More inexpensive ebook goodies!
Just discovered that you can still download The Robert E. Howard Omnibus: 99 Collected Stories (Halcyon Classics) for only 1.99$ here. That's 2032 pages for less than 2$!!
Here's the blurb:
This Halcyon Classics ebook contains 99 short stories and novellas by 1930s pulp writer Robert Ervin Howard. Howard (1906-1936) is best known today for creating the sword-and-sorcery hero Conan, subject of two movies and dozens of books. However, during his short life Howard also published stories in a number of other genres.
In addition to fantasy, Howard wrote boxing stories, westerns, detective stories, horror, and created an number of compelling characters such as Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, El Borak, Steve Costigan, Pike Bearfield, King Kull, and Conan the Cimmerian.
This ebook is DRM free and includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.
Conan Stories
Gods of the North
Queen of the Black Coast
Shadows in the Moonlight
A Witch Shall be Born
Shadows in Zamboula
The Devil in Iron
The People of the Black Circle
Red Nails
Jewels of Gwahlur
Beyond the Black River
The Hour of the Dragon
The Hyborian Age
Boxing Stories
Alleys of Peril
Blow the Chinks Down!
Breed of Battle
Champ of the Forecastle
Circus Fists
Cupid vs. Pollux
Dark Shanghai
Fist and Fang
General Ironfist
Night of Battle
Sailors’ Grudge
Sluggers on the Beach
Texas Fists
The Bull Dog Breed
The Iron Man
The Pit of the Serpent
The Sign of the Snake
The Slugger’s Game
The TNT Punch
Vikings of the Gloves
Waterfront Fists
Winner Take All
Alleys of Darkness
Apparition in the Prize Ring
Detective Stories
Graveyard Rats
Fangs of Gold
Names in the Black Book
Skull-Face
The Tomb’s Secret
Aha! or The Mystery of the Queen's Necklace
Halt! Who Goes There?
Unhand Me, Villain!
Fantasy Adventure Stories
Almuric The Treasures of Tartary
The Voice of El-Lil
The Valley of the Worm
The Garden of Fear
Witch from Hell's Kitchen
Kull Stories
The Shadow Kingdom
The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune
Bran Mak Morn Stories
The Lost Race
Cormac Fitzgeoffrey Stories
Hawks of Outremer
The Blood of Belshazzar
Wild Bill Clanton Stories
She Devil
The Purple Heart of Erlik
Historical Adventure Stories
Lord of Samarcand
Gates of Empire
The Lion of Tiberias
The Shadow of the Vulture
The Sowers of the Thunder
Red Blades of Black Cathay
Horror Stories
People of the Dark
Black Canaan
Moon of Zambebwei
Black Talons
Black Vulmea’s Revenge
The Cairn on the Headland
The Fearsome Touch of Death
The Haunter of the Ring
The Hyena
The Fire of Asshurbanipal
Solomon Kane Stories
Solomon Kane
Skulls in the Stars
Rattle of Bones
Western Stories
A Gent from Bear Creek
Cupid from Bear Creek
Evil Deeds at Red Cougar
Guns of the Mountains
High Horse Rampage
No Cowherders Wanted
Pilgrims to the Pecos
Pistol Politics
Sharp’s Gun Serenade
Texas John Alden
The Apache Mountain War
The Conquerin’ Hero of the Humbolts
The Feud Buster
The Haunted Mountain
The Riot at Cougar Paw
The Road to Bear Creek
The Scalp Hunter
War on Bear Creek
The Vultures of Whapeton
While Smoke Rolled
Boot-Hill Payoff
"Golden Hope" Christmas
Mountain Man
Extract from Jacqueline Carey's AUTUMN BONES
Thanks to the generosity of the author, here's an exclusive extract from Jacqueline Carey's upcoming Autumn Bones. For more info about this title: Canada, USA, Europe.
Here's the extract:
New York Times bestselling author Jacqueline Carey returns to the curious Midwest tourist community where normal and paranormal worlds co-exist—however tenuously—under the watchful eye of a female hellspawn…
Fathered by an incubus, raised by a mortal mother, and liaison to the Pemkowet Police Department, Daisy Johanssen pulled the community together after a summer tragedy befell the resort town she calls home. Things are back to normal—as normal as it gets for a town famous for its supernatural tourism, and presided over by the reclusive Norse goddess Hel.
Not only has Daisy now gained respect as Hel’s enforcer, she’s dating Sinclair Palmer, a nice, seemingly normal human guy. Not too shabby for the daughter of a demon. Unfortunately, Sinclair has a secret. And it’s a big one.
He’s descended from Obeah sorcerers and they want him back. If he doesn’t return to Jamaica to take up his rightful role in the family, they’ll unleash spirit magic that could have dire consequences for the town. It’s Daisy’s job to stop it, and she’s going to need a lot of help. But time is running out, the dead are growing restless, and one mistake could cost Daisy everything…
Enjoy!
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Although I meant to make an early evening of it, I ended up staying at Mom’s later than I intended. We were on our second wine cooler when her neighbor Gus lumbered over to offer us a couple of the bratwursts he was grilling; which, by the way, I confirmed he hadn’t made himself. Gus is an ogre, and while he hasn’t eaten anyone in the last century, I have my suspicions regarding a few of the neighborhood cats and dogs over the years.
Anyway, the bratwursts were store-bought, so we invited Gus to join us on the deck, where he sat hunched to approximately the size and shape of a boulder-strewn hillock, and gazed adoringly at my mom.
I think it’s sweet that he has a crush on her, and aside from his latent appetite for human flesh, he seems to be a gentle soul.
Once the sun set, the mosquitoes began swarming. But by then it seemed a shame to go home too early, so Mom and I said goodnight to Gus and went inside to watch an episode of Gilmore Girls. Which, yes, I’ve seen half a dozen times, but if you’re not familiar with it, it’s about a single mom in a quirky little town raising a teenaged daughter she’d had out of wedlock when she was just a teenager herself, and it’s cute and smart and funny, and since it originally aired when I was, like, twelve years old, it’s always been our show. I bought Mom the first season on DVD with my first official paycheck.
Of course, one episode turned into two, then three, before I finally made it home to find an indignant Mogwai demanding that I refill his bowl.
“That’s all there is,” I told him, emptying the dregs of a bag of cat food. He flicked one notched ear in my direction. “Hey, it’s not my fault if you struck out today and were forced to survive on kibble alone, mighty hunter.”
Mogwai lifted his head from his dish long enough to give me a look of disdain.
“I’ll go to the store in the morning,” I promised.
Lying alone in bed, I let myself relive the memory of waking up this morning in Sinclair’s bed with his arm over me, trying to decide how I felt about it. Short answer: I felt good.
So as I drifted off to sleep, I resolved that tomorrow I’d do something nice and distinctly girlfriend-like for him. Cookies. Yeah, cookies. He didn’t know it yet, but I knew my way around the kitchen, too. I’d bake cookies for Sinclair.
It was a good idea, anyway.
The morning started out well enough. Since it was Sunday, I was technically off-duty. I woke up in time to make a run to the grocery store before the after-church hordes descended on it, stocking up on cat food and baking supplies.
By noon, I had my wet and dry ingredients whisked, sifted and separated and the late, great Katie Webster blasting some Swamp Boogie Queen blues on the stereo. My trusty electric hand-mixer was plugged in and ready to go when my phone rang. It was a local number, but not one I’d programmed into the phone.
I turned down Katie. “Hello, you’ve reached Daisy Johanssen.”
There was a lot of noise in the background on the other end, too. “Hi? This is Mark Brennan at Bazooka Joe’s. You asked me to call?”
My mind was a blank. “I did?”
“If those kids came back?”
Oh, crap. Right. I shifted my phone to a better angle. “The kids running the shell game? They’re back?”
“Yeah, right here down on the dock,” he said. “Got a pretty big crowd, too.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate it.”
Okay, so the cookies would have to wait. On a hunch, I exchanged my cute but slippery-soled sandals for a pair of white Keds sneakers. If my suspicions were right, I might need speed and agility. For the sake of mobility, I would have preferred to wear dauda-dagr on my belt, but since I didn’t want to spook the alleged kids, I went with the messenger bag instead, strapping it across my torso. Since I wasn’t sure how well my face was known in the wider eldritch community yet, I added a pair of sunglasses.
Being an agent of Hel sometimes requires compromise. At least I looked enough like a tourist to pass.
Truth be told, I actually enjoy this part of my job. It’s a game in a way; one that involves enough adrenaline to make it fun, but low enough stakes that I won’t castigate myself if I lose a round. Although I do like to win. It’s when things get serious, like they did earlier this summer, that it gets scary.
My apartment was a couple of blocks away from the docks. At a brisk walk, it only took me minutes to get there.
Sure enough, it appeared that a trio of kids were running a shell game. To the mundane eye, it was a charming affair. There was the young hawker, who looked like a miniature version of a young Justin Bieber in an oversized baseball cap, sweeping bangs over his eyes, doing the whole “Ladies and gentlemen, step right up!” bit. And there was the operator, a solemn-looking towhead, kneeling on the dock over a piece of cardboard, his hands moving swiftly as he shuttled a dried pea between three empty walnut shells. Last was their bagman, a chubby-cheeked, freckled redhead holding twenty-dollar bills fanned like playing cards in one hand. Norman freaking Rockwell would have been proud of these three.
I sidled through the crowd, ignoring a few protests. Blinking my eyes, I concentrated on seeing through the trio’s glamour. Hobgoblins, all three.
I have to say, it was obvious they were having great fun. Their feral nut-brown faces were contorted with gleeful malice, long, pointed noses drooping toward wide, grinning mouths filled with an erratic straggle of teeth. Sharp, bristly ears twitched with mirth and bright little hedgehog eyes gleamed with delight.
“You sir, you look like a sharp-eyed gent!” the Bieber-goblin said encouragingly in a clear, piping voice, identifying a new mark. “Try your hand?”
A portly tourist in a polo shirt and Dockers cleared his throat. “I don’t want to take advantage, son.”
“Oh, it’s all right, sir,” the Bieber-goblin assured him. He laid one hand on the towhead’s shoulder. “Nate here just needed to find his rhythm. He’s got it now.” He winked. “Right, Nate?”
The ostensible Nate returned his wink, hands moving more swiftly as he passed the pea from shell to shell. “Right you are, Tommy!”
Oh, gah! It worked, though. I watched the portly tourist pony up a twenty dollar bill for his bet. The seemingly freckle-faced bagman made a big show of inserting the twenty into the array of bills he held fanned in his hand. The towheaded operator made a number of smooth passes with the pea and the walnut shells, just fast enough to be credible, just slow enough to be detectable. The portly mark was sharp-eyed enough to follow him. With a show of reluctance, the bagman plucked out two twenty-dollar bills and made good on the bet.
“Double or nothing, sir?” the Bieber-goblin asked.
And again, I had to admit, it was a pretty damn clever scam. It was a reverse shell game. The hobgoblins were paying out worthless fairy gold in exchange for cold, hard, mundane cash.
I almost hated to bust them.
Almost.
While the mark debated whether to go double or nothing, I pushed my way to the head of the crowd. Beneath my skirt, my tail swished back and forth in an involuntary stalking reflex. The Bieber-goblin’s long nose twitched as he detected an eldritch presence in the gathered throng. His bright, beady eyes scanned the faces before him, pausing with uncertainty when he reached mine.
I held up my left hand palm outward, revealing Hel’s rune. “Sorry, guys. You’re busted.”
“Scatter!” he shouted.
I lunged forward to grab him... and promptly went sprawling as someone clipped me hard behind the knees. Damn. Apparently, there was a fourth hobgoblin. I caught myself on my hands on the piece of cardboard they were using as a gaming table, which promptly slid out from under me, sending me to my belly. The air went out of my lungs with a whoofing sound and my sunglasses clattered to the dock.
“Thanks!” The Bieber-goblin vaulted over me, stooping to snatch up my sunglasses with one gnarly, long-fingered hand. “I’ll take these.” Someone let out a startled shriek as he put them on his face. In the heat of the moment, he’d dropped his glamour. “Oops.”
Spinning on the cardboard like an old-school breakdancer, I took him down with a leg sweep and pinned him to the dock. “Gotcha.”
Behind me there was more shrieking and a loud, angry buzzing sound interspersed with oohs and ahs. I barely had time to wonder what the hell was going on before someone grabbed my ponytail and yanked it hard enough to make me yelp. The buzzing sound was right at my ear, vibrating the air like a hummingbird on steroids.
“Loose him, you churlish, ewe-necked trollop!” a voice shrilled. The Bieber-goblin squirmed out of my grip and took off at a run.
“Dammit, Jojo!” I scrambled to my feet. A dozen cameras went off as I confronted the hovering fairy. “I’m working!”
Jojo didn’t even deign to reply, just gave an indignant sniff and winked out of sight.
“Aw, man!” one of the tourists complained, fiddling with his camera. “Why’d you have to scare her off, lady?”
My temper stirring, I gave him a look that shut him up, then scanned the area. Three of the four hobgoblins were nowhere to be seen. They couldn’t vanish into thin air like fairies, but they were fast, and they could camouflage themselves as rocks or bushes in the blink of an eye. As long as they held still, it was hard to spot them.
Lucky for me, the bagman-goblin wasn’t as speedy as the others; and when the Bieber-goblin yelled scatter, he’d taken off down the dock where there was nowhere to hide for a good hundred yards.
I took off after him, my Keds thudding against the wooden docks. Hearing my footsteps, the bagman-goblin turned on the jets. If I’d had a clear shot, I could have caught him, but there were tourists strolling the docks, and that little bugger was agile. He scooted underneath a distinguished-looked Great Dane being walked on a leash and bounded over a baby-stroller being pushed by a young couple.
I had to go around them, apologizing breathlessly. I should have caught up to the bagman-goblin in the park with the gazebo, but by the time I reached it, he’d gone to earth, hiding.
“Where are you, you little creep?” I looked around. “C’mon, I know you’re here.” A group of tourists gave me an odd look.
I ignored them. There was a hedge of boxwood around the base of the gazebo. And unless I was mistaken, that bit of shrubbery on the end was trembling. Squinting, I peered through the camouflage glamour to see the bagman-goblin trying very hard to hold perfectly still, his narrow chest heaving with exertion.
So lazy hobgoblins could get out of shape. Who knew? I tackled him before he could run again.
“Oof!” Lying on his back, he raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay! I give.” He batted his lashless beady-bright eyes at me. “We were just having fun.”
“I know.” I plucked a crumpled wad of twenties from his clutch. “And I’m just doing my job.”
“Spoilsport,” the hobgoblin grumbled.
“Uh-huh.” I sorted through the bills, separating the real ones from the fairy gold counterfeits.
“We’ll give you half our take,” he said in a wheedling voice.
“No can do.” I dropped the false twenties on his chest, where they turned to dry, brittle oak leaves. “And I’d like my sunglasses back.” “Yeah?” The hobgoblin smirked. “Good luck with that.”
I got off him and stood, patting my messenger bag. “You know, I could have drawn steel on you and I didn’t.”
A hint of fear crossed his face. “You wouldn’t. Not for this.”
“Don’t push me,” I said sternly. “You know you’re not supposed to break mundane laws. Do you want me to report you to Hel?”
“Over a pair of cheap dollar-store sunglasses I didn’t even take?” Now the hobgoblin sounded incredulous.
“No, you nitwit. For defrauding tourists. What’s your name?” I asked him. He didn’t answer. Reaching into my bag, I unsheathed a few inches of dauda-dagr, enough to let him see the hilt. “On pain of cold steel, what’s your name?”
Although they’ve developed a higher tolerance in the last few centuries, most of the fey retain an aversion to iron and its alloys. They can be around it, but they can’t bear its touch. “Tuggle,” the hobgoblin said sullenly. “Name’s Tuggle. You really going to tell her?”
There was no way in, well, hell, that I was going to bother the Norse goddess of the dead by reporting on a relatively harmless hobgoblin scam—and Hel has her own ways of keeping tabs on what’s going on aboveground in the mundane world—but Tuggle didn’t know it. I thought about forcing him to rat out his accomplices and decided against it. I was here to keep order, not make enemies. “We’ll see,” I said to him, easing dauda-dagr back into its hidden sheath. “Tell the others to consider this a warning. And I really would like those sunglasses back.”
Tuggle shrugged. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks, Tuggle.” I gave him a hand up, which he accepted. “No hard feelings?”
He shrugged again. “Eh.”
“Hey, lady!” a concerned voice behind me called. “You okay?”
I turned around. “Fine. Why?”
It was a teenaged kid, maybe sixteen or seventeen, out wandering the town with his girlfriend. They were doing that thing where they had their arms wrapped around each other’s waists and their hands in each other’s back pockets. All the cool couples in high school used to stroll the halls that way. Of course, Jen and I had made fun of them, but secretly, I was always a little envious of them. I’m pretty sure Jen was, too.
“It’s just that you’ve been talking to that bush for a while,” the kid said in an apologetic tone.
His girlfriend blinked. “Wait a minute. What bush?”
Apparently, Tuggle the hobgoblin was skilled at maintaining a glamour and had a knack for timing a getaway. Glancing behind me, I saw he’d made his escape, probably shifting back to his freckle-faced kid guise when no one was looking.
Oh, well. At least I’d made my point.
“Welcome to Pemkowet,” I said to the teenagers. “Where weird shit happens.”
This week's New York Times Bestsellers (September 9th)
Samantha Shannon's The Bone Season is down three spots, finishing the week at number 10.
John Jackson Miller's Star Wars: Kenobi debuts at number 12.
Terry Goodkind's The Third Kingdom is down nine spots, finishing the week at number 14. For more info about this title: Canada, USA, Europe.
George R. R. Martin's A Dance With Dragons is down three positions, ending the week at number 16. For more info about this title: Canada, USA, Europe.
Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane is down five positions, ending the week at number 17. For more info about this title: Canada, USA, Europe.
In paperback:
Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is down five positions, ending the week at number 6.
George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones is down eight positions, ending the week at number 12.
Stephen King's Joyland is down seven positions, ending the week at number 13 (trade paperback).
George R. R. Martin's A Clash of Kings is down six positions, ending the week at number 17.
George R. R. Martin's A Feast for Crows is down five spots, finishing the week at number 18.
George R. R. Martin's A Storm of Swords is down nine positions, ending the week at number 21.
Max Brooks' World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is down two positions, ending the week at number 25 (trade paperback).
Win a full set of the Cassandra Kresnov series by Joel Shepherd + Extract
I have a full set of Joel Shepherd's Cassandra Kresnov sequence up for grabs, courtesy of the folks at Pyr! The prize pack includes:
- Crossover (Canada, USA, Europe)
- Breakaway (Canada, USA, Europe)
- Killswitch (Canada, USA, Europe)
- 23 Years on Fire (Canada, USA, Europe)
The rules are the same as usual. You need to send an email at reviews@(no-spam)gryphonwood.net with the header "CASSANDRA." Remember to remove the "no spam" thingy.
Second, your email must contain your full mailing address (that's snail mail!), otherwise your message will be deleted.
Lastly, multiple entries will disqualify whoever sends them. And please include your screen name and the message boards that you frequent using it, if you do hang out on a particular MB.
Good luck to all the participants!
Even better, here's an excerpt from 23 Years on Fire, which has just been released yesterday! I'm almost done with this one and it's as good a read as its predecessors were!
Enjoy!
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Ari tried to avoid Kobayashi Square; there were too many monitors. He walked from the rail station about the square perimeter instead, down Jin-Hai Street and across Pier, grateful the traffic monitors weren’t set to bust a person for jaywalking.
It was cold in Anjula, several below freezing, but if he walked fast and kept his woolen hat down over his ears, he found it bearable. There was old snow on the curbs, tucked in the places the sweepers missed, or in sidewalk gardens where grass or shrubs tried to grow. All quite odd for a Tanushan, accustomed to that city’s tropical location on planet Callay, and temperatures that rarely chilled even on winter nights. He was missing the warmth now, as the prospect of returning to it drew closer. Six months now he’d been without it, stuck here on the outer rim of Federation space, in this sprawling port city built foolishly too far south of the equator.
But in other ways, Anjula was not too different. The night streets buzzed with artificial colour, advertising hoardings, network displays, bars and theatres advertising their latest sin. People crowded the sidewalks, unbothered by the chill, some of the women even with light stockings and otherwise bare legs that Ari shivered just to look at. Here about Kobayashi Square, where transport networks clustered and VR simulation joints were famous, the crowds were sometimes huge. Tonight, they were just large—a Sunday, in the universal Federation week. In a few hours, the crowds would dwindle further. Monday was a work day and by midnight, Anjula’s ten-million-strong buzz would have declined to a low murmur. Fewer people were better, for what was planned, however little sympathy he had for them.
It was the most surreal thing, to walk these streets of a huge city, on a world whose population now approached a neat three hundred million, and to know that he was about to bring it all crashing down. Well, not him alone, he’d have help. Quite a lot of help, in fact. But it had been his idea from the inception, several years planning, and lately six months of field work. And none of these people, out on their Sunday night entertainments, had any idea what was about to happen.
Sandy knew she’d hit atmosphere when the aeroshell ceased shaking. That was odd—typically reentry was a fiery affair at nearly thirty thousand kilometers per hour, but a covert insertion fired thrusters before atmospheric contact, slowing the pod to a near hover, then hit troposphere at just over five thousand, barely fast enough to make a jolt in whisper thin air. Otherwise, a series of coordinated fireballs over Anjula might have made the defences suspicious.
After two minutes of falling, she blew the shell off and took a look at where she was. The altimeter said sixty thousand meters, well high enough to see the curvature of Pyeongwha’s horizon, if it hadn’t been pitch black. She was descending somewhere in excess of Mach two, the air not thick enough to sustain a candle flame even if the howling gale wouldn’t blow it out again.
She flipped her helmet visuals to ultra-v and got some lovely colours—hot lights below, cities along a crescent-shaped coast. That was Narata, an island, perhaps a thousand kilometers end to end. Upon the far horizon, more lights—Abanda, the mainland continent. Anjula was on Narata, off the coast; a big port city, ideal for a world surfaced eighty percent by water. Its lights below were brightest, sprawling up the coast into fragmenting smaller dots: fishing towns, villages, seaside resorts. Too cold for bikinis now, though.
Spread-eagled, she looked up and around for her support. Helmet vision found them pretty fast, dark shapes falling against an even darker sky, the nearest just over a kilometer. Sandy did a slow spin and finished her count at fifty-two . . . there were fifty-six in the drop, she imagined the other four were fine, helmet visuals weren’t as reliable as her bare eyes, but at this altitude she had no other option. Reentry trajectories were notoriously unreliable, a few random atmospheric interactions and you could end up tens of kilometers from where you should be. But the shadow crew that had inserted them had got it down to something of an art, and in free fall you could always correct your descent once unshelled.
She did so now, leaning forward to create a glidepath. Spread across the night sky about her, armoured figures followed her lead.
At thirty thousand meters Anjula was filling her view, patchy with broken cloud. She called up maps and overlaid them, quickly getting a match. From there, navcomp told her what was what, and she’d been committing most of Anjula to memory for the last few weeks. She could laser com her teammates to talk to them without frequency pollution, but Anjula was said to be paranoid enough these days, and a network of low intensity lasers above the city might just be visible enough to the kind of telescope that paranoids might have down there. It was nearly impossible for them to spot the suits, though, armoured with Tanusha’s latest stealth materials plus low-intensity opti-cam, not strong enough to turn a soldier invisible at close range, but black against a black sky? Even if a telescope did get very lucky and spot one of them, they were coming down so fast now they’d be grounded before anyone figured out what to do about it.
Ten thousand meters. The central parks were clear now, a chain of natural lakes left untouched by the encroaching sprawl of city. North, Taizhou hills. South, Xanh Harbour, and big docks for shipping, intricate shapes against the water. Not a planned pattern of hubs and spokes like Tanusha, but an organic, random mass. Ari said it was quite pretty.
She passed an airliner at five thousand meters and climbing, and counted several more below, circling toward one of the two major airports. Below that, even now at an hour after midnight, lots of city air traffic. Anjula was big enough that it never truly slept, just dozed.
At two thousand meters she got her first signal reception, a mass of shortrange frequencies, strengthening as she fell. Bandwidth increased rapidly, and she sorted fast until her suit latched onto the agreed upon network—an ultraband used primarily for uplink advertising, nearly unjammable. Trust the advertisers to pick that one while leaving the hospitals with low-band junk.
“Come on, Ari,” she murmured, as the ground rushed up fast. “Be there.” Suddenly, she found the encryption. Flash-zoomed on internal vision, saw a mass of codework and interlocking structural components that could only be Ari, with open gates just waiting for the right mate-up . . .
She provided it, and with a flash she was in, and a broad network across the entire city of Anjula blew open before her like an unfurling flag. One thousand meters. She chose a building roof and aimed for it, as her teammates appeared in quick succession upon the new network—tacnet was propagating now, using the Anjula advertising frequency as its operating base, and so much faster than usual as it found Ari’s little markers and built on them like some crazed climbing vine on a trellis.
At five hundred meters the thrusters kicked, which felt a little odd at these speeds, but she quickly found her balance and settled down toward the rooftop. She kicked harder a hundred meters up, decelerating from two hundred to fifty kph at impact, and jogged quickly to the edge for a view. The building was only fifteen stories, there wasn’t a heck of a lot of super high-rise in Anjula, just masses and masses of middle-rise fading out to suburbs. She was two blocks from the southern-most central park, perhaps two Ks from downtown, and almost exactly where she wanted. Her eyes told her that she was all alone, and none of the sparse traffic on the road below had seen her descent. If it weren’t for tacnet, she could have believed she were just a lonely soul on a lonely rooftop in a cold and unfamiliar city.
About the city, her soldiers were landing. Tacnet showed them down, reporting ready. Surely somewhere, someone would notice the small thruster flare and report something . . . a note to a friend, a video recording, a query to an authority. Ari would be watching that, patched into all the local comnets, sifting traffic for telltale phrases or images. So far, nothing. Sandy looked, but even with her enhanced vision, she could see nothing across the jumble of rooftops.
Tacnet showed the last unit down, fifty-six plus her.
“This is Snowcat,” she said. “First wave target and lock.”
Ari and his local network of rebels had selected the first wave of targets. Pray he got them all right. Sandy activated the suit’s launcher, allowed tacnet to allocate her its share of the targets, then waited for the final locks to come in. They did.
“Fire.”
Three missiles leaped over her shoulder, then kicked away as primary thrusters activated. They zigzagged like crazed fireflies, weaving across the rooftops. Now she could see her team’s presence in Anjula, tiny bright dots appearing across the skyline like illegal fireworks on Chinese New Year. They wove and dodged, headed for targets at a variety of ranges, never aiming at what their launcher was closest to, confusing the defences. Micro-munitions, a recent addition to Callay’s production lines, barely bigger than a fist, but fast, accurate and nothing micro about the charge.
She could see the flashes before she heard the booms, casting shadows in the night. They multiplied, random flares, then the sound waves struck with familiar, hypnotic resonance. Boom, b-boom, b-b-b-BOOM, boom. For a moment, it was like being back on Sao Joaquin, watching the latest Federation counter attack roll through. But she was the Federation now, and this fight was to liberate a world, not take it.
BOOM! Something struck just up the road, a fireball rising and debris raining down. A com node, possibly, the fibre links were underground but wireless transmitters were on rooftops like this one, as were backup satellite links and first-redundancy laser com relays. They whittled Anjula’s communications down, limiting options, reducing response times and creating confusion. Now the defence grids would be activating. Time to move.
She unshackled her rifle and jumped; thrusters kicked her into a low flight over the next buildings until a nice corner building loomed up with a rooftop garden. Toward the parks she could see huge fireballs rising, those would be defensive gun emplacements, secondary explosions as the ammunition cooked off. Further north, behind the tall towers of city centre, more big explosions.
Parliament defences and government buildings. There would be collateral from those explosions and others, mostly civilian. It couldn’t be helped.
Tacnet was slotting them in to secondary targeting now, armscomp found her one and she fired a missile as she landed, with no real interest in where it went. She ducked amidst garden trees and took a knee with a view.
Tacnet was incorporating the local network now, and she could hear/see/feel the local traffic going crazy. Perhaps a million calls to emergency services, media networks abruptly going live, police, hospitals, fire departments. . . and no doubt security services too, but those weren’t on any accessible network. Or, not yet.
“Okay, I’m getting a CNS response, very active, all units standby.”
That was Ari, tracking Central Network Security as it tried to lock its own tactical networks into place. There was no way of knowing exactly where they propagated from until they went active.
“I have police on the streets at A-35 by H-16,” came another, as tacnet immediately located that grid reference and highlighted it. “Multiple vehicles, lookslike a convoy.”
“Don’t hit it unless it’s para,” came Vanessa’s reply. She was only coming online now, her tacnet functions took longer to propagate, leaving the first “fire” command to Sandy. But now, she was in charge. “Police just cause confusion.”
If they’re not equipped for this sort of fighting. Most weren’t. They’d run the simulations many times, and Sandy concurred—they were actually more use alive. Emergency services, too. Sandy would have vetoed shooting at them, anyhow. Yet, happily, fire trucks blocking the roads served every purpose except the defence of Anjula.
“Airborne at C-9 and V-3. Unspecified security vehicle.”
“Kill it.”
And so it went. Pyeongwha security would go red now, but they weren’t equipped for this kind of assault; it would take them time to get assets in the right positions to be effective. In the meantime, Sandy had a facility building to reach. She couldn’t head straight in because Ari thought the network defences were too advanced, and could be degraded through phase one of the assault. Give it a half hour, he insisted, and he’d have her a path inside.
From 23 Years on Fire: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel (Pyr, 2013). Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Adrian Tchaikovsky contest winners!
Thanks to the generosity of the folks at Pan Macmillan, our three winners will each receive a copy of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s War Master's Gate, ninth volume in the acclaimed Shadows of the Apt sequence. For more info about this title: Canada, USA, Europe.
The winners are:
- Carole Fleres, from Leudelange, Luxembourg (Alytha on asoiaf.westeros.org)
- Jyoti Roy, from South Cheam, Surrey, England
- Ashley Moser, from Kennedy Town, Hong Kong
Many thanks to all the participants!
More inexpensive ebook goodies!
You can now download Arthur C. Clarke's classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey, for only 1.99$ here.
Here's the blurb:
The year is 2001, and cosmonauts uncover a mysterious monolith that has been buried on the Moon for at least three million years. To their astonishment, the monolith releases an equally mysterious pulse—a kind of signal—in the direction of Saturn after it is unearthed. Whether alarm or communication, the human race must know what the signal is—and who it was intended for.
The Discovery and its crew, assisted by the highly advanced HAL 9000 computer system, sets out to investigate. But as the crew draws closer to their rendezvous with a mysterious and ancient alien civilization, they realize that the greatest dangers they face come from within the spacecraft itself. HAL proves a dangerous traveling companion, and the crew must outwit him to survive.
This novel version of the famous Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey was written by Clarke in conjunction with the movie’s production. It is meant to stand as a companion piece, and it offers a complementary narrative that’s loaded with compelling science fiction ideas.
Extract from Tad Williams' HAPPY HOUR IN HELL
Thanks to the author and his lovely wife Deborah, here's an extract from Tad Williams' Happy Hour in Hell. For more info about this title: Canada, USA, Europe.
Here's the blurb:
I’ve been told to go to Hell more times than I can count. But this time I’m actually going.
My name’s Bobby Dollar, sometimes known as Doloriel, and of course, Hell isn’t a great place for someone like me—I’m an angel. They don’t like my kind down there, not even the slightly fallen variety. But they have my girlfriend, who happens to be a beautiful demon named Casimira, Countess of Cold Hands. Why does an angel have a demon girlfriend? Well, certainly not because it helps my career.
She’s being held hostage by one of the nastiest, most powerful demons in all of the netherworld—Eligor, Grand Duke of Hell. He already hates me, and he’d like nothing better than to get his hands on me and rip my immortal soul right out of my borrowed but oh-so-mortal body.
But wait, it gets better! Not only do I have to sneak into Hell, make my way across thousands of miles of terror and suffering to reach Pandemonium, capital of the fiery depths, but then I have to steal Caz right out from under Eligor’s burning eyes and smuggle her out again, past demon soldiers, hellhounds, and all the murderous creatures imprisoned there for eternity. And even if I somehow manage to escape Hell, I’m also being stalked by an undead psychopath named Smyler who’s been following me for weeks. Oh, and did I mention that he can’t be killed?
So if I somehow survive Hell, elude the Grand Duke and all his hideous minions and make it back to the real world, I’ll still be the most hunted soul in Creation. But at least I’ll have Caz. Gotta have something to look forward to, right?
So just pour me that damn drink, will you? I’ve got somewhere to go.
Enjoy!
------------------------
Pleasure Boating On The Rivers Of Hell
A fair wind, one of the few bits of luck I’d had in this whole cursed trip, had kept the ship ahead of Commissar Niloch long enough to reach Bashskull Point, and I was determined to get off the Nagging Bitch before the he destroyed it.
“But they know this ship,” Walter said. “They know everything. We’ll never be able to go back to Cocytus Landing now!”
“Don’t matter,” said Riprash as he lifted me into the dinghy. “We’re not going back.”
“What do you mean?” As we talked I hurriedly tested the oilcloth of the vest to see if it was flexible enough, but my main concern was that the seams would give under the pressure: I didn’t have a huge amount of faith in the tar we’d used to seal them.
“It’s a sign, that’s all,” said Riprash. “Like I told you, I’ve been thinking on this, and I see it clear now. I’m to take Bitch and spread the Lifters’ word. We’ll go where we please, and every port will be our home.”
This sounded like a spectacularly bad idea. “The authorities, Eligor and Niloch and Prince Sitri and the rest—they’ll stamp on you like ants, Riprash. They’ll never let you get away with it.”
“Even the Mastema can’t be everywhere,” he said, surprisingly cheerful. “We’ll stop and spread the word, then move on. We’ll leave behind those as can keep spreading the word for us. Gob here can say the Lifters’ Prayer by heart already! Say it boy. Show him.”
The kid looked embarrassed (or fearful, it was hard to tell with Gob) but he stared at the deck and spoke in a quiet, very serious voice.
“Out farther, way up in Heaven,
Hell has took my name
The kind don’t come
The will won’t come
In Hell as it does in Heaven.
Give us this day our asphodel
And give us our best passes
As we give up on those who passes against us,
And lead us not into time’s tortures
But deliver us from our evil . . .”
Again, the lack of tear ducts kept me from making a blubbering fool out of myself. I still wasn’t sure whether I’d helped the boy or doomed him by bringing him up out of Abaddon, but it was too late to change anything now. “Keep safe, Gob. Riprash will take good care of you.”
The boy nodded. I don’t know whether he would have thanked me in any case, but people didn’t do much thanking in Hell, as you may have noticed, and we were also surrounded by gouts of white water as Niloch’s guns began to find our range, so things were a bit hectic.
“And Walter, I’ll get you out of here. Somehow.” I felt like an idiot even as I said it—so many promises, so few fulfilled. But Walter was too polite, even as a demon, to tell me how unlikely that was. Instead he just waved like a kid watching his older brother going to the gallows.
Riprash began lowering the dinghy into the water, manning the ropes all by himself. “I put a flask of rum in that vest of yours, Snakestaff. You’ll need it, I think. And tell you-know-who back in you-know-where that I’ll spread the word all over the Inferno!” he bellowed.
Was that really what Angel Temuel wanted? It didn’t matter, because that was what he was going to get. We never know what a gesture or a word will lead to, do we?
“God loves you!” I called. It was what we angels say to the recently deceased. I was pretty sure none of these folks had heard it since then, and some of them like Riprash had probably never heard it at all.
My boat splashed hard into the water, and for the next moments I was busy trying not to fall into the river. The waves beaten up by the wind had seemed much smaller from on board the Bitch than in the little dinghy. I could hear Riprash bellowing for the rowers to start pulling, and the slave ship began to move away from me. I think the sight of my boat being put into the water had confused Niloch and his crew. The Widow’s guns fell silent, though the black bulk of the ship continued to bear down on me.
I’m sure the commissar and his crew expected me to start rowing, but in fact I hadn’t bothered to bring any oars—no point to it, as you’ll see. I watched Nagging Bitch pull away, and for the first time I felt how truly alone I was.
Niloch and his crew obviously suspected some kind of bomb or other trap, so when they were thirty or forty yards away from me they disengaged their engines and let the ship drift with the same current pushing my little boat. Many sailors and soldiers looked down through the clouds of steam that drifted from the Widow’s smokestacks.
Seen this close, Niloch looked even less pleasant than I remembered. A lot of his bone tendrils had simply burned away or broken off, and for the first time I could see that his skeletal head was more like a bird’s than a horse’s.
“You!” he screeched, “Snakestaff, you miserable turdling! Why do you look so puffed up? Whatever armor you’re wearing under that won’t save you from me. You destroyed my home.”
“Gosh,” I called back, “maybe because you were going to torture me and then turn me over to your superiors?”
“Nobody may flout authority,” Niloch screeched. “Least of all a speck of dirt like you, a creature with no level, no land, no loyalty . . . !”
“Honestly, I’m not listening,” I said. “You’re as boring as you are ugly.” I looked around to make sure that Nagging Bitch was still on the move, that Riprash and the rest were putting distance between themselves and Niloch’s larger ship. Then I bent down and picked up the heavy iron sphere from the bottom of the dinghy.
“Do you know what this is?” I asked.
Niloch tittered in surprise. “A cannonball.”
“Wrong. Try again.”
He scowled, a strange thing to see on such a long, bony face. “A bomb? Go ahead, little traitor. Destroy yourself—you won’t hurt us. This ship is iron-plated.”
“It’s not a bomb, either. It’s just a weight.” I balanced for a moment with my foot on the boat’s rail, just until I could tuck the heavy iron ball into the harness I wore across my belly, then I stepped off the boat and the cannonball yanked me down into the oily, caustic waters of the Phlegethon.
More inexpensive ebook goodies!
You can download Orson Scott Card's classic and current no. 1 NYT bestseller, Ender's Game, for only 3.98$ here.
Here's the blurb:
In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut—young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.
Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister.
Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.
Ender's Game is the winner of the 1985 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1986 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
You can also download The Palencar Project, edited by David G. Hartwell for only 2.99$ here.
Here's the blurb:
Five stories inspired by the same painting. Contributors include Gene Wolfe, L. E. Modesitt, Jr., Gregory Benford, Michael Swanwick, and James Morrow.
Extract from L. E. Modesitt, Jr.'s THE ONE-EYED MAN
Here's the blurb:
The colony world of Stittara is no ordinary planet. For the interstellar Unity of the Ceylesian Arm, Stittara is the primary source of anagathics: drugs that have more than doubled the human life span. But the ecological balance that makes anagathics possible on Stittara is fragile, and the Unity government has a vital interest in making sure the flow of longevity drugs remains uninterrupted, even if it means uprooting the human settlements.
Offered the job of assessing the ecological impact of the human presence on Stittara, freelance consultant Dr. Paulo Verano jumps at the chance to escape the ruin of his personal life. He gets far more than he bargained for: Stittara’s atmosphere is populated with skytubes—gigantic, mysterious airborne organisms that drift like clouds above the surface of the planet. Their exact nature has eluded humanity for centuries, but Verano believes his conclusions about Stittara may hinge on understanding the skytubes’ role in the planet’s ecology—if he survives the hurricane winds, distrustful settlers, and secret agendas that impede his investigation at every turn.
Enjoy!
---------------------------------
When the hatchway opened on the drop shuttle and I filed out after most of the others, Stittara turned out to be a purple-gray world, just as all the briefing materials indicated, but mere words and screen and link presentations aren’t the same as the reality. Not for me, anyway. As for why that purple-gray was so intense, rather than dull, I couldn’t have said. Oh, I could have presented reason after reason, and they’d all make perfect sense, beginning with the translucent always-airborne microorganisms that absorbed certain frequencies of visible light. The meteorologists have their measurements, their analyses that confirm those reasons. For them, that solved the problem. For me, it didn’t. An old, old physicist once told me that labeling anything had nothing to do with solving a problem. Neither does explaining how something works. As far as I was concerned, the meteorologists had just analyzed and labeled the planet’s atmosphere, and let it go. There were reasons for letting it go, and I suspected that what lay behind those reasons might be why I was there. Well… not exactly. They were why the Unity’s ecological arm, the Systems Survey Service, had posted that free-lance consulting assignment that I’d jumped at just to get away from Bachman and Chelesina, except it had been dangled right in front of me, and I’d jumped at the bait like every other consultant who thought a proposal had been written exactly for his or her experience and abilities. And I was fairly certain this one had. What galled me the most was the feeling that I was part of a multimillion duhlar political throwaway vote-getting gambit… that the experience that the Survey Service was paying for was only mid-level camouflage and that the results of my assessment would change nothing. Except… I’d known that the assignment wouldn’t likely change much. Every consultant knows that ninety percent of what they do is to either give cover to doing nothing or to support a decision already made. In the case of Stittara, it was more than clear which was most likely.
Now… I was wondering just how good an idea it had been to take the contract, given that I was stepping off an antique half-winged/half lifting body shuttle, carrying a modest duffel, in addition to the two crates in the shuttle’s cargo bay. I’d had a look at the planet from the viewers on the orbit control station, and while the atmosphere looked hazy, I had been able to make out the outline of the continents and the comparatively narrow oceans that separated them. From space Stittara hadn’t looked all that different, just another water world, with less water than many, except the veil of stars that was the Arm was far narrower, and the blackness on each side much wider… and there had been a shading of purple, but the view from outside the atmosphere had given no idea of the intensity of that purple gray… or the fact that the sun was not a circle hanging in the sky, Rather the microorganisms in the upper troposphere diffused – and diminished – its illumination so that almost a quadrant of the sky was intensely luminous. Part of that was because Stittara’s sun was an F class, but Stittara wasn’t as far away as it should have been to be in the habitable zone because the atmosphere reflected more heat than did that of most T-type worlds.
Once I was down the ramp and clear of the shuttle I looked around, past the faded low greenish-gray stone structure at the edge of permacrete tarmac to the west, looking around to see who from the local Survey Service was there to meet me. I couldn’t pick out anyone in particular from the thirty or so individuals standing near the blockhouse-like dropport terminal, but I did see a pair of men in what appeared to be security singlesuits, along with a woman, greeting Aimee Vanslo, while a single functionary met Holly and Georg. The others before me had merged into the small crowd.
Once I looked away from the passengers and their greeters, the next thing I noticed was the grass, brownish purple green, that seemed to cover everything, leaving no bare ground or rocks. The next was that there were no trees, not anywhere I looked, and the clumps of bushes that I did see were dome-like and barely a meter tall. Nor were there any sharp shapes or jagged peaks, even of the hills or mountains in the distance. All that presented a landscape with an almost surreal and streamlined appearance, and in colors that would have seemed dull, monochromatic, had it not been for the intensity of those colors themselves.
Then… there was the sky, or what was in it. Stittara didn’t have clouds. Well… not clouds in the way anyone from a standard water world would consider them. What struck me immediately was the complexity and the intricacy of the skytubes, that and the intensity of their purple-gray, a shade that didn’t stay exactly the same in one place for more than moments. Yet I couldn’t actually see the shift in color and intensity, but that might have been because the skytubes I saw were far to the southwest.
I kept walking, my eyes on the sky because all the briefing cubes in the world couldn’t have conveyed that vibrancy… and yet, as I looked at the skytubes, they were somehow both intense… and just plain dull purple tinged with gray. The sky was a lighter gray, tinged with purple, also intense, just not so intense as the skytubes themselves.
“Gets you somehow, doesn’t it?”
I looked away from the skytubes to see walking toward me a pleasant-faced woman of indeterminate age, not that I expected anyone on Stittara to show obvious age, given that it was essentially the source of cosmetic and physiological anagathics for the Unity. She smiled, obviously waiting for me, since she wore the gray-blue singlesuit of Systems Survey, if one in a style long since abandoned on Bachman, conservative as it was compared to styles on Eduardo or elsewhere in the center of the Unity.
“Aloris Raasn,” she added.
“Paulo Verano. I’m the – ”
“ – the ecological assessor sent by the Unity, more precisely under the direction of the Chamber’s Oversight subcommittee.” Aloris finished for me.
That an oversight committee had been involved didn’t surprise me, but that I hadn’t been told and that she had told me that she’d clearly received a beamed message from the Persephonya, which had reached her more swiftly than I had, for all that it had traveled with me, there being nothing faster for practical interstellar communication transmission than a ley-liner. Even so, she’d had to have acted quickly. “What do you do with the Survey?”
“I’m the assistant meteorologist and the administrative director.” A smile slightly more than polite crossed her lips. “I have a groundcar. A Survey Services van, actually. We’ll have to wait for your equipment.”
“Don’t we have to pick it up?” I gestured toward the blockhouse port building.
“It’s easier for everyone if they deliver it to the van. I told Tadao you’d likely have some equipment.”
“Two crates and a few templates.” More than a few, since I’d brought as many as I could beg, borrow, or steal.
“Not exclusive single use, I hope.”
I shook my head. “You’re welcome to all of them, so long as I have access to the first prods on the ones I need for my work. Where do we go from here?”
“To the Survey compound. You’ll be staying in the guest quarters.”
“The first in how many years?”
“They’re used often by Survey personnel from the out-continents. You are the first off-planet visitor in several decades.”
That wasn’t exactly surprising. I would have bet that I was the first in longer than that.
There wasn’t any ground de-briefing, nor any entry formalities and procedures. All those had been taken care of on the orbit station. That made sense, because there was only one ley-liner a year from Bachman. Perhaps another handful from elsewhere in the Arm ported at Stittara, bringing either bored trusters on tours to see the oddities of the galaxy or industrial science types arriving – or departing – from the handfuls of projects scattered around the globe that had been established to study and to attempt to replicate the internal structure and properties of the various natural anagathics in the local flora.
We walked past the single long and low stone blockhouse set back from the shuttle strip toward a large flat expanse of permacrete, on which were arrayed a variety of vehicles, mostly ground types of some sort. There were two flitters, both with fuselages finished with the smooth dark gray that suggested years of usage and more than a few refinishings and repairs. The Survey Service van was finished in a yellow that had doubtless been brilliant and designed to stand out against the gray of the sky and the purple-gray of the skytubes. Now, it was just yellow.
“What do you expect to find here on Stittara, Ser Verano?” She opened the rear of the van, and I put my duffel in on one side, leaving more than enough room for my small crates. “Or not to find, as the case may be?”
“Paulo, please.” I smiled. “I don’t expect to find anything. I’m here to determine whether there are environmental and ecological impacts arising from the various projects that have been established to further develop the immunological and anti-aging boosters gleaned from the local organisms… and, of course, those studying the skytubes.”
“There’s little of that these days.”
“Oh?”
“It’s proved futile and fatal too often. You can see that in the Survey records.”
That was interesting. Of course, neither of us had to mention the fact that Stittara likely would have long-since been abandoned without the intermittent flow of data and bio-discoveries. Those discoveries were another reason why I was standing there, since no one really wanted to abandon Stittara, for whatever reason, and my presence, at the very least, would buy enough time for a fickle electorate to forget and move on to the next sensational political revelation. My greatest danger was that I actually might find something that would change everything.
“If they were having such an impact, don’t you think we would have reported it?” Aloris’s voice was calm, but that didn’t disguise the edge behind it. “And who might care when you return in over a hundred and fifty years?”
“The Environmental Ministry might. It has lasted more than a while.” And I’d care, just out of professional pride, which might be all I had left by then.
“Ah, yes. The Ministry.” She smiled. “Tadao will be here in a few minutes with your equipment.” She walked to the back of the van, manually opening it.
I glanced to the west, where the skytubes were barely visible in the distance.
Aloris said nothing while we waited, and I didn’t feel like making small talk. That’s always been a problem for me. Chelesina complained that I was always pontificating or boring people with details. Somehow I never cared much for debating the latest linkpopper’s hair shades or private life that was really scripted for public consumption.
Before long an open ground lorry appeared, moving first to one of the flitters, where a uniformed patroller and another man in a silver-gray singlesuit waited while the loader transferred three cases, all covered in quantum-locked film, to the flitter.
“The latest microprint specs,” said Aloris.
That made sense. With molecular assemblers – microprinters – given an energy source and raw materials – tech transfer and updating was simply a matter of information. And since every ley-liner carried backup printers, if an outsystem world had suffered some form of catastrophe, rebuilding was certainly possible, not that I was aware it had ever been necessary.
After the microprint templating specs had been off-loaded, the flitter lifted almost immediately and headed westward. What did strike me as odd was that the craft stayed low, no more than a hundred meters above the ground. Yet the sky was clear. Were the skytubes actually aware and sensitive to aircraft? The old reports I’d read had speculated on that, but had come to no conclusions. I hoped that the Stittaran Survey office had more recent and conclusive data, but that remained to be seen.
After a few minutes, the stocky young man with serious dark eyes guided the ground lorry over to the van. “Professor Doctor Verano?”
I nodded.
He extended a hand tablet. “Please authenticate receipt of your crates. Receipt does not invalidate any claims for damage, but you must make such claims before the Persephonya breaks orbit.”
“When will that be?”
He grinned. “Not for another two months. The systems have to be recalibrated.”
That only took a week or so. The rest of the wait time was to accommodate those who only needed a few weeks before departing.
Then he swung down and lowered the lorry’s drop gate until it was level with the rear of the Survey van. In quick movements, he slid both crates into the van.
“Our thanks, Tadao.” Aloris nodded.
“Summer calm, and my best to Raasn,” he replied.
I assumed that he referred to some relative of hers, but since I didn’t know the relationship nomenclature on Stittara, I just mentally filed the comment.
“Summer calm?” I asked as the lorry glided back toward the single structure serving the dropport. “Are the skytubes or the local winds less violent in the summer?”
“Not really. The early colonists thought so. By the time they found out, the expression had stuck, and now it’s as much ironic as custom.”
“By the way, what is the local season here?”
“Spring. The seasons don’t vary much here. There’s almost no axial tilt.”
“And there’s life here?” My question was rhetorically sardonic, designed to provoke a reaction.
“Stittara wasn’t always this calm, the geologists say.” She turned and walked to the driver’s side of the van.
I walked to the other door, opened it, and slid into the seat. I actually had to manually fasten the safety straps. When I looked over, after fumbling them on, and nodded to Aloris, she pressed a stud on flat surface before her and then put both hands on a steering wheel. I didn’t say a word as she guided the van from the parking area onto a narrow permacrete highway. I hadn’t expected a planetary or even a local VCS, but it was still a slight jolt to ride in a wheeled conveyance traveling a highway at high speed that was actually controlled by a person and not a system. I knew it wouldn’t be the last surprise I should have anticipated and didn’t.
“What have you found most intriguing about meteorology here on Stittara?” I asked as an opening question.
“That it’s comparatively predictable and seldom intriguing.”
“Even with the skytubes?”
“They seem to coexist with the weather. There’s no data and no documentation on any instances where they could have changed or influenced meteorological conditions. You could make a rough analogy that they’re an airborne cross between plankton and jellyfish. Ocean jellyfish merely ride the currents. They don’t create them.”
More than a stan passed as the van continued westward, and as Aloris Raasn expanded on her theory. During that time, we passed exactly two other vehicles, and I saw not a single structure once we left the dropport. Nor did I see any trees, only gently rolling hills covered with the thick low grass with its undershades of brown and purple, and low bushes of various types, whose leaves held close to the same shades as the grass. I’d read about the ecology and studied the reports, with the notations that only the mountains held any flora or fauna of significant height, but there’s always a difference between reading and experiencing.
Finally, Aloris pulled off the highway and guided the van along a narrow way, over a rise, and down a slope into a wide grassy vale that held an array of hundreds, if not thousands, of structures, all but a few less than ten yards on a side, and none of them more than a story in height, if that. While there was a clear plan to the community, what it was escaped me, because all the streets were the same narrow width and all curved. There wasn’t a straight stretch of permacrete anywhere, not from what I could tell, and not a single one of the tiny structures had any sharp corners, not even gently smoothed right-angled ones.
“Welcome to Passova.”
“This is civilization, then?”
“There’s more here than meets the eye, as you must know.”
My eyes didn’t see more, which confirmed that there was a lot underground, given that supposedly close to a hundred thousand people lived in Passova, the administrative center for the geographic area centered on the dropport.
The only indication of the nature of the structure into which she guided the van was the Service logo beside the vehicle doorway. Once the door had closed, and we had driven down the ramp behind it and into a vehicle bay, she seemed slightly less tense, but I wasn’t certain why, unless she didn’t care for driving a van more than a stan each way to the dropport.
“Why is the dropport so far from Passova?” I asked as I unstrapped and opened the door.
“It’s located mid-way between Passova, several research communities, and eight other towns. It’s also in the area with the best weather – and the greatest visibility.”
“Have the skytubes ever destroyed a drop shuttle?”
“Once. That was over two hundred years ago. That’s another reason why the dropport is where it is.”
“And why everything on the surface is aerodynamically smooth and why important installations are underground?”
“It makes sense. You can leave your duffel in the van for now. You can meet some of the others, but the Executive Director won’t be back until late tonight, and then we’ll get your equipment transferred to the vacant lab space and your personal gear to the guest quarters.”
I followed Aloris Raasn down the ramps to the open receiving area on the main level, lit by piped light. The diffused atmospheric light was close to T-standard, but far from identical.. There another Survey member stood. He could have been her brother, or regendered clone. He probably wasn’t either.
“Ecologist Verano, this is Meteorogist Raasn Defaux.”
I managed not to gape. I’d obviously been wrong, in more ways than one. “I’m pleased to meet you.”
“And surprised. You shouldn’t be. It’s in the Charter. Without imprint cloning, Stittara couldn’t maintain critical expertise.”
“He’s also a far better meteorologist than I,” added Aloris.
That might be true, but it was irrelevant. What was relevant was that Raasn was effectively her twin brother. Even if I reviewed the Stittaran Charter, I’d find that such a provision existed, and Raasn knew it, which was why he’d offered the statement, I suspected.
“Raasn and Demotte will take care of your gear while I show you the guest quarters,” said Aloris smoothly. “This way, if you will.”
I followed her to the end of the open area through what was clearly a pressure-seal door and out into a corridor a good six meters wide and three high, effectively an underground highway, emphasized by the fact that Aloris immediately moved to the right side of the tunnel corridor. Given that the top of the corridor had to be at least two meters below ground level, I had to ask, “Why the pressure-seal doors?”
“At times the storms can be so violent that there’s a significant pressure drop in the center. If there’s a break in any above-ground structure, the pressure differentials could wreak havoc with the equipment.”
That made sense. I didn’t think it was a complete answer, either, since wreaking havoc with equipment suggested even worse impacts on those operating the equipment.
We walked past another open pressure-seal door.
“Those are the quarters for local Survey staff. The visiting quarters are accessed through the next door.”
After walking another hundred yards, and being passed by a silent small conveyance I would have called a tunnel lorry, we reached that door, also equipped with pressure-seals. Beyond the door, the much narrower corridor sloped gently upward until we came to a simple iris-door. Aloris palmed it, and it opened. “You can add your print to the setting before you leave the next time.”
I nodded, following her into a foyer of sorts, with a narrow closet. Beyond the foyer was a modest-sized receiving chamber.
“Receiving chamber, dining, kitchen, and spare bedroom and bath down here, sleeping quarters, study, and bath/fresher on the upper level.”
“Are all the quarters like that?”
“No. We’ve just discovered that out-worlders feel confined without an outside view.”
“You don’t need it?”
She shook her head. “Most of us prefer the lower levels. Dermotte should have your personal gear here shortly. If you’ll enter your prints on the door, that will confirm your biometrics and cancel other access. Then I’ll show you your spaces in the Survey complex.”
I did just that, a little chilled, but not totally surprised that she had my biometrics. Then I followed her on what was likely to be a comparatively long walk through endless tunnels.
***
Spring was the garden of my sky, thought one,
Where there we loved in joy and saw no sun.
“Daisies are the perkiest flowers, don’t you think?” Ilsabet looked to the wall and to Alsabet, framed in the wallscreen. “Petals of sun and light, centers of ink.”
“If they don’t get caught in the wind,” replied Alsabet. “Then they’re just scattered petals.”
“The skytubes let them be, as any can see.”
Alsabet was silent, as if waiting for a prompt.
“I know,” Ilsabet finally declared, “because it’s so.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do. But I won’t tell you. You’d tell them now, but you don’t know how.” With that, Ilsabet’s hand came down in a cutting motion, and the wallscreen blanked. After a moment, she smiled. “I know you’re still there, but it makes me feel things are fair.” Her voice changed slightly. “I’m going outside. Matron says I can go and bide. I wish there were a storm today, but they’ve all gone away. So the door will open for me. It only closes when I want to see. I learned to know that about doors a long time ago.”
Her grayed braids swung girlishly behind her as she danced out through the door that had irised open at her approach. Once outside, her wide gray eyes lifted to behold the twisted purple tubes that festooned the sky to the south. Far to the south. Too far.
More inexpensive ebook goodies!
You can now download Dan Simmons' excellent The Terror for only 2.99$ here.
Here's the blurb:
The men on board HMS Terror have every expectation of triumph. As part of the 1845 Franklin Expedition, the first steam-powered vessels ever to search for the legendary Northwest Passage, they are as scientifically supported an enterprise as has ever set forth. As they enter a second summer in the Arctic Circle without a thaw, though, they are stranded in a nightmarish landscape of encroaching ice and darkness. Endlessly cold, with diminishing rations, 126 men fight to survive with poisonous food, a dwindling supply of coal, and ships buckling in the grip of crushing ice. But their real enemy is far more terrifying. There is something out there in the frigid darkness: an unseen predator stalking their ship, a monstrous terror constantly clawing to get in.When the expedition's leader, Sir John Franklin, meets a terrible death, Captain Francis Crozier takes command and leads his surviving crewmen on a last, desperate attempt to flee south across the ice. With them travels an Inuit woman who cannot speak and who may be the key to survival, or the harbinger of their deaths. But as another winter approaches, as scurvy and starvation grow more terrible, and as the terror on the ice stalks them southward, Crozier and his men begin to fear that there is no escape. The Terror swells with the heart-stopping suspense and heroic adventure that have won Dan Simmons praise as "a writer who not only makes big promises but keeps them" (Seattle Post-Intelligencer). With a haunting and constantly surprising story based on actual historical events, The Terror is a novel that will chill you to your core.
Win a copy of Luke Scull's THE GRIM COMPANY
Here's the blurb:
The Gods are dead. The Magelord Salazar and his magically enhanced troops, the Augmentors, crush any dissent they find in the minds of the populace. On the other side of the Broken Sea, the White Lady plots the liberation of Dorminia, with her spymistresses, the Pale Women. Demons and abominations plague the Highlands.
The world is desperately in need of heroes. But what they get instead are a ragtag band of old warriors, a crippled Halfmage, two orphans and an oddly capable manservant: the Grim Company.
The rules are the same as usual. You need to send an email at reviews@(no-spam)gryphonwood.net with the header "GRIM." Remember to remove the "no spam" thingy.
Second, your email must contain your full mailing address (that's snail mail!), otherwise your message will be deleted.
Lastly, multiple entries will disqualify whoever sends them. And please include your screen name and the message boards that you frequent using it, if you do hang out on a particular MB.
Good luck to all the participants!
This week's New York Times Bestsellers (September 2nd)
Terry Goodkind's The Third Kingdom debuts at number 5. For more info about this title: Canada, USA, Europe.
Samantha Shannon's The Bone Season debuts at number 7.
Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane is down four positions, ending the week at number 12. For more info about this title: Canada, USA, Europe.
George R. R. Martin's A Dance With Dragons is down three positions, ending the week at number 13. For more info about this title: Canada, USA, Europe.
In paperback:
Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game maintains its position at number 1.
George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones is down one position, ending the week at number 4.
Stephen King's Joyland is down two positions, ending the week at number 6 (trade paperback).
George R. R. Martin's A Clash of Kings is down three positions, ending the week at number 11.
George R. R. Martin's A Storm of Swords is down three positions, ending the week at number 12.
George R. R. Martin's A Feast for Crows is down one spot, finishing the week at number 13.
Stephen King's Under the Dome is down one spot, finishing the week at number 20 (trade paperback).
Max Brooks' World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is down two positions, ending the week at number 23 (trade paperback).
Quote of the Day
- JOEL SHEPHERD, 23 Years on Fire (Canada, USA, Europe)
About a third into this one and it's been pretty good thus far! Everyone should give the Cassandra Kresnov novels a shot!
