Strange Horizons, July 2002 Page 8
GB: What sort of impact would you like to make?
SB: Oh wow. Well, first, I'd like to inspire young black writers. Right now, I'm the only black male writer writing science fiction today. There's Chip Delany, but he stopped writing science fiction twenty years ago. I'm it, and that can't be. There are a number of women of color in the field. Octavia Butler, of course, does wonderful, phenomenal work.
Second, my work with Lifewriting, in which one writes as if you, the writer, were going through the journey that your characters are experiencing. I keep coming back to that, approaching it from different angles. I think I'm getting closer.
I'd like to see my sales high enough to see an impact. I don't have to sell like Stephen King, but I'd like to have, say, one tenth the sales of King. In a couple of years I'll be moving back to California, back to Hollywood. There are so few films with positive imagery of black men. I'd like to contribute to providing healthy images for young black men. I'd like to add my voice to that dialogue.
One of the insidious dangers of Hollywood movies, especially extremely powerful movies such as Gone With the Wind, is that they portray Blacks without inwardness. Nothing could be more poisonous. If you ask yourself for one moment, would the Black characters in Gone With the Wind enjoy what they're doing, the movie falls apart. I want to provide alternatives to that world.
GB: I'd like to touch on a technical point. In several works you've either had a major figure dead throughout the book (Blood Brothers, Charisma, The Kundalini Equation), or off-stage through most of it (Swarma in Firedance). Why does this appeal to you so?
SB: That's interesting. I hadn't thought about that, not as a conscious pattern until you asked. I don't know. >pauses< Then maybe it is because my father wasn't around. A Freudian would have a field day with that.
GB: Well, I wouldn't want to push anyone into the Freudian camp.
SB:
GB: Well then, let's close with this. Who inspires or influences you as a writer?
SB: [Harlan] Ellison. [Robert] Heinlein, especially his sense of the untapped potential of the human race. [Arthur C.] Clarke. Clarke communicates a sense that the universe is a spiritual place that was very precious to me. [Edgar Rice] Burroughs. [Robert E.] Howard. Mickey Spillane. [Leslie] Charteris.
* * * *
Greg Beatty recently completed his Ph.D. in English at the University of Iowa, where he wrote a dissertation on serial killer novels. He attended Clarion West 2000, and any rumors you've heard about his time there are, unfortunately, probably true. Greg's previous publications in Strange Horizons can be found in our Archive.
Visit Steven Barnes's Web site.
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Other Villas
By Erika Peterson, illustration by Jeff Doten
7/1/02
Flavia heard the scrape of footsteps, quick and light, on the loose rocks of the road. She let fall her needlework and hurried through the portico, thinking she would find Caius back from a day on the hills with the goatherds. But the small figure who approached was not her son.
It was one of those children.
He carried on his hip another child, a girl with dark curling locks who looked no older than two. The boy had the appearance of a child of six, but he held the other child's weight with no awkwardness, and his steps were sure.
Flavia could not imagine why he walked. It was more their way to arrive unannounced, to appear swimming in the water trough between one dip of the ewer and the next, and then to fly away over the yard in a flurry of laughter. Flavia and her household never talked to the wild children. If one tried to pretend that they were simply little birds or animals, they were less disturbing.
The look on the face of this one was sober and adult. He stopped at the foot of the steps and stood in the white heat as if waiting for her.
Half-unwilling, she left the shade of the portico and sat on the dusty steps, directly in front of him. He joined her, settling the toddler on his lap. The girl looked up at Flavia and moved her lips in something like a smile.
“Are you well, Flavia? And Caius Amatius?” the older child asked.
“We're both well, thank you.” Useless to wonder how he knew their names. There were powers here, Flavia knew, but they did not intrude where they were not wanted, and they were not wanted at this villa. Perhaps they had sent the boy to speak for them. The little girl waved her arm at Flavia, and Flavia took the girl's hand loosely in her own. She drew her thumb lightly across the plump palm with its delicate lines; the girl laughed and pulled her hand away. Then a look of distress crossed her face. She looked from Flavia to the boy in confusion. Flavia touched the girl's cheek and made soothing noises. There was no strange wisdom in the little girl's eyes, no flash of visions beyond sight.
This was what children had looked like when Flavia was alive.
“She's Amatia, your husband's youngest daughter,” the boy told her.
“What? But I didn't know she was even ill!"
“The plague is in Rome again."
Flavia knelt before the steps, the better to see the girl's face. Yes. The shape of her eyes and the breadth of her forehead, they were just like the features of her own son. “And you've brought her here to stay with me?"
“It wouldn't be right not to give you the choice,” the boy sighed. “But it won't make you happy. I know that. You can let the child come back with me. I promise we'll reunite her with her parents when the time comes."
“No. No. Why would you bring her here at all if you don't want her to stay? Look at her, how young she is! She needs a family. She'll stay with me.” Flavia tried to keep her words calm, but she wanted to snatch the girl away from him, shelter her and hide her away, before the boy could change his mind and lure her into the wilderness. Perhaps he sensed that, for he stood up and passed the girl to Flavia, who nestled her in her lap and kissed her soft hair.
The girl's skin was pale and fine as silk. Her bones were sturdy, more prominent at the wrist than Flavia would have expected. Flavia remembered her with the tiny, round limbs of an infant; she had seen her once or twice at that age. She had never been sure whether it was a proper thing to do, to seek out visions of her husband and his new wife and their life together. She thought that perhaps as long as Titus Amatius still missed her and remembered her, it wasn't wrong. But last year he hadn't visited Flavia's tomb, and now she did not watch his family.
“Flavia, you have no obligation to her. She would be so happy with us."
Flavia stared up at him. “Please, could you leave now? Before Caius gets home."
The air brightened and the boy faded.
That wordless knowledge. That too-shining joy. Every day she feared she would awaken to find them in the face of her son.
Wait—the solemn boy might go to Caius, might be whispering wild thoughts in his ear even now. At that thought, Flavia began to run, out through the garden and into the yellow hills to find her son, scarcely noticing the weight of the girl at her hip.
* * * *
Flavia watched Caius practicing his letters in the dust. Amatia sat beside him, and whenever he would lean back to think of another word, she would lean forward and smack the dirt with her palm, ruining what he had written. He didn't seem to mind; he was always so patient with her.
Then she heard a new burst of laughter from the shed where the farmhands were threshing, and one dusty man after another emerged. “It's finished!” someone cheered. The threshers dispersed throughout the yard, some to wash at the trough, some to rest in the shade beneath the poplars, some to the kitchen to nag old Luculla to hurry with the midday meal. Gnaeus Fortius came to Flavia with his report.
“We did everything just as we've always done it. The work was no easier and no harder, and we've as much grain as we had in a good year."
“Make the work easier,” she said quietly. He looked like he would protest, and she shushed him. “I don't want anyone to leave! I want us all to be happy. They must realize by now that no one need stay and thresh. They can do anything they dream of. Why do they stay?"
“Why do you? You could join Verus in Rome and live like an empress on larks’ tongues and roast peacock."
“This is my home."
He nodded as if that settled things. “It should be a month till the grape harvest."
“I'll note it in my diary. We should take everyone out to the vineyard this evening—let them see the grapes and think of their ripening. Then we'll count the days."
The serving-women brought out clay bowls and wooden platters laden with bread, cheese, fruits, and greens. Flavia called the children to her. They took their food and went to sit on the low wall that enclosed the yard. Flavia set Amatia in her lap and fed her bites of plum. She knew already that Amatia didn't like the skin, so she peeled it off and held the fruit by its fragile flesh, the juice running down her arm as she steadied it for another bite.
Amatia rarely ate. At every meal Flavia fussed over her, offering her every delicacy at the table and coaxing her with smiles. The other women joined in, too. They reminisced about other difficult eaters they had known. No one acknowledged that there was no longer any need for Amatia to eat, or for any of them to.
Caius ate. He was sitting next to her right now, eating bread and honey; his white teeth tore at the bread's hard crust. He ate, he drank, he even grew. It had been seven years since pestilence had ravaged the farms of their valley, bringing them all here, mistress and son, servants and families. Caius hadn't grown to be a youth of sixteen as he should have, but he had grown. He looked to be twelve, perhaps.
Did he grow because he ate? Or simply because he was old enough to know that growing is what children do?
Maybe she should ask one of the wild children. She could catch one next washing day. They often came to the river to watch the proceedings, looking curious and uncomprehending as little cats. But she knew now that some of them did comprehend. Some of them could put words to their knowledge. She could drag one out from the bushes where they played beneath the drying laundry. She could carry him home and feed him honey cakes and candied nuts until he agreed to answer all the terrible questions she had not yet dared to ask.
Amatia wriggled in her arms, and Flavia realized she was crushing the poor child to her chest.
* * * *
Mutton roasted on a spit over the fire. Flavia chopped leeks. Luculla and Clodia lifted bread from the oven. Once, Flavia and Caius and Titus had eaten their dinner apart from the others. There was no sense in those distinctions now.
Hoofbeats and shouts came from the yard. Flavia leapt up, then smoothed her gown and moved at a more seemly pace toward the door. Tonight of all nights, Lucius should see her dignified and composed.
When Lucius came in, his hands were cold and the evening air hung in the folds of his toga. He murmured a greeting in her ear, and she in his. Then he stopped still.
She knew, before stepping back from him, before looking over her shoulder, that he was seeing Amatia playing on the floor. “She's Titus's daughter. Vera's daughter,” she explained.
“I know,” he said. He looked from the child to her. She saw pity for her, but no surprise.
“Did they—They brought her to you first, didn't they?” she asked.
He knelt on the clay tiles beside Amatia. He tilted his head and seemed to study the girl. Flavia returned to the table to master her tears. So many of the body's embarrassments were forgotten now, lost unless one called them up, yet tears still came unbidden.
“Flavia, what do you think will happen?” he asked gently.
“It doesn't matter what will happen.” If he objected, she would not defend herself. Nor would she ask him how he could have turned away his own daughter's child. She would simply take her new daughter in her arms and go sit in the moonlight under the fig tree. He would ride away back to Rome. He might never return.
Lucius came and stood next to her, his back to the table, his shoulder touching hers. He said nothing. Flavia scooped up the leeks and moved them to a bowl. She wiped her hands clean.
“And how is Rome?” she asked, finally, when silence had stretched so long that surely it meant acceptance.
“Which one?"
“Yours, of course."
“Swamped with philosophers. Athens must be emptied; the halls of all the palaces are clogged with Greeks. The debate is noisy and ceaseless. Heady stuff, but I needed a respite."
Flavia left the final preparations to the servants. She picked up Amatia and led Lucius to the chamber where once she and her family had dined every night. Luculla had already slipped in and lit the oil lamps.
“What do they debate these days?” she asked him, settling into a carved chair.
“What don't they? And sometimes I think ‘debate’ does them too much credit. Before I came here, we all took a trip to see Nero. Don't let anyone tell you that philosophers are high-minded. They may have cheerfully given up all the pleasures of the body in favor of endless talk, yet when they stare and probe at a monster like Nero they're as avid as a mob at an execution. They all maintain that the purpose was to discuss what a bad example he provides, but in truth, we went to gawk. I at least am honest about it."
Caius burst into the room. He and Lucius exchanged affectionate greetings, then he ran off again to eat with the servants’ children. Dinner was brought in. Flavia and Lucius were left alone.
With Lucius there to protect her, the fear of drifting was muted, becoming something akin to anticipation.
Once she had gone for a walk with him, far down the road out of sight of the villa. She had plaited poppies to wear in her hair and scuffed the dust up with her bare feet. They lingered to watch hawks soaring over an escarpment, and they argued over whether they had imagined the hawks into being and if so, whose thought it had been.
When they returned, the villa was gone.
Flavia remembered running. Where the lane should have been there was only meadow; she forced her way through the tangled plants, her gown hitched up. She didn't panic, not entirely, at first. She felt strangely certain that the house was just invisible. She walked toward it with her arms out like a blind woman. Farther and farther she walked, and touched nothing. Then she ran again, arms whirling, stumbling, crying out.
Lucius grabbed her; she struggled against him as if he were keeping her from saving her child from drowning. Finally he caught hold of her hair and twisted it around his hand. He pressed his cheek against hers. “Close your eyes,” he whispered. “Think of Caius. How he looks. How he smells. The home you've made for him."
“Caius,” she moaned, and he hushed her.
“No, think. See him. Do you see him?” She made some noise. He said, “My eyes are closed, too. Step forward, walk toward him, just a few steps. Now open your eyes."
There Caius was, sitting on a bench in the farmyard with one of the men, learning how to whittle. Her sobs of relief must have embarrassed him, but he returned her embrace anyway.
After that, everyone had slowly learned how to keep from drifting, and how to find their way home when they did. But they all feared it.
Lucius didn't. He lived in Rome, that vortex of the swirling dreams of thousands of people. He traveled alone to see her—with less fear than he had ever felt traveling in life, he said.
Sometimes when he visited her, they would emerge from a chamber after some time alone to find the house empty and echoing. Knowing that she could find her son again as soon as she wished to, she would allow herself to taste for a few moments the sensation of being lost, before she could stand it no longer.
“Nero is as mad as ever,” Lucius was saying. “Seneca can always find him; he led us all there. Vi
le as Nero is, he's a passable architect. He sustains acres of lavish palaces, and some of them are not without aesthetic appeal. He gave us a tour. Everywhere we went, the creations of his mind made obeisance to him. Senators, slaves, prostitutes, priestesses ... the whole panoply of Rome, bowing and cheering. We played along with it at first, but soon some couldn't resist baiting him. It was an ill thing to do, for all that it had its amusing side. It wasn't long before Nero was red-faced and spitting with rage. He must have hurled an entire legion of exotics at us—bronze-clad Parthians with bows, black Africans with golden scimitars—and of course nothing could touch us. He was on the verge of apoplexy when we left."
They ate in silence for a time. Flavia shifted Amatia on her lap. The girl drew Lucius's attention again.
“If my husband hadn't married your daughter, we never would have met,” Flavia began, starting the explanation she had promised herself she wouldn't give. It would sound as if she was begging to keep Amatia, like a child with a stray dog.
“When the messenger came,” Lucius interrupted, “and I sent the girl away with him, it wasn't because I don't care for her. Or for my daughter. Or for you. I did it so that the child could be free."
“What a horrible freedom!” Flavia protested.
Lucius rose and came to stand behind her. He rested one hand on her shoulder and the other on Amatia's head. The girl looked up at him. “Bread,” she said, holding up the sticky crust she had been sucking on.
“Yes, bread,” Flavia agreed.
“I wish you would come back to Rome with me,” he said from above her. “The children, too, of course."
“No. This is where we belong."
His hand left her shoulder. He moved away. “There's so much you need to see! Not just the palaces and monuments; if that were all there was to it, I could build Rome here for you in a day. But the people, the soul of Rome.... You isolate yourselves here, your handful of people, and enslave yourselves to your past. The same few words, the same well-worn actions over and over again. Can that really be what the gods intended for you? The people who have come together in Rome are brilliant and kind. They would welcome you into their fellowship in an instant."