Part 36 (2/2)
The nestlings leapt up from his corpse to form a shrieking, swirling ma.s.s above the ring. They were tiring. They are dying, Trelayne thought. Blood with Scream. Blood with Scream.
He tore open his s.h.i.+rt. Pulling a knife from his belt, he slashed at his chest and upper arms. He dropped the knife and stood with arms outspread, blood streaming down him, waiting for the smell of the Scream in his blood to reach the brood.
They swooped down from above the ring, swarming him like bees on honey, driving their tendrils into his flesh wherever he bled. The pain surpa.s.sed even what Scream let him endure. A dark chasm yawned below him, and he felt himself falling.
Trelayne awoke on his back, pale green light illuminating a bulkhead above him. The weight pressing him into the bed and the throb of engines told him he was on a s.h.i.+p under acceleration.
Something was wrong. No. Something was right. Finally he felt right. He felt human. He felt...
Pain. Real pain. Pain that hurt. He tried to rise.
”The Captain has returned to us.” It was Feran's voice.
”In more ways than one, fox boy, in more ways than one.” The Cutter's face appeared above him. ”Lie still for chrissakes. You'll open the wounds again.”
Trelayne lay back gasping. ”What happened?”
”We won. We took Weitz's s.h.i.+p.”
”Mojo? Procne? Phi-where's Phi?” he wheezed.
Her voice came from across the room. ”All your family is safe. Guppert, the Puppies. All are here with us.”
Trelayne twisted his head. She lay on another bunk, Procne asleep beside her. ”Didn't know I had a family,” he said weakly.
”We knew, Jason Trelayne. All along we were your family.”
The Cutter moved aside, and Trelayne could see the brood clinging to her. She smiled. ”Yes. You saved my children.”
”I haven't seen that smile in a long time, Phi.”
”I have not had reason for a long time.”
”I feel... I feel..”
”You feel true pain. And you wonder why.” Her gaze dropped to something at his side. Only then did Trelayne realize that one of the brood lay next to him, and that the tiny creature still had its tendril inside him. He tried to move away.
”Lie still, dammit,” the Cutter snapped. ”This ugly little vacuum cleaner hasn't got you quite cleaned up yet.”
”What are you talking about?”
The Cutter checked a monitor on the wall above the bunk. ”The brood's feeding's reduced the Scream in your blood to almost nil. The big bonus is zero withdrawal signs. Remember when you tried to kick it when we started the colony?”
Trelayne nodded, shuddering at the memory.
The Cutter rubbed his chin. ”These little suckers must leave somethin' behind in the blood, lets the body adjust to lower levels of Scream. Angels'd need the same thing when the brood feeds from'em.” He looked at Trelayne. ”You just bought a new life for every Screamer the Ent.i.ty ever got hooked.”
As the implication of that sank in, Mojo's face appeared at the door. One of the brood clung to him as well. ”We're nearing the jump insertion point. Where're we headed, Cap?”
Silence fell, and Trelayne could sense them waiting for his answer. He remembered something Weitz had said and smiled through his pain. ”I hear there are still rebels on Fandor IV.”
Mojo grinned and disappeared towards the bridge with Cutter. Trelayne turned to Feran. The kit moved away. Trelayne's smile faded as he understood. He stared at the kit, then spoke very quietly. ”Feran, the Captain Trelayne that you saw in the dome today... he died with all those other men. Do you understand?”
An eternity pa.s.sed. Then Feran ran to him and hugged him far too hard, and it hurt. His wounds hurt. The nestling at his side hurt. G.o.d, it all hurt, and it was wonderful to hurt again and to want it to stop.
Later, the s.h.i.+p slowed for the jump, and weightlessness took him. But to Trelayne, the sensation this time was not of falling. Instead, he felt himself rising, rising above something he was finally leaving behind.
Meet the Authors
Eric M. Witchey lives in Salem, Oregon. He is a graduate of Clarion West and has won recognition from Writers of the Future, New Century Writers, and Writer's Digest. His fiction has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies.
About ”Voyeur”: ”Voyeur” came from an exercise in which I attempted to write a short story from four randomly chosen topics: A revelation, Who else has owned this chair?, A voyeur, and Squint. My critique group, the Wordos of Eugene, Oregon, provided valuable feedback. If the results are palatable to the reader, it is due chiefly to a set of good dice and my friends in Eugene.
John Teehan lives and writes in Providence, Rhode Island. He's been a fan of science fiction since he could read, and wrote his first story (a radio play) while in the fourth grade. He spent his younger years at the family bookstore where he was put in charge of the science fiction section which accounts for his love of the genre, so it was only a matter of time before he began writing science fiction in earnest.
Besides short stories, John has also written several pieces of genre-related non-fiction and edits the fanzine, Sleight of Hand.
About ”Digger Don't Take No Requests”: Around the time that thousands of students in Tiananmen Square were facing down tanks, I was attending the University of Exeter in England on a grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities to work on a thesis about The Exeter Book, a collection of Anglo-Saxon poems. My room had been broken into at one point and I had lost quite a bit of money. Between the close of term at the university and my return home, I found myself playing my guitar on street corners for enough money to pay for a bed, some food, and a bus ticket to Heathrow.
Street musicians, or 'buskers' as they are called in England, are a fairly friendly crowd and are only too glad to recommend good street corners or even dispense advice so as to increase the day's takings. Many of them took a liking to me-possibly because of the novelty of seeing an American trying to make his way home by playing bluegra.s.s on noisy city streets.
There were also a couple of folks, panhandlers and dealers, who were not as friendly as the rest and who defended their comers vigorously-sometimes even violently. There is a whole subculture on the street with its own customs and proprieties.
These days I always give money to folks playing music on street corners, remembering my own days trying to get along by doing the exact same thing. I've talked with many of them and find the culture of busking is pretty much the same the world over.
How could I not use that in a story one day?
Holly Phillips lives and writes in south-central British Columbia, Canada, one of the most beautiful regions in North America. She has sold many stories to literary and speculative markets in Canada and the US, and to date has received two honorable mentions, one in the 2001 Best of Soft SF Contest, and the other in the 14th annual Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthology edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. In addition to her writing, Holly is a fiction editor for On Spec, the Canadian magazine of the fantastic, and has just recently entered into the world of the freelance editorial consultant.
About ”The Gate Between Hope and Glory”: On ”The Gate Between Hope and Glory” I had a lot of fun digging through my old notebooks looking for the genesis of this story. The original note says (if I can decipher my own scribbles), ”Unionization in s.p.a.ce! The problem with striking is that the Company can just turn off the air. The key is to emphasize the precariousness, the vulnerability of living in s.p.a.ce-and also the necessity of community.” Of course my interest in labor issues is one I inherited from my father (and indeed, from my grandfather). But I find it interesting, and pleasing, to see how closely the finished product adheres to the originating idea. Something of a rarity, in my experience.
eluki bes shahar was born long enough ago to have seen Cla.s.sic Trek on its first outing. As she aged, she put aside her dreams of taking over from Batman and returned to her first love, writing. Her first SF sale was the h.e.l.lflower series, in which Damon Runyon meets Doc Smith over at the old Bester place. Between books and short stories (most of them as Rosemary Edghill), she's held the usual part-time writer jobs, including book store clerk, secretary, and grants writer. She can truthfully state that she once killed vampires for a living, and that without any knowledge of medicine has ill.u.s.trated half-a-dozen medical textbooks. Find her on the Web at: e partners, and the time when h.e.l.lflower begins.
A lot can happen in fifteen years...
Every weekend, from age five to eighteen, Lawrence M. Schoen worked at one or another swap meet throughout southern California. He spent a lot of that time watching the range of humanity pa.s.sing by, and when business was slow he filled spiral notebooks with endless tales for his own amus.e.m.e.nt. The fascination with people won out and he put fiction aside to go off to college and graduate school to study linguistics and psychology. After ten years as a professor he put academia aside and returned to crafting fiction. He's also traveled the globe for years speaking and promoting the Klingon language. Nowadays, when not writing or making alien sounds, he's the Director of Research for a series of mental health facilities in Philadelphia.
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