by Nisi Shawl
She dragged Obsidian toward the car. She had nothing to dig with her, and no one to guard for her while she dug. Better to take the bodies with her and bury them next to her husband and her children. Obsidian would come home with her after all.
When she had gotten him onto the floor in the back, she returned for the woman. The little girl, thin, dirty, solemn, stood up and unknowingly gave Rye a gift. As Rye began to drag the woman by her arms, the little girl screamed, “No!”
Rye dropped the woman and stared at the girl.
“No!” the girl repeated. She came to stand beside the woman. “Go away!” she told Rye.
“Don’t talk,” the little boy said to her. There was no blurring or confusing of sounds. Both children had spoken and Rye had understood. The boy looked at the dead murderer and moved further from him. He took the girl’s hand. “Be quiet,” he whispered.
Fluent speech! Had the woman died because she could talk and had taught her children to talk? Had she been killed by a husband’s festering anger or by a stranger’s jealous rage? And the children…they must have been born after the silence. Had the disease run its course, then? Or were these children simply immune? Certainly they had had time to fall sick and silent. Rye’s mind leaped ahead. What if children of three or fewer years were safe and able to learn language? What if all they needed were teachers? Teachers and protectors.
Rye glanced at the dead murderer. To her shame, she thought she could understand some of the passions that must have driven him, whomever he was. Anger, frustration, hopelessness, insane jealousy…how many more of him were there—people willing to destroy what they could not have?
Obsidian had been the protector, had chosen that role for who knew what reason. Perhaps putting on an obsolete uniform and patrolling the empty streets had been what he did instead of putting a gun into his mouth. And now that there was something worth protecting, he was gone.
She had been a teacher. A good one. She had been a protector, too, though only of herself. She had kept herself alive when she had no reason to live. If the illness let these children alone, she could keep them alive.
Somehow she lifted the dead woman into her arms and placed her on the backseat of the car. The children began to cry, but she knelt on the broken pavement and whispered to them, fearful of frightening them with the harshness of her long unused voice.
“It’s all right,” she told them. “You’re going with us, too. Come on.” She lifted them both, one in each arm. They were so light. Had they been getting enough to eat?
The boy covered her mouth with his hand, but she moved her face away. “It’s all right for me to talk,” she told him. “As long as no one’s around, it’s all right.” She put the boy down on the front seat of the car and he moved over without being told to, to make room for the girl. When they were both in the car, Rye leaned against the window, looking at them, seeing that they were less afraid now, that they watched her with at least as much curiosity as fear.
“I’m Valerie Rye,” she said, savoring the words. “It’s all right for you to talk to me.”
Octavia Estelle Butler
Vonda N. McIntyre
Estelle was rather shy and quiet and she towered over me. Our rooms were next to each other, in the first co-ed dorm in the history of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. About twenty young writers, including Estelle and me, had gathered at Clarion State College in Clarion, Pennsylvania, for the 1970 Clarion Writers Workshop. It was the third (and last) original Clarion, based on Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm’s Milford, invented and run by Robin Scott Wilson.
Our instructors included Robin, Joanna Russ, Samuel R. Delany, Fritz Leiber, Harlan Ellison, Kate Wilhelm, and Damon Knight. Other writers and editors dropped in: James Sallis, Gardner R. Dozois, Edward Bryant, David G. Hartwell.
Estelle and I had arrived by completely different paths. The common factor was Harlan. Estelle’s gateway was Harlan’s screenwriting class in Los Angeles. He recognized in Estelle a talented prose writer and encouraged her to attend Clarion.
My gateway was an SF convention where I attended a panel on the Clarion Workshop. Clarion was quite controversial in the SF community, for reasons that I never understood. The people who objected loudly to it at the panel had never been within a hundred miles of it, as far as I could make out. If memory serves, Harlan wasn’t on the panel itself, but commented from the floor.
The workshop sounded wonderful to me.
I had taken a single creative writing class in college, to give myself an excuse to spend time writing, among the calculus and physical chemistry. I gave up Creative Writing classes after one quarter and a professor who handed back my SF story (pinching it carefully by one corner so as not to be covered in scifi cooties) saying:
“When are you going to write some real stuff?”
He wanted us to write like Hemingway about war and barroom brawls. This was pretty silly considering that at the time nobody under 21 was allowed into a bar in Washington State, women weren’t allowed in combat, and the men were hoping to stay out of Viet Nam.
All of us arrived at Clarion knowing that science fiction and fantasy would qualify as “real stuff” even if it wasn’t realistic fiction.
In a class that included George Alec Effinger, Robert Thurston, David J. Skal, and Glen Cook (Robin’s assistant that summer)—Estelle was a star. When she turned in her first story, we all realized that we were reading the work of a major writer.
She was also a perceptive and kind critic, a quality that carried over into her teaching.
Estelle was a serious morning person and I’m a night owl. She never complained when I started typing along about the time she went to sleep. The Clarion State College dorms were built of cinderblock, and carried the sound of typing quite efficiently—even the tape-loop typing of one student who, we discovered later, would put the loop on his reel-to-reel recorder, set it running, and take a nap. But he was in the half of the corridor that was supposed to be restricted to men, so the tape loop didn’t bother the women overmuch when we were trying to work or sleep.
We got together to talk in whatever room we pleased, as the house mother who made the rules was apparently afraid to come into our section of the dorm.
It was some years later that I found out Estelle had been able to hear my late-night typing, in the context of her hoping that her early-morning typing hadn’t kept me awake.
She maintained her early-morning pattern all her life. At the beginning of her career, at the time when new writers all have day jobs to support their writing, she deliberately took jobs that put no claim on her thoughts, that would let her think about her stories while working. But jobs such as working in a laundry are physically exhausting, so she would go to sleep early, wake up at zero dawn thirty, and write until it was time to go to the day job again.
After a few years, when her career began to take off, Octavia—she switched from her middle name to her byline—overcame her shyness to branch out into speaking engagements. She took to it: she had an authoritative voice and a compelling presence. She spoke her mind and enthralled audiences. The speaking engagements had a salutary effect on her bank account and allowed her to stop taking menial jobs.
The MacArthur grant she won in 1995 gave her financial stability and allowed her to move from Pasadena to Seattle, where the climate was more to her taste. In an amusing coincidence, the house she bought in Lake City was across Lake City Way from a place I had lived twenty years before.
We got to see each other more often after she moved, crossing paths at the monthly gathering of the local SF community and at Clarion West parties, attending plays and movies, searching out vegetarian and, later, vegan restaurants. Her blood pressure troubled her and she hoped a vegan or vegetarian regime would help.
And she was right to be troubled. The terrible news of her death came in February of 2006. I heard of it at the small SF convention Potlatch, where we were all expecting to see her.
She had been taking blood pre
ssure medicine that made it difficult for her to write, which also troubled her.
She was a bit embarrassed about her fondness for vampire novels, but found in them the inspiration to write her own vampire novel. She thought it was a bit lighter than her Patternist or Xenogenesis or Parable novels, or, of course, Kindred, but in Fledgling she created a vampire novel unlike any other vampire novel ever written. Fledgling came out only a few months before her death, to considerable success and acclaim.
She had been thinking of writing a sequel. I miss knowing what that book would have been.
But not as much as I miss Octavia.
My Love Will Never Die
Christopher Caldwell
He had whisky eyes—Kentucky bourbon, really—I felt a little drunk whenever he looked at me. People use the words magnetic and hypnotic to describe eyes like those, but that doesn’t fit; it was more like they had their own gravity. When his gaze was on you, it felt like it had weight.
I wanted him.
He strolled liquid-smooth into the travel agency where I worked. The little bell above the door jingled in time with the swing of his arms and the gentle sway of his narrow hips. It was only an hour after lunch, but he made me hungry. His skin was the color of grocery-store caramels, the kind that come in bulk and are almost irresistible; even people who’d never think of stealing can’t help popping one or two into their mouths. When he came over to my desk, I found myself short of breath and shivering despite the summer heat.
“I was wondering if you could help me. I need to arrange a last minute trip for a large group, and I’m afraid I’m hopeless at this sort of thing.” He flashed me a quick, nervous smile as he settled into a chair across from me. I felt dazed.
“Uh, yeah. Certainly, sir.” Never before had the cheerful façade I adopt as a travel agent felt so false. “Welcome to the Prescott Travel Agency. Taking the worry out of all your travel planning for business or leisure is what we’re here for!” Lame.
“This is very last minute.” He had a faint accent. I couldn’t place it. “I need plane tickets and hotel rooms for a party of fifteen. We’re going to New Orleans.”
I jerked open my junk drawer. I pretended it didn’t hurt when I slammed it into my knee. I cursed under my breath as I knocked over the bottle of sunblock I used to keep my complexion peaches-and-cream instead of boiled lobster; the cap wasn’t screwed on right, and thick liquid pooled in the bottom of the drawer. I rifled through the files until I came to New Orleans. I pulled out a stack of brochures that spilled over the top of my desk in a multi-colored mess.
“Beautiful,” he said. He was not looking at the brochures. “I knew I was in the right place.”
My face tingled from blushing. So much for not looking like a boiled lobster. “So, Mr.—”
“Bienamie. But please, please call me Etienne.” He leaned over my desk to read the tiny print on my business cards. He smelled like burnt sugar. “Mr. Lawrence?”
“Ray.”
“Ray.” His hand rested on a brochure extolling the virtues of hotels in the French Quarter. It was so close to mine that I could feel his body heat.
“So, Mr. Bienamie—er, Etienne—when are you and your group planning on leaving, and for how long?” I logged into our scheduling database and punched New Orleans into the relevant field.
“We need to leave next Tuesday evening. We’ll be there through that Sunday.”
“Okay, any idea on the price range?”
“Money isn’t really a problem. We’d like comfortable accommodations, and if they’re a little on the expensive side I’m sure we can cope.”
We discussed travel options. I forgot to go for the hard sell and offered a more than fair luxury package. He put the whole thing on a single platinum credit card. I had to punch in the numbers twice. My hands were shaking.
“You’ve been very helpful,” he said, leaning back into his chair. “I’d like to take your card so that I can keep in touch. I mean, should another travel need arise suddenly.”
I pulled out one of my cards and scrawled my home number across the back. He glanced down at the number, raised an eyebrow, and smiled as if he’d been expecting it.
∞
My phone began to ring only minutes after I’d stepped through the door. I was grimy and gritty from the ride home on the Light Rail; the air conditioning had failed, and I’d spent most of the ride pressed up against a woman who smelled like garlic and feet. I picked up the receiver on the third ring, mentally steeling myself to insult the mother of the telemarketer I assumed was on the other end.
“What?” I answered.
“Is this Ray?” A honey-smooth voice with a hint of an accent I couldn’t place.
“Uh, hi. Yeah, this is Ray. Is this Etienne?”
He laughed. “You guessed.” He certainly didn’t follow rules. He hadn’t waited three days to call me. He didn’t even try to sound disinterested. “I was wondering if you had any plans for dinner this evening. And if you didn’t, I was wondering if you’d like to join me.”
“I’m not really doing anything.” I sounded too eager. “Sure, sounds great. What time?”
“Is an hour from now too early?”
I sniffed one of my armpits. Yes. “Oh no, not at all. I’ll just change out of my work clothes.”
“Do you want to meet up? Or I can pick you up, if you’d like.”
I gave him my address before I could think.
“Perfect. I’ll be there in about forty-five minutes.”
∞
After dinner, I invited him home for mojitos and conversation. I hated my tiny kitchen. I hated its pink tiled walls. It was so small that two people standing chest-to-chest filled up most of the available floor space. I expected Etienne to stay in the living room while I made us drinks, but he followed me in. He leaned in the doorway and watched as I pulled out my two favorite tumblers, blue mosaic glass with pleasingly nubbly surfaces. I turned my back to him to get a glass pitcher, but the entire time I felt clumsy, feverish and dizzy. He watched me muddle the mint and sugar. He closed his eyes and inhaled the sweet, sticky smell. I poured in the measures of rum and he said, “Drinking sometimes makes me dangerous; I’m warning you.”
“Maybe I should down the whole pitcher for the greater good, then?”
“I think that you like a little danger.”
I laughed nervously and then pushed past him with the pitcher and pair of glasses. His hand brushed my waist. I poured him a mojito and thrust it forward clumsily. Liquid sloshed onto the hardwood floor. I poured myself one. He lifted his glass in cheers, threw his head back, and swallowed most of his first mojito in a single wolfish gulp.
I sipped at mine. “These are strong. You don’t mess around.”
“I believe in going after what I want.”
“I don’t know what I want, yet.”
He kissed me. It was abrupt and we both pulled away almost immediately. I sucked in a sharp breath between my teeth. He looked at me with half-lidded eyes. His lips parted. I kissed him. This time was longer and harder. His teeth crushed against my lips. He pulled back again. He looked at me with something like concern. “We don’t have to.”
“No,” I said. “We can stop this. Maybe you should go home.”
“Maybe,” he said half-heartedly. Then, “Do you like me, Raymond?”
“Do you have to ask?” I replied incredulously.
“No, I mean, really like me.”
“Do you have to ask?” I said, softer this time.
He kissed me again. I wrapped my arms around him.
“We can still stop.”
I sighed. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”
“No,” he said, and kissed me again. He unbuttoned my shirt. I fumbled with his belt buckle.
“Do you want to—” he began.
“Yes,” I said, “yes.”
∞
This is imperfect, I thought. He lay in my bed asleep, his cheek on my pillow. His limbs stretched out gra
celessly. He took up so much more space than I would have thought. His shirt was crumpled on my floor. It wasn’t moonlight that beamed down upon his lovely naked form, but rather the harsh orange-yellow glow of the streetlamp, filtered through my cheap venetian blinds.
A half-finished mojito from earlier in the night sat on the dresser. His. I slugged it down. It was warm, and the sugar had settled in the bottom of the glass. It felt thick on my tongue. A bit of mint stuck between my teeth. I sighed and he stirred then settled again, breathing slow and deep. I walked into the bathroom, bared my teeth at the mirror, and picked out the piece of mint.
My alarm went off.
He called for me from the other room, his voice thick with sleep. I walked over, sat on the edge of the bed and turned off the alarm. He reached for me. I leaned back into him. I smelled the alcohol on his breath and in his sweat. He nuzzled my neck. The bristle on his chin scratched me, and I wanted to pull away but didn’t. He said, “Ray, I have to get going. I want to stay but—”
“I know,” I said. “This wasn’t supposed to happen anyway.” I pulled away from him a little. My chest felt tight. I turned to him and managed to smile weakly. It wasn’t a convincing smile at all.
“I don’t regret what happened. I like you.” He put his hand on my shoulder. I shuddered at the closeness of him. He took his hand away.
“I like you, Etienne. I like you a lot. I wanted this to happen—I did. It’s just that everything’s so complicated for me right now.”
He drew back a little, took my face in his hands and gazed into my eyes. His expression was earnest and sweet and boyishly concerned. I wanted to turn away from him, I wanted to avert my eyes, but he would not let me. I felt like I would break under the weight of that gaze.
“We will see each other when I return from New Orleans.”
