by Anthology
He cursed his stupidity.
The small Thedesian town appeared as soon as they’d driven over the hill. It filled the valley on the other side, a quaint sprawl of small buildings straight out of a history museum. Smoke curled out of chimneys, and wheeled vehicles chugged down paved streets. As they drew closer, Strung saw that the homes were made of heavy materials—wood and brick—and as far as Strung could tell, everything in sight had been constructed, not printed. Making or changing anything here must be incredibly slow and difficult.
“Wow.” Cutter whistled. “Talk about untapped printer market.”
The Thedesian towed their boat right up to the outskirts of town and left them there. Before he went, he asked for another of the canisters, and in exchange, he counted out a handful of round metal disks into Cutter’s palm. “Real money,” the Thedesian said with a grin. “You buy food, drink, room, girls, eh? Then get ship fixed.”
Cutter held one of the engraved coins up to the sun. The cheap metal gleamed dully. “I’ll be damned.”
They walked into the first public building that smelled of food. At their entrance, the room quieted and half a dozen heads turned to stare. When he and Cutter sat down at the nearest unoccupied square wooden table, conversation resumed, but Strung could feel the many curious, flickering gazes directed their way. He glanced around cautiously. Everything looked heavy and worn. The chairs were scuffed, as if they’d been around for years, and some of the woven clothes on people’s backs bore stains or frayed edges, suggesting they’d been used many times. Dust motes swam through the shafts of sunlight streaming in from the small windows. A few folks met his wandering gaze and nodded politely before turning away. The Thedesians didn’t appear unfriendly; they just didn’t seem to get visitors very often.
When a young woman brought them two bowls of chunky stew, Cutter spread the handful of coins on the table. She chuckled, took three of them, and left. They watched her go; her curvy hips swayed as she walked, and her long dark hair cascaded in waves down to the middle of her back. Strung turned his attention reluctantly back to his bowl. Its rim was slightly chipped. He shook his head in amazement. These people reused nearly everything. They couldn’t just dematerialize and print new stuff whenever they wanted.
“How old do you think these bowls and spoons are?” he whispered to Cutter. His stomach turned slightly at the thought of eating off of them. “How many people have used them before?”
Cutter made a face, then shrugged. “They must wash them.” He dipped his spoon in and ate.
Strung followed suit hesitantly. To his surprise, the food tasted good. He kept eating, and refocused on the larger predicament. “Coolant systems are pretty simple, right? Someone in this town must know how to fix one.”
Cutter pushed the remaining coins around the surface of the table with a finger. He stared after the waitress with a slack expression. “What’s the big rush?” He took another bite, then pulled a black marker from a front pocket and started doodling. Cutter did this all the time; he could never keep his hands still. “This place doesn’t seem half bad. Kind of like an olden days theme park. It’s going to be while before anyone notices we’re missing anyways.”
“Maybe we can get back before anyone does,” said Strung. He looked up, then nearly coughed out a mouthful of food. “I don’t think you can do that.”
“Do what?”
“Draw all over the table.”
It was too late. A gray-haired but immensely broad-shouldered man, who Strung surmised was the proprietor of the establishment, was standing beside their table, glaring down at them. His face was darkening to a curious shade of pink, and his jaw was working back and forth as if he was chewing something sticky and unpleasant. Strung hoped sincerely that the restaurant owner and the young woman who had served them were not related because Cutter had drawn a lewd exaggerated picture of the waitress’s bare ass. It filled up most of his side of the table. “Something the matter?” he asked.
The man unleashed what Strung suspected were choice German profanities.
“Hey, it’s just a table.” Cutter stood up and spread his hands in defense. “How was I supposed to remember you use the same shit for months?”
The restaurant owner’s expression suggested he was considering slamming Cutter’s head into the defaced furniture. After some profuse apologizing on Strung’s part, and the offer of most of the metal coins they possessed, the man was mollified into merely showing them out the door with a glower. Outside, Cutter snorted. “Can you believe that guy was upset about a stupid table, and instead of asking us to print him a new one, he takes a bunch of metal chips instead?”
“The metal chips are worth more to them than the table, you moron. And thanks to you, we have barely any left.” Strung rolled the few remaining coins in his hand and hoped it would be enough to buy a way off the planet. He had had enough of this place already. He did not like the scruffiness of it, or the purple dust, and he was sick of being around Cutter. “I’ll look around and try to find a mechanic. You go back to the ship and get rid of the dope. I don’t care how you do it. Burn it, bury it, give it away, hide it in a tree, I don’t give a damn. Just make sure it’s gone by the time I get back. We can still solve this mess and get out of here before we get into any deeper shit.”
Cutter said, “I have a better idea.”
“Oh no,” said Strung. He recognized the shifty, excited twitch in Cutter’s shoulders, the lopsided, cajoling smile. “No.”
“Aw, come on. You’re not even going to hear me out? It’s a really good idea this time.” Cutter bounced on the balls of his feet, winked as if to say, Who are you kidding, you do want to know, I know you do. “What are you so knotted up over all of a sudden? Are you really that anxious to get back to your girl, because it can’t be the excitement of our jobs that you’re dying to get back to. You can’t turn all lame on me now, man.”
Strung stabbed a finger at Cutter’s chest. “I don’t care what crazy idea you have cooked up in your head right now, I am not interested in hearing it. You are the reason we are on this wacky planet that time forgot, and if we end up stuck here, or get fired, or thrown in jail, or Renata kicks me out, I am going to beat the piss out of you.” He made his face as hard as he could. He’d never been able to make Cutter take his warnings seriously, and that truth made him want to grab his friend around the throat and shake violently. Cutter would only laugh, like he used to after their childhood fights. He was much bigger than Strung, always had been, and he would lie there, rolling around and laughing, while Strung whaled on him, and then he would get up, brush them both off and continue right on doing whatever it was they were going to do anyways, as if overcoming Strung’s protests, objections, or tantrums was all part of the fun. Which it was—had been—until now.
“I mean it, Cutter,” Strung said. “I’ll meet you back at the ship.”
***
Cutter was not at the starboat when Strung returned three Standard hours later.
The good news was that there was no sign of the black canisters full of Siryean white snuff. The cargo hatch was open. The UP3122X stood gleaming in the sunlight, its door cracked slightly open.
“Dammit.” Strung shielded his eyes and squinted at the nearest line of brick houses. After half a dozen broken and pantomimed street conversations, he’d finally managed to find a mechanic who agreed to come out to take a look at the boat. She was a short, well built, unsmiling woman with blackened fingernails, who sighed a lot but spoke passable Standard. She dropped her bag of tools with a clunk, pursed thin lips, and heaved out a weary breath before opening the starboat’s engine hatch and poking around in what Strung hoped was a productive way.
A glint of metal in the dirt caught Strung’s eye. He bent down and picked it up. It was a Thedesian coin, like the ones that had purchased their meal and placated the angry restaurateur a few hours earlier. A short distance away, another glint of metal: another coin. In short order, he found three more, leading away from
the ship, as if someone had dropped them in haste.
“Oh no,” said Strung, feeling his stomach descend through his body. He opened the UP3122X printer. The sides of the printer were warm, and a burnt metallic smell laced the interior of the starboat’s cargo hold and stung his nostrils. The control panel was flashing a completion message. SCAN AND PRINT JOB COMPLETE.
It takes a UP3122X printer twenty Standard seconds to print a small metal disk. According to the printer’s finished job queue, scanning the initial model, then printing four hundred Thedesian coins had taken one hundred and forty minutes, plus an additional seven minutes to print a nylon bag large enough to carry all the canisters and the coins together.
Strung wondered what you could buy on Thedesia for that much white snuff and cash.
Then he considered, without optimism, his prospects for continued employment after a Mr. D. Sing complained to Universal Print about the activity log of his supposedly new UP3122X.
The mechanic crawled back out from under the engine hatch and wiped her hands on a black-stained rag. “Done. Should work now.” She slammed the hatch shut and looked at Strung expectantly.
He dropped all of the remaining coins into her hand. “If it’s not enough, my friend—” he paused, “former friend—will pay the rest.” He climbed into the starboat’s cockpit. “He’ll be easy to find in town—he’s not going anywhere for a while.”
S Lynn
http://robling-t.dreamwidth.org
Ffydd (Faith)(Short story)
by S Lynn
Originally published in Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction From the Margins of History by Crossed Genres Publications
Abertawe, 1919
Always more work than hands willing to turn to it, even in your own bloody kitchen. "Is that the last of the milk, then?"
Chorus of complaint and sighs from my husband's sisters. Lily and Iris and Violet have been looking after the home front, they're not used to being ordered about like relief-workers, not to scrub and fetch and stretch a ration proper. Not that it's not all the same war we've been fighting against. But.
I'd thought it would be less blood and worry, to be home again.
We fall silent as my husband edges into the room. Still a wisp, for all they've fed him since he's been home.
Still not even a shadow of him to reflect in the spoons.
Trevor smiles, hesitant as always. Still the same crooked eyeteeth. Still his. Unshaven. Iris shattered all the mirrors in a fit of rage, or pique, I never entirely know with Iris. Though no mirror ever helped his hair before, it's always been a hayrick. He looks like a naughty schoolboy.
He's barely met my eyes since I've been home, my husband. As hard to bear as how he's been lying beside me like a stone these last few nights. I'd been holding so fast to the memory of his eyes, the colour of that single word for what other languages slice up into blue and grey and green. But how can you divide the slate, the sky, the sea.
He'll never see those eyes looking back from a glass again. And there's not a word at all for what he is.
He's changed, they'd written. (Not come home, no, they credit me that much, but…but could I stop myself thinking about what they wouldn't say right out, till I had to tell myself I'd do no one much good working myself into a state. Better to think of it as seeing he's fit to join me at the relief efforts. Even if the leaving felt like an admission of unseriousness of purpose, just because I'd a husband to go home to.) And it's true. Not the sort of change one might have expected when a man's been in gaol over his conscience, neither. That one could understand—sudden starts at nothing, weeping when he'd think no one could hear? Seen my share of that this past while.
But Trevor, Trevor's is none of that.
How of a sudden he's the one offering to butcher the hen who'd stopped laying—how he'd come back in with blood round his mouth. He'd not denied it. Couldn't, wouldn't, not if it's simple truth. Just asks us to come clear in our own consciences, whether he's still the boy they loved, the man they knew.
That there itself should tell us that.
Trevor's looking round in that terribly polite way of a bloke who's only dared come in with us cooking because he's that desperate to see if the kettle's on. When he clears his throat Iris slams the cheese-grater down in the bowl hard enough I worry for her knuckles. "Put it on your own bloody self, why don't you? Ned manages."
Ned doesn't manage and we all know it, we know that Violet will be acting as her brother's lost arm for the rest of her days and the worst is she'd rather that than admit there's barely a lad left to marry proper and live her own life instead. Iris has cut her fingers on the grater. Trevor is watching his sister's hand as she sucks at her knuckle, teeth dimpling his lower lip till the blood beads. And, ah, the hunger in his eyes, until Iris finally says, abrupt and sharp, "Go see to the chickens then."
Trevor pushes out the back door into the courtyard without another word. I'm sure Iris doesn't mean to be hateful, well, I'm almost sure Iris doesn't mean to be hateful. I feel it low in my own stomach, our desperate fear of this uncharted future. Lily and Violet can see to the rest of our tea, or to Iris, whichever they please; I dust the flour from my hands and step out the back door after him.
It's a bright day, as it goes. Not raining yet at any rate. Trevor's sat on the step cuddling one of the hens in his lap. The cockerel's watching him from the wash-line, clearly not on with the notion that this sudden threat to the back-garden flock has hold of one of its wives or daughters, however gentle the embrace. I wave a hand for the bird to get off the washing and it flaps down to peck at the bricks as if we're the ones here on its sufferance. "I've not seen Iris this cross," I say.
"She's missing William." Trevor looks up, then ducks his head back down as if he'd not meant to meet my eyes for even that instant.
"Suppose I can understand that." I pause, steel my nerves with as deep a breath as I can draw through the knot of my chest. "I'd have minded it, if I'd lost you."
I can see it on his face, that thought he's not so certain I haven't. I smooth my skirts and tuck myself down onto the step beside him, just enough room not to crowd though he still shifts away. The chicken in his arms gives a small chortle of uncertainty and he pats her soothingly. "Reckon we're luckier than some," Trevor says.
Which I suppose is true, he could have been Daisy's husband, to make it all the way through the war and then die of the 'flu. Nor the health of his body ruined, quite. It's a scandal how those who refused to fight have been treated, the misery, the few who'd not come home, though of his own troubles Trevor's said as little as the men back from the trenches with no words to explain to those who'd not seen.
And of the other, only, Someone took offence.
Lily's husband comes out of the toilet at the bottom of the garden, nodding at the door with a wry grin beneath his bristling moustache; "I'd not go in there for a bit, aye?"
Dear Herbert. At least he's not mentioned the chicken. Yet. Instead he pauses in the act of pulling open the back door to squint at his wife's young brother with a keen eye for a sorry state: "Trying to grow out your whiskers?" Trevor reaches up to brush his dusting of stubble, and Herbert laughs, not unkindly. "Never mind, lad, you'll get the knack of it someday. Lil? What's on for tea, then, love—?"
Trevor's not smiling back when I look to him from the closing door. "Ah, 'nghariad, he didn't mean anything by it, you know Herbert." He's shaking his head, small, but enough to make me shiver from it. "Hm? What is it, what's the matter?"
Trevor looks at the cockerel. Meets its eyes, square on. It tilts its head at him, jerky, puzzling—takes a step towards Trevor, another, until he can reach out a finger to chuck it under the beak. "I did this to the prison barber," Trevor says, so low I want to ask him to repeat it. "The mirrors, he was frightened of me, and I looked at him, and…" A bone-deep shudder. "I could have told him to slit his own throat and he'd have done it. I could smell the blood inside his skin…"
This man who'd paid near two years of
his life to witness with his body that to raise a hand against another is never the way—"What did you do?"
He looks up, picture of misery. Scratch of nails on the bricks as the cockerel takes wing. "Asked him for a short-back-and-sides."
The smile startles out of me like the flapping cockerel. "Not enough ruddy brilliantine in the world to make that look right with you."
He sets the hen down onto her feet on the cobbles, leaving her to make her unsteady affronted way back towards the coop. "Wouldn't know, would I."
Can't but put my arm round his shoulders, can I, my husband, my Trevor. "Come back in?"
Lily is the only person in the kitchen now, mopping at a spill of jam on the table with a furious glower on her face. "Why do we marry them, I ask you?—Not you, bach," she adds when she sees I've her brother with me, small fond smile for the ridiculousness of our lives. (Hard sometimes not to be envious of Lily, thirty soon and married to a house-holder. Do we claw at each other because we've not got all that we wanted? Or do we retreat into our separate troubles?) "Trevor, I was talking with Helen and we're thinking that even if Meeting can't spare the money to send the both of you back over to the Continent I'm certain they'll at least be able to help you sort out what you mean to do for work and all?"
Been weighing on her mind something terrible, what her brothers are to do with themselves now. Though Ned's his soldier's pension, small token for it all but more than anyone would grudge for my husband. Trevor half-turns from where he's gone to wash barnyard-smelling hands under the tap. From his face he's picturing what even Friends will be able to do to find positions for anyone from this notorious family of conchies and suffragists. "Not the civil-service I don't think," Trevor says. The irony, that he'd have the vote now if he'd not chosen to go to prison. "Go back to helping Aled-mawr maybe?" (And how long will it be that we're still calling his uncle that, when will we forget the why of it now Aled-bach rests in Flanders?) "Or Da."