A Mythic Fear of the Sea
Jay Lake

THE MORNING OF THE DAY I turned twelve years old, Daddy brought out the crampons and the skin-spikes. "Little Ozzie," he said in that rough-burred voice I'd always loved, "it's time."

I had no need to ask, time for what? Even at twelve, I knew we had all the time in the world and none. My grandfather loomed over our little town, his long shadow creeping across our fields and orchards with every day's setting of the sun. He guarded us all around, kept the water away, fed us when times were lean, kept our souls safe within our bodies.

It was time to meet Granddaddy.

We went out to the kitchen, fetched some guavas in their canning jars and a rope-slung pot of sour milk -- which would keep through the day's heat, as it was already half-bad, though the stuff never sat well in my tummy. I reached for the twists of beaver jerky, but Daddy shook his head. "We'll dine on the old man's grace," he rumbled with a smile which was for him small and secret.

So I followed him out through the yard, limping between the pumpkin and squash vines, and into the sole street our town still claimed. I was surprised to see everyone in the world there, smiling, laughing, sipping hot chickory from china cups and toasting me with all the good will of a happy funeral.

Blood and Verse
John Meaney

AND RAIN. I'm not going to forget this rain.

Now I'm in love.
Not wholly good news.
For the woman I've fallen in love with...
My father. I will honour your memory.
... is not the one I'm meant to kill.

Silver rain hisses on the dark wooden dock. Ocean swirls, in all directions. Swollen, dark purple-grey skies hang overhead, their sombreness broken by twin arcs of white points: the sunlets which ring this world.

I stand beneath dripping ceramic eaves, watching. Twelve of Quinvère's tiny suns are visible – thirteen, if I lean outwards, over the waves – above the boundless seas which define this place.

No skimmers are visible amid the falling rain.

She's gone...

For a moment, our eyes met: minutes ago, or was it years? Perhaps twenty SY old, lithe with clear ivory skin and cropped hair, she stood straight-backed, and her stare was as helplessly lost as my own. Then she shook herself, walked out onto the dock, and climbed on board the public skimmer which had brought me here. Striding forward with athletic grace, she called to the driver, then took the controls, span the long skimmer into open ocean, and – in a burst of flying spume – straightened her course and red-planed the speed.

Did she look back, as waves churned and the skimmer diminished with distance and the misty rain?

The Russian Winter
Holly Wade Matter

LIKE A PAGAN IDOL, Balboa Stabilo sat on a purple and gold cushion in the middle of the splintered kitchen floor. She balanced a skull full of fortune cookies in her right hand; the fingers of her left hand formed a rude mudra. Thirteen stainless-steel doves clanked aimlessly around her; and behind her rose the arched doorway, quiescent, for the time being, of the MindFuck Instantaneous Gratification Unit.

Noble and naked (but for her metallic gold wig and a rope of raw turquoise beads), she presented a complex visual challenge to Auburn, who sketched her for a future mosaic. Balboa was magnificently and sensually fat, and really needed no ornamentation but her blue-black pubic hair. Auburn, herself thin in severe grey wool, envied Balboa’s luxurious body. Of course, Auburn need not have patterned herself in the style of a Russian intellectual circa 1917, with steel-rimmed glasses and starvation cheekbones. She could have chosen something Byzantine, for instance, the enormous eyes and elongated face of an ikon. She could have adorned herself in the murky colors of El Greco. Yet she would still have been long and thin, uninviting, a plank bed on which to lie, and devoted to the representation of what she adored but could not be.

“I’d kill,” said Balboa, barely moving her lips, “for a Diet Mecca.”

Emerald City Blues
Steven R. Boyett

LIEUTENANT RHINO LOVES HIS F-18. After thousands of hours nestled in its warm and pressurized cockpit, the Hornet is as responsive to the commands of Lieutenant Rhino’s brain as his hands. He enjoys the power at his fingertips and beneath his hard-soled boots. He can make the horizon pinwheel with the slightest turn of gloved wrist. A push will fill the wedge of windshield with the monotony of sea or confusion of land. A pull, and the horizon drains in an even line.

A finger on this button, and the load would lighten beneath his wings, to explode somewhere and someone ahead of him.

Lieutenant Rhino smiles, sliding his rubber cup of oxygen mask a half inch up his nose. On his nose is the wart that gives Rhino his nickname; the wart that all the kids made fun of in school; the only wart on his body, and in the most conspicuous place possible; the wart he absolutely refuses to have removed.

His oxygen mask irritates the wart.

Rhino thinks about the payload specialists on bombers. They have time to plan, to add some style to their button-pushing. A bombardier — payload specialist — can arc his hand out, add a flourish, extend an index finger, and push. Or he can jab like a concert pianist attacking ivory, then wait for the welling of megaton timpani. Or simple and direct, the Air Force Way. Or, better still, simple, direct, and with little finger.

Little House on the Accretion Disk
Gordon Gross

HE WATCHED AS THE LAST OF UTIT slowly elongated and was consumed by the infinite depths of what had been their (and was now his) pond. It was the part of her she had fashioned into a hand reaching out to him, waiting for his touch but knowing it might not arrive. Despite the time effect, he was sure it had wiggled a good-bye just before it vanished. He may even have remembered what happiness was before he recognized she was gone. Utit was gone. He focused on the center of the pond unable and unwilling to dive in, the accompanying light show above and below the pond, twin geysers of energy, warmed him. 20,000,000,000 pulses of the time-spot passed before he was ready to move again.

Sirtot recalled when, so many pulses ago, he had contemplated going male. The thoughts formed solid in front of him as he watched.

“A nod to the ancient beginnings of the species,” he had explained to her.

Entertained, Utit discussed going female. “To maintain eternal balance,” she had returned to him, spinning with laughter.

Talk of Mandrakes
Gene Wolfe

THE MONS WERE NOT RUNNING. Peak coughed into his breather and turned aside shivering. What do you do when you have to be someplace? And can’t get there?

The man beside him pulled car keys from a pocket.

Beg. “You’re probably going to work,” Peak said. “I wasn’t. I was going to Skybase Five.”

The owner of the keys turned to look at him. Both were breaking the great unwritten rule of the city: Do not make eye contact.

“Here, sir,” Peak tried to make it smooth. “Let me show you.” His hand slid into his worn raincoat, past jacket and sweater, and unbuttoned his shirt. Slowly enough to let the owner of the keys see that it was not a weapon, he pulled out his wallet and punched the combination. The pass had come by unasked by e-secure and the picture was two years old, but it was still recognizable. “You can hold it if you want, sir. I trust you.”

A thousand grumbling commuters swirled around them.

“Admit John Michael Peak, Ph.D.” The owner of the keys moved his lips when he read. He skipped Peak’s number. Thursday twenty-eight N eighty only, eleven hundred to thirteen hundred only. Building one-one-four.” He looked from the picture to Peak, then back at the picture. “Yeah. that’s you all right.”

“I’m in xbio,” Peak told him. “Doctor Selim wants to see me.” He did not add that the mere fact might make his career.

Silver Land
Lori Ann White

THE SECOND TIME, Stearns buried her himself. Only then could he be sure he had let her go.

He thought to wait beside her blanket-wrapped body until night came to shroud them both. McCune would not be back—the squaw man had bolted, eyes wild, as though the whole of the Shoshone nation was after him. And she might never know the Silver Land of her brother’s letters, but he could give her a grave under the moon’s shimmering silver light, light that spread over the prairie like a pallid mixture of memory and dreams. He could give her that much.

He looked about, considering. The sod promised hard digging after so many wagon wheels and trampling feet, but he knew the ground could be broken. A powder-dry mound hidden in the high grass encircling the campsite gave silent testimony to that.

Stearns tried to swallow, could not; pulled up his kerchief to mop his face, felt his hat brim slide in the greasy sweat on his forehead. One thought came to him, like a voice raised in prayer. She deserves a place of my choosing. He couldn’t stay here, could not dig the second grave next to the first.

Logs
Walter Jon Williams

LORD GARETH MARTINEZ ate alone in his office, staring sourly at the plump buttocks and chubby faces of the naked winged children that so oddly ornamented his office walls. He was served by his cook, Perry, and he dined alone.

It was normal for him to eat by himself. He was the squadron’s tactical officer. A tactical officer was normally a lieutenant, and would mess in the wardroom, a kind of club for the lieutenants. Martinez, a full captain, couldn’t take a meal in the wardroom without an invitation. Squadron Leader Chen had her own dining room, as did the flagship’s Captain Gomberg. Unless someone invited him, or unless he invited others, his unique status on the ship ensured his solitude.

He had left the relatively carefree life of a lieutenant behind, but he missed the companionship that life had brought him. He would have traded that companionship for the loneliness of command, but the fact remained that he wasn’t in command, and he had to dine alone anyway.

Perry cleared Martinez’ plate and offered to pour more wine. Martinez placed his hand over the glass.

“Thank you, Perry,” he said. Perry took the glass and left in silence.

Martinez called the tactical display onto the wall, just to make certain nothing new had appeared. Even though the naked children on the walls gazed at the displays as if in fascination, Martinez found there had been no change.

The flagship Illustrious and six other warships— “Chenforce”— were on an extended raid into Naxid space. Their task was to destroy enemy commerce, not to engage Naxid squadrons, and every enemy vessel at large in the Termaine system had been destroyed by Chenforce missiles within the first few days after the wormhole jump into the system. Chenforce would pass by Termaine itself in three days’ time, and had already ordered the commander of the planet’s ring station to jettison any ships docked on the ring. Their destruction would provide a close-up demonstration of the raiders’ power.

The raid would last another two or three months. Martinez could look forward to many dinners alone in his office.