by Eric Brown
Beside her, Kallis groaned. This cold, this lack of air, would kill him. She had to return him to the light. She bent, scooped him up, and, on her powerful new legs, carried him towards the pass in the World’s Edge, a notch where beads of sunlight still played.
As the twist passed through the fabric of the World, the remote suns wheeled across the sky, and the deforming land shuddered beneath her feet.
~
She reached the pass (it seemed to be artificial, a conduit on the rim of the World) and descended onto the light side. She entered a magical land: a land in which air and water hissed from the ground, billowing up at the touch of new sunlight.
She slithered down the ‘slope’ from the Edge, but paused before the hard undersurface disappeared beneath its covering of soil and dust. The air was thick enough here, but they were still so ‘high’, so far from the centre, that the land seemed tipped up. There would be floods, fires, more instabilities, she realised. It would be best to wait it out here.
The new landscape on this side of the World, devoid of water and life for generations, looked like a carved mask, with bare hills and empty valleys. She saw buildings, like the Scholars’ tomb. So there were people here, too: more larvae who wouldn’t become sunflies. Kallis would have company.
She wondered about the animals: the hornbeast, the sunflies. And the plants. Perhaps they had their own encysting mechanisms. Perhaps she would meet a Winter hornbeast, when she returned to the darkness.
Kallis stirred. Coughing, clutching at his chest, he struggled to his feet. Onara longed to run to him, to have his arms around her. But how might he react to seeing her in this new, monstrous guise?
She remained behind him as he stood and stared across the bowl of the landscape. “Onara,” he gasped. “Are we still alive?”
She said gently, “I think there are people down there. See that cluster of buildings? There must be Scholars—or some equivalent—emerging from their long sleep. They must be as confused as you. I’m sure they’ll welcome you. Go there, Kallis.”
He turned to face her for the first time. His expression froze as he stared, horrified.
She held out her ugly hands. “Don’t be afraid. I’m just—a sunfly. Don’t you see?”
“Onara?”
She tried to find the words to explain to him. “I understand now. This is what encystment is for,” she said. “Not so that a chosen few can hide out the Winter. But so that we can all—all of us—metamorphose into this new form, and ride the twisting World into darkness, survive to live a new life. Another phase of life.”
The price of survival was to become monstrous: with a huge barrel chest, spindly legs, bloated arms... Like the Foe, she thought suddenly. I have become the Foe !
“You see how it must have been,” she went on. “Once, all men became as I am. But there were some who resisted the change—like that sunfly larva we saw in the forest... And so they fought the Winter forms, their brothers. Dehumanised them.”
Made them into monsters for children—made them into the Foe.
“And now we must live through this ghastly, perverted life, with a culling every thirty generations... But it was not meant to be like this, Kallis. We are meant to live in sunlight, and shadow...”
He stared at her, panting. Then, slowly, the fear subsided. He reached up towards her face. “Onara...”
She stumbled back from him, her new legs thick and awkward. “It’s alright,” she said. “I’m still Onara. But... but I can’t stay with you.” The air was like a clammy blanket around her; despite her ties to Kallis, she longed to be away from this damp, soft place, to return to the hard vacuum of the dark side.
Kallis stood. “Don’t go. You’ll be alone–”
“I have to go back, Kallis. The Winter is my world now. There is much that I must do.”
She turned and ran towards the Edge. With her new, powerful legs, she scaled the formidable ‘slope’ as easily as she had scrambled up trees as a child.
She considered what lay ahead. Perhaps she might even return to her home—the Vale, the manse—all of it dead and destroyed now, a landscape of corpses, blanketed over by the frozen air.
She would find no life anywhere now—save in the Scholars’ shelter...
She lifted her arms and, in awe, studied the muscles there. She could break into that shelter, let the vacuum enter and permit the encystment to take its full course. As it was meant to.
She thought of Almora, and Sch. Malken, and wondered how they might react to their metamorphoses.
She was the only sunfly in the world. But when she woke the Scholars, she would be alone no longer. She would bring to an end this huge cycle of repression and death.
When the Narrowing comes again, she thought, humans will be ready. All the people will survive the next turning. Become sunflies like me. I’ll see to it.
She turned and looked down the ‘slope’. Far below, Kallis was a small, dark figure, watching her. He saw her turn, and raised an arm in farewell. Onara lifted her misshapen arm, and waved.
Then she continued her ascent.
Winter awaited her: a new life, new goals. But she knew she would always keep her love for Kallis, like a warm, soft treasure, at the core of her being.
Within minutes she had reached the Edge of the World.
THE AUTHORS
Stephen Baxter is the pre-eminent science-fiction writer of his generation. Published around the world, he has won major awards in the UK, US, Germany and Japan. Born in 1957, he has degrees from Cambridge and Southampton. His first short story was published in 1987, and his first novel, Raft , in 1991. He lives in Northumberland with his wife, and is the author of more than thirty books. His latest include the collection Xeelee: Endurance , and the novels The Massacre of Mankind , and Xeelee: Vengeance . His website can be found at:
www.stephen-baxter.com
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Eric Brown has won the British Science Fiction Award twice for his short stories, and his novel Helix Wars was shortlisted for the 2012 Philip K Dick award. He has published over sixty books, and his latest include an SF novel Binary System , the crime novel Murder Take Three , and the novella The Martian Simulacra . He writes a regular science fiction review column for the Guardian newspaper and lives in Cockburnspath, Scotland. His website can be found at:
www.ericbrown.co.uk
Publishing History
‘The Spacetime Pit’ was first published in Interzone 107 , May 1996.
‘Green-Eyed Monster’ was first published in Spectrum SF #2 , April 2000.
‘Sunfly’ was first published in Interzone 100 , October 1995.
also available from infinity plu s
Microcosms: Forty-Two stories by Tony Ballantyne and Eric Brown
Philip K Dick Award nominated writers Tony Ballantyne and Eric Brown bring together forty-two fantastical short-short stories, featuring new takes on every SF trope from alien invasion, robots, and time-travel, to stellar exploration, the future of computing, and the nature of the human soul.
Tony Ballantyne is the author of the acclaimed Penrose hard SF novels, Twisted Metal and Blood and Iron , as well as the groundbreaking and surreal fantasy novels Dream London and Dream Paris .
Eric Brown has written many SF and crime novels including The Kings of Eternity , Kethani , and The Serene Invasion .
Together they are a hundred years old.
Available from Amazon US , Amazon UK , and other good bookstores.
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Parallax View by Keith Brooke and Eric Brown
"The stories in this collection are among the best science fiction. These are stories imbued with a rich intelligence and a deep sense of humanity. These are mature stories, tales of love and loss, of pleasure and pain. Cherish them." —from the foreword by Stephen Baxter
Parallax View showcases 'In Transit', written specially for this collection, a novella set in a future war-torn universe in which human expansion has come up against the implacable Kryte. Xeno-psycholog
ist Abbott finds himself the guardian of a deadly Kryte on a mission to study it on his return to Earth. When they crash-land on the fortress planet of St Jerome, the Kryte prisoner turns the tables and takes Abbott into terrible custody. What follows is a terrifying journey across a hellish landscape towards a finale that might change the destiny of the Kryte and humanity, forever...
Plus six other stories that examine the interface between human and alien - a parallax view from two of Britain's top science fiction writers, both shortlisted for the 2012 Philip K Dick Award.
Available from Amazon US , Amazon UK , and other good bookstores.
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The Best Short Stories of Garry Kilworth
These short stories span a period of 40 years. They are as eclectic as the insect world, ranging from the bizzare to the quixotic and back again. Plucked from an oeuvre of 145 stories, they are beautifully crafted tales, several of which have snatched awards from the jaws of oblivion or shouldered their way into short lists.
Though he writes longer fiction Garry Kilworth considers himself primarily a short story writer, which is his first and last love. There is science fiction, fantasy, horror, folk lore and legend within these pages. What does not fall into any of those categories is simply unclassifiable weird fish.
The first tale is a parallel world story in which we, the people who inhabit this planet, can walk on water. The last story involves the kind of madness which is brought on by too much discipline and good order. These two sandwich a vast array of brilliant and sometimes puzzling pieces of prose.
Available from Amazon US , Amazon UK , and other good bookstores.
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