Dark Currents Read online

  Edited by Ian Whates

  NewCon Press

  England

  First edition, published in the UK April 2012

  by NewCon Press

  NCP 044 (hardback)

  NCP 045 (softback)

  Compilation copyright © 2012 by Ian Whates

  Introduction copyright © 2012 by Ian Whates

  “The Fall of Lady Sealight” copyright © 2012 by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  “The Age of Entitlement” copyright © 2012 by Adam Nevill

  “Electrify Me” copyright © 2012 by Tricia Sullivan

  “Alternate Currents” copyright © 2012 by Rod Rees

  “The Barricade” copyright © 2012 by Nina Allan

  “Things that Are Here Now” copyright © 2012 by Andrew Hook

  “Loose Connections” copyright © 2012 by Finn Clarke

  “Sleepless in R’lyeh” copyright © 2012 by Lavie Tidhar

  “Damnation Seize my Soul” copyright © 2012 by Jan Edwards

  “Home” copyright © 2012 by Emma Coleman

  “A Change in the Weather” copyright © 2012 by Rebecca J Payne

  “Bells Ringing Under the Sea” copyright © 2012 by Sophia McDougall

  “In Tauris” copyright © 2012 by Una McCormack

  “Lost Sheep” copyright © 2012 by Neil Williamson

  “The Bleeding Man” copyright © 2012 by Aliette de Bodard

  “George” copyright © 2012 by V.C Linde

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-907069-34-5 (hardback)

  978-1-907069-35-2 (softback)

  Cover art “Conflagration” by Ben Baldwin

  Cover layout by Andy Bigwood

  Invaluable editorial assistance from Ian Watson

  Text layout by Storm Constantine

  eBook design by Tim C. Taylor

  Contents

  1. Introduction by Ian Whates

  2. The Fall of Lady Sealight – Adrian Tchaikovsky

  3. The Age of Entitlement – Adam Nevill

  4. Electrify Me – Tricia Sullivan

  5. Alternate Currents – Rod Rees

  6. The Barricade – Nina Allan

  7. Things that Are Here Now – Andrew Hook

  8. Loose Connections – Finn Clarke

  9. Sleepless in R’lyeh – Lavie Tidhar

  10. Damnation Seize my Soul – Jan Edwards

  11. Home – Emma Coleman

  12. A Change in the Weather – Rebecca J Payne

  13. Bells Ringing Under the Sea – Sophia McDougall

  14. In Tauris – Una McCormack

  15. Lost Sheep – Neil Williamson

  16. The Bleeding Man – Aliette de Bodard

  17. George – V.C. Linde

  18. About the Authors

  Dark Currents:

  an Introduction

  Ian Whates

  In many ways Dark Currents represents a return to NewCon Press’ roots: a genre-straddling collection of stories produced by a diverse group of talented wordsmiths writing to a common theme. After a number of anthologies that have focused on one specific area of genre – Conflicts and Further Conflicts (science fiction), Anniversaries (fantasy), The Bitten Word (vampires), Hauntings (uhm, would you believe… ghosts?) – I was keen to again oversee a book that encompasses science fiction, fantasy, horror, dark fantasy and slipstream all under the same cover.

  Inspiration came when artist Ben Baldwin approached me regarding his work. I looked at Ben’s website and needed no further persuading. This man has talent! One image in particular caught my eye and I immediately contacted Ben to discover that yes, it was indeed available.

  An evocative image of fire, water, ships ablaze, with a seated figure watching on.

  Dark Currents/Dark Tides: that’s all that any would-be contributors were given. The rest was up to them.

  As ever, I was seeking a mix of familiar names and the less familiar, of writers I’d worked with before and those whose work I admired but hadn’t yet had the pleasure of publishing. I began to approach authors at Eastercon, 2011, and the first two I spoke to were Aliette de Bodard and Nina Allan; two exceptional writers who are already making names for themselves and whose careers can only go from strength to strength. I also met Sophia McDougall for the first time that weekend, and our paths were destined to cross several times in the following months, notably when we were both guests at a massed signing event at Heffers in Cambridge. Sophia was another natural to approach for Dark Currents.

  I first encountered Adam Nevill when we were on a panel together at a literary event in Lincoln a couple of years ago. I was deeply impressed by his writing ethos; even more so when he produced the superb The Ritual in 2011. We bumped into each other at the launch of China Miéville’s Embassy Town, where I took the opportunity to talk short stories. Adam’s was one of the first submissions to arrive. He had clearly embraced the theme as his tale fitted to perfection. Only subsequently did I discover that Adam had finished the story shortly before we spoke and was wondering where to send the piece when I offered it the perfect home. Serendipity in action.

  Adrian Tchaikovsky is an author who has already made a significant impression with his novels, but not perhaps with his shorter work. I’ve a feeling this might soon change. I recall attending a reading in which Adrian treated us to a new story; it was witty, entertaining, and clever. I loved it, and immediately invited him to submit for the anthology.

  Una McCormack is an author I have a great deal of respect for. Una has appeared in two previous NewCon anthologies and never fails to deliver something memorable. She is part of a cabal of us authorly types who gather from time to time in a Cambridge pub… to, ahem, discuss genre literature. It was Una who first introduced Rebecca J Payne to the group: another emerging talent. Rebecca’s first ever story submission was accepted by Interzone and subsequently came third in that year’s readers’ poll; not the worst of credentials.

  I first discovered Neil Williamson’s fiction via his excellent collection, Ephemera. It’s been far too long since Neil appeared in a NewCon Press volume – not since 2008’s Subterfuge – and I didn’t hesitate in approaching him regarding Dark Currents. Another author I was pleased to invite is Andrew Hook – whose Elastic Press, coincidentally, published Neil’s Ephemera. Andrew’s observant and inventive brand of slipstream brings an added dimension to any book.

  Lavie Tidhar has to be one of the busiest writers around; his short fiction seems to pop up all over the place and is always worth reading. It seemed inevitable that NewCon Press would publish Lavie at some point, and Dark Currents struck me as the perfect opportunity. Lavie is a writer from whom it’s always best to expect the unexpected, and the same can be said of Tricia Sullivan. This is the fourth story of Tricia’s I’ve been fortunate enough to commission (three for NewCon Press and one for the recent Solaris Rising) and each has been very different from the others, having in common only their quality. Tricia’s piece here is short but packs a real punch.

  Emma Coleman is something of an enigma: tall, slender, quiet… you’d think that butter wouldn’t melt; yet a dark corner lurks somewhere deep within. When Emma first joined the Northampton SF Writers Group a few years back, we were all impressed by the strength of her writing, but also by its inherent darkness. I was disappointed when circumstances prevented Emma from contributing to 2010’s Shoes, Ships and Cadavers – the volume launched to showcase the group – but I’m delighted to now put that omission right by publishing a story from this very talented writer.

  I received more unsolicited approaches for Dark Currents than for any previous anthology. Presumably this is an indication of the growing re
putation (or perhaps infamy) that NewCon Press is garnering. The result is that I’ve had a wider pool of stories from which to select the final book than ever. Amongst these unsolicited pieces were Jan Edwards’ rumbustious ectoplasmic naval tale and Finn Clarke’s near-future dystopia – two stories that just couldn’t be ignored – as well as Rod Rees’ deft intertwining of alternative history and genre tropes. Rod’s story arrived via his agent, the estimable John Jarrold, who had heard of the Dark Currents project and enquired whether I’d like to see a piece from one of his authors that might just fit the theme: Rod. Of course I would! And I’m delighted that I did.

  I’ve always resisted the inclusion of poetry in any NewCon Press anthology (okay, a couple slipped into the Now We Are 5 booklet, but that was special circumstance and intended as a one off). I have little knowledge of the field and reckon such things are best left to those more qualified. Then Vick Linde – a multi-talented lady with impeccable taste in reading – approached me for three words from which to build a poem for her blog. The result was “George”; a poignant piece that I felt would make a perfect coda for the Dark Currents book… It just goes to show: never say never; those currents are strong.

  Ian Whates

  February 2012

  The Fall of Lady Sealight

  Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Each night, in dreams, she still flew through the green-blue dappled vastness of the Void. The dim-lit chasms arched and wheeled around her. A space that is no-space, greater than the mind can conceive, immeasurable, ineffable, nowhere and nothing.

  In her dreams she could still soar through the infinite sea-lit halls that her mind made of the Void’s awful nothingness; dance amidst the motes of sifting dust; soar unbound and untethered as man has always yearned to do, and never done, save there.

  In her dreams, most nights, no others were there. She could not hear the static buzz of comrades in her head as they looped together through an abyss that each flier saw differently. She did not see the memory-shapes her mind had once conjured: shapes giving space and distance and form to the mere bundles of thought they were all rendered down to.

  Nor were there enemies in her dreams. No sharp darts of motion as Commonwealth soldiers arrowed in for the kill. No mental daggers lancing into her brain. No feel of resistance, of sudden shattered release, as she turned the weapons of her mind upon the enemy.

  Only sometimes, in her dreams, there was Isender, who had loved her – whom she had shared her inconsequential body with, whom she had shared her mind with as they flew together. Sometimes she dreamt of Isender, whose real name she had never known.

  Her name was Eleanor de Witney, of a family whose every generation gave at least one son or daughter to the service of the Crown. In the vastness of the Void they called her by another name. Once they had seen the world her mind constructed in that matter-less vacuum, they had called her Lady Sealight.

  She woke to the unbearable prison of the flesh, dropping out of the dream of flight that was now denied to her forever: into her leaden, lumpen body, her wounded, broken mind.

  Where am I now?

  There was nothing to suggest a yesterday to her, as though the dreams had taken not only her hope but all her history. She was left as vacant as the Void she had once sported, loved and fought in.

  Was I here yesterday?

  Had she used the Prod yesterday? Something told her that she had not. Some indefatigable internal clock told her: one more day and it is charged again. She must have triggered it, must have come here, the day before last.

  I can no longer deal with a material world.

  Even as the thought tore at her, memory began dropping back into her hollow brain in fragments and shards. The island republic: tropical paradise; tourists and loungers and the larcenous poor; police on street corners, young as schoolboys with machineguns tucked under their arms like books; the hotel. She had been so tired, more tired each time. She could not even remember paying for the room.

  Just another place that is not my place.

  How many had there been? Her clock struck inside, telling her: thirteen. There have been thirteen places now that have not been home.

  Hunger was waking inside her now. Lady Sealight had not eaten, save as need be. Her body had been fit, thin, trained, and largely irrelevant. Her mind had disdained it. Like all the Abyssonauts she would have spent her life free and unfettered in the Void, had she been allowed. If duty and the Crown had not tied her down she would have danced off into the sea-murky gothic grandeur and never come back.

  Now the prison of her body wanted food. She was aware that she was rebounding from her loss of the infinite, falling back into the crass and the material. She knew the hole she tried to fill with food was the unbounded Void, and that she would eat herself to death before she could plug it, and yet she ate. She ate to emphasise the misery and the degradation of the flesh that held her in.

  She called room service. Her fingers remembered how. The empty cartons and bottles on the floor beside the bed gave solemn testament. She recalled none of it. Her memory seemed to skip, to shudder over things as recent as yesterday.

  It’s just because I’m tired.

  She hoped it was because she was tired.

  “Peanuts,” she told the telephone. “Beer. Sandwiches. Meat. Chocolate. Ice cream. Food.”

  Tomorrow she would fire the prod again, before things became too bad here: groping for home like a blind woman scouring the streets of London for a lost pin.

  Once the British Empire had the world in its hand, there was nothing for it but to turn inwards. Parliament bucking at the reins of a King who hauled them in all the harder at the resistance. Englishman spilling English blood as had not happened since Richard’s triumph at Bosworth Field. Whilst the conquered world looked on and held its shackled breath, the Crown and the Commonwealth fought like sleepwalkers. Spies but no armies. Scientists but no bombs. The Empire’s leaps of technical might, that had humbled a world from pole to pole, made all the old wars obsolete, impossible. Only backward, third-world places had any use for the massed infantry, the tanks and guns. The field of combat for the civil war was the Void.

  They tested all children, nowadays. They subjected them to the terrible vacancy of the Void at five or six, seven was late, eight too late to train. This was cruel, and everyone knew it, but the safety of the Crown was at stake and the Empire needed soldiers. They recoiled, those frightened children. They screamed and cried and begged to be taken back into a material world their senses could grasp. Some never recovered. There would be scars on most, nightmares of a cavernous lack of being, that would stretch from infancy to senescence. Some would lose their minds in that first touch. It was cruel. It was necessary. The Commonwealth did far worse.

  Some children, confronted with a dimensionless space, a senseless abyss of non-information, painted a picture for themselves, splashed colour across the invisible, called light into the eyeless gulf. Perhaps one in ten thousand could make that mental leap, like seeing the other side of an impossible figure, inverting a line-drawn cube. They were the motive behind the cruelty, the ends that justified the means. For every soldier of the Crown, a handful of minds were destroyed and others would never sleep easily again.

  It was a personal thing, the Void: along and behind and within the physical world, without end, without measure. That Void had no distances or landmarks. It had no material existence. To fly the Void was to have your body made into nothing, to vanish from existence entire and be remade on your return, whole, or almost whole. It was the mind that vaunted in the Void.

  It was not dark, not silent. That implied that light, that sound could come there. The Void had no medium that light could navigate. No sound. No scent. No touch. The vacuum of space was bursting with energy and life against the Void. The madness of those children was rooted there: the human mind withering and dying in the conscious, shocking absence of stimulus. Only those gifted few could colour the Void and, if they could give it form, then they co
uld fly. There would be no limits to them. They would be little gods.

  For most of those so gifted, that first brush with the Void was yet a horror that would stay with them all their lives. Their minds made of it an infinite personal horror. They saw twisted, spiralling towers of bone; filled the sky with malice-ridden idiot faces; trembled in terror before vaulted cathedral cloisters wreathed in dark smoke, or louring jungles peopled with bright pinprick eyes. Still, they found the service of the Crown. It was an honour and a duty, and the war was too fierce to leave them a choice. They were condemned to fly in their own nightmare.

  For just a few, though, that first forced entry into the Void was something else, something wondrous and strange. Their minds reached out into the infinite and smiled. Isender, when he flew, cast himself through a golden sky as beautiful as he was.

  Eleanor crammed chocolate into her mouth, bitterly trying to escape a sea-blue, sea-green, coral-limned space where she had moved like a dolphin and, even when the sharks of the Commonwealth had pressed close, known no fear.

  The television channels of the hotel featured imported soap operas in foreign languages; staticky game shows where poor picture quality gave human skin the colours of cheese; newsreaders carefully picking around the gaps they were forbidden to illuminate. Eleanor knew the pattern. She had seen the angry men in nondescript clothes eyeing the police with loathing, heard the slogans the students shouted across the square. The island was brewing revolution.

  One day until the Prod was charged and she could exchange this hell for another, no better, no worse. Would she get out ahead of the guns this time? She thought not. The newsreaders looked strained, as though they needed a holiday anywhere but here. Mechanically she checked her hardware. Everything in poor shape, but holding. Everything low on power. The Assumptor was still bending causality around her, hiding the armour and the weapons and the Abyssonaut’s three-lobed helm, making people see what they wanted to see. Sick of it, she let it die for a minute, in the privacy of her own room. She looked down without its haze to confound her, saw the eroded plates of her mail, scarred and pocked as though her eruption from the Void had been re-entry from space. An Abyssonaut’s kit had to survive being unmade in the baptism of nothingness that was entry to the Void, had to survive being remade in the tumbling, system-wrenching return to a physical world. Her return had been more wrenching than most. Everything had suffered, herself most of all.