by Jerry
Extreme pain forced Little Nubs to regain consciousness, but the voltage still rendered most of its body paralyzed. It couldn’t struggle free. It pumped its little flukes, whined pitifully, seeming to sing its own elegy.
“Stop it!” I screamed, but my voice was lost in the wind. All I could do was stomp on Big Grey’s back and shout hoarsely, “Why aren’t you moving? Fly!”
The juveniles cried out as they scattered to the four winds. But the Gale Force Three vessel seemed to lay eggs, issuing dozens of smaller ships, an orderly division of labor, and more than enough to hunt down each whale. Judging by the familiar make of the ships, all were specialized poachers. I was afraid that none of the whales would escape.
Big Grey’s eyes began to change, their shade darkening. It issued a deafening cry. The calves seemed to hear, were guided by the adult’s voice. They rallied to Big Grey, who suddenly and precipitously dove. The calves followed.
This caught me off guard. I failed to get a firm hold, and I tumbled off Big Grey’s back. The wind howled in my ears. This time I knew I was done for. I held onto the urn and shut my eyes, but the bone-crushing death I expected didn’t come.
I plunged into warm seawater. I was in the Golden Sea. Big Grey had flown out of the wilderness and come very far, the sea its unwavering goal. Just like mine was to return with Frond to Earth.
Big Grey and the calves plunged into the ocean, quickly vanishing into the depths, leaving behind nothing but whirlpools. Big Grey’s whirlpool nearly sucked me down. Kicking my legs, I barely stayed on the surface. The watery waste extended to the horizon, barren except for surreal tubing hung between sea and sky. These were extracting seawater for high-orbiting space stations.
The surface already showed no trace of the whales, to my relief.
The Ghost-Four ships descended in steep arcs, sweeping low over the ocean. I cried out as one passed near me, and it came about and braked. After I promised the pilot a thousand Union scrip, he extended the ship’s exploration claw and lifted me out of the water.
He was alone in the cabin. He gave me a new protective suit, a few bottles of water, and a chunk of hardtack. While I wolfed down the bread, this tall, scar-faced man looked me up and down. “Brother, how did you end up alone on the sea? Did your ship crash?”
I gulped down water and nodded.
“You’re damn lucky we were around. Just now we were hunting a pod of cloud whales. We nearly had the bastards too.” He shook his head. “But the leader of this pod was Ghost Eyes. And not catching that one is normal.”
“Ghost Eyes?” I asked, putting down my water.
“Its eyes turn black, just like they’re filling with black ink. This beast is well known among us poachers. We kill cloud whales, and it kills us. Ferocious bastard. Blade-class ships it just chomps and swallows up. As for Ghost-class ships, it has smashed a dozen or more to pieces. People say it even knocked a Gale Force out of the sky. The black-market bounty on it has reached a million Union scrip.”
“What’s its grudge against you guys?”
“They say it used to be the leader of a pod, brought them along the Golden Belt, entering the Golden Sea, the whole thing. The first time they came out to fly, they were discovered by some of us.” He smiled enviously. “Think of the profit! Fifty or more cloud whales! They were drawing blood day and night. At last they didn’t have enough homeostatic barrels. They were pouring blood directly into ship holds, up to men’s thighs. Later, when they sold, they took off their trousers, because even the blood congealed on them was worth a few scrip.” His malevolent grin twisted the knife scar on his face. “At that time only Ghost Eyes escaped. Its progeny and companions were killed, so it began to retaliate. Between you and me, I was scared shitless just now. And I saw something strange on its back, at one point, when I got close. Did you happen to catch a glimpse?”
I shook my head, continued to gnaw on the hardtack. A voice issued from the communications module: “Knife Smile, what the hell are you doing down there? Get moving.”
He winked at me and put a silencing finger to his lips. “How are things up there?”
“We can’t get a fix on that pod. Luckily we snagged one of them. Once we’ve drained it we’ll head back to the Citadel for a rest. Been runnin’ all night. We’re tired to death.”
“Stay frosty and get every last drop,” Knife Smile said, then turned to a control panel and initiated pre-flight.
My stomach somewhat appeased, mouth no longer dry and rough, I hugged the urn tightly. Its hard ridges and corners pressed into my stomach. I took a deep breath, walked up behind Knife Smile, and brought the urn down on the back of his head.
He toppled without so much as a whimper.
I placed the urn on the console and said, “Frond, forgive me.”
I found clues and inklings on her social media page.
At one point she hadn’t updated for three days. I incessantly refreshed the page, starting to feel uneasy. I fretted, couldn’t let it go, finally had to leave a message.
But it was Michael who replied. I checked out his page and saw many photos of he and Frond together. Her new boyfriend, then. He invited me to a video chat. I accepted after some hesitation.
“Hello,” he said. “You must be Azuki Bean. Frond talked about you often.”
He had called her Frond. I burned with illogical rage, but on second thought, surely Frond had been using the name of her own volition. Lightyears away, she was still using the name I’d given her. She hadn’t forgotten me. Welling with joy, I asked, “So what about Frond? Where is she?”
“Frond,” he said. “She’s dead.”
I struggled for words and finally managed a “What?”
“She died three days ago.”
“What do you mean? That’s impossible!”
Michael stood inside the chat frame, silently watching me. His expression was both cold and sad. I felt a dark tide rolling over me. He wasn’t joking, but I refused to believe. After a long silence, I opened my mouth, but couldn’t find my voice. I beat my chest until words came out: “Frond is dead?”
“Yes.”
That affirmation twisted in my brain like a knife. Frond was dead. A volcanic eruption, thick smoke blotting out the sun. Frond was dead. An earthquake sneak-attacking a city, mansions and towers toppling like a child’s building blocks. Frond was dead. An asteroid from some remote part of the cosmos striking Earth, a shockwave engulfing the globe, toppling mountains and overturning seas.
I sat down on the floor.
Michael said she’d died while rescuing a cloud whale. After some routine observation work in a rural area, she was returning to Research Retreat Valley when she discovered a pod of ground-stranded cloud whales. Seven or eight calves surrounded a titanic cow, presumably the mother. The cow had been severely injured. Her underbelly was savaged, torn open and bleeding profusely, dying the mountain rocks gold. She was trying to take off, but she’d lost too much blood. Every time she managed to rise a few meters, she immediately crashed back down. The calves surrounding her whined plaintively.
Frond immediately contacted the Valley and demanded assistance, but the cow was already on the verge of death. She wouldn’t last the two hours it would take for the team to arrive. Frond burned with anxiety. She finally resolved to haul the cow to a river a kilometer away.
Securing the cow wasn’t complicated. Frond took advantage of the creature’s futile attempts to lift off, casting three load-bearing belts beneath her. She was belted about the head, middle, and tail by the time she’d spent the last of her strength. She lay there quietly, unable to struggle as the belts tightened. But there was still a problem: Frond’s research vehicle was lightweight. It was probably too small to tow the massive two-hundred-ton cloud whale.
The lamenting cries of the calves spurred Frond on. Despite Michael’s cautioning voice in the communicator, she opened up her anti-grav engine to maximum power. Rocking and swaying, she hoisted the cow into the air and flew toward the ri
ver. The calves ceased their keening and timidly followed.
Frond piloted carefully, giving that short kilometer a half hour. When they were above the river, Frond released the load-bearing belts, and the cloud whale dropped into the river. This artery fed into the Golden Sea. Its waters contained F937.
That’s when things went wrong.
The overloaded anti-grav engine rapidly heated up, fusing already-decrepit circuits. The ship reverberated with cough-like death pangs, and suddenly plunged into the river. The vehicle filled with sparks and flaring electrical plasma. Frond didn’t have time to free herself as river water flooded the cabin.
By the time she was dragged out of the water, she was already white, ice-cold, and not breathing.
“It was my fault,” Michael said. “If I had spoken more forcefully, perhaps she would’ve listened to me, and let the whale be. But I thought maybe she could pull it off. Although it was well beyond the design specs of her vehicle, none of us foresaw what happened with the engine.”
I wasn’t really hearing him anymore. I’d gone numb. Suddenly I remembered what Frond had said to me when she left. I struggled to stand up. “What have you done with her?”
“What do you mean?” Michael said, choking. “She’s dead.”
“Her remains.”
“We’ve had her cremated. We’ll bury her ashes on the side of the valley opposite the institute.”
“No,” I said. “I want to bring her home.”
Michael was nonplussed. “According to Union law, on Goliath—”
“To hell with the Union. It’s what she wanted, if she died out there among the stars. I’m bringing her ashes back to Earth, and burying her beside our willow tree.”
My fanaticism scared Michael. He thought about it for a bit, but finally agreed. After all, I’d been with her the longest. Michael had been her last love, but I had to carry out her final wish.
“I don’t have time to bring her to Earth,” Michael said apologetically. “Besides, it’s illegal.”
“I’ll come get her myself.”
It would be my first time traveling into the depths of the cosmos. My fear of flying caused me physical torment, but thinking of Frond resting in a cold urn, I knew I would have to confront my fear. I had to bring her back, even if it meant crossing a sea of stars.
“What happened to those whales?” I asked.
“We found them about a hundred miles from the Golden Sea. They’d been bled dry by poachers.”
I had never understood why Frond loved cloud whales so much. But now, after flying on Big Grey’s back for so long, I began to see. These animals embodied her spirit:
From their breeding grounds in the seawater of Xorchin, migrating the vast length of the Golden Shipping Belt, finally plunging into the Golden Sea—this was the life of cloud whales. They began in a sea and ended in the clouds. They threw off the shackles of gravity, their only companions wind and starlight. They were unlikely to ever touch dry land. This life had captivated Frond. She had to leave me, and having endured the hardships of her long journey, arrive here on Goliath, following the cloud whales.
Perhaps she had never really loved me, or Michael. But she’d truly loved the unbridled, soaring cloud whales.
I realized that Frond’s wish to be brought home had been for my comfort, not hers. As far as she was concerned, boarding that ship bound for Goliath hadn’t been a departure.
She’d been homeward bound.
“Knife Smile, why the fuck are you dawdling?” The voice from the communication module was impatient. I stared at the console.
I had helped design the Frontier Development Company’s ship operating systems. I knew that voice-activated control required voice verification—but gestural control didn’t. I thrust my hand into the console’s panoramic projection, shifting it, and the ship obediently turned, and began to ascend.
Little Nubs was still being drained up there. Its mournful calls were weakening. It had at most ten minutes before it was completely drained, at which point it would plummet into the sea and become a floating corpse.
“Hang on,” I whispered, powering up the engine. I stuck my right palm into the image, moved it in a U-shaped trajectory, and returned it to my chest.
The ship kept rigorous pace with this movement. I cut through Little Nubs’ right-hand exsanguination tube like a sword, passed by the calf’s head, and came back around to cut off the left tube. The blood flow to the ships stopped, and now blood sprayed into the sky, was scattered and diluted by the wind until it resembled autumn leaves.
Little Nubs whistled sharply, pumped its flukes, and dove for the sea. The two ships that had been draining the calf immediately gave chase. I moved to intercept, but they evaded me. This delay gave Little Nubs the time it needed. It was bound for the vast Golden Sea, the warm waters of which could rejuvenate the calf’s blood, and heal its wounds.
Eventually it would be able to fly again.
“Knife Smile, are you fucking crazy?”
“Motherfucker, you almost killed me just now!”
“What the fuck? Respond!”
The communication module reverberated with clamoring voices, some full of doubt and distrust, others damning and cursing Knife Smile. I looked through a porthole. The dark of night still predominated, but dawn was brewing, the first weak rays of day lighting the horizon.
The Gale Force ship slowly descended, halting some thirty meters from me. It seemed like an ancient fortress hanging there, impregnable. In the pre-dawn gloom it cast an even darker shadow that enveloped me. Ghost-class ships were scattered about it in chaotic profusion.
The bastards. I gently caressed the urn, watching the poachers array themselves like a battle group.
Somebody with a low voice cleared his throat, and all chatter vanished. There were a few moments of silence. “Knife Smile, you have ten seconds. If you don’t respond, we’ll recover your ship by force.”
The hand against the urn felt like it was burning. Frond, you’re with me, aren’t you?
“Ten,” the poacher warlord began to count.
It was still dark outside. I squinted at the still-weak vanguard rays of dawn, and they seemed ground down and broken by the darkness. When would the day finally burst forth?
“. . . seven, six, five . . .” the voice counted.
The horizon was aglow, the dark not so concentrated as before, the heavens turning a dark umber blue.
“. . . three, two—” The voice suddenly paused. Sounding flustered, he went on: “Dammit! What is that?”
“Cloud whales?” somebody stammered.
“Impossible!” said another bewildered poacher. “How could there be so many?”
“It really is cloud whales! God!”
I brought my ship about. When I beheld the scene, my tears began to flow. “Frond, you really should be here to see this.” I pressed the urn close to the porthole.
Countless whales hovered before us, several hundred at least, perhaps more than a thousand, big and small, high and low. Big Grey was in front, but there were quite a few larger than it. They floated silently in the sky, facing off against the thieving humans and their ships. The dawn finally broke, escaping the horizon, skewering the darkness like a sword. The golden radiance spread across the bodies of the cloud whales, from flukes to heads, seeming to deck them in golden armor.
Big Grey opened its mouth and roared. The other cloud whales followed suit. The deafening chorus made the surface of the Golden Sea tremble, conjuring waves and whitecaps. The night was broken, repelled. I covered my ears, weeping with joy.
Even the fortress-like Gale Force warship, faced with such an enemy, had no sure chance of success. The poachers slowly retreated. After they’d gone a safe distance, they turned, and spouting ion beam thrust, quickly vanished into the distance.
Only I remained, hanging there above the sea.
Big Grey flew under my ship, buzzing with a low-frequency hum. I put on a spacesuit and jumped out, and Big Grey
caught me on its back. It gave a long cry, suddenly accelerating. The other cloud whales followed. We charged east toward the two risen suns.
The long night had passed, and day was waxing. The magnificent dawn gleamed on the sea, delineating waves as they came together and parted. When the suns got a bit higher, they seemed to melt into one. The light was fierce. I opened the urn.
“Frond,” I said, “I think I can go on alone. Thanks for accompanying me this far.”
I upended the urn, and bone ash blew across the sky like a white mist.
Frond, fly! Fly away and never land!
Seeming to hear this silent call, a morning wind whipped up, intense, screaming. The ash, which had been descending, was raised up and scattered. It seemed to vanish. At that moment, my Frond was the morning wind, the suns, the Golden Sea’s limitless waves. She had at last become one with this world.
DIGITAL COMMANDER
JS Morin
Editor’s Note: Technology has always offered us new chances at immortality. From the cave paintings of Lascaux to the golden record in the belly of Voyager, each of these captures the expressed essence of individual humans and carries them beyond time to touch the lives of unknown beings in some vast and murky future. And when that day comes, when the quapods find our artefacts and flap their puzzled questions, they will get no reply. They will be left to puzzle us out from the static hints embedded in the message. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
What had appeared to be a modest proving-ground facility nestled against the Sierra Nevada Mountains turned out to be anything but. Flanked by a pair of US Army soldiers, Commander Brent “Skip” Harrison limped up to the security station and stepped into a glass booth like one of the old-fashioned airport screeners. Beams of green light swept over him, top to bottom and back again. On the far side, a technical sergeant tapped away at a workstation.
