Prima had left her broom behind. “Don’t need it,” she had explained. Inside the circle of brooms they were safe. “I don’t think I’ll need it all, even out there.”
“Dirt to be swept up.” Krim imagined all those naked bodies rising, hungry, needing to be taught to feed themselves, heal themselves. Winter would be coming on, and they’d need to find shelter. The new hides could only do so much. “You’ll need the brooms.”
They walked back down and greeted Ezra as he rose. “Daughter, Son,” he said.
“Old Uncle,” Krim said, smiling.
“I dreamed wonderful things,” Ezra said. “Someone told me ‘Make a big pot of soup.’ I think that’s wise counsel.”
“I’ve been hungry for days,” Krim said.
“You have to go, don’t you?” the Broommaker asked.
“I came to make the change. It’s done.” Krim grinned. “I thought I’d have to stay and teach these people—teach them to be human. But I think there are plenty of teachers around.”
“They don’t need to learn what they already know,” Ezra said. “They just have to remember it.”
“You were going to do it anyway, weren’t you?”
“Do what?”
“Make them human.”
“They just had to learn to rely on themselves. But the dreams . . . I couldn’t have brought them those. We can move through this Ur? Think through it and always be connected?”
“Always.”
“So we became connected by becoming disconnected.” Ezra frowned. “I like the Zen of that. How does that poem, ‘The Howl’ go? I heard it from a prisoner once. He could recite the whole thing.
“‘Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.’”
“That’s it,” Krim said.
Ship came up to him, lowered his belly to the ground and opened the hatch. His manipulators clattered, and Krim felt the image. The machinery of night. Yeah, time to go.
“I’m done here,” he said. “I’ve got to go back.”
Prima held out her palm to him again, like she had that time he went up into the Space Needle. “You’re leaving again.”
“You can come with me,” he said. “Anyone can.”
“No, this is a good place. You won’t be back, though.”
“I’ll be everywhere. That’s the way it is now. We’ll all be everywhere.” He looked in her eyes, then, and saw the truth of what she meant. “No, I won’t be back. Take care of these people, Lazuli—Prima.”
The chocolate man turned and went into his ship, his self.
“Let’s go home, Ship.” The hatch closed, and the ship engulfed him.
“No problem,” Ship said. “We’re already there.”
About the Author
Raised in Florida, Michael Armstrong now lives in Homer, Alaska. A graduate of New College and the Clarion Writers Workshop, he wrote After the Zap and Agviq, and his stories have been published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Asimov’s. He teaches English through the distance education program of the University of Alaska-Anchorage and has also taught dog mushing and writing. Michael and his wife, Jenny Stroyeck, have a small sled-dog team, a large house dog, and one cat.
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