Tales from the Edge: Escalation: A Maelstrom's Edge Collection

by Stephen Gaskell

  "Help me," I felt. "Help me." Was the feeling coming from me? I didn't think so, but where?

  Hanerah's face wore an expression of triumph. "So you can feel it! I thought so."

  "What is it?" I felt as though something had crawled into my mind, to lodge there like a scorpion under a rock. I even shook my head, but the presence remained. And the air felt strange.

  "Come and see!" All of a sudden Hanerah was as enthusiastic as a child. She tugged at my hand and I took a grudging step forwards. The world had become nightmarish; the blood-red tower, the glaring sand, and Hanerah's hand in mine did not feel like a human hand at all, but as though I clutched an insect's carapace. But I didn't have the strength to pull away. The walk to the base of the tower seemed to take forever.

  "There's no way in," I heard myself say.

  "Oh, but there is." Hanerah raised a hand and a spark flared deep in the red wall. A black space appeared. "In we go."

  Inside, it was suddenly cool and moist. There was a central column in a round room pinpointed with sparks: were all of them potential doors, then? That feeling rang again inside my mind. "Help me!" It echoed, insistent. Hanerah released my hand and ran lightly up the steps. I turned. The door was no longer there. What the hell? I hesitated. I didn't want to follow her, but I couldn't get out. If it was a trap… but I needed her to open that door again. I took a breath and went after her.

  The place felt very old. Each step had a worn groove in the centre, the mark of generations of feet. Here, however, it was dry, the air filled with that chemical smell, which was growing stronger. It was curiosity as much as duty which drew me on.

  "Here he is," Hanerah said, with a shy pride. "My friend."

  I took one look at the roiling thing which filled the chamber and could not take another step.

  *

  I had never seen an Angel before, but I knew a man who had. It was not long after the destruction of my homeworld. The refugee fleet was limping towards what it hoped was sanctuary: the planet on which I now stood. I had been standing by the viewport, staring out at the fleeing stars and trying, against my better judgment, to make sense of their configurations, when one of the crew members, a man who fancied himself as an old space hand, came up behind me.

  "Never know what you're going to see, out there… I saw an Angel, once."

  "You're kidding me. They're rare, aren't they?"

  "I'm not joking. I was looking out of the viewport just as you are now when something swam into view. It was massive, I'm telling you, a mess of tentacles and spines. It attached itself to the viewport. I had to chuck myself backwards in case the bastard got in. But it was only a minnow. Only a little one, too." He looked at my face and laughed. "Not scared of a baby, are you, Doc?"

  'Now you mention it," I said ruefully, and he laughed.

  "Don't worry, you won't see any. There's a sweeper outside – it'd knock them off the ship. They'd be after the cybel. Bloody nuisance they can be, too. But as you say, they're rare."

  Now, I had never been so close to something so huge, so alien. It filled me with an almost religious terror and for the first time I had an inkling into what motivated the Karists. Then the sweeper came along, a bristling machine running a blasting wave before it, and the minnow spiralled off into space. I did not sleep that night.

  *

  This was no minnow. The domed chamber at the summit of the tower was big, and the Angel filled it. It must have been three times the thing I'd seen on the ship. It pulsated, mimicking breath, and with its membranes wrapped around itself it resembled a great black flower about to bloom. Energy crackled about it and this was, I now realised, the source of that chemical smell, but it felt wrong, like a battery sparking out and wearing down. I could see a coil of something—energy?—in the slit of its mouth, but it looked hazy, as if seen through gauze.

  "Where….where did this come from?" I heard myself say.

  Hanerah smiled. "It arrived with a ship. One of the first mining landers – a long time ago now. They tried to kill it." Her pale eyes grew fierce. "But it escaped, and my tribe found it. It grew strong again – there are places in the deep desert which contain a kind of energy, on which it could feed. It – affected us."

  "Are you Karists, then?"

  "I know of them," she said, indifferently, "but they are not like us. We have had such visitors before, you see. It is an old alliance. They whispered to us. They gave us the gift of prophecy."

  Pride filled her voice. I looked at the Angel. Its six eyes, as black and cold as the void, stared back at me with an arachnid intelligence.

  "And now?" I said.

  "It is ailing," Hanerah hissed. "You can feel it, can't you?"

  "I – " There was something wrong with the thing, but it was still powerful. Now I knew what had been making me feel so alive. Somehow, its energy had accompanied Hanerah, and I had been feeding off it.

  "I want you to cure it."

  "Listen to me," I said. From somewhere, I found the strength to take her arm and pull her out of the chamber. "I know it doesn't want to hurt me," I added, and for the first time realised this was true. That feeling echoed in my head. Help me. "But I don't know anything about their anatomy. No-one does, unless the Karist priests might –"

  "The Karists cannot come here. They seek only their own ends: they would use it as a weapon. It is not a weapon. It is a living thing." The words my friend came back to me: how had this tribeswoman come to such a point? She clutched at me. "You have to help it!"

  "Hanerah, I don't think I can. Where would I begin?"

  "You felt it, did you not?"

  "It – influences - you, doesn't it? And has it communicated to you what's wrong?"

  "No."

  She looked so downcast that I said, "Look. I'll try. But I can't promise anything."

  I had a feeling that what ailed the thing was simply lack of cybel. They said this was how the Karists controlled them, after all: withholding and donating the energy form, the only way that they could bend an Angel to their will. But no-one knew for sure and the only cybel here that I'd heard of was found in the drives of the ships at the spaceport, and I wasn't exactly willing to unleash a starving Angel onto those. Besides, why hadn't it gone there itself? Maybe it had travelled from the deep desert and run out of energy.

  I took a deep breath and stepped back through the door. The Angel seemed to have shrunk, then I realised that it had wrapped its gel membrane more tightly about itself. The membrane appeared stiffer, as though the thing was drying out.

  "All right," I said, aloud. "Tell me – no, you can't, can you? Show me what's wrong."

  And the Angel did so, but not in words. Instead, I saw images.

  It showed me a great shoal of minnows, travelling against the rearing gas clouds of forming galaxies. Songs soared in the bright void and for the first time I understood why these aliens had been named by us as Angels: they saw themselves as utterly free, yet united by a connection which my brain could not encompass. 'Love' was a pallid imitation. This Angel was very old, I now knew, and the loss of its kin was like the loss of a limb. I had always seen them as terrifying, but this thing was filled with a great sadness and a strange innocence: they did not know why we were so afraid.

  "Help me," I felt.

  "I don't know what to do. What is wrong with you? How can I cure you?"

  The feeling in my mind was, I thought, a kind of humour. "Cure? You cannot cure me. I need your help, not your treatment."

  "I don't understand – " I started to say, when there was a rumble from outside and the tower shuddered. Hanerah gave a cry. The roar of an engine reverberated through the chamber and the Angel shrank further into its membrane. I remembered that sense of being followed: it seemed that, indeed, we had been. I rushed to the single window and looked out. One of the mining vehicles hung at the base of the tower, its hover-engine engaged and shuddering. Nothing wheeled could have made it across this friable sand, but a flyer had no such disadvantages. Three robed
figures leaped from it, running for the tower.

  I cannoned into Hanerah in the doorway. "Karists! They must have detected its presence. How did they get in?"

  Her face was grey. "The same way I did. You cannot let them take the Angel!"

  "Hanerah, I don't know how to stop them. I'm not even armed."

  You must run, I felt from the Angel. It seemed quite calm. Hanerah hesitated, but I am more of a coward than she. I grabbed her hand and we fled down the stairs to the tower's base. We reached the hall in time to conceal ourselves behind the column; I caught a glimpse of the robed Karists tumbling up the staircase and as one of them looked back, I recognised the nameless man who had come to see me after Moria's death. They weren't alone. A hump-backed figure followed them: peering cautiously around the column, I saw glaring eyes in a face like a skull, all the flesh worn down into a mass of lines. The hump was a glowing shield attached to the man's back. He looked almost more inhuman than the Angel.

  "They'll take it prisoner," Hanerah whispered. She tugged urgently at my sleeve. "We have to help it!"

  "There's nothing we can do." Inside my mind, the Angel communicated.

  "Help me."

  "I cannot!"

  "Help me. You must run."

  For a second, I thought these instructions were contradictory. Then I realised they were not. A sudden memory came back to me: my family and my lottery-lucky name pulsing in the palm of my hand. You must go! I won't leave you! You must!

  "Come on!" I said. Hanerah's eyes widened: she, too, had experienced the Angels' command. Together we raced out of the tower: I expected to hear the flyer tearing towards us, but it remained, its engine idling. The pulse of it echoed the pound of my heart. Hanerah zigzagged across the sand and once more I followed in her footsteps: she led me up a nearby ridge, made of yellow stone. There, we looked back. The tower stood silent for a moment, then, "Do not look!" Hanerah cried. We threw ourselves to the ground, shielding our sight, but I still saw the blast behind my eyelids and the rocks shivered and shook.

  When, finally, we raised our heads, the tower was no longer there. A circle of red stone – the base – was all that remained, with part of the shattered column rising from it like a vertical tongue. Nothing else was there: no rubble, not even dust, save for a plume of rose-coloured smoke which wisped up into the sky. A second later, I realised that it was not smoke, but that strange energy: all that was left of Hanerah's Angel. The ground quivered and I saw a hole open beneath the Karists' flyer; a moment later, it, too, was gone.

  "What happened?"

  Hanerah looked at me in shock. "It's dead."

  "At least it took the Karists with them." I paused. "I'm sorry I couldn't save it, Hanerah."

  "You were willing to try."

  We looked at each other.

  "What did Moria take from you?"

  "He saw it. He must have been exploring – I don't know why. It wasn't at the tower, but further south. I thought the Angel would kill him, but he escaped."

  "But what did he take?"

  "He took the Angel's freedom. He must have told someone that it was here."

  "And the Karists followed."

  We stared back at the tower, as quiet as if it had always been a ruin.

  "What will you do now?" I asked.

  "Go south."

  I hesitated, but what had I to lose?

  "Can I come with you?"

  She looked startled, but, I thought, pleased.

  "It wanted me to remember," I said. "That's what it meant by 'help.'" I thought again of my family.

  "You can speak to my tribe," Hanerah said. She seized my hand. "We can remember it together."

  So we began the long journey south. As we walked, I thought that when night came, and we rested, I would tell her what had caused the Angel to sicken: not this alien world, or even lack of cybel, but loneliness. And I was not prepared to follow it.

  CONTRIBUTORS

  ★

  Aliette de Bodard writes speculative fiction: her short stories have garnered her two Nebula Awards, a Locus Award and a British Science Fiction Association Award. She is the author of The House of Shattered Wings, a novel set in a turn-of-the-century Paris devastated by a magical war, which won the 2015 British Science Fiction Association Award, and its upcoming sequel The House of Binding Thorns, out in April 2017. She lives in Paris.

  ★★★

  Jeff Carlson is married to a twin. They have two sons. Nothing else in this story is real. For example, he can't fly spacecraft and there are no blue snakes in our solar system. Jeff is the international bestselling author of Plague Year, Interrupt and The Frozen Sky. To date, his work has been translated into sixteen languages worldwide. Readers can find free fiction, videos, contests and more on his website at www.jverse.com.

  ★★★

  Coming via Wolverhampton, Dublin and London, Jonathan Cooper is a novelist and occasional journalist now living in Amsterdam. He has written on film, TV and pop culture for the Mirror and the Independent and has short fiction published in the New London Review and Scrivener Creative Review. He is also the author of Lethbridge Stewart: The Showstoppers, a new novel featuring Doctor Who's very own Brigadier.

  ★★★

  Jaine Fenn is the author of the Hidden Empire series of character-driven Space Opera novels, published by Gollancz, as well as numerous short stories in the SFF genre. She also teaches Creative Writing, and has recently written dialogue for the Halo computer games franchise. She intermittently blogs at www.jainefenn.com - where you can find some free fiction - and tries to resist ranting on Twitter, where she is @JaineFenn.

  ★★★

  Stephen Gaskell's work has appeared in Clarkesworld, Interzone, Years Best Military SF, and elsewhere, and he is currently seeking representation for his debut novel, The Unborn World, a dystopian eco-thriller set in Lagos, Nigeria. An alumnus of University College, Oxford, he holds degrees in physics and artificial intelligence. As well as helping to develop the Maelstrom's Edge universe, he is Senior Writer at Amplitude Studios, working on their forthcoming 4X strategy title, Endless Space 2. He lives on England's south coast with his wife and daughter.

  ★★★

  Karin Lowachee was born in South America, grew up in Canada, and worked in the Arctic. Her first novel WARCHILD and her third novel CAGEBIRD were finalists for the Philip K. Dick Award. CAGEBIRD won the Prix Aurora Award in 2006 for Best Long-Form Work in English. Her books have been translated into French, Hebrew, and Japanese, and her short stories have appeared in anthologies edited by John Joseph Adams, Nalo Hopkinson, Jonathan Strahan and Ann VanderMeer. Her fantasy novel, THE GASLIGHT DOGS, was published through Orbit Books USA.

  ★★★

  Tomas L. Martin is an author and scientist living in Oxford, England. He writes science fiction and magical realism, and his stories have appeared in venues such as Nature Futures, Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show and Digital Science Fiction. When not writing, Tomas is a postdoctoral researcher in Materials Science at the University of Oxford. He manages the atom probe tomography laboratory, analysing materials such as aeroplane engines, nuclear reactors and semiconductor devices at the atomic scale. He has a PhD in chemical physics from the University of Bristol, where he investigated surface dipoles on the surface of synthetic diamond. He is also editor of the scientific journal Materials Today Communications. You can read more about his work at his website www.tomaslmartin.com

  ★★★

  Alastair Reynolds was born in Barry, South Wales in 1966. He started writing science fiction at a very early age. After graduating from Newcastle and St Andrews universities, he began a career in space science which lasted until he turned full-time writer in 2004. He has published fourteen novels since 2000, and more than sixty short stories. After a long period in the Netherlands, he and his wife are now settled back in Wales.

  ★★★

  Liz Williams is a science fiction and fantasy writer living in Glastonbury, England, where she is
co-director of a witchcraft supply business. She is currently published by Bantam Spectra (US) andTor Macmillan (UK), also Night Shade Press and appears regularly in Realms of Fantasy, Asimov's and other magazines. She is the secretary of the Milford SF Writers' Workshop, and also teaches creative writing and the history of Science Fiction. Her novel BANNER OF SOULS has been nominated for the Philip K Dick Memorial Award, along with 3 previous novels, and the Arthur C Clarke Award. Liz writes a CIF column for the Guardian and reviews for SFX.

  ★★★

  Rob Ziegler writes contemporary and speculative fiction. His debut novel, Seed, was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for year's best novel. Rob and his wife live in western Colorado, where they spend as much time as possible in the mountains. He is currently at work on his second book. His website: www.zieglerstories.com.

  THE MAELSTROM'S EDGE UNIVERSE

  Tales from the Edge: Escalation is the second collection of short stories set in the Maelstrom's Edge universe. In addition to this collection, the first two books in the Battle for Zycanthus series, written by Tomas L. Martin and Stephen Gaskell, Maelstrom's Edge: Faith and Maelstrom's Edge: Sacrifice, are available now on Amazon Kindle, at http://amzn.to/2cwsS28

  Maelstrom's Edge is a new science fiction setting, where the far future colonisation of the galaxy's spiral arm has been halted by the emergence of an apocalyptic wave of destructive energy, the Maelstrom. As worlds and civilisations are torn apart by the Maelstrom's implacable approach, the people living on the Edge fight for the chance to escape.