Chapter One of a YA novel I hope to finish someday…

Why is it unfinished? Well, because I sold Masks instead, I guess. But reading this over again for the first time in months, I realized I really want to write this one.

There’s actually a different version of this, too, one in third person and starting off with a completely different character’s viewpoint. But I like the first-person approach best, I think, so if I do get around to finishing it, I’ll probably carry on with this, which is about half of what I’ve written in total. Whole thing is planned out, though.

Anyway, enjoy. And let me know if you’d like to see it carried on!

***

The City Must Die

By Edward Willett

Chapter One

I never meant to destroy The City. It just sort of happened.

Not that The City is really, you know, gone. I mean, I can see a big piece through my bedroom window, sticking up above the ridge on the north side of the farm. It kind of looks familiar, like maybe I used to walk by it when I–

Oh, I’m doing this all wrong. I knew I would. “Write down what happened,” Fedlar said. “For posterity.”

“But isn’t it a big secret?” I said. “I mean, we’re not supposed to tell anyone–”

“It’s a secret for now,” he said. “But not for always. Someday, someone will want to know.”

So I guess I’m writing this for you, Mr. or Miss Mysterious Someone way off in the Someday. And I guess I should start at the beginning. Which would be my fifteenth birthday.

You’d think turning fifteen would be really special. And I guess it was. But not in a good way.

See, when you’re the Ward of an Officer, which is what I was, back when all this started, there are Things Expected of You, one of which is to hold great big birthday parties, every year, for every girl within two years of your own age.

Whether you like them or not.

Which is why, on the day this all started, I was sitting on a dais in the really much-too-warm dining room of Quarters Beruthi, watching the Amazing Belgrani make himself disappear in a puff of purple smoke.

Which may sound very exciting to you, Someone in the Someday, but you have to realize I’d seen the Amazing Belgrani before. At Vessa Stillmore’s sixteenth birthday party. At Shelli Antonin’s fourteenth birthday party. And at the really boring party Parisi Hedmore had thrown just the week before just because there hadn’t been a party for ten whole days days.

The Amazing Belgrani was amazing enough, I guess. But the fourth time you see someone disappear in a puff of purple smoke, it kind of loses its appeal.

Besides, that smoke smelled like moldy cheese, and not the good kind of moldy cheese, either.

I coughed (covering my mouth, of course; I was a very well-brought-up Ward), waved my hand idly in front of my face, and turned to look at Sallia, my personal servant, hovering just off my left shoulder. “The main course now, please, Sallia,” I said.

Sallia curtsied in precisely the proper manner of a servant acknowledging a command from the young mistress of an Officer’s house, but then rather spoiled the effect by winking her left eye. I winked back, then folded my hands in front of me and peered out at my guests.

“Peered” is the right word. The theme for my party, which I had had nothing at all to do with–there were People who decided that sort of thing for me–was Primitive Romanticism–you know, candles, gowns cut daringly low in front and even lower in the back, big hair, lots of ribbons. All well and good, I supposed, and many of the girls looked lovely–I wouldn’t know about myself, though I doubted it; frilly dresses and I never really got along–but the candles seemed to have been made according to some far-too-authentic recipe involving rendered animal fat, and they smoked. Worse than the Amazing Belgrani, in fact, though not as smelly. So I could really only see the girls in the seats closest to the dais at all clearly; the others were just kind of faded silhouettes in the fog.

Plus side: I couldn’t really see Bacrivia Jonquille and her catty little clique, whom I had made certain were seated as far away from me as possible.

Did I mention we were required to invite all the other girls within our age group? No matter how much they reminded us of snakes?

The sad fact was, I reflected as I peered down at the twenty-three perfectly coiffed heads at the lower tables, I only had two real friends among the lot–and they, naturally, were seated at the head table with me.

Not that they were paying the slightest attention to me at that moment. Lissa and Sandi had been giggling, heads together, all through the Amazing Belgrani’s act, which of course they had seen just as often as I had. I suspected they had been talking about boys. Unlike me, they had actually met real-life examples of those mysterious creatures during their outings to their father’s estates on Lake Glass, or balloon trips to Green Plateau.

Unlike them…unlike everyone else in that room…I had never been out of The City. In fact, I had never been off of the Twelfth Tier. Which was another reason I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be turning fifteen. All it meant was that I had spent another full year as a caged pet. A pampered pat, I had to admit–I took a sugared pink bon-bon from the bowl by my plate and sucked on it to ease my woes–but caged, nonetheless.

I became aware that Lissa and Sandi had quit giggling and were now looking me. And they weren’t just giving me ordinary looks. They were giving me Significant Looks.

Oh, great, I thought. They’re going to try to make me feel better.

I dug up my best fake smile and hung it on my face. The things we do for friends.

“Millicred for your thoughts,” Lissa said, leaning in. “You look like you’re a million kilometres away.”

I wish I was, I thought. But all I said was, “Just thinking. Sorry. Side-effect of maturity. You’ll understand when you’re older.” Lissa’s fifteenth birthday wasn’t for another two twenty-days.

“You can’t blame her for looking like she’s at a funeral,” Sandi put in. “After all, a funeral would be more fun. At least at a funeral we wouldn’t have to watch the Vaguely Amusing Grand Belly again.”

Vaguely Amusing Grand Belly! I liked that. My smile turned a bit more genuine.

“Why our mothers put us through this…” Sandi continued, then suddenly turned bright red from the top of her head all the way down to her chest, a great deal of which was exposed by the silly Primitive Romantic dress. “Sorry!”

You couldn’t be mad at Sandi, not for long. It was like being mad at a puppy. “It’s hardly news to me I don’t have a mother, Sandi,” I said. “Or a father. I have noticed their absence from time to time over the last fifteen years.” I sighed. “I’m living proof that these horrible traditions exist independently of parents. Maybe they’re an Order of the Captain.”

“May She live forever,” Lissa and Sandi said in unison. It was the automatic response to every reference to the Captain, although considering She’d ruled The City for, supposedly, more than five hundred years at that point, I did occasionally wonder why she needed benedictions from the beneficiaries of her beneficence.

(So I like alliteration. So sue me.)

“If you could do whatever you wanted for your birthday, instead of hosting these stupid parties,” Sandi said, “what would it be?”

“I’d go horseback riding,” Lissa said instantly. “I only got to go that once, last summer out at our estate, and it was incandescent.”

“Incandescent” was the word of choice for something really wonderful that half-year. I thought it was a silly choice, but nobody asked me.

“I’d go paragliding off the Silver Cliffs,” Sandi said dreamily. “What about you, Alania?”

I felt my smile fade, and I looked up at the dining room ceiling. That night it was programmed to display holographic stars. They were the only stars I’d ever seen. “Me?” I said. “I’d just go…out.”

Which of course earned me more Significant Looks from Sandi and Lissa. And then they exchanged Significant Looks with each other. I knew exactly what they were thinking. Poor Alania, shut up in her guardian’s house her whole life. Never allowed to leave the City. Never allowed to leave the Tier. Never been anywhere. And never told why, either.

It was, after all, exactly what I’d been thinking. But it wasn’t their fault I was a prisoner, and they were my only real friends. I didn’t want them to feel bad on my birthday. I could look after the feeling bad all on my own.

I forced my smile back onto my face. “But since we’re all stuck here, let’s make the best of it.” I looked to my left, where the Vaguely Amusing Grand Belly’s props had been cleared away and the next act, the Seventh Tier Acrobatic Association, was setting up. I felt vaguely interested. Them, I’d never seen. “The entertainment is about to continue, and the main course is about to arrive. I had the Master Chef make my favorite: candied vatam with mashed sweebers and red gravy.”

“Incandescent!” Sandi and Lissa said in perfect unison, and I couldn’t help but laugh; probably my first real laugh of the evening.

It didn’t last long, though, because just at that moment I heard a deep gong, the kind that gets inside your bones and vibrates your whole body. It came just as the Seventh Tier Acrobats were rushing into the room: the one in front pulled up so short the others piled into him and they all collapsed into a tangle of gold-spangled tights and leotards. While they were sorting themselves out, the dining room’s main door slid silently open. At first all I could see through the smoke was a square of light, much whiter than the yellow candlelight, and two silhouetted figures. But I heard a gasp from the girls seated nearest the door, and as the figures walked toward me, I understood why.

Both of them wore the crisp white uniforms of City Crew, but that hadn’t sparked Bacrivia’s startled reaction: both of her parents were Crew, and everyone there had at least one Crew parent.

It wasn’t the man on the left they were reacting too, either. That was Second Lieutenant Ipsil Beruthi, my guardian, and they couldn’t have been surprised that he showed up at his Ward’s party–although, to tell the truth, I was.

No, the man they were reacting to was the second man. He wasn’t anything special to look at–not much taller than me, really, a little paunchy around the middle, with neat gray hair and a little gray mustache just the same width as his nose. But he had a lot more gold braid on his hat and shoulders than my Guardian.

Which is what you’d expect, on First Officer Staydmore Krenz.

Maybe by the time you read this, way off in the Someday, that name won’t mean anything. So you’ll just have to take my word for it that Staydmore Krenz showing up at my birthday party was about as shocking as waking up one morning and discovering the sun had changed color.

The Captain, as I’d just been thinking, had ruled The City for centuries. But nobody every saw The Captain. We just knew She must still be alive and in charge because…well, because The City kept running, and that proved it, didn’t it?

Sounds kind of silly, now, although oddly enough, I guess what happened proved that it was true…

Anyway, even though The Captain was the One In Charge, the day-to-day governing of the City and the surrounding Homelands actually fell to Krenz. Which made him nothing less than the most powerful man in the world.

And I was pretty sure I hadn’t invited him to my party. I mean, you wouldn’t forget something like that.

I’d only seen pictures and viddies of him before. He was shorter than I’d expected. And fatter. Not fat, exactly, but…thick. Solid. He had gray hair cut very close to his head and no neck to speak of.

He sort of flicked his hand at all the girls who had stood up as they realized who he was, and said, “Please, ladies, be seated, be seated. Go on with your festivities.”

He had the kind of deep booming voice that fills a room even when it isn’t particularly loud, though it certainly left you with the impression it could be louder if it needed to be. Much, much louder.

The girls looked at each other, then up at me, and then rather hesitantly sat down again. The whole room sort of glittered as all those jewel-decorated heads tilted toward each other, and the sudden outbreak of whispering sounded like air leaking from a compressor.

Lissa and Sandi sat down, but I stayed standing. I was the hostess, after all. And did I mention all that drilling in manners I’d had? Somehow it not only kept my astonished body on its feet, it managed to keep the astonishment out of my voice as I heard myself say, “Guardian. First Officer. So kind of you to come.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Sandi and Lissa trying really really hard not to look like they were eavesdropping. They failed.

“Happy birthday, Alania,” my guardian said. He didn’t offer his hand. He’d never touched me, that I could remember. One of my earliest memories is of tripping over something in that very dining room and banging my head on the sharp corner of a table. My guardian was right there, but he stepped away from me and had a servant pick me up and comfort me. That pretty much defined our relationship from the very beginning.

But, like I said, years of training in being polite, etc.

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

“May I present First Officer Krenz?” he said.

Unlike my guardian, Krenz held out his hand. I found myself rather reluctant to take it, but…well, most powerful man in the world, ruler of The City, etc., etc. I put out my own. His hand felt smooth and dry, and his grip was firm without being painful. “Alania,” he said. “A pleasure. Ipsil has told me so much about you.”

He let go. I pulled my hand back and resisted the urge to nervously dry it on my pale green skirt. I couldn’t imagine exactly what my guardian could have told him about me, since as far as I knew he knew nothing at all about me beyond the fact I took up space in his house, but I couldn’t exactly argue the point.

“Thank you,” I said again. That seemed safe.

“I’m sorry to take you away from your dinner,” Krenz went on, glancing around. The servants had emerged with platters, now being uncovered on each of the tables. The savory-sweet smell of roast vatam rose with the steam from mounds of golden-pink protein slabs. The food hadn’t made it’s way to the head table yet, though; I suspected Sallia was understandably reluctant to interrupt whatever it was the First Officer had come to say.

Krenz’s eyes wandered up toward the ceiling and the wire strung high overhead between two pylons. “And the entertainment,” he added. “The Seventh Tier Acrobats are very good.”

“My guardian hired them,” I said.

“I know,” Krenz said. “I recommended them to him.” He smiled at my guardian, who smiled back–or at least curved up the corners of his mouth.

Krenz looked back at me. “Unfortunately I have another meeting this evening and can only stay a few moments. I’d like to talk to you, if I may…?”

He made it sound like a question, but I knew better. You did not refuse a request of the First Officer. I trust I’ve made that clear by now.

“Of course, sir,” I said. I looked at my guardian, who took the hint.

“The music room, Alania,” he said. “I’ll stay here and fulfill your duties as host until you return.”

“Which won’t be long,” Krenz said.

I looked from my guardian to Lissa and Sandi, who had given up all pretense of not eavesdropping and were frankly staring, eyes wide. I suddenly had a mental image of the dour Second Lieutenant Ipsil Beruthi gravely engaging in small talk with my two friends, and had to bite my lip to keep from grinning. I winked at the two of them, then smoothed my expression–not without difficulty–and turned back to the First Officer. “This way, sir,” I said, and stepped down from the dais to lead him out of the dining room.

Since I couldn’t imagine what the First Officer wanted with me, I wasn’t particularly worried yet–just curious. And so I have to admit that my favorite part of the party to that moment was leading the First Officer right past the table occupied by the odious Bacrivia Jonquille and her coven. Much as I would have liked to, though, I did not stick my tongue out at them as I passed. I simply sailed by like the grandest of grand airships, studiously ignoring them.

(What had Bacrivia Jonquille done to me? I’ll keep that to myself, if you don’t mind. Posterity doesn’t need to hear all the embarrassing details of my younger life. Besides, this is the last time Bacrivia is going to show up in this account, so you don’t need to worry about her. I know I don’t, any more. As to why she seemed to have it for me from the moment we met at the age of nine…well, maybe I understand that a bit better, now. Now that I know the truth about my birth and how I came to be a Ward of the Officers. But I’ll get to that later.)

Where was I?

Oh, right, leading Staydmore Krenz to the music room.

It was three doors down the hallway to the left, a hallway painted white, trimmed in gold, and punctuated with statues of the heroic-nude-gazing-off-into-the-distance type. (What is it with sculptors and nudes? I know, I know, celebration of the beauty of the human body and all that, but whenever I looked at those statues surrounded by those snowy white walls I thought they just looked silly…and cold.)

The music room was also white: white carpet, white walls, white ceiling, and the concert kebe in the centre of the room, which I was spectacularly mediocre at playing despite years of lessons, was also white.

Floor-to-ceiling glass cabinets in all four corners of the room housed other instruments: strings, brass, woodwinds, electronics. I’d never seen any of them so much as taken out of the cabinets for dusting, much less actually played. Sometimes I wondered if they were just holographic projections.

Along the far wall of the room, ideally positioned to allow people to sit on it and listen to someone playing the kebe, was a rather spindly white couch with golden legs, and a matching chair, with a glass-topped table in front of them. I gestured to them, and Krenz promptly sat in the chair. I took the couch, carefully arranging my long dress around my ankles and then folding my hands demurely in my lap. I was rather horribly aware of just how low-cut the ridiculous Primitive Romantic dress was, but I resisted the urge to tug it up a little higher, figuring that would just draw attention to my cleavage–or worse, lack of it.

Krenz leaned back, one arm thrown casually over the back of the chair, thoroughly relaxed. “I won’t keep you long,” he said. “I know how anxious you must be to return to your party.”

Of course, I wasn’t anxious at all. This was far more interesting than a tight-wire act. But what in The City could he possibly want? “I’m entirely at your service, First Officer.”

“I just came to congratulate you on reaching this milestone,” Krenz went on. “Fifteen years! It hardly seems possible.”

Which was, of course, beyond weird. Until the First Officer had appeared in dining room, I hadn’t even known he knew that I existed. Now all of a sudden he was talking like he was my favorite uncle.

Not that I had an uncle, favorite or otherwise.

And what kind of “milestone” was fifteen, anyway? I  always thought it was a singularly uninteresting age. You were already a teenager, but you had a long way to go until you were an adult, which in The City didn’t officially happen until you were twenty.

“You’re too kind,” I said, letting my etiquette training handle things.

Krenz laughed. “and you’ve been very well brought up,” he said. “Because I know perfectly well what you really want to know is what in the Captain’s Name I’m talking about.”

Now, look, I’m no prude, but I have to admit the casual way he took the Captain’s name in vain shocked me, just a little. I guess I let a little of that show in my face, because Krenz raised his hand. “Sorry, sorry,” he said. “Pardon my language. I’m not used to the company of young ladies.” He leaned forward, his smile broadening. “But that’s about to change.”

All of a sudden I was really aware of just how low-cut that silly costume was. And took a giant step away from feeling curious and excited and into a big pile of totally creeped out. “Um…sir, I’m…”

For the first time, Krenz looked startled himself; then he suddenly chuckled. “Oh! I’m sorry, that came out rather badly, didn’t it? Don’t worry, Alania, I’m not making inappropriate advances–I’m old enough to be your grandfather, for Captain’s–sorry, for goodness’s sake. I just mean that…well, you’re circumstances are about to change. For the better, I believe.”

I didn’t say anything. I figured eventually he had to tell me what he was talking about.

Didn’t he?

Not right away, apparently, because the next thing he said was, “Have you been happy as the ward of First Officer Beruthi?”

Trick question, I thought. I didn’t know what was going on, but I did know I didn’t want to bad-mouth a fellow Officer to Staydmore Krenz. “He…has taken very good care of me,” I said. Which was true, as far as it went. I mean, I was healthy, I had everything I wanted–and lots of things I didn’t, like the birthday party dragging on in the other room. And sometimes I was happy. With Lissa and Sandi, sometimes. Occasionally when I was by myself. And the rest of the time…well, nobody was happy all the time. Or even most of the time. Were they?

Krenz chuckled. “I’m sure he has,” he said in that indulgent, aren’t-you-cute some grown-ups invariably use with children. Of course I wasn’t a child, not any more, but he probably didn’t realize that from his advanced aged. “I’m sure he has,” he repeated, “but between you and me, he can be a bit of a cold fish, can’t he?”

“He…doesn’t believe in spoiling children with too much affection,” I said, even more carefully, trying to keep my tone as neutral as possible.

Krenz snorted. It wasn’t a particularly dignified sound. “I’m sure he doesn’t. Well, I’m grateful to Ipsil for volunteering to raise you in the…absence…of your parents, Alania. He has done his duty well.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands in front of them. “but now that you are fifteen, we believe it is time for a change.”

We who? I wondered. And what did the First Office know about my parents? More than me, that was for sure, since I’d never been told anything about them beyond the bare fact that they were dead, and that it was involved with something called the Secret City Rebellion. Sallia had murmured that to me once. “But the subject is forbidden,” she’d added. “I can’t say any more.” And she’d hurried away.

“Sir?” was all I said out loud.

Krenz looked me in the eyes and said, “You’re going to have a new guardian, Alania.” And then, before I’d even had the chance to digest that bombshell–uh, sorry, guess that’s what the Teacher would call a “mixed metaphor”–he dropped another one. “Me.”

I just stared at him. I’d heard the words, but they made no sense. It was as if he’d said I was going to sprout wings and fly to the Barrier Range. Ward of the First Officer? Me? Leave Quarters Beruthi, the only home I’d ever known?

Well, sure, five minutes earlier I’d been dreaming of just that, but I’d been hoping for a trip to the country, not moving into Quarters Krenz.

If I were Bancrivia Janquille, I thought, I’d be squealing with excitement. She has real parents and she’d dump them in a second if she thought she could do better. Just like she dumps her “friends”…

Sorry. Forgot I wasn’t going to say anything else about her.

But for me, the thought of moving into Quarters Krenz was frightening, verging on the terrifying. Quarters Krenz was not only four times the size of Quarters Beruthi, it was a fortress. Every entrance was secured and guarded by armed petty Officers.

I already felt like a prisoner in Quarters Beruthi, where at least I could go out into the streets of Twelfth Tier whenever I felt like it. How much worse would it be there?

What about Lissa? And Sandi? They were the only friends I had. Would they even be able to visit me? And what about Sallia? She’d been my servant for as long as I could remember. She was as close to a mother as I’d ever had. Would she be coming with me?

I opened my mouth to ask…but then closed it again. This was the First Officer. I was a well-brought-up Officer’s Ward. You didn’t question the First Officer that way. It would be impudent, improper, impolite–and possibly imprudent. There were stories…whispered by the servants, never by anyone else…that some of those who had questioned Krenz’s decisions had simply…vanished.

Executed, or maybe exiled to the Middens, the vast garbage dump that filled the canyon The City spanned on its enormous metal legs. Thieves, murderers, the insane, mutants, monsters…there were plenty of whispers about what lurked down there, too, and those whispers came from the girls as well as the servants. The Thing from the Middens was a reliably scream-getter at any Twelfth Tier girls’ sleepover.

I didn’t really think Krenz would have me killed or exiled. That sort of thing just didn’t happen to well-brought up Wards.

But I didn’t see any reason to risk it. Especially not when I took a good look at the bright-blue eyes behind Krenz’s easy, friendly smile.

They looked as cold and blue as the sky above The City on a midwinter morning.

His smile was fading, which made those eyes looke even colder. He obviously wasn’t getting the reaction he expected.

“Sir, I…I don’t know what to say,” I finally managed, truthfully. “Why me?” Who am I, was what I really wanted to ask, but I knew it wouldn’t be answered, and Krenz didn’t want it asked. All I knew about my birth was that some mystery surrounded it, something to do with something called the Secret City Rebellion. Sallia had told me that once, in response to my endless questions, but then had said, “But the topic is forbidden. Don’t ask me again,” and had hurried away. I had asked her again, of course, but she’d never said anything more.

Which left me free to make up my own stories, of course. Sometimes I imagined that my parents must have been heroes, giving their lives to save the Captain from evil mutineers. More often I thought they must have been mutineers themselves, and had been executed, while her endless imprisonment was to punish her for her poor choice of ancestors.

Sometimes I even liked to pretend that they were still alive somewhere. Maybe they’d been exiled off in the Barrier Range, and I was a hostage to their continued good behavior. That would explain why I couldn’t be allowed to leave the City.

For about two weeks when I was ten I convinced myself that Beruthi somehow blamed himself for their deaths in the mysterious rebellion and had taken me in because he was a man of deep compassion. I hadn’t been able to sustain that daydream very long, however, since he so obviously wasn’t anything of the sort.

But none of those explanations explained this.

Krenz’s smile had given way to a careful expression of grave compassion. “I can’t tell you why,” he said. “I’m sorry. I know it isn’t fair. You’ve spent your whole life wondering who you are, and who your parents were, and no one will tell you.”

I blinked. It almost sounded like he’d read my mind. But not even The Captain was reputed to have that ability.

He leaned forward again. “Alania, I promise I will tell you, soon. But not yet. For reasons of City Security, your origins must remain secret.” His smile suddenly returned, but there were a lot more teeth in it than before, and his eyes were as cold as ever. “Suffice it to say, young lady, that you are…special. Quite possibly–quite probably–unique.”

And then stood up, so suddenly it startled me. “Well,” he said. “I must get to my meeting. Go back and enjoy your final evening here, Alania. I’ll send an escort for you tomorrow–it will have to be rather early, I’m afraid–to bring you Quarters Krenz. Everything from your rooms will be packed up for you after you leave; don’t worry about that.” He held out his right hand, and, still feeling kind of numb, I put out my left and let him help me to my feet.

I tried to pull my hand free, but he held on, shifting his grip to my wrist. “Just one more thing,” he said. “A…precaution. Nothing to worry about.” He took something from the pocket of his uniform jacket with his free hand. I’d seen it glinting there and had thought it was a pen, but it was too big around for that. He held it up, and I saw it had an opening at one end. “Put your middle finger in here.” He guided my hand toward it.

It wasn’t like I had much choice. I extended my finger and he slipped it into the opening in the strange little device. Soft rubber squeezed it like mechanical lips. “This may sting a little,” he said then.

Something jabbed my fingertip, the pain sharp and sudden. I yelped and tried to jerk my finger out, but Krenz held it immobile. “A simple blood test,” he said soothingly. “Nothing to worry about.”

The tube beeped, and the rubbery lips released my finger. Krenz let go of my wrist and an pulled my hand back, resisting the urge to suck my finger, which would definitely not be appropriate for a properly brought up young ward of an officer. I did take a quick look at it, though; a tiny round spot of synthiskin sealed the hole made by the needle.

Krenz raised the silvery tube to his face, and green light flashed, reflecting for an instant in his startlingly blue eyes. “Excellent!” he said. He slipped the tube back into his pocked. “Well, I’ll leave you to your celebrations, then, Alania,” he said. “Once again, congratulations. I look forward to getting to know you better in the weeks to come.” He headed to the door. “I can show myself out,” he said, and a moment later the door closed behind him, leaving me alone in the silent music room.

My knees suddenly felt just a little shaky, and I sat back down on the couch so hard I thought I felt a spring give way. What had just happened? In the morning…in just a few hours…my whole life was going to change forever. I felt as if the whole world had been turned upside down and dropped on my head.

All I wanted to do was run to my room and cuddle a stuffed animal or four, but I was–still–the properly brought up Ward of an Officer–Ward of the First Officer, tomorrow, I thought, which did nothing to undo the urge to hide–and there was a rather ostentatious party going on just a few doors down the hall at which I was the guest of honor.

Besides, I knew my guardian–my former guardian–had to be getting tired of Sandi and Lissa, and they had to be getting even more tired of him. Plus they must be dying of curiosity.

Could I tell them?

I didn’t see why not. The First Officer hadn’t indicated it was a secret, and everyone would find out soon enough.

And then I thought of the look on Bacrivia Janquille’s face when she found out, and I felt a little bit better. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, in Quarters Krenz, I thought. Maybe I’d finally find out the truth about who I was, and who my parents were. Maybe Krenz would be a wonderful guardian. Just because people called him a cold-hearted monster who would exile his own mother to the MIddens if she crossed him…

Ulp. Better not start thinking like that.

One thing at a time. Get up, go back to the party, be a gracious host, tell Sandi and Lissa what had happened, rub Bancrivia’s nose in it. All of those things were doable, and they were all I had to do tonight.

Tomorrow would take care of itself.

Now, it’s easy to just talk for an hour and a half about writing, but I want people to actually do some writing: and to that end, I’m going to make us of an exercise that SF author and high-school teacher Jim van Pelt came up with, The Seven-Sentence Story.

Since I want to make sure everyone writes SF or fantasy, I’ve made one alteration to his rules, insisting that the first sentence establish the fantastical nature of the piece.

Here’s how it works:

The seven-sentence story

1. Introduce what the main character wants and the first action he/she takes to accomplish that goal; establish it’s a science fiction or fantasy story with some fantastical element.

2. The results of the action the charact takes in sentence #1 has to make the situation worse. The character should be farther from the goal now.

3. Based on the new situation, the character takes a second action to accomplish the goal.

4. The results of the second action the character takes from sentence #3 is to make the situation worse. The character should be even farther from the goal now.

5. Based on the new situation, the character takes a third and final action to accomplish the goal.

6. The third action either accomplishes the character’s goal, fails to accomplish the goal, or there is an unusual but oddly satisfying different result of the last action.

7. The denouement. This sentence wraps up the story. It could tell the reader how the character felt about the results, or provide a moral, or tell how the character’s life continued on.

Now, I’m a strong believer in the notion that if you’re going to ask students to do something, you should be willing (and able) to do it yourself. So I wrote my own seven-sentence story. This took me about 15 or 20 minutes, start to finish, including one pass at revision.

My attempt:

1. Anethor, strapped to the belly of the great dragon, stared down at the pointed tops of the spindly towers of the great city of Karrnikk, saw the wizard on his balcony right where the bribed servant had told him he would, drew his sword, and pulled the quick-release buckle on the straps…

2. …or what was supposed to be the quick-release buckle: the mechanism only released the strap holding his upper body to the beast, not the one holding his legs, so that instead of falling free, ready to spread his mechanical wings and glide down to the attack, his torso fell with a jerk that threatened to snap his spine—and he dropped his sword.

3. The blade fell, twisting and spinning, the red light of the setting sun flashing off of it with every turn, while Anethor, swearing, hanging like a cased ham from the oblivious dragon’s stomach, drew his dagger, jackknifed himself up, and slashed through the remaining strap.

4. Now at last he fell free—but that suddenly seemed far from a blessing, as he pulled the cord to release his wings, only to have the cord come free in his hand and the wings remain neatly tucked away in their leather backpack.

5. Undone by what could only have been sabotage, he looked down at the pointed towers hurtling toward him and had no other choice but scream his teacher’s name: “Taaaaaannnnniiiiissssss!”

6. Instantly his plunge toward destruction halted and, light as a feather on the breeze, he wafted down to the wizard’s balcony, landing upright with no more impact than if he had stepped off the curb, finding himself face to face with the Wizard Tanis, who smiled slightly and inclined his head.

7. “A valiant attempt,” said the old man (which, Anethor thought, was some consolation, since as Master of the Apprentices to the Assassin’s Guild, Tanis had seen a thousand attempts by students trying to get close enough to kill him without him being aware of it), “but you forgot one very important rule,” and here Tanis’s smile widened, as he looked up at the winged beast circling overhead, showing its fangs in a toothy grin: “Never trust a dragon with a secret.”

I look forward to seeing what the students come up with!

This week’s Saturday-special-I’m-actually-posting-on-Monday is the first chapter of the YA science fiction novel (dystopian before dystopian YA SF was cool!) I just epublished last week:

If you like this sample, you can order the complete book through Smashwords or buy it in the Kindle store. (It should soon show up in other premium ebook stores.)

Enjoy!

***

The Chosen

By Edward Willett

Chapter One

Beth Foster held tight to her father’s waist, her right ear pressed against his back, as the white stallion galloped across the prairie. Out of the corner of her eye she caught occasional glimpses of the dozen mounted men following close behind. The pounding of all those horses’ hooves and the pounding of her own heart mingled in her head until she couldn’t tell one from the other.

Suddenly the stallion slowed, and at the same instant, Beth smelled the sharp scent of burning pine. She raised her head, sniffing the autumn wind like a hunting dog, as her father lifted his right hand and the other riders reined to a halt around them, horses blowing and stamping, breath and sweat steaming in the frosty air. The wind tossed a strand of red-gold hair across her eyes, and impatiently she tucked it back under her warm red cap of knitted wool.

Her father surveyed the troop of horsemen, and Beth followed his gaze. Each man wore a white surcoat, emblazoned front and back with the red cross of the Crusade, dimmed by the dust of their ride; a saber hung from each belt and a holstered rifle was slung from each saddle.

Beth’s father nodded, then said, “Torches.”

From their saddlebags, each rider pulled out a short wooden torch, greasy rags wrapped around one end. After a few moments’ work with flint and steel, the rags began to burn. One by one the riders lifted the flames in salute to Beth’s father. He raised his clenched right fist in response. “Hold on,” he said in a low voice to Beth, then, “To the glory of God!” he shouted, and slammed his heels into the stallion’s flanks.

Beth’s heart leaped as they surged up the slope, but instead of plunging down the far side of the hill, her father reined to halt at its crest. In the valley below Beth could see a farmyard, with a pre-Trouble white frame house and a few outbuildings surrounded by a much more crudely made wooden stockade about eight feet high. “Aren’t we going down?” Beth shouted as the other riders pounded past them, but her father shook his head.

“It’s too dangerous for you,” he shouted back. “Just watch. Watch how the Chosen purge the land of evil!”

Beth watched.

An old man picking corn looked up as the riders thundered down toward him, froze for a moment, then dropped his half-full basket and ran for the open gate, shapeless brown hat flying from his balding head. “Joey! Marta! Close the gate! Close the—”

The broad chest of the lead black gelding struck him in the back and he fell, rolling over and over among the dry yellow stalks.

A woman appeared in the doorway of the house, and screamed as the Chosen pounded through the gate. Three crying children, the oldest no more than eight, ran to her. One by one the horsemen flung their torches through the door of a shed from which stretched two strands of black wire, strung on tall wooden posts.

A dull thump shook the ground, and orange flames engulfed the shed and licked at the wall of the house as the Chosen swept out of the compound and rode back up the hill, past the motionless body of the old man.

“Praise the Lord! Hallelujah!” Beth’s father shouted to his men as they rejoined him at the top of the hill, but Beth’s eyes were locked on the woman. She herded her coughing, weeping children away from their burning home, then saw the old man lying in the field and ran toward him.

“Dad!” Beth heard her scream. “Dad!” Beth’s last view, as her own father wheeled the stallion to lead his band home in victory, was of the woman kneeling in the broken corn beside the old man, sobbing.

Beth thought she might be sick. “It was God’s will,” she whispered to herself. “God’s will—God’s will!” Hadn’t her father said so that very morning? He had stood in his stirrups, silver hair and beard astir in the breeze, his voice booming through the Square. “The army of the Lord rides forth to rid the land of evil and prepare the Earth for the coming of its King!”

They had a generator, Beth told herself fiercely. It had to be destroyed!

“Electricity is the lifeblood of Satan!” her father had shouted out across the Square. “From it sprang all the evils of the Old World before the Tribulation!”

But she kept seeing the old man rolling in the dust, the fire licking at the house, the terrified faces of the children, and in her ears still rang the cries of the woman who had seen the little bit of security she had carved from a hard, uncaring world destroyed in an instant.

We saved them from the Evil One. We saved them!

Would Mama have thought so?, another inner voice whispered in reply.

All the way home, Beth listened to the excited voices of the horsemen, rehashing their glorious attack. She didn’t say a word, and when the tree-filled valley that sheltered their village opened below them, Beth suddenly felt she could not face the cheering crowd that would welcome them. “Father, may I get down?”

“What?” He looked back at her. “Why?”

“I’d like to walk from here, that’s all.” She didn’t meet his eyes.

He hesitated, then pulled on the reins. The other riders halted a little further on and waited as he helped Beth to the ground. “Don’t be long,” he said. “There’ll be a celebration feast tonight, and I want you looking your best.”

“Yes, Father.”

He pulled off her cap, leaned down and kissed the top of her head, then handed her back the cap and urged the stallion to a trot. A moment later the entire troop disappeared into the valley.

Beth looked back the way they had come. Was that distant smudge the smoke from the destroyed farm? She stared at it a moment, then shivered and plunged down into the valley herself, to escape the wind that suddenly felt much colder. Winter’s coming, she thought. That recalcitrant strand of hair had escaped again; she tucked it up under her cap once more, then pulled her patched brown homespun riding cloak closer around her shoulders. Maybe this will be the last raid for a while.

But an icy gust rattled the yellow leaves of the birches and aspen like scornful laughter, and she shivered. She knew better. As surely as the snow would come, the raids would continue. “God’s will does not wait for good weather,” her father said, and she knew his scouts were scouring ever further afield for any sign of the Old Ways.

She reached the trail at the base of the slope and walked slowly toward the village, wishing that when she got there she would have someone to talk to, someone who could help her sort out her feelings.

But there was no one. No one questioned her father. He had risen to oversight of the Chosen through the combined force of his intellect and personality; no one had ever withstood him in debate, no one, it seemed, failed to be mesmerized by his fiery oratory. When Elder Silas had dropped dead of a heart attack ten years ago, Elder Joshua Foster had been the unanimous choice as his successor—and had not been challenged since.

If only Mama were still alive. But that was foolishness, like wishing the Tribulation had never happened. If her mother had not died a year ago in the outbreak of Blue Plague that took more than twenty of the Chosen in all, her father might never have begun his Crusade; but die she had, drowned in the fluid that filled her lungs as surely as if she had sunk to the bottom of Lake Katepwa. Beth’s father had taken his wife’s death as a sign. She could still hear him thundering to the Chosen on the Sunday morning that had launched the Crusade. “Evil remains in the land!” he had shouted, voice hoarse with emotion, face tight with pain. “God sent the Tribulation to purge us of evil, but He has let some remain to test our faith. It is our duty, as the sons and daughters of God, to finish God’s great work—before God repents of our survival and destroys us all!”

Beth could also hear her mother’s voice, saying “God is love.” But love seemed to have little place in her father’s new creed…

And then Beth’s heart skipped a beat and she suddenly forgot her doubts as she heard men’s voices—voices she didn’t recognize.

She darted off the path into the woods. Anyone not of the Chosen was to be feared; that was one warning of her father’s she believed fervently. She knew what had happened to others of the Chosen who had come upon some of those who wandered the Wild…

Yet despite her fear, she had a duty to her neighbors. As silently as she could, she crept toward the strangers. There were two, she decided as their voices became clearer; two men, just off the trail, hidden by a stand of bushes. They spoke English, but with such a strong, drawling accent she had to get closer than she liked to understand them.

“Ain’t seen nothing bigger’n a sparrow since day before yesterday,” one whined. “Where’s them deer that old man promised?”

“We’ll find them down here,” said the other in a deeper tone. “He must have known what he was talking about. You saw all those hides.”

“So why should he tell us where he got them?”

“I paid him, didn’t I? I gave him that flashlight thing. That should be worth a deer.”

“Yeah, and who said you could do that? That was mine, that was. Why’nt you give him them silver gloves you lifted?”

“Because I need gloves worse’n you need a flashlight. Anyway, you’ve got those binoculars and the best rifle. And we’ve each got a couple of those—what’d the Technos call ’em?—solar batteries, that’s it. They ought to be worth a winter’s lodging just about anywhere, if they put out as much ’lectricity as they said.”

Beth swallowed and nervously shifted position, and a twig under her foot snapped like a rifle shot. “Someone’s watching us!” the whiney man cried.

Beth burst from cover like a startled rabbit. A branch snagged her cloak, but she twisted free and raced for the village, ignoring the shouts behind her and praying she could outrun the men if they pursued her.

The chill air stung her face and her arms grew cold without her cloak, but she hardly noticed. Electricity! Flashlights! Satan’s work, brought into the Chosen’s valley!

Half a mile later she staggered through the open gate of the village’s palisade and fell to her knees on the flagstones of the Square, gasping, heart pounding, unable to speak.

The Square was crowded with people and horses, as the men who had been on the raid mingled with those who had come out to greet them on their return. John Ramsey, the village butcher, and one of that morning’s raiders, was the first to notice Beth. “Here, now, Beth, what’re you in such a state over?” he said, helping her to her feet as a crowd gathered. She tried to speak, but a stitch in her side doubled her over again and for a moment she thought she would throw up. It seemed to take her forever to summon the breath to blurt out what she had heard.

Shouts of anger greeted her news. Leaving her in the care of Sarah Goodman, a grandmotherly woman Beth knew mainly as the village’s biggest gossip, Ramsey called for men and horses and sent his eight-year-old son, Amos, running toward the big house overlooking the courtyard to summon Beth’s father.

Mrs. Goodman settled Beth on the wooden bench ringing the well, then drew up the bucket and offered her a ladle of water. Beth gulped the icy liquid gratefully, but then almost dropped the ladle in a fit of shivering. Mrs. Goodman’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, dear, I never thought…here.” She pulled off her green wool cloak and wrapped it around Beth’s trembling shoulders. “What you need is something warm. Come inside and I’ll fix you some mint tea.”

Teeth chattering, Beth followed Mrs. Goodman across the Square, but paused as her father strode from their house, still wearing the dust-grimed uniform he had worn on the raid and buckling his sword-belt around his giant, gaunt frame as he walked. His ice-blue eyes glittered in the waning sun, and the cold wind ruffled his white hair and beard. He looked magnificent and frightening, and as Beth watched him mount his stallion once again, she almost pitied the two strangers.

They brought Satan’s handiwork into our valley, she reminded herself. And Father won’t harm them if they don’t resist…

But what if they do?

“Come along, dear,” Mrs. Goodman said, and Beth gratefully turned away from the forming posse and hurried after her.

Mrs. Goodman’s hot mint tea, poured out in a cozy kitchen warmed by a potbellied stove, soon warmed Beth’s body, but did nothing to ease the chill in her heart, and she excused herself as soon as she could, leaving Mrs. Goodman’s myriad questions about what had happened in the woods and on the raid that morning unanswered.

Half an hour later, she watched from the door of her own house as her father and the half-dozen men who had ridden with him returned to the crowd awaiting them in the Square, bringing with them two strangers, bound together astride a barebacked pack horse.

The posse halted, and her father dismounted. He pulled his saddlebags free, lifted one flap, and upended them. Bits of metal and glass scattered across the stones of the Square, glittering in the sun like diamonds.

Joshua Foster drove his boot down onto one of the largest pieces of glass, grinding it to dust against the rock. “Thus do we treat all the works of Satan!” he shouted. The Chosen cheered.

Then he saw Beth and motioned her to him. She reluctantly obeyed, holding her arms tight to her body against the deepening chill. From the other side of his saddlebags he pulled out her old brown cloak; as she took it, he bent down and kissed her on the cheek. “I’m proud of you, Beth,” he whispered, then stood and shouted, “Let my daughter’s devotion be an example to us all! It was she who discovered these pawns of Satan and exerted all her strength to warn us!” He motioned to John Ramsey, whose horse was leading the packhorse bearing the prisoners; Ramsey slipped out of his saddle, then jerked the two strangers to the ground so roughly they almost fell.

One was a tall, stout man, his black hair and scraggly beard salted with gray, his face brown and deeply lined. The other, thinner and younger, had dirty blonde hair and a straggly mustache. Both looked around sullenly, and for a moment the older man’s eyes met Beth’s.

She read anger and disgust there, and suddenly all she wanted to do was escape. “May I go now, Father?” she said, looking down at her hands, twisting the rough wool of her cloak.

“Of course,” he murmured. “You should rest before the feast.” He lifted her chin and smiled at her. “You’re a hero, you know.” Then he released her and turned toward the crowd as she walked quickly toward their house. “These strangers will be questioned,” his voice boomed out again. “They may yet redeem themselves by telling us where they found these tools of the Devil. And tonight at the feast, perhaps, we will be able to celebrate not only a great day in our Crusade, but the hope of more great days to come…”

The front door banged shut and cut off his voice. In the dim hallway just beyond Beth pressed her cheek against the smooth, dark wood paneling and closed her eyes.

“You’re a hero,” her father had told her. A hero—to the Chosen.

But not to herself.

Buy it on Smashwords!

I was an early adopter when it came to ebooks in more ways than one. I owned a very early dedicated ebook reader, the HieBook, and read a ton of stuff on it. But I was also an early adopter as a writer, publishing my YA fantasy novel Spirit Singer with Awe-Struck Publishing (now owned by Mundania Press LLC) 10 years ago…you know, clever me, before ebooks really took off. As an experiment, it wasn’t entirely a bust, by any means. Spirit Singer won a couple of epublishing awards (the 2002 Dream Realm Award for excellence in epublished young adult science fiction, fantasy and horror and the 2002 EPPIE Award for best electronically published young adult fiction), and more importantly from a monetary point of view, the Regina Book Award for best book by a Regina author, at the 2002 Saskatchewan Book Awards. That award came with $1,500…which is a good thing, because I wouldn’t have made any money off of it otherwise. Those $1.50 royalty cheques just don’t add up very fast. (Technically it wasn’t the ebook version that won the Regina Book Award; it was a print-on-demand paperback, since only printed books are eligible. It may have been the first POD title ever entered.)

Fast forward to the present. Ebooks are finally taking off, and more and more authors are releasing titles as ebook originals (and more and more publishers, like my own, DAW Books, are releasing their books in both print and ebook formats.) And so…I’m experimenting with ebooks again.

I currently have four available through Smashwords and on Kindle.

First, there’s Spirit Singer, reborn as a modern ebook,  though it began life in the age when ebooks were sometimes sold on floppy disks. (No, it’s true! You can look it up!). Second, there’s my duology about far-future street musician Kit Murdoch, better known as Andy Nebula. When Roussan Publishers went under, freeing up all rights to my printed YA SF novel Andy Nebula: Interstellar Rock Star, I turned it into an ebook. The sequel, Andy Nebula: Double Trouble was written and ready to go when Roussan failed, and so it had languished until it, too, could be made into an ebook–which it has been.

And then there’s The Chosen. This was a very early novel of mine–in fact, it might have been only the second I wrote as an adult–that came very close to being published by a Saskatchewan publishing house maybe 25 years ago. That never happened, and I was unable to find another home for the book (although I did use it as the basis for the material I worked on in a screenwriting class I took–any movie producers interested, I have a treatment!). Just a few years ago I polished it up a bit (it got a bit longer in the process), and now, at last, it sees the light of day as an ebook. As I like to say, it was dystopian SF before dystopian SF was cool!

Details follow, with links to the books on Smashwords and Amazon. Go forth and read! It would warm the cockles of my heart, and you want me to have warm heart-cockles, don’t you?

Spirit Singer

The Chosen

It’s late in the 21st century, and after economic collapse and a “small” war, civilization is in pretty bad shape. On the Canadian prairies, a religious cult, the Chosen, has dedicated itself to destroying all vestiges of the old technological civilization–but only a few hundred kilometres away, the Technos are just as dedicated to rebuilding it. The two cultures are on a collision course that could mean the first war of the new era, and mutual destruction, unless the teenage daughter of the cult’s leader and a boy from the Technos can overcome their own personal differences and prevent it…no matter what the cost.

Buy through Smashwords

Andy Nebula: Interstellar Rock Star

Kit is a tough streetkid from a backwater planet, living hand-to-mouth as a musician. Then he meets Rain, a tentacled alien, and Qualls, a talent scout. Overnight, Kit becomes Andy Nebula, interstellar rock sensation. But as his star starts to fade, Kit and his young fan Meta find themselves caught up in something far less glamorous–and more deadly!–than the galactic music industry.

Buy through Smashwords

Andy Nebula: Double Trouble

Kit is no longer Andy Nebula, interstellar rock star. Reduced to playing dingy dives, he agrees to reprise Andy Nebula for a one-time benefit concert…only to discover that someone else is passing himself off as Andy Nebula instead. Soon Kit, Meta and Rain, the alien cop, find themselves caught up in an interstellar assassination plot that endangers not only their lives, but galactic peace.

Buy through Smashwords

It’s of roughly the same era as “Janitor Work,” which I posted here a few weeks ago.

The other interesting thing about “The Minstrel”: it was the basis for my first post-university novel, a book that never sold…but that came agonizingly close, as I found out at the World Science Fiction Convention in Winnipeg in 1994. Josepha Sherman was editing science fiction at Walker & Co. in the late 1980s early 1990s (I don’t remember the precise dates) and I’d sent the novel version of this story to her. She liked it, but said it needed quite a bit of additional work…which I did, adding several chapters, in fact. I sent it back, but again it was turned down.

What I found out in Winnipeg, as she recounted the tale while on a panel, was that she’d been “ready to make an offer”…but then the publisher died and his replacement decreed that Walker would no longer publish science fiction. And so my novel-writing career remained stalled for many more years.

Such is life, and writing. But I’ve got plans to go over Star Song (as I eventually titled the novel) and release it myself as an ebook. So I may yet have the last laugh!

For now, enjoy “The Minstrel.”

###

The Minstrel

By Edward Willett

The music sang of the infinite Dark and the suns that burn within it. It shimmered like starlight on alien seas, and whispered with the voices of strange winds.

#

Kriss stopped playing, and as the last chord died slowly away, sat quietly with his head bowed, cradling his touchlyre in his arms. The orange glow of the oil lamps gleamed on the instrument’s polished black wood and burnished copper.

One by one those in the smoky bar, mostly offworlders, rose from their tables and came to the low platform where Kriss sat to drop coins into the wooden bowl at his feet. The murmur of their conversation was slow to resume.

When the last had come and gone Kriss stood, bowed, and left the stage. He divided the money with the innkeeper, then slipped the touchlyre into its soft leather case and went out into the chill night air.

In the cobblestoned street he stopped and looked up at the stars blazing in the night sky, as he did every evening when he finished playing, burning into his mind’s eye the goal for which he had striven, it seemed, forever.

Two local men staggered by. One poked the other with his elbow and nodded toward Kriss. “Uppity offworlder,” he whispered loudly. His companion made an obscene gesture at the boy, then, laughing, they weaved on down the street.

Kriss clenched his fists, then spun and strode in the opposite direction.

Where the cobblestones ended and concrete began, artificial lights banished the night. At the sight of them Kriss forgot the drunks’ insults and broke into a run. In a moment he reached the tall wire fence that surrounded the spaceport and pressed his face against the cold mesh, peering through it at the starships, silver spires that seemed to soar skyward even though standing still. The lights glittered on their mirrored sides.

There lay the path to the stars, away from this hated planet where he didn’t belong, couldn’t belong, though he had been raised on it. The drunks had known; they had seen his height and his blonde hair and had known he came from the stars.

Somewhere out there must be his true home; somewhere out there he had to have a family. His parents were dead, but they had to have had parents of their own, brothers, sisters…

He blinked away tears, and, disgusted with his own self-pity, turned away from the fence and set out along a dark, garbage-strewn alley for his barren lodging, a tiny attic room above a seamstress’s shop. He was fooling himself if he thought he would ever leave Farr’s World, he thought bitterly. The spacecrews called him “worldhugger”; neither Union nor Family, and without contacts in either of those spacefaring groups, he could never gain a berth as a crewmember, and he could entertain in spaceport bars for the rest of his life without raising enough money to buy passage into orbit, much less to another world.

Lost in dark thoughts, he didn’t realize he was being followed until a hand touched his shoulder.

He instinctively spun away from that touch and pressed his back against a rough stone wall, his heart pounding, his arms wrapped protectively around the touchlyre.

“I mean you no harm,” said the man who faced him. Shadows hid his features. “I only want to talk.”

Kriss did not relax. “Then talk.”

“What is your name?”

Kriss said nothing.

“Perhaps if you knew mine…? I am Carl Vorlick, a dealer in alien curiosities.” He waited.

“My name’s Kriss Lemarc,” Kriss said finally. “Why?”

Vorlick ignored the question. “And how old are you?”

“Fifteen, standard.”

“That would be just about right.” Vorlick’s eyes glinted faintly in the starlight. “I heard you play in Andru’s—remarkable. Almost as though you projected emotion, not just sound.”

Pleased despite himself, Kriss shrugged. “My instrument is…special.”

“Indeed it is. And very beautiful. May I…?” He held out his hand.

Kriss looked up and down the alley, but saw no hope of rescue. Slowly he unfolded the leather covering and took out the touchlyre. The copper fingerplates and strings shone even in that dark corner.

Vorlick took a handlight from his pocket and played the beam over the instrument. Kriss caught a quick glimpse of a lean face with thin lips and ice-blue eyes before the light switched off. “Lovely,” the man murmured. “How does it work?”

Kriss hesitated. “I hear music in my mind, and the touchlyre plays it,” he said finally. “I can’t explain any better than that.”

“Touchlyre?”

“That’s what I call it. I don’t know what its real name is.”

“Where did it come from?”

“It belonged to my parents. But I don’t even remember them.”

“Your parents, yes.” Vorlick paused for a long moment, then said, “You desire to leave this world, don’t you?”

Kriss said nothing. This stranger knew too much. Once again he glanced up and down the alley. He would have welcomed even the two drunks who had insulted him earlier—but there was no one.

But Vorlick took his silence as consent. “I own a ship.”

Kriss stiffened. “What do you want from me?” he demanded; but inside he already knew.

“The price is small: your instrument. Give the touchlyre to me, and I will take you into space.”

Kriss looked down at the touchlyre. “It’s that valuable?”

“To the right person, everything is valuable. Your music spoke of your longing for the stars—some of those hardened spacefarers in Andru’s were near tears. You value the stars, I value your instrument. A fair exchange.”

“A musician once told me there isn’t another instrument like this one in the galaxy.”

“But there are other instruments. You could choose from those of a thousand worlds. Surely one construction of wood and metal is not so different from another?”

To go to the stars, Kriss thought. To cross the great Dark, to breathe the air of alien worlds, to perhaps touch Mother Earth herself…

…to find a family…

Almost unconsciously, his arms loosened from the touchlyre. He looked up again at the stars, drank in their light with his eyes—and made up his mind. “Agreed.”

Vorlick rubbed his hands together. “Excellent! Come to the spaceport gate at dawn. Bring the instrument.” He turned and vanished into the darkness.

Kriss listened to his footsteps fade, then turned and walked slowly on toward his room. He climbed the familiar, rickety wooden stairs on the outside of the old brick building, past the dingy window through which shone a faint yellow light from the seamstress’s lantern, unlocked his door and went in. Lighting his single candle, he looked around the tiny chamber. The ceiling with its small square skylight was simply the underside of the roof, and so low on one side he had to stoop to get to his bed, the only furniture aside from a rough-hewn table and rusty metal chair. I won’t miss this, he thought. I won’t miss anything on this planet.

But he didn’t feel euphoric, as he had always expected to feel when he finally found a way to fulfill his dream. Instead he felt—numb? No, not numb—depressed.

Why? he asked himself. I’m going to the stars—all my dreams are coming true!

But the feeling persisted. As always when his spirits needed lifting, Kriss took out the touchlyre. Playing it was cathartic; he could lose himself in music as so many others on this impoverished planet did in wine.

He held the instrument in his lap for a moment, running his fingers over the sinuous curves of its velvety, unvarnished wood. Then he raised it and placed his hands on the copper plates.

The strings screamed: discordant, angry, ear-shattering. Kriss snatched his hands away. The touchlyre had never made a sound like that before! Had he broken it? He touched the plates again, cautiously, and again the instrument howled.

Disgusted, he tossed it on the table. If it was broken, he was well rid of it. He’d find himself another instrument, from one of those thousand worlds of which Vorlick had spoken. He undressed, blew out the candle and crawled into bed.

Just before sleep claimed him, he thought he heard the instrument’s strings softly humming; but of course that was impossible, with no one touching the plates.

He dreamed. He was performing in Andru’s, as he had done so many times, playing of his longing for the stars. That longing filled him with almost physical pain, but pain he could bear as long as he kept playing.

But suddenly the touchlyre disappeared, and he stood on an alien planet, strange and beautiful. Then another new world surrounded him, and another, and another, flashing past faster and faster, but no matter how exotic, how wonderful, they did not satisfy his longing, and the ache grew ever more acute.

And then he came to a world where dwelt a man who, he somehow knew, was his father’s brother. His uncle rose to greet him, laughing, and hugged him, welcoming him to his family…

…but still the longing burned within Kriss, stronger than ever, so strong he suddenly knew it could never be quenched, and he broke away and screamed and screamed and—

—woke, gasping, bathed in sweat, his blanket a tangled heap on the floor and the scream echoing in his ears. His scream—or—he glanced sharply at the touchlyre, barely visible in the faint illumination from the skylight. It seemed to him he could hear the strings vibrating down to stillness, as though a mighty chord had just been wrung from them.

Nonsense, he told himself. He retrieved his blanket. No dreams troubled him the rest of the night.

In the morning he rose very early, put the touchlyre and the few clothes he owned into a backpack, and headed down the stairs and through a thin morning mist to the spaceport. The mountains towering above the city still hid the sun, but light filled the sky.

Vorlick waited at the spaceport gate. “Did you bring it?” he asked at once.

“Yes,” Kriss said, startled by the blunt question.

“Take it out. I want to see it in the daylight.”

Nonplused, Kriss did as he was told. But as he took the touchlyre from its case it hummed to life in his hands, and from it crashed a single explosive chord that echoed through the silent streets. Vorlick stumbled back as though slapped. “What—”

Kriss didn’t hear him. The chord had sent the whole dream of the night before flashing through his mind, and it suddenly made perfect sense to him. His longing wasn’t so much to see the stars, or even to find his family, but to find himself. He was doing that, bit by bit, through the touchlyre, journeying into his own soul to find out what kind of person he was, healing the wound made when he was orphaned on Farr’s World.

Without the touchlyre, he could never finish that healing process. Wandering around the stars with the touchlyre lost to him forever would only hurt him worse; and even if he found a family, he would have lost something just as important.

Kriss’s eyes suddenly focused on Vorlick. “No.”

“No?”

“I’ve changed my mind. I’ll keep the touchlyre. I’ll find my own way into space.” He started to turn away.

Vorlick reached into his pocket and pulled out something metallic and deadly looking. “Stand still,” he said, his voice as cold as space. “That’s not one of your options. You don’t even know what you have, but I do. It’s a working artifact from an ancient, alien civilization, uncovered by two archaeologists on a planet we may never find again. They fled here with it when they realized someone knew they had it and was out to get it.” He smiled humorlessly. “Me, of course. It was almost fifteen standard years ago. I tracked them here, only to find they had died in an aircar crash. I assumed the artifact was destroyed with them.

“But then, just a few months ago, a spy on this world told me of a strange instrument in the hands of a boy—an instrument unlike any other.

“I did some checking. I found that the archaeologists had an infant son shortly after they arrived here, who was not in the aircar when it crashed—a baby who has become a young man—the minstrel with the unique instrument.

“So now, Kriss Lemarc, though I must withdraw my offer of placing you in a ship’s crew, I give you your parents: Jon and Memory Lemarc, archaeologists. And I also give you knowledge of what your ‘touchlyre’ is: the only relic of an ancient alien culture, and worth a fortune you cannot imagine.

“In exchange for that information, you will now give me this instrument.” Vorlick put his hand on it. “Or I will kill you.”

Kriss tore the touchlyre away from him. “No!”

And from the strings that cry of defiance exploded again, with a force that surpassed sound. Kriss, paralyzed, felt all his violent emotions, fear, awe, defiance, hatred, pouring through his hands into the touchlyre, adding to the force it hurled at Vorlick like a weapon. The power coursed through Kriss like a cleansing tide—and he knew he couldn’t stop it if he wanted to.

Vorlick’s face paled and slackened and his eyes glazed, then closed. The gun dropped from his nerveless hand as his legs buckled, and he fell to his knees and then to the ground.

Finally it ended. Kriss felt, not empty of emotion, but as if he now had room to truly experience and understand his emotions for the first time, as though a gritty residue clogging his mind had been washed away.

He looked down at Vorlick and pitied him. The man lay unconscious, and Kriss knew he had nothing more to fear from him.

Then he raised the touchlyre, silent again, and held it at arm’s length, studying it in the first rays of the sun, streaming through a cleft in the mountains behind him like searchlights. The orange beams made the wood and copper glow, reflecting the power hidden inside the ancient artifact. Just what that power was, and where it came from, he might never know: but he knew it was on his side.

He let his gaze travel to the tall starships beyond the gate, stark against the brightening sky. Above the tallest a single star still outshone the dawn light.

Someday, Kriss thought. Someday I’ll make that journey.

That dream was still his: but now he knew the real journey lay within him. He turned his back on the spaceport and walked back to his attic room.

#

In a bar called Andru’s, near the only spaceport of an obscure planet, starship crewmembers come to sit quietly and listen to a boy play a strange instrument of space-black wood and burnished copper.

His music sings of the infinite Dark and the suns that burn within it. It shimmers like starlight on alien seas, and whispers with the voices of strange winds.

And you know what? That would have warmed the cockles of Hugo Gernsback’s heart.

What’s that? You never heard of Hugo Gernsback? Well, you’re about to!

Modern science fiction stands primarily on the shoulders of two writers: France’s Jules Verne and England’s H. G. Wells. Verne played on the public’s interest in burgeoning technological and scientific advances as the 19th century advanced, and told stories of fantastic journeys to the moon, beneath the seas, to the center of the Earth, and even Around the World in 80 Days.

Wells focused less on the future of technology than on the future of society. The Time Machine was a parable concerning future relations between the working and ruling classes. And The War of the Worlds, the first alien invasion tale, was more about the insignificance of humanity in an uncaring universe than the likelihood of life on Mars.

Yet neither Wells nor Verne is considered “the father of science fiction.” That title belongs to Hugo Gernsback.

Gernsback wasn’t a writer, at least not to start with. Rather, he was a pioneer in the fields of electricity, radio and television. He sold America’s first home radio kit in 1904 ($7.50 at Macy’s). When government regulation of radio put him out of business, he repackaged the left-over parts as kids’ electronics kits. He also founded New York radio station WRNY, where some of the world’s first regular TV broadcasts began in 1928.

But he also moved into publishing. In 1908 he founded the world’s first radio magazine, Modern Electrics. For a 1911 issue, finding himself short of material, he filled a few empty pages with a piece of fiction, entitled “Ralph 124C 41+: A Romance of the Year 2660.” The story was so popular he wrote more, even publishing them as a novel in 1925.  As a prose stylist, Gernsback left a lot to be desired (“Bang! Bang! Bang! Three shots rang out! Each more horrible than the last!”) But he wasn’t worried about style. He used his stories to toss off scientific predictions like one of his electrical devices might toss off sparks.

Microfiche, skywriting, solar power, holograms, fax machines, aluminum foil and a “parabolic wave reflector” (radar) were all part of Ralph’s daily life—but certainly not yet part of the daily lives of Gernsback’s readers.

Based on Ralph’s success, Gernsback founded a new magazine: Amazing Stories. The first issue from April 1926 (which you can read online, along with many other old magazines, at pulpmags.org) featured old stories by Verne and Wells and Edgar Allen Poe, but was nevertheless, Gernsback claimed in his introduction, “entirely new—entirely different” from other fiction magazines, because it would be devoted to what he called “scientifiction.”

He defined scientifiction as “a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision.” His rationale for the new magazine could have been written yesterday: “It must be remembered that we live in an entirely new world. Two hundred years ago, stories of this kind were not possible. Science, through its various branches of mechanics, electricity, astronomy, etc., enters so intimately into all our lives today, and we are so much immersed in this science, that we have become rather prone to take new inventions and discoveries for granted. Our entire mode of living has changed with the present progress, and it is little wonder, therefore, that many fantastic situations—impossible 100 years ago—are brought about today.”

Gernsback saw the new genre as a way of “imparting knowledge, and even inspiration, without once making us aware that we are being taught,” and that’s exactly how it worked out: many of the children who read Amazing Stories under the covers went on to become scientists, engineers or science fiction writers themselves. Gernsback, as Ray Bradbury put it, “made us fall in love with the future.”

Implicit in science fiction is the realization that the future will not be like today, and in both its “Vernesian” (focused on the science and technology) and “Wellsian” (focused on the effects of science and technology on society) strains, prepares us and excites us for—and sometimes alarms and warns us about—what that future may hold.

Hugo Gernsback died in 1967, not quite living long enough to see humans walk on the moon. Science has honored him by naming a lunar crater after him. Science fiction, meanwhile, hands out awards every year for the best new work in the field.

They’re called Hugos.

(The image:the cover of Amazing Stories, Volume 1, Number 1, April 1926.)

The photo of the lunar surface is from Apollo 17.

Darryl Norton looked glumly at the dust-covered object before him.  It seemed to him he had seen an inordinate number of dust-covered objects in his short life.

Yet he had been very pleased when his father had given him this job in the Lunar Survey and Exploration Corps.  Although Apollo City offered many kinds of entertainment, it was still a very small community, isolated by the void of space and the desolate lunar surface.  The Corps had seemed like the place to find some adventure.

Some adventure, Darryl thought.  He reached for the vacuum nozzle.  It was his job to clean dust from equipment that had been used on the surface, like this seismic charge.

Of course, it hadn’t actually been used.  Someone had just set it on the surface and brought it back.  But any equipment like that had to be cleaned—by Darryl.

At least it was the last item.  Darryl finished going over it once and was starting to pry into some of the harder-to-reach places when his wristwatch alarm went off.  He looked at it, startled.  1800 already?  In just thirty minutes the Apollo City spinball team would be playing the L-5s for the off-Earth championship.

He quickly examined the charge.  Any dust left on it wasn’t visible; no one would notice.  He grabbed it and spun away from the table.

As he turned, the charge slipped out of his hand.  He had given it enough momentum to send it crashing hard against the metal floor, but when he picked it up, he could see no damage.  He placed it with the rest of the clean equipment, logged “work completed” into the computer and left, whistling.

The next day Darryl’s father, Philip Norton, surprised him by taking him to the crawler bay, where he and a geologist, Andy Davis, were getting ready for a two-day trip to set out seismographic equipment.  Then his father surprised him even more by telling him he was going to be the third crewmember.

As Darryl climbed in through the crawler’s airlock he hoped he was done with janitor work for good.

A few hours later he stood at the bottom of a deep crater.  The crawler, his father and Davis were all out of sight beyond the crater wall.  Darryl had finished setting up his segment of the instrument package, and was simply enjoying the solitude, solitude as complete as though he were alone on an alien planet in another solar system.  The voices crackling in his helmet, after all, could be coming from the orbiting starship, where the captain awaited his report…

Abruptly the voices ceased.  A cloud of dust spurted over the crater wall and rapidly settled.  Frightened, Darryl scrambled out of the crater—and froze when he saw the crawler.

Something had torn a gaping hole in its side.

“Dad!” Darryl screamed, and ran toward the vehicle, awkward in his suit.  If the hole was in the crew room, everyone inside without a suit was dead—and he could see no one outside.  He called his father again, but only static answered.

He reached the crawler, slipping and falling as he tried to stop.  He got clumsily to his feet and hammered the airlock control with his fist.  Nothing happened.

He grabbed the wheel to open the lock manually and turned it.  The door slid slowly open, and he scrambled through, closed the door behind him, and opened the valve that would fill the lock with air from inside the crawler—if any air remained.

With relief he felt a blast of wind against his glove, and the moment the pressures had equalized he swung open the inside door and burst throught.

Smoke from shorting electrical equipment filled the room.  A shattered suit life-support pack lay against one wall.  Davis crouched on the floor, bent over…

“Dad!”  Darryl tore off his helmet and crashed to his knees beside his father.

“I’ll take care of him,” Davis snapped.  “You get a fire extinguisher and put out those electrical fires.”

“But—”

“Move!”

Heartsick, Darryl did as he was told.  As soon as possible he was back.  “How is he?”

“Not good.”  Davis injected something into the injured man.  “He was recharging that life support pack when the explosion happened.  All the electrical systems shorted out, and the suit’s oxygen tank blew up.  He took a heavy shock and he’s cut up, too.”  He looked up at Darryl.  “I won’t lie to you, kid…if he doesn’t get help, he’ll die.”

“But what happened?”

“A seismic charge must have exploded in storage and ruptured one of the big, high-pressure oxygen tanks.  That blew out the side of the crawler and took the electrical systems with it.  But there’s no reason a charge should just…What’s the matter?”

Darryl had gone white, and he felt sick.  He could imagine only too well what might have set off a seismic charge prematurely—if the outer casing was cracked, and dust got into the mechanism.

Davis helped him to a chair.  “Are you hurt, too?”

Darryl looked up at him with eyes that didn’t see.  “I caused the explosion,” he whispered.

“What?”

“I caused it!” Darryl cried.  “I was cleaning a seismic charge yesterday—I was in a hurry—it slipped and hit the floor—and I didn’t report it, or even check it closely.  It must have been damaged.”

Davis, who had been bent over him in concern, straightened.  “You little fool!” he exploded.  Darryl cringed, certain the geologist would strike him.  He didn’t, quite.  “I should toss you out the airlock.  But I guess there’s no point, is there?  You’ve killed yourself as well as your father and me!”

“Can’t you radio for help?” Darryl said faintly.

“The radio’s ruined.  And since we just made our daily report, we won’t even be missed for 24 hours.  Your father won’t last that long, and neither will we.  We have exactly 15 hours before the emergency life support gives out.” ¯Davis turned away from Darryl and slumped in another chair, his eyes closed.

Only 15 hours… “There must be something we can do,” Darryl said desperately.  Then he saw his helmet where he had dropped it.  He got to his feet.

Davis opened his eyes.  “What are you doing?” he demanded sharply.

Darryl fastened his suit and picked up the helmet.  “I’m walking back to Apollo for help.”

“You’re crazy.  We’re four hours out by crawler; that’s close to twelve, walking.”

“My life support pack is less than an hour used and we’ve got one full one.  Each one is good for six hours.”

“That’s not enough.”

“That’s just enough.”

Davis jumped up and grabbed the helmet.  “I won’t let you!  You’ll just be killing yourself!”

With more strength than he knew he possessed, Darryl tore the helmet away.  “I caused the explosion,” he said grimly.  “I’m responsible for Dad being hurt.  I have to do something, and I’m the only one who =can= do anything.  My suit is too small for you, and yours is damaged.  If I don’t try, we’re all dead, so if I try and fail…it doesn’t make any difference.”  But his heart pounded as he said it, and his palms were wet.

Davis looked at him, then down at Philip Norton.  “I can’t stop you, short of tying you up,” he said at last.  “So go ahead.”  He lay a heavy hand on Darryl’s shoulder.  “Forget what I said before.  Those charges shouldn’t damage that easily.  It’s not your fault.”

“It’s my fault for not doing my job,” said Darryl, and clamped the helmet down.

At first he found the going easy, since the crawler had had to stick to level terrain.  But as foot followed foot for mile after mile and the hours passed, the pace began to tell.  His legs ached after the first hour; he had never walked more than a mile at a time in his life.

He rested briefly when he felt he had to, but after several hours there came a time when he felt he could walk no longer.  The pain in his legs was too much, and he couldn’t get his breath¯.¯.¯. couldn’t get¯.¯.¯.

His air supply was running out!  He fumbled with the pack, hit the cutoff and felt the flow of air cease.  He would have to breathe the air in his suit while he made the change.

If only he hadn’t waited so long!  His hands were clumsy and his eyelids heavy.  The new pack was almost too heavy to lift, despite the low gravity, and his tingling fingers fumbled the connections.

But finally cool, fresh air flooded his suit and lungs, and with it came new energy.  He wondered how much of his fatigue had been due to his lack of oxygen.  With renewed hope, he pressed on.

Now, though, he knew the feel of the death that awaited his father and Davis if he failed—and if his father lived even that long.

Tears blinded him, and he blinked them away angrily.  Crying would do no good.  He had only one way to make up for his stupidity:  make it to Apollo and get help.

Time dragged on.  His footprints, sharp and clear in the harsh sunlight, stretched endlessly behind him.  The barren, blazing landscape seemed unchanging.  Darryl took to calling Apollo City constantly on his suit radio, but never got an answer.

Breathing became hard again, but this time there was no fresh air to be had.  He could only stagger on.

He tripped over a rock and discovered his eyes had been closed.  He tottered to his feet again.  Where were the crawler tracks?  He’d lost the—no, there they were.  How did they get over there? he wondered muzzily, but stumbled back to them.

Radio.  He should try the radio again.  “Apollo City—anyone!  Can you hear me?”  His voice came out in a croak.

He tripped and fell again.  His breath rasped in his ears as he struggled up.  The crawler tracks had moved again…it didn’t matter.  He had failed.  He had killed his father, and Davis, and now himself.  And I matter least of all, he thought.

He sank to his hands and knees, chest heaving, futilely trying to strain more oxygen from his nearly-exhausted air.

“…and I tell you, I heard something!”  The voice crackled in Darryl’s ears.  He found he was lying down again, and was faintly surprised at the softness of the rocky soil.

A different voice said, “You said you heard heavy breathing and someone mumbling.  I say you’re nuts.”

Darryl felt he was supposed to say something, something important.  But what?

“I know what I heard,” the first voice said stubbornly.  “Hello?  Come in, whoever you are.  Do you need help?”

Help.  That was it.  The word triggered Darryl’s sluggish brain.  “Help,” he tried saying.  His voice was ragged and hoarse, but the sound encouraged him.  “Help”!  Help me…”

“There is someone!  Close, too!”

“Over there—by those crawler tracks!”

A moment later Darryl felt himself being gently lifted.  He opened his eyes, which had somehow sagged shut, and caught a glimpse of the skeletal frame of an unpressurized lunar sled.  “Crawler…explosion…” he croaked.

“An explosion on a crawler? ¯Where?”

The metallic sheen of a spacesuit faceplate floated in front of Darryl’s eyes.  “What?” he said fuzzily.

“Where is the crawler?” the man said urgently.  The sled was underway.  A bump knocked Darryl’s head to one side, and he saw the lights of Apollo City, just over the ridge on which he had collapsed.  “Where is it?” the man said again.  “Come on, boy, you’ve got to tell us…”

Darryl made a supreme effort to make sense of the demand.  Numbers…the man wanted numbers.  The coordinates struggled to the surface of his mind and he whispered them before darkness swallowed him.

Darryl recovered quickly once air was restored to him, but for four days his father fought for life.  The shuttle from the orbiting station had rescued him and Davis barely in time.  Only when the doctors told Darryl his father was out of danger did he surrender completely to the rest they had prescribed for him.

When at last he was allowed to visit his father, he went into the room with mixed happiness and dread.  How could he face seeing his father lying in a hospital bed when he was the one who had put him there?

His father looked pale and drawn, but he smiled when Darryl came in.  “Was that enough adventure for you, son?”

Darryl couldn’t smile back.  “It was my fault,” he blurted.  “I dropped a charge, and didn’t check it or report it.  I could have killed you!”

His father quit smiling.  “You saved my life,” he said quietly.

“It wouldn’t have been in danger except for me!”

“We’ll never know that for sure, Darryl.  A lot of things could have caused that explosion.  You can’t be sure it was the charge you dropped.

“But what else—”

“It doesn’t matter,” his father said firmly.  “Come here.”

Darryl went closer, and his father clasped his hand.  “Now, listen to me.  Not doing your job properly was irresponsible and stupid.  You know that better than I do after what happened.  And it may even have caused the accident as you say.”  He squeezed Darryl’s hand hard.  “But even if it did, you more than made up for it.  I’m proud of you, son.

Darryl couldn’t speak, but he returned the squeeze: and, strangely, he felt not as if he had just ended a long, adventurous journey, but as if he were beginning one.

Not surprisingly, science fiction (though not overly successful at predicting its rise) has taken to this futuristic resource in a big way. But how to choose which sites to visit?

Here’s one way: visit the ones I visit!

Let’s start with general news sites. I’ve previously mentioned Locus Online, the website of the most important science fiction news magazine. Besides publishing news, links to interviews and reviews and more, there alone you’ll find a links page directing you to more sites than you could possible visit without the assistance of an army of clones. Locus Online is always at the top of my list.

I also like SF Signal, edited by John DeNardo. I like many of its regular features, including SF Tidbits, which provides links to interviews, news, articles, art and more every day of the week. There’s also a weekly roundup of free online fiction and the regular Mind Meld feature where writers are asked their opinion about some related topic (i.e., “The best opening scenes in science fiction,” “How to create drama for posthumans.”)

Then there’s SF Scope, “your source of news about the speculative fiction fields,” which is just what it says on the tin. Its many news and opinion features are edited by Ian Randall Strock (who bought two short stories from me back when he edited Artemis Magazine).

A third one is SF Site. This one is very focused on books, with tons of reviews, along with interviews and more. It has regular columns on both TV SF and graphic novels.

Moving on to writers’ organizations, there are three to mention. First and foremost is the website of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, which includes news about members, publishing news and (most valuable for those wanting to break into the field) some well-worth-your-time articles on the practice of writing SF and fantasy.

On this side of the border, there’s the site SF Canada, our homegrown equivalent of SFWA (I was president for a couple of years).

For those on the dark side, I should also point out the Horror Writers’ Association, at the easy-to-remember horror.org.

Looking for places to sell your science fiction and fantasy? There are numerous market-listing sites. One I like goes by the unlikely name of Ralan’s SpecFic and Horror Webstravaganza—or just Ralan.com for short. Ralan’s website has been around since 1994, and breaks down markets by pay: pro, semi-pro, token and “expo” (i.e., no pay!). He lists both book and short-fiction markets, and also tracks response times.

Of course, just about everyone who is already selling science fiction and fantasy has a website. I have two: edwardwillett.com and leearthurchane.com. One you should definitely check out (besides mine!) is Robert J. Sawyer’s, at sfwriter.com (Rob was a very early Web pioneer, which is how he landed such an awesome URL; SFWRITER is also his license plate!).

You should also pay a visit to Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s site. Rusch is the author of the invaluable Freelancer’s Survival Guide, and regularly posts long, thoughtful essays on the state of publishing today—and how writers can surf the waves of change and hopefully arrive safe on the other side of that dangerous reef we call electronic publishing.

There are some interesting group blogs run by science fiction writers, as well. Deadline Dames is a fun one: subtitled “Nine authors, one website, no excuses,” it details the writing adventures of Devon Monk, Jackie Kessler, Jenna Black, Karen Mahoney, Keri Arthur, Lilith Saintcrow, Rachel Vincent, Rinda Elliott and Toni Andrews, working mainly in the field of urban fantasy.

I also like Science Fiction and Fantasy Novelists, an invitation-only group blog with an impressive list of contributors and always-interesting posts. (I particularly recommend “A Writer’s Letter to Santa,” which any writer, SF- or non, should find amusing.

Finally, no list of sites would be complete without Writer Beware, a publishing industry watchdog group sponsored by SFWA with additional support from the Mystery Writers of America. Writer Beware “shines a bright light into the dark corners of the shadow-world of literary scams, schemes, and pitfalls” and also provides “industry news, writing advice, and a special focus on the wacky things that happen at the fringes of the publishing world.” If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Check it out at Writer Beware first!

This only scratches the surface. There are dozens more that could be listed. But the Web being the linkful place it is, any one of these sites will lead you to some of those dozens more.

And when you think about it, what better use could there be of today’s science-fictional technology than using it to learn more about science fiction?

That opening was:

Emily streaked through the phosphorescent sea, her wake a comet-tail of pale green light, her close-cropped turquoise hair surrounded by a glowing pink aurora. The water racing through her gill-slits smelled of blood.

As the week progressed, I attempted to turn that opening into a short story. And did so–but I never submitted the story. Before I got back to it, DAW picked up Lost in Translation, and Ethan Ellenberg agreed to be my agent, and we needed something to propose to DAW for my next book. I constructed an entire novel around that initial opening sentence: Marseguro. Terra Insegura followed, and this April, the omnibus edition of the two of them together, The Helix War (that’s its cover above, obviously).

But lo and behold, that never-submitted short story still lurks on my hard drive…and here it is. Those who have read Marseguro will see a lot of elements here that made it into the final book. If you haven’t read Marseguro, well…you should! And you can, when The Helix War is released on April 4.

Without further ado…

***

Sins of the Father

By Edward Willett

As his hoverboat burst into flames, Richard Hansen plunged into the water.

Thanks to the envirosuit, he felt no shock of cold, no sensation of pressure as he let himself sink into the darkness. But he was shocked and under pressure all the same.

The hunterbot had fired on him!

By God, I’ll have someone disfellowshipped for this when I get back to Safehaven, he thought.

He looked up at the bottom of the hoverboat’s hull, outlined by the red glow of the fire consuming it. If I ever get back, he amended. Something cold wound its way down his spine, and for a moment he thought his envirosuit had sprung a leak. But then he recognized the sensation for what it really was:

Fear.

Without the hoverboat, the only way he was going to get back to Safehaven was to swim. He hadn’t come more than twenty kilometers or so since he’d left the harbor that morning, so it wasn’t impossible–but it wouldn’t be quick, or easy. Especially not for him. He might be a Superior Deacon in the Office of Developing Omniscience, but he normally worked surrounded by dataspheres and holodisplays, not out in the field. He wasn’t exactly fat, but he wasn’t exactly fit, either.

Well, he’d do what he had to. One problem at a time, and his first concern was the hunterbot.

He needed information. “Jihad Revelation,” he said, and his faceplate lit with the head-up display for his Indweller, the microputer implanted at the base of his neck. “Display Safehaven Purification briefing material relevant to term ‘hunterbots.’”

Words appeared, apparently floating in the black water. “Despite the best efforts of the Holy Warriors, it is inevitable that some of the merpeople will escape; we have no technology on board capable of blocking the five-kilometer-wide mouth of the harbor. It is imperative that these escapees not be permitted to reach and warn other merpeople pods currently at sea or in other communities.

“In addition to warriors in hoverboats tasked with searching for and destroying any survivors, we will deploy a large number of hunterbots, programmed to detect, track and destroy merpeople, which they can locate through a variety of means, including infrared signature, visual recognition and DNA traces. To ensure maximum effectiveness, a positive ID through any one of these means will be sufficient to trigger an attack.”

It must have been the envirosuit, Richard thought. It made me look like a merman to that stupid ‘bot, never mind the fact I was driving an OHD hoverboat.

A stolen one, another part of his mind insisted on adding, but he argued it down. It all belongs to the Church of Humanity Purified, and I am a servant of the Church.

The argument would have held more water if he had bothered to tell the servants of the church actually responsible for the hoverboat that he was going to “borrow” it.

“Page,” he said, and another screen of text appeared. “Hunterbots come in a variety of specialized forms. Aerial ‘bots will identify targets and attack those that they can. Targets which cannot be attacked by the aerial ‘bots will be tracked and attacked by submariner ‘bots as soon as they can intercept.”

“Jehovallah preserve me!” Richard whispered.

How close would the submariner ‘bot be?

No way of knowing, but it wouldn’t be far away, not if it was meant to support the aerial ‘bot. It could arrive any minute.

He needed shelter. “Light!” he snapped, and his headlamp came on; it showed nothing but drifting white specks, thick as falling snow.

It might also show the aerial ‘bot or the probably incoming submariner ‘bot exactly where he was, he realized.

“Light off!” It wasn’t doing him any good anyway.

“Sonar!” he said instead. It would give him away even more surely than the light, but it was his only hope of locating any hiding places that might–please Jehovallah, did–exist among the rocks of the nearby cliff or the seafloor blow.

His display lit with a sonar-generated image of the surrounding five hundred meters or so. His heart almost stopped when he thought he saw a moving blip, but it vanished before he was even sure he had seen it. If it had been a submariner ‘bot, it wasn’t homing on him yet.

Probably just some local wildlife, he thought. I’ve got bigger fish to fry.

“Analyze,” he told his microputer. “Identify possible caves.”

Instantly the display showed him two bright green spots. One was far below his current depth, but the other was above him–right at the water level. Perfect, he thought. The deep one was designated 1 and the higher one 2. “Guide me to Target 2,” he said, and a spot of red light appeared in his faceplate, well off to the left. He turned until it was centered in the display, and swam toward it.

He kept the sonar sweep active–no point trying to hide now, he suspected–so he could see how close he was getting to his target. He was about twenty meters from it, and the red dot had grown into a ragged red, almost-circular opening sketched against the blackness, when the microputer beeped at him. “Moving target acquired,” its uninflected male voice murmured inside his head. A red blip appeared on his display, tagged, “Submariner Hunterbot Mark III.” Numbers below that told Richard the target had been acquired at 465 meters and was closing at 5.2 meters per second, and would intercept him in…

Less than two minutes.

Richard said a frantic prayer, but he said it silently: he needed all his breath for flight. He kicked as hard as he could, forcing his way through water that only pushed back harder the faster he tried to go, as though doing its best to hold him up for the hunterbot to catch.

The mouth of the cavern became visible in his helmet lamp–and at the same instant a red gleam like a single baleful eye appeared in the water behind him.

He hadn’t thought to read far enough in the briefing material to find out what weapons the submariner hunterbot was armed with. Just as he swam in through the cavern opening and dared to think he might yet escape, the first torpedo caught up with him. Only the fact he had turned abruptly upward, following the path of the cavern entrance, save him. The torpedo impacted on one of the rocks outside the cave mouth.

The explosion hit him like a hammer blow, hurling him upward in a welter of bubbles and mud, spinning over and over, out of control. Dazed, he felt himself slam into a rock, then another–a knife-like pain stabbed him in the chest–he collided with something else, this time more yielding–and then he erupted into open air, tossed up in a fountain of water like a leaf.

He splashed back down, went under, then rose to the surface and floated, face down, dazed, consciousness fading.

In the last instant before he blacked out, he saw the face of a young girl, eyes closed, drift upward into the light of his helmet lamp.

#

An insistent beeping roused him, an indeterminate time later.

He opened his eyes. He was floating on his back. His helmet lamp reflected off a wet rock ceiling, just a meter or two above his head. He hurt all over, but the worst pains seemed to be coming from his chest–he must have broken a rib–and his shoulder, which he thought he must have dislocated. “Revelation Jihad,” he whispered.

Nothing happened.

“Revelation Jihad,” he said louder.

Still nothing.

The shockwave must have disabled my microputer, he thought, and felt the first budding of panic.

Those buds blossomed into full-fledged terror when a girl suddenly erupted out of the water beside him and stared down into his face.

He screamed, and her eyes widened and she screamed back, then disappeared under the water again. That didn’t reassure him; she must be underneath him, and he knew what she was:

A mergirl. There could be no mistaking that strange face, with eyes the size of an old Earth anime character, a nose whose nostrils were sealed tight into almost invisible slits, a mouth filled with sharp, triangular teeth–and the triple-frilled gill flaps on each side of her shapely neck.

She was one of the very abominations he had brought the S.S. Simon the Zealot to this planet to destroy, and if she found that out…

He was hurt. He was unarmed. The merfolk were much stronger than ordinary humans, and they could breathe underwater. All she had to do was open his faceplate and drag him under, and she could finish the work of the hunterbots.

Maybe the hunterbots weren’t after me after all, he thought. Maybe it was really chasing her, and I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That might explain the sub-bot, but it didn’t begin to explain the air-bot.

He couldn’t stand the thought that she might be sneaking up on him from underwater, so he rolled over. The envirosuit, having gotten him to the surface (even if that surface was inside a cave) had no intention of letting him go under again without a fight. The buoyancy it had established made it possible for him to recline comfortably on top of the water; it also made what he intended to be a swift, decisive move into a clumsy, floundering, splashing struggle.

At the end of it, he was pointing face down…and there was the face again, looking up at him. Underwater, it looked less alien than it had in the air, more as if it belonged. The gill slits were open, pulsating gently as the frills weaved a slow, silent wave. The eyes glowed in his helmet lamp. A halo of close-cropped, green-tinged hair surrounded her skull.

He could see her body now, too, naked except for a silvery smooth belt around her hips. Her hands and feet were out of proportion to her body, bigger than they should have been. Her toes were almost as long as her fingers, and webbed; her fingers were also webbed. But the rest of her was disturbingly human–disturbing, because the sight of her nakedness woke in Richard a sexual urge that shamed him. It would be like mounting a sheep! he thought, deeply disgusted by his weakness. She may look human, but she’s an animal.

And then the “animal” spoke. “Who are you?” she said.

The sound was high-pitched and inhuman–whatever method she used for producing it obviously didn’t involve moving air over her vocal cords, since she didn’t breathe air–but perfectly clear in his ears.

Don’t answer, a wary part of him insisted, but, “Richard Hansen,” he heard himself saying. I’m trapped in here with her, he defended himself to himself. (He wanted to think of her as an “it,” but she was all-too-obviously female). I can’t very well ignore her. He didn’t give his title, though. She probably had no idea who had attacked her colony, or why–but some part of him, remembering those sharp teeth, seeing her sleek, muscular form, so at home in the water, thought it the better part of valor not to give her immediate reason to connect him to the slaughter of her friends and family.

“My name is Emily,” she said. She paused, as though having her own second thoughts, then finished, “Emily Hansen.”

Richard felt as though he’d been punched in the stomach. “We have…the same last name?” he finally managed to squeeze out through his constricted voice.

“I am a descendant of the Shaper,” Emily said. Her voice didn’t change–or if it did, he lacked the skill to interpret it–but her face showed pride. “Direct in line from his grandson, the First.”

Richard felt sick. His great-great-grandfather had not only polluted the human genestream, he had modified the gametes of his own son–Richard’s great-great-uncle–and his wife so that they gave birth to the first of these monsters.

He swallowed, hard. Throwing up in an envirosuit was a really bad idea. “How old are you?” he asked instead, trying to regain his mental balance.

“Nine and a half.”

Richard did the mental math. One Safehaven year equaled 1.42 Earth years, so that made her…it took him a few moments–he’d gotten used to having his microputer calculate things for him…

Oh, God. Not quite 13 1/2. Now he felt doubly ashamed of his lustful urges. She was only a child…

No. She was not a child. She was a monster–a young monster, perhaps, but a monster. And among monsters, she might very well already be a mother many times over. Maybe they gave birth to whole litters before they were ten and another one every year thereafter. He must not think of her as a human being…

…not when everyone she had every known was being turned into bite-sized bits of fish food back in the harbor.

She watched him closely, obviously wondering if he was going to say anything about her age. When he didn’t, she said, “Why do you wear that thing? How can you breathe?”

She doesn’t know, he thought. She doesn’t know who or what I am.

“It’s a…protection,” he said. “Things here are different from my…home waters. This keeps me from…getting sick.”

“Would it protect you from the machine thing outside?” she said, her voice going even higher. Eagerness? Fear? He couldn’t tell. “Could you help me get past it? I have to get back home. My mother will be worried.”

She doesn’t know, he thought again. She doesn’t know what has happened!

“Why were you out here?” he asked.

“Allie and I were camping,” Emily said. “Down in the Featherbed Fish Canyon. It’s a protected area, no large predators. My church has a cave down there. Allie and I are prayer buddies.”

Richard heard the words, but couldn’t believe he was hearing them. Didn’t want to believe he was hearing them. “Church?” he said. “Prayer?”

“Are you all right?” Emily sounded concerned.

No. No, I’m not.

Animals don’t go to church.

Animals don’t pray.

Animals…

“Where’s your friend? Allie?”

Emily’s eyes blinked rapidly. For the first time, Richard saw that she had a nictitating membrane that slid back and forth from side to side. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m so worried. When the machine thing came into the canyon we got separated…the machine went after her, first…I swam the other way. I was trying to get home, to get help, but the machine…” her voice trailed off.

Allie was almost certainly dead. Richard knew it, and suspected Emily knew it, too, but wasn’t allowing herself to think it, yet.

“The machine chased you, too,” Emily said. “What were you doing out here?”

“I was just…arriving. From my trip. My hoverboat–”

Suddenly remembering she thought he was a merman, he broke off, but she’d already noticed.

“Hoverboat?” She stared at him. “Oh! You’re an air-breather! Why didn’t you say so?”

“You’re not…frightened by that?” he asked, taken off guard. Of course they had known there were surface dwellers here as well as the abominations, but they’d assumed the two groups had nothing to do with each other…

“Why should I be? I have many air-breathing friends.”

There would be a great deal of work to be done in Purifying the land community, too, then, Richard thought, but did not say.

“I didn’t know how you would react,” he said truthfully. “I’m from…very far away.”

“Do you know what those machines are?”

Tread carefully, Richard thought. She’s still dangerous–and amoral.

“I think they came…from another place. Another…planet.” Would that mean anything to her?

“You mean one of the other worlds settled by the Ten Thousand Ships?” she said, her eyes widening. “But why would they attack us? We’re all of Old Earth.”

Once again, she caught him off-guard. She knew so much. He’d always assumed the merfolk would be simple barbarians, barely intelligent enough to talk–more like glorified dolphins than anything else.

She has as much of Joseph Hansen’s DNA as you do, his inner voice reminded him. Maybe more.

Modified DNA, he snarled silently back.

“I think…they came from Earth itself,” he said out loud.

“But Earth was destroyed!”

“No…we…” He thought quickly. “Where I live, we recently were visited by a space trader. He said he had run into a ship from Old Earth. It seems there was a…” Miracle? No– “…extraordinary bit of luck. Another asteroid collided with the Killer before it struck. It hit the moon instead of the Earth.”

“But…” Emily looked bewildered, insofar as he could interpret her strange features. “But why would Earth send machines to kill us? What have we done? Earth was our home…”

Not your home, Richard thought. Never the home of people like you.

He realized he had just thought of her as a person instead of a thing, and felt confusion again.

What to tell her?

Tell her the truth, he thought. See how she reacts. Valuable information for further Purification efforts.

He almost convinced himself.

“After the Ten Thousand Ships left…we were told…many of those left behind were convinced that the Killer was an act of God, a punishment for the wickedness and licentiousness that had descended on the planet.” He had heard this story so many times he could tell it in his sleep. “And so it came to pass that they rose up against the irreligious, the irreverent, the immoral and the ignorant; rose up and Purified the Earth with blood and fire, and the smoke of the burning cities had a sweet savor in the nostrils of Jehovallah, and he repented of his decision to destroy mankind. He sent the Savior, the second asteroid, to strike the Killer. But as a warning, he sent the Killer into the moon, where it destroyed Apollo City, a haven of sinfulness, the place where many of the abominations of the bio-meddlers had fled the Purification of the Earth. And so was the Third Covenant sealed. God would withhold punishment so that mankind might have one more chance to Purify itself. And if we succeed, then Earth will never again be threatened with destruction, and Jehovallah will bless his Chosen People, Humanity Purified, through all of space and all of time, forever and ever, amen.”

As he came to the end of the lesson, he realized what he had just done, but by then it was too late. Emily might be an abomination, but she was no fool, as she had already shown.

“My God,” she said. “You’re one of them. You’re from Earth. You brought those machines!”

“No,” he said. “But…I arrived with them.” And I found your planet in the first place and told those with the machines where to bring them, he thought. And your family is dead, and you don’t know it yet, and I brought the Holy Warriors who killed them…

He felt his heart pounding in his chest.

“How many of them are there?” she demanded. “Are they all over the planet? Are they in Safehaven?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re lying,” Emily said flatly. “I can hear your heart pounding, hear the tension in your voice. You airbreathers have no control.”

Think fast. “All right,” he said. “It’s true. They’re in Safehaven. But they’re not all over the planet.” Not yet. “The Holy Warriors are attacking one community at a time.”

“Holy Warriors? Is that the name of the machines?”

“No…there are humans, too. Soldiers.”

Her reaction wasn’t what he expected. She blinked. “Soldiers. Unmodified human soldiers?”

“Yes.”

“Are they all wearing envirosuits?”

What an odd question. “No…the air here is breathable.”

She suddenly flipped over and swam out of range of his light, then back again. “What have they done to the settlement?” she said. “If the machines attack on sight–what have these Earthlings done?”

Richard said nothing.

“Answer me!” she demanded, and then, faster than he would have thought possible, she darted forward and seized the suit’s air hose. “I can rip this out and you will drown,” she said. “What have these Earthlings done?”

Richard swallowed. “They have Purified the village,” he said.

“Purified?” Her face was suddenly pressed against his faceplate. “Killed?” she shrieked, the sound so loud, so high that he tried to clap his hands over his ears even though it was pointless inside the suit. “My parents? My brother? My friends? They killed them all?”

“I don’t know for sure…” Richard began, but she squeezed the air hose closed and his next breath failed. “Yes! Yes!” he choked out.

She released the hose and vanished again. “Jehovallah preserve me,” he whispered under his breath. “Jehovallah preserve me as you preserved the Earth. I am pure, oh Lord, preserve me. I obey you, oh Lord, preserve me. I–”

Emily was back, fluttering her hands and feet, agitated. “Who is this Jehovallah?”

“The Creator. The Lawgiver,” Richard said.

“Jehovah? Allah?”

Richard recoiled. “Those names are forbidden,” he said. “They reflect an imperfect understanding. The Church of Humanity Purified worships the One True God behind the false gods of the past, the one they saw through a glass darkly, but we now see clearly: Jehovallah.”

“I worshipped God,” Emily said. “We have…” she grimaced. “Had…a large congregation. We are Christians here.”

“That would not have saved you, even had we known,” Richard said. “Christianity is anathema. Along with Islam, and Judaism, and all other religions from before the Miracle. If you were air-breathing humans, you would still have been Purified.”

“You would have slaughtered non-modified humans the way you slaughtered my people? What kind of monsters are you?”

You’re the monster, Richard wanted to say, but he didn’t dare. “They would not have been slaughtered,” he said. “They would have been detained and re-educated, taught the error of their ways.”

“But because we breathe water instead of air, we’re fair game?”

Richard swallowed. “Yes.”

Emily shook her head, a human gesture beyond doubt.

“Great-great-grandfather was wiser than we knew,” she said. “He warned us all. We didn’t listen.”

That got Richard’s attention; her great-great-grandfather, after all, was also his. “Warned you? How?”

“He said that the rest of humanity might not understand what he had done here, that just as the Ten Thousand Ships fled the Earth to try to ensure humanity would endure among the stars, so his creation of the merfolk would help ensure humanity’s survival by opening up entirely new worlds for us to inhabit. He said some humans might not be able to see that. And so he made sure that even the airbreathers of Safehaven were not unmodified humans. They all, every one of them, underwent a minor modification that has been passed down successfully since.”

Richard shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

Emily swam close. “Great-great-grandfather also modified a local microbe. He made it lethal. And then, after everyone on the planet had the modification that made them immune, he had it spread around the planet–everywhere, from the seas to the air to highest mountain peaks. It is ubiquitous. It is deadly. Symptoms don’t appear for about 36 hours. When they do, the progress of the disease is rapid. Most victims die within 12 of the onset of symptoms. And there is no treatment.”

Richard swallowed. “I don’t believe you.”

“Wait a few hours.” Emily swam even closer. “There is only one way to save you or any other human who has breathed the air of our planet,” she said. “You must undergo massive genetic modification.”

“You’re lying!”

Emily’s face was now only inches from his own, though separated by glass and water. “Am I? How are you feeling? Take stock, Richard Hansen. Are your lungs a little thick? Does your head ache, just a little? Are your joints feeling sore?”

In fact, all those things were true, Richard thought, with something approaching panic. The power of suggestion! he told himself. “No,” he lied.

“Then you may have a little longer. But the infection, and the outcome, is certain.” She suddenly flipped on her back and swam out of his headlight.

“Come back!” he yelled. He suddenly didn’t want to be alone.

But she remained out of sight.

He swallowed. His throat hurt. There was a dull ache behind his left eye, an ache that had surely spread since he first noticed it. He took a deep breath, and felt a strange resistance in his chest.

She’s telling the truth, he thought. Oh God, she’s telling the truth!

He had to get out of the cave. Had to…

Had to what? He was many hours’ swim from the harbor. Most victims die within 12 hours of the onset of symptoms, Emily had said. And he would most likely be too sick to swim within far less time.

And if she spoke the truth, if he did make it to the harbor, what would he find there? Dead and dying Deacons.

And on the ship…?

There had been constant traffic between the ship and surface since they had arrived, with no decontamination procedures–after all, they knew humans lived on the planet successfully, so there couldn’t be anything here that could harm them, right?

We were fools, he thought. I was a fool.

Soon to be a dead fool.

Unless Emily’s offer…

No! He recoiled from the thought. How could he accept genetic modification? How could he join the abomination?

The Christian scriptures were forbidden, but those in the Church hierarchy had studied them to know the heresies they must combat. He remembered something that was not forbidden, something that had made the transition to the Pure Book, the scripture of the Church of Humanity Purified: “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, but lose his soul?”

If he saved his life by accepting the mergirl’s offer, he would lose his soul. He would no longer be Pure, and he would be cast out of God’s Kingdom.

He swallowed, hard. It hurt.

Great-great-grandfather Joseph must be laughing his head off in hell, Richard thought bitterly. He has had his revenge.

Emily reappeared in his helmet-lamp light so suddenly he gasped, which triggered a fit of coughing. When it subsided, he felt substantially weaker.

“So it begins,” said Emily. “I came to tell you the machine has left. I cannot hear it within swimming distance.”

“That…doesn’t make sense,” Richard said. But he felt cold. It did make sense…if the Deacons of Holy Destruction had realized something was wrong, if they were falling ill, and had already withdrawn from the planet.

No one would look for him, if that was the case. He was on his own.

“Nevertheless, it is true,” Emily said. She swam up until her face was once again just centimeters from his. “There is still time for genetic therapy to give you a fighting chance for survival,” she said. “I can take you back to Safehaven. The vector we use results in a rapid delivery of the necessary genes to enough cells to halt the reproduction of the disease virus. But you must decide now. If you wait much longer to begin treatment, nothing can save you.”

And there it was. The martyr’s choice. Die for what you believe in, or live–and kill the part of you that believes, or else live with guilt and the knowledge of certain damnation.

Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief, was another line from Christian scripture.

“Leave me to die,” he said.

“As you wish,” Emily replied. She flipped on her stomach and disappeared into darkness.

Almost Richard called out to her, begged her to come back…but he bit his lip, held in the cowardly cry, until he was certain she had left the cave and could no longer hear him.

Then he took a deep, painful and constricted breath, and followed her.

When he emerged into the open water, he tried his microputer again. It still wouldn’t activate.

Well, he didn’t need it to find his way back to the harbor. All he had to do was follow the coast north.

He set off.

He managed to swim fairly strongly for the first hour. But each breath and each stroke was incrementally more painful than the last.

The second hour, he moved much more slowly, and the pain increased.

The third hour, his forward progress slowed to a crawl, and every movement seemed torture. His breath crawled in and out through slime-choked channels in his lungs. Ground glass seemed to have been injected into his joints. Occasionally, his vision blacked around the edges.

Sometime in the fourth hour, he came to to find himself simply floating, face up, three or four meters beneath the sun-dappled surface of the water. His breathing seemed less painful, but he felt no desire to move. He watched the play of light and water until it blurred and faded and finally went black.

When he woke again, he was no longer wearing the envirosuit…or anything else.

He lay naked beneath a thick white blanket, staring up at a white ceiling. Air moved easily in and out of his lungs. There was a faint discomfort in his left wrist that after a moment he realized must be caused by an IV line, which explained the bottle of clear liquid hung on a shiny metal stand to his left.

With difficulty–he felt as weak as a kitten–he turned his head in that direction. Through a window, he could see purplish leaves and a cloud-flecked blue sky.

He turned his head the other way. He was in a plain white room. Aside from the IV, the bed, and a table beside the bed, there was nothing in it except a simple wooden chair…and in the chair, a woman he had never seen before.

He frowned. Or had he? Her face looked…familiar.

She rose when she saw his head turn toward her. She wore a white lab coat and simple blue shoes. She walked over to him and stared down at him. She didn’t smile. “So, you’re awake.”

He licked his lips, tried to speak, failed, and tried again. “Where…where am I?” His voice was little more than a croak.

“Pinkshore Hospital,” the woman said.

“Pinkshore…? ” The name was familiar; after a moment Richard’s brain, which seemed to be spinning up to speed with agonizing slowness, managed to attach additional information to it. “I’m still on the merpeople’s world?”

“You are,” said the woman.

“But…I’m alive.”

“Brilliant deduction.”

“But…” Many things came back to him. “You didn’t–Emily didn’t–I haven’t been…modified, have I?”

“You have not,” said the woman, her voice hard.

“But Emily said…”

“Emily,” the woman corrected, “told you the truth. Every one of the murderers you brought to our planet is dead in orbit above us. But you survived.”

“I don’t–”

“I’ll let her tell you herself,” said the woman.

She went out without another word.

Richard’s mind raced. Everyone else was dead? Was that true? She could be lying to him…after all, he was alive. Maybe the plague wasn’t as fatal as they claimed. They might just be sick up on the ship. If he could get to a radio…

The woman–nurse? guard?–reappeared, pushing a cart with a vidscreen atop it. She positioned it at the foot of the bed. “Emily will be with you in a moment,” she said, and went out again.

Richard stared at the screen. Nothing happened for several seconds, then it suddenly lit with the face he had last seen just centimeters from his own on the other side of the envirosuit faceplate.

“We meet again,” the mergirl said.

“I didn’t expect to,” Richard said.

“Nor did I. I was more than willing to give you your wish, Richard Hansen. If you wanted to die, I wasn’t going to stop you.”

“So why did you?” Richard said hoarsely.

“I didn’t. A patrol from Pinkshore pulled you from the water when they went to investigate what had happened at Safehaven. By then you were too ill to treat genetically. They took you back to the hospital and waited for you to die…but you didn’t. And you won’t.”

“I guess your plague isn’t as perfect as you thought,” Richard said. “I think I see God’s hand in that.”

“Do you, Richard Hansen?” Emily smiled, showing sharp white teeth that reminded Richard of a shark. “Then God has a strange sense of humor.” Her smile widened. “You lived, Richard Hansen, because you already have the genetic modification that protects you from the plague.”

He felt cold. “You’re lying.”

“You’re always telling me that, but you’re always wrong. You became sick because you haven’t grown up with the microbe, like we have, but you are every bit as much genetically modified as every other human on this planet. Great-grandfather Hansen modified all his children, Richard Hansen…not just the one who came with him here. You are not, and never have been, a Pure Human. You are, in your way of thinking, an abomination.

“You’ve come home, Richard Hansen. You’ve come home…and for the rest of your life, you will live here, among the people you despised, among the people whose friends and family were slaughtered because of you, because they were modified just as you have been, because they bear the same genes you did…because, in fact, they are of your own blood.”

And then her shark-smile faded. “And here’s the difference between us, Richard Hansen, between what we abominations believe and what you Pure Humans believe.

“We forgive you. You will walk out of that hospital a free man. Your identity will be known to only a few of us. You may tell people what you wish, or nothing at all.

“We forgive you. Whether you can forgive yourself, or whether your God can forgive you…only time will tell.”

The screen went blank.

And Richard Hansen…wept.

*Yes, that’s a rule change: in the past, anyone could nominate but only members could vote. This year, you must be a member to nominate, as well.