Nebula Awards Showcase 2017 by Julie E. Czerneda

Author:Julie E. Czerneda [Czerneda, Julie E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2017-04-20T21:00:00+00:00

* * *

Ten hours passed.

I had no food left. No water. I packed and repacked my things. Keeping busy staved off the dehydration and hunger a bit, though my constant need to urinate kept reminding me of my predicament. And movement was tricky because the edan’s current still wouldn’t release my hands’ muscles, but I managed. I tried not to indulge in my fear of the Meduse finding a way to get the ship to stop producing and circulating air and maintaining its internal pressure, or just coming back and killing me.

When I wasn’t packing and repacking, I was staring at my edan, studying it; the patterns on it now glowed with the current. I needed to know how it was allowing me to communicate. I tried different soft equations on it and received no response. After a while, when not even hard equations affected it, I lay back on my bed and let myself tree. This was my state of mind when the Meduse came in.

“What is that?”

I screamed. I’d been gazing out the window, so I heard the Meduse before I saw it.

“What?” I shrieked, breathless. “I . . . what is what?”

Okwu, the one who’d tried to kill me. Contrary to how it had looked when it left, it was very much alive, though I could not see its stinger.

“What is the substance on your skin?” it asked firmly. “None of the other humans have it.”

“Of course they don’t,” I snapped. “It is otjize, only my people wear it and I am the only one of my people on the ship. I’m not Khoush.”

“What is it?” it asked, remaining in the doorway.

“Why?”

It moved into my room and I held up the edan and quickly said, “Mostly . . . mostly clay and oil from my homeland. Our land is desert, but we live in the region where there is sacred red clay.”

“Why do you spread it on your skins?”

“Because my people are sons and daughters of the soil,” I said. “And . . . and it’s beautiful.”

It paused for a long moment and I just stared at it. Really looking at the thing. It moved as if it had a front and a back. And though it seemed to be fully transparent, I could not see its solid white stinger within the drapes of hanging tentacles. Whether it was thinking about what I’d said or considering how best to kill me, I didn’t know. But moments later, it turned and left. And it was only after several minutes, when my heart rate slowed, that I realized something odd. Its withered tentacle didn’t look as withered. Where it had been curled up tightly into itself, now it was merely bent.

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