Eclipse Three Read online

  Eclipse Three

  by

  edited by Jonathan Strahan

  Table of Contents

  ECLIPSE THREE

  New Science Fiction

  and Fantasy

  edited by

  Jonathan Strahan

  Night Shade Books

  San Francisco

  Eclipse Three © 2009 by Jonathan Strahan

  This edition of Eclipse Three © 2009 by Night Shade Books

  Cover art © 2009 by Richard Powers

  Cover design by Michael Ellis

  Interior layout and design by Michael Lee

  Introduction, story notes, and arrangement by Jonathan Strahan. © 2009 Jonathan Strahan.

  "The Pretenders' Tourney," by Daniel Abraham. Copyright © 2009 Daniel Abraham.

  "Sleight of Hand," by Peter S. Beagle. Copyright © 2009 Avicenna Development Corporation.

  "Swell," by Elizabeth Bear. Copyright © 2009 Sarah Bear Elizabeth Wishnevsky.

  "Don't Mention Madagascar," by Pat Cadigan. Copyright © 2009 Pat Cadigan.

  "Yes We Have No Bananas," by Paul Di Filippo. Copyright © 2009 Paul Di Filippo.

  "The Coral Heart," by Jeffrey Ford. Copyright © 2009 Jeffrey Ford.

  "The Pelican Bar," by Karen Joy Fowler. Copyright © 2009 Karen Joy Fowler.

  "The Visited Man," by Molly Gloss. Copyright © 2009 Molly Gloss.

  "It Takes Two," by Nicola Griffith. Copyright © 2009 Nicola Griffith.

  "Galápagos," by Caitlín R. Kiernan. Copyright © 2009 Caitlín R. Kiernan.

  "A Practical Girl," by Ellen Klages. Copyright © 2009 Ellen Klages.

  "Dulce Domum," by Ellen Kushner. Copyright © 2009 Ellen Kushner.

  "Useless Things," by Maureen F. McHugh. Copyright © 2009 Maureen F. McHugh.

  "On the Road," by Nnedi Okorafor. Copyright © 2009 Nnedi Okorafor.

  "Mesopotamian Fire," by Jane Yolen & Adam Stemple. Copyright © 2009 Jane Yolen & Adam Stemple.

  Digital Edition

  Printed in Canada

  ISBN: 978-1-59780-162-1

  Night Shade Books

  Please visit us on the web at

  http://www.nightshadebooks.com

  For the late, great Charles N. Brown, last of science fiction's

  great lions, dear friend, and tireless supporter.

  Acknowledgements

  Eclipse Three is, as always, more than just the product of one person: it's the creative output from a small village of people. Once again, Jeremy, Jason, and Ross at the Shade have stood tall and provided me with the support I needed to do the book that I wanted to do; something for which I'm incredibly grateful. I'd also like to thank all of the contributors to the book. This book evolved much more naturally than it's predecessors, with stories coming from unexpected places at unexpected times, so I'm very grateful to everyone who has sent me stories this time. I'd like to thank Peter Watts for his understanding, and the Richard Powers Estate for the fabulous cover.

  Finally, two special thanks. This book may not have been completed without the support of my good friend Gary Wolfe, who has never ceased to remind me of its value, and it certainly wouldn't have been done without the support and hard work of Marianne Jablon, who was both in-house editor on this book for me and tireless supporter. I'm very lucky indeed.

  Introduction

  Jonathan Strahan

  A good book cover attracts the eye of a potential reader. It makes a book pleasing to behold, and makes you eager to pick it up and look further. A great book cover does more. It encapsulates the essence of the book and communicates that essence clearly and simply to anyone who might be interested.

  When I first saw the cover for Eclipse One, the opening volume in this series, I could immediately see that it was a good cover, but I wasn't sure that it was a great one. It certainly had all of the right ingredients. Designer Michael Fusco had created a clean, simple series design that could be used with almost any piece of art. Multiple award-winning artist Michael Whelan's pre-existing art provided an appropriate air of ambiguity. What the cover didn't do, though, was "fit" the book that I felt I had in my mind's eye. It didn't have quite the same feel; represent the essence of the stories completely.

  Now, creating a cover that fits an anthology is always difficult, and it is especially difficult when you are talking about a book such as Eclipse, which is unthemed and intended to be as varied as possible. Still that fit is something an art editor strives for, and that a designer works to achieve. It's also something that has become enormously important to me as an anthologist over the last year or two.

  Increasingly I've felt that it's essential to create a total package that is, for want of a better word, "honest." I want the cover, the blurbs, the cover quotes, the introduction, and the stories to tell the same story, to deliver the same message to anyone who picks the book up so that they have a clear idea of what it is they're going to get. It's an ideal, but it's one that I think is worth working towards.

  Because of that I was much more confident about the cover for Eclipse Two, which came out last year. I had decided, in consultation with my publisher, to make the second volume in the series a much more science fiction oriented book. I approached more science fiction writers than fantasy writers for the book. I chose stories that had robots and spaceships and vast empires. And art editor Jeremy Lassen provided a peach of a cover, taking a well-known piece of art by Hugo Award-winning artist Donato Giancola and nudging it into Michael Fusco's design in such a way that it was bright and shiny and new. I remember the excitement I felt when I opened the email that had the cover attached, and how I felt that it was just exactly right for the book. Even now, I think it's one of the best covers to appear on any of my books.

  I was, however, frankly nervous about what kind of cover would be found for Eclipse Three. Like the first volume of the series, it's a varied volume featuring stories that range from straight fantasy to swords and sorcery to eloquent social science fiction. What could possibly, I wondered, honestly represent that variety? I needn't have worried.

  When I first saw the cover art for Eclipse Three I knew immediately it was right. Following his own passion for great science fiction art, Jeremy Lassen had searched out and found something special: an unpublished piece of art by the late Richard Powers. Powers was possibly the greatest artist ever to work in the science fiction field, producing more than eight hundred science fiction paintings during a long and distinguished career that saw him produce iconic covers for Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and many, many more. Although when Powers started his career his work fit the conventional pulp paperback style of the day, he quickly evolved a Surrealist style that was influenced by the likes of Picasso and Yves Tanguy, but was highly personal and very much his own.

  The painting was perfect for Eclipse because it was vibrant, rich, and evocative. It suggested something hip and cool, but it didn't prescribe anything. It spoke directly to the essence of what I thought an Eclipse volume should be—varied, engaging, and ever changing. It also had connections to the science fiction world that I couldn't resist. The first volume of Damon Knight's classic Orbit series of anthologies had a Powers cover, as did the first volume of Pohl's Star and one of Robert Silverberg's New Dimensions. He'd also done some classic covers for books that had meant an enormous amount to me, like R. A. Lafferty's Nine Hundred Grandmothers.

  I was sufficiently thrilled by the cover that I wanted to know more. After all, how likely is it that unpublished Powers art of this caliber still existed? As it turns out the provenance of the art is as mysterious as the image Powers created. His agent Jane Frank told me that information on the work was severely limited. It is signed "Powers Laz/org," as he signed all of his commer
cial work, which suggests it was done for publication. But there's no information on it having been published. It has the hallmarks of a Powers book cover—layout, collage style, signature, etc.—but no other information. It is a mystery. And for me, that makes it perfect. A mysterious cover—bright and filled with energy—for a mysterious book. It's my hope that, when you've read the group of stories that make up this latest Eclipse you'll think it's perfect too.

  Before I hand you over to the stories, though, a few thanks. Eclipse Three exists because of the generosity and dedication of 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 who have let me publish such wonderful work, and Jane Frank at the Powers Estate. As always, though, my greatest thanks goes to my wife Marianne, who has been there for every difficult moment I went through getting us here.

  And last, thanks goes to you, the reader, for picking up this book and being willing to enter the worlds contained within it. Whether you were there for Eclipse One and Eclipse Two, 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

  July 2009

  The Pelican Bar

  Karen Joy Fowler

  For her birthday, Norah got a Pink cd from the twins, a book about vampires from her grown-up sister, High School Musical 2 from her grandma (which Norah might have liked if she'd been turning ten instead of fifteen) and an iPod shuffle plus an Ecko Red t-shirt and two hundred-dollar darkwash 7 jeans—the most expensive clothes Norah had ever owned—from her mother and father.

  Not a week earlier, her mother had said it was a shame birthdays came whether you deserved them or not. She'd said she was dog-tired of Norah's disrespect, her ingratitude, her filthy language—as if fucking was just another word for very—fucking this and fucking that, fucking hot and fucking unfair and you have to be fucking kidding me.

  And then there were a handful of nights when Norah didn't come home and turned off her phone so they all thought she was in the city in the apartment of some man she'd probably met on the internet and was probably dead.

  And then there were the horrible things she'd written about both her mother and father on facebook.

  And now they had to buy her presents?

  I don't see that happening, Norah's mother had said.

  So it was all a big surprise and there was even a party. Her parents didn't approve of Norah's friends (and mostly didn't know who they were) so the party was just family. Norah's big sister brought the new baby who yawned and hiccoughed and whose scalp was scaly with cradle-cap. There was barbecued chicken and ears of corn cooked in milk, an ice-cream cake with pralines and roses, and everyone, even Norah, was really careful and nice except for Norah's grandma who had a fight in the kitchen with Norah's mother that stopped the minute Norah entered. Her grandmother gave Norah a kiss, wished her a happy birthday, and left before the food was served.

  The party went late and Norah's mother said they'd clean up in the morning. Everyone left or went to bed. Norah made a show of brushing her teeth, but she didn't undress, because Enoch and Kayla had said they'd come by, which they did, just before midnight. Enoch climbed through Norah's bedroom window and then he tiptoed downstairs to the front door to let Kayla in, because she was already too trashed for the window. "Your birthday's not over yet!" Enoch said, and he'd brought Norah some special birthday shrooms called hawk's eyes. Half an hour later, the whole bedroom took a little skip sideways and broke open like an egg. Blue light poured over everything and Norah's Care Bear Milo had a luminous blue aura, as if he were Yoda or something. Milo told Norah to tell Enoch she loved him, which made Enoch laugh.

  They took more of the hawk's eyes so Norah was still tripping the next morning when a man and a woman came into her bedroom, pulled her from her bed and forced her onto her feet while her mother and father watched. The woman had a hooked nose and slightly protuberant eyeballs. Norah looked into her face just in time to see the fast retraction of a nictitating membrane. "Look at her eyes," she said, only the words came out of the woman's mouth instead of Norah's. "Look at her eyes," the woman said. "She's high as a kite."

  Norah's mother collected clothes from the floor and the chair in the bedroom. "Put these on," she told Norah, but Norah couldn't find the sleeves so the men left the room while her mother dressed her. Then the man and woman took her down the stairs and out the front door to a car so clean and black that clouds rolled across the hood. Norah's father put a suitcase in the trunk and when he slammed it shut the noise Norah heard was the last note in a Sunday school choir; the men part of Amen, sung in many voices.

  The music was calming. Her parents had been threatening to ship her off to boarding school for so long she'd stopped hearing it. Even now she thought that they were maybe all just trying to scare her, would drive her around for a bit and then bring her back, lesson learned, and this helped for a minute or two. Then she thought her mother wouldn't be crying in quite the way she was crying if it was all for show. Norah tried to grab her mother's arm, but missed. "Please," she started, "don't make me," but before she got the words out the man had leaned in to take them. "Don't make me hurt you," he said in a tiny whisper that echoed in her skull. He handcuffed Norah to the seatbelt because she was struggling. His mouth looked like something drawn onto his face with a charcoal pen.

  "This is only because we love you," Norah's father said. "You were on a really dangerous path."

  "This is the most difficult thing we've ever done," said Norah's mother. "Please be a good girl and then you can come right home."

  The man with the charcoal mouth and woman with the nictitating eyelids drove Norah to an airport. They showed the woman at the ticket counter Norah's passport, and then they all got on a plane together, the woman in the window seat, the man the aisle, and Norah in the middle. Sometime during the flight Norah came down and the man beside her had an ordinary face and the woman had ordinary eyes, but Norah was still on a plane with nothing beneath her but ocean.

  While this was happening, Norah's mother drove to the mall. She had cried all morning and now she was returning the iPod shuffle to the Apple store and the expensive clothes to Nordstrom's. She had all her receipts and everything still had the tags, plus she was sobbing intermittently, but uncontrollably, so there was no problem getting her money back.

  Norah's new home was an old motel. She arrived after dark, the sky above pinned with stars and the road so quiet she could hear a bubbling chorus of frogs and crickets. The man held her arm and walked just fast enough to make Norah stumble. He let her fall onto one knee. The ground was asphalt covered with a grit that stuck in her skin and couldn't be brushed off. She was having trouble believing she was here. She was having trouble remembering the plane. It was a bad trip, a bad dream, as if she'd gone to bed in her bedroom as usual and awakened here. Her drugged-up visions of eyelids and mouths were forgotten; she was left with only a nagging suspicion she couldn't track back. But she didn't feel like a person being punished for bad behavior. She felt like an abductee.

  An elderly woman in a flowered caftan met them at a chainlink gate. She unlocked it and the man pushed Norah through without a word. "My suitcase," Norah said to the man, but he was already gone.

  "Now I am your mother," the woman told Norah. She was very old, face like a crumpled leaf. "But not like your other mother. Two things different. One: I don't love you. Two: when I tell you what to do, you do it. You call me Mama Strong." Mama Strong stooped a little so she and Norah were eye to eye. Her pupils were tiny black beads. "You sleep now. We talk tomorrow."

  They climbed an outside stairway and Norah had just a glimpse of the moon-streaked ocean on the other side of the chainlink. Mama Strong took Norah to room 217. Inside, ten girls were already in bed, the floor nearly covered with mattresses, only narrow channels of brown
rug between. The light in the ceiling was on, but the girls' eyes were shut. A second old woman sat on a stool in the corner. She was sucking loudly on a red lollipop. "I don't have my toothbrush," Norah said.

  "I didn't say brush your teeth," said Mama Strong. She gave Norah a yellow t-shirt, gray sweatpants and plastic flip flops, took her to the bathroom and waited for Norah to use the toilet, wash her face with tap water and change. Then she took the clothes Norah had arrived in and went away.

  The old woman pointed with her lollipop to an empty mattress, thin wool blanket folded at the foot. Norah lay down, covered herself with the blanket. The room was stuffy, warm, and smelled of the bodies in it. The mattress closest to Norah's belonged to a skinny black girl with a scabbed nose and a bad cough. Norah knew she was awake because of the coughing. "I'm Norah," she whispered, but the old woman in the corner hissed and clapped her hands. It took Norah a long time to realize that no one was ever going to turn off the light.

  Three times during the night she heard someone screaming. Other times she thought she heard the ocean, but she was never sure; it could have been a furnace or a fan.

  In the morning, the skinny girl told Mama Strong that Norah had talked to her. The girl earned five points for this, which was enough to be given her hairbrush.