Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente

Author:Catherynne M. Valente
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Saga Press

Eyes slid closed. Eyes slitted open.

Decibel Jones lay in the dark alongside the roadrunner’s long, lithe, blue body. “Were you afraid, before the Grand Prix?”

“Very much.”

“I shouldn’t have come. I’ll just sludge it up. I’m already sludging it up. All I’ve ever wanted was to make something beautiful, and everything I touch just disappears in a poof of fuckery.” Capo wrinkled her muzzle in distaste. She was, as all cats, ultimately conservative on the subject of interspecies relations.

Decibel changed subjects like a drunk changing lanes. “Look, are we a thing? An item? I don’t know how this works.”

“I’m sorry. There is only one of you. Esca do not pair-bond. Perhaps if all the Zeros were here, we could manage a flock, but as it is, you and I are just friends with a short-term benefit plan. But I do like you. Even if you’re only plausibly sentient.”

A long silence.

“How long do Esca live?”

“If we’re careful, around three hundred years. I am one hundred twenty-one, if you’re asking. Not too old for you, I hope.”

“It’s . . . less. For us. A lot less.”

The Esca nuzzled him with her thick black beak. “That’s because your science is tiny and ridiculous and adorable like a plush toy.”

“You shouldn’t come round anymore. It’s not good for you. I’ll sludge you up too. I won’t mean to, but I will. Plus, I think it really bothers Oort’s cat.”

The great ultramarine fish-flamingo made a soft, awful sound with her rib cage. “I am having fun. Please do not make me go.”

“I loved Mira and she left. I loved Oort and . . . well, Oort seems fine. But I loved my parents and I loved my grandmother and I loved Lila Poole and I loved my life, and it’s all gone. Being around me is a high-risk enterprise.”

“ ‘Dying happens to everyone, even stars. Even the stuff between the stars. But if you believe in yourself and achieve your goals, you can die so hard that no one will ever forget you, and that’s almost as good as not dying at all. Well, it isn’t, really, it isn’t at all, and believing and achieving is just something sportscasters say, but what are you gonna do, not die? Try it. I’ll wait.’ ”

“What?”

“It is Goguenar Gorecannon’s Seventh Unkillable Fact.”

“Who the hell is Goguenar Gorecannon?”

“I will bring you my copy,” the roadrunner said softly, and when she said it, she said it in Mira’s lilting, amused voice.

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