TransVersions II

Cover Art for Issue #8/9 by Wolf Read.

Click on the small cover above to download a larger image. (40 Kb jpeg)

TransVersions 8/9 Contents:

Short-Short Stories:

Short Stories:

Novellettes:

Share-a-Byline Contest Winner:

Illos: Vincent McHardy, Lorri McMullen, Carolyn Shipley, DLSproule & Robert J. Trahan

Poems: Nancy Bennett, Bob Cook, Corrine De Winter, Lawrence Greenberg, Catherine Mintz & Dietmar Trommeshauser

Book Reviews: Frameshift/Black Wine/The Throne of Bones/Northern Frights 4 & mini-reviews

Excerpts from Issue#8/9:

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Excerpt from "Les Mains Sales" by D.F. Lewis

The next picture she drew proudly from her bag really impressed Meech... and it has haunted his dreams ever since. It depicted two human figures, one white and the other black, in what appeared at first to be a violent digging, spitting, wrestling, biting and clawing. But, then, he realized it was a passionate embrace--so intertwined, he found it difficult to tell which was male and which female, and even where one ended and the other began...

"I'm sure that's a photograph," he suddenly said on the spur of the moment.

She looked ashamed, almost tearful. He peered closer at the picture: the glistening muscles, the bare emotions in the eyes, the scrotum finely picked out, the body hair individually etched, the fleshy cavities sunken even beyond the picture's surface...

"Yes, you're right, Mr Meech, I took it in Hell...with my Brownie box camera."

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Excerpt from "A Bird in the Head" by Carl Sieber

You don't hate your lover even though he's made of thin things. Legs, arms, hair, neck, stare. His fingers and the pencils he manipulates with his surgical fingers. Generally the harder regions of lead. 3H. 5H. 9H. His preferred style of nail.

Kyle. That's his name. The sound of pencils scratching lines down the inside of your skull.

"Kyle."

"What?"

"The fifty-seventh use for an empty birdcage--are you listening--you could put a bird in it."

"It's been done before."

Well so has this afternoon. It's been done too many times before. You sitting in a chair, you sitting on a rock, you sitting on a bench, you sitting on a log, always asked not to move. And Kyle sketching you. "How about a bird, Kyle? Ever tried to sketch one of them? No. They move too much." You move your lips deliberately. It makes it harder for him to capture your spirit. Harder for him to pin it into his sketchbook with his little nails. You speak and go on speaking just for the damn perversity of it.

This afternoon you sit on a sidewalk bench and don't care how many people from the downtown crowd stare at the huge birdcage you hold in your lap. And it really is huge, so big Kyle can't get a good look at your face, and he doesn't like that. You whisper through the bars. "Number fifty eight: you could get a little file, a very tiny little file, and whenever you felt depressed you could saw through one of the bars."

You press one of the bars between two of your fingers and wonder how long it might take to saw through it with the sharp edge of your tongue. Is Kyle going to ask you again to put the birdcage down again? If he does--this time you might because it is getting uncomfortable the way you are holding it so tight against your chest.

"Number fifty-nine: it could serve as a shark cage. Put Barbie in it, along with a T-bone steak, and throw the works into shark-infested waters. Chomp! She'd have such a thrill."

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Excerpt from "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" by Michael Coney

Illustration by Carolyn Shipley

Boycott climbed into the rowboat and began the long pull to Iona under heavy clouds. The tide was running swiftly through the channel so he had to angle his course, crabbing across the flow. A little jet outboard would be very useful right now. And a radio, to call Earth Central. And a laser rifle, to deal with hostility. And. . . .

He'd made one hell of a mistake, joining the Revolution. It had cost him his job, and it had cost him Angela, who'd died in childbirth for lack of proper medical attention, and it had cost him ten years of unremitting hard labor trying to get the croft on a sound basis capable of supporting three people. There had been more than one hungry winter. Like many idealistic Reverters, he hadn't realized how dependent humans were on advanced technology. . . .

Particularly communications. For instance, did Earth Central know about this shuttle?

Reason told him the survivors of an emergency landing are usually more than friendly, but his genes warned him otherwise. The creatures on Iona might well be hostile, and the Reverters of Earth did not have the means to fight them. It was his duty to assess the situation and warn people, if necessary.

Some time later he approached the sandy shoreline of Iona. Rocks slipped by on either side; kelp strands streamed with the tide. He felt a light bump against the hull, probably an underwater rock. He turned around anxiously, scanning the planking for leaks.

He saw a shapeless mass raise itself from the water and grasp the side of the rowboat.

It was dark and fleshy against the pale weathered planking, dark and writhing like a moray eel, dark and repulsive like a nightmare. The boat slowed abruptly--there was a lot more of that thing underwater. Shuddering, Boycott bent to his oars, trying to wrench the boat free. The oars plowed the water uselessly and the boat slid to a halt.

The thing climbed aboard. . . .

The appearance of a Thule component is familiar enough to humans now, but that creature in the Sound of Iona, on that wet November morning, was the first of its species seen by human eyes. And when it came clambering aboard out of the sea, it was Man's most primitive fear realized.

Boycott seized the club he normally used on fish and struck the creature repeatedly in a kind of furious terror. It spurted red blood like any terrestrial thing, and it struggled and hissed while he yelled incoherent hate at it. In the end it lay still and broken on the bottom boards, some fifty kilograms of dead meat.

He pushed an oar under the carcass and levered it overboard, resumed his seat, spun the boat around and began to row rapidly back toward Fionnphort. The creatures from the shuttle were at large and appeared hostile. His first duty was to protect Becky Ann.

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Excerpts from "Torch Song" by Gemma Files

Illustration by Dino at FLATLINE

"I wish you love, Detective," she whispered to me, as she went by--Mrs Silas. First name Maria, N.M.I. I looked it up in her file. Her head was bowed, hair hanging in her eyes; just a breath of a phrase on my cheek, consonants etched in bile and honey. Beck didn't even hear her.

I did. And laughed, because it didn't seem like much of a curse. At the time.

* * *

Valentine's Day night, I woke up at 3:00 AM, thinking: I gotta apologize. Gotta go find Beck, and apologize for the whole Silas thing. He thinks I was out of line, and he's right; I gotta tell him. 'Cause he's my partner, my only friend. And because...

...I love him.

It swept up on me, then and there--this painful need to kiss him 'til his lips were one big bruise, bite his tongue and drink his bloody spit. Slap him barely conscious, then go at him 'til he opened those narrow eyes wide--do him so rough he fought me back, fought me with everything he had, then keep right on and do him some more. Hurt him like I hurt. Break him down.

Show him I was his, and make him mine.

The truth, plain and simple, a razor in my heart: That's love, to me--all I know, all I'm capable of.

I could get used to this. And I guess I have, in my own way. Got used to this love, like insects swarming in and on me, everywhere at once--this love, a cage of sick shivers. This love, the stink of my own quick rot. Gangrene hot flash, indistinguishable from envy, from anger, from anguish. This goddamn love I bear for the fine fellow officer whose head I slammed against the tiles, whose ribs I broke to hold him still, who I fucked hard up the ass 'til he screamed out loud, clawing and squirming, smart mouth gone dumb with pain. No lube, no finesse, no climax for anybody but me--no respect, no dignity. No mercy.

Just love, love, love.

I lay there, thinking it. Wanting it. Which was bad enough, all told.

But then I got up, drove to Beck's house. And actually did it.

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Excerpt from "Basement Alembic" by Ursula Pflug

I was so afraid to wake in that room not to peace but to some nightmare of my own unbidding and crept home. Crept now on spirit wings no longer a proud dragonfly but some winged wormy scaled thing, afraid, afraid oh yes; so afraid and wanting only to return and wrap myself in the mystery and comfort of those rooms, in a flying Persian carpet, in the one life that could save me.

And yet my guide had said. And who was I to ignore his words when he obviously knew what he was doing, and moreover, what I was doing that night, which most surely I did not.

You'd said, "I'll study with you; we'll learn those secrets together," and my heart flared, red and open.

At last at last, someone to climb the dark staircase with me, dusty oak stairs, holding the pewter sticks aloft, the wax from tallow candles dripping down onto our clawed feet, which, being clawed, wouldn't feel a thing. Already our little leathery wings snapping and crackling to be free.

Step, step, oh step, my sweet dark companion, through the molten mirror with me.

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Excerpt from "Heron" by Mary Soon Lee

Illustration by Fred Wellner

That winter the temple seemed to be closing in on her. Some days her chest was so tight she could hardly breathe. At first she thought she might be sick with pleurisy, but she had no fever and no cough. In lessons, the priestesses spoke about politics and geography, all the different lands where the Goddess had temples. Heron scowled and filled the corners of her notebook with sketches: isosceles triangles trapped in weird geometrical shapes, sharp-peaked mountains that she'd never be allowed to see.

Now that she was twelve, she shared a bedroom with only one other novice. One night when Alissa was sound asleep, Heron tiptoed out of the room. She stole along the corridors to a narrow window.

Heron pushed the shutters open, shivering at the chill night air. There was no one in sight, but the temple grounds ended only a few dozen yards away. Beyond, she could make out the silhouettes of houses and two tall pine trees. Heron squeezed out of the window. She pulled her cloak tighter about her and ran across the lawn.

A shadow moved against the background, separated into a hooded figure.

Heron peered into the darkness, trying to make out the person's face. All she could see was a darker hole within the shadow. Spirit-demons had no faces. Tessa said that demons were only myths, but still Heron edged away from the shadow figure.

The figure spoke. "A thing once broken cannot always be mended. Would you forsake your vows?"

Heron froze, half-relieved and half-appalled. That was the Mother Priestess's voice.

"Speak, child."

"What vows?" asked Heron, hating the way her voice trembled. "I, I haven't taken the novitiate vows yet."

"The vow that you would stay here till the King granted you permission to leave."

"But I didn't--I never agreed to stay."

"Mother Tessa took such a vow in your name on the day you first entered the temple. Had she not been willing to guarantee your custody, the King would have thrown you in a dungeon. If you leave now, what do you imagine the King will do?"

An image burst inside Heron: a skeleton in a coffin, remnants of hair and leathered skin tattered over the bones. The bones of both hands and feet were crushed. A green glass marble nestled in one eye socket. The image dissolved to a pauper's burial, Heron standing over the grave, dry-eyed, laying the green marble into Tessa's open coffin.

Abruptly the image vanished. A curious warmth flooded through Heron, sweet as honey, and yet she felt sick to the point of vomiting. Someone was steadying her, holding her so close that Heron smelled soap and the faint underlying smell of the other person's body. She mumbled into that warmth, "I saw a skeleton."

"Hush now. It's all right. It's only one seeing; it doesn't have to happen that way."

Heron pulled away at the sound of the Mother Priestess's voice. She had been clinging to the priestess like an infant, like a babe in arms. No one touched the Mother Priestess. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean, I didn't think--"

"It's all right. Seeing is a great gift, but a hard one." She took Heron's hand gently and walked her back to the temple.

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Excerpt from "Bronzage" by John Graham

Illustration by DLSproule

I was jogging along a trail that wound through the evergreen forest surrounding the new training retreat. It was colossal, a small city squatting in the hinterland of northern Quebec like a movie set for an epic 88minner. There was room enough to train a whole army of boxers.

The retreat was protected by a twenty meter blackice fence, an obsidian wave soaring over the trees. No media were going to get in. Nothing could climb blackice, not even insects. There were golf carts with silly logos; a chalky fist crushing a lightning bolt. I'd have to tell Fanta to get rid of the logo. The carts were humming busily around the cobblestone streets. From the top of one of the hills on the trail, it looked like an amusement park ride. There weren't any cars, all travel was done with a fleet of Mach 10 hoppers. The absence of cars was probably a good idea since the only road to the retreat - from some place called Coupdesoleil - was dirt. I'd never seen a dirt road before.

I still couldn't believe the endless arrogance and countless wealth the retreat represented, but I was pleased Fanta was serious about this secret hideout thing. And I couldn't wait to take a peek at the 88minner collection. Ford the Fascist had told me the collection included such rare titles as I Ain't L.I.O.N. and Tron Again.

My jaw was healed. I had been embraced by the loving appendages of the Knitter just this morning, and had hopped to Quebec right after a lunch of carrot 'stew'. It had been a tearful parting with the Knitter, at least for me. But hospital thoughts had only a palsied hold on me, easily brushed away by the warm afternoon sun and the clean smell of the trees.

Houses. That's what I was thinking about. Houses for immigrant women and rural women, and especially pregnant women, because that's when a lot of the hurting begins. Just the signing bonus alone would more than triple the number of Houses. So many and not nearly enough.

Not one thought about Nichola.

I sprinted up a steep hill. A chin-up station with a nubbly bar and a realwood frame was cut into the side of the trail at the top.

She would stop calling soon. She knew what I was now.

I started doing chin-ups, ten, twenty, kept going after my muscles started to burn, thirty, forty. My arms were shaking so much my elbows banged together, forty-one, forty-two, forty-three. I barely managed to pull myself up, forty-four, and glimpsed a square of red cloth through a tree trunk that had split into two trees. I was halfway to the split tree, staring ahead and dodging rocks and roots with some other sense, when I saw it again. A red shirt. If this was the media, then they were in for one exclusive interview.

I hurdled the V between the trees, and almost landed on a kid who was hunched over a hole about as big as the inside of a hat. The kid didn't move. He only brought his eyes up and glanced at me through greasy blond bangs. He had green eyes. The same color as Emery the Anemone's eyes.

The kid took a scorpion out of a toolbox and put it in the hole. He bent further down towards the hole, blond hair grazing the edge. A quick, crackling CRUNCH came from inside the hole. The kid sat back, smiling, face glowing. I leaned over. The scorpion was gone. A silver toadthing with bizarre limbs and growths sat in the middle of the hole, still as a rock. I couldn't comprehend all of the thing, only pick out and stare at parts of it, like looking at a magnified picture of an insect. I backed away.

"I'm going to try a turtle next," said the kid. "They last a bit longer."

"Listen, you can't - "

"Have you been sprayed? Because if you haven't, Humphrey will bite you. He killed one of the guard dogs last week."

The kid smiled at the toadthing, cheeks dimpling. It smiled back. Its mouth was jammed full of coppery fangs. Pieces of scorpion were stuck in the gaps between the fangs.

I ran.

* * *

"Bronzy, Bronzy! I don't know who this kid is. Maybe some fan from Coopsoil. Let go of my arm, Bronzy!"

"Sure Fanty, the kid can climb blackice. I know what you're doing. You're so predictable. You're letting the dysfunk entourage back in. Well, I'm sick of it. We're through. I'm hopping back home right now."

"My armmm!"

Fanta's bald head was dotted with bubbles of sweat. I let go and he stumbled back, off balance from standing tip-toed. He rubbed him arm, straightened his chameleon silk suit, then launched a geyser of fauxbacco juice onto the cobblestone street.

I grabbed his jacket. "Stop spitting!" I shouted into his chubby, shocked face. "And it's Coupdesoleil, not Coopsoil."

"Hey sport, if you're feeling so stony, why don't you try some sparring?"

I looked over at Cole, the executive commander of security. His lips were tattooed with a filigree of black lines, and he was coated with Deus Ex Machine muscle.

"Yaaa Bronzy, why don't you try some sparring? Get some training in before the Dectuplets get here. Bram called while you were out running. They'll be arriving tonight."

The Decs were coming. I started to feel better. The coppery smile of the toadthing became a little less real.

"I'll spar." Maybe it would burn off the memory of chewed up scorpion pieces. I headed towards my chalet, stopped, looked back at the two men.

"Sorry about your arm, Fanta," I said. After all, he did negotiate a billion Y signing bonus. "But I'm still going home, first thing tomorrow morning."

I wondered what Arthur would think about Cole and his Machine muscles. And the tattoos. I couldn't wait to hear what he would say about the trend sucking lip tattoos.

* * *

I was dancing around number three outdoor ring, feeling heat and snap in my limbs, thinking that I should get my gloves put on soon. Not thinking about the toadthing.

"I think you're going to be impressed with your sparring partner, Bronzy!"

Not thinking about Nichola's easy laughter. The way she curled her hair around a finger when she was worried. I shook out my legs, rolled my shoulders.

"Why is that, Fanta? Was he ranked?"

"See for yourself. Heeere he comes!"

He was ambling towards the ring, looking down at the immaculate grass that covered the retreat's grounds like an endless golf green. He looked familiar. Had I fought him? He raised his head.

He was me.

I stared, unable to accept what I was seeing. He looked exactly like me, closer than any twin. But the body was horribly different. His chest and shoulders were engorged, his arms were malformed, so long that he could have touched his knees without bending. He reached the ring and jumped right from the grass, clearing the top rope easily, landing in front of me.

He had the skewed eyes of a dysfunk. They were green, with some unknowable hunger in them. The kid with the toadthing had the same eyes, and I knew that their eyes didn't just look like Emery the Anemone's eyes. They were His eyes.

Those eyes broke my world...

* * *

Sulphur plowed up my nose and into my brain. Smelling salts. I gasped and opened my eyes. Cole was kneeling over me, his lip tattoos stretched by a wide smile.

"Good morning, sport, wakey, wakey."

"C'mon get up!" Fanta called from ringside. "Meet your sweet little sonny."

Cole hauled me to my feet.

He was in the far corner. His impossible arms were draped over the ropes. He was examining me with those skewed and hungry green eyes. The ring started to spin.

Cole reached for the nickel-plated gun in his shoulder holster. "Maybe I should just term him right now?"

"Naaaw, let's see what these eugenes can do. Don't worry, it'll be quick. Joey isn't wearing any gloves. Quick and juuuicey!"

Cole laughed, flexing his upper body at me. "Sayonara, sport."

He struggled out of the ring, his Machine muscles too bulky to slip easily through the ropes.

"Hey Bronzy, what do you think of big Joey here? Ain't he a bruiser? You're the proud father and a gorrrgeous gorilla called Mighty Joe Young's the mommy." Fanta guffawed. "See, I told you all those blood tests were necessary!"

He had started to shadow box. I had never seen someone so quick.

Mighty Joe Young? The sheer absurdity of the idea made the ring stop spinning. I looked down at Fanta.

"The gorilla from the black and white movie?"

"Oh Bronzy, you kill me! That was only our name for the donor animal. We thought you'd get a kick out of it. Dr. Ford searched the Holowood Net for hours before he found that stupid ape movie."

"Still think I am predictable, Mr. Bronzage?" said Fanta in a flawless network anchorperson's voice.

He was throwing weird, lashing combinations, using punches that I wouldn't have been able to do without dislocating my arms. He had epaulets of coarse black hair on each swollen shoulder.

"Bet you didn't even know that I loooathe you! You and your high and mighty Saint Patrick shimmy sham." He spat at me. The fauxbacco juice hit my temple and dribbled down my face, thick and warm.

"There's going to be some fun stuff happening around the world, Bronzy. You see, Mr. Starm and Mr. Tellinger have formed a good ole Public Interest Group of their own. They'll never be another coaly sports hero again. Every world champion will be chalky, pure as Canadian water!"

Fanta hopped around in circles, then gave Cole a high five.

"He's all yours, Joey! This is what you've been waiting for, sluggerrr!"

He rippled at me, giant and terribly fast.

"Goodbye, Daddy," he hissed, and it sounded like a cutlass slicing through the air. His voice was mine, closer than any PC Voice. He faked a jab and then rocketed one of those lashing punches at my jaw. I tucked my chin and turned my head. The blow exploded inside of my head, almost buckling my knees.

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Excerpt from "The Road to Utopia Plain" by Rick Kennett

Illustration by Robert J. Trahan

Sometimes it's caused by solar flares and sometimes by the passing echoes of distant novae. And sometimes it happens for no reason at all.

Five seconds before Utopia Plain kicked back into real space just beyond the orbit of Saturn, a subspace distortion wave shocked through the solar system at many times the speed of light. In that instant, time and space flexed and altered. The starship's exit hole stretched along her trajectory so that she bulleted back into reality, not in safe, empty space, but on a imminent collision course with Mars.

Gravity rings back-rippled down her hull in frantic deceleration. Inwardly rotating, tilted to their maximum, they pushed simultaneously against every atom passing through them, causing no g-forces within. Her course began to alter, slowly. But Mars, in less than thirty seconds, had swelled on the ship's screens from a distant star to a rushing disc to a very solid planet.

Thirty seconds later she clipped the western edge of the atmosphere. Settlements at Casius and Neith to the west and on the Isidis and Elysium Plains in the east saw her as a flash of white and silver racing an arc across their skies as she ricocheted off the atmosphere and belted back into space.