Chimeras

by Christopher Evans

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Hard Science Fiction

Synopsis

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A TROUBLED MAN The world of Chimeras is very like our own. But for one difference. In Christopher Evans' evocatively portrayed land, some people have an incredible gift. They can create dazzling works of art from the nothingness of the space before them. Moving statues of incandescent gold shimmer into life, literally out of the air. The very best artists conjure wonderful pageants of soldiers glorious in battle or rich Lords helping the common man. They bring a little magic into the drudgery of the peasants' lives - and re-write history into the bargain. Chimeras tells the story of Vendavo, the greatest artist of them all. He's the man sought after by Jormalu, the new leader of the ruthless Hierarchy, to produce images, statues and public performances in his honour. Vendavo agrees - it is prestigious work. But there are rumblings of discontent in the land and rumours of revolution. If it succeeds, Vendavo might be compromised.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 208

Sample

Damn that boy! Where was he?

Shubi surfaced from a muddled dream to the stillness and silence of her room. Grey morning light leaked through the gaps in
the window blind.


She pushed herself up on her elbows, still thinking about the boy, all too conscious that he was long gone from her life.
There was a damp patch where she had been lying – she’d wet herself again!


Up you get, old woman. The bed creaked as she heaved herself off it, a horrible wheeze escaping from the depths of her throat.
She stumbled to the window, pulled the blind.


The sun was hidden behind the clutter of terracotta roofs. Down below in the courtyard a brindled dog sniffed among a scattering
of rotten tomatoes, avocado rinds, bread husks and eggshells. The morning air was chill, the cobbles slick with dew. She heard
someone calling her, the words coming from afar, from long ago …


‘Shubi! Shubi!’

Two voices, shouting as one. The twins, Jenna and Neresh.

‘I’m here!’ she cried.

They came scurrying through the grove, ducking under the boughs and finding her in her usual place, in the hollow next to
the irrigation channel. Here it was shady, and they were safe from prying adult eyes.


They sat down at her feet, girl and boy, alike as two peas. Brown-skinned, black hair cut short, both of them dressed in bleached
cotton tunics. They were her disciples, which was only fitting because they were just eight and she was ten.


‘We’re ready,’ Jenna said eagerly, her brown eyes bright.

Shubi played innocent. ‘For what?’

‘The spirits, of course. What are you going to make for us today?’

‘Have you brought me anything?’

Neresh delved into his trouser pocket and produced three sticks of liquorice which he hastily straightened. Shubi pocketed
them ceremoniously, then nodded. Nothing pleased her more than fashioning the spirits; she would have done it without reward,
but already she knew that pleasures paid for are more valued than those given free.


‘No one followed you?’ she asked.

‘No one,’ they both assured her.

But it always paid to check. She climbed up on the boundary wall, peering over the tops of the orange trees. They stretched
in all directions, filling the shallow valley, row after row of glossy green leaves dotted with pale blossom and bright fruit.
Between the lines of trees she could see other children, diligently hoeing and weeding. The fruit would not be ripe for another
month or two, but there was always work to be done, always drudgery. The adults were busy planting saplings in the new groves
higher up the valley sides.


She clambered down, satisfied that no one else was near. Already she could feel the spirits gathering like ripples in the
air, soft insistent breezes. She had always been able to sense them, far more strongly than anyone else she knew. The few
adults who also felt their presence simply ignored them, and children were taught to do the same. But she, alone one evening
in the fields, had suddenly had an image of an awesome and terrifying white bird descending from the sky. Something rushed
through her mind, and she saw to her amazement the same white bird flicker into existence right in front of her eyes as a
shiver overtook her. She’d transformed a spirit into the picture that was in her head.


Of course the bird had been small and ill-formed, and it immediately dropped to earth, bursting into a greyish dust. But that
night, while her brothers and sisters slept, she’d experimented again, letting the spirits flood her mind before concentrating
on an insect, one of the black weevils from the fields. Something dropped on her blanket, and she saw the weevil sitting there
before she crushed it to powder in her fright.


‘What are you going to show us?’ Neresh asked impatiently.

‘Be quiet,’ she said, closing her eyes and concentrating.

There were any number of things. Recently she’d created chessboard pieces in bright primary colours, none bigger than the palm of her hand, all soon turning grey and falling apart
when they were handled. But she was getting better, the colours brighter and the shapes lasting longer each time.


‘What are you thinking of?’ Jenna whispered.

‘SSSHHH!’

The spirits were all around her now, pressing in on the edges of her mind. They had no thoughts – they were just presences,
urgent to be brought forth into the real world in whatever shape she wanted. All she had to do was squeeze them out with her
mind.


She stretched out her arms, palms upturned, and felt their heady rush. Dimly she heard Jenna give a whoop of joy.

She knew they were there before she opened her eyes; she could feel them resting on her palms. Both balls were identical,
emerald green blotched with crimson.


She offered them to the twins. If anything, they looked disappointed, not appreciating that she had never until now managed
to give her creations more than a single flat colour.


Neresh took his ball and flung it casually into the air. It fell to the baked earth, exploding into an ashen cloud.

Shubi was furious.

‘Give me that one back!’ she said to Jenna, whose ball was already losing its colour.

She tried to snatch it from her. There was a brief struggle before the ball disintegrated between their hands.

‘Witch!’ Neresh shrieked. ‘You’re a witch!’

And he and his sister ran off through the trees.

Squatting over the bowl, she relieved herself. As usual, her hip ached abominably. Where had she put her damned stick?

She had turned the mirror above the washbasin to the wall, unable to bear the sight of her face. Everything was turning yellow
– teeth, eyes, skin, even her grey rats’-tails hair. She looked like the sort of hag who terrified young children.


The kettle began to sing on the hotplate. She found the stick propped up against the bottom of the bed. On the wall she’d
hung a calendar, and she saw that she’d ringed one of the days. That was it! That was why she’d been dreaming about the boy.
Today was the opening of the exhibition.


She began scuttling about the room, wondering what she should wear. Not her cloak, even though it was the warmest thing she
had; he’d recognize her easily in that. She wanted to be invisible, just part of the crowd. What then? Think, woman, think!
Her long grey undergown that buttoned up from crotch to neck. The linen dress with the long skirt. Her black woollen leggings
and canvas boots. And a coat? Where was the black serge one with the big collar?


Shubi! Shubi!

Stop yelling, damn you! She sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, her chest creaking like a badly hung door. If there had
been anyone else in the room she would never have believed the noise was coming from her. Still the calling went on.


‘Shubi! Shubi!’

Her father’s voice, carrying fierce and strong from the village square above the swirling sounds of harmonica and fiddle.

Jered immediately pulled back, but she clutched him to her again.

‘Don’t stop now!’ she whispered urgently.

He had been covering her neck with kisses, and she had bared a breast so that he could fondle it. He swallowed, looked anxious
as her father shouted her name again.


‘He won’t find us here,’ she assured him.

They were on the blind side of old Ruash’s barn, rampant white-flowered bushes in the wasteground shielding them. She pressed
her back against an inward-sloping wall, drinking in the musky scent of the blossoms.


‘Shubi! Shubi!’

The shouts were fainter, drowned by the music. Her father was heading off in the other direction.

Reassured, Jered resumed his kissing and fondling. She pushed a knee between his legs, holding him tight to her, her mind
elsewhere entirely. Her parents had found the statuette of the woman with the parasol – a stony figure that she had fashioned
from the air only days before. It was her best creation so far, and when it first emerged the woman had been gaily dressed
in scarlet and cream, her parasol matching. Even after the colours faded, she’d been unable to bring herself to dispose of it and had kept it under her pillow. Her mother had found it while changing the sheets.


Jered breathed heavily in her ear and kneaded her breast as if searching for something inside it. Shubi stroked his back,
urged him on. She hoped she was doing it right. Sixteen, and she’d hardly ever been kissed until now. Time she took affairs
into her own hands.


Of course her father had been furious. He was always making her promise to ‘stop conjuring those damned essences’, as he called
them, and she was always breaking her promise. They wouldn’t leave her alone, and she couldn’t leave them alone. ‘We’re farmers,’
he would tell her, ‘workers with our hands’, but the fields bored her, always had. This latest act of defiance had been the
final straw for him. She was of an age now, and he’d announced that he was going to marry her off. He’d visited Malakot to
arrange the examination which would establish her virginity before she was put up for marriage.


Well, Malakot would have a surprise because she wasn’t going to be a virgin much longer. As soon as she knew of her father’s
intentions, she’d sought out Jered, who was always boasting of his conquests. She cared little for him, but he was handsome
enough and about the same age as herself. When she’d asked him to meet her behind the barn at dusk he’d looked at her, amazed.
Then he’d shrugged and said he’d think about it. But he was waiting for her when she arrived.


Heavenly host, all this kissing was an ordeal! Her lips felt bruised from Jered’s gobbling. The carnival music swirled down
from the square, and she could sense the spirits coming closer.


She supposed she was ready, though it was hard to tell whether she felt aroused or just impatient. She twisted her mouth away
from his.


‘Now,’ she said. ‘Get on with it.’

He merely redoubled his frantic kissing. She coiled both legs around him, pulling him tighter to her. Then she freed her right
hand and reached down to unbutton his shorts.


He broke free, lurching backwards, swallowing and shaking his head.

Shubi pulled herself upright. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing. I’m not ready yet, that’s all.’

‘What is it? I know I’m not beautiful –’

‘It’s not that.’

He stared down at his sandalled feet, kicked at a tuft of grass. He was blushing!

She said, ‘You’ve never done it before, have you?’

‘Of course I have! I’ve had dozens of girls.’

‘I’m a virgin too.’

‘I know you are,’ he said defiantly. ‘I can tell.’


She stood up, brushing bits of hay from her skirt. ‘I won’t say anything to anyone.’

‘I’m going back to watch the carnival.’

She felt like whacking him across the ear.

‘Why did you come?’

He tore a tall weed from the ground, flung it away. ‘I thought you were going to show me something.’

‘Show you something? What?’

‘I know what you do. With the presences. Everyone knows.’

So that was the forbidden fruit he wanted! She might have known.


The spirits had thickened all around her, only too eager to be brought forth. Suddenly, maliciously, she smiled and said,
‘All right. I’ll give you what you want.’


She should never have done it, of course; it was mean and cruel. But without pausing to think, she materialized the image
that was in her mind, seeing it blink into existence at head-height in the shadowed space. The flood of release exceeded any
pleasure Jered could have given her.


Jered gaped when he saw it. He stumbled back as if she had hit him, called her a slut and a whore. Then he turned and ran,
hurrying out of sight through a clump of bushes.


Shubi heard herself laughing, but there was little real mirth in it. The erect penis slowly began to sink towards the earth
as it lost colour and turned to stone; she had fashioned it so swiftly that it had immediately begun to decay. Whistles and
cheers carried from the square. Shubi snatched the floating penis, flung it down, and ground it to dust under her bare heel.


She climbed the alleyway to the square, already feeling trapped. Her father would find her a dull-witted husband who would
make her cook his meals and fill the house up with children. All the talk would be of farming, and she would turn into a stupid resentful sow. And as she sank into drudgery, the spirits would abandon her for ever.


The square was filled with villagers and the gay gold and scarlet wagons of the Wanderers. They had arrived the previous morning,
and Ruash let them pasture their horses in his fields. Now they were entertaining for their supper. Before her rendezvous
with Jered, Shubi had watched a slab of a woman wrestle with a huge green snake, her arms and legs tattooed with reptilian
designs so that she appeared at times to merge with the creature. Now an albino girl no older than herself was dancing with
three sickly-looking apes and encouraging them to leap through hoops with urgent motions of her hands.


Shubi pushed herself to the front of the crowd just as the dance ended. She envied the girl her freedom and the bright scarves
she wore. The Wanderers travelled the whole land in their wagons, and this was their first visit in over a generation. They
were swarthy, black-haired folk, and the albino girl scarcely seemed one of them.


Her dance over, the girl offered to tell fortunes by reading palms. A line of villagers swiftly formed beside the seat she
had taken, and Shubi was among them. She watched a strongman lift children in a water barrel and pull a cartload of hay across
the square with his teeth. She scanned the onlookers’ faces for her family, but there was no sign of them. Suddenly it was
her turn.


She crouched before the albino and offered her hand. The girl’s eyes were as pink as watered blood.

‘What’s your name?’ Shubi asked.

The girl looked surprised. She said, ‘Taliko.’

A big woman in crimson robes strode to the centre of the square. Her grey hair flowed down her back, tied with ribbons at
its ends. There was something about her that immediately commanded Shubi’s attention.


‘Who’s she?’ Shubi asked.

‘Rosenna,’ Taliko told her. ‘She’s head of our clan.’

The woman was concentrating in a manner all too familiar to Shubi. Abruptly four white doves exploded from her hands, shooting
up into the air and hovering around her head. The birds looked real, their movements perfectly natural. Shubi pulled her hand
away from Taliko, scarcely able to believe her eyes. The doves, spirit-creations, hung steadily in the air on beating wings. Shubi had conjured white birds herself,
but she had never imagined she could give them movement.


Now the birds descended to settle on a low wall beside the temple. With a dramatic flourish, the woman brought forth a small
sailing ship, carefully detailed and coloured, which bobbed through the air, making the onlookers duck as it floated by. Meanwhile
the birds on the wall stiffened as their white plumage faded to grey.


Several children scrambled forward to claim the stone doves as prizes. The woman watched their squabbling indulgently, allowing
the victors to carry the birds away. The crowd sounded its approval and flung coins into the collection boxes placed around
the square.


The ship sailed away down the hill, pursued by a riotous crowd of infants. Rosenna succumbed to a spate of coughing, but she
quickly recovered. Then, to Shubi’s astonishment, she materialized a life-sized black horse with wings sprouting from its
flanks. It reared upward, its hoofs making scrabbling sounds on the cobbles.


Another wonder! Shubi had never managed to fashion anything of such a size. Whenever she tried, her creations simply dissolved
away immediately they emerged. The wings were particularly splendid, each twice the span of a man’s arms, raising dust as
they beat the air.


The woman grasped the animal’s mane, obviously intending to mount it. All around the square the crowd roared its appreciation.
Shubi was suddenly furious with them. Jumping to her feet, she concentrated hard and summoned forth her own creation – an
ape similar to those she had seen earlier, but pure white. She imagined it astride the horse’s back, clinging tight to its
mane. Her body shuddered as a spirit rushed through her.


And there it was! Rosenna stepped back in surprise. The horse spread its wings and leapt into the air.

Shubi, on thinking of the ape, had willed it to have complete powers of movement, and she was delighted to see it grip the
mane and flex its legs tight around the horse’s flanks as it rose high above the square, wings beating like sheets flapping
in a gale. Up and up it soared before plunging down, the ape clasped to its neck.


The crowd scattered, for it was plain the horse was not going to stop. None of the Wanderers moved apart from the woman, who
took a single step back. Shubi was transfixed; despite the danger, she noted t. . .