Go back to the facility, Shadia Duster. You don’t belong here. This is just one more story to take with you along the way. Walk away, finish out what little time you have left before the med-debt’s gone, and then board the first ship you come to.
Except she didn’t. She couldn’t ease around the uni; her coveralls were far too conspicuous. But she couldn’t go. She asked perm after perm if they knew where the Rowpins’ address would have put their home, and she asked if anyone had seen them—or rather, she asked if they’d seen Feef, who would have made more of an impression than just another person in the bustle. She made herself useful on this side of the barrier, distracting the uni when another perm needed to slip by. When a handful of people came with warm drinks and what must have been their entire month’s ration of treat bars, she knew who’d been working the longest and most needed the boost.
And when someone spotted the dangling pale tan arm amidst the edge wreckage, several levels up and with the inner ring destroyed between here and there, she knew how to get there. She glanced at the uni, who quite deliberately looked the other way, and then she slipped past the barrier to the half-height tech access door recessed invisibly into the slightly skewed wall, the seams not evident until released with the right touch in the right spot.
She led them into the tight darkness.
They murmured uneasily behind her, following at a slower pace so when she emerged into the maintenance shaft and flicked the control to release the stepholds folded into the pole for upward transit, she still had a moment to wait. They’d never been in such tunnels; their uneasy voices rang louder than they’d ever guess. They worried about the obvious warping in the walls, they murmured about the motionless arm they’d seen … and they wondered about her.
It’s only fair. I’m wondering about them.
Who were these people, following her into the unknown for the sake of someone equally unknown? Who were any of them, defying unis to work among the wreckage of the neighborhood? Clustering around the dangers instead of running away as any duster would do? Take nothing for granted and take what you can get, one of the common duster phrases. One would say it, and all others within earshot would finish with the chorus of And then move on!
It’s only fair. I’m wondering about me.
Shadia moved on, all right. She waited for the first tentative head to poke out of the half-height tunnel and she started climbing the pole. She took them up two levels and stepped off onto the platform … and then, remembering the layout of the wreckage they’d seen, took them farther into the structure, through an even smaller access hatch until they were just about to balk—and then she clambered out into the wreckage itself. So close to the edge, where it tumbled straight out into the core. The floor beneath her feet seemed to give a little quiver when the second person came out, and when the third appeared, there was no doubt.
The third was the uni. He gave her a guileless smile—and he bent down to instruct the others to wait. “It’s not secure,” he told them. “You shouldn’t be here.”
None of them should be here-And yet here they were.
“Found someone!” the second person, a woman in an expensive work suit from which she’d already ripped the frills so they wouldn’t get in her way. Her voice held a vibration of excitement that made her next words seem lifeless. “No. Never mind. We’re too late.”
The uni joined her as Shadia inched around the wreckage; a fourth person eased out into the open and began to cast around, hunting the owner of the elusively dangling arm. What had seemed so obvious from below was hardly that from amidst the tangle of walls and upholstery and crushed electronics.
“Good Lord, what’s that smell?“ exclaimed the man who’d just joined them; his hand covered his nose and mouth, but from what remained of his expression, it had done no good. The woman caught a whiff of the odor as well, and was the first to spot the source.
“There!” she said, flinging up a hand to point. “That.”
That. Cowering into the smallest possible bundle in the only dark, intact corner left in the residence—the upper tier of a closet, it looked like—was a mostly hairless slothlike creature. The crumpled remains of a den-cage, barely recognizable, were not far away.
Aw, ties and chains. The Rowpins. And Feef, their survivor.
She must have said some part of it out loud; the others glanced at her. Then the uni said, “I found a second one,” and the tone of his voice was clear enough. Too late. Both dead.
“That’s all there is,” Shadia said, her voice very small as it fought to get out of her throat. Nothing’s permanent.
The uni looked at her, somber. “These are the people you were asking about when you first came.”
Shadia nodded.
He gave a little nod back at her, a small gesture that shouldn’t have made her feel as it did … as though she were part of something. Something bigger than she was or he was … bigger than all of them. She frowned, caught in the moment.
“Go on back down,” the uni told those people still waiting in the tunnel. Waiting to help … except no one here needed it. “There’ll be crews here to deal with … what we’ve found.” The flooring gave a decisive tremble beneath them, and his voice grew crisp. “Go on, then. We’ll get their animal and be right after you.”
They meant well.
They cooed and they called, unable to reach the akliat through the rubble, wanting badly to preserve this creature belonging to those people they hadn’t been able to save. But the flooring gave a wicked shudder and Feef’s odor-signals only grew more intensely offensive. A gridnews hovercam floated past, stopped short, and wandered into the destruction, wavering slightly in midair as it soaked up the scene for its operators. Shadia, retreated to familiar duster ways— nothing’s permanent—eased back toward her escape. It was all too much, this joining in, this caring … she’d learned the lesson once as a child and learned it well. She hadn’t thought she’d be learning it again, that she’d been foolish enough to let herself care about these people who loved their akliat.
He was a disturbed old ex-duster. I didn’t do anything besides bring him a few meals, sneak out some of the family’s old clothing and once a pillow. An old ex-duster who wanted to return the kindness, to save me from the misleading perm ways of my family. I understood that later. And in a way I suppose he did. When he took me away from all I knew, it was the strongest lesson I ever could have learned. Nothing is forever. Things change, whenever and wherever. So embrace the change. No ties, no extended responsibilities to others, nothing to lose. Dive into the change and ride it like a wave.
The uni shouted a warning; a huge chunk of flooring broke away and tumbled down the levels, leaving the others scrambling for safety while Shadia clutched the edge of the maintenance shaft. Time to leave.
“That’s it, people,” the uni said. “He’s not coming to us. I wish there were something we could do, but—”
“Give me your uni coat,” Shadia said abruptly.
He gave her a baffled, resistant look, one arm raised to usher the other two back toward the shaft.
Shadia stepped away from it. “Your coat,” she insisted. The man and woman hesitated by the exit, watching them. “You want to save the akliat? Hand it over!”
Still baffled, less resistant, he peeled it off and passed it to her, a long, dark tailored thing that smelled of sweat and stress and physical labor. Shadia tented the collar over her head, put her hands halfway up the sleeves that were way too long for her anyway, and turned the coat into a draping cloak, turned her upraised arms into caveenclosed branches. She didn’t have to warn the others to hush; they’d done so on their own, letting their hopes burst through to their faces.
Shadia raised her arms a little higher within her self-imposed cave and gave one of the casual little chirrups she’d often heard from Feef. A long trill with a few clucks at the end, a soft repetition …
He sprang from his corner, scuttled across the rubble, and climbed her like the nig
httime tree she pretended to be. Fast enough to make them all gasp. And then she steeled herself for the stench of him … but the stench had transformed to perfume, a crisp pervading caress of a scent; his soft, suede-skin arms clung to her not with fierce intent, but gentle trust. Slowly, filled with a sweetness she could just barely remember, she let the coat slide down to her shoulders and closed it around the two of them.
They clapped for her. The man, the woman, the uni … the people several levels below on the first intact inner ring, watching it broadcast on their PIM gridviews. She met the grin of the uni with a surprised gaze, and he nodded at the maintenance shaft. “Go.”
The others went. And Shadia turned to follow, awkward under the burden of coat and akliat, in wavering midstep when the uni shouted and the grid-watching crowd gave a collective gasp of horror. She saw it from the corner of her eye, the bulk of falling debris, its screech of metal against metal as it bounced once on the way down.
She’d never get out of the way. Not in time. Dusterlike, she was ready for that … except within her whispered a long-forgotten child’s voice, something that treasured the newly rediscovered sweetness in life and didn’t want to give it up again so soon….
Something hit her hard. She twisted, trying to cushion the akliat even as she protected him, and all the while he exuded his scent of trust. A horrible crash buffeted her with sound and everything went dark, dark with a great heavy weight upon her.
She waited for the pain.
“Close one, eh?” said the uni’s voice in her ear. “Come on, then. You’re the one that knows the way, I think. Let’s get you and your new friend out of here.”
I don’t understand. He could have been killed. He doesn’t even know me, doesn’t have any of a perm’s affection for those they keep around them.
I don’t understand.
She led him through the darkness and back to the dimly lit pole shaft. She did it in silence, moving carefully to protect Feef, moving slowly to accommodate the tremble in her limbs. When they reached the level they’d come from, he put a hand on his own coat and stopped her before she remembered that dusters didn’t like to be touched by strangers, and everyone was a stranger.
“I work the duster turf, mainly,” he said, and his voice held an understanding she’d never heard before. “Never yet met one who hadn’t already lost too much to listen, but you…”
She looked at him, going wary. Feef snuggled against her and before she could stop herself, she stroked the absurd fluff of his topknot where it poked out at her neck.
The uni gave the smallest of smiles. “It’s worth a try,” he said. “This is it: we’re not so dim as you dusters think, perms aren’t. Most of us aren’t fooled into thinking what we have is forever, whether what we have is a little or a lot. Things come and go … we just … we take ‘em in as we can instead of skipping across the surface of life like so much space dust. Sure, we lose things, and then it hurts. It’s just …” He shrugged, coming to the end of his little speech and apparently not quite sure what to do with it. “It’s just that—it gives us—”
She thought of people rushing to help strangers and other strangers cheering her success with Feef and yet other strangers who mourned. Perm strangers, who somehow weren’t really strangers at all, not as dusters defined them. Perms left themselves open and vulnerable to the hurt and disillusion that dusters scorned, but …
“You could have been killed,” she said. Killed, tackling her to take them both flying into their only safety instead of diving there himself, a certain save.
“Yes,” he admitted.
“A duster wouldn’t have done it.”
“No. A duster wouldn’t.”
“You leave yourself open to lose things,” she said, and looked down at her hand a moment. Then, gently, more naturally than she’d have thought possible, she offered it to him. A perm gesture. “But it gives you this.”
His uncertain expression made way for a smile. It cracked the dust on his face and crinkled the corners of his reddened, irritated eyes. He looked terrible, and he looked wonderful. “Yes,” he said, taking her hand. Only for the briefest moment. Then he coughed and said rather brusquely, “Let’s get you and your new friend home, then.”
Feef’s House. Sounds like a good name for a pet care center.
* * *
After obtaining a degree in wildlife illustration and environmental education, Doranna Durgin spent a number of years deep in the Appalachian Mountains, riding the trails and writing SF and fantasy books (Dun Lady’s Jess, Wolverine’s Daughter, Seer’s Blood, A Feral Darkness), ten of which have hit the shelves so far. She’s moved on to the northern Arizona mountains, where she still writes and rides. There’s a Lipizzan in her backyard, a mountain looming outside her office window, a pack of dogs romping in the house, and a laptop sitting on her desk—and that’s just the way she likes it. You can find a complete list of her books at
ATTACHED PLEASE FIND MY NOVEL
by Sean P. Fodera
ASSISTANT EDITOR SOUGHT
The well-known and respected publishing house K&T Publishers has an immediate opening for an assistant editor. The successful applicant will not only have outstanding academic and practical credentials, but will also be thoroughly familiar with our current and past list of authors. A commitment to quality, a willingness to take on disparate tasks, and the ability to work under tight deadlines are essential.
Send resumé and references via ColNet to K&T Publishers, 16 Elray Circle, Landfall, Christea
Mr. Del Bradden
Science Fiction Editor
K&T Publishers
16 Elray Circle
Landfall CHRISTEA
Dear Mr. Bradden:
Attached please find my novel Beyond Here for your consideration. It is a science fiction novel, 270 refrains long. I have read the books published by K&T Publishers since arriving on Christea, and most enjoy the works of this kind that you have published. I hope I have captured the format properly.
Please listen to my novel, and be honest in your opinion.
Please do not reply to this message, as this account will no longer be active after today. I will contact you in one week with a private ColNet address for further communications.
Sincerely,
“Dr” Aly’wanshus
Christea Collegium
Office of Alien Studies
THERE you have the letter that started it all. Simple. Formulaic, for the most part—”here’s my book; I like the books you publish; read mine and get back to me.” Even if it hadn’t made me curious, I would have read it anyway. That was my job.
I had to admit this was a new approach for a submission. From an academic, obviously. Probably one about to lose his job, or move to another collegium; hence his expiring EdNet address. But 270 refrains? And an audio file? Unless he was trying to recapture the days of the bards and minstrels with an epic sf poem, I didn’t know what to expect.
But this “Dr.” Aly’wanshus’ mysterious approach had doubly caught my attention, as science fiction was my pet project at K&T. Hardly anyone was writing science fiction at the time; an understandable turn of events on a colony world where nearly everyone’s parent or grandparent had been among the first humans to arrive. Even the people back on Earth (“Homers” in colony slang) now perceived folks from “outer space” as being no more distant than someone half a globe away, though those of us who had made the trip once or twice could tell them it was a bit farther. Still, there was enough life left in my favorite genre to warrant the rediscovery of works from the pre-colonial days, and the publication of novels by a handful of young colonial writers dreaming about faster-than-light fighters and space battles.
I’d read lots of junk during the year-and-change since I’d begun K&T Publishers’ open-door pol
icy on submissions. It was a simple enough policy, if unique on Christea and the other colony worlds. We would review any booktext sent to us, from anyone.
Actually, every ’text that came in was personally read by yours truly, Del Bradden, searching for a winner. I was only an assistant editor, working for Mr. Cyril Burke, our executive editor, but I had found a terrific one just a year before “Dr.” Aly’wanshus sent me his message: Jeremy Raschon’s Starseeker. The fifth best-selling novel on ColNet that year, and the best-selling novel in K&T’s seventy-two-year history. If I hadn’t found Starseeker, I doubt we would have retained the policy so long.
There were, at the time, only the original eight colony worlds: Christea (though we weren’t the first), Almedia, Kuron, Wales, Jerral, New Rome, Beacon, and Hurst. Broadbent and Leeside had only just been discovered, and were not yet settled.
And among these worlds, there were seven colonial publishers: two on Christea; none on Wales or Beacon. Competition was fierce. A small number of Earth academics took notice of our literary output, but not in significant numbers. Colonial publications just didn’t show good sales on SolNet. We were basically limited to ColNet.
We had a total potential audience of approximately seventeen million. Most of those were on the heavily populated worlds of Kuron, Christea, and Almedia (“heavily” is a relative term, as Kuron, the most crowded, had just under five million people). The rest were on the more recently settled worlds—”provincials” with little interest in general fiction (erotica and tech manuals were the top sellers on Beacon, Wales, and Jerral).
The other publishers required writers to send their ’texts through a licensed Mediator. Earth’s government was smart when it started licensing mediators … “agents” as they used to be known. Since almost every human ever born probably fancies himself a writer at some time in his life, the population explosion on Earth in the late 2000s also caused an explosion in would-be authors. Agents already had a lock on the market, as any file submitted to a publisher that didn’t come from a recognized agent would be automatically rejected by the comp system.
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