Lucius Shepard is one of the foremost short story writers of his age, working across many genres, melding sf with horror, fantasy with contemporary fiction and stories of war. This latest collection is headed by the Hugo Award winning ‘Barnacle Bill the Spacer’, a science fiction that is both eerie and enchanting, forward looking and nostalgic.
The six further works demonstrate in spectacular fashion the breadth of Shepard’s unique imagination, exploring the darkside where science fiction meets horror, where real life becomes nightmare. ‘Beast of the Heartland’ tells of a boxer on the ropes professionally and personally, of the monsters that lurk inside all of us in extremis. ‘The Sun Spider’ and ‘All The Perfumes of Araby’ tell of love in trouble—on a satellite orbiting an overpopulated, much polluted earth and in present day Egypt where tours of the pyramids alternate with shopping for narcotics.
Like the World Fantasy Award winning, The Ends of the Earth, Barnacle Bill the Spacer is a tour-de-force of imaginative fiction.
Lucius Shepard endured a harsh childhood designed to hothouse his education—it worked and at five he was reading Shakespeare. At fifteen he left home and has travelled extensively ever since. A multi-award winner he won the John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1985, and has picked up World Fantasy Awards for his previous short story collections, The Jaguar Hunter and The Ends of the Earth. The stories in Barnacle Bill the Spacer have appeared in a range of magazines from Playboy to Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.
ALSO BY LUCIUS SHEPARD
FROM MILLENNIUM
The Ends of the Earth
The Golden
Copyright in this collection © 1997 Lucius Shepard
All rights reserved
The right of Lucius Shepard to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 1997 by
Orion Books Ltd
Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane, London WC2H 9EA
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
ISBN 1 85798 501 X (cased)
ISBN 1 85798 500 1 (trade paperback)
Typeset by Deltatype Ltd, Birkenhead, Merseyside
Printed in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
‘All the Perfumes of Araby’, first published 1992 in Omni Best Science Fiction 2
‘Barnacle Bill The Spacer’, first published July 1992 in
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
‘Beast of the Heartland’, first published September 1992 in Playboy
‘Human History’, first published April 1996 in
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
‘A Little Night Music’, first published March 1992 in Omni
‘Sports in America’, first published July 1991 in Playboy
‘The Sun Spider’, first published in April 1987 in
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
CONTENTS
Barnacle Bill The Spacer
A Little Night Music
Human History
Sports in America
The Sun Spider
All the Perfumes of Araby
Beast of the Heartland
BARNACLE BILL THE SPACER
The way things happen, not the great movements of time but the ordinary things that make us what we are, the savage accidents of our births, the simple lusts that because of whimsy or a challenge to one’s pride become transformed into complex tragedies of love, the heartless operations of change, the wild sweetness of other souls that intersect the orbits of our lives, travel along the same course for a while, then angle off into oblivion, leaving no formal shape for us to consider, no easily comprehensible pattern from which we may derive enlightenment…I often wonder why it is when stories are contrived from such materials as these, the storyteller is generally persuaded to perfume the raw stink of life, to replace bloody loss with talk of noble sacrifice, to reduce the grievous to the wistfully sad. Most people, I suppose, want their truth served with a side of sentiment; the perilous uncertainty of the world dismays them, and they wish to avoid being brought hard against it. Yet by this act of avoidance they neglect the profound sadness that can arise from a contemplation of the human spirit in extremis and blind themselves to beauty. That beauty, I mean, which is the iron of our existence. The beauty that enters through a wound, that whispers a black word in our ears at funerals, a word that causes us to shrug off our griever’s weakness and say, No more, never again. The beauty that inspires anger, not regret, and provokes struggle, not the idle aesthetic of a beholder. That, to my mind, lies at the core of the only stories worth telling. And that is the fundamental purpose of the storyteller’s art, to illumine such beauty, to declare its central importance and make it shine forth from the inevitable wreckage of our hopes and the sorry matter of our decline.
This, then, is the most beautiful story I know.
It all happened not so long ago on Solitaire Station, out beyond the orbit of Mars, where the lightships are assembled and launched, vanishing in thousand-mile-long shatterings, and it happened to a man by the name of William Stamey, otherwise known as Barnacle Bill.
Wait now, many of you are saying, I’ve heard that story. It’s been told and retold and told again. What use could there be in repeating it?
But what have you heard, really?
That Bill was a sweet, balmy lad, I would imagine. That he was a carefree sort with a special golden spark of the Creator in his breast and the fey look of the hereafter in his eye, a friend to all who knew him. That he was touched not retarded, moonstruck and not sick at heart, ill-fated rather than violated, tormented, sinned against.
If that’s the case, then you would do well to give a listen, for there were both man and boy in Bill, neither of them in the least carefree, and the things he did and how he did them are ultimately of less consequence than why he was so moved and how this reflects upon the spiritual paucity and desperation of our age.
Of all that, I would suspect, you have heard next to nothing.
Bill was thirty-two years old at the time of my story, a shambling, sour-smelling unkempt fellow with a receding hairline and a daft, moony face whose features—weak-looking blue eyes and Cupid’s bow mouth and snub nose—were much too small for it, leaving the better part of a vast round area unexploited. His hands were always dirty, his station jumpsuit mapped with stains, and he was rarely without a little cloth bag in which he carried, among other items, a trove of candy and pornographic VR crystals. It was his taste for candy and pornography that frequently brought us together—the woman with whom I lived, Arlie Quires, operated the commissary outlet where Bill would go to replenish his supplies, and on occasion, when my duties with Security Section permitted, I would help Arlie out at the counter. Whenever Bill came in he would prefer to have me wait on him; he was, you understand, intimidated by everyone he encountered, but by pretty women most of all. And Arlie, lithe and brown and clever of feature, was not only pretty but had a sharp mouth that put him off even more.
There was one instance in particular that should both serve to illustrate Bill’s basic circumstance and provide a background for all that later transpired. It happened one day about six months before the return of the lightship Perseverance. The shift had just changed over on the assembly platforms, and the commissary bar was filled with workers. Arlie had run off somewhere, leaving me in charge, and from my vantage behind the counter, located in
an ante-room whose walls were covered by a holographic photomural of a blue-sky day in the now-defunct Alaskan wilderness, and furnished with metal tables and chairs, all empty at that juncture, I could see coloured lights playing back and forth within the bar, and hear the insistent rhythms of a pulse group. Bill, as was his habit, peeked in from the corridor to make sure none of his enemies were about, then shuffled on in, glancing left and right, ducking his head, hunching his shoulders, the very image of a guilty party. He shoved his money-maker at me, three green telltales winking on the slim metal cylinder, signifying the amount of credit he was releasing to the commissary, and demanded in that grating, adenoidal voice of his that I give him ‘new stuff’, meaning by this new VR crystals.
‘I’ve nothing new for you,’ I told him.
‘A ship came in.’ He gave me a look of fierce suspicion. ‘I saw it. I was outside, and I saw it!’
Arlie and I had been quarrelling that morning, a petty difference concerning whose turn it was to use the priority lines to speak with relatives in London that had subsequently built into a major battle; I was in no mood for this sort of exchange. ‘Don’t be an ass,’ I said. ‘You know they won’t have unloaded the cargo yet.’
His suspicious look flickered, but did not fade. ‘They unloaded already,’ he said. ‘Sleds were going back and forth.’ His eyes went a bit dreamy and his head wobbled, as if he were imagining himself back out on the skin of the station, watching the sleds drifting in and out of the cargo bays; but he was, I realized, fixed upon a section of the holographic mural in which a brown bear had just ambled out of the woods and was sniffing about a pile of branches and sapling trunks at the edge of a stream that might have been a beaver dam. Though he had never seen a real one, the notion of animals fascinated Bill, and when unable to think of anything salient to say, he would recite facts about giraffes and elephants, kangaroos and whales, and beasts even more exotic, all now receded into legend.
‘Bloody hell!’ I said. ‘Even if they’ve unloaded, with processing and inventory, it’ll be a week or more before we see anything from it. If you want something, give me a specific order. Don’t just stroll in here and say’—I tried to imitate his delivery—‘“Gimme some new stuff.”’
Two men and a woman stepped in from the corridor as I was speaking; they fell into line, keeping a good distance between themselves and Bill, and on hearing me berating him, they established eye contact with me, letting me know by their complicitors’ grins that they supported my harsh response. That made me ashamed of having yelled at him.
‘Look here,’ I said, knowing that he would never be able to manage the specific. ‘Shall I pick you out something? I can probably find one or two you haven’t done.’
He hung his great head and nodded, bulled into submissiveness. I could tell by his body language that he wanted to turn and see whether the people behind him had witnessed his humiliation, but he could not bring himself to do so. He twitched and quivered as if their stares were pricking him, and his hands gripped the edge of the counter, fingers kneading the slick surface.
By the time I returned from the stockroom several more people had filtered in from the corridor, and half a dozen men and women were lounging about the entrance to the bar, laughing and talking, among them Braulio Menzies, perhaps the most dedicated of Bill’s tormentors, a big, balding, sallow man with sleek black hair and thick shoulders and immense forearms and a Mephistophelean salt-and-pepper goatee that lent his generous features a thoroughly menacing aspect. He had left seven children, a wife and a mother behind in São Paolo to take a position as foreman in charge of a metalworkers’ unit, and the better part of his wages were sent directly to his family, leaving him little to spend on entertainment; if he was drinking, and it was apparent he had been, I could think of nothing that would have moved him to this end other than news from home. As he did not look to be in a cheerful mood, chances were the news had not been good.
Hostility was thick as cheap perfume in the room. Bill was still standing with his head hung down, hands gripping the counter, but he was no longer passively maintaining that attitude—he had gone rigid, his neck was corded, his fingers squeezed the plastic, recognizing himself to be the target of every disparaging whisper and snide laugh. He seemed about to explode, he was so tightly held. Braulio stared at him with undisguised loathing, and as I set Bill’s goods down on the counter, the skinny blonde girl who was clinging to Braulio’s arm sang, ‘He can’t get no woman, least not one that’s human, he’s Barnacle Bill the Spacer.’
There was a general outburst of laughter, and Bill’s face grew flushed; an ugly, broken noise issued from his throat. The girl, her smallish breasts half-spilling out from a skimpy dress of bright blue plastic, began to sing more of her cruel song.
‘Oh, that’s brilliant, that is!’ I said. ‘The creative mind never ceases to amaze!’ But my sarcasm had no effect upon her.
I pushed three VR crystals and a double handful of hard candy, Bill’s favourite, across to him. ‘There you are,’ I said, doing my best to speak in a kindly tone, yet at the same time hoping to convey the urgency of the situation. ‘Don’t be hanging about, now.’
He gave a start. His eyelids fluttered open, and he lifted his gaze to meet mine. Anger crept into his expression, hardening the simple terrain of his face. He needed anger, I suppose, to maintain some fleeting sense of dignity, to hide from the terror growing inside him, and there was no one else whom he dared confront.
‘No!’ he said, swatting at the candy, scattering much of it onto the floor. ‘You cheated! I want more!’
‘Gon’ mek you a pathway, boog man!’ said a gangly black man, leaning in over Bill’s shoulder. ‘Den you best travel!’ Others echoed him, and one gave Bill a push toward the corridor.
Bill’s eyes were locked on mine. ‘You cheated me, you give me some more! You owe me more!’
‘Right!’ I said, my temper fraying. ‘I’m a thoroughly dishonest human being. I live to swindle gits like yourself.’ I added a few pieces of candy to his pile and made to shoo him away. Braulio came forward, swaying, his eyes none too clear.
‘Let the son’beetch stay, man,’ he said, his voice burred with rage. ‘I wan’ talk to heem.’
I came out from behind the counter and took a stand between Braulio and Bill. My actions were not due to any affection for Bill—though I did not wish him ill, neither did I wish him well; I suppose, I perceived him as less a person than an unwholesome problem. In part, I was still motivated by the residue of anger from my argument with Arlie, and of course it was my duty as an officer in the Security Section to maintain order. But I think the actual reason I came to his defence was that I was bored. We were all of us bored on Solitaire. Bored and bad-tempered and despairing, afflicted with the sort of feverish malaise that springs from a sense of futility.
‘That’s it,’ I said wearily to Braulio. ‘That’s enough from all of you. Bugger off.’
‘I don’t wan’ hort you, John,’ said Braulio, weaving a bit as he tried to focus on me. ‘Joos’ you step aside.’
A couple of his co-workers came to stand beside him. Jammers with silver nubs protruding from their crewcut scalps, the tips of receivers that channelled radio waves, solar energy, any type of signal, into their various brain centres, producing a euphoric kinaesthesia. I had a philosophical bias against jamming, no doubt partially the result of some vestigial Christian reflex. The sight of them refined my annoyance.
‘You poor sods are tuned to a dark channel,’ I said. ‘No saved by the bell. Not today. No happy endings.’
The jammers smiled at one another. God only knows what insane jangle was responsible for their sense of well-being. I smiled, too. Then I kicked the nearer one in the head, aiming at but missing his silver stub; I did for his friend with a smartly delivered backfist. They lay motionless, their smiles still in place. Perhaps, I thought, the jamming had turned the beating into a stroll through the park. Braulio faded a step and adopted a defensive posture
. The onlookers edged away. The throb of music from the bar seemed to be giving a readout of the tension in the room.
There remained a need in me for violent release, but I was not eager to mix it with Braulio; even drunk, he would be formidable, and in any case, no matter how compelling my urge to do injury, I was required by duty to make a show of restraint.
‘Violence,’ I said, affecting a comical lower-class accent, hoping to defuse the situation. ‘The wine of the fucking underclass. It’s like me father used to say, son, ’e’d say, when you’re bereft of reason and the wife’s sucked up all the cooking sherry, just amble on down to the pub and have a piss in somebody’s face. There’s nothing so sweetly logical as an elbow to the throat, no argument so poignant as that made by grinding somebody’s teeth beneath your heel. The very cracking of bones is in itself a philosophical language. And when you’ve captioned someone’s beezer with a nice scar, it provides them a pleasant ’omily to read each time they look in the mirror. Aristotle, Plato, Einstein. All the great minds got their start brawling in the pubs. Groin punches. Elbows to the throat. These are often a first step toward the expression of the most subtle mathematical concepts. It’s a fantastic intellectual experience we’re embarking upon ’ere, and I for one, ladies and gents, am exhilarated by the challenge.’
Among the onlookers there was a general slackening of expression and a few titters. Braulio, however, remained focused, his eyes pinned on Bill.
‘This is ridiculous,’ I said to him. ‘Come on, friend. Do me the favour and shut it down.’
He shook his head, slowly, awkwardly, like a bear bothered by a bee.
‘What’s the point of it all, man?’ I nodded at Bill. ‘He only wants to vanish. Why don’t you let him?’
The blonde girl shrilled, ‘Way you huffin’ this bombo’s shit, you two gotta be flatbackin’, man!’
‘I didn’t catch your name, darling,’ I said. ‘Tarantula, was it? You’d do well to feed her more often, Braulio. Couple of extra flies a day ought to make her more docile.’
Barnacle Bill The Spacer and Other Stories Page 1
