Deserted Cities of the Heart

praise for deserted cities of the heart “[Shiner’s] narrative never flinches. It moves with precision from one point of view to another, breathing warmth and life into all the primary players—even the guy from Rolling Stone. The dialogue, especially among the central characters, is so convincing that their genuineness seems beyond question. I have never seen the pacing, the mood, the psychological intensity of individual scenes drawn any better than this.” —Richard Grant, Washington Post Book World “A fast-moving adventure story about modern-day Mexico, replete with desperate rebels, hard-eyed defenders of the status quo, brutal North American ‘advisors,’ an ambitious journalist, a beautiful woman with a mission and a good man who is looking for something to believe in. Despite some imaginative rearranging of recent history, Mr. Shiner’s Mexico has the gritty feel of reality.” —Gerald Jonas, New York Times Book Review “It is both a taut political thriller and a transcendent apocalyptic fantasy....Shiner’s prose is tight and controlled and he keeps the pace revved high....Perhaps the most astonish- ing thing about the novel is its sense of hopefulness. Full of violence and set at the beginning of the end of the world as we know it, Deserted Cities of the Heart nevertheless leaves the reader with the liberating notion that, even though history endlessly repeats itself, there may come a better time when guns and bullets do not matter.” —Michael Berry, San Francisco Chronicle “The best sf novel of the year, period. This is one of those rare books with both heart and brains in equal parts, mean- ing it’s an exciting story that also has something to say about being alive.” —Richard Kadrey, New York Review of SF “A brilliant (and incredibly coherent) story about the com- ing of the end of modern civilization...simply a spectacular novel.” —Michael Sumbera, Nova Express “A visionary glimpse at an all-too-likely apocalyptic future. A simply stunning book.” —James P. Blaylock, author of The Knights of the Cornerstone “Shiner imbue[s] the reader with sympathy for Mexico with power and with skill and with what would seem to be genu- ine political passion....Deserted Cities of the Heart is surely as good as any novel that any of the writers who would now seem to be graduating from the ‘Movement’ have written since Neuromancer, and arguably the best of them.” —Norman Spinrad, Isaac Asimov’s SF Magazine “With surpassing skill, Shiner creates a milieu of corruption, decay, and ultimate redemption—populated with a cast wor- thy of Robert Stone. This savagely written novel is a total original.” —James Ellroy, author of LA Confidential Finalist for the Nebula Award (Science Fiction Writers of America) Finalist for the William L. Crawford Award (International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts) deserted cities of the heart books by lewis shiner novels Black & White (2008) Say Goodbye (1999) Glimpses (1993) Slam (1990) Deserted Cities of the Heart (1988) Frontera (1984) collections Collected Stories (2009) Love in Vain (2001) The Edges of Things (1991) Nine Hard Questions about the Nature of the Universe (1990) deserted cities of the heart a novel by lewis shiner subterranean press © 1988 by Lewis Shiner. Portions of this book have been previously published in substantially different form, as follows: “Americans” inThe Fiction Magazine (U.K.), “Rebels” and “Deserted Cities of the Heart” in Omni, and “Cabracan” in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. Interior design by Lewis Shiner Set in Bembo Author photo © 2008 by Orla Swift Pyramid photo © 2008 by Jeff Strand/iStockphoto Helicopter photo © 2006 by Brett Charlton/iStockphoto All other photos and cover design by Lewis Shiner isbn 978-1-59606-304-4 Subterranean Press PO Box 190106 Burton, MI 48519 www.subterraneanpress.com www.lewisshiner.com The original dedication of this book read: For Neal Barrett, Jr., friend and guru. Then, as now: Thanks, Unca Neal. Many of the events in this novel are factual—the Mexico City earthquake, the border riots of 1986, the looting of the forest at Nahá, and so on. In some cases, for dramatic purposes, the dates of these events and even their locations have been changed. one uddenly the path opened up and Carmichael walked out of Sthe jungle. The perpetual green twilight turned into bright after- noon. The ragged kid who’d been guiding him got excited and ran on ahead, leaving Carmichael to stand blinking at the edge of the rebel camp. He waved at the cloud of white flies around his head and tried to look harmless. They didn’t seem to be expecting him. A teenager in orange pants and a plaid shirt was pissing against a tree. He saw Carmichael and zipped himself up and made nervous little half-bows, grinning in em- barrassment. Somebody else slapped at a jam box and cut off a scratchy, distorted dub tape in mid-echo. The silence made the others turn and look. Carmichael smiled and held his hands away from his sides. “Periodista,” he said. For Christ’s sake don’t shoot, I might be the New York Times. From where he was he could see maybe thirty or forty guerrillas. Most of them wore a uniform of blue jeans and a khaki shirt. There were a lot of straw cowboy hats and billed caps. A few of them had leather lace-up combat boots, a lot more had Converse All-Stars or Nikes. The rest got by with rubber beach sandals or bare feet. The clearing was a chaos of green canvas tents, sleeping bags, yellow army blankets thrown over poles, and tin cans. The cans were stacked empty around the tents or filled with water or beans or corn soaking for supper. A collie with matted yellow fur and a cut over one eye came up to sniff his ankles. “Carla said she would do an interview,” he told them. His Spanish wasn’t great, strictly California high school, but he’d been in Mexico over a month now and he knew they could understand him if they wanted. A woman in a striped shift stared at him from the shade of a tree, both straps of the dress down, a baby at each breast. Finally a middle-aged guy in a flat Fidelista cap and graying beard took a couple of steps toward him. “¿Cómo te llamas?” 1 2 lewis shiner “Carmichael. John Carmichael. I work for Rolling Stone. The magazine.” He took a card out of the front pocket of his hiking shorts. “I know of them.” “Listen, Carla sent word she’d talk to me. She sent a correo.” He looked around for the kid but there was no sign of him. The kid was a case. He’d seen his mother raped by the guardia a few months back. At least that was how Carmichael read it. The kid was only 8 and didn’t really understand what was going on. But they killed her when they were done and now all the kid wanted was to be old enough that they’d let him have a rifle. Which would be another year or maybe less, depending on how desperate they got. The man chewed on the inside of his cheek for a couple of seconds. He didn’t seem so much reluctant as nervous. He had a hunted kind of look about him that was making Carmichael nervous too. “Okay, I’ll talk to her. My name is Faustino.” Carmichael shook hands with him, fingers up, movement style. “¿Cubano?” he asked. Faustino thought again. “Yes,” he said, finally. Carmichael nodded to show it was okay with him. Maybe it was a test. The rebels liked to pretend there weren’t any Cubans or Nicaraguans in Mexico, but then Reagan liked to pretend there weren’t any US troops here either. Carmichael just wanted the interview. He hadn’t believed he would really get this far, and now if it went sour it was going to break his heart. “Come with me,” Faustino said. They walked uphill around the edge of the clearing. Through a stand of trees Carmichael watched an instructor in jeans and khaki with six teenage girls. The instructor was trying to get them to run up to a line, drop prone, and fire. They were having to pantomime the rifles and they kept giggling. Faustino took him to the top of the hill and Carmichael could see the next valley and the mountains to the south, just over the border into Guatemala. The mountains were the violet-brown of old, faded photo- graphs, the color of unreal, untouchable things. It was almost noon but there were shreds of clouds still trailing off the highest peaks. “Beautiful, no?” Faustino said. Carmichael nodded. He wanted to take a picture but it was too early to risk pulling out a camera. Later, maybe, if Carla was willing. Deserted Cities of the Heart 3 Carla sat by herself a few yards away, reading. Carmichael recognized her from the few pictures that had found their way to the States. She was short, a little heavy and round-faced by Hollywood standards, but not unattractive. She had the long nose and high forehead and reddish skin of Mayan ancestry. He squinted and made out that she was reading ex-president Portillo’s novel Quetzalcoatl. “Wait here,” Faustino said, and went over to her. Carmichael couldn’t hear what they said. Faustino gave her the card and she stood up and dusted off the seat of her jeans. Then they both looked up to check the sky and Carmichael’s nervousness came back.

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