Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two

by Short Story Anthology

  Work is progressing on a number of TV productions, Unseen Academicals being the next to be produced by Mob.

  During the Summer of 2010 the National Portrait Gallery put on an exhibition of mystery portraits in its collection at Montacute House, Somerset and invited various people to create lives for those portrayed. Terry called the character in ‘his’ portrait Sir Joshua Easement, a late Elizabethan adventurer whose career to a certain extent depended on his total absence of a sense of smell. His biography and those of six other sitters (by authors including John Banville, Joanna Trollope appear in a paperback being published by the NPG in February 2011, Imagined Lives: Mystery Portraits from the National Portrait Gallery c.1520-1640.

  Death and What Comes Next, by Terry Pratchett

  When Death met the philosopher, the philosopher said, rather excitedly: "At this point, you realise, I'm both dead and not dead."

  There was a sigh from Death. Oh dear, one of those, he thought. This is going to be about quantum again. He hated dealing with philosophers. They always tried to wriggle out of it.

  "You see," said the philosopher, while Death, motionless, watched the sands of his life drain through the hourglass, "everything is made of tiny particles, which have the strange property of being in many places at one time. But things made of tiny particles tend to stay in one place at one time, which does not seem right according to quantum theory. May I continue?"

  YES, BUT NOT INDEFINITELY, said Death, EVERYTHING IS TRANSIENT. He did not take his gaze away from the tumbling sand.

  "Well, then, if we agreed that there are an infinite number of universes, then the problem is solved! If there are an unlimited number of universes, this bed can be in millions of them, all at the same time!"

  DOES IT MOVE?

  "What?

  Death nodded at the bed. CAN YOU FEEL IT MOVING? he said.

  "No, because there are a million versions of me, too, And...here is the good bit ...in some of them I am not about to pass away! Anything is possible!"

  Death tapped the handle of his scythe as he considered this.

  AND YOUR POINT IS...?

  "Well, I'm not exactly dying, correct? You are no longer such a certainty."

  There was a sigh from Death. Space he thought. That was the trouble. It was never like this on worlds with everlastingly cloudy skies. But once humans saw all that space, their brains expanded to try and fill it up.

  "No answer, eh?" said the dying philosopher. "Feel a bit old-fashioned, do we?"

  THIS IS A CONUNDRUM CERTAINLY, said Death. Once they prayed, he thought. Mind you, he'd never been sure that prayer worked, either. He thought for a while. AND I SHALL ANSWER IT IN THIS MANNER, he added. YOU LOVE YOUR WIFE?

  "What?"

  THE LADY WHO HAS BEEN LOOKING AFTER YOU. YOU LOVE HER?

  "Yes. Of course."

  CAN YOU THINK OF ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WHERE, WITHOUT YOUR PERSONAL HISTORY CHANGING IN ANY WAY YOU WOULD AT THIS MOMENT PICK UP A KNIFE AND STAB HER? said Death. FOR EXAMPLE?

  "Certainly not!"

  BUT YOUR THEORY SAYS THAT YOU MUST. IT IS EASILY POSSIBLE WITHIN THE PHYSICAL LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE, AND THEREFORE MUST HAPPEN, AND HAPPEN MANY TIMES. EVERY MOMENT IS A BILLION, BILLION MOMENTS, AND IN THOSE MOMENTS ALL THINGS THAT ARE POSSIBLE ARE INEVITABLE. ALL TIME SOONER OR LATER, BOILS DOWN TO A MOMENT.

  "But of course we can make choices between-"

  ARE THERE CHOICES? EVERYTHING THAT CAN HAPPEN, MUST HAPPEN. YOUR THEORY SAYS THAT FOR EVERY UNIVERSE THAT'S FORMED TO ACCOMMODATE YOUR 'NO', THERE MUST BE ONE TO ACCOMMODATE YOUR 'YES'. BUT YOU SAID YOU WOULD NEVER COMMIT MURDER. THE FABRIC OF THE COSMOS TREMBLES BEFORE YOUR TERRIBLE CERTAINTY. YOUR MORALITY BECOMES A FORCE AS STRONG AS GRAVITY. And, thought Death, space certainly has a lot to answer for.

  "Was that sarcasm?"

  ACTUALLY, NO. I AM IMPRESSED AND INTRIGUED, said Death. THE CONCEPT YOU PUT BEFORE ME PROVES THE EXISTENCE OF TWO HITHERTO MYTHICAL PLACES. SOMEWHERE, THERE IS A WORLD WHERE EVERYONE MADE THE RIGHT CHOICE, THE MORAL CHOICE, THE CHOICE THAT MAXIMISED THE HAPPINESS OF THEIR FELLOW CREATURES, OF COURSE, THAT ALSO MEANS THAT SOMEWHERE ELSE IS THE SMOKING REMNANT OF THE WORLD WHERE THEY DID NOT ...

  "Oh, come on! I know what you're implying, and I've never believed in any of that Heaven and Hell nonsense!"

  The room was growing darker. The blue gleam along the edge of the reaper's scythe was becoming more obvious.

  ASTONISHING, said Death. REALLY ASTONISHING. LET ME PUT FORWARD ANOTHER SUGGESTION: THAT YOU ARE NOTHING MORE THAN A LUCKY SPECIES OF APE THAT IS TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE COMPLEXITIES OF CREATION VIA A LANGUAGE THAT EVOLVED IN ORDER TO TELL ONE ANOTHER WHERE THE RIPE FRUIT WAS?

  Fighting for breath, the philosopher managed to say: "Don't be silly."

  THE REMARK WAS NOT INTENDED AS DEROGATORY, said Death. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES, YOU HAVE ACHIEVED A GREAT DEAL.

  "We've certainly escaped from outmoded superstitions!"

  WELL DONE, said Death. THAT'S THE SPIRIT. I JUST WANTED TO CHECK.

  He leaned forward.

  AND ARE YOU AWARE OF THE THEORY THAT THE STATE OF SOME TINY PARTICLES IS INDETERMINATE UNTIL THE MOMENT THEY ARE OBSERVED? A CAT IN A BOX IS OFTEN MENTIONED.

  "Oh, yes," said the philosopher.

  GOOD, said Death. He got to his feet as the last of the light died, and smiled.

  I SEE YOU...

  Theatre of Cruelty, by Terry Pratchett

  It was a fine summer morning, the kind to make a man happy to be alive. And probably the man would have been happier to be alive. He was, in fact, dead. It would be hard to be deader without special training.

  "Well, now," said Sergeant Colon (Ankh-Morpork City Guard, Night Watch), consulting his notebook, "so far we have cause of death as a) being beaten with at least one blunt instrument b) being strangled with a string of sausages and c) being savaged by at least two animals with big sharp teeth. What do we do now, Nobby?"

  "Arrest the suspect, Sarge," said Corporal Nobbs, saluting smartly.

  "Suspect, Nobby?"

  "Him," said Nobby, prodding the corpse with his boot. "I call it highly suspicious, being dead like that. He's been drinking, too. We could do him for being dead and disorderly."

  Colon scratched his head. Arresting the corpse offered, of course, certain advantages. But...

  "I reckon," he said slowly, "that Captain Vimes'll want this one sorted out. You'd better bring it back to the Watch House, Nobby."

  "And then can we eat the sausages, sarge?" said Corporal Nobbs.

  ***

  It wasn't easy, being the senior policeman in Ankh-Morpork, greatest of cities of the Discworld [*].

  There were probably worlds, captain Vimes mused in his gloomier moments, where there weren't wizards (who made locked room mysteries commonplace) or zombies (murder cases were really strange when the victim could be the chief witness) and where dogs could be relied on to do nothing in the night time and not go around chatting to people. Captain Vimes believed in logic, in much the same way as a man in a desert believed in ice -- i.e., it was something he really needed, but this just wasn't the world for it. Just once, he thought, it'd be nice to solve something.

  He looked at the blue-faced body on the slab, and felt a tiny flicker of excitement. There were clues. He'd never seen proper clues before.

  "Couldn't have been a robber, Captain," said Sergeant Colon. "The reason being, his pockets were full of money. Eleven dollars."

  "I wouldn't call that full," said Captain Vimes.

  "It was all in pennies and ha'pennies, sir. I'm amazed his trousers stood the strain. And I have cunningly detected the fact that he was a showman, sir. He had some cards in his pocket, sir. 'Chas Slumber, Children's Entertainer'."

  "I suppose no one saw anything?" said Vimes.

  "Well, sir," said Sergeant Colon helpfully, "I told young Constable Carrot to find some witnesses."

  "You asked Corporal Carrot to investigate a murder? All by himself?" said Vimes.

  The sergeant scra
tched his head.

  "And he said to me, did I know anyone very old and seriously ill?"

  ***

  And on the magical Discworld, there is always one guaranteed witness to any homicide. It's his job.

  Constable Carrot, the Watch's youngest member, often struck people as simple. And he was. He was incredibly simple, but in the same way that a sword is simple, or an ambush is simple. He was also possibly the most linear thinker in the history of the universe.

  He'd been waiting by the bedside of an old man, who'd quite enjoyed the company. And now it was time to take out his notebook.

  "Now I know you saw something, sir," he said. "You were there."

  WELL, YES, said Death. I HAVE TO BE, YOU KNOW. BUT THIS IS VERY IRREGULAR.

  "You see, sir," said Corporal Carrot, "as I understand the law, you are an Accessory After The Fact. Or possibly Before The Fact."

  YOUNG MAN, I AM THE FACT.

  "And I am an officer of the Law," said Corporal Carrot. "There's got to be a law, you know."

  YOU WANT ME TO... ER... GRASS SOMEONE UP? DROP A DIME ON SOMEONE? SING LIKE A PIGEON? NO. NO-ONE KILLED MR. SLUMBER. I CAN'T HELP YOU THERE.

  "Oh, I don't know, sir," said Carrot, "I think you have."

  DAMN.

  Death watched Carrot leave, ducking his head as he went down the narrow stairs of the hovel.

  NOW THEN, WHERE WAS I...

  "Excuse me," said the wizened old man in the bed. "I happen to be 107, you know. I haven't got all day."

  AH, YES, CORRECT.

  Death sharpened his scythe. It was the first time he'd ever helped the police with their enquiries. Still, everyone had a job to do.

  ***

  Corporal Carrot strolled easily around the town. He had a Theory. He'd read a book about Theories. You added up all the clues, and you got a Theory. Everything had to fit.

  There were sausages. Someone had to buy sausages. And then there were pennies. Normally only one subsection of the human race paid for things in pennies.

  He called in at a sausage maker. He found a group of children, and chatted to them for a while.

  Then he ambled back to the alley, where Corporal Nobbs had chalked the outline of the corpse on the ground (colouring it in, and adding a pipe and a walking stick and some trees and bushes in the background -- people had already dropped 7p in his helmet). He paid some attention to the heap of rubbish at the far end, and then sat down on a busted barrel.

  "All right... you can come out now," he said, to the world at large. "I didn't know there were any gnomes left in the world."

  The rubbish rustled. They trooped out -- the little man with the red hat, the hunched back and the hooked nose, the little woman in the mob cap carrying the even smaller baby, the little policeman, the dog with the ruff around its neck, and the very small alligator.

  Corporal Carrot sat and listened.

  "He made us do it," said the little man. He had a surprisingly deep voice. "He used to beat us. Even the alligator. That was all he understood, hitting things with sticks. And he used to take all the money the dog Toby collected and get drunk. And then we ran away and he caught us in the alley and started on Judy and the baby and he fell over and --"

  "Who hit him first?" said Carrot.

  "All of us!"

  "But not very hard," said Carrot. "You're all too small. You didn't kill him. I have a very convincing statement about that. So I went and had another look at him. He'd choked to death. What's this?"

  He held up a little leather disc.

  "It's a swozzle," said the little policeman. "He used it for the voices. He said ours weren't funny enough."

  "That's the way to do it!" said the one called Judy.

  It was stuck in his throat," said Carrot. "I suggest you run away. Just as far as you can."

  "We thought we could start a people's co-operative," said the leading gnome.

  "You know... experimental drama, street theatre, that sort of thing. Not hitting each other with sticks..."

  "You did that for children?" said Carrot.

  "He said it was a new sort of entertainment. He said it'd catch on."

  Carrot stood up, and flicked the swozzle into the rubbish.

  "People'll never stand for it," he said. "That's not the way to do it."

  [*] Which is flat and goes through space on the back of an enormous turtle, and why not...

  The Sea and Little Fishes, by Terry Pratchett

  Trouble began, and not for the first time, with an apple. There was a bag of them on Granny Weatherwax's bleached and spotless table. Red and round, shiny and fruity, if they'd known the future they should have ticked like bombs.

  "Keep the lot, old Hopcroft said I could have as many as I wanted," said Nanny Ogg. She gave her sister witch a sidelong glance. "Tasty, a bit wrinkled, but a damn good keeper."

  "He named an apple after you?" said Granny. Each word was an acid drop on the air.

  "Cos of my rosy cheeks," said Nanny Ogg. "An' I cured his leg for him after he fell off that ladder last year. An' I made him up some jollop for his bald head."

  "It didn't work, though," said Granny. "That wig he wears, that's a terrible thing to see on a man still alive."

  "But he was pleased I took an interest."

  Granny Weatherwax didn't take her eyes off the bag. Fruit and vegetables grew famously in the mountains' hot summers and cold winters. Percy Hopcroft was the premier grower and definitely a keen man when it came to sexual antics among the horticulture with a camel-hair brush.

  "He sells his apple trees all over the place," Nanny Ogg went on. "Funny, eh, to think that pretty soon thousands of people will be having a bite of Nanny Ogg."

  "Thousands more," said Granny, tartly. Nanny's wild youth was an open book, although only available in plain covers.

  "Thank you, Esme." Nanny Ogg looked wistful for a moment, and then opened her mouth in mock concern. "Oh, you ain't jealous, are you, Esme? You ain't begrudging me my little moment in the sun?"

  "Me? Jealous? Why should I be jealous? It's only an apple. It's not as if it's anything important."

  "That's what I thought. It's just a little frippery to humour an old lady," said Nanny. "So how are things with you, then?"

  "Fine. Fine."

  "Got your winter wood in, have you?"

  "Mostly."

  "Good," said Nanny. "Good."

  They sat in silence. On the windowpane a butterfly, awoken by the unseasonable warmth, beat a little tattoo in an effort to reach the September sun.

  "Your potatoes ... got them dug, then?" said Nanny.

  "Yes."

  "We got a good crop off ours this year."

  "Good."

  "Salted your beans, have you?"

  "Yes."

  "'I expect you're looking forward to the Trials next week?"

  "Yes."

  "I expect you've been practicing?"

  "No."

  It seemed to Nanny that, despite the sunlight, the shadows were deepening in the corners of the room. The very air itself was growing dark. A witch's cottage gets sensitive to the moods of its occupant. But she plunged on. Fools rush in, but they are laggards compared to little old ladies with nothing left to fear.

  "You coming over to dinner on Sunday?"

  "What're you havin'?"

  "Pork."

  "With apple sauce?"

  "Ye -"

  "No," said Granny.

  There was a creaking behind Nanny. The door had swung open. Someone who wasn't a witch would have rationalized this, would have said that of course it was only the wind. And Nanny Ogg was quite prepared to go along with this, but would have added: why was it only the wind, and how come the wind had managed to lift the latch?

  "Oh, well, can't sit here chatting all day," she said, standing up quickly. "Always busy at this time of year, ain't it?"

  "Yes."

  "So I'll be off, then."

  "Goodbye."

  The wind blew the door shut again as Nanny h
urtled off down the path.

  It occurred to her that, just possibly, she may have gone a bit too far. But only a bit. The trouble with being a witch - at least, the trouble with being a witch as far as some people were concerned - was that you got stuck our here in the country. But that was fine by Nanny. Everything she wanted was out here. Everything she'd ever wanted was here, although in her youth she'd run out of men a few times. Foreign parts were all right to visit but they weren't really serious. They had interestin' new drinks and the grub was fun, but foreign parts was where you went to do what might need to be done and then you came back here, a place that was real. Nanny Ogg was happy in small places.

  Of course, she reflected as she crossed the lawn, she didn't have this view out of her window. Nanny lived down in the town, but Granny could look out across the forest and over the plains and all the way to the great round horizon of the Discworld. A view like that, Nanny reasoned, could probably suck your mind right out of your head. They'd told her the world was round and flat, which was common sense, and went through space on the back of four elephants standing on the shell of a turtle, which didn't have to make sense. It was all happening Out There somewhere, and it could continue to do so with Nanny's blessing and disinterest so long as she could live in a personal world about ten miles across, which she carried around with her.

  But Esme Weatherwax needed more than this little kingdom could contain. She was the other kind of witch. And Nanny saw it as her job to stop Granny Weatherwax getting bored. The business with the apples was petty enough, a spiteful little triumph when you got down to it, but Esme needed something to make every day worthwhile and if it had to be anger and jealousy then so be it. Granny would now scheme for some little victory, some tiny humiliation that only the two of them would ever know about, and that'd be that. Nanny was confident that she could deal with her friend in a bad mood, but not when she was bored. A witch who is bored might do anything.