Bastion Science Fiction Magazine - Issue 7, October 2014 (7 page)

On the way back to her makeshift dwelling that evening, an unexpected weakness overcame her. She felt her legs turn to mush, her arms slacken. Black ghosts danced at the edge of her vision, and twice she nearly fell down a slippery, heavily-inclined path. As she turned off her portable light and tried to sleep, it felt like her blankets had become useless against the all-pervasive cold.

Her hands and feet grew numb.

Her throat dried and her head pounded.

She recognized the symptoms at once. It had started the same way with Drosian.

Without another Blessing soon, I won’t make it through the cycle.

She imagined her father, suffering alone in their cavern. It made her feel even worse.

#

In the depths of restless sleep, she felt a familiar rejuvenating effect, less potent, less cleansing than other times, but discernible nonetheless. It coursed through her like a gentle stream of wellbeing, invisible energy stimulating her body here and there, eliminating the worst of her pains. Her hunger dampened and her headache disappeared. She woke with a smile, grateful for even a partial restoration of her health.

It didn’t take long for her joy to be replaced by something else.

If the Blessing has just occurred,
she thought,
the ship won’t be in this system for long.

Making use of every iota of her new strength, she scrambled up the path and through the rock tunnel in half the time it would have normally taken her. Emerging from the mountainside in the middle of pitch black, she had to slow her pace on the ascent to the mountain’s peak to avoid slipping and falling.

Lugging the transponder beacon, one of the few pieces of their ship that they had managed to stow away and repair so many cycles ago, slowed her down even more.

By the time she made it to the summit her lungs burned in her chest and her arms trembled with exhaustion. It felt like she’d been climbing for hours. All she wanted to do was lie down in the soft snow and sleep forever.

The desire for rest set off alarms inside her head, warning her of oxygen depletion.

Adrenaline now coursing through her body, she set up the beacon and completed its simple start-up routine with surprisingly nimble fingers.

Using infrared binoculars Sumelyu scanned the night sky. After several minutes she located her target, a fleck of pulsating orange that moved against the backdrop with unnatural precision and speed.

She aligned the direction of the transponder’s beam with the fleck’s coordinates and let out a long breath.

Now to wait
.

#

The
Ariadne
, one of the Cohort’s latest-generation Collapsar ships, detected an unusual signal emanating from Rakesh’s fifth moon.

The lone pilot studied the signal, adjusted the
Ariadne
’s course and prepared to land.

#

“How do you feel?”

Sumelyu’s eyelids fluttered and opened only halfway, white light stinging her with pinpricks of pain that shot through her forehead and into the back of her skull.

“Too bright,” she moaned, raising her hands to shield her face.

“This should help.”

She felt a mask being attached to her face. She risked a peek and saw that the glare had muted down to a tolerable level. And with every filtered breath her head seemed clearer.

“Better,” she managed, and rose up.

“How long have you been here?”

The pilot wore the standard colors of the Cohort uniform, a configuration that apparently hadn’t changed over the last sixteen cycles. The pilot’s own partially masked face betrayed weariness, a life of too much duty and too little
recompense.

“There’ll be time for explanations later,” Sumelyu said. “Right now I need your help. There’s several Guilds—” she saw the pilot’s puzzled expression “—
groups
of us living deep inside
this mountain range. Maybe one hundred and twenty people in all. I need your assistance for a full evacuation.”

The pilot looked concerned. “Even if I was authorized to assist, my ship can only hold a crew of five. But, more importantly—”

“You’ll have to call other ships!”

“You don’t understand,” the pilot said. “No more Cohort ships will be coming to this sector. My craft is a Collapsar. I’ve been instructed to close the Conduit.”

Sumelyu, still standing upright, felt like the wind had been knocked out of her.

“But surely, if you let the Cohort know that there are people down here—”

“I already did, during my descent.” The pilot shook her head slowly. “It didn’t take them long to figure out that, improbable as it seemed, you’re survivors from the
Naxos
. I came down to confirm it. The Cohort doesn’t want to allocate resources for this rescue mission. Our alliances have been strained, our empire in retreat. Why do you think we’re closing down Conduits? Cohort Central has decided it’s time we look inward and preserve our resources, instead of squandering them on places like this.”

“But we can offer you something unique,” Sumelyu said quickly, stomach sinking while she spoke the words she’d rehearsed for days. “Scan my body. I haven’t aged in sixteen cycles. The Conduit provides Blessings, which we would be willing to share with you in exchange for your aid.”

The pilot frowned, pulled out a sleek piece of equipment from her suit’s rear pack and probed Sumelyu’s body with a dozen different sensors.

The pilot’s mouth dropped. Then she said, “You’re sick.” The pilot paused.“Your body is riddled with at least nine types of cancer. Yet somehow you haven’t developed malignancies.
I think that the foldspace radiation from the Conduit’s opening and closing is interacting with the planet’s intense magnetosphere to somehow keep your cancers in check. The same magnetosphere prevented our scans from detecting you… But according to my ship it’s been weakening, and you’ve probably started experiencing some symptoms of your cancers.”

“
Cancers
?”

“You talked about not ageing. Cancer cells are immortal. Your hyper-stimulated cancers are hijacking your biochemistry so that they can continue to thrive indefinitely. I can try to treat you with my med-pack, but I’m not sure how your body will react.”

Sumelyu’s head was spinning. She had gone against the wishes of her father, who might well be dead by now, against the wishes of her friends—for what? To discover that the Blessings were nothing but a curse, that Krossatar and Felioe had been right when they warned her that the Cohort wouldn’t take them back?

Tears of embarrassment and regret streamed down her face, clouding her vision. Her agitated breath fogged up her mask.

“Calm down,” the pilot advised. “Your vitals just spiked and—”

Sumelyu swept her feet under the pilot’s legs, toppling her. As the pilot careened to the ground, her words muffled by the fall, Sumelyu grabbed her med-pack and ran towards the outcroppings of rock she’d used to reach the summit. As she descended, she kept looking up at the summit for signs of the pilot, but a bank of clouds rolled in and obliterated her view.

By the time the pilot had traced her footsteps in the snow to the ledge, she had vanished.

About an hour later the
Ariadne
climbed through the sky and resumed its mission.

#

“There will be no more Blessings.”

Drosian, lost in a reverie, was pulled back into the here-and-now by the sound of his daughter’s voice.

“I know.”

Sumelyu knelt down and kissed him on the cheek. The old man’s skin was still burning up.
“But the Guilds will endure,” she said, and pulled out the equipment she had snatched from the pilot. “With this tool, we should be able to direct the sicknesses we carry in our bodies to defeat one another. Perhaps not everyone will survive, but…”

“We should use it on the youngest members of our Guilds first,” Drosian said. “They have the best chances of making a full recovery.”

Sumelyu sat down beside his reclining figure.

“We won’t live forever,” she said.

Her father looked at her for a long time, ineffable sadness mixed with transcendent joy. “Then let’s make the most of every moment we have.”

Sumelyu nodded. Suddenly the events of the last week seemed to catch up with her body all at once. Chills passed through her with the same vigor that the Blessings had once exerted. Exhaustion tugged at every cell in her body.
This is no paradise
, she thought, looking at the frozen cavern walls.
But it’s home.

###

Alvaro Zinos-Amaro is co-author, with Robert Silverberg, of
When the Blue Shift Comes
, which received a starred review from Library Journal. Alvaro’s short fiction has appeared in
Analog, Nature, Galaxy’s Edge, BuzzyMag
, and other venues. His poetry has been nominated for a Rhysling award. Alvaro's reviews and essays have been published in the
Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Review of Science Fiction, Strange Horizons
, and elsewhere. Alvaro currently edits the blog for Locus. His website is Waiting for My Aineko (
myaineko.blogspot.com
).

Shudder

Manfred Gabriel

So, we’re guarding this warehouse. One of those domes on the periphery. No idea what’s in it. Lot of the time they’re empty. Bait for the goons. Still, orders are orders.

I’m up top with a Geiger and a three-sixty. Nothing but burnt out adobes for blocks. My murder is evenly spaced around the base of the dome, each killer just close enough to put eyes on one another in case the buzzers jam. Another two at the doors. A convoy’s due after dark along with our relief, but out there, night falls slowly.
 

Spinners swarm out of the north, we don’t see them because the setting sun is in our eyes. Glare guards might work here, but not there, where the sun would burn your retinas in seconds if you did so much as blink in its general direction.

The spinners are silent. Not like the old kind that hummed like so many flies. They strike Vil, pierce his well coat, a thousand stings to the chest.

Then the goons start popping out of the ruins of the adobes, gear shots in their gangly hands, eyes like they were slit open with knives. They keep the two killers nearest Vil pinned down so they can’t get to him. He goes down. He’ll be dead in less than a minute.

I leap and hit the side of the dome nearest him, slide down so I’m only a few steps away. Meantime, goons have spotted me, gear shots plug the ground, the dome, but they miss me as I move to Vil. His eyes were wide, his breath slow and labored. If I took time to feel his heart, no doubt it would be racing. With one hand I’m firing away with my Geiger, green shots hurtling into the already bombed out buildings. Explosions send pieces of goons flying into the air. In my other hand I’ve got a patch, slap it on Vil double-quick. He was still unconscious, but at least he was breathing normal again.

The goons regroup behind the wall of an adobe that was once a manse. They start firing again. I blow the wall to pieces with my Geiger. I fling Vil over my shoulder. No small feat. He’s a big man, even bigger than me. Start scrambling up the wall, my boots gripping onto its smooth façade. I make it back up top. Look around. Half my murder is gone. The goons are making their way to the dome door.

I call for support. I’ve got Vil lying at my feet, and I’ve emptied my Geiger. Some of my murder has joined me up top. A hopper rolls overhead, like some black thundercloud. It booms. Jumpers fall from its portals to engage the enemy. A tentacle wafts down to me. I grab hold of Vil and it sucks us up into the hopper.

Did he make it?

Who?

Vil.

Oh yeah, he made it okay. Coats in the hopper saw to that.

And how did you feel?

Pissed off. That was my murder, my assignment, and we got our asses kicked. Good killers, all gone.

You weren’t afraid? I mean, with all that happening around you.

I didn’t have time to think about it.

Even afterwards, sitting in that hopper?

Don’t you get it, Coat? I’m never afraid. Never been afraid in my entire life. That’s why I’m here.

#

How are they treating you?

Aren’t you a ‘they’?

I’m sort of a volunteer. I take cases that interest me. I’m not associated with the clinic.

We call it the twisted house.

I prefer clinic.

It’s okay, I guess. You hear all sorts of stories on the outside, you know. Like they throw you into pits with a bunch of other loonies, and everyone’s trying to claw their way up and out, and screaming or sobbing so that you can’t ever get any peace. Or they drug you into a coma and strap you to your bed for good measure. Stuff like that. But I’ve got a soft bed and they let me read all I want. My room’s got an odd shape, and funny little windows like raindrops high towards the ceiling that let in the stars. The corridors beyond go this way and that, turn and curve and hairpin. So in case you escape your room, you won’t be able to find your way out. The food’s crap, but I’m used to that from the periphery. At least it’s regular. Sometimes, food drops wouldn’t come for days. Support our troops—bullshit.

Still, could be worse. Did I tell you I was once captured by the goons? They don’t normally take prisoners. No word in that gut spewing language of theirs for it. Caught me unawares once when I got lost in the canals. Dozen or so on me, not much I could do. They bound me with what seemed like their own flesh, all oozing. Think they were just holding me while they figured out the messiest way to kill me.

Spent ten turns under that white-hot sun. No food, little water. They stripped me naked. One of them always watching me. Finally, they left me alone for a few minutes. A mistake, I guess. Anyway, one thing about those cords they bound me with, they were slippery. Slid out of them and stole away. Could hear them hunting me for several miles before I finally came upon one of our recon units. Almost shot me. Thin as I was, no clothes, thought I was one of them.