Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #226 (2 page)

Christopher Anvil
(Harry C. Crosby, Jr, 1925—2009), US author of many magazine stories—mostly in John W. Campbell's
Astounding
and
Analog
—died on 30 November aged 84. The first of his eight novels was
The Day the Machines Stopped
(1964).

I.F. Clarke
(1918—2009), UK sf bibliographer, anthologist and scholar of future-war fiction whose books included
The Tale of the Future
(1961; revised 1972, 1978),
Voices Prophesying War
(1966; 1992) and
The Pattern of Expectation
(1979), died on 5 November. He received the SF Research Association's Pilgrim Award in 1974.

Don Congdon
(1918—2009), US literary agent and anthologist who represented Ray Bradbury's for over 50 years from 1947, died on 30 November. He was 91. (
NY Times
)

Louise Cooper
(1952—2009), UK fantasy author whose debut novel was
The Book of Paradox
(1973), died suddenly on 21 October. Her scores of fantasy and supernatural novels include the popular Time Master and Indigo series, plus much work for younger readers.

Lionel Davidson
(1922—2009), UK writer of well-regarded thrillers whose sf/fantasy includes
The Sun Chemist
(1976) and the YA
Under Plum Lake
(1980, also as by David Line), died on 21 October aged 87.

Raymond Federman
(1928—2009), French-born author long resident in the USA, whose
The Twofold Vibration
(1982) is dystopian sf, died on 6 October; he was 81.

Janet Fox
(1940—2009), US author of short stories—also sf novels under the house name Alex McDonough—died on 21 October aged 68. She was best known for her writers’ market report
Scavenger's Newsletter
(1984—2003).

Robert Holdstock
(1948—2009), UK author of many notable sf, fantasy and horror novels, died on 29 November after a brief and shockingly unexpected illness. He was only 61. Most of his finest work is part of or linked to the Mythago cycle, opening with
Mythago Wood
(1984)—a World Fantasy and BSFA Award winner—and dealing with powerfully re-imagined mythic archetypes inhabiting an English heartwood infinitely larger inside than out. Losing Rob leaves a huge, aching hole in the British sf scene.

Karl Kroeber
(1926—2009), US literary academic who wrote the nonfiction
Romantic Fantasy and Science Fiction
(1988), died on 8 November. He was Ursula K. Le Guin's brother.

Buddy Martinez
, co-founding editor of
Iniquities
magazine, sometime co-publisher at Gauntlet Press, and author of short horror stories, hanged himself on 30 November.

William Miller
(1934—2009), UK publisher in the 1960s/1970s and later a Japan-based literary agent, died on 5 November aged 75. He was responsible for publishing much sf, including J.G. Ballard, while he ran Panther Books (later Granada).

David C. Smith
, US scholar in several disciplines including the life of H.G. Wells—of whom his
Desperately Mortal
(1986) is a notable biography—died on 7 November.

Ed Valigursky
(1926—2009), US artist who in the 1950s and 1960s painted many sf covers for
Amazing
,
Fantastic
, Ace Books (especially Doubles) and other publishers, died on 7 September; he was 82.

Copyright (C) 2010 David Langford

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The names of dying sailors washed across Amber Tolester in a sea of rainbow-lit letters. When the ships of Windspur languished in port during the doldrums of summer, the names lay cold-blue and exhausted on her skin. When autumn's gales churned the seas to crash and foam, the names burned red in response. And when a sailor on any of Windspur's ships was washed away, or crushed by tackle, or drowned in the endless depths, Amber screamed as that sailor's white-hot name burned into her body, leaving the other names to wonder which would next fall for the sea's slippery embrace.

No one in Windspur could explain Amber's fate. The port's more pious citizens proclaimed Amber a warning to sinners that life was short and damnation eternal. The less pious whispered that Amber paid for the sins of her parents, who had been shop keeps until their untimely deaths a decade before. Depending on the tale, Amber's mother had either spurned a sailor's true love—cheating on him even as he drowned in a great hurricane—or Amber's father had jumped ship at the last minute. For want of a full crew, his ship was lost.

Once every month, Amber walked to the church rectory, where she disrobed in front of Mrs Andercoust, the town's oldest widow. Mrs Andercoust wrote down the names on Amber's skin, compared those names with previous lists, and noted with sadness any missing names. Ship owners and captains used the widow's lists to balance their crews, never wanting too many named sailors on one ship. And woe be to any sailor who asked for his true love's hand in marriage without first confessing that he was among the named.

And so Amber Tolester grew to hate her life. She covered herself in long dresses and gloves and prayed every day for the names to disappear. More than once she walked to the harbor breakwater and considered jumping into the churning ocean waves. All that stopped her was the ironic knowledge that without being named on her skin, she wasn't fated to die at sea.

Shortly after Amber turned twenty-five, a new name appeared on her skin: David Sahr. Mrs Andercoust discovered the name glowing in cold blue light across the middle of Amber's back. As Amber pulled her clothes back on, shivering from the rectory's chilly drafts, Mrs Andercoust cackled about the discovery.

"No David Sahr has been born in the last month,” Mrs Andercoust said, leafing through the church's baptismal record. “And the only David Sahr I remember left Windspur when he was a child."

Amber buttoned the front of her dress, smiling as the name of Billy Martin swam across her right breast. As a teenager she'd often dreamed of Billy caressing her breasts, although not in this manner. She watched Billy's name for another moment until a cough from Mrs Andercoust brought her back to the issue at hand. “Perhaps this David Sahr changed his name,” Amber suggested.

"Doesn't work like that. Change their name all they want. If they're on your skin, the sea will take them."

Amber frowned. While she understood the fervor the widow devoted to the names—like most widows in town, Mrs Andercoust had lost her husband to the sea—Amber hated it when Mrs Andercoust saw her as nothing but an empty canvas for the sailors’ deaths. Still, Amber figured Mrs Andercoust's work tracking the names helped people, so she bit her tongue to keep from saying anything nasty.

When Amber left the rectory, she walked the long way home, enjoying the cool spring breeze blowing from the bay and the morning sunshine bouncing off the damp cobblestones and slate-roof buildings. Outside a boutique, Amber stopped and gazed longingly at a collection of popular sun dresses newly arrived from London. Amber glanced at her reflection in the window—at her hideously brown old maid's dress, at the long sleeves and gloves she wore to hide the names. She wished she could wear sun dresses without attracting attention.

With a sigh, she turned to walk on. However, a middle-aged woman blocked the sidewalk. When Amber tried to step around her, the woman spat at her feet.

With a start, Amber recognized the woman as the mother of Clyde Oldman, who'd drowned last year. Amber tried to walk away, but the woman followed her. “You're a vile, evil thing,” the woman yelled. “You should have drowned with your parents."

Before Amber could respond, the woman's husband raced over and grabbed his wife's arm. “My apologies, Miss Tolester,” he said, hustling his wife away. “She doesn't mean anything by it.” But his abrupt tone told Amber the husband agreed with his wife.

Once the woman was gone, Amber noticed the passersby who had paused to watch the encounter. “What are you looking at?” she screamed. Then, nearly in tears, Amber ran back to her store, wondering if fate had purposely left her face free of names so everyone could easily see how much she hated her life.

That night an unseasonably powerful storm blew in from the sea. From Amber's apartment above her store, she watched the waves pound the harbor's breakwater. But while the names on her body crashed in tune with the gale, none burned red. Amber always felt the deaths of sailors minutes or hours in advance, as their names grew hotter and hotter and brighter and brighter. For now, all the names merely warmed her skin, meaning their deaths were far in the future. Amber climbed into bed and fell asleep, happy there'd be no deaths on her conscience tonight.

The next day, as Amber swept broken branches and smashed slate fragments from the front of her store, she heard people yelling at the docks. Amber walked over to find the
Simply
, a 1,000 ton sailing trawler, limping into port. One of the trawler's masts was broken and the ship listed heavily to port. The crowd at the docks parted when they saw Amber—some people happy to see her, others appalled.

"Oh, Miss Tolester, Miss Tolester,” a sailor onboard yelled when the trawler reached the piers. Without waiting for the gangplank, he jumped from the ship to the dock and fell at Amber's feet.

"Bless you, Miss Tolester. When that storm hit, I would have lost faith except my best mate Bonder wasn't on your skin. I stayed close to him and sure enough, here I am, safe and sound."

Amber didn't know what to say. The sailor at her feet was Miles O'Shaughnessy, who was among the named. And she knew Jack Bonder—he'd gone to school with her and wasn't named. As more sailors walked off the
Simply
, they crowded around Amber, adding their praise and touching her like a sacred totem. As always, Amber marveled at this behavior. Every sailor who survived a storm or accident praised her. If they weren't named on her body, that was why they survived. If they were named, they survived because their time had yet to come. Living sailors loved Amber while the dead voiced few complaints.

Happy all the sailors had survived, Amber tried to leave, but Miles stopped her. “My lady, we have a gift for you,” he said. He and the other sailors led Amber to the gangplank, where a tall sailor Amber didn't know was carried to the dock on a stretcher. At first Amber thought the gift was behind the unconscious sailor, but she realized they meant the sailor himself.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand,” Amber stammered.

Miles O'Shaughnessy frowned. “Isn't he a friend of yours? He's been delirious since we've found him floating in a half-destroyed lifeboat. Keeps muttering your name over and over."

Amber stared at the unconscious sailor's peaceful face. She'd never seen this man before. But before she could say so, Miles handed Amber a tiny silver and glass frame. “He had that in his pocket,” Miles said.

Amber glanced at the tiny picture, which fit easily in the palm of her gloved hand. The daguerreotype showed Amber standing on the bow of a ship. Amber tried to convince herself that the picture merely showed another woman who resembled her, but then she turned it over. There, etched into the silver backing, were the words to amber tolester, with eternal love. david sahr.

As Amber watched the unconscious sailor being carried to the port's small hospital, a shiver rocked the names flowing her skin. David Sahr. That was the new name on her body.

That night, Amber couldn't sleep. She stared at the daguerreotype over and over, trying to tease details from the black and white image. In the picture Amber wore pants and a short sleeve shirt and stood on the deck of a small sailing cutter. Behind her, a man dangled by his neck from a rope slung over the yardarm, his face swollen and blurry. Amber had heard of captains hanging mutineers and pirates like that, but such a deed hadn't been done in decades.

Another strange thing about the daguerreotype—aside from the hanged man and the fact that Amber had never taken the picture—was that no names were visible on her bare arms. Even more shocking were the words from David Sahr expressing his eternal love. Amber wanted to race to the hospital and force this stranger to explain why he dared state his love for someone he'd never met. She felt both violated and excited by Sahr's words.

The next day she visited the hospital to confront this David Sahr. To her surprise, two constables stood outside his door.