Book Promo
If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. By clicking through and buying (anything book-related, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion. Remember though all of these submissions are from people willing to be associated with this blog. So if you’re trying to buy from people who don’t hate you, this is a good place to start.– SAH
FROM BECKY JONES: Station on the Edge: Rebellion’s Edge Book 1
Zeke Udinesi just wanted to spend his career as a station chief on a nice space station with a good pub. Unfortunately for Zeke, the best pub is on Glasvyr Station which sits on the line dividing the Core, the civilized galaxy, from the Edge, the very much less-than-civilized bit of galaxy. When the Republic of United Planets takes a sudden interest in Glasvyr Station, Zeke gets a very bad feeling. A surprise visit by a high-ranking VIP, a newly minted, bullying political commissar assigned to the station, trader captains fleeing the new regulations and restrictions, and a notorious military unit stationed on Glasvyr all point to increasing power moves by the Burokratika Senaat of the Republic.
Fueled by caffeine and spite, Zeke takes on the leviathan Republic vowing to stop it no matter the cost. Can he survive or will he be pushed into the Edge?
FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Empty Dispatch Case (The Aurigan Conflict)
There are men who operate in the shadows because they are criminals. There are men who operate in the shadows because they are spies. And then there are men who make certain that nobody can tell the difference.
Nicholas Harrow has spent decades cultivating that distinction. To the criminal underworld, he is Lucky Nick — the impossible thief who can steal anything, escape anything, and stay one step ahead of every police force in known space. To law enforcement, he is Saint Nick — the mysterious fixer who appears whenever a case grows too complicated for ordinary methods, and who somehow solves crimes without ever making an arrest.
Neither reputation is entirely false. Neither is entirely true.
In the tense, decades-long Cold War between New Albion and the Aurigan Dominion, information has become more valuable than weapons — and someone has discovered that peace is bad for business.
When trade attaché Susan Hollis answers a knock at her hotel room door on neutral Meridian Station, she finds a dying stranger, a small encrypted device that appears to hold nothing at all, and three final words that will send half the galaxy searching for one particular man: Find Nicholas Harrow.
What Susan uncovers — one careful step at a time, across three suspicious intelligence services, a criminal underworld that adores him, and a conspiracy six years in the making — is a war being manufactured for profit, and a man who may be the only person capable of stopping it, if he can survive being hunted by everyone at once.
A science-fiction espionage thriller in the tradition of classic Cold War intrigue, The Empty Dispatch Case is a story of elegant deception, competing loyalties, and a hero who relies on intelligence rather than force — for readers who love a mystery built on trust, reputation, and the secrets worth dying to protect.
FROM KAREN MYERS: The Ways of Winter – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Book 2)
Book 2 of The Hounds of Annwn
TRAPPED BEHIND ENEMY LINES, CAN HE FIND THE STRENGTH TO DEFEND ALL THAT HE VALUES MOST, OR EVEN JUST TO SURVIVE?
It’s the dead of winter and George Talbot Traherne, the new human huntsman for the Wild Hunt, is in trouble. The damage in Gwyn ap Nudd’s domain reveals the deadly powers of a dangerous foe who has mastered an unstoppable weapon and threatens the fae dominions in both the new and the old worlds.
Secure in his unbreachable stronghold, the enemy holds hostages and has no compunction about using them in deadly experiments with newly discovered way-technology. Only George has a chance to reach him in time to prevent the loss of thousands of lives, even if it costs him everything.
Welcome to the portrait of a paladin in-the-making, Can he carry out a rescue without the deaths of all involved? Will his patron, the antlered god Cernunnos, help him, or just write him off as a dead loss? He has a family to protect and a world to save, and little time to do it in.
FROM LEE ECKHARDT: ROGUE STARSHIP!: A Science Fiction Novel
The entire Universe is in danger! This is the telepathic message broadcast by the Sentinel, an entity created by an alien race to guard our dimension from the ferocious denizens of another, dying universe. For millions of years the Sentinel has carried out its mission alone, but now it has been damaged and needs help urgently. But, in all the Galaxy, only Jonny Bluesky can hear the Sentinel’s call for help, and he is an inmate in the Deimos Orbital Redemption Training Center, aka ‘the Dread’, a place no prisoner has ever escaped from. Johnny believes there is no way he can help the Sentinel. Until he discovers that there is a way off the Dread – and a way to hijack the Johner, the most sophisticated starship ever built. With the Johner Jonny can locate the Sentinel and give it the aid it so desperately needs. If he can evade capture by the authorities. If one of the other escapees doesn’t kill him and take over the ship. If he can retrieve a vital piece of equipment from a lost city filled with hostile mutants. And if he can survive a final, possibly lethal, surprise at the end of the journey…
FROM MARY CATELLI: Writing and Reflections Volume 3: Essays on the Writing Process from World-Building to Words
Reflections on the many and far-flung fields that writing can touch upon, from original inspiration to the final work.
Magic and science. Talking birds and cats. Ideas and their origins. Magic, in schools, on the battlefield, and whether it is evil. Fairy tales. Exposition. Utopias. Wandering heroes in series. Wicked stepmothers and their motives. And more.
FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: An American in Iya (Timelines Universe Book 8)
Over 200 years ago, a Plague overran the world, and 9 out of 10 human beings died.
In a small Japanese village on Shikoku, a group of American tourists found themselves stranded — and in grave danger of being murdered, merely for the sin of being 外人 ( gaijin ).
Luckily for them, their Japanese hosts took pity on their plight, and took them in as their own.
This is the story of their descendants — who still, more than anything, wish only someday to go home. That is . . .
. . . if they still have a home to return to.
FROM ROSS HATHAWAY: Grimm’s Anatomy : Stay, Don’t Stare
Welcome to Mercy General. Please state your name, your symptoms, and whether your condition is currently metaphorical.
Dr. Tessa Ward thought she was leaving trauma surgery for something quieter.
She was wrong.
Mercy General’s East Annex is home to Supernatural Pathology, the department where medicine meets the things ordinary hospitals prefer not to put on the billing form. Its waiting room may contain a werewolf with sinusitis, a vampire arguing with Insurance, a haunted umbrella, or someone whose curse has become visible on an X-ray.
Under the watchful eye of veteran nurse Hattie Boone, Tessa learns quickly that supernatural medicine has rules of its own.
A diagnosis can change a patient.
Observation can become pressure.
A story recognized too confidently can turn into a cage.
And sometimes the most dangerous thing a doctor can do is decide she already knows what role the patient is supposed to play.
When a series of narrative injuries begins overwhelming the East Annex, Tessa and her increasingly improbable team must invent a new kind of medicine on the fly. Their patients include people being rewritten by fairy tales, transformed by other people’s expectations, trapped inside identities they never chose, and treated as symbols when what they desperately need is to be treated as people.
The solution may begin with something deceptively simple:
Stay.
Witness.
Don’t stare.
And never confuse continuity with captivity.
But in a hospital where stories can bleed, corporations can package identity, insurers can deny the medically impossible for being insufficiently documented, and even a happy ending may qualify as an adverse event, nothing stays simple for long.
Grimm’s Anatomy: Stay, Don’t Stare is the first novel in the Grimm’s Anatomy series, blending dark urban fantasy, supernatural medicine, institutional satire, black humor, and the stubbornly radical idea that patients are not plots, morals, archetypes, or content.
They are patients.
And somebody still has to keep them alive.
FROM HOLLY CHISM: A Sunny Day on Ganymede
Imagine growing up in a colony. No, not one on Earth–one in space. On one of Jupiter’s moons, or maybe on a station…or an asteroid! What would it be like to be a kid in a research station on Io, or Ganymede? What would it be like to grow up inside tunnels dug into an asteroid? Or on a station floating in fixed orbit somewhere? Join Jack, Sean, Raffie, Jake, and Chris in this collection of stories…where one of the biggest differences a kid can make is by asking the right questions.
FROM BLAKE SMITH: By the Light of the Moon
Aatu is eighteen years old, a respectable landowner, and about to marry the girl he loves. The south coast of Finland provides everything his little village requires.
It’s a peaceful life, until a band of ex-Crusaders land on the shore. With the harsh winter and lean times approaching, they cannot be allowed to stay for long. When their priests disturb things best left alone, Aatu fears a minor annoyance will become a disaster.
Aatu’s people turn to the old ways to fight the enemy, to teeth and claws instead of swords and spears. Though they are outnumbered and unused to fighting, Aatu is about to discover that wild wolves are not the most fearsome predators in this land, and even the most peaceful people can become ferocious in defense of the ones they love.
FROM CEDAR SANDERSON: Fen Dead (The Groundskeeper Book 6)
In the misty fen on the edge of town, a murdered man refuses to stay buried.
Chloe Brandt, groundskeeper of Belleview cemetery and reluctant apprentice mediator to the dead, has been called in to help. The deeper she digs into the strange killing, the more she realizes some bindings run deeper than any grave.
Armed with a glowing jar of restless oil, a crew of sectretive gnomes, and more confidence than caution, Chloe must navigate deceptions and dangerous liminal spaces before the fen claims another soul. In a world where even the dead keep secrets, the only way forward is to get your hands dirty.
FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: A Stranger at the Door (Family Law Book 9)
Life never seems to get less complicated for Lee. The Earth Claims Commission collapsed when North America, was driven from the heavens by Central. What else to do but repossess it if they weren’t going to pay the royalties due? That meant seeing to it’s governance. She never aspired to being a sovereign. With a little luck she could govern with a really light hand by appointing a pair of Voices. She had good examples in doing that in her ally Heather, Queen of the Moon.
Her quiet home was much less quiet after she gave shelter to her Badger friend Tish and her brother. At least the Badger Voice and Ambassador owed her a big favor for taking the teenagers in. Any year now she’d start collecting on those favors instead of paying them out.
What was to be a quiet day trip found her in the middle of a civil war, and if that wasn’t enough there were mysterious aliens quietly spying on her and her allies. Of course they had to DO something about that.
FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Done With Mirrors: A Collection of Short Stories (Sarah A. Hoyt’s Short Story Collections)
DONE WITH MIRRORS
From Prometheus Award winner Sarah A. Hoyt comes a dazzling collection that showcases why her work has appeared in Analog, Asimov’s, and Weird Tales—and why readers can’t get enough.
Magic-soaked noir in 1920s Denver. Mirror-hopping time lords fleeing across infinite universes. Survival in John Ringo’s zombie apocalypse. Murder and mystery in the world of Darkships and Rhodes. Each story in this collection pulls you into a different world—and refuses to let go.
Previously published in acclaimed anthologies from Baen and Chris Kennedy Publishing, these nine tales span Hoyt’s most beloved universes alongside standalone adventures. Whether she’s writing in Ringo’s Black Tide Rising series, exploring her own Darkships and Rhodes worlds, or crafting speculative noir that defies categorization, Hoyt delivers the vivid storytelling and emotional resonance that has earned her a devoted following.
From rain-slicked streets where magic and murder collide to the far reaches of space-time itself, Done With Mirrors demonstrates the genre-hopping brilliance of one of speculative fiction’s most versatile voices.
Nine stories. Nine worlds. One unforgettable collection.
Contains the short stories: Honey Fall; Scrubbing Clean; Last Chance; Great Reckoning in a Small Room; Horse’s Heart; Do No Harm; Dead End Rhodes; Knights of Time; Done with Mirrors.
Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.
We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.
If you have questions, feel free to to ask.
Your writing prompt this week is: AFTERNOON
c4c
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Irritated looks were cast my way by some of the moms at the restaurant when I stepped into the family restroom. With the door locked behind me, I used a small screwdriver to pop open the paper towel dispenser and withdrew a smartphone from inside. I unlocked it with my code and watched the video that began to play.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Phelps. The man you see here …”
The recording droned on as I studied the images on the screen. It was the usual soliloquy about double agents, conspiracies, and threats to national security. Blah, blah, blah.
The recording ended with the customary “Good luck, Jim. This device will self-destruct in five seconds.” I chucked it into the bowl and left the restroom, already out of the restaurant when the explosion caused a cloud of smoke and a rush of water into the seating area.
No one destroys a toilet at Taco Bell quite like me.
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Remember, o Readers, that you can be FORCE MULTIPLIERS!
After you read books, you can rate and review them!
Even short reviews are of aid to the writer, because sheer mass helps. (And if you really can’t review, still rate.)
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“Alright, see here. The party of the first part shall be known as the party of the first part…”
“Nah nah nah, I don’ like that part.”
“Well, all right, this is just a standard contract, but here, we’ll just take that out.” He carefully tore the paper across. “There you go. Now. ‘The party of the second part…’”
“No, I don’ like that part either.”
He tore across the contractors without a word. “There. But I have a feeling we’re going to be at this all afternoon. We should have ordered food. Now, the party of the third part…”
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“Wait, wait, wait. What’s this last part here?”
“That? Oh, it’s the sanity clause. If any of the parties are found to not be in their right mind, the contract is declared null and void.”
“Oh, no. You can’t-a fool me. There ain’t-a no Sanity Clause!”
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One of my top time-travel destinations, or even just a time-tunnel vid recording thereof, would be one of the theaters in the 1920s and ‘30s where the Marx Brothers worked out what worked, ditched what didn’t, and got their timing right for the laughs – basically the entire “A Night At The Opera” with the full movie cast was performed live in San Francisco at the Golden Gate Theater as the last stop on a road show tour before they filmed the movie down at the MGM studios in Hollywood.
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Yesterday afternoon I discovered that what a few people mentioned is correct: WPDE’s latest update has restored my access to post comments from Sarah’s ‘accordingtohoyt’ web page, instead of having to go through the WordPress Reader. Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! 🤣
The return of the funky formatting box is a small price to pay.
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It is now leaving me logged in, which is nice.
Every step forward has it’s attached fall backward.
It won’t let me ‘like’ a post. Acts like it, no actual effect on the page.
There are release notes for WPDE; utterly opaque to me.
On -my- next afternoon, I will have just visited the Acropolis and found my hotel in Athens. We’re UTC +3 in Greece. Is the US of A still there?
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“Is the US of A still there?”
As of two minutes into the afternoon PDT, so far so good. This is behind the lines, though, so no promises.
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If anyone figures out how to include an image in a comment, please share. What used to work only posts the url now.
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Still there? Depends on who gets off their duff on Nov 3rd and votes.
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And whether the legitimate votes are swamped out by fraud. Especially here in Kalifornistan. ☹️
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Oh yes.
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“The birds, they are singing and the wind, it is a gentle breeze.”
“Wait, is that an accordion in the distance?”
“Yes, it is. Say, why don’t we go cruising down the river?”
“A wonderful idea. Let’s go and get away from all the racing rats for a few hours.”
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“There was a feud before the elopement,” muttered Clara.
Diggory raised an eyebrow, and slid them about the lodge and in the back door. As the high-born went off to talk, before the afternoon was far gone, he came to join her.
“Long may they talk of affairs of state.”
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They
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(Sorry about the oops on the first try — this new method of posting replies is annoying)
Historians would later call it the Long Golden Afternoon of Humanity. It was a time of peace and prosperity, yet it was only in retrospect that it would be regarded as a Golden Age. Already the seeds of discontent were sprouting, alongside the slip-slide into sloth that would accelerate the decline.
The man who would see beyond the surface appearances was the son of a meteorologist in one of the peripheral worlds. Benno never intended to be the storm-crow of doom, but his statistical methods revealed that the Empyrion of Humanity had become like a beautiful house with its timbers eaten by termites.
When it became clear that attempting to raise the alarm would only create panic, Benno approached the problem in a different way. Instead of attempting a civilization-wide recovery, he devised a plan to establish a network of small, self-contained Cloisters, charged with maintaining some portion of the essential knowledge of a starfaring civilization through the dark times to come.
It was a desperate shot in the dark — but a slim chance was better than none at all.
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Sorry, this is the best I can do this afternoon:
—-
For generations, the Mictlacuāni were regarded as harmless ornamental plants. They were beautiful. They were hardy. They required little care. And they were completely understood.
Or so everyone thought.
Until people began disappearing after sunset…
—-
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Nigel Slim-Howland sat down in his seat at the stadium. It was his first college football experience, and his school’s team was represented by what appeared to be a turkey. The other team was represented by a steam locomotive, apparently. Yanks actually spend autumn Saturday afternoons this way? he wondered.
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Thank God for good friends.
Kamal had left my car in the hospital parking lot and after three weeks of being stuck in the room…just the ability to choose my own destiny was beautiful. He had left my Glock, mags, and spare knife in the trunk and I put those on before getting in the car. I plugged my iPhone into the car charger-Mercy General had a strict “no phones” policy-and waited cheerfully as it charged while I pulled out of the parking lot.
The moment I powered the phone on, it blew up with messages. Hundreds of calls, voicemail messages, text messages…one of the most prominent was from Méihuā, who just kept sending one message over and over again, every three hours.
The moment you see this, come and see me. Stop for NOTHING, come to me directly.
Méihuā is probably the calmest person I have ever met, regardless of species. She makes Franks look frantic and wishy-washy. This is something I have never seen from her, but if she’s sending me these messages…
My fingers start punching up her phone number as I pull onto 405 towards her house. She barely lets it pass the first ring before I hear her pick it up. “Jason,” Méihuā says, “are you on your way here?”
“Mei,” I want to chide her, but I realize that something is seriously wrong, “what’s going on?”
“You’re on your way here, correct,” she interrupted me, and for the first time ever, I have heard fear in her voice. “You need to come here, now.”
“I’m coming there,” I replied. “You’re going to tell me why?”
“Not on the phone,” and she hung up.
I drove as carefully as you could on a Wednesday afternoon on the 405, getting off near Westside and driving towards Méihuā’s house. Nearly seventy years of investment has seen her purchase all the houses on just one block, which she rents out to other kitsune who live in LA. Every twenty or so years, she moves houses, puts stuff into storage, and changes identities to keep herself out of trouble. Her current house is a classic Los Angeles one-story with a small lawn and a decently sized backyard. No pool in this one, but there’s a good public pool nearby. I pull into the driveway, find my usual parking spot, and head to the back door like always.
I don’t even get a chance to knock before Méihuā throws the door open, physically yanks me inside, picking me off my feet, and closes the door with her tails. “Were you followed?” she asks, looking out the window over the door.
“Unless they bugged my car or by air, no. And why are you…,” and then I realized that all of her tails are out. Méihuā is an eight-tail kitsune, and she prefers to keep her tails hidden or only show four or five. Eight tails out means that she’s expecting trouble. “What is going on, Mei?”
“What did you do, Jason?” she asks me, pointing towards the kitchen. A fresh pot of green tea is steeping on the counter and she pours us each a cup. “Almost a month ago, you drop off the radar, then something happens. And everyone I know, including some bāwěi mǔgǒu I wouldn’t trust with a tray of tangyuan, starts calling to ask what happened, because it happened here…”
I’m trying to follow her monologue, and the phrase “eight tail bitches” hits my ears. She talking about other kitsune of her age and rank. The only thing higher is a nine-tail, and they tend to be rather…hermetic and detached from the world. “Méihuā,” I interrupt as calmly as I can, “what is going on? I just got out of the hospital and…”
She stopped, looked at me, and realized that I clearly wasn’t getting it. “You did something almost a month ago. I know because I smelled you when it happened, everyone at the restaurant knew because they know your scent,” she grabbed her cup of tea, drank half of it in a single gulp, and glared at me. “Damn it, guizi, what did you do a month ago?” she tries to be civil between gritted teeth.
“I killed a one hundred and thirty thousand year old lich,” I sighed and held up my right hand, pointing at somewhere near my left elbow. “I had both arms deep in his chest, smashing his phylactery, when it exploded on me. I have been in Mercy General for the last three weeks regenerating most of my body and filling out PUFF paperwork for the single oldest lich ever killed by anyone in the United States.”
She looked at me, and ran one of her hands through her hair, stroking one of her ears nervously. “There can’t be a lich that old, but that explains the smell…,” then she stopped, took a breath, and tilted her head. “There’s a story behind that.”
“A very long one, which I will tell you when you tell me…,” I was starting to lose my temper, and Méihuā realized that.
“Jason,” she interrupted me as kindly as she could, “three weeks ago, every single kitsune on Earth just had someone around here waving a huge flag marked ‘perfect mating partner here.’ The only reason why we are not drowning in fox pussy is that it was just vague enough that they only know it’s the West Coast of the United States, mostly in California. Any kitsune that knows your scent knows it was you. I’m willing to bet a quarter of the messages on your phone are offers of marriage, and your apartment is staked out. Which is why I am offering to be your senior wife and help you with this.”
I’m sipping my tea as she says this and nearly choke on her last sentence. I cough up some very good green tea, wipe my face with a nearby piece of paper towel and look at her. “Marriage,” I cough again. “You…”
“I have been considering it for years,” she admitted. “But I wasn’t sure what would happen if we got married, and you need someone to protect you from the eight-tail bitches that are hopping flights here as quickly as they can.”
“You told me that…,” I paused, coughed again, took another sip of tea to calm my throat, and looked into her eyes. “You want children again. And…”
“Everyone at the restaurant would want you as well, and as your senior wife, I would be able to help you to navigate the polyamorous relationship that would be needed,” Méihuā continued. “And keep the kitsune away that would break your heart, because it is far too human for someone like you.”
“I was born human,” I pointed out. “I do know what I am, which is even more amusing. And why am I the way I am. It’s why we get along so well-if kitsune are the female half of the species, I’m the male half. The reason why is due to the very same lich.”
That makes her pause and she looks at me. “Okay, I’ll bite. What did the lich do?”
“Ever hear of a bastard outsider by the name of Asag?” I asked in reply and she shook her head. “MCB has put him on their Most Wanted List, top five, and the big op a few months ago in Russia? MHI was trying to get him first before he got organized. He had an advance man, a lich, and he came to Earth about…ten thousand years or so ago, and he wasn’t stupid. There’s a spell he used and one of the things about it was that he was only vulnerable to one particular kind of opponent…”
“Which is kitsune,” Méihuā nodded.
“Which is the male half of the kitsune species,” I shrugged. “He couldn’t do both sides, only one. And went out to make sure that every male kitsune was dead as soon as possible. Which is where I come in. Eight years ago, big murder spree with revenants that you probably didn’t notice because MCB killed the stories? Our lich was giving his allies revenants to kill all the candidates to resurrect the male half of the species. All because God had a plan and His plan was to throw an army at the lich. Plan B was…,” and I tapped my forehead. “Me. Or the simple fact that He, through two particular angels, poured all the magical mojo that was going to build an army into one body. Mine.”
Méihuā paused, set her cup down, and looked at me. “The White God invested power into you,” she replied after a moment. “And now?”
“Can’t pull it back without killing me, and one of his angelic sons made it clear that they weren’t going to be that ungrateful to someone they threw in the deep end,” I pointed out. “And it was the one that was the prodigal son, the light-bringer. Yes, Heaven and Hell teamed up for this one.”
There was this long, quiet pause as Méihuā contemplated this. “You’re still…,” she took another sip of her tea. “I’ve seen you heal.”
“It’s even faster now. I’m stronger now. I can’t beat Franks in arm wrestling, but I was regularly maxing out the weight machines at the hospital. And I’m even faster, more agile,” I sighed. “Which means…”
“You might have to protect me from every kitsune that wants to ride your jade pillar,” Méihuā raised an eyebrow in wry amusement.
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It was a dark and stormy night. Of course it was. Nobody escapes with their family from a pursuing evil nation from another dimension on a bright, sunny, warm afternoon. I was listening to the wind howling and the rain hammering when suddenly someone was pounding on my front door.
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Lord Nigel Broadbottom awoke from his afternoon nap in the library. The warmth of the sun and the aroma of old parchment combined to make a powerful inducement for slumber. He stretched to ease the stiffness of his aging joints and summoned the butler. When he did appaear, he thought to himself, “Odd, James is always so attentive.“
When the butler did not come to his second or third beckoning, Lord Broadbottom began to worry and decided to go in search of his wayward servant. “I shall have to give him a piece of my mind,” he said aloud, his temperament shifting from concern to irritation. As he passed by the door to the kitchen, he found James seated at a small table, attempting to open a large jar. Broadbottom called out loudly for his attention.
James turned and said, “Quiet down, you! I need to get this open before I can give you a treat.” He turned back to efforts to open the recalcitrant container and mumbled, “Stupid cat.”
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(Part 1/5)
Carrie woke slowly, incrementally, like a bubble rising out of the vague dark depths of the sea. She shivered, even though she wasn’t cold, under the heavy quilts on her narrow single-size bed. Wait, that wasn’t at all like her years-familiar college-town apartment bedroom in Urbana…
Opening her eyes showed her a smallish room, in something very like a log cabin — the modern kind, built from a kit. Only with differences, and a seemingly-mad collection of things from the 19th century onwards. But the most eye-grabbing thing was her friend Carla, sitting wrapped in a quilt with a glass mug of what looked like tea in her hands. Tea made so strong it looked almost like black coffee; tea that smelled just exactly like the rich cinnamon of Carrie’s favorite grocery-store blend…
“Morning, Carrie. Or I should say, afternoon. Welcome back to the land of chocolate-covered manhole covers. Or maybe Faerie, only with neater tech and way-fewer damn Fae politics…” And she pointed wordlessly to a small slate (black, apparently the real thing) with Carrie’s own writing on it. In real, honest chalk, not some fancy modern markers-on-white mess…
No, you’re not crazy, yes, last night really happened. Sleeping in your own bed your first night in a new world ain’t the worst thing ever.
She sat bolt upright. Birds sang outside, a very soft breeze wafted in by the few-inches opening of the oddly-normal double-hung window nearby. It was so homelike, so aggressively-normal it almost took your breath away.
Water dripped softly; likely, she knew, melting frost from one of the two paired iron air-conditioning plates — that sucked up unwanted heat from the air, turned most of it into electricity, and then radiated that last residual 10% or so to the cold far-away sky at about 30 degrees K, using some half-magical field technology she didn’t even begin to understand. Or else alternately, just sat there and let any accumulated frost melt away.
“Hope you don’t mind I pilfered some of your tea, but apparently you don’t have so much as a spoonful of coffee anywhere in your place, not even the dubious coffee-ness of instant.” Carla sipped again. “If you use three or four tea bags to the cup, it’s not even half bad.” And smiled, inhaling.
Her computer (or one just like it) hummed on a small table, power-supply fan sounding just like always. Her clock, a wind-up striking model from a birthday half a dozen years ago, ticked from across the room. Things she’d last seen last evening, when she’d briskly left her own apartment to go pick up Carla and Peter to go to that SF-club presentation on imagined megastructures in space… “Go big or stay home.”
My own stuff, shanghai’ed far-away to here just like me, evidently.
“I have to see it. I have to go look at the thing.” She threw back all the heavy covers at once, found her shoes on the floor just as she’d usually leave them in her room in the century-old house she’d grown up in back in the mountains of Tennessee, dropped her feet into them and headed for the door that was already finely plotted on her mental ‘map’ of the place.
Her place, or so she’d been told. Along with ten acres around it, a right square furlong. Not quite outright ownership, but next to the same as…
The screen door came open in front of her, closed itself behind her, with a very particular, very familiar sort of scree-squeak that resonated deep in her bones. All the old screen/storm doors, or most of ’em, back home made exactly that noise… it did again as Carla Whitworth followed her.
The house, an upsized cabin really, nestled in among trees, just the way most (older) houses back home would do. The whirring late-summer sound of locusts came to her, on the warm and lazily-stirring air. Carla had called them cicadas, then all but burst into tears at the familiarity, last night scant minutes before they’d all agreed to stay at “her place” together…
There was a sort of small lawn, a cozy-looking picnic table of tea-colored stained wood. Midgard evergreen oak, except grown and sawmilled on New Albion instead, her mind supplied from out of the dizzy mad whirlwind of last night. It sat serenely on something like a small lawn, under what looked a powerful lot like familiar red-oak trees, with maples, plus what allegedly and apparently were true chestnuts, mixed in around.
Her picnic table, her trees, her cabin. On a thousand-year lease. And her two friends, who’d “stepped on a stray sod” with her, as her car carried them under a railway crossing and… ‘out of this world’ last night, had much the same each, and right next door too. So they’d all been told.
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(Part 2/5)
She looked over her shoulder. Yes, her car was still parked over there, a hundred feet or so away. Her keys were still in the pocket of the pants she’d been too tired-and-wired to even try to exchange for pajamas, ones she was somehow morally certain would be waiting for her somewhere in her new little house on the… Big Big Prairie. Likely the same brand, too.
And beyond, framed by the huge boughs of the overshadowing oaks, was an opening to a field. Not a lawn, clearly a meadow or a sheepmeadow, or yet maybe a field for cows to graze, someday. (She could decide now, right?) Blue sky, and near-level ground and a ridge of hills beyond that, to just about exactly the east; so comfortably familiar, yet also so alien.
(Like the lightness she could feel, all the time, in the background. The standard-issue accelerometer in her phone had said 80 percent gravity.)
And beyond all that foreground, like a young moon up in a clear sky only far more distinct and brighter, rose the Ring. Maybe a few degrees across as it cleared the hills opposite her, narrowing to near moon-width as it climbed the sky, then fading rapidly as its local-day faded into evening and night. As the sun fell successively on the circumference of a Ring a couple of million miles across, or nearly, as it spun every 24 hours…
A mini-Ringworld. Just like in one presentation, last night and far away.
“Yes, it’s real. Yes, it’s still there, Carrie. No, we’re not any one of us goin’ crazy. And if I sound just like you did last night, I’m all but quoting you now. You were a rock, Carrie, and you held us all up through all of it. And if I was a bit of a pain in the ass, I’m sorry as well as grateful.” Carla sipped dark tea, slurping a bit as she sometimes would.
“And by the way, Peter has been reading stuff on the Internet, back up in that sort-of-loft area we two slept in upstairs. All very Little House on The Prairie if you ask me, but cozy.” Carla’s background was as suburban or frankly-urban as Carrie’s was country; but she was most definitely Good People. (And one of the heavy drinkers who were nevertheless nothing like alcoholic she was familiar with, from some odd corners of her own family.)
“Wait, the Internet? Here, in the, um.” Go on, just say it, Carrie Anne Jenkins, right out loud. Stop being a coward, girl. “Nubecula Major; the Greater Magellanic Cloud.” The Milky Way had been very visible up in the sky last night, as they’d all disembarked from Carrie’s car, air-towed here by ‘Demetria Hoeg of the People of the Phoenix.’ Like a Frisbee, held at arm’s length, tilted so it looked about half as tall as wide… a wave of quasi-homesickness hit her like a cold November breaker, and fell away.
‘The people of the Phoenix.’ Or, simply the Phoeniki, from the old Greek.
And Carrie shivered again. What she’d heard of as the Phoenicians, from back in the days when Tyre did big business getting the First Temple built — only also kidnapped to the stars, like the Romans of New Rome or the ‘Vikings’ of the two major Norse factions, or the Celts of Tea and Tephi, or, or, or! Only, her eyes had never left the Ring, sixteen or twenty thousand miles wide (this was the smaller one, ‘Bangle Blue’ not ‘Bangle Green’ or so Demetria had said). Believe what’s up there plain, for true, or else get used to distrustin’ your lyin’ eyes all the time…
“Yes, the Internet. Only a sort of archive or proxy copy of it, we’re not going to be able to send messages back home, not so easily. You got much the same briefing we all did, of course.” Carla sipped again, just noisy enough to be barely heard. “But there are compensations; there’s quite a local ‘trove’ of goodies about the Ring and the Daughter Worlds’ history and whatnot. A real metric crap-ton already; and likely more to come once Demetria is convinced we’re all not gonna go bug-nuts crazy or anything.”
“Wait, ‘Daughter Worlds’ would be, what, the not-so-volunteer colonies of whoever the, um, ‘Gateweavers’ decided they wanted to kidnap from Earth?”
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(Part 3/5)
Another just-audible sip. “Yup. Apparently everyone ‘out here’ knows just about everyone else. But it’s not only press-ganged people, some of them got rescued from this-or-that disaster. Nobody known from our Titanic, for instance; but there’s this family on New Albion named Briggs, founded by a couple named Benjamin and Sarah who sailed on a ship you might’ve heard of sometime, called the Mary Celeste. Or on others a whole lot less famous.
“And one of the major colonial lines of the Norse originated in a Viking ship that got blown way off course into the mid-Atlantic, then… scooped. You can read it, translated, The Mist Lake Saga. Or assorted warriors who got almost-killed in this battle or that. More than a few people from the Plague times in Britain, you know, back when whole villages dropped dead with no-one left to bury ’em. Well, not quite all dead…
“My impression is that Peter’s reading the equivalent of some children’s books from the Synagogue of Worlds, pitched to a rather older audience.”
And for maybe half a minute they only stood there, looking companionably up in silence. Which Carrie found, a bit surprisingly, rather wonderful.
On her land, on her new world. Like something out of Interstellar, maybe; only enough more to make Christopher Nolan an outright piker. More like, at least in a technical and literal sense, Intergalactic.
“And he’s already jonesing for the full-size display on your computer. A Web page that lets you look at insanely detailed imagery of the Ring, all the way down to being able to see towns and villages around us here. And, some 3-D model thing of the Galaxy, I mean the Milky Way there, with lots of its major systems plotted, all around what they call the Third Bear’s Ring — evidently they didn’t read the Grimm as making it all Goldilocks’ stuff as they do back home — a fuzzy circle at vaguely the same radius from the Galactic center and the bulge as Earth. And…”
There was a rider on a horse coming into view around the edge of the trees farther off. A youngish man, his horse walking slow and easy. Seeing them in return, he raised an empty left hand in greeting. And smiled. Took off his hat, which was sort of like a Western hat and sort of like an Aussie bush hat and not quite like either, and waved it, showing sandy-colored dark-blond hair, and — saluted the two of them with it, too.
For an instant, Carrie wished for one of the guns she’d also found in the cabin, just in case. (Evidently the Phoeniki and the mostly Scotch-Irish of her higher mountains were pretty much of one mind on such things. None of those had been her guns; but then again she’d not exactly tussled with the mad bureaucracy necessary to carry on a gun-unfriendly campus, or had ever dared to inquire of her apartments’ rules on such.) Then she figured starting off declaring herself as the suspicious, ready-for-trouble kind might not be entirely in her long-term interests here.
Still, that modern not-quite-a-derringer had looked pretty fit for use… and fully as concealable as any classic or present-day “muff gun.”
“So I’m guessing Demetria the recruiter and would-be boss would not leave such a thing entirely to chance,” said Carla quietly behind her, coming up to stand by her side. “And I do have a quick-dial to Peter.” (It’d been a matter of some friction, last night, that only Carrie’s phone had signal.)
Mostly, though, her intuition had marked him as a clear not-a-threat. And even, oddly, sent her a brief, rich, salty whiff of sea air as impression.
By now he’d tethered his horse to one of the trees backing up to the gate post, that presently held no gate but still marked the boundary of ‘hers.’ Was walking, just as deliberately as he’d rode his horse, toward them. It still struck her as a bit odd, how Demetria hadn’t sent some word, first.
“Hello, the watch! Permission to come aboard, as we say back home, even on land as we are. Back on New Albion, where I’m from.” His voice was an odd but pleasant blend of American, British or maybe Australian, even a sort of overtone lilt of Scottish like they had sometimes in western Canada.
Something in her upbringing urged Carrie, strongly. “Hello, traveller, and be welcome to the house, all who come in peace and friendship.” Nothing at all like what you’d say, back home, really; yet the meaning was identical.
And now he lengthened his stride and smiled more broadly. “Demetria told me you three would be joining our little company here, and I took it all upon myself to come over and offer my own welcome. I presume I have the honor of addressing Carrie Jenkins and Carla Whitworth?” Over the short time it’d taken him to say it, he’d walked much of the little wagon-lane approach to her house’s vicinity. She smiled and nodded.
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(Part 4/5)
And now he stopped, and smiled wider, and took off his hat again, dropped it to his waist and bowed over it maybe a dozen feet away from them. Came up again to his full height, which looked to be about six feet and a few inches, facing them both. With a true twinkle in his eyes and a similar merriment in his voice.
“Well met, friends; and I am Ellery Mayall Lascaux Pentecost, grandson of Admiral Emily Pentecost of the Breakout Years on New Albion. And for your more common use, I am Ell, or occasionally Ilya though that lays claim to a Russian blood I may not honestly boast. Though the line of the Briggs of that semi-infamous mystery ship does indeed flow through me.
“Too much, dear ladies? I do but follow the lead of my world’s people.”
“No, I quite understand,” said Carrie, lips curving in a contagious sort of merriment she did indeed feel. “Your people are where you come from, in addition to being so much of who you are yourself. Carrie Anne Jenkins, of the Jenkinses of High Gap. And my mother was a MacQuarrie, first, too.”
He nodded, again, with a swift doff-and-wave of that hat.
“Carla Jane Whitworth, of Baltimore and assorted other places, Ellery. And it’s not even nearly too much for me, either; though I confess I despise most rituals and pretensions of so-called ‘society’ most intensely.”
Again even swifter that flickering routine with the hat, smiling. Then.
His mouth twisted, wryly. “Much of New Albion is common sailors, Miss, or else uncommon ones; but I assure you we have no nobility of titles, if at times and mostly at necessary ones, nobility of manner and deed. I’ve done the Albatross Route, from polar sea to polar sea; and now I’ve gone a bit farther yet, to seek my fortune among the stars.” He stopped, and the tone of his voice changed, again. “Not to brag at all, Miss and Miss; but the lands of New Albion are largely mountainous and our inlands mostly in deep rain shadow, so the sea has long been our fortune and our challenge.”
And again that change, only more so. Not mercurially but deeply, deep as a sounding whale, Carrie couldn’t help but think, remembering Nantucket.
“And, before this goes further, dear ladies, Carrie and Carla, I wish to give you somewhat. I know you three got no choice, in coming here. And I know, as you likely do not yet know fully, how deeply and badly it might rend the Veil of un-knowing that keeps Mother Earth ignorant of her many Daughter Worlds, for any of you three to go home to there, any time soon.
“But I am, as I’ve said, from New Albion rather’n Old Earth; and there’s no Veil between my home and you as there is between you and yours. So, if any of you or all of you ever need or truly desire it, you all or any may find a safe harbor with me and with us. My true word as a Pentecost and a Lascaux and a Briggs and a Mayall and a Hitachi, and more, to you all.”
And he bowed low, over the hat at his waist again. Which was just as well for Carrie; because she felt what he’d just said, had done, as the two others of her little shipwrecked crew likely could not. Like a punch to the gut, only in the best of ways; like the shock wave of a returning spaceship or booster. His culture overlapped with hers enough, she’d read of the old culture of world-spanning saliors of old Nantucket, enough. It must’ve showed plain on her face, surely.
You all or any may find a safe harbor with me and with us. Wow.
And he’d said it not as some mere afternoon visitor, but as someone who’d (as he said) sailed the doubtless-unforgiving seas of New Albion from pole to pole, then cast further out for challenges. And… the man who’d faced her, then, had been indeed what Kipling had said once, “a man of infinite resource and sagacity” — if still only young in his work and his nature.
So what exactly did he see, in her, of her, to be one worthy of such?
Her smile and tone were light, as her heart was not. “That is a princely sort of gift indeed, for someone just met; I accept it fully and with no hesitation or reservation, Ellery Pentecost. And such a thing demands at the tiniest least some decent hospitality, poor as mine is at the moment.
“So, will you come inside to this little cabin they tell me is mine, and let me make you at least as welcome as I may?” And, obedient to instinct, Carrie bowed (though not nearly so deeply) in return.
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(Part 5/5)
And Ellery grinned. “Yes, most surely. I know Demetria is planning a kind of feast, what you might call a ‘barbecue’ of sorts, for tonight. But I’d be most happy to come inside, as I’d be most honored if you’d host that. With no great hostessly duties involved in doing it, this soon after your feet first hit the dirt here, of course.
“And I wouldn’t worry too much, or be overly put out, about what you might call ‘The Unpleasant Profession of Demetria Hoeg’ — she personally didn’t pick any of you three to get snatched away to here. It not only would’ve been approved at the level of the Phoeniki as a group far above her head, I have it on sure authority the Miinarii, themselves, approved you three directly — or as directly as they ever do aught, by human go-betweens.”
“Wait.” Carla’s voice was deep and definite; and for an instant, Carrie recalled her last-night’s occasional terror she’d say something… hard.
“You’ve read Heinlein?? Far away off on that stormy, watery globe of yours??”
That same smile was back, now. “Of course I’ve read Heinlein, most of his stuff at least, growing up, and most of Clarke’s too. What you might tend to forget is the Veil is one way only. Someday, a right tsunami of money’s likely gonna fall on assorted heirs and publishers on Old Earth. Only not any time soon, the Veil’s held already for thousands of years at the very least.”
“The Miinarii” — she pronounced it the same, Mee Nar Ee — “would be the Gate Weavers, right?” Carrie’s voice was as level as she could keep it.
“Yes. Their name for them, always, to everybody ever. And, they do hold a pure utter monopoly on the Gates between the worlds. Those glowing rings you’ll have crossed through to get here. And the word I have is, they do demand approval on every single person who crosses to here. Not requiring it to go back, or (apparently) even to return here again; but, always, to come for the first time. This, here, is that… special a place.
“But enough of such matters. Let’s simply go enjoy the afternoon, eh?”
“There is a picnic table of mine here no-one’s eaten at yet, Ellery.”
“Well then let’s go change that now, Carrie Jenkins.” He offered his arm. And smiled at Carla quite conspiratorially too.
And she took it; reflecting that less than twenty-four hours after she’d ‘stepped on a stray sod’ in Illinois, she’d already made one true friend. Some way she didn’t quite understand yet. And, most of all — intergalactically, too.
(Based on pre-existing setting and characters, plus one completely new character.)
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