Something Wicked Anthology, Vol. One

by M. Scott Carter

  Wait. Wait. Wait. The word swirled in her head like a mantra.

  She shivered as the temperature dropped until the faint ghost of her breath frosted the air above her face. Unable to wait any longer, she felt around the edge of the cushion with fingers of ice. A rumble ate up the soft notes of the hymn and the bed trembled. The cramped space prevented her from turning and made her task harder. Panic poured through her until she couldn't distinguish her own trembling from the ship's vibration. Her breath came in rushed gasps; her fingers went numb and her vision blurred.

  Her thumb pressed against something cold and slender, but the shaking of her body and the ship made her fingers slip whenever she tried to grasp it. Tears slid down her face as she tried again and again to pull the latch. She was too cold, the sliver of metal too small. Was she working in the wrong place? Had they locked it? Since the Guides slept through their journey, very few attendants took the extra few minutes to lock the ship down. Had this changed since she had spoken with Dariel and the priest? Had the priest lied to her? She rubbed along the edge until one of her fingers slipped under it. She cried out in relief as it flipped up.

  The bed dropped and she rolled onto the floor. Heat flushed her skin, thickening her thoughts, and pressed against her lungs. She struggled to lift the weight of her body, searching for the door that led away from the rumbling coffin behind her into the corridors that would free her. She stared at the dark gray smudge against the silver walls for a long time before she realized it was a handle. Her thoughts oozed into her brain, only to be buried in a muddy haze that obscured even the simplest of observations.

  She crawled to the door, praying it would be unlocked. She cried and pushed harder when it refused her. The door remained firmly closed. The heat made her hands slick and scorched her lungs; her head throbbed as the ship's rumble rose and invaded every crevice of the bay.

  "Let me out, please, let me out!" The roar that had become her world drowned out her voice.

  She turned and twisted the handle, pushing with all her weight. Smoke warned her that fire would soon be pouring out of the points that made the ship's star shape. Tears streamed down her face as she hit the door with the weight of her body. She had to think. The heat rose around her and the smoke deepened. Screaming in her head scattered her thoughts. She didn't have time. Taking a deep breath, she slowly and deliberately twisted the handle again. The door opened. Her grip slipped, she slid against the smooth metal and fell into fresher, cooler air.

  She shoved the door closed behind her. Staggering to her feet, she used the wall for support until she had gone what she thought was a safe distance. She needed to rest. She would go in a minute and meet Dariel outside the temple complex. He would take her far away, to another city and a new life. They would marry, have a family. She imagined a little girl like Misa with Dariel's eyes. Drained, her body aching, she slumped down in a shadowed corner.

  "Thank you, Dariel," she whispered.

  "Yes, my love. Reyna is safe now, and we'll be together." Did she imagine his arms around her, his lips on her temple?

  Ilkyia sank into her exhaustion and dreamed she lay in a soft green meadow covered with tiny, pale flowers and petals that fell from blue skies. She never felt herself lifted up, never felt herself laid gently on a new pallet. Petals caressed her face and landed gently on her chest and belly. Quiet singing wove itself into her dreams. She didn't feel the metal restraints snap around her wrists. A sweet scent carried her to another place, a place where she bowed before the God of Light.

  BREATHING SPACE

  by Sheila Crosby

  Dan Gaunt squirted half a tube of Tabasco into his chili. It still tasted like ashes. He shoveled it in anyway.

  Kylie, his wife, stared at him. "Don't you like it, love?" asked Kylie.

  "Tasteless."

  Kylie's eyes widened. "Chili with added Tabasco is tasteless?"

  He slammed his napkin down. The magnets in its corners clanged as they hit the steel table. One broke off, and the freed corner floated like seaweed in a current, breaking the illusion of gravity.

  Kylie went very still. "Talk to me, Dan," she said quietly. "I can see you're hurting, but I don't understand why."

  A large part of Dan wanted to clam up, but he’d begged Kylie to come 375 million kilometers so he could talk to her. This was their first chance to talk alone for eight months. "I'm not hurting. Numb. I don't understand it either. But since I got here everything's tasteless. Everything's gray. It's like some dentist injected me all over."

  "It must be horrible."

  Dan made himself go on. "This probably sounds stupid, but everything's dead here. Never even been alive. I mean back on Earth there's life everywhere. Everything's busy eating something else. Even in the city there's birds and moss and stuff. Everywhere."

  "And cockroaches. Remember that revolting flat in Glasgow?"

  "Kylie, I'd give anything to be there again. Earth looks very small from here. Life gets to feeling like a bunch of meaningless atoms. People are just carbon and hydrogen, you know?"

  "Have you told anyone else about this?"

  "'Course not. They'd have me on the next ship home."

  Kylie hesitated, then said, "Maybe you should come home."

  Dan pressed his lips together. "I won't get another salary like this one. I got us into debt. I'll get us out of it."

  "It wasn't your fault!"

  Dan muttered, "So who talked who into investing with Piers Mountbatten?"

  "Look, he's a pro. He made a living by taking people in. The judge said so."

  "So there's one of us born every minute. Big help. Tell the bank that."

  Kylie took a deep breath. "We've been through this before. Let's just agree to differ, and talk about you. Are you telling me you've been carrying this alone for five months?"

  "Like I said, no-one to talk to. Seems like everyone's in cliques. I started writing you an email, but when I wrote it down it looked stupid. Anyway, I don't think email's really private."

  Kylie nodded slowly. "What about the boss, that Nigerian guy you liked so much at the interview?"

  "Shuwundu? He's Kenyan, and he isn't the boss. Anyway, he chatted up the pilot, Juanita, on the way out here, and now they've only got eyes for each other."

  "So what about the boss?"

  Dan rolled his eyes. "Jim? Do me a favor! He thinks feelings are for wimps, and real men eat hard vacuum for breakfast. I can't go tell him I'd like to see some butterflies now and then. Or failing that, cockroaches."

  "So why don't you tell the owner?"

  "He is the owner."

  Kylie gasped. "He owns this lot? So what's he doing out here instead of living it up on Earth?"

  "Proving he's a real man. Avoiding alimony. Besides, he's a control freak. He wouldn't trust anyone else to wipe their own nose without supervision."

  "Depressing bloke to work with."

  "Very."

  Kylie took his hand. "Look, Dan. I know you when you get down. You haven't thought of killing yourself, have you?"

  Dan stared at his bowl of chili. "No," he lied, absently scooping a blob of Tabasco from mid-air with his finger. The zero-G product had higher surface tension, but this drop had evidently splashed off anyway.

  "Well if you can cope with this lot, on your own, you're definitely over it then."

  "It" was his father fatally stabbing his mother, then himself. At age five, Dan heard the whole thing, cowering under his bed trying to comfort his little brother and keep him quiet. When the noise stopped, he was relieved, but neither of them came out until Dan crept down in the morning. Now he stared at his chili, seeing a lake of dried blood.

  The vid-phone shrilled.

  The chair's magnetic feet screeched as Dan pushed it back. "And knowing my luck, that's Jim now." He unfastened his Velcro lap belt and stomped off to the phone, feeling Kylie's eyes on his back all the way.

  It was Jim all right, looking angry. "Dan, get to the spaceport now. Collision alert." The
screen went blank before Dan could draw breath, much less reply.

  "Rude man," said Kylie. "What's a collision alert?"

  "I'll tell you while I get ready."

  They went to the airlock.

  Dan said, "All the bigger asteroids are tracked by the computer, but there's zillions of tiny ones too. One's heading our way." After five months here, getting into his spacesuit was simple. The trick was to get one foot firmly fastened into the suit before you took the other out of its metal-soled shoe. If you didn't, you found yourself floating weightlessly around the airlock, magnetic floor or no magnetic floor. "So we're going out to the other asteroid to push it out of the way. We don't have to move it much - just give it a little nudge with a water gun, so it misses us."

  He zipped up the suit and gave Kylie a peck on the cheek. She looked worried. "Relax, Sweetheart. They've done this before. There'll be an evacuation drill, but it's just a precaution."

  She still looked worried.

  He strapped on his fanny pack. "Honest. Now get out of the airlock, so I can go. See you."

  "Goodbye, Love. Take care." She kissed him and went.

  As Dan left the dome, he set the computerized electromagnets in his boots to ten percent G. He bounded effortlessly across the surface of Paycheck asteroid in five-meter strides, accelerating to a reckless sixty kilometers an hour. Once, the speed would have terrified him. Nowit barely eased the emotional deadness.

  His spacesuit lights threw a jumble of shadows. Each had razor-sharp edges, but at the speed he was going the ground was a blurred patchwork of red and black.

  He passed the mine where he worked. B shift was working away, loosening huge chunks of ore. That was all they needed to do - loosen them and give them a nudge upwards. The mine was covered by a huge canopy, like a funnel. Paycheck's own rotation flung the ore to the top where the grinders and smelters converted it to stainless steel.

  Dan jogged on between the hawsers that held the canopy. Two hundred meters further, he reached Paycheck's pole. The spaceport blazed with lights as they unloaded the Buzz Aldrin. Buzz called twice a year. It brought mail, food, equipment, medicine and replacement personnel. Yesterday it had brought Kylie and Johnny. Later today it would carry on to Liveheart, a comet core. Within a week it would be back to collect Kylie and Johnny and load up with stainless steel from the smelter. Even though Paycheck was eighty percent nickel-iron, mining and smelting was far more expensive than doing it on Earth. On the other hand, transporting it to a space construction site was dirt cheap because of Paycheck's negligible gravity. The Company was making money hand over fist. So were its employees, because the job was dangerous.

  Ten minutes later, Dan sat at the back of the four-seater transport as they flew to the other asteroid. The others had done this several times before, but Jim constantly barked unnecessary orders. "Remember you're in a zero-G vacuum everyone!"

  As if I could forget, thought Dan. His suit smelled of old socks. His nose was itching again. These days it started itching as soon as he got into his suit and out of an airlock.

  Dan could never understand why he was still alive, while his mother was dead. Sometimes all he wanted was a convenient fatal accident so Kylie could collect his insurance. Then they'd all be free of Dan Gaunt. He wished his intercom had an off button so he could be alone with his misery, but he was stuck with Jim's hectoring, and the noisy combined breathing of four people. It had taken him a long time to get used to the intercom. Everyone within a kilometer sounded as though they were right beside you.

  "Now you're all to do as you're told. We can't have no mistakes. We got to stick together and do this right."

  Shuwundu jabbed a finger up, behind Jim's back, then stared at the approaching asteroid and said, "Why is it winking like that?"

  The other asteroid was indeed winking, about once every nine seconds.

  Jim said, "Five months out here and the prat still can't tell when something's rotating."

  Yes, thought Dan, but why would one side be so much brighter than the other?

  As they got closer, Dan saw the asteroid was a peculiar shape. The bright side consisted mostly of a semi-circle, unnaturally accurate.

  Shuwundu said, "It's a ship!"

  Kylie hurriedly cleared up the meal and squirted air-freshener, wondering what to do. Nothing in this place was as she'd expected. Dan's messages had become so terse and infrequent that she came prepared to battle with another woman. When she got here, she found Dan seriously depressed, which was almost worse. She'd have known what to do about a rival. She'd expect to live communally in identical tunnels, but they lived in higgledy-piggledy domes - whatever was left over from something else. Everything possible was made of iron because it was available locally. Water was almost plentiful, because they got it from comet cores. It all made her head spin. She wanted to run back to Scotland, but even if there'd been transport available, she couldn't leave Dan in the state he was in.

  Enough maundering. She called out, "Who loves meeeee?"

  Two-year-old Johnny peeked out, and looked around for his father. When he saw Dan wasn't there, he came barreling out of his room and tackled her legs. "Hug!" he demanded, so Kylie did.

  He pulled free and grabbed Kylie's hand. He counted her fingers: "One. Two. Nine. Six. Nine." Then he sat back and grinned, obviously pleased with himself.

  "Very good!"

  He pressed her eyelid, a little too hard for comfort. "Eye," he announced.

  "Eye," Kylie agreed.

  Then he put his finger up her nostril. "Nose."

  Ouch! Time to cut those nails. "Nose," she agreed.

  He stuck a finger between her lips. "Mouth."

  "Grrrrrrr!" said Kylie, pretending to worry it from side to side, like a dog with a stick. Johnny squealed in delight.

  "Sausage," said Johnny, meaning he was hungry.

  Kylie strapped Johnny into his high chair, then got him some lunch from the fridge.

  She left Johnny throwing cheese and ham around, and went to check the spacesuits. The cupboard was open and Johnny's suit was a mess. She shut her eyes, breathed deeply, and counted to ten. Then she did it again. It seemed no matter how hard she tried to keep track of Johnny, he always managed to break something while she wasn't looking. She'd learned to lock up everything she could, but in the eight months they'd been apart, Dan had lost the habit of keeping things toddler-proof. If she'd known how careless he'd become, she'd never have brought Johnny here.

  She shook the magnetic Lego out of the legs, but she couldn't pry the play-doh out of the helmet catches, or remove the toy car rammed down the air hose.

  Dan's depression was dangerous. Perhaps she ought to get him off Paycheck as fast as she could. Perhaps then Dan would turn back into the man she'd married. Oh, to see grass again, to smell it, and walk on it barefoot, and feel its slight stickiness on a hot day! With Dan sharing the childcare, she might even get a chance to do some painting again.

  And Dan would call her a traitor.

  Kylie felt a familiar tearing sensation in her chest, as though she were being pulled in two.

  Jim said, "Don't be daft. We'd know if a ship was coming."

  But Shuwundu was right. As they got closer, there was no doubting it. Originally, the ship had clearly consisted of an outer ring, joined by spokes to a central sphere on which rockets were mounted. Presumably the engines were in the center, and the outer ring had spun to provide gravity. Now it tumbled crazily, and a large part of the ring had been blown away by some huge explosion. Some parts were almost black, and nearly invisible even in sunlight.

  They watched it in silence for several minutes, and then everyone began talking at once.

  "God help whoever was on that when it blew."

  "Can't have been many survivors."

  "No ID visible now."

  Dan listened morosely to the chatter. He knew he ought to be feeling something, but the truth was, he couldn't care less. Numb again. With no clues to distance, they were almost on top o
f the ship before Dan could judge its size. It was only about 100 meters in diameter.

  Shuwundu said, "How about we get Base to find out which ship this is? It would be good to have the technical data."

  Juanita replied, "I already transmitted some video to Amelia. No reply yet."

  The launch chased the jagged edges of the ring, but the spaceship tumbled so wildly she couldn't land. Juanita said, "This is impossible. I think we should anchor near the center."

  "Stupid woman," muttered Jim.

  Juanita headed for the center. Since this moved more slowly, and the landing pads were undamaged, she landed with little difficulty. Shuwundu and Dan got out to tether the launch.

  Dan said, "I've never seen anchor points like this before."

  Shuwundu said, "Yeah. Must be a real old station. Hook it round the pigtail bit. See?"

  Dan felt sick. The stars and asteroids appeared to spin wildly as the station gyrated.

  "Ugh," said Jim. "Let's stop this spin first."

  Bleeding obvious, thought Dan. We can't do anything else while we're on this whirligig.