by Ian Whates
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you, you know? Not here, and not at the pub.” He dips his chin and looks at her. “Just acting in self-defence, trying to stop you from killing me.”
The picture shows Josef holding a child, maybe four or five years old.
“What’s this?”
“It’s my daughter.”
The girl has Josef’s blue eyes and blonde hair. She’s wearing a red dress.
“Your daughter?”
Josef closes his eyes.
“Yes.”
Paige glances at the coil gun, lying on the carpet between them. She wonders if she can reach it before he can reach her.
Josef says, “I don’t want any more trouble.”
Paige lifts a hand to her ruined cheek, and her lip curls.
“So what? You think it matters what you want? So you’ve gone and got yourself a family, and you think that wipes away all the shit you’ve done, all the people you’ve killed?”
She reaches for the gun. Josef howls in frustration, and lunges for her throat. His teeth rip into her oesophagus, and she feels his jaw snap shut on her windpipe. His hair fills her face, and he’s heavy on her chest. She can’t breathe, and wonders how many others have died like this. How many others, because of her, and what she taught him?
Josef pulls back, his face dripping with her blood and, as Paige gasps for breath, the wound bubbles.
Josef snatches the photograph from her unresisting fingers. She tries to move her arms, but can’t. Josef’s speaking, but the fangs make it difficult and she can’t hear him over the roaring in her ears. Her eyes swivel around in panic, looking for help. The guests in the other rooms must be awake now, and cowering behind their peepholes. Some at least will have called the police.
Then, as she twists her head, she catches movement in the room behind her. Federico stumbles into the light. The boy looks dazed and frightened; there are scratch marks on his face, but he has the shotgun in his hands.
There’s a flash, and Josef jerks. Part of his face disappears, bitten off by the blast. Another flash, and he topples from Paige like a puppet with its strings cut, knocking his head against the doorframe as he falls.
Paige slaps a palm over the sucking wound in her neck, pinching the skin together, hoping she can heal before she suffocates.
Federico bends over her. Wordless, she points to the coil gun, and he kicks it over.
“Help me up,” she croaks. As long as she keeps her hand covering the injury, her vocal chords still work.
With Federico’s hands under her shoulders, she struggles to her feet and coughs up a wad of blood. She feels unsteady, but each breath is easier than the last.
Josef lies in a spreading patch of red-soaked carpet. One of his eyes is completely gone; that side of his face is a gory ruin; but the other seems miraculously untouched, and still beautiful. His hands twitch on the carpet like angry spiders.
Paige plucks the slippery, homemade throwing stars from her forearm, and tosses them aside. She points the coil gun at Josef’s heart. Dimly, she can hear sirens pulling up on the street outside.
Josef’s remaining eyelid flutters. She knows he’s down, but he’s obviously not out.
She says, “How many people have you killed, Josef?” Then, without waiting for an answer, she pulls the trigger. The gun whines and his chest blows apart. His heels scrape at the floor, as if trying to escape, and she raises the gun to his face.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
She looks away as she fires, and she keeps the trigger depressed until the magazine clicks empty.
When she looks back, Josef’s head’s gone, and there’s a hole in the floor.
The photograph of his daughter falls from his fingers.
He’s dead.
She sticks the spent gun back in her belt. For some reason, her smashed cheek hurts more than her torn throat. She looks around to find Federico leaning on the doorframe.
Paige hawks red phlegm onto the carpet. Then she leans down and takes hold of Josef’s boot. Gritting her teeth, she drags his body back into her ruined hotel room. Moving slowly and painfully, she retrieves the vodka bottle from the dressing table, spins the lid off, and raises the bottle in a toast to her fallen student. She stands over him for a long moment. Then she takes a deep swallow, which makes her cough.
“Goodbye, Josef,” she says. There’s nothing else to say. There’s no triumph here, no closure, nothing but bone-deep weariness. Solemnly, she pours the remaining contents of the bottle – most of a litre of spirit – over his chest and legs; then she pulls a complimentary matchbook from the desk, and strikes one.
The wet clothes go up in a woof of blue flame. The fire spills onto the carpet, and the room fills with smoke.
Paige opens the desk drawer and takes out another clip of ammo for the coil gun. Then she limps back to Federico.
“I have to go,” she says. She has to move on to the next target, the next time zone.
A fire alarm rings, and the sprinklers go off. The shotgun’s on the floor at Federico’s feet. He’s holding the photograph of Josef’s daughter. Water’s running down his face, streaking his cheeks. His dreads are soaked.
“You’re a fucking monster,” he says.
Paige puts a hand to the torn flesh of her throat. She can feel the sides stitching themselves back together.
“I know,” she says.
And with that, she fades away.
THEY SWIM THROUGH SUNSET SEAS
LAURA LAM
Laura Lam is an SFF author originally from California but now based in Scotland. Her YA gaslight fantasy, Pantomime, was released February 2013 and is a Top Ten Title for the 2014 American Library Association Rainbow List, as well as being nominated for other awards such as the Bisexual Book Award and the Cybils. The sequel, Shadowplay, followed in January 2014.
DEAR ELI,
I thought I would write and tell you what happened after you died. It’s not as if there’s much else to occupy my time just now, though I don’t know if I’m much of a story-teller.
I was returning from the coral reef when it happened. You remember, the one we had nick-named Chalk Castle. I’d taken a sample of yellowish seaweed, similar in appearance to Earth’s Sargassum muticum, which I was going to analyse in the lab that afternoon.
The seas were particularly beautiful that morning as I made my way back in the clear globe of the jet. The light from the sun trickled through the water, and all was varying shades of orange, pink, and yellow. Pillars of pale coral rose on either side, and the nearly transparent fish-like creatures darted to and fro. Trailing strands of red seaweedshifted in the current.
I never grew tired of travelling through the sunset seas of Anthemusa. It’s still incredible to me that such small changes as increased nitrogen in the atmosphere above and the dinoflagellates in the water below could shift the colour spectrum so drastically from our own blue-green oceans. I know you saw this every day as well, but in six months I hadn’t lost my awe of it.
Soon I would be back, and I would drag you away from the observation room for lunch. We’d listen to the belated news casts from home as we cooked and talk about our morning as we ate. You’d ask about the moss, and I’d ask about the alien.
The dome of the station came into view ahead, our home for the past six months and for what we thought would be the next four or five years. We couldn’t believe we were going to live in that when we saw the pictures. Do you remember? You teased me, said that my name was too fitting for the setting and it was inevitable that I would go to study Anthemusa, the world of the Nyxi. You didn’t believe a word of it. You had no patience for superstition or fate.
Our station looked like a giant soap bubble: transparent, striated with different levels. The clear walls provided the best way to observe the flow of life around us, and there was little need for privacy at the bottom of the ocean or from each other. I wish we had been conscious when the spaceship dropped the station from its belly and we sank throug
h the seas to nestle onto the bottom in a deep, sandy valley. What a view that would have been.
I switched on the camera to observation room A. You were close to the wall of polycarbonate ‘glass’ separating you from the alien. It was an immature specimen of the Nyxi – a child, equivalent to a ten year old or so. I shuddered, as I always did when I saw them. They looked like grossly-oversized tardigrade parasites, or water bears as you call them, though they don’t look much like bears.
I could never grow used to the Nyxi’s gross, segmented, wormy bodies, with their eight stunted limbs that ended in three-digit-webbed hands. Their delicate flesh, like a blister about to pop. I remembered your lecture, patiently telling me that they are strong, smart, and that, though they appear transparent, their skin is actually camouflaged and very tough. See? I do listen.
You were much nicer to look at, and I smiled as I watched you, with your dark skin, dark eyes, your white little smile as you scribbled your notes. You pressed a button on the console, and echolocation rippled the water of the observation tank. The Nyxi wriggled in agitation. We knew far more words, or rather vibrations, of their tongue than the last time a mission came to Anthemusa, gleaned from intercepted transmissions and analysed by linguists. But we were still far from fluent. We didn’t know half as much as we thought we might, did we, dear?
The Nyxi swam through the rosy water, pausing face to face with you. I didn’t know how you refrained from jerking away. But no, you rested your nose right against the glass, so certain that you were safe behind it.
The Nyxi twirled in the tank and rammed itself against the glass that separated it from the outside. It did this every morning, though we continued to transmit messages such as ‘calm’ and ‘safe,’ wishing to say that we didn’t want to hurt him, that we were only keeping him for a week or two. The Nyxi didn’t appear to understand.
We both read the reports of the Nyxi captured in past studies of Anthemusa, adults that refused to cooperate. They floated in their tanks, unmoving and unresponsive, until we let them loose. They’ve been impossible to find in the wild this time. It was an extraordinary stroke of luck that we found this young one tangled up in the beaded red seaweed.
You were so excited, so determined to make a breakthrough with communication. You studied the bits of transmissions we had received, your mind whirring as you attempted to break down the syntax and piece together the Nyxi’s culture and interactions. We were so excited when a few days before, you thought you had discovered another word – the vibrations for ‘mother.’
“Hello there, sunshine,” I said. You started, twisting around towards the view screen. “Getting hungry?”
“Good morning, Lorelei,” you said, smiling, never one for endearments.
“Are you still intending to go into the tank room today?” I asked.
“I think so.”
“It’s not a good idea,” I said. “You know this.”
Your mouth tightened. “The Nyxi hasn’t made any aggressive moves since we’ve had it and when it does understand my communication, it’s been almost cordial. This is the first one we’ve captured that’s responded to us.”
“It could be a trap,” I said. Ramming against the glass seemed plenty aggressive to me.
“It could be,” you agreed, “but I don’t think it’s quite clever enough for that, at least at this age. This one’s only a child.”
“You’d be a fool to go in there and you know it,” I said.
“Don’t call me a fool.”
“Don’t go in then,” I said, the edge in your voice echoed in mine. “There’s no good reason to. Not yet.”
You didn’t respond except to open the hatch to the tank room and disappear inside. I yelled at you to come back, but you ignored me. I sped up the jet.
The Nyxi had backed to the far corner of the tank. It lifted its wings, the only beautiful part of the Nyxi – ethereal things usually tucked close to the body when immobile, veined with every colour of the spectrum when exposed. It was making a display. I was about to point this out to you, but the creature jumped out like an ugly flying fish. One bony tip of a wing grazed your leg, and you tripped and fell into the tank.
“Eli!” I screamed. I pressed controls frantically. I docked and sprinted towards the tank room.
You were still alive when I arrived, splashing about. We locked eyes, and you smiled ruefully. I smiled back and grabbed a net to fish you out, knocking over a long, thin tube and sending it clattering to the ground.
You screamed as the Nyxi came for you. Red mixed into the orange of the water. The Nyxi retreated back to its corner. What used to be you floated in the water, face down. It was that quick, and too sudden for me to process. A moment ago, you had smiled at me. You would never smile again. My world fractured and became strange and hazy about the edges.
The Nyxi floated up to me and held its wings out under the water. I backed away and it too retreated, to curl up into the bottom of the tank, dragging your corpse down with it. I stumbled back to the observation room, knocking my shins against the walls and a chair.
The Nyxi sent out a few echolocations, which the translator broadcasted over the speakers:
‘Free.’ The translator gave the word a child’s voice and innocence. I turned and emptied my stomach into the corner. ‘Free now?’
I blinked, stared at the screen. ‘No.’ I typed back into the translator, one finger at a time. Aloud, I said, “Not free.”
LORELEI SET THE pen down and wiped away the teardrops on the page, smudging the words into a monochrome watercolour. She took deep breaths, knowing it was stupid to try and stifle sobs in a place where no one could hear her or see her. The light bounced off the rosy orange water and veined her face and hands in golden threads. She used her hands to smooth the lines away from her forehead and mouth, to dry her tears. She picked up the pen, rewrote the smudged words, and continued.
THE NYXI ATE your body, Eli.
A Kraken landed on the station. I thought the Kraken was one of the most marvellous things we had seen in the ocean so far, with its colourful, octopus-like body and the four tentacles that stem into dozens of smaller ones like tree branches.
It was the distraction I needed. Back in the observation room, as the Nyxi descended on you, I gazed up at the Kraken’s violet underbelly and the pulsing suckers of the tentacles. The mouth in the centre gaped, the venomous tongues licking the surface of the dome. I would rather have had the Kraken take you. It was a beast, and wouldn’t have known better. None of this seemed real – to be surrounded by violently-coloured creatures in an ocean the wrong colour, your body disappearing.
I left the observation room. There was nothing else to see. You were gone.
“Earle reporting,” I said into the intercom. “Emergency.”
Dr. De Garmo, head of Extra-terrestrial Marine Biology at the RTA Institute, appeared on the screen. She looked tired. It was far past the time she should have gone home to her family. “Dr. Earle. Report.”
“Fatality of Dr. Elias James Earle,” I said, willing my voice to stay even.
Dr. De Garmo’s face fell. “Eli? No,” she said. “How?”
“Eli broke protocol and went into the tank room. The Nyxi jumped up, clipped him, pulled him under. It was all recorded. I had been speaking to him at the time.” Arguing with him, I thought, and bit my tongue. They would see that soon enough.
Her face was sympathetic. “And the extra-terrestrial specimen?”
“Is still alive.”
She rested her mouth on her hand. “Do you wish to abort the mission?”
“Yes. The alien is dangerous, and I do not have sufficient training to deal with him on my own. I want out.”
She did not try to argue. That was wise. “Keep the specimen alive. I’ll dispatch a shuttle within the next hour. Estimated arrival in ten standard days.”
“Affirmed.”
“I’m truly sorry about this,” Dr. De Garmo said. “He was an extraordinary psycholinguist. H
e was a brilliant man. A good man.”
“Thank you, Dr. De Garmo. Earle out.”
The bed sheets still smelled of you.
LORELEI PACED THE room, rubbing her hands against her arms to try and warm them. She went to the hydroponic room, clutching the harpoon to her chest. There were a couple of mottled, brown bananas drooping from a spindly tree. She crouched in the corner and slowly unpeeled one and ate it, the overripe banana so sweet it tasted almost fermented. There came a sudden sound that caused her to jump and hold the harpoon ready. It was only a withered apple falling to the floor.
I FORCED MYSELF to stay together, shoving the grief-riddled parts into some semblance of order. I could not grieve.
Back in the observation room, the Nyxi was still alive.
‘Name?’ I typed.
The water rippled. ‘Untranslatable,’ the voice said. Stupid question.
‘Food?’ it queried.
You were much better at communicating with the alien than me. ‘I want answers from you’ was shortened to: ‘You answer.’ There was no room for nuance. I typed it into the translator, along with: ‘Why kill?’
‘Angry,’ it responded. ‘Hungry.’
‘Hungry?’ We fed him plenty. And then he’d had a recent meal.
‘Hungry for free,’ said the childish voice of the translator.
‘Not free,’ I typed back. ‘Not now.’
The Nyxi swirled around in its tank, back to me. It felt like a male to me, but I had no way of telling. They choose their gender when they reach adulthood. We think.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Do not understand.’
I tried typing various editions of ‘you killed my husband’ but the closest I could find was the imperative of ‘to kill’ and ‘love.’
‘No understand.’
I was getting nowhere. Maybe the Nyxi was little more intelligent than an animal, or too young and undeveloped. I buried my fists in my scalp, tugging the hair hard enough to bring tears to my eyes.
