FSF, January-February 2010 (37 page)

On the morning of February 2, 1993, as the sun was casting its light across the apartment's front window, I stuffed every piece of clothing I owned, all my toiletries, whatever food was in the cupboards over the sink, into a green duffel bag that I struggled out the front door, down the front steps, and through my Hyundai's hatchback. The apartment's door was wide open, the place full of my possessions, but I started the engine, threw the car into gear, and fled Albany. I didn't return home to my parents; I didn't head north or west, either. I wanted the shore, the sea, someplace where the earth was not so deep, so I sped east, along I-90, toward what I thought would be the safety of Cape Cod. I didn't stop for bathroom breaks; I didn't stop until Albany was a ghost in my rearview mirror and the Atlantic a gray sheet spread in front of me.

All the way to Provincetown, while I pressed the gas pedal as near the floor as I could and maintain control of the car, I kept the radio at full volume, tuned to whatever hard rock station broadcast clearest. Highway to Hell bled into Paranoid became Lock Up the Wolves. Although the doors, the dash thrummed with a bass line that changed only slightly from song to song, and my ears protested another shrieking singer, guitar, none of it was enough to drown out the sound that had drawn me from my bed the previous night and rushed me to the basement door, hands shaking as I unsnapped the deadbolts and turned the doorknob. Some kind of loud noise, a crash, and then Kaitlyn—I had heard her voice echoing below me, calling my name in that low, sing-song tone she used when she wanted to have sex. I had thought I was in a dream, but her words had led me up out of sleep, until the realization that I was awake and still hearing her had sent me from my room, kicking over several stacks of books on the way. The door open, I switched on the light and saw, at the foot of the stairs, shielding her eyes against the sudden brightness, Kaitlyn, returned to me at last.

At the sight of her there—the emotion that transfixed me was some variety of,
I knew it
. I knew she hadn't really vanished, knew she wasn't lost under the earth. She was wearing the oversized army greatcoat, which was streaked with mud. Her feet were bare and filthy. Her skin was more than pale, as if her time underground had bleached it. Her hair was tangled, clotted with dirt, her mouth flaked with something brown.

I was on the verge of running down the stairs to her when she lowered her hand from her eyes and I saw the white centers, the black sclerae. A wave of dizziness threatened to topple me headlong down the stairs. Kaitlyn smiled at my hesitation, reached over, and pulled open her coat. Underneath, she was naked, her white, white flesh smeared with dirt and clay. She called to me again. “Here I aaa-mmm,” she half-sang. “Didn't you miss me? Don't you wanna come play with me?"

A bolt of longing, of desire sudden and intense, pierced me. God help me, I did want her. My Eurydice: I wanted to bury myself in her, and who cared if her eyes were changed, if her flesh bore evidence of activities I did not want to dwell on? I might have, might have crossed the dozen pieces of wood that separated the life to which I clung from that which had forced itself on me, surrendered myself to sweet oblivion, had a large, bony shape not stumbled into view behind Kaitlyn. Of the
Ghûl
I had seen previously, none had given so profound an impression of being unaccustomed to walking on all fours. It held its head up too high, as if unused to the position. Its weird eyes were rheumy, its gums raw where its lips drew back from them. It curled around Kaitlyn from behind, dragging its muzzle across her hip before nuzzling between her thighs. She sighed deeply. Eyes lidded, lips parted, she extended her hand toward me while the other pressed the
Ghûl
's head forward.

The thing pulled away long enough to give me a sidelong glance, and it was that gesture that sent me scrambling backward, grabbing for the door and slamming it shut, throwing myself against it as I snapped the deadbolts. It kept me there while I listened to the stairs creak under the combined weights of Kaitlyn and her companion, who settled themselves on the opposite side of the door so that she could murmur tender obscenities to me while the
Ghûl
's claws worried the wood. They left with the dawn. Once I was sure they were gone, I ran into my room and began frantically packing.

If the far end of Cape Cod was not as secure a redoubt as I might have thought, hoped, if Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket proved no more isolated, they were preferable to Albany, whose single, outsized skyscraper was an enormous cenotaph marking a necropolis of whose true depths its inhabitants remained unaware. I fled them, over the miles of road and ocean; I am still fleeing them, down the long passage that joins
now
to
then
. That flight has defined my life, is its individual failure and the larger failures of the age in sum. I see the two of them still, down there in the dark, where their wanderings take them along sewers, up into the basements of houses full of sleeping families, under roads and rivers, to familiar cemeteries. Kaitlyn has grown more lean, her hair long. She has traded in her old greatcoat for a newer trenchcoat. The
Ghûl
lopes along beside her, nimble on its feet. It too has become more lean. The scar over its left eye remains.

For Fiona and for Ellen Datlow, who knows about Albany

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BOOKS-MAGAZINES

S-F FANTASY MAGAZINES, pulps, books, fanzines. 96 page catalog. $5.00. Robert Madle, 4406 Bestor Dr., Rockville, MD 20853

20-time Hugo nominee. The New York Review of Science Fiction.
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Reviews and essays. $4.00 or $40 for 12 issues, checks only. Dragon Press, PO Box 78, Pleasantville, NY 10570.

Spiffy, jammy, deluxy, bouncy—subscribe to Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. $20/4 issues. Small Beer Press, 176 Prospect Ave., Northampton, MA 01060.

Latest from RAMBLE HOUSE:
The Triune Man
by Richard A. Lupoff and
Automaton,
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318-455-6847

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SPANKING STORIES: For a 38 page catalog, send $3 to CF Publications, POB 706F, Setauket, NY 11733

For a taste of Harvey Jacobs’ new novel,
Side Effects,
check out
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.

The Visitors.
$14.95 Check/MO

OhlmBooks Publications

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Winner of the 2009 National Indie Excellence Award for best S.F.!
In Memory of Central Park,
a green novel set in N.Y.C. circa 2050, is as bleakly terrifying as George Orwell's
1984.

www.CentralParkNovel.com

The Star Sailors
(Gary L. Bennett). Prometheus Award nominee. “Highly recommended”—
Library Journal
. $15.95 trade ppb. Major bookstores or 1-800-AUTHORS (
www.iuniverse.com
).

Do you have
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SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5, CATTLE 0. The first 58 F&SF contests are collected in
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MISCELLANEOUS

If stress can change the brain, all experience can change the brain.
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Edwardian Britain saw publication of several distinctive interplanetary novels worthy of retrospective consideration; the weird allegories of R. H. Wright's
The Outer Darkness
(1906) and Elizabeth Whiteley's
The Devil's Throne
(1903) both come to mind, as does Richard Lamport's
Veeni the Master
(1912), which opens with Earth's destruction and the soul transference of its “chosen ones” into the bodies of beings in another solar system.

Transference of Earth's population to another system also occurs in R. A. Kennedy's philosophical extravaganza, but the means by which this happens is far, far stranger.
The Triuneverse
opens with a scientist observing a strange phenomenon that presages the materialization of a visitor from the micro-universe. Much of the book is then taken up with a complex cosmological discourse between the two before the visiting scientist continues his journey into the macro-universe—with an unforeseen consequence.

The planet Mars reproduces by binary fission and the daughter cells devour each other until only one ravenous entity remains. This creature then systematically devours the outer planets before turning toward the Sun, a cataclysmic explosion results, and Earth is hurled into outer space with Mars in hot pursuit. Only the timely return of the visiting scientist saves Earth; the space-time fabric once more changes, Mars begins to shrink, and Earth ends up as part of the Alpha Centauri system with Mars the size of a pea under glass in a museum.

They don't get any stranger than that!

—John Eggeling

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Our chronovisor is currently being repaired so we can't give you the contents of our next issue with complete certainty, but here are some of the stories we're bringing you soon:

* “Blue Fire” by Bruce McAllister, in which we'll meet Boniface XII, aka “the Child Pope,” and his nemesis.

* Albert E. Cowdrey will give us a bit of Southern history in “Fort Clay, Louisiana."

* “Amor Fugit,” a lovely tale of time from Alexandra Duncan.

* “Epidapheles and the Insufficiently Affectionate Ocelot"—there's lots to say about this story, but for now we'll let the title speak for itself.

We'll also have a new story by Tim Sullivan that follows his “Planetisimal Dawn,” and Fred Chappell is due to return soon to the world of shadow trading.

With all these stories and more in the works, now is a good time to go to
www.fandsf.com
to subscribe for the coming year.

STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION 1. Title of Publication, THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION.2. Publication no. 588-960. 3. Date of filing, October 1, 2009. 4. Issue Frequency, 6 times per year. 5. Number of issues published annually, 6. 6. Annual subscription price $42.00. 7. Known office of publication, 105 Leonard Street, Jersey City, NJ 07307. 8. Mailing address of headquarters, PO Box 3447, Hoboken, NJ 07030. 9. Publisher, Gordon Van Gelder, PO Box 3447, Hoboken, NJ 07030, Editor, Gordon Van Gelder, PO Box 3447, Hoboken, NJ 07030, Managing editor, none. 10. Owner, Spilogale, Inc, Gordon Van Gelder, Barbara J. Norton, PO Box 3447, Hoboken, NJ 07030. 11. Known Bondholders, mortgagees and other security holders owning or holding 1% or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages or other securities, None. 15. Extent and nature of circulation: a. Total no. copies (net press run), average no. copies each issue during preceding 12 months 22,957, actual no. copies of single issue published nearest to filing date 23,042. b. Paid/requested circulation 1) average no. copies outside-county mail subscriptions 11,971, actual no. copies 11,476. 2) average no. copies in-county subscriptions: 30, actual no. copies in-county 24 3) sales through dealers and carriers, average no. copies 3,446 actual no. copies single issue 7,647 4) Paid distribution by other classes of mail through the USPS 44, actual no. copies, 60 c. total paid and/or requested circulation average no. 15,491, actual no. copies 19,207 d. Free or nominal rate distribution by mail 1) outside-county average no. copies 270, actual no. copies 301 2) in-county average no. copies 5, actual no. copies 5 3) mailed at other classes through the USPS average no. copies 171, actual no. copies, 177 4) outside the mail average no. copies 0, actual no. copies, 0 e. total free distribution average no. copies 446, actual no. copies 483 f. total distribution average no. copies 15,937, actual no. copies 19,690 g. copies not distributed average no. 5.780, actual no. copies 2,368 h. total average no. copies 21,717, actual no. copies 22,058 i. Percent paid/requested circulation 97. 17. Gordon Van Gelder, Publisher.