Eclipse One: New Science Fiction and Fantasy by Jonathan Strahan

Author:Jonathan Strahan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Fantasy, science fiction, Collections & Anthologies, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9781597801171
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Published: 2007-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Down on the plain, when they finally reached the boundary of Aymon's new real estate, there was certainly a sense of crossing some kind of crucial border. The wide fields of ethanol-fated corn (where Aymon muttered about the dumb European energy policy, not yet woken up to the exploded concept of biofuels) gave way to water meadow; and then suddenly they faced a wall of trees. There was no signage. The road surface, equally suddenly, deteriorated to dirt, with a few scabby patches of asphalt.

"Are you sure this is the right place?"

Aymon had been enlarging on the fortunate partnership of Jean-Raoul and Madeleine. Their daughter the biochemist, brilliant and flighty, who'd taken up computer science as a sideline, currently spent her time modelling neurotransmitters, out in the wild blue yonder. Jean-Raoul Martigny, however, was a scientist with a sound business mind, always took Aymon's advice, understood that sustainable dies if it means non-profit-making.

He paused in this pleasurable rant—leaving Maddy with her head in the clouds, Raoul with his feet on the ground—and punched up the help menus on the dashboard map.

"Heck. Something's wrong with this—"

The Aston Martin was a beautiful car, and as guilt-free as a classic performance roadster can well be, but its subsystems had proved unreliable. Or else there was something in the air, interfering with the signal . . . Aymon could feel the prickling heaviness, an electric storm on the way.

There was an old man watching them from the edge of the trees.

A welcome sight, in the ringing, silent emptiness of this countryside, where you could hardly believe that crowded old Western Europe was all around. Aymon had pulled up, meaning to try some diagnostics. He leaned out, and made his inquiry. The old fellow set down his axe—he really was carrying a long-handled, ancient-looking axe—and came ambling over, cautious of his joints as the Tin Woodsman.

"Hi," said Aymon, ever trustful of the universal power of the English language. "Would you mind telling us where we are, sir?"

The old fellow stared at the foreign car as if he'd never seen anything like it, and said something that Aymon didn't catch at all, except that the word forêt was in there. Viola explained the problem, in her passable French. The Tin Woodsman scratched his seamed and bristly chin, peered into the car and looked long at their GPS screen, shaking his head and murmuring, a voluble excursion, presumably in the local dialect: from which Viola could only snag "unbelievable!" She tried again, and managed to learn that he'd never heard of the projected Bock Foundation, and didn't recognise the number of the minor Departmental Road they were looking for—

"But there are roads through the forest?" she persisted, still in French.

The old man looked completely blank, a senior moment, then he spoke again, in a careful, strangely accented English. "There are plenty of paths." He smiled. "Perhaps too many. You can go in, easily. But you may not come out." He nodded, pleased with his joke, and went back to his axe.

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