Paradise Tales (44 page)

She puts her hand on mine.

“I will always be so grateful to you,” she says and really means it. I play with one of her fingers. I seem to have purchased loyalty.

“Thank you,” I say, and I realize that she has lost mine.

She tries to bring love back by squeezing my hand. “I know you didn’t want to come. I know you came because of us.”

Even the boys know there is something radically wrong. Sampul and Tharum stare in silence, wide brown eyes. Did something similar happen with Dad number one?

Rith the eldest chortles with scorn. He needs to hate us so that he can fly the nest.

My heart is so sore I cannot speak.

“What will you do?” she asks. That sounds forlorn, so she then tries to sound perky. “Any ideas?”

“Open a casino,” I say, feeling deadly.

“Oh! Channa! What a wonderful idea, it’s just perfect!”

“Isn’t it? All those people with nothing to do.” Someplace they can bring their powder. I look out at the sea. Rith rolls his eyes. Where is there for Rith to go from here? I wonder.

I see that he, too, will have to destroy his inheritance. What will he do, drill the rock? Dive down into the lava? Or maybe out of pure rebellion ascend to Earth again?

The drug wears off and Gerda awakes, but her eyes are calm and she takes an interest in the table and the food. She walks outside onto the mall floor, and suddenly squeals with laughter and runs to the railing to look out. She points at the glowing yellow sign with black ears and says “Disney.” She says all the brand names aloud, as if they are all old friends.

I was wrong. Gerda is at home here.

I can see myself wandering the whispering marble halls like a ghost, listening for something that is dead.

We go to our suite. It’s just like the damn casino, but there are no boats outside to push slivers of wood into your hands, no sand too hot for your feet. Cambodia has ceased to exist, for us.

Agnete is beside herself with delight. “What window do you want?”

I ask for downtown Phnom Penh. A forest of gray, streaked skyscrapers to the horizon. “In the rain,” I ask.

“Can’t we have something a bit more cheerful?”

“Sure. How about Tuol Sleng prison?” I know she doesn’t want me. I know how to hurt her. I go for a walk. Overhead in the dome is the Horsehead Nebula. Radiant, wonderful, deadly, thirty years to cross at the speed of light. I go to the pharmacy. The pharmacist looks like a phony doctor in an ad. I ask, “Is … is there some way out?”

“You can go Earthside with no ID. People do. They end up living in huts on Sentosa. But that’s not what you mean, is it?” I just shake my head. It’s like we’ve been edited to ensure that nothing disturbing actually gets said. He gives me a tiny white bag with blue lettering on it.

Instant, painless, like all my flopping guests at the casino.

“Not here,” he warns me. “You take it and go somewhere else, like the public toilets.”

Terrifyingly, the pack isn’t sealed pr

operly. I’ve picked it up, I could have the dust of it on my hands; I don’t want to wipe them anywhere. What if one of the children licks it?

I know then I don’t want to die. I just want to go home, and always will. I am a son of Kambu, Kampuchea.

“Ah,” he says and looks pleased. “You know, the Buddha says that we must accept.”

“So why didn’t we accept the Earth?” I ask him.

The pharmacist in his white lab coat shrugs. “We always want something different.”

We always must move on, and if we can’t leave home, it drives us mad. Blocked and driven mad, we do something new.

There was one final phase to becoming a man. I remember my uncle.

The moment his children and his brother’s children were all somewhat grown, he left us to become a monk. That was how a man was completed, in the old days.

I stand with a merit bowl in front of the wat. I wear orange robes with a few others. Curiously enough, Rith has joined me. He thinks he has rebelled. People from Sri Lanka, Laos, Burma, and my own land give us food for their dead. We bless it and chant in Pali.

All component things are indeed transient.

They are of the nature of arising and decaying.

Having come into being, they cease to be.

The cessation of this process is bliss.

Uninvited he has come hither

He has departed hence without approval

Even as he came, just so he went

What lamentation then could there be?

We got what we wanted. We always do, don’t we, as a species? One way or another.

Geoff Ryman was born in Canada in 1951, went to high school and college in the United States, and has lived most of his adult life in Britain. His longer works include
The Unconquered Country
, the novella version of which won the World Fantasy Award;
The Child Garden,
which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award; the hypertext novel
253,
the “print remix” of which won the Philip K. Dick Award;
Air
, which won the Arthur C. Clarke and James Tiptree, Jr. awards; and a historical novel set in Cambodia,
The King’s Last Song
.

An early Web design professional, Ryman led the teams that designed the first web sites for the British monarchy and the Prime Minister’s office. He also has a lifelong interest in drama and film; his novel
Was
looks at America through the lens of
The Wizard of Oz
and has been adapted for the stage, and Ryman himself wrote and directed a stage adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.

Since 2001, Small Beer Press, an independent publishing house, has published satisfying and surreal novels and short story collections by award-winning writers and exciting talents whose names you may never have heard, but whose work you’ll never be able to forget:

Joan Aiken,
The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories

Poppy Z. Brite,
Second Line: Two Short Novels of Love and Cooking in New Orleans

Ted Chiang,
Stories of Your Life and Others

Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud,
A Life on Paper
(trans. Edward Gauvin)

John Crowley,
Endless Things: A Novel of
Æ
gypt

John Crowley,
The Chemical Wedding*

Alan DeNiro,
Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead

Carol Emshwiller,
The Mount

Carol Emshwiller,
Report to the Men’s Club

Carol Emshwiller,
Carmen Dog: a novel

Kelley Eskridge,
Solitaire: a novel

Karen Joy Fowler,
What I Didn’t See and Other Stories

Greer Gilman,
Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter’s Tales

Angélica Gorodischer,
Kalpa Imperial
(trans. Ursula K. Le Guin)

Alasdair Gray,
Old Men in Love: John Tunnock’s Posthumous Papers

Elizabeth Hand
, Generation Loss

Julia Holmes,
Meeks: a novel

Ayize Jama-Everett,
The Liminal People: a novel*

John Kessel,
The Baum Plan for Financial Independence

Kathe Koja,
Under the Poppy: a novel

Ellen Kushner
, The Privilege of the Sword

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Stranger Things Happen
;
Trampoline
(Editor);
Magic for Beginners

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Redemption in Indigo: a novel

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Fire Logic: a novel*

Laurie J. Marks,
Earth Logic: a novel*

Laurie J. Marks,
Water Logic: a novel

Eduardo Jiménez Mayo and Chris Brown, eds.,
Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories*

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Hound: a novel

Vincent McCaffrey,
A Slepyng Hound to Wake: a novel

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Mothers & Other Monsters

Maureen F. McHugh,
After the Apocalypse*

Naomi Mitchison
, Travel Light

Benjamin Parzybok,
Couch: a novel

Benjamin Rosenbaum,
The Ant King and Other Stories

Geoff Ryman,
The King’s Last Song: a novel

Geoff Ryman,
The Child Garden: a novel

Geoff Ryman,
Was: a novel*

Geoff Ryman,
Paradise Tales

Geoff Ryman,
The Unconquered Country*

Sofia Samatar,
A Stranger in Olondria*

Delia Sherman & Christopher Barzak (Eds.),
Interfictions 2

Jennifer Stevenson,
Trash Sex Magic: a novel

Sean Stewart,
Mockingbird: a novel

Sean Stewart,
Perfect Circle: a novel

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, Howard Who?

A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2011: Your Year in Writing

A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2012: Your Year in Writing

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The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories

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The Freedom Maze: a novel*

*Forthcoming

Lady Churchill
’
s Rosebud Wristlet