FSF, September-October 2010 Read online

  One of them hefted a stone in both hands and struck the lock twice, three times, and finally broke the hasp off. They pulled the lid open. Inside were wrappings of oiled linen, covering a wooden box well caulked with tar. They pried that open, undid more wrappings, and finally took out a sealed jar of alabaster. The sailors handled it fearfully, and gave it to the magician as if it were too hot to hold. He pulled off the lid and reached inside. The papyrus scroll he took out was as thick as my calf, all edged in gold, and sealed with golden bands.

  An ibis bird dropped out of the sky. It was pure white and shone brighter than the torches. It circled three times and then alighted on the scroll in the magician's hand. He batted it away.

  Before I curled into a ball to hide my face I caught a brief glimpse as the ibis became an ibis-headed man, tall and shining. I heard the foreign magician shriek, but his voice faded away to a tiny sound. The people watching on the shore said they saw him fall into the starry sky, screaming and struggling. If he ever came to earth again it was not in the black land of Egypt.

  Then the walls of water collapsed in a roar of foam and mud. I struggled, tried to swim, but all around me the elements swirled in chaos and the breath of life left me.

  * * * *

  When I awoke I was in a tent on land. Bright sun shone outside and my master Seosiris sat by my head watching me.

  "I didn't get the book,” I managed to croak.

  "I know,” he said. “I saw the whole thing from the shore, at the house of my friend Rensi the builder. My brave Senehem, you did well."

  "But the foreigner took the book!"

  "And paid for it. Long ago Prince Setna my father sought that book, and was preparing to drag the river-bottom even as you did, when a pair of ghosts warned him in a dream of what would happen to any mortal who touched the lost book of Thoth. If even a son of Ramesses was not worthy, no foreigner could possibly be."

  "You knew he would take it?"

  "I did. You obeyed my commands perfectly.” He placed a scroll beside me. “This is my last order to you. I am giving to you, in exchange for your service these past weeks, my land, my house, my books, and all the things which are mine."

  My heart grew glad. “Thank you, Master! The King has restored your offices?"

  "No, Senehem. The lord of the living will not be pleased when he hears what happened. The foreigner was under his protection, and I contrived the man's destruction. I must leave Egypt until a new Pharaoh sits in Memphis."

  "You cannot leave! Where can you go?"

  "I shall go upriver to Axum, in Ethiopia. They know of me there, and I can support myself selling charms and medicines."

  "But you only fought the foreigner to protect the kingdom! It isn't fair!"

  "It would be more unfair for me to disobey the Pharaoh and escape punishment. That is why you must have all my books. Learn as much as you can, Senehem. The King my uncle will have need of wise counsel and protection, very soon."

  I flung my arms about him and stained the hem of his kilt with my tears. He bade me good-bye and boarded a boat bound for Meroe that very morning, carrying his own bag like a tradesman looking for work.

  Many times since then I have sent letters with merchants bound for the south, but no answer ever comes. Merneptah grows old, and his sons and brothers snap at each other like hungry crocodiles. If some new foreign magician comes to Egypt, who will defeat him?

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Novellla: ORFY by Richard Chwedyk

  Since Richard Chwedyk introduced the saurs to us in our Jan. 2001 issue, the sentient toys (rambunctious Axel, irascible Agnes, and the rest) have become one of our most popular series. It's hard to believe the last one, “In Tibor's Cardboard Castle,” appeared six years ago, but Richard Chwedyk says he has been busy teaching writing at Columbia College in Chicago while still serving as a newspaper managing editor. (He notes that bales of papers were shredded for confetti for the Blackhawks’ recent Stanley Cup victory parade; it was the best use of those newspapers he has seen lately.) We'll do our best to make sure his next story doesn't take another six years.

  "Last night we had a big storm!"

  On the afternoon Diogenes died, Axel, the small blue theropod with the scar down his back, stood on the table next to the window of the former dining room, dictating another message to the “Space Guys,” somewhere out there, as he had done every week since the spring.

  "There was lightning flashing and thunder and stuff!"

  Reggie, as everyone called the Reggiesystem computer that helped run the house, dutifully recorded his words.

  "Everybody got afraid and the walls were shaking and I thought the house was going to fly through the air all the way to space and land on Mars!"

  He turned from the computer screen and looked out the window. “But the storm's over now. The sky is clear and blue and everything's bright, like the rain washed it or something! It's all clean and—and alive! The flowers over there and the trees and the grass and everything!"

  He bent forward, tiny forearms raised, almost touching the glass, his jaws opened wide: the yard had never looked more beautiful. As if he had never seen it before: a gift of his—a gift of discovery, of finding everything new.

  "Everything's ALIVE!"

  Though he directed these words to the Space Guys, his voice alone broadcast them throughout the house. Axel may have stood no more than twenty-seven centimeters when he stretched fully upright, but his voice belonged to a saur three or four times his size.

  He took a few steps over to the other end of the table and looked around the room. Directly below him, near the base of the plastic stairs he had used to get up onto the table, Baraboo Bob and some of the other “little ones” (saurs no bigger than hamsters or chipmunks) took pictures of themselves with a penpoint camera. The images appeared in squares on a flexible vinyl screen spread out on the floor like a quilt. They marveled at the close-ups of their smiling faces.

  Axel told the Space Guys about them.

  Rolling by just then, Ace led another group of little ones—each on a shoe-sized battery-powered “skate"—one behind the other, like a train or a parade, on their way to the library.

  Axel told the Space Guys about them too.

  And Axel told them about the saurs whisking checkers about the floor with their tails in a game that seemed to be a mating of croquet (without the wickets) and hockey (without the sticks). Axel explained the rules to the Space Guys, though he'd told them about the game several times before.

  "And the Five Wise Buddhasaurs are sitting on the couch against the other wall! They're blowing into their horns and that stuff coming out is supposed to be music!

  "And in the middle of the room's Alphonse! He's listening to a radio! And next to him is Ross! He's got a parsnip left over from lunch! And next to them is Doc! Hiya, Doc!"

  Axel couldn't help but wave to Doc, seated on a small plastic cube in the middle of the room. Doc smiled back and raised his small forearm in return like someone used to dipping into a great reserve of patience.

  "And under the table here, Agnes is talking! She's telling a bunch of the guys about what's wrong with humans. She thinks their backs hurt too much because they don't walk with four legs! But I don't walk with four legs and I'm okay!"

  "Tails!” The gray stegosaurus shouted from under the table. “You have a tail! And who says you're okay? I don't!"

  "She's got an eggling down there,” Axel said to the Space Guys. “His name is Leslie! And Rotomotoman helped to hatch him!"

  Rotomotoman, the meter-and-a-half tall cylindrical robot with a hemispheric head, stationed near the table, raised his jointed metal arm at his mention and saluted, digits held out flat and straight above his large, perpetually startled eyes.

  "And in the next room over here,” Axel turned his head to the right, “they're watching a video! There's a human guy in the video, and he's climbing up the side of a big building! He's got these things on his eyes called glasses that humans use
d to wear! And now he's stuck on a big clock! And he's hanging from the clock—and—and—"

  For a moment, Axel fell silent watching the dark-suited man in the straw boater dangling from the clock. Then, remembering he was still talking to the Space Guys, he jerked his head to the left.

  "Oh yeah! Over the other way is the library! That's where they got all the books! And real ones too! Diogenes and Hubert keep them all in the right places! Bronte and Kara are going to be reading to Hetman in there! Hetman is the guy who got hurt real bad, so he can't see or walk around now. But one day I'm gonna build him an EXO-CYBORG! That's like robot legs and arms! And robot eyes, too! Doc says I shouldn't talk about the Exo-Cyborg because it would cost a lot, and we may not be able to make it because the humans might not want us to make Exo-Cyborgs. But nobody said I can't make an Exo-Cyborg. So when I figure out how to, I'll make one!"

  From below, Agnes shouted, “You can't!” Axel could feel her voice vibrating the table beneath his feet. “You can't make one because you're an idiot!"

  Axel looked upward, to the ceiling. “And there's stuff upstairs, too! Preston is up there, writing a book! And Geraldine is up there, working in her lab! And Tibor! Tibor's got his castle and it's a box! But it's got all sorts of universes inside!"

  "Hey!” Agnes thumped her tail against one of the table legs. “Can you save it? Do you have to give them a complete inventory every week?"

  "And Tom is up there! He's the human who takes care of us! He's up there now and he's talking on a phone! He's got a mother and there's another human who used to be his mate! He's gotta listen to them ‘cause they know what he's supposed to be doing!"

  Agnes grumbled and looked at the little group of saurs around her, gradually disbanding, and tried to remember where she had left off explaining why human lower back pain leads to aggressive behavior.

  Her mate, Sluggo, who had heard the lecture enough times to give it himself (if he had believed any of it) whispered, “Counterweight."

  "Counterweight! Balance! Backs always parallel to the ground! Never perpendicular!"

  "You know,” Axel said, “out there in the forest around the house, we got bad guys! They're still there, but nobody's seen them since Geraldine shot this bright thing at their van! They're waiting out there because they want to know stuff about us! We got codes and stuff in our genes! And we're made out of that stuff! So they keep watching us, but we don't see them!"

  Axel looked back at the computer, at the “Reggie” icon that resembled a baby sea serpent, though no one knew what Reggie really was. “The bad guys could come in here, but Reggie keeps them out. And Tom keeps them out, too. And Rotomotoman would help!"

  Rotomotoman saluted again.

  "And Geraldine too. Maybe. I called the bright thing she shot at the van a Death Ray, but Agnes says it isn't a Death Ray if it didn't kill anything. And then she said I'd be better off if I called it None of My Business. That's because nobody knows what Geraldine is really doing. She's sending stuff to a guy in the city, but we don't know what she's sending."

  He turned to the window again, staring out at everything until the breath from his nostrils condensed on the glass.

  "Hey! There are birds out there! They got beaks and wings! That's how they can fly up into those tree branches. And—and—there's a whole world out there!"

  Below, Agnes shut her eyes. It seemed for a moment as if she might start shouting again, but all she said—and very faintly, so not even Sluggo could hear her distinctly—was, “Really?"

  "Axel discovers the world,” said Doc. He could see Axel as a bouncing silhouette against the afternoon sky. “Again."

  Doc had been thinking, and trying not to. It wasn't what one expected of a beige-colored tyrannosaur no more than forty-five centimeters tall, with thick, heavy eyelids and a tricky left leg.

  A beige tyrannosaur designed to be a toy (as all the saurs were: “bio-toys” and “life-toys” were the names used to market them many years ago).

  A toy designed to be a child's companion, to speak in pleasantries and sing a few childish songs.

  Doc was never much of a singer, but he could listen—patiently. Thinking, if that's what it was, came of its own volition. Nothing profound: no great syllogisms, statement following statement, like steps leading to—to what? Not “thinking” like that, but he'd had a thought.

  All the distractions—Axel and Agnes and parades of saurs on skates—the thought was gone. Poof!

  Doc, however, was patient. And hopeful, if a little on the melancholic side. The thought would return if it were worth remembering.

  Alphonse nudged Doc gently and pointed to the radio. “You hear this?"

  The radio was tuned to the “all-news” station, the one that offered trivia quizzes on the hour. Between the customary litany of crime reports, natural disasters, political deadlocks, and controlled releases of entrepreneurial propaganda, a few bits of real news broke through.

  "Abby?” asked Ross, who listened to the radio only because he liked the voice of the afternoon traffic reporter, Abby Riley.

  "Ssshh!” Alphonse held a forepaw digit to the tip of his snout. “Five minutes. Abby's on in five minutes."

  "Oh-KAY!” Ross sucked on his parsnip. He was in no hurry to finish his snack. The parsnip had narrow lengthwise grooves cut into it by Ross's teeth.

  "Ssshh! Listen!"

  "—A sudden rise in stock value of the SANI Corporation, attributed to its efforts at acquiring certain patented properties of Biomatia, formerly Toyco, to aid SANI's continued research in the health and defense fields—"

  "'Certain patented properties.'” Alphonse looked at Doc. “That means us, doesn't it?"

  "It could,” said Doc. “That's very possible."

  "They'll try to take us back?"

  "They've tried before,” Doc said softly. “They have an agreement with the Atherton Foundation, however, and legally they can do nothing."

  "Legally,” said Alphonse.

  "Legally.” Doc added, even more softly, “No reason to spread this information around."

  Alphonse nodded, then repeated from the business report, “'Health and defense.’ Is that two categories or one?"

  "My friend, you frighten me at times."

  "And I hope you guys are all okay,” Axel said, “and no space armies or cosmic storms or stuff is going on out there!” He signed off the way Reggie had taught him when he first started sending the Space Guys messages: “Your friend, Axel."

  For a moment, Doc envied him his energy and, even more, his enthusiasm—his ecstasy, perhaps. There were “bad guys” out in the woods, but everything was “okay.” That world out there was filled with war and poverty and greed and tragedies—but there were birds flying from tree branch to tree branch in the rain-washed yard.

  Doc wanted to see things that way—to see the day without regard to the following darkness.

  There were “bad guys” out in the woods, watching.

  And listening, perhaps.

  "We'll talk later, my friend,” he said to Alphonse and raised himself from his little plastic cube and tried to bear his weight on the tricky left leg—not that he felt much pain, but it didn't always behave when he needed to walk.

  He took the stairs in his usual slow, careful fashion, briefly becoming the object of Agnes's lecture ("See? See how he bends forward and clutches the stairs with his forepaws? Even carnosaurs can walk on all fours!") though most of her audience had by then wandered off to join the groups playing the game with the checkers or the ones taking pictures with the little camera. Only Sluggo and the eggling Leslie listened, and it looked to Doc, as he continued his ascent somewhat more self-consciously, that they did so in uneven measures of sympathy and duty.

  At the top, Doc found Axel enthralled before the Reggiesystem screen, reviewing his animation of the Exo-Cyborg. With only a neutral blue background, the metallic, disembodied theropod limbs seemed to be running in place; the long, shiny tail stretched back, firmly horizontal (Agnes w
ould be pleased, Doc imagined, if she hadn't already declared the entire notion stupid); the gleaming forepaws, each shaped like a tipped-over letter S, appeared to have projectiles flaring from them (again with the machine-gun fingers, Doc noted, recalling that Axel's original design for Rotomotoman included similar armaments); and bright yellow rays (non-lethal, Doc hoped) issued from the wild, glowing green eyes, perhaps inspired by the beam Geraldine had shot at the van parked out in the woods.

  "Axel,” he said, just as the image of the racing Exo-Cyborg receded into a gridwork of moving pictures that may have been an animated scrapbook of Axel's “projects": vacuum ‘bots, space tractors, a flock of hinged-looking things gliding in spirals and blinking, an interlinked pair of perpetual motion machines, what looked like a rocket-powered storage shed—the screen afforded a glimpse into the mind of Axel.

  Doc stared, jaws open, and shuddered. Either the old house felt much bigger, or he had grown very, very small.

  "Hey! Doc!” The gridwork of images shrank to a corner of the screen as Axel pivoted and smiled. “I was waving to you when I was talking to the Space Guys! Did you see me waving to you?” He repeated the gesture to refresh Doc's memory.

  Doc, still a little stunned, slowly transferred his gaze from the screen to Axel. “Indeed I did. I just wanted to tell you—"

  "I didn't tell the Space Guys what you were doing because you looked like you were doing what Agnes calls goofing off, but I know you were doing what you told me was meditating—but I forgot that was what you were doing, so I didn't tell that to the Space Guys."

  "I simply wanted to mention—"

  He stopped, Axel's words rebounding on him. “Do you tell your, your ‘Space Guys'—everything?"

  "Everything I see and hear, so they know what's happening on this planet."

  "Have they ever...replied?"

  Axel stood completely still and took what for him was a long time to reply—about four seconds.

  "The Space Guys are way out there! Reggie says they're millions of millions of kilometers away! That's really far! So Reggie thinks it might take a long time for my stuff to get to them."