International Speculative Fiction #4 Read online

  The figures in white went up to one of the windows that was considerably larger than the others and was unlighted and started to touch some of the bumps that protruded under it. The window suddenly lit up, but it did not have the stream of numbers as on the others. It showed something that the prisoner could finally make sense of. The star field seemed far denser, brighter, and sharper, but basically did not differ from what he had seen through his small telescope.

  But how could the picture in the window and the telescope be the same? What kind of window was that? The answer soon followed, but his readiness to believe took considerably more time. The two people continued to touch the bumps, and the scene slowly started to change. The change itself was clear to him, but he could not figure out how it was done. He would have achieved the same effect if he were slowly to raise his telescope: some stars would disappear under the lower edge, while others would appear above. But here the window did not move at all.

  Then he heard something buzzing behind him. It was quite feeble, like the sound of a distant bee. He probably would not have turned around if he hadn’t been compelled by the pins and needles at the back of his head—the tension of premonition. Something was going on behind his back, something big was moving.

  The heavy, upright cylinder in the lower part of the slit in the dome slowly rose toward the highest point, although he could not see how it moved. It seemed to be doing so by itself, without the help of ropes and a winch.

  He caught on to what was happening before the cylinder stopped at an angle of about seventy degrees. So, the Tempter had not overestimated him too much. In any case, it was only a matter of proportions here. Even though it was gigantic, the telescope had kept its original shape. What he could not understand was that the eyepiece had been moved. Instead of being in the only place it could be, at the bottom of the cylinder, it was on the wall like a big window that everyone could look at.

  The picture on it stabilized just for a moment, and then a new change started. The stars began to flow over all the edges as though the telescope were rushing through the air at an unbelievable speed, although it was resting immobile. It penetrated more and more into the dark expanse, reaching for unattainable infinity.

  The impression was intoxicating, delightful. And then, as if this were not enough, music echoed. The woman in white went for a moment to a smaller window and touched something. At the same moment, the crystal sounds of heavenly harmony reverberated from all sides. He could not see any musicians or instruments, he could not understand a thing, but he did not care. He was experiencing what one undergoes perhaps once in a lifetime: exaltation.

  The two climaxes merged into one. One point in the middle of the picture started to get bigger, to expand. At first it was a star like the countless ones around it, then it was a circle, then a ring, and then finally it burst into a lacy flower that filled the entire window. The moment it opened its rosy, vaporous petals, the music streamed upward, greeting with an upsurge of joy the appearance of the yellow nucleus—the hidden eye of the Creator himself.

  He was not filled with frustration when everything around him suddenly froze and became silent. He knew this would happen, that the watch cover had to open once again. The moment of the about-face was perfect. The epiphany had just taken place. Dared he hope for anything greater?

  Return trips always seem shorter than departures. There were no more surprises and wonders to slow down time. Even though he felt awe as he watched the reverse sequence of what he had seen before—the disappearance of the dome, the return of the barred windows, the formation of doors and beds, the flickering of days and nights—his thoughts were elsewhere.

  His confused thoughts that gradually formed a crucial question.

  The end of the voyage came abruptly once again, just as when he had arrived in the future. At first, while his eyes were still blinded by the flashes, he could not make out anyone on the other side of the cell. Icy fingers of horror tightened around his chest. What if he wasn’t there anymore? If he had only been playing with him? That would be just like the Tempter. Then he never would know...

  “So?” came a gentle voice from the darkness.

  He tried to muffle his sigh of relief, but such effort was futile in the murky silence of the night. “You said the observatory would be named after me, didn’t you?” There was no time to beat around the bush; he had to get straight to the point.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Because of the discovery I made or because I was burned at the stake for not renouncing it?”

  “For both one and the other, although considerably more for the act of sacrifice. You know, in the age you just visited, your discovery has only historical value. It has not been refuted, but it is secondary, insignificant, almost forgotten. As you have seen, things have advanced much farther. But your burning will not be forgotten.”

  From somewhere in the heart of the monastery came the sound of heavy footsteps. It was not just two guards. A larger group was walking through the corridors.

  “Does that mean I have no choice?” asked the prisoner quickly. “If the observatory is named after me because I was burned at the stake, then it necessarily follows that there is no way I can avoid that fate. But I can still do it. I still have free will. They’re coming. What if I say yes when they ask me to renounce my discovery? That would spare me from the stake but would change the future, wouldn’t it? And the future cannot be changed; I saw it with my own eyes.”

  The steps ceased for a moment, and then in the distance there echoed the harsh sound of a barred partition door being opened.

  “That’s right. You can’t change what you saw. And you saw only that which is irrefutable, that which you cannot influence in any way. What you did not see, however, is whether the observatory is named after you.”

  The prisoner opened his mouth to say something, but no words emerged. His sight had returned in the meantime, so that now in the obscure light of dawn pouring in from the high window he could make out the contours of his visitor. His head was somehow elongated, as though he had something tall on top of it.

  “No, I did not deceive you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he continued. “The observatory really will be named after you if you are burned at the stake. But if you are not, it will be named after someone else. One of your students, for example, who will be braver than you. There is no predetermination. Your free will determines what will happen. You will choose between a horrible death in flames and the penitent life of a royal astronomer under the wing of the Church, whose comfort will be disturbed only by the scorn of a handful of students and perhaps a guilty conscience—between satisfying your own conceit and the wise insight that it actually makes no difference after whom the observatory is named. I do not envy you. It is not an easy choice.”

  The rumbling steps stopped in front of the cell door, and a key was thrust into the large lock.

  “You know what I will decide,” said the prisoner hurriedly in a soft voice. It was more a statement than a question.

  “I know,” answered the gentle voice.

  The rusty hinges screeched sharply, and into the small cell came first a large turnkey with a torch raised high and after him two Inquisition interrogators in the purple robes of the high priesthood. The soldier who entered last was also holding a torch. There was no more room inside, so the three remaining soldiers had to wait in the corridor.

  In the smoky light the prisoner squinted hard at the figure on the bed across from him. The strange object on his head was some sort of cylindrical hat with a wide brim, and its slanted shadow completely hid the man’s face.

  He had not expected his visitor to stay there. Would he let the others see him? But no one paid any attention to him, as though he were not there, as though he were invisible. In other circumstances this would have confused the prisoner completely, but in the light of his recent experience he accepted it as quite natural.

&nbs
p; “Lazar,” said the first priest, addressing him in an official tone, “this is the last time you will be asked: do you renounce your heresy and penitently accept the teachings of our Holy Mother the Church?”

  The prisoner did not take his eyes off the figure in black, but he had turned into a statue. He sat with head bowed, silent, just like an old man who had fallen asleep, with his white hands leaning on the top of his cane. He seemed indifferent, as if all this had nothing to do with him, as though he were not the least bit interested. The silence grew heavy with tension, with expectation.

  And then at last, the royal astronomer turned slowly toward the inquisitors and gave his monosyllabic answer.

  About Zoran Živković

  (A biographical sketch by Michael A. Morrison, originally published at www.ou.edu/wlt/11_2011/zoran-biographical-sketch.html.)

  Only a few years after his birth in 1948, Zoran Živković fell in love with literature. Like so many, he was initially drawn by the “irresistibly enchanting impression that whenever I opened a book it was as if I had opened a portal to an alternate world.” Years later, as a graduate student at the University of Belgrade, he specialized in American sf from 1950 to 1957. After earning his master’s degree in 1979 with a dissertation on works by Arthur C. Clarke, he began doctoral study.

  In the mid-1970s, Živković started to actively promote sf (speculative fiction) in Yugoslavia. For three years he co-edited the annual sf almanac Andromeda. He also regularly contributed to the magazine Sirius. After earning his doctorate in 1982, Živković committed totally to bringing sf to his homeland. During the 1980s he worked as an editor for publisher Izdava∂ki Zavod Jugoslavija, translating nearly fifty books, mostly American sf. He also founded his own press, Polaris, “as a sort of resistance movement against the proverbial slowness and clumsiness of state-owned publishing houses.” Polaris rapidly became the pivotal publisher of sf in the former Yugoslavia. From its inception in 1982 to its termination in 2000, Polaris published over two hundred translated books. In 1984 Živković developed and starred in the television show The Starry Screen, each episode of which explored a major sf film.

  This phase of his career culminated in 1990 with publication of his massive Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, then only the fourth comprehensive sf encyclopedia ever written. Three years later, he published his first novel, The Fourth Circle, after which he began to focus increasingly on writing fiction, which, curiously, contained no sf elements whatsoever. In 2000 he decided to become a full-time writer: “I was fifty-two then, old enough not to be able anymore to have two professions at the same time—a publisher and a writer—simply because they both were very demanding and time-consuming. Moreover, to write fiction properly requires one’s total devotion.”

  From the start, Živković’s fiction began winning awards. Prominent among these is the Stefan Mitrov Ljubiša Award, which he received in 2007 for his entire fictional opus. Internationally, his major recognitions came in 2003, when The Library won the World Fantasy Award, and in 2009 when he was named Guest of Honor of the World Fantasy Convention, the first writer whose native language is not English to be so honored.

  Živković is now among the most widely translated central European authors. Although he writes in Serbian, all of his fiction is available in English. Alice Copple-Tošić, translator of all but two of his works, masterfully captures the nuances, subtleties, and precision of his prose. Translations of his books have appeared to date in twenty-three countries.

  Currently a professor of creative writing in the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade, Živković lives in Belgrade with his wife, Mia; their twin sons, Uroš and Andreja; their dog, Zoe, and cats Micuko, Sivka, and Buca.

  The Bird Catcher

  S.P. Somtow

  There was this other boy in the internment camp. His name was Jim. After the war, he made something of a name for himself. He wrote books, even a memoir of the camp that got turned into a Spielberg movie. It didn’t turn out that gloriously for me.

  My grandson will never know what it’s like to be consumed with hunger, hunger that is heartache. Hunger that can propel you past insanity. But I know. I’ve been there. So has that boy Jim; that’s why I really don’t envy him his Spielberg movie.

  After the war, my mother and I were stranded in China for a few more years. She was penniless, a lady journalist in a time when lady journalists only covered church bazaars, a single mother at a time when “bastard” was more than a bad word.

  You might think that at least we had each other, but my mother and I never intersected. Not as mother and son, not even as Americans awash in great events and oceans of Asian faces. We were both loners. We were both vulnerable.

  That’s how I became the boogieman’s friend.

  He’s long dead now, but they keep him, you know, in the Museum of Horrors. Once in a generation, I visit him. Yesterday, I took my grandson Corey. Just as I took his father before him.

  The destination stays the same, but the road changes every generation. The first time I had gone by boat, along the quiet back canals of the old city. Now there was an expressway. The toll was forty baht—a dollar—a month’s salary that would have been, back in the 50s, in old Siam.

  My son’s in love with Bangkok, the insane skyline, the high tech blending with the low tech, the skyscraper shaped like a giant robot, the palatial shopping malls, the kinky sex bars, the bootleg software arcades, the whole tossed salad. And he doesn’t mind the heat. He’s a big-time entrepreneur here, owns a taco chain.

  I live in Manhattan. It’s quieter.

  I can be anonymous. I can be alone. I can nurse my hunger in secret.

  Christmases, though, I go to Bangkok; this Christmas, my grandson’s eleventh birthday, I told my son it was time. He nodded and told me to take the chauffeur for the day.

  So, to get to the place, you zigzag through the world’s raunchiest traffic, then you fly along this madcap figure-eight expressway, cross the river where stone demons stand guard on the parapets of the Temple of Dawn, and then you’re suddenly in this sleazy alley. Vendors hawk bowls of soup and pickled guavas. The directions are on a handwritten placard attached to a street sign with duct tape.

  It’s the Police Museum, upstairs from the local morgue. One wall is covered with photographs of corpses. That’s not part of the museum; it’s a public service display for people with missing family members to check if any of them have turned up dead. Corey didn’t pay attention to the photographs; he was busy with Pokémon.

  Upstairs, the feeling changed. The stairs creaked. The upstairs room was garishly lit. Glass cases along the walls were filled with medical oddities, two-headed babies and the like, each one in a jar of formaldehyde, each one meticulously labeled in Thai and English. The labels weren’t printed, mind you. Handwritten. There was definitely a middle school show-and-tell feel about the exhibits. No air conditioning. And no more breeze from the river like in the old days; skyscrapers had stifled the city’s breath.

  There was a uniform, sick-yellow tinge to all the displays... the neutral cream paint was edged with yellow... the deformed livers, misshapen brains, tumorous embryos, all floating in a dull yellow fluid... the heaps of dry bones an orange-yellow, the rows of skulls yellowing in the cracks... and then there were the young novices, shaven-headed little boys in yellow robes, staring in a heat-induced stupor as their mentor droned on about the transience of all existence, the quintessence of Buddhist philosophy.

  And then there was Si Ui.

  He had his own glass cabinet, like a phone booth, in the middle of the room. Naked. Desiccated. A mummy. Skinny. Mud-colored, from the embalming process, I think. A sign (handwritten, of course) explained who he was. Si Ui. Devourer of children’s livers in the 1950s. My grandson reads Thai more fluently than I do. He sounded out the name right away.

  Si Sui Sae Ung.

  “It’s the boogieman, isn’t it?” Corey said. But he showed little more than a passing interest. It was the year Pok�
�mon Gold and Silver came out. So many new monsters to catch, so many names to learn.

  “He hated cages,” I said.

  “Got him!” Corey squealed. Then, not looking up at the dead man, “I know who he was. They did a documentary on him. Can we go now?”

  “Didn’t your maid tell you stories at night? To frighten you? ‘Be a good boy, or Si Ui will eat your liver?’”

  “Gimme a break, grandpa. I’m too old for that shit.” He paused. Still wouldn’t look up at him. There were other glass booths in the room, other mummified criminals: a serial rapist down the way. But Si Ui was the star of the show. “Okay,” Corey said, “she did try to scare me once. Well, I was like five, okay? Si Ui. You watch out, he’ll eat your liver, be a good boy now. Sure, I heard that before. Well, he’s not gonna eat my liver now, is he? I mean, that’s probably not even him; it’s probably like wax or something.”

  He smiled at me. The dead man did not.

  “I knew him,” I said. “He was my friend.”

  “I get it!” Corey said, back to his Gameboy. “You’re like me in this Pokémon game. You caught a monster once. And tamed him. You caught the most famous monster in Thailand.”

  “And tamed him?” I shook my head. “No, not tamed.”

  “Can we go to McDonald’s now?”

  “You’re hungry.”

  “I could eat the world!”

  “After I tell you the whole story.”

  “You’re gonna talk about the Chinese camp again, grandpa? And that kid Jim, and the Spielberg movie?”

  “No, Corey, this is something I’ve never told you about before. But I’m telling you so when I’m gone, you’ll know to tell your son. And your grandson.”

  “Okay, grandpa.”

  And finally, tearing himself away from the video game, he willed himself to look.

  The dead man had no eyes; he could not stare back.