Emperor of Gondwanaland

The Emperor of Gondwanaland and Other Stories

Paul Di Filippo

Collection copyright © 2005 by Paul Di Filippo

Copyright Acknowledgments: “Anselmo Merino” first appeared in
New Pathways
, 1986. “My Adventures with the SPCA” first appeared in
Shock Waves 1.1
, 1996. “The Emperor of Gondwanaland” first appeared in
Interzone
, 2005. “Your Gold Teeth, Pt. 2” first appeared in
Aberrations
, 1996. “Beyond Mao” first appeared in
Postscripts
, 2005. “Observable Things” first appeared in
Conqueror Fantastic
, 2004. “Clouds and Cold Fires” first appeared in
Live Without a Net
, 2003. “Ailoura” first appeared in
Once Upon a Galaxy
, 2002. “Time Travel Blasphemies 1 & 2” first appeared in
Proud Flesh
, 1994. “Pulp Alibis” first appeared in
Schegge d'America
, 1998. “Science Fiction” first appeared in
Witpunk
, 2003. “The Curious Inventions of Mr. H.” first appeared in
Electric Velocipede
, 2003. “Shake It to the West” first appeared in
Space and Time
, 1995. “Sisyphus and the Stranger” first appeared in
Bifrost
, 2004. “A Monument to Afterthought Unveiled” first appeared in
Interzone
, 2003. “Bare Market” first appeared in
Interzone
, 2003. “And the Dish Ran Away with the Spoon” first appeared in
Sci Fiction
, 2003. “Up!” is previously unpublished.

To Deborah, who has seen everything

And to John Oakes: ten years of making it up as we go along

Introduction

Every prior collection of mine has had an organizing theme behind it.
The Steampunk Trilogy
featured SF based on the Victorian era, while
Ribofunk
presented a vision of a biology-centered future.
Fractal Paisleys
was a collection of my allegedly humorous stories, as was
Neutrino Drag
, an encore. My “hardcore” science fiction ended up in
Babylon Sisters
, while my excursions into fantasy found a home in
Little Doors. Lost Pages
presented the alternate lives of famous authors. Finally, every story in
Strange Trades
explored the concept of working for a living.

In short, I have shown myself to be an author who likes tidy, homogenous packages of fiction. Rather like a person who prefers to eat an entire quart of vanilla ice cream at one sitting, rather than indulge in a heterogeneous three-scoop sundae.

I think there are some distinct advantages to books that reflect a thematic unity. The stories build on each other—especially if they’re actually linked by characters and incidents, as in
Ribofunk
— and they convey a coherent slant on existence.

But there’re disadvantages as well. The stories might begin to seem at best too much of a good thing or at worst repetitive. By the time you swallow that last spoon of vanilla ice cream, you’re longing for a hint of chocolate.

Hence this collection you hold in your hands. My first non-themed volume of short stories. Actually, the book does have a theme: inclusivity. Here is a sampling of everything I do, all the different modes I work in, available in one place. Eighteen stories that have never seen the light of day since their first appearances. Fantastical, realistic, surrealistic, speculative—this book’s a regular foot-long banana-split, with three kinds of sauce, nuts, cherries, whipped cream, and at least one flavor of ice cream you’re guaranteed to love.

I’m reminded of a character in a John Barth novel. This fellow vowed to be forever unpredictable in his behavior. But then he realized a paradox: total unpredictability was
a predictable pattern
! Therefore, he decided to violate his rule of total unpredictability in only one category: what he ate for breakfast. He would eat the same thing every day. Thus, this mote of predictability in his sea of unpredictability would preserve the true randomness of his lifestyle from being predictably unpredictable.

This book is my link of unpredictability in my chain of thematic predictableness.

Does your head hurt yet? Mine certainly does!

I

Periauricular Dampness

When I quit my day job in 1982 to embark on the career of a freelance writer, I drew up a little chart. I wrote down the names of all the extant SF zines and planned how often I would sell a story to each one. I figured that if I could place just one story per month among them, I’d have it made, earning about half the money I had been reaping as a programmer. Enough to live modesdy on.

Emboldened by Ray Bradbury’s exhortation to fledgling writers to write a thousand words per day, thus composing one story per week, I figured I had plenty of room for learning-curve failures. Hell, only one story out of four had to be good enough to sell.

During the course of that first year, I wrote nearly fifty stories, lovingly assigning a number to each one (a tyro’s practice that, I was recently pleased to learn, Robert Silverberg shared in the early years of his career). I amassed over a quarter of a million words of fiction.

And I didn’t sell a single story.

Eventually, when my savings ran out, I had to get another day job. But I kept writing. And I must’ve gotten better at it, thanks to Bradbury’s formula, since I finally did begin to place a story here and there.

But sell a story per month? Not even Robert Reed or Michael Swanwick or James Patrick Kelly—writers at the height of their craft—do that nowadays.

Wet behind the ears? I guess you could say that.

Once I began selling fiction, I turned back to the stories that hadn’t sold. Now, in most cases, I could see why. But there was a single piece from the tail end of that run that seemed to have merit. Maybe it was different from the others because it was based on a template I had stolen from a master. Having read Melville’s “Benito Cereno,” I conceived of the notion of science-fictionalizing Herman Melville’s sea saga. I shook the dust off “Anselmo Merino” and found it a home in a small-press zine, the late lamented
New Pathways
. If there was any money involved, I can’t recall, but it couldn’t have been much. Still, I felt proud to see this in print. Editor Michael Adkisson, wherever you are: thanks again!

Anselmo Merino

being a true and accurate rendering of the encounter between the ships
golden cockerel
and
melville
, off encantada island, august 24th, 901 p.s.

All this happened many years ago.

For a period of my life, the events I am about to narrate—for the hundredth time, and yet, in a way, for the first— \dominated my thoughts. Then, for a brace of decades, they troubled me little, if at all. Now, however, in my retirement, as I sit in the high tower of my lonely house in Tirso Town, watching the sea by day and night, the strange and disturbing happenings that occupied barely twelve hours of my life recur vividly and portentously, as if fraught with more meaning than I can legitimately and consciously assign them.

So of them, at last, I will write.

I. We Sight the Distressed Ship

My vessel, the
Melville
, was anchored some hundred meters off Encantada Island, a crescent-shaped parcel of land claimed neither by the Union nor the Aristarchy, lying in mid-ocean between Ordesto and Carambriole, some five degrees below the Equator. From where my schooner rocked gently on the pellucid waters of the bay, I had an excellent view of a golden beach, and the
Melville
’s cutter grounded there. Beyond the beach, in a dense wall, began the satinwood trees, their silver boles tall and bare of branches and foliage, save for a tuft of feathery green at the very top of each.

From the island drifted faintly to me the brittle hum of the lasers wielded by my men, and the intermittent thump of a tree striking the earth. In an hour or so, the trundlebots would emerge from the woods, each bearing the massy, lustrous heart of a satinwood tree, excised almost surgically by my trained foresters. The bots would load the logs into the cutter. From each tree we took a piece averaging four meters in length and a fraction of the tree’s original diameter. Those shining, red-brown cores, cut into boards and finished to a moire-like sheen, would pay the costs of the entire voyage, with a handsome profit left for every crew member. Wasteful, in a way, to kill such splendid trees and use so little of them. Yet they did no good to the nonexistent inhabitants of Encantada Island, and we were careful to harvest judiciously, the trees being our livelihood.

This last load would fill the
Melville
’s, hold, and we would then depart for our home port of Tirso Town, capital of the Transmontane Union.

The sun beamed down—very hot, but not cruel—as I stood at the rail, eyeing the land. I was grateful for the lack of clouds, knowing that the banks of faceted solarcells atop the fore and aft deckhouses would be gathering energy aplenty. Overhead, in the rigging of the
Melville
’s twin masts, the sailbots scuttled like spiders, anticipatory of our leave-taking.

The allotted time passed. Breezes stroked my brow. On the sandy shore the trundlebots appeared, laden with Paean’s bounty. The entire complement of the
Melville
—myself naturally excluded—followed: four foresters and my first mate, Runcie Belgrano. The robots deposited their loads and entered the cutter, followed by the men. The slim craft put off soundlessly, powered by its small electric motor. How often, when becalmed in the doldrums, had I wished the
Melville
herself might possess larger versions of such motors. But our solarcells could never accumulate enough energy to feed such brutes, and so, Paean being a world poor in fossil and radioactive fuels, we were forced to rely on wind and sun.

And not a bad pair to put one’s faith in, for the most part, I always held.

The cutter arrowed across the calm surface of the sea. I began to discern more clearly the familiar faces of my crew, notably the fat, bristled cheeks of Belgrano. It struck me suddenly that contrary to all prior usage, the men did not gaze longingly on the
Melville
and her comforts, but beyond her, out to sea.

I turned with a sense of irrational foreboding.

I had often heard of a ship “limping” into port. Never had I fully appreciated the figure of speech until that moment, being a rather prosaic and unimaginative sort of man, not given to flights of fancy, nor extravagance in words or deeds. Yet the ship that approached us now, and which so riveted the attention of my men, did somehow evoke a human’s sore-footed gait, crawling almost in fits and starts.

Like the
Melville
, the ship was a double-masted schooner forty or so meters in length, with clean and fluid lines. There, however, all resemblance ended. Where the
Melville
was trig and polished, scoured and caulked, this newcomer was in disrepair and foul shape. Her sails were in tatters, and devoid of bots. The solarcells atop her deckhouses were smashed, functioning as useless collectors of rainwater. I saw charred scorches on her rails, as if lightning or lasers had bitten there. Her whole aura was one of neglect and desuetude. No living figures did I mark on board, either.

Small wonder my men were so captivated, it was such an unexpected and disreputable sight.

The cutter had by now pulled alongside the
Melville
. I had in the instant made up my mind what to do regarding the uncanny ship, and so leaned over to shout my orders.

“All bots: Come aboard with the cargo and stow it. Jenckes, Topps, Allen, and Strathmore: You also disembark. Mate Belgrano and I shall visit this stranger. Hold yourselves ready should we need you in any way.”

Each trundlebot, clasping a piece of satinwood with two of its arms, ascended the hanging netting up the ship’s side using its other two limbs. They headed for the aft cargo hatch, where they would deposit the satinwood and then tap the flow from the solarcells. Jenckes, Topps, Allen, and Strathmore came aboard in their wake and made off to the galley, to refresh themselves after their work ashore.