Anywhere but Earth
new tales of outer space
edited by Keith Stevenson
published by coeur de lion publishing at Smashwords
Compilation © Keith Stevenson 2011
Copyright in each story remains with the individual author © 2011
The right of the individual authors to be identified as the authors of their respective stories has been asserted 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.
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Title: Anywhere but Earth [electronic resource] : new tales of outer space / edited by Keith Stevenson.
Edition: 1st ed.
ISBN: 9780987158710 (ebook)
Subjects: Outer space--Fiction.
Other Authors/Contributors: Stevenson, Keith.
Dewey Number: 823.0876208
Contents
Lee Battersby ‘At the End There Was a Man’
Alan Baxter ‘Unexpected Launch’
Richard Harland ‘An Exhibition of the Plague’
Robert N Stephenson ‘Rains of la Strange’
Liz Argall ‘Maia Blue is Going Home’
Chris McMahon ‘Memories of Mars’
CJ Paget ‘Pink Ice in the Jovian Rings’
Donna Maree Hanson ‘Beneath the Floating City’
Patty Jansen ‘Poor Man’s Travel’
Jason Fischer ‘Eating Gnashdal’
Kim Westwood ‘By Any Other Name’
Brendan Duffy ‘Space Girl Blues’
TF Davenport ‘Oak with the Left Hand’
Margo Lanagan ‘Yon Horned Moon’
Jason Nahrung ‘Messiah on the Rock’
Steve Cameron ‘So Sad, the Lighthouse Keeper’
Murmer
Calie Voorhis
Margaret sits in the meadow, the pine-cone needle in her left hand. The sun is warm on her face except where the breeze, swaying the yellow tufts of grass, brushes past the tracks of slow tears.
It was all unknown then, this new world, Morning.
In Morning there were no streets—not as she knew them, lined up in straight grids—no houses and shops. The city of Viridian was green, not steel and stone, filled with immense trees soaring up to the grey sky. Walkways on large branches made bridges, and blue leaves drifted down. Viridian was full of the tree denizens; crowded in the dim trails with quiet beings who nodded as they passed her. Bright purple birds crooned and flitted in the upper branches. Margaret took a deep breath and tasted the solace of rich loam, welcoming after the recycled tang of the spaceship.
They’d come to the planet Morning from Alba. Before Alba, there was Manto IV. Margaret lost track of the other worlds. Barry’s job as envoy took them places, took them into time dilation and away from her friends, always roaming, never taking root. Once she’d thought the life exciting, glamorous; now the adventure had paled into a constant move.
After they’d arrived at their house, one of a cluster of alien cubes stuck like mushrooms among the forest, Barry had thrown the carisacks on the bare bed. ‘Here,’ he’d said. ‘Go ahead and unpack, will you?’ He was out the door without even a kiss.
She waited for him to come home that night, in the clean house with the sleeproom and their few possessions carefully placed—the wedding picture of the two of them on the same wall in the living room, where it always hung. As she stared at the kitchen, she knew nothing changed.
‘Where’s dinner?’ he asked when he came in, long after dark. He kissed her, a quick peck on the lips, followed by a brief hug.
Margaret nodded towards the reheater. He ate without a word and went to bed, his back against hers.
The great city of Viridian is an island bounded by rivers on either side, one a deep slow beast with a broad silver back and slow rafts crossing it, the other swift and rocky, tearing torrents and arching bridges. The trees themselves, the denizens of Morning, tower up to the sky, some as big as a stardrive.
The meadow in the middle of the city is free from the rustling of business, free from the shade of leaves, free from the denizens and base personnel. It is reserved for those who seek the change, who are deciding, like Margaret. Like many before, she is just the latest alien to make a choice.
Margaret wandered into the centre one day, a net of groceries from the base commissary slung over her shoulder. The light of the open area attracted her and she found herself taking a winding path of grey and white flecked pebbles to the edge.
The broad meadow was full of pink spring flowers. Margaret stepped out of the shadows and into the lea and resisted an urge to do cartwheels. She picked some flowers and held them to her nose. The bouquet smelled like lavender, roses, and the bitter resin of a cut Yule tree.
‘Are you wishing to change?’ he asked her.
Margaret was startled and dropped the flowers.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know anyone was here.’ His tall form swayed in the sunlight, shaped like a human, if a human were a weeping willow. His eyes peered blue out of a face embedded in gossamer leaves. Where he should have had skin he had pale green pliable bark, and twigs for hair.
‘Do you wish to change?’ he asked again. ‘If not, you should leave, Margaret.’
‘You know my name.’ She shifted the net of food higher on her shoulder and smoothed down the front of her faded blue dress.
‘How could I not, when so many of my leaves see you about the city, see you lost in Morning, regretting what you’ve left? I am Murmer,’ he said. He held out his left hand.
The hand was gnarled like an old branch, covered in grey bark.
‘I believe it is the custom of your people to shake hands?’ His voice wavered. A gust of wind swept back Margaret’s hair.
‘You’ve got the wrong hand,’ she said. She set her grocery net down and held out her right hand.
He laughed and switched hands. Up and down he swung her arm.
She’d expected his hand to be rough, insubstantial, for she’d seen the denizens drifting through the dappled city. But he was smooth, warm, solid, and the wooden touch of his thumb on her wrist set her pulse racing.
The wind shifts to the east now, blowing the scent of winter from the city—the dry mould of leaf rot, the sweet of dried grass. Soon it will be winter and the rains again.
Margaret wonders if Murmer is already gone with the rest of the leaves, faded into the loam.
If she plunges the needle into her arm, if she takes the challenge, she’ll be the fifth from the base this year. Two made the metamorphosis from human to tree, are now seeds in the city, waiting spring and the planting. Two failed and are nothing more than dry husks, pith rotted out from within. She will change the odds to one side or another if she commits.
Or she can lay the needle down. Leave Morning with Barry, who even now waits for her, back at the cookie-cutter house, bags packed and in his pressed uniform. She can continue to follow him through the vastness of space, trailing along, belonging nowhere. The feel of the starched collar as she laid his shirt out on their bed this morning is still in her hands.
The second time they met, she thought she knew what she was doing. What did it hurt for her to have a friend on this planet, she thought, wheeling a hovercart full of fresh clothing from the cleaners.
Something of her own, this friend, Murmer. Not like the tidy base house, which wasn’t hers, or the clothing, which Barry bought for her, or his friends, who were jolly and bright, full of uniformed pomp and talk of wars in far-off systems.
The second time they met, Margaret and Murmer sat in the meadow and talked of their lives. He told her of the wonders he’d seen through the eyes of his fellow forest, the knowledge contained in the dense pith of his tree, and the way the deep roots tasted the planet’s core.
Margaret told him of the travel, exciting at first, each new place an adventure, now paled and stale, how she missed the Barry she’d married—the way his eyes used to light up when he saw her, how she’d grown to miss a place of her own, a voice of her own.
The third time Margaret and Murmer met, they kissed. It wasn’t anything Margaret had planned, she was just looking for a friend, but something in his blue eyes, the way the crinoline leaves lined his face, the way his hand trembled against her back, turned the half-attempt of a hug, foreign to them both, into something else. The kiss tasted like winter on the planet she’d been born on, full of the piney taste of fir and crisp nights.
‘Tell me about the change,’ she said one day weeks later. Murmer sat down beside her on the slight hill with the sun warming the fresh grass.
‘Once upon a time,’ Murmer said. ‘That is how you begin stories of long ago?’
‘Or stories that were never quite real.’ Margaret rotated his hand in hers and let his fingers wrap around her wrist.
He dropped a kiss on the top of her head and pulled her closer, wrapping his legs around to create a nest of sorts. Murmer smelled like the tree he resembled, sweet and spicy, and underneath, a damp rising of earth.
‘Once upon a time,’ Murmer said, ‘everything talked and walked and danced at midnight, in forest glades under the full moon. The light flowed from inside to light up the moon, not the other way around. The moon’s glow was reflected joy, not dim shadows of sunlight over the earth’s umbra. Eclipses vanished the day and allowed the aspens’ quaking to shed through the wastes. This was before, when the trees were still young, before the first aliens came and learned to choose, to decide to stop roaming, the way we did an aeon ago.’
Murmer shifted. Margaret could feel him hard against her back. Barry had told her this morning about an administrative assistant leaving the base for a ‘native’. The rosy cheeks on Barry’s broad face had dimpled in disgust and Margaret had turned away to make the bed, hoping to hide the rising flush.
Murmer continued. His soft voice lilted as the wind rustled over the grass, as the breeze blew through the city. He told her of the awakening of the great trees, the first visitors from the other worlds, the creation of the denizens, each part of the whole tree.
She stopped him then. ‘Do you mean you’re not really you?’
His grip on her shoulder tightened then relaxed. ‘I am Murmer, yes. I am an individual, also part of the tree, just a leaf among others. Each is different but part of the whole. I am the forest. I am a dream.’
Margaret fell silent, reminded with a shock to her stomach that this person was not human. His hands rubbed her shoulder. She shook them off. ‘I think I should go home,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I should see you any more.’
Margaret waited for him to call after her. When she glanced back, he just stood there and swayed.
When had Barry changed? Or had it been her?
Margaret couldn’t pinpoint the day when love had died. He didn’t kiss her when he came home any more. She didn’t miss him during the long days. They ate their meals in silence and rolled away from each other in bed. She wanted him back—the one who used to smile—almost as much as she wanted something to call her own. Perhaps Barry was the only thing she could have, could possess in this roaming life.
She turns the needle over and over in her hand, testing the sharp point on one thumb, then the other.
Her heart is a betrayer, she thinks. Black and barren. Will the needle, will the becoming, ease the pain? Will belonging to a place quench the urge for another person?
Margaret didn’t see Murmer for the rest of the spring and most of the lazy days of summer. She kept herself occupied with her errands, dusting, and cleaning. The pit in her heart grew and overtook her body, till she moved around by memory alone, numb. She indulged in her vices, more glasses of wine with dinner than she should, more cocktails at the endless parties. She spent a whole day in bed.
She tried to woo her husband back. In the night, she reached for him. His familiar fingers woke response in her. When he left for work the next morning, the smile was back, and he whistled on the way out.
‘Can we stay here?’ she asked him one day when he came home from the embassy.
‘And give up space?’ He kissed her on her forehead. ‘Become a grounder? You know you don’t want that.’
‘Perhaps not,’ she said, returning his hug, knowing he would never settle down.
Through the summer, she learned to love him again, or to at least pretend to the possibility.
One day the urge rose within, a restless itch in her legs, and she set the dust cloth down and headed for the meadow. Just to get some sun, she told herself. Murmer would have moved on by now anyway.
He was there, waiting. His leaves, like bright green hair, rustled in the noon sun.
She stopped on the edge of the meadow, in the border of the shadow of the city. Her heart thumped. A few moments passed. Murmer stood still, rooted. She forced her feet to walk towards him, not run.
‘I never finished telling you,’ he said. ‘About the change.’ He raised a hand towards her, like he would brush the hair from her eyes, then dropped it.
Margaret forced a smile, feeling her lips tighten. ‘Tell me,’ she said as she sat down.
Murmer sat a few feet away from her. His leaves were fading, she noted. Yellowing around the edges.
She kept her hands tight together in her lap as he talked.
‘Wait,’ she said, stopping him as her mind caught up to his words. ‘If I change, will I still be me?’
Murmer shrugged and held out his hands to the sun. ‘What are you?’
‘Will I still be me?’ she repeated.
‘You will be more,’ he said. This time when he reached for her hand, she let him take it. ‘You will not be the same. Parts of you will walk in the forest while you remain planted. You’ll remember this life like a dance, a dream, a moment.’
Margaret wonders if she wants change or wants death. She knows what she wants she can’t have, never could have. Not now, not ever—Murmer. All she can have is the planet, a home, a place to rest, to stay.
She pounds the ground with a fist.
Margaret resolved to be good. She kept the house clean, programmed dinner for the other officers and their wives. Smiled when she knew she should, refilled glasses and made small talk. And then the letter came, in the autumn.
‘Darling,’ Barry said to her one night. ‘It’s finally happened.’
‘Yes,’ she said, as she loaded the dishes. Her mind was on Barry and Murmer, running in the useless circles it always ran in.
‘We’re out of here. Our transfer came through. We’re going to New Melbourne. Isn’t it great?’
‘How long?’ she asked.
‘Two weeks. Better get packing.’ Barry chuckled.
‘I’m not going,’ she said, the words sticking in her throat. ‘I want to stay.’
Barry turned to her, disbelief reddening his cheeks. ‘Here?’
‘Yes. I like this planet. I want to settle down, I want to stop moving.’
‘Oh, honey,’ he said, gathering her in his arms. ‘I know this is hard on you. I promise, one day, we’ll stop. When my next enlistment is up, I won’t renew.’
He would. She’d heard this before.
‘Come on, say you’ll follow me, just a little further.’
She nodded, to please him, to stop the argument from the familiar circle it turned in every time they left for another world. He left for the sleeproom, and the glass in her hand shattered on the floor.
Margaret hurried out to the meadow the next morning.
Murmer waited there, a thing she’d grown used to. He was aflame in colour, this Murmer, full of orange edges with red leaf centres. His hair was golden yellow, and the smaller leaves of his beard bright umber.
‘We’re leaving,’ she said. She ran towards him.
‘I need to say goodbye,’ Murmer said at the same time. He reached for her hands and she let him take them. The throb of her pulse quickened.
‘Where are you going?’ they said together.
Margaret tightened her grasp on his hands. ‘You look beautiful.’
‘As do you.’ He let go of her right hand and traced the contours of her chin.
‘Barry’s been transferred. To New Melbourne. He expects me to go with him.’
‘And will you?’
‘It depends on you.’ She stepped forward and tilted her head up to meet his blue eyes.
Murmer let go of her and stepped back. ‘I won’t be here much longer. It’s my time to turn, to rejoin the dream.’
Margaret’s hands fell to her sides. ‘What?’ Her heart stuttered.
‘It’s autumn. Soon it will be winter.’
‘So you’re going to hibernate?’ She knew, even as she asked it, it wasn’t what he meant.
‘Trees change in the autumn,’ he said. His head tilted to the side to regard her.
Margaret sat on the ground with a thud that travelled all the way up her spine. She looked at her hands, at the sunlight bright on them, noticed they trembled. With a gasp, she remembered to breathe.
‘You’re going to leave me,’ she said.
‘I was always going to leave you,’ Murmer replied. ‘I thought you knew.’
‘No.’ Margaret pushed the fingertips of her hands together. A drop of salt water fell on her thumb, a tear.
Murmer sat down beside her and she could hear the creak of old wood. ‘How could you not know?’ He sounded confused.
Margaret shrugged and watched the tears drip down to stain her blue skirt. ‘We’ve been so many places, Barry and I. And they’re all the same once we get there. The same base layout, the same houses. You never even have to leave if you don’t want to. So I stopped paying attention. It was enough to pack, to unpack, every time. To lose my friends every time. I stopped caring about where we were. Once, I thought Barry would be enough . . . ’ Her voice cracked and she clenched her teeth. Far away, she could hear the rustle of the city. Beyond that the roar of a spaceship took flight from the base.
‘I wanted to stay here, with you,’ Margaret said when she thought her voice was under control. ‘It was silly of me, I see that now.’ The trembling had taken over her entire body. Her shoulders shook and her chest was tight with muzzled sobs. Margaret felt a touch on her shoulder. Sunlight swam in her vision.
‘Not silly,’ he said. ‘If I could wish such a thing, I would. I can’t. I can’t even wish it.’
Margaret took a deep breath. The air burned in her lungs. ‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘Please forgive me for being an idiot.’
Murmer brushed his shoulder against hers. The comfort he offered let the sobs escape and she cried until her face was covered with tears.
A thought occurred to her, a wave of hope spread out from the pit in her stomach. ‘Will you be back in the spring? Because I could wait for you.’
He pulled Margaret to her feet and wrapped her in his arms then. ‘No,’ he said into her hair. ‘I won’t be back. Others will, for their season, but not this me. I’ll be a different tree.’
Margaret felt her body become ice and stone. The shaking stopped. Stupidly, she’d thought she could have it all—the relationship and the world too. A home, not dependant on a person, but with someone, a place she wouldn’t move on from, with this being, this Murmer, who was as rooted as she wanted to be.
‘All I can offer you is the change,’ he said. He reached into his side and pulled out a device, shaped like a pine-cone with a sharp needle at the end.
‘What good does that do me? Does it bring me you?’ Her voice rose.
‘No. All it offers is the chance for permanence. The chance to live, rooted in a spot, to grow under the shade until you reach the sun, to be part of the whispering city. To, in time, have leaves of your own, all the parts of yourself free to change, to wander.’
‘To die,’ she finished and angrily wiped a tear away.
Murmer shrugged and his body swayed for a moment as a fierce gust blew past, rattling the grass like a wave on the ocean. The crest swept towards them, then past, down the hill. ‘Death is only change,’ he said.
Margaret watched the grass return upright. ‘Would you stay if you could?’
He didn’t answer and it was answer enough for her. Margaret took the needle from his hand, not meeting his eyes. She marched away, back stiff. She didn’t turn back.
Barry was there when Margaret got home.
‘Where have you been?’ he asked, leaning over an open beige carisack. ‘I started packing.’ He grabbed her and spun her around.
She broke free of his embrace, walked into the bathroom, and splashed water on her face. ‘Out,’ she said from behind the closed doors. ‘Went for a walk. Why the rush? Aren’t you supposed to be at work?’
‘They moved my schedule up. We leave tomorrow.’
Margaret gripped the edge of the bathroom counter with her hands. Of course. Probably better this way. She pulled the needle from her pocket and sat down on the edge of the tub. Baring an arm, she took the needle and started to press it against her skin.
‘Are you going to come help me pack?’ Barry yelled from the sleeproom. ‘You know I never do it the way you like.’ The teasing edge to his tone tore her heart open.
She didn’t answer and stared at her bare white arm, at the needle. After a few moments, she put the needle back in her pocket, washed her face again and went to help Barry. He had folded all the shirts wrong and she had to take them out and start over. Margaret snapped each fold into place, stamped down each item of clothing in the suitcase to compact it.
‘Are you mad at me?’ Barry asked. His red face watched her.
The temples on her forehead throbbed. ‘No, I’m not mad at you,’ she said. She forced a smile. ‘So, where are we going next again?’
In the evening, he took her out for a last meal at the base commissary.
‘Do you mind if we walk through the city for a bit?’ she asked.
Barry shrugged. ‘I thought you didn’t like the city.’
‘I just want to look at it one last time before we leave.’ She angled away so he couldn’t see her face.
‘Sure.’ He took her hand in his. ‘We haven’t been on a walk together for a while. Remember the glorious beach on Alba?’
Margaret nodded.
‘Well, New Melbourne has an ocean to compare. Perhaps we can recreate a few moments?’ He nudged her with an elbow. For a moment, Margaret clung to his hand, happy for the warmth and familiar feeling of his fingers.
Viridian was dark with little lamps like fireflies floating high in the trees. Glow globes made dim circles on the lower trails. Margaret and Barry stepped from one halo to the dark, then back into the light.
Denizens passed them quiet on the loam path and Margaret’s heart pounded each time. None of them was Murmer.
The night was silent except for the faint trill of insects sounding like tiny violin players. When Barry suggested they return home so he could get some sleep, she agreed.
She tossed and turned all night. Every time she moved, Barry snuggled back up to her. In the quiet hours of the morning, she fell asleep with her legs twined with his, his breath soft on her shoulder.
Margaret sits and the shadows lengthen around her as the sun moves above. In the distance, she hears the roar of an engine and watches the silver spike force its way up into the sky in a column of cloud and fire.
With a sigh, she takes the needle in a steady hand, presses it into the bend of her left arm, and squeezes the trigger. With a tiny pinprick she has made her choice. It doesn’t feel like anything at all. She looks at her hands—they still look the same. After a few moments, she realises they’re turning green. The code of her cells is changing, morphing, turning from animal to plant. Already she can feel her toes’ urge to embed in the dirt, her hairs’ need to feel the winter rain.
The wind blows her hair back and she waits for the change to complete. She will root on this planet, Morning, and will be a part of the city, blooming in the spring.
Calie Voorhis is a lifelong fanatic of the fantastic, with over fifteen short story publications, including stories in Ray Gun Revival, Beyond Centauri, Fusion Fragment and The Online Anathema Anthology, and print anthologies Dead Set: A Zombie Anthology, Space Sirens, Farspace 2, DOA—Tales of Extreme Terror, and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. She holds a BS in Biology from UNC-Chapel Hill, an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University, and is an Odyssey workshop alumna.
Beautiful
Cat Sparks
The invitation to Rukash House had come as a great surprise. Nin accepted, blushing, even though she supposed her inclusion merely served to address the colour balance. The Remembrance of Oris required ochre swirls. Nin didn’t mind at all. It was exciting to be asked, a treat rarely afforded members of her caste. Rukash House’s murals were famed across the continent, each panel depicting a well-known sequence from The Book of Suhab.
She took a deep breath and climbed the marble staircase. A prim doorman waited to take her cloak and scarf. Beyond the gilded double gates, such splendour! More finely attired people than she had ever seen gathered in one place before. How dull she felt in her flimsy patterned silk, flat clogs and sand-plain hair.
No-one else from her sector had been invited. She craned her neck, hoping to catch a familiar face, even if it belonged to someone she didn’t actually know. Such intricate beadwork on the gowns, star sapphires sewn with silver thread. Jewels so rare she couldn’t even name them. Part of her wanted to turn on her heels and flee. Another part was so excited she could barely breathe. Wait till Nok heard all about it. And Asha—she’d plain die of jealousy!
The ballroom’s centrepiece was a constellation chandelier. She knew of such things, of course, but had never seen one. A nebular web set in brilliant filigree, it peppered the room with pulses of contentment.
As she stood below it, wondering if she’d have the nerve to see the evening through, Nin sensed five beautiful scattered throughout the crowd. How ever had the hostess enticed so many? She must have paid an exorbitant sum, though she’d never admit to the truth of it. The kind of question you weren’t supposed to ask.
The five spaced themselves evenly. Glowing admirers took pains to keep a respectful distance. A beautiful moved to stand beside the sculpted nude just a few feet away from Nin. She longed to edge in closer for a look but it was impolite to draw attention by pushing.
There were ways to engage with the beautiful. Stern decorum and polite conceits. You weren’t supposed to crowd or box them in. A pose of casual indifference was best; looking without appearing to gawp. Never touch unless one of them touched you first.
The hostess’s name was Mija—almost as famous as Rukash House itself. Silver-blonde with skin of russet hue. Her dances were the stuff of legend, gossiped about for months on end. Some whispered she was descended from the Great House of Ezatyra. Others hinted at less salubrious origins.
Nin knew better than to court her attention. She fixed her eyes on all the lovely gowns, then rested them upon the beautiful, impossible as they were to ignore for long. The one nearest Nin sported a fabulous silver-blonde mane. Hair like that took decades to grow, which meant it must have been older than it looked. Completely at ease amidst the ballroom’s golden splendour, it radiated smug superiority, shifting through a sequence of poses choreographed to display its perfection to best advantage.
There’d been two silver-blondes in Nin’s dorm at Shoushan, way back in childhood when they were identical in all ways but hair. The silver-blondes, Ang and Gita, had been excited even then, enchanted with comprehension of their rarity. Both were utterly certain they would bloom to beauty, as certain as Nin had been that she herself would not. Nin had thought the Shoushan brood mothers cruel, encouraging the silver-blondes so heartily. There was no sure-fire predictor of beauty. No traits that could be encouraged or shaped. When the time was right, you either blemished or you didn’t. That was all there was to it.
Some mothers believed they could tell ahead of time. Occasional lucky guesses made them cocky with false knowing. Which was all very well if you kept it to yourself. Another thing to get a hatchling’s hopes up. Both those silver-blondes had blemished. In the end, their precious hair meant nothing. The one called Ang had been shamed into exile. The other, Gita, nobody liked to speak of what happened to her. Those Shoushan mothers were never punished for their failings. Nin didn’t think that was right.
Not that anything could have quelled the pent-up energies of the hatchlings themselves. The raw excitement during manifestation months. Nin vividly recalled the thrill of it—and the blinding terror. Every night you went to sleep thinking, would tomorrow be the day? Would you awake still safely cocooned in the mottled beige of childhood? Or would the unsubtle taint of failure stain its trail across your flesh? When, at long last, ridges pushed up through your skin, would they be hard and coarse like bristle, or small and delicate as dew-kissed summer buds?
How many mornings had Nin been wrenched from slumber by a chorus of hysterical sobs and shrieks as, one by one, each hatchling was forced to face the truth. They weren’t beautiful and never would be. Purple swirls would creep across their skin, overpowering the innocence of childhood. Skin that would harden and ridge over time, as would their stoic little hearts, but for now the mothers would have their hands full mopping up tears and offering consolation to those whose dreams had shattered.
‘It’s not so bad is it, now, m’dear—ending up like the rest of us?’ The most pathetic consolation the old could offer the young. Nin remembered how ancient those mothers had seemed—and how ugly. Now she was as old as they’d been then and she saw the world through very different eyes.
Nin had not applied for motherhood. The Shoushan hatchery echoed with harsh memories. Mothering seemed a vast and thankless profession; tut-tutting and tsk-tsking over hundreds during the difficult hatchling phase. Nin had sought herself a future in hydroaltics, settling comfortably into the patterns of laboratory life when she matured. She’d never held high future expectations, even before her beauty failed to manifest. Nin elected to prepare herself for the inevitable rather than stooping to the flooding tears and theatrical histrionics of her ugly sisters.
Nin’s day of reckoning had arrived unannounced. A quiet thing, like snowflakes settling upon soil. She’d been undressing before the mirror, her mind on other things. Lifting her shirt, she saw the ugly purple stain—a full week before her ridges began to push. A little part of her died in that instant. She’d never dared to hope, nor dream, yet hopes and dreams are the purest flames of youth. She angled her back for a better look, then let the shirt fall down to hide her shame. She stared at her own pale reflection for a minute or two—the light never was very strong in that room—and then in one swift motion, hoisted the shirt and was done with it: the bitterness, the disappointment, the pain. She tossed it all aside with the laundry, chose a different garment and got on with it. There were other pleasures to be had in life. Other meanings, other adventures. Beauty was merely one thing out of many.
The following weeks had passed in a blur. She could recall so little detail now, but perhaps there wasn’t much to remember once the truth was finally out and everybody knew it. The beautiful were already setting themselves apart at Shoushan. Dissolving former friendships and alliances, touching each other excitedly as they cemented to form a group. Hardest for everyone to bear were the ones who manifested late. Too smug too soon, so utterly sure their lack of purpling as the weeks rolled on meant purple was never going to come.
Nin recalled Gita actually claiming a place at their table, nestling amongst the beautiful, beaming and cooing her good fortune, only it wasn’t right. She was never right. The beautiful eventually tired of her noise, hunting the purple flush across her skin. They turned on her like a pack of wild beasts. The helpless mothers could do nothing to prevent it. Everyone knew the way things were. Risks were understood. Hatchlings were drilled endlessly in deportment and etiquette. It was Gita’s fault entirely, but Nin still blamed the brood mothers, the way they’d teased and fussed and fed false hopes. Mores were not so lax the year that followed. The mothers were a sterner crop and nobody was savaged or torn apart.
Nin didn’t announce her own purple. Her friends were much like she was; shy and quiet. There hadn’t seemed any reason to make a scene, so she’d just gotten on with her chores. She’d been hoeing a line of cabbages in the lazy afternoon sun when Shae moved up to work beside her. Nin looked up and wiped her sweaty forehead with her wrist. Shae smiled and in that instant, Nin knew that she had purpled too and accepted her simple destiny, as had Nin.
The Remembrance of Oris required many castes and colours. Cradling a drink, Nin found herself a vantage point between two potted sargassi palms. Which story would be danced tonight? There were more than enough performers for The Battle of Ashwah-Nemh. Or Narahshanti Hunts the Wild Dogs. Or even Oris and the Nameless Maiden, her favourite tale from Shoushan days, despite its miserable ending.
All three tales were painted on the walls along with others, she was ashamed to realise, she’d all but forgotten. The murder of the princess—what had been her name? Or those winged triplets who’d bested the mighty dragon?
She hid beneath the drooping fronds to watch the dance floor patterns swirl and form, unseen. Mythology had once been her favourite subject. Problem was, she’d had so little use for it since Shoushan. Her mind was always filled with practical matters. She was good at her job but not so good with people. Gatherings like this one made her feel so small.
The beautiful knew how to work the crowd, how to tease the love from it with hints of sexual promise. When one moved, the pattern adjusted itself to flow and follow, resettling to form new eddies and curls.
And Mija—what was she up to? As hostess, she should have feigned indifference; stood well back and let the evening run its course. But, Nin noted, she could barely conceal her glee. She glowered with pride at every little detail, canapés shaped like hearts and tears, not to mention the ornate fireplace with a row of antique weapons mounted above the mantle—five-pronged daggers, scimitars and spears.
Mija wanted her guests to believe the beautiful were her friends. Attracted by mere fact of her own exotic colouring, perhaps. Such things, although extremely rare, were not unheard of.
But the ballroom was too crowded. More guests had turned up than could comfortably be accommodated. Mija flitted about the room, disrupting the designs with every movement, somehow knowing she could get away with it. The beautiful were good at what they did, and Mija acted with vulgarity in that knowledge, ingratiating herself, pushing boundaries, almost taunting them, thought Nin, tightening the grip on her glass. What could the crazy woman be up to?
When the dance began it was languorous, claiming participants one by one, pheromones pulsing from the centre, enveloping them into the fold. Nin felt the gentle tug of rhythm, abandoned her drink on the nearest tray. A component of the ochre quotient, she sniffed out her tone sisters easily. The ribbon was soon threaded between them, small steps synchronised, to and fro. Guided by the beautiful, each slice of sunset merged to form a flame. Russet embers licked the crowd’s bejewelled edges.
It was the hostess’s privilege not to join the dance. But Mija watched it closely. Every step. Every nuance. Sideways glances hinted at clandestine plots and plans.
The Remembrance of Oris was customarily danced outdoors, but not tonight. Not on Mija’s watch. As she wove and blended, Nin gradually glimpsed the truth behind the masque. The real reason they’d been gathered here. Something dangerous was going to happen. Something provocative and new. Something the guests would remember forever. Something that made her uneasy.
Tonight would be whispered about in the highest circles: the night we evoked Oris beneath a constellation chandelier! Five beautiful lead the dance, no less. Can you believe there were five?
One beautiful separated from the others, took its stance below the jewelled stars. Nin knew in an instant which tale the dance would bloom to. Oris and the Nameless Maiden. She smiled.
And when she looked to Mija, she saw how she was smiling too. In that instant, Nin understood. Mija was not content with life as part of a sycophantic entourage: followers with filed ridges, purple concealed beneath layers of artfully powdered creme. Before the elliptic pause was at its zenith, Mija pushed through the crowd like a prow parting water and indeed it did seem as though the beautiful would let her spoil their moment.
And what a masterful dance it was: mesmeric, enthralling, like ripples shivering a pond’s still surface, only deeper. Much, much deeper. Dark and cool and green. Colours swirling to drown the whole damn lot of them in luxurious, forbidden depths.
Suddenly, uncharacteristically, with no thought for what she was doing, Nin dropped the ribbon and stepped as close to the beautiful who was dancing Oris as she dared. Hugging her own arms, she appraised its wonder, simultaneously hot and cold, its dorsal spikes shimmering beneath the stellar chandelier’s fine light. Nin felt the heat steam from its flesh, sensed the ridges along her own lines begin to tingle. Her sweat mingled with its scent and the heady pheromone backwash almost knocked her off her feet.
She had become the Nameless Maiden! Fighting to suppress her nervousness, she looked away, fearing she might die of embarrassment. She breathed in deeply, drinking in its flavours through her pores. A breeze brushed lightly across her skin, just enough to break enchantment’s hold. She looked up as twin footmen swung the balcony’s double doors wide open.
The beautiful broke formation, leaving ripples of anxious chatter in its wake. Nin watched the tip of its crown, besotted by the grace of its passage. She followed, ribbon abandoned on the floor, nudging gently with her shoulders as the crowd readjusted itself to fill the beautiful’s void.
Nin ached to touch it. To claim its mythology as her own. No, more than that. She needed to embrace it, hold it tight against her skin. To press her lips against its mouth and smother it with passion. Trap the heat of it inside her, helpless between her thighs. She wanted to squeeze the life from it, leave it quivering, begging for mercy. She wanted to own this beautiful and share it with no other.
A cold blast of evening air hit her in the face. She realised she was sweating, her heart racing, drowning out all other sounds. The beautiful stood mere feet away, its back to her, moonlight shivering its glossy mane. What was she supposed to say to it, out here, alone and unprotected? Why was it standing here at all, away from the patterns and structures of its own kind?
She’d die if she touched it. Either it would kill her outright, or one of the others would. But Nin didn’t care. She was drunk and giddy from the moonlight. Maybe its touch would be worth dying for? There was only one way to find out.
As she stepped forward, it sensed her closeness and turned to face her. Nin didn’t pause. She moved swiftly, cupping silver cheeks between her palms, drawing herself up on tiptoes to match its height.
‘I love you, my prince,’ she whispered, just as Oris’s maiden had once done, pressing her lips fiercely against its own. The soft, sweet taste of it filled her mouth, like rosewater blended with wine and honey. Up so close, its scent was overpowering. She kissed it harder and, to her astonishment, it kissed her back, drawing her near with its powerful arms, clutching her tightly to its breast. Nin tasted blood. Her own? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the moment. She prayed it would never end.
‘No!’
The sound struck them both as surely as a blow. The beautiful relaxed its grip and Nin staggered free of its embrace.
She turned, heart thumping, her body quivering with ache. Mija stood behind her, ridges sharp, her fury barely suppressed. Suddenly aware of the evening chill, a cloud moving across to cover the moon and a thousand other ordinary little things, Nin dipped her head in shame. What had she done? What had she been thinking? Had she really become the Nameless Maiden in plain view of five hundred people, let alone that she’d done the deed at all?
She looked back to the beautiful just in time to see it lift its head. It stared right past her to Mija and its eyes flared for an instant. Mija bowed and Nin stepped out of the way as the beautiful strode back into the ballroom.
Nin held her breath, waiting to feel the brunt of Mija’s wrath, flinching with anticipation, but the blow never came. Mija stared at her with unashamed curiosity, as though seeing Nin for the very first time. Almost as if Nin wasn’t plain old Nin at all, but some faint ghosting of beautiful herself.
The corner of Mija’s lip curled into a smirk. It was supposed to be a put down, but Nin saw it for what it was. She suppressed a wicked smile of her own until the hostess spun on her heel and retreated. Nin had made her jealous! Plain old Nin. Mija had been planning to step into the Dance. She was intending to become the Nameless Maiden. Nin had stolen her kiss.
As Nin rejoined the party, she sensed something had changed. Her lips still tingled, her heartbeat quivered. Glancing in search of a waiter, she felt like she was being watched. And she was. Each beautiful had stopped what it was doing to stare her down with an icy glare. Guests were beginning to murmur their discomfort, their mutterings like the droning of a hive.
Nin knew she should have been afraid but she wasn’t. She didn’t fully comprehend the why of it, but why didn’t matter. The flush of triumph would stay with her for always.
She took a drink from the nearest tray and sipped it, holding her ground. Hostess Mija was nowhere to be seen.
A minute passed, perhaps two. By the third, the tension began to dissipate. The beautiful turned their attention to other things, patterns realigning to how they were supposed to be.
The tingling sensation in Nin’s lips faded gently, like the memory of a luxurious dream. It was time to go. To stay another moment would dilute the afterglow irreversibly, and she wanted to retain the taste as long as possible. But when she glanced towards the door, Nin saw she was surrounded. Guests had formed a ring to block her from the exit. Her stolen kiss was not to go unpunished.
Nin glanced nervously from face to face, desperate for someone familiar. Anyone. But all were strangers, staring her down, their faces blank. Expressionless.
She swallowed dryly, her throat constricted. What would these people do to her? Could she make it to the door? What then?
Nin gathered her courage, steadied her breath and stepped forward. Nothing happened so she took another timid step. This time, when she moved, others moved too, stepping aside so she didn’t have to push.
The look in their eyes was not menace after all. It was adoration! Pure respect. No wonder she didn’t recognise it. No-one had ever looked at Nin that way before.
A footman waited by the gate, offering her cloak and scarf. He escorted her down the marble staircase and when she went to thank him, bowed, almost as deeply as if she’d been a beautiful herself.
Oblivious to the cold night air, Nin walked down the path towards the road, smiling at her unexpected fortune. She would chance the weather and walk back into town, enjoying the companionship of moonlight till it faded.
She’d barely covered any ground when a shadow moved across her path. She paused, hesitant, until the shadow showed its face. Mija, her dark expression rivalling the night itself.
‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ she said grimly.
Nin raised her hand to her lips in involuntary surprise. She opened her mouth to speak but Mija spoke first.
‘Shoushan. Many years ago. I had a different name back then, of course.’
Mija stepped closer into the light. Nin observed small details she had overlooked before. Missed because she had not suspected and had taken Mija at face value. In childhood, Mija had once been known as Ang, one of those poor, hopeful silver-blondes. The one who had not been savagely torn apart.
‘I didn’t recognise—’
‘No, of course you didn’t. They gave me higher cheekbones along with my new name. Knocked a couple of ridges off. I suppose I should be grateful for that.’
‘But I had no idea—’
‘Do you have any concept of how hard it’s been for me? Living with a blemished record as well as blemished skin?’
She stared at Nin as though she were a bug. ‘I didn’t fight my way through life to have a common ochre steal my glory. What did you think you were playing at back there?’ Her eyes narrowed as she peered out through the darkness. ‘Who by all the ancient gods do you think you are?’
‘Nobody!’ exclaimed Nin, stepping back. A glint of light refracted off the object clutched in Mija’s hand.
She raised it high so Nin could see. The five-pronged dagger from above the ballroom’s fireplace, a ritual weapon from a bygone age. Wielded, it would slash through skin like claws.
‘Everybody saw what you did,’ said Mija, stepping forward. ‘Everybody will presume . . . ’
‘But I don’t want anything! I’m not trying to—’
‘Who do you think you are—the Nameless Maiden? You stole a kiss that wasn’t yours to steal.’
‘I didn’t mean to . . . It just happened! The dance. It was the dance.’
‘It’s far too late to search for meaning, girl. What was done cannot be undone.’ She took another small step forward. ‘That kiss was supposed to be mine.’
Nin inched backwards. She was about to run when footsteps sounded on the marble staircase. One of the beautiful descended, its mane glazed silver with moonlight.
Nin froze. She sucked in her breath, but it ignored her. Mija stepped up, smiling from ear to ear, but the beautiful ignored her too.
‘Wait!’ she said, but it kept on walking. She stood sullenly, transfixed by its lavish, cascading mane, knuckles whitening as her grip on the five-pronged dagger tightened.
‘I said wait!’ she shrieked.
When it didn’t respond, Mija let out a terrifying scream. She raised the weapon high and ran at the beautiful, a stream of obscenities blurting from her lips.
She didn’t get far. It turned and slashed her throat wide open with one swift, perfect stroke. Blood spurted from the fatal wound, some of it spraying across the front of Nin’s silk dress.
Nin tasted still-warm blood on her own trembling lips. Shaking uncontrollably, she turned, intending to run but the hem of her cloak snagged on her clogs. She tripped, sprawling head first onto the gravel pathway.
The beautiful stood motionless, stone cold as alabaster. Nin scrambled to her feet, hands and shins scraped raw, the taint of Mija’s blood still in her mouth. She raced for the road as fast as she could, glancing back once—just once—when she reached the fence. The sound of boots on gravel drove her onwards, running faster, choking down panic, terrified by what she’d seen behind.
Eyes gleaming in the darkness.
Five pairs.
Beautiful, every one.
Cat Sparks is fiction editor of Cosmos Magazine. From 2002 to 2008 she managed Agog! Press, an Australian independent publisher that produced ten anthologies of original speculative fiction. A graduate of the inaugural Clarion South Writers’ Workshop and a Writers of the Future prizewinner, Cat has edited five speculative fiction anthologies. Fifty-six of her short stories have been published since 2000. Cat was official photographer for two NSW Premiers and worked as dig photographer on three archaeological expeditions to Jordan. She’s won seventeen Aurealis and Ditmar awards for writing, editing and art. She is currently working on a far future/biopunk trilogy and a suite of post-apocalypse tales set on the NSW south coast. One of her short stories was reprinted in Hartwell and Cramer’s Year’s Best SF 16. www.catsparks.net
Hatchway
Simon Petrie
‘Touch me again, and you’ll need a proctologist.’
Kalpana’s quiet menace is sufficient to persuade Marisol and Django to back away towards the clean ceramic sides of the Hanel West 2 airlock; Stieg, stationed by the lock’s inner hatch, sneers ‘as if’ in response. Only Boris, holding the small tub of baby-blue gel, has the decency to colour up.
‘Look, K,’ says Django, ‘the gel’s every bit as vital as the mask, the boots, the gloves. You’re, huh, going to get cold out there—’
‘You think I haven’t worked that?’ Kalpana replies, her fragile calm slipping, shattering. ‘They musta got your plumbing wrong, the shit that comes out sometimes.’ As soon as the words are out, she realises they’ve taken her too far, like they’ve a tendency to. Too far in, or too far away. Too late now. But she’s feeling like a piece of readymeat, underdressed, self-conscious of her plumpness and of the all-important two-three years the group has on her. Of the need to prove she’s not just a kid, to do something the dults wouldn’t ever dare.
And to show she’s worthy. Because that’s what she’s here for, after all. (It’s like Boris had said, the first time he’d let slip about the initiation, the test: ‘It’s all about showing Titan who’s boss.’)
‘I don’t think she wants this,’ Stieg drawls, leaning for effect against the polished crud-resistant frame that lintels the airlock’s inner hatch. Stieg’s skinny, a little short, and with skin pale enough that it makes his spiked hair seem blacker than it is. He fixes his eyes on her, then sweeps across the rest of the group. He’s playing for an audience. If Boris is the leader, Django the expert, and Marisol the conscience (or perhaps, Kalpana muses, the mascot), then Stieg is the enforcer. Or fancies himself thus, at least. ‘You think she wants this? Any of you think she deserves this?’
Bastard. There’s no way she’s going to plead, not in front of a creep like Stieg. But she needs to do something, to convince them she’s not motivated just by fear. She stares past him, feigning boredom with his jibes, affecting a sudden casual interest in the hyperextended saguaro that, foyered inward of the airlock, stands improbably green within its deep bed of grey-orange sand. (Not frozen-hydrocarbon sand, either, but real asteroid-origin faux-Earth silica sand. A statement of comparison, or solidarity, or something.)
‘It’s not just about the cold,’ Django says, and she’s grateful enough for the interjection, for the imperturbability of Boris’s younger brother, particularly after her slur. Django handcombs his scruffy crest of orange-brown hair: camo hair, she’d thought it, when first she saw it. ‘It’s the overpressure. Titan’s going to be trying to, huh, push its way in, any way it can. The breathmask covers your face—eyes, ears, mouth, nose. But there’s—’
‘Grossleaks. Okay, you don’t have to paint the picture.’ She rubs at her bare forearm, goosefleshed. Unlike the rest of the building, the airlock’s not designed for warmth; that’s what T-suits are for. None of the group is T-suited. But she’s the only one in just a single layer, or in shortsleeves. ‘Makes sense. But then, why the ti— Uh, the nubs?’
‘Sensitivity,’ says Boris. ‘Ask Marsy.’ He makes sufficient of a hand gesture, splaying across his chest, that the tub in his other hand sloshes. Calling it ‘gel’ is a misnomer, Kalpana decides—some of the drinks she’s experimented with have been gluggier.
Marisol, for her part, turns awkwardly away. Maybe she’s not willing to be used as an example, or maybe she’s still pissed with Boris, from last week.
‘It’s too runny,’ says Kalpana, trying not to whine. ‘It’s just going to run straight off—’
‘Told you she doesn’t want this,’ says Stieg, staring her down.
‘Shut up, tool,’ Boris says, glaring at Stieg. The latter shrugs, indifferent to the other’s height and bulk.
‘So you need to add it last,’ Django explains. ‘That’s one of the reasons for the loose shirt and shorts—it makes it easier to, huh, slap on the goop quickly. As well as for movement once you get outside. But it has to be runny at three hundred K, if it’s to have any elasticity at one hundred.’
‘We can delay this if you’d rather,’ suggests Marisol—and something’s up, something’s bugging her, because Marisol is not looking at Kalpana’s face, not at all, while she speaks. It’s as if instead she’s conversing with Boris’s tub of gel. ‘We don’t have to do this today.’ There’s almost a plea in her voice, Kalpana reckons.
And Kalpana would readily enough defer. Now that she’s arrived at the moment, it’s as though there’s a premonition, a foretaste of the overpressure. It’s strong enough, this feeling, to cause her breath to catch, to send her heart on such a rush of activity beneath her breast that it’s sure to catch the boys’ attention. She’s not even sure, right at this instant, that this is a group she wants to be accepted by: up close, they’ve lost some of the initial rebellious gloss, the dult-defying omnipotence that she’d first glimpsed, or thought she’d glimpsed. Up close, there’s more than a hint of the dult in how they’re treating her, right now. But there’s Stieg: and she will not give Stieg the slightest hint of satisfaction. This is the bravest, stupidest, most illegal thing she’s ever attempted, and she will not give him reason to taunt her.
Hanel West 2 airlock is cold. It smells of burnt bleach, baked dust, and cryogrease, and it’s cold.
‘No,’ says Kalpana, trying, and signally failing, to catch Marisol’s eye. ‘No, we don’t have to. But today makes sense, with all the dults either at the loftball game, or the concert.’
‘She’s right,’ agrees Boris, as though this settles it. And maybe it does.
‘Right. Then I’m ready. Five-three-one-four-six, right?’
‘Five-three-four-one-six,’ Django corrects her.
Whoops.
She’d been seven, almost eight, when it happened. When her mother pushed her father through the hatchway.
Kalpana had mental images from that day. They’d never leave her. She’d made, from the images, a loosely-arranged sequence; but it was a knotted thing, and as difficult to follow as it was painful. It wasn’t until a full year later that her aunt had been able to assemble for Kalpana a narrative, a sufficiently-detailed framework through which to comprehend the day’s events.
To comprehend; but not to understand.
They’d been living in Clemence, a small single-arcology community of never more than a hundred souls, on the southern edge of the Senkyo dunefields. It wasn’t Kalpana’s first home, nor even the third—miners were itinerant, almost by definition, and the Brauns certainly fitted that pattern—but it was the earliest place of which she retained solid memories.
Ultimately, all of those memories led back to the airlock.
She wasn’t sure how long the pharmhands had been living in the community: several months, certainly, maybe even a year. But families in Clemence came and went all the time, as processing and extraction fluctuated at the various mining operations among the coffee-dark dunes to the north and the sepia-stained knobbled highlands to the south and east. Among adults, friendships weren’t sought out overmuch, because why bother establishing ties with a group of people who might well have moved on within twelve months? Among children of Kalpana’s age, friendships were understood to be temporary, and subject to mysterious external influence—a best friend might be taken, with but few days’ notice, to a mining community several hundred klicks away. You tended, after awhile, to learn not to elevate anyone to ‘best-friend’ status, but merely to maintain a circle of near-equidistant acquaintances. (Or you could communicate by feed, with friends who really meant something, but Kalpana had never found that satisfying—what was the point of talking to someone if you weren’t actually in the same place?)