Terry Dowling - Flashmen.pdf - Terry Dowling - widez2

Flashmen

TERRY DOWLING

Terry Dowling continues to be one of Australia’s most awarded, versatile

and internationally acclaimed writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror.

He is author of Rynosseros, Blue Tyson and Twilight Beach (the Tom

Rynosseros saga), Wormwood, The Man Who Lost Red, An Intimate

Knowledge of the Night, Antique Futures: The Best of Terry Dowling and

Blackwater Days , and of the computer adventures Schizm: Mysterious

Journey, Schizm II: Chameleon and Sentinel: Descendants in Time . He

is also editor of Mortal Fire: Best Australian SF and The Essential Ellison .

Dowling’s stories have appeared in The Year’s Best Science Fiction,

The Year’s Best SF, The Year’s Best Fantasy, The Best New Horror and

The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror , as well as anthologies as diverse as

Dreaming Down Under, Centaurus, Gathering the Bones and The Dark .

He is a communications instructor, a musician and songwriter, and has

been genre reviewer for The Weekend Australian for the past sixteen

years.

“Flashmen’ was inspired by what is commonly known as a

mondegreen - the mishearing of a line in a song lyric. It concerns one of

Terry’s favourite themes: the depiction of the truly alien.

* * * *

am was sitting over a pot of Boag’s and a Number 9 at the New Automatic

on the banks of the Yarra, watching the old riverside fire sculptures - the

‘pigeon toasters’ - sending gouts of flame into the night sky.

That was how Walt Senny and Sunny Jim found him, staring out at the

sheets of plasma tearing the dark. Dangerous and wonderful friends to

have, Walt and Sunny, and a dangerous and wonderful place to be, given

what Melbourne had become - been forced to become. All the coastal axis

cities.

“Sam,” Walt Senny said, just like in the old days, as if grudging the

word. He wore his long flashman coat, a genuine Singer flare, and had little

hooks of colour on his cheeks. They were called divas after famous

women singers and each one was a death. Knowing Walt, each one was a

ten-count.

Sam returned the greeting. “Walt.”

“Sam,” Sunny Jim said, looking splendid as usual in his dapper Rock

fall crisis suit.

“Sunny.”

Both men carried their duelling sticks in plain sight as if it truly were

ten years before and the contract shut-downs and call-backs had never

happened.

“What’s the drift?” Sam asked, falling into the old ways in spite of

himself, as if the ten years were like smoke.

“Raising a crew,” Sunny said. “Trouble out in the Landings.”

“Someone thinks,” Walt added.

“Flashpoint?” Sam asked, going straight to it. Major strike ? Even: A

new Landing ?

Walt studied the crowd, using a part of his skill few people knew

about. “Not sure yet.”

Sam almost smiled at the melodrama. “Someone?”

“Outatowner,” Sunny replied, which meant protected sources and

need to know and told Sam pretty much everything. Possibly no strike, no

flashpoint at all. But official. Some other reason.

Sam was careful not to smile, not to shake his head, just like on those

long-ago, never-so-long-ago days when Sam Aitchander, Wilt Senny and

Sunny Jim Cosimo belonged to as good a flash crew as you were likely to

find. “Bad idea right now, Sunny, Walt. The Sailmaker is still there.”

Telling it like it was. The Landing that could reach out. Snatch and

smash even the best.

“Need to make five,” Walt Senny said, a spade on gravel. Affectation,

most like, though how could you know? Sergio Leone and a hundred years

of marketing departments had a lot to answer for. “Figured Angel for point

and you for star again, Sam.”

But the ten years were there. Things had changed.

“Other business right now, Walt,” Sam said, trying to keep the

promise he’d made to himself. “Not sure the Landings are the place to be.”

Walt and Sunny expected it. They played their main card.

“Another crew going in as well,” Sunny said, which could very well be

before the fact knowing Walt and Sunny, a lie but a likelihood and a serious

one, what it implied. “Punky Bannas is putting it together. The Crown

Regulators ride again!”

“Punky? Then -”

“Right,” Walt Senny said, his ruined voice like a shovel against a

sidewalk.

And got me , Sam thought. Punky and Maisie Day and the rest.

But ten years. Probably not Maisie. Still, Punky Bannas liked known

players no less than Sunny and Walt did. His Regulators would need to be

solid, as familiar as he could get.

“Who’s their pure?” Which was saying yes, of course. Let’s

re-activate the Salt Hue Trimmers . Sunny even managed his lopsided

grin, two, three seconds of one.

Walt Senny knew better than to smile. “Kid named Jacko. Henna

Jacko. First class.”

“Who’s ours?” Sam asked. Should have been: who’s yours? but he

slipped.

“New kid. Thomas Gunn, if you can believe it. Thomas not Tommy.

He’s prime. Talent scout found him in a doss out in Dryport.”

“The rest,” Sam said. “I need it all.”

Sunny gave his grin. Walt Senny spun his stick in a splendid bonham.

Spectators ahhh’d. One, trying too hard, called out: “Bravo!”

“Not here,” Walt said. “Come out to Tagger’s. Meet the crew.”

Sam had to grin back at them. Tagger’s. All of it, just like ten years

before. Ghosts out of the smoke.

And the possibility of Maisie Day.

* * * *

Sam didn’t have to wait until Tagger’s. Sunny had borrowed a clean van

from Raph Swale, and as soon as they were on the city road and he’d

switched on the dampeners, Sam asked it.

“A new Landing?”

“Not as easy as that,” Sunny said.

“Sailmaker’s had a kid,” Walt said from the back. “Replicated.”

Sam was truly surprised. One hundred and eighty-six Landings

across the planet and all of them pretty much stable since The Sailmaker

had arrived. “Hadn’t heard.”

Sam didn’t need to look back. Walt would be giving that look.

“Have to know if it’s something local or a new arrival,” Sunny added,

hardly necessary but these were new days. Maybe Sunny was worried that

Sam would ask him to pull over and let him out. “Couldn’t risk it back in the

Automatic. World Health wants known teams. Two of the best.”

The World Health Organization in full stride again. The WHO doctors!

“How bad?” Sam asked, remembering how the original Sailmaker had

started, how it had changed everything, destroyed so many crews,

discouraged the rest.

“Nowhere near mature, but they’ve tracked fourteen towns to date,

half in Europe, rest in Asia. None in the Americas this time. Another six are

possible, but overlaps are still making it hard to tell.”

“Stats?”

“Last posting for the fourteen: two hundred and forty thousand people

down. Recovery teams got to the European sites, but you know how Asia

can be.”

Used to know , Sam almost said, ready with attitude. But kept it back.

Nothing ever really changes, considering .

“How far from the original?” he asked, thinking of The Sailmaker out

there in the hot desert on the edge of the Amadeus Basin, so far away.

“Right near Dancing Doris. Sixty ks outside Broken Hill.”

“It’ll all depend on our pure!” Sam said, stating the obvious, the too

obvious, but giving them the old Sam Aitchander standard. Part of him, too

big a part of him really, suddenly wanted things as they were back then.

Known.

They let it be. He let it be. They drove the rest of the way to the

Bendigo Gate in silence. Another time it would have been companionable

and welcome. Now there was too much fear.

A Sailmaker almost at the perimeter , Sam thought. They’re closing

in .

* * * *

Tagger’s was on the very edge of the Krackenslough, that glinting landflow

from the only Landing phenomenon, globally, ever to involve striking back at

civilization from inside a Landing perimeter with large-scale coarse action

above and beyond the shut-down fugues. There was that single calamitous

event, tearing up so much of eastern Australia, then The Sailmaker arriving

eight years later. Perhaps, experts argued, The Sailmaker had caused that

singular event, already on its way.

Now this. Sailmaker Two. Sailmaker Redux, whatever you could call it,

and here in Australia again, would you believe? However it fell, proof that

the Landings were there: a constant in all their lives. Ongoing.

They left the clean van in the holding yard at Becker’s, and Sam went

with Walt and Sunny through the Bendigo Gate, finally made it to the large

taproom of Tagger’s with the windows showing the red land and red sky

before them. The forty-six Australian Landings were a day away, scattered

over three hundred and forty thousand hectares, twenty days across on

Terry Dowling - Flashmen.pdf

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