Magazine - Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy - 2008 - Issue 219 by Nov Dec (v1.0)

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

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THE COUNTRY OF THE YOUNG—Gord Sellar

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Illustrated by Daniel Bristow-Bailey

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Gord Sellar is a Canadian (and incidentally a British citizen as well, though undocumented) who was born in Malawi, raised in Saskatchewan, and lived in South Korea since 2002. His work has appeared in Asimov's SF, Flurb, Fantasy Magazine, Postcards From Hell, with more forthcoming in Tesseracts Twelve. The first draft of this story was written at the Clarion West Workshop 2006 in Seattle. Gord's website is gordsellar.com

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As the train begins to pull out of the station, Ji Ah sets the heavy bag down on the floor beside her feet, and wonders for a moment whether the train's clattering might crack open one of the plastic bricks and infect everyone in the carriage. No, she thinks, and forces herself to relax. Deep breath, just like they taught you in the ER that first year, she reminds herself, and inhales slowly. The bricks’ shells are solid, she knows this: they will not break until she hammers them open.

All around her, dull, still pairs of eyes, the tops of heads, sour expressions. She can't see their faces for masks, but their eyes look older than anyone who can afford to ride a train allows themselves to become these days, in this city. They all sit there in their rigid bodies, in polite, stiff rows that remind Ji Ah of the cadavers back in her training, back in Busan, in what used to be South Korea. But these people are not the dead: they're just citizens and guest workers of the Hyeokmyeong chaebol.

She looks at them, and wonders Could I infect everyone? Some of them are quite culpable, some of them only as innocent as any citizen of any corporation could be. But some are no more deserving of blame than her poor old Prabhir had been.

There is yellow-smudged white cotton everywhere. Air-filter masks: there is one on every face, almost. The gang of football jerseyed Flip slumboys in the corner aren't wearing them though. Instead, they've got themselves some ancient gas masks that look like they've been salvaged from some kind of obsolete near-future manga. They squeak their stonerubber clogs on the scarred tramcar floor, and fiddle with their long spiky hair that they wear Japanese style, in a land where no Japanese are ever allowed to visit.

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These boys chatter in loud, tinny voices through speakers soldered onto the fronts of their masks, and swivel their heads occasionally to get a view of the other passengers. Ji Ah catches one of them staring at her bulky bag, and for a moment she prays—to nothing in particular—that he doesn't get it in his head to try and steal it. The phrase and of course carrot! is emblazoned on its side in blocky grey English.

Nobody else is looking at the bag. They all sit with their heads lowered,

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