“My son is a hero,” he says. “They attacked us first on Aidan, and Nick did everything you asked and sacrificed himself to surgical procedures that could have killed him—all for the war. He was a kid when you people conscripted him.”
She shakes her head. “Mr. McLaughlin, there are details I can’t give; things that happened.”
“Tell him,” I say. “The Siph know and they’ll be here in an hour so what difference does it make if he knows too? Tell him about my targets; tell him why.”
Jennifer hesitates and then stutters. “I can’t. I’d lose my job, Jim—Nick.”
Dad looks back and forth at us. Since I’m about to be handed over, there’s nothing to stop me from telling the whole truth except that I don’t want him to think the worst but if I don’t it means he’ll be confused for the rest of his life, not understanding what made it so important for me to be handed over. I’m still thinking when Jennifer inhales with a wheeze. It’s the sound she’s made every time for the past hour when she’s about to speak and for some reason the thought of her voice makes my decision easy.
“I killed Siph juveniles, dad. Their babies. They were my primary target—not their warriors—and millions of them died while they slept in their nurseries. Our antimatter bombs trigger a chain reaction with the material in a Siph juvenile’s carapace and they scream in a way that makes you think millions of little girls are being burned alive.” I pause but Dad doesn’t react. His stare makes me ashamed and the heat of that shame is so intense that I imagine it must be visible in waves off my cheeks, and I wish there was some way to hide, so I look away. “We captured one of their bio stations early in the war—when things were still going well. We got lucky; the station had a bunch of research outlining Siph reproductive habits and someone got a brilliant idea: kill all their offspring. Destroy one generation of Siph and you annihilate the entire race.”
He looks just as confused as he did a few minutes ago and shakes his head. “I don’t understand. How does going after their children annihilate the race?”
“Siph reproduce once every hundred years. So their warrior cadre is a fixed number, which can’t get bigger, they can’t reproduce on the fly, and all the older adults die as soon as juvenile Siph become adults—every hundred years. It’s hardwired in their genetics. So if you get rid of their kids, you win the war—assuming you can stay alive for another eighty to ninety years.”
Dad’s face goes white. At first I think he’s going to pass out but he leans over in his chair and hugs me so I can’t breathe, and then whispers into my ear it’s not your fault; you were a child and you’re my son. Jennifer motions for the guards. The three of them slip out the door and lock it shut, leaving us alone for the last hour so we can say goodbye.
§
Jennifer and I wait for the Siph in an airlock outside their shuttle and without warning my system activates to make my fingers tremble with adrenaline. For the first time in over a year the butterfly and antigravity controllers flick on while I’m conscious, overlaying their data patterns on both retinas. Jennifer was telling the truth: the techs never fried the drone controls like they claimed and had reprogrammed major systems so they’d stay dormant until I slept—or they’d trigger melatonin production to make me fall asleep. Now my fear response is so intense that it triggers full systems activation, surprising me with a feeling of exhilaration that had been missing during the dream sessions.
Targeting systems calculate escape vectors and urge me to do something—to kill Jennifer and head back through the airlock door behind us, on the other side of which is a small army of guards who would shoot me if I tried, a piece of information that slows my processors for only a second. Then we try a different tactic. The communications system sends electromagnetic beams to sweep the enclosed space, searching for anything to hack into, any way to change the calculus and give me an advantage because it doesn’t want us to die.
“We won the war, Nick,” says Jennifer. “The story that we lost is just that: a story. Another lie. You deserve to know that before… you know.”
She’s hard to understand, since we’re both wearing respirator masks in preparation for exposure to the Siph atmosphere; I turn to face her. “What are you talking about?”
“You accomplished your mission. In ninety years we’re going to take back everything we lost, and it’s all because of you and what you’ve been doing while on the run; you wiped out over ninety percent of their juvenile population and they can’t recover from it. All humanity has to do is survive. The military is taking your father to someplace safe right now, to a system that’s only known to a fraction of us, and I leave tonight so I’ll make sure he’s safe.”
I shake my head and turn back to face the far airlock door, worried that at any moment I might strangle her. “People like you don’t get it, Jennifer; you weren’t at Listman. As soon as I hit the first nursery they came out of nowhere and ripped open our fleet with antimatter beams—not tiny warheads. I’m talking about three–centimeter–wide, continuous beams of the shit, a kind of weaponry we had no idea they had, and I just managed to escape in a stealth pod that got picked up by one of your intel ships eight months later. I’ve been on the run ever since. And still they found me.”
“What’s your point?”
“You might make it,” I say, “but you didn’t hear the screams. The Siph will look for you the same way they came after me at Listman and beyond, and if they find you they won’t care if neither race survives, and even if they don’t find you your dreams will; and sometimes those are worse than butterflies.”
§
Now I know why Jennifer told me about the planetary system where she and others hoped to hide: it’s because my brain keeps secrets even from me—like the fact that it can self–destruct; the thing has a failsafe. As soon as the Siph airlock opens, my wetware has an apoplectic seizure and an intense heat sears the inside of my skull, making me scream while the airlock fills with the smell of molten plastic and burning flesh. Plastic drips onto my back. And I’m already forgetting; memories of first this day and then everything else fading into a kind of grey haze, mixing with the pool of molten material on the floor that chars my hand when I fall to my knees. But soon the pain lessens; there are colors everywhere and a sense that tall insect–like figures surround me but it’s hard to get a clear view through all the butterflies, which now swarm by the thousands, forming a cloud of pink and blue and orange wings and I laugh because their fluttering tickles me and for some reason they can talk, whispering something that makes me warm and happy—that now there will be no more dreams. Ever.
Always the Stars and the Void Between
Nerine Dorman
THE LITTLE DOG STOOD ON the sill overlooking the yard. The sun had long ago bleached the cedar from which he’d been carved to the same hue as old bones. I didn’t want to think about bones, but I couldn’t resist picking up the figurine and running my fingertips along his spine and pointy ears.
Derik had given the dog to me so long ago: in reality, only seventeen years, but it felt like a lifetime. It might as well have been an eternity. My time serving the African Federation equalled my childhood years on the farm.
Now Derik was dead and I was back. White scars marred my skin and offered mute testament to countless brushes with death. What made it so that one of us lived and the other did not? We were both children of these mountains, who’d breathed the same air and whose bones had sprung from the same river and soil. Brave, loyal Derik, who’d followed me into the wasteland of space to fight a war for people to whom we were nameless. Three thousand dead on Deimos Base. A troop carrier hits an interplanetary mine between Jupiter and Saturn. A gate collapses on a jump ship out from Proxima Centauri. Numbers, objects. Not people.
Krommedrif was home. My childhood loft bedroom with its A–shaped ceiling and exposed beams where I used to dry bunches of herbs had endured, diminished somehow, but mercifully familiar. Did I dare to withdraw here like a snail into its shell?
Would this house nurture me the second time ’round so that I might emerge somehow healed and ready to face the world again?
My letter of resignation in its creamy envelope with the official AF watermark was the only object I placed on the desk by the window. Though we moved between the stars—folded space, even—and warred against other nations for resources on moons and asteroid belts, some customs endured—like simple, archaic paper and ink.
“Keep it with you until the end of your leave,” Magister Oroyu says.
“My mind is made up. I’m done with this. I want to go home. There is nothing for me here.”
He places his dark hand over mine, and I can’t break eye contact. “No, little falcon. Listen to me. Keep the letter. When you change your mind, you can always discard it and come back once your leave is over.”
When. Not if.
I was not going to change my mind, but something in Oroyu’s implacable dark stare had me obey. I’d humour him. That was all. After six weeks I’d make the trip out to Clanwilliam, where I’d mail the letter and then go enjoy a celebratory pint at the pub.
My personal effects were pitifully few once I’d unpacked them. My civvies consisted of two pairs of denim jeans, five T–shirts (white, non–labelled AF inventory), and a fitted charcoal flight jacket with the winged lion flashes that marked me as AF Special Ops, among a few other sundries. Everything about me screamed off–duty military.
The only other item that bore any stamp of my personality was the digital picture frame that I had bought at the Saldanha Space Port seventeen years ago and that had now come home with me. It was an outdated thing, made to look like a small, baroque gilt frame complete with cherubs and scrollwork. My seventeen–year–old self had thought the hideous device to be precious back then and had squandered a week’s allowance purchasing it.
Over the years the gold had worn to grey, and at one point I’d dropped it; a hairline crack ran diagonally from the top left–hand corner. And still I couldn’t bear to toss it away and transfer the data back down from my virtual drive onto a new frame. All my family photos were stored here: Mother, Father, my brother Johan… pictures of the farm, of the mountains. My favourite places… even old Broekgat, the pony I used to ride, though he had been dead for nine years now, according to Johan.
There were pictures from the academy days too, and those years of service that I’d seen, but I didn’t want to look at those now. I’d see his face, and that’d hurt too much.
“I’m resigning,” Michael tells me.
My heart stutters and I stare at him, unable to form the words. “Why?”
“I need to spend more time with Saskia and the kids. I’m through with active duty, and besides, what use is a cripple?”
He offers his usual self–deprecating laugh but it rings hollow. His eyes tell the truth—there’s enough pain lodged there to power one of the jump ships’ Gibson drives.
I followed that man into space. I could have stayed behind, perhaps even had a life on Earth and found a cushy job in admin on one of the orbital stations. Instead, I trekked after a married man I knew I could never have. Love made fools out of all of us. Oh, we’d been lovers, but Michael was never in love with me, and I’d been a fool to think I could convince him otherwise. I’d been doubly a fool to ignore Derik, who’d waited patiently all those years for me, for nothing.
Michael left without saying goodbye. Ten years of me playing the dutiful mistress, and all I got was an empty officer’s suite and a cleaning assistant’s terse explanation that Captain Michael Louw had caught the morning shuttle to the Callisto Base en route to Earth.
I tried to hand in my resignation two weeks later.
Even now I could look Michael up on the social networks. It wouldn’t be difficult to find him; we both have friends in common. I don’t bother making contact. Obviously. Over the years we’d been nothing but discreet. For me to go blundering into his life now like some inconvenient spectre of his infidelity would not be right. Two beautiful, blond children. An erstwhile supermodel wife who ran an NGO that supported war veterans. They were picture perfect.
Who was I to shatter these perceptions?
I was small, brown–skinned, and decidedly native, so far as Michael was concerned. While we’d been serving on board assorted vessels, these differences had not been so apparent—our crew consisted of a melange of other races and nationalities. Back on Earth, we were reminded of the people we’d been when we first left the planet behind us.
Like I was reminded now, in this tiny bedroom. Muted scuffling and chittering in the roof told me the resident population of serotine bats were still here. How many nights I’d watched them from this very window as they squeezed out through the gap in the eaves and hurled themselves into the star–speckled sky. How many nights I’d stared at the stars and wondered if I’d ever take wing myself.
If I’d been able to have words with my wide–eyed sixteen–year–old self who’d blithely filled in the AF application form on the sly…
Sandra was in the kitchen by the time I went downstairs, fussing with the clean dishes. Poised. Perfect. Not a bronze–tinted lock out of place.
“Hey,” I said.
She paused, about half a dozen side plates grasped firmly. “Oh, hi.”
“I don’t think we’ve met, at least not properly. You weren’t in this morning when Johan brought me.” I’d spoken to her via a few long–distance family conference calls in the media lounge, but even a screenwall offering the illusion that folks were in the same room as you didn’t quite make up for meeting someone in the flesh. Sandra was much taller than me, though for some reason she gave the impression of cowering the moment I’d entered the kitchen. My brother’s white trophy wife.
Sandra shook her head. “We haven’t, now that I think about it.”
We stood awkwardly, saved only by Johan thumping in. “Where’s the vaccine ampoules for the cows? They’re not in the store room,” he growled at Sandra, who looked as if she’d drop the crockery.
“How should I bloody know?” Her mouth pulled in a tight line, and she slammed the plates on the kitchen counter.
“I told you to have Essie bring them down.”
“They’re probably still in the deep freeze,” Sandra said.
For a moment I thought an ugly argument would erupt but then a child yelled from deep within the house and Sandra darted out of the kitchen. I doubted whether my younger relative needed help but it seemed like Sandra was only too happy to abandon me to my brother’s ire.
Instinctively, I pressed myself against the wall. Johan was so much bigger than me now. The past seventeen years had been bountiful, it would seem, and my brother’s girth spoke of too much of a good thing. He looked like Oom Swart from Dwarsfontein over the pass.
Odd that I’d faced down enemies on a battlefield, yet when family turned the home into a warzone, I cringed like a beaten dog.
“You going to stare at me like I’m the Devil?” Johan asked, his face contorted in a ferocious scowl. He was probably embarrassed that I’d caught him bitching at Sandra.
I shook my head, hating how like a cockroach I felt in my childhood home, in the very kitchen where Ma used to bake. Try as I might I could hardly recall those warm, yeasty smells and the taste of butter melted on a crust of fresh bread.
“Well, you’re going to have to sort out your life now that you’re back. Can’t have you lying about like the other vets. You’ve still got all your limbs. You gonna have to pull your weight round here.”
“What the—” My anger surged hot and sudden. “My life is—” Who was he to point fingers when it seemed like his own life had visible cracks?
But he was out the door already, his back turned on me like I was no more than one of the farmworkers to be ordered around.
I stood for a few moments, just to regain my composure. I’d wanted to ask the other question that I hadn’t dare voice since my arrival. How is Ma? Not talk about my problems light years away. I’d barely h
ad a chance to shake the dust off my feet and we were already arguing.
Seventeen years yawned like a bottomless chasm between us, filled with accusations. Where were you when Pa fell ill and died? Where were you when the Great Fires burnt down the plantations? Where were you when the modified anthrax killed all the livestock?
To say that I was at war, fighting so our enemy would not lay waste to our precious farm or carry away the children, would not wash with my brother. Those who remained earthbound took it for granted that the wind always raced through the scrubby veld or that rain came in the cooler months. The sun that rose and set on their world was always tame, yellow.
If I told only a fraction of the stories I held locked away in my heart, would my family be able to sleep at night? My hands were red with blood, if only they had eyes to see, and no amount of scrubbing would ever remove the stain. I’d done it all for them.
Dare I remind them that it was my AF stipend that connected the electricity to Krommedrif or sent my nieces to a private school in Clanwilliam? It was my blood money that kept my brother’s tractor pulling the plough when the crops failed.
Nowadays, the crops failed more often than not.
Ma was in a back room—one where she used to keep her sewing things and that had been set aside for guests. Now Ma lay contorted beneath a sheet. The linen was half twisted from the bed and the stench of piss hung heavy in the air. I remained on the threshold, unable to take that fateful first step that would carry me to the foot of Ma’s narrow cot.
Her condition had deteriorated even before I decided to return home. I could read between the lines when they stopped letting Ma join on the family calls, which grew steadily further and further apart the longer I remained on active duty. There was always some sort of excuse—I had to train raw recruits, Johan had to bring in the crops, no secure connection… it was all too easy to reschedule our calls. After all, the farm wasn’t going anywhere.
War Stories Page 32