Five Stars: Five Outstanding Tales from the early days of Stupefying Stories (4 page)

“I think so. Odd to become a part of history—of history you’ve already read.”

They drank field coffee and contemplated. Below them, the new Jerusalem—minus the temple and the ancient walls—gleamed in the light of the winter sun.

David W. Landrum
teaches Literature at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. His stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. His novellas,
The Gallery, Strange Brew,
and
The Prophetess
, as well as his full-length novel,
The Sorceress of the Northern Seas,
are available through Amazon.

Teaching Women to Fly

by Guy Stewart

It was not the pungent sandfish
sizzling in hot oil spiced with swamp onions and yellow reed pepper that made Celianne weep. Nor was it the annoying croak of slender, flying frogfolk constantly wheeling overhead, or the loathsome organic reek of the millions of hectares of alluvial marshlands.

It was not the note her husband had left two weeks ago, before riding off on the harvester: “Hold off the loan-taker as long as you can. I’ll be home soon with the cash to pay him off.”

“What loan-taker?” she muttered. It was not the ominous silence of the distant hot gold noonday sky that drove her sobbing.

“
Tomar shomashhata ki
, Amma?” seven-year-old Uzzal said, tugging at her thin dress.

Celianne patted him away, staring into the fry pan. “English, Uzzal! You know what your baba says about Bengali in the house.”

His lower lip puffed out then he mimicked, “‘No Bengali! We speak English!’”

She nodded, patted him on the head and said, “Exactly. And nothing is wrong. Now get back to your fishing.”

It was, she suddenly knew, all of it at once.

Uzzal ran off, vaulting over a weak spot in the floor that was marked by a green rug. Celianne dried her tears with a wrist and flicked a gaze through the pathetic living room, kitchen, and dining room. Gray plastic made from the harvest of organics was formed into everything to be purchased from the Baru Ekrasi-Kalligstadtzin company store. The shell of this houseboat itself was plastic. “Don’t jump in the house! Someday you’ll fall right through the floor into the marsh!” she called.

She closed her eyes once more. Blocking out the tang of cooking, she imagined falling into vacuum sky, hands reaching to hold space. Hard white points stretched to hydrogen spikes cut by yellow calcium stripes. Pulse roaring in her ears, imagined hair shook around her face. Flushing in embarrassment, she knew herself a starship pilot horrified of flight trying to force herself to love it again.

“Can I sell the rest in market and keep the money?”

Celianne caught her breath, eyes snapping open. Uzzal was returning from the sink and holding up four crabfish, their claws sheared, legs plucked, scaled and gutted. “I done ‘em up, Amma,” he said. “Can I?”

“We’ll ask Baba when he gets home. Until then, put them in the freezer, Bachchale.”

“Amma! That’s a baby name,” he said suddenly, pouting. “I’m big now. Call me Uzzal.”

“You never said anything before,” she exclaimed.

“You never axed before.”

“’Never
asked
before’,” she corrected. Heading off a jag of bull-headedness she said, “How long have you been awake?”

“I caught seven crabfish before moondown,” he said, proudly hoisting them up.

She looked at the fish and her son, hair and skin coffee like hers but face like his baba: hawk nose, thin lips, and wide blue eyes. He wore red nylon shorts, dark feet calloused and pale at the edges. He flashed a white-toothed grin, but she had no joy to return it. “Nice job. Baba will be happy when he gets home.”

“I seen the boats going out. Maybe the harvester’s coming in!” In the distance, a horn brayed: the signal that a starship would be stopping on Baru Ekrasi, a main island in the Ganges Nuton River delta, for a day or two.

“When did you see the boats go out?”

“Right at moondown, from the deck.”

Celianne hurried out, stepping over the soft spot. The sun was a yellow patch in the cloudy sky, glaring rather than shining. Their houseboat was near the end of twin piers jabbing into marshy delta, grounded on the island Baru Ekrasi. Their neighborhood of houseboats was Little Big Cypress. A breeding flock of croaking frog flyers flew over, four females chasing a male. Marsh sharks lived near Human settlements, too. The marsh sharks, the humanoid frogfolk, and the flyers were all linked, but humans didn’t care much how, ever since the Frogfolk Massacre nearly exterminated them and calmed them all down, and as long as they didn’t interfere with the harvest of the organic sludge just under the surface.

Peering past another row of houseboats, into the harbor slip and across to the twin pier, Big Chittagong, she saw only empty water and a few frogfolk poling punts, webbed fingers skimming the wriggling “plantimal” algae from the water. Usually full of houseboats, dinghies, canoes and ferries, the slip waited, ready to welcome the floating harvester.

Celianne wiped her hands on a faded towel draping her shoulder and hurried back to the stove. She took two saucers, two spoons. Cutting a fourth of the sandfish for herself, she gave the rest to Uzzal. She scooped peppers over each. “Breakfast, Bachchale.”

“Amma!”

“Sorry, sorry,” she muttered around hot bites, sucking cool air. Uzzal wolfed his.

Stepping out to the deck, she closed her eyes, listening. Some said that starship pilots were psychic. She sniffed. If she’d been psychic twenty years ago, she would have known that the starship she’d hired on to fly was too new and required its pilot to use addictive, creativity-suppression drugs. She’d been willing to try, but she’d nearly killed them all and a passenger had broken into the cockpit, raped and tortured her while she was drugged. Then the ship’s mechanic, Bill had rescued her. They’d reneged on their contracts and fled by freighter to Enstad’s Planet.

She shuddered. Faster-than-light travel had always nauseated her, but the C-S drug altered brain chemistry. To her, star flight became an uncontrollable, plunging chaos. A decade of trying to forget left her destitute and still afraid of starships.

She was not psychic, but she thought that the harvester was near before she heard the low rumble of its oil engine and the rhythmic slap of paddles. “It’s here!” she cried and stepped back into the house, colliding with Uzzal. She caught him as he fell, clutched him to her breast and kissed him on the cheek.

“Amma! Stop...”

“It’s here, Bachchale!” She cleaned up, ran to their bedroom and clambered over the swinging hammock to the wardrobe. Touching the fingerprint lock, it opened with a dry puff of air. She lifted her best dress from the hanger, skinned out of the thin, green nylon work dress and pulled on the teal blue cotton shift Bill liked best.

Out again to the deck, she stared into the distance, squinting against the glare. The nearest tree village of frogfolk grew from the flatness of Ganges Nuton River delta, a cylinder of branches aligned like the pleats of a starship’s air filter, the largest supported by roots growing straight down like pillars. A warm puff of wind rattled marshland reed stalks, but she saw most clearly a stain of smoke and cried out, “They’re here!”

All along Little Big Cypress and Big Chittagong, the cry rang out. The quiet piers and boats swarmed quickly with old men, women and children, Ekrasimen—businessmen whose life was the Company—and Big Chittagongers in lungi and old women hanging laundry. Buckets of clean water appeared and splashed over grimy piers. Banners saved for Harvest Celebration snapped suddenly free. Somewhere further in, from High Baru Ekrasi—where the rich lived in stilt houses and walled compounds on solid land—sprang the sound of a steel pan band.

Sweet scents perfumed sultry air. At the center of Baru Ekrasi, warehouses, plastic factories and storage tanks clustered near the starship launch pad, opened in anticipation of the harvest, releasing the stink of revving oil pumps.

Celianne called to Uzzal, “Are you coming with me or running with your...”

“Bye, Amma!” he shouted, dashing through the houseboat, vaulting the weak spot and through the door, swinging like a monkey and bolting for the pier. A pack of boys raced away, flashing a rainbow of nylon shorts and bare bodies and feet, caroling, school-free children.

She smiled a bit. Two smiles, two pleasures. One more waited: she would sleep with Bill tonight, passion satisfied as many times as they could, with windows open to the soft, cool greenness of night blossoms. Straightening the towels, chairs, rugs and curtains, she hurried out.

She met neighbors on the plastic pier and nodded as they greeted her. Men, women and children raced by in bright, loose pants of Christians. Hurrying with them, were pale cream Muslim robes hanging head to toe, eyes the only evidence that a person lived beneath. A dozen frogfolk sent punts slipping in every direction. Young men and women in scant shorts, loose A-shirts and clinging shifts busied themselves on the piers. Children, sometimes in shorts, the youngest in nothing but sun-darkened skin, raced and called in English, French, Inuit and Bengali or a singsong creolé of all four. Celianne called and waved, but hurried to the harvester slip. Casting a peek over her shoulder, the smudge had turned to a billowing thunderhead. She could see the high pipes of the distillation tanks.

She stopped to stare. There were only four pipes where there should have been eight. There was too much smoke. The flagpole was not flying the red, blue and green of Baru Ekrasi. In fact, there was no flagpole at all. Her breath thickened like grease in her lungs; light feet abruptly leaden. The band had not stopped and welcome cries and songs drifted over the water. A warning died stillborn on her lips.

Her hopes for Bill’s pay being enough to leave Enstad’s Planet this time expired. Her hands hung limp at her sides.

The barge hove into view and soon the scale of the disaster was obvious. The hull was black along the starboard bow. After the immense organics grinder, one of four flash vessels was gone. The paddle had gaps. Laid out on the foredeck were four bundles of burlap tied neatly with hemp cords at neck, chest, waist and ankle. Two men and two women stood guard, grim faces dark with soot. The music of the steel band of Highest Baru Ekrasi staggered to silence, the only sound now the wheeze of an oil engine missing on one of its cylinders.

Celianne ran to join the crowd as the barge pulled into the slip, guided by tugboats. Banners drooped as dockmen tied multiple ropes. The gangplank slid from the hull to the pier.

First across was Captain Reza Dhaka. His face was clean-shaven, but over one eye an arc of glued skin showed angry red. The crowded piers hushed on his first word. He said, “Four...are dead.” Celianne caught her breath and barely noticed Uzzal wrap his arms around her thigh. “Victoire Jolliet. Israt Purganj. Joel Simons. Taal Boi.”

Screaming families stumbled forward to cross the bridge, and claim the bodies.

Captain Dhaka continued, “Injuries. The most serious have been taken to the Corporation Hospital.”

“So far away?” someone near Celianne muttered.

Another sighed, “So expensive.” For a blank instant, no one could hear as a starship oozed down from the sky to land on the pad. There it would stay a day, take up complex condensed oils from the last harvest and leave to ply larger markets on nearby worlds like Kandiyohi and La Portada.

When the noise faded, the Captain called, “These families come see me.” He rattled off names but all Celianne heard was a roar. She scanned faces for Bill.

Fingers dug into her thigh. Uzzal breathed, “Amma?”

“What is it? I’m trying to find Baba,” she said, annoyed that Bill didn’t at least look in her direction or make some move that might attract her attention.

“Amma, he called Baba’s name. Is Baba hurt? What’s a ‘Corporate Hospital’? Can we see Baba?”

She grabbed Uzzal so hard he cried out. “He said Baba’s name? I didn’t hear it. Are you sure?” Uzzal nodded. Suddenly, she felt dizzy. “They called Baba’s name?”

“Amma! You’re hurting me! The Captain said Baba’s name,” Uzzal cried.

She led Uzzal over the ramp, people stepping away. She scowled fiercely and eyes turned down. She stood aside with others, apart from the safety of the crowd as the last body was carried by its mourners from the barge.

The Captain called each family to him, leaned forward and spoke quietly. Some fainted dead away, others screamed and beat their fists on their loved ones.

The Captain said, “Celianne and Uzzal Christofferson.” They stepped forward. He leaned to her ear, wary of Uzzal.

She whispered, “What you have to say to me, say to Uzzal. He’s a big boy now.”

Captain Dhaka nodded, then said, “Bill lost his entire right arm and his right leg from the knee down.” He paused, looked around to make sure no one heard. “He’ll never work the harvest again, but at least he’s alive.” He stepped back, nodded to them and said the next name.

Celianne held Uzzal’s hand, staring at the Captain.

“What?” she asked politely. “What happened?”

He said harshly, “Take it up with Baru Ekrasi-Kalligstadtzin Organics,” and turned his back on her. There was movement in the ranks as two scowling sailors stepped to the ramp, glaring at her. One had an arm in a sling the other wore a bloody T-shirt, threatening.

She stalked away, the crowd parting to let her pass. As she broke from them, a Baru Ekrasi-Kalligstadtzin Organics Corpora-tion businessman from the main island fell in alongside them. He wore orange formal pants and a white shirt, but his oiled, blond hair was pulled back into a long, thin braid and over one shoulder, a black feathered boa wrap hung. While a ‘krasiman by day, he was vodoun priest by night. He said, “How will you be paying for the treatments, Christofferson
begom
?”