Challenging Destiny #24: August 2007

by Crystalline Sphere Authors

  "Freakish,” someone said. “Look how they can just grab things."

  There were three humans on the screen: a stocky one with dark fur atop his head and a booming voice, a slender, light-furred one lying flat, and atop it, what Velmam could only take as an infant of the species, a large-headed, furless creature wrapped in a length of cloth.

  "Waah, Ricky!” the slender human said, and from the screen came a huffing, moaning sound that took the crowd aback.

  "Are they laughing?” someone said. “It sounds as though they are about to die."

  Now the box showed the larger human moving across the floor, a strange, jerky motion, and Quanric howled with laughter.

  "Look at them!” he cried, and rolled on the ground. “They stand on their tails to move! How do they keep from falling over?” A few others in the crowd giggled, and the male with the picture-screen frowned.

  But Velmam sat transfixed and watched as the slender human with long curling fur trailing from the back of its head cradled the infant, who reached a tentacle out to touch the slender human's face.

  "They're beautiful,” she said.

  * * * *

  On the day the last screen was stretched across the canal, they pulled old Anharmam out from her nest to see. The crowds were thick along the dry bed, but they drew back to make a space for the Matriarch. Her assistants rolled her to the edge of the canal, where she could look down and see the workers slithering among the pilings that held up the screens. Anharmam's eyes were failing, as was the rest of her body, but she told no one, and smiled with approval and felt a great happiness at what she knew was happening.

  "Now we are hidden,” she said as the workers spread sand across the screen. “Our children can grow up without fear."

  The civilization of Earth had erupted while the screen was being built. The radio broadcasts, so weak and few in number at first, multiplied and strengthened until a corps of one thousand Listeners was required to monitor them all. The Earth men learned to fly, to sail beneath the sea, to harness the power of the atom. Their nature, however, seemed not to change. They fought two colossal wars, in which millions were killed, and in the final act the power of the atom was used to snuff out life. The people of Redworld listened to these reports with wonder, and shuddered at the sight of the little blue dot in their sky. They hoped fervently the humans would not venture beyond their own world, though in their hearts they knew better.

  The humans did come, though timidly and not in person. Robots sailed to Redworld on long ellipses, giving ample time to prepare for their arrival. When a Listener heard of a launch, he alerted the stargazers, who watched for the probe with the powerful telescopes left behind by the Xantys. They calculated orbits and warned the people when an orbiting satellite was to pass overhead. No one could state with certainty the power of the cameras on board the satellites, and so those in the cities stayed underground during a passage, and the desert dwellers slithered beneath the screens and hid at the sandy bottoms of the canals.

  The first robot arrived only a few years after the humans had visited the moon of their world. It landed far from centers of population, and caused less trouble than its orbiting companion, which looked down with its baleful, unblinking eye, taking in half the planet at its highest point. The people cursed and moaned whenever they were forced to duck underground, but soon the passages became a matter of routine, no more remarkable than the passage of night and day.

  For a long time no other robots came. Then, a dozen years later, another landed within a hundred miles of Hatibe. The populace huddled below ground and stargazers anxiously followed the flight of the probe as it passed overhead. When it became clear that the robot had landed some distance to the east, two of the stargazers were sent out to reconnoiter the site and see what danger this new intruder presented.

  They worked up slowly from the southeast, hiding behind boulders and making sure always to be downwind. It was painstaking work, and the sun rose to the zenith and descended again on the other side before Ghemam and her assistant Tanric at last glimpsed the reflection of sunlight from metal. They hugged the ground, and slithered from stone to boulder without making a sound.

  The probe was very small, even more so than the previous one. It had landed on some kind of balloon, now deflated and lying flat. The robot unfolded like an exotic flower, revealing a long narrow ramp, poised atop which sat what looked like a gold-colored box with a black board on top and six wheels beneath.

  "Where's the rest of it?” Tanric asked, but Ghemam shushed him. They were still a long way off, but this robot might have ears, and there was no point in taking unnecessary risks.

  As they watched, the box rolled down the ramp to the ground. For a long while it did nothing, as though the effort had tired it. Then, slowly, tentatively, it began to move again, crawling over the rocks with its six knobbed wheels. It approached one of the larger rocks nearby, and when it had drawn close, extended a tiny arm and brushed the surface of the rock.

  "This? We are afraid of this?” Tanric said, and began to rise. Ghemam put a pad to his back and pushed him back down.

  "I am afraid it is only the beginning,” she said.

  * * * *

  Years passed, and no more threatening emissaries than these visited Redworld. Then, a messenger rushed to the Matriarchs with the news that a larger ship was approaching, landing almost on top of Hatibe itself.

  Ghemam, twenty years older than when she had seen the robot ship touch down, now elder of the Matriarchs, felt a thrill of fear run up her skin. “Show us,” she said.

  With an advance guard clearing their way, the Matriarchs hurried to one of the observation bubbles on the western side of the city. There, peering through the pitted dome, they saw a tiny orange flicker high in the sky. As they watched, the flicker grew larger, and descended until they could see the glint of metal above the flame.

  "Mother, we have intercepted signals,” a technician said from Ghemam's side. “Listen.” He held a speaker box in the midst of the Matriarchs. The words of the humans poured forth:

  "A hundred feet ... down at ten. Fifty feet. Kicking up some dust now. We're still go."

  "What does it say?” the Matriarchs asked. Ghemam, who had learned the language as a stargazer, wrapped her tail tight about her. “It means the humans have arrived,” she said.

  They watched in mute horror as the ship descended, aiming for a spot on the plain no more than five minutes’ journey away. When the ship had come within perhaps ten of its own lengths from the ground, the orange flame beneath it sputtered and changed color, becoming a lurid green. The ship lurched to one side, spun crazily and fell, sputtering flame as it went. It hit the ground with an impact the Matriarchs felt inside the dome. A muffled boom reached them a moment later.

  "Houston ... Houston ... do you read? ... crash landing...” Words still came from the ship, but Ghemam could tell the voice was pinched with pain. She could see vapor trails rising from the silver hulk now, the lifeblood of the humans spilling away into the thin atmosphere of Redworld.

  "Propulsion failure,” another voice said in the radio loop. “Stand by ... stand by."

  The Matriarchs whispered to each other. “What will happen? Will they die? Can they breathe our air?"

  Ghemam looked at the young male technician holding the speaker box. “Well?” she asked him.

  He shook his head. “They rely on oxygen to breathe. We have this in our labs, but there is almost none outside."

  "Thank the Creator,” one of the Matriarchs said. “We have been delivered."

  Ghemam felt a flash of relief herself. She looked out at the crumpled ship, still bleeding white trails of gas. The radio transmissions were becoming more frantic now. Ghemam winced at the words she heard, messages of pain, loss, death. She regarded her fellow Matriarchs, staring with absorption at the Earth ship. They could not speak the language. They could not understand.

  Time passed—a minute, perhaps less. Ghemam felt a change rising up inside
her, a queer lightness that increased by the second. A weight had been taken from her.

  She looked at the technician, and could find no fear in his eyes. He reminded her of Tanric long ago. “Come with me,” she said. She picked two more youths from the crowd nearby. “And you two as well. Stay close beside me, but don't speak unless I tell you."

  "Mother?” said one of the Matriarchs, reaching out with a puzzled look. Ghemam shook her head and moved forward through the crowd, the young ones close behind.

  She opened the door and wriggled her way outside.

  * * * *

  Corey Brown is a native of North Carolina and has made his home in Florida for the past seven years. He's trained as a mechanical engineer and works now for a company which makes rocket engines when the budget allows. When not working Corey enjoys playing golf, basketball, and fleeing from the occasional hurricane. “Camouflage” is his third short story sale.

  * * * *

  There can be no peace without equitable development; and there can be no development without sustainable management of the environment in a democratic and peaceful space.

  —Wangari Maathai, “The Nobel Peace Lecture for 2004” in The Ploughshares Monitor (Spring 2005, Vol 26 No 1)

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Abigail & Chang by Harvey Welles & Philip Raines

  March 2

  The visitors came back this week. The worst outbreak for over a year.

  I'm sure it started by accident. I was in the shed, cleaning oil from the generator, when I heard trampling in the tomatoes. My new Jet Stars as well—good against the new diseases going around these past few seasons, and it'd taken some sharp bargaining to get the seeds. My gun was in the kitchen, but unless you catch a visitor with their back to you and you've got a silencer—well, guns weren't going to make any difference.

  The visitor looked confused, very Where the hell is this? But as soon as he spied my Chieftains, he was gone. Sure enough, twenty minutes later, he was back with the rest. First count, looked like five of them, but they move so fast and in the last couple of years, they've all started cutting their hair the same way, so no one can tell them apart. Pretty soon they were munching on the Chieftains—raw and primitive, not even brushing off the dirt. They were all youngsters so there was no point trying to reason—only the older ones remember things like privacy or manners—but I was so angry that I grabbed my rake, thinking I could chase the visitors off the property like crows. Yes, yes, should have known. There I was, with my bad hip, swinging away like a batty old maid, and they dodged without even looking, until someone thought this was a good game, and they were all around me, playing tag. Smart thinking, Abigail.

  Then one of them must have looked through the back window of the kitchen, and before I knew it, pop! pop! pop! they were all inside. I rushed indoors, but they just ignored me as they scavenged the house. They pulled my science fiction novels from the shelves, looking for travel or housey or any kind of picture books, what we used to call ‘coffee table'—anything with photos. I kept those upstairs in Mark's room, so I held my breath, hoping they'd lose interest before too long—and of course, they did. They always do. But an Oriental girl stared at one of the pictures on the wall, my photo of the temple at Banteay Srey from my year of trekking before I had Mark, and called over the others.

  So, six of them. They stood around the photo, memorizing the image with that disturbing concentration of theirs. Then they were gone.

  Stupid. I should have taken the picture down years ago. Now they'll be back looking for more images. Moving the furniture around won't make any difference so I'll have to redecorate and that will mean a trip up to Parchers Crossing and that will mean going to Sal to ask for a lift in his mini-bus and that will mean letting Sal persuade me back to his Memory Circle.

  I should have taken the picture down.

  * * * *

  March 3

  No one was interested in the visitors at the market. “Come on, Abi,” Sal said during one of his breaks. “Look around."

  OK, there were a lot of visitors around this afternoon—a few popping in and out, a group playing frisbee in front of the Wal-Mart. And why not—it was the first bright day this year that wasn't a winter sun sputtering, the kind of early Spring gift day Mark and I used to celebrate in the park behind the library.

  "But Sal, none of these visitors are inside your house."

  "They're not visitors, Abi.” He had that stern look that annoys me. When an old Goth like Sal—long black hair tied back, decrepit velvet shirt all laced up—tries to reprove, it just comes over Old Testament and foolish. Bad as things are, it's hardly the End of Days. “You make them sound like aliens."

  Visitors is a polite way of saying vermin, Sal. And what do you call them? Ghosts? No worse than a poltergeist with an irritable bowel? I don't think so.

  But Sal's not the only dozy one around here—most of the good folk of Cray Point want to ignore them as well. There weren't many traders out at the farmers market—still a bit early in the season for us in Cray Point. I'd tried to rattle some of my neighbours with the stories, but they were all buzzing with unlikely rumours about a band of marauders working their way south from New York.

  "Once the visitors get inside, they'll keep coming back until they've found every picture and photo in my house,” I told Sal. “I'm thinking I'm going to have to redecorate. Make sure they can't get back in."

  Sal was always a bit slow on the uptake, but I let it lie in the silence for a while. “So you want running up to Parchers Crossing for supplies."

  "I'll get the gas off Felipe."

  Sal scowled. “Ain't the petrol. Stories of marauders—"

  "And the New Jersey Devil. And the werewolves. And the zombie remains of the New York Giants. Sal, of all people, I can't believe you'd fall for a few bored tongues. Don't you want to go exploring?"

  Of course Sal doesn't want to go exploring—none of them do—but he pretended to consider this for a while. “One condition."

  "Don't, Sal."

  "Mayor Santos said there'll be no civic guards to spare until April. Have to make a special trip."

  "I won't do it. Especially if Mona's still going."

  "All alone up there, unprotected—"

  "All right! All right!"

  "Say it out loud, Abi."

  "I'll come back to the Memory Circle."

  That sent Sal back to his next session with a smile on his face, which didn't really suit songs by Marilyn Manson, but most people wouldn't have any idea who Marilyn Manson was anyway, and Sal's efforts to educate folk with his acoustic renditions of classic folk songs weren't going to change that.

  I managed to talk Felipe out of a can of gas on credit, telling him the Chieftains would be ready next week (I think he knew I was lying, but he didn't say). “You heard the stories about those raiders up north, Abi?"

  "Up north, Felipe? I'd heard they were coming up from Philly. And I didn't hear raiders—sounded to me like a whole army is already whooping it up in Atlantic City."

  "Yeah, yeah, Abi. And how you going to run from them with that hip of yours?"

  "I'll tell them where they can get as much gas as they want."

  "You and your stories, Abi. Think they'll believe them any more than we do?"

  Donna exchanged my empty bottle for the week's water ration and when I was done, I cycled into the Wal-Mart to see if I could scavenge a screwdriver for the small screws on the generator. I was lucky—the tools section hadn't been ransacked too much. There were a couple of visitors, probably looking for food, so when I got the screwdriver, I hobbled back to my three-wheeler and the trailer before they spotted the bag of potatoes.

  As I was leaving, for some weird reason, I thought about elephants. I imagined elephants strolling up and down the aisles of the Wal-Mart and elephants picking up the frisbee with their trunks and trying to throw and catch it and elephants suddenly finding themselves in my front room. That lifted me. What if there was another universe
where all this had happened to the elephants instead?

  * * * *

  March 5

  One of them turned up again today—the Oriental girl. I thought maybe she'd drawn the short straw to be the advance party this time, but she stood in my front room, examining each of the photos on the wall for twenty minutes and no one else followed.

  Like most of the other younger visitors, she ignored me, so I ignored her and just carried on emptying the shelves so I could get at the wallpaper, occasionally saying, ‘Excuse me'. Didn't have to bother with the Excuse Me's because the visitor would have instinctively reacted before I'd gotten near her, but it's my house and I'm not going to let a visitor make me abandon simple manners.

  When I finished the shelves, she was still there, studying that picture of Banteay Srey, so I studied her. Their nakedness still rattles me and I'm amazed how it doesn't unnerve them, not because of propriety, of course, but just out of a feeling of vulnerability. But I guess they can't help it so they've gotten used to it. In the early days, the older ones draped curtains or whatever was to hand around their bodies like a bedroom farce, though now most of them have given up what must feel like pretty ancient notions like indecency and embarrassment or anything remotely civilized. Seem to put up with the cold pretty good too.

  Chinese, I decided—certainly not Cambodian, or anywhere near Banteay Srey. Slight, but not as soft and out of shape as a lot of the young visitors. Cropped black hair, a young Yoko Ono except for the nose that looked more flattened than was natural—broken perhaps? Surprisingly clean—maybe the dirt really does come off them every time they jaunt. I'd have placed her in her mid-twenties, which meant she must have been five or so when it happened (and yes, I thought it immediately—Mark's age). She had the big-eyed, blank-faced innocence that they all had now—nothing fazed them, nothing escaped them.

  I had to rake the compost, so I was about to shoo her away when she finally spoke. “Doesn't exist."

  Spoke. They don't often speak to folk like me anymore (Do they have a word for us? I'm sure they do—slowpokes or fils de boue or something) so I was startled.