BIG CAT: And Other Stories Read online

  Big Cat

  Big Cat

  & Other Stories

  2007 – 2019

  Gwyneth Jones

  NewCon Press

  England

  First edition, published in the UK April 2019

  by NewCon Press

  NCP 188 (hardback)

  NCP 189 (softback)

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This collection copyright © 2019 by Ian Whates

  Cover art © 2019 by Vincent Sammy

  All stories copyright © Gwyneth Jones

  “Big Cat” copyright © 2007, a version first appeared in Interzone, April 2007

  “The Flame Is Roses, The Smoke Is Briars” copyright © 2011, first appeared in

  TRSF the Best New Science Fiction

  “A Planet Called Desire” copyright © 2015, first appeared in Old Venus (Bantam Books)

  “The Old Schoolhouse” copyright © 2016, first appeared in Gothic Lovecraft (Cycatrix Press)

  “The Kianna” copyright © 2011, first appeared in Engineering Infinity (Solaris)

  “The Vicar Of Mars” copyright © 2011, first appeared in Eclipse Four (Nightshade Books)

  “Bricks, Sticks Straw” copyright © 2012, first appeared in Edge Of Infinity (Solaris)

  “Emergence” copyright © 2015, first appeared in Meeting Infinity (Solaris)

  “The Seventh Gamer” copyright © 2016, first appeared in To Shape The Dark

  (Candlemark & Gleam)

  “Cheats” copyright © 2008, first appeared in different form in

  The Starry Rift: Tales of New Tomorrows (Viking Juvenile)

  “Stella And The Adventurous Roots” copyright © 2019, original to this collection

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN:

  (hardback) 978-1-912950-15-7

  (softback) 978-1-912950-16-4

  Cover art and front cover design by Vincent Sammy

  Back cover layout by Ian Whates

  Edited by Ian Whates

  Interior layout by Storm Constantine

  Author’s Dedication

  For Christina Sinclair-Jones

  Big Cat

  When I was writing Bold As Love #1 I had a thrilling dream about Fiorinda and Sage, the teenage rock-brat with the dreadful past, and her unlikely best mate. They were in Cornwall, driving across the Moor at night, supposed to be taking Marlon (small boy) to a birthday party, & things had gone wrong, & the very dark and weird future… ahead of them, in my novels, was revealed… by some kind of fateful encounter.

  Awake, I couldn’t remember much, but I rarely, rarely dream about my fictional worlds, so I treasured the fragments, and from time to time, ever since, I’ve tried to write the story. This is probably the best and last attempt. The dead wolf dragged to the farmhouse door, the rotten little van; the cold & filthy palace, and the trees walking, were all in my dream. Maybe some of the rest, but that’s all I’m sure of.

  How a Message Was Strangely Delivered to the King’s Minister

  In the dark of dawn the farmer woke, listening for a sound that had invaded his sleep in a dream he could not remember. Was that a fox in the yard? Now he seemed to hear a body being dragged, maybe a big fat goose...? Actual loss of food these days, not just loss on a tight balance sheet, should have impelled him out of bed like a rocket. But he lay still. What about that other, sinister noise? Had it come from outside, or had it been part of his dream—?

  It spoke again. A fierce, peremptory, coughing yowl. The farmer and his wife both sat up, bolt upright, as if yanked by puppet-strings.

  “What the hell was that!” gasped Bel.

  Tristan grabbed the shotgun (loaded) which he’d taken to keeping by their bed. “That’s not a fox…!”

  “Don’t go down, Tris. Look out of the window!”

  Bel groped for the lamp switch on her side. Nothing happened, it was Power Saving hours. Tristan opened a shutter, struggled with the catch of a cranky mullioned window, set deep in two hundred year old stone, and peered out. Damp, cold air washed in. It was early in May, but the weather wasn’t very spring-like as yet.

  “There’s something by the gate. I’m going to see.”

  The yard was drenched in mist, its contours mysterious. A heap of old tyres loomed, baled straw bulged out of a Dutch barn. Tris lowered his gun. On the concrete track outside the yard gate a blurred, blunt-muzzled animal shape crouched, motionless. Round yellow eyes stared at him boldly – then the beast was gone. Bel came up beside him, holding a big wind-up torch like a club.

  “There’s nothing wrong with the poultry.”

  The henhouse birds were barely beginning to stir and cluck. The geese were quiet; the turkeys roosted calmly in their tree in the outdoor run.

  “I should have grabbed a camera, not a gun,” breathed Tristan. “Did you see it?”

  “I didn’t see a thing.”

  “There was a big animal on the track. Looking at me.”

  “There’s something there now,” said Bel. “On the ground.”

  Tris handed the shotgun to her and opened the gate cautiously; half afraid his vision was waiting in ambush. Mist swallowed the track, a grey smother in which birdsong glittered faintly. At his feet, slack and rumpled, lay the carcase of a full grown male wolf.

  “Oh hell,” muttered Tristan, a clean-spoken Cornishman who had never taken to the ‘fucks’ and ‘shits’ of the licentious modern world, which had so recently passed away. He stood looking at the body, stirred by awe, unease; and the thrill of the marvellous.

  “Is it dead?” said Bel, whose first impulse was that they must protect themselves. “It looks dead. What do we do? Call the vet? Do we move it? Or cover it and leave it there, to preserve the evidence?”

  The mist was already brightening. By the time they’d moved the body (the wolf was definitely dead), and decided what to do next, the lowing of impatient cows, and Bob the dairyman’s cheery whistle, could be heard from the milking shed.

  Later that morning, a couple of hundred miles away, Ax Preston, lead guitarist of the Chosen, and uncrowned Countercultural king of England, sat alone with his friend Sage Pender, perfect master of Techno-Immix, in the Whitehall office of the Minister for Gigs. Both were tall men, Sage remarkably so, and both, in this incongruous setting, had the slightly menacing presence of tamed but powerful animals. Sage wore black, slick dungarees over a terrible old sweatshirt, and the skeleton digital masks that covered his face and hands. The hand-masks disguised several fingers curtailed or absent, destroyed by infant meningitis. The skull, expressive as living flesh, was purely for dandy. Ax was equally, though differently, dressed for another world than this, in a dark red, shot-silk suit, a crisp white shirt and a black string tie. They were discussing Sage’s involvement in a guerrilla cognition experiment, which was taking up too much of the Minister’s time, and endangering his health.

  “You get a warning,” said Sage. “If I get mine, I quit. I’ll have no option. What’s wrong with that?”

  “What kind of ‘warning’?” his friend asked suspiciously. “Olwen Devi gives you notice?” Olwen, the Counterculture’s chief scientist, was running the project.

  “Nah, it’s personal, an’ transient the first time. Your left hand vanishes. You forget the colour words. You can’t read—”

  “Fuck—”

  “Hey, calm down. I know what I’m doing.”

  “Famous last words… What colour’s my suit?”

  “Hm. Carmine. Violet highlights, interesting bit of chatoyance going on in the reflectance edges, where the sheen’s almost silver-gilt. You want the hex triplets?”1

  “Smartarse. I just don’t want you swanning off to a neurological ward, is all, leaving me and Fio drowning
in this shit—”

  In the years of gathering chaos, as Europe fell apart and the United Kingdom ripped itself to shreds, popular music had become immensely significant – the only politics of a furious generation. Since the formal Dissolution of the Union, England had seen a government move to recruit this Rock and Roll muscle; that ended in a bloody shambles, a huge wave of extreme green violence, up and down the country, and a small Islamic separatist war in Yorkshire. Currently there were thirty thousand active Counterculturals, all ages, all genders, permanently camped like refugees at Rivermead, by the Thames. But the CCM (Countercultural Movement) routinely under-reported ‘staybehind’ numbers, and there were bigger camps elsewhere. Not to mention god knows how many of the truly lost: incapable of work or play, wandering around with no agenda, no food, no money, no hope. Normal service was not going to be resumed, and one man had taken on the thankless task of holding the land together. But what the hell was to be done?

  “I won’t desert you, Ax,” said Sage. “I will not.”

  A phone on the desk buzzed, a rare sign of life from one of these Whitehall antiques. Minions in outer offices siphoned off landline calls, and patched them through to personal devices with added surveillance. Whitehall was full of spies, webs of intrigue, conspiracies sprouting like fairy-rings. The same as it ever was, of course; except now the suits had tasted blood.

  “It’ll be for you,” said Sage.

  “It’s your name on the door.”

  Sage leaned over and tapped the speaker button. “Hi. You’re through to the Minister for Gigs, how can I help?”

  “Erm. Could I possibly speak to Mr Pender himself?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Oh. Is that you, Steve? I didn’t recognise your voice.”

  Stephen was Sage’s original name.

  “This is my telephone voice. I don’t recognise you, either.”

  “It’s Tris, Tris Venning. I hope it’s not inconvenient but I thought you’d want to know. It’s about the wolves. A wolf is dead, and—”

  “Hold on, dead? One of my wolves is dead? How did it happen?’

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Make an attempt.”

  “Er, well, short version, very early this morning, I found a dead wolf, on the track outside our yard gate, and…”

  Sage asked questions (not adequately answered, apparently), and gave orders, with the brisk authority that was his secret weapon, so disconcerting when you’ve only known the monstrously successful, drug-sodden rockstar reputation. Ax remained silent, feeling disembodied; an eavesdropping ghost. He wondered what the other listeners, Whitehall spooks, were making of this tale… Take photos, analogue if possible. Chill the body, preserve the crime scene. Don’t upload anything, and don’t contact Wolfwatch, not yet.

  “Okay… But I was hoping, er, you might send someone?”

  “No problem. I’m on my way.”

  Sage replaced the receiver, the skull frowning ominously.

  “You’re going to Cornwall?”

  “I think, maybe I better… As a gesture of goodwill. Those wolves are kind of my responsibility.”

  No ‘kind of’ about it. Sage was quite literally responsible for the Bodmin wolves. He’d forced through their release, in the halcyon days when Dissolution and its anarchies were malign good fun.

  “Who’s Tris Venning?” said Ax.

  “Uster drink with us. Wanted to be an architect, as I remember, but he had to take over the farm. He’s a right winger: Countryside Alliance type, not a rural CCM, but he deserves the personal touch. Those wolves are important to people. I should be there and back in a day or two.”

  “Why not see if Fiorinda wants to join you,” suggested Ax. “She could do with a few days out of town.”

  Fiorinda was the third member of their Triumvirate. She was very young, razor sharp, horribly damaged, and fragile as tempered steel. She’d been friends with Aoxomoxoa for years, but she was now Ax’s girlfriend. Sage considered this idea, the skull mask thoughtful.

  “I’ll ask her. It’s time I looked in on Eval, an’ all.”

  Eval Jackson was the former front man of Sage’s band, Axomoxoa and the Heads, who’d been invalided out. He was hard work, according to the band (Ax had never met the man) but the Heads took turns to spend time with him, down in their old stamping ground.

  How The Queen and Her Knight Came To Cornwall

  Smallstones farmyard might look better in summer, or if tastefully draped in snow. On a raw, sunless morning in May it breathed no romance, although the moor’s ancient standing stones, hut circles, burial mounds and whatnot, were thick as dragon’s teeth around its walls. The windows had fire shutters on the inside; the doorways on the outside, as recommended, but there was far too much flammable material about. Maybe the Vennings thought being friends with Aoxomoxoa was protection enough. Fiorinda Slater, teenage punk diva turned National Icon, picked her way around puddles of redolent slime, and looked in on some boy calves penned in a barn. They nudged her hands for the salt of her palms, heaved warm silage sighs and gazed sorrowfully at her red cowboy boots.

  Soup of the evening, beautiful soup…2

  Fiorinda was a devout omnivore, but meeting food that reproached you with big sad eyes got her down a little. The train journey had been appalling, full of cold, dreary unexplained halts that felt as if the world had ended. The weather was no better on Bodmin Moor, but at least the plot had thickened. Fiorinda and Sage had been shown phone photos, including a close up of the alleged victim’s ID tattoo. They’d been introduced to the marble slab where the body had lain, and the sheet of smeary old plastic that had been used to transport it. But the body itself was gone. The dead wolf had been stolen!

  She crossed the slime archipelago again to join the rest of the party.

  Sage and the Vennings, plus their young daughter and a farm worker called Bob, were looking over the yard gate at a stretch of concrete track. Tris Venning held a bundle of wet sacking. The concrete showed no obvious signs of anything special, and the sodden ground on either side was useless, mashed to bits by sheep and cow feet.

  “There wasn’t much blood,” said Tris. “I think it’d been suffocated. It’s how big cats kill, I looked it up: they grab the prey’s windpipe and choke it. But there were drag marks, muddy drag marks. I covered the track, I didn’t think to cover the ground, and then it’s rained a bit.”

  “There’s no lock on the old dairy doors,” said Tris’s wife, Bel. “We didn’t think it mattered… We’d told nobody, apart from Tris calling you. Why would anyone steal a dead wolf?”

  Bel was older: and a beauty, with creamy white skin, wavy black hair pulled back in a ponytail, and deep, dark eyes. She looked very like her husband, Fiorinda noted with curiosity: except his hair was more brown than black, and his looks less classy. Their daughter had the same eyes and bones, too—

  “I didn’t know a thing about it,” said Bob cheerfully. “It’s noisy in the milking shed, and I’m on auto, half asleep. First thing I knew was this morning, and Tris saying we’d had a break in—”

  No body, no evidence of foul play and no witnesses, thought Fiorinda. This begins to look like carelessness.

  Bel Venning caught the National Icon’s eye and smiled dubiously.

  Without his masks, and with his ruined hands thrust deep into the pockets of a scabrous fleece, Sage looked right for a farmyard, which Fiorinda knew she did not. Her drab waterproof was okay, but under it she was wearing indigo taffeta, and a fluffy orange cardigan: choices she now regretted. Why shouldn’t I dress like this? she thought. It’s not extravagant, it’s charity shop, and I like party frocks. Don’t judge me, Cornish person. I have wellies, I know mud.

  “But we found something, this morning,” said Bel. “It’s up here.”

  She led the way, leaving the track where a stream came bubbling down from Small Tor, with a footpath beside it. Tris and Sage followed her to the foot of a granite outcrop, where the stream swirled around
in a cup of stone, spilling over to soften the black earth. Tris crouched on his heels to remove small stones that secured a square of tarp.

  “Have a look. What d’you think?”

  Sage and Bel crouched beside him. The clear single print was nearly fourteen centimetres across (Tris had brought a ruler). The central pad was flared at the rear and curved in front, with four deeper, smaller marks set evenly around the forward end… Sage shook his head. “Hard to say. I mean, without calling in an expert, and playing devil’s advocate, hard to say you guys didn’t search ‘panther tracks’ an’ fake that.”

  “The light was bad,” said Tris, taking no offence. “I grant you that. But I saw what I saw. And I heard what I heard.”

  “Pity Bel didn’t.”

  “I can’t help what I didn’t hear,” said Bel. “But I saw the dead wolf, and what kills a wolf? Another wolf, maybe, but not like that, leaving hardly a mark. You should know what the moor’s like. It’s bigger than it looks on the map. It hides things—”

  All three looked up, into a landscape transformed by their angle of vision: the stream’s cleft a Himalayan gorge, the rough flank of Small Tor desert uplands. A curlew passed overhead and vanished into cloud, drawing a sickle of lonely sound behind it.

  “On the phone you said ‘she’, Tris. Was that a generic, rural-speak she? Or how did you know it was a female big cat?”

  “I didn’t… It was an impression. It’s usually she-cats who leave gifts of mice on the doormat.”

  “You were expected to eat the wolf?”

  “More like a good ratter, showing me she’d done the business.”

  Tristan replaced his tarp, arranging the small stones with stubborn care. “D’you mind if I ask you something, Steve. I mean, er, Sage?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Why are you guys so down on the numinous?”