while the black stars burn (7 page)

But...I know I haven’t been with him, but...I can’t remember why we separated? Or when? I remember the nightmares. But it’s been years...or has it? And I feel like Sofia should be...older now? Or is that just the hyperspace affecting my memory?

I wish I could talk to you. I wish I could talk to Vince. I feel like he’d be able to help me sort out what’s in my head. At least he’s still alive; Dr. Cedar says she thinks he’ll pull through, but she has to keep him in a medical coma until we get to Kepler.

We’re all still getting error messages when we try to access our message archives; I tracked down a couple of lines of corrupted code yesterday, but fixing them didn’t help. If I didn’t know better I’d think the damn program had been rewritten.

I wish this headache would go away. Dr. Cedar’s meds make me too sleepy and stupid to work.

Love,

Deb

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Dear Mom,

Sorry it’s been so long since I wrote you. I had a bad reaction to the drugs we’ve been taking for hyperspace sickness and came down with meningitis, of all things, but Dr. Cedar is getting me squared away. Finally the headache is getting better. I’ve been confined to quarters because I can’t stand the lights, but Mark’s been the best. He’s been telling me all about how we’re going to give Sofia brothers and sisters soon. He’ll be a great dad. I can’t wait.

Love,

Deb

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Dear Mom,

Time has flown! But you know how busy it is when you’re expecting. I can’t believe how pregnant I am right now, and the babies are so active! Mark is one proud papa. He says I am the best mother he’s ever seen. Dr. Cedar thinks there are eight babies? They all get wound around each other and it’s hard to make them all out on the scanner.

Dr. Cedar and Rufina have been tremendous helps in setting up the nursery. They’ve spun their silk everywhere; the whole room is so soft and looks like Santa’s beard. Vince is in there, and most of the crew from Engineering. They will help the babies get big and strong.

I might not make it through the birth. But I’m okay with that, because my babies will live and that’s what’s important. It’s been so long since the Kthath had a good host species and I could die happy knowing I helped save them. But I don’t want you to worry—Mark and Dr. Cedar will do everything they can to make sure I can see them grow up. Mark says I’m tough and I can make it. I have a lot to teach the babies about humans and human behavior so they can fit into the Kepler colony. They’ll have to take the places of everyone in the nursery, and that’s hard, so I might be gone longer than I said I’d be. But it’ll be fine—once my babies have had babies, we’ll all head back to Earth.

See you soon,

Deb

The Still-Life Drama of Passing Cars

Co-written with Gary A. Braunbeck

“Mom!” shouted Jason from the back seat of the station wagon. “Lookit that woman! She’s crying!”

Tammy Horton caught a glimpse of the shiny black BMW as it sped past. The driver—a woman on the wrong side of forty and trying hard not to look it—was, indeed, crying. Her right hand shook terribly as she wiped at her puffy eyes with a wadded Kleenex, ruined mascara running in dark streaks down both sides of her face. Maybe she was coming from a funeral, or from the hospital where she’d been visiting a dying friend or relative. Or maybe she’d discovered that her husband was having an affair with a younger woman. It didn’t matter; the misery on her face and the tears in her eyes told everyone, for just a quick moment shared by passing Monday cars, that her entire world had just collapsed.

“Well?” Tammy asked her children.

Jason and Lynn looked at one another, then Lynn said: “Jason saw it first.”

The rules of this particular road game were very strict: If You See It First, You Have To Claim It.

“Okay, Jason…it’s yours.”

“Cool!”

A moment later he held a dark, wet, squirming mass in his arms.

“Ew!” said Lynn, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “It’s uglier than a squid!”

“Want to hold it?”

“Wanna bite me?”

“Knock that off right now, you two.” Tammy glanced at the woman in the BMW. There was no longer any soul-crippling sadness on her face; in fact, she looked as if she couldn’t quite remember why she’d been so upset.

Tammy changed lanes without bothering to signal. No one sounded their horn. Big surprise. She closed her eyes, knowing she wouldn’t crash. When she wasn’t able to see the road, she could smell water, and there was a nasty taste like old pond scum in her mouth.

The afternoon sun turned roads and the cars on it into gold.

Tammy’s car cast no shadow.

“Mommy!” shouted Lynn, bouncing up and down on the seat beside Jason. “That man over there’s hitting his little girl!”

A ‘76 Impala, its mismatched body panels seemingly held together by rust patches and primer, came up alongside them. The driver—a blond man in his late twenties who had the sunken eyes and hollow cheeks of an alcoholic—repeatedly punched the little girl sitting next to him. He reminded Tammy of her ex-husband. The little girl cowered against the passenger door, trying to ward off the blows by turning her face toward the window. The man was red-faced and screaming, and though Tammy couldn’t hear what he was saying, she could tell from the pain on the girl’s face that his words hurt much worse than his fist ever could. How many times had the girl been through this? Would she repeat the cycle of abuse with her own children?

The cold lump in the pit of her stomach told Tammy everything she needed to know about the girl’s fate. Whether they were victims or perpetrators, those ensnared in violence were destined to relive it. The cycle never ended, not for people like them.

“Your turn, Lynn.”

“Got it!”

Lynn turned her attention to a deformed infant on her lap. It made mewling sounds like a kitten. Its head looked like something that floats. Its mouth was a knotted mass of hardened scar tissue. Its eyes were blinded by cataracts.

The man in the other car was staring at his fist in confusion, as if he’d never seen such a thing before; then he reached over and gently caressed the back of the little girl’s head. The little girl squirmed and shuddered, then—seeming to forget that Daddy had ever touched in any other way—giggled at something funny the man was saying and leaned her head against his arm.

“Good girl, Lynn,” said Tammy, moving the car over into the center lane without signaling.

She pushed in the cigarette lighter, reached down into her battered handbag, and worked a smoke out of what was left of her crushed pack of Virginia Slims. Bending down over her distended belly sent sharp pains through her bladder and lower back. Her ankles were swollen, and her skin was clammy and itchy.
God
, why did she have to be seven months pregnant in the middle of summer?

The lighter popped out. She lit up, taking a deep drag on the cigarette. The smoke tasted sharply foul, like mud and rusty cans. Dammit, every cell in her body craved nicotine; why couldn’t the cigs at least taste good, like they used to?

Jason leaned forward, his small face scrunched in a worried frown. “Daddy’ll be all mad again. He said—” Tammy coughed as she glanced back at her son. He’d always looked too much like Jake, his father. She forced down her irritation, making herself instead smile. “I love you, hon, ’kay? And I know what your daddy said, but he ain’t here no more and we’re not gonna be seeing him again for...a while.”

“I know,” whispered Jason sadly. “I just don’t like it when you cough.”

“Thank you, hon.” Tammy affectionately mussed his hair. He really was a good kid. He’d be a heartbreaker when he grew up. Just like his dad.

She turned her attention back to the road. Her eyes ached and stung from staring at the sun glaring off the endless miles of sunbaked blacktop. She wondered if anyone driving past had taken notice of them on that day three months ago. Had anyone glanced over and said to themselves, “Jesus, that woman looks in bad shape. And those kids! They look like they’ve not had a good day on this earth since they were born.”

Damn Jake. That sonofabitch gave more care to his old Thunderbird than he did to his own family. If he was in a
good
mood, he went off with his buddies and drank himself stupid at the Rusty Nail; when his mood was black and his buddies abandoned him—as was the case more often than not—he raged around their little trailer, cussing and throwing anything he could lay hands on and finding fault with every little goddamn thing everyone said or did and then bringing out the fists if she dared suggested he might help out with the chores and the kids. So he just up and hit the road for Las Vegas in his polished T-bird, taking every last penny they’d saved and not giving a damn that his expectant wife and two other children would soon find themselves broke, evicted, and hungry, with nowhere to go but her old station wagon and no friends or family to call and ask for help....

Did anyone on the highway notice the still-life drama of her family’s passing car that day?

She took the usual off-ramp near Lake Gifford, made a left, and drove until she reached the patch of willows and oaks that marked the entrance to the road leading to the fishing dock.

“Already?” groaned her children in unison.

At least they always enjoy the trip,
Tammy thought.

“’Fraid so. Put on your seat belts and roll down your windows.”

Like the good children they were, Jason and Lynn did as Mommy said.

Tammy floored the accelerator and sped toward the cool, gray-green water.

“I love you,” she told her children, trying not to cry this time.

“Love you, too,” they replied, always quietly at this part.

The car shot onto the old dock and leapt over the edge, soaring twenty feet before it came down grille-first into the water.

The rest didn’t take long.

It never did.

*

“Mommy!” shouted Jason. “Lookit those old folks in that car. They look happy, don’t they?”

Tammy glimpsed the elderly couple as they drove by in a cream-colored Cadillac. They were smiling at each other, looking so very much in love, even after so many, many years.

She both hated and envied them.

Jason tried to Claim It but couldn’t.

“I forgot,” he said, his voice thick with disappointment. “It can only be the
bad
stuff.”

Tammy grunted in pain as she reached down for her never-quite-empty pack of Virginia Slims, lit up and breathed in the muddy, unsatisfying smoke. God, how she hated driving! Her aches seemed worse with every trip, her never-to-be-born baby restless in her womb. Her children laughed and started singing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall”.

Funny how heaven and hell could work out to be the same thing.

Through Thy Bounty

I stare down at the naked body of the boy on the butcher block as my mother’s nightmare washes through me. She is ill. Last night’s dreams were filled with fever-warped images of shrouded doctors, knives and needles, tubes and dark blood. The doctors of the Resistance will do their very best for her, but she is an old lady now, her body fragile. The thought that she might die turns my guts to ice.

Her life is my only hope in this Hell. But at least I know she is safe from the Jagaren. For now.

The boy is maybe eight or nine, redheaded, skinny and bruised. His ankles are purple and rope-burned. The gash in his neck is as pale as raw bacon; they’ve drained the blood from his body. Sometimes, depending on the menu du jour, they leave the chilled blood for me in a stainless steel thermos jug beside the corpse’s head. But not today.

He has the look of a child who’s been in captivity for a long time. But he has to be the flesh and blood of somebody important in the Resistance, else he would not be here in my kitchen. The Jagaren always have their most precious catches flown in fresh from the battlefield, concentration camp, and torture chamber.

As always, the menu instructions are printed on stiff paper tucked into the corpse’s mouth. The Jagaren have been sampling every aspect of Terran cuisine, each day a new ethnic menu. Today they want to taste the Deep South: sweet barbecue, collard greens, chicken fried steak with gravy, chitlins, sausage, watermelon, corn on the cob, fried green tomatoes, and apple pie. Dinner for twelve. I have but eight hours to prepare this meal.

I touch the boy’s forehead, close my eyes and say a brief prayer for him. I don’t know what religion he had, if any, but we all live under the same God. Maybe someday He’ll remember us. Prayer finished, I pick up my curved knife and begin to skin him.

The boy’s left hand has the calluses that come from years of throwing a baseball. A lefty Little League pitcher. As I work, I imagine him playing ball in a sunny Midwestern field, jeans stained with grass and dirt. His grin is the very definition of childhood joy, and he goes home victorious to a hot bath and hugs from his proud father. He spends the evening catching fireflies with his friends until his mother calls him home to be tucked in and read to sleep.

I have been alone here for over a year, all my waking hours spent in this huge, beautiful, damnable kitchen. It has a walk-in refrigerator that is stocked every night as I sleep, an immense pantry of dry goods, racks of jars of dried spices from every corner of the Earth. In case I ever face an unfamiliar menu, the back wall is lined with hundreds of cookbooks selected by the Jagaren; undesirable recipes have been cut out. The side door leads to a room with rows and rows of herbs under grow lights. There’s an open-pit barbecue and spit big enough to roast a whole ox, a man-sized oven, wok, industrial meat grinder, and on and on. No kitchen I ever worked in as a chef in Los Angeles and Dallas was even half as well-equipped.

The Jagaren picked their torture well.

I always loved the kitchen, even as a child, and everything I know about cooking, about life, is but a pale shadow of what my mother knows. Her mind, her
will
, is astonishing. When the Jagaren came to take our planet, my mother turned from managing her restaurant empire to managing the covert movement of arms and soldiers around the world. Some of the military leaders would not believe (at first) that a master chef could have so sharp a mind, would not believe she could turn from butter to guns, but she would not be denied. Later, when the Jagaren found the secret tactical bunker in Montana and killed most of our generals, she kept the Resistance from falling apart. Ever since, she’s been leading most of the war efforts in North America.