Stupefying Stories: August 2014

by Alison Pentecost

  “That made no goddamned sense.” Elizabeth punched the void with the suit’s manipulator-arm. She fed another phrase into the translator.

  “The third planet has sentient life. The third planet,” she thought for a moment, “has life that thinks.” How does one give orders to something the size of a moon? “It is necessary that the third planet...” She stopped, then erased that phrase. Simple was better. She said, “Do not destroy the third planet.” She told the translator to send the message.

  While she waited for the reply, Elizabeth brought up the telltales for her low-gain antenna, the one tasked with broadcasting this farce back to Earth. The Thorpex seemed uncomfortable with radio technology, so her suit had a laser attached to its armor that she could flash when she wanted to be picked up. She hoped retrieval would go more smoothly than the launch.

  Finally, the giant alien replied. “Glory in the harmonious heavens. The rocky bodies cannot be tuned. Untranslatable.”

  “Untranslatable?” she said, and instructed the translation program to explain itself.

  “Metaphor,” it said. “Possibly relating to cometary orbits.”

  “So they know they’re going to send us zinging out into space?” she said. The translation software didn’t understand, and asked her to restate the question. She switched it over to send.

  “I...” she said, and then her stomach rolled over. Her mouth flooded with bitter saliva and the taste of bile. Oh, God, I’m going to puke. She switched over to her signaling laser and flashed the pre-arranged retrieval code, praying the Thorpex wouldn’t misunderstand and leave her outside to die. Deep breaths. Come on. This is such a stupid way to die.

  “Houston,” she said, hoping her ragged breathing wouldn’t carry over the radio. “I’m aborting the EVA. I’m feeling nauseous.”

  The Thorpex reeled her in. She left her suit powered on so she could watch its sensors as the aliens refilled their hold with air. Because watching the loading bar makes it go faster, she thought. The hold was too big to fill quickly. The fever-dream song edged back into her mind. Drift in the light, drift in the ocean...

  As soon as the telltales flashed green, she popped the back of her suit open and vomited noisily over the side. Convulsions shook her body. She steadied herself on the edge of the cockpit and gasped for air. Only the drip of bile off of NASA’s white paint broke the silence.

  Elizabeth wiped her mouth and nose on the sleeve of her jumpsuit. She looked down at the snail’s trail of mucus and sick running down the side of the WISP suit. I have to clean that. And make sure I didn’t hit any sensors. She sighed, and rested her head in her hands. Then she saw the aliens watching her. Elizabeth’s heart sank.

  She worked her legs free of the padding and climbed slowly down from the suit. Even bent forward into its all-fours resting pose, it stood taller than her. She patted it. The vertigo was almost gone. Maybe that was a good sign. She managed to smile at the aliens, who lifted their tentacles in an unreadable gesture.

  “I need to rest,” she told them. “Then I’m going back out there.”

  An alien in the center of the group swayed from side to side, silent.

  “Tell the Great One to expect me again tomorrow,” she said.

  “We are sorry,” an alien said.

  “We are sorry that your mission met with failure.”

  “We are sorry, but we warned you that your mission would meet with nothing but failure.”

  “Don’t count me out yet,” she said, and staggered off to her room.

  ¤

  Elizabeth opened ration packets until she found one that didn’t smell bad, ate it, and fell asleep. When she woke, she felt better than she had in days. She was still feverish, and her guts felt like a series of rubber tubes pulled too tight, but she hadn’t lost her dinner. If the sour ones had been contaminated, it would explain the rest of her symptoms.

  A knot of dread joined the other unpleasant sensations in her stomach. She got up and began to count. When she finished, she piled the little silver packages up in a corner of her spotless ceramic room and glared at them while fever-pain shook her body. She grabbed a ration-bar out of the pile, causing a small avalanche, and threw it against the wall. Counting them again wouldn’t change anything. She didn’t have enough food to get home.

  The first astronaut to die in deep space. Lucky me.

  She cursed the politicians who’d cut her program down to one lone envoy, and herself for being the only one who fit in the WISP suit. The only astronaut, that is. The Air Force had plenty of short pilots, but... Astronauts are trained for space. Astronauts are good PR. This astronaut hadn’t ever been in space, and I wasn’t ever going to be in space, and now that I finally get the chance? I’m going to die here. She sat down on the pile of soft lumps the Thorpex had given her for a bed. Astronauts are fifth wheels, these days. Hitching rides with aliens. At least I’ll get into the history books.

  Assuming she succeeded, and there were humans left to write history books.

  ¤

  Elizabeth managed to clean herself up and put on a fresh jumpsuit before the aliens arrived at her door. They gestured for her to follow them and she did so, wearing her brave smile, wondering if they even noticed. She ran the fingers of one hand along the porcelain walls, feeling the sandy surface become slick, then glass-smooth; hot, and then cold. The whole world rocked under her feet, and she wondered whether that was a product of the fever or some obscure function of the alien ship. A crack in the ice, a voice in the ocean...

  The WISP suit stood where she’d left it, crouching on all-fours like a penitent dog. The aliens waited while she wiped it down with yesterday’s uniform. She hummed as she worked, until she noticed the aliens twitching.

  She said, “I’m sorry,” but that only made the twitching worse. “I’m ready to launch as soon as you are.” She looked over her shoulder as she climbed into the suit, and saw them hurrying out the door. They’d better let me get the WISP sealed before they dump me into space.

  She stretched out on her seat and settled in. This time the suit’s systems booted up on the first try. She stabilized herself manually, took a deep breath, and looked down.

  The eye was waiting for her. For one awful moment it looked like a sunless pit, and her instincts screamed that she would fall. She caught her breath, swallowed, and told the transmitter to send the stock greeting.

  “This thing is a thing we have seen before,” the alien said.

  “Listen,” she said. “I exist. I live. My species lives on the third planet. Nine billion of us live on the third planet. If you move the gas giant closer to its sun, we will all die.”

  Elizabeth sent the message, then called up her music again, watching the minutes tick by. She decided that her suit had acquired a bit of a smell, and smiled at the thought of who would pull the unsavory duty of scrubbing it out.

  Although, she thought, if she returned as a failure, they probably won’t waste time cleaning up her filth. What do you do when the world is about to end?

  A line of shadow now marred the edge of Jupiter’s disk. Once their orbit took them behind the planet, she wouldn’t be able to call home anymore. She thought of her home, of lilacs and walnut trees and the back porch on her mother’s house. She could weep for a home, for a person, maybe for a tree... but for a world? How do you mourn an entire world?

  The translator beeped. Elizabeth read the alien’s reply.

  “We regret,” it said, “But the harmony is all. This thing is a rocky body, and we recognize the necessity of sacrifice.”

  “I don’t understand. What is the harmony?”

  “The harmony is all. Glory!”

  I wonder if this conversation makes any more sense on their end. She said, “I do not recognize the harmony. What is it?”

  “Behold the disharmonious gas giant. This thing is in its untuned state. We-who-are-between-the-stars recognize the necessity of bringing it close to its sun. Glory in the harmonious heavens!”

  Tr
y as she might, Elizabeth could get no clearer explanation. She’d had more productive conversations with computers. Though the great eye tracked her as the shadow on Jupiter’s face grew, she began to wonder whether the giant alien was sentient after all.

  Her guts twisted until she could hardly think for the pain, but she kept talking, blunting her arguments on the impenetrable wall of an alien mind. The conversation was spinning in narrower and narrower circles when the alien eye dissolved into separate shadows and vanished over the horizon.

  “No!” she said. She choked back a scream of frustration and rage, flailing her arms uselessly in the void. Oh, my God, I’ve failed. Her whole body shook. Composure. Dignity. In front of the aliens, if nothing else. She signaled the Thorpex. She would make them explain.

  Elizabeth’s mind seethed with rage and pain and guilt. She struggled not to lose control. A melody flashed above it all, clear as crystal. She glanced at the readout from the VOX, and decided that she didn’t care who heard her. She began to sing.

  “A crack in the ice, a drop in the ocean. You cross the whole world... but the air that you breathe and the guilt that you share... tells you you’re not alone. Come home, brother, lost and broken...”

  Her voice, burned by acid and thick with phlegm, was not the most pleasant sound. She sang anyway, finished that song and started another. Before the Thorpex could bring her into their ship, she felt a weight settle on her shoulders and prickle down her spine. She turned around.

  Its attention was on her, the eye of the thing too big for her mind to grasp as an intelligence. It was a landscape, that eye, and she fell above it, falling over Jupiter, falling around the Sun. Her receiver flashed, startling her.

  “This thing is a thing that sings,” it said. “We shall listen.”

  How did it hear me?

  “Houston,” she said automatically, “the alien said...” She looked down at the voice-operated transmitter’s light. Oh. “The alien has been listening to this transmission. I think it’s finally going to listen to me.”

  But the eye rushed away again, leaving her alone.

  No...

  After that, words abandoned her. She was still staring at the spot on the horizon where the eye had vanished when the Thorpex pulled her back into their ship.

  Pressurization took as long as ever, but this time something pounded on the outside of her suit, frantic tentacles tapping on white metal before the air was breathable by human standards. When her air sensors gave her the all-clear, she wriggled out of her suit and found herself surrounded by aliens.

  “Hurry!” one of them twittered.

  “Hurry, you must come with us!”

  “The Great One is leaving! You must come with us. Hurry!”

  They pushed her along the corridor. She cringed at the touch of their papery skin, the smell of rotting flowers.

  “Where is it going?” she said.

  “We do not know.”

  “It is impossible to know.”

  “We cannot know until we arrive.”

  She shook her arms free of the aliens’ grasp and planted her feet. The aliens stared at her, swaying their long bodies like reeds.

  “Take me home.”

  One of the aliens squealed the first words she’d ever heard a Thorpex speak alone. “There is no time!”

  Then they turned as one, and hurried away down the hall. Elizabeth stared after them, caught up in the desire to run back to her suit and somehow get out of the ship. And then die in Jupiter’s orbit instead? Come on. No one from home is coming to get you.

  She followed the aliens. They led her to the room with the window. She looked down at Jupiter’s roiling atmosphere, the vortices of brown and red and white. I’m the only human to ever see this up close. She lay the tips of her fingers against the window. She felt light, as though she’d been hollowed out. She watched the giant alien’s body rise, close enough to eclipse Jupiter, its ruckled surface shining green and gold.

  A Thorpex took her arm and pulled her back. More aliens lined the walls of the room. The one holding her pushed her up against the wall, next to the window.

  “Assume crash positions?” she said. It trembled. Wherever we’re going, I’ll be the first human there. That’s not so bad.

  The aliens raised their tentacles, holding them like rows of upturned hooks in front of their bodies. Elizabeth lifted her arms hesitantly, and then everything went white.

  ¤

  She gasped for air. Her heart beat, and her cheek lay in a puddle of something warm. She had hands, so she raised one of them to her face. She had eyes, so she opened them.

  Elizabeth pushed herself up out of the little puddle of blood on the cool ceramic floor, and looked out the window. Below her, white clouds veiled a blue ocean. An alien planet, she thought. But... something about the scene bothered her, like a half-heard melody teasing her ear.

  She turned to an alien. “Where are we?” It gyrated its tentacles at her until she turned back to the window. So blue! And the continents... “Wait,” she said. “That’s Africa. This is Earth.” She grabbed the nearest tentacle. “How did we get here?” she demanded.

  The alien trembled in her grasp until two of its fellows hurried over to speak with it.

  “The Great One’s wake.”

  “We ride the Great One’s wake.”

  “Our ships ride the Great One’s wake between the stars.”

  “Come.”

  “It is time for you to come with us.”

  “Come with us. It is time for you to go home.”

  “But... what about Jupiter? And the... the Great One?”

  “It will not.”

  “It will not move the planet.”

  “It will move on and leave your planet in peace.”

  “We do not know why.”

  “We do not understand how this happened.”

  “We do not understand this; it has never happened before.”

  Elizabeth moved to follow them, but then she looked back. The limb of the giant alien rose into view, bathed in earthlight. We’re safe, She thought. We can try again. Go back to space, and then to the stars. This isn’t the end.

  She felt light. The hollow place where the pain had been filled with buzzing euphoria. She thought of home, with its walnut tree; and the stars, and Jupiter’s stormy face.

  Then she began to sing.

  Sarah Frost lives in Kansas, where she makes her living putting science on the internet. Her fiction has appeared in Analog, On Spec, and the Mad Scientist Journal. Her story “Borrowed Feathers” appeared in the November 2011 issue of Stupefying Stories. She is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. When the weather is fine, she can be found working in her garden. Online, she can be found at www.sarah-frost.com.

  HAPPY VALLEY

  By Garth Upshaw

  DAMP UNDERWEAR, GREY SOCKS, and a long-sleeved shirt the color of a bruised peach festooned the rods and cupboard handles of our tiny bathroom. I showered, cold water making my skin burst out in goosebumps, while Caitlin waited for me to make breakfast.

  I pulled my clothes on and opened the door. Caitlin smiled from her perch by the stove. She held Tango Charlie up for my inspection. “His laser arm is busted.”

  Caitlin wrote and illustrated a comic series based on the adventures of Tango Charlie, a warbot who’d given up battle to open a dance school. She sold the comics for five bucks a pop off our front stoop, not exactly a money-making operation given the cost of supplies, but the neighborhood kids loved them.

  I examined the bent metal arm. “I’ll get the pliers, kiddo. Do an operation. He’ll be good as new in no time.” I rubbed my hand through her hair and bent over to smell the fresh scent of shampoo. “Who’s nine today?”

  Caitlin kicked her legs. “What did you get me?”

  “A pony. Nothing’s too good for my favorite daughter.”

  “Dad.” Mock outrage sparkled in Caitlin’s eyes. “Where would we keep a pony?”

&n
bsp; “It’s a very small pony.” I held my finger and thumb about an inch apart.

  “Come on. What’d you really get?”

  I put a pot of water on the stove, wanting to boil it before today’s electricity went off. I slipped two eggs into the water. “Eat a hard-boiled. We’ll go for dessert after.” I reached towards her head. “There’s something in your ear.” With a flourish, I revealed a palmed twenty-dollar bill. “Birthday sticky buns.”

  The refrigerator grumbled into life and droned a pre-recorded message. “Your milk is past its sell-by date. Your milk may be bad.”

  I hit the side of the fridge with my open palm. “I’ll tinker with this again. Sorry.” We didn’t have any milk.

  After breakfast, the two of us set out for the bakery. Cold mist lingered in the hollows under blackberry bushes, but the sight of the sharp blue sky inspired me to stop and take a deep breath. A trio of military jets shattered the moment, racing overhead with a roar so loud it rattled my teeth.

  A legless old man in grimy fatigues called out from the shadow of a doorway. “Spare dollars?” He pushed himself forward with his hands, his torso seeming to sprout directly from a wooden skateboard.

  I tried to herd Caitlin around him, but she stopped dead in her tracks. “What’s your name, and what would you spend the money on?”

  “Charles. You can call me Charlie.” He coughed and spat. “I won’t lie to you, honey. I’ve had my eye on a bottle of Bohemian beer.” He winked at me. “Breakfast of champions.”

  Caitlin unclasped her fist and straightened the crumpled twenty. “It’s my birthday.” She held the bill out.

  I stepped closer. “We won’t have money for sticky buns.”

  Caitlin cocked her head. “I know.” The warm smell from the bakery filled the air.

  Charlie glanced at me, and then took the offering. “Happy birthday.” The twenty disappeared into his jacket pocket.

  A muddy army jeep turned the corner. A convoy of flatbed trucks loaded with hard-edged shapes under black tarps thundered by. I grabbed Caitlin’s hand. Soldiers, faces as flat and empty as peeled potatoes, stared past us. The chemical reek of diesel exhaust obliterated the smell of rising loaves.