Magazine - Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy - 2009 - Issue 221 by March April (v1.0)

Author:March April (v1.0) [html] [April, March]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

HOME AGAIN—Paul M. Berger

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Paul Berger has been a Japanese bureaucrat, a Harvard graduate student, an M.I.T. program administrator, an internet entrepreneur, a butterfly wrangler and a Wall Street recruiter, which, in the aggregate, may have prepared him for nothing except the creation of speculative fiction. His work has appeared in/on Polyphony 6, Twenty Epics, All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, Ideomancer and Escape Pod, and he wrote the first true-life memoir published in Weird Tales. Paul is a founding member of the Altered Fluid writing group and a 2008 graduate of the Clarion Writer's Workshop.

* * * *

Julia was the first one to realize Father's ship had jumped home. She had been reaching to help herself to a piece of fruit just as it happened—one moment she was extending her arm to snatch a nice heavy pear from the basket in the kitchen, and the next her hand closed around a bunch of plum-grapes. Without that little schism between intent and sensation, she wouldn't have noticed at all, no more than anyone else. The basket was a silver latticework made to look as if it had been woven of living rushes. Father had brought it back from the other end of his trade route, which was a world called Arkilla where they had three moons and the people were marvelously clever with their hands. He loved that basket. He also loved plum-grapes. There were no pears in it now.

She ran to tell Mother, and sure enough, ten minutes later the phone rang, and it was Father linked in from orbit to say he had arrived. The next afternoon, her little sister Elleen called out when she saw his car start up the long, tree-lined driveway, and the three of them dropped everything to greet him.

Father came through the door, and Mother, Elleen and Julia flew to his arms and they were all glad, because he had been away for weeks. He held them tight and touched their hair and smelled their necks.

"I swear,” he said, “you three ladies get a bit more beautiful each time I see you.” Then he gave Elleen and Julia their gifts, little jewels filled with light, which would run like water when you told them to, and could be draped around a wrist or neck or ankle like a tiny coiling river. Elleen's was red, and Julia's was purple, which were their favorite colors.

"Take good care of these,” he told them. “They're about to become the hottest fashion accessory in human space, and you're the first to own one."

He said he would save his gift for Mother for later, when they were alone, and she put her hand on his chest and grinned at him with a heavy-lidded gaze. Julia hoped she would grow up to look like Mother, because everyone thought she was the prettiest woman they had ever seen.

After that they gave Father the quiet time he needed, and he inspected every detail of the house, squinting at the colors of paint

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