The New Weird (51 page)

I wish we were able to develop stronger and faster reactions to new literary trends as well as particular works of fiction, but, unfortunately, Poland, at many levels, is a slow-changing country, whose literary market is really peculiar and, to a large extent, conservative, and where readership is alarmingly slight compared, for instance, to that of our neighbor, the Czech Republic ― a country with the population nearly four times smaller than Poland's. By many it is still viewed as an inexplicable phenomenon that throughout the 1990s the bestsell-ing authors in Poland were William Wharton (the author of
Birdy,
who at a certain point began to write exclusively for the Polish market) and Jonathan Carroll, while a huge number of both contemporary classics and the most interesting new books were not translated and published (China Miéville's novels have been gradually gaining recognition ―
Iron Council
has not been published yet ― while those of Jeffrey Ford or Jeff VanderMeer still wait for publication).

In spite of this, there is a group of writers who, in their short stories and novels, have begun to approach creating fictional, fantastic worlds and characters in a similar way to that of New Weird authors. I think that it is very promising, and that we are on the verge of a revolution in imaginative fiction which, hopefully, will bring more novels as original and important as those of Dukaj and Huberath.

Festival Lives

PAUL DI FILIPPO, CAT RAMBO, SARAH MONETTE, DANIEL ABRAHAM, FELIX GILMAN, HAL DUNCAN, CONRAD WILLIAMS

WE COMMISIONED this piece as a kind of laboratory experiment. Given a brief of coming up with a "New Weird" story, how would some of our finest fantasists generally not identified as "New Weird" interpret that brief? In a sense, we wanted them to show us their take on the term in fictional form. The result was never intended to be a complete story, although it definitely has closure. Di Filippo came up with the milieu and provided avenues for inspiration with his opening, after which each writer was asked to write about a particular element from Di Filippo's opening. The further brief was to advance the plot while also expanding on Di Filippo's milieu. (A conclusion created specifically for the internet by Di Filippo can be found on the Tachyon website at
www.tachyonpublications.com
on the page devoted to this anthology.)

― THE EDITORS

VIEW 1

Death in a Dirty Dhoti
| PAUL DI FILIPPO

THE TERRORIST got off the train amidst hundreds of other noisy pilgrims, all debarking into the cavernous, cast-iron columned interior of the Battidarmala station on Khunds Road.

The perfect cover,
thought the killer, not for the first time, and as if to reassure himself.
Masquerading as a mindless worshipper ofChuzdt, during the locust god's own annual Festival. Millions of pilgrims flooding

into immense Riarnanth. The city authorities abandoning all checks of papers. Vast crowds interposed between me and any pursuit. Mindless religious fervor obscuring proper civic vigilance.

How simple it was going to be, to make the ruling Sengpa sept pay dearly for their cruel treatment of the Dardarbji.

The terrorist had been traveling for six wearisome days, his train stopping for new passengers, it seemed, at every other collection of four hovels or more, across three thousand miles of heterogeneous terrain: from Dardarbji itself, the small northern mountain-nestled city named for its majority sept, down alpine slopes studded with summer flowers, over trestles threading the foothill swamps of Swatay, across the endless village-dotted plains of Neethune, detouring most circumspectly around the jungles of Kubota, hugging the shore of the Verminous Sea for the last hundred miles, train tracks slicing through acres and acres of squalid slums, until finally, blessed and wicked Riarnanth rose up against a backdrop of towering cliffs, occupying the long, long, miles-wide strip of land between the Dallut Escarpment and the pleasant jade waters of Bangma Bay.

At random intervals along the curving cliffs, the terrorist noted as his chuffing train made its slow, populace-clogged way to the station, dozens of sizable waterfalls plunged over, their atomized mists casting perpetual rainbows. Captured at the bottom in big marble-ledged artificial ponds surrounded by tiled plazas, the resulting rivers rushed to the bay through an assortment of canals: the Meritful, the Easeful, the Tranquil, the Imponderable, the Torpid and others, trafficked by boats and bathers alike.

At last, inside the Battidarmala terminal, the tedious first stage of the terrorist's journey had come to an end.

And excruciatingly tedious it had been. Most of the trip had been spent standing, packed pelvis-to-buttock with seething humanity. Sleep was accomplished in shifts in special windowless cars, segregated by sex and outfitted with hard coffin-like niches from floor to roof, amidst suffocating odors of flatulence and sweat. Meals were catch-as-catch-can, based on whatever prepared foodstuffs vendors were selling as they raced alongside the slowing train. Voiding of bowels and bladders

occurred in public while hanging from a kind of bosun's-chair lofted outward from the train, while the train was still in motion. (Fatalities were common.) Facilities for ablutions were non-existent.

Yet his voyage could not have been otherwise. The group of radicals subsidizing his journey to Riarnanth could have easily afforded him private transport, for the terrorists counted among their number many of the most prominent citizens of Dardarbji. But the terrorist's camouflage relied on merging with the masses.

So now, as the terrorist paused a moment beneath the vivid aestival sunlight pouring down through the terminal's glass roof, he relished a moment of stoppage, of assessment of his condition in a small bubble of privacy.

His dhoti, crisp and white at the outset in Dardarbji, was grimed and splattered, and the strap of one sandal had broken when someone trod on his heel as he sought to advance. That sandal flopped loosely with every step, constant impediment. His single-knotted fabric bindle crossed an otherwise bare mahogany chest and back tacky with a crust composed of road grit and sweat, as if he were a breaded lamb chop. His hair was snarled, his teeth and tongue furred, and his nails caulked. He knew he was not thinking as clearly as he needed to, thanks to the general sleeplessness of the past week. He was hungry and irritable and lonely, for this was the farthest he had ever traveled from Dardarbji in his young life. The weight of his mission camped heavily on his shoulders.

And these pilgrims! How their devotions sickened him!

Passing by, two of them now grinned in an overflow of fellow-feeling and made Chuzdt's sign toward the terrorist: both arms bent at the elbow and held vertically close to the torso, with forward-and downward-pointing hands drooping as if their wrists were broken.

The locust's stance.

Worship of earthy Chuzdt was widespread across all districts of the multifarious nation, but not among the pure Dardarbji, who instead paid tribute to lordly and regal Jaggenuth.

But now of course the terrorist was forced by expediency to smile back and imitate the shibboleth until the pilgrims passed.

Best to get out of this hot, enclosed, pilgrim-filled space,
he thought.

Although the streets of Riarnanth would be nearly as hot, nearly as tight, and certainly as thronged with pilgrims. But an odd breeze, a chance open vista, and a smattering of nonpious citizens would be a relief.

The terrorist passed the train's massive engine where it rested its nose against a padded wooden bumper. Workers were shoveling biomass into its maw and bleeding off wastes through unclamped nipples. The ketonic odor assailed the terrorist's nostrils, and he hurried toward the exit.

He had an address: Number 50 Djudrum Lane, in the Tsongtrik banlieue. There he would receive his next instructions. (The exact nature of his righteous assault on the city remained unknown to him, a precaution against unlikely capture and interrogation.)

But surely he could delay the rendezvous with his co-conspirators long enough to visit a public bath, a rice-or noodle-or samosa-shop, and a cobbler. Perhaps he would even grab a night's doss without company or obligations, just to rest up for his arduous and dangerous assignment, whatever it might be.

Thoughts of a woman hired to share his pallet briefly flashed across his imagination, but he sternly put them down. Duty brooked no carnal pleasures.

The exit to the terminal was festooned with long garlands of garish flowers, both real and paper. A banner in the harsh Sengpa script, which all the children of Dardarbji had been forced to learn for the past hundred years, welcomed the "brides and grooms of Chuzdt."

Outside fresh breezes from Bangma Bay to the east enlivened the terrorist's sensibilities somewhat, although odors from street mire, cooking foods, beasts of burden, perfumes, pets, industrial processes and the bodies of approximately a thousand active citizens crammed into the proximate square block defeated nature soundly.

In Dardarbji's steep and solemn pristine streets it was not thus.

Tentatively the terrorist joined the flow of humanity. He was uncertain of the actual path to Number 50 Djudrum Lane in the Tsongtrik banlieue. But he assumed he would soon discover a public information cubicle where he could ask for directions.

He noted from an official enameled sign affixed to the wall of a building that he had left behind Khunds Road and now traversed Jonkul Avenue.

A block ahead, a knot of people surrounded a small raised stage, atop which a troupe of actors cavorted. Not quite approving but nonetheless intrigued, the terrorist stopped to watch.

The leader of the troupe sported a fierce mustache that trailed below his chin. Acerbic and wry, he seemed to include his listeners in on some droll secret. While beautiful women in pastel silks danced behind him and clowns juggled antique scimitars, he pitched to the crowd.

"Come see Hrangit's Accomplished Thespians and Mountebanks this evening, as we enliven your dull existences with a drama of deep tragedy and heroism. 'The Inundation of Riarnanth!' That most ancient legend of the destruction of your very own beautiful city, when the puissant sea turned traitor and smashed down upon the metropolis! Enacted before your unbelieving eyes with miraculous effects! Only those who could climb the Dallut cliffs like monkeys or swim in Bangma Bay like fish survived that day."

On cue a small monkey appeared from nowhere and clambered up the pants of the pitchman to perch atop his head. A clown attempted to help dislodge the beast by whacking it with a bladder shaped like a puffer fish. The crowd roared.

When at last the boisterous citizenry quieted down, the pitchman concluded: "I, Hrangit, guarantee your satisfaction!"

The terrorist found himself smiling and feeling beneficent. Mention of the destruction of Riarnanth constituted a good omen. He felt grateful to the troupe. If their gods favored them, Hrangit and Company would move safely on to another city before a more modern disaster befell Riarnanth.

Jonkul intersected with a broader boulevard denominated Poonma Way. The terrorist arbitrarily turned right, still seeking a public information cubicle of the kind he was familiar with from home.

A corps of musicians, all male youths in gold-braided uniforms, meandered down the street, barely avoiding collisions with vehicles such as a big dray full of pumpkins, while celebrating Chuzdt's temporary reign with sarod, flute, violin and tablas. People threw coins at them for luck and out of appreciation. The bandleader, a wiry old man whose instrument was the vina ― carried more for show than for use ― hurriedly gathered the coins. "Chuzdt thanks you, and Doumani and his Golden Songboys do likewise!"

Growing thirsty, the terrorist stopped for a cool yogurt drink from a sidewalk cart surrounded by a scrim of water from its onboard melting ice blocks. As he was finishing it, a beggar approached. Dressed in tatters, his bare feet horned and cracked, his big frame warped, the man displayed various sores and scars.

"An oobol or two, good sir, to feed poor Goza! In Chuzdt's name!"

The beggar's lack of propriety, disgusting condition, and evident disfavor in the eyes of Jaggenuth repelled the visitor from Dardarbji. His clean city would never countenance the presence of such.

"Get away! I have no oobols to spare for you! Hire yourself out as guide to the fiery cracks of Mount Meru, for all I care!"

The beggar named Goza cringed obsequiously. "Blessings from Chuzdt be yours in any case, good sir!"

Gratefully leaving the beggar behind, the terrorist continued his search for a booth where he could get the directions he needed. Could it be that Riarnanth did not possess this public amenity?

In Dardarbji there was hardly a block that did not boast the little stupa-shielded hollow statue whereby one communicated questions and payment through capsules dropped down a demon's mouth and thence through a pneumatic system to a central library, and received speedy answers back ― out the demon's nether parts! (Information as such was not a particularly revered commodity in Jaggenuth's eyes, spiritual fervor being favored.) But Dardarbji was a civilized, advanced place, and these people were all obviously uncultured heathens.