Double Vision by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller

Author:Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: short stories, Sharon Lee, Steve Miller, Liaden, Archers Beach
Publisher: Pinbeam Books
Published: 2024-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

Stormshelter

Sharon Lee

THE WAR REACHED the much-talked-about Turning Point, hesitated, decided in the Enemy’s favor.

I, long-distance scout, mind encased in chromium; light years away from home, family, body; less than an analogue; less—more—than a man; rationality borrowed from the same machine body; beyond emotion—I ran.

Ran. Broke contact with the others, dropped out of the Grid under cover of a too-close eruption. Cut my losses. Deserted my duty. Fled.

Full of a sickness that belonged to that body—safe—buried beneath the mountains of my home, I fled. Whirled my craft—myself— away and outward; sensors sensing, scanners scanning; seeking life. Life that made no wars.

The chromium body has no sight; the computer processes its data, feeds it to a brain used to outward seeing. Compensation, protection from insanity—the brain forms pictures for itself to scan. Thus, space whipped by in swirls of ice blue, flares of orange, pinpricks—too distant—of white. And cold. Filled with a wailing, lonely wind, torturing ears long years behind me. No life, no life— Warmth.

The briefest flicker, almost lost in the howling of the Wind. I formed the command, slowed my body’s running. Paused, almost. And looked about.

The flashing blue and orange trembled as I slowed. My computer swallowed data wholesale—I recoiled; pictures faded as my brain stuttered— blind! Before I could panic—sight: A house loomed in the distance; coolly white; Greek-columned; smoke curling from each of the three chimneys, warmly.

The door stood open, so I went in.

The foyer was an expanse of white marble reaching to the horizon; the ceiling vaulted out of sight; the scent of jasmine came from the tiles in the floor; the light was sourceless yellow. I stood, unbreathing in my shell; unbreathing beneath the mountains.

The door at my back slid shut, soundless, and latched itself with a solemn click.

My mind wondered at the pictures it painted itself. My computer hummed through its data, disregarded. We waited for the owner of the house to come.

To make us welcome.

Waited, we—I—and wondered at the warmth, at the stillness, at the peace.

And I was content to wait, though the waiting was a hundred years of being still in the midst of such quietude.

My non-ears detected a step. I pivoted to the right as a heretofore unperceived door swung open and my hostess came to sight. I don’t know how I must have appeared to her—ugly, pitted lump of dull metal; fused in some places, cracked in others—a meteorite crouching in the center of her miraculously unshattered hall.

But she. She—long red hair entangling the blossoms that scented the hallway; slender arms circled with silver; long full dress a deep, cool green. And she moved like a ripple across a storm-stilled pond.

She stopped and regarded me—whatever was my seeming—her eyes a depthless and shimmering green.

“My Lady—” voiceless, I spoke to her. She did not seem to hear.

She only stood and looked at me, the line of a frown between her brows. She moved, in that effortless gliding, and walked around me, studying.

One circuit she made, leisurely. Then she stopped and addressed me, in a manner that my earless self could hear.

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