A Year Near Proxima Centauri by Michael Martin

Author:Michael Martin [Martin, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Humour
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

We had hoped to walk up the hill with Constance and Deverell in the afternoon. We wanted to show them the views and Jet them experience the pleasure of walking among wild things that Palissandrians are never able to experience, but, being accustomed to personally adjusted environmental systems, they were feeling the heat and preferred to stay inside the shaded but still warm house. We had a quick dip in the lagoon. When we came back they were asleep.

We had promised to take them out for a meal that evening and show them some of the life of Bepommel. When they woke up, they did not seem to have benefited much from their sleep and Constance’s complexion appeared a little blotchy. We gave them some Trake bark infusion. They had never had any before and were polite but not over-enthusiastic. It seemed to do the trick though: Constance’s complexion coloured and her eyes seemed to sparkle a little. They took us into Bepommel in their Ferenziculo. I sank back into it and it held me firmly yet tenderly, as only a Ferenziculo can, with just that hint that only you and no-one else receives such special treatment. We went to the old Drib mill again. Constance and Deverell were a little dismayed at the singing Drools but we knew they loved shell crimplets. When they saw how large they were, they decided to share one.

The cooks carried out their carefully choreographed display, marching past with snapping shell crimplets held aloft and throwing them to their noisy death in the scalding water. Constance and Deverell were unperturbed by the screams. They were accustomed to the “Fresh Houses” of Palissandria where gastronomes ate creatures alive, believing that any form of preparation, including a painless death, compromised the pure flavours unacceptably. The meals arrived and Constance found it difficult to wield the batterer but I assisted her. My wife and I had several more courses while they rested at intervals and worked their way through the first. When they had finished it they said that it had been exquisite but they were quite full.

As we relaxed with our Algarglanon, Deverell brought up the old Palissandrian dinner party debate—was Provender alive? We had heard similar debates on Conima, although there was never any doubt there that, were it possible for a planet to be alive, Conima was most certainly dead, and had been dead for quite some time. Various planets in our galaxy are credited with being alive by groups of scientists. Provender is one of them. The signs of life are deemed to be scarcely detectable on a daily basis, but are discernible by studying past records. The apparently random behaviour of the Incontinent Continental Drift seemed to be linked to any attempts at remapping the planet’s surface. It takes many years to get anything to happen on Provender and on four previous occasions, just as soon as the complex procedure of precisely measuring and mapping the planet’s surface was completed and the

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