Northern Stars

by Glenn Grant

  Joël Champetier is the current publisher and fiction editor of Solaris, one of the two major French-language SF magazines published in Quebec. After working for ten years as a technician in electrochemistry, he is now a full-time writer. He has published five young adult SF and fantasy novels, beginning with La Mer au fond du monde (1990), winner of the Prix Boréal 1991 for best book, a collection of dark fantasy, and an adult SF novel, La Taupe et le dragon (1991), which tied for the Prix Boréal for 1992 for best book. Jean-Louis Trudel, writing in The New York Review of Science Fiction, called it “a revelation … it attains an exquisite balance between action, plot, science fictional speculation, extrapolation, and characterization.” He has written nearly twenty SF short stories, winning the Prix Boréal twice in that category (1982 and 1991), and the Aurora Award (then called the Prix Casper) for another in 1989. Only two of his stories (and none of the award winners) have appeared in English translation, although a third, the Boréal winner for 1991, is scheduled for this year as “Heart of Iron” in the forthcoming Tesseracts Q.

  We have selected “Soluble-Fish,” which appeared in Tesseracts2. It is reminiscent of much of the British “new wave” SF of the late 1960’s and of such French SF as Boris Vian’s.

  * * *

  For weeks now, rain had been lashing against my window. The first few days, in spite of advice to the contrary, I opened the shutters. I had always hated the smell of a closed room and I just lay there languishing in memories of pleasant strolls on sunny days. But rain filtered through the shutters into the room and flooded the tiles.

  I awoke to a clammy morning, hearing the moans of Onires as she sponged off the tiles.

  “You shouldn’t open the window when the wind is from the east.”

  I shivered on the wet floor and dressed, a bit ill at ease to notice that my cousin did not avert her eyes.

  * * *

  The water was only about ten centimetres deep, but many soluble-fish swam in it, looking like drops of mercury. It was going to rain for some time and the water would rise; soon, it would be hard to catch the fish. After several unsuccessful attempts, Guylane landed one, a sort of jelly fish that wriggled, cupped in a trembling hand. Splashing everywhere, we ran to our aunt’s house: the little house with the pointed roof, perched on high pilings. We almost let go of the fish.

  “Don’t come in before taking your clothes off.”

  The fish slid soundlessly into a sand bucket. Onires lit a lamp to warm up the room.

  “Don’t let this fish dry here!”

  My aunt’s orders were, it seems, rarely to be obeyed.

  We looked at the fish, which wriggled at first, but then fell quiet and motionless.

  “Is it dead?”

  “No. You didn’t believe us?”

  We spread carpets on the floor, talked and daydreamed for hours, in the warm and humid atmosphere of the workshop, for a long while unaware of the rain calling on the window pane. We soon had to go to bed. It would take days anyway.

  “Can we fish some more?”

  “No. Mom wouldn’t like it.”

  * * *

  Early in the dry season, we find many of these fish, all dried-up, lying in the gravel and the dust, or stuck to branches. By then it’s hatching time when the rain-birds break their wrinkled skin and stretch their crystal wings.

  “It’s strange … we call them ‘rain-birds’ and they disappear when the rain comes. And we call them ‘soluble-fish’ and they only appear when there is water.” Guylane looked at me, nodding in surprise at a thought he had never had before.

  I looked in the sand bucket and for the first time saw a dried-up fish; its eyes and its mouth had disappeared and had melted into the wrinkles of a greyish skin, like dust.

  * * *

  It was one of the worst nights. I tossed and turned between clammy sheets in the illusive agony of one who waits for sleep. I thought I hadn’t slept, yet Onires awakened me.

  “Come.”

  I followed her, unable to talk to her about my dreams where her slim adolescent body haunted me. Guylane was rubbing his eyes, already tottering near the sand bucket.

  “The bird will come out.”

  The shell had cracked hours ago. Now, pulsating within it, translucent wings were struggling to get out.

  The rain-bird shivered on tiny chiselled legs; it opened a pair of soft and weak wings that would have to dry before turning into crystal. Then it opened its opaque eyes which would later dry into a liquid transparency.

  Once dry, it began to fly, fragile yet graceful. The sound of a faint humming penetrated the room in answer to the drumming of the rain.

  Morning found us still awake, as did my aunt who frowned when she saw the shadow of the flying bird. Onires pleaded, but to no avail.…

  “Enough now! You disobeyed me. Get this bird out of here.”

  As soon as we opened the shutter, the bird slid into the grey sky. It took flight in a flutter of wings. But soon its flight was less graceful. It slowed. It was coming down now, erratically.…

  “So soon?” I was sad and disappointed.

  “The rain is like spikes on its wings.…”

  A drop of water—which was not from the sky—rolled down my cheek. The bird gave up, stopped flapping its wings, and dove down with a muffled sound. One more soluble-fish would soon slide slowly in the thin layer of troubled waters.

  MEMETIC DRIFT

  Glenn Grant

  Glenn Grant, the coeditor of this book, was born in London, Ontario, but now lives in Montreal. He is the founder and editor of the SF magazine Edge Detector and is the SF reviewer for the Montreal Gazette. His articles on SF have appeared in Science Fiction Studies, Science Fiction Eye, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and other magazines. The Canada Council awarded him an Explorations Grant to write his first SF novel, which will be called Remote Sensing. His short fiction has appeared in Interzone in the U.K., from which David Hartwell chose “Memetic Drift” to reprint.

  “Speculative fiction…,” Grant writes, “is the lens we use to bring some clarity to the chaos around us; it’s a system for redefining our world-views and our self-images. What we want is a kind of mythological edge detection, similar to the computer-processing which increases the resolution of fuzzy satellite images. If it’s done well, SF can show us the big picture, yet still bring all the details into sharp focus.”

  Grant’s desire to redefine and complexify is given free rein in this story, which suggests that Québécois nationalism is not the only centrifugal pressure that Canada may face in the near future.

  “13.01: A meme is not replicated by words alone. Competition between meme-complexes is becoming increasingly intense, but we have no interest in resorting to evangelism or cult-tactics to gain ‘converts’ [see 13.3].… Although actions do not, in fact, speak louder than words, they are a more subtly effective transmission vector.”

  —A Code for Nomadiks; Version 25.0 (annual updates available on the World3 Network).

  Stick out my thumb, and I find myself crossing the Great Midwestern Dustbowl with a flock of sun-crazed Nomadiks, generally heading in a westward direction, without plan or destination. Half the day wasted in the hard solar infall which is the only rain here, waiting for this lift. Half the night spent staring past my reflection, past sandblasted billboards and disused silos. Not a recommended therapy for anyone just pulling out of an extended period of depression. This same desert that has finally swept over my home has now settled into my mind, grain by grain filling up the cortical folds, a thin layer of insulation against unwanted emotions.

  I’m riding with the Norm Famli, a polymarriage consisting of two women, a transmale, an hermaphrodite, and two pseudochildren. All of them live in these two articulated trailer modules, carted around on the back of a mammoth surplus defense vehicle. (A GM mobile missile carrier, to be exact, auctioned off by the U.S. military when they decommissioned the MX arsenal.)

  I’m one of two hitchers they picked up last night
in the depopulated suburbs of Regina. The other guy, who calls himself “Scred,” is a wiry geezer with a missing right canine, nasty stitchmarks up one arm, and a lot of crude jokes to tell. A few of them are even funny, but for the most part it’s a dull trip. Far too much time to think.

  Sometime around sunup, I notice my reflection in the window. There’s a gap where my eyes should be, the shadow under the visor of my Co-op baseball cap. Only the end of my thin nose is reflected, and a twenty-year-old face that is gaunt even when I’ve been eating well (which I haven’t), surrounded by long strands of dirty-blond hair.

  Yes, I’m aware that I’m exhibiting all the symptoms of emotional shock: apathy, indifference, inexpressive staring, the whole bit. It doesn’t help to have seen it happen to others, to strangers and neighbors, and to Jodi.

  Jodi had to go in for observation after her parents were killed in a tornado. A year later she was off the medication and holding up fine, until the dunes swamped the pathetic encroachment barriers out behind our rented farmhouse. By ones and twos, our housemates packed up and left. Then, with an enormous sand drift engulfing the back porch, came the city’s eviction notice, and the papers from the Resettlement Ministry, and the inevitable, final moving day.…

  Eventually Jodi’s aunt and uncle brought her to a hospital closer to their home in Thunder Bay. When I last saw her, a month ago, she didn’t know who I was.

  * * *

  “Want some tea with that croissant, Fifer?” Sue sets her tray down on the table in the kitchenette where Scred and I have been sitting since midnight, getting leg cramps. “Fifer—that’s your first name, is it?”

  “That’s right. Fifer Stenzel. And some tea would be nice. Thanks, ma’am.”

  Sue Norm is a tall Asian woman, eldest of the Famli, streaks of grey in her disorderly black hair, and a few crinkles around the eyes as she laughs. “Not ‘ma’am,’ please. Call me Sue. Or Yingsiu, if you prefer.” She fills the teapot carefully, compensating as the trailer rig sways around a turn.

  A couple of the other Norms are having breakfast in the small living area adjacent to the kitchen, where the TV runs a disc of a Fijian earthdub band. Forward of that are storage shelves and overhead cupboards, haphazardly decorated with posters of obscure netbands and digital Shunga paintings. Sliding doors lead onto a low tunnel to the cab, below a warning in felt-marker: Don’t bug the driver. Aft of the kitchen are the fresher, the shower, and the accordion-pleated passage to the second module, hung with a curtain. Famli sleeping quarters, back there.

  Yingsiu pours the tea.

  The first sip sets off a warning alarm, “Aw hell, this is”—then a sudden sneeze, spilling a hot mugful onto my lumberjack shirt—“mint tea.”

  “Oh, I am sorry.” Sue grabs a towel, passes it to me. “You’re allergic to mint?”

  “And to certain trees, and cats, and”—another sneeze—“and it’s my own stupid fault for not checking first.” Next, an onslaught of three sneezes.

  Scred is cackling hysterically. “You oughta be more careful, Fife.” Grinning, he returns his attention to his Bioregional News fax. The top headline reads: Secessionists Bomb Edmonton Airship Terminal. Mopping up the spilled tea, I decide that it might not be a good idea to settle here in Alberta. More jobs out in BC, anyway.

  * * *

  “Yingsiu? Bad news from World3,” Vicki calls from a swivel chair by the vidphone. “ResetMin just revoked our permit for Finnegan. The Christas have a monastery about one klick to the east. They filed a complaint.”

  “Shit. That hexes that. Left it as late as they could, didn’t they?” Sue takes the other chair and slips on a headset. “What’s the backup site, Larry?” Maps appear on the screen, the new destination and ETA in red. “Mount Cyprian? Great. We’ll have to double back. Okay, put Sal on.”

  Larry, I take it, is the name of their vidphone persona, the program which handles their messages, broadcatching, and other databiz. Noel Norm calls it Larry the Lar, their protective household spirit. But Noel’s a Teknik Pagan (an absurd idea, in itself) and I can’t tell if she expects to be taken seriously.

  On the screen, a thinly bearded face shows up in a shuddery low-angle, flowing brown hair snaking about in the breeze from the driver’s window. This would be Sal Norm, somewhere up ahead of us in the box-van, seen from the dash camera. Sue explains the situation to Sal, who nods, jots down directions, and signs off.

  Sue makes a few more calls, while Victoria removes her headset, sidles aft to the kitchen, and draws a cup of water from the dispenser. “What’s all that about?” I ask.

  “A little change of plan.” She draws a felt bag out of her sweatsuit pocket, drops something blue into her palm, a capsule which she tosses back, and the water follows it. “We got word from World3—our net, y’know—that the … uh, Resettlement Ministry won’t let us use the town of Finnegan for a little gathering we’d planned. You ever been to one of our—no, you wouldn’t have. Lotta fun, you’ll see.” She nods, rather Californian in speech and gesture, blond split-ends swaying into her face. (I don’t know what’s in the capsules she keeps downing. Maintenance doses of something, but they have no visible effect on her at all.)

  “What was wrong with Finnegan?”

  “Nothin’. A ghost town. Perfect, for our purposes. But there’s these Christa Cultists nearby, seem to think we’d make lousy neighbors, so the ResetMin revoked our permit. Happens all the time, so we arrange for backup sites.”

  Another evil grin from Scred, who’s been sitting across from me, reading something on his microbook. “You know those Christians. They used to say the Gypsies refused to shelter the Virgin and her child on the flight to Egypt, and for that they were cursed to wander forever. Ain’t that so?”

  Vicki blows hair from her eyes. “Pphh. I’ve heard that. They fucked up, as usual. The Romany were never Egyptians, and as far as we’re concerned, it’s everybody else who’s cursed to stand still.”

  With that, she returns to the living area. The back of the sweatshirt reads, Can’t hack reality? Try reality-hacking, in purple on mauve.

  * * *

  Turned about on the TransCanada, we head southeast from Brooks, Alberta, backtracking. After breakfast, Lyndon Norm goes to work on the plumbing system at the rear of the module, and asks me to assist. “Well, carpentry’s my specialty,” I tell him, “but I can turn a wrench or hold a spanner if needed.”

  “Specialization? Hah!” Lyndon’s voice is a thin alto, an odd match for his stocky, broad-waisted frame. Somehow he manages to wedge himself into a closetful of tangled pipes and cables. The place stinks of methane and mildew. “Don’t let ’em do that to ya. Hand me that bag of filters, there; thanks. You go to school?”

  “Well, I applied to a few, wanted to be an architect, but … uh … I couldn’t get in. Tough competition. But I was in an apprenticeship program for two years, first as an electrician, then as a carpenter. Then they cut off the funds last year, and I haven’t worked since.”

  “Bastards—here, tighten these gaskets for me—they couldn’t care less about education. So what? Do it anyway.”

  “Do which?”

  “Become an architect, or whatever. Everything’s online, isn’t it? Math tutors, manuals, design standards, expert systems. Schools are just a game for rich kids anyway.”

  Sue’s laugh again, from the kitchen. “Watch it, Fifer, that’s Actuator propaganda. And they don’t accept excuses.”

  “Damn right. Nobody’s stopping you.” With some difficulty, Lyndon extricates himself from the plumbing system, and replaces the service panel. “For a bunch of lazy mediabase artists, the Actuationist Transnational actually have the right idea. If I want to do something, or if I see something that needs doing, I do it. Learned a lot of electronics, automotive maintenance, metal fabrication. Like, I got tired of being Lynda Kulikosky, and now I’m not.

  “Hey, thanks for the help.” He picks up the toolbox and heads off to the second module. Lynda? Oh, right, those hips. First transm
ale I ever met.

  * * *

  “Damn you, I didn’t see that one…” Noel pipes up in annoyance as Haji steals her Queen’s rook. They’re playing Choiss, a chess variant in which the board is defined by the players as the game progresses. She’s warding off an attack from a sector of board that didn’t exist five moves back. The chess pieces and board are black and red.

  “Your charms and wards aren’t gonna help you now.” Haji tosses his head, jet-black hair (grey at the roots) spilling over his small brown face. In contrast, his opponent is pale as winter sky, probably from pigment inhibitors; a Teknik fashion, as are the jagged patterns of shaven scalp running through her crew cut.

  Haji and Noel are pseudochildren, or X-youth, as they prefer to be called. Their apparently ten-year-old bodies are the results of dangerous and illegal synthetic-hormone treatments which halt most growth processes at the onset of puberty. Extended youth. But look at the crosshatching of lines around Haji’s features, the cataract obscuring one iris, signs of the accelerated breakdown of an overstressed metabolism. He’s not yet thirty, but I would guess that he has less than three years to live, and knows it.

  I’ve returned to my seat by the pitted and scoured windows, trying to ignore them. Too strange, too alien. I’m not interested in how they came to be what they are, what bizarre histories brought them here. I don’t care. It’s all I can do to watch the dessicated landscape slide by, and try to decide on some sort of plan for myself.

  All I want, really, is to find a job over in BC, and maybe a new girl to room with.

  * * *

  “That’s a good one … huh.” Scred puts down his book and scratches the bristles on his chin. “I got curious about these Christas, so I looked ’em up. I knew they were mostly women, but I thought they were, y’know, preparing for Jesus to come back, like most of the other kooks out there. But no, they’ve got an original tack: they think God is about to send us Her only Daughter, get it? Makes a weird kind of sense, I mean, having made such a hash of it with a male incarnation, can’t hurt to try it again as a woman.” He chuckles, turns off the book, folds the screen down, and pockets it. “There are worse memes, I guess.”