~ * ~
He left that place through the hole the witch had torn. He was terrified that the passage would drive most of the knowing out of his head, but it seemed he really was a jesusman, a true guard of the crossing. He remembered it all, and stood naked in the Now. Bauer had once spoken against breaking through to the Before-Time, that it wasn’t a golden world but an ending one, that witches were jesusmen who went back once too often. Lanyard only wanted his kit, a room in a squat. Perhaps a sheila and a bottle if he had coin enough.
Staggering through the bush he found the spot where they’d jumped him, all his kit still lying there. He’d thought to see his handguns all rusted and jammed, but they were as fresh as the day he’d dropped them. He snatched up his satchel, found the last hunk of bread how he’d left it, and knew he hadn’t been gone more than a few hours.
His clothes were useless rags and the only thing left to him was Bauer’s old slouch hat, snagged on a thorn bush. He laughed and cried and laughed again, and wore that hat for all the good it could do him.
A taursi found him half-dead and wandering naked over the salt-flats. He was laughing and covered in the yellow life-blood of a witch, which stank of corruption and stale piss. The young buck swept the man into his arms, cradling him as he bounced along the hunting trails and made for the camp. Lanyard knew no more.
He woke to see the taursi elders fussing over him. He was strapped in hemp bandages, aching all over. He hurt too much to be anything but alive.
“Two days now you slept,” the greyest native said. “Killed our witching fella, jesusman.”
Lanyard Everett wore that most hated word, and said nothing.
* * * *
Jason Fischer is based in Adelaide, South Australia. He attended Clarion South in 2007, and has been shortlisted in the Ditmar Awards and the Australian Shadows Awards. He won the 2009 AHWA Short Story and the 2010 AHWA Flash Fiction Competitions, and is a recent Winner of the Writers of the Future contest. Jason has stories in Dreaming Again, Apex, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and Aurealis Magazine. His zombie-apocalypse novella After The World: Gravesend is available from Black House Comics.
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* * * *
* * *
Hush
deborah biancotti
“Shhhhhhhhh.”
Then later, “Quiet, Shep.”
Another interval, then another. “Chasing rabbits, girl? Hush. We’ve got a journey ahead tomorrow.”
Journey?
She opened one eye. Timmons was hunched in his chair by the fire, hands hanging in a loose clasp like an open clam.
He was getting old, Shep noticed. She noticed that a lot lately. How thin and white his hair was. How thin and white he was. And how the skin between his fingers and thumb when he reached for her face was slack and soft.
“Good girl, Shep,” he said.
She heaved herself up and went to him, rested her chin on his knee and waited for him to scratch her nose. He obliged immediately. But soon the crick in her neck forced her to lay back down on the floor at his feet.
“Good dog,” said Timmons.
Shep whined.
~ * ~
“Wake up, Shep. Good girl. Time to go.”
It was morning. She knew this because the lights were off and a milky blur filled the windows. As close to daylight as they got nowadays. Dust covered everything, covered the world, covered up the light and the days and the seasons.
Timmons was holding out the lead and harness.
“I’m sorry, girl. We gotta do this, it’s the law.”
Insistent. He slipped the harness over her head and buckled it over her back while she struggled to rise. The stiffness in her elbows slowed her down.
She made a low growl that she hoped sounded like “where are we going?”, but Timmons didn’t answer.
They left the apartment and walked out across unscented turf to a covered carriage, black and gleaming like stone. A chestnut horse fronted it, and gave Shep a disdainful look as she approached. She stared imperiously back. Not because it was a horse, but because it was working class when she herself was clearly something better.
A man stepped from behind the carriage. A stranger with a wet face. Not wet like water; wet like drunkenness and want.
“There by nightfall?” he asked. “Only, the horse will need tending by then.”
He said it like a challenge.
“Leave it with me,” said Timmons. “I know animals.”
The man chuckled. An odd sound, his laugh; a toneless, nasal thing, like he was trying to breathe through water. Shep stifled an instinctive growl.
“See that,” he nodded, indicating Shep. “Haven’t seen a dog in years.”
He hunkered down in front of her and she let out a whine, then a grunt as his hand landed smack on her skull. He rubbed at her ears and pulled at the loose skin of her neck.
“Quiet, isn’t she?” he observed. “Unusual breed.”
“Last of her litter, too.”
The man stank of sweat like onions. He was lean and rough. Calloused on his hands, face and elbows. Shep thought maybe he was a turtle hiding out as a man. There was something determined about him. But little that was slow, she sensed. She suffered the pull of his fingers on her ears.
“What was she before her mash? That what you call it?” the man asked.
Timmons nodded. “A scientist. A man.”
“Yeah? My mother-in-law, she was undistinguished, if you don’t mind me saying,” replied the man. “Wealthy, though. Got herself mashed into a litter of kittens. Fitted her brain all neat into theirs. Most of ‘em made it, too. They were five-gen. You types had it pretty much right by then, eh?”
Timmons nodded. “Shep here is one-gen.”
“No! Thought they were all done for by now?”
“You just don’t hear about them. We keep them pretty close.”
“She a toy?”
Timmons shook his head. “No, she’s not cleared for work with children. We didn’t do the same extensive pre-mash testing as now ...”
The onion-stink man made cluck-clucking noises with his tongue. “Too monstrous, eh? The kids I mean.”
He laughed that drowning laugh again.
Timmons had a sad droop of a half-smile on his face.
“She’s fine with me,” he said. “I’m Timmons, by the way.”
“Hendricks,” said the man, and gave a kind of bow. Like he was proud Timmons had even bothered to ask.
He turned to the horse and gave the address.
“Sure,” said the horse, eyeing Shep again.
Voice box, thought Shep resentfully. She clambered up the ramp and settled against the carriage floor. From the window she saw the bald Sun rise with clockwork smoothness, lighting the dusty air with opulent fire as it slow-dived upwards.
She dozed again, woke and dozed all day. Once she thought she saw a child’s face, his mouth a perfect frozen O of terror, his pale hair clamped to his skull and his skin white under ice. She whined and rose with a start, ignoring the stab of pain in her back. But there was no child. Only the Moon, its engine bearing it skyward after its stint as the Sun. Moon and Sun were one globe. Artificial stand-ins for the real things, which had long disappeared behind dust and the detritus of human waste.
The carriage rolled on. Her uncut nails clattered on the floor as she turned in three tight circles and then fell rather than sat, back legs stiff and unwieldy.
“Steady on,” said Timmons affectionately. He reached to smooth her brow and scratch her snout.
Shep made a hooting sound. “Roow? Ooow?” she asked.
“Who? You mean who are we visiting?” asked Timmons. He ran the back of one hand down the length of her jowls. “The sister of your mash-human. She knew you when you were Joseph Shepherd. We need to ask her ...”
He drifted back into one of those sad smiles.
Shep settled with her head on his foot, lulled to sleep by the steady rumble of the carriage.
When she woke next it was because Timmons had moved his shoe out from under her. There was a thin line of drool smearing his toe and she whined in apology.
Timmons was at the carriage door.
“I had no idea how remote your home was!” he called, jumping to the ground.
“Remote all right. Last remote place on God’s dull, brown Earth, eh?” came a voice that creaked and split with age.
Shep reached the carriage doorway and spied an old woman with gnarled shoulders and a loose housedress like a tent. She looked sure and cautious.
“This is Shep,” said Timmons.
“Ha. Shep, is it?” said the woman, reaching out a hand, like they all did, to scratch at Shep’s skull. Her fingers were like needles. “Bernese, eh? Bernese mountain dog. Swiss breed.”
“That’s right. You know your animals.”
“I do that. Don’t see a lot of ‘em anymore. Labs take them all for mash, of course.” She eyed Timmons bitterly. “Too many human brains they want preserving, they reckon. Can’t keep up with demand. Can’t afford to feed them all! But I remember when them was just good, old-fashioned pets.”
“The Bernese were bred for their stable neurology.”
“Right, right. Out of my league that neuro-mash stuff,” said the woman. “Well, how you getting down from there, old thing?”
Timmons pulled out the ramp and the woman let out another ha! of exclamation.
“New-fangled things,” she said. “And I suppose the horse is mashed, too?”
“I am,” called the horse, making the woman laugh in a long series of ha-ha-has, bending forward so her gnarled back rose above her head.
“All this work on the brain,” she said. “Still most people in poverty, farming’s all to hell, food’s to be stolen from fields when farmers ain’t looking. Had me a good worker last year. Poisoned himself on potato plant. Go figure! Not the potatoes themselves, the berries. Ate the berries. Starving, he said! Died on my own lawn. Nothing to be done. No doctors out here. Well, come in then.”
She gestured them to the door of her home. It was a modest place with a narrow front, three concrete steps, slit windows with a pale wash of light behind them. Only on the first floor, though. All the other windows were closed and dark.
“Local scientist asked if I wanted to mash the boy’s brain. His brain! Got no animals for it, I told him, and no funds. Besides,” she led them into the narrow corridor, “if he had a good brain, wouldn’t have eaten those berries.”
Timmons said politely, “Of course, it was your brother’s work which made that question possible at all. Before Joseph, there was no neuro -”
“Yeah, yeah, heard it before,” said the woman. “Straight through to the back. Front room’s a mess, I’m afraid. Hardly ever get up the stairs anymore, so down here’s all there is for me. Back courtyard. Not too cold out there yet.”
~ * ~
Shep was shivering, her belly on the cold pavement, the bare Moon clicking across its programme above her. Timmons rested a hand on her neck. He was silent, lost in his head. She recognized this posture from the times he was working, trying to undo a knot in his mind.
When the woman returned she was carrying a tray with teapot and cups, plus a plate of flat biscuits. Shep didn’t recognize the woman. A fault of time, she figured - time either acting on the woman’s face or Shep’s memory.
“Ms Holly, do you mind if ...?” said Timmons, reaching for a biscuit and gesturing towards Shep.
“Feed the dog my good biscuits, eh? Well, fair enough. Don’t know that Joseph ever liked biscuits, truth be told.”
Shep sucked the crumbs from her teeth.
“You weren’t much in contact with your brother in his later years, I understand?”
“Later years,” said Holly. “Early years. Most of the years! Nearly twenty years between our births. Different mothers, of course.”
She handed Timmons a cup with a delicate painted flower along its side.
“But I’m sure you must be aware of his pioneering work in neurology?” Timmons persisted. “He fashioned the entire process for mashing human brains to animal hosts -”
Holly bit into a biscuit triumphantly, crumbs littering her lips and spilling unheeded to her chest.
“I know it,” she said. “Left nothing for his family, you understand? Don’t know why he was so hung up on the brain. S’pose he was always trying to save his kid brother, eh? You know Joseph’s history, I’m assuming.” She leaned back, lost inside her own memories. “Brain the seat of the soul, and all that. Did he say? Why, that is. Did he say why?”
She looked vulnerable and hollow. An old woman in a floral housedress with a stained apron and stale biscuits in her pantry, unaccustomed to company. Shep rose from her spot on the floor and moved to Holly’s side, allowing the woman’s sharp fingers to find her neck. She felt a sudden wave of sympathy. Everything in the world seemed old nowadays, and Holly was just part of it.
“I’m sorry,” said Timmons. “I was a junior when your brother was head of the lab. I didn’t know him well.”
Holly nodded. “Didn’t like to fraternize, did he? Like that with family, too.”
“You say his younger brother died? Your brother?”
Holly nodded, coughed, choked, spat a wave of crumbs into the air. She teared up and her face went red, and Timmons leaned forward in alarm lest she collapse. But in a moment the scene righted itself and Holly took a slurp of her tea.
“Henry, yes.” She coughed. Continued, “Younger than Joseph, a year older than me. I don’t remember him too well. Guess I was, what, three? Joseph was an adult by then. Twenty-something, I guess, meant to be looking after us, but he liked to sneak out all the time. Henry always followed. Wanted to be like his older brother. Some boys have that. Can’t fight it. Wasn’t a thing Joseph could say to stop him.”
Holly told it to Timmons like she’d been there herself, but Shep didn’t need the explanation. She saw it all in her mind, like a series of old photographs. Henry on the crust of the lake in winter, Henry bending to touch the ice and then falling headlong, a spray of water like a cloak fanning out to mark his fall.
“They found him,” Holly asserted. “Four months too late, they did. The doctor said he must’ve found an air pocket. Small one. Suffocated in it. Darnedest thing. Wasn’t drowning that killed him, it was the lack of oxygen to his brain.”
Shep whined.
Holly reached to lift Shep’s chin and peer into her eyes. She smelled of cookie dough and damp walls.
“Still in there, Joseph?”
She smiled.
“Shep’s the last of the litter,” said Timmons.
Holly nodded. “All this work to save his brain. And it was his liver that killed him. Joseph, I mean. If he’d turned all his science on the liver instead, might still be alive!” She gazed thoughtfully at Timmons. “So, what d’you want from me?”
“Permission.”
“Aha. For?”
Timmons hesitated. “To let Joseph rest.”
There was a whistle from Holly, a low, impressed noise. She leaned back so Shep couldn’t see her face anymore.
Shep turned to look at Timmons but he wouldn’t meet her gaze either.
“You want to put the dog down?”
“She’s old.”
“We’re all old.”
“Some months ago, she attacked a child.” Timmons rubbed at his eyes. “It was ... savage. His parents fund - or have funded, at least - a lot of the work in our lab. The child suffered head injuries. He’s still in a coma.”
Shep wracked her brain, but there were dozens of children’s faces in her memory. She couldn’t distinguish one from another. Only Henry was clear, blue with death and cold in the thawing lake.
“You want to destroy the dog for destroying a child?”
“She’s become dangerous.”
“So’s your science, if you ask me. So’s your penchant for killing animals. That not important? And is it that
she hurt a child, or is it that she hurt the wrong child?”
She held up a hand to stop his answer. “I’d like to think it’s all about the, what, the sanctity of human life, eh? But it’s not that. No. It’s the sanctity of the chosen human lives, the ones you think worth saving, the ones worth mashing. Nothing for the rest of us, though.”
Timmons said quietly, “It’s not ... We think the bestial part of the brain is overwhelming Joseph. Wiping him out. We think Joseph is dying already. The brain is so malleable, you see, and the science so new. Joseph was a genius. If he’d lived we might have made more progress -”
The Year's Best Australian SF & Fantasy - vol 05 Page 7
