IGMS Issue 30 Read online

  Death held its hands out. "Your Recorder is waiting."

  "I defy you," whispered Andern. "And that is my testimony. Till the end of time, we defy you. If god-killers cannot kill you, we will find another way: science, technology, virtual life, something. Death, thou shalt die."

  It was still impossible to bring Death into focus, but it looked sad. "If only that were true." It looked at its grey hands, then at me. "These are only symbolic, of course. They could just as easily be . . ." rapidly, they cycled through brown, deathly black, rosy white.

  Almost like a lover, Death laid a white hand on Andern's shoulder. Andern collapsed into Death's arms. But it was a ruse. Andern's own hands came up suddenly, gripped Death's throat, and squeezed.

  Death allowed it until Andern's breath came in gasps. Finally the pulse in his neck peaked, beat once, paused, beat again, and stopped.

  Death let out something like a sigh and picked up the inert body.

  It drifted to the pyre. "Tell them, Recorder," said Death, "how Andern God-killer fought; how he died and what he said." Death laid Andern on the pyre and gestured. One corner of the wood fired, then another. Death was still, even as the flames spread.

  "But why?" I said. "Why repeat Andern's words?"

  "People want to live in the real world. This is it."

  I felt a chill at that. My perfect memory brought back an image of Delight. I found I missed her.

  Death made me perceive the body of Andern the god-killer as it was, terribly old and pushed far beyond its capacity. Already escherishia coli in his blood multiplied; decomposition began even as the fire grew.

  And once again the Temple of Delight became richly sensual: the smell of burnt pork, which was Andern's flesh burning; the smell of leather tanned over a fire, his skin. His hair smelled like sulfur, while his blood smelled coppery, metallic. There was perfume, a musky sweetness, which I researched later: it is cerebrospinal fluid. The bacteria in his body began to die in the flames. Boiling fluid hissed.

  My last functioning recording was of a vague figure whose white hands flickered orange and red in the glow of the fire; and of Andern God-killer at last consumed by his lifework.

  Something in my interaction with Death left me unable to enter Recording Mind. I spend this long trip home grappling with my experience in Contemplative Mind.

  The stretch drive pulls me back to earth, back in time. As if it rewinds history and brings Andern back to life. As if it undoes our entire trip. But no: I am alone.

  Death's words confuse me.

  Is humanity better off without the gods? Were gods merely human creation? Perhaps. Their deaths do not mean the end of human experience, nor of mine.

  I do not know what the born-humans will do with Death's message. In forty days I will be home and I have . . . I don't know how much time I have anymore to contemplate this.

  I experience fear of death. I experience curiosity about what humanity will do with Death's message.

  And in contemplating my memories of Andern God-killer, I experience delight.

  Shaken to the Bone

  by David Lubar

  Artwork by Lance Card

  * * *

  Devon kicked and screamed and protested so much on the way to the doctor's office for his annual exam that, by the time he got there, he was too exhausted to do much more than whimper.

  "You're being such a baby," his mother said. "You don't even have to get a shot this year. It's just a checkup."

  Devon let out a prolonged moan that might have translated into "Don't wanna" or some similar protestation if it had been shortened into recognizable syllables. He crossed his arms and slumped down in his chair.

  A moment later, the door between the waiting room and the exam rooms popped open. A smiling nurse in a white dress said, "Devon?"

  Devon stood up and glanced back at his mother. "Go ahead," she said. "You're old enough to see the doctor on your own."

  Devon followed the nurse down the hall, into a chilly room with a padded exam table and a pair of chairs. He hated the chemical smell of rubbing alcohol and antiseptic soap. As he was getting ready to moan and groan, he caught sight of something he liked a whole lot less.

  He pointed at the skeleton in the corner. "Is that real?" he asked the nurse.

  "That's what happens to young men who don't eat their vegetables." She smiled, as if to tell him she was joking. Then she patted the table. "Hop up here. Dr. Hanson will be right with you." She stepped out and closed the door.

  Devon climbed up on the table, and scrunched back against the wall, putting as much space as possible between himself and the skeleton. He stared at it for a moment, then looked at a poster of the digestive system on the wall above the sink, to try to avoid looking at the skeleton any more.

  Rattle.

  Devon's gaze shot back toward the skeleton. He could have sworn he heard the sound of rattling bones. He stared and waited, like a deer that just spotted a hunter. Nothing moved. Until he looked away.

  The skeleton rattled again.

  Maybe I should get out of here right now, Devon thought. The instant he started to slide off the table, the door opened.

  Dr. Hanson came in. This was a new doctor for Devon. His old one had retired. "Hello, Devon," the Dr. said. "Ready for your exam?"

  Devon wasn't sure what to say. He wanted to tell the doctor about the skeleton, but he knew nobody would ever believe him. So he just nodded.

  Dr. Hanson took Devon's temperature, peered into his ears with a scope that felt as large as a traffic cone, and did all the other uncomfortable stuff doctors do to their captives. As he was listening to Devon's heart, the skeleton moved again.

  This time, the hand lifted. The index finger pointed right at Devon. The thumb cocked back like a pretend gun.

  Devon screamed.

  "Easy there," the doctor said.

  "Look!" Devon jabbed a shaking finger in the direction of the skeleton. The bony hand dropped just as the doctor turned around.

  "What's wrong?" the doctor asked.

  "Nothing."

  "Take a deep breath," the doctor said, putting the stethoscope back against Devon's chest. Somehow, Devon managed to breathe.

  "Good. Your lungs sound fine."

  The skeleton shook its head, as if it knew better. No, your lungs are not fine.

  But Devon's lungs were fine enough to allow him to expel a major scream.

  "It moved!" he shouted as he scrambled to his feet.

  The doctor glanced over his shoulder. Then he looked back at Devon. "Easy, there. Don't let your imagination get away from you. The lights in here are tricky."

  "It moved!" he said again. "Really!"

  Dr. Hansen opened the door that led to the hallway.

  "Don't leave me!" Devon shouted.

  "I won't," the doctor said. He called down the hall. "Nurse, please get Mrs. Prentiss."

  Devon was trembling, now. The doctor told him to calm down, but all he could do was shake.

  "You seem very nervous. I'd better check your blood pressure." He wrapped an inflatable cuff around Devon's arm and pressed a button. The cuff swelled with air, squeezing Devon's biceps muscle like a killer anaconda. Behind the Dr., the skeleton's jaw gaped open, then snapped shut.

  Devon managed a short scream just as his mom came into the room.

  "What's wrong?" she asked.

  "Nothing serious," the doctor said, "as long as we take care of it right away." He pointed to the display on the blood pressure meter. "This is a dangerously high reading. That's very rare in someone so young. Fortunately, I have a medicine especially made for this. You won't even need to go to the pharmacy. I sell it right out front in the office."

  He unwrapped the cuff from Devon's arm. Devon kept his eyes riveted on the skeleton. It didn't move again.

  After Devon and his mom left, Dr. Hanson reached into a side pocket on his white coat and pressed one of the buttons on the remote control he kept there. The skeleton raised a hand. With another p
ress, it lowered its hand. Then it shook its head.

  Dr. Hanson laughed. He loved watching the skeleton in action. And he especially loved selling his special medicine to the parents of his nervous young patients. The elixir was mostly water, with a pinch of quinine to make it bitter. It was harmless, but very profitable. It was also amazingly effective. The patients would usually calm down after the visit, once they were safely away from the skeleton. They might have nightmares for a week or two, but if bad dreams and midnight screams became a long-term problem, he sold a special medicine for that, too.

  Flying Children

  (Excerpted from The Gate Thief)

  by Orson Scott Card

  * * *

  1

  On a certain day in November, in the early afternoon, if you had just parked your car at Kenney's burger place in Buena Vista, Virginia, or maybe you were walking into Nick's Italian Kitchen or Todd's Barbecue, you might have cast your gaze up the hill toward Perry McCluer High School. It could happen. You have to look somewhere, right?

  You might have noticed something shooting straight up out of the school. Something the size and shape of, say, a high school student. Arms waving, maybe. Legs kicking -- count on that. Definitely a human being.

  Like a rocket, upward until he's a mile above Buena Vista. He hangs in the air for just a moment. Long enough to see and be seen.

  And then down he goes. Straight down, and not falling, no, shooting downward just as fast as he went up. Bound to kill himself at that speed.

  You can't believe you saw it. So you keep watching for a moment longer, a few seconds, and look! There it is again! Too far away to be sure whether it's the same kid or a different one. But if you've got someone with you, you grab them, you say, "Look! Is that a person? Is that a kid?"

  "Where?"

  "In the sky! Above the high school, look up, I'm saying straight up, you seeing what I'm seeing?"

  Down comes the kid, plummeting toward the school.

  "He's got to be dead," you say. "Nobody could live through that."

  And there it is again! Straight up!

  "That's one hell of a trampoline," somebody says.

  If you noticed it early enough, you'd see it repeated about thirty times. And then it stops.

  Do you think they're dead? I don't know, how could anybody live through that? Should we go up and see? I'm not even sure it was people, it could have been, like, dummies or something. We'd sound so stupid -- hey, you got a bunch of kids getting catapulted straight up and then smashing down again? It can't be what it looked like. Maybe we'll see it on the news tonight.

  Three different people got it on their smartphones. Not the whole thing, but the last five or six, and one guy got fifteen of them. High quality video it wasn't, but that actually made it more credible. All three videos got emailed to people. All three ended up on YouTube.

  Lots of comments: "Fake." "Why do people bother making crap like this?" "You can see that the lighting's different on the flying dummies." "Cool. Something new and fun to do with your old GI Joe's." The usual.

  The local news stations aren't all that local. Lynchburg. Roanoke. Staunton. They don't give a rat's ass about Buena Vista -- the town never amounted to anything even before it died, that's what people think in the big city. If those are big cities.

  And the footage is so implausible, the flying figures so tiny that it wouldn't look like anything on TV screens. Besides, the fliers were so high that at the top, all you can see is a dot in the sky, not even the mountains. So it's sky, clouds, and a dot -- makes no sense. Has to be a bird. Has to be a trick of the light. So it doesn't get on the news.

  But scattered through the world, there are a few thousand people who know exactly what could cause those kids to fly. Straight up, straight down, incredibly fast and yet no news stories about dead kids at a Virginia high school. Oh, yeah, it makes sense to them, all right.

  It's an act of a god. No, not an "act of God," to use the weasel-out-of-it words in insurance policies. Not God. A god.

  Or at least people used to call them gods, in the old days, when Zeus and Mercury and Thor and Vishnu and Borvo and Mithra and Pekelnik were worshiped wherever Indo-European languages were spoken.

  Nobody called them gods anymore, but they were still around. Weaker now, because they could no longer pass through the Great Gates that used to carry them from Earth to Westil and back again, greatly magnifying their powers.

  Only a gatemage could send someone from one place to another instantaneously, but there hadn't been a gatemage since 632 a.d., when the last Loki of the Norse destroyed all the gates on Earth, disappearing through the last Great Gate and closing it behind him.

  In the North Family compound, only a few miles away from Buena Vista, one of the kids spotted the longest YouTube video only a few hours after it went up on the web, and within twenty minutes the most powerful mages in the family piled into a pickup truck and headed for the high school. They knew it was Danny North who had done it, Danny the son of Odin and Gerd, a boy who had seemed to be drekka until one day he up and disappeared.

  Now they knew that he hadn't gone as far as they thought. Now they knew he wasn't drekka at all, but a gatemage. And a strong one. Because the video didn't show somebody suddenly appearing in the air, which is how gates usually worked. No, the flying figures could be seen as they moved upward. They were moving fast, yes, but it wasn't instantaneous. They rose into the air, visible the whole way.

  That meant it wasn't just any gate. It was an attempt at a Great Gate. A spiral intertwining of many gates at once, rising straight up from the surface of the Earth. And even if it only reached a mile into the air, it was one more mile of Great Gate than had existed in nearly fourteen centuries.

  Here's the thing. Some of the gods on that pickup truck were heading for Perry McCluer High School in order to find Danny North and kill him. Because that's what you did with gatemages -- they brought nothing but trouble down on the family, and if the Norths had a gatemage and allowed him to live, all the other Families would unite against them and this time they wouldn't be allowed to survive the war that was bound to start.

  The Norths had to be able to show Danny's dead body to the other Families -- it was their only hope of survival. If history had taught them nothing else, it taught them that.

  But other gods on that truck had a different plan entirely. Danny's father and mother had known perfectly well that Danny was a gatemage -- it was in hopes of creating a gatemage that Gerd and Alf had married each other back before Alf became head of the family and took the name Odin. The two most powerful mages in generations: lightmage Gerd with her power over electricity and light; stonemage Alf, with his strange new talent for getting inside the workings of metal machines. Everyone expected a child of theirs to be extraordinarily talented

  But Gerd and Alf had studied the genealogical tables and they knew that gatemages, rare as they were, came most often to couples with very different affinities. Like stone and lightning, or water and fire. And never to beastmages. So they hoped. And when Danny showed no sign of being able to do magery, or even raise a clant -- even the most minimal abilities -- they hoped even more. Because yes, he might have been drekka, worthless, devoid of power; but he might also be a gatemage, unable to raise a clant because his outself was fragmented into all the potential gates that he could make in his life.

  And a year ago, when Danny ran away, Thor had used his clant to converse with Danny before he got too far away, and had confirmed that yes, Danny was making gates and yes, Danny finally knew what he was.

  So the gods on that truck were evenly divided between those intending to murder Danny before he could make a gate and get away, and those determined to enlist his power in the service of the family.

  They got there too late. Danny had already made a Great Gate, and the Gate Thief hadn't eaten his gates. Danny's had friends -- Orphans who didn't belong to any Family -- and some of them had passed through the Great Gate and returned. It made the
ir power irresistible. The Norths were sent home in utter and ignominious defeat.

  But none of them had been killed. It was a good sign that Danny and his friends had refrained from doing any serious damage. They still might be able to work something out -- especially if they eliminated the faction of the North family that still wanted Danny dead. Times have changed, Uncle Zog! We can't kill our gatemage, Grandpa Gyish!

  We have to get Danny to let us pass through a Great Gate! You saw how powerful his friends became -- a cowsister took your eagle right out of the sky, Zog! A mere cobblefriend was able to open up a rift in the ground and swallow our truck! Imagine what Odin will do with his power over metal and machinery, what Gerd will do with electricity, when they pass through a Great Gate.

  And imagine what the other Families will do to us if Danny lets any of them through a Great Gate before us. No, that's not a reason to kill him -- how will we even get near him now? He's warned, he's ready, he'll just gate away from us. You know the stories. The winged feet of Mercury, seven-league boots -- gatemages can be gone before your attack comes close to them; or they can suddenly appear behind you and kill you before you turn around.

  Gatemages are slippery! Once they come into their power, you can't kill them. Even if you sneak up on them somehow, passing through a gate heals any wound. We're no threat to a gatemage. We need him -- alive and on our side. So we have to talk to Danny. Appeal to his family loyalty.

  And if you can't stop trying to kill him, then we'll have no choice but to put you in Hammernip Hill. For the good of the family.

  You understand, yes, you do -- you'd do it yourself. There's a gatemage in the world, one who created a Great Gate and wasn't destroyed by the Gate Thief. And that gatemage is our own Danny. He knows us, he grew up among us. He has roots in our garden. We need to play that up. We need to bring him back to us. Not irritate him with foolish attempts to murder him. Get it? Are you going to leave him alone? Keep him safe? Make friends with him?