Brave New Worlds

arms, and talk to us in whispers, and pull off the masks.

I spun around, and looked at the mound, because I thought the dead inside it would wake. It did seem to swim and move, and I thought that Babylon would crack, and what had been hidden would come marching out. The dead were angry, because they had been forgotten.

Then the mist began to clear, blown. I thought of dandelion seeds that I had blown like magic across the fields when I was a child.

'Hockey games,' I said. I thought there had been a game of hockey. The bodies were piled up, in uniforms. They were still. We waited. Harry practiced throwing stones.

'What a mess,' said Gary.

There were still wafts of gas around the bottom of the platform. We didn't know how long we would have to wait before it was safe.

Suddenly Lou stepped forward. 'Come on, let's start,' he said, his voice muffled by the mask. He pulled back the emergency gate. 'We've got masks,' he said.

None of us moved. We just didn't have the heart.

'We can't leave them there!' Lou shouted. Still none of us moved.

Then Royce sat down on the grass, and pulled off his mask, and took two deep breaths. He looked at the faces in front of him, a few feet away, purple against the mesh.

'Alice,' he said. 'Why are we doing this?'

No answer.

'It's horrible. It's the worst thing in the world. Horrible for us, horrible for you. That's why what happened last night happened, Alice. Because this is so terrible. You cage people up, you make them do things like this, and something goes, something inside. Something will give with you, too, Alice. You can't keep this up either. Do you have dreams, Alice? Do you have dreams at night about this? While the Wigs are at their parties, making big decisions and debating ideology? I don't believe anyone could look at this and not feel sick. '

'You need to hear any more?' Lou asked the cameras, with a swagger.

'I mean. How did it happen?' Royce was crying. 'How did we get so far apart? there were problems, sure, but there was love, too. Men and women loved each other. People love each other, so why do we end up doing things like this? Can you give me a reason, Alice?'

'You do realize what he's saying, don't you?' asked Lou. He pulled off his mask, and folded his arms. 'Just listen to what is coming out of his closet. '

'I am not going to move those bodies, Alice,' said Royce. 'I can't. I literally cannot move another body. I don't think any of us can. You can kill us all if you want to. But then, you'd have to come and do it yourselves, wouldn't you?'

Lou waited. We all waited. Nothing happened.

'They'll — uh — start to stink if we don't move them,' said Gary, and coughed, and looked to Lou.

'If we don't move them,' said Harry, and for once he wasn't smiling, 'another train can't come in. '

'Alice?' said Lou. 'Alice?' Louder, outraged. 'You hear what is happening here?'

There was a click, and a rumbling sound, a sort of shunting. A gate at the far end of the platform rolled back. Then another, and another, all of them opening at once.

'Go on,' said Alice.

We all just stood there. We weren't sure what it meant, we didn't even know that all those gates could open at once.

'Go on. Get out. Hurry. Before one of the Wigs comes. '

'You mean it?' Harry asked. We were frightened. We were frightened to leave.

'We'll say you got killed in the riot, that you were gassed or something. They'll never know the difference. Now move!'

'Alice, god-damn it, what are you doing, are you crazy?' Lou was wild.

'No. She ain't crazy. You are. ' that was Royce. He stood up. 'Well you heard her, haul some ass. Charlie, Harry, you go and get all the food there is left in the canteen. The rest of you, go get all the blankets and clothes, big coats that haven't been shipped back. And Harry, fill some jugs with water. '

Lou didn't say anything. He pulled out a kitchen knife and he ran toward Royce. Royce just stood there. I don't think he would have done anything. I think he was tired, tired of the whole thing. I mean he was tired of death. Lou came for him.

The Grils burned him. They burned Lou. He fell in a heap at Royce's feet, his long, strong arms all twisted. 'Aw hell,' said Royce, sad and angry. 'Aw hell. '

And a voice came cutting into my head, clear and blaring. I was crazy. The voice said,'this is radio station KERB broadcasting live from the First Baptist Church of Christ the Redeemer with the Reverend Thomas Wallace Robertson and the Inglewood Youth Choir, singing O Happy Day. '

And I heard it. I heard the music. I just walked out onto the platform, reeling with the sound, the mass of voices inside my head, and I didn't need any blankets. O Happy Day! When Jesus wash! And Los Angeles might be gone, and Detroit and Miami, a lot of things might be gone, but that Sunday night music was still kicking shit, and if there wasn't a God, there was always other people, and they surprised you. Maybe I'd been fooled by history too. I said goodbye to the cameras as I passed them. Goodbye Alice. Goodbye Hortensia. See ya, Scarlet. Butch, I'm sorry about the name.

They were making funny noises. The cameras were weeping.

I walked on toward the open gate.

For America

Pervert by CHARLES COLEMAN FINLAY

Charles Coleman Finlay is the author of the novels The Prodigal Troll, The Patriot Witch, A Spell for the Revolution, and The Demon Redcoat. Finlay's short fiction — most of which appears in his collection, Wild Things—has been published in several magazines, such as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and Black Gate, and in anthologies, including The Best of All Flesh and my own By Blood We Live, The Way of the Wizard, and The Living Dead 2. He has twice been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards, and has also been nominated for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the Sidewise Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Award.

Sexuality is more than just bodily urges; it's more than who you ask on a date. Sexuality permeates almost every aspect of the lives we lead, and our cultural experiences will influence our sexual choices. We dream of love at first sight, but find that society not only influences who we will see, but the kind of love we are allowed to fall into.

This next tale is the story of a man torn between the passion within him and the strictures of a society very different from our own. In his world, religion and biology have colluded to make people with his sexual urges not only uncommon, but unacceptable. Duty and temptation catch him in a Gordian knot even the most hardened dominatrix would find too binding.

This story was a finalist in the 2005 Gaylactic Spectrum Awards for its thoughtful discussion of sexuality and how society regulates our sex lives. Here is all the passion of sex, the melancholy of unexpressed love — and the bitterness of a life lived in perversion.

* * *

There are two kinds of people in the world, homosexuals and hydrosexuals. And then there are perverts like me. So far as I know, there is not a word, not even a bit of slang, to describe my particular depravity. But then I have never spoken of it to anyone, nor written of it before now, and we do not invent words for the things we dare not speak or write.