Kzine Issue 19 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kimota Publishing
Published: 2017-09-19T23:00:00+00:00

PAST THE BLACK WHERE CALL THE HORNS

by Alex Acks

“Wait!” Mid-stride, Mari slips in sodden leaves and falls face down onto the muddy forest floor. Pain stabs through her nose, the dirt and moldy plants in her mouth making her gag. She chokes, spits. “Wait, dammit!”

The boy, short and thin, wrapped in a dark green cloak that blends into the forest, catches himself against a tree. He’s as dark as her, has the same close-cut black fuzz of hair, but is far shorter. “Shut up!” he hisses. “You’re going to get me killed. You’re going to get both of us killed!”

“Then wait and I’ll be quiet!” She scrambles to her feet, and cool silver and blue vector lines swim into her vision, pointing onward. These visual representations must be conjured by the illegal augment chip nestled in her inferior temporal gyrus, which she does not remember turning on. The question of how this could happen is for the moment less important than the immediacy of the hillside, the edge of green fabric that snaps around the boy’s ankles in the breeze. Ungainly as a floundering airboat, she makes her way up the hill, grabbing at trees while noting stability factors, correcting course to skirt low friction slicks of gray mud. “Who are you?”

He pauses, head cocked as if listening, and then says: “You can call me Jonah.”

Of course her sleeping mind would dredge up a name she’d set aside for a someday son when she’d been in Bible study and known she would marry and have a family—the name Brenner had thrown back at her when she’d crushed his dreams of something between them more permanent than sex. With dirt between her teeth, she can find this ghost blackly amusing. “And why are we in the middle of a forest? I don’t even like hiking.”

His lips curl in a smile far too old for his face. “We’re going to grandmother’s house.”

It takes her a second longer than it should to get that reference, and she snorts. “Shouldn’t you be wearing red? And be a little girl?”

“Shouldn’t you be in your spaceship?” he retorts. “It would be a lot faster.”

“Should you even know about spaceships?” Let alone her ship, the EES Thalassa 7-9.

He shrugs. “I’m a figment of your imagination. I know whatever you know.”

For a representation of undirected brain activity, she thinks, he’s quite astute. “Then you should have already known that.”

“Maybe I did.” He climbs over a rock. “Is your ship a big one?”

Bemusement drives the conversation now. “Small.” The Thalassa is a pale, smooth stone made to skip across the void with little acknowledgment for human needs, barely big enough for the two-person stellar survey team she heads.

“Are there many people with you?”

“Only two to an exploration team.”

“Must be nice to have company,” he comments.

“Not as much as you’d think.” Mari grimaces at the thought of Brenner, the red-headed giant who is her exploration partner. She’d trusted Brenner once, and he’d rewarded that by acting as if it was only natural.

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.