Asimov'sSF,October-November2007 by Dell Magazine Authors

Author:Dell Magazine Authors [Authors, Dell Magazine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

LITTLE RED ROBOT by G.O. Clark

My little red robot

stares at me with dark eyes,

toy arms raised in anger,

teeth permanently set

in a tin leer.

-

His stomach is full

of toothy gears hungry

for the fragile shell I inhabit,

this flesh and blood and

brittle bone.

-

Neutron by name,

he poses a threat only

when I wind him up, and I

become a god and fool with

each turn of the key.

—G.O. Clark

Copyright (c) 2007 G. O. Clark

[Back to Table of Contents]

DEBATABLE LANDS by Liz Williams

Liz Williams's forthcoming books include Precious Dragon and The Shadow Pavilion (both from Night Shade). One of her most recent novels, Banner of Souls (Bantam Spectra, 2006), is currently nominated for the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award. It was also a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke award. The author's contribution to our annual slightly spooky October/ November issue may look a little like fantasy and a little like horror, but it's all science fiction.

He chased it through the rushes at the water's edge, late spring, with the dark-mist twilight coming down around him. It was as though he had been chasing it lifelong, all through the racing years of childhood, past the time when he was initiated as a warrior and warlord's man, past the battles of Cadon and Burn, the years of love and the years of war. He knew that it was barely a short span since the hounds had put up the scent and begun the chase, but that was what it felt like. And already he was exhausted by it, bone weary, as though the day was already at its end. The thing he was chasing had sapped him: he could feel it sipping at his strength, leaching into marrow and sinew, spooling him out like the thread from a dropped spindle. Then it raised its unnatural head and gave a pealing cry and the sound brought him to his knees.

He was somewhere else. There were towers all around, made of red stone, higher than any building he had ever seen before. They reached up into cloudy greyness, rain on the way, and he felt dizzy and disconnected. Hastily he looked down and around. He stood on a grassy circle but the grass was not green, as it should be, but yellow and sere, as though the summer had been hot and long. It did not feel like summer to him, but there were no trees to show him the season.

There was, however, a plank of wood on a ball, tilted so that one end of the plank rested on the ground. A smaller plank hung from a frame, creaking in the rising wind. He blinked. A child was sitting on the plank, swinging to and fro. The child was staring at him, her face as blank as an egg.

"Where am I?” he cried. “What is this place?"

But the child's face cracked and she laughed and laughed, not kind laughter but cold, and he knew her for one of the Changing, or thought he did. Then the child and the towers were gone and there were only the rushes and the marsh's edge, with the wind whistling through the reeds.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.