Emperor of Gondwanaland

by Paul Di Filippo

  He Keung realizes he has reached the nadir of his quest. All roads leading either to fulfillment of his original mission or to wholehearted adoption of Wu Yuèhai’s imperatives seem barricaded. Within He Keung’s heart, mind and soul, all the tugging, tensioned polarities that have kept him ajitter and incapable of decision making resolve into one gaping nullity, a black hole compounded of the impossibility of wisdom in a delimited framework of knowledge and the utterly dire necessity of action.

  At this moment of He Keung’s inverted satori, Huang Shen and the silent Wang Yu suddenly implode, collapse, as if those hanging puppets had been deflated and with no transition whatsoever they have become are ragged blotches staining the red cavern of the blister with a soup of foul yellow matter.

  His nemeses are naught but small, indistinct puddles upon which he glances, and then his perspective shifts, rises toward the ruddy and damaged surface of Mars hanging above, and Wu Yuèhai, returned inexplicably from the exile of her abysmal and despairing silence as He Keung never expected she would or could resurface, says: “Amazing! It is the most ancient, the greatest of powers you have shown! An unflagging warrior’s spirit, like that of Su Wu when sent to face the Huns. You have vanquished them!”

  The wavering, exultant exclamation of her voice is so unlike that quiet, insidious tone with which she had so movingly tracked her own orbital expiration that He Keung’s own spirits are comparably lifted.

  “Come with me,” she says, “Come with me now before these two perfidious Immortals are reconstituted in some other vessels. On Mars, we shall devise counterschemes that will yet secure this solar system as a bastion of the Jade Angels.”

  Reconstituted? He Keung, deep in service to the Great Revolution, deep in his fathoming and dedication to the cultural enlightenment which the space program has brought to his country and his life, has never felt as confused as he does at this moment; it is as if he were not a taikonaut but an innocent, somehow stripped of memory and desire, hanging (hanging like a puppet?) within some deep well excavated in the name of the Ancients. He cannot move; movement is beyond him, and yet he can feel some force, perhaps generated by Wu Yuèhai, which flutters at the rim of sensibility and begins to guide him, stumbling, away from the decaying blister and its slimy contents.

  “You must hurry!” she is saying, “you must not let this triumph pass; you must be opportune and take the moment,” and the shuffling He Keung, lashed by a kind of insistence that he cannot comprehend, stumbles forward, stumbles under the guidance of the more-than-human Wu Yuèhai toward some dim conception of the light.

  Is he going to Mars? Has he been granted entrance to the community of transfigured souls whose existence Wu Yuèhai has hinted at, a comity of blissful demigods who, under the tutelage of the Jade Angels, all work toward evolving the plenum to some form of transcendental perfection? Will he make his ascent toward the mythic planet that has for so long fascinated mankind? Or he is instead doomed to shuffle like some broken automaton across the gray plains of Deimos? Can this be some monstrous illusion, some hallucination on the Journey of a Thousand Knives patched into his dying sensorium only to torment him?

  He does not know. He cannot know.

  How he loved Wu Yuèhai in those hours of dictation of her loss; how he loved the Great Leader in all of the years before that; how, dreaming, he loved the skies and stars when even the issue of the Revolution fell away and it was only he and possibility close and alone in the night.

  He takes a step. He takes another step. Something systematic, something greater than he, seems to be guiding. Wu Yuèhai laughs in his ear and it is a laugh both gentle and ferocious, laughter of absolute insistence and yet yielding. Mars, the great Red Planet of dreams, hangs ever lower in the distance. If he could but expand his arm by just a little, if he could just reach a little farther, he would be able to touch that great snare, hanging low like fruit in the heavens. All that he must do is stretch a little farther …

  Behind the ripe beckoning pomegranate of Mars, misty figures larger than the prominences of the solar flare that killed or metamorphosed Wu Yuèhai now appear, viridian specters whose outlines fluctuate like flames in accordance with some half-sensed cosmic tempo. Are these the Jade Angels, come to assist He Keung in his transition, or only artifacts of his derangement?

  Wu Yuèhai says, “And soon, believe me, He Keung, as it did for me as I lay dying all alone, the Earth so near, yet so far, in this darkness everything will appear,” and he reaches adamant to embrace her.

  Soon.

  Soon all will be revealed.

  Soon he will be a Martian, too.

  IV

  Children of André Breton

  Surrealism and its offshoots are surely some of the most significant literary inventions of the twentieth century. And science fiction has adapted these narrative strategies to its own goals. Just consider, as one example, how seminal the surreal works of Philip K. Dick or J. G. Ballard are to the development of the genre. But as with any technique, it’s easy to overdose on such a dramatically in-your-melting-watchface style. That’s why the best such work is generally short.

  I hope the following stories hew to that standard of amusing brevity.

  As someone raised on the songs of Bob Dylan, I always wanted to title a story “[Yadda Yadda Yadda] 1 & 2” Or maybe it was the Isley Brothers’ influence. Who is that lady?!? In any case, the title came first in this instance. Then I had to imagine two blasphemous anecdotes to accompany it. Religious blasphemy is easy, but politically incorrect blasphemy was more fun.

  Time-Travel Blasphemies I and II

  I

  Joe Carpenter had undergone a strict Catholic upbringing: weekly confession; Sunday School till age thirteen; nuns as teachers right through twelfth grade; and then straight to Notre Dame.

  It was only natural then that his favorite sexual fantasy should be to imagine himself fucking the Virgin Mary.

  Ever since his first wet dream, the original Madonna had been the focus of his sexual longings. As the nuns of Joe’s youth frequently referred to themselves as “the brides of Christ,” it was an easy step for him to imagine himself “the husband of Mary.”

  Seeing the Pietà, Joe would imagine himself in Christ’s place and get a hard-on. Russian icons substituted in the bottom of his underwear drawer for the more traditional copies of Penthouse. He made a shameless pastiche of the “Hail Mary,” which he would recite mentally whenever he was called on to perform the prayer. It began, “Hail, Mary, full of cum,” and went downhill from there.

  Quite predictably, Joe’s sex life was rather unsatisfactory. Mere mortal women held no delight for him.

  Luckily, Joe was a genius. And a driven genius at that. More often than not, being a driven genius allows you to achieve all you think you want, with generally bad results. (Just consider, for instance, Thomas Wolfe the Elder and Robert Oppenheimer.)

  Joe therefore bent all his talents and intelligence toward building the world’s first time machine. With a firm mastery of quantum physics, he soon perfected a tachyonic field modulator small enough to fit into a belt.

  Now the belt device was around his waist, under a sackcloth robe. Sandals on bare feet, a pouch of antique coins in his pocket, and Joe was ready.

  In less than no time, Joe stood in pre-Christian Judea.

  He tracked down Mary’s family and found her still a teenager.

  From a distance, laying eyes on her for the first time, he had an involuntary spontaneous orgasm and collapsed in a faint.

  The next day—speaking the Latin drilled into him at school—he introduced himself to Mary’s mother as a prosperous merchant and trader from Rome.

  Within a month, he was married to Mary.

  For the next few weeks, Joe lived out all his sexual fantasies. Mary was a hot if inexperienced lay. It was heaven.

  But then one morning Mary announced: “Josephus—I think I am with child.”

  Understandably somewhat alarmed, Joe decided then and there t
o abandon Mary and return to the twenty-first century. He had a hunch that he could relive these weeks whenever he wanted. Here’s how Joe saw it: he would arrive so as to intercept his earlier self, kill that self, and then take his place. Over and over, innumerable times, he could murder his earlier doppelganger so that the (n + 1 )th Joe could enjoy Mary afresh.

  It occurred to Joe—as it probably has to you—that the fact that he himself hadn’t been murdered yet by any of these later Joes was a bad sign that his plan had some hidden flaw. But he easily made up some quantum explanation about branching timelines to satisfy himself that his plan was plausible.

  “Goodbye, Mary,” said Joe, and vanished.

  Back in his time of origin, a few twenty-first-century seconds after he had first set out, Joe could be found in his bathroom, enjoying the delights of a modern shower.

  As he was toweling himself dry, the doorbell rang.

  Joe opened the front door.

  It was the Jewish babe he had skipped out on.

  And she had her kid with her.

  II

  Sandra Birkenstock hated men.

  Her father had been an abusive bully. Her brother had raped her. Her first husband had been an alcoholic. The president was a warmongering, and-abortion fanatic.

  These seemed good and sufficient reasons to Sandra for her to engineer the extermination of the entire male gender.

  So she did.

  In her capacity as a biohacker for Merck Pharmaceuticals, Sandra fashioned a lethal virus that attacked only humans with Y chromosomes. It was gruesomely fatal within days of being contracted, and so cunningly wrought that all men would be dead before its mysteries could be unraveled.

  Rather selfishly, Sandra had no desire to live through the short-term chaos that was sure to follow her purge. On the other hand, she wanted to see the sane and healthy all-womyn society that was sure to follow the Interregnum.

  Her work provided a solution.

  After unleashing the indestructible airborne anti-male virus, Sandra injected herself with stasis-inducing nanodevices. These tiny machines would put her into suspended animation for a century, at the end of which period little bioclocks would shut the machines down and she would awake.

  The injection was made while Sandra was shivering in a cave high in the Swiss Alps. Here her body would be safe from the social chaos to come. She had taken the precaution of leaving a sealed envelope with the National Organization of Women. The envelope contained the story of what she had done, and how to find her body.

  As Sandra’s cells shut down, snow drifted over her …

  Sandra awoke to tropical heat.

  Several womyn were bending over her.

  They were all sun-bronzed, their features a mix of different races, and they wore only sarongs. They were smiling down at her.

  “Welcome, Savioress,” said one of the womyn in barely understandable, time-shifted English.

  Sandra struggled creakily to her feet. A frond roof was above her head. Glassless windows revealed lush vegetation washed in bright sun. Sea breezes wafted in.

  “Where am I?” asked Sandra.

  “You are on the Isle of the Blue Conch, and I am Queen Frangipani.”

  “How did I get here?”

  “Your body was recovered by one of the last expeditions to venture north, just before the ice sheets came down.”

  “Ice sheets? What happened to global warming?”

  “The fever which Mother Gaia had, induced by the evil workings of male technoculture? Once industry was abandoned and the atmosphere was cleansed, the ice age that was geologically overdue quickly settled in. All of womynkind now lives in a small belt around the equator. I believe you once called this part of the world ‘Polynesia.’”

  Sandra could hardly believe what she was hearing. This was not something she had counted on. However, she quickly adjusted to the news. The diminished womyn territory and population was a small price to pay for ridding Gaia of males.

  “If you feel well enough,” Queen Frangipani said, “we have arranged a feast in your honor.”

  “Of course,” said Sandra. “I am eager to sample your brave new world.”

  Sandra and her host stepped outside, followed by the other womyn. They were greeted by cheers from the entire population of Blue Conch Isle. Sandra’s heart was lifted by the sight of the exuberant womyn.

  Down on the sandy beach, a pit full of coals held roasting vegetables. Over another fire, a roasting pig—male, noted Sandra gleefully—turned on a spit.

  Some kind of alcoholic beverage began to circulate. Songs and dancing started. Soon, Sandra felt right at home.

  After the drink had loosened her inhibitions, Sandra felt free enough to inquire about reproduction.

  “Is it by parthenogenesis? Or cloning?”

  Queen Frangipani laughed. “Neither, I’m afraid, would be much fun, or very practical to sustain in our low-tech culture. No, you see, before the last laboratories ceased functioning, womyn scientists succeeded in permanently modifying the genome of dolphins to the point where we could mate with them. Of course, all male babies from such unions die immediately, since we are all still latent carriers of your splendid virus.”

  Sandra gagged on her pork. “You mate with dolphins?”

  “Of course. Everyone here had a dolphin father. What troubles you about that? Are they not our equals in Gaia’s eyes? Look! I will introduce you to them and you will see.”

  The Queen signaled for a conch to be sounded. Soon, the water around the beach was thronged with lustful dolphins. The drunken Blue Conchers waded into the shallows and embraced the dolphins. The water began to surge with fucking.

  Sandra passed out.

  In the morning, she awoke with a wicked hangover. During a breakfast of fruit, she tried to convince herself that the interspecies orgy of the prior night had been a bad dream.

  As Sandra was finishing her third banana, the sound of a conch drifted in from far out at sea.

  “It’s the Pink Conch womyn!” shouted Queen Frangipani. “Queen Jacaranda promised she would try to take the Savioress away from us, but I thought she was only boasting. Quickly! To the canoes!”

  Seemingly from nowhere, the tribeswomyn brought out plaited armor, spears, and war clubs. These latter were caked with dried blood, gristle, and tufts of hair.

  Queen Frangipani gripped Sandra’s arms. “You must come with us. Your mana will ensure victory.”

  Numbly, Sandra let herself be led away.

  Soon the Blue Conch fleet was afloat. The womyn paddled vigorously, chanting imprecations and blood-curdling death threats.

  Within minutes, the fleet of the Pink Conchers was sighted.

  Queen Frangipani stood up in the prow of the lead canoe, where Sandra sat, too.

  “I swear by the Savioress that I will eat your heart, Jacaranda!” It was then that Sandra noticed for the first time that the Queen’s teeth were filed to sharp points.

  Leaning over the gunwale, Sandra puked her breakfast. Screams suddenly sounded. Surely the fleets hadn’t engaged yet—

  Sandra looked portside.

  The ocean floor was rising up through the surface. No. It was only a whale.

  “Orca!” screamed Frangipani. “They have Orca on their side!” The building-sized mammal opened its immense jaws. It was like looking into a train tunnel.

  As Sandra’s canoe shot into the whale’s gullet, she could only think—

  I hope it’s a female.

  At an SF convention known as Readercon some years ago, the rabble-rouser and avant-popist Larry McCaffrey was hot on a new project. “Paul, I’m going to create an anthology of fiction devoted solely to the O.J. Simpson case. Would you contribute something?” How could I refuse such an outrageous invitation? I wrote the story you’re about to read, but the project died stillborn, alas. Nonetheless, Larry was kind enough to include my piece in the Italian edition of one of his books, its first appearance in print, where it doubtlessly mystified and alie
nated a vast foreign readership.

  If you can cast your thoughts back to the day when we were all fixated on this scandal, and recall the various personalities involved, and then summon up memories of some icons from Pop. Lit. 101, you might still enjoy this little jape.

  Pulp Alibis

  Pop. 7 Million

  Sheriff Fuhrman swung his massive hairy fist into the gut of the unsuspecting tramp—some bottle-blond nancy-boy he had picked up for vagrancy—and felt it connect with the man’s backbone. Stepping back with a neat practiced motion to avoid the spew of vomit from the unshaven hobo, Fuhrman began to laugh.

  “Told ya that cheap wine wouldn’t agree with ya, Kato old son!”

  Leaving the crippled bum to wallow in his own filth, Fuhrman swung shut the cell door, twisted the key in the lock, and moved across the tiny jailhouse to his desk. Seated with his booted feet up, a pint of whiskey opened for chugging, he ran through some pleasant options for how to spend the rest of his day.

  After he visited the Cowlings ranch and delivered the foreclosure papers, he might take a spin up to ol’ Marcia’s house. The purty lady lawyer should be home today—warn’t nothing scheduled down at the county courthouse, and maybe—hell, no maybes about it!—for sure he’d feed her a little raw turkey neck. Most days she didn’t need no convincing anyhow, being randier than an Okie roustabout fresh from a three-week stint in the oil fields with his pocket full of pay. After that little interlude, he could head out to Dogtown, see what action he could stir up among the niggers, Mexes, and white trash who lived there. It had been too long since the last lynching, and there was danger them half-breeds and coons might be getting uppity. No sense letting things get to the point where he’d have to call the Klan up. Most of the boys were getting too old to ride anyhow, and they mostly took queen-size sheets for their robes.