The Company Articles of Edward Teach/The Angaelien Apocalypse

By Thoraiya Dyer

Two novelettes form the second Twelfth Planet Press Double.

The Company Articles of Edward Teach – Learning to live inside your own skin is hard enough, but what if you were thrown back in time, to another body; a different world...?
The Angaelien Apocalypse - An alien story you’ve never seen before ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Twelfth Planet Press
• Release date: Jan 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9780987082886

Thoraiya Dyer

THORAIYA DYER is an Australian writer whose more than 30 short stories, as well as a novella and short fiction collection published since 2008 have racked up 7 wins from 17 Aurealis and Ditmar Award nominations between them. Her debut fantasy Titan's Forest Trilogy is published by Tor Books.

Book preview

A Twelfth Planet Press Double

First published in Australia in November 2010

by Twelfth Planet Press

Available in print from www.twelfthplanetpress.com

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Smashwords Edition 2011

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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If you like The Company Articles of Edward Teach/Angaelien Apocalypse, you might also enjoy the following Twelfth Planet Press publications on Smashwords…

Horn (a Miriam Aster novella) - Peter M Ball:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/4763

New Ceres Nights – edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Tehani Wessely:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/5115

Angel Rising, a New Ceres Novella - Dirk Flinthart:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/4765

Siren Beat - Tansy Rayner Roberts:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/4764

Sprawl – edited by Alisa Krasnostein:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/35731

This Twelfth Planet Press Double © 2010 Thoraiya Dyer and Matthew Chrulew

Design and layout by Amanda Rainey

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Author: Dyer, Thoraiya.

Title: The Company Articles of Edward Teach/The Angaelien Apocalypse by Thoraiya Dyer and Matthew Chrulew; edited by Alisa Krasnostein, Tehani Wessely

Edition: 1st ed.

ISBN: 9780980827422 (pbk.)

Other Authors/Contributors: Chrulew, Matthew, Krasnostein, Alisa, Wessely, Tehani

Dewey Number: A823.0876

CONTENTS

The Company Articles of Edward Teach by Thoraiya Dyer

The Angaelien Apocalypse by Matthew Chrulew

About the Authors

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THE COMPANY ARTICLES OF EDWARD TEACH by Thoraiya Dyer

October 30th, 2009

Layla

My Baba’s always telling me the Muslims were the first men of science.

‘The first men? That’s got nothing to do with me, then,’ I say carelessly at breakfast when I can see he’s got the bloodshot eyes, the chicken-wing shoulders, the stiff neck, that mean he’s been up all night watching foreign language news from the Old Country.

‘You think you’re equal to a man, Layla? I don’t think you’re smart enough to be a doctor.’

Ah, reverse psychology. He thinks I was born yesterday. But I wasn’t, I was born seventeen years ago, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you don’t tell your Baba he’s got the parenting skills of a lobotomised ape. Not when he’s had a sleepless night, anyway. Not when I need a costume for the rave tomorrow night that he doesn’t know I’m going to.

‘I’m coming first in Maths and Science at school, Baba.’

‘Only? You should be first in everything.’

‘Where’s your university degree, then, you stupid dole bludger?’ I snap.

Not really. I don’t really say that. You know why? Because his entire self-worth hinges on getting respect. In public, anyway. It’s all about having your family under control. It’s all about having the most money, the most fame, the most education, the most sons, and making sure all ten billion of your relatives know about it.

My Baba’s got no money and no fame. He’s got no education and no sons. All he’s got is what he tells to his lowlife gambling mates at cards every afternoon: My daughter’s going to be a doctor. She’s smart. Smarter than all of you.

Of course, he’d never say that to my face. That’s not how he was raised. Stomp on them and the strong ones will be left standing, that’s how they did it back then, in the dusty villages with their olive trees and kerosene-laden donkeys.

‘Baba, I need some money for school.’

‘How much?’

‘A hundred bucks. For an excursion. Here’s the note.’

I hand him a sheet covered in tiny writing. His eyesight’s so bad he can’t tell it’s the school anti-racism policy. I’ve got it because Marissa Jenkins called me an ‘aids bomb’ last week and she didn’t realise I’d get her suspended for racist remarks at the drop of a hat. Or a veil. Or one of those things the Sikh boys have on their heads.

Baba digs grudgingly in his pocket, like it’s a diamond mine. Like the cash came from his sweat and tears instead of his atrocious scrawl on a Centrelink form. Or, in this case, from a win at poker, without which I’d never have asked for so much. He slides it across the chipped, lime green tabletop, but before I can take it he slams his hand down on it, hard.

‘Hussein said you were at the shopping centre on Thursday.’

Damn, and I thought I’d ducked out of sight quick enough. It’s the mosque’s unofficial surveillance network. Nobody escapes.

‘I was buying books, Baba.’

‘Hussein said you were talking to boys.’

Well of course I was talking to boys. Why else go to the shopping centre? I feel powerful when they fight for my attention. The more they hate each other, the hotter I feel. And then I ride them in the backs of their hotted-up cars. Their rigid cocks are like rockets to the stars. There’s no better feeling than being ploughed by a prince that you’ve raised to the throne yourself.

How they grovel just to get near me. How they squirm.

‘Oh, they were bothering me, Baba, but I know how to take care of myself.’

He lifts his hand from the money, grumbling.

‘I can see your hair, Layla. You must be more modest.’

Yeah, because wearing a veil to protect me from lecherous hair-perverts is really relevant in a country where you can go topless on the beach. Besides, half of Sydney is gay. It’s the men who should be lengthening their hems and refraining from shimmying their hips as they walk.

Strangely, the Prophet didn’t give any instructions about that.

‘Thank you for teaching me, Baba,’ I say, and take the money for the fancy dress hire from under his cracked, calloused fingers. I’m thinking of going as a naughty nurse, or maybe a French maid.

‘Where’s the excursion to?’

The lie comes all too easy.

‘The hospital, Baba.’

His face lights up. All the pouches and wattley folds flatten out and his crooked teeth show; his eyes are focused on a vision of me tossing a flat-topped cap into the air, a bunch of sandstone gargoyles looking on.

I adjust my veil, sling my schoolbag over my shoulder, and walk away.

Why should I be a doctor? Why would I waste ten years of my life so I can dish out medical certificates to brickies with hangovers until the day I get sued because someone’s kid ate their granny’s medicine and I failed to write ‘do not eat granny’s medicine’ on the script in ten different languages?

I can just go on the dole forever, like him. That way I can get on with what I really want to do: dancing, dressing up and fucking. Life is too precious to waste. Too precious to be born a control freak’s daughter.

I wish I was somebody else.

October 31st, 2009

Avi

My mother’s always telling me the Jews are the Chosen People.

‘Chosen for what?’ I say.

‘Obedience,’ she replies significantly. Her eyebrows, that she’s removed and then pencilled back in, dive down like a non-kosher, fish-eating bird over the polished pebbles of her penetrating lawyer’s eyes.

What she means is that I should listen to her and plead ‘not guilty’ to multiple driving offences. What she doesn’t know is that I did it on purpose. Because if I get a criminal record, I can’t ever be a lawyer.

What she just doesn’t get is that obedient is just another word for brain-dead lemming and the last thing the world needs is more lawyers making more laws. There are too many already. Federal laws. State laws. Six hundred and thirteen mitzvot. Talmudic law. Rabbinic law. All the customs and traditions we’ve been carting around for thousands of years. You can’t be obedient even if you want to, because arson in the eyes of one law is simply burning down a city that has turned to idol worship in another.

I close my eyes and permit myself a small smile.

Damn, it felt good to put my foot down on the accelerator. Lights streaking along both sides of the Eastern Distributor, blurring in the edges of my vision. Adrenalin lifting me above the penthouses and corner offices on the hundredth floor. The cop cars behind me felt like a king’s escort. I saw the truck stopped ahead of me, in my lane, and I crashed through the barriers into oncoming traffic without blinking.

I couldn’t stop. It felt too good. I was free at last.

The motorcycle cop came straight towards me. They wanted obedience? I’d take my own advice, for once. And I was no coward.

He swerved out of my way, and not at the last second, either. Seriously, there’s no way a plea of innocent is ever gonna go down. I don’t care what technicalities she’s got her hands on — or what magistrates’ joysticks, either. You don’t play chicken with the boys in blue. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that rule on the list, somewhere in between permitting a man to marry a slave after he’s raped her and breaking the neck of a calf by the river valley following an unsolved murder.

She gave me the guilt trip, of course. About how I could have gotten someone killed. But the thing about that is, unless you actually do get someone killed it doesn’t cross your mind — and if he had taken his bike head-on into Mum’s Audi he would have deserved it in a direct, Darwinist way.

I open my eyes. There’s a fly on the ceiling.

‘My son,’ she says sternly, seeing that I am unmoved, ‘a legal system carries with it the obligation to be obedient. We may not agree with certain legislation or judicial interpretations, but we must be obedient. The alternative is anarchy or compliance by the use of force.’

‘I thought we were talking about being Jewish,’ I say flippantly.

‘We are talking about being human.’

Yeah, right. Most humans can eat a pepperoni pizza without having to repent for it later.

‘I feel like going for a walk,’ I say. If I’m going to jail then I might as well live it up a little first. There’s a pirate-themed harbour cruise on tonight. Samantha said she would go with me, but that was before she found out I’m not going to be a lawyer, the gold-digger. She’d already ordered matching outfits for us from a costume hire place in the city.

‘You can walk down to the Council Chambers and pick up that folder of character references for your court appearance,’