AUREALIS #46
Australian Fantasy & Science Fiction
Edited by Dirk Strasser and Carissa Thorp
Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords
Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2011
Copyright on each story remains with the contributor.
EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922031-00-6
CHIMAERA PUBLICATIONS
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Contents
From the Cloud – Dirk Strasser
Heaven and Earth – Greg Mellor
Love Death – Andrew J McKiernan
Interview with Felicity Pulman – Crisetta MacLeod
Carissa's Weblog – Carissa Thorp
From the Cloud
There's no doubt that we are witnessing the dawn of a new age of publishing. But whose dawn is it? Some people are claiming it's the rise of the self-publishers. There was a buzz at the recent Frankfurt Book Fair about self-published superstars like Michael J Sullivan and Amanda Hocking. Technology can launch some amazing transformations. There's a lot of talk these days about how individual authors have been empowered by epublication. No longer are they dependent on publishers for production, distribution and marketing. Writers can just go ahead and do it all themselves. Technology has freed them to publish what, how, and when they like—the world is their audience.
Right?
Maybe.
All of this may be true of the odd author, but I'm not sure if it's going to work out across the board. Authors need copy editors and proof readers. They need artists and designers. Most need help from marketing professionals. I'm not sure if too many authors are realistically able to replace what the multi-national publishers have done in the past.
We've all heard the stories of self-publishers who have made a lot of money out of epublications, but we have no sense of how exceptional or commonplace this experience will become in the future. Individuals have had extraordinary success in all sorts of areas. It's not easy to tell whether they the exception to the rule, or the sign of a significant trend.
My view is that it is far more likely we are witnessing the rise of the small press publishers rather than the self-publishers. With the advantages of epublication, small, passionate teams of people, with the love of specific genres, are in the position to achieve large scale success. They provide the expertise, the filter, that self-publishing doesn't provide. They can bring together people with editing, designing and marketing skills. I think the real transformation that is happening is that small press publishers will be able to compete more successfully with the big boys, punching well above their weight.
So, have a look in this issue of Aurealis to see how we're doing.
We open with an absolute ripper of a hard science fiction story by Greg Mellor—one with both hardness and heart. The second story is a zombie tale with a difference by Andrew J McKiernan.
All the best from the cloud.
Heaven and Earth
Greg Mellor
-Prologue-
The neutron star filled the prison cell with bands of crimson light and long shadows.
Daniel woke and pressed his palms against the diamond wall. Were he able to reach out, his hands would be crushed into kilometre long filaments by the intense gravitational field. He had never contemplated death, but the instant destruction that lay just beyond his fingertips now beckoned him, filling his mind with a disturbing sadness.
It is forbidden to love humans…of any kind.
Varden haunted him still, an unwelcome ghost in this lonely hell.
Daniel had ignored his father and the collective opinion of the Carvers at his own peril. His voice was one against a million.
We were human once. We still are. We left humanity a long time ago.
The hypocrisy of the collective was palpable: deny your heritage, pretend you are different, and live the new values, untouchable. Bigotry was alive and kicking, rebadged and repackaged for a smart but gullible generation.
Not that long ago, father.
Time makes all the difference, Daniel. You will learn that eventually.
Varden had sealed the diamond cell then with a glyph, dipped it into the exotic matter furnaces, and shunted it on a secret trajectory into the galaxy.
Daniel's thoughts drifted. The residue of the collective clung to his mind like a phantom limb, a collage of random memories. As the pain of disconnection grew weaker each year, so his hatred and anger grew stronger, building into a crescendo of rage. A mournful sound ripped out of his lungs and he cursed the crimson sky. He slammed his fists against the wall, splitting his knuckles open and spattering blood across his black skinsuit, until he slumped to the floor, exhausted.
He closed his eyes and dreamt of Idona walking ahead of him along the beaches of the Mirha Sea. He called to her, but his voice was drowned out by the roar of the surf, then he tried to catch her, but with each step she receded further into the distance.
Further still.
And further.
He fell to his knees and pounded his fists into the coarse grey sand, the surf now swelling as a storm loomed in over the cape. Flashes of lightning stuttered across the horizon and rain plastered his dark hair across his face, pouring off his chin in curling rivulets. He lifted his hands to the faltering light, saw them drenched in blood, realised that it was raining blood. His scream rose above the storm…
He opened his eyes. His face was pressed close to the wall. A haggard reflection looked back, the flecks in its hazel eyes like embers. Afraid of his image, and the insanity it might bring if he engaged it in conversation, he stood up and began pacing around the cell.
He had left her there on the beach that day. Ever since he stepped through the door, the Casimir booster blinking shut in his wake, he had wondered what she thought of him, what had gone through her mind in the intervening years? Did she blame herself for his absence? Or did she hate him now? And then the terrifying reality resurfaced again. The cell had been shunted using technologies even the Carvers were uncomfortable with. In all likelihood Idona had died years ago.
With a deliberate force of will he rallied his thoughts and shoved away the despair from his mind, unwilling yet to give in, even if it meant clinging to her memory. She was his shield to stave off the madness that crept closer with each relentless orbit. He wrapped his arms across his chest and cherished her love that sheltered him more with each passing year.
Time does make all the difference.
-Kardashev I Space-
A splash broke the surface of the Mirha Sea into shards of black and electric blue.
Idona surged through the water, singing to her cousins in the distant depths.
It was a complex lament of tweets and twitters. The reply came after a time: a series of whines and squawks interspersed with higher pitched whistles.
Do not despair, hope is destiny.
She smiled and sent a message of thanks then swam to the shore and stood naked under the starlight. Water sluiced from her mottled grey skin and drops rained from her hair as she blew out excess water through her fluted nasal cavity.
'How long do you think you can go on like this?'
Idona whirled around.
'As long as I wish, Ilara.' With a subliminal nod and twitch Idona pleaded with her sister to be left alone.
'I only worry about you.' Ilara stepped out of the surf and rubbed her cheek against Idona's.
Idona returned the gesture. She wondered how many times they had had this same conversation.
'You love stricken fool,' Ilara said.
'You know the divide between humans and the collective cannot be crossed.'
'Do you really believe that? Of all the people, Ilara, how could you be so sanctimonious? We wouldn't exist if boundaries hadn't been crossed. We couldn't live in such a place if boundaries hadn't been smashed.'
'That's not my point.'
'Then what is your point? We fell in love, is that so hard to accept? Through sheer passion he transformed a barren planet into a world for us all to live.'
'But that's just it, Idona. The scale of it all, it's incomprehensible. Who does that for someone else? It's not...natural.'
'Please go,' Idona said, turning her back and stepping into the water.
She looked defiantly over her shoulder.
'I will find him.' With one fluid motion she plunged into the sea.
'And what if you can't?' Ilara called. 'What will you do then?'
Idona swam away into the darkness, trying to shut out Ilara's last words. She had never felt so alone, stuck in a limbo of inaction. She would have to move on at some point, somehow. But what could she do when she knew deep down she would never get over Daniel? Her confidence had grown with him, but the void he left felt like an open wound that would never heal. And each day that passed chipped away at the new Idona until the insecurities surfaced again, aspects of her old self she hated so much—the self-destructive traits of a crossgen.
It was well past midnight by the time she returned to the shore, and much to her relief, Ilara had gone. She walked to the base of the headland then up the meandering path to the cliff top.
She squinted as the lights came on. The house was open and uncluttered, with large balconies and windows that let in blocks of light and the salt tang of the sea. She went upstairs to the bedroom and sat down on the bed, her fingers absently tracing the patterns on the cover.
They made love again, in the bed. He was more confident this time, away from the water. She wondered at that as they lay together in the breathless aftermath, long limbs stretched out over the sheets, the last rays of Alcyone casting a blue-white pall across the ceiling. Pleione, Asterope and Electra were also fading to twilight as the nightshade slid across the sky.
'New home with uninterrupted views,' he said.
'There I was saying I wouldn't take this for granted, and now you're talking like it's just a piece of real estate. It is a miracle.'
A smile edged onto his face, then broadened into a grin. 'If you insist.'
'I do. You've done so much. It's incredible beyond words.'
'I know. I'm tired.'
'Now you're just teasing.' He shrugged. In the months they had been together he had not shown any sign of vulnerability, until today. It was taking time for him to let his guard down, but she was patient. Their lives were different in so many ways she could not even begin to describe. She turned on her side to face him. 'What is it about the water that makes you uncomfortable?'
'It reminds me of home.'
'When I swim I give myself to the sea. It's kind of hard to explain, you know the power of it can crush you, yet to be free you have to give yourself to it.'
A frown clouded his face. 'If only I could. A sea has a purpose—it is part of an ecosystem, part of something greater. The collective? Well...'
'Are they really that insular?'
'The Carvers and the other families, except perhaps the Kimuras, were not ready. They left the colonies for a reason, but they brought with them the very thing that they wished left behind.'
She knew what it was, had suffered the brunt of bigotry all her life. 'I'll watch out for you,' she said, not quite sure how she could ever keep such a promise.
His face brightened. 'Yes, I've noticed you watch me day and night.' There was mischief in his eyes now.
'What do you mean?'
'You fell asleep on me in the dunes, it was quite disconcerting.'
She raised a hand to her mouth. 'I'm so sorry. I can't help it. I'm a conscious breather. I can't sleep the same way normal humans sleep. Keeping one eye open...it's a survival thing...'
'Oh, right,' he said with a straight face that lasted all of two seconds.
She thumped him on the chest.
He reached over and grabbed her gently.
She bunched her fists into the bed cover. Her life always seemed to carry some fatal flaw, some random self-destruct switch. She pulled the cover off and hurled it across the room.
She went to the bathroom and rinsed away the salt and grit in the shower then put on a loose bathrobe and, out of habit, opened the study door. The books stacked across the shelves were covered in an unhealthy layer of dust and the curtains hung like limp rags. Her eyes inevitably strayed to the alcove, the only place in the room free from dust. The com-sphere sat there, its dull surface turning to quicksilver as she approached.
Aside from some clothes and books it was the only thing he had left behind. She picked it up then sat down in the reclining chair.
The com-sphere programs engaged, caressing her mind...
The waiting room was the same as always, a row of chairs beneath a mirror on the left wall, a locked door on the right wall, and a single window in front of her. She touched the glass of the window.
Beneath her lay a sprawling city of silver spires with fields of solar panels stretching out to the horizon. It was the middle of the day, the bright white light of Castor etching the metropolis into sharp relief. Crowds thronged the streets and caterpillar-like transporters filled the skies, streaming holo-ads for anti-aging treatments and news-bites of the latest riots. She turned her head, in no mood to watch the violence.
Catching her reflection in the mirror, she moved in front of it and checked the curves of her hips and breasts that were accentuated by the sleek indigo skinsuit. The com-sphere always dressed her this way—men and their programs. She brushed aside strands of hair and scrutinised her freckles. Her eyes, normally bright blue, were dull grey orbs with dark circles underneath. She tilted her head slightly, but the harsh starlight of this strange world wasn't complementary no matter which way she looked.
'Damn it.' She wondered what he ever saw in her with her nearly human face and slightly elongated skull. She clenched her fists and let out a loud burst-pulse of sound.
'Who are you?'
She spun around. A man stood in front of her. He had entered through the door—the door that was always locked. Robes flowed about his angular form. Liquid chrome eyes scrutinised her from a granite face etched with veins of silver.
'Who the hell are you?'
'Forgive my intrusion,' he said, nodding his head respectfully.
'My name is Marshall.'
'Is this a dream?'
'I don't think the com-spheres distinguish between waking and sleeping minds.' He paused, a look of recognition across his rocky features.
'You must be Idona of the Pleiades.'
'You know me?'
'Yes, Daniel talked about–'
'Have you seen him? Do you know where he is? Why did he–'
'I'm sorry, Idona,' he said softly, 'but I have not seen Daniel in years. I thought he had taken the com-sphere with him, but I found it buried amongst some supplies only two weeks ago. Even then I would not have known what to do if you had not dialled in.'
'Dialled in?' She let out a short, ironic breath. 'I have tried for the last three years to work out how to use the com-sphere. I had suspected all along that this was the last number he had called and that the device simply redials when I'm close to it.'
Marshall waved his arms about with a distracting flourish. 'You should have seen him when he spoke of you. There was fire in his eyes, a pride that squared his shoulders.'
She looked up at him, haunted.
'Believe it, Idona, for it was as real as I have seen. This man loved you.'
She smiled through tears.
'Daniel's absence has been deeply felt by all geomorphs. We were part of a shadow biosphere that came under threat of extinction from toxic seepage. He relocated us here within the crystalline lattices beneath the tectonic plates. We use these simulacra to simplify the interaction with humans.'
The sharp edges of a migraine began to stab at the back of her eyes. She had always thought that Daniel had helped the crossgens in some way to compensate for his problems at home. But she should have guessed that he had helped others—he was always on the move, able to live a hundred lives in her short lifetime. And through it all he still had time to be with her.
'Why?' She bit down on her lip. 'Why does he do it?'
Marshall looked at her thoughtfully.
She felt the scrutiny of his strange eyes again. They didn't miss a beat.
'I know precious little more than you, Idona, so I'm not sure I can be of any real help.'
Her face creased up in frustration. 'I need to know what happened to him. He said that things had become extremely difficult. His use of the terraquickening technology outside the collective had caused an immense outrage.'
But she knew as well as Marshall that there was virtually no chance of any information filtering back. The riots were a sign of the hatred that still stirred in some parts of the colony worlds. It was a mindless call to trade cartels to open up the technology singularity for the benefit of everyone. But what could they do? Only the wealthiest families had had the means, and now they were gone, and they had taken their technology with them.
'Who knows what happens in heaven's jet stream,' Marshall offered.
She looked sidelong at the geomorph. 'How do I reach the collective?'
His liquid eyes widened in disbelief. 'You cannot be serious. The Sagittarius Arm...it is too far.'
The jumble of emotions that had plagued her for so long began clicking together, a pattern of intent tumbling into clarity.
'How do I get there?'
'It can't be done in our lifetime. There are cryo-ships, of course, but we'll never know.'
'Then help me find a way.'
'My dear –'
'We should try at least.'
'Are you absolutely sure this is what you want?'
Her look said it all.
When Idona woke, the com-sphere still hummed quietly in her lap. She set it back in the alcove and it switched off.
A storm had passed during the night and the air smelt of damp earth and brine. Something about the sound of the surf made her step out on to the balcony. Figures were leaping out of the water far below, climbing across the shattered rocks at the base of the cliff. She saw Ilara calling up to her, the sound of her voice barely audible. Darius, Paran and Alcha stood next to Ilara. Then a pod of bulkier figures emerged from the water, bull-necked with the monochromatic skins of the Orcinus orca splice. She had not seen them in months, her seven cousins, and she wondered what the occasion was.
Then her dreams filtered through to her conscious mind, half-remembered. She must have called out to her family during the night. With a sigh and a full heart, she went downstairs to meet them.
-Kardashev II Space-
Autumn had arrived with all its colours.
Leaves tumbled in the northerly off the range, blowing down from the foothills into the river where they floated for kilometres out to the ocean. And with the winds came a chill that lingered on the air, a sign that snow would arrive early this year.
A herd of white tailed deer ran across the rough terrain, disturbed by some unseen predator. They darted here and there, fear written in every twitch, a limbic spark etched in their eyes.
A flash of spotted fur appeared...there...and there again. The snow leopard was at full stretch now, close to the back of the herd. Green eyes shone with intent as massive paws found purchase for one final leap. Time stood still...then the leopard stumbled, one paw sliding away from the rump of its small prize as its other paws lost traction on the slope. The deer fell, legs scrabbling, then stood up and sprang away at an angle not even the leopard could follow.
Idona let out a long breath. She leant back from the telescope, her pulse hammering.
'Next time, my friend.'
The wind ruffled her white robes. Her head felt cold and she pulled her hood up. She had cut her hair shorter this year and now that the grey had completely grown through, she decided that it suited her. Her freckles were less blotchy, her cheeks less drawn, or so she tried to convince herself.
She shivered again. It wasn't so much the physical cold than the chill inside her that had not shifted in all the years.
She looked up, distracted by the nightshade gliding down the crumpled geography of the ringworld. The other habitats, fragments and rings of the collective began to appear, a chaotic mega-structure of a thousand parts like jewels across the night sky. Each component had a function or purpose: ecologies, didactic havens, industrial asteroids, science platforms. And at its core—feeding off the energy of Herschel 36—the computing engines and infrastructure that housed the collective mind.
But when she thought her eyes could take no more, the backdrop of the Lagoon Nebula appeared. The veils of stardust were like slabs of onyx and rose quartz, highlighted with veins of grey and white, and spattered with plumes of darker dust and Bok globules.
'What a night.'
She whirled, bumping the telescope on its tripod.
'Daniel?' A figure emerged out of the shadows of the house and stepped onto the balcony. Nebula light caught the silhouette that she knew so well: high brow and cheekbones, wavy hair, broad shoulders and long legs, all wrapped in slim-fit black.
She stepped back until she reached the railing. The drop from the balcony to the valley below now made her head reel.
'No.' It was her own voice, a whisper on the edge of her senses. She reached up and touched his face, felt the cool skin, an unfamiliar stubble and texture. Not Daniel.
She snatched her hand back, afraid that it might be Varden after all this time.
'I am not Varden,' the stranger said.
'I don't suppose you are.' Her old cynicism fell into place like a comforting mask. She had been a fool to ever think Varden would show himself.
'My name is Armand Carver.'
Idona arched an eyebrow. 'My last visitor was your cousin, Antoinette. She was as unhelpful as the rest of you, but at least she had the courtesy to knock.'
Armand stood next to her and leant against the railing with a casual familiarity. 'He's out there, somewhere.'
Idona thought he meant Daniel then realised he was looking at the ranges. 'Varden? Here?' She felt her throat constrict. A sickening feeling twisted in the pit of her stomach.
'He could be a river, a tree, your leopard friend. He could be many things. We become what we are meant to be—the calling of our nanotype. Our father made many mistakes, but try not to judge him, he was a pioneer and it was a long time ago.'
Her jaw set in place. 'It's my life—our life—taken from us. You, all of you out there with your oversized intellect, you've never known what to do with me, have you?'
'You will not see through the winter, Idona.'
She clutched the railing. 'So is that it? Does time somehow take you past your predicament, vindicate you in some way? How convenient. Why don't you just go away and leave me alone.'
Those soul-wrenching hazel eyes never left hers. 'You need to understand, Idona, by our standards it was a long time ago. Thirty generations have passed since Daniel was banished.'
She frowned. The nightscape had changed over the years, growing and evolving in synch with some inner plan that she could only guess at. And how many more worlds like this were out there, strung like pearls along the Sagittarius Arm?
Who knows what happens in heaven's jet stream.
She waved her arms wide and leant dangerously out over the railing. 'It's all nanotech, isn't it? The hills, the leaves, the animals, you...Daniel.'
'Yes,' Armand said with the same look of casual detachment.
She had felt so lonely on this alien shore, but now she realised how naive she could still be. The collective had been watching her all this time, calculating, recalibrating. They presided over her every move, her every thought. The periodic visits by the Carvers were testing her resolve, analysing her response and every nuance of speech and movement.
She hated herself now with an old, unwanted passion. So intent was she on her goal, on not losing the glimmer of Daniel, that she had not seen what was in front of her all along.
Armand reached out and touched her shoulder. 'You're an enigma, Idona, the unplanned variable, so to speak. What audacity to travel here in your ramshackle cryo-ship using our booster network. But your single act of selflessness has helped us–'
'Change.'
She went for a swim as Alcyone pushed away the night. The water was calm and she was content to float for a while, contemplating her good fortune and her growing love for the man sleeping still.
Stirred by a morning hunger, she caught a few fish and brought them back to the house. He was awake by the time she arrived and they cooked the fish and ate in a silence that had an intimacy all of its own.
'Will you stay today?' she eventually asked as they sat on the balcony and watched the tide.
'I'll have to leave soon, another day or so.'
'Do you want to talk again?'
'About home?'
She nodded.
He let out a long breath. 'I fear we are stuck in a rut, slowly destroying ourselves with our stubborn values. I can't see how we can we ever become a true collective if we remain so self-absorbed.'
'It's much harder to challenge,' Idona offered, 'particularly when nine out of ten people in the room are in agreement. It makes you doubt yourself, your own sanity. But I believe there's a reason for everything, Daniel, though it might not be clear right now. Your technology must be making some difference, surely?'
He laughed scornfully. 'I'm sorry.'
'That's okay.'
'The way I see it, Moore's escalation is no different to biological evolution. They're both blind. So in answer to your question, I think it will take generations to sort out the mess we've made. Maybe we never will.'
'I hope you're wrong.'
'So do I.'
Armand touched her shoulder. 'I am truly sorry for what happened to Daniel. It has been an incredible struggle for us to evolve. We have been through resource wars, meme regulation, repression of civil liberties...it's a sad litany, but I believe we have turned a corner.' He paused, squeezing her shoulder. 'Join us, Idona.'
She laughed.
Armand took a step back. 'What is it?'
'You think with all the computing power at your disposal you could have worked it out sooner.'
He smiled. 'I'm sure that wisdom is inversely proportional to processing capacity.'
'Well,' she said. 'What to do? Live in your world or die here, on the cusp of it all?'
Armand shrugged.
She thumped him on the chest, caught now between laughing and crying. 'Life and death choices are meant to be serious. And in any case, you know your presence here stacks the odds.'
He gave a wry grin. So like...
She sucked in air through her teeth. 'You have information.'
He nodded. 'We have heard rumours.'
'Rumours?' Her shoulders sagged. 'You mean you don't know where he is.'
'The galaxy is...huge. Chatter has been intercepted along our com-channels.'
'Intercepted? That can only mean that there are others out there.'
'Of course—the technology singularity did not stop for some.'
Idona leant heavily on the railing. 'I'm not sure I can take this.' Her jaw set and she stood up straight, eyes focussing, resolute. 'Show me, before I change my mind.'
'Very well,' he said. 'Although this will be the first time we have done this since the singularity.'
'And that is supposed to inspire me, how?'
He smiled and opened his arms as if introducing a friend. 'You said it yourself, Idona, the nanotech is all around. But it is passive, we need your permission.'
Her heart lurched. 'To do what?'
'Don't be alarmed. We must copy you to save you from your dying body, to give you a new home.'
'Can you get rid of the old bits?'
He laughed. 'Consider it done.'
He reached out and held her by the arms. The sound of the wind died away and she shivered uncontrollably. The first touch of the collective was like the delicate shift in the currents of the Mirha Sea. It was a strange feeling, as if she had travelled a long way and returned home to find that the place had changed. Or maybe it was just not the way she remembered it.
She felt another surge of adrenalin as Armand let go of her.
'This is not farewell,' he said. 'It is welcome. Welcome to the collective.'
She could sense more than see the nanotech coalescing in the air around her, but dared not move for fear she might regret her decision. Light began to shine into her eyes, down her optic nerve, into her brain, into her conscious mind. The light became a conflagration as the nanotech slid unseen through her body with an urgent, osmotic push. She tried to scream but it filled her mouth and she gagged as it closed up her oesophagus and she realised now the true implications of what it was doing to her—copying, erasing, re-creating.
So this was drowning…
It was the last sensation Idona had as a biological entity.
She awoke and vomited black bile. Her body was covered in strings of nano sludge that draped from her arms and legs. Armand caught her before she fell. This time she saw the eyes behind his, the minds behind his mind, reaching out, pulling her into depths she had never dared explore. She pushed Armand away and fell to the balcony floor.
You have to give yourself to it.
Her own words: but how? It was too much, too deep.
She teetered on the edge, resisting the terrifying vortex of the collective for as long as she could until it drew her in. It began to unravel her memories, experiences and subjective feelings—uploading, understanding, assimilating.
This time, she did scream.
-Kardashev III Space-
The probability-shunt emerged into space and then silently quantum tunnelled away.
Idona was flung into the bright void, her outer dermal layers adjusting rapidly to the vacuum and intense flux of photons and gamma radiation. She drifted for a time until she was able to snag a trajectory around a small, dead moon that had been ejected from the Core a billion years ago. At the lowest point in her descent she diverted precious energy and remoulded her shape to enter the thin atmosphere. She descended to the far side of the moon on kilometre long monolayer wings. As soon as she touched the radiation blasted soil, her nanochines began extracting molecules through the soles of her feet. She found shelter in the caldera of a dead volcano, withdrew her wings, ramped back down to stasis mode, and slept.
She dreamt of Daniel, an old man with weathered skin and a vacant look. He didn't recognise her as she waved to him. How could he? She caught sight of her face in a mirror, all grainy, like an old screen of broken pixels. She reached out and the mirror dissolved when she touched it.
Then her perspective shifted and she was looking down on herself curled into a foetal position, her face calm, her hands cupped together above her chest. There was a quiet about the night that she had not felt in a long time.
Antoinette, Michael, Rochelle, Armand—where are you?
She longed for the connections of the collective.
Their quest had finally been realised—to be others but not lose your individuality, for others to be her and share her inner thoughts. It was a true mass consciousness, unity and diversity hand in hand. And the collective had even started to share their technology with the Type I colonies.
If only Daniel had been able to experience it...
A shudder wracked through her, small tremors building until she writhed around in the grip of full seizure. Sweat dampened her glossy black hair and beaded on her face and limbs. Her breathing came in shallow, ragged gasps, each intake triggering more spasms. And then the nano-mitosis stopped, the sweat evaporated and the Idona of old bleached away into the moon's crust—lost forever.
The new Idona woke and thrashed about in the dirt as the Core rose like a white lance. She rolled away and crawled under a rock ledge, to little effect. She booted up her optical nerve filters to stop the searing light, but it could not remove the agony of a lost incarnation.
You love stricken fool.
'Oh, Ilara, what have I done?' The sound seeped out into the thin air.
In time the pain subsided to leave an odd nausea and sluggishness, like mud sliding through her veins.
The Core blazed overhead for another four hours then set, but even the night was awash with light.
She did not have long here, depending on what useful molecules she could extract from the ground. There was a lot of iron, traces of heavier elements, but precious little carbon. She set a program running overnight and slept again. By the time she woke, an iron dome had extended over her. How could anything live in this nightmare? Maybe the Carvers had got it wrong or maybe the shunt had fallen short of its destination.
She thought of constructing a small light-sail ship from the moon's crust, but where would she go? She could spend a thousand years searching. She diverted some of her mass, and with a few raw materials from the soil she made a crude radio dish at the top of the caldera. An array of small lasers and masers followed. Finally, she configured a miniature solar array as a power source.
She programmed a distress signal and sent it out on all frequencies. As an afterthought she constructed a billion homing nano-probes from the crust and hurled them out of the weak gravity well in all directions. She programmed herself to come out of stasis every month— approximately every seven hundred moon revolutions.
After the first year, and to conserve energy, she reduced the wake up call to every six months.
After thirty thousand revolutions she woke up every year and cursed the gigantic black hole that scrolled across the sky, a hundred suns convulsing on its event horizon.
She surfaced about five metres out, stood up and flicked her hair away from her face, an arc of water trailing out like blue fire flies. She beckoned him with one hand.
He ploughed hip deep into the water and kissed her.
'You are in better spirits,' Idona said.
'You got me thinking this morning.'
'Oh, that's dangerous.'
He nudged her with an elbow.
She urged him on. 'Okay, don't go silent on me now, I won't tease you anymore.'
'Fair enough,' he said, holding her hand as they walked back to the beach. 'I'm beginning to think there is no such thing as a true collective. It all seems so pointless.'
'How so?'
'Evolution is too cyclic—conformity, diversity, then conformity again. And we're locked in without the means to lift ourselves out of it.'
'It's only flawed if we throw reason out the door.'
He looked at her. 'But we have so much of that—logic, intelligence, mathematics.'
She shook her head. 'You're talking about global abstracts. I'm talking about the reasoning of the individual, the ability to tolerate others, to accept ourselves, to question the context we are born into. If we can change our paradigm, our ideas, then we give purpose to the evolutionary process. I say to hell with blind fate. We can achieve a collective and maintain our uniqueness, lift ourselves above our biological or technological programming; all it takes is a single act of faith.'
He turned in his tracks to face her. 'You're the strongest person I know, Idona. I love you.'
She flung her arms around him, feeling now that some distances weren't so vast.
'We knew you would come.'
Idona stirred and looked up at the apparition. It was human, female, stunningly beautiful, wrapped in a cloak of bubbling light like miniature solar flares, with green ellipses for eyes. Then she felt a surge of emotions not her own—curiosity, admiration, hatred, ambivalence—all conveyed through some link, unlike any collective communication she had ever experienced. She squirmed as the link nudged around her optical filters, gently tapping into her mind.
'Who are you?'
The apparition floated closer. 'Akashi Kimura.'
'I am Idona.'
'We know. Tunnelling so close to the Core was foolish, but you will surely die out here nonetheless.'
'Do you hate me?' Idona was stunned by the contradictory emotions she felt through the link. 'What have I done? I don't know you or your society, but you claim to know me.'
Akashi laughed.
Idona felt a sudden, inexplicable irony. Her mind went further into the link until she arrived at the hive entity behind Akashi's strange eyes in a world that defied logic.
A silhouette formed against the permanent brightness of the Core, a network of light and interlaced photonic forms. They looked like kelp beds off the cape, but finessed down to incredibly small gossamer structures, spinning in concentric energy states—countless photonic worlds feeding off the radiance of the galactic core.
Idona floundered as the will of the entity drew her in like the sudden back surge of the tide before a tsunami. She had been known to the entity and its citizens for a hundred generations. Zeitgeists had risen and fallen in her name, generations had mulled over her plight and modelled and forecast the impact of her arrival. They had heard about what had happened to the collective and now they waited with bated breath. Some groups were welcoming her with open arms; others were ready to die before they let her in.
The air rushed out of her lungs. This ocean before her was too much to bear. She panicked and let out a burst-pulse. The entity withdrew, like a confusing dream that she wanted to remember and longed to forget.
Akashi looked down at Idona with regret—a thousand networked Akashi-incarnations backed that look, and twenty trillion individuals in the entity sighed for different reasons.
'Wait,' Idona said, reaching up.
'You should know by now, Idona. We don't look back.'
The link began to slough from her mind. 'You are kidding, right?' Idona stood up and tried to grab Akashi by the ankle, but her hands passed through. 'I've come all this way and now you're going to leave me?'
'You have been with us in spirit far longer than your physical form. But now we see you are just a person. Even we can succumb to myths.'
Idona cancelled the dome and it turned to iron dust and sprinkled to the ground. The light of the Core slammed down on them. Akashi's photon matrix darkened. Idona shielded her eyes with her hands.
'If I'm really that much of a threat, then go' Idona said. 'But before you make up your mind, you should get some perspective.' She pointed to the Core. 'You live next to that.'
Akashi looked puzzled. 'That is our energy source.'
'Exactly. You live next to the most lethal astrophysical object in the galaxy and you call it home.'
'But you represent change,' Akashi said, 'and we are undecided.'
Idona gritted her teeth. 'I get it, I really do. But if it's not me, it will be someone else, sooner rather than later. Someone will eventually be a catalyst for change, you cannot deny that. It will come to you all. I know there are others out there; more advanced than you even—Type IV and V civilisations—living deep within the universal manifold. But we're all human and we have a conscience that is catching up, no matter how far the technology escalates.'
Akashi floated up away from the moon.
Idona fumed. 'Have you listened to a word I've said?'
Akashi turned. 'If only you knew, Idona. Our zeitgeists are in mayhem as we speak.' She paused. 'Who is this man anyway that you would move heaven and earth to be with?'
'Does that matter?'
'I suppose not,' Akashi said, transferring one final data packet to Idona.
'What is this?' Idona called to Akashi's receding figure.
'A map to his location in the galactic halo plus a schematic to build an optical trap. This is no place for–'
'Nanotech.'
-Epilogue-
Daniel gave the neutron star a morning curse.
It took some time for the lethargy to filter away. The nightmares had grown worse of late, probably stimulated by the strange lights that occasionally streaked across the sky. He went about preparing his sludge-meal from the cell's primitive facilities to help dim the eternal ache of blocked mitosis.
He wondered where Idona might be. Perhaps she had remarried and had children. He hoped that she'd had a fulfilling life.
'Don't count me out yet.'
He spun around, his arms flailing, sending his tray spilling across the floor. He backed away until he thudded into the diamond wall.
'Up here.'
He looked up, tears scrolling down his face. She was made of silver and grey light, flecked with motes of violet.
'Idona?' He reached up, hesitant.
She floated down to him, leaving a rainbow trail of bright patterns. He fell to his knees and she wrapped him in her photonic arms.
'I have waited fifteen lifetimes for this day and to hell with waiting any longer. Let's get out of here.'
He stood, cupping her ethereal face in his hands, feeling only a light tingling in his palms. 'Yes, but how?'
'You must trust me.'
He nodded and Idona triggered an optical trap and Daniel's life drained from his body. She waited confidently until the transformation was complete and Daniel was reborn in a burst of light.
He reached out and...touched her. Then in an instant they were together, their bodies pressed painfully close, spiralling up, helixes intertwining.
They paused at the top of the cell and he looked at her, confusion conveyed.
She laughed heartily. 'This beats travelling in that old cryo-ship.'
The quantum singularity net appeared, dazzling them with its primal energies. They reached up through the hole it had created in the diamond bubble, their photons caught in the snare of the net's gravity field. The cell collapsed instantly behind them, and the light of the neutron star quickly faded.
'Remember those days along the shore?' he conveyed as they raced out into the void.
She smiled, her mind tracing back in time, reconnecting to the Idona of old. She had changed so much, physically, emotionally.
'Yes. Yes I do.'
'Your spirit is still the same, Idona. It still shines.'
Those words were her vindication. All the fears and insecurities washed away to be replaced by a renewed confidence in herself and in her long held belief in him.
'Let's go home.'
The Author: Greg Mellor
Greg Mellor is a Canberra-based science fiction writer. His stories have appeared in Cosmos Magazine, Clarkesworld Magazine, Aurealis, AntipodeanSF and several US and Australian paperback anthologies. He was a finalist in the 2009 Aurealis Awards and is a member of the SFWA. He has degrees in astrophysics and technology management, and reads a lot about cats, cars and consciousness theories. An earlier version of 'Heaven and Earth' reached the quarter-finals of the Writers of the Future contest. More information is available at www.gregmellor.com
The Illustrator: Tristan Hodgetts
Tristan Hodgetts was born in Adelaide and moved to Brisbane in 2001. He studied visual art privately on and off for ten years. He has received two highly commended awards at state art competitions for airbrush work. He is currently readying himself to start studying art at university in August of this year.
Love Death
Andrew J McKiernan
Eduardo led her body through the streets on a wheeled bier pulled behind a nag of tired and sullen temperament. His own mood was not much better; four days of trudging south through jungle heat and humidity had taken its toll on both his body and mind. The woman who lay on the bier had been his first and only love, but every hour of travel brought with it an increasing pungency of decay that made it difficult for him to maintain his feelings. He knew that if he didn't get her to a necromancer soon, not only would her chance of resurrection be low but his love for her might fade completely.
But now that Eduardo had arrived in the city, a small portion of his fears were beginning to abate. The Festival of the Laughing Corpse was still two days away but already the streets were filled with people and everywhere the living mingled with the dead. He knew the upcoming festivities were certain to place a premium on any necromancer's services, but the sight of so many faces of morbid pallor filled him with a renewed hope.
Not too late, he thought, I can't be too late, and pushed through the throng of tourists and early revellers, dragging the nag and bier behind him.
Ahead, a troupe of Comedia de la Muerte players performed La Historia de Cómica del Doctor Fausto to a rowdy crowd. Doctor Fausto, having cast off his clothes and dressed now in bright-coloured motley, chased El Diablo around the stage with a large and undoubtedly phallic slapstick. The audience roared their approval at the newly risen Doctor's triumph over death and threw onions at the fleeing devil.
Eduardo watched for a moment—even felt the beginnings of a smile tug at the corner of his lips—but the sign he could see hanging at the far end of the street was more important to him than frivolous plays performed by once-dead clowns.
He moved on, the crowd parting slowly before him, and stopped outside the shop he had been searching for.
Above the shop's oaken door, black and polished smooth by the touch of untold hands, swung a shingle of dark and aged wood. Painted upon the shingle's surface was a faded Caput Mortuum—a white circle inscribed within its circumference with three dots arranged in an inverted triangle— the symbol known as the 'dead head', the sign of the necromancer.
Tentatively, Eduardo reached for the door and knocked.
* * *
Eduardo's mother had died when he was nine, although he wasn't to find this out until five years later.
His mother had always been a sickly woman, and Eduardo thought nothing unusual of the week long trip his father had taken her on. At the time he'd assumed they were on their way to visit yet more leechers, apothecaries and chirurgeons in search of a cure. But Eduardo's father was not interested in retaining the services of mere physicks, for he had seen the coming of his wife's final days and made due preparation with a necromancer in Ciudad del la Muerte.
It was to this appointment that his mother and father had travelled, and there that she had died of her illness not an hour's journey from the city gates.
Outside those same city gates, at the beginning of their journey home three days later, his father and newly resurrected mother had vowed never to tell Eduardo of what had taken place within the city's walls.
Eduardo's mother finally broke her vow five years later and told him everything as her husband lay dead in a night-dampened field, crushed beneath of the wheel of a steam-tractor he'd hired to help prepare the year's planting. She told him because she wanted Eduardo to know his parents would have done anything for each other, but that sometimes it just wasn't possible to do anything at all. Sometimes a body was just too damaged for any hope of resurrection.
Young Eduardo stared at his mother's pale face as she spoke. She wasn't crying. He couldn't remember a time in the previous five years when she had. He'd thought this was because she was happy to be cured of the disease that surely would have killed her, even though his father had become increasingly distant since their return. But what if his mother didn't cry because she couldn't? Maybe it just wasn't possible for the dead to cry. Which made Eduardo think of his father lying beneath the tractor's wheels, and he wondered whether the old man's final tears had fled their reservoir, mingling with the blood that washed the newly ploughed furrows of the stony field.
* * *
Woodcut depictions in various tracts and handbills had led Eduardo to presume all necromancers to be exceedingly old, with beards of impressive length, and apparelled from neck to toe in robes of damask silk. Therefore, when a young and clean shaven man presented his face through the open crack of the necromancer's door, Eduardo assumed he was a servant or assistant and instantly asked to see the master of the house.
The young man responded with a throaty and jovial laugh and swung the door wide, motioning Eduardo in with a sweep of his hand. He wore dark woollen breeches and a rough linen shirt stained here and there with patches of brown and yellow and the darkest of reds.
'If you are looking for the best necromancer in all of Ciudad del la Muerte, then you have found him, amigo. Come in, come in, before the sound of that rabble drives me to a frenzy.'
Eduardo hesitated, his hand still holding the nag's bridle to keep her steady.
'You? You are the mago Don Diego Tezcatl?'
'The very same.'
Eduardo shook his head, confused.
'But, my father came here almost twenty years ago with my mother. You must have been a mere boy.'
Don Diego Tezcatl inclined his head to one side and pressed his lips together in what might have been a smile.
'I was much the same age then as I am now, Señor. Who better to administer the rites of the dead than one who has already experienced them? Please, won't you come inside so that we can discuss your business in comfort and peace?'
'I can't,' Eduardo said and glanced back at the bier. 'I can't just leave her out here on her own. It might already be too late.'
Don Diego Tezcatl looked over Eduardo's shoulder, seeming to notice the horse and bier and its shroud-covered cargo for the first time, and sighed. He stepped out onto the street and drew back the top of the winding-sheet. Eduardo couldn't bring himself to look. He hadn't dared look since the moment he had placed her on the bier.
'Ah, I see,' the necromancer said. 'Yes, we had better bring her inside. You are right; it might indeed be too late, but I will do the best for her that I can.'
* * *
'Her name is Catrina,' Eduardo told the necromancer as they placed her body on an ancient wooden catafalque bedecked about with candles and lilies. The catafalque was set in the centre of the necromancer's workroom. The floor and walls around it were painted with sigils and glyphs that Eduardo found unintelligible and somewhat unsettling.
'She was only twelve years old when I first met her. So beautiful. So sweet and caring and sharp as a blade for her age. I loved her the moment I saw her. Watched her grow into such a beautiful woman. And, now...now that she'd finally come of age...'
'Yes, I'm sure that's all true, Señor Eduardo, but for the moment I will need your assistance to remove this winding sheet. Please hold her steady for me, will you?'
Eduardo reached forward, hesitant, and placed his shaking hands upon the waist of his beloved. She felt so cold and still.
Don Diego began to unwind the shroud, revealing Catrina's raven hair coiled over her crown in an elegant chignon encrusted with dried blood. Loose curls fell around her ears; ears that were darkened at the edges, fever red and weeping fluid at the entrance of the canals. Her face was bruised purple and black, the skin thin and tight across her forehead and the sharp bones of her cheeks. Her lips were drawn back in a rictus grin, displaying gums as slick and dark as rotting oysters. The eyes were like giant fish eggs staring up at him from the hollows of their sockets.
Eduardo flinched and gagged. His hands pushed down as he tried to steady himself and a miasmic belch erupted from his dead love's mouth.
He fell back, tripping over his own feet in an attempt to get away from the sight and smell of what his Catrina had become. A candelabra fell to the floor, spilling wax and extinguishing the flame.
'Maybe you should leave, Señor Eduardo', the necromancer said, a great deal of gentleness in his voice as he continued to remove the shroud.
But Eduardo couldn't look away. He couldn't move at all. He could only stare down at the thing that could not possibly be his Catrina and wonder where his love had gone.
It can't be her, he thought. It can't! But he knew it was.
As the necromancer unwrapped the last of the shroud, he saw that the corpse was still wearing Catrina's wedding dress.
* * *
For three days Eduardo sat in a musty third-floor room in a boarding house near the docks. He rarely slept or ate, and even when he did, the portions of both were measly and unsatisfying. He smoked stale tobacco rolled inside sheets of maize husk. He drank a lot of cheap whiskey. And, when he wasn't staring out the window at ships travelling to and from the Old World, he read through the pile of love letters he'd kept and cried tears onto a faded daguerreotype of Catrina standing young and radiant beneath a blossoming persimmon tree.
He didn't remember booking the room and knew that Don Diego must have arranged it for him. He didn't even know how he'd arrived there; only that he'd suddenly come to the realisation that he was there, in that dirty and threadbare room, and no longer in the shop of the necromancer.
A letter addressed to him lay folded upon the credenza. Beside it rested the now dry and brittle bouquet Catrina had held to her breast as she'd walked slowly down the church's aisle. For the entire first day Eduardo had been unable to approach the small bundle of pale flowers or read the note. He was too afraid of what the bouquet represented and of what might be written on the single page of crisp white paper. Instead, he sat on the bed and stared at them from a distance.
Sometime late on that first night he'd finally fallen into an unsettled sleep, plagued by dreams of his mother and father standing in a ploughed field, shovels in hand and pointing down at the empty graves they'd dug for themselves.
He awoke with the morning's first light, somewhat relieved by the fact that his parents had been alone in the field.
Not twelve months after his father's fatal accident, Eduardo's mother—still grieving and unable to cry for the loss of her husband—had ended her life-in-death by throwing herself down an old well at the rear of their estancia. The fall had been far and the bottom rocky. It was three days before Eduardo discovered her body, twisted and smashed in such a way that no necromancer could restore her life a second time.