Rainmaker Cometh

Rainmaker Cometh

By Jan McDonald

Time of the Tower, Time of the Tug, for generations beyond remembering Rainmaker has been a denizen of pressure gradients and barometric boundaries, flexing and curving itself to the hills and valleys of the air. Only once a year does it approach the earth, on the summer solstice it descends over some obscure map reference in a forgotten part of the ocean to consign its dead to the receiving waters and replenish its vapor tanks. This day of approach is foremost among the city’s festivals; as it unfolds its tail from its belly and descends from the perpetual cloud of mystery, the rigging wires flutter with tinsel streamers and spars and ribs bristle a thousand silver prayer kites. Fireworks punctuate the sky and all citizens celebrate Jubilee. Flatlanders find it paradoxical that those who chose to live in the sky should celebrate their closest approach to earth, but those of you who have been a dragonfly snared by the surface tension of a pond will understand: it is not the closeness of the approach they celebrate, but the slenderness of the escape.

Sheriff Middleton and his stomach have enjoyed each other’s company for so long now they are the best friends. A satisfyingly mutual relationship: he keeps his stomach warm, full and prominent in the community behind straining mother of pearl buttons and silver belt buckles; it supplies him with public eminence and respect, a rich emotional life of belly laughs and gut feelings, even a modicum of protection, the stomach totes a .44 Magnun and has seen several Dirty Harry movies.

Rainmaker. Illustration: Elena

This stranger, stepping off one bus and not stepping on another, bag full of weird thangs, head full of weirder stories; stomach’s got this gut feeling about him. Stomach’s heard all about them on the evening news, these folk from the coast, there’s nothing they won’t do, and People are beginning to talk (the ones whose talk matters, the ones with the capital P), and once People start talking, tome you started listening to your good old buddy, Sheriff Middleton, that’s been giving you nothing but heartbum and flatus all week and Do Something.

Stomach never walks anywhere, so Sheriff Middleton drives him out to the edge of town where the man who calls himself Elijah is taping something that looks a little like a CB aerial and a little like a chromium Bay Prawn and not a whole lot and a whole lot like either to the side of a Pastor Drew McDowell Ministries hoarding.

There’s never any way of making this sweet and easy, so don’t even bother trying.

(Excerpt from The Year’s Best Science Fiction, eighth annual collection, edited by Gardner Dozois, 2008)