“Whatever.” Browne shook her head. “Just keep this damn thing moving.”
An hour later I was jolted out of bed, my body writhing at the electric prod of a stun baton.
“That machine’s stopped again,” Browne growled. “Fix it, or I’m putting you in solitary for the next month.”
Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I stumbled out to the field. Davey the tractor was rolling back and forth across the same six feet of dirt, like my Davey pacing as he stewed over some hurt or scheme. I laid a hand on the bodywork and the machine stopped, lights blinking in acknowledgement of my presence.
Cracking open the control panel, I switched on its monitor and started exploring Davey’s mind. It was getting caught in loops of logic, refusing to act until it could think its way clear. But it was a simple AI without any skill in self-reflection, so instead of finding a solution it just rolled back and forth, the frantically running engine making it hotter and hotter under the bonnet.
As I stared at the subconscious workings of the tractor, I realised that my own subconscious had been at play. I’d missed my Davey so much that I’d given the tractor his habits. Now its programs were so tangled up, there’d be no clearing it without a complete wipe. I didn’t want to do that to my Davey.
Dozens of other prisoners stood, picks and shovels idle in their hands, as they watched me grapple with the tractor while Browne paced impatiently beside me. It can’t have been all that exciting, but then neither was digging dirt.
Now I understood, the answer was obvious.
I drew the AI’s attention to a part of its own code, highlighting what I saw as crucial flaws. It was like telling someone they were being an idiot.
Suddenly the engine growled. Wheels spun and Davey the tractor raced away from me, just like my Davey had outside that casino. I ran after, head spinning as I fought for breath in the thin air, and flung myself on the back just as I would have fainted. Behind me, Browne stood shouting and waving her stun baton.
Davey hit the electric fence. There was a shower of sparks and a rending sound. For a terrible moment I thought the fence might be tougher, but Davey was strong. Wires snapped, the engine roared, and the other prisoners cheered as I rode through the gap out onto the wastes. They started running after me, guards shouting and chasing them.
Slumped across the back of the tractor, I looked across hundreds of miles of red desert.
“Come on, Davey.” I patted the tractor’s flank. “Lets go find the real you.”
Songs of a New World
There was a lonely beauty to working with chorister birds. The first to land on the terraformed planet, Simon stepped out into woodlands unseen by any other human and released his birds to fly free among the trees. Nature surrounded him, its beauty the inspiration for the song which would spread with his birds, comforting and encouraging settlers as they landed far from home. Other choristers might be out there in the woods, but by the time he met them the settlements would be rising, humanity claiming the land it had made inhabitable. The beauty would start to fade.
Following the birds with the strongest voices, he headed along a ridge line scattered with pale, jagged rocks and young pines. Hearing the birds respond to their surroundings, he whistled a new refrain, building up the harmony of their intertwining chorus. It became more soothing, in tune with the woods.
As the wind carried away his birds’ voices, he heard those of another chorister ringing across the valley, reaching him from the distant hills.
Captivated, Simon climbed a rock to hear more. It was the most dazzling chorister song he had ever heard. As the wind died down and the voices of his birds reached him again, he was stunned by how much cruder his own work was. He had thought himself sophisticated, but his music was nothing compared with this.
Around him, the focus of the music became lost as his birds explored the new world, picking out local inspirations and broken fragments of the song from across the valley. But he could not remember where he had meant to take the composition, how he wanted the birds to sing.
All he could think about was the other song.
He had to know who had created it.
Hefting his pack of supplies, Simon trudged down the valley and toward the far side. It was a gruelling trek, the ground uneven, the fresh foliage thick and tangled. He was soon exhausted, but he kept whistling as he went, trying to keep his birds with him, striving to weave their song around this new world.
Sweat-soaked and aching, he started up hill. The other song came clearer to him here. His early musical training had been in jazz and blues, and he followed that improvisational discipline, playing around with the tune he heard, trying to whistle a fitting response. Something that would fuse their songs, and those of the two flights of chorister birds. Something that would bring a higher harmony to the planet.
Everything he tried sounded wild and clumsy, not even close to the beauty the other chorister was crafting. He wanted to cry at the wonder of that tune, and at his inability to match it.
Reaching the top of the far ridge, he sank broken to the ground. His body ached, his throat was raw, around him was a chaos of disconnected notes. Worst of all, there was no-one in sight.
Head in hands, he struggled to find even the simplest tune.
Then a whistling emerged from the woods behind him. Picking up the notes he had left discarded in his wake, it threaded them together, connecting them into the already amazing song.
Suddenly Simon heard how it could work. He smiled and leapt to his feet, whistling as he did. The tunes melted together. The valley cam alive.
Someone walked out of the trees. She smiled at Simon, and he smiled back.
“I’m Bernie.” She held out her hand. “Your song was amazing. So many ideas. I wanted to…”
She shrugged bashfully.
“My song?” Simon shook her hand. When he was done, neither of them let go. “Yours was, was…”
“Nowhere near what we’ve made together?” She tilted her head, and Simon listened with her.
Around them, a new world resounded to the beauty of their music.
Divided by a Shared Language
They say that in space no-one can hear you scream. The truth is even more disturbing. In space, no-one can tell that you aren’t American.
“No, I’m the British representative,” I said in Embalgon for the third time. I wasn’t going to correct the minister for calling me ambassador – he didn’t need to know that I was a public relations officer, only sent because others had struggled with his language. “Here to discuss the new embassy.”
“Julian Atticus, is this ‘English’ your language?” The Embalgon interior minister’s gills flapped in agitation. Though his scales remained a sedate blue, I sensed that he was finding this as frustrating as I was.
“Absolutely,” I said. “We invented it.”
“Good.” The minister narrowed one pair of eyes, the Embalgon equivalent of a smile, and sat back in his chair. “Then you represent the Americans, and their debts.”
I leaned back too, enjoying the fine silk-like materials from which the Embalgon’s made their furniture, gazing out the window at the city below. It was a beautiful place, even the factories forced to match its undulating curves if they wanted a share of the lucrative local trade. A trade the British government hoped to profit from, by setting up an embassy to regulate British business here. Our business presence was nothing compared with the Americans, but the Embalgons gave embassies great influence over their natives’ businesses, and the tax potential alone made the venture worthwhile.
At least now I knew why negotiations had stalled – the bloody Americans and their government’s bloody debts again. Was this how it felt to be Canadian back on Earth, constantly associated with the ruins of their southern neighbour’s government?
I mustered my thoughts, and the Embalgon words to express them, but the concepts didn’t quite match. I didn’t hold up much hope for this conversation.
“On Earth,
language groups are not the same as nations,” I said. “Americans and Britons share a language, but we are politically distinct.”
I could see that I was getting nowhere. It was like trying to explain the difference between sex and gender to some humans, the ideas so utterly connected in their minds that I might as well have used the same word. For an Embalgon, language, nation, culture, even economy were so utterly intertwined as to be inseparable. I might have been able to explain this to an academic, or even a teacher, but to an elected politician? No chance.
Being labelled as American was indignity enough. Now I was going to have to include their debts in the negotiations.
“So how much do the Americans owe from their previous embassy here?” I asked, realising as I said it that I couldn’t even bear to use ‘we’ or ‘us’. I could lie to the press a dozen times a day without flinching, but couldn’t bring myself to pretend to be a Yank. So much for my strength of character.
With one suckered hand, the minister held out a flat device the size of my palm. I read the figure on the screen. The sheer size of it choked my brain – nearly double what I was even authorised to discuss. This deal was not going to happen.
Unless…
“Who’s currently responsible for American businesses trading here?” I asked, as casually as I could.
The minister snorted.
“Responsible,” he said. “If only someone would be responsible for them. No-one is keeping them in line. No-one is regulating their shipping. The Great Sea only knows where all the goods are going.”
“Then whoever takes over this debt is responsible for those businesses too? For regulation, oversight, and so on?”
A look of disappointment filled the minister’s face. He’d clearly hoped to keep this part from me, to fob off a perceived burden along with the debt.
Cultural confusion can so easily cut both ways.
“Fine,” he said. “We are willing to drop twenty percent of the debt if you will just take control of those factories with it.”
“Fifty percent,” I said.
“Thirty.”
“Forty.”
“Done.”
We didn’t shake on it. Human skin feels repulsive to Embalgons, and theirs brings us out in a rash. Instead encryption codes were exchanged and attached to an electronic agreement. The deal was done.
I called our ambassador from the shuttle on the way out of atmosphere and told her the good news. In space, no-one can tell that you aren’t the Americans.
That means no-one can stop you taxing them.
Last Sunset
I could hear Haowey breathing around me, feel the flesh of her port side pulse beneath my hand. Staring through the portal in the front of her command deck, the surface of Mars rolled past beneath us - red sands, green forests, the lilac of shallow seas. Together we sang the Song of Renewal, my voice a tiny fragment of Haowey’s sonorous, wordless boom, a voice from the whales that lay far back in my starship’s genetic past. Our hearts beat together, our voices rose together, and together we watched the sun sink toward the horizon, a bright disk of hope against the void of space.
If I could have been anywhere else, I would have been. I was weary to the bone. The war might not have battered my body as it had Haowey’s, but my soul was soiled with the horrors I had seen. Now it was over, I wanted solid ground beneath my feet. No more stars. No more darkness. No more reminders of what we had seen and done.
But this was Haowey’s last wish. How could I refuse her that?
She shuddered, the deck lurching beneath my feet. Her voice trembled, fading almost to nothing. I kept the song going for her, but a blackness was descending upon me.
Perhaps what I needed was not ground beneath my feet. Perhaps what I needed was the same fate now claiming Haowey - an end to all of this. All the guilt, all the grief, all the memories.
Looking at the helmet hanging from my belt, I wondered if I would have the will to don it when the time came.
I had always assumed that life still lay ahead of me, if I made it through the war. Yet I faced a choice.
The sun touched the horizon. Bright beams scattered across the upper atmosphere. I thought that Haowey fell silent in appreciation of the sight, as she had above the many other planets she had carried me to. But the deck shuddered again, and a rattle like the falling of skulls filled the command deck.
Haowey’s final breath.
Tears ran down my cheeks.
I knew enough ship biology to know that she still lived. I had ten minutes before the final spark would fade from her synapses; before the muscles of airlocks and cargo doors would lose their strength, voiding the atmosphere and me with it.
I welcomed it. My closest companion was dying around me. I had fulfilled my duty, and wished only for peace. What better way to find that than together?
The sun was halfway below the horizon as I unbuckled my helmet and cast it aside. My view through the portal blurred, and I tried to wipe the tears from my eyes, only to realise that I was cried dry. It was not my tears that broke the last light of day into flared fragments.
Haowey was weeping.
“It’s OK.” I patted the tender spot where the portal joined her wall. “You’ll be at rest soon. We both will.”
Her eyes still ran. With the last morsel of air in her vocal chamber, she sang the ending verse of the Song of Renewal. Though her rendition was wordless, still the lyrics echoed in my mind.
“Live on, my love. A new dawn awaits us.”
“I can’t,” I whispered. “There is too much darkness. How can I face that?”
Haowey was silent, her flesh cold and still. The final line of the Song came unbidden to me, one last message from a dying friend.
“Live on for me.”
A breeze stirred the command deck. The first of the air locks had opened. Haowey was venting.
Not Haowey. Haowey’s corpse.
With a lump in my throat, I picked up my helmet and stared at my reflection in the visor, a pale, distorted image of human being. The breeze became a gust, became a storm, became a gale that snatched at my spacesuit and hurled me from my feet.
I kissed the deck, one last tear running from dry eyes, and pulled the helmet on. The fleeing atmosphere snatched me up and hurled me into space.
In the distance, a retrieval ship appeared over the horizon, as the last crescent of sunlight disappeared.
Afterwords
About the Author
I live in northern England, where the grey skies provide an excellent incentive to stay indoors and write. When not working as a freelance writer, I play board games, build Lego and read comic books. Maybe one of these days someone will force me to grow up, but it hasn’t happened yet.
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You might also like my other books:
Short stories:
Demons and the Deep - Romans, demons and Thracian pirates fight for freedom in this fantasy short story - *free in most ebook stores*.
By Sword, Stave or Stylus - fantasy short stories featuring a shadow-draped ninja, a gladiator painting in manticore blood and a knight so stupid that he just might win.
Riding the Mainspring - a collection of steampunk short stories featuring moving buildings and incredible machines.
From a Foreign Shore - history and alternate history short stories, featuring Vikings and a statue that refuses to die.
Lies We Will Tell Ourselves - the future is uncertain and the truth even more so in these science fiction short stories.
Silence on Second Street - a foul mouthed detective seeks justice on a war-scarred planet in this science fiction short story - *free in most ebook stores*.
Mud and Brass - a mudlark inventor balances love and vengeance in a steampunk short story - *free in most ebook stores*.
The Epiphany Club:
Guns and Guano - Victorian adventurer Dirk Dynamo joins an expedition to a remote island as he begins a hunt for the lost Great Library of Alexandria - *free in most ebook stores*.
Suits and Sewers - Dirk’s journey takes him into the sewers below London, pursuing ninjas in search of a stolen artefact.
Aristocrats and Artillery - As war descends on Paris, Dirk seeks the third clue to the Great Library.
Sieges and Silverware - Dirk’s adventure takes him to Germany, where strange things roam in a castle under siege.
Dead Men and Dynamite - At last Dirk has all the clues, but can he find the Great Library before his enemies do?
Ocean Gods, Roman Blades - Ancient history meets epic fantasy in an action packed novella of war, magic and one man’s struggle to find himself.
You can read free stories from me, as well as thoughts on books and writing, on my blog at http://andrewknighton.com/ . I’m also on Twitter where I go by the name of @gibbondemon .
Thanks for reading!
Dedication and Thanks
This book is dedicated to fellow writer and blogger Lisa Walker England. In the autumn of 2014, Lisa wrote about how readers come to fiction writers for their stories, yet that’s not normally what appears on our blogs. She challenged writers to join her in posting flash fiction on their blogs each Friday. It’s a challenge that has inspired me to stretch myself creatively, and that has resulted in this collection. The stories are still coming, and I’m incredibly grateful for the inspiration.
A Mosaic of Stars: Short Stories From Other Worlds Page 14