Analog Science Fiction and Fact 2022 01-02 by Penny Publications

Author:Penny Publications [Publications, Penny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penny Publications
Published: 2021-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

Adam-Troy Castro’s twenty-seven books include four Spider-Man novels, three novels about his profoundly damaged far-future murder investigator Andrea Cort, and six novels about the adventures of that extraordinary little boy, Gustav Gloom. Adam’s works have won the Seiun and the Philip K. Dick Award, and been nominated for two Hugos, three Stokers, eight Nebulas, and one World Fantasy Award.

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By the Lake Where We First Loved

Paul Starkey | 2204 words

These days the lake at the heart of Ishikawa National Park was rarely bereft of tourists, but her surname merited special treatment. The park had been closed for an hour to let her conduct the ceremony.

She stood by the edge of the lake, where she and the man who would become her husband had last stood thirty-seven years before.

In many ways little had changed. The low rocky escarpments that rose and fell around the lake like the peaks and troughs of a rollercoaster looked no different, and the surface of the lake was still virtually mirror smooth. She remembered last time, how she’d been genuinely fooled into thinking it solid ice. Only Taka’s hand on her shoulder had stopped her trying to prove this by stepping out. He’d never been one for fancies, never trusted his eyes so much as empirical evidence.

If you looked closely you could see tiny waves lapping at the shoreline. They were almost imperceptible, but they were there. These days you could hire little electric boats to take out, so she imagined the surface of the lake was usually more agitated, but these boats were currently moored on the far shore; from this distance they were indistinguishable from rocks

Even though the tourists were absent, the trappings of tourism were not; the buildings, the benches, the signage. All that infrastructure was behind her though, so it was easy to pretend she was alone, even though she knew dozens of faces were likely pressed up against the windows. Watching.

A titian haze clouded the sky, casting everything in an orange tint. The cloud cover was dense, still Saturn was visible, half risen over the horizon, dominating the skyline like an overbearing parent. Of course, you couldn’t make out any color; it was the rings that gave it away, circling the planet at an angle. Suspended around it like a magic trick.

Even though she’d gotten a better view of Saturn from the shuttle coming in—the planet visible without the need for enhancement while she was still several days out—somehow it looked more beautiful here, more majestic, even muted by the haze.

It had been the same thirty-seven years ago, a sight that took your breath away as surely as a ruptured oxygen seal. She remembered them standing here, not speaking, just dumbly looking at the view until they finally realized an increasingly panicked Ahmed had been asking if they were okay for at least five minutes.

She wondered sometimes: was it the view that made them fall in love?

It was churlish to boil years of happy marriage down to a picture postcard;

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