plants, a flat roof, and nine shuttered rooms. And nearby, outside the village, in a valley drenched with rain, where the brown donkeys weep with exhaustion, where the flowers melt away and are lost in the heat, my father had his spacious pepper farm.

  This farm was the source of my father’s wealth and enabled him to keep the stately house, to maintain his position on the village council and carry a staff decorated with red dye. The pepper bushes, voluptuous and green under the haze, spoke of riches with their moist and pungent breath; my father used to rub the dried corns between his fingers, to give his fingertips the smell of gold. But if he was wealthy in some respects, he was poor in others: there were only two children in our house, and the years after my birth passed without hope of another, a misfortune generally blamed on the god of elephants. My mother said the elephant-god was jealous, and resented our father’s splendid house and fertile lands; but I knew that it was whispered in the village that my father had sold his unborn children to the god. I had seen people passing the house nudge one another and say, “He paid seven babies for that palace”; and sometimes our laborers sang a vicious work-song: “Here the earth is full of little bones.” Whatever the reason, my father’s first wife had never conceived at all, while the second wife, my mother, bore only two children: my elder brother Jom, and myself. Because the first wife had no child, it was she whom we always addressed as Mother, or else with the term of respect, eti-donvati, “My Father’s Wife”; it was she who accompanied us to festivals, prim and disdainful, her hair in two black coils above her ears. Our real mother lived in our room with us, and my father and his wife called her “Nursemaid,” and we children called her simply by the name she had borne from girlhood: Kiavet, which means Needle. She was round-faced and lovely, and wore no shoes. Her hair hung loose down her back. At night she told us stories while she oiled her hair and tickled us with a gull’s feather.

  Our father’s wife reserved for herself the duty of inspecting us before we were sent to our father each morning. She had merciless fingers, and pried into our ears and mouths in her search for imperfections; she pulled the drawstrings of our trousers cruelly tight and slicked our hair down with her saliva. Her long face wore an expression of controlled rage, her body had an air of defeat, she was bitter out of habit, and her spittle in our hair smelled sour, like the bottom of the cistern. I only saw her look happy once: when it became clear that Jom, my meek, smiling elder brother, would never be a man, but would spend his life among the orange trees, imitating the finches.

  My earliest memories of the meetings with my father come from the troubled time of this discovery. Released from the proddings of the rancorous first wife, Jom and I would walk into the fragrant courtyard, hand in hand and wearing our identical light trousers, our identical short vests with blue embroidery. The courtyard was cool, crowded with plants in clay pots and shaded by trees. Water stood in a trough by the wall to draw the songbirds. My father sat in a cane chair with his legs stretched out before him, his bare heels turned up like a pair of moons.

  We knelt. “Good morning father whom we love with all our hearts, your devoted children greet you,” I mumbled.

  “And all our hearts, and all our hearts, and all our hearts,” said Jom, fumbling with the drawstring on his trousers.

  My father was silent. We heard the swift flutter of a bird alighting somewhere in the shade trees. Then he said in his bland, heavy voice: “Elder son, your greeting is not correct.”

  “And we love him,” Jom said uncertainly. He had knotted one end of the drawstring about his finger. There rose from him, as always, an odor of sleep, greasy hair and ancient urine.

  My father sighed. His chair groaned under him as he leaned forward. He blessed us by touching the tops of our heads, which meant that we could stand and look at him. “Younger son,” he said quietly, “what day is today? And which prayers will be repeated after sundown?”

  “It is Tavit, and the prayers are the prayers of maize-meal, passion fruit and the new moon.”

  My father admonished me not to speak so quickly, or people would think I was dishonest; but I saw that he was pleased, and felt a swelling of relief in my heart, for my brother and myself. He went on to question me on a variety of subjects: the winds, the attributes of the gods, simple arithmetic, the peoples of the islands, and the delicate art of pepper-growing. I stood tall, threw my shoulders back and strove to answer promptly, tempering my nervous desire to blurt my words, imitating the slow enunciation of my father, his stern air of a great landowner. He did not ask my brother any questions. Jom stood unnoticed, scuffing his sandals on the flagstones—only sometimes, if there happened to be doves in the courtyard, he would say very softly: “Oo-ooh.” At length my father blessed us again, and we escaped, hand in hand, into the back rooms of the house; and I carried in my mind the image of my father’s narrow eyes, shrewd, cynical and filled with sadness.

  At first, when he saw that Jom could not answer his questions and could not even greet him properly, my father resp
onded with the studied and ponderous rage of a bull-elephant. He threatened my brother, and, when threats failed to cure his stubborn incompetence, had him flogged behind the house on a patch of sandy ground by two dull-eyed workers from the pepper fields. During the flogging I stayed in our darkened bedroom, sitting on my mother’s lap, while she pressed her hands over my ears to shut out my brother’s loud, uncomprehending screams. I pictured him rolling on the ground, throwing up his arms to protect his dusty head, while the blows of the stout sticks descended on him and my father watched blankly from his chair… Afterward Jom was given back to us, bruised and bloodied, with wide staring eyes, and my mother went to and fro with poultices for him, tears running freely down her cheeks. “It is a mistake,” she sobbed. “It is clear that he is a child of the wild pig.” Her face in the candlelight was warped and gleaming with tears, her movements distracted. That night she did not tell me stories, but sat on the edge of my bed and gripped my shoulder, explaining in hushed and passionate tones that the wild pig-god was Jom’s father; that the souls of the children of that god were more beautiful, more tender than ordinary souls, and that our duty on earth was to care for them with the humility we showed the sacred beasts. “But your father will kill him,” she said, looking into the darkness with desolate eyes. “There is flint in his bowels, he has no religion. He is a Tyomish barbarian.”

  My mother was from Pitot, where the women wore anklets of shell and plucked their eyebrows, and her strong religious views were seen in Tyom as ignorant Pitoti superstition. My father’s wife laughed at her because she burned dried fenugreek in little clay bowls, a thing which, my father’s wife said with contempt, we had not done in Tyom for a hundred years. And she laughed at me too, when I told her one morning at breakfast, in a fit of temper, that Jom was the son of the wild pig-god and possessed an untarnished soul: “He may have the soul of a pig,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean he’s not an idiot.” This piece of blasphemy, and the lines around her mouth, proved that she was in a good humor. She remained in this mood, her movements energetic and her nostrils clenched slightly with mirth, as long as my father sought for a means to cure Jom of his extraordinary soul. When the doctors came up from the south, with their terrible eyes and long hats of monkey-skin, she served them hot date-juice in bright glazed cups herself, smiling down at the ground. But the dreadful ministrations of the doctors, which left my brother blistered, drugged and weeping in his sleep, did not affect his luminescent soul, and only put a shade of terror in his gentle pig’s eyes. A medicinal stench filled the house and my bed was moved out into another room; from dusk until dawn I could hear the low moaning of my brother, punctuated with shrieks. In the evenings my mother knelt praying in the little room where the family janut, in whose power only she truly believed, stood in a row on an old-fashioned altar.