Forever Magazine Issue 88 by Ray Nayler & Wole Talabi & Simone Heller

Author:Ray Nayler & Wole Talabi & Simone Heller [Nayler, Ray & Talabi, Wole & Heller, Simone]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: magazine, science fiction, Science Fiction - Short Stories, science fiction magazine
Publisher: Wyrm Publishing
Published: 2022-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

Now

I was out of the terraplane, falling through space, arms outstretched, toward the black water below.

It was as if the entire world had receded behind sheets of glass, with only the sound of the wind rushing past my ears. Even the cold was something distant, unimportant. It was a feeling I was familiar with: I had experienced it several times during the war, when the Germans shelled our station, or during an air attack. It was a merciful trick of the mind: how could you die—really, truly die—in a world so remote and irreal? I squeezed my eyes shut, awaiting the impact.

And then something was around me, cold and slick with condensation, and my momentum slowed. I struggled with this thing in the air, made of a leathery bat-wing chill. I thrashed at it like a drowning woman fighting my rescuer. I could smell the ozone-sulfur stench of a fired death ray. Then I felt hands on my wrists. A voice said, “Calm. Be calm, soldier. Be still.”

It was a voice I recognized. We were rotating slowly downward, at no more than the speed of an elevator. Then we were hovering in the air.

“Are you hurt?”

“N-no,” I stammered. How was I alive? All I could think of was the black water, rising toward me. I had accepted it—death. And it had not come. Not yet.

Below me, I saw the black sedan that had struck our terraplane. It was spiraling downward, belly-up, toward black water. Bolts of green light danced across its shattered anti-grav unit. I knew what would be inside: nothing but ashes.

Above me was our Willys, righted now, curving toward us in a careful arc.

As it approached, I saw that Alvin was unconscious in the passenger seat. Eleanor Roosevelt was behind the wheel, fighting with the bad stabilizer as I had. General Hedy Lamarr settled me gently into the Willys’ back seat. The two women were in similar leather, fur-lined flight suits, their faces half-hidden by goggles, their hair concealed under hoods. General Lamarr reached into a pack at her waist, and then tore open Alvin’s shirt and began injecting his wound with the clotter—the alien tech that had saved so many of our soldiers’ lives in the war. “The bullet passed all the way through his body,” she said. “That’s good: at least we can be reasonably sure it didn’t bounce around inside him. Once I am done, this will stabilize him, and seal the wound, keeping him from tension pneumothorax. But he won’t last long without real care. You need to get to your submarine.”

“How did you . . . ” I stopped myself from completing the foolish question. “I don’t know the coordinates of the submarine. Alvin had them.”

Mrs. Roosevelt began punching the numbers into the terraplane’s beacon system. “Thank goodness you have friends, dear, watching over you. I hope you’ll remember that. Who your friends are. I hope you’ll keep our secret. As you can see, we are keeping our end of the bargain.”

General Lamarr was working on the entrance wound in Alvin’s back.

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