FSF, January-February 2010 Read online

  I could have asked if she liked the outcome. I could have told her that I liked the outcome.

  “My feeling is this,” she said. “It's a cliche. The Minds didn't get it. When they stored away everything, they didn't feel like they were wiping away humanity. Their utter refusal to understand how we feel, as flesh and blood, is their moral failure. I decided I don't want to believe anything so powerfully that I can't take in another way of seeing things.”

  What she said was so commonplace that I was disappointed. Like many writers, she was smarter in her fiction. I asked, “Will you download your mind?”

  She shifted on the floor and looked straight at me. “Why?”

  “Well, I don't know.” For the first time, I pictured us, sitting, our two selves in Mindspace, talking for eternity.

  “If I download my mind, it will go on forever. That mind will think she's continuous from me. But the mind in this body, by which I mean my heart—” At this point, she took my hand, placed it against her head, then right against her heart, and she talked about how the mind in her body would end, it would still die, it would still struggle at the end knowing that for this mind, this mind in her body, it was the end. I heard the sense of the words, but I was more aware of the warmth of her breasts pressing against my thumb and pinky. Her eyes shone because they were moist. The intensity of her feeling could be felt more intensely than anything that might have passed between us ten years ago, when we were starting our adult lives. I wanted to kiss her. But she took my hand from her heart, kissed it lightly, and said she had to start making dinner.

  When I returned home to Varle, I discovered my son sleeping on the couch. My daughter, who was nine, a year away from her own worlds tour, was sleeping in their room with her lover. It seems odd to go through the routine of making sure her seven-year-old brother has what he needs from the room, never knowing for sure if Paul will stay the night or not. Dosamai and I are in bed early on these nights. I was never graced with the opportunity to sleep in someone else's home in the arms of their daughter. Dosamai and I are only comfortable making love when our daughter doesn't have a guest over.

  One night, after making love, during that restfulness in which our relationship is truly at peace, Dosamai says, “In a year she'll be gone. It makes me yearn for a third child.” She shifted in bed to get a closer look at my face. “That's a selfish thought, isn't it?”

  “No. It's a very human thought.”

  “Murder's a human thought. But it's not a good one to have.” She wasn't arguing. She was thinking out loud, her voice wandering into sleep.

  I thought about the idea. What if a group of couples all decided they'd have a third child? Sure, it would upset the balance, but it would force the world they lived in to find some way to grow, to expand. It would be a story to fight against entropy, to fight against our end. It was most likely another story I would never finish, but that night, I couldn't sleep the idea seemed so wonderful.

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  * * *

  Short Story: SONGWOOD

  by Marc Laidlaw

  Gorlen Vizenfirthe, the Bard with the Gargoyle Hand, last appeared in our magazine in the March 2009 issue. Here we have a new tale in this series, but this one concerns the gargoyle whose hand Gorlen owns. It also concerns something that utterly baffles gargoyles: human behavior

  Marc Laidlaw reports that he recently enticed another F&SF contributor, Ted Kosmatka, to work with him in his day job as a game designer for Valve Software.

  Ocean passage was never easy for a gargoyle. Most were content to pack themselves away in a carton, but Spar had developed an unusual (for a goyle) appetite for the ever-varying spectacle of clouds in slow parade against blue depths or starry night skies. Besides, packing arrangements took several days—even weeks, depending on the port and its stringencies—and on this occasion he had not even several hours to spare. If he failed to leave tonight, then morning might find nothing left of him except some black gravel fit only to be swept into the harbor. Complicating matters, the port was unfamiliar and all the ships looked equally sea-unworthy in the dark. He compared them to the crumpled list of vessels leaving that night, scribbled out by the terrified quartermaster at his request. Three smeared names matched up to three creaking candidates that chafed against the dock as if restless, like himself, to be away. But how was he to choose among them?

  As he cast about for some differentiating factor, he noticed a pale face nodding down at him from the nearest of the ships. A feminine creature, friendly and alert—and definitely, alluringly, beckoning him aboard.

  Spar bowed back, a gesture he had learned from humans, unsure if she were signaling to him. In response she dipped her head closer, affirming his silent question with her entire being.

  This was the portent he sought, and more than he needed—especially now that he heard voices raised in the night, footsteps turning from the wharf and rumbling down the dock. He sprang into some dangling lines that spilled from the deck and pulled himself aboard, finding the planks reverberant beneath his heavy feet.

  Before long, his pursuers rushed out along the dock. Spar hunched low, peering over the side through the mounded net. A party of torch-bearing men paused at each ship, demanding of whatever watch was on duty the right to board. In some cases the requests were met with indifference and the ships were boarded, in others with defiant bellows and the men moved on. But the ship Spar had selected was quiet and dark, its occupants no doubt off carousing, and it seemed likely the searchers would board without opposition. He leapt lightly to the mast and climbed to its peak, clinging there like a sky-barnacle watching them come and go below. He much preferred the stability of a traditional spire or roof peak; but he enjoyed the advantage of watching their every move from above. They swept their torches into the corners where he had first hid, making him glad he had ascended to the height. And just as they began to argue about who should climb into the riggings, Spar heard even angrier voices rising from the wharf. A sizable flood of men were streaming from the tavern district.

  “You there! Who's that aboard our ship?” said a belligerent voice like a stone drawn across a rasp.

  “Stowaways or customs agents!” another, shriller, speculated.

  “Either way—dead men!”

  What happened on the dark deck was never entirely clear to Spar. Those in the vanguard of the newcomers quickly scrambled aboard and confronted the interlopers in a muddle of violent shadows and shapes. He soon heard heavy splashing on the side opposite the dock, and then muttered consultations that ended in agreement on the advisability of a hasty departure. Relieved of his immediate apprehension, Spar considered returning to port. But there was no concord between his wishes and this crew. The men spread out through all the crannies of the ship like black wine spilled and drunk down into thirsty wood. In a goylish panic, he saw a number of them scurrying up the rigging, toward the very spot where he watched and waited.

  It required no special effort for Spar to remain immobile, for movement contravenes the gargoyle's essential nature. Still, it occurred to him that any who climbed this high would be surprised to find one of the yardarms replaced by a stone arm. He hunched there like a petrified seabird, his wings slightly parted, and felt the ship begin to rock more deeply underneath, Spar himself swaying like the bob on an inverted pendulum. Faintly luminous sails of pale violet snapped out, full of the night wind, and the lights of the dock began to pull away. Spar watched until the lamps of the port were as small as the stars above, and then some dark eclipsing buttress of headland must have moved between the ship and land. They were away.

  * * * *

  The first night passed with no further incident, save toward morning when he realized dawn would find him pinned against the sky by the mainmast, plain for all to see. While the dark still held sway, he descended slowly, avoided the more alert sailors, crept among the dozing ones, and made his way down into the hold, so packed with cartons, crates and tarpaulined lumps that he k
new he could hide here undisturbed.

  Except for his weight, he could be no burden to the ship's crew. An ordinary stowaway would have to pilfer the stores to survive; not so Spar. The crew ought to have no objection to his presence. Still...superstition ruled any ship. Spar knew himself to be inconsequential as long as he stayed unseen and out of the way, but sailors had been known to jettison their entire cargo for fear of the goyle it might contain.

  His only regret that first day was that he had no view of sea or sky, and must wait for nightfall if he wished to find a position with more scenic potential. The seamen stumbled about on the deck; heavy weights dropped from time to time, reminding him of family footsteps; he heard the occasional clang of a bell marking hours; and once a throat-clearing figure crept down into the hold and rummaged among the supplies, kneeling out of sight for several minutes, muttering and gasping at something unseen, freezing when voices came near the hatch, then limbering up and lurching away to abovedecks when they'd moved on.

  Spar watched and waited: unblinking, unbreathing, unmoved.

  At last the ship grew quiet except for that occasional bell. He ascended past sleepers in swaying hammocks, climbing to a spray-damp deck.

  He had missed the day entirely and was left with only stars to console him. For a time, a watchman traced the vessel's cramped byways, casting a lantern about. But soon the lantern settled and from its fixed location came irregular snoring. Water slapped the ship's sides. Spar moved toward the bow, absorbed in the pleasant tip and tilt of the deck. Something about the rhythm, leaping and falling, reminded him of the feminine creature who had beckoned him aboard.

  In all his time on the ship, during last night's fray and the day's long wait, he had heard no female voice. Had she called him aboard and then slipped away herself? Or was it possible the ship might conceal another stowaway, one hidden elsewhere in the many nooks and crannies?

  As he pondered possibilities, leaning forward to watch the seafoam cleaving against the prow, he saw a pale form in the water, leaping ever ahead as if narrowly outrunning the ship. At first he thought it a fish, but it swam so strong and steady, so perfectly matched to the speed of the vessel, it seemed more like a reflection of the moon traveling with them. In fact, its pallid glow was very much like that of the moon, not to mention the lovely bright features smiling up at him from the water, yet not of the water.

  “Aren't you going to say hello?”

  He raised his eyes and looked out through the dark wet air into which they sped—and there she was: craning around to look back at him over her shoulder. The very same one who had seemed so glad to see him board the ship last night. How was it she floated out there ahead of the craft? Why did she not turn and face him?

  Finally, he saw her nature. She was fixed to the prow of the ship—was, in fact, its figurehead. A lithe yet sturdy feminine form, her figure gave only passing tribute to the mammalian bipeds that had carved her. To Spar's eye she was finer in every respect. She made him momentarily ashamed of his own crude shape.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said, enraptured. As little as he saw of her—with her fullness turned away from him, suspended above the rushing dark—there was something about her that made him feel for the first time the potential of quickstone for...quickness. “Hello! Hello, indeed!”

  Mainly keeping an eye on their course, she granted him another quick glance.

  “And your name?” she asked.

  “Spar.”

  She laughed.

  “Why is that funny?”

  “I'm amused that a creature of stone should be named for a ship's part, and the same whose role you played last night. Spar!”

  “It is a respectable mineral name. I was not aware it had some maritime application.”

  “No matter. I did not mean to wound your dignity.”

  “I do not believe I possess such a thing as dignity.”

  “Really? I had thought you were composed entirely of it.”

  “This is quickstone. Not quite a homogeneous composition, but close enough. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the stuff, out here on the open water, where it has no reason to be.”

  “And what is your reason for being here, O Spar of Stone?”

  “Nothing worth your time to hear it related,” Spar replied. “But what of yourself? Why are you here?”

  “This is my grove,” she said. “Where else could I be?”

  “Your grove?”

  “All the timbers of the ship...we were cut from the same stand of songwood, from the same deep patch of forest. Once we stood together, old nurses and guardians, fathers and mothers, shoots and sprouts. It had always been so. Then one day the flesh came with axes and saws, and I watched my family hacked down around me. The pitiless flesh took no notice of our screams...until they reached me. Me, they could hear. When they stopped their hacking, I believed I had some power over them. But they had only stopped to congratulate themselves on their good fortune. They had been looking for songwood, which grows in rare groves like mine. Once they were sure of what they had, they commenced to cut me down. Later, another man carved me into this shape, which is hardly my true one.”

  “Any more than the form you see is my true form,” said Spar. “We have much in common then. I too was deeply alive, my consciousness a flicker in the span of a quickstone seam, until the day a human hacked me out in a huge block and whittled me down to this clumsy shape you see. My mind was cut off forever from the great ocean of stone.”

  “Your form is not unpleasing,” she said, “but I can tell that there is more to you than that.”

  “And to you,” said Spar. “At least water is friendly to your kind. And here you are with your grove all around you, while I am far from home and family—far from land. But will you tell me your name?”

  “I am Sprit,” she said.

  “Are you alone of your kind, Sprit?”

  “From time to time, in certain harbors, I have seen other figureheads carved from songwood like myself. Mainly they guide the gallant ships, far too proud to consort with this dingy vessel. As you must have noticed, my crew is unsavory even by fleshy standards.”

  “I've seen little of them, but they were handy enough at dispatching last night's search party.”

  “Oh, truly, they are practiced at violence. Their captain's the cruelest of them all. I have not always belonged to him. My first owner was a placid, peaceful sort, which contributed to my falling so quickly from his possession. Each of my many masters has been nastier than the one before. You picked a fine ship to stow aboard, Spar. Still, I am glad for your company. No one here speaks to me, except occasionally to ask my seafaring advice.” She laughed. “As if I—who grew up in a deep wood, seeing stars only in winter, bound utterly to the land—would have the faintest expertise in celestial navigation or other matters maritime!”

  “What do you tell them when they ask?”

  “I make things up,” she said with a coy smirk. “Speak in riddles. Oh, they love that! It keeps them busy for weeks. I especially enjoy tormenting the captain with the suggestion that he is continually drifting past hidden treasures that would be his if only he weren't too obtuse to unravel my riddles. He tolerates me because, owing to his superstitious nature, he believes I bring uncommon luck. If he'd truly observe his sorry condition, he might question just how much luck I've brought him, or myself.”

  “Your tale saddens me,” said Spar, who felt such a twinge as he had only felt previously for stonekind. How strange that wood and stone should have so much in common—including the enemy, flesh.

  “Perhaps I exaggerate,” she said. “It is all I have, I'm afraid. Now that I can no longer stretch my limbs to the sky or my roots toward deep springs, there's nothing left to reach with but my words. I was meant to regale my grove with tales and poetry and songs, but they are deaf and dumb now, mute planks. I wish to believe there's life enough left in them to feel my love. But at other times I hope they bear no wits...for how horrid it would be, trodden upon
by unworthy boots, unable to change or grow or even die in a natural way.”

  Spar noticed a pale golden sap trickling down her cheek. He reached out and touched her side. She put out her hand and took hold of his. Together they stood for a long while, unspeaking, as the ship plowed on into the night.

  Toward morning, when they reluctantly parted hands, it was as if they had grown together in the dark hours: Spar-and-Sprit. He asked her if she might suggest a hiding place with a view of the horizon, but she knew nothing except the bow. She knew not their destination, nor how long the journey might last. Rather than risk discovery, he returned to his previous place in the hold, arriving just as the first morning bell began to sound.

  The second day passed much like the first, save for the new restlessness pervading him. A gargoyle was not meant to feel agitation, but Spar had trouble remaining at rest. He continually restrained himself from raising the hatch to gauge any change in the light. The bells came at interminable intervals. The tiresome voices of men, men, nothing but men. After an age, however, there came a change in the ordinary sounds of the ship. He heard a high tone raised above the grumbling, a musical note that wove and wended its way through the creaking and clanking and cursing. It took him a moment to realize Sprit was singing.

  For me? he wondered. Or was this a common occurrence? He could not imagine it was a typical treat for the sailors, and in fact it was wasted on them. The voices of the men began to whine and wheedle, full of complaint, until finally he heard the gruffest of them cry, “Shut the bitch up! If she doesn't quit, I'll carve a plug from her arm and stopper her up with it!” There was laughter at this, followed by escalating threats of mutilation and even fire. Spar grew ever more enraged and indignant. How dared they! It seemed strange they would treat her thus, if they truly believed her a talisman of luck. Yet it was not the first time the goyle had seen humans deride the very thing they knew (or anyway, believed) to be their best hope of happiness.