Encounters Magazine 07

This publication copyright 2013 by Black Matrix Publishing LLC and individually copyrighted by artists and individuals who have contributed to this issue. All stories in this magazine are fiction. Names, characters and places are products of the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance of the characters to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Encounters Magazine is published bi-monthly by Black Matrix Publishing LLC, 1339 Marcy Loop Rd, Grants Pass, OR 97527. Our Web site: www.blackmatrixpub.com

ABOUT OUR COVER ARTIST Chris Osman created the cover for our first issue of the new Encounters Magazine and we are happy to present his work once again. You can check out his gallery and other links at www.chrisosman.com. He recently created the art for the book An Alien in the City which can be found on Amazon.com at: http://www.amazon.com/An-Alien-City-ebook/dp/B00BQ1WOV0/ Can a defenseless young alien find his parents in the middle of the Big Apple? Or will the cities' strange residents get to him first?

AJ Cosmo's stories are crafted to help parents teach their children simple everyday lessons in an easy to understand manner. By artfully marrying beautiful illustrations and language, children are challenged to explore his magical worlds.

Written for the transitional reader, AJ's stories allow children to develop and master a new level of reading.

ENCOUNTERS MAGAZINE Volume 02 April/May 2013 Issue 07 Table of Contents TOUCHSTONE by Edward Ahern – Page 4 TURTLES by Sean Monaghan – Page 19 A LEGACY OF THE TWILIGHT YEARS by Mike Jansen – Page 61 INFATUATION by Damien Keith – Page 92 AN ARCHITECTURAL EASTER EGG by L. Lamber Lawson – Page 126 IMPERFECT RELATIONS by Gerri Leen – Page 149

PUBLISHER: Kim Kenyon EDITOR: Guy Kenyon

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TOUCHSTONE

by Eward Ahern

The black stone outcropping poked out of the ground like a broken thumb. A Mercedes sedan was parked to its left. To its right an abandoned Hogan waved broken branches toward the sky. Two folding chairs had been set up facing the stone.

Ed Wilson parked behind the Mercedes and watched Felicity jump out of its driver’s seat and open up the rear door. An obese and ruddy apparition pushed itself off the seat in stagesJasper Carbolia. Carbolia spoke before his second foot touched the ground.

“Mr. Wilson. Join me in one of the chairs please. Felicity, open the wine.”

“Hello again, Felicity. Ed, please, Mr. Carbolia. I gather this is the construction site?”

“Yes. You may call me Jasper.” The aluminum framing squealed as Carbolia settled into the chair. Ed had the wiry build of an acrobat, and although six inches taller than Carbolia was half his weight. Ed thought of Laurel and Hardy and Abbot and Costello. I’m definitely the straight man here.

Felicity poured the wine. Her lack of expression reminded Ed of a cat on the prowl.

“I brought the initial plans, Jasper.”

“I’ll look at them later. I gather you’ve been able to reconcile the house’s design to my requirements?”

“Except for a few issues. But the house could be more efficiently built if we move it forty yards to the right or left, or even if we just blew that rock apart and worked with level ground.”

Jasper sputtered wine in his direction. “Never. The Hachunka elders know the stone is both sacred and deadly. So 4

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do I. My house will be the monstrance that contains it. What color is the outcropping, Ed?” “Black.”

“Look more closely. It’s reddish black with yellow particles, like the sacred stone inside the Ka’ba in Mecca. Only mine is different. And much bigger. ” “If the Hachunka revere this chunk of rock so much, why’d they sell it to you? Isn’t this still their reservation?”

“Yes, well, I induced them to give me ownership to five hundred acres which includes the tumulus.”

“But why would they give up a sacred site?”

“Money of course, plus some unpleasant consequences if they didn’t.”

Ed rose from his chair and stepped toward the rock.

“Interesting that nothing seems to grow around it for ten yards…”

“Don’t touch it!”

Ed stopped. “I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing touches the rock. Your instructions require that foundation and building structure never make contact with it.

You’ll comply with that?”

“Yes Jasper. And despite the restriction, it’ll be a dream house, on a par with Kubla Khan’s pleasure dome.”

“Have you read Coleridge’s poem? Many think it’s just an opium delirium. I know it’s a wonderful vision.

‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure dome decree Where Alph, the sacred river ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea’ This monolith perhaps comes from one of those measureless caverns. Such stones convey great power.”

Ed pulled Carbolia back from his obsession. “Jasper, I’ve 5

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made notes on the plans where there are still problems with concealed rooms and passageways.”

Carbolia’s frown cracked his cherubic mask and revealed sullen displeasure. “Tell me about them,” he ordered.

The two men reviewed the obstacles. It wasn’t a discussion.

Ed would point out a problem and Jasper would harshly advise that any problem was an unacceptable failure on Ed’s part.

Ed churned with a clotted mixture of anger and fear. He treats me like a whipping boy. Take it easy, smile. He’s my last hope. I can’t jump out of the lifeboat because the coxswain belittles me.

Jasper redonned his placid mask. “You’ve seen the site and the tumulus. Improve your plans and meet me tomorrow evening in the restaurant where you’re staying.”

Ed had more questions, but shut his mouth in intimidated silence. He opened it again to babble goodbyes and got back into his car. As he made a u-turn he watched Felicity break down the chairs. Her movements were implausibly fast and limber.

As he pulled out from the dirt trail and onto a rutted gravel road Ed noticed a gangly man standing across the road, as if waiting for him. He waved, but the Indian held his stare without expression or movement.

The settlement where Ed was staying was off reservation, barely. The one-story motel and attached diner stared across the road at a gas station/liquor store.

The diner menu focused on fried meat and mushy vegetables. Ed ignored the taste of the food he downed, then went back to his room and reexamined the plans.

The best woods and steel were useless for what Carbolia needed. He researched on line, but all the supply houses offered the same inadequate materials. At two a.m. he surfed onto a screen of the moon’s surface.

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Extraterrestrial. Think like an alien.

He investigated materials used in NASA flights and found alloys and plastics that might allow him to shape and suspend the house’s clandestine elements.

The house wouldn’t merely enclose the rock, it would cocoon it. Its core would be a hidden bee hive penetrated by cantilevered passageways, then gift boxed in squared-off stone and timber. This is beyond eccentric, it’s abnormal. Like their approach to me.

Initial business contacts are impersonal - office visit, telephone call, e-mail. Felicity had approached him on the street.

“Mr. Wilson?” Her words were too precisely phrased, as if she overcompensated for lack of practice.

“Mr. Wilson, how do you do? My name is Felicity. I represent a potential client for a house design and construction.”

They shook hands. The pads on Felicity’s fingertips and palm were hardened, like the paw pads of a cat. Ed’s attention focused on her, his head tilting sideways. Like a dog looks at a tennis ball.

“He’d like to meet with you this evening and discuss the project.”

Ed studied her. Black hair. Skin slightly darker than the hair.

Attractive but deliberately not seductive. Expensively dressed.

“I’m sorry. Please tell your employer no thank you.”

She remained expressionless. “Mr. Wilson, we’ve vetted you. Your divorce cost you the house and most of your assets.

You’re heavily in debt from your last project, and your client from that project is suing you. Your reputation is demolished.

We’re offering you a way out.”

Ed frowned. Bad news keeps no secrets. What the hell, they’ll at least buy dinner. “Where would we meet?”

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Jasper Carbolia waited for him in an opulent restaurant. His skin ballooned well away from muscle and bone. His vest comforted the belly swell but made no effort to suppress it. Ed thought of Sydney Greenstreet, the actor who played genially evil fat men foiling off of Humphrey Bogart.

“Mr. Wilson, your resume is impressive. An undergraduate degree in structural engineering, a stint in the military as an explosive ordnance disposal officer, an architectural degree, several projects that you both designed and built…”

“The last two of which received some harsh criticism.”

“True, but projects in which I find redeeming virtues. I’d like you to design and construct a house.”

“I don’t handle residential projects.”

Carbolia’s lip tips pushed upwards, but his eyes remained flat.

“This will be 25,000 or 26,000 square feet, with complexities and refinements that I think you’ll find will be satisfyingly demanding to accomplish.

“I require a master builder, Mr. Wilson, the sort of man who built tombs for the Pharaohs and cathedrals for medieval archbishops. And a man who must swear to secrecy. The plans will be destroyed on completion of the house. You’ll never be able to speak of this project or have it listed among your credits.”

In between comments Carbolia gnawed on a raw steak.

“Bleu,” he’d demanded. “Just tell the chef to briefly burn the outside and leave the inside cold and blue colored.”

Carbolia resumed. “Mr Wilson, you’ll be well paid for your success, but you’ll sign a stringent confidentiality agreement.

The agreement penalizes you harshly for indiscretion. I’ll assign the work crews for you. You’ll focus on embodying my vision.”

“But I’m going to need zoning approvals and inspections, 8

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sub contractors like electricians…”

“There’s no need for approval from the Hachunka, and no zoning here. The work crews will have qualified tradesmen.

Felicity will be the only inspector on the project and you’ll find she is an agonizing task master. She’ll also serve as your translator.”

“The Hachunka speak English.”

“Your work crews will be brought in from offshore.”

Ed hesitated. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can work under these conditions.”

“Indeed. I believe the failure of your last projects has left you in considerable debt. Your initial payment, which I have with me, is $150,000. You’ll receive an additional $150,000 as each of three construction phases are completed, and $200,000 on final approval. The monies will be placed in escrow so that you have assurance that you will receive it. Felicity, the agreement.”

Carbolia pushed aside dishes and glasses to make room for the document.

“Read it carefully Mr. Wilson. Once you sign it your life isn’t going to be your own.”

Ed studied the two pages. “My obligations are stringent and your penalties are excessive. Forfeiture of funds received, criminal and civil prosecution…”

“That, Mr. Wilson, would only be the public side of my displeasure. Your rewards will be considerable, but I would exact a painful vengeance for violating confidentiality.”

Ed knew he should walk away. But, worse than broke, and with no other project in the offing, he had signed.

And now he was waiting for Carbolia in a dilapidated diner.

Chipped Formica table top instead of linen table cloth, an almost drained Catsup bottle in place of a cut glass bud vase.

Felicity’s arrival stopped the table conversations and started 9

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the stares. Jasper Carbolia’s appearance immediately afterwards reversed the process. No one wanted Jasper to stare back at him.

“I reviewed the plans,” Jasper wheezed as he sat down, overflowing the chair seat and back. “Except for the unresolved details, you’ve been able to capture what I want to do with the house.”

Jasper handed the menu back to the waitress with a hundred dollar bill.”We won’t be eating. That’s for the use of the table and your tip. Felicity, the wine.”

Ed explained his solutions and their considerable expense, which Carbolia waved off as insignificant. The two men then discussed equipment and work crews. “They’re Haitian,” Jasper allowed,” I find they give Felicity and me the proper respect. They speak almost no English, but Felicity can translate from the Creole for you.

“You’ll be quartered on site in a tent. You won’t be able to leave and will have to surrender all your electronic devices.

Your computerized applications will be handled by a terminal that Felicity will oversee. Complete isolation and secrecy. I’m sorry for any inconvenience.” But his hard smile showed no regret.

After Jasper and Felicity’s procession out of the restaurant Ed ordered and ate. Carbolia’s insane and Felicity’s a barely restrained attack dog. But I took his money, God help me. If it stays a secret maybe nobody would know if it turns out badly.

Ed was walking back to the door of his motel room when he was grabbed by the arm. It was the same Indian he’d seen near the construction site.

“Mr. Wilson.”

“Jesus, you scared me. You move pretty quietly.”

“Must be the genes. Don’t do it, Mr. Wilson.”

“Do what.”

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“Whatever Carbolia is asking. He’s vicious. We should know.”

“What’s your name?”

“John.”

“Let’s get out of the open, John, and into my room. We need to talk.”

John

refused the offer of a drink and began without prompting. “Carbolia approached our tribal elders last year. He offered us a half million dollars for 500 acres of scrub forest worth maybe $200 an acre. But it included our most sacred place, and after some arguing among ourselves we turned him down.

“Then he showed us the debt he’d bought up. All our debtcars, trailers, mortgages, appliances, personal loans. A lot of it was past due. He’d forgive all the loans if we agreed to sell.

We’re used to being in bad debt, and told him to fuck off. Then he told us about our outstanding warrants and the crimes and drug dealing he knew about. If we refused he gives the cops the whole list and makes sure we’re prosecuted. We caved in and sold. Now we have to sneak back onto our own land.”

“But why come to me? I can’t help you.”

“We need to know what he’s going to do with the rock, and stop him if we have to.”

“Nothing I know of. Once the project is completed and he moves in I can’t say. Why’s this rock so important, John?”

“The elders say the rock is deadly and never let us touch it.

They say it offers great power but eats you inside-out, like a tape worm. Carbolia wants the rock very badly, so he must think he can control it.”

Suspicions confirmed. I’m working for a madman. “I think we need to help each other, John.”

They talked for another hour. After John left Ed reopened the 11

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plans and began to make notations on a separate sheet of paper.

The first work crew arrived the following week, along with the excavating equipment. The Haitians took their orders through Felicity, and avoided contact with Ed. Their timid glances at her showed their fear. In the evening the Creole lilts coming from their campground were subdued with anxiety.

Felicity treated the crew as disposables. Ed once came upon her beating a worker with a section of two by four. The worker never fought back, or even screamed. When Ed stepped in to try and stop the beating she glared at him with the wordless assurance that he would be included in the beating if he interfered. He ashamedly backed off.

Felicity also lived on site, but occasionally left on errands for Carbolia. As the weeks passed Ed found himself attracted to her despite his fear, but knew she needed to be treated like a dangerous exotic - achingly pretty but best kept behind reinforced glass.

One evening when Felicity was away a worker who spoke a little English snuck up to Ed. “Monsieur?”

“Yes. René, isn’t it?”

“Oui. Monsieur I need to ask you something. Could you contact my wife, Claudia? She is enceinte - pregnant. Please tell her the work is going well, and ask how she is…”

“But I have no way to contact her, René.”

René persisted, pushing a scrap of paper with a telephone number into Ed’s hand. “When you have a chance, Monsieur.”

And he slipped back into the dusk.

No way in hell am I going to risk calling this woman. If Felicity finds out about the stashed satellite phone I’m cooked.

The footings went in, the foundation was poured. The framing went up quickly. The weather stayed unusually dry, letting them jump ahead of schedule. The first work crew was 12

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shipped out and a second crew brought in. Carpenters and stonemasons and electricians. They were equally fearful.

Ed’s pride in the design and construction swelled. God help me, I’m becoming an emotional hostage to this house. But I need to know a lot more about what Carbolia and Felicity are up to. Now that René is back in Haiti he might be willing to talk. He risked a satellite call. “Hello. Claudia La Pierre? Yes, I’d like to speak with René please.”

The woman shrieked. “René never return Monsieur. The entire crew is missing. What do you know of my René?”

“Ah, nothing. Just that he was to be paid and sent back.”

“The money, yes, the money arrived, but René and the others never. Where are you calling from? Where was he working? I must tell the police!”

Ed hung up. Were they killed to protect the house’s secrets?

No one knows the secrets better than I do. He called John.

“Did you get all the supplies we talked about?”

“We had to steal some of it, but yes I’ve got them. I’ll drop them where I told you. Remember - you can do whatever you like to the house, but the stone can’t be harmed.”

The house gestated, skin of stone, muscles of pressure treated woods, inside linings of wonderfully carved mahogany, Italian tiles, and finely woven middle-eastern tapestries and curtains. Its vast rooms resonated without echo. The labor pains would give birth to a mansion in which Ed took a father’s pride.

The secret chambers of the house also took form. Cunningly hidden accesses led to rooms within the inner hive. The monolith itself was approached through a concealed passageway bristling with man traps. A final walkway of raw ash planks lead just up to the outcrop.

Ed devoted the nights of Felicity’s occasional absences to crafting the material John had smuggled in for him. The night 13

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of her last absence he spent with the stone. In the hissing lantern light the outcropping’s blacks and reds and yellows seemed to swirl dust into his lungs. As the intimate installation progressed Ed developed a palsy. After he finished Ed blacked out, and woke up vomiting blood.

That next morning Ed felt fatalistically confident and hideously empowered. A berserker must feel like this. Felicity immediately sensed a change in him. She treated him no longer as easy prey but as an adversary who might maim her before being brought down.

One post-midnight she slunk into his tent and slid onto his cot.

“Felicity, what, uh. I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

She said nothing, just began removing clothes.

“Carbolia won’t like this. Especially if he thinks you’re the Abyssinian maid Coleridge talks about in his poem.”

Felicity began removing his clothing. They coupled without words, an urgent, affectionless ritual that somehow sanctified Ed’s transformation. He woke briefly to observe Felicity searching his tent. She left some time before morning.

The furnishings for the house began arriving, a collection of museum quality furniture, carpets, lamps and oil paintings. So far as Ed could tell, all of it had been created well before the First World War. The last work crew left, cheerfully unaware that the crews which preceded them had vanished.

Carbolia arrived the day after the last picture had been hung.

The service lines into the house had been buried, the remains of the Hogan long since torn down and burnt. The house stood alone, its clean lines shrugging off the surrounding scrub trees like a bad joke. Carbolia sat alone in a folding chair and admired the façade.

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“Let’s go in,” he finally ordered. The procession into the temple was slow, Carbolia hampered by his weight and a desire to exact maximum enjoyment from his visit. The rooms were grand, furnished in that cluttered Victorian style that pulls the eye from one unique piece to another, as if they were stocked to infinity with objets d’art.

“Let’s see the monolith.” The booby traps were not yet activated, and Ed explained them one by one as they moved into the bowels of the house. Ed and Felicity hung back when they reached the ash planking and Carbolia lumbered forward on his own. The inner sanctum was lit by animal fat candles and not electricity. He leaned forward at the end of the planking and breathed on the outcrop, as if infusing himself into it.

Abruptly he turned back. “Odd, I thought it would feel different. But well done, Mr. Wilson, very well done. You’re indeed a master builder. Let’s go back and make a toast.”

They sat in overstuffed leather chairs and looked out over alder and birch thickets. Felicity gave them each a glass of wine, and then stood at Ed’s side.

“Ed, you’ve crafted my jewel case excellently, and are to be congratulated. It’s a masterpiece. But I’m afraid that I have to welsh on part of our agreement.”

“You’ve already paid me, Jasper.”

“Um. I’ve told you about my need for absolute secrecy. That unfortunately includes you.” Carbolia’s cherubic face crinkled into a gargoyle mask. “Felicity will be killing you shortly.”

Ed glanced at Felicity, poised and expressionless beside him.

His own forced politeness sloughed off, leaving bony edges.

“Jasper, I’ve signed your agreement and kept to it. Let me just walk away.”

“I can’t my boy. We have to ensure the greater... I was about to say good but that wouldn’t be appropriate, would it? The 15

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greater potential. Don’t take it personally.”

Ed’s smile glinted. “I’m not so sure Felicity will be able to do as you order, Jasper. I took out some insurance. Look out the window into the alders on your left.”

Carbolia’s massive head bobbled left as Ed took a small remote from his shirt pocket. He keyed the remote and a dozen alders exploded into the air, shredded and torn. The roar of the blast rattled the glasses on their side tables.

Carbolia quivered in his chair. Felicity, Ed noted, hadn’t moved at all, still focused on him.

“I suspected that you’d want me disposed of. Do you remember my resume? Bomb disarmers are also good at rigging up bombs. I’ve planted thoroughly booby trapped charges adjacent to the rock. So long as I continue to send a coded message the rock survives.”

“You’re an idiot. Felicity will just torture you until you tell us how to disarm it or continue to send the message.”

“Now who’s being the idiot? You’d kill me in any case, but you wouldn’t know if I’d told you the truth until it was too late.”

“The rock will survive a little concussion.”

“I think not. It’s deeply veined and fissured. A blast of any size turns it into rubble. But it’s just term insurance. In two years it deactivates. By then you should be reasonably confident I won’t talk.”

Carbolia’s fingers clenched. “It’s an impossible situation, Mr. Wilson. I can’t risk the monolith and I can’t risk your talking. Felicity…“ Her eyes shifted to Carbolia while holding Ed in her peripheral vision.

“Take away Mr. Wilson’s remote and then cut the power to the house.”

“Bad move,” Ed interjected quickly. “You may know black 16

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stones but I know explosive devices. Here Felicity, take the remote. It’s not the triggering device you need. The dead man switch is safe elsewhere. I borrowed some techniques from Second World War German ordinance. The device is antimagnetic, anti-light, and extremely sensitive to disturbance.

Plus a few refinements of my own.

“Let me go, Carbolia. I can’t say a word about this place without getting into serious trouble. Fair is fair. I followed the terms of the agreement. I’m paid up and won’t be asking for any more.”

Carbolia’s porcelain-doll face roiled and then recovered.

“Well, sir. You appear to have the upper hand for now. But you should know that I’m an extremely patient man, given to thoroughly thinking through my problems. Felicity, give Mr. Wilson back his electronic devices and take him to his car. Au Revoir, Mr. Wilson” Felicity was deferential as she drove. “You’ve gained power,” she concluded, “and lost your cowardice. And become something else.” She dropped him at his car. “You may have use for me later.”

Two hundred miles down the road he called John a last time.

“It over, John.”

“The rock is safe? You’re safe?”

“Carbolia won’t be damaging the stone, nor misusing it.”

“How can you be sure?

“It’s too precious to him to damage, and I’m pretty sure the stone won’t do what he wants it to.”

“So you believe now that the stone has power?”

“Yes, unfortunately. Your elders were right, no good comes of touching that stone. Thanks again for your help.”

Ed resumed driving. He’d broken his word to John and Carbolia on the same promise - that he wouldn’t damage the stone. But he’d drilled a hole in its side to plant the explosives.

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And as he stuffed in the plastique the stone had enveloped his arm, taking him like a thirteen-year-old virgin and filling him with a burning elixir. It consumed him now. Felicity had sensed it. He was gaining fearful power, but watching himself seep away.

The last lines of Coleridge’s poem came back to him.

‘And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair Weave a circle round him thrice And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey dew hath fed And drunk the milk of Paradise.’

Edward Ahern has resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He informs us that he still has his original wife, but after 45 years they are both out of warranty.

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Turtles

Sean Monaghan

Erina’s mouth felt dry and her legs ached. The

translucent skin of the taut tent­room glowed a little with Whisp's dawn light. The star was on a down­swing cycle, the planet ­ Breyen ­ pushing for apogee, so it was cool out.

She showered, letting the water cascade over her face.

Wiping down, she pulled on her overalls and looked back at the man in her bed. Still sleeping.

"Erina, Erina," she muttered to herself. This is what you get for drinking when you're ovulating. A deadbeat in your bed.

David was nice enough, but he was old and lost. Nearly fifty already, with no publications for at least five years.

Divorced, twice. Now stuck out here on Breyen to try to prop up his career.

The dig had been operating for a hundred days. Any excuse for a party, but last night's had been a real shindig.

Williams had broken out some genuine Champagne, then some real whiskey. Whiskey from the actual Scotland.

With a sigh, she put on the breather, strapping the transparent mask over her mouth and nose, and went through the vestibule. The inner door sealed behind her.

She straightened her hat while she waited the moment it took for the outer door to open.

As she stepped out onto the dusty ground she heard a sonic boom, followed immediately by another. She flicked 19

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through a mental calendar. It was the second Tuesday of March, and they weren't getting a supply run for another two weeks. She shook her head. The schedule must be out. She didn't think anyone had requisitioned anything that required special delivery.

Walking through the other tents, all the same as hers ­ taut inflatable boxes sitting on their original delivery pallets ­ she knew she was the first one up. That was good. It always gave her a while to go over the previous day's results again, see if there was anything new at the dig.

As she came up to the main building ­ a two­story prefab with a garage, offices, labs and their rec room come dining room ­ she saw the shuttle putting down.

Too close to the dig.

Running inside, she bit her lip as the building's vestibule ran through its cycle. They didn't need airlocks per se ­ Breyen's air was breathable ­ but it kept the little bugs and odd gases minimized.

The inner door opened and she went by the lab and straight up the flight of stairs to one of the offices that faced out over the dig.

The shuttle was almost on the ground. A cloud of dust swirled up around it. Just like she'd known it would. Dust and sand blasting across their grid­lines and marks. They would lose a day or more resetting things.

Williams was going to be chewing the shuttle pilot out.

Already she could hear movement from below. People woken by the arrival and heading from the tent village into the compound.

The vehicle settled onto its haunches. It wasn't like the 20

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usual delivery shuttle. It was bigger, chunkier, painted black with slits for windows. Not civilian.

"What's going on?" Williams said, coming up behind her. Williams was in his late fifties, hair receding dramatically, skin already taut and yellow from too much time under Whisp's light. His eyes were still strong though, and his intellect like a whip. A publication record that stretched back to before she was born, and a rate that was only increasing. Erina always felt privileged to work here with him.

"Shuttle," she said.

"Thanks for clearing that up," he said.

"I mean..."

"It's okay," he said with a grin. "We know as much as each other." He put his hand on her shoulder. Fatherly.

"Except they haven't been very polite with their choice of landing spot."

A door had popped open on the shuttle and two people in light breathing suits jumped down to the ground. They were uniform suits, like the UN issue ones she'd seen before. The pair of them strode across the rough ground between the dig and the compound, almost running.

"Guess I'd better go meet them," Williams said.

Erina just nodded. What would possess someone to put their shuttle down almost on top of the dig? Surely the satellite had given them landing clearance and a location, across the other side of the low hill behind the compound.

Their emergency lifeboat was there, prepped and primed, ready to evac the staff to orbit in an emergency. All their supply boats came down there. Easy.

She saw Williams out in front of the building, walking 21

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at a leisurely pace towards the two. Compared to the two in their tight military environment suits Williams seemed under­dressed, in his shorts and tee­shirt and sun hat.

They all had breathers. The arrivals with full soft plastic face helmets, and Williams with his standard mask and little shoulder bottle. It felt to Erina like the outback farmer meeting the big city cops.

Williams stopped when they were about ten meters from him. He raised a hand, waving. The two stopped when they reached Williams, and Erina could see all their heads moving as they conversed. Williams turned and pointed back to the building.

Pointing up at her.

Couldn't be, she thought. He was just indicating the compound, and she was a little hung­over.

Williams dropped his hand to his side and the two visitors started moving again. Running now.

Williams looked up at her, holding his hands up at shoulder level and shrugging. In his hand he held a document sheaf. He began walking after the two runners.

Why had they started over without him? Running. Why was he shrugging? This was all too strange. She wished that he'd taken a walkie­talkie so she could ask him. Were they getting shut down?

The two disappeared from her view as they came up to the main building just below her.

She heard the door system cycle through beneath, then the sound of footsteps on the stairway. She took another look out at Williams. He was trudging back towards the building.

The office door burst open.

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Erina jumped, even though she'd known they were coming up.

"Erina Parlane?" the first one said. A tall man. He'd peeled his helmet off and it lay draped on his shoulder.

His eyes were crystal clear and she realized he was wearing data contacts that hid his retinas.

"Erina Parlane?" he said again, coming further into the room.

"Yes, I'm­" "Grab her. Let's go." He turned back for the door.

The second man stepped forwards.

"Wait. What?" she said. She smacked the man on the upper arm as he reached for her. He still had his helmet on and it was hard to make out his face.

The first man turned back to her. "We don't have time to explain. We need you to come now."

"Tell me what's going..."

"We told your boss. You're coming with us."

"You can't just order me around."

The second man came at her again and grabbed her arm as she took another jab at him. He used her momentum and swung her up over his shoulders. "Mask," he said.

"Let me go." She swiped at him with her free arm, but he caught her wrist and locked her arm down across his chest. He had his elbow across her knee, so she was over his shoulders like a cape. A fire fighter's carry, she thought. She wriggled as he headed for the stairs after the first man, but she was held too tightly.

Williams was coming up the stairs. "What's the..."

"Stand aside," the fist man said. He was pulling his 23

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helmet back on as he descended.

"You can't..."

The first man pushed Williams up against the wall. "We can. We are. I explained. We don't have time." He was already past and almost at the bottom of the stairs.

"Erina?" Williams said as she came down on the other man's shoulders.

"Get me off," she said.

Williams stepped back into the middle of the stairs, blocking the way.

"Please, Doctor Williams," the first man said. He was holding a gun. His arm was stretched up, the gun aimed at Williams.

The door behind him opened and David stumbled in.

His hair was tousled and his face bleary. He pulled his mask down.

The man with the gun didn't even look. He just took two steps to the left so he was right against the wall. He kept the gun up, but watched David in his peripheral vision.

"What's going on?" Williams said.

The gunman sighed, his shoulders slumping a little.

"Yeah," David said. "We have firearms at the dig now?"

"Listen. Listen close. We are on a tight time frame.

People are dying. We need Doctor Parlane's expertise.

Urgently. We break for orbit in three minutes. We will be aboard our ship. It's all in a message that's on your server right now. Stand aside so that we can get going."

"People are dying," David said, "and you're the one carrying a gun?"

Williams moved aside.

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"Get me down," Erina yelled.

"I'll get you," David said. He took a step forward.

The gun moved quickly, dropping across and tracking him. David stopped.

"You better go," Williams said. "You'd better go with them."

"Let me down."

"Trust you?" the man carrying her said. "We don't have time to explain it all."

"I'll come." What was she going to do? They were holding her colleagues hostage. David, poor man, probably thinking he was more than a colleague.

The man shucked her down from his shoulders and she stood next to Williams.

"What?" David said. He was staring at the gun, eyes wide. "They're kidnapping you."

"No," Williams said. "They showed me a document. I didn't have time to read all the details, but it's official.

Transporting her."

"You didn't think to call ahead?" David said.

"We need to go." The first man holstered the weapon.

Erina stepped down past Williams. "Legit?" she said, touching his arm. "An archaeology emergency and they need my expertise?"

He nodded. "You'll be okay." His face was grim, but she knew she could trust him.

"I need my stuff." She hadn't even eaten breakfast yet.

"In one­hundred­fifty seconds," the first man said. "I plan to be on my ship."

Erina trotted down the stairs and around to the other entry. "Light speed, David," she said over her shoulder. "No 25

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calling ahead." she pulled her mask up.

"Barris relay. Please," he said.

Then she was in the other vestibule with the two men.

"Why didn't you show me your document."

"Showed your boss."

"We'll show it to you once we're aboard," the man who'd carried her said. The outer door hissed open. "We need to run. I can carry you again?"

"I can run," she said, putting her mask back on. She dropped down to the dirt and followed them as they jogged across. Lights blinked from their ship.

She thought about David. So insightful about the archaeology, but didn't know that a Barris relay had a lag time of days. Surely he had used it to call his family back home. He was going to be upset with her.

Then she was back to reality. Running across Breyen's surface towards a strange ship. Trusting that Williams knew what was going on. How could there be any urgency that involved her expertise? If it was her family ­ her father's heart giving out finally ­ they would have told her right away. No amount of rushing would have her home in time. Even if it would get her back quick enough, they wouldn't send a military­grade vessel with men trained in firearms and how to pin a woman across their shoulders.

"Step it up, Doctor Parlane. We've got one minute."

Running faster, she caught up to them. She was puffing now, the mask's little bottle wheezing to keep her oxygen up. "Why the rush?"

"On board."

The vessel loomed over her. It was a chunky thing. All 26

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angles and blocky boxes, the command station directly in front. The whole thing was much bigger than the shuttle she'd come down on. She could feel the ground thrumming with energy as the vessel prepared to lift off.

She wondered if they'd even let the coils wind down. How long had they been on the ground? Ten minutes? Five?

Then she was at the hatch, clambering up into the airlock. When they were all in, the outer door sealed and there was a flush of vapor. Erina resisted the urge to cough. The two men stripped off their helmets and suits.

They were tall and lean; men who worked out.

Spacefarers, she thought, spending time in zero gravity would mean they would have a tight exercise schedule.

"You going to tell me what this is about now?" she said.

The airlock's inner door opened and there was another man there. "Twenty seconds," he said.

The first man turned to Erina. "When we're in our couches."

The interior had a sterile smell, like a dentist's surgery.

Everything was white or chrome, shining back at her. She was used to the dusty griminess of Breyen where the soil tracked everywhere no matter how much you cleaned.

She followed the three of them through a short narrow companionway into a cylindrical room lined with two layers of reclined chairs. She counted twenty­four, but only two were occupied. The first man pointed for her to sit in the nearest chair, then went to another one.

Hanging in the middle of the room, a thin display showed a "5", then changed to "4". Erina got into the seat.

The display hit "0" and she felt the acceleration pressing her down. She could feel herself gaining weight, muscles 27

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pressed and her eyes squeezed. Sparkles of light danced in her peripheral vision.

The acceleration stayed on for minutes. The countdown display had changed to a count up. It was inexorable to watch; the seconds seemed to take much too long to click over.

"You know about turtles," the first man said through the shuddering pressure.

"Turtles?" What could the turtles have to do with this?

"You described them."

Erina nodded. It hurt her neck so she just let her head rock back into the cushioning. "Yes." "We have a turtle problem."

"Uh­huh." The display ticked over to two minutes. She could feel her vision narrowing. This had to be military­grade acceleration. She'd never liked lift offs.

"We..."

"Who are you?" she said. It was getting hard to talk.

"Coming out here to kidnap me in such a hurry, then talking about my research. I don't even know your names yet. Don't know who you work for." She tried to take a big breath, but her chest was heavy. She breathed fast instead.

"Derel Larsen," he said, then pointed to the others.

"Cray, Suzuki, Smith and Jenner." Cray was the one who'd carried her. She didn't know how Larsen could keep his arm up. He seemed to be around forty, with a straight nose and brown eyes. The whole time he projected an air of authority.

You're just hormonal, she told herself. Don't look at him like that. He's kidnapping you.

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The sound and the shaking was starting to get to her.

"Marines?" she breathed.

They laughed.

"Peacekeepers," Larsen said. "Tell me about the turtles. I don't get it, they just told me to pick you up and bring you out to Eltanin."

"Can't talk now," she said. "Need rest." "'Kay." Turtles, she thought. What was the deal? It had been one of her first off­world digs. A temple in a jungle on Wolf B Six. There were jewels and crystals, a pyramid and ball courts. A vast city spreading out into the thickening jungle. It was compared to Copan and Tikal ­ the Central American ruins.

They had water reticulation, traffic systems and, from appearances, schools. They'd died out thousands upon thousands of years ago.

Bipeds, six­fingered, fat­headed. The archaeologists had found bone piles and been able to assemble whole skeletons.

And in amongst all that, a quiet PhD student had found a cache of mechanical parts. More interested in the politics of the aliens, her supervisor had pretty much brushed her off and let her go play with the parts.

When she'd been able to assemble them, she had a shell with four legs standing about a foot tall. A turtle. No head, no tail, but that was the closest analogy she could come up with. There were parts inside, but jumbled. It was a robot, but its purpose remained mysterious. It didn't fit with the rest of the ruin. These had been iron­age people, not up to manufacturing anything like 29

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this. Even with the jumble and the corrosion on the one she had, she could tell that it had been precision machined.

She'd written it up. Just a quick little paper describing the find, trying to avoid making too many assumptions.

She had her supervisor review it, and then, after several rewrites, submitted it to the journals. No one took it. Not even Popular Xeno was interested. The explosion in off­world paleontology and archaeology meant there was little room for anyone without postdoctoral research behind them.

"Don't worry," her supervisor had said. "It's not what we're funded for anyway. Plenty of time for you."

So she'd put it aside and gotten on with her regular research, the turtle all but forgotten.

At seven minutes the acceleration suddenly stopped.

The room went quiet. She thought she could hear the sound of water running through pipes.

"Hold on," Cray said.

Erina grabbed one of the webbing loops at the side of the chair just as the ship spun around her. She drifted up out of the chair a little.

"Hold on," Cray said again.

The ship kicked and she was thrown back into the seat.

"Coming up on the Shining Star," Larsen said. "Just matching velocities."

It only lasted a few moments, then she was weightless.

There was a heavy clunk that seemed to echo through the ship and, even weightless, she could feel it shudder. The others moved up out of their chairs, swarming back through the companionway. Larsen waited.

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"Turtles," she said. She was still holding the loop to stop from drifting off. She'd never liked being in zero­gee. Too unnerving. Not like the swarming Peacekeepers who seemed completely at home.

"You're the one who knows."

"I don't really know anything," she said. "I found that thing, described it, got on with other work. How did you find out anyway? Nothing was ever published."

"Everything is published. As soon as you wrote it, it was there."

Erina shook her head, feeling her whole body shake with the action. "I can't be of any help."

"You're the closest thing we've got to an expert. Let's get aboard the main ship. We'll be on site in an hour."

"An hour?"

But Larsen was already slipping off along the companionway.

Erina kicked off the chair. Too hard, wrong direction.

She smacked into the bulkhead beside the companionway entrance. "Crap," she said.

"All right back there?"

"Doing fine." She really hated zero­gee. And after last night's activities she felt a bit woozy and nauseous.

That was why she thought Larsen was attractive. Even through the nausea and after David, she was still horny.

Scrambling around she managed to get into the companionway and pull herself though the open airlock into a much bigger volume. The main ship. What had they called it? Shining Star?

She was moving too fast and lost her grip, drifting out into the room. She saw pipes and conduits lining the 31

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walls.

Larsen was waiting by another opening, holding his hand out. She was going to miss him but somehow he got his hand out to her and pulled her into another companionway.

"Not used to a weightless environment?" he said.

"I like my feet down on rock."

Another Peacekeeper jostled by them in the companionway, barely seeming to touch the walls. Erina was grabbing every loop and rung she could. She was going with the rock­climbing rule of always having three points of contact.

"Yeah," Larsen said. "I prefer solid ground too, actually.

Tell me more about the turtles."

"One turtle," she said. "You must have read my paper."

"Twice on the trip. But I want to know your feel for it."

"Why? What have you found? Why the urgency? Where are we going?"

There were hatches along the companionway and Larsen stopped at one, pulled it open and ushered her through.

She came into a big cabin, a wide cluttered graphics deck on a stalk in the middle, a hammock on one side, and zero­gee loops on the wall with more harness loops on straps that ran the height of the room. There were lockers across the ceiling and footplates on the floor. She hadn't seen the vessel from outside, but could tell it was big, probably too big to ever land, yet it still had an up and down orientation as if there was gravity.

There was her turtle on the graphics deck, amongst the papers and magnetic weights.

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"How did you get that?" she said.

Larsen swung himself around to the deck and nestled into a harness. "We made it," he said. "On the way out here." He indicated with an open hand for her to get into another harness.

"If it's such a rush, shouldn't we get underway?" She resisted the urge to reach out and pick up the turtle. It looked close to perfect.

"We are underway. We dropped into Barris space the moment the shuttle docked."

Erina did a double­take. "What about winding up the machine?" She remembered the trip out to Whisp where they'd been in the cabin for a couple of hours before the engines were fully aligned and warmed up, ready to put them into Barris space for the journey.

Larsen reached behind, slipping out of the harness a little. He thumbed a lever by a slatted screen and the screen wound up into a recess. There was a window and beyond she could see the twisting blues and blacks of Barris space. She remembered sitting in the observation dome on the way to Whisp, watching the flow of the complexities in the transitional space. There seemed to be more debris this time; more of the odd black lumps that drifted around independent of the flow.

"This is a UN Peacekeeper vessel," Larsen said. "She's tuned pretty tightly. We have to be ready to go at a moment's notice."

Erina nodded. She pulled herself over and strapped the webbing over her shoulders, setting her feet onto the floor.

"Made it?" The turtle looked exactly like the one that 33

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was supposed to be in a cupboard back in the cache room back on Wolf B six. How had they got a hold of that to be able to make a reproduction?

"We have a tool maker. A fabricator. We just milled it from..."

"I get that. But how did you know how to manufacture it?" She reached out to pick up the replica. It was lighter than she remembered, but then this would be made of some kind of composite plastic, not the metal and ceramic of the original.

Then she was carried back to the jungle, scraping away in a corner of the field, uncovering the shell. She'd been surprised. It didn't fit with the carved stone and rough tools left by the inhabitants. It was alien even to Wolf B six.

She remembered digging it up, photographing as she went, taking it back to the tents to clean up and test. She remembered the way the legs were articulated, and still moved at her touch even though they were damaged. It only had two legs, though it clearly was designed to have four, with thin cables and mesh sticking from the recesses where the missing legs had been mounted.

The shell was spherical, slightly less than a half­sphere, with one leg nestled into recessed arcs in each quadrant, the underside curved but nearly flat in the center. At the very top of the shell there was a stubby, wide cylindrical projection, the size of her palm and raised about a centimeter from the shell. There was a small circular hole in the middle of the projection.

"We used your description to make it," Larsen said, bringing her back to the ship.

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Blinking, she looked at the replica turtle. She'd been examining it, but imagining the original. The color was wrong, and the texture, but the shape seemed exact. It was even missing the two legs, with the same damaged cable and mesh remains sticking out. "My description?" she said. "But I never published. It was outside my specialty, and no one was interested anyway."

"Well, we're interested now. And all your submission data was there, from the paper ­ which was quite readable, I should say ­ to all the raw data you put in.

Photographs from when you unearthed it, your catalogue from your disassembly of the thing. Really, I don't know why no one was interested at the time."

"But you're interested now? Like you said."

Larsen nodded.

Erina waited. She realized that on the graphics deck there were two more legs. She picked one up, fitted it to the recess. "You made the other legs."

"The computer decided to extrapolate. The legs all seem the same."

"And internally?"

"Exact. Different materials, so it's not a working model, but the computer is fast and the fabricator too. We had a couple of hours to get out here, so there was time to make it. Extrapolated how the pieces fit together too, apparently."

Hours? Erina thought. They must have been close. "So you really don't need me at all."

"We do. You've heard of the Eltanin Hoop Anomaly?"

Erina thought for a moment. Eltanin was a long way from Whisp. A couple of months in Barris space at least, 35

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probably seventy or eighty light years. "A tear or something. Directional gravity?" She shook her head.

"Someone mentioned something. There's an artifact?"

"The hoop is an artificial three hundred kilometer­wide ring of solid silicon and carbon base matrix, which has odd properties. It orbits Eltanin at two AU and rotates about its own axis about every hundred or so years."

"Slow," she said. "It's a ringworld? That seems kind of small. And too slow for centrifugal gravity, right?"

Celestial mechanics, another one of her weak points.

"Much too slow. The hoop spins above the anomaly. Or alongside, depending how you look at it." He made a circle with his left index finger and thumb, then touched the knuckle on the thumb with the tip of his right index.

"It points at the hoop like so. Gravity feeds out of the anomaly, and time dilates. The gravity doesn't penetrate the hoop, and doesn't point the other way; it's almost linear. There's a structure on the outside of the hoop, and construction mechanisms that rebuild the structure as the hoop rotates."

"Mechanisms?"

Larsen pointed at the turtle she was still holding.

"Autonomous robots. They mine the hoop structure and build. Current thinking says that they are exploiting the gravity and time dilation somehow."

"Old?" She could feel her interest picking up.

Mechanisms similar to her turtle.

"Very. But still functioning."

Erina nodded. "They would be. I think they're very good at self­maintaining."

"That's what our people said too."

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Leaning back in the harness, she squinted at him. "This was your emergency? This was why you pulled a gun on my boss ­ who's a very nice man, I might add ­ and hauled me out of there?"

"Something came through the anomaly."

Again she blinked. "Something? Something bad?"

"There was a team out there. Similar to your group.

Harvard sponsored. They were setting up to investigate the hoop and the structure. Team of six. They were supposed to put themselves in orbit around Eltanin, trailing the hoop, and spend a few weeks doing remote surveys. Seems they decided to try to get in too close."

Larsen put his hands on the graphics deck and swiped aside the piles of paper and other clutter. The surface lit immediately and he waved his hand through, pulling up data streams. With his palm, he wiped most of the streams away, then called up an audio and video table. He selected one of the video icons and swelled it to fill the available deck space, then rotated it to face her.

It was grainy and jerky. It showed what Erina assumed was the hoop; a long poorly lit structure curving off into the distance. "This is long range?" she said. On the outer surface of the hoop she could see what looked like buildings, rising up several stories. That would be what he was talking about the robots constructing.

"No, not long range."

As she watched the video, the view kept closing on the structure. Then speckles began appearing in the space to the right. "Turtles?" They were moving very slowly, flicking into existence, then drifting towards the hoop.

"Thousands of them. Coming right out of the anomaly."

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"I can't see the anomaly."

"It's invisible, but it's there."

The speckles grew into spots into shapes distinguishable as the same as the turtle she was still holding. "How are they propelling themselves?"

"See, this is where we need you."

The swarm approached the camera. Accelerating. One moment they were just distant shapes, then they were right there and the deck went blank. "They sped up suddenly," she said. "And they destroyed the camera?"

"They came out of the time dilation volume. They were already moving fast. And, yes the camera was destroyed.

This record was pulled off their general datalog."

"What happened to them?"

"The ship's still there, from what we can tell. They sent a distress through their Barris relay."

"That takes days, at best," she said. And it would take weeks if not months to get out to them anyway. She looked again at the turtle in her hand. She'd always just thought it was a little crawler, like an automatic vacuum or lawn mower, not something that would be space borne.

"It did. But this is alien aggression, so we were on site quickly, and that's when our real problems started."

"Real problems?"

"Three hours ago our rescue vessel was attacked too.

We..."

"Hours? How could you know already?" She didn't know much about how it worked, but she did know that there was no way they could know about something that happened only hours ago. Even the closest star to Whisp was light years away. In Barris space, even though times 38

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fluctuated, it would still take weeks to transit between points. A Barris relay took days to get a message through.

Larsen turned the video to another feed. A view along the length of a big ship. The hoop nearby, and a similar swarm of turtles approaching. "They contacted us as soon as the turtles began approa..."

"Contacted you? You said this was at Eltanin. I'm not sure about all those distances, but there's no way they could be in touch with you in hours."

On the deck the turtles kept approaching. The ship was backing away; the hoop getting smaller. The turtle swarm turned and headed back, winking out as the resolution could no longer pick them out.

"Barris delays?" he said. "Not an issue. It takes more energy, but we can be in communication almost instantaneously. And transit more quickly too. We go deeper into the flow."

"Deeper?"

"It's not something you get so much on day to day starships. You need different shielding, bigger wheels more finely tuned. There is more debris the deeper you are so you've got to navigate carefully."

"This is how it can be urgent? How fast are we going?"

Larsen swiped the deck. "We'll be on site in fifteen minutes."

They'd only been going for maybe fifteen minutes already. A thirty minute transit time between stars for a trip that any commercial transport would take months to manage. That's why the Barris space outside the window had seemed so dense with debris. They traveled differently. It made her exhausted to just think about it.

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"I still don't get why you need me." She thought of the swarm. Nothing like she'd ever imagined they were capable of.

"You're the closest we've got to an expert."

"But you've analyzed all my data. Probably better than I did." She held up the replica turtle. "For crying out loud, you built one already."

"You're still the person who dug it up, described it. You wrote all that information we used to build the replica.

And they have one on board."

"One on board?"

"The Buccaneer is a corvette, big enough to defend itself."

"Because there's so much out here to defend against, right?"

"Apparently there is."

"Point taken."

Larsen went on. "They have projectile, energy and particle weaponry. And they were able to vaporize a lot of the attackers, but something got on board, and that was the last we heard. There's a crew of a hundred and fifteen personnel."

That was a big ship. Erina had imagined one of the quaint little sailing ships when he'd said corvette. "Contact lost?"

"We don't know what we're up against."

"And you think I do?" She looked at the turtle again, wondering if there was some way to activate it. Surely there was some kind of nano controller that could weave tendrils through the replica and turn it into a mobile machine. A decoy, perhaps. Give it a remote control and 40

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have it lead the invaders away like a pied piper.

Ridiculous. They would have thought of anything like that.

"It took an extra twenty­five minutes to collect you.

Time down from orbit, then back into orbit. We're calculating overall having your expertise will save time, and lives."

"You think they're dead." She was swimming way out of her depth here. She wanted to be back on Breyen with her laser spreader and dusting brush, working through the buried walls and homes looking for jewelry and pots. Of course now the dig had been screwed up by their landing exhausts. Williams and David and the others would probably already be out there looking over the site with disgust, all the marker flags scattered and the string grid wrecked.

Larsen stared at her, grim­faced. "We don't know."

"Why not just leave the place alone, then?" It sounded interesting enough, not her kind of thing, but she knew plenty of people in the profession who would happily spend three years looking at a giant space hoop with a magnifying glass. But there were other artificial structures they could satisfy themselves with.

"As long as there's a chance they're alive, we're going there. And it's quite possible that we need a way to stop the incursion."

"That's where I come in?"

"You come in where the last thing we know is that one of your turtles slipped through their perimeter and got on board." He palmed the graphics deck again and pulled up another video record.

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My turtles, she thought. Suddenly she was almost getting blamed for this.

The video was split into four quadrants, as it had been taken directly from a security feed. The first showed an empty cylindrical corridor, the second what looked like a ship's bridge with a half­dozen uniformed people strapped into harnesses, and the other two both showing similar corridors to the first. Men and women were streaming along the fourth corridor. The group in the bridge worked frantically at their controls. The third quadrant blanked out. Everyone in the bridge shifted at once as if the ship had suddenly moved under them.

"Here," Larsen said, pointing at the first quadrant.

A panel in the side of the cylindrical corridor burst inwards. A turtle leapt through. Surprisingly agile, Erina thought.

Everyone in the bridge turned their heads to the left, and the group in the corridor ­ almost out of sight of the camera now ­ grabbed at loops in the sides.

The turtle rushed at the camera and that feed blanked out too.

Another panel exploded in the other corridor, then that feed went out.

In the last feed two of the crew suddenly raised their hands over their heads. Another blanking.

"That's it," Larsen said.

Erina stared at the black graphics deck, then up at him.

"They move fast."

"We think an inertial propulsion not tied to normal space."

Erina nodded. "I'm sure you're the experts on all that."

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Larsen stared, then shrugged, the move looking odd in the harness. "I have friends on that ship."

Erina almost said that it didn't look good for them, but held her tongue. Faux pas, she thought, were sometimes her specialty. "I really don't know how much help I can be." She tapped the model turtle, pushing the top cylinder a little. There was a thin join between it and the shell. It seemed that it ought to be able to settle flush into the body. She remembered thinking that when she'd first unearthed the original, but with the corrosion it had suffered none of the parts worked. Disassembling it had been intense and delicate.

"This is an exact reproduction?"

"Micrometer accuracy, as I understand it. The machine is very precise and clever."

She pushed a little harder. "And it has accounted for the damage? Abrasions and nicks and­" "We weren't doing archaeology here. It's not some museum replica. We want to know how they work."

"Like this," she said, feeling the cylinder actually move.

The legs shifted.

"Oh," Larsen said. "Look at that."

Erina raised her eyebrows. "Your people should have been able to figure this out. You assembled it." Why would the turtle have this kind of manual control? It would be good if it was a kill­switch. Erina blinked at herself. Now she was thinking about kill­switches. Was she going to get one of their guns and start shooting at the turtles?

Larsen rubbed his chin. "Pass it here."

Erina held onto it. With pressure still on the now flush cylinder top, she twisted her hand. The piece rotated a 43

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little.

"Pass it here." Voice with a little more authority this time.

She kept turning and squinted at him. "I'm your expert."

The turtle gave a quiet click. At least it was perfectly machine made. If someone had assembled it by hand, what she was doing probably wouldn't work.

Larsen sighed. "I guess you know what you're doing."

Another click.

The shell popped open. Pieces scattered through the room in a slow explosion.

"For..." Larsen stifled a curse.

They had been thorough. There were hundreds of machined plastic fragments drifting in the room. Three hundred and forty three of them.

Larsen grabbed for the pieces.

"Stop," she said, watching how they drifted.

"You've wrecked it," he said, but he put his hand down.

Erina could see the array immediately. Even though the pieces kept moving, there was a sequence to them. If they'd been in gravity they would have fallen into a pattern. What if the turtles had some kind of... force field... that would keep the pieces in a particular spread.

If they had a type of inertial field that worked separately to real space, then anything was possible.

The hatchway opened and a woman came in. Pretty, Erina thought, but in a drawn, forced way. She'd had surgery.

"We're coming up on..." the woman trailed off. She reached and picked a spinning piece of the turtle out of the air. "You broke it? We'll never be able to reassemble 44

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that."

"Don't need to," Erina said.

"This is our expert?" the woman said.

"Doctor Erina Parlane," Larsen said. "Meet Sam Dalgliesh."

Erina nodded. "I didn't break it. This is what it does."

She'd always wondered. The articulation and mobility had been an obvious given, but so many of the pieces had seemed superfluous and unnecessary. This made sense. It was mobile like any autonomous machine, but it had levels of complexity that went beyond anything current technologies could manufacture.

"What's going on with this?" Dalgliesh said. She kept reaching out and taking pieces from the air.

"Please stop doing that," Erina said. She was still watching the pattern they scattered into.

"What, and have them clog up the ducts? I don't think so."

"Sam, please," Larsen said.

"This is a finely­tuned ship and..."

"Why don't you just take me back to Breyen right now?"

Erina said to Larsen. "I've got a big clean­up job to do there after your rocket­boy landing antics. The sooner I get started, the better."

"What?" Dalgliesh said. She batted one of the bigger pieces across the room. "You just got here. Anyway, we're..."

"Now," Erina said.

Larsen raised a calming hand.

"We're coming out of Barris in..." Dalgliesh glanced at her time "...two minutes."

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"Teams ready?"

Dalgliesh nodded.

"Dismissed."

"I..." Dalgleish's mouth stayed open a moment, then she nodded, scowled at Erina and twisted back out of the hatchway.

Larsen watched, then turned back to Erina. "My apologies," he said. "What is the deal with exploding it and letting the pieces drift?"

"Here," she said, pointing up into a series of the slower moving pieces. "See how they form a line?"

"Vaguely. What are you getting at?"

"Your fabricator is very good. The parts are probably accurate to a micron level, and the processor has made good extrapolations from the damage and deterioration.

That means that your replica turtle would probably operate if we had the kinds of internal control systems the... aliens used."

"We could probably build something. Not in two minutes, though."

"That's not the point," she said. "See how they've drifted apart? In a sequence. Even from the relative crudity of the parts. The real one would be even more exact."

"I don't see what you're getting at."

Erina sighed. How to explain it? "The turtle has a duality. One, it's a simple robot. Two, it's something else."

Larsen shrugged again. "What, then? What else is it?"

Erina shrugged, too. "If I could get my hands on a live one, I might be able to figure that out." It wasn't archaeology, but it still fascinated her. "The array suggests communications, or perhaps a calculator; some way of 46

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calculating celestial mechanics and the age of the universe?" That would be beyond her.

"They're aggressive. They destroyed a ship and are in the process of destroying another. That's not some 'celestial calculator'."

"Perhaps they're just defensive." She almost said that they might have some important calculation they didn't want interrupted, but knew that would sound too irreverent.

Outside the window something changed. They'd dropped from Barris Space. There was an almost black starfield, with some refraction in the window from the local star.

A thump and she felt the ship lurch.

"Crap," Larsen said.

Erina saw sparkles outside of the window. From the corridor a klaxon began to sound.

"Stay here," Larsen said. He was already out of the webbing harness and almost at the hatchway. Then he was out and the hatch slammed behind him. The ship lurched again.

Erina fumbled her way from the harness and managed to twist and drift her way to the window. Grabbing one of the loops, she pressed her face up to the plastic. It was cold to the touch. She couldn't see anything other than the stars and more of the sparkles. Were the sparkles fragments from an explosion, she wondered, lit by Eltanin?

A rumble echoed through the ship, and the room went quiet. The air circulation had gone out. She hadn't noticed the sound of the vents until they stopped. Another 47

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rumble. The ship shuddered. The klaxon continued to sound.

Turning, Erina kicked off from the window and grabbed the handle on the hatch. It didn't budge.

They locked me in? She tried the keyscreen at the side, but it was coded and locked. Awkwardly she swung back around and half­glided, half­swam to the graphics deck.

With a quick swipe in the corner she called up layered menus. There was a fair chance that it might have door controls.

A bead in the center of the deck flickered and she tapped it. The bead budded off a series of two­dimensional daughter icons and Erin maximized them all. External camera feeds.

Outside, the hoop was obvious. A vast thick curve of enhanced white in the starfield, and a cluster of particles ­ turtles ­ drifting close to it. The other ship was there, clearly big, but still dwarfed by the hoop. The ship was broken, two pieces drifting separately.

On the left of the graphics deck there was another line of daughters.

The internal camera feeds.

Punctured bulkheads. People in survival suits scrambling along the companionways. Bodies.

Erina's chest clenched. She was scared. Larsen had said people were dying. But she'd been distracted by the turtle.

Pieces of it still drifted around her.

Urgent, he'd said. People were dying. Not like this, though. She hadn't imagined. She was an archaeologist.

She dug up pots and tools. She didn't get into military ships that were repelling alien invaders. It was all wrong.

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With a bang the hatch opened.

Larsen swung in fast. His legs came around and he shunted the hatch closed again.

"Put this on." He held out a flimsy suit. He was in something similar himself, the helmet inflated over his head.

Erina took the suit. She kicked off her work boots and stuffed her legs in. "What's going on." She saw that Larsen was armed again. A big gun strapped across his back.

"They hit us as soon as we came out of Barris."

"Waiting?" She had the suit up over her waist. It seemed to adapt to her clothes and shape as it came over her.

The ship rumbled again.

"Perhaps." Larsen nodded. "There aren't many of them, but they punched in like projectiles."

"Turtles?"

"Definitely."

Erina realized that she was breathing hard. She was terrified. She forced herself to slow her breathing. "What's the plan?"

"Lifeboat into Barris space. Come out near help."

"The ship couldn't drop right back into Barris space?"

"The first hit wrecked the starboard wheel."

Barris ships resembled the old side­wheelers on the Mississippi with two big wheels on the sides focusing the energies to keep them in the sub­space realm that allowed fast transits between stars. Barris herself had endured endless 'ferris wheel' jokes at her expense.

"We can't drop in?"

"Not in the Shining Star. The lifeboats have mini­wheels" 49

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Erina could feel a different part of her brain coming into play. That same practicality that had been there when the ship had blasted across the dig, already able to visualize a plan for reinstating things. She could feel that now, getting the suit on quickly and figuring out getting to a lifeboat and wondering about the turtles. "Did you see them?" she said. "The turtles."

"Saw two. They were boring holes, blasting. A pulse weapon. They fire a charge."

"Energy," she said. "Like the anomaly, like Barris space.

They borrow energy from a form of subspace, inject it into real space. No need for conservation or Einstein. Mass and speed don't figure into it."

Larsen stared at her, his eyes like a bug's through the bulging helmet lenses. "I guess. Not quite archaeology, huh?"

Another rumble, coupled with a series of explosions.

"That can't be good," Erina said. She got the hood­helmet over her head and felt the suit sealing itself up her back and up across her hair. The oxygen reservoir molded in against her back, thick and supporting. A little mic budded physically by her mouth and HUD display lines leapt across the bug­eye lenses. The words 'D. Larsen, 13032916' popped up with an arrow pointing virtually at Larsen.

The hatch shuddered with a closer explosion. She heard the staccato chatter of gunfire. A sound behind her and she twisted around. The external window shivered and cracked. As the shutter wound down, Erina saw gel filler squirting across the cracks.

A turtle passed by, right outside. Then the shutter was 50

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down.

"Come with me," Larsen said. He spun around, grabbing the hatch key screen and thumbing it with the suit.

She could feel the nausea rising again. A medical diagnostic scrolled up the HUD. 'Administer sedative, Codeine 20%,' it read.

"No," she said. She could handle it. Being drugged and dulled would be bad in this situation. The diagnostic faded out, replaced with an oxygen volume that meant nothing to her. It could mean she had three hours or ten minutes.

"No what?" Larsen said, his voice buzzing in her ear from the helmet's speaker.

"Your suit's trying to medicate me."

"Might be a good idea. I'll have you in the boat in forty­five seconds and we'll be out of here." He turned to her, hand still at the key screen. "Ready?"

"Yes." Why had they even brought her out here? Surely they should have locked the situation down properly ­ or whatever they called it in the military; flat or green or neutralized ­ before they hauled her into it. Weren't they supposed to be in the business of not underestimating?

Larsen pulled the hatch open. Erina felt a shift in the air, as if there had been another explosion. Larsen stuck his head into the companionway. "Clear," he said. "Let's go."

Erina put a foot on the graphics deck to push off, then hesitated. Drifting near her was one of the turtle legs that hadn't been on the main body when she'd exploded it.

"Let's go," Larsen said.

She grabbed the leg and kicked off. Larsen caught her 51

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wrist and directed her out. Staring at the turtle leg as Larsen turned her, she wondered why she'd taken it. A souvenir? In this situation? If they had all the data, then she would be able to fabricate one anyway. Assuming she survived this.

"Move," Larsen said, coming up beside her. He gave her a little push, sending her back the way they'd first come into the ship.

Grabbing a loop, she pulled herself on. There was someone ahead of them waiting. No, not waiting. The crew member wasn't moving. Dead.

Larsen swooped ahead of her, spun the body out of the way and grabbed Erina's wrist again, pulling her quickly on.

"If they're in the ship, how come there's still atmosphere?" she said. "They must have breached your hull."

"They did. We're in vacuum."

Erina felt a sudden chill. There was nothing ­ really nothing ­ outside her suit. The suit was keeping her alive right now. "But that room," she said. "I was..." she trailed off, realizing that the shift in the air wasn't another explosion. It had been the air bleeding out of the compartment.

She shivered. She'd been in ships plenty, but it was always in warm dry air. You just breathed like normal. She wasn't an astronaut, she didn't do spacewalking.

"Yeah," Larsen said. "The compartment sealed."

"But how did..."

"The bulkheads." He pointed back at a line that circled the companionway. "Touch and go."

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"They're open now."

Larsen didn't reply. He grabbed her wrist again and kept pulling.

"We're the only ones alive on the ship now, right?"

"In here." Larsen pushed her through an open hatchway into a hangar bay. A wide circular room with three pods mounted on the walls. Lifeboats. There was another hatch beyond, on the outer hull, big enough to accommodate the pods. Beside the hatch there was a turtle­sized hole.

One of the pods was wrecked, stove in with fragments drifting around it. There was a hole in one of the other two.

"Uh­oh," Larsen said. He pulled a screen scrap from beside the hatch they'd come in through. Expanding the scrap, he called up logs and controls.

"What's wrong?" Erina said. She had a bad feeling she knew. Suddenly getting tanked and going to bed with David seemed like the best thing she could have done. At least she'd had a little frivolous fun before she died.

"Sorry to put you in this situation. I didn't expect them to be this aggressive."

"Nonsense," she said. "You knew. You just thought you could handle it. Get me one of the turtles." She realized why she'd grabbed the leg.

"What?"

"Can you find a turtle now?" she said. She wondered if they were all tearing around too fast.

"Excuse me?"

"Where are they? What are they doing?"

Larsen considered for a moment. He twisted at the hatch a little. "Near the bow."

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"Are they disassembling the ship?"

"Probably."

Erina glanced around, looking at the big hatch for the pods. "Can we get out that way?"

"Out?" "And move along the outside of the ship."

"I... yes." Larsen swung back in and turned to a row of lockers on the inner wall. "Are you rated?"

"Spacewalking? No. This is bad enough."

"I don't think you want to go out there." Larsen ripped one of the lockers open and pulled out some lengths of thin coiled rope. "But if you insist then we'll have to be tethered."

"I insist." What was she doing? She looked at the wrecked pods again. "These are all the lifeboats?" How big had he said the crew complement was? Eighty? More.

That many wouldn't fit in these three boats.

"Further forward," Larsen said. "There's more damage up there. We could check the bays, but looking at this I'm not hopeful. It might be our best shot." He grabbed a pole with two cylinders from the locker. It looked like a barbell with the weights turned parallel to the bar. He clipped it to his shoulders.

The ship shuddered again. It was soundless, but Erina felt it through the loop.

"Come on," Larsen said. He quickly tied a carabiner to the end of one of the ropes and clipped it to a ring on her suit's waist. Trailing the rope, he leapt out across the volume, turning as he went, and landed feet down beside the hatch. He crouched as he landed and caught up one loop at the edge.

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Erina got her feet around, crouched, let go of the loop and jumped. Too gently. She moved slowly across the space. Larsen had his foot hooked into one of the loops and stood up. He pulled on the rope. Erina jerked forwards. As she came to him he reached his palm up and tapped her shoulder. Her body turned, feet coming down.

As she landed, Larsen steadied her. She hooked her foot into one of the loops.

"I'll open the hatch," Larsen said. "I can't promise it will be pretty out there. Lots of debris."

"You were shooting them?"

"Almost a waste of time. They're agile and there were so many." He fiddled with the controls and the hatch jerked, then slowed, sliding open.

"Hit any?" Erina looked into the growing gap, feeling a sense of vertigo. It was a long way down to nothing out there.

"Some, I think." Larsen clipped the rope into an industrial­sized ring at the edge of the hatch.

"Let's find one of the one's you've hit." She had to look back up into the bay to feel less woozy from the view.

"Not easy," he said. "Okay, there are rungs on the exterior to pull yourself along with."

What was she thinking?

"We have to go," Larsen said.

She looked down, saw the swarm. The couldn't be more than fifty, maybe sixty kilometers from the ring itself.

There were more turtles coming. "Go where?" she said "You're right. We have to check the other bays." He paused for a moment. "We're kind of going last­ditch here."

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"Didn't an emergency signal get sent out?"

"Probably. We might even still be sending data back through the relay. But if it was me, I wouldn't be coming out of Barris space anywhere near the anomaly now."

Courage to the sticking place, Erina thought.

"Working lifeboat is our only chance, huh?" For a moment there, when she'd woken, she'd thought that her day had started badly. She'd been considering how she was going to let David off the hook. Least of her problems now.

"Yup," Larsen said. "Watch my actions. Repeat them and follow me."

Erina swallowed. "Okay."

Larsen reached for the edge of the open hatchway.

Erina watched his hands. He grabbed and pulled himself around, keeping his hands firmly on the edge. His legs vanished, but she could still see his hands. "Okay?" he said.

"Fine time for a spacewalking lesson."

"It will be okay. You're tethered. I'll pull you along if I have to."

Crouching, Erina grabbed the same spot. Her grip felt loose and light. How had he done that swing? Trusting that it would work, she pushed off with her feet, letting her legs swing around. Just like a jungle gym, she thought.

"I see you," he said. Then she felt his hands on her ankles. He guided her down. "Just like a pro," he said.

Erina sighed. Now she was outside the spacecraft. She felt his hands guide her foot into a rung.

"You can let go n... crap."

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"What?" Erina let go. Her foot was wedged and she stood, turning a little "Turtle," Larsen said.

She saw it. Just like the one she'd found, but pristine and functional. It was fixed to the hull a few meters away.

Right by the row of rungs that led away from the hatch.

"This is a problem," Larsen whispered.

The turtle was creeping slowly along towards them.

One foot lifting a little, stretching out, then dropping down a few centimeters ahead. The foot sat flush with the deck, as if it was magnetizing itself on.

"There's no way back?" Erina said. "They've overrun the corridors, right?"

"I think so. We wouldn't be out here if they hadn't."

Erina stuck her free left foot into a rung beside Larsen's foot and pulled out her right foot. "You've got me, right?" she said as she stepped and slipped her right foot into the next rung.

He tugged her back a little.

"Let me concentrate."

"Doctor Parlane! You're..."

"Let. Me. Focus." She was just a meter away from the turtle now. It stopped moving and swiveled a leg towards her. It kept the leg raised.

"It's going to shoot you!" Larsen said. He grabbed her arm.

"Let go. No. Push me."

"What?"

"My feet are hooked. Push me forwards."

"What are you doing?"

"Push me over. I can reach it."

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"You've lost your mind, right? We need to get back into the ship."

"They're not aggressive," she said. "They're lost."

"Lost?"

"Push me."

Larsen sighed now. "I hope you know what it is you're doing."

She felt his hand on her back, then he pushed.

Erina folded forwards, her feet still jammed in the rung.

As she came down she lifted her arm. The turtle's leg swiveled a little more. Bending at her waist, Erina smacked her gloved hand down on the turtle's upper surface.

The turtle exploded.

"Whoa," Larsen said.

No flash. No fire. It just disassembled the way the replica had, back in the room.

Except that the pieces didn't keep moving. They lined up into an array and steadied. The furthest any of them traveled was perhaps fifteen meters. Three hundred and forty three pieces, forming up into a kind of floating series.

Erina stared into the array. The pieces had spread out into a volume of perhaps two hundred cubic meters. The size of a small house, stood up on end. There were still points of contact on the Shining Star's hull, and the turtle fanned out above. Some of the tiny pieces were rotating, some were shivering and others were quite still "Whoa," Larsen said again.

"They've lasted beyond whoever created them," Erina said. "And now they don't know what to do."

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"You know this how?"

"Speculation."

"More are coming in," Larsen said. Erina could hear the tension in his voice.

"It will be all right."

"Look out!"

Another turtle sped in towards her. It decelerated rapidly and hung in space within arm's reach.

"I wanted to get that first one out of the way," Erina said. "I didn't mean for more to come." The new arrival drifted closer.

"You're attracting them now."

Erina slapped the new turtle. It exploded too. She didn't get as much of a fright as the first time.

The first turtle let go of the hull, its array moving away from them. It combined with the new array, like two fountains side by side sharing droplets.

Another turtle zipped in and Erina slapped it too. Its array merged in with the others. They were going to form a sphere, she realized, with the tips of all the turtle feet in the core.

"You think this is such a good idea?" Larsen said.

"Maybe this is how they signal across the universe for their creators to come and start their invasion."

"Maybe. But at least we can try for a working lifeboat."

Erina took another step into a new rung. "How far to the next bay?"

"About fifty meters," Larsen said.

"Good." Erina swiped another turtle, then another. The array was getting huge now, dwarfing the ship. She kept walking.

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"Doctor Parlane?"

"Mm." The array was rippling, as waves shifted and moved through the floating pieces. A nearby turtle spontaneously exploded without her touching it. Then another.

"Just wondering," Larsen said, "if you were dating anyone."

Erina smiled, thinking of David. Who knew if she was dating anyone? "Maybe," she said. Right now she would just settle for a working lifeboat.

Sean Monaghan is a New Zealand writer with over one hundred story publications. His sci-fi thriller Rotations is published through Lucky Bat Books. Web: seanmonaghan.com.

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A LEGACY OF THE TWILIGHT YEARS

by Mike Jansen

“Will you come to the table, Father?” asked Min. Her

father was staring at the horizon again, the fading, bluish light of Trega coloring the sky a deep purple through which a few bright stars twinkled.

Yu grumbled and turned away. “The stars come out early these days. Not twenty years ago, when the city was alive, the sky was lit by thousands of houses and offices.

Business never stopped.”

Min nodded. She herself had been in her late twenties then and remembered well Lakeside’s skyline. The Exodus Project was finished by the time she reached her thirty­fifth birthday. Many of her family had said their farewells and there was a three­day ceremony to cleanse their relatives before their great journey outward. Yu had insisted that this was the way to send off family even way back on Earth.

Yu sat down and Min saw there was a tear in his left eye.

“I miss Tommy too, Father,” she whispered as she filled his plate with slices of fried duck, sweet­and­sour mud crawler in velvet grass roots, noodles and some fried rice.

Yu nodded. He picked some choice pieces from his plate, got up and carried them to the house altar, where he put them in the sacrificial chalice. He poured some 61

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scented oil on the food and then lit the oil. As gray smoke rose from the chalice he prayed. “Dear Lord Jesus, embodiment of God and Spirit, please accept these gifts.

And as you once shared your food, please now partake of ours, that you may find sustenance and strength to care for the spirits of our beloved ancestors. And please look after our family and my son Tommy on the starship Pride of Lian. Amen.” He also lit some incense and the sweet smoke followed him back to the table.

“How was work today?” he asked as he sat down.

“The number of complaints is still rising, mostly plumbing and power that seems to fail.” Min took very little food herself. She was a small woman, even if she was of obvious Caucasian stock with her light skin and blue eyes. Still, her Asian genes showed in the epicanthic fold and her jet­black hair.

“Our infrastructure is failing in more places.” Yu nodded. “I was shown various statistics today, which indicate that we are heading for a breakdown.”

“Surely you exaggerate, Father,” Min said softly. Her father was raised in the traditions of a family which could trace its origins to the very first settlers from the Guangzhou and as such he was worthy of her respect.

“Sadly no, my sweet daughter,” he looked at her with sparkling eyes. “We are getting old. Most of our young people went with the ships. And birthrates are virtually non­existent. Still, we die sometimes. And there are none who can perform the tasks of those who have departed.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes.

“Is the Central Government looking into this?” Min asked.

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“Of course.” Yu sighed deep, a strange noise that Min had rarely heard from him.

“Are you not pleased with that?” she asked.

“They are old men and women, Min. Like I am. Their ideas are as old as they are and not many have the drive to come up with drastic solutions, except maybe that ancient clown, Jan Boikgestien.” He sighed again.

Min sharply raised her eyebrows, a gesture she knew would emphasize the blue of her eyes and thus the display of her shock at hearing the heresies her father had just preached. “Surely, Father, drastic measures have never been good for the people of Lakeside, let alone Treetoo as a whole.”

“Without some drastic measures, dear, Trega Two will lose the last of its civilized inhabitants in a matter of decades. Those that remain will squat in the ruins of our slowly crumbling cities and wonder what Gods built these artifacts. And maybe someday they will rise to greatness once more. Or die out altogether.”

His words hung in the air for painful seconds before the house avatar chimed in.

“Lady Min, I am dreadfully sorry to interrupt your dinner, but there is a call from Mister Chen Lee. Your colleague, if I may believe his security keys.”

“Excuse me Father,” Min bowed politely and got up. “I will see him in the kitchen, Wu.” Min had named her avatar after her first teacher, a man of great wisdom to her youthful mind. That image had never faded.

Chen’s face floated in the air above the center of the black granite and chrome block, which she used to prepare food. Min looked at him thoughtfully. Chen was 63

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nearly her age, a friendly man, good looking, taller than she, always smiling and quick of wit. She liked him and if it had not been for her father, she might have asked him over for dinner some time. Right now his face was pale and there was a grim set to his jaw.

“Chen, what is it?” she asked. His short bow was almost a nod, she noted with some concern.

“I... apologize for interrupting your time with your family, Lady Min. There... there is good reason, I assure you.” He wiped his chin and forehead with a yellow handkerchief.

Min waited patiently. Apparently Chen had experienced something and he needed some time to compose himself.

After a few seconds Chen inhaled deeply. “There has been a murder.”

The transit took Min from her house on the shore of

Lake Darwin to her offices in Lakeside in mere minutes.

Chen was sitting at his desk, together with Han and Pilton, as she entered the artfully lighted and designed hall from which the Lakeside Central Police Administration operated.

She walked purposefully to the center table, which they used for their meetings. The titanium dragon, which was woven delicately into the glass and dark polished wood of the table, seemed to wink at her, although that was most likely one of the cameras adjusting its focus. “Master Wu, please attend me,” she spoke to the table. Her avatar appeared before her on the table, diminished and less detailed than she was used to, but still endowed with the 64

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formidable routines and programs that Min had selected for him.

“Please ask my colleagues to join me at the conference table, Master Wu.” She collected her thoughts and prepared a small agenda for their meeting. She found that focus and concentration did not come easily. She bit her lower lip for a moment, before suppressing that urge.

Chen, Han and Pilton each took a chair and keyed into the central systems.

“Esteemed colleagues,” Min began, “I have reviewed the facts as I drove here. The images I have seen seem to confirm that a murder has indeed been committed.”

“I concur,” Chen said.

Han nodded. His thick neck almost obscured the move, but the systems picked it up regardless.

“Me too,” said Pilton. His voice croaked slightly.

“That puts us in an awkward situation,” Min stated.

“There has not been a murder in over twelve­hundred years and we have no experience in such cases.”

“Do we even have jurisdiction to look into this... this... event?” Pilton asked.

“Apparently we do. Article seventy­eight, sub­section four of our charter.” Chen keyed the relevant paragraphs onto the table.

“That, and Master Wu discussed the matter with the Council of Elders. They have given their express authority to this body to investigate.” Min folded her hands on the table. “It’s our job now. Our task to perform. We will find this murderer and bring him or her to justice.” She keyed the pictures of the murdered woman onto the table, which turned almost completely and vibrantly red.

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Pilton got up hastily with his hand before his mouth, muttered something unintelligible and ran towards the restroom.

“When he is done, I suggest we go investigate,” Chen said. He looked at Min directly, indicating he meant the two of them. He tapped a small silver suitcase that Min knew held the relics of ancient detectives who had solved crimes long before they were even born.

The area in which the body was found was located in

the southern suburbs of Lakeside. The transit took Min and Chen to within a few minutes walk.

As they traversed a small park with indigenous purple ferns surrounding a small, heart­shaped pond, the soothing noise of a small waterfall reached them. The sound of their feet on the gray gravel seemed an intrusion in the serene atmosphere of the area. Rounding one of the many bends of the path a splash of darkening red next to a square and solid wooden bench became visible. A pale hand seemed to materialize from the dark shadows cast by the lanterns that hung from a closely packed clump of birch trees, close to the pond.

“Master Wu?” Min whispered.

“At your service,” the familiar voice seemed to speak in her ear, although the implants wired the information directly into her brain. Min had foregone the visual work that would allow her to see her Avatar in any situation, to at least keep a sense of privacy. Unlike most other citizens who felt that immersion in the audio­visual data nets was of vital importance.

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“Can you see us? We’re in Angaio Park, a few minutes from Dang Low station.”

“The location of the murder, naturally.”

“Why is there no one here?” she asked. “Shouldn’t someone be posted?”

“Orders from the Council of Elders. Citizens are warned away from the premises until you have investigated.”

“As always your foresight is commendable, Master Wu,” she complimented her Avatar.

Chen had walked around the bench and went to one knee to take additional pictures with his enhanced eyes.

Min walked around to see if she could find any traces in the gravel or in the undergrowth next to the paths.

When she found no evidence she joined Chen.

“What have you found so far?” she asked him, trying to avoid the wide, staring eyes of the dead woman and failing miserably.

“The victim’s name is... was Mai Lin Vries. Almost two hundred years old. Cause of death... Better see for yourself.” Chen’s voice trembled slightly.

Min swallowed, then looked down from those staring eyes and found the bloody ravages of a neck, torn and broken with vicious strength. Claws seemed to have ripped deep through flesh, bones and cartilage from her neck down to her abdomen, which seemed strangely empty.

“Did you... did you take samples?”

Chen nodded. He looked pale, even in the reddish light of the lantern. He tapped the small suitcase. “It’s all done.

All other material is in the data­stores.”

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to the park so they can prepare her for her departure.”

Min silently whispered a short prayer for Mai Lin. They heard a subdued croak and a short splash from the pond as they left the park. In silence they retraced their steps to Dang Low Station. During the ride back Min sat a little closer to Chen than usual, her left leg touching his right leg, finding comfort in his closeness and the warmth of his body.

The next morning Min came to work early. She had

missed her father at breakfast. Yu made it a habit to work in the garden for an hour before going to work and he had not finished trimming his bonsai trees when she left for the office. It somehow seemed wrong to her, but the importance of the coming day overshadowed that feeling.

When she got to the office, her colleagues were already in heated debate.

“Why is their no surveillance footage of the time she was murdered?” asked Pilton.

“I have no answer for you, Jerome,” Chen said. They were going over all the collected data and had found that some key elements were missing. “One would assume that a guided and monitored society such as ours would follow our every move. In fact, that is exactly what happened.

Until she, Mai Lin, entered that park.”

“There was a power failure,” Han stated solemnly.

Min sat down at her end of the table and keyed into the system. She saw Chen looking at her with a warm smile on his face and she felt a strange quiver in her stomach.

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autonomous systems,” Jerome Pilton went on. “Even the data net did not pick up her distress signal until it was too late. Why? This technology is hundreds of years old and has proven accurate and robust time and again.”

“Glitch in the relay station. Her transponder was due for replacement. Coincidences, but together they form a plausible case.” Chen fiddled with the various results that were even now coming in from laboratories all around town. “But this can’t be right.”

“What can’t?” Min asked.

“The coroner’s report. It mentions the use of excessive force to inflict the wounds we have seen. It talks of ‘inhuman’ strength.” The words appeared highlighted on the table in front of Chen. “Also, most of her internal organs were missing: heart, lungs, stomach, kidneys, liver, spleen, womb, ovaries and intestines.”

“So our murderer is very strong, or uses tools or drugs to enhance his or her strength.” Min’s thoughts kept drifting towards the staring eyes of Mai Lin. “It happened so fast, she was probably still alive when her organs were removed.” There had been fear in those eyes. The kind of fear humans on Trega Two rarely ever experienced, except when artificially induced in an adventure­flick or some kind of simulated competitive game environment.

The table chimed softly when another report relevant to their investigation was posted on the net.

“It’s the result from the DNA lab.” Chen pulled up the file. He and Jerome read the pictograms that scrolled through a window on the table. Almost simultaneously they read a portion aloud: “alien origins?”

“What, what?” Han asked. His usually imperturbable 69

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face was alert and his eyes, normally closed to slits were now wide open, showing his big and dark brown irises.

Min pulled up the file and read the report. There it was.

Alien origins. The DNA found inside the wounds inflicted on Mai Lin was of a strain found in a number of indigenous life forms. Min shook her head. “This can not be. There are no large predators on Treetoo. And none that could successfully attack a human.”

“The southern edge of the city is relatively close to the Purple Gates. Those forests stretch for three thousand miles to the shores of Sargasso’s Sequel. And they have never been fully explored...” Han was an avid nature lover who made frequent trips to the countryside.

“There have been no reports whatsoever of any large animal wandering around in the city.” Jerome tapped the window with the surveillance reports. “And besides, why attack here, inside the city, instead of at the edge?”

“It could be intelligent,” Chen proposed.

“If it were intelligent, it would know to steer clear of humans,” Han argued.

“From a human perspective I would agree with you, Master Han,” Chen acknowledged, “but it seems we are dealing with something else here. Something that knows how to circumvent our surveillance, knows when to attack without witnesses. And that has a craving for our flesh.”

The last sentence sounded ominous.

“Could it be some kind of camouflage we have never encountered before?” Jerome speculated. “That would explain why no one saw it and none of our systems picked it up. It would also explain why it has remained hidden until now.”

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Min shook her head. “The human race has been on Trega Two for well over fourteen hundred years.

Something of this size leaves traces and we would have found them.”

“What do we tell the Central Government?” asked Chen.

“The truth of course.” Min stated. “Which is that we’re still investigating.”

At that moment Master Wu appeared above the table and monotonously said: “There has been another murder.

A witness just reported the attack.”

Min and Chen arrived in Shang Do Park thirty minutes

later. A few dozen people stood at the entrance.

“They’re discussing the events,” Chen noted. “There’s an unusual amount of activity on a newly created channel called ‘Alien Attack’; that’s our witness over there, the one in the black and yellow robes.”

Min looked at the man that Chen pointed out and the first thing she noted were his prosthetic eyes. Though the model was over two­hundred years old, they were advanced and the images they relayed to the brain were sharper and more sophisticated than what the original could produce. Still, she had a hunch about the functioning of electronics whenever the killer struck. The more surprised she was when the man, one Peter Huang, stated that he had captured a few seconds of footage before the grid went down and all electronics stopped functioning.

“Please send that to us through the usual channels,” 71

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Min asked Peter Huang.

“Already done, detective. I was scared for a moment when the lights went out and of course the image of that terrible creature was on my mind. I’m an old man and I thought my last hour had come.” Huang shook his head.

“Then I heard the scream. I think it was widow Grettelman. I cannot be sure. She was standing near the willows at the other end of the park, across the water.”

“Is there anything else you remember?” asked Chen.

“Only the sounds. When the wind came across the lake.

Something eating. Wet fleshy sounds. Ripping of cloth.”

Peter Huang shook his head. “I was terrified. Everything was dark and I never felt so alone in all my life. I hid in the bushes and prayed to our Lord to reserve a good place with my ancestors.”

They walked into the park, following the path that

Peter Huang had indicated. It led past some bushes that showed obvious signs of someone trying to crawl underneath them.

“This is where he stood.” Chen held his right hand above his eyes, shielding them from the afternoon sun and looked out over the lake. “I can see the willows on the other side. There is definitely something on the ground.”

As they walked past the lake a gentle breeze followed them until they reached the stand of willows.

A quick search in the municipal databases by Chen revealed the face of the widow Grettelmann, age two­hundred­seventy­eight.

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“It’s her alright.” He took the silver case, opened it, and started taking samples.

Min felt detached. Her mind seemed hazy, yet sharp.

She noted the precision with which the killer had duplicated last night’s work and her mind drifted off to the kind of monster which would commit such acts of atrocity.

The voice of Master Wu distracted her thoughts and brought her back.

“Repeat please, Master Wu.” “The Central Government is worried about the footage that has reached the media. They fear there will be panic among the people.”

Min bit her lip. The usual channels. She had meant for the footage to be sent to Police Headquarters, not the newspapers.

“Tell them we’ll analyze the new evidence and will come with preliminary results soon.”

Master Wu obliged and the Central Government came back with its customary “Carry on the good work” statement.

Min shook her head and kneeled next to Chen. She felt his warmth radiate onto her skin. “How can this victim be so remarkably similar to the previous victim?”

Chen nodded. “I was wondering that myself. If I’m not mistaken the wounds have the exact same length and are positioned exactly identical.”

“Do we have everything we need?” Min asked. “Then I suggest we go back to the office for some more fact finding.” As she got up she almost tripped but Chen was there, supporting her. Min felt her face flush.

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“Are you alright,” he asked and there was genuine concern in his voice.

She nodded. “I’m alright, thank you, Chen.”

Chen put his hand on her right shoulder and squeezed gently. “Be careful.” As he gazed into her eyes she felt a tremor deep inside.

As they rode the transit back to the Police Station, Min

suddenly asked: “Why are you not married, Chen? Is there no special person in your life?”

Chen looked at her for a moment, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. But then he smiled. “I think there are numerous reasons. First, I like my work, so I am rarely able to meet people outside of business. Second, I think I am waiting for the right one… And perhaps the right moment.”

With sudden courage she did not think she possessed Min asked Chen: “Would you… have dinner with me sometime?”

Chen was quiet for a few moments as he looked at her.

“Are you sure?” he asked hesitantly. “These are worrisome times and I do not wish to impose…”

Min shook her head and in another audacious moment said: “No imposition. In fact I would like to invite you to my house for dinner.” She knew she implied he would meet her father which in the old days was almost an invitation for courtship.

Chen’s smile told her he was amenable and he gave her a short bow from the neck. As they left the transit he took her hand and they walked toward the Police Station 74

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together.

When they arrived at the offices Min forced her head

clear of the jumble of thoughts and feelings that had flooded her mind when Chen had smiled at her earlier.

“Your inspection in Shang Do Park has revealed a few interesting facts,” Han started before they were able to sit down at the table.

“The footage?” Chen asked.

“Total rubbish. After enhancement it’s still a blurry mess. Yes, something big next to a human sized figure. A tree possibly. Maybe something else. Apart from a bit of obvious movement of the tree­like blob towards the human sized blob there’s not much else to see.” Han shook his head. “But this is much more interesting: oil.

Synthetic oil.” Han brought up the chemical composition of the substance that had been found in the wounds of the widow Grettelman.

“What type of oil is this? Some kind of ointment for creaky joints?” Chen ran a short search on the net. The search avatar came back with the description of an industrial lubricant.

“What does that mean?” Min read the description of the oil that Chen’s avatar had retrieved. It dawned on her.

“This is machine oil…”

“Chen, can you upload the photos of the surroundings you took? For Mai Lin Vries as well as for widow Grettelman.”

Chen complied and fed the data from his prosthetic optics to the central system.

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“I was wondering why we did not see more footprints at either crime scene. Look at the position of the bodies.

Both were lying next to water or within a few yards at least.” Min measured the distance between the bodies and the water’s edge with her fingers. The table computer automatically drew lines and set measurements. Both bodies were within four yards of the water’s edge.

“Their assailant was standing in the water?” Pilton asked incredulously.

“Obviously. There are few alternatives,” Han said. He ordered a police drone to go onsite and take pictures of the bottom of both ponds at specific locations. As an afterthought he changed the order to ‘watertight’ drone.

“So,” Min continued, “our assailant also had very long and strong arms to be able to grab the victims and to wound them like it did. Hmm.” Min typed a few codes into the table and the various data­files, photos and notes were given a red ‘eyes only’ marker. “Just to be safe, let’s keep this information between the four of us,” Min said.

“Five then,” the voice of Master Wu sounded in her head, “but my loyalty is of course yours’, lady Min.” His remark brought a smile to Min’s face.

The photos Han had just ordered appeared in the table.

There were large and obvious imprints in the soft muck of the pond bottom. Han whistled softly. “That is not an animal.”

“I suspected as much.” Min stated. “Consider the force, the way the deeds were done, and now synthetic lubricants and these imprints. A machine did this.” And, unspoken and by implication, a human must have been controlling it, since autonomous machines were instilled 76

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with sufficient programming to not be able to hurt humans in any way.

“It could still be a machine built by aliens,” Pilton tried, but he did not sound convinced of his own theory.

“A human murderer?” Chen asked incredulously. Until now the possibility of a local, as yet undiscovered species had seemed a plausible explanation. A society that had not known murderers for over a millennium now once again housed a monster.

The next day Min was called on the transit to the

Police Station. A local police officer reported that he had just found a body next to the Neng Shao canal. He described an elderly man, wounds following the familiar pattern.

“Is there any footage available?” she asked although she knew the answer.

“Negative. But I have located an eye witness.”

“Enhanced eyes?” Min queried.

“Negative.”

Min sat up straight. “I’m on my way. Isolate the witness and protect him or her with your life!”

“Consider it done, detective.”

Thirty minutes later Min sat across from an elderly

man who looked deathly pale.

“Mister Tenchi, please tell me what it was you saw.”

The man blinked. “A water devil. That’s what it was.”

“Can you describe it for me, Mister Tenchi?” Min asked gently.

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“Long arms with terrible claws. It rose up from the waters, metallic blue with a huge, central eye. Poor Gheng, he was just setting up his fishing gear.” Tears welled up in Tenchi’s eyes.

“Mister Tenchi, please remain silent about what you have seen,” Min implored. “You too, officer. We need a bit of secrecy to conduct our further investigations.” Both men consented to keeping their silence.

“Father, I am faced with a terrible problem,” Min

started.

Yu stared at the horizon from the terrace facing the lake. “Speak, daughter. I am listening.”

“Father, there is a monster among us.”

Yu nodded. “I read some of your reports. Some indigenous creature from the forest seems to be the going theory.”

Min shook her head. “No, father. This monster, this killer, is all too human.”

Yu looked at her. “This is not mentioned in your notes.

Are you keeping secrets from the Central Government?”

“Only to further our investigation and as described in our charter,” Min assured him, “but that’s not the point.

There is a murderer among us who uses a machine to kill other people.”

“Old people,” her father whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yes, and I’m afraid to let this news become known. It’s bad enough that there are stories about alien animal killers in our cities. A murderer, a serial killer could disrupt our society even more than these murders already 78

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have.”

“My daughter is wise beyond her years,” Yu said. He sounded tired. His shoulders slumped and he leaned heavily on the fence surrounding the terrace. He breathed a few deep breaths, and then said with an unsteady voice: “Keep your secret, Min. Once you solve this case, I am sure wisdom will come and your path will be clear.”

Min smiled. “There is one more thing.”

“Tell me, daughter,” Yu said wearily.

“I…have invited Chen over for dinner.” She hesitated for a moment, expecting disapproval.

Her father turned around and there was a thin smile on his face. He looked older today, as if a heavy burden were on his shoulder. “I think that would please me, Min. I would love to meet this young man and dine with the two of you.”

“Of course we should first finish this murder investigation,” Min said.

“Of course,” her father confirmed.

“I think we have a breakthrough, Min,” Chen said as

they met outside an ancient factory that had been closed for two centuries and that was overgrown with a mixture of indigenous purple ferns and green grasses imported from Earth. “The oil we found is water­resistant. It is used primarily for submersible machines.”

“Is that why you called me here?” she asked.

“I found out that the description that Tenchi has given us closely resembles a manned seaweed­disposer, such as produced in this factory until one hundred seventy­five 79

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years ago.”

“Impressive.”

“It gets better.” Chen kicked the rusty gate that swung open noiselessly.

“Someone has been here,” Min noted.

“Yes, more oil to lubricate the hinges. Very thorough.”

“I wonder who it was,” Min said, knowing that Chen must have waded through ages of data the previous night.

His message to meet him here arrived two hours before dawn.

“Well, the current owner is an investment company.

Thanks to our charter I was able to dig deep enough to come up with one name of interest, hidden behind multiple layers of secrecy.”

“Get to the point, Chen.” Min smiled at him, thinking she would soon dine with him at her father’s house.

“Jan Boikgestien owns the company that owns the front that owns the foundation that owns the investment company that bought the factory. Three months ago. He hid his tracks well.”

Min stepped inside. “That is… unexpected.”

“That’s what I thought when I found out. I’m vizzing everything so don’t walk too fast, will you?”

A small patch of the path towards the factory had been cleared. It led to a courtyard that had been cleared of growth as well. Two large steel doors had recently been scrubbed clean of lichen. They tried the doors which swung open silently. Inside was darkness until Chen located the light switch and a dozen lamps lit up a hall of fifty by fifty yards.

“Someone has restored power here,” Min said. She 80

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looked at Chen who nodded. “Boikgestien again.”

They walked inside and there, not twenty yards away in an alcove stood a seaweed disposer. The machine indeed resembled a one eyed demon.

“Look at the claws, Chen. Sharpened and covered with some kind of fur, I guess.”

“I see it.” He moved closer to get all the details. “There are traces of red, probably blood.”

“What I’m wondering Chen…” Min said pensively.

“What could have driven him to such acts of terror?”

“I have no answers for you there, Min,” Chen answered, “but I expect we will soon know when we interrogate him.”

“He is mad, of course. My father considers him a clown.

Master Wu, will you find out his current whereabouts and the extent of our jurisdiction over Councilors?”

“It shall be done,” Master Wu’s voice sounded tinny. The factory was quite removed from the datagrid and Master Wu apparently had trouble reaching her. And perhaps the equipment used to disrupt the surveillance grid during the murders was close by and acting passively as some kind of dampening field.

As an afterthought Min added: “Could you also find out his portfolio, Master Wu?” “Right away.”

She turned to Chen. “It seems we have found our murder weapon. We still need a motive. But we also know the potential culprit. I say this calls for celebration.”

Chen smiled broadly. Apparently dinner was on his mind as well.

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have an honored guest that night.

Her father was dressed in his best black silk costume.

Its simple yet elegant cut gave him the distinguished look of a mandarin of old.

“Welcome in my house, Mister Lee,” Yu said solemnly.

To Min it was obvious he put grave weight on Chen’s presence.

Chen bowed deeply from the waist and then said: “It pleases me more than I can say to be the guest of the great Yu Chong, Advisor to the Central Government.” And to Min: “and his lovely daughter, of course.”

Min smiled at his compliment. She had been setting up the table with various plates. There was freshly grilled mud­crawler, her father’s favorite. And she had made lamb pastries with spicy herbs, which she knew Chen enjoyed. There were several dishes with a variety of steamed vegetables, both local and from Earth and a large bowl of perfumed rice.

She motioned the men to sit down and she poured rice wine for all of them.

“Are you a religious man, Mister Lee?” Yu asked politely.

“As much as I can though not as much as I’d like,” Chen replied.

“Duty sometimes interferes, I imagine,’ Yu suggested.

Chen smiled. “Sometimes it does. I try to deal with that in a practical manner.”

“So you are a practicing Taochristian?”

“You could say that, yes. I do keep track of the mundane matters of everyday life, job and family.”

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Min sat silent and enjoyed the conversation the two men had. Her father was obviously trying to get a feel for Chen.

Yu got up and picked a few pieces from several bowls.

“Will you join me at the house altar, Mister Lee. Min?” Both Min and Chen stood and placed some small pieces of food on their plates. They joined Yu at the altar. When they stood next to him, Yu spoke in a clear voice. “Dear Lord Jesus, embodiment of God and Spirit, please accept these gifts. And as you once shared your food, please now partake of ours, that you may find sustenance and strength to care for the spirits of our beloved ancestors.”

He placed the food on the chalice, then continued: “and may you be merciful to those who were slain in the past days and may you forgive their killer for what he has done and what he may do.”

Min and Chen looked at each other. Jan Boikgestien was on both their minds. Their charter allowed them to detain and interrogate a Councilor of the Central Government, but only in the presence of at least one other Councilor.

“Amen!” said Yu. “Amen,” Min and Chen chimed in.

“Now then, let’s eat. Mud­crawler is my favorite.” Yu briskly walked back to the table.

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Then Yu asked: “How long have you two been colleagues?”

Min and Chen looked at each other. “Almost ten years,” Min said.

“Interesting,” Yu nodded.

“How so, father?”

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“A conversation I had a few months ago with Boikgestien. About challenges in a human society. He made an interesting statement.”

Both Min and Chen sat straight.

“What statement, Mister Chong?” Chen asked.

“His statement was that humans need a challenge or a common goal to achieve advancement. As an example he gave the Exodus project. Once the fleet had departed, the remainder of our population became complacent. No more drive.”

“There may be truth to his words,” Chen said, “but how is this related to the time we have been partners at work?”

“The fact that you are sitting in my house at my table with my daughter present should answer your question, should it not?”

Chen was silent for a moment and then said: “Are you implying that Min and I were complacent but that we have found a drive?”

Yu nodded. “Exactly. Whatever the cause, it made you aware of each other.”

Chen looked at Yu pensively. “I do hope that Mister Boikgestien also has a good explanation for the deeds that were recently committed.”

At his words Min saw her father’s face cloud over and he fell silent. Shortly after he retreated to the terrace, leaving Min and Chen together.

“I don’t know what is wrong with him, Chen.”

“Do you think he will assist us in the interrogation of Boikgestien?”

“I’m not sure. They have known each other for more 84

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than fifty years.”

Yu entered, his face still cloudy and said: “I’ve been called away. Government business.” He faced Chen. “I leave my only daughter in your capable hands, Mister Lee.” With that he gave a short bow, then left.

Chen looked totally surprised. “Did your father just say what I think he said?’

Min laughed and took his hands in hers. “I think he approves of you.”

Chen smiled back at her and pulled her closer. “That pleases me very much.” He gave her a quick, soft kiss on her cheek and then tried to step back.

Min held on and pulled Chen even closer and lifted her face up to his.

Chen hesitated for just a moment and then kissed her lips. Moments later she released her hands and he felt her arms around his waist. He followed suit and together they stood kissing and enjoying the feel of each other.

As they strolled along the edge of Lake Darwin, arms

intertwined with only the light of the stars to guide them, Master Wu chimed in. “A message from the Central Government, my pupil. Will you hear it?”

“Of course,” she sub vocalized, smiling up at Chen.

“You are formally requested to attend the Council to discuss your current work.”

“Alright. When?”

“Now.” “It’s almost eleven, is there an emergency?”

“I was not informed of that.”

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“Hmm, very well, tell them I shall attend at my earliest convenience. Which should be in about an hour.”

“Very well, I shall relay your message.” Master Wu’s presence faded from Min’s mind.

Chen noted her whispered conversation and asked: “Something going on?”

“I have to go to GovSquare for a meeting.”

“Duty calls, I guess.” He winked at her. “When do you have to be there?”

“Immediately.”

“It’s about half an hour’s ride by transit from here, I guess.” Chen estimated.

“I said I’ll be there in one hour.” Min smiled.

“How so?”

“To give me more time to do some serious kissing.”

Chen laughed and said: “That is a duty I’ll gladly perform.”

Min took the nearest transit to GovSquare, taking the

thirty minute ride to fix her hair, compose her thoughts and to go over the facts repeatedly. She was only distracted a few dozen times by thoughts of Chen standing close to her and looking deep into her eyes.

As the train pulled up in GovStation Jan Boikgestien stepped inside. His tall frame and his pale skin made him an impressive figure. His head was covered in a shock of unruly gray hair. His dress was immaculate white as always and reflected the well­to­do circles that he stemmed from and which he represented. “Please come this way, lady Min. Your father has requested your 86

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presence before you go before the Council of Elders.”

For a few moments Min observed him, a small whisper of fear in the back of her mind. Then she considered the location. There were people everywhere and to kill her here with so many witnesses would immediately result in his apprehension. She gave him a slow nod. Min followed the old Councilor through a maze of passages below the government complex until they finally reached her father’s private office, a small but luxuriously decorated room with red and gold ornaments. He sat behind his tikkawood desk and she noticed deep lines in his face that seemed to deepen when he saw her enter.

“This is a disaster, Min,” he began.

“I agree, father,” she said meekly, “We should not have discussed our investigation with you.” She was very aware of Boikgestien who closed the door behind her and sat in a chair next to the door.

Yu shook his head and smiled a tired smile. “No, you do not understand. This whole situation has been handled poorly.”

“I’m certain we have done the best we possibly can, father. If you find fault then I would be much pleased to be educated.” Min replied.

“The council awaits you. They will decide how this matter will be resolved.” Yu leaned back in his chair. “It is out of my hands now. I am old and tired. Jan, please escort my daughter to the Council.” Yu exhaled deeply as if deflating.

Boikgestien got up from his chair and walked across the room to a door set in a wood panel wall. He winked Min to follow him. She gave her father a worried look and 87

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then followed the gray haired Councilor.

He took her on a grand tour of the complex until they finally reached two large stainless steel double doors. Jan Boikgestien pushed them open with a grand gesture, then ushered Min inside. The room was the large arena she had seen on the net on several occasions and she noticed several Councilors in their raised seats.

Boikgestien came to stand next to her, cleared his throat and stated in a loud voice: “May I present to you Lady Min Chong, daughter of the esteemed Yu Chong.”

The chairperson of the Council nodded politely down at Min. She wore the customary black and grey robes of the office and her dark hair was tied back. Her voice was creaky, but strong. “Welcome, young Lady. We have evaluated your reports and we have prepared a statement for you to issue to the media. Do you have any questions?”

Min was somewhat overwhelmed and said: “Wait, what statement. You have not even read my final report. There is no final report. We’re still investigating.”

“We know that. And your statement will properly address the needs of our people,” an elderly man to the right of the chairperson tried to reassure her.

“What do you mean?” Min asked.

“Your statement will mention the presence of a previously unknown, aggressive species that is hostile to humans.”

“Impossible. We have been here too long. We would have known.” Min felt anger rise up in her, something she had rarely felt.

“It’s not about the truth, Lady Min,” Jan Boikgestien 88

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told her. “It’s about what the people need to believe.”

“Let me guess, we have grown complacent and we need a drive?” Min asked. “And for that you have murdered innocent people?” She pointed her index finger at Boikgestien accusingly.

“Murdered? Me?” Boikgestien snorted. “Don’t assume you know the truth when in fact you know nothing, young woman.”

Min was puzzled. “Then who?”

“I think you know the answer already: the one who was most worried about the decline of our society.”

“Father?”

Boikgestien remained silent. Min looked up at the Councilors, but they all stared into the distance, ignoring her pleading expression.

The chairperson broke the silence: “Your father has made the ultimate sacrifice for his people, Lady Chong.

He will be sorely missed.” She waved her hand dismissively.

Boikgestien took her elbow and led her back to her

father’s office. When they arrived they saw Yu lying peacefully on a grand sofa. His face was pale and he was no longer breathing. Min ran to him and knelt beside him.

His skin was cool beneath her hands. There was a faint scent of almonds.

Min felt tears well up in her eyes. “Why? Why?” “Your father knew that we need our bogeyman,” said Boikgestien. “But who will be the bogeyman in this over civilized society? Committing murder, it killed him 89

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inside.”

“But I can’t lose him, not now.”

“He leaves you a legacy of twilight. It’s up to you to honor that. Or not.” Jan Boikgestien placed his hand on her head, and then left her to grieve over the body of her father.

Four years later

Min walked along the beach of Lake Darwin, close to

her house. The statement that the Council had prepared had the desired effect. Birthrates were up again and there was even mention of a regular baby boom.

When she neared the house a child’s voice yelled at her: “Mommy!”

Her daughter came running from the garden and jumped into her arms in a flurry of arms and legs.

“Dearest Yumi, have you been a good girl?”

Yumi laughed then asked: “Mommy, what is a bogeyman?”

“Who told you about that?” asked Min. “Daddy did. Does he really eat little girls?” Yumi smiled but her eyes betrayed a hint of fear.

Min smiled. “Yes, he does. But don’t worry. Your grandfather Yu is always with you. He always protects those he loves. And he dearly loves you, I’m sure of it.”

She hugged her daughter.

Yumi smiled at her mother and said: “Then I will not be scared.”

Mike Jansen has had flash fiction, short stories and longer work published 90

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in the Netherlands in various anthologies and magazines. A list is available on his website, www.meznir.com. His –Dutch- debut novel De Falende God (The Failing God) came out in November of 2011 and the sequel, In Schaduwen van Weleer (In Shadows of Times Past) is nearing completion.

He has won awards for best new author and best author in the Dutch King Kong Award in 1991 and 1992 respectively and some honorable mentions for English language contests. He lives in Hilversum, Netherlands.

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INFATUATION

by Damien Keith

For nearly ten minutes, Damon Kent’s intense brown

eyes had not wavered from the hotel entrance. His black trousers, shirt, jacket and gloves let him blend into the shadows of the doorway down the block and across the street. He pressed the button on the recorder in his jacket pocket and began his narration.

“It should have hit him about … two minutes ago,” he began as his gaze now shifted to the elaborate watch face on the underside of his wrist. He glanced down the bustling street and listened for the sound of sirens. “In the past, the response was around three minutes; give or take.”

The distant wail of an ambulance drew his attention as he watched it come into view. The siren gave short bursts as it slowly weaved its way toward the hotel through the congested street.

“Little off the pace boys,” he said, shaking his head, as the ambulance squealed to a stop at the hotel entrance.

He watched dispassionately as medics rushed in then, after a few minutes, came back out for a gurney. A short time later, the medics wheeled out the gurney bearing a white­shrouded body as someone in the ambulance silenced the alarm.

“Who knew the old guy was allergic to nuts or that dipping his Cuban in peanut oil could be so fatal? Well, my work here is done,” he said as he switched off the 92

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recorder. “Rest in peace you poor bastard.”

With his eyes still on the ambulance, Damon sauntered from the doorway into the street. He smiled and was about to turn away when everything went black. He wasn’t sure what happened but the next thing he saw were several watery faces staring down at him. Questions floated toward him as he struggled to clear his head.

“Sir, sir are you okay?” a young dark­haired woman asked as she helped him sit up.

“Yeah, yeah I think so,” Damon responded shakily.

“What happened?”

“Some guy in a red Mercedes really whacked you good then sped off,” she continued as she effortlessly lifted him to his feet. “We should get you over to that ambulance, he hit you pretty good.”

“No I’m okay,” Damon said as he nodded his thanks and moved out of the crowd in the direction of the Arlington subway entrance. He glanced nervously toward the ambulance and saw two of the paramedics jogging in the direction of the crowd.

“Really, I’m okay,” Damon repeated as he quickly checked to see if he had his tape recorder then rushed off toward the subway.

Damon sat on the deck of his townhouse, pensively

staring out at the lake as his fingers drummed the newspaper on the table. He flipped through the pages then glanced at the screen of the laptop next to the paper.

“Ah, here we are,” he said, focusing on the headline that read, Heart Attack Claims Prominent Businessman. He 93

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smiled as the report confirmed what he hoped they would believe, death due to a massive heart attack. The article implied an open­and­shut case so he closed the paper and turned to his computer. Opening the instant messaging program, he selected a name from the ‘client’ group. He also opened a browser page containing his banking information and waited. While he waited, he opened another browser tab to the online version of the article he was reading. A tone sounded as the client came online and he typed his message.

'A person doesn’t die when he should but when he can ­ Gabriel García Márquez.'

He sent the message and stared out at the lake as he waited for the reply.

“Profound words, do you think its true?” was the reply.

“Absolutely, I’ve seen it many times. You only have to read the paper to see how inevitably true it is. As a matter of fact, I just read about one today.”

“Really, I would be quite interested in that, do you have a link?”

Damon copied the link from the website, pasted it into his instant message screen and clicked send.

After a moment, a tone signaled a response. “It seems you’re right. I’ve enjoyed our chat and we’ll speak again very soon, perhaps in a week or so.”

Damon refreshed the screen of his bank account and saw that the balance had increased by $75,000.

“Next month would be better. I have other engagements and won’t be free until then.”

“Pity, I would like to discuss this topic at more length.”

“I appreciate that but it can’t be helped, until next 94

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month.”

Damon signed off, closed the application and signed out of his bank account. “Okay, that’s done,” he said as rubbed wearily at his eyes then gazed at the ripples in the lake. “I need a bit of sanity,” he said, sighing deeply and rising from the table.

Damon’s brush played over the canvas as he stared,

transfixed, at the image. In hyperrealism, a marble cherub smiled down from atop an ornate headstone at a colorful iris that sprouted from the over­grown grave. Rain poured down from the angry sky and droplets streaked the cherub’s cheeks like tears. Damon stepped back, stuck his brush between his teeth and studied the painting pensively.

“Good, good,” he said as he nodded to himself. “I, I think I’ll add …”

From downstairs, a baritone chime sounded twice as he glanced at his watch. “God, I’ve been painting for nearly four hours.” Reluctantly he wiped the brush on a cloth and stuck it in the cleaning solution. “Need to get something to eat anyway.”

Damon stared at the large empty table in the back of

the restaurant near the massive fireplace. After a moment, he turned away from the table and stared out the window as he stirred his tea absentmindedly.

“You haven’t touched your dessert?” someone said and, thinking it was the server, he turned and looked up to find no one there. “Forgive me for disturbing you but I noticed 95

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that you’ve been stirring your tea for five minutes and haven’t touched your dessert.”

Damon looked in the direction of the voice and saw a beautiful, dark­eyed woman sitting two tables away. She smiled and waved at him with a delicate, silver spoon.

Her petite hand immediately covered her maroon red lips as she smiled self­consciously. “I honestly didn’t mean to disturb you, I just thought that … that you looked like you needed someone to talk to.”

“Why would you think that?” he asked as he laid down his spoon and folded his arms on the table.

“May I?” she asked, nodding toward his table as she picked up her purse and put it in her lap.

“If you like,” he replied and gestured to the chair opposite him.

Damon’s dispassionate gaze followed her as she made her way to his table. She was of average height and build with shiny brown hair that fell in loose waves down her back. She was dressed in a silk, chocolate­colored blouse with gold emblems, a knee­length matching brown skirt and suede knee­high boots. The most striking thing about her was her large brown eyes and long, dark lashes.

“Well, you just look so pensive and stern sitting there,” she said, swiping unconsciously at her bangs, “that I thought you could use some company.”

He placed his elbows on the table and interlaced his fingers, saying nothing.

“I, I really didn’t mean to bother you,” she continued as her eyes darted away from him and down at the table. “I hope you’re not angry.”

“No,” he replied as he relaxed his posture. “I’m sorry if I 96

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seem guarded, it’s just the way I am.”

“That’s okay,” she said, brightening. “I shouldn’t have barged in on you. So, what’s so interesting about that table back there?” she asked, pointing with her pinky.

“Oh, last night one of their patrons died at that table,” he said, glancing over his shoulder.

“That’s a shame,” she responded as she stared at the table. “What of?”

“Heart attack I think,” he replied as he turned and stared out the window. “Why is it a shame?”

“I, I don’t know,” she answered with a self­conscious shake of her head. “You don’t think so?”

“Death is death; it’s a part of life,” he said with a shrug.

“People die every day all over the world ­ young, old, male, female, but we seem very discriminating about who we shed tears for. As far as I’m concerned,” he continued nonchalantly, “when most people die, we really haven’t lost much.”

Her long, thin fingers brushed a wisp of hair behind her ear as she stared down at the table. “Most people would say that’s a pretty harsh way to look at it.”

“That’s true, but most people are far too impressed with themselves. With very few exceptions, I believe people fall into one of two categories; prey and preyed upon. I’m not saying it’s natural or even desirable, just that it is.”

“And what determines who falls into what category?” she asked as she delicately sipped her cup of black coffee.

“The individual I think,” he replied casually. “Those who choose to remain powerless and uninformed are prey while those who acquire knowledge and power do the preying.”

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“But not everyone has the opportunity to acquire either,” she responded empathetically. “This is not a just or fair society … uh,” she continued then smiled self­consciously. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

“Damon,” he replied as he extended his hand.

“Pleased to meet you Damon, I’m Kylie,” she said as she shook his hand demurely and he nodded his acknowledgment.

"But not like Minogue," she quickly added.

Damon smiled briefly then continued, “I agree Kylie, never has been, but most don’t even make the effort to acquire the knowledge, much less the power. I believe they happily consign themselves to being preyed on out of either laziness or trying to beat a game they can’t even begin to understand. He preyed on people,” Damon said, gesturing behind him to the table where the old man had sat. “He was the head of some large petro­chemical and energy company. Wanted people to believe that crawling in bed with some dictator or terrorist was worth it if you could drive your SUV another five miles.”

Damon turned and looked over his shoulder at the table as his voice turned wistful.

“In the end he found out what everybody discovers, that we’re all prey to death in the end.”

“You think death preys on people?” she asked quizzically.

“Oh no, not in a bad way,” he said as he quickly turned back to her. “No, in many ways I admire death, death is one of the few things that doesn't play favorites. Death took him the same as it would a starving child in Africa, death is the great equalizer.”

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She smiled, her large brown eyes gazing at him intently as he immediately grew uncomfortable. Hers were not the dull cow eyes he was used to seeing, they were intelligent and complex.

“You really are quite special,” she said as she smiled again, self­consciously, and looked away. “You really are quite the thinker.”

The growing silence made him uncomfortable as he searched for something to say. She seemed to sense his discomfort and moved to fill the gap.

“So which are you Mr. Damon, predator or prey?” she asked, leaning her heart­shaped face on her palm as she planted her elbow on the table.

“I’m neither,” he replied, turning his attention to his white chocolate Linzer torte. “I’d aspired to be more than either of them but …”

Kylie could see he was uncomfortable as he pawed at the torte with his fork so she quickly changed the subject.

“So, what do you do Damon?” she asked.

“Sorry?” he said, looking at her as though coming out of a trance.

“Oh, I asked what you did, as a job I mean.”

“I’m a, a freelance efficiency expert of sorts.”

“What does that mean?” she asked with a laugh.

“Just that, you know, people call me in when they want, you know, things to run smoothly."

“What kind of people? Sounds a little shady,” she said, searching his face as he looked away.

“All kinds of people,” he replied as he wiped his hands nervously on his napkin. “My job doesn’t interest me. I think of myself more as an artist, a painter.”

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“Really, you paint?” she asked, smiling broadly and sitting up. “What kind of painting do you do?”

“You know Salvador Dali?” he asked almost rhetorically and was surprised when she said she did.

“Well, my work is not quite as far out as his but it is definitely surrealistic. My primary focus is social commentary. All my paintings have some type of socio­political theme.”

“It sounds fascinating,” she said enthusiastically. “Do you exhibit?”

“I have shows,” he answered sheepishly, “but they’re mostly vanity shows.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Basically, I rent the galleries and show my stuff. I just want people to see the work so I can hear the comments.

Generally, the work is well received by the public, the critics are another matter,” he said with a roll of his eyes.

“Art critics,” she said disdainfully, tossing her long brown hair over her shoulder. “I don’t think they know any more about art than the rest of us, they just pretend they do.”

Damon smiled and nodded as their eyes met and he felt a flutter in the pit of his stomach.

“Well said, that’s exactly what I think,” he said as he took a bite of his dessert.

Kylie smiled, reluctantly tore her eyes from his and stared down at her hands. “I’d really love to see your work, I mean, next time you have a show I’d love to come.”

“Sure,” he said as he smiled broadly. “Do you have a card or something with your address? I’d be interested in 100

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hearing what you think.”

Kylie reached into her purse and pulled out an elegant ivory­colored card bearing only her first name and email address in elegant script.

“Email is generally the best way to contact me,” she said as she passed him the card. “And I always reply the same day.”

“Great. So what do you do?” he asked as he flipped the card over to see if there was more information but found none.

“I do, sort of, life and health, that sort of thing,” she said hurriedly. “I do a lot of traveling, just a job,” she said dismissively. “I don’t want to talk about that, tell me more about your art.”

"Yo dude, I'm out; you got any on you?" Damon asked

as he slumped against the wall next to a man who looked like a serious heroin addict. Damon was dressed in a worn, stained jacket and equally distressed pants as he sniffed and pawed at his nose.

"Naw man, wish I did," the thin black man said as he sat up and planted his elbows on his knees.

"Damn," Damon said as he reached in his jacket pocket, pulled out a half­full bottle of Cisco Red, and shook the contents. Damon pretended to take a long drink from the bottle then passed it over to his companion.

"Go on man, take a pull; better than nothing."

The man took a deep draw and was about to pass it back when Damon waved him off.

"Naw man, need something stronger than that. You got 101

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any money?"

"Busted," the man replied dejectedly and took another drink as Damon eyed him closely.

"Yeah, same here," he said and stared down at his hands. As the man contented himself with the liquor, Damon's gaze shifted discreetly toward the street. He then glanced over to his companion as his hand went into his jacket pocket.

"Son­of­a­bitch!" Damon said, suddenly looking toward the entrance to the alley. His gaze followed a well­dressed man who scurried down the street with his coat pulled tightly around him.

"What's up brother?" his companion asked as Damon quickly rose and rushed toward the entrance.

"Dude owes me money," he replied, peering around the corner furtively. "Been dodging me for two weeks but I wants my money!"

"So just go take it from him man," the junkie said as he sauntered up beside Damon.

Damon motioned for the junkie to follow him and they trailed the man down the block.

"Can't do that man, soon as he sees me he’s going to run. Damn! Was going to buy this big­ass stash and party tonight too!"

"Look man, I get your money for you; think he got it on him?"

"Oh, I know he got it on him," Damon said as he stopped and fixed an angry gaze on the mark. "He don't never carry less than a couple of grand so I know he got it."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the junkie's interest 102

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peak as he craned his neck to follow the vanishing silhouette down the street.

"Hey man, you losing him!" he said as Damon put a hand on the man’s chest and held him back.

"Tell you what," Damon said as he leaned in toward his partner. "You get my money and I make sure you taken care of for a couple of weeks. Dude pretty tough though," he continued as he reached into his pocket and withdrew a knife with a taped handle.

"If I was you I wouldn't give him a chance to fight. I'd take him from behind, shank the bitch and grab the money. He carry some in his wallet but he got some in his inside coat pocket too."

"Yeah, yeah man just hurry up!" his partner said, taking another swig of Cisco. "He getting away!"

Damon reached in his pocket and pulled out a nearly empty baggie of heroin. He then looked at the cracked face of the Timex on his wrist. "You get the money by eleven, we can score by eleven thirty."

"Damn man, just give me the knife!" the junkie said as he grabbed the blade and hurried down the street. Damon followed at a discreet distance as he noticed the mark notice the junkie. The man in the overcoat gave his pursuer a quick, nervous glance then stopped at a magazine stand and pretended to peruse the publications.

Being high, nervous and greedy made for an effective combination given Damon's purpose. The junkie rushed up behind the man and stabbed him quickly three times in the kidneys. Clumsily he grabbed the wallet and envelope from his victim's inside coat pocket then turned to run.

Damon drifted back into the shadows of a nearby 103

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doorway as the attacker's eyes searched the street wildly for him. As a crowd began to gather, the newsstand owner lunged at the junkie and was immediately stabbed. The attacker ran as two police officers rounded the corner at the end of the block. Clutching the knife desperately, Damon's pawn ran into the crowd, slashing blindly at the air.

"Stop!" one of the officers commanded, drawing his weapon.

Damon stared at the eroded bricks that made up the arched doorway in which he stood. He shifted further into the darkness as he heard footsteps getting closer. Another command to stop accompanied the running footsteps.

There was the sound of a single gunshot and the footsteps suddenly stopped. Damon moved forward slowly and peered around the doorway. His pawn lay sprawled in the street, his lifeless eyes still seeming to search for Damon.

One police officer kicked the knife away as another flipped the body over on its back.

"Crazy junkie," the officer muttered, then directed his partner to check on the victim by the newsstand.

"This one's a goner," he said, then moved to the newsstand owner. Though injured, the man was still alive and conscious so the officer began taking his statement.

At that point, Damon exited the doorway and strolled down the street. He never looked back to see a black Lexus as it pulled away from the curb in the opposite direction.

"First trip to New York?" the pretty, red­haired 104

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receptionist asked as she smiled seductively at Damon who was dressed in dark sunglasses and a grey linen suit.

"No, not at all," Damon replied as he ignored the attention and continued to study the gallery space.

"When did you get in?" she continued as she played with her long, red curls.

"Yesterday," Damon replied, still studying the space.

"So, are you an artist or what?" the receptionist persisted as she rose from her chair and walked over to stand beside him.

"Little bit of both," he said with a friendly smile. "But yes, I’m primarily an artist."

"Cool, what do you do?" the receptionist persisted as she toyed with the hem of her short, plaid skirt and swung her hips slowly.

"Paintings mostly," Damon replied as he glanced at his watch and saw that it was nearly eleven, "but mainly for pleasure."

"I'm Christy, where you from?" she asked as she extended her hand. Her blue eyes fought to catch his but Damon deftly avoided them. Before he could answer, the front door buzzed and a dark­haired woman entered the gallery. Habitually, he glanced in the direction of the door and immediately recognized the woman even behind the large sunglasses.

"Excuse me," he said, giving the hand a quick, polite shake then moving over to intercept the woman.

"Kylie?" he said, removing his glasses as she also removed hers and smiled broadly.

"Damon, I thought I recognized you when I glanced in here; you setting up for a show?"

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"Yes I am, if the director ever turns up," he said, looking toward the receptionist's desk where Christy now sat, bearing a scowl.

"But what are you doing here?" he asked, turning back to Kylie.

"Oh, work," she said, sliding her sunglasses into her leather handbag. "Had some work that ran late and decided to stay over another day, now I'm glad I did. How long are you here for?"

"Uh, it's pretty open," he answered warily. "The only thing I've slated for today is to set up this exhibition and, by the looks of it, it may take all day."

"Do you have images of your work here?" Kylie asked as their eyes locked and lingered before he forced himself to look away.

"Uh, yeah, I emailed the gallery some images but I also have them on my phone.

He pulled out the device as he walked with Kylie to a corner of the gallery.

"Please, take a look and let me know what you think," he said, handing it to her.

Kylie took it and studied the images eagerly.

"Oh Damon, these are wonderful!" she said as his gaze lingered on her soft round cheeks and full, smiling lips.

His eyes traveled down the silky chocolate wisps of hair that curved slightly beneath her chin then followed the elegant line of her neck.

"Oh, I'd love to see some of these in real life," she said, smiling with perfect white teeth as he fought the foreign urge to touch her.

"No worries, I'll invite you to the show," he responded 106

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as the Gallery Director walked up to them.

"I'm so sorry for the delay Mr. Kent," he stated with the hint of a British accent. "My name is Alistair Beck, how may I help you today?"

"So what does this one mean?" Kylie asked as the

waiter set down the twin cups of coffee, nodded and scurried away.

"Which one?" Damon responded, leaning forward to view the image and, inadvertently, inhaling her perfume.

What is wrong with me? he thought as he inched back to a 'safe' distance. I haven't so much as thought about a woman in years and suddenly …

"Damon?" Kylie said, smiling quizzically with her pinkie pointing at a slide. "Are you okay?"

"Sorry, yes, I was just thinking about something else."

He glanced at the picture and smiled. "Funny, it's a bit related to that. I call that painting, A Boat Upon the Sea." "It's beautiful," she said, placing her elbow on the table and leaning her cheek in her hand. "It feels sad and lonely though. I like how the man on the boat is adrift on the ocean even though it’s floating through the air in a cavern."

"So, what do you think its saying?"

"Well, loneliness, isolation and a feeling of being separate from his surroundings is definitely a part of it," she replied, tilting her head to the side as she studied the image. "But he doesn't look depressed or sad; he looks more … contemplative I guess."

"And what about the title?" Damon asked, stifling a 107

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satisfied smile. "What do you think it means?"

"It's all metaphorical," she replied, grasping a lock of hair and twisting it between her fingers. "But, I don't really think the boat is a boat really. Because it's listing and in such rough shape, I would say it represents his psyche or maybe even his defenses."

The waiter suddenly appeared and asked if they wanted anything else. Damon only refilled his coffee then deferred to Kylie who asked for a refill as well. During the interruption, Damon took a moment to examine feelings he barely recognized because they had laid dormant for so long. It never dawned on him that he was lonely, that the periodic interactions at his exhibitions weren't enough until this very moment. He glanced over at Kylie who returned the look with a bright, warm smile. He tried to remember the last time he was with a woman that wasn't a mark or a client and came up empty. It had been years but he didn't know how many. All he knew was that he was enjoying this.

Kylie laid the device on the table then asked, "So, Mr. Kent, is there a Mrs. Kent?"

She searched his eyes for a moment then quickly looked away.

"No," he replied casually and took a sip from his coffee.

Inwardly, he was a little unsettled that the question would come on the heels of his own inner musings.

"Now why is that?" she followed up, choosing to focus on stirring her coffee rather than look at him.

"Well, you have to get out and meet people," he said sheepishly, "and I'm not really good at meeting people."

"Well, you met me," she said with a bright smile."

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"You're not like other people, other women," he countered, surprised at his forthrightness.

"What do you mean?" she asked, slightly defensive as her smile faded briefly.

"Most people," he said, glancing around the restaurant, "are drones, sheep that comprise a tribe of sheep.

Generally, unless I talk to them about their house, car or kids there's very little to say. Sure, you could stray into how well their last exercise class went or some mindless drivel on television. Overall, it's the same boring bullshit!

Sorry," he added with an apologetic smile.

"So you're telling me you haven't met any women you connect with?" she asked with a hint of surprise and disbelief. "I imagine there are plenty of women who are attracted to you."

"Possibly," he said as he shifted nervously under her gaze. "I … I guess I'm just not attracted to them, not a member of their tribe."

"Their tribe?" she repeated, shifting back in her chair and folding her arms.

"My own theory," he said with a smile. "No matter how far we advance technologically, most people are still Neanderthals running with a pack. This country sells itself as valuing individuals but every aspect of it is set up for tribes. If you're not part of the tribe with the most members or the most power, you're going to get stepped on.”

"So who is your tribe Mr. Kent?" she asked as she, once again, leaned forward onto her elbows.

"I … I don't think I have one," he replied pensively. "I suppose you could say I'm a tribe of one."

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"Sounds lonely," she said and it seemed as though she wanted to reach for his hand but fought the urge. He didn't respond, only turned and stared out the window at the bustling traffic.

"I'll be part of your tribe if you want," she said, then turned and gazed out the window as well.

"Damn, I really need to get my head together," Damon

said under his breath as he locked the door to the balcony that led to the bedroom.

He dropped silently to the ground, peered over the bushes and tried to get his bearings. "Okay, does the elm have the high wall or the oak?" he asked himself as he studied the silhouette of trees to the west. He was about to head in that direction when he heard the sound of barking dogs.

Dogs, when the hell did he get dogs? he thought as the frenzied barking drew closer. No choice, I pick this wall. He scurried to the line of elms and began to climb.

"What's the matter with you Nero," a male voice said from the darkness, uncomfortably close to Damon's tree.

"You smell something out there boy?"

Damon shifted around to the back of the large tree trunk as a man and a Doberman pulling at its leash appeared in the clearing below the balcony. Another man, who carried an automatic weapon, quickly joined him.

"What's up Gerry?" the first man asked as his Doberman strained toward the trees.

"Aw, Nero's been acting a fool all night, now he thinks there's something out here in the back grounds."

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"He's just horny because they took Sheba away," the second man said with a laugh and began walking toward the house. "Turn him loose and let him run it off. If there's something out there he'll find it, kill it and get it out of his system."

The first guard laughed, released the dog and walked with the second guard toward the house. The dog shot off in the direction of the oak trees as Damon breathed a sigh of relief.

"So where'd they take Sheba?" the first guard asked as they reached the entrance to the mansion.

Damon didn't hear the answer as the door closed behind them.

"Son­of­a­bitch!" Damon whispered as he picked his way up the tree, searching for a branch near the top of the wall. "Never again, I have got to get my head together!"

A relatively thick branch jutting out near the top of the tree allowed him less perilous access to the wall so he made for it. Slowly, steadily he tight­rope­walked the foot­wide branch, keeping his eyes on the top of the wall.

When he was near enough, he twisted his torso around and calculated the effort needed to leap the vertical three­foot distance. Counting off in his head, he jumped on three and seemed to hang in the air for an interminably long time. Suddenly, there was barking as he instinctively turned to look and nearly missed grabbing the ledge. Twenty feet below him the Doberman lunged at the wall, gnashing the air with his teeth.

"God damn it!" he exclaimed as he pulled himself up to the ledge of the cold concrete. He heard a door open and 111

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men cursing under their breath as he quickly moved to a squatting position. He glanced over the other side of the wall at the treetops and jumped just as a Krypton beamed light swept over the top of the wall. He seemed to fall forever as the canopy of branches quickly rose up to meet him. He tumbled through the foliage, twisting in the air as he tried to get his bearing. Exiting the trees, he could see only the night sky as he plummeted backward toward the ground. Lights and pain accompanied a teeth­jarring collision that was quickly followed by blackness.

Damon stared transfixed at the ink­colored sky that slowly spun to a standstill. He blinked several times, sat up and let his gaze travel the height of the wall.

"I should be dead," he said, rising unsteadily as he kept his gaze fixed on the wall's 50­foot height. He quickly examined himself and found that, other than his ringing headache, he was surprisingly unharmed. Barking dogs and the bobbing glow of flashlights in the distance drew his attention. He scanned the ground to make certain he'd left no clues, then slipped into the shadows and vanished.

"Oh, this really is masterful!" Damon overheard

someone say from his secluded corner of the gallery. "How much are they, do you know?"

"Doesn't matter, he never sells them," a male voice responded. "I've been following his work for a couple of years. I offered to buy several pieces recently but he refused."

"If he doesn't want to sell them then why does he exhibit?"

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"He says to see the reaction," was the response as the couple merged into the crowd.

Like little soldiers before the charge, his twenty­four paintings hung on the walls awaiting the studious onslaught of the gallery patron’s scrutiny.

"This guy is like Rockwell and Dali on crack," he heard another spectator say and the comment made him smile.

"You hide even at your opening," a familiar voice said as he turned to see Kylie standing next to him.

His heart raced at the sight of her, but he struggled to maintain a stolid expression.

"Hadn't heard from you in over a month so I didn't think you'd come," he said flatly as he turned his attention back to the crowd.

"I, I know. I'm sorry," she said, toying with the emerald­colored shawl draped over her shoulders. "Work has been crazy lately. I got all your messages but thought it was best to talk to you in person," she said as he continued to look out at the crowd.

"I've been thinking about you … tribesman," she said with a little laugh, then turned toward the crowd as well.

Damon glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and saw that she was fighting back tears.

"I've thought about you too," he said finally as he stuck his hands in his pockets and stared at the slate­gray carpet. "It's good to see you again."

Kylie's infatuated gaze never left Damon as he milled

among the gallery patrons discussing the various paintings.

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She was moving closer to eavesdrop on a particularly interesting explanation when she suddenly stopped and stared toward the gallery exit. Glancing at the clock, she saw that it was only nine. The opening was scheduled from eight to ten and, given the size of the crowd, she was certain she could return in time. Without a word to Damon, she slipped out the gallery's side door.

“Thanks so much for inviting me to your show!” Kylie

said enthusiastically as she and Damon strolled down the crowded street. “It was so enjoyable and enlightening to hear the comments of the viewers.”

“I’m pleased you could make it,” Damon replied as he flashed a quick, warm smile. He hesitated then added, “It was nice to have someone there to share it with me.”

"I'm curious, why don't you sell your paintings?" Kylie asked as she moved closer to him with every step. "I mean, people were asking about prices but nothing was for sale."

Damon smiled as he stuck his hands in his pockets.

"Already been burned by that," he said, giving her a sidelong glance. "They only want them because I won't sell them. Believe me, there was a time when I tried to sell these same paintings, tried to make a living at it but no one wanted them. I even tried donating a couple of them but no takers. After I got my job, I didn't need the money. I stopped trying to sell them and began orchestrating these vanity shows," he concluded with a jerk of his head in the direction of the gallery.

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her hands behind her back and inching closer to him.

"Maybe you could sell enough work now to make a living and quit your job."

"Maybe," Damon answered pensively. "Don't think so though. Screw me once, shame on you; screw me twice, shame on me. Besides, I like my job."

"You say that as though it's a vocation, not a job," she said as their shoulders brushed periodically with their stride.

"I suppose you could say that," he replied as he stared thoughtfully at the ground.

Kylie linked her arm in his, laid her head on his shoulder, closed her eyes and smiled her contentment.

Though Damon stiffened a bit at the contact and his hands remained in his pockets, he did not rebuff her gesture.

“How many of those people do you think truly understood your work?” she asked as she tossed her long dark curls over her shoulder and glanced up at him. “I mean, do you think any of them got the painting, 'House of the Living Dead?'”

“I don’t know; I hope so. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear anything in there to lead me to believe they did, but I didn’t talk to everybody. Death is an uncomfortable subject for most people,” he said as they strolled past an open­air restaurant. Mouth­watering odors filled the air, causing them to stop and savor them. “You want something to eat?”

“It’s tempting but I’m fine, I think I just want to continue walking a little more,” she replied and leaned her head into his shoulder again.

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“You said death is an uncomfortable subject for most people, it’s not for you?” she asked. They strolled past shops of expensive merchandise with pedestrians day­dreaming through the glass at the baubles.

“No, I believe death is just a process,” he said as they happened upon a bench next to an exotic­looking tree and took a seat. “Death is no different than birth as a life­cycle process, but I think people fear it because it is unknown.”

Damon crossed his legs and folded his hands on his knees. “It seems many people try to ascribe palatable philosophical appliqués to the idea of death in order to control their fear of it. They anthropomorphize it; give it purpose and direction as though it's something personal. I believe death is no more purpose­driven or personal than a virus. Both are opportunistic and fulfill a function but, neither death nor viruses are personal; they just are.

Death can also be empowering, but with a power that can easily corrupt say, a soldier or president or … an assassin.

I think anyone who administers death is in danger of being corrupted.”

"But, don't you think death can be kind too? For people who are tired or ill; death can be a release."

Damon smiled and touched her cheek affectionately, "Yes, yes it can."

Kylie’s large, brown eyes gazed up at him with love and fascination, as she seemed on the verge of tears.

“What’s the matter?” he asked as he brushed back a wisp of her hair.

“It’s just refreshing,” she said with a small laugh of relief. “It’s refreshing to hear someone speak about death in such an objective and intelligent way. No matter how 116

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much civilization progresses, most people still think of death the same way they did when they were hiding in caves. This has been such a wonderful evening Damon,” she said with a melancholy sigh. “Thank you for my wonderful evening.”

For nearly every moment of the two weeks since the

exhibition, Damon struggled to keep Kylie from his thoughts and concentrate on his upcoming contract. He asked for twice his usual fee in the hope of building his financial parachute to escape his present situation. Twice the fee meant twice the risk but he calculated that three more jobs would allow him to live as comfortably as he wanted anywhere he wanted. He thought back on his conversation with Kylie and realized that, in dealing so often with death, he had abandoned life. With the exception of his painting, for the last fifteen years, all his creative energy had gone into the orchestration of death rather than the pursuit of life. As he allowed himself to feel more for Kylie, he became more interested in what he could gain from a life with her.

Damon watched the bodyguards as they chatted beside

a dark sedan. His gaze then shifted to the man who was, periodically, the object of their attention.

“Humph, big shot,” one of the guards said, throwing a sidelong glance toward the entrance of the mansion. The look was in the direction of a short, graying man in an Italian suit as he entered through massive oak doors.

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politicians and military types, go figure.”

“Well, the arms might have something to do with it," the other guard responded as he smiled and crushed out a cigarette in the driveway.

Two thin, attractive women giggled drunkenly as they lingered in the arched doorway drawing everyone's attention. One of the guards whispered to another as they both smiled and laughed lecherously. Rifling though his mental notes, Damon recalled the sky­blue Lexus in which the women arrived and spotted it parked in the northwest corner near the hedge. As the attendant struggled to decipher the vehicle’s location from the increasingly slurred and incoherent instructions of the pair, Damon made his way toward it. Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew his toolkit and slipped around to the rear of the car.

The first part of his task completed, he moved back

into the shadows of the bushes to watch the events unfold.

"Damn it!" the blonde in the black sequined dress exclaimed as she leaned out the passenger side door and peered toward the rear of the car.

"What now Britney," the brown­haired woman responded with a roll of her eyes.

"The damn tire is flat," Britney answered with drunken fatigue as she laid her head back on the headrest.

"Are you sure?" the brunette asked with a pathetic squeal as she bounced her head on the steering wheel in equally weary frustration. She exited the car and 118

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stumbled around to the back, her black velvet spiked heels making it a bit of a challenge.

"The tire is fine," she said, leaning forward on the quarter panel and looking as though she would throw up.

"The other side Gina," Britney said as she glanced at Gina in the rear­view mirror. "It’s the other side."

Gina staggered to the passenger side of the car, examined the flat tire and groaned. “Britney, I told you to get a spare!” She leaned against the fender, held her head in her hands and cried.

Britney grunted angrily, exited the car and slammed the door. “No, you asked me for money last week and said that you were going to get the spare. I don’t know what you did with the money!”

Both women were crying and arguing when one of the guards walked up, gave them each a toothy grin and introduced himself.

“You ladies look like you could use a little help,” he said as he stuck his hands into his pants pockets and swayed his hips back and forth slightly.

“The damn tire is flat!” Britney said, tossing her long blonde hair over her shoulder and gesturing toward the tire. “And this … didn’t buy a spare!”

“I can fix that for you, I’m Roy by the way. So what do you ladies do, for a job I mean?” Roy asked, taking a step closer to Britney.

“We’re models,” Britney said with a drunken, crooked smile.

“I’m an actress,” Gina offered as she stumbled around to the side of the car, struck a clumsy attempt at a sexy pose and stood beside Britney.

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From his car, the second guard watched as Roy and the girls chatted and laughed. Boredom, irritation and a sense of missing out eventually drew him out of the car and over to the trio.

“So what’s up man?” he asked as he joined the group, smiled and stared down at Gina’s ample breasts.

Damon quickly made his way to the guard’s vehicle, kneeled next to the front passenger tire and examined it.

“Good, it’s not a run­flat,” he said, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out two triangular pieces of a broken bottle. He positioned the shards of glass in a “V” shape, wedging them into the tread of the tire at an angle from the ground.

“Okay, with the air pressure in this tire, once it’s punctured it should go flat in about …”

He did the calculation in his head and, visually, checked the guards who were pulling a small, temporary spare from the women’s trunk. The women stared at it, expressing surprise that it had been in the trunk beneath the lid all the time.

Damon shook his head, smiled and crept back to his car.

"What's going on back there?" the driver of the lead

Jaguar asked through the walkie­talkie.

"Don't know, I think we have a flat. I'm going out to take a look," Roy, the guard from the party, said as he quickly scanned the area for danger then exited the vehicle.

"Yep, it's flat," he said, kicking the tire and leaning on the hood.

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"You guys using a run­flat?" the driver in the lead car asked irritably, though he already knew the answer.

"No, maintenance said they weren't necessary and stopped using them over a year ago," Roy replied with equal irritation.

After a brief conversation with the passenger in the back seat, the Jaguar driver responded.

"Look, uh, get the tire changed as quick as you can then catch up with us. I don't like the idea of sitting in the open in the middle of the night."

"Roger that," Roy said as he winked at his partner in the drivers seat and smiled. "We'll catch up as quick as we can."

Roy watched the Jaguar pull off, tossed the radio in the back seat then lit a cigarette.

The mini­Uzi dangled at his side as Damon peered

through the trees at the road. The remote felt slippery in his hand as he saw the cue of the headlights bouncing down the twisting hillside road. He pressed the button and the signal raced toward a small charge, which blew out a section of a large tree. The tree crashed onto the road just as the auto rounded the bend. The tires squealed in protest as the driver narrowly avoided the tree. The safety of the near miss was short­lived as the vehicle swerved wildly then plunged down the embankment and slammed into another tree. Damon drew a deep nervous breath, checked his machine gun and sprinted toward the car.

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front while the silhouette in the rear was equally lifeless.

Damon cautiously approached the car with the machine gun poised and ready but it was unnecessary. A quick check for pulses confirmed they were both dead. Damon was backing slowly away from the car when a strafing burst of gunfire knocked him off his feet. The bullets riddled his shirt and jacket as they tore a path diagonally from his hip to his shoulder. He lay on the ground, briefly stunned and surprised that there was no blood. Gathering himself, he looked in the direction of the gunfire and saw two figures at the top of the ravine. The men were peering into the valley, as though trying to make certain that he was dead. Their curiosity was answered by a burst from Damon's machine gun. Three blasts nearly cut the men in half as they twitched and dropped from sight.

Damon crouched and waited, his finger poised on the trigger but the silhouettes did not reappear. As he watched, a lithe shape slowly materialized where the men had stood. It moved over to where the first body had fallen and bent down out of sight.

"What the hell is going on here?" Damon asked as he habitually swapped out the magazine for a full one and made his way toward the ridge.

"Kylie?" he said as he crested the lip of the ravine and saw her bending over one of the bodies.

"Kylie, what are you doing here?" he asked as she retrieved the fading, throbbing white light from the dead man's mouth and tucked it into her purse.

"Like you, I'm working," she said finally as she smiled at him, then moved to the other body and repeated the ritual.

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Damon was shocked and confused as he took a step backward and tumbled down the hill. Kylie seemed to float as she approached him and, for the first time in a long time, he was afraid.

"I know you're scared and a little confused," she said as she reached down, grabbed his hand and lifted him up effortlessly. "I assure you, there's a reasonable explanation."

"I, I doubt that," Damon said as he fingered the shredded cloth of his shirt and jacket then took another step backward.

"Please Damon, don't be afraid," she said, looking as though she was about to cry. "I'm still the same Kylie, this is just another facet of me the same way that is a facet of you," she said, gesturing toward the car.

"Are … are you death?" he asked as he backed up again until his progress was halted by a large tree.

"Of course not, are you?" she asked with a sweet laugh as she sat on a tree stump and crossed her legs. "Would you ask a midwife if she was life, of course not? She only assists in a process, as do we. You said it yourself, death is just a process, remember."

Damon slid down into a crouching position and let his gun drop to his side.

"Then what were you doing with those bodies, what was that light?"

"Damon, sweetheart, we're in the same business. You dispense death and I process the aftermath. Someone has to collect that life­force so that it can be redistributed, that's all I do."

She rose from the stump and fluidly moved toward 123

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him. Gazing at him sympathetically, she crouched down and placed her hands on her knees.

"Damon, please don't be afraid of me. I'm the same person, only now you know exactly who I am," she said as she touched his cheek lovingly.

"And are you responsible for this?" he asked as he touched the undamaged skin beneath the shredded cloth.

"Yes," she said guiltily as she caressed his cheek again. "I was supposed to process you outside the hotel the night the old man died, but I couldn't. You're an artist Damon, and I wanted you to continue your work."

"You did this so that I could continue to paint?" he asked incredulously.

"Of course not," she replied as she stood and drifted slowly away from him. "The art I'm speaking of is the way you bring death. Some purveyors of death are as clumsy as a caveman with a club and others are so coldly detached that it is … business­like. You are different, my love, you respect death enough to devote creative thought and effort to the process, you truly are an artist."

"But what does all this mean?" he asked, bewildered as she turned and moved into the shadows. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Create," she said as she slowly merged with the darkness. "Pursue your art, that's why I spared you."

She vanished and Damon was left alone staring blankly into the darkened woods.

Damien Keith is a novelist, screenplay and short story writer living in Waltham, Massachusetts. Regardless of the genre, the focus of Damien’s stories is always the characters and their interactions. Though a catchall term, Damien’s favourite writing style is speculative fiction as it presents the 124

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widest variety of story and character exploration. Damien has been writing for nearly ten years and, prior to that, was a fine arts painter with over fifteen years of exhibitions in national galleries.

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An Architectural Easter Egg L. Lambert Lawson

Olya had fallen asleep when Ukraine was over Japan

and woke up orbiting above the gash where her motherland had once resided. Her alarm had again failed to wake her on time. She unzipped her sleep sack, raced through her morning ritual­­finger­brush teeth, pull hair into ponytail, grab an apple from her stash, shove her sleep sack into its hiding place­­and ran down the mountain. If she garnered another citation, Serhiovich, the president of the Ukraine Corporation, would make good on his promise and jettison her into space. What did he care about one builder? Ukraine had hundreds of thousands, and ever since the UN had detached Ukraine from the earth and terraformed it into a satellite, Serhiovich did with them as he pleased.

Her friend Vika met her at the foot of the mountain path and fell in beside her. "You know you'll go insane if you keep sleeping outside, right?"

Olya shrugged. "You get used to the light."

"That's what Pasha used to say. Now look at him." Vika pointed to a young man seated on an upturned bucket. He banged his thumbs on the rim and sang an old folk song.

His pin, an Earth bird no longer found on Ukraine, glittered in the creeping daylight.

"There're worse things, Vika."

"Like what?"

"Serhiovich. He sent me a text last night."

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"He sent you a text?"

"It's about my dad." Vika opened her mouth in reply, but Olya shook her off. They'd reached the factory door, and they joined the other workers. The entrance hall hemmed them in with a low ceiling, boarded up windows, and walls tattooed with the smell of steel­­the engine of the Ukrainian economy. Once inside, the civvies came off, workers stripping down to the skin. Then on with the red, neoprene uniforms. Sleeping in "the wild," as her co­workers called it, Olya had developed overpowered peripheral vision. She didn't think Vika had noticed her side­stare, and she thanked God for the talent. Flashbacks of Vika's milky skin often got her through the long workday joining steel beams into a kaleidoscope of shapes.

The factory floor bustled below her. Hammers clanged; arc welders fizzed. Her factory designed and manufactured frames for buildings that went up on India, Honduras, Australia, and all of the other UN­commissioned satellites; on the moon; and even back on Earth. Olya loved how the floor danced. The workers put love into each steel skeleton. That the bosses wouldn't actually know if the angles didn't square didn't give the floor a license to slack. Instead, it compelled them to improve and refine their work. They saw art where the bosses saw only commodity.

A foreman grabbed Olya's arm, yanking her out of her appreciation. "Ms. Panchyk?"

"Yes." "President Serhiovich wants you now."

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Olya entered Serhiovich's office. The hard cement of

the corridor became the soft carpet of an executive suite.

Soft blue and green lights hung from the ceiling. Even the air tasted luxurious. The president leaned back in a plush, leather chair. "Your father died recently, did he not?"

Serhiovich asked.

Right to the point, this one, she thought. Olya bit her lip.

She'd already had two citations. A third and she'd be expelled, and that meant no paycheck, no rent, and no food. She nodded.

"It is my understanding that he willed his personal effects to you."

Another nod.

"And his diagrams? Were they a part of those?" he asked.

"I've never looked."

Serhiovich raised his eyebrows. "You've never looked at your father’s property?" Olya shook her head. "Would you mind if I did? Our records are...incomplete, and I'd like to verify some of the structures your father designed and helped build. The mountains, in particular."

A drop of sweat slid down Olya's back, and she cursed that unseen show of weakness. Her face must have betrayed the emotion because he frowned. "Do not make me take them."

"They're mine."

"Of course." He pressed a button on his desk, and his office door opened. "Please," he said, gesturing out the door with his hands. "Enjoy your day."

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"So, he just sent you back?" Vika asked. "I mean...he

didn't liquefy your organs or grind down your teeth?"

They sat in the cafeteria, chewing through the day's rations of boiled dumplings, warm milk, steamed vegetables, and borshch. Vika learned across the table and whispered. "Did he bruise you somewhere I can't see?"

She jabbed her carrot into Olya's shoulder. "Maybe here?"

Jabbed her belly. "Or here?"

Olya pushed her away. "I'm serious."

"Then you're tres fucked because that dude does not mess around."

"I'm sure the diagrams my dad kept are copies of what the Corporation already has on file," Olya said.

"But you haven't even looked at the crap your father left you."

"How do you know?"

"I'm your friend, Olya. I know everything. What time is it?"

"Twenty to two."

"Okay," Vika said, pushing her lunch tray to the side of the table where a robot grabbed it and carried it away.

"We've got twenty minutes to look at those diagrams."

But when they got to Olya's office, they found the door busted in and all of her cabinets smashed open. Olya dug through the footlocker at the end of her desk. "They're gone," Olya said. "They're all gone."

Word of the break­in got around her swath of the floor

in a hurry. Her colleagues had offered support, but no one had come out and said they had her back if she 129

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confronted Serhiovich. No one but Vika, that was.

Paychecks were more important than solidarity or pride, and living trumped everything else. Perhaps if Serhiovich were dead.... She pushed the thought away.

Vika called in a few favors and got hold of some security footage of Olya's office. Closed door. Five minutes of deleted footage. Then the banged­in door with her personal effects strewn about the foreground. Olya thumbed the screen off.

"Lots of people have access to these tapes," Vika said.

"But not everyone has a motive to steal my shit. I'm going up to see Serhiovich." The computer beeped, and a prompt appeared on the screen: restart video from beginning?

Vika tapped the screen, then grabbed her friend's arm, sitting her back down in her chair. "And do what exactly?"

"Get him to confess. Throw steel shavings in his eyes.

Piss on his shoes." She paused. "Not necessarily in that order."

"Oh. Sure," Vika said. "That'll work. Say hi to the moon as you pass it by."

"Better idea?"

"Don't get killed over nothing. You might be wrong about this."

"Nothing? That little shit broke into my office and stole my father's stuff. That's all I had of my father."

Vika glanced at the screen. "Okay. But you never went through it." Vika tapped a few buttons, pausing the video just after the blank, deleted footage.

"Haven't had the time."

"In a year?"

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"Fuck you."

Vika restarted the security footage. "Look at the video, Olya. Tell me what you see."

Her busted in office door; scattered sheets of paper; tiny, broken bottles of vodka; shattered picture frames.

Her life in a thousand pieces. "I see a reason to hurt Serhiovich."

"Look more critically."

"What the fuck, Vika? It's my office, broken all to shit.

What else is there to see?"

"Serhiovich owns this place. Owns us, if you want to get right down to it, and he has significant control over the other satellites. The other bosses have taken advantage of the UN's distance. We're not the only folks being worked to the bone." Vika cut through Olya's protests and continued. "Besides, why the hell would he break your office apart, especially after basically telephoning that move by asking you for your father's diagrams? Dude's got a fucking key to everything in here."

"But...." The afternoon broadcast cut Olya off. Small vid­images coalesced out of the ether, and Serhiovich's face floated in mid­air. "The temperature today is fuchsia," he said. Then the image died.

"What the fuck?" Olya asked. "That's the third day in a row he's said that."

Vika pointed to the video and said, "Dude's got a key to everything. He doesn't need to make sense."

Olya cut out of work two hours early to clean her

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incinerator­­there was no saving the alcohol soaked paperwork, for one. She had all the information pertinent to her job cataloged in her computer anyway. She didn't need the paper trail the UN demanded they keep. Well, specifically, the Corporation needed it, but Olya didn't really give an orbiting fuck what the Corporation needed.

Besides, she was pretty sure they destroyed documents against regulation all the time. The whirring of industrial shredders rivaled only clanging steel for aural supremacy in the factory.

What Olya did give a fuck about, though, was the red and blue sequined pin she found amidst the destruction of her office, the jewels fashioned into a sparrow. She'd seen the sigil in only one place, had seen it every day for the three years she'd been working at the factory.

On Pasha's lapel.

Olya found Vika on the way out of the factory. She didn't admire her nude body through her periphery.

Instead, she grabbed Vika by the arm and pulled her aside. Clove clung to Vika's skin, and Olya forgot, for one brief moment, all the trouble that seemed to be humping up around her.

"Yes?" Vika said. She filled and latched her bra and slid into her civvy shirt.

Olya pulled the jeweled sparrow from her pocket.

"What the fuck?"

"Need help getting dressed? Okay. But just this once."

Vika reached over to unzip Olya's collar, and as she did, she palmed the sparrow pin. Vika's thin fingers yanked the zipper down to Olya's hip, and she involuntarily rocked towards Vika's face.

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Olya's breath quickened, and she turned away. "I'm okay. I can do it." Olya stripped and dressed as though her skin would light on fire from exposure. When she turned back to Vika, her friend was nowhere around.

Olya laced her boots and ran toward the exit.

Olya caught Vika at the edge of the factory grounds,

just past Oleg's Bar. Oleg waved to the women, called out his evening specials, but they ignored him and entered the woods.

"Vika?"

"Shh," Vika said. "We're too close."

"To what?"

"The factory. Now...shut up."

They marched under yawning oak trees, their boughs peppered with small, black birds. They sung melancholically. The deeper into the forest they got, the louder the birdsong grew. Now, instead of limbs peppered with birds, boughs sank under the weight of hundreds of the chirping beasts. When the din got so loud that Olya couldn't think, Vika stopped. She held out the sparrow pin, and Olya took it.

"What the hell, Vika?"

"I'm surprised you never found this place on your own.

You're always bragging about traipsing around 'the wild.'"

"Who broke into my office, Vika?"

"I mean, this is about as wild as it gets."

"Did Pasha steal my father's shit?"

"I did." Pasha pulled back some leaf­lined limbs and stepped into the narrow clearing. "Your father is a genius, 133

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Olya, a hero, and Serhiovich finally figured it out."

"You broke into my office? And you knew, Vika?"

"Serhiovich's goons caught us on the way out. We beat them by minutes," Pasha explained. "Vika told me Serhiovich wanted to talk to you about your dad. I asked myself, 'Why would they be interested in him?'"

Olya rushed Pasha and got one punch off before Vika hooked her arms and pinned her to the ground. "Calm down. We're on your side."

"You broke into my office," she shouted. "Stole my shit."

"I did," Pasha said. "Serhiovich wanted the diagrams for Hoverla II. I wanted to know why." Pasha pulled off his rucksack and pulled out two plastic tubes. He screwed the cap off each and cleared a space in the dirt with his foot.

"They can't hear us, but they might be able to see us, Pasha," Vika said. "If they can broadcast here, they can certainly position a few cameras."

Pasha shrugged and spread the diagrams out on the ground. He motioned Olya over. "Take a look at H­II. Tell me what you see."

"Fuck you. I'm not playing this game again. How about you tell me what you see."

"Well," Pasha said, running his finger across the diagram of the mountain. "Look at this." Four erased lines limned the edges of a rectangle 30 meters below the peak of the mountain. Within that rectangle perched a complex series of hash marks, some large, others small. "Now look at that same position in H­I, III, IV, and V." Olya did. "They worked the drafters crazy hours, Pasha.

When they actually allowed Dad to come home, he would basically collapse on the floor and sleep for two days."

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"H­II isn't a mistake, Olya. Drafters don't make mistakes." He lowered his voice, and Olya could barely hear him over the chirping birds. "They're not allowed to.

There's something beneath the peak of H­II that your Dad wants you to find."

Olya scanned the diagrams again and pressed her thumb against a corner. "And this smudge? What does that signify? What insight do you have about my own fucking father that explains that?"

"I'm not trying to be condescending here, Olya."

"Well, you’re not trying not to be either." Olya rolled up her father's diagrams, turned the leaping Vika aside with a lowered shoulder, and escaped deeper into the forest.

The birdsong faded after a few minutes, and once the

only sound around her became the crush of her heart in her head, she slowed her pace, circled back onto her path twice, and stopped when she had convinced herself Vika and Pasha hadn't been able to follow.

Dumb bastards, she thought. And her dumber for believing one of them had been a friend. Her crush had clearly clouded her vision.

A twig­crack filtered through the forest. She looked through the trees. She could climb steep rock faces. Why not a tree? She tightened the sack on her back and took the trunk with a leap. She faltered twice on the way up, but her first climb up a tree was far more graceful than her first climb up a bald rock face. The bark had roughed her palms, but the aching soreness felt good, matched the throbbing in her heart.

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She curled up into the crook of two branches and held her breath, but no other sounds whispered through the wood aside from the endless loop of wind rustling pine needles and oak leaves. Just as she'd decided that she'd imagined the twig­crack, two gruff voices pierced the forest.

"They went this way," one voice said.

"It all looks the same to me," a second voice replied.

"They could have gone in any direction."

As the last word faded away, two men stepped into the wood beneath her and stopped. Two of Serhiovich's goons: Leonid and Vitaliy. Vitaliy lifted his nose and sniffed. "I can smell one of them. Probably the tall, skinny one. She looks like she'd smell a bit ripe." They twirled in a circle and peered amongst the trees.

A third, familiar voice ripped through the silence.

"Found them!"

Leonid and Vitaliy ran toward the third voice and, likely, toward Vika and Pasha.

Olya stayed in the tree until nightfall, until moonrise, and then until a little bit longer. They'd broken into her office. They'd rifled through her father's things. They deserved what Serhiovich gave them.

Yet Olya couldn't quite dispel the camaraderie she'd shared with Vika at the factory­­even if she and Pasha had ignored that same camaraderie when they'd broken into her office.

Olya left her pack hanging in the tree, flap closed tight against curious birds and their even more curious beaks, and slid down the trunk. Leonid and Vitaliy may have been skilled at navigating the complex hierarchical 136

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structure Serhiovich had vested into the Corporation, but out here, in the wild, they were shit at basically everything. A blind rock could have found and followed the path they stomped through the tress.

However, instead of following, Olya climbed back up the tree and snatched her pack. She'd had another change of heart. Vika had betrayed her when they'd broken her office apart looking for her father's diagrams. Betrayal had consequences.

Back on the ground, Olya shouldered her pack and walked north, toward Hoverla­II.

The night creaked. Frogs croaked, and a warm breeze

combed the scrub hugging the rocky soil. Above, the Earth sat it its orbit like a bowling ball, the lights of the metropolis' glowing. To the east, Honduras blinked over the Earth's horizon. The UN had intended these new satellites to be independent monitors, to watch over the Earth and inform the UN of international activity in defiance of the Treaty of Nairobi, the accord that brought World War III to a close. Cross­border troop movements.

Missle launches. The like. Yet each satellite had gotten so caught up in its trade­­steel in Ukraine, coffee in Honduras, cattle in Australia, etc.­­that the 'monitor and observe' backbone to their newfound existences fell to the bottom of the priority list. Away from UN eyes, the bosses of these new satellites got rich.

Olya brought her eyes and her mind back to her own landscape and trudged toward H­II. Somewhere behind her, Serhiovich's goons were getting into Vika and 137

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Pasha, trying, for some reason, to get the diagrams Olya held in her pack. Whatever Serhiovich wanted to find in that room, Olya wanted to find first, but when she got to the base of H­II, a bomb exploded that plan to bits.

"Hello, Ms. Panchyk," President Andriy Serhiovich said, gun gleaming in his large fist.

The tip of the gun shoved into the base of her spine

made the hike up H­II more dramatic than it needed to be. She wasn't going to go anywhere, and he could shoot her at any time, so the attention wasn't entirely necessary.

However, Serhiovich ignored the logic. "Climb," he'd said.

He'd demanded the diagrams and had kept the gun trained on her as he'd inspected them. Olya hoped that the moonlight would have hidden her father's erasures, but Serhiovich hadn't become boss by exhibiting a stunning lack of attention to detail. He'd found the secret room immediately.

Now, as they climbed the mountain, they had time to ponder what, exactly, lay in the room ahead. Her father had never spoken about it, had never even hinted that he'd have anything to hide.

They climbed well into the short night, as the sun bobbed in space, hidden behind the bulk of the Earth. The factory town below shrunk, its shacks and shops and fence and factory blurring together into an amorphous blob of utilitarian architecture.

"Stop here," Serhiovich said. "According to the diagrams, there's a door somewhere close." He scanned the rock and dirt.

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"A door? You think there's a door in the mountain?"

"You don't?

"You think we're just going to stumble upon the secret, hidden door to my father's secret, hidden room? Do you think my father was an idiot?" As she spoke, she punctuated each word by slamming her heel into the dirt.

On the last two words, a dull clanging filtered up through the dirt. "Oh," she said.

"Move," Serhiovich said. She did, and he cleared the patch of pebbles and dirt with his boot. He uncovered bolts seared into a steel slab. A few more feet of pebbles cleared away and a recessed handle shone out of the dirt.

Serhiovich raised his gun. "Open it."

Curiosity, not fear, put action into her bones. Olya grabbed the handle. She pulled, expected the door to stick fast, and was surprised when it swung open easily.

"Wouldn't build a door, huh? There seems to be a lot about your father that you didn't know. Why do you think..."

Olya took advantage of Serhiovich's short monologue and dived through the door and into the corridor beyond.

He grunted and followed, but she moved quicker in the tapered corridors than the large man, and she lost him in the twists and turns.

Unfortunately, she also lost herself. She closed her eyes and concentrated. Her father had designed this place.

Surely that'd give her some edge. But, as her filial prayer ended, she still had no clue where to go. "Father," she whispered, saying the word for the first time in a long time. "Help me." She waited, her breath locked in her chest. No help came, but she heard heavy boot steps 139

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rushing toward her.

"C'mere," Serhiovich said. His voice wavered, losing a bit of the boss­edge she'd been accustomed to. She put her hands on the cold, steel walls and pushed off into the darkness, Serhiovich closing in behind her, his movement muffled by the corners she'd turned. When she stopped, he stopped. When she walked, his boots continued clomping, echoes of her own. Then, a steel door slid open, and a hand reached out.

"Gotcha," Serhiovich said.

Except that it wasn't Serhiovich. The man was too

short, too stooped, too old. Olya pushed away from him and stumbled to the far edge of the cavernous room she'd been dragged into. She banged her hands against a door.

Echoes of her thumping climbed the walls. "Stop," the man said, his palms pressed against his ears.

"Let me out," she screamed.

"Olchyk, please."

"What?"

"Olchyk."

"Dad?" "Olchyk."

He rushed forward, his arms extended as if to hug her, and he met a slap. She slapped him again, and then she hugged him, and then she slapped him again.

He wrapped her up in his arms. "It's me, Olchyk. It's daddy."

Her father led her through a labyrinth of corridors, 140

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each growing narrower than the last, forcing Olya to shimmy sideways to keep up. Every few minutes, as she wound closer and closer to the core of the secret room her father had built in the mountain, she heard Serhiovich banging against the walls and screaming.

"He'll never get in here," her father said, and she believed him.

When they stumbled out of the passageways, a large, metal cavern opened up before them. The room smelled of burned cheese and overclocked CPUs. A worktable sat against the far wall, hammers and tongs and other tools gathered in a pile. To the left of the worktable, all along the wall, sat banks of computer screens and tablets and a blue power core that signaled the heavy energy use of a supercomputer. On the wall nearest them, a chalkboard full of diagrams, lines and curves and text Olya couldn't make sense of, yet the loops and cuts in the script erased any doubt in her mind. The man before her was indeed her father.

"They worked me to the bone," he said. "I was good at my job. Too good. They just kept bringing me projects to draft and, because the diagrams were so complex, they asked me to build them with my small team. I worked my body even harder than my mind to build those prototypes.

New moonbases, extended skyscrapers­­ all the self­ indulgent edifices the bosses seem to crave. But then I got on the wrong side of Serhiovich."

"So you left?" Olya had asked.

"I had to. You had the diagrams. You'd figure it out."

Olya hadn't said another word to him the rest of the walk through her father's maze. Now that they were in his 141

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workshop, awe momentarily replaced the hurt. "Quantum computers," she said.

He nodded.

There was only one thing he'd need a quantum computer for. "You're trying to break their encryption," she said.

He nodded again and drew her attention to the chalkboard. "The algorithms are quite complex. But once they're broken, we'll have control of the government communication system."

"Why? We have radio."

"Easily jammed. You think the miners on India can get a shortwave signal? Think the ranchers on Australia even have receivers? The government signal broadcasts through particles in the air, dear. Everyone hears it. Earth, Australia, Honduras, Ukraine­­hell, even the moon. We all hear it."

"This is why you left home?" Olya found the hurt again and turned away from her father, pretending to focus on a squiggly part of the algorithm that looked like a pig's curlicue tail.

"You think the UN sent us up here to monitor the Earth?" He sat his arm across his daughter's shoulders.

She shrugged him off.

"I haven't thought much about it. Too busy earning a paycheck to feed and house myself since my father died and left me alone." By the end of her sentence, she was shouting the words.

"Precisely," her father said. "Too busy to question the operation. No fault of your own, of course. All the laborers are buried up to their eyes in work. Producing 142

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more steel than any planet could use in a hundred years.

And coffee. And cattle."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that we've been kept busy. If we had been sent up here to monitor the Earth, monitoring would have been our main task. Instead, it became the chore no one had time for. Yet the UN still thinks we're observing and reporting."

"Reporting what? Nothing's happened on Earth for decades."

Her father walked to his desk and pressed a button. The computer monitors flared to life, and Olya had letterbox views of London, Rome, Dallas, and Cairo­­all cities she recognized from her textbooks. However, these views were unlike the textbook mimeographs in that each city was on fire. "What the hell is this, Dad?" "Live shots from Earth. Those missions Serhiovich sent from Ukraine back to Earth?"

"Trade missions?" Even as she said this, she doubted it.

"They were burning the Earth capitals to the ground."

He pressed the button, and new cities appeared on the screen, these ones no longer burning, for they were already charred and burned to the ground.

"But you can see the Earth from here. Smoke would have been visible in the atmosphere."

"Somehow the engineers doctored the atmosphere.

We're not seeing the real Earth. And the UN gets a similar doctored vid­feed, originating from...any guesses?"

"Ukraine."

"You got it. The UN's underground, has been since World War III culminated with the scooping up of Ukraine 143

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and Honduras and all the rest and setting us into orbit.

They think the surface of the Earth has been at peace these 35 years, but cities began burning a year ago."

"When you died."

"When I left, yes."

Her father flipped a button, and Serhiovich appeared on the screen. He sat against a wall, knees pulled up to his chin. He appeared to be asleep. "The computer broke the algorithm a week ago. I've been monitoring our satellite, and our factory in particular, since then. I've been communicating with a few people."

"But not me?"

Her father ignored the bruised barb. "I sent out a test message each day for the past few days."

Olya flashed back. "The temperature today is..."

"Fuchsia. It was a risk, but I had to know if it worked."

"It did. Everyone heard it."

Her father tapped on the monitor, right on Serhiovich's head. "Everyone did, and the bosses figured it out. Dead or no, it was only a matter of time until they traced it back to me. I had a bit of a reputation."

"That's when they came after the diagrams of H­II." "Sorry, honey. If I'd have known you wouldn't find the room in the diagram, I never would have left it for you. I wanted you to find me. But when you didn't, I had to get help."

"I guess I'm a bit denser than you thought," she said.

She warded off his hug with a look. "Now what?"

Her father called up a command on the computer. He typed in a string of text and poised his finger over the enter key. "Now we patch the UN into the live feed of 144

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Earth. Everyone in near space, too." He pulled his finger away. "Want to do that honor?" She shook her head, and her father pressed the button.

Small vid­images bloomed into the air, and everything hummed with the message her father had programmed into the live feed of Earth: EARTH IS UNDER ATTACK. LAY DOWN YOUR TOOLS AND OPEN YOUR EYES. EARTH IS UNDER ATTACK. LAY DOWN YOUR TOOLS AND OPEN YOUR EYES. EARTH IS UNDER ATTACK. LAY DOWN YOUR TOOLS AND OPEN YOUR EYES. Her father pressed a second button, and the wall with the chalkboard and the algorithm recessed into the floor, opening a tunnel to the outside of the mountain. A four­wheeled vehicle sat at the mouth of the tunnel. "We need to get down to the factory," her father said.

As they boarded the vehicle, Olya asked, "What about Serhiovich?"

"He'll find his way out of the labyrinth eventually, but, by then, it'll be too late."

By the time Olya and her father had reached the

factory town, the workers had assembled. Some carried their tools. Others carried weapons. A few goons melded into the crowd, but they didn't cause trouble. Without their boss, they looked a bit lost. Just as her father had predicted: without Serhiovich, the whole game fell apart.

In fact, a few goons had even picked up the workers' shouts: THE WORKERS, UNITED, WILL NEVER BE DIVIDED. THE WORKERS, UNITED, WILL NEVER BE DIVIDED. 145

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By then, everyone had seen the carnage on the vid­images. Cities burning, and in those cities, their estranged comrades fleeing or dying or worse. UN turbo­craft had docked on Ukraine within an hour of the broadcast and, presumably, on all of the other satellites too, and UN officials addressed the gathered crowds. "Our cities are in tatters, our crops are razed, and our farms decimated. We need you back, on Earth, to produce the steel that frame our buildings, sow the fields, raise the livestock." The officials lavished praise on the workers' skills, offered astronomical rewards for a few months of labor, and, slowly, the workers crowded into the transport vehicles for the short ride back to Earth. The orbiting observation experiment, it seemed, had finally expired.

As Olya and her father piled onto one of the craft, her father pulled aside one of the officials and handed him the diagram of H­II, this one with an intricate mapping of the labyrinth. He whispered into the official’s ear. The official nodded, took the paper, dragged two other officials with him, and set off for H­II. Olya grabbed her father's arm. "What are they going to do with him?"

"Do you really want to know?"

Olya thought for a moment and then said, "No. I suppose I don't."

Her father gestured toward the craft. "Then let's get off this rock and help out the Earth."

On the craft, Olya and her father huddled against the rear window as it shuddered and four thousand people, in unison, grabbed onto a neighbor as the vehicle shook violently through liftoff. As it turned out, when her father had grabbed onto her, Olya had grabbed onto Vika. When 146

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they locked eyes, they growled at each other.

"You left us with those goons!"

"You broke into my office!"

"To keep your dad's plans away from Serhiovich. Dude's evil, as you've no doubt figured out." Vika lifted her gaze over Olya's shoulder. "Hello Mr. Panchyk."

Olya's father nodded. "Hello, Vika."

"Hello?" Olya asked. She looked from her father to her friend. "That's it?"

Vika reached behind her and pulled Pasha forward. She pointed at Olya's father.

"Hey Mr. Panchyk," Pasha said.

"Look," Vika said to Olya, trying to tamp down the fury in her friend's face. "We only found out a few hours before we pilfered through your office." She pointed at Olya's father. "He made us do it."

"There was no time," Olya's father explained. "You'd have never believed it was me, and I needed Serhiovich not to find those diagrams."

"You...asshole," Olya said, punching Vika in the shoulder. "You jerk," she said. Pasha ducked the punch and backed away.

Vika latched onto Olya. "We did it for you." She hugged her friend until Olya stopped punching. Then she pulled back, looked her friend in the face, and leaned in to kiss her. "We did it for you." Olya stared back, mouth agape.

Vika leaned in again, left a longer kiss on Olya's lips. "We did it for all of us."

Olya smiled despite her anger, "I still hate you." She looked to Pasha and then her father. "I still hate you all."

However, later, as her first day on Earth rolled into 147

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night, Olya decided that if she could forgive her father for pretending to be dead, she could forgive Vika and Pasha too. They'd built beautiful things in the past, together, on Ukraine, and they could build beautiful things on Earth as well. And with her father in tow, they'd be able to design and build edifices that wouldn't fall for a thousand years.

Perhaps they'd even design a secret room, an architectural Easter Egg, from which the workers could save the Earth, again, if the time came.

L. Lambert Lawson writes from his library in Southern California. He's been published in Cast of Wonders, Every Day Fiction, and Liquid Imagination. From 2005-2007, he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine. He can be found online at www.llambertlawson.com or on Twitter @llambertlawson.

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IMPERFECT RELATIONS

by Gerri Leen

The sun set low, falling slowly into the sea. As a child,

Maura had always expected to see steam rising, to hear the hiss of the burning orb easing into the waiting sea, the way a red­hot sword sounded when the smith would thrust it into a barrel of rainwater.

She heard the crunch of leaves from the forest behind her, knew that he was coming. She didn't turn, just sat on the edge of the cliff that rose behind the town. Her position­­legs dangling over the side, sword still in its scabbard­­was a gift to her enemy, a sign that she had not come to fight.

He walked slowly, as if he too wanted to make it clear he hadn't come to fight. Sitting next to her, he scooted over to the edge until his legs also dangled. She turned to look at him fully, met the bright blue eyes that were twins to her own.

"It's been a long time, Maura." He looked down at the house they'd grown up in. "I haven't been back here in years."

"I haven't, either." She could just make out the smoke from Methos's forge. Her sword had come from that place. Her brother's sword, too. Many mercenaries had been armed and trained here. She glanced over at the field between the town and the base of the cliff, where markers in the shape of swords and axes and spears dotted the landscape.

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He followed her gaze. "I wonder if we'll be buried there."

She shrugged, then looked to see if he still carried the same blade.

He rubbed the scabbard. "Old Methos said it would see me to my death."

"If you fight me, Tono, it will." She was not boasting.

He was a great warrior, but she was better­­only he might not know that. Self­realization had never been his strength. Self­indulgence, on the other hand...

He sighed. "All these years, we've managed never to come up against each other."

"Yes." "And now here we are. On opposing sides."

"You're on the wrong side, little brother."

"Is there a right side?"

Her brother fought for Vorga, a warlord who'd left villages burned to the ground. He'd sold women and children into servitude and left the old men gasping to tell her master what had happened.

Her master, who in his time had done the very same things.

"Where did you last fight?" Tono was plucking the short grass that grew near the cliff. He'd always done that, a nervous habit that betrayed him just as surely as the way he was kicking his legs.

"We were in Hell." Trapping his leg with her own, she smiled. "You still tell too much with your nerves."

"Remember when we used to leg wrestle?"

Letting him go, she laughed at the memory of how they would tussle, how she'd screech when he'd manage to pull 150

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her over. They'd played hard and run wild as youngsters.

Until their parents had died, and they'd been sold to the war­masters to pay off the family's debts. They'd been separated as soon as they were brought to this town, but they'd rebelled until their masters had let them live and train together.

She'd always had his back, her little brother. Always taken care of him, just as she'd promised her parents she would. She'd watched him grow tall and strong, broad chested and well muscled. They'd even signed out together for their first few jobs.

She'd made sure he was going to survive in this life. It was all she could do, since they'd never been given a choice. But she was good at what she did and wise enough to know that if she hadn't been taken for this, she would doubtless have ended up in far worse circumstances.

But she could see Tono as a scholar of some sort.

Living a life that involved soft beds and good food, not killing and sharp blades and riding through the night to get to the next battle.

"I am Vorga's champion," he said into the silence.

"I know." She pointed out the dying sun. "Make a wish."

It had been their game to wait until the last possible bit of sun was left on the horizon and make a heart's wish.

"I wish that we didn't have to fight each other," he murmured, ruining the game­­the wish was supposed to stay secret.

"We don't have to. Walk away."

He laughed, but there was a note of desperation in the 151

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sound. "And be hunted down the rest of my life for deserting Vorga?" He leaned against her, the way he had when they were kids. "You walk away."

She knew that Maddix would have her head if she tried.

He was a generous master to those who pleased him. He was just as liberal with his enmity.

She swung her legs to the side, rising in an easy motion. Tono mirrored her movement. They stood eye to eye, both tall and built to handle the heavy weapons of their trade.

"I've missed you, Tono," she said as she backed away.

"Good fight tomorrow."

"To you, too, big sister." He turned, then paused, as if unwilling to leave her. His shoulders moved slightly, and she thought for a moment he was crying. Then he whipped around and grabbed her, pulling her into a hug, his lips on her cheek. "I love you."

"I love you, too," she said to the wind and the darkness as he ran back the way he'd come.

Maddix looked up as she walked into the camp, his

scowl apparent even in the dim firelight. "Where've you been?"

"To the cliff. To look at the town. I was raised here."

"Feeling nostalgic?" He grinned and tossed her an apple.

"I was talking to my brother."

His grin faded. "Consorting with the enemy is not the way to keep my trust, Maura."

"He's not my enemy." But by the laws of the guild they 152

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fought under, anyone on an opposing side was. There was no shame in killing a classmate, a lover, or a relation, not if it was in the service of a mercenary's sworn duty. "I know where my duty lies, Maddix."

He patted the log next to him, and she sat down, stretching her legs out to the fire.

"I thought we'd moved beyond duty, warrior." His smile was tired, his eyes even more so. "I thought we had some kind of understanding."

She stared down at the fire. "I'm your champion."

"I thought you fought for me. Not just because I pay you to do it."

She felt his hand on her shoulder, kneading the tight muscles.

"I thought," he said, laughing as she moaned when he hit a particularly tight lump, "that we had forged a friendship in the last few years."

Friendship. Was that what they had? Maddix had beautiful women at his disposal. Soft, willing women to bury himself in. His rapport with Maura was not based on desire. At least not physical.

He loved to talk to her of his plans, his next move. He trusted her.

Letting go of her, he asked, "How long has it been since you've even seen your brother?"

"A long time."

"And your meeting was...?"

"Amicable." She sighed, took a bite of the apple, brushing off the juice that ran down her chin with the back of her hand. "I tried to talk him into deserting."

"And did he return the favor?"

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She nodded.

"And yet here you are. So he must not have succeeded."

"No better than I did with him."

He pointed off in the distance. "I can just make out Vorga's fires."

"I see them."

"He and I have gone far enough with tiptoeing around each other."

"I know."

Maddix looked at her. "Do not echo back versions of yes. Tell me what you think, like you used to."

"Are you any different than Vorga?"

For a moment, she thought he might strike her, but he held his hand and seemed to be considering what she'd asked. When he could not answer right away, she knew the truth, no matter what might eventually come out of his mouth.

"I must talk to Luca," she said, rising. "Good night, my lord."

"Get some sleep, Maura. I want you well rested tomorrow."

"Yes, sir." She hurried off, intent on burying strange emotions in the familiar routine of preparing for battle.

She awoke feeling dizzy, could hear the sounds of

preparations­­how long had she slept?

"Luca," she yelled, but the sound came out at half the volume she intended.

Her cheek burned, and she touched it­­it was hot and 154

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felt raised. She remembered Tono's lips on her, how he'd stood for a moment with his back to her before he'd whipped around to kiss her.

Had he poisoned her? Used something that he could wipe from his lips as he ran? If she was off her feet, he would not have to fight her. If she went into battle weak and sick, the other warriors would kill her first. It was an easy way out of their predicament.

"Luca," she said, forcing herself to her feet as the world spun around her.

Luca hurried into the tent, tried to help her stand.

"You're burning up."

"Tono did this," she said as she collapsed into the other woman's arms.

Luca eased her back onto the sleeping furs, then ran out of the tent. A moment later, she was back with the healer and Maddix.

"Here." Maura touched her cheek, barely able to lift her hand. "Tono did it here."

The healer knelt by the furs and sniffed at her skin, then pushed gently.

The pain was intense; Maura thought she heard something tear, then realized it was a small whimper escaping through her clenched lips. "This will not stop me."

"You are right, it will not. But the poison coursing through your body will. I may have something to help you live on and fight another day." The healer rose and hurried out.

Maddix crouched, his brows pulled down as he glared at her. "How do I know you did not do this to avoid 155

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fighting your brother?"

She struggled to sit up, reached for her sword, nearly dropping it. "Just get me out there. I will kill him for this." She fought her way to all fours, stayed like that, breathing hard, head pushed against Maddix's. "I will not fail you."

The healer pushed the tent flap open and stood in the doorway. "I have medicine, my lord. I can take her on a wagon, somewhere to get well. Then I will rejoin the rear flank."

"No. I will fight." She pushed herself to one foot, tried to get the other up to meet it, but her leg refused to move.

Maddix grabbed her face, his large hand enveloping her chin, pushing painfully just under where Tono had kissed her. "Do as the healer says, Maura. You will fight another day."

"But I owe you my­­" "The dishonor is your brother's, not yours." Maddix looked at Luca. "You are in charge now."

"Tono betrays his moves if you watch him," Maura whispered to her second. "He has never been good at hiding his intent."

Not until last night on the cliff.

She felt hands lifting her, fought until Luca murmured, "We are just getting you to the healer's wagon. Stop making it harder."

She sensed Maddix was the one holding her under her arms and said, "I beg forgiveness, my lord."

"There may be no one left to forgive you, warrior, if your brother's treachery causes us to lose."

"I will punish him for his lack of honor."

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"See that you do." She felt Maddix tighten his grip. "If I don't first."

Maura woke to darkness, shivered as sweat­sodden

hair and bedclothes seemed to press down on her. There was somewhere she should be. But where?

"Shhh." A gentle voice, then pressure on her forehead, and Maura realized it was dark because a cool, damp cloth covered her eyes.

An image came. Of armies clashing. Of the sound of metal meeting metal, of horses screaming as they reared and kicked, of people grunting and hacking and fighting to the bitter end.

She should be there. Not here, wherever here was.

Her head pounded as she tried to get her bearings. Was she still in the house the healer had brought her to? How many days had passed?

"Maddix?" she said through parched lips.

"Shhh."

"The healer?"

She heard the creak of a chair, sensed whoever had been tending her was leaving.

"No, wait, please."

Then she heard a new sound. The clomp of boots, creaking of new leather, and the sound of heavy fabric being swished back as whoever it was sat down next to her.

She stayed silent, trying to determine who her visitor was.

"I know you're awake." Tono's voice. No remorse in it.

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No hint of triumph, either. He sounded...dead.

"You." She dragged her hand out, trying to reach for anything that might serve as a weapon.

He trapped her hand, holding her down as easily as if she was an infant. She reached for the cloth over her eyes with her other hand, and he said, "Don't. You'll only hurt your eyes. It's very bright today, and these people don't have the money for expensive cloth to keep out the sun."

She had a feeling they'd have more money after his visit.

"The healer isn't coming back. Your hosts believe you will die in a few days." He moved, then she heard the sound of liquid being shaken in a container. "And you will die. Without this."

He tipped her head up, held the container to her lips, but she refused to drink. "Maura, don't be stubborn. I promise you it is not more poison."

"Your word is worth nothing." But hers was. "If I drink and get better, I will hunt you down, Tono."

"I know." He sighed. "I had my reasons for doing this.

It wasn't just to avoid fighting you."

"There is no reason that will excuse what you've done."

He leaned in, his breath cool on her ear as he whispered, "Vorga found a new weapon, one such as we'd never seen. Liquid fire, Maura. Light it, launch it with a catapult, and it hits and keeps burning. And it's easy to make if you know the recipe. Your army didn't stand a chance. Those who the fire didn't get were easy to pick off."

"I should have been there."

"And you would have been if our meeting on the cliff 158

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had gone differently. If I'd found you'd turned into someone other than the sister I love."

"This had nothing to do with love. This was you taking the easy road."

"Then drink this and punish me for it once you're well."

She opened her lips, let him ease her up again, and pour the sticky liquid into her mouth. She could barely swallow; it was bitter and so thick it seemed to resist going down her throat.

He stood, his clothes sounded soft and heavy­­expensive things.

"Where is Maddix?"

"On display at Vorga's camp. He isn't a pretty sight­­he was caught in the first round of fireballs."

"I will find you, Tono."

"I know you will try." He touched her cheek, right where he had kissed it. "This will leave a scar. One more for the collection."

"The only one not honorably earned."

"Honor, sweet sister, is for those who don't love their families." Then he walked away, leaving her alone to fight the drowsiness his antidote had brought on.

She finally gave up and let sleep take her.

Maura woke in the half­darkness of early morning.

Her skin felt dry and tight, but she could move more easily, and when she touched her cheek, it no longer felt hot and puffy. She gingerly tried sitting up in bed, was relieved when she managed it, pushing herself against the rustic headboard.

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"You're awake." The voice from before, then a figure followed it. A woman dressed in robes that were patched and darned­­Tono had been right: these were poor people she was staying with.

She looked around, saw that her sword was leaning against a chair, her knife on the seat. Her coin belt was there, too. She was willing to bet that the woman had not disturbed what was inside.

The woman pointed to the other side of the room.

"They left those for you. In case you recovered." Maura's armor, the leathers she wore underneath, and her worn boots sat on the floor.

"How long have I been asleep?"

"Five days since they brought you here. Three days since your visitor came." The woman sat down on the stool next to Maura's bed, and Maura realized she was very old. "Your visitor looked startlingly like you. Your brother, I take it?"

"Yes. My brother." She could feel rage growing as she thought of what Tono had done.

The woman studied her. "Are you hungry?"

Maura nodded.

"I'll get you something that will make you strong."

"I'll pay you for your trouble."

"The healer and your brother already did that. You can repay me by getting well and leaving me in peace. I am not fond of warriors."

There were probably many in the lands Maddix and Vorga had fought over who could say that.

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Vorga's camp was in the midst of what looked like a

days' long party. At the edges of the camp, men lay scattered all around­­drunk, not dead­­ snoring loudly and muttering in their sleep, some with women in their arms.

More celebrated around a roaring fire. The sentries were still on duty, but Maura had no trouble sneaking past them as she skirted the main area of festivities and kept to the shadows.

"Bring the bear," someone yelled, and she heard laughter and taunts beginning. Several men ran past her, and she pushed herself into the darkness and stayed perfectly still. But they didn't even look as they passed, their attention on a cage­wagon tucked into a corner of the camp across from her.

They grabbed the tongue of the wagon, began to pull it out of its place. A lumpy, black shape huddled on the floor, and for a moment she thought it was a bear, beaten and broken into providing entertainment.

Then, as the wagon rumbled past her, she realized it was not a bear at all, but a man. Burned beyond recognition­­only the name cut into a wooden plaque and attached to the wagon told her who it was: Maddix.

Feeling sick, she slipped deeper into the shadows, then followed the wagon, keeping to the back of the tents where she would not be spotted. When she was close enough to make out the features of the men she watched, she stopped and crouched behind some barrels.

She saw someone­­it had to be Vorga with all the riches dripping off him­­pick up a stone and throw it into the cage. Maddix roared in pain and moved away from the 161

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fire, but then another man thrust a stick into the cage from the back and forced him to move again. Each time it happened, Maddix cried out, and Maura imagined he was leaving charred skin behind him as he was forced to dance to their cruelty.

"Take him back," Vorga said. "He is less amusing each time."

The men wheeled the wagon by her again, and she followed. Once they had left the wagon where they'd found it, she eased her way over to it, finding a place where she could not be seen as she studied the man inside. He was whimpering in a way she'd never have thought he would do. He smelled horrible: of burnt flesh and the things they'd thrown at him and his own waste.

"Maddix?"

He slowly lifted his head, and she nearly threw up at the sight of his ruined face so close to hers. But she owed him more than that, so she stood firm, meeting his exhausted eyes with her own.

"I will get you out of here."

"No." His voice was little more than a whisper, and then he began to move closer to her, the journey slow and painful. He finally made it to the bars and grabbed them with hands as badly burned as the rest of him. "I am dying."

She couldn't argue with him. He looked like a man who had already died and forgotten to fall.

He drew himself up, so that his chest was pressed against the bars. "End this for me, Maura."

She drew her knife from its sheath.

"You always kept your blades sharp. I shall be grateful 162

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for that in a moment."

She moved into a better position to strike. "Have you seen Tono in the camp?"

"No. But I can barely see. Maura, do it now. It is my last command to you."

She stabbed quickly­­a kindness not to wait the few seconds he might expect. Her blow was true, direct to the heart, and his groan sounded more like release than pain.

She pulled out her knife, waited for his eyes to close, for him to let go of the bars and fall back. She listened, making sure there was no breath coming from him, before cleaning off her knife on a ragged piece of cloth in the wagon.

She thought there was probably one man who knew where Tono had gone. He sat at the campfire, bedecked with riches he'd taken from Maddix's treasure chests. She slipped through the dark, heading for a tent in the middle of the camp. A rich tent, with Vorga's banner next to it.

There was no guard, but she heard the murmuring of women's voices within. They were probably captured women, and Maura had no desire to hurt the innocent­­or the unlucky. So she waited in the shadows, and a while later Vorga bellowed for dancers, and women ran out of several tents, including his own.

She was not sure his tent was empty, but ducked inside anyway. The place still reeked of the perfume of the dancers, but there was no one else there. She found the best spot to hide and still have room to fight, and willed her ears to listen and her legs not to cramp.

She stayed hidden for what seemed like hours. But then she heard harsh laughter, a spitting noise followed 163

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by a slap. A woman squealed, and again the harsh laughter rang out. Then Maura saw the woman walk in and begin to turn down the bed.

Vorga came in behind her, his back to where Maura hid.

"Go fetch us some fruit, Lana. I am in the mood for something juicy."

Lana hurried away.

Vorga stretched, then began to take off his weapons, throwing them to the chair by the bed. Once he'd taken off all of them, Maura snuck from her hiding place, careful not to get in the way of the lamps and candles for fear of her shadow alerting him. She drew her knife as she grabbed him, the blade pressing into his throat before he could let out a cry.

"I will slash before you can call out. Nod carefully if you understand."

He nodded, very carefully.

"I am looking for Tono."

"That makes two of us." But his voice lacked conviction. Fear, yes, but not the anger of a master whose best warrior has run out on him.

"Where is he?" She let the blade bite into his skin, knew she'd drawn blood.

"I told you­­" Again she pushed in, this time he cried out in pain.

"North. He's gone north."

"North is a big place. Where in the north?"

"He said he was going home."

"He betrayed me for you. This should have been a true battle." She let the knife ease. "Where is your sense of honor?"

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"Honor does not win wars, and you know that or you would not have sneaked into my tent. An honorable warrior would have come openly and called me out."

"You're right; honor does not seem to win wars any longer."

He began to relax in her arms.

"But I still wish it did. This is for Maddix." And she pulled her dagger across his neck with enough force to make sure there would be no recovery from the cut.

He clutched at his torn throat, trying to stop the flow of blood, then he fell and lay staring at her, first in horror, then lifelessly.

She heard Lana coming back and slipped under the side of the tent, moving quietly past the sentry, then running to the sheltering trees. Halfway there, she heard the woman scream.

She didn't look back, kept her eyes fixed on the trees that lay ahead as she walked as quickly as she dared through the darkened forest, moving north to her family home. And to her brother.

She was surprised at how much she remembered of

their old home village. As she passed through fields of tall grain, heard the joyful sound of children playing, she felt a pang­­an ache of loss that she'd not let herself feel since she understood she would never come back here.

Home had been lost, and she'd never cried for it. Tono had, though. He'd cried so much their first year when they were alone that she'd had to find them a secret place to go where he could cry in safety. And he'd trusted her 165

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to protect him as he lay with his head in her lap on that cliff they'd so recently shared and wept for their old life.

The war­masters would have killed a boy so weak.

She'd known that and she'd kept his sadness from them.

Tono had grown up tall and strong.

Strong in body, but not in heart, not in his sense of honor. She had protected him for this? To be betrayed?

She expected to find their house in ruins, but it was in good shape, the stones standing straight on the sides. As she stood taking in the sight of the place she'd been born, a little boy ran out from the back of the house.

He appeared to be about five years old, was dressed in what seemed to be new clothes, and looked so much like Tono she felt as if she was back at the war­masters' town again, with the little brother she had to protect because she'd promised her parents she would.

"Who are you?" the boy asked.

"No one."

He studied her, seemed to be taking in her armor and weapons. Then he smiled. "You look like Father."

"This is your aunt Maura, Kano." Tono stepped out of the front door, dressed in expensive new clothes­­not warrior clothes, either, even if he was fully armed. He drew his sword. "She's come to fight me."

She drew her own sword. "I've come to kill you." But the words sounded wrong in front of his son, especially when the boy's face crumpled in fear.

"Will you let me show you something?" Tono asked.

"Before we fight?"

"What? More poison?"

"No. Not that." He pushed his sword back into its 166

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scabbard and walked over to his son, holding out his hand to the boy. "Kano, let's go see your mother."

Maura expected to be led into the house, but instead they walked around to the back, and she followed at a safe distance. She saw grave markers up ahead in the grass. Weathered wood, cracked and hard to read. Her parents rested here.

And just beyond she saw a fresher grave. One old enough for grass to have started to cover it but still not the same deep green as the grass in other places. She looked at the simple stone, carved out with a woman's name.

The little boy sank down and touched the stone.

"Hello, Mother."

Another memory burst on her. How she'd done the same thing, how she'd been lying on top of her parent's graves when the war­masters had come for them. It had been Tono who'd been brave then. Tono who'd pried her off the graves and begged her to come with them.

To keep himself safe, of course. Even as a youngster, Tono had the keenest sense of self­preservation she'd ever seen.

Tono turned to look at her. "I did it for you, Maura.

You'd have died by the liquid fire. And I couldn't have stood that."

She laughed softly, a long, bitter puff of air. "You're a liar. I might have evaded the fire. I might have rallied our troops to draw yours away from the fire." She could imagine Luca trying to figure out how to fight such wicked enemies. Flexibility of strategy had never been Luca's strong suit. "You wanted me off the field so that I 167

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could not wring victory out of defeat."

He sat down on the grass, seemed to be leaving himself open to her if she wanted to strike him. But there was no honor in that kind of attack, a fact she thought he was counting on.

"If we'd fought, you'd have killed me, and Kano would have been an orphan. How long do you think it would have taken for the war­masters to come for the son of one of their guild members?" He looked over at the grave. "I fought as long as she was alive. But when she died, I knew I had to make a change. I was the one who found the man with the secret to the liquid fire. And in exchange for that, in exchange for taking you out of the game, Vorga gave me enough to buy an early retirement."

Kano pushed himself up from the grave and walked over to his father. Settling into Tono's lap, he began to play with the sheath of his father's dagger.

"That's not a toy," Tono said, pushing the dagger back in and securing it.

He sounded exactly like their father as he said it.

She sank to the ground, let her hand fall from her sword. "Honor demands that I kill you."

He looked down at his sword, then eased the boy off his lap and began to unbuckle the scabbard. Tossing it to her, he smiled, then pulled his son back into an embrace.

"There. Methos had the right of it. That sword will see Tono the warrior to his death."

His son turned to hug him and buried his face in his father's neck, and Maura could tell they were frightening him with all this talk of killing and death.

"Who will Tono become if not a warrior?"

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"A father. A teacher, maybe. I don't know. I've spent the last few days waiting for you. I wasn't sure I'd even need to plan my future."

She studied his sword. "What if I throw this back to you? What if I make you fight me?"

"Then I want your word that if I die, you will watch after Kano as if he was your own son."

"I'm a warrior. I have no room in my life for children."

"Well, I do have room. So don't kill me and go back to your life."

She looked down, then heard soft footsteps coming toward her. Kano touched her hair, and she looked up, and for a moment she was a child again herself, crying because she was alone and another soul depended on her too much.

She kissed Kano on the cheek, the same place Tono had planted his poison, and she knew the symbolism would not be lost on her brother. Then she pushed her nephew away and rose. "If I hear that you have taken up arms again, if I hear that you are teaching war­fighting, if I hear that you have, in any way, gone back to your old life, I will hunt you down and kill you. Do you understand?"

"I understand." He stood, then held out his hand to her.

"Stay for dinner?"

It was tempting to reach out for him. She could feel the hardness beginning to leach from her as she stood in this yard they'd run so innocently through. She looked down at little Kano, gave him the gentlest smile she could.

Then she forced her features back to warrior neutral as she looped Tono's scabbard over her shoulder. She would give the sword back to Methos; he was old now but still 169

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able to make metal sing. She would tell him her brother the warrior was dead, and Methos would melt the sword down and turn it into a new blade, for a new warrior. It was the cycle of their lives at the guild.

"I'm not hungry," she said to him.

Tono dropped his hand and smiled, a true smile, one full of love­­and relief. "I didn't think you would be."

Gerri Leen lives in Northern Virginia and originally hails from Seattle. She has a collection of short stories, Life Without Crows, out from Hadley Rille Books, and over fifty stories and poems published in such places as: She Nailed a Stake Through His Head, Sword and Sorceress XXIII, Dia de los Muertos, Return to Luna, Sniplits, Triangulation: Dark Glass, Sails & Sorcery, and Paper Crow. She also is editing an anthology of speculative fiction and poetry from Hadley Rille Books that will benefit homeless animals. Visit http://www.gerrileen.com to see what else she's been up to.

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