We See a Different Frontier: A Postcolonial Speculative Fiction Anthology Read online

  She landed with barely a whirr on the main bench, next to the voicebox, and reached for three heartsprings coiled naked on a sheaf of papers. Paused. The springs’ thin metal had ripped in places; the pattern of dents said they had been flattened out, then rolled back up. Well, that could all be repaired. But―she held one up to the moonlight, then checked the others, shivering. Every graven word was gone. Scratched over, rubbed down to a lifeless blur.

  Not even she could bring someone back once their heartspring was destroyed.

  A prayer for her dead, then, gone to power that great mechanism marked by stars; and three more notches in her own spring. There was only metal left here. And paper, rubbed over with wax to make imprints of each ruined heartspring.

  But remains could, at need, become parts. The hunting cat's skeleton was still fully articulated. The soldier’s head still held his steam boiler, though the ruby lens that heated it was gone. And for the rest―she shredded the paper into a crucible, set the springs gently on their bed of copied words, and turned to build up the fire.

  * * *

  Four brahmins met in a village one day and, in the way of learned men everywhere, got to talking about their learning. Now, each believed his own knowledge to be the most essential; but brahmins value humility and non-attachment, so none were willing to admit it. In consequence each one heaped praises on the rest, and so they all became great friends and decided to travel through the jungle together.

  On the way they came across new bones scattered by the side of the road. “My dear friends!” cried the first brahmin. “While my knowledge is a drop to your monsoon clouds, yet I believe it would reveal the mystery of these bones.”

  “Do please show us,” said the second, “for we have nothing but awe of your mastery of form, and virtue can only increase when learning is shared.” For he was hoping to overhear his new friend’s mantra and steal its power for himself.

  So the first mouthed his sacred words and scattered water from the three holy rivers onto the bones, and they rose from the ground and arranged themselves into the skeleton of a tiger.

  * * *

  The sun was risen when the workshop door squeaked open, letting in the day’s dust on a rush of muggy air. The Englishman glanced in, then turned to give his guard a low-voiced command before stepping inside.

  All but one of the windows cast trellis-shadows on the far wall. From that one, the Artificer raised her wings. The Englishman wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, smirked at her shadow, and said in passable Hindustani, “Well, isn't this curious.” Behind him, the door pulled shut. The outer bar dropped with a thump.

  She tucked her wings neatly back, keeping her good eye fixed on him. His skin showed red through his light muslin jama, and it sat oddly with his English hat and boots, but there was nothing silly about the pistol at his hip. “You seem, Sir James,” she said, “to find a great many things curious.”

  “With all Creation so full of wonder, how could I not?” He looked up at her directly, then, shading his face; his eyes gleamed in appreciation. He said, “And I would be loath to damage so lovely a mechanism before even seeing it fly.”

  “Am I to be grateful?”

  “Another man might choose revenge.” He gestured from the cooling crucible to his disturbed mallets and gravers. His hand drifted down to the gun, jerked away from it again. “Or use this violation to cause trouble for your Emperor. I am a natural philosopher, and prefer understanding.”

  By Imperial edict, the British could not be touched. Much the bird cared. “Understand this, then,” she said. “The usurper Aurangzeb is not my Emperor. And you murdered my own.”

  “Oh, murdered, is it now?” The Englishman sounded only amused.

  “You think your studies justify their deaths?”

  “Well said. One would almost think there was meaning to it. But it was Man, after all, whom God made in His image, not clockwork; so clockwork cannot be murdered.”

  She rattled her feathers. “Ah? Then mere clockwork could hardly violate your workshop.”

  “Argued like a native! And indeed you may be right despite yourself.” He grinned. “For I have discovered that it takes only Descartes’ four principles of inanimate form to explain you.”

  “So you need only know—” She shifted into French. “—the motion, size, shape, and arrangement of my parts.” Back to Hindustani. “What’s left to understand?”

  His mouth opened. Shut. “’s Blood, you’re a saucy one,” he said. “I wish to know why, of course.”

  “We have our last rites, as you do yours.” Sunlight crept down the far wall, towards the skeletal forms, reaching lower now than the man’s head. “We do not leave our dead unmelted. You’ve had your dismantlement and your diagramming. Trade me for what is left, and I shall take no further action.”

  He glanced along the row of windows; then, gaze calculating, back at the bird. “And what is it you offer?”

  “A tale of our own natural philosophers, whose understanding might inform yours.”

  * * *

  The second brahmin was impressed, which irritated him because he hadn’t managed to hear the mantra. So he said, “That is very clever!”

  Such meager praise drew a thin smile to the first brahmin’s lips. “You are far too kind, my brother,” he said. “But indeed, I don’t aspire to cleverness. Only to knowledge of Truth within the world.”

  “As do we all,” said the second, “though we cannot all achieve it.”

  The third brahmin said hurriedly, “Still, enlightened company can only add to our learning.”

  “That's so,” said the second. “And feeble as my own learning is, such a base does call out to be built upon.”

  “Yes, and as you so wisely said, our lives will be richer for sharing,” said the third. And so the second brahmin mumbled over the skeleton, shaking neem and mango leaves as he spoke; and muscles built themselves over bone, each one the perfect size for its place.

  “Why,” the third marveled, hiding his own chagrin, “The animal’s bulk is clear now. Even so does philosophy grow around a fundamental knowledge of the Vedas. And as art grows up around philosophy, I shall add my own grains of knowledge to give it shape, if this pleases my dear friends.” Nothing, of course, could please his dear friends more. So he anointed each muscle with clove oil and camphor, spoke into his cupped hands, and clapped twice; and striped skin grew over the whole, its orange glowing like sunrise.

  The fourth brahmin said, “Truly, this is a wonder. Perhaps I can add to it a little, though I admit myself surprised that I might know anything my learned friends do not!” So saying, he breathed dust from the four great mountains into the tiger’s mouth and eyes, and he whispered his own words.

  The tiger sprang into motion, then, and ate them all.

  * * *

  The Englishman laughed. “If you want someone who takes tales of heathen chanting and anointments seriously,” he said loudly, “find a Papist. This explains nothing―”

  A shadow loomed behind the bird, silent on bare feet. She dropped from the window, spread her wings, and settled on the main bench. Above her, rain shutters slammed shut.

  The Englishman’s smile was edged, now. “Though it kept you occupied,” he said, drifting closer. The pistol was in his hand, aimed at the floor. “My guard’s a native, after all; too superstitious to see why the fire burned all night, but clever as a monkey on the roof. Now, there’s no need to damage you—” She turned, and he recoiled. “What happened to your eye?”

  “Eyes break,” she said. “They are mere lenses, and can be replaced.” They could also be pulled out whole and set atop a steam boiler, angled to catch sunlight, to wind a new-forged heartspring. Once that sunlight slanted down far enough into the workshop. “And your guard closed the wrong window.”

  “What? No, no, you’ll not make me look away so easily.” He circled around till he could watch the windows without losing sight of her, then glanced warily up.

  Behind
him, a lens flared. Yellow eyes eased open. Golden claws came out with a click from skeletal tiger paws.

  Pancho Villa’s Flying Circus

  Ernest Hogan

  General Villa tore the bottle from my hands, gulped down some tequila, then slapped my shoulder.

  “Look! Look, Sahagún! Alejandro! See how well Tesla’s death ray works!”

  Beneath the airship Cucaracha, the Chihuahuan Desert was littered with burning, crashed American aeroplanes on both sides of the border between the United States and Mexico. Smoke rose into a sky that turned blood red as the sun set.

  “Quite effective, General,” I said.

  “Effective?” He tapped the bullet-proof glass. “It’s magnificent! Beautiful! They thought they were invincible, but look at them now!”

  The door to the gondola’s cramped observation pod burst open. It was Tesla. He looked paler and more wild-haired than usual.

  “Come, Tesla, my friend!” General Villa had not taken his eyes away from the carnage. “Come see what we have done!”

  “Yes.” Tesla held up a device like a gun, but also like one of his electrical machines. “What have we done?”

  “It’s wonderful!” General Villa beamed.

  “It’s horrible!” said Tesla.

  “Yes! Horrible! Terrible! Wonderful!”

  “I did not make the death ray for this!” Tesla’s hands shook.

  I didn’t like the look of that device. I kept my hand close to my revolver.

  “What?” General Villa turned, saw Tesla and the device. “It’s a death ray! What did you think we were going to do with it?”

  Tesla waved the device at the carnage. “I wanted to make war impossible!”

  “You of all people,” said General Villa, “should know that nothing is impossible.”

  A spark leapt from the device—like the beam of the death ray, only smaller. General Villa exploded into a foul-smelling dust-cloud.

  I put a bullet through Tesla’s fantastic brain, then coughed, choking on what was left of General Villa.

  Holding my breath, I picked up the device—a death ray pistol—and tucked it into my belt.

  This was my big chance. I decided to take it. It’s all about seeing opportunities and having the guts to take them. Or, as General Villa once said, “Without huevos—cojones!—brains are nothing.”

  * * *

  The death of General Villa shocked my crew, Cháirez, the copilot in the control pod, and Holguín, the gunner in the death ray blister. I didn’t give them time to think about it. I had them toss Tesla’s body overboard, then said:

  “There is no time to lose. The Americans are probably assembling all the planes they can muster for counterattack. They do not know of the unfortunate death of General Villa. We must move fast.”

  “What can we do?” Cháirez said.

  “We are stocked with provisions. Tesla’s generator for the death ray and the Cucaracha’s engine allows us to go immediately.”

  “But where?” Holguín asked.

  “To the very heart of America.”

  “Washington?” Asked Cháirez.

  I laughed. “No. What do we want with Washington? We are going to strike at America’s true heart—Hollywood!”

  Cháirez looked confused. Holguín uttered some blasphemy. I let it sink in. Cháirez smiled. “Yes! Yes! Hollywood!”

  “It will be ours!” I said.

  Holguín sneered. “We know what you want, Sahagún!”

  I found myself touching the letter I kept in my breast pocket.

  “Zee-O-Mara!” said Cháirez.

  “It’s pronounced Shi-O-Mara!” I had to correct him.

  “Hollywood will have the whole world saying it gringo-style soon.” Holguín was always such a cynic.

  “Not if I can help it.” I put my hand on the death ray.

  “I want Theda Bara!” Holguín smirked. “Think she’ll go for a Mexican death ray airship gunner?”

  “Then I’ll take Gloria Swanson, or maybe Clara Bow… or Anna May Wong…” Cháirez was dreaming with his eyes wide open.

  “Why not take all of them?” I suggested.

  “Yes! All the beauties of Hollywood will be ours! Or we’ll vaporize the town!” Holguín gestured like he was firing the death rays.

  I knew these men well. Not much younger than me, but young. Still boys in a lot of ways. A bit smarter than General Villa’s ground troops, but with the same basic spirit. They never had much—show them something desirable, offer a possibility, and they will want it.

  I put my hand on the device at my belt. It, plus the Cucaracha and its death rays, was better than an entire army. We could take on the world, or at least Hollywood

  And now Cháirez and Holguín wanted it.

  They probably thought it was their idea.

  They didn’t need to know that it was my idea, what I wanted.

  Being a leader is so easy.

  And why did I want to take Hollywood?

  Simple. Natural. Hollywood had taken something that belonged to me, and I wanted it back.

  * * *

  It was just a few years ago. The Revolution was going well and was very popular. Even the Americans liked it, donated money, came down to look at it, take pictures of it, maybe even fire a few gunshots or throw a bomb or two. Americans love a revolution—as long as it doesn’t cost them too much.

  That was when intellectuals from all over the world came to Mexico, thinking that the Revolution would allow them to take their crazy ideas and make a new world.

  I didn’t really care about making a new world. I would settle for something I could call my own.

  That was also when the scientists and inventors came, eager to impress General Villa. Santos-Dumont came from Brazil to help with the airships—and was killed in an unfortunate accident. Tesla arrived with his electricity, and talk of the death ray.

  How General Villa’s eyes lit up at that talk!

  Even people from Hollywood came. Why not? The Revolution was full of action—the stuff of motion pictures!

  And they weren’t just movie people, but men in uniforms with guns. They said they were from the Studio Corps.

  So they were here with their big shiny cars and fancy American suits, setting up their cameras everywhere. Even in Cuauhtémoc, my home village.

  The loved it all. The mountains, the desert, our clothes, our music… our women.

  How they loved Xiomara!

  I can’t really blame them. She’s beautiful. Her eyes. Her smile. Her laugh. And the way she sang and danced!

  She could look at you, and make you want to do whatever she wanted. There were many times I nearly killed someone because of the look in those eyes.

  “Even your name is wonderful,” said Raoul, a director. “Zee-o-mara!” he mispronounced it. “You won’t need a last name! You won’t just be stuck with playing señoritas, you could be an Indian maid, or an Oriental siren. We got some technical boys working on a way to make movies that talk—and sing—and you’ll be a natural.” Movies that talk? Ridiculous. I knew what he really wanted. The way he would touch her. And she would smile, laugh.

  Xiomara was smarter than most women—or men. She was so good at dealing with people. She could speak English, and even French. Some people in Cuauhtémoc called her La Bruja.

  * * *

  “If that pig ever touches you again, I’ll kill him!” I later told her.

  She laughed, then kissed me. “Alejandro, you know that you are the one I love.”

  Her smile. That look in her eyes. I believed her.

  We lived in Cuauhtémoc all our lives. We were going to be married. We couldn’t let the fact that the world was being turned upside down get in our way.

  But I could see that Xiomara had desires bigger than our town. I would have to fight—even kill—to keep her.

  And I would. That was my big desire.

  * * *

  I shouldn’t have been surprised when they took her. A big American car, grin
go thugs with masks and guns burst into her parents’ house. They drove off into the night.

  Her family was devastated. I promised her parents that I would bring her back.

  But at first all I could do was drink. All the time, I kept my eyes focused northward. Toward Hollywood.

  * * *

  Then it happened. A movie came out, and Xiomara was in it. She danced—there was no sound yet—and kissed a gringo. Soon rumors spread of her being the star of a new kind of movie—one with dancing, and singing that could be heard.

  It looked like she had forgotten all about me. I would pick up my revolver and think about shooting myself, when I wasn’t drinking.

  * * *

  Then the letter came. It reeked of perfume. The postman laughed. People gathered around because they saw it had come from Hollywood.

  “Read it aloud, Alejandro!” someone said.

  I pulled out my revolver. “What Xiomara has to say to me is private.”

  My darling Alejandro, she wrote:

  Please forgive me for not writing you sooner, but I have been so busy since I came to Hollywood, and you know that writing is not an easy thing for me.

  It has been wonderful, like a dream that I could never imagine, but I miss you and my family terribly. I keep telling them that I would love to see you, but they say there is much work for me to do here.

  They want me to make the singing-dancing picture. It will make me a lot of money. After that I will tell them I want to see you and visit my family. I would like to bring them, and you, up here. Things are possible here that could never happen in Cuauhtémoc.

  Maybe you can come up and see me? I know that once you want something, nothing can stop you. If you could come here, you could do anything.

  Please take this letter to my parents and read it to them. Tell them that I miss them, and I love them, and someday I would like them to come live with me in Hollywood.