I jumped. Hurtling towards the ground reality flashed before me, but what I was doing was too terrible for me to believe. Some of them could already be dead. I had to think of myself; I had to believe in the story.

The pick-up started at once. I'd driven a tractor on my father's farm. I managed in fits and starts to back it up to the barn door. They were yelling inside, but with the tractor and the bar there was no way out.

I sat there in the truck waiting for the cries to stop. I suppose a stray spark could have sent the petrol tank up, but I just sat there with my eyes closed, waiting. Perhaps I wanted oblivion. I rested my forehead against the cold and grimy wheel. I could feel the truth flooding in towards me again and then there was a thump on the bonnet.

I looked up to see Jemmy, arms wide, a burning cross, staring at me through the windscreen. My first impulse was to get rid of her, run her down, but I didn't.

I leapt out of the cab and pulled Jem from the bonnet. Not all of her was on fire so I didn't even burn my hands. She didn't live very long and all she would say over and over again was "It was only a joke. It was only a joke."

Afterwards I moved the pick-up a little way from the barn, so that it looked as if it had been moved up to unload our gear, and made my way home across the fields, gazing at the moon. It was a beautiful walk, my feet seemed to glide across the gra.s.s and the silver light changed the world into a new, delightful place. I never looked back. As my home came into view I could no longer believe anything was wrong. I climbed up on the porch and into my window as I had done a thousand times before. My parents never knew I was gone.

I told the police that yes, I had known about the party, but that Jem and I had a row so I didn't want to go. No-one doubted me because I believed it myself. There were plenty of theories as to what had happened, created by both the public and the experts. And all propagated by the press. I don't know if I ever came under suspicion. The national press made a big story out of me, the little girl who hadn't been bad and gone to the party and who'd lost all her friends in one night. They quoted some child expert at length, who said that it had made an indelible impression on my psyche. And suddenly the money started pouring in, not for my dead friends' family, but for me.

The newspaper got a lawyer to set up a trust fund. The first thing he did was send me to Disneyland on a holiday to forget it all and get over the nightmares I'd been having for months. The rest of the cash should send me through college.

Looking back, it's all very confused, like a dream or a nightmare. I told my psychiatrist what really happened and he told me to write it down as a story, to exorcise the memory. He didn't believe me. He said something about feeling guilty I hadn't died, but the only guilt I feel is over Jemmy. I didn't mean her die, but I couldn't think of another ending.

[Originally published in Kimota 2, Summer 1995].

THE FUNGUS COMMUNION.

by Alexander Gla.s.s.

The G.o.ds were coming back.

Carter had seen them everywhere: clinging to the gnarled knuckles of trees, nestling between the cracks in old stone walls, lying naked on the brown earth with their pale faces staring at the sky. When he stopped to rest that morning, by the edge of a dark, stagnant pool, he had caught a glimpse of one of them down in the water. This one was huge, a pale grey disc in the depths, bigger than a man. He drew near to the water's edge, so that a ripple licked at the toes of his boots, darkening the old leather. The G.o.d stayed still, far below, giving no sign that it had seen him, or heard his prayers. Carter sat there, watching, the heels of his hands pressed hard against the rough, stony ground. This had been a roadway, once, before the war. Now it was overgrown, parts of it collapsed, parts of it flooded. A good home for a G.o.d. He kept on watching until he saw the G.o.d move. One edge of the fleshy disc lifted up, as if it were waving to him, or saluting him. As if it were granting him a benediction. He caught a glimpse of the smooth dark gills beneath, and all at once he felt at peace.

When he reached the place where Sister Constance was waiting, it was late afternoon, and a smoky dusk was settling over the trees. Constance was sitting with her back to a broken wall, at the edge of the clearing. Her arms hung down beside her, lifeless. It was as if someone had picked her up like a doll, and propped her carelessly against the wall. That morning, when he had left the clearing, he had stopped for a moment, and looked back. Sister Constance had been lying in the same spot, her back to the wall the spot where he had left her. She had glanced up at him and sighed, a tiny, weak breath, and a dust-cloud of spores had poured from between her lips.

She was still breathing, but her eyes were closed. Though Carter made no effort to hide the sound of his footsteps through the undergrowth, she didn't seem to be aware of him until he was right beside her, until his shadow, wavering in the fading light, fell across her body. Then her lips parted, as if to taste the shadow; and she opened her eyes, and saw him. She smiled; even this now seemed to be an effort.

Carter wanted to say something, but there was nothing to say. He hadn't brought the news he wanted to bring. There was no encampment within easy reach, no-one to help. That was the only news that mattered, the only thing he could have said, and he couldn't bring himself to say it. Instead he waited, kneeling down beside his teacher, his arms crossed before him, his hands clasped upon his shoulders. After a while Sister Constance understood, and looked away, and Carter looked away also. Constance didn't seem distressed. There was no expression on her face at all. She closed her eyes again, her head rolling back into place against the stone.

Carter thought she was asleep once more, and was about to move away, to leave her in peace. But her lips were moving; she was trying to give shape to the breaths that pa.s.sed between them. She was trying to speak. Carter leaned closer, placing his ear by her mouth, straining to catch the words. He caught the smell of divinity as he leaned across her, a dry, musty odour.

"I was wrong," she whispered, and for a moment Carter heard the sound of his own heart drowning out her words. He thought she was going to renounce the G.o.ds, just as they were about to welcome her to their ranks. But she continued: "I was wrong to ask for a doctor. There was no need. Why should we be saved from G.o.dhood?"

Carter nodded, relieved. He had too many doubts of his own; he didn't think his faith would stand the pressure of Constance turning apostate. He had wondered, that morning, whether the motion of the G.o.d in the pool had been nothing more than a ripple, a movement of some invisible current. Angrily, he had tried to brush the thought away, but it had stayed with him all day.

"I hope you can join me," Constance murmured. "This is the greatest state of all, even greater than the holy state of symbiosis. The one leads to the other, Carter. I hope you are stronger than I have been, when you're given that gift."

A few hours afterwards her body grew cold, and Carter buried her, as best he could. The G.o.ds had left her skin mostly untouched, and so he covered her over with a makeshift cairn, and tossed a handful of pungent earth over that. Her hand protruded through the stones, the fingers curled into a loose fist, like a white flower growing on barren ground. Carter smiled sadly at that thought. He knelt down beside the cairn and gently prised open the five white petals of her fingers. In the centre, sprouting from the palm, was the only sign of G.o.dhood that Sister Constance had ever carried. A smooth tendril, with a tiny, soft white cap.

Three days later, Carter found a small village on the edge of the wastelands: an open square with a heavy stone well, and a couple of rings of houses. There seemed to be few people there, and of those, most were pa.s.sed into apostasy: he had pa.s.sed a young woman on the road, and seen that she was gathering the G.o.ds, presumably to eat. She had selected her G.o.ds with care. Perhaps, Carter thought obscurely, some exacted a more bitter vengeance than others.

A small crowd had gathered by the well, and Carter approached them, and murmured a greeting. The old man who seemed to be their leader stared at him for a moment, then turned and spat down into the water. Moments later, a small wet sound echoed up from the well.

"What do you want?"

"I don't want anything," Carter a.s.sured him. "I was just pa.s.sing by your village. I'm travelling west. To the desert."

The old man nodded shortly, as if he had been expecting as much. But then he demanded: "Why? What's out there for you?"

Carter hesitated. Then he said: "I'm trying to find the place where I can speak to the G.o.ds."

"Which G.o.ds would those be?"

Carter found he couldn't explain. He didn't have the right words. So he tipped his head to one side, and pulled down the collar of his shirt. The old man peered inside, and then stepped back hurriedly, with a curse. There was a clang as his bucket hit the ground, and rolled a little way across the square. The crowd leaned forward, straining to see, but Carter had closed his shirt on seeing the old man's reaction.

"Keep away. d.a.m.n it. Keep away." The old man recovered himself a little and stood there, staring, panting. His face hardened into a scowl. "Why don't you ever learn? Don't we make ourselves clear? We don't want the fungus in our village. We don't want it anywhere near our village. Do you know how far the spores can carry?" He shook his head. "I promise you, if I catch the fungus, I'll come after you. I'll kill you with my own hands."

"If you catch the fungus," Carter said mildly, "you'll be one step closer to G.o.dhood."

The old man nodded, and glanced around at his companions. "I'm sure. Well, for the moment I'm quite happy with my mortality, thank you. Imperfect as I may be. Imperfect as I am. The war's over, long over. There's nothing to be gained by worshipping the bomb, or the fungus, or the virus." He spoke more loudly now, more to the a.s.sembled crowd than to the stranger. "There never was. Those were cruel G.o.ds, the G.o.ds of war. They wouldn't have spared you then, no matter how you prayed, and they certainly won't spare you now."

Carter tried to explain, knowing it was useless. "We don't want to be spared. We want to unite our souls with the G.o.ds."

"And exposing yourself to the fungus is supposed to help?"

"Yes. Yes, of course. It's the only way." Carter shrugged. "In your village you eat lichens, don't you? I saw someone from the village gathering lichens and fungi. A lichen is a plant in symbiosis with a fungus with one of the G.o.ds. That plant is closer to the G.o.ds than you are, my friend."

The old man shook his head, exasperated. The others seemed either openly hostile, or simply bemused.

"The greatest prophets of the past were symbiotes," Carter continued, forcing himself to go on although it was obviously no use. "Jesus Christ was a man in holy symbiosis with G.o.d."

"You'd better be careful what you say," the old man said, in a low voice. "There are people here who might take that amiss."

"We can attain that symbiosis, if we only take communion from the G.o.ds. The fungus communion." Carter hooked a finger into his collar again, tugging the cloth aside, exposing the crescent fungi that were cl.u.s.tered on his breast. They were thin, almost wafer-thin, each one as white as a cobweb. He had taken communion himself only a few months before, and already he was closer to the G.o.ds. So much closer. "Take the G.o.d into your body," he urged. "Let it transform you."

Carter had become so carried away by his own speech that it took him a moment to realise the man was laughing at him. "I don't want to be transformed," the old man snorted. "I don't want to die any earlier than I have to, no matter how close to your G.o.ds I get. I'll take my chances with whatever's waiting for me."

Carter sighed, and turned away.

The old man called after him: "I'd drag you out into the desert myself, if that's where you want to go. Best place for you. But I can't. I don't want to touch you with my hands. Do you understand? Your holy symbiosis has made you an untouchable." He raised his voice, straining to carry his words to the stranger, as Carter left the square behind. "I might catch your disease. But I'll never catch your religion."

There was more, but Carter didn't stay to listen. He took the broken road out of the village, following the setting sun, until he came to the desert's edge. As the last light drained from the world, he knelt and prayed. He prayed that the G.o.ds would be waiting for him out here, in this friendless place. He prayed for his deliverance into G.o.dhood. And he prayed that his doubts might be eased.

That night, he slept on the hard ground.

When he awoke, he knew that something had changed. Divinity always took a greater hold during the night, during the hours of darkness. That was why the G.o.ds had begun to return at the ragged end of the war, or so Sister Constance had taught him. Their spores had crossed the darkened land, carried on the wind, sowing divinity wherever they went.

The night after his first communion, he had been unable to sleep. He thought he could feel the spores in his body, in his blood. They raced around his bloodstream like tiny sparks. The next night, the G.o.ds themselves began to appear. Under his arms, first. On his groin. On his feet. Then, night by night, they had spread, over his upper arms, over his chest and back one of his nipples was hidden by a soft, pale G.o.d over his stomach and thighs. Sister Constance had had nothing like this. Her divinity was within her, holy tendrils spreading through her body. Carter had fallen to his knees when the first of the G.o.ds appeared, and thanked them. He had attained the holy symbiosis. He was no longer human: he was a new creature, part G.o.d, part man.

He stretched, feeling the G.o.ds that clung to his body stretch with him. A few of them would have been bruised or broken by his movements, and some were torn open, revealing the clammy flesh inside. But there was no serious harm done. At first, he wasn't sure what had changed. His divinity had spread a little further, certainly, but he was used to that; he had almost grown to expect it. The wonder of being a vessel for the G.o.ds never went away, of course, but his rapture was no longer as intense as it had been on those first few days. He was a day older, and a little more divine. Each day, as Constance had said, each day a little more divine.

Then he realised. This was the day. This was the day he would ascend, to join the G.o.ds, to become one of them. He would leave his mortal body behind, and become something purely divine.

He hauled himself up, muttering a prayer, and staggered away into the desert.

He ate nothing that day. He could find nothing to eat in the waste lands. Nothing but the G.o.ds, and they were not to be touched. If he had wanted to eat them, he had his own supply. But he found, in any case, that he had no appet.i.te. If there was a temptation, it was to take a second communion, to break one of the G.o.ds from his breast, the one that grew just over his heart, perhaps, and eat it. Perhaps that would bring him directly to G.o.dhood. Or perhaps it would d.a.m.n him.

He wandered on until the sun began to sink, painting the desert sky with colour: deep blood-red, bright yellow, purple, green. He felt the G.o.ds stirring on his skin, as if they sensed the approach of night.

At last, just as the last drop of red was melting over the horizon, he gave in to temptation. He could hardly help himself. He longed for that sensation, that feeling of perfect understanding, perfect clarity, that he had had when he had taken the fungus communion. He couldn't believe the G.o.ds would punish him for that. So he broke off a thin G.o.d from his breast the one that grew over his heart and placed it on his tongue.

The G.o.d tasted bitter, more so than he remembered. His mouth was watering, his jaws working hard. At last he swallowed the bitter G.o.d, and sat waiting for that sense of clarity.

When it came, it froze him still. The clarity was terrible. He understood it all. He knew that the fungi were not G.o.ds. He knew that he was no divine creature, but an ordinary man, infested with genetically-enhanced parasites, inside and out. His body was crawling with them. All his doubts settled on him at once; all his doubts were confirmed.

Trembling, he began to tear the fungi from him, casting them away. There were so many. He knew it would do no good. They were deep within him, coursing through his blood. He wouldn't ascend to G.o.dhood that night. He would die, out in the desert, alone, with no-one beside him and no G.o.ds to comfort him.

All at once he realised that Sister Constance, too, must have betrayed her vows and taken a second communion. She too had understood. That was why she had asked for a doctor, at the end, when it was already too late.

Carter lay back on the ground, his arms spread wide. He closed his eyes.

Later, his last breath flew past his lips and out into the desert, carrying with it a handful of spores.

[Originally published in Kimota 13, Autumn 2000].

IDLE HANDS.

by John Travis.

The sullen youth slumped into his chair, legs wide apart, careless of how late he was for the lesson. The teacher glared at him, drumming his fingers on the cluttered desk, the sound thudding through the air of concentration.

"You're already ten minutes behind," the teacher told him, moustache bristling. "Get on with it."

The youth scowled, sighed, and then started to write: YOUTH CULTURE IS s.h.i.tTY - DISCUSS.

Before you start tutting to yourself Mr.Dorsey, I know this is the wrong t.i.tle. But 'The decline of standards in modern society' was your choice, but not mine. I think mine's much more to the point, don't you? more eye catching certainly. But as you just pointed out I haven't long to finish this and I have got some work to do soon. And no, I don't mean 'watching the junk that pa.s.ses for entertainment these days' as you so beautifully expressed it last week. No Mr. Dorsey, I mean something worthwhile, something for the community in which you live. Then my time will be up, and I'll be on my way.

But! you must be wondering what has happened to delightful Shaun Potson and his usual Neanderthal scribblings. Shaun couldn't possibly be writing this, could he? Well, let's just say that for the time being at least, he's absent. He doesn't look any different though, does he? still the same narrow eyed, slack-jawed, slick-haired bother-causer that he always has been. But you know what people are, Francis. Changeable as the weather. But, I think I can interest you for the time being. Go on, admit it, you're already curious!

So...what's going on? Well, I'll explain. First let me say that of all the people I've spied upon in my duties, you have to be one of the most uninteresting. Your homelife really is pitiful. Don't believe I'm up to it? Okay...last night you weighed yourself as you thought you overheard some pupils in the schoolyard calling you fat. The scales registered fourteen stone six, and you considered yourself two stones overweight. You're not a pretty sight in slippers and underpants either are you Frankie? Maybe (you think) that's part of the reason Dora left you six months ago. Ah, n.o.body's supposed to know about that are they? You haven't breathed it to a soul. But you have no friends to tell even if you wanted to - and you wouldn't tell your fellow teachers, as you hate them nearly as much as they hate you. You spend each weekday in this school until four thirty, then go home, eat from a can and drink yourself into insensibility in front of an out-of-focus TV set, occasionally hurling insults at the blurry figures on the screen.

Anyway, to the essay at hand.

Is youth culture dreadful? Why, yes! I hate the d.a.m.n stuff. I'm no spring chicken myself you understand. It's all violence and flesh, noise and fit-inducing colours. If you're under thirty you might as well be dead. Youth culture breeds nothing but laziness and stupidity. No, I don't like it. I wouldn't be here without the climate that sp.a.w.ned it though. All grist to the mill as they say. Times change, Mr.Dorsey. For all of us.

Now to the crux of the matter. This essay was inspired by the recent events in the town, is that not so? The theft, the muggings, burglary, arson, the increase of the town's youth under the influence - of something. And then there's the vandalism. That 'd.a.m.ned graffiti' everywhere, walls full of it, train tunnels filled with incomprehensible rubbish, scrawl that even manages to avoid proper interpretation. 'Foreign rubbish' you think. How right you are. Who on earth would do such a thing?

Well...

I can't take credit for it all, of course. We all do our bit. I can safely say that the stuff annoying you so much is my creation. At least in this neck of the woods.

But what does it mean?

Anything the beholder wants it to mean; steal a car, rob a chemist's, smash a few windows. We don't put a limit on creativity. Subliminal advertising I believe it's called these days. Everybody's influenced in some way. I saw you yesterday watching me - that is, watching Shaun - staring at that fly posted wall full of fluorescent aerosol paint. What did you think he was admiring - the view?

That graffiti does have meaning, but only if you are susceptible to it. That's why it's always the young ones causing the trouble. They've no belief, no defences, not like us oldies, eh? They just don't try nowadays.

And you know what happens to idle hands.

So there you have it. Well, the clock tells me time is almost up. Me and Shaun will go out from here and- but that would be telling! Keep watching the TV, Frankie. See you around...

The bell rang.

"Okay, you lot. Onto your next lesson."

The boy stood up, placed his essay on the front desk where it was covered by another one, and another one. He smiled at the teacher, who gave him a puzzled look, his eyes following him out of the door.

[Originally published in Kimota 12, Spring 2000].

BOXES.

by Hugh Cook.

"In adversity, opportunity."

It was the Fleet motto, and Howie Garnish was trying to live up to it. Hold yourself together. Use your initiative. Strive. Never give up! But it was getting increasingly difficult.

"Captain Riff! Captain Riff?"

No use. The lines of communication were down. Captain Riff - like the other surviving members of the crew - had lost the power of human speech. His mind, subtly modified by nanotechnological intruders, had been converted to use the same incomprehensible gibble-gabble as the aliens. Only Howie himself, the sole human so far free from nanotechnological infection, still spoke human language. He was trapped in a solipsistic bubble, unable to communicate with anyone.

"In adversity, opportunity."

What opportunity? Why, linguistics, of course! Here was Howie, marooned in the middle of an alien civilization. The alien tongue was a code to crack. Crack the code, and maybe you would understand the mysterious ways of the alien mind itself.

Most incomprehensible of all was the sheer indifference of the aliens. The humans who scavenged a meagre living in the alien city were simply disregarded. As if they were invisible. Not one of the aliens seemed to recognise that there were actually intelligent beings living in their midst.