Tag: Interzone

Those We Serve by Eugenia Triantafyllou

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Those We Serve by Eugenia Triantafyllou (Interzone #287, May-June 2020)1 begins with Manoli, an artificial, putting his summer skin on his steel chassis. Manoli is an illegal copy (the real/original Manoli lives in an undersea city) and he works on an island that is a tourist destination:

For a few precious hours the island seemed to belong only to the artificials. Manoli let himself feel enchanted by the walls painted bright summer colors but also by the pure white ones, as radiant as the sun. By the calm sea and the oceanic pools (such was their architecture that they seem to pour into the sea like a tilted glass of water). As he went up the wide and curved stairs that led to a small white church, he admired its decrepit beauty, the chipped green paint of the bells. The priest, another artificial, pulled at the rope and let them boom all the way out to the sea, his long black robes and bushy beard blowing in the high wind. He greeted Manoli with a subtle nod and then crossed his hands and fixed his stare at the horizon.
How could the priest reconcile his nature with his birth memory? Did he still believe he was a God’s creature? Manoli wondered the same thing about every artificial but he always reached the same conclusion: it depended on the person they were made from. Their birth memories and the personality their human had. They could not escape it.

The rest of the piece sees Manoli looking for a woman called Amelia, who arrives later but does not seem to be aware that Manoli is an artificial. Then we see Manoli experiencing the memories of his original who, when Manoli meets him later, complains about living in the undersea city and tells Manoli that the originals are coming to take their lives back. When Amelia later arrives at the bar to join the two of them, she doesn’t recognise the original Manoli.
The piece ends with (spoiler) Manoli managing to overcome his programming and leave the island with Amelia.
This has a confusing start and the rest of it is pretty mystifying too. Even once I realised that Manoli was an artificial person, the reason for their existence never convinced (real people hiding away from the tourists in an undersea city). I also didn’t understand why Amelia was with Manoli (did she not know he was an artificial?) or why she didn’t recognise the original in the bar. This may be one of those stories that is operating on a dreamlike or allegorical or symbolic level—if so, it went over my head.
* (Mediocre). 5,800 words.

1. The writer briefly speaks about the story here.

Kitemistress by Keith Roberts

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Kitemistress by Keith Roberts (Interzone #11, Spring 1985) is a direct sequel to Kitecadet,1 the second of the ‘Kiteworld’ stories, and takes place shortly after Raoul’s crash in the Badlands. Raoul has decided to leave the Kitecorps, and we see Captain Goldensoul quiz him about his decision to leave. They quickly get to the nub of the matter:

‘Cadet,’ he said, ‘you saved both yourself and your String. You showed coolness, and considerable courage.’ He paused. ‘You are here, we are all here, to protect the Realm. You did your duty. I see no shame in that.’
But he’d been neither cool nor courageous. He’d been terrified. He’d seized the first weapon that came to hand, killed a defenceless creature with it. He said, ‘Have you ever cut a baby’s head off with a hatchet?’ His back stiffened instantly. He said, Sorry, sir. Beg pardon.’
The Captain waved a hand, mildly. He stared a moment longer, then sat back at the desk. He said, ‘You didn’t kill a baby. You killed nothing human. You destroyed an alien. An enemy of the Realm.’
Raoul moistened his lips with his tongue. ‘It was human,’ he said. ‘And it wasn’t our enemy.’

Goldensoul decides to give him a conditional discharge (twelve months upaid leave) and Raoul leaves. He packs his things and goes to the bar, where Canwen, the legendary kiteman, summons him to his table. He quizzes Raoul about his decision, points out a few uncomfortable truths about the young, and then gives him a letter of introduction to the Bishop of Barida, who will get Raoul a job as a house kiteman.
Raoul travels to Easthorpe and is quickly placed by the Bishop in the Kerosin household. However, its wealthy master (“the richest bloke in the realm” on account of his fuel business) soon passes him on to the Lady Kerosina, who runs the household:

The Lady Kerosina was lounging in a chair of silvery Holand fibre. Behind her, long glass doors gave a view of landscaped grounds. A glass was at her side, and a bowl of some confection. He stared. Her hair was dark, shot with bronze highlights. It tumbled to her shoulders and below. Her cheekbones were high and perfectly modelled, her eyes huge and of no definable colour, her nose delicately tip-tilted. She wore a simple white dress; the neckline plunged deeply at the front. She wore ankle-high sandals, again of some silvery material. He saw they were uppers only; the soles of her feet were bare.
She inclined her head, graciously. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Josen,’ she said. ‘Sit down, and tell me about yourself.’
He took a chair, hesitantly. She crossed her knees. Her skirt was split to the top of her thigh. Her legs were long, and exquisite. He blinked. He’d seen some daring fashions in Middlemarch odd times, but nothing to compare with that. He rested his eyes carefully on the middle distance. He was aware she smiled. He began to talk, haltingly at first, about his training, early career; but she interrupted him. ‘Who,’ she said in her well-modulated, slightly husky voice, ‘was your Captain, in the Salient?’
‘Goldensoul, Mistress,’ he said. ‘He gave me an excellent testimonial.’
‘Dear old Goldensoul,’ she said. ‘Always the do-gooder.’ She selected a sweet, bit into it deliberately. Displayed even, pearly teeth. ‘And what brought you to Barida?’
He swallowed. He said, ‘I was sent by the Master Canwen.’
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I begin to understand. I was wondering how you breached our good Bishop’s defences. Tell me, is the Master still as mad as ever?’
He frowned. He said. ‘He’s one of the most respected Fliers in the Realm.’
She looked amused. She said, ‘No doubt.’
He risked another glance at her. She wore no jewellery of any kind; but round her neck was a slender leather collar. The sort of thing you might put on a dog. It seemed oddly out of sorts with the rest of her ensemble; he wondered what its purpose could be.

Raoul later talks to the retiring kiteman, who confirms other comments that Raoul has heard about Kerosina’s predatory sexual behaviour, and it isn’t long before he has to report again to her in his new uniform. This time she makes him kneel down in front of her and gathers his hair into two ponytails. She instructs him to wear it like that. However, when she invites Raoul to stay and have a glass of wine, he says he has urgent work to do.
In between the pair’s further encounters we learn more about the household and its personnel, one of whom is the unsavoury head horseman Martland—who Raoul ominously sees at one point in the house with a young boy and a nine-year-old girl (we learn at the end of the story that Martland is Kerosina’s procurer).
After further attempts at seduction by Kerosina (who gets progressively more irritated at Raoul’s reluctance) and more trouble from Maitland, matters come to a head when Raoul gets a letter from Stev, an old friend who had been posted to F16—then immediately afterwards gets another letter saying that Stev has been killed in a crash. While Raoul is emotionally vulnerable Kerosina takes him down to her mud dungeon and seduces him (this scene includes the first hint of urolangia that I think I’ve seen in an SF story).
Afterwards, Raoul packs his bags and flees with Canwen’s words ringing in his ears (“Wallow in mud, and then the stars come close. Because you have earned the right to see their glory. . . .”). Then a jealous Martland pursues Raoul on horseback and, when he catches him, beats him so badly that Raoul is badly injured. He lies on the ground going in and out of consciousness for days. During this period a thick bubbling voice talks to him and leaves food—rabbit haunches—on a decorated plate.2 Raoul comes to a terrible realisation about the mutants from the Badlands:

He thought, ‘So they’re even here. In the Middle Lands.’ So much for the Kites then. Once he thought he saw one of the creatures humping away. On all fours; smaller than a dog, and blue. He pushed himself up on his hands. ‘Come back,’ he called. ‘Come back, I want to talk to you. . . .’ But the bushes stayed still.
He wiped his cheeks. He’d met its sister once, and killed her. This was how they were repaying him. With Life.

Raoul eventually manages to get to his feet and continue his journey to Middlemarch, but he experiences further abuse from tinkers, who rob him of some of his clothes, and the Variant police, who beat him. He finally gets sanctuary at the doors of Middle Church just as he is about to be beaten again. Rye (the barmaid from Kitecadet) comes to him at the end of the story.
The bare bones of the plot probably make this sound like a fairly slight story, but the beauty of this piece is in its writing and characterisation, its subtlety and slow burn. And perhaps, most of all, its sorrowfulness. It’s a very good piece, if one that uses its main character rather badly.
**** (Very Good). 11,000 words.

1. I think that Kitecadet and Kitemistress (this story) would have been better published as one piece: Kitecadet has a rather abrupt, puzzling ending, and Kitemistress depends, at least for part of its effect, on a good knowledge of Kitecadet.

2. This part of the story, where the mutant brings Raoul food, reminded me of the scene in the ‘Pavane’ story, The Signaller, where the fairies/Old Ones appear after Rafe has been attacked by the catamount.
The more obvious reminders of The Signaller are the parallels between the Signaller’s Guild and the Kitecorps, and of a young man’s progression in those organisations.

Salvage by Andy Dudak

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Salvage by Andy Dudak (Interzone, January-February 2020) gets off to an intriguing start with a woman called Aristy examining “homifacts” on New Ce. These homifacts are petrified humans created by an alien race a thousand years previously, with the purpose of stopping human observation of the Universe (which was, apparently, causing it to fly apart). The hominids are, however, still alive as software inside their transmuted bodies—and Aristy is there and able to interface with them because her people were far away on near-lightspeed spaceships at the time of the alien action. As she tells one of the homifacts (a political man in the Picti dictatorship which ruled the planet):

“They asked humanity to turn its damaging gaze away from the cosmos. Turn inward, lose itself in simulated realities. And some did. Whole civilizations did. But it wasn’t enough for the aliens, the Curators as we’ve come to call them. So, they acted. They swept through the human Emanation in less than a century. No one knows how they did that.
“They turned the human species inward. Cities, worlds, systems, empires. The Curators’ Reagent froze people instantly, preserved their brains, which were gradually converted into durable networks suffusing their remnant statues. A trillion human beings Turned Inward, a trillion isolated minds in a trillion virtualities.”

Aristy now spends her time interfacing with these homifacts and asking them if they want to be downloaded onto her servers, where they can live in a world of their own creation; stay where they are, with or without improvements; or be deleted:

Of the six she hacked today, four chose transfer to her server: Acolyte, Night Soil Collector, Visiting Student, and Doctor. The small-minded Printer opted to remain in his simulated village, but with a larger, more prosperous print shop, a remodeled wife, and a medal of distinguished service from Generalissimo Picti. The brainwashed Commissar, unable to bear the historical irrelevance of Picti’s long-gone reign, chose oblivion.

Just as this story looks like it is settling down into its groove, the next part veers off in an unexpected direction: Aristy goes back to her camp and finds a lawyer and an armed guard waiting. They ask her about the homifacts she has salvaged, and then tell her that she needs to go with them to Drop City.
After her arrival, Aristy is quizzed by the Drop City Committee, and later has to listen to a number of homifacts give testimony about the historical crimes committed against them by Picti the dictator: they go on to demand his reclamation so he can stand trial. Then, during a recess, Aristy goes for a drink in a bar, followed by her guard; there, an old man challenges her about something she did on her starship. Finally, the committee reconvene and sentence Aristy to community service for her illegal salvaging operations, which means she has to track down Picti and bring him to trial for them.
The search for General Picti starts at a former torture chamber under a building called The Tannery. Aristy finds his security boss there, and starts going through his memories to find out where Picti was when the aliens arrived: these scenes build up a picture of the planetary society of the time.
When (spoiler) Aristy finally finds Picti, she enters his simulation and goes through the timeline, watching as it veers from reality into fantasy (during this sequence Picti turns himself into a god). Then she appears to tell him that he is to stand trial for his crimes, and Picti learns what has happened over the last 1000 years. Meanwhile, the reader learns that Aristy was one of the waking crew of the starship, and deliberately killed its sleepers. We aren’t really told why Aristy did this, but the ending has such an intense, almost hallucinatory, quality that I wasn’t as bothered about this unresolved subplot as I might have been.
This is an original piece, has a complex development and, all in all, is pretty good.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 10,600 words.

Kitecadet by Keith Roberts

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Kitecadet by Keith Roberts (Interzone #6, Winter 1983) is the second in his series of ‘Kiteworld’ stories, all of which are set in a post-holocaust world where Kitemen fly patrols in huge kites over the radioactive badlands which surround the Realm: this one opens with a newly graduated Kitecadet called Raoul getting on a transport to go to Middlemarch, the Realm’s main settlement.
During Raoul’s preparations to leave, and his journey to the city, we see the day to day detail of a Kitecadet’s life, and learn that (a) Raoul is newly qualified (despite not having completed his first operational flight) and (b) that he and another cadet called Olsen bear a serious grudge against each other.
Later in the journey, Raoul gets his first sight of Middlemarch:

Far off, the mountains of the Westguard loomed in silhouette, like pale holes knocked in the sky. To right and left, as far as the eye could reach, the land rose to other heights; while below, dwarfed by the vast bowl in which it lay yet still it seemed stretching endlessly, lay Middlemarch, greatest city in all the Realm.
Somebody whooped; and abruptly the spell was broken. The Cadets fell to chattering like magpies as the Transports began their slow, cautious descent. Raoul joined in, pointing to this and that wonder; the Middle Lake, the great central parkland where on the morrow the Air Fair would begin, the pale needle-spires of Godpath, Metropolitan Cathedral of the Variants. The sprawling building beside it, he knew from his books and lectures, was the Corps headquarters; beyond was the Mercy Hospital, the Middle Doctrine’s chief establishment. Beyond again loomed other towers, too numerous to count; while in every direction, spreading into distance, were the squares and avenues, the baths and libraries and palaces of that amazing town. To the south Holand, the industrial suburb, spread a faint, polluting haze, but all the rest was sparkling; clear and white, like a place seen in a dream.  p. 29

The next day the cadets go to the Air Fair and see a character from the first story, the legendary kiteman Canwen, make a record breaking altitude attempt. Then they attend a ceremonial dinner attended by another first story character, Kitemaster Helman. After this they go out on the town and, at one bar, Raoul starts chatting up one of the local barmaids. Later, when a drunk Olsen steams in and starts pawing her, a violent fight breaks out between Raoul, Olsen and some of the others, leaving Olsen badly beaten. The barmaid takes Raoul to her place before the Variant police arrive, and there she attends to his wounds before they later make love. Raoul leaves to return to base the next day.
After this the structure of the story becomes quite choppy—the next scene leaps forward in time to Raoul’s second visit to Middlemarch and the barmaid, where he is obviously traumatised by something that has happened to him. Then the story flashes back to his first operational flight (which presumably occurs between their first and second encounters). During this (spoiler), and as a result of the sabotage of his kite by Olsen, Raoul crashes in the badlands and has an encounter with one of the creatures that live there:

The shouts carried to him. ‘The basket, the basket. . . .’ He understood, at last; it was tilted to one side, carrying far too much weight. He grabbed the pistol from its wicker holster, but he was too late; the thing that had boarded him already had his wrist. It was no bigger, perhaps, than a three or four year child, and its skin was an odd, almost translucent blue. It was mature though, evidently; he saw that it was female. Dreadfully, appallingly female. The gun went off, wildly; then it was jerked from his hand. The basket rebounded again; but the other didn’t relax its grip. He stared, in terror. What he saw now in the eyes was not the hate he’d read about, but love; a horrifying, eternal love. She stroked his arm, and gurgled; gurgled and pleaded, even while he took the line axe, and struck, and struck, and struck. . .  p. 42

The last short scene sees Raoul fleeing from the barmaid in some distress.
This is a story that, although I enjoyed its separate parts, doesn’t work structurally. Part of the reason for this is the change of pace and time that occurs in the last part—for most of its length it is a slow-moving piece that describes the character’s world and his place in it; at the end the climactic scenes jump about in time and the kite accident section is much faster paced. I’d also add that the first time I read this piece I had no idea that the blue creature was a mutant and not some other demon or monster. There is probably be an argument for this story and the third one, Kitemistress, being combined into a longer piece, but I’ll perhaps come back to that with the next story.
**+ (Average to Good). 7,900 words. Story link.

Kitemaster by Keith Roberts

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Kitemaster by Keith Roberts (Interzone #1, Spring 1982),1 is the first of eight stories that make up the mosaic novel Kiteworld, and the opening of this piece, with its gloomy and atmospheric evocation of hangars and steam-driven machines, seems to consciously evoke that of his most successful novel Pavane: 2

The ground crew had all but finished their litany. They stood in line, heads bowed, silhouetted against the last dull flaring from the west; below me the Launch Vehicle seethed gently to itself, water sizzling round a rusted boiler rivet. A gust of warmth blew up toward the gantry, bringing scents of steam and oil to mingle with the ever-present smell of dope. At my side the Kitecaptain snorted, it seemed impatiently; shuffled his feet, sank his bull head even further between his shoulders.
I glanced round the darkening hangar, taking in the remembered scene; the spools of cable, head-high on their trolleys, bright blades of the anchor rigs, fathom on fathom of the complex lifting train. In the centre of the place, above the Observer’s wickerwork basket, the mellow light of oil lamps grew to stealthy prominence; it showed the spidery crisscrossings of girders, the faces of the windspeed telltales, each hanging from its jumble of struts. The black needles vibrated, edging erratically up and down the scales; beyond, scarcely visible in the gloom, was the complex bulk of the Manlifter itself, its dark, spread wings jutting to either side.

This passage also evokes another ‘Pavane’ story, The Signaller, but whereas that story was about a guild of signallers who transmitted messages the length and breadth of a Vatican dominated Europe by the use of huge semaphore towers, the organisation in this piece, a Corps of Kitemen, fly kite-like Manlifters or Cody rigs above the Badlands to ward off an unspecified threat.
There isn’t really much of a story here, and the narrative mostly concerns itself with the interplay between two characters: Kitemaster Helman, a high ranking official cum religious figure who is visiting the kitebase, and an unnamed Kitecaptain, who is the commander. As they watch the night launch of a Cody rig, the drunk Kitecaptain provides a stream of heretical comments about (a) their strange society (there are hints this is set after a nuclear apocalypse), (b) the salient wide malaise among the kitemen (it seems a string of suicides may have prompted Helman’s visit), and (c) the pointless of the defence they mount against the demons in the Badlands:

‘The Corps was formed,’ [Helman] said, ‘to guard the Realm, and keep its borders safe.’
‘From Demons,’ [the Kitecaptain] said bitterly. ‘From Demons and night walkers, all spirits that bring harm. . . .’ He quoted, savagely, from the Litany. ‘Some plunge, invisible, from highest realms of air; some have the shapes of fishes, flying; some, and these be hardest to descry, cling close upon the hills and very treetops. . . .’ I raised a hand, but he rushed on regardless. ‘These last be deadliest of all,’ he snarled. ‘For to these the Evil One hath given semblance of a Will, to seek out and destroy their prey . . . Crap!’ He pounded the desk again. ‘All crap,’ he said. ‘Every last syllable. The Corps fell for it though, every man jack of us. You crook your little fingers, and we run: we float up there like fools, with a pistol in one hand and a prayerbook in the other, waiting to shoot down bogles, while you live off the fat of the land. . . .’
[Helman] turned away from the window and sat down. ‘Enough,’ [he] said tiredly. ‘Enough, I pray you. . . .’

Later, the Kitemaster takes out a radio or similar device to listen to the Cody rig’s pilot, Observer Canwen, a legendary flier, and they briefly listen to his delusional ravings about his dead father and wife. The Kitecaptain eventually denounces the device as “necromancy” and smashes it, before recalling Canwen. As they draw him in there is a lightning strike, and the Cody rig crashes—although Canwen survives.
The next day a sheepish Kitecaptain, sober now and realising he has seriously overstepped the mark, arrives to see the Kitemaster off on the next leg of his journey. The Kitemaster is pragmatic and affable, and exhorts the Kitecaptain to keep the Codys flying “until something better comes along. . . .”
This was probably my fourth time reading this story and I enjoyed the atmosphere and the interplay of the fully realised characters—but, if you come to this cold, and/or on its own, your mileage may vary. (It struck me as an odd story to start a series.)
*** (Good). 6,400 words. Story link.

1. This story first appeared in a German language anthology, Tor zu den Sternen (“Gate to the Stars”), 1981.

2. More accurately, I’m referring to the opening of the first of the ‘Pavane’ stories, The Lady Margaret (Impulse #1, April 1966, as The Lady Anne).

At three in the afternoon the engine sheds were already gloomy with the coming night. Light, blue and vague, filtered through the long strips of the skylights, showing the roofties stark like angular metal bones. Beneath, the locomotives waited brooding, hulks twice the height of a man, their canopies brushing the rafters. The light gleamed in dull spindle shapes, here from the strappings of a boiler, there from the starred boss of a flywheel. The massive road wheels stood in pools of shadow.  p. 6

Time’s Own Gravity by Alexander Glass

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Time’s Own Gravity by Alexander Glass (Interzone, September-October 2020) begins with the narrator winding multiple timepieces in a house:

We kept them on the old kitchen table: two alarm clocks and an old pocket watch. We were lucky: we had enough to have a set in every room. We even had a couple spare, up in the attic. Some people have just one set for the house. Some people have just one clock, which means you can tell when it isn’t safe, but can’t work out which way to run. Two is better. Four is too many: you can’t distinguish their sounds clearly enough. Three is best. Time, and time, and time again. That’s what people say.

Later on we learn that differences in the speed of the ticking clocks are used to warn of time distortions that are life-threatening, something that subsequently happens to the narrator and his wife Ginny, who then flee their house:

The protocol was simple enough. First, we were supposed to get out of the immediate vicinity, and find a place that seemed safe. People said higher ground was better, for some reason, though that might have been a myth; and anyway, nowhere was completely free of danger. If there were injuries, we should get them treated, not that there was much the doctors could do, generally. Without meaning to, I found I had brought my good hand up to touch the scar on my face. I forced it back down.

As the couple wait by their house for the time distortion to pass, a man called Lukasz, the famous inventor of the Ragnorak Drive, turns up with his team. He ignores their warnings about the house, and tells them he is there because of the event. After he leaves them to survey the property, we learn that the narrator came by the scar on his face and his withered hand in a previous event; however, on that occasion, the couple didn’t get away in good time, and the narrator got caught in the margins of the time distortion. This caused his hand to age much more quickly than the rest of him (their dog, who didn’t escape with them, was reduced to a skeleton and fur).
The rest of the story has Lukasz describe his theories to the couple (spoiler), and he explains that the time distortions are living creatures which appear in our time to reproduce. Lukasz subsequently goes into the house to trap the creatures, but disappears. The story ends with the narrator’s wife leaving him, and an account of the narrator’s theories about Lukasz (who he thinks is a time traveller), and the event that caused the creation of the creatures.
I found the last part of this story a little confusing, alas, but for the most part this is a conceptually engaging piece, and one that reminded me of work by the likes of Barrington Bayley or David I. Masson.
*** (Good). 5,200 words.