Bones.
Reeling away from the tawny remains, Caleb collided with the nearest vehicle. He peered inside. Tattered blue clothing lay in the driver’s seat, barely concealing more lumps of bone. A human skull smiled from the passenger’s side.
Caleb moved on, pace quickening. What had happened here? How long had corpses rotted outside his bedroom walls? He ducked and weaved between the derelict vehicles, stepping over more piles of human remains. Some of them still clutched the rusted weapons that had failed to save them. By the time it was all behind him, Caleb ran at full clip. The road bore him into the unknown, but he couldn’t turn back. Not after what he’d seen. Not after what he’d done.
Dilapidated houses on either side of the street gave way to woods and telephone wires, a sweet scent rising with them. Caleb slowed to a jog, then a walk, lungs heaving. He’d never run so far, so long. The trees whispered as a burst of cool air caressed him; the world seemed to breathe Caleb in as he did likewise. When the wind receded, an altogether different sound emerged. A low, mechanical rumble swelled somewhere on the road ahead, growing louder with each passing heartbeat. Caleb considered standing his ground. Part of him yearned to learn what this world was bringing him. But the remnants of death outside the house burned in his mind. He ducked between the trees, dropping down to wait for the thing to pass, whatever it was.
The rumbling grew louder, and a shape emerged beneath the starlight. Blinding light erupted from twin spots on its fore. Caleb covered his eyes, and the thing made a wild screech. Two loud thumps followed, then boots against blacktop. People.
When Caleb could see again, two men stood in the road, bathed in the headlights of a truck. They wore black jumpsuits with white emblems on the left breast. Each held a rifle. Each pointed it at Caleb.
“Out of the woods, vagrant,” one of them said. “Now.”
Caleb thought about running, slipping deeper into the trees. But something told him their weapons would outrun him. He complied.
“A kid?” the man said when Caleb emerged. “This far in? Are you shitting me, Tucker?”
“Don’t look at me,” the other said. He wore some kind of visor over one eye. “None of the infrareds further back caught him.”
The first man gestured with his weapon. “You’re in a lot of trouble. Who are you? What are you doing on this road?”
“My name is Caleb. I’m exploring.”
Tucker let out a snicker, and the men exchanged puzzled looks.
“Well, sorry to interrupt your expedition,” the first man said. “But I’d rather not have to answer for an idiot kid being reduced to a thin, red paste in my quadrant. How did you get past the checkpoints?”
“I don’t know what you mean. I walked.”
“From where?”
“From my house. Up the road.”
The man lowered his rifle with a cockeyed look.
“Sarge,” Tucker whispered. His rifle pointed somewhere behind Caleb. “There’s more out there. Reds missed it somehow, but I’m staring right at it.”
The first man, Sarge, gave Caleb a hard, combative look, as though he’d committed some great wrong. “Christ. One of them.”
“No way,” Tucker said. “We made tribute. They shouldn’t—”
“In the truck. Now.”
Without another word, they lowered their weapons and piled into the vehicle. The truck spun around, cutting across the road and bathing Caleb in fumes that made him cough. The tires screamed against the asphalt, kicking acrid smoke into the air. But the truck refused to move, as though held in place. Caleb knew why.
He faced the darkness behind him. His father gave it a voice. “Everything that happens now is your fault.”
“Don’t hurt them, Dad. Please.”
“You’ve condemned them, not me.” Caleb had never seen such a grim expression on his father’s face. “Now watch.”
Groaning metal punctuated his last sentence. The truck’s doors flew from their hinges, and the men inside spilled out. Tucker clung to the doorframe, but an invisible hand wrenched him away. They tried to right themselves, to raise their rifles and fire, but the guns ripped away from their hands, slings tearing like paper. They rose from the ground, tumbling and spinning in the air, grunting and moaning. Caleb looked away. He knew what he’d see if he didn’t.
“Nah-ah.” Dad seized his chin, steering it back in their direction. “You wanted the outside. You hurt your brother to get it. Well, here you are, son. Watch how we deal with vermin. Watch how this world works.”
Sarge drifted forward, hanging upside down. Their eyes met. For a second, Caleb thought Sarge might say something. His head drove into the concrete before he had the chance. Caleb slammed his eyes shut.
“No, no, no.”
Dad gripped his shoulder. “Open your eyes.”
“I can’t. I can’t watch this.”
“Tell you what. I won’t kill the other one. I just want you to look at him. Look at the life you’ve ruined.”
Caleb did as his father asked. Tucker no longer floated in the air. He knelt a few feet from them, shivering, staring at his unmoving partner.
“I’m sorry,” Caleb said, tears blurring his vision. He didn’t know if he meant the apology for Tucker, Sarge, or his father. “I’ve learned my lesson.”
“Not yet, you haven’t,” Dad said.
“You said you wouldn’t kill him.”
“I won’t.” Dad gave Caleb a shove toward Tucker. “You will.”
“What?” Caleb’s stomach lurched.
“This is what you wanted. You wanted to cross the yellow line, whether you’d earned it or not. You wanted a shortcut. Here it is. Forget dominoes. Forget mazes. We’ll skip you right to the final test. Your brother hasn’t even made it this far.”
“No.” Caleb tried to back away, but his father shoved again.
“This man is nothing, Caleb. He’s an insect—vermin. They all are. Remove him and the world is yours. The sun is yours.”
“I can’t.”
Tucker rose into the air again. He let out a frantic gasp, which became a pitched howl.
“What are you doing to him?” Caleb said.
“Just breaking a bone or two.”
“Please don’t!”
“Then put him out of his misery. I know you can. You showed Josh what you can do. Now show me. Otherwise, it’s going to take him a long time to die.”
Caleb tried to block the world out, to build the sun, as he’d done before. He doubled over, scrunching his eyes and covering his ears. He tried to ignore Tucker’s pain, to fade into a reality of his own making. But this time, he failed. His imaginary sun never came. All he saw was black. All he heard were screams.
He opened his eyes and aimed them at the night sky. They drifted straight to the brilliant orb that had so entranced him when he took his first steps outside. He’d spent his life chasing the sun, but he knew about the moon from books in the library. He knew why it beamed so bright amid this dark sky. The energy crawling across his exposed skin didn’t belong to the moon—it was sunlight. The moon was merely its vessel.
Caleb stood up straight and met his father’s eyes. He removed his shirt, letting the sun embrace him from somewhere over the horizon.
Dad smiled. “And I thought Josh was the quick learner. Do it, son.”
Caleb didn’t need to shut his eyes for what came next, though part of him wanted to. He didn’t need to block the world out. He didn’t need to visualize his obstacle. It stood right in front of him. Caleb knew what he needed to do, and for the first time in his life, he knew he had the power to do it. This time when he called on it, his mind leaped forward as easily as a hand swatting a fly. A loud popping noise halted Tucker’s screams. Save for a final, rasping cry, the night fell silent.
Tucker collapsed onto the ground. Caleb’s gaze drifte
d from him to the twisted mass that used to be his father. His back had inverted like a question mark. His head faced the wrong direction. Dad’s eyes—eyes that once held immense power over Caleb—had gone white and empty.
Caleb fell to his knees and sobbed.
“You helped me,” Tucker said, clutching one arm. “Your kind never helps. You just hurt. And take. But you helped me.”
Caleb stood and wiped his face with his shirt. “I couldn’t help your friend.”
Tucker shuffled to his feet and leaned against the truck. He limped toward the driver’s side, then turned back to Caleb. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
The sound of shoes pounding pavement echoed toward them. Caleb looked up. Against the night sky, which now faded to purple at its edge, a featureless silhouette bobbed along the road. Caleb heard his name, a long howl against the wind—Mom calling after him.
“Take me some place high,” Caleb said. “I want to watch the sun rise.”
Flawless Imperfection
by Sergey Poyarkov
* * *
This year, Sergey Poyarkov celebrates his 25th anniversary as a winner of the L. Ron Hubbard Illustrators of the Future Gold Award. He arrived in Los Angeles in 1991 to receive his award, directly from his home in the Ukraine, as Communism was falling in his homeland.
Sergey has since gone on to a successful artistic career as an illustrator and made a transition to fine artist, with his works displayed in exhibitions across Europe, the UK and the United States. He has published five books of his art, in which he conveys not only his art but his own philosophy of art, expressing pride in his roots and appreciation of his new friends in other countries.
Sergey’s whimsical art graces the cover of this anthology. The piece is entitled “Do Not Stop,” which he described with these words: ”I do not remember when I made the discovery that the world is a system of obligations. Here a man is flying and playing the piano. As soon as he ceases to play he will fall. Each of us lives in his own definite rhythm, sits at his keyboard. This rhythm is set to us by society or by ourselves. And when one tries to stop, to change this rhythm, all the complex mechanism of his life starts its descent. One may beat the keys more often and then the device will mount higher, the horizon will widen. If you beat them less often, the machine will fly closer to the ground. So don’t stop: fly farther.”
Flawless Imperfection
A long, long time ago, art split into two opposite directions. One of them is described by the word art-ful, the other by the word art-ifical.
There exists the art of bizarre fantasy so masterfully performed and polished over years that you can’t take your eyes off it. There also exists an art of marketing, in which one can’t determine whether all this has been brought from the rubbish heap or a museum.
When this split occurred is hard to determine, but one has to admit that with the appearance of “experts” in art, the practice of painting has become, shamefully, a pastime one is likely to be embarrassed by.
Back when people lived in caves, they desired with all their might to draw beautifully, as can be seen by the painting in Lascaux, Spain. Painters in antiquity also attained perfection in their arts. It’s from them that the Renaissance masters took the baton.
In fact, over the past nineteen centuries, artists tried to paint beautifully. Artistic skill achieved its highest point as a rather pleasant and delightful thing until a marvelous stream of hooligans and—at first even nice—rebels appeared at the end of the nineteenth century.
At the beginning of the twentith century, there appeared a number of “experts” who said it was inappropriate for a viewer himself to decide what he liked.
I dislike many aspects of Modernism—namely those works where one can’t see any skills of drawing. I don’t like them for the same reason any doctor or scientist doesn’t like palm readers, astrologists, or other swindlers.
There is a boundary that separates these two different businesses: the art of painting and the art of marketing.
Palm reading and astrology are cheating on a commercial level. If Mark Twain were alive today, he would jeer at the tribe of conceptualist artists and their followers. Modernism began as a piquant cheese with a rind of mold, where the bits of mold emphasized the taste of the cheese. But the cheese disappeared quite soon and only the moldy rind remained.
You must have seen the film The Thomas Crown Affair. A teacher takes her pupils to the Metropolitan Museum and points out an early impressionist painting. The children don’t appreciate the piece until the teacher tells them it costs 100 million dollars. At which point, they open their eyes in admiration, saying in chorus: “wow!” But it was the sum of money, not beauty, which created the impression.
Just because millions of people believe in something, it does not make it true or good. If these millions adopt cannibalism, fascism, fall into religious trances, or believe in the rightness of Marxism or beauty of conceptualism, I don’t have to agree with them.
Only those who are unsure of themselves must listen to “experts.” Do you seek the opinions of “experts” while choosing your favorite dish, convictions, hobbies, friends, or your wife?
The art of Rauschenberg, Chagall, Warhol and Picasso is the art of positioning in the market using PR technologies, conveyor goods, and masterful marketing. Their professional position is, “It’s my view.”
It’s truly ingenious to adopt that stance, and I take off my hat to them.
The art of Breughel, Andrew White, Bosch and Norman Rockwell is the art of imagination, fantasy and masterful professional skills. Their professional position is “This is how I can do it.” Their position and philosophy belong to them, and it was not invented by their art dealers for them. To be honest, we have to say that they successfully combined both positions, and one must give them their due.
There are two reasons why I respect Picasso. First, I respect success. Second, in his last interviews he jeered at his admirers and laughed publicly at those who considered him a great painter.
From my observation, the worse one can paint, the louder and more hysterically he tends to shout: “This is how I see it!” and the more furiously he calls those who have all grounds to declare with dignity, “This is how I can do it,” “craftsmen” and “cheap shopkeepers.”
I believe it’s better to be a jolly, capable, and joyful craftsman than a dull, incapable conceptualist.
The principle goal of the artist is to gradually make his work simpler and simpler or more and more complicated. My New York friend Sasha Zakharov sometimes checks whether his work of literature is a success by the reaction of his girlfriend Yana. If while looking at the plot she starts weeping, it means that the work is a success. This is more objective than any expert’s evaluation.
I hate questions like, “What do you call your style?” or “In what direction do you work?” It’s easy to invent a pseudo-scientific term ala “narrative descriptivism” or “anti-conceptual out-modernism,” but for whom or what is it needed? Viewers are taught to ask questions: “What stream (trend, or direction) is it?”
Really, what difference does it make? There is no stream. There is only one person in the world who determines what you like and what you don’t like, what is good and pleasant and what is unacceptable and ugly, and that person is you!
I think that for mentally healthy viewers, the most important thing is their perception—not mine, not an art specialist’s, or a curator’s, a journalist’s nor a neighbor’s.
You, yourself, are capable of having your own opinion, and it is the only true and correct one for you. If, in order to learn what he truly likes, a man needs advice from an “expert,” then he is sick.
When I became an art student, I stopped painting my “childish” pictures where maps of fairy islands and my own fictitious heroes mingled with heroes of the books I read. I proudly began to learn how to paint academical
ly correctly. Then one day, my childhood friend Igor Sudak came to see me. Naturally, he asked me what I was engaged in at the moment.
I joyfully unloaded a heap of portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and staging routines—feeling justifiably proud of my evident progress.
“It’s understood,” said Igor. “And what do you paint for yourself?” I realized then that this school of drawing plaster heads, paraffin apples and naked bodies on the background of conventional drapery is simply a method to gain professional painting skills. And it’s my personal choice to paint exactly what I wanted after I obtained the skills. I want to paint my own personal realities, and not the things only accepted, or things that are considered to be “proper.”
A painter learns to paint staging and all the rest in order to return on a high aesthetic, a higher level of technical expertise to the things he wanted to paint before he got engaged in academic studies. It’s very important not to lose track of the childish feeling of awe in front of a white sheet of paper. However, while studying, many forget what they began studying for, like adults who forget that they once were children. When one gets bored with everything, including diversity, those who are truly original remain true to themselves.
I recall a story about a rabbi named Dzussi. He said: “When I die, God won’t ask me why I wasn’t Aristotle, he’ll ask me why I wasn’t Dzussi.” I want to be myself, and I think that this should be the goal for everyone.
Directing the Art
by Bob EGGLETON
* * *
Bob Eggleton is a successful science fiction, fantasy, horror, and landscape artist, encompassing twenty years of putting brush to canvas or board. Winner of nine Hugo Awards—he has been nominated an amazing twenty-eight times over twenty-four years—plus twelve Chesley Awards, as well as various magazine awards, his art can be seen on the covers of magazines, books, posters and prints—and of late, trading cards, stationery, drink coasters, journals, and jigsaw puzzles. He is considered one of the most “commercially successful” artists in the fields of science fiction and fantasy.