Magic Dirt: The Best of Sean Williams Read online

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  Magic Dirt

  - the Best of Sean Williams

  by Sean Williams

  No copyright 2013 by MadMaxAU eBooks

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  CONTENTS

  LUDIC DREAMING

  A MAP OF THE MINES OF BARNATH

  GHOSTS OF THE FALL

  THE SOAP BUBBLE

  THE MAGIC DIRT EXPERIMENT

  NIGHT OF THE DOLLS

  ATRAX

  THE END OF THE WORLD BEGINS AT HOME

  THE SEVENTH LETTER

  EVERMORE

  THE BUTTERFLY MERCHANT

  RELUCTANT MISTY & THE HOUSE ON BURDEN STREET

  THE GIRL-THING

  ENTRÉ LES BEAUX MORTS EN VIE

  PASSING THE BONE

  A VIEW BEFORE DYING

  TEAM SHARON

  WHITE CHRISTMAS

  THE MASQUE OF AGAMEMNON

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  LUDIC DREAMING

  JOHN HARWOOD

  Magic Dirt brings together the finest of Sean Williams’ stories from a career that has so far spanned sixteen years, during which he has published twenty-two novels and sixty short stories, received fifteen major awards, and established an international reputation as a leading author of speculative fiction. His range, as this collection abundantly demonstrates, extends from hard SF to horror, from the classic ghost story to crime, comedy, mystery and romance, to his own special brand of magic realism. Yet trying to list all the genres he’s worked in leaves you with the uneasy feeling that you’re missing the point, because he’s also a writer who delights in crossing—or dissolving—the boundaries between them.

  His gift for storytelling—a sure instinct for the pace and shape of a narrative, a seemingly effortless fluency of invention—is manifest in the earliest of the stories here, such as the wonderful “A Map of the Mines of Barnath” and the apocalyptic stories set in Adelaide. “Ghosts of the Fall”, “White Christmas”, and “The End of the World Begins at Home” have lost none of their futuristic edge; indeed they seem to have gained in immediacy, now that the realities of climate change have seized our collective imagination. (They also demonstrate that Adelaide is not only an ideal setting for a Stephen King novel, as Salman Rushdie once remarked, but an all-too-plausible vantage point from which to witness the end of the world). In Sean Williams’ stories, there are no secure vantage points, nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide. The protagonist of “White Christmas” doesn’t know, and nor do we, who has sent the malignant ‘snow’; whether it’s aliens or the fallout from some Faustian technological bargain, all he can do is watch and wait.

  Reading these stories is like lucid dreaming, in which you dream that you’re lying awake in your own bed; the room is exactly as it would be in waking life, until the impossible intrudes. Sean Williams doesn’t simply stay one step ahead of his reader; he knows how to make you believe you know exactly where he’s going, while steering you down a far more sinister path. The immediacy of the action is never compromised, but there’s an unnerving resonance, a shadow cast (shadows often carry a particular charge in his work) which doesn’t quite match up with the object supposedly casting it.

  Thus “A Map of the Mines of Barnath” unfolds from a plain and seemingly straightforward opening—protagonist arrives at mine in search of his missing twin brother—into an increasingly vertiginous series of perspectives more reminiscent of Borges’ “Library of Babel” than Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001, which the ending deliberately echoes, but with chilling contrast. Whereas the astronaut Dave in 2001 is a mere cipher, a peg on which to hang the ideas, we have become far more involved in the haunted Martin Cavell’s quest for his vanished twin. Sean Williams’ ultimate engagement is always with his characters, rather than with the situation or the technology, however mind-bending, and so the stories bend back on themselves, reflecting into inner space: the space, characteristically, of obsession, of deals with the devils of the mind, and the price that must be paid. “Reluctant Misty and the House on Burden Street”—a variation on the classic ghost story—has, superficially nothing in common with “Mines of Barnath” and yet a line from the latter—’You only get out once’—could serve as the refrain for either story. In ‘Burden Street’—a highly effective twist on the topos in which the house itself is a ghost—the heroine’s ominous lack of fear points toward a conclusion in which she, too, confronts a kind of twin.

  Like all the best writers of ghost and horror stories, Sean Williams has the gift of knowing where to stop and what to leave out, chillingly manifest in “The Girl-Thing” (printed here for the first time). Again the power of the story is amplified by its crossing of genres; it reads, almost to the end, like realist hard-boiled crime, but there’s a lurking undercurrent, manifest in the troubled detective’s nightmares (if that’s what they are ... ), drawing us toward the final shocking discovery. Elizabeth Bowen once remarked that the effect of the ghost story depends upon those pivotal details which are only a little, but unmistakably ‘out of true’. Though it isn’t a ghost story, the same applies to “Team Sharon”, a chilling variation on the theme of male bonding. There’s nothing intrinsically impossible about men gathering in a park at night for the purpose described here, but it has the revelatory terror of a horror story, all the more sinister for staying just within the boundaries of realism.

  I see that I’ve dwelt upon the dark side of Sean Williams’ imagination at the expense of the playful, presented here in the comic extravaganza “The Masque of Agamemnon”, and most recently “The Seventh Letter”, with its wonderful ‘Royal Society for the Semantically Impaired’, a comic but also surreal displacement of the familiar. It’s a sign of his versatility and creative intelligence that one can’t tell where his imagination will take him next, but I can safely predict that once you’ve read Magic Dirt, you won’t want to miss the ride.

  — John Harwood

  February 2008

  >

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  “Inneston, 2006”

  the man’s seen hard times

  he turns his face from the light

  craters on the moon

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  INTRODUCTION TO:

  ....................................A MAP OF THE MINES OF BARNATH

  Where do ideas come from?

  This is one of those questions that usually send writers sprinting for the door, but in the case of this story I can answer with certainty.

  The idea came to me in a dream.

  The dream didn’t have a story and it succumbs readily to analysis. I was descending by elevator into the depths of a planet, where lay the surface of another world entirely. Below that, at the core of both planets, was an entire sun. The image was so wondrous and strange that it stayed with me all day.

  While it was nice of my subconscious to remind me that the surface of things can hide all manner of wonder, I’m a science fiction writer, and turning metaphors back on themselves is one of the tools of the trade. I could keep the spirit of the dream and still make it a real place, which a real character could explore. That this character might be seeking a lost twin who had disappeared into the bowels of such an impossible world—and that he might discover along the way a level more strange than anything in a mere dream—only made it more interesting.

  There are several stories in this collection that I’ve wanted to expand into a novel. This is one of them. Who were the original builders of the mines? Where do the five other elevators lead? Why does the mysterious Director take some people and kill others? I like to think that I know the answers to these questions, but until I try to write them down, I’ll never be sure.
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  A MAP OF THE MINES OF BARNATH

  The Manager of the mines was a small, grey man named Carnarvon, wiry with muscle and as tough as old boots. A slight accent betrayed his off-world origins; one of the older colonies, I thought, or perhaps even Earth. He was sympathetic in a matter-of-fact way, as though my position was far from unique.

  “What was your brother’s name?” he asked.

  “Martin Cavell. Do you remember him?”

  Carnarvon shook his head, tapping into a terminal. “No, but his records should ... yes. This’ll tell us something.”

  I tried to wait while he read the file, but impatience soon got the better of me. “What happened?”

  “It seems he took a three-day pass to the upper levels, then chose to continue deeper when the pass expired.” Carnarvon skimmed through the file to the end. “Your brother died on the fifth level.”

  “How?”

  “The exact details are unknown. There was no body, no witnesses, and no inquiry. Assumption of death is automatic under these circumstances.”

  “A pretty large assumption, I would’ve thought.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  He seemed quite content to leave it there, but ten thousand kilometres of travel prompted me to dig deeper.

  “Would it be possible to see the place where he died?”

  “Possible, yes, but...” He looked at me oddly. “You don’t know the mines, do you?”

  “No. This is my first time here.”

  “Nobody’s said anything?”

  “I only flew in this afternoon.” It was my turn to look puzzled. “Is there something I should know?”

  Carnarvon shook his head slowly. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “So show me. Or have me shown. You don’t have to take me personally—”

  “No. I’ll take you. It’s been a while since I went all the way.” He looked around the office, eyes itemising the contents one by one until they finally came back to me. “If you want a Grand Tour, I’ll give you a Grand Tour.”

  “Thank you.” His capitulation was both unexpected and total; he made me feel slightly guilty for inconveniencing him. “As soon as I find out what happened to Martin, I’ll be out of your hair, I promise.”

  “That could take longer than you think.”

  “I’m in no hurry.”

  He sighed and called his deputy into the office. “I’m going Down, Carmen,” he told the woman. “You’re in charge until I get back.”

  They shook hands gravely and I thought for an instant that she was about to say something. But she didn’t. She just watched as we left the office, her eyes filled with something oddly like grief.

  Carnarvon led me to an elevator shaft, handed me a hardhat and a dirty blue overcoat. He looked around the surface level—at the swarming clerks and technicians, at the administration buildings and bulk-transport containers—and shook his head a third time.

  “Let’s go,” he said wearily, and hit Down. The cage door closed and the floor fell away.

  The Mines of Barnath are the biggest in known space, and rumoured to be inexhaustible. Discovered a century ago, they have turned our previously struggling, pastoral world into a major mineral exporter. The five thousand people—according to the unofficial tourist brochure—who work its seven levels are capable of extracting over a million tonnes of any given ore per month, plus the same again in refined materials, most of which is exported off-world.

  Yet, strangely, the mines are completely independent of the rest of the planet, like a distant country or a very large corporation. Visitors are rare, especially to the deeper levels, and the flow of information to the world outside is often restricted, as it was regarding my brother’s fate. But the official policy on the surface is to let the status quo remain. The fate of the planet depends on a constant if not large supply of Barnath metal—so while ore comes out of the upper shaft any situation, no matter how unusual, can be tolerated.

  Carnarvon, if he was aware of his awesome responsibility, didn’t let it show.

  “We don’t get many people here,” he said, pausing to light a cigarette. “Usually from off-planet—those who have heard rumours and want to check for themselves. Most are satisfied with a few pamphlets and a quick tour of the upper levels.”

  “What about Martin?”

  “He was an exception, like you.”

  I nodded, allowing him the point. “What about the other miners, then?”

  “A handful—the ones called ‘skimmers’—live nearby. Drifters and no-hopers, usually. They only go as far as the third level, where we do the refining. More permanent miners work the deeper levels. The deepest ones never come Up at all.”

  “So some actually live down there?”

  “Of course. They’re the ones that work best.”

  My surprise was mild but genuine. This was a rumour I had heard and dismissed as unlikely. I had never been in a mine before, but the thought of crawling for any length of time along what I imagined to be cramped, poorly-lit tunnels made me feel claustrophobic.

  “Why?” I asked.

  Carnarvon looked me in the eye, studying my reaction with interest. “Surface people from ‘round here, apart from the skimmers, don’t work below ground because they’re afraid of the mines. They’re scared that if they go inside, they’ll get caught.”

  “Gold fever?” I joked.

  “No.” There was little humour in Carnarvon’s eyes. “Caught.”

  I waited, but he did not explain further. If he was trying to scare me off, or warn me, it didn’t work. I had come too far to be deterred by vague superstitions.

  The cage rattled to a halt. The doors swung open and Carnarvon waved me ahead. “After you.”

  I nodded, and entered the mines.

  ~ * ~

  ONE & TWO

  The sparsely populated first and second levels are almost identical, and usually regarded as a single unit. These were what greeted the first settlers, when they discovered the mines and sent the first of many expeditions into the depths of the planet. Carved from the bedrock, at five hundred and seven-fifty metres respectively, the two upper levels were found to be empty of ore and life, little more than half-submerged tunnels littered with rubble and dirt. That they had been fashioned by ROTH—Races Other Than Human— was obvious, however. Mankind had not been on Barnath long enough to begin such an ambitious project, let alone subsequently abandon it. Another species had therefore established the mines, emptied them of all valuable minerals and left.

  Or so it appeared at first.

  When I arrived, new tunnels were being carved by skimmers in a half-hearted attempt to reopen the upper levels. The air was full of dust and the screaming of pneumatic and sonic drills. The weight of the rock above and around me was almost palpable—a feeling compounded by the stifling half-light. Flickering electric arcs swung from carelessly-looped cables draped along the tunnels. It was unexpectedly hot and uncomfortably damp. In some tunnels, it almost seemed to be raining.

  Jean Tarquitz, the supervisor of the upper levels, greeted us as Carnarvon showed me around. She was an attractive woman, although filthy, grimed with moisture-streaked dust. When Carnarvon explained that we were heading on a Grand Tour, she looked surprised.

  “Why?” she asked, staring at us both with naked curiosity.

  “I’ve been topside long enough,” Carnarvon explained, “waiting for an excuse to come back Down.” Even I, who had known him little more than an hour, could tell that his casual words hid a more complex reason. “I thought it was about time.”

  “And you?”

  “Looking for my brother.”

  There was both amusement and pity in her pale orange eyes as she snorted disdainfully and waved us on.

  My tour of the first level passed quickly. Tarquitz accompanied us to the second, which had little new to offer, and bade us farewell as we re-entered the shaft to the t
hird. A load of processed ore climbed past us, deafening all those nearby with the sound of labouring machinery.

  “The Director has been active in the lower levels,” she said. “I’ve heard rumours—”

  “I know,” said Carnarvon wearily. “We’ll be careful.”

  “If it comes for you,” she asserted, “it comes regardless of care.”

  “I haven’t forgotten.”

  “Who’s the Director?” I asked, but Carnarvon merely shook his head and motioned me into the cage.

  “Take your time,” said Tarquitz.

  “I will,” Carnarvon replied, and the doors closed.

  The lift fell, swaying gently from side to side, and although the first two drops had lasted little more than sixty seconds each, this descent took at least ten minutes.