“Don’t know. I can’t go home. I guess I could turn mercenary, see if the new Uprising wants a fighter. But I think I need a break from overthrowing governments for a while. I could work at a dive bar. The Low Road, maybe.” She makes a peevish noise with her mouth. “I really thought Bianca was going to be great. She had me convinced. How do I know it’s going to be any different if I decide to follow you?”
I watch her face close enough to see a flicker of hope, in among all the twinges. I don’t want anybody to follow me, or to believe in me. I want to sleep for another five or six turns of the shutters.
But I was sent back here to teach. So I feel the calm settle into me.
“There won’t be any safe place soon,” I say. “Good weather’s gone forever. Imagine if the next cyclone hits one of the farmwheels.”
“All the more reason to lie low,” Alyssa says. “Why should I put my faith in you now?”
I breathe deep, as if I could take time itself into my lungs and hold it there until I’m ready for the next moment to arrive.
“Don’t believe in me,” I say. “Believe in them.”
I spread my arms and unwrap my cloak to let her see, if she wants to see. Alyssa hesitates a moment, then comes forward.
I bring her down easy, remembering all my mistakes, and show her nothing but the play of snow on the wind, until I feel her relax into it. Then I bring her inside the city in the middle of the night, down through walls of ice and living matter, which resonate with all the music from below. I show her the galleries, the huge girders, strengthened by fire from the center of the world, and supported by a shared history that goes all the way back to the taming of the sky. The Gelet approach, not as some inhuman shapes that swarm out of a hostile landscape, but as friends whose tentacles extend in welcome and whose pincers open to let you see inside their hearts. I close in on one memory in particular, of when Rose held up my father’s timepiece, and how this looked to my human eyes as well as to my new senses, all the ways I knew she was keeping faith with me. I don’t try to tell a story, or share a chain of events, I just open up the feeling of being home, in a place where everybody knows your damage, and I let it seep out of me. The memories I have to share are clean and true.
When I disengage, Alyssa holds me tighter, as though she doesn’t want me to ever let go. Her eyes are so wet they look like silver.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing this book felt like stumbling around in total darkness, a lot of the time. I’m supremely grateful to everyone who helped me find my way. Any screwups and faults are all my responsibility, but most of what’s good about this book is due to the generosity and kindness of many others.
First and foremost, I am hugely and eternally indebted to Miriam Weinberg, my editor, whose brilliant sense of story and razor-sharp sensibility made a huge difference. Large sections of this book only work because Miriam spent hours on the phone with me helping me to see where I had swept important stuff under the rug, and to figure out what this book was actually about. Miriam is the most patient genius around.
Also, Patrick Nielsen Hayden didn’t run screaming when I told him I wanted to follow All the Birds in the Sky with a dark, serious story about a tidally locked planet. I’m also super grateful to everyone else at Tor, including the fantastic Kirsten Brink, magical punk rock icon Patty Garcia, super art director Irene Gallo, the eagle-eyed copy editor Liana Krissoff, and tons of others. And at Titan Books, I’m super grateful to Ella Chappell, Lydia Gittins, and everyone else who has supported this book.
Also my astute and fearless agent, Russ Galen, supported me every step of the way, no matter how weird and indescribable the book started to sound.
I also have to thank my sensitivity reader, K. Tempest Bradford, who put up with a million questions and offered keen insights on my elaborate future history of Earth and beyond. Thanks also to all my beta readers: Claire Light, Liz Henry, Elizabeth McKenzie, Isabel Yap, Baruch Porras-Hernandez, Wonder Dave, Jessy Randall, Nicole Gluckstern, Kate Erickson, Shobha Rao, and anyone else I’ve forgotten. Claire, in particular, spent ages generously helping me with the emotional beats and the world-building in this story.
Josh Friedman took a chance and hired me to work on the Snowpiercer TV show when I was struggling to finish this book. Getting to listen to some of the smartest people around geek out about story structure (including the aforementioned Kate Erickson, plus Alexandra McNally, Erica Saleh, Halley Gross, Heather Regnier, and Lucas O’Connor) made all the difference when I left behind their oppressive society on the edge of a frozen wasteland, and returned to my own.
Thanks also to my manager, Nate Miller, for getting me that gig and for everything he’s done to support my writing.
So many other people have helped me with my writing and helped me to learn from my storytelling mistakes; I could be here all day listing them. I’ve learned from the best.
Thanks to everyone on Twitter who answered my tidally locked–planet questions back in 2013, and to everyone who’s helped me with the science since then. Lindy Elkins-Tanton at Arizona State University patiently answered my geophysics questions, and I also got some useful feedback from Aomawa Shields and Dorian Abbot. Berkeley’s Terry Johnson had a lot of thoughts about the Gelet’s weather manipulation.
I’m aware that the science in this book is fudged in some cases, and in others the scientific consensus changed while I was in the middle of writing. Which happens. But these generous scientists, as well as all the papers I read about tidally locked planets, were invaluable in shaping this book.
Superstar economist Noah Smith kindly read my book and patiently argued with me about the admittedly gonzo economy I had created for Xiosphant. I don’t think I convinced him to go work for the Xiosphanti Central Bank, alas.
And most of all, as always, I have to thank my partner and hero, Annalee Newitz, who inspires me in a million ways, and with whom I always want to share all the science, all the stories, and all the mapo tofu.
The City in the Middle of the Night
Six Months, Three Days, Five Others
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHARLIE JANE ANDERS is the former editor in chief of io9.com, the extraordinarily popular Gawker Media site devoted to science fiction and fantasy. Her science fiction and fantasy debut novel, All the Birds in the Sky, won the 2017 Nebula Award for Best Novel and was a finalist for the 2017 Hugo Award’s Best Novel category. Anders’s short story “Six Months, Three Days” won the 2013 Hugo Award and was subsequently picked up for development into a NBC television series. She has also had fiction published by McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Lightspeed, and ZYZZYVA. Anders’s journalism has appeared in Salon, The Wall Street Journal, Mother Jones, and many other outlets.