Concord: Sabotage by Chris Mason

Author:Chris Mason [Mason, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: space opera, alien culture, dog hero, humor scifi, climate crisis, plucky heroine, galactic drama
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Which part of “no thank you” didn’t you understand?

That night Emma played the piano for the first time since the ceilidh. It didn’t sound right to her—not out of tune, which wasn’t possible, just sour somehow—but she kept playing anyway. When she felt she had practiced enough, and broken the ice so she could play without heartache at the memory of the last time, she leaned against the wall, still on the piano bench, and called Seeüwit on her twitcher.

“Are you busy?” she said.

“No. Just doing a little work in the garden.”

“I didn’t know you were a gardener.”

“Usually I leave it to the experts, which I decidedly am not. But I was feeling restless.”

“I know what you mean. Something weird happened to me today.”

“Uh oh.” She told zim about her visit to Peeblejum. “Fichtek’s behavior doesn’t sound out of character,” ze said.

“No, he’s pretty much always like that. But the first one I talked to. When we met he said, ‘Emma Fuji, Human.’ I thought that was odd.”

“You didn’t catch his name, did you?”

“No. And he didn’t know Fichtek by his brevinomen. I had to dredge up his real name.”

“Did you? I’m impressed. Well, maybe he was insulted when you called his friend by the familiar form of his name and just pretended not to know who you were talking about.”

“I didn’t know Kchiks got huffy,” she said. She got up and moved to one of the comfy chairs by the fireplace. A small, cheery fire was crackling in it.

“I find the cessation of traffic more interesting, actually,” ze said.

“It was disturbing. Creepy.”

“And you said you went back in and it hadn’t resumed?”

“Right.”

There was a moment of companionable silence.

“Hey,” she said, “have you ever seen a female Kchik? Or whatever their other sex is.”

“No, never. The Pilots are certain that there are at least two sexes, but the females and the children—and the other sexes, if any—never leave the habitat. Only adult males come out to play.”

“Not to be parochial or anything, but Kchiks are weird.”

Seeüwit made the trilling song she recognized as laughter. “Humans are weird too.”

“Yeah, I know, everyone’s weird to everyone else. But except for the wasp waist, and the four eyes, and the stubby double tail, a Kchik looks a lot like a dinosaur.”

“Those extinct ancestors of birds?”

“Yeah. Hey, you weren’t around when…”

Ze trilled again. “I’m older than you, but not that old.”

“I wonder if Zeep 4 is that old.”

“It’s very possible. You could ask zim if ze’s ever seen Earth’s dinosaurs.”

“No, I know Pilots. Ze would just say,” she lowered her voice, “‘Of course I have, Emma my dear, in the New Smithsonian.’”

Another trill.

“Why didn’t Concord save the dinosaurs? I mean, of course I’m glad you didn’t, or Humans would never have evolved. But I bet some of them would have got smart enough to become Members.”

“Emma, my dear.”

“Oh, don’t you start.”

“You get really lazy-minded when you’re tired and stressed.”

“Yeah, Mother always said that.”

“You know it’s not Concord’s mission to save anybody. If a Tribe is about to commit suicide, we give them one chance to change their mind.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.