First Contact - Digital Science Fiction Anthology 1

by Ian Creasey

  Isabel smiled a little, but it stopped short of her eyes. “I guess now you’re thinking I don’t ever do anything except cry. I’m not like that, I promise. I just remembered that farm now, I don’t know why. Maybe those geese reminded me.”

  “I can go over and make them apologize, if you like.” I nearly added, “Get your ice-cream back,” but I bit it off just in time.

  A long pause later, I realised what she really expected me to do was come up with a matching anecdote, something that told her about my feelings and all that. I cast about in my memory and said, “My family were mad on taking me to stately homes with big flower gardens. When I was a kid, I never really saw the point of flower beds. But I remember one place where they had a pond with black swans.

  “Back then I was moody and angsty the way kids get” – the words touched lightly as feathers on the vast lonely void of my childhood – “and I thought it would be cool to have black gardens. Tall dark walls casting long shadows, and inside everything black – flowers, bees, swans. I loved the black swans with their red beaks. But when they stretched their wings to clean them, I was surprised to see they had white under-feathers.

  “White feathers on a black swan.” I stopped for a moment, knowing I didn’t have the words to explain. “It was a kind of weird Zen moment, like I’d seen the answer to a riddle I hadn’t heard the question of.”

  I didn’t think Isabel understood what I was getting at – and I could hardly blame her, since I’d described it so badly. So I finished by saying, “And the swans had this funny, high-pitched squeak.”

  I tried to do the squeak. Isabel didn’t laugh as I had hoped, but she smiled a little more, and it reached her eyes this time. The sun shone on her blonde hair. Just for a minute – because of the smile, and her being so thin – she looked like she’d stepped from the cover of a magazine.

  We fell into a conversation about where we’d go if we could fly away for the winter, like migrating birds. Then we talked about our boring jobs, and what we’d originally wanted to be when we grew up. We laughed about that, and promised to be spaceman and actress, just for each other.

  Isabel did a little skit as if from a one-woman outdoor show. “Oh cruel grass, you looked so greener when you led me on. I wanted to make hay, and you gave me hay fever. Oh heartless tease, oh cruel sneeze – when will I find my final ease?”

  I pretended the park was an alien planet, and reported back on what I found: “A wire mesh receptacle, filled with ritual offerings of plastic bags and sacred cans. A beautiful native dressed in white and gold, such a gorgeous vision to a man who’s been alone in space for years ...”

  The evening passed quicker than a rocket reaching orbit.

  She came back to my flat. I felt like I’d won the lottery the first time I bought a ticket. On the way, we picked up a bottle of wine, though when we got home we didn’t even open it.

  Isabel turned her back to me while she undressed. I noticed that she wore a bra, although she was so slim she had no breasts to speak of. In bed, our figures seemed a little odd together. Even though I’d lost so much weight, she was far thinner than me, so delicate-looking that I almost feared touching her.

  We kissed ...

  I think it went as well as could be expected. Not as well as in books or in movies. In truth, I didn’t find it quite so great as I’d dreamed. And yet afterward, when we snuggled up to each other, I loved the warmth of her skin, the sense of togetherness.

  I woke early, with dawn’s grey light creeping through the thin curtains. I was so used to waking alone that it took me a few moments to realize Isabel had gone. A sick feeling seized me when I thought she’d left in the night, but then I saw her shoes still under the chair. Perhaps she’d got up to use the bathroom, and that had woken me. I waited, but she didn’t come back. A few minutes later, I tried the bathroom anyway. She wasn’t there.

  Well, maybe she was an early riser. My stomach growled, and I decided I might as well get some breakfast. We’d have time to talk before we headed off for work.

  On my way to the kitchen, I saw Isabel lying naked on the living room sofa, with Charlie’s proboscis sucking her flesh.

  Funny, Charlie’s feeding never looked ugly to me until I saw it on her. It was like a scene from a monster movie. Yet Isabel’s eyes looked so rapt. Far more than they had last night.

  The sick feeling returned, ten times worse. I felt stupid and pathetic as I realized how I’d been duped. Isabel had never liked me at all. Her critter was dead, so she needed mine. She’d only slept with me because she had to. Right then, I hated her for using me. And I hated myself for being so easily taken in, for being stupid enough to think that any woman would ever care for me.

  “So that’s what you really came for,” I said.

  Charlie scuttled away at the sound of my angry voice, leaving a small, pale mark on Isabel’s flat stomach.

  She jerked in surprise, and turned to look at me. “No,” she said. “I came to be with you.”

  “And yet here you are, with Charlie.”

  “I thought I could resist this.” Isabel’s low tones sounded flat and weary, lifeless as Toric’s translator. “I was going to invite you back to my place, but if we’re going to be together, I knew I’d have to visit you sometime. I thought I could be strong. I should know by now I can’t be strong. I’m weak. I’ve always been weak.” As she spoke, she got up and walked past me, back to the bedroom.

  “I know how it feels to be weak,” I said. And I did know. All those years of being fat had taught me how a resolution made one day – Diet. Exercise. Eat fruit, not chocolate. – can crumble the next.

  I desperately wanted to believe her, and I thrilled to the thought of her words “if we’re going to be together.” But if we were going to be together, why was she gathering her things?

  “I’m sorry,” Isabel said as she began dressing. “I shouldn’t have come. I never meant this to happen.” She had a horrible defeated look in her eye. “I don’t want to take Charlie away from you.” She put her shoes on and headed for the door.

  “Don’t go!” I raced around her and blocked her way in the hall. I can run, now I’m twelve stone. “I don’t mind Charlie feeding from you. I just thought that was the only reason you came – that you didn’t really care for me at all.”

  Isabel didn’t try to push past me, but she didn’t go back either. Her expression wavered between doubt and determination.

  “Look, at least let me make you some coffee,” I said. “Then we can talk.”

  The pause stretched for a dozen of my speeding heartbeats. At last Isabel nodded. She walked back to the living room and sat on the sofa. I went into the kitchen. While I waited for the kettle to boil, I watched Isabel delve into her handbag for a hairbrush, and start wrenching her hair into shape with savage jerks. Little clumps of thin blonde hair hung all around the edge of the brush.

  I made myself a bowl of cornflakes, but didn’t bother getting anything for her. I was pretty sure Isabel wasn’t the type who ate much in the mornings. I remembered some white-coat type telling me, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Yeah, sure it is, if you’re a food fascist.

  Out of habit, I nearly flipped the TV on, but just managed to stop myself. I gave Isabel her coffee. “Morning,” I said, like we did this every day.

  She took a sip. A small smile crept onto her face, like the sun peeping up over the spaceport. “You didn’t put sugar in it,” she said.

  “Of course not.” I sat down next to her.

  “Anyone who ever makes me coffee – my parents, the nurses at the clinic – they always put sugar in. It’s like they think I won’t notice they’re trying to force-feed me calories.”

  “I’m not judgmental,” I said.

  And that’s how I found love.

  Biting a Dead Man’s Hand

  By Ed Greenwood

  Galorn held his sword up to the moon, and prayed hard. “Remember, Russark,” the crazed British inventor had murmured,
“once word spreads about the Wargallant, half the world will flood into Tarkania, willing to do anything – anything – to get their hands on my flying ship. They’ll happily destroy Tarkania to do it. Tark Castle, every last sheep in the land – even the Flame of Tarkania.”

  Galorn Russark had trembled. The Flame of Tarkania: the Grand Duke’s daughter. Althelena Suzara Tark, the haughty and beautiful Markgrafina of Tarkania. Every true Tarkanese man’s passion. Even now, after the recent proclamation that she was now Mr. Digby Sterncastle’s fiancée.

  Especially now, when crazy Sterncastle had done the impossible, and made a warship fly. Bringing the world powers here to Tarkania to try to get it.

  Their envoys were here now. The Muskovite slavers, the poisoners of far Cathay, the Prussians with their cold eyes and sword-scars … even the British Empire. These were just the fastest and boldest. They would be followed by more, many more.

  Galorn drew his sword. Its blue gleam suddenly didn’t seem so glorious. He was one of the best swordsmen ever to graduate from the House of the Blade, but the British had pistols that could shred a man, and the slavers their hoods and manacles, and everyone had bombs, it seemed, and – and this was his first command. He held his sword up to the moon, and prayed it would not be his last.

  Sun and moon, but the Count of Oporlto was an incredibly obnoxious man!

  Galorn Russark stood like a watchful statue in the gloom of the unlit gallery, gazing down on the Count far below – the Count and all the rest, as they stood talking errant nonsense, cigars and drinks in hand.

  The high, vaulted Red Room of Tark Castle had never before held such a gathering. Half the powers of Europe were here in tiny Tarkania, gathered to try to seize a weapon well worth killing for. A ship that sailed the skies. And keeping them from killing each other, preventing them from gaining any excuse to march armies into Tarkania … that was his task.

  Galorn’s gaze strayed often to the great east window. He was still learning patience. Not that all the sneering and taunting down there made it easier.

  Their tongues were wagging hard right now, above expensive waistcoats that shone with decorations Galorn doubted had been earned. Their gleaming boots were unmarred by wear, their tailcoats newly-tailored.

  “Sterncastle did not prefer Tarkania to the reeking streets of London,” the exiled Count of Oporlto drawled smugly, his monocle gleaming on its wine-red ribbon, “and doesn’t. He came here for the hammershale.”

  “The what?”

  “Hammershale. A rock found in only one place in all the world. Here in Tarkania, in a few deep caves you can be sure the Grand Duke’s guards are keeping a very good watch over right now.”

  “Rock? I thought this was all about some sort of gas,” a Moldavian with long, sandy whiskers said dubiously around his cigar. “Lighter than air, too! Hardly seems credible, but everyone’s saying Sterncastle has a ship that can fly!”

  “Ah, but it is possible, my good Baron.” The sneer that always adorned the Count’s features was loud in his voice. Small wonder he’d been exiled. How the man had managed to reach graying age without someone putting a blade through him, Galorn couldn’t imagine. Perhaps being born noble, in a city where men got maimed just for irritating noblemen, had something to do with it.

  The Count waved an airy hand. “Heating hammershale just so yields vaele, an emerald-green vapor that’s indeed lighter than air. Mr. Digby Sterncastle demonstrated as much to the British Academy years ago, but Britons are easily able to believe their eyes are mistaken when what they see conflicts with their comfortable beliefs.”

  “So he came here,” said the writer from Florence.

  “He did,” the Count agreed serenely, “and made the Wargallant fly. So Tarkania now swarms with envoys, spies, and merchants from every power in the world. All eager to secure control of Sterncastle’s wonder, and found a fleet far mightier than the great navy of the British Empire. The British, of course, want flying ships so they can sail over mountain ranges and deserts to far, spice-rich Asia. Not to mention dominate all battlefields and re-conquer the lost American colonies by landing armies from the air.”

  “Come now, my good Count,” the man with the fierce mustache said dismissively. “This is 1816, not 1616. You can’t expect us to believe in armies angel-delivered into enemy back pastures from the skies!”

  The Count of Oporlto resettled his monocle – a sure sign, Galorn had come to know, that the man was angry, excited, or nervous – and yawned. “You’re Maltese, Alard, so I don’t expect you to believe anything.”

  Strolling across the gleaming marble floor in Alard’s direction, the Count drawled insultingly, “Maltese seldom do, until they’ve been hit across the face at least thrice by something stone-blind obvious to the rest of us. You didn’t believe in Bonaparte until it was much too late.”

  Alard went scarlet, but whatever he might have said next was lost in a sudden, collective awed gasp as the men in the Red Room looked up. A vast shadow was passing across the great chamber. Its cause could be seen scudding through the air, low above the skylight … and then through the high, arched east window, passing swiftly and silently over the grounds of Tark Castle.

  The Wargallant, under light sail, long and sleek, even more menacing than the deep-keeled warship it had begun life as. Like a gliding hawk, it passed over the row of great elms that marked the eastern boundary of the castle gardens. No one said a word until that line of towering foliage hid it from view.

  Orlan of Florence found his voice first. “Well, now … that’s the prize, is it? Splendid thing! Splendid! Imagine a sky navy of two dozen of those!”

  “Your country’s spies already have,” the Count said dryly. “That’s why they’re here. And why a certain old friend suggested it was time you paid long-ignored little Tarkania a visit just now, too.”

  Orlan’s sharp face darkened, but the Count waved away the Florentine’s sputtered protest and told the room, “You’ve witnessed a few moments of the Wargallant’s demonstration voyage, gentlemen. Sterncastle’s guests at the helm included Sir Halditch, the British ambassador; Vicomte Elblüch of Prussia; and the usual Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese rabble. Fish eager to be hooked, of course, here in the scenic but dangerous backwater of Tarkania.”

  Sun and moon, but the man was offensive! Galorn found his fingers achingly tight on his sword.

  “By tonight,” the Count drawled, “we should know just how much the most hungry bidders are willing to offer. As opening bids.”

  “How much can the kingdom of Sicily pay?” Alard asked sharply.

  The exiled nobleman smiled. “Enough,” he replied lightly. “If need be.”

  All conversation abruptly died again; the Wargallant had reappeared in the distance. As the men in the Red Room gazed at the ship drifting effortlessly across the almost cloudless sky, they saw a tiny figure fall from it – a man, arms and legs spread wide – and plunge to the ground far below.

  Mutterings arose. Had they heard a despairing scream, or only imagined it?

  “Ah, the Count observed, toying with his glass. “I see negotiations have begun.”

  Gregor Aulhesse was off-duty and heading for bed, but he answered Galorn’s sharp question with a smile, and leaned close to mutter, “The man who fell from the Wargallant? No one important. A Scot, along to bid on bladders and valves for the vaele. He talked everyone’s ear off about the world needing to get out of the slave trade ‘before God smites us all.’”

  “Fell, or pushed?”

  Hesse shrugged. “Not that anyone saw. What matters is he wasn’t a count or ambassador or anyone who provides an excuse to invade Tarkania.”

  He grinned, waved, and strode off, leaving Galorn at his post. Thinking dark thoughts, as usual.

  The world was in turmoil, with Napoleon only lately defeated – again, and who was to say it was the last time? – and Prince Metternich and the rest now busy in Vienna carving up Europe between them.

  The Tsar was busily exp
elling undesirables from his empire, Estonia was freeing its serfs, someone in England called Wilberforce was railing against slavers, and half the burghers of Europe now found themselves part of another kingdom or principality than their houses had stood in a year back. The queen of Portugal had just died, and this spring was icily cold everywhere, with killing frost after hard late frost…and inevitably, here at home, in the smallest, poorest grand duchy in Europe, there were gruesome new tales of peasants killed and eaten by the wild dogs. Here in Tarkania, a little-known and less-regarded backwater.

  That sneering judgment belonged to the Count of Oporlto, but it was what most of Europe thought of Tarkania – if they thought of it at all. Until Sterncastle had thought of a use for hammershale, the valley of the Tark had been best known for root vegetables, smoked mutton, and the skilled bladesmen of its fabled House of the Blade.

  Galorn smiled wryly, half-drawing his sword and reseating it in one swift, smooth motion. It still brought pride to recall that he was one of them. Yes, Galorn Russark could be far from here, earning good gold as a duelist or bodyguard to any nobility – as could every relatively young and handsome graduate of the widely famous fencing school sponsored by the Grand Duke Tark. For Galorn was dashing, and reckoned one of the finest swordsmen in all Tarkania. Though it was true, as the Count had been swift to mockingly drawl, that Tarkania was a “rather small place.”

  “Loyal Russark, am I,” he murmured, surveying the night-shrouded Castle gardens. One man he’d not be seeing this night was the Grand Duke himself. The Great Tark was ailing, and had spent the winter in seclusion in one of his upland castles. Increasingly, the beautiful Markgrafina was Tarkania, as coldly regal as any king or emperor, swift to give orders and to –

  Galorn spun around. That sound –

  Booted feet, far down the corridor but coming nearer, and striding fast. Not soft-slippered servants, but men with scabbarded swords at their hips. Two at least, where there should be none.