I.
Each grain of azurcose was a truncated icosahedron. She remembered this from school as thousands of them avalanched into her crystal mug of dark brown coffee, “like a million tiny footballs,” she whispered. Only these had flat faces, whereas the tiles on a football were convex, giving it its smooth rounded shape. “Thirty-two faces… Twelve pentagons, twenty hexagons, sixty angles, ninety lines. Remember that the next time you slurp your darn SyraNova drinks,” she mimicked her Chem teacher’s gravelly voice.
Someone snorted a few booths away, the group of punks she’d clocked on her way inside, only other people in the diner besides the cook, the server, and herself.
She wasn’t going to make him stay in her life if he didn’t want to, baby or no. How could she? Korratrea was still a free country, unless there’d been a coup she hadn’t heard about yet, which was unlikely.
The short one slid in beside her, and two more across the table, while the cautious one sat lightly at the adjacent table to her right. Clack-clack-clack, the man’s knuckles tapped on the hard plastic surface beneath her chin. Clack-clack-clack.
“Did you order yet?” he asked.
“Nope, just trying to enjoy this coffee.”
“Nice ring. Where’s your husband?”
“He said he was on his way.”
The man smiled to his friends, who laughed. “Yeah, well, I think he’s crazy to leave you alone like this. Middle of the night, strange neighborhood… Uncivilized company.” His friends laughed again.
“Funny, I was thinking the same thing.”
He reached around her shoulders with his left arm and let it rest on the back of the booth. “Amazing girl like you, if I was him I’d be afraid someone might take you away.”
“Did you take Chemistry in high school?”
“What?”
“How about Geometry, do you remember Geometry class?”
He stared at her quietly, boldly, in offended disbelief.
“Because if you do, you’ll probably recall hearing about the Goldberg polyhedron. It’s a multi-sided shape made up of hexagons and pentagons, the faces joined together at vertices like this, here.” She picked up the azurcose shaker and sprinkled some out on the table. “Every grain is like a—”
“Like a tiny football,” said one of the friends, before a dark glance silenced him.
“That’s right,” she continued, “and unlike snowflakes each grain is one hundred percent identical. Zero variation, upon production at least.”
“Is there a point to this little lesson?” He let his hand fall gently on the back of her left shoulder.
“There is,” she nodded. “Because azurcose, due to its structural shape, has an amazingly high degree of both molecular strength and flexibility. So if I were to say, smash this container on the wall, the stuff would fly everywhere.” She swept the shaker up and crushed it on the wall to her left, simultaneously leaping out of the booth, eyes closed, and flipping backwards onto the tabletop behind them. As the short man and other two sat groaning and rubbing their eyes the tall one darted from the farther table, his lightblade drawn and glaring.
Waiting for him to slash, she caught the knife under the sole of her boot and stomped it down against the plastic tabletop, pivoted on his hand, and caught the hinge of his jaw with the toe of her other boot. Two seconds later she was out the door and in the pilot seat of her motordeck sailing up toward the storm cloud where she could lose them. Their engines revved and hummed below, behind her, fading gradually as she launched into the flashing mist and set the coordinates for Jadengate 794.
The motordeck hatch shot open as she approached, and the vehicle maneuvered into position on the landing board. Zipporah swiped the ignition card and stepped out before the pilotside door closed and the board raised the motordeck into the ceiling. Removing her jacket, kicking off her boots, and pulling the elastic band out of her hair, she grabbed a bowl of leftover noodles from the fridge and plopped into the basket chair in the corner by the window. Space looked cold and blue, like it always did.
After dinner she checked her mail, took a shower, and crawled into bed—the bed they’d shared until a few months ago, before he ditched her. Her fingers dragged across the skin of her softly rounded stomach as she descended, away from consciousness, her mouth whispering, “Great and marvelous are your works, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are your ways…”
The Egg in the center of the living room broadcasted the System Daily News from every angle, literally, as she cleaned up and made breakfast. Dark matter readings off the Southeast edge of Chambrek’s orbit were “disturbingly disproportionate,” higher than any time on record. The InterSolar Truth Observers commissioned a quantification team to investigate the anomaly. Planet-wide political and social reconstruction on Taldrathon was coming along nicely, with fewer incidents of intra-species assaults-and-consumptions than in prior weeks. System health in general was up, effective plague containment, lower cancer and terminal disease statistics, continued vaccinations on the Outer Four (less advanced worlds), and the Sun shone bright and strong despite the frequent outcries of the Implosion Hypotheorists. Zipporah felt in her soul that it would be a good day.
While eating her breakfast salad the phone rang, she jumped up and ran into the living room. “Egg off! Hello and greetings…” She stood waiting.
“Hello, honey.”
Her eyes dropped to the maroon carpet. “Hi, Mom.”
“Don’t sound so excited to hear from me. Where were you last night? I called seven times and no answer.”
“Cabin fever. I went out for coffee.”
“What happened to the coffee maker I gave you for Christmas? Does that not work anymore?”
“No, it works. I wanted some air so I went over to the sand fields for a short walk. It was nice, actually.”
“Did you see anyone?”
“A few guys at the diner. I’m fine, Mom, no worries please.” Zipporah glanced at her boots next to the doormat, eyeing the brown crust on the right toe.
“You aren’t fighting again, are you?”
“Me, fight? Pshhh, I… Come on, I… Pshhh.”
“Okay, just remember, ‘those who live by the sword will die by the sword.’”
“Will die by the sword,” she echoed, “Yes, I remember. Thank you, Mother.”
That afternoon she went for a jog around Power Town, the enormous generator in the center of their quadrant, forty-six cubic miles of engine machinery encased in a mammoth bubble of reinforced explosion-proof glass. The platform of steel grating around its perimeter measured to just under fourteen miles, a little more than a half marathon. She’d been running there for years and had completed the lap with no problem a few weeks ago, but that was before she’d started to show, and this time she only made it three-quarters of the way around before having to slow down and walk.
“What are you doing, child?” she said cradling her belly. “Trying to make me a couch potato?”
Nights were quiet, slow, and lonely. She took her mom’s advice about steering clear of the sand fields and the outlands in general. The worlds were too dangerous these days, and the child far too precious. She spent her free time listening to music, reading French Existentialism, praying, and dreaming of the day when Karrick would return. He would return, she felt it, knew it to be true. The only question was when.
On the fifth waning moon of Quintember the doorbell chimed at four o’clock in the morning. No phone call, no warning, no guests expected, and by now Zipporah was visibly pregnant. She approached the door in her husband’s boxers, a t-shirt, and one sock, and pressed a button illuminating the screen by the keypad. Three soldiers appeared on the step, one in uniform and two in full body armor behind him. Captain’s hat.
“No, no, no,” she bowed her head against the door. Then, drawing a deep breath, punched a code on the keypad. The door clanked, parted, and slid open.
“Zipporah Dallens?”
No, no, no…
“I
have news from the Colonel, ma’am. May I come in for a moment?”
“Just say it.”
“Your husband, Lieutenant Karrick Dallens, perished honorably in service of the KWPAF.”
II.
The hazy green nebula over the distant horizon swirled slowly, but not too slowly for its tranquil rotation to be observed with the naked eye. The inhabitants of Calperon-T34 called it the distant side because that was the direction of the uncharted lands opposite the highly populated, heavily policed colonies of sector T15-30. T34 designated a liminal territory between the crowded city and wild country, both hazardous in their own ways, the land between providing a supply station, a hospital/information center, and a village for the local residents as well as the occasional weary ex-traveler, a category to which Zipporah now belonged.
She ducked out of a tan igloo, straightened her back and reached for the sky, letting her eyes drift from the pale green cloud up to the starry space above, opening her mouth and releasing a mighty yawn into the galaxy. A second later the baby started crying and, smiling drily, she turned and ducked back inside the metal dome.
“Hush, little théquo,” she said, rocking him gently in her arms. “What’s wrong, don’t think today will be a good day? Shhhh, shh, shh.” Her warm brown eyes were circled underneath by dark crescents, her black curls cropped short at her ears, and her forehead marked by three sharp lines from squinting in the evening winds. The dust on Calperon tanned your skin a chalky copper color if you spent any time outside, which you had to do if you lived beyond the colonies, where fresh water was scarce, reserved mainly for cooking and hydration.
On her way to work she noticed a body stretched out among the nettles by the path, she almost kept walking but heard a faint cough and saw a limp hand draw toward its cloth-wrapped head. Glancing at the infant bound against her chest she asked, “What say you, Saiojéte, should we investigate?” The goggled head of a miniature mummy tipped back and peered up at her, dark lenses staring, and emitted a gurgling squeak through his beige mask. “I agree,” she circled round to see the man’s face. His cheek and jaw were red, possibly wind-burnt, lips dry and dark, eyes concealed by a fabric head covering.
“Can you walk, sir?” she called from several steps away. “Hello. Can you walk?” she asked more loudly. Hugging the child tightly, she walked over, slowly, and nudged the man’s shoulder with the toe of her boot. “Are you alive, sir?”
“Ah, huh,” he mumbled.
“Okay, I’m going to fetch an airsled.” She bent down close to his ear, “I will be back in one hour. One. Okay?”
“Ah, uh-huh.”
Edging her way past the line of customers and into the supply tent, she hurried along the right wall to the other side of the counter, and up to the slender arachnoid woman operating the register.
“Hulé, I need you to watch Saio for twenty-five, thirty tops.”
“Do you see this mob I’m dealing with?”
“I know but someone’s injured, a traveler from the outlands I believe.”
“He better take a number. I’ve seen fifty injured travelers this week. Put some gloves on, please.”
“Hulé, I promised to help this man. I promised I’d come back.”
“You promised me you’d mend these time suits today.”
“I will just as soon as I get back. Here…” Zipporah untied the papoose and hoisted her son into her highest left arm.
“Don’t you dare walk away.”
“Relax, you still have seven good arms to work with.”
The man lay on his back when she returned. The airsled fishtailed to a halt and hoverparked beside him, she dismounted, approached, and gently shook his shoulder. He awoke, attempting to look around through the cloth over his eyes.
“Here,” she said, folding it back. “I’m taking you to a hospital. Hospital.”
“Manglokel,” he groaned.
“Yes, medical. Come now, help me lift you.” Sitting him upright, she hooked his arm around her neck and stood him up on wobbly legs, guiding him to the vehicle. Once she’d secured him to the rear bed she looked into his wandering blue eyes, squeezed his hand and said, “You’re safe now.” He nodded and closed his eyes.
The music that evening reverberated from the Shell like an echo chamber, as if the sonic drums and whale horns were being played at the mouth of a cave. Zipporah and the child had remained in the village after her shift ended to await news about the traveler. She bounced Saio on her knees at a table not far from the arched enclosure where the less reserved inhabitants of T34 celebrated their evening revels.
Behind the Shell a flock of théquos grazed at the edge of the creek, snuffing at the dusty ground with dangling beaks. “Look,” said Zipporah, turning Saio around. “See them?” she pointed, “Your papa used to call them flying pigs. Whenever we saw them back on Korratrea he’d say, ‘Anything’s possible, Zeeah, now that pigs can fly.’” She made a high-pitched clucking sound in his ear and the baby squealed and started laughing.
A young man of nine or ten solars jogged up and stood before them panting.
“What news?”
“He’s awake, your traveler. Frantic, speaking Braekean, no one understands him.”
“Where is Hulé?”
“I don’t know. How should I know?”
“Never mind, I will fetch her.”
The two women hiked along the trade road in darkness with only their ion lamps to light the way. “You owe me, sister. First you abandon me at work and now you drag me out of bed to translate for you? I want extra shifts for this, Zeeah.”
“Fine, whatever you want.”
“No, you know what? You can clean the store for me.”
“I said fine.”
“This week.”
They heard him wailing before entering the hospital tent. He sat straight up on a cot in the rear corner, waving his arms at the doctor and two nurses, shouting what sounded like accusations then reaching up and crying out to heaven.
“What’s he saying?” Zipporah asked.
“Help me, save me… Dear God, save me from these lunatics,” Hulé answered, rushing toward the corner with all eight of her arms extended, palms showing. Upon seeing her the traveler shrieked and froze for a second with wide terrified eyes, then, apparently recognizing her species, exhaled a deep sigh of relief.
They spoke for a while as Hulé relayed messages to the medical staff. The man had a severe drug allergy and had been refusing the pills they’d attempted to give him. After a while he calmed down, took the medicine, and reclined on the cot to try and sleep. Zipporah watched with Saio from a distance until he looked relaxed enough for them to leave.
“What did he say?” she asked on their walk back.
“His town was invaded. His wife and son were killed, across the System, way out in the Outer Four.”
“Which planet?”
“Raanved, early last solar. Claims he spent ninety moons on a salvage freighter before arriving here. What is it, what’s wrong?”
“Probably just a coincidence. Karrick, before he left, that’s where he was going. His last mission was on Raanved.”
III.
The cots were lined about one pace apart, about a hundred and twenty beds in the hospital tent. It reeked of sour blood and excretions, the rotten odors mixed with the sterile smell of rubbing alcohol and fresh medical supplies. Zipporah slipped past the rows of patients, some dazed, others sleeping, a few of them wide awake and frightened. One who’d arrived the previous week from crash landing in the outlands, a male TigerMole, a soldier, beckoned her as she passed by the foot of his cot. Pausing for a moment, she turned and stepped up to the creature’s bedside.
His eyes were watery, elliptical orbs, gray iris’s nearly eclipsed by the pupils, gazing up through her face, through the roof of the tent and into distant space above them. She held the digits of his paw and smiled. Under the sheet lay the form of a right hind leg and the absence of a left one. Zipporah placed her palm on
the mole’s forehead and stroked his charcoal fur with her thumb, quietly humming the gospel hymn her mother used to sing to her when she had lain sick as a child. Fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, come, He’ll show you the way. Sons and daughters, great-grandfathers, come, He’ll show you the way. Follow Jesus, Lord and Savior, take a drink, be still, no greater, peace, He’ll show you the way…
The traveler she’d rescued had settled down since the day he was admitted. He sat propped in the corner intently watching the Egg mounted over the center aisle of the tent. Nodding curtly when he saw her, he kept his eyes on the System news, watching over her shoulder after she pulled up a stool and sat beside him.
“Do you remember me?”
He glared at his visitor, then back at the luminous Egg.
“I hauled you in from the road the other day. I helped you. Helped, remember?”
He shook his head and muttered something in Braekean, likely a profanity.
“I only want to talk,” she continued. “It’s possible you can help me. I need to ask you about Raanved.”
The mention of his home planet got his attention.
“I need to know what happened there. I know this is painful for you, but will you talk to me?” Zipporah tapped her fingertips together and pointed back and forth between them. “Talk?”
The man stared in her eyes for a moment as though he knew exactly what she wanted, then turned and locked his focus on the Egg.
Work was slow that afternoon, she and Hulé sorted boxes of worn out time suits, making three piles for the varying levels of dilapidation. She glanced at her boss. “How does the store look, Hulé? Clean, is it not?”
“You did a fine job, Zeeah.”
“Thank you. It took quite a while.”
Hulé sliced open another box of time suits.
“Hot yesterday, too. And the dust, aye, terrible.”
“What do you want, sister.”
“Talk to him again?” she asked. “Please?”
“The sick traveler? What about?”
Zipporah smiled meekly.
9 Tales From Elsewhere 11 Page 10
