Ready Thrown out Six

Contents (Annually) Editor’s Note —3— EP309:The Insurance Agent By Lavie Tidhar —4— Review: The Magician King By Josh Roseman —12— EP311: The Faithful Soldier, Prompted By Saladin Ahmed —14— EP312: Night Bird Soaring By T.L. Morganfield —20— Escape Pod Publisher: Paul Haring – paul @ escapeartists.net Founder: Steve Eley – steve @ escapeartists.net Editor: Mur Lafferty – editor @ escapepod.org Assistant Editor: Bill Peters – bill @ escapeartists.net The Soundproof Escape Pod and all works within are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. All works are copyright their respective authors. Hey Folks, This is the October issue, so I guess I should be sounding all spooky in the editor’s note, but That Holiday Which Must Be Feared is a month away, so instead why don’t we talk about reinvention. I’m not that great at waiting out long serialized stories, and honestly with longer book series where the author is know for long stretches between novels (Cough-George-RR-Martin-Cough) I usually stop one before the last one out so I can at least control when I’ll restart the story. So comics have never been an ideal form for me, except for when the storyline’s collected into a volume. Or, in the case of The Sandman, 10 volumes. But we’re a bit into DC’s reboot, and their reinvention means a bit more critical eye is being cast over their crop than would be if they hadn’t resorted to remaking themselves in the great American tradition. And while there are highs in the new crop, the lows have been getting most of the attention, because, well, while any reboot is going to lose you fans, it shouldn’t do this to young female fans: http://io9. com/5844355/ On a happier note, this is one-year anniversary of Escape Pod reinventing a bit of itself into a text product in addition to the audio coming into your ear canals every week. I think it’s been a success, but this is as good a point as any to stop and ask for feedback, so hit up [email protected] with your suggestions for what we can do different/better in Soundproof. This Soundproof is bringing you Lavie Tidhar’s The Insurance Agent, Saladin Ahmed’s The Faithful Soldier, Prompted, and T. L. Morganfield’s Night Bird Soaring. So it’s a strong issue. Hope you enjoy it, —Bill Bill Peters Assistant Editor P.S. SF Signal put together an awesome, awesome flowchart of NPR’s top 100 SF/F books. Go get lost in it here: http://www.box.net/shared/static/a6omcl2la0ivlxsn3o8m.jpg —30— 3 EP309: The Insurance Agent By Lavie Tidhar The bar was packed and everyone was watching the Nixon-Reagan match. The fighters were reflected off the bar’s grainy wood countertop and the tables’ gleaming surfaces and seemed to melt as they flickered down the legs of the scattered chairs. The bar was called the Godhead, which had a lot to do with why I was there. It was a bit of an unfair fight as Reagan was young, pre-presidency, circa-World War Two, while Nixon was heavy-set, older: people were exchanging odds and betting with the bar’s internal gaming system and the general opinion seemed to be that though Reagan was in better shape Nixon was meaner. I wasn’t there for the match. The Godhead was on Pulau Sepanggar, one of the satellite islands off Borneo, hence nominally under Malaysian federal authority but in practice in a free zone that had stronger ties to the Brunei Sultanate. It was a convenient place to meet, providing easy access to the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and, of course, Singapore, which resented the island’s role as a growing business centre yet found it useful at the same time. She wore a smart business suit and a smart communication system that looked like what it was, which was a custom-made gold bracelet on her left arm. She wore smart shades and I was taking a bet that she wasn’t watching the fight. She was drinking a generic Cola but there was nothing generic about her. I slid into a chair beside her and waited for her shades to turn transparent and notice me. ‘Drink, Mr. Turner?’ I liked the name Turner. It was Anglo-Saxon generic, a mid-level executive’s name, white as beige. ‘Call me James,’ I said. I liked James too. You could tell what a James Turner did just by hearing his name. The rest of me was tailor-made for the name, had been for some time: I had the kind of tan that suggested I had been East for just long enough to have acquired it, black hair that was short but not too short and had a decent but not overly-expensive cut, pale blue eyes behind shades that cost a lot of money to look like a knock-off. There was a suggestion of a smile in the corners of her mouth and she said, ‘I don’t think I will.’ ‘Mr. Turner, then,’ I said. ‘One name’s good as another.’ ‘Quite,’ she said. There was something dismissive in that single word. For the likes of you, was what it implied. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll have that drink.’ ‘Preference?’ she said. I said ‘Orange juice,’ wanted vodka. She didn’t say anything, didn’t have to. A moment later a waiter glided over and deposited the drink on the table, moisture condensing on the outer surface of the manifold that was the glass. I took a sip, put it down again into the ring of water that had immediately formed. Below, Nixon knocked out Reagan in the second round. I heard groans and shouts around me, tried to tune them out. ‘What can I do for you?’ I said. I couldn’t quite tell where she was from. She had pale skin carefully kept out of the sun, an Oxford-acquired accent and eyes I couldn’t see. She said, ‘I would like to buy insurance.’ ‘That,’ I said, possibly a little stiffly, ‘is why we’re here.’ 4 ‘Quite,’ she said again, and I felt I won the round – she did not like to waste her words and by answering me she had already thrown out six. ‘Is this personal insurance or –?’ I said and she said, a little too quickly, ‘Personal.’ ‘Who’s the IE?’ I said. She frowned for a moment and I could almost feel her scanning some remote database. Then she relaxed and again I had the impression of an almost-smile. The next fight was announced, Lenin versus Ho Chi Minn. I’d heard a rumour the company behind the fights modelled Lenin on his actual, mummified body, but it seemed unlikely. I don’t know how they did Uncle Ho. They were circling each other and I was taking a sip of juice when she said, ‘The Insurable Entity’s name is Kim,’ and I almost choked on a cube of ice, which wasn’t very professional. ‘Do you fear she is in danger?’ It was her round and she knew it. She didn’t answer me but she smiled. Of course she was in danger. Aliens always are. ### To understand Kim, you have to understand the Alien Theory of Spiritual Beings. It has been in and out of vogue since the early twentieth century, and goes something as follows: There have always been, throughout human history, figures of extraordinary spiritual power, who have changed the course of human history. These figures have been, without exception, aliens. As a theory it isn’t quite provable, of course. And purists always argue about the List. Jesus, Buddha, Mo- hammed, Jean D’arc, L. Ron Hubbard, Elvis, Uri Geller, sure. But what about Marx, Hildegard of Bingen, Madonna or Ogko (if he was even real?). The problem was that the theory gained, if not credibility, then popular appeal some time post-Ogko and, to make matter worse, was complicated with the addition of the Conflict Codicil. The Conflict Codicil of the Alien Theory of Spiritual Beings suggests that the alien manifestations on Earth belong to two or more opposing factions. What these factions are, or how many of them exist, is unknown, but the addition of the CC led to several bloodied clashes, most notably the Gellerite-Elron War in the South Pacific and the destruction of the Singularity Jesus project in South East Asia by forces unknown (various factions have been accused over the years, including Mossad, the Vatican and the SCR, the so- called Special Committee on Relativity, since listed as a terrorist organisation by the UN). Which is where I come into all this. ### I took the shuttle to Kota Kinabalu. From there by plane to Kuala Lumpur and from KL to Ho Chi Minn City, to find out I was in the wrong country altogether and Kim had left by then and no one knew where. It was my job to find out where and so I did, but it took me two days and then I was on a private helicopter going over Laos and into the badlands. Kim, I only found out later, was about to declare herself independent. She and her followers had acquired land that straddled the borders of Laos, Thailand and the country that was variously known as Myanmar or Burma. The intersection used to be called the Golden Triangle and it was, literally, a dump.

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