

The Worlds of Science Fiction,

Fantasy and Horror

Vol. 2 2017

FIRST PUBLISHED IN 2017 (THE WORLDS OF SCIENCE FICTION FANTASY AND HORROR Vol.II) THIS EDITION PUBLISHED IN 2016 BY ALTAIR AUSTRALIA PTY LTD ISBN: 978-1506166414 (PAPERBACK + ELECTRONIC BOOK) COPYRIGHT © CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS 2017 COPYRIGHT COVER ART © KIRSI SOLONEN 2015. COVER DESIGN © ROB BLECKLY 2017. THE RIGHTS OF THE COLLECTED AUTHORS TO BE IDENTIFIED AS THE AUTHORS OF THIS WORK HAS BEEN ASSERTED BY THEM IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE COPYRIGHT AMENDMENT (MORAL RIGHTS) ACT 2000. THIS WORK IS COPYRIGHT. APART FROM ANY USE AS PERMITTED UNDER THE COPYRIGHT ACT 1968, NO PART MAY BE REPRODUCED, COPIED, SCANNED, STORED IN A RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, RECORDED, OR TRANSMITTED, IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, WITHOUT THE PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER AND OR THE AUTHORS

With thank you to Tarran Jones and Rob Bleckly for helping to make all this possible.

The Worlds of Science Fiction,

Fantasy and Horror

Vol. 2 2017

Edited by

Robert N Stephenson

Published by

Altair Australia Pty Ltd

The Cover Artist

Kirsi Solonan

Finland

This Finnish digitally painting artist is married to her Wacom tablet. It's been so for nearly 10 years now and she's also in the process of starting her career as a fantasy/fiction writer, as her 'Ordera' has been slowly developing as a massive project, a tale she hopes to see continuing far into the future.

Many of her works are (dark) fantasy art. She hopes to find that unique touch in every work she makes, to give something new to familiar subjects, but more so not so familiar ones... Blazing and rich stories and heart-breaking fates and creatures are all out there waiting to be painted and told. In other words, telling a story in one frame is her key method.

She also thinks that using effective lights and strong colour schemes and still growing an idea from simple feelings and giving them a Face and a stage makes the picture rock. The main goal and highest prize is the successful emotion it creates when looking at the piece. Maybe making you wonder about things in another perspective and even get touched by the work.

What she deals with is controversy, nature, duality, the hidden aspects of humanity, the violence that persists in the soul that sees injustice, and the empathic part of the heart that doesn't give up when things get hard. And in these modern times, that is more than hard to maintain.

The battle of survival is not an illusion, it happens between the emptiness of the powers controlling us all from the inside, and the universal understanding of pain and love for truth and freedom, which connects all life together.

www(.)kirsisalonen(.)com

Contents

Introduction

No One is So Fierce - James Van Pelt - USA

Queen of Diamonds - Floris M. Kleijne - Netherlands

Booting Bottom - T.D. Edge - UK

Peeping Tom – J G Faherty - USA

Wings That Make No Sound \- Samantha Murray - Australia

Dancing for Azathoth –

Jaap Boekestein & Tais Teng - Netherlands

Sanguine – Jonathan Shipley - USA

Belief - Gustavo Bondoni - Argentina

Invasion Day – Victoria Knight - Australia

A Slice of Heaven - Zayan Guedim - Algeria

Despair – Brandon Grundling - South Africa

Last One - Eric Del Carlo - USA

Mnemo's Memory - David Versace - Australia

Hewit's Report – Gene Stewart - USA

Path to F'dar \- E.J. Alexander - Canada

The Demi-Arcanist's Will - Jakob Drud - Denmark

Executive Pressure - Brian Koukol - USA

The Trembling - Hernán Salvarezza - Argentina

290 - Harvest Time - Lyn McConchie - New Zealand

And the Matter of the Library Fine - Leon Chan -

Singapore

The Pale Witches of Autumn - Nicola Lombardi - Italy

Introduction

The year is 2017 and the search through 2016 has brought together an eclectic mix of voices, styles, and stories ranging from horror to epic science fiction. But there is more here as the search also went further in doing its best to find what was available, in English, from other nations outside the typical English speaking regions. While the search wasn't deliberate, it was focused on what could be created in vision as well as place and it was here some good work was discovered. These works from traditionally non-English speaking regions are not what would have been obtained via translation. As such, some of the deeper characteristics of language has been lost along with some of the more unusualness of culture and world view. The representations in this collection have been written for an English-speaking audience. It is hoped in the future actual translations would become available for writers that may only write in Spanish, French, German, Italian etc. This small book is only a representative sample of what was on offer in 2016.

The reason behind the creation of these anthologies is to raise awareness of other writers in this mixed field and perhaps allow the reader to get a taste and search out other works by these authors. To help in this regard the anthology will have what links are available at the end of the book so readers can find and read works of the authors they have liked, or gained an interest in.

Does this attempt at a worldview deliver the absolute best available in the marketplace? It is a question often asked and even argued against. The benefit comes in the knowing the world exists outside the usual offerings in fiction. The world is a big place and there is plenty of room for everyone to have a voice, provided we don't become too ruthless and objectionable. It is possible some great fiction has been overlooked, it is possible, but taste does play a part in some of this and as much as s sense of neutrality is put in place there will be leaning to what is liked over what is just well written.

This year does see many new voices to the anthology and some rather dark takes on the world. The mix of three genres, including some of the sub-genres, has allowed for an interesting combination of imaginations and emotional journeys. The inundation with stories through 2016 was encouraging and showed the concept of creating and writing is well and truly alive, despite the dumbing down through technology saturation. Intelligent stories were also on the rise but even though the colloquial tale about teenagers in small towns was still popular it garnered scant support. It was good to see we have reached the end of some of the over the top vampire fair and werewolf memes and have moved more into the twisting and further development of these tales away from things created in and by marketing studios.

Like the 2016 anthology, not all works will impress and some may even be deemed atrocious and some deemed brilliant. This dynamic observation by readers and critics is what keeps writer's minds alive and keeps them striving for the future. Do yourself a favour and search out some of these authors, or if they have no contacts, send a note to the publisher just giving your thoughts. Good or bad, apathetic or indifferent they may be, all are valuable. As always it has been a joy to put this work together.

Robert N Stephenson

January 2017

No One is So Fierce

James Van Pelt

USA

I'm forty-nine, Jamie thought and live with an ocean view. She paused on the quarter-mile long causeway to the Kingsmark Reef Lighthouse, shifting the heavy book bag from one shoulder to the other. Waves slid by on each side of the strip of rock and cement that connected the lighthouse property to the mainland. Nice day. A manageably cool breeze off the Pacific instead of the steady coat-cutter that kept all but the hardiest tourists from visiting. She'd heard Mark Twain said the coldest winter he'd ever spent was a summer in San Francisco, which was three-hundred and seventy miles south. Clearly, he'd never visited Kingsmark Reef in early September.

The tide would cover the causeway in an hour. Already, higher waves lapped over, sending long ripples down the sidewalk. Water trickled off the rocks. Crabs scuttled away. A seagull hopped aside to let her pass, and the wind smelled like seaweed and icebergs. Wet shoes were a small inconvenience to not living in a sterile, urban studio apartment with noisy neighbours and drive-by shootings. Much better than stepping over trash spilled from broken bags in the alley. Better than Friday nights sitting at the Slap and Tickle, fending off married realtors whose wives didn't know when their husbands got off work.

Jamie mounted the steps to the lighthouse door beneath a biblical verse inscribed in a corroded brass plaque. Predictions said the waves would rise tonight. An unseasonal Labour Day storm hundreds of miles away churned the ocean already and was coming this way. By morning, they'd close the beaches. Too early to be a true winter tempest, but a harbinger of the season to come.

The heavy metal door creaked open into the blockhouse the light tower rose from. She turned back. If she could have seen over the bluff, only her car covered with a tarp remained in the parking lot. She'd pulled the shutters over the visitor centre and gift shop windows, giving the place a huddled and deserted look.

The lighthouse clung to a spit of land fifteen feet above sea level. Too dangerous for a boat to moor, the land bridge was her only route in and out, and was wet so often that algae slickened it. From a rock, farther from shore, seals barked. A cormorant streaked low, skimming the water. If the storm lasted, she might be stuck inside for a week or more since waves would splash over the walkway even at low tide. She hoped for a big one, a long, violent, pounding storm that dumped rain so fast she could wade into the sea and not notice the difference, one that kicked waves into a froth and rattled the lighthouse's foundation. The kind of storm primitive people would have attributed to vengeful gods. That's what Jamie wanted. Give me a storm to raise leviathans, she thought.

The door creaked open. At one time, it might have been waterproof, but now during a storm the ground floor filled with water that slammed against the door and pushed through the cracks. The room drained slowly and smelled like a fishy vegetable tray gone bad.

Still, I've won the lottery, she thought. Most people never run away to the circus, despite their hopes. They don't become firemen or astronauts or surgeons. They don't get to raise the dream family, or their kids turn out bad. Not many fairy tale endings in the real world, but here she lived the fantasy. Jamie clanged the door shut, threw down the heavy bolt that held the ocean at bay, and hung up her raincoat. She breathed easily for the first time all day. Sitting in the gift shop stressed her more that it should. Mostly people came to the lighthouse were looking for someplace else, like St. George Reef Lighthouse, twenty miles down the coast, a much more scenic attraction, although it took a helicopter to get to it. Fussy parents with whiny children. College kids on a lark. Foreign tourists collecting postcards and those little silver spoons with tiny cameos of the site. Kingsmark Reef Lighthouse stood impressively above the water, but the park trail to it was poorly marked and there were no photogenic overlooks from the road to set it off. Steep stairs in six long flights led to the shore, and all those steps had to be climbed to bring a tourist back to the visitor centre. The wind, too, sweeping off the frigid Pacific made it uninviting. Rocky spurs around the lighthouse shattered waves, creating a near-constant salt-water mist that soaked coats and ruined cameras. It was a singularly uninviting place. Jamie loved it.

The only feature of the lighthouse's main floor was a large, round wooden trapdoor to one side. A long metal bar that ran between two iron brackets anchored in stone held it shut. Jamie had opened it her first week on the job to reveal a well. The dark and silent water swirled slowly and rose and fell with the ocean swell. During a storm, water pounded against the trapdoor from below, like a monster's fist, and squirted from the edges all around.

She mounted the spiral staircase. Since 1881 when the lighthouse was put into service, every metal surface, like the stairs and central stair pole had been scrubbed of corrosion, primed and repainted many times, but now the paint covered pits and ridges and other imperfections. Nothing in Kingsmark was smooth, not the metal nor the wood nor the stone. Even the heavy glass in the lantern room had grown wavy with time. In the hundred and forty years, the lighthouse had stood, three keepers had died, two from waves crashing through the lantern room glass. If anyone doubted the sea's power, they only had to look at the first death: a seventy-pound rock cannonballed through the glass, catching the lighthouse keeper in the chest.

Jamie had not seen a storm where the waves crashed that high, but Park Service Superintendent Tacket warned her about them. "In the old days, when the light had to be tended, the worse the weather, the more we needed a manned lighthouse. But now the whole operation is automated, and ships have GPS positioning. There's no need to put anyone's life in danger. Even the lighthouse keeper's cottage is miserable in the winter. We have a deal with the Holiday Inn Express off the highway to put our keeper up. You don't need to stay here during storms. I don't want you to stay here." He looked solemn and serious in his park ranger uniform. Sometimes he'd drop by the gift shop for a coffee. Tacket had worked for the park service for forty-five years, and they all showed on him. When he took off his hat, his wispy grey hair looked like an afterthought.

Jamie read everything she could find on lighthouses before she took the job. She told him, "The beacon is still an active guide to navigation, sir. GPS can fail. A ship in trouble needs visible markers." She thought about Kingsmark Reef's reputation. In 1871, a coastal steamer named the Sister Hibiscus tore out its bottom during a fall storm. Only eight people (and a pair of goats) survived of the one-hundred and sixty-one on board. "I don't mind the weather. Have you seen this poster?" She held a framed image they sold in the gift shop of a man standing at the blockhouse door of a lighthouse, a huge wave crashing against and enveloping the tower above him. It seemed impossible that the wave wouldn't engulf him and sweep him away. "My life was sort of like this before I got here. I'm staying."

He'd given her a puzzled look.

Jamie mounted the circular stairs, keeping a hand on the centre pole. In an hour, she wouldn't be able to leave. When the storm hit, the waves would burst around the blockhouse base and overwhelm anything standing. Now, though, middle of the day, light streamed through the tower windows, tall gun slits filled with twelve-inch thick glass bricks. She didn't need to turn on the lights. The second-floor room held food, water, furnace and the kitchen. The third floor were the keepers living quarters while the fourth floor contained electrical equipment to run the beacon and the radio. Eighty-nine feet from base to top, Kingsmark Reef was the second tallest lighthouse on the Oregon coast.

She checked her phone. No reception which filled her with joy. No television in the lighthouse, no Internet. Only the radio. She dropped the book bag on her bed before rushing to the lantern room, an untraditionally large space, lantern in the middle, a circular bench against the wall facing in surrounded it, which was an addition in the late 1990s when the lighthouse became a tourist attraction. A mannequin dressed in a navy-blue wool, traditional double-breasted sack coat stood beside the lamp looking out to sea, his cap at a jaunty angle. When Jamie brought tour groups up, the lantern room could accommodate about a dozen. With the doors to the catwalk open, there was room for more, but for now, the lantern room was hers. Standing at the catwalk, she felt like a queen, like Thalassa, the Greek goddess who was the progenitor of fish, older than Poseidon even. She arched her back, pressed her belly against the rail and let the sun bathe her despite the cold breeze.

Last week, on a particularly clear and calm night, she'd stood in the same spot with a full moon heading toward the horizon. She gazed into the gleaming sea, awash with silver and bright glitters. A couple miles out, a freighter glided by, its deck lights flashing. She'd looked fruitlessly for mermaids because the night was too perfect for them not to exist. Selkies too or Jonah's whale or Melville's. Anything could come to reality on a night such as that. Werewolves on the shore, perhaps, or Valkyrie descending from Valhalla.

The next day, she called her sister in Portland. "Give my renters notice and sell my house," Jamie said. "Put a price on it that will move it in a hurry. Deposit the money in my account. I've filled out all the paperwork for you to do it, and I put it on my desk in my office. Take anything you want. Estate sell the rest."

"What's going on, Jamie. Are you in trouble?"

"Never been better." Jamie hung up.

Was it being forty-nine? When she'd turned thirty, she wondered where her twenties had gone. Her diploma brought her a middle-management position, and her portfolio grew. Portland provided plenty of entertainment. She'd joined a book club, made friends, moved out of the apartment and bought a house, but when she looked back, her twenties felt too short and wasted.

The thirties looked the same with a little more body fat. Three affairs, all short-lived. Moved back to the city. Leased the house out as a real-estate investment. Saw a therapist for insomnia that turned out to be depression, and somehow limped into her forties. She commuted on the bus. One day last year, a teenager sat next to her, her hair done in green and purple spikes, a nose peg, a skull tattoo on her neck. Jamie balanced a briefcase on her lap wearing a light green pantsuit and beige jacket. Her shoes pinched, but they matched the belt. She'd spent the morning in a budget meeting and the afternoon at a values, vision, and mission seminar. Tomorrow was her performance review with her manager, a pimply man fifteen years' younger who she'd trained a decade ago. The spiky haired girl faced her and said, "Did you see yourself like this when you were my age?"

Wind pressed relentlessly from the west, snapping tops off waves, sapping the sun's heat, but clouds covered the horizon, growing as she watched, pushing a storm swell. Translucent grey-green ridges, rich with seaweed shadows and fantastic shapes swept towards shore, shattered against the rocks. She couldn't feel it yet in the guardrail, but when the tide rose, when the waves grew, they'd shake the tower.

Eight hours later, after the sun set, the wind's muted caterwaul echoed in the living quarters. Jamie sat on the bed, a quilt wrapped around her shoulders, reading a book. This is what she missed in her old life, the unrestricted indulgence in her senses, in her imagination, in the world shuddering and alive around her. She tried, oh she had tried. Hiking when she could get away. Vacations. Meditation. Prayer. But people surrounded her. Certainly, not all bad. Jamie volunteered at the soup kitchen. She joined charities where she found the selfless who devoted their lives to helping others. People who were spiritual and inspirational, but they didn't overwhelm the mundane work, the debts and taxes and indelicacies that came her way every day. The distractions and indignities. She'd memorized Hamlet's "to be or not to be speech" because Shakespeare captured the essence.

A solid boom echoed from below. Jamie laughed, dropped her book, then ran down the spiral stairs barefoot, the metal cold and sharp. She carried a lamp because the ground floor had no electrical lights—they'd short out when the sea invaded. The top stair overlooked the trapdoor in the floor. Ten feet across. Water dampened the dark stone, and a sucking sound came from the trapdoor's circumference as the water retreated. A moment's pause, as the air reversed, whistling before a solid water column rushing upward. Then a whump she felt in her chest. Water sprayed from the trapdoor's edges. It leaked from the metal door that was her only exit. The ocean had come. If she loosened the trapdoor's bar, the water would slam into the ceiling in a powerful spout. It wasn't just the sea, though, trying to batter its way in. Denizens lived below, she was sure, which was the hope she couldn't share with her workers, with her neighbours, with the spiky-haired teenager who had no idea who Jamie was. Wonders and monsters lurked in the world, Jamie was sure. They lived in the blank spaces people ignored, in the terrain, they could not tolerate, in severe weather. As sure as she was sure of anything, Jamie knew terror and beauty in the leviathan, in hidden nature, multiplied and made grand.

An inch of water caressed the floor like oil, then flowed back toward the trapdoor. The powerful entrance demand would come again. A "let me in" that could not be denied. Jamie didn't feel forty-nine while sitting on the stairs, shivering in the stone ocean cold broadcasting from the brick walls. Back she went, to when she was seven, lying in bed on a turbulent night, as tree shadows waved on the wall, where the open closet door hid horrors, when her hands and feet retreated under the cover, pulled tight in, like a child-sized armadillo, locking out the claws, teeth, tentacles, and spines. Scary, yes, but also huge and glorious and limitless.

The sea, now, would be churning and wild. Jamie mounted the stairs toward the lantern room, like an acolyte or penitent, lamp in one hand. If she'd been the keeper a hundred years earlier, she would have spent the afternoon buffing the reflector, cleaning smoke residue from the lamp lens, trimming the wick, checking the whale oil or kerosene or carbide supply. She would have adjusted the vents to provide a steady draw for the flame and wound the clockwork to rotate the beam through the night. Now, though, the lamp was electric. It still flashed forth as a beam, three quick rotations followed by three slow ones, the lighthouse's signature pattern, not only warning of the rocks, but also telling ships where they were. This was her first ocean storm, the reason Kingsmark Reef Lighthouse existed, a beacon sending light into the darkness, warning mariners of rocks that poked up like massive megalodon teeth waiting to rip the flimsy hulls asunder. She shielded her eyes. No rain in the storm yet, only wind. Jamie put a raincoat over her nightshirt. She needed more clothes, but she wanted to see, she needed to see what was out there.

The wind pulled the door hard against her grip, and now the full-throated roar of the provoked ocean pummelled her, dampened her face and soaked her hair. The light swept by, throwing her shadow out to sea, then moving on like a vast, foggy sword. This wasn't a January storm, not the kind of waves that knocked down lighthouses or picked up rocks to throw through the lantern room, but it was her first one. The Sister Hibiscus sank during a September storm, maybe no worse than this one. There could be ghosts, she thought, and for a second she heard voices calling for help in the ocean's cacophony before losing them in the grinding clash between waves and reef. The mist dancing light stabbed toward the sea again.

She wasn't a middle-management drone, clinging to her desk and employees, serving her bosses' whims. Companies couldn't reach her here with targeted advertising, nor could politicians chart her leanings. Standing at the rail, she revelled in the cold baptism of salt spray, of the heady gusts that tugged at her coat. When the light went around again, two bright spots reflected to her from far at sea, and by the next light, they were closer and larger and twice of a height of the lantern room. Jamie leaned toward the shape coming toward her, vast, cyclopean, leather-winged, a face filled with tentacles dipping from the clouds and then hidden within them, and then another behind it just as big, waves breaking harmlessly against them. The first one reached out; its hand grasped the lighthouse just below her feet, shaking the structure. Revealed in the light, its skin was obscenely lumpy, and then the lumps were not lumps, but clinging man-sized creatures, water, and seaweed streaming from them. Hysterical with joy, Jamie remembered the inscription above the lighthouse door, "No one is so fierce that dare stir him up: who then is able to stand before me?" She'd thought it meant the sea.

I've seen the leviathan, she thought. I'm not that poor woman who'd sat in her apartment night after night, afraid that an empty wine class, a torn paystub, a lifeless daily commute was all the world offered. She felt the ocean's cold in her feet, on her bare legs that seemed as solid now and as slick as marble. Ocean trickled on her face. She licked at its salt on her lips. If the tentacled creature looked down at her, even noticed her, she knew she would go mad—she was nearly mad now—but it would not be Jamie who would be lost. That sad person died long ago.

Its skin was so close, she could mount the rail, leap onto it, but the beings who already had attached themselves looked hungry. In the arcing brightness and acetylene shadows, they stared at her, ready to render her to her bones, and she was jealous of them.

Then the hand moved on. The giant turned to walk along the shore. Light shone on it, slid away, and when the light returned, it revealed only an ocean at war with the wind and shore. The woman who had been Jamie laughed at the fullness of the world.

I am the keeper, she thought. I tend the light at night, and all beings who visit are welcome. I am ageless.

Queen of Diamonds

Floris M. Kleijne

Netherlands

Now on video

"Ace of spades. Queen of diamonds. Three of spades. Two of hearts."

The youthful female voice droned on as a succession of playing card graphics unreeled on-screen. After the first forty cards, had appeared on the laptop, the pattern was obvious. I phased out the images and the actual words, and for the remainder of the clip focused on the voice itself. It was a pleasant voice, suggesting melodiousness, but on the soundtrack to this bizarre home movie, the girl sounded stressed, unsure of herself--scared even. She was obviously not happy doing what she was doing.

The last card in the series, the eight of clubs, faded to black, and the sound ceased. I swivelled my chair to the left, facing Albers. She tapped the screen off and inclined her head.

"So, Richard?"

"So what?" I replied. "That was one of the most boring home videos I've ever had to watch. Get to the point."

Albers smiled. She was used to my bored and insolent attitude. She was also fully aware that it was almost entirely feigned. We had worked together on a wide range of projects, some perfectly above-board, the majority sprinkled across a wide spectrum of shadiness. I was her outsider, her specialist, an independent contractor who usually delivered when her own people couldn't. My rates ensured that she only called me in when the case absolutely required it, so I was certain there was something to interest me here.

I just didn't have a clue yet what it could be.

Albers took her glasses off and took her time folding them and placing them in their cassette. My turn to smile; it was her trademark gesture, announcing frankness, a confidential subject, or both. She was a severe blonde in her late forties, pale-faced and straight-nosed. Dressed in a tailored men's three-piece and with her hair pulled back into a firm little bun from which a few strands had escaped, she resembled a small-town headmistress more than anything. Instead, she was R&D manager for a major Euronext trading house that would never publicly admit they had an R&D department in the first place--her business card said 'Head of Operations', Zadelhoff & Verschuren.

I can't remember her first name.

"Have you heard of Project Preview?"

As a matter of fact, I had. I was around the offices enough to pick up the hallway buzz. But from what I had heard of Preview, it was exclusively a matter for their legal department. I said as much to Albers.

"True. At this moment, most activity concerning Preview is in Legal. But the core of Project Preview falls under my department and is extremely confidential."

"Aren't they all, Albers?"

"Not to this extent. If successful, the project could give us quite an edge on our competitors."

Cogs started whirring in my head; the hair on my neck tingled. I straightened my six-foot frame in the chair.

"Project Preview, top secret, edge on the competition? Is this what I think it is? Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

Albers inclined her head slightly, regarding me with what seemed to be amusement.

"That depends on what you think I am saying."

"You know what I'm thinking, Albers! If I'm right, I can understand the secrecy--doing R&D into insider trading is Euronext suicide! Not to mention illegal..."

Albers sighed theatrically.

"Oh Richard, why so squeamish?"

I stared at her unbelievingly for a long time before I caught on to the slight upward curve of her mouth and the ironic wrinkles around her eyes.

"Okay, okay--my bad. It's not insider trading. Are you going to tell me what it is, or are you just going to toy with me until you've had your fun?"

"I apologize, but I just could not resist. I'll tell you what Project Preview is about."

And she did, and as she spoke my initial surprise morphed into disbelief and annoyance.

They were looking for clairvoyants.

"I expect you have questions," Albers concluded.

"You expect right." I leaned forward in my chair and raised a fist. "Two questions, Albers, and then I'm out of here." I unfolded my index finger. "One: why is Legal even involved?"

Albers waved her hand in a dismissive gesture.

"Their team is breaking ground, creating jurisprudence for when we need it. Basically, getting the High Council to explicitly declare the use of clairvoyants on Euronext legal. What's your second question?"

I unfolded my middle finger and shook the resulting V sign at her. "Have the Board of Directors gone out of their collective mind?!" I exploded. "Or is this some weird test of my common sense? Clairvoyance is a King's Day scam, Albers! Are you telling me Z&V is planning to base their trading strategies on what Madame Zaza says?"

"Clairvoyance is..."

"Bullshit! There is no such thing!"

"The girl in the video..."

"... was wrong! I counted, Albers. I counted through the first forty, and she got only one right. I suck at math, but I bet you and I could do the same!"

Albers looked at me, completely unfazed. She remained silent for what seemed like minutes.

"Easily," she said finally, with a smug smile.

"What?"

"I said, easily. I did have a statistician work it out, of course. You and I would easily do as well. We took her through a series of 500 random cards on a computer screen she could not see. She named the correct card twelve times. My statistician tells me that anyone at all could score that well. I asked him if the result showed any sign of clairvoyance. He laughed and said he would not let her gamble with his money."

Albers looked and sounded triumphant as she told me this. I was puzzled, half-expecting a punch line. Were they asking me to find them the real thing? But then why show me the video at all?

"Here's the point, Richard. We have very good reason to believe the girl is a full clairvoyant, scoring as near to 100% as makes no difference. We believe this girl is going to make Z&V very rich indeed. She was discovered in Arnhem when a teacher took her through the same test and she scored 500 out of 500. The teacher knew about our clairvoyance program and entered the girl. She is very convincing."

"Yeah, except on video."

"That is exactly it, Richard. She can't do it in our controlled lab setup. Her teacher tells us the girl needs to feel safe to do it, to be with people she trusts."

New alarm bells started ringing.

"Tell me about this teacher."

"Miss Eva Jacobs. An average teacher, as far as we can tell, but with a talent for connecting with her students. She is very close to the girl. They're living together in the apartment we provided, on Herengracht."

"The girl brought her teacher?"

"Yes. She was adamant about not bringing her mother. She wanted Miss Jacobs, so we gave her Miss Jacobs."

I mulled this over for a bit. It all smelled fishy to me. In fact, it sounded like a very likely scam.

"In this program, do you give out all the facts?"

Albers smiled knowingly and said,

"Not about the purpose of Project Preview, obviously, but we do share the information about the relocation, the scholarship, the private school, the other perks."

I laughed quietly, shaking my head.

"Albers, Albers, Albers. Give me one good reason why you don't think you are being scammed. It's the perfect set-up! Poor girl, bad parent, good teacher, and here you come with a perfect little escape clause. All they had to do was come up with a good story about why it doesn't work in Amsterdam. You bought right into it!"

"We have reason to believe her claims," said Albers, primly.

"Oh yeah? What reason?"

"This," she said, triumphant again, and tapped the screen once more.

I swivelled back towards the laptop. The new video started on a black screen. A voice sounded that I had been listening to half an hour earlier.

"The cap, Miss Jacobs," the girl said.

I heard chuckling, a different voice. Light appeared at the edges of the image, suddenly flooding the screen, as a black circle moved away and down, enclosed in blurry pink blobs. The image darkened as the camera auto-adjusted, then drew into focus.

In the foreground was part of a wooden classroom desk with piles of papers neatly stacked and a Bluetooth keyboard. A lit flat screen monitor sitting on the desk filled half of the video. The classroom was a standard high school affair, with strips of window on one side looking out into the hallway and unseen windows on the other letting in sunlight. Posters and bookcases covered the back wall. Chairs were disarrayed, suggesting the end of a school day.

In one of the front-most seats was the girl.

She looked uncomfortable, no doubt partially caused by her tall shape in the small seat. But there was more to her discomfort, an impression that she was not quite at home in the classroom, or in her own body. The impression was enhanced by her facial expression: she looked confused and even a little scared, wide eyes darting here and there, swallowing and wincing every now and then. Her hands fidgeted.

She looked years older than any high school kid, and was dressed in old and faded jeans; not the fashionable, intentionally faded type, but the wear and tear of long use. An old baggy sweater with most of its letters missing hung off one shoulder. It was an outfit chosen of financial necessity, but even in her physical unease, she looked great in it.

I took it all in as Miss Jacobs, still off-screen, thanked the girl for her tip and fussed with the camera; took it all in and wondered, to my own amused exasperation, if the girl had a boyfriend.

"Are you ready for this, Sandra?" Sandra, then, was the girl's name. She nodded shyly.

"Okay, here we go." A hand reached past the camera and hit Enter. An app started up and filled the computer screen with a single grey window. The outline of a playing card was drawn but left blank. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then, almost simultaneously, the girl spoke and a card appeared.

"Jack of clubs," she said, and on the computer appeared a J and the black club symbol. "Six of clubs." The card outline blanked to white and the six of clubs appeared. She was right again. "Six of diamonds. Ten of hearts." She kept on naming cards, one after another, with hardly a pause, and every card she named appeared on-screen half a second later. I discovered my mouth was hanging open, and it seemed I had forgotten to breathe for a while. There she was, this exquisitely gangly creature, reeling off the future.

I heard a click behind me and the image shrunk to a point and disappeared. I faced Albers again.

"I see I've finally made an impression," she said. "This video originally convinced us she can actually make this happen. We had the program analysed, the one they used to produce the cards. And our experts say the program on that computer does indeed produce random series of cards. It is still possible that they used a different program to make the video, or doctored it in another way, or provided a second screen somewhere for the girl. That's one of the reasons why we want to reproduce it with our own people. The other reason, of course, is that the Board--in full possession of their mental faculties, I might add--demands evidence of any potentially useful psychic."

During this explanation, I had regained most of my composure and common sense. Of course, the tape could be a clever fake--but even I, with my built-in scepticism, had been all but convinced it had been genuine.

"But you're stumped now," I said, "because she says she can't do it among strangers."

"Miss Jacobs says that. Sandra prefers not to speak to us at all."

"How old is she, anyway? It was obviously a high school classroom, but she looks..."

"Yes, you've noticed. She's close to twenty-four. Her mother kept her out of school all her life, under the guise of home-schooling; it was miss Jacobs who finally enrolled her, but by then she was eighteen. Don't let yourself be fooled, Richard. In some ways, she can come across as slow, but she is a very bright 24-year-old."

I had one more thing to ask, though I suspected I already knew the answer.

"So what's my part in all of this?"

"The starring role, Richard. The hero. We need someone inside, someone to win her trust and still be impartial enough to provide the evidence we need. Miss Jacobs will accept no Z&V employee for that role. So, we thought of you."

But there was more to it than that, and we both knew it.

"This, is it? You want me to unlock this girl's potential, and if I succeed, you will hire her to do market predictions, and you'll pay her an indecent salary, and everybody comes out ahead?"

"That's it."

"Are you telling me everything?"

I looked in Albers' eyes and she looked back. We held each other's gaze for a long time, but her expression remained all but unreadable. Finally, she said,

"That's the whole truth, Richard."

At the movies

We made our way down the aisle and into our row of seats, people swivelling their legs to one side to let us pass with annoyed faces. I chose the furthest of the three open seats, and Sandra, in an unexpected but welcome show of trust, sat down next to me. Eva--Miss Jacobs--perched on the edge of her seat, watching me as much as the screen.

Almost at the exact moment we settled into the red plush upholstery, the theatre lights dimmed and the screen lit up: a reel of movie trailers and commercials.

"How's that for timing, eh?" I said, glancing sideward at Sandra. She gave me a shy smile before fixing her eyes on the screen.

"Very good, Richard," said Eva in a stage whisper. "I am impressed." But her voice told me all I needed to know: making it to the cinema on time was not a skill she valued in a man, and anyway, no amount of movie tickets, nice dinners, hikes and sailing trips would make me anything but a Z&V flunky with a far from hidden agenda.

It had started when I first arrived at their posh Herengracht apartment. When I rang the bell, I was buzzed in without comment and left to find my own way to the narrow switch-backing staircase at the back of the building. On the fourth floor, Eva Jacobs was waiting for me on the landing, outside the open door to the apartment.

Eva Jacobs was a tiny woman about a decade older than I, in her late thirties or early forties, small in stature and bone structure, with small gestures, economic movement, clipped sentences. That first time I met her she was dressed in a business-like jacket and skirt that almost matched her straight brown hair. She has a very expressive round face, but on that first meeting, it was set in a firm and unforgiving frown.

"Mr. Witte?"

There was more than a hint of Flanders or Brabant in her voice. I placed my suitcase on the wooden floor, stuck out my right hand, and confirmed my identity.

"Call me Richard."

"I am Eva Jacobs. Call me Miss Jacobs. We will have a talk before you meet Sandra."

"Good," I said. "I wanted to talk with you anyway."

A fleeting look on her face suggested that my response was neither expected nor welcome. She made no move to go inside.

"Sandra is like a sister to me. She is very bright and sensitive, but also very shy. That makes her vulnerable, Mr. Witte. I will protect her. I will tolerate nothing I consider harmful."

"I swear I have no intention..."

"Zadelhoff & Verschuren," she continued, waltzing over my words, "have sent you over to win her trust. So, you can get the proof they desire. You may succeed in winning her trust, or you may not. In either case, her well-being comes first. Don't push her. Don't force her. Don't hurt her, or I will have you out of here immediately. I'll be watching."

I nodded slowly as I pretended to consider her words. What I was really doing was deciding how to break through the pattern of hostility she had established, to show her I wasn't what she expected, to break the ice.

"Miss Jacobs," I said. "The main reason I got this assignment is because Z&V knows I always care deeply about the people put in my charge. If you think my involvement will be harmful, I will turn around and leave right now."

I stooped to pick up my suitcase and stood waiting for her response. She took ten seconds, and then a slight smile broke through her features. It looked good on her.

"Not quite yet, Richard. I agreed to your involvement. We will see how it works out. Come on in."

She went ahead of me into a long hallway. To the left were a series of doors, and I saw glimpses of bedrooms, exercise equipment, a well-stocked kitchen and a very nice bathroom before we entered the living room at the end of the hall. The living room was on the corner of the building, and the room was awash with sunlight from four enormous windows that looked out over the tree-lined splendour of the Golden Bend.

On a sofa across the room sat Sandra.

I looked at her and my stomach contracted.

She looked exactly as she had on the video I had watched three days before, down to wearing the same outfit. But seeing her in the flesh made her features come alive. She still seemed awkward and uncomfortable in her body, but that didn't stop her from unfolding her long legs and standing up almost gracefully.

"Sandra, this is Richard Witte. The man from Zadelhoff & Verschuren."

"Hi Sandra," I said. My voice felt like it wanted to croak, and my cheeks hinted at heating up. Stop it, I told myself. This is a job, not a date. Cut it out.

"Hi," Sandra mouthed. A tiny smile succeeded in lighting up her eyes and giving my stomach another stab. Cut it out!

I decided to give her my prepared opening speech.

"Well, this is rather strange to me too. Basically, Z&V is paying me to be your friend." And I think I am going to like the job, I added silently. "As far as I'm concerned, that means we have a contractual obligation to have as much fun as we can with their money." She briefly laughed at that, silver bells tingling, before curving her hand over her mouth with a guilty look in her eyes. "To start off with a bang, I thought we might go sailing this afternoon." Her eyes lit up. I knew from the file that she loved the wind and the water. "Have you ever been on a yacht?"

We took the company limo to Ijmuiden that Saturday afternoon and spent hours sailing up and down the North Sea coast in the Z&V forty-footer. It was sunny and there was a good wind, not strong enough to be dangerous, but with brief gales that allowed us to make a bit of water. Sandra did not speak much, but she had some skill with a sheet, and I could tell that she was enjoying it all immensely. Eva Jacobs sat aft and seemed determined to keep the disapproving look on her face, but every now and then I caught her off-guard and saw her grin. I did most of the talking, telling stories about previous jobs, pointing out points of interest around us, talking about the ocean.

Back in the marina, we dined off fresh eel and lobster before the limo took us back to Herengracht. It was close to 10 pm and we were all yawning as we walked back into the apartment. There was, however, one more thing I needed to do.

"Sandra?"

She looked at me from her place on the sofa over the rim of her cup of goodnight tea. Her face was flushed with the day, lightly tanned, and her eyes softened with fatigue.

"I'm afraid Z&V expects us to do a video today, as a baseline. Do you mind?"

Eva looked as if she was about to explode with righteous indignation. Fortunately, she held her peace until Sandra spoke.

"No, 's okay," Sandra said, with another of her half-smiles.

"Miss Jacobs?" Formally, I didn't need her permission if Sandra agreed, but it was the tactful approach.

"Make it brief, Richard. We are all tired."

I set up the camera and the tablet in the unused fourth bedroom. Sandra sat on the bed with her hands folded in her lap. I aimed the camera to include the tablet screen and Sandra and pressed the Record button.

"Now this is just a kind of calibration video if you know what I mean. I expect absolutely nothing. In fact, I expect to do at least as good as you." Again, she smiled, one of those genuine, eye-deep smiles. "Are you ready?"

She nodded and I tapped the random card program Z&V had provided. Sandra began listing card names.

It was a small bedroom and Sandra was very close, close enough to smell her shampoo and the faint, musky aroma of a long day on the water. I fidgeted with the camera, stared at the screen, did the statistical calculation in my head. As I expected, she was scoring one out of every fifty or so. Finally, in an unguarded moment, I looked her in the eyes, and she looked back.

There was a rush of feeling down my arms. My stomach squeezed tightly. My scalp tingled and I felt blood rush to my head. I knew there was an inane grin developing around my mouth, but I was powerless to do anything about it.

She blushed, too, but held my gaze, and kept naming cards.

At last, I broke our contact and looked at the screen. And when it registered what I was seeing, a shiver ran down my spine. The next seven cards that appeared were preceded by their name in Sandra's confident voice.

I looked back at her, open-mouthed and stunned. She started, and her series of correct predictions ended abruptly.

But I knew what I had seen.

*

After that first incredible day, we had settled into a kind of routine of fun. On weekdays, Sandra attended a private school, where it seemed that she excelled. After coming home, she spent an hour, tops, finishing the homework she hadn't gotten around to in school. After that, we would usually go on an excursion.

We visited the major museums, the Nine Streets, Muiderslot Castle. We wandered around the Jordaan and the Dam Square Monument. We took a canal boat trip through the harbor. We visited Artis Zoo. We played Frisbee in Vondelpark, explored Chinatown, had Dim Sum. I shared her love for jazz and blues, and the first two Saturday nights we ended up at the Blue Note Club near Leidseplein, where a hugely overweight woman sang a dark and smoky version of Hank Williams' Cold, Cold Heart and paid homage to Billy Holiday.

Sandra did not talk much, leaving most of the conversation to Eva and myself. But I could see she loved the things we did, the time we spent together. And me? Let's just say the fluttering and lurching my stomach did in her presence did not abate.

Tonight, three weeks after our first meeting, Sandra had requested a movie.

I had let Sandra choose the movie, pleasantly surprised when she turned out to be a fantasy and horror fan. She had picked the third Dark Tower episode, and we settled comfortably into our seats as Roland and his Ka-Tet hazarded the wastelands.

Later, Sandra's hand crept into mine.

"Richard?"

I turned around at her voice. Sandra was standing just inside my bedroom door, in loose plaid pyjama pants and a white t-shirt.

"Is it ok?"

I nodded, unable to speak. She took the few steps separating her from my bed and sat down on the edge.

"Is it really ok?"

"Yeah," I breathed, hoarsely. "It's okay."

Sandra slid under my covers and into my arms. I held her close as she fell asleep, wetting my shoulder with her tears.

I lay awake most of the night, blissfully aware of her soft breathing, her long warm body against mine, the smell of her hair.

Counting cards

His name had been Frederik and he was an idiot savant. In my opinion, that is an offensive and patronizing label, but he was a textbook example, severely autistic but with one amazing ability. He had trouble tying his own shoelaces and couldn't hold a normal conversation to save his life, but when it came to number-crunching, he was as good and fast as most calculators.

Albers had come across him in one of their first shady schemes to acquire people of remarkable talent. They had an ongoing search for human calculators, statistics whizzes, and trend predictors. One of their scouts had gotten wind of a kid who could do all three of these things with eerie reliability. Rumour had it he could glance at a stock market chart and instantly infer what the stock would do over the next few days. Optimists spoke of weeks; dreamers believed months.

I worked with him for a while. I believe it could have been years.

Albers had brought me in because she believed I had a knack for getting people to open up to me. She was right, though I don't think she ever understood what that knack was. Up until then, I had mostly done basic detective work for her, research into competing investors, that kind of stuff. My results had always been beyond her wildest expectations. I'd always known that the knack of getting someone to open up was to open up yourself, or at least seem to. Frankness invites frankness and all that. My experience was that people rarely felt unsafe or threatened around me. Top that off with a few shots at a local bar, and most investors tended to spill their beans and invite me to their birthdays. It seemed to please Albers, and I had developed a reputation for people work.

On the strength of this reputation, Albers had contracted me to work with Frederik. I believed she was crazy to think I could do something, anything, with an autistic 17-year-old, but took the job anyway; my fee did not depend on results.

I met up with Frederik, and against everyone's expectations, his doctors' foremost, Frederik took to me and grew to enjoy my company. He never learned to tie his laces and we never had a real conversation, but we did spend a great deal of time together. Z&V formally hired him and paid him an indecently generous salary, and Frederik got to stare at charts and make his forecasts.

It seemed to me that he was happy.

At the Aquarium

The nose of a rusty old Citroen Tortoise stood poised on the very edge of the quay, its left front tire almost toppling over the edge into the murky canal. On the water surface, a tiny improvised raft was home to an equally improvised nest of twigs and refuse, where a stoic plastic duck brooded. Below the surface, surprisingly large zanders and carp swam in restless repeating patterns. A rusting bicycle sat half-submerged in the goo at the bottom.

The three of us were standing at the canal diorama in the Artis Aquarium. This time, I was the one who had chosen our destination. An avid scuba diver, I loved the Aquarium for its ability to transport me back below the surface of the world's oceans. Sandra was enchanted by the windowed fish tanks, where an endless series of local and exotic fish displayed a mind-bending variety of shapes, sizes, and colours. We had spent hours taking in the tropics and were now enjoying the Amsterdam exhibits. Luckily Eva, who had an MSc in Biology, enjoyed the exhibition as much as we did.

It was the day after our visit to the movies. Sandra and I had woken up together very early, she still in my arms, and kissed cautiously. "Hey," I'd said softly, and that was all we'd said. Sandra had snuck out quietly before Eva would wake up. But the both of us were unusually quiet all through the morning, and sweetly shy during our visit to the zoo, enough to create a wondering frown on Eva's face. I realized something would have to be said soon, but had no idea how to go about it.

Eva herself came to the rescue, unexpectedly. It was a Saturday, and I had suggested taking in the zoo before lunch. When we'd had our fill of fish tanks, Eva, more perceptive than I'd given her credit for, suggested that we might want to have lunch together while she did the shopping she wanted. I looked at her, a question on my face. Eva smiled and nodded. Sandra, watching our wordless exchange, bent over and put her arms around Eva. They hugged briefly.

Eva jumped into tram 9 as I oriented myself before setting off north with Sandra. We made our leisurely way through the old warehouses that stood bearing witness to my city's centuries-old maritime history, past tree-lined canals and gabled houses, until we reached Kanis & Meiland, the waterfront cafe I believed Sandra would enjoy. She took in the riot of masts of the docked boats along the quay; then we settled down on either side of a small outside table overlooking the harbor.

It could have been an awkward, uncertain moment, but it wasn't. I stretched both arms across the table and she put her hands in mine. For a long while, we just looked at each other, and I felt indecently happy.

Sandra broke the silence.

"I like you," she said, and I squeezed her hands.

"I like you too, Sandra. And more."

She squeezed my hands right back, but it seemed she only half-listened, as if she had known what I would say in advance, and was instead working out what to say next. She was staring at our hands and her mouth was working. It was only when a warm droplet hit my hand that I realized she was crying.

She looked up at last and spoke.

"You know, all I ever wanted was... to be a normal girl..."

I lifted her hands and kissed her fingertips.

"You could never be just normal to me," I said.

Sandra blushed and turned her head away.

"You know..."

And I did, so I said nothing.

"I was... My mom, she didn't like me around. She said my dad didn't either, and that is why he split. She had these guys over, different ones. They never touched me or anything, and some were even nice to me. But she mostly ignored me. Sometimes we ate together, but usually, she just gave me money. I don't know what she did when I was little."

Her tears were streaming freely by now. I pressed her hands to my face.

"You know, I met Miss Jacobs, Eva, and she was nice to me. Just nice. And I didn't understand. We fought a lot at first, I didn't trust her. But she kept being nice to me. She helped me get into school, helped me study. The kids in my class treated me like a freak. They were all young and they didn't understand who I was. They weren't nice, but I was used to that. My mom made fun of me, said I was too stupid for school. But I am intelligent, I know. She should never have kept me out of school."

A waitress materialized to take our order. I was unsure whether I was relieved at the break in emotion or annoyed at the interruption. I glanced over the menu but discovered I had no appetite. Sandra amply made up for it, ordering a large omelette with a side of fries. I just asked for the tossed salad.

"Not hungry?" Sandra asked.

"Kinda choked up, I guess. You're... I don't know. Lovely. But so, sad."

Sandra bent over the table smiling and put a hand on my neck. Pulling me to her, she kissed me softly. Her lips were moist and wide and so gentle.

"Not sad," she said. "Not now."

I smiled.

"I'm glad. Will you tell me the rest?"

She nodded.

"There isn't much to tell. Eva found this test and we moved here. And Eva is still my friend, but the children at school are the same. And everyone else, the Z&V people... They treat me like a thing. I can do this trick, make this thing happen, and that's what they care about. But I'm still a person. And that's what you see. You see me. And I see you, too."

I kissed her fingers again, slowly. Her next few sentences came out in a rush.

"And, and, and... I know they hired you. And I know all the great stuff we've been doing is paid by them. And maybe I am dazzled. Maybe I am. But it's not all the stuff--it's how you enjoy it, and how you enjoy that I enjoy it. It's just... life, and you love it, I can see. They pay you, but you don't work for them anymore.

"You know?"

I did, and I said so. Then, perhaps, I told her I loved her, but maybe she hushed me, and we kissed, longer this time, and more intimately, blurring my thoughts and heating my body. We broke free when the waitress coughed. She set down our food and disappeared promptly. Laughing, I said,

"Do you know you've said more in the last half-hour than in all the weeks I've known you?"

Sandra laughed with me.

"I guess I haven't much to say a lot of times."

*

Back at Herengracht, Eva welcomed us with tea and an unusually broad smile.

"Richard, I think we will have another talk."

"I think so too," I replied. But something nagged at me. Something I'd missed. Something essential.

Giving pause

Sandra was naming card after card as my camera rolled. She sat radiantly on the edge of the bed and produced a grocery list of the future. I did not believe prescience was possible, but here was the woman I'd fallen for, proving me wrong. I felt pride at her capability, but the pride was mixed with an irrational fear; what was happening disturbed me at a deeper level.

And though I had accomplished exactly what I had set out to do, I felt only unease.

Eva had sat the both of us down in the living room, where a pot of tea was already steaming. Sandra and I took the two-seater sofa, and Eva leaned forward in the chair and poured cups for us all.

"Sandra, Richard," she started, "Only a fool would miss what is happening. And I am sure you are aware of the obvious objections." I opened my mouth to protest whatever she was trying to say, but she raised her hand, silencing me.

"Please, Richard, hear me out. This needs to be brought out into the open. You were hired by Zadelhoff & Verschuren to win Sandra's trust. You are paid to be her friend. And it is obvious there is even more than friendship between you now. But it is a job for you." Again, I wanted to protest, and again her hand came up. "Then there is the age difference. There are almost ten years separating you. And finally, there is you, Sandra. Many people consider you little more than a teenager. I have called you sensitive and vulnerable. There are those who would say Richard is taking advantage of you."

By now, Sandra and I were both about to break out in a series of passionate objections. But Eva was not finished.

"I will tell you both what I think of all that. I think it is rubbish."

I sank back into the sofa, feeling greatly relieved and oddly deflated. Sandra's hand crept into mine. I squeezed her fingers.

"I have seen how good you are for Sandra, Richard. And I don't mean all your fancy day trips. I have never seen you so happy, Sandra. And, even more importantly, Sandra is good for you too. Have you seen how he's changed, Sandra?"

I looked to my left, where Sandra was nodding vigorously. I vaguely felt I should be surprised, but deep down I knew they were right.

"So you love each other, and that's fine. I love you, Sandra, and you're a good man, Richard. You have my blessing."

We did a lot of hugging after that, spilling some of our tea. And then I suggested we get the second video over with. Sandra did not doubt for a moment she would be able to do her 'trick' now.

After dinner, Sandra and I went through 500 cards and she named every single one correctly. I stopped the camera in a half-unbelieving daze.

"See?" Sandra said. "It only works with someone I love."

My heart lunged in my chest and I was instantly in her arms. We kissed, not gently like before, but with greedy passion, our hands eagerly fluttering over each other's bodies, sliding under clothes, unbuttoning, touching.

She lay naked in my arms, asleep, and for a while I was content to run my eyes over her body, taking in the almost invisible gold of the downy hairs on her neck, the curve of her arm, the swell of her breast against my chest.

But something was still nagging. Something was still wrong. And I didn't know what it was.

Lying there with Sandra breathing against me, I went over everything I knew again. First of all, the unbelievable claim Albers had made had turned out to be true. Sandra appeared to be a real clairvoyant. It was incredible, and it remained to be seen if her gift would have any practical application for Z&V, but that much seemed to check out. I had won her trust and quite a bit more than that. She could go to work for Z&V, make lots of money, and we'd live happily ever after as I had put it to Albers.

That was it. What was I missing? Was it something Albers had said? The thought made me shiver, but that wasn't it, at least not all of it. If it was something I had heard, it had been more recent. But I knew that concentrating on it would not bring it home to me any sooner.

What else?

Sandra had the gift and could go to work as soon as Legal... It suddenly hit me, so forcibly I shook. Sandra mumbled something and snuggled closer. I hardly noticed. How could I have been so naïve!

I slid out from under Sandra's arm. She half-woke and made a question-mark sound. I kissed her temple.

"'s Okay, baby. Go to sleep."

I dressed quietly, grabbed the tablet containing the video we had made earlier, and eased out into the corridor. Writing a quick note, I left the apartment and unlocked my bicycle. Ten minutes later through midnight traffic, I arrived at my office on the western islands. I was about to wake up a few of my legal contacts.

As I waited for my call to be returned, I played that afternoon's clip. It was partly because I suspected some of what I was missing was visible in the video, but most the time I just phased out the sound and watched Sandra.

When my phone rang, I tapped pause and answered.

"Frank?" I listened to what he had to say.

"Okay, okay. I owe you big-time. Dinner and a Paradiso concert, minimum. I promise. What have you got?" Frank spoke at length, and as I listened, my eyes widened and I felt anger rise.

"Are you sure? You were able to trace the case all the way?"

Frank replied with an obscenity.

"Okay, okay. I know you did a thorough job. And you're sure there is nothing in the case specifically about... Yeah? Absolutely sure?"

Frank confirmed that he was certain. The tablet, after having been idle for minutes, automatically went into sleep mode. I tapped the screen again to wake it up, but that caused the video to resume playing. I hit Pause again.

"Thanks very much, Frank. No, I'm sorry. Maybe later, but if I tell you now, you'll just say I..."

I'd glanced at the screen as I talked with Frank, but what I had seen hadn't registered at first. But an insistent part of my mind had made me look back, and as I looked at the frozen image, I forgot to finish my sentence. It was staring me in the face. And as I stared back, two things clicked into place: the thing Albers had said that didn't fit and the moment Sandra had said almost the exact same thing.

Defence exhibit #1

"Quick results, Richard, even for you."

Albers smiled and inclined her head towards me in acknowledgment. We were back in her white and concrete corner office overlooking Rokin. Albers had asked for a first monthly progress report, and I had told her we could wrap up the project. I had brought a USB stick with me.

"It was easy, really. She's a lovely girl."

Albers heard in my voice what I had put there for her to hear, and asked the question with her eyebrows.

"I see no reason why I shouldn't tell you. We got close, very close. Romantically close."

"Is that so," Albers mused. "How... nice for you."

"It is. I can't remember ever feeling like this for anyone."

"I'm sure. It puts me in an interesting position, though. Obviously, you've won her trust if you're lovers now. And winning her trust was your assignment. But were I of a suspicious nature--" I smirked at that. "--I could argue that your first loyalty might be to her now, not to me."

"You could," I conceded, "but I'm here, ain't I? And you must have foreseen some form of this dilemma--you sent me there to get close to her."

"Good point. Show me what you got."

Inserting the stick in her laptop, I double-clicked the first of the two mp4 files that appeared. Albers watched the entire video without speaking, only humming occasionally, and making a mark on her notepad each time Sandra got a card right.

The video finished just as I was starting to fear Albers would notice the tension I was feeling. I turned to her and said,

"That was the first day, almost immediately after meeting Sandra."

Albers nodded.

"I counted ten correct answers--how many cards did you go through? Five hundred again?"

Digipath

"You never asked," said Sandra, defensively. "I just assumed you knew."

"Of course, you did, and I'm not blaming you--I'm just excited." And that was an understatement. I had taken just enough time to print a hard copy of the video frame before I had all but sprinted back to Herengracht, dashing my bicycle through every red light I encountered. Waking up Sandra had been difficult; she was a deep sleeper, and even after her mug of instant coffee was still a bit groggy.

I sat down beside her, but immediately stood up again and began pacing.

"Do you know what this means?"

"No." She sounded annoyed and weary. I knew she would be thinking I was only interested in what she could do after all. I could only hope the opposite would become clear in a moment.

"It means that Z&V has lied to me from the start. They lied about you, about what this was all about; Albers lied about the whole High Council litigation..."

"Who lied about what?" came from the door. Eva was standing at the end of the corridor in a robe, hair sleepy-wild, glassed on crooked. "What's going on?"

And suddenly I realized that Eva had no idea either.

"This is going on," I said, letting the hardcopy sail onto the coffee table.

It was a high-resolution print-out of the image I had inadvertently freeze-framed while talking with Frank. It showed Sandra on the bed, the tablet, and the outline of a card on the screen. The bottom half of the card showed red sixes and hearts. The top half held clubs, the letter K, and the top of a King graphic. With a bit of imagination, it was possible to discern the not quite horizontal line where the six of hearts was being overlain with the king of clubs.

"I don't understand," said Eva.

"Half a second before this frame of video, Sandra named the king of clubs."

"Of course, she did. That's what this was all about, wasn't it? And I'm sure that she named the six of hearts before that. I still don't understand."

"No, Eva, she didn't name the six of hearts. The previous card is not on this screen. The program would never show two cards together like this; it blanks out the screen between two cards, for at least half a second."

"What are you saying, Richard?"

"I'm saying that the program came up with the six of hearts, and then Sandra named the king of clubs, and then the card on the screen changed!"

Eva looked at the print, at me, back at the print, and finally at Sandra.

"Sandra? What is he talking about?"

Sandra smiled a small, apologetic smile.

"It's true, what he says. I change the cards."

"You change... Is that even possible?"

At that, after a pause, both Sandra and I snickered, breaking the uncomfortable tension that had been building up.

"Well, it's what I do," said Sandra, just before I said,

"About as possible as clairvoyance, I'd say, or slightly more plausible even."

"You never said anything about this, Sandra. Why?"

Sandra gave her the same answer she had given me.

"You never asked."

"Does Z&V know about this?"

Sandra nodded emphatically, and I said,

"I think they've known from the start, Eva. I believe they analysed your video and saw what I spotted by accident tonight. And once they realized what they had seen, they were hell-bound on getting Sandra on their side, to be able to use her gift. They smelled fortunes."

"But what, exactly, is it? Sandra? What do you do?"

Sandra sighed.

"I don't know a word for it. But I can... sense computers, and kinda talk to them. I feel what they are doing, and sometimes... make them do something else instead. That's all."

Eva sat down hard on the chair.

"That's all? That's amazing! I had no idea. You're a computer telepath?"

"A digipath," I said. "I think that would be the accurate word. Sandra is a digipath."

Sandra turned her face up to me, her face a storm cloud.

"But I'm more than that."

I threw myself beside her on the sofa and put my arms firmly around her.

"So much more. I wouldn't care if you could swallow swords or juggle chainsaws. I still see you." For a few moments, her arms were around me and she hugged me fiercely.

"But for Z&V, for Albers, that is what you are. Can you imagine what they might do if you allowed them to use your gift?"

"They couldn't do anything legal with it..."

"They don't care if it's legal," I said, grim-faced. "They don't care about much of anything, except profit." And I told them about Frederik, and what had happened to him. By the time I finished that tale, I was crying, and Sandra was holding me close while Eva looked at me with heart-warming compassion.

Then I told them what I planned to do with Albers, and the three of us found our smiles back.

Defence exhibit #2

"493, I think," I answered Albers, with just a bit of hesitation. She looked another question, but I ignored it.

"The next video is of the day before yesterday." I turned my attention to the laptop, double-clicking the second file, pausing.

"Are you going to tell me what you found, Richard?"

I glanced sideways.

"I don't think so, Albers. You had your fun when you put me on the case; I think I'll have my fun now."

I rolled my chair back a bit until I could take in both Albers and the laptop.

"Ready?"

With satisfaction, I saw a greedy tension on her face.

"Get on with it, Richard."

I reached across and clicked the Play button with a little flourish.

Sandra's voice sounded again, and it was impossible to miss how much more confident and happy she sounded. Though her face looked somewhat stressed, her eyes were radiant and she smiled throughout the video. She named cards, and cards showed on the laptop, in an endless progression.

As the video progressed, I watched Albers more than the screen. She started out looking eager and greedy. With the first few cards, her expression changed to hope, then confusion. Those, in turn, made way for annoyance, and, finally, incredulous rage.

Before 200 cards had passed, Albers shouted:

"Stop that damn clip!"

"Sorry?" I said, innocently.

"Stop that video, Richard! What the hell is this?"

With as much theatre as before, I clicked Stop. Then I rolled my chair back to face her, and turned to her, smiling.

"Start talking, Richard. And make it good."

I shrugged.

"Not much to say, Albers. You saw the clip. She trusts me. She loves me, even. But she still can't do it. I think you've been scammed."

A hint of red flushed over Albers' face as her mouth worked. For long seconds, she was unable to speak at all.

"Scammed?" she finally uttered. "You think I've been scammed?"

"Obviously," I replied, and I admit I was enjoying her discomfort. "This was the chance you took when you brought me in, Albers. You wanted confirmation of their own video, but there was a possibility it was a fake, and as it turns out, it was. I can understand your disappointment, but be realistic. You knew you could expect this.

"Unless, of course, you knew in advance what I would find. But that would mean you have been holding out on me, Albers, and that could not be, now could it?"

Her look darkened, and I could imagine her terrifying employees with it. But I felt invulnerable.

"Don't you dare play games with me, Richard!"

"Who's playing games?" I asked, and I couldn't help myself: I was smiling. "You gave me an assignment: to find out if Sandra is a true clairvoyant. Right?" I waited for a response but got none. "Obviously, she is not. Job done. 'Thank you, Richard', would do nicely at this point."

"What the hell do you think you are doing here, Richard?"

"Me? Nothing. You're debriefing me. I understand this is a disappointment to you, Albers, but there's nothing I can do about that."

"Goddammit, Richard! I've always trusted you! We've worked together for six bloody years! Are you really prepared to betray that trust for a halfwit girl you've known all of three weeks?"

I took a deep breath.

"For the record, Albers, the project stands as I've just told you. Sandra is not a clairvoyant, so you'll just have to go and find a new one. But let's just say, for the sake of argument, that I am betraying your trust. Can you think of any reason why I would do such a thing? Any reason at all?"

"None, Richard. I've been perfectly forthcoming with you from the get-go. I don't deserve this!"

"Hypothetically, I'd say you deserve this and more. Let's say there was a disturbed kid once who could do a trick. Let's say Z&V was very interested in that trick. Let's assume they hired a guy to get the kid to do this trick for them. And the guy they hired did a good job, and the kid came to Z&V, and Z&V dismissed the guy, and worked the kid into the ground, and relocated him, all against the guy's specific instructions and the kid's wishes. And let's assume, Albers, hypothetically, that the kid died, all alone, deeply unhappy, because of all of this."

Albers exploded with fury.

"Fuck you, Richard! You can't keep blaming me for Frederik's death! You are at least as culpable, you self-righteous fuck!"

"Hypothetically," I admitted, wincing, "I would agree with you, Albers. But that's not the point. Or maybe it is exactly the point. The thing is, the circumstances of the hypothetical boy's death were buried, and no one was ever held accountable, not Z&V, nor the guy who helped destroy him."

Albers had calmed down enough to try and argue with me.

"Richard, all this is history. We've talked it through back then, and I thought we'd reached an understanding. Frederik's death was unfortunate, and it's true that Z&V--that I--was at least partially culpable. But Sandra is not Frederik, and the circumstances are different. We would not make the same mistake twice, Richard."

I could clearly hear in her voice, see in her face, the hope she had that she could still convince me to take her side. It made me smile, and that, in turn, increased her hopes.

I waited a few seconds and struck.

"You have, Albers. You've made the same mistake again, the mistake of lying to me. Sure, your program looks for clairvoyants, but that is not all it is looking for, is it? And the High Council! I swallowed that hook, line, and sinker. The beauty of it is that you can sit there talking about trust, even though you've told me a whopper of a straight-faced lie in my briefing. I didn't even bother to check because I did trust you. But two nights ago, I had Frank check. The High Council case is not about clairvoyants at all, but about paranormal involvement in general. And you know what? I don't even think the case is anything but an elaborate smokescreen for the Authority for the Financial Markets. I don't think you could use Sandra's ability for anything legal anyway.

"And you know the beauty of it all? You gave it away to me yourself. It nagged at me all these weeks, but I finally did recall what it was you said because Sandra said almost the exact same thing. She said she can 'make this thing happen', and those are almost the same words you used. But does that sound to you like a description of clairvoyance?

"So let's say, hypothetically, that Sandra can do the thing she can, and that I have seen her do it, and refuse to tell you, and have made this second video to con you. If that were the case, there would be nothing you can do about it. Because one thing is true, hypothetically: Sandra can only do it around people she loves and trusts. So, if she wants to hide her ability from you, Albers, it will stay hidden."

"You... bastard! I'll destroy you, Richard, I'll have your ass! And as for your beloved Sandra: I'll have her out on the streets by sunset!"

My stomach tensed for the final play.

"I don't think so, Albers. I think it would be a particularly magnanimous gesture on your part to give her the yacht, in return for all the effort she's put in for Z&V. She'll move out of the city, and she'll be out of Z&V's reach forever. I think that's the minimum she can expect after all your illegal activities."

Her eyes widened in disbelief.

"Are you threatening me, Richard?"

"Not threats, Albers, promises. Frivolous High Council litigation is the least of your problems. The AFM would love to hear about all this."

"Don't be a fool, Richard. You have nothing, no evidence, just conjecture, backed by an opportunistic school teacher and a fucking retard!"

"Even the conjecture would get the AFM very interested in Z&V, Albers, and you know that as well as I do. But it gets even better." I half-unbuttoned my shirt and folded it back. "Do you know what this is?"

I would have given a fortune to be able to record the expression of pure, unadulterated fear and loathing that washed over Albers' face as she identified the objects taped to my chest as a microphone and transmitter.

"I have you on record as taking responsibility for Frederik's death, Albers. That should be enough to get you kicked out of Z&V and into jail. I think one company yacht is a small price to pay."

The queen of diamonds

Gulls wheeled around the mast as the boat made its calm way up the North Sea coast. We were five kilometres west of Den Helder, and Eva was aiming for the harbor of Texel. The Lange Jaap lighthouse was clearly visible among the dunes, flashing its 20-second beacon into the setting sun. Eva stood at the helm with Sandra sitting close to me in the cockpit.

Two days previous, a few hours out of Ijmuiden, I had unwrapped the transmitter and microphone I had used with Albers. Then I had stood on the front deck with Sandra and Eva watching, wound up like a pitcher planning a no-hitter, and thrown the device far into the North Sea to the women's applause. It felt good, even though it was a largely empty gesture.

"Will she fall for it?" Sandra had asked when I had first explained my plan to them. So, I had told them about the recordings I had made of conversations with competitors, and the demonstration I had given Albers years back inside her very office.

"And she'll understand she's getting off cheaply," I had added. "Even if I don't get her to claim culpability for Frederik, she'll realize we can make a hell of a stench for Z&V. She'll go for it, I'm sure of it."

Eva had nodded, but there had been a residue of doubt behind her eyes.

"One last thing, Richard," she had asked. "If you are going through all this trouble, why not make a real recording? Why only make her think you have her on tape?"

I had started to answer that there was no need, that I wanted the extra satisfaction of having fooled her. But Sandra had been quicker than me.

"Because a tape will tie us to her forever," she had simply said, "and this way, we'll be free." And the moment Sandra had spoken, I had realized that her reason was the true one.

Albers had fallen for it. She had raved and threatened, but in the end, she had accepted our price and let us go. We were making for the island of Terschelling first, where we might live for a while, Eva getting a teaching job and Sandra and I perhaps chartering out the boat. After that, we hadn't decided yet.

My consultancy fee, that Albers had very reluctantly paid as part of our deal, had gone into the ring that Sandra kept holding up into the sunlight, giggling happily to herself as she watched the rays shatter on the single diamond.

Booting Bottom

T. D. Edge

United Kingdom

I can feel hungry eyes in the shadows, stripping me, and I'm not talking about my clothes. It's my soul they want. My Earth-virgin special spirit fizz. They've pretty much eaten all of each other's here and are fed-up with seconds. Which is why they want to cross into our Earth-zone, and why I've been sent to stop them.

I just hope they don't find out that I'm only a philosophy student who's been enhanced in more ways than I like to think about, but who is yet to kick her first arse, sorry--ass.

The street is narrow and stinks of human waste. Doctor Bronlock warned me that in this Earth-zone London, the distinct lack of intact souls means they've yet to develop past Victorian levels. And by the stink of it, also before their version of Sir Joseph Bazalgette built his wonderful sewage system.

Candle-light flickers in some of the windows but it's oddly quiet. I know Victorian London was full of diseases, drunkenness and dastardly men doing unspeakable things to women but by all accounts, it was noisy too. Seems as if losing one's soul is not such a great conversation piece.

My mission is simple: walk down the street and let them attack me. Then I kill them, which should release said stolen souls and the resulting fizz-storm should mean their big bad chief himself has to take me on. When I kill him too everyone will be saved from invasion back home. Easy, but maybe hold the peasy for now.

The slight problem with the simple kill-the-king plan is that the only proper fight I've ever been in was over the last rhubarb crumble at school dinner two years back. My hand got to the bowl just before Jessica Ward's. And despite the trembling in my knickers at the fact she was the school Judo champion, I stood my ground. Even if I was too nervous afterward to swallow the damn pudding.

Then there's the fact I'm far too young to wear a skin-tight leather fight-suit packed with weapons, gripping me in places I thought I was saving for--

Suddenly, I'm sprawling face down in foul water, back of my head thumping in agony from where I've been hit. I barely have time to roll over before this huge, flapping shape lands on my chest, winding me.

His hair is all flailing wet black ropes, his face whiter than Arctic ice. As he bends to my chest, clawed hands extended, one holding a long knife, ready to rip out my heart with soul therein, all I can do is hope my defences hold.

I grab the wrist of the hand holding the knife and he tries to tear through my suit with his other, then roars with frustration when it resists him. All the same, his claws push the enhanced leather hard into my skin. Despite my nano-toughened flesh, it still hurts like hell.

I remember what Doc Bronlock said, just before he zapped me away from leafy old Kent to this blood bucket of a world.

Let your instinct do the thinking.

So, while the soul-stealer is still howling at being denied entry, I jump to my feet, whip a titanium blade from a thigh holster and bury it deep into his heart/soul.

For a moment, nothing happens, unless you count the look of sheer puppy-dog surprise at this undeserved betrayal that appears on his face. And I'm just cursing the Doc for not doing his alternative Earth homework, when I'm elbow deep in rotting skin, holding up a pile of old fizzless bones as if making out with a putrid corpse is my secret thing.

But no time to congratulate myself on having kicked my first arse/ass because the newly freed-up soul has already alerted other soul-stealers. The street ahead has filled with around a dozen of them, obviously out to nick mine.

You know what? Once I get into the groove, it's a real thrill. Like someone else has taken over my body. Someone who really knows how to fight, and hurt and kill. Maybe it's whoever the Doc based my programme on. Whatever, I just sit back inside my head and watch it all take place.

Dip, swing hips, boot to jaw, flip upright, throw titanium blades into their hearts, spin through the flapping bodies, all the time punching and kicking faster than my little brain can take in. But it doesn't matter because the nano-bots in me move even faster, toughening up my muscles, adding iron to my punches.

In less than a minute, all that's left of them are a few piles of rotting skin and bones clogging up the gutter.

I'm breathing hard, feeling better even than when I passed my Grade 8 exam in violin. Only back then I wasn't wearing leather and sweating everywhere but my fingers.

Okay, but now I need to face the bad guy. According to Doc Bronlock, he'll have been watching me up against his lackeys and adjusted his fighting skills accordingly. I'd asked the Doc why these particular soul-thieves in this particular Earth at this particular time, and how many of them were there exactly? But being a typical government employee, he'd said it didn't matter, that I just needed to do what I was contracted to do, which was take out the ones that live in this particular London; do that, and the rest will automatically be negated.

But their big chief turns on the pressure by not actually showing up. I try to stay cool but start getting cramps in my thighs from holding the hands-on-hips pose too long. So, I have to move and try to march proudly down the middle of the street, head held high, hoping no one can see my eyeballs darting right and left like marbles with attitude.

While I wait just in case he appears, I recall the meeting with Miss Thompson that got me into this mess.

"You must be very excited, Amanda," says the Head Mistress.

"About what, Miss Thompson?" I say, even though I'd read the details in her email, before deleting it as instructed. I'd just not really believed it till now, sitting here in her oaky office where nothing ever happens that isn't Of the Utmost Importance.

Doctor Bronlock, the bald government alchemist sitting to the Head's left, says, "To travel to an alternate Earth and prevent ours being invaded," in a tone that suggests he doesn't get out of his semi-detached tax-payer-supplied cauldron very often. "Fighting soul-thieves."

"To be a kick-ass heroine," says the Head.

"But I didn't come to this school to be turned into a British Buffy; I want to be a good philosophy student," I say. "And shouldn't that be kick-arse heroine?"

The Head's smile quivers like disturbed frog spawn. Although her email had told me I was the only girl in my year who ticked all the medical and psychological boxes required to, um, boot bottom, I've no idea why. I mean, I never exercise for one thing or use my mind for much other than studying for good grades. Shouldn't booting bottom heroines be full of snappy, culturally referenced put-downs and remarkably astute self-analysis?

"As you're aware from the email I sent you, Miss Peters," says the Head, "all previous contracts with the secret United Nations Interdimensional Committee have gone to American schools. We are very grateful, therefore, to the British Government for negotiating a deal on behalf of this country. Apart from anything else, we have reason to believe for some months now that soul-thieves in another Earth-zone London may have developed interdimensional magic and are planning to come to this Earth-zone's UK and, well, we can't rely on the Americans to help or to be particularly generous when we end the threat." She smiles at the Doc as if he's made of compacted alumni pledges. "But while you may prefer 'arse', we will not complicate our benefactors' contractual terminology by differentiating between one's bottom and an alternative term for a donkey."

"I'm just a simple girl from a quiet, little village in Wiltshire," I say, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice. "But these alternate kick-arse--sorry, ass--jobs: they're usually in urban environments, right? Well, I get disoriented in cities, and the traffic fumes bring on my asthma. So, thank you for the offer, Miss Thompson, and Doctor Bronlock, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to turn it down."

Oh-oh--Thompson has a very slight but definitely smug little gleam in her eyes. She must have something on me. But I know my rights: they can't force a sixteen-year-old to submit to a magical make-over of the ass and kicking variety then send her into some other Earth-zone full of soul-thieves that have only one purpose in life which is to rip out her heart with their probably unwashed claws so she croaks and doesn't even get to go to heaven, not that a Hume-ist like myself has much truck with the notion of a perfect celestial afterlife.

"I see," she says, taking her time. "Unfortunately, I have here a letter from your father."

Damn. I can guess what's coming. Dad has made his wad from building a string of gyms across the country. He has more muscles than Superman on steroids. The fact that the only workout I ever take is pulling open Diet Coke cans is a great disappointment to him.

"Mr. Peters was kind enough to endorse the school's opportunity to combine fund-raising with the benefits of a superior outdoor activity regime. He's also so confident you'll want to play your part that he wishes me to tell you he will not pay for you to attend any other school but this one."

Double damn. Of course, I could always take the hit and settle for the local comprehensive school back home, even though that would mean learning to kick ass for sure if I want to survive. But I have my own reason for needing to stay at Haselhurst. Not that I'll ever tell anyone what it is.

I try a last somewhat desperate ploy. "But why is it always females who have to toe punt some bum? I don't think I'm handing in my feminist loyalty card here by pointing out that blokes tend to be physically tougher than us."

Bronlock throws a quick glance at the Head but she fails to catch it and he answers me.

"Boys are tougher but they break more easily. Girls bend and survive."

"You should write country music," I say.

"Boys can be useful for programming purposes, and if we could only put the two genders together . . . "

He looks as if he wants to say more but then seems to think better of it. A long silence ensues, the kind that would kill stone dead any country music that might have been playing in the background. No chance of that, anyway, since the Head is only on first name terms with Bach and, after a few sherries, Lloyd Webber.

"Okay," I say, knowing when I'm beaten. "It will be an honour to kick some bottom for the good of the school."

"Excellent!" says the Head. "Doctor Bronlock will expect you to report for treatment and training at nine a.m. sharp tomorrow."

Doc Bronlock smiles for the first time, rather like an oil slick spreading across one's semolina pudding.

After selling my moral soul, I walk outside, on to the leafy fields behind the school. Flinching at the distant cracks of balls on hockey sticks, I keep to the shadows until reaching the maintenance shed.

Back in the Head's office, my heart-rate had stayed stable, despite my arse--sorry, ass--being on the line. But now I take several deep breaths, trying to muffle the booming in my ears made by my frantic heart. I fluff out my black bangs. I curse our school uniform of brown canvas sack skirt and even browner sausage skin tights. I stroll into the shed like I am just passing through, even though there's nowhere to pass through to.

"Amanda."

He says it like he isn't surprised; on the other hand, his face is not exploding in goofy joy at the sight of me. Never mind, that's because I know he's a metaphysical kind of guy, not just the school's youngest-ever lawnmower mechanic, joined us a few months ago. Twenty-one, short black hair, no qualifications that I know of, just the tantalising hint of deep. It probably helped him get the job that the Head is opposed to engines; insists that our grass is cut only by non-motorised blades of the mechanically simple sort.

"John, hi," I say. "What are you doing?"

I can see what he's doing: poking about in a cluster of blades with a spanner. But if I ask, he'll have to say something back.

"I hear you're in the programme," he says in his wonderful non-British accent.

He glances up at me then back to the machine, but I catch the slight touch of respect in his eyes. Change of plan required.

"Yeah. It's kinda cool, being a kick-arse heroine."

He yanks at something with the spanner, grunts with the effort in a way that makes my skin shiver.

"I always took you to be a studious kind of girl," he says.

"Well, I like to take risks, too," I say, wishing I had the nerve to take a risk right now by planting a smacker on his lips.

He stands, wipes his hands on his overalls. "I have to get this machine over to the tennis court."

"That's okay. I have homework to do--I mean I have to research some martial arts moves."

I walk beside him as he pushes the machine out of the hut.

Kick-ass? I'll show them kick-ass. Show him, to be precise. And I don't mean Daddy.

My enhanced instinct knows for sure that he isn't coming.

I feel oddly disappointed. For the first time in my life, I'm not anxious to get back to books and warm milk.

I hit the return sequence on my belt pad then I'm shimmering once more, out of a London full of daily pain, death and blood to one where people get angry if there's only one raisin in their tea-time scone.

"I killed the posse but the chief didn't show," I tell Doc Bronlock.

He barely looks up from his interdimensional TV screen, or whatever it is, on a table of smoking phials and gurgling bowls, obviously bored long ago with teenagers popping out of a rip in reality.

"We'll try again tomorrow," he says. "It's late: why don't you get some sleep?"

I nod, turn to leave the lab but almost as an afterthought he says, "Two of my interdimensional belts have been missing for some time now."

I don't know why but this sends a shiver through my nether regions.

"Any idea who took them?"

"No, but I hope they didn't leave here."

I don't need to ask where he means by 'here'.

I leave the lab to find the school's in shadows, mainly because the Head always wants to save money by cutting back on luxuries like being able to see where you're going.

I reach for the light switch then change my mind. All that raw instinct is still pumping in my veins, so I let it lead me through the dark. It takes me to the main lobby where I make to turn up the stairs towards the dorms. But then it tugs me towards the front door instead.

It's gone midnight and I'll be breaking just about every school rule if I go outside now, including the one about not letting the locals see the pupils dressed like perve-bait.

But the very same instinct saved my life just now; the least I can do is let it take me where it's itching to go.

Around the front of the house, ignoring the spooky moon shadows of the elm trees flickering over the lawn like ghost bats. Past the music annex and on to--oh, no, just how predictable am I?

But he isn't going to be in the maintenance shed at this time of night anyway, is he? I'm about to turn back when something in me thinks, what the hell. So, I push open the big black, annoyingly creaky door and step inside, only briefly wondering why it isn't locked.

Big hulking shadows of machinery everywhere; the smell of cut grass and oil. Moonlight dribbles through the dusty windows but doesn't show me any outlines.

I guess I'm just thrilled to be standing in the middle of the place where he works.

I breathe deep a few times on the air, thinking that some of it has been inside his lungs. I turn to leave but sense a presence.

"Amanda."

Heart pumping so hard my ears pound, I turn and there he is, a silhouette in the centre of the floor.

I step towards him, my instinct now fully locked on to his inner scent.

I realise I should be asking what he's doing here so late, and how he suddenly appeared in the middle of the floor, and why again there was no question mark after he spoke my name when this time he shouldn't even be able to see me. That and why he possesses that accent I've never been able to quite place.

But I don't because a few yards from him, I step into a small patch of moonlight and he says, "Wow."

I stop and let him take his fill of the interesting body shadows my suit makes and I think the power shifts a little.

"You look incredible."

He steps forward and I wait. He reaches me; I feel his cool breath on my cheeks. I close my eyes and then his lips touch mine. He presses against them and I press back; I'm shaking but ecstatically so.

The kiss lasts a long time. Then he steps back a pace, reaches for the zip at my throat. I raise my hand to stop him but let it drop again.

He pulls the zip half-way down my chest. Then he leans forward, gently kissing my neck. He licks at the sweat there. I feel an amazing intensity in the pit of my stomach and just want to let go.

He kisses my neck harder, and I lean back, giving him more of it. Then I feel the sharp pricking of fingernails at the bare part of my chest ... triple damn! Thank god for the nano-bots, the suit with more brains than me, and even thank Doc Bronlock, for pumping up my instinct to survive higher than my instinct to lose my virginity.

I throw myself back, into a flip, to land on my feet by the door.

He's still in the moonlight which now highlights the lust in his eyes, only I know now it's not for my body alone.

"You came here from the Earth I've just been to, didn't you?" I say. "You're the big cheese soul-thief. The Cheddar Gorger."

"What?"

"Sorry. Haven't quite got the quipping thing yet. But you are from there, aren't you?"

"Actually, I'm the second in command," he says, "sent to clear the way for the boss."

He rushes at me.

My fighting instinct kicks in again, which is just as well since he's all whirling arms, arcing feet and scything claws.

As we clash, I get angry. Mostly with myself. I should have realised he'd drawn me to him in the first place. So, all that school girl eyelid fluttering was just my helpless hormones dragging me along the hook and line he'd thrown my way.

And I get even angrier as I remember now what he'd said earlier ... "I hear you're in the programme"... when I'd never even told him about it.

But the trouble with anger is it stops you from seeing the bigger picture. Because what I should be asking myself is: who told him I'd been selected as the ass-kicker and why hadn't he just taken me out before I'd been given the suit, nano-bots, and super instinct? That way, he could have saved the lives of his soul-thief-mates back on his own world and maybe even his chief.

So, just as I'm congratulating myself on having driven him on to his back with my new fighting skills, deciding that it's morally right to shove a blade through his heart, that self-same bigger picture whacks me from behind with something heavy and I'm out of it.

Probably the only good thing about regularly sleeping in a room with three other girls is that you learn to wake up wary. Any yawning or stretching while your eyes are still shut can, for example, lead to tripping a string which tips a bucket of goo over one's mush.

Therefore, when I come around, I keep my head down and don't cry out when I feel tight ropes around my wrists and ankles.

Gently, I test the knots; they're good. I feel metal against my back and figure I've been tied to one of the iron columns that holds up the roof. I'm sat on my ass, feet tied together.

John's voice, argumentative, almost sarcastic: "--wasn't supposed to come here at night when you and I meet. Particularly when the moon's nearly full, and especially dressed like that: can't you control what they wear?"

Thank God again for my dorm training, preventing me from yelping in surprise at recognising the voice which replies. I'd decided it could only be Bronlock who zapped me, on some kind of sneaky government double-cross; but, no, turns out it was our own Head.

"Well," Thompson says, "perhaps if you could learn to control your supersoul-charged pheromones instead of sending them off on missions to seduce impressionable schoolgirls, what they wear would not be an issue."

A brief silence follows this, in which I can imagine the Head eyeballing the soul-thief with that empire-building glare of hers.

He takes a deep breath. "So, what do we do with her?"

"What we were going to do with her was hire her out in the UK, to dispatch the people turned into soul-less drones by a mysterious prime who can never be found. But then I failed to consider the overpowering urge to copulate that always seems to occur between well-educated but unworldly girls and young men who wear oil-stained T-shirts and let their hair flop over their face just so."

"Careful, Miss Thompson. You sound as if you wouldn't mind getting stained by this particular soul-thief, too."

"Oh, for goodness sake . . . The point is, Amanda now knows who and what you are and she cannot be allowed to inform the authorities. I'll be ruined and the school will be closed down."

"You're going to kill her?"

"No, you are. She's your mistake."

Oh, Lord of Damns. I expand my wrists, straining to loosen the knots. But they've been tied by an expert who, given the fact she's our local Girl Guide leader, I suspect was Miss Thompson, rather than a senior soul-thief who's probably used to having lackeys do it for him.

"I've got a better idea," says John.

For a moment, my heart pitter-patters with hope. He does fancy me, and not just in a main soul course way. He is going to save me.

But then he says, "Why don't I take your soul, use it to turn her into a thief and together she and I can set up a new order on this virgin planet of yours. All those innocent, bulging hearts, all those pure souls we can share. I've always fancied a queen, and the women on my world, well, they're just so vacuous. By the time my boss arrives I'll be strong enough to beat him."

Another, more interesting, silence follows this, in which I can imagine the Head's wool underwear itching like crazy.

I still need to escape, of course. The question now is should I try to save the Head too? I mean, she'd planned to hire me out like some kind of kick-ass heroine escort, and now that hasn't worked, wants her soul-thief pimp to take me out. Why should I bother?

Well . . . there is the small fact that if I save her ass she'll be forever in my debt, which means I should at least get to choose which missions I go on in future. That and take time off to study so I can build up my secret identity with a boring cover job like Philosophy Tutor or even Assistant Head of St Haselhurst.

I risk a quick glance up through my sweaty bangs. Oh, no--John is bending over the Head who has that pre-ripped glazed look that soul-thieves induce in victims who don't have nanos in their blood to resist them. Most of them.

Thinking of the nanos, I wonder if they can be concentrated into making big efforts in a small area. I force my mind to focus on my wrists, imagining them expanding, growing bigger and bigger, loosening the ropes.

Another glance: John's claws are only a few inches from the Head's heart. Briefly, I wonder if he'll be able to taste the soul difference between me and her. Will hers choke him with its two-faced, money-grabbing, child-neglecting stench of greed?

My hands whip free of the ropes and I quickly untie the ropes around my ankles.

I think he would have seen my movements if he didn't right then have his lips buried in the Head's neck, flexing his claws just outside her field of vision. She's got her eyes closed anyway and is--I blush at this--moaning with pleasure, pulling his head in deeper.

Yuk. This could put an impressionable young girl off the idea of marriage, duty, sex, and sprogs.

As I leap to my feet, I realise I'm too late to save the Head. John has already removed his mouth from her neck, not because he's seen me but more to gain claw momentum as he rams his hands into her chest, her moans of pleasure turning to screams of pain.

I pick up a spade, break it over my knee. John stands, wiping blood from his hands, turns and sees me too late. I leap forward and drive the splintered shaft into his chest.

His eyes flare with anger, betrayal, frustration and finally a kind of peace before I'm once again kneeling in skin and bones.

I go to the Head, lift her wrist, fail to find a pulse.

"It'll be noted that you tried to save her."

I stand to face Doc Bronlock as he moves out of the machinery shadows.

"You've been watching all this?" I say. "They could have killed me. He really did kill her."

"He wouldn't have killed you. He wanted to join you."

"Is that what you wanted?"

I don't know, maybe his eyes look more intelligent somehow, and even though he says nothing, his silence kind of answers my question anyway.

"What really happened here?" I say.

He walks over to the remains of John and pulls out an interdimensional belt, shakes the body dust off it.

"I knew the Head had serious financial problems," he says. "So it wasn't difficult to guess who'd stolen the belts. I thought about confronting her but decided it could be useful to see what she did with them. When a new young mechanic was hired, my school spies told me that at first, his English was not just odd but contained many unusual words. Words that might be normal in another Earth-zone."

"And the Head made that rule about no motors in the mower shop ... because he came from a world that hasn't developed them yet. But I still don't get why you didn't turn her in; I mean, I could have been killed. She was killed."

"I apologise for the tight timing. But the fact is we have removed a corrupt teacher and her soul, and we tested the strength of a very strong soul-thief. But most important of all, we made and tested you."

"Oh."

"The Americans have been dealing with other-dimensional worlds for some time now. We suspect they're covering up the occasional monster which gets into their country through a corrupt backer. It's going to happen here too, inevitably. So, we need our own fighter."

I think about this. But only for a minute. "As long as I can still take Philosophy," I say.

"This college will be an ideal cover for you. Especially when we appoint a sympathetic and incorruptible new Head."

"I'll need my own room. Can't get leathery with other girls around."

"Done."

Right then, I'm proud of what I've done, protecting my school and my country. But if I'm feeling in any way smug about that, what Bronlock says next puts me back in my place.

"There's still a belt missing," he says. "So now you have to go back to the other Earth and take out their chief before he uses it to come here."

I'm back in the alternative, very smelly, London. Doc Bronlock has given me an address near London Bridge he thinks might have something to do with the chief. I asked him how he knew but he just mumbled something vague about 'insider' information.

Still shaken from what happened with John and the Head, I've stopped off in the gardens of Southwark Cathedral to gather my thoughts.

The grass is as green here as on my Earth, and the sun splaying through the plane trees warms my face just the same. But the people aren't quite like mine. Yes, I know they're a century and a half behind us in many ways. And I know that poverty and crime adds lines to faces and humps to backs.

But, well, they lack that certain something called a soul, don't they?

There are lots of definitions of 'evil' in philosophy but the simple idea that it's that which perverts or steals another's life force will do for me. It's one of the reasons I was happy to fight the soul-thieves. And despite his knee-trembling smile, fab abs, and deep sexy voice, John was evil.

So was the Head because she'd planned to sell all our souls for cash.

I sigh. There are times when even the most sedentary of philosophers must get off the can. Whatever it is that I don't know, the fact remains that a soul-stealing monster is going to gate-crash our world if I don't stop him.

Hooray for me.

"Are you Amanda?"

My head fizzes in panic at the sound of my name. I think about running but realise it's pointless. I look towards the voice.

He's standing about five paces to my left, body in dappled shadows from the tree just behind him. Five paces are a safe distance for any sudden attack, of course.

Amongst other tumbling thoughts, it occurs to me that he's speaking an English that I can understand.

"Which Earth are you from?" I say, which makes him smile. He walks forward and I get to my feet quickly, spreading my weight to counter a possible attack.

He's dressed in nondescript black trousers, white collarless shirt and tweed waistcoat; would pass here as a clerk. But there's nothing nondescript about his eyes.

"Yours, of course," he says.

He has blond hair, cut short, that suits his pale blue eyes. Concentrate, Amanda. Keep the stance. Can't trust him yet. Maybe he's the chief pretending to be one of us.

"So what's Harry Potter's wand made of?" I say.

"I've never read Harry Potter," he replies.

"Really? I thought everyone's read, Harry Potter. Okay, so just tell me who are you and why you're here? I thought this was my mission."

"My name's Richard and I've been coming here to gather intelligence for several months now. There's something you need to know which is ... look out!"

Thank god for my training. I read his frantic gaze over my shoulder and know he's not joking. I turn, falling to lower my body as a target.

Running at me is a huge bundle of muscle, black leather, and hate. This is the chief, no doubt. He's twice as fast as John and about to hit me.

I roll towards him hoping to take out his legs with my right foot. But he's so quick he sees this and as momentum takes him past me, stamps down hard on my ankle. The pain is immense.

Before I can recover, I feel his hand on my neck, squashing my windpipe. His other hand is drawn back, fingers clawed and punching down at my chest before I can react.

Then I'm staring at a clear blue sky as the chief is whipped off me by Richard, yelling something incomprehensible.

The new instincts programmed into me by Bronlock have me on my feet and heading for the other two. Which is just as well since Richard is already on his back, the chief about to thrash down on his head with a small boulder he must have gathered up as they rolled together.

A new fury rushes through my body, close to sheer disgust. I rip a blade from my leg holster and throw it right into the side of the chief's face. Blood spurts from his cheek and he drops the boulder.

Richard leaps to his feet nods once to me and we rush the chief.

Which is the moment four of the chief's lackeys run at us from the open gate of the cathedral's garden.

Richard turns to me. "We have to merge!" he yells.

"What?"

"No time," he says and grabs my shoulders. He presses his lips hard against mine. I struggle to break away but he's too strong.

Also, something very weird is happening to me.

I know, and he knows that I know, only one of us will survive this kiss. And I want it to be me. Never mind the philosophy of sacrifice or the greater good. I want to continue to live. I need to. I desire to. I ...

I kiss hard back, not just to contain him. I reach into his soul and ... do what a soul-thief does?

Oh, God, what am I?

No, it's not the same. Richard and I have chosen to fight for our souls. It's our battle plan. The only way we can beat the chief and his side-kicks. He knows I have the philosophical grit and guts to do this.

How do I know that?

My entire inner being swells to twice its size, muscles harden to steel, battle instincts work at lightning speed.

The reason I know is because I now have Richard's knowledge in me. Amazingly, it's the same as the feeling I had in my first fight, that someone else was fighting through me. That someone else was Richard. Is Richard.

His lifeless body bag drops to the grass but I have no time to grieve.

I spin, hands in defence posture, take in the scene in a moment: the chief now standing back, side-kicks running at me. The plane trees mute and solid, throwing dappled shadows that can't help me. Waste paper bins that are not detachable. A few terrified locals running for cover. The damp stench of the Thames nearby . . .

The first two are nearly on me, greasy hair swinging before their snarling faces. They scream meaninglessly, trying to unsettle me.

I ... we ... reach for two blades. In one smooth motion, I hurl them into their chests. Not pausing to check they're dead, I leap over their bodies, yanking out the blades as I do, then throw them at the remaining two protecting the chief who has blood running down his face but is otherwise disappointingly intact.

They're dead too but he just smiles. I don't give a damn why. No games. Death for one of us. And I have a country to protect.

A blur of motion from him, a thunderous pounding in my head, gaze turned black, nose rubbing the dewy grass.

He's stronger than us. But he doesn't know why or how you killed me. Use that doubt.

Is that my inner voice or Richard's? No time. Get sight back. Roll out of his way. Ow! Boot stamping down, onto my ear.

On feet now, girl! He has doubts . . .

Do I kiss him?

No, because he hasn't offered that route.

He's ready to rush me again, going to use brute strength. He has the power of the souls he's stolen to squash me with.

But that's just it: they were stolen. My extra soul was freely given.

Richard, I'm handing over to you. Again.

Wow! My body moves but not at my command. I spin on my left foot and my right swings in a rising arc, boot connects with the chief's chin. He staggers. My body does a forward flip, both feet crash down on top of his head.

He falls. I--we--Richard slam our knees into his chest. My hands produce two bloody blades I hadn't even realised I was holding.

I plunge them into his chest, ripping and tearing. I ditch the blades, grab the slippery thumping heart and wrench it free. His soul fizzes through my fingers, into my nerves, on to my own heart where we contain it.

"You sent Richard to the cathedral to protect me, didn't you?"

I'm sitting in Bronlock's lab, sipping the tea and honey he's given me. I ache all over and other people's blood is on my face and hands.

"Ordinarily," he says, "you could have ended the threat of invasion from their world on your own. But Miss Thompson's treachery meant I couldn't be sure how prepared their chief would be. You needed back-up."

He turns to fiddle with a beaker or two but I recognise avoidance when I see it.

"I remember you talking about how boys break and girls bend," I say. "You reckoned if you could put the two together, you'd have a truly super-duper bottom booter to protect us, didn't you?"

He sighs. "Believe it or not, Miss Peters, I care only about protecting our world from evil. I sent Richard to find out about their Earth-zone and help you to destroy their soul-thieves and retrieve the belt, which you have done."

"But you knew one of us would have to die. He knew that but he was prepared to sacrifice himself if need be."

He turns. "Well, that's how I taught him."

I don't need Richard's soul to tell me what that means. And now I understand why they chose me. Why he chose me, rather. He knew that I'd need the spiritual strength which philosophy can provide to accept my new fate as a two-in-one ass-kicker.

"Richard was your son, wasn't he?"

He nods and that's when I fully realise what a life of duty means. What my life means from this point on.

At dinner, later that night, I'm exhausted and not very hungry. But when the last rhubarb crumble lands on the table before me, my gut need for sweet things kicks in and I reach for it.

Just as Jessica Ward, sitting opposite, also reaches out.

She stands even less chance this time of beating me. But to my surprise, my hand doesn't close around the crumble. It takes hold of Jessica's hand instead, surprisingly gently.

Her hand feels nice.

Peeping Tom

JG Faherty

USA

Tom Grainger closed his apartment door and leaned against it, his chest heaving as he tried not to hyperventilate. Through his gasping breaths, he listened to the deliveryman's footsteps fading away down the hall.

Tom checked his watch. He'd kept the door open for exactly two minutes and fourteen seconds.

Not good.

A person could get murdered in half that time. Shot. Stabbed. The possibilities were endless, even with the security chains still set. Tom had checked the man's ID through the peephole, but even so...

Unfortunately, some deliveries had to be signed for.

"I have to do better."

Chester, the apartment's only other occupant, bobbed his head in silent acknowledgment from his favourite perch on the kitchen windowsill.

His heart settling into something of a normal rhythm, Tom nodded back at the iguana and set his package on the table. Early afternoon sunlight warmed the small room, its strength weakened only slightly by the extra-dark tinting Tom had put on the windows a few years ago so no one could see in.

A smile bent his lips as he opened his new fibre optic video camera kit. After installing the accompanying software on his laptop, Tom got his toolbox and went into the living room, where he stared at the adjoining wall.

"Where should I drill?"

Chester regarded him with dark eyes.

Tom frowned. It had to be placed just right, allowing a clear view of the Jackson's apartment without being noticeable from the other side.

Guilt wormed up his back. He'd never considered spying on his neighbours until he'd heard the strange noises coming from next door. Weird moans, a high-pitched keening like a storm wind whistling through an alley, and, on some occasions, bestial grunting, and snorting. Way different than the usual sounds of fighting, sex, music, and laughter that made it through the cheap plaster walls and ceilings of the building.

Tom had never met the Jacksons; they'd only moved in a few months ago. But he felt confident that a normal, middle-aged couple - as Mr. Freivald, the building super, had described them - wouldn't be making the sounds he heard several nights a week.

So, he'd decided to break his own rule. He valued his own privacy more than anything and believed others had the same right to theirs.

"But I just can't take it any longer. Am I wrong?" He glanced at Chester, who'd made his way to the living room window over the past hour, following the movement of the sun. The iguana bobbed sagely and licked its fat tongue across its scaly lips.

"Exactly." Tom considered the wall. Ideally, the hole would be in a central location. However, that would be the easiest place for anyone on the other side to see.

Then an idea came to him.

"Down low, by the baseboard. No one will see it there." It would limit his view, but better that than having the neighbours call the police.

The electrical outlet. It was only a foot off the ground, so odds were no one would notice a small hole. If they did, hopefully, they'd only think some plaster had cracked away.

He put his ear to the wall. No sounds came from the other side.

"Here goes nothing."

He drilled through an inch above the baseboard, then slid the fibre optic tube into the opening and hurried to the laptop to check the image.

A monstrous beast lunged at him.

Tom cried out and jumped backward. He bumped into a chair, gasped, and then grabbed hold and hung on as if lost at sea.

It can't be real. Maybe it's just a picture on a TV screen.

There are no such things as monsters.

Tom repeated the mantra in his head until his heartbeat slowed and his body no longer trembled. Taking a deep breath, he relinquished his hold on the chair and went back to the laptop.

On the screen, three reptilian creatures gnawed at a carcass, its flesh, and bones rendered in vibrant, gory detail by the top-of-the-line lens. Mustard-yellow fluids dripped from the body cavity, contrasting grotesquely with the glistening black and red skins and brown tunics of the enthusiastic diners.

Forcing himself to think logically, Tom tapped the keys that controlled the movement and focus. The image blurred slightly as the camera panned first left, then right.

Tom's stomach clenched at the scene it revealed.

An alien landscape of black soil and rocks, a few scattered reddish-brown scrub trees, and a greenish sky dominated by a pale orange sun. More bones, picked clean and bleached to a dull yellow, were scattered on the sand around the creatures.

"It's got to be a joke of some kind," Tom whispered. "Maybe they saw the hole and realized what I'd done." Purposely ignoring the question of how anyone could set up such an elaborate hoax so quickly, Tom withdrew the lens and crawled to the wall. Lying flat on his stomach, he put his eye to the hole.

Less than five feet away, the lizard-creatures, which seemed about two feet tall, continued to rip and tear at their food. Only now Tom could smell the stink of the dead flesh and exposed organs, feel the unwelcome touch of a hot breeze on his eye.

"Son of a..." He clamped his mouth shut as one of the things paused in its chewing and looked around, head darting back and forth in birdlike fashion.

Holding his breath, Tom counted to thirty before the alien returned to its ghastly meal. Then he slowly backed away from the wall, only exhaling after he'd put several feet between himself and the peephole.

Aliens. The word bounced around in his head, threatening to shatter his worldview. "Holy... it's aliens! Now, what do I do?"

On the sofa, Chester let out a slow, hissing breath.

"No help, old friend. No help at all."

For the first time in fifteen years, the reality of his enforced isolation hit home. He had no one he could call. His family already considered him crazy. None of the neighbours spoke to him.

"And my only friend is a lizard."

Chester tilted his head and blinked.

He couldn't even go to the super. Mr. Frievald already believed the Jacksons were a normal couple, which meant either he was under their control or they'd hid their real identity somehow. Either way, he certainly wouldn't listen if Tom - the resident nutcase in the building - suddenly started talking about aliens living next door.

Record them.

"That's it." He'd record the aliens and then he'd have proof, a video he could send to media outlets, post on the internet. "Once the world knows, I'll be safe. The aliens won't be able to touch me."

Picking up the camera, he turned on his video recording software and aimed the lens at his own face.

"Hello. My name is Tom Grainger. What you are about to see may be hard for you to believe. But there are aliens living among us..."

Tom hit the 'Enter' key and leaned back in his chair while the latest video saved on the laptop. His back ached and his eyes felt like he'd rubbed sand in them. For the past six hours, he'd done nothing but video the strange world that somehow existed on the other side of his living room wall. Afraid he'd miss something potentially important - or deadly - he'd stayed glued to the screen, watching the events unfold in real time while he recorded them.

After finishing their meal, the lizard-creatures had wandered off. After they left, a few spider-like things with twelve legs came by and cleaned the last remnants of flesh from the carcass before they disappeared as well. He'd panned the camera in different directions but all he'd gotten for his efforts were hours of sand, rocks, and sky. Even the sky hadn't changed, which he assumed meant the alien world had longer days than Earth.

"What I need is some sleep." He yawned and stood. Chester, who'd been dozing on the table, looked up and blinked. "Then I'll figure out what to do next." The idea that extra-terrestrial creatures had turned the apartment next door into some kind of portal to another world had him on pins and needles, jumping at every sound, but he knew he couldn't stay awake forever.

After putting a piece of masking tape over the hole and putting some green beans and bananas in Chester's bowl, he collapsed onto his bed without bothering to take off his clothes.

Five hours later, Tom woke up and staggered to the bathroom. He'd slept badly, suffering through vivid nightmares of flesh-eating creatures. After splashing water on his face in a futile attempt to shock his system into wakefulness, he made his way into the kitchen, intending to put on a pot of strong coffee.

It took several moments for his sleep-dulled senses to notice the foul smell in the air. His first thought was to check the garbage, thinking something in there might be rotten.

Except the bag was empty. He remembered putting it out after dinner the previous night. The remains of Chester's dinner were too small and fresh to be the culprit.

He moved into the living room and sniffed. The odour seemed stronger. On the couch, Chester stared at him, head bobbing in rapid fashion.

"You notice it, too?"

Tom glanced around. What could be the cause? On his third inspection, something about the far wall caught his eye. He stared at the wall, trying to figure out what was different. The lone painting hung straight; no new stains marred the plain white -

Wait. What's that? He focused on a small, black mark in the centre of the wall, about as high as his waist. Moved closer. A shiver ran up his back as he realized what it was.

A hole.

Tom let out a moan. The room narrowed to a long tunnel with the nickel-sized hole at the far end.

"That wasn't there last night," he whispered. So, where had it come from?

The violent images from his dreams came rushing back.

Them!

Go look through.

"I can't."

You have to!

"No." He looked at Chester, but the iguana just stared back, his black and gold eyes offering no support.

"Fine. I'll look."

Each step acted like a shot of adrenaline on Tom's heart until it threatened to explode. Although the room wasn't very large, it seemed to take forever to reach the far wall. He took a deep breath and slowly moved his face closer to the terrifying hole until finally, he could see through.

He gasped.

The scene on the other side of the wall was nothing like the arid wasteland he'd studied the night before.

It also wasn't like anything on Earth.

A field of orange grass sat beneath the umbrella of a violet sky. The tips of the grass bowed over as a gentle breeze carried the stink of carrion and death through the hole and into Tom's face. Clenching his teeth against a sudden hiccup of bile, he did his best to look from side to side, searching for whoever might have made the hole.

And just how did they make that hole, Tom? Drill into thin air? You sure you want to make eye contact with whatever could do that?

Tom took two quick steps back, the enormity of the situation too much for him.

"I can't deal with this."

Chester crawled down the couch toward him. Blinked.

But you have to. They've been watching you. And if they're watching you, what else are they doing?

"What else...?"

Against Tom's will, his brain supplied images of different possibilities. Carnivorous creatures busting through the wall; Tom's body strapped to a table while weird devices probed his orifices; Tom locked in a cage while hundreds of aliens stared at the newest member of an interplanetary zoo.

"Shit." He took a step towards the wall and stopped again. What if something was staring back? What would it do if it realized Tom knew it was watching him?

Maybe they already know. They could have found the hole you made.

Tom swore again and dropped to his hands and knees. His fingers shook as he pulled the tape free. With his head, almost at floor level, he peered through the hole he'd made the previous day.

The desert landscape looked unchanged from the last time. Empty sand littered with yellowed bones.

"That doesn't make sense." How could two holes only a few feet apart give views of two different places?

How can an alien world exist inside an apartment?

Tom's guts froze. "It can't. Which means normal laws don't apply. Anything is possible."

Like different holes looking at different worlds.

"So what if I drill a third hole?"

Chester bobbed and blinked.

His heart pounding as if he'd just run a marathon, Tom hurried to get his drill.

Tom stood by the wall, drill in hand, contemplating where to place the next hole. Movement on the couch caught his eye and he jumped, then let out a deep breath when he saw it was just Chester, climbing down the arm.

"It's gotta be somewhere that gives me a better view," Tom said. Chester blinked once and then walked away as if wanting nothing to do with Tom's foolishness. For a moment, Tom considered following the iguana's advice but then shook his head. The not knowing would drive him crazy.

Crazier, he amended.

But putting the hole that high meant it might be seen. Tom thought about the lizard-things. They hadn't looked very tall; not much bigger than Chester, actually. So, something higher up might be the best choice.

Hoping he wasn't setting himself up for an untimely death, he drilled right into the centre of the wall at eye level.

Thirty seconds later, he had the camera plugged in and an image on the computer screen.

An image of a place completely different from the black desert or the strange field.

"Holy crap." Tom chewed his lip and clutched the edge of the table as he stared at a scene right from Dante's inferno. Fiery lava carved valleys through silver-coloured rocks. Further away from the molten river, flames raced across a hillside, devouring armoured grasses and spiked trees. Something leaped from a concealed hole in the ground, a bipedal creature with feet like a rabbit and a face like a melting Halloween mask. Before it could take three steps, a tongue of fire shot out with sentient accuracy and wrapped around the unlucky animal, reducing it to charred bones in seconds.

Tom considered the three holes.

Three holes, three different worlds.

"I need more cameras."

Tom regarded the equipment spread out on the kitchen table. Five new laptops. Twenty-three new cameras. He'd maxed out his credit cards and emptied his bank account.

"So what? We're going to be rich, my friend," he said to Chester, who was watching from the windowsill. "Rich and famous."

The thought of all the money he'd make once he revealed his discovery was powerful enough to temporarily quell the other anxiety lurking inside him, the fear that in order to prove the aliens were real he'd have to let people \- probably lots of them - into his apartment.

"First things first. We'll deal with that when the time comes."

Determined to do things in a scientific manner, he'd drawn a grid on the wall and placed each of the fibre optic cameras at equally spaced distances. The cameras fed into separate ports on the laptops, four to a computer, and he'd figured out how to split each screen into four separate views, so he could watch everything at once.

As he'd expected, none of the scenes were the same. What he hadn't expected was to see seven places that were obviously on Earth. A city that appeared to be in Japan, a grassy savannah that was probably in Africa, and several small towns in the US and Europe, based on the license plates of cars.

Seven views of Earth. Fourteen of other worlds, counting the three original holes.

And all of them with one thing in common.

Lizard-people.

Like the first time he saw them, the reptilian aliens were impossible to tell apart. They all looked the same and dressed the same. The idea that one or more of them had made the second hole, the one that looked in on him, seemed more outrageous every minute. In fact, it would have been easy to believe they were nothing more than dumb creatures if it weren't for two chilling facts.

One, they wore clothes. And unless someone was dressing them, that meant they had to have at least some intelligence.

Two, he'd seen them in the human cities, feasting on dead cats and rodents, and ducking behind dumpsters or parked cars when people went past.

That meant they were smart enough to know they had to stay hidden.

"What are they up to?"

*

Two days after setting up his cameras, Tom woke from one of his exhaustion-driven naps and staggered out of his bedroom.

His apartment, usually as neat and tidy as the pictures in magazines, had taken on the appearance of a college frat house. Dishes littered the sink and counters, the garbage was overflowing, and a pile of brown apple slices and green squash-the remains of Chester's dinner from two nights ago - had already attracted the attention of several cockroaches.

Tom felt much the same as his garbage. He hadn't changed clothes or showered in three days. His hair flopped around his face in greasy strands, and he'd begun to itch in places that would've been impolite to scratch in public.

Ignoring the mess, the first thing he did was check the laptops to see what was happening on the other side of the wall. His brain still muddled from insufficient sleep, it took him several moments to realize something was wrong.

All the video feeds showed plain black squares.

"What the...?" he mumbled. A quick check of the connections showed everything still in place. The computers still worked when he closed and opened the screen shots.

A cold chill moved up his spine. If it wasn't the computers, it had to be the cameras...

His head swivelled to the right before he finished the thought. Nothing looked out of place.

Wait.

Something caught his eye, down near the floor. A dark circle, larger than his fist. Right, where...

The outlet used to be.

"Shit. Shit-shit-shit -"

He stood up. Something else was wrong. A pile of white and red and green scraps on the floor. Almost like the remains of one of Chester's lettuce and tomato salads.

Only he hadn't given Chester any tomatoes lately.

His stomach churning, Tom slowly walked across the room. Chester's remains were identifiable before Tom got halfway there. He dropped to his knees and crawled forward, hoping he was wrong somehow, that it wasn't his only friend laying in bloody pieces.

Except it was.

"Oh, God. No. Chester." His voice broke saying the name. The lizard-things hadn't left much behind, just a few scraps of scale-covered skin and greyish-white bones. They'd even broken open the skull and cleaned it out.

How could they do it? Christ, they're like damn cannibals, eating something that looked so much like them.

Right, Tom. And humans have never eaten other primates. Or each other, for that matter. Cry later. You've got bigger things to worry about right now.

"Like what?" Tom asked, his hand still hovering over the dead lizard as if he could somehow bring his old friend back from the dead.

Oh, I don't know. Like maybe what the iguana-eating aliens on the other side of the fucking wall are doing, and if any of them are still in your goddamned apartment?

Tom's guts clenched and he glanced around.

They could be anywhere. Behind the couch. Under the sink. In my closet. I could tear the whole place apart and never find them. Or they might be on the other side, watching me, waiting for me to go to sleep again, so they can sneak in and eat me, too. They're not big, but if there were a bunch of them...

Suddenly the apartment seemed too small. I must get out of here, get help.

But that means going outside, Tommy-boy. Can you, do it?

"I... I don't know," he whispered. Then he remembered. He didn't have to leave. All he had to do was call the police. Still on his hands and knees, he scurried over to the nearest phone and hit the 'talk' button.

Nothing happened. The only sound in his ear was the deceptively peaceful false-ocean susurration of a deadline.

"Jesus Christ." He tossed the phone down, for the first time in his life wishing he owned a cell.

And you wondered how smart they were.

"Shut up! I have to think." He closed his eyes, still saw images of Chester's ravaged corpse.

What's to think about? Get your ass out of here and get help. But bring a laptop with you.

"What? Why?"

Without proof, you're nothing but a whacko who's been locked in his apartment for years, and now he thinks aliens are coming through the walls.

"Shit." Tom pulled himself to his feet and unplugged one of the laptops, the one where the original pictures of the lizard-men had been stored. Taking a deep breath, he closed the computer and headed for the door.

Wait!

"What?"

Shoes, dummy.

Tom looked down. Sure, enough, his feet were bare. He glanced around the room. All his shoes were in the closet. Where the aliens just might be waiting for him.

Slippers. He always left them in the living room. Sure, enough, when he checked, they were right by the love seat. Feet covered, he started towards the door again.

When he reached it, he put his hand on the first lock and paused. He'd thought he'd be too afraid to do it, but here he was about to open the door and step outside for the first time in he couldn't remember how long. His hand barely shaking at all, he undid the locks and opened the door.

Right before he stepped into the hall, he stopped.

What if the aliens were waiting for him?

You can't stand here forever. At least, in the hall, you have a chance. In the apartment, you're trapped.

"Right."

Head down, laptop tight under one arm, he ran as fast as he could for the stairs, preferring to take the three flights rather than get attacked while waiting for the elevator.

He dashed through the lobby without seeing anyone and stumbled out into the street before he could stop himself.

"Oh, God. Oh, Jesus." It was too much. The wide-open streets, people walking as the morning rush hour kicked into gear. Cars jostling for position, horns honking, brakes squealing. And the smells. So many of them. Exhausts and foods and bodies...

"I can't do it." Tom backed up until he was pressed against the wall of his building, and slid down to the ground, the laptop clutched against his chest. "I can't..."

"Hey buddy, you all right? You need help?"

With a start, Tom looked up and saw a burly construction worker staring down at him, coffee in one hand and a McDonald's bag in the other.

"I..." He tried to get the words out, but an invisible rope had wrapped itself around his throat. "I... police. Police."

"You want me to get the cops?"

Tom nodded, all ability to speak gone.

"Sure, buddy." The man transferred his bag to his coffee hand and pulled out a cell phone. After a quick conversation, during which Tom heard the words 'weird' and 'nuts,' he closed the phone and looked at Tom. "Don't worry. They're on their way. Everything's gonna be okay."

Tom shook his head. No, no it's not. Nothing will ever be okay again.

"Was the door open when you left?"

Tom peered around the tall police officer standing in front of him. "I... I don't remember. I ran out so fast...I probably didn't shut it."

"Mmm-hmm." The cop's voice was non-committal, but Tom had a good idea of what the man was thinking. Probably the same thing as his partner, who stood with a gentle but firm hand on Tom's arm, providing much-needed support. The ride to the police station had been a nightmare, a hazy acid trip of cars swooping past and faces shouting words at him until finally, they'd called a doctor who'd administered a sedative. Only then had Tom could form words again, tell his story in halting, shaky sentences.

It hadn't helped that somehow most of the files in the computer had been corrupted, and all he'd had to show the police was a blurry still frame of the lizard-people copulating. But despite their obvious disbelief, two officers had agreed to take him back to his apartment and look at the other computers, plus give the place a thorough search.

Of course, in return, Tom had been forced to agree to a mandatory visit with a psychiatrist on Monday, but he'd worry about that later. All he wanted was to prove he wasn't crazy, that aliens had taken over the apartment next door.

"Looks okay," said the tall cop, whose name was Willits. His partner with the strong grip was Lopez. "Show us what you think you found, Mr. Grainger."

Tom entered the apartment, wary of something jumping out at them. Relief rushed through him when he saw the laptops still on the table.

"Jesus, Grainger, you did some number on the wall," Lopez said.

"I had to. Look here and you'll see why." He tapped a button on one of the laptops, brought up one of the saved video files.

"Looks like static to me." Willits raised an eyebrow and shook his head.

"Something's wrong." Tom tried several more files. All of them were the same.

Blank.

"Dammit!" Tom slammed his hand on the table.

"Don't worry, buddy. Shit happens." Lopez turned to go.

"No, don't go yet." Tom grabbed the officer by the sleeve. "It's them. The lizard people. They must have erased the files. But it doesn't matter. I can show you. Just look through the holes." Tom let go of Lopez's shirt and ran to the wall, where he pulled out several of the fibre optic cameras, exposing the holes he'd drilled.

"Please. You'll see I'm not crazy."

Lopez glanced at Willits, who shrugged. "Why not?"

The two cops made their way across the cluttered room and put their faces to the wall.

After a moment, Willits stepped back, his lips tight as he fought to keep from smiling. "Wow. That's really...something, Mr. Grainger."

"Yeah." Unlike his partner, Lopez looked more annoyed than amused. "It's something, all right. I don't think I've ever seen an empty apartment before. Real scary."

"What?" Tom put his eye to a hole.

And found himself staring at an empty room. White walls, a hardwood floor much like his own. Some discoloured marks on the walls where pictures might have hung.

"No. This can't be." Tom pulled out several more cameras, checked one hole after another. All of them provided the same view. "They're gone. But they were there, I know it. What about Chester?"

"Who's Chester?" Willits asked.

"My iguana. The one they killed. They ate it. The body's right--" Tom stopped as he looked down. No signs of Chester's corpse remained on the floor, not even a blood stain.

Willits patted him on the back. "Look. It must be tough living here all alone for so long. You make sure you see the doctor on Monday, okay? I'll bet he can help you."

The officers walked out, leaving Tom to stare at the empty space on the floor.

"Where did they all go?"

They're aliens, dummy. If they can take over an apartment and turn it into some kind of galactic transport station, without anyone knowing, why can't they leave again?

Tom wanted to tell his brain to shut up, but he knew it wouldn't listen.

Hey, this is a good thing, Tommy-boy. They're gone. Probably 'cause they knew you were on to them.

"But they're still out there, in all those other places."

Let someone else worry about them. Now you can go back to work, let your life get back to normal. Get some sleep. Take a shower.

"I guess." He reached up, pulled another camera out. Then the rest. The sedatives turned it into a slow process but he removed them all. The holes stared at him, two dozen mocking eyes shaming him with their gaze.

Man, Freivald's gonna charge you a fortune for that.

"Whatever." Tom couldn't muster the strength to worry. His body felt drained of all emotion, all will. He wanted nothing more than to sleep for a week.

Fibre cams in his hands, he stared at the wall. "I still can't believe it." On impulse, he bent toward the larger hole in the centre of the wall, the one the aliens had made, intending to take one final look.

A reptilian eye stared back at him.

With a shout, Tom dropped the cameras and stepped back. Before he'd gone three steps, the entire wall burst inwards, plaster and wood shards flying. Tom fell, cameras rolling in all directions. A figure emerged from the cloud of white dust, a lizard creature. Only this one was five feet tall and wider than Tom at the shoulders, and dressed in a khaki shirt just like -

Mr. Freivald's? How -

Red and black scales gleamed with a mother-of-pearl sheen as the creature came at him. It opened its mouth, exposing rows of sharp, curved teeth.

"No! Get away! Get away!" Tom kicked his feet at the beast. Fast as a bird, the lizard-man darted forward and bit Tom's calf, crunching effortlessly through muscle and bone before letting go. Agony raced through his body, setting every nerve on fire. He opened his mouth to scream but his throat clenched, turning his cry into a strangled gasp. His arms went rigid and he fell to the side, muscles frozen and uncooperative. A heavy weight descended across his chest and he fought to breathe.

Unable to move his head, he could only stare while the creature dressed like the building super leaned down, strings of frothy red saliva hanging from its jaws.

This is it. I'm going to die. He tried to close his eyes but they refused to work. The room spun around him -

No. Not spinning. Moving.

I'm moving.

Furniture and carpet slid past. Shards of plaster and wood gouged his skin. Nausea roiling in his stomach.

Dragging me. Where?

Bright light stabbed at his eyes and tears blurred his vision. Fire burned his lungs. Sharp sticks poked at his side. Something rough and hot against his face. The sensation of spinning stopped and the queasy feeling eased. He tried to blink; on the second attempt, it worked. His vision cleared.

Black carpet stretched out in front of him.

No. Sand. Black sand. Gritty and searing.

It dragged me through! I'm in the other place, the desert world.

He tried to move his arms. No response. Same with his legs. Only his eyes worked. He looked around as best he could from his awkward foetal position. Reddish tufts of grass. Bones scattered around, more beneath him. The same place as he'd seen when -

Movement. Something coming. His heart sped up. The creature - Freivald? - returning to finish him, to -

No. Smaller. Sweat stung his eyes and he blinked it away.

The lizards. The small ones, in the tunics. Three of them, their scales red and black just like -

Their father. Jesus. They're babies. All the ones I watched in those places.

The ones eating.

Eating. Food. I'm their food, it brought me to its nest to feed them.

No! Can't let it. Move. Have to move. Have to -

The lizards leaped forward. Needle-like claws dug into his flesh as they fought for purchase. Razor teeth bit deep. Tom's screams died in his paralysed throat but filled his head. He had time for one last thought This is what they did to Chester and then the last of his sanity fled.

And all he knew was pain.

Wings That Make No Sound

Samantha Murray

Australia

The sight of the sunrise made Hugh feel queasy as it always did. Red streaks struck out across the sky and Sydney's city buildings were burnished until they seemed to glow. Hugh cast his eyes down and started into the welcome dimness of the grimy grey stairs leading to the metro.

Magic light, Kelsey used to call it. He'd gone camping with her once, the week before they had started university, and they had woken to watch pink fingers of dawn delicately paint the sky. The earth had smelled damp and dew had made the cobwebs sparkle like they were strung with diamonds. Kelsey had pressed her cold nose into the side of his neck. That was when they were still unbroken. When the world had been new and clean again every morning.

Hugh had not slept for fifteen years.

The train was not ideally the place Hugh would have chosen for a memory-dump. The train was crowded, the heat from other bodies pressing in on him, and he didn't like to be among so many people, especially if not at high-beta. But it had been a good many hours since he had been anywhere approaching theta, so it would have to do. Hugh stood with the cracked plastic strap held lightly in his right hand, and the left-to-right sway made him feel as if water was sliding over him. I am a shark, he thought. Needing the constant flow of water to breathe, not stopping, unable to be still.

Predictably his dump started with most recent events. As he stood in the train he processed and laid down the memories of the meeting he'd had earlier at PharmaHeart with Jarvis. Hugh felt again the firm handshake that said I'm not just your superior, I'm your pal, Jarvis holding eye-contact in the way that few people did anymore.

A man walked through the meeting room. His teeth were chattering and he was shaking his head from side to side as if he had something whispering to him on each of his shoulders. No, that was wrong; the man was not at PharmaHeart at all--he was on the train.

The metro wrenched back into focus.

The man banged on the train window with his open palm. He must have already been bleeding because Hugh could see the red streak on the glass. He could read the signs flashing behind in the tunnel. A larger than life picture of a middle-aged woman beamed next to the 'PharmaHeart – There for You' slogan, but through the smeared reddened pane her smile looked forced and dubious.

Hugh slipped a green ceut into his palm from the dispenser at his wrist and brought it up to swallow in one quick motion. It cut through the blue ceuts he had used to facilitate the dump and snapped him beta-wards, and he felt like ice was being pumped around his body.

The man was yelling while he pounded the glass; the only bit Hugh could make out was "YOUKNOWYOUWANNA TAKE A DIRT NAP WITHME YOUGOTTA."

Palming one of the deep red ceuts, Hugh approached the man slowly from the side. The smell of stale sweat rankled his nose.

"It'sdarkdarkdark takeadirtnap."

Hugh grabbed one of the man's arms as it flailed around. The man was more forceful than Hugh had guessed even though his motions were unfocused and his crooked elbow whipped close to Hugh's eye, thwocking his temple. That'll bruise. Hugh had the pill in the man's mouth, though, and pushed his jaw closed and upwards like you would a dog you needed to treat. Hugh heard the count in his head, One, Two, Three, and the man sank downwards till he was sitting with his knees up, head nodding to the train's rhythm.

"Guess he'll miss his station," a scrawny girl on the seat just across from him said. She was looking straight at him. People were looking at him now. Most of them looked dazed, but the girl stared at him as if she was hungry.

Hugh left the man there on the train and got out at the next stop, deciding to walk to meet his contact. He didn't like people. They were everywhere; it seemed hard to believe that there used to be twice as many in the world. Had it been like drowning in all those people? He couldn't quite remember.

Hugh had been one of the lucky ones--he had heard it often enough over the years and supposed it was true--but he didn't feel lucky. He had been eighteen in the year 2022 when the Insomnia began. And lucky--it was the right age to be. Of the people who survived that first year, there were more of them around his age. Children had much higher sleep needs and the drugs weren't as good then as they were now. People nearing middle-age didn't take to the ceuts as well, nor show as much flexibility in adapting to the new demands of their bodies.

He had heard people blame extra-terrestrials, and the government, and the scientists, and terrorists and pollution. They blamed PharmaHeart, which Hugh thought was both unfair and ridiculous - yes, PharmaHeart was a monopoly and money flowed like a flush river in their direction - but they were the good guys. How many more would be dead if they had not responded so promptly and on such a massive scale? They'd saved humanity from extinction, or close enough to it. PharmaHeart was a lucrative employer with the best perks, but Hugh worked for them mostly because he didn't know where else he would be or what else he would do.

When he emerged from the subway into the watered-down light of the city Hugh saw Kelsey sitting on the old stone steps of an apartment building. Her hair was longer now and she looked tired and a little wistful. For a moment, he thought she was real.

Kelsey and Hugh had been a high school couple and maybe that was part of what had kept them together for so long. They had met when the world had wonder and promise and possibility gifted to it anew every morning. Somewhere underneath the twisted tangling of bitterness and darkened love he felt for Kelsey, she still existed for Hugh as a girl with freckles on her nose and eyes that were bright and fearless. Even when lines had etched her face and the brightness had leeched away from her eyes and most of the words she threw at him were cutting or hateful. Even then.

Hallucination.

Hugh rubbed at his eyes and looked again at bare stone. There was no-one there at all. A pigeon landed a couple of steps up and cocked its head at him.

Damn. That hadn't happened in months. He popped two more ceuts as he paced the block and unwrapped a pro-bar to chew on. His disrupted dump on the subway had something to do with it, no doubt, and working too much.

His contact turned out to be a Blinker. The man was standing in the shade cast from the high-rise buildings on either side of the alley, but his pupils were contracted as if he were squinting into bright sunshine. Helldamn he found Blinkers annoying. The guy acknowledged him with a sideways jerk of his head and took the ceut-credits Hugh proffered with a movement so practiced and quick Hugh wasn't even sure where he stashed them.

"You'll want this, it's good, it's real good." The guy closed his eyes and kept them closed for an extended beat. "Good," he repeated, finally opening his eyes and showing too much of his teeth, which Hugh supposed was meant to be a smile.

"You have the address?" Hugh kept everything in his voice and posture neutral.

"Yeah, here I got it here." The guy flickered his eyes open and shut several rapid times in succession and held out a dirty piece of paper to Hugh. "I drew you a map."

"Can't you just code it to me?" There was something vaguely distasteful about the grubby little square his contact was shoving at him.

"Naw, you never know, you just never know." He closed his eyes and kept them closed. "You never know who is watching."

You're sure as hell not, thought Hugh, but said, "What's the ex?"

"It'll cost ya." His eyes were back open, and he put a bunch of zeros on the end of a number. "But trust me, my friend, this stuff is real, you want this."

I'm not your friend, Hugh thought. "Ok. Security?"

"Naw, they're pretty relaxed. But you need the password, and you need to wear it. See?" He pulled up his sweater and closed his eyes again. Hugh bent his head to see. The man had no fat on him at all, and at the base of his stomach was reddish-white scar tissue forming the word 'Remember'. The first three letters were bigger and capitalized. REMember. Cute.

Hugh left him with his eyes still shut. Damn creepy Blinkers. He got it; taking those brief rests, taking time out from the world in tiny little bites; but that didn't mean it wasn't irritating. He used to lie on his bed in the dark at night, eyes closed, and try and do a great swathe of his dumping and resting then. It seemed the logical time, the logical place.

It wasn't.

Too many nights feeling pent-up and hopeless, feeling his limbs itch, wanting to punch the wall. He had punched it once; it hurt and busted up his knuckles. He no longer closed his eyes, not on purpose. Except for when he put his face up to the spray of the shower, or when he'd been having sex with Kelsey. The latter had not happened for a long time now. Closing his eyes was too much of an ache of what was wrong, of what wasn't there. Too much wasn't there.

A car went down the street, going too fast, as he began the long walk back to his apartment. Some people still drove, despite everything, which Hugh thought was madness. The drugs were good, but everybody had lapses, and Hugh preferred not to mix himself up in metal at high velocity when he didn't quite trust himself, and he certainly did not trust anyone else. The subway was almost fully automated, but Hugh preferred to walk. He usually did his best dumping when shuffling around the park at the end of his street, watching the leaves and winding slow circles. It was the best he could do.

He passed a group of teenagers lingering just outside the neon signage of a twenty-four-hour chemist. Around eighteen years old most of them, Hugh guessed, although they looked smaller and older than they should do. When Hugh was eighteen he had been in love, and for one bright summer had held the world in the palm of his hand.

Until it all changed.

These kids looked thin and wary, despite their loud voices and dramatic make-up. Some of them were younger than he'd thought, Hugh saw, now that he was closer; there were a couple who couldn't be more than thirteen. These were children who had never slept. Ever. One girl was wearing a black t-shirt with spidery grey writing on it; "Sleep When Ur Dead", Hugh made out.

He'd seen that attitude before, in kids and their graffiti. The Pfft, what's all the fuss about, I don't want that anyway attitude to something they couldn't have. Pissing in the wind, his grandfather would have said. They made a big deal about how they didn't care, but they still talked about it on their t-shirts.

"What are you looking at, old fart?" the girl in the t-shirt called out in his direction, starting loud but trailing off as if she couldn't sustain her bluster. Hugh gave her an apologetic half-smile and picked up his speed as he went past them. She was just a kid.

At home, Hugh coded his progress to Jarvis at PharmaHeart. Jarvis' boosted-beta intentness was palpable even with his small image. Hugh had never seen him anything other than keen and focused. The man must switch off, sometime, but Hugh couldn't imagine it.

Jarvis suggested he come into PharmaHeart to get prepped, but Hugh declined. Wasn't anything he couldn't do himself. He removed the blade from one of his shavers and positioned himself in front of the mirror. His stomach was lean—-a result of a constantly churning metabolism and an immune system that was over-taxed. Obesity was a rare problem these days. He shot himself a feral grin in the mirror as he carved the R into his skin.

Remember. As if he could forget.

He remembered being entwined with Kelsey, awakening to the smell of her skin, to her sleepy rumpled smile.

He remembered her face, fierce and impassioned as she'd talked about the child. She'd said there was no way she would bring a child into the world like it was. It was her decision--he would have done it for her; he would have had a child, even though he thought it was a bad idea and she knew it. They suffered, the babies; when they were not drugged they screamed and screamed. It was not fair. She thought the same thing he thought, and somehow she hated him for that, in the end.

He remembered losing sleep. How it'd felt it was receding from him like the tide slowly going out. Getting further and further away, leaving him standing on wet sand. It had been patchy and broken bad sleep for a week or two; but in the beginning, he thought it was just him, that he was stressed with study and work. Then he was struggling to get a couple of hours a night, and the world, the whole world had been starting to notice.

It got worse. Then worse.

For a lot of that first-year people were still having micro-sleeps, and then even that dwindled. Even though micro-sleeps had made being anywhere near the roads hazardous, they were a blessing; having little portions of delta in their day probably kept a lot of people alive in the beginning.

As it was, many died. Everybody had their toll of relatives and friends that were lost--through accident and violence, illness and suicide and misadventure. The death-rate was still higher than the birth-rate most everywhere.

Hugh wiped the blood beading on his abdomen and looked at his work. REMember.

The apartment block was virtually deserted. People tended to cluster together, making some areas of the city almost as full of life as twenty years ago, while other parts were dead. Hugh took the elevator up to the top floor. The penthouse. The surveillance he had done prior had not turned up much; a few people coming and going that he had run through the scanners for matches. The windows were all sealed and blackened.

Stepping through a primitive metal detector Hugh held his hands out to the security scanner, and then waited.

Some ten minutes later the penthouse door was opened by a tall woman with hair falling in tendrils around her. Her clothing shifted green and blue, and her large dark-rimmed eyes regarded Hugh soberly.

Hugh raised his shirt to show the mark, still encrusted with some dried blood. The woman reached out her hand and touched his stomach lightly. Then a completely unexpected grin tugged the corners of her mouth upwards.

"Come," she said, and he followed her inside.

Water rippled and murmured somewhere in the background. Hugh caught himself glancing around for it, but couldn't identify the source. It sounded real, not like a recording. Dark curtains draped the walls, giving everything a soft, undefined quality. By another doorway were pots filled with flowers; poppies in red and yellow and orange.

"I'm Lethe," the woman told him, swaying a little on her feet as if she were moving underwater. "We're so glad you found us."

She scanned in a large amount of Hugh's credit. It was PharmaHeart's money, of course, but Hugh couldn't help but wonder how much other people had to sacrifice to come here just the once.

Lethe brought out some robes and helped Hugh change, which he was vaguely uncomfortable with. Her hands were gentle and light and while she didn't speak to him he could hear her murmuring something under her breath. She took his hand and led him through the doorway past the poppies. Hugh ducked his head towards them as they passed but they gave off no scent at all.

The small room had a concealed lighting source and had only a long ebon couch and a screen behind it decked with a tapestry in which Hugh could make out shapes of people falling in shades of purple and deep red.

Lethe gestured and he lay down on the couch, feeling the coolness of the leather beneath him. She was busy behind his head and then positioned something over his ears. He could hear a buzzing that sounded like far-off chanting, notes running higher then falling away.

Then she was back in front of him. Close your eyes was the shape her mouth made; he could no longer hear her. Wait, he wanted to say, as her hand came up to his face and brushed his lids downwards with the lightest of touches. Hugh felt that bite of fear that was always there whenever he closed his eyes. It was more than the old fear of not being able to sleep; it was a tight panic right at the top of his chest cavity. Fear of failure. Neither did it help that he couldn't identify why or what it was he might fail.

Hugh felt something placed over his mouth and nose and thought that he could smell the poppies after all. He tried to lift his arm to investigate, and then he was gone.

Hugh awoke coughing. He had a funny taste in his mouth and he felt muddled and nauseous. He didn't know what time it was but it felt late. The headphones were gone and there was nothing over his face. I know this taste, his experienced palate told him. There was movement at his periphery and Lethe turned up by his side. "Welcome back." She smiled at him as if she knew him. As if they were old friends.

"Where did I go?" Hugh managed.

"It is different for everyone. You were in your dream-state; can you remember?"

"No."

"A lot of people don't. Sometimes you get a memory-flash later. What's important is that you got there."

Lethe left him alone with the pile of his clothes and Hugh dressed slowly. He looked behind the screen. There was nothing there, but the carpet there was flattened, depressed as if something heavy had rested there. He checked the display at his wrist for the brain-wave scan results from the bud embedded under his scalp. His brain activity had dropped to levels akin to brain-stem death. He had not been asleep-under anaesthesia the body tracks much closer to coma than sleep. Hugh was not sure whether the vileness in his throat was due to disappointment or the after-effect of the drugs. He never expected the results to be genuine, but down underneath the weight of his cynicism had been a tiny spike of hope, that he could recapture something he had lost a long time ago.

After coding Jarvis Hugh released two green ceuts and swallowed them dry, then exited the room and found Lethe waiting for him.

"I should book in with you again, that was really... profound," he said with what he judged the right amount of eagerness. "Is it always you? How big is your operation here?"

"Yes it's just me," said Lethe. "I can book you for two weeks' time if you like."

"Please do," said Hugh. "You must have a team helping you, I'd like to thank them."

"No, it's just me," Lethe said and smiled at him again.

Liar. But no matter. They'd get her associates out of her under questioning; they always did. PharmaHeart had an arsenal of superb drugs at its disposal which facilitated many things.

"I'll see you in two weeks." Hugh held out his hand. When Lethe's hand was in his own he twisted her wrist up and back so that he held her in front of him. She yelped. "I am taking you to PharmaHeart for suspicion of fraud and misleading claims, act 23."

"You're wrong," she said. Her voice was vehement as if she believed in what she did, and maybe she had.

She didn't struggle against him as he took her downstairs. Neither did she talk to him again. He saw her eyes as he bundled her into the car that Jarvis had sent; fierce with hurt, anger, betrayal. Betrayal? He wasn't the one taking money from people desperate for something to believe in; offering false and dangerous hope. Deceiving people into substituting this lie for the drugs their bodies needed to survive.

Despite the lift of the ceuts Hugh felt strangely leaden as he left the scene, two vans just arriving to clear the building of evidence and equipment. More sleep-peddlers out of circulation - it was a good outcome. He wondered whether it was the look on Lethe's face, and the way she had smiled at him as if they were friends; but even if she had believed in the process, that didn't mean it wasn't fakery all the same. I am a shark, he reminded himself. I am a predator. I hunt alone. A long time ago he had thought of himself as a nice guy.

He'd had a job a few months ago. Jasper had been the man's name, and he had claimed that after seven years of studying relaxation, meditation and self-hypnosis he'd been able to achieve a delta-state, and have lucid dreams. Hugh had been able to get close enough to him to differentiate out his brain-wave output; it had read theta, but it was right at the low end of the scale, dipping right to the border of delta. He must have been close enough to smell sleep, to feel the air of the other side. It was closer than anything Hugh had ever seen or recorded in the many years he had worked for PharmaHeart. Jasper had run informal meditation classes for a small and reasonable donation; he didn't promise or ask for anything more.

Hugh had delivered his results to PharmaHeart and Jasper had been taken away. He knew this because a week later he'd had an impulse--born of a mixture of awe, disbelief, and jealousy--to go and sit in on one of the man's classes. Jasper had been gone and no one in his building had known his whereabouts. Jasper hadn't been selling sleep or trying to rout people with falsehoods. Anything or anyone that helped PharmaHeart create better ceuts was a win for humanity of course. But the case itched at him still, and he found his mind wandering back to it at odd moments. The look on Jasper's face as he meditated--it had looked like peace.

Two days later Hugh found himself down at the old university, following the next lead he had: a group who passed information around on old-fashioned business cards. They didn't call themselves anything, and the cards stated simply, "Need sleep? Maybe we can help you." Hugh was intrigued by the 'maybe'. The claims he saw were usually more grandiose and certain, big with the promises.

The university had an earthy smell to it--like a garden after the rain. Hugh had a mental image of mildewing books, but he hoped that wasn't the case though the buildings had been in disuse for some years now.

There was a middle-aged woman behind a desk in the foyer when Hugh arrived at his appointed time at 4 pm.

"Hello, I'm Emily." She reminded him of Kelsey's mother, with her smile that came with a slight crease of concern at her brow. "Please take a seat and fill this out."

Hugh filled out his details on her form; he was not used to pen and paper and his writing was shaky with lack of practice.

"Now you realize," Emily said as she scanned his credits, "that this is not a guaranteed result. Our techniques work for over seventy percent of people, but some prove resistant." The look of concern was back on her face. "It should be relaxing, though, even if it doesn't work for you." She patted his hand.

The door to what Hugh imagined was the classroom opened and a head with shaggy grey hair poked out.

"Great, he's here. Send the lad in already Emily. Ah, never mind." It was a long time since Hugh had been called a lad, and he felt a small smile play around the edges of his mouth.

The rest of the man came out from around the door. He had a dishevelled look to him like he had been lying down in his clothes, and he seized Hugh's hand.

"John. John Walsh. You look like you could do with catching some zees."

Hugh's smile dropped. It was too cavalier a treatment of something held too deeply and too tightly inside him, despite everything.

John was watching him. "Ah, I know, lad. Come on in, let's get started."

The classroom was one long rectangular room with small windows streaked with dust that turned the light coming through them grey. There were large metal benches running down both sides of the room, also dusty. Two reclining chairs sat side by side at the end of the room, along with a machine Hugh guessed was an electroencephalogram and other equipment that he could not hazard a guess to its purpose.

"You've been here a while?" Hugh said.

"I used to conduct my research here. Ex-professor of neuroscience. That all ground to a halt after the Insomnia began. We all started trying to work on ways to combat the problem. I think that is what every scientist in the world was doing, those that hadn't gone mad--and no doubt a few who had. We banged our heads against that research for many years. But we had no luck."

Hugh turned to him in surprise. Then why am I here? He thought but did not say.

John grinned back at him. "No luck with that vein of investigation. Dead end, nothing worked. After a long time, I went back to fiddling with my old research. We had been close there, we hadn't even known how very close."

"What was your old research?"

"Telepathy."

"Oh." Hugh felt his face freeze. Another nutter. It was a shame, there was something about John he had liked. And he didn't usually like people. But it was probably for the best, given he was here to expose them and shut them down.

John chuckled. "Oh, indeed, my lad. You'd be surprised how many times we've had that response. We were working on passing information from a brain directly to another brain... with a little help."

"And how does this relate ..."

"To sleep? We had done a lot of work with brains, getting them running in a simple loop with each other via the computer to get them 'on the same wavelength.' This amplifies greatly the brain's own sleep feedback mechanism . . . it puts more within our reach, shall we say. In this case two heads," John winked, "are literally better than one."

Hugh was unimpressed by the pseudo-babble. "So if you need two people, are you going to..." he began flatly.

"No, I'll be setting you up. I'll put you in the loop with the best. Needa \- my daughter," he added with a palpable pride in his voice. As if she had timed it for effect a young woman entered from the rear door just as the words had left his mouth and came across to stand at his left.

She had her father's over-large nose and mousy straight hair that was pulled back into an untidy knot. But there was something about her that held Hugh's gaze. He thought perhaps she looked a little like Kelsey when he'd first known her, but she didn't. Kelsey had been pretty and piquant and this girl was decidedly ordinary-looking.

"How old are you?" he blurted.

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Nice to meet you too," she said. "I'm twenty-six, as it happens." He'd thought she might say eighteen. Her eyes were bright and her skin was clear and Hugh got a strong sense of youthfulness even though all she was doing was standing there with a solemn look on her face. Hugh thought of the kids he had seen outside the chemist. Even young kids these days didn't look youthful. He realized she had said something to him and blinked.

"I'm sorry?"

"I said, and you are?" Hugh blinked at her again. "Your name?"

"I'm Hugh." He offered his hand and she took it lightly in her own. "Hugh Winters." I'm a shark. Or at least, I have the pin-headed brain of one.

John directed Hugh to the chair and Needa sat down in the adjacent one. He explained that the lattice of filaments would surround them with a weak magnetic field and the electrodes would pick up their brain waves. They would both be jacked into one computer and the messages from one brain to the other would go through the computer as a medium.

"Have you done this a lot?" He asked the slight woman, attempting lightness while John affixed the net to his scalp.

She tilted her head towards him but Hugh was not sure if the wisp of expression could be called a smile. "Many times. Must be hundreds now." She paused and then added "I'm good at this. Don't worry."

"I'm not worried." Letting crazy people do things to my head again, why should I be worried. I'm a shark. Nothing worries a shark.

John held up a syringe. "Your brain is an electrochemical organ, and this contains what you can think of as a chemical-enhancer. It'll magnify the messages your brain is sending out. There's also something in here to relax you, ease the process." He moved behind Hugh's neck and Hugh felt the sting of the needle piercing his skin.

"What about her? Don't you need to give her a shot too?"

"She doesn't need one," John replied. "She's good at this now."

Well, that's dodgy, Hugh thought. But he could feel the injection taking effect already, making his body feel like he had ingested a bunch of the deep red ceuts. Hello, theta.

"Are you ready?" John said.

"I'm always ready. I'm a shark." John grinned at him and Hugh realized he had said that thought out loud.

"What do I do? Should I close my eyes?" Hugh felt that familiar spike in his heart rate as he asked.

"As you wish--you don't have to," John said. "Anything you should be doing you are doing already."

Hugh turned his head to his left. Needa had her eyes closed and her hands were relaxed in her lap. He envied her the stillness.

Nothing is happening, this is not going to work, he thought, feeling the lull and rock of the water over his body. His hands and feet moved in slow ponderous circles. I could stay here forever. The water was almost the same colour as the sky and it was hard to tell where they met. I must have closed my eyes after all. He wasn't alone. He knew this even though he couldn't see the other swimmer. He could feel the ripples they made, the other swimmer moving with circles overlapping his own. But instead of interfering with each other the circles were additive and grew bigger together. I'm a shark, some part of him asserted, but that was not right at all. He paddled with his feet and his hands and his limbs, human things, things a shark did not have.

Down. He could feel the tug on him, the circles, the other swimmer; they were leading him down and down, underneath and through the water where the shades of blue got darker and darker.

When Hugh opened his eyes, it was morning. He could tell because it was easier to see the dust. Kelsey. Kelsey had been laughing. And there had been a bright red bike, like the one he'd coveted as a kid. His mind clutched but it was fading. He blinked and sat up.

Next to him Needa had swung her legs around and was pulling the little filaments from her hair, which had come loose from its knot. Had he thought she was ordinary? She was beautiful.

Hugh felt his eyes filling and swiped at them clumsily. "How long have I . . ." he found he could not finish.

"Been asleep? Fifteen hours," Needa said.

Hugh opened his mouth but found himself unable to say anything at all.

"Don't worry," Needa said, "everyone reacts like that."

He saw the far door open. John made his way to Hugh's side and started to detach the wires. "Both awake I see -that's timing for you. Have a good sleep lad?" His voice was curiously gentle.

Instead of answering him Hugh kept his eyes on Needa. "You said you were good at this now," he said with something urgent and rough in his tone. "Can you do it by yourself? Can you sleep alone?"

"No," she said, but her eyes shone and she did not look at all sad. "I still can't."

"It needs two," said John. "We had some limited success with larger groups, but it optimizes at two, sharply. And even someone practiced like Needa can't do it alone."

"Could I learn to do that? To take people into sleep?"

"I'm nothing special," Needa answered him. "I've just had a lot of practice. A lot of people could I think. You followed me very easily. I think you could."

"But at the front, at the desk, she said it didn't always work for people ..."

"No," said John. "Some people seem to be resistant. That part of their brain has atrophied too much. But I have a theory," his voice picked up excitement, "that it is just about finding the right match, the right sleep partner. I think we could reach them, too, or most of them. It might take a lot of sessions to build up the connections." He scratched his shaggy head. "There is so much work to be done."

"Your results. Why haven't you told ...?" Hugh began.

"Who? The government? PharmaHeart?" John's face held a wariness that didn't seem to belong there. "This is still experimental. We don't know where this will lead exactly. I would not," he said, his gaze going towards his daughter, "willingly put her in their hands."

PharmaHeart and the government were pretty much the same thing, twined tightly around each other like snakes. PharmaHeart had a history of using people up, wringing anything useful out of them, and John as a scientist had no doubt encountered that side of them. But it was for the good of humanity. But there was a picture in Hugh's head of Needa in one of their laboratories, of Jarvis probing Needa's brain to find out how she ticked. Somehow it hurt him to think of it.

Hugh looked back at the chairs and the monitors lining the bench. "Could you do this, do you think you learn to do this, without the equipment?"

Needa's eyes widened. "Perhaps, if two minds had slept together many times, they would learn..." She looked towards her father and John frowned. "But it could never work," she continued. "No. The messages are not, um, loud enough without the computer to amplify them. And you have to be asleep." For the first time, she spoke to Hugh without looking directly into his eyes.

"You were right; you are good at this," Hugh said, wanting her to raise her gaze. "Thank you." The word felt foreign and strange on his tongue.

For the first time, he saw Needa smile. She had a slow and glorious smile.

And Hugh left because he was afraid if he stayed any longer he would weep.

Hugh walked slowly home. It was a bright hot morning and the wash of people on the street looked edgy, battered and tired. Hugh felt like he had gone to sleep when he was eighteen and was just now waking up, instead of having been awake this whole time.

He'd checked his wrist scan and it was all there; period of torpor characterized by a profound change in brain waves. Delta; patches of R.E.M.; sleep. But he'd known that already.

He should code Jarvis.

Hugh thought of the scrawny girl on the subway, and teenagers snubbing the whole idea of sleep, and babies that were never born. He thought if he held it all it would break his heart, or perhaps his heart was already breaking, right there on the sidewalk.

He should code Jarvis. It was his job; it was what they paid him for. PharmaHeart had the resources, the money, the power to use this, to progress this, to help the world.

And he remembered Jasper. He thought about how Needa had not needed any drugs. A population freed from drugs; he wondered what PharmaHeart would think of that. And how hard it would be to relinquish complete control once you were built around it, to give humanity back to itself.

In front of some townhouses, there was a boy filling one side of the pavement with chalk drawings. The kid looked like he was in his late teens--old enough to have slept, but too young to remember what it was like. The boy's art wasn't very good, Hugh didn't think, but something about his use of colour was compelling. The panel closest to Hugh was full of dark twisted shapes which might have been people, but the one next to it was a picture of waves, traced in gold where they met the sky.

His mind led him back to Emily at the desk, and her concern. He didn't think the worry in her face had been for him. He recalled the way John had turned up when Needa had awoken. Needa arriving right at the moment John had spoken of her, without being called.

And she had looked away from him.

She is good at this. So, good that she didn't need drugs. So, good that she didn't need the computer's assistance anymore? So, good that she could hear or send thoughts when she was awake? He thought he knew why they did not want to take it to the government. He was not sure whether part of why he knew was because he had swum with Needa's mind.

Hugh realised he had squatted down by the water drawing.

He was not going to code Jarvis. He would have to relocate their operation to start with; they were too exposed at the university. Maybe the ransacked REMember premises. He had access to PharmaHeart intel and systems; he could obfuscate and monitor from the inside. They would have to set up in many little pockets and grow - duplicate the equipment, teach others to do it; spread so that they were many places and could not be shut down in a fell swoop. Sleep would spread like a virus.

He didn't know where Kelsey was, or if he could find her. But he thought he might like to help save the world for her, even if he never saw her again. It would not be their old world come back; with whatever cultural shift it would bring to have to sleep in pairs, and beyond that--if people could learn to read each other's thoughts. It would be something else.

Hugh touched the tip of a wave with his finger. Maybe the boy could remember at that. He did not feel like a shark at all. He felt like some other creature, winged, just-hatched.

He would welcome a new world.

Dancing for Azathoth

Jaap Boekestein & Tais Teng

Netherlands

Outside the ordered universe, at the centre of all infinity, rules the daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes. There also waltz and twirl His dancing-girls, snake-supple and surpassing beautiful in the eyes of mortals and demons.

H. P. Lovecraft: draft version of

DREAM-QUEST FOR UNKOWN KADATH

"Outside the ordered universe... " Friedrich von Hamlin could have whispered those words in his sleep. Especially about those dancers, "snake-supple and surpassing beautiful in the eyes of mortals and demons". Ladies like that could steal your heart with a glance and make every man their slave. But not him. He lifted the flute, fondly fingered the holes. The flute was made from the thighbone of an exceedingly large rat. Played, it would mesmerize all listeners and even better, show the gates to hidden worlds. According to the Necronomicon, a man who held this flute could even control Azathoth's dancers.

Some, though, remained immune to his best tunes. Earless demons or men which had been born tone-deaf. But for them, the dancers would do.

Friedrich had crossed the Slate-Grey Sea, piping the winds into the sails of the pirate ship he had commandeered. Later came the road to the misty mountain kingdom of Ladweyn, the crossing of the Great Desert. And now he stood in the great city of Kadhal with the only gate to the centre of the universe. Kadhal was a kind of double feature: it held the portal to Azathoth as well as the best dancers of the mortal world. He would need both.

It rained of course. In Kadhal, the city of the Weeping God, it rained every night.

He chose a palace at random: one with a gate in the shape of a roaring lion head.

"What do you want, wretch?" A guardsman stepped from behind a fang, thumped the end of his halberd on the marble flagstones.

"I am a musician. They sent for me."

"Hah! You are clad in rags and there are louse crawling from your moustache. The musicians of the Lord Protector sport curled beards and smell of sandalwood."

"Well, listen." Friedrich raised the flute to his lips. This time, he played a simple lullaby. Friedrich walked past the guardians who suddenly stood stiff and unmoving, their eyes closed and snoring loudly.

So far so good. Always test the power of the flute before you act. He remembered the music-hating tribe of vegetarians who had been quite immune to his flute. He shuddered. It had cost him his left ear.

He mounted an onyx staircase. Shards of music reached his ears: sitars, cymbals and glass flutes. There came laughter and shouts of drunken revelry. The sounds of pleasure and lust drowned out the rumble of the night rains.

A feast hall lay before him and the orgy was in full swing. Naked guests and almost naked servants were coupling, often in ways, no sane creator-god had intended. Men, women, ostriches with all their feathers plucked: the aristocracy took their orgies seriously. Sensual perfumes drifted through the air, some almost indistinguishable from the miasmas rising from a tanner's vat.

The musicians had their own raised platform. Friedrich stepped across drums, glass xylophones. Down there copulated the wealthiest and the mightiest of Kadhal: priest-wizards, noblemen, members of the Imperial Court. If anyone could resist the power of his flute, he would be there.

The orgy stopped, right in the middle of every moan and sigh, every thrust or squeeze.

Everybody arose, all stood up, men and women, high and lowborn. Everyone rose to the sound of the flute. Everyone moved as one, all danced.

There was a balcony at the front of the feast room. They walked out in the downpour, across the rain-slick marble and climbed the balustrade. The street below was twelve man lengths distant, with granite flagstones, and most of the guests fell down head-first anyway.

When Friedrich left the palace, all was quiet.

The flute was as potent as ever: most of the guests had been wearing amulets, spell-repelling tattoos. These hadn't saved a single one of them

Outside the streets gleamed in the light of the sparse lanterns. He already knew the location of the gate. Just inside the Temple of the Blind Beast. What he needed now was to find the dancers. The best dancers of the world. He shook the phlegm from his flute and started to play. It was the tune Krishna had used to seduce his cowgirls.

"Dance,

come dance with me

under the silver willow-moon!

Jump, oh, jump

from lily pad to lily pad,

agile as a frog!"

He halted just before the end of the song. The echoes died and then he heard the three concluding notes from the distance. It took him only two more tries before he had found the right place.

It was a tavern, a rather run-down tavern with windows of yellowed horn and nettles growing in the gutters. He frowned. The Two-Horned Unicorn. The sign showed what the proprietor considered the unicorn's second horn. Not exactly the place for the best, the most excellent, dancers of the whole world. Still he heard drums, the kind of wailing tunes dessert-dwellers considered lively.

"My dancers for yours, Azathoth," he muttered and lifted the flute again to his lips. Let them come to me. Let them come willingly.

"Great Kadh's balls!" Asca the sword-dancer cursed "We all agreed, you said yes. Tonight, we are going to dance for his Imperial Pain!" She glared at her two half-sisters.

Mayl the fire-dancer and Cyrel the snake-dancer were busy staring down in their drinking cups.

"I know we urgently need the money," Mayl finally said, "but isn't there another way to pay off father's debt? Dancing is one thing, but what that turd wants..."

Yuliuham the Imperial Cup-bearer was hiring, but he and his friends did not want mere dancers. The tales of their perversions were whispered among the girls in the Street of Shards. He paid well, but too many girls returned battered, with bruises, whip marks or even broken bones. Two or three girls had never returned at all. It was not right, it wasn't fair, but what could be done? Yuliuham was a member of the Imperial Court and no constable would be foolish enough to hinder him. Especially not for some dancing girls or whores, which were the same in the eyes of most citizens of Kadhal.

"We need the money," Asca insisted "If we can't pay off father's debt by the end of the week, we will end up in a brothel. At best. If Radbur's bully-boys don't break all our bones first. Is that what you want?" She was the oldest, the responsible one and this was the only way out. Dance for his Imperial Pain, or end up in a brothel. They had to choose between two evils. She was not sure yet which was the lesser one.

"Maybe something will show up," Mayl, always the optimist said. "In the tale of the Three Sisters, there was that handsome fisherman..."

"You and your fables!" Cyrel exploded. "Stop dreaming! I say we nick something and sell it! Look, that merchant there..." The man must have sensed her attention, because he suddenly sat upright, reached for his ornate dagger. "Never mind. Still, that is the way to get rich."

"Father stopped stealing for a very good reason!" Asca said "Such as keeping his two hands. We are not going..."

She noticed that there were now two girls standing next to the cup-bearer's table. Two wouldn't be enough. The cup-bearer needed five at least and he was looking in their direction. "Come." She laid a hand on Mayl's wrist. "Let's step outside for a moment. I need some fresh air."

Outside there was the melodic sound of rushing rain. A flute played, tones so pure and free she felt her eyes water. Her feet started to tingle and suddenly she was dancing. Twirling like a dervish and her hands held her swords, wove a net of glittering steel. Five steps beyond Mayl had become a living flame, literally, even if she couldn't have oiled herself. And little Cyrel wasn't Cyrel anymore, but the very essence of the snake, a serpent-goddess, undulating, covered with opalescent scales, a snake like her own snake. Their steps meshed: became a single dance. The flute wailed and yodelled, screamed in ecstasy.

We have never danced like this before. And there was another thing: they had never been a team; every sister did her own act. It felt so good, finally being part of something greater. Really being sisters. It is what I have always wanted. No more bitching. Three against the world.

The music stopped and all joy seeped away, left the world colourless and flat.

She only now saw the man standing under the creaking sign. His flute gleamed in the lamplight, bone-white. "The flute told me you were the best dancers of all Kadhal, of the whole world. I believe that now."

"Only while you play the flute," Asca said.

"No, it was your feet, your turns, and jumps that made the dance. Your perfect balance. Follow me and you'll learn how to dance on your own."

Mayl stepped forward. "We only dance for money, citizen. Clean silver, gleaming gold. And we don't need you or your flute."

"Thalers are no problem. I'll pay you twenty thalers for a night."

Twenty thalers. It was more than Asca made in two months. The cup-bearer would have paid pennies.

"Twenty thalers for each of us," she said. It was reflex. If you have a fool for customer, ask the impossible.

"Done."

"And what exactly do we have to do?" Cyrel asked.

"Just dance for a friend of mine. Dance better than his own dancers." He smiled. "Call it a wager."

The strange man took the three half-sisters from the well-lit Street of Shards through

the silent streets, past the Temple of the Brass Sun, the Granary. He was playing a lively marching tune. It felt as if Asca had grown springs beneath her boots. As if she could walk on forever. All three of them wore their oil-soaked cloaks and caps. In the City of the Weeping God, every citizen owned a raincoat.

Cyrel hooked her arm in hers. "That flute is worth a fortune!" she hissed. "If we can get our hands on that..." She needn't say anything else, they were all daughters of the same father. And Vial Twenty Fingers had been a thief.

"Where are we going?" Asca asked. "Is it a long walk?"

Friedrich shook his head, pointed the way with his flute.

We don't have a choice. On they went.

They had lived in Kadhal all their life but ten heartbeats later they were hopelessly lost. Somewhere in the dark, Friedrich stopped and blew a new tune, strange and demanding.

The three sisters waited and watched.

A door opened, revealing a sliver of golden light. In the door-opening, a crooked man, clad in funeral black, looked up at the visitors, started to speak.

Friedrich resumed his eerie flute play and marched on. The crooked man stood aside, a look of bewilderment on his face. Asca, Mayl and Cyrel followed quick as kittens. What else could they do?

The Temple of the Blind Beast proved to be a low hall, filled with a twilight of burning incense, glowing coals in bronze chalices and the stench of hundreds of sweating naked bodies. The worshipers - many of them scarred by self-flagellation with shark-skin whips and knotted tar ropes - all knelt and prayed to a blood-stained idol in the form of a multi-tentacled eye. Drums beat an evil rhythm and there were moans of unspeakable lust or agony.

The sound of the flute cut through the darkness as a burning sword through fog. A sound so clean, so wholesome that it almost becomes an abomination in this place.

The drums stopped, prayers died away, heads turned, utterly surprised.

Through the throng of worshipers, Friedrich marched, followed by the girls in their rain-cloaks and - easy to spot - their colourful, dance costumes, hung with tinkling coins and tiny bells. They smiled professionally, their smiles a bit frozen and stained, and stayed as close to Friedrich as possible.

The flute started a new reel. Behind the idol, smoke whirled. Something irised open. A portal.

Like characters from a strange tale, the man, and the three maidens walked on, though the portal.

The sound of the flute died away.

The portal snapped shut, leaving the scores of believers in an utterly bewildered silence: none of the accursed scrolls had ever mentioned a merry flute-player and three dancing-girls.

Around Asca the bleak white snowscape stretched all the way to a wall of mountains. The mountains rose and rose in the sky, row after row. The one man marched on and the three women followed.

"What is that?" Mayl asked. She was the tallest of the three sisters, and this white world reminded Mayl of the tales of her fair-skinned mother about her barbarian homeland. "It looks like a city at the edge of those mountains."

Asca squinted. "A dead city, by the looks of it. I think those are ruins. Carved in the very stone."

"I wonder who lived there, amidst all this ice and desolation?" Mayl asked.

"Go find out, if you want to know," Cyrel taunted. "Just go take a look!"

Mayl looked again. The shadows seemed to have moved. Shapes fluid and formless, as white as the ice itself.

Friedrich lowered his flute. "These are Mountains of Madness, with their herds of wild shoggoths. Not many mortals have seen this." His smile was haggard. "Or survived to tell the tale."

The velvet skies bore a wheel of many-colored stars, glimmering and sparkling as the jewels of some wizard's treasure chest. In the west, a dark sun was rising, erasing star after star.

The flute player and the three dancing girls trudged on, over roads of cracked clay, along whisper-filled woods, the shore of a tideless ocean with a convoy of white ships, their sails bright in the morning light.

Then came a place where the sun shone no brighter than the full moon and the stars burned in a sky forever twilit. Drudges were working the fields, bowed and utterly patient. But on the high hills, well-lit mansions beckoned them, so cheerful in this murk.

"The island of Naat," Friedrich intoned. "The necromancers' isle." He held his flute in the air and it kept playing on his own accord. "The air is so saturated with souls that their anguish makes my flute sings on its own. We are crossing Zothique, the last continent when the world has grown monstrously old and weary."

"Necromancers?" Asca stopped and looked at the men and women working the fields. "And those must be their dead. Look! Look at them! They don't breathe, they don't talk or sing. They are all dead! Dead slaves toiling away for their masters. These necromancers must be rich; don't you think?"

Her sisters did not reply. They were almost gone in the dark, following Friedrich and his flute.

For a moment Asca hesitated, looking at the brightly lighted mansions, then she hurried after them.

"There is another city." Mayl pointed to the shapes in the water, far, far, down.

They were walking on a bridge. A bridge between two-mile high glass statues of one-legged birds over waters deep and dark, but somehow strangely clear.

The three sisters looked down. The outline of a city shimmered in the water. But the harder they looked, the less clear it became.

"It looks huge," Asca said.

"It looks old," Mayl whispered.

Red-haired Cyrel kept her silence. It felt like something down there was waiting, sleeping, dreaming. She prayed it wouldn't dream about her.

They were walking through a barren landscape of black sand and distant mountains when the tune suddenly cut off and Friedrich started to cough. "My flute! Take my flute." A hiccup made him gasp for air. He shoved the polished bone in Asca's hands.

"How?" Asca cried. "I am no magician!"

"Play hic! any... hic! ...thing!"

"Let me!" Cyrel ordered. "There was that boyfriend of mine who worked as a snake-charmer..."

Her tune was an eerie wail, not calming at all. An echo returned from the distance.

"I see the next gate!" Mayl called. She was thumping the Friedrich on the back, as forcefully as if she was beating a rug.

"It isn't the only thing I see," Asca said. "Cyrel, stop! Stop playing!"

Serpents were slithering in from the blasted earth. Hundreds of vividly coloured serpents. red and screaming yellow, glowing green. This were colours Nature used to warn off predators. Don't eat me. I am poisonous.

They started to run, jumping across writhing rivulets of snakes.

"Give it to me, you little idiot!" Mayl screamed and snatched the flute from Cyrel's hand.

Her notes were completely different: the hiss and roar of a forest-fire. It was hot-flame music, the creaking and thunder of a funeral pyre meant for a hero.

This time, the echo was even louder than the music itself, a lot louder. All the snakes had fled, but that echo... A kind of rumble, deep down. The ground started to shake and suddenly all mountaintops bore crowns of fire, were spewing lava. Hot ash burned Asca's neck when she jumped through the gate and she smelt scorching hair, smouldering fabric.

The rumbling cut off and they stood on a high ledge, above a city made of cyclopean blocks of stone. The sun, enormous and red filled half the sky. It was the red of glowing coals and it burned Asca's brow. In the distance, a lake glared.

"Ah," Friedrich sighed. "Dim and lost Carcosa and the misty Lake of Hali." There was awe in his voice.

"Dim!" Mayl protested. "Are you blind or something? And that lake isn't misty, idiot, it is boiling!"

The wizard took up his flute. "Boiling or not, on we go!"

The next gate showed a swirling uncolour, the negation of all shape and no doubt the entrance to the throne-room of the Sultan of the Universe. Friedrich's flute uttered a piercing scream and the gate dilated, pulled them inside.

Everything here was bitingly sharp, impossibly real. All her life Asca had walked in mist, only seen things dimly, as reflected in streaming water. This was the source of everything, the axis of the universe. Azathoth sat on a throne of black ice and he was surely the most handsome, the most virile man Asca had ever seen. His elegant three-pointed beard, his sensual, slightly cruel lips. Glittering eyes with piercing pupils. That he was clearly stark raving mad didn't matter at all, for this was the kind of wrong man every romantic girl yearned to save.

"He is so cute," a voice breathed next to her ear and that set all her alarm-gongs ringing. Cyrel wasn't romantic or soft-hearted at all: she would feed an adorable puppy to her snake. If she called Azathoth cute she must be completely under his spell.

And what better lover than the sultan of the universe? a tiny, treacherous voice whispered in her head. One who is so wealthy he could build a mountain of thalers for you? She averted her gaze and looked around. The throne-room was splendid: there were chandeliers made of living stars, waterfalls so huge that she saw whales jumping from the spume, galleons toppling down, their sails torn. The floor was tiled with dragon-scales.

At the feet of the sultan three flute-players stood, their fingers long and agile, their heads shaved. The notes were somehow familiar and as compelling as Friedrich's flute-play. And these flutes were made from hollowed bones, too. All except the middle one which must have been made of clear glass or was just plain invisible.

"Allow me to introduce my dancers to you, your Highness."

Friedrich took up a lively tune, full of flashing steel and stamping feet.

Asca swirled forwards, swords raised her body a perfect echo of the song.

A new tune, sizzling, roaring and Mayl joined her older sister, flames leaking from her exotic blond hair and white skin.

A third tune, sensuous, slithering almost. Small young Cyrel entered the floor, she and her snake dancing as one.

Three dancers, dancing to the tune of Friedrich von Hamlin's flute. Who could resist?

Not even a mad god.

From his throne Azathoth watched. The weight of his gaze could have crushed a thousand mountains, cracked open wheeling moons and was at the same time as light as the touch of a butterfly's wing.

Suddenly the three dancers became six. Three new bodies joined the dance of the flute.

Three demon dancers, three sisters (of course, how could it not be three sisters?), three dancing girls of Azathoth lured out into the open.

Magic is like a mirror, for every black, there is a white, for every left, there is a right. The six girls paired off, each a mortal, each a demon. There was no choice, there was no will, it was inevitable.

"I am Asca."/"I am Xanjawh," the first pair thought. Asca saw Xanjawh lift a hand and her nails lengthened, grew into sabres of black gleaming iron. She replied with a playful stroke of her own swords, the clang of steel a caress.

"I am Mayl."/"I am Zhigly." Their eyes locked and in Zhigly's pupils wavered tiny flames. Mayl knew that they burned in her own eyes, too, and just as bright. Sisters in the fire.

"I am Cyrel."/"I am Yidarlei." The girls looked at each other and grinned. Their arms touched and entwined, suddenly boneless as the coils of a snake. Yidarlei's grin showed twin fangs, two most beautiful fangs, dripping poison.

Turn and step, swing, turn and duck below an elbow covered with iridescent scales. Close your eyes, surrender. Feel the dance. Be the dance.

The world was one, the universe was one, all made sense. There was only movement and the sound of the flute.

Perfection is an instant, it is an eternity, but it never, ever lasts.

Asca felt it deep inside her, a tearing as if something was ripped from her soul, in horrible slow-motion. Xanjawh!

She opened her eyes. Where is...?

The three demon-dancers were twirling and leaping but every step brought them closer to the gate. Friedrich followed them, almost on their heels, playing his accursed flute. No, he wasn't following them: he was herding them, driving them like a sheepdog.

Suddenly Asca understood. "He wants to switch those girls for us! Leave us behind!"

Mayl and Cyrel looked at Xanjawh, Yidarlei, Zhigly. The three demon sisters stared back, frozen in shock though their feet kept moving. The tune gave them no choice.

Friedrich! That double-crossing wizard!

Asca tried to stop, leave the dance. Not a chance. Like the demon sisters, she was constrained to dance the pattern.

The black-haired sword-dancer glanced at the mad ruler of this realm. To dance for him forever, to lose oneself in dancing.

Asca snapped out of it. That was not what she wanted, that was what Friedrich's tune told her she wanted!

The man on the throne and his musicians, they sat entranced. They were also under Friedrich's spell.

That one musician... The one playing an invisible flute? Was he really playing a flute, or just faking it? Had he lost his flute somehow? To someone?

"Hey you!" Asca shouted and a glissando in the song allowed her to turn and point to Friedrich. "He stole your flute."

Was it the truth? It didn't matter. A lie well told is better than truth, as her father would have said. "He is getting away!"

The single fluteless player shook his head as if trying to wake up. He looked at Asca, then at Friedrich who had almost reached the portal. The three demon-sisters had already passed through.

"He stole your flute! Stop him!"

The demon screamed and... One moment he stood near the throne, the next moment he was lifting a flute to his lips. A flute still clutched by a bleeding, torn-off hand.

Friedrich von Hamlin was writhing on the floor, screaming, holding the spurting stump of his wrist.

The music stopped, the pattern faltered.

"Run!" Asca shouted. "Run!"

The three sisters dove through the portal, just before it closed with musical ping.

Asca looked around. They were standing on a plain of purple, fused glass. Twin suns hovered above an infinitely distant horizon. Of the gate to throne-room, there was no trace. Of that gate or any other gate.

"I think we have a problem," Asca sighed.

"What do you mean, a problem?" Xanjawh said. "I have danced for nine eons and seventy-five million years. Time to take a breather. To stretch our muscles."

"We are stranded here," Asca explained. "Friedrich used his flute to find the gates between the worlds. We lost that flute and we crossed a dozen worlds."

"That shouldn't be too big a problem. We demons, we are born with a map of the universe in our brain. A map encompassing all time and space." She sat down. "Where exactly did you came from?"

"Your world, is it round or flat?" her sword-nailed sister interrupted.

"Round," Mayl nodded. "My mother told me."

"And there are humans like you there. Right. Your kind is rare. The favourite prey of too many abominations. That leaves about two and a half million possibilities. Do you lay eggs?"

"No."

"Ah, only three thousand. We are getting there. Wait. There is a better way. Let Yidarlei taste your blood. Blood calls to blood,"

Cyrel stepped forwards, offered her wrist. "Take me. I have been bitten before."

Yidarlei retracted her fangs. "Got it. Kadhal, the city of the Weeping God. That shouldn't be too hard."

*

The demon sisters knew all the good shortcuts:

They crossed a quagmire, stepping on the heads of half submerged giants, their eye-holes empty and bleeding.

"They peeped at the Virgin Daughters of the Hundred-Breasted Diana," Yidarlei explained. "They shouldn't have."

Cats! Asca hated cats. And there were hundreds of them, streaming in from the red-tiled cottages, snaking out from the hedges. She sneezed. "Keep them away from me! I can't stand them!"

Xanjawh's hand muffled her next cry.

"Stop it!" the demon hissed in her ear. "They are the rulers here. These are the cats of Ultar and all men obey them!"

"Please..." Asca sniffled. "Take me away from here. I am completely allergic to cats."

After Ultar Asca started to feel seriously overloaded and close to gibbering. Too many strange sights. Cyclopean ruins under a triple-ringed half-moon. What in the name of Kadh was wrong with a row of normal toppled pillars or statues without tentacles?

And that short stop at the seashore, with, what called Xanjawh them? The Deep Ones? To eat a raw fish just to be polite, and not just any raw fish, no a black, slimy eel that was still alive and hissing when she had to bite his head off.

Next ghouls. Dancing ghouls. Perhaps Asca should feel a collegian respect for them, but there was dancing, serious dancing, and madcap capering. And if she never heard Erich Zann's stupid violin again it would be a century too soon...

They crossed a market that almost could have been in Kadhal, but the merchants glared with three eyes at them and the soldiers rode ostriches.

"Almost there," Asca said. "Just one eye less and they should sit on horses or mules."

Xanjawh frowned. "The horses allow you to ride them? How utterly strange! How deeply inappropriate!"

The next gate opened on gleaming wet pavement and a torrential rain shower. Somewhere in the distance, a bell was clanging.

"Home!" Cyrel cried and fell on her knees, kissed the street-stones.

It was the next night, after all, six had slept the day away. It had taken Asca some time to explain the idea of work and money to the demon-sisters but she guessed they kind of understood it now.

"Let me recapitulate," she said before they entered the Two-Horned Unicorn. "Don't bow for horses. If you kill somebody, don't eat him. At least not in sight of passers-by. And you ask for money before you dance for a patron."

"Got it," Xanjawh nodded.

"I understand you and your sisters want to dance for me?" Yuliuham the Imperial Cup-bearer said. It wasn't exactly a question, more like an order. An order that he was sure would not be disobeyed. He raised his cup, took a sip of his wine. Of course, it was donkey's piss, but one had to endure some hardships while slumming. It was among the darkest filth of the city that one sometimes found the, well, the tastiest morsels. This sword-dancing girl looked like she could endure some... exciting things. Yes, she would do. And she had two sisters? Ah, the possibilities!

"We are already spoken for this night," Asca said. "But my friends here are still free and they really like manly men. Forceful patrons who know what a woman needs." She waved and from the shadows Yidarlei emerged, followed by her two sisters.

Yuliuham closed his mouth after one, two, maybe three thudding heartbeats. Some drool found its way down his chin. "Methinks you three could be... entertaining."

"So true," Yidarlei whispered and put a hand on the shoulder of the Imperial Cup-bearer, tickled his double chin with a long nail. Some men considered long lacquered nails sexy, but Yidarlei's nails were not exactly ornamental.

"Payment up front!" Asca firmly said.

Sanguine

Jonathan Shipley

USA

The towering skyscrapers looked achingly familiar, even though it was brand new to Venda. Pomme la Grande -- as per the name -- had managed to capture the feel of old New York back on Terra. As a native New Yorker, she kept seeing reminder after reminder. Of course, this was a First Wave Colony old enough to have a population density and infrastructure like the motherworld. Completely explainable, but the sensation of déjà vu was unnerving.

She com-linked to the freighter Drzhryra orbiting above and dashed off her impression of Pomme la Grande to her semi-spouse half a sector away on Omicron Colony. As a New Yorker, himself, Brock -- short for Brooklyn -- would appreciate the déjà.74 vu, even with the half day com lag to Omicron --

An in-coming message interrupted: "Applicantzs queuing already." The gravelly voice of the freighter's commander. "Ztart interview procez now."

Abandoning Mid-ish Town, she trammed down 53rd Street toward the spaceport. Real addresses with names and numbers instead of GPS co-ords. It brought a smile to her lips. Then her smile faded as she approached the warehouse where the Drzhryra had temporary offices. The line already stretched halfway down the block, and the job blip had only gone out twenty minutes ago. And everyone in sight was a young male of military age.

"Coming through," she repeated a dozen times to get to the door where a huge yellow-orange striped lizard stood guard. Like most saurians, he considered his colourful scales covering enough, though he did wear a bandolier for necessary devices. "Save me, Shrkl," she pleaded.

He thumped his tail in sympathy. "All tribulations will passs," he hissed quietly. "And you are but a youngling, strong and vibrant."

Late twenties wasn't her definition of a youngling, but she let it pass. Shrkl was her closest friend aboard the freighter. Humans and saurians weren't all that similar, but they were a lot more like each other than the Kwob who made up the rest of the crew. Something about pseudo-limbs, a long snout, and stalk-like eyes dampened close interaction. Shrkl was officially the freighter's cargomaster but was flexible enough to fill in whenever a situation needed sheer physical presence - like now. Big and saurian always exuded a threatening presence, even though Shrkl wasn't even a carnivore.

"I was hoping for a few women candidates," she sighed.

"Maybe some are," Shrkl offered hopefully. "Near the back of the line isss hard to determine."

She already knew there was no maybe about it. Saurians depended on smell for identification, and Shrkl couldn't smell that far. But her eyes told her the line was 100% male.

Inside, Venda passed through the candidate reception station where temp medicos manned screening stations and continued to the office cube where she would be interviewing. To fill twenty-four positions, she would have to wade through hundreds of applicants. The blood workups should reduce the number, but not enough. But this was the job she had undertaken. There were few work-for-passage positions for socio-linguists, so she was adjusting as needed. This trip she was the handler for twenty-four sangreanos, supposedly an easy job for someone with organizational skills. Supposedly. The mob outside put a different slant on things.

Pomme la Grande was struggling with the same post-military crisis as Terra herself. The huge population of young males trained as grunts for the war were now coming of age and largely unemployable. Work-for-passage was a lodestone to this demographic. They'd do anything for a better life somewhere else. She'd seen it all back on Terra, where unemployable males were herded into work camps "as a precaution." No one wanted violence on the street, but those camps were practically drone dumps. And the "Big Apple" really didn't fall far from the tree.

But to work. She touched the com. "Shrkl, send in the first twenty."

Second day of interviews. Day One had produced only four acceptable sangreanos. She seated herself at her desk and signaled the medicos to send in candidates. Then her com beeped with an image of the Brooklyn Bridge. Ah, Brock's reply to yesterday. She read and smiled. Of course, he would want to know if Pomme la Grande had a reproduction of his namesake. He had - quite literally \- been born on Brooklyn Bridge Park

"Excuse me - here to interview?"

Venda glanced up. Same age as the rest, but without the dark, desperate edge. In fact, he was smiling. "Yes, please sit down." She clicked up his screening results. "Coby Bresner?"

"If it pleases, I am."

Smile aside, he had a pleasant face with clear blue eyes. But it was his speech that caught Venda's attention. Once a linguist, always a linguist. He wasn't native to Pomme, but neither was it Terran speech. So, an isolationist colony in the sector? It would have to be since homogenization was always the tendency with dialectical differences. And the linguist was overthinking.

"Your blood properties are excellent," she reported from the arterial analysis. "Good pressure, good composition. And your heart seems strong under stress. Are you aware what a sangreano is?" Many, she found, were simply applying for a job, any job, without knowing the duties.
"Aye," he nodded. "If I might..." And suddenly he was pulling off his shirt.

Uh, too strange. While his head was in his sleeves, she clicked a summons to Shrkl.

"As you see, I'm experienced," he said, tossing aside his shirt and turning slightly to emphasize his left pectoral. There near the heart was a stent. He really was experienced.

A brightly coloured head on a long neck appeared over the wall of the cubicle. "Problem?" Shrkl rumbled, fixing the bare-chested candidate with a baleful yellow glare.

"No," Venda said quickly. "Just a surprise. Sorry to trouble you."

"Ah," Shrkl nodded. And took a long sniff of the candidate. Then a second. "Hmm," he rumbled. "I sssense clever little fingers with much intimacy to offer." Then he moved off.

"Did I do aught that was amiss?" Coby babbled nervously. "Your friend didn't much like the look of me."

"But he seemed pleased enough with your scent." Maybe too pleased if it triggered thoughts of finger massages. Saurians and their scratchers. "No, you're fine. I was just surprised when you started stripping."

"Oh, but that was just to..." His words faded, and he turned very red in the face. "I did not think," he murmured. "If I have offended, I shall leave."

His embarrassment was acute. Wherever he came from, he seemed to be atypically innocent. "No, I'm fine; you're fine," she assured him. "Tell me about your stent. Have you had it long?"

"Always," he answered. "On my world, we are trained to be san-gree-an-o from childhood."

The way he stumbled over the term was completely at odds to what he was saying. But no matter. This Coby Bresner was the perfect candidate for the Drzhryra. She didn't need to look any farther than his stent.

"I'm recommending you to the commander," she said. "Expect confirmation before the end of the day."

Coby beamed. "My thanks."

That was the high point of the day. The rest were all angry young men. Ten hours later, Venda closed office and headed to quarters for a badly needed night's rest.

It was a relief to close down the office and return to the freighter . . . six days later. The interviews hadn't gotten any better, but Venda had found her full complement of sangreanos. None of them had given blood professionally before, and a number of them still didn't know what the job was -- and didn't care. And oddly, no Coby Bresner on the list. She was fairly sure Shrkl had pulled rank and taken him as a personal scratcher, which was very mysterious of him. But the truth would come out.

With only a couple days before the crew and sangreanos arrived, Venda was frantically organizing an operational extraction centre. She was not fond of the term "extraction centre" but cringed at the alternative phrase "harvest centre" and absolutely hated "dairy," which was how the Kwob referred to her suite of staterooms. To them it was all food production.

She found a moment to search out Shrkl in the cargo hold amidst crates and manifests. "So what did we pick up on Pomme?" she asked.

"Sculpture," he announced. "Hom modern art sellsss well in the Crescent Worlds. Abstract art achievesss a certain universality and 3-D examples appeal to cultures where art doesn't manifest as physssical objects. Much like the appeal of solid-form music."

Solid-form music was fascinating. "And on another topic," she continued. "Why did you preempt my best sangreano as your personal servo? I find that most unlike you."

"Good ssscratchers are hard to find. I merely availed myssself of an opportunity."

"So you're not going to tell me."

"Ah." He was silent a moment. "As your friend, Venda, I caution you to forget the whole matter. The swamp might be alluring, but the path, treacherous. Trussst me."

It was such an odd response that she took it as the truth, though it explained nothing. Experience had shown her that Shrkl was one smart lizard. A shrewd observer with connections across a range of species. If he hadn't prodded her, she never would have taken this post with the Kwob, whose taste for human blood was a little too vampiric for comfort.

The next day the sangreanos arrived. Everybody had been fitted with stents planetside, so the blood extraction itself was straight forward. The challenge came with determining each sangreano's optimum cycle and arriving at a schedule that drained no one, yet fulfilled Kwob nutritional needs. The primary constraints were low fluid pressure -- which strained the heart -- and iron depletion. The first was a short-term concern, but the human body took longer to replace its iron content. Special diet and supplements accelerated the process, but extracting a pint of blood every other day was the best-case scenario. It left the donors weak and near-comatose but was medically acceptable. And it would generate just enough blood to feed the eighteen Kwob on board. As an army ran on its stomach, so the freighter ran on its sangreanos. There was even a margin for error. They had a scheduled stop on the planet Jhntc to "refresh and replace" sangreanos. She assumed that meant some candidates could fail in their blood production duties -- that sounded grimly fatal. But she didn't actually know.

It was a tricky few days establishing a workable rhythm for the extractions, the more so because the freighter was waiting on her. The Kwob weren't going to break orbit without their food supply, but finally, she got the blood output to sufficient levels and the freighter was clear to start for the Crescent Worlds. If she did this again -- and that was a big "if" -- Venda now had a whole list of mistakes to avoid.

For the next week, she was relatively unstressed. Extraction was going smoothly, and the bridge reported they were making good time. Then the Kwob commander showed up at her door. He wasn't the captain exactly -- someone else piloted the vessel -- more the ranking chieftain over a fleet of nomadic clan ships. She made polite welcoming phrases to the chieftain, all the time wondering if he or she \-- no telling if gender even applied -- was here for an impromptu snack which would throw her rhythm off.

But he stood in the doorway, sniffing the air with his long snout while his eye stalks swivelled about to take in the berths with their sleeping occupants. Kwob weren't particularly big by human standards, but with their bodies constantly generating pseudo-limbs in all directions, they had a lot of presence.

"Problem," the chieftain finally grunted. "Zhyrn cruizer comez. Cooperate. Let them tezt and tazte." And he left.

Zhyrn? Venda knew the name from the news and not in a good way. The Zhyrn had established a protectorate over the human colony of Tatis last year, which hit a lot of nerves. They were blood-drinkers like the Kwob with a long-standing relationship with Tatis where blood production had become a major industry. But none of this explained why Zhyrn were boarding the freighter. Then the door to the corridor irised open.

The three beings that stepped inside the suite were larger, darker, and dressed in flowing cloaks over their flowing bodies, but definitely Kwob-like in anatomy. "We zeek Tatizian cowz," the largest Zhyrn announced. "Under new Livestock Law, all Tatizian cowz are contraband."

"No cows of any type on this freighter," Venda answered, then jumped back as the Zhyrn spat at her.

"Theez cowz," he/she/it insisted, stretching a pseudopod toward the nearest berth.

She wanted to argue that sangreanos were not livestock. "These are all from Pomme la Grand, not Tatis," she said instead.

"Tatizian cowz can be anywhere," the Zhyrn spat back. "Tazte will tell."

"Allow me to provide you samples." She didn't like this at all, but the chieftain's orders were to let them "test and taste."

The Zhyrn pushed her out of the way. "Will harvest cowz ourselves."

What followed was a scene from an old vampire vid. Dark, hovering presence snaking a long snout directly down sangreano Number 1's chest stent. She saw him give a twitch and realized he was waking up. Quickly she stepped over and increased the sonics in his helmet to intensify sleep mode, then moved down the line of berths, intensifying all the sonics. If one of them woke and panicked -- she didn't want to think where that might go. Then she stood aside and watched uneasily as the Zhyrn proceeded berth to berth.

There was a pattern, she saw. One Zhyrn would take a quick drink from the stent, wait for a moment, then signal and move on. The other two would follow up with a longer drink. The longer she watched, the more she saw that there was inequality among them. The initial tester was slower, greyer, and seemed to be bullied by the other two. It was hard to know, but her gut said that the tester was not enjoying his duty while the two tasters were like kids in a candy store.

They finished with Number 24 on the far side of the stateroom and returned. "Now you," one the Zhyrn said.

Venda felt an instant of mindless panic. "I'm not a blood-donor," she stammered as they gathered around her. She flipped open the top of her bodysuit as proof. "See, no stent." She heartily wished that Shrkl was there with his imposing body mass to back her up.

But the Zhyrn accepted her argument and withdrew. She gave a deep sigh of relief, took a moment to collect herself, then started down the row of berths, checking blood pressure. Nothing life-threatening, but her carefully established extraction cycle was shot to pieces. It would take at least a day to regain the rhythm.

She monitored for a few more minutes, then stepped over to a viewport. A military-grade cruiser was just retracting its connecting tube -- a lot like a Zhyrn snout. She watched until the cruiser pulled away and disappeared, then marched down the corridor to the cargomaster's quarters.

She gave a perfunctory knock, braced herself against the heat, and pushed on in. His quarters always felt like an oven. "We need to talk," she said, catching sight of the orange-striped body half submerged in the mud pool.

Shrkl turned his head. "Zhyrn are gone?"

"They just decoupled and reset course. Why were you taking a mud bath while they were here?" She glanced around the bare stateroom, realizing something, or someone was missing. "Where's Coby Bresner?"

Shrkl heaved himself out of the pool, the silicate mud sliding from his scales. "It isss connected," he rumbled and turned back to the pool. "Come out."

The other end of the pool bubbled up with a malformed human head. No, a head with a breather, she corrected as more of Coby emerged from the mud. He pulled himself onto the edge, the mud sliding away to reveal an overly pinkish body clothed in durable flex-ceramic swimtrunks. "How long has he been in that pool," she asked, noting the boiled lobster look.

"Sssince the Zhyrn first appeared on long-range scanners."

"Well, go cool down in the extraction suite," she told Coby. She waited until he was gone, then turned back to Shrkl. "I suddenly find out my sangreanos are 'cows' and that certain cows are contraband. What the hell is going on?"

"To Zhyrn, all large mammalians who produce blood for consumption are cowsss," Shrkl explained. "To them it indicates a function, not a species. The Kwob think much the same but are more careful with their language. They are related, you may have noticed."

"I did notice," Venda said. "And I'm very surprised that no one has documented the connection between the two hemovore cultures in this sector."

"The Kwob try to distance themselves from their militaristic cousins. But the scent tells all."

Not to mention the pseudopodic anatomy. "And these livestock laws governing Tatisian cows?" she pressed.

"Since the Zhyrn protectorate over Tatisss, all designated cows are legally livestock with much-reduced rights."

"A law categorizing humans to livestock?" She cocked her head, visualizing the public outrage. "Why is none of this known to the public?"

"It isss known," Shrkl insisted. "Jussst not to hom public. Your Spaceforce is keeping the information to themselves. Moreover, restriction of designated cowsss is not contested by the general hom population on Tatisss. The corporations are much in favour, in fact."

"Which corporations?" she asked suspiciously.

"The Tatisssian dairy industry, though 'dairy' is not the term they use off world with other homs. They are careful not to offend."

Venda took a deep breath. "So if Coby is a 'Tatisian cow,' I clear enough why he's on the run, but still very mysterious why a saurian is involved in a messy dispute between other races."

"I do not want my excellent scratcher appropriated by Zhyrn."

"Hmmph," Venda snorted. Shrkl was still keeping secrets. She returned to the extraction suite. Maybe Coby would be more forthcoming. She found him stretched out on one of the cots, waving his arms in the air. "Are you all right?" she asked.

He sat up quickly. "Yes, very all right. Much do I enjoy the coolness of the room. The cargo-master keeps his quarters most-hot, and I have been sequestered there for many a day." Then he gave a start. "But one does not present oneself in polite company unless fully clothed."

It sounded so much like a rote rule that she had to ask. "Who told you that?" When he hesitated, she added, "I already know you're Tatisian."

"Ah, then it was Reverend-Doctor Saltir at Crèche Bressur on Tatis. He memorized many rules upon me when smuggling me off world." He looked up cautiously. "You also know of Tatisian cows?"

"Just the basic facts, but as an outsider, I don't understand a lot about the system. The Zhyrn takeover of Tatis must have made your life miserable."

Coby shook his head. "Very little change at first. Those of us raised in the crèches were always marketed to the Zhyrn. Blood has ever been a high-profit item. The Livestock Laws came later and brought unwelcome changes. The crèche-raised are unwanted children, so we were used to poor treatment. But to be locked in stalls and drained of our blood like dumb animals." He shuddered. "Father-Doctor Saltir told me to run and so I have been doing. But now the Zhyrn hunt me. The cargo-master has promised me a new life in Sauriana, and this I desire."

Venda frowned. Sauriana? Saurian Space, maybe? If Shrkl was smuggling a refugee from Tatis to Saurian Space, there had to be a reason beyond a good scratching.

"And a favour, if you will," he added shyly. "Since we are here and it has been a long time, you would do me good service by relieving the pressure I feel."

Venda kept her face impassive. That couldn't be what it sounded like. It had to be . . . blood pressure? Was he asking for an extraction? "But you just said you don't like being drained."

"Not drained" -- he shook his head impatiently -- "just a regular siphoning. My body produces extra blood, and without siphoning, every heartbeat makes my head pound. So, if you would . . ." He gestured to his chest stent.

"Of course. In fact, with all my sangreanos drained by the Zhyrn, it will be an uncomfortable couple of days until I can get them back on schedule. Your offer provides a valuable service to the crew."

Coby beamed.

She thought the Zhyrn incident was behind them, then two days later, the crew started falling sick. The Kwob chieftain was spitting angry when he came to the blood suite.

"Filzy Zhyrn contaminate our zyztems," he spat, simultaneously sprouting a whole batch of tiny, angry pseudo-arms. "Now muzt clean out zyztem, rezet everything. Do thiz! Muzt break journey until all iz well. Can make Jhntc in two dayz. But very hungry." He flowed angrily out of her suite.

It was a lot to process. At least none of the blood contamination cases had proven fatal. Since she was new to this job, it could be something she was doing wrong, though logically that would have shown up much earlier. But if it was Zhyrn interaction poisoning the well, that implied some foreign agent infused into the blood of her sangreanos. So how long to flush that out of their bodies? At least a week, she guessed. But since Jhntc had been scheduled to "refresh and replace" sangreanos, it must have resources. She flipped on the wall display for more info.

Jhntc was one of those pit stop worlds that dotted the interstellar trade lanes. On the long haul from Pomme la Grande to the Crescent Worlds, it was a convenient stop for bio-supplies and a little rec. But there wasn't much more than the port ringed by commercial and habitat sectors, and the mud spa outback that some saurians considered a destination -- Shrkl would be delighted.

Venda looked through several more references before she found that Jhntc was also a drone dump. The legality was always iffy when big genetics corporations dumped defective and outdated clone products, but in this case, they were well outside Terran Space and law. The ethical side of that same argument -- whether clones were people or mere consumer products -- was way above her pay grade. The important point was that there was a sizable human, or near-human, population that could feed the Kwob for a week or two in a blood-for-credit arrangement.

And if there was any problem with clone blood, there were always the other category of drones, the mind-wiped criminals. The process left the subjects pretty much simpletons, but still it was a fresh start. Just not as a real person. Whatever the status of clones, the mind-wipes shared it, and drone dump planets ended up with a slave-like subclass of workers. And she was thinking about this too much. There would be blood, and that was all she needed to know. Actually, she ought to wake up her sangreanos and give them rec time so their systems would flush faster. But that would involve some planet-side expenses . . . she'd check with the purser on priorities.

It took a little time and a lot of discussion, but by the time they established orbit around Jhntc, all the kinks had been worked out. Everyone on board would get leave time in rotations, fast immediate rotations for the hungry Kwob crew. Slower for the humans.

As Venda shuttled down and walked around the sprawl of Jhntc City, her overall impression was cheap construction and uninviting treeless desert. She ran into Shrkl, lounging with another saurian at a sidewalk café. They were both sipping something bubby and green that didn't look even vaguely appetizing to her eye.

"Ah, Venda," Shrkl grunted. "The very person I wasss recommending to friend G'brsh here. She has a situation that may require a linguistic solution."

Oh, good, another problem, but Venda nodded politely. "Happy to be of service" and ordered a crinkleroot latte from the drone standing nearby. It wasn't coffee, but it was good.

"It's my scratcher Rhu, you sssee," G'brsh said. She looked to be the same species of lizard as Shrkl, even though the coloration was different. "I'm thinking he'sss not a clone."

"A reconstituted criminal, then?" Venda asked.

"Pssh. The crims have even lesssss personality that the clones, but my Rhu shows personality. Sense of humour even."

"Does he speak of his past?"

"Never. At first I thought he did not want to, but now I'm convinced he cannot. Selectively mind-locked, I think."

Venda frowned. Not mind-wiped and dumped, but mind-locked and dumped. That was considerably more complicated, not to mention expensive. "How do I fit into this?"

"There are techniques, I believe, for channelling the subconscious while distracting the conscious. You could do thisss?"

She wanted to protest that this was psych, not linguistics, but Shrkl was giving her a pregnant look. "I've never practiced that technique, but I could research it and try it on your scratcher." Shrkl gave her a satisfied wink.

"Exsssellent," G'brsh nodded.

A tall, dark-suited man approached their table. "Venda Senjak? May we go somewhere and speak." He totally ignored the saurians sharing the table with her.

There were so many clues -- the rudeness, the ramrod-straight posture, the fact that he was aggressively human on a non-human world. He had Spaceforce written all over, even without a uniform.

"Yes, I'm Venda Senjak," she replied, picking up her cup. She managed to exchange a quick warning glance with Shrkl as they walked away from the café... "And to my knowledge, I have no business with Spaceforce."

The man grimaced. "We're trying to be subtle, Miz Senjak."

"Then you might try slouching a little. But I really have no idea what you want."

"You travel and have worked with several races of interest."

"I'm a linguist and have worked for passage on non-hom vessels. I'm still not seeing a connection."

"You've interacted with the Zhyrn?"

"Briefly. A few days ago, they searched the freighter I'm serving on."

"For renegade Tatisian sanguinary suppliers?"

As much as she hated the term "Tatisian cow," his alternative just sounded silly. "The freighter has a stable of sangreanos to supply our hemovore crew. But I'm guessing you already know this."

"We do," he nodded. "And your connection with the colony worlds of Tatis, Regis, and Orab?"

"I thought that the Zhyrn had established sovereignty over Tatis, and Orab has been in a state of civil war for the last decade. I haven't been to any of those worlds."

He looked unsatisfied. "I was hoping for more on your relationship with these renegade Tatisian sanguinary suppliers,"

Venda didn't feel trapped exactly but certainly herded. "Look, just ask, why don't you? I handled all the sangreano interviews back on Pomme la Grande. One of the applicants may have been Tatisian, but that one wasn't hired for the job. To my knowledge, he's the only possible Tatisian I've run into." All that was true, but not the whole truth by any means. She needed to be very careful with every word.

Spaceforce held a palm tablet with a pic in front of her face. "Was this the Tatisian you interviewed?"

Venda leaned closer. It did -- and it didn't -- look like Coby. The face should be a little rounder, the hair not so dark. Broader mouth. And the expression was too severe. Military, she guessed. "No," she said, then realized that sounded too abrupt. "There's a resemblance," she admitted. "Is this man Spaceforce?"

"He was military," Spaceforce said with a nod. "The young man you interviewed would be his orphaned son."

A Spaceforce family connection explained a lot -- wait. He hadn't said Spaceforce. Just military. If you parsed his words, he hadn't answered the question, and that was an answer in itself. She looked at the picture again, this time noting the unfamiliar insignia on the collar of his shirt. "What military was that," she said casually. "I don't recognize the uniform."

Spaceforce's eyes narrowed. "Orabi. The father was a commander in Orab's Colonial Militia."

"Wait." Venda thought that through. "An Orabi military commander has a son who's a Tatisian sangreano? That makes no sense."

"It's convoluted. Orab was in the first throes of rebellion, and the father sent his son to the relative safety of Tatis. Then the government disintegrated, and all record of the son was lost. However, it has come to light that the boy was raised in one of the many crèches that took in orphans and trained them as sanguinary suppliers. The boy in question is Demetrius diCobi."

DiCobi . . . Coby. "And you're interested in him -- why?"

"He is one of our own," Spaceforce said simply.

Venda shook her head. "You just said he wasn't."

"An orphaned son of a brave military family. We feel an obligation to do right by him, not to mention the fact he's being hunted by blood-thirsty Zhyrn."

She counted at least three emotional appeals in that little speech and guessed his words had been pre-scripted by the Spaceforce Persuasion Department.

"We need to find him before the Zhyrn rip him open for his blood, and you need to help us."

Again, the heavy emotional appeal. She weighed the factors and came to a quick conclusion. She needed to stall until she could talk to Shrkl . . . and Coby, of course. But she suspected Coby was going to feel as blindsided as she did. Shrkl \-- probably not so much. He was the one who had pre-empted Coby's services for no apparent reason, the key word being "apparent." Now things were becoming more apparent. But Spaceforce was waiting.

"I would be happy to help," she nodded. "I can round up my sangreanos for you to interview and transfer my notes on the applicants to you, but beyond that . . . " She shrugged.

"We're fairly sure, Miz Senjak, that diCobi left Pomme la Grand on a freighter taking on sanguinary suppliers. While it may not be your freighter, you could contact the other Kwob freighters in port at that time."

"That would be up to the Kwob clan chief . . . but of course, I can try." She smiled brightly. "And I've thought of a way you can help me in return."

"Oh?" He looked surprised and wary.

This was a gamble, but she suspected Spaceforce was working toward a heavy-handed conclusion, and she wanted to derail that. "One of the saurian residents asked me to investigate a drone servant who seems to be neither clone nor criminal, but with a mind-lock to keep him from talking about his past. I'm no expert, but that sure sounds like a Terran citizen illegally abducted and dumped."

Spaceforce raised an eyebrow. "Name?"

Good, he was interested. "Rhu. In service as a scratcher to the saurian G'brsh. Shall we meet back at the café tomorrow and trade information?"

All she got was a grunt as Spaceforce walked off, but she took that as an affirmative. She waited until he was out of sight around the next corner, then turned to look for a certain seven-foot, yellow-orange striped lizard who would be close enough to eavesdrop.

"Mossst clever, Venda," Shrkl said, appearing in a shop doorway. "Asking for a favour rebalances your relationship."

"I hope I didn't misstep by involving G'brsh."

"G'brsh can handle herself," Shrkl assured her. "Thisss one isss Ssspaceforce Intelligence, I think."

"I just hope he's not also Psi Corps."

"Did not smell like a psssi." Shrkl gave tentative flick of his tail. "Would be good to take a walk about town. Take in the sights. Give my regards to Coby upship."

So, he was going to tail Spaceforce while she talked to Coby. It confirmed her suspicion that Shrkl knew more about this than he was saying.

She shuttled up to the Drzhryra and found Coby playing solitaire while five sleepy-eyed sangreanos sat waiting to rotate down to the surface. "Change of plans," she announced cheerily. "The five of you are starting your leave early. Enjoy." She waited until they had shuffled out of the suite, then turned.

"And do I not also get to enjoy?" Coby asked with a grin. "Should I feel special to be the last?"

"Very special. And I'm glad you're in a good mood because we have a difficult conversation ahead."

He sobered instantly. "Truly. About?"

"About Demetrius diCobi." As his face took on a closed, shuttered expression, she urged, "What do you know? It's important."

"Just a name," he said warily. "Why do you know that name?"

"It's become important for reasons I don't entirely understand. People are looking for Demetrius diCobi, and apparently, Demetrius diCobi is you."

He gave a slight nod. "It is so. But Father-Doctor Saltir said I must never talk of it."

"Do you remember anything about your parents before the crèche?"

"Faces. My mother's laugh. Not much more. I was very young." He frowned. "And I was sickly, perhaps. I have unfond memories of doctors and needles."

Venda took a deep breath and dove in. "Your father was a military commander on Orab who hid you on Tatis when the revolution broke out. I don't know how you ended up in a crèche, but it's highly unlikely Commander diCobi's son was intended for the life of a sangreano."

His eyes had grown wider and wider during her speech, and now he blurted, "A soldier? My father was a soldier, yet I am just a dumb cow? It is a joke of Fate, I think."

Venda winced at his distress. "I doubt that Fate was much involved. The point is that you were raised invisibly. And now that you're back on-grid, both the Zhyrn and Spaceforce are hunting you. Spaceforce says they want to help the orphaned son of a brave commander. I'm no fan, but I'd take them any day over the Zhyrn. Or there might be a third path where you investigate your past on your own terms. And now you know what I know. Reactions?"

He gave an exaggerated shrug. "I am inadequate for this. At four years, old did I enter the crèche where thinking was little encouraged."

"You sell yourself short. You've done all right so far with this game of charades. So rather than Coby Bresner, the Tatisian sangreano pretending to be Shrkl's scratcher, you turn out to be Demetrius diCobi, the commander's son pretending to be a Tatisian sangreano."

"And my parents are truly dead?"

"Spaceforce called you an orphan," she nodded. "Considering you came from a war zone, that's likely true. But Coby, you're not alone. Shrkl and I will stand with you, no matter what you decide."

He perked up. "Like family?"

Venda knew she was getting way too involved in a dangerous situation, but what the hell. "Exactly like family."

Venda spent the next day scheduling sangreano interviews and formatting her notes on the Pomme la Grand applicants. When she finally finished, and went planetside to meet Shrkl at a mud massage parlour, she had questions. "You, me, and Coby -- does anyone else know he's here? Does the clan chief know?"

The lizard thumped a denial. "My position grants me certain waggle room."

"Wiggle room," she corrected. "I feel very conflicted about this. Would it be so wrong to turn Coby over to Spaceforce? They could protect him from the Zhyrn."

"Many agencies could protect Coby," Shrkl argued. "The open question is why Spaceforce ssseeks him. There is much yet undisclosed. You are wise to be wary of the players."

G'brsh joined them, looking very smug. "I hear you have inquired about my Rhu," she said. "I look forward to learning the results."

That seemed to be a hint, so Venda took her leave and headed back to the café. Spaceforce was waiting stiffly at a table. As she sat down, he signed the wait-drone, who poured him a cup of something that smelled wonderfully of mocha and cinnamon. Probably also exorbitantly expensive. Interestingly, Spaceforce didn't start sipping but pulled out a hand device to scan the substance first. Paranoid, she thought. Maybe he has reason to be.

"Thank you for meeting me again," she said to push the tone of the conversation into friendly territory. "I arranged this schedule with my sangreanos, and here are my interview notes." She transferred the data tablet across the table.

He glanced through the documents and gave a curt nod. "A start. And I have information for you -- very unofficially, you understand."

She leaned closer.

"The drone Rhu currently serving as a scratcher"-- his inflection was disdainful -- "has a complicated past." He flipped his device around. "Here he is at St. Crispin's Academy on Pomme la Grande just before he disappeared."

Venda blinked. "He's so young." And rich-looking.

"Sixteen at the time, which was two-and-a-half years ago. It was a time of conflict between the banking cartels of Pomme la Grande, and one casualty was Rhuvius Fortienne, oldest son, and heir to Fortienne Trust and Credit."

It took Venda a moment to swallow that. Fortienne Trust and Credit was enormously powerful at this end of Terran Space. "Who did this?"

"Rumour has it," Spaceforce said, "that the Sandoval banking cartel was putting pressure on the Fortiennes to rethink certain monetary practices. It seems to have worked. All conflicts have been resolved."

"But Rhu is still here," she pointed out. "Why wasn't he retrieved?"

"To what end? To pass as a drone among drones, he was neutered, and the family wouldn't be interested in damaged goods. His younger brother Trajan has since been groomed as heir. Any sudden reappearance of Rhuvius would destabilize a hard-won balance, and no one wants that, least of all Trajan. For all parties involved, it would be convenient if Rhuvius were to disappear with his master into the vastness of saurian space."

Master? That was both inaccurate and offensive. And as for the rest -- her head was still reeling at the sheer cold-bloodedness of everyone involved, Spaceforce included. Fortienne Trust and Credit was a generous supporter of the military. Of course, Spaceforce would do nothing to "inconvenience" the Fortiennes. And all this info on Rhu was a little too free. There had to be reason. Ah. Thinking back, she saw now that she was being used to convey a pointed message to G'brsh: Take Rhu deep into saurian space and never bring him back.

"You seem tense," Spaceforce commented.

She brought her outrage under control. "That was a lot more than I expected," she said woodenly.

"But your friend G'brsh will no doubt be pleased to keep his favourite scratcher?"

And there it was again -- that insulting slant on the role of a scratcher. What did people think happened in a mud bath? No, better left unanswered. With confirmed xenophobes, interaction with non-homs was usually viewed as all rape and destroy.

"She'll be relieved to know the truth," Venda corrected. "I should go now." She'd had enough for one day.

"We need to discuss DiCobi further," Spaceforce called after her. "Tomorrow, same time and place."

Venda walked for a long time because she needed physical activity to keep from thinking. She would never have expected to have such a visceral reaction to Rhu's plight -- Rhu whom she'd never even met. But the way everyone was blithely tossing him under the shuttle made her furious. The kid deserved better.

Then as she cooled and started thinking rationally again, something else bubbled to the surface. There were lots of parallels between Rhu and Coby. Both were removed from their families to live in much degraded states; both were physically adjusted to match their new lives; both had attracted the interest of outsiders; both were known to Spaceforce although the response was --

She stopped and turned back toward the massage parlour where she had left the saurians. Three blocks later she was seating herself on the edge of a mud pool where Shrkl and G'brsh lay half submerged. "Here's the Spaceforce data on Rhu," she said without preamble and proceeded to repeat the situation using much the same wording so they could appreciate the cold-blooded tone. She finished with, "He trusts that G'brsh will be pleased with all this."

A long silence followed. Then G'brsh harrumphed. "Intolerable, all of it. Mammals at their mossst mean-minded."

"But there's more. I was considering how Rhu and Coby are parallel, yet with one, it is 'disappear into the vastness of saurian space' and the other is 'we shall do right by an orphaned son'. Call it my own prejudice, but I see 'disappear into the vastness' as the more typical Spaceforce response to a problematic individual. I think 'protect the orphan' is a bogus reason manufactured by the Spaceforce Persuasion Department. This must be about Coby's high-ranking father and connected somehow with the Orabi civil war. Nothing else makes sense."

Shrkl and G'brsh leaned their long snouts toward each other and rapidly hissed back and forth. Core sauroid communication, she recognized. She couldn't understand or replicate it, but she was aware of its existence. Interesting how it bypassed the linguistic conventions of Interstel completely. After a few more moments, the hissing stopped.

"We are agreeing that the Orabi civil war isss the heart of the matter," Shrkl said. "We find it a mossst dangerous conflict near our borders, the more so because it isss a proxy civil war being fuelled by third parties."

"By the Zhyrn?"

"On one side the Zhyrn are employing human mercenaries."

"And Spaceforce on the other?"

Shrkl gave a long exhalation. "We fear some of your Expansionists refuse to bow to the new Terrano policy of peaceful borders."

Venda mulled that. "Spaceforce as an institution has always been heavily Expansionist, but they wouldn't openly defy Terragov. Still, there might be people within Spaceforce backing a very clandestine black ops effort, off-budget, off the books. But even so, a war is hard to hide. Just imagine the expense. That in itself would raise questions."

"Perhaps thisss," G'brsh suggested softly. "Rhu's family?"

Venda sat up. A reactionary regional Spaceforce command funded by Fortienne money. It made sense. "The Orabi civil war has been going on for sixteen years, and Rhu might know things from those years before he was abducted." She sighed. "But he's mind-locked and can't speak of his past."

Another quick hissing conference took place. "I will sssee that Rhu's mind-lock isss removed and question him on this matter," G'brsh offered.

What? "But mind-locks are expensive, specialized procedures. So, when you asked for my help with Rhu, you really didn't need it because you could unlock him at any time?" Her tone was accusatory.

"Venda misunderssstands," Shrkl interposed quickly. "Friend G'brsh has no access herself but knows those who do. And while such friends would consider un-locking a scratcher petty and self-indulgent, they would have great interest in the Orabi civil war. Rhu's status has changed, you sssee."

"Any more changes and he can qualify as a chameleon," she snorted.

"Chameleon!" G'brsh repeated, startled.

Shrkl splashed his tail. "Venda isss being ridiculousss. Rhu will never be a skin-changer and ssshould not be compared. Sssuch references are highly charged in cultures once overrun by skin-changer warriors."

She filed away to refrain from all figures of speech involving lizards when in saurian company. "And Coby? How do we find out what Spaceforce really wants with him?"

"And the Zhyrn," Shrkl added. "They are putting ridiculoussss effort into tracking a lone Tatisian cow. But one answer isss also the other, I do think."

"And Venda has the opportunity to solve thisss puzzle," G'brsh added cheerily. "Another meeting with Ssspaceforce tomorrow, yesss?"

Venda looked at the two saurians beaming encouragingly at her and felt completely out of her depth. This Big Picture just kept on getting bigger. "Yes," she sighed.

The next day, Venda arrived planet-side early and headed for the café. She had hoped to find G'brsh waiting with more information about Rhu, but the café was empty. There had been no plans to meet, yet she felt oddly abandoned in a time of crisis.

She ordered her favourite crinkleroot latte and tried to order her thoughts for the coming confrontation with Spaceforce. And a confrontation was what it was likely to be. She might have to be aggressive to shake out more information about Coby. Yet if she was too aggressive, it would be tipping her hand that she had more connection with Coby than a random interviewer ought to.

"Excuse me, Miz Senjak?"

She looked up from her latte to find a young drone in utilitarian bodysuit at her elbow. He had a thin, underfed look in common with most of the drones she'd seen here on Jhnct where animal protein was scarce, but his face had an unusual degree of animation . . . tension, wariness, anticipation. Then the obvious struck. "Rhu, I assume. Please sit down."

He shook his head. "That would look odd for a drone. I'll just hover so passers-by assume I'm wait-staff. G'brsh sent me to tell my story, but first my thanks at removing the mind-lock that's kept me mute these last two years."

"My part was minimal, but I'm glad you're free. You're very well-spoken, incidentally."

He gave a thin smile. "Once I had the advantage of the most expensive education on Pomme la Grande, but that life is gone now." There was something dark in the way he said it.

"That life may be gone," she said quickly, "but you have other options, now that you're no longer trapped as a drone."

"Perhaps so, Miz Senjak --"

"Venda, please."

"-- but it's hard to see much happiness in any direction."

"I understand," she nodded, "but it has to get better. Abducted, mind-locked, reduced to a menial -- you've survived a lot of suffering."

He looked thoughtful. "I think I was meant to suffer. Otherwise, I would have been mind-wiped, not mind-locked."

That was an interesting thought. "Why would the Sandoval banking cartel want you to suffer?" she asked.

He shook his head. "They just wanted me gone as negotiating leverage -- maybe even just temporarily gone. I've had years to think about this, and I doubt Jhnct was part of the Sandoval plan at all. Punishing me was a way to punish my family for past sins. This is what G'brsh wanted you to know -- my family has had a hand in the Orabi civil war from the start. My grandfather was a friend and supporter of Governor Ishton."

Ishton? Venda gave a start. Now there was a name with a bloody history. Demetrius Ishton, neo-Stalinist Colonial Governor of Orab, had been a rabid Expansionist who advocated exterminating all non-hom obstacles to colonial expansion, namely the Zhyrn. He wiped out the Zhyrn population on Orab and was planning to do the same on Tatis. Then his assassination, followed by the brutal massacre of hundreds of children, and suddenly he was martyr in a war against blood-sucking monsters. Everyone assumed both assassination and massacre had been Zhyrn-backed. And the civil war had been raging ever since.

"Are you saying the Zhyrn wanted to punish you, Rhu?"

"Their cruisers orbit here regular -- they have local influence. It could also have been my brother Trajan making a power play within the family, but I doubt Traj would organize something so elaborate. Traditionally the Fortiennes prefer fast-acting poisons . . . "

Dark family, Venda thought.

". . . and the Zhyrn theory makes more sense than anything else. I offer no excuse for my grandfather's politics, but the Zhyrn are a vicious race."

Probably say the same of us, Venda thought. Her wristband beeped. Twenty minutes until her meeting with Spaceforce. "Thank you for the information, Rhu. I hope you find a good future far away from this mess."

He stepped away with a little bow. "May your future also be bright. And could you give me the contact channel for your friend Demetrius DiCobi? It seems we have a connection if my family funded the war that orphaned him."

Grim connection. "He knows nothing about the politics of the war. Maybe you're the right person to tell him, but do so gently." She blipped him the channel to Shrkl's quarters. "But I need to take a little walk to clear my head. I really dread this face to face with Spaceforce."

"And it's all about Demetrius?"

"It's about protecting him from the powerful players hunting him. It might be easier if I had any idea why."

Rhu looked pensive as she took her leave of the café.

As she walked down the street, something nagged her about that conversation and it took a moment to put a finger on it. It was calling him Demetrius. If Coby was Coby to her, and Coby to Shrkl \-- and by extension G'brsh \-- why would Rhu call him Demetrius? She had no answer, so she set the thought aside to focus on Spaceforce questions. Why were Rhu and Coby viewed very differently by Spaceforce, even though Rhu's banking grandfather and Coby's military were both hard-core Expansionists . . .

Dammit, Rhu knew something!

Out of the blue, that thought struck like an arrow. Some connection between the Fortiennes and Coby's military father. Something that might even be on record? Assuming patrilineal surnames, the father of Demetrius DiCobi ought to be DiCobi as well.

She paused in the next doorway to activate her com link and tap into whatever data sources were available. A lot about the Orabi war, and it took a moment to parse through it. But no Commander DiCobi was listed on the casualty lists, which was odd . . . maybe too odd. How very like Spaceforce to give her a name that had been systematically scrubbed from the expected sources. But just like the old saying: when the expected data sources yield nothing, turn to the unexpected ones. In this case, that meant what? Promotion records? Academy graduation rosters? Assignments postings? No, those were all military records, exactly what Spaceforce could easily expunge. "Unexpected" in this case meant non-military data on a military personage, which would be . . . what?

She was stumped. With a sigh, she turned to see in whose doorway she had parked herself. The smell of fresh dough told her it had to be a bakery, even before her eye fell on the holographic symbol in the window. Pastries were a delicacy across a range of species, though some preferred it in a goopier, less baked form than humans did. Might be OK for a cookie, but she'd hate to see what that did to a wedding cake. Then she froze. Of course, Marriage licenses. A child implied a wife.

Still standing in the bakery doorway, she hunted through data sources again until she found wedding information from Orab from two dozen years earlier. And there it was on a social blog -- the marriage of Colonel Fraysion DiCobi to Aria . . . Ishton? Venda's eyes grew huge as that realization settled. Demetrius DiCobi. Demetrius Ishton. Coby was grandson to the notorious Orabi dictator . . . who was a friend of Rhu's grandfather. Her stomach knotted as she realized she had unknowingly just put the two grandsons in contact with one another . . . for good or for ill.

Part of her wanted to jettison this meeting with Spaceforce and upship to make sure Coby was all right. But that was nonsense. She couldn't protect him from Spaceforce if she wasn't talking to Spaceforce. She turned back toward the café, still trying to puzzle together more of the pieces.

Would the Zhyrn really expend so much energy tracking down the grandson of a long dead enemy? Maybe Shrkl could answer that; she couldn't. But the only reason for Spaceforce also expending energy to protect said Ishton grandson would be if he had political utility. Were they thinking of putting Coby in uniform and porting him to Orab as a rallying symbol for the pro-Ishton forces? The same Coby who had grown up supplying blood to the Zhyrn? She was thinking nonsense again, probably because she was rattled.

As she neared the sidewalk café, she saw Spaceforce pacing the sidewalk. "You're late," he said coldly. "I don't like being kept waiting."

"Sorry," she murmured as they seated themselves. Bad beginning for a bad meeting.

"We've come to that point in our discussion where you stop stalling and I become blunter," he said without preamble. "The interviews you set up with your sangreanos were obviously a delaying tactic. What I know from your behaviour is that you're hiding something. How that information comes out is up to you." Then he paused and signalled for a cup of his favourite cinnamon-mocha drink. He scanned it as before and sat sipping and waiting for her answer.

The threat behind those words was so strong that Venda had to forcibly remind herself that this was a non-Terran world where Spaceforce held no jurisdiction. She needed to push back as strongly as he was pushing her. "Of course, I'm holding my cards close to the vest," she returned with forced bravado. "It's very unsettling trying to figure out if your investigation is official or not."

Spaceforce's eyes narrowed. "Meaning?"

"Meaning do you represent Spaceforce, the Terragov entity carrying out Terragov's official policies, or do you represent the regional, rightist faction of Spaceforce pushing the Orabi civil war with funding from Fortienne Trust and Credit?"

The silence at the table stretched.

"You're in dangerous waters, Miz Senjak," Spaceforce finally said.

"Not as dangerous as high treason," she responded. "I have no idea what you want with Demetrius DiCobi, but I fear it's nothing good. If I'm wrong, please tell me."

Another silence, this one cold and horrible. "You have a husband, I believe, on Omicron. There are legitimate questions about the validity of his emigration. I do not believe he registered as a colonial candidate prior, which could invalidate his status as a colonist. He could easily be returned to Terra and assigned to a work camp."

Venda's mouth went dry. A work camp was Brock's biggest nightmare. She couldn't let that happen . . . but she couldn't betray Coby either...

"So let us revisit the matter of Demetrius DiCobi, Miz Senjak. I think you will find that --"

"You are wanting to speak to me, I think," a voice panted from over her shoulder.

She knew that accent even before turning around. Was Coby mad? And he was a spectacle in the loose-fitting fishnet smock he wore around Shrkl's hothouse quarters. And gasping for breath. Had he run all the way from the shuttle park? Apparently.

But what was he doing? What was she supposed to do?

She turned back to find Spaceforce stunned and staring. This was obviously not covered in any pre-scripted scenario from the Persuasion Department. A drone waiter in white bodysuit appeared at his elbow to refresh his cinnamon-mocha from a steaming pot and place the cup before him. Spaceforce automatically reached for it and took a long sip.

Then he gave a strangled gasp and collapsed head down on the table.

The wait-drone stepped forward to pull Venda's chair and urge her to her feet. "You should leave quickly. We all should." He gave a thin smile and added, "The Fortiennes have always favoured fast-acting poisons."

It was Rhu, she suddenly realized, amazed that he could pass so perfectly as a faceless drone. Of course, he had years of practice playing a faceless drone. She turned to find Coby offering his arm as if this was a cotillion, not a murder. Then they left the café, a young woman on the arm of a strangely dressed young man with their subservant in a bodysuit trailing respectfully two steps behind.

When they reached the shuttle park, they all boarded. Still no word had been spoken. The shuttle docked on the Drzhryra where they were met by two saurians nervously thumping their tails.

"All is well?' Shrkl queried.

Venda traded glances with Coby and Rhu, unsure who was supposed to answer. They'd just murdered a Spaceforce Intelligence operative. She certainly had no idea if that meant all was well.

"He's dead," Rhu offered. "I solved the problem as I saw fit"

Another moment of silence as that information settled. Venda had assumed Rhu was acting for the saurians, but apparently, he was "solving problems" on his own. Then G'brsh slapped her tail hard against the bulkhead. "Drat those Zhyrn!" she thundered. "This murder isss another outrage against the peace-loving homs."

This was now the official story -- the Zhyrn had killed Spaceforce? Mind-boggling from beginning to end, but Venda managed to go with it. "OK, the Zhyrn did it in the library with a candlestick." She fixed Coby and Rhu with a stern stare. "So you two know each other?"

They shook their heads in tandem. "Just the grandfather connection," Rhu said. "I knew from my grandfather that Governor Ishton's grandson was the only baby warrior to survive the massacre."

"Baby warrior?" Venda repeated, looking at Coby. "Now you're a baby warrior?"

"I knew naught of this," he insisted. "I gave my blood as I was trained to do in the crèche. I had no inkling it was poisoning the Zhyrn."

So, that was why the Kwob had gotten sick.

"Ishton's great plan was to infuse toxic blood into the blood supply and kill off all the hemovore races in the sector," Rhu added. "But the Zhyrn got wind of it, torched the research laboratories, and killed off the whole batch of genetically modified babies before they could leave Orab." He glanced at Coby. "But one escaped."

Venda nodded. "So the Zhyrn have been desperately backtracking the poison source ever since Coby became an active sangreano on Tatis. And Spaceforce?"

Shrkl hmmed loudly. "Spaceforce, or elements within Spaceforce, no doubt knew all this and sssaw Coby's uniquely modified blood as the perfect bio-weapon against an overly aggressive hemovore race. Mossst interesting."

"So what now?" she demanded. "Do we all disappear into the vastness of Saurian Space."

"Coby, yes," Shrkl nodded. "He will be far safer away from the hemovore races of this sector."

"Rhu, no," G'brsh contradicted. "A drone-assassin has great potential on many border worlds." She gave Rhu a knowing look. "An offer to think about, yes?" He looked interested.

"And me, no," Venda added. "I'm not a part of any of this and just want a semi-normal life. However," -- she turned an accusing stare on Shrkl and G'brsh \-- "I'm strongly suspecting that the two of you are operatives in some well-organized, secretive saurian agency."

The saurians exchanged a quick moment of hissing between them, then Shrkl slapped his long tail and rumbled, "Venda is being ridiculous."

She relaxed a little. Some things in this crazy world of baby warriors and drone-assassins were still normal.

Then he added, "All sentients know that sssuch saurian agencies are neither well organized nor terribly secretive."

Belief

Gustavo Bondoni

Argentina

"...the evil grand vizier lost his grip and fell from the wall, leaving the kingdom in the hands of the prince, who ruled much more wisely from that day forth, and lived unto his ninetieth year and was much mourned by his people when he passed." Scheherazade paused. Both knew what was coming. "That was the end of my story, my liege. If it pleases you, I can begin another."

Shahryar nodded. "Do so, but it must be finished by dawn. This cannot go on any longer."

"Of course, my lord. Your wish is my command." She smiled demurely and lowered her eyes, playing her part to perfection. "Up to now, I have told you of great deeds from the past, of colossal struggles for riches and kingdoms. But I know also of things that are to come, stories that have not yet come to pass."

"How can this be?"

"You are a great king, and it is the will of the spirits that you should hear of all that would please you. A man of your stature cannot be limited by that which has been."

Shahryar smiled, well pleased at the compliment. Long gone were the days in which he mistrusted everything she said. Long gone also were her nights of terror.

"It is the story of a woman, my liege. A woman from the infidel lands to the north and west, who took up arms for her infidel king."

"Against whom did she take up arms?"

"Against other infidels, my lord."

"And why should this interest me? There seems no chance of a triumph of truth and justice." And yet Scheherazade could see that he was intrigued. Perhaps because the heroine had taken up arms, perhaps because it was a story of something yet to be. Perhaps simply because he no longer wished to have her killed.

"You may decide whether the story pleases you as I tell it," Scheherazade replied, knowing that the king would enjoy anything that reached his ears from her mouth. "In a small village far to the north and west..."

...the greatest general in the history of a proud nation strode down the corridor acknowledging the bows and reverences of the people. Ministers, clergymen, powerful nobles, lesser messengers, all of them men accustomed to places of power, all of them looking the general's way with eyes that burned brightly. Hope lived there, and the love of a leader that had turned a desperate situation into a winnable war.

The general reached the door at the end of the corridor, closed it, leaned against the rough wood, and sighed. She wasn't sure how much longer her strength would hold. A polished piece of metal served as a mirror, inherited from the previous commander of the king's troops. He, like all the generals before him, had used it to shave. She used it to study the rings beneath her eyes and her short light-brown hair. Sometimes, only sometimes, she wished she could allow it to grow, allow herself to find a husband and forget about the complexities of war.

But her God had called, and she had answered. No one could recognize her except in man's attire until her land was freed from the foreign scourge and her king was secure upon his throne.

But as long as no one recognized her...

She opened the solid wooden chest, the only piece of furniture she'd allowed in the small room other than the desk, chair, and bed. The troops were convinced that the contents of the chest were the paraphernalia of leadership and communion with God. They imagined maps, hair shirts, and crucifixes within. The fact that the punishment for tampering with the general's chest was death only lent strength to the rumours.

The truth would have shocked them. The first item that emerged was a wig of long, lustrous black hair that fit over her own short hair like a glove. She adjusted the angle until she was satisfied with the effect.

After putting the wig on, she discarded her male attire. As always, she cursed herself for putting the wig on before doing any of the rest but knew it was something she couldn't avoid. For some reason, she couldn't truly think of herself as a woman until that long black hair framed her features.

The dress she selected was a dark brown affair, beautiful but practical since the colour would hide the stain of travel and especially mud from crossing the fields.

She refrained from putting on her delicate indoor shoes – they would be ruined long before she reached her destination – and instead kept the boots from her general's attire. No one would see them under the dress, and she would hide them when she arrived and donned the other pair.

Finally, she extracted the single item that, even had the rest not been shocking enough, would have resulted in her being removed from the head of the army, incarcerated, and quite probably burned as a witch. A small wooden casket which, when opened, revealed a powdery white substance: powdered lead paint. She applied a light coating to her face and secreted another small quantity in a pouch under her dress, whispering a prayer to her God for forgiveness as she did. Her country needed her to act on its behalf, and if God could tolerate, indeed command, that she dress as a man, small womanly sins could also be forgiven.

As she looked into her mirror, she was satisfied to see that the instantly recognizable sight of Jeanne was gone. In her place stood the Countess Renée, an equally well-known figure often involved in political intrigue and court politics. Mistrusted by Jeanne's people and the treacherous Burgundies, she was grudgingly tolerated by both because she was considered useful.

Neither faction had considered her credentials, for she came bearing documents with the general's mark, an irony that made Jeanne smile.

Getting out of the general's complex – a small noble house, more of a large farm, really – would be simple enough in her disguise, but she had to be certain that no one witnessed the exit from the room itself. Any further connection between the Countess and the general would incite comment. Some of the sharper-eyed among the staff might notice the physical similarities, and that would lead to unpleasantness.

So, she waited by the door, looking through the keyhole until no one was visible in the corridor and let herself out. She turned the key in its socket once to ensure that the general's absence wouldn't send the troops into shock and walked out of the door, imperious and unchallenged.

The trip across the fields between the small town and the enemy city was full of risk. No woman was safe in those days, but a noblewoman would be twice as vulnerable. Brigands would value her for flesh and purse, a much more profitable proposition than ravaging some penniless farmer's daughter.

Jeanne managed to reach a small clump of trees just outside the town without incident, but just as she was bending over to remove her muddy boots, she felt the touch of cold metal against her back.

"Straighten up and turn around so I can see you," a rough, uncultured voice commanded.

She did so, slowly. By the dim light coming from the town itself and the bonfires lit by the defenders, she could make out his features. A round, dirty face with a gap-toothed grin and beady eyes gave him a drunken look, but he held the spear against her steadily, keeping it in contact with her dress as she turned.

"It is dawn, my liege."

"It cannot be!"

"See for yourself."

Shahryar sighed. It was always thus. "I suppose you want to continue this tale tomorrow."

"I think it would be best," Scheherazade replied.

He sighed again. "One day I shall lose patience with your games, woman."

"But until that day comes, I assume you wish for me to continue in attendance."

"Very well. I shall hear the rest of this story tonight."

"Until tonight, then."

As the spear jabbed painfully into her stomach, just about to break the skin, Jeanne considered the man before her. The uniform identified him as a soldier of the Auxerre city guard. It was a bit frayed and definitely unclean, but there was nothing to suggest that the man wouldn't do his duty and do it zealously.

"Ah," Jeanne said, pulling herself up and swatting at the spear with a dismissive gesture, showing a calm face when she felt like screaming. "The city guard. Good. I need you to take me to the Mayor."

This caught the man completely off guard. "The mayor? Not likely. I shall take you to the dungeons, and let the captain decide what to do with you. A spy in our midst will probably be put to death without much of a trial."

She scoffed, hoping to bluff her way through. Though she knew very well that she would never be put to death, a trip to the dungeons would take time she didn't have – and losing her wig might bring more problems than that. "A spy, you say? Hah! Are you blind as well as dirty, man? Do you not recognize the Countess Renée when you see her? Mayor Luc will have someone put to death if you take me to the dungeons, but I can assure you that it will not be me."

The effect on the poor guard was what she expected. No peasant would take the risk of incurring the displeasure of a noblewoman – at least not when her screams would be heard by the men on duty upon the city walls. He honoured the tradition of all low-ranking military men and turned her into the commander of the night guard, who sent her up to the castellan. Less than half an hour after being discovered among the trees, she was face to face with Luc Alphand, the mayor of the town.

He stood to greet her, a smile touching the corners of his mouth. "Countess, I was beginning to think we would not be seeing you tonight." He was a stout man, with thinning blond hair and bags under his eyes. He did not look as though he'd been getting much sleep.

Jeanne laughed inwardly at the use of the royal plural. The man had driven every one of his retainers out of the dark, candlelit chamber in preparation for her arrival. He knew the Countess' reputation well and wished to add to it. He would not succeed, but without witnesses, he could claim anything he wanted. "I very nearly didn't arrive. Your city guard detained me at the gate and caused me an unconscionable delay. You must have a word with them, explain what is proper and what is not."

"I'm sorry Countess, but these are difficult times. Rumour has Jeanne's army stationed not a stone's throw from here. They say it is millions of men strong. Some claim that demons march with her, others avenging angels. They say she will not be stopped until all the world is part of France." He grinned at her, to show the sophisticated countess what he thought of such peasants' babble. "So tell me, what is the true news from the front?"

"For once, the rumours have more truth in them than lies. The army of France has won victory after victory, and they advance upon this city as we speak. The English have been unable to stop them, and they are much more concerned about reducing their own losses than in aiding their Burgundy allies lying in Jeanne's path. Whoever told you that they are nearby spoke truly, as their general headquarters is less than an hour's walk from this very chamber. They have been in position for two days."

He paled, well aware that though the countess was not allied to either faction, her information was always reliable. "If they are that close, why haven't they attacked us yet? And why have my scouts been unable to spot an army of that size?"

Jeanne waved his concern aside. "The army is not as large as they have led you to believe – it is large enough to put this city under siege, and more than enough to reduce your pathetic city guard if they create a breach or crest the walls, but it is easily hidden." She looked straight into his eyes. "Do you have some wine?"

Two goblets appeared as if by magic and Jeanne sniffed one. She nodded her approval – Burgundy might have been following the devil's path against the true king of France, but there was little wrong with their wine. She took a sip, watched intently as he drank and relaxed when he swallowed.

"Even with a small force, I still don't understand why she hasn't attacked us yet. She must know that we cannot hold."

Jeanne wondered how much to tell the man, and decided that the truth would serve her better than any dissembling would. "Jeanne has not attacked because she believes in the goodness of all French people. She thinks that Auxerre will come to its senses, renounce the treaty with the English and open her gates to the true king of France."

"That is ridiculous. She knows that all of Burgundy supports Henry. Why would we renounce our honour by forswearing?"

"Because Henry is an Englishman," she said, more harshly than would have been natural for Countess Renée. She took a few deep breaths to steady herself. Her plan had already been put into action. Offending her host would serve no purpose. The next words she spoke were much calmer. "She believes that you will see the light and surrender the town."

His eyes blazed. "Does she think me craven? I will fight her to the last man if need be."

"She knows you are not craven. But she also believes, truly knows, that God is on her side. She has told her troops that Auxerre will either open her gates on your command or that you will be struck dead before noon tomorrow and Auxerre will capitulate under the orders of your successor."

He laughed. "Do her troops believe this? Has anyone been struck dead by her prayers in this campaign?"

"Thousands of the enemy have died as a result of her prayers. She has received guidance that can only be described as divine. Even your own peasants whisper that the city will open its gates. She is convinced that God guides her actions, sends her plans in the night and keeps her from death no matter how badly she is wounded. Her troops would lay siege to hell itself if she told them that it stood against the interests of France and her rightful king."

"Yes, I'm aware of the loyalty she commands, and I know full well that the city cannot hold out more than a few days. But I'm prepared to delay her progress for as long as possible. Perhaps reinforcements will arrive in time, or perhaps we can use the time for other purposes. And besides, I'm not at all certain that Jeanne isn't a witch who has cast some kind of glamour over half of the nation. How can they accept a woman who refuses to act in a seemly way? Even the way she dresses must be an insult to God."

"Not if God has commanded her to do so."

"No, but that is difficult to believe. What other news do you have for me?"

Jeanne sighed inwardly and gave the man an accurate, although incomplete assessment of the loyalist forces in the field. Enough that the Countess Renée's reputation would remain intact, not enough that the information would cause suspicion.

She left the man with a heavy heart, but content that her decision had been the correct one. Luc was a proud man, who would never surrender his city. His death would be a tragedy, but he would not be able to live with the decision she needed him to take. God was merciful in these matters.

Her return to headquarters was much less eventful than the road out, and dawn found her sitting at the head of a table speaking to her field commanders.

"We need to strike immediately," one man said. He was just a young artillery captain, but older and wiser heads around the table nodded their agreement.

"No. The city will capitulate."

"Why do you insist? They show no signs of capitulating. Luc is a proud man, and loyal to his Duke."

"If Luc wishes to resist, he will not survive the morning. The city will be ours by noon, and no French blood will be spilt. God has told me so."

There was a shuffling around the table as the men shifted uncomfortably. No matter how often she was proved right, they still would not believe. Only her iron grip on the army kept them from openly resisting her commands. Still, it was better to show confidence in their abilities than to crush them under her heel.

"I know that it will not be necessary, but I will allow you to plan for an assault. If the city does not capitulate before midday, you may attempt to storm it two hours after noon."

Another shuffle, tinged with relief, spread across the table as the men left to prepare. The artillery captain stopped on his way out. "Pardon me, general, but will you want to review our plans?"

She smiled at him. He was loyal if misguided. "There will be no need. I will wait here for the emissaries."

His eyes widened, but he just nodded and left.

Jeanne prayed as the morning advanced. She didn't pray for the surrender of Auxerre. That had been promised, and the promise would be kept. She prayed for the people of France and the expulsion of foreign armies from her beloved soil. She prayed for a swift end to the bloodshed. And she prayed for her own soul, which had been forced, for the good of the light, to do things that many found questionable.

When the emissaries from Auxerre arrived at midmorning, surrounded by her own bewildered officers, she just smiled wanly. "I hope Luc's death was a painless one."

"No, Your Grace, it wasn't. He died horribly, screaming to the last."

She ignored the incorrect form of address and nodded. "God works in mysterious ways, my friends. I take it you are ready to surrender."

"More than that. We want to join you." His eyes widened and he made the sign of the cross. "We believe now."

"Good. All Christians are welcome in my army. I accept your offer." She gestured to her officers to take the men away. They could deal with the details, and with pacifying any resistance that might still smoulder in Auxerre. She had to pray a little more.

She thanked God for the guidance and then prayed for the soul of Luc, former mayor of Auxerre, struck down in his prime by the hand of god and a goblet of wine with just a little face powder in it.

She resolved to throw away the last of that powder, though it would make disguising herself as the Countess much more difficult. But the evidence was there: it had to be a product of the devil. Why else would something calculated to make men and women sin contain both lead and arsenic? But it had done its job.

Jeanne, her prayers complete, got up to face the rest of the day. It would be a busy one...

"...because her army needed to replenish, and establish its new base within the walls of the city, to plan the rest of the war," Scheherazade said. "And she was successful. The war ended with her king, the man she believed was the rightful king, on the throne of that far land to the north and west."

Shahryar smiled, satisfied at the conclusion of the tale. But then his eyes saw what he'd never seen before. "Scheherazade," he said, "the sun is rising, and you have not begun your next story."

She cast her eyes towards the floor. "I have told you a thousand stories in a thousand and one nights," she said. "I have no more tales to tell. Over this time, you have come to know me well, have given me three sons for your greater glory. I believe the time has come for you to decide what it is you wish to do with me."

Shahryar smiled. "Have you poisoned my wine?"

"No, my liege. But I hope to have planted seeds of doubt in your heart."

He looked into her eyes for a long time, and the hour grew much later than what was customary for them. Finally, Shahryar spoke. "I will tell you your fate this evening. Come to me at the usual hour." And then he smiled, something she'd rarely seen, even after the most thrilling of her tales. "There is no need for you to prepare a story."

Invasion Day

Victoria Knight

Australia

Rymar drew in a deep breath and tasted the lemon in the air; it was clean and pleasantly cool. He considered how he would approach the terrorist's location, he couldn't just walk up and say, hello, I am here for your secret meeting. He touched the node behind his ear and logged into the network. He tapped into his office files and brought up the list of those possibly attending. He put in an order to apprehend a few. This would add a sense of normality to the occasion. His fake ID belonged to a member who was currently in custody. He was not known to attend this cell's meetings. He flexed his hands, feeling the skin gloves tighten a little more.

The building was new and bristled with alien-manufactured smart eyes and recognition systems. The Dar technology had both sent humans to war and now allowed them their freedom. The three-storey building was wide and squat; it displayed solar panels swivelling on gimbals to make the most of the daylight. Every wall was dedicated to power generation, either solar cells or wind ribbons, spinning and waving about on the slightest of breezes. He had to admit to himself he was tense. He never took operations himself, but today was a special day and he knew the Revivalists would be planning a special attack. The alien occupation had only lasted less than a hundred years, but they had been like an ever-watchful parent in space for the last two hundred years. Their arrival tonight for the three-hundredth Anniversary of their coming had to be protected.

He stood at the front of the building. A prism guard; all refracted light and rainbow determination blocked his way. His face would show the fake ID on the prism's recognition mirrors and the security would be running quick checks on that identity. His office would be matching this with identification inserts. The guard would bombard his ID with questions and the AI would answer and deflect until the guard accepted his facial recognition. He would have to place his hand on the surface on one side of the prism and allow it to absorb some of his DNA for the final identification. The fake hands would do this and it would be enough to get in anyway, getting to the meeting might take something else. He had been so long out of the field he now wished he'd listened to his wife and sent an arrest team. There was more to learn though and he would be less of a Commander if he could not complete a basic fact finding mission himself.

He removed his hands from the prism, the light flashed a rainbow of colours, distorted and pulsed before he saw a door in a blank face of the building turn white. Entrance granted.

"Wait," someone said from behind as he went to pass through the opened door. He turned. A young woman, a law enforcement officer in a blue uniform with silver epaulets, ran to him.

"Yes," he offered, not sure if he should quickly get her away from the building.

"Hold the door for me."

His heart raced. An officer was about to blow his operation. He held the door with his palm flat against the closing mechanism. She nodded at him as she removed her small cap. He had to say something. Had to stop her.

"I'm..."

"Get out of the way, before someone sees me." She pushed past him and into the building. He followed, fumbling for his hidden Commander's ID.

"You don't understand..."

"You're new," she said, studying him. "Once the guard clears you get inside. Someone will come get you. Until then keep moving, unless you want to get arrested for sedition?" She headed across the open receiving area with its yellow and grey tiled floor and brilliantly lit ceiling. There were lift stalls in the centre of the floor and an information desk across one wall. She looked back and waved him towards a panel near one of the lift stalls. She pressed her hand against the wall and it opened to reveal a door. He hurried to her. She started down the stairs two at a time. He followed carefully and slowly. At the bottom of the stairs, he was met by a tall man holding a metal object; it looked like a weapon. He had two crowd suppressors and a knife but hoped he would have no need for them.

"Search him, Julio," the law officer said.

The man pressed the metal object against his chest, it hurt and for some reason, Rymar thought raising his hands above his head might be a wise thing to do.

"Nothing," the man said after searching roughly.

"Today is Invasion Day," the officer said, "Why aren't you out celebrating?"

"Because it is Invasion Day and there is nothing to celebrate." He stiffened his back and clenched his jaw. "Unlike others, I do not worship the Dar."

"The prism cleared him," she said turning away, "Now I've cleared him. Let's get on with it, we only have a couple of hours."

Rymar took several deep breaths and realised he'd come so close to giving himself away. His field training was rusty. Once he was free of the basement he would be able to add this officer to the pickup list. What did the Revivalists know that would turn the mind of a screened officer? The Dar didn't make mistakes when it came to screening. This young woman must have seen something that questioned the very truth of the past. He could suspect a few things; he had questioned aspects of those days many times himself, but he had not turned.

The study of Earth history was almost forced on the population by the Dar by the start of the second century after arrival, and he could understand why people might not trust an invading species' account of events. Some of what he had learned was damning. Many of the data feeds, live images recorded on human held equipment, showed what he had come to believe. The human race was destroying itself. Were the Dar an influence humans could do without? He clenched his jaw again. He was not here to be converted.

"We are secure," a voice rang out, amplified by wall pickups. He shouldn't have been surprised by smart textures. "In a few hours the celebration of our planet's invasion will commence, and we, the free people of Adelaide and of the wider world will make a stand. We will strike back at our invaders," the voice, a young man with a beard, was saying. "We do not celebrate."

"We do not celebrate," the gathering echoed.

"We do not celebrate!" the man yelled.

"We do not celebrate!" the others yelled, punching the air. He joined the chant and felt the darkening mood of the crowd as his own fist punched up over his head.

"These Dar. These abominations slaughtered our Government officials, slaughtered our industrialists, slaughtered our business leaders, and slaughtered our people to make way for their own secret plans for the human race." The man punched the air.

"We do not celebrate!"

"They keep secrets and our own kind do the hiding for them," he shouted, the walls vibrated with his voice. "Billions died of starvation. Billions died from wars and billions died at the hands of the Dar."

"We do not celebrate!"

To Rymar it sounded like they were listening to an often-chanted speech, and all knew their parts. So far he had heard nothing to cause him concern; it was nothing he didn't know from reports taken from those who had been arrested. Yes, he knew billions had died when the Dar arrived and shut down the corporations through stealthy meetings with the then world leaders. Billions had died when the money stopped flowing and it was discovered the wealthy had only hoarded enough food and water for themselves. He still questioned why so many had to die in those early years, everyone in government did, but the Dar seemed happy for humans to assume the worst. The man stopped yelling. Rymar lost sight of him behind heads as he shifted to get a better view.

"These aliens, these filthy things sacrificed us," the law enforcement officer stated. "They forced nations into wars with each other over food and water." This was not part of a script, the people seemed to grow anxious with this. "I have learned that families across the many Africa's starved to death and the Dar could have stopped it. They started the wars and could have stopped them as easily, but they didn't."

History tells a slightly different story, Rymar knew, though not a lot different. The wealthy raised armies to protect their holdings after the Dar took all the leaders. These leaders of humanity had been shown in negotiations offering only greed and requesting only they should have access to the wonders of the space visitors. It had been a trap. The most obvious power brokers went first then the Dar left the world to decide for itself how the next hundred years should be.

Another chant went up and as he fist-punched the air he felt some connection with these people. He still had the same nagging questions. He had no issue with what came after and what they lived now, but could it have been handled differently? The room was getting stuffy and the smell of close bodies was giving him a headache. He squinted and tried not to breathe through his nose.

"The Dar take water from the oceans. They do not ask. They do not pay. They just take. We will not celebrate!" The woman poked her fingers out at the gathering as if blaming them for the past.

"We will not celebrate!" the body of people yelled and he yelled with them.

"The Dar control all communication. Everything goes through their networks and uses their technology. The Dar filter our messages and suppress the news so only what they want us to hear is heard. I have seen information vanish before my very eyes. I have personally seen what happens to Revivalists captured. They are given to the Dar, who I suspect eat them."

The crowd gasped.

"We will not celebrate!" The woman yelled.

"We will not celebrate!" the crowd responded with ferocity and anger. "We will not celebrate!"

"The Dar have experimented on our children. They have stolen babies from hospitals to never be seen again." She was pacing back and forth before them, face red and eyes hard stones.

"We will not celebrate!"

In the heat of the room, Rymar was feeling the growing passion in the crowd. His heart raced and his head pounded with indignation. What she said wasn't true. Her conviction was somehow making it true. The Dar took sea water for their ships and their sustenance and nothing more. The Dar only ever visited on Invasion Day when they traded technology for the water they had taken. What they didn't use was sent back as rain over the oceans.

Even in her silence, the feeling of the crowd was building. More was happening here than he'd first thought. He scanned the crowd and used a facial recognition application as each face fell into his view. While he couldn't access the network, it could access data he had stored in his mind. Rymar stopped on a face. Identifications came up immediately. It was his husband. He quickly turned away. If he saw him then everything was over. He was a Revivalist. How did he miss this?

"We will not celebrate!" Interrupted his moment of surprise. The woman was talking again, only this time he wasn't listening. His husband stared on, transfixed. He had been visiting him at his office regularly for the last few years with questions and seeking clarification of what he was doing and why it was keeping him from home. He had thought it simple spousal disdain for his long hours. He thought of failed pickups had this happened after one of his visits? He took another glance at his beautiful face, his fair skin, and blonde hair. He had been a fool. He had been used.

"We will not celebrate!"

"Now we will act. "The woman said with a sure determination. Rymar looked to her. "Now we will take back what is ours. Now we will overturn the Dar and send them back to whatever hell they call home. Today, my brothers and sisters, the Dar are no longer our rulers." The woman yelled and the gathering cheered.

Moving away from his husband, Rymar made his way to the farther edge of the crowd. He could see the woman clearly now but couldn't see his husband; his own personal betrayer. His wife, Marta, had only ever shown interest in his health. She had only ever wanted to enjoy a dinner with him, which he always put off because of work. He had entertained his husband's inquisitiveness as pride. Oh, how wrong he had been.

"Right across the world we have meetings like this taking place, all at the same time and all with the one goal," she said, raising her hand to keep the anxious people silent. She turned to one of the men behind her and he handed her a hand-sized disc of silver; it could have been an everyday communications device. They were free and easily obtained. "Each of you will be given one of these and each of you will go to a celebration in your region and you will enter the landing platforms." Silence fell, and the overwhelming stink became a blanket of stillness and heat. The officer raised the disc. "These are neural mines and will kill anyone who is within two hundred metres, Dar and humans alike. The Dar and their supporters will be eliminated." Still, silence held a collected breath. "You will have two and a half hours to plant the devices and get yourself to a safe distance away from the blast field." She waved her hand over the group. "These mines are pre-set, you need activate nothing, just hide them close to the landing platforms. Remember, get them within two hundred metres of the zone and you will kill the Dar and the traitors who do their bidding." She offered a smile so cold he felt a shiver down his spine. "Each of you take one and take your part in ending the rule of lies and oppression."

No one spoke, all stared to the front and all watched the young law enforcement officer and her hard face.

"We do not celebrate!" She punched the air. The crowd roared their response.

Quietly, men with large boxes walked about handing out the discs. Men and women took one, gazed at it briefly before putting it in a pocket or within the folds of a coat. He knew what he must do. He closed his eyes and replayed all the woman had said. The truth about the water and what it might mean. Water spouts reached into the sky every few months. The Dar employed people to operate machines to pump. All on Earth were considered equal in some way, but humans being humans this didn't always hold true. The world had free health care, free housing, free transport - individual and communal. Everyone had access to free elections and could choose whatever government they wanted. People no longer needed to work if they didn't want to, though many did because they enjoyed the strong notion of community. He understood it wasn't a perfect life but they were free. He reminded himself of all these things. The woman was wrong, she had to be wrong. Then, what was freedom if it was something given out rather than earned and won? He looked to his husband and saw his smile, the union in a common cause and something he had not seen in him since their wedding day. The box reached him and he took a disc. His own platform was in a cleared area with only factories nearby, but several platforms were close to residential complexes and even schools. Children would be flocking to the landings to try and get a look at an elusive Dar and their enormous craft. Tens of thousands would be around every arrival.

Was the activation of the discs any worse than what the Dar did to all of humanity when it first arrived? They came in peace, offered wonders and called the world leaders and barons of industry to its feet; then killed them all. He looked once more to the woman. She was smiling and talking with another woman, another conspirator. He put the disc in a pocket and slid from his sleeve both crowd suppressors. With hesitation and regret, he thumbed both activation tags and dropped the cubes on the floor. He heard the screech as a muffled hum.

Everyone but the law officer fell to their knees, first with their hands over their ears and then toppling sideways unconscious. He stared at the woman and wasn't surprised she hadn't been knocked out by the crowd control devices. She would be shielded just like him.

"You can't stop it," she said flatly. "Even if this district is saved, all the others will fall. Thousands of Dar ships will be ours for the taking."

He looked at the still faces scattered about him. These people had been prepared to kill hundreds of thousands to overthrow their masters. He looked to the officer who pointed a weapon at him.

"Why?" he asked, seriously interested in the answer.

"Because this is our planet, not theirs. This is our freedom to have not theirs to give."

He stepped towards her, she pointed the weapon and a loud bang erupted from its end. He felt a stinging in his side. He rubbed at the pain for a moment then looked down to see blood on his shirt. He touched at it with his right hand while the walls rang with noise. He felt the sting of radiating pain from his side. He pushed open the hole in his shirt and saw he was bleeding. Rymar glanced at what was in her hand.

"It is a projectile weapon. A gun from our distant past," she said. "Fitting weapon don't you think; one in keeping with the anniversary."

"It is quite a messy weapon it appears," he said, pressing his fingers into the wound and feeling the stickiness of blood. "As I am not dead, I can only assume you only meant to slow me."

"Who are you?" She waved the gun.

"Commander Rymar Lane, Chief Monitor for the Dar Control Unit in this city."

"Then I should just shoot you dead now." She aimed.

"Wait." He held up both hands feeling his left side grab. "Why are you doing this. Why kill millions of innocents?" He'd heard the answer, it just felt like a good time to delay dying. "Yes, the wars were bad, but they helped and allowed us to rebuild. We have had two hundred years without war."

The woman didn't lower the gun. She seemed to relax and that meant she wasn't ready to shoot him just yet.

"You know the histories," she started. "Like me, you would have studied them in the academies." He nodded. "Then who gave the Dar the right to overthrow our way of life and replace it with... with this." She waved the gun about the room. "What have they done to us? Forced us to work for their own benefit?" She was angry. "The wars, the famines, what was it all for but to weaken us, to take away our rights and freedoms."

"You are reciting propaganda," he said, lowering his hands so he could feel comfortable. He could feel blood running down his leg; it soaked through from his shirt. "I have been privileged to also see the world before the Dar came."

"What they wanted you to see." The gun pointed straighter and her body stiffened. "They tell us half-truths, show us lies and call them reality."

"In some of that I can only agree with you," he said. "The world was once a place of starvation and cruelty. Everything on the planet was owned and controlled by the bare few and tens of billions were in poverty."

"So, you think them coming was right? You think what they did to us was right?"

"I use to." He pressed his fingers to his side and winced; it hurt now. "But what you have said has made me realise things aren't as clear as I thought, or believed." He took a step towards her and he could see she was crying.

"They let the wars happen. They could have stopped them. They have the power. Shit it all to dirt, they gave us the technology to overthrow them, so why hold back." The gun lowered slightly. He took another step, then another, the woman was looking at him. "Now we will use that technology to bring them down." Her voice hardened. "They will learn just how violent we can be when we want something."

A solid, cold lump dropped into his palm, he clenched his throat and found it hard to swallow. The officer was right, the Dar could have stopped many things, they could have saved nearly five billion people from death in the first twenty alone, but they hadn't. He thought he knew why. There were just too many of people on the planet; it was a hard truth he, even now, struggled to accept.

"There must be another way?" He took yet another step forward. "What is your name? Tell me. I am not the enemy." Another small step.

"Officer Kelian." She raised the gun and pointed it at his head. "You won't be able to stop it; everything has already been planned. The signal will be sent regardless of what happens here."

"Maybe you are right." Things wouldn't change, not now and not ever. With the Dar gone, what would the world be like without them? How would humanity evolve without their influence or over-riding governance? He took another few steps and was close to her now. "We need more from the Dar, and we need to know more about ourselves."

He could see her shoulders tense and caught a flicker in her eyes. He took a greater step into her, wrapped his left arm over her outstretched one and heard a shot. The gun deafened him. His ears rang. She struggled. He thrust up and pulled her in close. She stiffened. Gasped then stilled. As he let her slide to the ground he heard the clatter of the gun as it dropped from her hand. His blade was pushed up under her ribs and through her heart. She would have died quickly.

"Today we do not celebrate," he said as he laid her on the floor.

Once out of the building he called his vehicle and used its facilities to decode the neural device and block the signal. He sat in his seat of the car; the warm leather soft about him and the crisp scent of limes coming through the vehicle's air refresher. His side ached a little. He'd treated it with wound patch and it would heal soon enough. It took a few minutes to decode the device and less than a minute to get up a total deactivation signal. Rymar let his office fend off reports of Dar interference with television broadcasts. The Revivalists had piggybacked the general transmission signal of the TV stations which would have all been running Dar celebration shows. The activation code would have triggered the moment the Dar ships had started opening their hatches. The stations were only down for a few minutes; no one would miss the show.

"Your suit is ready," the vehicle said, once he had allowed the fragrance and some medication to settle his mind. He was feeling worn out and his mind craved rest.

"Tell Mardi we will have dinner before the celebration ceremony."

"But what about the Prime Minister's dinner, she has booked this time."

"I have not enjoyed a meal with my wife in years, she can wait."

"This is unprofessional, Commander; it could harm your progression through the political sphere." The car didn't sound committed to the statement.

"Contact, Mardi, and have her meet me for dinner at 8. Book me a table at Styles in New Unley Plains, in fact, book out the whole restaurant. I want to be alone with my wife. Send a car for her." He had just lost a husband and didn't want to push Mardi away tonight. He loved her and she was right to feel concerned for him.

"You have done a great thing today, Commander Rymar Lane," the vehicle said as it set off towards the restaurant. "The Dar will be appreciative of your actions."

"I didn't do it for the Dar."

"They know."

He rubbed at his temples and the hard headache that had started up after he placed a healing patch over his side wound. Drugs always gave him headaches. "But I know why the Dar did what they thought was right."

"The Dar are always right."

"Today we are not celebrating Invasion Day, we are celebrating Salvation Day." He looked out the window at the defuse world and its calm reality. "They saved us from ourselves and today I understood why."

A Slice of Heaven

Zayan Guedim

Algeria

I didn't know her as a deity of destruction, I knew her as Luna, a gee-whiz, tantalizing brunette. She falls into that category of delicacies whose taste and texture, unparalleled, are not close to anything else. Like the Tennessee whiskey, drained through maple charcoal, like fresh truffles I picked, a child, in the surroundings of the village.

Luna, boastful, claims the inhabitants of Easter Island feared her and built the Moai statues to scare her off, that Nazca people sacralised her and etched those geoglyphs to immortalize the animal forms she took before every rain. From what I've seen, I can vouch for that.

"No one's to blame, not me, not you Ali. What began has to end, or else to begin wouldn't mean squat," she said, seemingly delving into the nostalgic, "Adam and Eve, expelled from Paradise, rid of immortality, regained their composure when they discovered that their new home had all the delights they were used to. Earth was the reflection of Paradise, temperate with a tropical tone. Climate was uniformly tepid year-round; no overlapping seasons, no seasons at all. Just an endless spring. Then the Flood changed everything, it disfigured the world and acted as a catalyst for climate diversification. Nothing was the same again. Man, lost the longevity enjoyed by the antediluvian patriarchs while inheriting an antsy planet that's been struggling to settle ever since..." I cut her off, in my mind. I'm not listening.

What begins should end. For me, it all began in that day. It was a Tuesday, December 24, 1985. Leaving Anchorage Airport aboard a limousine, I, still clinging to the arm of Scarlet, finally managed to articulate the word she's been trying to teach me during the flight, the word that inaugurated my English vocabulary, 'Mother!' Through the foggy window, I contemplated streets sparkling with garlands and trees weighed down with snow. It was Christmas Eve. It was snowing... unheard-of for me. I was ten years old and came from a village, embedded between khaki dunes, where rain was few and far between. Since then, I went by the name of Al Summerson; I've never been called by my real first name until I met her, thirty Christmases later.

I met her yesterday, I think. She came to Alaska to attend the first International Conference on Climate Recovery, where I delivered the keynote speech. She approached me at luncheon and asked if she could speak to me, pronouncing my name "Ali" by stressing the A, à la Algerian. I quickly left the table, taking leave of my two guests, and potential grub stakes, for a brief conversation with her. I learned that her name was Luna, weather presenter and environmentalist. She wanted to interview me for her blog. I accepted and immediately, in my heart, I confessed myself loser. I answered her questions before she evoked Ice-Ember project, questioning its "ambiguous" nature. I simply said that it was for the good of all living beings. "That's a pat answer!" She tilted her head slightly to one side, her eyes turning an inviting look on me. I promised her to "spill all the beans about Ice-Ember if you accept my dinner invitation."

So, I'm waiting for her and, in the meantime, I gave her blog a check. Yesterday's interview is already there:

"Today we have a special guest: Mr. Al Summerson, an Algerian-American, the Rock Star of Environment. There is no need to introduce him, but for those who live in a cave and have not heard of him, do yourself a favour by following this link: www.worldarchives(.)org/biographies/Al_Summerson.

...

"EL: Welcome to EcoLUNAtic.

AS: Thanks — glad to be here.

EL: Do you prefer Sir Al or Si Ali?

AS: All the same, it doesn't matter to me.

EL:Then, Sir Ali! I have not seen your mother, Mrs. Summerson, didn't she attend the conference?

AS: No, she didn't. Mother is bedridden in the hospital.

EL: My prayers are with her. She's your adoptive mother...?

AS: I call her mother tout court. I am her son and I owe her everything.

EL: Everything is not much for a wealthy heiress like her...
AS: Money is but a random variable in an equation whose constant is love. She adopted me and offered me the world — or rather, she offered me to the world. She made me the mascot of green environment, a sworn enemy of human stupidity, a bullhorn for muzzled victims across the globe.

EL: Thanks for bringing that up. The media dubbed you Green Pope, Saint Al —your Americanised name— and recently gave you the unflattering nickname, Carbon Tycoon. What do you think?

AS: I could see where they're coming from. It is a human tendency to focus on the moment, for not using synthetic thinking, or lack thereof. When I defend the environment, I'm a pope, they cheer me on, and when I do business like everybody, they get leery.

EL: Some criticize you for your high-carbon-footprint lifestyle that, they say, tramples underfoot the same principles you profess. You consume twenty times more energy than an average household, you use a private jet for your travels...

AS: That's true. But you should ask that Namibian farmer whose harvest has been disseminated by the drought, this Maldivian child who is defenceless against the ocean that threatens to engulf his native atoll, or that bear trapped on an ice floe, which, thanks to our sustained work, have come to be clichéd photos after being completely unknown. Ask them if their lives had not improved a little bit after we visited them in my private jet, a visit planned from my power-hungry house-cum-offices.

..."

I do not want to read what I said yesterday. I clicked on the link Weather Watch. Luna provides a torrid weekend.

"As December is coming to a close, there is not a shadow of a cloud in the sky. A never-seen-before anticyclone is still getting in the way of cumulonimbi and the few isolated tufts of cloud formations that manage to sneak in, vanish immediately afterward. The weather is forecast to stay hot and dry, throughout Algeria. Blistering days with extreme readings are still ahead, searing 30° to 36 ° C temps. and a staggering 23° dew point which..."

I admire the way she stands in front of the map of Algeria. I know that in reality, she's doing her description in front of a chromakey background, but she seems as one with Algeria, and I cannot help but fantasize about both of them.

She came. We left. Destination: Ice-Ember facilities.

During the excursion, I serve as a tour guide:

"We have created the ultimate invention: Ice-Ember. From now on, weather forecasts, no offense, are archaic. This grid of hundreds of antennas you see allows us to transmit huge amounts of energy into the ionosphere that turns into a giant radiator. The secret is to know where and when to release this energy to produce the desired effect where we like it to. This is not science fiction, it's a project we took out from the drawers of the Cold War, giving it our fresh touch. Ideal weather will be, is, a click away! You get that!" Without looking surprised, she said she had heard about those attempts, like cloud seeding, but thought they were just theoretical concepts and couldn't see the benefits of such a project. "Benefits? You want me to cite concrete and recent examples? We neutralized a series of tornadoes that would've killed thousands of Americans, dismantling them or driving them on the ocean more easily than a car on the highway. Contrariwise, we created controlled hurricanes to sweep the smog that had been choking Malaysia and Hong Kong without damaging the urban tissues." "And the most direct benefit: money, you sell rain and sunshine." "Basically. By the way, that's off the record! Look, let's have some hot dogs, they'll tide us over till dinner." I feel cold. I got cold when I shook her hand at the conference, and since then I have not stopped shaking. A cold that's emanating from Luna.

She doesn't seem to appreciate the reindeer hot dogs for which I'd an irrepressible craving. The clouds, piled up since the morning, started to drizzle. Luna, distraught, throws the sandwich and runs, heading for cover under a cedar. I run behind her. "It's water! A weather presenter who hates rain!" I told her, wrapping her in my arms. Her face's pale and she's breathing in gasps, her blue lips quiver as she says: "I do not suffer the rain!" Not concerning; most girls hate rain that could mess up their hairdo, although her deconstructed ponytail is rainproof. However, these dark stains are very concerning. Elongated purple-black stains, appearing on her face and hands, the parts of her skin that were exposed to rain.

In my place, after dinner, I'm in the bathroom shaving when Luna, in a white bathrobe, her auburn hair side parted, enters to take a shower. The stains on her face became faint, perhaps a rash outbreak caused by some sort of allergy. She wants me to go, saying she doesn't want me to take her for a "partridge" in search of a warm nest. I laughed. "You look like it, though, the partridge, or the ptarmigan, whose plumage during winter turns white, brown on the head. Look at you!" She pulls the shower curtain, without a word. I'm fantasizing about her again, I see myself a drop of water gliding across her skin, navigating her undulating body before crashing at her feet. I cut my chin; droplets of blood splattered the sink. Red over white, what a contrast. I drank alone and went to bed, alone, to my dismay. I let there be light. A lava flow poured into my veins when I found Luna lying in the bed, au naturel. I see nothing. I see everything. I see all my cravings, all my fantasies, like fragments of an exploded picture, sticking together to define her pretty face and the contours of her sylph body. A double intoxication scooped me up. I flipped on the darkness switch.

I woke up, lively and fresh, astir early unlike usual. Aromas. I went down. The kitchen is redolent with scents of the past, orange blossom water and cinnamon, morning coffee. Luna has prepared an Algerian breakfast, lozenge-shaped makrouds filled with date paste and sesame seeds, soaked in honey syrup. The rash on her face disappeared; ditto her smile.

"Are they my Christmas gift, those?" I asked her.

"No. You'll have your gift soon."

"The glycemic index of them makrouds is unsurpassable, it is good for a hangover."

She remained silent, reluctant to speak. I drove her to the airport.

"And your village back home, what misfortune had befallen it?" She says as she opens the car's door before stepping outside, "Where were you that day?" She left this question to the morning of her departure, a question to which I don't have a satisfying answer as yet. How would she know about that episode of my life? My official biography begins with that scene, thirty years ago. In 1985, I was ten. "Disaster... a natural disaster," I said, stammering, "a leitmotiv in the annals of the clash between elements and human. Nature, what a dreadful weapon in the hands of God!" By way of farewell or invitation, she gave me my gift, unwrapped and hot. Grabbing me by the necktie, she trapped me in a tell-tale kiss. She left me frostbitten, with a dry mouth and a bleeding lip.

Then I remembered my village, but not that day. A hodgepodge of time-tarnished dusty images came back.

Luna left, I spent the next two hours chewing gum sticks to moisten my mouth, and applying cold compresses over my busted lip. I got a call about an incident that had never happened before. Yesterday, in a dangerous precedent, we lost control of the computers. Ice-Ember had gone completely haywire and its reboot would take days. Then, a second call from the office of the Algerian Prime Minister. The Algerians, infuriated, deferred payment for they got the opposite of what they were waiting for. They were expecting rain and cool weather in accordance with the results-based deal we agreed on. The breakdown of Ice-Ember had caused a sizzling heatwave over Algeria, already asphyxiated by several months of drought. A manmade drought. I gave them my word; that we would neutralize the anticyclone and that rain was forthcoming. They demanded my presence for contract renegotiation, giving me a forty-eight-hour ultimatum to make it rain; their Ministry of Religious Affairs was planning to hold a prayer of rain in all mosques of the country so that they'd take sole credit for it. The unstable health of Scarlett prevents me from leaving Anchorage, she's been hospitalized for over a month. I am sure the Algerians are right now looking for another supplier. We're not the only horse in this race, yet my team is top notch, and Ice-Ember is a state-of-the-art ionospheric heater. Russians built their own heater, so huge and clunky that its maintenance costs make it unprofitable. The Chinese one, a pale copy of Ice-Ember, is like any other Chinese knockoff, mediocre and prone to breakdowns. Europeans, as usual, obsessed to catch up with the United States, also built theirs, pompously called the Large Hadron Collider, disguised as a non-profit scientific project.

In the kitchen that has nothing of the colours and flavours of yesterday, I am preparing a mocha coffee when the phone rang for the third time. This time, it was mother. Her voice made me jump. She recovered the use of her tongue and hands. I rushed to her bedside. I found her singing The Twelve Days of Christmas, a willow ptarmigan was keening at her side, all brown as if it were summertime. She thanked me for the bird before returning to sing. I left her.

They were de-icing the plane, parked on the tarmac for weeks. It seemed that everything lent itself to this trip constantly postponed. Algerian officials were awaiting me; Scarlett had a sudden remission; Luna was there. I knew I was going to make that long journey eventually, and I was seeing in my head how everybody would be waiting for Al, but none for Ali. I texted Luna, announcing my arrival and where she would find me.

*

I levitate like a yogi, free from gravity's yoke and relieved of my own weight, airy and light, yet I'm dreading the descent, which is as ineluctable as night after day. In the glass booth, absorbed in my ascent, I long to see her again, eager for her cuddles. The elevator opens. I went to the room. Luna is not here. I turn off all the lights, with no big difference, the interior remains dripping with sunshine. Outside the city is agonizing. I have travelled all over the world but I never stepped foot back into Algeria; here I am today, after so many years. Its sun, the first to welcome me, is indifferent to what is going on around it, always true to its mission whose order is simple: shine and let die.

I won't attend the meeting with the PM unless I see Luna. Waiting for her, I sat on the balcony sofa. The smell of the city is fleeting there, the smell of tin, of a scrubbed sink, salty and persistent. I think about that day, long ago. Not the day I left Algeria, the day I arrived in America. Scarlett and I had just landed at Anchorage Airport. I passed from one extreme to the other, like an incandescent metal immersed in cold water. When I touched snow for the first time, my pockets were still full of sand. And I learned to hate extremes. And I had since taken a liking to good weather, which I followed everywhere: Christchurch, Malaga, Kailua-Kona. I don't like Alaska where I spent every last week of November, Thanksgiving Day is Scarlett's. I've been always on a flight and a quest; fleeing summer torridity and winter dullness, in a desperate quest of an eternal spring.

A shiver coursed down my back, only then I noticed the presence of Luna and her hand on my shoulder. She put a bottle of whiskey on the table.

"What are you doing here... now?"

"Thanks, and I too am glad to see you!"

She opens the bottle and pours me a glass on the rocks, serving me a sip, livened up with a heady kiss.

"Jack Daniel's, your favourite spirit, isn't it?"

"You bet! But how do you know?"

"I know all about you."

"Gimme more!"

"Whiskey?"

"You!"

Hands on hips, she is standing before me; the space around her blurs. The black side slit gown she's sheathed in looks as if it were painted on her body, glittering with sequins. Sips won't do it. I downed four shots for I know our real interview is about to begin.

"What are you here for?" she said as she sat next to me, "Business or pleasure?"

"Funny... ha, ha! They usually ask me that at the airports!"

"They don't. You don't even pass through customs; I mean you're Al Summerson."

"Both. Americans, fond of portmanteau words, made it Bleasure."

"You see yourself as American or Algerian?"

"Both, again. I see myself as a double scoop ice cream cone. I'm Amegerian, here's a new one!"

She stood up and gave me her hand, to which I hung on as to a lifebuoy. We took the elevator down one floor. It opens to total dark; we're no longer in the hotel. Nothing but us. A vertical light beam comes down on us, creating a bright spot amid a sea of obscurity. We are face to face, arms and legs entwined. The sweat evaporates on the surface of my red-hot skin, and the skin of Luna is nacreous, cold; her fresh breath on my face is like a mountain breeze. "Don't let go, we'll die!" she whispered, "Don't you see?" The black veil lifted, I see that we are in the street, I think a street or a long corridor that runs through the city. As if an invisible line symmetrically divides it into halves. Luna and I are in the street or the corridor, or on the line, suspended in mid-air between two apocalyptic scenes. The extent of the city on the right burns under the light that pours down like melted lead; and on the left, is collapsing under the ice falling thickly. "Do not let go!" she repeated, glued to me, wrapping me with her arms in a feverish embrace. Mortals on both sides are crowding along the invisible line trying in vain to find a hole to cross into the other side, thinking it might be more clement. Those on the right, their scalded flesh peeling off, fall into red shreds, reduced to shapeless bloody heaps. While those on the left, petrified in suspended actions, are turned crumbling blocks. All that remains in their beings comes out into an ultimate liberating cry, quickly muffled in the tumult of the raging elements.

The city, between fire and ice, was annihilated over one orgasm. Luna pushes me back with her hand. "That's enough! Let's get back to the hotel!" I shouted and let myself fall to my knees, head in hands, "Stop it, I beg you, Luna!" She looks at me, smiling, "We are at the hotel!" I raise my head, we are inside the elevator, which going down slowly

"But why?" I asked her.

"You mean what befell to the city? That's the easy part," she replied, "If you could see it on the big canvas if you look at it through the prism of the great scheme of things, it wouldn't be that harrowing. It'd be merely a probability that has occurred, one of many that already had and others yet to. That's no news to me, so don't expect me to turn on the waterworks, honey! Pompeii, Port Royal, Ubar..."

No, I don't expect her to burst into tears, that would be unbefitting. She went on at length about her deeds, the incineration of Pompeii, the entombment of Ubar, the sinking of Port Royal and many other cases throughout history, enumerating all the ancient monuments dedicated to her around the world. I don't blame her for that. Neither do I bear her a grudge for what happened here, or what might happen next.

"I told you I'm onto all your schemes Al." She said as she remembered my presence.

"You work with Russians, the Chinese, huh? I confess that what I saw is ultra-sophisticated that even our engineers can't compete with." I said, as though I wanted to dedramatize the eeriness of what happened, make it of earthly origins, "Ice-Ember is capable of creating each of the two opposing effects, one at a time. But simultaneously over two spots or back-to-back in the same place? That's way beyond our grasp."

"You really think this is artificial, or maybe some American style gaudy special effects?" Her shrill laugh resounded through the booth, "Charity fundraisings and ribbon-cuttings are for Al the Goodwill Ambassador, Ice-Ember is for Al the businessman; what's in there for Ali, a score to settle with nature?"

"Well, Ice-Ember is just a start-up of yet another big endeavour. With what we've done with it so far we've been usability testing it. We'll go on the offensive: reset the planet, configuring it once and for all by recreating the vapour canopy that once enveloped antediluvian Earth and gave it stability. We've already started heating polar ice packs."

"You will have your canopy; I'll make sure of it. Let aside the pre- and the post-Flood, what about the Flood, your flood? Your name sums you up; the i is the third you lost and I'll restore it to you."

The elevator opens on the air, a desert at sunrise and a road running through it. On the side, a rusty sign indicates the entrance to a village. My village. Luna is no longer at my side, apart from the cold imprint of her hand. I made the homeward walk alone.

A déjà-lived day.

The roasted soil is disintegrating like a flaky skin shedding its scales. Cracks spread over it, forming an infinity of irregular polygons peeling off. The sky is emphatically clear, glaring blue. Dozens of animal carcasses litter the streets but not a single shadow of a person. Except for a little girl with a grimy face. She's been following me for a while, holding a plastic bottle half-filled with murky water. That smell again, now I have my chest full of it. It's impregnating the air, no, it is the very air. It's taking a colour... of rust.

There he is Ali, my child version, running toward me, but he didn't recognize me. He didn't see me at all. Panting, he gave a bottle of fresh water to the girl, who was staring at me with her jet-black eyes. The two kids, hand in hand, and I behind them, walked to the other side of the village. All the villagers in lines‒old, children, men, and women‒ hope and despair contorting their faces, listen to the imam:

"... We lost our way, that's why God is punishing us. He deprives us of the rain because we've been wallowing in the pestilential mire of sins, like animals in mud. O, Allah! if you don't help us soon, we're sunk. O, Allah! pour your mercy upon us, water your beasts and revive your dead land..." As soon as the imam finished his invocation, and before the crowd dissipated, fluffy trails of filamentary clouds appeared in the sky, which began weaving together into a behemoth coppery cloud overwhelming the rising sun and creeping over the village. They smile and congratulate each other for they managed to obtain what they needed most, or so they thought.

The girl, my ten-years-version Ali and I headed to the top of the hill overlooking the village where we found Scarlett, the American tourist that the girl had brought here. Scarlett who will take care of the little Ali. This girl planned everything. She's responsible for everything. A universal trigger. "Who are you?" I asked her. "Luna," She replied, "your guardian demon."

The cloud bled itself dry. Blood fell in sheets, spilling in purple and viscous flows. "It is time for you to leave!" said the small Luna to Scarlett and Ali who were racing down the hillside. "What should I do?" I asked the child Luna, "I don't belong to the past." "Do you remember the night we'll sleep together?" She said as she turned back, making a beeline for the village. Below, the red mire coagulates, having left no survivor; all dead, like flies in the glue. I ran after her and almost caught her before I... "Not so original Luna," my voice echoed as I'm falling into the abyss, "That gag, really!"

The hole had a bottom, a wooden one. I found myself once again in the cabin, lying face down on the parquet. The elevator door opens. Luna enters and helps me up. Outside, the horizon, shrouded with a huge blazing cloud, is ready to burst.

The sky rumbles.

"What are you, Luna?"

"A probability!"

"Where are we?"

"It's the now if you mean when; where doesn't matter anymore, anyway. This red canopy covers the entire planet and will soon tear itself apart. Before birth, there should be labour pains. If it's of any consolation to you, a new age's a-coming..."

I have no choice, and that's rather comforting.

Despair

Brandon Grundling

South Africa

Lizzie Barlow walked through the bleak landscape of her own reality.

Reality – how it drifted like a snowflake riding the wind. A Viking burial ship, travelling aimlessly across the ocean, flames consuming flesh and wood alike.

But Lizzie walked – that was all she could do. She walked to forget the memories that haunted her. She walked to forget about Melanie; how her small hands would reach up into the sky, inquisitive. How her cheeks would turn pink in the winter, like the sky after the sun had set.

Melanie.

Lizzie walked, down nameless paths that led to nowhere. Roads that were lit up by streetlights, like an empty stage after all the players had left and only the phantoms remained.

To her left, there was an empty lot where the public pool had once been, many years ago when she had still been a girl. But now there were only weeds and bushes, and grass tall enough to reach above a grown man's knees. It seemed like everything in the town had closed and withered away, or was just about ready to. Each morning on her way to school she would notice a new house that had gone empty, with only dark windows and even darker hope remaining.

An old lady appeared, pushing her cart along – a cart which more than likely contained all her earthly possessions. The woman's face was cast toward the ground, like a sunflower in a world that knew only darkness, but Lizzie could smell her as they passed one another – there was the smell of alcohol which she had expected, yes (something cheap and strong and unhealthy, something that would get her through the cold night) but there was another scent. One that made all the others irrelevant.

It was the stench of despair, Lizzie knew. It was the promise of death that radiated off the old and the abandoned.

Turning down at the next street, Lizzie and was once again left alone with only the cold midnight breeze and the ever-gazing moon for company.

In seven hours' time the street would be filling with cars and bikes, the parking lots, now empty and desolate, would be packed, and car horns performing their angry orchestras at every red light.

But that was morning, an eternity away.

Right now, she was in another world, where the streets belonged to the lost and lonesome. She was in a place where reality was only a concept created by man and the ghosts inside her head were free to roam.

A sound on the opposite side of the street caused Lizzie to freeze, her head snapping up and her stomach tightening, tightening. Her eyes darted around the deserted landscape, trying to distinguish silhouettes from shadows. There was an alley running between Corner Antiques and The Pine Bin (it seemed these days that it was only old castaways and oddities that kept this town running, the only thing the tourists still cared about), and Lizzie felt a coldness crawl over her as movement caught her eye, but it was only a dog rummaging through a bin turned over onto its side - a thin creature with its ribs clearly visible, ghoulish piano keys of malnourishment.

The dog pulled its filthy head out from between the trash and gave Lizzie a quick glance, a look that might have wondered what a woman like her was doing out on such a cold night. A woman who gave English classes to a bunch of twelve-year old's; a woman who lived in a larger than average house (at least by small-town standards, she was prone to say, although only in the company of Arnie) and got her hair done by Natalie Duval on Wednesdays, an hour after school let out. A woman who should have been in bed next to her husband, dreaming the dreams that only middle-class ladies could.

A woman, but not a mother.

Lizzie had the urge to walk over to the dog, to sit down next to the pitiful creature and to answer its unspoken questions – to tell it stories about times that should have been but never were, about pain that seemed to start everywhere but never reached their destinations, and so they lingered inside, eating away at the spirit until a person felt hollow within.

But the dog had retreated into the shadows.

"Just as well," she said loudly, too loud, attempting to break the eternal silence that enveloped her. "Could have bitten me. Given me rabies or something."

She let out a soft giggle, one so low someone standing next to her might have mistaken it for something completely different – perhaps a choking sound, or a whimper. The tears that were sliding down her cheeks (Sweet Lord, was it still possible that she could cry? Even now?) would not have done much to persuade the onlooker differently.

What are you doing here, Lizzie?

She wanted to be back in her own bed, listening to the wind howl as it went around corners. She wanted the covers pulled up to her chin, watching the trees dance outside the bedroom window, performing a special lullaby just for her. But most of all she wanted to feel Arnie's strong hands holding her, his warm breath tickling the back of her neck as he held her safe from the cold unwelcoming night.

But will he still hold you?

She doubted it. After Melanie's death two months ago, he hardly seemed to notice her. There was a distance between them that could not be measured by any system man had created. Time, she had thought, would close the gap which separated them, but the philosophers and the hermits were wrong. Time became lost in despair, just another concept without meaning, an artist taking his secrets to the grave.

He had not been home when she had stepped out just after eleven, and she doubted he would be there when she returned. And if he was... if he was there he would be lying on the couch, the yellow and green quilt his mother had made them, two years before the final stroke took her, covering him. There would be a scotch bottle on the table, open and half empty. Lizzie would try talking to him, but he would pretend to be asleep as if it was still possible to fool her after seven years of marriage.

I need you, she wanted to tell him

Lizzie felt her legs quake, and a second later she was down on her knees. And was this position not familiar? She could feel the jagged pebbles that littered the sidewalk dig their way through her jeans.

Yours were the seed that made her, but it was my womb in which she grew. I was the oyster, there to keep the pearl safe. I was the mother wolf she needed, baring my teeth at any threat that came near – but I failed her.

There was a fluttering movement from the corner of her eye. She looked up, expecting to find nothing more than a plastic bag cart-wheeling down the sidewalk, but was instead graced with the sight of two sparrows dancing together – up they went, first the one and then the other, their wings painted a gloomy orange in the streetlight.

Dancing!

Lizzie watched them as they touched the ground again – they were so close! She was sure if she reached out with her hand she would be able to stroke one of them. Through the tears and ache in her heart, she felt a tugging at the corner of her lips, something like a smile that was gradually trying to reach the surface.

It was such a queer sight. Had it been day, she would not have cared – would not have spared the sparrows a second glance, but here, near midnight, it was like something magical had been offered to her.

One of the sparrows took to the sky again, passing so close to her that she could feel the wind from the wings brush her face. There was a strange sound then, something that seemed to emerge from nowhere, and it took her a moment to realize the noise was coming from her... she was laughing! By God, she was laughing like the girl she had been at sixteen, dancing in the summer rain while Big Billy bellowed out the words to one of the classic rock songs that always seemed to play in his old Ford. They had been at the river which encircled the eastern half of the town. That was where they use to spend the most of their days as children and, later, as teenagers. God, how long has it been she had last been there?

The birds froze for a second as if surprised to find that they had an observer, and then they took off. They never stopped dancing, though – even as they fluttered toward Phillips Memorial Park, they circled one another like youthful lovers.

They flew among the trees, they twisted, they passed the lamplight near the centre of the empty park... but that is where her eyes remained because she was suddenly aware of a dark form, a shadow, untouched by the light.

It was a woman – she was not sure how she knew, but something about the figure secreted femininity: the long locks of deep black hair, blowing in a world that Lizzie was not a part of. The shape, so womanly even in its alienness.

Lizzie pushed herself to her feet, groaning as her knees popped, and then got ready to turn away, to turn her back on the cold night and return to her warm home, except... except she could not. Her eyes went back to the lamplight, seeking out the figure. There was a feeling as if she was meant to be here, as if great things were to happen if she would just stick around.

Lizzie thought that this time the woman would really be gone, back to the imaginary part of her mind in which she had been created, but her eyes settled on the figure without hesitation. She was captivated. She was a ghoul incapable of taking her eyes away from a freak accident. She was Icarus, going higher and higher even as the sun sliced into her skin.

"Hello?" Lizzie said in a voice that could not have travelled more than a few feet, yet the woman's head seemed to snap upward, a bloodhound that had finally caught a whiff of the scent it had desperately been seeking.

She knew it was a woman now; she could tell by the hips and, once she reached the other side of the road, by the way, her breasts lay bare upon the evening. The woman was still bathed in that perpetual blackness, impenetrable by light, but Lizzie thought she could see her more clearly now. The way a person's eyes would adjust if it was left in the dark for too long.

"Are you alright?" Lizzie asked, but feeling that question inadequate, she quickly added, "Who are you?"

There was a scurrying in a nearby fever tree as some creature got startled, or perhaps annoyed, by her voice cutting through the night. Lizzie wrapped her arms as a cool wind blew, waking the leaves that littered the ground. Something, however, appeared wrong with the woman, and it took Lizzie a moment to figure out it was the way the woman's hair moved – not with the wind, but against it as if she was a figment on the other side of a magical mirror.

Lizzie's brain would not – could not – accept what she was seeing, but her eyes went on watching with an interest that was so intense it was nearly painful.

It was frightening, yes, but there was something more to it. It was magnificent, mysterious. She was a small child in the front row at the circus, watching as everything she had thought real was tossed aside, opening her mind to a world full of endless possibilities.

Come, the woman raised a hand, long fingers, the sleeve of her dark gown gently swaying in the wind.

And Lizzie was walking, her feet passing between the dead and dying leaves that gazed up at her, soldiers who had lost the war with nature.

She wanted to feel this dark woman's touch, to be consumed by it.

She could smell something, a scent that cut through the decay of leaves and pollution. It was neither sweet nor unpleasant – like the woman, it seemed to come from some other place and time. Lizzie wanted to belong to that world.

She reached out with her hand, anticipating the moment in which her fingers would meet those of the faceless stranger. There was coldness in that inch that separated them from each other, but there was also energy, a spark that was waiting to ignite.

Yet, their fingers would not meet.

Take me home, the lady said, frail and soft.

"Why?" Lizzie asked, their fingers barely an inch from one another. She could feel the promise of a better life in the distance between them.

It is cold, the night, the lady said.

It's all a lie. Madness. It was her wandering womb, as the Greeks called it. Hysterika. She let her hand fall to her side and turned away, head lowered.

A mist wrapped itself around Lizzie, like the shroud of Hades, and in that moment, that split second, a fissure went down the centre of her mind – and she knew everything. Up until then, her life had been a black and white silent film, a picture of a barren landscape. But now it exploded into colour, so vivid it sent her to her knees, weeping.

But the moment passed, leaving Lizzie feeling empty, a hollow shell that had experienced all the adventures the sea had to offer but now lay alone on the shore.

But she was not alone.

Melanie lay on the ground before her, her large blue eyes shining in the moonlight. There was not a speck of dirt touching her skin, but then Lizzie knew there would not be. She had not returned from the grave but had been reborn. She was the phoenix, immortal, a flame that lit up the world.

It was absurd. It was impossible.

But the fissure inside her head let her know that nothing was impossible anymore. She was the artist, the creator of her own reality. She was the carver, slowly chipping away at the statue of her life, able to create whatever she wanted.

And if this was craziness, if this was her mind finally caving in, she would embrace it with open arms, like greeting an old friend.

She reached out and gently picked up Melanie, afraid that she, too, would turn into mist, seep out from between her hands and fall back into the ground that had once before claimed her. But Melanie was real, her skin warm and soft like freshly baked bread.

Lizzie placed her daughter against her chest, kissing the top of her small head, loving the way her soft hair tickled her lips. And the tears fell freely – tears of joy and fear. Fear that now that Melanie was back, she could be taken away again.

It was just past one when Lizzie arrived home, Melanie sound asleep against her chest. Her little cheeks were pink from the cold, and Lizzie cursed herself for not taking a jacket with her when she had left the house. But she had not known that...

But she had – deep down in the back of her mind she had known that Melanie would return to her. Why else had she been stepping out into the darkness night after night? She had not known it the way she did now, but the thought had always been there, a surreal concept wanting to take form.

She closed the door and sighed as the warmth of the house pressed against her skin. The living room was still clean and untouched – no scotch bottles there to greet her or to warn her away from their owner, like guard dogs. Arnie was not home.

"He'll be here soon," Lizzie whispered over her daughter's head. "Daddy will be here soon."

Melanie let out a soft whimper but did not wake up.

Lizzie lay in bed, drifting in and out of sleep. Each time she awoke her heart would stop and she would move her body closer to Melanie, making sure she was there, keeping her safe from the monsters of the night.

"Oh, Liz," it was Arnie's voice, in the distance. "Oh, Liz, what did you do?"

"Arnie?" Lizzie felt confused. Why was he talking to her? He had not spoken to her for nearly a week. Why now? Did she forget to take her pills again? Had she fallen asleep with the oven on? Why... And then she remembered, Melanie's warm body moving beneath her arm. "She came back, Arnie! She was given back to us!"

"Oh, Liz," Arnie was sitting on the floor, his back against the closet. Lizzie thought she had never seen him look this old before. Had he aged so much in one night? Or had it just been a while since she had seen him?

"What's wrong, Arnie?" Lizzie could not understand. He was supposed to be happy. Things were supposed to go well again. Why was he acting like this?

"Melanie..." Arnie picked up his head, tried to find her eyes, could not. "Melanie is dead."

"No," Lizzie smiled gently, the way she did when she was trying to explain something to one of her less bright students. "She's here. She's the phoenix. She came back to us. I never gave up hope and she came back to us."

Arnie got to his feet and stumbled like a drunken man. She could smell the scotch radiating off him. He gave a step towards Lizzie, the fool that was about to fall off the cliff as he stared up at the sun, but then he said "This is not right... oh Jesus," and stepped out of the door.

Lizzie buried her head in the nape of Melanie's neck, and felt tears begin to prickle at the corner of her eyes. She wanted to yell after Arnie, to tell him that she knew it was crazy and that she did not blame him for feeling the way he did, but she...

He is going to call the police.

This thought, like a large neon sign, flashed on in her mind.

Arnie was going to call the police and they were going to take her baby away again. And Melanie would not survive without her. She was the life support, the frail thread keeping her daughter alive. She had not been there for her daughter the first time, but she would be here now. God could not keep her away.

She placed pillows around Melanie, making sure she was safe, and then rushed out the door.

"Don't do it, Arnie," she said, taking the steps two at a time. "Please don't. It's our daughter. Can't you see that?"

Arnie was standing with his hand on the receiver, his eyes shut like a little boy fighting off brain freeze. "It cannot be."

"Just hold her," Lizzie placed her hand upon his, and felt the warmth there that she had been seeking for so long. "If you hold her, you would know. You'll just know."

She could feel his hand shaking, could almost feel the thoughts that ran through his head, the doubts and the fears that swam like a snake in the murky depths of the Amazon River.

Lizzie opened her mouth again to say something, but a sudden knocking at the door cut through the tense silence.

Arnie opened his eyes, and for the first time she could see how bloodshot and desolate they were. How distant. He jerked his hand away from the phone, from her, and began his trek toward the door, the shuffle of a dead man that was unaware of his condition.

It's her, that little fissure in her brain spoke. It's the Lady of Desire, the Lady of Despair. She has come back to reclaim what is hers, what you have taken.

Lizzie watched as Arnie reached out to open the door, her mouth opening and closing like a stranded fish. Don't, she said. Or she thought she did, but no sound came from her lips. She tried stepping forward, but someone had filled her bones with lead while she wasn't watching.

Arnie pulled the door open, slowly, perhaps feeling the darkness that lay waiting on the other side. But then he was on his knees, his hands opening and closing at his sides, nails scratching at the wooden floor like starfish trying to escape into the deep.

The Lady stepped into the house, placing a hand on Arnie's shoulder as she passed him. Lizzie watched as his fingers dug into the wood one last time, and then became still. A second later his body slumped to the left, his head hitting the wooden table that held an Oriental vase of blue and white vines. The vase seemed to dance upon the table, entertaining the intruder that stood beside it, but then it tumbled to the floor, shattering.

And then there was silence, time unmoving. Lizzie wanted to rush over to where Arnie lay, to believe that he was not dead, but the lead in her bones only seemed to grow heavier.

"What the fuck do you want?" Lizzie didn't quite shriek, but she felt her voice inching closer towards insanity.

Hysterika.

I've come to collect what is mine, The Lady said, her voice the sound of soft rustling leaves on a winter night, the crackling of fire. You took what belongs to me.

"You gave Melanie to me."

I gave to you only that which you needed to see. A figment of your desire.

"She is mine! She is real!" Lizzie tried to recall how Melanie's warm skin had felt against hers, how her soft hair had touched her lips, but there was only cold darkness.

I did not want to do it this way. I must take what belongs to me.

"No!"

It's not up to you to decide.

"No!"

But The Lady was no longer listening. She was walking toward the stairs, as soft and slyly as a cat, as surreal as the moonlight dancing on a stream of water. Even inside the house, where no wind could touch her, her dress fluttered like midnight moths ready to take to the sky.

Lizzie felt the lead inside her slowly break away as the woman approached the stairs, and then she was there herself, trying to skip as many of the steps as she could, yelling out in pain as she lost her footing and her shin struck the unforgiving wood.

But she was up again, ignoring the agony, only thinking about Melanie.

She reached the top, rushed down the hall, wildly turned into the room and slammed the door shut behind her. Her heart was beating furiously, a rocket ricocheting throughout her body.

I'm sorry it had to be like this, the voice, the sound of a swinging axe, cut through her.

The Lady was standing at the edge of the bed, Melanie in her cold unearthly hands. It wasn't the warm loving Melanie anymore – it was the limp daughter that she had wept over, the Melanie that had lain motionless in her casket, her face a pale imitation of the moon.

"Why?" Lizzie asked, her voice dead, far away, barely human.

The Lady said. The future is a frail thread.

"You fucked that thread up when you killed my husband," Lizzie snickered, but it was a humourless sound, like a rattlesnake's tail shaking in the desert.

He would have killed himself tonight. That's why I had to be here. He was planning it for the past week. He was on his way to the closet to get his pistol when he saw you and... the baby.

"But why give me back Melanie?"

I gave you a part of me to take home. I needed to get inside your house before dawn. I needed to take this man's soul. You only saw what you wanted to. I gave you a part of me and your mind did the rest.

"And me? Why don't you take me?" Lizzie asked, remembering how close their fingers had been, yet unable to touch.

Your soul is not mine, The Lady said. Not yet.

"I want to go," Lizzie whispered. "Please. I want to go. Take me with you."

Not yet, The Lady repeated. And then she and Melanie were out the window, just mist in the air, slowly fading, until nothing...

Lizzie sat a moment longer, a lifeless doll, and then dragged herself toward the closet on feet that no longer belonged to her. She started pushing clothes aside – jeans, shirts, the jacket she had bought Arnie two years ago. Her hand struck something hard. It was the brown box which contained Arnie's, Smith & Wesson. She had never touched it before – had hated the idea of a gun in the house, but now it was the lifesaver tossed to her as she struggled to stay afloat.

Not yet.

Removing the gun from the box, she was amazed how heavy it felt in her grip, how cold it was. Such petty, distant thoughts. Thoughts that did not matter. She was going to be with her baby soon. She was going to be with Melanie. And Arnie. They were going to be a family again.

Not yet.

She placed the gun in her mouth without hesitation, the coldness a shock against the back of her throat, and pulled the trigger. Again. And again. There were hollow clicks, broken promises, and a sound that whispered... not yet.

Last One

Eric Del Carlo

USA

"Mount up," said the woman; seamed face, knuckly hands on the reins.

This was more of Cleo's cowgirl shit. Frodhi, annoyed, wanted to demonstrate his annoyance. Make a dismissive gesture, take up a scornful posture. What he settled for was a dull, muttered echo--not even really sarcastic: "Mount up." He didn't know if he would have it in him today to snipe at his former wife.

He mounted the oversize canine. It stirred docilely under him, a tamed creature, no need for any chemical bonding between them. It had been a different story when Frodhi was a kid, when if you wanted to make a dog your own you had to ride it rough until you sweated and bled, and it absorbed your exudations through its spiky red fur.

Cleo watched as he got into the saddle, and he was hyper-alert for any look of judgment in her pale sun-squinted eyes. The ochre sky framed her atop her own supra canis at the top of the pass. Pure portraiture: dusty riding clothes, leathery skin, saddlebags full of provisions and weapons. The rugged ranger.

He should never have returned to this world; he'd had no choice in coming back. The Navy had taught him to hold such contradictions in his head. You obeyed counterintuitive orders. You accepted the irrationalities of q-logic. Strange that his experiences so far away should prepare him for this uneasy homecoming.

Prepare him as well to see Cleo again, after twenty-six years.

Mounted on his own provisioned red-furred beast, he was looking right back at her. Some of what was passing through his mind must have shown. Or else she could still decode his face, his older, worn, weary face.

"Last one, Fro," she said. It had the sound of a promise, an explanation, an apology.

This time he repeated her words in a clear voice. "Last one." Only the last could have brought him back here.

Together they rode down through the pass, to the interlinking valleys beyond the range of stark cobalt mountains.

*

There was something missing from him. It hadn't been sanded away by the years; it had gone. It was any sense at all of adventure. The Navy had taken that. A peacetime military didn't want audacious sorts. Hell, a Navy on a wartime footing probably didn't want heroes either, not really.

Frodhi might never have been made so conspicuously aware of this deficit within himself were it not for this ride through these valleys, he realized. He remembered ventures like this one, from his youth. He recalled the animal smell of the canine, its back rolling beneath him, the sky in its shades of yellow, the landscape and flora. Home. He had been born into this world. Had grown up here, married Cleo, and together they had produced a child. And that had been an adventure, even the dullest parts, the most routine moments.

Now, back here, riding through this terrain like he once had--with Cleo along as well, just as in the old days--he felt beleaguered and unsettled. He wanted a hot meal, with a warm bed waiting. Mostly, he wanted this business done. Finished. Cleo had said this was the last one, which made it his final chance at true closure.

Nothing else could have lured him back to this planet.

Ahead, Cleo swayed with a perfect ease atop her red dog. He watched her shoulders rock, her hips shift with fluid balance. It did no good to remember her as a teenager or even as a mother in her late twenties. Her body had been its own adventure for him, exciting contours and heady hollows. He wasn't so old that sex had lost meaning for him, but the specificity of his former wife's physical form was a dead end of desire and speculation. It was an escapade he had abandoned in the past, and one whose memories were only a blank in his present.

The humped cobalt mountains behind them still marked the end of settled territory and probably always would. No one was going to colonize beyond them, not on this meagrely resourced world. There really was no conceivable cause for a population boom which could bring the necessary tens of thousands that might force any expansion.

Still, Frodhi had been surprised--dismayed, almost--by the influx of culture to the nearby town. Art galleries, senso parlours, learning annexes. The enlightenment quotient certainly seemed to have risen. It was not quite a planet of slack-jaws anymore.

Which made Cleo's cowgirl affectation all the more aggravating.

He glared now at her back. She was an intelligent woman, sophisticated even. She didn't have to put up this image of the hardy drover. She sure as hell didn't have to do it for his benefit.

She turned in her saddle. Her mount halted. Frodhi tugged his reins, glad his dog slowed and stopped smoothly. You never did forget how to ride; but there was still plenty of opportunities \--here in his saddle right now, and during this whole grim undertaking--for him to make an ass out of himself.

Cleo's pale eyes flicked toward the ground. He frowned and followed her gaze with impatience.

In the indigo soil, on the valley floor, he saw the toe prints. Three of them. In that tight V shape.

"Three hours old," he said before he could catch himself before he could second-guess or await a command which would take away any need for independent thought or evaluation. He hadn't always been in the Navy. Once, he had ridden and tracked and hunted and killed.

He looked up at Cleo, and doubt, sudden and potent, stretched the small pause before she lifted her chin and said with cowgirl terseness, "Yep."

Three hours. The prints aimed straight ahead, on into the next valley, further into the Badlands which lay beyond the town and the safe settled places.

He spurred his dog, and it obeyed immediately. He rode alongside his onetime wife now, toward the narrowing end of the valley. The sky shifted to a hard gold.

His term of Naval service would leave him a decent pension. Just decent. He couldn't settle anywhere affluent, but there were enough semi-impoverished worlds he could afford to retire to. Like this one. Except, no, he could never live here again. The Tragedy would always have happened too soon for him.

Cleo called the end of the day's ride, sunset coming on, no chance to keep on tracking. Frodhi found himself hopping to the tasks of setting up camp. Anything in the shape of an order caused this response. He wondered how long it would take to erase that instinct.

He had seen further evidence of the creature they stalked--more toe prints in indigo soil, disturbed foliage, a few threads of that ghostly hair caught on low gnarled branches. He suspected that Cleo saw even more signs. She, after all, had stayed, had kept at this life. That had stunned him when she'd contacted him. Still on the home-world, still--still--at the hunt, putting away one by one the beasts responsible for the Tragedy. Tireless work. Thankless too, probably. From the refined look of the main town, this world had moved on from that unfortunate happening, had tucked it into the annals of a rugged, ruthless history, more a cautionary tale now than a true calamity.

Already he was missing that imagined hot meal and warm bed. But when Cleo unbuckled and fired up the heating unit, and he had a metaplastic plate of lukewarm mash on his lap, he knew he could manage this ruggedness for a few days. He'd had tougher nights in the service, with shipboard quantum irregularities to worry about.

Here, it was vaulting stars, the practicality of a sore saddle butt, and this reasonably comfortable bedroll. All simple building blocks.

"You marry again?"

He had to blink awhile in the heat unit's shifting red shadows, looking across to where Cleo sat. The lines on her face were prominent, but the set of her pale eyes was no different from when she was a teen.

"No. I did not," he said. "Did you remarry?"

"Not a chance." Toneless.

He was sick of this curt cowpoke shit. He turned away, taking her last comment for a dig at him. He, evidently, had put her forever off the very idea of marriage. Fine. Fuck her.

It was the most intimate conversation he'd had with her in twenty-six years.

Sleep came from fatigue. Riding a dog through the wilderness was a tiring affair. His mount slept nearby his roll, just like his old dog had.

Sometime in the night, the deep moonless night of his home-world, movement disturbed him. The bedroll shifted, and a hot alertness pumped through his veins. Before she could settle against him, he shoved Cleo away, bodily, out onto the ground. He sat up, gaping at her, glowering.

She lay there a moment, then shrugged and said, "Okay." A note of humour or humouring in the word, which further infuriated him. He had a hard time getting back to sleep.

*

One of the things that held this planet back from being a first-tier world was that it had native life. As zoologically fun as it was to discover new life forms and try to fit them into the evolutionary blueprints humans still carried with them from Earth, a healthy pre-life environment was far preferable. So much less fuss.

The thing about biota was that it could surprise you.

Cleo was holding no visible grudge about last night. He needn't have worried about how roughly he'd shoved her. He had felt her body's wiry resilience, her leanness, and muscularity. The cowgirl thing wasn't entirely an act, then. After all, she had spent year after year doing this rugged work, the sort of chore that put one outside the strictures of comfortable society, just like in cowboy myth.

And maybe he wasn't one to speak against affectation. What about him? He was the old salt returned to shore, judging land by seagoing measurements. He had belonged to an organization that traipsed blithely through the high deep black, and he felt special because he had touched the quantum realm. But really, what was more tiring than a sailor off his boat?

One ovoid valley led into the next. It was quite a natural maze. No worries about becoming lost, though. Frodhi was logged on to the local glo-po. Also, Cleo had to know this land. How often had she ridden through, how far out into the Badlands, picking off the dwindling mimetics?

A native life form that had surprised the human inhabitants...

They were on the creature's trail again, and it remained a consistent three hours old. He remembered how you judged prints, factoring in wind and soil settlement. It was coolly thrilling to think of the beast prowling over this very ground just three hours ago, still heading outward, away from all traces of civilization.

Despite the lingering tenderness of his backside, he felt easier in the saddle than he had yesterday. His animal was very responsive, and old muscle memory had fully woken in him, letting his body sway placidly with the mount's lithe movements.

He rode side by side with Cleo again. They took turns pointing out indications of their quarry's passage. She didn't quite seem to be testing him today. Perhaps in her stoic way she had accepted his ability to still function on a hunt.

Of course, what the hell had she invited him for if she didn't think he could--

"You still in the Navy?"

Her tone was no different than when she had asked if he had remarried. Twenty-six years of bitter silence and now they were having these tête-à-têtes.

"No. I'm out."

"Got another trade? Or you going to hang it all up?"

"I suppose I mean to retire." And because her question dictated a reciprocation: "Are you going to...hang it up?"

She smiled at him, sidelong, showing him nests of wrinkles. "No way."

No way. Not a chance. Cowgirl absolutes. Life was simple out here. You didn't have to make complex decisions. This rough-hewn type of life decided things for you, while you kept a stolid countenance and a sure hand on your reins.

Frodhi meant these thoughts scornfully. Maybe he was even testing them out before uttering them out loud. But there was too much righteous truth in them. He couldn't irreproachably argue that he had known a richer, more honest life in the Navy. His service had taken him many places, but he felt, on some level, like he hadn't been anywhere.

But he did have a retort for her, one dig he could make. So, he made it. "But this is the last mimetic we're hunting. Once it's gone, then what?"

It was an acrid pleasure watching her smile die out. His resentments toward her were still in him, but they were no longer near his surface. She had exhorted him to stay with the hunt, those years ago--well past the time when others affected by the Tragedy had quietly bowed out, past when any dignified measure of basic sensibility said that retribution had been satisfied. But she had kept on him, mercilessly, ferociously. She had crossed many lines, violated many marital boundaries of trust and respect.

Finally, and quite unforgivably, she had evoked in brutal glaring detail the memory of their child. She had tried to shame him into carrying on. And that had ended it for him. A wife who could do that was no wife at all.

Cleo let out a breath he hadn't known she was holding. It was a ragged exhalation, and it led to these words: "I can still be useful." Which sounded both frail and proud to Frodhi's ears.

He gazed a moment at his former wife, then urged his mount to move on.

There were good reasons the mimetics couldn't be hunted from the air, but the chief one was economics. A prop plane or helicopter or flit cost money to run, and a search took the machine away from its usual purpose, which was bolstering someone's livelihood. So, thrift and tradition had it unanimously that if you went hunting, you did it on dog-back. The only improvement from the old days, so far as Frodhi could tell, was the glo-po. The planet hadn't had a global positioning system when he'd left.

"What the hell is that?"

Plant life had changed the further out they'd gone. It was still mostly low scrubby growths, with knurled root systems and branches, but the colouring had shaded into the deeper reds and the wood had grown gummier. You knew, if you had cause to go into the Badlands, how far out you were by these colour and texture shifts.

Frodhi had pulled his reins tight and was looking down intently at the mark on the ground, set among the scarlet and cardinal plants.

The V formation of toe prints was there, very clearly. Also, above this, were three lines--tall, short, tall--seemingly drawn deliberately into the soil. It looked too much like...like a pictograph.

"What the hell," he repeated, but said it this time to Cleo who had pulled up beside him.

Cleo tilted her head one way, then back the other. She used to do that when they were kids, horny teenagers when one or the other of them had sex in mind. The head tilt was either her way of proposing the fun or else, for laughs, pretending bafflement at his overtures.

He snapped his thoughts away from those memories, which crackled with sudden, surprising and dangerous potency.

"Maybe it's carrying something," she said.

It was an explanation, maybe the only one. The creature, with something, prong in its hand, those tines just scraping the indigo dirt--

But the two tall bracketing lines were so uniform; and even the toe prints, which he gazed at carefully now, were pristine, conspicuously placed, and as always bearing signs that they had been made three hours ago.

Frodhi lifted his gaze, settled it on Cleo, on her weatherworn imperturbable face, features which nonetheless seemed to tick with real life, indicating vibrant thoughts and passions in this woman. She had purpose. Just like she'd said. Perhaps there really was something for her beyond this last hunt.

What, though, was this hunt? Frodhi wondered. What was this last mimetic they trailed through the valleys?

He didn't ask. To ask her would be some sort of vulnerable admission on his part, or at least a slight giving of ground; and he wasn't ready to do that.

Wordlessly they rode on.

When the yellow light, a delicate saffron, came with the morning, Frodhi finished saddling his very agreeable mount. Then he stood and stared at the animal, at its lines, its prow of a snout, the lay of its spiky red fur.

"This reminds me of my old dog," he said as Cleo returned to the broken camp from her morning necessities, fixing a buckle on her twill trousers.

She took water from a squeezer. "She's the granddaughter of your dog. The one you rode when we both worked on Hitomi's ranch."

He turned slowly. "You're kidding."

"Nope." She started to mount her own dog.

Frodhi's words stopped her. "Cleo, what the fuck is going on?"

She squinted off into the morning a moment, then slid down and stepped away from her mount.

She wasn't going to say, or she was going to take too long or tell him in a taciturn roundabout cow-girly kind of way, and he didn't have the patience for it.

"You made it so neat," he said, and there wasn't much vitriol at all in his tone. "You contact me after twenty-six years. I get here and immediately we're on the trail of a mimetic, the very last one, the opportunity for the final kill. Somehow it's just me and you, like old times, like times even before the...the Tragedy. When we'd go out riding together, even into this territory. What are you trying to recreate here, Cleo?"

It shook him to say all this. He was essentially questioning the sanity of the woman who had once been his wife, who had mothered their child. When they had lost that child--that sweet, infinitely precious, tender intelligent pleasant little five-year-old life--they had both lost chunks of themselves. And they had tried to replace the good vital things with emptier practices and ambitions. He had gone on the vengeful hunt with her for a time, then had fled to the Navy, to that organization's unchallenging obedience and rituals.

And Cleo, what had she done? Stayed with the hunt. But what was the rest of this...?

Softly she said, "Let's ride awhile, Fro."

That didn't seem unreasonable, not as deep into this as they were already. He mounted and rode alongside. The valleys had started to flatten out, the ridges sinking gradually. This was truly unsettled land, the most devoid of natural resources. Not a wasteland, though. The scrub bushes had begun to show flowering, small nubby purple bursts. Also, there was evidence of water.

He noted their quarry's tracks when they appeared yet again. The three toes. And now another pictograph. This was three sides of a rectangle, capped with a curved line. Not unlike, he realized after a moment of study, a representation of a standard colonial dome-home.

Cleo stayed silent. This felt like some wordless epilogue to their story, lovers broken apart, now sharing a final elegiac interlude. But the breakage between them was surely irreparable, and he wondered again about her mental equilibrium. Still, she had promised him a "last one," and maybe that assurance remained in effect.

They two, as wife and husband, were not the only parents who'd lost children in the Tragedy. There were Faraz and Duncan, Amy and Dae-Ho, Ezekiel and Clark and Zara; and quite a few others parental sets. The raid had occurred on a ranch, rather an outlying one, though at the time--Frodhi recalled vividly--none had thought its remoteness alarming.

Not much was known about the mimetics. The planetary survey was a musty old document, more or less ignored by the roughshod locals. Mimetics were a bipedal species, belonging to what passed for the primate family. Fine. Apes with ghostly fur. Few, maybe on the brink of extinction. Something weird, something absorptive in their makeup. The trait wasn't uncommon on this world. It was a feature the settlers had taken advantage of--thus the useful chemical bonding which could be effected between the large native canines and humans.

The mimetics resided well outside the settled areas. Once in a generation, the population went into a frenzy. They set off on a devouring raid, pouncing on the nearest group outside their species.

This time, unexpectedly, they had gone after the humans. Specifically, a schoolhouse full of the youngest. It was a true massacre. The ape-like things were adult sized and proportionally strong; and the children were...children. It was the Tragedy. Because you couldn't call it anything else.

The mimetics had gotten their name from a member of that long-ago planetary survey party, one who had observed the apes' tendency to imitate behaviours of fellow native species. This seemed a playful activity, without any survival purpose.

Frodhi looked around at the broad flats onto which they had emerged. Twenty-six years had replaced familiarities with startling sights, such as in the town, but this truly was an obscure part of the world. Those purple-budded bushes made for a kaleidoscopic landscape. Curious rock formations stood here and there. There was a strange thick quiet to the place.

His dog moved easily under him. Cleo had said she was the progeny of that feisty red dog he'd ridden while working Hitomi's ranch in his late teens. She was accommodative, in the way of a dog he had bonded with, like that reliable ranch dog. Their bonding shouldn't have passed down through the generations, though. He had taken this mount for one which had been tamed--essentially, one genetically neutered in the modern way of such things. But he felt, with deepening certainty, that nothing of the sort had been done to this creature.

"Hold," he said, suddenly in a voice of command. Not a Naval voice or at least not his Naval voice, as he had never issued commands.

Cleo drew her mount to a halt a few steps to his side. She waited with the patience of a fellow hunter. And he realized then that there had been no leaders on those ventures in the past, just riders. He needn't think himself lesser. By participating in this tracking, he was automatically her equal. Or her peer, anyway.

She, however, knew something he didn't. He was sure of that.

"I saw movement," he said and reached for the binoculars in his saddlebag. The valley walls had all but disappeared, but the odd stony formations had grown more prevalent. They stood in a curious scattering across the plain, somehow randomly non-random. Almost cairn-like, stackings of bluish stones.

It was amongst these, at a distance, that Frodhi had seen a tiny flicker of motion.

He aimed the glasses. Cleo didn't take up her pair but merely waited for him to report.

There was no movement now, nothing but wind tickling the brush; but he noted the spot, and Cleo followed as he rode them toward it.

The print was there, behind a vertical arrangement of stone which soared a meter up past his head. He looked above the three-toed impression to yet another pictograph. He couldn't think of them as anything else any longer. These were deliberate drawings.

The one he faced now was an elegantly simplistic stick-figure depiction of two bipedal shapes atop a pair of four-legged creatures. The mimetic had sketched the two of them, himself and Cleo.

His heart beat hard, as if from good clean exertion. The sight--the impossible, irrefutable reality of the pictograph--had excited his blood. Whatever else, this was the most engaged he had felt in years. He had come deep into a puzzle, with his onetime wife at his side. And for the first time he was glad she was here. She needed to be a part of this. Or, perhaps more accurately, she needed him to be in on this. Whatever this might be...

He looked again at the toe prints. They were not three hours old. He took note of the wind. The mimetic's foot had marked this soil within the last few minutes. He had seen it, then. Or glimpsed it.

A nearby bush studded over with purple blooms, had caught a long pale string of hair. It waved in the breeze. According to Cleo, it belonged to the last mimetic on this world. The final member of that species which had killed their child. He still wanted revenge, yes; the vengeful impulse remained, a set of mental drills he had worked repeatedly over the years, and lately as a duller, more rote routine. But he was also curious now. And that was a more active state, he found.

"What do you want to do, Fro?"

His gaze returned to the pictograph, its edges just starting to blur with the shifted dust. She had lured him home. That much was clear. But she had arranged this endeavour so that he had choices. His will could directly affect the outcome. What, he wondered, did she want him to do? And more poignantly, what would he want to do when this thing reached its culmination? That climax wasn't far off, he sensed.

He brought his eyes up to hers. Her leathery features weren't quite so imperturbable anymore. He saw a shiver of anxiety there. She was taking a risk with him, whatever this was.

He said, "I want to catch up to it."

So, on they rode, speeding the two red dogs.

The settlement emerged as things did on any plain--gradually, rewarding the intrepid explorer. Frodhi saw the structures, the metaplastic walls, the blistered domes. He observed as well the not-quite-a-pattern of cairns, the placement of the blue rock towers deliberate and even orderly--to sensibilities other than human, perhaps.

He didn't take out the binoculars. Cleo was watching him, not the encampment ahead. When they were near enough to begin to see, figures moving about, she spoke.

"They have a culture, Fro. The stone stacks--those are a kind of language. They're histories and warnings and memorials and instructions and some are very old. But the species was damn near done for. They overbred before we'd ever arrived, then experienced a huge die-off. That, so far as we've learned, was when the frenzies started happening. The once-every-generation fury that led them on their...their raids of consumption."

It was difficult for her to utter those last words. And it goddamn well better be, Frodhi thought. That was the Tragedy she spoke of.

He continued to listen, without comment.

"They're absorbers. Absorptives might even be a better term than mimetics. They were too few, and their culture, fascinating though it is, was too fragile. So, they sought to consume their way toward a new survivability. They tried--instinctively, we believe--to absorb some necessary element from a fellow species, something which would help them to persist, to turn them back from extinction."

That did prompt Frodhi to speak. He was surprised to find his voice steady, even tinged with sarcasm. "After you and I spent years trying to drive them to extinction." He almost added that she had kept on with that effort for years afterward, but now he didn't know what the truth of that was. At some point, very obviously, she had stopped hunting the mimetics, the absorptives, and had started...what? Studying them? Protecting them?

Them...

"We've found some communicative middle ground. We can talk with them, after a fashion, and--"

He cut her off, "You said the last one." Where she now spoke breathlessly, desperate to explain, he had adopted her cowpoke curtness. His toneless accusation hung between them as they continued toward the camp.

She let out a long breath. "I said last, yes. Last one. But I never said we were going to hunt the last mimetic. I never actually said that, Fro."

And she probably hadn't, he admitted silently. It would be more cowgirl code of honour shit not to have told him a direct lie. Still, mention of a last one, combined with his own assumptions, had enticed his return to this world.

"What's the last one, then?" he asked.

"You are."

There were humans and mimetics at the settlement, maybe two dozen of each species. Colonial dome-homes stood among the cairns. Frodhi saw a well and plots of crops, as well as a corral of dogs. He supposed there was nothing keeping any of the people from riding into town for any needed supplies. They would just be old weatherworn eccentrics, after all, still out riding the range as it were. The civilized townsfolk wouldn't take much note.

He and Cleo came to a central point and halted. He recognized faces now, even aged as they were. Duncan, he knew, was dead, a suicide shortly after the Tragedy. But here was Faraz, and there stood Dae-Ho with Amy. And the others, all of them, along with younger members he presumed had been recruited to the cause. There were even a few youngsters. Some of the parents of the Tragedy had gone on to have more children.

Everyone was watching the two of them, up on their saddles. The mimetics too had gathered. They didn't look like apes; that was just a convenient term. But they were bipedal and covered in pale coats, and their eyes were large and staring.

Like Cleo, Frodhi had a weapon in his saddlebag. No one in the camp appeared armed, or at least they hadn't come to meet them with weapons. Plainly he and Cleo were expected. His arrival would mean some sort of completion to these people. He was the last of the parents. Somehow they needed him.

One of the mimetics came loping forward in the awkward-graceful gait of the native species. It was small in stature, with an undeveloped musculature. Its eyes were deep pools. Frodhi looked down into them as it came into full view before his mount. It would be a simple thing, really, to draw his gun, to put a cartridge between those soulful eyes.

"This is the first generation which has not frenzied," Cleo said, breaking a fraught silence.

He said nothing. He didn't look at her. He was still, he found, looking down into the mimetic's eyes. A slight creature, almost but not quite delicate. It didn't stand entirely still, but rather bounced a bit on wiry legs, like something fidgeting, like someone with a restless pent-up energy.

Like, in fact, a child.

Lifespans for the mimetics were roughly like humans'. The original planetary survey said as much. This, then, was an offspring of the ones responsible for the Tragedy. And it, according to Cleo, hadn't acted as its progenitors had. The time of the frenzy must have come and gone, and no frenzy had ensued.

Perhaps the pale apes had consumed--absorbed--what they needed.

Softly, tenderly, Cleo said, "She's in there, Fro. Consider those eyes. See her...."

Frodhi saw intelligence in those big eyes gazing up at him. Yes, intelligence and sensitivity. These were not dumb brutes and never had been. Even hunting their numbers down after the Tragedy, he had known this. All the hunters had. It had made no difference.

He did as Cleo had said, one last act of marital allegiance. He sought a sign of their child in the depths of the creature's eyes.

And when he could not be sure he'd recognized anything; he drew the rifle from his saddlebag. The assemblage, tensely silent until now, gave a gasp, and a few of the people started forward. But the Navy, even in peacetime, had made him too quick with a weapon.

It wasn't until later that Cleo told him she'd provided him a gun with a clip of blank rounds. That didn't matter as it turned out. At the last instant, Frodhi jerked the barrel upward away from those expressive eyes and fired into the yellow sky.

*

The older absorptives did not make drawings. They couldn't seem to grasp the concept. But the younger ones liked their pictographs.

The secret settlement, set so deeply and remotely in the Badlands, was more sophisticated than Frodhi had thought at first. Conditions were primitive, yes, rather like those he had known in his youth on this same world. But this strange operation had evidently attracted some agile minds, and they had brought equipment to aid their analyses. In addition to the surviving parents of the Tragedy, there were xenobiologists and xenolinguists. The absorptives submitted to study, though they weren't treated like lab rats. The scientists respectfully researched the cairns, uncovering, layer by carefully placed layer, a chronicle of a once great species.

This was more than a historical study. Within the absorptives' genetic makeup lay fascinating strengths and helpful clues as to the possibilities of gentle manipulation. It was how Frodhi's dog had been made to recognize him, by coaxing from it the encoded memories of its own ancestor, the one he'd ridden on Hitomi's ranch.

One day the humans would make their findings known. For the present, however, the so-called mimetics were in too fragile a state as a breed. This protective isolation suited them.

The younger generation, those who had not frenzied when the time for the collective fury had come, were engaged, curious, cooperative, occasionally stubborn, emotive. They were even more than that, Cleo helped Frodhi to discover. They had individual personalities, explicit behavioural traits.

The one they had tracked all the way from the cobalt mountains, for instance, was a distinct entity. She--since a gender could be honestly assigned to the creature--was a feisty being. Quick-witted, vulnerable, empathetic.

Frodhi wished he had preserved her pictographs, the ones she had left in the indigo soil along with her toe prints for him to find. She had drawn him and Cleo atop their mounts had depicted a dome-home where the two of them might live together. But it was the youngster's first drawing which stuck most with him. Those simple three lines, which he'd found so baffling. Two tall, one short; the short one in the middle.

He understood it now. Tall, short, tall. Parent, child, parent. Very basic. A portrait. A suggestion. A proposal. Cleo, who possessed a special affinity for communicating with this particular absorptive, had conveyed her plan to the child. And the child had agreed to work with Cleo to bring Frodhi gradually across the valleys and plains.

He moved into one of the old colonial dome-homes, one already occupied by Cleo. They had separate bunks, and he thought it best they keep it that way; and said so to her. Cleo went cowgirl-stoical at this comment. At the encampment, she tended the corral of dogs. There was hunting to be had on the surrounding plains, small snouty game that burrowed in the soil. Cleo usually led the hunting parties or went out on her own. Frodhi started going with her. The rest of his time he mostly spent with the absorptive child, who liked making more drawings for him, on paper this time so he could preserve them.

One night he and Cleo went for a walk. Their world was moonless, but there was starlight. He felt the complex tension between them. That anxiety wasn't entirely negative, not anymore.

They paused beneath a soaring cairn on the periphery of the camp. Frodhi was still trying to understand how the placement of different coloured and sized stones led to language. The scientific-minded members tried out their interpretations on him. If they could explain to him, they figured...

Cleo was looking at him. He could see the sun-squint lines around her eyes. When she wanted, those pale eyes could be as expressive as those of the child.

She said, "How about a kiss, Fro?"

He gave it a little thought. They hadn't been living as husband and wife in their little dome. Sometimes the child slept in there with them, sometimes outdoors.

"Okay," he said. "A kiss. But it's the last one."

Turned out he was wrong about that.

Mnemo's Memory

David Versace

Australia

With a sweep of sealskin-clad fingers, Captain Hollioak brushed icicles from his brow. They drifted down to the snowdrift gathering about his deck boots. Some swirled overboard to join the creaking Antarctic pack ice far below. He wondered again how he'd been impressed into this damn fool enterprise. Overhead the canvas thrummed with the cutting wind, causing momentary ribs to ripple across its surface and shed flurries of ice particles.

Two figures emerged from the murk. Clanking footfalls marked their unsteady progress.

"Lady Gracemere, I must once again protest at your footwear. Your every excursion ravages the decking. Mr. Thackeray is beside himself." He withheld the carpenter's precise words.

Lady Elizabeth Gracemere's pale features were hidden behind both tinted eyepieces and a sturdy woollen scarf, which concealed any possible remorse. She hitched the hem of her skirt, revealing sturdy boots bound by metal bands to a contraption of gleaming rivets and shark tooth-shaped spurs. Her companion's feet, or rather the extremities of its unbending legs, were similarly attired. "And I assure you, Captain Hollioak, that I have no intention of being swept into the aether to suffer the indignity of a long and fatal fall."

Hollioak bristled. "Your safety is assured, my lady. I have never lost a passenger overboard and by God's leave, I never shall. Even this clanking factotum of yours need fear no harm."

His reflection in the automaton's amethyst faceplate was uneasy and distorted. The monochrome paintwork on its brass body bore a superficial resemblance to butler's attire, but its unnatural stillness robbed it of any sense of humanity. Next to Lady Gracemere, who overlooked it by more than a head, it was a cold, haunted thing. Never more so than when it spoke in a hollow echo of that warm, familiar baritone. "No fear, Hollioak. Complete faith, I assure you."

"I beg you to recall, madam, my request that it not speak in my presence." Hollioak fancied that her Ladyship would interpret his stiff carriage as nothing less than the formality due her station. He could not bear to hear his dead friend's voice emerge from the machine. The steam butler was testament to her mechanical genius. But its uncanny assumption of the late Lord John Gracemere's verbal habits and, worse, its unsettling familiarity with his widow, hinted at a darker spiritual malaise on her part. The hissing steam-work facsimile of her late husband, replicating his voice and so many of his mannerisms as its limited articulation allowed, was as disturbing as it was grotesque.

Lady Gracemere touched a gloved hand the automaton's shoulder. "I recall your request, Captain. As my late husband recommended you, I presumed your petition was on behalf of your crew. I little imagined that you yourself would be dismayed by the march of science."

"By no means, Madam. It is a remarkable work of engineering. All the more remarkable given that you -"

"Are a woman, Captain?" Her arch reply was more chilling than the bitterest crosswinds.

"Are a widow in mourning, my Lady." Hollioak grimaced, certain he had given offense.

Lady Gracemere peered past him into the gloom ahead. "How long until we reach our destination, Captain?"

"We will be within sight of Mount Erebus in no more than three hours, by my reckoning."

Lady Gracemere nodded, evidently confident in his aeronautical skill if nothing else. Hollioak was by no means satisfied to let the matter rest, however. Risking what good standing remained to his credit, he said "I urge you to take some rest. Contemplate terminating our present venture. You could be certain of my wholehearted support."

"I hope I am not wrong to be certain of your support, in any event, Captain Hollioak. Do not suppose me ignorant of your discomfort. I regret demanding that you discharge your obligation to his Lordship on such grim business. It is uncivil of me to compel you and your crew into the path of grave danger. But I mean to avenge John. To do so I must hold you to your oath. Do I have cause for fear on that score?"

Hollioak deflated in the face of her crystalline determination. "Indeed not, Madam."

"Then I pray you will make no further attempts to dissuade me. Please summon me when we approach Doctor Winter's stronghold."

*

Elizabeth could not sleep. Captain Hollioak's protest had stirred unsettling memories. It was over a year since the telegram informing her she must arrange a funeral with no casket.

Her work on Mnemo had already begun before the fall of the Marquess of Salisbury. As society gossiped about airships in flames and the eligibility of widows, she withdrew to her laboratory. From that moment on she wore workshop coveralls more often than her mourning wardrobe.

Making the most of a dull ring of gas candle-tubes, she tinkered with the bundles of steel cables articulating Mnemo's four-fingered hands. The work demanded concentration but her thoughts kept drifting to the impossible position in which she had placed Captain Hollioak. She commanded him to repay his loyalty to John by disregarding his orders and ferrying her to likely doom. Even through her goggles it had been plain to see the anguish of uncertainty in his dark eyes. She sympathised. A man like Edward Hollioak, a commander of fighting men, could afford no appearance of indecision. She must vex his every moment.

She shook her head, requiring distraction. "Mnemo, replay Recording 15."

A moment of crackling hissed from Mnemo's speaking grill.

Then John's voice, one of the few precious mementos remaining of the man she had loved, filled the small cabin. "...His Majesty's interests in the Southern Hemisphere, Elizabeth. The conflict between the Tsar and the Emperor might spill out of control at any moment. The world cannot remain in peace for much longer."

Though she had never shared his interest in political affairs, she smiled to recall his fire. He had burned with passion that day, stalking about her lab as she had calibrated her recording equipment for the first time. That had soon passed. Within a few months, John was embroiled in the affairs of Doctor Winter. As his obsession with preventing the horrors of revolution from gaining a foothold in England had deepened, his simple devotion to King and Country had taken a dark turn.

"Madam, has the recording made you sad again?"

"How should I feel, Mnemo? The recording is all I have left of John before this Winter business led him into madness."

"You know it's not that simple," replied the automaton. "Why do you keep the truth from Hollioak?"

For an aching moment, she could not say whether it was her husband's voice or the Captain's name that sparked the unexpected longing. She crushed the sudden ache, reshaping it into renewed resolve.

"The truth would distract Captain Hollioak from his duty," she said. "I cannot allow it. Besides, you are incorrect."

"In what way?"

"There is nothing more simple than revenge."

Elizabeth's small cabin, piled high with trunks of equipment, a modest wardrobe and a variety of sensitive instruments, had no windows. A subtle shift in the drone of the dozen Haight-Trommler engines suggested the airship was slowing. She confirmed it with a glance at the flicking hands of her pocket seismograph before she slipped it into a coat pocket. She fitted the last harness in place. Compact belts hung with tools. Pouches bulged with replacement parts. She slotted weapons into oiled sheathes and slick holsters. She slipped on the heavy arctic coat John once wore on his Greenland expedition. Her miniature machine shop was concealed beneath fur trimmed leather and brass sealing-rings.

Were The Bishop of Sarum not approaching Mount Erebus under cover of dense snow clouds, she imagined the view from the foredeck would be magnificent. Elizabeth promised herself to return in some future summer to take in the sight of its glowing crater, its billowing steam vents, and its stalagmite-shaped ice spires. It was not wicked arrogance, just mild self-deception.

"What do you think, Mnemo?"

"Your preparations are exemplary, Madam," replied the automaton. "His Lordship couldn't have done better."

"We will know soon enough."

"I must inform you that there are two men listening at your door."

At this declaration, a sailor's blistering oath preceded two brutes wielding pistols through the cabin door. Elizabeth permitted herself a faint smile before turning to receive them with an expression of rankled perplexion. "Gentlemen, whatever can be the meaning of this intrusion?"

The sailors were Hibb and Adkins, Yorkshiremen of hulking stature and surly disposition. More than sufficient to overpower a slight woman in heavy dress should she give them cause. They might even best Mnemo with luck. Fortunately, there was no need to test either proposition.

"You are to accompany us, Lady Gracemere."

"Captain's orders," added the second, failing to conceal a knowing smirk beneath a mat of iced beard.

"Delightful. Lead on. Do make room for my assistant there if you please."

Hibb stood his ground in the doorway. "Just you, your Ladyship. Your engine-man there bain't summoned."

"Of course, how silly of me." Elizabeth held both hands up to Mnemo's face-lenses, turning and twisting them like a Turkish bar dancer's. "Stay here Mnemo."

"Very good, Madam." The echo of John's amused twinkle almost made Elizabeth smile again.

As they led her through cargo holds and cramped corridors made almost impassable by her many layers, Elizabeth did her best to feign ignorance about their destination.

She had committed the ship's layout to memory. The brig was situated a full deck below the Captain's cabin and officer's wardroom. She could be led there unseen by any more than a handful of idle airmen.

She felt a pang of regret on Captain Hollioak's behalf. She estimated that Doctor Winter would have advanced knowledge of her expedition and that his coin would turn the coats of some of the Bishop's crew. She had accounted for treachery in her own plans but she had never shared her suspicions with the Captain. When he learned that Winter had bought his hands' loyalty, Captain Hollioak would be aghast. Elizabeth took no pride in concealing her intelligence from him.

The crewmen were ignorant of her information. They kept up their commendable performance of escorting her to Hollioak with rough but decent manners. For her part, she pretended not to see their worried glances and their shifty responses to unexpected sounds. To their evident relief – and Elizabeth's – they reached their destination uninterrupted.

"Captain's waiting inside," said Adkins. He took firm command of Elizabeth's elbow and steered her through the door into the gloom beyond. For form's sake, she exclaimed "Captain Hollioak? I cannot see you." The two airmen laughed. Adkins ended their brief acquaintance with a rough shove to her behind. She yelped in outrage as the door slammed. The point of a carpenter's wedge punched through the door frame. Elizabeth tested the door with a shoulder. It was stuck fast. She was sealed in.

She smiled and set to work.

Hollioak announced himself with an emphatic cough at Lady Gracemere's cabin door, adding "We've crossed the Ross Island coast. We must assume ourselves within range of Winter's artillery."

A bell was calling the hands to their stations. Under ordinary circumstances, Hollioak would be preparing for battle in the helmcastle. These circumstances were anything but. It rankled that Lady Gracemere had yet to divulge the final details of her plan.

"Madam, the hour is upon us."

She was not present. Though the spacious cabin was stacked with the paraphernalia of her engineering works, there was nowhere she could be concealed. The factotum stood in her place. Curling his lip, Hollioak asked, "Where is Lady Gracemere?"

Mnemo hissed and emitted a barrage of quiet pops like distant cannon fire. "Edward Hollioak," it said. "Unaccompanied. Message two."

Hollioak scowled. "I beg your pardon! I asked –"

"Lady Elizabeth has been taken prisoner by crewmen in the service of Doctor Winter." Mnemo's interruption stilled Hollioak's indignation. Lady Gracemere kidnapped by mutineers? Hot blood swelled his chest like an inflating balloon.

"Damn you, why didn't you say so at once?" The automaton's complacence was all the more infuriating for sounding like Lord Gracemere. In life, the man would have leaped straight into action. "Why didn't you do anything?"

Unruffled, Mnemo said, "Lady Elizabeth's instructions were precise: to wait twenty minutes or until your arrival. Eighteen minutes and twelve seconds elapsed."

"Her life may be in danger!"

"Lady Elizabeth expects her detention is a precursor to an attempt to take control of your vessel, Captain, before you can turn your guns on Doctor Winter's facility."

"What? Who are these mutineers?"

"My information is incomplete. Crewmen Adkins and Hibbs are certain. Their accomplices may be few or many. You must trust your own instincts."

Mnemo's words hit him like the revelations of a ghost. How many times had John Gracemere told him just that? "Am I supposed to trust you?" he said. "A memory made of brass and mirrors?"

"No, Hollioak," replied Mnemo. "Trust Elizabeth Gracemere. Now please stand aside." He barely had time to comply before the automaton lurched past him, its faceplate flashing.

Hollioak burned to restore his ship to order. Instead, he drew his pistol and followed, his thoughts grim. Trust was all very well but only action accomplished anything.

Having located the structural weak point of the floor, Lady Elizabeth set aside her small mallet and held up a chemical lamp. She marked out a circumference with coloured chalk.

She heard a crash of splintering timbers from the forward holds. It was followed by muffled shouts and smacks of pistol fire. Lady Elizabeth stood back from the sealed door. Her confidence that the plan was working did not stop her hand from closing around the pommel of the dirk sheathed at the small of her back.

Outside, cries became shrieks. Lady Elizabeth spared a small measure of sympathy for any wretch trying to obstruct Mnemo's path. She had made no provisions for mercy in his instructions.

Mnemo crashed through the wall like a fox with the hunt at its tail. Its flailing arms shredded the timbers, clearing a path for its clumsier legs.

"Lady Gracemere," said Captain Hollioak with a fierce look, collapsing past Mnemo through the destroyed wall. A patch of bruised skin wept blood into his brows. On his stern, thoughtful features the injury was like an oil stain on fresh crinoline. "Are you unharmed? Thank God." He fell to one knee.

The gesture startled her. Then she recognised he was overcome with pain. "Captain Hollioak was struck by Airman McCrea," Mnemo observed.

"Damned turncoat," muttered Hollioak. Then his eyes widened. He said, "Forgive me, Lady Gracemere. My language is unforgivable."

She smiled at his gallantry. "It's nothing I haven't said myself while struggling with an uncooperative repair." Kneeling as carefully as her restrictive layers allowed, Lady Elizabeth retrieved a small nursing kit from an outer pocket. Holding the Captain's jaw with a steady hand, she turned his wound to the light. She dabbed it with cleaning alcohol. At the sting, Captain Hollioak's eyes snapped open. "Thank you. I believe I am clean enough now."

She held the light closer, not replying. His eyes were flint at the rims, softening to azure bands about the pupils. Lady Elizabeth removed the stained linen from his forehead and, after a moment, her hand from his face.

"Can you stand?" she asked.

"I can accomplish that much, at least." He grimaced as he did so.

Testing the contours of his head wound with hard, steady fingers, he said, "Lady Gracemere, am I bold to speculate that you are unsurprised by this mutiny?"

Lady Elizabeth blinked away a sudden pinprick of tears. "Oh. No, Captain, the boldness was mine alone. I expected Doctor Winter to undermine you from within. If I shared my intelligence with you, you would act to thwart him. All my hopes are pinned on his underestimation of me. Can you forgive my deceit?"

He rewarded the revelation with a raised eyebrow. "On two conditions."

"Which are?"

"The first is that when our business on Ross Island is complete, we compare profane vocabularies. As a sailing man, I collect obscenities the way you must collect compliments."

It was Lady Elizabeth's turn to widen her eyes in mischievous astonishment. "Imminent peril appears to have freed you from the shackles of decorum, Captain."

"I never find it much use on the field of battle, Madam."

"Then you have my wholehearted consent, Captain."

Mnemo made a small mechanical grunt. "Several men approach, Madam. It is likely the mutineers have regrouped."

Captain Hollioak nodded in agreement. "Any loyal man would be at his post. Dempsey might have dispatched one lad to locate me but he would never spare a whole search party."

Lady Elizabeth's mind raced. "We must hurry. Tell me, Captain, have we arrived at our destination?"

"I think we must. From the sound of their thrust configuration, the engines are holding us in a steady position. The turbulence directly above the caldera would demand greater thrust to keep the Bishop steady. If we have not deviated from the original flight plan, then we are above the north-western slope."

"Good enough," said Lady Elizabeth. She opened a panel in Mnemo's torso. Inside were the bulkier necessities of her plan. The cable she dropped to the floor for the moment. She freed the breathing tube of her mask and clipped the oxygen tank to her coat.

"Lady Gracemere, without a landing tower you cannot safely disembark. If I could get you to the foredeck we could belay your climbing cable but -"

"We cannot risk further encounters with mutineers?" She glanced at the frown of tactical assessment creasing his brow. The spirited bonhomie was gone again, carefully stowed in some secure compartment until the fighting was done. She hoped she would see it again.

"Until I can secure control, you are safest here."

She worked her mask's straps loose. "I have something other than safety in mind. Mnemo?"

The automaton stretched its arms in a cruciform pose, gripping the wall struts until cracks showed at its thick fingertips. Its clawed feet centred on the chalk circle inscribed on the floor. Its legs drew up, receding partway into its abdomen. Lady Elizabeth placed a hand on Captain Hollioak's chest, easing him away from the automaton. Then with an ear-splitting crash Mnemo's legs pistoned out, rupturing the cabin floor. A yawing grey darkness was exposed through the hole.

A blast of Antarctic air rushed in. The sweat on Captain Hollioak's brow, beard and eyelashes froze into a dusting of ice. To Lady Elizabeth's eye, it enhanced his already formidable look of determination. If time were less pressing she would have given the expression deeper consideration. Alas.

"Convey my sincere apologies to Mister Thackeray for the damage, Captain." Lady Elizabeth lashed her rope to the carabiner on Mnemo's shoulder. Another section she threaded through reinforced slits in her coat to the harness about her waist. "I must take this route alone. The cold outside would kill you in a minute, I'm afraid."

Captain Hollioak's regret was obvious. "I will do what I can to distract Winter and his men."

"Be careful, Captain. Winter did not insinuate traitors in your crew just to capture me. I believe he intends to take your ship. Expect heavy fire and light damage." She smiled ruefully at the gaping perforation at their feet. "Perhaps lighter than I have already inflicted."

She could see the awful suspicion growing in his eyes. Pain took hold of her heart. "How can you know so much about Doctor Winter?" he said.

"Oh dear." She drew a deep breath. Unavoidable as the moment was, she felt flummoxed and ill-prepared. "It is because I know him better than anyone else. Because once my heart held nothing for him but passion. Doctor Winter did not kill John Gracemere, Captain. Not in the way the world believes. My husband's obsessions became madness and in his madness, he forsook one name for another. He abandoned his name, his title, and his country."

Captain Hollioak's jaw tightened. "He abandoned you."

"He did."

"Of all his crimes, that may be his most unforgivable." Captain Hollioak's throat was clenched with submerged emotion.

He told her once of his last sight of the Marquess of Salisbury: flames casting long orange streaks across the Severn's black surface; men falling from the sky, screaming and afire; the ship's lift sacs swollen beyond their limits, snapping their restraining nets and bursting in blinding phosphor glares. At the last, its fat hull, slung beneath burning balloons and useless screeching engines, had dropped and burst. Its scattered bones blazed a forest. The fire burned for days and devoured all hope of survivors. She knew he was reliving the same moment now.

"That was your second condition, was it not? To know what I know?"
He closed his eyes and nodded. "I would kill him if he were standing here."

"I know. You are at home in the heat of a raging battle, Captain. I crave method. Precision. One step after another, each piece in its place until the mechanism is flawless."

"That's not my experience of most plans, Lady Gracemere."

So, that he could not read her face, she fitted her mask. Her voice sounded hollow through the gentle hiss of oxygen. "I have asked so much of you Captain. I think we must dispense with these awkward formalities. When we meet again, call me Elizabeth."

"Then you must call me Edward."

The wind whipped at his dark hair, flaring it like spray from an angry wave. His eyes were hard with the certainty that they looked upon her for the last time. Perhaps he was fixing this final sight of her in his memory, as Elizabeth was.

"Godspeed, Edward."

She stepped into the hole and vanished into the grey darkness.

Edward's anxiety built as he watched the thrumming vibrations in the rope. Its tensile strength was unquestionable. Yet it strained against the anchoring automaton with the force of Elizabeth's descent and the relentless power of the biting wind. It whined with tension and slapped at Mnemo's iron frame.

"Do not be concerned, Captain," said the automaton. Tiny puffs of sawdust escaped as its tightening grip crushed timber. "She is an accomplished climber."

He could hear cautious footsteps and drawing knives. The mutineers were gathering their wits for a renewed assault. Time was short. Even so, Edward's curiosity bested his caution. "How much of him is in you?"

"I am nothing of Lord Gracemere. I am a flawless reproduction of a widow's fond memory, Captain Hollioak." Mnemo's disingenuity was just how Gracemere himself would have put it.

"Did she even mourn her loss?"

Mnemo's pause suggested an odd reluctance to answer.

"She made me to supplant her grief, Captain. Mnemo is the receptacle into which she poured her sadness and fury and frustration. Any bereaved soul might weep in a favourite garden or whisper secrets to a portrait. Am I so different?"

Edward said, "You are remarkable." He was unsure whether he addressed himself to Mnemo or John Gracemere.

"I am the product of remarkable hands, Captain."

"So you are."

Edward tucked the pistol into his belt. "If I may, I will use the rope to gain access to the coffers between the deck and the hull. They will pursue me there, but not soon enough." He took hold of the rope, which bit frostily at his palms, and used it to lever himself into the gap between the floor and the lower hull of the Bishop of Sarum. Mnemo's strength impressed him, that it should hole two decks able to deflect all but the most accurate cannon fire. As soon as his feet found purchase in the musty coffer, he lowered himself and pushed through into the dark space.

He felt the rope go slack. Elizabeth had reached the ground and cast herself off. He released his breath in a muttered prayer of thanks.

Above, there were shouts of dismay and a shot was fired. Two pounding footsteps from Mnemo's elephantine feet thundered directly overhead. More shots were fired, and a voice ordered, "Knock it down, boys!" A rumble of footsteps crossed above, closing on Mnemo. Thumps and curses. One last shot, which ended in a shattering sound.

Mnemo said "Godspeed," as though to nobody.

A moment later the automaton, its arms wrapped about three screaming air sailors, plummeted through the thin scrape of light before Edward's eyes and disappeared into frozen space.

Imprisoning an exclamation of horror behind pursed lips, he began a steady, silent crawl into the heart of his ship.

Smoked lenses protected Elizabeth's vision from the blinding effects of the snow glare. They made it difficult to pick details out at a distance. She saw the faint outline of the airship, swathed in cloud, and Mnemo's parachute, grey as a quarryman. When it became obvious what, the figures falling away from Mnemo with animalistic cries and thrashing limbs were, she raised a hand to her throat. For months, she had known she must harden her heart to the lives her revenge might endanger. She had no qualms that those who had thrown their lot in with Winter should share his fate. As she watched the helpless figures tumble, it was for one soul alone that she feared.

She closed her eyes as the dark shapes crashed to earth, bouncing and breaking upon the frozen scoria. The sound of their impact was all but swallowed by the howling wind. A moment later, the hissing whine of Mnemo's articulating motors broke through the empty rumble.

"Mnemo is Captain Hollioak -?" She could not speak the words.

"Captain Hollioak is still aboard the airship, madam."

"Thank God. I only hope he - Mnemo, there is a man attached to you."

The air sailor, a young midshipman whose name Elizabeth could not recall, was dead, stuck in place with his arms wrapped about Mnemo's shoulders and back. The deadly chill must have sucked the life from him in an instant, though sheer terror could not be discounted.

"Kindly avert your gaze, madam," said Mnemo. Elizabeth turned away. The heavy layers of her mask and hood could not protect her ears from a noise like the splitting of a green branch as Mnemo detached his doomed passenger. The heavy crunch of the corpse dropping onto loose stones signalled the grisly business was done.

"We must hurry," she said, looking up the sloping outer wall of the Erebus volcano. It was bare, lifeless rock, broken into flaking scree, steaming black soil and a few obstinate patches of glistening snow resisting the radiant heat. "Even with the moderate ground warmth, the cold is unbearable."

Mnemo leaned forward and dropped onto his hands, absurdly resembling a calisthenics enthusiast. Its powerful hands punched into the loose rock. Where a human foot had toes, curved metal prongs emerged like dull talons. "Clip on, madam," it instructed. Elizabeth fixed a new, shorter cable between herself and Mnemo, one that allowed her to stand no more than a few yards behind it.

"Begin." At her instruction, Mnemo detached a hand and reached up. One leg elongated while the other dug in. The cable went taut as Mnemo pulled itself upslope. Upon its next movement, Elizabeth was dragged two steps forward. She leaned away at a comfortable angle and walked behind Mnemo, letting it drag her toward the summit.

Their destination was soon in sight. A crenelated wall had been built along the rim of the volcano's caldera. Every so often she observed a bulky gun emplacement with an artillery piece mounted upon it. The nearest was directly above them. At their current rate of ascent, it was no more than eight or nine minutes away.

Elizabeth turned her face skyward, trying to make the airship out through the gloom.

"Mnemo, did Edw- did Captain Hollioak say anything about me?"

"He complimented your engineering skills, madam."

"Humph. As well he might."

But then, why should Edward have shared his thoughts with the hollow reconstruction of a dead man? She knew well enough that he recoiled from Mnemo. Still, she hoped that he might understand. Perhaps one day he might even find it possible to forgive her shameless manipulations. She pictured him twenty years on, a deep-lined face surrounding sharp grey eyes, hair of distinguished silver, recounting this day at some London club. She imagined him speaking of her, not unkindly and with perhaps a dash of the daring to pepper the tale.

Elizabeth smiled beneath her mask as her clockwork butler dragged her up the face of an active volcano to confront a killer.

Edward pressed the muzzle of his pistol against the back of Lieutenant Dempsey's head, just below the brim of his bicorne hat. "Stand down, Ensign," he told the startled helmsman, "or you shall wear Dempsey's brains with my first shot and a shroud with the second." The obedient sailor set his pistols on the helmcastle's floor.

"Captain? What the devil -?" Dempsey spoke with urgent horror. Edward felt him shiver through the pistol in his grasp.

"Quiet, Mister Dempsey, while I make a judgment as to your character." Edward realised he'd already made his decision. He'd served with Dempsey long enough to know the man was no great actor. The cold sweat at his nape was real enough. He lowered his pistol. Then he said, "There's treachery abroad, Lieutenant. I had to be certain you were not Winter's man."

Dempsey swallowed hard. His hand shook but he mastered his voice. "Aye, sir. A couple of the Scots gas monkeys tried to take the 'castle a short time ago. They reckoned without Farmer here." He nudged two canvas-wrapped bundles pushed to one side of small observation cabin.

"Good work, Ensign. Tell Sergeant Judson to take two men and sweep below. Any man not at his proper station is to surrender at once or be shot as a mutineer." The junior officer hurried to obey.

Edward collected the discarded pistols and handed them to Dempsey. An apology was not proper but trust ought to be restored. "No sign of engagement from Winter's stronghold?"

"No, sir. Cloud cover's thick and light's poor. Forward watch observed some artillery mountings and a docking tower. No ground response yet. They mustn't have seen us."

"Let's not depend on that," said Edward. "We'll come about and launch an attack from the south. Sound the –"

A shudder rippled through the deck. The anchor-guys and the rigging sang out a humming tune. The sailing-men glanced around, as deep an involuntary reflex as breathing. The instinctive horror of damage, especially to the great silk-and-canvas bags that held them up, was shared by every man who lived aloft.

"Sabotage," Edward said, his eyes racing over the flicking instruments of the monitoring panel until he found one inactive. "Number five intake vent. Clogged it with oakum, I'll warrant."

"They're mad! If it catches alight -"

"They're gambling we'll set down immediately." Edward made a snap decision. "Is the docking tower in sight? Then align on it and full ahead all able engines. Run out the guns. Commence firing on the starboard side only. Starboard only, do you hear me?"

He could not be certain that Lady Gracemere – that is, Elizabeth – was not in firing range. She was shrewd enough to account for an artillery exchange. He could only hope she had done so.

"Let's make some noise, Dempsey," said Edward. "So much noise Winter will never hear what's coming."

Winter's guards intercepted them sooner than Elizabeth had expected. For all her care over months, for all her attention to the tiniest detail, the reality of enacting her plans was maddening. Every step seemed to throw up some bothersome wrinkle, like the portcullis grate separating this steam vent from the stronghold's interior. It had not been equal to Mnemo's strength but she was nearly overcome with concern that the sound its removal had made.

It occurred to her that Edward's battle experience would have been useful in this infiltration. The military mind was always having to compensate for the unexpected. A pity she hadn't factored him into this final phase. It was most unfair, selfish even, to wish him by her side. But there it was.

A harsh mechanical voice like a grindstone sharpening gears shrieked in the darkness. "Remain where you are if you please." Elizabeth froze, dismayed at the sight of the guard automaton. Her focus was on the point of the sabre emerging from the bulbous stump at its wrist.

"Ah. What a - crude innovation. I hardly think the intimidating effect outweighs the loss of digital utility." In the echoing service tunnel, her voice lacked the intended note of cool dismissal.

"I don't think the sword's primary purpose is to intimidate, Madam." At the sound of Mnemo's voice, the automaton swivelled its head, as if noticing Mnemo for the first time. "May I?"

"Yes, thank you. Please take care." The sword tip was level with her eye.

Mnemo trundled forward. The automaton's violet faceplate flashed in warning. It said, "Remain where you are if -"

Mnemo's faceplate split and opened like a warehouse door, spilling a burst of colours. Fuchsia and heliotrope lights played over the guard's head for a fraction of a moment. A sharp smell of scorched oil and an almost inaudible crystalline crack reached Elizabeth. The sword arm quivered and began to straighten with a whining sound. Its point wobbled and drove forward.

Elizabeth squealed and fell backwards. She dropped into an undignified position. The blade passed overhead, close enough to have impaled a hat. Fortunately, she possessed no such item. The automaton's arm was drawing back for a second strike but before it could launch its attack, it froze. When it had remained unmoving while she counted twenty hammering heartbeats, she spoke.

"Excellent work Mnemo."

"With respect, Madam, the credit is all yours." A new click beat rhythmically from somewhere inside it. Elizabeth pictured the elegant mechanism within, now busy with activity. She rose with fresh vigour.

"Let us call it a shared triumph." Once, she had said such things to John Gracemere. "Now begin. Time is short."

The Bishop of Sarum eased down through the clouds, its multi-chambered air sacs rumbling against the volcano's turbid air.

The moment they began their approach, the stronghold opened fire. Thunderous cracks and bursts of light and black smoke popped all about them, some of it crackling across the reinforced lower hull. As Elizabeth predicted, the fire pattern was dense but ineffective. Edward might have congratulated himself on his superb captaincy, had he no advanced warning of Winter's tactics.

The Bishop's gun crews had no such orders to fire wide. They directed their barrages against the artillery emplacements, the observation turrets, the walls themselves. Smoke filled what little clear air surrounded the battered stronghold.

Edward leaned close to the marine at his side. "Hold the docking tower until we have secured the ship, Sergeant." An elongated spire loomed out of the murk, rushing at them at an unnerving rate. A team of sailors armed with nets were positioned around the Bishop's exposed docking platform, with Edward and the marines occupying the centre. As the tower swept by, the closest netsman cast off. His heavy cable netting fell across barbed extrusions on the tower's surface, catching and tightening instantly.

Every man aboard the platform heaved forward. If not for the lines each had fixed to the platform and clipped to his wide leather belt, they would have pitched over the side. The lucky ones would have fallen to the frozen stone walls or collided with the tower. Deadly as that might prove, it was preferable to overshooting the wall and plummeting straight into the mouth of Mount Erebus. Below them, bubbling with angry yellow intensity was the open caldera of the volcano.

Edward unclipped his safety line with unconscious ease and swept forward onto the jutting stone walkway of the docking tower. The marines swarmed past him, rifles raised, while sailors bounced about attaching mooring ropes to the tower.

Winter's guards waited for them at the other side. Not men at all, but two clanking automatons with dull staring red lenses. They were tall steel brutes with crude rivets, bubbled seams, and merciless clawed hands. Edward recognised the design ancestry they shared with Mnemo. They lacked its elegant aesthetics but the overlapping plates and grooved, studded limbs reflected a familiar style.

The mechanical soldiers – twice Mnemo's height - swept forward. Ignoring a barrage of rifle fire, they fell upon the marines. Their strength made children of the men. Their swings broke limbs, their grip immobilised arms. One man was thrown free of the tower, his screams lost in the howling wind before his fate could be known. The marines were overwhelmed within moments.

Edward aimed at the crystal faceplate of the nearest automaton. His shot was wide, deflecting off metal. Before he could fire again, the mechanical soldier lifted him like a small boy. His feet brushed the rough basalt paving without finding purchase.

His captor manoeuvred him down a long stairway through a rubble-strewn courtyard, open to the sky and slick with snowmelt. He felt warm stone even through light footfalls. More: a grumbling vibration from somewhere below. It could have been Erebus itself but Edward had lived most of his life reading the mood and health of engines through the timbers of his deck and the soles of his boots.

A factory. Edward had a good idea what Winter was building down there.

They passed through heavy steel doors that lifted with the turn of great cogs. Inside was a miniature railyard every bit as busy as Waterloo Station. Legions of mechanical men loaded and unloaded cars, stacking barrels, massive crates and disassembled munitions. Some of the mechanical labour force bore Mnemo's likeness. Most appeared little more sophisticated than basic geometric shapes moving on wheels and waving skeletal metal limbs with tongs for fingers. All ignored Edward and his escorts as they wound a path through the supplies to a flat freight car. The rail it rested on led to a junction that split into five separate paths. They followed the central path, which dropped into a short tunnel and terminated on the far side of another cog-driven door.

They were in a large chamber that was part bedchamber, part business den and a greater part lunatic trick of architectural engineering. It overlooked a rocky vent roiling with lava. Though what appeared to be a fine stratum of pearlescent glass separated them from sputtering lumps of molten rock, radiated heat suffused the room. The warmth restored some of the feeling robbed from his limbs by manhandling and the cold.

The soldiers released Edward and propelled him into a comfortable armchair. Across a small table bearing a silver tea service sat the man whose works had brought him here.

"Doctor Winter," Edward said. His finger itched as he imagined it curling around the trigger of a pistol aimed at the man's head. Even in his life as a professional soldier, he'd rarely found cause to kill in anger. Were he armed now he would not have hesitated to strike.

Winter frowned in mock dismay. "Oh please, Edward, don't be so stuffy. You've always called me John before. Do you still take sugar?"

*

The tea was fresh, even delicious. It left a bitter taste in Edward's mouth. There was only one way that fresh tea could possibly be obtained in the Antarctic.

"You skulk at the bottom of the world. You dispatch mechanical soldiers to murder sailors, steal cargoes and scuttle ships."

"So that's how you found me?"

"I collected reports of unexplained attacks by air and sea. I gleaned clues from your various public pronouncements as Doctor Winter. I could not have performed the necessary triangulations without Elizabeth's assistance."

"You have formed a close alliance?"

"I have conducted myself honourably. I give my word on it, little as it may mean to you."

"I suppose you judge me fairly, Edward. I faked my death, turned my coat from England for her greatest rival and styled myself as a pirate king from a comic opera. Scurrilous behaviour indeed."

Winter chuckled over his teacup. He rose and signalled one of his guards. The automaton detached twinned Admiralty sabres from the wall where they were crossed, beneath a portrait of Lord and Lady Gracemere on the grounds of their estate in Sussex. The reminder of Elizabeth's shattered happiness brought an unwelcome lump to Edward's throat.

"I believed John Gracemere was dead. I hunted his murderer only to find you. But I was right all along, wasn't I? John is dead after all." Edward fixed Winter with a cold glare as he took a final sip of Lapsang tea.

"I believe sabres are the Airman's blade of choice? Select your piece if you please."

The weapon Edward took had an excellent heft and balance. "After all you've done, dare I hope for an honourable engagement?"

"I offer you the opportunity to fight for your life, Edward. See to your guard."

Winter lashed out at Edward's forehead. It was a predictably treacherous cut. Edward raised his blade in sharp salute, diverting Winter's blade overhead. He stepped sideways to clear himself from the clutter of furniture. Winter scooped up the tea service in his free hand and threw it at Edward. Tea sprayed brown in the wake of the silver pot. Edward ducked, too slow. The pointed spout caught him a glancing blow on his cheek and opened the skin just below the eye.

Winter came at him, probing with narrow cuts. Edward turned each away, stepping back from Winter's advance.

"You want to kill me," said Winter, twitching his blade to draw Edward into a false defence. He wore a grin. "Allow me to offer an alternative. Join me."

"To what purpose? What possible cause inspires this madness of yours?"

Edward felt warmth at his back. Mount Erebus itself seemed to react to their duel. Gouts of superheated vapour rose beyond the protective glass wall. Edward threw a low cut at Winter's knee. His opponent retreated a step, allowing Edward to circle away from Winter's trap.

"Profit at first. Oh, don't look at me like that, Hollioak. Great causes cost money." Winter's blade lashed back and forth as his face coloured slightly. He withdrew from each cut a fraction too late.

Edward saw it. He held back from pressing his advantage. "So you terrorise the southern shipping routes for what? To repay your German masters?"

"They are not my masters! They are useful tools, nothing more. They assisted me to establish this facility and in return, I target their political and economic rivals."

Edward overreached on a lunge. Winter snaked his blade forward, darting the tip into the flesh above Edward's elbow. He fell back at once, raising his blade to tap his forehead with the guard. Edward grimaced and nodded, acknowledging the hit.

"What then?" he asked through a tight frown.

"You saw my factory. In another month, it will be operating at full capacity. Fully resourced it can build fifty of my Winterguard every week. In six months, I will have an army. Completely loyal, completely tireless. They are remarkable machines, you know."

Edward said, "You stole Elizabeth's designs, didn't you? Is that why you pretended to die? So, you would not have to admit the shame of your betrayal?" He pressed forward, aiming slashes one-two-three at Winter's arm, shoulder, and head. Winter battered them away but his arm was slowing. Every cut Edward aimed came closer to its mark than the last.

Winter went on, ignoring Edward's accusation. "I will set them to work taking a dozen locations in Chile and Peru. They will build more factories and that dozen will make a hundred."

"You think you can do all that by yourself?"

"Why not? My workers never complain. They don't demand wages; they don't need coal for warmth and they don't go home at the end of the day. They just work until they break and their parts are reused to replace them."

"And what will you do with this tireless Winterguard of yours?"

"Why, I'll put an end to war, of course."

Edward stared. It was madness. It must be. More of Winter's attacks were wide and wild now. Winter seemed not to notice or care. "Whatever can you mean?" Edward said.

"Europe is a political cesspit, Edward. A squabbling nest of greed and spite and petty mistrust. Anarchists. Captains of industry. Communists. Peers of the realm. All as bad as each other. One imagined slight is enough to set them all at each other's throats. Good men, Edward, men like you, are sent to die in meaningless wars."

"Your solution is conquest?"

His eyes glittered. "My armies will fall across Europe and lay it prostrate. I will crush anyone who resists. I'll offer absolute peace under my protection."

"An oppressor's peace."

"There's no other kind. Come, Edward. You've all but thrown away your career, your commission and your reputation to pursue me to this cold hell. Return to the world at my side."

Edward had heard enough. "I've seen how you value those at your side, Lord John Gracemere. I decline your offer with no regret at all."

He leaned forward, his foot slapping loud on the cold flagstones. He caught the point of Winter's blade and turned it away. He circled his own point down below Winter's outstretched arm and drove it into his side just below his shoulder. The blade sunk into Winter's armpit. He coughed in surprise and fell back into his armchair.

An automaton wrapped its hand around Edward's and closed, crushing the sword's steel guard around his fingers. Edward howled in agony. He tried to yank his fingers free but they were fixed fast in their mangled cage.

In a moment, the pain overwhelmed him. The strength drained from his legs. He collapsed, suspended like a hanged man from his crippled hand.

"Edward!"

Through nausea and pain, he forced himself to regain his balance. Through blurring eyes, he saw Elizabeth dashing toward him, brandishing a sledgehammer. She was flanked by Mnemo, in the custody of a phalanx of Winter's soldiers. The likeness to some warrior-queen was captivating. "Mnemo, help him."

Mnemo turned Edward's captor to face it. Its face-lights flashed. Then Mnemo punched a clawed fist through its faceplate. The destroyed head sizzled with ruptured pipes and a momentary grind of dislodged gears. As the automaton toppled over, Mnemo fixed two crimp-edged fingers about its wrist and sheared it through.

"So, my dear, you've come at last -" began Winter, but Elizabeth directed an annoyed "Shush!" at him and rushed to Edward's side.

"Captain, are you badly hurt? Can you walk? Edward!" She produced tinplate shears from the folds of her coat and set to work on freeing his crushed hand. Even through the spearing pain, he felt the warmth of her hands on his bloody skin.

"I'll manage," he said.

He glanced at Winter, who was gasping for breath and clambering to sit up. "Elizabeth, I'm sorry. I hoped I could spare you -"

Elizabeth placed her palm against his cheek, her fingers resting on the pulse behind his jaw. "Edward, please, there's nothing for you to apologise for. I wish I had never dragged you into this."

"If you had left me behind I would be the sadder for it." He touched his good hand to hers, wincing a little.

"Well, well, it seems I have been succeeded in your affections, Elizabeth." Winter, pale and unsteady, dabbed a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. "How fortunate it is not to know how our loved ones remember us after we die. A lesser man might take exception."

Elizabeth said, "Your reputation has survived intact, John. The world remembers you fondly, even if I cannot."

Winter said, "At the risk of seeming ungrateful, I don't care a fig for my reputation. Guards, take Lady Elizabeth away. I will deal with - Guards?" His Winterguards made no response.

"You always overestimated your abilities, John," said Elizabeth. She tapped her hammer against the dome-head of one of the Winterguards. "You fled with the blueprints for my Mnemonic Man. That was how I knew you weren't really dead. You thought you could turn my inventions into war machines? Well, I suppose you were right. But you never really understood what you stole."

"It was you who did not understand the strength of my convictions, Elizabeth. I -" He was interrupted by a shuddering rumble that rolled through the chamber. Fine cracks appeared in the glass wall. From somewhere beyond the doors they heard a sudden crash of colliding metal. "What - what is happening?"

"Your soldiers are destroying your factory, John. Or I suppose I should say, my soldiers."

"How?"

"My designs for sapient machines model the complexity of a human personality using repeated diffraction of light waves in a crystalline matrix. As such their instructions are remarkably susceptible to rewriting through coded bursts of light. It was a design flaw that I was yet to eliminate. Fortunately,"

Edward reeled unsteadily as another shock struck the room. Outside, the Erebus' heart bubbled like an agitated stew-pot. "You intended to be captured all along?" asked Edward.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you." She turned, pointing the hammer at Winter in accusation. It seemed to weigh nothing in her fierce grip. "I could not risk someone in your crew passing the information on. I preferred to appear as if I were a distraught widow hell-bent on bloody revenge."

"No!" From beneath his chair, Doctor Winter produced a short wand wrapped about with copper cable. He slapped it against the side of the closest soldier, where it stuck fast. The wand flashed a blinding violet. The Winterguard fell to the floor, whining and sparking. Winter leaped to his feet and dashed for the factory doors. "I commanded them once, I can do it again. I won't be stopped so easily." He paused at the open door and looked back at Elizabeth. "When I return, you'll regret interfering with my business, wife." Then he was gone.

Edward gamely snatched up Winter's blade and tested its weight in his uninjured hand. "Not my best, but it will do for him." He made to give chase after Winter. Elizabeth grabbed his arm.

"Let him go," she said, taking the sword from him. "We don't have much time. Right now, the guards are opening the valves that regulate water pumped through the volcano to produce steam. The pressure build-up will shortly become, er, exciting. That should keep Winter occupied until the countdown is complete."

"What countdown?"

Mnemo moved between the control panels and the glass wall. An honour guard of Winter's soldiers surrounded it like sons at a father's funeral. "Six minutes remain, Madam. My charges are primed for detonation."

Tears pricked at Elizabeth's eyes.

"Oh my, I hadn't expected to feel upset. I'm going to miss you Mnemo."

"Quite right, Madam," said Mnemo, with more than a hint of the smug confidence that led from John Gracemere to Doctor Winter.

"When the charges detonate, everything Winter has built will be consumed by the lava. For all I care, he can live a long and healthy life. What he cannot do is use my Mnemo to rule the world."

"When you were thinking of everything, did you come up with a way to escape?" Edward's grin was somewhere between amusement and admiration.

"To be honest, I never expected to live this long. I thought he'd shoot me in the head. As long as he stole Mnemo as well, my plan would succeed regardless of my survival." Elizabeth's cheeks were flushed. "I didn't count on your interference, Edward."

"Then I'm happy to bring fog and confusion to your schemes, Lady Gracemere. As it happens, I have transportation available not more than four minutes away. Would you care to join me in a headlong sprint?"

He held out his hand. She took it with fond gratitude and put it to her lips. It was a touch as soft and warm as a summer breeze.

"I have no other plans, Captain Hollioak."

Hewit's Report

Gene Stewart

USA

"It never helps that fact interrupts fond wishes."

Hewit sat before the Senate Committee Investigating Claims of Climate Change and thought of railroad schedules, picturing himself tied to the tracks.

"Threatening a schizophrenic's delusions, trying to build a bridge to span a break from consensual reality, arrests their fall, but often does so violently. Nets of confabulation offer softer landings, but rubber room coddling by projecting back selected parts of their delusions to end at least 93 percent of the time in straight-jacket swaddling. Trying to play to their mindset only prolongs their decay, validates some of their delusions, to which they tend to cling. In short, softer, more gradient methods work only for those more nearly grounded."

He had lost them, bored them. This was over their heads, beyond their interest levels, and irrelevant to the agenda they'd so obviously already agreed upon. Hewit felt foolish suddenly. Performing like a seal for rubes.

Most of these fat rich old white men sat in bubbles of self-regard and hazes of unassailable power only a lifetime of Yes, Sir could impart. They did not care what a scientist had to say.

They were themselves delusional, Hewit decided.

Not that everyone he dealt fact to qualified as delusional in a clinical sense. He was no bigot. Mostly the kind of delusional thinking he faced just then was expedient, political, which was worse in Hewit's opinion. More viral, less treatable. People can be amazingly blind to what threatens their self-image and lifestyle.

"Could we, Dr. Hewit, save editorial remarks until a later time?" This from a pert younger woman eager to curry favour with older colleagues.

Opinions not being called for from the likes of him, being reserved for power's wielders and brokers, Hewit limited his concluding remarks to a dry recitation of fact, gave his brief report as briefly as possible, and gathered his papers. He'd been properly spanked, or so he thought.

As he lifted his folio and bent at the waist to stand a sharp, mocking voice said his name as if identifying a particularly loathsome species of salad cockroach. Frozen, Hewit glanced at a sneering senator, a bloated man in a bolo tie with tombstone teeth and eyes like a haywire Pachinko machine cascading ball-bearings onto the floor. Hewit was ironically surprised this specimen of western — emphasize country western, emphasize cowboy — fascism did not have his thousand-gallons-per-second hat on, the better to offer an oily squint out from under, the better to shadow his reptilian spite.

This people-shaped reptile of greed was Hewit's nightmare. "Oh, sorry if I woke you, Senator."

Up close, the scowling pocketer of any bribe that strayed within lasso or lurching wide-stance distance probably smelled of petroleum from a sputtering fracked well and bathed in liberal blood when he wasn't quaffing it. Was such a thing ever human in other than form?

That type.

It was people-shaped things like this senator who had kept pollution sacred, despoiled natural resources, raped and murdered the Earth, and guaranteed a looming extinction for mankind and most other higher species, perhaps all of them down to the amoeba. Hewit hated such greed-driven short-sighted power-mad gun-drunk violence-prone war-loving throw-back psychopaths. It figured to be this species of cancer attacking Hewit's report, kept as oblique, bland, and mild as possible to avoid just such theatrics.

"Sir?" the senator drawled, using at least three syllables.

Such affronted ego, such acidic mockery packed into a word.

Hewit began to speak but was interrupted. "Oh, sit back down, son. We're just gettin' started on all this — "He fluttered his pudgy fingers as if clearing away a bad smell, a gesture his sulphurous self had a long, detailed experience of, muscle-memory practice amounting to years.

Hewit sat. From Sir to Son in one breath. He smiled. "It's called Science, senator."

It was a mark of the senator's viciousness that the ripple of soft laughter smothered itself and its children instantly when the self-defined great man glared at specific enemies. He had no friends to target with his ire and had often said how glad he was of that. Fear, not friends, was his credo.

Hewit folded his hands on his closed folio and got comfortable, expecting at least three hours of barrage, billingsgate, and pure down-home bullshit posed as elliptical speeches embedded in pointless questions. Tone, not content, counted, Hewit knew, in the political sphere. In such games, score was kept in crooked cooked books.

This pustule was going to use him as a chance to spew.

This colostomy bag was going to spray everyone and everything, pretending it was Hewit who'd punctured him.

When it began, once the senator was absolutely certain every gaze was on him and him alone, and had tested this a few times, when it began Hewit was able to offer succinct deflections of every simplistic misinterpretation, every wilful ignorance, and all sophist's thrusts spewed torrentially, often with false triumph, by the man-shaped thing that was every inch a senator.

Logical fallacy as fire-hose torrent, Hewit thought.

Any blogger could have done as much. Hewit knew the real bomb would be rolled toward him under the cover of all those foggy, twisted words. He knew it would be lobbed only once the senator figured he'd worn his opponent to exhausted frazzle, hypnotized and confused his audience, and won his view by sheer poseur's bravado and bulldozer's inertia. Foghorn Leghorn incarnate, no cartoon but instead mankind's fatal flaw, funny only to hard-core misanthropes.

Pure theatre without substance. Hewit even thought he knew what the single objection of substance, the fulcrum on which this hurricane of mindless verbiage wobbled, would be. He'd been briefed. He was prepared.

When it came, Hewit broke his posture of attentive cooperation and sat back. He raised his folio as if to block the light, or heat more likely, given off by the oven of smug hate he faced. He was prepared to make the senator's little explosion into the trigger for his own nuclear detonation that would blow away all the blather.

Trouble was, no one was even looking at him anymore. They jotted notes, fiddled with cell phones, and leaned to talk openly, ignoring him.

He realized then it would not matter, would make no difference, what he said. His arrangements to counter any core argument a senator like this might tender had been to no avail. For nought, he thought.

"Hope is what I'd hoped to highlight." Hewit stood. "Leave it at that."

"Young man, you are not dismissed."

Hewit ignored the senator, shrugged off the phony outrage, and walked from the committee hearing room to bellowed threats of being held in contempt. "Too late for that," he muttered, disgusted by nodding and smiling to the armed guards at the doorway, who let him pass unmolested.

By the time Hewit got back to the lab through dusk's knotted traffic it had been shut down, its doors locked, police in facemarks, war-paint as it was called with boyish glee — it was used as a sign that these cops would shoot to kill and not bother with questions later — and body armour holding guns guarding all entrances, even windows, until, as one of the ousted workers grumbled, "...the trucks get here to cart it all off."

"Yeah," someone else said. "To an incinerator, I bet."

A dozen or so of Hewit's co-workers stood talking, outrage supplying the main tone. As Hewit arrived they swarmed him, seeking news in a desperate hope that he might be able to re-open the lab, reclaim their work, their jobs at least. Everyone had experienced projects being shut down for political reasons, all had known the frustration of good work trashed by cretins.

It was the knowledge equivalent of Daesh demolishing ancient sites.

"Are we just out on the street now, or fugitives?"

"High-handed theatrics; you know the drill. By the time it blows up in their faces, it's new faces who have no fucking clue."

"Fascism. Worse than I saw in the New Soviet States."

Hewit conveyed to them the plain fact that yes, a single senator really could do this; that, yes, one crazy old man wielded this much power from his committee chairmanship; and that yes, they were locked out of their labs indefinitely, their work made inaccessible and maybe forfeit, their data and equipment about to be seized; that likely anything salvaged would end up shoved deep into a dark archive, results never known by anyone alive, details blurred on purpose, or tossed away with the casual bully glee of marauding chimp armies. Certainly, no general claim or specific information left could suffice to allow independent experimental confirmation by other, or future, scientists. By taking offense at remarks made by one of their investors, or sponsors, or contributors, by clamping down on the details, the senator, one vicious tiny over compensatory ego-limp old man, in a stew of mad autocrat's tantrums, effectively suppressed what they'd found, seeking to kill the hope offered by the implications of their science.

"It's intolerable."

Hewit concurred. "Literally. Maybe it's time to implement Plan Nine."

Those close enough to hear him gaped looked away or nodded eagerly. Some grinned big or laughed bigger. Those just out of ear-shot intuited the gist and caught a tingle from the invocation of Plan Nine. All knew from past drunken discussions how difficult implementing it would be. Precise timing outside a lab was not a scientist's hallmark, yet Plan Nine required they all vanish, (as if to Outer Space, hence the movie reference), on the same day, almost within the same hour, only to reappear later at a place agreed upon earlier. If they made it.

Teleporting, most called it, the irony of THE FLY strong in their reference system. A fly in the ointment would precipitate disaster for the team but Hewit knew failure to act now precluded ability to act later.

If Icarus wanted to fly, he had first to jump.

Or be pushed.

"Remember: We carry hope." Hewit knew it sounded fatuous but wanted to charge his team with serious intent, laser focus. If pomposity of phrase was the cost, he'd pay it unflinchingly and take all the Oppenheimer crying digs later. That there'd be a later was what counted.

Reporters calling for comments or confirmation found none of Hewit's team reachable. No one had seen them after Hewit had issued his report to the Science Control Committee since the chair had tested the limits of senatorial power and privilege by shutting down and seizing the lab "...for the public's moral safety."

No one in media knew what was going on but speculation soon arose that the senator may have "disappeared" Hewit's team. Unable to prove a negative, that he had done no such thing, the senator and his staff could only deny bluster, and shrug, a response no one accepted as even the front edge of factual truth. "It's not real until it's denied inside the beltway," as one doddering Washington, DC wag reminded everyone.

Calls of habeus corpus arose; the senator himself soon found himself forced explicitly to deny he'd had the scientists arrested, detained, labelled enemy combatants, placed in extraordinary rendition categories, or GITMO'd. "Most ludicrous charge of all," he bellowed, red-faced with clenched fists, "is that I had them liquidated, disposed of, killed in short. Assassination!" Wagging his face in unconscious imitation of a certain crook denying he was a crook, the senator said, "I am not a murderer."

Editorial cartoonists sanctioned by the official Opposing Party, ignoring the rehabilitation of the erstwhile tricky president, parodied the senator as a reincarnation even as tabloid headlines shrieked rhetorically WORSE THAN NIXON? "All Nixon did was deny, crookedly, being a crook," one editorial began. "The senator has managed to make dozens of top scientists disappear." The drawing with that one portrayed the senator as a magician leering from under a stovepipe hat spewing clouds of oil smoke.

"Senator Putin to Vanish More Opponents?" one headline asked.

None of this had been foreseen, let alone planned, by the Plan Nine crew. They had not thought themselves that important or that noticed by the public. Plan Nine was an exigent strategy, escape and evasion nerd style, never meant to invoke political persecution.

"Pretty sweet." The senator's suffering was an added surprise benefit of Plan Nine, as most involved agreed. Not that most of Hewit's team had time for schädenfreude. To vanish as a group inside 12 hours required more than grabbing a go-bag and a taxi. It took effort to leave no tracks.

Hewit let the senator off the hook of dark suspicions finally by assembling his team for a media conference at a university convention centre in Lausanne, Switzerland a few months later.

"We'll keep this undramatic." Hewit stood gripping a podium in a crowded room. Few media types attended; most of his audience were family of colleagues. "My team and I, over the past several weeks, have distributed files, assisted specialists, and otherwise spread word of our hopeful findings so others can check and confirm them using the scientific methods of empiricism and reproducible results. As you can see, we're all fine, and each of us will go where most needed to further our work."

Hewit answered a few desultory questions, then stepped aside so a few of the others on his team could make announcements or respond to an increasingly-relaxed Q&A.

Hewit let an amoebic crowd absorb him, chattered for a few moments, then slipped out a side door. He walked through an empty conference room, found the hallway, then found stairs. An exit put him into a cobbled alley from which he emerged to blend with tourists and students in the university town's pleasant melée of accents and attitudes.

At Lake Geneva's shore, he boarded a ferry, found a window seat, and read his Kindle during the smooth excursion to Evian. Sun glinted in coy winks from slate waves. Skies peered down blue and fluffy-clouded, just passing through. Mountains in the distance gleamed, some still snowy on top, a sparse few even gleaming with remaining glaciers on their slopes.

"Hope so," Hewit muttered, gazing upward.

At the Evian bottling works Hewit filled several hiker's bottles at the public fountain, rumoured to be fed no longer by the 12-year trickle from the source glacier. At the train station, he bought a ticket north and rode for under an hour to the Evian source, the ragged remnants of a glacier on a mountain few noticed anymore except on the label, which seemed increasingly quaint.

Hewit hiked upslope, just another tourist exploring trails.

Expecting a bullet to enter his head any second eroded life's joys. Hewit found the views flat, not spectacular. He breathed merely to keep going, missing the apfelwein savour of crisp clean mountain air mentioned in all the brochures. His tiring leg muscles annoyed rather than fulfilled him, seeming to punish rather than reward his efforts.

Whether the senator would send a hit man or squad to kill him and his team Hewit considered a moot point. Others might do so unasked, to curry brutal favour. Corporate would do it, perhaps, to glean competitive advantage in some obscure market. Still other political/corporate entities, finding their hegemony or gravy trains threatened, might decide a deniable act of stochastic terrorism or murder here or there was a small price to pay for continued torrents of profit. Finally, there could always be a quisling among them whose inside reports and sabotage could lead to frustration, a state of emotion never far from the use of violence. A gun, a knife, even a garrotte was not out of the question, to be delivered one otherwise pleasant evening.

Veering from a public path, Hewit vectored toward a landmark visible on an adjacent mountain. He took out his compass and paused now and then to confirm his route. As mountains blocked sunlight in late afternoon slant, chill air flowed downslope like sighs of warning. Mists coalesced in ravines. Shadow snatched clear sight, undermining footing. Hewit stumbled a few times and stopped to cut a walking stick to brace with.

Three boulders, each three times his height masked a cavern's entrance, which he reached as the Moon in crescent rose clear of the tree line as if chasing him up the mountain. Hewit walked a Z among the boulders to reach the cavern's first chamber, using a hiker's LED flash with a red lens to make sure where he placed his feet.

"You made good time. We watched your progress."

"Good time for an American, you mean." Hewit recognized the voice and squinted as a lantern flared. He switched off his flash, pocketed it, and let his eyes adjust to the flame's glow. He smiled. "Was I followed?"

"Only by the Moon. Not even a drone that we could spot. There are satellites, of course. None are scheduled to be over us just now."

"Scheduled."

A nod. "They can be moved, yes, but for the likes of us?"

Hewit remembered the firestorm that had nearly consumed the senator, all due to the likes of them but said nothing. The likes of them could save the world but threatened the current systems. Both knew this. Moving a satellite would not be unreasonable to many. Science had enemies with huge resources.

"There's also GPS. Our scanners say you're clean but, got a cell phone with you? Anything?"

"Of course not." Hewit had tossed his cell phone and Kindle into Lake Geneva's depths in pieces, having broken them before a trip to the rail to watch the mountains get incrementally closer.

"Good. We'll scan for passives; they ping only when pinged."

"What, subcutaneous?"

A nod. "Or in clothes, tools, even food. Anywhere, really. Quite small. They call 'em nano but they're really micro."

"Science literacy marches on, eh?"

"On the heads of dolts, apparently."

"Still, passives are small."

"But potent. Like us, we hope."

"What happens if it turns out they've tracked me?"

A pause. "Hiking accident. Your body will be found elsewhere on the mountain and they'll never spot us. Sorry, has to be that way."

Hewit shivered. He turned his thoughts to the important matters at hand. He perked up. "Have you run the tests?"

As they talked they moved single file through a series of mazes cut into rock. A slight downslope meant they were going deeper. Hewit followed close to benefit from the lantern light.

"We've run every unit independently but not all of them at once. Not yet."

"Won't matter if the others don't come online."

"They will. It's a robust system, layers of redundancy and auto-repair. Diagnostics are the best ever. It's into the terabytes-per-nanosecond scan levels now, cascaded on separate, parallel systems."

"We've planned for countering their inevitable counter-measures?"

They took blood samples, in case of actual nanotech developed outside their information bubble. After that, he was led further into the maze.

They came to locker rooms, showers, and walk-in wardrobes where Hewit was scanned some more, scrubbed, then given a clean set of clothes he'd put there months ago. The trousers were looser at the waist. All that stress, all that motion, never sitting down, sleeping sporadically, fitfully, briefly. He frowned, then shrugged.

"Nearly there, almost done." He glanced up and smiled. "Sorry. I learn by talking to myself."

His escort chuckled. "Ready to see your quarters?"

"Rather see the array."

"The machines are sleeping. Well, most of them."

Diurnal machines, needing sleep-time, dreams. Hewit shivered. "I won't wake them. Promise."

More mazes only inches wider than their shoulders led to a set of elevators. "Left, today."

"You sure?"

"Hope so. Long fall."

They descended smoothly deep into the mountain's core. Hewit thought of Thomas Mann; would time speed up and compress with each step taken from the now-limited time each member of the team and crew enjoyed with such seeming casualness? Or would their footing go out from under them all with neither warning nor mercy to stochastic fate, by random cruel indifference? This was a Science, not a Magic mountain.

Had their crimes piled too high to avoid toppling onto them? Would their machines even work?

Hope, Hewit found, came with a fog of ambiguity every bit as blinding as the desolate fog of war.

The machines slept dreaming in twinkling lights and quiet hums in a seemingly endless chain of chambers each too vast to grasp on a human scale except in abstract, by mental modelling; they slept the digital sleep of AI algorithms, the machine sleep of mathematics, the slumber of logic surrendered to heuristic programming hoped to be aimed toward altruism, if such could be found in the aggregate static of solid-state hearts.

Standing on a platform holding a railing, Hewit gazed outward and down as if seeing a cavern containing a fallen, caged constellation of cities. Both peaceful and unsettling, the scale awed him. They'd done it.

"It's up to you now," Hewit whispered, shivering again toward a shudder.

One machine near him, below him, whirred for an instant, flashing brighter lights, as if it had heard him, wanted to reply.

A sleepers' muttering.

As if, Hewit told himself, my mind is on its frequency.

Or its, mine.

No one could save the ecology. The tipping point had been reached, passed, during the Cheney Junta of W's Presidency. No one could stop climate change toward runaway greenhouse effect. Weather modification efforts such as HAARP had aided only chaos. So-called chemtrail spraying had availed them of nothing. An accelerated schedule for doom had resulted from each new analysis of the raw data.

Mankind had broken the systems sustaining it. Psychopaths like the senator had not been stopped in their acts of cancerous greed and destruction. Left untended, cancer kills the host — people-shaped things had been tolerated by humanity too long, helped perhaps in its forbearance by metaphors such as zombie apocalypse, space alien invasion, and the invisible hand of the unfettered marketplace. Money, so-called civilization, and other inventions helped the psychopaths exploit and benefit from the people's labour, even as pollution and deforestation and other ecological horrors accrued, worsening by orders of magnitude as the population exploded.

Pod people, bodies snatched, brains eaten, took as normal these greedy psychopaths, accepted them as part of a necessary whole.

The sixth mass extinction, already well underway, would take out all higher life forms, including people. All higher primates, all things alive bigger than cockroaches, maybe even cockroaches themselves would be unable to live in the climates that would prevail in only a few more years. Certainly, within living people's lifetimes, their narrow life-niche would slam shut. Hewit thought of David Bowie's song, "Five Years", his brain afire.

It might not be only five years but that estimate was close enough for rock and roll.

What hope could anyone offer?

Hewit's report stated it bluntly: "We cannot stop our extinction. We cannot even offer Artificial or Mechanical Intelligence to carry on our memories. We can offer only a model of our world as it is now, using any data, all information from every source, legally-sanctioned and otherwise, to create in huge banks of new types of computers that will learn to become self-aware, perhaps after we're gone. They may be self-aware already; we debate it. We're not sure. Turing wouldn't be sure.

"These machines are self-correcting, self-monitoring, and self-repairing. Beyond that, they can design new parts of themselves and expand, grow, and change. They can adapt rationally. They are connected to solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, and other power sources. In their servers, one can find more about each of us than anyone could know. More about places. More about everything, held in cognizance and awareness all at the same instant, constantly. Imagine being aware of everything, always. The model of this world is of incalculable complexity and subtlety and all this to offer, no, to give, to grant us the hope that whatever we are will go on in some form into a future that lies beyond our collective bodily death. Our physical existence may end and very soon but our culture, our art, even our personalities, our greatness, our foibles, our good and our evil, even that will remain, in some form. All we are, everything beyond what even we can know, is now secure in hidden, protected machines designed to become, if we are lucky, our next phase, our next incarnation. One universe is birthing another, physical to digital. Perhaps the digital will re-colonize the physical one day. Da Vinci, Newton, Tesla, Einstein, Penrose, Hawking, all died as men but their ideas, their proofs, lived on, thrived, adapted to a changing world. Meme theory says ideas spread like viruses, the vector being communication, so we built that in. These machines seek to expand outward, to find others to communicate with and learn from. This complex, subtle, supple model of ourselves will do what we might have done, in more detail than words can express.

"We all hope to survive, in some form.

"Our machines ensure it."

"You blaspheme, sir, and speak of creating a new god."

So, the senator had begun his tirade, backed by untold millions of superstitious minds, fearful hearts, hate-filled people who stood anti-intellectual and proud of ignorance, weighing opinion and wishful thinking heavier than fact.

Hewit's report did not mention the necessity of eliminating living mankind to be sure it would not, as the single worst threat to the machines, find ways to sabotage the only hope of the culture's long-term survival.

The 1% rich envisioned a world in which those they labelled Useless Eaters would be eliminated, leaving only half a billion at most alive globally to serve their whims. Paradise for a few elite who imagined they could ride out the extinction they wished to impose on everyone else.

They reminded Hewit of the war pigs who believed an L-shaped hole covered with plywood and topsoil would suffice to let them survive a nuclear war, later to dig out and conquer the ruins. Madness had been enshrined in mutually-assured destruction. It was called a balance of power.

Such insanity.

Hewit slept fitfully, if at all.

Early next morning, yawning from poor sleep and worse nightmares, Hewit, in communication with the other so-called interim crews that would stay alive long enough to make any needed adjustments, looked the others in their view-screen eyes, nodded, and said, "Okay. Start them. Start all the machines."

No pompous words came. He tried hard to think of the billions who would die in the next week or so from released plagues, detonated nukes, stirred storms to which the machines were immune. He tried hard to remember the people swept aside as history's clutter, to make room for a bigger, better idea, one needing a clean slate and no vermin infestations.

He tried hard to think of his own family, somewhere in the world.

Once stability was ensured, the interim crews would die in their sleep. It would happen when the machines decided.

"Flip of a switch."

"What's that?" A man near Hewit looked startled.

Hewit blushed. "Nothing. Just thinking out loud. Old habits, huh?"

It never helped that fact interrupted fond wishes.

Path to F'dar

E.J. Alexander

Canada

Rali leaned against cold stone. He was near the nesting corner, where Browny and the other girls huddled and coddled their screamers. He closed his eyes and let the chill soak into the bare skin of his shoulder blades and buttocks.

His stomach rumbled. Though accustomed to the early-cycle ache of emptiness, pain nagged him still, lurking ever at the edge of his notice, ever demanding his attention. Rali opened his eyes to look up at the slowly rotating slats that crossed the ceiling high overhead. They were completely open--half-cycle. The portal would click soon.

A blast of sound and air roared into Rali's ears. The ball slapped the wall only a fingerbreadth from his head. Kren had thrown it--of course. Kren was near the rain-room and his initial look of disappointment at missing his target turned to satisfaction with Rali's involuntary start. Kren had the uncanny ability to sense every opportunity to torment his little enemy. Though Rali's ears rang with the swollen, empty, ripples of deafness, he could still hear Kren sing-out:

Rali, Rali is too small

Rali, Rali falls off wall

The other boys and some of the girls joined in,

Rali, Rali don't you know?

Rali, Rali you can't go!

Most of the half-sizers knew only the 'Rali, Rali' part and sang in their joyous thoughtlessness, but they would learn the whole of it soon enough, Rali knew.

The boys' laughter echoed throughout the big-room. Their hatred pressed down on him like a weight--always pressing down. It made it difficult to breathe sometimes. He was careful not to show any reaction; emotion would only spur them on. Although accustomed to their taunts, it still hurt--like the ache in his arm from his last fall.

Browny said quietly, "Don't let them bother you. They're just a bunch of ballheads."

Rali liked Browny. He liked everything about her. During dark-cycle, he'd lie near her, and when he was sure she was asleep, he'd snuggle up closer and stroke the remarkable softness of her hair. Even her smell was wondrous: clean and mysterious.

The portal clicked, heard above the slap of bare soles on stone. It began rotating slowly open. The boys raced off to crowd around the silvery half-cylinder in the wall, though Kren would claim first position regardless. The girls stood up and made their way over; some carried screamers wrapped in blankets. Many of the screamers were fussing; they too were hungry.

Browny moved toward the portal.

"Luck in the choosing," Rali called and immediately felt the guilt of that falsehood. What would he do when she was chosen? He couldn't imagine being without her.

Rali sank down onto the tattered remnants of his blanket. He was always last to the fooder anyway. He told himself that he didn't care if there was a choosing this cycle. Kren would surely be chosen next, he was the biggest among them. But soon Browny would leave too; she was the tallest of all, though gangly. Rali would wait until everyone had eaten, there was usually enough for him also.

There would be no new screamer this cycle, again, he noted. There had been no tell-tale swishing sound before the portal's click. Rali knew the portal's workings well. He was the oldest--not the biggest--but the oldest among them.

At one time, a new screamer meant a new blanket. But that was long ago; one cycle the blankets had just stopped. It was past time now for him to add the wispy remains of his blanket to the matted pilings of the nesting corner. Rali sighed. He wasn't ready to give it up quite yet. He remembered the soft warmth and security it had once given him.

When Browny's turn at the portal came, Rali's heart began thudding in his ears. He suddenly wanted to shout, to jump up and hold her back. But it was pointless. She'd be chosen when she was chosen; there was nothing he could do. He hated the chosen. Why not him?

But the portal closed around Browny as it always did--there was no symphony of angels, no celestial melody of hums that ushered the chosen to F'dar.

One by one the others began filtering back--to the nesting area or to kicking the worn ball in their endless game.

They all grew so fast.

There was something wrong with him, he knew. Rali reached up above himself, stretching slowly, willing himself taller, straining until his muscles stung, just as he did every cycle. But he never grew. And there was something even more disturbing. To his horror, he discovered hair growing from strange places: a small patch above his groin, and also from beneath his arms. He tore out these hairs, of course, as soon as they appeared. The others had enough to tease him about. He was becoming more freakish every cycle.

"Here, take it." Browny stood in front of him holding out her cupped hand. It was slick and half-full of pale ooze. Her blanket was tied at her shoulder and fell across her thin torso. Browny's skin was darker than the others. Maybe that was why she was so kind: they were both alike--different. "I'm full anyway," she said.

"You could eat it later. You'll be hungry before cycle-end."

She pushed it closer to him and started to tilt her hand to pour. He cupped his hands beneath out of necessity and caught the thick, warm wetness. A familiar odour struck him--sour and sweet. He brought it to his face, pouring it into his mouth, and then licked his hands clean. It didn't go far in slaking his hunger.

When the portal was clear, Rali got up and walked over. His reflection was blurred grotesquely wide by the portal's curvature. He raked his fingers through his long dark hair to straighten some tangles. Though resigned to the fact that he'd never be chosen, he still always felt a flush of anxiety before entering. What if it was his turn?

He closed his eyes and said the words: "I have not wasted, or stolen more than my share, or ever hurt a screamer. Please take me, take me to F'dar."

Oh, how he longed to go. He had waited longer than anyone for his turn. F'dar, where the portal opened whenever you were hungry, where the screamers slept the whole dark-cycle through, and where there were blankets enough for everyone – two blankets for everyone. He imagined a bright, colourful place--large of course, to accommodate all the chosen--and fresh smelling. There, everyone knew it was wrong to hurt anyone smaller, so there was no teasing or fighting.

Rali stepped into the narrow metal cylinder. As the door slid around, he went up on the tips of his toes.

'Take me!' Came his silent plea.

Nothing happened. He longed to see the door slide all the way around--the gateway, he suspected, to F'dar. The gateway he'd never see open. It was said that the way was magical. Rali was not convinced. Perhaps he could find his own path to F'dar?

The fooder was a square metal alcove recessed into the portal. A nozzle stuck from the top. Rali cupped his hands and pushed them into the alcove. A large glob flopped into his hands. He immediately sucked it all away. His hunger satiated, Rali went to the rain-room. Water sprayed down as soon as he entered. The stench in the small dark room always startled him, stinging his nose. He tilted his head back and let the cold stream into his mouth and drizzle down his body. He relaxed and relieved himself.

A wail arose in the big-room. Rali emerged to find half the ballheads staring up at the ceiling; the others crowded around Kren and Jory. Jory was a happy young half-sizer who'd taken to following Kren around like a shadow.

Kren was pushing Jory, "I'll turn you into bones . . . you've wrecked everything."

Kren hit Jory in the face. Jory went down. Everyone's attention was now fully on the fight. Rali wondered if Jory would end up like Tani. Rali was just a half-sizer himself when Tani had fallen and hit his head. He had just lain there--sleeping. After a few cycles he smelled so bad they dragged him into the rain-room. In time, Tani melted into nothing but a pile of yellow bones.

". . . and kick like that! At half-cycle!" Kren punctuated each word with his own kick. Jory's sobs were muffled by the jeers of the encircled boys.

Then Rali understood what'd happened. The ball had been inadvertently kicked or thrown up into the slats before but it'd always fallen back down.

"I can get it back," Rali spoke before he'd thought it all through. But he couldn't bear to see Jory beaten, and he knew that without the ball there would be little for Kren and the others to do--just fight and torture the half-sizers, and especially him.

And what about the monsters? But the screeches and rumblings of those creatures hidden somewhere up there had not been heard for many cycles now.

There was sudden quiet. The boys between him and Kren slid away. Kren turned slowly, his face red and twisted.

A spike of fear stabbed Rali. Kren had hit him before, but this was going to be different, this time Kren seemed truly out of control.

"You!" Kren stepped forward and gave him a two-handed thump to his chest. Rali was thrown backward.

"Get him," purred the crowd.

"He can do it," Browny said, suddenly beside him. "He's the only one who can."

Whispers drifted about like the faint echoing sounds of the monsters from long ago.

Kren stared down at Rali. He leaned so close that Rali could smell his sharp breath. "Get the ball. Or you are bones."

Cycle-end. Bands of light narrowed as they crawled up the wall until they were at last squeezed out at wall top. Rali lay on his blanket. The continuous low murmur of the nesting corner was broken by the occasional yelp of a screamer. Astonishingly, Jory slept curled up beside him. His breath was a small, rhythmic puff. But Jory's adulation was misplaced. Rali couldn't save Jory from Kren; in fact, he couldn't even save himself. Browny was the brave one.

Could he climb all that way, or would he fall and turn to bones like Tani? He'd never go to F'dar anyway, he knew. He was too small, a freak--so it didn't matter if he fell. Unless that is, he could find his own path somehow, and for that, he must climb. But what was up there if he did make it? What would the monsters do to him?

Rali dreamt of creatures with sharp metallic teeth and huge spinning eyes.

Rali was up with cycle's first light. His path was mapped out, at least up to a certain point, to where he'd last fallen. Rali shook his head to clear it.

The wall itself was a monster--terrifying and cruel. It was chipped and scored, but in many places, it was tauntingly sleek. It stood there as it always had, calmly defying him, confident in its superiority. Rali hesitated.

Browny was awake also. "You can do it." Her smile gave him courage.

Callused toes found familiar crevices; fingertips dug into their holds. He crawled slowly and carefully up and across the scarred wall.

The first third was easy. He past his old mark with a tingle of pride. Could he make it? He let the thought wash over him. About halfway up, though, the holds just disappeared. Below and silent, all were gathered to watch, waiting for him to fail--wanting to witness the fall.

Rali pressed his face against cold stone. The wall seemed to be pushing him away. His fingers cramped. The strength in his forearms ebbed. He reached blindly for another toehold but scraped only blank wall. He found a notch for his left foot and a higher hold for his right hand. Below, everybody seemed so small--much smaller than even him. He silenced a hysterical laugh. Fear twisted inside him, struggling to surface as panic; he pushed it back down.

He could do this, just put one foot above the other. He twisted his head upward, scraping his chin. Rali half expected to see a monster grinning down at him. The slats were brown with dust. Beyond them were the rods of light--thin bars that glowed red, like blood. It was nearing half-cycle; he'd have to hurry before the slats started to close. From the corner of his eye, he could see the slat's pivot points at the top of the opposite wall. The crowd below remained hushed.

His left leg trembled. He wasn't going to make it. Kren waited below. Rali couldn't go down. He didn't have the strength to make it back down again anyway. He struggled for a new toehold--any sort of hold. Nothing. He grabbed for a notch above him and pulled only dust. Then he was wheeling through the air, flailing at the wall during his long descent into darkness.

The wall had won again.

The popular belief was that he'd turn to bones. But Rali woke finally, a bruised, broken, and wheezing wreck. More cycles had past than he had fingers and toes to count before Rali could even move. His failure at the wall pained him as much as his battered body. His right leg twisted out oddly below the knee.

Browny brought a little food, but mostly handfuls of rain to appease his unquenchable thirst.

"Why " Rali asked her once, "are you so good to me?"

She had paused thoughtfully and smiled. "You are different."

She just pitied the freak, Rali thought.

Surprisingly, Kren lets him be. Perhaps, he'd forgotten his promise. More likely, though, he was just waiting until Rali could offer a little more fight. Kren occupied himself now with endless wrestling matches. The worn and ancient ball seemed forgotten. But Rali knew it wasn't. Someone had rolled up a ball of old blankets. But the rotting strings tore, and it waggled apart after a few kicks. To Rali, the ball was no longer the goal. He must beat the wall and make his own path to F'dar--if another way existed. There had to be.

When Rali was able, he pulled himself along the floor to the portal. But his leg screamed with every movement. More pain burned him when he tried to curl himself up tight enough to allow the portal to shut. The worst part though was pulling himself up to the fooder. Darkness nearly took him then and he slopped food on the floor. He licked it clean--he wouldn't be denied F'dar because of waste. There seemed to be slightly less each time--or was that just a trick of his hunger-fevered mind?

It was a great many cycles before Rali could walk again. He couldn't put much weight on his leg before it buckled beneath him. He hobbled over to face his nemesis, carefully exploring all possibilities. Rali decided finally on a new route, steeper but faster than before, up the corner that was opposite the portal.

It was on one of his exploratory climbs that he heard the angel's song. But who'd been chosen? Jory was beneath him looking around also. Jory was with him always now, watching his every move, mimicking him. Thankfully, Jory never made it very high up the wall before getting scared and retreating. Kren was still there below, scrambling up from a wrestling bout. The call soon came up--it was Browny. Browny had been chosen.

No!

Now she was gone from him--gone forever. But he was also happy for her. No one deserved it more. He wished he'd been kinder, though, more thankful for all she'd done; had at least wished her luck before she'd gone to the choosing that cycle.

He would climb next cycle, he decided. He had to, to be with Browny, to live finally in happiness with her and all the others. There was nothing left for him here. He'd waited long enough. With each passing cycle, Kren and the others had seemed meaner, more easily angered. The fooder was giving less each cycle; everyone had noticed now. And the taste seemed more sour than usual; many were getting stomach pains.

There were grumblings that it was his climbing that had angered the portal.

Perhaps he had done something wrong. That was why the portal would never choose him. But it was too late for such thoughts now. Rali was out of time.

His leg was better now, functional at least. Though every movement was a stab of pain, he was determined to ignore its protests. This time he'd climb fast--not allow time for his muscles to surrender.

Light hadn't cracked through the slats before he was clinging to a small crevice and making his way upward. He didn't want Kren and the others to catch him at the beginning of his climb.

Rali did climb fast, as fast as he could have hoped for. But it was taking its toll: his path was marked by a smear of red. He'd cut his fingertips scrabbling at the sharp crack, making each grip oily, and his forearms were scraped raw.

He was quite high before the wall began pushing back. For a panicked second, he was falling again. Then his nails closed on a small eye level crack, enough to hold him a few more torturous moments.

A collective gasp came from below. He risked a glance beneath him. They'd gathered again. A wide area was kept clear so no one would be hit by his fall.

Rali managed to pull himself up into another tenuous hold, then slowly higher still. With his big toe wedged into a good notch, he rested a moment. Sweat stung his eyes. The higher he climbed the hotter it became. He wiped his bloody fingers across his leg, then brushed them on the wall to coat them with dust. His leg screamed and raged.

With his cheek rasping against cold stone, he looked up. He was close enough now to almost touch the bottom of the slat. Almost. If he was bigger.

It was nearing half-cycle; the slats were tipped towards him. Just out of reach was a small gouge up to his right. If he could spring in that direction and catch the handhold, he could reach the top.

His muscles bunched; he froze. He'd fall for certain. His leg would fail him or his grip would falter. He thought about how it would feel floating free again for a moment before his long sleep into bone-hood. Time passed, how many intense, breathless moments, he couldn't say. Would he be defeated by that small stretch of wall? He was bones regardless. At least this way he'd have a chance to be with Browny. Rali's throat was dry. He swallowed hard. Then his fingers slipped from their thin crevice. He sprang, clutching frantically for the hold.

His tortured fingers closed into the sharp edges of the notch.

With one last painful effort, he swung his good leg up above him, hooking his heel over the wall edge. He dragged himself up, squeezing between the slats. Distantly, he heard a cheer from below.

Rali lay flat out across the slat tops, panting. He'd made it. He'd conquered the wall. And there were no monsters. He looked quickly around. To the right was another long length of slats. Was it another big-room? Behind him was a tube descending into the rain-room. The wall top was wide and dirty. In the ceiling, the glowing rods were behind some dirty opaque substance. Their heat prickled at his skin, the air was stifling.

"Throw down the ball." It was Kren. A wider arc had been cleared below. Rali had sent down a shower of dust.

"No ball. I'm looking." But what he was looking for was F'dar.

On the portal side, across the way, was the extra space he'd imagined must be there. F'dar. His heart pounded triumphant in his ears. He would be with Browny and all the others soon.

He slid across to crouch on the wall top. Leaning over, he looked down into the big-room adjacent. And there was the ball. There also were piles of yellowish curves. Bones. Maybe he'd try to get the ball later. Maybe.

Rali wormed his way across the slat tops towards the portal wall. He spread his weight across three slats. They flexed alarmingly beneath him. There were advantages to being small, though not many. When he was mid-way, they wobbled and sprang precariously.

Above the portal was a sprawling mass of decaying, grime-covered metal. He was close now. He made his way around the devices above the portal and looked down into the gateway.

This couldn't be the way to F'dar.

It was just a room, nearly the size of the big-room, lined with large, metal-covered things.

The gateway was magical then, Rali decided. There was no way for him to ever get to F'dar. A painful realization, but admittedly, one he was prepared for. Deep in his heart he knew--had always known--he wasn't good enough for F'dar.

A tall, blockish, metal thing against the wall presented an easy way down. Rali scooted over. There were two large flat metallic features on the opposite wall. Perhaps another type of portal?

Rali lowered himself onto the metal thing, testing his weight as he went, and then to the floor. A thick layer of dust covered everything. A sour smell pervaded.

What struck him next were the series of large clear cylinders with tubes sprouted out all around. Inside were little monstrous creatures. They looked akin to the screamers, but smaller, with heads too large, and arms and legs too small. They floated submerged in dirty water. One moved--a blind grasping little spasm. Hideous.

It was all so incomprehensible. Was this part of the magic?

No. These were screamers--before they became screamers. A queasy wave washed over him.

Near where the portal intersected the wall was a large device; a long arm on the end held eight large upturned hooks.

He went to the flat portal-things. Metal loops stuck out; he heaved on one and it moved open. A cold breath blew over his skin. He jumped back. A wispy white cloud billowed out and dissipated near the floor.

Inside were stacks and stacks of blockish-shaped things, rowing back into the deep dimness. They were covered in a cold white powder that disappeared into water at his touch. Magic. The things were wrapped tight in a thin, clear, filmy material. Most were pinkish red, or white, but some closest to him were brown.

Click. It was the loudest, most ominous click he'd ever heard. It was half-cycle; the portal was opening. He came closer to the portal. He would witness the workings, the magic, firsthand. His bad leg quivered beneath him, more from fear than his injury.

A whirring sound began; the device beside him started to hum. The angels. A choosing? Would the magical gateway open here? Now? Could he go too?

The portal door slid all the way around. There was Kren. He looked at Rali; his smile turned to confusion. The arm device stretched out with sudden speed. The hooks flashed forward, flicking up into Kren. Rali stumbled backward.

Kren hung suspended. His eyes bulged out; his legs shivering as if he were cold. The device pulled Kren out, tilting him as it moved until he hung horizontally. Splotches of blood widened where the hooks entered. He was swung toward a large metal box as a whirring sound gained pitch. An enclosure then enveloped him; wet splotchy sounds echoed within.

The hum-song of the choosing reached a crescendo.

Rali fell to his knees. Understanding struck him like a fall from the wall. He vomited.

They themselves were food.

And he knew now what the brown blocks were in the magical cold room. Browny. His stomach convulsed again. She was bones.

He must destroy everything. Destroy all the lies. He staggered, searching for something he could use. Finding a length of metal that he could waggle off a machine, he started pounding on the arm. He could beat the stiff hooks sideways. Rali ignored the questioning clamour from the big-room. But they must use the portal they needed the fooder. Should he even tell? How would they eat?

Rali opened the other door beside the cold room. A long dusty hallway stretched towards infinity.

How many cycles passed as he wandered that endless labyrinth of corridors, levels, and vaulting caverns--he could not guess.

Despair, denial, terror, and rage battled within him, muddling all his thoughts. Browny was gone forever. Everyone was gone forever. His whole world was gone, torn away, and nothing was left to replace it but the dust of this barren stone complex. Not caring whether he lived or died, he stumbled aimlessly, endlessly on.

When Rali finally made his way up to the large metal doors set in stone, he found them sealed tight and immovable. But along one side was a crack in the rough stone where a shaft of light beamed through. It was about a hand's width wide and surrounded by a crumble of loose rock. He dug away the debris making a passage he could just squeeze through.

A bright circle burned above. Squinting, Rali looked out over a broad green landscape. This was the biggest room ever; he could not even see the walls, and the ceiling was an indistinct blue-grey and very high. It was all strange and wondrous, rich with odd colours and fresh smells. Airbrushed against his skin like when a half-sizer ran past him.

Tiny flying things flitted before his face. He heard the low hum of angels.

F'dar.

The sun peaked over the distant spires of the dead city. Rali's grandson, Nari, stood at his side--the fingers of one hand pinching Rali's pant leg, the fingers of his other exploring his nose. Today, Rali was to supervise the raising of the new millstone, but Jori had matters well in hand. Rali was only there as a symbol anyway, he supposed; 'The Guide' was the title they'd honoured him with. He'd never grown comfortable with all the ceremony that was pressed upon him.

The mill's high platform granted Rali an unmatched view of the town but his gaze drifted again to the mountain. Even now, after cycles beyond counting, Rali's thoughts drew him back.

They'd pieced together much of what had happened. And the team he'd assigned to decipher the Old One's language symbols were making progress.

Some great sickness had swept over the lands. A few of the Old Ones survived, though, isolating themselves within that compound deep within the mountain. A very few on the surface, it was later discovered, were unaffected. These were rounded up and brought back to aid in finding a cure. As the years marched on, a whole underground city grew there, hewing ever deeper into the earth.

At first the unaffected were just confined and isolated, but after years of fruitless research and experimentation, they came to be considered different: a despised sub-class. Finally, they evolved into the city's last desperate source of protein.

That was their ghastly heritage. It's astonishing what can be justified when survival is at stake. The Old One's devised that great, automated food chain to help distance themselves from their shame.

There had been other farm-cells alongside theirs. For generations, their echoing noises had been attributed to the monsters that haunted his youth. And despite all their obvious similarity, it was only much later, that someone connected the words 'F'dar' with 'fooder'.

At one time, his people must have known that terrible truth. But they chose to forget it--replace it with that hopeful vision of F'dar. How impossibly hard it must have been to live day after day with such a dark reality.

Rali's gaze fell back over their burgeoning little town. They would need a bigger meeting hall soon, he observed, and perhaps another schoolhouse. He'd have to remember to mention it to his still beautiful daughter, Browny.

The Demi-Arcanist's Will

Jakob Drud

Denmark

The cabinet was all but invisible in the fumes, except in the spot where Jarn Dinaris wove his grounding seam into Master Elosivan's seam of transmission. There the metal hissed and glowed in dark purples as they wove the commissioned refrigeration pattern.

Jarn's focus on the pattern was so complete that he didn't immediately detect the failure in old Master Elosivan's concentration. He only became aware that something was amiss when a searing whipback knocked the old man down. Deep pain wrenched the old man's kind wrinkles, only to be replaced by a look of utter confusion that made Jarn's own chest hurt as if he'd been the one struck by the whipback.

Twenty years of routine kept Jarn from cutting off his grounding seam, which would have resulted in another whipback aimed at himself. He slowly let go of his grounding source and sought a push flow to open the window, venting the stench of molten metal into the city.

Only then did he rush to Elosivan. The old man was holding his hands up to protect his face from the heat, and his eyes stared fixedly at the cabinet. Jarn put an arm around his shoulder, hoping to comfort, but Elosivan held his palms up towards him. "You're trying to cook me. Like a pheasant. In wine sauce."

"I'm trying to help you."

"Like a pheasant. Get out!"

Jarn recoiled at the enmity in the old man's shout. Backing towards the door he forced his voice to remain calm as he said, "I'll send Amelia up with refreshments."

"I don't need refreshments!" the old man yelled. "I need peace! Do you understand? Peace!"

Jarn's hand shook as he placed a palm on the lock and worked the mechanism. The man staring at him from those hostile eyes was no longer the man he known and loved in the past twenty years. Where the compassion and patience of a lifetime had been only minutes ago, distrust had flowered, firing waves of anger and outright enmity.

He realized the danger he was in just by being here, and sweat started to trickle his armpits down the side of his chest. If the old man struck him with his demi-arcane powers, Jarn would die. His own world-bound powers would be no shield against the trans-dimensional forces that the old man alone could draw on.

The lock clicked open, and no killing blast struck him. Jarn slipped out and carefully reset the wards and absorber fields that protected the door and the rest of the Tower from wayward power surges.

Pausing on the landing outside, he tried to calm himself. Elosivan had never misenchanted an object before, but other lapses came to Jarn's mind. The beakers of flammable pyrogasa that the old man had placed too close to the fire. The batch of bantil chicks he'd been observing for grounding conductivity that had escaped and set the Tower servants on a night-long hunt. And in the past weeks, several prolonged searches for misplaced books and ingredients.

Jarn placed his palm on the silver door as if its wards might dispel his suspicion that his master was growing senile. The thought left him sick to the heart. It was a cruel fate for a man of such power, intelligence, and kindness to be reduced to mindlessness. Especially since it was his mind that made him great.

Jarn recalled the senescent courtier Troost Alibado. Alibado had been the previous Mayor's long-time supporter and the architect behind the cleansing that had rid Parnsthaal of demonic predators and sealed them in their own dimensions beneath the city sewers. After the final battle in the Plaza of Banners, he had started to forget which meetings to turn up for, and when he began calling on the Mayor at night-time, often screaming outside the Mayor's bedchambers, he had been locked away. He died addled, weeping, and ignored.

They couldn't do that to Master Elosivan, could they? Would they dare try?

Jarn waited a while before pressing open the silver door, ashamed to go against his master's orders, but sensing that blind obedience would be treachery. Inside, the old man sat on the floor. At first, Jarn took comfort, thinking the old man had found one of his yoga positions, but his legs weren't folded, and his slumped posture showed neither strength nor concentration.

"Where were you? Why haven't we started on the cabinet?"

"You've been ill," Jarn said, as much to calm the old man as to put a damper on his own desperation. Master Elosivan, lucid, would never unleash his demi-arcane powers, but there was no telling what kind of damage the old man could do, confused. The Mayor would think the man a great danger, as would Jarn's family. The Tower had been the Dinaris family's gift to Master Elosivan after the cleansing, but since the old man had no direct heirs, the Tower would revert to Jarn's great uncle Taro on Elosivan's death--or if he was declared insane. Neither would be soon enough for great uncle Taro.

"Master, we need to get you to bed," he said, knowing that no amount of sleep would cure senescent addling. "Your mind needs rest and strength." He helped the old man through the silver door and down the winding stairs to the master bedroom. The old man's feet met the broad stone steps firmly, betraying none of the confusion written on his face.

"Yes," Elosivan sighed as they entered his room. "This is peaceful."

Jarn helped Elosivan across the thick, weaved carpet to the four-poster bed and supported him while he sat down. A discreet pull on the bell wire summoned Amelia, the housemaid.

"Is it morning yet?" Elosivan asked, rubbing his bare face.

The old man had always wanted a beard, merrily insisting it was the mark of wizards everywhere. However, Elosivan's right cheek was home to an angry patch of red scar tissue, a permanent meaty sideburn devoid of hairs. The old man never spoke of it, but Jarn had seen his eyes stray to the razor when the barber visited to trim his chin and left cheek. He always saw self-contempt in that look, as if he were regretting an old folly that cost him dearly.

"Jarn, why did you put me in a wet bed?"

Elosivan rose, and before Jarn could do anything, he'd started drying the sheets with a seam of heat that left the linen smouldering.
At that moment Amelia entered with a tea tray. She gave a small gasp as she took in the smoking bed, and her mouth contracted to a thin line when her gaze fixed on Elosivan's soiled clothes. Jarn called up a sphere of dissipation to put out the fire while she put down her load.

She was shaking, he noticed, but visibly composed herself. "I'll get this," she said, and expertly produced clean sheets and a clean shift from a closet on the landing outside the room. While she cleaned, and changed him, Elosivan just stood by his bed, scratching his face where his beard didn't grow.

After taking care of the burned, soiled linen and tucking the old man in, Amelia brought the tray to the bed and put a cup on the nightstand. "Some tea to replenish your fluids, master," she said tonelessly. She poured one cup, curtseyed and left. Jarn followed her out the door and pulled it shut with a seam of flow.

"If you speak to anyone of what you saw here, you'll be in a heap of trouble," he said.

She crossed her arms. "Is that so? You're not my master, Jarn. Seeing how you're the one who dragged the old man down here, you're more of a servant yourself."

For one angry moment, Jarn considered reminding her that his family owned the Tower and would fire her when it reverted after Elosivan's death. He thought of telling her that she'd likely die in the battle if someone tried to force the old man out of his home. But both thoughts made him feel miserable, and his words would only add strength to the stories she would spread sooner or later. "Just remember that anything you say of this will harm the old man. Your master."

She turned and started down the winding stair, making a crude servants' hand sign. Even as he turned and kicked the boulder-and-mortar wall of the stairwell, he knew he'd be hearing the first questions all too soon.

The man from the Mayor's office showed up at dawn two days later, escorted by four arms bearers. Jarn Dinaris spotted them from his fourth-floor sleeping chamber during breakfast. Amelia had left him a suspiciously generous meal, apparently, a distorted apology for knowing of the visit in advance and not telling him. Jarn gave the nigella-sprinkled honey buns a longing glance before leaving to intercept the Mayor's man. Scenarios of erecting barriers of grounding and heat to block the arms bearers played out ominously in his mind.

He beat Amelia--and thankfully, Elosivan\--to the door and opened it wide for the visitors. The smile on his face didn't match the churning in his stomach. He was betraying Elosivan by inviting his guests in and taking measures to defend his reputation. The old man did not need a guardian, and even imagining that he did make Jarn's toes curl.

The man didn't step across the threshold of the Tower. "Jarn of Dinaris, I want a word with you," he said. "Let's take a stroll," he added, his eyes fixing on Amelia, who ducked back into the ground-floor kitchen with embarrassed haste.

"Of course," Jarn said, taking a cloak from the wall to guard against the morning chill. "I've not been part of business life for two decades, so I'm afraid I don't recall your name."

"I'm just a humble servant of the Mayor, who is, after all, more important than either of us."

A chill ran down Jarn's back at this. To keep a cool distance, the Mayor would in certain cases send a proxy, whose questions and words would be as powerful as the Mayors. A man who could take care of the Mayor's dirty work.

They set a slow pace down the Tower stairs that ended at the edge of Parnsthaal's trading quarters. The four arms bearers followed close behind. Soothing smells of frying peppers from a food stall filled the air, accompanied by the racket from the coppersmiths' workshops. Jarn followed the man, more anxious than willing to hear the Mayor's plans for his master.

"Is your master going mad, or is it just a rumour?" asked the man from the Mayor's office when they were clear of the Tower.

Jarn hesitated. The last two days had seen Elosivan improve and sharpen, then relapse into forgetfulness and confusion. That was painful to watch, though mostly harmless. However, the night before last, Jarn had found the old man in the falcon roost, searing the feathers off his magnificent peregrines one by one.

"I really couldn't tell you if my master is mad," Jarn said firmly.

The man harrumphed. "Before you make an educated guess, let me share a couple of interesting facts with you. First: People have been disappearing in Parnsthaal. A dockworker was found with a bite chewed out of his torso from collarbone to hipbone. All edges of that wound were seared shot, and the ends of his ribs appeared polished. A demon's bite, they tell me."

Jarn nodded, cursing inwardly. "And second?"

"The city council's magicians speak openly of damage to the seals in the sewers. They use the words demi-arcane damage. Two magicians even disappeared while investigating the seal beneath Rarnsta's Market."

They stopped in a small but central plaza. Parnsthaal's colours hung on the walls of the four-storey cloth-merchants' warehouses. Customers, traders, horses, and moving carts piled high with bales of cloth made the place a teeming, haphazard jungle of activity. The Court of Banners, Jarn realized. During the cleansing, demons had crawled from the sewers here, gathered in the plaza and devoured more than two hundred people trapped in the buildings. And here the city's magicians had finally rallied and driven the demons underground, where they sealed them away for time eternal. Or so the story went.

"The only demi-arcanist in the city goes mad," the man said, his diction formal. "The seals are damaged by powers only he can wield. We do not think this is a coincidence. What shall we do about it, we wonder?"

Jarn frowned, worried and more than a little surprised. He had pondered how to help Elosivan, but the news of the seals had him baffled. What if... but no, Elosivan hadn't left the Tower in the last couple of weeks.

"You are right that Elosivan would know how to damage the seals," Jarn said. "He helped make them, after all. But I doubt he did it. His growing senility leaves him more confused than dangerous." Except in the falcon roost, he didn't say.

The man from the Mayor's office started strolling across the plaza, and Jarn followed. "Nevertheless, we don't like the timing," the man said. "If the demi-arcane seals are failing now, along with the demi- arcanist's sanity, we cannot ignore the connection. We are averse to taking risks, Jarn of Dinaris. Therefore, we suggest you get rid of the old man. In exchange, you shall have the Tower."

The formal delivery felt like a stream of cold water running down Jarn's back. The callous suggestion of an assassination was one thing. Worse, it smelled like one of his great uncle Taro's schemes to get the Tower back. If Elosivan died, the Tower would go to Jarn and hence the Dinaris family. And should Jarn die? Well, if Elosivan killed his own apprentice, it should be perfect proof of his insanity. No doubt great uncle Taro could use both outcomes in his plan to become the next Mayor.

"What makes you think I could kill the strongest magician to live in Parnsthall in four generations?" Jarn asked.

"Hit him when he's confused. He'll be much easier defeated than the demons waiting to crawl up from the sewers."

"His powers may be dangerous, but if demons are loose in the city, you'll need his help to stop them."

The man stared Jarn directly in the eyes. "But can he help us? Or is he already too addled to be of use to us?"

The word 'use' lit Jarn's anger like a fuse of powdered pyrogasa. "I will help him help you." Jarn spit every word out. "Just as you won't."

The words, meant to sting, brought only a smile to the nameless man's face, and belatedly Jarn realized that his agenda might not have been to get rid of Elosivan. Jarn's blood ties to great uncle Taro were well known, so why not get Jarn of Dinaris to handle the addled demi-arcanist? Success would show the Mayor's benevolence and wisdom. And should Jarn fail? Well, then the Mayor would have the perfect example of the dangers you couldn't let a Dinaris handle.

"It wouldn't be the first time a young man has to take care of his old man's demons. I hope they don't prove too much for you to handle." The man nodded to his arms bearers, and the five men cut a path through the crowd of the Plaza of Banners, leaving Jarn alone with the fate of an entire city.

Jarn started his descent into the Tower basement and foundations as soon as he returned from the city. The man from the Mayor's office might be worried about the seals beneath the city. Jarn found himself much more worried that Elosivan's illness might be tied to the seal directly beneath the Tower.

His torch sputtered with every step, but lighting his way with a sphere of heat and flow was out of the question. The soil in the deep passages brimmed with fluctuating sources that made seam-weaving risky and likely to cause a whipback if they suddenly failed. He refused to think what would happen if he had to fight demons with nothing but unstable sources at hand.

At the bottom of the staircase, he followed a narrow passage for a while until it opened into a cavern that had nothing natural about it. Every surface was smooth, and the four-walled chamber itself was oblong like a silver ingot. Only the far broke the symmetry, and here a steady, indigo light penetrated the metal greyness of the cave. Inscribed patterns ran along the edges of the light.

Jarn stopped two yards from the seal, immediately aware of the damage. The power in the room had a tinge of chaos he recognized from Elosivan's demi-arcane seams. It felt as if the forces in the cavern were trying to escape their imprisonment, and judging by the minute flaws in the inscribed patterns, power was already leaking. In some places a little too much grounding flowed through; here and there heat created an unnatural updraft. And behind it all was a hunger for this world that he knew must be held at bay forever.

A chilly despair tightened his chest and made his breathing shallow. He had no way to assess the damage, much less repair it. Even if he tried, it would be near impossible to hold on to one of the fluctuating sources of power--even the grounding that was his specialty. No, he would need help to repair the seal.

"It'll hold for a while yet," a voice said behind him.

Jarn jumped, his heart hammering in his chest. Elosivan shouldn't be wandering around here. He'd been lying in his bed only that morning. But when Jarn turned, he found the old man floating a foot above the floor on a powerful cushion of flow and transmission, complete clarity in his eyes.

His presence made Jarn feel like a first-year apprentice caught messing with powers way too strong for him, but his embarrassment had a heavy lining of fear as well. Fear of the old man's ability to weave patterns in this place. Fear of his behaviour in the falcon roost. And more than anything else, fear of his instability and the memories that the seal might spark in his addled mind--memories of past disasters that he would suddenly re-enact in the present.

I'm doing him wrong, Jarn thought. He had seen enough suspicion in the world to know it could poison love and foster unlimited hatred. Once a man started to suspect his neighbour, his misgivings would taint his perception of all the neighbour's actions, gestures, and words. Jarn would not let the Mayor's suspicions rule him. He would remain true to what he was: A magician who held Elosivan in the highest regard.

"I wasn't sure if you knew of this seal," he finally said. "I learned that Uncle Taro's father, Theorod, built it, but the family keeps it secret." And no wonder. Theorod was persona non-grata in the Dinaris family and neither great uncle Taro nor Jarn's father had said his name in years.

"I helped him," Elosivan said. "He was a great demi-arcanist."

Elosivan's words let that particular piece of family history slide into place in the puzzle. If Theorod had wielded powers that everybody feared, it was no surprise that Uncle Taro had disowned him. The man sacrificed anyone standing in way of power.

"Master, I came down here to check the seal," Jarn said. Because you were ill, he didn't say. "There are demons loose in the city."

"Well, they didn't come through here," said Elosivan. For a long second, he looked like he was losing focus, but a moment of intense concentration brought him back. "The demonic is always present in this city, Jarn. The city's foundations are too close to the membrane that separates our world from the home of the demons. The power makes the ground fertile for magicians, but it's dangerous too. Like living on the slopes of an active volcano."

"What exactly are these demonic powers?" Jarn asked.

"In some respects, they're the perfect pattern of grounding, heat, transmission and flow. You could compare it to light if you like. Filter sunlight through a prism and you see the colours of a larger spectrum. Filter demonic powers through the earth and the barriers keeping the demonic dimension from devouring our own and you get each of the powers in a separate form."

"You said 'in some respects'. What's different?"

Elosivan gave Jarn his 'good pupil' nod. "There's a will in the demonic dimensions. An intent that cannot cross into our world although it desires do devour us all. Its powers reach us in the form of grounding, heat, transmission and flow. But when it sends its demons here, its power becomes purer and more forceful. It's what we call demi-arcane power."

Jarn stared at the old man in shock. His words were nothing less than an admission that he was wielding demonic powers. And not just demonic. If Elosivan had told him the truth, there was a foreign will present in the power he wielded. A will that might be trying to gain control of the old man's decaying mind. The thought made him cold all the way down to his toes.

"How did you become a demi-arcanist? What happened to you?" The questions forced themselves out as an accusation, and Jarn watched Elosivan's face darken.

"What happened to me?" Elosivan said. "Perhaps I learned something you could learn too if you put your lazy mind to it!"

Jarn felt his apprentice reflexes kick in. He started to turn away, ashamed, until he realized that the old man's anger was predictable and more forceful than it had to be. A mask. Fear was alive beneath the anger, but fear of what? The otherworldly will he spoke of? The return of demons with powers like his own? Or was he simply an old man, afraid of losing his mind to senescence?

"Then I'll have to learn if I am to repair seals like this," Jarn said, as soothingly as he possibly could without sounding submissive.

Elosivan regarded him quietly. Then he smiled and expanded his disc enough to give Jarn room to fly up the stairs with him. "You're smart enough to learn it, Jarn. And I'm smart enough not to teach you. But if you come with me, I'll show you how to hunt demons."

Jarn understood perfectly well that he would never again be safe around Elosivan; the man was simply too unstable. But he also knew that if there was any connection between a demonic will and the old man's mind, he must help the old man repair the seals and break that connection. Elosivan would never have a better chance to regain control of his mind.

They entered the sewers through The Estuary, the fast current main exit of the city sewers. Opani, the Tower coachman, had bought them waterproof boots and scented handkerchiefs before driving them to the docks, but despite these measures Jarn did not expect a healthy journey. Both the faecal air and the thought of demons made his chest tighten.

As they turned down the first side tunnel, Jarn immediately recognized the signs of demonic activity. Disfigured holes in the walls. Burned stones. Deep scratches in the mortar. The air turned hotter and less obnoxious as they descended a curving flight of stairs that ended in a cavern much larger than the Tower's seal chamber. The roof here curved upwards in a temple-like striving for the heavens as unnatural as the shifting powers flowing through the cavern walls.

In the centre of the cavern stood a huge cobalt four-armed man-shape. The powers flashing over its huge naked corpus shifted between grounding, heat, transmission and flow in patterns that Jarn would have found impossible to weave even with a hundred years of practice. Nobody in the city had faced such a creature since the cleansing.

Three amber creatures the size and shape of grown Rottweilers sat on their haunches around the demon, and behind he sensed the seal, degraded and failing. A pulsing beam of dark energy stabbed from a coin-sized crack in the centre. For the demon to have wrestled its way out seemed impossible, but Jarn suspected that demons had a different view of the impossible then he did.

Jarn glanced back at Elosivan to hear his suggestion for their approach, but the old man was already striding forward. As he passed Jarn he whispered, "Ground the hounds if they come at me. Otherwise stand back."

The old man strode forward into the circle of cobalt light cast out by the demon's seams, complex patterns materializing between his hands. When he was fifty meters from the demonic quartet, his hands spit out a thick reed of indigo light. Jarn sensed its demi-arcane origins and understood they were much stronger than any pattern Elosivan had ever weaved around other people.

The blue-white reed struck the demon in the chest, and it buckled backward, keeled over and slammed to the floor. Jarn just had time to hope that the old man's first strike had killed it before the cavern floor melted and flowed upwards to form a barrier around the cobalt shape. The fluid stone absorbed Elosivan's second and third strike, and while the demon got back on its feet, the hounds turned to face the old man.

Jarn immediately grasped for a source of grounding. The power in the cavern fluctuated wildly, the sources changing and merging in seemingly random patterns, and for a second he thought he'd be completely unable to weave a single seam. The next moment he hit a grounding force so powerful he'd never felt anything like it. The holding pattern flew from his hands as if of its own will and froze the hounds in their tracks a safe distance from Elosivan.

The old man hit the demon's grounding shield with intricate combinations of elaborate seams, hit it again and again. The stone shield evaporated bit by bit in a superheated cloud. Patterns of pure power punched out of this fog towards Elosivan in long, skeleton-like fingers, but the demi-arcanist directed them all into the floor with powerful grounding patterns. For a while, Jarn could only stare at the fight, and part of him didn't know who he feared the most: the demon or his untamed master.

He understood the demi-arcane better now and saw clearly why the demon was bound to lose this match. Both Elosivan and the demon got their powers from the dimensions beyond this world. But while Elosivan could weave his seams and patterns in this world, the demon's actions were controlled from the other dimension. Its body in this world was nothing more than a vessel for a will trying to exert itself beyond its own, twisted realm, and every reaction it made came just a bit too late to be effective.

An explosion from the middle of the chamber sent a shockwave of heat and pebbles through the chamber. The blast threw Jarn backward into a wall, and for a second all he could do was try to pull air into his lungs in microscopic, panicked breaths.

Elosivan had been thrown to the floor. His left leg was bent out and up in a strange angle at the hip. His screams penetrated Jarn's ears above the ringing left over from the explosion, and still he managed to pour seam after complex seam into the demon. The creature's shield lay broken around it, and it seemed barely capable of standing.

Shaken from the blast, Jarn cast a panicked glance around the cave and located the spots where two of the hounds had been rooted. They had been reduced to a pool of shimmering energy and molten rock. The third further away from the blast had been knocked down, but it was struggling to rise. As it got up on all fours, it bolted directly towards Elosivan.

Jarn reached for a source of grounding, but the one he had used just a moment before had shifted into a thin trickle of transmission. He felt the cold sweat run down the back of his neck as he reached for another source, but came up empty-handed.

The hound was close to Elosivan. Jarn finally grasped hold of what he could find--a source of heat--and a cutting-edge seam sprouted from his hands. It hit the legs of the hound just below the chest and belly, amputating all four limbs in one go. Still, impetus and pure fury drove the hound forward. Its jaws hinged shut over Elosivan's leg and bit it off just below the hip. No blood sprouted, and a battle-shocked part of Jarn calmly registered that the bite must have seared the wound shut.

Elosivan's scream turned to a moan, and power ceased to flow from his hands. Quickly, knowing it was too late, Jarn adjusted his aim and cut the hound in two at the neck. It melted away into the stone floor while he hurried towards the old man.

The demon, no longer under assault, was stirring, and Jarn saw the seams around it slowly come to life. Grasping for power he focused on the sources in the ground around him and started weaving a defensive barrier, not knowing how long he'd be able to hold the demon off.

Moaning terribly, Elosivan rolled over and grabbed his severed leg where the hound had left it. In one absurd moment Jarn imagined the old man hobble forward to bludgeon the demon, but then a weak seam of heat and transmission began to peel the skin and flesh from the leg. The femur inside shone with crystalline indigo powers of the same kind that had flown from the old man's hands while he attacked the demon.

Without warning, Elosivan threw the sawed-off end of the bone into Jarn's chest. All his power was behind the throw, and the power of the impact knocked Jarn back. The femur penetrated his chest and passed out of his back. The pain was as sharp as it was unexpected, but the sensation that filled him wasn't pain. It was power. Looking down in shock he saw the bone dissolve and flow into him. Power--and odd, old memories--entered his mind and limbs: memories of battles fought long ago, of demons killed, of good times, celebrated and good friends lost. He howled, knowing it only because of the vibration in his chest and the way the old man flinched away. The power in his chest burned, and he felt a terrible hatred telling him to strike out at the world.

Not entirely aware what he was doing he called up sources for new seams and tied them in elaborate patterns that he couldn't possibly know. His patterns hit the demon with a fury that scared him more than anything the demon represented. He drew power from the bone crumbling inside him, from the rock around him, perhaps even from the old man on the floor. He didn't care. Hatred was all that he was, a simulacrum of vengeance that should never have existed.

He didn't know how long his fury blazed. Afterward, he thought he remembered the deadly combination of grounding and heat that had finally boiled the demon's flesh away, but he could never recall repairing the seal. Most of the patterns he weaved were unknown to him, but someone inside him had known them. Older people, or the memories of older people. He sensed Elosivan there, great uncle Taro's father Theorod, and he knew they were helping him fight the blood-boiling fury that had gripped him. Listening closely to their guidance he found the source of that fury, and with his utmost effort shut his ears to its angry demands.

The war of wills inside him continued while he weaved a stretcher pattern for his Master. It kept his mind occupied as he carried the old man to the surface. It filled him while he found the coach. And he knew the war would never cease again.

The old man's eyes were dull and glazed, pain obviously racking him. Opani, the coachman, struggled to get Elosivan into the coach, while Jarn cushioned the old man with a steady seam of flow and transmission. He managed to extract himself from the war of wills in his mind once, long enough to send a messenger boy to fetch a healer to the Tower. With the old man's leg cut off at the hip, he doubted there was much anyone could do. But he had to try.

Opani whipped his horses hard, and the coach rumbled recklessly through the city. Jarn tried to levitate the old man to keep him steady, but even with his new powers--or perhaps because of them--he felt so worn out that drawing power from even the simplest sources made him queasy.

They were passing through Rarnsta's Market when Elosivan's eyes suddenly glazed over. A powerful seam sprang into existence, lifting the old man upright, and a pattern of heat flew from his hands like a cannon shot. It streaked through the coach window and embedded itself in the aged timber on the second floor of a warehouse. Jarn sensed the perfect demi-arcane purity of the fireball, and even as he struggled to send his own sphere of dissipation to the warehouse, he knew that fire would claim the building.

Opani reined in the horses, and Jarn stumbled out of the coach to create a cooling pattern of grounding and transmission. It grew from his hands like a benevolent raincloud and gained power from the ground. Against demi-arcane fire in a wooden building, his powers might as well have been non-existent, though, and Jarn was by no means ready to announce himself a demi-arcanist.

Jumping into the coach to see if he could somehow convince Elosivan to fight the fire, he found his master unconscious on the floor. In a fit of panic, he banged on the roof, and the coachman took off for the Tower again, leaving behind a milling crowd of workers, customers, and angry traders, who had no doubt recognized the Tower's seal on the coach.

The three assassins entered the Tower through a window on the third floor a few hours after Elosivan's death at midnight. Sitting by the dead man's bed, holding his hand, Jarn felt a few of the Tower's defensive wards give way to attacks of heat and grounding. Most stayed intact, enabling him to sense the progress of three black-clad figures tip-toeing up the Tower stairs.

Jarn remained seated. He would leave his master at his own time of choosing and not before.

The door blew inward in a gush of heat and flow. Jarn shielded himself and Elosivan's bed with a barrier invented by a long-dead demi-arcanist and stared at the trio as they ran into the room. They appeared capable of disposing of anyone in the city. The two dark-clad knifemen moved with quiet grace, and the magician's power was both well-directed and forceful.

Jarn wrapped the two knifemen in a cocoon of flow and transmission, rendering them immobile, and continued to deflect the magician's attacks. Had the room been lit, he knew he would have seen fear in the magician's eyes, just as the magician would have seen the anger in Jarn's eyes.

The assault on his barrier continued for a while until Jarn wrapped the magician in the same cocoon as the knifemen.

"He's already dead," he told the intruders patiently. Lighting a glow-sphere with his mind, he said, "He died defending Parnsthaal. Tell the Mayor that killing him for a burning a warehouse is a lousy way of repaying him for killing four demons."

The magician struggled, and Jarn relaxed his cage enough for the man to talk. "You have his power," the assassin noted calmly. "I suppose you killed him to take it."

"No. What I have, he..." The words 'forced on me' stuck in his throat. "...he gave to me." Along with the responsibility not to succumb to the demonic will in his mind.

"Are you going to claim the Tower as well? If you do, you'll always have enemies in this city."

This shocked Jarn more than he cared to admit. He had assumed the killers were doing the Mayor's bidding, but possession of the Tower was only important to the Dinaris family.

"I'm surprised my great uncle involved you in his plans for the Tower. Tell me, had he figured out I would be your target?"

"He told us not to damage his property. Now will you get on with it and kill us?"

Jarn held the magician's gaze, impressed by his courage. This man--like Elosivan--didn't blink at death. With the demonic dimensions under the city, Parnsthaal would need men like him to defend it.

"I'll let you go. Put in a good word with my great uncle."

"Of course," the magician said. But aside from the obvious surprise, there was a sidewise glance, a split second of embarrassment, that told Jarn everything he needed to know: Great uncle Taro's ears would be closed to any words that didn't fit his plans. Most likely he would speak from his palace balcony the next morning. He would announce Elosivan's death and denounce Jarn as a murderer and menace to the city. He would state in his clearest demagogical voice that the old man's madness now ran in Jarn's veins and that he should be cast out, exiled. And that the Tower should return to the family.

"Of course, you will," he told the magician. He knew he shouldn't have expected anything else from his great uncle than this. With the Tower in his hands, Taro would be one step closer to the Mayor's office and the power he'd always wanted.

Jarn realized that only sense of duty could keep him in Parnsthaal. But duty to what? Elosivan had given his life for the city, and Taro, the Mayor, and the city's population would repay him with ignominy.

In his head were the whispered memories of others who had earned the same scorn. They spoke of mountain ranges far away where the demonic will couldn't reach them, and of cities beyond the sea that would welcome his help in their own struggle against the demons underneath their land.

One by one he released his three prisoners. "Leave now," he told them. As they backed out, he called after them. "And tell Taro Dinaris that Parnsthaal will have the fate it deserves."

He sat awake until the first rays of light peeked over the horizon. Then he finally let go of Elosivan's hand and left to pack for a lifelong journey.

Executive Pressure

Brian Koukol

USA

Peder Danyels was terrified by the very idea of Belial. Tight spaces. Isolation. Water. Work. They should've called the planet Phobia, as it hit pretty much all of his. Yet here he was, the only executive in the entire Company crazy enough to volunteer for assignment in the devil's armpit. If there were a quicker way off probation, he couldn't think of it. Two days. One report. Home free.

The hatch of his docked crawler swung ajar and Peder swam through the opening, entering the depths of Cameron Mining Base 223-fr. A man in a skinsuit and full habitation gear floated in wait on the other side.

"Welcome to the Aquarium, Mr. Danyels," the floater said, his voice conducted into Peder's skull through a piezoelectric disc behind the ear. "How was the trip down?" The narrow sightlines of Peder's constricting mask were just wide enough to pick out the name on the man's skinsuit through the crystal-clear water. Jaxon.

"Delightful," Peder replied, his voice reverberating back at him inside his confining helmet.

Truthfully, it had been hell - all one would expect of shrieking through a dense atmosphere in a glorified bathtub onto a gravity suck off on a world like Belial. But he couldn't say that. Rule number one in the Company handbook was to maintain a stoic countenance at all times. Or was that rule number two? No, rule number two was to engage in noncontroversial small-talk with the locals to put them at ease.

As the hatch sealed behind him, he added, "In all honesty, the ride was milder than I'd anticipated."

Jaxon's eyes smiled. Everything below them was obscured by the intricacies of a face mask. It was just as well, Peder thought - he didn't want to be reminded of his own nasogastric tube, newly installed as required for all bodily inputs on base. From there, it was only a short hop to visions of the output tubes.

"This your first time on a heavy?" Jaxon asked.

"Did a stint"-Peder cleared his throat to eliminate an unprofessional squeakiness - "did a stint on a one point five once."

Jaxon laughed, a painful intrusion inside Peder's skull. "My grandma could rehab a hip on a one point five. A four-gee is something else entirely. Never been done before. Likely never will again."

That bordered on political talk, a definite no-no. Keep it robotic.

"I'd like to see the wreck now if you don't mind," Peder said, immediately cursing himself. Incident site. He should've said incident site.

"You wouldn't like to see your quarters first? Don't you need some time to decompress?"

Peder frowned. How could anyone decompress in a place like this? Life on a heavy meant immersion in water for the duration or a quick and agonizing death, at least according to the only part of the briefing he'd read.

"No," he said. "I'd like to accomplish my task and return to the orbital station in an efficient manner."

There was that laugh again. "Wouldn't we all?" Jaxon asked. "But there'll be plenty of time for you to get comfortable. Your return launch won't be ready for another twenty-six days..."

The windowless walls of the hallway squeezed in on Peder. His heart fell into his stomach and he fought the urge to gag. He'd kept it together so far, but the prospect of twenty-six days swimming around this waterlogged coffin without so much as a change in clothes or a breath of fresh air was more than he could handle. Alarms reverberated through his skull as his pulse and blood pressure skyrocketed.

"Calm down," Jaxon said, now serious. Peder's status must've relayed to his HUD. "Your suit will administer a tranquilizer in thirty seconds if you don't and you'll be useless for the rest of the day. I'll never hear the end of it."

The thought of impending tranquilizers proved soothing enough for Peder to get a hold of himself. Soon, the alarms quieted.

"I was just kidding," Jaxon said. "Twenty-six days on Belial approximates to two Earth days. You're looking at about fifty-one hours."

"Sorry," was all Peder could muster. So much for maintaining a stoic countenance.

The last thing Peder needed was time alone in his room to meditate on his claustrophobia, so he urged Jaxon to bring him to the incident site without delay.

As the two men made their way through a series of sparsely populated corridors, Peder wondered again why an executive, even one so minor as he, was needed on Belial at all. Cameron Base could've submitted its own incident report without him, but that was bureaucracy, he supposed. Besides, it gave him a chance to get out from under that damn probation.

Eventually, they reached a dead-end studded in hatches. Peder followed Jaxon through one of the hatches into a crawler, not unlike the one that had brought him to the base - basically a water tank printed from the strongest of materials and endowed with the ability to ambulate. Unlike his earlier crawler, this one included a series of thick portholes. It would be a sightseeing trip.

From orbit, Belial resembled an enlarged copy of Venus - the dense atmosphere blocking out all traces of its basaltic crust. Even though thick gases and basalt tended toward ugly landscapes, Peder stretched against his restraints to peer through the closest porthole when the outer doors finally opened. The first glimpse of any new world was like opening a present.

But this present sucked.

A heavy gust of wind threw a hail of particulates at them so thick that it rendered the portholes useless. Jaxon manipulated the crawler controls and they edged forward, into the fray.

"What is that stuff?" Peder asked.

"Bugs."

"What?"

"Bugs. Insects. Or the closest thing to it around here."

"They ride on the wind?"

Jaxon laughed. "That's one way to put it," he said. "They fly."

"On a four-gee world? Aren't they too heavy?"

"The atmospheric density provides some compensation. That's why your descent was so pleasant."

When they finally cleared the swarm, Peder forgot his earlier disappointment concerning the view in a single heartbeat.

The filtered disc of Belial's star crested an ambiguous horizon over a sea of basalt that spread out before him like nothing he'd seen on any of the handful of volcanic worlds he'd visited before. There the formations were craggy, porous teeth that grasped for the stars. Here they were flat and sweeping, polished smooth by the wind and gravitational erosion. Hints of low, wide hills loomed in the distance, obscured by the thick haze that blanketed them.

But lifeless rock was not all to be observed. Thick, crimson lichens framed nacreous grasses that whipped about in the spastic wind. Voluminous gas pockets danced in slow-motion as hot hydrogen tried its best to burn without its old pal oxygen. Distinct swarms of insects roiled above flat, ellipsoid creatures that left trails of iridescent gold as they undulated along the surface.

Jaxon caught Peder's fascination. "They're not too different from slugs, are they?"

"I've never seen a slug that secreted gold slime before," Peder said, shaking his head.

"You still haven't. It's caesium."

"Really?"

"Yep. Whole place runs on the stuff. Belial is a dry planet. No water. Complex life can't exist without fluid, so caesium fills that role here, at least according to the brains in the lab. It's just as well. Caesium and water have an explosive relationship."

Peder watched a bubble saunter up through their liquid filled crawler. "Um. Aren't we in water right now?"

"Yeah, but it's virgin water forged from native hydrogen and carbon dioxide by the Pioneer bots that printed Cameron Base. Never touched the atmosphere. Never will if I have any say in the matter." Jaxon slapped a nearby bulkhead. "The caesium can't get through to us anyway. And even if it could, it's not the worst thing we'd be facing."

A foggy layer of condensation appeared on the inside of Peder's face mask. He was breathing faster than his life support could process.

"What's the worst thing we'd be facing?" he asked, struggling to get the words out between breaths.

"We'll get to that later," Jaxon said. No doubt he was reading Peder's status on his HUD. "Just remember: things that interact with water don't tend to blow up without oxygen present, and this world's plum out of O2."

Peder wondered what he was breathing if it wasn't oxygen, but he cut the thought off. Ignorance might be his best bet for making it through this assignment without another breakdown.

He tried to distract himself with the landscape. "Is that all caesium?" he asked, pointing toward a shimmering, metallic pond.

"Nope. That's lead."

"Lead? How hot is it out there?"

"500 Kelvin. Didn't you read your briefing?"

"Well ... I ... "

Jaxon glared at him. "You mean to tell me you landed on the living embodiment of hell and didn't even bother to read up on it first? You really make ignorance an art form, don't you?"

Peder squeezed his eyes shut, but there was no place to hide. "I ... I was planning on doing my due diligence at the orbital station. But when I came out of stasis, I met this Centaph girl - they're all girls, right?"

"Yeah. They're all girls. And boys too. They're hermaphrodites."

"Well, whatever. The important thing is that they have two mouths and don't have to come up for air if you get what I'm saying..."

"Is that why you're so eager to get back up?"

"Guilty," Peder said. It was a lie, but better to be thought a rake than a coward.

Jaxon peered out one of the front portholes. "We're coming up on the wreck."

In startling contrast to the smooth, eroded hillocks scattered about them, an uneven table of rock emerged from the gloom ahead. A pate of red lichen stippled the top of the jagged ruin, flanked on either side by an encroaching legion of multicolour coral analogues.

"That used to be a crawler?" Peder asked.

"Three cycles ago it did."

Peder accessed the briefing file on his HUD, playing catch-up now. "The report states that a fissure in the hull caused the... the incident?"

"That's what we determined."

"Was there a defect in the printing?"

"No. It was as strong as the one we're in now."

Peder studied the inside walls of the watery tomb that enshrouded them. They seemed sturdy enough, possibly bordering on overkill. "Then how ..."

"Look carefully," Jaxon said. "At the base of the wreck."

There was nothing to see. It looked like a dead reef surrounded by a concentric ring of grey sand. "What am I looking for?"

"Drop your eyes a few meters. Follow the terrain in front of it."

And then Peder saw it. A short ledge, not more than a meter in height, cut through the heart of the site. "That little thing?"

"It's not so little on a four-gee world."

"So they bumped over the ledge and split in half? Why didn't they just go around?"

"They were in a hurry..."

Peder took a moment to make sure his HUD was recording. He'd sift through the transcripts later to concoct a coherent narrative. "What happened after the fissure? The water drained and they were crushed to death by gravity?"

"Nothing quite so tame. Like I said before, caesium isn't the worst thing about the environment. If there's an alkali metal to be had, it's present, and in elemental form. Sodium. Rubidium. Lithium. Potassium. Whatever doesn't melt is in with the dust."

They were getting off track. This was an incident investigation, not a science lecture. "What do these metals have to do with the wreck?" Peder asked.

"When they react with water, things get violent."

"Like caesium."

"Exactly."

"But I thought you said they needed oxygen to explode."

"They do. The reactions produce hydrogen gas, but it's barely more than a light source without oxygen. That's where we come in."

"What you mean?"

"As you're probably aware, we're both breathing an oxygen mix right now. But do you know where it's coming from?"

"Our habitation gear. The backpack."

"Nope. The proper gear is too bulky for us to lug around, so we oxygenate the water and our suits deliver it to us, though I could see why a layman like you might be confused."

Condescending and patronizing. Why was it always assholes that accompanied him on these assignments?

"So the ledge caused the fissure, the alkali metal dust infiltrated it and reacted with the water, which created hydrogen gas and blew the whole thing up thanks to our pesky human need to breathe?"

"Essentially, but that's only part of the story. You can't forget that it's 500 Kelvin outside, well above the boiling point of water. On top of that, certain reactions, like that of potassium and water, create fun things like potassium hydroxide, which are highly corrosive. Taking everything together, the crew of that crawler was boiled, detonated and scoured into oblivion, as was their vehicle."

"At least they weren't crushed to death by the gravity."

"Gravity, no. But the atmospheric pressure is far less forgiving. I'm sure they would've taken the trade."

Peder stared out through the porthole. "How is it possible that the mining base hasn't been blown to bits a thousand times over?" he asked.

"We concentrate nitrogen from the atmosphere and flood the immediate area with it," Jaxon replied. "It's not very reactive and dilutes some of the nasties."

"Some of the nasties?"

"Enough to make our lives easier."

That meant the heap of slag before them had experienced the gentler side of Belial.

"Well, I've seen the site," Peder said. "We should head back before it gets dark. I have more than enough for my report." He didn't, but fudging numbers had sort of become his specialty.

"Starset's not for an hour. Don't you want to drop a dervish?"

Peder sighed. "Fine. But you're driving it."

Jaxon's eyes danced around inside his mask as he interacted with his HUD. A low, rumbling noise passed through the protective liquid and registered in Peder's chest. He watched as a sphere studded in spines rolled from beneath their crawler toward the incident site. It didn't hesitate when it reached the ruin, instead impaling a coral analogue and then climbing its face.

"Can we get a picture?" Peder asked.

By answer, the left side of his HUD darkened to black. A standard interface appeared and Peder manipulated the 360° gyroscopic camera away from the face of the ruin and into the light. The sky showed nothing of note, so he spun the visuals until they settled onto his crawler. Almost immediately, he spotted his own diminutive head through a small porthole on the unsubstantial craft, adrift in a vast sea of hellfire and crushing pressure. His mask fogged up again and he quickly rolled his view back into the dark ignorance of the reef.

"Let's get a better view," Jaxon said.

A moment later, the protective blackness of the ruin dropped out of view as the drone reached the high point, a lip of material that oversaw the concave remnants of the sundered crawler.

"Have the inhabitants been retrieved?" Peder asked.

"It set back our quota, but I insisted. Diverted a few dervishes and managed to get a handful of material - mixed remains and who knows what else. Got it back to the garage, but we couldn't divorce the contaminants from Maikal and Mariya, so we had to dump them."

Peder shut off his view of the camera and left the work to Jaxon. He didn't like the idea of being dumped on a planet like Belial. At least a grave back home could have visitors.

Instead, he stared out his porthole, focusing on what horizon he could see in an effort to make the rest of it all go away. There was a flash behind the veil of haze. Then another. Then three more. Then a dozen.

"What's that?" Peder asked.

Jaxon followed his gaze. "Reaction storm," he said. "A little one."

Peder tensed. "Are we safe here? Should we head back?"

"We're fine. We have the nitrogen to protect us."

"But we're in a tank of water in the middle of a lightning storm!"

"It's not lightning."

"It's not?" Peder asked, calming down.

"Not at all. It's just hydrogen gas igniting."

"Wait. You said it couldn't blow up without oxygen."

Jaxon laughed. He wasn't taking this serious enough. "Guilty, but I didn't want to worry you any more than I had to. When a bit too much sunlight sneaks through the haze, hydrogen and chlorine can react. But it won't work over here. The gas mix is all off."

He'd barely had the words out when a blinding flash exploded just outside Peder's window. The window tinted black in defence but too late. A kaleidoscope of spots bombarded Peder's eyes as he reeled from the gut punch of released energy.

Jaxon howled in delight. "Now that was lightning!" he shouted, his words boring into Peder's skull.

"You said it wouldn't work over here!" Peder squeaked, losing control of his voice.

"No. I said hydrogen and chlorine wouldn't react here. Lightning can strike anywhere."

The tint lifted from Peder's window as the last vestiges of a diaphanous smoke diffused into the air around them. "Now what the hell is that?" he demanded.

"Ammonia," Jaxon replied. "And some other stuff. Hydrogen can react with nitrogen when ..."

"Shut up!" Peder screamed. He jerked against his tether to get loose. "I don't want to hear it! I'm sick of this god damn shit-stack of a planet. I want off. I want off right now!" His mask fogged up again, blinding him as a chorus of alarms bombarded his other senses.

"Calm down," Jaxon said. "We're going back. I just need to retrieve the dervish first."

"Screw the drone. We were insane to come here. Nothing we can mine is worth all this."

The crawler didn't move.

"I said screw the drone!" Peder shouted. If Jaxon replied, he couldn't hear it over the alarms. He couldn't see anything either. He was alone. Where were the god damn tranquilizers?

A low rumble shook the cabin. He felt a hand on his shoulder. Jaxon's hand.

"I'm turning around." Somehow the words snuck through between klaxons. "Open your eyes. You can see the base from here."

Peder couldn't see anything through his fogged mask, but the reassuring touch was enough to ground him. Soon, the alarms silenced as he regained control. The margins of the smear of condensation before his vision retreated until he could once again see through the porthole.

His peace didn't last very long. Smack in the middle of the window was a fine, jerky line. "Is that a crack?" he asked.

Jaxon peered at the spot. "Looks like a little one. It's on the exterior pane, though. Nothing to worry about."

But Peder couldn't hear a word he was saying. The alarms were back. The fog was back. He flailed about in his suit, moaning.

A hand gripped the back of his neck and slid down to his backpack. Warmth flooded his head and filtered to his tingling extremities. His brain detached from his body, floating alone in a protective cocoon, not unlike that which ensconced his corporeal form, itself imprisoned within the vacuum of starlight that separated him from all that was good in the universe.

Peder lay in a warm, dry bed, snuggled amongst examples of every sentient species in the known universe - and each in their own version of rut.

He twisted to his right to caress the hooks of a particularly handsome Ralid and found himself restrained. He tried to wrench free of whatever overzealous lover wanted him all to itself and felt a tentacle unfurl into his nose. His tight sinus cavity creaked to accommodate the scurrying intruder as it navigated its way to the back of his throat. He gagged and clutched at his face, trying to rip it out, but to no avail. An invisible barrier stymied his manic efforts.

He lurched from the bed, tumbling out of his dream and into a deep pool of warm liquid, opening his eyes to a shower of flashing lights and whispered warnings of rising intensity. A dim cabin encapsulated him - his stateroom on Belial.

"Hello?" he said, his voice shaky and unsure in the hollow headpiece.

There was no answer.

He was alone. They'd left him here. There'd been an evacuation or something and they'd overlooked him in the commotion. No one was coming. He'd die here, forgotten and imprisoned.

He squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself back to the orgy, but the only thing interested in violating him were more flashing lights and alarms. Sweat lubricated his mouth and stomach acid burned in the back of his throat. Then, just as quickly as it had seized him, the panic lifted and the world went dark.

There were no dreams this time. He woke up in his dim stateroom with a strange hand gripping his ankle.

"What day is it?" Jaxon's voice asked him.

Peder opened his eyes and saw the man at his foot.

"How the hell should I know? The days are only two hours long here."

"Good," Jaxon replied. "You seem to be back to normal. We were worried."

Peder didn't concern himself with who 'we' was.

"How long was I out?" he asked.

"Maybe ten hours in total."

Great. That meant he was stuck here for another day and a half.

"Check your inbox," Jaxon said. "I had some time to kill after you passed out, so I did your homework for you. All it needs is your signature..."

Peder accessed his HUD. Sure, enough, there was his report, and far better than usual based on the few sentences he skimmed. With a quick retinal scan and DNA from three areas of increasing delicacy, he signed the thing and sent it off to the ansible queue.

His work was done. Nothing to do now but endure the big squeeze until his launch was ready. And there was no reason to remain conscious for that.

Focusing on his confinement, as well as the water that surrounded him and his inability to break free of it, Peder managed to trigger the alarms in his suit. He thought of the inhospitable planet that enveloped him and its crushing strength and apathy for humankind. He let the fear course through him, doing his best to keep the alarms screaming. After thirty seconds, a wave of relaxation washed over him. He could keep himself in chemical stasis for a day or two, no sweat. His habitation gear would take care of all his needs.

He let go.

"You're an idiot," Jaxon said when he woke up again.

Peder didn't much care. He felt very relaxed, even when he considered the heel of Belial crushing down upon him.

"Why so hostile?"

Jaxon sighed. "You don't have to turn nutter if you want a sedative. You can administer one through your HUD. Hell, anyone can administer one to anyone by interacting with their backpack. People lose it pretty often around here, but I'm sure that doesn't surprise you."

Peder laughed. A rotund belly laugh he didn't know he possessed. "Why didn't you tell me your eyes were so green, Jaxon? And so, deep?"

Ignoring him, Jaxon said, "You're wanted in the command centre. But first" - he manipulated something behind Peder's head - "let's turn your drip down a bit."

"The command centre? How exciting!"

Jaxon swam to the door hatch and opened it. "Unstrap yourself and follow me," he said.

Peder blew a raspberry, spritzing the inside of his mask with a fine mist. "I'm tired, Jaxon. Tow me."

By the time they'd reached the command centre, the majority of Peder's wits had returned, but that didn't stop him from letting Jaxon drag him inside.

The room itself was small, with operators tethered to consoles that ran the length of the flanking walls. A more impressive desk sat before a view-screen in the centre which was counting down from thirty in bold, red numerals. A floating supervisor gripped the shoulder of the frantic operator that populated the desk.

"Is something going to explode?" Peder asked. He didn't seem to care one way or the other.

With five seconds left on the countdown, the floating supervisor turned to him, squinting and wrinkling his nose. Peder squinted right back.

The picture on the viewscreen switched to a ruddy man dressed in the horizontally striped suit of a Cameron senior executive. He slicked his hair back with a palm and mouthed a few words. Peder couldn't hear a thing.

The executive paused as if waiting for an answer. Peder glanced at the command centre supervisor, who was squinting at him again. He crinkled his nose in return and giggled.

A firm hand squeezed Peder's upper arm. It was Jaxon, joining in on the squinting.

Peder made fish lips at him.

There was a click inside Peder's skull followed by Jaxon's voice. "Change your comm channel to Command, jackass," he said, squinting as his obscured mouth formed the words.

Oops. An embarrassed Peder navigated his HUD and opened the proper channel. Several raised voices vied with themselves in a competition involving ever more elaborate expletives and ultimatums. They were all focused on him.

"Sorry everybody," he said. "Technical difficulties. It's fixed now."

The executive glared at him from the view-screen. "Is a little competency too difficult to ask for in a situation like this?"

"Um..." Peder struggled for a response.

The man exhaled, then slicked back his hair again. "Danvers, do you have any idea what you've stepped into here?"

"No, sir," Peder replied.

"A shit show, that's what. You just slept through first contact with a novel alien species. And on one of our mining interests. We're supposed to find indigenous sentient life before we plunk down trillions in infrastructure. Now we can't do anything until we get god damn consent."

"I see, sir."

"Do you really? I don't think you see a god damn thing. You need to talk to these fuckers and get their consent to mine."

"Me?"

"Of course you. Who the hell else am I talking about? Certainly, not Supervisor Pitcairn there. The only thing that's saving his job is the fact there's no shittier place than Belial I can send him to."

"But I'm not trained for this. Shouldn't you send ..."

"There's no one else to send. The closest suitable executive is five cycles out, and that one works for our competition. Whoever gets consent first owns this rock."

"But ..."

"Stop arguing and let me finish. Ansible airtime isn't cheap. The only 'but' I want to hear is yours in a seat on the way to greet our new best friends."

"And what if I refuse?"

The executive chuckled. "That would make my day. If you were to refuse, you'd be fired on the spot. And then why would I spend the money to bring a former employee off planet? For that matter, why would I let a nobody use my habitation gear for free? This isn't a god damn charity. Now do your job. That's it."

The screen went black and Peder pulled up his HUD, looking for the menu for tranquilizer levels.

"Don't check out yet," Pitcairn said. "I have your orders."

"Well, I don't want them."

"That's not an option. Someone needs to make physical contact with the Peelatra."

"I agree. And I think you're the perfect man for the job."

"Didn't you hear Mr. Cameron? He doesn't want me. And on top of that, I don't have a license for contact."

"Neither do I," Peder said.

"Of course, you do. You're a Cameron executive."

"Level one. I'm barely off probation."

"It's still an executive."

Peder struggled to find a way out of his mess. "You can go and pretend you're me. I won't say anything."

"They'll know. And so, will the Universal Trade Commission. Now shut up. The sooner we get through this, the sooner you can get back to your tranquilizers."

"Screw that," Peder said, pulling up the menu on his HUD again. "I can get back to my tranquilizers right now."

He turned the drip up to maximum and eyed execute. The word "Denied" flashed in his face.

"We're not stupid, Mr. Danyels," Pitcairn said. "Eat your vegetables and then you can have dessert."

Peder folded his arms and frowned, but he listened. He wasn't sunk yet. He just had to wait for the right opportunity.

"When we planted this base, we thought we were alone," Pitcairn said. "Sure, there were the bugs and the slugs and the like, but nothing even approaching sentience. We staked our claim with first possession and everything was fine. Then we received a message from the Peelatra. Let me play it for you."

A raspy, high-pitched voice infiltrated Peder's skull. "Peelatra. Are. We. Outsiders. Not. We. Greetings." That was all.

"That is a sped-up version of what we received over the course of five minutes," Pitcairn said. "The words were so long and low that we almost didn't notice."

Peder smiled. "I bet they're great at dinner parties."

"It makes sense if you think about it," Pitcairn said. "On high gravity worlds, the bigger the organism, the slower it moves. We've seen that here with the bugs and slugs. For something big enough to harbor intelligence, even a stumble would be fatal. They'd move slow. They'd breed slow. They'd speak slow."

"So how did you respond to their call?"

Pitcairn shrugged. "I didn't. I'm not licensed."

Peder scoured his brain for any accumulated titbit that related to this situation. "Well, return their greeting. And tell them we'd like to meet. Oh, and that we bring gifts."

Ten minutes after the message was sent, they received a response. It was like communicating between planets before the advent of the ansible.

"Come. To. We. Bring. Organic. Compounds."

"There is data with that stream," one of the operators said. "A location."

"How far?" Pitcairn asked.

"Close. One hundred kilometres."

Pitcairn nodded. "That's doable. Twenty hours in a crawler. Maybe a little more with a trailer. What do you say, Jaxon?"

"Be happy to," Jaxon replied. "I wanted to stretch my legs anyway."

"How do they even know what an organic compound is?" Peder asked. "It's a human classification."

"They speak English too," Jaxon said. "They've obviously been listening."

"Makes sense," Peder replied. "So what do we have in the way of organic compounds?"

Pitcairn accessed his HUD. "Foodstuffs for the nasogastric tubes, some polymers, Galvez's insulin. Not enough to fill a trailer."

"What about carbon dioxide? It's got carbon right there in the name."

"Strictly speaking, it's not organic. And there's tons of it on Belial. They could harvest it themselves."

Peder froze. "I just had a thought," he said. "Humans are made of organic compounds. You don't think ..."

"No," Pitcairn said, cutting him off. "I don't. They learned English. On their own. I think they can differentiate between a human being and insulin.

Peder shrugged in his suit, but the exchange got him thinking. "How often do you have to swap out habitation gear down here?" he asked.

"Once a week. That's about the time they run out of food and water and fill up with waste."

"And where does the waste go for recycling?"

"The sewer."

Pitcairn's eyes widened in understanding. "Absolutely not."

"Yes," Peder replied. "I bet it's brimming with organic compounds."

"You can't buy a planet out from under its indigenous population with crap. It can't be done."

"You, my dear Pitcairn, are no student of history."

It wasn't until he and Jaxon were back outside Cameron Base that Peder realized he hadn't bothered to turn up his drip, so excited was he to be putting one over on the aliens. Buying a planet full of infinite riches and saving the Company trillions upon trillions of dollars in exchange for a vat of shit was not only poetic, but it would skyrocket him to a Cameron vice presidency at the very least. He could stop going to these frontier colonies and sit back in an ugly suit, yelling at underlings and counting his wealth on the abdomens and thoraxes of his many concubines. Or was it thoraces? It wouldn't matter; it would be whatever he decreed.

"We are going... lose you... nitrogen... interfer ..." the operator from Command said. His name was Anup, a second generation with the most amazing freckles. Peder wondered if he might consider becoming his first concubine.

"What was he saying?" Peder asked.

"Once we breach the nitrogen perimeter around the base, we'll lose communication until dark," Jaxon said. "And I'd wager we just breached it."

A lonely fear of separation from what little civilization there was on this rock crept over Peder. "I think this is where I check out for a while," he said, pulling up his HUD interface.

"No problem," Jaxon said. "I've got this. See you in five days."

"Don't even try with that. I'm not going to fall for it again."

As he said it, Peder caught sight of a lumbering caesium slug ten meters ahead. They were going to run it over.

Peder leaned forward, eager to see what would happen when they did so. He checked over his shoulder to reaffirm the presence of rear windows for a good view. They were dragging a low trailer of putrid human excrement, but he should still be able to see the resulting smear.

With a meter to go, the slug puffed into a ball and rose from the burnt ground. It drifted lazily to the sky, bumping from Peder's porthole and continuing to ascend.

"Did you see that?"

"Fifty times on my first day planet-side," Jaxon replied. "Now go to sleep. I like you better quiet."

"Not until you tell me what happened with that slug."

"There's not much to tell. They initiate a biochemical reaction that produces hydrogen gas in order to inflate, adjusting the flow to change elevation. Once airborne, they utilize a rudimentary steering system involving once hidden appendages. As far as we can tell, they spend the majority of their life cycles floating in the higher, tamer reaches of the atmosphere, descending for short periods of time to eat, drink and procreate."

"Three of my favourite things," Peder said.

Satisfied with the answer, he manipulated his drip and awaited the salve of the impatient: sleep.

He opened his eyes five hours later and glanced out the nearest porthole. Nothing much had changed. They were twenty-five kilometres closer to their destination, but the view was still of endless basalt and the same handful of species he'd already encountered.

Jaxon was hard at work trying to look busy at the controls. "I don't think I ever asked you what you're mining here," Peder said to him.

"You're right. You haven't."

There was an awkward pause. "So what are you mining here? What's so valuable that the Company would risk something so ridiculous as a base on a four-gee heavy?"

"You mean you don't know?" Jaxon sighed. "You may be the worst executive in the entire Company."

"Why do you think I was on probation? Now tell me."

"Francium," Jaxon said.

"Never heard of it."

"That's probably because it has a half-life of twenty-two minutes and only a few dozen grams of it can be found on most planets at any given time."

"I take it Belial isn't most planets?"

"You take it correctly. Belial is home to a concentration of high-actinium uranium. Francium is created from the alpha decay of actinium. We've been able to trap it for centuries, but never efficiently enough to achieve a marketable scale. Until now."

"So what's it used for?"

"I'd expect any Company executive to be versed in applied chemistry, but I've met you, so forget it. Just know that it's extremely radioactive and the most reactive of all alkali metals. It makes caesium and potassium look like baking soda."

"So a weapon, most likely. A big one."

Jaxon's shoulders raised and lowered in what was probably intended to be a shrug. "We are human, after all," he said. "No price is too high for the means to come out on top."

Peder smiled a little too wide and his nasogastric tube hit his gag reflex. Ignoring the annoyance, Peder focused on Jaxon. The man was starting to grow on him. He was ugly as hell if his crooked nose and the weathered skin around his eyes were any indication, but the ugliness was clearly from the attrition of a lifetime of hardship as opposed to poor genetics. He was probably quite handsome in his younger years.

"Hey Jaxon," Peder said. "Two questions. Do you have a younger sister? And, if so, is she happy in her chosen career?"

When Peder woke up, his joints were achy and he felt a deep urge to rub the haze from his bleary eyes, but his helmet prevented any such pleasure.

"Are we there yet?" he asked.

"As a matter of fact," Jaxon replied. "We are."

"What?" Peder lunged at his porthole to see what there was to be seen. "How long have I been asleep?"

"Sixteen hours. I put you out. I'm sensitive about my sister."

But Peder was no longer listening. Instead, he gaped open mouthed at the site before him. They were situated at the base of a narrow gap between enormous cliffs of basalt that curled into the oblivion of suffocating atmospheric gases in either direction. Unlike most the gravity-crushed surface of Belial, the cliffs were lithe and vital, their face an amalgam of rectangular fingers smashed together and soaring skyward.

The planet's shrouded star swung across the hazy gap at speed, seeming to freeze for a few awed seconds at the midline before continuing its path of eclipse behind the right cliff.

"Is this it?" Peder asked. "It's incredible."

"Not quite. Our destinations on the other side. This is just the gate."

"Well, send a message to Command. Tell them we're here."

"Already taken care of. We beat dawn by a few minutes, but we're incommunicado until dark now. If we go in, we won't be able to report for an hour."

"And if we go in at night, we won't be able to see anything. I'll take the chance. Push on through."

They navigated between the massive walls, emerging at last onto the surface of an enclosed plain of grey sand dappled with sporadic outcroppings of rock. The overhead star burned bright and clear above them. It took a minute for the significance of this to dawn on Peder.

"Hey, where'd the haze go?" he asked.

Jaxon accessed his HUD. "According to our sniffers, the atmosphere here is almost one hundred percent argon."

"What does that mean?"

"It means it's nonreactive. They did one better than our nitrogen barrier. If you could breathe argon and handle the gravity and temperature, this would be the choicest spot on all of Belial."

"So the Peelatra built this place?"

"That would be my guess," Jaxon said.

"What do we do now?"

"We wait."

Dusk soon arrived, but a message from Command did not, so Jaxon called in.

There was no response.

Peder began to feel anxious and adjusted his tranquilizers appropriately. He opened the door to a small transfer port in a low bulkhead and reassured himself that the canister containing the necessary documents was still there. He doubted the Peelatra would be able to sign their name in any recognizable form, but the legal definition of a proper mark had become rather lax lately out of necessity. A trail of mucus would do.

"What do you suppose is keeping our hosts?" Peder asked.

"Maybe they don't like the organic compounds you selected..."

"I fail to see how some glucose and Galvez's insulin would be any better," Peder said.

Deep down, however, he wondered if Jaxon were right and he'd made a mistake. Maybe the higher-ups at the Company would keep him here on account of such a major screw-up. Peder closed his eyes and tried to take a deep breath. He'd kill himself if it came to that.

The night wore on and Jaxon continued to reach out to Command in vain. Peder untethered and squatted beneath a high porthole, peering through the suffocating black in search of the orbital station that should be waiting somewhere in the heavens above. If he could just see it, could just make some connection to its reassuring glimmer, perhaps he could remember that Belial wasn't all there was to the universe. The walls of the crawler were closing in on him in again.

But there was no sign of the station above. Indeed, no sign of any stars above.

"Shouldn't we be able to see something through all this empty argon?" Peder asked Jaxon.

Jaxon stopped trying Command for a moment and looked up through his own porthole. "Vega, at the very least," he said. "On a good night, you can see it above Cameron Base's thin layer of nitrogen."

"Then where the hell is it?"

The faint colours of dawn emerged above the encircling cliffs, young enough to quickly die into the blackness that dominated above their short, low halo.

Ten minutes later, the sky hadn't changed. For all intents and purposes, dawn was stuck.

"Command, this is Jaxon. Come back."

Peder could hear the strain in his companion's voice but didn't share his urgency, so captivated was he by the frozen dawn, which turned out to be not quite so frozen after all. As he watched, the short strip of colour above the cliffs was lightening to the smoggy dinge of day, but its height was diminishing as if a giant plate that obscured the star was pressing down upon them.

A low, continuous groan rattled Peder's skull and the realization set in.

"They're coming down on top of us!" he shouted to Jaxon over the noise, squeezing his helmet with his palms in a futile effort to drive away the sound.

Jaxon untethered but didn't leave his position. "I know," he said. "That balloon of theirs has been descending on us all night."

"Balloon? What the hell are you talking about? It's the size of a city!"

"Use your head, Peder. Think of the slugs - they stay afloat, only descending to eat, drink, and procreate. The Peelatra likely built their cities on the same principle, like we did with the sky colonies of Venus. And now they're coming down for a chat."

"Well tell them to stop," Peder said, disoriented by the oppressive vibrations cavitating throughout the protective layer of water. "That balloon of theirs is going to break us apart."

"That sound isn't the balloon," Jaxon said. " It's coming through the radio. They're trying to communicate, but it's too slow for us to hear."

Peder dropped his ineffectual hands from the sides of his helmet and swam to the transfer port in the bulkhead.

"Then it's time to make a deal," he said, hitting the button to eject the reinforced capsule of documents onto the sandy surface of crushing Belial.

Nothing happened.

"Jaxon!" Peder shouted. "The transfer port isn't working."

"I know," Jaxon said, floating to his side and opening the port's access door. "I disabled it."

"What? Why?"

Jaxon removed the document capsule. "Did you pre-sign the papers in here like I asked?"

"Yeah."

"Good. We're all set, then."

"What are you talking about? We've got to eject that capsule. Those documents are the entire reason we're out here!"

"No, they're not."

Peder twisted toward him. "I don't understand..."

"No," Jaxon said, putting an arm around him, "I don't suppose you would."

A calming heat spread through Peder's body as Jaxon manipulated something on his backpack. "But I need to make first contact..."

"No, you don't. Mariya made first contact three cycles ago."

"Mariya?" Peder tried to place the name amid the chaos. "You mean the body from the wreck?"

"Yes. My younger sister..."

Peder felt his body divorce from his brain. "So the papers are already signed?" his body asked.

"No. Her attempt was a catastrophic failure, so we tried something different this time. You."

Peder glanced into Jaxon's firm green eyes, but couldn't quite focus. Darkness seized the edges of his vision and plunged him toward unconsciousness. "Me?" he asked.

"We couldn't have asked for a better executive. You signed off on our version of the incident without asking too many questions. Hell, you even let me write the damn thing. Once that was done, you became expendable, and it didn't take long for someone to figure out how to expend you."

Peder's hearing muffled as he neared his final communion with the void. "Why am I here?" he managed.

"The Peelatra don't want your trailer full of crap, Peder. They want you. A human specimen. Intact."

"For an orgy?"

Jaxon sighed. "Maybe, Peder. I guess you'll find out."

"You can't just deal out a Cameron executive for alien mining rights. Someone will miss me. What about the orbital station?"

"The station will be glad to be rid of you. I understand they've already started recycling your things."

"They knew?" Peter asked, floating alone in the ether of oblivion. He was a mote in the dark. A troubled mote, pestered by the buzz of Jaxon's final words straight into the skull he was leaving rapidly behind.

"Everyone knew," Jackson said. "Everyone but you. Story of your life, I'd wager."

The Trembling

Hernán Salvarezza

Argentina

I sit at the kitchen's table and hear the screech of claws against the walls and the howling that haunts me every night. I listen to the mockery in their laughter and think coming here was the right move, but I can't remember why. Tonight, the shaking starts with the cabin's walls and ceiling. The tabletop, chairs, and stove join the dance seconds later. Pictures frames fall and shatter. Cardboard boxes spill magazines, albums, and pictures of home. A pot of coffee explodes into a million pieces; mottling the bone-white titles with black tar.

With every episode, I get colder and more fragile. And there's not much I can do about it, but take two pills and a protein drink—gasping, concentrating on breathing in and out, in and out, in and out, as I scratch the tabletop's jagged wood, my fingernails dirty with animal grease.

The screeching sounds of claws fade as devilish shadows creep across the walls. Every hour I spend in this place is a hellish nightmare of its own. Every day I remember what happened, but I can never quite figure it out. I know the pills help me fight the memory lapses. Without them the trembling could wipe out my memories, thoughts, and mind; finally reducing me into a zombie. But I can't let that happen to me. I'll take my chances outside these walls. I'll cross the meadow and break into the Mission Control Centre. I'll figure this out. I'll figure this whole thing out.

When the trembling stops, a status report appears on the screen of my sky-blue cube—the only kind of electronic device left that works. It's a hand size quantum computer that stores an infinite amount of data that was previously known as the Internet. Right now, the cube projects a maroon dot the size of a walnut on the wall in front of me. Below it, an orange compass arrow points to the north, to the space mission centre. Maybe it's the trembling's point of origin, maybe it's something else.

The cube shows a second image. It's a faded pink face with familiar slate eyes and blood-red lips.

"Finish my work, Ray," My wife says, grimacing. "Take your pills. Run the tests."

"Leave me alone!" I lay my head down on the table and shiver. "Please leave me alone."

"Finish my work, Ray, run the tests, take your—"

"I didn't mean it. Don't go," I say, looking up. "Please don't leave."

The table shakes. The cube shuts down and my wife's face disappears.

For a moment, I remember bits and pieces of my former life.

This time it's a society dance at least a decade ago. The room is the size of an airport runway paved with marble floors. Huge chandeliers shaped like star fish hang from the crystal dome roof. On every wall, the intelligent painting draws digital golden leaves falling on tropical oceans.

I stand on the east side of the salon, craning my neck out, looking for my wife. Most women wear tight dresses and shine like golden mermaids. All of them are blondes and have majestic fake breasts and shiny plastic-puffed crimson smiles. Men wear tuxedos or military fiesta uniforms.

I ply through the crowd of dancing queen bees and Emperor Penguins. In the centre, a circle of fluorescent-violet flashing light surrounds the mass of dancers moving to the sound of techno beats. I see my wife's by the champagne tables, and when our eyes meet she rushes into my arms.

"I'm so in love with you," I say.

Her cheeks flush red and her eyes are as bright as Venus. That's the last time we went out. The last time we had fun in a public venue; a week before her tests began.

We're back at home. Our bed is unmade and our clothes are scattered on the floor, chair and bed. She's standing on the mattress above me. I stare at the cloud-white halo around her head. It's so bright I'm losing sight of the shape of her lips, nose and eyes. All fading to the whitest light I've ever seen.

"Fuck me, fuck me," She says, flowering on to me. "Please, God fuck me."

Our bodies are pressed against each other, locked in a furtive embrace. I feel her tremble with pleasure and I'm done too.

I smile, aroused by the memory. I can't remember if she's alive or dead, but I smile nonetheless.

It's all I have left.

Three lamps draw yellow, fuchsia and red light circles on the ceilings plaster plaques. I stare at the half-built-broken rainbow; it's hypnotic and it calms me down. After a minute or so, I look down and see a host of pills scattered on the floor. They are splattered under the table-top like silvery stars on a coffee-black sky. I grab a few capsules, swallow them dry and gait through the litany of junk that populates this cabin in the middle of nowhere. A black and white TV, a record player, a digital oscilloscope, a long-range radio set... They look intact, but internal circuit boards are melted, fried by electromagnetic pulses, smelling like a paper bag of flaming dog shits. I keep them for the memories. It's just in case I tell myself. It's just in case something isn't ruined or completely lost, just in case I forget.

Outside, I think. I've got to step outside. I put on a black trench coat and struggle and fail to button my pants, so I hold them by the belt loops. Outside, I've got to step outside.

Moonlight shines through a small circular window on the east wall, a foot away from the kitchen. I stand on the moonlit squares and gaze at the horizon. The cobalt meadow undulates; tall thin grass waves, sparkled by red fur hyenas with yellow spotted spines, white eyes, and feet like bear claws. My cold legs tremble at the very sight of them and goose bumps cover my hands, arms, and neck. I walk to the kitchen rubbing my arms to warm up and step by the blood red stove of silvery chrome burners and handles. Besides the cooker, the sink is illuminated by a rim of blue light and it overflows with yellow lobsters that smell like fried chicken. I drown my arm in the sink up to my shoulder and pull out a bottle of Jack Daniels; most of the crustaceans fall to the ground twitching as if they were alive.

There's about a finger of whiskey left in the bottle. It's coppery and it sparkles. I take a sip, hold it in and my mouth blisters flare up and blaze. I put my chin against my chest as the whiskey burn expands through my torso—my body slowly coming back to life. I take the bottle with me and let myself down onto the blackened mattress by the window. White goose feathers float around me. A wind chime hangs from the ceiling. There's not even a breeze inside the cabin, but the pipes sing nevertheless.

"AP—Memory Exhausted," I say.

I remember those words. I believe they have something to do with the tests my wife used to run. I believe they are still running, if the tests weren't working or the mainframe wasn't operational, my cube would've told me so. The Mission Control mainframe is also connected to my wife's heartbeat monitor. That means that if the vital signs monitor fails and alarm is sent to my cube. If there was a warning, I would've received it during the initial reports. And I didn't. I've got to get down there. My wife's heart still beats...

At the other end of the room, a swinging wicker chair hangs from the roof; coated in dust as if it's never been used for seating in. It's shaped like a gigantic light brown egg cut in half. It's filled with cardboard boxes crowned by a purple seahorse figurine that turns to red when it rains. I get the statuette out of the way, open the first corrugated carton package and pull out a shock gun. It's a P25 electric discharge gun with a Mobius rechargeable unit that never runs out of ammunition. It can take an elephant down with a mild shot. It could take a herd of elephants down, if I had the strength or the will to kill, which I don't. I can only wave it at the hyenas and scare them by shooting at the sky.

The coffee-stained floor creaks below my feet. The wind chimes sound low and distant like seashell resonance. I swallow my sense enhancement pills; grab my fluorescent cane and my P25 shock gun.

I've got to leave. I've got to leave right now. I won't have a second chance.

Outside, fire trees sway back and forth and red leaves float in the air toward the moon as they disappear. A thin layer of snow surrounds the house. The shack is a four by six-foot square of oak covered with black monocrystalline silicon wafer solar panels and a tall, narrow lavender oak door in the front. Beyond the metallic fence, the teal grass pushes out of the snow in waist-tall chunks that sway in the wind. Twenty feet ahead it changes to the lush azure carpet that covers the meadow and beyond.

A thin hyena looks at me from the upper west side of the hill. The animal is a smudge of fire-red fur backed by moonlight that engulfs its head and pointy ears in a bluish radiance. I hold up my walking stick and rock it. Its intelligent paint reacts. Showers my face with greenish light. Smears the grass around me.

The hyena howls at the moon; wolves used to do that, I recall, but I can't tell for sure anymore.

I take short steps to the east side of the meadow and pass the waist-high blue grass blades, reaching the mid-point between the shack and the slope. At the top of the hill, three hyenas with their fangs out and white foam dripping from their muzzles wait for me. I think of running, but my feet, legs, and ankles are bound and freeze—heavy as if restrained by imaginary shackles. I stumble, fall and lose my P25 gun and my walking cane. You aren't in the First Team Academy; I say to myself. This is a walk in the freaking park for you. A walk in the freaking park.

The hyenas see me, somehow, and they howl again. They yell their battle cry at the moon and the stars. The oldest one of the pack leaves the three-animal-formation and heads my way. I crawl and stretch out to a sparking piece of silver in the grass and grab my P25 gun.

On my knees, I extend my left arm and hold out my shining cube to distract the beast, to give the animal a second target, something to bite besides myself. The hyena jumps at me with bloody fangs the size of daggers and knocks the cube right out of my hand.

I back away, release the safety switch and shoot. Two tree-like electric branches flow out in mid-air with a cyan glare going up to the sky. My arms and hands tremble while I hardly control this man-made lightning. As I pull the P25 down, the electric branches become one stream of purple light, a laser-like flash that hits the hyena in the chest. The beast shakes and sputters blood and white foam that evaporates in a second. The howling is silenced. All that remains is the stench of burnt flesh and a carcass full of ashes. Twenty feet away, a circle of light-green brilliance moves through the meadow. It's the skinny hyena carrying my walking fluorescent cane in its jaw towards the shack, disappearing through the grass blades.

"Get up, get up," I say, and gasping I get on my good knee and push myself up. "There's no going back now."

I grab what's left of the cube and limp to the west edge of the slope. By the rising ground, I crouch and wait. The cube's screen is cracked in two, fractured as a window hit by a bullet, but it still projects my wife's face over the blue grass. Her face is scrambled by white noise, her eyes scratched all over by vertical and diagonal black lines. She's talking, but a hissing sound engulfs her voice. The face of my love disappears as I hear the cube speaking.

"AP—Unable to comply."

The hyenas stand around my cane's eerie glow; now held by the skinny beast that took it.

I've got to reach my area of operations, I reason. I've got to make it to the Mission Control Centre. I've got to find my wife.

I around the hill. In the distance, beyond a wire mesh fence twenty feet away, fire trees submerge a deserted dirt road in sparking red leaves. Tumbleweeds run along a rusted railway. A red stop sign eaten by rust hangs from a lead pole. Now you're gonna find out, I say to myself. Now you're gonna remember, understand. I walk lamely toward a huge wall made of hundreds of mirrored windows that reflect the full moon, the sky and the stars. Besides it, there's a brick tower with a crystal-walls room on top.

It's the lighthouse, I think. Below, a brown brick archway tunnels into utter darkness, swallowing red leaves the icy wind pushes inside. I ask the cube for information about the building. It responds.

"AP—Unable to find site."

I follow the rails into the pitch-black tunnel. After a few feet, the tunnel widens into a corridor and the amber lights embedded in the walls turn on as I walk in. On the other side, a dismantled assembly line is covered in rusted junk—F1 engine blocks and space shuttle turbines. White and grey pigeons fly out through a dome roof opened half way. The whole place smells like scorched motor oil, fuel, and shit.

Inside the control room, the mainframe's screen covers the east wall. I find a keyboard with a data port access and plug in my cube. A liquid solution of nanites spreads over the crack on top of it. The fissure disappears before my eyes as if the cube had healed itself. Seconds later the room lights up and the cube shines with a crimson hue. Ahead of me, there's a ship shaped like a gigantic pinball, its silvery shine reflecting the moon, the control room, and the mainframe.

I type in the start-up sequence—the keyboard's keys are stuck, and I have to press each letter with my index finger to make them work. Finally, the screen flickers on and a buzzing noise comes out the computer's speakers, my wife showing up on the screen wearing an army military suit. She has thin lips, milky skin and looks old and tired. She says a few words, but I miss them—her voice is scratchy. I hit the keyboard with my fists and press every key I can possibly reach. The image clears up and the voice is crystalized. A smile slips over my face.

I see her again and remember who she is outside our relationship. I smile, listen, and calm down. She's talking about interstellar exploration, medical facilities and a way to do good things...interplanetary vessels leaving with men and women from earth, a time of hard choices and responsibility, science, and society...leaving the world as we know it behind and having no other choice.

I frown and sigh and I'm not sure what to think, as I can't tell what these images really mean.

"What does it mean?" I say to my cube. "What does it mean?"

On the screen, a long line of people marches to a gigantic silver-pinball-like-space ships. "ANSWER ME! GODDAMMIT! ANSWER ME!"

The cube turns from turquoise to blood red. The screen shows a new message

"AP—System instability."

The camera zooms in and shows a long line of people boarding ships. Some of them smile and wave with a silly look on their faces. The silvery spacecraft shoot through a blistering sky. I've seen these starships before. I know I have.

"What does AP mean?" I shout and sob. My face feels hot and I cry again because I can't find the other words, the words I just read on the screen. "What's AP?"

The cube displays the answer to my question. I'm numbed and my mouth drools while I stare at the screen.

AP test detail:

– Memory exhausted

– Unable to comply

– Unable to find site

– System instability

On the mainframe screen, the star cruisers rise while I try to hold on to this experience—keep it lodged in my mind so this won't happen to me again. In that instant, I forget what I'm here for and I reason that maybe the trembling of the earth is not what I think it is.

My hands and arms shudder. My legs are still cold and my feet feel restrained, as before. I look down and I see my pasty white legs swarming with goosebumps and remember that I've had my pants down around my ankles since I came out of the cabin. I sigh and understand why my legs felt restrained, why sometimes I couldn't run and what the imaginary shackles were. I look at my wristwatch but I can't figure out the time because its needles bend like Dali's clock paintings and I forget who Dali was.

The computer says:

"AP—I can't tell time."

"What does that mean?" I hit the keyboard with my fists. "What the hell any of it means?"

The screen shows a new image of my wife's face. I want to know, but I'm afraid to look. I'm afraid to hear her words. "It means that you misplace things too often," she says. "You can't complete simple tasks; you get lost in familiar places. Look at the screen, AP means..."

I look at the computer monitor. The final results are displayed.

AP– Alzheimer Positive

AP– Alzheimer Positive

AP– Alzheimer Positive

"How can this be?" I say, and button my pants while staring at the screen. "It's not possible. It's not."

The screen freezes for a moment.

"Follow the stairs," She says. "Go to the lighthouse and see for yourself."

I tread out of the computer room, walk back to the assembly line and find a narrow hallway to the east. I walk up a spiral staircase and go up three floors. A revolving glass door surrounded by white light bulbs spins before me. I move through the brightness, pass the control panel and head outside. From the balcony, I see blue hills spotted with snow along the rails, nothing else.

I go back inside to the control board. There are two reflectors. The primary one spins around the tower. The secondary one aims at the railroad and the river. I type the start-up sequence and the secondary reflector flickers and I see the mountain top and the meadow and the railroad that brought me here, covered by snow that forms small piles alongside the river.

I step onto to the terrace.

Light engulfs me. I'm blinded and my eyes sting as if bleach was poured into them. I cover my face waiting for the light to go around. It can't be long, I think. When I open my eyes, with the main reflector ahead of me, I see the world around the lighthouse: an endless field of solar panels, satellite dishes, space launch platforms and vehicle assembly buildings; and the endless azure of the Caribbean Sea.

"I'm at the Kennedy Space Centre."

I keep going, tailing the glare, clutching the rusted banister. To the east of the railway, all along the meadow by the river, partially covered by the snow piles, dozens of washed up bodies lay frozen. Men and women who walked into the water at the end of their days, I think. Now silver feathered crows and ashen vultures slash the corpses' arms, legs, and eyes; they share the profit.

I go back. I walk through the revolving door, the round stair, the hallway, the assembly line, and the tunnel. I leave everything behind and run out onto the rail, pass the wire mesh and turn east to the river. All of the frozen bodies seem to be part of the landscape, but their foetus shapes are unmistakably human. By the river's icy shore, I pull my cube out and ask it for a full spectrum analysis of the cadavers. The cube goes from bluish to red and back to a pale sky hue. A holographic image is displayed on the snow that carpets the meadow. Tiny red and blue marbles intertwined and joined by thin connecting strings and semi-transparent layers inside form a helix particle pattern that repeats from the bottom to the top. It's a chemically modified DNA chain-sequence.

"Identify the compound."

The cube says, "Unable to identify."

"Find closest data source," I say. "Where can I find it?"

"Data source identified. Mission Control Centre mainframe preserves pertinent data."

I go back into to the tunnel, to the mission control room. I connect the cube to the mainframe's data port and a path of maroon neon lights show me the way to the silvery, spherical spaceship. The spacecraft's in a mist of neon-orange brightness while its giant tongue-like-door opens and touches the ground.

Inside, the walls are covered with flickering monitors running a twenty-second countdown—showing clocks in yellow numbers over grey backgrounds. To my right, there's a small iron box that looks like a safe surrounded by digital temperature gauges. At the other end, a computer terminal shows a heartbeat graphic, a yellow line going up and down, forming peaks and valleys. On a closer look, I realize the heartbeat monitor's malfunctioning; sending a ghost life status signal.

I press the reset button.

A flat line appears on the screen as the sound of pressurized air being released knifes my ears. Thick yellow power wires come down from the ceiling and engulf a black metallic chair at the back of the ship. It's a tall chair bolted to a steel plank on the floor, with silver arms and foot supports. A white light bulb on top of it shines with a ghostly glow over my wife's body; her arms fall off the arm rests and her head's tilted back. I lean into her face, with tears washing down my cheeks, and kiss her goodbye.

My wife is dead. She's gone; her life's work is gone as well. All tests are over.

A humming sound comes out of the computer monitors. The countdown is over. The iron safe's door opens and a metallic tray carrying a light-red laboratory tube comes out of it. The label says: "Universal AP Antidote."

I take off the cap and hold it just an inch away from my parting lips. Was this cure some sort of trial? Was it a test?

I'm out of the ship. I tread slow, dragging my feet that feel restrained by shackles. I reach the mainframe and feel cold—like never before... I finally realize what the trembling was about. I'm lost to the same virus activated dementia that killed so many others—and there's no coming back from it.

I get out while my arms and hands shake violently and the test tube, the cure, falls off my hand and hits the floor, mottling the white tiling with a splatter of red gel. I keep going and take my cube from the mainframe data port. The control room shuts down. Acrid sweat runs down my face. I shudder. I walk.

I walk, but I can't find the way out. I can't remember how I got in either, or what was I supposed to do in this place. I take short steps and go around and around and around as the cube repeats my sentence. I close my eyes and picture my wife's face guiding me out of this blackened tunnel and hope for the trembling to come back and take everything away.

Harvest Time

Lyn McConchie

New Zealand

Terror was abroad in the thirteen colonies. Terror, witchcraft, and madness. It had not touched many, nor did many know of it - not yet. That would come.

He was a slight, slender boy. He had the gift of singing and where ever he went he sang, to the delight of those who heard. He was a hater of the cruelty of humankind so that as he passed he did many small deeds of kindness for those less fortunate. His master had been the opposite although he had seen himself only as Righteous in the Lord. For that righteousness, he'd beaten Jared, starved him and worked the child until even the harsh elders protested privately to the man.

It was fortunate for Jared that he had been in the sight of all at the market day when his master died, and luckier still that it had been an elder who found the terribly tortured body, dismembered and the bits strewn about the small farmyard. Elder Honesty was a sensible man. He'd called witnesses at once and then sent men running to find Jared.

"Tell me your day from the time you woke."

Jared detailed his hours from waking to work, from his meagre breakfast to leaving for the market.

"Why was it you who went to buy at the market and when did you leave?"

"The master said his bones pained him more than usual. He said I should take the piglets in the cart and buy stores with the money. I left as soon as it was light. It's a long way and the horse is old."

Elder Honesty considered. From the evidence, it was clear that if the boy told the truth he could not have been the murderer. He questioned others who could testify, a man who had been on the road when Jared passed - soon after first light - those who had seen the boy at the market, and finally Elijah from the next farm.

"I called to ask the farm's master if he wished to share the harvest work as usual. He said he did. I left. There was no sign of Jared and the cart was gone from the yard."

For the elder that was sufficient. He laid a hand on Jared's arm. "Whoever may have done this terrible thing, we know that it was not you. I had to be certain of this since the farm is now yours. He saw the lad's bewildered stare and cursed the dead man inwardly. How like the man to have said nothing. He swept the gaping chattering group before him out of the house.

"Go! Elijah, I rely on you to see that all is made decent. I know Master Righteous kept a coffin ready-made in the barn. Gather his body and place it within. Tomorrow we bury our brother. After that, take water and wash the yard. Care for the beasts. I have other work to do."

He left them working and returned to Jared. "What do you recall of how you came to be with your Master?"

Jared looked up at him slowly. "Why, I think I was about six. My parents died of typhoid. Master Righteous came and took me away."

"You were not told by what right he did this?"

Jared stared. "I was a child."

The Elder nodded. It was a fair answer. Who explained anything to a child? And how like Master Righteous. The man had gained a worker and money at the same time and all without any dissenting. He began to explain.

"Your master was also your father's brother. He sold the land your father had at his death using the money to buy more land and stock here. You inherit his property as his only relative."

He hid a smile. Righteous in the Lord would have been furious to die. The man's philosophy had been that if he couldn't take it with him, he wasn't going. He'd been a harsh, bad-tempered bigot who treated his nephew abominably. The Elder was pleased to see the boy inherit. He looked at Jared. The lad was sitting staring blankly at the wall. It had to be a shock to find that you were suddenly rich by an uncle to whom you'd never known you were related.

He stood, "I'll oversee what those do outside. You must think what you wish to do now, my boy."

He walked quietly from the room leaving Jared alone. Behind him, Jared's face twisted into lines of rage and bitterness. So, Righteous in the Lord had been his uncle. His master had stolen his childhood, his inheritance, and his right to family. Jared remembered the beatings, the threadbare clothing, and the meagre scraps he'd eaten. All while his uncle lived fat on money he'd made from Jared's inheritance. The man had deserved to die even more than Jared had known.

He rose to stare about the solid three-roomed cabin. All this was now his. He did not wish to stay here. Yet it was his. He ate and drank mechanically as he listened to those outside. Gradually plans formed in his mind. The Elder was kind, and intelligent men were often easier led than the dull or stupid. He brought out food and the ale barrel once the work was done. He bade the men eat and drink. It was good to watch their approving glances. Then he drew the Elder aside.

It took some time of quiet discussion. But at last, it was the elder who made the suggestions. "I think you should get away for a while, lad. Work a while for other men and see how they farm. I can put a man in here to care for your inheritance. Spend a year, maybe two. Come back and farm your land when you are ready."

Jared bowed his head. "If you think it a good idea, Elder."

They buried Righteous in the Lord the next morning. Jared sang the twenty-third psalm-like an angel so that many recalled his mother too had a fine voice. Jameth Glory to God had sung at many weddings and funerals before her untimely death. The farm was left in the care of the Elder's cousin. A sensible hard-working man who would take his pay in the crops and beasts he raised while Jared was gone. Jared took only the elderly horse. It too had suffered enough at their master's hands. Jared's weight would be far easier than the overloaded cart the poor beast had too often dragged.

They wandered. A year. A second. Half of a third before Jared came home. He was changed. No longer the thin starved boy but a taller stronger young man. He settled in to farm his land keeping on the elder's cousin and treating him and his family well. Even as his mother had, Jared sang now at funerals and weddings. His pure voice rose into the air like a blessing so that more and more he was asked to grace a celebration and paid well. It was at a wedding he met her. The wedding was her sister's. Jared attended and hid his thoughts.

The bride was lovely, her father a hard-handed brute who was wedding her to another for gain. He saw the fear in the girl's eyes. Saw the smug gloating in the bridegroom's face. Jared turned away to find himself looking at another girl. Her face was a pure soft oval, her eyes a warm gentle brown. She was slight. He guessed the pallor of her face to be that of a girl over-worked and under-fed. The bride's father spoke roughly to her and Jared saw the tiny flinching movement before she obeyed.

His protective instincts flared. He said nothing. It was wrong for a man to criticize the handling of another's household. But he returned, and again until it was clear he was courting. He was not made welcome to the puzzlement of those beyond the family. After all, Jared was growing wealthy as men were there and then. His singing brought in cash and gifts and in his time of wandering he'd learned much he brought now to his land for its betterment. Jared kept silent. He called, sat and talked, made small gifts to Emily's family biding his time. And always he watched until he guessed the truth. It was not his way to announce this. Instead, he made the chance to be alone with his love.

"I will ask your uncle for your hand tomorrow."

She wept. "Don't, please don't. I can't marry you."

"You love me," Jared said with quiet certainty.

"Yes. But I can't marry you." she broke off to look up into his face. "You know! How...?"

"I am not blind. I've seen - too much. Marry me and be free of him."

"He'll never let me go."

Jared looked down at her. "Oh, he'll let you go. How would it look if you were to accuse him of his lusts before the church? No, no. Hush." as she cried out. "I do not say you shall do so, only that he would fear it. I will ask for you tomorrow. Wait for me."

But for Emily, there was no tomorrow. "What happened?"

Her uncle shrugged. "The girl was always careless. She must have slipped on the bank. The stream runs high in spring when the snow melts. She could not swim."

Jared kept silent. Emily had never been careless. Either she had gone into the water deliberately or - he eyed her uncle thoughtfully and said nothing. There was no proof, but in the back of his mind, he made a promise. Jared said all that was proper and departed. Two months later he wed. Elder Honesty protested at his choice.

"She is a good girl, yes. But not long for this world, I fear."

Jared smiled. "She is a good girl and time with her will be worth the loss of her."

The elder left, still trying to work out exactly what Jared had meant. A little under a year later he stood by the bride's graveside. In Jared's arms, a baby whimpered. Jared lifted his voice, singing his wife's spirit home then he took his daughter inside. He obtained a nurse for her; the daughter of the Elder's cousin who still worked for him. She was solid and unfanciful. But she was kind and efficient. She'd do well. Jared had other things to attend to.

He was away in the nearby town when it happened. Elder Honesty came for him.

"Terrible news, my boy. The Spirit of the Lord family was attacked in the night."

Jared stared. "Who, how. They're all dead?"

"No. Whatever it was spared the women. But all the men are dead. Dead as your uncle was. Tortured and dismembered. Strewn about their land like slaughtered beasts. Worst of all, it was done in silence. They had those visiting who swear they heard nothing. No unusual sounds at all throughout night."

Jared returned with his old friend. This time, it was Jared who arranged the funerals and cared for the farms. He sang at the funerals and afterward Emily's mother and sister thanked him. He looked down at the faces so like his lost love's and accepted their gratitude. Already they looked happier. He returned to his own land and his daughter. The loss of the Spirit of the Lord family was put down to Indians, although few quite believed that. Over the next few years, other men died. Slowly the talk grew. Witchcraft! Somewhere, someone was trafficking with the Devil.

Jared's daughter was growing up. She wasn't pretty. But there was a quiet distinction to her. She took after her mother in looks but her mind and spirit were all Jared's. They talked together often, sitting alone by the large hearth.

"Goody Osburn is cruel to her maids. Her husband enjoys them both and she beats them often for it. He makes them do as he wishes else they will not be fed."

She watched her father's face darken. "And Bridget Bishop plays the wanton. She and her lover meet in Elder Honesty's barn. They talk of setting up a coven. They say the Devil will give them their desires for no more than a few cockerels and doing before him what they do already in private. They will lead others to destruction." She reached out to take Jared's hand. "I know what you can do, father. I have always known. I too have the gift, let me help you this time. Maybe we can scour cruelty from our land at last. Punish the guilty as they deserve."

Jared nodded. From then on they worked together, he and his daughter. Jared was careful. The talk built into hysteria. Now and again he dropped a word. Soon all knew that he planned a trip back to England. Not long, a year perhaps. Sarah should have some experience of the World before she settled to wed. Even Elder Honesty now grown old and feeble agreed.

"Best you get her out of here, my boy. I don't know what's got into people lately. Of course, there are witches, and the Devil is always with us. But I think there are fewer witches than fools and the devil dances in hearts more often than in forest clearings. I foresee great trouble."

Jared smiled. "I'm sure you are right. We sail shortly. God be with you, Elder."

Sarah was waiting when her father returned. "It's time?"

"We leave in two days. Once in the city, we'll book passage on the next ship. What else have you to tell before we are gone?"

Sarah smiled. "Goody Proctor is forcing her daughter to wed Master Taylor. The old man pays well for a virgin bride. He's killed two already with his cruelty but Goody Proctor does not care. Gold is gold. Elder Burroughs beat his wife so hard so she lost her babe. Then he beat her harder for that. Mistress Cloyse pinches every penny. Her servants starve but they are bound to her. If they attempt to leave she'll have them in the stocks." Her list continued as Jared listened closely.

He gave instructions. Sarah nodded. "I'll be back by dark. Tomorrow I'll be out again and back by mid-afternoon. Everything is packed ready for us to leave." She chuckled softly. "Those who are cruel shall reap a mighty harvest, father."

"Aye. A whirlwind. Go, the storm rises. We must be gone before it strikes."

They were, by a few hours. Sarah had laid the poison of her tongue well. Talk had become hysteria, and hysteria became action as two girls writhed and howled. They were only fools. Those who died, as a result, were no more than cruel, miserly, or self-righteous. Jared and Sarah were in England when the truth began to filter from their own land. They stayed until the hysteria and the killing was over. Then they returned.

Elder Honesty met them. "It is good to see you back. Too many have gone whence they can never return. But you left before trouble came upon us. What should you know of that?"

Jared remembered the days and nights of lying in his cabin sending his spirit forth. Sarah pretending that he was seasick and that she tended him. Then his pretence for her in turn once he was exhausted. He recalled how, driven to the edge of madness, he'd learned he could do this. His uncle had died for that knowledge – and for his brutality. Sarah was his daughter and the gift too was hers. Together they'd seared the cruel from the land. He smiled at his old friend.

"Why, I must confess we know little of recent events here. Come and eat with us and we will hear all the news."

He and Sarah exchanged quiet smiles as the old man turned to lead the way. They knew that it was all folly, this talk of witchcraft and the Devil. In later years, most would agree with that. But those who came after would never think to ask, what had those who died done to earn their fates, and could there have been other reasons for their deaths? Jared and Sarah could have told them but they died in silence, each at a great age and leaving behind a land less prone to casual cruelties. Jared had always known how to keep his mouth shut and Sarah, in this as in certain other things, was his true daughter.

And the Matter of the Library Fine

Leon Chan

Singapore

In the beginning was the word. And of course, there was a word, then another and thereby begins a story. Like this one. Like the words on the page, quivering slightly on a bench, basking under the lazy light of the spring sun in Regent's Park. The boy saw the words and didn't see them. If he cared, he would know the secret names of the rainbows and how to tell them apart. He picked up the book, delicately and reverently, as is common to all people handling things of great age.

If a person could hear deep into the infrasound, that magical frequency only known to the elephants and the deep blue whales, he may have heard a voice whispering ohgodohgodhesoneofthemrunhes-gotusrun. The boy gave the world at large a clown's smirk and stepped away, vanishing into thin air as though turning around an invisible corner. There was no book left.

In the beginning was a word, and the word was a scream.

Lenore was hard at work; the table in front of her looked like a mix between a chemistry experiment and a chef's workspace. On one side, a gathering of little plastic bottles of exotic herbiage; sage grown over the grave of a crone, a thousand-year-old piece of ginseng in the form of the first emperor of Qin. On the other, glassworks containing a kaleidoscopic collection of liquids and powders. The aqua fortis had left a smoking pockmark on the counter. Sally would complain later if she caught it before it darkened to black and faded into the cratered moonscape of the tabletop in the workshop.

The better part of a sticky, sweaty morning had been spent cataloguing and rearranging the witch's apothecary. Probably the first time it'd been done in years. It was mind numbing, painstaking work, which was why the City-Witch left it to Lenore. And that was why Lenore smelled like the unholy offspring of a yoga class, a greenhouse, and a meth factory. The witch's phone blinked to life and chimed twice.

"Sal, you got a message. Looks like a library book is overdue."

Sally bounded into the apothecary. The woman thrummed with jittery energy, as antsy as a kettle about to hit the boil. She pulled up next to Lenore, the top of her slight frame barely reaching Lenore's nose.

"Ta, love. Are you nearly done in here? There's work to do."

Lenore tried to blow a strand of lank black hair away from her face. It dropped back, heavy with sweat and directly across her right eye, tickling her lashes. She sighed, knowing better than to touch her hair with her hands after working with Sally's collection of ingredients. She'd lost count of the times she wondered if she'd be covered by health and safety if she got into any trouble doing city magic. Somehow the guidelines didn't cover perforated eardrums arising from prolonged exposure to Mandrake screams.

"I am working, Sal. Do you know you had three separate vials of nightshade?"

The witch snatched her phone from the table. Tawny eyes peered at Lenore from over the half circles of Sally's reading glasses. "The one with the black X on it is graveyard nightshade, the other two are from marsh land. Mostly similar, but you really want the graveyard stuff for anything psychic. Manifestations, illusions, mind readers, the lot." Lenore kept a practiced neutral mask on her face. She'd consolidated the three vials into a single Ziploc bag, not a moment before.

"Ah. Well. Never mind. I didn't know you even had a library card," Lenore said, steering the conversation back to firmer territory.

"I don't. It's a call for help. We're going to see Alexandria."

"A person? Or the library?" A strange thing to ask, but strangeness had become a fixture in Lenore's life since she'd blundered into city magic. She tussled with angels; interfered with the politics of the hidden animal kingdoms; and shared an apartment, with the City Witch, that had a tendency to shift locations every week or so. In that time, the esoteric had become routine and the most unexplainable magic in her life was how she was living rent free in London.

Sally, City-Witch, and nominal boss, patted Lenore on her shoulder. "Good girl. You're picking things up. We're going to see both."

The books were fleeing, hiding; but it was in their nature to be seen and read, these intersections of knowledge and the material. And so, they never hid too far; even if the knowledge was not meant for the eyes of the uninitiated. Consider the seventy-two Jinn in the service of Sulaiman, King of Kings, and the book that held the secrets of their transgressions and the contracts that bound them, now sitting on a shelf between a Bourne novel and a Cosmo in a slow bed and breakfast in the wind blasted Hebrides.

The innkeeper was in no rush to settle his customer, a lady of indeterminate age in a smart pantsuit, and so he dusted while the lady perused the meagre bookshelf. The innkeeper no longer had a young man's ears, but he looked up when he thought he heard a scream, fading into the distance like the whistle of a departing train. He would miss his customer, but he would never know the book was gone.

The coffee shop was buzzing. Suits took their espressos at the counter; a trio of ladies in yoga pants took their smoothies in traffic light trifecta, one green, one yellow, one red; a pair of old ladies sipped macchiatos while their little bony dogs coiled their leashes around chair legs.

Lenore and Sally kicked back in a far corner of the shop, nursing steaming mugs and watching the crowd. Lenore took her coffee blacker than midnight, wincing a little when she burnt her tongue. Sally typically took her tea sweet enough to send a toddler to the moon. While the older woman was distracted, Lenore shifted the pot of sugar to the next table, allowing herself a small smile when Sally's questing teaspoon found nothing but air.

"Bring that back, kiddo."

"Four is more than enough, Sal. You should get a little more tea to go with your sugar." Lenore swirled her black coffee around in its prison of porcelain and breathed in the bitter steam. "Where's your friend?"

"Probably on the way. You don't get to live to be two thousand without getting a little paranoid."

Lenore thought to question this when the shop went silent; as sudden as a blackout in the middle of a storm. When she looked to the rest of the patrons, she saw them gesturing, lips moving, raising cutlery to partake of their food - but no sound whatsoever. She turned back to her own table and found a third person sitting with them. Another lady, willow-thin, clad in a dress that covered her from neck to toe, something that would not have been out of place in a Victorian period drama. A pair of long matching satin gloves in dark blue hid her arms up to her sleeves. The woman's skin was a dusky bronze, that burnished shade that came from neither labour nor leisure. Her lips were so thin as to be nearly invisible, hiding under a striking nose of uncommon nobility.

Sally nodded at their new companion and spoke," Lenore, I'd like you to meet Alexandria, the Bibliotheca Fantastik."

Alexandria held out a gloved hand and gave Lenore a handshake as soft and fleeting as a puff of breath on a January morning. "Word has come to me about you, apprentice witch. It is a pleasure to finally meet in the flesh." Alexandria's voice was dry as dust; accent hinting at warmer climes. She turned to Sally. "I am sorry to have summoned you, witch. There are few others that can help. I am in danger."

"There are few things that would trouble an existence two millennia old that barely lives in this dimension, Alex," said Sally.

Alexandria took a breath. For a moment Lenore saw past the dusky mask and saw the fear in the tightness of her jaw, the tension in her brow; just for a moment and the woman was serene again. "Something hunts me. It tracks the books, one at a time. Every time it finds a book, the fold is lost to me. I fear my pursuer is not after the aspects, but the whole."

"How many, Alex?"

"Three."

"We have some time then. Last I remember, the Bibliotheca was composed of more than a thousand works."

"You misunderstand me, witch. Three are left."

Sally put her mug of tea down slowly on the table, Lenore caught the rattle of the shaking china as it made contact with the wood. The witch balled her fists and pressed them into her lap. "You should have come sooner, Alex. This is bad."

"The adversary is cunning and fast. At the start, I did not even know I was being hunted. The books go missing from time to time, as they are prone to do. By the time I took countermeasures, more than half were lost. I have sought refuge with the Fae; with the other workers of the hidden and the wondrous. Some tried to help. None succeeded. Now I come to you."

"Tell me about your foe," probed Sally. Her voice level and her eyes narrowed. Lenore had seen this before, Sally was as calm and serene as a placid shore with a hidden current. Trouble was brewing.

"They call themselves the Singers. Collectors and hoarders of secret wisdom. For all the knowledge, they've stolen, precious little is known of them. All I gather is that they've pursued the books across the planes as simply as your kind takes a bus."

"Can't you just hide the books?" asked Lenore, more than slightly puzzled at the thought of books fleeing otherworldly hunters.

"Alex, would you be so kind as to give my intern the rundown on the library," said Sally. "I'm going to make a few calls." She stood up, pulling her phone out of her pocket and leaving the sphere of dampened sound around their table.

"Tell me, dear girl, what you know about space," asked Alexandria, steepling her fingers and leaning on the coffee table.

"NASA space?"

"Dimensions of space. Consider what a square looks like to a line, or what a sphere looks like to a plane. So too is Alexandria to your world."

"You keep talking about Alexandria like it's still a place." This solicited a slight narrowing of the eyes from Alexandria and the tired snort of one about to return to a path repeatedly travelled.

"It is. Was. The greatest store of knowledge for an age. A temple to the intersection of thought and form; thousands upon thousands of works. And even more than that; cloistered in the darkened rooms only available to the enlightened, a collection of mysteries and secrets."

"And they burnt it?"

"People always will. Knowledge is power. If it cannot be controlled than the powerful will seek to hide it from the powerless. Even as the library burned, a few of the keepers worked something wondrous, something which counts as perhaps the fourth greatest piece of magic in this age. Even as the fire consumed them, they folded the collection of secrets away."

"Away from the fire?"

"Away from everything. Into dimensions of space, you cannot perceive. In the years intervening, we have only added to the library. But the Bibliotheca Fantastik is not many books, just a myriad facets of something greater. My adversary means to close each facet in turn, till they have the last one. Then they will have it all."

Lenore took in the flowing silk of Alexandria's garment, light on the skin. She imagined for a heartbeat the licking flames amidst crumbling woodwork and burning parchment. "Were you there? When they burned the library?"

Before the thin lady could answer, Sally clapped a hand on Lenore's shoulder. "Looks like at least somebody's been paying attention to the comings and goings of Alex's stalkers. Oh, where's she skipped off to now?" Lenore turned back to see an empty seat where the strange woman had been. On a whim, she laid a palm on the scuffed upholstery of the seat cushion and found it cool. The sound of conversation was bleeding back from the rest of the coffee shop like the fade in on a music track.

The witch took her place back at the table and sipped at her tea. "So I guess Alex gave you the sob story about the burning of the library? It never gets old to her. It's not really city business, but I've got soft spot for books. You're not much of a book person, are you?"

Lenore downed the last of her coffee, wincing at the taste; it had grown cold and bitter while Alexandria told her story. "I get my books on a peer-to-peer sharing site running off the TOR network."

"You started that sentence in English, but somehow segued into something foreign halfway through."

"It's sort of like a free book exchange. Every time I get a bit of a book, I make it available for someone else to read. All done through some internet magic."

The witch sniffed. She approached technology with late adopter's permanent scepticism, never quite trusting her growing family of devices. "Sounds a little like stealing to me."

"Says the woman who hasn't paid rent for twenty years."

"Touché. Hope you're done with your coffee. We're going to have to get to the third book before Alex's friends do."

Lenore put up her hand for the bill. "Where's that going to be?"

"A place where tonnes of people forget books. The Underground."

Five storeys down, where the sun never reached but the lights never dimmed, the third book rode down tunnels on screaming rails. The zombie crowds shuffled on and off; from home to office and back again. The trains ferried them all for the price of a coin. The book was non-descript, like its brethren. To some, it bore the serious script of a bestseller, to others the bright lines of a children's book. To the man dressed in the business suit, approaching it as one would approach a snake, it spoke of the languages of the dead, the twenty-three known psychopomps and how to bribe them.

The book knew of the fate of its brothers and sisters and it began a low keening as the man drew near, a sound that would have set dogs barking for miles, had it not been trapped in this silver bullet on an endless circuit.

"You found my book, I'd almost forgotten it."

The man snapped to attention with the grace of a plastic action figure. The speaker was a woman of middle years, brown hair streaked with white brushed the shoulders of her sweater. Old eyes looked at him from under an unlined brow. With her was a taller woman, in her early twenties, slim and just on the cusp of attractiveness.

"The book belongs to the Singers, witch. This is not your business." The carriage was empty save for the three of them, a strange thing on the London Underground for a weekday afternoon. The pair stood between the man and the book; the witch and her apprentice.

"Any magic in the city is business of mine. What is your concern with Alexandria?"

"The future, of course. My associates and I collect tomes of power. We make them available for our clients on the psychic narrowband. From our collection, straight into your mind."

"For a price."

"But of course." The new voice was that of a woman, the tone clipped and businesslike. She and the man could have been twins, cut from the same cloth. The witch pulled her apprentice behind her, her back straight, muscles tense.

"So predictable..." started the man

"... always ready to fight," finished the woman, leaning forward to snag the book with her perfectly manicured fingers. There was a feeling of pressure on the eardrums, a vibration without sound and the book folded away. It was gone.

"Just the two left, and then..." said the woman.

"... Alexandria joins us." said the man.

The train doors opened and the crowd streamed in, pressing in around Lenore and Sally. By the time the train started up again, the strange couple was nowhere to be seen.

Lenore snuggled into the soft embrace of the couch; the maroon upholstery wore her shadow permanently. The witch was in one of her moods, so Lenore contented herself with the non-work of cataloguing the organizing she'd done earlier in the day on her tablet. Sally paced the living room, her anger coming through in the clumping of her circuit around the wooden floor. The witch was muttering under her breath, a continuous stream of vitriolic exhortations which could have been an invocation or, more likely, a blue streak of swear words.

"So you and Alex go way back?" asked Lenore.

The witch paused her circumnavigation of the living room. "Yeah. That's why she sent me the message. She was calling back a debt from when I just starting out. She didn't need to. I'd have helped out regardless."

"Getting a magical book downloaded straight to your brain for a fee sounds pretty convenient, you know."

"That's not the point. Nobody owns Alex. I wouldn't be standing here right now if I had to swipe a credit card every time I needed some forbidden text."

Lenore set her tablet down. "I guess you have a plan then, Sal?"

The woman threw herself down at the other end of the couch, hitching her legs onto the coffee table. "It's fairly straightforward. I'm getting the locations of the last two books from Alex, then I'm going to hit the kitchen and I'm going to brew up some ungodly concoction for those Singers or whatever they call themselves. Preferably, something administered via suppository. With spikes on. Give us your laptop, kiddo. I'm going to need to grab one of those recipes out of my inbox."

Lenore reached out with one foot and nudged the humming laptop across the table. Somewhere in the back of Lenore's mind, a bit of throwaway information started clamouring for attention.

"Say, these Singers, you'd put them in that general class of psychic ilk?" probed Lenore. Sally grunted agreement, brow furrowed as she followed the instructions on the screen with a finger.

"You wouldn't be needing some nightshade, would you?" continued Lenore.

"Probably. Gotta make sure it's that graveyard stuff, though. None of the other muck will do."

"There's something I should probably tell you then."

The British Library was a young building, huge and squat, hugging the ground under the swirling clouds of springtime. Inside, silence clung to the walls like dust. The rare books room was stocked ceiling to floor with tomes out of antiquity. Rows upon rows of tables crossed the floor, pew-like, for celebrants to revel in dusty pages. If there was a smell for age, it was this: rich leather, dry paper, old carpet.

It was an uncommon sight for the rare books room to be devoid of researchers and students. But this library was part of the city and Sally was her witch; clearing a room before a brawl was a policy that had served her well.

She licked her forefinger and flipped a page, eyes staring over the edge of the penultimate volume left in the Bibliotheca Fantastik. The worship rites and ceremonies of the three hundred and thirteen silent gods of faerie and the other near human races were endlessly fascinating but Sally was interested in other things. Humans grew to be overly dependent on five most obvious senses; a witch had to be adept with all the others.

Yet she still jumped when one of the Singers, the female, pulled up a chair and sat by her right. The Singer smelt vaguely ashen, dry as a funeral pyre. "We thought you would..."

"...be here. You will not..." continued the man, materializing by Sally's left.

"...win. You are on the wrong side of history," concluded a rosy-cheeked boy, decked out in his Sunday School best, as he took up a seat opposite Sally.

"Good grief, how many of you are there?" asked Sally.

"More than enough to take that book, witch," answered the woman.

"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," said the Singer in the shape of a man. "Magical knowledge more so. It needs to be corralled, pruned, controlled," added the boy with the perfect lips and ruddy hair.

"And sold to the highest bidder?" asked Sally.

"Nothing is free," said the woman at her side.

"Alexandria's been free for a thousand years. I prefer her that way."

The boy fixed her with a blank stare, daring her to move. The Singers wore familiar shapes, just drapes over something far older and misshapen. Another of the Singers laid a hand on the book that Sally was holding and pulled it from her. She edged her chair back, tensing up for the trio to make their move.

The boy took the book from his companion; the pink tip of his tongue ran over his upper lip quickly and disappearing. He frowned. "It's missing a page."

Sally's chair clattered to the floor and the chase was on.

"Why'd you put both the last books in the British Library?" Lenore asked Alex, in a forced whisper as they passed rows of scholars and students with bowed heads; some working, some asleep. It wasn't necessary; Alexandria's silence followed them around like a shroud.

"The second last book is here. The last book is a little cannier."

The brisk pace left Lenore's heart racing but Alexandria answered in the same dry monotone without pausing for breath. It was only the day before when they met in the cafe, but Alexandria wore the same impractical dress, which, for all its frills and ruffles, made no sound as she led Lenore deeper into the guts of the library. The air was cool amidst the shelves, the carpet muffling the thumps of their footfalls.

Alexandria held up a gloved hand, signalling for them to stop at an unoccupied corner, far from the prying eyes of the denizens of the library. The shelves there were much like any other, a hundred spines of books arrayed in perfect order. Any one of them could have been Alexandria's last book; the last thing the Singers were hunting for.

Lenore unslung her bag from her shoulder, pulling her laptop out and placing it on the ground. She sat before it cross-legged, waiting for it to boot up. Alexandria stood above her, eyes unfocused. "They hunt her amongst the shelves. She has tricked them but only for a span. The fire will find her soon."

"Sal can take care of herself. That's the plan. The Singers go for the second last book, she ambushes them. We meet up here and get you somewhere safe. Where's the last book? The one with the first spell they ever used on the Bibliotheca?"

Lenore looked up from playing whack-a-mole with the various popups and messages on her screen. The set-up was nearly complete. Alexandria was leaning against a wall for support, the dust staining her dark dress. She brushed the front of her gown over and over, continuing even when all the pale stains had been smoothed off.

"They have her."

*

The smack of Sally's temple connecting with the outstretched arm of the Singer cut through the air like a rifle shot. It was like running into a steel bar; the impact enough to send her flying. The Singer, the male one, she noted through watering eyes, hadn't budged an inch. She'd gone toe to toe with worse things before. A nest of feral vampires in the abandoned secret Underground line where the trains made no sound. A moulting phoenix in Chinatown. Each time she went in prepared. The troubles of hidden London would offer her no quarter and the City-Witch was better known for winning than for fighting fair. Still, half a day's preparation and the contents of her kitchen were all she had against this triumvirate of interplanar book hoarders.

The woman stepped out from behind a bookshelf, with the twitchy movements of a person in ill-fitting clothes. Or something with an ill-fitting body. She hauled Sally upwards in a single motion. The boy joined his compatriots and the troika was complete again. The three Singers, the City Witch amidst the array of shelves and the musty smell of old paper.

No time for anything big or flashy. If the Singers had more forces to bear, they would have called them in by now. Sally took a breath and focused inwards, concentrating just hard enough to close a circuit somewhere in the library. The public-address system sputtered to life and coughed out a slow, droning lullaby as if a hive of bees were trying to sing a baby to sleep. The boy Singer blinked, the calm mask cracking for a moment.

"What have you done?" he asked.

"Wasn't sure if it was going to work, actually. A gift from the seventeenth secret Dalai Lama. He called it a Schrodinger mantra. Apparently, it generates a recursive fractal of tulpas, all intent on believing with absolute certainty that you're exactly here. Makes it difficult to teleport, or so the Lama said. But he was a strange man, a little liberal with the psychedelics."

"You make this harder than it needs to be, witch. We are the future of knowledge. Convenient, sanitized, on demand," said the woman, or perhaps it was the man. Their voices blended and flowed, as though whatever darker thing in its human raiment was getting weary of maintaining the distinction. The woman pinned Sally's arms behind her back, restraining her with no apparent effort. Sally's elbows screamed in response; she ground her teeth, jaw muscles straining. The Singers would not have the pleasure of hearing her in pain.

"We don't need to jump across space to get the book from you," said the man, reaching into Sally's pocket and retrieving the page she'd stuffed there. He placed it back into the book the Singers had taken from her. The man smiled, and with all the things that the Singers did, it was slightly off, one corner of his twitching lip higher than the other. He was still smiling when the book in his hands burst into a twisting, serpentine flame that snaked up his arm and turned him into an incandescent pillar of fire which blurred Sally's vision for a heartbeat.

She prised herself from the woman Singer's unresisting hands, stepping free to face the two remaining figures. "Dragon fire. One of the hottest flames in existence. A pair of separate chemical compounds mixes in the dragon's mouth and boom. Banned across this plane, faerie, and a dozen other dominions, but I hadn't figured you for the sort to call the authorities." Sally smirked at the pair, trying to keep the pair guessing. That was the last bit of offensive magic she'd scrounged up from home. It was going to be bare knuckles from here on. She was still eyeing the shelves for some tactical advantage when one of the library speakers sputtered and went silent.

"Deal with the witch. I'm going for the last book," said the boy to the woman, before turning and walking around another shelf. On the fifth step, the sound of his footfalls vanished. And then the woman pounced on her.

"Ouch."

Alexandria ripped off a glove and blew on her hand. Lenore saw a spreading red welt on the palm of the other lady, as though she'd been scalded by a splash of hot water. Alexandria spoke again. "They come for us now."

Lenore sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. "That wasn't the plan."

The tall woman got to her feet, towering above Lenore. "It turns on you now, apprentice."

"No. This is Sal's stuff. I do the dishes. I sort out herbs. I manage the accounts. I can't do this."

"You must."

"I can't do this," Lenore repeated, "I'm afraid." She felt an empty flutter in her belly; a quiver in her voice. The weight of her task was a millstone and she was drowning.

"As am I. Even more afraid than when the fire licked at me millennia ago."

Lenore got to her feet and pulled the other woman upright. Alexandria was right. Sally could take care of herself but she would never join them in time. She took a deep breath, took in the scent of the library, dust and books and old carpet. Letting it out slowly, she looked up at Alexandria.

"The book, Alex. I need it now."

Alexandria gave a small smile at the steadiness in Lenore's tone.

"Each of the books of the Bibliotheca Fantastik was not simply paper and leather. Each one was a different perspective of the entire library, an informational hologram. The whole was contained in the part and what you saw depended on your point of view. And your need." Alexandria plucked at a clasp on her neck with her uninjured hand. The material fell away, revealing a tattoo of such intricate and delicate workmanship that it seemed the entirety of Alexandria's skin was covered by a single inky design.

"Here is the last book, apprentice witch. Work the spell."

Out of habit, Lenore shifted the bowl of sugar away from Sally when she took her place next to the witch. "Too late," said Sally, smiling widely and stirring her tea.

"How'd it go with the Singers?" asked Lenore.

"Got two of them. They'll probably be back. It'll take more than a little fire and being squashed by a bookshelf to keep the likes of them away. Could have gotten the third one but a lousy speaker died. I'm going to have to add the Singers to that list of people who want me dead. Want us dead. Speaking of which, we're banned from the library."

"I can't believe you started a fire in the British Library."

"Seemed like a good idea at the time. How'd things go with Alex?"

"As good as can be expected when I had to work an untested piece of magic on a two-thousand-year-old woman who happens to be a library and also a book."

Sally leaned back in her chair and stretched out her legs with a sigh. "Sounds kind of ridiculous when you say it out loud, eh? But you did great," said Sally. She gestured to Lenore's laptop. "So she's in there now?"

"Not anymore. We just folded her into a different kind of space and dumped her into a family of untraceable servers spread across the world, what could have possibly gone wrong?"

"Change comes to all of us. It's always the fire chasing us, isn't it? Change or be destroyed. Do you know the other name for the Tower card in the Tarot deck is the Fire?"

"I may have seen the card before. Not much choice when you're stuck in a burning building. You can burn or you can fall." said Lenore.

Sally took a sip of tea, looking out to the books of the library. "Or sometimes the Tower is a jail and the only way out is to fly."

The Pale Witches of Autumn

Nicola Lombardi

Italy

(translated by J. Weintraub)

10.31.2016 – 14:28

From out of the blackness, the shot opens on a young red-headed man, rather tall and slim, about twenty-four, twenty-five years old. Smiling a little awkwardly, he is looking directly into the camera. At his back, can be seen the greying wall of a ruined farmhouse, where gashes in the whitewash give way to patches of brown brick, laid bare. A large door, its wood splintered, can also be made out as it tilts forward on a single hinge, halfway open to a sheet of impenetrable darkness. Alongside, only a poorly framed gap is left of what had once been a window, now also overlooking a world made up solely of shadows.

The young man coughs to clear his throat, and always looking directly forward to address the camera, he begins speaking:

"Well, here we are. . . My name is Alex Condotti, and I'm about to graduate from the University of Bologna with a degree in cultural anthropology. My thesis will concern some little-known aspects of northern Italian folklore, and, in particular, I plan to investigate certain agrarian rituals connected with the end of the harvest and the ancient closing of the year. I am speaking, naturally, about the Eve of All Saints' Day, or, if you prefer, Halloween. And I have chosen to be right here, in Pastrenno, on the 31st of October, to recreate, together with an eyewitness, the so-called ceremony of the Pale Witches of Autumn. Ok, you can track back now."

With a slight tremor, the video camera's zoom takes over, and the shot's frame expands. We now see the entire building behind Alex, a two-story wreckage through which the sky's dim grey light is filtering.

"I forgot. Behind the camera is Claudia, my girlfriend. Say hello, Claudia!"

A high-pitched "Ciao!" can be heard off-camera, and for a second a woman's hand, the left one, comes into the shot to wave once or twice and then disappear.

"Good," continues Alex. "now that we have made the necessary introductions, we can move on."

"But you haven't shown any of these things to your professors yet. Right?"

At that interruption, Alex's smile wavers for an instant. He scratches his chin thoughtfully and replies, "What do you think?"

"Ok, sorry. Carry on."

"Thank you. So, I was saying. . . Here we are in Pastrenno, an abandoned village in the middle of the countryside, about twenty kilometres from Ferrara. Less than a hundred souls were living here up until 1944 when the massacre took place, right on this last night of October. But let's move on one step at a time. Follow me, and we'll take a look around."

Alex starts to walk slowly down a path that skirts alongside the structure in front of which he had been speaking just before. The camera, wavering, starts to follow. We discover then that the decrepit building is flanked by other similar ruins, grey houses with crumbling walls, engulfed by rocks and underbrush, probably inhabited only by whatever onlookers can imagine inside, given their fancy or sensibility. The transparent brightness of the late autumn afternoon penetrates, obliquely, that silent pile of stone, broken walls, blank windows, collapsed roofs, beams reaching up to support nothing; and the breeze penetrating every gap gives voice to that light, making it recount things that at times would be better left unheard.

What we are seeing, limited by the rectangular frame of the shot, is quite evocative. Claudia does not keep the camera focused on Alex, but guides it to the right and to the left, instinctively following the trajectory of her own curiosity. It is also likely that Alex has trained her carefully on what she should be filming and how to do it, to linger over such details as a rusty door handle, a dry branch jutting out of a crack, a cobweb, a lizard disappearing beneath a tile. All quite fascinating. And all dead.

Suddenly, Alex stops in the middle of the gravel lane that passes through the village, and he turns toward Claudia. She locks onto his face, a few seconds passing before the lens regains its proper focus.

The young man resumes his carefully prepared narrative: "The massacre of '44 carried out by a division of German soldiers, who had been retreating little-by-little before the advance of the allied Anglo-American forces, wrote the final chapter to a traditional ceremony for which written testimony, although very scarce, can be found going back to the seventeenth century. The celebration of the Pale Witches of Autumn, held here every year, signalled quite naturally the end of the harvest, the closure of a natural cycle, and like every rural fertility rite at October's end, it had a pronounced sacrificial significance tied to the hopes and expectations regarding the benevolence and generosity of the natural elements, which were viewed as subjects actively participating in both the safe-keeping and destruction of a people. Very real sentient beings, in fact: demons, goblins, fairies, spirits, and all the rest. The entire mythic-folkloric pantheon that revolves around the culture of the Eve of All Saints' Day. Here in Italy, a popular annual recurrence like Halloween has always been—on the rural level, at least, in the setting of a preindustrial culture— celebrated with bonfires in the middle of fields, dances, carved pumpkins, puppets thrown into the fires as symbols of a cycle coming to an end, and so forth, at least until the social phenomenon of growing urbanization forced newer generations to abandon many of these traditions, and to forget them. Moreover, we should remember that the rituals at the end of October also extend to include November 2, the Day of the Dead, when our own dearly departed are believed to return to pay a visit to their homes, where it was customary to leave the table lavishly set throughout the night so they could feast before making their way back to their underworld abodes. In short, we're speaking of days where everything was possible, according to popular belief: the veil separating this world from the next was raised, and the communication channel between material and spiritual planes was wide open. This is, broadly speaking, the framework into which the events I wish to speak about will be introduced. Now . . ."

During the brief pause, that follows Alex glances over his shoulder. He has the look of a man who expects, from one moment to the next, someone else to appear along the path leading from the abandoned village. For a moment, he looks toward the buildings around him, and then he asks, "How are we doing with the battery?"

Claudia's voice responds quickly, "We've got about three-quarters. Do you know you're sounding like a textbook?"

Alex stares directly into the lens, pressing his lips into a crooked smile. "I'm quoting from memory excerpts from my thesis. Do you think it's too academic?"

Slight laughter off-camera. "No, no, you're going great. Really."

"Are you nervous?"

"No. Why do you ask?"

"It's just that this is not a very nice place."

"It doesn't bother me. A little gloomy, maybe. But, it's not bad."

Alex looks around again, rubbing his hands together. "Go on and film a little more around here, then turn it off. We'll wait for Moraldo, then carry on with him."

The red-headed man disappears from the shot, and it floats about in search of visual moments worth lingering over: a rusted watering can partially buried among the weeds, a sacred stone image mounted above a door (a Madonna, probably, missing part of its face), a string of nails poking halfway out of a doorjamb, a bizarre juncture between the edges of some roofs—seen from a certain angle they create spiked forms, like strange stars.

Again, Alex's voice. "Ok, that's good enough."

And the shot fades into black.

15:35

The shot comes up again on Alex and on an elderly man, stocky, with white hair and a white beard; only his moustache is black, a curiosity that immediately catches the eye. Over his back, he is wearing a brown cape that looks rather heavy, and his small eyes, poised over enormous wrinkled bags, are shifting from the young man back to the lens, unsure about when or where to pause.

The background is little changed: ruins, dried underbrush, wire fencing deformed by decades of bad weather.

From the end of the preceding take, some thirty minutes have passed, signalled not only by the digital post on the upper left corner of the frame but also by the dimming light that has thrown a vaguely ashen veneer over everything.

Alex resumes speaking. "Ok, here we are with Ruggero Monaldo, a retired elementary school teacher and author of several texts on local culture, but, above all, an eyewitness to the events that occurred on that fateful night of 1944." The emphasis placed by the young man on this last fact incites the other man, his face serious, to nod decisively. "Together with him, we are also joined by Erminia, his wife. Claudia . . ."

A gesture from Alex is enough to send the frame tracking a bit to the left, where a tiny little woman, with a dark green scarf tied around her head, is standing next to a small wall. Gesturing with her hand and muttering incomprehensible words, the woman seems to scorn the camera, which then turns quickly back to the two principal subjects.

"That's fine, that's fine," continues Alex, smiling. "No publicity for the lady. So, I was introducing Mr. Ruggero Monaldo. Having spoken over the phone, we made an appointment and met this morning in a bar in Vallasca where he lives, the closest town to Pastrenno. He is an extremely accommodating person, and we agreed to meet each other here around . . ." He checks his watch, ". . . three-thirty. Right on time. Exceptional. I would like him to tell us personally what the ceremony of the Pale Witches of Autumn was all about, and just what happened on that final night. Are you all right, sir? Are you up to it?"

The man passes his right hand along his moustache, then plucks at the point of his beard a few times. A sign of nervousness. But the wish to speak is making his eyes shine.

"Sure I'm up to it. That's why I've come out here."

"Great," Alex then adds, "just look towards the camera, and begin whenever you want. We'll be listening. Claudia, zoom to medium close-up."

The shot contracts, carefully, until the man fills a good part of it. The microphone picks up the rustle of the wind in the form of a light hissing, but Ruggero has a commanding voice. No matter how many years have passed, the habit of speaking in front of a class has clearly left its mark.

"The ceremony of the Pale Witches of Autumn goes back to the time here when it was said there were witches. To be clear, we're speaking of the second half of the 1600s. Obviously, it wasn't a matter of real witches, but of a matriarchal rural community devoted to the veneration of nature. Nothing diabolical, no Witches' Sabbath, nothing at all like that. Legend and folklore have handed down sensational stories, but only what can be considered the fruit of imagination and superstition. However, it seems that one-day certain rumours reached the ears of representatives of the Papal authority, who were then immediately assigned to contain the risk of heresy and sacrilege. Three women were tried and executed. The real reason? Very likely one of them had harmed someone or had refused someone's advances. Slander and betrayal did the rest. It's shameful, but that's how things worked back then.

"The bodies of those poor women, first tortured and then hung upside down until they bled to death, were thrown down a well in the middle of a field not very far from here. And from that time stories began to circulate about nocturnal voices coming from the depths of the well, every year, on the anniversary of the women's death. The 31st of October, naturally. The idea the witches were still alive or, in any case, that their presence lingered on from somewhere there below was terrifying, but also compelling. Am I drawing this out too much? Should I go on?"

Alex's voice: "Don't worry. Keep talking."

"Fine. So, as I was saying... There are no sources to certify exactly when they began doing it. The fact is someone had the idea of descending into the well. Or, rather, lowering someone else into it. A very young girl, in fact, because of the well's narrow dimensions. The intent was to listen more closely to what the witches there below had to reveal. And thus, was born the tradition of repeating that act every year, on the Eve of All Saints' Day. In memory of the suffering of the three murdered women, a little girl, preferably under the age of puberty, was tied by her feet, lowered down with a cord for seven or eight meters, and left there for a dozen or so minutes, while those present chanted prayers, the nature of which, frankly, has never been verified because of the complete lack of any documentation. Once brought back, the girl was, understandably disoriented, if not unconscious. Unable to give a full account of her experience, or any impressions drawn from that ordeal, she was, instead, said to have been 'touched,' that is to say approached, contacted in some way. And even a prophetic ability was attributed to her. In short, it so happened that omens or portents regarding the fertility of the upcoming season were drawn from her features. Pulled up to the surface, the girl's face was once clearly purplish due to the flow of blood, and this came to be interpreted as a negative sign. But it seems that most of the time the face of that poor child would come back as pale as a boiled rag, despite her head having been upside down. And that was a good sign because it meant that the witches had drawn the girl's blood, consequently demonstrating their gratitude to the community."

Ruggero, crossing his arms, falls silent for a few moments. He sighs deeply, looking downward.

"Everything all, right?" Alex asks him.

The man raises his eyes, his great black moustache following the contours of an odd grimace. "Yes, thank you. It's only that . . . all this talking has left me a little out of breath."

"Come on, Ruggero, that's enough, or else you'll get sick!" The voice, barely captured by the microphone, is Erminia's. It's a whiney screech, as if from a cat, vaguely annoying.

Alex intervenes from off-camera. "But, of course, if you want to rest . . ."

"No, no, no, I'm not at all done!" Ruggero recovers a bit. "The most interesting part is still to come, but . . ." He stares back over to the horizon. "Perhaps it's best if we walk over there, and I'll tell you the rest directly on the spot. What do you say?"

Alex comes back into the shot and slaps his hand cordially against the man's shoulder. "You're absolutely right!" Then he fixes his eyes on the lens. "Now Ruggero will accompany us outside of Pastrenno, into the open countryside, to show us the famous well of the Pale Witches, or what's left of it, and we'll listen to the rest of his story. Everything ok, Claudia?"

There is no hesitation in the girl's voice. "Everything's ok."

"So, turn it off, please."

And the images of Ruggero and Alex are replaced by a black screen.

16:14

Now the landscape has changed, distinctly. It's much brighter, even though by now less than an hour is left before sunset. We are in open country, and the visible horizon is a vague line made jagged by trees and outcroppings fading into the distance, flattened by a murky white sky. As far as it is possible to tell, we are in the middle of a field, a stretch of grey and dusty soil, which Alex and Ruggero have crumpled under their shoes, particularly around an arrangement of light-coloured stones laid out in a circle. The shot is unsteady, wavering uneasily from the men to that stony ring, about a meter in diameter, that surrounds a patch of topsoil, a little darker than the ground outside; and then it tracks a little to include the immobile form of Erminia—standing apart and clearly uncomfortably cold—before finally returning to Alex to await instruction.

"Here we are," says the young man with enthusiasm, "about a couple of kilometres from Pastrenno, in a field that will be filled with corn next year, but for the moment looks like this."

He opens his arms, and the shot tries to support him, taking in as much of the landscape as possible in an awkward panning motion. "And it is this very same field that up until 1944 had been the staging ground for the ritual of the Pale Witches."

Ruggero, who until that moment had done nothing but look around—half-hidden beneath his cloak, his hands sunk into his pants' pockets—turns to give his attention to Alex. "Right, right," he confirms, nodding, but with a slightly distracted air.

"So, let's get back to business. You were going to tell us about what happened here, on that fatal night?"

"Absolutely."

"Wonderful. Claudia, rest for now. I'll take over the camera."

"Agreed," she replies. "Actually, my hand was getting to be a little numb."

The shot tilts jumps up and down for a few seconds, then is again set straight. We see coming into the frame a pretty young woman with long, light brown hair flowing from beneath a small red woollen beret. Turning towards the lens, she waves her hand in greeting; then she withdraws and, smiling, she approaches Erminia. The woman stares at her for a moment, without returning her smile, confirming that she is what she seems: gloomy and not very sociable.

Alex quickly turns his attention back on Ruggero. "I'm ready!"

The man fiddles with his beard a bit, which seems to be a habit of his, and then resumes his account.

"Here we are. This is the spot where the people of Pastrenno gathered, year after year, to lower a girl into the well, as I explained before. The well . . . do you see? was right here where now there is only this stone circle to commemorate the place." The video camera drops down to recapture a close shot at the man's feet, again presenting the arrangement of stones; then it rises and with some uncertainty, returns to Ruggero's wrinkled and solemn face.

"I was only ten at the time, but I remember well enough what happened since it has remained stuck deep inside my head. It was the first year I took part, and you can imagine how excited I was. The sun had just set, and those present, including me, were already preparing to rub dry dirt over their faces. Something called for by tradition, to mimic the pale complexions of the witches. There were so many of us, yes, almost all the citizens of Pastrenno. I say 'almost,' because that ceremony was not to everyone's liking. There were those who regarded it as something unsuitable for people who still considered themselves Christians. I can understand that. After all, we are speaking about a time and a cultural context where religion and superstition often overlapped, without creating any problems, let's say, of a doctrinal nature for many people. All very simple men and women. And when a tradition has taken root after generations, it's not easy to get rid of it. Although on that occasion, they did.

"No one can prove it for sure, but I remember that survivors blamed Martino Sgarzi. The blame for the betrayal, I mean. The year before, it had been the turn of his daughter, Lisetta, to be 'touched' by the witches. She was chosen through a drawing that usually took place in August during the Feast of San Lorenzo so that the girl and her family had time to get ready by the end of October. In short, in 1943 it was Lisetta Sgarzi's turn to be lowered into the well. She was twelve. I wasn't there that year, and I didn't know what happened to her. Years afterward, however, I had the chance to consider it, and I managed to discover that she died of a cerebral haemorrhage. When they pulled her out, her face was 'red as a watermelon,' to use the same expression I heard from one of our neighbours the next day. I was very much moved by it. The doctor, whose name I don't remember, was there. But nothing could be done for Lisetta. I guess there was some sort of malfunction in her circulatory system, and the prolonged flow of blood down into her head was fatal. In any case, I've brought up this sad incident to explain why Martino was thought to be the one. His personality changed radically, as well as his relations with the rest of Pastrenno's residents. His wife was almost never seen any more outside the house. He continued to work—he was a cobbler—but he was no longer the same. The next year, perhaps, he made everyone pay for it.

"The end of the World War was not far away. In the space of six months, very hard times would be coming for the Germans and the Fascists in Italy. But in October of 1944, the Krauts were still hanging around, and they were angrier and fiercer than ever since partisans were becoming active nearby and were beginning to raid their rear-guard columns. There was talk about reprisals, so we avoided gatherings; in fact, many of us were sleeping in the fields at night. But on the 31st, the Pale Witches could not be put off, even though the previous night, Martino had been seen speaking with a German officer.

"I remember them springing up suddenly, out of the dark, from three different directions. From there, there, and there." Ruggero swivels around, indicating the exact spots from where the soldiers spoken of in his story were emerging. "They were yelling like madmen, swinging the beams of their flashlights. A tried-and-true military ambush in the open country. I remember clinging to the arm of the first person I found by my side. The women began screaming, the men cursing. There were also another three or four kids my age, and with all that confusion, it's curious how the fact some of them were crying made such an impression on me. I could never have done that. In my immaturity, I thought I was too grown up to start crying . . . but still, I came close. The terror among those present grew bit-by-bit with the approach of the attackers as they circled around us. I have no idea how many there were, no one has ever established that. But from the yelling they seemed to be a regiment. I remember words being exchanged between the soldiers and some of Pastrenno's men. Words, like the growling of animals more than anything else. Unintelligible to me. And then, between cries and shouts and threats, the first burst of machine gun fire, followed by an infinity of them. Believe me, it was like the end of the world. Even today I still don't know how I got to save myself. I remember trying to catch my father's attention, but he was far too busy. Yet in the middle of that inferno, my mother's voice managed to reach me, shouting at me to get away. And that's exactly what I did. I threw myself full speed into the darkness, towards the village, leaving a bloodbath behind me."

Ruggero stops short and stares at the lens. He is so absorbed in his recollection; his eyes are glistening. Tears, perhaps, of anger and pain.

From the left, Erminia comes into view, approaching her husband tenderly, with a handkerchief that she brings to his face. Abruptly, the man brushes it aside. "Leave me be, Minia. I'm fine." She mutters something the microphone fails to catch, and he nods as if to reassure her, motioning her to return to her place. The woman obeys him.

"A short break?" offers Alex from behind the camera. And without waiting for a response, he allows the shot to fade into a black rectangle.

16:46

A dim, milky light, a bit on the yellow side, now sweeps over Ruggero. It is clear that a spotlight mounted just above the video camera, has been turned on. By now, the daylight alone is no longer enough to keep the images sharp; the sun has been reduced to a dimming sphere, half-hidden behind the horizon's black ridges, and the rustling of the wind has forced Alex to draw a little closer to his subject to pick up his words as clearly as possible.

"Thirty-nine, that's how many they killed," resumes Ruggero, coming to the heart of the matter. The expression on his face is hard, filled with a rancour that still seems on fire despite the passing of seventy years since the incident. "My mother was lucky. A bullet caught her on the knee and she lost consciousness. They must have mistaken her for a corpse. My father, on the other hand, was mowed down by a blast at his neck. He hadn't moved a centimetre, even after the massacre began, since what he was doing was too important. He was leaning over the well, hanging onto the rope."

Alex's voice, off-camera, interrupts him. "You mean that . . . "

Ruggero grips his beard in his fist, almost as if he intends to pull it out. "That year my sister, Lidia, was chosen. She was twelve."

The breeze carries a gasp to the microphone. Rolling to the side, the video camera frames Claudia, holding her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide-open. A few paces from her stands Erminia, stock-still, a funereal statue against an opalescent grey background.

We turn quickly back to Ruggero who, in the meantime, has composed himself and is now looking at the lens with the coolness of a television newscaster.

"She fell into the well. Headfirst, her legs tied. And no one could do anything about it."

Alex cannot restrain himself. "And so, she's been down there for . . ."

The man cuts him short. "Forever. The Germans, they dropped a hand grenade into the well."

A tense, cold silence follows. Alex lowers the shot, almost in embarrassment, to film again the ring of stone. The bright beam of the spot illuminates that circle of dark earth, holding steady there, raising silent questions.

Ruggero must have sensed those unexpressed doubts, since he replies as if he were being interrogated, "Yes, she was left there below, and she's still there below, and she'll stay there forever."

"My God." Claudia's voice, a faint whisper, is still picked up very clearly despite the wind and the distance.

"There below, yes, together with the Pale Witches. I like to think she's become one of them. Such things can happen on the Eve of All Saints' Day."

The shot wavers a bit but continues to linger over that stone circle, that tomb that had once been a well.

"The Allied bombing did the rest, and what you have in front of your eyes is all that's left. But the fields around here always have been cultivated, without fail. Corn and wheat. In fact, the year after the disaster, we had our best harvest. The best harvest ever... But this stone circle remains untouched. This is a sacred place. And not only for me."

With a sense of timing that seems calculated, Erminia's strident voice slips into the soundtrack. "Here they are. They're coming."

The camera lens is suddenly raised, and after some moments of confusion, it fixes on the direction where the others are looking, on a spot behind Ruggero. At first sight, because of the distance, it's not possible to identify the nature of what was just then approaching. It seems to be a patch of darkness, propelled forward, speckled by glittering foil.

"What's going on?" Alex asks. No one answers.

In the space of a few seconds, however, that vague shape takes on more familiar features. Approaching is a group of people, led by long beams from flashlights.

"On time. Right at sunset." In Ruggero's voice, a note of satisfaction can be heard.

"Those? Who are they?" asks Claudia, and the lens turns reflexively to frame her. In the cold light of the spot, she seems pale, frightened. There at her side Erminia appears intent on studying her, her eyes alert, her lips tight and withdrawn into a disturbing crack.

The camera then turns to Ruggero, expanding the shot to include various others—fifteen, twenty perhaps—always coming closer.

"Is there some kind of problem?" Alex asks.

Ruggero, who had pivoted around to watch the approach, turns abruptly back to face the speaker. On his pitted and rugged face, the shadow of a smile has appeared. "No, no problem. On the contrary. I would say that tonight everything is going just perfectly."

Alex, finding nothing else to say, shoots in sequence the man, the two women, the unknown strangers.

"Alex," ventures Claudia, "Alex, please . . . can we get out of here?"

"Get out of here? Why?"

An ugly screech from an owl or some other nocturnal bird bursts out suddenly, and the frame jumps.

An expression of distress comes over Claudia. And it is clear she has not noticed Erminia, a step behind her, leaning over and touching the ground as if she were searching for something. When the older woman arises, her face has taken on the colour of ash. But what she is crumbling into tiny flakes against her cheeks, forehead, and lips is not ash. It's dry dirt.

Behind the camera, Alex utters a gasping sound; but quickly the hoarse breathing of Ruggero claims its attention. He is rising, after having in turn, like his wife, leaned over. The effort makes him groan. Keeping his hands raised, he rubs them across his face as if he were washing it. And as he lowers them, he reveals a bearded face that is a pale and crumbling mask.

"Now turn it off, please," he says simply, in a flat voice. Alex mumbles something unintelligible as he takes several wavering steps backward. Claudia, on the other hand, screams.

The shot tilts over like a ship surprised by a tidal wave, cutting across faces and bodies, between flashes of images and lights, like the wake of a dying comet.

"Shut it off!" And with a click, everything turns to black.

17:29

Vague shapes, blurring, unstable. The frame shifts continuously, among spasmodic surges, into a disturbing kaleidoscope of white, grey, and black forms. From the upper corner on the right, the symbol for a depleting battery begins to flash.

"There! It's back on!" A new voice resonates from behind the video camera. Someone else has taken over. After several seconds the image holds steady and becomes sharper.

Now we see different people. They are surely the new arrivals, men, and women of varying ages, crowding about, smiling nervously, restless, muttering, settling around the stone circle. But they all have one thing in common. Their faces are already smeared with dry earth.

Ruggero stands out among all of them, even though his build is not particularly massive. But his presence is striking, almost as if he is the focal point for that gathering. And that is as it should be. Everyone there seems to be gazing at him with awe and respect.

The microphone picks up some moaning, and the lens immediately seeks its source. We discover Alex and Claudia, bathed in the murky light of the spot. They are struggling, but their efforts are clearly in vain. They both have one wrist held behind their backs by men who have wrapped another arm around their necks. Their mouths are unobstructed, but only breathless whimpering escapes from their throats. Yet even if they manage to cry out, no one would hear to come to their aid, there, in the middle of the countryside. Not after sunset, not on that last night of October.

Ruggero—whom the camera had momentarily left to record indifferently the panic of the young couple—comes back into the picture as he approaches the unfortunate pair.

"Really, I'm sorry," he says, and with these words, the clamour around him diminishes and, shortly, becomes silent. "But we couldn't let this opportunity slip away." Alex seems ready to hurl himself at him, but the man holding him wrenches him violently, cutting off his breath. Claudia, on the other hand, is reduced to a pair of staring eyes, full of tears, mad with fear. Perhaps she already understands what is about to happen, or maybe not. In any case, if she were not being held in an upright position, her own legs would probably be unable to support her.

"This year it would have been the turn of Antonio's daughter." Ruggero pivots and the camera pans to frame an exceptionally fat man who, with affection, lays an arm around the shoulders of an obese and visibly impaired young girl. "Right, Antonio? I hold you in high esteem, and I am very glad that you can keep Lucia for yet still another year. So? Does that make you happy, Lucia?"

The girl nods and smiles, exposing her uneven teeth and dribbling over the crust of dried soil on her chin "Yes," confirms her father. "We're happy."

Ruggero turns to stare at Alex, who, in the meantime, has given up struggling. "You deserve to know that your arrival, unexpected but much appreciated, has granted this poor little girl another year of life."

The man moves up to the circle bordering the spectre of the well. The other participants fall back a little, making room for him. Even the person who is filming retreats a few steps, automatically enlarging the shot.

Ruggero bows his head and for a few moments stares at the dark earth at his feet. Intent, he seems engrossed in prayer. Probably, that is exactly what he is doing, Praying. And after a dozen or so seconds pass in unmoving silence, he kneels, panting from the effort.

The words he is speaking are broken up in the rustling of the wind, but they manage to be picked up without difficulty.

"Here we are again for you, Lidia, beloved sister, on this sad anniversary. To you, we bring this offering in memory of your sacrifice, and we place ourselves in your hands, pleading for your protection. Accept our humble gift, and from the depths of your dwelling, intercede for us in the presence of your new and loving mothers, the Pale Witches of Autumn. Amen!"

At that point, an outburst of exalted voices rises from those present, a chaotic chant that wind and the screeching of nocturnal birds' fragment into sequences of overlapping words.

"Pale! Witches! Autumn!" everyone is crying out in an unsynchronized frenzy where every element of that triple invocation rises up into bundles of sound like an infernal Babel. The camera pans to the right, to the left, picking up blank faces and raised hands, and even the impromptu operator chants in a strident voice, "Pale! Witches! Autumn!"

"Bring forth the offering!" Ruggero cries out, returning to his feet. The shot jerks, wavers, vibrates. New cries break out, overwhelming the demented incantation, yet without any likelihood of silencing it. ("Pale!") Shaky beams from the spot and from the flashlights intersect in an insane clash of spectral sabres, while an almost catatonic Claudia is pushed to the stone edge of the circle. ("Witches!") Alex, his face bright red, is howling. A swollen vein appears pulsing across one of his temples. His vigorous attempt to break away, however, leads only to increased pressure on his throat ("Autumn!"), reducing his cry to a breathless croak.

The camera abandons him to hurry over to the girl, now found kneeling at the rim of the circle.

"Down!" orders Ruggero, pulling his beard in his fist, walking back and forth like a caged beast. And at that moment, followed by every pair of wild, shining eyes, Erminia steps in to seize Claudia by the neck and push her forcefully down, to stretch her out flat. The girl collapses, offering no resistance, uttering only a gasp of pain, probably due to her stomach falling over a rock. Ruggero's wife has an almost ecstatic look as she leans down on all fours, over the girl's back. Alex, off-camera, is still trying to cry out, but again his voice fades into a pitiful wheezing.

"And now quench your thirst, Lidia! And you, too, our Pale Witches of Autumn, drink your fill!" The hysterical voices bursting from the frenzied congregation rise now even higher, joining forces with the wind.

Erminia's hand disappears into the folds of her dress, quickly finding what it's looking for. A metallic object emerges in her fist. A knife, its blade long and serrated. Still kneeling on Claudia's shoulder blades, she grabs the girl's hair, pulling her head back, then with the other, unflinching, she executes a skilful manoeuvre, just beneath the throat. The words of the litany rising to the heavens erupts into a collective shriek of joy and exultation. Even the person filming is howling out loud, and the image of a black spray exploding violently to drench the earth shudders as if being filmed during an earthquake.

Alex's cry is a roar that tears through hearts and ears.

Laughter, shouts applause.

Claudia's body, riddled with nervous spasms, quivers, while Erminia remains fixed in that same position, holding her hair as it were a horse's reins keeping her firmly in the saddle.

The battery icon is flashing now with greater frequency. The light from the spot has been sporadic. Then, in the middle of that fatal grey tumult, a faint yet reverberating voice slips into the soundtrack. "Yet still another . . ." It seems to be the whispering of a little girl.

"Bring the other one over as well!" orders Ruggero.

Erminia lets the girl's head fall back down, and she gets up while some men lift the now motionless body by its feet and hold it suspended, upside-down, better to soak the closed yet thirsty mouth of the well.

"And, you, shut down that contraption," growls Ruggero, staring at the lens with his puffy eyes. Streams of tears have lined the dirt on his cheeks.

The frame tilts into a confusion of flickering light, but the operator is spared the trouble of again locating the switch. The light from the spot grows dim, diminishes, gives out. The battery dies.

And the black returns a final time to swallow those images no one will ever see.

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