Shoreline of Infinity 18 Read online

  Award-winning science fiction magazine

  published in Scotland for the Universe.

  ISSN 2059-2590

  ISBN 978-1-9993331-8-8

  © 2020 Shoreline of Infinity.

  Contributors retain copyright of own work.

  Shoreline of Infinity is available in digital and print editions.

  Submissions of fiction, art, reviews, poetry, non-fiction are welcomed: visit the website to find out how to submit.

  www.shorelineofinfinity.com

  Publisher

  Shoreline of Infinity Publications / The New Curiosity Shop

  Edinburgh

  Scotland

  110620

  We’re supporting

  and we thank Cymera for supporting us.

  Shoreline of Infinity

  Science Fiction Magazine

  Editorial Team

  Guest Editors Tendai Huchi and Raman Mundair (poetry)

  Co-founder, Editor-in-Chief:

  Noel Chidwick

  Co-founder, Art Director:

  Mark Toner

  Deputy Editor & Poetry Editor:

  Russell Jones

  Reviews Editor:

  Samantha Dolan

  Non-fiction Editor:

  Pippa Goldschmidt

  Copy editors:

  Iain Maloney, Russell Jones, Pippa Goldschmidt, Richard Ridgwell

  First Contact

  www.shorelineofinfinity.com

  [email protected]

  Twitter: @shoreinf

  and on Facebook

  Cover: Jackie Duckworth Art

  If you want to read the print edition order it from

  https://www.shorelineofinfinity.com/product/shoreline-of-infinity-18/

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  Table of Contents

  Shoreline of Infinity 18 - Spotlight in BAME Science Fiction

  Pull up a Log

  Zen Cho – Odette

  K. M. McKenzie – Mobay Woods

  Prashanth Srivatsa – Perumal and the God of Words

  D.A. Xiaolin Spires – Sakahlu Homeland

  Asith Pallemulla – The Digital Man

  Feng Gooi – The Seven Day Ghost

  Tobi Ogundiran – Isn’t Your Daughter Such a Doll

  Stepping Through the Portal: Guest editorsRaman Mundair and Tendai Huchu in conversation

  The History of Japanese Science Fiction: from the 1930s to the 2010s

  The Dangers of Expectation in African Speculative Fiction (Excerpt)

  Reviews

  Multiverse – Jeda Pearl, Mandisi Nkomo, Robert René Galván

  Cymera, Scotland’s Futures Forum and Shoreline of Infinity’s Competition for speculative short fiction 2020 – the results

  Laura Scotland – The Chrysalis

  In Need of a Laugh

  Pull up a Log

  Can we give a warm welcome to Raman Mundair and Tendai Huchu our guests editors for Shoreline of Infinity 18.

  Guest Editors: Tendai Huchu and Raman Mundair

  For this issue we turn the spotlight onto BAME science fiction. It was back in December 2019 BC (Before COVID-19) when the editorial team, including Tendai and Raman, sat around a table in the Storytelling Centre Café in Edinburgh. With excitement and anticipation we planned this issue, aiming to attract established and new BAME writers from around the world. Take a look at that list of contents over there and you can see how well the guest editors performed; this is a beautiful collection of tales and writings.

  This achievement means so much considering all that has happened in the last six months with the effects of the coronavirus on health and society. In the aftermath of the appalling killing of George Floyd, we are watching news and social media reports from the USA, and as I type I have no idea what the world is going to be like when you are reading this.

  As the clouds gather perhaps Shoreline of Infinity 18 can be a tiny beacon for the creative spirit of the human race.

  We have a winner!

  Congratulations to Laura Scotland for winning the (takes deep breath) Cymera, Scotland’s Futures Forum and Shoreline of Infinity’s Competition for speculative short fiction 2020. The judges describe Laura’s story The Chrysalis as “emotionally compelling.”

  —Noel Chidwick, June 2020

  Odette

  Zen Cho

  Art: Alice Cao

  Odette’s time for hope was short.

  Early that morning, the first morning of the rest of her life, she’d gone out of her house to the end of the garden. The air was as pure as the breath that first animated the clay of Adam’s flesh. She looked out over the island and saw no limitations.

  But then she saw him – Uncle Andrew, in his polo shirt and khaki shorts, coming out for his daily morning walk. He pretended not to see her as he opened the gate and passed her by, but he knew she was there.

  Odette realised her life had not changed after all. She would have to live with Uncle Andrew for the rest of her life.

  He had only died the day before.

  Uncle Andrew had insisted on being discharged from hospital.

  “If it is my time, I will die with dignity,” he said. He spoke slowly, pausing between words to struggle for breath. “A Christian shouldn’t be scared of death.”

  It wasn’t Odette’s place to disagree. Uncle Andrew’s friends from church stepped in for her.

  “Andrew, God helps those who help themselves,” said Auntie Gladys. “You are still so young. Don’t you think it’s too soon? Let the doctors treat you.”

  “God can wait for a while,” said Auntie Poh Eng. “He knows how much we all need you!”

  All this was no less than what Uncle Andrew expected, but he was inflexible. “The doctors have had their chance. They poke me here, there, everywhere also, they still don’t know how to cure me. God is calling me back to Him. I’m not so foolish as to put my faith in humans over God.”

  Auntie Poh Eng took Uncle Andrew’s hand. Her eyes were full of tears.

  “God has been good to let us have you for so long,” she said.

  Auntie Poh Eng was Odette’s favourite of their church friends. Her only flaw was an unfailing affection for Uncle Andrew. But this was a flaw shared by all Uncle Andrew’s friends. It was not Odette’s place to complain.

  Her place was by Uncle Andrew’s side, except when she was in the laundry room, or the kitchen, or in the dining room polishing the heirloom silver. Just because Uncle Andrew was about to die didn’t mean he was about to let standards slip. They had a cleaner who came in every day to go over the house, but the clothes Uncle Andrew wore and the food he ate had to come fresh from Odette’s hands. As for the various antiques and other treasures Uncle Andrew had accumulated over the years, they could not of course be entrusted to a cleaner who only earned RM600 a month.

  Uncle Andrew had collected enough that looking to the upkeep of his possessions, cooking for him, keeping him in clean clothes and nursing him was too much for one person. Odette suggested that perhaps the cleaner could cook and do the laundry:

  “Then I can put hundred per cent into looking after you and the house, Uncle.”

  “You should already be putting in hundred percent,” said Uncle Andrew. “Who is paying for you to live? Not like you have so much to do. When Beatrice was alive she did all this and more. She didn’t even have a degree, not like you. She never complained. You young people are spoilt. Given too much.”

  “Auntie Letchumi is a better cook than me. Maybe you’ll feel like eating more, Uncle. It’ll be good for your health.”

  “Instead of learning to cook better, you want to pay someone else to do,” said Uncle Andrew. “You’re us
eless! If not for my money I don’t know what you’d do – end up lying in the street like a tramp. I don’t eat all this Indian food.”

  “If you don’t want her to cook for you, what if we ask her to do the laundry? It will give me more time.”

  “What else are you doing with your life? Do you have a job? Do you have a husband? All you have to do is take care of your uncle who has done so much for you. Even that you don’t want to do. I sacrifice for you and still you are so selfish.”

  Odette was of the unfortunate mould which does not grow less sensitive with time and use. She fell silent. Crying irritated Uncle Andrew to a fury. He took it as an unjustifiable assertion of self.

  “After I die your life will be very easy,” said Uncle Andrew. “My time left here is short. But you can’t even wait until God takes me.” He coughed.

  “I’m sorry, Uncle,” said Odette.

  “There’s no use saying sorry,” said Uncle Andrew. “You shouldn’t be so selfish in the first place. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.”

  He banged the bedside table, but though Odette jumped she wasn’t really scared. Five years ago the force of the blow would have rocked the table back and forth on its legs. Now Uncle Andrew was so weak it barely rattled the glass of water Odette had brought him. She watched the surface of the water tremble and go still, and hid a smile.

  Uncle Andrew only spoke this way when they were alone. His friends did not see this side of him.

  The friends watched Odette bring in meals, give Uncle Andrew his medicine, serve him hot drinks, fluff his pillow. They didn’t see her change his bedsheets every day, bathe and dress him, do the laundry, eat only in the brief intervals granted her between chores – standing at the kitchen counter, stuffing the food into her mouth, dry-eyed.

  Auntie Poh Eng told her:

  “You are taking Jesus’ life as your model. Life is hard now, but God will reward you in the end.”

  Odette only shook her head. “I don’t need His reward, Auntie.”

  After all, Uncle Andrew had always been so kind to her. He was known for his kindness. A pillar of the church, counsellor to his friends, benign dispenser of advice to their children.

  It was all the more impressive in one who had done so well for himself. Look at that beautiful house he lives in, said his friends. In the foothills overlooking the sea. The only tragedy in Uncle Andrew’s life was that he had no children of his own. But then, he had Odette.

  To Odette his kindness had been wearyingly comprehensive. It had covered sending her to university, and insisting that she stay in his home for the duration of her course. He never asked for rent – she wouldn’t have been able to pay it. In return for accommodation she did the household chores.

  She hadn’t minded staying at home for university. It had meant living with Uncle Andrew, but she was used to that. The house was almost enough to make up for it.

  It was the mansion of a nineteenth-century Peranakan merchant. Uncle Andrew liked to give out, and seemed to half-believe, that it had been in the family for generations, but he had bought it when he was in his forties from the businessman’s great-grandson.

  “Fella said he’s an artist.” Uncle Andrew snorted. “Cannot even hold on to the house his father gave him.”

  Whatever he had been, the great-grandson had had an eye for beauty. Upon Uncle Andrew’s arrival the house was exquisitely preserved. No incongruity had been permitted in it, no disruption to its elegant lines.

  Uncle Andrew had improved the plumbing and installed air conditioners in every room. He filled the house with big ugly imitations of Western masterpieces, ludicrous photos of himself and Auntie Beatrice, and imposing jade sculptures he bought on trips to China (“I haggled them down to RM500 from RM3,000. These Chinamen will skin you if you don’t watch out”). He replaced the Victorian tile flooring with marble, and brought in white leather sofas and glass coffee tables.

  But the bones of the house shone through these embellishments. Odette loved the graceful shuttered windows, the intricate latticed vents, the pillars topped with carvings of cranes and fruit. The very gutters were wonderful because they fit so well with the building: they had that perfection that comes from being impeccably appropriate. The beauty and intricacy of the house was such that it could sustain even the incongruity of Uncle Andrew’s additions and turn them into something marvellous.

  The house was the only thing Odette loved. It was worth staying for.

  She’d made the mistake of trying to leave once. Right after she graduated from university Auntie Beatrice died. It was sudden – cardiac arrest, the doctors said.

  Odette understood that her aunt had finally given up.

  She had not known Auntie Beatrice well, though they had lived under the same roof for many years. Auntie Beatrice had compacted herself so efficiently she seemed to take up no space in the world. Two days after her death Odette found herself struggling to remember what her aunt’s face looked like.

  Odette had started applying for jobs with a sense of foreboding.

  When she was offered a teaching job, she was nonplussed. She had not really expected to get a job. But here it was, her ticket to another life. She would be teaching at a tuition centre in Singapore – would be able to pay rent, feed herself, and live without reference to Uncle Andrew.

  But there was the house. If Odette took the job, she would have to leave it. She would not see it again. Uncle Andrew had made it clear when she started university that she was not getting a degree so that she could enter the workforce.

  “God has been generous,” he said. “As long as I live, nobody else in the family will need to work.”

  Odette struggled with her decision for days. A week after she’d received the offer, she woke up suddenly in the middle of the night.

  Uncle Andrew’s bedroom was air-conditioned, but Odette wasn’t allowed to turn on the air conditioner in hers – the expense of it. The windows were open and outside the cicadas were shrieking insistently. The mosquito coil burning under her bed scented the air. Moonlight shone through the air vents high in the walls. Seeing the inky tracery of the shadows cast on the floor, Odette felt a shock of love.

  In Singapore it would be an ugly little flat she lived in – bare of flourishes, with grilles on the windows and white fluorescent lighting. She would sit on a cheap sofa from IKEA and watch TV. She would have surrendered the glories of carved ivory and old rosewood armoires in favour of that cold idol, freedom.

  Odette went back to sleep with her mind made up.

  The next morning Uncle Andrew was waiting for Odette when she came back from the wet market with the groceries. A letter was on the table in front of him.

  “All the money I spent on you, and you go and do this?” said Uncle Andrew. “I treat you like my own daughter. Fed you since you were small. Paid for you to go to uni. Someone like you, you think you would have this kind of lifestyle if I didn’t pay for you?”

  Odette’s voice came out strangely calm. “I thought if I get a job, I can be less of a burden on you, Uncle.”

  “So clever to make excuses now, hah?” said Uncle Andrew. His face had gone dark red. He slammed the table. The letter fluttered. “Don’t try to lie to me. You want to run off! Sick of listening to your uncle, is it?”

  A prickling sensation spread up Odette’s nose and behind her eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I forgot.”

  “You think I’m stupid?” roared Uncle Andrew. “Useless! Idiot! If you’re so rushed to get out of this house, get out! Go pack your things and get out! If you don’t even know how to be grateful, why should I spend any more money on you? Go lah! Go!”

  Odette was sobbing. “Uncle, I just wanted to contribute. I’m ashamed to keep taking your money. I’m an adult already.”

  “You think I’m the kind of person who won’t support their own niece?” said Uncle Andrew. “My friends will be very surprised to hear that. You ask the church people, my staff. Everybody will say Andrew Teoh isn’t
afraid to spend money on his family. You know better than all these people, is it?”

  Odette shook her head. “I was going to reject the offer, Uncle.”

  “Nice story,” said Uncle Andrew. “What for you go and apply then?”

  The house gave her the right thing to say.

  “I wanted to try,” said Odette. “But when they offered, I knew I couldn’t accept. I don’t want to leave this house.”

  Uncle Andrew stared at her. The colour in his face faded to pink.

  “Hmph,” he said. He crumpled the letter and threw it at her. It hit Odette on the shoulder and fell to the floor.

  “I don’t want to see that again,” said Uncle Andrew. “Go put the food in the fridge.”

  After this, a merciful blankness descended on Odette. She felt nothing, and could even laugh at a couple of Uncle Andrew’s jokes at dinner.

  The next morning at church, Uncle Andrew sent Odette to the car a couple of times – first for a packet of tissues, then for a copy of a magazine he’d promised Auntie Gladys. When Odette came back with the Reader’s Digest, Auntie Gladys said:

  “So guai your niece, Andrew. If my daughter was so helpful I’ll be very happy.”

  “Beatrice and I did our best to bring her up,” Uncle Andrew said. “But what’s the most we can do, a childless couple like us?”

  “You’ve done better than so many parents. Odette is lucky to have you all to look after her.”

  Uncle Andrew inclined his head. “As long as I’m alive, she’ll always have a home.”

  They turned their eyes on Odette – Auntie Gladys’s face distant and tender with thoughts of her daughter in America, Uncle Andrew looking just past Odette’s ear. She smiled as expected.

  When she got home she shut the door to her room and crawled into bed. Her body was sour with hatred. Her eyes burnt with tears.

  The house absorbed them – weathered her storm – until she lay boneless on her bed and saw love shine through the vents, as it had done the night she decided to stay.