Genevieve assured her, “Anything at the altitude of Galul or above. That will include the uplands of Langmarsh, the mountains of Sealands, most of Dania, all of Havenor and Upland, though Barfezi will become marshlands, and virtually all of Merdune and Frangía will be submerged. Havenpool will be nothing but a shallow lagoon of the sea. Since there is considerable vulcanism involved, however, there will also be new islands, some of them of considerable size. Though we will not live to see all these changes, our children’s children will.”
“We will not see the depths of the sea, either,” said Mrs. Blessingham firmly, though sadly. “But our children’s children will.”
Genevieve went home to Langmarsh House, where, as they had agreed on their way home, Aufors Leys had been busy reorganizing the Duke’s estates and parceling various farms and businesses out to the men and women who had always worked them. Genevieve, watching him before he knew she was there, saw the satisfaction in his face. He actually looked happy! His welcome, when he saw her, was almost as ardent as she remembered.
“All finished?” he asked.
She heaved a great breath. “I think so.”
“And what now?”
She surprised herself by weeping, tears spilling down her cheeks as though his words had released a dam. “Oh, Aufors, I feel finished, too. Done with my purpose in life! I think it’s a great pity to come to the end of one’s purpose in life when one is not yet twenty-two.”
He actually laughed. “You think you’ve come to the end, do you?”
He said it teasingly, but it rankled nonetheless, and she frowned, aware she was behaving childishly, unable to behave in any other way. Too much had happened to her. Too much all at once.
“Come,” said Aufors, reaching for her hand. “I want to see.”
“See what?”
“See the cellars where your mother took you.” He caressed her hand, and though she could not fathom his reason, his tone said it was important to him. They went down the stairs, she leading him by one hand, a candle in the other, as she herself had been led all those years of her childhood. They traversed the extensive cellars, far under the foundations of Langmarsh House, to those deep pools where she had learned to be what she was.
He looked at her, and at the pool, and at her again. The candlelight reflected on the pool in little shattered ripples of fire. Far off, the water dripped ceaselessly with a musical phrase that repeated, with variations, over and over. He ran his hands down her neck, where he felt nothing at all but sweet flesh and soft skin, though his eyes told him there were little lines there that other women might not have. Some other women.
“It’s only a deep pool of water,” he said, gesturing. “I thought it would be more mysterious.”
“It’s pretty mysterious at two in the morning, especially in winter. It’s cold in there, and it’s dark,” she murmured, half hypnotized by the ripples on the water. “I was always afraid there were eely things in there. Still, it’s not unnatural, and I’m not unnatural either, anymore than whales are unnatural. We are both creatures born to the land who are going back to the sea.”
“That’s the part you haven’t explained,” he said. “It’s why I wanted to come down here. I want everything. Everything the spirit said to you. All that you’ve told me so far, I’ve managed to accept, but you haven’t really said why. Why are we to go back to the sea?”
“Fingers,” she murmured, remembering the words of the spirit. “We got fingers before we got good sense. You know, one of our early ancestors was called Homo habilis, the toolmaker. We learned to manipulate and change things before we learned to look at what we were changing. So did the whales, and the dolphins, long before us, but they have bigger brains than we do, and after they made a few mistakes, they decided—philosophically, you understand—that it would be better to go back to the sea and practice humility first by thinking things out thoroughly. Then, when they’d done that, they could crawl back up on the land in a few million years or so. Only they never got the chance because of us! We … we made mistakes, too, but we didn’t have any humility. We never bothered to think things out. We just … went on. Wreck this, destroy that, gamble our souls on the odds of whether we’d ever do it right …”
“So,” he said.
“So, the spirit of this world made one tiny change in one woman—Tenopia’s mother really was impregnated by a wave—and that woman passed on that one tiny change to all her lineage, and that lineage will turn us around and let us go back.”
The water dripped and rippled. The light on the ripples came and went.
“What will happen to Ares?” he asked at last.
“Terceth asked me that, before he left for home. The Aresians that are left will have to emigrate to other worlds. The planet will lie barren for an age, or an eon, until a spirit of life visits it again. Perhaps in time its own harbingers will return to it from their haven here. Life always goes back. It always tries again. Meantime, the spirits of several dead worlds have found a haven here, and their harbingers with them. The spirit said, ‘The latigern and betivor graze the hills of Galul. The chamaris and thalliar roam the mountain ranges. Brak and bralt lie in deep grass along the rivers, where the Thai-flower grows amid the reeds.’ So the spirit said, that they have come to their Haven, as we will come to ours.”
“And that’s the end?”
“There’s never any end,” she said. “The world souls sunder and they join. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose, but eventually, wisdom spreads and there will be more of those whose covenant is life, not mere living for one species at the expense of all, but life in such variety that there will be no place in the universe it does not exist, and all that exists will think as with one mind …” Her voice trailed into silence.
“And that’s all you know?”
“Every jot. I’m sure there were things being said that I was too stupid to understand, but you’ve heard everything I can remember.”
“Then your being half fish shouldn’t bother me,” he said, as though trying to convince himself.
She watched him narrowly, then pressed herself against him, unbuttoning his shirt and her own, to let their skins lie next to one another.
“Fish aren’t warm,” she whispered. “I’m warm, aren’t I?”
He gulped. “Oh, yes.”
She slid her hands lower and caressed him.
“If I am only part fish, it’s no part that’s important to us, is it?”
After a long moment, he laughed tremulously, putting his arms around her to hold her as he had not truly held her since she had sung to the sea.
In the pool, something small and golden surfaced only long enough to see the two of them locked together in the light of the candle. It flipped away as quickly as it had come. Nothing had ever happened on Earth that the Earth-soul had not seen and remembered. Nothing had ever happened on Ares, or Chapín, or Dowes world that their world-souls had not seen and remembered. Nothing happened anywhere on Haven that was not added to those memories.
Glossary
The following are Maori words used in the text. Long vowels appear in bold face. Ng and wh are letters peculiar to Maori. Ng as in singing. Wh is usually pronounced F. R is close to L, not rolled.
awhero hope
haere mai welcome
he a, an, some
hohonu deep
huna conceal e.g., mea huna, secret thing
kaikaukau swimmer
kamakama quick
karanga call, shout
kuia old lady
e kui form of address
mai hither, to me
mana charisma, power
marae meeting place. Also fortress, tribal center
matangi wind
matawaka ancestral canoes
mea thing, article
morehu saved, survivor
nga the, plural e.g. nga matangi, the winds
nui large, great
oranga safety
parauri dark skinned
/>
taiao world
tahunga makutu wizard
tapairu honored lady
tapu sacred, forbidden
te the, singular e.g. te taiao, the world
Tenopia Zenobia
Tewhani Stephanie
tumau servant
wairua spirit
wahi place, site
whakaeke arriving visitors
whakamomori wait patientiy (malghaste usage, “those who”)
whakautu response
whetu star
We hope you’ve enjoyed this Avon Eos book. As part of our mission to give readers the best science fiction and fantasy being written today, the following pages contain a glimpse into the fascinating worlds of a select group of Avon Eos authors.
In the following pages experience the latest in cutting-edge sf from Dennis Danvers and the wondrous fantasy realm of Roger Zelazny and Jane Lind-skold, as well as thrilling passages from the works of Sheri S. Tepper, Ian Douglas, and Robert Silver-berg.
END OF DAYS
by Dennis Danuers
DONOVAN CARROLL SAT UNDER THE STRIPED AWNING OF A sidewalk cafe and watched the rain. It drummed the taut canvas overhead, and a fine, cool mist settled on his face and hands. Dangling from the awning, a whirling wind chime emitted a high melodic clatter. He took a deep breath. The rain smell left a tang at the back of his throat and made him feel a little high.
Every year some misguided senator introduced a bill to control the weather, arguing, as required for any innovation, that it was both scientifically possible and socially desirable. Donovan didn’t know about the possible part. He was no scientist. But any random occurrence was desirable as far as he was concerned. It was bad enough contemplating eternity without the prospect of an endless succession of sunny days. Apparently, most people agreed with him: The rain was still falling when and where it liked.
Donovan checked his watch. He was waiting to meet Freddie—late as usual, like most people. Donovan’s anarchronistic devotion to timeliness—including his affectation of carrying a watch, for goodness’ sake—was a sure sign of his eccentricity. An image he sometimes cursed and sometimes nurtured. He caught the waiter’s attendon and pointed at his coffee cup. He watched the waiter pour.
When he was a kid, there hadn’t been any waiters. You pushed a button or a glowing icon. The world was a huge free-of-charge vending machine. But these days jobs were making a comeback. Anything to fill the time. With Donovan’s coffee poured, the waiter tidied up the other tables, none of which needed any tidying. Then he stood by the door, a towel draped over his arm, a crisp white apron from his waist to his shins, staring past Donovan at the rain-swept streets, looking, Donovan decided, vaguely military.
Donovan wondered how old the waiter might be, wondered whether he’d been a waiter in the real world, whether he’d ever lived in the real world at all, for that matter. Maybe he was a newbie like Donovan himself, a virtual life formed from the dance of his parents’ genetic uploads, choreographed by the strictest laws of biological science, pure life without the muss and fuss of flesh and blood.
He wondered all those things, but he couldn’t ask the waiter. It was rude to ask questions about the life before the Bin, especially if, like Donovan, you didn’t have one. “Born in the Bin with no body to burn” was the phrase that Donovan had grown up hearing, just as, he imagined, the young of a couple of centuries earlier had gritted their teeth to “footloose and fancy-free.” Both were licenses for a certain eccentricity tinged with misplaced envy.
Donovan was about to turn forty, an age when men used to start feeling old, calculating their lives were half over, lamenting they were halfway to nowhere, crying out, “Is this all there is?” Donovan envied them. It’d taken him only forty years to decide his life was pointless. Now he had eternity to figure out what to do about it.
He sipped on his coffee and opened up the newspaper he’d brought with him. He usually didn’t read newspapers, though they were all the rage. A nice fat paper could last you all day. The lead story was about the upcoming centennial of the Bin, still months away. There were numerous expert opinions as to “what this incredible milestone might have to say to the human race.” Donovan read that part over. The writer had indeed created a talking milestone. And no matter which expert made it talk, it seemed to say pretty much the same thing as far as Donovan could tell: It’s only been a hundred years, and already immortality is getting old.
LORD DEMON
by Roger Zelazny and Jane Lindskold
GIVING WAY TO A SMALL DESIRE TO CELEBRATE, I FOUND my way—“outward” I guess you’d call it—through a small, perpetually misty and twilit region of mountains calculated to resemble a Taoist painting. For me, this is a kind of Faerie, where a man could hide himself and beautifully sleep the sleep of a Rip Van Winkle, where a lady could become a Sleeping Beauty in a rose-tangled castle and cave grown into a jade mountainside.
I heard a hearty howl from my left and another from my right. I walked on. Always good to let the boss know you’re on the job.
After a time, an orange fu dog the size of a Shetland pony appeared to the left, a green one to the right. They seated themselves close to me, their great, fluffy tails curved over their backs.
“Hello,” I said softly. “How’s the frontier?”
“Nothing unnatural,” growled Shiriki, the green one. “We passed The O’Keefe recently on his way out, but that is all.”
Chamballa merely studied me with those great round eyes set in a flat face above a wide mouth. I have said that she was orange in color, but her coat was no garish citrus hue. It was closer to the ruddy glow of a coal that has not yet become fringed with ash.
I nodded.
“Good.”
I had found them some nine and three-quarter centuries ago, half-starved, dying of thirst—for even some more and less than natural creatures have their needs. Their forgotten temple had fallen apart, and they were a pair of unemployed temple dogs nobody wanted, roaming the Gobi. I gave them water and food and permitted them to come back to my bottle with me, though I was a creature such as they had been cautioned about. I had always avoided contact with temple dogs if I possibly could. Me and my like, they’d been trained to rend into tiny pieces, to be carried off to a variety of uncomfortable places, with a mess of dog-magic for company and security.
So we never talked employment. I just told them that if they cared to live in the abandoned dragon’s cave in my Twilight Lands, there was fresh water nearby, and I would see that there was food. And I would like if they would keep an eye on things for me. And if there was anybody nearby that they needed, simply to howl.
After a few centuries details were forgotten and only the fact of their residency remains. They call me Lord Kai and I call them Shiriki and Chamballa.
I walked on. Where I’d no need whatsoever to go outside what with O’Keefe tending to everything, there was that small desire to celebrate, to walk and to breathe the night air.
Coming to the edge of the worlds, I considered my appearance. Within my bottle I wore my natural shape: humanlike in that it possessed two arms, two legs, a recognizable torso and head, the usual number of eyes and suchlike. However, I stood eight feet tall on my taloned feet (these possessed of five toes) and my skin was a deep blue without a trace of purple. Around my eyes were angular segments of black. Some have supposed these are cosmetic (indeed, at one point a thousand years ago there was a fashion for such), but they are natural. They make my pupil-less dark eyes seem to glow and give my countenance a forbidding cast, even when I might not wish it.
Yes, this would not do for the world of humans. Quickly, I slipped into the human guise I use for my infrequent journeys without: a Chinese male of mature years, glossy black hair untouched by gray, average tall, but with an aura of command. I shaped my clothes into the dull fashions of the American city in which we now dwelled, sighing inwardly for the elegant robes of bygone China.
These preparations a matter of desire
, I manifested outside the bottle with barely a pause in my stride. As I had wished, I was in a garage belonging to the son of the late lady who’d formerly kept the bottle on a parlor table. Either location was an easy one for our comings and goings. The son has not yet decided whether to give the bottle to his wife or to keep it on the table, where he enjoys looking at it. I had no opinion at the moment, and so stayed out of the matter.
Letting myself out of the garage’s side door, I strolled off in the direction—several blocks away—of Tony’s Pizza Heaven.
It was a starry but moonless night, crisp and breezy. I knew that something was wrong when, as I passed one of the town’s small parks, I scented blood and pizza on the air. And demon.
I faded. I moved with absolute silence. All of the ways I have learned to inflict death and pain over the years rose up and came with me. At that moment, I was one of the most dangerous things on the planet.
… And I saw the tree and them.
SINGER FROM THE SEA
by Sheri S. Tepper
IN GENEVIEVE’S DREAM, THE OLD WOMAN LUNGED UP THE stairs, hands clutching like claws from beneath her ragtag robe. “Lady. They’re coming to kill you, now!”
She dreamed herself responding, too slowly at first, for she was startled and confused by the old woman’s agitation. “Who? Awhero, what are you talking about.”
“Your father’s taken. The Shah has him. Now his men come for your blood! Yours and the child’s. They’re coming.”
The smell of blood was all around her, choking her. So much blood. Her husband, gone; now her father, taken! Dovidi, only a baby, and never outside these walls!
Genevieve dreamed herself crying, “They’re coming after Dovidi? How did the Shah know about the baby?”
“Your father tell him.”
Endanger his grandson in that way? Surely not. Oh, surely, surely not. “I’ll get him. We’ll go …”
“If you take baby; you both be killed.” The old woman reached forward and shook her by the shoulders, so vehement as to forget the prohibitions of caste. “I take him. I smutch his face and say he one of us. They scared to look and they never doubt …”