ASIM issue 55 Page 4

  Mort folded the paper into a winged dart.

  The boy woke as Mort strode toward the window. “I’m keeping that one,” the boy said.

  “Tomorrow,” Mort said, and handed the boy back the folded paper, “you guide the ships into port.”

  * * *

  Mort guided the first ship of the day into the port, then allowed the boy to tell him when he should throw the scoopfuls of empyrean powder into the beacon fire. The second ship glided so smoothly between the shoals that Mort felt like the boy had gotten lucky. For the next ship, the boy told him when, and the ship never even broke pace. It entered the port with such speed it nearly collided with the docks. The captains, it was obvious to Mort, had become used to dragging across at least a little sand and were surprised by the ease of portage when they did not.

  “You can read the shoals?” Mort asked the boy.

  “Yes,” the boy said. “Perfectly.”

  Mort looked at the shifting sands below. His eyes ached. The sandbars looked like blurs. They had always looked like blurs. But, no. Not like this. There had been distinct edges once, hard and fast boundaries between each minute difference of depth.

  “Then what have you been letting me do?” Mort asked.

  “I have been letting you teach me what not to do, while showing me how to still get by.”

  Guilt stung Mort like a blade between the ribs. All the wild back and forth movements through which he sent the ships were unnecessary. He had been imperilling them for the sake of his pride. He had been doing his best, and the thrill he got from watching the ships reach safety, he realised, was false. Somewhere deep within himself, he knew, had always known, that the thrill was his fear telling him he had almost failed. And he had been living off the increasing euphoria of that thrill for years now. Young eyes could see that. Young eyes could see better.

  Mort handed the boy the scoops and let him work. The ships filed into the port until all were docked for the day. Sunshine lay across the bay, and Mort watched the dockworkers finish their jobs and lounge in happy ranks to watch the sunset as if it were a jewel they rarely got to enjoy.

  After dinner, the boy asked for his tower lessons, but Mort waved him away and retired to his hammock.

  The next day, Mort filled the hoppers with wood and coal. His joints ached under the burden and felt stiff when he watched the sea over the boy’s shoulder. He brought powder scoops to the boy, running up and down the stairs. His breath was not what he remembered it to be, and as the day wore on, making a large supper and falling asleep sounded like the best reprieve.

  Mort felt himself fading. He saw it coming like the ships that had once jockeyed for port sailing away into vanishing dots on the horizon. He felt sad and useless. When he stopped assisting the boy in running the tower, he thought of it as an act of revenge. But when the boy did not come calling for his assistance, he realised what he had actually done was prove himself right. He was finished.

  The rumbling from the mountains became guttural, and Mort imagined the merchants guild was now deeper in, that the pass’s completion was inevitable. It meant progress. It meant an increased burden for the boy. It meant Mort wouldn’t be able to handle it, and only the boy could.

  The nights cooled. Mort lay awake in his hammock. When he was certain the boy was asleep, he crept to the window perch where he watched the scintillating play of moonlight on the water. He told himself he knew where the sand lay below, but when day came he could not bring himself to look.

  He listened to the pages, who knocked on the receiving door with daily deliveries. The longer they went without bringing a new apprentice, the more he feared they suddenly would. He let his hair and beard grow out; his scalp remained bald. He felt like it would be useless to wish to be young again. The fear of a new apprentice dulled as he realised the people of the port had never intended to abide by his request. He had grown too old. There was no time to start over.

  Quietly, one night, Mort piled wood and coal and all the remaining paper and ink and quills at the entrance to the beacon fire, then began feeding them in by the armful. He bid goodbye to fantasies. Hungrily, the fire rose. It was beautiful, powerful. The light on the waters glowed orange and shook. Stark shadows outlined the port. Then the fire pushed through the door. He watched it eat into the pile he had accumulated. He stepped toward it to break it up and end the outbreak, but the heat had become unbearable. Flames engulfed the pile, and Mort eyed them, ashamed that he had been so foolish as to start the fire, to think it could solve his problems. The blaze reached the ink and gave off vicious, acrid smoke. His lungs burned. His legs felt too weak to fight it, too sore to flee. Perhaps, he thought, he had been right and it would be easier just to give himself to the fire. He wheezed and collapsed.

  When Mort woke, the boy stood beside him and applied salves to the blisters that covered his body.

  The place smelled thickly of smoke, but the room was cool.

  Mort’s lips split and hurt as he spoke. “I’m sorry.”

  The boy shushed him.

  The boy changed Mort’s soiled bandages. Immobilised by pain, Mort’s mind squirmed with regret. He had forced the merchants’ hand by growing slow, they had killed the boy’s parents, and now he had made himself a burden upon the boy. He cried. His tears stung the blisters on his face.

  “How long ago did I do this?” Mort asked.

  “A week ago,” the boy said. “It’s all right. I contained the fire and had the beacon ready by morning. The empyrean powders never ignited. You taught me well.”

  Mort wanted to tell the boy it had not been a lesson. Instead, he asked, “What is your name?”

  “I am only your apprentice,” the boy said, “for as long as you shall live as my master.”

  * * *

  Angel air came. The people of the port prepared firewalls, and when the huge fog bank of living thistles met the wall of hot air and flying embers, the boy came down to the hammock room where Mort lay in recovery, and closed the shutters.

  Mort watched him go back upstairs with the lantern, then shuffled to the shutters and reopened them. The catch bins emptied ash down the sides of the tower, and it billowed inside. Mort coughed and rubbed his eyes and felt the burn of ash on his blisters. He waved the ash cloud away. When it cleared, the angel air thistles had made their way inside. Mort felt glad; they were coming to finish him as they should have long ago. They would not stop. He grabbed at them, but they parted around his fingers and whirled into the swirling ash motes.

  Mort leapt into clouds of them and swiped at them. They moved away, always out of reach, and flew up the stairwell.

  “No!” he screamed. “Touch me. Touch me!”

  The rushed shuffle of footsteps approaching from above told Mort he should not have called out. He had doomed the boy. From the landing, the boy cried out. Mort painfully scrambled up the stairs. As he swatted the thistles off the boy, they touched him, too, and flew off into the corners of the tower to live out their short lives.

  Then thistle fever was upon him and the boy.

  The boy was smaller and younger, and the green pox quickly spread over his body. Fever plunged him into sleep. With the advantage of experience, Mort fought through it awake.

  Between sweating fits and crushing hunger cramps, Mort fixed meals and prepared teas for the boy. Mort ate little, then none, sacrificing for him. His beard fell out. His blisters oozed. Weakness crept into him and wrapped around his skeleton like a vine. With trembling hands, he applied salves to the boy’s green pox. What little medicine he had was quickly spent. Days passed in heightening delirium, from which Mort returned only after seeing the boy’s pox change and glow blue.

  “Look,” the boy mumbled. “Sapphire flares. I’m burning up.” Mort crawled down to the old, wooden exit door, swung it open, and stopped in the doorway. The rough, long path that led to the port wound down and out of sight. It felt like staring at death. Desperation stole his strength. Even if he made it to the port, its people had only w
hat he had—luck. At the bottom of the stairs, he prayed, then got mad that providence was not swift to save them. He felt it would never come.

  He crawled up to the powder hold, and peered down into its bins. Holding off for the angel air to pass, the couriers had not resupplied his empyrean powders. A dusting coloured the bottom of each bin, enough for one combined flare. Mort scooped the bins clean with his hands, brought the powder to the beacon, and sent a ruby flare—stay away. Pages would come when they thought all was clear, and he could not bear to let them stumble into the thistles still trapped in the tower.

  He returned to the kitchen and crushed brittle tea leaves between his palms, staining them green and blue with the powders that caked to his sweat. He was too weak to start over. He kept going. He imagined it was the last kindness he’d show the boy, though he’d never know it. As he poured hot water over the leaves, the tea reddened.

  He cupped the boy’s bald head and tilted the earthy tea into his mouth. With his eyes closed, the boy coughed and swallowed the drink. Almost immediately, his blue spots ceased to glow. His breathing became deep and regular through his nose, his tongue swollen and red in his mouth. The boy repositioned himself as if peaceful in sleep.

  Mort sobbed and stared at his red palms. He thought of the taste of earth that had clung to his tongue when he had woken and found his own master dead with red-stained hands. The powder. It had saved him once. Now, it had saved the boy. And there was no more in the bins.

  Breathless, Mort shook the boy, rubbing red stains on the boy’s skin. “The port,” Mort said. “We can save the sick. No more need to die.” The boy grumbled as though irritated, but remained asleep.

  Delirious, Mort scoured the tower for paper and quills and ink, but found none; he had been too thorough in eradicating them. He searched the boy. In the muff pouch of his wrap tunic, along with his birth braid, Mort found the story the boy had written about the life he wished to lead, folded into a winged dart.

  Mort stared at the residue on his fingers, and wondered if he licked them clean would it be enough to save him, or was he already too far gone. He felt his fingers thickening and becoming clumsy, his blisters stretching.

  On the back of the boy’s story, he smudged residue streaks into red letters with his swelling fingers. He scrawled, “The powder is the cure,” then signed it with his name, the boy’s new name—Mort. His hands were clean.

  He wondered what the boy would do now—would he be like a king?

  He gripped the boy’s birth braid. Smiling, he collapsed.

  The sickness coursed through him like hot waves, like shifting sands, like the wind and fog and play of light on the sea. As the fever took him, he was glad that, if nothing else, he had shown the boy when to turn right, when to turn left, and when to stay away.

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  Attack of the Killer Space Lizards

  A Serial in Four Parts

  …Tom Holt

  Part Two

  Another foul day in a generally disappointing summer. The half-dozen dignitaries huddling together on the boarding dock of the UPF Magenta With A Faint Green Stripe had lit up warm against the unseasonably bright ambient light, but they couldn’t seem to help flickering a little. A junior officer operated the entry prism and shone them straight up to the warship’s observation deck, where the admiral was waiting for them.

  “A brief summary of the progress we’ve made so far,” he said, as they tried to get comfortable in the ship’s decidedly spartan Fleet-issue refractors. “Thanks to a generous grant from the civil authority—” There was just a tinge of irony in the beam he shone at Burnt Umber. “—we’ve been able to carry out a detailed photonic trace analysis on the alien object we discussed at our last meeting. Using revolutionary new spectrum-busting software from MilTecLab, we’re as sure as we can be that we’ve identified the star whose light was the first to shine on the object. In other words, we think we know which solar system it came from.”

  It was so still you could’ve seen a firefly cough. “Remarkable,” said the archbishop. “What will you people think of next?”

  “The star,” Aquamarine went on, “is not in this galaxy. It lies out towards the terminus of the spiral arm of the Rice Pudding galaxy, nearly two and three-quarter million us-years away. Our observations lead us to believe that only one of the planets in this star’s solar system is currently able to support life. Accordingly, we despatched a hyperspatial Torchlight probe at the planet in question. This,” he added, “is what we found.”

  In the middle of the belvedere device’s matrix a huge spherical shape appeared. It was ever so slightly translucent, and a little out of focus; it hung like a droplet of holographic dew, faceted and glistening.

  “My God.” The archbishop flared so violently he was practically blue. “Stop it! Get rid of it! Make it go away!”

  Aquamarine gleamed onto the control console and the image immediately vanished. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” he said gravely.

  “Green,” the archbishop was whimpering. “Green and blue. A primordial clash.” He pulled himself together with a visible effort. “Admiral,” he said. “Whatever that—that abomination is, I must insist that it be destroyed immediately.”

  “It’s a planet,” the admiral said. “Two and three quarter million us-years away from here. With a population of something in the order of six billion sentient life-forms. The blue would appear to be a large expanse of some form of naturally occurring liquid.”

  “Be that as it may.” The archdeacon had tightened into a thin filament of incandescent plasma. “It’s anathema. It’s evil. Blue and green. Thou shalt not suffer a clash to continue. Blow it up, man. It’s your duty to Divine Taste.”

  “Speaking on behalf of the civil authority,” Burnt Umber said, in a quavery voice, “I would like to second that proposal. Are you seriously asking us to believe there are intelligent beings living on that?”

  “It is written,” the archbishop muttered, “in the User’s Emmanuel. If thy primary colours offend thee, blot them out.”

  “We fully intend to deal with the situation,” the admiral said. There was a moment’s pause, and the rest of the group began to glow just a little brighter. “But, before we take any precipitate action, we must gather as much information as we can. For example—”

  “No,” the archbishop roared at him. “No delay. Kill it now.”

  Aquamarine shone at him full force, until he gradually began to dim. “With all due respect,” he said with monumental dignity, “it really isn’t as simple as that. We have reason to believe that we’re dealing with an exceptionally advanced species. Would it really be wise to attack them with primitive therion lances and actinic explosives?”

  “Maybe,” Burnt Umber said in a soft whisper, “we ought to take another look at it.”

  “Agreed. Archbishop,” Aquamarine added quickly, “perhaps you’d prefer to extinguish yourself for a minute or so. I can understand how painful—”

  “No,” the archbishop replied faintly. “I must be strong. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Pink, I shall fear no evil. Put it back on screen.”

  The monstrous globe reappeared. Aquamarine shone himself through it, backlighting the largest of the livid green patches. “We think the inhabitants are corporeal,” he said, “and live on the dry land. Clearly they’re colour-blind, or they’d never have been able to survive in such a harsh environment. Our diaspectral trace would suggest that the actual point of origin of the object was here; this large isolated island in the south-eastern sector. Assuming our life-forms are the normal co
rporeal carbon-based types, it’s almost inconceivable that they should be able to support life in this environment.”

  “Quite,” muttered the archbishop. “Those perfectly nauseating yellow bits.”

  “Therefore,” Aquamarine went on, “it would seem logical to assume that this island’s sole function is to act as a terminus for the intergalactic mass transit operation they call Andromeda Spaceways. We would guess that the general dehydration and large expanses of apparent desert are the result of pollution caused by countless takeoffs and landings by inefficiently vented total-annihilation antimatter drives.”

  Several of the dignitaries flickered their agreement. Then Vermilion 577634, a senior lecturer at the Academy of Mauve, said, “We haven’t addressed the central question.”

  “Which is?”

  “Why.” Vermilion deepened his base red tones. “Doing this must be consuming most of the resources of their civilisation, no matter how advanced they may be. You don’t do something like that without a bloody good reason.”

  “Agreed,” Burnt Umber said. “But what—?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Cobalt Blue 77, a nervous young Representative from the House of Shades, was glowing dangerously. “Just look at the place. If you were trapped on that, you’d be desperate to leave. You’d do anything. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think it’s blindingly obvious. This Spaceways thing is to take their entire population off that horrible little rock and bring them somewhere better. Like here. And if here’s already inhabited—” She shrugged, sending sparks halfway across the room. “Tough.”

  “Just a minute.” Burnt Umber turned and gleamed at her in horror. “You’re talking about—”