Irregular Verbs (38 page)

“I’m sorry you had to hear that.”

Apisai shrugged. “I have a son, you know. They’re all the same at that age.”

“No, it’s—it’s more than that. She was never interested before, in any of it, and then when she wanted to come see the Islands I thought . . .”

“Nobody’s interested in home, not at that age. None of us could wait to leave the Islands.” Apisai shrugged. “Maybe it would have been different if we’d known we could never go home, but I don’t expect so.”

“But you can,” Saufatu said. “Come tomorrow night, you’ll see. And we’re going to make it even better, it’ll be just like being there.”

“I know what that’s like,” Apisai said, then held up a hand before Saufatu could respond. “Fine, fine—I’ll be there.”

Losi’s door was shut when Saufatu went inside, and his hand hovered over it, ready to knock; after a long moment he took a breath and let it drop to his side. What could he say to her? He had thought she didn’t care because she had grown up here, had never known the Islands, but he had to face the fact that none of the ones who had grown up there cared either. He sat down at the kitchen table and started a text to Kettner to get him to cancel his visit: it felt like a fraud now, absurd to think that a virtual reconstruction could give someone any sense of what it was like to be an Islander. For the tourists, it would be nothing more than another fantasyland, like Losi had said; for the Islanders it was just a dusty photo album.

Saufatu’s hand hesitated over his pico’s airboard; after a moment he waved it back and forth to cancel the message, then picked up the pico and took it to his room. He hooked his ’jack up to the dreamlink and then forced himself to go to sleep and get to work.

Saufatu walked down the Niulakiti beach to the shore, dodging tourists as they ran back and forth across the sand. He had seen them all over the Eight Islands, walking along the beaches, watching the fearless birds, swimming out to the wrecks—everything that had been in Kettner’s preview reel.

Apisai Lotoala was at the shore, standing just ankle-deep in the water and surrounded by a knot of Islanders who were all chatting together, drinking toddy from plastic milk jugs and casting occasional glances out to sea. So far as the Islanders were concerned, this was no more meaningful than a backyard
fatele
; Apisai waved to him as he neared but Saufatu just nodded back, not feeling any need to be humoured.

He spotted Kettner and Losi about a half-mile out, near where the shark attack was instanced: he thought he recognized the blond boy who had been surfing with Losi out there as well. He waved, and Kettner and Losi began to make their way back to shore.

“What did I tell you?” Kettner said as he walked out of the water. Losi followed a few steps behind, her eyes lowered. “They love it.”

“It’s very gratifying,” Saufatu said.

Kettner laughed. “I’m glad you think so,” he said, and shook his head.

Losi tapped Kettner on the arm. “Listen,” she said, “I’m going to go, okay? Text me.”

“No, wait,” Saufatu said. He took a step past Kettner, looked her in the eye. “Just stay, a little longer. Please.”

“Uncle—”

Suddenly there was a noise, a deep note like someone blowing on a conch shell. A ship had appeared out on the water—or rather dozens of instances of the same ship, a battered old freighter that hauled itself slowly towards every shore of the Eight Islands.

A moment later tourists and Islanders alike had been transported aboard the ship, packed tight on the decks or else peering out of the portholes below. From there they could see the deep-water wharf at the north end of Fogafale and beyond to the narrow streets and concrete buildings where most of the Islands’ people had lived for the last fifty years.

There was no water on the ground; this was no sunken city, no drowned Atlantis—only an island that had become too low and too salty to be inhabitable, just one more of the thousands of lifeless atolls that dotted the Pacific.

Kettner was at his elbow. “This is what it was like, isn’t it?” he asked. “When you left.”

Saufatu nodded. He saw Apisai Lotoala leaning out over the rail, his head turning in wide arcs from side to side and his eyes gleaming with tears. Of course his people hadn’t needed the simulated Islands: every one of them already had an unchanged memory of their home the way it used to be. What they had not had, until now, was a chance to say goodbye.

The ship’s horn blew again, two sharp blasts, and it began to move away from the wharf. Saufatu turned to see Losi standing behind him. “I’m sorry, Uncle,” she said.

“Don’t be. You were right.”

“But you’re not—sinking it? Everything you did?”

“No,” Saufatu said. “It’ll still be here, for people to see what it was like before—or to help people remember. But this will be the only way to leave.”

“Listen,” she said, “I could help out for awhile, if you like. I’m sure Kettner would understand.”

He shook his head. “Do you know, when our people left Tonga and Samoa they thought everywhere in the ocean had been settled? But they set out again into the open sea, just to see what was out there.” He took a deep breath. “Go with Kettner. See what’s out there.”

She nodded, and they both turned back to look over the side. The wharf and the islands beyond it were moving away in accelerated time, shrinking and then finally fading from view, lost in the trackless ocean.

All books are the products of many hands, but a collection like this especially so. I owe a debt to the many editors who bought and, in many cases, improved the original versions of most of these stories and most especially to Sheila Williams who published many of them in
Asimov
’s; to Brett and Sandra, for taking a chance on this book; to Helen Marshall, for her support and for providing the book with an introduction much more wonderful than it deserves; to all those writers who provided feedback and encouragement on the book and those who offered to risk their reputations by endorsing it; and to my parents, who inspired me to tell stories.

“Irregular Verbs” and “Holdfast” first appeared in
Fantasy Magazine

“Outside Chance” and “Closing Time” first appeared in
On Spec

“Talking Blues” first appeared in
Triangulation: End of the Rainbow
(Parsec Ink)

“Long Pig” first appeared in
Daily Science Fiction

“Written by the Winners” first appeared in
Timelines
(Northern Frights Press)

“The Face of the Waters” first appeared in
Triangulation: Taking Flight
(Parsec Ink)

“Another Country,” “Public Safety,” “Lagos,” “The Coldest War” and “The Last Islander” first appeared in
Asimov’s Science Fiction
.

“When We Have Time” first appeared in
Triangulation: End of Time
(Parsec Ink)

“Jump, Frog!” first appeared in
Ten Plagues
(Saltboy Bookmakers)

“The Dragon’s Lesson” first appeared in
Time for Bedlam
(Saltboy Bookmakers)

“Heroic Measures” first appeared in
Strange Horizons

“The Afflicted” first appeared in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

“What You Couldn’t Leave Behind,” “The Wise Foolish Son,” “Beyond the Fields You Know,” and “Au Coeur des Ombres” are all original to this volume

Matthew Johnson is a writer and educator who lives in Ottawa with his wife Megan and their two sons. His first novel,
Fall From Earth
, was published in 2009 by Bundoran Press, and his short stories have appeared in places such as
Asimov’s Science Fiction
,
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, and
Strange Horizons
, and have been translated into Russian, Danish, and Czech. He is also the Director of Education for MediaSmarts, Canada’s centre for digital and media literacy, for whom he has written articles, lessons, blogs, tipsheets, and educational computer games, and whose material he has presented to numerous parliamentary committees and international conferences, as well as appearing on
The National
,
Canada AM,
and many other TV, print, and radio outlets.

“Johnson skips like a stone across the myriad provinces of the spec-fic landscape: time travel noir, Le Guinian psychofable, alternate history—even a glorious coda to the myth of the comic-book superhero. Yet somehow he leaves his own unique footprints wherever he lands. Macabre, whimsical, and touching by turns,
Irregular Verbs
does not disappoint.”

—Peter Watts, Hugo Award-winning author of
Blindsight

“Matthew Johnson is a clever and thoughtful writer, and an unusual one, too.”

—Elizabeth Hay, Giller Prize-winning author of
Late Nights on Air

“I tore through this collection. Sharp. Insightful. Smart. When can I have more?”

—John Scalzi, author of
Redshirts

“Matthew Johnson is a twenty-first-century Bester. With each story he deftly takes a single idea and gives it an unanticipated shove, presiding over the resulting consequences as they ripple through character and plot, carrying the reader along to shores of distant wonder.”

—Lawrence M. Schoen, Hugo and Nebula Award nominee

Haxan
© 2014 by Kenneth Mark Hoover
Cover artwork © 2014 by Erik Mohr
Cover and interior design by © 2014 by Samantha Beiko

All rights reserved.

Published by ChiZine Publications

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

EPub Edition JUNE 2014 ISBN: 978-1-77148-176-2

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Edited by Andrew Wilmot
Proofread by Michael Matheson

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Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.