Bravado's House of Blues (22 page)

I unstrapped, rolled off the couch, and sat on the floor by her side. The smells of blood and animal fur filled the plane, but we were safe. For the moment.

“I can give you something for the pain,” I said. “Maybe let you sleep a bit. What do you think?”

She smiled at me, reaching out with her good hand and brushing the side of my face. “That’s sweet.”

Her touch was electrifying on my skin. I wasn’t sure if I should move, or just sit there and maintain that contact.

“We suffered some damage on take-off,” the AI said over the intercom, breaking my reverie. “Several large creatures attempted to board in your wake, but I managed to achieve lift-off despite their efforts to breach my hull.”

“Are we okay?”

“Absolutely,” the AI said. “We are well within parameters. We have an eighty-seven percent chance of getting back to the base.”

Well, that was mostly a relief. “Thanks,” I said, patting Magenta’s arm and standing. “Do your best, okay?”

“I can do no less. If you don’t mind, I will begin tabulating a list of items I will need replaced or repaired to return to one hundred percent capacity.”

“Please, do,” I said. Talk about single focused.

When our flight path had leveled out, I fished a flight suit out of the storage lockers and put it on. For some reason I was very aware of my nakedness.

Magenta watched me, her eyes intense. I had no idea what was going through her mind, but she looked peaceful, despite the blood and dirt.

“Ready?” I asked her. She nodded and closed her eyes.

Her arm was not only lacerated, it was broken. I set it, covered the torn tissue with insta-flesh sealant, and wrapped it in a pressure cast.

I started an IV drip, feeding her a solution of genetically modified antibiotics and targeted anti-virals to get ahead of infection.

When I was done, I sat in the pilot’s seat, but swiveled it around so I could watch her sleep.

“She’ll live,” Grandpa said in my ear. “But, damn she’s ugly.”

“That’s not fair,” I said. “She’s really sweet.”

“We can fix some of her stuff,” he said, a bit of remorse in his voice. “But a lot of that scarring will stay.”

“Wish we hadn’t lost her wig,” I said as I sat by her side. “It seemed pretty important to her.”

Several hours later, as we flew east over Kansas to avoid any tracking the Femme-Bots may have had in place, Magenta woke up. Her face was a little puffy, but she wasn’t afraid to smile all the same. Girl sure smiled a lot. Too bad her teeth were such a wreck. She reached to me with her left hand. Her right was swollen and purple.

We discussed her wounds, and where we were. She mentioned the wig. All things considering, we both agreed the wig loss was the most traumatic.

Later, after I’d fallen asleep in the pilot seat, Magenta came into the cockpit, sat in the copilot seat, and handed me a stick of dried meat she’d had in her gear. It wasn’t Turkey Medley, but it had a nice strong flavor—very salty.

We landed south of Omaha to wait out the dawn. We’d need to spend a day recharging the solar cells before heading home. By then, anyone who’d been tracking us would have given up, I hoped.

Grandpa kept in tight communication with me the whole night. Mom had isolated the genetic structure of our home invasion beastie. That was very good news. But I hadn’t recovered Dad’s head. He was pretty grumpy about that. Still, I thought the trip was working out nicely otherwise.

“If you want, we can scan your girlfriend’s DNA,” he said. “See what kind of damage she’s taken.”

“Magenta is pretty banged up,” I said. “But we’ll see how she feels in the morning. She’s sleeping now.”

At first light, I crept to the back of the plane. I hadn’t noticed my own wounds in all the rush. Several blood-encrusted slashes covered my left calf. Magenta saw me trying to daub a small scrape on my lower back with a moist towelette and got up to help. She mentioned infection, and I just laughed.

Note to self
. Don’t laugh at someone who is looking out for your well-being. She’d been through a lot, and had been ripped from the world she knew. Maybe that’s why she cried.

Once I let her help me, and we had the wounds cleaned, I asked her to let me do a genetic test on her. She agreed, although the technology she was used to was a bit more archaic. I showed her how to stick her hand into one of the many machines in the cargo hold. She laughed as the lights played across the top of her hand, and ooohed when the slot filled with warm liquid. The electro-shock and needles were quite a surprise, though, and she screamed and cried like I’d gutted her.

I don’t think they hurt all that much. When the machine released her hand, she went to the furthest point in the VTOL and hunkered down, cradling her hand and sobbing. I tried to approach her, but she glared at me in a way that made me afraid to fall asleep anytime soon.

This interacting with other humans had a few drawbacks, I was learning. Maybe she was just cranky about her missing wig.

I spent the next three hours and the last of the chocolate coaxing her out of the storage compartment she’d hidden in. Well, it could’ve been my charming wit, but I’d lay bets on the chocolate.

As the sun fell, we rose into the air once more and headed north. We’d head up over Calgary, then loop up to Alaska before heading back down to Trinity.

I slept in the pilot seat, and Magenta took the copilot. I liked the way she sort of wuffled when she slept. It was cute.

Just as the sky began to pinken, and we flew over the ruins of Juneau, Grandpa informed me they’d isolated seventeen genetic diseases plaguing Magenta, as well as three mutated venereal diseases.

“You can fix those, right?”

“Sure thing, kiddo. You may also want to know you’ve picked up a bug yourself. Very nasty, very fast acting.”

That would explain the burning when I peed.

“Fixable?” I asked.

Grandpa snorted.

Magenta woke over northern Canada and was only momentarily confused. She actually smiled at me, and let me know her hand had stopped hurting. Her broken arm was healing at a good clip as well. Mom made good vectors for healing. I’d have to remember to thank her.

After a brief morning constitutional where the burning had gotten worse, we returned to the cockpit. She fetched food and I got water.

“When we get back home,” I told her over a salty stick of jerky, “you’re getting a complete geno-bath.”

“Not if it’s like that last thing you did to my hand,” she said squinting at me. “I might try to mate with you again, if you are nice to me, but I’m not going to stick any of my limbs into another machine for you.”

“She’s only seventeen,” Grandpa said in my earpiece. “But with all the things wrong with her, she’s not likely to see eighteen.”

“Mom will fix her,” I said.

“Fix who? Me?” Magenta asked. “You talking to your grandfather again?”

“Yes, and fix you,” I assured her. “We can give you something to fix your teeth—”

She put her hand to her mouth.

“—and maybe fix some of the other things. But no promises.”

“Can I keep the baby?”

“Baby?” I asked.

She shrugged, a smirk on her face.

“They said she was a breeder,” Grandpa said in my ear. “Maybe she knows something we didn’t pick up yet. Her DNA showed some serious anomalies. Maybe not all of them are negative.”

“How did you not pick that up on the scans?” I asked him.

“Didn’t think to look,” he replied, a chuckle in his voice. “Not like you’ve got a long history with knocking girls up or anything.”

The rest of the trip we talked about her being a breeder and what that meant. They’d been altering themselves for generations, splitting into nearly two different races. Breeders were hyper-sensitive to things like fertility and conception. The Amazons were bred to be warriors. Duh. We talked nonstop until the AI informed us we’d landed.

The elevator ride down to the living quarters takes twenty-eight point five-seven-one-four-three minutes. Plenty of time to try out a few things Magenta suggested. Grandpa quoted the time, then cheered when the elevator doors opened. At least he had the decency to pretend like there weren’t cameras in the elevator.

Magenta was eager and clever. I wasn’t sure I’d ever sleep much again.

I spent the next three nights sitting at Magenta’s bedside. The treatments didn’t hurt, thanks be. But Mom put her into a coma to do the finer genetic work. The radiation sickness, venereal diseases, assorted fungi, molds and rather nasty Staph infection were all treatable. The bigger things, like longevity and hair growth, were out of the question.

“Too much chance she’ll lose the baby,” my mother said, weeping. She was an electronic personality, had been for centuries, but the woman cried when she found out for sure she was going to be a grandmother.

I got a couple shots to clear up the gonorrhea and a booster for tetanus and typhoid. Low risk stuff.

Magenta loved the improved dental care, and after the first three months of pregnancy nausea her hormones shifted. She was insatiable.

While Mom and Grandpa began working out a form of communication with the slug that ate my workshop, Magenta and I tried to christen every room in the redoubt. Twice a day for four months, and we only covered about one-tenth of the available rooms. And while she ate about twice my daily caloric intake, she didn’t gain an ounce. Grandpa had told me she’d be big as a horse, and twice as ornery, but I’m glad he was wrong about that too. I never had a chance to talk to Grandma, but I’m beginning to wonder if Grandpa knew anything at all about women.

Magenta had no problem with him. She was happy as a clam to chat him up now that she was inside the compound. Of course, she thought he was cracked, but she found him charming.

*

By the time the baby was born, we were picking up radio chatter out of Portland. They had Dad’s head and were willing to trade for it. Seems they couldn’t crack his memory after all. Magenta thought we could work something out. Said the folks in her old compound were just cautious, but they were good people. I didn’t want to fight with them. And now that Magenta had explained how the enclave worked, I figured it would be worth it. Not like I wanted to keep her here without her extended family, but caution had ruled my life so long, I couldn’t see any way around it.

Magenta filled in the gaps about Dad one afternoon. Seems a mil-gov satellite had crashed near Pasco. Dad raced over there, but the group out of Portland beat him to it. They parleyed, then argued, and finally fought.

Dad ended up killing one of them. They scrambled him with some neutron weapon they’d discovered in old California. It spiked Dad’s power grid, scrambling his memory. They didn’t know about the personality clusters.

Mom was pissed. Said something about him having secret contact with other women and went silent for six weeks.

But when the baby came, she reappeared to talk me through the delivery. It was one of the most beautiful experiences I’d ever had.

Eventually I figured out how to rig the Rapture protocol to work room by room, wiping out the nasty viral slug invader. Eventually we got back access to the vehicles, machine shop and weapons storage.

I inventoried the nukes, just to make sure, then recovered the titanium from the work shop.

I Raptured the crap out of it, then used the titanium to build a crib for little Mauve. She is so pretty. Purple hair, nose like a button, and her mother’s warm brown eyes.

“You know,” Magenta said one morning as Mauve nursed. “We have plenty of room here, and better medical care than anything I’ve ever seen.”

I held my breath, knowing what was coming.

“And you’ve been so kind, such a good father.”

She knew which buttons to push.

I think I’m going to like being a dad. But could I stand more people here?

“Just think about it,” she said, toying with Mauve’s beautiful hair. “Then all the children could grow up pretty and healthy.”

Grandpa laughed. “That girl got you whipped, boy.”

“Oh, you hush,” Mom said quietly. “Or I’ll rearrange your clusters.”

Grandpa muttered a few more minutes, but fell silent. Magenta and Mom had this worked out, I could see.

“Not a lot at once,” she said. “And not forever. Just a small group, let them get all doctored up and then send them home. We could teach them too. Maybe set up some trade, you know?”

“We just need some time,” I said, sitting at her feet, my hand on the baby’s back. “We can take the VTOL down, do some preliminary healing and such, get some vaccines made up with Mom’s help, show some good faith?”

Magenta smiled at me and nodded. “That’s good thinking.”

I knew she was humoring me. Letting me feel like I had a say in the matter. It was all right, though. She and Mom were right. I needed to open up, help those others out there.

“Perhaps for Mauve’s first birthday. We can arrange to pick up a small group of them. See what happens.”

Magenta rose, placing little Mauve in the crib I’d made from the bones of my father.

I stood, watching her fuss with the baby a moment, then moved beside her. They were both so beautiful.

“Okay, and we can send a care package down their way right now, trade for Dad’s head, maybe?”

“Whatever you say,” she said. When she turned to kiss me she glowed with a golden light.

STORY NOTES

Three Chords and the Truth.
Issue 39 was
Talebone’s
final regular issue. There’s a pattern with my short fiction that is a little scary. Magazines just fold left and right after publishing my work.

“Three Chords” references the power of music and just how, with the right musician, magic can happen. I’ve always been intrigued by buskers and their courage to sing on a street corner for spare change. It seems such a noble and fruitless cause, that those who do it must truly love performing no matter what.

This story also highlights one of my driving themes: true love and the ramifications of our actions, good or bad. Using music as a centerpiece for a story is harder than some tropes, but I find it to be powerful if done well.

Also, my best pal, Ken Scholes, is a musician and has done his fair share of busking. He was one of the inspirations for this piece.

“Three Chords” was rejected twelve times before selling.

There One was a Girl From Nantucket
. “Nantucket” is the first collaboration piece I’ve done. I worked with Ken Scholes on this piece, and it caused one of the two real disagreements he and I have had. It was a growth experience for me, that’s for sure. I had to check a lot of assumptions and ego at the door. But in the end, I’m very happy with how lovely this story turned out. This appeared in the last issue of
Fortean Bureau
, alas.

“Nantucket” sold on its first submission.

Towfish Blues
. This story was one of my “I can write about anything story” challenges I had with my friend Renee Stern. We had discussed a certain mutual acquaintance and their work habits, and this story sprang from that. It was also my first sale to
Talebones
magazine, which made me exceedingly happy.

My brother was so moved by this story, that he wrote a rebuttal and sent it to the editor of
Talebones
, hoping to see it in print. It did not make the cut, however.

“Towfish” was rejected thirteen times.

How Jack Got Hisself a Wife
. I love Jack Tales. They are an Appalachian story form that enthralled me as a young reader back in my native Kentucky. There are a limited number of Jack Tales known, so I had to add one of my own. They were originally brought to America and Appalachia by the Scots and Irish immigrants who settled that hard-scrabble area. You’ll find references to kings and queens that were never a part of the American scene.

This is a folksy story with a bit of a twist that you’d come to expect from Jack and Mollie tales.

This was my second professional short story sale. Another story that sold to the first market.

The Harp
. I struggle with the short form. My natural length for story is the novel. Imagine my surprise when I wrote my first flash piece. This 1000 word gem is another of my attempts to make subtle twists on known fairy tales.

It was very popular when I read it at
Talebones Live
, an author reading event at Norwescon. As I finished reading this story for the first time in front of a live audience, Marti McKenna came right up to me, told me she loved the story, and asked me to submit it to
Aeon
magazine. That’s the greatest feedback you can get, let me tell you. In the end, they didn’t publish it, but they did publish “Hanging of the Greens,” so I still win.

Anyway, this story made the regular rounds, getting reject after reject, until I was asked by KC Ball to submit something to her flash only e-zine. I submitted this to her, she read it, and offered to buy it all in about fifteen minutes. One of my faster sales. I was sad when
10Flash
folded, but I’m proud to have graced its pages while it was around. By the way, KC Ball is a damn fine writer in her own right.

“The Harp” was rejected nine times before I sold it.

Luck Muscle
. This is an older piece. Something I wrote over a decade ago and shelved due to some rather fierce and contradictory comments from my then writers workshop. Now, I’m under no illusions that the confusion and angst created by the review of this story fell directly on my shoulders, but it made me hide it away and keep it buried for a very long time.

Funny things was, friends who’d seen the story asked me about it from time to time, and it tickled the back of my mind from time to time.

So I pulled it out, got some excellent advice from KC Ball on what was working and what wasn’t, then did a significant rewrite before adding it to this collection.

It says a couple of things to me. Never give up, never give in. Never let other voices overwhelm your own. It’s a lesson for me to trust my own voice more and take the advice from others with respect and a healthy dose of skepticism.

I hope you like it.

The Hanging of the Greens
. This story taught me a few things, including the true meaning of the word decimate and its context to the Roman Legion. This is a secret history piece that could just very well be true. I love the druids and fairies as well as the juxtaposition of man’s many religions and their cross-currents as well as their diametrically opposed logic.

This was also the first story I ever saw a review for. And it was very positive.
Aeon
was a wonderful e-zine, ahead of their time, but they too folded not long after this issue.

“Greens” was rejected thirteen times before selling.

F*cking Napalm Bastards
. I was told by certain editors *cough* PatrickSwenson *cough* that I’d never sell this story with this title. So, I’ve sold it twice. Isaac is one of my favorite characters, and I expect to see him show up in other work.

I don’t believe
Revenant
magazine saw an issue 1. I know Carnifex Press didn’t publish much after the
From the Trenches
anthology came out.

“FNB” gathered fourteen rejections before I finally sold it.

Mushroom Clouds and Fairy Rings
. Here we go back to some of my favorite tropes: true love, fairies, post apocalypse, and redemption stories. This is a quiet story, lovely and sweet with just the right amount of edge to keep me interested (at least). I like to take expectations and familiar story types and twist them around a little, make them fresh and slightly unpredictable.

This was the first anthology where I was invited based on my emerging professional reputation. The invite was quite a happy surprise. I’d met the editor, Russell Davis, at a Worldcon in Denver while he was still the president of SFWA. I was very pleased that he remembered me and thought of me for this book.

Sold to the spec market, no rejects.

Dead Poets
. This anthology really intrigued me. It was about the critters that go bump in the night, small woodland beasties that while normal in the light of the day, took on a more sinister role after the sun went down. Really it was any warped, nasty or evil critter one wanted to imagine.

I had just recently learned about Shrikes and their grizzly method for killing and eating their prey. These birds don’t have grasping talons, so they impale their prey on thorns and eat them by tearing long shreds from their impaled bodies.

Seems reasonable. Add in some Pixies and a slightly crazy English major obsessed with dead poets and I thought it was a delicious recipe for a story.

This anthology may have one of the deliberately campy and awful covers I’ve seen. It got a lot of shocked chatter in the review communities when it came out. This was my third professional short story sale. Three pro sales is the key to getting into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). Of course, by the time these stories came out, I’d already sold the novel
Black Blade Blues
, and that got me into SFWA.

Written on spec for this anthology and sold. No other submissions.

Black Blade Blues
. This is the story that launched my Sarah Beauhall series. This started out as a story for an anthology about swords. As I put significant thought into what I wanted to write, I settled on Gram, the Norse sword, over the more popular swords like Excalibur, which I knew others would write about. Anthologies are spec work, and you compete with other authors. I wanted something to stand out in the crowd. I’d been reading a lot of Urban Fantasy and decided to set the story in present day Seattle. Then I decided that most stories about swords would be about the warrior, so I chose the blacksmith. This would help give me a unique perspective on the artifact itself.

Finally, I settled on a strong female character as I am wont to do, for lots of reasons that could fill a book. Once I realized that Katie was more than friends with Sarah, the whole novel concept unfolded in my brain.

Then, when Denise offered to buy the story with one minor tweak, she and Dean Wesley Smith strongly encouraged me to write the novel that this obviously was a part of. Strong character, strong voice, unique story. So, I wrote the novel and sold it in December of 2008. The books are available if you want to see where I took this story.

This was my first professional short story sale. It also sold to the first market I sent it to.

Crow and Turtle
is published here for the first time. I wrote this story at an editor’s request and submitted it to an anthology that was never purchased. The story reverted to me at that time, and I’ve decided to include it in my collection to have some new work.

It’s set in the world of Sarah Beauhall, but involves happenings in Japan. I did a lot of research for this story, including getting a Japanese friend to vet my cultural references and make sure I didn’t offend anyone. Again, love story, with deep mythological overtones. There will be a novel with these characters some day.

Howling
is published here for the first time. Another flash piece. I wrote this one morning while I was out at the Rainforest Writers Retreat in Lake Quinault, Washington. I was sitting in my room as the sun was rising over the hills and the lake. Clouds had come down low and were scudding along the top of the pines, shredding themselves into small white puffs. In the distance I heard animals howling and it didn’t sound like dogs. Not sure if there are wolves in the Olympic Rainforest, but there are in my world—hence this story with Sarah Beahuall and Katie Cornett.

Bones of My Father
. I dearly love post-apocalypse stories. Really, really. I’ve read tons of books and stories set in a world where civilization has fallen apart and the survivors have to rebuild with new hope.

I decided to tackle “Bones of My Father” one afternoon after unpacking a box of old gaming books, including all my Gamma World modules and various box sets.

I like to twist stereotypes and expectations. In my humble opinion, it allows us to see things with new eyes. So I created this story with the tropes of monsters and ray guns, AIs and robots, but in the end, under everything, it’s about redemption and true love.

Which, honestly shouldn’t be a surprise to you if you’ve read this far.

I really hope this story fills that need for adventure and wistful emotions based on hope.