"A Book of Silences" by James Enge

April will see the release of James Enge's swords & sorcery novel, Blood of Ambrose, an epic work featuring Morlock Ambrosius, wandering swordsman and master of all magical makers. The book is a stand-alone adventure, but Morlock returns in the (already-delivered) follow-up, This Crooked Way, and we've just signed for a third Morlock novel, the wonderfully-titled The Wolf Age. But Morlock Ambrosius already has a significant following, as Enge has been chronicling his adventures in short stories for some time prior to his novel debut. The tale below is but one example."A Book of Silences," first appeared in the pages of Black Gate magazine. We are pleased to reprint it in its entirety here. What's more, we will shortly be presenting "Fire and Sleet," which follows directly on the events of "A Book of Silences" and is an original novelette that will debut here for the first time anywhere. So, read and enjoy!

A Book of Silences
James Enge

That night Morlock Ambrosius dreamed of silence as a pool lapping at his feet, in which he watched the world slowly dissolving in a golden glare. He woke with the sun in his face and an uneasy feeling in his mind.

He decided, as he sponged himself off at the basin of his rented room, that his dream meant that he had spent too much time in the sleepy little forest town of Aithonford, and that he needed a city full of noise and smoke and voices. Fyrkirach, not too many days ride to the south, might do. After dressing, he stowed his belongings in his pack, slung it over his crooked shoulders and went downstairs.

“Master Bunden,” he said, on meeting his landlord, whose cheerful face fell when he saw what Morlock was carrying.

“Ach,” the little man said disconsolately, “I guess you’ll be leaving us, Master Morlock. This is sudden.”

Morlock nodded. “I must go. But I may return. Maybe you’ll hold my room for six months or so? I’ll pay you.”

Bunden nodded, but not cheerfully. “Sure, sure-- we’ve always got an empty room, as you know, and the gold’ll be grateful. But gold doesn’t talk to you.”

Neither did Morlock, much, so he hefted his saddle from a hook by the door and went out back to fetch his horse from the stable. He was struck, as he went, by the thought that Bunden was fond of him. It meant little, perhaps: Bunden had a capacity for being fond of people. When he found that his brother Handen was sleeping with his wife, Rella, he simply divorced her, stood up at her wedding to his brother, and gave both of them jobs at his inn. “I thought about killing them,” the little man confided to Morlock (not without confidence: he was also one of the town blacksmiths), “but... I’d miss seeing them around.” So it probably meant little that he would miss Morlock, after a few nights of trading stories among several months of mostly silent coexistence.

These thoughts were driven out of Morlock’s mind when he rounded the smithy attached to the inn, and found that the stable had vanished. His horse, Velox was there, disdainfully cropping some of the weed-thick grass of the empty field, but there was no stable, no fodder troughs, nothing. Morlock crouched down to examine the ground, rose again thoughtfully a few minutes later. In his opinion, this ground had never been levelled for building. Yet, last night, there had been a stable here, the largest in town.

Velox, his horse (a black, somewhat middle-aged warhorse with sarcastic gray eyes), trotted up and snorted at him. Morlock grunted and patted him on the neck. Then he led him around the front of the house and went in. “Master Bunden,” he said, stepping into the dimness of the common room. “Your stable is missing.”

“Eh?” said an irritable voice. “What’s that?”

“Your pardon, Handen,” Morlock said. “I didn’t know you from your brother in the dark. I suppose he is in he smithy by now.”

“I don’t have any brother and this inn doesn’t have any stable-- or a smithy,” Handen replied irritably. “Are you sure you’re at the right place? Maybe you got drunk last night and came back to the wrong inn.”

Morlock, beginning to find the conversation tiresome, stepped outside to confirm Handen’s remark about the smithy. It was, in fact, gone. A pine tree at least forty years old was towering where the smithy had been a few moments before. He was unsurprised to find Handen missing on his return. He ran into Rella, just outside the common room and began, without much hope,

“Ma’am, I was just speaking to your husband--”

Rella laughed the infectious laugh that had so appealed to Bunden and his brother, while they still existed. “Bless me, Master Morlock, someone has been teasing you. I’ve no husband.” Morlock watched with some interest as one of her eyes disappeared, congealing like a small puddle in the hot sun. “Who’d marry a one-eyed woman like me?” she continued without pause. Her other eye disappeared. “Nevertheless, this blind old woman will be sorry to see you go, if you catch my meaning.”

“Farewell, then, Ma’am,” said Morlock, more swiftly than was strictly courteous. He wanted to say goodbye before Rella’s ears disappeared, which they had begun to do before he turned away.

Once outside he shifted the pack from his back to Velox’s, saddled the horse and rode away: away from a shadow-etched plot of green, a patch of uncleared forest in the heart of the little town.

Bunden’s place was not the only one affected by whatever was happening to Aithonford: all through the town there were vacant lots that had not been vacant the day before. In some places the vacancies themselves had disappeared, pulling two buildings that were not adjacent next to each other, giving the town’s main street a strangely wrinkled, puckered look.

Morlock reined Velox in by the other inn (now the only inn) in Aithonford. When the postboy came up to take his horse, Morlock did not dismount, but said, “Fellow, listen. Isn’t there a sorcerer who lives nearby? A sorcerer in the woods?”

The postboy hesitated. “I’m not supposed to say...” he began. He never finished.

Morlock shrugged his wry shoulders and rode away from the empty place where the post-boy had been. At least he knew now that his suspicions were correct: there was (or had been at one time) a sorcerer living nearby. It wasn’t surprising that no one had mentioned it to him before: he was not so intimate with anyone in town that they would let him into their deeper confidence. Sorcerers, especially solitary adepts, were bad neighbors, as a rule-- nothing to brag about.

He rode on to the end of the main street, where some boys were taking turns kicking a leather ball into a man-shaped wooden target which bore more than a passing resemblance to the town jailer. The resemblance was due to Morlock himself, who had recarved the thing’s face after a brief stay in the town lockup. The boys had been delighted, and Morlock felt it had won him some credit with them, so he called, “Hey, boys.”

“Hey, Crookback!” they shouted cheerfully.

He reached into a pocket and drew forth a handful of gold. “I have here a gold coin for each of you.”

He owned their attention absolutely. Gold coins were not often seen in Aithonford. “And two,” he said, “for the first one who tells me how to reach the sorcerer’s house.”

Hardly a heartbeat passed before one sang out, “Cross the Aithon at the ford, follow the main path to the fire-split oak; north on the sign road about a mile.”

Morlock tossed the coins accurately and they snapped them out of the air like toads catching flies. He waved his hand curtly and rode away to the ford. If they vanished, he didn’t want to see it. He forded the shining blue river Aithon and dismounted on the far side. The dim green woods came straight up to the river’s edge, and he didn’t know whether there was clearance for a rider on the path. “A bad day is rarely improved by a branch clonking you on the head,” he remarked epigrammatically to Velox, who snorted.

The fire-split oak was easy to find, and the way north (evidently the “sign road”) was just by it. Nonetheless, Morlock hesitated there. Under the oak was a sleeping man, his head pillowed on a book, and Morlock was inclined to wake him and speak to him. But it seemed unlikely he was the sorcerer: his ragged clothing marked him as one of the lesser lights of the town, perhaps a beggar who lived in the woods. Morlock didn’t know the man, but there was something familiar about him... He shook his head and turned up the sign road.

As a road it wasn’t much, but the reason for the name soon became clear. Every two hundred paces or so the path took a jagged turn to the left or right, and at every turn was a sign.

You approach the home of
FLEGYAS THE MAGICIAN.
Go back.

You are nearer the dwelling of
FLEGYAS THE MAGICIAN.
Your danger increases.

Why do you defy the kindly warnings of
FLEGYAS THE MAGICIAN?
Does your life mean nothing to you?

Everyone’s death has a dwelling place.
FLEGYAS THE MAGICIAN
dwells with yours.

Beyond this final warning lives
FLEGYAS THE MAGICIAN.
Beware of the phoenix.

“Do you suppose he really has a phoenix?” Morlock asked Velox, whose silvery gray eyes, fixed on the sign, gave every indication of concern. For once Velox did not snort in answer, and Morlock, shifting the reins to his left hand, drew his sword with his right before leading Velox onward.

They advanced up the overgrown path toward a lean high house now visible through the trees. The windows were all shuttered and no light showed through the cracks. Morlock walked up to the door at the end of the cluttered path and rapped on it.

“Flegyas!” he called, sheathing his sword. “I am Morlock Ambrosius. I’ve been staying at Aithonford. I want some words with you. Flegyas, awake!”

There was no answer. Morlock, glancing about, was not surprised. The mushroom garden had overgrown its borders, perhaps years ago. Morlock doubted that the dread FLEGYAS THE MAGICIAN was still in residence. (It turned out he was wrong about this.) Still, there might be some clue within as to what was causing the vanishings at Aithonford, and Morlock determined to enter. The door was plain wood, unprotected by anything except a very weak residual spell to prevent fire, so Morlock simply kicked it in.

The clouds of dust within seemed to confirm Morlock’s suspicions. Glancing back, he saw Velox nervously peering at him through the open door.

“You’d better come in,” he said grudgingly to the horse. “We don’t want you eaten by wild phoenixes.”

The horse gratefully squeezed through the narrow doorway and immediately began to sneeze. Morlock retreated hastily out of the range of flying horse snot, and tripped over something shrouded in the deep dust of the floor. As he rose he saw that it was a long-dead body, clutching a large book in its crisp dry hands. The mummified flesh had been torn about the heart with something like a triple claw; similar claw prints, painted in brown blood, adorned the cover of the book and the nearby floor.

“Poor old Flegyas,” Morlock remarked to the dead body. “You may or may not have had a phoenix. But it looks as if a phoenix had you.”


Morlock pulled the book loose from the mummified hands, brushing away the dry papery fingers adhering to the cover. The blue leather was scrawled with runic imprecations which Morlock took a moment or two to counterinscribe. When he opened the volume he found it was, as he had expected, Flegyas’ workbook.

Morlock scanned the early part with considerable interest and professional respect. Flegyas had been no fool. But he became one: as he grew middle aged, and then old, he spent more and more of his talent on attempts to script a rejuvenation spell. Morlock knew several effective ones, but he would have used none of them, even if he had need of them which (for various reasons) he did not. The cost of a spell to transform the magician’s self is usually prohibitive.

That was what the phoenix had been for. Flegyas had actually travelled to the legendary southern continent and trapped an aged phoenix, bringing it back with him in a cage.

Professionally, Flegyas had been brilliant, and reckless in his courage in facing everything except the inevitability of his own death. The tale made absorbing reading, but it was all for this: that when the phoenix died, bursting into flame, and all that was left of the glorious fire-colored bird was a black worm crawling in the black ashes, that Flegyas could take some of the ash and use it in his latest rejuvenation experiment. Which, of course, had failed. The whole section ended with a despairing scrawl: So much time spent, and I am only older... older still... always older-- my hair grayer, my face more wrinkled each day.

“After achieving one of the great journeys of the world, alone and in old age, he laments his failure as a cosmetician,” Morlock remarked wryly to his horse. “Well, what’s next? Demonolatry, I guess.”

It was. At a fearful cost in human blood (some of it his own) Flegyas had purchased from a demon (whose name Morlock carefully counter-inscribed and effaced wherever it appeared in the workbook) a book called Silences which contained, the demon swore by certain specific and binding oaths, “all the knowledge of your world, the secrets of life.” Flegyas felt sure this would contain the spell he sought.

But it didn’t. Flegyas wrote of his disappointment in scanning the table of contents in Silences. It recorded, in no obvious order, all the knowledge in Flegyas’ particular world, all the secrets of his own life: his ancestry, life, education and work, the celestial bodies, the places he had been; the last item listed in the table of contents was his birth.

The last entry in the workbook recorded the final discoveries in the career of Flegyas the Magician.

I have been reading in the book of Silences and something rather strange happened. I opened the book at random and read through a passage around the middle. It was nothing but an account of my caging the young phoenix, which has grown ornery of late. (It is very large and intelligent, these days, and I think it suspects I have more use for its blood than itself, as indeed I do: see the entry above for the 12th of Brenting, last year.)

There was nothing exciting in the passage, but it was rather absorbing (one’s own life always interests one, I suppose) and I read it clean through. But when I turned back a page to check something, I found that everything I had read had disappeared. My memories of the incident, too, had changed: grown transparent somehow, uncertain, weightless. I began to doubt the thing had ever happened. I got up and went outside. The cage was gone; in fact, it had never existed. I remember building it from a basket-weave of maijarra-wood slats, but I found them untouched behind the house.

Then I understood: this book contains all the knowledge of my world-- in a sense, my world itself. As long as no one reads it. If someone opens the book and breaks the silence, reading the words of my life, the life vanishes and only the words remain, fading in memory.

This is what my blood-guilt has bought me: the risk of utter dissolution. Not only would I die: I would vanish from the earth as if I had never been, if I had read the rest of that book! Or even the last page... It must be destroyed.

But I may not have the chance. I came from the yard straight to my notebook to write these discoveries down. I don’t remember if I locked the door. But it is locked now, and the key gone: I don’t have it. And I hear something moving about in my workroom. The phoenix, of course! I’d forgotten it. But it hasn’t forgotten me.

I’m going to try and make it to my library. The door and the fire-quell magic there should protect me from the phoenix. If I fail... these words will only be read by one of those-who-know. Have mercy on me, brother. Take my workbook and my library-- the phoenix itself, if you can find it and catch it. But leave me my existence. Destroy the book of Silences without reading it.

Morlock looked down on the mummified corpse and shook his head. “In your place, old friend, I would have turned to the section of the book of Silences that described your capture of the phoenix and read it. Then it never would have happened, and you might still be alive.” Then he scratched his bristly chin thoughtfully and said, “Or would I...?”

Maybe, Morlock reflected, Flegyas in that last moment had discovered he cared about something more than simply living a little longer. He was prouder of his achievement in capturing the phoenix than he was afraid of dying: he didn’t want his greatest deed erased from the slate of the world.

Morlock did not consider Flegyas to be his brother, but he was perfectly prepared to burn the book of Silences. But, of course, it was not there: neither in Flegyas’ crumbling hands nor at the writing desk where he had clearly written the last entry in his workbook.

What had happened was clear enough to read on the dusty floor. The phoenix, after ripping up Flegyas, had walked on bloody feet to a window in a hallway leading to the back of the house. Its fiery exit there was written in burned timbers and shattered glass. Later, years later, probably no longer ago than last night, someone had come in the same way. This intruder was merely human (from his foot-prints), soaked with rain rather than blood (from the drip-marks in the deep dust). He-- Morlock was confident that it was a he --had walked into the house, as far as Flegyas’ writing desk. Then he had walked away again.

And the tramp under the fire-split oak had been sleeping with his head on a book.


Morlock knew the path, now, and he did not hesitate to ride Velox at a pretty fair clip down the crooked way to the main path through the forest. The tramp or beggar was still there beneath the oak, but now he had the book open in his lap and was reading it with great interest, sounding out a word occasionally as he followed the line of text with one finger.

“Good morning,” Morlock greeted him.

The reader waved absently with his free hand, and continued his reading.

“Interesting book?” Morlock asked.

“Very!” the reader said. “It’s all about people and things that I know. But it makes me tired somehow to read it. I read and I read, I can’t help reading. Every once in a while things get all dim and glassy and I have a nap. But when I wake up I just have to read some more.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s all about me, isn’t it? Other people come into it, but sooner or later it comes back to me. Who’d think to write a book about my life? Wizards must have a lot of time on their hands.”

“You stole this from a wizard, then?”

“I don’t know about stole,” the reader said judiciously, lifting his eyes at last from the text. “I found it in a dead man’s house. Who owned it? Anyway, it’s all about me. I own my own life, don’t I?”

“No, but I see your point about the book.”

“I guess I see yours about the wizard. They say everything from a wizard has its price, and it’s better to pay up front.”

“Then?”

“If you mean ‘Why did you take it, then?’ I sort of couldn’t help myself. I didn’t know it was the wizard’s house-- didn’t know I was in this part of the woods at all last night. I was lost in the storm. When I got in I saw him dead on the floor and I figured I’d be o.k.-- whatever killed him was long gone. And I opened the book and all I could see was Rella’s name in the table of contents.”

“You knew Rella?” Morlock said, and then shook his head in irritation. Of course the reader had known Rella. That was why she disappeared, when he read that part of the book.

“I knew her before she married that innkeeper,” the reader hissed. “I guess I did. She was my sister. I was her brother and-- and-- a lot more. Then he came along, and I wasn’t anything.” The reader’s face clenched and unclenched a few times. “There was some stuff about him and his damn brother in the book. But a lot about Rella, so I brought it away. I couldn’t read it properly until the sun came out this morning.

“I wish I could read you the stuff about Rella-- it was so beautiful; just what I always thought about her. Her eyes were different colors, you know-- one brown, one green.”

“I didn’t know.” Morlock thought of Rella’s eyes, sinking separately into her skin like water into sand.

“I’d show you, but it’s not there anymore-- nothing about any of them. So I’ve been reading about the rest of the town. I’m mostly through that part, too. I wonder if you’re in it somewhere?”

Morlock had been wondering the same thing. He said dismissively, “How could I be? We’ve only just met. I’m not really part of your life.”

“I suppose,” the reader said dreamily. “I’m tired of reading about myself, anyway-- it makes me feel all light and glassy, like I’m not really here. I think I’ll read the first part of the book.”

“Isn’t it all about you? You said it was.”

“Not exactly. The first part is all about the sun, the moons and stars-- what the earth is made of-- things like that.”

Morlock thought of a world that had never known the light of the sun, a star, a moon. He wondered what it would be like. He spoke quickly because he saw the reader’s gaze drifting back toward the text.

“Do you read a lot of books?”

“I’ve never read one before. It’s a lot of work, but it’s pretty interesting. But it’s a lot of work.”

“The most interesting part of a book is always the end.”

“What?”

“It stands to reason, doesn’t it? A man writes a book to say something; he leads up to it, says it, and the book is over. Lots of people only read the end of books, if they want to get to the interesting part without all the work.”

“You talk like a book,” remarked the reader sleepily and laughed, flipping to the last page. “Hey, it’s about me again.”

Morlock watched with professional interest until it was over, then turned away and mounted Velox. He rode back to Flegyas’ house and dismounted. He entered the house and picked up the book of Silences from the magician’s writing table. It was as if no one had touched it since Flegyas’ death. In a way, of course, no one had.

Morlock turned to the table of contents.

The last item read: MORLOCK AMBROSIUS IS BORN.

Silences now held his secrets, his knowledge, his life.

Morlock closed the book and thought fiercely. He had lived a long time-- long enough to know that Flegyas’ quest for immortality was beyond insanity. He had no desire to read that final passage, as he had duped Rella’s brother into doing. But he had lived through much that he would gladly wipe clean from the world. He had come to terms with his memories because it had been necessary to do so. Now he could wipe them away-- not from his own mind, it was true, but from the world’s memory.

He could pick and choose. There was no need to read it all. His life would be so different if a few events, a few people, could be cut away, as if they had never been, like warts or moles that disfigured a face...

He almost opened the book again. Then he glanced down and saw Flegyas’ ruined body, its wrinkled mummified face.

Morlock laughed. “No. I’ll take my life as it happened, warts and all. But maybe we are brothers after all, Flegyas.”

Taking the dead magician’s body and the book out into the garden, he set them on fire. As he waited for them to burn, he etched on a piece of clouded glass from the wizard’s house with a diamond stylus from his pack. When the book and the body were utterly consumed he mixed the ashes and buried them in seven different places. The house and the library he left for those who would have them, but he took Flegyas’ workbook for himself.


Bunden was glad to see him as he stepped through the inn’s front door about sunset. “Good day, Master Morlock! Had a good day in the woods?”

Morlock nodded. He was tempted to ask Bunden what he remembered about this morning; it would be interesting to see how their recollections differed. Another time, perhaps.

“Is Rella or Handen about?” he asked.

Bunden looked surprised. “My wife is just down the hall. I haven’t seen Handen for months. Confidentially, Rella doesn’t like him-- says he is always trying to put his hands on her, and she won’t stand it. He never does it when I’m around. But of course he wouldn’t.”

Morlock waited while Bunden fetched Rella. When she appeared, he unceremoniously handed her the glass etching he had made while Flegyas and Silence burned. The lines were deep; it was almost a relief carving. It showed a man sitting cross-legged under the fire-split oak, reading a book in his lap. “For you,” he said harshly.

“Master Morlock, it’s lovely!” she cried, as Bunden beamed at them both. Then her brow wrinkled as she said, in a lower tone. “It reminds me of a dream or-- a dream or something.”

“An unpleasant one,” he guessed, watching her expression closely.

She met his gaze. It was true about her eyes, Morlock noticed: they were different colors. “A little,” she admitted. “But an important one, if dreams can be important. I’m grateful for this, Master Morlock.”

“It’s nothing,” he said, and turned away hastily.


That night Morlock dreamed of noise, like a red cataract of fire spreading through a wood. He awoke in the deepest part of the night, and got up to look out the window of his rented room. He looked westward to where the great northern forest lapped like a dark ocean at the edge of the silver moonlit Aithon river. Somewhere, in those dark woods, a phoenix was burning.

"A Book of Silences" © James Enge
Originally published in Black Gate # 10, Spring 2007

James Enge is an instructor of classical languages at a Midwestern university. His fiction has appeared in Black Gate, Flashing Swords, and everydayfiction.com.

"Ill Met in Elvera" by Chris Roberson

Chris Roberson's Paragaea: A Planetary Romance is both an homage to the planetary romances of Edgar Rice Burroughs and a sophisticated updating of same. Science Fiction Weekly said, "the illusion of being cast away in some exotic realm that combines the best elements of Jack Vance, The Arabian Nights and a hundred other glorious pulp adventures will linger in the lucky reader's mind throughout the tale, and long after."

After take-off, Soviet cosmonaut Akilina “Leena” Chirikov finds herself thrown into another dimension, a world of strange science and ancient mystery. There she meets another time-lost person from Earth, Lieutenant Hieronymus Bonaventure of the Royal Navy—who left home to fight the forces of Napoleon and never returned—and Balam, outlaw prince of the jaguar men. They agree to help Chirikov find a way home.

But Hieronymus Bonaventure's own story began earlier, in the novel Set the Seas on Fire (out now from Solaris books), a Napoleonic-era naval adventure (with zombies!). Now, I'm thrilled to be presenting "Ill Met in Elvera," an an original short-story, debuting here for the first time anywhere, which bridges the gap between Set the Seas on Fire and Paragaea: A Planetary Romance, and explains how Hieronymus Bonaventure and Balam met for the first time.

"Ill Met in Elvera"

Chris Roberson

Hieronymus Bonaventure, always slow to anger, was still mourning the spilled lager when the jaguar man overturned the table. The loss of the drink, his third of the evening, put him in a philosophical mood, and he ruminated briefly about mortality and the vagaries of fate. Then he was struck from behind by a traveling merchant’s errant blow, unseated and knocked arse over kettle, and by the time he was back on his feet, his thoughts had turned towards violence.

At what point the boisterous free house had degenerated into an all-out melee, Hieronymus couldn’t say, but it must have been sometime after his third round was served. Service, clearly, had been interrupted. The wait staff were nowhere to be seen, having wisely retreated behind the heavily barred doors behind the counter. Unable to replace his lost lager even if he wanted, there was nothing for it but to mete out justice.

In the aftermath, no one was certain who has started the ruckus, though in its course it swelled to embroil all of the free house’s patrons. The habitués, naturally, blamed traveling merchants and other outsiders, pointing fingers at any number of nameless strangers who, when questioned, invariably claimed to be blameless, having stopped in for a brief jar of the fabled Elveran spirits before continuing on their way. Elveran locals who were caught up in the brawl, but who did not frequent the free house, insisted that the city fathers should tighten restrictions on all unaffiliated drinking establishments, pointing to the eruption of violence as evidence of innate corruption. That some of these Elverans represented different distilleries, all of whom had unsuccessfully lobbied the free house to join their patrons’ families of public houses, did not escape notice.

Such consideration as cause or fault, however, were immaterial to Hieronymus as he plunged into the fray. He knew only that his evening solace, the brief span between his day’s labors and slumber, had been interrupted, and that someone must be held to account.

There were, by this point, only a handful of targets for his ire. The room was littered with the insensate forms of patrons who had already fallen, and the combatants still standing had the courtesy, at least, to step gingerly as they trod upon their outstretched, bruised limbs. In the midst of the open space before the counter, a towering black-furred jaguar man faced off against a Themanite trader, while a short distance away a Canid with the emblem of an Azurian courier on his lapel bared his fangs at an Elveran man dressed in a suit of fine blue linen. The Elveran, lids drooping and weaving unsteadily on his feet, brandished a broken table leg like a club, laying about him on all sides. The Canid, no less unsteady on his clawed feet, ducked when he should have weaved, and caught a clot from the table leg across his snout, falling to the ground with a whimper.

Hieronymus blinked, his vision blurred, beginning to suspect that the lost lager had not been his third, but some higher iteration. He turned his attention to the jaguar man, who had so recently turned his table end over end. He advanced, while the jaguar man made short work of the Themanite, whose heart clearly wasn’t in it. Hieronymus didn’t consider for an instant drawing his saber from its sheath; this was a matter to be dealt with by hand.

Before Hieronymus had closed with the jaguar man, the situation took a turn. The Elveran continued to swing his cudgel back and forth with force, having failed to notice that his opponent lay whimpering on the floorboards, until his orbit brought him in contact with the jaguar man, who leant heavily against the counter, winded from his exertions. The Elveran’s blow against the back of the jaguar man’s head must certainly have carry little more force than a love tap, but it was sufficient at least to annoy, and the jaguar rounded on the Elveran with fangs bared and claws out. Hieronymus, weaving across the floor, watched as the jaguar man swatted at the Elveran as a house cat would at a chew toy, buffeting him up and over the counter, where he crashed indecorously into the mirrored wall.

The jaguar man, rubbing ruefully at the back of his skull, turned around just as Hieronymus reached him. He smiled down at Hieronymus, wavering unsteadily on his feet.

“And what can I do for you, friend?”

Hieronymus almost fell as he cocked back his fist, so unbalanced was he, but through sheer force of will was able to connect with the jaguar man’s jaw without losing his footing. The jaguar man, already much abused, moaned as, eyelids fluttering, he collapsed in a heap at Hieronymus’s feet.

“Nobody move!” came a shout from the door.

Hieronymus turned, as the Elveran constabulary streamed into the room through the open door.

“Wha-?” he managed.

“Don’t worry about that one,” the chief constable said, pointing towards Hieronymus, who wore the maroon livery of an Elveran gaoler. “He’s one of ours.”

As the constables took the combatants into custody, Hieronymus staggered to the door, avoiding eye contact with anyone, and debating whether to stop for another drink on the way to his lodgings.

###

It had been only a few months since Hieronymus Bonaventure traveled west. After the events in Masjid Empor, and the death of Greenslade and the calif’s daughter, he’d lost his taste for larceny. In the city of Elvera, he’d found work as a guard in the city gaol, watching over prisoners intended for the arena, and besides a few coins each day, he felt that he was earning some small degree of penance. The excessive drink he purchased with his meager income he liked to see as a salve to his guilt, though he knew he drank only to crowd out the memories of that night in the calif’s palace.

He’d adapted to the Elveran lifestyle easily enough. In many ways the culture was the most like that of George III’s England of any of those he’d traveled through since first arriving in the strange world of Paragaea years before. That the natives spoke one of the three Paragaean languages Hieronymus knew made the city all that more attractive. There had been in ancient times a dialect specific to Elvera, but centuries before it had been supplanted by Sakrian, the common language of the plains, and now Elveran survived primarily as an accent—principally a lengthening of vowel sounds and a tendency to bite off fricatives—and a handful of loan words, nearly all of them vulgar in nature, the antique tongue spoken aloud only in religious observances, and even then only by a small class of clerics.

Elvera sat at the boundary between the western woodlands and the Sakrian plains, where the River Gihon bifurcated, the main branch continuing to the south while a tributary snaked off into the west, marking the division between the forests of Altrusia in the north and the Western Jungles to the south. The city had been a hub of trade since the days of the Metamankind Empires, a crossroads between the cultures of the plains and of the jungles. With the rise of the Sakrian city-states, Elvera’s star began to wane, but while it was no longer the economic force it once had been, eclipsed by younger cities such as Laxaria, Lisbia, and Hausr, it still retained much of its former influence. If worse came to worst, and the culture’s only revenue stemmed from the export of Elveran spirits, always in high demand all across the Paragaean continent, their income still would be considerable.

If Hieronymus had a reservation about living in the city, and working in the gaol, it was that in Elvera, justice was severe.

###

The next morning, Hieronymus reported to work at the gaol, bleary eyed, to find the jaguar man occupying one of his cells. Still dressed only in a green loincloth and a leather harness, he lounged against the rear wall of the cell, knees drawn up and arms folded lightly.

“You look worse than I feel, jailer,” the jaguar man said, chuckling. “And I hadn’t thought that possible.”

Hieronymus straightened his maroon vest, conscious of the ache pounding at both temples. “It was… a difficult night.”

“You look familiar, my friend,” the jaguar man said, narrowing his amber eyes. “What is your name?”

“Hieronymus Bonaventure,” he answered, nearing the bars. “I was drinking at the free house this last evening.”

“Ah,” the jaguar man said. “He-, Heron--. Hero. A difficult name.” He paused, and then with genuine concern asked, “And did I hurt you?”

Hieronymus smiled, and shook his head. “You only spilled my last lager of the day.”

“Oh, my, no!” The jaguar man laughed, a rumbling noise deep in his chest, like distant thunder. “Then I have most seriously wounded you, indeed.”

The jaguar man climbed to his feet, straightened, and inclined his head. “I am Balam, former prince of the Sinaa.”

“Hieronymus Bonaventure. But why would a Sinaa prince be drinking in an Elveran free house?”

A cloud seemed to pass over the jaguar man’s features, but it lasted but a moment, and then he forced a thin smile. “I am in exile, which accounts both for my desire for drink, as well as my choice of locale.” He clapped his large hands together, and gave a short nod. “Friend, you must allow me to make amends. When I have gained my freedom, please allow me to purchase a round as recompense.”

“I’ll not refuse a courtesy,” Hieronymus answered, smiling. “Most of those convicted of drunken disorderliness are back on the streets after a single bout. What was your sentence?”

The jaguar man named Balam shrugged. “I’m afraid the intricacies of Elveran justice are beyond me. All I know is that I was brought before a magistrate in the early morning hours, and at the urging of some Elveran fop and his solicitor I was convicted and sentenced to eight bouts, and something about unarmed and unarmored. Can you translate that into plain Sakrian for me?”

Hieronymus’s face fell, and his mouth hung open.

“I… I may not have the opportunity to refuse your courtesy, after all, Balam.”

###

Elveran law was severe. All crimes were met with the same punishment: the arena. Depending on the severity of the offense, however, the prisoner was given more or fewer advantages, and forced to stand varying numbers of bouts. The most heinous criminals were ushered into the arena completely unarmed and unarmored, while petty offenders were well fortified and armed. The combat was never required to be to the death, but the maximum sentence—ten consecutive bouts of combat unarmed and unprotected—was tantamount to ordering a slow execution.

The Elveran who’d appeared at Balam’s trial, the cudgel-wielding combatant whom the jaguar man had fallen, was apparently the scion of a wealthy family, and though he’d survived the melee with only bruises to his body and ego, he had inveigled his family to have their solicitor press for the maximum penalty for the outsider who had shamed him. In the end Balam had been sentenced to Unarmed, Unarmored, Eight Bouts. It was not a death sentence, but it missed the mark only by inches.

###

On the next arena day, Hieronymus and the other gaolers marched the prisoners to the enclosure behind the gaol, and herded them into pens. Elveran gladiatorial combat was not fought in a grand Spectaclum as thrilled the plebes in Laxaria. Here, combat was a meaner thing, the only spectators the gaolers, the other prisoners, and those Elverans with nothing better to do and an innate hunger to see blood spilled.

Hieronymus stood guard at the pens, while the prisoners were ushered out in turn when their names were called. Balam lingered nearby, leaning casually against the fence, wearing a casual expression that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“No chance for a reprieve, then, friend Hero?”

Hieronymus had given up trying to teach the jaguar man to pronounce his name correctly. He shook his head, sadly, his mouth drawn into a tight line. “I’m afraid not, Balam. Not only have I never seen a pardon granted, I’m not sure if the Elveran justice system even allows for such a thing.”

“Ah, well.” Balam shrugged. Then, with forced bravado, he added, “I was trained in the arts of defense by the royal warmasters of the Sinaa, so these coddled Elverans should prove no special challenge.”

Hieronymus smiled weakly, and turned away. He didn’t turn back until Balam’s name and sentence was called, and then found that he couldn’t bring himself to meet the jaguar man’s eyes.

###

Balam’s first bout was with an Elveran man convicted of murdering one of the principals of the Seven Brothers Consolidated Shipping Concern. Both opponents were unarmed and unarmored, though the murderer was on the third of ten bouts, his hands and arms already covered by freely bleeding cuts and nicks. The jaguar man did not extend his claws, but boxed the Elveran with his knuckles, human-style, displaying an honor and courtesy his opponent would not for an instant have considered extending, had their situations been reversed.

After the murderer was laid out on the sandy ground by Balam’s third roundhouse punch, a pair of gaolers dragged the fallen prisoner from the ring, while others kept Balam motionless with the tips of their pikes. The jaguar man was not given an opportunity to rest, as the next prisoner was immediately escorted from the pens to the ring.

Balams’s next opponent was a barrel-chested, thick-nosed Kobolt, convicted of rustling infant indriks from the stables at the city’s edge. His sentence was Light Arms, Unarmored, Five Bouts, of which this was the first.

The opponents closed, the Kobolt raising a short sword, the jaguar man with his talons extended, fangs bared. Balam danced away from the sword’s arc, its point missing his knees only by inches, and reposted with a vicious swipe of his claws across the Kobolt’s upper arm and shoulder, raking through skin and muscle. The Kobolt howled in pain, but kept his grip on the sword with his other hand, and spinning around swung for Balam’s head. The jaguar man reared back, but not fast enough, as the sword’s point bit through his ear, taking a hunk of skin and fur with it.

Balam snarled, black lips curled back over teeth like sabers. “Ah,” he said, his voice strained but even. “That hurt.”

The Kobolt chuckled, but his laughter died in his throat as the jaguar man exploded towards him, a blinding rush of motion, and tackled him to the ground. His sword sent skittering across the sands, the Kobolt was pinned beneath the jaguar man’s weight, unable to move, unable even to breathe.

Balam extended a claw, and brought it inching slowly towards the Kobolt’s dangling earlobe. He smiled, viciously. “My turn.”

###

Balam was still standing after his sixth bout, still undefeated, but the combat was taking its toll. In addition to the chunk cut from his ear, now blood streamed freely from a cut above one of his amber eyes, his other nearly swollen shut, and he kept his left elbow tucked close to his body after a hammer’s strike in the fourth bout. A constant parade of well-muscled misdemeanor offenders, whether proficient with their weapons or not, was proving too much even for a student of the Sinaa warmasters.

Balam retreated a distance, waiting for the seventh bout to begin, while the gaolers moved the insensate body of his last opponent from the ring. It fell to Hieronymus to retrieve the pair of knives Balam had taken from his opponent during the bout, while two other gaolers menaced the jaguar man with their pikes.

Hieronymus’s hand hovered near the hilt of his sheathed saber, and he moved slowly towards the jaguar man, whose broad chest rose and fell with ragged breaths.

“Not… a bad… showing, eh, Hero?” Balam said with a wan smile, his voice wavering. He held a knife in either hand, point downwards, and swayed uneasily on his feet, his head repeatedly dipping forward, only to jerk back up again, like someone trying desperately not to fall asleep.

The head gaoler called out the next opponent’s name. An Elveran, she was convicted of disobeying traffic regulations, and had been sentenced to One Bout, Heavy Arms, Heavy Armor. Hieronymus looked over as the woman was escorted from the pens. Young, muscled, and healthy, she swung a mace with the practiced deftness of a repeat misdemeanor offender, a short-hafted spear in her other hand, the plates of her armor glinting dully in the afternoon sun.

Hieronymus turned back to the jaguar man, who was already inches away from collapse. A mace’s blow or a spear-thrust would be all it would take to end the bout. But could the jaguar man survive another wound?

“This will not do,” Hieronymus said, firmly.

Taking two long strides forward, Hieronymus turned and stood at the jaguar man’s side.

“Balam, are you still interested in that reprieve?” Hieronymus drew his saber with a whisper of steel on steel, and raised its point to his fellow gaolers.

The jaguar man blinked, confused, and looked from the pike-wielders to Hieronymus and back.

“Ah!” Balam finally said, understandingly slowly dawning. “I believe… I may owe you two drinks… when this is all said and done.”

“If we live that long,” Hieronymus said with a smile.

Balam raised his knives, as the pike-wielders shouted for Hieronymus to resume his post. “Do you have a plan, friend Hero?”

Hieronymus shrugged. “Just this. Run!”

Without another word, Balam and Hieronymus broke and ran towards the exit, leaving the pike-wielding gaolers shouting calls of alarm, bustling after them.

###

The gaolers, joined now by the Elveran constabulary, were close on their heels when the pair reached the Hegemon’s Span, the wide bridge over the western tributary of the River Gihon. The water, silty and gray, rushed at white-crested speeds beneath the arch, snaking into the wooded wilds to the west of the city.

“We’ll never be able to outrun them,” Balam said, pausing for a brief instant to catch his breath, his hands on his knees.

“Can you swim?” Hieronymus said, peering over the bridge’s railing.

“What?” The jaguar man followed his glance, and flinched back, eyes wide. “Oh, no, I couldn’t…”

Their pursuers reached the foot of the bridge, while their shouts and whistles had drawn constables from the other bank, who now approached from the opposite side.

“Do you see an alternative?” Hieronymus said, sheathing his saber and climbing onto the railing.

Balam snarled, barring his fangs. “I only had another four bouts to go, you know. The warmasters would be ashamed.”

Hieronymus gave an abbreviated salute to their rapidly approaching pursuers, then dove off the bridge, plunging into the swift-moving waters below.

The jaguar man let loose a wordless howl, and lurched over the railing, flailing madly with arms and legs. The splash of his impact in the cold water dotted the bridge with spray.

###

Hours later, under cover of darkness, the two fugitives clambered ashore in the forest depths, sputtering and tired. They rose unsteadily to their feet, and made their way into the moonlit woods.

“I said that I owed you two drinks,” the jaguar man said, his fur wet and matted.

“Yes?” Hieronymus’s teeth chattered with the cold, and he hugged his arms to his chest.

“Consider them well paid in river water.”

“Balam, my friend,” Hieronymus said, putting a damp hand on the jaguar man’s sodden shoulder, “I don’t think I’ll ever be thirsty again.”

Copyright © Monkeybrain, Inc.

The adventure continues in Paragaea: A Planetary Romance.

To read the first five chapters, click here.

Fast Forward 2: "Catherine Drewe" by Paul Cornell

Fast Forward 2 is an anthology of all original, unthemed science fiction works, edited by Lou Anders, published by Pyr, and featuring stories from such names as Paolo Bacigalupi, Benjamin Rosenbaum & Cory Doctorow, Ian McDonald, Mike Resnick & Pat Cadigan, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and Karl Schroeder & Tobias S. Buckell.

As a sample of the contents in Fast Forward 2, we are pleased to present, in its entirety, a story from the twice-Hugo nominated Paul Cornell, of Doctor Who and Marvel comics fame. The adventure that follows launches Paul into exciting new territory while remaining quintessential Cornell in its mad, exuberant brilliance.

"Catherine Drewe"

Paul Cornell

Hamilton could hear, from the noises outside the window, that the hunters had caught up with their prey. There was a particular noise that Derbyshire Man Hounds made seconds before impact. A catch in their cries that told of their excitement, the shift in breathing as they prepared to leap at the neck of the quarry the riders had run in for them. He appreciated that sound.

He looked back to where Turpin was sitting in a wing chair, the volume of Butriss he’d taken from Sanderton’s library in the early stages of the hunt still open on his lap. The skin on Turpin’s face was a patchwork of different shades, from fair new freckles that would have put an Irishman to shame to the richer tones of a mulatto. This was common in the higher ranks of the military, a sign that parts of Turpin’s body had been regrown and grafted back on many different occasions. Hamilton saw it as an affectation, though he would never have said so. He had asked for his own new right arm to match the rest of his body completely. He’d expected Turpin, or one of the other ranking officers who occasionally requested his services, to ask about it, but they never had.

The noise from outside reached a crescendo of cries and horns and the sudden high howl of one dog claiming the prey and then being denied more than a rip at it. Turpin opened his eyes. “Damn,” he said. He managed a slight smile. “Still, five hours. They got their exercise.”

Hamilton reflected the smile back at him, shifting his posture so that he mirrored Turpin’s nonchalant air more exactly. “Yes, sir.”

Turpin closed the book. “I thought they had me an hour ago, which is why I sent for you. How’s your weekend been? Has Sanderton been keeping you in the style to which you’re accustomed?” Turpin had arrived unannounced and unexpected, as he often did, late last night, sitting down at the end of the dinner table as the gentlemen were about to adjourn and talking only about the forthcoming day’s hunting, including asking his host for Hamilton to be excepted from it.

“It’s been a most enjoyable house party, sir. Dinner was excellent.”

“I heard you bagged your share of poultry.”

Hamilton inclined his head. He was waiting for Turpin to get to the point, but it wouldn’t be for a while yet. Indeed, Turpin spent the next twenty minutes and thirty-three seconds asking after Hamilton’s family, and going into some of the details of his genealogy. This happened a lot, Hamilton found. Every now and then it occurred to him that it was because he was Irish. The thought registered again now, but did not trouble him. He had considerable love for the man who had ordered him to return home from Constantinople when it became clear the only good he could do there was to remind the Kaiser that every disturbance to the peace of Europe had consequences, that every action was paid for in blood. Hamilton would have done it, obviously, but it was one fewer weight to drag up the hill when he woke each morning.

“So.” Turpin got up and replaced the book on the library shelf. “We’ve seen you’re fit, and attended to your conversation, which rang like a bell with the white pudding crowd. We have a job for you, Major. Out of uniform.”

Hamilton took that to be the royal we. He found that a healthy smile had split his lips. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Turpin touched his finger to the surface of the table, where the imprint glowed with bacterial phosphorescence. Hamilton leaned over and made the same gesture, connecting the receptors in his skin with the package.

“Nobody else knows about this,” said Turpin.

The information rolled into Hamilton. It exhilarated him. He felt his nostrils flare at the smells and pictures of a land he’d never been to. New territory. Low white newly grown wood buildings, less than a day old by the look of them, with the banners of imperial Russia fluttering gallant. That is, fluttering not entirely through the progression of an atmosphere past them. Near darkness. Was it dawn? Not unpleasant.

And there was the woman. She stood on a bluff, looking down into a dark grey canyon, looking at a prize. He couldn’t see what she was looking at; the emotion came with the package, and Hamilton reacted to it, making himself hate her and her prize for a moment, so if anything like this moment came in the world, he would be in charge of it.

She wore her hair green, but bundled in the knots that suggested she rarely had to unfurl it and take the benefit. Her neck was bare in the manner that said she was ready for the guillotine, the black collar of her dress emphasising her defiance. Hamilton let himself admire that bravery, as he did the martial qualities of all those he met in his work. Her gown was something that had been put together in the narrow hell of the foundry streets of Kiev, tiny blue veins of enforcement and supply across Imperial white, with the most intricate parchment wrinkles. It looked like she was wearing a map.

Her hands were clasped before her, and she was breathing hard, controlling her posture through an immense effort of will. She wanted to exult, to raise herself in triumph.

Hamilton found himself wishing she would turn around.

But the information froze there, and the rare data tumbled into his mind. He sent most of it into various compartments, for later examination, keeping only the index in the front of his attention.

“Catherine Drewe,” said Turpin. “Ever meet her?”

Just because they were both Irish? Hamilton killed the thought. “No.”

“Good. We got that emotional broadcast image by accident. From some­one standing behind her—a bodyguard, we think. One of our satellites happened to be passing over the Valles Marineris at the right moment, three days ago.”

Hamilton had already realised. “The Russians are on Mars.”

Turpin nodded. “Terrifying, isn’t it?”

“Is her army—?”

“Down there with her, because if so, we’re acting with a criminal disregard for the safety of our allies in the Savoy court?”

Hamilton acknowledged Turpin’s smile. “Thought you might be ahead of me, sir.”

“We hope not. And we don’t see how. So we’re not getting Chiamberi involved as yet. She’s probably down there on her own, either negotiating a rate to take the Russian side in whatever their long-term plans against the House of Savoy might be, or already part of those plans, possibly as a consultant. Now, the mercenary armies alarm us all, but the good thing about them is that we’ve sometimes been able to use them as passive aggregators of intelligence, allowing them to serve a side to the point where they’re trusted, and then buying them off, netting all they know in the process.”

“Is that the mission, sir?”

“No. We’ve created and are ready to plant chaotic information of an unbreakable nature strongly suggesting that this has already happened, that we have paid Miss Drewe in advance for her dalliance with the bear. Your front cover will be as a serf, your inside cover as a deniable asset of the Okhranka. Your mission is to kill her and any associates in one move.”

Hamilton felt himself take another deep breath. “So the world will think the Russians discovered her treachery and covertly executed her.”

“And botched the cover, which the world will enjoy working out for itself. Miss Drewe’s mercenaries are tremendously loyal to her. Many of them declare themselves to be in love with her. Doubtless, several of them are actually her lovers. They will not proceed with any contract should she die in this way. Moreover, they may feel obliged to expose the Russian presence on Mars—”

“Without us having been involved in exposing it.”

“So the czar’s state visit at Christmas and the superconductor trade talks won’t have any awkwardness hanging over them. Savoy won’t ask and won’t tell. They’ll be able to bring pressure to bear before the Russians are anywhere near ready to tussle. There will be no shooting war, the balance will be preserved, and even better—”

“Miss Drewe’s disaffected mercenaries may actually give us the information on Russian arms and intentions that we’re alleging she did.”

“And other such groups, irked at Russian gall, will be less disposed to aid them. It is rather beautiful, isn’t it?” Turpin held out his hand, the ring finger crooked, and Hamilton touched fingertip to fingertip, officially taking on the orders and accepting them. “Very good. You leave in three days. Come in tomorrow for the covers and prep.”

There was a knock on the door. Turpin called enter, and in marched a hearty group of hunters, led by Sanderton, the mud still on their boots. At the front of the pack came a small girl, Sanderton’s daughter. She’d been blooded across the cheeks, and in her right hand she held, clutched by the hair, Turpin’s deceased head. “Do you want to eat it, Uncle?” she asked.

Turpin went to her, ruffled her hair, and inspected the features of his clone. “Yes, I’ll take my prion transmitters back, Augusta. Can’t be spendthrift with them at my age.”

Sanderton advised him that his chef was used to the situation, and would prepare the brain as a soup.

Hamilton caught the eye of the girl as she hefted the head onto a plate provided by a servant. She was laughing at the blood that was falling onto the carpet, trying to save it with her hand.

Hamilton found that he was sharing her smile.



Hamilton made his apologies to his host, and that night drove to Oxford in his motor carriage, a Morgan Sixty-Six. The purr of the electrical motor made him happy. Precision workings. Small mechanisms making the big ones tick over.

It was a clear run up St. Giles, but glancing at his watch, Hamilton knew he wasn’t going to make it in time for the start of the service. He tore down the Banbury Road, and slowed down at the last moment to make the turn into Parks, enjoying the spectacle of the Pitt Rivers, lit up with moving displays for some special exhibition. The Porters, in all their multitudes, ran out of their lodge as he cut the engine and sailed into the quad, but the sight of the Fourth Dragoons badge had them doffing their caps and applauding. After a few words of greeting had been exchanged, Loftus, the head porter, came out and swore at Hamilton in her usual friendly fashion, and had her people boost the carriage onto the gravel just beyond the lodge.



Hamilton walked across the quad in the cold darkness, noticing with brief pleasure that new blades had appeared in neon scrawl on the wall of his old staircase. The smells of cooking and the noise of broadcast theatric systems in students’ rooms were both emphasised by the frost. The food and music belonged to Musselmen and Hindus and the registered Brethren of the North American protectorates. Keble continued its cosmopolitan tradition.

He headed for the chapel. As he passed the main doors, the bells that had been sounding from inside fell silent. He put his hand to the wood, then hesitated, and went to sit in the hallway outside the side door. He listened to the start of the service, and found his heart lifted by the words, and by the voice that was saying them. “Your world turns as the solar system turns as the universe turns, every power in balance, for every action an opposite, a rotation and equalisation that stands against war and defeats death, and the mystery of what may happen in any moment or in any space will continue. . . .”

He waited an hour, until the service was over, enjoying the cold, listening to that voice through the wood of the door, intimate and distant.

As the congregation came out, Hamilton stepped through the mass of them, unnoticed, and past churchwardens putting out candles and gathering hymn books. There she was. She had her back to him. Annie. In the gleaming vault of the chapel interior, dominated by the giant depiction of God with a sword for a tongue, reaching across time and space with his Word.

She turned at the sound of his footsteps. She was as lovely as he remembered. “Jonathan,” she whispered, “why are you here?”

He took her hand and put it to his face and asked for a blessing.



The blessing only gave him an edge of 0.2 percent. Annie checked again, in his head behind his eyes, and for a moment he thought how splendid it would be to show her all his old covers, to share. But no. He could not. Not until this part of his life was over.

“It’s a very slight effect,” she said. “Your prayers have hardly provoked the field. Are you contemplating murder?”

Hamilton laughed in a way that said of course not. But really his laugh was about the irony. It wasn’t the first time the balance had stood against he who sought only to maintain it.



They went into the side chapel where The Light of the World by William Holman Hunt was kept, the one on display to the empire’s gawkers in St. Paul’s being a copy.

Places like this, to Hamilton, were where the sons of empire returned to after they had done terrible things, the clockwork pivots about which their dangerous world turned, where better people could keep the civilisation that they did those things for. Annie, his old tutors like Hartridge and Parrish, the architecture and custom, the very ground were why he went to work. On his way from here, he would look in on the Lamb and Flag and drink a half of a beer with the hope that he would return to drink the other half. As had many before him, for all the centuries.

After the churchwardens had left, Annie did him a certain service behind the altar, and Hamilton returned the favour.

And then he left holy ground, and went out into the world that wasn’t England, equipped only with a tiny and ironic blessing.



At the square, anonymous offices off Horse Guards Parade, they armed him and briefed him. He looked out from the secret part of his mind and saw that he was now Miquel Du Pasonade, a bonded serf of three generations. He let Miquel walk to the door and bid farewell, only leaning forward to take over during weapons familiarisation.

He let his cover take the overnight to Woomera, switching off completely, waking only as he was paying in Californian rubles for a one-way ticket up the needle.

Hamilton always preferred to watch the continents drop below him as he ascended. He mentally picked out the shapes of the great European Empires, their smaller allies, colonies, and protectorates. The greater solar system reflected those nations like a fairground mirror, adding phantom weight to some of the smaller states through their possessions out there in the dark, shaming others with how little they’d reached beyond the world.



Hamilton waited at Orbital for two days, letting his cover hang around the right inns, one of the starving peasantry. He let himself be drunk one night, and that was when they burst in, the unbreachable doors flapping behind them, solid men who looked like they should be in uniform, but were conspicuously not.

His cover leapt up.

Hamilton allowed himself a moment of hidden pride as they grabbed his hair and put their fingers onto his face. And then that was that.



Hamilton woke up pressed into service, his fellows all around him celebrating their fate with their first good meal in weeks. They sat inside a hull of blue and white.

His cover didn’t know where they were heading.

But Hamilton knew.



Normally on arriving at Mars, Hamilton would have booked into the Red Savoy Raffles, a tantalising distance from Mons, as the gauche advertising put it, and spent the evening arguing the toss of the wine list with Signor Harakita. Serfdom to the Bear offered a different prospect. The hull the serfs were kept in smelt of unaltered body. During the passage, they did the tasks that would have needed continual expensive replacements had mechanisms been assigned to them: maintaining the rocket motors, repairing the ship’s life-support infrastructure. There were two fatalities in the three weeks Hamilton was on board.

They didn’t take the serfs on face value. All of them were run through an EM scan. Hamilton watched it register the first level of his cover. It accepted it. The deeper cover would only be noticed once that print was sent, hopefully long after the fact when inquiries and excuses were the order of the day, to the cracking centres in the hives of St. Petersburg. It had also, to more deadly effect, been registered in public with the authorities at Orbital, and would thus also be cracked by every empire’s mind men in every capital.

But that was not all that the EM scanner did. It suddenly went deeper. But not searching, Hamilton realised—

Cutting!

Hamilton winced at the distant sight of some of the higher functions of his cover’s mind dissolving.



From that point on, it was like sitting on the shoulders of a drunkard, and Hamilton had to intervene a couple of times to stop his body getting into danger. That was all right. The serfs also smoked tobacco, and he declined that as well. A cover couldn’t look too perfect.



The serfs were strapped in as the Russian space carriage aerobraked around Mars’s thin atmosphere, then started its angled descent towards the surface. This was the first surprise. The carriage was taking a completely conventional course: it would be visible from every lighthouse. This must, realised Hamil­ton, wishing for a window, be a scheduled flight. And by now they must be very close to whatever their destination was, the resorts of Tharsis, perhaps—

Then there came a roar, a sudden crash, and the giddy sensation of falling. Hamilton’s stomach welcomed it. He knew himself to be more at home in freefall than the majority of those he encountered. It was the sea welcoming the shark.

He could feel the different momentum: they must have been jettisoned from the main carriage, at a very narrow angle, under the sensor shadow of some mountain range—

The realisation came to him like the moment when Isaac Newton had seen that tiny worm and started thinking about the very small.

Hamilton started to curl into the crash position—

Then with an effort of will he forced himself not to. Too perfect!

His seat broke from its fastenings, and he flew at the ceiling.



The quality of the air felt strange. Not enough! It felt like hell. And the smell. For a moment Hamilton thought he was in a battle. So where were the noises?

They pulled the darkness from around him. They were rough. There were bright lights, and a curt examination, his body being turned right and left. Hamilton had a sudden moment of fear for his body, not belonging to him now, carelessly damaged by the puppet he’d leant it to! He wanted to fight! To let his fists bite into their faces!

He held it in. Tried to breathe.

He struggled out of their grasp for a moment, only to look round.

A serf barracks, turned into a makeshift hospital. Bunks growing out of packed-down mud, providing their own sawdust. Bright Russian guard uniforms, blue and white with epaulettes gleaming, polished, ceremonial helmets off indoors. All wearing masks and oxygen supplies. All ceramics, no metal. Afraid of detectors. A Russian military medic, in his face again, flashing a torch into his eye. Masked too.

There was a rectangle of light shining in through the doorway. They were pushed from their beds, one by one, and sent stumbling towards it. Still couldn’t breathe. That was where the smell of battle was coming from—

No, not battle. A mixture. Bodies from in here. From out there—

Gunpowder.

Soil with a high mineral content.

He moved into the light and put a hand up.

He felt his skin burning and yelled. He threw himself forward into a welcome sliver of dark, shielding his eyes from a glare that could have blinded him.

He lay in shadow on the gunpowder-grey ground, with laughter from behind him, the sun refracting off angled rock, through a blurred sky, like a cold furnace.

He was in the Mariner Valley, the deepest gorge in the solar system, with the sun flaring low in the west, rebounding off the white buildings. There was hard UV in the sky. His lungs were hoiking on tiny breaths. Frost was already burning his fingers. And he wasn’t wearing any kind of protective equipment.



They made the serfs march along the shaded side of the valley. At least they gave them gloves.

An enormous wind would suddenly blast across the column of men, like a blow to the ground, sloughing them with rock dust, and then it would be gone again. It was a shock that breathing was even possible. Hamilton stole glances from the shade as he struggled to adjust, looking upwards to the nearest escarpment. In the valley proper, you wouldn’t necessarily assume you were in a gorge; the vast depression stretched from horizon to horizon. So this must be one of the minor valleys that lay inside the great rift. They could be six miles deep here. Given the progress of terraforming on the rest of the Martian globe, the air pressure might just be enough.

He realised, at a shout from the overseer in the Russian uniform, that he had slowed down, letting his fellow serfs march past him. But his cover was pushing his body to move as fast as it could.

He realised: he was different to the others.

He was finding physical action more difficult than they were. Why?

He looked at the man next to him, and was met with a disinterested misty expression.

The mental examination! They hadn’t ripped out the higher functions of the serfs purely in order to make them docile; they’d shut down brain processes that required oxygen!

Hamilton added his own mental weight to that of his cover, and made the body step up its march. He could feel his lungs burning. The serfs had perhaps a couple of months of life before this exposure caught up with them. It felt like he had a week.

He considered, for a moment, the exit strategy. The personal launcher waiting in a gulley—he checked his internal map—sixteen miles away.

That was closer than it might have been. But it was still out of the question without the oxygen supply that previously had been standard for serfs working in such conditions. If he was going to get out of this, he would need to steal such equipment, the quicker the better, before his body weakened.

On the other hand, if he stayed and died, after having made his kills, the mission would be successfully completed. The cover would still be planted.

He decided. He would not leave quickly while there was still a chance of success.

He took care to think of Annie and the quad and the noise of the Morgan’s engine. Then he did not think of those things again.



In the days that followed Hamilton was put to work alongside the other serfs. He mentally rehearsed that Raffles wine list. He remembered the mouth feels and tastes. He considered a league table of his favourites. Although the details changed, it was headed every day by the 2003 Leoville Las Cases.

Meanwhile, his body was collapsing: blisters forming on his exposed, sunburnt, and windburnt skin; deep aches and cramps nagging at his every muscle; headaches that brought blood from his nose. And the worst of it was he hadn’t seen Catherine Drewe.

His work crew were using limited ceramic and wooden tools to install growing pit props into what was obviously a mine shaft. Other serfs were digging, fed off nutrient bath growths that had been thrown up the walls of the valley. There was a sense of urgency. The digging was being directed precisely, according to charts.

These were not fortifications that were being dug. Turpin’s conclusions had been rational, but wrong. This was not a military offensive. The Russians gave the impression of sneak thieves, planning to smash and grab and run.

So what was this? Hamilton had only seen one mercenary uniform, bearing the coat of arms of Drewe’s Army. The badge displayed the typically amateur and self-aggrandising heraldry of the mercenary bands. It claimed spurious (and now nonexistent) Irish aristocracy, but had nods to all the major courts of Europe, nothing that would inflame the temper of even the most easily offended monarch. The badge irked Hamilton. It was a bastard thing that revealed nothing and too much.

The emblem had been on the sleeve of some sort of bodyguard, a man with muscle structure that had been designed to keep going having taken some small arms fire. He moved awkwardly in the lower gravity. Hamilton felt a surge of odd fellow feeling, and knew this was the man from whom the emotional broadcast had originated.

He and his mistress would doubtless appear together at some point.



After three days, Hamilton’s crew swapped tasks with the other group, and were put to dig at the rock face down the tunnel. Hamilton welcomed it: the air pressure was slightly greater here.

He had started to hallucinate. In his mind, he saw great rolling clockworks against a background of all the imperial flags. Armies advanced as lines across maps, and those lines broke into sprays of particles, every advance countered to keep the great system going. He himself walked one of the lines, firing at imaginary assailants. Women spun in their own orbits, the touch of their hands, the briefest of kisses before they were swept away maintaining the energy of the whole merry-go-round.

And at the centre of it all . . . He didn’t know; he couldn’t see. The difference of accident, the tiny percentage effect that changed the impossible into the everyday. He bowed his head amongst the infinite cogwheels and prayed for grace.



He was broken out of his stupor by the sudden noise in front of him. There had been a fall of rocks. The whole working face in front of him had given way.

Something, maybe the pebbles beneath their feet, was making the serfs working with him sway and stumble. One beside him fell. The Russian overseer bent to check on the man’s condition, then took out a gun, thought better of the expense, and instead used a ceramic knife to slit the serf’s throat. The body was carried out to be bled over the nutrient baths, the overseer calling out orders as he walked with the man back towards the exit.

Hamilton put his face close to the rock wall that had been revealed. It felt different. It looked blacker. Iconic. Like a wall that was death ought to look. He thought he could hear something in there. That he was being called. Or was that the thought he wasn’t allowing himself, the chapel and Annie inside?

A voice broke that terrible despair that would have led him away. “There!”

Hamilton turned and smiled in relief to see her at last. Catherine Drewe. Face-to-face. Her hair was dark with dust, her face powdered around her oxygen mask in a way that looked almost cosmetic. Her eyes were certain and terrified. The other serfs were staring at her. Behind her came the bodyguard, his bulk filling the tunnel.

Hamilton’s right hand twitched.

She pushed past him and put her ear to the rock.

He decided not to kill her yet.

“You,” she said, turning to point at one of the serfs, “go and tell Sizlovski that we’ve hit a snag. The rest of you, get out of here, you’re relieved.”

The serfs, barely understanding, took a moment to down tools and start following the first towards the light.

Hamilton let his cover open his mouth in blank surprise and kept it there. He stayed put.

The bodyguard tapped her shoulder, and Drewe turned to look at him, puzzled. “I said you’re finished.”

Hamilton detected something urgent in her voice, something he’d heard in the moments before other situations had got rough. This was no setback, no sighing pause.

He crumpled his cover into the darkness of his mind.

He slammed his palm against the wall beside her head.

The bodyguard moved—

But she put up a hand and he stopped.

He let out his Irish accent. “You’ve got a problem, Miss Drewe,” he said.

She considered that for a moment.

He smelt the edge of the ceramic knife as it split molecules an inch from his eye.

He flathanded the wrist of her knife hand into the wall, his other hand catching the gun she’d pulled at his stomach, his finger squashing hers into firing it point-blank into the bodyguard. His face exploded and he fell and Hamilton ripped aside the weapon and threw it.

There was a shout from behind.

Hamilton grabbed the Webley Collapsar 2 mm handgun from the folded dimensions in his chest, spun into firing stance, and blasted a miniature black hole into the skull of a Russian officer, sending the man’s brains flying into another universe.

He spun back to catch Drewe pulling another device from her boot.

He grabbed her wrist.

He knew intuitively how to snap her neck from this posture.

In moments, the gunfire would bring many soldiers running. Killing the overseer had compromised Hamilton’s mission but slightly. It was still something that a Russian assassin might do, to give his cover credibility. He had completed half his mission now.

But why had she pulled that, instead of something to kill him with?

He looked into her eyes.

“Do what you were going to do,” said Hamilton.

He let go.

Drewe threw the device at the overseer’s body, grabbed Hamilton, and heaved him with her through the rock wall.



The thump of the explosion and the roar of the collapsing tunnel followed them into the chamber, but no dust or debris did. It was a vaulted cavern, sealed off, with something glowing. . . .

Hamilton realised, as he didn’t need to take a breath, that the air was thick in here. He started to cough, doubling up. Precious air! Thick air that he gulped down, that made his head swim.

When he straightened up, Drewe was pointing a gun at him. She looked shocked and furious. But that was contained. She was military, all right.

He let his gun arm fall to his side. “Well?” he said.

“Who are you?”

Hamilton carefully pulled out his uniform tag identification.

“British. All right. I assume you’re here for that?” She nodded towards the glow.

He looked. Something was protruding from the rock in the centre of the chamber. A silver spar that shone in an unnatural way. It seemed to be connected to something that was lodged—no, that was in some way part of the rocks all around it. There were blazing rivulets threaded in and out of the mass. It was like someone had thrown mercury onto pumice stone.

It was like something trapped. And yet it looked whole and obvious. It seemed apt that it had formed a place where they could live, and a wall they could step through. It spoke of uneasy possibilities.

“What is it?”

She cocked her head to one side, surprised he didn’t know. “A carriage.”

“Some carriage.”

“You don’t know. That wasn’t your mission.”

“I was just having a poke around. I didn’t expect a non-Russian here. You’re Catherine Drewe, aren’t you? What’s your mission?”

She considered, until he was sure she wasn’t going to tell him. But then—“I saw this thing. In my prayers. I spent a week in an isolation tank in Kyoto. You see, lately I’ve started to think there’s something wrong with the balance—”

“Everyone always thinks that.”

She swore at him. “You have no idea. Inside your empires. You know what that is?”

“No.”

“A new arrival.”

“From—?”

“Another universe.”

Hamilton looked back to the object. He was already on his way to the punchline.

“I followed it calling,” Drewe continued, “via a steady and demonstrable provocation of the field. I proved the path led to Mars. I used my rather awe-inspiring political clout to whisper all this into Czar Richard’s ear. By which I mean: his ear.”

“Why choose the Russians?”

She ignored the question. “I dreamed before I set off that only two people would find it, that their motives would be different. I took Aaron into my confidence. He was motivated only by art, by beauty. But you killed him.”

“How do you feel?”

She bared her teeth in a grim smile, her gaze darting all over his face, ready for any provocation. “I’m strongly inclined to return the compliment.”

“But you won’t.” He slowly replaced his gun in its dimensional fold. “Destiny says it’s two people.”

She kept him waiting another moment. Then she slipped her own gun back into the folds of that dangerous gown.

They looked at each other for a moment. Then they stepped over to the glowing object together. “That glow worries me,” she said. “Have you heard of nuclear power?”

Hamilton shook his head.

“Energy produced by the radioactive decay of minerals. An alternative technology. It’s poisonous like hard UV. A dead end. One of the outsider sciences something like this might bring in.”

Hamilton consulted his internal register, holding in a shudder at the damage he’d already taken. He hadn’t anything designed to log radioactivity, but he changed the spectrum on his UV register, and after a moment he was satisfied. “I’m not seeing any radiation. Not even . . .” He stopped. He wasn’t even detecting that light he could see with his own eyes. But somehow he doubted that what he was seeing would allow him to come to harm.

Drewe put a hand on the apparently shining limb, deploying sensors of her own. “There’s nobody in here, no passenger or driver. But . . . I’m getting requests for information. Pleas. Greetings. Quite . . . eccentric ones.” She looked at him as if he were going to laugh at her.

In a civilian, Hamilton thought, it would have been endearing. He didn’t laugh. “A mechanism intelligence? Not possible.”

“By our physics. But it opened a door for us through solid rock. And let me know it had. And there’s air in here.”

Hamilton put his own hand on the object, realised his sensors weren’t up to competing with that dress, and took it away in frustration. “All right. But this is beside the point.”

“The point being—”

“This thing will tip the balance. You can’t be the only one who’s intuited it’s here. Whoever gets it gains a decisive advantage. It’ll be the end of the Great Game—”

“The start of a genuine war for the world, one not fought by proxies like you and me. All the great nations give lip service to the idea of the balance, but—”

“So how much are you going to ask? Couple of Italian dukedoms?”

“Not this time. You asked why I used the Russians to get me here.” She reached into the gown. She produced another explosive device. A much larger one. “Because they’re the empire I detest the most.”

Hamilton licked his lips quickly.

“I don’t think mere rocks can hold this being. I was called here because it got caught in . . . this mortal coil. It has to be freed. For its own sake, and for the sake of the balance.”

Hamilton looked at the object again. Either of them could pull their gun and put down the other one in a moment. He wondered if he was talking to a zealot, a madwoman. He had pretty vague ideas about God and his pathway through the field, and the line that connected his holy ground to the valley of death. He’d never interrogated those ideas. And he wasn’t about to start now.

But here were answers! Answers those better than him would delight in. That could protect the good people of his empire better than he could!

There was a noise from outside. They’d started digging.

Drewe met his gaze once more.

“You say it can be reasoned with. . . .”

“Not to get itself out of here. That’s not what it wants.”

Hamilton looked around the chamber, once and conclusively, with every sense at his disposal. No way out.

“You have to decide.”

Hamilton reached into the hidden depths of his heart once more. He produced his own explosives. “No I don’t,” he said. “Thank God.”



Drewe had an exit strategy of her own. She had a launcher waiting, she said, lying under fractal covers in the broken territory of a landslide, two miles east of the Russian encampment.

It was again like walking through a door. As soon as they had both set the timers on their explosives to commit, in that otherwise inescapable room, an act of faith as great as any Hamilton had experienced—

The room turned inside out, and they took that simple step, and found themselves on the surface again.

Hamilton gasped as the air went. His wounds caught up with him at once. He fell.

Drewe looked down at him.

Hamilton looked back up at her. There was auburn hair under the green.

She pulled her gun while his hand was still sailing slowly towards his chest. “I think God is done with you,” she said. “We’ll make a balance.”

“Oh we must,” said Hamilton, letting his accent slip into the Irish once more. He was counting in his head, doing the mathematics. And suddenly he had a feeling that he hadn’t been the only one. “But your calculations are out.”

The amusement in his voice made her hesitate. “How so?”

“By about . . . point-two percent.”

The force of the explosion took Drewe, and she was falling sideways.

Hamilton rolled, got his feet on the ground.

A wall of dust and debris filled the canyon ahead of them—

And then was on them, racing over them, folding them into the surface until they were just two thin streaks of history, their mortal remains at the end of comet trails.

There was silence.

Hamilton burst out of his grave, and stumbled for where the launcher lay, bright in the dust, its covers burst from it.

He didn’t look back. He limped with faith and no consideration. With an explosion that size there would be nothing left of the encampment. His mission had not succeeded. But he felt his own balance was intact.

He hit a code-breaker release code on his palm onto the craft’s fuselage, and struggled into the cockpit. He was aware of his own silhouette against the dying light.

He looked back now. There she was. Only now staggering to her feet.

In this second and only this second, he could draw and shoot her down and with a little adjustment of leaks and revelations his mission would be done.

He thought about the grace that had been afforded him.

He hit the emergency toggle, the cockpit sealed, and he was slammed back in his seat as the launcher sailed up into the Martian sky.

He thought of a half pint of beer. And then let himself be taken into darkness again.

"Catherine Drewe" © Paul Cornell

Fast Forward 2 © Lou Anders

Paul Cornell is a novelist, television writer, and comic book scribe. In addition to various other genre and nongenre shows, he’s written some of the best episodes of the new Doctor Who, his first season episode “Father’s Day” and his third season follow-up, the two part “Human Nature/Family of Blood,” having both received Hugo nominations. His work for Marvel Comics includes the miniseries Wisdom, a Fantastic Four miniseries, and the ongoing monthly title Captain Britain and MI-13. His SF novels are Something More and British Summertime, the latter released last year in the States by Monkeybrain Books.

For more information about Fast Forward 2 and Pyr, visit www.pyrsf.com.