Tale of the Thunderbolt by E. E. Knight

Author:E. E. Knight
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: valentine, speculative fiction, fiction, Science Fiction, human-alien encounters, adventure, david (fictitious character), military, general
ISBN: 9780451460189
Publisher: RoC
Published: 2005-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Some of the sailors elbowed each other as they admired the lithe Haitian girls.

Valentine jerked his chin, and the gesture brought Torres forward. “Keep the men out of trouble,” he said, before joining the Kurian. Ahn-Kha sang out a few orders to the Grogs and followed.

Legba made his way, slowly and painfully, to a bleached stone bench in the garden. Victo and Valentine each took an arm and helped him sit. Haitian girls, all muscle and gleaming smile, ran to his aid from the well, bringing water.

“Thank you, my children,” the old Kurian said.

“You know what you are called up North?” Valentine asked.

“No. I’m sure my former cousins settled on something outrageous.”

“The ‘Once-ler.’ It’s from an old children’s book by a man named Seuss.”

Papa Legba shook his head. “I haven’t heard of it. I don’t read much human work. Some Dostoyevsky. A few lines of poetry, perhaps. I know a little Baudelaire.”

Valentine watched it drink.

“So Kurians do live off of something other than fear and death,” Valentine said.

“Yes, we eat. Though not as much as a human.”

“The people here are so strong-looking. I was expecting a bunch of half-dead skeletons. I thought you were just taking their vital aura in doses rather than all at once.”

“It is a hard thing to explain, Valentine. You know all life creates aura, even single-celled organisms. To a certain extent, this aura is also projected, just as your body gives off extra heat. The healthier a body is, the more it throws off.

I’m able to live off this part of the aura, though only just. It is a bit like osmosis. I have to be careful when I sleep, however. I was napping in a grove some years back, and when I woke, the grass was dead all around, and I had killed the tree shading me.

“It has not been easy, no. And again no. Perhaps it can be compared to giving up a drug addiction. Except the body does not recover after healing itself of the need for the drug. I live with it, fight with it, every day. A real physical need, like starvation, not the psychological one so familiar to those who give up a habit. I can control myself while awake, but in my dreams, Valentine, in my dreams. When I sleep, it is six thousand years ago, or thirty, and I swill myself into a coma on the sweet screaming auras of your kind.”

Legba’s appearance flickered for a moment, and Valentine got a glimpse of multipupiled eyes, but the black face returned, licking its lips. “Why does evil have such strength? The thoughts, they grow on you in a way that virtuous deeds do not.” Papa shut his eyes for a long moment, and his face became as false as a death mask. He opened his eyes again.

“My children, I’ve seen evil not just at its birth, but at conception. I was on the councils when we first began to learn from the Anciens about the secrets of aura. I spoke for scientific inquiry, for reason, for knowledge.

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