Forever Magazine Issue 63 by Robert Reed & Anil Menon & Sarah Pinsker

Author:Robert Reed & Anil Menon & Sarah Pinsker [Reed, Robert & Menon, Anil & Pinsker, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: magazine, science fiction, Science Fiction - Short Stories, science fiction magazine
Publisher: Wyrm Publishing
Published: 2020-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

16

A pedestrian wandered past, his gaze distracted and his manner a little nervous. He seemed embarrassed by the drama that he had happened upon. He looked human. Cold blond hair and purplish-black skin were common on high-UV worlds, while the brown eyes were as ordinary as could be. He wore sandals and trousers and a loose-fitting shirt, and he stared at the destroyed body, seeing precisely what he expected to see. Then he glanced at Sorrel, and with nothing but warmth, he said, “You do not know . . . you cannot appreciate . . . how much I love you . . . “

“Sele’ium,” she said doubtfully.

He started to speak again, to explain.

“Stay away,” she said quietly. “Everyone, leave me alone.”

Sele-ium’s reaction was to shake his head with his mouth open—a J’Jal refusal—and then calmly and with considerable malice, he informed her, “I am an exceptionally patient individual.”

A bitter thin laugh came out of her.

“Not today, no, and possibly not for a thousand years,” he said. “But I will approach you with a new face and name—every so often, I will come into your life—and there will be an hour and a certain heartbeat when you come to understand that we belong to one another.”

There was a pause. Then the corpse suddenly kicked hard at the empty air. Sele’ium glanced at the distraction, and he began to realize that Pamir’s body was shrinking, as if it were a balloon slowly losing its breath. How odd. He stared at the mysterious phenomena, not quite able to piece together what should have been obvious. The headless ruin twitched hard and then harder, one shrinking leg flinging high. And then from blackened wound rose a puff of blue smoke, and with it, the stink of burnt rubber and cooked hydraulics.

With his left hand, Sele’ium yanked the plasma gun from inside his shirt—a commercial model meant to be used as a tool, but with safeties and trackers cut away—and turning in a quick circle, he searched for a valid target.

“What is this?” Leon’rd called out. “We have been fooled!”

More puzzled than worried, the young J’Jal refused to panic, his mind ticking off the possible answers, settling on what would be easiest and best.

Their enemy was hiding in the open air, of course.

“Just leave us,” Leon’rd begged. “I will not stand aside any longer!”

Sele’ium threw five little bolts into the basalt wall, punching out holes, making a rain of white-hot magma.

Somewhere below, a voice howled.

Sorrel ran to the wall and looked down, and Sele’ium crept up beside her, the gun in both hands, its reactor pumping energies into a tiny chamber, readying another blast that would obliterate every soul in its path.

He started to peer over and then thought better of it. One hand released the weapon and the free arm wrapped around Sorrel’s waist, and when she flung her elbow into his midsection, he bent low. He grunted and cursed softly and then told her, “No.”

With his full weight, he drove the woman

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