The Taste of Different Dimensions Read online

  Book Description

  Fifteen tasty tales from a master of fantasy!

  The dead. The undead. Those who wish they were dead. They’re all here, along with a legend from a Pacific island, a legend from beneath a Pacific island, and much, much more. Frogs and dogs, knaves and slaves, and maybe a smidgen of real but impertinent food. Extend your imagination and have a nibble. You’ll come back for more.

  Includes the never before published story “Fetched.”

  Praise for Alan Dean Foster

  “Alan Dean Foster is the modern-day Renaissance writer, as his abilities seem to have no genre boundaries.”

  —Bookbrowser, for Mocking Program

  “One of the most consistently inventive and fertile writers of science-fiction and fantasy.”

  —The Times (London)

  “Alan Dean Foster is a master of creating alien worlds for his protagonists to deal with.”

  —SFRevu, for Sagramanda

  “Foster’s greatest strength remains his world building, easily creating evocative alien landscapes and populating them.…”

  —Booklist, for Strange Music

  “Amusing … intriguing … consistently entertaining.”

  —Locus, for Lost and Found

  “A winner for all ages.”

  —Publishers Weekly, for Lost and Found

  “Packed with action, intriguing human and alien characters, and a message of strength through diversity.”

  —Library Journal, for Drowning World

  “Surefire entertainment … the author’s mastery of his exotic setting cannot be denied.”

  —Publishers Weekly, for Drowning World

  “Inventive and packed with flavorsome incident.”

  —Kirkus Review, for Carnivores of Light and Darkness

  The Taste of Different Dimensions

  15 Fantasy Tales from a Master Storyteller

  Alan Dean Foster

  The Taste of Different Dimensions

  Copyright © 2018 Alan Dean Foster

  Introduction, copyright © 2018, Alan Dean Foster, original to this collection.

  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.

  Trade ISBN: 978-1-61475-956-0

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-61475-957-7

  Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-61475-985-0

  * * *

  Cover design by Janet McDonald

  Cover artwork images by Adobe Stock

  Kevin J. Anderson, Art Director

  * * *

  Published by

  WordFire Press, an imprint of

  WordFire, LLC

  PO Box 1840

  Monument, CO 80132

  * * *

  Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta, Publishers

  * * *

  WordFire Press eBook Edition 2019

  WordFire Press Trade Paperback Edition 2019

  WordFire Press Hardcover Edition 2019

  Printed in the USA

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  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Introduction

  1. Ali Babette

  2. The White Hotel

  3. Two-cents Worth

  4. The Frog and the Mantas

  5. Mr. Death Goes to Washington

  6. Food Fight

  7. Unnatural

  8. Overcast

  9. The Eccentric

  10. Dark Blue

  11. Ah, Yehz

  12. Green They Were, and Golden-Eyed

  13. The Door Beneath

  14. Castleweep

  15. Fetched

  Previous Publication Information

  About the Author

  If You Liked The Taste of Different Dimensions

  Other WordFire Press Titles by Alan Dean Foster

  Introduction

  It is commonly accepted that writing science-fiction is harder than writing fantasy due to the amount of “real world” research that has to go into the former. But as with anything involving art, there are no inviolable rules. Bad science-fiction often features a great deal of poor research. Sometimes none at all. Whereas good fantasy can contain a lot of the same. This is especially true if said fantasy is based on existing lore, folk tales, ethnology, or real-world situations.

  The Arabian Nights would be one such example. If you’re going to do an Arabian fantasy it’s difficult to avoid that seminal collection of tales containing everything from djinn to the adventures of Sinbad the Sailor (a leading SF/Fantasy publisher was called Roc, for example). While a majority of fantasy, including Tolkien, draws upon European folk tale and fantasy tradition, today the avid reader can find fantasies based on everything from Japanese mythology to that of Africa and India. The fact that so many of the great early literature from other countries takes the form of fantasy only tempts writers to make contemporary use of it.

  What’s difficult to do is to write fantasy that steps outside these obvious precursors. Take China. There are so many stories involving the Monkey King that you could fill a room with Monkey King anthologies. Just as American editors must roll their eyes in exasperation every time another story submission drones on about elves and orcs, wizards with pointy hats and long white beards, and evil sorcerers who have no redeeming social values, so must Chinese editors sputter in frustration at yet the ten thousandth tale featuring some iteration of the Monkey King.

  But submit a story, say, where Beijing is stalked at night by a monster given life by that city’s notorious pollution, and you might have something. In the story, the municipal authorities might try to trace the monster to the super-sensitive particulate detectors atop the US embassy. Now you have a tale that doesn’t rely on thousand-year-old traditional storytelling. The Global Times might even buy it.

  Or how about a story where an old god submerged by the lake behind the Three Gorges dam threatens to rise up and wreak havoc? Or one where a mermaid (a Chinese mermaid) at Spratley Reef takes offense at the Chinese military chewing up her home? Modern Chinese fantasy can thrive without the Monkey King. Unless some kid suspects the Monkey King is being held in the simian exhibit that’s part of a traveling circus motoring about the hinterland.

  Similar examples could be given for every country. The point is that fantasy is much more than extrapolation from ancient tradition. More than vampires and werewolves (although I have yet to see a story where a werewolf ends up in a veterinarian’s office). If nothing else, humanity has always had a fecund imagination. When sitting around a fire you have to do something besides warm your hands.

  Once you have latched onto what you hope is a new idea, or at least a novel variation on an old one, the next step is to maintain the internal logic. Just as if you were writing science-fiction. The difference is that with fantasy you get to make up not just some but all of the rules. But there are still rules. Your djinn can’t live in a lamp one minute and a Beverly Hills mansion the next—unless you establish that as one of the rules in your story. Nothing can happen without a reason, no matter how fantastical the scenario. You have to be consistent throughout, even if your story is one about Hieronymus Bosch painting from life.

  I hope you find the enclosed tales each a little bit different, but consistent within. Or at least consistently entertaining.

  Alan Dean Foster

  Prescott, Arizona

  June 2018

  1 Ali Babette

  If you eat regularly at a restaurant, eventually the waiters and waitresses will come to know what you typically order. Especially if it’s breakfast or lunch. There used to be such a place here in my hometown called TRISH’S. Some several decades ago, one of the waitresses was a tall, truly beautiful woman. One day when she was taking my regular omelette order I noticed she seemed particularly sad. Inquiring gently, I found out that, unsurprisingly, her dejection involved a guy.

  “I’ve been married three times,” she told me. “The first time it was for looks. The second was for money. By the third go-round I wasn’t too picky. He turned out to be an alcoholic.”

  I nodded sagely—as if I knew anything. “So, what are you looking for in a man now?”

  She turned thoughtful. “I don’t care what he looks like. I don’t care if he has any money.” She looked down at me. “I just want somebody who will treat me with some decency.”

  * * *

  Soda was glad she didn’t have to close for the night. Even without being stuck with the responsibility of securing the place, Monday nights sucked. True, a less-than-grand total of four customers since nine o’clock made for no fights, no arguments over who had the next game on the one slightly unsteady pool table, and reasonably clean restrooms, but it also meant next to nothing in the way of tips. When you were young, single, and tending bar in greater New York (actually it was Hoboken, but greater New York sounded so much better), you needed every buck from every jerk. She bid good night to Dave, who would handle the closing, and left.

  Only one fool hassled her on the bus on t
he way home. It was too late and too cold outside even for the average pervert. Glancing left and right before getting off the bus, she assured herself no one was lurking in the shadows waiting to jump her. Concluding the brief reconnaissance, she knew she was luckier than many late-night commuters. Her building was only a block from the bus stop.

  It was dark, it was freezing (hey, it was Jersey in January), and she was drained. The weekend had gone pretty good, but now she needed rest. She had the next three days off, and she intended to use every one of them to catch up on her sleep and Those Things What Needed Doing. Maybe Gerry would call. Or Stax. Stax was sharp, looked great, dressed fine, but he was a lazy narcissistic bum. Bit of a raging male chauvinist, too. By contrast, Gerry didn’t look like much, but he was pleasant enough and made good money working for the Port Authority and was occasionally nice to her. After five years working steady behind the bar at the DEW DROP INN on Clancy Avenue, and after an equal number of failed relationships, she was ready to sacrifice muscles for money and compliments for kindness. Her mother called it maturing. Soda called it growing tired.

  Soon after graduating from Carver High she had discovered that being moderately attractive in the wider world didn’t automatically guarantee you the hand of a Prince Charming. It didn’t even guarantee you a chance with the Evil Grand Vizer. Most of the guys who wandered in and out of the DEW DROP INN were little more than testosterone-powered lumps of clay.

  Not that she was in desperate need of permanent male companionship. By now she was used to being on her own. But—it would be nice to have someone warm to curl up next to at night. Someone to confide in, someone you could talk to secure in the knowledge that your words wouldn’t be taken the wrong way, wouldn’t be twisted into something nasty and hurtful.

  She’d had her fill of that.

  The pillow caught her eye because of the way it reflected the light that was bolted over the entrance to the apartment building. It caused her to hesitate at the bottom of the landing. A dozen or so heavy cardboard boxes had been dumped beside the stone steps, next to the regular garbage bin. They were pregnant with junk, the refuse of a life or lives too busy to bother with their contents. Most of what she could see in the dim light looked just like that: junk. But the pillow was different.

  Nobody was peeking out any of the first-floor windows, watching her. The panes of the old brownstone were dark. No one else in the building that she knew of worked hours as late as she did. Moseying over to the pile of cardboard, she peered closer at the corner of the pillow that protruded from one. The covering material looked like silk, or maybe satin. It did not appear to be stained. Either way, it was a cut above what she had on the second-hand couch in her tiny living room.

  After a brief struggle with the box resting on top of it, she pulled it free. It was a throw pillow of average size. Gold tassels decorated the four corners and gold fringe, apparently intact, lined the seam. The fabric itself was silvery. Her couch was a patterned forest green, but the potential contrast didn’t concern her. Architectural Digest was unlikely to come calling to do a story on her place any time soon. Intricate embroidery in a script she didn’t recognize decorated both sides of the shimmering material. Under her gentle ministrations it fluffed up quite nicely. Finding it almost made up for the lousy night at the bar.

  It looked good, snugged in a corner of her couch, resting up against one rolled arm. Setting aside the mug of instant hot cocoa she’d prepared, she reached down to carefully smooth out the fabric so the elegant gold embroidery would show clearly, rubbing her open palm from one corner of the pillow to the other.

  On the third pass of her hand, the pillow exploded.

  Well, didn’t actually explode. Smoke and haze erupted from it, but the only sound was a soft underlying hissing. Afraid that it might contain some harmful substance, she put her hand over her nose and mouth and stumbled backward toward the kitchen. She was hunting for the phone to call 911 when through the rapidly dissipating vapor she found herself staring at a singular figure.

  A cat.

  Sitting on the couch atop the inexplicably reconstituted pillow, the cat stared back.

  This in itself was nothing remarkable. Staring was a common attitude of cats. What was extraordinary was the cat’s attire. In fact, she mused as she forgot all about the telephone, calling 911, and everything else, any cat attire was extraordinary. Cats came clad in fur; long or short. They did not dress in diaphanous silk pantaloons, jewel-encrusted turbans, miniature vests of gold and silver thread, and small boots of crimson silk boasting upturned toes. When they visited apartments in northern New Jersey they tended to arrive via cracked doors or half-open windows, not exploding pillows. Otherwise, the interloper appeared to be a perfectly ordinary gray and black housecat.

  That was a very big Otherwise, however.

  Clutching her robe tight around her, she swallowed hard. Before she could pause to reflect on the absurdity of it, she found herself asking, “How did you get in here?” Perhaps not surprisingly, the cat rose to stand on its hind legs, crossed its front paws over its chest, and replied, “Thrice you rubbed the enchanted Pillow of Sitting and Sleeping. I came at your command.”

  “It wasn’t a command,” she protested, thinking to add, “You can talk.”

  “Verily, fifty-five languages and one hundred and sixty-two dialects can I speak, plus the languages of the djinn that no human can understand.”

  “Djinn? You mean, you’re a genie?” Aware that she was speaking nasally, she removed her hand from her nose and mouth. If it hadn’t hurt the cat, the smoke and mist that had heralded its improbable arrival was probably harmless to her as well. She was tired and bewildered, but otherwise felt all right. Physically, anyway.

  “I am the djinn Asami el-Razar el-Babesthi the Magnificent, of the line of Al-Bintetta the Stupendous, of the djinn of fabled Samarkand. The great and ancient Samarkand of trade and legend, not the sorry Central Asian pit stop it is now.”

  She swallowed. “How—how did you get here?”

  “Air courier. I was a gift that was not appreciated, and was peremptorily cast out without the vessel wherein I dwell being appropriately caressed.” Burning bright yellow eyes regarded her thoughtfully. “You have released me from the Pillow. Thereby am I commanded by the Great and Almighty Turazin, ruler of all the feline djinn, to grant whosoever caresses my container appropriately, three wishes.”

  “Three wishes!” This wasn’t happening, she told herself. But then, why not? This was Jersey. Anything and everything could happen in North Jersey, and often did. Visions of riches vast enough to embarrass the Lotto began to swim in her head. Or at least, they did until the djinn spoke again.

  “Alas, there seems to be a problem.”

  A catch. There was always a catch. That was true of Jersey, too. “What problem?”

  “You are not a cat. I am not a djinn of the human kind. I am a djinn of the Felidae. I am empowered to grant cat wishes to cats. That is one reason why I was not released earlier from the Pillow. The one who dwells high above you and who received me does not associate with cats.”

  “That’s pretty dumb of them. Me, even though I’ve never been able to afford to keep one, I’ve always really liked cats. Sometimes I’ll feed one or two of the neighborhood strays, but they never stick around.”