Rites of Passage (21 page)

That dawn, as we sat in the cavern around the glow-coals, I told my people of our exploits, of the giant crabs and the great dwellings made by our giant ancestors, of the blackened beings and their miraculous possessions. Fifty pairs of eyes stared in wonder as I described the vast V-shaped dwelling, and the domes on the escarpment. I told them of Kenda’s treachery, and how Nohma had saved my life as he attacked me, and how later she had saved me again when I had been at the mercy of a crab.

Later, I sat with Nohma at the entrance of the caverns, and stared out as the line of the sun edged across our valley. After a period of silence Nohma asked, “What are you thinking about, Par?”

And I replied, “The future.”

A short while later, Old Kahl and Old Tan approached and sat beside us. “Par,” Old Kahl said, “the time has come to appoint a new storyteller.”

Old Tan went on, “I am old now, and my memory is failing, and it is time I gave way to someone new. You have heard all my stories, and now you have brave tales of your own, and a way with words that I could never match.”

“Will you accept the honour?” Old Kahl asked.

I thought of all the storytellers over the years who had kept our history alive, who had recounted the exploits of previous generations, who told of the time when we did not live like insects in the caverns below ground.

“I accept,” I said, “but not immediately.”

Old Kahl frowned.

I said, “First, with your permission, I wish to mount an expedition. I want to take a dozen of our youngest, fittest men and women and journey back to the escarpment. I want to make contact again with the blackened beings, for they have much to teach us, and we have much to learn, and our people will benefit from the encounter.”

Old Kahl and Old Tan listened with bowed heads, and when I had had my say Old Kahl said, “We must take your proposal to the Elders, and discuss it with wiser heads than ours. But, in principle, I cannot see an objection to the idea of an expedition.”

And then they left us and we sat in the entrance and stared out across the valley.

I looked at Nohma. “And you will come too?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said. “Because if I do not, then who will be on hand to save your life?”

I smiled and fell silent, gazing out across the moon-silvered terraces.

Nohma asked, “What are you thinking about, Par?”

“The big skeletons we saw in the dome,” I said, “and the blackened beings.”

“What about them?”

“Nohma, what if many, many thousands of winters ago, the tall beings were the only race that lived on the Earth, and the sun swelled and burned up all the water, and humankind divided into two tribes. One tribe went underground, to the caverns, and the other... the other remained above ground, and became the blackened people.”

I would mount an expedition, I thought; I would march into the mountains with my brave band of men and women and we would meet the blackened beings, and I would find some way of communicating with these kindly creatures and I would ask them, as we shared food and drink beneath the stars, if we – the cavern-dwellers and the blackened people – were truly once, long ago, one people and the same.

My head swirled with the enormity of the idea.

Later, as the sun burned its way across the valley and the heat increased, we hurried below ground to my hollow and made love.

E
ric Brown began writing when he was fifteen while living in Australia and sold his first short story to
Interzone
in 1986. He has won the British Science Fiction Award twice for his short stories, has published over fifty books, and his work has been translated into sixteen languages. His forthcoming books include the SF novel
Jani and the Greater Game,
the collection
Strange Visitors,
and the crime novel
Murder at the Chase.
He writes a regular science fiction review column for the
Guardian
newspaper and lives near Dunbar, East Lothian. His website can be found at:
www.ericbrown.co.uk

“B
artholomew Burns and the Brain Invaders” first appeared in
Aethernet #5,#6,#7,#8
.

“Guardians of the Phoenix” first appeared in
Apocalyptic SF
.

“Sunworld” first appeared in
The Solaris Book of New SF 2
.

“Beneath the Ancient Sun” is original to this collection.

I’d like to thank the following editors of the online magazine and anthologies where these stories first appeared: Tony and Barbara Ballantyne, Mike Ashley, and George Mann.

N
ovels

Murder at the Chase

Salvage

Satan’s Reach

The Serene Invasion

Murder by the Book

Starship Seasons

Helix Wars

The Devil’s Nebula

The Kings of Eternity

Guardians of the Phoenix

Cosmopath

Xenopath

Necropath

Kéthani

Helix

New York Dreams

New York Blues

New York Nights

Penumbra

Engineman

Meridian Days

Novellas

Famadihana on Fomalhaut IV

Starship Spring

Starship Winter

Gilbert and Edgar on Mars

Starship Fall

Revenge

Starship Summer

The Extraordinary Voyage of Jules Verne

Approaching Omega

A Writer’s Life

Collections

Strange Visitors

The Angels of Life and Death

Ghostwriting

Threshold Shift

The Fall of Tartarus

Deep Future

Parallax View (with Keith Brooke)

Blue Shifting

The Time-Lapsed Man

The Angels of Life and Death

by Eric Brown

www.infinityplus.co.uk/book.php?book=ebrtaolad

T
he Angels of Life and Death
collects ten science fiction stories from two times winner of the BSFA short story award.

From cyberpunk visions of post-human futures to traditional tales of alien encounter and time travel, what connects these tales are Brown’s storytelling ability and his concern for the human element. Whether he’s writing about telepaths fleeing alien assassins on a vast spaceport city in the Bay of Bengal, or a woman reporter finding true love in the far, far future, Brown imbues his fictions with a concern for character and headlong narrative pace.

“SF infused with a cosmopolitan and literary sensibility” —Paul McAuley

“He is a masterful storyteller” —
Strange Horizons

~

Salvage

by Eric Brown

www.infinityplus.co.uk/book.php?book=ebrsal

W
hen Salvageman Ed saves Ella Rodriguez from spider-drones on the pleasure planet of Sinclair's Landfall, he has no idea what he's letting himself in for. Ella is not at all what she seems, as he's soon about to find out.

What follows, as the spider-drones and the Hayakawa Organisation chase Ed, Ella and engineer Karrie light-years across space, is a fast-paced adventure with Ed learning more about Ella - and about himself - than he ever expected.

The Salvageman Ed series of linked stories - four of which appear here for the first time - combine action, humour and pathos, from the master of character-based adventure science fiction.

“These stories demonstrate everything that Eric Brown excels at: intelligent high adventure in space featuring fully-rounded characters that the reader can instantly relate to, revelling in their evolving relationship as Ed and his crew are forced to contend with all that the author’s vivid imagination throws at them. Wonderful stuff!” —Ian Whates, author of 
The Noise Within

~

Genetopia

by Keith Brooke

www.infinityplus.co.uk/book.php?book=kbrgen

S
earching for his missing sister, Flint encounters a world where illness is to be feared, where genes mutate and migrate between species through plague and fever. This is the story of the struggles between those who want to defend their heritage and those who choose to embrace the new.

“A minor masterpiece that should usher Brooke at last into the recognized front ranks of SF writers” —
Locus

“I am so here!
Genetopia
is a meditation on identity – what it means to be human and what it means to be you – and the necessity of change. It’s also one heck of an adventure story. Snatch it up!" —Michael Swanwick, Hugo award-winning author of
Bones of the Earth

“Keith Brooke’s
Genetopia
is a biotech fever dream. In mood it recalls Brian Aldis’s
Hothouse
, but is a projection of twenty-first century fears and longings into an exotic far future where the meaning of humanity is overwhelmed by change. Masterfully written, this is a parable of difference that demands to be read, and read again.” —Stephen Baxter, Philip K Dick award-winning author of
Evolution
and
Transcendent

~

The Fabulous Beast

by Garry Kilworth

www.infinityplus.co.uk/book.php?book=gktfb

A
set of beautifully crafted tales of the imagination by a writer who was smitten by the magic of the speculative short story at the age of twelve and has remained under its spell ever since.

These few stories cover three closely related sub-genres: science fiction, fantasy and horror. In the White Garden murders are taking place nightly, but who is leaving the deep foot-prints in the flower beds? Twelve men are locked in the jury room, but thirteen emerge after their deliberations are over. In a call centre serving several worlds, the staff are less than helpful when things go wrong with a body-change holiday.

Three of the stories form a set piece under the sub-sub-genre title of ‘Anglo-Saxon Tales’. This trilogy takes the reader back to a time when strange gods ruled the lives of men and elves were invisible creatures who caused mayhem among mortals.

Garry Kilworth has created a set of stories that lift readers out of their ordinary lives and place them in situations of nightmare and wonder, or out among far distant suns. Come inside and meet vampires, dragons, ghosts, aliens, weremen, people who walk on water, clones, ghouls and marvellous wolves with the secret of life written beneath their eyelids.

“Kilworth’s stories are delightfully nuanced and carefully wrought.’ —
Publishers Weekly

“A bony-handed clutch of short stories, addictive and hallucinatory.” —
The Times

“Here is a writer determined and well equipped to contribute to the shudder-count.” —
The Guardian

For full details of infinity plus books see
www.infinityplus.co.uk/books