La Femme Read online

  la femme

  Edited by Ian Whates

  NewCon Press

  England

  First edition, published April 2014

  by NewCon Press

  Compilation and introduction copyright © 2014 by Ian Whates

  “Palestinian Sweets” copyright © 2014 by Stephen Palmer

  “Slink-Thinking” copyright © 2014 by Frances Hardinge

  “A Winter Bewitchment” copyright © 2014 by Storm Constantine

  “Softwood” copyright © 2014 by Andrew Hook

  “Soleil” copyright © 2014 by Adele Kirby

  “Haecceity” copyright © 2014 by Stewart Hotston

  “The Girl with No Face” copyright © 2014 by John Llewellyn Probert

  “High Church” copyright © 2014 by Jonathan Oliver

  “Valerie” copyright © 2014 by Maura McHugh

  “Trysting Antlers” copyright © 2014 by Holly Ice

  “The Honey Trap” copyright © 2014 by Ruth EJ Booth

  “Elision” copyright © 2014 by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

  All rights reserved, including the right to produce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  Also available as:

  ISBN: 978-1-907069-66-6 (hardback)

  978-1-907069-67-3 (softback)

  Front cover photograph of Adele Kirby © Pam Martin

  Back cover photograph of Adele Kirby © Shaun Hodge

  Cover design and layout by Andy Bigwood

  eBook design by Tim C Taylor

  Text layout by Storm Constantine

  Contents

  Contents

  La Femme - An Introduction by Ian Whates

  Palestinian Sweets - Stephen Palmer

  Slink-Thinking - Frances Hardinge

  A Winter Bewitchment - Storm Constantine

  Softwood - Andrew Hook

  Soleil - Adele Kirby

  Haecceity - Stewart Hotston

  The Girl With No Face - John Llewellyn Probert

  High Church - Jonathan Oliver

  Valerie - Maura McHugh

  Trysting Antlers - Holly Ice

  The Honey Trap - Ruth EJ Booth

  Elision - Benjanun Sriduangkaew

  About the Authors

  La Femme

  An Introduction

  Ian Whates

  Sometimes a story can take you by surprise, but it’s rare for an anthology to do so, especially when you’re the person responsible for compiling it. Yet in essence that’s what happened here.

  You see, I was merrily commissioning and editing stories for an anthology themed round the femme fatale which swiftly expanded to encompass ‘women who are more or less than they seem’, when something strange happened. The submissions were being stubborn. I had some great stories here, but they refused to marry together into a coherent collection. In fact, it became increasingly clear that what I had was two collections struggling to fit into one skin. Eventually, bowing to the inevitable, I separated them and gave the two books their freedom, which is how the duo anthology came into being: La Femme and its sister volume Noir.

  Some of the authors in La Femme will be familiar to NewCon readers: Stephen Palmer, who appeared in Further Conflicts, Storm Constantine whose fiction I’ve been delighted to feature in several titles and Andrew Hook likewise, while Holly Ice made her NewCon debut in last year’s Looking Landwards. Others, perhaps less so…

  It was Adrian Tchaikovsky who first recommended Frances Hardinge to me, while Tricia Sullivan suggested I look at the work of Benjanun Sriduangkaew – and I’m extremely grateful in both instances, particularly given the quality of story that has resulted. Ruth EJ Booth actually submitted her piece for a different project entirely, but I felt it to be better suited here, while Jonathan Oliver and I experience a switch of roles. As head honcho of Solaris, Jon was responsible for editing my Noise novels. Stewart Hotston and I fell into conversation at a convention last year, where I discovered he used to be a quantum physicist. Well, naturally I wanted a story from him. I’ve known both Maura McHugh and John Llewellyn Probert for a while, admiring their writing and, in John’s case, the quality of his superbly witty dramatic productions at various cons. Maura has theatrical connections too, and I still regret not making it into London to see the production of The Hallowe'en Sessions, which she co-wrote with Kim Newman, Paul McAuley, Anne Bilson and Stephen Volk. I’ve long wanted to work with both Maura and John, and La Femme offered the perfect opportunity. Then, of course, there’s Adele Kirby, who has the unique privilege (at least as far as NewCon Press is concerned) of appearing on both the front and back covers of the book and within its pages. Adele’s submission proved a delightful surprise: a far future romance of sweeping scope and ambition.

  These are the twelve contributors who collectively produced La Femme, a volume of stories that, hopefully, will hold as many surprises for the reader as it did for the editor.

  Ian Whates

  Cambridgeshire,

  February 2014

  Palestinian Sweets

  Stephen Palmer

  Lucas Nohandys sensed the existence of people long departed as he walked through the scent-fossils of Wardour Street. This thoroughfare, the heart of West Jerusalem, was for him a miasma of information, a cloud, from which he could acquire knowledge transmitted in computer-generated biochemical format. A dog, they called him. It was quite a compliment.

  At the end of Wardour Street lay the heart of Greek Orthodoxy, the restaurant known as the Status Quo, where his family lived; where his nose was based, and his other nose too. But tonight a new customer would present herself, a woman from the other side: Randa, negotiator, whose second name was unknown.

  It was early evening, June. The time had come for the tussle.

  Lucas was small, black-haired and slim, and he slipped beneath the scent barrier of the Status Quo’s front door without setting off the alarm – the restaurant’s computers knew his sweat. Yes, he had eaten garlic, but that could be compensated for. More difficult were the complications of the traditional Palestinian meal musakhan, whose allspice and pine nuts could come from anywhere in the tropical world. But the restaurant was quiet, the night-time rush yet to begin. He heard the creak of floorboards upstairs as his family finished their own meal. He heard the beep of an olfactor, smelled the drifting fug of retsina.

  His mother, Irene. emerged from the doorway at the bottom of the stairs. “So you’ve come back in one piece.”

  Lucas shrugged. “Enemies are for children. I’m a man.”

  “You’ll be telling me next you’re some kind of negotiator.”

  Lucas scowled. From the steam-washed air he pulled information: molecules of ash, molecules of leaf. “So your boyfriend was here earlier. Did you tell Father?”

  “We have an open marriage now. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

  Lucas looked away. Conflict disturbed him. Was that why he remained in London long after the British had departed for their green countryside? “You know,” he said, “this family doesn’t have to stay here. We could return to Israel.”

  Irene chortled. “Who wants to go back there? I like the cosmopolitan life. I like London as it is now. You forget, Lucas, I was here when the embassy patchwork started. I remember.”

  “I haven’t forgotten that.” He turned to walk away. “But what a shame Father is so much younger than you and can’t remember.”

  *

  “Did you get them?”

  Lucas glanced at his father, then turned back to the window and gazed out across London Central. “No.”

  “What happened?” Zeid asked.

 
; Lucas took a handful of bizir al-bateekh and threw them into his open mouth, the seeds squidging against his teeth as he chewed. He sighed.

  “You didn’t give us away, Lucas?”

  Lucas shook his head. His father walked to his side. Lucas stared at the distant line of faux-Himalayas, soft white with a hint of pink, in the distance where Marble Arch used to be, and he shook his head again. Half a world away.

  “Tell me,” said Zeid.

  “The woman was there.”

  “The one making eyes at you?”

  “Yeah, that one. Ghinwa. She was with her brother all afternoon so I didn’t get anywhere near him. He must still have the packet of sweets on him.”

  Zeid nodded. “There’s still plenty of time. Randa isn’t due here for a few hours.”

  “But what are we going to do? Mother will be suspicious-”

  “Mother is too busy with her toy boy. We can forget your mother.”

  Lucas sighed. “Yeah. Of course we can. So what’s your plan?”

  “The Palestinians want us to receive those sweets. All we have to do is get the sister out of the way. Maybe… maybe I should be the recipient.”

  “But I’m the negotiator. What would I be doing?”

  “Making sweet love to Ghinwa. Her name means song. So sing to her.”

  Lucas said nothing. In this city of broken quarters anything was possible for an ambassador. But what song could he sing? His record of success (he hated that word) with women was poor, as his father – his loving, supportive father – had observed on numerous occasions. But then, as his father also observed, no man in this family had much luck with women, for obvious reasons.

  “Just wine her and seduce her with knowledge,” Zeid continued. “You know how to do that, don’t you? And don’t feel bad. Cultural relations have no remit of love. You were born into this family, and that’s that. Listen, Lucas, I’m proud you became a negotiator, it would’ve been so easy for you to return to the West Bank.”

  “Sure. Easy. My life – easy. Yeah.”

  “Go now. Don’t make a plan – if you do she’ll smell you’re faking. Improvise. And don’t forget, for women, the nipples-”

  “Father! I am sixteen.”

  *

  The Jameed was well known to Lucas: a restaurant in an alley off Baker Street, this was the centre of Palestinian Christianity in London. Those braided scent-lines that crossed Hindu-controlled Oxford Street were like delicate silk threads spun by the fattest, most decadent spiders, that had dined on apricot jam and dibs. Those lines were a map of the locale, experienced by Lucas in complex synchrony with the information being transmitted by his optic nerves. As a negotiator he had the right to enter the Jameed, and even eat there, so long as he had been invited. Similarly, Randa (“scented tree”) had the right to eat free and easy in the Status Quo. But women were something else for the nosy man, something else entirely.

  The matter of the Palestinian’s Schism was becoming complex.

  Stress: the belief that you are in danger. Yes, he was stressed, denying as much was pointless and dangerous. Luckily this stress worked against his heart, not his digestive system – the possibly fatal flaw of the Nohandys family, whose male line had lost so many to cardiac arrest.

  His heart beat quickly as he slipped beneath the scent barrier of the Jameed’s front door without setting off the alarm – the restaurant’s computers knew his sweat. Inside, six o’clock, a few Palestinian diners from Jerusalem and a Jewish couple, but elsewhere the building was quiet, lit only by green-glowing algae tubes. No candles of course – stink of burning.

  At the rear of the dining area he saw a shadow move within a greater shadow. He smelled information: Ghinwa, her skin scent obvious, and the musky, almost Gaza Strip odour of her brother Amin.

  “You’re back?”

  He ignored Amin’s question, knowing Zeid was nearby.

  Ghinwa was an olive-skinned beauty, long black hair scented with grape blossom, dark eyes, tall and slim. “The source of much jasmine is Egypt,” he told her.

  She smiled. He guessed she liked him. The smile was sincere. And that code phrase rooted in the twentieth century perfume industry meant no living mannequin moulded by plastic surgery and sprayed with Greek Orthodoxy had entered her restaurant.

  “Hi Lucas,” she said. “You just can’t keep away, can you?”

  Lucas shrugged. “This is such an important time for our little bit of the patchwork.”

  She approached him, then stepped aside to lean against the bar. “Na’ana tea or maramiyyeh?”

  Lucas did not care for sage. “Na’ana.”

  Amin stared at him, the slightest hint of desperation in his eyes.

  Lucas whispered to Ghinwa, “I’m lonely.”

  He had no idea what he was saying. It popped out, as the truth so often does. She stopped breathing for a moment, as if her brain was computing the message of the two words. She seemed to have no idea what he was saying. “Really?”

  He nodded. “And a little bored. Are you?”

  “Lucas, I mean… Lucas, I didn’t guess…”

  He shrugged. “We get so few opportunities to chat. But you’re beautiful, I have noticed.” He paused, almost empty of inspiration. “Do you think you’re beautiful?”

  “What a question to ask a girl!”

  He said nothing, looking into her eyes, as if demanding through the force of his silence that she confront, then answer his question.

  She murmured, “I have been told –”

  “No, what do you think?”

  She glanced to her left, then at the floor, then over her shoulder at her brother; uncomfortable, he knew, but he needed this hold over her, this unexpected thing that he had snatched, unsmelled, from the chemistry between them.

  He smiled. “Ghinwa, you like me!”

  “Oh, well…”

  And she blushed.

  Lucas knew this moment was a unique moment that he could not waste, and he took her by the hand and moved forward, so that his right hip touched her belly; then he brushed his lips against hers. Her mouth stayed closed, yet he smelled her surprised pleasure, and he knew her pheromones were changing in response to the kiss. But this was the toughest part for a negotiator: the art of sincerity.

  She pulled back. “But Lucas… you’re Greek Orthodox.”

  “I know. You’re Palestinian, and we’re fighting.” He shrugged.

  She glanced down at the floor again. “Not fighting exactly…”

  “As good as. This is religion. Religion’s composed of fighting.”

  It was almost as if she remembered with horror that her brother sat a few metres away. With a gasp she turned around… then breathed out. He saw her shoulders relax, as if a weight had been removed from them. Amin was looking the other way as he poured water into a plant pot.

  Lucas knew that the moment was gone now, though secure, and that neither of them would forget it. He felt something for Ghinwa. But he prayed in the silence of his mind that he had given his father enough time.

  *

  The sweets were extraordinary, the like of them never seen before.

  In Lucas’ room at the Status Quo, Zeid frowned. “But these are like mughli.” He sniffed one, then added, “Condensed mughli.”

  Lucas looked at his father then shrugged.

  “Sweets prepared to celebrate a newborn child,” Zeid explained. Lucas heard the confusion in his voice. “It’s a dessert made of ground rice, sugar and a mixture of spices, garnished with almonds, pine nuts and walnuts. But what is the newborn child we’re expecting?”

  “Is this a Schism matter?”

  Zeid sat back. After a few moments he said, “It must be. Why else would the Palestinians send these to us?”

  Lucas glanced up at the horologique on the wall. Randa would be here in an hour.

  “What game are they playing?” Zeid said. “Is this intended to confuse us? Distract us?”

  “Or do I actually eat one?”

  Ze
id stared at him, and, horrified, Lucas realised that his father had not considered this possibility.

  He continued, “Father, you thought I was only meant to sniff them?”

  Zeid pressed the silver foil back around the column of sweets and threw the packet into a polythene container. “Computer! Clean the air.”

  There came the subliminal sound of air cleansers doing their work, pumping out molecule traps into the room atmosphere. Lucas grimaced. Unavoidably, the London-standardised cleansers had their own odour, which made him nauseous; they smelled of south of the river.

  Zeid said, “Smelling information in patchwork London is all very well, but eating something from another side is different.”

  “It’s something to get emotional about.”

  Zeid’s expression was puzzled.

  “You’ve never negotiated, Father. It’s a dry, scholarly affair. Afterwards I always feel the need to jump up and down and shout, or punch somebody, or hug somebody. Negotiating is like chess. Thank God I never learned to play that. Yeah, it’s like chess, all brains and no love.”

  “You need to snap out of this slightly self-pitying mood,” Zeid said, standing up. “Pull yourself together. Let’s go downstairs and prepare the restaurant.” He glanced at the horologique. “We’re open in half an hour.”

  “But what about the sweets?”

  “For now we’ll have to leave them. Mughli… no, that’s too risky. There’s a message there for us but I can’t read it. Can you?”

  “No.”

  Zeid nodded. “We take no risks here. We don’t want the Palestinians getting one over on us. We didn’t find out about the existence of these sweets by accident.”

  Lucas followed his father downstairs. The waiters and waitresses were all present, Naga the cook too; to all intents and purposes it was a normal night that would be filled with normal food.

  The taste of Ghinwa on his lips just wouldn’t go away.

  *

  Randa the scented tree looked much like Ghinwa the song – tall and slim, but with long brown hair instead of black; the same Mediterranean skin and the same sultry eyes. She wore the standard neutral garb of a negotiator.