Onward, Drake! - eARC Read online

In a different tone, she then said, “I was wondering, Master Hesperus, if you had plans for dinner tonight yourself? I’ve been lonely since, well . . . since, you know.”

  Since Tychos left, and that was just the day before yesterday, Cabbage thought. But he probably didn’t understand.

  “Well, I would be pleased to dine with you, mistress,” uncle said. His stomach growled, just to show how true that was.

  “And I wonder, master . . . ?” Berenice said, edging a little closer. “My friend Glycera is worried about her husband. He’s in the Alexandria trade, you see, and his ship should have been back weeks ago. Could you possibly help her? She’s quite well off. For material things, you know.”

  Uncle looked doubtful. Zoe glanced up at Cabbage and said, “No problem at all. I’ll need a piece of his clothing and a basin of water, that’s all. But you’d better get paid in advance because the news may not be what the lady wants to hear.”

  “We can handle it, uncle,” Cabbage said. “You can, I mean.”

  “Ah!” said Hesperus, but it was a cheerful “Ah,” this time. “Yes, that can be arranged, I’m sure. Now, Cabbage, if you’ll come with us to Mistress Berenice’s shop, I’ll give you enough money to feed yourself and, ah, my familiar while the mistress and I are engaged.”

  “I want radishes,” said Zoe as she waddled out of the shop at Cabbage’s side. “And some proper lettuce, hearts of lettuce.”

  Ahead of them uncle was saying, “And may my apprentice borrow your hand-cart tonight, mistress? We have a delivery of sorts to make just outside the gate.”

  * * *

  David Drake needs no introduction in this volume.

  At my request, he supplied this afterword to his story.

  The first series written by David Drake (hereinafter “me” or “I”) involved a pair of 4th century A.D. Romans, and Graeco-Roman history has provided settings for most of my SF and fantasy. In the spirit of explaining what “The Great Wizard, Cabbage” has to do with me, I could discuss the importance of Latin and classical history to my life both generally and specifically as part of my writing.

  But I’ve said that elsewhere, so instead I’ll comment on the fact that Cabbage is a lighter story than much of what I write; that in fact Cabbage is funny. (Okay, it’s funny in an English sort of way, particularly if you’re a guy with a juvenile sense of humor. Which is most guys, at least in my circle of friends.)

  There’s a lot of humor in all my fiction, but I think it’s fair to say that the people who are most likely to appreciate that humor have been in some pretty bad places. Black humor is a welcome companion in environments which you know are likely to kill or maim you and your buddies. I have a writing career because that experience is more widespread than civilians tend to think, but it’s not true of most people in the First World. (Thank goodness.)

  I have written humorous stories, however. I collected these in All the Way to the Gallows. In doing so, I noticed to my surprise that almost all of my funny stories were set in somebody else’s universe. I didn’t (and don’t) know whay that should be, but I decided that for the fantasy Mark wants for this volume I would do a funny story. (He also wants me to do a Hammer story. I’m pretty sure that’s not going to be funny.)

  Two of my best stories (funny or otherwise) are “Airborne All the Way” and “A Very Offensive Weapon.” Weapon was based on a full background by Roger Zelazny, and the story is novella length. That’s much longer than I thought was suitable for this anthology.

  All the background I had when I wrote Airborne, however, was a single card from the Magic: the Gathering™ pack. I therefore thought about Airborne and wondered how to get the same feel for the new story.

  The first result of thinking about Airborne is that I switched the current story’s viewpoint from the hedge-wizard to his apprentice. Airborne’s viewpoint character was the leader of a squad of goblins. She was brighter than the goblins under her command, but that wasn’t a high bar: they were explicitly on an intellectual level with rocks. (They were brighter than most rocks.)

  Something else I like about Airborne is that the goblins are all good-hearted. Sure, they’re pawns (they’re a balloon crew, so I can’t call them footsoldiers) in a magical war, but they don’t hate anybody. They’re just trying to do the best job possible with their limited mental resources. That was an important aspect when I characterized both the apprentice and his master.

  The biggest difference between the two stories is that Airborne is set in a game universe which I didn’t describe or even understand (I’d never played Magic), whereas Cabbage is set in the Roman Empire of about 170 A.D. I know a fair amount about Rome and I wanted to get the setting right. It wasn’t necessary for the story, but it was darned well necessary for me. (Reread the first paragraph of this essay.)

  But you know? I’m not sure that this is such a big difference after all. For Cabbage I used a map and a topography of Rome, a large reference work on the Tivoli site, and the trusty volume of classical spells and curses which had been at hand through the years in which I wrote the Isles series . . . but I remember reading 19th century ballooning memoirs for Airborne, and also studying coal gasification (because 19th century sport ballooning generally used lighting gas instead of the extremely expensive process of generating hydrogen by pouring concentrated acid over iron filings).

  In any case, herewith a light and I hope funny fantasy. Now to work out the details of a Hammer story.

  Forward!

  Incubator

  Gene Wolfe

  “You’ll know it right away,” Fil had said, smiling. He had a charming smile. “Our roof was designed by some lunatic, and it’s all tile, sort of between a greenish yellow and a yellowish green.” When she had said nothing Fil added, “Depends on how the sun strikes it. There’s nothing like it for thousands of kilos—nothing else like it in the world, probably. I mean, who’d want a roof like that?”

  She had remarked that she still did not understand why the locator would not take her straight there. “Don’t know,” Fil had said. He had golden hair, like someone in an old, old painting. “Something Father did, probably.” Then he vanished, and a hundred vocal and keyed commands had not brought him back.

  There it was, over there! That jumble of poisoned leaves! She guided L-87 with a gesture and told him to land with another.

  It was all garden here, no paths at all that she could see, no paved paths, no bridle paths, just lush green grass among straggling rose bushes. Were not roses supposed to bloom all summer? All winter, too, even here north of the line? These roses did not know the rules, or most did not. A few blue or green blossoms here and there. And foliage, though not as lush as she had expected.

  She took a dozen steps before the thought struck, but once it did she knew that it was quite correct. These roses had not been chosen for their blossoms or even for their foliage. Chosen for something else. From fear, she refrained from naming it, even silently. No name, and no looking at those.

  Left, then right, then straight on for twenty-odd steps and here was the inhabitation. She positioned in front of the lens, standing far enough back to give it a full view. Blond, she reminded herself. That was what Fil’s yellow hair was called. Dark blue eyes? Was she imagining those? Could semihumans, even blond ones, really have two such eyes?

  The voice of the door was not his. “Come right in. It’s not locked.”

  A woe man’s? An android’s?

  The door swung open before she touched it. The room beyond was large and many-shadowed, with a ceiling that had to be three stories high—no, five. It seemed to draw her up like sky, promising something she could not have named. A row of pillars to the left, mucus stretched from floor to ceiling.

  “Father wanted you to come here.”

  She looked around. The shemale was almost near enough to touch, though not quite.

  “I thought I’d better tell you. You’ll want to think it was Fil.”

  She wanted to say they had known all along
who it was, but that would have been snapping the truth. She replaced it with, “Is Fil your sibling?”

  “A third.” The shemale not quite close enough to touch smirked. “Same feather, different nest.”

  She thought she knew what was meant by nest, and was slightly offended.

  “Now you say left third or right, and I say bottom third.”

  She stopped to look around at the shemale. “Then we’ll skip it.” The shemale had lions-mane hair and enormous green eyes. Not at all like the near-brother Fil? Thinking that, she was secretly pleased.

  House or hice? If she were permitted more than one, would she want one like this? She shuddered.

  “Fil soft-pedals everything, but Father will tell you truth.”

  Was it time to resume walking? She decided against it. “What about you?”

  “Oh, I won’t tell you anything.” The shemale paused thoughtfully. “Or at least, nothing you might believe.”

  “You just told me something.”

  “Doesn’t count.” The shemale’s glowing teeth were not pointed, yet she knew somehow that they were terribly sharp—sharp as knives. What a horror it must be to have teeth like that!

  “What does your father want?”

  “You.” The shemale moved off.

  What if he cannot have me? “You mean he asked your semi-sibling to call me. What for?”

  “He wasn’t paid. He must do what Father says. So must I.” This was said without looking back.

  All right, two can play that game. A black leather divan waited between pillars. She crossed the room to it and sat down. There was a mirror in the shadowy distance, and she studied the images in that. Did she look tough enough? Clever enough? How tough was she? Really now? Though she did not move, the she in the mirror brushed back a lock of dusky hair.

  A tall woman appeared at her left elbow. She looked around, half expecting to see no such woman; but there was indeed a lofty figure wrapped in black there.

  “May I sit with you?”

  “I am sitting without permission,” she remarked at length. “I will make no objection to your sitting, at present.” She hesitated. “Are we inside or outside? I thought I knew but . . .”

  “You have come to doubt yourself.”

  No. To be rid of doubt. She nodded.

  “What you see could be a dream, an illusion. An hallucination–”

  “Or a reality,” she finished.

  “Not so. No one can see reality. The mind processes a pattern of light reported by the optic nerves. The mind interprets that.”

  “What if I were to touch you?”

  The tall woman—seeming even taller now that she was sitting—laughed. “Your touching me would have no effect. Everything is unreal and real. We may see the real part or the unreal part.”

  “Or both.”

  “Or neither. I look for oranges, I see apples which are figs.”

  “Really figs?”

  “Is anything?”

  “May I speak to Fil?”

  The woman in black laughed. “Of course not.”

  “Why not? We communicated. That’s why I came.”

  “He has left, gone deaf, is sleeping or insane. More if you like.”

  She nodded. “I understand. Unending fantasies and failures bar my way.”

  “Those you dispatch, you will leave behind you. When you have gone, they will rise and make haste so as to be ahead of you.”

  “Fil and I spoke shortly before I landed. Fil has golden hair and the voice of two poets.”

  “You thought him here.”

  “He said he was. I had no reason to doubt him. He promised to show me the Egg, so he must have been here.”

  “He was on a seaplane flying at a depth of five hundred fathoms.”

  “I take it the plane is bound for a volcano.”

  The tall woman in black said nothing.

  “I have come to see the Egg.”

  “Or something else. Or nothing.”

  “Fil knows that—knows why I came. I told him.”

  “He is dead.”

  “You said he was on a seaplane.”

  The tall figure in black laughed. “Now I say that it crashed. Answer, clark!”

  “Into the sea, you mean.”

  “It struck the side of a submerged mountain.”

  “I brought you something.” Reaching into a pants leg, she produced a bauble.

  The black-robed woman stared through tall eyes. “Is this valuable?”

  “It is invaluable.”

  “Then come.” The black-robed woman led the way to a crystal pillar standing among ferns. “I have no reason to spare you.”

  She went closer, to better see the Egg behind the crystal. It was copper-brown, with dots of rose, sallow, and ebony.

  “In there? Is all the old humankind in there?”

  The black-robed woman nodded, but by then she had seen the crevice, a crack no longer than her smallest nail. It grew by the width of an eyelash as she watched.

  She stepped back, and fled.

  * * *

  Gene Wolfe attended Edgar Allen Poe Elementary School and has never quite left the ghoul-haunted woodlands of Weir. If you like this little story, you might look for Innocents Abroad, Endangered Species, The Best of Gene Wolfe, and other collections. He is old now, a widower who lives in Peoria, Illinois. But why should you care?

  At my request, he supplied this afterword to his story.

  Laugh if you like, but I feel a deep kinship with David Drake. As far as I know there are only three fantasy and science fiction writers who have actually gone to war and gotten shot at: David, Joe Haldeman (who was severely wounded), and me.

  That’s a shame. Combat makes you experience a different reality. It teaches you that the calm of ordinary American life is in fact the calm of an extraordinary time and place. Homicidal people, it seems, are not confined to certain defined hours and channels on TV. You yourself are a homicidal person and so are all your friends, if you’re lucky. Explosions are not a mishap that occurred in an oil refinery in Oklahoma seven months ago. The most recent explosion was seven seconds ago and about five yards off, and here comes another one so stay down! Ditches are to live in, and women largely legendary. For all its virtues, science fiction must present a world that seems more or less plausible. The future will not be plausible. It never is.

  Thus the story you have just read.

  A Flat Affect

  Eric Flint

  On St. Anselm’s feast day in the Year of the Hedgehog, King Bertrand of Wollend was seized by a sudden caprice. True, he was given to such things, but this was an enthusiasm beyond the norm.

  “According to the texts,” he announced to his privy council, “this year marks the millennium of the birth of Chefferax, greatest—by far!—of the generals of antiquity.”

  “Ah . . . which texts, Your Majesty?” asked Hubert Reese, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. His tone was deferential, but cautious. King Bertrand’s whims were prone to make excessive charges upon the royal purse.

  “I forget,” the king said, waving his hand dismissively. “But I’m sure it’s true. So let us have a season of revelry! A great pageant of ballads and poesy! Summon the minstrels and the troubadours and the bards!”

  The mien of the chancellor grew dour. Minstrels were profligate in their demands; troubadours, worse; bards, worst of all. Where honest workmen were satisfied with unassuming wages and a modest bonus upon completion of their task, poets insisted upon perquisites and lagniappes at every turn—and lavish praise, to boot.

  Hubert Reese would rather have applauded fishwives in the street. But his was not the deciding view when it came to these matters. For a moment, he thought to appeal to his colleagues on the council, but the thought was short-lived. They knew their monarch’s moods as well as he did; and, when all was said and done, enjoyed the benefits of their positions in the council. Arguing with King Bertrand when he was in the grip of one of his fancies was not, as the lowlifes
in trade would put it, a good career move.

  Several years back, the chancellor had heard a young poet proclaim his desire—no, his pressing need!—to speak truth to power. He grew no older. His bones moldered somewhere in the bottom of the royal moat.

  There was nothing for it. “As you wish, Your Majesty.” Reese glanced at his fellows on the council, but none would meet his eye. “I’m sure we can have the services of the Crown and Scepter Theater at a reasonable price,” he added.

  King Bertrand’s eyes widened and his mouth opened, as if he were uncertain whether to be shocked or outraged.

  He settled for both.

  “Preposterous!” he spluttered. “Are lays and ballads in praise of history’s finest strategos to be crabbed within the confines of a glorified shack?”

  He stretched forth a royal hand, splayed wide in full decree. “I will not have it! An outdoor stadium must be built! Of solid wood and festooned with banners!”

  The chancellor foresaw many hours in the future, when he himself would be crabbed over the kingdom’s books, confined within the king’s grandiosities and impractical disposition.

  But he said nothing. Spoke neither truth to power nor caution to monarchy. Not even when the king piled on the final blow.

  “And send for Garrick! We must have him! He’s the finest trouvère on the continent!”

  He was nothing of the sort, in the chancellor’s opinion. The Garrick creature’s lays were given to neither lofty judgments nor refined sensitivities. They were coarse and crude in sentiment; stark in execution; sung—if the word could be used—in a voice any crow would be proud to call its own.

  But he made no protest. The king doted on the fellow. They’d been friends in their youth. No doubt a misspent youth on the part of the minstrel. The king’s youth . . . Well, he was of royal blood.

  The troubadour Garrick arrived three weeks later, by which time the new stadium was well underway. He was immediately ushered into the monarch’s presence.