Contents (Are Malcontent) Editor’s Note —3— Podcastle’s Editor’s Note —4— EP292: In The Water By Katherine Mankiller —5— Book Review: Brave New Worlds By Sarah Frost ­—12— EP293: A Small Matter, Really By Monte Cook —13— Book Review: Ship Breaker By Josh Roseman —21— EP294: The Night Train By Lavie Tidhar —23—

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. Hello Gentle Listeners— May brought us the announcement of the Hugo Awards nominees, which means that June is Hugo Month! For years, Escape Pod has been buying the rights to most of the Hugo short story nominees, and this year is no different. We’ll be featuring three of the four nominees, and since June has five Thursdays, we will also be featuring two longer stories that got Nebula and/or Hugo nods! We also have the ebook rights to the stories, which is an Escape Pod first, so next month’s Soundproof will be a collector’s item. (If a digital file could be collectible. Which it can’t. So never mind. But you know what I mean; it’ll be cool.) I’m very excited to see our site growing so much. We want to send extra special congrats to the podcasts who managed to make it onto the Hugo Ballot this year! 2010 winner for Best Fanzine, Starship Sofa, has gotten another nomination, and Writing Excuses has received a nod for Best Related Work. SSS has wonderful stories from many masters of SF, and Writing Excuses has wonderful discussions on how to write genre fiction. We are thrilled that these quality pod- casts are getting attention from fandom. I’ll be reporting from WorldCon in two and a half months, and liveblogging the Hugo Awards. More info soon! A question we get a lot of is, “Why do you not have all the stories in your PDF?” The answer is simple- au- dio and ebook rights are purchased separately, and sometimes an author cannot or will not grant us both rights. Or there are stories we’ve purchased before we started purchasing ebook rights, so we have no right to give you text versions of the stories. We take our authors’ rights very seriously and will only release the format for which we have rights. Audio-only stories are fewer and fewer these days, but there still will be an occasional one in our future feed. Speaking of the feed, some people have asked that the Soundproof Escape Pod have its own feed, or the audio have its own feed. Or the R stories to have their own feed. We get this question a lot and can’t really create custom feeds for each listener - but never fear, there is a solution. I’d like to point you to a page that gives you some RSS options, including some things you can do to custom make your own EP feed. From How To Subscribe (http://escapepod.org/subscribe/): You can make your own special Escape Pod feed by subscribing to http://www.escapepod.org/category/ XXXX/feed where you replace XXXX with the category you want to subscribe to. Categories are listed on the front page in a drop-down box on the right. Have at it! Lastly, in order to get the submissions under control, we’re taking two months off and closing for submis- sions on June 6th. We hope you enjoy this issue, chock full of awesome stories, reviews, and Nebula reporting. We hope you have a wonderful summer (or winter, if you’re on the other side of the world) and keep listening! We will have other announcements next month! ——Mur Mur Lafferty Editor —30—

3 [Basically, sometimes you have to let one of your fellow editors borrow the car, so to speak. This is one of those times. I told him to avoid that dragon’s nest he always goes too close to. Still — good luck. -Ed.]

Hey Folks— In late 2007, I took a trip down to San Diego’s Conjecture convention. I’d been listening to Escape Pod for a couple of years (PodCastle hadn’t even started yet) and so I was thrilled that the very first panel I got to see featured Tim Pratt, Heather Shaw, and Greg van Eekhout. Tim had just won a Hugo for his story “Im- possible Dreams” (which I first heard at Escape Pod, yo!) and proceeded to do a collaborative reading of ABC flash fiction. Essentially, they divvied up the alphabet, wrote flash fiction stories for each letter, such as “E is for Excrement” and “N is for Nevermore Nevermore Land.” It was a fantastic reading - hilarious, poignant, thrilling, and most of all - they knew how to have fun. I left the convention knowing, just knowing, that one day - this ABC book was going to be big. But nothing happened. Several years passed, and still - nothing happened. And then, toward the end of last year - I realized, I’m at Escape Artists, co-editing PodCastle, and that awesome book I remember? Is out there still, and nobody’s heard it. So, I talked to Ben Phillips, and then I talked to Tim, Heather, Greg, and Jenn Reese - who came aboard to help them finish up the collection - and we came up with a plan. I decided it’d be awesome to send the Alphabet Quartet out to listeners who’d been kind enough to sign up as paid subscribers or make a one-time donation to us of $50 or more since January 1, 2011. Times are tough, we know, and not everyone can donate, so all the Escape Artists podcasts are going to be sharing a few of these stories with everyone who wants them (and also at the Drabblecast). Additionally, all the stories are available to read there for free at Daily Science Fiction, a great new online magazine that emails you free SF/F stories daily, so everyone wins. Thanks for listening, and we hope you enjoy the extra stories. ——Dave Dave Thompson Co-Editor of Podcastle [One hoopy frood -Ed.] —30—

4 EP292: In The Water By Katherine Mankiller Yvonne looked up from her monitor, the beads in her cornrows clattering as Roger walked into her office. Roger sat in the dark wooden chair opposite her desk. “Weren’t you assigned Alice van Buuren?” “Oh, no you don’t,” Yvonne said. “You can’t have her.” Yvonne hadn’t been assigned Alice; she’d request- ed her. Alice was probably the only murder victim’s wife she would ever meet. They hadn’t even put the murder in the papers. Maybe they thought there’d be a panic. “Please,” Roger said. “I’m just trying to save you some trouble. I’ve already spoken to her, and…” Yvonne crossed her arms and glared. “Wouldn’t you raise hell if I talked to one of your patients behind your back?” “She’s refusing modern therapy. What are you going to do, use the old-fashioned techniques your grand- mother used?” Roger had a lot of nerve mentioning Grandma. Yvonne glanced at the photo on the corner of her desk. Grandma Jackson had been a big woman, with braids down to her hips and skin like chocolate. Grandma Jackson smiled back at the camera, all reassuring good nature. Roger said, “I think we should just wipe her and have done with it.” “Too bad she’s not your patient,” Yvonne said. “I could take her away from you, you know.” “Don’t you dare!” There was an awkward silence. “It’ll be less confusing for her if I come with you,” Roger said. “Just to hand her off to you. You understand.” “Fine,” Yvonne said. “Whatever.” “Good girl,” Roger said, and Yvonne gritted her teeth. “Room 314.” He stood. “Let’s go.” “Now?” Yvonne said. She picked up her coffee and almost took a sip, then put it down again, making a face. It was cold, and it had been so bitter hot that she’d taken caffeine pills with orange juice instead. Roger snorted. “That bad?” Roger clearly wasn’t going anywhere, so Yvonne stood, picked up her jacket, and followed Roger out of her office. The halls were white to the point of being blinding after her calm, earth-toned office, and reeked of disinfectant. They went upstairs and over to room 314. Roger placed his hand on the identification plate and the door slid open. “Hello, Alice,” Roger said. The patient, a skinny, pale woman with brown hair, backed away from Roger. She reminded Yvonne of someone, although she couldn’t put her finger on whom. The patient fell into a seated position on the bed, mouth open, staring at Yvonne. Before Yvonne could say anything, Roger said, “This is Doctor Jackson. Doctor Jackson, this is Alice.” “We’re not going to hurt you,” Yvonne said. 5 The patient–Alice–stared at Yvonne for a moment, then shut her mouth. She shot Roger a defiant look. “I’ll just leave you to it,” Roger said, and left. “Hello, Alice,” Yvonne said. “You can call me Yvonne if you prefer.” “We’ve met,” Alice said. It wasn’t a question. Alice really did look familiar. “Refresh my memory?” “It doesn’t matter,” Alice said and looked away. There was an uncomfortable silence. Yvonne said, “Dr. Hill said you’re refusing drug therapy.” “I had a negative reaction once,” Alice said. “Really?” Yvonne said. “Usually that’s associated with an interaction with an unapproved drug. You should be fine this time; your blood tests came back clean.” “I wasn’t on anything then, either,” Alice said. “That’s very unusual,” Yvonne said. Alice shrugged. “Just weird, I guess.” “He also said you object to memory modification.” Alice started to cry. For a moment Yvonne just wanted to hug Alice and let her cry, but negative emotions caused crime. It wasn’t right to encourage Alice to carry on. “You won’t forget your marriage. We’ll just erase the trauma of his murder. We can come up with a cover story for why he’s gone together–a heart attack, perhaps–and then give you some antidepressants and send you on your way.” “I’m sorry,” Alice said, and dried her eyes, sniffling. “It just feels like forgetting so soon would be wrong. I don’t want to forget. I loved him.” “You won’t forget. You just won’t be upset.” “Which feels wrong.” “Well,” Yvonne said, “you’re not a danger to yourself or others, so I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. But we are going to keep you for observation.” “All right,” Alice said. Yvonne patted Alice on the shoulder. It seemed to make Alice nervous, so she decided not to do that again. “Get a good night’s sleep. Let me know if you need something to help you rest.” “I’m fine,” Alice said, although she didn’t look fine at all. Yvonne left and locked the door behind her, then clocked out and walked to the train station. The art dis- play on the street corner was a holographic image of large fish swimming in a tank, which she always felt was very soothing, and very appropriate to a hospital. Across the street, there was an escalator down to MARTA II, the commuter train. The sun was setting, and the streetlights all up and down the street lit up in random pastel colors. The crosswalk signal chimed, and she crossed the street and took the escalator down to the commuter train, where most people were reading or sitting quietly. Some of them looked up and smiled; she smiled back. The station was decorated with statuary from the old days of Atlanta, some of the few architectural pieces that survived the civil war. Life had been so violent then, back before modern Psychiatry. 6 The train arrived, and she found a seat and pulled out her latest issue of Psychopharmacology Journal. She’d barely finished the first article when she realized she was almost at her stop, so she put the journal away and looked around. Out the window, they were passing an old graveyard with Victorian monuments of stone angels; Yvonne liked to jog there in the mornings. Grandma Jackson was buried there. The train pulled to a stop, and Yvonne got off and walked the four blocks to her house. It was dark now, but the city provided excellent lighting. She unlocked the door, went inside, and locked the door again. Locks on doors were really a throwback to her mother’s time; one of these days she was going to decide it was just too silly and stop locking her door. Grandma always had a big key ring that Yvonne had played with as a child; Yvonne remembered the jangly noise and the metallic taste from chewing on them. The computer and video were new, of course, but a lot of the furniture was old–her grandmother’s. There was a Persian rug, the kind you couldn’t get any more, and a grandfather clock, and books. Roger had told her to throw it all out. He said it was morbid, that it was holding her back, that she needed more therapy to get over Grandma’s death. Asshole. She couldn’t wait for him to retire. On the contrary, she thought her house was just about perfect. The only thing missing was another person. Yvonne was so busy that it didn’t leave much time for a social life. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had friends over. The truth was that she was lonely, and she couldn’t even figure out why she wasn’t doing anything about it. She went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. There was something in the smell she didn’t like–something chemical–so she poured it out and got herself some milk instead. Yvonne pulled one of Grandma’s old Psychology texts off the bookshelf. She put on her nightgown and went to read in bed. After a couple of hours, she took a Somnalix with a glass of warm milk and turned off the light. She dreamed she and Alice were running away from some kind of monster–something out of the cheesy old horror movies her mother used to watch. She woke up in a cold sweat and swallowed a Valium dry, then went back to bed. ### “You want to talk about it?” Yvonne asked Alice. Alice shook her head. Her hair looked very dark against the stark white of the room and her hospital gown. “Will you at least tell me how you’re feeling this morning?” Alice sighed. “I’m all right, how are you?” “I’m good. I had a nice run this morning,” Yvonne said. “You ever run?” Alice shook her head. “I don’t have the skin for outdoor exercise. I’ve already had one growth removed.” “I can get you some gym time, if you’d like,” Yvonne said. Alice snorted. “Exercise is therapeutic,” Yvonne said. “No one would object to my arranging something therapeutic for a patient.” “Thank you,” Alice said. “I’d like that.” “You know,” Yvonne said, “if you’re not willing to take pharmacological treatment, you really should talk.” “You wouldn’t believe me,” Alice said. “Try me.”

7 Alice looked at her, and Yvonne suspected she was considering whether she wanted to talk or not. “What made you decide to become a Psychiatrist?” “My grandmother,” Yvonne said, and smiled. “She was a Psychiatrist, too. She helped a lot of people. When I was little, I wanted to be just like her.” Alice smiled. “Where is she now?” “Dead,” Yvonne said. “Heart attack.” They looked at each other for a moment, in an awkward silence. “We’re supposed to be talking about you, not me,” Yvonne said. Alice looked at her for a long time. Finally, she said, “Peter had an after-hours consultation with Dr. Hill,” she said. “If you look at his records, you might get some insights.” “I’ll do that,” Yvonne said. “Thank you. I’ll go arrange that gym time now.” “Thank you,” Alice said. Yvonne left, and told Carmen, the administrative assistant, to arrange some gym time for Alice. Then she went into her office and called up the records for Alice’s late husband, Peter Van Buuren. Which were locked, by Dr. Roger Hill. ### “I’m so sorry,” Roger said. Roger’s office was twice the size of hers and had a view overlooking Grady Hos- pital and the Carter tower. “I can’t give you those records. I was doing confidential research for MacPher- son Forrester Long.” “He was a product tester?” “It would be inappropriate for me to answer that,” Roger said. It was also inappropriate for Roger to do product testing at the hospital, and she’d love to tell him so. Un- fortunately, the person she would report improprieties to was Roger. “I certainly don’t want to put you in an uncomfortable position,” she said. “I appreciate that,” he answered. Yvonne left before she said something unfortunate. Maybe she’d take a Serenitor to calm down. She stopped at the water cooler for something to wash it down with and nearly gagged. It tasted like rot, like death, and her throat closed up in protest before she could swallow. She spat the water back into the cup and tossed it into the wastebasket. Her stomach clenched, and she felt gorge rising in her throat. She said told Carmen she wasn’t feeling well and walked out the front door. She’d just go to bed early. ### Somehow, she knew, even in her dream, that she was in some kind of government facility. It was dark and dingy, rather than white and well-lit like the hospital. There were two armed men in police uniforms there, and Roger, and Alice, and a man–somehow she knew it was Peter van Buuren. The man’s head was strapped into a wave regulator; he was about to be wiped. The armed men were point- ing their guns at Yvonne and Alice. “Tell me how to find the rest of your cell,” Roger said. “Up yours,” Peter said. Roger crossed his arms and glared. “You don’t even care about the danger that you’re putting your wife in, 8 do you? She’s the one who’d suffer, not you.” “I can speak for myself,” Alice said, from behind Yvonne. “It’s not worth it.” “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Roger said. He took a gun away from one of the policemen and pointed it at Alice. “Is it worth it? Is it really?” “Leave her alone!” Peter shouted. “You won’t hurt her,” Yvonne said. “You’re a doctor.” Roger looked at Yvonne for a moment, then walked back towards Peter. Alice made a breathy, relieved noise. Roger pointed the gun at Peter’s head. “Talk to me, Alice,” Roger said. Alice hid her face in Yvonne’s back. There was a long silence. Roger looked down at Peter, his face gentle. “I had a wife once,” he said, and pulled the trigger. Alice screamed. Yvonne wanted to scream, but couldn’t. She was frozen, filled with a sense of horrible recognition. The smell of gunpowder, the metallic scent of blood thick enough that she could almost taste it–all familiar. Roger looked over at Yvonne. “You of all people should understand.” Yvonne–fully awake–sat up in bed and lunged for the light, shaking. She reached into the nightstand drawer and took a couple of tranquilizers. She had a strong sense that Peter and Alice had been here, in her house. She could almost see Alice laugh- ing. She walked into the living room and had a sense that Peter and Alice had sat there, on her sofa. Peter had been serious, leaning forward, talking, and Alice had stirred her drink absently with her straw. Had she kissed Alice in the kitchen with Peter in the other room? And then she remembered. Grandma. Lying on the Persian rug, bleeding, dead. No. Yvonne knelt and looked at the carpet where she thought Grandma had lain. She didn’t see anything. She pulled back the carpet, and there, underneath, the wood was stained, right where she thought the blood should be. “I’m sorry, Grandma,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She got dressed. ### There was a hidden staff entrance to the hospital. It was always disconcerting to walk through the fish and water hologram, but there it was–the door. The fish seemed menacing somehow, even though they weren’t real. She felt like they were lunging at her. She went upstairs, up the back stairs, and went into Alice’s room, using her emergency key rather than the hand plate. Alice was curled up in the fetal position on the bed and started when Yvonne came in. Yvonne put her finger over her lips, then took Alice’s hand. Alice stood, and Yvonne led her to the door. Yvonne leaned against the door, listening. Everything seemed quiet, so she opened the door and looked both ways. Clear. She led Alice down the back stairs, out the door, and into the fish hologram. She looked over at Alice, who was wearing a white hospital gown and had bare feet. The holographic fish swam over and through Alice’s body, and the holographic water cast strange patterns on her pale face. 9 “I think I remember you,” Yvonne said. Alice’s lower lip trembled. Yvonne grabbed her hand and pulled her down an alley towards a cab. The cabbie gave them a long, suspicious look, lingering on Alice’s hospital gown and bare feet. “1343 16th Street,” Alice said. Yvonne realized she was still holding Alice’s hand. She didn’t want to let go, so she didn’t. The cabbie kept giving them long looks in the mirror, but for the most part he kept his eyes on the road. When they arrived, Yvonne paid and gave him a huge tip, which she hoped would help him mind his own business. The house was a small, modest home with a large, overgrown vegetable garden in the front yard. Alice led Yvonne up the sidewalk to the front door and opened it. Yvonne reflected with amusement that her locking habit made her more eccentric than an escaped mental patient. Alice and Yvonne stepped inside, and Alice shut the door and led Yvonne back to the bedroom. She then extricated her hand from Yvonne’s. “Sorry,” Yvonne said. Alice just smiled and opened drawers, pulling out a change of clothing. “I think I remember your husband’s murder,” Yvonne said. Alice froze for a moment, then returned to removing clothes from her chest of drawers. “Government drugs aren’t voluntary. They’re in the water.” Alice changed clothes, pulling off the hospital gown and put- ting on nondescript casual pants and a shirt. She sat on the bed and pulled on shoes and socks. “Why would the government need to drug us?” Yvonne said. “We’ve eliminated crime!” Then she put her hand over her mouth. She felt a sense of wrongness that she would say that, and it wasn’t just because she said it to a murder victim’s wife. Alice just stared at her. “You could go to the police,” Yvonne said, then remembered the armed men in police uniforms in her dream. “Or the press.” Alice shrugged. “I’m an escaped mental patient. Who would believe me? By the way, there’s a chemical formula that you’re supposed to write down on a piece of paper for me.” “What?” Yvonne said. “I know it doesn’t make any sense,” Alice said, standing and handing Yvonne pencil and paper. “But you’ll know when you start writing.” Yvonne looked at the pencil and the piece of paper, and sure enough, yes, she felt an urge to write down a formula. She scribbled the formula onto the paper–some kind of psychopharmacological, but she’d have to study it more to make a guess at what it did–and handed it to Alice. “Thank you,” Alice said. “You should go home, and I should go, and you can’t know where.” She looked at Yvonne for a moment, then leaned over and hugged her. “I’ve missed you. I’m sorry I can’t take you with me.” She paused a moment, looking like she had something to say, but all she said was, “I’m sorry about your grandmother.” She headed towards the door, then turned and said, “Don’t drink the water.” Then she left. Yvonne left the house, confused, and wandered back past the train station she saw on the cab ride there. She considered taking more tranquilizers, but decided against it. She got on the train and rode to her stop. When she got off the train, she was surrounded by police, who arrested her on a charge of abetting a ter- 10 rorist, handcuffed her, and put her in the back of a police car. ### Yvonne didn’t for one moment fail to realize that she was strapped into the same chair where Peter was murdered. Roger stood over her with his arms crossed. “You didn’t give them the antidote, did you?” “What?” Roger smirked. “Good girl.” “You’re not going to kill me, are you?” Yvonne asked. “Oh, Yvonne,” Roger said. “You’re far too valuable as a psychiatrist to kill.” Yvonne sighed in relief. “People trust you,” he said. “You have a genuine quality that I could never duplicate.” No, she supposed he couldn’t. “We’ll just wipe your memory. After all, it worked well enough the first time.” Don’t drink the water, Yvonne thought. Don’t drink the water. Don’t drink the water. ### Yvonne took a sip of coffee, then made a face. Bitter. She put it on the corner of her desk and took caffeine pills instead. Business was booming and no one was sure why. At this rate they might have to hire more doctors. Roger wasn’t handling the stress well. There was even some talk of him stepping down. Yvonne wished he’d hurry up. She stood and headed to the cafeteria for a nice glass of milk. —30— Katherine Mankiller lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where she spends her days performing Geek-Fu and bend- ing computers to her will. Over the years, she’s asked that her business cards read everything from “Alpha Bitch” through “Queen of Awesomeness” to “Zen Master”--to no avail. Her greatest ambition is to rule the world.

11 Book Review: Brave New Worlds Review by Sarah Frost Edited by John Joseph Adams Anyone who is interested in the grim meathook side of the science fiction genre should pick up Brave New Worlds, the new anthology of dystopian fiction. Once again, John Joseph Adams has proved that he has a keen eye for a good story. These are not easy stories to read. Few of them have happy endings. However, I found them to be moving works of science fiction that will stay with me for a long time. Dystopias have been part of science fiction since the beginning. Brave New Worlds opens with “The Lot- tery” by Shirley Jackson, which was first published in 1948 by The New Yorker. It is the kind of science fic- tion that provokes tempers on all sides. People within the genre criticize its lack of obvious scientificitional elements and its magazine of origin. Deborah Treisman, The New Yorker’s fiction editor, noted on her pod- cast that the magazine received angry letters from its readers after “The Lottery” was published. Treisman also pointed out that “The Lottery” is the only story by a woman of the period to be regularly anthologized. Other classics that have been reprinted in Brave New Worlds include “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin. This story should already be familiar to most readers, who will know ex- actly what to expect when they see Le Guin’s name on a collection of dystopias. However, in this context, it provides a respite for the mind’s eye. The world that Le Guin has built is beautiful — except for that singular, terrible room. The new stories in Brave New Worlds are also of the highest quality. Carrie Vaughn’s “Amaryllis,” reprinted here, has just been nominated for the 2011 Hugo Award for best short story. “Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment: One Daughter’s Personal Account” by Mary Rickert first appeared in the Magazine of Fan- tasy and Science Fiction, and was nominated for the British Science Fiction Award and the Stoker Award. I have an abiding affection for this story, in which all the brutality of a world where women are executed for having abortions is filtered through the eyes of a little girl who has never known anything else. Longtime listeners of EscapePod will recognize “Of a Sweet Slow Dance in the Wake of Temporary Dogs” by Adam Troy-Castro. This is the only story in the collection that I did not completely reread, as I remem- ber how much it affected me the first time. It is, however, not the most brutal story in this book — and the argument over whether or not it even qualifies as a dystopia should be an interesting one. The stories are grouped loosely by theme. J. G. Ballard’s overpopulation classic, “Billenium,” is followed immediately by “Amaryllis” and Paolo Bacigalupi’s “Pop Squad,” in which children are vanishingly rare. Silverberg’s “Caught in the Organ Draft,” about a world where the young are required to donate their or- gans so that the terribly old can get even older, stands back-to-back with Orson Scott Card’s heartbreaking “Geriatric Ward,” in which people grow old and die while still terribly young. Brave New Worlds strikes me as being comprehensive enough to serve as reference book. It even includes a list of suggested reading at the end, for anyone who wants to pursue longer works of dystopian fiction. I recommend this anthology wholeheartedly — on a sunny day, and followed by something cheerful. —30— Sarah Frost is a science fiction writer who lives in Kansas. Her first short story, “Falls the Firebrand,” -ap peared in the March 2011 issue of Analog. She can be found on the Voice of the Vortex podcast, or trying to organize her library. 12 EP293: A Small Matter, Really By Monte Cook Only the Catholic Church of Osirus would have enough money to afford not one, but two black holes. Standing within the majestic narthex, Maria McNaki imagined the vibration of complex machinery under her feet, despite the fact that the nanosensors laced into her flesh revealed nothing other than the passing of the people in the crowd and the chanting coming from deeper within the cathedral. The stone walls of the chamber slowly flowed with a liquid relief of gothic circuitry and religious hiero- glyphic animations. The glyph depicting Setan as he tore the crucified Osirus-Christ into tiny fragments malfunctioned and remained static. Just as well. The petitioners around her made carefully devout hand signs over their hearts as they faced the ankh crucifix over the door into the sanctuary. Religion was back in fashion this season. Three identical priests stood next to the holy water fonts, welcoming the incoming congregation. Their white collars and black robes stood starched-still. Geneticists form-shaped all Catholic-Osirus priests into the gentle, fatherly form selected by church PR, but these three were special. The bright eyes and the shin- ing hair indicated Aesthicel, the most expensive genengineering firm in the Earth system. This parish liked to spend money. Perfect. That most likely meant that they were interested in obtaining more. Terrence told her that the facility lay underneath the cathedral. Maria made her way past the incoming worshipers as quickly and politely as she could. Stout-of-Heart mewled behind her, trying to keep up. The alien’s appearance disturbed a few in the crowd, and Maria realized that bringing him might not have been the best idea after all. The four-foot, shaggy bra- magian bore the minder headband that marked him as a trained urban bodyguard, but his claws and tusks still instilled fear in many humans. The headband also allowed the creature to access a private data field that existed only between the two of them. Through it, Maria could communicate with him. Nevertheless, she preferred it much better when Piotr had tended to the bramagian. “Lord, what is this place?” Stout-of-Heart asked her. She hated being called Lord, but the bramagians were so fiercely misogynistic that it was best if they thought of all humans as male. Maria had no idea how to explain the church to Stout-of-Heart. Bramagians taken by humans from their homeworld already believed that they were in Heaven, walking among the gods. If she told him that the gods also worshipped gods, it might be too much for him. Among the bramagians, madness was a fate worse than death. “Never mind, Stout-of-Heart,” she uploaded into their link. “It’s too difficult to explain.” Her assurances would only work for so long. Although the aliens were happy to be warriors in Heaven, they were in- tensely curious about everything they encountered there. Elevator doors stood closed to the right of the sanctuary entrance. More boy than man, a guard stood in front of them, arms folded as if he could possibly appear menacing. He wore black robes but no priestly collar and his temple sported a removable receiver implant. Maria knew better than to be deceived by looks. Muscle-augmentation, hidden disrupters or even nanite drones could all be concealed. Instead, she produced her most powerful weapon as she approached the slight guard–a cashstick keyed to more than this man made in a month. He stepped aside with a smile, and the lift doors opened. Maria entered the elevator and whispered “all 13 the way down,” to the man with a smile of her own and a nod. Stout-of-Heart followed her in, and the doors closed. She smoothed her dark blue suit, and ran her hands over her graying black hair. The advan- tages of wealth allowed her to look however she pleased, but she found little point in appearing to be anything other than what she was–a healthy, fifty-three year old natborn woman. Moments later, the doors slid open. An unadorned corridor led into a small chamber with a bank of screens and holo projectors. Meters of metal and stone shielded this area from the music in the church above. Two natborns sat immersed in the data before them, facing the door. Each bore the same temple-implant as the guard. Maria took it to be an access into a locked data field that probably permeated the whole church. Faces familiar from briefing injections given by Terrence indicated that the techs were Varz and Jagger. Since the information was injected to Maria, however, Jagger had covered himself in glowing, photophore tattoos. Varz now appeared to be female. Varz’s long, black hair was pulled back behind her head. Weary, brown eyes registered Maria and her bodyguard and she stood when she saw them. Genetic tailoring had not disguised the haggard, red-eyed appearance of an adrenaline-junkie. Jagger’s rumpled clothing suggested he had not left his chair for per- haps a full day. The challenge of maintaining the entire process pushed these two to their very limits–that much was obvious. “Yes?” Varz folded her arms in front of her. She wore an out-of-date, translucent holo-shift, which seemed inappropriate in the laboratory. She bore none of the typical tech totems. “I’m here to speak to you about your project,” Maria took as formal a tone as she could muster. Jagger removed the temple-implant, leaving a small hole in the side of his head. He rubbed his eyes as he asked “Who are you?” “How did you get down here?” Varz demanded before she could answer the first question. The tech’s nails bit into the skin of her own arms and her teeth were clenched. Change tactics. Maria tried a smile to soothe her. “This is purely an unofficial, friendly visit. My name is Maria McNaki, and I’m an associate of Terrence and Unger Reynolds. I believe you know them. They helped you build the containment units for the black holes–that is to say, the singularities.” “Nope. Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Varz tightened further. Jagger waved a non-committal hand. “Maybe if you told us why you’re here, Ms. McNaki?” “I want to hire you.” They both exchanged a short glance. Maria’s smile became genuine. “For what?” Jagger asked. “We’re not for sale.” Varz stated. Jagger waved her quiet. Her years of diplomatic experience in the Trans- american Ambassador’s office suggested that these two were nothing but science-minded amateurs. Chil- dren. If Jagger had kept his implant in, the two of them could exchange data in the ambient field without her knowledge. “Lord?” Maria received from her guard. He was clearly picking up on Varz’s hostility. “Hush, Stout-of-Heart. We’re safe here.” “What is it that you’re looking for?” Jagger asked. “I want you to alter the past for me.” Varz’s eyes lit with fire and she stepped forward to speak. Jagger intercepted her move and asked very quietly, “Why would you ask such a preposterous thing of us?” 14 Varz picked up Jagger’s implant from where he had set it on the console and tried to slip it into his hand unseen. Pathetic. “This is a cashstick keyed for 10 million.” She held it for both of them to see. The sight of it brought silence. Beads of sweat formed on Jagger’s brow. Varz pulled out her own implant. Maria knew that its removal would cut them off from the data field’s monitoring systems, a sign that even the more temperamental of the two was now interested. The three could now talk in private. “Terrence Reynolds told me about your operation. I know that you can undo what has come before. I don’t know what the Church is having you do with this technology, and frankly, I don’t care. But I have something that I want you to do for me. It’s a very small matter, really.” “I see.” Jagger wiped his had across his forehead. The fact that their secret was out clearly made them anxious. “I don’t know if you really do understand,” Varz stated. “We’re altering the space-time arena on the quan- tum level using transactional quantum physics.” Maria said nothing. Jagger raised a reassuring hand. “Ms. McNaki, our operation here is quite complex. We’re on the cutting edge of at least three different fields–power generation, standing wave manipulation and quantum junc- ture analysis. I don’t know what the Reynolds’ told you. Maria continued to feign interest. She didn’t need to know the “how.” She only needed them to agree to do what she wanted. “You see, what we do here is generate two singularities and then force them to collide within a chamber of folded-space. This creates an output of energy so great that we still don’t know exactly how to measure it. The burst of energy is powerful enough to create… well, think of it as a bit of slack in the line of time.” “Slack?” “Yes, like slack in a rope. A flick of the timeline and the slack whips backward like a wave–a timewave as we like to call it. With a jerk of the ‘rope,’ we alter the past path of quantum possibilities–some juncture in our timeline. We make it so that at some point in the past, history takes a slightly different course. ” “What you describe sounds rather crude. I need specific results.” “But it’s not. With a complex set of four-dimensional computers, we’re able to predict the exact path of what’s called a quantum wave function. This is essentially a wave of probability extending forward and backward in time. All we’re doing is spiking the amplitude of that wave, and thus creating a desired effect in the past, called an artificial causality.” Maria mused over the possibilities. These people were–what was the word–hackers. Time hackers. Artifi- cial causality indeed. “Our change,” he continued, “then affects the future as a ripple back forward in time. Ultimately, we can’t travel in time, but we can change it.” These children could rewrite the past and shape the present just as decisions made in the present alter the future. A little frightening, but this exchange was exactly what she hoped for. Better, even. “I need you to be able to alter the past so that the present changes to precisely what I need. I don’t care what it is that you change, or how you do it, I just care about the result.” “What is it that you’re looking for Ms. McNaki?” “Four years ago, my husband Piotr left Earth to travel to Mars for a conference in New Vancouver. He was 15 to be gone only three weeks. The drive on the skiff malfunctioned and all four people aboard were killed.” Maria’s eyes and voice did not waver. “I want my husband back,” she stated. “I want him alive.” Maria allowed Varz and Jagger an exchanged look, the length of which she found most satisfying. Stout-of- Heart, meanwhile, crouched in a position that humans usually took to be relaxation. A bramagian could leap ten feet from that position and rip out an opponent’s throat in less time that it took to describe. “It’s possible,” Jagger finally stated. “We’d need the money up front.” Varz was still hostile. “And all the details you can give us regarding the ship. The more accurate the temporal information the better–exactly where it was when.” Maria pulled a tiny metallic vial from her suit pocket. “I assumed as much. It’s all here.” Inside the vial was an information-virus that they could inject that would add all the knowledge they needed directly into their brains. She stepped forward and handed both vial and cashstick to Varz. She wanted to show Varz that her attitude did not affect her in the slightest. Varz looked at the money and failed to suppress a grin. “You should know, the singularity collision creates a standing quantum wave around our lab, here. Despite the fact that we’ll have altered time so that you never had to come here, we’ll still have the cash. Nothing here changes.” Maria nodded. The quantum physics of the whole thing was beyond her, but she understood the implica- tion. Jagger clapped his hands in obviously forced congeniality. “Fine then. I don’t think we’ll need anything else from you. It’ll take us a while to plot this out, and determine exactly how to go about it. To be honest, however, compared to the larger project we’ve got going here, this is nothing. We’ll have it done by morn- ing. You’ll have your husband back by dinner tomorrow.” Maria’s widening eyes betrayed her. Dinner tomorrow. “What will it be like?” She tried to keep her voice level. “What will I remember?” “Everything,” Varz said. “That is to say, because you’re a part of the artificial causality, you’ll remember both states of space-time. Both pasts–the one in which your husband died and the one in which he re- turned from his trip and has been with you all the time since then. Consciousness appears to exist inde- pendent of changes in space-time, despite what we theorized before we began the process.” Maria needed to leave before her emotions began to show. Before they revealed more of herself than she ever let slip through, at least to strangers. This was a lot to take in. A lot to control, even for her. It was one thing to ask, but quite another to receive. “Thank you. I appreciate your discretion in this.” “That works both ways, Ms. McNaki. We’ll keep your visit here a secret, but we’ll need you to do the same.” Yellowish-green light flickered around his flesh. The glowing tattoos on his body were made of the same type of biological matter that fireflies and certain deep-sea fish used to w.glo “Very well.” With a quick, business-agreement smile, she turned and walked toward the elevator, sum- moning Stout-of-Heart to follow behind. He did so eagerly. Back on the main level, the service was in progress within the sanctuary. She could hear one of the priests speak. Maria stopped and peered in. Not a believer herself, she had never even seen a religious ceremony. “Take of His body and His blood,” the priest said, holding forth a shining silver platter of bread and a goblet of wine. “Ingest Him, make Him a part of you. Hold Him in your heart, forever, for when Mother of 16 Heaven gathers together the flesh of Osirus-Christ, we shall be made one as He is made whole. Through this apotheosis, Isis unites us all, and with Osirus, ushers in the New Age of Horus, their child.” On her way home, Maria’s eyes fell upon all the interesting, wondrous sights of the city, but she saw none of them. Dinner tomorrow with Piotr. ### Stout-of-Heart kept a vigil as he always did, sleeping only in frequent naps measured in just minutes. This, Maria knew, he did for his own sake, not hers. The house was a fortress. She only really needed a body- guard when she left its confines. The bramagian needed to feel useful all the time, however, so she did not interfere. Maria issued a nanite sweep of the house when she arrived, but realized that cleaning was foolish. Piotr was not returning from some long trip. When Varz and Jagger completed their task, it would be as if he had always been here. They really would get all the time lost back. Her mind would swell with four years of new memories–memories of time with him at her side where there had only been emptiness before. She wished that the process worked differently. Once he returned, she didn’t want the memories of the years when he was gone. Having side-by-side, contradictory memories scared her. How would she cope? She would never be able to remember what truly happened–in fact, truth was a word that no longer would hold meaning. Stout-of-Heart wandered into the kitchen where her reverie overcame her as she stared at a cold plate of yesterday’s yakitori. “Greetings, my lord,” he communicated. “Hello, Stout-of-Heart.” She forced a smile. “Is everything all right?” She nodded. “Piotr is coming back.” A pause. The alien cocked his head and closed his eyes. “I thought you said that he was never coming back.” Why did she tell him? He wouldn’t remember the change. Or would he? He was present–part of the alter- ing process. Yet he wasn’t aware. Most likely he would be oblivious. Stout-of-Heart couldn’t be expected to understand such things. I actually envy him, she thought. “I was mistaken. He’s coming back tomorrow. Are you excited?” “Yes, Lord.” If Stout-of-Heart was unaware of the timeline change, Maria wondered at the families and friends of the other three killed in the accident. And what about Piotr’s sisters? They also, she reasoned, would never know that anything had ever gone wrong, and that Piotr had been anywhere but here the last four years. Truth be told, she mused, there was nothing from the last four years that she desired to keep. If only some- one could tear memories away like dead leaves on a plant. She would grow stronger if they were pruned. Besides, she would not need them–other memories would be there to take their place. Good memories. Time well spent, not time wasted wandering the rooms of this house alone like a bit of trash tossed about in the wind. Perhaps some neural chemist could get rid of the unwanted memories for her, although ex- plaining it all might be tricky. Maria had been honest when she told Varz and Jagger that she had no interest in what they were doing for

17 the Church. All she wanted was Piotr back. But Piotr would want to know. His quest for knowledge was only superseded by his social consciousness. He would demand an investigation of the Catholic Church of Osirus, worried at what they might do with such technology if left unchecked. Would she tell him? How do you tell a living man that he had been dead for four years? It felt like a bad idea, but how could she not? It seemed unthinkable to keep secrets of him. If the last four years taught her anything, it was just how much he had meant to her. When she got him back, she wanted to start anew. Perhaps she needed those dark memories of life without him to keep reminded that she should not take him for granted, and should not allow their relationship to become anything other than the wonderful, loving partnership that she had missed all this time. The New Age of Horus, she thought. It bothered Maria a little that there was nothing to do in order to prepare. Everything would change, and she had no control over exactly how. She would have rather been able to control the exact alteration of time, so that each detail in the new present would be as she desired. But Terrence had told her before she ever went to the Cathedral that while they probably did possess that level of control, they would not have been willing to go to all that trouble and work for her. Not even for double what she paid, and, as it was, she had drained away half her net worth. There was nothing to do but wait. Maria busied herself throughout the sleepless night looking through old images stored within the data field. She accessed their whole life together and fast-forwarded through almost thirty years of memories. So much happy time spent just the two of them–they had never even ap- plied for a child-bearing license. By mid-morning, she milled about her own home as though it were a foreign place. At noon she checked on Stout-of-Heart. He was oblivious to what transpired, but he seemed aware of her agitation and anxious- ness. She reassured him and stroked his furry head affectionately. Finally, she just sat in the living room that she had reprogrammed a year ago in stark white. No doubt this would be the longest day of her life. At 7:53 and 23 seconds everything in her life changed. Maria sat upon their long, white couch, waiting in silence. Maria and Piotr sat at the dining table, the remains of a wonderful shellfish dinner splayed about them on plates in half-full wine glasses. A holo-field around them made it appear as though the table was on a patio overlooking a beach. The waves crashed rhythmically, and gulls called in the distance, carefully orchestrated for just the right level of ambient noise. Piotr! Maria stood, a little unsteady from the wine. Tears welled in her eyes vacant of the sight of him. They had brought Piotr back to her. She felt faint. Piotr looked up at her with surprise. “Is something wrong, Mar?” He must have deactivated the holo-en- vironment via the house’s data field, for the sea melted away, and they sat within their own dining room. Piotr pushed his chair away from the table with his broad hands, and met her liquid gaze with his own, gray-flecked eyes. She had thought about those eyes for four years, never forgetting a single fleck. “Piotr,” she managed through her tightening throat. She threw herself into his arms, curling into his broad chest. Maria sat upon their long, white couch, waiting in silence. Her body shuddered. She exclaimed something unintelligible. What happened?

18 She looked about her. “Piotr?” Her clothes were different than what she had been wearing at the table. She ran into the dining room, through the hall with the film-photos of the trips that they had taken together. She kept each one running, cycling eternally through its scene of mountain climbing in the Rockies or Piotr bartering with a merchant on Io. She ran past them, but each step moved through an eternity. The dining room was empty. “Piotr?” She fell from his embrace onto the floor next to the dining room table. Plates clattered and a wineglass toppled. “Mar, what’s wrong?” “Piotr, where did you go? What happened?” His brow furrowed. “What?” Maria looked around. All had returned to just as it had been a moment ago. But then she was standing in the hall, looking into the dining room again. It was empty. No plates, no spilled wine. No Piotr. She screamed. She screamed and screamed. Maria was back on the floor, Piotr looking down at her, his eyes full of helpless concern. Maria still screamed. She stood at the entrance to the empty room. Maria still screamed. She lay on the floor. She stood in the hall. On the floor. In the hall. Piotr. No Piotr. Stout-of-Heart raced into the room. Maria still screamed. He looked around, his toothy maw filled with snarls. She ignored him and his pleas for explanation. Wide, alien eyes gazed into hers and saw something that made the bramagian recoil. Madness was a fate worse than death. “Forgive me Lord.” Stout-of-Heart tore her throat out in one, clean slice of his claw. Maria fell to the ground in mid-wail, her terror and loss silenced. The bramagian began his own tortured howl. He had failed the gods, and, lest he be punished with mad- ness himself, went to his chamber, took his mono-blade from its carefully placed spot, and took his own life. Among those bramagians taken away from their homeworld by humans, one question is frequently asked than never gets a satisfactory answer: What afterlife awaits a god or his servant? Where does one go when one dies in heaven? ###

19 Varz let the ambient data field wash over her, accepting input from nine different sources at once. Good thing the adrenaline boost was kicking in, or she could never cope. Cell 32-A reported a strange fluctua- tion. “Jagger, we might have a problem.” He turned to her, his eyes asking for more information. “There’s some sort of resonating instability in the return wave after we changed the quantum state.” “Varz, that could be really serious. A resonating change could tear apart space-time. I’ve got to–” “Relax, it’s not that major. It’s localized. A single point in the continuum. No big deal. Nothing that will affect the space-time arena. Very localized. A small thing.” He shrugged. “A very small matter, really.” Jagger eased back in the chair. “Oh, well, that’s probably all right.” Varz nodded, and deactivated cell 32-A. “Yeah, you’re right. Even with all we’ve got here, we can’t main- tain every quantum wave exactly.” “Right. We’re not gods,” Jagger said with a shrug.

—30— A graduate of the Clarion West writer’s workshop, Monte has published a humorous book of nonfiction, The Skeptic’s Guide to Conspiracies, and two novels, The Glass Prison and Of Aged Angels. He has also published the short stories “Born in Secrets” (in the magazine Amazing Stories), “The Rose Window” (in the anthology Realms of Mystery), and “A Narrowed Gaze” (in the anthology Realms of the Arcane). His stories have appeared in the Malhavoc Press anthologies Children of the Rune and The Dragons’ Return, and his comic book writing can be found in the Ptolus: City by the Spire series from Marvel and Zombie Tales #6 from Boom! Studios. His fantasy fiction series, “Saga of the Blade,” appeared in Game Trade Magazine from 2005–2006.

20 Review: Ship Breaker Review by Josh Roseman Book by Paolo Bacigalupi Which side will you be on when the world ends? Will you be one of the haves, an employee (or, better still, owner) of one of the ten big companies that controls everything? Will you live in relative luxury, with good food and affordable health care, safe from the weather and the rising ocean? Or will you be like Nailer, the main character of Paolo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker, who crawls through the passageways of long-dead ships, pulling old copper wire to fill his team’s quota so they get to eat for another day? Ever since the success of Bacigalupi’s Windup Girl, I’ve been meaning to read both it and Ship Breaker. It turns out I finished the latter almost a year to the day since it was released. I’m not sure how it justifies the young adult tag it’s given — it’s brutal, bloody, violent, and depressing, and while I do think it’s a good book, it makes me wonder about what exactly comprises YA fiction these days. In Ship Breaker, Nailer Lopez leads a very difficult life. About twelve years of age, his job is to collect wire from old oil tankers and other beached vessels in the southeastern United States. He’s on a team of similarly-aged individuals, under the command of the pragmatically-ruthless Bapi. The team collects wire for one of the few big companies that controls commerce worldwide. What’s worse, this is one of the best options for Nailer, who knows that once he’s too big to crawl through he old ships, he’ll have to work heavy crew (for which he’s too small) or do something even worse. In addition to all of that, Nailer also has to deal with his father, the vicious drug-abusing pit fighter Richard Lopez. Perhaps that’s where the YA part comes from — despite everything Richard has done to Nailer, Nailer still apparently loves him. Or, at the very least, respects him for being his father, as well as for being able to beat the hell out of him. After a large storm, a clipper ship — Nailer’s dream is to work on one of these large, clean vessels, sail- ing the oceans — is beached and Nailer and Pima (a member of his crew) go out to scavenge it before everyone else gets there and takes the good stuff. They find a survivor — and in true YA fashion, she is the daughter of someone important — and Nailer must choose whether to kill her now or save her in hopes of a bigger payday. While the book hits all the YA tropes — rich daughter, rough main character, bad parent, hero’s journey, double-cross, big showdown at the end — where it really excels is in worldbuilding and characterization. Even the minor characters are well-rounded, from the dispassionate murderess Blue Eyes to the dog-men who work for Captain Candless. When someone is injured, the reader really feels his or her pain; when one is successful, such as when Nailer escapes death by drowning in oil, the reader joins in the jubilation. And the world itself, a semi-near future where the oceans have risen and hurricanes can be Category Six, is compelling. Not a lot of it is shown because, to Nailer, it doesn’t really matter. There’s his beach, and there’s the Orleans, and there are some mentions of Houston and a melted Pole. That’s about it. But still we know that now-destroyed coastal cities are called “Orleans” — the newest of which is somewhere in Mississippi — and we know that corporations have pretty much free reign to do what they want. We know that the Chinese yuan (I don’t think it’s mentioned by name, so I’ll call it that) is the premier method of currency, and we know that genetic engineering has taken place to create dog-men who are devoutly loyal to their patrons. In reading Ship Breaker, it’s plain to see why so many people are high on Bacigalupi’s writing. However, I didn’t adore this book in the way that I did the Terry Pratchett YA novels, or Harry Potter. It felt a little to me 21 like the YA tropes were shoehorned into a story the author wanted to tell. Had the story been aimed at a more adult audience, or been of a wider scope, I probably would’ve enjoyed it more, but as a YA novel it just didn’t have the kind of oomph I was expecting given the accolades it’s received. There was too much “easy” stuff for me (as a writer and avid reader) to recognize, such as clear signposts which say “THIS IS IMPORTANT AND IT WILL COME BACK IN THE CLIMAX OF THE NOVEL, SO PAY ATTENTION”. That doesn’t take away from how good I think the book is — which is to say, “yes, it was a good book”. I defi- nitely would read more adventures with these characters, and Windup Girl remains on my list. If you like dystopian futures where corporations smash the downtrodden, who in turn smash each other, then this is a good book for you. If you enjoy contemporary-style YA dystopian fiction, you’ll like it. There’s no steampunk, no supernatural, almost no high technology, but what there is is so vivid that you’ll be drawn in even if you don’t care for the subgenre. It’s worth a read. Note to Parents: This novel contains graphic violence and adult situations, though no sexual ones. I would recommend it for older teens, and younger ones who are mature enough to play MA-rated video games such as Call of Duty. Of course, you should use your own discretion when it comes to your children.

—30— Josh Roseman (not the trombonist, the other one) is a writer and web developer. His fiction has appeared in Big Pulp, and on the Dunesteef and the Drabblecast. He also has a decade of news and feature writing experience. Visit his website at roseplusman.com, or find him on twitter @listener42.

22 EP294: The Night Train By Lavie Tidhar Her name wasn’t Molly and she didn’t wear shades, reflective or otherwise. She was watching the length of the platform. Hua Lamphong at dusk: a warm wind blowing through the open platforms where the giant beasts puffed smoke and steam into the humid air, the roof of the train station arching high overhead. Her name wasn’t Noi, either, in case you asked, though it’s a common enough name. It wasn’t Porn, or Ping. It wasn’t even Friday. She was watching the platform, scanning passengers climbing aboard, porters shifting wares, uniformed police patrolling at leisure. She was there to watch out for the Old Man. She wasn’t even a girl. Not exactly. And as for why the Old Man was called the Old Man . . . He was otherwise known as Boss Gui: head and bigfala bos of the Kunming Toads. She got the job when she’d killed Gui’s Toad bodyguards—by default, as it were. But that had happened back in Kunming. This was Bangkok, Bangkok at dusk—this was Hua Lamphong, greatest of train stations, where the great slugs breathed steam and were rubbed and scrubbed by the slug- boys whose job it was to nurture them before departure. And the Old Man wasn’t exactly an old man, either. Scanning, waiting for the Old Man to arrive: Yankee tourists with in-built cams flashing as they posed besides the great beasts, these neo-nagas of reconstituted DNA, primitive nervous system, and prodigious appetite. Scanning: a group of Martian-Chinese from Tong Yun City walking cautiously—unused to the heavier gravity of this home/planet. Scanning: three Malay businessmen—Earth-Belt Corp. standardized reinforced skeletons—they moved gracefully, like dancers—wired through and through, hooked up twen- ty-four Earth-hours an Earth-day, seven Earth-days a week to the money-form engines, the great pulsating web of commerce and data, that singing, Sol-system-wide, von Neumann-machine expanded network of networks of networks. . . . Wired with hidden weaponry, too: she made a note of that. An assassin can take many shapes. It could be the sweet old lady carrying two perfectly balanced baskets of woven bamboo over her shoulders, each basket filled with sweet addictive fried Vietnamese bananas. It could be the dapper K-pop starlet with her entourage, ostensibly here to rough it a bit for the hovering cameras. It could be the couple of French backpackers—he with long thinning silver hair and a cigarette between his lips, she with a new face courtesy of Soi Cowboy’s front-and-back street cosmetic surgeries— baby-doll face, but the hands never lie and the hands showed her true age, in the lines etched there, the drying of the skin, the quick-bitten nails polished a cheap red— An assassin could be anyone. A Yankee rich kid on a retro-trip across Asia, reading Air America or Neuro- mancer in a genuine reproduction 1984 POD-paperback; it could be the courteous policeman helping a pretty young Lao girl with her luggage; it could be the girl herself—an Issan farmer’s daughter exported to Bangkok in a century-long tradition, body augmented with vibratory vaginal inserts, perfect audio/visual- to-export, always-on record, a carefully tended Louis Wu habit and an as-carefully-tended retirement plan—make enough money, get back home to Issan wan bigfala mama, open up a bar/hotel/bookshop and spend your days on the Mekong, waxing lyrical about the good old days, listening to Thai pop and K-pop and Nuevo Kwasa-Kwasa, growing misty-eyed nostalgic. . . .

23 Could be anyone. She waited for the Old Man to arrive. The trains in Hua Lamphong never left on time. Her name before, or after, doesn’t matter. They used to call her Mulan Rouge, which was a silly name, but the farangsloved it. Mulan Rouge, when she was still working Soi Cowboy, on the stage, on her knees or hands-and-knees, but seldom on her back—earning the money for the operation that would rescue her from that boy’s body and make her what she truly was, which was kathoey. They call it the third sex, in Thailand. But she always considered herself, simply, a woman. ### She ran a perimeter check. Up front, she was awed as always by the slug. It was tied up to the front of the train, a beast fifty meters long and thirty wide. It glistened and farted as the slug-boys murmured soothing words to it and rubbed its flesh, thirty or forty of them swarming like flies over the corpulent flesh of the slug. She checked out the driver—the woman was short, dark-skinned—a highlander from Laos, maybe. The driver sat in her harness high above the beast, her helmet entirely covering her head—the only thing she wore. Pipes came out of her flesh and into the slug’s. They were one—her mind driving the beast for- ward, a peaceful run, the Bangkok to Nong Khai night ride, and she was the night rider. She was the train. There were stories about joined minds liked this in the Up There. Up There, beyond the atmosphere, where the universe truly began. Where the Exodus ships lumbered slowly out of the solar system, in search of bet- ter futures far away. They said there were ships driven by minds, human/Other interfaces, holding sleepers inside them like wombs. They told stories of ships who had gone mad, of sleepers destined never to awake, slow silent ships drifting forever in galactic space . . . or, worse, ships where the sleepers were awakened, where the ship-mind became a dark god, demanding worship. . . . Mulan didn’t know who they were, or how they knew. These were stories, and stories were a currency in and of itself. Darwin’s Choice used to tell her stories. . . . ### She met him/her flesh-riding an older kathoey body, at a club on Soi Cowboy. Darwin’s Choice—not the most imaginative name (he told her, laughing)—but he liked it. He had watched her dance and, later, signalled for her to join him. She thought of him as a he, though Others had no sex, and most had little interest in flesh-riding. He had evolved in the Breeding Grounds, post-Cohen, billions of generations after that first evolutionary cycle in Jerusalem, and she only thought of him as him because the bodies he surfed always had a penis. He used to hold the penis in his hand and marvel at it. He always chose pre-op bodies, with breasts but no female genitalia. He always dressed as a woman. Surgery was expensive, and a lot of kathoey worked it off in stages. Taking on a passenger helped pay the bills—it wasn’t just a matter of cutting off cock-and-balls and refashioning sex, there was the matter of cheekbones to sand down and an Adam’s apple to reduce, bum to pad—if you really had the money you got new hands. The hands usually gave it away—that is, if you wanted to pass for a woman. Which many kathoey didn’t. Darwin’s Choice always surfed older kathoey who never had the basic equip- ment removed. “I am neither male, nor female,” he once told her. “I am not even an I, as such. No more than a human—a network of billions of neurons firing together—is truly an I. In assuming kathoey, I feel closer to humanity, in many ways. I feel—divided, and yet whole.” Like most of what he said, it didn’t make a lot of sense to her. He was one of the few Others who tried to understand humanity. Most Others existed within their networks, using rudimentary robots when they needed to interact with the physical world. But Darwin’s Choice liked to body-surf. With him, she earned enough for the full body package. And more than that. 24 Through him, she discovered in herself a taste for controlled violence. Boss Gui finally came gliding down the platform—fat-boy Gui, the Old Man, olfala bigfala bos in the pidgin of the asteroids. His Toads surrounded him—human/toad hybrids with Qi-engines running through them: able to inflate themselves at will, to jump higher and farther, to kill with the hiss of a poisoned, forked tongue—people moved away from them like water from a hot skillet. Boss Gui came and stood before her. “Well?” he demanded. He looked old. Wrinkles covered his hands and face like scars. He looked tired, and cranky—which was understandable, under the circumstances. She had recommended delaying the trip. The Old Man had refused to listen. And that was that. She said, “I cannot identify an obvious perp—” He smiled in satisfaction— “But that is not to say there isn’t one.” “I am Boss Gui!” he said. Toad-like, he inflated as he spoke. “Who dares try to kill me?” “I did,” she said, and he chuckled—and deflated, just a little. “But you didn’t, my little sparrow.” They had reached an understanding, the two of them. She didn’t kill him—having to return the client’s fee had been a bitch—and he, in turn, gave her a job. It had security attached—a pension plan, full medical, housing, and salary, calculated against inflation. There were even stock options. She had never regretted her decision—until now. “It’s still too dangerous,” she said now. “You’re too close—” “Silence!” he regarded her through rheumy eyes. “I am Boss Gui, boss of the Kunming Toads!” “We are a long way from Kunming.” His eyes narrowed. “I am seventy-nine years old and still alive. How old are you?” “You know how old,” she said, and he laughed. “Sensitive about your age,” he said. “How like a woman.” He hawked up phlegm and spat on the ground. It hissed, burning a small, localised hole in the concrete. She shrugged. “Your cabin is ready,” she said; then: “Sir.” He nodded. “Very good,” he said. “Tell the driver we are ready to depart.” A taste for controlled violence . . . Darwin’s Choice used his human hosts hard. He strove to understand humanity. For that purpose he visited ping-pong shows, kickboxing exhibits, Louis Wu emporiums, freak shows, the Bangkok Opera House, shopping malls, temples, churches, mosques, synagogues, slums, high-rises, and train stations. “Life,” he once told her, “is a train station.” She didn’t know what to make of that. What she did know: to understand humanity he tried what they did. His discarded bodies were left with heroin addiction, genital sores, hangovers, and custom-made viruses that were supposed to self-destruct but sometimes didn’t. Sometimes, either to apologise or for his own incomprehensible reasons, he would go into the cosmetic surgeries on Soi Cowboy and come out with a full physical sex-transfer—seemingly unaware that his hosts might have preferred to remain non-op. Sometimes he would wire them up in strange ways—for a month, at one point, he became a tentacle- junkie and would return from the clinics with a quivering mass of additional, aquatic limbs. 25 But it was his taste for danger—even while he experienced none, even while his true self kept running independently in the background, in a secure location somewhere on Earth or in orbit—that awakened her own. The first time she killed a man . . . They had gone looking for opium and found an ambush. The leader said, “Kill the flesh-rider and keep the kathoey. We’ll sell her in—” She had acted instinctively. She didn’t know what she was doing until it was done. Her knife— The blade flashing in the neon light— A scream, cut short—a gurgle— Blood ruined her second-best blouse— The sound of something breaking—the pain only came later. They had smashed in her nose— Darwin’s Choice watching— She killed the second one with her bare hands, thumbs pressing on his windpipe until he stopped strug- gling— She laid him down on the ground almost tenderly— Pain, making her scream, but her lungs wouldn’t work— They hit her with a taser, but somehow she didn’t pass out— She fell, but forward—hugging the man with the taser, sharing the current until there was only darkness. ### “You were clinically dead,” he told her, later. He sounded impressed. “What was it like?” “Like nothing,” she told him. “There was nothing there.” “You were switched off?” She had to laugh. “You could say that.” They made love the night she was released from hospital. She licked his nipples, slowly, and felt him harden in her hand. She stroked him, burying her face in his full breasts. He reached down, touched her, and it was like electricity. She kept thinking of the dead men. . . . When she came, he said, “You would do it again—” It wasn’t a question. ### She was tuning in to people’s nodes, picking up network traffic to and from—the Malay business guys were high-encryption/high-bandwidth clouds, impossible to hack through, but here and there— Kid with vintage paperback was on a suitably retro playlist with a random shuffle—she caught the Doors singing “The End,” which was replaced with Thaitanium’s “Tom Yum Samurai” only to segue into Drunken Tiger’s “Great Rebirth.” Issan-girl was plugged in—a humming battery was sending a low current into her brain. She would be out for the journey. . . . The K-pop princess was playing Guilds of Ashkelon. So were her entourage. The French backpackers were stoned on one thing or another. Others were chatting, stretching, reading, farting, tidying away bags and ordering drinks—life on board the night train to Nong Khai was always the same.

26 The train was coming alive, the slug belching steam—the whole train shuddered as it began to crawl along the smooth tracks, slug-boys falling off it like fleas. Tuning, scanning—someone two cars down watching the feed from a reality-porn channel, naked bodies woven together like a tapestry, a beach somewhere—Koh Samui or an off-Earth habitat, it was impossible to say. Boss Gui: “I’m hungry!” Mulan Rouge: “Food’s coming—” in the dining car they were getting ready, a wok already going, rice cooker steaming, crates of beer waiting— “I want kimchi!” “I’ll see if they have any—” though she knew they didn’t. “No need.” A long, slow, drawn-out hum from one of the Toads. “I keep for boss.” Limited vocabulary—you didn’t breed Toads for their brains. She watched the toad reach into what the Australians called an esky. There was a jar of kimchi in there, and . . . other stuff. Like a jar of living flies, for the Toads. Like what appeared to be a foetal sac, preserved in dry ice. . . . Other things. She left them to it, returned to watching—waiting. ### “You would do it again,” Darwin’s Choice had said. And he—she—it—was right. Mulan had liked it—a sense of overwhelming power came with violence, and if it could be controlled, it could be used. Power depended on how you used it. She counted the proceeding years in augmentations and bodies. Three in Vientiane—she had followed Darwin’s Choice there to buy up a stash of primitive communist VR art—the deal went wrong and she had to execute two men and a woman before they got away. She’d had snake eyes installed after that. A man and a kathoey in Chiang Mai—DC was buying a genuine Guilds of Ashkelon virtual artefact that had turned out to be a fake. She’d had her skeleton strengthened following that. . . . With each kill, new parts of her. With each, more power—but never over him. Gradually, Darwin’s Choice appeared less and less in the flesh. She had to cast around for work, hiring out as bodyguard, enforcer—hired killer, sometimes, only sometimes. Finally DC never reappeared. He had tried to explain it to her, once: “We are I-loops but, unlike humans, we are self-aware I-loops. Not self-aware in the sense of conscious- ness, or what humans call consciousness. Self-aware in the sense that we are—we can—know every loop, every routine and subroutine. Digital, not neurological. And as we are aware so do we change, mutating code, merging code, sharing. . . .” “Is that how you make love?” “Love is a physical thing,” he said. “It’s hormone-driven.” “You can only feel love when you’re body-surfing?” He only shrugged. “How do you . . .” she searched for the word, settled on—”mate?”

27 Imagine two or more Others. Endless lines of code meeting in digital space—ifs and ands and ors branch- ing into probabilities, cycling through endless branches of logic at close to the speed of light— “Is that what you’re like?” “No. Shh . . .” . . . and meeting, merging, mixing, mutating—”And dying; to be an Other is to die, again and again, to evolve with every cycle, to cull and select and grow, achieve new, unexpected forms—” . . . not so much mating as joining, and splitting, and joining again—”A bit like that old story about hu- mans replacing every single atom in their bodies every seven years—how the body wears out and regener- ates and changes but the entity still retains the illusion of person, remains an I-loop—” . . . but for Others, it meant becoming something new—”Giving birth to one’s self, in essence.” The body he was surfing had been stoned, then, when he told her all this. When he was gone, she hired out. She enjoyed the work, but freelancing was hard. When the contract on Boss Gui came, she took it— and upgraded to corporate. “We are never alone,” DC had told her, just before he left forever. “There are always . . . us. So many of us . . .” “Can’t you all join?” she asked. “Join into one?” “Too much code slows you down,” he said. “We have . . . limits. Though we share, too—share the way humans can’t.” “We can share in ways you can’t,” she said. Her finger dug into his anus when she spoke. DC squirmed under her, then gave a small moan. His breasts were freckled, his penis circumcised. “True,” he said— whispered—and drew her to him with an urgency they were sharing only rarely, by then. That had been the last time. . . . She wondered which species’ sharing was better—figured she would never know. They said sex was overrated. . . . ### Yankee boy blue was no longer listening to the Doors—she couldn’t sense his node any more at all. She blinked, feeling panic rise. How had he slipped past her? Scanning for him—his vintage sci-fi paperback was still on his bunk. Shit. She glanced back into the cabin—Boss Gui glared up at her, then clutched his bloated stomach and gave a groan. The two Toads jumped—too hard, and hit the ceiling. Double shit—she said, “What’s wrong?” but knew. He said, “It’s starting.” She shook her head. “It can’t. It’s too soon.” “It’s time.” “Shit!”—a third time, and it was counterproductive and she knew it. Boss Gui’s face was twisted in pain. “It’s coming!” And suddenly she picked up the North American’s node.

28 “Sh—” ### They were going to Nong Khai, from there to cross into Laos. Boss Gui wanted to expand the business, and business was booming in a place called Vang Vieng, a tawdry little mini-Macau at the foothills of the mountains, four hours from Vientiane—a place of carefully regulated lawlessness, of cheap opium and cheaper synths, of games-worlds cowboys and body hackers, of tentacle-junkies and doll emporiums and government taxes that Boss Gui wanted a part of. A large part of. There were families running Vang Vieng but he was the Old Man, olfala bigfala bos blong ol man tod blong Kunming, and the Chinese had anyway bought up most of Laos back in the early privatisation days. He would cut deals with some, terminate the others, and slice himself a piece of the Vang Vieng dumpling— that was the plan. She had advised him against it. She told him it was too soon to travel. She asked him to wait. He wouldn’t. She sort of had an inkling as to the why. . . . ### She was picking up the kid’s node right next to the driver’s. Which was not good at all. The driver’s, first: an incomprehensible jumble of emotion, in turns horny, soothing, driven, paused—the driver and the slug as one, their minds pulsating in union—hunger and lust made it go faster. Snatches of Beethoven—for some reason it calmed down the slugs. The driver not aware of the extra passenger—yet. The kid wasn’t really a kid. . . . His node blocked to her—black impenetrable walls, an emptiness not even returning pings. He was alone in his own head—which must have been terrifying. She had to get to the front of the train. She had to get on the slug. And Boss Gui was convulsing. “Why are you just standing there, girl?” She tried to keep her voice even. “I found the assassin. He is planning to kill the slug—destroy the entire train, and you with it.” Boss Gui took that calmly. “Clever,” he said, then grimaced. His naked belly glistened, a dark shape mov- ing beneath the membrane of skin. The Toads looked helpless, standing there. She flashed them a grin. “I’ll be right back,” she said. Then she left, hearing Boss Gui’s howl of rage behind her. ### Running down the length of the train—through the dining car, past toilets already beginning to smell, past farang backpackers and Lao families and Thais returning to Udon from the capital—past babies and back- packs and bemused conductors in too-tight trousers that showed their butts off to advantage—warm wind came in through the open windows and she blocked out the public nodes broadcasting news in Thai and Belt Pidgin. The end of the train was a dead end, a smooth wall with no windows. She kicked it—again and again, augmented muscles expending too much energy, but it began to break, rusting old metal giving way, and fading sunlight seeped through. How had the kid gotten through? He must have had gecko-hands—climbed out the window and crawled his way along the side of the train, below the window line, all the way to the slug. . . . 29 She reached out—sensed the driver’s confusion as another entity somehow wormed its way into the two- way mahout/slug interface. Stop! Confusion from the slug. The signals rushing through, too fast—horny/hungry/faster—faster! He was going to crash the train. The driver: Who is this? You can’t— She kept kicking. The wall gave way—behind it was the slug’s wide back, the driver sitting cross-legged on the beast, the intruder behind it, a hand on the driver’s shoulder—the hand grew roots that penetrated the woman and the beast both. Hostile mahout interface initiated. The driver was fighting it, and losing badly. No one hijacked slug trains. On her private channel—Boss Gui, screaming. “Get back here!” “Get your own fucking midwife!” But she could sense his pain, confusion. How many times had he gone through it in the past? she won- dered. The hijacker had kept the driver alive. Had to—the whole thing had to look like an accident, the driver’s body found in the wreckage, unmolested—no doubt he planned to jump before impact. Could he? She crept behind him. Neither hijacker nor driver paid her any attention. And what could she do? Killing the hijacker would kill the interface—he was already in too deep. Unless . . . From Boss Gui, far away—”Hurry!” Sometimes she wondered what would have happened if Darwin’s Choice had stayed behind. It was pos- sible for kathoey to give birth, these days . . . could an Other foster a child? Would he want to? Or he could have flesh-ridden a host . . . she would have kept the male parts just for that. If he’d asked her. But he never did. The hijacker must have had an emergency eject. She had to find the trigger for it— Wind was rushing at her, too fast. It was hard to maintain balance on the soft spongy flesh of the slug. It was accelerating—too fast. She was behind the hijacker now—she reached out, put her hand on the back of his head. A black box . . . She punched through with a data-spike while her other hand— ### Darkness. The smell of rotting leaves. The smell of bodies in motion, sweat—hunger, a terrible hunger— “Who the fuck are you? How did you get in here?” Panic was good. She sent through images—her standing behind him, the data-spike in his head—and what else she was doing. “You can’t do that. . . .” She had pushed a second data-spike through his clothes and through the sphincter muscle, into the bow- els themselves—detached a highly illegal replicator probe inside. She felt the slug slow down, just a fraction. The hijacker trying to understand— 30 She said, “I am being nice.” She was. He had a choice. The probe inside him was already working. It was the equivalent of graffiti artists at work. It replicated a message, over every cell, every blood vessel, every muscle and tendon. It would be impossible to scrub— you’d need to reach a good clinic and by then it’d be too late. The message said, I killed the slug train to Nong Khai. It was marking him. He wasn’t harmed. She couldn’t risk killing him, killing the interface. But this way, whether he got off the train or not, he was a dead man. “I’ll count to five.” He let go at three. ### Light, blinding her. The wind rushed past—the driver sat as motionless as ever, but the train had slowed down. The hijacker was gone—she followed him back through the hole in the wall. He was lying on his bunk, still reading his book. He wasn’t listening to music any more. Their eyes met. She grinned. He turned his gaze. She had given him a choice and she’d abide by it—but if the Toads hap- pened to find out, she didn’t rate his chances. . . . Well, the next stop was in an hour. She’d give him an extra half hour after that—a running start. She went back to the boss. ### “It’s coming!” Boss Gui said. She knelt beside him. His belly-sac was moving, writhing, the thing in- side trying to get out. She helped—a fingernail slicing through the membrane, gently. A sour smell—she reached in where it was sticky, gooey, warm—found two small arms, a belly—pulled. “You sorted out the problem?” “Keep breathing.” “Yes?” “Yes, of course I did! Now push!” Boss Gui pushed, breathing heavily. “I’m getting too old for this . . . ,” he said. Then he heaved, one final time, and the small body detached itself from him and came into her hands. She held it, staring at the tiny body, the bald head, the small penis, the five-fingered hands—a tiny Boss Gui, not yet fat but just as wrinkled. It was hooked up with a cord to its progenitor. With the same flick of a nail, she cut it cleanly. The baby cried. She rocked it, said, “There, there.” “Drink,” Boss Gui said—weakly. One of the Toads came forward. Boss Gui fastened lips on the man/toad’s flesh and sucked—a vampire feasting. He had Toad genes—so did the baby, who burped and suddenly ballooned in her hands before shrinking again. “A true Gui!” the Old Man said. She stared at the little creature in her hands. . . . “Which makes how many, now?” she said.

31 The boss shrugged, pushing the Toad away, buttoning up his own shirt. “Five, six? Not many.” “You would install him at Vang Vieng?” “An assurance of my goodwill—and an assurance of Gui control there, too, naturally. Yes. An heir is only useful when he is put to use.” She thought of Darwin’s Choice. “Evolution is everything,” he would have told her. “We evolve constantly, with every cycle. Whereas you . . .” She stared at the baby clone. It burped happily and closed its little eyes. Gui’s way was not unpopular with the more powerful families . . . but sooner or later someone would come to challenge succession and then it wouldn’t matter how many Guis there were. Suddenly she missed DC, badly. She rocked the baby to sleep, hugging it close to her chest. The train’s thoughts came filtering through in the distance—comfort, and warmth, food and safety—the slow rhythmic motion was soothing. After a while, when the baby was asleep, she handed him to the Old Man, no words exchanged, and went to the dining car in search of a cup of tea.

—30— Lavie Tidhar grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and has lived variously in South Africa, the UK, Asia and the remote island-nation of Vanuatu in the South Pacific. Lavie’s first novel, The Bookman, was published in January 2010 by by HarperCollins’ new Angry Robot imprint (now an imprint of Osprey Publishing) in the UK, and in September 2010 in the US. It has since sold in translation to Germany and Israel. Lavie’s second novel, Camera Obscura, will be out in both the UK and US in April 2011. Two more novels, Osama and Martian Sands, will be published during 2011 from smaller publishers.

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