by John Shirley
They hired two fast enta'tallies from the village near the woods, and rode the tall, galloping two-legged beasts toward the starcraft—tallies, the mounts were called, for short, with a profile like three-yard-tall human beings but with flattish, reptilian heads, triple-jointed arms ending in pincers, and enormous, leathery legs. From a good distance a tallie rider looked like a child riding piggy-backed on a human adult.
They rode the tallies across the fields, toward the windbreak of poplars and brush that here divided the Gollden estate from the Grelle.
Jann didn’t much like riding tallies: the saddles held one almost vertically in line with the animal’s spine, yet you felt you might at any time fall off backwards, and the ride was bone-jarring, rump-rawing.
Vonn a Vleet, however, was a great tallie rider, and much preferred them to the sky-herds—he made himself ride the behemoths, now and then, “because a man should conquer his fears”, and he showed no outward sign of terror when he did it, doubling with Jann. But Jann had seen Vonn’s white knuckles on the behemoth lines, his quiet relief on returning to the yielding soil of Paradine.
Now they leapt over fences and irrigation ditches, zig zagged between hay ricks and herds of stock, startling sheep into bounding away. They came to a dirt road that wended beside Glimcrack Creek, and followed it south till they were within sight of the windbreak.
Vonn signaled with his hand, in the mute gestures the S’Leorna used when hunting.
We will approach under cover. We will observe without being seen.
Why? Jann wondered. There were laws—the Kastillians might be getting away with bending them, but they would submit when confronted. They had to, really. Jann was, after all, a DemiLord, one of the fifteen most powerful men on this planet. They would have been instructed to show at least a modicum of respect to the local hierarchy. And they would not want to pay a fine to the Terran Authority for recklessness.
But again Jann deferred to Vonn and reined his tallie to a trot. They approached the starcraft slowly and indirectly.
Jann felt an almost perverse relief on seeing that the ship was still there. He could make out the mercuric gleam of its triple hemispheres between the tall green poplars; the breeze brought him a few murmurs from the ship’s crew, or perhaps passengers, and the oily smell of landing fuel.
Vonn signaled to dismount and they tied the beasts to a wiry shrub near a patch of green grass.
Vonn a Vleet took the lead, half crouched as he eased up to the windbreak of trees and scrub. In an open field just fifty yards on the other side of the brush-lined fence was a group of Kastillian soldiers, most of them listening to an officer reading from a wordboard, maybe giving out sentry and maintenance assignments; they were all male, in the patriarchal tradition of the Kastillians, most of them in chin-to-toe deep-blue EKCW uniforms— the acronym standing for Enforcement of Kastillian Collective Will. Kaswills, in the vernacular.
LCD letters marched along their epaulets and armbands, indicating their rank and medals. Most of them were armed with stropps; some carried microwave pulsers. Looming over them was the triple-rounded silvery bulk of the spacecraft, big as a Lapis Mall, its windows sealed. It was shaped something like a legless insect landed on its belly, with head, thorax and tail-section connected by complex tubes. Along a ramp up into a circular hatch in the “thorax” a couple of Kaswill Lowers herded three tallies, using electronlashes. The stolen tallies, raising their heads to give out their eerie wails of distress, were probably from the pastures of Gollden Manor.
Crouching beside Vonn and peering through the brush, Jann tensed with outrage. “Do you see? It’s said they like the taste of roast tallie. They’ve stolen at least three for their dining table! First they kill my behemoth and now they steal the Gollden’s stock!”
“Keep your voice down, boy,” Vonn hissed. “Yes they’ve killed your animal, they’ve stolen a few beasts—but ‘do not pursue the Stinger back to its Hive’.”
“Old sayings won't save our stock from these thieves,” Jann grumbled softly. Their conversation continued in whispers. “I don’t understand why we’re hiding. There is a treaty, the law is with us—and I am a DemiLord. I say we identify ourselves, Vonn, immediately. We demand the animals back-- and demand their landing papers. It’s likely they have no permissions whatever. If we emanate Kreitos, as you taught me, they'll respect our authority!”
“They just might be immune to our emanations of Kreitos,” said Vonn ruefully. “And of course they have no landing papers—not when they land in secret. But do you think they’ll let a couple of local bumpkins order them about? That's what they'll think, DemiLord or not. They’ll laugh in our faces—they may do worse. There are rumors of offworlders taking slaves on Paradine...”
“What? The Kastillians use slaves onboard ship, it’s said—but no one from Paradine could have been taken! We're protected by treaty! We have allies!”
Vonn shrugged. “I don’t know that it was the Kastillians. But then--why are they here?”
“Let's demand an explanation. We have the force of the treaty--we have the Terran League...”
“The Kastillians know full well that the Terran League will fight for us reluctantly, if at all. The balance of power between Earth and Kastillia is chancy, Jann.” Vonn turned him a narrow eyed look. “You didn’t read the System Histories I gave you?”
Jann looked at the Kaswills: Lower, Intermediate, Advanced and Higher orders, each order with its various sub-ranks, now spreading out to their various tasks around the starcraft. “I don’t think this is the time for a scholar’s examination.”
“This situation is the examination, boy—” He seemed to be counting the sentries, tracking their movements about the clearing.
“What do you think we should do, then?” Jann asked.
“Nothing. We will report this...”
Jann had a sickly feeling of disappointment in his mentor. Had the legendary warrior surrendered to the cowardice and cynicism of old age? "That will do no good. We need to confront them—find out what they're up to!"
Vonn shrugged, still watching the sentries around the starcraft. “They could claim anything. They could be up to anything. Security is an illusion. There is none.”
“You’re not hearing me, Vonn!”
“I tell you for the last time, keep your voice down, you fool!” Vann hissed. "I have reasons to avoid a confrontation. More than I have time to explain."
Jann suddenly felt like striking the older man—instead, he looked angrily away. The Kastillians were still at their enigmatic tasks, seeming unaware they were being watched.
Vonn glanced back as one of the tallies snorted and pulled free of its stake, shuffling toward forage. “That badly trained beast is going to wander into their line of sight and call attention to us.”
“The Kastillians may do a personnel scan at any moment,” Jann pointed out. “They will pick up our body signatures. We seem like skulkers behaving this way. We should present ourselves to them—once they know I’m a DemiLord...”
“No—I'll tell you what we'll do, boy—” He leaned nearer so that Jann could catch his whisper. “They're doing some repair work on the ship. They'll be here for awhile. I'll ride to the Free Ranchers, see how many armed men I can shame into coming—Probably won't need them but it's good to show strength. You go to the Manor, use the communicator to contact the Peacekeeper Station. Report an illegal landing, stolen livestock, the killing of your behemoth. Request a Peacekeeping Force. By midnight we'll have it resolved, one way or the other. We will demand reparations. Now just go—I'll meet you at the Manor.”
“But—they could commit any number of crimes in that time!"
“They’re putting up perimeter posts like they're planning to stay the night—so they're probably not getting ready for an expedition. Now go! Ride to the Manor, to the communicator! Quick, before they deploy their Personnel Scanners!”
Jann almost defied him. He was on the point of insisting on a meeting with the starcraft’s captain. Vonn would have to yield to insistence, if he was to remain in the service of Grelle Manor.
But a long habit of deferring to Vonn held Jann back. And at last he turned furiously away and stalked back to his tallie.
Moments later the two riders were thumping off in separate directions, Vonn a Vleet to the Free Ranches, Jann toward Grelle Manor...
Vonn had called him a fool. That grated.
And what about Liana—and Gollden manor? Those were the Gollden's tallies the Kastillians had taken. If he confronted these Kastillian raiders over it, demanded reparations, what could they do? He was a Paradine DemiLord—and if he got reparations, immediately, even got the tallies back before they were slaughtered, it might help him get the Baron's permission to marry Liana.
How would Liana a Gollden regard him if he stood by and allowed outworlders to raid her father’s tallie herd? Already she seemed distant from him.
And by the time Vonn got some kind of back-up for a confrontation with the Kastillians, the ship might have departed—Vonn was only guessing about the Kastillian plans to stay overnight. But if they were faced down now, they’d know that they were being watched, that steps were being taken.
Jann reined in his mount and turned to look back at the Kastillian ship. The three silvery arcs seemed once more to embody a great opportunity. Hadn't Vonn taught him to seize opportunities? He would not get too close to the Kastillians—just close enough to shout his demands. Once he had identified himself as a DemiLord they would surely not molest him. If they refused to respect his demands, he could ride away to the Manor—they were on foot except for the starcraft, and they would surely not rouse that great monstrous ship just to pursue him in anger. He could easily get away on the tallie if he needed to.
He found himself riding at first slowly, then more and more rapidly back toward the Kastillian spacecraft. As he approached a gap in a windbreak, he was aware of a certain inner alarum of fear and dismay. But he dismissed the feeling as a childish fear of the unknown, and spoke the command that made the tallie leap the fence, so that he came down squarely in view of the Kastillians.
A Kastillian shout of warning went up immediately, quickly followed by a muted siren that was half buzzer and half warble, and a dozen hostile faces turned to him from various quarters, in the shadow of the spacecraft, which now loomed above him like a great anomalous building.
Jann felt an impulse to turn and ride away but he quelled the panic and trotted his tallie a few steps closer to the nearest Kastillian officer. He reined in and ordered it into “Address Posture”-- a half turn and squat, leaning forward-- so that he could face the officer squarely, and not too far above him. Shouldn't be this close, he thought. But it was too late to back away—he'd look weak.
When the Kastillians saw that he was alone, and unarmed but for a crossbow, some of them laughed and babbled dismissively in their language. His comprehension of Kastillian dialect was weak and he understood only phrases here and there.
“...some farmer’s son...how ridiculous those beasts they ride...”
“...look he rides like a child playing at rumpity-back...”
Inwardly furious at their disrespect, his statement to the Kastillians in “System Wide”, was harsher than he had intended: “I am Jann a Grelle, DemiLord of Grelle Manor and a protector of Gollden Manor! I must first protest that you killed an elder behemoth of my skyherd, with wanton and proscribed weapons-fire in violation of treaty! I demand to see both your landing permissions and ownership papers for the beasts I saw driven into the ship but minutes ago!”
His own voice sounded cracked and reedy in his ears, and he felt his face burn when the Kaswills laughed at his demand.
The officer Jann had confronted was a tall, broad-shouldered, red-faced man with his eyebrows grown together. His wide mouth twisted into an amused sneer as he responded in System Wide. “Back home on Kastillia we have a way of dealing with children who make demands on their elders! We find the electronlash gets an improved response—except when it induces them to wet their diapers!”
Now all the Spacers laughed in one great roar, and Jann was forced to reach deep within for the stoic self-control Vonn had tried to teach him. “I spoke formally, and definitely, but I do not intend disrespect. You men landed here illegally—and you're bound under the Seventeenth Agreement to address my demands.”
As he spoke, three armed sentries hurried up to stand behind the officer; Jann was distantly aware that others were moving behind the tallie. Would they attack a DemiLord of Paradine?
Click Here for Part 5 of SKY PIRATES,
by John Shirley
FRIDAY, JULY 10: Johnny Strike's NIGHT FLAMERS
Be sure to tune in tomorrow morning when the FoFaSF hosts a short piece of post-Interzone flash fiction from Johnny Strike, author of the short story collection A Loud Humming Sound Came From Above and the novel Ports Of Hell, recommended by William S. Burroughs. Johnny Strike also happens to be one of the lead founders (guitar/vocals) of the 70s underground proto-punk band CRIME. NIGHT FLAMERS is sort of like the "title piece" from Johnny's short story collection.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
SKY PIRATES:Part 3
by John Shirley
The A'taranda’s long tail, a powerful ribbon of flesh and leather ending in a barb, lifted and vibrated back and forth, holes in the tail making a shrieking sound with the motion: a sign it was about to charge. The shriek and whipping of the tail was intended to paralyze its quarry with terror and confusion. A hunter not ready for an A’taranda’s rush was good as dead—its attack ended in a rampage of slashing talons. The tongue would retract, to be replaced with the sharp piercing tube stabbing stiffly from its long, tapered maw. The talons would tear, and then the forelimbs would hold the man down so the feeding tube would penetrate his body; the tongue would whip out through the tube to lap up the man’s wet inner parts. No one was known to have survived its rush once struck down. The only way to kill the thing was to aim your weapon true before the rush. To do this a man must surprise the A’taranda, which Vonn had been poised to do, till Jann blundered onto the scene.
Jann had just time to lick his lips and prepare to die—before Vonn jumped up, shouting, “Here, beast! To me!”
The A’taranda hadn’t seen Vonn –for it tended to discount the motionless--and now it recoiled in surprise, turning to set itself to charge him, even as Vonn fired the crossbow, the bolt flying to bury itself in the creature’s neck, just below its’ head. Vonn cursed—he had aimed for the skull, where a properly placed bolt would have killed it instantly. Now –as the vines overhead twitched and slithered like snakes in typical Paradinian reactivity--he must take an even greater risk.
He drew the scimitar from its sheath across his back, the drawing motion becoming a downward stroke as he rushed the A’taranda, severing the slashing, taloned forearm so that the A’taranda spurted inky fluid from its neck and the stump of its forearm. The predator shrieked with its vibrating tail and recoiled another step, searching for an angle of attack. Its piercing tube darted out—but Vonn had anticipated this and twisted himself to the right, so that the tube only burned the skin of his left hip, ripping his hunter’s leggings; in the same moment he angled his blade up and drove it deep into the upper thorax of the beast, piercing its primary heart.
The A’taranda jerked hissingly back, becoming an S-shape, so that four of its stubby limbs waved frantically in the air, the motion twisting the blade from Vonn’s grasp. But it was dying now, falling on its side to thrash wildly, turning the mosses inky-purple with its lifeblood.
Vonn waited till the thrashing eased, then stepped in, pulled his blade free, and saluted the beast. “A’senka Karosand A’taranda!” he said, as hunters who’d trained with the mountain primitives always did, after a kill of this kind.
He still had his back to Jann, but, going down on one knee to clean his blade on the moss, he shouted, “Get you over here, Jann, and pull this ravenous mollusk from my back! Three minutes and more it has gnawed at me!”
Jann shook himself from his almost paralytic fascination, and hurried to Vonn, bringing out his pocketknife.
Vonn leaned over the boulder, hands flat on the stone as he spoke. “I felt the nasty thing drop on the back of my neck from the boulder the instant I heard the A’taranda coming…"
Jann shook his head in silent wonder. The spiderlike bloodsucker did not dig deeply into its host, but its gnashing was excruciating to endure.
Jann lifted the cloth, winced at the sight of the thing clinging bloodily to his teacher’s living flesh, between his shoulder blades. It made a puddle of blood there and extended a little black tongue which lapped doglike at the blood.
He dug under its mandibles with the knife, prying it loose, then flicked it onto a stone.
Vonn strode to it, ruefully crushed the parasite under his boot-heel. “You can put some wound-closer on me, I can’t quite reach the spot. Now tell me why you have interfered with my hunt, blundering in here with all the rackety noise you made?”
Jann swallowed his exasperation. Vonn didn’t give him the respect he craved—but then, he knew that he had not yet earned it. “There’s a starcraft landed without permission by the border with the Golldens. I saw them there myself, from the air. And Vonn--they killed one of my behemoths!”
“Did they! And did they see you?”
“I don’t know—I suppose they thought they were taking a pot-shot at a wild one. But I got the herd out of there, as quick as I could—I was afraid they’d shoot Aleshna out of the sky before they saw me there...”
“So they are poaching—for sport, since there’s nothing much left of an exploded Behemoth.” Vonn scowled. He hated the pointless killing of animals. He'd have spared the A'taranda had it not come so close to the manor. “A starcraft. Who do you think it was?”
“It looked Kastillian to me. They ignore the treaty when they choose. I wanted your...your counsel.”
Theoretically, Jann’s mother was in charge of the Manor, while her brother Denmo was away. But the bibulous Denmo was always away, drinking wine and smoking Groak in the reeking dream-dens of Lapis, Paradine’s only major city, two hundred miles northwest. And Sena spent her days with her weaving, and in charity rounds to the outlying villages; she had lost the heart to run the manor, soon after her husband’s death, and it fell to her son and to Vonn a Vleet. Most specifically, to Vonn. Technically he worked for Jann, but Jann usually deferred to Vonn.
“A starcraft,” Vonn repeated musingly, scratching in his thatchy gray hair—when he bothered to cut it he did the job himself with sheep sheers. He dug a small bottle of wound-closer from his belt pouch and tossed it to Jann. “I’ve been half expecting them. The Peacekeepers would have so informed you, if they’d known they were on your land. Therefore the Kastillians landed under the umbrella of a sensor-damper. Which suggests they are up to thievery.”
Jann applied the wound-closer. “The gigglin' skreff can't break our laws with impunity. We can demand their papers and see that the ship's captain is fined...”
“Yes—but with some preparation,” Vonn said, straightening and putting his shirt back on. “Come on...”
They jogged down the wooded path together, toward the village, silent for long minutes. Jann knew that despite the medicine, Vonn would be in pain from the bite, but he showed no sign of it. After a few minutes, Vonn said, “Remember—if it is the Kastillians, they have weapons we don't have. We must deal with this quietly, unless they force our hand. Could be they mean us no harm—but we've got to take care not to provoke them.”
Jann growled to himself. “They’ve killed one of my skyherd elders! Why did we let them bully us into the SlowTech Agreement? Some of us have stashes of energy weapons, computers—there are the black markets, secret Tech Clubs. The SlowTech can't last—people are groaning under it, Vonn! If we had more energy weapons, enough Stropps, flyers for aerial attack, we wouldn’t have to creep around like frightened children...”
“And then we’d have a whole Kastillian fleet to deal with.” Vonn shook his head. He turned to look at Jann sadly. “You have always hungered for more technology; all your generation shares the hunger. History has shown what an excess of technology does to a society. The Kastillians do us an unintentional favor by keeping our technology in check—they think it keeps us from being a military threat, but in fact it makes us stronger...with the strength that matters. It's the inner capabilities that matter in a man-- not his reliance on crutches!”
They both glanced to their left at a sudden motion there—but it was only an Oosh tree, revolving in place. No one had yet figured out why the bright-yellow, globular Oosh tree occasionally revolved in the socket at the top of its roots, nor even how, though botanists sometimes came from Lapis to puzzle over it.
“We've let them push us too far in the low-tech direction,” Jann said bitterly, looking back to the trail. “Even computers are proscribed—one to a township! It's outrageous! Technology is freedom, Vonn.”
“Transcending desire is freedom,” Vonn a Vleet said. “Inner freedom is all that matters.”
Jann grunted, and shook his head. It maddened him how Vonn could be so right, and so wrong-- at the same time.
Click Here for Part 4 of SKY PIRATES,
by John Shirley
The A'taranda’s long tail, a powerful ribbon of flesh and leather ending in a barb, lifted and vibrated back and forth, holes in the tail making a shrieking sound with the motion: a sign it was about to charge. The shriek and whipping of the tail was intended to paralyze its quarry with terror and confusion. A hunter not ready for an A’taranda’s rush was good as dead—its attack ended in a rampage of slashing talons. The tongue would retract, to be replaced with the sharp piercing tube stabbing stiffly from its long, tapered maw. The talons would tear, and then the forelimbs would hold the man down so the feeding tube would penetrate his body; the tongue would whip out through the tube to lap up the man’s wet inner parts. No one was known to have survived its rush once struck down. The only way to kill the thing was to aim your weapon true before the rush. To do this a man must surprise the A’taranda, which Vonn had been poised to do, till Jann blundered onto the scene.
Jann had just time to lick his lips and prepare to die—before Vonn jumped up, shouting, “Here, beast! To me!”
The A’taranda hadn’t seen Vonn –for it tended to discount the motionless--and now it recoiled in surprise, turning to set itself to charge him, even as Vonn fired the crossbow, the bolt flying to bury itself in the creature’s neck, just below its’ head. Vonn cursed—he had aimed for the skull, where a properly placed bolt would have killed it instantly. Now –as the vines overhead twitched and slithered like snakes in typical Paradinian reactivity--he must take an even greater risk.
He drew the scimitar from its sheath across his back, the drawing motion becoming a downward stroke as he rushed the A’taranda, severing the slashing, taloned forearm so that the A’taranda spurted inky fluid from its neck and the stump of its forearm. The predator shrieked with its vibrating tail and recoiled another step, searching for an angle of attack. Its piercing tube darted out—but Vonn had anticipated this and twisted himself to the right, so that the tube only burned the skin of his left hip, ripping his hunter’s leggings; in the same moment he angled his blade up and drove it deep into the upper thorax of the beast, piercing its primary heart.
The A’taranda jerked hissingly back, becoming an S-shape, so that four of its stubby limbs waved frantically in the air, the motion twisting the blade from Vonn’s grasp. But it was dying now, falling on its side to thrash wildly, turning the mosses inky-purple with its lifeblood.
Vonn waited till the thrashing eased, then stepped in, pulled his blade free, and saluted the beast. “A’senka Karosand A’taranda!” he said, as hunters who’d trained with the mountain primitives always did, after a kill of this kind.
He still had his back to Jann, but, going down on one knee to clean his blade on the moss, he shouted, “Get you over here, Jann, and pull this ravenous mollusk from my back! Three minutes and more it has gnawed at me!”
Jann shook himself from his almost paralytic fascination, and hurried to Vonn, bringing out his pocketknife.
Vonn leaned over the boulder, hands flat on the stone as he spoke. “I felt the nasty thing drop on the back of my neck from the boulder the instant I heard the A’taranda coming…"
Jann shook his head in silent wonder. The spiderlike bloodsucker did not dig deeply into its host, but its gnashing was excruciating to endure.
Jann lifted the cloth, winced at the sight of the thing clinging bloodily to his teacher’s living flesh, between his shoulder blades. It made a puddle of blood there and extended a little black tongue which lapped doglike at the blood.
He dug under its mandibles with the knife, prying it loose, then flicked it onto a stone.
Vonn strode to it, ruefully crushed the parasite under his boot-heel. “You can put some wound-closer on me, I can’t quite reach the spot. Now tell me why you have interfered with my hunt, blundering in here with all the rackety noise you made?”
Jann swallowed his exasperation. Vonn didn’t give him the respect he craved—but then, he knew that he had not yet earned it. “There’s a starcraft landed without permission by the border with the Golldens. I saw them there myself, from the air. And Vonn--they killed one of my behemoths!”
“Did they! And did they see you?”
“I don’t know—I suppose they thought they were taking a pot-shot at a wild one. But I got the herd out of there, as quick as I could—I was afraid they’d shoot Aleshna out of the sky before they saw me there...”
“So they are poaching—for sport, since there’s nothing much left of an exploded Behemoth.” Vonn scowled. He hated the pointless killing of animals. He'd have spared the A'taranda had it not come so close to the manor. “A starcraft. Who do you think it was?”
“It looked Kastillian to me. They ignore the treaty when they choose. I wanted your...your counsel.”
Theoretically, Jann’s mother was in charge of the Manor, while her brother Denmo was away. But the bibulous Denmo was always away, drinking wine and smoking Groak in the reeking dream-dens of Lapis, Paradine’s only major city, two hundred miles northwest. And Sena spent her days with her weaving, and in charity rounds to the outlying villages; she had lost the heart to run the manor, soon after her husband’s death, and it fell to her son and to Vonn a Vleet. Most specifically, to Vonn. Technically he worked for Jann, but Jann usually deferred to Vonn.
“A starcraft,” Vonn repeated musingly, scratching in his thatchy gray hair—when he bothered to cut it he did the job himself with sheep sheers. He dug a small bottle of wound-closer from his belt pouch and tossed it to Jann. “I’ve been half expecting them. The Peacekeepers would have so informed you, if they’d known they were on your land. Therefore the Kastillians landed under the umbrella of a sensor-damper. Which suggests they are up to thievery.”
Jann applied the wound-closer. “The gigglin' skreff can't break our laws with impunity. We can demand their papers and see that the ship's captain is fined...”
“Yes—but with some preparation,” Vonn said, straightening and putting his shirt back on. “Come on...”
They jogged down the wooded path together, toward the village, silent for long minutes. Jann knew that despite the medicine, Vonn would be in pain from the bite, but he showed no sign of it. After a few minutes, Vonn said, “Remember—if it is the Kastillians, they have weapons we don't have. We must deal with this quietly, unless they force our hand. Could be they mean us no harm—but we've got to take care not to provoke them.”
Jann growled to himself. “They’ve killed one of my skyherd elders! Why did we let them bully us into the SlowTech Agreement? Some of us have stashes of energy weapons, computers—there are the black markets, secret Tech Clubs. The SlowTech can't last—people are groaning under it, Vonn! If we had more energy weapons, enough Stropps, flyers for aerial attack, we wouldn’t have to creep around like frightened children...”
“And then we’d have a whole Kastillian fleet to deal with.” Vonn shook his head. He turned to look at Jann sadly. “You have always hungered for more technology; all your generation shares the hunger. History has shown what an excess of technology does to a society. The Kastillians do us an unintentional favor by keeping our technology in check—they think it keeps us from being a military threat, but in fact it makes us stronger...with the strength that matters. It's the inner capabilities that matter in a man-- not his reliance on crutches!”
They both glanced to their left at a sudden motion there—but it was only an Oosh tree, revolving in place. No one had yet figured out why the bright-yellow, globular Oosh tree occasionally revolved in the socket at the top of its roots, nor even how, though botanists sometimes came from Lapis to puzzle over it.
“We've let them push us too far in the low-tech direction,” Jann said bitterly, looking back to the trail. “Even computers are proscribed—one to a township! It's outrageous! Technology is freedom, Vonn.”
“Transcending desire is freedom,” Vonn a Vleet said. “Inner freedom is all that matters.”
Jann grunted, and shook his head. It maddened him how Vonn could be so right, and so wrong-- at the same time.
Click Here for Part 4 of SKY PIRATES,
by John Shirley
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
SKY PIRATES:Part 2
by John Shirley
The sky herd returned by a more direct route to the manor’s cultivated grounds, where Jann a Grelle hoped to find Vonn a Vleet. Jann’s pulse raced, and he felt as if the herd now rode within the shadow of his behemoth: sliding dark and without substance over the low rolling hills.
They came to an aerial island of beige and rust-colored gas-pods, the skylands floating over the craggy outcroppings of the Granite Expression. The behemoths liked to feed on the skylands, as well as on the tops of Oosh trees, and Jann had to speak sharply to keep the herd on course. He gazed at the skylands as they passed, wondering if he could survive being riderless on one of them. More than once a man had fallen from his behemoth to clutch onto the floating plants; and more than one had survived there till searchers found him, clinging, spread eagled. You couldn’t walk across the living island in the sky without slipping, falling through. The island was free-floating at this season, its anchoring filaments having cyclically parted, and now it sailed, rocking slowly, out toward the warm freshwater sea to the west.
Jann left the skylands behind, passed over the haphazard, mauve fields of the creeper bulb plantations, the carnivorous plants blindly stretching their purple suckers ten and twenty yards above them as they sensed his passage, tracing his course, yearning after him. Without thinking about it, he murmured the semi-ritualistic doggerel all Plainsmen spoke on passing by creeper-bulbs:
Know me for eater, while eaten know true:
If the eaten t’aint me, then it must be you
Harvesters of the sausagelike creeper-bulbs were well paid for their expertise; it took training to avoid being killed and eaten by the plants they were harvesting.
The skyherd soared over pasturage where sheep and cattle from Earth grazed; over vineyards, the grapes brought from Earth but spliced with native dream-berry; over the twisty brown course of the River Swenn a Grelle, named after Jann’s great grandfather, and marking the Eastern boundaries of Grelle Grounds. He could see the sprawling three-story gables and crenellations of Grelle Manor rising amongst poplars and patchy lawns. The little chapel to the Great Organizer—on some planets called the Evolutionary Spirit, or Galactic Spirit—was almost in the shadow of the manor’s trees. An unpretentious structure, but it was an undemanding religion, almost an afterthought. The outlying Plainsmen and Free Ranchers preferred a kind of pantheistic stoicism, and the educated Plainsmen like Vonn were fascinated with ancient Earth culture, and prone to quote Marcus Aurelius.
Jann and Aleshna drifted above shady walkways linking pocket gardens, and thin streams flowing to the river. Each reed-fringed creek was nocked by ornate Conjugal Bridges, the bridges built by generations of Paradine Plainsmen seeking to impress their lady loves. Marrying Bridges they were called, less formally. Many a romantic union was founded or foundered on the glory or mediocrity of a Marrying Bridge. There was a Plainsman saying: “Better to build great deeds for her, than a poor Marrying Bridge.”
The bridges made Jann think again of Liana a Gollden. If he managed to wrest her from Dalick a Jimson, they would one day ritually meet on opposite sides of one of these very streams between Gollden and Grelle land, there to shout their vows across the stream; there to wade toward one another, to embrace in the water while –or so Jann hoped it would be—supporters from the Grelle and Gollden manors cheered. After the meeting in the stream, he would build her the bridge, with his own hands.
All such must wait. The outworlders had killed an elder of his skyherd. And though on Grelle land, the invasive spacecraft was but a short distance from Gollden territory—was closer to Gollden manor than to Grelle—and the Baron would have to be informed.
Jann grimaced at the prospect. The Baron’s disdain was so all encompassing it seemed everything Jann did or said earned him only the Baron’s contempt.
At least he would have a good pretext to see Liana again. Their one tryst of intimacy, carried out in a stack of fragrant zurena-flowers after first harvest, had been like a drunkenness, a dance that went from stately to pantingly mad; but now that he reflected on it, she had seemed to hold back on the verge of truly giving her heart to him—she'd surrendered physically, yes, and with enthusiasm. But she'd seemed to tease him emotionally.
It seemed to Jann that if he handled this emergency well—if emergency it proved to be—why, the Baron could not refuse him if he were to declare for Liana. Of course, they could marry whether the Baron approved or no, but Liana was loathe to declare vows in the face of his disapproval.
Jann tilted Aleshna so that he could see the Ivory Fields, where Vonn a Vleet had early that morning been cultivating Sensitive Trees, for their exquisite wood—lumber given up freely, branch by branch, if they were properly gentled.
Far below he made out a group of five workers huddled together, and he thought he knew what they were up to. Though he doubted Vonn was with them, Jann commanded Aleshna to descend.
The behemoth sent out a gust of musky hydrogen-rich steam from its side-vents, reducing its lift, and they spiraled down, till they bobbed but a yard above the ground just outside the cultivated copse of Sensitive Trees. Far overhead, the rest of the herd moved off to the East, to feed on gas-pods in the skylands, though still droning mournfully for their lost elder.
Jann ordered Aleshna to wait. He took his slippers from his waist band, put them on, and unhooked himself to slide off the behemoth’s side to land on his feet in the grass. The tree cultivators—the Gentlers, they were called—had seen him come down and were now all industriously working away, just as if they’d been working right along and not sucking in Groak-smoke moments before. A thin blue wisp still hung reekingly over the attenuated, twisted-ivory shapes of the leafless trees. Some of the trees sensed Jann’s irritation and worry as he approached, and twisted about to a greater angularity in reaction, like sculptures that redesigned themselves, creaking as they moved.
Jann approached Mandeska a Blunn, the stout, red faced foreman in the black and gold cover-alls of Grelle Manor.
“Mandeska!” Jann snapped.
The chubby foreman turned a look of grave innocence to Jann’s approach.
“Yes, sirra?”
“I am not going to cuff you for smoking Groak when you should be working,” Jann growled. “I’ll let Vonn catch you at that and he’ll have you picking purple-creepers with your toes.”
Vonn, of course, would do nothing of the sort, since Mandeska would lose not only his toes, but at least his feet too, if he tried that; it was but an old Plainsman expression.
“Oh well,” Mandeska said, shrugging hugely, his eyes still dilated from Groak, “someone—” He glanced around at the other Gentlers as if to spy out who the stony slacker might’ve been. “—oh ay someone may have blown a pipeful about, but—”
“There are intruders on the land,” Jann interrupted impatiently. “Offworlders. Have you heard anything of it? Was there a landing permission issued while I was out?”
“I heard nothing of it!” Mandeska said, in an entirely different tone. “Suffering and death! Who is it?” Gone was the affectation of a bad boy playing innocent—now he was the middleclass Grelle householder, a profit-sharer with forty years work invested, outraged at this intrusion on land to which he felt an authentic connection. For the Grelle Manor Gentlers and Harvesters were not mere employees, as they were in some Manors—indeed, at some they were scarcely better than serfs. Here, each had four acres of his own and shared in the profits of the Manor, as well as receiving a salary.
Jann grunted. “Kastillian, looked like. The wretches killed one of my old flyers, too. Shot it out of the sky for a lark."
"The giggling skreff!" Skreff were a particularly idiotic race of monkeylike creatures dwelling near the south pole. Giggling skreff was one of the harsher Paradinian insults. "The other manors should hear of this!"
"I'd better consult Vonn before I spread the word. Well? Where is he?”
Mandeska scratched his head. “Vonn? Oh...let me see...Ah yes. The A’taranda!”
“Which A’taranda is that?”
“One of the beasts has been assailing the outlying cottages. He heard of it this morning, and went to hunt the slinker down, so did Vonn.”
“And where is Vonn hunting this beast?”
“The Viney Woods, near the southern edge.”
“Really. And as usual I suppose he took no communicator.”
“Not that I’m aware of. There is little enough Terraknowledgy we’re allowed, but even that he disdains.”
“And I’ve none on me either, and now I regret it. Go to the house, and warn them there are intruders to the southeast, and I am off to find Vonn...”
“I will, sir,” said Mandeska, bowing.
Jann sought for Vonn a Vleet in the likeliest place for hunting A’taranda, the northern reach of the Viney Woods, near the village of Harvesters’ bungalows. He wondered if he should go to the Golldens first, and the A’Slenns, and to Grall e Drimi Manor, and warn them about the starcraft. But his friends from those manors were away to college in Lapis—Jann had shrugged college off, deciding that instruction from Vonn was all he needed. The other manormen might well regard him as a troublesome alarmist. Leave the Kastillians alone and they'll leave us alone, they'd probably say. But Vonn had taught him to mistrust Kastillians—especially Kastillians who landed without permission. And these had killed one of his behemoths.
The trees here were a mix of imports from Old Earth—oak and sugar maple and the occasional eucalyptus—and the sky-dimming Paradinian vines. So well named was the Viney Woods that it had as much horizontal line about it as vertical, the stretchy vines in their leaping season snapping like rubber bands from one tree to another, to make a natural roof of crisscrossed vines between trees; in the dim, light-squeezed space underneath the vines and tree foliage, fungi grew in fantastic shapes of vivid orange and dull green, and mosses clung to tree trunks like plush green fur. The still, moist air here was both musty and sweet.
Jann let his intuition guide him and, following a nameless cue, he walked along the shady central trail.
He was only twenty minutes into the woods before he found Vonn on the edge of a clearing partly roofed by vines. Lean, gray-haired, bristle-browed, in close-fitting hunter green, Vonn crouched beside a boulder yellow with lichen, his crossbow in his hands, his scimitar strapped across his back, gazing past slanting columns of mellow sunlight shafting through the viney gaps; he seemed statue-still as he watched a shadow-black, almost cavelike opening between thick, over arching stands of maple trees and fungi-choked underbrush.
On the edge of the clearing, Jann stood behind the hunter in something like awe, seeing how completely motionless Vonn was, how acutely attentive. All of his attention, all of his being was focused on waiting here for the A’taranda. He had one knee on the soft turf, the other leg cocked, ready to spring into action—yet somehow he seemed quite relaxed.
And Jann knew his mentor had been there for some time, in just that pose: for a spiral of dried blood ran down his sleeveless left arm, over the snaking tattoos given Vonn by the S’leorna primitives in the Stark Mountains—given to honor him for fighting beside them against the murderous canyon tribes in the Native Wars. Jann guessed the cause of that bleeding as he saw a freshet of blood pulse down.
Jann weighed calling out to Vonn, or waiting. There was a probably a large, blood-drinking spider digging into Vonn's upper back, yet he did not move. That suggested that the A’taranda must be near—with his prey close by, Vonn would remain motionless till he had the chance to strike, and the big blood sucking arachnids were painful biters. Only the presence of the A'taranda could keep Vonn from tearing the spider from him. It was a magnificent testimony to Vonn’s Kreitos, as the S’leorna called it—the self-control of High Soldiery. At the same time, the matter of the Kastillians was urgent.
Jann had just resolved to interrupt Vonn—when there came a stirring in the cavelike opening between the trees. There, a pale tongue whipped out into view, and snapped back. Then the A’taranda took a hesitant step into the clearing. Its long, narrow, striped snout sent the tongue questing out once more, and the cluster of eyes on its jutting scaly head twisted this way and that; they were more the eyes of an insect than the saurian the great predator resembled at first glance.
This was a big one, Jann saw, his blood drumming in his ears as the creature stalked into the clearing. Its ten multijointed legs worked with rippling precision, the talons on its retracted forearms clenched.
Jann took an automatic step backward—and the motion made the A'taranda swing its head toward him. The predator extended its forearms, talons restlessly clutching at the air as it caught sight of Jann. And it charged Jann—not Vonn.
The sky herd returned by a more direct route to the manor’s cultivated grounds, where Jann a Grelle hoped to find Vonn a Vleet. Jann’s pulse raced, and he felt as if the herd now rode within the shadow of his behemoth: sliding dark and without substance over the low rolling hills.
They came to an aerial island of beige and rust-colored gas-pods, the skylands floating over the craggy outcroppings of the Granite Expression. The behemoths liked to feed on the skylands, as well as on the tops of Oosh trees, and Jann had to speak sharply to keep the herd on course. He gazed at the skylands as they passed, wondering if he could survive being riderless on one of them. More than once a man had fallen from his behemoth to clutch onto the floating plants; and more than one had survived there till searchers found him, clinging, spread eagled. You couldn’t walk across the living island in the sky without slipping, falling through. The island was free-floating at this season, its anchoring filaments having cyclically parted, and now it sailed, rocking slowly, out toward the warm freshwater sea to the west.
Jann left the skylands behind, passed over the haphazard, mauve fields of the creeper bulb plantations, the carnivorous plants blindly stretching their purple suckers ten and twenty yards above them as they sensed his passage, tracing his course, yearning after him. Without thinking about it, he murmured the semi-ritualistic doggerel all Plainsmen spoke on passing by creeper-bulbs:
Know me for eater, while eaten know true:
If the eaten t’aint me, then it must be you
Harvesters of the sausagelike creeper-bulbs were well paid for their expertise; it took training to avoid being killed and eaten by the plants they were harvesting.
The skyherd soared over pasturage where sheep and cattle from Earth grazed; over vineyards, the grapes brought from Earth but spliced with native dream-berry; over the twisty brown course of the River Swenn a Grelle, named after Jann’s great grandfather, and marking the Eastern boundaries of Grelle Grounds. He could see the sprawling three-story gables and crenellations of Grelle Manor rising amongst poplars and patchy lawns. The little chapel to the Great Organizer—on some planets called the Evolutionary Spirit, or Galactic Spirit—was almost in the shadow of the manor’s trees. An unpretentious structure, but it was an undemanding religion, almost an afterthought. The outlying Plainsmen and Free Ranchers preferred a kind of pantheistic stoicism, and the educated Plainsmen like Vonn were fascinated with ancient Earth culture, and prone to quote Marcus Aurelius.
Jann and Aleshna drifted above shady walkways linking pocket gardens, and thin streams flowing to the river. Each reed-fringed creek was nocked by ornate Conjugal Bridges, the bridges built by generations of Paradine Plainsmen seeking to impress their lady loves. Marrying Bridges they were called, less formally. Many a romantic union was founded or foundered on the glory or mediocrity of a Marrying Bridge. There was a Plainsman saying: “Better to build great deeds for her, than a poor Marrying Bridge.”
The bridges made Jann think again of Liana a Gollden. If he managed to wrest her from Dalick a Jimson, they would one day ritually meet on opposite sides of one of these very streams between Gollden and Grelle land, there to shout their vows across the stream; there to wade toward one another, to embrace in the water while –or so Jann hoped it would be—supporters from the Grelle and Gollden manors cheered. After the meeting in the stream, he would build her the bridge, with his own hands.
All such must wait. The outworlders had killed an elder of his skyherd. And though on Grelle land, the invasive spacecraft was but a short distance from Gollden territory—was closer to Gollden manor than to Grelle—and the Baron would have to be informed.
Jann grimaced at the prospect. The Baron’s disdain was so all encompassing it seemed everything Jann did or said earned him only the Baron’s contempt.
At least he would have a good pretext to see Liana again. Their one tryst of intimacy, carried out in a stack of fragrant zurena-flowers after first harvest, had been like a drunkenness, a dance that went from stately to pantingly mad; but now that he reflected on it, she had seemed to hold back on the verge of truly giving her heart to him—she'd surrendered physically, yes, and with enthusiasm. But she'd seemed to tease him emotionally.
It seemed to Jann that if he handled this emergency well—if emergency it proved to be—why, the Baron could not refuse him if he were to declare for Liana. Of course, they could marry whether the Baron approved or no, but Liana was loathe to declare vows in the face of his disapproval.
Jann tilted Aleshna so that he could see the Ivory Fields, where Vonn a Vleet had early that morning been cultivating Sensitive Trees, for their exquisite wood—lumber given up freely, branch by branch, if they were properly gentled.
Far below he made out a group of five workers huddled together, and he thought he knew what they were up to. Though he doubted Vonn was with them, Jann commanded Aleshna to descend.
The behemoth sent out a gust of musky hydrogen-rich steam from its side-vents, reducing its lift, and they spiraled down, till they bobbed but a yard above the ground just outside the cultivated copse of Sensitive Trees. Far overhead, the rest of the herd moved off to the East, to feed on gas-pods in the skylands, though still droning mournfully for their lost elder.
Jann ordered Aleshna to wait. He took his slippers from his waist band, put them on, and unhooked himself to slide off the behemoth’s side to land on his feet in the grass. The tree cultivators—the Gentlers, they were called—had seen him come down and were now all industriously working away, just as if they’d been working right along and not sucking in Groak-smoke moments before. A thin blue wisp still hung reekingly over the attenuated, twisted-ivory shapes of the leafless trees. Some of the trees sensed Jann’s irritation and worry as he approached, and twisted about to a greater angularity in reaction, like sculptures that redesigned themselves, creaking as they moved.
Jann approached Mandeska a Blunn, the stout, red faced foreman in the black and gold cover-alls of Grelle Manor.
“Mandeska!” Jann snapped.
The chubby foreman turned a look of grave innocence to Jann’s approach.
“Yes, sirra?”
“I am not going to cuff you for smoking Groak when you should be working,” Jann growled. “I’ll let Vonn catch you at that and he’ll have you picking purple-creepers with your toes.”
Vonn, of course, would do nothing of the sort, since Mandeska would lose not only his toes, but at least his feet too, if he tried that; it was but an old Plainsman expression.
“Oh well,” Mandeska said, shrugging hugely, his eyes still dilated from Groak, “someone—” He glanced around at the other Gentlers as if to spy out who the stony slacker might’ve been. “—oh ay someone may have blown a pipeful about, but—”
“There are intruders on the land,” Jann interrupted impatiently. “Offworlders. Have you heard anything of it? Was there a landing permission issued while I was out?”
“I heard nothing of it!” Mandeska said, in an entirely different tone. “Suffering and death! Who is it?” Gone was the affectation of a bad boy playing innocent—now he was the middleclass Grelle householder, a profit-sharer with forty years work invested, outraged at this intrusion on land to which he felt an authentic connection. For the Grelle Manor Gentlers and Harvesters were not mere employees, as they were in some Manors—indeed, at some they were scarcely better than serfs. Here, each had four acres of his own and shared in the profits of the Manor, as well as receiving a salary.
Jann grunted. “Kastillian, looked like. The wretches killed one of my old flyers, too. Shot it out of the sky for a lark."
"The giggling skreff!" Skreff were a particularly idiotic race of monkeylike creatures dwelling near the south pole. Giggling skreff was one of the harsher Paradinian insults. "The other manors should hear of this!"
"I'd better consult Vonn before I spread the word. Well? Where is he?”
Mandeska scratched his head. “Vonn? Oh...let me see...Ah yes. The A’taranda!”
“Which A’taranda is that?”
“One of the beasts has been assailing the outlying cottages. He heard of it this morning, and went to hunt the slinker down, so did Vonn.”
“And where is Vonn hunting this beast?”
“The Viney Woods, near the southern edge.”
“Really. And as usual I suppose he took no communicator.”
“Not that I’m aware of. There is little enough Terraknowledgy we’re allowed, but even that he disdains.”
“And I’ve none on me either, and now I regret it. Go to the house, and warn them there are intruders to the southeast, and I am off to find Vonn...”
“I will, sir,” said Mandeska, bowing.
Jann sought for Vonn a Vleet in the likeliest place for hunting A’taranda, the northern reach of the Viney Woods, near the village of Harvesters’ bungalows. He wondered if he should go to the Golldens first, and the A’Slenns, and to Grall e Drimi Manor, and warn them about the starcraft. But his friends from those manors were away to college in Lapis—Jann had shrugged college off, deciding that instruction from Vonn was all he needed. The other manormen might well regard him as a troublesome alarmist. Leave the Kastillians alone and they'll leave us alone, they'd probably say. But Vonn had taught him to mistrust Kastillians—especially Kastillians who landed without permission. And these had killed one of his behemoths.
The trees here were a mix of imports from Old Earth—oak and sugar maple and the occasional eucalyptus—and the sky-dimming Paradinian vines. So well named was the Viney Woods that it had as much horizontal line about it as vertical, the stretchy vines in their leaping season snapping like rubber bands from one tree to another, to make a natural roof of crisscrossed vines between trees; in the dim, light-squeezed space underneath the vines and tree foliage, fungi grew in fantastic shapes of vivid orange and dull green, and mosses clung to tree trunks like plush green fur. The still, moist air here was both musty and sweet.
Jann let his intuition guide him and, following a nameless cue, he walked along the shady central trail.
He was only twenty minutes into the woods before he found Vonn on the edge of a clearing partly roofed by vines. Lean, gray-haired, bristle-browed, in close-fitting hunter green, Vonn crouched beside a boulder yellow with lichen, his crossbow in his hands, his scimitar strapped across his back, gazing past slanting columns of mellow sunlight shafting through the viney gaps; he seemed statue-still as he watched a shadow-black, almost cavelike opening between thick, over arching stands of maple trees and fungi-choked underbrush.
On the edge of the clearing, Jann stood behind the hunter in something like awe, seeing how completely motionless Vonn was, how acutely attentive. All of his attention, all of his being was focused on waiting here for the A’taranda. He had one knee on the soft turf, the other leg cocked, ready to spring into action—yet somehow he seemed quite relaxed.
And Jann knew his mentor had been there for some time, in just that pose: for a spiral of dried blood ran down his sleeveless left arm, over the snaking tattoos given Vonn by the S’leorna primitives in the Stark Mountains—given to honor him for fighting beside them against the murderous canyon tribes in the Native Wars. Jann guessed the cause of that bleeding as he saw a freshet of blood pulse down.
Jann weighed calling out to Vonn, or waiting. There was a probably a large, blood-drinking spider digging into Vonn's upper back, yet he did not move. That suggested that the A’taranda must be near—with his prey close by, Vonn would remain motionless till he had the chance to strike, and the big blood sucking arachnids were painful biters. Only the presence of the A'taranda could keep Vonn from tearing the spider from him. It was a magnificent testimony to Vonn’s Kreitos, as the S’leorna called it—the self-control of High Soldiery. At the same time, the matter of the Kastillians was urgent.
Jann had just resolved to interrupt Vonn—when there came a stirring in the cavelike opening between the trees. There, a pale tongue whipped out into view, and snapped back. Then the A’taranda took a hesitant step into the clearing. Its long, narrow, striped snout sent the tongue questing out once more, and the cluster of eyes on its jutting scaly head twisted this way and that; they were more the eyes of an insect than the saurian the great predator resembled at first glance.
This was a big one, Jann saw, his blood drumming in his ears as the creature stalked into the clearing. Its ten multijointed legs worked with rippling precision, the talons on its retracted forearms clenched.
Jann took an automatic step backward—and the motion made the A'taranda swing its head toward him. The predator extended its forearms, talons restlessly clutching at the air as it caught sight of Jann. And it charged Jann—not Vonn.
Monday, July 6, 2009
SKY PIRATES:Part 1
by John Shirley
Chapter the First: DemiLord of Paradine
Jann a Grelle soared over the plains of Paradine Prime. The great flying beast throbbed with life under his bare feet. He rode standing on Aleshna's back, braced against the clean, cool wind, streaks of cloud whipping moisture over his face, his bare shoulders. Should he lose his grip on the bridle-lines, a step to the right or left would send him sliding down the great blimp-like creature's side, to fall tumbling end over end to the land far below. A crosswind slapped at them and Jann had to hold hard to keep from falling, hands tightening on the lines, his toes digging instinctively into the fine piebald fur of his steed's hide; he grinned as his behemoth rumbled warningly.
"Easy, Aleshna!" Jann shouted to the behemoth. "I've got a good grip!" The behemoths had been known to swoop down and catch falling riders in mid-air, but it was a tricky maneuver and in the process of being caught a man's bones might be broken on his rescuer's thick hide.
But Jann exulted in flying—especially on this spring day on the planet Paradine; an exuberant, grass-fragrant day worthy of old Earth. The land far below, beyond the herd of behemoths Jann was leading, was stippled with pale purple amidst rippling fields of dark green clover set off by bristly copses of oak, their foliage the verdigris of old copper. The oak had long ago been brought like the clover, and many of the animals, from the home planet; but here and there were globes of bright yellow, the bubble-shaped foliage of the native Oosh tree, and magenta spikes of Paradinian tower cacti.
Lean of frame, black of hair and eye and not quite twenty-two years old, Jann made fine adjustments on the bridle-lines in his two hands. He could feel the air pressure changes reverberating through the soles of his feet; he sensed the muted ruminative rumblings of the creature’s call to its fellows in the herd flying below and a little behind them. His behemoth was twenty yards long, stubby-winged, beak-headed and amber-eyed. Jann felt its humming delight as he made tugged it to drive soaringly over the crystalline waters of the Great Blue Crater. The behemoth was indeed an it, the flying beasts having no particular sex, any of them capable of fertilizing any of the others; all able to bear young.
He leaned back as Aleshna drove down, digging in his heels, the beast's back wrinkling to give him a better foot-hold. He twisted the bridle lines toward one another so their microprogrammed fibers stiffened to hold him in place. The long lines, the harness just back of the behemoth's enormous beak, and Jann’s single anchoring sash, were twined of gold and black cords, the colors of Grelle Manor. The wind whipped his moth-silk tunic and trousers, rattling the cloth.
The primeval character of Paradine asserted itself whenever the sky-born herds of behemoths rippled the rolling hills with their shadows; when they shook leaves from the trees with their deep resonant calls, heard for fifty miles around.
Jann’s mother, Sena, did not approve: his father had died in a behemoth explosion, when lightning struck a badly designed bridle, and the hydrogen that kept the zeppelin-like creatures aloft ignited into a consuming ball of blue fire.
But Vonn a Vleet, Jann’s Instructor of Soldierly Arts, encouraged him to master the behemoths for that very reason: because riding them had killed his father. "If you turn away from the challenges of life, because of grief—because of a risk—you're left with its leavings!" he'd said.
Down they swooped toward the glittering waters of the crater…Closer, closer yet—and if he got too close, he knew, the behemoth, which disliked immersion, would whip very suddenly upward, the motion dislodging Jann from his place, possibly breaking his wrists. And a man with broken wrists could not hold on.
Closer…He felt the behemoth's skin contract warningly…
Jann hissed a command, twitching the bridle-lines and Aleshna pulled up, just skimming the waves of the Crater, so that spray chilled Jann's face. Rising, the behemoth sucked in a great breath of air, which drew it forward in something like a jet effect, but its greatest energy of upward motion came from its creation of more pure hydrogen gas, internally. It gleaned the hydrogen from the air it drew, and expelled the unused gases from vents on its side, furthering its propulsion. Glancing over his shoulder Jann thrilled to see that more than fifty behemoths were doing exactly as his lead flyer did, the gigantic herd behaving like an aerial school of gargantuan fish, turning as he turned, rising now, up and up till the air grew colder, through a gap in the clouds. The behemoth rose till the nimbostratus were arrayed below him in a vast cloudscape of spotless white.
A grumbling moan went through Aleshna, a warning to the herd that another behemoth, not a part of their extended family, flew challengingly near. Jann looked around, and his heart quickened when he saw it: a small “personal behemoth”, decorated with the red and blue streamers of Gollden Manor. The diminutive figure saddle-riding its back—most manor-ladies preferred a saddle—was Liana, the most marriageable daughter of Gollden Manor. She was small of stature but voluptuous; her long wavy golden hair streamed in the wind.
But Jann’s mother had a smoldering dislike for both Liana and Liana’s Father, Baron Dolliman Chesslander a Gollden. The Baron had always condescended to Jann, whose family estates were half the size of his own—and whose late father had criticized the Baron’s treatment of his harvesters.
Liana was just emerging from a cloud three hundred yards off—and he raised a hand to wave, grinning at her.
But had she not seen him? It seemed to him that she had pretended not to.
He decided she was playing a game—he was supposed to pursue. He laughed and shouted his command, and Aleshna set off in pursuit.
Liana seemed to have turned back, toward home. Jann followed, urging Aleshna to greater speed. The more powerful behemoth quickly overtook Liana, and he drew alongside, the stubby wingtips of their mounts just a yard apart. Liana wore a lady’s flying suit of buckskin, beaded in blue and red, tight-fitting and cut to expose her waist and cleavage. There was something particularly provocative about the thigh-length boots. He noticed that she carried a leather messenger bag on a strap over one shoulder. They were used for urgent contracts and letters of negotiation, when transmission was insecure.
“Hey-yo, Liana!” he shouted. “Slow down! Is there a ‘gagement I should know about?” Skyherders sometimes played a game in which behemoth riders captured trained birds in nets: each game was divided into four ‘gagements.
She slowed her behemoth, turning to him with an irritated flick of her tresses: a slightly-plump face with its almost comically large eyes and lips. She frowned, then seemed to remember herself and put on a teasing smile. “Jann! Dripping wet with clouds, you are!” The Golldens used the quaint Paradinian sentence constructions that Jann’s relatively progressive parents considered archaic; he had been taught a grammar more in line with the universal tongue of the settled galaxy, System Wide.
He felt a sadness he couldn’t identify, looking at her then, but he hunkered on the behemoth, to be more companionable, and said, “I wish you’d told me you were going riding! We could’ve gone together.” Then his eyes went again to the message bag dangling from her pale, plump shoulder. “But I guess you’re delivering a message for your father?”
“That is the truth of it,” she said—a particularly archaic construction. She didn’t seem happy that he’d noticed the bag.
“You look lovely,” he said, “though I wouldn’t think you were dressed for message carrying...”
Her cheeks reddened. She spoke with some asperity. “I had another mission too, you and I are not betrothed yet, and until we are, it is customary to date freely. Anything else is unwholesome.”
He had to speak sharply to Aleshna to keep the behemoth from crowding Liana’s mount; it was trying to snuggle close, a preliminary to mating. To Liana, with all the equanimity he could muster, he said, “I thought we had an understanding! If you'd encouraged me to ask your father—”
“He isn't receptive. Your Manor has not been productive, Jann—your mother gives away a third of your profits and more." She shook her head disdainfully. "You don’t drive your Harvesters; they smoke Groak and dream the day away...”
“That’s an exaggeration. Last year we did very well in creepers and wool and sensitive wood.”
“But you’re deeply in debt. I...My father is cognizant of that kind of financial willicumsery...”
He couldn't help laughing. “Does your family still use Old Paradine words like willicumsery? Far as I remember, the word means irresponsibility. Can you really say I’m irresponsible? Forget this tryst you have planned and let's talk about it, Liana!”
“That I cannot do—it would be...willicumseric! I’ll see you soon enough, Jann a Grelle!”
She snapped her bridle-lines and leaned right—the little behemoth looked at Aleshna with an unmistakable regret; groaning to itself, it rolled obediently away and down.
He watched Liana fly away from him, angling her behemoth down as if to go to some particular manor. What was in that direction? Jimson manor perhaps? The home of the conceited and wealthy Dalick Jimson? Dalick had long been mooning after Liana...
Why passively accept it, if that’s how things were going? Why not go after her?
He stood up, shouted a command. Aleshna veered downward, turned—and then he reined suddenly in.
He’d seen something disturbingly out of place gleaming on the grasses below. An attenuated blob of silver. Possibly a starcraft. He spiraled lower, letting Liana go. He had to know for sure.
Yes. A starcraft: landed where none had permission to be.
He commanded Aleshna to level off at three hundred yards, but the behemoth did not obey, wavering but still hesitatingly descending. The beast hadn't heard him clearly: Jann had instinctively lowered his command voice, for it seemed to him that the craft might be Kastillian.
A Kastillian craft was never a welcome sight. Paradine was independent from Earth for a century now—there was little help there in the event of trouble with the Kastillians. And little they could do to resist the Kastillians, if it came to that: Paradine had agreed to limit its technological growth because the decadent, mistrustful Kastillians, much closer to hand than old Earth, regarded any high tech as a forerunner to weaponry. With its tradition of preferring rugged frontier simplicity, Paradinians had for the most part shruggingly complied with the ban—especially outside Lapis. The city and the manors had electricity, solar power, remote phones, a few other technological conveniences—but energy weapons were few, and Paradinians had no interstellar attack craft.
Now Jann gave the command louder. With a steamy venting, Aleshna expelled hydrogen, and some oxygen, partly in the form of water vapor, the reduction of hydrogen causing it to lose some of its lift. The bridle-lines and the experienced grip of his toes kept him from slipping as he leaned to peer down at the starcraft. There were uniformed men moving about the spaceship’s companionway, and on the ground nearby. He caught the flash off a lens as one of them turned an oculator upward to take in the sky herd. They might not spot him—might well take the herd to be wild behemoths.
But if they thought that...
He heard the thud of a stropp—a hand-cannon, as some called it—and the shriek of a projectile. The herd was being fired on! Were they firing at him or taking pot shots at wild animals?
A scream of pain from the drag of the herd gave him his answer. He turned, saw that an elderly, slower behemoth had been hit by the stropp. Its lavender blood gouted and sparkled and it bucked in visible agony. Jann shouted his harshest command at Aleshna, and the herd, to flee for home. Aleshna turned north, but with a reluctance Jann could feel in his feet; it meant abandoning a herd elder.
A moment later the wounded behemoth exploded—becoming a living fireball—and the herd accelerated in fear.
Jann heard cheers and laughter faintly from the spacers below...
“They will pay for that, Aleshna,” he told the behemoth. It hooted skeptically, and moaned.
Flying back to the Manor, the herd moaned in consonance, the same four inhuman notes repeated again and again, a great rumbling funeral dirge that sent chills through everyone who heard it, even the Kastillians.
Chapter the First: DemiLord of Paradine
Jann a Grelle soared over the plains of Paradine Prime. The great flying beast throbbed with life under his bare feet. He rode standing on Aleshna's back, braced against the clean, cool wind, streaks of cloud whipping moisture over his face, his bare shoulders. Should he lose his grip on the bridle-lines, a step to the right or left would send him sliding down the great blimp-like creature's side, to fall tumbling end over end to the land far below. A crosswind slapped at them and Jann had to hold hard to keep from falling, hands tightening on the lines, his toes digging instinctively into the fine piebald fur of his steed's hide; he grinned as his behemoth rumbled warningly.
"Easy, Aleshna!" Jann shouted to the behemoth. "I've got a good grip!" The behemoths had been known to swoop down and catch falling riders in mid-air, but it was a tricky maneuver and in the process of being caught a man's bones might be broken on his rescuer's thick hide.
But Jann exulted in flying—especially on this spring day on the planet Paradine; an exuberant, grass-fragrant day worthy of old Earth. The land far below, beyond the herd of behemoths Jann was leading, was stippled with pale purple amidst rippling fields of dark green clover set off by bristly copses of oak, their foliage the verdigris of old copper. The oak had long ago been brought like the clover, and many of the animals, from the home planet; but here and there were globes of bright yellow, the bubble-shaped foliage of the native Oosh tree, and magenta spikes of Paradinian tower cacti.
Lean of frame, black of hair and eye and not quite twenty-two years old, Jann made fine adjustments on the bridle-lines in his two hands. He could feel the air pressure changes reverberating through the soles of his feet; he sensed the muted ruminative rumblings of the creature’s call to its fellows in the herd flying below and a little behind them. His behemoth was twenty yards long, stubby-winged, beak-headed and amber-eyed. Jann felt its humming delight as he made tugged it to drive soaringly over the crystalline waters of the Great Blue Crater. The behemoth was indeed an it, the flying beasts having no particular sex, any of them capable of fertilizing any of the others; all able to bear young.
He leaned back as Aleshna drove down, digging in his heels, the beast's back wrinkling to give him a better foot-hold. He twisted the bridle lines toward one another so their microprogrammed fibers stiffened to hold him in place. The long lines, the harness just back of the behemoth's enormous beak, and Jann’s single anchoring sash, were twined of gold and black cords, the colors of Grelle Manor. The wind whipped his moth-silk tunic and trousers, rattling the cloth.
The primeval character of Paradine asserted itself whenever the sky-born herds of behemoths rippled the rolling hills with their shadows; when they shook leaves from the trees with their deep resonant calls, heard for fifty miles around.
Jann’s mother, Sena, did not approve: his father had died in a behemoth explosion, when lightning struck a badly designed bridle, and the hydrogen that kept the zeppelin-like creatures aloft ignited into a consuming ball of blue fire.
But Vonn a Vleet, Jann’s Instructor of Soldierly Arts, encouraged him to master the behemoths for that very reason: because riding them had killed his father. "If you turn away from the challenges of life, because of grief—because of a risk—you're left with its leavings!" he'd said.
Down they swooped toward the glittering waters of the crater…Closer, closer yet—and if he got too close, he knew, the behemoth, which disliked immersion, would whip very suddenly upward, the motion dislodging Jann from his place, possibly breaking his wrists. And a man with broken wrists could not hold on.
Closer…He felt the behemoth's skin contract warningly…
Jann hissed a command, twitching the bridle-lines and Aleshna pulled up, just skimming the waves of the Crater, so that spray chilled Jann's face. Rising, the behemoth sucked in a great breath of air, which drew it forward in something like a jet effect, but its greatest energy of upward motion came from its creation of more pure hydrogen gas, internally. It gleaned the hydrogen from the air it drew, and expelled the unused gases from vents on its side, furthering its propulsion. Glancing over his shoulder Jann thrilled to see that more than fifty behemoths were doing exactly as his lead flyer did, the gigantic herd behaving like an aerial school of gargantuan fish, turning as he turned, rising now, up and up till the air grew colder, through a gap in the clouds. The behemoth rose till the nimbostratus were arrayed below him in a vast cloudscape of spotless white.
A grumbling moan went through Aleshna, a warning to the herd that another behemoth, not a part of their extended family, flew challengingly near. Jann looked around, and his heart quickened when he saw it: a small “personal behemoth”, decorated with the red and blue streamers of Gollden Manor. The diminutive figure saddle-riding its back—most manor-ladies preferred a saddle—was Liana, the most marriageable daughter of Gollden Manor. She was small of stature but voluptuous; her long wavy golden hair streamed in the wind.
But Jann’s mother had a smoldering dislike for both Liana and Liana’s Father, Baron Dolliman Chesslander a Gollden. The Baron had always condescended to Jann, whose family estates were half the size of his own—and whose late father had criticized the Baron’s treatment of his harvesters.
Liana was just emerging from a cloud three hundred yards off—and he raised a hand to wave, grinning at her.
But had she not seen him? It seemed to him that she had pretended not to.
He decided she was playing a game—he was supposed to pursue. He laughed and shouted his command, and Aleshna set off in pursuit.
Liana seemed to have turned back, toward home. Jann followed, urging Aleshna to greater speed. The more powerful behemoth quickly overtook Liana, and he drew alongside, the stubby wingtips of their mounts just a yard apart. Liana wore a lady’s flying suit of buckskin, beaded in blue and red, tight-fitting and cut to expose her waist and cleavage. There was something particularly provocative about the thigh-length boots. He noticed that she carried a leather messenger bag on a strap over one shoulder. They were used for urgent contracts and letters of negotiation, when transmission was insecure.
“Hey-yo, Liana!” he shouted. “Slow down! Is there a ‘gagement I should know about?” Skyherders sometimes played a game in which behemoth riders captured trained birds in nets: each game was divided into four ‘gagements.
She slowed her behemoth, turning to him with an irritated flick of her tresses: a slightly-plump face with its almost comically large eyes and lips. She frowned, then seemed to remember herself and put on a teasing smile. “Jann! Dripping wet with clouds, you are!” The Golldens used the quaint Paradinian sentence constructions that Jann’s relatively progressive parents considered archaic; he had been taught a grammar more in line with the universal tongue of the settled galaxy, System Wide.
He felt a sadness he couldn’t identify, looking at her then, but he hunkered on the behemoth, to be more companionable, and said, “I wish you’d told me you were going riding! We could’ve gone together.” Then his eyes went again to the message bag dangling from her pale, plump shoulder. “But I guess you’re delivering a message for your father?”
“That is the truth of it,” she said—a particularly archaic construction. She didn’t seem happy that he’d noticed the bag.
“You look lovely,” he said, “though I wouldn’t think you were dressed for message carrying...”
Her cheeks reddened. She spoke with some asperity. “I had another mission too, you and I are not betrothed yet, and until we are, it is customary to date freely. Anything else is unwholesome.”
He had to speak sharply to Aleshna to keep the behemoth from crowding Liana’s mount; it was trying to snuggle close, a preliminary to mating. To Liana, with all the equanimity he could muster, he said, “I thought we had an understanding! If you'd encouraged me to ask your father—”
“He isn't receptive. Your Manor has not been productive, Jann—your mother gives away a third of your profits and more." She shook her head disdainfully. "You don’t drive your Harvesters; they smoke Groak and dream the day away...”
“That’s an exaggeration. Last year we did very well in creepers and wool and sensitive wood.”
“But you’re deeply in debt. I...My father is cognizant of that kind of financial willicumsery...”
He couldn't help laughing. “Does your family still use Old Paradine words like willicumsery? Far as I remember, the word means irresponsibility. Can you really say I’m irresponsible? Forget this tryst you have planned and let's talk about it, Liana!”
“That I cannot do—it would be...willicumseric! I’ll see you soon enough, Jann a Grelle!”
She snapped her bridle-lines and leaned right—the little behemoth looked at Aleshna with an unmistakable regret; groaning to itself, it rolled obediently away and down.
He watched Liana fly away from him, angling her behemoth down as if to go to some particular manor. What was in that direction? Jimson manor perhaps? The home of the conceited and wealthy Dalick Jimson? Dalick had long been mooning after Liana...
Why passively accept it, if that’s how things were going? Why not go after her?
He stood up, shouted a command. Aleshna veered downward, turned—and then he reined suddenly in.
He’d seen something disturbingly out of place gleaming on the grasses below. An attenuated blob of silver. Possibly a starcraft. He spiraled lower, letting Liana go. He had to know for sure.
Yes. A starcraft: landed where none had permission to be.
He commanded Aleshna to level off at three hundred yards, but the behemoth did not obey, wavering but still hesitatingly descending. The beast hadn't heard him clearly: Jann had instinctively lowered his command voice, for it seemed to him that the craft might be Kastillian.
A Kastillian craft was never a welcome sight. Paradine was independent from Earth for a century now—there was little help there in the event of trouble with the Kastillians. And little they could do to resist the Kastillians, if it came to that: Paradine had agreed to limit its technological growth because the decadent, mistrustful Kastillians, much closer to hand than old Earth, regarded any high tech as a forerunner to weaponry. With its tradition of preferring rugged frontier simplicity, Paradinians had for the most part shruggingly complied with the ban—especially outside Lapis. The city and the manors had electricity, solar power, remote phones, a few other technological conveniences—but energy weapons were few, and Paradinians had no interstellar attack craft.
Now Jann gave the command louder. With a steamy venting, Aleshna expelled hydrogen, and some oxygen, partly in the form of water vapor, the reduction of hydrogen causing it to lose some of its lift. The bridle-lines and the experienced grip of his toes kept him from slipping as he leaned to peer down at the starcraft. There were uniformed men moving about the spaceship’s companionway, and on the ground nearby. He caught the flash off a lens as one of them turned an oculator upward to take in the sky herd. They might not spot him—might well take the herd to be wild behemoths.
But if they thought that...
He heard the thud of a stropp—a hand-cannon, as some called it—and the shriek of a projectile. The herd was being fired on! Were they firing at him or taking pot shots at wild animals?
A scream of pain from the drag of the herd gave him his answer. He turned, saw that an elderly, slower behemoth had been hit by the stropp. Its lavender blood gouted and sparkled and it bucked in visible agony. Jann shouted his harshest command at Aleshna, and the herd, to flee for home. Aleshna turned north, but with a reluctance Jann could feel in his feet; it meant abandoning a herd elder.
A moment later the wounded behemoth exploded—becoming a living fireball—and the herd accelerated in fear.
Jann heard cheers and laughter faintly from the spacers below...
“They will pay for that, Aleshna,” he told the behemoth. It hooted skeptically, and moaned.
Flying back to the Manor, the herd moaned in consonance, the same four inhuman notes repeated again and again, a great rumbling funeral dirge that sent chills through everyone who heard it, even the Kastillians.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Launching Monday, July 6, 2009
photograph by Shasta Fletcher
the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
"a freezine devoted to the resurgence of a post-
New Wave Science Fiction & Fantasy ethic"
The editors of the Freezine -- the bloodhost, I sometimes call them -- or nanoswarm -- seem to be battling harder within me every day to excise my interference altogether so they can address you directly. I won't let them. I'll have you know it's a matter of willpower alone that is allowing me to maintain a strong presence here. Don't get me wrong. I don't perceive them as the enemy or anything. For all I know they are here to help us all. I just see them as a refined tool whose delicate intricacies may outweigh my capability of mastering them. Such a tool can only become dangerous in unskilled hands. Forget about double edged instruments -- with the microhorde, three edges is just the beginning. But I digress.
This missive has been generated with a post automatic suggestion implanted in the mind of your host--yours truly--to bring you up to date with our Freezine's progress. To the Zine's current Followers: You are the Inner Sanctum. We may now extract a randomized variable with just enough coherency, from the configuration of forty-four neurolinks, to proceed. Digital Man--welcome to the Fold. You are the forty-fourth member of the Inner Sanctum.
What's cooking on the platter for the Freezine's Debut is the launching of the serialized novella SKY PIRATES from none other than award-winning novelist John Shirley. It is a good old-fashioned, blast-em space opera set on an alien world, and appears here for the first time. Although it serves well as a stand-alone story, it is roughly the first half of a novel still in progress. SKY PIRATES should fit snugly into July's serial slot, ending on Thursday, July 30. John's newest books are BLACK GLASS: The Lost Cyberpunk Novel out from Elder Signs Press, and in August Simon and Schuster is bringing out his urban fantasy novel, BLEAK HISTORY. Be sure to visit his authorized website at http://darkecho.com/johnshirley.
Also ready to be served up each and every Friday, are enticing pieces of fiction from Johnny Strike, David Agranoff, Keith Graham, and many more as yet top-secret undercover fantasists.
Johnny Strike is a founding member of the protopunk band CRIME (vocals/guitar) as well as author of the 2007 short story collection A Loud Humming Sound Came From Above (published by Rudos and Rubes), and the 2004 novel Ports Of Hell (published by Diagonal).
David Agranoff is the author of a short story collection Screams from a Dying World just released by Afterbirth Books. Afterbirth will also be releasing his first novel Hunting the Moon Tribe.
Keith Graham is a Computer Programmer, Blues Harp player and Speculative Fiction writer. He currently maintains 45 active websites. He has published more than 50 stories over the last six years in venues such as Martian Wave, AtomJack, Electric Spec, Aoffe's Kiss, Tales of the Talisman, Fifth Di..., The Harrow, and many others. Visit his website: http://www.cthreepo.com.
I can now reveal that the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction will declare its independence by debuting Monday, July 6, 2009, with the John Shirley novella SKY PIRATES presented in daily installments, from Mondays to Thursdays. Each Friday we will present a different short story by another author for our dear Followers to print up and read over the weekend. Week 2 should present the continuation of SKY PIRATES, with another juicy story offered up that coming Friday. This daily eperiodical will meet the qualification (in the eyes of the post -blog -twit -generation) of being updated irregularly (five times a week, twenty times a month, two-hundred-and-sixty times a year, more or less). Just don't expect anything on weekends. The bloodhost need to recharge their power supply.
-- breaking urgent memo from the fleet -- we are to include an interview with a writer at least one Friday a month. --/end memo
-- New breaking memo -- the nano-armada informs me they have arrived at the final stage of their calculations. They encourage writers to "submit their fantasy and science fiction short stories and novellas with all the terrific elements of horrifying tales rooted in these traditions". --/end memo
email your submissions to:
freezinefantasysciencefiction@gmail.com
These imaginative tales and interviews are quite eagerly anticipated by the microhorde. They tell me they want to "copy them and send them on". I suggest we should not seek to fear the unknown, but to understand it. I think its best we work with the nanofleet, and provide for them exactly what they want: the elixir of our dreams.
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Archive of Stories
and Authors
Callum Leckie's
THE DIGITAL DECADENT
J.R. Torina's
ANTHROPOPHAGUS
house ('90-'97), runs Sutekh Productions
(an industrial-ambient music label) and
Slaughterhouse Records (metal record
label), and was proprietor of The Abyss
(a metal-gothic-industrial c.d. shop in
SLC, now closed). He is the dark force
behind Scapegoat (an ambient-tribal-
noise-experimental unit). THE HOUSE
IN THE PORT is his first publication.
Sean Padlo's
NINE TENTHS OF THE LAW
Sean Padlo's
GRANDPA'S LAST REQUEST
Sean Padlo's exact whereabouts
are never able to be fully
pinned down, but what we
do know about him is laced
with the echoes of legend.
He's already been known
to haunt certain areas of
the landscape, a trick said
to only be possible by being
able to manipulate it from
the future. His presence
among the rest of us here
at the freezine sends shivers
of wonder deep in our solar plexus.
Morris's HOW THE GODS KILL
Konstantine Paradias's
Adam Bolivar's
Daniel José Older's
Paul Stuart's
SEA?TV!
Paul Stuart is the author of numerous
G. Alden Davis's
THE FOLD
G. Alden Davis wrote his first short story
SACRI-FEES
Konstantine Paradias is a writer by
choice. At the moment, he's published
over 100 stories in English, Japanese,
Romanian, German, Dutch and
Portuguese and has worked in a free-
lancing capacity for videogames, screen-
plays and anthologies. People tell him
he's got a writing problem but he can,
like, quit whenever he wants, man.
His work has been nominated
for a Pushcart Prize.
Edward Morris's
ONE NIGHT IN MANHATTAN
Edward Morris's
MERCY STREET
Edward Morris is a 2011 nominee for
the Pushcart Prize in literature, has
also been nominated for the 2009
Rhysling Award and the 2005 British
Science Fiction Association Award.
His short stories have been published
over a hundred and twenty times in
four languages, most recently at
PerhihelionSF, the Red Penny Papers'
SUPERPOW! anthology, and The
Magazine of Bizarro Fiction. He lives
and works in Portland as a writer,
editor, spoken word MC and bouncer,
and is also a regular guest author at
the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival.
Tim Fezz's
BURNT WEENY SANDWICH
Tim Fezz's
MANY SILVERED MOONS AGO
Tim Fezz hails out of the shattered
streets of Philly destroying the air-
waves and people's minds in the
underground with his band OLD
FEZZIWIG. He's been known to
dip his razor quill into his own
blood and pen a twisted tale
every now and again. We are
delighted to have him onboard
the FREEZINE and we hope
you are, too.
Daniel E. Lambert's
DEAD CLOWN AND MAGNET HEAD
Daniel E. Lambert teaches English
at California State University, Los
Angeles and East Los Angeles College.
He also teaches online Literature
courses for Colorado Technical
University. His writing appears
in Silver Apples, Easy Reader,
Other Worlds, Wrapped in Plastic
and The Daily Breeze. His work
also appears in the anthologies
When Words Collide, Flash It,
Daily Flash 2012, Daily Frights
2012, An Island of Egrets and
Timeless Voices. His collection
of poetry and prose, Love and
Other Diversions, is available
through Amazon. He lives in
Southern California with his
wife, poet and author Anhthao Bui.
Phoenix's
AGAIN AND AGAIN
Phoenix has enjoyed writing since he
was a little kid. He finds much import-
ance and truth in creative expression.
Phoenix has written over sixty books,
and has published everything from
novels, to poetry and philosophy.
He hopes to inspire people with his
writing and to ask difficult questions
about our world and the universe.
Phoenix lives in Salt Lake City, Utah,
where he spends much of his time
reading books on science, philosophy,
and literature. He spends a good deal
of his free time writing and working
on new books. The Freezine of Fant-
asy and Science Fiction welcomes him
and his unique, intense vision.
Discover Phoenix's books at his author
page on Amazon. Also check out his blog.
Adam Bolivar's
SERVITORS OF THE
OUTER DARKNESS
Adam Bolivar's
THE DEVIL & SIR
FRANCIS DRAKE
THE TIME-EATER
Adam Bolivar is an expatriate Bostonian
Adam Bolivar is an expatriate Bostonian
who has lived in New Orleans and Berkeley,
and currently resides in Portland, Oregon
with his beloved wife and fluffy gray cat
Dahlia. Adam wears round, antique glasses
and has a fondness for hats. His greatest
inspirations include H.P. Lovecraft,
Jack tales and coffee. He has been
a Romantic poet for as long as any-
one can remember, specializing in
the composition of spectral balladry,
utilizing to great effect a traditional
poetic form that taps into the haunted
undercurrents of folklore seldom found
in other forms of writing.
His poetry has appeared on the pages
of such publications as SPECTRAL
REALMS and BLACK WINGS OF
CTHULHU, and a poem of his,
"The Rime of the Eldritch Mariner,"
won the Rhysling Award for long-form
poetry. His collection of weird balladry
and Jack tales, THE LAY OF OLD HEX,
was published by Hippocampus Press in 2017.
Sanford Meschkow's
INEVITABLE
Sanford Meschkow is a retired former
NYer who married a Philly suburban
Main Line girl. Sanford has been pub-
lished in a 1970s issue of AMAZING.
We welcome him here on the FREE-
ZINE of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Owen R. Powell's
NOETIC VACATIONS
Little is known of the mysterious
Owen R. Powell (oftentimes referred
to as Orp online). That is because he
usually keeps moving. The story
Noetic Vacations marks his first
appearance in the Freezine.
Gene Stewart
(writing as Art Wester)
GROUND PORK
Gene Stewart's
CRYPTID'S LAIR
Gene Stewart is a writer and artist.
He currently lives in the Midwest
American Wilderness where he is
researching tales of mystical realism,
writing ficta mystica, and exploring
the dark by casting a little light into
the shadows. Follow this link to his
website where there are many samples
of his writing and much else; come
explore.
Daniel José Older's
GRAVEYARD WALTZ
Daniel José Older's
THE COLLECTOR
Daniel José Older's
THE COLLECTOR
Daniel José Older's spiritually driven,
urban storytelling takes root at the
crossroads of myth and history.
With sardonic, uplifting and often
hilarious prose, Older draws from
his work as an overnight 911 paramedic,
a teaching artist & an antiracist/antisexist
organizer to weave fast-moving, emotionally
engaging plots that speak whispers and
shouts about power and privilege in
modern day New York City. His work
has appeared in the Freezine of Fantasy
and Science Fiction, The ShadowCast
Audio Anthology, The Tide Pool, and
the collection Sunshine/Noir, and is
featured in Sheree Renee Thomas'
Black Pot Mojo Reading Series in Harlem.
When he's not writing, teaching or
riding around in an ambulance,
Daniel can be found performing with
his Brooklyn-based soul quartet
Ghost Star. His blog about the
ridiculous and disturbing world
of EMS can be found here.
Paul Stuart's
SEA?TV!
Paul Stuart is the author of numerous
biographical blurbs written in the third
person. His previously published fiction
appears in The Vault of Punk Horror and
His non-fiction financial pieces can be found
in a shiny, west-coast magazine that features
pictures of expensive homes, as well as images
of women in casual poses and their accessories.
Consider writing him at paul@twilightlane.com,
if you'd like some thing from his garage. In fall
2010, look for Grade 12 Trigonometry and
Pre-Calculus -With Zombies.
Rain Grave's
MAU BAST
Rain Graves is an award winning
Blag Dahlia's
armed to the teeth
with LIPSTICK
BLAG DAHLIA is a Rock Legend.
Rain Grave's
MAU BAST
Rain Graves is an award winning
author of horror, science fiction and
poetry. She is best known for the 2002
Bram Stoker Award winner for Best
Poetry Collection, The Gossamer Eye
(along with Mark McLaughlin and
David Niall Wilson). Her most
recent book, Barfodder: Poetry
Written in Dark Bars and Questionable
Cafes, has been hailed by Publisher's
Weekly as "Bukowski meets Lovecraft..."
in January of 2009. She lives and
writes in San Francisco, performing
spoken word at events around the
country. 877-DRK-POEM -
Listen. http://raingraves.com/
Blag Dahlia's
armed to the teeth
with LIPSTICK
BLAG DAHLIA is a Rock Legend.
Singer, Songwriter, producer &
founder of the notorious DWARVES.
He has written two novels, ‘NINA’ and
‘ARMED to the TEETH with LIPSTICK’.
G. Alden Davis's
THE FOLD
G. Alden Davis wrote his first short story
in high school, and received a creative
writing scholarship for the effort. Soon
afterward he discovered that words were
not enough, and left for art school. He was
awarded the Emeritus Fellowship along
with his BFA from Memphis College of Art
in '94, and entered the videogame industry
as a team leader and 3D artist. He has over
25 published games to his credit. Mr. Davis
is a Burningman participant of 14 years,
and he swings a mean sword in the SCA.
He's also the best friend I ever had. He
was taken away from us last year on Jan
25 and I'll never be able to understand why.
Together we were a fantastic duo, the
legendary Grub Bros. Our secret base
exists on a cross-hatched nexus between
the Year of the Dragon and Dark City.
Somewhere along the tectonic fault
lines of our electromagnetic gathering,
shades of us peel off from the coruscating
pillars and are dropped back into the mix.
The phrase "rest in peace" just bugs me.
I'd rather think that Greg Grub's inimitable
spirit somehow continues evolving along
another manifestation of light itself, a
purple shift shall we say into another
phase of our expanding universe. I
ask myself, is it wishful thinking?
Will we really shed our human skin
like a discarded chrysalis and emerge
shimmering on another wavelength
altogether--or even manifest right
here among the rest without their
even beginning to suspect it? Well
people do believe in ghosts, but I
myself have long been suspicious
there can only be one single ghost
and that's all the stars in the universe
shrinking away into a withering heart
glittering and winking at us like
lost diamonds still echoing all their
sad and lonely songs fallen on deaf
eyes and ears blind to their colorful
emanations. My grub brother always
knew better than what the limits
of this old world taught him. We
explored past the outer peripheries
of our comfort zones to awaken
the terror in our minds and keep
us on our toes deep in the forest
in the middle of the night. The owls
led our way and the wilderness
transformed into a sanctuary.
The adventures we shared together
will always remain tattooed on
the pages of my skin. They tell a
story that we began together and
which continues being woven to
this very day. It's the same old
story about how we all were in
this together and how each and
every one of us is also going away
someday and though it will be the far-
thest we can manage to tell our own
tale we may rest assured it will be
continued like one of the old pulp
serials by all our friends which survive
us and manage to continue
the saga whispering in the wind.
Shae Sveniker's
A NEW METAPHYSICAL STUDY
REGARDING THE BEHAVIOR
OF PLANT LIFE
Shae is a poet/artist/student and former
A NEW METAPHYSICAL STUDY
REGARDING THE BEHAVIOR
OF PLANT LIFE
Shae is a poet/artist/student and former
resident of the Salt Pit, UT, currently living
in Simi Valley, CA. His short stories are on
Blogger and his poetry is hosted on Livejournal.
Nigel Strange's
PLASTIC CHILDREN
Nigel Strange lives with his wife and
PLASTIC CHILDREN
Nigel Strange lives with his wife and
daughter, cats, and tiny dog-like thing
in their home in California where he
occasionally experiments recreationally
with lucidity. PLASTIC CHILDREN
is his first publication.