Life Never Stops Being Amazing

Posted on February 18, 2015 by Kate

Kage Baker loved novelty – on her own terms. That meant she preferred to sneak up on it, examine it from hiding, then ambush if it looked interesting. If it didn’t please her, she liked having the option to creep away and deny she’d been anywhere near it.

This was because she also liked tradition. Established routines made her feel safe. If something good happened a certain way once,  it had to happen that way all the time: traditions didn’t need much time to settle in, just a high enough quotient of GOOD. And she was suspicious and disapproving of anything that interfered with what she expected to happen.

It was difficult to get her to try new foods, for instance. Being one of many in the maternal dining room, she managed to refuse suspect foods much longer than usual: from toddlerhood until well into her adult years. For instance, until Kage left home, moved in with me and had to eat my cooking, she had never eaten lots of things that actually became favourite foods: Brussels sprouts. Yorkshire pudding. Any pasta other than spaghetti.  She was in her 30’s before she discovered oysters; her 40’s, before foie gras; her 50’s, before lobster.

The one novelty she embraced without hesitation was travelling. Any new road was instantly fascinating, and Kage could barely wait to find out where it went. New horizons were something for which she had an unslakeable appetite. In fact, she often worked out new routes to old destinations, just so she could try a now road, a fresh approach. We had scenic routes everywhere, ways we took to the most mundane places in order to make them more fun. If we were doing an ordinary shopping – especially if we were momentarily poor, which happened a lot – then going to a new grocery store would make limited budgets more entertaining to use.

If she had a bad day at work, Kage would request the long way home – in Pismo, we’d drive down to the streets that hung just above the beach and follow the coastline all the way. You can drive for miles between the houses and the vast beach, and never lose sight of the sea. And going to work in the morning was enriched by a swing down through the municipal parking lots, to observe the clouds of terns and plovers and sandpipers sweep over the early waves.

Terrified though she was of flying, she could never resists the chance to be in a new place. I think it’s the only reason she ever consented to attend conventions out of state at all. Even so, Kage was willing to drive for  days to both see a fresh city and avoid a plane; I got us 1,000 miles in all directions from the Pacific coast. Every time we passed a point we’d reached before, Kage would cheer New road! New road from here on!, leaning out the window while her braid bannered out behind her.

Good thing that driving was Kage’s preferred method of travel, too. (Though she’d have taken sailing ships if there were a clipper service between Los Angeles and Las Vegas …) Daughters of California that we were, we knew how to live in a car. If I could find a car, Kage could find a road: and we could get anywhere.

I’ve been to many more states since she died, more than she ever saw. I fly quite happily, though I can still do long-distance drives for quite a distance, too. This May, I shall be at BayCon in San Jose – which jaunt is a mere gallope, a saunter up I-5. Then in August, I am heading to Seattle, there to pick up my travelling companion – the retired mastermind who was the model for the Unfortunate Mr. Gytte – and we are going to WorldCon at Spokane. New horizons, Dear Readers, new experiences.

Plus, today I finally discovered ramen noodles, which were delightful. How I reached this advanced age and never tried them before is a bit of a mystery to me. But I liked ’em.

There’s still such a lot to do that’s new and wonderful. Kage would be pleased.

 

Tomorrow: next bit of the story

 

 

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Edges and Islands V

Posted on February 17, 2015 by Kate

Kage Baker actually did have a real life. It was kind of strange, and she tended to hammer it into the narrow gaps between world-building and writing things down – but she actually did possess access to an IRL universe.

She didn’t like most of it very much. The real world – local news, global trends and situations, geo-political games: it all tended to upset her. She was afraid of road rage people. She was afraid of the deranged strangers who mutter half-audible threats behind you in grocery store lines. She was afraid of the interpersonal tensions that make the lunch room at work into a mine field. She dreaded phone calls after 10 PM; when, she said, people only call to tell you they are dead.

To hide from personal pain, Kage wrote.  Nothing matters but the work: a philosophy taken from her own life, her own solution to those times when things are intolerable. She didn’t always keep what she wrote in those times, but just writing it down got her through the Dark Lands.

Sometimes writing – like any other art – is more about survival than anything else.

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What I remember most is the light.

It was a silver light, at the beginning of things. Everywhere, even at night – beyond the fire that burned in the spear-slit doorway of our cave, the light of the moon and stars was blue-white on the snow and the pale stones. It was almost as clear as day – we see well in the dark – but in daytime, the light had a glitter to it like the sea; like waves you couldn’t see danced and sparkled in the sky. I suppose it was ice in the air.

I had seen the sea twice, though, before all the grown-ups went away. It was a half-day’s walk, carried in a bag on someone’s back. We went twice; the second time, I was big enough to run on the yellow sands of the beach. The grown ups caught salmon, and on the way home there were silver scales glittering in every bag, and on every shoulder. That’s why I remember the light so clearly – everything shone, everything danced like fish scales in the sun.

And then, after Artur and Iris and Eiluned came and took me away, the light of the entire world changed, It was red and gold then, everywhere and all the time; when I napped in the cool white halls with the other, stranger kids, all the shadows on the walls were a pale pink glow.  At dawn the sky burned white, and at sunset it smoldered down into the red earth, and when it rained the distant rocks to the South and East were purple. There wasn’t any ocean, but there was the lake; it glittered pretty well. But the light was never, ever cold.

I didn’t mind. I wasn’t cold,  either.

***

It was terribly cold, the day I was left behind. I was all wrapped up in fur and leather, though, even with the long socks that tied to the bottom of my tunic: so I was warm, and I ran around and played until I got tired. Then I lay down in a safe little cavelet I knew, and went to sleep. Nobody had told me we were moving camp that day, I guess because I was still mostly part of the baggage. Momma told me not to go to far away, but she always said that. And I didn’t listen, and so I was asleep in my hidden place when all the grown-ups walked away. I like to think they hunted and called for me – I’m just about certain they did. But I didn’t hear them, and they didn’t find me, and when I woke up and walked home they were all gone away.

They took most of the skins, and all of the food. They didn’t bank the fire completely, though – there was nothing to burn out of control in the cave – so I could feed the fire and keep it alive. I could probably have stayed alive for several days like that, if nothing grabbed me when I went out to search for food and fuel. But Artur and the others were watching, because it was their business to save children who were left behind. It was barely dark when I heard them calling softly outside, so as not to surprise me, and then a big man came pushing into the firelight. There was a lady with him, and another person behind them in the shadows.

I’d never seen anyone other than my family, but my momma had told me there were other people in the world. She taught me to be polite to them, because new people were a gift in the empty world. So I made the welcome sign with both my hands (because I couldn’t remember which one I was supposed to use in mixed company). They both smiled at me at that, and Artur answered with his own big right hand and said, “Hello, little flower. My name is Artur, and these ladies are Eiluned and Iris.”

Artur was fine – just a big man, with sandy-yellow hair and bright grey eyes. Eiluned was all right, too, though she was darker than my momma. But she looked like a person.

Iris, though … Iris was the ugliest person I’d ever met.  Her hair was short and curly and black, like paint. Her eyes were small and squinchy, and black, too, which made her look blind to me, and I could barely look at her nose; it looked like the end had been cut off, leaving her nostrils gaping and exposed. Her skin was a colour I would have thought was pretty on a piece of agate – but I’d never before seen a lady the dark brown of jasper, so it was  strange and scary. Her face was small and scrunched up on the front of her head, and when she turned to the side, it looked like part of her skull was … just gone.

Iris was pretty much the most disturbing thing I had ever seen in my life.

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Caveat: the foregoing is the intellectual property of Kathleen Bartholomew. http://atomic-temporary-14891989.wpcomstaging.com/                    materkb@gmail.com

 

 

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Islands and Edges NULL

Posted on February 15, 2015 by Kate

Kage Baker at least only caught influenza once a year.

At the moment, I’m very jealous of that. I am either starting on my 4th bout – which blows my statistical theory into a cocked hat – or the last rendition of the damned thing has entered a new, pneumo-thorax-centered phase that intends to flirt heavily with pneumonia before it either kills me or lets me go.

At this point, I am not especially opposed to either solution. However, I am going to write even as I drown in my own noticeably brachycephalic  skull … Neanderthal skulls, you know, were dolichocephalic. So are several kinds of modern Homo sapiens, including Australian Aborigines. I’m thinking, if I were dolichocepalic, I might be able to take the pressure off my damned lungs by tilting my head back – you know, so all the fluid would run to the back of my head, which I fondly imagine as a big bone balloon …

However, I know it’s not a balloon, and besides – I have the traditional modern human skull, which means it’s as round as a cantaloupe. This also means that as the mucus in my lungs rises to the base of my trachea, my head fills up like a fishbowl. Then I cough mightily; and – so far! – clear enough passage to breathe in and out. I can even breathe through my nose, because my sinuses are as empty as an unlocked warehouse of       stalled-by-the-port-strike electronics.

What I can’t do is take a deep breath. Or, indeed, more than 15 minutes worth of any kind of breath before having to blow all the positive pressure in my lungs.

Gonna go build up all my pillows into a ramp, and try to sleep sitting up. Then tomorrow I’m going to my doctor and demand he vacuum out my lungs. Maybe that will help.

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Being Dunyazade

Posted on February 13, 2015 by Kate

Kage Baker felt that accessorizing was a vital component of life. All tasks and experiences, she believed, were enhanced by having the appropriate add-ons to hand: the right idols, the right music, the right snacks. The idea was to broaden and enhance an  already-favourable ambiance,  and thus extend its beneficial influence.

Feng shui appealed to her; she tried several of its staples, and added the ones that seemed to work to her own life. Elephants, jade, doors at cardinal points, scarlet and gold in appropriate places; these joined her personal juju of old concert tickets, sea water, white shoes and gold earrings. No crystals near her, especially not amethyst or quartz: they gave her migraines. A Bebe from a King’s Cake, wind-up animals, pieces of shipwreck – there was one carved into a door guard by the front door, and another large spar built into the frame of her bed.

Some of it was for moods, some of it was for relaxation and/or focus. Some of it was practical magic. It worked for Kage. I don’t know why …

Kage encouraged me all the time to develop a suite of accessories that would similarly aid me in creative endeavours; the same way I nagged her to take feverfew to fend off her headaches. We each considered these to be sensible, common-sense solutions for certain domestic problems … they both worked for Kage. They didn’t work for me.

The closest I’ve gotten to helpful juju is my writing cap. I do find that it’s easier to write, especially to begin writing, if I am wearing my black and silver smoking cap. As long as the tassel is firmly to the back … I assume it’s an automatic reflex; I’ve set it up on an unconscious level as a positive stimulus.  But you know what Kage would say?

You don’t need ‘positive stimulus’, you maroon, she would say. You need magic!

I’m don’t know any magic, though. Kage played a few games of Free Cell before she settled down to write, and checked certain web sites to get into the right groove: animated gifs, mostly. I just research plot points – I print a few things, to have on immediate hand for visual reference, but mostly it’s all in my head.

It does slow me down a little, because I then have to correlate, cross-file and regress to the mean. Or something of that nature. If I thought magic would help, I’d try it – but honestly, Dear Readers, I’ve just never gone in near as much for talismans as Kage did.

Dunyazade must have had problems like this. You know her, Dear Readers; she was Scheherezade’s little sister, often assumed to be an invisible listener in the royal bed chambre … Not only was Scheherazade a hard act to follow, her sister must have wondered – how the hell did she do it? What was the secret?

There is no indication that Dunyazade ever found out.

Me, I have found it necessary today to do some in depth research on Charlotte. I’m collecting my own talismans, I think. Why is she Charlotte? What does she look like? There’s been a face in my mind for some time, two of them, really – one a little girl, and one a scowling teenager. It took me a while to find them again, though, from where I had first seen them and been at once haunted by their sea-water eyes …

They’re Neanderthals. You probably suspected that, Dear Readers, when Charlotte announced her birth in England 40,000 years ago. There weren’t many folks there during the last few glacials and interglacials. Some of them were Neanderthals.

Her home has solidified, too; the soft green hills rising above the River Elwy, near Cefn Meiriadog. It’s in Wales, and Neanderthals once lived there, to judge by the hand axes and some teeth.  Cefn is a village. Its name means  “the side of a hill”; the Meiriadog in question is Saint Meriadoc.

I find myself thinking of Charlotte as a sort of proto-Took  or Brandybuck … short and stocky and round-faced, with no chin to speak of, but ice-water eyes and pale red hair over the gentle double curve of her brow. I think she’s pretty. I don’t know what she thinks yet.

But I will soon.

 

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Islands and Edges IV; January 10th II

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Kate

Kage Baker tried to make sure she had an outline before she began a story. That sounds like the most logical thing in the world to a non-writer, I’d imagine; but really, it can be something you have to remember to plan ahead. Sometimes inspiration is not only sudden, it’s insensible – you write in a frantic white heat, and by the time the ripples in the air die down, you’ve written yourself in to a corner.

Then you need to get a plot ASAP. Characters are nice, too, though some may obligingly be precipitated out of the energy of the story. Kage’s solution to this was to always have a few characters and plots in storage – bits and pieces she scribbled down and socked away, and tossed into stories when she needed extra texture. Sometimes they even turned into the point of the story; “Old Flathead” ended up like that.

And I am now in a similar position with the Aussie story. Luckily, I have this cupboard full of bits and pieces …

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Now it’s time to focus in on Australia Base, time to drop down and drop in and see what has been growing here.

The staff was drawn from all ages. As soon as there was a need and a destination, they began to arrive; it didn’t matter where they were born, there was plenty of room for them to work in the past.  Some were from the original European field stations, but most were future graduates of Australia Base; they circled back into a past before their own births, to make sure the cycle got started properly.

By Year 20 or so, there were home-grown Staff as well. But we still got neophytes from all the disasters of human history – small confused children from all over, who were delivered to the huge open-air nursery of Australia Base.

As soon as the facilities were complete, the saved showed up.  Botany and Biology began to differentiate like bacteria in a growth medium – projects arrived from every where and most whens, and were settled wherever was convenient for their keepers: small herds took possession of dozens of small, customized meadows. The native beasts and plants were sheltered on the edges, the imports in the center – there was some trouble with the aurochs and the carnivorous kangeroos, I remember, but they learned very quickly to leave one another alone.

It gave the place an aura of permanence from the very first. Traditions came pre-installed. There have always been people here who remember it. This made the mortals from the Future nervous as hell, but they only got to see inventories, graduation lists and pictures – they never saw the Base itself, not once the children began to arrive.

There were sensors and alarms on the perimeters, but no walls. Earth and air flowed through the Base, maintaining the shape of the land under it. The white walls and red roofs grew softened with dust – in dunes, and lines, and curtains on the wind. It made patterns on the walkways, when it didn’t just bury them. On the walls of the dormitories, there were always dozens of little red hand prints, after the custom of the country – neophytes’ hands outlined by the blowing red dust, constantly erased and re-drawn.

***

And so there we were! The first crop planted was children. Baby cyborgs played in the new fields, followed their elders into the new barns and paddocks, and learned to use their new senses on the rows of exotic seedlings and strange animals.

Australia Base was the home of transplants. Rare plants, extinct animals, little-known peoples, and nothing but empty space for miles and miles: all that was needed to make a Garden in the emptiness of the Northern Territories was power and water. For the Company, those were easy to supply. It gave them a Paradise guaranteed unseen for 50,000 years, where no one who came afterwards would ever even think to look. Except for the Anangu – and we were waiting for them anyway. But we had a thousand years or so to get ready for them.

For Central Australia, it was a well-watered place; but where the borders of the Base fields ended, the colours changed. Our fields were all greens and bright flower hues – beyond them, everything look like hot metal and molten glass. Eucalyptus made the ridges and stream beds look like California to us kids, like Disney cartoons and Little Rascals films. The spinifex grass added to the illusion, since it’s a bunch grass and it spends most of its time dried to a deep gold. It glitters, too, from the silica it stores in its leaf tips. They can break off in your skin and cause all sorts of trouble, but it was awfully pretty when the wind blew over it in sparkly waves.

Sometimes we made crowns and antennae out of it, and ran around being space aliens. Especially after surgeries, when some of us had to wear sensor caps and monitor harnesses. It was easy to invent just about anything to play, especially with all the contrasts between  what was growing on the Base – like us – and the native plants and animals all around us. You can make cows look as strange as kangaroos and goannas, if you get into the right mind-set. Or fool around with the settings on your brand-new retinal implants.

I’m Charlotte, by the way. I was born in England, about 40,000 years ago, and raised on Australia Base.  I was there when the People finally came. I remember them.

 

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Caveat: the foregoing is the intellectual property of Kathleen Bartholomew. http://atomic-temporary-14891989.wpcomstaging.com/                    materkb@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

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February 10th, I

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Kate

Kage Baker was into victory dances, at least partially because Harry the Parrot loved to dance with people. Kage could cavort all around the living room with the parrot clinging to her shoulder, shrieking with glee. Both of them, usually … Stories being accepted, payments coming in, publication dates, good reviews – these were all things that had Kage dancing round the room.

I’m not a dancer anymore, but I’m still celebrating a victory today. The March 2015 issue of Asimov’s is on sale now and “Pareidolia” is out! Paper editions per subscription and in good bookstores; e-book formats available for both Nook and Kindle. And both our names are on the cover!

I have no illusions as to why mine is there – I’m being rewarded for carrying Kage’s lamp and not dropping it. I don’t care. I am incandescent with joy. We didn’t get an internal illustration, but that’s kind of a relief – Kage usually had hysterics over the magazine illustrations, which were so awful they were deathless. Her favourite was for “An Incident Concerning Dr. Kalugin”, which had a black and white illo that would have looked great in Famous Monsters of Filmland – and Kage was one to know, because she read that faithfully as a kid.

Anyway, the story is out and will hopefully please. I’ve had a couple of kind remarks sent to me already. I do most sincerely hope this “takes”, because I will have others if anyone wants them. Despite my problems with the flu this winter – a lifetime’s semi-immunity seems to have worn off in one season – there are 3 stories that have actually begun to be written down.

The Aussie story will resume later this afternoon, Dear Readers. Time to identify some characters and find a plot!

And in between bursts of writing, I can stare at the cover of Asimov’s, where our names are together for the latest time …

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Resuming Service

Posted on February 10, 2015 by Kate

Kage Baker was, most adamantly and by deliberate self-design, a writer. She wrote – first, foremost, in preference to almost any other activity, she wrote.

It’s an ideal for most writers. But it takes the kind of dedication, stubbornness and occasional plain good luck that being a professional dancer or musician needs. Simply being able to survive while you write enough to become both good at your craft and financially viable requires something close to a miracle. Kage won a lottery that very few people ever do when she finally succeeded in earning her bread with her writing.

And she was only a mid-list writer! The truly astonishing success of writers like King or Grisham or Meyer makes money in unbelievable amounts; but even just barely making a living at writing is miraculous. Especially in science fiction, where quite successful writers notoriously cannot not give up their day jobs … trust funds, couch-surfing and living in friends’ basements have figured largely in a lot of speculative fiction writers’ lives.

Kage not only made her own living, she was almost able to support me. Within a year or two, I think, she’d have reached that plateau. For years, the way she managed to devote her main energies to writing was via our team effort. She wrote, and pulled in lots of money at wide but repeating intervals; I ran the house, and brought home small amounts on a regular schedule. Kage cooked; I cleaned. She gardened; I drove. She composed, and I read the contracts and paid the bills. It was a rather frenetic way to set up a budget, but it worked.

“Good thing we’ve been short of money all our lives,” was Kage’s cheerful opinion. “We already know how to live on next to nothing. Social Security is gonna be a piece of cake!”

And it would have been, too. The up-side (such as it is) of my hitting old age and bad health more or less simultaneously has been that the last 5 years have been financially … easier. Money disasters have been few. I’ve been able to contribute to the household of which I am now a part – and I have a household of which to be a part at all, which is no small thing in this day and age. Fortune has continued to favour me in this peculiar regard, just as it always – though sometimes at the last minute! – favoured me and Kage.

I firmly believe that moving in with family makes all the difference in the world. If you have been careful with your selection of family, they will last you a lifetime. However, I can’t hand off many of the details of life, as Kage often did to find time for writing. My family is already engaged in lots and lots of necessary things.

For the last 2 weeks, I’ve been battling with persistent and pernicious influenza. Not stomach “flu” (which is a misnomer anyway) but old-fashioned respiratory flu: fevers, aching bones, a chest full of wet concrete. Or so I assume, based on the way it feels and behaves; it may be something more organic. Maybe corn meal mush.

My throat hurts; my voice has been missing, and it sounds weird when it shows up for work. It’s made me cough until my eyeballs fell out, and the sound of my breathing out goes on for 5 seconds after I stop exhaling – to the accompaniment of wheezes, whistles, and angry cat-noises. Sleeping lying down has been impossible, and sleeping sitting up just doesn’t work. I’ve been a mess.

But today, Dear Readers, I am almost recovered! Kimberly has kept me supplied with Kleenex, vital drugs, juice and coffee: I am restored to the land of the living. And she has gently reminded me that I really ought to post something here – it’s not her fault I haven’t, I was just flattened by the wretched virus.

But I am back. The story will resume. Thank you for your patience.

 

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Tomorrow

Posted on February 4, 2015 by Kate

Kage Baker kept her tonsils until she was 31 years old.

It wasn’t her idea. She just never got tonsillitis much as a kid. So, although Kimberly and I had ours out in a job lot at 11 and 10, Kage went on happily into adulthood with never a fear.

Of course, when her tonsils decided to go south in her 31st year, she was profusely unhappy. Not very loudly, though: her throat was too sore … and a diet of ice cream is not as soothing at 31 as it is at 11. Kage mostly went for chocolate egg creams with a dash of rum …

This is on my mind because, while I am blessedly free of the curse of tonsils, I have a sore throat. It showed up yestreday and is getting worse. Having had all too much evidence presented to me lately that I am not the immune system Wonder Woman I used to be, I am casting paranoid glares down my own throat (in a mirror. My eyes are not on stalks.) and have sworn that if I still feel like I’m wearing ice picks in my ears tomorrow, I’m heading for the doctor. I don’t need to host stray Steptococcus strains.

In the meantime, I am curling up and sipping hot drinks, hacking dolorously. But the Aussie story is not over! I have selected a brief cast of about 20 Anangu and a half dozen adult Operatives. Plus various neophytes of both groups, coming to terms with one another more or less under the radar of their elders. All children have a universal knowledge of how to become invisible and evade the observation of their grown-ups: this, I have decided, is a trait firmly fixed in Homo sapiens.

And besides: the Preserver kids would have candy. And the Anangu kids would have dogs.

A match made in somebody or other’s heaven …

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Compiling

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Kate

Kage Baker is … compiling. Inspiring me to compile, anyway. I have to identify some characters, and I’m still flipping through pictures and cave paintings. I’ve made an interesting personal discovery about supraorbital ridges.

Beep boop beep …

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Edges and Islands III

Posted on February 2, 2015 by Kate

Kage Baker  was a model of authorly discipline. She sat down every day and wrote – usually on a deliberately set topic, from a carefully arranged outline, so many words a day, so many points ticked off on a neat list. It was astonishing.

It’s also a deed impossible of duplication. That particular trick of hers remains her signature party piece – I watched her do it, I hung over her shoulder and watched the words flow out from her hands, I listened as she told me every step needed to accomplish that 2,000 words (minimum) every day. And I don’t know how it works. I don’t know how to make it start. I mean, it works when it does happen, but how to make sure it does – ?

It’s a mystery, Dear Readers. Just so you know.

foot_barSo there the Operatives were, building the very first Base. They were on their own, the mortals all having fled back to the Far Future, confident in the ability of their cyborg cultural militia to take a stand in the desert and save the Past for them.

And it wasn’t as if the Operatives of Australia Base were inexperienced. Oh, they had been once – they’d been recruited in the tent-and-inflatable days, raised and trained in outposts like high-tech gypsy camps. Most of them remembered mortals among their teachers, glassy-eyed with tranquilizers and afraid to touch them. All of them were human – or had been: but not all of them looked like it, and none of them were really human any more.

They brought a few agendas of their own to Australia Base right from the beginning. There were to be only immortals among them, except for the brief little mortals who were brought to the Base to be changed. And almost from the first batch of neophytes, a few were set aside, marked as Facilitators; and among those, certain elders set aside a few, very secret more. They didn’t know what they would do with them yet – it just seemed like a good idea to have some secrets.

The Zoology Department went far beyond their orders in setting up. There was room for so much, and they were in the middle of such abundance! They made room not only for the commercially photogenic animals on the Company’s wish list – the pandas and tigers and birds of paradise and Manx cats – but for the insane zoo that was already native to Australia. Someday, the weirder beasties would be wanted too, and there the whole wonderful bestiary  would be.

The thylacine was chosen as the school mascot. The Reptile House quickly became a tourist stop for visiting Operatives, or those delivering livestock and plant slips to the Biology labs. It featured a goanna lizard 27 feet long, and constrictor snakes longer than that. Behind the Reptile House, a huge kennel in a walled compound housed a long-legged crocodile, Quinkana, which was (demonstrably, every few days) faster than a kangaroo.

A modest little bar developed by the outdoor pool, in a small forest of umbrellas and awnings. Harmless horned turtles 8 feet long wandered between the tables, and would most amiably accept the fruit spears from visitors’ cocktails.

The Base was meant, from the very first, to be a fortress for living treasures. There was room for specimen zoos. If orders called for the acquisition of genetic stock for the 9-foot tall Demon Ducks of Doom, the  Bullockornis planei weren’t just sampled, bottled and frozen: they got a private breeding colony on the shores of the young Lake Amadeus. Giant wombats and echidnae the size of sheep roamed the fields around the Base; platypussies 5 feet long kept the Demon Ducks in line down by the lake.

The Operatives lived well on Australia Base; did their jobs with satisfaction, raised their younger siblings, sipped cocktails and watched Uluru turn crimson in the sunset and violet in the rain. And then one day the People came: the Anangu.

The Anangu had walked  around the Mediterranean and the southern edge of Asia, and then come stone-skipping down the island chains to the south east point of Australia. In their heads they carried a unique application of Homo sapiens’ 2 most powerful gifts: speech and imagination.

All that long migration, they apparently kept to themselves, scouted the new lands, and talked about it. They talked about it in ways no one else had yet invented; they made the world into a map with a cast of gods and a backdrop of miracles, and by the time they got to Australia – where they were destined to be alone with their unique world view for more than 40,000 years – they had learned how to make the world they walked though live forever in their heads.

“Anangu”  meant – of course! – The People. Other, less pleasant names waited for them: blackfellas, wogs, abos. Aborigines, which was meant to sound formal and polite but pretty much meant “sub-human”. Actually, they were unique among the African Diaspora, and the Company had sent its Operatives to wait for them. Oh, there would be a few problem infestations ahead – rabbits,cane toads, Englishmen. But the Anangu would be preserved.

Because the Company wanted to save everything that was uniquely human, just in case they ever had to be invented again. And the Anangu were a sort of Ur-Homo sapiens; the  original model that walked out of Africa, almost undiluted. They interbred with very few of the cousins. They went away into the haze on the ocean, and unlike the sea birds, they never came back.  But they had the blue prints for everything.

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Caveat: the foregoing is the intellectual property of Kathleen Bartholomew. http://atomic-temporary-14891989.wpcomstaging.com/                    materkb@gmail.com

 

 

 

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