Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 2, May 2013 (19 page)

“Having the girls,” I said.

“Any of it. Do you regret it?”

He wasn’t looking at me. It was as if he couldn’t look at me, as if our whole lives rested on my answer.

I put my hand in the one he had dangling. His fingers closed over mine. His skin was cold.

“Of course not,” I said. And then, because I was confused, because I was a bit scared of his unusual intensity, I asked, “Do you regret the choices you made?”

“No,” he said. But his tone was so flat I wondered if he lied.

***

In the end, he didn’t come with Echea and me to St. Paul. He couldn’t face brain work, although I wished he had made an exception this time. Echea was more confident on this trip, more cheerful, and I watched her with a detachment I hadn’t thought I was capable of.

It was as if she were already gone.

This was what parenting was all about: the difficult painful choices, the irreversible choices with no easy answers, the second-guessing of the future with no help at all from the past. I held her hand tightly this time while she wandered ahead of me down the hallway.

I was the one with fear.

Ronald greeted us at the door to his office. His smile, when he bestowed it on Echea, was sad.

He already knew our choice. I had made my husband contact him. I wanted that much participation from Echea’s other parent.

Surprised?
I sent.

He shook his head.
It is the choice your family always makes.

He looked at me for a long moment, as if he expected a response, and when I did nothing, he crouched in front of Echea. “Your life will be different after today,” he said.

“Momma—” and the word was a gift, a first, a never-to-be repeated blessing—“said it would be better.”

“And mothers are always right,” he said. He put a hand on her shoulder. “I have to take you from her this time.”

“I know,” Echea said brightly. “But you’ll bring me back. It’s a procedure.”

“That’s right,” he said, looking at me over her head. “It’s a procedure.”

He waited just a moment, the silence deep between us. I think he meant for me to change my mind. But I did not. I could not.

It was for the best.

Then he nodded once, stood, and took Echea’s hand. She gave it to him as willingly, as trustingly, as she had given it to me.

He led her into the back room.

At the doorway, she stopped and waved.

And I never saw her again.

***

Oh, we have a child living with us, and her name is Echea. She is a wonderful vibrant creature, as worthy of our love and our heritage as our natural daughters.

But she is not the child of my heart.

***

My husband likes her better now, and Ronald never mentions her. He has redoubled his efforts on his research.

He is making no progress.

And I’m not sure I want him to.

She is a happy, healthy child with a wonderful future.

We made the right choice.

It was for the best.

Echea’s best.

My husband says she will grow into the perfect woman.

Like me, he says.

She’ll be just like me.

She is such a vibrant child.

Why do I miss the wounded sullen girl who rarely smiled?

Why was she the child of my heart?

.

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“Echea” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch was first published in
Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
, July 1998.

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Copyright © 1999 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Gio Clairval is an Italian-born writer and translator. After living most of her life in Paris, she recently moved to Edinburgh, Scotland. Her fiction has appeared in
Weird Tales, Fantasy Magazine, Postscripts,
and elsewhere.

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SPARKLER

by Gio Clairval

Howard’s mother loved her pet because it glowed in the dark. Howard thought it was a silly reason to love something, but old Mrs. Apperson, withered and sickly, was in no position to be too picky about what cheered her up.

Every night Howard came home from work to find the creature curled up in his mother’s lap as she watched her favorite films from Earth. The sparkler looked like a spiky poodle, with the occasional flicker of grass-green or lavender bursting from its asymmetrical ears. She’d named it Galin Naadam, the Mongolian words for “fireworks.” Galin, for short.

The sparkler’s sudden light always startled Howard. Each time Galin puffed light, he’d jump out of his chair. He began to hate the creature, but he knew better than to complain about the one thing his mother loved other than himself.

The pet grew rapidly. Two months ago it was the size of a chick. Now, when it walked on its hind legs, it could reach the top of the table.

Every night, Mrs. Apperson would say: “How was your day? I made you
Khorkhog
.”

“I’ll get it, Mom,” Howard always answered.

But she never listened. Instead, she stood up, pressing Galin to her chest with skeletal arms, and trudged to the kitchen, limping noticeably. The doctors had refused to operate on a ninety-three-year-old woman in her precarious condition.

“You should go out tonight,” she would tell him. Since they’d emigrated from Turini 34, he rarely left home to go anywhere except to his place of work. He preferred to keep to himself. He liked the lab because he worked alone.

One night, when he got home, his mother lay unconscious on the floor. Galin was tugging futilely at her, trying to lift her onto the couch.

“Help!” cried the creature.

Howard’s jaw dropped. He’d heard the rumours that sparklers could speak, but he’d dismissed them as the idle fancies of unscientific minds.

He slid his arms under his mother’s armpits and lifted her while Galin rushed to lift her feet, and together they moved her onto the couch.

“She hurts,” it said in a thin voice, echoing his mother’s Mongolian accent. It looked considerably larger than when Howard had left in the morning.

Howard summoned the medics, whose verdict was that she was so fragile, her condition so advanced, that there was no sense rushing her to the hospital. Better to tranquilize her and let her die painlessly in surroundings she loved.

Howard’s hands grew cold. “You’ll be all right, Mom,” he lied when they had left. “I’ll call a nurse, and she’ll bring some medication that’ll ease your pain.”

“I don’t need a nurse,” she snapped. “Galin can take care of me.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Howard.

A shadow fell across his face, and he looked up. The sparkler towered above him, head touching the ceiling. Howard gripped the armrests.

“Don’t worry,” Mom said. “It happens. Sometimes they grow bigger.”

Howard stared at the sparkler. “Not like
this
.”

“When needed…” Galin raised a paw fractionally, a curious expression on its misshapen muzzle.

“I don’t know about this,” said Howard dubiously. He’d always taken good care of his mother. How could a pet do better than her own son? “It looks dangerous.”

His mother smiled. “Oh, no, dear. Sparklers are harmless. It says so on the galaxynet.”

“But—”

“You were going to send me to die in a hospital with strangers. I’m asking you to let me stay here with the people I love.”

“
People?
It’s not a
person
, Mom!”

“People come in all colors and sizes,” replied his mother. “So surely they can come in all shapes as well.”

“Thank you, Mom,” said Galin, and spirals of light burst out of every pore. Howard shielded his eyes and tried not to think about this alien creature calling his mother “Mom.”

***

Within days Galin began to have trouble squeezing through the doorways between the rooms—but Mrs. Apperson, who had seemed to be on Death’s doorstep, showed signs of improvement.

Howard watched in wonderment as his mother kept getting stronger and Galin kept getting bigger.

“He’s helping me, Howard. He needs to be big to take all my illness and digest it.”

Howard threw his arms up. “Nonsense! And don’t call it ‘he.’”

Within a week Galin was so large he became confined to the garden.

It’s getting out of hand, Howard thought one morning. “I wish you’d
stop growing
!” he said aloud.

Galin hung its head. “As you. Wish.”

That day, Howard took a syringe from the lab, filled with
taloxenin
, a potent poison. On his way home, he stopped to buy the most placid Xialong cat he could find—an acceptable replacement pet.

As the conveyor approached his district, a rocket shot upwards. The passengers screamed, but the rocket dissolved before touching the top of the dome above the city, and a shower of stars followed. And rings, clovers of light, a ball with glittering streamers, radial lines tracing a spider’s leg, and fragments like tiny fish swimming away. The cat screeched in terror and bolted off before he could stop it.

Howard ran home under a rain of powdery flashes.

His mother sat on the threshold, clapping her hands at each explosion of light. Galin shone with slow-burning stars of every imaginable color, the meaning of its Mongolian name more appropriate than ever.

“It’s like New Year’s Eve in Ulaanbaator!” Mrs. Apperson cried.

“Did…Galin help you out of bed?”

“I can walk without help.” She looked healthier than she had for years.

Howard hid the syringe behind a potted
Calpurnia
.
Later
, he thought.

“I love you, Mom,” said Galin, its voice weaker than usual. The spiky fur hung limp from its body.

Howard stepped forward and clumsily hugged the massive neck. Galin’s head fell on its chest, imprisoning Howard’s arms.

My God
, thought Howard.
It’s dying so that she can live.

The sparkler’s skin grew cold. Its light faded.

“Grow, please, my brother,” Howard whispered. “Glow.”

.

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Original (First) Publication
Copyright © 2013 by Gio Clairval

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Over the decades, Bruce McAllister’s short fiction has been a finalist for both the Hugo and the Nebula. His “ESP in war” novel,
Dream Baby,
is considered a classic of its type.

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CHILD OF THE GODS

Bruce McAllister

So they’ve given me these two big wings, but also these pathetic legs because (so they tell me) I won’t be needing legs when I fly. Makes sense—up to a point. I need to walk on this world they’ve made for me, too. That’s part of being who I am for them, and they don’t seem to get it. I’m supposed to be their “child,” the “Child of the Gods.” That’s what they’ve engineered this new body of mine to be, but it’s not as ideal as it sounds. I’m alone (I think someone else is being groomed to join me, but who knows?), and in their grand plan they’ve neglected a few things. It makes life in this body they’ve given me a living hell, even if the world is Earth-like.

I’ve never seen them. They arrived in the usual B-movie way—telepathic message from An Incredibly Advanced Alien Race—and chose two human beings to be “special.” That’s how they put it. One was me. The other was a woman, I think. We weren’t in any position to argue. They just took us. “We will treat them as children,” they announced. “We will help them be as innocent and happy as children should be—as all our children are.”

Was I excited to be chosen—an out-of-shape (not proud of it), 45-year-old yogurt distributor from Kansas City, unhappily divorced, no living children, an obsession with sports memorabilia, and bored with the grind? “Worried” would be the better word. How, I asked myself, would aliens (advanced or not) define “special”? How would they even define “child”? I could end up gray matter in a cyborg ship or a yappy pet with ten heads.

So here I am. The stars call like a bad habit, and I find myself, even when asleep, heading out there, flapping and flapping, pain shooting through my bones, and then, airless, falling like Icarus. But my lungs are happier up there than down here, where it hurts to breathe. It’s bad planning, as if they don’t get what a body is about.

So I do a lot of coughing when I walk, and my legs feel like the legs of an 80-year-old, about as useful as a pterodactyl’s must have been. I try to feel the sun on my skin—that would be nice (the Child of the Gods gets a tan)—but the nerves are missing. They’ve given me this raging heart, this heat machine, so I won’t be cold when I’m flying up where I shouldn’t be flying; but the tradeoffs are hell.

I don’t have a mouth because I haven’t been given one. My lips are like a wound that’s healed. I’d ask them why, but I can’t. They’ve given me a body that doesn’t need food, so I don’t need a mouth, but every day words flutter like mad butterflies in my throat and I want to let them loose.

I’ve been given four arms with webbed fingers on each hand. My arms, easily confused, get tangled with my wings when I try to fly. When the wings finally catch the wind, the arms calm down. But for that moment flying feels impossible.

It’s a shitty situation.

What I’ve found on this planet, this kingdom of mine—the one they’ve given me—looks pretty impressive, however: forests, deserts, lakes, mountains, seas, valleys, rivers, and meadows; insects, birds, and animals of all types. When the little things are near me (tree or animal), I can’t see them. They’re blurred. But when I stand in a valley at night and look at a distant mountain, I see a scampering mole snatched up by an owl with a hungry hiss, fur floating down like a slow song from the tree as it eats. It’s beautiful.

If I hover over the ocean as dawn breaks and I look toward shore, I see perfectly, miles away, the red eyes of the birds with their stick-like legs and long bills pecking at the mud for tiny crab-like things. And the eight legs of the crab-like things kick frantically as the birds swallow them. And the lice move happily through the tiniest of feathers on those birds’ heads. I don’t know why, but for some reason this makes me happy.

Maybe it’s because I can’t see what’s near me that I can’t see the Gods, that I can’t tell whether the voices I hear (if I’m really hearing them) are mine or theirs. But maybe it’s that I haven’t looked
far enough
—beyond mountains, beyond seas. That’s what it feels like (because they want me to?):
That I haven’t looked far enough.

“Why did you make me this way?” I ask, and it’s my voice all right—the one my ex heard every morning for years, the one my sales staff had to put up with. It’s mine, but it sounds like someone else’s voice and someone else’s life.

The engines of the stars rumble.
I don’t know how else to put it. It’s nothing I would have known in Kansas City, in that body I had. I don’t know that words can say it.

The night turns red and blue—the
universe
turns red and blue—in my eyes, which are closed.

They answer with the voices of the moles, birds, lice, rocking sea, timeless mountains and light that dwells in the darkness within the light. It sounds, if it has a sound, like my own voice, the one I once had and might have if I had a mouth to emit one.

“
We did not make you
,” the voices say.

“You are the Gods and I am your child. Of course you made me…”

The engines race.

“You were
given
to us,” the voices say. “You were given to us the way you are. There was no planet called Earth. There was no Missouri, no dairy product to be distributed and consumed, no little boy—your son—who died at the birthday party that day, filling you with a grief that drove others away. All of that was a dream you brought with you when you were given to us.” The voices pause. “You have been with us
forever
, given to us in the beginning the way you are.”

“But you are
the Gods
,” I say again, the words coming as if from a child. “If you did not make me,” I continue, my voice my son’s, “who is there for me so that I might mean as much as the little crabs the birds eat on the mud, or the lice on their heads, or sand on the shore? Who is there in the darkness within the light to make the words fluttering in my throat mean what they might mean were you the Gods who made me?”

A voice that must be theirs, not mine, answers: “We make of the universe what we are given—what no one else wants. We take it and make it ours.”

Looking down at the world, I see that it’s true. How the jaw of a wildcat with funny ears and a single eye in its forehead opens, yawning. How an ape with hooves and a bleeding hand picks up a stone despite the pain and looks at it with a plan. How in the mountain range across the sea the tallest mountain collapses and in its fire a million insects, birds and animals vaporize, but none of this matters because others will come. They always come.

“What am
I
then?” I hear myself ask, the litany like a new religion.

“There are no mirrors here yet,” the voices are saying, “because we haven’t been given them. But we can show you what you would see were you to look in one.”

I kick near the stars, high above the planet that’s mine, wings tiring, and cry:

”But I can’t see up close!”

“
Yes, you can
,” the moles shout back, speaking for the Gods and everything else as the little crab-like things whisper, “
Yes, you can. Just look
—”

They’re right, of course. I can see. I look, and as I do, the Gods show themselves, and I see at last what I am, and I know why.

“So that I am yours. Really yours.”

Yes, Child,
they answer.

It is done.

“But what about
her?”
I want to ask
—
that other voice, that other me, the old, fading dream. “The second one you chose? Brittany or Tiffany
—
some silly name like that. When is she
coming and will she look like me?”

But I don’t. They’ll tell me it’s a dream, and I barely remember the question.

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Original (First) Publication
Copyright © 2013 by Bruce McAllister