Five Stars: Five Outstanding Tales from the early days of Stupefying Stories (5 page)

“Treatments?”

He snorted, “Surely you don’t think EKOC fixed your husband for free?”

“The pay from harvest…”

“You can see that the harvester was badly damaged. We’ll assess then charge the crew for repairs. Whatever’s left will of course be distributed to the crew. EKOC has saved his life at great cost. There are rescue and transport fees, triage fees, medication costs, surgical and professional consultation fees. Room and board for his stay in the hospital will cost you as well. The longer he stays, the higher the fees, so we will encourage him to be healed as quickly as possible.”

“What are you saying?”

“Christofferson
begom
, I am only trying to tell you gently that William has become charity. Now, if you’d like to take his place as a boiler tech on the harvester until he can get back on his foot again, I’d be happy to oblige you.” He flashed a thin smile. “Given that you have a child, your travel will be as limited as possible, and you should only expect to be gone from Baru Ekrasi for six to eighteen weeks.” He reached into his suit and took out a wordreader. Holding it to her, he said, “All you have to do is thumb the…”

“I can’t do that!” Recoiling, Celianne exclaimed, pulling Uzzal close, “Who would take care of Uzzal?”

“If that won’t work, perhaps we can make another sort of deal,” he said. The smile was predatory as a marsh shark’s and no longer businesslike. The pier was abruptly empty and her spirit shivered as if a cloud had covered the sun.

Celianne said, “I’m a good Protestant woman. I have no dealings with Satan.”

“A starship pilot as well,” his voice was smooth. Ignoring the rebuke, he did not deny the accusation.

“I have no need for sacrifices or help from the demon world.”

“You have no one else, Celianne. If you refuse to deal with the Company—and remember, child, the Baru Ekrasi-Kalligstadtzin Organics Corporation owns Enstad’s Planet—only the spirit world can help you now. Many speak for the Company, but only I speak with the spirits. You need me,” he said, walking closer. “I can save you.”

She stopped abruptly.

“What do you want, demon talker?”

He hummed and stepped back, smiling faintly. “You recognize my skill.”

“I came to Enstad’s Planet a devout, educated woman to raise a family. I believe that you are a demon’s mouthpiece.”

His smiled sharpened. “Did you come to this world to lose your husband and live cheek to jowl with poverty?”

Celianne snorted. “You’re the diviner. Did I?”

He scowled and said, “No one knows why you came here. Even Company records are extremely vague.” He tried to smile, “I think we can help each other.”

“What do I have that you would want?”

“Contacts,” he said simply.

She paused, eyes narrowing to slits. “What kind of contacts?”

“You know starship pilots and I am in no hurry. I need to obtain certain…objects from off-planet for the rituals.”

“Satan’s rituals,” she said, heart hammering. “Hire a pilot like everyone else.” She started walking again.

“I only deal with Lucifer when it suits me,” he said softly.

“Satan’s an all or nothing master, ‘krasiman. Besides, there are vodoun women who could coerce pilots easily enough.”

“But none of them are starship pilots,” he said. He twined the boa through his fingers. “You have the mark.”

Celianne touched the pilot’s tattoo on her temple and passed their houseboat. Uzzal tried walking to the boat’s ramp. Celianne yanked him along, kept going. She didn’t want the vodoun priest in her house. She strode to the end of the pier, looked down and started. An intricately carved punt floated on the thick water. In it, one of the frogfolk stared up at her with fist-sized eyes.

She gestured to it. “I think this frogfolk will help me.”

The priest’s eyes flashed and he motioned with his hand. Celianne smiled and said, “I’m a Christian, vodoun. Your curses don’t work on me.” She swung Uzzal around and lowered him into the punt, then dropped to her belly, slid over the edge of the pier and into the native’s boat.

The priest stepped up to the edge and snapped, “Curses may not, but I can guarantee indentured servitude would!”

¤

The frogfolk didn’t hesitate, but poled them away from the pier. The vodoun priest watched for a while, then stamped his foot and stormed away.

The local stopped poling and looked at her.

She looked at it and said, “Hello.”

The frogfolk were humanoid: bulging, dark thick-lidded eyes spaced widely, almost on the sides of its head; vertical nose slits; no neck; its mouth a twelve-centimeter inverted U. Spindly arms ended in three pairs of opposable fingers—the outer two with wide pads, the inner narrowing to a hard point. Its legs were as long as its arms and both were bare and webbed. From the wrist to the upper part of the leg, a tough, translucent membrane stretched when the frogfolk lifted an arm. Hearing was by vertical tympani on the chest. That chest might swell to twice its size with a flexible ribcage to protect the lungs when frogfolk sang or called for mates. In this form, it should have been fresh from the hatchery. Instead, deeply lined and dry skin made this one looked old.

The voice that came from the mouth was unexpected—alto like a breeder and sweet. The alien didn’t speak with its entire mouth. Only the lips between the eyes moved as it said, “Hello.”

“You speak English?”

“And Bengali as well, though with more difficulty. Seven other languages if it interests you.”

She stared at the creature. “You’re one of the ones that don’t change.”

“
fairka*
.” It said the word followed by a whistle from the lower corner of its mouth. “My name is Fump, and no, I have not metamorphosed. I hope to in the future. I think I’d enjoy breeding.”

A flock of frog flyers swooped past and she saw them again: all skin, bones, and sex organs, flight membranes like kite-paper stretched thin. Small eyes, small heads, because when frogfolk changed, the brain that let them speak to humans was sacrificed for reproductive tissue.

“You won’t enjoy anything. You’ll just do it,” she said.

Fump croaked, shoved the pole into the muck and said, “Is there somewhere you want to go?”

“Home.” She gestured back to the pier. “Slip ten.”

It worked silently, heavy muscles straining, pushing them past a meter-wide floating island of razorgrass. Slimy orbs of nearby frogfolk eggs twitched as nearly mature young prepared to hatch. Once free of the rubbery sack, the hand-sized, voracious, marsh sharks scavenged and hunted the waters, mostly eating each other and dying flyers whose life was spent fertilizing or laying new eggs. In time the marsh sharks metamorphosed into bipedal, human-shaped amphiboids who could speak, pick up information like sponges, and carried racial and parental memories in a cranioid capsule. Humans had thought the marsh sharks, frogfolk, and fliers to be separate species when Enstad’s Planet was first colonized. Eventually they learned that the newborn sharks protected the breeders and eggs, and the middle-stage frogfolk journeyed over the marshes to mix the species’ DNA. A ‘mud season’ brought on by the increased radiation of the star’s variable output introduced humans to something new: swarming fanged salamanders and the disappearance of the frogfolk. The salamanders crawled from drying ooze, devouring marsh sharks, frog fliers, and all other life including men, women, and children; the frogfolk got away clean as humans learned another hard lesson about their new world.

The frogfolk built and maintained the towering villages kilometers from humans, but near enough to watch. They tended watergrain paddies and learned as much as they could. Once they found a new home, frogfolk waited eagerly for sexual metamorphosis to occur.

A tiny number never changed and went on learning until death from old age. Every village had at least one
fairka*
, the unchanged ones who were thinkers, inventors, teachers and historians.

Celianne said, “Why did you rescue me?”

Fump’s neck swelled and it made a deep thump of laughter. “Right place at the right time. You looked like you needed rescuing.”

Fump pulled up to their houseboat. Others tied every eight meters bespoke their owners. The few belonging to Muslims who owned businesses were painted brash colors. Latex was cheap and color made them stand out, with a few sporting minarets or golden domes. Each had a wide fishing deck where the owner might pray five times a day out of doors. Different smells curled on humid air around them, reminiscent of Earth’s Middle East.

The majority poor Christians kept house plainly, houseboats grey or blue, sometimes Company issue rust red.

Teeming life of the marsh surged beneath them: besides marsh sharks, fish, crustaceans and creatures both at once; amphibians, reptiles and mammals and bizarre mixes of all three; mostly small and sometimes large, rarely dangerous. Things slapped and crawled and hummed and croaked and slithered all around them.

Fump said, “I have heard of you.”

“Me?”

“‘The mudwoman who was a star,’” it said.

Celianne laughed. “That’s me.”

“Why Keragh?” The frogfolk name for Enstad’s Planet sounded kinder than the Human name. “Why trample this world?”

She sighed, not hearing the deeper question. No one had asked for years. She said softly, “I am terrified to fly again but it’s the only way to escape this place. I have to go back.” She shuddered, felt nauseated.

Fump stopped poling and Celianne realized they were under their fishing deck. It said, “I will help you learn to fly again.”

Celianne stood abruptly and said, “No.” She hoisted herself up. Scrambling to her knees, she pulled Uzzal up, turned and went into the houseboat, hoping Fump would just go away.

She went to the cooler tank, pulled out vegetables and fruit, and set about cleaning and cutting them for lunch. She lifted bowls from the drying rack by the sink and filled them with fried, pale-skinned reed roots, bright red cranberries, boiled yellow cattail heads and sliced orange marsh sweet potatoes in the bowl. She poured fruit oil and herbs over them and handed Uzzal one bowl and took the other for herself.

“Can we drink soda for lunch, Amma?”

“Water. Soda is only for special occasions.”

He didn’t try to wheedle but went instead and filled two glasses with filtered water. He followed her to the fishing deck where they both sat down on the edge, feet dangling over the water.

Fump was gone.

They ate with their fingers, in silence, staring out over the water as it rose to meet the hot gold sky in the hazy distance. It seemed to her that Fump’s promise still hung in the air.

There was a knock on the door. Celianne grabbed Uzzal’s shoulder, saying, “Wait.” She made her way to the living room window, mercifully translucent from multiple cleanings, letting in light and vague shapes but not prying gazes. A slim window ran from the floor to the ceiling next to the door. A shadowed figure stood at the door. An arm came up to knock again: white sleeve, black feathers.

Celianne opened the door a bit, Uzzal behind her. The ‘krasiman-vodoun priest smiled sharply filed teeth at her. She said, “I told you ‘no’.”

He smiled and said, “I’m here to collect a debt.”

“I owe you nothing!” Celianne exclaimed.

He dipped his head again, “Bill owed Mamun
begom
a half-million Company credits. I paid off his loan. I am here to collect now as he will no longer be able to work. I am sure that you will be unable to pay off his debt. At least his life was spared and he still lives.”

“But I didn’t know! How could I know? Is it a gambling debt? Because if it is...”

Mamun shook his head, “I am a good Muslim, as are all ‘krasimen, as well as a vodoun priest. I do not deal with gambling debt. No, Celianne, he borrowed to feed you and your son.” His hand flashed out and he grabbed Uzzal’s hair. The boy twisted and bit the priest. The man let go with a very un-Muslim-like curse. Uzzal ran screaming into the house. Celianne slammed the door in the priest’s angry face. He roared commands at her.

Celianne spun as Uzzal’s feet plunged through the weak spot. He shrieked, his entire body slithering through the plastic floor.

The priest’s dark shadow slipped past the living room window. Celianne fell to her chest and reached down into the gaping hole, shouting, “
Bachchale
! Take my hand! Take it now!”

Uzzal grabbed hold of her and she hauled him up. He was wet from the waist down and sobbing. He wrapped his arms around her neck and she stood with him. He flung scratched and bleeding legs around her waist and she staggered to the deck door, slammed and bolted it just as the priest appeared. She dashed into Uzzal’s room with its hand-sized window close to the ceiling, slammed the door and sank to the floor with her back against it. She wrapped her arms around her son and closed her eyes, breathing in giant gulps of air as he leaned his head on her shoulder, sobbing.

Celianne listened for the sound of the priest breaking down her door, waited for him to come for her. She tried to hold her breath, hoping to hear a footfall that would let her know where he was, but she heard nothing. Uzzal’s weeping faded to hiccoughs, then to the steady breathing of sleep. Patting his back, she leaned her cheek against the tight curls of his hair. She watched the play of light across the room’s window as it fell into late-afternoon shadows.