FSF, April-May 2009

by Spilogale Authors

  Juno's airlock gaped before them. Fidelio brought the lorry in full speed. Someone—Rhea would be in command—had deployed the brake nets. They skidded across the landing surface, then plowed into the first net. The cords tightened and stretched, damping momentum. Then everything jolted to a stop. Devlin saw it coming and braced himself. His neck muscles tightened automatically. The suit gave him a blessed measure of support. The second net sprang into place as the lorry rebounded.

  The outer hatches of the airlock slid closed. Lights marked the pressurization cycle.

  Fidelio unclipped his harness and swung around to secure the tie-downs for the lorry. Devlin fumbled with his own straps. His hands seemed to belong to someone else, but he managed to get everything loose, even Verity's safety harness. Fidelio caught her other arm and propelled the three of them into the inner airlock.

  The anonymous gray walls had never seemed gloomier or more claustrophobic. Araceli met them there, a respirator in one hand and a Jarvik CPR unit, still in its case, strap looped around his other elbow.

  "Ship damage?” Fidelio said.

  "Minimal.” Araceli reached for Verity.

  "Careful!” Devlin said. “I want to x-ray her before I get her out of the suit."

  Together with Fidelio, Araceli supported Verity, one on either arm. They guided her down the corridor, twisting in unison to change direction at corners, shifting orientation for the best, smoothest speed, kicking off walls and handholds as if they'd rehearsed the route. Devlin spun, banged elbows, but somehow kept up with them. The two men enclosed her by their presence. Neither was her lover, but until that moment Devlin had not realized how much they loved her.

  Shizuko....

  They took Verity to the medical bay. The tests came back clear for fractures or gross internal organ damage, but showing the radiolucency pattern suggestive of swollen, sprained neck ligaments. She was going to have a miserable whiplash.

  Devlin improvised a supportive collar, cutting it from foam splinting material. He slipped her helmet off, stabilized her neck and slipped on the collar. Her carotid pulses felt strong and steady under his fingers.

  With Araceli's help, he eased Verity out of her suit and anchored her to the gurney. She moaned and opened her eyes.

  "What the hell?” were her first words.

  Araceli, floating beside her head, said, “She's all right."

  "Any pain?” Devlin said, waving the quartermaster to shut up.

  Verity rubbed her temple and tugged at the cervical collar, scowling. “Just my head. What hit me? What is this ... thing around my neck?"

  Devlin wanted to laugh and cry in relief. They had lost Shizuko, the computer core, and whatever secrets it held. But at least he could count this small victory.

  * * * *

  Devlin, his legs hooked around a stabilization frame, watched Verity sleep. From time to time, her eyes moved behind her closed lids. Dreaming, but of what? She moaned, a sound like the beginning of a sob deep in her throat. He touched her hand, the warm smooth skin, and she quieted. Did she know, even in her dreams, that she was safe with him? As long as he kept his focus on her, he could never wish Shizuko were lying here instead.

  A shadow hovered at the entrance to the medical bay. Even without turning his head, Devlin knew who it was. Rage flickered at the corners of his mind, curled like tentacles of smoke through his guts.

  "What do you want?"

  "To talk to you.” The voice wove silk through the smoke. Silk like an assassin's garrote.

  "I'm busy."

  "Oh, surely not.” Archaimbault March propelled himself to the side of the bed, arrested his momentum with practiced ease. “You wouldn't want the death of the engineer to be for nothing."

  "What's it to you?” Devlin spared no energy keeping the hostility from his voice.

  "You don't like me, do you?"

  "You—and everything you stand for."

  Gray eyes blinked. “I confess I find your attitude puzzling. I have done nothing to harm you. Have I? And yet, we do have a common purpose."

  Devlin looked away, to Verity's serene features. “We do not. I save lives. You spend them."

  "I had nothing to do with the death of your engineer. Or the colonists and the crew on the space station. In fact, I am as anxious as you to discover the cause."

  For a long moment, Devlin said nothing. His breath stilled in his throat. He turned his head to look at the black-clad man.

  "Was there anything?” Archaimbault March went on, his words now coming in a rush. “Anything the engineer found in the computer records? Anything that might tell us what happened to December?” He shifted, his dark form towering above Devlin. Devlin heard the harmonics of urgency ringing in his voice.

  In Devlin's mind, pieces came together, slipping seamlessly into place. Shizuko found it.

  Slowly, he tilted his head in a spacer's negative. “As far as we know, Captain Fidelio was right. It was a natural disaster. A cometary strike setting off widespread tectonic instability."

  Pale lips pressed together. “That doesn't explain the bodies on the station, or why it was sabotaged. I heard what happened with the spider wire when you were leaving."

  "Populations such as the station crew are subject to paranoid delusions,” Devlin said, putting all the authority he had learned in medical training behind his words. “It's a closed-feedback loop phenomenon, undoubtedly triggered by grief and isolation. As for the sabotage ... survivor guilt is the most likely explanation. That's what my official medical report will conclude."

  Devlin closed his eyes and turned away from Archaimbault March's instant of unguarded frustration. Whatever the black-clad man's suspicions, he had no answers, no evidence of what he had come to find. Nor, thanks to Shizuko, would he ever.

  When Archaimbault March had left, Verity opened her eyes. Devlin, bending over her, realized she had been awake, holding herself motionless, controlling her breathing to simulate sleep, through the entire conversation.

  She gestured for him to come closer. When he did so, her breath whispered across his cheek.

  "There was no spider wire. She said that so we would get away."

  He drew back, far enough to meet her gaze again, the layers of light and grief and understanding. “I know."

  They must never say more, never mention what Shizuko had found, records of the device the colonists had unearthed in the alien ruins, the planet killer, a weapon so terrible that she would die rather than see it in the hands of Archaimbault March and his kind. She would die, but she would not kill, and her last gift to them had been their lives.

  And all they had left of her was a terrible emptiness in the heart, and a terrible clenching at the back of the throat that was the price of silence.

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  Novelet: One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright

  John C. Wright is the author of nine novels, ranging from the far-future science fiction of his “Golden Age” trilogy to the “Chronicles of Chaos” fantasy novels. Recently he has shown a knack for expanding on the work of other writers, including several stories that follow from William Hope Hodgson's “The Night Land,” a sequel to A. E. van Vogt's The World of Null-A, and most recently a story called “Guyal the Curator” that is slated to appear in an anthology in tribute to Jack Vance's “Dying Earth.”

  Mr. Wright's first F&SF story is a fantasy we think you'll find to be most memorable. Enjoy.

  "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

  —I Corinth. 13.11

  * * * *

  1. Tommy

  "I should be happy,” Thomas S. Robertson muttered to himself, fumbling for the latchkey to his Brighton flat. Perhaps he had had a pint too many at the local pub; perhaps he had too desperately tried to celebrate.

  His key ring fell from an unsteady glove, bounced on the stair near his shoe, and spun away into the dried rosebushes t
he concierge had planted between the concrete strip of the sidewalk and the street.

  Thomas Robertson sighed, and his breath was white with cold. Was it worth searching for his keys, in the dark, in the October fog, at this hour of night? Perhaps he should shout and wake the concierge. The concierge might be put out, but Thomas was soon to leave this comfortable old building anyway, and move into the stark glass boxlike high-rise in the midst of the most modern part of London. The company had arranged to move his things; the modern apartment was provided as part of his promotion.

  Many of the officers of the company, ambitious men younger than he was, had slapped him on the back or shaken his hand with envy at the party this evening.

  It was that envy that had finally driven him out into the foggy night, to find the old stone-and-wood public house where Irish dockworkers sometimes swapped tall tales of mermaids and of little people, of selkie and of banshee and of stern, pale kings from the fairy world.

  Those tales he knew and loved; he had more reason to believe them than most people, although it was easy to forget that, now that he was grown.

  Those tales were one more thing to lose, when he moved away to London.

  He doffed his gloves, bent down to feel through the thorns for his key, and grunted as he bent; bending was not so easy anymore, now that he was on the wrong side of forty and losing his hair. Middle aged, if he lived to be eighty. (But last year Bridesmith from Accounts had passed away at sixty-two. Heart trouble. Middle aged for him had been thirty-one.)

  A thorn scratched his ungloved hand; he pulled it back. Now he sat in the dry leaves heaped by the roadside, drained and defeated, sucking mournfully on his pricked finger. It did not even seem worth the effort to shout and wake the concierge to let him in, for if he went in-of-doors, and slept, the morning would come all the sooner.

  Light came from a wrought-iron lamppost not far away. The street was empty, and here and there a lonesome tree lifted its bare and crooked twigs to the cold sky. To one side was an old Anglican Church, built nine hundred years ago, with a statue of St. George standing atop a pillar in the midst of the churchyard gardens, overlooking the street, as if standing sentry over the road.

  The other way along the street loomed new construction. Squat black warehouses dominated in the nearer ground; beyond them rose faceless glass monstrosities, including Thomas's office building. He always walked that way in the morning, turning his back on the church, and leaving St. George behind him. But then St. George was always there in the evening, when he turned about again to come home.

  Thomas felt a solemn, silly mood, like the seriousness of a child. He closed his eyes. “St. George,” he said in a soft voice, “Help me find the key I have lost. I want to open the door to my home."

  Without opening his eyes, he plunged his hand into the rosebush. Thomas's hand closed on something warm and furry, which yowled and turned and clawed him. When he yanked his hand back, the animal was riding his arm on white-hot needles of pain.

  With a startled yell, Thomas shook off the yellow-eyed thing clinging to his arm. It was a black cat. The cat spun neatly in the air and landed on its feet in Thomas's lap.

  On a slim silver chain around its neck, the cat wore a silver key, intricately inscribed. The teeth of the key were large and square; the hilt was crowned with a circle inscribed about a cross, divided into equal fours.

  The cat was as black as moonless midnight, with no spot of white in its fur. Its eyes were sardonic; they were yellow as gold, and the pupils were opened up wide.

  Thomas was swept with a blinding joy. “Tybalt!” he cried, “It's you! You've come back! Oh, you've come back! It's been so long...."

  He stood up, trying to seize and hug the black cat. The cat twisted out of his grasp, spun and landed on its feet. The chain fell off over the cat's sleek head; the key fell with a chime to the stone of the stairs, and lay, shimmering silver-white in the light from the lamppost.

  "Have you forgotten how to talk?” asked Thomas. “Are you under an enchantment?"

  Suddenly, he felt foolish. Perhaps he was drunk. The cat could be any black cat.

  Thomas Robertson stared down at the cat. “If you're really Tybalt, the Prince of Cats, son of Carbonel, please say something,” he whispered. “Say anything. Please."

  The cat began to wash his paws fastidiously.

  Thomas said, “Don't make me feel ridiculous. I remember you from when I was a schoolboy. There was the well behind the ruined wing of Professor Penkirk's mansion. Bombed during the war, and overgrown with moss, the black windows and spooky walls surrounded the well on three sides, and a broken angel was there. We knew it was a haunted well, we were sure. Penny and Richard and Sally and I, all of us were playing there, when we found the key. It was the well of the nine worlds, and the key opened the gateway...."

  Thomas stooped and picked up the silver key. “I believe,” he said. “I remember everything. Richard came back with the sword; Sally had the shard of the shattered magic glass; Penny, God rest her soul, brought back Myrrdin's book. I had this key. I lost it years ago, but here it is again. I know it. I know you. I am not mad."

  Thomas looked overhead till he found the North Star, which was shining brightly above the clouds and fogs. For a moment, he frowned as if searching his mind for something long forgotten, something precious and lost. Then he smiled. He pointed the key at the North Star, and turned it clockwise. “Power of heaven, unchained by me, come into the carven key."

  He pointed the silver key at the cat. “Unlock, unbind, release, set free; so says he who bears the key.” He twisted it clockwise.

  The black cat spoke in a voice as soft and clear as rippling water. “I am come to summon you to tourney, Tommy, to face a knight of ghosts and shadows. No weapon of mankind can cut him; and once he is called to come, no door nor gate can keep him out. Only one who knows his secret name can hope to vanquish him. He is the champion of the Lord of Final Winter, who also is called the Shadow King. He has been summoned to your world, now, and all of England is at hazard.” The black cat looked up at him with eyes as yellow and mysterious as moonlight. “The call is given. Listen: you can hear the trumpet of the Wild Huntsman. Will you go?"

  "Now? Right now? In the middle of the night? Without packing a bag?"

  "To fly upon the air, little Tommy, we needs must travel light. If you do not already carry all you need, nothing you can put into a bag will help you now. Can you not hear the trumpets of the wild hunt?"

  Thomas cocked his head. “I hear nothing but the cry of night birds in the air,” he sadly said.

  "Your belief is weak. Those who refuse to understand cannot hear, even when the Call rings out as loud as church bells. Come away; the lords of faerie summon you. The Enemy will conquer all, if none stand to oppose his might."

  "I can't just up and leave. I have work; I have rent to pay. But, see here, you've picked a good time. In a week or so I'll be ready to move; the company might give me some days off, and then I can schedule in some time to go fight the knight of shadows, and...."

  Thomas straightened, blinking. Schedule in some time to fight the knight of shadows?

  "Tybalt,” he said slowly. “I'm not a child anymore. It's been thirty years since we went to Vidblain, and broke the Black Mirror of the Winter King, and restored Prince Hal to his throne at Caer Pendewen. You can't order me around like a schoolboy. I'll help you, yes, certainly. But this time, I must know why we're doing what we're doing, where we're going, and by what plan. I can't just go shooting off into the blue. I have a life of my own. I have a future to think about. If I just disappear in the middle of the night, I'll be sacked, and have no future, no job, no place to stay."

  The black cat turned and slipped off down the stairs. Then the cat was in the street, and beginning to slink away, a black shadow in the night. Thomas jumped down the stairs after him, crying, “Wait! Don't leave me! I'll come! I'll come!"

  Pausing for nothing, Thomas ran joyfully down the street after the
elusive black cat, his back to the high-rises, his face toward St. George.

  It was midnight, and the church bell solemnly and slowly began to ring, filling the starlit world with echoes.

  * * * *

  2. Richard

  It was November, and the days were dark.

  "Thomas! How d'you, old man. Great to see you after all these years. Ah ... just great. I can spare you a few moments. It's a busy world, you know. Quite busy. Sit down."

  Richard Sommerville's office was square and large, carpeted in red, walls hung with ugly modern paintings in rich frames: mere colored blobs and jagged scrawls, without meaning or skill of execution. Bookshelves filled two walls, crowded with expensive books of the type one never reads, but leaves about to impress one's guests. The windows were narrow and small, like archer's slits, and through them could be seen the snow on the road outside, churned black by automobile traffic.

  Richard's face was large and square as well. Age had thinned his hair and left baggy rings around his narrowed eyes. His face had a tight, cautious look. He greeted Thomas with hearty words, but he smiled only with his lips, never with his eyes.

  "You've been out tramping in the country, haven't you, old man? I can tell by your gear. Not many people come into my office with knapsacks and hiking sticks, wearing stained anoraks. Or dripping snow on my things. No, not many at all. Not at all. But we always have time for old friends, don't we? Don't we? What can I do for you, Thomas?” Richard said, looking at his wristwatch.

  Thomas was wreathed in smiles, his face eager as a child on Christmas morning. “Look.” He upended his backpack, and dumped a small black cat onto Richard's desk, amid the neat stacks of paper, the pen set, the ticking desk clock, the telephone. The cat batted documents off the blotter, and stepped disdainfully on some others.

  Richard almost rose from his seat. “What! See here, Thomas, what do you mean throwing your smelly pet all over my desk? Are you loopy?” He sounded sincerely angered and shocked.

  Thomas smiled, and leaned forward. “It's Tybalt!"