Eclipse Two Read online

  ECLIPSE TWO

  Jonathan Strahan

  Copyright © 2008 by Jonathan Strahan

  This edition of Eclipse Two © 2008 by Night Shade Books

  Jacket art © 2007 by Donato Giancola

  Jacket design by Michael Fusco

  Interior layout and design by Jeremy Lassen

  Introduction, story notes and arrangement by Jonathan Strahan. © 2008 Jonathan Strahan.

  "Turing's Apples" by Stephen Baxter. © 2008 Stephen Baxter. Published by kind permission of the author.

  "The Rabbi's Hobby" by Peter S. Beagle. © 2008 Peter S. Beagle. Published by kind permission of the author.

  **Not available in the electronic version**

  "Exhalation" by Ted Chiang. © 2008 Ted Chiang. Published by kind permission of the author.

  "Michael Laurits Is: Drowning" by Paul Cornell. © 2008 Paul Cornell. Published by kind permission of the author.

  "Ex Cathedra" by Tony Daniel. © 2008 Tony Daniel. Published by kind permission of the author.

  "Truth Window: A Tale of the Bedlam Rose" by Terry Dowling. © 2008 Terry Dowling. Published by kind permission of the author.

  "The Seventh Expression of the Robot General" by Jeffrey Ford. © 2008 Jeffrey Ford. Published by kind permission of the author.

  "The Illustrated Biography of Lord Grimm" by Daryl Gregory. © 2008 Daryl Gregory. Published by kind permission of the author.

  "Elevator" by Nancy Kress. © 2008 Nancy Kress. Published by kind permission of the author.

  **Not available in the electronic version**

  "Night of the Firstlings" by Margo Lanagan. © 2008 Margo Lanagan. Published by kind permission of the author.

  "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" by David Moles. © 2008 David Moles. Published by kind permission of the author.

  "Skin Deep" by Richard Parks. © 2008 Richard Parks. Published by kind permission of the author.

  "Fury" by Alastair Reynolds. © 2008 Alastair Reynolds. Published by kind permission of the author.

  "Invisible Empire of Ascending Light" by Ken Scholes. © 2008 Ken Scholes. Published by kind permission of the author.

  "The Hero" by Karl Schroeder. © 2008 Karl Schroeder. Published by kind permission of the author.

  First Edition

  Printed in Canada

  ISBN: 978-1-59780-136-2

  Night Shade Books

  Please visit us on the web at

  http://www.nightshadebooks.com

  For Gary K. Wolfe, dear friend and respected colleague.

  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: Volume 1

  The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 2

  Eclipse One: 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

  With Karen Haber

  Science Fiction: Best of 2003

  Science Fiction: Best of 2004

  Fantasy: Best of 2004

  INTRODUCTION

  Jonathan Strahan

  I've been writing introductions to anthologies since the summer of 1996. Twenty-two opening salvos written or co-written for anthologies, each intended to preface a selection of original or reprinted tales, and those stories themselves selected either from the submissions I'd received from potential contributors or filtered from the annual output of the science fiction and fantasy field. For the last three or four years science fiction publishing journal Locus has estimated that roughly three thousand or so pieces of short science fiction and fantasy have been published, and I've estimated that number to possibly represent as little as half of what's actually being published. That means up to six thousand new stories are being printed or displayed, or whatever's done with them in the early twenty-first century to get them to readers, each year. If that number has been roughly constant, and it may well not have been, that means somewhere in the vicinity of sixty thousand new stories have been "published" since I co-wrote the introduction to my first year year's best anthology, The Year's Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy.

  Realizing that, I began to wonder what exactly it is that I'm looking for when I read stories for a new book, and especially when I'm reading for this anthology series. It's true that most of the stories published are of little relevance to Eclipse, but I think they are relevant to what I read, why I read, and that colors this book. And what I've come to realize is that genre purity isn't something that interests me. I love science fiction. I love fantasy. I like horror. I have loved stories that come from both the purest centers of those genres, ones that come from their farthest peripheries, and ones that mix and match elements from all of them as they please. Whether something is or isn't genre is not an essential part of what makes me respond to a story and think that it's good or not. It's also not a matter of structure or technical approach. I don't care whether a story is told using a traditional "Clarion" structure, or whether it's been torn apart, rebuilt, and resembles nothing more than some crazy patchwork quilt. I also don't especially crave novelty. I love new ideas, having my brain stretched around corners in the way that only the best science fiction can do, but I equally love stories that revisit old ideas in interesting ways or simply elucidate them well.

  What I have come to realize is that for me the pre-eminent thing is story. I want a strong story built around a good idea that is complete; one that opens, builds and then delivers some kind of pay-off at its conclusion. Again, this isn't structure: the conclusion can come at the beginning if you can make that work. It's about whether there's a story to be told and whether the author manages to get it told before his or her piece is done. It's not simply plot, either. Plot is important, but it's how plot is used in the service of theme, character and setting. It's voice. I want a story that is immersive, that takes me away into its world, for however long it lasts, or that makes me think differently about something. As you can see, not the most clearly explained thing, but I've realized over the past few years that I know it when I see it, and it's what I hope to put into all the anthologies that I edit, and most especially what I put into these Eclipse series because, as much as I stand behind what I said in the introduction to Eclipse One—that the Eclipse anthologies are inspired by the work of Damon Knight in his Orbit anthologies and Terry Carr in his Universe anthologies—these books represent my personal search for a greater understanding of the nature of story, and of science fiction and fantasy.

  This means that each book in the Eclipse series will be somewhat different from its predecessors and that the one constant will be the window on the science fiction and fantasy short story that I create by editing the anthology. Certainly this book, Eclipse Two, is different from its predecessor. I was delighted with the reception that first book received—the reviews were good and stories have ended up on awards ballots and in year's best annuals—but I knew this book had to be its own thing. So, after discussions with my publishers, I deliberately nudged this Eclipse installment towards science fiction, dropping some of the balance that had characterized Eclipse One. While there is still some fantasy here—in three strong stories from Peter S. Beagle, Margo Lanagan, and Richard Pa
rks—and no horror, there are tales of galactic empires, uplifted personalities, strange worlds, and stranger characters. Most of all, though, there are stories. Some timely, like Paul Cornell's tale of social networking website Facebook, some timeless, like Ted Chiang's examination of the nature of our universe. There are stories that connect to series, like Terry Dowling's first new Wormwood story in seventeen years, and Karl Schroeder's latest installment in his stunning SF "Virga" series. Each of them is complete, engaging, and right for Eclipse and where I see it sitting in the science fiction and fantasy field.

  All of which I hope gives you some idea of what you're about to experience. A rich, varied selection of new stories, mostly science fiction but with a touch of fantasy too, each of which engaged me in some way, and which I hope will engage you too. Some of the stories are adventurous and some are not: that's not what this book is about. It's about story, and I hope you enjoy these ones as much as I have.

  Even though this is just the second volume of Eclipse (and I hope there'll be many more), a community has already grown up around it and, before you move on to the stories, I'd like to thank a few people. First and foremost, Jeremy Lassen, Jason Williams, Ross Lockhart, and John Joseph Adams at "the Shade". Without them this book literally wouldn't and couldn't exist. I'd also like to thank the contributors to the book, and all of those who, for whatever reason, didn't quite make it for this Eclipse (next time!). Above all, though, I'd like to thank my wife Marianne, who has been there for every difficult moment I went through getting us here. And, last of all, I'd like to thank you for picking up this book and taking it home. Whether you were there for Eclipse One, or this is your first time under its darkling skies, welcome, and I hope to see you here again next year.

  Jonathan Strahan

  Perth, Western Australia

  June/September 2008

  THE HERO

  Karl Schroeder

  Is everybody ready?" shouted Captain Emmen. At least, Jessie thought that's what he'd said—it was impossible to hear anything over the spine-grating noise that filled the sky.

  Jessie coughed, covering his mouth with his hand to stop the blood from showing. In this weightless air, the droplets would turn and gleam for everybody to see, and if they saw it, he would be off the team.

  Ten miles away the sound of the capital bug had been a droning buzz. With two miles to go, it had become a maddening—and deafening—howl. Much closer, and the bug's defense mechanism would be fatal to an unshielded human.

  Jessie perched astride his jet just off the side of the salvage ship Mistelle. Mistelle was a scow, really, but Captain Emmen had ambitions. Lined up next to Jessie were eight other brave or stupid volunteers, each clutching the handlebars of a wingless jet engine. Mounted opposite the saddle ("below" Jessie's feet) was a ten-foot black-market missile. It was his team's job to get close enough to the capital bug to aim their missiles at its noise-throats. They were big targets—organic trumpets hundreds of feet long—but there were a lot of them, and the bug was miles long.

  Jessie had never heard of anybody breaking into a capital bug's pocket ecology while the insect was still alive. Captain Emmen meant to try, because there was a story that a Batetranian treasure ship had crashed into this bug, decades ago. Supposedly you could see it when distant sunlight shafted through the right perforation in the bug's side. The ship was still intact, so they said.

  Jessie wasn't here for the treasure ship. He'd been told a different story about this particular bug.

  Emmen swung his arm in a chopping motion and the other jets shot away. Weak and dizzy as he was, Jessie was slower off the mark, but in seconds he was catching up. The other riders looked like flies optimistically lugging pea-pods; they were lit from two sides by two distant suns, one red with distance, the other yellow and closer, maybe two hundred miles away. In those quadrants of the sky not lit by the suns, abysses of air stretched away to seeming infinity—above, below, and to all sides.

  Mistelle became a spindle-shape of wood and iron, its jets splayed behind it like an open hand. Ahead, the capital bug was too big to be seen as a single thing: it revealed itself to Jessie as landscapes, a vertical flank behind coiling clouds, a broad plain above that lit amber by the more distant sun. The air between him and it was crowded with clouds, clods of earth, and arrowing flocks of birds somehow immune to the bug's sound. Balls of water shot past as he accelerated; some were the size of his head, some a hundred feet across. And here and there, mountain-sized boluses of bug-shit smeared brown across the sky.

  The jet made an ear-splitting racket, but he couldn't hear it over the sound of the bug. Jessie was swaddled in protective gear, his ears plugged, eyes protected behind thick goggles. He could hear the sound inside his body now, feel it vibrating his heart and loosening the bloody mess that was taking over his lungs. He'd start coughing any second, and once he did he might not be able to stop.

  Fine, he thought grimly. Maybe I'll cough the whole damn thing out.

  The noise had become pure pain. His muscles were cramping, he was finding it hard to breathe. Past a blur of vibration, he saw one of the other riders double up suddenly and tumble off his jet. The vehicle spun away, nearly hitting somebody else. And here came the cough.

  The noise was too strong, he couldn't cough. The frozen reflex had stopped his breathing entirely; Jessie knew he had only seconds to live. Even as he thought this, curtains of cloud parted as the jet shot through them at a hundred miles an hour, and directly ahead of him stood the vast tower of the bug's fourth horn.

  The jet's engine choked and failed; Jessie's right goggle cracked; the handlebars began to rattle loose from their fittings as his vision grayed. A rocket contrail blossomed to his right and he realized he was looking straight down the throat of the horn. He thumbed the firing button and was splashed and kicked by fire and smoke. In one last moment of clarity Jessie let go of the handlebars so the jet wouldn't break his bones in the violence of its tumble.

  The ferocious scream stopped. Jessie took in a huge breath, and began to cough. Blood sprayed across the air. Breath rasping, he looked ahead to see that he was drifting toward some house-sized nodules that sprouted from the capital bug's back. The broken, smoking horns jutted like fantastically eroded sculptures, each hundreds of feet long. He realized with a start that one of them was still blaring, but by itself it could no longer kill.

  In the distance, the Mistelle wallowed in a cloud of jet exhaust, and began to grow larger.

  I did it, Jessie thought. Then the gray overwhelmed all thought and sense and he closed his eyes.

  Bubbles spun over the side of the washtub. In the rotational gravity of Aitlin Town, they twirled and shimmered and slid sideways from Coriolis force as they descended. Jessie watched them with fascination—not because he'd never seen bubbles before, but because he'd never seen one fall.

  They'd both gotten into trouble, so he and his oldest brother Camron were washing the troupe's costumes today. Jessie loved it; he never got a chance to talk to Camron, except to exchange terse barks during practice or a performance. His brother was ten years older than he, and might as well have lived in a different family.

  "That's what the world is, you know," Camron said casually. Jessie looked at him quizzically.

  "A bubble," said Camron, nodding at the little iridescent spheres. "The whole world is a bubble, like that."

  "Is naaawwt."

  Camron sighed. "Maybe Father isn't willing to pay to have you educated, Jessie, but he's sent me to school. Three times. 'The world of Virga is a hollow pressure-vessel, five thousand miles in diameter.'"

  One big bubble was approaching the floor. Sunlight leaned across the window, a beam of gold from distant Candesce that was pinioning one spot of sky as the ring-shaped wooden town rotated through it. After a few seconds the beam flicked away, leaving the pearly shine of cloud-light.

  "The whole world's a bubble," repeated Camron, "and all our suns are man-made."

  Jessie knew the smaller su
ns, which lit spherical volumes only a few hundred miles diameter, were artificial: they'd once flown past one at night, and he'd seen that it was a great glass-and-metal machine. Father had called it a "polywell fusion" generator. But surely the greatest sun of all, so ancient it had been there at the beginning of everything, so bright and hot no ship could ever approach it—"Not Candesce," said Jessie. "Not the sun of suns."

  Camron nodded smugly. "Even Candesce. 'Cept that in the case of Candesce, whoever built it only made so many keys—and we lost them all." Another shaft of brilliance burst into the laundry room. "People made Candesce—but now nobody can turn it off."

  The bubble flared in purples, greens, and gold, an inch above the floorboards.

  "That's just silly," scoffed Jessie. "'Cause if the whole world were just a bubble, then that would make it—"

  The bubble touched the floor, and vanished.

  "—mortal," finished Camron. He met Jessie's eye, and his look was serious.

  Jessie shivered and wiped at his mouth. Dried blood had caked there. His whole chest ached, his head was pounding, and he felt so weak and nauseous he doubted he'd have been able to stand if he'd been under gravity.

  He hung weightless in a strange fever-dream of a forest, with pale pink tree trunks that reached past him to open into, not leaves, but a single stretched surface that had large round or oval holes in it here and there. Beyond them he could see sky. The tree trunks didn't converge onto a clump of soil or rock as was usual with weightless groves, but rather tangled their roots into an undulant plain a hundred yards away from the canopy.

  The light that angled through the holes shone off the strangest collection of life forms Jessie had ever seen. Fuzzy donut-shaped things inched up and down the "tree" trunks, and mirror-bright birds flickered and flashed as the light caught them. Something he'd taken to be a cloud in the middle distance turned out to be a raft of jellyfish, conventional enough in the airs of Virga, but these were gigantic.