

Alt Hist Issue 1

Edited by Mark Lord

Published by Tipping Point Publishing at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 All fiction works are copyright the respective authors. All other material is copyright Mark Lord.

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### Contents

Editorial by Mark Lord

Short Fiction

"The Silent Judge" by David W. Landrum

"Easter Parade, 1930" by Rob McClure Smith

"Holy Water" by Andrew Knighton

"Lament for Lost Atlanta" by Arlan Andrews

"The Bitterness of Apples" by Priya Sharma

"Travelling by Air" by Ian Sales

Non-Fiction

Interview with Brandon H. Bell, co-editor of Aether Age

Columbia & Britannia

## Submissions

Alt Hist is looking for submissions in the following categories:

Fiction

We have three pretty simple criteria subject to the editor's subjectivity:

  1. Must be a short piece of fiction — under 10,000 words

  2. It must be either historical fiction or alternate history

  3. It must be good (that's where the subjectivity comes in!)

Non-Fiction

Reviews and articles about historical fiction, alternate history books, genres and writers are welcome and criteria 2) and 3) above also apply.

Artwork

We would love to have your artwork to illustrate the magazine and website. In fact we need a nice image for the website asap, so if you have something you would like to contribute we'll count you in for a share of the first two year's profits as well!

## How To Submit

Visit <http://althistfiction.com/submissions/> for details.

## How to Get Alt Hist

Alt Hist is available in a printed format from www.lulu.com, and also as an e-book from the following retailers: Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and Smashwords.

## Copyright

All fiction works are copyright the respective authors. All other material is copyright Mark Lord.

# Editorial

by Mark Lord

Welcome to the first issue of _Alt Hist, The new magazine of Historical Fiction and Alternate History_. Some of you may be wondering why there seems to be a '50s style space ship on the cover. Perhaps this looks a bit like a science fiction publication rather than a historical fiction serial? The image is in fact an historical picture from NASA of the Bell X-1, which Chuck Yeager flew to break the sound barrier in 1947. One of our stories refers to this event and I thought it would make a great image for the first issue of _Alt Hist_. I think it's also a good reminder that historical fiction needn't be set in a pre-modern period.

The idea of _Alt Hist_ , or more particularly of setting up a fiction magazine dedicated to publishing historical fiction, has been on my mind for a few years now. With the demise of _Paradox_ it seems that the market for short historical fiction has all but collapsed, with only a couple of specialist outlets available to writers. _Alt Hist_ aims to plug that gap by providing readers with a high-quality dose of short historical fiction, that tell well researched and compelling stories either from a realistic or an alternate angle.

I feel very lucky to be presenting to you six short stories of diverse topic and style. When I was reviewing each submission I felt in awe of the quality of the stories that I would be able to publish in the first issue of _Alt Hist_. Also I was heartened to receive a number of positive comments from writers who applauded the launch of this magazine because of the lack of markets for historical fiction. I hope that _Alt Hist_ can fulfill some of those writers' hopes and become a well regarded and well read publication that will provide an outlet for historical fiction for many years to come. I am confident that with the six stories in this first issue, _Alt Hist_ is getting off to a good start.

I considered providing a brief summary of each story in this editorial, but then I decided that to do each piece justice would really require more space, which might be better suited to an entry on the _Alt Hist_ website, or one of the websites that reviews short stories. Even better I would recommend that you, dear reader, begin reading the stories as soon as you can, preferably right now and then let me know what you think via the website or other places such as our Twitter or Facebook pages where you can get in touch with the _Alt Hist_ community. I am sure the authors would love to hear what you think.

I really hope that you won't be disappointed with the first issue of _Alt Hist_. If you do have any feedback on any of the stories, the layout of the magazine or anything else related to _Alt Hist_ then please do get in touch. And if you are a writer or illustrator then please consider sending some of your work to _Alt Hist_ if it has an historical theme. We would also be interested in receiving non-fiction pieces such as reviews or features about historical fiction.

Enjoy the first issue!

Mark Lord

Editor of Alt Hist, The new magazine of Historical Fiction and Alternate History

Website: <http://althistfiction.com/>

Twitter: <http://twitter.com/althist>  
Facebook: <http://www.facebook.com/pages/Alt-Hist/125227137521391>

# The Silent Judge

by David W. Landrum

Saint Ives, Cornwall, 1928

I got word of Mary's murder from the morning paper. My wife and I reposed at a table set with beautiful china, fresh flowers smelling fragrantly in a silver bowl in the center, tea, croissants and fruit set out for us by the serving women. The children were eating in the nursery. The morning shone sunny through the French windows that looked out on our garden. The butler brought in the paper, slightly warm from ironing. It almost fell out of my hand when I read her name. Lillian noticed.

"What?" she asked, putting cream cheese on a section of croissant.

I tried to appear unruffled.

"Something we should not discuss," I said, laying the paper aside.

"Another one of those horrible murders?" she asked, looking down.

"It appears so."

She sighed. "Horrible, of course—but the kind of lowlife women he victimizes put themselves in harm's way by the disgusting lives they live."

I did not reply. I placed my hands under the table because they were shaking so badly. My appetite had gone. I tried to rally and managed to sip a cup of tea. We ate in silence, letting the unseemly matter of Jack the Ripper recede. After a while, I asked how she felt.

"A little tired, but that's how it was with all the other children."

Lillian was pregnant with our fifth. She was a strong, healthy woman who bore pregnancy and birth well.

"The children are going out today," she commented. "To St. James's Park, I think."

"Lovely day for it."

"Yes," she smiled. "I'll go with them."

"Don't strain yourself."

"The doctor says it's good for me."

We finished. I kissed Lillian and our children good-bye, went outside, and walked two blocks to where I could catch a cab. Once inside, I collapsed. I had folded the paper inside my coat. As the carriage clopped toward central London, I read.

She was victim number five. Mary Jane Kelly, the article said, also known as Marguerite, a "free woman" (their euphemism for a prostitute) was found murdered in her room in Whitechapel. The police reported that the crime resembled those committed by the killer popularly known as Jack the Ripper. A wave of nausea passed over me. My head swam as we pulled on to Fleet Street.

I tried to calm myself. I had to confer with two important clients that morning and could not be preoccupied. They had proposed investing several hundred thousand pounds in our bank. My job was to convince them we would handle their money well, were a reliable and capable agency, and thus secure the contract. But as we rode along and as I read how the corpse was "horribly mutilated," grief and panic enveloped me like a huge wave envelops a ship caught in a typhoon.

The paper had carried, in a section with a black border warning that its content might be repulsive, the coroner's report. I glanced down at it:

The whole of the surface of the abdomen and thighs was removed and the abdominal cavity emptied of its viscera. The breasts were cut off, the arms mutilated by several jagged wounds and the face hacked beyond recognition of the features. The tissues of the neck were severed all round down to the bone.The viscera were found in various parts viz: the uterus and kidneys with one breast under the head, the other breast by the right foot, the liver between the feet, the intestines by the right side and the spleen by the left side of the body.

I felt an explosion from my stomach. Hot, bitter chime filled my mouth. I put my head out the window and let it spew into the street. The cabbie, of course, saw me and stopped.

"You okay, governor?" he asked, tipping his hat.

I nodded and waved for him to go on. I collapsed against the seat, my face hot, sweat pouring from my brow.

I had to fight my way out of this. We were a short distance from the rooms that housed our brokerage firm.

In a flash my mind went back to the first time I met her. My club members have a way of detecting men who are looking for opportunities to meet women discretely. One of them told me he knew of a very nice Irish place where I would find good ale and where the waitresses were quiet attractive. He would take me there if I were interested.

I went and met Mary Jane. She was pretty—bright-faced with blue eyes and ginger-colored hair, Welsh, not Irish, with a sweet- adorable body. I paid her well that first night and became a regular visitor to her establishment. I gave her quite a bit of money so she could cut down on the number of men she serviced and have more for me when I came to her. We had been seeing each other once a week for the five years. Now she was gone, victim of a ruthless murderer.

I remembered my nights with her. She would lie in her billowy bed. She wore the black bodice whores often wear, but I liked her naked, and she always made a show of taking the bodice off for me. Her skin, creamy white, made her dark red nipples more vivid. Below, her stomach curved down to her powerful loins and thighs, the tangle of black hair between her legs, the delightful beauty of her intimate parts.

Lillian rewarded me more frequently than many men said their wives rewarded them. She harbored progressive notions about the relationship of a man and wife and enjoyed our intimate times. But she was often pregnant and often too exhausted from caring for our children and running a household to express desire as frequently as I wanted. The wildness of the Welsh mountains ran in Mary Jane's blood. The experience of a life spent pleasing men informed her embrace. She sang to me in the strange, enchanting language of her native land as we coupled. Our passion blazed like fire in the quiet darkness of her room.

Now she was dead. Murdered, the paper said, and _horribly mutilated_. As the taxi slowed, I wondered what I could do. But as strongly as revulsion and despair gripped me, resolution suddenly welled up in my soul. The police were baffled. No one knew the identity of the killer. _Punch_ had carried a cartoon depicting a constable blindfolded amid of crowd of leering thugs with the caption, **BLIND MAN'S BLUFF**. I knew the police were doing everything they could do, but I would do everything I could do. I would find the man. I knew more about Mary Jane than they knew. I would investigate myself. And I would find him.

I walked into the bank with determination on my face and strength in my step. I closed the investment deal in only forty minutes. That night, when the newspapers published the details of Mary's death, I grew ill reading them. The brutal mutilation of her body exceeded what he did to any of the other victims. My only solace was the investigating physician's conclusion that her throat was cut first, causing death before the brute gutted her, removed her inner organs and viscera, and propped her destroyed trunk up on them as if they were cushions or pillows.

Lillian went away to the south to enjoy the salt air and took the children with her. I would join her in a week. Alone, I could begin to investigate.

§

I drank a stiff, fragrant glass of brandy at night in our house—quiet now with the children gone and servants dismissed—and pondered. Everyone, of course, had read the Doyle stories and agreed that the best mode of investigation involved careful observation and logical induction. Holmes was fictional, though, and the methods those stories valorized had failed in this case, perhaps demonstrating their impracticality outside of detective fiction. As I took it upon myself to do what the police and the private investigators had so far failed at, I concluded that information would reveal the killer more readily than looking for his tracks or determining if he had left cigar ash at a crime scene.

I also knew where I could start gathering information. I began to look around for a woman who had known Mary Jane. The two shared a room sometimes. They also had a relationship such as Sappho cultivated in ancient times. Now and then, Mary Jane told me, they engaged in that variety of love.

Once the three of us spent together a night of mad and forbidden love. Occasionally, when Mary was ill or away, Juliet—this was her name—Juliet McCann—would substitute for her.

I did not dare go to Whitechapel, the area where Mary worked and where she was murdered. Too many police and investigators were sleuthing around there now. Skillful law enforcement personnel would spot a man of my standing immediately. I could not risk identification as a suspect. But I did remember Juliet saying she had an aunt who lived in Oxford. I took the train there to look for her. I found her after two days.

She was working for a low-class brothel. I saw her in red plush chair, waiting for someone to take her upstairs. I told the madame I would go to the room and wanted the girl brought up. Five minutes later came a tap. I said, "Come in." Kelly, wrapped in a blanket, pushed through the door.

She almost screamed when she saw me. I think she thought I might be the murderer. I took her hands and spoke soothingly to her. She had let the blanket drop and stood there trembling. I wrapped her up and told her to sit on the bed. When she calmed down, I told her I had vowed to find the man who killed Mary.

Juliet was pretty in a different way. She had dark hair and eyes and a thin body. She looked nearly emaciated. I asked her if she were hungry.

"I've not been able to eat," she said. "The mistress here pays me well, but I can't eat after what I saw."

"What did you see, Juliet?"

She tried several times to talk but could not make the words come out of her mouth. She would tremble and grow pale. Once her lips turned blue and I saw she could not draw breath, but she recovered. I sat down next to her and put my arms around her. Finally, she began to speak. I reproduce her speech without trying to represent the mixture of Irish brogue and London slang that characterized it.

"I saw her," she said. "I saw what he did to her. I'd been working all night and I was tired. I thought it would be nice to sleep with Mary because I was cold and I had been used a lot that night. Her window is broken, and if you know how you can open the latch on the door when it's locked. I pushed the curtain to one side to open the door and I saw her there.

"It was so horrible. She was soaked in blood and ripped open. I never saw so much blood in my life. I stared and then yelled, 'Murder!' And I ran. I didn't want to be dragged into it. So I came here. I stayed with Aunt Bridget. I had the money I'd got that night, which was quite a bit, so I lived on it until I found work here."

She fell silent, tears pouring from her eyes. Mary had been a friend in the dark pain of the profession they followed—and, more than that, a lover and sister to her. The depth of her grief broke my heart.

She cried a long while. Finally, I asked her if she knew anything about who might have done this.

"No—well, one thing I noticed," she said. "I saw her two nights before and we slept together for warmth and for love. She had a letter and told me it was from a man who said he would be by in two days. The next day we cooked together in the kitchen downstairs at the inn and she used it to line a pie-plate."

My pulse quickened.

"Do you have it, Julie?"

"I do, sir. I took what was left of the pie home with me and brought the plate when I came here to Oxford. I kept the letter. I wondered if I might have someone read it someday. It's over at my place."

Juliet was illiterate. Mary could read, though she once told me she sometimes pretended she could not for some of her customers.

I went back to my hotel room and tried to rest. Juliet had to work until late. I had offered to pay for her absence, but she said she did not want to anger the madame, who was short on girls and needed her to be there.

At one in the morning she came up to my door and knocked timidly.

She had the paper, soaked with grease, wrapped in a cloth. It said nothing of significance. Three things, though, caught my eye. One was the sharp, angry angle of the handwriting—as if the penman had slashed it across the parchment in some king of rage. Another was that several words, and some very simple words, were misspelled. And, more importantly, in one corner stood a mark from an outgoing post office in Notting Hill.

§

I went there the next day. I felt foolish, not knowing who I was looking for or how I would find him. It was about that time that I read about the two letters the police received—what came to be called the "Dear Boss" letter and the "Letter from Hell." One article by someone who had seen the originals observed exactly what I had observed on the note Juliet gave me: he said the letters were "slashed" across the page at a hard, downward angle, indicating, the writer said, "some sort of pent-up rage." The letters, he noted, abounded in misspellings—just like the simple note I had seen.

I began to deduce—and here I'll admit I was taking on the character of Doyle's Holmes and Mr. Poe's Dupin—that the man I sought was an angry man and murder the outlet for his anger. He was not educated—but here I had to be careful. Many country squires and rich lords could hardly spell their own names. Poor spelling did not necessarily mean he was a lowlife rogue. He preyed on prostitutes and knew where to find them and how to contact them. One thing, however, puzzled me more than any other.

I wondered why he wrote the letters. If rage over who-knew-what injustices led him to revenge himself on naïve women, why did he bait the police? Why did he give hints about his identity and open up the possibility of being caught through a postmark or through someone who might recognize his handwriting?

I could not answer those questions, but I could go to the places that I knew he frequented. I began to locate the brothels around Notting Hill and visit them.

The first two were middle-class places with tired, worn-out women, where I learned nothing. One of the whores I bedded said, "A gentleman like you should be going to Miss Delaney's."

Miss Delaney's, I found out, was a luxury brothel that catered to high-class men. I walked in to an opulent reception room, carpeted, hung with chandeliers and gilded wallpaper, filled with plush chairs. Observing, I quickly learned how the place functioned. Customers sat in the back. The women sat in the middle. A well-dressed attendant stood by. The customers motioned to him, pointed to the whore they wanted, and he would bring her to him. Another attendant would appear and take them to a room.

And what whores! They were beautiful and dressed in wild, colorful clothing. Some wore carnival masks or painted their faces blue or white. Occasionally, at some sort of signal from the attendant, they would get up and dance, pulling up their skirts to show their legs and bottoms so the men sitting in the back could make a more informed decision on which one of them they wanted.

I went there three nights and found out nothing—other than that the women in the place were quite skillful at their trade. I went back home two days then visited once more and noticed one of the regular girls was missing.

I asked the attendant on duty about her. She was the one I paid my first night there.

He was evasive. I took him aside and offered him an exorbitant bribe if he would tell me where she was gone.

"I'm afraid," he said, looking about nervously, "that someone beat her."

"Can I see her?" I asked. "I'll double what I offered you if you'll let me see her." I added, "I only want to talk to her."

He led me up a red-carpeted flight of stairs to her room. Her name was Deidre. She resented me invading her privacy but seemed to understand that Maurice, the attendant, would not have brought me up to her room for less than a good reason.

She looked twenty years old or so and had teased-up red hair and striking blue eyes. Without her exotic costume she looked much less glamorous and much sadder. She had wrapped herself in a robe.

I noticed bruises on her neck and cheek. Seeing me staring, she involuntarily put her hand over the left part of her face.

"Do you know who this man is?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"I think he may have harmed a woman I love."

She regarded me with curiosity—her eyes no longer assuming the blank, detached look her profession required her to put on so much of the time but an innocent, vulnerable look.

"What will you do to him?"

"I don't know. I haven't decided."

"If I think you might kill him I won't tell you anything."

I hesitated and then said, "He killed her. It is likely he will eventually kill you. Are you the one to whom he always goes?"

"Yes. He . . . does his business and then chokes me and beats me. Miss Delaney makes me do it because he pays her so much money. He only comes around every two or three months, but when he's here he always asks for me."

"One of these days he'll get carried away and it will be the end of you. He killed the woman of whom I just spoke. She was very dear to me and now she is gone. Tell me anything you know that might help me to locate him."

She licked her lips. She looked like the frightened girl that she really was.

"The only thing I know about him is that he lives near St. David's. I can't read but I know the letters for St. David's because I used to go to a man who lived there. I saw the letters on his door every time I went to see him. The same letters were on the card of the man who beats me. That's all I know about him, sir. That's all I can tell you."

"Thank you."

I stood. She pulled the robe tighter around herself. Then she looked up at me, all eyes, all earnestness.

"The girl—was she like me? I mean"—

I nodded.

"I can tell you really loved her."

Again I nodded, unable this time to speak. A long moment of awkward silence passed. Finally, I turned to leave.

"God bless you, sir," she said, her voice simultaneously emotional and lacking emotion, as I went out the door.

§

I went toward St. David's, found some urchins, and asked them if they knew of anyone who lived near-by and went to Miss Delany's.

"You mean the Lady-House?" they smirked. "Aye."

Of course they wanted money. I gave them half a crown each and they pointed to a large house.

"Him who lives there," one said. "He's the one that likes to beat up Miss Deidre."

I had my man.

I made further inquires and found out who it was.

This is the point, I am sure, at which all of you are filled with expectation. But my story is not finished. Let me tell it as I see fit and follow with me to the end.

I realized my investigation was not conclusive. A high probability existed that this man was the killer. Still, I could not be absolutely certain. I went back to London to wait for the train to Dover. Tomorrow I was scheduled to meet my wife and children there. Perhaps, I thought, I should do nothing and simply let justice take its course. Murder will out, they were fond of saying in the Middle Ages. Perhaps it would reveal itself again and the culprit be caught without my help. I could not go to the police. My association with Mary Jane would undoubtedly come out in the investigation, and I would be ruined. I decided to go to her grave in Leytonstone. People had flocked to see the place, so my presence would not be anything of note even if someone did recognize me.

I saw him there. When I did, I realized two things. One, this was the man who had killed her, beyond a doubt; and, two, he wanted to be captured.

Why else, I thought, as I stood there, would a murderer do something so foolish as to visit the grave of a victim? The police would be monitoring the crowd and would have descriptions of anyone seen in and around the vicinity of the murders. A real chance existed that someone would identify him. This would also explain his habit of writing letters and challenging the police. He wanted to experience the fame, the notorious glory of being the center, for a short time, of the world's attention—even if it did mean he would hang for it.

The revelation I received at that moment also explained the brutal nature of how he killed Mary Jane. The other women were killed and their internal organs removed with such precision that many thought this Jack the Ripper might be a physician. Mary had been butchered like an animal—slit open, gutted, flayed like a common beast at a slaughterhouse. His violence had escalated. This had been deliberate—a ruse to make the authorities intensify their investigation so he would be caught.

If no one apprehended him, what brutality would come next? My duty, I saw, was to prevent this; and even more, I felt obligated not to give the man his ultimate pleasure. After killing five women, he planned to go out in a blaze of glory, a celebrity, his name immortalized in the annals of evil. I had to stop this. And I would stop it this very day.

He left the graveside. I followed him at a distance. He walked for miles. I kept up with him until he came into a seedy section of town and turned into an alley where the cheapest of whores plied their trade. I knew his trip portended a new and probably more horrific murder than any that came before, including Mary's. He had gone on an excursion to select a victim, whom he would dispatch this night.

I shadowed him until we came into an open field. Ash pits burned there, broken glass and refuse littered the place. Scrawny cats eyed us warily from the weeds around the edge of it. I called the man's name.

He turned to see me holding my gun on him. A faint smile came to his lips.

"Are you from the police?" he asked.

I could not immediately answer, thinking how this man was the last person my beloved Mary Jane had seen in her last terrified moments of life—the man who had killed and mutilated her. My paralysis seemed to delight him. His smiled broadened.

"Private investigator?"

"A lover of Mary Jane Kelly," I replied.

His smile faded. He looked fearful.

"Are you arresting me?"

I shook my head.

"No. I am going to kill you—right here and now. No one will ever find out who you are. You will not have the notoriety of which you have dreamed. No one will ever know your name."

He stared. At that moment several factory whistles went off. I pulled the trigger and dropped him on the spot. I walked up to his prostrate form and put two more bullets in him—one in his heart and one in his throat. After standing a moment, I walked away. Apparently, no one saw me—or whoever saw me did not report my crime.

I went home, cleaned up, and telegraphed Lillian, telling her I was leaving for the station and would arrive at Dover later that night.

§

By the time the police found the man's body it had been stripped of everything. They were able to identify him and ruled his death a case of robbery, possibly kidnapping for robbery. He was not married and had no heirs. His estate near St. David's went to the nearest male relative, and his name is remembered no more.

And it will always be so. I will not tell you who he was. To do so would be to fulfill his greatest wish and make come true his greatest twisted dream. He murdered five women, Mary Jane Kelly being the last. I murdered him, but above all I murdered his name.

I am growing old. Soon I will leave this world. Lillian has been gone two years now. My children are married with children of their own, and I have provided well for them. Best of all, I have provided them with a world that will give no attention to the insane vanities of a brutal murderer. His name will ever be unknown. The name of Mary Jean Kelly lives on in peoples' hearts and peoples' sympathies.

About the Author

"Jack the Ripper," an unidentified serial killer, stalked the Whitechapel district of London in 1888, preying on women. Five murders are attributed to him. The women, all prostitutes, had their throats cut and various organs removed from their bodies. Despite an intense investigation, in which over 2000 people were interviewed, upwards of 300 investigated, and 80 detained, no one was arrested or charged in the murders, which remain to this day unsolved.

**David W. Landrum** teaches Literature at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. His fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. He is also a widely-published poet and edits the on-line poetry journal, _Lucid Rhythms_ , www.lucidrhythms.com.

# Easter Parade, 1930

by Rob McClure Smith

So, says Milroy, five of the eight weans slept in wheelie beds and makeshifts and the recess. The other bairns shared the big bed wi' the parents. So it's mid-winter and tae save oan trips tae the cludge there's this big pail at the heid of the bed. This Friday night the pair come hame drunk, crawl intae bed and git doon tae business, if ye ken whit ah mean. So, the mither wakes up oan Saturday mornin' and looks doon and sees the six month baby got pushed oot the bed when they wur aboot the deed the night afore and has taken a header intae the pail. It wid huv been funny, except but the wean drooned.

What did the parents do? Cumberland asks.

Gave the corpse a quick scrub wi' carbolic soap, and dressed it in its Sunday duds afore they sent oot for the doctor. That yin wrote natural causes oan the certificate, but he knew fine. Ah believe it wis death by misadventure masel.

A gale of laughter, and quiet settles again in the back of the ambulance. Without, another dreich Spring day, and the men harken to thick jaups of rain dinging on the roof, the windborne plaint of the flutes and ruff of drums coming closer. Not one of them could quit gauping. The nerves. They need the cludgie and no one can go.

That's the Papish Goat that is.

Any fags? Can ah cadge a Woodbine off of a person?

Was that a true story about the baby? Cumberland asks, thoughtful.

Aye, the most of Milroy's yarns ur true, says Hepburn.

Cumberland leans back, girns and stretches stiff legs out before him.

It's a strange city this right enough. I'll give you that.

The others regard Cumberland with curiosity, the big Sassenach sharing his impressions of Glasgow. An outsider's perspective is of interest. 'To see oorselves as ithers see us' is not always welcome, but usually of interest.

I was over Garngad way yesterday. That what it's called?

The men nod, no one calling him on his mispronunciation.

Robinson was showing me some old shebeens there. So, we come down this old cobbled street and I notice a broke-down milkman's charabanc parked outside a dairy and I swear I thought there was a monkey in the other seat. I remember thinking, 'Ah, the driver has a little monkey with him.' But then as I get closer I realize that it isn't a monkey at all. It's a woman. It was a little woman looked just like a monkey.

Mibbe ye jist need specs, offers Hepburn.

Yes, says Cumberland. A chimpy type woman it was.

Silence again, rain pelting yet, spattering liquid percussion dull thudding the metal roof, and all sitting thoughtful now imagining the chimp-woman.

It must be hard tae look like a monkey, offers Hepburn. Unless yir a monkey.

Milroy looks out the vizzy-hole the engineer drilled in the back door. He peruses the length of Norman Street.

Hepburn taps Cumberland's knee, interrupting his yawning.

Bull Bowman, the leader of the Conks, is a tall heavyset fella wi' a wee baby face and a big scar oan the temple. Says he got it in a pitched battle wi' the Billy Boys, but it wis jist his big brither struck him wi' a hatchet when he wis four gave him that striped face.

Cumberland looks at Hepburn, bemused.

They wur jist wee boys, explains Hepburn. It wis an accident. Ye ken how wee boys ur. He's a corrie-fister, so mind yirsel if he takes a swing.

Little boys don't play with hatchets in Sheffield.

Mibbe it's a Glesga thing, the hatchets. Hepburn gets to his feet, ducks his head aneath the roof. Slide ower and let me see oot that peep a minute, Milroy.

Tell me we're going to get started soon now, Cumberland says.

Patience, says Hepburn. This is hawk-studyin. When we hit, the claws go deep.

§

The Billy Boys, 300 strong, led into combat by their calshie fife and drum band, march round the corner to enter Norman Street proper. Inspired by the propinquity of the enemy, the drummers batter the skins, giving it big licks. Hard men with harder wooden clubs shoulder the two uniformed policemen out the middle of the road. One crabby upstirrer riffles his membership card, pledging allegiance to crown and constitution, in a constable's face, jokoh as anything, juices a big tobacco-glob upon his boots to seal the deal. The tenement windows quiver with the dull thump of the lambeg. So it begins.

This habbleshow is greeted by a cacophony of hoots ensuing downpour of bricks, missiles and broken glassware from windows high and nethermaist, and from every rooftop all the wrack of the midden comes showering with the rain's blash. This debris cascades upon the paraders, a volcanic eruption of woodplanks, brass and glassen ornaments, slates, hammers, pliers, nails, copper pennies, tongs, the whigmaleeries and faldarals of the fireplace, raw tatties with razor blades protruding, a settle bed, a camshacle truckle, bow-saws, bucketfuls of warm piss, pails of cold piss, a flying mewling cat. The Billy Boys, throughither, redound quickly and retaliate with abandon of their own, chucking bricks with Presbytry venom through every window, returning the truckery whence it came, the tools, fireplace and kitchen implements, cat also, mewling still, walawaying "God Save the King." Then, whereout every tenement close mouth comes sprinting into battle the Conks, half the crew weaponed with a standard-issue forty-two inch pickshaft.

One boy, no more than thirteen, sklims up a lamppost to swing on the crossbar, settling there to bullet copper pennies from higher vantage, dangling malicious like an antic ape of bizarre philanthropic intent. In all the bringle-brangle, a platoon of Billy Boys bedrite and begairied break ranks to rock this lamppost, endeavoring to make him dreep and snap his neck on the calsay. Elsewheres, the rump of the Billy Boys find employment shattering beer bottles and scooping chunks of broken glass. One gargantuan in the colors of Glasgow Rangers, gross and elephantine, brosy-faced, aquiver with billowing spillovers of rippling fat, strokes the jaggy shards of glass and smiles in a way not good. The only thing worse imagined would be the man's sitting upon you.

Thus battle is enjoined and the best-readied and most anticipated city gang riot of the decade in deadly progress.

§

Glasgow gangs were not renowned for their percipience. In the depths of the jungle, Chief Constable Sillitoe always said, the predator need only be smarter than the prey. This is to the hunter's advantage, predating the predator. But in the aftercast there will some in the ranks of the Billy Boys and Norman Conks that day who confess to pondering those two large flitting vans on either side the street (upon the side of one blazoned an advertisement: A.E. Pickard—The Skinless Sausage!), or wondering in the passing at the splinter-new ambulance parked aglee the pavement, as if foreshadowing the bloody melee to come. But these percipient few said less and the bulk of their acquaintance, courageously inebriated and dutched, preoccupied with ambush and maiming of heretical foes, gave little or no thought to their being ambushed in turn.

Till Inspector White yells the order and the mounted police, Sillitoe's Cossacks, sweep out the side streets at a canter with riot batons drawn and charge pell-mell into a confusion of marchers and their attackers, cutting the Billy Boys column in half and causing great consternation to all that gaithering. Suddent, the back ramps of the furniture vans collapse and fifty officers and C Division Specials careen into the street, a terrible screaming horde, swinging clubs and truncheons and steel tubes and other things evil and metallic and spiked, and with who knew what other viciousness concealed about their persons, laying about them, smacking any brainpan to hand, in seconds flat hoch deep in blood not their own.

The party tunes cease, a band disbanded forever, instruments abandoned as detritus in the street, only a solitary flute playing, a high keening note, a flautist in extremity, accompaniment now to other wailings obscene and guttural. Upon the pavement staggering wayward a Conk splurged with mud, his zigzag trail taking him to the white and blue ambulance. He chaps on the back door. He is laid open from cheekbone to chin with the steel razor embedded still in his face. The door opens.

Help us, the man chowls. Ah'm hurt.

You certainly ur that, says Hepburn, stepping out in clean swank ambulanceman's uniform and delivering a vicious knyp to the groin. The fist-foundered Conk lurches sidieways like a man miraculous to spin arse over elbows and sit in a pale blue ripple of puddle. Hepburn stoopit over the prostrate figure, feet plashing wet, curses the drabbling of his shoes, and commences leathering the man about the skull.

Such close-quarter fizz suits the police and special irregulars. Amid this frenzied panorama glimpsed: Cumberland slamming the pikeshaft on a Conk's own fingers, shattering the bones of three whiles a fat boy moaning bleakly scampers by, deep slash of a gully across his chuffie face, the ear near severed.

Hepburn sclaffs another Billy Boy upon the skull with a brassheaded poker and swirls the concussed man feet first through a window, jugular nicked close to the teeth of glass, and hunkers and shatters a wine bottle, pincers the jaggy neck twixt his fingers. A Conk reaches for the sharpened bicycle chain concealed by his coat lapel and Hepburn sticks the bottleneck flush in his face, twists methodical, laughing. The Conk clutches his stickit cheek, offers groan of miseries deep and eternal.

An old angry woman with the pallor of burnt cork leans out on the sill of a third floor window and shakes her fist at Hepburn. He wipes a dab of blood from his fingertips and indicates the fallen man, with a nod and a smile. The lump of coal the ancient throws arcs in the air before it skelps Hepburn under the eye.

Still the bandleader's whistle shrill and terrifying upon the street of torn and crying men, and still the incessant clatter of hooves of whinnying shitting horses.

Easter parade.

§

In time, disorder begat order, as ever it does, a universal law birthed by cooling stars. Bleeding men cluster agin the ground floor window of auld Mrs. Yule, street physician. She fills up her kitchen sink, timming hot water from the pans, and throws open the lower sash. A queue forms and the wounded lean across the sill with skulls droopit over the sink and she washes their wounds with a shammy, wrings it dry and her sink crimson.

No one now thought it wise to venture near the ambulance anent which Milroy stands clutching a two foot long steel file. He taps the tubal end on his palm and grins like a Halloween neep whiles, aneath a shattered streetlamp, Cumberland watches a Conk and a Billy Boy engage in a strange sight that day, a fair fistfight. Each has since gone some way towards battering his opponent into senselessness and Cumberland readies himself to deal the final hand-payment to both parties.

Elijah Wilson, big drum player, lies curled and hidden in his own broken bass drum. It is his hope to stay there until the Sheffield gangbusters cease taking turns laying into the other Billy Boy who wurtles on the ground, his hands raised beseeching, fending blows. The police employ for this purpose instruments. Flutes whistle when used as batons. When the flute-strapped man tries to stand a policeman grabs him by the thrapple and tosses him into a percussion of drums. He tumbles the wilkies and a pile of cymbals clashes as if in appreciation of his gymnastics. The weel-thrashen one gives a grue, and drops feckless back upon a broken snare, his nose aglee. Elijah curls into a tighter ball, sees three men humph a stricken friend along the tarmac upon which his limp dragging leaves a long drippery of drool. A dog laps the calsay blood in the gutter. Elijah hears no murmuring in his head and no tiny cloud the size of a man's hand rises out the sea beyont. The sky is all one black glowering cloud and the blood from the row-de-dow is splashed even up on the lintels.

§

The man shouldered hobbley-hoi to the ambulance by Milroy is a smorgasbord of snot, tears and blood and pechs like a man run a marathon.

Got they suckers bitched noo, Hepburn says. Who's this hing-oot?

It's me Hepburn, announces a small aperture opened in the bloodmask.

For Christ's sake, Stallard, whit for ur you at this argy-bargy! Yir a man couldnae punch his way oot a wet Tilly. Hepburn turns to Milroy and throws up his hands, exasperated. Can you believe this Irish clag tail? Man's walking needlework practice.

I thought it might be fun, says Stallard sheepishly. That was all. Go on the Billy Boy march. See what all happened. Youse worked a flanker though. Nearly by a big horse run down was I. It's all some big kerfuffle now.

The fella's hurt some, says Milroy.

Ah can see that. Ah'm no fuckin blind.

I tried to jink in a close and a wee Conk stuck a big slunge in me head. But cut me right it didn't.

Hepburn rubs a splurge of blood off Stallard's head with his shirtsleeve, examines the wound's wicked sickle curve.

Mibbe so. Whit's that big thing doon yir troosers?

Stallard looks at the erection in his crotch and grins. Reaching in his waistband, he extracts a long sharp bayonet.

It's a bayonet, he announces, redundantly. It's a good bayonet this. My father used it. I couldn't get it out though. In my pocket all fankled it got. I chucked it after that. Ran away. Something else my father said: it's sometimes best to run like fuck.

You need tae git tae a real ambulance. See a doctor.

I don't believe in them, Stallard says. They give you jags.

You need stitches in yir heid, ya eegit. It won't hurt.

Stallard grimaces and looks from one policeman to the other, shaking his head. 'It won't hurt,' always did, he observes.

That anither wan of yir father's?

Never again able to part my hair on the left will I, says Stallard, miffed.

You look a bit peely-wally yirsel, observes Milroy. Conked by a Conk wur you?

Hepburn feels at the swelling under his eye. Ach, an auld wumman wi a face like a camel eating sherbet gubbed me wi a lump of coal.

§

Hepburn tells the occupants of the real ambulance that the surgeons need not to be too gentle with the casualties. A stitch in nine saves time. The orderlies laugh. At the Infirmary, the doctors will be oxter-deep in the blood of Conks and Billy Boys, and not one will think to observe it looks the same, Catholics and Protestants bleeding red alike.

§

Hepburn orders the fearsome Big Tommy of the Toll to disperse the aftermath gawkers. He ambles into the gawking mob and it parts as the Red Sea. The massive polis carries before him a wooden truncheon as if the phallus of the tribe, and bears himself like a priest of Baal. He speaks.

Git aff this Cross, or ah'll fuckin book ye, he snarls.

Hearing this, Hepburn turns back to the others, smiles.

See, ah'm inclined tae think that's whit should huv been better said tae Christ. If yir man had jist taken that advice it'd surely huv saved us a lot of trouble in Glesca.

About the Author

**Rob McClure Smith** has published his short fiction in _Gettysburg Review_ , _Chelsea_ , _StoryQuarterly_ , _Barcelona Review_ , _Warwick Review_ , _Chapman_ , _Gutter_ and many other magazines. He was a previous winner of the Scotsman Orange Short Story Award. This short story is based on actual events related to Sir Percy Sillitoe's breaking up of the Glasgow razor gangs in the 1930s.

# Holy Water

by Andrew Knighton

The lady's knees ached from days kneeling before the brightly painted statue. Like all of England, she felt the touch of drought. The Virgin Mary beamed down placidly upon her through the heat haze and dry, blurry eyes. Lady Hunwold felt inside out. Her mouth and throat were dry, and yet her skin was wet, dress clinging heavy and stagnant with sweat. Mind wandering she glanced down, to be certain that her soft, damp insides had not been pulled forth for examination in the nave, then gazed up again, guiltily, at the focus of her devotion.

'Holy Mother,' she whispered through parched lips, 'please preserve us. We have weathered the storm of the Danes; let us not now die of drought. Our crops are failing, animals running mad from sun and heat. Men turn upon each other in rage and frustration. These past years, we have raised many churches in your Son's name. Let our faith not be in vain.'

A cool answering breeze touched the bare backs of her hands, and, turning to peer through the chapel door, she saw dark clouds racing towards her from the west. There was a low, loud rumble, followed by the patter of raindrops falling on tiles. Lightning crashed down upon the surrounding hills, fierce winds shaking the church from floor to ceiling. She sobbed and heaved with joy, and Mary seemed, through eyes misty with tears and exhaustion, to be shaking too. Lady Hunwold swept the water from her eyes and looked up to see the holy mother lean forward to embrace her with open arms.

By the time Lord Hunwold found his poor, crushed wife she had long ceased breathing.

§

The statue swung slowly from the gibbet, blue and white paint flaking away around the noose. Oak and rope creaked from the strain. Despite her predicament, Mother Mary smiled softly down on Huw through the tumbling rain.

'I still don't see how God's mother can be a murderer,' he said.

Oswine looked down on the balding, curly head of the shepherd, grimacing as he watched a thick, gnarly finger plunge deep into a nostril and rummage vigorously for treasure.

'Our Lady is not convicted of murder, her statue is,' Oswine explained with a frown. 'Though I admit, this work sits ill with me.'

'Why are you here then?' Huw asked.

'Because, as Lord Hunwold's clerk, I have been instructed to oversee the correct conduct of the execution. And to keep you from evading your sentence.'

'Just because I farted in church, I'm burdened with this nonsense,' Huw grumbled.

'No. Because you hurled the miller in the duck pond.'

'Aye, but no-one would have cared if I hadn't farted in church.'

They stood for a while without speaking, the silence broken only by drumming raindrops and Huw chewing noisily on an apple.

'King Edgar is at Farndon,' Oswine said, staring at the hills as though he could see through them to the royal palace. 'They say he is planning a great coronation with kings from all over Britain. Most of the lords of Cheshire have taken their clerks there, with gifts and oaths of allegiance. Mine has sent me to desecrate an image of our Holy Mother.'

Huw picked up a short branch that lay on the hillside, torn from its tree by the storm. Approaching the statue, he reached forward and prodded the dangling legs with increasing vigour.

'Is it dead yet?' he asked.

'No more than it was a week ago,' Oswine answered with a sigh. 'I think we need to try something else.'

§

Huw pushed his way out of the tree-line, wet branches slapping at him as he emerged into a forest clearing. A lone rabbit watched from beneath the shelter of a clump of ferns as he trudged across the open space and dropped a pile of wood at Oswine's feet.

'What use is this?' the clerk asked. 'Look, it's all rotten or tiny twigs.'

He grabbed a fistful of kindling and waved it under Huw's nose. Then his eyes narrowed, squinting at the purple stains around the shepherd's mouth.

'Have you been eating blackberries?'

Huw swallowed. 'They were just there in the wood. Would've been wasteful not to eat 'em.'

'You were meant to be gathering firewood, not foraging for fruit. How are we going to burn it like this?'

Oswine pointed to where the statue stood in the middle of the clearing. A pitiful collection of sticks and broken branches lay scattered around its feet, dripping into the mud. The rain had lightened to a drizzle, but showed no signs of stopping, a thin smear of water on the wind, soaking men and tinder alike. Mary stood unfazed, the weather pouring round and off her without leaving a mark.

'Doesn't bother me,' Huw said with a shrug. 'I don't want to burn it anyway.'

'But this was your idea!'

'My idea was to leave the wretched thing where it was and go find somewhere dry. This was just a passing thought.'

'I'll give you passing thought if you don't fetch some decent dry timber,' Oswine said, cuffing Huw soundly round the head. 'My lord says to execute the statue, and that's what I shall do. It is my _duty_ — though heaven knows the word means nothing to you.'

'Perhaps he can explain it,' Huw said as a large man in priestly robes burst into the clearing, his face like thunder.

'Oswine, clerk of Lord Hunwold,' he bellowed. 'I will have words with you!'

§

Oswine and Huw sat beneath the arms of a great oak, grey morning light seeping through the leaves. Long streams of water ran from branches bent beneath the weight of tumbling summer rain. The soft smell of dung and sound of bleating rolled over their senses as sheep crowded round them seeking shelter. Oswine sneezed, the force rocking his head into a wall of stinking wet wool. He slapped at it futilely, and turned away with a grimace.

Huw chewed thoughtfully on a fingernail.

'What'll it be like, King Edgar's coronation?' he asked.

Oswine paused for a moment. He had never seen a king, never mind a high king, and royal ceremony was an exotic mystery. He scoured his brain for fragments of knowledge that might hide his ignorance.

'There will be hundreds of lords and kings, all in their best tunics and jewellery, attended by their wives and servants. They'll gather at Farndon, and then process to Chester, so that the priests there can bless King Edgar. They'll ride sleek stallions, or be rowed in a hundred barges. The crowd will cheer and sing songs, while the priest anoints the king's head with oil and crowns him.'

'Won't the crown slip off, with all that oil?'

'Holy water, then. They'll use holy water.'

'This crowd...'

'Huge. Everyone in the county will be there.'

'Everyone except us.'

'Everyone except us.' Oswine hung his head. A trickle of rain burst through the cover and ran down his neck.

Huw grinned at the clerk's discomfort. 'Told you we should have burned it,' he declared, pointing towards the river Dee. The statue of Mary lay on her back in the shallows, bound now to a hastily built wooden cross. She gazed into the sky from this morbid bed, smiling serenely towards heaven. Even the icy waters lapping against her skirts could not disturb her.

'Every fragment of kindling from here to Wales is soaked through,' Oswine replied. 'Besides, Father Augustus says to burn her would be heresy.'

Huw snorted and pulled a loaf of bread from his pouch. He tore off a chunk and stuffed it into his mouth.

'Hang it, drown it, burn it, what difference does it make?' he said, spitting crumbs. 'With priests like that, we'd be better going back to the old beliefs, like my grandma talked about. No churches and Latin, just an empty clearing and some bloke in robes killing a chicken.'

'Blasphemy!' Oswine yelped in alarm. 'You'll burn yourself if you're not careful, you wretch. To talk like that by the Dee, the most holy river in Christendom. A river so pure that it will carry any true Christian safely to its banks, no matter what storms may rage. We stand by waters blessed by God himself, and still you dare say such things. Even in front of Mother Mary!'

'Mother Mary who you're drowning.'

'My lord orders it,' Oswine murmured. 'Duty and faithfulness compel me. But after this blasphemy... Perhaps it's time I found someone else to serve.'

He squinted out through the rain. The river was rising fast, overflowing its banks as water poured off land hardened by drought, and rushed, leaping and lunging, down towards the sea. Only the statue's face showed now, emerging for air behind each passing swell. Then it rose, as Mary bobbed up through the water, rolled over to face the fields, and disappeared again beneath the waves, the arm of the cross splashing down behind her. Oswine dashed to the river's edge, sheep scattering from his path, arriving too late to stop the wooden frame as it was swept off on the torrent, carrying the statue beneath it.

'That'll do it!' Huw yelled in delight. 'It'd take a miracle to save it now.'

§

The east wall of Chester stretched before them, smooth blocks of Roman stonework patched with rough brick. Once a ghost-town, a bustling crowd testified to its revival. Merchants, nobles and peasants crowded by the banks of the Dee, eagerly awaiting today's visit by the king.

'We're wasting our time,' Huw declared. 'It's out to sea and drowned.'

'My lord ordered me to punish it, and I must be sure I have fulfilled my task,' Oswine replied.

'So that you can leave him alone in his grief? What faithfulness!'

Oswine turned on him in a rage.

'How dare you poke fun at me? You're loyal to nothing but your gut!'

'At least my gut doesn't think the Dee holy,' Huw said with a grin, 'or make me fool enough to execute a statue.'

Oswine swung a fist at the empty air, as Huw ran, chuckling, across the pasture. Oswine gave chase, following the city walls down towards the river.

Where the walls met the water, a huddle of men in rough priestly robes were studying something in the mud, and muttering animatedly in Welsh. Huw dashed towards them, ready to plead for help, but was struck silent when he saw what they had found.

'Look,' one of the monks declared, 'as the stories tell, the Dee protects the faithful.'

Huw fell to his knees before the serenely smiling statue. Smeared mud and dangling duckweed did nothing to disrupt her imperturbable calm.

'I surrender,' he said, 'Nothing can kill you. Do with me as you will.'

Oswine came to a halt behind Huw, glaring at the shepherd's back. Then he too noticed the statue, and his rage shifted. With a fierce swing, he kicked the frame on which Mary lay, to the shocked gasps of the small crowd.

'Hey!' Huw yelped. 'You can't do that, that's sacrilege!'

'Since when did you care two pennies for sacrilege?' Oswine asked. He kicked out again, flecks of paint bursting onto the breeze as his foot hit home.

'Then what about duty?' Huw asked.

'Stupid dung-brained waste of time!' Oswine shrieked. 'Duty's for fools - I'll have no more of it! I'll ditch this blasted thing and be my own man.'

He grasped one arm of the wooden cross on which the statue lay and heaved it up. It rose with a spluttering, sucking squelch, mud oozing from its sides. Groaning with the strain of his exertions, Oswine dragged it slowly away from the river, the monks watching in bemused silence.

From upstream, a long, low rowboat appeared. A bearded figure in fur-trimmed red robes sat in its prow, a gold circlet gleaming on his head. He was rowed by men in rich, bright clothes. Sunlight scattered from the silver round their necks and arms. Their only sound was the rhythmic splashing of oars in the river, accompanied by the cawing gulls that followed in their wake.

Oswine ceased his labour and dropped the statue, staring slack-jawed at the sight.

'What is that?' he asked.

'High King Edgar,' one of the monks replied, 'being rowed by kings of the north and west.'

'Rough work for kings, isn't it?' Huw asked, raising himself from the mud.

'Ah,' said the priest, eager to show his knowledge, 'it is a test of their loyalty, lowering themselves to a humble task.'

Cheering arose from the town as the High King's vessel approached. Children ran along the banks, laughing and waving their arms as they tried to get a better view. The joy of the crowd drove the rowers to new levels of effort, hauling hard at the oars, rushing the vessel towards its docking place.

'Reckon I've seen it all now,' Huw said. 'An unbreakable statue, kings doing fishermen's work, and you finally giving up.' He winked at Oswine as he pulled a battered apple from his pouch. Halfway to his mouth he looked at the fruit, shook his head and returned it to the bag.

Oswine looked down at the mud-spattered statue, and up again at the boat gliding by in splendour. His heart lifted at the sight of these noble men, muscles straining to please their master. Then he looked again at Mary. He thought of his duty to his lord, a man whose overwhelming grief had led him to set this bewildering task. He thought too of his duty to his heavenly master, for whose mother the statue had been made. He heard his own words to Huw echoing in his ears, and hung his head in shame.

'Take the statue,' he said to the monks. 'Place it in a church, where all can gaze upon it and remember God's works. But if you are near Hunwold, tell my lord it is at sea and sunk, or else he will tan my hide.'

Huw watched as the clerk walked back the way they had come, head held high despite his weary steps. As the shrinking figure disappeared round the river's bend, Huw turned to the monks.

'I'm used to rough work,' he said, 'but I've never seen a day like this. You got room for one more?'

'We always have bread and a bed for those who have faith,' one of the monks replied.

'You hear that?' Huw said, leaning down to the statue. 'You've even found me dinner.'

With a grunt he lifted the Virgin and her cross onto his back and, praying softly beneath his breath, followed the monks into Chester, heart lifting in newfound veneration.

About the Author

**Andrew Knighton** spent six years studying history, which qualified him to write this story and get angry at Mel Gibson films. "Holy Water" is the jamming together of various pieces of Cheshire folklore, the sort of fast and loose approach to history that got him angry at those films. What a hypocrite. He's had over thirty short stories published in magazines and websites, and you can find out more online at andrewknighton.wordpress.com.

# Lament for Lost Atlanta

by Arlan Andrews

Last night was really strange.

First off, our seventh grade American History teacher, Old Man Ill-Used, took us W. T.'s on a night-time field trip out to Stone Mountain to watch the laser light show, all about the hanging of Robert E. Lee.

_Bor-ing_. Seen it a dozen times and — _bor-ing_ is all I can say about it. Andrei and Bob and I just rolled our eyes when Ill-Used told us about it in class. And besides that, we hated the hot, smelly old buses and the bumpy, dusty old dirt road ride.

(Actually, his name is Mr. Ilyushin, but since I am writing this diary in secret for only myself to read — and maybe somebody else, years from now — I can say these things and call anybody anything I want. Like the way the Feds call the place "Victory Mountain," but Dad calls it by its true name. Kind of like the way they call our run-down town "Sherman," and we whisper its forbidden name, "Atlanta."

The way gross Old Man Ilyushin put it, " _Malchiks_ —"I just _hate_ it when he puts on that uppity Russkie accent, like his great grandparents weren't just W. T. like us when they shipped over a hundred and forty years ago to fill up our emptied land — "at Victory Mountain we shall see a re-enactment of the final victory of the Federals over the southern terrorists.

"Of course, the events you will see tonight have been compressed a _bolshy_ bit. It actually took a full year for President Stanton and General Sherman to track down and bring to justice the terrorist warlords of the so-called 'Confederacy'."

Actually, I am kind of glad the whole thing only takes forty-five minutes and not a full year, but I bet Old Man Ill-Used would rather sit out there in the heat and humidity and mosquitoes and the stinking tobacco smoke for the whole time, as much as he likes to talk about the War of the Terrorists and the way his ancestors got to come over here and take over this land from our ancestors.

Anyway, I am finally out there with the whole freshman class and we are _bor-ed_ out of our minds as the lasers jump and dance in time with the loudspeakers. We all wanted to hear some gnarly _bistrock_ tunes, but of course we just got the usual rah-rah marching songs. And the narrator's _bo_ -ring old-fashioned voice.

"President Stanton—" (everybody cheers the handsome face the lasers paint on the huge flat rockside of Stone Mountain) "—sent General McClellan — " (cheers) "—to arrest the traitors Judah Benjamin —" (boos) "—and the arch-villain traitor Jefferson Davis—" (screeching boos and hoots at the Scared Scarecrow Himself) "—and then General Sherman—" (tremendous cheers) "—chased down the King Rat, the self-styled General Lee — " (this was the big crescendo, the climax of the booing and hissing. It was always a lot of fun, even though I knew that Dad and some of our family thought different about Ol' Bobby Lee.) "—in his rat's nest hidey-hole in Mammoth Cave in Kentucky."

The lasers showed a rat-like Robert E. Lee, skittering down into the old Mammoth Cave. And then a giant gloved fist reaching down and pulling him out by his tail.

Our whole freshman class laughed like we usually did, but this one time there seemed to be a weakness in the other folks, hundreds of them, like maybe their hearts weren't really it in. I couldn't figure out what was up, but something was different. Old Man Ill-Used tried to make up for it by laughing louder and longer, and so did some other teachers, but it just didn't work out. Andrei and Bob and I just looked at each other and couldn't figure it out, so we stayed quiet, unusual for us. It was an uncomfortable moment for everybody.

Things stayed kind of like that for the next forty minutes, all the way through the mass hanging where Stanton gives his famous order, Sherman pulls the trap door handle, and the Four Traitors gurgle and gasp and kick and twitch, their wicked southerners' souls going to roast and scream in a laser-red Hell, while above them in white robes and wings, the smiling trinity — Lincoln, Grant and Burnside — wag fingers at their defeated, tormented enemies.

By the end of it, most people were once again clapping and cheering and hissing and booing and laughing at the right times, but there was something going on, something that felt strange.

But boy, that was just the beginning of it.

When all the mighty deeds were done being painted on the side of Victory Mountain, we all stood to sing the national anthem. We had barely got to the place of "trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored" when all of a sudden a really weird, really big laser image covered, I mean, like the whole mountainside. For a few seconds it looked like one of the old prohibited southern terrorist flags, that one with the red background and the blue diagonal bars and white stars and the stars in them. Only this one, it had a crucified Christ hanging on the bars, like he was nailed to them, diagonal-wise.

There was some noisy yelling in the projection room, and then it sounded like some shots, and then the whole thing went dark and those people who had kept on singing, they got real quiet. A bunch of Feds came while the teachers scooted us over to the smoking, rattletrap buses that took us back to our W. T. mobile homes (we call them "tin-cans") on the outskirts of Sherman, just a couple miles from Sherman Tech University.

Last night started off really strange, but it got a whole lot stranger.

§

The strangers were at my home when I got back from the Victory Mountain show. I knew somebody was visiting because of the big old black motorcar parked next to our trailer. For a minute I hoped Dad had bought us a car of our own. Only one or two people in the trailer park had cars that ran, and everybody thought they were real rich.

Three strangers were there inside the little trailer kitchen-living room area when I let myself in, but two of them just sat in the darkness leaning against the wall of the half-lit room, and just kind of waved my way as I walked in.

Dad stood up and introduced the third guy, who looked as old as Dad, meaning he was in his mid-thirties. The man looked a bit different than most W. T. people, not so many wrinkles and more at ease with himself. Taller than me — but everybody is — really dark hair, skin kind of Mexican brown, dark eyes, his jet black hair cut a different way, and clothes not in this year's style at all, with faded blue denim pants, kind of Western looking, not Down South style at all. I can tell that from the telly, even though I wear second-hand clothes Mom gets at the Welfare Trust Center. Thin as a rail, tough looking, he was. Not from here.

"This is your uncle, Jeff Davis Blythe," Dad said. "Visiting here from the Republic." I had heard of the Blythe family, some of our cousins, who had moved away from here about the time I was born, out to the Republic of Texas. Some people said they were kicked out by the Feds.

"Just call me 'J. D.', if you don't mind, son," the man said, sticking out a hand to shake. As I took it and shook it, he went on, "Damned if you don't look just like some of your cousins in Pike City."

I was just a little bit surprised by a visitor from anywhere in the Republic of Texas, especially the capitol itself, which used to be called Austin, according to old man Ill-Used. There had been a lot of fighting after the Removal, until things finally settled down, I think, back in the early Twentieth Century. An undeclared border war went on, too. Then a few years ago, when I was a little kid, some other incidents started up, but I never paid much attention to them. You can get used to the most terrible things if you don't know they're unusual.

Then last week a car-bombing incident at a Sherman police station was carried out by Republican terrorists, but most people don't care about politics unless it affects their own neighborhoods or their jobs. "Times are hard," Dad keeps saying to Mom and us all the time, "and politics don't put food on the table." But all the same he gripes about the government a lot, mainly 'cause he thinks they are the reason we are so poor.

What they teach us in W. T. school about the Republic of Greater Texas is pretty bad, that they are all mostly terrorists and religious fanatics. So I said knowingly, "Well, Uncle J. D. How _are_ things in Greater Texas?" Dad and J. D. and the two men in the dark exchanged startled looks with each other for a long, quiet minute, but then J. D. lit up with a big smile. "Things are fine over there, son. I've just come over here to meet the family who stayed behind, our long-lost cousins from whom we should have never been parted."

Uh-oh, I knew J. D.'s stay was going to be about Dad's "politics," because Dad is always harping on how hateful that old President Sherman had been to kick our family out of our huge plantations and give them to the Russkie immigrants. Like we would be rich today if that hadn't of happened. "Damned ol' Yankees," he would hiss, "I wouldn't have to work two jobs today to keep food on the table if we still owned half of Fulton County like my great-great-grandpaw did." I never could figure out, even using the school's Grannysmith computer, if any of that was true. I did know that over half of the Southron Race was driven out — "they all left voluntarily, they were not forced," Old Ill-Used tells us, as if he was here when it happened. "That is why my ancestors were brought over from Europe, to provide a much-needed White population to replace the southern terrorists "— _Crackers and Blackers_ is the slang term — "who once occupied this place."

I didn't know what the truth was, and really never cared too much. In the afternoons after school, Andrei and Bob and I mostly would just leave the trailer camp and walk down the dirt road a mile and hang out down to the general store, and watch the storefront telly with all of those superstars from Up North with great cars and great girls on it, wishing we could have it all like they do. But I figured that anything happened over a hundred fifty years ago, that's like ancient history, and I'm looking forward to the future. To finish my education, get a job, get one of those great cars. (They say that some W. T.'s get to go through all ten grades and some even make it to a college like Sherman Tech and get to go work on Reclamation and Recovery all over the Americas. That's what I tell the counselor I want to do. But really I would like to go to the Moon like Kaiser Billie's men do.

Like I said, I never really cared too much about politics and the Republic and all. Until last night.

And that's the strangest part.

§

Later at night, Mom was asleep in her bed across the room, and my twin brothers down below were mumbling under their Winston the Pooh covers, so I got off the top bunk and sneaked in to overhear what Dad and Uncle J. D. and those other men, the un-introduced ones, were discussing. From around the open kitchen doorway, I could see them all, and hear them pretty good, too. The other men were sitting on the floor, leaning back against the far wall. In the dark shadows they looked even less friendly than before.

Dad and J. D. were sitting at the red plastic topped kitchen table, on a couple of flimsy plastic chairs, under the one bare light bulb, which kept going down dim and then brightening, according to the power surges that we live with, when the electricity even works at all. This is just how we live, and I hate to write it down even to myself, because then I have to admit it. We're just W. T.—"Welfare Trust," the sign says. But we say it means "White Trash."

Dad was in his undershirt, scarfing drinks from a can of cheap beer, while J. D. was swishing a dark liquid in a small glass. As the ice in it tinkled, J. D. spoke softly, like somebody might be listening. He was right. I was.

"Bill," he was saying to Dad, "the time is imminent. The Return is necessary, and it's going to start. Soon. The Preacher is ready; the operations are under way. The Republican Safety Committee is cooperating. The car, money, instructions."

Dad sighed and took a swig from the can. "Don't breathe a word of this to her father, J. D. You know how he is."

"Yeah, a real Accommodationist. He just doesn't know what all was lost way back, and how much there is to gain." J. D.'s eyes kind of glimmered as he talked. He was really a strange kind of guy, like he was some kind of prophet or something.

Dad said, "Sure, Nan's family married into the Russkies right off, long time ago, and they were all Commodes. When we talk about anything like this, Old Jimmy just goes on —" here, Dad switched to a singsongy type of voice, like Grandpa's — "'Get over it, young'un; we were whipped fair and square and we just need to get on with our lives. Ol' Useless Ass hadn't of got hisself killed on his damned horse, we would've had a fair deal and it would be over a long time ago.' You know, J. D., crazy crap like that. Crazy as a Ukrainian can be, but she loves him, J. D., and I don't want him hurt." J. D. was kind of quiet, and one of the men against the wall coughed.

Then Dad said, "You're not gonna be doing your operations there in downtown Sherman are you? Old Jimmy lives in those Victory Creek W. T. apartments, across the street from Sherman's Statue at the State Capitol."

J. D. closed his eyes and shook his head. "Shit, that is all I need, Bill. Look, get him away from that statue and the Capitol. That's all I can say. Tomorrow morning, you ride down with us and then bring him back out here for a week, but make sure it's some kind of real family excuse, something you can back up when the Feds react and start rounding people up and breaking bones and smashing things." Then J. D. drank all of the rest of his drink in one swallow, and slammed down the glass. The dark men in the shadows were shaking their heads and mumbling to each other. "That's more than I should have said, and we're all in jeopardy until this is all over with. Damn, this is complicating the operation."

I could barely stay quiet, crouched as I was just around the kitchen door from them, but I was getting too scared to breathe. Bring Grandpa here? Where would he stay, us living in just two tincan trailer rooms? I sighed quietly. I knew — I was going to be sleeping on the floor for a week or longer. It made me tired just to think about sleeping on an unforgiving pallet, lumps and all. I was truly drowsy.

But what was "the operation"? And how would it affect Grandpa?

I was still thinking about it when I fell asleep and slumped forward into the kitchen.

§

"What in the hell were you doing, kid?" I jerked awake at J. D.'s yelling, with a pistol pointed at my face, just inches away.

"Just wondered what y'all were talking about," I managed to croak out. J. D.'s pistol disappeared somewhere inside his shirt, and he gave me a friendly hand to pull me up. The two mystery men were standing. One of them crackled loud knuckles. I was afraid of them, and didn't know why.

"It's OK, nephew," J. D. said to me. "Bill," he said to Dad, "your boy's almost a grown man now. He's one of us, so don't worry about it." I was relieved he was friendly again, but I couldn't figure out somebody who could change moods like that, so quick. He invited me to sit at the table, and I pulled up a wooden crate and stared at my mysterious relative. The two quiet men sat back down. I didn't look at them.

"You know your real American history, boy?" J. D. said, in a formal, educated kind of voice that surprised me. He sounded like Old Man Ill-Used at our school. Smiling at my reaction, he said, "I'm an assistant professor at Pike and Lee University, in San Antonio, in the Republic. I teach Republic and American history." I gulped; history wasn't my favorite subject. Not many jobs Down South for History people; but tech jobs, though, even some W. T.'s can get.

I was thinking fast, trying to figure out an answer about History that J. D. might like. I knew he wasn't a fellow to fool around with. But I couldn't say anything right off that I thought would please him. Because whenever I can find the books, I concentrate more on the history of science than the history of politics. I mean, the Kaiser's liquid fueled rockets going to the Moon and the Tsar's fission bombs blasting Japan into the sea — those meant more to me than stupid old-timey stuff like Useless Ass Grant breaking his neck. I mean, Andrei and Bob and me, we do like to play "Hiding Robert E. Lee," like all W. T.'s do, even more because the teachers tell us it is forbidden. " _Nekulturny_ ," Old Man Ill-Used yells at us when we shoot Yankees down by the thousands inside our imaginary Mammoth Cave holdout. Bob says it's Russkie for "rednecks," and I think that is supposed to be an insult.

But it is not an insult to me; nothing is worse than being a W. T., I guess. "Son, it takes two to make an insult," Grandpa always tells me. Dad doesn't care too much for Grandpa to talk like that; I guess it might be because Grandpa is Mom's dad, not his. He never talks about his own Dad.

I finished my gulp and answered J. D., "Er, Uncle J. D., I am more into, like, Moon rockets and electronic brains and atom bombs and such."

"No matter," he laughed, mussing my hair. "All knowledge is important at some time, some place. But knowing true history can tell you where you have been, and make it easier to know where you want to go."

"To the Moon?" I blurted out.

J. D. laughed. "Yes, indeed. History shows that the Yankees laughed off the one man — Dr. Goddard — who emigrated to the Reich and helped Kaiser Billie build the rockets that fought off the Tsar. And then took Europe to the Moon." He smiled again, and pulled a small thick book the size of a Sunday School Bible out of a pocket on the backpack he carried. "Here, read this, find out what history really is, not that junk the Yankees have been feeding you. And then talk to me about it." He looked at Dad, who nodded and gestured to me to take it. "Rockets and electronics and bombs, hmm? I think a technical kid like you might be interested in some of the things the Republic has to offer." One of the men in the dark laughed, a hard, nasty sound. I shuddered.

"You have got to hide this book, boy," Dad grunted. "Your Mom and the twins can't know about it, and for God's sake, not your little Russkie and Yankee friends and especially your teachers." His face took on a look I had never seen, strong but sad. "Now tell me that you understand me. You are thirteen years old, almost a man, old enough to know how things really are. No showing it to _any_ body, you hear?"

"Yes, sir," I replied, heart pounding. "I hear you. Just _my_ eyes only."

I went back to bed and did my own reading under the covers. " _Removal, Redemption and Return: The Confederate Christ_ ," the book was titled, "by Reverend Albert Pike, Ph.D., Freemason, Founding President of the New Republic of Greater Texas." A really weird book.

Like I said, it was the strangest night of my life.

§

Today, I am a different person than I was yesterday.

Today , I am a man.

It is hard, being a man.

This is what happened, back when I was a child, less than one day ago.

This morning at recess, Andrei and Bob wouldn't believe my story about J. D. and Dad and the mysterious strangers the night before, so of course after school I had to show them the book. We sneaked out into one of the junkyard clearings in the woods near the trailer park, out of view of adults. "God damn, man!" Andrei said after reading a few pages, "You think this stuff is for real?" We were lounging on the weed-overgrown flattened metal remains of what looked like had been tin-can trailers like our own houses. It was a favorite place to place "Hiding Bobby Lee" and "Yankees and Indians" and to dig around in for old squashed junk. It had been there as long as I can remember, just one of a dozen such places out here in the sticks.

I shrugged. "Idd'n it funny, to find out history can be more than one thing?" But Bob, scaredy-cat that he was, wouldn't even hold the book after Andrei showed him one of the pictures in it, that one of the crucified Christ hanging diagonal-like on the old Reb battle flag. That page really spooked him, and he told us he was going home, but we made him promise he wouldn't tell anybody about any of the weird stuff. Bob's parents are pretty hard on him, and make him go to Orthodox Church and speak Russkie at home and all that. We hollered a friendly-like " _Da sve-dah-nyah_ " to him, and then Andrei sat while I pointed out the good parts to him. I had only read about twenty pages of the one hundred pages the night before. I am supposed to be a good reader, but Dad says that W. T. schools are not very good, compared to Russkie and Yankee ones. That has always bothered me, because school is pretty easy for me and I hoped it was because I was smart, not because the schools were dumb. I want to get a tech job, to get out of these trailer-cans in the woods and live in downtown Atlanta — I mean, Sherman — and have a great car and a great girlfriend and my own telly.

"Yeah," Andrei said, "especially that part about General Lee holding out for two years inside Mammoth Cave, and the Final Rangers really killing four thousand Yankees before they drilled down with explosives and all."

"Yeah," I murmured, something stirring deep inside me. "Why you reckon they show us the story about a hanging, and Bobby Lee looking like a rat and all? This picture here, he looks old and important, just like my Grandpa Jimmy."

"I guess they are trying to insult him," I answered myself. I thought, _And we all used to laugh at him at Stone Mountain. I wonder, if a man is dead, can you really insult him?_

We sat for a long time there in the shade of the pines, sometimes not talking or reading, just listening to the birds chirping and an old car chugging down the road and once, even, a real big aeroplane that droned overhead, probably going Up North to where folks lived in big painted houses and had nice big farms and great cars and tellys. Once or twice we even whiffed the faint sharp smell of a 'shine operation, which told us we shouldn't go any further back in the woods.

After a while Andrei got tired of ancient history and wanted to play baseball, but the stories in President Pike's book had really grabbed my attention and I wanted to know more, so I sat back against an old pine tree while Andrei ran off to find Bob and round up a team. We waved at each other, and I turned my attention to the wondrous world of history.

As the afternoon wore on toward evening, I laughed out loud to read President Pike's account of the way the driven-off Georgians and Carolinians and Alabamians and Mississippians and Louisianians had sneaked some of their machinery and weapons into false bottoms of their wagons and boats, and got them past impatient Yankee overseers and into Texas and Oklahoma, where General Sherman made them go and stay. The Destroyer had said, "If I owned Hell and Texas, I'd live in Hell and lease out Texas." Which I guess he kind of did.

This book didn't even mention what happened to Virginians; nobody ever talked about them, they must have got shipped off someplace else. There's not even a state of that name any more. It was located where the state of Lincoln is now.

I read in President Pike's book how he had a visitation or at least a vision from Jesus Christ, and that changed his life. He called that vision, "The Confederate Christ," and said that Jesus told him to lead his people to a new life. With his new devout faith, he went to work on setting up the new Republic of Greater Texas. Later, the Yankees were real surprised when the run-off Southerners and their Indian allies got a real country up and running real quick, while the Yankees were off invading what used to be Canada or something. How the Southerners discovered oil in the territories, how the Republic of Greater Texas got richer than Midas and competed with the Yankees in taking over or buying up new territories in North America. And how Down South stayed impoverished ever since Sherman's invasions, with the victorious Yankees spending all their money and energy on holding back the Republic and the King and the Kaiser and the Tsar. They never had liked Down South anyhow, so they were okay with the Russkies lording it over the old-time native Crackers and Blackers.

All this was no kind of history I had ever heard of. In our version Mr. Ill-Used always said, "The natural laziness and inherent genetic inferiority of Scots-Irish W. T. criminals and their downtrodden blacks caused Down South to stay poor." He would stomp up and down the aisles, slamming down his ruler on somebody's desk, scaring us all. "The only smart people here are us Russkies and other Europeans who rescued this backward region from total depopulation. And you people are no more grateful now than your great-great grandparents were then. It is small wonder you live like animals!" I never liked Mr. Ill-Used after that outburst. W. T.'s are people, like anybody else.

Somebody else — I was surely shocked to see it was my uncle,

J. D., with a Ph.D. behind his name — had added a chapter called "The Rest of the Story", to bring President Pike's account up to modern times. Dr. Blythe (as I thought of him after that) wrote how border wars flared on and off for a century. Then came the best part — I didn't know that oil could make so much money. It appears that everybody in the Republic is filthy rich, with great houses and great cars and, I guess, great girl friends. They had even sent some of their own Republic _Weltraumfahrers_ up to the Moon with the Germans, buying seats to go into space, something nobody ever told us in school. No Yankees had ever gone into space, and here some of our own Southron brethren in the Republic were living out there even now!

About then I groaned, and wished my family had got Removed along with all of the others in the 1860s, because we W. T.'s were not living nearly as great as the people in the Republic or on the telly. And no W. T. ever gets to go to _Mondstadt_ , that bright shining circle-dot city you can see when it's night-dark on the Sea of Tranquility.

Then I got to wondering why our Removed relatives out in the Republic didn't just give us some of their big pile of money, and we could move out there with them, and we could all be away from the Yankees and Russkies. There sure seemed to be plenty of room for us W. T.'s out in Nebraska and Davis and Jackson and Semmes and those other big plains states. But I guess adults know better than I do what ought to be done.

My head was full to bursting with all this new information, and buzzing with new ideas. I had a million questions to ask Dr. Blythe when I got home.

§

When I got home, Dr. Blythe wasn't there. Neither was Dad. Neither were the mysterious strangers. Their big old motorcar was gone and that was too bad. I really liked having a car next to our trailer. It made us look rich to the grouchy old neighbors and they didn't like it and I liked that.

"Mom, where's Dad and Dr. Blythe and them?" I yelled through the ragged screen door of our trailer. An old neighbor lady looked out her window and frowned at me. A scrawny old man in T-shirt and shorts was burning some leaves in the next trailer space over, and the smoke came my way and choked me.

Mom came out, waving off the smoke and looking even more wrinkly and sweaty than usual. My twin little brothers were hollering in the bedroom and from the sounds of it, throwing things around. "What a day," she moaned. "Son, your Dad and J. D. and

J. D.'s friends have gone downtown in their motorcar to get your Grandpa Jimmy. I got a message from the general store that my Pa had called us, said he was sickly and needs to come out here." She waved a futile hand at our tin can home. "My own father," she mumbled, "and I don't even want him coming out. We've got no room for him."

Then she turned and looked down at me with weariness in her bloodshot eyes. "Son, soon as you can, get out of this hell hole. See if J. D. might even take you back to the Republic with him. You don't want to live like this." Mom started crying and I ran over and held onto her, and started crying too. But just then Andrei ran up toward us, yelling, and I had to dry my eyes without him seeing me all wet and teary-eyed. He was real scared about something.

Mom went back in the trailer and started yelling at the twins to calm down, but they started crying instead. I wondered what Andrei was up to. " _Shto eta?_ " I said, mushy Russkie words, I never knew what they really meant, except _what's up_? By now, the nosy neighbors had lost interest in loud kids and went about their own business, burning leaves and all.

_"No mo' betta_ ," Andrei said, using our own slang. "Our stupid Russkie _droog_ , Bob, told his priest about your stupid book, and now the Feds are going to come over here and _discuss_ it with you!"

Damn Bob! 'Discussions' with the Feds usually meant a bad whipping with a rubber hose, maybe worse. Sometimes a whole lot worse.

"Andrei, my Dad is gone, and my Mom's here with the twins alone! What can I do?" I wanted to know how he knew about the Feds coming. I knew he was telling the truth, scared as he was. But my courageous friend had turned around, hightailing it to his own tin-can palace, I imagined. I made a decision as fast as I could. "Mom! Mom!"

I hated to see how she took the news that I had read a prohibited book about the Republic and the Removal. "My God, son! The Feds can kick us out of this trailer, did you know that? Where can we go? We gotta get outta here, right now! Let me get the boys —" She ran into the back room and dragged out two screeching three year olds.

Mom made the decision — we would all four walk down to the Welfare Trust center like we were looking for work or more rations or something. It would get us out of the Feds' way, and maybe they would forget or maybe they wouldn't come. It was miles, she said, but along the way she would try to flag down Dad and J. D. and Grandpa when they came driving back, and warn them.

"At least the nights are warm now, if we have to stay in the woods." I really flinched at that thought. _Warm_ wasn't the word for it; the dirt roads stayed hot all night, and the woods were full of chiggers and ticks and mosquitoes and even spiders and snakes. All at once I was remembering the comfortable pallet waiting for me back in the trailer. _Damn Bob, that stupid Russkie!_

§

Along the way, Mom made me show her where I had stashed the President Pike book, in a hollow tree near the smashed junkyard clearing. She looked at the picture of Jesus on the flag, shook her head, and then spit on it. "This 'Confederate Christ' stuff is just hateful trash, son! This Pike book is rightly prohibited, and you shouldn't have anything to do it with. Forget what you saw. It's nothing but trouble!" She raised up an old slab of smashed metal and put President Pike's history book under it and made sure no one could find it. Then she grabbed the twins and started off for the W. T. center with her back to me, with me doing my best to keep her calm.

Dad and maybe even J. D. were going to thrash me good for this one, I just knew it. But I wondered, why would they let me have a book that was going to get us all into trouble?

§

The really bad things happened while we were gone from the trailer camp, so we didn't see any of it. First, the Feds came to our trailer park and ran everybody out of it just the way they were, with no extra clothes or suitcases or food or money, no belongings at all, and then they bulldozed all the trailers down flat. There must have been two hundred people living in the trailer park at lunchtime, and it was just a pile of smashed-down tin cans by suppertime. I wondered what everybody else was going to do, and if they would know I caused it and blame me for it. I never want to go back there again!

When I heard about all the destruction hours later, I wondered — were all of the other smashed-flat junkyards we played in, were they all done by Fed bulldozers, too? I was scared, but I was mad, too, and getting madder all the time. It wasn't right, all those hundreds of people and my Mom and Dad and my brothers and me out of a place to live just because of a stupid old book!

Before we got to the W. T. center, an ear-shattering _boom_! nearly knocked us off our feet. A pillar of black clouds erupted over the distant trees a couple of miles away. Something in downtown Sherman had blown up, a really big explosion, and pretty soon the evening sky was darkened by a cloud of dark smoke, lit from underneath by a pinkness of flames. It was the biggest noise I ever heard. It was the biggest column of smoke I had ever seen.

The second bad thing that happened was that Dad got killed in that explosion.

§

"Damn it, Nan, he was not supposed to go near that Sherman statue, I told him that." Dr. Blythe was dirty and sweaty and had a bloody bandage around his left hand, and he stunk of smoke and body odor. One of the mystery men — he, too, was all smoky and dirty and sweaty and stinky — was holding onto Mom, and she was sobbing so hard that I couldn't tell if she was hearing what Dr. Blythe was saying. The other mystery guy was not there. Grandpa Jimmy was with us but standing a ways apart, and we were all standing around in the woods near the mashed-trailer clearing where I had been reading President Pike's book earlier. Grandpa looked really, really old, and he had been crying too, I guess, because his eyes were all red. He kept twitching his lips, and his wrinkled sunk-in mouth made him look even older and sicker. I was almost as tall as him, something I had not noticed before.

The sky was raining ash now, and the smell was kind of like when we have barbecue once a year on the Second of July. _That_ smell, but mixed in with a little something sickening. Everybody was coughing and wiping their eyes, even my uncle. "We delivered the car to the Capitol basement parking lot and we each walked away as we had planned, just like tourists, even had your Dad with us. We were far enough away when the operation ensued. Like we planned, nobody saw us park the car, and they can't identify any of its pieces.

"But I guess your brave Bill had to go back and spit on Sherman one last time. That's what he told my silent friend here. Bill thought we had ten minutes left until it went off, but with mechanical timers being so unreliable anyhow, and with the God-awful potholes in the streets shaking up the car so bad, shit, you just never know!"

In my shock, at first I smiled at the thought of Dad doing what we W. T. kids all do — "Spittin' Image" everybody called the pigeon-dropping-white-green statue of The Destroyer. We kids sometimes even collected up dog turds or cow patties and put them under the horse's rear end and called it the "Shittin' Image." But now it was gone and Dad was dead, and I was in a blankness of spirit, and our little home was gone and Mom and me and my little brothers were in the woods with Grandpa and those dangerous strangers.

Dr. Blythe motioned for me to go away, out of earshot, so I ran to Grandpa and broke down and cried in his arms. I never knew he was so small and so weak. He began to cry with me, and that scared me even more. My little brothers came over where we were and they commenced crying, too. It must have been a scene.

From our distance away I could still catch some of what Dr. Blythe. and the stranger were telling Mom. "Nan, I am sorry but the Feds are going to be clamping down hard and there is no way I can get you and the boys out of Georgia right now."

Mom was crying but I heard her say, "But J. D., _hundreds_ of people! How could you _do_ such a thing? And you a Christian!" I saw J. D. look my way and shake his head slowly as he took my crying Mom in his arms. _This is what men do._ I could read his raging thoughts in the set of his grimy face, in the twitch of his eyes and the snarl of his lips. _You are the man in the family now. You are going to avenge this!_

§

J. D. and his friend led us through back paths in the woods for a long time, until we came to a big old white house on a farm that was a shelter of some kind where they were expected. The nice folks there took us in. At least we weren't on the roads or in the woods, where the Feds were looking out for us with rubber hoses and guns and even bulldozers. Even though men with guns were standing guard at the windows and the door, I felt as safe there as I think I ever will again.

It was late in the hot, dark night when the shock of Dad being dead finally sank into my heart and my soul. Though I wanted to cry, and though my chest heaved and I was racked with trembling and wanted to vomit, right there and then I promised my God and myself and my dead Dad that I would never cry again. In fear that turned to rage, I promised us all that I would make Yankees and Russkies and Up North hurt like I was hurting.

To keep from making a sound that our friends could hear, I bit my lip until it bled, and I liked the hurting and the taste of my own blood. Sometime in the darkness I finally fell asleep. I dreamed of the Confederate Christ, nailed to the side of Stone Mountain, His blood washing away the enemies of the Republic. I dreamed of an army of W. T.'s driving them all away from our land.

It was my first night of sleep as a man.

§

It is now the next morning and I am writing this through my unwept tears. My father is gone, blown up with Sherman's statue and the State Capitol Building and the State Senate and the State House of Representatives and three hundred twenty nine other people. Dr. Blythe says the Feds actually were responsible for it because the un-elected politicians who were meeting there had to be removed before they could hurt us any more. "We in the Republic cannot simply sit back while our Down South brethren are humiliated, persecuted, denied human rights in their own country!'

But even when he is talking to the people assembled in the basement, a few dozen of them, all I can think of is, I can't ever even see my Dad's body because there is nothing left of it, nothing of the statue and nothing of the Capitol Building. I hoped those other hundreds of people who got blown up were roasting in Yankee hell. I truly believe that they are there now.

I guess my shock and my sadness and maybe even my new resolution to fight Yankees and Russkies showed up in my face or the way I talked, or something, because Grandpa Jimmy spent a long time with me after breakfast today, trying to comfort me as I forced my sobs back into my chest, back into my heart.

It was nice and peaceful and pretty out there on the porch swing, with the smell of flowers, the mooing of cows, the buzzing of bugs. There were quite a few airplanes around in the sky today, too, which surprised me. Grandpa Jimmy and I were sitting on the porch because the people in the house said it was OK to be outside, that the Feds had rounded up a lot of terrorist suspects and were going to try them and then hang them in Sherman today, and so they wouldn't be looking for me or my Mom any more. I wondered if Mr. Ill-Used got into trouble because I was in his class. _I hope so_ , I thought, and smiled at the thought.

Hours later I regretted that childish wish, and I swore never to think as a child again. Because I didn't know that right then my Russkie teacher and Andrei and Bob and all of their folks were being grabbed up and beaten up by the Feds, in an outrage at the bombing of their stupid Capitol building. Mercifully I didn't know about any of that until several more hours later, when the telly in our host's house showed close-ups of their twitching, kicking bodies dangling from a mass gallows.

I could not recall my dreams of last night, which is good. These last few days, every day is stranger than the one before, and a lot worse.

§

Every day is worse than the one before, and this was the worst yet.

It started off nice and peaceful out on the porch swing again. After I kind of got over seeing my dead friends on the telly — it didn't seem real, even with the pictures of Andrei and Bob and Mr. Ill-used and ten other people kicking and twitching — Grandpa Jimmy began talking about Dad and J. D. and I felt better for a little bit, hearing how Dad and J. D. had been friendly cousins years ago when they were both my age. "But when the Feds killed J. D.'s paw in a raid and the rest of the Blythes had to sneak across the border into the Republic, that's when the grits hit the fan, as they say." I smiled; Grandpa Jimmy never would cuss, but the words he used instead of cussing were kind of funny. I put my arms around him and was a little bit happier for a couple of minutes.

But then he started saying what Dad had told J. D. he would say: "Boy, this feudin' been goin' on a hundred-fifty years. Our whole country been ruined because we didn't know when we was licked and didn't just quit. Just 'cause old Destroyer Sherman took over when Useless Ass killed hisself on that horse, and insulted Bobby Lee and burnt some towns afterwards."

But Grandpa Jimmy didn't know that I was a man now. I let go of him and kind of stiffened up. I stopped gulping back my tears long enough to let my raging brain remember President Pike's words. "'General Sherman arrogantly _arrested_ General Lee at the Appomattox surrender ceremony," I quoted.

Grandpa Jimmy's eyes opened wide. "Where'd you hear that, boy?"

I shook my head and continued on, this time in my own words. "And the southern soldiers there, they got mad and killed a bunch of Yankee generals and officers and rescued Bobby Lee and fled westerly, taking refuge amongst patriots and countrymen in Tennessee and finally in Kentucky."

"That's Pike's shit, boy," Grandpa Jimmy sighed. "You been reading prohibited books. 'Pike's Pique', the Yankees call it. No wonder they sent the Feds to bulldoze your tincan alley. Who gave you that trash, was it _Doctor_ J. D. inside the house here? A stupid _Texan_?" He spat in that direction.

I kept on reciting from memory. " 'Sherman had more than once vowed to remove the White population of the South and once he and Usurper Stanton had total power, they Removed half of the white population of the Confederacy to Texas and Oklahoma, along with a large number of ex-slaves. Those who remained in the territory of the Confederacy, the Crackers and the Blackers, were subjected to humiliating measures, unjust laws, and expropriation of all lands and belongings. Not to mention the wanton destruction of every Southern capital city, seaport, mill, mine, dam, farm, levee and forest.' "

"That's J. D. talking there, boy. Him and his so-called history lessons. But let me tell you," he said, waving a thin bony arm at the hazy sky, where over the fields of corn we still saw dark smoke in the direction of Sherman, "all around here, for hundreds of miles, is nothin' but dilapidated buildings and shacks and W. T. centers — not one factory, not one college worthy of the name! Nothin' but desolation and despair over all Down South." Grandpa was yelling by now, trembling and red-faced and really shouting out loud. "All of this mess is what J. D. and his kind call 'History'! What has it brought us but ignorance and poverty and death? What good did it ever do?"

Just then Dr. Blythe and his friend came out to the porch and ambled over to where Grandpa and I were sitting on the stilled swing. "Jimmy," he said, a really fierce look in his eyes, "I will tell you just this once. You will not talk to the boy about the Removal, the Return, the Redemption or the Confederate Christ." He patted a bulge in his breast pocket to emphasize the point. I think he had a gun in there. I didn't like him threatening Grandpa Jimmy like that, but he was a strong man, and I _was_ glad he made Grandpa stop talking like that.

Dr. Blythe motioned for me to get up and come with him. "We're going to change this miserable world, old man. And your grandson here is going to help." Grandpa tried to stand up, but J. D.'s friend gently pushed him until he sat back down on the swing. I heard my Grandpa gulp and sob, but I didn't look back. I had promised myself I wouldn't cry, and keeping a promise is part of being a man.

§

That last diary entry was a few days ago. After I left Grandpa Jimmy out there on the porch swing and went inside with J. D. and his friend, the people in the house got a call on their own phone (they were pretty rich, having their own phone and their own telly!) and told us all we would have to leave, that some Feds in airplanes were indeed still searching the county for more people to hang and that we had better get out quick.

Dr. Blythe's friend said he would take Mom and my little brothers to a place where they would be safe. "Son, we have to go," Mom said to me, hugging me real tight. I hugged and kissed my little twin brothers and wondered if I would ever seen them again. "J. D. will take care of you," she said. "Someday when you are famous and powerful, please try to find out where we are, or if it is a long time from now, please find out where your twin brothers are and help them."

I just barely kept my vow, just barely kept the tears back. "But where are you going?"

The silent stranger spoke out for the first time. "We are going to Jubilee, my boy. That is a place where W. T.'s can get away from all Yankees and Russkies."

"In the Republic," I whispered in awe. The man nodded.

"And I can't go?" My dreams of a tech job, of seeing the legendary lands of the Kaiser and the Tsar, watching their huge aeroplanes and Moon rockets, were fast fading. The man looked at J. D., who shook his head.

"Son," my uncle quietly, "you are a man now. You have things to do here to help your people." He nodded at my twin brothers. "Those two, they will go to the Republic and learn things that will help your people, too."

"But they're so little," I croaked. "I can learn things now."

"This war will go on a long time. It already has. But someday, maybe when they are grown, we will win it and get our lands back from the invaders."

While we were having this discussion, the roof above us suddenly started shaking, _whoop whoop, whoop! Sikorskys! The Feds!_

The people in the house came up from the basement and from upstairs rooms, grabbing up all kinds of guns and big metal tubes of some kind as they went, running out into the yard around the house. Shooting started right away, and lots of loud yelling.

"Come on, run!" Dr. Blythe screamed. He and his friend kept hollering for us to go down to the basement, almost throwing Mom and me and the twins down the stairs. Outside, Hell was breaking loose, with more guns firing and explosions and screams. Oh God, screams the like of which I had never heard. For long minutes, the gunfire never stopped, snaps and pops and rips and thuds and rattles like a million chains hitting tin roofs, many of them hitting the house, busting out windows, coming through the walls, smells of gunpowder and burning lumber overwhelming everything.

When we got down in the dark basement, I wondered where we could run to, but Dr. Blythe opened a hidden door in the wall paneling and he pushed us all into it. He picked up his backpack and gave it to me. He spoke real fast, and I knew right then that he wasn't coming with us. So I listened hard to everything I could hear over the loud noises outside, noises now coming into the house right above us. Yelling and shooting and screaming and stomping.

He said, "Son, in there is everything you will need. Use the gun to protect your Mom and yourself and your little brothers! Get them to safety first. Then you go and pass out the books to true people who will help us." In the half-light of the basement, I saw a kind of fear and a kind of wildness in his strange eyes. He wiped sweat from his face, then grabbed me and kissed me on both cheeks.

"After you do that, you will know what to do, my man. Now you go and do it! Run away from that door, quickly now!" He slammed the door shut and I heard him trashing the basement, I guess to make it look like nobody was down there but him.

I fumbled around in the backpack, found a small flashlight, and quickly led my family down into a moldy-smelling tunnel that was so low-ceilinged that Mom and I both had to hunch over to avoid hitting out heads on the supporting timbers. The twins were really scared but Mom kept hushing them so we couldn't be heard. We were running like that, all bent over, when the doorway area behind us collapsed in a _thud!_ of sound and a _whoosh!_ of air and a _slush-whump!_ of wet dirt. Then a tremendous _wham!_ shook everything and for a second I was afraid the tunnel would fall in on us, but it didn't.

That wet, stinky tunnel went on for a long, long ways, and when it slanted upward and stopped, I slowly and carefully opened a wooden trapdoor and we all came up out of the ground and found that we were in the woods way beyond the cornfields. I looked back toward the house but it was gone and instead a big old crater was there, belching up black smoke and big old flames. A bunch of armored Fed vehicles were buzzing around the area, and the burning hulks of the _Sikorskys_ looked like big old dragon-flies laying around. Every few seconds one of them would explode and spew bright streaks into the sky or across the ground. One of the armored Fed vehicles got hit by one of these streaks while I watched.

"Rocket weapons killing their own kind. Good!" I followed that by a curse, then turned around to see Mom with her bloodshot eyes wide open.

"Your Grandpa is still over there," she whispered.

I instantly loathed myself, even more than I detested the Feds. In my first test as a man, in the midst of life-threatening chaos, I had left my own Grandpa Jimmy to die.

Every day of my life is worse than the one before.

§

Miles away and days later, I am writing what will be my last entry in this diary. I have seen Mom and my little brothers to safety in a place that I cannot write down, in case my writing is captured by Feds.

Other people even have a copy of my diary that the host lady wrote down in her own hand. "My little man," that lady told me, "we had no idea you were so morally advanced, that you are able to express both tragedy and noble aspirations so beautifully. Our people will see to it that your work is known by the world." That nice lady and her nice words made me feel a little better for a little bit, but instead of writing all of this, I would still much rather be myself as a kid again, living in a tin-can trailer with my Dad and Grandpa Jimmy and my friends, everybody still there and still alive.

I left my mother and the twins there in the place Uncle J. D. had written down to go, and I memorized and then burned his written instructions and other important information. I know my mother's new friends will get my incomplete diary published, and I hope it is like Dr. Blythe's addendum to President Pike's book. But these last few pages I will be mailing to a sympathetic publisher's anonymous Down South address, as an addendum to that addendum, if they want it.

I am fully prepared now, as I write these last words, to do what a Man must do. Dr. Blythe's pamphlet gave me detailed instructions, and the money in the backpack gave me the means. His examples — in downtown Sherman and in that farm house — they gave me the courage.

It is a warm Saturday here in Atlanta, and as I approach the mailbox, scribbling in a school notebook, I have been drawing stares of the lots of rich-looking Yankees and Russkie occupiers who think I am just another little old worn-out street bum who lives here on the streets, a stiff-legged cripple all wrapped up in his greasy old overcoat and writing crazy stuff. Maybe they are partly right, but it is a crazy world and I have to try to change it.

By the time the mailman picks up this package I will be a mile away from here, across town — in the middle of enemy lunchtime crowds, in my bulging old overcoat, my old clothing that conceals fifty pounds of military high explosives and shrapnel strapped to my body, a bomb that will end my miserable life and the miserable lives of a lot of the enemies of my miserable people and my miserable nation.

I have vowed that the last thing I will think of is Grandpa Jimmy and how he thought all of this would lead to nothing. He said that we Southerners didn't know when to quit and I guess he was right about that, but I will show him what I can do, just one boy, one Southern man. God willing, I will even see Grandpa soon, and my Dad, and J. D., and Andrei. Maybe even stupid Russkie Bob will be there, too.

You all please wait for me, and welcome me to Heaven, for I am still kind of scared.

But I am coming home.

About the Author

**Arlan Andrews, Sr.** , has been publishing SF short stories and articles on esoteric subjects, humor and technology for over thirty years, with close to 500 appearances in magazines, newspapers and anthologies including _Analog_ , _Asimov's_ , _Amazing Stories_ , _Omni_ , _The New Scientist_ , _Fate_ , _Atlantis Rising_ , and many other venues worldwide.

His latest fiction appeared in _Analog_ (Oct. 2010); his latest non-fiction in _Atlantis Rising_ (8/2010)

A professional engineer, Arlan formerly worked at White Sands Missile Range, the White House Science Office and other high tech organizations. He is the founder of SIGMA, the science fiction think tank, and lives with his wife and small dogs next to a canal on the Texas Gulf Coast.

# The Bitterness of Apples

by Priya Sharma

Her: I always knew when Adam was dreaming of Eden. His breathing changed, his eyes flickered beneath their lids. His face transformed to pleasure, then to pain. He'd murmur to himself and turn about as though on a bed of nails. I knew he was in Eden and I envied his restless sleep because I never dreamt of it at all.

§

Him: Eve is all I ever wanted for myself. All the things I could have had and my heart fell upon her. She stood before me and I never realised perfection until she smiled.

I love her more than any other could. I love her best.

§

Adam was revealed to me in fragments, with each bite of the apple. Not just Adam but Eden too. The colours made my eyes ache, the light pulsing as though it had a beat. Birdsong reverberated on my eardrums. The breeze and sun slipped over my bare skin.

I'd spent so long being blind. I'd never seen the line along Adam's thighs as they tensed. The way his throat moved as he laughed. The run of his ribs. The ridiculous piece of flesh that looked stuck on.

When I put my mouth on his, my breasts against his chest, my arms about his shoulders, that strange piece of flesh between his legs reinvented itself. Somehow it didn't seem so ridiculous anymore.

The apple was sour by the way.

§

We apportion blame. It doesn't matter. However we try and divide it up between us, the outcome is still the same and if we are despised, it's because we are despicable.

§

When Adam held me it seemed that we were made of each other after all. Was it really so wrong?

Afterwards, Adam fed me figs, not apples, split open to reveal their private parts. As we dozed in the tree's shade it shed leaves to cover us and keep us warm.

§

**Eve has finally stopped raging. Now all she wants is to make everything right. For everyone to have of a piece of the Eden that is lost to them. That we lost. To glimpse the grandeur. I've been watching her. I've seen her stop people on the street. A couple arguing. A trickster mid-hustle. An angry mother. She admonishes them gently as if to say,** _My children, how can you be so unkind to one another?_

It wasn't always so with her.

§

God didn't roar as he cast us out of Eden. His voice was as calm and cutting as a glacier. Then silence. We were alone, incarcerated in the empty world.

That damned snake.

§

Every woman reminds me of Eve. I've loved a fragment of her smile on another woman's face, the curve of her eyelashes. The contour of a knee or fingernail. The abandonment of joy and sorrow and the surrender of herself. Her DNA arranged and rearranged until she was lost. Her exquisite genes diluted but she was there, somewhere, if only I'd known how to find her.

Eve, where were you all those years?

§

The apple didn't prepare me for everything. We had to work out some things for ourselves. I thought my belly was swollen from some malady. I grew tired and sickened for all manner of things. Adam lay beside me, crying. He was afraid. _I love you, Eve_ , he'd say, as though that alone could save me. _I love you_ , as though that could be enough.

There was blood and slickness down my legs and the pain began. I screamed and screamed. The place where I had sinned was tearing me apart. I was coming undone. Then there was another voice screaming in the vastness. A tiny being, as afraid and naked as we'd once been. We called him Cain.

The next time was easier. It was another son, Abel. Then the daughters. They made me sad. I knew what they had coming.

Adam and I carried our love between us like a corpse. There was sweetness. Kindness. There was patience but the loss of paradise was too much for our love to bear. Grief is corrosive, as are guilt, shame and a liberal dose of blame.

Adam blamed me in silence. It was in the way he snapped at me and stalked about the house. He made love to me in anger. How could he not blame me when I blamed myself?

So we doled out our children. We separated ourselves. We formed two tribes. Of course, we didn't know we were at war, any more than we'd first known we were in love. Love and hate. The sparring of the hearth and the intimacy of battle. Our children were two armies of lovers and enemies.

§

I lost sight of Eve. I wandered in the world, lost my purpose and myself. Aching drove me to extremes. I tried to get God's attention. I sinned until sinning became a habit, as mundane as whistling. This drove me to a course of self-improvement, purgatives and self denial, of purity and religious mania. I sought God in the tongues of prophets and stone temples whose steps stretched to heaven.

He didn't answer. He wasn't there. I was dead to Him. Dead to Eden. Dead to Eve.

§

I sent out scouts in search of Eden. I had no idea how far from the garden we'd fallen. My mourning ceased to be a bargaining with a deaf God but a rage that seethed and boiled. I wanted to go home. He had no right to keep me out. I set my men upon Adam's tribe, convinced he was keeping Eden from me. Cain, our first son, had joined me at the division of our progeny. He returned with his brother, Abel.

Abel was hung upon the rack and questioned, under my supervision. Pokers, irons and fire were used, as were flails and twisting hooks. I hardened myself against his cries. He had nothing worth the knowing. The only thing satisfied was my cruelty. I would have Eden back. I would find it and it would be mine alone. It was a madness that consumed me.

Skinless, limbless, eyeless Abel was carried out to die in the fields by Cain, whom I never saw again. I ordered more of my children brought to the inquisition chamber. It was a factory of pain.

Call me Lilith. I deserve it. My only consolation is that when I think of that time, I still weep.

§

The tribes bred and spread until the earth was covered. Everything gets mixed up eventually.

§

I spent an eternity wandering. I covered my face with ash and staggered along dry, cracked river beds. Through fields of parched earth. There was no point to life. The apple was rotten to the core. The tree of wisdom dead. Everything was forfeit. I'd outlived the children I hadn't murdered.

I found an abandoned hovel in the hills. I lay on the dirt floor and watched the moon through the crack in the roof and waited to die.

§

I found Eve again in Kensington. I was there at the invitation of a billionaire because of my reputation as a fixer and a finder. He was vague about what he did, like all those with obscene riches are. My nonchalance impressed him. Each generation thinks they are the pinnacle of humanity and depravity but there are only the same sins and follies with the most minor variations.

We left the excesses of narcotics and flesh on offer and went up to his private garden on the roof. The lift doors opened. I felt like we were plummeting as he said, "Eva made my garden. Isn't it sublime? A little piece of heaven, here in London."

Every part of me knew that Eva was Eve. It wasn't a little piece of heaven. A little piece of Eden.

§

I lay there watching the moon wax and wane. I waited but didn't die. Instead, I was found and taken to Egypt as a slave. I was marched, manacled to others, to the temples by the Nile. The Ibises, arrogant in their elegance, witnessed the outrages I was subject to. Until that time I thought I'd understood all the pains of womanhood. I didn't know there could be more.

Imagining myself an old woman I was shocked to see my reflection in the burnished shields and swords of the Pharaoh's guards. I was tall and slender as a bow, unblemished by age. The Pharaoh's eyes glittered behind his golden mask. He was a fitting punishment for my crimes. His cruelty exceeded only my own. I had his son, a boy called Moses. Of all my children, he was the one I loved the most. That's why I set him free. Tried to get him far from me. That brought its own catastrophes.

I didn't like Egypt. Or Rome. They imagined themselves gods.

§

I sat in the garden in Kensington. Water poured from one pool to another, from heights that made it sing a song of another garden, long ago. Eve had been clever in her planting. She'd bred flowers so close to the ones I'd known, their petals thin as gauze. Variegated leaves as fine as parchment. Subtle scents that carried on the breeze. I told my host that I was crying because it was the most beautiful garden I'd ever seen.

§

My anger ebbed. I was alive to the world again, piece by piece. I broke my heart over the most trivial of things, like a cracked pot or a lost sheep. I watched the world turned until I didn't recognise it any more. Kings and queens, revolutionaries and whores. They were all the same to me. I missed Adam's love and anger. I wanted to find Eden but this time I wanted it for him.

§

I spent the following years watching Eve, deliberating how best to make amends. She had lovers, an eclectic mix of men but mainly it was the powerful sort who were drawn to her. Their chauffeurs waited patiently until they emerged from her building into the night, looking disarrayed and wounded. She always turned them out when she'd finished with them.

Afterwards the lights of her apartment stayed on, sometimes until dawn. I'd glimpse her pacing about. Unfulfilled. Unsatisfied.

§

God would speak in such tongues that all Eden understood. Flowers quivered. Grass trembled. The antelope stopped in its race across the plain. The lion bowed his head. Adam and I did the same.

I miss God's voice. I miss Adam's. Now there is only a multitude of silences.

§

I learnt her habits and her circle. My secret was my indirectness. Insinuation. I let myself be known to her through others. I let it be known how useful I might be. A few words in the correct ear, my card pushed into their palm. All I had to do was wait.

§

How else do you go about finding a piece of real estate called Eden? Not in a window or a brochure. An acquaintance handed me a card.

I'd tried to be happy in this world, or at least content. I'd made a life of sorts. All my searches for Eden had led to nothing. I kept remembering the last time I saw Adam. Our chariots broke up the bodies beneath the wheels. Now our prodigious children are off fighting their own wars.

§

I was disappointed when she didn't recognise me. At least it meant she didn't spit in my face. It was ridiculous to think that she might know me. That I hadn't changed that much, but of course I have.

§

There is this feeling in my chest. I think it might be hope.

§

Eve climbed into the car and we shook hands. Then she retreated to the far corner, sliding over the leather seats and pulling the arm rest down between us to forbid further contact. She had an old fashioned formality about her that discouraged intimacy. Her foot tapped, either from frustration or fear. She frowned when I showed her the key that lay in my palm. Eden had no keys.

I couldn't help but stare. Eve was still beautiful. She was Negro, Oriental, Asian and Caucasian. Every race was in her face but instead of confusion there was clarity. She is the pure source of everyone.

§

We left London early. The sun had yet to bathe the litter and graffiti in golden light.

He made me uncomfortable. His scrutiny was rude. When I asked if we were headed to the airport he smiled in a way that made me think I'd made a mistake in trusting him. Sensing my unhappiness his strange, composite face rearranged itself into sadness. He turned away and stared out of the window. After half an hour of silence he addressed me again as though we could start afresh. He made chit chat but was studying me. I made up some of the answers, even to the most innocent questions and I could tell from his face that he knew a great deal about me. That I was telling him lies.

§

I've done wicked things.

§

We were only a few hours' drive from London but we'd arrived. It was a village, nestled in the loop of a sluggish river. When I lowered the window, there was birdsong and cottages with leaded diamond panes. Ancient elms guarded the church. The pub was of black and white beams. Very picturesque.

I sighed. I'd had my fill of con men and was angry at myself for being taken in again.

"I don't like being misled."

"It's here."

"You've wasted my time."

"I promise you, what you're looking for is here."

He was in earnest. The key offered up. It lay on his palm, just beyond my reach. I'd have to stretch out to take it. I dithered. I had an overwhelming feeling of familiarity that I couldn't place.

I raised the armrest.

§

The first sin was mine. I coveted.

The house was a dilapidated pile, the country seat of some inbred, decayed line. The drive swept around to the front doors and the dried up fountain in which a fawn danced. The house itself was caught between neglect and resurrection. Roof tiles had yet to be replaced but the window frames and doors had been repainted.

"Are you certain?" I asked again.

"Absolutely."

"I don't believe it."

"It's greatly changed. Eden can never be whole again but what you seek is here, Eve." That startled me. I was known as Eva. "We can turn around and leave but now you're here you might as well have a look."

"I look but there's no guarantee I'll give you the money. Not until I'm satisfied."

"That's fair."

He snatched his hand away as I reach for the key.

"Don't play games with me."

"The key is not Eden. There's a separate fee for this," he looked furtive, "there's something else I want from you."

"We had an agreement."

"A kiss."

"What?"

"Please." He held up both hands, as if I were the one that was holding him to ransom. "The door's unlocked. You've not been harmed so far. You're safe. You can leave whenever you want. Here, take the key."

§

She tasted of apples.

§

There was no lust or intrusive tongue. His parted lips were cool and smooth as he pressed his mouth against mine. He was trembling, his hands fluttering. It was an innocent kiss, loaded with longing and chasteness. He almost whimpered.

§

It was old fashioned key, all teeth and a ring.

"For the house?" Eve asked.

"No, for the lower garden door."

**I was dazed and dizzy. I wanted to say,** _I've made a mistake_ **. I wanted to take back the key and say,** _Stay with me_ **.**

I should have choreographed a meeting. Spent some time in her company as though we were any two people. I should've wooed her and won her.

Stay with me. Love me. Love me like I love you.

"Right then."

"Yes."

There were no grand final moments. No momentous farewells. There never are. Moments of true finality can never be grand enough. There was only the closing of the car door before I was ready to hear it.

§

I looked back. I could feel his eyes behind the smoked glass. My feet crunched on the gravel. A collared cat came to greet me. An opportunistic hunter of affection, it rolled onto its back.

The path wound around to the back of the house. Once a formal garden, it was a shamble of broken balustrades and overturned urns. Ferns grew with abandon. There were foxgloves for my fibrillating heart, the purple trumpets plugged by bumblebees.

I followed the steps down through this glorious wilderness, to the door in the lower garden wall. The key found the lock freshly oiled and eager. I could barely breathe. The door swung open and the kitchen garden was revealed, the fantasy of a Victorian gentleman with a passion for pineapples in winter.

I passed the potting shed where empty terracotta pots lay stacked on their side, hungry mouths gaping. Hoes, hooks and spades hung on the wall, all brushed clean after their labours. Then the greenhouses, the air inside smelt hot and promising.

The whole of the walled garden opened up before me. This was where the time had been invested. Flowers had been planted alongside vegetables to lure the pollinators. There were the hymns of bees in lavender. Blackbirds, yellow eyed and beaked, sunned themselves.

§

Eden came from chaos. God made His garden from a swamp. There was no need for toil. All that we needed grew around us like a gift. The bough, heavy with fruit would bend towards us. It was all there for the taking.

Fruits trees were trained along wires and walls, crucified for the crime of fruitfulness. Cachabons made of rain nestled on velvet cabbage leaves. Globe artichokes with meaty heads grew alongside the Jerusalem variety, whose treasure was buried underground. Rows of graceful gladioli looked down on Sweet Williams who were shy but no less beautiful. Rude, robust rhubarb was being forced under pots. Onions' unprepossessing flowers gave no clue to the vitality hidden in the bulbs.

The miracle of phyllotactic architecture. The Fibonacci sequence. The Golden proportion. It was all here in the head of a sunflower, in the arrangement of the petals and seeds. God's marvellous constructions. Proof He is a scientist, an artist, a mathematician.

Entranced, I didn't see him. He'd stopped working, leaning on his spade to watch me. He'd been digging, the patch of soil at his feet chopped up. His shirt sleeves were rolled up. He needed a haircut.

I ran to him, crying, "Adam!"

§

I watched from the door. Over Eve's shoulder, Adam's face darkened when he saw me. He hated that I'd found her first.

**Adam, losing sight of** _you_ **was never a problem. I could see your clumsy hand everywhere- such as plundering treasures from around the globe which you then promptly sold, in the ridiculous GMO apple venture, in the buying up of great tracts of the Middle East in your search for Eden. Your career in theology, as though your papers could redeem you. You wrote them to Him like a letter to some maiden aunt by way of apology for some social transgression.**

Adam, you are stupid and low. I despise you. You fool. You bumbler. Why did you ever let her go?

§

This is Eden after all.

§

My task is done. Eden is reclaimed. All that was divided is reunited. Now I will return to crawling on my belly and eating dust. The only part of my fate that I can't bear is her hating me. Adam's punishment is to toil. Eve's punishment is to always want for him and mine is to always want for her.

Was this part of His plan? Was the burden of knowledge too great? Why give it to me? He knew how I loved her. He must've known I'd tell. He must've known I'd give her the apple because it was precious. He must have known that I'd give it her because it was the only thing I had to give.

About the Author

**Priya Sharma** lives and works on the Wirral, UK. She has had short stories accepted by a variety of magazines including _Albedo One_ , _On Spec_ , _Fantasy magazine_ , _Dark Tales_ , _Not One of Us_ and _Zahir_. She has a vast array of rejections for her novels.

You can find out more about her and her writing at www.priyasharmafiction.co.uk

# Travelling by Air

by Ian Sales

Muroc Dry Lake Bed, Nevada: a vast expanse of salt flats, featureless, empty. An irregular line of Quonset huts crowds against one edge. Beside them is a pair of corrugated tin hangars and a control tower on wooden stilts. A group of men, some in uniform, has gathered on the shore of the dry lake. Although there is little to see, they still stare up into the cloudless desert sky. Somewhere above them, and several miles away, Chuck Yeager is preparing to break the Sound Barrier.

It is a curiously vicarious experience, witnessing an historic event that cannot be seen.

However, the watchers will hear. If the theory is correct, then a sonic boom will echo across Muroc Lake — the first ever caused by a manned object. The sound will signify that the Bell X-1, 'Glamorous Glennis', has exceeded Mach 1.

Speaker-horns atop a van relay the radio conversations between the control tower and the B-29 mothership, giving a breathless running commentary as the X-1 disengages from the aircraft which has carried it up into the sky. The observer in the B-29 describes what the watchers cannot see: the orange bullet-shape dropping away from the mothership, the rockets igniting with a crackle and a roar, the X-1 rising into a steep climb ...

The watchers hold their breath.

That Yeager will fail is unthinkable. On earlier flights, he had mentioned the severe buffeting that occurred as the X-1 neared the Sound Barrier, but passed it off as inconsequential in his slow drawl. The watchers know Yeager will fly through it. Few know he has a broken rib, the result of a fall from a horse the night before. After too many beers, he and his wife, Glennis, had borrowed a pair of horses from Pancho's and gone riding. In a fit of drunken bravado, Yeager had tried to jump a fence... and fallen from the saddle.

"He's diving!" cries the man on the B-29.

This is it. Powered by its XLR-11 rocket engine, the orange bullet of the Bell X-1 will surely hit Mach 1. And pass through it. Yeager will hold it together. Yeager will ...

"He's in a flat spin!" cries the commentator.

The watchers turn to stare at one another. Chuck Yeager augers in.

Before their eyes an orange streak hurtles from the sky and, just over the horizon, smashes itself into a thousand pieces. Clouds of thick black smoke roil across the salt pan. A fire truck splutters into life, but there is nothing that can be done.

Chuck Yeager has augered in.

§

The windows of the overseas departure lounge offered an excellent view across Heathrow Aerodrome's apron. Geraldine Marsh could see her reflection in the glass, faint and ghostly, hovering above the de Havilland SuperComet in which she would be flying. The aircraft was a blue, white and silver crucifix in the centre of the tarmacadam. Geraldine knew little about aeroplanes, only that to travel by air was a matter of hours, rather than the days it took by sea. It was also a great deal more expensive. But she was not paying for this eight-hour flight to New York. Her father, Harold Marsh, had bought the ticket.

Geraldine pulled her fur coat in tighter about herself. She felt frightened at the prospect of speeding through the stratosphere in a metal tube. Her fear was nonsensical, of course. Air travel was perfectly safe. There had been aeroplane crashes, true — but no more than one or two each year. The SuperComet had an excellent safety record. The British Overseas Airways Corporation had been operating them for nearly twenty years, and fewer than a dozen had been lost.

A bell sounded politely behind her and she turned to see two stewardesses in BOAC uniforms: one blonde and one brunette, both very pretty. Geraldine glanced about the room at her fellow passengers. She was the only woman. All the rest appeared to be business men, clutching gleaming leather briefcases in their hands.

The blonde stewardess said brightly: "If I may have your attention, please. We will begin boarding the aeroplane in just a moment."

Geraldine glanced at her wristwatch. If the schedule were accurate, she would be airborne in another thirty minutes. She crossed to one of the deep leather armchairs, sank into it and crossed one leg over the other with a whisper of stockings. From her handbag, she fished out her cigarette case, clicked it open, and picked out a filter-tip. Before she had even placed the cigarette between her lips, one of her fellow passengers had shot to his feet and hurried across. He stood before her, bent at the waist and held out a gold lighter, thumb poised to strike.

"You're most kind," Geraldine murmured.

The man's thumb descended. Geraldine leant forward, and inhaled. Her cigarette crackled and lit.

"My pleasure," the man replied.

After slipping his lighter back into his pocket, he dropped into the armchair beside Geraldine. "I hope you don't mind," he said. He smiled, but the smile did not reach his eyes. "You're travelling to New York?"

What an asinine question, thought Geraldine. She would not be here in the departure lounge if she were not. But it was best to be polite, so she replied, "Yes. To visit my cousins."

"I see you're not married." He looked pointedly at her left hand.

Wishing she had not removed her gloves, Geraldine slowly slid her hand from the chair's arm into her lap, and made a fist. "No," she replied as calmly as she could. "No, I'm not." She gave a brittle smile.

"Perhaps I should introduce myself."

Geraldine did not like the man's expression. She turned to stare out at the apron, and took another drag from her cigarette.

"Cunningham, John Cunningham."

"Pleased to meet you," Geraldine replied automatically, not shifting her gaze.

"I'm flying to New York," Cunningham continued, "on business."

"Indeed."

Why would the man not leave her alone? She was doing her best to show him that his attentions were not welcome, but the message did not seem to be sinking in. If only her father had not insisted she travel by air. Sea was so much more civilised. At least aboard a ship Geraldine could have found some suitable travelling companions...

The bell rang again. Geraldine glanced up to see the stewardesses had reappeared.

"We may now board," declared the blonde stewardess. She set off across the lounge at a quick trot, stride restricted by her pencil skirt, high heels loud on the parquet floor.

The other stewardess approached Geraldine and, with a quick glance at Cunningham, asked, "Miss Marsh? Perhaps you should like to be the first to board?"

Geraldine twisted in her seat and stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray at her side. "Yes, of course," she replied gratefully. Rising to her feet, she gave Cunningham a polite nod, and followed the stewardess towards the door that led down wide stairs and onto the apron. The steps were steep, not designed for women in constricting skirts and high heels, and both Geraldine and the stewardess were forced to take them slowly and carefully.

Waiting for them at the foot of the stairs was a large white vehicle, with the BOAC "speedbird" prominent on its side. It was a shooting-brake of some sort, a six-wheeled car with seats for some dozen passengers.

The stewardess saw her seated, and then gently closed the door. The shooting-brake pulled smoothly away from the terminal and headed across the tarmac towards the SuperComet.

Geraldine alighted from the car and climbed the red-carpeted stairs to the aeroplane's entrance. These too were uncomfortably steep. At the top, yet more stewardesses in BOAC livery greeted her as she stepped into the aircraft. "May I take your coat?" asked one, reaching out. Geraldine slipped it off her shoulders.

"Oh, it's quite lovely," said the stewardess. "Fox, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," replied Geraldine, glancing about her. This was the first time she had seen the interior of an aeroplane. Oh, she had seen the BOAC brochures, and those stuffy documentary programmes on air travel the BBC would insist on broadcasting, but this was her first real view of the inside of an aeroplane.

It was really quite luxurious. Lines of wide leather seats, three abreast, stretched the length of the cabin, two to the left of the aisle and a single seat to the right. The windows — or did one call them portholes? — had dainty little curtains. The carpet underfoot was deep and soft. Most noticeable was the smell: of rich leather, rich food, and pleasantly-scented cleaning materials. Geraldine breathed in through her nose. She could just detect a faintly disturbing tang, as of burnt metal.

"If you would like to follow me?" asked one of the stewardesses. She stretched out an arm to point, palm uppermost, down the aeroplane's wide aisle. "Your seat is this way."

Geraldine followed her to a seat halfway along the fuselage. The stewardess indicated the single seat to Geraldine's right. "This is your seat," she said. "It's just in front of the wing, so one shouldn't be able to hear the engines."

"You're very kind," responded Geraldine, carefully lowering herself into the chair. She was grateful the seat was not one of a pair. She didn't think she could have borne being seated next to that man for eight hours. Again, she rued her lack of a travelling companion. Perhaps she should have asked Father to provide a chaperone. But it was too late now.

The other passengers were beginning to filter onto the aircraft. Geraldine watched them as they were directed to their seats by the stewardesses. It was rather like sea travel, the way one was treated, the implacable politeness of the aircraft's crew.

Geraldine saw Cunningham take his place several rows in front of her. Her relief was short-lived. Every other passenger glanced her way before settling into his seat.

For eight hours, Geraldine would be trapped in this metal tube, with no escape from their attentions.

§

Chuck Yeager does not auger in. He breaks the Sound Barrier in the Bell X-1. He even receives a medal from the President for it.

Twenty years later, Joe Walker, ex- of the X-15 programme, is flying in a F-104 Starfighter chase-plane behind the second prototype of the XB-70 Valkyrie supersonic bomber. He is not watching the huge white delta-winged aircraft cruising before him. He is thinking about mortality. A friend of his had been killed a week before in a car crash. A test pilot, like Walker. Live fast, drive fast, die young: the test pilot way of life. Walker, however, is not some hot-shot jet-jockey, but an engineer-pilot, a married man, a father. He has responsibilities, and test piloting is a dangerous career.

Walker thinks about how close he had been to death in the X-15 programme: strapped into the sleek black titanium rocket-plane as it hung from its pylon on the mothership's wing and the ground crew pumped explosive rocket fuel into its thin-walled tanks. That was before the X-15 had even left the ground! If the rocket fuel had ignited, they would have been picking up pieces of the pilot from all over Edwards Air Force Base.

Walker had been up to the edge of space in that plane, up where the air was so thin the X-15's control surfaces had no grip. He'd pulled it back at the brink, regained control and brought the X-15 down, brought it down to a deadstick landing on the salt flats. For a brief while, he'd even held the world record for the highest altitude ever reached by a plane.

A flash of sunlight from one of the XB-70's twin tailplanes momentarily blinds Walker. He throttles back and dips the nose of his F-104. He has been drifting too close. He can see the knife-edge slash of the Valkyrie's wing dominating his view. Inside his helmet, he shakes his head. Too close, too close. He nearly clipped the bomber. Sweating unexpectedly, he falls even further back.

"Joe?" asks one of the other chase-plane pilots over the radio. "You okay?"

"Yeah," he replies. "It's nothing."

"Hey, nix on the chatter. Over," comes the voice of the XB-70's pilot.

Through his sun visor, Walker grins at the rear of the Valkyrie.

§

Geraldine Marsh placed her laptop at her feet and stared out the window of the departure lounge at the Supersonic Transports perched at Heathrow Airport's many gates. There were all kinds there, most of which she recognised: Convairs, Rockwells, a General Dynamics or two. There was even an Anglo-French Concorde, dwarfed by the huge American wide-body SST airliners around it.

Geraldine had a seat booked on a United Airlines Rockwell SST-140. Four hours after take-off, she would be at John F Kennedy Airport, with plenty of time to make the meeting at the company's headquarters in Rochester, New York.

Her reflection stared back at her from the tinted glass and Geraldine smiled ruefully at the doppelgänger. Salarywoman Marsh. Salarymen had their _waishatu_ , their "uniform" of dark suit, white shirt and sober tie; but the same insistence on standardised corporate dress made Geraldine look more like a _konpanion_ than a female executive. The above-the-knee skirt, the tailored jacket, the tan pantyhose, the high heels... Even the make-up — heavier than Geraldine felt comfortable wearing — was "expected", although the Company manual did not explicitly say as much. But if you wanted to get ahead, Geraldine told herself as she checked her reflection's lipstick, then you played by the rules, written _and_ unwritten.

She rotated her shoulders inside her jacket and tugged ineffectually on the hem. It had been cut to look smart only when buttoned up, and then it was uncomfortably constricting. Sighing, she briefly wished the head of UK Operations had decided to send someone else. But no, she didn't really want that. This presentation was her chance to succeed, to impress the executives in Rochester. There were few enough opportunities for women to climb the corporate ladder. Geraldine had to work twice as hard as her male colleagues, just to show them she was as "effective" as they were. Too often she had seen upper management close ranks against a female candidate.

There was a harsh click as the airport PA came on-line, and the modulated tones of the announcer said, "Flight UA14 will now begin boarding at gate nine. Thank you."

That was Geraldine's flight. She bent and picked up her laptop. She had spotted gate nine on her earlier stroll through the departure lounge. It was off to her right, hidden behind the branch of Waldenbooks. She headed in that direction, her heels clop-clopping on the tiled floor.

At the gate, Geraldine fished in a side-pocket of her laptop carry-case for her boarding card, annoyed that only men's jackets had pockets. Of course, pockets would ruin the hang of her jacket, spoil the effect it had been carefully tailored to present. Male clothing was designed to display a man's status or wealth and women's clothing solely to accentuate the physique.

It suddenly occurred to Geraldine that this might the reason behind her trip to Rochester. She could imagine her boss saying, "We'll let Geraldine do it: a pretty face might take the board's mind off what the figures actually mean"... She groaned under her breath. So she was nothing but a _konpanion_ after all — but rather than draped across the bonnet of a car, she was going to be draped across the quarterly Profit and Loss account of the UK subsidiary.

Suddenly, this whole trip seemed like a huge step backwards in her career.

After her boarding card had been checked, Geraldine made her way along the plastic-smelling passage of the jetway. The heavy door of the aircraft gaped wide, and within the SST's lit interior stood two pleasantly-smiling air hostesses in United Airlines livery. Geraldine handed the stub of her boarding card to one. The air hostess glanced at it and then stretched out a hand. "Your seat is along there, Ms. About halfway down."

Geraldine hefted her laptop and headed in the indicated direction, scanning the seat numbers as she did so. She had a window seat, but glancing through the tiny window she could see only a wide expanse of delta-wing. She sat, stowed her laptop beneath her seat and settled back.

Geraldine was flicking through the in-flight magazine when a man lowered himself into the seat next to her. She looked across and saw he was in his mid-thirties, smartly dressed in a sombre suit and corporate tie: a salaryman, then. He had a high forehead, neatly-cut brown hair and large glasses. He smiled at her. "Hi," he said, in an American accent.

Geraldine nodded warily.

The American began to settle himself into his seat with a series of wriggles and fidgets. "Pardon me," he said, cheerfully, "but it's awful hard to get comfortable in these, isn't it?" He glanced across at her, then dropped his eyes to her lap. Geraldine felt an urge to tug her skirt hem over her nyloned thighs.

The American lifted his gaze to her face. "Todd Hennessy," he said.

Geraldine introduced herself.

"Going to the US on business, Geraldine?"

"Of course," she replied. "Only corporations can afford seats in these supersonic sardine cans."

"Yeah, right. Returning after business in the UK myself." Hennessy leaned close, and his tone turned conspiratorial. "Hey, maybe we could go for a drink after we land. I know this great bar in Manhattan."

"I don't think so," Geraldine replied frostily.

Hennessy settled back in his chair. "Hey, don't sweat it. We got four hours to get to know each other. I'm sure by the time we hit JFK we'll be best buddies."

Dismayed, Geraldine turned to stare out of the window, and wondered if it was too late to disembark.

§

Chuck Yeager does not die. Joe Walker does. Yeager makes his historic flight, smashes the Sound Barrier into a million pieces with the blunt orange nose of his 'Glamorous Glennis'. Yeager's achievement begins Muroc Lake, soon renamed Edwards Air Force Base, on its long history as a centre of cutting edge aviation research.

Twenty years later, the tailplane of Joe Walker's F-104 chase-plane clips the wing of the XB-70. His fighter flips onto the wing surface, is dragged across the supersonic bomber, destroying both of the Valkyrie's tailplanes in the process. Walker's Starfighter explodes. The XB-70 continues in level flight for sixteen seconds... and then goes into a flat spin. One pilot ejects, destroying his knees in the process; the other rides the Valkyrie down to the desert floor. The XB-70 programme dies with the crash.

§

Geraldine Blake, née Marsh, could feel the man's eyes on her again. She refused to look at him, to give him the satisfaction of knowing he had provoked a reaction.

Where the hell was David? He'd disappeared twenty minutes ago, saying he was only getting a newspaper. He'd walked off without a backwards glance and left her to be ogled by some Neanderthal in a football shirt.

This was supposed to be a holiday: flying to Florida for a fortnight in the sun. Geraldine definitely needed it — work had not been going well recently. She knew she was the best candidate for the team leader position, but she had a horrible suspicion it'd go to one of her male colleagues. She couldn't stay on at the firm if they passed her over for promotion again.

Her feet ached. Why had she worn heels? Looking about her, Geraldine spotted an old woman with a halo of wispy hair, dressed in a shell-suit. And over there by the bank of monitors displaying flight information was a scruffy-looking young man in jeans, black shirt and trainers. Both had obviously dressed for comfort. But not Geraldine Blake. No, she had worn a smart dress and high heels for this, her first time travelling by air. David's "you look nice" was no comfort after stalking miles through Heathrow Airport in three-inch heels.

Leaning back, Geraldine closed her eyes and tried to relax. It didn't work. That bloody Neanderthal was still staring at her. She could feel it, like a sunlamp on her flesh. What had she done to warrant such naked attention? Hadn't the idiot seen her with David?

His stare was beginning to frighten her — if his leer stretched any wider it'd be sexual harassment. Geraldine rose to her feet, and found another seat in the waiting area, where the lecher could not see her. She still felt uncomfortable — no, _discomforted_. She wore skirts and heels to work, but that was different. Among friends; well, colleagues. Here, Geraldine was in the company of strangers, and whatever message they were picking up from her outfit, it wasn't the one she intended. Much as it pained her to admit it — she refused to play the "little woman", refused to believe such a creature still existed in this day and age — Geraldine would have felt more secure with David beside her.

Rooting around in her bag, she found the cardigan she'd packed in case it turned cold. She hurriedly pulled it on.

After pushing the last button into its hole, she looked up. Across the aisle, a man was staring at her. Geraldine felt like swearing. Was nowhere safe? Then she caught his expression — it was anything but lascivious. His gaze dropped to her nyloned legs and, as if the new angle made it clear, she identified the emotion on his face. It was contempt. What had she done to deserve _that_?

Certain other facts about the man occurred to her. He was clearly of Arab extraction, although he wore a T-shirt and jeans. He held a rosary looped through one hand, the beads of which he repeatedly fingered, sliding them back and forth on their chain. At his feet sat large cabin bag. There was nothing suspicious in that, but for the overly-protective way he guarded it with his lower legs...

Now Geraldine was even more frightened. Her first time in an aeroplane, and she was scaring herself silly.

She folded her arms tightly across her bosom, and looked away, hunting for something, _anything_ , to dispel from her mind the image of a burning plane hurtling into the ground. She found it: David approaching, a sheepish grin on his face. He waved a magazine — a bloody car magazine, Geraldine saw — and said, "Sorry, love. Didn't realise the time."

Geraldine rose to her feet. She ignored the man glaring at her from across the aisle; she refused to look across at the man who had been ogling her earlier. She had eyes only for David.

"Not long now," he said. He glanced across at the huge picture window giving out onto the apron. "We'll be boarding in about ten minutes."

He turned away from her, took a couple of steps forward. "In fact," he added, "you can see our plane." He reached back for her hand.

She took it and let herself be pulled forward and into his side. His arm went about her waist.

"There it is," he said. "It's an Airbus."

In fact, it was a Boeing 777, but it didn't matter that David was wrong. He was only saying it to demonstrate that he was qualified to protect her.

He glanced down at her. "It's perfectly safe," he added, and she marvelled that the two of them could live side-by-side in entirely different worlds.

"Of course it is, dear," Geraldine replied quietly. "Of course it is."

About the Author

**Ian Sales** has been published in _Postscripts_ , _Jupiter_ , _M-Brane SF_ and the _Catastrophia_ anthology from PS Publishing. He reviews books for _Interzone_ and for _Vector_ , the critical journal of the BSFA, and DVDs for _VideoVista_. He is represented by the John Jarrold Literary Agency. His blog can be found at http://iansales.com.

# Interview with Brandon H. Bell, co-editor of _Aether Age_

**Alt Hist:** For the benefit of readers of _Alt Hist_ can you summarise what _Aether Age: Helios_ is all about?

**Brandon:** Sure, and thanks for talking with me about the anthology. _Aether Age (AeA)_ asks one basic question: what if one event changed everything? The resulting changes being an ancient world, roughly from 500 to 100 BCE, going through industrial revolutions and a subsequent space race. Meanwhile, the earth has passed into a breathable aether. There are connections between these two facets of _Aether Age_ , but we leave it to the reader to make inferences that will either find confirmation or correction in the second AeA anthology, _Tartaros_.

**Alt Hist:** One of the main ideas behind the collection is what if the ancient civilisations underwent industrial revolutions? Can you tell us more about the combination of factors that cause an industrial revolution to happen at this time?

**Brandon:** One of the neat things about _The Aether Age_ is the initial conditions, so to speak, of our scenario were hashed out with a group of science fiction and fantasy writers, with certain scenarios and concepts making it in our little bazaar of ideas and others not. We decided early on that there'd be no green aliens popping out with ray guns. We didn't want aliens building the pyramids, or any of that sort of new age-ism type of content. Our aliens, almost exclusively off-stage, introduce not a series of technologies to early man, or even a branch of science. Rather, it is a single piece of technology simply introduced much earlier in history coupled with these people's realization that 'something is up there', that drives progress.

We have a book club guide at the end of the anthology, and one of the questions is "What is the 'single prime to the pump of progress' that leads to industrial revolutions and social change? Do you agree this would be enough to lead to such drastic changes?" I'm being coy about what that single technology is, but when you read the book, you'll find out in the first story, so I don't want to ruin it for the readers.

**Alt Hist:** It seems like your aim is to create a shared world environment for writers. Is that the case and what are the guidelines for writing within the Aether Age?

**Brandon:** If interested readers/writers go to the site (http://aether-age.com) there is a guidelines section along the top linking to an extensive guidelines document. Christopher Fletcher, editor of M-Brane SF, myself, and many of the other writers involved are fans of shared world projects like Harlan Ellison's Medea and Murasaki, edited by Robert Silverberg. Any SFnal 'property' like Star Wars, Star Trek, or the myriad game-related books you see at the end of the genre section at your local book store could be considered shared world fare. And I don't imply any derision toward these works: some great writers like Greg Keyes have written a number of those books.

The lineage for AeA is more closely related to Murasaki & Medea, and other works like Harlan Thomas' _In the Time of the Sixth Sun_ , or the 'what if' scenarios from works like _Man in the High Castle_.

Also, on a personal note, many of the writers —describing AeA in blog posts, etc. — refer to it as a sort of steampunk world. I totally disagree with that description and personally find overt attempts at steampunk to more often than not fall flat. If you like steampunk, obviously there's something here that will appeal to lovers of that aesthetic, but ... AeA's so much cooler than mere steampunk.

**Alt Hist:** World building and what if scenarios are interesting in themselves but they don't on their own make great fiction. What can readers of alternate history expect from the short stories within this collection?

**Brandon:** We emphasized from the start that we wanted works that ranged from barely fantastic, historical work that focused on the societal changes taking place, on up to the more SFnal and/or action-packed. We have two stories with very different views of an emergent, united Hellas, and others show-casing the struggle of traditionalists in Egypt (Kemet) and social forces railing against the rule of kings. Others demonstrate a sort of dark ages in the Two Lands, on through a time of superstition and sacrifice, and then a time of war both within and without the kingdom. Our stories include societies from Africa (Kerma has flourished in parallel with Kemet) the Americas (The Olmecs) and Asia. A few Asian Empires are mentioned, but I think only the Nehon are explored in Helios. History lovers will note this, I think, as our most overt extravagance in playing with the timeline, but I'd suggest that while historical plausibility ranked high on our list of concerns, telling fun, compelling stories ranked highest, and so decisions were made on that basis.

Those readers who are history buffs should not be put off though: there is an amazing amount of research and history here. From the Tanakh, the Book of Gilgamesh, and various translations of Homer, and beyond, we scrabbled with various details and how to present the stories in a way that was consistent, reasonably historically accurate, and yet remained readable. Do you go with Lacedaemonia, or Sparta? At a certain point in history is Medes or Persians more accurate? I found this aspect of the anthology endlessly fascinating and even found myself getting out the bible my adoptive father gave me to look up a reference to King Darius that I had no idea was in there.

My personal take-away from the research side of the project was how very human these people were. When I read the words of the Egyptian Negative Confession, you know, in connection with one of the stories, it brought tears to my eyes. We've always worried about our worth and place in the world. I'm sure we'll find mistakes or inaccuracies, but it is this truth that we've allowed to guide us in the stories.

**Alt Hist:** How did you go about gathering together all the contributions for the collection, considering that the Aether Age shared world is new to most writers?

**Brandon:** We coupled the open call for submissions with a constant stream of blog posts discussing the milieu. The writing process was more collaborative than other collections, with a constant baseline revisioning of names and terminology applied to the stories as they came in, then a second-level in applying time-line corrections, pinning down when each story takes place, and cross referencing the stories with one another where applicable.

Those guidelines are probably due for an update, because we learned about the world as the stories were brought into the fold, and our timeline became —for the better, I'd say— a 'mere' 500 years, instead of the vast swath we first anticipated. For _Tartaros_ , we'll get that updated, but basically stories for the next anthology with not conflict with those in Helios while functioning within the forthcoming _Tartaros_ specs. My hope is that, based on what we learned with _Helios_ , we can make the process less painful for all involved. In the meantime, both _M-Brane SF_ and _Fantastique Unfettered_ accept Aether Age stories set in the Helios era, so if intrigued writers are reading this: the aether awaits.

**Alt Hist:** What prompted the soundtrack for Aether Age? Does each track go with a separate story? And if so, did the musicians and writers liaise with each other on the creation of the soundtrack?

**Brandon:** The first I ever heard of a soundtrack for a book was back in my teens in the late eighties/early nineties when Craig Spector & John Skipp came out with a horror novel with its own soundtrack. I don't recall the name of the book. More recently I saw that Jeff Vandermeer did a similar collaboration with Murder by Death. Interesting idea, I thought.

My 17 year old daughter is probably the one most attune to my tastes in entertainment: Wes Anderson movies rock. And she was the only one willing to go with me to the Polyphonic Spree's Holiday Extravaganza a couple years back. The Spree's music has been in movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Thumbsucker, and the show Scrubs, and CCG has some members in common with the Spree. There we saw The Chameleon Chamber Group for the first time, and I fell in love with this thing that they do to make old music engaging and relevant to a modern audience.

I thought it was a long shot, but sent an email to CCG, which turned into a phone call with Audrey: me playing the role of raving lunatic talking about industrial revolutions, Greeks, and Egyptians, wooden spaceships. I was sure I'd eventually hear a click at the other end of the line, but when I finished, Audrey laughed and said it was just weird enough a thing to be exactly up their alley.

You can get a snippet of their music on the Aether Age site when you watch the trailer. Audrey recently contacted me to say the soundtrack is coming along well, so we'll have more soon now. As for the collaborative aspect, their work is instrumental, so there wasn't a need for clarifications of pronunciation, etc., such that the audio book/dramatizations T.C. Parmelee & Paul Rothchild are about to launch into do require. The audio project, on both sides (music and voice) is HUGE, and is going to blow listeners away.

**After the Interview Brandon added:  
**  
Thanks so much for taking time to talk with me and we hope readers will go and preorder the anthology today: you'll get a discounted price plus free shipping. We come out on November 29th in celebration of Hadley Rille Book's 5th anniversary. You can also register to win a Kindle 3G: a nice little bonus for our readers, and readers of Hadley Rille Books in general.

# Columbia & Britannia

