He sprang from his corner, scuttled across the rubble, and climbed her like the nighttime tree she pretended to be. Fast enough to make them all gasp. And then she steeled herself for the stench of him… but the stench had transformed to perfume, a crisp pervading caress of a scent; his soft, suede-skin arms clung to her not with fierce intent, but gentle trust. Slowly, filled with a sweetness she could just barely remember, she let the coat slide down to her shoulders and closed it around the two of them.
They clapped for her. The man, the woman, the uni… the people several levels below on the first intact inner ring, watching it broadcast on their PIM gridviews. She met the grin of the uni with a surprised gaze, and he nodded at the maintenance shaft. “Go.”
The others went. And Shadia turned to follow, awkward under the burden of coat and akliat, in wavering midstep when the uni shouted and the grid-watching crowd gave a collective gasp of horror. She saw it from the corner of her eye, the bulk of falling debris, its screech of metal against metal as it bounced once on the way down.
She’d never get out of the way. Not in time. Dusterlike, she was ready for that… except within her whispered a long-forgotten child’s voice, something that treasured the newly rediscovered sweetness in life and didn’t want to give it up again so soon…
Something hit her hard. She twisted, trying to cushion the akliat even as she protected him, and all the while he exuded his scent of trust. A horrible crash buffeted her with sound and everything went dark, dark with a great heavy weight upon her.
She waited for the pain.
“Close one, eh?” said the uni’s voice in her ear. “Come on, then. You’re the one that knows the way, I think. Let’s get you and your new friend out of here.”
I don’t understand. He could have been killed. He doesn’t even know me, doesn’t have any of a perm’s affection for those they keep around them.
I don’t understand.
She led him through the darkness and back to the dimly lit pole shaft. She did it in silence, moving carefully to protect Feef, moving slowly to accommodate the tremble in her limbs. When they reached the level they’d come from, he put a hand on his own coat and stopped her before she remembered that dusters didn’t like to be touched by strangers, and everyone was a stranger.
“I work the duster turf, mainly,” he said, and his voice held an understanding she’d never heard before. “Never yet met one who hadn’t already lost too much to listen, but you…”
She looked at him, going wary. Feef snuggled against her and before she could stop herself, she stroked the absurd fluff of his topknot where it poked out at her neck.
The uni gave the smallest of smiles. “It’s worth a try,” he said. “This is it: we’re not so dim as you dusters think, perms aren’t. Most of us aren’t fooled into thinking what we have is forever, whether what we have is a little or a lot. Things come and go… we just… we take ‘em in as we can instead of skipping across the surface of life like so much space dust. Sure, we lose things, and then it hurts. It’s just…” He shrugged, coming to the end of his little speech and apparently not quite sure what to do with it. “It’s just that—it gives us—”
She thought of people rushing to help strangers and other strangers cheering her success with Feef and yet other strangers who mourned. Perm strangers, who somehow weren’t really strangers at all, not as dusters defined them. Perms left themselves open and vulnerable to the hurt and disillusion that dusters scorned, but…
“You could have been killed,” she said. Killed, tackling her to take them both flying into their only safety instead of diving there himself, a certain save.
“Yes,” he admitted.
“A duster wouldn’t have done it.”
“No. A duster wouldn’t.”
“You leave yourself open to lose things,” she said, and looked down at her hand a moment. Then, gently, more naturally than she’d have thought possible, she offered it to him. A perm gesture. “But it gives you this.”
His uncertain expression made way for a smile. It cracked the dust on his face and crinkled the corners of his reddened, irritated eyes. He looked terrible, and he looked wonderful. “Yes,” he said, taking her hand. Only for the briefest moment. Then he coughed and said rather brusquely, “Let’s get you and your new friend home, then.”
Feef’s House. Sounds like a good name for a pet care center.
After obtaining a degree in wildlife illustration and environmental education, Doranna Durgin spent a number of years deep in the Appalachian Mountains, riding the trails and writing SF and fantasy books (Dun Lady’s Jess, Wolverine’s Daughter, Seer’s Blood, A Feral Darkness), ten of which have hit the shelves so far. She’s moved on to the northern Arizona mountains, where she still writes and rides. There’s a Lipizzan in her backyard, a mountain looming outside her office window, a pack of dogs romping in the house, and a laptop sitting on her desk—and that’s just the way she likes it. You can find a complete list of her books at ‹http://www.doranna.net/›, along with scoops on new projects (and of course, tidbits about the four-legged kids).
Attached Please Find My Novel
by Sean P. Fodera
ASSISTANT EDITOR SOUGHT
The well-known and respected publishing house K&T Publishers has an immediate opening for an assistant editor. The successful applicant will not only have outstanding academic and practical credentials, but will also be thoroughly familiar with our current and past list of authors. A commitment to quality, a willingness to take on disparate tasks, and the ability to work under tight deadlines are essential.
Send resumé and references via ColNet to K&T Publishers, 16 Elray Circle, Landfall, Christea
<dbra.ktp.chr.ColNet>
Mr. Del Bradden
Science Fiction Editor
K&T Publishers
16 Elray Circle
Landfall CHRISTEA
Dear Mr. Bradden:
Attached please find my novel Beyond Here for your consideration. It is a science fiction novel, 270 refrains long. I have read the books published by K&T Publishers since arriving on Christea, and most enjoy the works of this kind that you have published. I hope I have captured the format properly.
Please listen to my novel, and be honest in your opinion.
Please do not reply to this message, as this account will no longer be active after today. I will contact you in one week with a private ColNet address for further communications.
Sincerely,
“Dr” Aly’wanshus
Christea Collegium
Office of Alien Studies
<File Attachment: BeyondHere.lyr>
There you have the letter that started it all. Simple. Formulaic, for the most part—”here’s my book; I like the books you publish; read mine and get back to me.” Even if it hadn’t made me curious, I would have read it anyway. That was my job.
I had to admit this was a new approach for a submission. From an academic, obviously. Probably one about to lose his job, or move to another collegium; hence his expiring EdNet address. But 270 refrains? And an audio file? Unless he was trying to recapture the days of the bards and minstrels with an epic sf poem, I didn’t know what to expect.
But this “Dr.” Aly’wanshus’ mysterious approach had doubly caught my attention, as science fiction was my pet project at K&T. Hardly anyone was writing science fiction at the time; an understandable turn of events on a colony world where nearly everyone’s parent or grandparent had been among the first humans to arrive. Even the people back on Earth (“Homers” in colony slang) now perceived folks from “outer space” as being no more distant than someone half a globe away, though those of us who had made the trip once or twice could tell them it was a bit farther. Still, there was enough life left in my favorite genre to warrant the rediscovery of works from the pre-colonial days, and the publication of novels by a handful of young colonial writers dreaming about faster-than-light fighters and space battles.