Wish Granted

by Peter James West

  Wish Granted

  Copyright © Peter James West 2014

  Published by: Peter James West

  ISBN: 978-0957219083

  Ref: v001

  Many thanks to NASA and the NSSDC for allowing the use of their image data for the cover of this book. The cover was taken by the Galileo spacecraft at 9:35 a.m. PST December 9, 1990, at a range of about 350,000 miles.

  Please note that this story has no relation to NASA, and NASA do not endorse this book.

  Find out more or contact the author:

  http://www.sciencefictionextra.com

  peterjameswest@sciencefictionextra.com

  Wish Granted

  Wide shoulders ripple with thick muscles that strain beneath folds of loose, grey skin. It feels no pain and knows no emotion, and yet, its golden reptilian eyes blink with a strange kind of intelligence. Loping on immense back-jointed legs it bounds across the rock with an alien grace. Its enormous barrel chest juts forwards as its thick arms swing lose by its sides. Powerful fists hang ready to pound the scattered boulders into fragments of rock and dust.

  The Kletch knows no love. It knows no friend. All it has is the voice. There is no warmth, no light, no sleep, no shelter. There is nothing. With the blackness of the sky comes a bitter cold that knows no end. To sleep would be to drift into a frozen coma without end. Instead, the Kletch rolls itself into a tight ball and flexes its muscles in sequence, straining against itself to generate enough body heat to stay alive.

  The black sky shines with white specks, but the Kletch seals its eyes tight against the cold, rolling its bulging eyes within their heavy grey lids. The blackness is a time of waiting. A time of shivering and longing for the warmth to return.

  After many hours, the bitter cold recedes. The Kletch lies helpless on the hard rock, shuddering until its blood thins enough to enable its cramped muscles to unwind. The darkness has been exhausting, but the warmth seeps into its coiled body, taking away the stiffness of its muscles, and filling its veins with the burning power of life. The rocks become warm under the rising yellow light. The Kletch spreads itself across the rocks and absorbs their heat. It clings to the warmth until its blood pumps fast and thin.

  From massive fists, it extends its sharp, black talons. They glint in the bright light. Struggling into a crouching position, the Kletch rolls and stretches each muscle in turn, waiting until it can balance upright. With some flexibility restored, it pulls itself upright and stands like an ancient monument amongst the scattered boulders. Its grey skin is a perfect match for the dust that covers the ground beneath its feet. The Kletch remains motionless, waiting for its energy to return. Time passes and the hot light bathes its rough dry skin.

  With blood pumping, and muscles rippling with power, it takes its first lumbering steps. Clumsy at first, limping and stumbling across the ground, it rolls its heavy shoulders until the last knots have worked themselves out. From a crawl to a trot, from a trot to a lope, the Kletch sucks in the rising heat and pumps its powerful legs in an endless cycle of strength. It never slows or tires so long as the warm light bathes its skin. It covers the dusty surface at a sprint.

  Moving fast, its golden eyes take in the craters ahead. A smooth grey semi-circular dust bowl awaits. There are no boulders in the crater, no rocks or features, only a vague sense of familiarity. The Kletch races forwards in three bounding strides, its arms rising up above its head. Before it reaches the rim, it slams its calloused forearms on the dusty ground, tilting its head backwards as it allows its muscular hind quarters to slide forwards. The Kletch grinds to a halt amongst plumes of dust that billow up into the blackness above its head. Specks of dust shimmer in the yellow light before making their slow descent towards the ground. When every speck has settled in the crater's bowl, the Kletch crawls into the centre of the crater and crouches down to wait. It knows that soon it will come.

  The Kletch's eyelids slide sideways, opening up to reveal golden orbs that twitch in opposite directions. One black slit faces the grey ridge of the crater, while the other scans the blackness above. The light is still warm. It doesn't have to flex its muscles.

  When the blue globe comes, it is beautiful as always. Bright swirls of blue and green shine against the empty blackness around it, pushing the darkness back and demanding attention. The Kletch drags its talons back and forth through the dust of its own shadow as its eyes stare upwards in wonder. The blue globe is mesmerising. Through puffy white swirls, the Kletch gazes down upon wide blue oceans and sprawling patches of lush green land. These things the voice has named before, but there are many other things that it cannot name. The Kletch watches them all. Sometimes it asks questions, hoping to learn more about the distant things that it doesn't understand. The voice may answer, or it may not. The voice is the source of all knowledge, and also the source of torment. By answering a question it can bring pleasure, and by denying an answer it can bring pain. The Kletch is driven by a ferocious need to understand. Maybe by understanding, it will one day be able to journey to the blue globe itself. It dreams of dancing with the strange creatures that it has seen on the blue globe's surface. On the blue globe, it would never have to be alone. On the blue globe, it could always be warm.

  The voice has no form, but the Kletch can feel when it is close. Even now, it lingers in the back of its mind, probing and testing, looking for any weakness to exploit. The Kletch scans the crater's edge with one darting, wild eye while the other examines the blue globe above, yearning to see every detail of the creatures that roam its colourful surface. The Kletch's golden eyes dilate as it stares into the distance. It watches the golden beasts that run with fur upon their backs. It watches the swimming beasts with rows of sharp white teeth. The Kletch asks the voice to name them all, but the voice doesn't answer.

  One creature floats above all others. Its face comes to a point, and its arms carry long brown strands that flutter as it glides.

  'Why does it not fall?'

  The voice remains silent, but it is near.

  'Why does it not fall?' The Kletch asks again.

  Silence.

  The creature flies above the land and the oceans floating with effortless grace. It knows no barriers. It is free. Its skin is different. It isn't grey and hard like the Kletch's, but brown and smooth, made of many fluttering strands. When it turns to swoop towards the ground, the Kletch is excited to see that it has talons. It plummets into a fierce dive towards the ground, arms tucked back towards its tail.

  'Now it falls?'

  'It hunts,' the voice replies.

  Hunts? The Kletch has never heard the word before. It forms a different shape in its mind. The creature swoops close to the ground before levelling its dive into a rapid horizontal sweep. Low and fast, it snatches at something on the ground and speeds upwards once more. The Kletch watches it cling to something small and furry, something terrified. It hunts.

  'Why does it hunt?'

  The voice is silent once more. The blackness seems closer than ever.

  After watching the creatures for a long time, the Kletch lies down to rest. The warmth of the yellow light will not last for ever. If it is to sleep, the Kletch must do it now, before the blackness returns. This is the only time that it is safe to relax its muscles without the need for flexing and straining to maintain the warmth of its body.

  The Kletch curls into a ball and dreams of the creatures that it has seen. It dreams of running amongst them, floating and hunting, running across the land, and swimming in the oceans. It wants to be with the other creatures, more than anything, but when it wakes, it finds that it is alone once more.

  Soon the blackness returns. It drains the heat from the rocky ground as though it had never been there. The Kletch starts to shiver on the cold ground even be
fore it is fully awake. It has slept too long. Gathering its limbs into a tight ball once more, it begins the endless process of flexing opposing muscle groups to generate enough heat to keep its blood from freezing in its veins. The bitter cold seeps into its body. It shuts its eyes tight and waits for the yellow warmth to return. The wait is long and tortuous. The ground stings against the Kletch's thick grey skin, and its blood thickens in the darkness, becoming slower as the blackness surrounds its trembling body. It cannot open its eyes but it knows the blue globe is far away now, lost beyond the crater's edge. Hours pass. Muscles cramp and strain.

  At last, the warmth begins to return. The Kletch keeps its eyes closed until it is warm enough to open them without tearing the frozen lids. Gradually, the rock thaws and the yellow ball rises high into the blackness above, casting yellow light across the ground. The Kletch's numb thoughts begin to clear. Soon it is crawling, loping, and sprinting to the next crater as it has done so many times before. It pumps its thick muscles until its blood is hot and thin. It sprints and leaps, leaving deep imprints in the grey dust behind it.

  The next crater is small but deep. Some fragments of rock remain, but most of the ground is covered in a thick grey dust. The Kletch pounds its fists into the ground, stirring the dust into shimmering white clouds that glow in the yellow light. The Kletch watches the shower of dust specks settling slowly towards the ground around it.

  When the blue globe returns, the Kletch wastes no time in raising its golden eyes to search for new creatures. It stares as far as it can see, and soon discovers a long grey beast with a horn that is mounted on top of its head. The creature charges back and forth across the land on powerful legs.

  'What is this beast?' The Kletch asks.

  When there is no answer, it raises one huge fist to check its own face for a horn. It finds nothing. Its face is little more than rough folds of skin like the rest of its body.

  On the blue globe, the horned creature collapses part way through a final charge and lies still on the ground. A white oblong creature appears nearby. It doesn't move. There are more creatures inside it and some of them climb out. Tall, thin and white, these lean creatures move towards the fallen beast and examine it. They take its horn and climb back into the oblong white creature before it moves away.

  'What are they doing?' the Kletch asks.

  'They hunt.' The voice sounds distant, but it has returned.

  The Kletch considers all that it has seen. It searches for more of the tall thin creatures and finds them scattered all across the land. They are small and weak, but there are so many of them. The Kletch wonders how it failed to notice them before. Some are white, like the ones that hunted, while others come in many different shades and colours. They move in strange ways and gather into groups. The Kletch tries to understand what it has seen. It watches the blue globe and drags its talons across the ground beneath its feet. After a time, it sees a green crater on the blue globe. A great number of the thin creatures are gathered inside it, but it doesn't have any boulders.

  'What are these creatures?' the Kletch asks. 'What are they doing?'

  The voice waits a long time before answering. 'They are people,' it finally says.

  Some of the people gather in the green craters, while others travel the land alone. Still more fight amongst themselves, hunting each other in packs. The Kletch watches them all with interest. The voice responds to no more of its questions, but it doesn't mind so long as it can watch them. The yellow light grows warmer and soon the Kletch finds itself exhausted. It lies down and sleeps a fitful sleep, dreaming of people and craters that are not grey - but green.

  Blackness returns, chasing the light away. It leaves nothing but biting cold in its wake. The Kletch wakes to find itself shivering once more. It stares at the white dots amongst the blackness, and wonders if each one might be an eye of the voice - thousands of eyes watching it from the infinite blackness. The cold grows bitter, stretching icy fingers around the Kletch's limbs. It closes its eyes tight and curls into the smallest ball it can manage, flexing each muscle in turn. The pain is worse this time. The exhaustion might never end. Time passes, but each moment lasts longer than the last. Soon it seems as though eternity must have been and gone a hundred times.

  When the yellow warmth finally returns, the Kletch finds it difficult to move. Its blood has thickened into a stiff paste. Aching eyelids struggle to open so that dark slits can peer from golden orbs across the ground. The eyes lack their usual twitching alertness.

  For a long time, the Kletch lies motionless on the ground, unable to move. It starts to fear that the blue globe might come and go before it is able to stand. Fear builds to panic and with an incredible effort it manages to force a shudder through its whole body. It isn't much, but it's enough the start the muscles back into motion. Each limb loosens just enough to start the process of flexing and straining the muscles once more. In degrees, it struggles against the bone freezing cold of the blackness and soaks up the gathering warmth of the rising yellow light. Its blood thins, and it succeeds in limping towards the nearest new crater, but it cannot find the grace and speed that it had before.

  The new crater is immense. The wide grey bowl is littered with rocks and fresh, unbroken boulders. The Kletch smashes some of the boulders with its huge fists, sending rocks skittering across the ground. It hobbles towards the crater's centre and crouches down on its haunches, trying to loosen the stiffness from its aching muscles.

  The blue globe is already halfway across the blackness. Too much time has been lost. The Kletch lifts its bulky head and searches the globe's surface once more. It's not long before it finds the thin creatures again. There are so many of them. Their bodies are thin and weak. The Kletch wonders how they were able to hunt the powerful grey beast with the horn. It watches them walking and running, fighting and hunting. Some sit in their green craters and walk in seemingly random circles.

  The voice had called them people. Two of them were walking through the green crater together. It was a park. The Kletch was sure of it now, but it didn't recall the voice having told it so.

  'It is a park,' the voice said.

  The Kletch turns one eye towards the crater's edge. The yellow warmth reflects against the grey dust, making it difficult to see if there is anything beyond the shadows of the rocks.

  'They are walking,' the voice says.

  The Kletch jerks both eyes towards the people in the park. They are close together now, arms encircling each other. One of them looks even stranger than the other. The Kletch wonders whether there might be more than one type of creature in the park? Maybe there were more creatures that it hadn't seen before.

  'Are they both people?' it asks.

  The voice laughs, a soft, hollow laugh that echoes in the distance. 'They are both people.'

  'Why are they different?'

  'They are man and woman.'

  The Kletch thinks about these new words. Man and woman. It sounds as though it might mean something, but the Kletch doesn't understand. It watches them walk and move their faces. The people have a holes in the middle of their face and they move them as they walk. The Kletch wonders whether they have to move their face to maintain balance on such weak legs.

  The voice laughs again but it feels more distant than ever. 'People have mouths. They move them to talk.'

  The Kletch does not understand this at all. It gazes at the holes in their faces and wonders what it means to talk.

  'They share their thoughts by moving their mouths,' the voice says. This makes some kind of sense. The Kletch wonders why they would need to do such a thing, but it understands about exchanging thoughts - in a way.

  A shadow slid along the edge of the crater. Jerking round, the Kletch raises its enormous fists in anger. For a moment, it felt like it was not alone. It knew that the voice had to be somewhere close. It was hiding and waiting. It wanted to trick the Kletch. It wanted to make it hurt.

  The Kletch searches the crater's edge, but there is nothin
g there. The shadows have gone now. Despite what its eyes tell it, the Kletch can still feel the voice's presence, pulling at the corners of its mind. The Kletch fights against it, fearing an attack. It struggles to fend off the voice while images of the blue globe flash across its mind. The man and woman are walking in the park. It's important. The Kletch knows this somehow, even as it shuts its eyes tight in fear. Through the thick grey eyelids, the images continue to blaze across its mind, clear and sharp. The Kletch struggles to understand what it all means, but there is something else too - sound.

  The Kletch opens its eyes in shock. It leaps out of the crater - an involuntary reflex that sends it high above the ground. It lands just outside the crater's rocky rim. Its muscles are tight and ready for violence as it scans the horizon for the source of its confusion. It can see nothing but the long shadows cast by boulders as they warm beneath the yellow light. Swivelling its thick neck back and forth, the Kletch lopes back towards the centre of the crater. It crouches down in the same dusty imprint that it had just left, and drags its talons back and forth across the ground, leaving deep furrows in the dust. The ground feels warm beneath its hind quarters.

  'These are the sounds that people make,' the voice says.

  The Kletch doesn't trust the voice. It listens to the strange new noises, but it doesn't remember having heard such sounds before. There has only been silence. The Kletch can make no noise, and the voice shares its thoughts without the need for sound. The Kletch wonders why people would want to make such noises. Could they not share thoughts without moving their mouths? The Kletch wants to understand. It stares at the blue globe and tilts its head to one side. The people are making lots of noises as they walk. Their mouths move, and sounds come out. There is a warmth too. The Kletch can feel it somehow, heat on their backs and a thin breeze against their thin pale skin.

  'Katherine, why do you look so sad? Are you not happy for me?'