"For the new Fillmore." Glib sits up. "For Broken Dreams."

"Deal." Matecca beams. She turns to Jason, takes his arm. "This was all your doing?"

"Damn right." Jason grins at her.

"Ever had your portrait painted?" Matecca puts her arms around Jason's shoulders.

"Not with this face. Are you nuts?"

"But you can buy a new face," Glib says. "After all, you have twenty million coming from Bobbibrown."

"And all I got was a lousy five." Matecca shoves Jason away. "You cheat!" She turns and stalks toward the stairs. "I'll be in my office. Packing!"

"Uh oh." Glib watches as Jason's fingers knot upon the Fendercaster.

"It's cool." Jason suddenly grins. "After all, I am rich. Guess I'm just a money grubbin' man. Used to dream about wealth when I was a kid." He slips the Fendercaster off his shoulder and offers it to Glib.

"No." Glib's tentacles come up, refusing the instrument.

"But you wanted to learn." Jason holds the instrument out while Glib climbs to its pseudopods. "That was our deal."

"It was." Glib pauses, looks around, then retrieves a cigarette butt from a nearby ashtray and pops it into its mouth. It offers one to Bardog.

Bardog oozes back on its peds, refusing. No more little tastes, it decides. Only Flavors!

"I had a vision while I was dying," Glib goes on. "I saw the new Fillmore West in all its glory. Man, the parking lot went on forever! Perhaps I've been caught up in this Fendercaster thing too long. I've forgotten the joys of middle management. I'm going to run the place soon as it's built." It glances down at Bardog. "With this little biomed at my side, of course."

Jason nods thoughtfully. "Sometimes we forget what truly matters. Cheapness. The cheapness of fate. There's a song in that. I'll pay someone to write it."

Bardog wriggles, delighted. Whole again, memories intact, it could change Flavor whenever it needed. Now it would always be safe and happy. Gazing hungrily at the Fendercaster in Jason's hands, Bardog licks its muzzle. Could it savor such an instrument? What Flavor is Zappa?

 

 

THE TIMES SHE WENT AWAY

Paul E. Martens

The first time she went away, I was a young man, younger than her in fact. I was a poet and I thought myself dashing, even though I was working at my father's tavern at the spaceport. That was just to earn my keep, and perhaps a few dollars more to spend on girls. My hair was long, tied back with a black ribbon, and I wore a moustache that wasn't quite as lush as I supposed it to be. I was tall and strong, and really not a very good poet, but it was the image I cultivated, not the rhymes.

When I wasn't waiting on tables or drawing foaming flagons of ale for the spacers and the whores, the merchants and the grifters, I sat by myself in a corner, posing for any ladies who might come in, a pad before me, a pen in my hand, looking dreamily out the window at the rockets and the shuttles that came and went with rattles of thunder and belches of flame.

That's where I was when she walked in.

Walked? She never walked in anywhere. She swaggered. She strutted. She strode. She burst into a room and claimed it and all who were in it for her own.

Her short hair was dyed crimson and stuck up in unruly spikes. A spaceship was tattooed on one cheek, lightning flaring out from its engines, extending down her throat and on under her silver leather jacket. She stood in the doorway like a Colossus, though she wasn't more than a meter and an half tall, hands on her hips, blocking the rest of the gang with her from gaining entry until she had surveyed the bar and the bar had surveyed her.

"This one will do," she decreed. "Until the ale is gone, or the tables are in splinters." The others crowded in after her, extras and supporting players in that particular act of the story of her life. She led them to the bar, laughing and shouting, jostling for a place next to her. She slapped down a wad of bills and said, "Bartender, start pouring."

My father, taller and broader than me, with a real moustache, called over to me, "Peter, get your ass over here and help."

Her eyes followed his. If a cat could smile at the sight of some prey to toy with, it would smile as she did then.

I didn't know what to do as she stalked across the room. I looked around for some avenue of escape. I was used to luring an entirely different kind of fly into my web. What was coming for me now was a kind of fly that ate spiders for snacks then moved on up the food chain for something more filling.

"Oh, no," she said. "He's much too pretty to waste yanking on a spigot. Stay here, pretty boy, and tell me things and I'll fill your head with lies about the suns you think are only stars." She pulled a chair close to mine and I breathed the air of other worlds, tasted danger and excitement I knew I would never know for myself.

I swallowed and prayed my voice wouldn't squeak as I asked, "Where does the lightning strike?"

She paused an instant as she got my meaning, then laughed from somewhere deep and real inside of her. "Ha! So you're more than merely pretty. It could be that later on tonight you'll find out where the lightning strikes." She leered happily at me. "I wouldn't even be surprised if it struck more than once." She stuck out her hand, as if she'd suddenly made a decision about me. "What's your name, boy? I'm Annie Jones."

Of course I'd heard of her. When spacers told their tall tales to each other, they often spoke of Annie Jones. But I never thought she was real. And she couldn't be, not really what the stories said she was, at least. Pirate, smuggler, mercenary. Murderer, thief. Defender, protector. Fighter of lost causes. A trail of broken-hearted men and women across the galaxy. A giant. A monster. Part machine. All machine. An alien.

She looked like a woman to me.

I took her hand. "I'm Peter."

We talked and the rest of the world went away.

"Once we found a colony planet that had been forgotten for centuries. They thought we were gods." She laughed and pounded the table once thinking of the incongruity. "But who can tell the difference between gods and devils? Not their leader. After a very little time alone with me, he made me an offering that took me almost six weeks to waste. And I know a lot of ways to waste money."

"I remember a world," she said, "Where the sands were gold. Not just golden, but gold. And a handful of pebbles could buy you a palace on Earth because they weren't pebbles, they were rubies and emeralds and sapphires." Then she grinned. "When we left, we had to strip down to our skins, which they vacuumed. They searched us inside out. They counted our teeth and tapped our eyeballs to be sure they were really ours. And I came away with enough of their precious pebbles to buy a new ship, with enough left over for a month on Hedys." She barked a laugh at the memory. "Remind me later to show you how I did it."

I had no stories to tell. I had spent my days bound to the Earth, living a little life in a little bar on the outskirts of the rest of the galaxy. I had dreams, though, and I told her about them. And if they were silly dreams, as the dreams of the young often are, they still seemed both wonderful and possible to me. She didn't laugh, even though to her they must have been little things that, despite their size, would likely never come true for me. I even read her a poem.

"I loved a man," she told me, later, her gaze far away. "I loved him but I left him, with a promise that I'd come back. I did come back, in what to me was just a few short years, and he was an old man. Wrinkled and bald and shrunken. He'd waited for me. A whole long life he'd waited for me. When I saw him I turned away so he wouldn't see my disgust. I walked away from him. I left the Earth with no promises to anyone. And I will not make any promises ever again." She looked at me, no laughter in her eyes. "Do you understand me, pretty one?"

I did.

She summoned up her laughter again and said, "Good. Then let's leave this place. With the crew that came in with me, your father should be keeping his eye on his till, not on his precious pup. Come on." She stood up and pulled me by the hand. "We have a lot of vices to cover before your education is complete. And when you tell people that you spent her leave with Annie Jones, they'll be able to see the truth of it in your eyes."

So we left, and we did things. Things I never imagined. We went places. Places I hadn't known existed. We saw people. People I would have run from without her. There were no seconds, nor minutes, nor hours, nor days. The time we were together existed all at once, forever. I blinked and she was gone.

* * *

The next time she went away, I was a man. Not young. Not yet old. I had been married, once, or twice, or three times. Depending on how you define it, depending on who you ask.

I told myself it had nothing to do with spending a night (or two? Or three?) with Annie Jones.

But the way I made my living did.

I still sat at that same table in the corner. But I no longer even pretended to write poetry. And I no longer posed to lure girls and women. Now I sat in shadows and waited for people who wanted to sell something that had arrived on Earth and somehow bypassed customs. Or people who wanted to buy something they would rather their wife, or husband, or their boss, or priest, or their local policeman not know about. Or maybe they wanted to get away from Earth, far away, and fast, and, of course, furtively. My time with Annie made me known to people who knew things, in places where the sun winked and found somewhere else to shine. Useful people.

It was just convenience that made me sit at the same table. It just happened. I wasn't waiting for Annie to come back. She wasn't coming back. And if she did, she'd probably look for someone like I used to be. Or maybe not. Maybe someone, or something, else would catch her eye. But not me. I'd had my turn. And I would be damned before I wasted my life waiting for her like that other guy. No promises. I still remembered, I still understood.

There were two men across the table from me. Nervous men with big brimmed hats, who would not look at me but looked at the door often.

"All right," I said. "Passage for five of you at the price agreed." An envelope snuck across the table to me. I counted and nodded. "Berth 17, at one o'clock. Will With the One Eye will meet you. Remember, five and only five. If there are six, none of you will board. And only ten kilos of luggage each. More and your luggage will stay here, even if you don't."

Their heads bobbed. Their eyes searched the room for spies and eavesdroppers and they got up to slip away, when the door seemed to erupt inward and a bald woman in a black jumpsuit of some shimmering, simmering stuff burst in and crowed. Literally crowed, her head thrown back to show the lightning slashing down her throat.

She saw me and cried, "Peter!" and headed for me like a goddess toward an offering left inside her temple. My customers knocked over their chairs and each other in their haste to be gone.

She ignored them and looked me over. "You'll do. You're not the impudent little vintage you were last time. Something stronger now. Fuller bodied, certainly. What? No hug for the prodigal returned?"

I was suddenly aware that my heart was beating, that I was breathing the same air she breathed. "I didn't wait for you."

She grinned. "Yet, here I am. Unannounced, unbidden, and uncharacteristically unkissed." She pretended to look around the bar. "Is there a jealous wife lurking about with a knife? Or an innocent child too young to see what a lascivious spacer might do to her father?"

My own smile broke free, opening the way for other feelings to wash over me. "No, no wife, not at present. And no child, innocent or otherwise to be shocked by you. Just me, and if I didn't wait for you, I'm still glad you're here." I got up and grabbed her, picking her up and squeezing her as if I didn't know I was going to have to let her go again. She gave me a kiss and I swear I felt her tongue tickle me down at the bottom of my stomach.

She hadn't changed much. Less hair. Was she smaller? Maybe I had grown. Maybe the memory of her was bigger than the reality. But why should she have changed? From her point of view, she'd only been gone a couple of years or so. For me it had been a good-sized part of my life. Spent not waiting for her.

We left the bar, and once again time was an ocean in which we swam, too vast to know if we were moving toward or further away from shore, or just staying in one place.

We went places and did things. This time there were as many doors that I could open as ones to which she was the key. Annie of the Stars and Peter of the Port. If we weren't king and queen of our respective realms, we were at least the duke and duchess.

We fought a handful of sailors. We watched the sylphs of Cygnus dance, or mate, or communicate, or all or none of those things, then we tried to imitate them, which caused a tavern full of pirates to be appalled. We tasted the pleasures of a hundred worlds.

"Why did you come back?" I asked her as we lay in bed.

"Chance?" She shrugged. "A job. Someone needed something from there to here and I brought it."

"Why did you come back to me?" I waited for her to answer.

Eventually she said, "It's what I do. There's a Peter on a lot of worlds. I come back to see what you've become. It's like visiting a series of portraits. I see you captured as a young man. Then I visit a moment when you are as you are now. If there is a next time, you'll be an old man. Three ticks of the clock. Beginning, middle, end. Then gone. It's like traveling through time."

"So I'm some sort of marker, away for you to mark your passage through the years?"

She looked at me. "I made you no promises. You said you understood. I never asked you to wait for my return."

"I did not wait for you," I told her.

I did not wait for her, I told myself.

* * *

The next time she went away, I was old.

I'd married again, once or twice. I even had a son and a daughter, both grown. The stories of Annie Jones I'd told them I now told to my grandchildren. They weren't true stories. The truth I kept locked away inside of me, to look at now and then when I was alone.

In fact, I made a good deal of money writing stories about Annie Jones. Like Annie Jones and the Space Squid. And Annie Jones and the Robots of Doom. And there were others, some of which were made into sensies. If Annie came back, she would find herself a legend, like Joan of Arc, or Buffalo Bill, or Neil Armstrong. I smiled to think of her reaction and hoped I would be out of her reach when she found out.

I still sat at the same table at the bar now run by my daughter and her husband. No longer posing, no longer intriguing, no longer waiting, just remembering and occasionally writing down a tale that had its start in a memory. My hair was white and thinning, and I was smaller than I had been, befitting my smaller life. And sometimes, I admit, satisfied, content, and happy, I fell asleep, nodding in my chair, dreaming dreams I kept to myself.

"Hey!" The voice, next to my head, woke me and almost made me fall backwards out of my chair.

"What have you done to me, old man?"

"Annie?" My eyes weren't as good as they once were, but the woman looming over me had longish black hair, and no tattoo. She was wearing a loose blouse and a short skirt. "Annie?"

"Yes, Annie, you slobbering, senile, son of a..."

"What have you done to yourself?"

She stopped and looked at herself. "What are you talk... Oh, I guess I look a little different than I did the last time you and I... Who gives a spacer's shit what the hell I look like? What's all this crap about Annie Jones and the Whore of Planet X, or whatever it is you've been spewing? Every time I try to pick up a lover or start a fight, people treat me like I wasn't real, like I'm sort kind of story book character come to life. I punched a cop just to see what would happen and she thanked me! Said, wait until she tells her kids that she got punched by Annie Jones. What have you done to me?"

When I was able to speak without letting her catch me laughing, I said, "I made you famous, that's all. Or, not you, so much as the idea of you." I risked a chuckle. "Made a lot of money at it, too."

"Money?" That calmed her down. "Well, I suppose if you did it to make money it's all right." She smiled. "I remember one time when we convinced the people on some hick world out beyond Andromeda that there was an asteroid coming that would wipe out half the planet. We sold about a thousand passages aboard a ship that might have held six or seven people if they didn't mind getting to know each other real well." A laugh burst from her. "Then we left two days, or rather nights, before we were scheduled to and left them all behind. I always wondered if they were so relieved we'd lied to them about the asteroid that they didn't mind losing their money."

She pulled up a chair and we started drinking ale and telling lies. It was almost like going back in time. Almost like being alive. I could pretend that I could keep up with her, that I wasn't tired, that I didn't hope for one more night with her.

Eventually I said, "How about some food?"

"God, yes," she said. "I'm so hungry I feel like I could take a bite out of a neutron star. Where should we go?" She stood up, pushing her chair over, ready for whatever came next.

Except for what I suggested. "How about my place?"

She didn't laugh, which was a relief to me. She did look at me with pity, which made me angry, whether at her or at myself I wasn't sure.

"I have food," I said, with some heat. "And I can cook." She still looked like she wasn't sure how to break it to me that she wasn't anxious to leap into bed with the decrepit husk of what had been a man. "I just thought you might want a real meal for a change, that's all. I have no dark designs on your virtue, if that's what you're worried about." I stared at her, daring her to laugh. Which she did, forcing me to join her.

"Come on, then," she said. "Let's go and fill our bellies with something other than ale for a while."

No promises, I told myself, but a perhaps, a maybe, a could be. I didn't even mind that she helped me to my feet. Her touch warmed places that had been cold too long. No promises, I told myself, but a hope, a wish, a prayer.

Before we got to the door, it opened and a group of five, or ten, or a hundred people burst in, laughing, shouting, shoving, shaking the floor like a stampede of wild creatures in their rush to reach the bar. Spacers and the crowd they accreted as they cruised the port.

"Annie!" they yelled when they saw her. "Annie Jones!" they trumpeted.

And she answered them. "Trisha! Sasha! Wen Ho!" And more. She was surrounded and torn from me by the mob, swept away by a wave of old friends and shipmates. I stood and watched them go. Even though they were just a few feet from me, they seemed to recede into the distance until I was alone, a million miles from anyone.

I went back to my table and waited.

* * *

There comes a time when old ceases to have meaning and the young become impatient to have you die and get out of the way. When every day you wake up is a miracle, or a curse, and you are never sure which.

I waited, no more pretending to myself. I hung on, day after day after day. I could hear the whispers of grandchildren and great-grandchildren as they wondered if I would ever die. They loved me, I think, but enough was enough. Besides, I still had some money to leave them.

Yet, even though there were no promises, I waited.

And, finally, she came.

"Peter?" she said, leaning over me as I lay in bed. Her voice was strained with the effort of trying to fit her normal shout into a whisper. Her hair was silver this time, the metal, not the color, though she was no longer young. The way she moved, the way she stood, were still filled with confidence, but some of her brashness was gone, as if she'd met a situation or two somewhere in her travels which she hadn't been able to handle all by herself. "Peter," she whispered again, a little louder, when I didn't respond. She leaned closer, trying to see if there was life in my eyes, to hear if I still breathed.

I did breathe. I breathed in the scent of her, the scent of a time before I was born and the time to come after I was dead. I smelled crowded ships visiting a hundred worlds with a thousand taverns. Blood and sweat and sex and fear and joy. I inhaled Annie Jones like a drug.

And when I exhaled, I let it all out.

"You never promised to come back," I said. "But you always did. And I never meant to wait for you, but when I wasn't spending my time thinking about the last time, I was hoping there would be a next time."

"Then you're a fool," she said, but she stroked my forehead as she said it. "I'm Annie Jones and I don't care about anyone but me. I'm a traveler through space and time, and, if sometimes by chance I happen to come back, I always go away."

"I know who you are, Annie, and I'm glad that you came back. But this time it's me that's going away with no promise to return." I smiled at her. "And, unlike you, I mean it." And I swear I saw a tear fall. And I was happy, not that she was sad, but that, in her way, she loved me.

 

SCREAM ANGEL

Douglas Smith

They stopped beating Trelayne when they saw that he enjoyed it. The thugs that passed as cops in that town on Long Shot backed away from where he lay curled on the dirt floor, as if he was something dead or dangerous. He watched them lock the door of his cold little cell again. Disgust and something like fear showed in their eyes. The taste of their contempt for him mixed with the sharpness of his own blood in his mouth. And the Scream in that blood shot another stab of pleasure through him.

He expected their reaction. The Merged Corporate Entity guarded its secrets well, and Scream was its most precious. Long Shot lay far from any Entity project world and well off the jump route linking Earth and the frontier. No one on this backwater planet would know of the drug, let alone have encountered a Screamer or an Angel. That was why he had picked it.

Their footsteps receded, and the outer door of the plasteel storage hut that served as the town jail clanged shut. Alone, he rolled onto his side on the floor, relishing the agony the movement brought. He tried to recall how he came to be there, but the Scream in him turned each attempt into an emotional sideshow. Finally he remembered something burning, something...

...falling.

It had been one of their better shows.

He remembered now. Remembered last night, standing in the ring of their makeshift circus dome, announcing the performers to an uncaring crowd, crying out the names of the damned, the conquered. Each member of his refugee band emerged from behind torn red curtains and propelled themselves in the manner of their species into or above the ring, depending on their chosen act.

He knew the acts meant little. The crowd came not to see feats of acrobatics or strength, but to gawk at otherworldly strangeness, to watch aliens bow in submission before the mighty human. Trelayne's circus consisted of the remnants of the subjugated races of a score of worlds, victims to the Entity's resource extraction or terraforming project: the Stone Puppies, lumbering silica beasts of slate-sided bulk-Guppert the Strong, squat bulbous-limbed refugee from the crushing gravity and equally crushing mining exploitation of Mendlos II-Feran the fox-child, his people hunted down like animals on Fandor IV.

And the Angels. Always the Angels.

But curled in the dirt in the cold cell, recalling last night, Trelayne pushed away any thoughts of the Angels. And of her.

Yes, it had been a fine show. Until the Ta'lona died, exploding in blood and brilliance high above the ring, after floating too near a torch. Trelayne had bought the gas bag creature's freedom a week before from an ip slaver, knowing that its species had been nearly wiped out.

As pieces of the fat alien had fallen flaming into the crowd, Trelayne's grip on reality had shattered like a funhouse mirror struck by a hammer. He could now recall only flashes of what had followed last night: people burning-screaming-panic-a stampede to the exits-his arrest.

Nor could he remember doing any Scream. He usually stayed clean before a show. But he knew what he felt now lying in the cell-the joy of the beating, the ecstasy of humiliation. He must have done a hit when the chaos began and the smell of burnt flesh reached him. To escape the horror.

Or to enter it. For with Scream, horror opened a door to heaven.

Someone cleared their throat in the cell. Trelayne jumped, then shivered at the thrill of surprise. Moaning, he rolled onto his back on the floor and opened his eyes, struggling to orient himself again.

A man now sat on the cot in the cell. A man with a lean face and eyes that reminded Trelayne of his own. He wore a long gray cloak with a major's rank and a small insignia on which a red "RIP" hovered over a green planet split by a lightning bolt.

The uniform of RIP Force. A uniform that Trelayne had worn a lifetime ago. Gray meant Special Services: this man was RIP, but not a Screamer. RIP kept senior officers and the SS clean.

The man studied a PerComm unit held in a black-gloved hand, then looked down at Trelayne and smiled. "Hello, Captain Trelayne," he said softly, as if he were addressing a child.

Trelayne swallowed. He was shaking and realized he had been since he had recognized the uniform. "My name is not Trelayne."

"I am Weitz," the man said. The PerComm disappeared inside his cloak. "And the blood sample I took from you confirms that you are Jason Lewiston Trelayne, former Captain and Wing Commander in the Entity's Forces for the Relocation of Indigenous Peoples, commonly known as RIP Force. Convicted of treason in absentia three years ago, 2056-12-05 AD. Presumed dead in the MCE raid on the rebel base on Darcon III in 2057-08-26."

Trelayne licked his lips, savoring the flavor of his fear.

"You're a wanted man, Trelayne." Weitz's voice was soft. "Or would be, if the Entity knew you were still alive."

The Scream in Trelayne turned the threat in those words into a thrilling chill up his spine. He giggled.

Weitz sighed. "I've never seen a Screamer alive three years after RIP. Dead by their own hand inside a month, more likely. But then, most don't have their own source, do they?"

The implication of those words broke through the walls of Scream in Trelayne's mind. Weitz represented real danger-to him, to those in the circus that depended on him. To her. Trelayne struggled to focus on the man's words.

"...good choice," Weitz was saying. "Not a spot the Entity has any interest in now. You'd never see Rippers here-" Weitz smiled. "-unless they had ship trouble. I was in the next town waiting for repairs when I heard of a riot at a circus of ips."

Ips-I.P.'s-Indigenous Peoples. A Ripper slur for aliens. Weitz stood up. "You have an Angel breeding pair, Captain, and I need them." He pushed open the cell door and walked out, leaving the door open. "I've arranged for your release. You're free to go. Not that you can go far. We'll talk again soon." Looking back to where Trelayne lay shivering, Weitz shook his head. "Jeezus, Trelayne. You used to be my hero."

Trelayne slumped back down on the floor, smiling as the smell of dirt and stale urine stung his throat. "I used to be a lot of things," he said, as much to himself as to Weitz.

Weitz shook his head again. "We'll talk soon, Captain." He turned and left the hut.

* * *

Think of human emotional response as a sine wave function. Peaks and valleys. The peaks represent pleasure, and the valleys pain. The greater your joy, the higher the peak; the greater your pain, the deeper the valley.

Imagine a drug that takes the valleys and flips them, makes them peaks too. You react now to an event based not on the pleasure or pain inherent in it, but solely on the intensity of the emotion created. Pain brings pleasure, grief gives joy, horror renders ecstasy.

Now give this drug to one who must perform an unpleasant task. No. Worse than that. An immoral deed. Still worse. A nightmare act of chilling terminal brutality. Give it to a soldier. Tell them to kill. Not in the historically acceptable murder we call war, but in a systematic corporate strategy-planned, scheduled, and budgeted-of xenocide.

They will kill. And they will revel in it.

Welcome to the world of Scream.

-Extract from propaganda data bomb launched on Fandor IV ComCon by rebel forces, 2056-10-05 A.D. Attributed to Capt. Jason L. Trelayne during his subsequent trial in absentia for treason.

* * *

Feran thought tonight's show was their finest since the marvelous Ta'lona had died, now a five-day ago. From behind the red curtains that hid the performers' entrance, the young kit watched the two Angels, Philomela and Procne, plummet from the top of the dome to swoop over the man-people crowd. Remembering how wonderfully the fat alien had burnt, Feran also recalled the Captain explaining to him how that night had been bad. The Captain had been forced to give much power-stuff for the burnt man-people and other things that Feran did not understand.

The Angels completed a complicated spiral dive, interweaving their descents. Linking arms just above the main ring, they finished with a dizzying spin like the top the Captain had made him. They bowed to the applauding crowd, folding and unfolding diaphanous wings so the spotlights sparkled on the colors.

Feran clapped his furred hands together as Mojo had taught him, closing his ear folds to shut out the painful noise of the man-people. As the performers filed out for the closing procession around the center ring, Feran ran to take his spot behind the Stone Puppies. Guppert the Strong lifted Feran gently to place him on the slate-gray back of the nearest silica beast.

"Good show, little friend!" Guppert cried. His squat form waddled beside Feran. Guppert liked Long Shot because it did not hold him to the ground as did his home of Mendlos. "Of course, Guppert never go home now," he had told Feran once, his skin color darkening to show sadness. "Off-planet too long. Mendlos crush Guppert, as if Stone Puppy step on Feran. But with Earth soldiers there in mecha-suits, now Mendlos not home anyway."

Waving to the crowd, the performers disappeared one by one through the red curtains. Feran leapt from the Stone Puppy, shouted a goodbye to Guppert, and scurried off to search for Philomela. Outside the show dome, he sniffed the cool night air for her scent, found it, then turned and ran into the Cutter.

"Whoa, Red! What's the rush?" The tall thin man scowled down at Feran like an angry mantis. The Cutter was the healer for the circus. "Helpin' us die in easy stages, s'more like it," was how the Cutter had introduced himself when Feran had arrived.

"I seek the Bird Queen, Cutter," Feran replied.

Sighing, the Cutter jerked a thumb towards a cluster of small dome pods where the performers lived. Feran thought of it as the den area. "Don't let him take too much, you hear?"

Feran nodded and ran off again, until a voice like wind in crystal trees halted him. "You did well tonight, sharp ears."

Feran turned. Philomela smiled down at him, white hair and pale skin, tall and thin like an earth woman stretched to something alien in a trick mirror. Even walking, she made Feran think of birds in flight. Philomela was beautiful. The Captain had told him so many times. He would likely tell Feran again tonight, once he had breathed her dust that Feran brought him.

"Thank you, Bird Queen," Feran replied, bowing low with a sweep of his hand as the Captain had taught him. Philomela laughed, and Feran bared his teeth in joy. He had made the beautiful bird lady laugh. The Captain would be pleased.

Procne came to stand behind Philomela, his spider-fingered hand circling her slim waist. "Where do you go now, Feran? Does Mojo still have chores for you?" He looked much like her, taller, heavier, but features still delicate, almost feminine. His stomach pouch skin rippled where the brood moved inside him.

"He goes to the Captain's pod," Philomela said. "They talk, about the times when the Captain flew in the ships. Don't you?"

Feran nodded.

Procne's eyelids slid in from each side, leaving only a vertical slit. "The times when those ships flew over our homes, you mean? Your home too, Feran." Procne spun and stalked away, his wings pulled tight against his back.

Feran stared after him, then up at Philomela. "Did I do wrong, Bird Queen?"

Philomela folded and unfolded her wings. "No, little one, no. My mate remembers too much, yet forgets much too." She paused. "As does the Captain." She stroked Feran's fur where it lay red and soft between his large ears, then handed him a small pouch. "Feran, tonight don't let the Captain breathe too much of my dust. Get him to sleep early. He looks so... tired." Feran took the pouch and nodded. He decided he would not tell the Captain of Philomela's face as she walked away.

* * *

> > > > > > Merged Corporate Entity, Inc. > > > > > >

Project Search Request

Search Date: 2059-06-02

Requestor: Weitz, David R. Major, RIP Special Services

Search Criteria:

Project World: All          Division: PharmaCorps

Product: Scream             Context: Field Ops/Post-Imp

Clearance Required: AAA     Your Clearance: AAA

> > > > > > Access Granted. Search results follow. > > > > > >

Scream mimics several classes of psychotropics, including psychomotor stimulants, antidepressants, and narcotic analgesics It acts on both stimulatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters hallucinogenic effects by maintaining neurotransmitter balance. It enhances sensory ability, speeds muscular reaction and lessens nerve response to pain. It affects all three opiate receptors, induct intense euphoria without narcotic drowsiness.

Physical addiction is achieved by four to six ingestions at dosage prescribed in Field Ops release 221.7. 1. Treated personnel exhibit significantly lowered resistance to violence. Secondary benefits for field operations include decreased fatigue, delayed sleep on set; and enhanced mental capacity.

Negative side effects include uncontrolled masochistic or sadistic tendencies, such as self-mutilation or attacks on fellow soldiers. Scream is therefore not administered until military obedience programming is completed in boot camp. Long-term complications include paranoid psychoses and suicidal depression. depression. Withdrawal is characterized by hallucinations, delirium and seizures, terminating with strokes or heart attacks.

Attempts to synthesize continue, but at present our sole source remains extraction from females of the dominant humanoids on Lania II, Xeno sapiens lania var. angelus (colloq.: Scream Angel). The liquid produced crystallizes into powder form. Since the drug is tied to reproduction (see Xenobiology: Lania: Life Forms. 1275), ensuring supply requires an inventory of breeding pairs with brood delivery dates spread evenly over-

> > > > > > File Transfer Request Acknowledged > > > > > >

Xenobiology File: Lania: Life Forms: 1275

The adult female produces the drug from mammary glands at all times but at higher levels in the reproductive cycle. Sexual coupling occurs at both the start and end of the cycle. The first act impregnates the female. The brood develops in her until delivery after thirty weeks in what the original Teplosky journal called the "larval form," transferring then to the male's pouch via orifices in his abdominal wall. For the next nineteen weeks, they feed from the male, who ingests large quantities of Scream from the female... The brood's impending release as mature nestlings prompts the male to initiate the final coupling-

* * *

Trelayne lay in his sleep pod at the circus waiting for Feran and the hit of Scream that the kit brought each night. The meeting with Weitz had burst a dam of times past, flooding him with memories. He closed his eyes, his face wet with delicious tears. Though all his dreams were nightmares, he did not fear them. Terror was now but another form of pleasure. Sleep at least freed him from the tyranny of decision.

Twenty again. My first action. I remember... Remember? I'd give my soul to forget, if my soul remains for me to barter.

Bodies falling against a slate-gray sky...

The RIP transports on Fandor IV were huge oblate spheroids, flattened and wider in the middle than at the ends. Trelayne and almost one hundred other Rippers occupied the jump seats that lined the perimeter of the main bay, facing in, officers near the cockpit. Before them, maybe a hundred Fandor natives huddled on the metal floor, eyes downcast but constantly darting around the hold and over their captors. The adults were about five feet tall and humanoid, but their soft red facial hair, pointed snouts and ears gave them a feral look. The children reminded Trelayne of a stuffed toy he had as a child.

Fresh from RIP boot camp, this was to be his first action. These Fandorae came from a village located over rich mineral deposits soon to be an Entity mining operation. They were to be "relocated" to an island off the west coast. He added the quotes in response to a growing suspicion, fed by overheard jokes shared by RIP veterans. He also recalled arriving on Fandor, scanning the ocean on the approach to the RIP base on the west shore.

There were no islands off the coast.

The other Rippers shifted and fidgeted, waiting for their first hit of the day. The life support system of their field suits released Scream directly into their blood, once each suit's computer received the transmitted command from the RIP Force unit leader. If you wanted your Scream, you suited up and followed orders. And God, you wanted your Scream.

His unit had been on Scream since the end of boot camp. Trelayne knew he was addicted. He knew that RIP wanted him and all his unit addicted. He just didn't know why. He had also noticed that no one in his unit had family. No one would miss any of them. Another reason to follow orders.

Twenty minutes out from the coast, a major unbuckled his boost harness and nodded to a captain to his right. Every Ripper watched as the captain hit a button on his wrist pad.

The Scream came like the remembered sting of an old wound, a friend that you hadn't seen in years and once reunited, you wondered why you had missed them.

The captain's voice barked in their headsets, ordering them out of their harnesses. Trelayne rose as one with the other Rippers, StAB rod charged and ready, the Scream in him twisting his growing horror into the anticipation of ecstasy. The Fandorae huddled closer together in the middle of the bay.

The captain punched another button. Trelayne felt the deck thrumming through his boots as the center bay doors split open. The Fandorae leapt up, grabbing their young and skittering back from the widening hole, only to face an advancing wall of Rippers with lowered StAB rods.

Some of the Fandorae chose to leap. Some were pushed by their own people in the panic. Others fell on the StAB rods or died huddled over their young.

Trelayne pulled a kit, no more than a year, from under a dead female. He held the child in his arms, waiting his turn as the Rippers in front of him lifted or pushed the remaining bodies through the bay doors. When he reached the edge, Trelayne lifted the kit from his shoulder and held it over the opening. It did not squirm, or cry, only stared a mute accusation. Trelayne let go, then knelt to peer over the edge.

A salt wind stung sharp and cold where it crept under his helmet. He watched the kit fall to hit the rough gray sea a hundred feet below. Most of the bodies had already slipped beneath the waves. The kit disappeared to join them.

A nausea that even Scream could not deflect seized Trelayne. Pushing back from the edge, he wrenched his visor up to gasp in air. A Ripper beside him turned to him, and for a brief moment Trelayne caught his own reflection in the man's mirrored visor. The image burned into his memory as be fought to reconcile the horror engulfing him with the grinning mask of his own face...

Dreaming still... falling still... falling in love...

Trelayne made captain in a year, as high as Screamers could rise in RIP. He took no pride in it. When the Scream ran low in him, his guilt rose black and bottomless. But his addiction was now complete. Withdrawal for a Screamer meant weeks of agony, without the filter of Scream, then death. The Entity was his only source. He did what he was told.

Rippers burnt out fast on project worlds, so the Entity rotated them off relo work every six months for a four-week tour on a "processed" world. Trelayne's first tour after making captain was on Lania, the Angel home planet, arranging transport of Angel breeding pairs from Lamia to project worlds with RIP Force units. The Entity had found that, with Angels on-planet, concerns over Scream delivery could be put aside for that world.

Sex with an Angel, said RIP veterans, was the ultimate high. But upon arrival, Trelayne had found them too alien, too thin and wraith-like. He decided that their reputation was due more to ingesting uncut Scream during sex than to their ethereal beauty.

Then he saw her.

She was one of a hundred Angels being herded into a cargo shuttle that would dock with an orbiting jump ship. Angels staggered by Trelayne, their eyes downcast. He had started to turn away when he saw her: striding with head held high, glaring at the guards. She turned as she passed him. Their eyes locked.

He ordered her removed from the shipment. That is how he met her. As her captor. Then her liberator. Then her lover.

The Earth name she had taken was Philomela. Her Angel name could not be produced by a human throat. She brought him joy and pain. He was never sure what he brought her. She gave herself willingly, and her pleasure in their lovemaking seemed so sincere that he sometimes let himself believe-believe that she clung to him in those moments, not to a desperate hope for freedom. That she did not hate him for what RIP had done to her people.

That she loved him.

But Scream strangled such moments. Though not on combat doses, he still needed it for physical dependency. On low doses, depression clouded life in a gray mist. Could she love him when he doubted his own love for her? Why was he drawn to her? Sex? His private source of Scream? To wash his hands clean by saving one of his victims? And always between them loomed an impassable chasm: they were separate species who could never be truly mated.

The news reached him one rare afternoon as they lay together in his quarters. His PerComm unit, hanging on the wall above them, began to buzz like an angry insect He pulled it down and read the message from the Cutter, the medic in his unit.

She watched him as he read. "Jase, is something wrong?"

He had come to expect her empathy. Whether she could now read his human expressions or sense his mood, he didn't know. He threw the unit away as if it had stung him and covered his face with a hand. "Mojo. One of my men, a friend. He's Fallen."

"Is he-"

"He's alive. No serious injuries." As if that mattered.

"Do you think he tried to take his life?"

"No," he said, though the drug in him screamed yes.

"Many do-"

"No! Not Mojo." But he knew she was right. Suicide was common with Screamers, and "Joining the Fallen" was a favored method-a dive that you never came out of. The Entity punished any survivors brutally. Screamers were easily replaced, but one LASh jet could cut the return on a project world by a full point.

"Now comes the judging your people do?" she asked.

"Court martial. Two weeks." If they found Mojo guilty they would discharge him. No source of Scream. Better to have died in the crash, he thought. He got out of bed and began dressing. "I have to leave Lania, return to my base. Try to help him."

"They will judge against him. You will not change that."

"I know. But I have to try. He has no one else."

She turned away. "We have few moments together."

She was shaking, and he realized that she was crying. He misunderstood. "I'll be back soon. It'll be better then."

She shook her head and looked up at him. "I mean that we have few moments left. It is my time."

He stood there staring down at her. "What do you mean?"

"I must produce a brood." She turned away again.

"You mean you will take a mate. One of your own kind."

"His name is Procne," she said, still not looking at him.

He didn't know what to do or say, so he kept dressing.

She turned to him. "I love you," she said quietly.

He stopped. She waited. He said nothing. She lay down, sobbing. He swallowed and formed the thought in his mind, opened his mouth to tell her that he loved her too, when she spoke again.

"What will become of me?" she asked.

All his doubts about her rushed in to drown the words in his mouth. He was but a way of escape to her. She did not love him. She would give herself to one of her own. She was alien. The Angels hated RIP for what they had done. She hated him.

He pulled on his jacket and turned away...

* * *

The trial, I tried, Mojo-but nothing can save us when we Fall, and we were Falling the moment they put it in our blood...

* * *

The day after Mojo's trial, Trelayne entered the RIP barracks pod. The Cutter and two other Rippers sat on drop-bunks watching MoJo stuff his few possessions into a canister pack. MoJo wore his old civvies, now at least a size too small. He still had a Medistim on his arm, and he moved with a limp.

The others jumped to attention when they saw their visitor. Cutter just nodded. Trelayne returned the salutes then motioned towards the door. After a few words and half-hearted slaps on Mojo's back, they filed out, leaving Trelayne and Mojo alone.

Mojo sat down on his bunk. "Thanks, Cap. Hell of a try."

Trelayne sat, forcing a smile. "You forget we lost?"

Mojo shrugged. "Never had a chance. You know that. None of us do. Just a matter of time. If the Scream don't get you, they will. No way out for the likes of us."

Trelayne searched Mojo's broad face. I have to try, he thought. We won't get another chance. "Maybe there is a way."

Narrowing his eyes, Mojo glanced at the door and back again. He looked grim. "I'm with you, Cap. Whatever, wherever."

Trelayne shook his head. "They'll kill us if we're caught."

"I'm a dead man already. We all are."

Trelayne sighed and started talking...

* * *

And so the Fallen dreamed of rising again, eh Mojo? What fools we were. But we gave them a run for a while, didn't we-

* * *

Trelayne returned to Lania. In his absence, Philomela had taken Procne as her mate. She refused to see Trelayne. He added her and Procne to the next cargo of Angels being shipped to the project worlds, with himself as the ship's captain.

He did not see her until after their ship had made the first jump. Philomela was summoned to the captain's cabin, to be told to which planet she and her mate had been consigned.

She stiffened when she entered and saw him. "You."

He nodded and waited.

"Sending us into slavery to be bred and milked like animals, this was not enough? You had to be here to see it happen, did you, Jason?" She looked around. "Where is the captain?"

"I am the captain on this trip."

She looked confused. "But you have never gone on these..."

He sighed. "Please sit. I have much to say..."

* * *

Why did I risk everything to save her? Love? Guilt? As penance? For her Scream? In a desperate hope that one day she would turn to me again? Or as I fell, was I willing to grasp at anything, even if I pulled all I loved down with me?

* * *

From the ship's observation deck, Trelayne and Philomela watched a shuttle depart, carrying a "shipment" of twenty pairs of Angels for the project world below.

"Do you know why I chose my Earth name?" she asked.

Her voice was flat, dead, but he heard the pain that each of these worlds brought her as more of her people were torn away, while she remained safe, protected. "No. Tell me," he said.

"In a legend of your planet, Philomela was a girl turned into a nightingale by the gods. That image pleased me, to be chosen by the gods, elevated to the heavens. Only later did I learn that the nightingale is also a symbol of death."

Trelayne bowed his head. "Phi, there's nothing-"

"No, but allow me at least my bitterness. And guilt."

Guilty of being spared. By him. She and Procne spared, only because an addict and xenocide and soon-to-be traitor needed his drug source close. He had stopped trying to examine his motives beyond that. The Scream would mock the small voice in him that spoke of a last remnant of honor and noble intent.

"My sister is on that shuttle," Philomela said quietly.

Trelayne said nothing for there was nothing to say. They watched the tiny ship fall towards the planet below...

* * *

At each planet on that trip, we gathered to us the castoffs, the unwanted, the remnants of a dozen races, together with the Fallen. And then, suddenly, there was no turning back...

* * *

Trelayne's first officer, a young lieutenant-commander named Glandis, confronted him on the bridge. She wasn't backing down this time. "Captain, I must again register my concern over continued irregularities in your command of this mission."

Trelayne glanced at the monitor by his chair. Mojo and eleven other ex-Rippers were disembarking from a shuttle in the ship's docking bay. In two minutes, they would be on the bridge. He tapped a command, deactivating all internal communications and alarms. He turned to Glandis. "Irregularities?"

"The ip cargo we have acquired at each of our stops."

"Those people are to be transported to the Entity's Product R&D center on Earth," Trelayne responded.

Glandis snorted. "What research could the Entity conduct with-" She read from her PerComm. "-a Mendlos subject?"

"Physiological adaptation to high-grav," Trelayne replied.

"A Fandorae kit? A Fanarucci viper egg."

"Biotech aural receptor design, and neural poison mutagenics development." One minute more, he thought.

Glandis hesitated, some of the confidence leaving her face. "You have also protected one specific breeding pair of Angels for purposes that have yet to be made clear to me."

"They too are slated for Entity research." Trelayne rose. Thirty seconds. "Synthesization of Scream."

"What about this stop? It was not on our filed flight plan."

"Late orders from RIP Force command." Fifteen seconds.

"I was not informed."

"You just were."

Glandis reddened. "And what purpose will a dozen disgraced ex-members of RIP Force serve?"

Now, thought Trelayne. The door to the bridge slid open. Mojo and four other ex-Rippers burst in, Tanzer rifles charged and pointed at Glandis and the bridge crew. Glandis turned to Trelayne with mouth open, then froze.

Trelayne had his own weapon leveled at Glandis. "Their purpose, I'm afraid, is to replace the crew of this ship."

* * *

And so the fallen rose again, to scale a precipice from which there was no retreat, and each new height we gained only made the final fall that much farther...

* * *

After leaving the Bird Queen, Feran ran past the closed tubes of the barkers, the games of chance, and the sleep pods of the performers. The kit moved easily among the ropes, refuse, and equipment, his path clear to him even in the dim light of sputtering torches and an occasional hovering glow-globe.

The show used fewer glow-globes than when Feran had first arrived. The Captain said the globes cost too much now. Feran didn't mind. He needed little light to see, and liked the smell of the torches and the crackle they made.

Turning a corner, Feran froze. Weasel Man stood outside the Captain's pod. The Captain had said that the man's name was Weitz, but he reminded Feran of the animals the kit hunted in the woods outside the circus. The door opened. Weasel Man stepped inside.

Feran crept to the open window at the pod's side. He could hear voices. His nose twitched. His ears snapped up and opened wide, adjusting until the sound was the sharpest.

* * *

Trelayne lay on his sleep pod bunk, shaking from withdrawal. Feran was late bringing his nightly hit. Weitz lounged in a chair, staring at him. It had been five days since their meeting in the jail. "Where've you been, Weitz?" Trelayne wheezed.

"Had some arrangements to make. Need a hit, don't you?"

"It's coming," Trelayne mumbled. "What do you want?"

Weitz shrugged. "I told you. The Angels."

"But not to hand them back to the Entity, or you'd have done it by now," Trelayne said. But if Weitz wanted the Angels, why didn't he just take them? He had his own men and a ship.

Weitz smiled. "Do you know there are rebels on Fandor IV?"

"Rebels? What are you talking about?" Where was Feran?

"Ex-RIP rebels like you, or rather, like you once were."

"Like me? God, then I pity the rebels on Fandor IV."

Weitz leaned forward in his chair. "I'm one of them."

Trelayne laughed. "You're RIP SS."

"I assist from the inside. I supply them with Scream."

Trelayne stared at Weitz. This man was far more dangerous than he had first appeared. "You've managed to surprise me, Major. Why would you risk your life for a bunch of rebels?"

Weitz shrugged. "I said you were my hero. The man who defied an empire. I want to do my part, too."

Trelayne snorted. "Out of the goodness of your heart."

Weitz reddened. "I cover my costs. No more."

I'll bet, Trelayne thought. "Where do you get Scream?"

"I... acquired a store doing an SS audit of a RiP warehouse."

"You stole it. A store? Since when can you store Scream?"

Weitz smiled. "A result of intense research prompted by your escape with the Angels. You made the Entity realize the risk of transporting breeding pairs. Angels are now kept in secure facilities on Lania and two other worlds, producing Scream that's shipped to project worlds with RIP forces. Angels live and die without ever leaving the facility they were born into."

Trelayne shuddered. Because of him. But the Scream in him ran too low to find any joy in this new horror.

They fell silent. Finally Weitz spoke. "So what happened, Trelayne? To the Great Rebel Leader? To the one man who stood up to the Entity? How'd it all go to hell?"

"Screamers are in hell already. We were trying to get out."

"You got out, in a stolen Entity cruiser. Then what?"

Shivering, Trelayne struggled to sit up. Where was Feran? "We jumped to a system the Entity had already rejected. Only one habitable planet. No resources worth the extraction cost."

"And set up a base for a guerilla war on the Entity."

"No. A colony. A home for the dispossessed races."

"You attacked Entity project worlds," Weitz said.

"We sent messages. There was never any physical assault."

"Your data bombs flooded Comm systems for entire planets."

"We tried to make people aware of what the Entity was doing. Almost worked." Trelayne fought withdrawal, trying to focus on Weitz. The man was afraid of something. But what?

"I'll say. You cost them trillions hushing it up, flushing systems. But then what? The reports just end."

"The Entity still has a file on us?" That pleased Trelayne.

"On you," Weitz corrected. "You've got your own entire file sequence. Special clearance needed to get at them. Well?"

Trelayne fell silent, remembering the day, remembering his guilt. "I got careless. They tracked us through a jump somehow, found the colony, T-beamed it from orbit."

"An entire planet? My god!" Weitz whispered.

"A few of us escaped." But not Phi's children, her first brood, he thought. More guilt, though she had never blamed him. "In a heavily armed cruiser with a crew of ex-Rippers."

He looked at Weitz. That was it. Even through the haze of withdrawal, he knew he had his answer: Weitz thought Trelayne still had a band of ex-Rippers at hand, battle-proven trained killers with super-human reflexes and their own Scream supply. Something like hope tried to fight through the black despair of his withdrawal. Weitz would try to deal first.

"And this?" Weitz took in the circus with a wave of a hand.

"After we lost the base, we had to keep moving. As a cover story to clear immigration on each world, I concocted a circus of aliens. Then I ran out of money, had to do it for real."

"What if someone had recognized you? Or knew about Angels?"

Trelayne struggled to speak. "We avoided anywhere with an Entity presence, stayed off the main jump routes." He started to shiver. "Why do you want Angels if you have a store of Scream?"

"My supply'll run out, and I can't count on stealing more."

Trelayne stared at Weitz. "So what's the deal?"

Weitz smiled. "Why do you think I won't just take them?"

"Against a crew of ex-Rippers pumped on Scream?"

Weitz's smile faded. He studied Trelayne. "Okay. Let's assess your position. One: I gave your ship's beacon signature to Long Shot's space defense. If you run, you'll be caught."

Trelayne said nothing.

"Two: if you're caught, your ip pals get sent back to their home worlds. And you know what that means."

Trelayne stayed silent, but his skin went cold.

"Three: you, Mojo and the medic get executed for treason."

"Like I said, what's the deal?"

Weitz studied Trelayne again, then finally spoke. "Both Angels for my store of Scream-a lifetime supply for you and your men. I lift the order on your ship and turn my back as you and your band jump. Your life goes on, with Scream but no Angels."

Life goes on, if you called this life. That much Scream was worth a fortune. But nowhere near the value of a breeding pair.

So there it was. Betray his love or die. What choice did he have? Refuse, and Weitz would turn them over to the Entity, and all would die. Run, and be killed or caught by the planetary fleet. Give her up, along with Procne, and at least the others would be free. Besides, she had turned from him, taken one of her own. She had only used him to escape, had always used him. She was an alien and hated him for what he had done to her race.

She had never really loved him.

All that stood against this were the remnants of his love for her, and a phantom memory of the man he once had been.

* * *

Outside, Feran waited for the Captain's reply to Weasel Man. He didn't know what the Captain would do but he knew it would be brave and noble. Feran listened for the sound of the Captain leaping to his feet and striking Weasel Man to the floor. But when a sound came, it was only the Captain's voice, small and hoarse. "All right," was all he said.

"You'll do it?" That was Weasel Man. Feran did not hear a reply. "Tomorrow morning." Weasel Man again. The door opened, and Feran scooted under the pod. Weasel Man stepped out smiling. Feran had seen sand babies smile like that on Fandor just before they spit their venom in your eyes.

As he watched the man walk away, fading into the darkness, something inside Feran faded away as well. He stood staring into the shadows for a long time, then turned and entered the pod. The Captain lay in his sleeping place. He seemed not to notice Feran. The kit put the pouch from the Bird Queen on the table, then left without a word. The Captain did not call after him.

* * *

How long Feran wandered the grounds, he did not know. Some time later, he found the Cutter and Mojo sitting in front of a fire burning on an old heat shield panel from the ship.

"Seen the Captain, Feran?" asked Mojo. Feran just nodded.

"He's had his bottle? All tucked in for the night?" the Cutter asked. Feran nodded again as Mojo scowled at the Cutter.

They sat silently for a while. "Does it hurt when you lose someone you love?" Feran asked, ashamed of the fear in his voice, the fear that he felt for Philomela.

The Cutter spoke. "Hurts even more to lose them slowly. Watch'em disappear bit by bit till nothing's left you remember."

Feran knew the Cutter meant the Captain.

"Shut up, Cutter," Mojo growled. "You've never been there. Only a Screamer knows what he lives with." He patted Feran's head. "Never mind, kid."

The Cutter shook his head but spoke no more. Feran rose and walked slowly away to once again wander the Circus grounds. This time, however, something resolved itself inside his young mind so that when he found himself outside the sleep pod of the Angels he interpreted this as a sign that his plan was pure.

The Bird Queen was alone. She spoke little as he told his tale, a question here or there when the words he chose were poor. She thanked him then sat in silence, her strange eyes staring out the small round window of the pod.

Feran left the Angel then, not knowing whether he had done good or evil yet somehow aware that his world was a much different place than it had been an hour before.

* * *

> > > > > > Search Results Continued > > > > > >

Xenobiology File: Lania: Life Forms: 1275

The impending release of a brood of mature nestlings prompts the male Angel to initiate final coupling. This act triggers the female's production of higher concentrations of Scream. Scream is the sole nourishment that tbe young can ingest upon emergence, and also relieves the agony of the male after the brood bursts from him. The female must receive the nestlings within hours of the final coupling or she will die from the higher Scream level in her blood, which the nestlings cleanse from her system.

7he evolutionary advantage of this reproductive approach appears to stem from the increased survival expectations of a brood carried by the stronger male, and the ensured presence of both parents at birth. Although Teplosky drew parallels to the Thendotae on Thendos IV, we feel...

* * *

Unable to sleep, Feran rose early the next day. A chill mist hung from a gray sky. For an hour, he wandered outside the big dome, worrying how to tell the Captain what he had done and why. He stopped. Towards him strode the Captain, at his side Mojo. Both wore their old long black cloaks, thrown back to reveal weapons strapped to each leg. The gun metal glinted blue and cold, matching the look in the Captain's eyes.

Feran felt all his fears of the previous might vanish like grass swimmers into the brush. The Captain was going to fight. He would beat Weasel Man, and all would be well.

The Cutter stepped out of the dome as the Captain and Mojo stopped beside Feran. The Captain reached down to ruffle the fur on Feran's head, then glanced towards the dome. "Ready?"

The Cutter nodded. "Just get him inside."

A cry made them turn. Procne ran towards them, stumbling with the bulging weight of the brood inside him. "She's gone! She's gone!" he cried. He fell gasping into the Cutter's arms. Feran went cold inside.

The talking box on the Captain's belt beeped. He lifted it to his face. "It's from Phi. Time delayed delivery from last night." They waited as he read. When he spoke, his voice was raspy, like when he took too much dust. "She's given herself to Weitz. She knows that I won't surrender her and Pro, that I'll fight. She doesn't wish me or any of us to die." He dropped the device in the dirt. "She knows me better than I know myself, it would seem," he whispered.

"Our brood-" Procne began.

"She says she would rather her children die than live as slaves, kept only to feed monsters that destroy races."

"No! Our final coupling was last night. The brood comes!" He placed a thin hand on his pouch. "The essence they must feed on is rising in her blood. If she is not here when they emerge, they will die. If they die without cleansing her..."

"She will die too," the Captain finished. "She knew this."

Mojo frowned. "How'd she know about Weitz? You only told me and Cutter, and just this morning." The Captain shook his head. Cutter shrugged.

Feran felt as if he was outside his body, watching this scene but not part of it, unable to act. Well, he had acted, and this was what had come of it. He heard a voice saying "I told her." It seemed to be coming from somewhere else, and only when they all turned to look at him did he realize he had spoken.

Silence fell. The Captain knelt down before him, and all the words that Feran had tried to find before came pouring out. He turned his head, baring his throat to the Captain, offering his life. Instead, warm arms encircled him and held him tight. Feran knew that this was a "hug" and found it oddly comforting. The Captain whispered, "Oh Feran." and Feran began to sob.

"So now what?" the Cutter growled as the Captain stood.

They waited. Then the Captain spoke, his voice as calm as when he told Feran a story. "Same plan, with one change. We need Pro with us." He turned to Procne, and Feran felt a stillness settle like before two alpha males fought. "You and I, we've never quite got it straight between us. just knew that she somehow needed us both. You never forgave, never trusted me. Can't say I ever blamed you. Well, I'm asking you to trust me now. If only because you know I wouldn't hurt her."

Procne stared at the Captain for several of Feran's heartbeats, then nodded. The Captain turned to the Cutter. "Take Pro inside. Make it look like his hands are tied." He spoke then to all of them. "Nobody moves till I do, and I won't move until I know where he's got Phi. And remember: we need Weitz alive."

Muttering under his breath, the Cutter pulled Feran into the dome. Feran looked back. The Captain and Mojo strode toward the main entrance, their long cloaks closed, hiding their weapons and shutting out the rain that began to fall hard and cold.

Inside, Feran saw Guppert standing beside two Stone Puppies. He scampered over to them, glad to leave the morose Cutter, then stopped. Weapons were strapped to one side of the great silica beasts, the side hidden from the door. The Puppies lay on the ground, and Guppert's shoulder came to the top of their backs.

Guppert grinned and rapped a fat fist on the slate side of the nearest one. "Puppies make good fort, Guppert thinks." He pointed to the ground. "This where you come, little one, with Guppert when I give word." He waddled around to the other side of the Puppies where water buckets and scrub brushes lay. "Now, we get busy looking not dangerous." He and Feran began scrubbing the Puppies. The Cutter stood with Procne between them and the entrance, Procne's hands bound behind him.

Feran heard them first. "They are here," he whispered.

Cutter nodded. A few seconds later, two men in RIP SS uniforms entered with guns. They looked around, then one called outside. "All clear."

Weasel Man came in, then the Captain and Mojo, and more men in SS uniforms. Feran counted, his hope fading as each one entered. Ten, plus the first two, and Weasel Man. Four carried a metal case, their guns slung.

"Thirteen. Damn, I hate thirteen," muttered the Cutter as he left Procne and sauntered towards a Puppy. Still scrubbing, Guppert moved to the hidden side of his beast. Feran followed.

Weasel Man looked around. "Where's the rest of your crew?"

The Captain shrugged. "Dead or deserted."

Weasel Man raised an eyebrow and glanced at his men. The Captain nodded at the case. "That our stuff?" he asked, pulling back a sleeve to reveal a Medistim pack. He hit a button on it. Feran knew that he had just taken a "hit." Mojo did the same.

Weasel Man wrinkled his brow. "It was going to be."

The Captain smiled. "But you've reconsidered."

"We have the female already-" Weasel Man said.

"Her name is Philomela," the Captain said.

"And you're outnumbered-"

The Captain nodded. "Just a bunch of old derelicts."

"-so now I think we'll just take this one too."

"And his name is Procne." The Captain hit the stim pack again. So did Mojo. Feran had never seen the Captain take two hits. "So you'll leave me and Mojo to die in slow agony?"

Weasel Man shifted on his feet. Feran smelt his fear. The man nodded at the case. "That's worth a fortune-"

"And you have to cover your costs, don't you? Where is she?" the Captain said, taking a third hit.

"On my ship, hovering above us waiting for my call." Weasel Man patted his talking device. "Now, why don't-"

Being a predator, Feran was the first other than the Captain to know that the moment had arrived. The killing moment. And in that moment, for the first time, Feran realized something.

The Captain was a predator too.

Weasel Man was still talking, "-this over with-"

The Captain and Mojo, moving faster than Feran thought men could move, threw back their cloaks and pulled their guns. The Captain shot Weasel Man twice, once through his gun arm and once through his leg. The air sizzled as Mojo fired, killing three before they could even raise their weapons. The Captain shot three more before Weasel Man hit the ground screaming. Feran closed his ear flaps to shut out the screams, his nose stinging from the burnt air smell. The Cutter and Guppert shot one Ripper each from behind the Puppies. The last four, who had kept their guns slung, died still reaching for their weapons.

As he watched, Feran felt only fear. Not of the killing, for he knew killing, but fear of the look on the Captain's face.

The look of a predator.

The Captain stepped over the bodies to where Weasel Man lay like a trapped animal, and placed his weapon against the man's head. "Call your ship. Tell them to land outside this dome to pick up the other Angel."

Weasel Man spat blood. "Screw you."

The Captain put his gun against Weasel Man's forehead. The man swallowed, but shook his head. "You wouldn't kill an unarmed man in cold blood, Trelayne. You aren't capable of it."

But for the twitching of one eye, the Captain seemed carved from stone. Then he laughed. He laughed and laughed until Feran felt fear again-fear that he did not really know this man. Suddenly the Captain reached down and with one hand lifted Weasel Man by the throat and held him off the ground. Feran had no words for what he saw in the Captain's eyes as his voice boomed inside the dome. "I have ripped babies from mother's arms. I have killed thousands and laughed while they died. I have ended races. Little man, I am capable of things you could never imagine!"

The Captain dropped him then and looked down at the man, and Feran heard the sadness in the Captain's voice as he almost whispered, "I am capable of anything."

Weasel Man lay gasping in the dirt. Then he looked up, and Feran knew the Captain had won. Weasel Man was baring his belly and neck, showing submission. He took his talking device with a shaking hand and spoke into it. Feran couldn't hear the words, but the Captain nodded to the others.

Feran relaxed. Guppert and the Cutter were slapping each other on their backs. Mojo sat slumped on the ground, his head between his knees, sobbing but apparently unhurt.

A cry cut the air. Feran spun, teeth bared. High above, Procne hovered, wings beating, head thrown back, face contorted in agony. His pouch bulged, then split as a cloud of bloody winged things burst from him and fell screeching towards them.

The brood had arrived.

* * *

Trelayne had not taken combat doses of Scream for over two years. The killing, and the joy it had brought, had shaken him. Now as the brood rained down bloody chaos from above, he felt his tenuous grip on reality slipping away. Knowing that the brood must live or Phi would did, he tried to follow what they were doing, but the Scream kept drawing him to the bloody corpses. He realized then that the brood was being drawn to them.

Resembling winged toads with humanoid faces, gray and slick, the brood swarmed over the bodies, driving a long tendril that protruded from their abdomen into any open wound. But they stayed only a second at each spot, and with each attempt became more frenzied.

Scream, he thought, they need blood with Scream.

"Trelayne!"

The cry spun Trelayne around. Weitz knelt, Tanzer held in a shaking hand. Blood soaked an arm and leg, and flowed from his forehead. Weitz leveled the gun at Trelayne.

The brood found Weitz before he could fire, swarming him, plunging their tendrils into each wound, into his eyes where the blood had run down from his forehead, probing, searching. Screaming, he clawed at them, then stiffened and fell forward.

The nestlings leapt up from his corpse to form a shrieking, swirling mass above the ring. They were tiring. They are dying, Trelayne thought. Blood with Scream. Blood with Scream.

He tore open his shirt. Pulling a knife from his belt, he slashed at his chest and upper arms. He dropped the knife and stood with arms outspread, blood streaming down him, waiting for the smell of the Scream in his blood to reach the brood.

They swooped down from above the ring, swarming him like bees on honey, driving their tendrils into his flesh wherever he bled. The pain surpassed even what Scream let him endure. A dark chasm yawned below him, and he felt himself falling.

* * *

Trelayne awoke on his back, pale green light illuminating a bulkhead above him. The weight pressing him into the bed and the throb of engines told him he was on a ship under acceleration.

Something was wrong. No. Something was right. Finally he felt right. He felt human. He felt...

Pain. Real pain. Pain that hurt. He tried to rise.

"The Captain has returned to us." It was Feran's voice.

"In more ways than one, fox boy, in more ways than one." The Cutter's face appeared above him. "Lie still for chrissakes. You'll open the wounds again."

Trelayne lay back gasping. "What happened?"

"We won. We took Weitz's ship."

"Mojo? Procne? Phi-where's Phi?" he wheezed.

Her voice came from across the room. "All your family is safe. Guppert, the Puppies. All are here with us."

Trelayne twisted his head. She lay on another bunk, Procne asleep beside her. "Didn't know I had a family," he said weakly.

"We knew, Jason Trelayne. All along we were your family."

The Cutter moved aside, and Trelayne could see the brood clinging to her. She smiled. "Yes. You saved my children."

"I haven't seen that smile in a long time, Phi."

"I have not had reason for a long time."

"I feel... I feel.."

"You feel true pain. And you wonder why." Her gaze dropped to something at his side. Only then did Trelayne realize that one of the brood lay next to him, and that the tiny creature still had its tendril inside him. He tried to move away.

"Lie still, dammit," the Cutter snapped. "This ugly little vacuum cleaner hasn't got you quite cleaned up yet."

"What are you talking about?"

The Cutter checked a monitor on the wall above the bunk. "The brood's feeding's reduced the Scream in your blood to almost nil. The big bonus is zero withdrawal signs. Remember when you tried to kick it when we started the colony?"

Trelayne nodded, shuddering at the memory.

The Cutter rubbed his chin. "These little suckers must leave somethin' behind in the blood, lets the body adjust to lower levels of Scream. Angels'd need the same thing when the brood feeds from'em." He looked at Trelayne. "You just bought a new life for every Screamer the Entity ever got hooked."

As the implication of that sank in, Mojo's face appeared at the door. One of the brood clung to him as well. "We're nearing the jump insertion point. Where're we headed, Cap?"

Silence fell, and Trelayne could sense them waiting for his answer. He remembered something Weitz had said and smiled through his pain. "I hear there are still rebels on Fandor IV."

Mojo grinned and disappeared towards the bridge with Cutter. Trelayne turned to Feran. The kit moved away. Trelayne's smile faded as he understood. He stared at the kit, then spoke very quietly. "Feran, the Captain Trelayne that you saw in the dome today... he died with all those other men. Do you understand?"

An eternity passed. Then Feran ran to him and hugged him far too hard, and it hurt. His wounds hurt. The nestling at his side hurt. God, it all hurt, and it was wonderful to hurt again and to want it to stop.

Later, the ship slowed for the jump, and weightlessness took him. But to Trelayne, the sensation this time was not of falling. Instead, he felt himself rising, rising above something he was finally leaving behind.

 

 

Meet the Authors

Eric M. Witchey lives in Salem, Oregon. He is a graduate of Clarion West and has won recognition from Writers of the Future, New Century Writers, and Writer's Digest. His fiction has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies.

About "Voyeur": "Voyeur" came from an exercise in which I attempted to write a short story from four randomly chosen topics: A revelation, Who else has owned this chair?, A voyeur, and Squint. My critique group, the Wordos of Eugene, Oregon, provided valuable feedback. If the results are palatable to the reader, it is due chiefly to a set of good dice and my friends in Eugene.

* * *

John Teehan lives and writes in Providence, Rhode Island. He's been a fan of science fiction since he could read, and wrote his first story (a radio play) while in the fourth grade. He spent his younger years at the family bookstore where he was put in charge of the science fiction section which accounts for his love of the genre, so it was only a matter of time before he began writing science fiction in earnest.

Besides short stories, John has also written several pieces of genre-related non-fiction and edits the fanzine, Sleight of Hand.

About "Digger Don't Take No Requests": Around the time that thousands of students in Tiananmen Square were facing down tanks, I was attending the University of Exeter in England on a grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities to work on a thesis about The Exeter Book, a collection of Anglo-Saxon poems. My room had been broken into at one point and I had lost quite a bit of money. Between the close of term at the university and my return home, I found myself playing my guitar on street corners for enough money to pay for a bed, some food, and a bus ticket to Heathrow.

Street musicians, or 'buskers' as they are called in England, are a fairly friendly crowd and are only too glad to recommend good street corners or even dispense advice so as to increase the day's takings. Many of them took a liking to me-possibly because of the novelty of seeing an American trying to make his way home by playing bluegrass on noisy city streets.

There were also a couple of folks, panhandlers and dealers, who were not as friendly as the rest and who defended their comers vigorously-sometimes even violently. There is a whole subculture on the street with its own customs and proprieties.

These days I always give money to folks playing music on street corners, remembering my own days trying to get along by doing the exact same thing. I've talked with many of them and find the culture of busking is pretty much the same the world over.

How could I not use that in a story one day?

* * *

Holly Phillips lives and writes in south-central British Columbia, Canada, one of the most beautiful regions in North America. She has sold many stories to literary and speculative markets in Canada and the US, and to date has received two honorable mentions, one in the 2001 Best of Soft SF Contest, and the other in the 14th annual Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthology edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. In addition to her writing, Holly is a fiction editor for On Spec, the Canadian magazine of the fantastic, and has just recently entered into the world of the freelance editorial consultant.

About "The Gate Between Hope and Glory": On "The Gate Between Hope and Glory" I had a lot of fun digging through my old notebooks looking for the genesis of this story. The original note says (if I can decipher my own scribbles), "Unionization in space! The problem with striking is that the Company can just turn off the air. The key is to emphasize the precariousness, the vulnerability of living in space-and also the necessity of community." Of course my interest in labor issues is one I inherited from my father (and indeed, from my grandfather). But I find it interesting, and pleasing, to see how closely the finished product adheres to the originating idea. Something of a rarity, in my experience.

* * *

eluki bes shahar was born long enough ago to have seen Classic Trek on its first outing. As she aged, she put aside her dreams of taking over from Batman and returned to her first love, writing. Her first SF sale was the Hellflower series, in which Damon Runyon meets Doc Smith over at the old Bester place. Between books and short stories (most of them as Rosemary Edghill), she's held the usual part-time writer jobs, including book store clerk, secretary, and grants writer. She can truthfully state that she once killed vampires for a living, and that without any knowledge of medicine has illustrated half-a-dozen medical textbooks. Find her on the Web at: www.sff.net/people/eluki

About "Riis Run": When I finished Archangel Blues, the final book in the Hellflower Trilogy, back in 1987, I figured I was pretty much done with the Phoenix Empire. After all, I'd chased everybody up a really big tree and thrown some medium-sized planets at them, so the scope for a sequel was somewhat circumscribed. The characters would be far too changed for the normal rules of sequelae to apply. (For a look at what I mean, check out my "Read Only Memory," in the DAW 30th Anniversary SF Anthology; it's a tailpiece to the series, set some years later.) So while I knew what happened next, and even had a second trilogy plotted out, I knew there was very little likelihood that it would ever get beyond the vapor-ware stage.

But when Low Port came along, I realized that there was a certain amount of elbow-room still available in that universe. There's about a fifteen year stretch between the time Butterflies-are-Free Peace Sincere and Paladin meet and become partners, and the time when Hellflower begins.

A lot can happen in fifteen years...

* * *

Every weekend, from age five to eighteen, Lawrence M. Schoen worked at one or another swap meet throughout southern California. He spent a lot of that time watching the range of humanity passing by, and when business was slow he filled spiral notebooks with endless tales for his own amusement. The fascination with people won out and he put fiction aside to go off to college and graduate school to study linguistics and psychology. After ten years as a professor he put academia aside and returned to crafting fiction. He's also traveled the globe for years speaking and promoting the Klingon language. Nowadays, when not writing or making alien sounds, he's the Director of Research for a series of mental health facilities in Philadelphia.

About "Bidding the Walrus": A lot of my fiction tends to involve cognitive processes like memory and attention, language and judgment, and their variations as they occur in alien or mechanical intelligences. The original motivation for this story came from a desire to flesh out the Clarkesons, a species I mentioned in passing in another story but didn't get to explore. My intent was to tap into the perils of doing business with creatures so alien in mindset and perspective that despite humanoid appearances they really did not experience reality in the same ways we do. I open the story with Eggplant Jackson's warming, but like the sorcerer's apprentice, Gideon pays no heed. The question you really want to be asking yourself is what the Clarkeson thought would happen. Did Greyce realize what his gift would do? And if so, did he care? The cognition of alien colony beings can be tricky. Fortunately, it falls nicely into balance when human cognitive processes are taken to extreme. I expect to see more of the Walrus, and he wouldn't go anywhere without Weird Tommy.

* * *

Laura J. Underwood used to be a stable bum, but she gave up a career with horses and veterinary medicine because she decided she would rather write. She is the author of two novels, Ard Magister and The Black Hunter, three short story collections, and a host of short fiction in the fantasy field. Her work has appeared in numerous volumes of Sword and Sorceress, and in such magazines as Marion Zirnmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, Dark Regions Magazine and Adventures in Sword & Sorcery. When not putting pen to paper, she is a fencer, a harpist and a librarian living in East Tennessee with the Cat of Few Grey Cells otherwise known as Gato Bobo.

About "The Gift": When I first read the guidelines for Low Port, I was intrigued by the challenge of writing a story placed in the underbelly of society. Very few of my stories ever venture into such settings for more than a scene or two. But then I remembered Rhys, a minor character in a working novel-a healer and an herbalist who happens to be mageborn too. Rhys lives and works in the ruins of the once-proud city of Caer Elenthorn, a city that has never quite recovered from being overrun by the dark forces of The Hound during the Last War. As a trained healer, Rhys feels duty bound to offer his gifts to the "lower levels of humanity" residing in Broken Wall, for these are the people among whom he was born. But what Rhys wants more than anything is to be a True Healer instead of one cursed with the legacy of magic. I decided he had a few lessons to learn about accepting himself as he is. Not everyone can have "the gift" they crave.

* * *

L. E. Modesitt, Jr., has published a number of short stories and technical articles and more than thirty-five novels, many of which have been translated into German, Polish, Dutch, Czech, and Russian. His first published story appeared in Analog in 1973. Born in 1943 in Denver, Colorado, Mr. Modesitt has been, among other occupations, a U.S. Navy pilot; an industrial economist; staff director for a U.S. Congressman; Director of Congressional Relations for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; and a consultant on environmental, regulatory, and communications issues. In 1989, to escape years of occupational captivity in Washington, D.C., he moved to New Hampshire where he married a lyric soprano. They moved to Cedar City, Utah, in 1993.

About "The Dock to Heaven": When I heard that Sharon and Steve were putting together Low Port, my initial reaction was two-fold-that it was a great idea and that it was too bad that I didn't have anything in mind that would fit the anthology. But the more I thought about the idea, the more I realized that in anything I'd ever read, and in my own experience, there's one very grubby aspect of every business that very few people realize can be every bit as draining and exhausting-if in a different way-as the hard and dangerous physical labor. And that's what I wrote about, because it's something that I know, from both sides, first as a pilot who didn't have to worry about it and then as a different variety of snark.

* * *

Ru Emerson grew up poor in Butte, Montana and after that lived some of the rougher parts of Hollywood, East Los Angeles and Venice Beach while trying to scratch out a living in a Straight Job. For several years that worked (legal secretary and paralegal in Century City-"L.A. Law" land). After relocating to Oregon some years ago and taking to writing full time, she has again rediscovered the thrills of living on the Edge.

Emerson now lives on five rural acres with The Infamous (and often alleged to be fictitious) Doug, and is bossed around by Roberta the Foo-Cat and twin black Cubs, Mufasa and Bagheerah. When not writing, she is usually gardening or lifting weights.

About "Find a Pin": When I first heard about the anthology and that it would be about people just barely making it, I knew it had already hit a nerve, though I wasn't sure which nerve, exactly. But the next day, I woke up and the story was simply There, fully told, waiting to be written down; before I even opened my eyes, I knew how this woman would sound, look, the little gestures she'd make with her hands.

I can't be sure exactly where the impetus came from on "Find a Pin;" these "Just in there waiting to be let out" stories are very rare for me, and not always susceptible to analysis. But for years, I have simply hated the way Oregon has closed its mental facilities and shoved so many schizophrenic patients out the door with a vial of pills: "Here, honey; now, don't forget to take these."

At the same time as the anthology came around, I was dealing with my lovely mother's condition: Mother is 83, has advanced Alzheimers, lives with my youngest sister and has been slowly turning into A Scary Person. Sue and I keep reminding each other "It could be worse." I guess for the women in this story, it really could.

* * *

Alan Smale writes speculative fiction, sings bass and serves as business manager for up-and-coming high energy vocal band The Chromatics, and performs occasionally in community theater. An expatriate Yorkshireman, he is now a US citizen. By day (and sometimes night) he works as a research astronomer for USRA at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Alan's science fiction and fantasy stories have appeared in many magazines and anthologies including Realms of Fantasy, Writers of the Future #13, Harcourt Brace collections A Wizard's Dozen and A Nightmare's Dozen, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, and Adventures of Sword and Sorcery. He has earned several Honorable Mentions in best-of-year anthologies, and is currently marketing his first novel. His fledgling website can be found at www.alansmale.com

About "Sailing to the Temple": I can't travel without becoming obsessed with the country I'm visiting. While touring Japan I tried to read manga without knowing Japanese and derive pachinko from first principles. (I never got lost in Japan, but I often got confused.)

I also tried to peer back in time, beyond the cliches of samurai and ninja, kabuki, and haiku. A thousand years ago Heian Japan was essentially isolated, its culture and basic assumptions very different from those found elsewhere. Even equipped with a universal translator, a time traveler would face major difficulties communicating in a society with such elaborate beliefs, superstitions, and rituals. The thought patterns and narrative style are sufficiently alien to us today that the Tale of Genji is almost untranslatable, and scholars cannot agree on whether it is complete or unfinished.

I read Genji, and Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book, but I couldn't help wondering what the regular folk were doing (apart from working their butts off and dying young) while the aristocracy pursued their cult of beauty and elegant romantic intrigues. I wrote "Sailing" to find out, and attempt to explore these different thought patterns.

Almost by definition, I must have failed. But I did enjoy the trip.

* * *

In 1988, Salmon Rushdie caused a stir with The Satanic Verses and Gabriel Garcia Marquez published Love In The Time Of Cholera. More significantly, Mark W. Tiedemann attended Clarion and soon after began publishing a string of short stories. In 2000, he began publishing novels, beginning with Mirage: An Isaac Asimov Robot Mystery for ibooks. More followed. His 2001 novel Compass Reach, first volume of the Secantis Sequence, was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award. Metal of Night (2002) and Peace & Memory (2003) continue the stories of the Secant.

About "The Pilgrim Trade": The Pilgrim Trade is a story from my Secantis Sequence. I began developing the Secant universe in response to a desire to write far future stories against a common background unbound by normal series restrictions of character and plot. I wanted to work in a world that would be recognized as viable in all its pieces and parts, wherein I could tell stories at any level of society, in any geographical (or interstellar) location.

My first Secantis novel, Compass Reach, is the story of Freeriders, a kind of interstellar hobo class-the disenfranchised, the unwanted, the unrecognized of my society. It's clear from that book that the Freeriders represent but one segment of the underclass in the Pan Humana. The present story is about another such segment.

The idea originally was to allow me to write about economics as social tool rather than how most people seem to perceive it, as some sort of natural phenomenon, and to show how control of the tool can be used for both good or ill. And how, the possibilities of a so-called "post scarcity" world can nevertheless fall to materialize due to simple (or complex) human prejudice.

* * *

Patrice Sarath is a writer and editor in Austin, Texas, and is a member of the Slug Tribe Writer's Group. Her stories have appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Black Gate, and the Meisha Merlin anthology Such a Pretty Face. Patrice's love of the fantastic began at an early age-she was one of those kids who always got in trouble for telling lies. She feels lucky that now she's getting paid for it.

About "More to Glory": In many ways, the working poor have it harder than the purely destitute. They live teetering on that knife's edge that separates a roof over one's head from homelessness, a full belly from starvation. One missed paycheck, one recession, and they know they can be plunged into true poverty. When I first sat down to write my story for the Low Port anthology, I knew I wanted to write about an ordinary, middle-class family doing its best to survive, love its kids, and raise them right, all against extraordinary odds.

* * *

Baltimore-born Sharon Lee is best known for the Liaden Universe® stories and novels that she co-authors with her husband, Steve Miller. Her singleton work includes the mystery novel Barnburner as well as a dozen or so science fiction and fantasy short stories. Sharon's most recent publication is The Tomorrow Log, co-written with Steve and published by Meisha Merlin. For more information on Sharon, Steve and their work, check out www.korval.com

About "Gonna Boogie With Granny Time": The city which "Granny Time" is set is Baltimore, Maryland-my hometown. When I was a kid, I walked all over the city-up to the Enoch Pratt Main Library, down to the docks, across to Lexington Market and the upscale department stores, and down again, to my favorite part of the city-the red light district known as The Block.

The Block and its diverse citizens fascinated me. The strippers, the barkers, the bouncers-they had their own culture, their own language, their own naming system-and their own code of honor.

Many years later, after Steve and I had moved to Maine, I was feeling just a touch homesick for the hot streets of my native city. It didn't occur to me to write a story about Baltimore, though, until I had a conversation with a friend in which he indicated that a particular person had so little personal power as to actually possess "mouse mojo."

Clearly, Mouse Mojo was the name of someone familiar with the streets of Baltimore and The Block. I put the word out-and a day later, I knew where to find him.

* * *

After the kind of varied career path that indicates either extreme curiosity or a very short attention span, Chris Szego found the job of her dreams managing Bakka, Canada's oldest SF bookstore. A prize-winning poet, her work has appeared in newspapers, magazines and anthologies. Most of the time she lives in Toronto.

About "Angel's Kitchen": Social work is not for the merely compassionate. It's a job for those very few whose hearts are both infinitely giving and tough as diamond. The people who can learn to measure success by an increase of time between failures. Who know that no matter how bad it gets, there will always be something worse ahead. But who try, anyway.

People that brave need an angel who's not afraid to get dirty.

* * *

Edward McKeown is a native son of NYC from which he draws much of the color and attitude of his stories. He moved to Charlotte, North Carolina in 1985 in search of reasonable house prices and a commute free of the "non-bathing public."

In Charlotte he developed an interest in the martial arts, achieving a black sash (belt) in Esoma Kung Fu. Writing was always a desire and became a passion after his muse took up full time residence behind his eyeballs. He's fortunate to be married to the noted artist, Schelly Keefer.

About "Lair of the Lesbian Love Goddess": "Lair of the Lesbian Love Goddess" came out of sheer serendipity. I finally listened to my wife and came out of the writing closet to join a critique group. The experience, which I think is an essential one for a writer, was terrific. The group known as Brinker's at Border in honor of a deceased member became a wellspring of ideas as well as a sounding board.

One day, I was e-mailing a friend from the group about a missing member. Our exchange spun out of control as we went back and forth about her possible fate: kidnapped, abducted by aliens, lost in a South Carolina swamp? Finally my friend, Diane Hoover, suggested that she had been captured and disappeared into a particular local institution of higher learning (which I won't name, so don't ask) that she called the Lair of the Lesbian Love Goddess. I laughed till tears appeared.

I decided that I had to write a short story with that as a title. Gradually the pulp-noir tale began to populate itself with characters: the world weary McManus, ambitious Regina Del Mar, flirtatious Freddie and that most critical of characters, New York City, in all its sordid muscularity. The four of them continue to whisper in my ear and three more stories have resulted. I hope eventually to have enough for an anthology of Lair tales.

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Nathan Archer is a former New Yorker and a former bureaucrat. He is the author of half a dozen licensed novels and a few short stories. He's not sure what else he is that isn't "former," but hopes to figure it out soon.

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Lee Martindale is a warrior-bard in the old tradition. Editor of Meisha Merlin's first original anthology, Such A Pretty Face, her own short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines, online venues, anthologies and collections. When not slinging fiction, she's a member of the SFWA Musketeers, a songwriter and filker, activist, public speaker, Life Member of SFWA and a member of the SCA. She lives in Plano, Texas with her husband George and three feline goddesses, and keeps her friends and fans in the loop with her website, www.harphaven.net

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Jody Lynn Nye lists her main career activity as "spoiling cats." She lives northwest of Chicago with three of the above (who get plenty to eat) and her husband (ditto), author and packager Bill Fawcett. She has published 25 books, including six contemporary fantasies, three SF novels, four novels in collaboration with Anne McCaffrey, including The Ship Who Won; edited a humorous anthology about mothers, Don't Forget Your Spacesuit, Dear!; and written over seventy short stories. Her latest books are License Invoked (www.baen.com) and Myth Alliances (Meisha Merlin), co-written with Robert Asprin, and Advanced Mythology (Meisha Merlin).

About "Bottom of the Food Chain": "The bottom of the food chain" is a common phrase currently used to describe the dispossessed. When I read the author's briefing for Low Port, it popped into my mind. The homeless or the marginally employed, especially in cities, have trouble maintaining a decent diet. Where they would be accorded basic nutrition by law, such as on a space station, logic suggests that they'd be given the least common denominator of food: enough so they wouldn't starve, but nothing as appealing or as varied as if they could actually pay for it. Like Oliver Twist, my main character dreams of the kind of food that rich people get to eat. His dreams may seem very small, but until he's attained those, it's hard to reach for higher goals.

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Joe Murphy lives with his wife, up-and-coming watercolor artist Veleta, in Fairbanks, Alaska. His fiction has or will appear in: Age of Wonders, Altair, A Horror A Day: 365 Scary Stories, Bones of the World, Book of All Flesh, Clean Sheets, Chiaroscuro, Crafty Cat Crimes, Cthulhu's Heirs, Demon Sex, Full Unit Hookup, Gothic.net, Legends of the Pendragon, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, Outside, On Spec, Silver Web, Space and Time, Strange Horizons, Talebones, TransVersions, Vestal Review, and Why I Hate Aliens.

Previously published stones are now on the Internet at Alexandria Digital Literature (www.alexlit.com) and at fictionwise.com. Joe is a member of SFWA, HWA, a graduate of Clarion West '95 and Clarion East 2000.

About "Zappa for Bardog": I really found the guidelines for Low Port interesting. And I've been experimenting with alien points of view. That's how the idea to tell a story through an artificial life form who could read information directly from human DNA came about. Having also been a fan of the late Frank Zappa, I've always wanted to do a tribute story as well. All these things kind of just came together and somehow managed to work.

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Paul E. Martens is a son, a husband, and a father. He has a job. Paul was a first place winner in the Writers of the Future Contest and received an Honorable Mention in the 2001 Best of Soft SF Contest. Other stories have appeared in a variety of print and online magazines. He likes to pretend to be a cynical curmudgeon but he's actually a neurotic optimist.

About "The Times She Went Away": I knew I wanted to write a story for Low Port. I started with a guy like Peter in his middle years (a smuggler, a fence, someone making his living, not exactly on the dark side, but certainly on the crepuscular side), and his kind of wild adopted daughter. I thought the story had potential, but no real plot yet. Then Annie Jones showed up. Once he met Annie, Peter had no choice but to spend his life hanging around the Low Port, waiting for her to come back, and I had my story.

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Douglas Smith's stories have appeared in over 40 professional magazines and anthologies in fifteen countries and thirteen languages, including Amazing Stories, Cicada, Interzone, The Third Alternative, On Spec, and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. In 2001, he was a John W. Campbell Award finalist for best new writer, and won an Aurora Award for best SF&F short fiction by a Canadian. He's been an Aurora finalist eight times and has twice been selected for honorable mention in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror. In real life, Doug is a technology executive for an international consulting firm. He lives just north of Toronto, Canada. Like the rest of humanity, he is working on a novel. His web site is www.smithwriter.com  and his email is doug@smithwriter.com

About "Scream Angel": The genesis of this story was a trip to a circus. Ever since my oldest son, Mike, was about five and until my youngest son, Chris, decided it was no longer cool, we've gone to a circus show that tours Toronto each summer. They just set up in a field near the parking lots of one of the big suburban shopping malls, charge way too much for popcorn and candyfloss, and put on a fair-to-middling show. It's no Vegas, but it was always fun and for a good cause. Chris is physically handicapped, so when he started going, we were given seats reserved for wheelchairs right at ringside. A great view, close enough to really smell the elephants. But being that close let me notice something I'd missed from farther back. All of the performers did double, or even triple, duty as circus hands, setting up equipment, acting as safety catchers, or even shoveling up after the horses and elephants. Seeing the trapeze artist, who had just dazzled the crowd in his spiffy sequined outfit, show up in coveralls cleaning up elephant poop gave me the idea of a down-and-out circus of aliens, just scraping by. I coupled it with another idea about a drug I ended up calling Scream, made the big act a pair of bird-like aliens, and the rest grew out of that.