METAtropolis:The Wings We Dare Aspire Read online

  Table of Contents

  Foreword

  Introduction

  In the Forests of the Night

  The Bull Dancers

  A Symmetry of Serpents and Doves

  Rock of Ages

  Let Me Hide Myself in Thee

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  About the Cover Artist

  Jay Lake and Ken Scholes

  Book Description

  In a near future Pacific Northwest, the mysterious Tygre Tygre shows up unannounced at the hidden city of Cascadiapolis, and sets events in motion that lead to the destruction of that city—and the ultimate surfacing of an end-game millennium in the making.

  Who are the shadowy Bull Dancers? What part does the high-powered J. Appleseed Foundation play in their secret work? And how will a legendary security specialist, a dying billionaire, a disgraced cop, a minister who’s lost his faith, and a keen-eyed nonprofit accountant work together to prevent what looks suspiciously like … the end of the world?

  From the award-winning Audible series, METAtropolis

  First time in print!

  ***

  Smashwords Edition – 2014

  WordFire Press

  www.wordfirePress.com

  ISBN: 978-1-61475-155-7

  Copyright © 2014 Joseph E. Lake, Jr., Kenneth G. Scholes

  “In the Forests of the Night,” METAtropolis, Audible,

  Copyright © 2008 Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

  “The Bull Dancers,” METAtropolis: Cascadia, Audible,

  Copyright © 2010 Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

  “A Symmetry of Serpents and Doves,” METAtropolis: Cascadia, Audible,

  Copyright © 2010 Kenneth G. Scholes

  “Rock of Ages,” METAtropolis: Green Space, Audible,

  Copyright © 2013 Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

  “Let Me Hide Myself In Thee,” METAtropolis: Green Space, Audible,

  Copyright © 2013 Kenneth G. Scholes

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Cover painting by Jeff Sturgeon

  Cover design by T. Duren Jones

  Book Design by RuneWright, LLC

  www.RuneWright.com

  Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta Publishers

  Published by

  WordFire Press, an imprint of

  WordFire, Inc.

  PO Box 1840

  Monument CO 80132

  ***

  Dedication

  For Steve Feldberg, John Scalzi, Audible.com and all of the writers and voice talent that made the METAtropolis audio anthologies possible.

  Tygre Tygre, burning bright,

  In the forests of the night;

  What immortal hand or eye,

  Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

  In what distant deeps or skies.

  Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

  On what wings dare he aspire?

  What the hand, dare seize the fire?

  From The Tygre by William Blake

  ***

  Foreword

  Sometimes it just sticks with you.

  It was at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2003, the glitzy black-tie Writers of the Future Awards ceremony, where I presented the trophy to a young writer named Jay Lake. Jay stood up to receive his award—and gave one of the most moving acceptance speeches I have ever heard.

  In a ballroom crowded with such science fiction luminaries as Robert Silverberg, Anne McCaffrey, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and many others, Jay described some of the grandest moments in human history, then made the point that the only reason anybody remembers them is because a writer was there to tell the story.

  I have been a judge and guest instructor for Writers of the Future since 1996, and Jay was among my students in that year’s workshop group. Many of the newer writers I’ve taught go on to become successful, while others vanish into obscurity. When you teach a workshop group, you can never identify which will be which. But with that speech, Jay Lake certainly stuck with me.

  Two years later, in 2005, at the Writers of the Future workshop and awards—this time held at the Seattle Science Fiction Museum adjacent to the Space Needle—one of the students was a gregarious and personable man named Ken Scholes. He took the opportunity to strike up a conversation with me, and I soon learned his real ulterior motive—that his wife Jen was a huge fan of my Star Wars novels, and he wanted to earn marital brownie points by introducing her to me.

  Shortly after that event, Ken wrote to ask if I would consider writing a blurb for a small-press collection he was about to release. I have every incentive to help former students, and as a rule I say that they can ask me—once—for such a favor. I considered Ken’s request and asked if he was certain he wanted to use up his one favor for a small press collection. Having read his work, I expected much bigger things from Ken, and I advised him it would be better to hold off so that I could give him a quote for a major project. Ken listened to my advice … and only a few months later he sold a five-novel series to Tor Books. (And, yes, I gave him a quote on that one.)

  Over the years I watched the careers of Jay Lake and Ken Scholes blossom, each of them becoming quite successful. My wife Rebecca Moesta and I gave lectures on professionalism at various science fiction conventions, how to talk, act, and dress like a pro. Jay would often pop in and stand there flaunting his trademark garish Hawaiian shirt. But that was his look and his brand, so Rebecca and I started incorporating him into our talks, too.

  I followed with great concern as Jay revealed his diagnosis of terminal cancer; he rallied the whole science fiction community in his very public battle against the terrible disease. I contributed what I could, donating high-end one-of-a-kind items to fundraisers so that Jay could try new treatments, get a complete map of his genome, and embark on other innovative strategies. Despite Jay’s superhuman efforts, the cancer proved to be his kryptonite, and he was left with a ticking clock.

  At Seattle’s Norwescon in 2013, Jay felt well enough to attend some of the events, and I spent a long time talking with him at a party one evening. The following morning I had breakfast with Ken Scholes, just so we could catch up.

  At the time, I was just launching WordFire Press, and like a proud parent I was happy to show Ken some of our titles, which included not only my own backlist but a fairly impressive roster of other writers including Dune author Frank Herbert, Pulitzer Prize winning Allen Drury, along with Bill Ransom, Brian Herbert, Neil Peart, and others.

  Ken and I talked about Jay, and he told me about the sprawling METAtropolis project they were working on in novella-length chunks. Jay and Ken have a significant track record with large publishers and certainly had no need to consider a relatively small independent operation like mine. After breakfast, Ken and I parted with a vague promise that we would have to do something “someday.”

  But Jay’s clock kept ticking. The METAtropolis series gained a fair amount of attention when they were released as audio originals, and both Jay and Ken really wanted a nice
print edition. In glacial traditional publishing, however, a book takes 1–2 years on average to go through all the steps of publication and release. With Jay’s declining health, that simply wasn’t acceptable.

  In an email exchange I pointed out to Ken that WordFire Press operates under a different paradigm, with a much shorter time frame. He and Jay convinced their agent to go with WordFire—and here, only a month after the deal was signed, is the print and eBook edition of METAtropolis: The Wings We Dare Aspire.

  I’m proud of these guys, and I’m very pleased to be their publisher. I hope you enjoy the book.

  —Kevin J. Anderson

  ***

  Introduction

  It was in late 2007 that I proposed to John Scalzi an idea I called “The Shared Universe Project.” A group of authors would be given the same “what-if?” and write stories based in the new reality it posited. I even offered up what I thought were several clever concepts for what that operating principal might be. We then recruited a team of authors—who proceeded to boot all my ideas right out the door.

  Which was the best possible thing that could have happened.

  Instead, what John called “Our Little Cabal” spent an intense month building a world far richer and so much deeper than a single “what-if?” They created an all-too-possible future of zero-footprint cities, virtual nations, and armed camps of eco-survivalists. Each writer then claimed his or her own corner of this shared world to explore and wrote stories that were highly individualistic, yet fit together as a cohesive whole. Just nine months after that very first brainstorm, METAtropolis was published.

  It wasn’t just the way METAtropolis was conceived and created that was unusual. Commissioned by Audible and appearing first as an audiobook original, it turned the traditional publishing cycle on its head.

  Happily, the success of the original led to a sequel, METAtropolis: Cascadia (2010), and then another, METAtropolis: Green Space (2013). Along the way, the series earned the first-ever Hugo nomination for an audiobook and won the Audie Award, the highest honor in the audiobook industry. And several stories were deservedly chosen for “Best Of” and other major anthologies.

  All the accolades are fantastic, of course. But, for me, the true joy of the METAtropolis franchise has been the experience of working with the best and smartest writers in the business. Even as the cast of contributors morphed from one installment to the next, and the timeline of the shared world moved forward, the overarching themes and the underlying premises remained remarkably consistent. And it was fascinating to see how the future the team created moved from one of growing despair to guarded optimism. Maybe when you live in a world for the better part of six years, it’s only natural to hope.

  All of which brings me to the stories you’re about to read.

  Over the three editions of METAtropolis, Jay Lake—later joined by Ken Scholes—created a story-within-the-story. It begins when a mysterious stranger called Tygre Tygre walks into the off-the-grid settlement known as Cascadiopolis—and ends many decades later when a very old man named Bashar races to save his wife, his daughter and, not incidentally, all of Seattle. I’m confident you’ll discover why Ken Scholes takes a back seat to no one as a storyteller and a world-builder—and that Jay Lake is one of the deepest thinkers in speculative fiction, predictable only in his unpredictability. For me, being able to witness their creative processes and to experience their craft first-hand has been a pleasure of the first order. (And I would be remiss if I didn’t thank Jay for taking on the additional role of Project Editor for Cascadia—and Ken for serving with him as Co-Editor for Green Space.)

  So … prepare to be blown away. And once you are, I hope that you go on to savor every novel, every story, every word committed to paper (and audio!) by these two wonderful artists.

  Steve Feldberg

  Audible.com

  March 2014

  ***

  In the Forests of the Night

  Introit

  It would be nice to say that Tygre arrived in Cascadiopolis on the wings of a storm, riding the boiling front of electric darkness and lashing rain like a tall, handsome man out in some John Ford western. Or that he came through shadow and fire by a secret tunnel through the honeycombed basalt bones of these green-covered mountains, a hero out of templed legend following the journey of the gods. It would be nice, but inaccurate. Tygre arrived the way almost everyone comes to Cascadiopolis: either by accident, by judicial design or by following the damp silences between the trees higher and higher until there was nowhere left to go.

  In Tygre’s case, all three.

  His name was Tygre Tygre. Spelled the way Blake originally did, T, Y, G, R, E. Or, if you prefer to file it by last name as so many sentencing authorities and similar busybodies do: Tygre comma Tygre. Not that he had a file, which made him unusual for someone who wasn’t otherwise born and raised completely off the grid. But then Tygre was unusual from before we ever saw to him long after we laid him down in the forest loam beneath a simple stone marked only with a stylized flame.

  Death improves everyone’s reputation. For some, it also multiplies their power.

  * * *

  Bashar grunts. A familiar, weary look nestles in his narrowed eyes, visible to the pickets even in the deep, green-black shadows of a Cascades evening. The men and women who stand at Cascadiopolis’ first line of defense know better than to give him cause for challenge. Not when he is in this mood.

  Even the new fish like Kamila understand this with the same brute instinct that keeps young cats alive in the face of a battle-scarred neighborhood tom. Still, she is not so smart as she should be. Spiked into camo netting forty feet up a Douglas fir, she tries to sneak a hand-rolled smoke.

  Cigarettes are so twentieth century, the pocket-sized equivalent of an SUV these days, but there’s been a fad for them in the cities up and down the I-5 corridor. Every generation ignores the lessons of the one before. It’s not tobacco—long haul transport is too difficult and expensive for something that doesn’t pay good Euros by the gram—but a mix of locally grown herbs and good old-fashioned ganja. Rolling papers can be sourced regionally from the old Crown Z mill up on the Washington side of the Columbia.

  Everyone knows this. The old hands, meaning anyone who has been on the picket line for more than a week, also know that Bashar hates cigarettes with the same passion that he hates concrete, white people and internal combustion.

  Kamila does not know this, so she clicks her sparker and takes a drag inside a cupped hand. Bashar has the hearing of a bat, they whisper to one another when the commander is on the far side of a basalt-ribbed ridgeline. He stops, pressure-rifle suddenly cocked, and without turning his head says, “Miller.”

  She accidentally swallows the butt, then chokes hard on the mix of hot tip, raw smoke and an inch of lumpy paper going down her throat. “Sir,” she squeaks.

  “Drop it.”

  The new recruit almost says, “Drop what?”—a relic of oppositionally defiant teen-hood so recently left behind, but the absolute silence from her fellow pickets warns her. Cautiously she casts her sparker down. It hits the mossy ground with a muffled thud to be swallowed by the shadows at the base of her tree.

  “The fag, Miller.” Now Bashar sounds bored. That is when he is at his most dangerous. “Drop the fag.”

  “I don’t have it,” she whispers, then belches smoke and paper shards amid a searing pain in her larynx.

  Still not looking over his shoulder, Bashar snaps off a three-needle burst from his weapon, which takes Kamila in the meat of her thigh. She squeaks with the agony of the non-lethal hit as the tangy reek of blood blooms among the trees.

  Whatever he was going to do to her next was lost amid a startled challenge from Ward, a hundred yards downslope hunkered down behind a lichen-raddled boulder.

  Her voice crackles over the dissociated network of turked comm buds, shouting, “H-halt!” A fraction of a second later the words echo through the cooling air.

 
Bashar moves like a mountain lion on a wounded sheep; fast, hard and silent as he makes the long descent in a dozen bounds. Ward knows better than to apologize—she is no new fish—but she has the stranger in her sights.

  He is Tygre, of course, though none of us have heard of him yet, and he has walked right past the outer line of Bashar’s pickets as if they were a row of dead streetlights on some Portland boulevard. The picket commander meets the invader face to face in a rare pool of moonlight this deep beneath the spreading arms of the mountain forest.

  For a moment, even this toughest of the renegade city’s partisans is lost in the mystery of the man who would be their king.

  * * *

  We quote from the introduction to a master’s thesis written during the last year that the Sorbonne was still a degree-granting institution:

  The early decades of the twenty-first century brought the collapse of the American project. A noble experiment in democracy and economics had transitioned through imperialism, then dove straight into the same hollow irrelevancy which had seized the eighteenth century Spanish crown—a zombie empire shambling onward through the sheer weight of its extents, but devoid of initiative or credibility. Where Spain had been dogged by England in those post-Armada years, America after Reagan was hunted by a pack of baying hounds: transnational terrorists, post-NATO powers and resource-funded microstates with long-armed grudges. All this while rotting from the inside as the true failures of internal combustion-centered urbanism were finally exposed like worms in the heart of a prize bitch.

  Hope was not dead, but it lived in strange, isolated colonies on the warm corpse of the United States. Astronomers listened to good news from outer space in their enclaves in Arizona, Wyoming and west Texas. Green entrepreneurs only a generation removed from South Asia and Eastern Europe clustered amid the Monterey pines of Big Sur, in the cornfields of Iowa, within sealed, half-buried arcologies along Pamlico Sound. The stochastic city blossoming hidden amid the near-ruins of Detroit, silent and extra-official as it was, prospered as no city had since the 1947 founding of Levittown unknowingly sentenced urban cores to slow death.