The Wine of Violence

By James Morrow

On a distant planet, two human societies keep an uneasy equilibrium—one nonviolent, the other ferocious—in this “triumphant writing performance” (Atlantic City Press).
  A fact-finding mission has crash-landed on a harsh world, leaving entomologist Francis Lostwax and physicist Burne Newman marooned. The scientists are rescued by a mysterious society whose inhabitants are wholly incapable of murder, assault, rape, or any other form of aggression. Protected by a river made of liquid hate, the descendants of Quetzalia’s original human colonists have devised a strange techno-religion that has in turn engendered a culture of total pacifism.
While Burne undertakes to rid the planet of the savage and menacing brain-eaters that flourish beyond the utopia’s walls, Francis cultivates his romantic feelings for Tez Yon, the Quetzalian surgeon who saved his life. But the entomologist’s obsession with Tez’s soul leads him down a dark and twisted path, in time confronting him with a terrible dilemma. Should he murder the woman he loves to save a society he abhors?  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Aug 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781480438613

James Morrow

Born in 1947, James Morrow has been writing fiction ever since he, as a seven-year-old living in the Philadelphia suburbs, dictated “The Story of the Dog Family” to his mother, who dutifully typed it up and bound the pages with yarn. This three-page, six-chapter fantasy is still in the author’s private archives. Upon reaching adulthood, Jim produced nine novels of speculative fiction, including the critically acclaimed Godhead Trilogy. He has won the World Fantasy Award (for Only Begotten Daughter and Towing Jehovah), the Nebula Award (for “Bible Stories for Adults, No. 17: The Deluge” and the novella City of Truth), and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award (for the novella Shambling Towards Hiroshima). A fulltime fiction writer, Jim makes his home in State College, Pennsylvania, with his wife, his son, an enigmatic sheepdog, and a loopy beagle. He is hard at work on a novel about Darwinism and its discontents.

Book preview

EARLY BIRD BOOKS

FRESH EBOOK DEALS, DELIVERED DAILY

LOVE TO READ?

LOVE GREAT SALES?

GET FANTASTIC DEALS ON BESTSELLING EBOOKS

DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX EVERY DAY!

The Galaxy’s Greatest Newsletter

Delivered to Your Inbox

Get awesome tales of fantasy and science fiction once a week.

Visit us at www.theportalist.com

PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF JAMES MORROW

James Morrow [is] a literary swashbuckler, his proud vessel a stalwart craft composed of rationalist thought . . . his weapons a rapier intelligence and a Swiftian gift for satire. —The Washington Post Book World

Morrow’s satire is funny and sad, and increases our ability to see the little bits of truth in our own world. —The Denver Post

Move over Kurt Vonnegut. James Morrow has put on the mantle of America’s best satirist. —James Gunn, the University of Kansas

[James Morrow] is an original—stylistically ingenious, savagely funny, always unpredictable. —The Philadelphia Inquirer

Morrow understands theology like a theologian and psychology like a psychologist, but he writes like an angel. —Richard Elliott Friedman, author of The Hidden Book in the Bible

As near as I can tell, Morrow is the greatest kind of American author. He’s funny and profane, bighearted and brave, he never takes the same risk twice in his satire, and for some reason I can’t explain, I’ve waited almost 20 years to express my love for his work. —The Stranger

The Wine of Violence

"[The] best SF novel published in English in the last ten years. It has the scope of Childhood’s End, the verbal playfulness of Cat’s Cradle, and the ethical seriousness and comic rage of Rasselas." —American Book Review

The story zips along with vivid images, and the message is clear: A heady brew, the wine of violence packs a hangover. —Los Angeles Times

[A] twelve-course literary banquet spiced with intriguing characterizations and inventive plotting . . . Morrow draws his plot and characters together like a spinner patiently working at a spinning wheel, drawing fine threads of gold from seeming flax. . . . It is a triumphant writing performance that should guarantee an eager audience for future Morrow novels. —Atlantic City Press

Beneath the high-tech space trappings, the author paints a nice little fable about what it means to be ‘human’ . . . Are hatred and blood-lust as necessary for man’s soul as peace and tranquility? In this imaginative novel, James Morrow proposes a thought-provoking answer. —Fort Lauderdale News

Morrow spins a satiric examination of violence that runs from light comedy to Swiftian bitterness, without ever letting the reader feel smugly superior. [He] knows the value of pushing issues to extremes to highlight a central point and the effectiveness of allegory in various guises. —Newsday

An anthropological fable that, for all its cool intelligence, bustles with life . . . Morrow writes a breezy blend of philosophical fiction and blood-stirring adventure. —Penthouse

The Continent of Lies

"Technology will improve remorselessly until we can be ‘wired in’ so completely that we can’t tell what’s real and what isn’t. The Continent of Lies . . . deals with this subject brilliantly." —Arthur C. Clarke

"The Continent of Lies is superbly crafted. It deftly blends technology, fantasy, and myth and spices the mixture with adventure, humor, and wit." —The San Diego Union

[A] literary cruise missile. It hugs the reader’s consciousness as it roars through time and cultural dimensions, leaving readers stunned, delighted and baffled. . . . Morrow writes so plausibly and so effortlessly about the impossible and the unimaginable that little bits and pieces of his narrative cling to your subconscious. . . . This is high octane writing indeed. —Atlantic City Press

James Morrow takes you to places you have never been before. . . . There are Dante-like descents into various kinds of hell, and—what would a book about dreams be without it?—a generous dollop of Freudian symbolism. —Los Angeles Times

[With] a new plot twist with every turn of the page an encapsulation would be impossible, as well as spoiling the fun. But when was the last time you read any SF that had a meeting of the characters inside the bloated corpse of a giant alien whale? What a story. Read it. —West Coast Review of Books

This Is the Way the World Ends

The most affecting account of nuclear devastation I have read in a work of fiction. —Newsday

Having no answers but only prophecy, Morrow is unafraid to feel pain or to make us feel it. . . . Astute, highly engaging, and finally, moving. —Los Angeles Times

"This Is the Way the World Ends begins where Dr. Strangelove ends. It is a tale told from the other side of the grave—quite literally from the point of view of the dead—and what makes it so wonderful is not merely that it is informed about how and why the world may end, but because throughout it remains a true tale, rich in narrative and moral complexity, magically inventive and comic. . . . [James Morrow] has written a story of the way and the why of our dear and foolish world—its sources of life and of death—that is utterly dazzling and memorable." —The Philadelphia Inquirer

Add to this scenario great suspense, fast action, a complex and sympathetic protagonist, and unrestrained black comedy, and the result is a wonderfully surreal novel worthy of comparison with the best political satire of this century. —Fort Worth Star-Telegram

"Just when you start thinking that everything that can possibly be done with the post-catastrophe novel has been done, along comes James Morrow to prove you wrong. . . . This Is the Way the World Ends is a magnificent surrealistic dark comedy that will scare you even as it amuses you, and it will leave you deeply moved. This is one of those books that other writers wish they had written." —Pittsburgh Press

"If Kurt Vonnegut had collaborated with Jonathan Schell on an antinuclear novel, the result might be This Is the Way the World Ends." —The New York Times Book Review

Very few books make me cry, but this one did. . . . James Morrow has a surrealistic edge to his imagination and a devastating ability to disembowel by satire. —Controversy in Review

Only Begotten Daughter

"[Its] lineage might be Stranger in a Strange Land out of Slaughterhouse-Five. . . . Such a summary as this can barely suggest the dense, hyperkinetic plotting of James Morrow’s novel, its welter of acute detail . . . or the vigor of its cartoonishly sharp-edged characters. Only Begotten Daughter is a rich, intelligent tour de force." —The New York Times Book Review

"Imagine, if you will, Joseph Heller at his satirical best writing The Satanic Verses. Sort of a Catechism-22. What you would have would be close to James Morrow’s Only Begotten Daughter, a delightfully devilish novel that tiptoes along the fringes of science fiction while treading heavily on imperious practitioners of Western theology." —Chicago Tribune

"A cheerfully secular rendition of the Second Coming . . . Morrow’s ambitious and wide-ranging satire plays straight with Scripture, reserving as its targets the intolerances and vanities of fallible humanity . . . Only Begotten Daughter is an intelligent, humane, and unusually funny novel." —Newsday

Morrow unerringly targets nerve endings that most readers won’t know they have until he zaps them, throwing out wild bits of social commentary and incidental barbs with impeccable timing. This novel invites comparison with Vonnegut and even Rushdie. —The Washington Post

It’s probably an insurmountable challenge for a reviewer to try to capture in a few hundred words the captivating delirium of this runaway carrousel of a book. . . . Morrow’s novel is suffused with a peculiar innocence, an earnest inquiry into the nature of godhead, and an enduring if battered optimism about the importance of love. . . . If the narrative makes us flinch, it’s only because it is itself so unflinching in its dissection of human foibles and cruelty. Ultimately, Morrow has given us a frank and fascinating novel that provokes rather than offends—a remarkable work of fiction with the power to disturb our complacency and challenge us to consider anew the thorny questions of life and faith.
—South Bend Tribune

"Several notable novels of this gloriously multi-faceted type have been published within living memory; examples include Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, Bernard Malamud’s God’s Grace, and Jeremy Leven’s Satan. James Morrow’s Only Begotten Daughter is the latest, the most vivid, and perhaps the best of the lot. It has enormous chutzpah and schmaltz by the bucketful, and despite the relentlessness of its darker side it still contrives, against all odds, to carry its due quota of pure mechaieh." —The New York Review of Science Fiction

Like many who see the world clearly, Morrow is driven frantic by the insanities committed in the names of the gods. He has written a work of satiric imagination as compassionate and horrifying as the book’s publisher bills it. . . . It has fangs, and it bites. It is also very warm, very human, very humane. —Analog

"Heretical? Yes. Exuberantly so. The dark satirical tone of Only Begotten Daughter makes for a potent novel." —People

City of Truth

A quick and delightful read, with a sharp, unmerciful edge that would have pleased old Jonathan Swift. —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Morrow leavens his serious theme with sizable dollops . . . of humor, without losing poignancy—his prose is compulsively readable, sprinkled with nicely understated jokes. At 100-odd pages, the novel may seem short, but satire can become tiresome when played out too long—the length, like almost everything else about this novella, is nearly perfect. —Publishers Weekly

"City of Truth is a humorous and pointed futuristic novel about a man facing his son’s inevitable death in a city which bars lies. Morrow’s thought-provoking and fun portraits of the results of an utterly truthful society contrasts strongly with a man’s refusal to equate hope with lying." —Midwest Book Review

"[True] satire is the work of a moralist in the grip of savage indignation, and gifted with sharp eyes, tongue, and wit. In the novella City of Truth, James Morrow wields a darkly glittering scalpel. . . . The cavortings of Morrow’s Veritasians and Dissemblers are hilariously petty as all humanity, and poignant as a dying child." —Locus

"[Jack Sperry’s] story is that of one man’s struggle to find the balance of hope that lies somewhere between truth and fantasy. Sperry’s pain is even more poignant because Morrow handles it so deftly, without false sentimentality. Morrow is a Jonathan Swift for our times, and his City of Truth works on many levels, from wickedly sharp satire to touching tragedy." —Starlog

[The] ending is affecting on the human level and besides, it’s probably worth the read just for the cited notice on a cigarette pack: WARNING: THE SURGEON GENERAL’S CRUSADE AGAINST THIS PRODUCT MAY DISTRACT YOU FROM THE MYRIAD WAYS YOUR GOVERNMENT FAILS TO PROTECT YOUR HEALTH. —Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine

Cat’s Pajamas

[Morrow’s] latest collection demonstrates that his rapier wit has lost none of its edge as it encompasses twisted scenarios. . . . All the stories manifest Morrow’s penchant for exploring the dark underbelly of technological promise and extracting quirky moral conundrums. Morrow’s fans will revel, and first-time readers may find his grim humor making fans of them, too. —Booklist

Morrow is a true satirist, a moralist who identifies some of our many faults and offers a wholly new perspective (not solutions, mind you, that is not his job) through his droll distortions. . . . [He] obviously loves his fellow human beings and has a sharp eye for their foibles. His wit and pen are sharper still. If you are unfamiliar with Morrow, this wonderful collection . . . is a superb starting point. —Cemetery Dance

"The first thing you’ll notice about James Morrow is what outrageous ideas he concocts. . . . If you have an offbeat sense of humor, Morrow’s The Cat’s Pajamas will have you in stitches." —Fantastic Reviews

Who else among modern SF writers (and Morrow, to his great credit, refuses to refuse the label) has worked so hard to sharpen the swords of satire? And had such fun doing it? . . . He is our Voltaire, casting a cold eye on both the follies of the day and the fashions of philosophy. He is our Swift, skewering his enemies with a smile. He would be our Twain, except that we already have one. He is in fact our Morrow. —Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author Terry Bisson in the book’s Introduction

Amply displays [Morrow’s] ability to juggle absurdity, tragedy, irony and outrage. —Locus

The Wine of Violence

A Science Fiction Fable

James Morrow

to R.J. Develin, my Uncle Ralph

Contents

ONE: The Atheist

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

TWO: The Agnostic

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

THREE: The Apostle

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 16

Chapter 27

Acknowledgments

Author’s Note

About the Author

In the seventh century, the Toltecs, an agricultural people, moved from northern Mexico down into the vicinity of Mexico City. In all of history, there was never a people more civilized or humane. According to the old histories, the Toltecs went to war with wooden swords—so that they would not kill their enemies.

—The Book of Lists

For they sleep not, except they have done mischief; and their sleep is taken away, unless they cause some to fall.

For they eat the bread of wickedness, and drink the wine of violence.

—Proverbs 4:16–17

There was a time, believe it or not, when human beings did each other harm. In the chaotic ages preceding the Stromboli Solution, torture, rape, war, and murder happened almost daily. Violence reigned like a soulless despot. Self-defense was a growth industry.

Scholars today agree that, of all the pre-Stromboli schemes for conquering aggression, only one merits preservation in our collective memory.

This is the story of Quetzalia.

ONE

The Atheist

1

NOTHING IN FRANCIS LOSTWAX’S past experience had prepared him for the sudden disappearance of his native planet.

He was an ardent disciple of natural law. When Francis dropped a fresh ripe mamula, he believed it would fall downward and in no other direction. When he collected a newborn gorgathon from its nest and took it to the laboratory, every particle of his faith told him the mother would follow with rage and stabbing mandibles.

It happened at noon, Nearth Equatorial Time, during the final fifty million kilometers of their return from Arete. He was sitting in his cabin, feeling all plump and dozy after a heavy lunch. Before his eyes, the bland chunks of the Malnovian Asteroid Belt floated like croutons. Boring, he thought. Boring as spacefood. He dialed his holovision monitor into the close-up mode, bypassing the belt. There, that’s much better—home.

Viewed from space, Nearth’s smooth cyan clouds made her Queen of the Solar System. One would never guess that their undersides were dingy and stinking. The planet approached at velocity-factor one: as per the flight plan, they would get there by coasting, having consumed the last of their fuel yesterday. Leaning forward, Francis punched his cushion till it got fat, then repositioned it under his rump and sat down in front of the monitor, ready to indulge a fine homesickness.

Now he saw it, now he didn’t. Nearth was gone. In her place loomed an endless gloating night.

The terror that came cut him loose from everything. He was as lost as his planet. Good God! he said out loud, though the truth was he believed in no gods, good or otherwise.

Quivering, Francis sprang from the cushion and dragged his steel boots through the phony magnetic gravity. A back tubeway brought him to Darwin’s control deck, where, centerstage, Burne Newman fidgeted near one face of the main monitor. The Malnovian Asteroid Belt orbited as if nothing had happened.

Under less awful circumstances Francis loved watching the great cubic monitor, with its stirring displays of imprisoned suns. Darwin’s was a Sozyo Model 3560, which meant the holojector was mounted in the ceiling instead of the floor or wall. Sozyo made 4-D equipment. The image had height, width, depth, and a fourth D that eluded precise definition. It was called Presence. Somehow, you felt that the subject was there in the room with you. You could seemingly walk up to it, savor its fragrance, finger its texture, rub a few eons’ grime off its contours. Francis felt the Malnovian Belt’s Presence, and he reeled with total loathing.

Burne snorted, acknowledging that Francis, too, had Presence. Good old Burne. Smooth, nervy Burne. Burne would explain all of this.

Francis clunked forward. The floor of the control deck was a huge disk, immaculately metallic. There’s been a war! he croaked. Nearth has disintegrated!

Burne regarded him with half-closed eyes. Saying nothing, he went to close-up, got a jolt. Nearth was just as gone, the starless night just as endless, as in Francis’s cabin.

But Burne’s voice was resonant with calm. Hell—something’s blocking our view, that’s all. He reversed the zoom. Slowly the night congealed into a single object, a black globe that made a hole in the sky. It floated in moonless silence. God’s magic mousetrap!

What is it? asked Francis. He exhaled in gratitude: it wasn’t the end of the world.

Carlotta! Burne whistled in delight. Carlotta the ghost! He socked a relay on the intercom panel, sending his voice to a dozen places at once. Kappie! Luther! Fire up your monitors and zoom! Go to two thousand millimeters and you’ll see pretty Carlotta like she’s never been seen before!

Francis knew about Carlotta. For years, several of the more dissident astronomy journals had been lending their support to theories of an uncharted body somewhere in the Malnovian Belt—an Atlantis among asteroids, too small to disturb its neighbors and too large to be uninteresting. But so far only one telescope-bespectacled scientist had ever reported seeing the thing with her own three eyes. This was Dr. Carlotta V. Quippet. In a convulsion of vanity, Dr. Carlotta V. Quippet had named it after herself.

She couldn’t decide whether to call her discovery a planet, a planetoid, an asteroid, an escaped moon, or a stable comet. Francis called it trouble. We’re not going to collide, are we?

We’ll graze it. Burne sidled toward the nearest computer terminal with annoying nonchalance. For the last six days, their L-17 had spewed out plastic rectangles stamped with a cybernetic subtongue few could fathom. He grabbed the stack and shuffled. Which is to say we’ll miss the troposphere by fifty kilometers.

Better tell them to get their hens off the roof, said Francis, grinning. But he was not happy. He wanted Nearth, not this dismal world that hovered before his eyes like a scoop of poison ice cream.

The far wall undid itself and Kappie McKack appeared, working her way across the flypaper floor with an ease Francis envied. She was a tall woman, bright and sly, with crisp features on a thin face. Francis enjoyed her young voice.

"Didn’t anybody get the coordinates? Don’t you dwartches think of anything? Kappie flipped through the printouts, took the electrostylus from her mouth (there was always an electrostylus in her mouth), and recorded Carlotta’s location on a scrap of flimsy. We’ve got to publish this—become famous. We should contact Nearth right now!"

You’ll never get a message through all that radiation, said Burne, eyelids on a snide descent.

Kappie gave him a let’s-try-anyway look and sprinted, slow-motion, to the keyboard. XM-2 TO DR. ALBERT THORNE, she typed, GALILEO INSTITUTE, PLANET NEARTH.

XM-2 was the name of their scientific party: X for exploratory, M for mission, and 2 because the first time they’d gone to Arete they hadn’t come back dead. The name was a lie: Francis had about as much desire to explore the solar system as he did to eat glass. He was a biologist, an insect authority (Ph.D. dissertation: Gall Midge Ecological Strategies), not an adventurer. The gratifying thing about insects was that you could study them indoors.

A plastic rectangle shot up like toast, and Kappie caught it in midair, TRANSMISSION TO PLANET NEARTH SCATTERED BY MALNOVIAN BELT RADIATION, she quoted merrily. "I told you it wouldn’t work. Turning to avoid Burne’s eyelids, she studied the gypsy planet. It’s just like all the disreputable theories say, isn’t it? A dark cloudcover, soaking up the sun—the perfect camouflage. But now your secret is out, Carlotta."

Eyes flashing, Kappie began improvising myths. Here, she explained, lived the Marduks, a lost race that spoke in music and thought in smells. This was the legendary Garden Planet, teeming with a fabulous herb that, ingested, enabled you to reverse the one decision in your life you most regretted.

"If only our main engines were fueled, Carlotta, we’d land on you and find out!"

Land—the thought made Francis flinch. Watching the homely little planet, he tried mightily to feel all the marvelous, exciting things Kappie felt. He knew he had a romantic bone, but right now it refused to sing. Disgusted, he hobbled to the edge of the monitor, found the switch, nudged it. Carlotta and the rest of the universe vaporized, clearing the way for Francis’s reflection: nascent potbelly, elfin face, small thirty-seven-year-old eyes, curly hair.

I’m worried. There was a new voice on deck. Two generations ahead of his shipmates, Luther Gorst was aging well. He slogged to the terminal without breaking stride, and his breathing did not accelerate. That damn asteroid may capture us.

Burne explained that they would clear Carlotta by over fifty kilometers, just enough to get some terrific snapshots.

"Even a hundred kilometers won’t necessarily keep her gravity at bay. Luther was doing his listen-to-me-I’m-old bit. If we’re sucked to the surface you’ll really get some terrific snapshots." Snatching a mamula-shaped mug, he lifted it toward Darwin’s coffee urn, a squat device anachronistically overgrown with nineteenth-century filigree.

Unlikely, said Burne. It’s a puny body, like Dr. Lostwax. You saw it.

Francis laughed without enjoyment.

I also saw an atmosphere. Luther poured coffee. "What do you think holds those clouds in place, rubber cement? I tell you, this object is dense. Probably some sort of esoteric fusion at the core."

Burne massaged his beard. God’s holy fastball! Carlotta spends her days turning gold into lead! Let’s just hope that gravity isn’t as heavy as it used to be….

Francis could feel his intestines kinking.

Two standard days later it became excruciatingly clear that gravity was as heavy as it used to be. We’re pinned, gentlemen, Kappie moaned. Pinned like one of Francis’s moths.

Luther switched on the retros, the only engines that were still fueled, and the computerized alchemy began. Cesium vapor poofed into ions. Speed braked, fall broken, Darwin started to orbit Carlotta fewer than ninety minutes before the fibrous atmosphere would have reduced them to lumps of ash.

The retros were banked, the monitors were revived, and the scientists milled lethargically around the control deck, each mired in a private gloom.

Eventually Luther said, "Think of something, Burne. Get us free. You’ve pulled bigger rabbits out of smaller hats."

I have a suggestion, Francis offered in the frail voice of a patient asking a neurosurgeon to go for a hopeless tumor. We’ve still got cesium vapor in the retros, right? If we fired those engines, and then gave them some moral support from the chemthruster, we might be able to bust out of here.

Despite his best efforts, condescension crept into Burne’s reply. "Yes, we could do that. But how do you propose we steer afterwards? You want to stand on the hull and blow on the solar panels? He began to circle the monitor, occasionally extending his palm and binding it to the glass with static electricity. On the screen, Carlotta’s equator rolled by, sheathed in seamless fog. Besides, we need the chemthruster for the landing."

The landing? Francis knotted up. "What landing?"

Friends, I’ve concluded that our best move is to decelerate again, touch down, and pray for good news—cesium and oxygen and fresh fruit and friendly natives.

"But you’ve never been there."

"The alternative, as I see it, is extreme and painful hunger. I’ve been there."

Francis had known all along that Burne would end up managing this crisis. Burne was tough. Burne practiced archeology, the most inconvenient of the sciences. He slept under stars and got local inhabitants to do things they’d rather not. Once when Burne was looking for shards of civilization on an icy outer moon, the life-sustaining thermal-pump at his chin froze inside his normally impervious pressure suit. Resourceful Burne bit through his own tongue, spat warm blood upon the motor, and got it working again. Still in his early thirties, the man already had a modest reputation as the sort of