by Robert Reed
I used my wife as an excuse, but the truth was that what we were doing should at least bring joy. At least once in a while. And since it didn’t, it couldn’t continue. “Not anymore, Beth. I’m sorry.”
She didn’t seem to hear me.
Sitting across from me in the restaurant, she sighed and sang a slow note before asking me, “Do you know what we have to do? If we want to ever, ever be happy?”
“What?” I asked. “Tell me.”
She sighed again, lifting her eyes to me.
“Betray our parents,” she said. “That’s the only way.”
I began this account with a promise. I would pick and choose, telling only what needed to be told. I think I have done that most of the time, never pretending to know things beyond my grasp. For instance, I can’t give any definitive answers about Dr. Florida’s truest motives and plans. Lately some people have speculated that Aaron Florida had masterminded every awful thing with the spark-hounds. Their escape. Their growth. Even their assault on the earth. He had been an evil man, say these people. His intent had been to manipulate a small number of children and rebuild this world in his own image. Smiles and guilt were his masks, nothing more, and I shouldn’t let myself be fooled now. These people weren’t fooled. The man had been the biggest bastard, they claim. The vilest piece of shit ever to walk outside of Hell.
Maybe they’re right, and maybe not. I don’t know.
I’ve come to see how little I do know, telling this story.
The world is so different today. I am near my middle years, gray coming into my hair; and I feel like a traveler in time. When I walked down the bottoms I was very much out of place. The parkland I remembered was gone—the trees grown or fallen, the kids grown and gone; and even a landmark like the almost-pond was transformed. Its waters were running clear, and it was deeper and quite a bit larger. A true pond at last. I stood on its shoreline for a long moment, watching a big fish or maybe a little whale breaking the surface, and then I heard a sound. A pounding sound. I turned and started up the long west slope.
Someone had built a house on that flat stretch where once, years ago, I’d lost the snow dragon in the grass. It was a modem house, colored like wood and shaped like an Indian tipi. There wasn’t a trace of that old crumbling concrete foundation, of course. There were brief slopes on three sides, all of them covered with brilliant odd flowers. A patio encircled the base of the house, and a figure stood working on that patio. I crept closer. I didn’t want to intrude, no, but I felt so very curious. I saw a small hammer rising and falling. Hammers haven’t changed—a clawed tool and a flat pounding tool—and the figure looked like a boy, I thought. At least the face was masculine. Sweat-soaked and determined.
At his feet was a substantial chunk of wood.
Rot and dampness had made the wood soft, and he was beating it with the hammer’s clawed tool. He was eighteen, maybe nineteen, months old. He had a baby’s soft golden hair and skin nearly as black as coal, and he worked with his pink tongue sticking from the corner of his mouth.
“What are you doing?” I asked him. “Kid? What are you making?”
He looked up at me. His head was oversized, and his eyes were like polished stones. With a soft, eerily clear voice, he spoke to me in some language that I didn’t know. He seemed to be explaining something that was perfectly obvious to him, gesturing with the hammer and his free hand.
They do that a lot these day. Kids.
They’ve started to invent their own words, impatient with our own, I suppose.
Finished with his lecture, my new friend laughed. I saw little white teeth, and he took the hammer in both hands and swung again. Bits of tired damp wood flew in every direction; he paid no more attention to me. So I turned and left him, going down the slope now. I kept hearing him pounding, endlessly pounding, and then the wind rose, and all I could hear was its rustle high in the trees.
More from Robert Reed
Beyond the Veil of Stars
A New York Times notable book from Hugo Award-winning author Robert Reed.
The son of a UFO researcher, Agent Cornell Novak is the perfect candidate for a secret government project, where humans go through "portals" and emerge as aliens. Cornell crosses a portal with Porsche, and together they embark upon a bizarre odyssey. When he returns to Earth, Cornell realizes that his greatest challenge is yet to come, as he faces secrets more shattering than any of his encounters on the other side.
Beneath the Gated Sky
In BEYOND THE VEIL OF STARS, Porsche and Cornell fell in love as they infiltrated an alien world for the sake of humanity. But Porsche it turns out, is not human, and the two return to Earth only to discover a conspiracy so deep that it casts doubt on those to whom they've entrusted their lives.
The Hormone Jungle
Set 2,000 years in the future, THE HORMONE JUNGLE tells the story of hunters and the hunted, fighting on an overcrowded, terraformed Earth, inhabited by trillions of lifeforms—some human, some robotic, some cybernetic.
Chiffon is an android Flower, a courtesan created to give pleasure. Trying to escape her crimelord master, Dirk, in the steamy equatorial city of Brulé, she enlists the help of Steward, a warrior and troubleshooter-for-hire. But Steward doesn't know there's more to Chiffon than meets the eye…
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