Tag: Nuclear post-apocalypse

Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand by Vonda N. McIntyre

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand by Vonda N. McIntyre (Analog, October 1973) takes place at a tribal settlement in the desert where Snake, a female healer, is treating a sick young boy. It soon becomes apparent that she does not use conventional treatments:

She had to annoy Mist to make her come out. Snake rapped on the bag and finally poked her twice. Snake felt the vibration of sliding scales, and suddenly the albino cobra flung herself into the tent. She moved quickly, yet there seemed to be no end to her. She reared back and up. Her breath rushed out in a hiss. Her head rose well over a meter above the floor. She flared her wide hood. Behind her, the adults gasped, as if physically assaulted by the gaze of the tan spectacle design on the back of Mist’s hood. Snake ignored the people and spoke to the great cobra, focusing her attention by her words. “Ah, thou. Furious creature. Lie down; ’tis time for thee to earn thy dinner. Speak to this child, and touch him. He is called Stavin.” Slowly, Mist relaxed her hood and allowed Snake to touch her. Snake grasped her firmly behind the head and held her so she looked at Stavin. The cobra’s silver eyes picked up the yellow of the lamplight. “Stavin,” Snake said, “Mist will only meet you now. I promise that this time she will touch you gently.”

Mist is the one of three snakes that Snake has (Sand is a rattlesnake, and Grass is a smaller “dreamsnake” she uses for pain relief and euthanasia).
After Snake lets the cobra “taste” the boy with his tongue, she meets with the tribe’s female leader and asks for food for her pony, and for someone to help her with Mist through the night. Snake then feeds Mist a small animal that she has treated with drops from a vial.
She is joined by Arvin, one of the male tribesmen, and they spend several hours restraining the cobra, which repeatedly convulses as it manufactures a treatment for the boy’s tumour. Eventually, day comes, and Mist is ready for the boy but, when Snake goes back to the tent, she discovers (spoiler) that Grass, who she left to comfort the child, has been have killed by the frightened parents. Even though she is distraught Snake treats the boy by letting Mist bite him and inject the venom treatment.
Snake later comes close to suffering the same fate as Grass even thought the boy’s tumour starts shrinking (the tribal members are a superstitious and fearful lot), but the tribal leader intervenes to let her leave safely. Arvin wants to go with her, but Snake tells Arvin that she must return to the city where she was trained and see if she can get a replacement dreamsnake (there is the briefest hint in the story that this is a post-nuclear holocaust world). Snake promises him that if she can appease her superiors, she will return.
This is an original piece and a pretty good one too—what also marked it out at the time, apart from its original idea, was the more subdued writing style, and the story’s matriarchal society (unusual for most mid-70s SF). However, some of the novelty wears off on the second or third reading, and it also feels a little fragmentary (it is part of the Hugo and Nebula winning novel, Dreamsnake,1 which I’ve also read).
***+ (Good to Very Good). 8,200 words. Story link.

1. Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand was the first chapter of the novel Dreamsnake (1978); The Serpent’s Death (Analog, February 1978) was chapter two of the novel; and The Broken Dome (Analog, March 1978) is a condensation of the last half of chapter 9 through to chapter 12 (the last hundred pages of the book).

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.

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