Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #226

by TTA Press Authors

  A handful of Hibs lie sprawled across the courtyard, either dead or wounded. More have arrived to fill their ranks, taking up position behind lampposts, concrete benches, chunks of rubble—anything that's on hand. The bark of gunfire is intermittent but consistent. As I watch, a masked Hib stands up and lobs a flaming bottle at the bus. It pinwheels through the air, and comes down near the radiator grill—shattering into a pool of flames.

  The only route to the bus lies straight through the centre of the firefight. I already feel like I've run a marathon. I can taste blood in my throat. My legs are just barely holding me up, and my whole head seems to be throbbing, like a giant heart planted on my shoulders. I'm in no shape to run a gauntlet like this, but it's not like I've left myself any alternatives.

  I start sprinting.

  I don't bother dodging or ducking—just take the most direct line. Something hurtles past my head. A rock, maybe? Then a scarecrow figure rushes towards me, face twisted into a grimace. We converge, bounce off each other. I stumble and scramble on, kicking away his clutching hands. Bullets zip by like angry bees. Dust kicks up at my feet. Shit. They're shooting at me. At first I assume it's the Hibs. Then I realize it's coming from the bus. Without my mask and hardhat, covered in grime, I must look like another crazed attacker. Impossibly, that makes me want to laugh. I raise my hands, wave them frantically in protest.

  "Don't shoot!” I shout. “Don't fucking kill me! I'm one of you!"

  Even as I say it, I realize that it's true. I'm one of them, the living. And for a split second, running headfirst into friendly fire, and away from the place that is your tomb, I feel the sweet and desperate desire to survive.

  Copyright (C) 2010 Tyler Keevil

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  IN THE HARSH GLOW OF ITS INCANDESCENT BEAUTY—Mercurio D. Rivera

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Illustrated by Jim Burns

  * * * *

  'Harsh Glow’ is set in the same universe as ‘Longing for Langalana', which won the Interzone Readers’ Poll for 2006. Mercurio Rivera's fiction appeared on the Locus Recommended Reading List for 2008 and the StorySouth Million Writers Notable Stories of 2008. His stories are forthcoming in Unplugged: The Web's Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy, Download 2008 edited by Rich Horton (Wyrm Publishing) and future issues of Interzone. His website is mercuriorivera.com.

  * * * *

  I sprinted through narrow, zigzagging pathways inside the pine-green glacier. I could make out Rossi's black bomber jacket far behind me, appearing and disappearing with each bend. The air-pulses struck the sides of the walls, sending chunks of ice flying.

  I dropped, hugged the frozen ground, and waited.

  * * * *

  We landed at the Lassel Airstrip near Axelis Colony where I was sure my wife, Miranda, had arrived a month ago with Rossi. Joriander and Hexa hauled my bags down our seedship's ramp while I hugged my hooded fur coat tight. Neptune hovered high in the pale viridian sky. Even with the Wergen force field doming this airstrip, Triton's tenuous atmosphere still mustered a bitter breeze that stung my face like razors.

  The three of us trudged across the empty tarmac toward the terminal entranceway. To our left, the towering, cathedral-like glaciers of Triton's North Pole glittered blue-green, capturing Neptune's luminescence.

  "Here, Maxwell,” Hexa said, removing a leathery scarf and exposing her white-scaled face to the elements. She threw it around my shoulders and pressed close to me—too close, I thought—for a few seconds longer than necessary.

  Joriander followed suit, removing his temp-mitts and offering them to me.

  I resisted the urge to slap the gloves to the ground. “Knock it off. I'm fine."

  The Wergens hunched their shoulders at my curtness, and I felt a pang of guilt. They continued their steady gait at my side. The ground rumbled and a geyser exploded on the horizon, spewing ice-lava miles into the sky.

  Oh, the distances you've traveled, Miranda. He's taken you so far from home. But don't worry, my love. I'm here now.

  After a few paces, Hexa placed her four-fingered hand on my shoulder, letting it linger there. “I wish my people could have produced a more effective field over this area, one that could generate more comfortable temperatures for humans. I apologize."

  "No need,” I said, shrugging off her hand. “After all, where would we be without you?” Probably relegated to digging caves on equatorial Mars, I thought. Wergen fieldtech had opened up every planetesimal in the solar system to human colonization, the limitations of temperature, radiation, gravity and atmosphere all conquered in one fell swoop. Without their help I would never have obtained transport from Earth to Triton to track down Miranda and bring her home.

  Joriander removed a jewel-encrusted sphere from his inside robe pocket and tapped several of the gemstones. In response, the terminal's circular doorway irised open and we entered a cavernous holding area. As soon as the door rumbled shut, a dozen bots, mantis-like devices the size of terriers, skittered towards us. They herded us into an enormous decontamination pen where they scanned our retinas, removed and sterilized our clothes, and ran us through a battery of tests to screen for contagious diseases.

  I caught the Wergens staring at me with rapt attention, their large mooning eyes probing my body. I cupped my hands over my crotch. Despite the Wergens’ notorious reticence to discuss their sexual practices, they showed no bashfulness at their own nakedness. They were squat, husky, with reptilian scales speckling their bleached-white skin, and no visible genitalia. Hexa, the female, matched my height, while Joriander, the male, stood a foot shorter. Rumor had it that their sexual organs lay hidden within their flat-topped craniums, which they kept covered at all times, even now, with a leafy headdress. I shuddered. For all of the Wergens’ courtesies, I still felt an instinctive aversion toward them.

  But they offered us so much. And I had to do whatever necessary to save Miranda.

  One of the bots injected a tracker into my earlobe. Local officials carefully monitored all new arrivals, a practice I was counting on to find Miranda among the hundreds of thousands of Axelis's inhabitants. The bots then sprayed our naked bodies with a microfilament that produced an electrical field evident only by the faintest of blue tinges.

  "This will maintain your body temperature at a more comfortable level,” Joriander said. “We won't need the heavier protective clothing any more."

  I turned away and donned the standard two-piece blue uniform provided to us, feeling the Wergens’ eyes on my back. The bots then guided us to a raised monorail where the three of us boarded a private railcar headed to Axelis.

  We sped above smooth, dark-green ice plains formed over millions of years by a slurry of water and ammonia. And as the minutes turned to hours, the topography below us shifted to a landscape of what I'd heard described as ‘cantaloupe skin', an endless expanse of circular depressions separated by deep, rounded ridges. Ahead of us, Neptune crawled across the skyline, growing smaller as it moved to the west but still filling a quarter of the sky. The Great Dark Spot, a massive storm system, stained its southern hemisphere behind half-formed rings.

  "A spectacular sight, isn't it?” Hexa said, leaning toward me.

  What did you think, Miranda, when you saw these alien vistas? Did you snuggle in Rossi's arms? To what extent had the neuromone warped your thinking

  The railcar wound around a bend between two icy mountain peaks and, all at once, Axelis came into view. The settlement sat in the thousand-mile Great Gulch, a valley of endless rows of low, neon-lit hills beneath a silver web of monorail tracks. The wisp of blue from the Wergen force field stretched from one peak to another. Below us, more than five hundred thousand colonists from Earth, Mars and Werg populated Axelis.

  Joriander locked eyes with me in an intense manner that made me uncomfortable. “Did you leave it on the ship?” he asked.

  I reached down and unzipped the side pocket of my bag, revealing the airpulser. “No, I'll be needing this."
<
br />   Joriander averted his eyes.

  * * * *

  An air-pulse whooshed past me and the ground to my left exploded. Another shot rang out and I darted into a crevice in the green ice-wall.

  My teeth chattered. I was headed in a dangerous direction, away from Lassel, where the Wergen force field would become more and more tenuous. After a few seconds, I stopped running. Eventually nothing would protect me from the moon's deadly natural environment. There was no trace of Rossi. No, the sensible thing for him to do would have been to forget about me. But I suppose he was no more sensible than I was when it came to Miranda.

  At that moment, he came around a bend, firing.

  * * * *

  The slim, seven-foot administrator sported a platinum-blonde crew cut and hunched over a com terminal. Her height pegged her as Mars-born. “Yes, they do reside in Axelis."

  "Do you have an address?” I said.

  It turned out that Miranda and Rossi had temporarily settled in the Pretori District in southern Axelis. They were on the long waiting list for the Human/Wergen expedition to Langalana, an unexplored but potentially habitable planet hundreds of light years away.

  "Thank you for your help,” I said.

  "My pleasure to serve, sir.” She bowed dramatically. “Welcome to Triton."

  Joriander, Hexa and I retreated to the rotunda of the Visitors’ Center. From within this hollowed-out hill, it resembled the lobby of any office building on Earth or Mars except that every human that bustled past us was accompanied by one or two Wergens.

  We boarded the jam-packed public monorail to Pretori. A smaller contingent of Wergens wedged in among the Earthers and Martians, their bleached-white faces frozen in ecstasy. Joriander and Hexa also seemed dazed into paralysis by the human crowd while I felt relieved by the brief respite from their constant attentions.

  The complex where Miranda and Rossi resided, like all the habitations in Axelis, consisted of a green, rocky knoll drilled with scores of catacombs and caverns. I disembarked from the tram and walked a paved path that snaked up the rocky terrain. Hexa and Joriander, eager to please, as always, lugged my two bags up the side of the hill.

  Row upon row of windows pocked the entire hillside, standing out like grids on an emerald anthill. Faces stared from behind them, surveying our arrival. I searched for Miranda's visage among them, to no avail.

  Making our way through crisscrossing catacombs, I asked for directions from passersby until I reached the cavern where Miranda lived. I pounded on the door. When no one answered, I lowered my shoulder into it, but the door held firm.

  "Can I help you, sir?” A Martian neighbor poked his long neck out into the corridor at the sound of the commotion.

  "I'm looking for the man and woman who live here."

  "Who are you?"

  "Miranda's husband."

  "Her husb— Oh. I see.” The man tilted his head and scrunched his nose in an expression I couldn't quite read.

  "Do you know where they are?” I said.

  "They left last week to attend basic training for the Langalanan expedition. They're due back any day."

  On my adrenaline-high, I had to resist the urge to break down the door anyway. Joriander thanked him for the information and gently pressed his hand against the middle of my back, moving me away. Hexa mentioned that the ships to Langalana departed from the Cipango Planum Plateau in the western hemisphere of Triton, which is where training would take place. Our Joint Venture Agreement with the Wergens required humans to work side-by-side with them on Triton or Europa or one of the other spaceports for at least six months to qualify for these colonization missions. The Wergens provided their tech to humanity: wormhole-generating seedships for intergalactic travel, force field devices, low-level AI bots that performed the physical labor. In return, we gave them our art, our ingenuity, and—what they desired most of all—our companionship.

  A trip to distant Cipango Planum risked delaying my reunion with Miranda for weeks if she were already on her way back and I missed her, so, despite my frustration, we were left with no alternative but to settle into the closest available cavern to wait. The Wergens shared the single sleeping room while I camped out on the stone green bench in the living area, staring out a window overlooking the pathway approaching the complex. The cavern smelled musky with a trace of burnt rubber—a sure sign of recently lasered rock. Stoked on stims, which I sniffed at a steady pace, I spent two days observing every approaching individual, hoping to see Miranda's sweet face, a familiar streak of red hair, her pale, soft skin. Water geysers exploded sporadically on the horizon.

  The Wergens prepared meals for me and supplied the stims. When they weren't engaging me in annoying small talk, they would sit in two chairs and study me silently, a half-smile on their flat faces.

  "You're very diligent,” Hexa said. “Very devoted to your mission. That's an admirable trait, Maxwell."

  I twitched from the stims.

  "Why did Miranda leave you?” Joriander asked.

  I had already explained this to them back on Earth when I negotiated their price for using the seedship—eight months of my companionship—but they still couldn't grasp the situation. I had left out many details, of course. I told them nothing about how Rossi and I had served on the Wergen Study Group—or the ‘Love Panel’ as it came to be known in the academic circles we traveled. We were selected to work with a committee of fellow scientists to delve into the nature of the Wergens’ obsessive infatuation with humanity. Rossi and I were specifically tasked with examining the aliens’ brain chemistry, a near-impossible assignment given the aliens’ taboo against revealing anything to us about their physiology. But military operatives had surreptitiously obtained Wergen skin cells and bodyscans, which proved invaluable to our research.

  We discovered that the introduction of a strand of the aliens’ single-helixed DNA into the cells of the medial temporal lobe of a human test-clone caused a new neurotransmitter to be generated in the amygdala, one that stimulated the firing of very specific postsynaptic neurons—the ones responsible for feelings of love. After synthesizing the neuromone, we were in the process of presenting our findings. That's when Rossi disappeared with the sample. And with Miranda. It never crossed my mind that he would think to use the neuromone, and on my wife no less. When I thought of the three years I'd worked side by side with him, the weekend swivelball games, the times I'd tried to cheer him up over watered-down beers at Helen's Pub during his rancorous divorce... How many times had Miranda and I had him over for dinner?

  "She's been drugged, brainwashed,” I said to them, fingering the airpulser I now carried in the inside pocket of my jacket.

  Joriander and Hexa seemed perplexed. “She doesn't understand what she's doing?” Hexa said.

  "Her feelings have been...warped.” When they remained bewildered, I added: “I miss her. I miss her smile in the morning, the warmth of her body in our bed. I need to be with her."

  This they understood. They bobbed their heads in empathy.

  "She's my wife."

  Joriander and Hexa looked confused again. During our uncomfortable trek from Earth I had tried my best to explain the concept of marriage to them, with no success. The Wergens had trouble understanding how mere vows could connect two people. I had finally thrown my hands up and escaped to the REM-pod where I hibernated for several months only to awaken to the sight of their flat smiling faces. How long had they stood there casting their adoring eyes in my direction over those longs months? My skin crawled.

  "It's difficult for us to understand ‘leaving’ after you've been joined together in what you term marriage,” Hexa said.

  "It's complicated,” I said.

  When I stopped talking, Hexa changed subjects and asked: “What are these black fibers sprouting on your face?” She reached out to touch my cheek.

  I flinched. “I haven't had a chance to shave."

  They continued to gawk at me.

  "Do you have to stare all the time?” I a
sked.

  "You're just so...” Joriander struggled for the words. “Luminous. Incandescent. It's difficult not to admire your beauty."

  Joriander's response didn't make me any more comfortable. The Wergens’ unconditional love for us transcended gender or species. As always, I did my best to ignore them and focused my attention on Triton's horizon.

  * * * *

  My chest ached as I sucked air.

  After several hundred meters, the trail before me opened into a wide, bowl-shaped arroyo. The peaks of the glacier circled high above. Ahead, the ground broke into layered ridges that sloped downwards. I twirled around looking in all directions for any sign of Rossi.

  Then I glimpsed movement. Like a charmed snake, an arm rose from below an ice steppe and Rossi fired the airpulser. It struck a glacier wall, scattering icy splinters that rained down on me.

  * * * *

  On the third night, I spotted her. She walked hand in hand with Rossi before he stopped to kiss her. A Wergen followed close behind them. Miranda waved goodbye to Rossi and he proceeded onward past the gates with the Wergen while she entered the residential catacombs alone.

  "You're looking stressed, Maxwell,” Hexa said.

  "Are you well?” Joriander said.

  I shoved past the Wergens and bolted out the front door, down the curving corridor.

  When I arrived at the entranceway I found her by the elevators, her back to me.

  "Miranda!” I grabbed her arm and spun her around. Her face blanched, her eyes widened. A long strand of red-orange hair draped across her left eye. She looked exactly as if she'd seen the ghost of the husband she'd cheated on.

  "Max! How did you...?"

  I kissed her cheeks, her lips, her forehead, over and over. “It's okay, I'm here, I'm here."

  She pushed me away. “What are you doing here?"

  "I came to bring you home."

  She stepped backward.

  "You've been drugged! It's a chemical, a neuromone we discovered.” The words came in a flood. I explained it all to her, how the single vial of the substance had disappeared the night before she left, how Rossi must have slipped the neuromone into some food or beverage she'd consumed.