Search Worlds Without End

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1987. The story is included in the collection Kaeti on Tour (1992).

Kaeti and her companions inhabit a strange world; a 'theatre of the mind' where the unexpected is commonplace, where ghosts, vampires and even the odd goddess may be encountered at any turn. It is a tribute to the author's skill that Kaeti's world seems, at all times, as real as our own, sometimes uncomfortably so. Whether satirising the mores of the Thames Valley or exposing the curious antics of the publishing world, Roberts is equally at home. He explores the gamut of human emotions; high comedy alternates with terror, the most delicate of love scenes are set against the iron dreariness of Death Row. Always though, at the focus, is Kaeti; witty and resourceful, resilient and vulnerable by turns. Some characters may change their roles with lightning speed, like the players i n a repertory company - but Kaeti remains. As does London. Robert always displays a knowledge of a city haunted by its own past, and a love for its highways and byways, that will surprise old fans and win him many new admirers.

Table of Contents:

• Kaeti's Nights - (1981) - novelette
• The Silence of the Land - (1984) - shortstory
• Kaeti and the Potman - shortstory
• Kaeti and the Sky Person - shortstory
• Kaeti and the Building - novelette
• Kaeti and the Tree - shortstory
• Kaeti and the Hangman - novelette
• The Clocktower Girl - novelette
• Kaeti and the Zep - shortstory
• The Dream Machine - shortstory

Kaeti branches out, moves farther from her beloved London. In the process she makes a whole range of new, intriguing friends; and lands herself in some scrapes startling even by her standards. The shadows she sprays on the pavement of a Thames Valley town come alive to haunt her; later, the magic Tiger Sweater she acquires does more than haunt the subjects of her wrath. While for a time her latest experience of France also looks like being her last. In a Thames-side hotel she conjures Hell on request; on a deserted airfield, and in the Green Palace, Glasgow, Hell returns to haunt her. In the West Country, she meets an eighteenth century benefactress; or is she? Certainly the experience lands Kaeti in hospital; for a while it seems she's about to cross the Bridge of Dreams herself. Finally she circles back to London' but a London neither you nor she has never seen...

But it's all in a day's work for Kaeti, the Bow Bells actress who is in touch with things magical and eternal.

Table of Contents:

• Kaeti and the Shadows - novelette
• The Tiger Sweater - (1987) - novella
• Kaeti and the Village - (1988) - shortstory
• Turndown - novelette
• Kaeti and the Airfield - novelette
• The Green Place - novelette
• The Aquatint - novelette
• The Bridge of Dreams - novelette
• Londinium - novelette