Dedrick sighed. Yes, he knew. Eberhart’s fierce protectiveness towards those she cared about was the thing that had first attracted him to her. This wasn’t a perfect situation, admittedly, but it could have been a lot worse, for both Leslie and her brother. If Sam carried a genetic predisposition for cancerous growths, then Leslie might be carrying it as well. Once the Authority stripped someone of his Eligibility for medical reasons, they could use the rescision as grounds for reviewing the status of all his blood relatives. Entire families had been recalled from off-planet postings and restricted to Earth until either their bloodline was cleared or their Eligibility was revoked…
…which, now that he thought about it, might not be such a terrible thing, Dedrick mused. Interplanetary travel was one hell of an adventure. However, families needed to gather in times of stress, to support and comfort one another, and that was hard to do when the Relocation Authority seemed bent on scattering Eligible Humans all over the galaxy. Leslie’s two brothers had been posted to colonies at opposite ends of Earth space, where they’d married and were raising broods of little Eberharts. As long as Watch Commander Eberhart wore a Fleet uniform, she would remain, like Dedrick, a singleton, in transit. By some miracle, the Eberhart clan had come through Angel of Death almost unscathed. But once all those nieces and nephews had grown to adulthood, the Relocation Authority would separate them and start moving them around, strowing Eberharts across Earth space like seeds blown by the wind. Thanks to Abner, Dedrick would never again know the pain of that kind of separation. It was the only benefit, he reflected sadly, of not having any family at all.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to tell her what you’ve done for Sam?” Deneuve asked, breaking into his thoughts.
“Positive.”
Deneuve’s expression became the portrait of incredulity. “You want her to go on thinking you’re a coldhearted bastard who wouldn’t lift a finger when she asked you for help?”
Dedrick blew out his breath in a sigh. What he wanted was to remain an anonymous benefactor so he wouldn’t end up like Uncle Dennis, constantly pursued by ‘friends’ with ulterior motives. He was already regretting having confided in the ship’s Supervisor of Med Services, but what was done couldn’t be undone.
“Until I’m ready to tell her myself, yes, that’s exactly what I want. And I don’t want anyone else aboard to know about this either. I want your word, Doctor,” he added, holding eye contact with her until she finally, reluctantly, nodded assent.
* * * *
THE OTHERNESS FACTOR
Sic Transit Terra book 2
Forthcoming from EDGE-Lite in Fall 2016
For more EDGE-Lite titles and information about upcoming speculative fiction please visit us at:
www.edgewebsite.com
Author Bio
Born and raised in Toronto, Arlene F. Marks found her muse at the age of 6 and has been writing and sharing her stories ever since. Her work has appeared in H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror and has been published by Daily Science Fiction. Her first science fantasy novel, The Accidental God, was nominated for the 2015 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. Arlene lives with her husband on Nottawasaga Bay but spends an inordinate amount of time in the Sic Transit Terra universe. She welcomes visitors to her website:
www.thewritersnest.ca.
More titles from EDGE-Lite:
The Rosetta Man
By Claire McCague
Wanted:
Translator for first contact.
Immediate opening.
Danger pay allowance.
Estlin Hume lives in Twin Butte, Alberta surrounded by a horde of affectionate squirrels. His involuntary squirrel-attracting talent leaves him evicted, expelled, fired and near penniless until two aliens arrive and adopt him as their translator. Yanked around the world at the center of the first contact crisis, Estlin finds his new employers incomprehensible. As he faces the ultimate language barrier, unsympathetic military forces converging in the South Pacific keep threatening to kill the messenger. The question on everyone’s mind is: Why are the aliens here? But Estlin’s starting to think we’ll happily blow ourselves up in the process of finding that out.
Praise for The Rosetta Man:
“The cover and synopsis had me expecting a light-hearted comedy. I didn’t realize I was getting a geopolitical first contact thriller that somehow still managed to be a light-hearted comedy. I really enjoyed this book! The characters are rich and diverse. Estlin and Harry are great, Beth and Bomani made me cry. The story is fast paced and engaging and again, completely unexpected. Great book for fans of first contact scifi, but also fans of thrillers and mysteries. And so well-executed that I give it a solid 5 stars.” — Scott Burtness, author of Wisconsin Vamp (Monsters in the Midwest)
“This book ranks up there with many of the classic sci-fi “first contact” stories and Claire McCague’s scientific background comes through in waves.” — Cameron Arsenault, Amazon Reviewer
“A completely enjoyable read. Good action, lots of humor, and a global setting. Strongly recommended.” — Diane Lacey, Amazon Reviewer
***
The Triforium:
The Haunting of Westminster Abbey
By Mark Patton
After Butterfield Senior’s death, ‘Butterfield and Son Architects’ becomes, for all intents and purposes, ‘Son — Newly Graduated — Without a Clue — Architect — Maybe’!
With his inheritance sold to get the architectural business on its feet, Wallace Butterfield eagerly hopes to add a major architectural project to his curriculum vitae. (Critics describe his previous project, le Mareschal’s Supermarket, as a large and unimpressive glass and chrome rectangle — though some shoppers have told Butterfield that they appreciate the large inventory of groceries and home products…) When Butterfield gets a call from the Reverend Poda-Pirudi, chairman of the Westminster Abbey Foundation, he overlooks the fact that the Reverend can only meet with him in the middle of the night — in an office located in the dark and cluttered attic of the Abbey itself. Butterfield thinks he’s finally moving up in the world. However, the interred ghosts of Westminster Abbey haven’t yet weighed in; and a local group of WITCHes (Women In Therapeutic Chemical Healing) have also taken a special interest in the architect. And unfortunately for Wallace Butterfield, these particular WITCHes aren’t above kidnapping.
Set inside Westminster Abbey, England’s enduring symbol of unity and crowned culture, a community of ghosts, whose remains rest inside the iconic building, arise at the bidding of a strange cleric. A series of adventures come into play as a hapless architect is dogged through the streets of London by a coven of drunken witches and illustrious but dead personages.
Praise for The Triforium: The Haunting of Westminster Abbey:
“As I finished the book and put it down with a very contented sigh, my first thought was “Why have we not previously heard the name Mark Patton in the realm of fiction writing?” If this is the author’s first publication, it bodes well for what may yet come. ‘The Triforium’ is a superb piece of fiction that provides the main ingredients to satisfy me: humour (I laughed aloud several times, startling my partner and my dog), a good plot, detailed research, and some very intriguing thoughts on the genesis of souls, ghosts and gods.” — Christopher A. Smith, Amazon Reviewer
“A very well written fantasy, entwined into the incredibly interesting history of Westminster Abbey. I thoroughly enjoyed this bizarre, extraordinarily entertaining tale. Well worth a read and I highly recommend it.” — S McDermott, Amazon Reviewer
“Thought provoking humor: “ You need your good dreams to make you want to go to bed and some bad ones so you don’t grow overly fond of being there.” The author’s accurately detailed description of Westminster Abbey and London had me searching the internet for further historical insight on many of the facts included in the telling of this unusual story. Fas
cinating and entertaining!” — Amazon Reviewer
“A great read steeped in history with mystery. I highly recommend this book.” — Amazon Reviewer
“Parts had me laughing out loud and the story line is really well thought out and worked through. It’s a fun, wild, ghost story that I was sorry to see end. I really enjoyed it quite a lot. 5 out of 5 stars.” — Emily, Amazon Reviewer
***
Award winning fiction from EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing:
The Milkman:
A Freeworld Novel
By Michael J. Martineck
In the near future, corporation rules every possible freedom. Without government, there can be no crime. And every act is measured against competing interests, hidden loyalties and the ever-upward pressure of the corporate ladder. Any quest for transparency is as punishable as an act of murder. But one man has managed to slip the system, a future-day Robin Hood who tests dairy milk outside of corporate control and posts the results to the world.
When the Milkman is framed for a young girl’s murder and anonymous funding comes through for a documentary filmmaker in search of true art beneath corporate propaganda, eyes begin to turn and soon the hunt is on. Can the man who created the symbol of the Milkman, the only one who knows what really happened that bloody night, escape the corporate rat maze closing around him? Or is it already too late?
Praise for The Milkman:
The Milkman won the Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) as the best science fiction novel at the national level. The novel was also a finalist in the Eric Hoffer awards, given each year for salient writing from small presses.
“Reminiscent of the novels of Michael Coney, Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth as well as Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, although with less bitter humor and more outrage than those luminaries, the work is a reductio ad absurdum examination of the increasingly corporatized world in which we all live, an impressive demonstration of the author’s skills.” — Publisher’s Weekly
***
Details
The Genius Asylum
by Arlene F. Marks
Copyright © 2016 by Arlene F. Marks
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published by
EDGE-Lite
An Imprint of
HADES PUBLICATIONS, INC.
P.O. Box 1714,
Calgary, Alberta, T2P 2L7,
Canada
The EDGE-Lite Team:
Producer: Brian Hades
Acquisitions Editor: Ella Beaumont
Edited by: Michelle Heumann
Cover Design: Ella Beaumont
Cover Art Elements: 1971yes, algolonline
e-Book Design: Mark Steele
Publicist: Janice Shoults
e-Book ISBN: 978-1-77053-111-6
* * * * *
All rights reserved. Under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-Book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
* * * * *
EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing and Hades Publications, Inc. acknowledges the ongoing support of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Canada Council for the Arts.
(EBK-20160221)
www.edgewebsite.com
The Genius Asylum: Sic Transit Terra Book 1 Page 28
