The Weird Part 96

Then I saw that I had never known him and that I had never even wanted to know him. And as he grew, he became thinner and more indistinct; his form slipped into the darkness of the stairwell and he no longer had shape or ma.s.s.

But his eyes, his eyes remained, and his gaze, which is as black and piercing as it ever was, and as impenetrable. And when I look into the darkness of his eyes they gradually begin to sparkle like double stars, like the planets on which the sun s.h.i.+nes and on which there are seas and continents, roads, valleys and waterfalls and great forests where many can live and sing.

Then I went inside and closed the door, a little less sad. For it was, after all, now clear that although I had lived beside him from the beginning to the end, not just one life but two or three, I would never have learned to know him. His outline, which I had once drawn around him, in order to be able to show him and name him, had now disappeared. It liberated the great stranger who was a much realer Longhorn than the person I once knew, small and separate.

Such is my farewell to Longhorn today, date as postmark, in the city of Tainaron.

Pa.s.sing Bells The Twenty-Ninth Letter What a rumbling! Over all of Tainaron it spread, echoing from wall to wall, shaking the window-panes and resonating in my own chest. When I pressed my fingers against the table, I could even feel the sound of the ore bells in my fingertips. And my toes, the soles of my feet, my elbows heard it, for the floor, all the soil of Tainaron quivered and resounded.

The prince had died, and now in all the churches, cathedrals and temples of the city, the many of them that there were, pa.s.sing bells were being rung. They roared from morning to night as if to restore to the deceased the respect which no one had accorded to him before his death.

'What happened to the prince?' I asked the Rhinoceros Beetle. For the cause of his death had not been divulged on the news.

'Him? He just died,' the Rhinoceros Beetle answered, turning his slow gaze upon me. 'It was high time. He was an old man.'

'But was it not almost too fitting a time?'

I had seen, in the heart tower, what I had seen: the thin, expectant form of the prince, huddled on a simple chair which had been set in the middle of the floor without the company of adjutants or even the most lowly guardsman. His cloak was surrounded, like another cloak, by the aura of his fast approaching end. And it was not a natural end.

'Did it not happen very suddenly?'

'No more suddenly than anything else,' the Rhinoceros Beetle growled, even more dully than usual.

Slow-blooded, simple-minded creature! How could Longhorn ever have imagined that the Rhinoceros Beetle could have replaced him as my guide to Tainaron?

'I should like to know what will happen next,' I said.

'Now power will change hands,' the Rhinoceros Beetle said.

'Yes, of course,' I said impatiently. I knew that, of course, but I wanted to find out what it would mean in practice and what kind of leaders.h.i.+p Tainaron would now receive. But as I looked at the Rhinoceros Beetle I realised that it was not worth pursuing the subject. I could already see that nothing could have interested him less.

At that moment he glanced at me askance, and behind the membrane that covered his black eyes there flashed something like amus.e.m.e.nt. Was the Rhinoceros Beetle really capable of being amused by something? For a moment I felt I might have been mistaken in regard to him, as if his dullness might veil completely different characteristics which he hid for who knew what reason. I tried to find the light again, but his gaze extinguished, as normal. Perhaps the fleeting impression was caused merely by the lighting or by my own state of mind.

'Will you go to a memorial service in one of the temples? What religion do you belong to?' I found myself asking, for I wished to change the subject, which had proved fruitless.

'Each in turn,' he said. 'Naturally.'

'Each in turn? Surely that is not possible,' I said, stunned. And 'naturally' surely that was too much.

'Why not?' he said, chewing something in his ma.s.sive jaws. 'One must be impartial. At the moment I belong to the temple of the highest knowledge. Next month I shall move to oh, I do not think I can remember the name of the parish.'

'But if where you are now has the highest knowledge, why is it worth moving to another parish?'

He did not answer, but chewed and swallowed some tough and gluey substance which from time to time stuck his jaws together. I could still hear the ringing of the pa.s.sing bells, from both far and high, both low and from quite close by.

'Do you recognise the bells of your own temple?' I asked.

'I think they are the ones that clattering quite close by,' he said. 'Or else those where you can hear a double ring between the low strokes. No, listen, I think after all that they are those slower ones from farther east, that always ring three and one, three and one,' he said.

I listened in vain. I could not distinguish the bells from each other; all I could hear was a roaring in which they were all mixed up. These Tainaronians! I do not suppose I shall ever learn to understand them. I am beginning to be weary of my long visit; yes, now I am weary.

The Rhinoceros Beetle has gone, but the prince's pa.s.sing bells are still booming. And why should I not admit that today I am plagued by home-sickness. I am sick with home-sickness. But Oceanos is freezing for the winter, and not a single s.h.i.+p will leave the harbour before spring.

The tall trees of my home courtyard are now tossing in the grip of a storm. The slanting brightness of autumn falls into my room. I see the room's books and pictures and carefully chosen things; I remember its calm and its secret joy. It was at just this time of year, before winter, long ago, that you came into my room.

You came into my room as the morning dawned, and I did not know whether I slept or woke. I did not stir, but you, you squeezed your hard, salt-weathered lips silently to my throat, where the pulse beats, and then they pressed my temples and moved, hot, over my eyelids, until finally you felt for my mouth and opened it with your own lips. Then I tasted your taste, the taste of your thirst, and I answered, and answered, and moaned.

The Pupal Cell of My Home The Thirtieth Letter How long I searched for a home back then. Before me furnished and cold rooms opened, broken rental agreements fell, houses with destruction orders collapsed, and the endless queues of housing offices wound in long roads without issue.

Now all that is in the past. In the room in which I now live I have everything I need, and more: if I step on to my balcony, I see the white pennants and golden cupolas of Tainaron, the cloud-girt mountains and the blue heart-waters of Oceanos.

Nevertheless, I have now started to prepare a new dwelling for myself, just in case. Yes, it is almost ready for me to move in, my little pupal cell; it can no longer be unsuccessful. It has the fresh smell of mud and algae and reeds, for I have gathered almost all the materials myself from the beach where I once almost found myself in the jaws of death. I have done it all with my own hands, and when I look inside I am satisfied. It is just my size, like a well-fitting garment which does not pull anywhere. It is small on the outside but s.p.a.cious inside, just as a good dwelling-place should be.

It is dark there. When I peer in through its only opening which, when the occasion arises, I shall close from inside, I am overcome by irresistible sleepiness. I do not believe that the lack of s.p.a.ce will trouble me, for once I reach it it will be as wide as the night.

The mail will go on being delivered for some time, so I have heard, but the city now seems dead. More and more people are withdrawing for their winter rest, some of them like Longhorn and, before long, I myself too will be away for much longer. I spoke of sleeping just now, but of course we shall not merely be resting, but changing. Will I know how? Will it be hard work? Will it bring pain or pleasure or will it mean the disappearance, too, of all regrets?

Some change imperceptibly, little by little, others quickly and once and for all, but everyone changes, and for that reason it is in vain to ask whose fate is the best.

My entire room stinks like an estuary! There was something I still had to tell you, but the smell of the sludge dulls my thoughts. I shall remember it once more when it is spring, and that will come soon, soon, the seventeenth, and all around will sparkle droplets! and I shall rise; and we shall see again...

Hogfoot Right and Bird-Hands.

Garry Kilworth.

Garry Kilworth (1941) is a highly respected English writer who has published dozens of fantasy, science fiction, and historical novels since the 1970s. A World Fantasy Award winner, Kilworth has also won the Charles Whiting Award for Literature and written a number of books for children, including the Welkin Weasel series. Short story collections include Let's Go to Golgotha (1975), In the Country of Tattooed Men (1993), and Tales from a Fragrant Harbour (2010). 'Hogfoot Right and Bird-hands' (1987) may be Kilworth's most famous story, in a few short pages evoking wonder, mystery, and horror to create an amazingly potent 'weird science fiction' tale.

There lived, high above the empty streets in a tall building, an old woman whose pet cat had recently died. In those days cats were rare and the woman had not the means to purchase another. So she called for the machine whose duty it was to look after the welfare of lost and lonely people.

The welfare machine came to her apartment in the middle of the night, and when she explained her plight it suggested that the old woman replace her cat with a pet fas.h.i.+oned from a part of her body. It said it could remove and modify one of her feet to resemble a piglet, and the old woman agreed to this scheme. Since she spent all her time in the mobile bed-chair that saw to all her needs, she did not require the use of her feet, nor any other part of her body for that matter, apart from her brain, to which the bed-chair and other appliances were connected. The old woman was not sick, unless apathy and idleness be looked upon as an illness, but she had no desire to take part in any physical activity of any sort. She merely went from one grey day to the next, sleeping, eating, and watching a device called wallscreen, on which she could witness the lives of others, long since dead, over and over again.

Thus, her right foot was removed and roughly shaped and given a life of its own. This appendage she called Hogfoot Right, and it gave her much pleasure to see the creature scuttling around the floor and nosing in the corners of the rooms the way such creations did. However, Hogfoot Right was not one of those pets that liked to be stroked and fussed over, the way the old woman's cat had been when it was alive, and eventually she grew tired of its company, wanting something more. Watching the creature grub around the carpet was interesting enough at first, but when she had seen it done once or twice the novelty began to pall. So she called her welfare machine again and had her other foot removed. This one she called Basil, in the hope that giving it a proper name would make it more affectionate toward its mistress.

Basil turned out to be such a sweet creature. He would sit on the old woman's lap and let her stroke him for hours, his little hog nose twitching in ecstasy as she ran her hands over his dozing form.

Hogfoot Right, however, was moody and irritable and would skulk around in the darker corners of the house and cower away from the old woman when she approached him. He did not actually kiss or spit at her, but his bad temper was evident in the expression on his blunted face and in the sour line of his crudely fas.h.i.+oned mouth.

However, Hogfoot Right was Basil's good companion and in that respect the old woman had no complaint. He served his brother well, snuggling up to him at night and making sure he did not get too excited when something happened to amuse him. Sometimes even Hogfoot Right would join in with his brother's antics, and the two of them would b.u.t.t each other's rumps and roll around the carpet like six-month-old piglets. Then, suddenly, Hogfoot Right would become resentful of something and would sidle away to frequent the edges of the room, glowering at both his brother and the old woman if they tried to entice him to play again. The old woman despaired of this temperamental pet and eventually gave up on the beast.

It was because of her great success with Basil that she decided to increase her menagerie. The welfare machine called one day to see how she was faring and she asked for more surgery. She told it she wanted to lose her hands and her ears. Her bedchair responded to brain impulses, and she said she could not see what use both these sets of her appendages were to her anymore.

The welfare machine was all in favour of the idea. The ears were fused together to make a moth, and the hands became a beautiful pale bird-like creature that soared gracefully around the room and was really the most delicate, delightful pet the old woman had ever set eyes on. She loved it from the first moment she saw it. It would perch on the back of the bed-chair and flutter its fingerfeathers with more dignity than a fantailed dove, and though it remained aloof from the other creatures in the room it would often sit and watch their games from a suitable place above their heads.

Moth-ears was a bit of a disappointment. She fluttered here and there occasionally and was best seen floating past the window with the light s.h.i.+ning through her translucent form, but mostly she hung from the old woman's collar with her wings clothed. It was almost as if she were trying to get back to her original positions on the old woman's head. She was nervous and shy and tended to start at sudden, loud noises and was really quite useless as a pet. Yet the old woman was happy to keep her, seeing in her an aspect of her own personality.

Bird-hands liked to perch on the light fittings or sit on the windowsill with folded wings, looking out at the sky. She would watch the house martins the way they swooped before alighting on the outer sill, and she would copy their flight patterns. Since the old woman could not fondle her pets any more, Bird-hands would stroke her instead, running her fingerwings along the old woman's shoulders and down her neck. At night she nestled in her warm lap while the others slept. The old woman loved her dearly.

Bird-hands seemed the most contented of the group of creatures. There was a musical instrument in the apartment which could be played manually if required, and this the creature would do, running her fingerwings over the keys and producing the most delightful melodies. Occasionally she would switch the instrument to automatic and fly to the rhythm of the tune, adding that extra dimension to the unfolding of the notes with her graceful motion.

The group prospered. Even when Snake-arm came along the harmony remained, though at times the sinuous movements alarmed the old woman when she caught sight of it suddenly out of the corner of her eye.

Thus, they all lived together in a harmonious group, apart from the unsociable Hogfoot Right. The old woman could not thank the welfare machine enough, pouring praises on its mechanical parts whenever it came to see how she was getting along. Sometimes the machine would sit with Bird-hands and squeak at it in its high-pitched language, always ending in a rattling laugh. Once, it brought a pair of satin gloves, white, with lace around the cuffs, which Bird-hands wore to fly around the room while the old woman exclaimed upon the beauty of the creature.

Another time, the welfare machine brought an old leather boot, and forced Hogfoot Right to wear it, making the foot clump around the room while the old woman sn.i.g.g.e.red at such a humorous sight. The welfare machine carefully watched her heartbeat monitor at times like these, intently observant for any variation in its pace and strength.

It was a very happy time for the old woman.

Until, one night, it all went wrong.

A terrible noise woke the old woman. It was the sound of cras.h.i.+ng furniture and struggling bodies. A gla.s.s ornament smashed against a wall, spraying her legs with fragments. There was a life-and-death struggle going on somewhere in the room. A standard lamp fell across a table and shattered the ceramic stem. The old woman was too frightened to even turn on the light. She was sure that an android had entered her apartment: a rogue machine whose brain had suffered a malfunction and was on the rampage. All she could do was quietly guide her bed-chair to the corner of the room and stay there until the ruckus was over.

The fighting, she was sure, was between her pets and the intruder, and since there was little she could do she had to await the outcome without interfering.

Finally, after a long while, there was silence, and she ordered the light switch on. The scene that met her eyes was horrific. In the centre of the room were Bird-hands and Hogfoot Right, obviously squaring up to one another. Around them, bleeding, broken, and bruised, were the other pets. Moth-ears had been torn and crushed and was obviously dead. Snake-arm had been pierced by a long ceramic splinter which protruded from its head. It, too, was deathly still. Basil was black with bruises, having been beaten, fatally it seemed.

The old woman had not the slightest doubt that Hogfoot Right had gone berserk. There was no sign of any android intruder, and Hogfoot Right looked as though he were now about to attack Bird-hands.

The two combatants fell upon one another.

There was a frenzied scrambling and clawing. The old woman began yelling like crazy for Bird-hands, telling her to dig her claws in, while the seemingly mad hog was b.u.t.ting her round and round the walls with its heel-hard head.

It was a vicious battle.

Furniture was scattered this way and that, and twice the old woman had to move her bed-chair to get out of their path as they rolled across the floor, locked in a tight ball. Once, she thought Hogfoot had had enough, as he backed away into a corner, but again he went forward, just when Bird-hands was trying to recover.

Finally, Bird-hands picked him up by the hindquarters and flung him at the exposed end of the standard lamp. It was bristling with live contacts. With a bouncing arc of his body he twisted in agony as the shock went through him. He lay broken and still, across the sputtering wires.

Bird-hands fluttered to the middle of the room.

'Well done,' cried the old woman. 'Well fought.'

Bird-hands just sat there, her thumb-head turned towards the window, through which the dawn was just beginning to emerge. Then suddenly the creature launched herself into the air and began throwing her body at the gla.s.s panes in a seemingly desperate attempt to smash her way through, like a wild bird that is trapped in a closed room.

Then the old woman understood. It had not been Hogfoot Right, but Bird-hands. She had seen the martins cutting through the blue sky outside and she wanted to be free too. She wanted to be out amongst those of her own kind. Maybe she had run amok amongst the others because they refused or were unable to understand her desire for escape? Perhaps she had tried to get them to open the window something only the old woman could do with a brain command only to find they could not help her? Anyway, she had killed them all. Even little Moth-ears. And Hogfoot Right, the bad-tempered one, had given her the toughest opposition of all.

Poor Hogfoot, misjudged right to the end.

Now Bird-hands sat on the ledge, her nails dripping with blood. She seemed to be waiting for the old woman to open the window, which could only be done by direct order. There came, in the silence, the sound of real birds chirruping outside, and Bird-hands, displaying restlessness. The old woman, still in a state of shock, refused to respond.

Bird-hands carefully wiped the gore from her fingerwings on one of the curtains. By this time the old woman had recovered a little but she had much of the stubbornness of her erstwhile right foot and she made it obvious that she was not going to comply.

Finally, Bird-hands flew to the ledge and settled on the old woman's neck. The creature began to stroke the withered throat sensuously, hoping perhaps to persuade her mistress to do what she wished. The woman sat rigidly still, grimfaced. Gradually the stroking became firmer. At the last, the fingerwings tightened and squeezed, slowly but effectively. There were a few minutes during which the old woman convulsed. Then the body went slack.

Bird-hands, after a long while, released her grip and fluttered down to the floor. She crabbed her way amongst the dead animals, inspecting them for signs of life. Then she came to Hogfoot Right, lying across the electrified strands of the light socket. Bird-hands observed her victim with seeming dispa.s.sion. She inched forward, close to the hog's head, looking down.

Suddenly there was a jerk from Hogfoot Right, as his head flashed out and his jaws clamped on a little finger. A brilliant shower of blue-white sparks rained around the pair, and then the stillness in the room was complete.

Later, the welfare machine came to call and surveyed the scene with mechanical surprise. It made a careful note of all of the damage and recorded a verdict of suicide. Just as it was about to leave, it sensed some vibrations coming from somewhere in the room. One of the creatures had stirred. Suddenly something snapped at its metal leg and then went careering through the open doorway and along the corridor.

Shades.

Lucius Shepard.

Lucius Shepard (1947) is an award-winning American writer whose fiction often contains an element of supernatural horror and reflects personal experience from his extensive travels overseas. Briefly a.s.sociated with the cyberpunk movement, Shepard quickly established himself as sui generis with novels such as Life During Wartime (1987) and The Scalehunter's Beautiful Daughter (1988). More recently, novels such as Viator (2005) have confirmed Shepard's status as one of his generation's best writers of weird fiction. Long stories have been Shepard's particular strength, collected in, among others, The Jaguar Hunter (1987), Trujillo (2004), and The Best of Lucius Shepard (2008). 'Shades' is a unque and unflinchingly weird ghost story that also serves as a commentary on the devastation of war.

This little gook cadre with a pitted complexion drove me through the heart of Saigon I couldn't relate to it as Ho Chi Minh City and checked me into the Hotel Heroes of Tet, a place that must have been quietly elegant and very French back in the days when philosophy was discussed over Cointreau rather than practiced in the streets, but now was filled with cheap production-line furniture and tinted photographs of Uncle Ho. Glaring at me, the cadre suggested I would be advised to keep to my room until I left for Cam Le; to annoy him I strolled into the bar, where a couple of Americans reporters, their table laden with notebooks and tape ca.s.settes were drinking shots from a bottle of George d.i.c.kel. 'How's it goin'?' I said, ambling over. 'Name's Tom Puleo. I'm doin' a piece on Stoner for Esquire.'

The bigger of them chubby, red-faced guy about my age, maybe thirty-five, thirty-six returned a fishy stare; but the younger one, who was thin and tanned and weaselly handsome, perked up and said, 'Hey, you're the guy was in Stoner's outfit, right?' I admitted it, and the chubby guy changed his att.i.tude. He put on a welcome-to-the-lodge smile, stuck out a hand, and introduced himself as Ed Fierman, Chicago Sun-Times. His pal, he said, was Ken Witcover, CNN.

They tried to draw me out about Stoner, but I told them maybe later, that I wanted to unwind from the airplane ride, and we proceeded to do damage to the whiskey. By the time we'd sucked down three drinks, Fierman and I were into some heavy reminiscence. Turned out he had covered the war during my tour and knew my old top. Witcover was cherry in Vietnam, so he just tried to look wise and to laugh in the right spots. It got pretty drunk at that table. A security cadre fortyish, cadaverous gook in yellow fatigues sat nearby, c.o.c.king an ear toward us, and we pretended to be engaged in subversive activity, whispering and drawing maps on napkins. But it was Stoner who was really on all our minds, and Fierman the drunkest of us finally broached the subject, saying, 'A machine that traps ghosts! It's just like the gooks to come up with something that G.o.dd.a.m.n worthless!'

Witcover shushed him, glancing nervously at the security cadre, but Fierman was beyond caution. 'They could a done humanity a service,' he said, chuckling. 'Turned alla Russians into women or something. But, nah! The gooks get behind worthlessness. They may claim to be Marxists, but at heart they still wanna be inscrutable.'

'So,' said Witcover to me, ignoring Fierman, 'when you gonna fill us in on Stoner?'

I didn't care much for Witcover. It wasn't anything personal; I simply wasn't fond of his breed: compulsively neat (pencils lined up, name inscribed on every possession), edgy, on the make. I disliked him the way some people dislike yappy little dogs. But I couldn't argue with his desire to change the subject. 'He was a good soldier,' I said.

Fierman let out a mulish guffaw. 'Now that,' he said, 'that's what I call in-depth a.n.a.lysis.'

Witcover snickered.

'Tell you the truth' I scowled at him, freighting my words with malice 'I hated the son of a b.i.t.c.h. He had this young-professor air, this way of lookin' at you as if you were an interestin' specimen. And he came across pure phony. Y'know, the kind who's always talkin' like a black dude, sayin' "right on" and s.h.i.+t, and sayin' it all wrong.'

'Doesn't seem much reason for hating him,' said Witcover, and by his injured tone, I judged I had touched a nerve. Most likely he had once entertained soul-brother pretensions.

'Maybe not. Maybe if I'd met him back home, I'd have pa.s.sed him off as a creep and gone about my business. But in combat situations, you don't have the energy to maintain that sort of neutrality. It's easier to hate. And anyway, Stoner could be a genuine pain in the a.s.s.'

'How's that?' Fierman asked, getting interested.

'It was never anything unforgivable; he just never let up with it. Like one time a bunch of us were in this guy Gurney's hooch, and he was tellin' 'bout this bada.s.s he'd known in Detroit. The cops had been chasin' this guy across the rooftops, and he'd missed a jump. Fell seven floors and emptied his gun at the cops on the way down. Reaction was typical. Guys sayin' "Wow" and tryin' to think of a story to top it. But Stoner he nods sagely and says, "Yeah, there's a lot of that goin' around." As if this was a syndrome to which he's devoted years of study. But you knew he didn't have a clue, that he was too upscale to have met anybody like Gurney's bada.s.s.' I had a slug of whiskey. '"There's a lot of that goin' around" was a totally inept comment. All it did was to bring everyone down from a nice buzz and make us aware of the s.h.i.+thole where we lived.'

Witcover looked puzzled, but Fierman made a noise that seemed to imply comprehension. 'How'd he die?' he asked. 'The handout says he was KIA, but it doesn't say what kind of action.'

'The f.u.c.kup kind,' I said. I didn't want to tell them. The closer I came to seeing Stoner, the leerier I got about the topic. Until this business had begun, I thought I'd buried all the death-tripping weirdness of Vietnam; now Stoner had unearthed it and I was having dreams again and I hated him for that worse than I ever had in life. What was I supposed to do? Feel sorry for him? Maybe ghosts didn't have bad dreams. Maybe it was terrific being a ghost, like with Casper...Anyway, I did tell them. How we had entered Cam Le, what was left of the patrol. How we had lined up the villagers, interrogated them, hit them, and G.o.d knows we might have killed them we were freaked, bone-weary, an atrocity waiting to happen if Stoner hadn't distracted us. He'd been wandering around, poking at stuff with his rifle, and then, with this ferocious expression on his face, he'd fired into one of the huts. The hut had been empty, but there must have been explosives hidden inside, because after a few rounds the whole d.a.m.n thing had blown and taken Stoner with it.

Talking about him soured me on company, and shortly afterward I broke it off with Fierman and Witcover, and walked out into the city. The security cadre tagged along, his hand resting on the b.u.t.t of his sidearm. I had a real load on and barely noticed my surroundings. The only salient points of difference between Saigon today and fifteen years before were the ubiquitous representations of Uncle Ho that covered the facades of many of the buildings, and the absence of motor scooters: the traffic consisted mainly of bicycles. I went a dozen blocks or so and stopped at a sidewalk cafe beneath sun-browned tamarinds, where I paid two dong for food tickets, my first experience with what the Communists called 'goods exchange' a system they hoped would undermine the concept of monetary trade; I handed the tickets to the waitress, and she gave me a bottle of beer and a dish of fried peanuts. The security cadre, who had taken a table opposite mine, seemed no more impressed with the system than was I; he chided the waitress for her slowness and acted perturbed by the complexity accruing to his order of tea and cakes.