FSF, September 2008 Read online

  "What are you doing here?"

  I jumped back and dropped the book. Dust puffed around me. An old lady, hunched and witchy, was standing at the end of the aisle. She limped forward. Her voice was sharp as she repeated herself. “What are you doing here?"

  "I got lost. I'm trying to find the engineering department."

  She was an ugly old dame: Liver spots and lines all over her face. Her skin hung off her bones in loose flaps. She looked a thousand years old, and not in a smart wise way, just in a wrecked moth-eaten way. She had something flat and silvery in her hand. A pistol.

  I took another step back.

  She raised the gun. “Not that way. Out the way you came.” She motioned with the pistol. “Off you go."

  I hesitated.

  She smiled slightly, showing stumps of missing teeth. “I won't shoot if you don't give me a reason.” She waved the gun again. “Go on. You aren't supposed to be here.” She herded me back through the library to the main doors with a brisk authority. She pulled them open and waved her pistol at me. “Go on. Get."

  "Wait. Please. Can't you at least tell me where the engineering department is?"

  "Closed down years ago. Now get out."

  "There's got to be one!"

  "Not anymore. Go on. Get.” She brandished the pistol again. “Get."

  I held onto the door. “But you must know someone who can help me.” I was talking fast, trying to get all my words out before she used the gun. “I work on the city's sewage pumps. They're breaking, and I don't know how to fix them. I need someone who has engineering experience."

  She was shaking her head and starting to wave the gun. I tried again. “Please! You've got to help. No one will talk to me, and you're going to be swimming in crap if I don't find help. Pump Six serves the university and I don't know how to fix it!"

  She paused. She cocked her head first one way, then the other. “Go on."

  I briefly outlined the problems with the PressureDynes. When I finished, she shook her head and turned away. “You've wasted your time. We haven't had an engineering department in over twenty years.” She went over to a reading table and took a couple swipes at its dust. Pulled out a chair and did the same with it. She sat, placing her pistol on the table, and motioned me to join her.

  Warily, I brushed off my own seat. She laughed at the way my eyes kept going to her pistol. She picked it up and tucked it into a pocket of her moth-eaten sweater. “Don't worry. I won't shoot you now. I just keep it around in case the kids get belligerent. They don't very often, anymore, but you never know....” Her voice trailed off, as she looked out at the quad.

  "How can you not have an engineering department?"

  Her eyes swung back to me. “Same reason I closed the library.” She laughed. “We can't have the students running around in here, can we?” She considered me for a moment, thoughtful. “I'm surprised you got in. I'm must be getting old, forgetting to lock up like that."

  "You always lock it? Aren't you librarians—"

  "I'm not a librarian,” she interrupted. “We haven't had a librarian since Herman Hsu died.” She laughed. “I'm just an old faculty wife. My husband taught organic chemistry before he died."

  "But you're the one who put the chains on the doors?"

  "There wasn't anyone else to do it. I just saw the students partying in here and realized something had to be done before they burned the damn place down.” She drummed her fingers on the table, raising little dust puffs with her boney digits as she considered me. Finally she said, “If I gave you the library keys, could you learn the things you need to know? About these pumps? Learn how they work? Fix them, maybe?"

  "I doubt it. That's why I came here.” I pulled out my earbug. “I've got the schematics right here. I just need someone to go over them for me."

  "There's no one here who can help you.” She smiled tightly. “My degree was in social psychology, not engineering. And really, there's no one else. Unless you count them.” She waved at the students beyond the windows, humping in the quad. “Do you think that any of them could read your schematics?"

  Through the smudged glass doors I could see the kids on the library steps, stripped down completely. They were humping away, grinning and having a good time. One of the girls saw me through the glass and waved at me to join her. When I shook my head, she shrugged and went back to her humping.

  The old lady studied me like a vulture. “See what I mean?"

  The girl got into her rhythm. She grinned at me watching, and motioned again for me to come out and play. All she needed were some big yellow eyes, and she would have made a perfect trog.

  I closed my eyes and opened them again. Nothing changed. The girl was still there with all of her little play friends. All of them romping around and having a good time.

  "The best and the brightest,” the old lady murmured.

  In the middle of the quad, more of the students were stripping down, none of them caring that they were doing it in the middle of broad daylight, none of them worried about who was watching, or what anyone might think. A couple hundred kids, and not a single one of them had a book, or a notebook, or pens, or paper, or a computer with them.

  The old lady laughed. “Don't look so surprised. You can't say someone of your caliber never noticed.” She paused, waiting, then peered at me, incredulous. “The trogs? The concrete rain? The reproductive disorders? You never wondered about any of it?” She shook her head. “You're stupider than I guessed."

  "But....” I cleared my throat. “How could it ... I mean....” I trailed off.

  "Chemistry was my husband's field.” She squinted at the kids humping on the steps and tangled out in the grass, then shook her head and shrugged. “There are plenty of books on the topic. For a while there were even magazine stories about it. ‘Why breast might not be best.’ Stuff like that.” She waved a hand impatiently. “Rohit and I never really thought about any of it until his students started seeming stupider every year.” She cackled briefly. “And then he tested them, and he was right."

  "We can't all be turning into trogs.” I held up my bottle of Sweatshine. “How could I buy this bottle, or my earbug, or bacon, or anything? Someone has to be making these things."

  "You found bacon? Where?” She leaned forward, interested.

  "My wife did. Last packet."

  She settled back with a sigh. “It doesn't matter. I couldn't chew it anyway.” She studied my Sweatshine bottle. “Who knows? Maybe you're right. Maybe it's not so bad. But this is the longest conversation that I've had since Rohit died; most people just don't seem to be able to pay attention to things like they used to.” She eyed me. “Maybe your Sweatshine bottle just means there's a factory somewhere that's as good as your sewage pumps used to be. And as long as nothing too complex goes wrong, we all get to keep drinking it."

  "It's not that bad."

  "Maybe not.” She shrugged. “It doesn't matter to me, anymore. I'll kick off pretty soon. After that, it's your problem."

  * * * *

  It was night by the time I came out of the university. I had a bag full of books, and no one to know that I'd taken them. The old lady hadn't cared if I checked them out or not, just waved at me to take as many as I liked, and then gave me the keys and told me to lock up when I left.

  All of the books were thick with equations and diagrams. I'd picked through them one after another, reading each for a while, before giving up and starting on another. They were all pretty much gibberish. It was like trying to read before you knew your ABCs. Mercati had been right. I should have stayed in school. I probably wouldn't have done any worse than the Columbia kids.

  Out on the street, half the buildings were dark. Some kind of brownout that ran all the way down Broadway. One side of the street had electricity, cheerful and bright. The other side had candles glimmering in all the apartment windows, ghost lights flickering in a pretty ambiance.

  A crash of concrete rain echoed from a couple blocks away. I couldn't help shiver
ing. Everything had turned creepy. It felt like the old lady was leaning over my shoulder and pointing out broken things everywhere. Empty autovendors. Cars that hadn't moved in years. Cracks in the sidewalk. Piss in the gutters.

  What was normal supposed to look like?

  I forced myself to look at good things. People were still out and about, walking to their dance clubs, going out to eat, wandering uptown or downtown to see their parents. Kids were on skateboards rolling past and trogs were humping in the alleys. A couple of vendor boxes were full of cellophane bagels, along with a big row of Sweatshine bottles all glowing green under their lights, still all stocked up and ready for sale. Lots of things were still working. Wicky was still a great club, even if Max needed a little help remembering to restock. And Miku and Gabe had their new baby, even if it took them three years to get it. I couldn't let myself wonder if that baby was going to turn out like the college kids in the quad. Not everything was broken.

  As if to prove it, the subway ran all the way to my stop for a change. Somewhere on the line, they must have had a couple guys like me, people who could still read a schematic and remember how to show up for work and not throw toilet paper around the control rooms. I wondered who they were. And then I wondered if they ever noticed how hard it was to get anything done.

  When I got home, Maggie was already in bed. I gave her a kiss and she woke up a little. She pushed her hair away from her face. “I left out a hotpack burrito for you. The stove's still broke."

  "Sorry. I forgot. I'll fix it now."

  "No worry.” She turned away from me and pulled the sheets up around her neck. For a minute, I thought she'd dozed off, but then she said, “Trav?"

  "Yeah?"

  "I got my period."

  I sat down beside her and started massaging her back. “How you doing with that?"

  "S'okay. Maybe next time.” She was already dropping back to sleep. “You just got to stay optimistic, right?"

  "That's right, baby.” I kept rubbing her back. “That's right."

  When she was asleep, I went back to the kitchen. I found the hotpack burrito and shook it and tore it open, holding it with the tips of my fingers so I wouldn't burn myself. I took a bite, and decided the burritos were still working just fine. I dumped all the books onto the kitchen table and stared at them, trying to decide where to start.

  Through the open kitchen windows, from the direction of the park, I heard another crash of concrete rain. I looked out toward the candleflicker darkness. Not far away, deep underground, nine pumps were chugging away; their little flashers winking in and out with errors, their maintenance logs scrolling repair requests, and all of them running a little harder now that Pump Six was down. But they were still running. The people who'd built them had done a good job. With luck, they'd keep running for a long time yet.

  I chose a book at random and started reading.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Department: Books To Look For by Charles de Lint

  You Call This the Future? by Nick Sagan, Mark Frary, and Andy Walker, Chicago Review Press, 2008, $14.95.

  * * * *

  When I was a kid, magazines such as Popular Mechanics and comic strips like Dick Tracy were forever giving us glimpses into the future. Even on pulp paper and newsprint, the images were enough to fire the imagination of any kid. And then there were the pulp magazines where science fiction writers tossed out inventions the way Bill Gates makes money.

  In the fifties and early sixties we were pretty much pre-everything—at least it feels like that these days, when you consider the gadgets currently available. Back then, the writers’ descriptions and the artists’ renditions of what the future held for us were windows into this amazing, shiny future that we couldn't wait to reach. Jetpacks! Flying cars! Wristwatch TV sets! Androids and robots! Floating walkways! Bubble houses!

  Of course, we didn't get most of it—at least we haven't yet. If you want to be cynical, nothing seems to really take off unless the porn industry gets behind it. Their backing certainly fueled the presence of video machines in most homes, and later, brought in the computer with its Internet access.

  But I digress.

  In the manner of one of those “Whatever happened to...” articles that run from time to time in periodicals like People Magazine, Nick Sagan and his fellow authors tell us in their book You Call This the Future? what happened to these imagined and promised inventions. Or rather why we didn't get them, and what we did.

  You don't need to have grown up with Popular Mechanics to appreciate what they've done. Half the things they discuss were never speculated about in those venerable pages. For instance, nobody back then was thinking about wireless access points because they didn't even imagine the Internet with its email, blogs, downloads, and all.

  What you do need to appreciate You Call This the Future? is an inquiring mind that likes to be fed information.

  The book's laid out in illustrated chapters ranging from jetpacks to cryonics and all points in between. The prose is smart, but not jargon-heavy. The illustrations and layout design facilitate our understanding of the prose, rather than distract. And the ideas—both the ones that still live in our imagination, and the ones that have already been brought to life—remain as intriguing as the ones this kid daydreamed about in the pages of the pulps and Popular Mechanics.

  * * * *

  Echo, by Terry Moore, Abstract Studio, 2008, serial, $3.50 an issue.

  I've written about Terry Moore's previous serial Strangers in Paradise a few times in other installments of this column, for all that it only banged up against the walls of our genre, rather than ever taking up actual residence inside. I could spend a couple of columns talking about the many good things this long, extended story brought to the table, one of which is that it actually ends.

  It has a start, a long (and occasionally muddled) middle, and a very satisfying conclusion, and you can pick the whole thing up now in six fat trade paperbacks the size of regular paperbacks, rather than that more awkward size of a comic book that's not as easy to shelve in your bookcase. They should be available in any good bookstore, or you can check out www.strangersinparadise.com for more information.

  But the new project Echo (two issues in as I write this) is definitely contemporary science fiction, to which Moore brings all the strengths that made Strangers in Paradise such a delight.

  It opens with a government agency testing a flight suit (a literal flight suit, complete with jetpack) in a desert area when they kill the “pilot” as the last part of the test. There's an explosion, followed by a rainfall of tiny pellets (which is all that's left of the suit). In the testing area, a photographer named Julie gets caught in the “rainfall” of pellets. They coalesce on her skin, forming a portion of the flight suit on her chest that won't come off.

  The agency is trying to gather up all evidence of the test, including any bystanders. They know Julie was there, and also an unidentified man (whom we haven't met yet), so they call in an assassin to assist with the cleanup.

  This being Moore, we don't just get a linear story, and things aren't as simple or clear-cut as they seem. For instance, we meet the assassin before we realize that's what she is. In her first scene she's just a young woman playing with her child in an idyllic country setting—until she gets called in to work.

  Moore has a great gift for characterization. Through his expressive artwork and spot-on dialogue, we quickly know and find depth to all the characters. And we also know that there'll be great interaction between them. No one is safe in a Moore story, either, a fact that's brought home when the viewpoint character from the opening pages dies a third of the way into the first issue.

  If you haven't tried Moore before, now's the time to get in on the ground floor of what promises to be an amazing series. Sure, issues will get reprinted down the road in trade editions, but there's an extra zing reading this sort of a story in a serial fashion. Your local comic shop should have back issues readily available to help yo
u catch up, or check that Strangers in Paradise site I mentioned earlier.

  Echo isn't being treated like an event the way the big comic companies promote what they consider to be their big stories, or hot series, but I have no doubt that in its own quiet way, it will prove to be the most satisfying story to come out this year.

  * * * *

  The Born Queen, by Greg Keyes, Del Rey, 2008, $26.

  I'm always amused how, with a series such as Keyes's The Kingdom of Thorn and Bone, the author and his publishers expect readers to retain the details of the many characters and subplots of the books, for all that there's usually a year or more between installments. Even TV shows have a little “last week on...” clip to bring one up to date, and they come out on a weekly basis, rather than annually.

  Maybe I just have a bad memory. Or maybe they're so close to the material that it's all still current for them. I don't know. But I do know that it's the mark of a good writer when their latest installment keeps your interest, even when your memory is scrambling—and not always successfully—to fill in the blanks.

  The Kingdom of Thorn and Bone is a big, sprawling story with more characters and plot threads than I could possibly sum up efficiently in the space I have. And this being the fourth and last book, my trying to do so will only spoil it for readers who have been happily reading it as each book comes out, as well as for readers who decide to give the series a try for the first time.

  So let me simply restate what I said in reviews of previous installments of this column: what makes this series so satisfying is how it reclaims the sense of wonder that first attracted many of us to reading fantasy in the first place. Yes, the plotting is deft and surprising, the characters fully realized, the world fascinating. But you can say that about a lot of books. What too many of them lack, however, is that feeling of wonder. The sense that the world is a bigger, more mysterious, and stranger place than we usually take it to be.