Eclipse 4: New Science Fiction and Fantasy Read online

  EDITED BY JONATHAN STRAHAN

  NIGHT SHADE BOOKS

  SAN FRANCISCO

  Also Edited by Jonathan Strahan:

  Best Short Novels (2004 through 2007)

  Fantasy: The Very Best of 2005

  Science Fiction: The Very Best of 2005

  The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volumes 1–5

  Eclipse One: New Science Fiction and Fantasy

  Eclipse Two: New Science Fiction and Fantasy

  Eclipse Three: New Science Fiction and Fantasy

  The Starry Rift: Tales of New Tomorrows

  With Charles N. Brown

  The Locus Awards: Thirty Years of the Best in Fantasy and Science Fiction

  With Jeremy G. Byrne

  The Year’s Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume 1 The Year’s Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume 2 Eidolon 1

  With Terry Dowling

  The Jack Vance Treasury The Jack Vance Reader

  With Gardner Dozois

  The New Space Opera The New Space Opera 2

  With Karen Haber

  Science Fiction: Best of 2003 Science Fiction: Best of 2004 Fantasy: Best of 2004

  With Marianne S. Jablon

  Wings of Fire

  Eclipse Four © 2011 by Jonathan Strahan

  This edition of Eclipse Four © 2011 by Night Shade Books

  Cover art © 2011 by Jeremy Geddes

  Interior layout and design by Ross E. Lockhart

  Introduction, story notes, and arrangement by Jonathan Strahan. © 2011 Jonathan Strahan.

  “Slow as a Bullet,” by Andy Duncan. Copyright © 2011 Andy Duncan.

  “Tidal Forces,” by Caitlín R. Kiernan. Copyright © 2011 Caitlín R. Kiernan.

  “The Beancounter’s Cat,” by Damien Broderick. Copyright © 2011 Damien Broderick.

  “Story Kit,” by Kij Johnson. Copyright © 2011 Kij Johnson.

  “The Man in Grey,” by Michael Swanwick. Copyright © 2011 Michael Swanwick.

  “Old Habits,” by Nalo Hopkinson. Copyright © 2011 Nalo Hopkinson.

  “The Vicar of Mars,” by Gwyneth Jones. Copyright © 2011 Gwyneth Jones.

  “Fields of Gold,” by Rachel Swirsky. Copyright © 2011 Rachel Swirsky.

  “Thought Experiment,” by Eileen Gunn. Copyright © 2011 Eileen Gunn.

  “The Double of My Double Is Not My Double,” by Jeffrey Ford. Copyright © 2011 Jeffrey Ford.

  “Nine Oracles,” by Emma Bull. Copyright © 2011 Emma Bull.

  “Dying Young,” by Peter M. Ball. Copyright © 2011 Peter M. Ball.

  “The Panda Coin,” by Jo Walton. Copyright © 2011 Jo Walton.

  “Tourists,” by James Patrick Kelly. Copyright © 2011 James Patrick Kelly.

  First Edition

  ISBN: 978-1-59780-197-3

  E-ISBN: 978-1-59780-311-3

  Night Shade Books

  Please visit us on the web at

  http://www.nightshadebooks.com

  For Ross E. Lockhart, whose work behind the scenes has made each book we’ve worked on together better, with thanks.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I doubt any book in this series has been more difficult to assemble than this one. My sincere thanks to Jason Williams, Jeremy Lassen, and Ross Lockhart at Night Shade Books for their confidence in this book and in the series; to Marty Halpern for his indefatigable, detailed copy editing on the series; to Alex, Alisa, and Tansy for their support when I felt a bit lost with this book; and to each and every writer who has been connected with the book, regardless of whether their stories appear here or not. I would especially like to thank those writers who came through under pressure when I’d begun to wonder is this book would happen at all, and to give an extra special nod to Gwyneth Jones, who waited so long for this to appear, and to Jim Kelly, who persevered long after anyone else might have given up.

  Finally, as always, my deepest thanks to my wife Marianne and daughters Jessica and Sophie, from whom each and every moment spent working on this book was stolen.

  INTRODUCTION

  JONATHAN STRAHAN

  Welcome to Eclipse Four. Five years ago, early in the Australian summer of 2007, I was hard at work on the first volume of what I hoped then would prove to be an annual series of unthemed science fiction and fantasy anthologies. It was, for me, a heady and exciting time. The decision to launch the Eclipse series was an optimistic one, and it reflected a sense of optimism about science fiction and fantasy generally, and short fiction in particular, that was widely held at the time. Several other anthology series—Lou Anders’s Fast Forward, George Mann’s The Solaris Book of Science Fiction and The Solaris Book of Fantasy, and Ellen Datlow’s The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy—were launched around the same time and all were received well. They were followed by Mike Ashley’s Clockwork Phoenix series and many, many original anthologies. That sense of optimism was, in many ways, well placed. As I wrote in the introduction to Eclipse One:

  “This is a good time for the short story in genre circles. Not maybe in business terms—we’re yet to develop a twenty-first century business model that allows writers to make a living writing short stories—but in artistic terms, it’s extraordinary. Whether in anthologies like this one, or in magazines or on websites, short stories are being published in staggering numbers. Thousands each year, millions of words, and in amongst this torrent of content is some extraordinary work.”

  That has continued to be true over the following years. Business models remained a problem. Print magazines didn’t exactly flourish, but long-time campaigners like Asimov’s, Analog, and F&SF continued to appear as they had for many decades, as did Interzone, Realms of Fantasy (though it did die twice), and many others. Online magazines evolved and became critical to the scene with Clarkesworld, Subterranean, Tor.com, Strange Horizons, and many, many, many more developing into important, well-paying markets that published some of our finest short fiction. It’s easy to feel, in these days of the iPad and the Kindle, that a successful long-term business model is yet to emerge, but an honest observer would have to admit these are still good times for short fiction.

  What does that mean for Eclipse? It was always intended to be a spiritual descendant of the classic anthology series of the 1960s and ’70s like Knight’s Orbit, Carr’s Universe, and Silverberg’s New Dimensions. With stories appearing on Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus, Shirley Jackson, Sidewise, BSFA, Aurealis, Ditmar, and other ballots, and with volumes of the series itself winning the Aurealis Award, and being nominated for the World Fantasy and Locus awards, it’s hard to not feel that it is meeting that goal.

  That doesn’t mean I’m any closer to knowing what a volume of Eclipse should be, or that I’m anywhere near done. Ever since Jetse de Vries named the series I’ve been taken by the idea that it was rare and unusual, a strange, dark eldritch thing where wonderful things might happen within its pages. I’ve tried, as much as I can, to make sure each volume was different, a place though where reality was eclipsed for a little while with something magical and new. And yet each volume has had its own personality. Eclipse One was very much a general beast, Eclipse Two much more science fiction-oriented, and Eclipse Three was the one with the broadest outlook.

  What of Eclipse Four? In some ways it is the strangest and most eldritch volume yet. When I started work on it I intended it to be very much a sister volume to Eclipse Three, but like the wilful, living thing it is it insisted on being the book it would be, not an echo of its predecessor. During the nearly sixteen months I’ve been working on Eclipse Four writers have joined and left the book, have delivered and redelivered stories, and in
some cases have moved from delivering one type of story to delivering another. In the end the fourteen stories here range from tall tales to coming-of-age stories, move from the deep South to the outer reaches of our solar system, and approach everything from how we find love and happiness to how we cope with death and grief.

  Many of the writers here are new to Eclipse, but some, like Jeffrey Ford, are old friends and regulars to the series. All of them have outdone themselves and I’m deeply grateful to them all for letting me publish their work here. I would also like to express my gratitude here to my publishers, Night Shade, who have been wonderful to work with, and to my wife Marianne and daughters Jessica and Sophie, who have been endlessly patient. I would also like to thank you, the reader, for picking this book up and taking it home. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have, and that this is just the start of a beautiful friendship. As for me, I’m working on Eclipse Five. See you next year!

  Jonathan Strahan

  January 2011

  SLOW AS A BULLET

  ANDY DUNCAN

  I ever tell you about the time Cliffert Corbett settled a bet by outrunning a bullet? Oh. Well, all right, Little Miss Smarty Ass, here it is again, but this time I’ll stick to the truth, because I got enough sins to write out on St. Peter’s blackboard as it is, thank you, and on the third go-round the truth is easiest to remember. So you just write down what I tell you, just as I tell you, and don’t put in none of your women’s embroidery this time.

  You’re too young to remember Cliffert Corbett, I reckon, but he was the kind that even if you did remember him, you wouldn’t remember him, except for this one thing that I am going to tell you, the one remarkable thing he ever did in his life. It started one lazed-out, dragged-in Florida afternoon outside the gas station, when we were all passing around a sack of boiled peanuts and woofing about who was the fastest.

  During all this, Cliffert hadn’t said nothing, and he hadn’t intended to say nothing, but Cliffert’s mouth was just like your mouth and mine. Whenever it was shut it was only biding its time, just waiting for the mind to fall down on the job long enough for the mouth to jump into the gap and raise some hell. So when Cliffert squeezed one boiled peanut right into his eye and blinded himself, his mouth was ready. As he blinked away the juice, his mouth up and blabbed: “Any of you fast enough to outrun a bullet?”

  They all turned and looked at him, and friend, he wasn’t much to look at. Cliffert was built like a fence post, and a rickety post, too, maybe that last post standing of the old fence in back of the gas station, the one with the lone snipped rusty barbed-wire curl, the one the bobwhites wouldn’t nest in, because the men liked to shoot at it for target practice. And everyone knew that if Cliffert, with his gimpy leg, was to race that fence post, their money would be elsewhere than on Cliffert.

  And because what Cliffert had said wasn’t joking like, but more angry, sort of a challenge, Isiah Bird asked, “You saying you can do that?”

  And just before Cliffert got the last bit of salt out of his eyes, his mouth told Isiah, “I got five dollars says I can, Isiah Bird.”

  From there it didn’t matter how shut Cliffert’s mouth was, because before he knew what hit him Isiah had taken that bet, and the others had jumped in and put down money of their own, and they were hollering for other folks on the street to come get in on the action, and Dad Boykin made up a little register that showed enough money was riding on this to have Cliffert set for life if he just could outrun a bullet, which everyone in town knew he couldn’t do, including Cliffert, plus he didn’t have no five dollars to lose.

  “We’ll settle this right now,” said Pump Jeffries, who ran the gas station. “I got my service pistol locked up in the office there, but it’s well greased and ready to go.”

  “Hold on!” cried Cliffert, and they all studied him unfriendly like, knowing he was about to back out on the deal his mouth had made.

  “I got to use my own gun,” Cliffert said, “and my own bullets.”

  They all looked at each other, but when Isiah Bird nodded his head, the others nodded, too. “Fetch ’em, then,” Dad Boykin said. “We’ll wait right here.”

  “Now, boys,” said Cliffert, thinking faster than he could run, “you got to give me some time to get ready. Because this ain’t something you can just up and do, no matter how fast you are. You got to practice at it, work up to it. I need to get in shape.”

  “Listen at him now. He wants to go into training!”

  “How long you need, then?”

  “A year,” Clifford said. “I’ll outrun a bullet one year from this very day, the next twenty-first of July, right here in front of the gas station, at noon.”

  No one liked this very much, because they were all raring to go right then. But they talked it over and decided that Cliffert wasn’t going to be any more able to outrun a bullet in a year than he was now.

  “All right, Cliffert,” they told him. “One year from today.”

  So then Cliffert limped on home, tearing his hair and moaning, cursing his fool mouth for getting him into this fix.

  He was still moaning when he passed the hoodoo woman’s house. You could tell it was the hoodoo woman’s house because the holes in the cement blocks that held it up were full of charms, and the raked patterns in the dirt yard would move if you looked at them too hard, and the persimmon trees were heavy with blue bottles to catch spirits, and mainly because the hoodoo woman herself was always sitting on the porch, smoking a corncob pipe, at all hours and in all weathers, because her house was ideally situated to watch all the townsfolk going and coming, and she was afraid if she ever went inside she might miss something.

  “What ails you, Cliffert Corbett, that you’re carrying on such a way?”

  So Cliffert limped into her yard, taking care not to step on any of the wiggly lines, and told her the whole thing.

  “So you see, Miz Armetta, I won’t be able to hold my head up in this town no more. I’ll have to go live in Tallahassee with the rest of the liars.”

  The hoodoo woman snorted. “Just tell ’em you can’t outrun a bullet, that you’re sorry you stretched it any such a way. Isiah Bird keeps cattle and hogs both, and he’ll let you work off that five dollars you owe him.”

  When he heard the word ‘work,’ Cliffert felt faint, and the sun went behind a cloud, and the dirt pattern in the yard looked like a big spider that crouched and waited.

  “Oh, Miz Armetta, work is a harsh thing to say to a man! Ain’t you got any other ideas for me than that?”

  “Mmmph,” she said, drawing on her pipe. “The holes men dig just to have a place to sit.” She closed her eyes and rocked in her shuck chair and drummed her fingertips on her wrinkled forehead and asked, “They expecting you to use your own bullet?”

  “Yes, and my own gun.”

  “Well, it’s simple then,” she said. “You need you some slow bullets.”

  “What you mean, slow bullets? I never heard tell of such a thing.”

  “I ain’t, either,” said the hoodoo woman, “but you got a year to find you some, or make you some.”

  Cliffert studied on this all the way home. There he lifted his daddy’s old service pistol and gun belt out of the cedar chest and rummaged an old box of bullets out of the back corner of the Hoosier cabinet and set them both on the kitchen table and sat down before them. He rested his elbows on the oilcloth and rested his chin on his hands. He wasn’t used to thinking, but now that first Isiah Bird and now the hoodoo woman had got him started in that direction, he was sort of beginning to enjoy it. He studied and studied, and by sunset he had his breakthrough.

  “The bullet is just a lump of metal,” he told the three-year-and-two-month-old Martha White calendar that twitched and tapped the wall in the evening breeze. “It’s the powder in the cartridge that moves it along. So what I need is slow powder. But what would go into slow powder?”

  He grabbed a stubby pencil, and on the topmost Tallahassee Democrat on a stack bound for the outhouse
, he began to make a list of slow things.

  For week after week, month after month, Cliffert messed at his kitchen table, and then in his back yard, with his gunpowder recipe, looking for the mix that gave a bullet the slowest start possible while still firing. First he ground up some snail shells and turtle shells and mixed that in. He drizzled a spoonful of molasses over it and made such a jommock that he had to start over, so from then on, he used only a dot of molasses in each batch, like the single roly-poly blob Aunt Berth put in the middle of her biscuit after the doctor told her to mind her sugar. For growing grass he had to visit a neighbor’s yard, since his own yard was dirt and unraked dirt at that, but the flecks of dry paint were scraped from his own side porch and in the sun, too, which was one job of work. He tried recipe after recipe, a tad more of this and a teenchy bit less of that, and went through three boxes of bullets test-firing into a propped-up Sears, Roebuck catalog in the back yard, and even though the boxes emptied ever more slowly, he still was dissatisfied. Then one day he went to Fulmer’s Hardware and told his problems to the man himself.

  “You try any wet paint?” Mr. Fulmer asked.

  “No,” Cliffert said. “Just the flakings. How come you ask me that?”

  “Well, I was just thinking,” Mr. Fulmer said. He laid the edge of his left hand down on the counter, like it was slicing bread. “If wet paint is over here.” He held his left hand still and laid down the edge of his right hand about ten inches away. “And dry paint is over here, and it goes from the one to the other, it stands to reason that the wet paint is slower than the dry, since it ain’t caught up yet.”

  Cliffert studied Mr. Fulmer’s hands for a spell. The store was silent, except for the plip plip plip from the next aisle. They couldn’t see over the shelf but knew it was six-year-old Louvenia Parler, who liked to wait for her mama in the hardware store so she could play with the nails.