by Scott Azmus
He knelt on the overhang and shielded his face as the magma rushed downslope. A few meters farther up, the magma was too well mixed for his needs. A few meters downslope the obsidian already piled up in what looked like crags of morning frost.
“One more try, Marky. Careful not to lean out too far.”
Marky nodded. He already knew that. The melt sometimes splashed the ledge and the sides were too hot and jagged to offer a good handhold. If he slipped, the ledge could take his fingers off in mid-grasp.
One meter, then two, he pushed the probe pipe over the edge. He had to be careful though, to keep the pipe turning. It was really a length of old wave guide and so might bend and snap if he left it on one side too long. When he had it suspended over the middle of the flow, he let it fall.
It didn’t splash, but it didn’t bounce either. The tip hit and just sort of eased its way in.
Marky braced himself. The tip was clearing the outer sheath that formed wherever the magma cooled. When it pushed through to the real current—
The pipe jerked hard into his chest, but he was ready for it. It wasn’t going to knock him off his feet like the first time Doctor Pat showed him how to blow bubbles. No way. Still turning the pipe, Marky locked it in the notch he’d cut before his first attempt. He pushed the pipe deep and then threw all his weight on it.
Lift, he thought at the end. “Lift!” he shouted.
The pipe broke free and levered up at him. The bright glob on its end was bigger than he’d hoped for, but cooling fast.
Hand over hand, he brought it in. It was very hot, but not so hot that he could afford the time to worry about it. If it cooled too far, he would have to start all the way over with another glob.
He coupled the air pack to the pipe and vented a short burst. Turn, turn, turn...vent. Turn, turn, turn...vent.
A bubble formed. Flame swept its interior as it grew.
Marky braced the pipe and pulled the first wire pack halfway from its sheath. Immediately, darkness began to glaze its surface.
Not this time, he thought.
He pressed the wires to the glass. The bubble bent, compressed, and finally gave without popping or shattering. Perfect timing.
Marky grabbed the tongs and pinched the bubble closed around the wires.
Turn, turn, turn...vent. Another bubble began to form. He added more wires and then flipped the pipe overhead so the glass began to spread out with the spin. When the bowl spread back and the darkening, cooling lip had radiated out far enough, Marky snapped the whole thing back down to the rushing magma. The bowl pinched into a flower-bud shape, forming a new sphere around the first bubble.
It was time to seal the first and second bubbles and gather a second glob right on top of them.
Marky hesitated. Too early in the process and the whole thing would return to the melt. Too late and the bubbles would shatter and drag off the end of the pipe.
“Cross your fingers,” Trisa seemed to say.
Too busy, Marky thought. He watched the color deepen and, just when the glass began to gleam, he threw all his weight on the pipe. It hesitated at the magma’s surface, then plunged through.
One alligator, he thought as his muscles trembled. Two alligator. He twisted the pipe. Three alligator! Lift!
Three times before, he’d come this far only to have the pipe break from the surface perfectly clean. No bubbles. No blob of hot melt. No wires.
This time, it came away from the surface with a sucking sound. The end was hot and red and the glass was sagging as he dragged the pipe back toward him. He connected the air pack and swung the pipe straight down between his legs to let the new glob lengthen into a tube.
Time seemed to fly as he wrestled the glass into shape. He added a wire here, a bank of heating meshes there. A coating of gold ribbon and a wrapping of fine wire. Then another coat of glass and another series of tong sculpting. A long, helical cavity. More wire. More gold. Glass, coils, anodes, cathodes, supports, contacts, more filaments and grids....
Marky finished wrapping a focusing coil around the drift space between two cavities and stopped. Simply, stopped. He was done. It wasn’t pretty. Nor was it like anything he had ever seen. Except that was, for the picture in his head, which Trisa must have sent him.
Her voice seemed to come somewhere deep inside him. “No, Marky. This is yours. All yours. I always said you were smarter than you thought.”
Marky wasted no time connecting his new tube, still hot from its genesis, to the circuits he had already prepared. Though heavily modified, it was basically the same design as the one he had tried earlier. He connected the last power pack and a luminous iridescence swirled through the glass. A band of orange light sizzled into shape along the helical tube. As Marky adjusted the voltage, dark nodes swept up and down its length.
The orange light pinched into eight separate lenses and then snapped into one brilliant arc. It went red. Red like Jupiter’s Great Spot. A standing wave formed between the first contacts and the last. The air around Marky seemed to stand still. The whole world seemed brittle and electric at the same time.
Trembling with excitement, he took a strand of insulated wire and walked the length of the launch rail. Though half hidden by a fresh coat of sulfur dust, it wasn’t difficult to find the same corroded patch he had touched before Tiercel’s launch. Dull where it had once been bright, the exposed metal couldn’t have been corroding for long. After a while, Marky knew, nothing would be left but the rail’s hard duraplast exoskeleton.
“Cut in until you find bright metal. There, where the covering has broken away. Now press one sweep to the acceleration ramp. The metal will feel cold, but it won’t hurt you.”
Marky slashed the ramp until bright metal flashed. He pressed a sweep to make contact. Jupiter’s voice boomed through him.
He swung his other sweep to his new tube. He felt an almost overwhelming tickle as the current rushed through his sweeps.
What do I do?
“Talk, Marky. Don’t move and just talk. Tell Doctor Pat how much you miss him. How much you need him. Tell everyone, Marky. Tell everyone.”
“Hello? Doctor Pat?”
Marky rocked back on his haunches and gazed upward. When he spoke, all of Jupiter trembled with his voice. It sounded so loud in his head that, for a moment, he thought God must be talking.
“Talk, Marky! Talk.”
He cleared his rakers. “Doctor Pat? This is Marky. It seems like a long time since the bad men took you away. I don’t know if you can ever come back, but I wish you would. I miss you. And I miss Trisa and all the others.
“Even if you can’t come back, you need to make sure they can. This is where they live. It will hurt them to live somewhere else. Especially on Earth where people are afraid of us because we know how to love each other. To be the same and to share everything deep inside.”
Marky paused. Jupiter didn’t look any different. The clouds were still sliding along like they always did. The bright storm centers were still swirling. “I wish I was smart enough to figure out why the bad men took you away,” he said. “Why they couldn’t just leave everything alone. Why they took Trisa and the others.
“Trisa always said I was smart. She helped me make this thing to talk to you. At least I think she did. Like she’s always helped me. Even if it sometimes made me feel bad, it wasn’t her fault I cheated on your tests. I’m real real sorry about that. I hope that’s not why the bad men took you away. It wasn’t Trisa’s fault if they did. Just my fault. I wanted to look smart. I wanted to make you happy. Everyone happy.
“Just like the time I wanted to touch you, I did something bad. Real bad.
“And I wanted to make a cat. Like you make things, Doctor Pat. Alive things. Beautiful, alive things. People. Real people. Like you. Like me and Trisa.
“Do you remember my cat? The one I made with Lego? With the yellow eyes? Someday, can we make a real cat? One to be my friend?”
The night began to settle into Marky’s bon
es. But even as first one limb and then another began to numb, Jupiter’s immense radio aura continued to boom. Marky’s voice continued to cut through the night.
“I know you will remember me, Doctor Pat. Just like you remember the other Marky from your other life. I’m getting cold, but Trisa said to talk, so I’m going to talk.
“Remember how you used to tickle my toes? This little piggy went to market. This little piggy stayed home. This little piggy ate frost and this little piggy...”
The splash of plasma jets warmed Marky and sent a gust of freshly sublimated sulfur dioxide across his rakers. He startled awake and instantly felt horrible. Sick with guilt. Angry with frustration. He had stopped talking! His sweeps were off the launch rail. Off the transmitter. Sometime during the night he’d given up and crawled off to find warmth.
He heard a noise. The clatter of locking struts. The grind of ramp pushers.
His heart beat wildly. He backpedaled into a pocket of darkness still untouched by the rising sun.
A lone figure stood atop Tiercel’s ramp. One hand lifted. “Rise and shine, Marky-boy. Rise and shine!”
Marky ran toward Doctor Pat. He caught him in his arms and flung him around in sheer joy. “Doctor Pat, Doctor Pat! It’s really you! You came back!”
Doctor Pat’s voice came into Marky’s head. “Thanks to you, Marky-boy. Thanks to you.”
“And Trisa,” Marky sent. Thanks to Trisa, too. She helped.”
Doctor Pat laughed. “No, Marky. Nobody helped you. Trisa’s been out cold—literally since we’re talking cryosleep—since we left Io. Same with your brothers and sisters. Anything you did was on your own.”
Marky’s rakers drooped open. He stared until Doctor Pat gripped his hand.
“You did well, Marky. You got the word out. They heard you first on Europa. Then on Ganymede and Callisto. We heard you after that. Then the belt and Mars. When the people of Earth heard your voice, they knew they’d made a mistake.”
Marky pressed his face to Doctor Pat’s chest.
“They turned us around, Marky. Colonel Blaton’s finished. The fighting’s not over yet, but you’ve made a good start at changing people’s perceptions of what we’ve been doing out here. Now that Earth, the whole world and the whole solar system, knows you’re human, we’re free. You’re free, too. Same for Trisa and your brothers and sisters. Thanks to you, we’re all free to live how we want and explore this new world of yours.”
Marky grinned. He was glad Doctor Pat was back. Glad that he’d done something smart. Glad there would not be any more bad men coming to take Doctor Pat and Trisa away.
Doctor Pat hugged him. “I’m proud of you, son. Seriously proud.”
Preface: The Catafalque
Charlie Ryan was the editor of Aboriginal Science Fiction, out of Woburn, Massachusetts. After buying a copy of the magazine at a local bookstore, I was simply blown away by a Dean Whitlock story called “Sophie’s Spyglass.” I wrote my first fan letter.
When I decided to try writing a short story, I naturally submitted to Aboriginal. After a while, Charlie started giving me more feedback along with my weekly rejection slips. In all of my years of experience as a writer, Charlie was one of the very few editors willing to help a new writer improve.
While this story is a bit “dark,” it actually represents my very first professional sale of more than $.05 per word and was enough to let me join the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA). Charlie’s acceptance letter is still one of my treasures, as is a copy of that issue. My name is right there on the cover!
Charlie soon accepted another story of mine called “The Trouble You Know” but the magazine folded before the story could see print. It should have then appeared in another magazine, but that editor never seemed able to read his email as part of my follow-up. (Jerk.)
Not that it matters. The body of that story saw new life in the early chapters of my novel, Lesser Beings.
The Catafalque
The pyramids of Endebar rise a thousand leagues above the abyssal plain. Where their peaks break the placid sea surface, the evening sun sends bright flares ghosting starward. I stare and stare. I stare until the bright triangles burn deep. Burn. Burn until those shameful memories return.
My wrist twists. My fingers claw the air. I shudder with pain. Ah. Ah, yes. My arm. I forgot. Father nearly broke it the first day down.
Down on Denholm.
Gypsum sand hisses as it piles against my calves. My hand trembles with the heavy water bowl. The tiny Baleraphon leaf bear peers from the shade of my draped shirt. Its fibrous feelers probe cage walls and then the air. I prop elbow against knee to steady my hand.
Father’s boots pound the sand. Drunk already. “Whole goddamned world’s a fucking paradise, but nooo…. We crash in a goddamned salt basin! Fucking pilot. Cheap, piece of shit company yacht.” The quas bottle sloshes and gurgles as he upends it to his lips.
I ease the water closer to the leaf bear. His feelers slide over the surface. They tickle the back of my hand. I try not to laugh. He backs away. His feelers ponder the moist air.
“Goddamned rescue party better get here soon.”
The leaf bear grasps the bowl’s brim. He arches and kisses the surface.
“What the hell are you doing?” Father’s boot slams down on the cage. Wire mesh screeches and buckles. Water trickles into the sand. The leaf bear is silent in its death. “You stupid little shit! That water’s for us.”
He snags me before I can pivot away. My throat tightens. I can barely speak. “No, Dad, wait! Dad!”
He yanks me aloft. Flecks of spittle fly from his lips as he rages. I don’t hear him. The world smells of quas and unwholesome sweat. I can’t free my arm. Blood pounds in my ears. He shakes me. I twist in the air and he shakes me and shakes me and shakes me.
I feel a sharp pull and the twang of tendons in my arm. A sudden inexplicable looseness jars my elbow. A cold sear numbs my fingers. It pulses back through my elbow to my shoulder and up my neck. My jugular vibrates like a plucked chord. Father feels it too. As I revolve toward him, his face falls into the same cast it gets after he rapes his wife. Or one of my sisters.
“Stupid shit!” he yells. He throws me against a spire of trona-encrusted gypsum. I roll aside, breathless, and slink away.
I press my arm to my chest and breathe the borax dust as shallowly as I can. He staggers off, but returns with his tranquilizer rifle. Our escape module crashed with sixty-eight cases of illegal arms and liquor, one Imperial Vrin prisoner and a wealth of contraband wildlife. But not one single charge for the weapons. I’d forgotten the tranquilizer gun.
Father’s eyes gleam. He slides a silvery dart down the barrel, pumps the compression arm and, poompf!, blows the cover off one of the llanak cages. I can’t see the frightened llanak, but I imagine it cowering against the far corner. In my mind I see its eyes widen with terror and its cloven hooves clapping the cage bottom in pointless retreat. Father swigs from the bottle, pumps the rifle and pushes it into the cage. When all but its polished stock disappears within, his arm jerks.
Poompf!
His laughter masks the muffled shot, but not the rattle of flailing legs and muscular neck.
He laughs and laughs.
He lunges at the last Hyperion sheep. “Stupid bastard. You’re not getting any of my food, my drink.” Blood drips from its muzzle, but it simply stares at him. Trusting, like Mom always was. He fires the barbed dart at close range. The beast’s eye explodes. Father’s laugh is thick and harsh as he flicks gobs of flesh from his vest.
Next in line is the Vrin. Father flings her cage door open and shatters his empty bottle against it. The glass-aluminum ring hurts my ears. She blinks her minutely striated eyes in the sudden light.
“This is all your fault,” Father says.
The Vrin folds spindly arms across the red down of her chest. She cocks her head the way Mother used to. Without words she is saying, “Are you serious?”
Father rocks forwa
rd and spits. Some of it lands on his boot. He brushes it in the sand and against the back of his camouflage trousers. He pulls another bottle from the big pocket above one knee. This he raises to the Vrin.
“I’d offer you some, but your imperial palette probably can’t handle the hard stuff.”
Her hushed voice reminds me of stringed instruments. Violin, sawratine, maybe a toomabore. “Barton, you are a fool. You destroy your only food source. You drink what might be of vital use later as a medicine. You are not equipped to survive.”
A sneer flashes across Father’s face. He mocks the Vrin while fighting to stand erect.
“‘You are not equipped to survive.’ Fuck you. Or should I say, ‘Fuck you, your highness’?”
“Call me what you will. My sisters will avenge me.”
“Sisters! There are no more Vrin. You’re the last.” He strokes the trigger guard as he lifts the weapon to his shoulder. “The very fucking last.”
The Vrin gazes back through his sights. The feathers along her back flash iridescent blue. He will kill her. I can’t watch. A sudden, driving rage thrusts me to my feet. I clutch my arm to my side and charge. The Vrin turns her stare on me. Her fleshy beak flexes in surprise.
“Yaaaah!” I yell while fighting to keep from sliding in the sand.
Father turns as I slam into him. He rocks and nearly trips over his own boots. He swings around in a drunken spiral until able to fix me with his most hateful stare. His lips twitch and warp. His jaw bones flex under his cheeks. His eyes narrow and a vein pulses between his eyebrows. The rifle barrel pans toward me.
The Vrin screeches. She steps to the sand. She faces the pounding sunlight and screeches again. The sound is so loud and so strange that, for an instant, Father and I pause.