The Big Book of Science Fiction

by The Big Book of Science Fiction (retail) (epub)

  “She had stopped crying, well almost. I hadn’t realized that she had a thing for him. When you live alone in space, you lose track of that sort of phenomenon. I had no idea just how important that was going to be later.

  “Evie said there was nothing particular about the area where Geoff had disappeared. It looked like so many other neighborhoods that they’d walked through before. They had to backtrack and ask for a satellite location in order to find it. Geoff was disappointed and furious. He raced up and down the three streets, looking for a secret passageway, a hidden opening, without success. Then he started to explore the outgrowths one after another, coming back out a little more annoyed each time. Finally, she saw him go into a porch and he never came back out.

  “According to the girl, there was nothing particular about the interior of the building either: a labyrinth of cartilage partitions, a rough floor, made of folds of dead skin. Since no one answered when she called out, she hadn’t dared to venture too far in and preferred to return to camp, taking care to spray-paint her initials on the porch.

  “We approached cautiously. Nothing moved, no sound filtered out to us, no trace of Geoff. I picked up the caterpillar’s remote control as I pulled Evie away from the porch.

  “ ‘We could get lost in that maze,’ I explained to her. ‘I’ll send the beast in to explore for us.’

  “ ‘Good idea!’ she said. ‘Then we can simply follow its wire to make our way back out without getting trapped by those damn partitions.’

  “ ‘After she’s done a tour inside, there won’t actually be many partitions intact,’ I replied.

  “She blushed, which didn’t look good on her, and fell silent. The caterpillar rolled over to the entrance. Her segments proceeded into the building, one by one. We could hear the sound of fabric tearing, followed by irregular periods of silence. I glanced inside: the floor was strewn with cartilage debris and booths that had been laid all askew, imprisoned in their placental pouches. Just the place for a large-scale communication centre. I noted its location on the map, out of reflex, before carefully following in the caterpillar’s footsteps, accompanied by Evie.

  “We made our way through the building diagonally, stumbling over the waste. A cloud of bone dust powdered our clothing. We avoided coughing, for fear of giving birth to an echo we wouldn’t have recognized. I twisted my ankle and Evie fell in a pile of debris, from which she emerged looking like a ghost, bits of membrane hanging from her shoulders and hair like a transparent shroud.

  “The caterpillar had stopped at the entrance to an immense multisided room that had remained intact. Evie slid past her body and almost immediately cried out. When I reached her, she was kneeling next to Geoff, who lay unconscious, feverish, lips clenched, fingernails dug into bloody palms.

  “We didn’t see the fountain right away. We were busy trying to revive our lost team member and didn’t have the time to study the surroundings closely. It was only when Geoff opened his eyes and pointed at it that I realised it was there. He hoarsely asked us to get him something to drink.

  “Evie gave him a shot and poured the contents of her canteen between his lips. I stood up to disconnect the caterpillar. On my way, I glanced about, without noticing anything special: a murmur came from the thin ribbon of water that welled up from the ground and filled a cavity. It hadn’t rained in a week and I recall wondering where the water was coming from. But I didn’t think it was all that important.

  “As soon as Geoff could stand up and before we could stop him, he rushed over to the fountain to drink. The water didn’t appear to have any particular effect on him. He offered me some, but I don’t really have an affinity for that type of liqueur at zero degrees.

  “When we asked him why he’d fainted, he replied that he’d knocked himself out against a partition. The explanation was so stupid that we believed it and considered the matter closed. Evie apologized for dragging me into all this for nothing. Geoff received his share of insults from me for leaving me with the caterpillar, but my heart wasn’t in it, so I left it alone.

  “We followed the wire back out. None of us tried to get away from the sector; we even decided to set up our camp at the intersection of two neighboring streets. Evie made some coffee. Without a word, Geoff held out her canteen so that she could go and fill it.

  “I gave him a mild sedative so that he could rest for the remainder of the day and went out to explore the neighboring buildings, to form my own opinion.

  “Evie was telling the truth; there was absolutely nothing to see in that sector. It was so similar to all the others I’d travelled through before that things were starting to look suspicious. I was caught up in the game, obstinately searching for something. I didn’t know what it should look like. I palpated the city’s thick skin in hopes of detecting some sort of revealing pulse; I scratched esoteric maps in an old notepad, tearing the pages out as I finished them. In short, I behaved like an imbecile. Evie, who was watching over Geoff, called out to me from time to time, asking if I’d found anything, and seemed to take no notice of my increasingly brief answers.

  “The dark gradually chased me from the shadowy streets, in which it would be all too easy to lose my way. I gave up and sat down next to the electric hot plate where our evening rations were heating, along with an entire pot of coffee. Evie and Geoff glanced at me, but refrained from making a comment. Just as well. I couldn’t forgive them for breaking the pleasant monotony of my trip through the city. For the first time, Paranamanco had disappointed me and it was all their fault.

  “I rolled up in my bedroll, as far from the caterpillar and them as possible, and tried to fall asleep. I’d had too much coffee for sleep to come easily but, with the help of the silence, I gradually felt myself doze off with the hope that the place would get rid of my two pests.

  “That night I dreamt the same thing over and over again. I was hitting my head against the reality of the city like a moth blinded by light. When I woke up, Geoff had disappeared once more and the entire neighborhood seemed to have gone mad….

  “Heavy bunches of colored lightbulbs hung overhead, large drops of luminous sap dripping down. A vine of telephone cables climbed up the outgrowths, rolling in abundant, baroque spirals along the streets, in an unnatural embrace. Neon orchids with electrifying scents surged from the slightest chink in the walls, shooting lightning that bounced off Paranamanco’s skin. In a few hours, the neighborhood had been transformed into a virgin forest.

  “Next to the dead hot plate and the caterpillar, which had been definitively disconnected, Evie lay plunged in a sleep evidently filled with nightmares. The ground around her was spiked by long, transparent spears, shimmering with violet sparks. I had to kick them to bits to get closer to her.

  “Geoff had made her swallow the rest of the sleeping pills and had pinned a laconic note to her sleeping bag before heading off. I knew what it said before reading and rereading it. Then I woke Evie.

  “All around us, the neighbourhood was coming to life. The sun was already high and the dense fiber-optic jungle shimmered in the bright light. I almost expected Geoff to appear wearing a simple loincloth, leaping from vine to vine, hunting prey. But I knew that we’d never see him again. And, deep down, Evie did too.

  “She refused to believe it, however, and wanted to look for him in that verdant growth, despite the evidence that surrounded us, despite Geoff’s note. She denied the facts. Hey, you try to convince a woman that her lover is capable of leaving her for a living organism that measures six hundred kilometers in diameter, a creature he had shared his dreams with….

  “I had a lot of difficulty convincing her to listen to me. I’d known what was really going on with Paranamanco since the previous night, in part because of Evie. The water she’d used to make her coffee came from the fountain. Some of its power remained, despite the boiling, just enough that I knew what kind of trap Geoff fell into. Merely thinking that I could have suffered the same fate made me shiver. It would have taken so little. I
must be one of the few people whose life has been saved by alcohol.

  “I told Evie that the liquid had slowly poisoned Geoff, that the first time we’d found him, unconscious, he’d most certainly just drunk from the fountain and that, feeling that he was about to die, he preferred to distance himself from the camp, to spare us the spectacle of his agony. The note he had left her was the fruit of a brain that was already damaged; she shouldn’t pay it any attention. Of course, she didn’t believe a word of what I said, but it was the best lie I could come up with given the time available.

  “She insisted that I tell the truth. I was stupid enough to do so….”

  A long line of vehicles, sirens shrieking, is heading my way. Judging by the sound, they’re still far away enough for me to listen to the last surface of the cube, the most important one.

  “The animalcities are incomplete organisms,” the old man murmurs, eyes staring at a horizon beyond my reach. “To successfully face the space that separates galaxies, they need symbiotic companions, gardeners capable of caring for them and maintaining them throughout the voyage. In exchange, they offer access to the entire universe, as well as the means to survive in the void of space.

  “When I landed on Paranamanco’s surface for the first time, she understood that her race and mankind could get along. She flavored the water with her dreams accordingly. After tasting it, Geoff was able to give birth to the neon garden that surrounded us of his own accord. No doubt he was wandering about the adjacent neighborhoods, impatient to put his new powers to the test. I imagined the winding streets filled with hardy brambles, leaves flashing with lightning, tree streetlights, electric foliage stretching over the city’s squares, avenues illuminated by the flamboyant chalices of glass tulips. I realized that Geoff had not only shared Paranamanco’s dreams, but had also, in a certain manner, transmitted his own. She dreamed of looking like the cities on Earth, with their adornment of multicolored lights enshrined in metal and stone. All she needed was a little help.

  “At the beginning, Evie refused to believe me, convinced that I was making the whole thing up for some totally obscure reason, that I didn’t know any more than she did. So, I placed my hands on the warm soil. A tiny neon flower sprang up and spat out its fire before expiring.

  “She finally understood that we couldn’t do any more for Geoff. Only an expedition organized by the base would be able to find him, if it wasn’t already too late. The caterpillar was dead; we had no more water. Well, at least, I preferred not to try the water in our canteens, in case Geoff had filled them at the fountain. I left Evie, deeply wounded by my words, and set out, following the wire, to search for a booth that was working.

  “I had no idea what my colleague on the other end of the line thought about my story and I didn’t care. Once I was certain that someone would come to get us immediately, I headed back to camp, and found it empty.

  “Evie had carried off one of the canteens when she left. In a letter scribbled while I was away, she said that she was ready to join Geoff, to take her turn at serving the city. I castigated myself for not having seen that coming and I cried out her name until the echoes rebounded around me. I never saw her again.

  “The most horrible part is that there was no chance for her project to succeed. Paranamanco was only interested in men. There was a sexual component between her gardeners and her that was essential for her survival. Evie was incapable of providing that and I suppose that the animalcities can occasionally get jealous….

  “That evening, a shuttle came to pick me up, guided by the dead caterpillar’s beacon. When the pilot saw the scene, he called for reinforcements. A security cordon surrounded the site. But it was too late. We never found anyone.

  “I don’t know how the information could have leaked out, but hundreds of colonists set out to look for Paranamanco’s secret wells. Those in charge implemented a news blackout, partly because they didn’t believe me. I’m an old wino, you know. It was fine and dandy for me to tell them over and over that it was the alcohol that had saved my life, but they remained skeptical. I can see their point of view and I would never have imagined that someone would come and interview me about all this.

  “And you, do you believe me? If I weren’t half drunk, I’d string up a garland of lights to convince you, but Paranamanco doesn’t like alcohol and I believe I lost my power over her a long time ago. She doesn’t want me anymore. I had my chance and I blew it.”

  —

  Someone is banging brusquely at my door; the recording is over. My article has been rejected everywhere, without explanation. I’ve been under constant surveillance, but that doesn’t matter now. The city found her pilot; she was able to take off with her crew of dreamers and adventurers, whose hands will bring flowers back to the dead streets. No doubt, they’re far away already.

  I have a minute or two before those who are looking for me break down the door. I grab the flask of the city’s dreams that the old explorer gave to me, before heading off into the streets with their sadly conventional signs and disappearing for good. Maybe I’ll have the time to uncork and drink it, but Paranamanco has flown off and I’m no longer certain that I can find her.

  Crying in the Rain

  TANITH LEE

  Tanith Lee (1947–2015) was an iconic British writer of speculative fiction who wrote in nearly every genre during a prolific and distinguished career that produced almost one hundred novels, several hundred short stories, and work in other media (including two episodes of the BBC television series Blake’s 7). Lee grew up the daughter of professional dancers, who often discussed favorite books with her and encouraged her to read work by Saki and Theodore Sturgeon, among others. She began to write before the age of ten.

  Lee’s short fiction has been reprinted by many anthologists and appeared in most of the major science fiction and fantasy magazines. In particular, Lee became associated with Weird Tales, which published her work continuously from the 1980s until her death. She became the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award for best novel (1980), was twice nominated for the Nebula Award, was nominated eleven times for the World Fantasy Award (winning twice), and received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2013 and the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.

  As she moved beyond her early works for children, Lee proved to be an inventive and fertile writer, producing novels and stories that differ vastly in tone and subject matter and are dauntingly comprehensive. There seemed to be no subject, from robots to cosmogony, that failed to serve her primary impulses as a storyteller. For this reason, it is hard to place her oeuvre within the larger context of the history of science fiction, except to say that her interests often lay within the gothic, surreal, and psychological. Although Lee was heterosexual, much of her fame was attributed to her award-winning fiction featuring gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender characters. An early series, Tales from the Flat Earth (inspired by the fairy tales of Oscar Wilde), was celebrated for introducing gender-fluid characters long before this became more common in the past few years.

  “Crying in the Rain” (1989) is typical, classic Lee—a dark and brooding setting with all-too-human characters, and the implications of the setup carried to conclusion with devastating consequences.

  CRYING IN THE RAIN

  Tanith Lee

  There was a weather warning that day, so to start with we were all indoors. The children were watching the pay-TV and I was feeding the hens on the shutyard. It was about nine a.m. Suddenly my mother came out and stood at the edge of the yard. I remember how she looked at me: I had seen the look before, and although it was never explained, I knew what it meant. In the same way she appraised the hens, or checked the vegetables and salad in their grow-trays. Today there was a subtle difference, and I recognized the difference too. It seemed I was ready.

  “Greena,” she said. She strode across to the hen-run, glanced at the disappointing hens. There had only been three eggs all week, and one of those had register
ed too high. But in any case, she wasn’t concerned with her poultry just now. “Greena, this morning we’re going into the Center.”

  “What about the Warning, Mum?”

  “Oh, that. Those idiots, they’re often wrong. Anyway, nothing until noon, they said. All Clear till then. And we’ll be in by then.”

  “But, Mum,” I said, “there won’t be any buses. There never are when there’s a Warning. We’ll have to walk.”

  Her face, all hard and eaten back to the bone with life and living, snapped at me like a rat trap: “So we’ll walk. Don’t go on and on, Greena. What do you think your legs are for?”

  I tipped the last of the feed from the pan and started toward the stair door.

  “And talking of legs,” said my mother, “put on your stockings. And the things we bought last time.”

  There was always this palaver. It was normally because of the cameras, particularly those in the Entry washrooms. After you strip, all your clothes go through the cleaning machine, and out to meet you on the other end. But there are security staff on the cameras, and the doctors, and they might see, take an interest. You had to wear your smartest stuff in order not to be ashamed of it, things even a Center doctor could glimpse without repulsion. A stickler, my mother. I went into the shower and took one and shampooed my hair, and used powder bought in the Center with the smell of roses, so all of me would be gleaming clean when I went through the shower and shampooing at the Entry. Then I dressed in my special underclothes, and my white frock, put on my stockings and shoes, and remembered to drop the carton of rose powder in my bag.

  My mother was ready and waiting by the time I came down to the street doors, but she didn’t upbraid me. She had meant me to be thorough.