FSF, July 2008

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  Spilogale, Inc.

  www.fsfmag.com

  Copyright ©2008 by Spilogale, Inc.

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  * * *

  THE MAGAZINE OF

  FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION

  July * 59th Year of Publication

  * * * *

  NOVELLAS

  THE ROBERTS by Michael Blumlein

  NOVELETS

  FULLBRIM'S FINDING by Matthew Hughes

  POISON VICTORY by Albert E. Cowdrey

  SHORT STORIES

  READER'S GUIDE by Lisa Goldstein

  ENFANT TERRIBLE by Scott Dalrymple

  THE DINOSAUR TRAIN by James L. Cambias

  DEPARTMENTS

  BOOKS TO LOOK FOR by Charles de Lint

  BOOKS by James Sallis

  PLUMAGE FROM PEGASUS: by Paul Di Filippo

  GALLEY KNAVES

  FILMS: SUPERPOWERS DO NOT A SUPERHERO MAKE by Kathi Maio

  COMING ATTRACTIONS

  CURIOSITIES by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre

  COVER BY MONDOLITHIC STUDIOS FOR “THE ROBERTS”

  GORDON VAN GELDER, Publisher/Editor

  BARBARA J. NORTON, Assistant Publisher

  ROBIN O'CONNOR, Assistant Editor

  KEITH KAHLA, Assistant Publisher

  HARLAN ELLISON, Film Editor

  JOHN J. ADAMS, Assistant Editor

  CAROL PINCHEFSKY, Contests Editor

  JOHN M. CAPPELLO, Newsstand Circulation

  The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (ISSN 1095-8258), Volume 115, No. 1 Whole No. 674, July 2008. Published monthly except for a combined October/November issue by Spilogale, Inc. at $4.50 per copy. Annual subscription $50.99; $62.99 outside of the U.S. Postmaster: send form 3579 to Fantasy & Science Fiction, PO Box 3447, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Publication office, 105 Leonard St., Jersey City, NJ 07307. Periodical postage paid at Hoboken, NJ 07030, and at additional mailing offices. Printed in U.S.A. Copyright © 2008 by Spilogale, Inc. All rights reserved.

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  * * * *

  CONTENTS

  Fullbrim's Finding by Matthew Hughes

  Books To Look For by Charles de Lint

  Books by James Sallis

  Reader's Guide by Lisa Goldstein

  The Roberts by Michael Blumlein

  Plumage From Pegasus: Galley Knaves by Paul Di Filippo

  Enfant Terrible by Scott Dalrymple

  Films: Superpowers Do Not a Superhero Make by Kathi Maio

  Poison Victory by Albert E. Cowdrey

  The Dinosaur Train by James L. Cambias

  FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION MARKET PLACE

  Curiosities: The Big Ball of Wax: A Story of Tomorrow's Happy World by Shepherd Mead (1954)

  Coming Attractions

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  Fullbrim's Finding by Matthew Hughes

  Not only is he the foremost freelance discriminator of Old Earth, but Henghis Hapthorn is also one of the most popular characters to grace our pages in recent years. Lately he has made himself scarce around here by habituating novels like The Spiral Labyrinth and Majestrum. (This story, in fact, first appeared in the limited edition of The Spiral Labyrinth.) A new Hapthorn novel, Hespira, is due out in September.

  Mr. Hughes reports that his latest book is a stand-alone Archonate novel called Template that should be available around the time this issue hits the stands.

  Doldan Fullbrim was a seeker after substance. His great misfortune—and, to a lesser extent, mine—was that he found it.

  His obsession intersected my life in the person of his long-suffering spouse, Caddice, who came to me, bringing his voluminous research. “He has disappeared,” she said, dumping stacks of recording media, bound journals and sketched diagrams onto my worktable. “You must find him."

  I welcomed the assignment for two reasons. First, finding persons who had mysteriously stepped out of their daily lives, often never to be seen again, had long been a part of my profession, as the foremost freelance discriminator of Old Earth in our ancient planet's penultimate age.

  Second, I had of late been much bound up in other activities, stemming from the impending cyclical readjustment of the universe, by which it would cease to be founded on rational cause-and-effect and would instead begin to operate by the rules of magic. The rapidly approaching cusp had harshly disrupted my formerly well-ordered existence and I was determined to get back to exercising my logical faculties for as long as they continued to reflect the reality around me.

  The integrator that served as my assistant had undergone its own dislocations. For a time, it had been transmogrified into a creature called a grinnet, such as would have been a wizard's familiar in the previous age of magic. By its own choice, it was now once again a collection of components and systems, though there were subtle indications that the willfulness it had acquired during its flesh-and-blood sojourn had not been wholly eliminated.

  * * * *

  I had met Fullbrim's type before. Substance-seekers were not unadmirable when the seeking was balanced by a dose of reasonableness, but they did become problematic when the urge to delve ever deeper was let to take precedence over life's other priorities. Fullbrim was of the latter sort, and his deepening obsession had gradually driven Caddice to erect a series of barriers within their relationship.

  First, she had forbidden him to mention his preoccupations when the couple was in any social setting. Too many old friends had ceased to call, or had taken to crossing streets at oblique tangents, or developing a sudden consuming interest in the contents of shop windows, whenever Caddice and Doldan Fullbrim loomed in the offing.

  Second, having stopped him from filling the ears of third parties with his findings and speculations, she forbade him to direct them at her own auditory apparatus except during the hour before dinner. But Doldan's continuing researches yielded more than enough material to fill the moments between the opening and closing chimes. Indeed, it seemed to Caddice that those moments stretched unnaturally long as he prattled enthusiastically about “fractal reinterpolations and quantum boojums."

  "At least, I think that was what he was talking about,” she told me, as we consulted in my workroom. “As we entered the last few minims of the hour, he would speak much faster and employ abbreviations of his own devising. He had so much to convey, he would say, and all of it so fascinating."

  "To him,” I said.

  "Yes,” she said, half stifling a sob, “though not to any other resident of Old Earth. Or at least none that he ever encountered."

  I offered her a second glass of the restorative cordial and she accepted. I waited until she had regained her composure, then encouraged her to continue. The rest of the story tumbled out: finally she had encouraged him to forgo the daily oral reports and instead to write a comprehensive report of his findings to date, with daily journal notes to keep her current. She promised to read them when leisure permitted.

  "But, of course, it never did,” I said.

  "Not until he disappeared.” She drained the lees of the second glass and I poured her another. When she had done away with half of it, she continued, “I've tried to make sense of it, but I become lost in every other paragraph. There are footn
otes, some of which connect to endnotes that only lead me back to where I started.” She indicated the sprawled materials on my work table. “Perhaps you can make sense of it."

  I regarded the accumulated results of a life-long preoccupation. “It might be a better use of my time to solve the mystery of your spouse's disappearance,” I suggested. “Tell me again what happened the last time you saw him."

  She repeated what she had told me earlier. Doldan Fullbrim had burst from his study, his hair in disorder and an expression on his face that she described as “energized.” He had not bothered to don any outerwear, even though it was a scheduled half-day for rain in Olkney, but had rushed out the door unhatted.

  "And did he speak at all?” I said.

  "He said, ‘Ahah!’”

  "'Ahah?’”

  "'Ahah,'” she confirmed.

  And then he was gone and she hadn't seen him for several days, nor had he communicated regarding his whereabouts or any forecast of his return. As time passed, Caddice Fullbrim had progressed from surprise to bemusement, then on to alarm and finally to dread. “He is not,” she said, “the most worldly of men. He could easily fall afoul of those whose motives are base and whose methods are dire."

  "Indeed?” I said. “Then we had better find him."

  "There may be clues in his work."

  "I will peruse them,” I assured her, though I intended to use more direct methods to locate her strayed seeker. We negotiated a fee structure, a healthy advance with refreshers and expenses. Fortunately for all of us, the missing man had been the heir to a fortune so substantial that it would have been difficult to dissipate, even if the Fullbrims had not lived relatively modestly on its proceeds.

  I saw her downstairs to her waiting cabriole and watched as it wafted her away. Back in my workroom, I instructed my assistant, “Make a search of Doldan Fullbrim's movements since the date in question."

  "I have already done so,” it replied. “He went directly from his home to the space port, booked passage for Greylag on a Graz Line passenger vessel, and was offworld within the hour."

  "Was Greylag his true destination?” The world was one of the Foundational Domains. From there Fullbrim could have gone in many different directions.

  "Unknown,” said my integrator, “but he bought an open ticket."

  An open ticket was a mode of travel favored by wanderers; Fullbrim could present it at the foot of any gangplank of a ship owned by any one of more than a dozen cooperating lines and receive preferred boarding.

  "Hypothesis,” I said, “he had discovered that there was something on Greylag, but it was a something that was likely to propel him on to some other destination. Else he would have bought a return ticket. Or a one-way, if he did not plan to return."

  "Supportable,” said my assistant. “A subsidiary hypothesis is that he has gone on to that other destination."

  "Yes,” I said, “and our best course is probably to follow him. Contact the Gallivant and tell it to provision for a lengthy voyage. Then alert the space port that we will be lifting off within the hour. In the meantime, I will survey these materials—” I indicated the stack of papers and charts—"and see what had our quarry so deeply engrossed."

  * * * *

  Seated in the snugly comfortable salon of my ship, a mug of fragrantly steaming punge at my elbow, I again sought to draw a pattern from Doldan Fullbrim's researches. But no comprehensive shape emerged. “It obviously has to do with fundamentalities,” I said. “He first put a lot of effort into investigating bell-curve distributions of naturally occurring phenomena. Then there was a period when he was concerned with the way that the atoms of which different types of matter are formed tend to attenuate at the edges of objects. Clearly, he was looking for underlying patterns, yet I find he drew no conclusions. Instead, he jumped over to a consideration of fractal geometries and the way that ostensibly straight lines and curved surfaces reduce themselves to tangled higgles-and-piggles when brought under close scrutiny."

  "Indeed,” said my assistant. Before leaving my lodgings, I had decanted it into a traveling armature made of a soft but sturdy material and shaped like a plump stole that I could wear around my neck. At the moment, however, it was resting on the salon's folding table.

  Seeing that the integrator had nothing more to add, I went on, “And then, most lately, he was comparing the shapes and trajectories of several million galaxies. He had leaped from the micro to the macro in a single bound."

  "And from there he made a further leap: from Old Earth to Greylag,” said my assistant.

  "What does it mean?"

  "I suggest we put that question to Fullbrim when we find him."

  It occurred to me that my integrator was not being of much use. When I gently suggested as much, its reply was equally unhelpful. It said, “You are looking for sense and structure in what is simply, and most likely, the evidence of mania."

  "You think Fullbrim to be unbalanced?"

  "It is not uncommon for an inhabitant of Old Earth to be seized by an obsession. It is the defining characteristic of the world's penultimate age."

  It was an inarguable observation. The planet was rich in its supply of persons who niggled over philosophical minutiae or devoted themselves to mystic cults or needlessly rigorous political systems. Fullbrim might well be just another “full-bore,” as the type was colloquially known.

  "I wish my intuition had not gone off to live in a remote cottage,” I said. My former intuitive faculty, now reified as a separate person named Osk Rievor, had not even acquired an integrator through which we could communicate while he pursued his own researches into the coming new age of magic. “I could use his insight, especially as to the meaning of this last cryptic entry in Fullbrim's journal."

  "I took it for evidence of the impending breakdown,” my assistant said, “that sent him flying to the space port."

  "It may be just that,” I said, “or coming last as it does, it may be the clue that illuminates all the murk that comes before."

  I regarded the five words, jaggedly scrawled across two pages of the journal in a more agitated hand than had set down the neatly arrayed paragraphs and tables that filled the rest of the substance seeker's notebooks. The entry read: “A lick and a promise,” and was followed by no fewer than three exclamation points.

  * * * *

  Greylag lay some distance down The Spray, sufficiently far that we must pass through two whimsies and cross a great deal of normal space between them. I used the time to pore over Fullbrim's notes and had my assistant deconstruct them from various perspectives, in case some hermetic code underlay the discontinuities of the material. But we had made no more headway by the time we popped back into reality to find ourselves only three hours at moderate speed from the sphere of controlled space that surrounded the planet. Greylag grew in the forward screen until it revealed itself to be a cloudy world, much of it swathed in gray and white, though a constant ion flux from its star gave a pinkish coloration to the atmosphere over the poles.

  We did not land, but orbited at a wide remove while my assistant contacted the Graz Line factor and inquired as to the movements of our quarry. “I am receiving no cooperation from the factor's integrator,” it informed me.

  "Connect me to the factor,” I said.

  An interval occurred while I regarded the image on my assistant's projected screen. It was the heraldic symbol of the Graz Line, a fanciful beast with broad wings and a rounded belly that led up to a long neck topped by a horned head. The features of the long-snouted face were set in a simper.

  The interval extended. “Where is the factor?” I said.

  "He is said to be engaged in important affairs,” my assistant reported.

  "As am I,” I said. “Is there provision for an emergency connection?"

  "Yes."

  "Then make use of it."

  "The factor's integrator requires to know the nature of the emergency."

  "Tell it that it is of an intensely private nature an
d that the factor will be annoyed—no, say angered—by his integrator's prying into affairs that do not concern it."

  "You are being put through,” my assistant said.

  The Graz Line's beast disappeared and the face of a heavyset man now filled the screen, his hand wiping crumbs from his lips and chin. “Who are you? What is this emergency?"

  "Emergency?” I said. “Your integrator must have misunderstood.” I identified myself and stated my business.

  "We do not divulge information on our passengers to every passing vagabond,” the factor said. I saw his hand, still becrumbed, reaching to sever the connection.

  Had we been on Old Earth I would have mentioned my connection to the Archon, but this far down The Spray, Filidor's name would have raised no sprouts, as the saying goes. Instead, I said, “Then you will have to explain your lack of diligence when the Graz Line's directors arrive to survey the ruins and decide who will carry the blame."

  The hand stopped, the beetling brows drew down into a dark chevron. “Directors? Ruins? What?"

  "Of course,” I said, “it may be that Doldan Fullbrim has targeted some other enterprise for his latest devastating fraud. But then that company's directors will still want to have words with whoever facilitated the crime. For the record, what was your full name?"

  "Fraud? What fraud?"

  "I have already said too much,” I said. “For all I know, you are yourself belly-deep in the conspiracy. I will disconnect and deal with your head office."

  "Wait!"

  Moments later, my assistant received Fullbrim's itinerary. “He has gone on to Mip, with a transfer to Far Grommsgrik."

  I did not know the latter world. When my assistant had the Gallivant's integrator pull up Hobey's Guide to Lesser and Disregarded Worlds, the place turned out to be a dry and rocky little orb on the outer edge of human-settled space, where The Spray met the Great Dark of the intergalactic gulf. “To Far Grommsgrik,” I told the ship, and we left Greylag to its own concerns.