Apex Book Company

One: Weirdies and Bombies

The Weirdy was directly ahead of Chamberlain, partially obscured by the thick foliage of the jungle, but there. Chamberlain’s gun was in his hand but it was hard to take aim. The Weirdy was moving. It looked like a localized maelstrom of air, a cone of turbulence tapering onto the ground where it stirred the rotting leaves into new configurations. The only organic part of the Weirdy was at the top where air gave way to a face like a dragonfly, a dragonfly gene-spliced with a tiger, that is. Worse, the head remained still while the body-storm continued to rotate. Chamberlain’s gun was a Vacuum 300 and, theoretically, it could take out one of the Weirdies, no problem. Theoretically.

Chamberlain took a careful step forward and brought the gun up…

The maelstrom stopped moving. Dark multi-faceted eyes seemed to look directly at him and for a moment he thought–it knows I’m here.

He pressed the trigger.

The blast tore through the foliage, bursting veins in the living trees’ trunks, creating a localized implosion that threatened to suck Chamberlain into it. He’d fallen down as soon as he’d fired, minimizing the amount of exposed body, but still it tugged at him, trying to drag him into the temporary vacuum. He shut his eyes and his fingers dug into the mud.

When the blast had abated, Chamberlain opened his eyes and stared forward. Total devastation. Where before there had been a thick, almost impenetrable jungle, there was now a clearing, and the ground was covered in bleeding, fresh kindling; the only remains of the living trees.

There was no sign of the Weirdy. A blue-black insect as thick as an eye-patch buzzed over Chamberlain’s head and settled on his outstretched fingers. He stared at it for a long moment. The insect’s feelers moved as if in a greeting. Then some knowledge forced its way back into Chamberlain’s mind and the fear was back, a thousand times worse, and he had to bite down on his lip, drawing blood, trying to stop himself from moving, to be perfectly and absolutely still.

The insect was a Bombie.

It seemed to stare at him. Chamberlain stared back at the Bombie, trying not to blink. Silently, he counted planets, based on their distance from the sun: Monkey, Jaguar, Wolf, Fly, Elephant, Dog, Firefly. There was a song by Li Tsheng you learned, like a children’s song, like a nursery rhyme, (although it didn’t rhyme), when you came here:

Firefly is dead and cold
Monkey burns, Jaguar sleeps
Wolf and Dog circle
Elephant is home
–Don’t send me to Fly.

The Bombie buzzed at him. How did he get into this mess? It was Colonel Piet, old Colonel Piet with his yellow teeth and close-cropped grey hair who sent him like this, to his death. So calmly, too. The order came in the night. Chamberlain, Mastorakis and Shen, report to Command immediately. When they came, Colonel Piet saluted them and then showed them a map of the nearby territory. “Having some problems around this area,” he said, circling one bit of jungle that looked exactly like any other bit of jungle. “We need some people to go in and take a look, thought of you. Got good records. If you could just pop in there and look around, see what you can find, why the Weirdies seem so bothered about this particular area. Think that would be all right?”

“Sir.”

“Sir.”

“Sir.”

“Good.” The colonel gestured at the projected map. “Kill any Weirdies you find, of course. And come back, do you hear? We need at least one of you alive.”

“Sir.”

“Sir.”

“Sir.”

“Dismissed.”

Mastorakis got it not five hours out of base: a living tree engulfed him in its branches and by the time they got to him, the tree was pulsating with blood, its branches shaking, and Mastorakis’s emaciated corpse was lying on the ground. They had torched the tree, but that didn’t help Mastorakis.

Shen was with him up to and including the region of penetration. A Gorp got him. Chamberlain shuddered. He didn’t want to think about the Gorp.

The shudder seemed to have alarmed the Bombie. Chamberlain froze. The Bombie stopped (it was now positioned half-way up his arm) and began to vibrate. The vibrations went up Chamberlain’s arm. Please please please don’t.

The vibrations grew more frantic. Please please pl –

“Bombie makes baby,” a voice close to his ear said. He almost jumped. The voice was pleasant, soft, a little childish. “Makes many baby. You no like?”

Trying not to move his lips, the words escaping like a hiss of air through closed teeth: “Don’t want to die.”

“What is die? You think.”

Somehow he understood the speaker. The voice made him picture a young girl standing there, which was insane. There were no young girls on Fly. But he did what the voice told him. He thought of death.

Pain, and the absence of pain… and the thing that is, that was, Chamberlain spread out over a large area, no heart to beat blood into the brain, neurons no longer firing, the I/We group-mind that is the human brain dispersing like mist–

The voice said, “Die–strange. You wait.”

On his arm the Bombie was ready to explode. Its wings juddered and its feelers moved frantically in an ecstatic display. It had grown larger, inflated, until it was the size of a hand-grenade.

He whispered: “Can’t…wait. No time.”

“You no like? Bombie funny.”

Funny?

Something leaned over him. He tried not to see it. It was nothing human. It was like two transparent arms made of glass, or air, passing over him, through him, and delicately cupping the Bombie. He saw it as a glass globe encircling the insect, right there on his arm.

The Bombie exploded. Chamberlain screamed.

“You silly,” the voice said in his ear.

The Bombie exploded inside its cage. A cage, Chamberlain thought. He tried to ignore the spreading wetness in his combat suit. The Bombie exploded into a thousand tiny fragments, sharp black slivers that shot away from it as it disintegrated, ready to cut, maim, and embed themselves in any and all available surfaces, but instead–

They’d frozen in a perfect moment of explosion, within the boundary of an invisible globe. The globe rested on Chamberlain’s arm. He stared at it. “Better now?” the childish voice said. “Pretty Bombie.”

Chamberlain rolled on his back, bringing the gun up in one smooth motion, pointing it at the–

Weirdie.

A maelstrom of wind, a face above it like a whiskered cat, eyes bright and twinkling. His finger tightened on the trigger–

“Release Bombie?” the voice said. It came from the Weirdie, although the lips in that face did not move. And Chamberlain froze with his finger on the trigger. The threat in the words was self-evident, with or without the childish voice.

He relaxed his finger, slowly, and equally slowly he stowed away the gun. Above him the Weirdie was holding the Bombie. It looked like a grotesque aquarium, like something you got in the restaurants back on Elephant, only with a living bomb inside.

“You… Chamberlain? Pretty name. Pretty face. Me-”

Instead of words, an image, shoved into his brain like fingers into soft dough. Images, confused,
incoherent. Weirdies, in formation. An area of jungle like all the others and yet somehow he knew it was the one he was in, the one he had been sent to, although it looked strange, somehow, as if the jungle were overlaid on top of something else, like two versions of the same thing getting mixed up. The area of penetration, he thought.

“Penetration,” the Weirdy voice said. More images. This Weirdy, with a companion, travelling through the forest. The companion-Weirdy disappearing in a blaze of– Chamberlain closed his eyes. The Weirdy had been killed with a vacuum gun. His.

“Mission, take look,” the Weirdy said. “Mission– learn. After fix. No problem. Now I learn you. Yes?”

“No,” Chamberlain said.

“Now I learn you,” the Weirdy said. “No problem.”

And again, it was like fingers digging into his skull, but this time it was worse, and he screamed. The maelstrom of wind picked him up and tendrils of air stroked him, touched him… “Please!” he said.

“No problem,” the Weirdy said. “Must relax.”

Tendrils of air studied him, caressed him, from his ears down to his neck, to his chest and back, to his buttocks and–

“No, you don’t understand,” he said.

“Is true,” the Weirdy said. “Not understand. Must learn. You now. No problem.”

“Stop saying that!”

Then a tentacle of air entered him and he screamed, and his mind was filled with images of the war, and back, back, back to:

Two: Brainstorm

He is at home and there is a solar-system swirling above his head made of soft colourful foam, all six planets in rotation. Daddy stands above him. “Monkey,” Chamberlain says. “Monkey!”

“And this one, little Shambi?” Daddy says.

“Monkey!”

“Jaguar,” Daddy says. “And this one?”

“Monkey?”

“Firefly. And this one is Wolf, and this one is Dog – see how they always circle close to each other, but never quite meet? – and this is home, this is-”

“Elephant!” Shambi says, and Daddy smiles and lifts him from the crib and gives him a hug. “You are a smart boy, Shambilan.”

(somewhere far away – No, don’t call me that! I’m Chamberlain now, and Shambilan is long gone, along with the house, the crib and that old useless toy–

-Where is other one?

-What?

-Where other one?

-There is no other one.

-No! Must look again!

And dissolve)

“Monkey!” Little Shambilan says.

“And this one?”

“Monkey!”

There is another planet on a string, but it is small and ugly, and father sees it and he frowns and he says, “That’s not supposed to be there. Hold on,” and he goes and he comes back and he has scissors and he cuts the wire and everything is pretty again. And Shambilan thinks of a word he had heard somewhere but doesn’t know where, and he shouts, “Fly!”

“What did you say?”

“Monkey?”

“You should not talk of that place. It is evil.”

(-What is evil?

-This is.

-No, this memory only. No evil. What is evil?

-Fly, Chamberlain says. Fly is evil.

And fade)

“What is evil, Daddy?”

Daddy is looking at him as if looking at something alien and strange. “Get away from my son,” he says.

“Daddy?”

But his father still looks at him as if he has never seen him before, and there is a hard, scary look in his eyes. “There is no such place as Fly,” he says. “Get away from him. Now.”

And the scene disappears and it is later, years later, and–

(-Man no like new friend?

-Is this real?

-What is real?

And Chamberlain groans, and the wind probes deep inside him–

And dissipate)

–and he is lying in the grass under the stars with Rashmi and they both have their shirts off and her skin is soft and dark and his heart is beating loudly in his chest and she says, “One day I’m going to go to the stars.”

“Why? Nothing there,” he says, and his fingers trace a line under her arm and she giggles. “Don’t you wonder what it’s like, up there?”

“Rocks,” he says, with the certainty of a boy. “Why go anywhere? Our ancestors came here because it was the best place to be.”

“Do you really believe it?”

“The Party says-”

“I’m not asking you what the Party says. I’m asking what you believe.”

“If they call me I’ll go,” he says, changing tack, his fingers trying to work their way below her navel, but she turns and blocks him. “Go where?”

“Into the service. You could come with me. Then we’ll see what it’s really like out there, on Firefly and Monkey, Jaguar and Wolf and Dog, maybe even further, back where people come from, I forget what it’s called.”

“Mars,” Rashmi says. He shrugs. “Whatever.” She smiles and turns towards him for a kiss–

(-Where is one?

-Oh, come on!

-You are distressed? Young boy likes young girl?

-Just… can we go back? Just for a moment?

-But where is other? Where is one?

-I–

And disperse)

“Rashmi? What is it?”

But she is backing away from him now, and her eyes are round with fear.

“What did I say?” He doesn’t understand. “We could go to all of them,” he says again, trying somehow to get her back. “You’ll like Fly. It’s beautiful. When the living trees are in bloom and the Gorp are hunting through the woods, and you can hear the music of the Skaar-et-lam when true night falls-”

“Get away from me! Get away!”

(-But I don’t understand! This never happened. I don’t know what Skaar-et-lam is–

-Very beautiful. Must experience. Now more.

-No more.

-Must.

-Kill me.

-I do not understand kill.

-Dying?

-Ah, yes, picture-story you tell. No, no dying.

And-)

The Party Congress, and he is a young man, standing in the auditorium with all the other cadets. The Chairman speaks, an elderly man in a plain blue shirt. “Prosperity is our watchword,” the Chairman says. “Under the Party’s leadership the six worlds are at peace. The world we have made for ourselves is a world of good.”

Cheers.

“Unity!”

Cheers.

“The path of enlightenment is glorious before us-”

(-Not understand.

But Chamberlain does not even remember a party conference, does not remember the auditorium, does not remember the speech, and he says – What are you looking for?

-One! One plus one plus one plus one plus one plus one plus one!

-Ah, Chamberlain says. Mathematics. Right.

-Where is one?

And–)

He stands up in the audience and everyone turns to look and their eyes are hard and uncomprehending. He shouts, “What about the seventh planet?” and there is an uproar, and somebody screams, and the soldiers turn and the guns are pointing at him and the speaker roars– “There is no seventh planet!” and the guns–

(and fade. And back. And-)

Three: Soldier Plus One

The Weirdy hovered above him. “One dark,” it said. Its body swirled in an excited turbulence. “One missing. Like puzzle, in memory of you, one time. You make puzzle with Daddy, and piece is missing. You cry.”

“I did not cry,” Chamberlain said indignantly. He pulled himself up. The Weirdy did not stop him. Chamberlain glared at the Weirdy. The trapped, exploding Bombie was still frozen by their side in its bubble of– of what?

“What did you do to it?” Chamberlain asked.

“Bombie? Make it sleep, only. Sleep small. You look?”

He looked, and looked away. “Come,” the Weirdy said. “You, me, go now. Take Bombie.”

“Go where?”

“Home,” the Weirdy said. “Source. Must change thing that is wrong. Fault of us, you. Never mind. All same.”

“I should kill you,” Chamberlain said. He stood up. His hand was on the butt of the Vacuum 300.

“Kill, not kill, all same,” the Weirdy said.

“Whatever,” Chamberlain said, resigned.

He followed the Weirdy. The Weirdy carried the frozen Bombie. What was he supposed to do? The alien could have killed him. It chose to keep him alive. Did that make him, technically, a prisoner of war? He’d never heard of anyone being captured by the Weirdies. And he still had his gun, so technically…

He thought about it. If he threw down his gun, would that make him a prisoner of war? They couldn’t blame him then, could they? I mean, didn’t he have to obey some kind of convention then? He said, “Do you want my gun?”

The Weirdy turned to him, the cat’s eyes inscrutable. “You keep wind-toy. Gorp coming. Gorp no like you. Smell wrong.”

Gorp.

“Where?” he said. Panic made him raise his voice. “Where Gorp?”

“You must quiet. Gorp coming. Many Gorp. Like you no like you.”

What the hell did that mean?

They walked through the jungle. Chamberlain felt the ground shake under his feet. They passed through the trees, and suddenly they were out of them and into open space.

Chamberlain stared. He had thought this was all jungle, yet below him a vast open plane spread out in all directions, and in the distance he saw the outline of mountains, their peaks covered in snow, and a great, distant waterfall whose water rose again into the sky as it hit the ground, creating a haze of mist. Below, on the plane, were the Gorp.

“What is this place?” he said.

“Source,” the Weirdy said. “Fly inside Fly. You say – amber?”

“Amber?”

“Fly in amber. Fly in Fly in amber.”

“I have no idea what you just said.”

The Weirdy seemed to shrug. “Matter no matter,” it said. Chamberlain sighed.

Below, the Gorp thundered past them.

“Why are they-” he said, and stopped, thinking back on the Weirdy’s words. “Like me not like me?”

“Not Fly. Come from – not source. Like you. Now belong Fly. Like you. But different.”

“Not from Fly?” He stared at the Gorp. He had never seen so many. They ran past, appearing not to sense him, which suited Chamberlain fine. “Belong Fly, like me? How? I don’t belong here!” Was that a wisp of panic in his voice? He stared at the Gorp and prayed they would keep on not noticing him.

“Belong Fly long time. No matter. Fix source first time. See after.”

“What’s the – where’s the – what source? How do you fix it?”

“You come. Wait first time. Gorp go. Gorp fight you, fight me. Like fight.”

They were aliens? That is, other aliens? Where did they come from? When? He said, “And the Bombies? Also from not here?”

“Bombies?” The Weirdy sounded surprised. “Nice toy. Nice bobmie. Like play-play. All same wind-toy.”

Wind-toy? He meant his gun, Chamberlain realised. So the Weirdy thought the gun was a toy? He said, “Gun no toy. Gun kill.”

“Kill, all same play-play,” the Weirdy said. “You no die. Like Bombie.”

Chamberlain gave up. They watched the Gorp in silence.

When the last Gorp had passed, Chamberlain sighed with relief and the Weirdy, without speaking, began to flow down the hill to the plane. Chamberlain followed him.

They walked in silence. It was a strange place. It should not have been there, he thought. There should be only jungle, living trees, darkness, mud, not – this.

There were tracks in the dust, and as they walked Chamberlain’s perspective seemed to shift uncontrollably, as if a great lens were pinpointed at him and he stared through it at the plane and saw–

The tracks – made by the Gorp? By others? – seemed magnified, lines and circles running and criss-crossing each other, forming–

Somehow they began to make sense. They were like a writing, if someone could write on an entire world. Not random, but carrying a meaning, like an ancient magic spell, and he could almost understand it…

“Source,” the Weirdy said, and it sounded sad. “You understand?”

Understanding was hovering on the edge of his mind. It was there in the lines in the dirt, in the great rising mountains which shouldn’t have been there, in the plane itself. The old song came back to him then.

Firefly is dead and cold
Monkey burns, Jaguar sleeps
Wolf and Dog circle
Elephant is home.

“No!” the Weirdy said. It stopped and faced Chamberlain. Its cat’s eyes were wide and unblinking. Its whirlwind body sent dust flying in the air. Chamberlain blinked back tears. “One, you see? You understand!”

“One is missing?” he found himself whispering the words.

“Must fix!”

Was there another line to the song? There were six worlds, and he counted them, ranked based on their distance from the sun: Monkey, Jaguar, Wolf, Elephant, Dog, Firefly. Six.

“No! Mistake! Never-mind, no fault. Must fix all same.”

“I wish you’d stop saying that.”

But the plane grew around him and he could see the world emanating from it, from that single point, growing outwards, and the script upon the world was like a curse, a seal, a–

“What did you do?” he whispered. And then he thought – was it us?

“All same,” the Weirdy said.

All same. And stop. And the world shrank around him, the lens lifted.

“Source,” the Weirdy said.

“Here?”

It was just another patch of dust, nothing to distinguish it. Nothing around them for miles. Something lying in the dirt, a metal cylinder half a meter across. He looked at it. Ours? he thought. Theirs?

“Never mind,” the Weirdy said. “You fix, now.”

“Me?”

The Weirdy released the frozen Bombie sphere. “Wait,” Chamberlain said, “What are you-”

The Weirdy threw the Bombie high in the air. The bubble rose, rose, rose and then–

“Shit!” Chamberlain yelled. He looked up–

The transparent bubble disappeared. The Bombie explosion, as if there had been no interruption, expanded outwards from its nucleus.

“Shit!” Chamberlain said again, and–

Four: Elephant and Fly

He was Shambalin, and then he was Chamberlain, and he was sent to Fly with all the others. He said goodbye to his parents. His mother cried. His father shook his hand, awkwardly. He wore his cadet uniform. There were many others like him. The Deputy Chairman of the Party gave a speech.

(-What happened?

No answer in words, but the scene disappeared, and was replaced-)

He was on the ship coming to land. They were playing cards. Shen and Mastorakis were still alive. Shen said, “I wonder what’s happening back home?” Mastorakis said, “Same old.” A screen came alive then, a news-feed from home, the Chairman speaking. “Peace must be achieved at all costs.”

“Hear, hear,” someone said.

“Our boys on Fly are sacrificing themselves daily to protect our rights, our livelihoods, our very humanity against the monsters.”

“I don’t want to be a sacrifice,” Chamberlain said.

(-Sacrifice, a voice said. Yes. Sacrifice.

-No!

-Doesn’t matter.

-It does to me!

Fade again, and–)

He was on Fly, walking through the jungle with his platoon, and the Weirdies where coming out of nowhere, and he fired at them, but always there were more Weirdies, more bloody trees, more exploding insects. Only when you found Gorp did you get a real fight; the Gorp were the worst, blood-thirsty and cunning and huge–

He was at the base, relaxing after the fight. They’d lost three people that day, including Shen.

He was in the jungle when the Gorp attacked. He remembered dying, now.

(-what?

-Play-play. You, me, Gorp, play. Now tired-)

He was at the base when Colonel Piet ordered him and Mastorakis on a scouting mission.

He was in the jungle when Mastorakis was killed by a living tree and a Weirdy, coming out of nowhere, stole over Chamberlain and the wind ripped him apart–

He was at the base when they brought Colonel Piet’s body back from the jungle and he thought, so they got you at last, you bastard.

He was at the base when Mastorakis came in carrying Shen’s body, Colonel Piet watching dispassionately from the side.

He was at the base when the Gorp attacked, screams, Shen dying beside him, Mastorakis, Piet and he was–

He was in the jungle–

(-Please. Stop!-)

He was in the base–

Mastorakis–

He was in the base and the voice of the Chairman of the Party on the news-feed said, “We have peace.”

He was in the jungle and a Bombie was resting on his arm and he tried not to move and counted the planets based on distance from the sun. Monkey, Jaguar, Wolf, Fly, Elephant, Dog, Firefly. Monkey, Jaguar, Wolf–

(-Fly!

-Fly. Fly and… Elephant.)

Fly. Fly. Fly. Fly. It was there. It had always been there.

And so had he.

(-How long? he said.

-Don’t know. Don’t count time. Long time?

-How long?

-Many solar circles. Many many. Full up.

-And all this time–

-Play-play. Tired now.

But-)

He was on a plane and above his head a Bombie exploded, shards raining down, and he knew there was no escape. “Have I been here before?” he said.

“No. First time. Last time. Fly now.”

The Bombie shards hit him, and he died.

Five: Shambalin

He was lying on the grass under the stars with Rashmi and they both had their shirts off and her skin was soft and dark and his heart was beating loudly in his chest.

Rashmi said, “One day I’m going to go to the stars.”

“Can I come with you?” he said, and his fingers traced a line under her arm and she giggled. “If you like. Where shall we go?”

“We could go anywhere. See what it’s really like out there, on Firefly and Monkey, Jaguar and Wolf and Dog, maybe even further, back where people come from, I forget what it’s called.”

“Mars,” Rashmi said. He shrugged. “Whatever.”

“We can go to Fly,” she said, and Shambalin said, “They say the forests of the living trees are beautiful.”

“I want to see a Weirdy!”

“They’re strange. Hard to talk to.”

“How do you know?” she said, and punched him on the arm and he rolled over her and smiled into her face. “I saw this programme.”

“I never want to see a Gorp though!”

“No,” he said. “No Gorp.”

He rolled on his back. Rashmi put her arms around him and nestled her head in the crook of his neck. He stared up at the stars, and said, softly, “Sometimes, when true night falls, and the living trees are quiet, if you stand still, you can hear the music of the Skaar-et-lam.”

“What does it sound like?”

He thought about it, looking up at the stars. “Like dying,” he said. “And then being reborn.”

“Where did you hear that?” she said, and he said, “I don’t know. It just came to me.”

He turned his head and looked into her face and she smiled. He kissed her.

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Lavie Tidhar writes weird fiction. He grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and has lived in South Africa and the UK. Most recently he’s lived in the Banks islands of Vanuatu, in the South Pacific, one of the most remote and isolated places on Earth. Lavie’s website is http://www.lavietidhar.co.uk/.

In 2007, Apex Publications released a collection of Jewish adventure stories titled HebrewPunk from Lavie Tidhar. This book is available as a direct order from the Apex Store and from the Apex aStore.

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