Best of British Science Fiction 2019 by Donna Scott

Author:Donna Scott [Scott, Donna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: NewCon Press
Published: 2020-07-14T04:00:00+00:00

The Final Ascent

Ian Creasey

I’d seen a hologram of my withered lungs, and heard the doctors tell me I only had a few days left. So when Katherine arrived at my bedside, I couldn’t help reflecting that she was the last woman in my life. It had ended a year ago; she preferred the aliens’ company to mine. But still–

“Kath, would you kiss me?”

We had not parted on kissing terms. Nonetheless, she bent down and kissed me with an echo of our old passion. I savoured the closeness, the taste of her, as her long dark hair tickled my neck. Now I had a chance to exorcise the resentment I’d hoarded since we split. Katherine was my last love, and I wanted to reconcile with her while I still could.

She couldn’t hide her shock at seeing my shrivelled body. Once I climbed mountains; now I could no longer climb out of bed.

“Oh, Lucian,” she said. “This is awful. I’m sorry I couldn’t get here earlier. I’ve been working like a slave lately.”

I suppressed a grimace at her alien idiom, and instead gestured at the hospice walls decorated with holos from family back on Earth and friends scattered across space. My mountaineering colleagues had sent pictures of the virgin peaks they’d conquered on frontier worlds. I’d added my own best ascents to create a collage of galactic summits in vast enigmatic skies, a climber’s vision of heaven. “This is how I’m dying. How do the Ardissans do it?” I asked, offering Katherine the olive branch of a chance to talk about her favourite subject.

“They eat this.” She gave me a pot of green paste that looked like mouldy guacamole. “Actually, they eat it every day anyway. But in your circumstances” – she winced as she alluded to my condition – “they would abandon all other food and eat only this. It helps them prepare for the transition.”

I accepted the sour-smelling paste with little enthusiasm. Yet for Katherine’s sake I ate a few spoonfuls. The green sludge had a peppery tang.

Katherine said, “It’s called ‘wathrone’, which means ‘spirit sight’.” She explained that the Ardissans constantly sought guidance from their ancestors’ ghosts. I struggled to concentrate as she described her research into the aliens’ religion. Her lecture reminded me of our field trips to their squalid villages, where funeral pyres so often billowed smoke over the stone huts.

A faint blue wisp appeared high above my bed. Katherine noticed my gaze. “This is Orlind,” she said. “He’s one of the elders.”

Like a fuzzy hologram resolving into focus, the figure imprinted itself on my vision. It was an Ardissan, a junior male: he had small stubs of antlers on his bear-like body. His fur was the deep blue of the sky at twilight.

“How’d he get in here?” I asked. “And why is he floating?”

“Because I’m dead,” said the alien. “That’s what your woman has been trying to tell you. We elders hover above to symbolise our higher wisdom.”

“Higher wisdom?” I laughed. “You’re a bunch of Stone Age primitives.

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