The Future Is Short (8 page)

Kes looked down at the display, impatiently tapping manicured fingernails against metal. “You know that this doesn’t mean I like you. I’m just curious to see what it is, that’s all. Don’t take this as an invitation to lance me.”

“Is that all you softies think about?” HanNam had the good sense to look offended.

Kes resisted smirking, a difficult thing to do; a violent cheek twitch betrayed him. The codes of behaviour—he couldn’t afford to make a mistake. Being alone with the revolting hominid was risky enough.

The display suddenly burst into life. The romantic images disturbed Kes. “It’s called a locket,” he said sourly, picking it up. There were meant to be pictures inside such trinkets.  He opened it, but settled into disappointment at the sight of mere sand. Without thinking, he shoved it back into HanNam’s hands.

“What did you just do?”

Kes turned swiftly to face the speaker. Pa-Ma looked from the display, then back to the locket lying in HanNam’s hardened palm.

“Kes, a love gift, to one of them? Not you too!”

Kes spluttered in protest, but his Pa-Ma’s eyes hardened. “You know the code. You’ve made your bed; now you have to lie in it.” Kes released a shaky breath; strangely, he was heartened by the fact that HanNam looked as horrified as he felt.

Ami Hart (pseudonym for Jesse Colvin) is a writer, painter, thinker, gamer from “Quaky- town”—Christchurch, New Zealand. She dabbles in a multitude of genres, frequently complaining that she suffers MWD (multiple
worlds disorder). She is currently writing her first science fiction novel. Ami blogs at
http://www.amilibertyhartwriter.com
and at
http://liberty-jessie.blogspot.co.nz
.

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16.

Sentience

Paula Friedman

All this happened before the Interstellar Manifest in Recognition of each world-born sentience.

We were still young. I was Parna’s female cultural attaché on conquered Lanos, new to Erigan’s soaring towers and the work. I loved the silvered skies, bold golden clouds, white waves. Garando was (surprisingly, as masculine Erigis there on Lanos are generally sombre like our own) a striking, gold-furred, brilliant creature, fluent in eight worlds’ languages, communicator in each verbal, empath, warbler mode. Someone who had known and suffered much, my lithe and learned good friend and mentor in those months. So wondrous he was, Garando, as we trekked the blasted Flith peaks over Yomba, clambered rock shores to the ancient sculptures of the Isle of Lan, wandered torn museums where he helped me comprehend Erig traditions, and by evening leaned, sleek head to golden breast and toes to claws, together in the slow, bare rail-ride back to Erigan. I trembled beholding his dark warmth, longed to stroke soft fingertips along that tawny pelt, sense feathery feelers on my skin, his swift thoughts in my soul.

And he, self-trancing on my “innocence,” yearned deep—I now know—too.

Remember, this was Parna-years before the Lanos Rising and resultant worlds-wide revolutions that, arising from the Seekers Movements of the 2460s, gave each sentience a sense of trusted self to freely seek out love. We were afraid.

“Hold me, beauty,” Garando’s tongue out-flicked. His fur misted my palms, his feelers coiled my arms. We rode the lift, gilt air below pricked by the darkened spires of Erigan. We wrapped together, heating, swarming dark electric. Squeezed at last into a narrow broken corridor, and lay upon his ivory warm-bed. Silver Moon glowed over Needle.

So few sentiences dared cross species then; I did not understand. He licked my eyelids; bathed in musk-scent, we sought new joy. Who could know a male Eregi needs, to reach a mode to merge a female … what, ignorant, I could not give. For hours we squeezed, and yet, even adhering, lay unspent. Until, though shamed by my failure, I dared look up into his orbs.

And he said, “Ah well, beauty, I guess your longing for the alien arises only from some twist,” and added, “I saw a healer once; you must, as well.
That you may someday cease to twist an Erig’s gift.” Yet his feeler stroked my cheek.

I could not doubt him; I left, descending the Thousand Steps. His words had cut a horror of my heart.

Much as our invasion fleets had etched, through that whole millennium, horror into his world. Leaving the puppet caste and upper sex of Lanos to carve Erigis’ minds. To teach them doubt of I and Thou, divide and isolate.

No matter. But it was only through Revolution’s changes we could find our own free language and our truths of selves. Only in the years we struggled, together as one—we Parnese, Earthians, Sillas, Erigs—on Jaranda’s barricades, space-trails of ancient Cortiex, darkest Har—could we learn, in sweat and tears, how deep all sentients love. Only then could I come, at last, to see Garando had been wrong, the “twisting” neither mine nor his but simply concepts foisted in Erigis by our long invasion and their loss, and in we Parnese females by our straitened lives.

I had only, wholly, longed for and loved him.

Now it is another courage needed, an age away on far Sil’s sands, knowing what we briefly had and ever lost.

Paula Friedman is author of The Rescuer’s Path (2012), which Ursula K. Le Guin has called “exciting, physically vivid, and romantic.” Friedman has received two Pushcart nominations and several literary awards; her short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines. She seeks a new siamese cat and a Macarthur, Nobel, or other major award/grant.
Sentience appeared as a February 2014 Flash Fiction selection on Morgen Bailey's Writers Blog.
[email protected]
 
http://www.paula-friedman.com

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17.

Everyman Dies, But Not Everyman Lives

Mike Boggia

“Wonder what my friends would say?” Medic Chiron Zingaro’s voice echoed from the cavern’s obsidian walls. “I forgot. It doesn’t matter to them. They’re dead. Everybody’s dead within twenty light years.”

He laughed until he choked. They all died at once, together. I’m dying alone, without hope.

Dawn broke, day twenty after the crash. Zingaro struggled to his feet. Moving carefully on a makeshift crutch, he avoided stubbing the toes of his broken leg on the uneven floor. He paused at the entrance, leaned against the rough wall, and studied the foreboding, blood-red sunrise.

Silence unto the silence of deep space. A boulder studded landscape stretched before him. He limped across the charred terrain to the wreckage of the ship. I’ll bring the last salvageable food here. After that . . .

With the rising sun-star, the insidious wind stirred. A gentle, beguiling zephyr graduated to a stiff breeze and ended in the daily, moaning gale. He stared at the bronze cloud of hissing sand, wondering if the night’s total silence was worse than the sibilant shh of sand. Cursing, he withdrew into the cavern, donned a respirator, and huddled on a pile of blankets.

Zingaro relived the last few heart-pounding minutes of disbelief and terror before the crash. He survived because he went into the linen closet to check supplies for sickbay. Three simultaneous explosions racked the craft. Bedding tumbled around him as he fell to the floor. Seconds later a shelf crushed his leg. Impact with the planet ripped the compromised airframe apart. Pain rendered Zingaro unconscious.

After he regained consciousness, the thought of survivors needing treatment, spurred him to drag
himself into the wreckage. Discovering he was the only survivor was a depressing blow. Using a bent doorframe, he set and splinted the fracture, almost passing out several times.

Alone, with no chance of rescue and hampered by his injury, he calculated the odds of survival were zero.

The periphery of his vision caught movement at the entrance. He blinked, sat up, and rubbed his eyes. It’s my imagination. Hell, no! Something’s peering around a boulder.

“Damn!” Zingaro grabbed a chunk of jagged rock and prepared to defend himself.

Startled by his movement, it halted, just inside the opening.

What the devil? Appears to be a scabby, wart and horn-covered emaciated snake. He cocked his arm.

The creature froze for a moment. The horned, oval head moved in serpentine fashion.

“Get the hell out of here!” Zingaro flung the rock and missed his target.

The alien rolled into a ball, flipped over, belly exposed. Rudimentary appendages folded against the body.

Zingaro stared at it until curiosity prompted him to speak. “Okay, I’ll let you stay.”

The creature righted itself, crept deeper into the cavern, and curled up across from him, head resting on the mottled gray body. He guessed the beast fell asleep. A string of green tongue hung from a fringed, lipless mouth. Zingaro dozed and dreamed of another crash.

He was aboard a vessel, manned by creatures resembling the one that crawled into his place.

Frantic activity indicated a malfunction aboard ship. The craft stalled and began a steep descent toward the bronze planet. The crash, though not spectacular, killed or mortally injured the crew. One survived.

***

He shared his rations and named it Macabre. Macabre ate and drank miniscule amounts. Their food and water lasted two weeks.

Dehydration and starvation sucked fluid and flesh from Zingaro’s body. Macabre sagged against him and dreamed.

“I’m dying, hopeless, but not alone,” he rasped. He snuggled closer, embracing Macabre’s skeletal body.

How did Macabre get to the entrance? I see four of him. He sank into darkness.

Zingaro awoke to the hum of a propulsion engine and saw Macabre curled up on a bench next to his. Macabre’s thoughts entered his mind. You saved me. We return you to your kind.

He reached over and patted the warty body. “
Thanks, pal. I wonder what Command will say about my ‘first contact’?”

Mike Boggia’s passion since childhood has been writing. He had a gothic novel, The Dungeon, written under the pen name Mary Lee Falcon, published in 1967, sold a short story to Mike Shane Mystery Magazine in 1973, and in 2013 had a short story in Mystic Tales from the Misty Swamp.