"I was concerned about you after you told me about hearing the voices. I called your father today, and he told me you’d told him the same thing, only that it happened again this morning. He said you’ve been acting odd, and that the death of your mother may have been harder on you than you think."
Her voice was icy, "I think I’m handling it pretty well, Rupert. And the next time I decide to speak to you in confidence, I’ll think again."
He looked away, then down at his hands, clenching and unclenching on the bar.
"I felt compelled to contact the Faculty Administration. They’re concerned that the hallucinations are a symptom of Transit Instability. They’re canceling your leave so you can be evaluated." In a softer voice, he delivered the worst. "They want you on a slowboat tomorrow morning."
"You called the Administration?" Her eyes were wide with surprise and betrayal. He wouldn’t meet her eyes with his, and in her fury, she wondered what she’d see there. The revenge of a suitor scorned?
"What in the hell were you thinking? I haven’t been in transit more than five times in the last five years, Rupert, and that’s not even near the low-end estimates for the effect." She slammed her palm against the bar. "It’s the goddamn witch hunt of the century. Because you think I’ve had two hallucinations, suddenly I’ve got the instability and might become a psychotic killer or something?" She slammed with her fist this time, the joey jumped in its cage, and Logan moved closer to Rupert.
"I think you’d better leave," he said, setting the glass and rag down.
Rupert looked at him, then finally back at Kahleigh. "I’m sorry, Kahleigh, but it’s in the contract. The constables will enforce it on behalf of the University if they have to. And I could be held responsible if I didn’t report it, and you did become unstable."
There were tears in Kahleigh’s eyes. "You bastard." She looked back at him, confused, not seeing any hint of vindictiveness in his eyes. "Did it cross your mind that by the time I get off the slowboat, it won’t even matter anymore?" She choked back her emotions, tried to speak in level tones. "In ten years, my education will be worthless. My projects will have been wrapped up by someone else. And my peers will suddenly be my elders. Thanks, Rupert. It’s lucky you can’t be checked for TI for being selfish and stupid, or you’d already be gone."
"Leave," Logan said again. This time Rupert complied. He thrust his hands in his pockets as he walked the short distance towards the exit, slowed a moment as if to stop and say something more, but continued out the door.
Logan set a hand on her shoulder as she let herself cry. "File an appeal with the constables. At least you’ll have a few more days to try and straighten it out with the Administration."
She shook her head. "I can’t. It’s in the contract." He offered her a napkin and she dabbed it at her eyes. "The right to anything other than complete compliance is waived when you agree to free transit between University and project sites. They’re serious about pinning down the cause of TI. It will make slowboat travel a thing of the past." The Administration owned the quickships, every one of them. Without the threat of Instability, the stars would be truly open.
"Can’t they evaluate you here? The hospital is as modern as they come."
She shook her head, wiped at her eyes, "There’s no physical symptoms to pinpoint. They send you back, and the best minds they have poke and prod and analyze you, and hope they find some clue."
"I’m sorry then. I don’t know what else to do."
"We have to go tonight."
"To the ‘lith?"
"Yes. I won’t have the morning."
"If that’s what you want, then that’s what we’ll do. Rest in the back until closing. Then we’ll go."
She ignored the looks and smirks of the few patrons who followed her with their eyes as she made her way behind the bar and through the swinging door to Logan’s home. She’d never see any of them again anyway.
The night was still, and through the wide windshield Kahleigh could see none of the usual myriad of stars, usually visible and distinct away from the lights of any of the larger cities. A low, dark fog hid the sky.
The ground car was quiet, but still the slight vibrations and sense of motion made the joey uneasy. Its tail twitched and it clutched at the bars of its cage, riding on the seat between Kahleigh and Logan. Its small hands sometimes reaching between, toward the lights of the dash.
"Looks like your father is burning the midnight oil." Logan pointed to the bright reflection on the sky as they topped a rise near the farm.
"He’s in the garden. Hurry Logan, please."
The car accelerated, the ground effect kicking dust and stones into the dark.
As they neared, and the car cleared the last hill, Kahleigh could see the broad bright area revealed by the strings of arc lights, and that only four of the twelve ‘liths in the garden were still standing. Eight were on their sides, felled without regard to the rose bushes they’d crushed, and her father was leaning into another, working a two handed diamondsaw into its girth. The central stone, with her mother’s bench, was still standing.
Joseph turned as the car stopped, setting down the saw and pulling down his goggles. He was in stark relief against the stone in the glare of the lights as he stepped over the hissing tubes of the saw’s pneumatics, toward the rifle leaning like a black stick against a toppled ‘lith.
The joey was going wild.
It banged at the sides of its cage, then rolled onto its back and kicked with its strong hind legs in a frenzy at the cage door.
Kahleigh was already out, her door open, when the mesh of the cage door separated with a snap. Logan tried to grab the animal, but it dodged him, jumping past Kahleigh and in less than a second into the razor sharp shadows of the stones.
Joseph already had the rifle to his shoulder and was sighting along the barrel, waving it slowly over the monoliths.
"Don’t shoot it, Dad! Please don’t shoot it!"
She ran towards him, heard the other door open and the crunch of Logan’s shoes striking hard on the gravel path. In the background, over the fading hiss of the saw winding down, she could hear the joey lowing.
Its sable head appeared on top of the central ‘lith, bright eyes reflecting the arc lights like glowing prisms.
"Kahleigh...."
She heard the voice again, saw her father stumble at the same moment, turning his head towards the joey, and knew he heard it too. Even as she ran past him toward the ‘lith, he hesitated a moment while bringing the rifle to bear.
"Joseph, no!" A sound of bodies impacting, a sharp report, and something pushed Kahleigh towards the bench.
"Kahleigh...I miss you..."
She struck the ground on hands and knees, a numbness spreading through her chest, and a warm flow moistening her arms and sleeves. She crawled the last meter, drawn towards the lith, a strong warm tide rushing past her entire body, pulling her forward.
"Dear God, Joseph, call for help." Logan was beside her. "Don’t move, Kahleigh. Stay still."
"No," she whispered. "The bench." She tried to crawl forward. The joey lowed, calling her forth.
"Kahleigh...I’m so alone..."
"Please, Logan...the stone," she whispered, and he carried her forward, pressed his hand onto the numb area of her chest, and lay her on her side in the hollow of the bench.
"Lie still now, Kahleigh. Help will be here soon."
When her head touched the stone, she heard it all, felt it all. Her mother there, preserved somehow within, and the sound and sense of hundreds, thousands of others. Alien minds, unfathomable in their echoes, but clear in the emotion of their slow lowing song, of longing for life.
"Kahleigh, my dear Kahleigh. I knew you wouldn’t leave me alone."
Her realization came abruptly, the sum of the roaring, compelling tide, and the sense of those other minds inside. The understanding that the first wounded joey had not been trying to reach her, but to reach the bench in the stone, drawn in the same way she had
been. Drawn into the elaborate communal awareness, these ‘liths that drew and copied the dying mind.
The stone was growing warm beside her cheek, warm and moist, and through half-opened eyes she could see the dark pool of her own blood forming the opening to a black well; a well through which the roaring of the stone tide was drawing her, down...down.
She could feel the joey, the catalyst that awakened the stored minds, could feel its fear as it cowered behind the stone. More strongly she could feel the anguish from her father, and less clearly, Logan’s denial. He was pressing something against her chest, holding one of her hands in his, and as her vision faded she felt the comfort of her mother nearby, and of a silent prayer…Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the stone my soul to keep....
The first thing she heard was a woman’s voice, far away. "She’s coming around."
Her eyes opened to the sterile white of a faculty hospital facility. "How are you feeling, Ms. Reynolds"
The slowboat, she thought. Ten years, lost.
"Fine," she lied. Her throat was rough and dry.
"The EMTs were able to preserve you in a field chrysalis and board you for the trip back. Your wound was superficial. Just some grafting and a new lung. We revived you without complications. You’re as good as new."
She turned her head stiffly toward the voice. The doctor was a young woman of Asian descent, black hair cut in a short bob, with remarkable bottle-green eyes. "We did all the work while you were under, and you’re about ready for release." She held a chipboard, glanced at it as she spoke.
"What about the TI?"
"You don’t have any symptoms. Your EEGs are perfect, and hallucinations aren’t a factor in your case."
"But I’ve lost ten years."
The doctor checked the board. "Actually, ten months. A chartered quickship docked with your boat and brought you back to Bergemon."
"Why?"
"Why not?" said another voice. Logan stepped into view from the periphery, somehow changed. His kilt was absent; he was in plain denims and a white shirt. His smile was uneasy.
"Logan." And everything—the ending—the dying—rushed back at her. "The stones. What’s happened to the stones?"
He took her hand, "They’re still there. I made your father promise to leave the last ones unharmed. It wasn’t too hard, after I made him sit with me and the joey."
"You mean you heard her? She spoke to you?" She remembered the loneliness in the memory of her mother, alone and uncomprehending, adrift among the chorus and unity of the others. The others, so much like the joeys that they would awaken in their attempt to commune, yet so much more evolved.
The doctor seemed to sense by Logan’s glance that this was private territory, "We’ll give you a once over this afternoon after a bit of exercise, and if everything’s okay, you’ll be released." Then she quietly left the room.
"You heard her, didn’t you?" She clenched his hand. "You heard her in the stone."
Logan shook his head, a faraway look in his eyes. "We heard something," he paused, pulled a shard of stone from his pocket and placed it in Kahleigh’s hand. "Your father has heard something all along." The stone was light and porous, and she recognized the slight glint and texture of the monoliths. "He heard her just as you did, and it was tearing him apart. The University dispatched a team after we made a report. When they arrived, Rupert went to them and told them he’d been working on a project related to the monoliths." He tapped the shard in her palm. "He’d concluded they are artifacts, and that they somehow capture EM resonances and store them. They caught him in his lie, and asked him why he reported you for TI if he knew what you heard was possible."
Kahleigh suddenly grasped the motives for Rupert’s betrayal. "He thought I’d make a report before he could publish the results himself." She shook her head in disbelief, to the extent the stiff muscles would allow. "What did they do with him?"
"I guess the Administration doesn’t fool around. They’re slowboating him to Earth. You were already iced and on the way when we found out. They wanted access to Matilda to test some theories about the stones. I refused unless they let me tag along on the quickship to bring you home."
She closed her hand around the stone, wondering how many stored minds were already gone, how many ‘liths crushed into soil. "You heard something, Logan. Tell me what you heard." The need to know was intense; to know that somehow some part of her mother survived—that though she wasn't there in the end, there was still some part of her mother she could touch.
"We heard you, Kahleigh. An echo of you in the stone." Kahleigh’s hand tightened on the shard.
"We heard you telling us not to worry about your mother, because now she’s not alone."
Among the green hills of Bergemon, past the white domes of the research prefabs and the clutter of sensing gear, and through the trampled ring that was once a rose garden, stands Kahleigh’s Stone. At times, when the wind is right and a joey wanders buy, researchers still claim to hear something from the ‘lith. Sometimes it is whispered words, or hints of conversation. But mostly what is heard is a faint, yet plaintive sound, as somewhere in the stone, a part of Kahleigh weeps.
~FIN~
Christopher Holliday is the award winning author of many short stories.
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SPACER
A NOVELLA FROM THE IN THE DARK UNIVERSE
By J.A. Sutherland
ABOUT SPACER
Jon Bartlett's path is clear before him. Finish his last year of schooling, then off on the family's ships to learn the intricacies of interstellar trade. Then a message of tragedy at home comes for him and his expected life is flung far out of reach.
INTRODUCTION
Part I was originally published as the short story
WRONGED
A Story of the Dark
1
“Are you sure it’ll work?”
“It’ll work.”
“He’s late. He’s not coming.”
“He’s not late.”
Jon Bartlett would have rounded on his mates with exasperation … if he’d had the room to do so.
Crammed into a maintenance compartment with the two other teens, though, made any movement difficult and awkward. There were already places touching that teenage boys generally didn’t care to have such contact with their mates, no matter they’d spent some years at school together.
Well, he wouldn’t truly mind a bit of awkward touching with Kaycie Overfield, but it would be a bit icky at the moment, what with Wyne in the compartment with them. Not to mention that she’d made it clear over the last two years that she didn’t share the same desires.
It was hot and stuffy, as well as crowded, and none of that was helped by the fact that they were all wearing balaclavas over their heads in case they were seen.
Instead, he watched his tablet intently, double checking the connections to the maintenance panel and waiting for a figure to appear on the camera feed he’d hacked into.
“Are you certain it’ll work?”
“Look, Wyne, I’ve tested it, haven’t I?” He heard Kaycie start to speak. “Kaycie, I bloody swear, if you say he’s not coming, I’ll yank your bloody tongue right out of your mouth.”
Jon counted off nearly thirty seconds of silence.
“He’s late,” Wyne whispered.
Jon closed his eyes and counted ten. Kaycie and Wyne were decent mates, the most decent he could hope to find at The Lesser Sibward Merchant Spacer Preparatory School, but there was no doubt they were a pair of whingers when it came to any sort of waiting.
No patience, either of them.
He opened his eyes to study his tablet again.
“Hst! There he comes.”
A figure had appeared in the camera image. Jon checked the time on his tablet. It was two minutes of one in the afternoon, just when h
e’d predicted their target would be heading for the bog. “Just on time, too. Regular as a clock, that one.”
“Regular as prunes,” Wyne added, and Kaycie laughed out loud.
“Ssh!”
Jon silently noted the time, to the second, when their target went through the loo’s hatchway.
“Do it!” Wyne whispered, voice harsh and tense.
“He’s not there yet,” Jon said, exercising as much patience as he could with his friends.
“How do you know?”
“I’ve timed it, right?” Jon said. “‘Know your enemy. Learn everything you can about him. His habits, his loves, his hatreds, and his desires—then use all that to crush him.’”
“You reading that Hso-Hsi bloke again?” Kaycie asked.
“Chinese—precolonization,” Jon said absently, watching the clock. “But, no, that’s my father, said that.”
“Holds a grudge, does he?”
“Nurses it like a baby at its mother’s teat, he does.”
Jon poised his finger over his tablet where he’d set the controls he’d hacked into. Most people didn’t realize the degree of fine-grained control modern grav-plates allowed—over individual plates, even. It wasn’t an all-or-nothing bargain. In fact, it wasn’t only gravity, as most thought of it, that the plates could simulate.
“Do it!”
“Just a few seconds more …”
Jon nodded as the clock passed his target time. No, not just gravity that pulled someone down, but they could also go negative. More than zero-g, they could actually repulse things and send the whole lot up. He touched the tablet’s surface and slid his finger upward—not too quickly, he didn’t want to injure their target, just …
The three could hear the shrieks of outrage even from where they were in the maintenance compartment.
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