Planetary Anthology 04 Mercury by David Hallquist

Author:David Hallquist [Hallquist, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Superversive Press
Published: 2018-01-08T23:00:00+00:00

The images vanished. Cincinnatus staggered, struck his heel on a rock, managed to correct for the misstep before he tumbled to the ground yet again. It was only after he steadied himself with a hand on the crystal—now as uncommunicative as a lump of stone—that he saw the islands in the lava flow shifting.

The graceful, rounded humps were eyes; the angular protrusions, legs. Another hump, emerging from the lava flow, the rounded carapace of a being millions of years old. In form, he saw, something like the spiders writ large, though as the Apostle emerged from the lava flow, differences became clear. The body was less segmented, sheltered by a carapace like a horseshoe crab’s. What he took for legs did not appear to be meant primarily for walking, but rather for manipulation—assembly, he thought. The manufacture of other Apostles in zero gee.

Caesura ends?

Cincinnatus brushed his fingers across the crystal. “Silence has ended,” he said, and frowned as he tried to remember the ancient stories told on Sunday mornings, “but I think your caesura is something else.”

Death.

The spider—an infant Apostle, he realized—did an odd dance and scrambled up the crystal to Cincinnatus’ hand. He stroked it, absently, and said, “In a word, yeah.”

I did not die. But I am broken. Beyond repair? The question hung there, open, and Cincinnatus had the uncomfortable feeling that the Apostle expected an answer from him.

“Aren’t we all?”

My young are malformed. I cannot remember how to construct them as they should be.

A dozen possible replies came and went and Cincinnatus spoke none of them. How do you reply to a parent’s grief over crippled children? “They’ll grow,” he said finally, “and become something beautiful in their own way.”

And you. Not a question.

“Me?” Cincinnatus asked, though he knew the answer. He eyed the knives where they had fallen, side by side, as if they refused to touch each other. He could not forever carry both.

In one hand, creation. In the other, entropy. You cannot forever travel a course of neutrality. Malachi chose death. The Virgin Queen chose life.

“What do you know?” he spat. “You’re some sort of Von Neumann space bug from the other side of the galaxy. What do you know of her?”

I saw your life as you saw mine.

“Then you know she’s—” His voice caught, a painful, choking sensation, and he did not continue.

And you know as well what you must do. Return to Venus. Climb the Skadi Mons as the Queen asked of you. And we… we will wait here, and speak with those who come, if you will tell the others about us.

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