Elemental (8 page)

Authors: Steven Savile

BOOK: Elemental

10.32Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

And it was then that Quinn Parnell got up. All his joints were stiff and made clicking sounds when he moved and the muscles in his legs were knotted and cramped. He hobbled over to the coop like an old, old man and supported himself by hooking his fingers in the chicken wire the way Angie Stoat had done, and he stared at the angel.

And slowly, slowlyâthough not compared to how it followed the orbit of sun and moonâthe angel lowered its moon-fixed gaze and looked Quinn full in the face. Its wings quivered, for sure this time, raising a little breeze that stirred the bits of cottonwood seed stuck in the chicken wire.

How long did they stand staring at one another? Quinn never knew, only that he never ever forgot it and never ever told another living soul. When he could look away he did, and unlatched the coop with hands that trembled before turning his back and hobbling away on pain-racked legs. When he reached the farther picnic table, he stopped and waited.

There was no sound and no change in the subtle moonlight, but presently a brief wind sprang up and died again, and Quinn waited another full minute afterward before turning around and seeing that the coop was empty and there was no sign of an angel anywhere in Garrett Ainsworth's backyard.

It took a while, but after that things pretty much went back to normal.

Tiger in the Night

BY BRIAN ALDISS

Brian W. Aldiss started publishing stories in 1954. His first science fiction novel,
Non-Stop
, was released in 1955. More than fifty years later he is still filling our bookshelves with tales of spectacular worlds, now with more than forty novels and 300 short stories to his credit. His short story “Supertoys Last All Summer Long” was the inspiration for the 2001 Steven Spielberg film
A.I.
Aldiss has also written several volumes of poetry, as well as highly acclaimed critical works on both writing and science fiction.

A resident of the United Kingdom, Aldiss has won the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, British Science Fiction Award, and John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He was honored as SFWA Grand Master in 1999 and has three times been Guest of Honor or Toastmaster of the World Science Fiction Convention. In 2004 he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. In June 2005, he was awarded The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for “services to literature.”

Brian Aldiss lives in Oxford, England. Visit his Web site at
http://brianaldiss.co.uk/
.

It's three o'clock
in the morning by the parish clock when there comes a knock at my door.

“Don't go, Will,” says my wife. But I heeded not the wishes of women in my young days. Up I get. The Lord God lashes me on, just to squeeze a line of verse from me.

A ragged-trousered boy stands at my door, shivering in the dark.

“It ain't yet cleared, mister,” he says.

“Lead on,” I say. Off we go through the night, and he goes barefoot.

I ask him why his mother cannot find him shoes in which to walk the streets of our capital.

He says, “Ain't got no shoes. Ain't got no mother.”

The streets are all but deserted, cold, damp, cruel.

So we come to the walls of the zoo.

“It ain't yet cleared,” he says again.

I toss him a farthing and I climb the wall, as I could do in my young days.

How black is the nightâand blacker yet inside the zoo.

I stand there. I wait. Devil a star overhead.

A man approaches with a bull's-eye lantern burning dim. All I see is the dull illumination and his dull face. He's tall and clean-shaven. I know him for a respectable man, though I hold respectability to be a poor enough quality. Nor do I like him because of his trade: but I did him a favor once and now he repays me.

“It's not yet been cleared,” he tells me. “This is illegal in the eyes of the law, Will.” He calls me Will. I call him Mr. Phipps.

“Let's trust that the eyes of the law are blind,” I tell him.

We make our way along between cages. All about are sounds of animal suffering, low cries, snuffles, moans: the sighs and gasps of those who should be free. Which is superior, I wonderâthose who cage or those who are caged? I smell the odors of their droppings. I am pained by their pain. The bars gleam like drawn bayonets as we pass by.

We come to a certain shed, where Mr. Phipps says, “It's not dangerous. I have him pent.”

Then in the stinking dark he sticks out a hand to me, a hand narrow and pale such as belonged to Judas Iscariot. I place a half-sovereign on his palm and he opens the shed door.

Oh, but it's black there, black as our sins, a cruel black where no good ever came looking. No half-sovereign would ever admit a caring deity here!

The light from the lantern illumines the tiger's head. Its eyes burn as if from another star.

I cannot breathe for the wonder of that pent head. In its great beautiful skull burn cunning and ferocity, uncontaminated by intellect.

Mr. Phipps is explaining. “It's the wars, Will. That damned Napoleon!” He indicates the imprisoned animal. “They snatched him from a French placeâa menagerie, they told me. Smuggled him over here, drugged, in a chest. It ain't legal so far. I got to try for a sustificate. It ain't yet cleared.”

I don't listen to him. I stare at the great beast. It makes no sound. The tiger, the dumb tiger, speaks a different language of a different world. He seems to exude both hate and love and things beyond. His head has been wedged between two bars. He has a collar clamped to one bar. In order to express his discomfort, his body constantly shifts position, sitting, standing, crouching, crouching, standing, sitting. The wonderful composition of stripes and colors burns even in the dimness, burns into my soul.

That the Lord God made such a creature! Not for us but for itself, for its savage mate. It is of unearthly beautyâand all about it should be the solace of green and striped foliage, the boundless freedoms of the savannah.

Not this loathesome hut, these vile bars.

I burst into tears. Savage tears, tears that burn.

“Be a man, Will,” says Mr. Phipps.

But who would desire to be a man when men do such cruel things?

“Let it go free,” I say. My voice chokes.

“What? Have this brute at liberty to roam our green and pleasant land? It would eat everyone. You're mad in the head, Will, always were.”

I take a final look at this masterpiece of nature and then I run from there.

My soul cries out at the villainy of it, the injustice.

For years, I suffer in spirit with that glorious cat, and can say nothing.

Then a verse bursts forth from my mind, as God willed.

What immortal hand or eye

Will aid you in that dreadful sty?

Man forges prisons, forges lawsâ

You the freedom of your jaws.

No, it will never do! A poor lame thing. At least in verse I can liberate the splendid creature. I destroy that verse and write insteadâ

Tiger, tiger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy dreadful symmetry?

The strange case of Jared Spoon, who went to pieces for love.

BY STEL PAVLOU

Stel Pavlou makes stuff up for a living. So far he's made up a movie and two novels: He wrote and coproduced the feature film
The 51st State
, starring Samuel L. Jackson and Robert Carlyle, and penned both
Decipher
(2002) and
Gene
(2004). He hopes to make a few more things up before anyone catches on and stops him.

When asked about the origin of “Jared Spoon,” Pavlou playfully replied: “I like Kurt Vonnegut stories. What got me into SF was Vonnegut, Adams, Dali, and Escher. Not because I wanted to be like them, but rather I saw in their surrealistic noodlings something very familiar. I was then promptly told by publishers that I was derivative and I've been writing in a different voice ever since. Well, this is a journey back to my starting point. My early love affair with juxtaposition. She's insightful and sardonic, and what a pair of tits.”

Pavlou lives in Rochester, New York. Visit his Web site at
www.stelpavlou.com
.

One day
she just took a knife to him.

She said, “I'm gonna stick this to ya if you look at me that way again.”

He was shocked, obviously. He had a mouthful of lunch.

“What way?”

“Or how about I cut off a finger? Yeah, one of ya fuckin' fingers. See how you like that?”

So he wiped his mouth on the napkin. Set his sandwich down. Almost like, should he get out of this alive it would be nice to get back to the sandwich.

In the end she didn't stab him with it. She threw it at him. It took a lobe clean off.

It bled a lot.

He responded with a kind of Parkinson's twitch.

She didn't have a name after that.

He called her Girl 77. There was no telling how many personalities she really had rattling around in that wonderfully packaged though fucked-up brain of hers. If he had to sit and count them all he'd say seventy-seven was a good guesstimate, but don't quote him. She was full of surprises. That was why he loved her.

That was the day Jared Spoon decided to quit smoking.

The letter read:
My dearest, darling Jared.

Immediately he had the impression this was not from anybody he knew.

The letter continued:
I am going to send you something. I don't want you to be alarmed. I am going to send you something very intimate. I want you to know it is sent out of love. Please keep it in your safe place until I instruct you otherwise. We shall be together very soon, my love. Yours deeply and intimately, Girl 77
.

Jared Spoon shuddered at the thought of his safe place.

He watched Girl 77 rocking quietly on the floor.

We shall be together
very soon
? How much sooner than already being together did she want?

He decided he should put more of an effort into making a lasting impression on her.

Jared Spoon used patches at first.

After a while he ran out of places to put them and slapped them on the back of his neck.

Herb Foresight thought they made him look like an armadillo. Jared Spoon didn't bother setting him straight. Herb Foresight was an idiot.

There is no health warning on a packet of nicotine patches.

At first he waited until nothing arrived. By then he was up to six patches a day!

Still Girl 77 said nothing about a delivery.

At last he was free from the burden of options!

He stood across the room to ask his question and hoped she wouldn't beat the snot out of him for disturbing her.

He said, “Girl 77, what happened to that thing you were going to send me?”

He waited for her lolloping form to come galloping across the carpet poised to club him one. Instead, she remained inert.

Girl 77 denied everything.

“I deny everything,” she said.

“Huh?”

She denied knowing him.

“How can you deny knowing me?”

“Who are you?”

“Are you serious?”

“Please leave.”

“You want me to leave?”

She denied even asking him to leave.

She said, “I didn't ask you to leave.”

She marched into the bedroom and returned dragging a large black suitcase behind her. “This is not your suitcase. I did not pack it.”

Jared Spoon was at a loss. This was his apartment. He asked if he should just stay a while.

She denied she could speak any English.

“I no speak English,” she said.

The Sennadril plastic cigarette substitute took away the craving for a cigarette by mimicking the look and feel of a real one, thus satiating the body's habitual need to keep placing flammable objects in the mouth.

Herb Foresight thought he looked like he'd stuffed a pen in his mouth. He said, “You taking notes?”

Jared Spoon set the suitcase down on the kitchen table and drummed his fingers on it.

“What's in the case?”

“Girl 77 gave it to me.”

“That's about right. She's got nothing but baggage and she's always giving it to you. You need to stop.”

Jared Spoon said, “She's not something I can quit.”

“You quit smoking.”

“But not nicotine.”

Herb Foresight scratched his chin. He understood very few things in this world. This too was not one of them. “You're doing this out of love?”

“I'm doing this out of desperation. I want to make her happy.”

“By moving out?”

“She'll have forgotten by the morning.”

“She threw you out on your stitched-up ear, my friend.”

“She just needs her medication.”

Drugs he understood. “Drugs. Jesus Christ, Jared. I can get you drugs. Anything you want, you just ask. You know that. What's she into? Blips? I can get a good deal on Blips, Nuts, Gloob, say the word.”

“Not
drugs,
” Jared Spoon corrected. “Medication. Peptoglycomol B, Frinzadrine, and Nitrinol. You think you can come up with that?”

“I can't even say that.”

“She needs it for her head.”

“So you're doin' this for head.”

“For love.”

Jared Spoon smuggled drugs for Herb Foresight once. He kept them in his safe place. He kept so many things in his safe place it became uncomfortable.

Girl 77 said she might be crazy but you couldn't pay her enough to put anything up
her
bum-bum.

He kipped on the couch that night.

It stank.

It was covered in leather and polished with wax. Every time he rolled over it sounded like a fart.

He dreamed he was lowing. Cud obsessed in a grazing field with the rest of them. Ruminating on his part in this endless piebald queue. Shuffling onwards to the place where the shotgun sounds were made.

It was enough to make him bolt from the couch and into the darkness scream: “Moo!”

The address on the parcel read:
Jared Spoon, 40116, No. 3.

This was not his toothbrush.

This was wrapped in brown paper and taped at both ends.

Jared Spoon decided that perhaps it would have been for the best if he had checked his suitcase before leaving home.

He peeled away the layers to find a sturdy silver box and a note which read:
My dearest, darling Jared. So it begins!

Jared Spoon took umbrage. Surely this was not where it began but where it continued?

A swift exhumation of the contents suggested it was neither. This was where it veered wildly off at a tangent and ploughed catastrophically into the ground leaving nothing but the depressing smell of singed artichokes.

Herb Foresight said, “What's that?”

His homeless, ear-stitched friend prodded the vacuum-packed plastic lump with a finger. “It's a foot in a box.”

“A foot?”

“In a box.”

“What size?”

“What?”

“What size is it?”

“A size eight, I think. Why?”

“Might help track down the owner.”

“You think its size will be the deciding factor?”

“What are you going to do with it?”

Jared Spoon said, “Well I'm buggered if I'm putting it up my bum-bum.”

Jared Spoon sat on the toilet clutching his head.

Nicozing chewing gum came in six
incredible
flavors. Spearmint, peppermint, freshmint, coolmint, aquamint, and menthol.

All of them produced the same incredible side effects! Mouth ulcers, jaw ache, dizziness, headache, and upset stomach.

Try as he might, he couldn't blame his squits on the chewing gum.

How many more pieces of this poor unfortunate footless person would be paying him a visit?

Jared Spoon went home to discover that the answer was three and a bit.

Herb Foresight stood in Jared Spoon's kitchen and peered down at the deep freezer in awe.

“Fuck me, she's been busy.”

“There's nearly half a person in here.”

“Just like your girlfriend.”

Jared Spoon said, “That's uncalled for.”

He stashed the new vacuum-packed appendage in with the peas and closed the lid.

“All week they've just kept coming. Yesterday it was a gall bladder with a note that read:
This is how much I love you
.”

“A gall bladder is a lot of love.”

Jared Spoon chewed on his fingernails and nervously paced the two-meter-square patch of linoleum.

“Do you think it's a good thing that she finally trusts me?”

“I don't think she even knows you moved back in, my friend. You need to talk to her. This is getting out of hand.”

“She comes, she goes. She never says a word. Where's she getting these things?”

Herb Foresight had a theory. “From people,” he said. “From people.”

This had to stop.

So far he'd tried patches, pens, gum. Nothing had worked.

Herb Foresight said there was this pill he could try that would make him chunder if he so much as looked at a cigarette.

Jared Spoon said he wasn't convinced by it. Nobody ever caught cancer of the eyeballs from looking at a cigarette.

He contemplated abstinence instead.

The invitation read:
My dearest, darling Girl 77
.

With any luck that would get her attention.

The invitation continued:
I have received your intimates and I have kept them in a place that's almost as safe as the other one. Why don't you come to dinner and we can moo about them? Yours as ever, Jared Spoon
.

He was hesitant, he had to admit. Meal times were when she got
feisty and he owned knives. So he lit scented candles to try to soften the mood.

They didn't help.

She said, “Are you a nancy boy?”

“What? No.”

“It would explain a lot.”

“I've done everything you asked.”

“Well, you're out of luck, nancy boy. I didn't ask you to do anything.”