Category: Short Stories

Her Last Chance 6

SIX

She awoke at planetrise. She didn’t know when her rhythms had begun to synch with that of the ice giant this station orbited. Perhaps that was the way of space travelers. At first Granny was surprised to find herself curled around a small warm body. Then she remembered Dr. Jensen coming to her with her nightmare, and then the child came.

She scooted out of bed with the ease of a lifetime of practice. Dr. Jensen nestled close to little Gita as she tucked the blankets around them. She smiled. They needed this bonding experience,

She dressed lightly and proceeded to the Portal. The Visitor was still guarded, but she allowed her to speak some words of comfort tonight before she moved on. The market had her provisions ready for pickup. They could have been delivered to her quarters, but she needed to get out this one night. Part of this was selfish, something to make believe she was making an extra effort for her guests. And honestly, she didn’t mind escaping the walls of her quarters.

She carried two bags in her arms while an automated cart dogged her ankles, loaded with five more parcels, which was when she bumped into a diminutive Japanese teen—indeed, an old acquaintance. “Hoichi?” she exclaimed.

His puzzled gaze evaporated at once, superseded by an ear-to-ear grin. “Granny!” he cried, ducking under her chin to sweep her into a hug. They rocked happily together for several seconds. “I never expected to see you here!”

“Likewise,” she smiled. “How did you–?”

“Fong is practicing in this District! I’m clerking for her.”

“I’m glad you’re still together. Practicing, you say? It’s only been six weeks. What has she been practicing?”

Hoichi staggered back, with a stare akin to panic. ‘Six—it’s only been six weeks for—” Before she could inquire further, or even shift one bag in her arms, he was already backpedaling toward the main corridor. “I-I-I have to get back, Fong’s expecting me to—I’ll tell her you called—oh dear!” and he darted into the bowels of the station before she could say another syllable.

These middle of the night spells were not unusual for Lianna. It was a useful instinct she retained from those months alone on the Lost Ship. At first she was only aware of Granny’s absence, of the pillows piled around her head and shoulders. Then her attention was riveted by the small body nestled around her. She gazed down on the sleepy body pressed to her shoulder, and somehow nothing else mattered in the universe. She could easily spend a lifetime watching her nostrils softly exhaling on her skin, the circle of coils cinching tight around her waist, an uncomfortable reminder of what an extraordinary child she was.

Gita’s long lashes batted, and her deep green eyes glowed in the darkness. By that light she signed, “are we going to be okay?”

Lianna nodded. “Yeah, baby.” What would Fayd say? “This will pass. Don’t worry, I’ll make this right for you.”

Sign: “Promise?”

Sign: “Yes. I’ve got to go. I want to see what Granny’s up to. I’m gonna set you down on the bed, okay?”

Gita nodded. Reluctantly her coils eased off of Lianna’s middle, curling up beneath the blankets as Lianna set her among Granny’s pillows. She tucked her securely into the blankets, then blew her a goodnight kiss before padding into the living area.

Granny hadn’t noticed her approach. Her attention seemed fixed on the mirror hanging beside the spare bedroom door, her body shuffling back and forth while muttering, “People are crazy and times are strange…” Yet her reflection was not that of the brown skinned woman before her, but that of a blue skinned giant with red eyes and many arms—

Lianna blinked, but the illusion remained. Granny seemed oblivious to it, to everything until Lianna tapped her on the shoulder. She whirled with a yelp, snatching the headset off her head. Lianna leaned sideways, gazing past her. The back of Granny’s head and shoulders showed in the glass, and nothing else. “Whatcha doing?” Lianna asked.

“Dancing,” Granny squeaked. In a normal voice she continued, “I hope I haven’t disturbed you.”

“No, I just…” Lianna peered at the mirror again, but only their images remained. “Do you always go off in the middle of the night to…dance?”

Granny shrugged. “Why not? You know how it is. Sometimes you just need to.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Surely you’ve just wanted to, haven’t you, just to relax?”

“I…I don’t dance.”

Granny’s mouth turned upside down. “You’ve never danced?”

“Not exactly. I never had the time.”

Now the frown tightened into a full-blown scowl. “Who had done this to you? I want their names!”

In spite of herself, Lianna started to giggle. “Huh. You’re the second person to ask me that.”

“Who was the first?”

Lianna stopped gigging, suddenly looking away. “Yeah, well…she was a goddess. She might have even been my mother.”

Granny’s features softened, her cheeks softening with a smile. “It’s not that hard. Let me show you. Stand over here with me, I’ll keep it simple,”

Lianna shuffled to her side, staring at the floor until Granny’s hand tipped her chin up. “Start with planting your right foot firmly, then extend your left leg in front of you—”

“Like this?”

“Yes and now reverse—jump as you switch feet. And reverse—jump and switch your feet in one fluid motion. Follow me.”

Lianna extended her left leg, stiffly, bouncing on her right leg, before switching legs, and nearly toppling over. “I’m sorry, I-I—”

“Don’t worry, you just need a little rhythm. Perhaps this’ll help.” She slid the headgear gingerly around Lianna’s ears, adjusting them to her head. “Hear that?”

At first it was only the drumbeat. Then the guitar kicked in, a steady thrum that sent a twitch to her legs. “Is this…?”

“Music, baby, like we haven’t heard in decades. Oh, we’ve so much to teach you.. come on, jump as you switch—baby, you’ve got feet of lead.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve never had to…”

“Don’t apologize. Practice. Let your movements be light, like…like moonwalking in half normal gravity.”

“Like a spacewalk?” She could do that. At first the back-and-forth shuffle on one leg seemed awkward. The more she did it with Granny whispering encouragement beside her, the easier it came to her. Her feet followed the steady beat and the guitar leading her on. “Sorry, I’m not very good at this,” Lianna said.

“You’re doing fine.” She might have done better if not for the battering at the door.

Lianna’s heart seemed to triple-beat. Granny raised her hand for silence. They both waited and then came another tattoo. Without a word Granny shooed Lianna back towards the bedroom, where Gita stood, rubbing her eyes. Turning to the door, she paused to fluff her boobs before touching the entry code.

The door whooshed aside, startling the dozen FAITH members standing on her threshold, with both Pastor Ludden and Reverend Bienbouw facing her. She greeted them with a smile, leaning on the door frame as her visitors shuffled nervously. “One, two…twelve of you? How disciple of you. Well, there’s not much to go around but I’m happy to share.”

“We’re not here for that, slut!” a boy in the rear—Nick, was it? —called.

Granny’s hand was open behind her back. While Lianna watched, her kettle floated across the apartment, with the handle rotating into her hand. She brought the kettle around to present to her guests. “I meant tea. What did YOU think I was offering?”

“He thought nothing,” Bienbouw interjected. “Absolutely nothing,” he reiterated to his fuming son. “We understand that you’re harboring Dr. Jensen.”

‘Someone had to,” she shrugged. “It seems some hairlips made it impossible for her to return to her ship.”

“Yes, that was a misunderstanding—”

‘It was a mob thirsty for blood. She was lucky to get here alive, not to mention what those maniacs would’ve done to her child.” She pushed off the door, fixing the crowd with a glare. “Exactly what did you intend for the child?”

“Ma’am, I don’t understand your accusation,” Ludden said. “We meant the wee one no harm. We are patrons of the Lord Christ.”

“That’s hardly reassuring. My experience has been that people are ready and willing to inflict all manner of harm on children if they’re not perceived as ‘one of us’. I’m surprised how easy it’s been to justify child butchery in the name of someone’s god.”

“Pa, we don’t have to listen to this—”

“Quiet, boy,” Bienbouw growled. But his frown was distracted. “I know you,” he said.

“I doubt that,” Granny said, “unless you been haunting old reels.”

Nick pushed through the gathering, his face a mask of hate as he stood behind his father. “We know she’s in there, Pa! I say we—”

Lianna clutched Gita to her hip. For her part Granny sighed, raised her right hand, and snapped her fingers. The sound actually seemed muted, but the effect was immediate. All of the congregants’ knees buckled, and then half of them, including Nick, flopped to the deck.

Granny smirked at the two reverends’ panic-stricken stares. “Huh. Someone hadn’t gotten enough sleep. You may want to carry these young fellows back to their bunks.”

Reverend Bienbouw barely seemed conscious of what had just transpired. His eyes were still glued on Granny. “I’ve seen you,” he insisted before bending over his son. It was only after the door slammed on her uninvited guests that Granny allowed herself to sag over her knees, “Hey, are you okay?” Lianna asked.

Granny nodded, though her back was coated in perspiration. “It’s too early for me to be dealing with these idiots. Wake me in a few hours, would you?”

As it happened, Gita ambled out of the bedroom as Granny was stumbling in. Her pet bat Gordon poked its head around her shoulder as Gita read from the book she carried. The cover was a deep maroon with a faux leather texture. “Whatcha got, sweetie?”

At first Gita extended the book in her small hands, but when Lianna only shrugged her incomprehension, she tucked the book under her arm. Then she signed some very curious questions. “What do you mean, discrepancies?”

Gita answered by bouncing onto the lounge, patting the cushion beside her. Once Lianna settled beside her, she took the book. Gita leaned over flipping through the early pages, then turned it over to the back. Lianna skipped back to the beginning, scanning each page. She read quickly, even with Gita’s serpentine trunk weighing down on her lap. She recalled everything, as she’d told Granny, and her reading comprehension had always been excellent. But damn, that child was sharp. How did this make sense?

Gita cozied into the arms of the lounge under a blanket, Gordon nestling beneath her hair and over her neck. As her trunk lay across Lianna’s legs, she asked, “Why are humans so cruel to their children?”

Lianna huffed. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I mean, we’re not like that anymore. Centuries ago when we were more primitive it was easy to dismiss other people, other races as savages, or something less than human. One thing they taught me at the Observatory, people are the same everywhere, whatever they believe. They all want their children to grow up happy, they all want to support their families without whatever state they’re in meddling in their lives.”

(Sign) “They haven’t left you alone, though.”

“No, I guess not.”

(Sign) “I was scared they were gonna hurt you.”

She leaned in and rubbed Gita’s nose with her own. “I’ll try not to get hurt in the future, okay? Now let’s see what this book has to tell us.”

“Where did you get that?”

Lianna flinched. She hadn’t heard Granny coming out of the bedroom until she was looming over her. “What time is it?” she stammered.

“Late morning,” Granny frowned down on her. “Where?”

“Gita brought it to me, with questions,” Lianna replied, passing the book back to her host. “It’s a very detailed chronicle of misery.”

“It took a lifetime to gather,” Granny nodded, hugging it to her chest. She sighed, cocking her head. “What troubles you about it?”

“Some curious discrepancies.” Lianna pushed off the cushion, lifting Gita before settling her comfortably back on the lounge. “She’s gonna be long when she grows up…I had journals like that in school. We used them exclusively at the observatory. They register direct entries or allow for written posts. Either way the journal makes an automatic entry for the date and time a given post is entered. Each date, each hour is accurately recorded.”

Granny nodded, waiting. “A lot of these entries have contemporaneous dates, spread over the most recent decades. Then it stops, for a period of five years. Now, when it resumes, for the bulk of these entries, the dates…”

“Go on.”

Lianna snatched the book back, flipping through to the middle and rapidly on through the pages. ”The journal has been registering posts that are hundreds of years out of date. Deaths recorded as they happened, five hundred years ago, before you were even born. The book is not defective. I know that.”

Gently Granny peeled the book from Lianna’s suddenly sweaty hands. “No, it’s not defective. And the stories are all true. I was there when each of them died.”

“How? I don’t understand.”

“I don’t suppose you would. I told you, I’ve been travelling.”

“Yeah, but no one’s seen you in 20 years—”

“TIME travelling.”

Lianna stepped back, staring at the volume she cradled in her hands. The dates— “No, that’s not right. Nobody on Earth is going to experiment with temporal physics, not after Moscow.”

“But you’ve lived extraordinary times. You’ve crossed the event horizon of—”

Lianna threw her hands up. “I was lured there! I-it was stupid! I wanted to make damn sure that planet was destroyed! Everybody died on the Naga Sentry, never having got to see it. I didn’t think—I didn’t think they were real.”

Granny pushed the tip of Gita’s tail to the back of the lounge, patting the cushion beside her   as she sat. “Speak to me, child.”

She joined her, nerves all atingle. “It was all in my parents’ journals, all the speculation connecting Hindu cosmology to physics. They thought there might be more literal truth to it than standard cosmologists attributed to it. That was why they booked passage on the Lost Ship. It was supposed to be the beginning of a lifetime of exploration.

“My dad was there, on a spiritual plane inside the event horizon, at least his spirit, and so was my mom, kind of. I-I forgave him. I think that was part of why I was there. It wasn’t his fault, all the adults went insane. Mom sent him on his way…to atone. His atman may go through many cycles of samsara before the cycle is broken…look, what you’re asking me to believe is fantastical, even compared to what I’ve experienced. I can’t accept that without some solid evidence in support of your claim.”

“Nor would I expect you to. Twenty years ago, I was approached to join a mission of mercy. Kate was there, as were others I’ve come to call friend. They’re all gifted  people, working anonymously. I never expected it to go on for so long, but…” Granny shrugged.

“But your family seemed so important in your life. How could you give them up–?”

“They didn’t need me anymore. My sons were all grown up, with children of their own. My husband was dead. I needed a change. Now,” she smiled, laying the book on an end table. “How about breakfast?”

She and Gita joined her as she drained a bowl of chickpeas she’d been soaking overnight. This she added to a processor, along with the leaves of parsley and cilantro Gita passed to her as she requested. To this she piled in an onion, shallot, chili powder, garlic, cumin and coriander, oil, plus a dash of baking powder. Once that was sufficiently ground, they shaped the batter into balls. Lianna and Gita retreated to the living area while Granny fried them in small batches. Before long she padded to them with a serving of crispy golden brown falafel balls over fresh salad. The interior was as savory as she remembered.

“This is perfect,” Lianna said around a mouthful of falafel. “How did you know?”

Granny set her drink aside. “An old Palestinian mother taught me her family’s recipe. It’d been handed down for generations since the Nakba, and lost when she died.”

Lianna’s drink fumbled in her hand, but she kept it from spilling to the floor. Granny continued. “That’s what I do. No one explained what my power was good for, or even what it was, when I was Gita’s age. I was told to hide it and pretend I was like everyone else, even when I felt like a freak. I didn’t understand how I could be useful until my first trip to Palestine.

“The first spirit I came into contact with was a fifteen-year-old American girl named Sydney. She opened a window onto a nation long past, from a time when her proud land was fracturing into separate confederacies. I told you I was a spiritualist. I’m able to observe the living energy of things, alive or not.

“It’d been in the third year of my marriage that a sister spiritualist, a Spaniard named Yolande invited me on a pilgrimage. We saw no harm in it, so we traveled with her to Palestine. Yolande was gifted as I was, and she explained we were going to bring peace to the souls of the martyrs.

“Gods, if only it’d been so simple. Stepping off the boat at Jaffa, and the sight of so many lost souls, so many mothers and children…it was a fist between the eyes. Most of them didn’t realize they were—and the stories–!

“I could only stay a few days. Then I had to flee. There were so many needing me, pawing at my skirts, crying for their fathers, could I feed them and their brothers—well, I went back a year later. I was too ashamed not to. Yolande understood. It had been hard the first time she undertook the pilgrimage. I managed ten days the second time, and I remembered their stories about harvesting olives, and the occupation. We went back, sometimes twice a year. They needed us to hear their stories and share them in their own words so that they were never forgotten.”

Lianna reached across the end table to clutch Granny’s hand. “You must have heard hundreds of stories.”

“Thousands. I’ve given peace to so many, posted their stories to the Palestinian Remembrance Log in Beirut. But there are so many more. Two, three of us are not enough to do it all in a single lifetime.”

“I grew up on those stories,” Lianna said. “Late nights when I was hiding in the calibration chamber, Fayd would tell me stories about his family, their survival in the Diaspora. He saved the best stories for tucking me in at bedtime.

“Everybody at the Observatory was always talking about family. I swear, Fayd’s eyes glowed when he spoke of their get togethers, their feasts and celebrations. The Professor, even Lady Smirnoff, that jealous old bag, they all had relations. Every time someone visited the station, they would always ask, where is your family?

“The Professor kept all my parents’ things in a storage bin at the far end of the Observatory, and at a very young age, I’d sneak off while the Professor was sleeping, and I’d read through their journals. It was one way to remember them. Well, the first couple of times he chased me back to bed and scolded me, I needed my sleep to be a smart young lady, blah blah.

“After a while I guess he realized how important this was to me. Because pretty soon he brought me blankets and sat with me as I read them out loud. Some of their ideas were far out. You know the rest. The Naga Sentry was blown off course by a storm of gamma ray bursts into a sector where the multiverses converge. Or maybe different dimensions. No one’s dared to investigate further.

“The quantum energies from different dimensions warped the adults’ minds. Everyone went insane…even my parents. The grown-ups all killed themselves. I spent the next seven months hiding from the culling gangs, rolling the bodies of the adults into freezer compartments. I-I thought they deserved that much. It’s funny, I’ve never told anybody that, not even the Professor.”

Granny clapped her hands, making both Lianna and Gita jump. “I’d like to get out for a while. How about you?”

“That’d be nice,” Lianna squawked, “except what about those loons haunting my ship?”

“I’ll arrange something. Get dressed.”

That was easy for her. Her skinsuit slipped on like butter, and Gita helped smooth it over her limbs. She wished she had access to the outfits she’d ordered for Gita that first night. All she had to wear was the sari that she arrived in three days ago. Granny offered her a small dress from her drawer, possibly a keepsake left over from one of her children. It was a beautiful maroon color, with a lion, a meerkat and a wild pig singing in unison, and below them a strange tag, ‘hakuna mata!’

Granny shimmied into transparent thermals that actually seemed to accentuate the glow of her ebony skin. Over this she wore a plain white dress, along with a shawl adorned with a smattering of prints featuring a pride of lions.

She was still nervous. She’d accessed the tracking mode for the clothes she’d ordered for Gita. A visual delivery record was displayed via a holographic bubble, for her customer satisfaction she supposed. Except Henri’s delivery ‘bot was bracketed by four security ‘bots from the station’s main contingent. Oddly, the crowds clotting the landing bay around her ship seemed denser. They opened a narrow corridor for the ‘bots to slip through. Henri’s DB knocked on the ship’s hatch. Ernie appeared in the entryway to accept the parcel. The hatch slammed shut and all the ‘bots made the return journey under the watchful gaze of the mob turning to dog their steps, if only with their eyes. Then the report ended.

Gita scowled at the Slosh Pit when she saw that Fries or Frieza had been shuttered. All the lights were off and the bulkheads sealed. Other restaurants were also closed to business. Evidently FAITH had driven the proprieters back to their home worlds. A deathly quiet had settled over the station’s corridors. The small bands of humans standing in every doorway had little to say to the three of them as they padded the central corridor.

Everywhere they went, there seemed to be small clusters of humans. Only humans. “I thought Cassie had deported these—” Granny shot her a look, and Lianna tightened her jaw against her first response. “Troublemakers,” she modified.

“They had an excellent solicitor,” Granny whispered. “He argued that the Commander hadn’t the authority to remove people en masse. Each individual would have to be provided legal counsel to advocate for their due process rights, as well as substantiate any allegations of religious bias—”

“Bias? The entire station is run by ‘bots!”

“I know. Listen, baby. I’m afraid the deportation order was so broad, their solicitor Mr. Hobson was able to pick it apart. Here we are.”

“Here we are what?” They’d stopped in a shadowy alcove facing a viewscreen displaying a wide-angle vista of Uranus’ spinning cloud-tops. At the moment the polar regions were illuminated by a burst of auroral cascades. Granny’s answer was to drop to her knees, pressing her hand to the floor while keeping her eyelids shut. “Enhance magnification,” she called, “factor of nine.”

A panopoly of moons juggled around the ice giant, with Miranda surging into the spotlight. After Granny’s request was processed, the view obediently zoomed in, penetrating thousands of kilometers into the cloud cover, past a layer where diamond-hard methane dropped like hail toward the slushy layer that was the mantle. Granny clasped Lianna’s small hand in her much larger one. And then she saw.

At first it appeared as a random plasmoid, a cumulous rising from the ammonia-and-methane gush from below. Then it spread its wings like a manta ray, and floated through the dense fluid layer. Beings of living energy with a translucent membrane of diamond, skimming through the planet’s interior while feasting on the energy generated by the superionic layers that composed Uranus’ mantle.

“Baby, come here,” Lianna whispered. She too had fallen to her knees, her right hand open to receive Gita’s. When the child touched her, she uttered the first word she’d ever heard her say: “Wow.”

White hot sparks traversed its every nerve fibre, made visible by the electrical impulses traveling along its transparent wingspan. “I don’t know if they’re indigenous to Uranus,” Granny said, “or some invasive species from outside our solar system who found this planet hospitable. Wouldn’t that tickle our religious friends’ funny bones to ponder that?”

“Who’ve you told about this?” Lianna asked, eyes fixed on the image.

“No one.”

Lianna swerved to stare at Granny’s profile. “I don’t understand. Something this monumental, on a body supposedly devoid of—”

A heavy sigh exhaled from her with what Lianna sensed was exaggerated patience. “I don’t trust people. We virtually rendered our mother planet uninhabitable for our own children. Luna originated as a labour camp before declaring its independence. Mars is nothing but a glittering tax shelter for trillionaires and their scion. I love people…I love children. But our leaders have a penchant towards exploitation. Why would I inflict that on another species?…Forgive me, it’s too much. Let’s go back.”

No one harassed them on their return to room 1263. The little clusters of Anglo-Saxon FAITH members, for that seemed to be all who were left on the station, ignored them as they passed. Some even turned their backs to them. The lift hummed quietly, like a sleeping quadruped, depositing them on the upper level with the gentlest of bumps. The corridor was ghostly silent as they strolled to Granny’s suite. The keypad accepted her entry code, and they piled into the living area without a word between them.

Granny was halfway across the apartment, headed for the bedroom before Lianna dared broach the subject foremost in her mind. “What was your mother like?”

Time seemed to freeze around her. Her shawl was halfway down her back, shoulders tense beneath her dress. The temperature actually seemed to dip in the room. But then her shoulders relaxed. The shawl slipped into her arms, tossed lightly over a seat. “She was a very spirited woman. She cared very deeply for me. Why are you asking?”

“I-I’m worried. My mum died when I was very little. I didn’t have a chance to learn anything about mothering before I lost her. I don’t want to—what if I screw this up?” She turned a tear-filled gaze toward Gita.

Granny laughed then, a soft gentle chuckle that welcomed rather than ridiculed her. “This is so familiar. You’re experiencing First Mother Jitters!” She crossed to her, pulling Lianna into a hug. “There’s no field guide to parenting, baby. Every parent has had to learn the ropes. You’re going to have to make some adjustments. You can’t take the same foolhardy risks you have as before. You must teach her discipline while giving her wings. You must set the rules and then kiss their booboos when they stumble. Have faith in yourself, baby, you can do this.”

“But my life is not over, is that what you’re saying?’

“It’ll never be the same, but no, your life is not—” But then a polite rap on the door stiffened both their spines.

This time at least the rapping was muted, even apologetic. Granny almost floated to the entry humming, “who can it be now…?”, in a singsong voice. Outside the door stood a crimson, boxey android on treads that hardly appeared suited for its frame. Without a word it pushed a sheet-covered handcart inside, whose contents bubbled volcanically. “Ernie!” Lianna screeched, catapulting across the floor into his spindly metallic arms. Gita leaped onto his chassis, delivering her hugs there.

“I presume you missed me,” Ernie pronounced. Lianna nodded, nuzzling her oldest friend, ignoring the stare she sensed poring onto her back. After a moment she stepped back. “Granny, this is Ernie. He took care of me on the Lost Ship. How’d you get past those religious freaks?” she asked.

“Protocol 47,” Ernie replied. “I’m allowed to prevaricate in extraordinary circumstances. In this instance I assured the individuals clustered around the ship that this cart carried radioactive isotopes emitting 90,000 rads that required disposal in the station’s disposal chute. They provided ample space for our passage. Once outside of earshot, I explained to station security my true intent. They were receptive to my entreaties.”

–You lied, Gita signed.

“As you wish. Now, if I may.” Like a true magician Ernie rolled back from the cart, swishing the sheet over the top of it. This unveiled two circular tubs, 30 liters each. Granny yelped as crimson and aquamarine tongues like pythons stretched over the rim of each tub. Each tongue planted themselves on the floor, where they pooled into two-meter pylons which took on humanoid form, arms snaking from both sides.

The lower portions of each column separated into shapely legs, the middle narrowing into approximate waists. The upper portions became rounded, sprouting humanoid ‘hair’ and features much like Lianna’s. Before long there they were, proud aquamarine Amba and bashful crimson Stavros. “Wait, where’s Little Stavros?” Lianna asked.

“In here.” Ernie flicked two stubs on his upper carriage. Swinging open his chest plate, he revealed the inner cavity, small enough for a child to curl up inside of. And indeed a child sized ameboid waved at them, sharing Stavros’ crimson membrane. “I recalled that you could hide there in your younger days. It appeared the safest option for her.”

Little Stavros flowed from Ernie’s interior, reconstituting herself inside Lianna’s arms. She joined Gita and Stavros, and even Ernie in a group hug. Granny sensed the joy emanating from them all and smiled, But Lianna frowned as Amba stood back, her expression almost blank.

“You’re not going to lose her.”

Lianna and Amba both spun at Granny’s words. She reached out a hand, gripping Amba’s ameboid mitt as she would any other humans’. “Come, sit with me. We have much to talk about.” She smiled at Lianna. “Why don’t you catch up? We’ll be all right.” Amba appeared bewildered as Granny guided her toward the lounge, where they sat.

She wondered if she should say something. She had a connection to Amba she didn’t quite understand herself, a bond that operated on an empathic level. Amba was herself part of a gestalt mind, separate but linked to the host body she’d willingly peeled herself away from, so many years ago. Telepathy, empathy were just words that didn’t begin to describe the depths to which she’d penetrated Lianna’s consciousness.  

But Granny was conversing with her, counseling her as she would any other being. As if with a word she could open up her ameboid heart and soothe her troubled thoughts. Amba pressed her right palm to Granny’s forehead, and from that moment they seemed to be communing on some higher level. “Would you look at that?” Lianna muttered.

“Miss Hadebe has a reputation as a valuable counselor,” Ernie said. “Of more immediate concern is the promise of FAITH.”

“I didn’t know you had the inclination,” Lianna teased, tapping Ernie’s casing with her knuckles.

“An unfortunate turn of phrase.” Taking her upper arm, he steered her toward the kitchenette. “What I meant to say was I have overheard them conversing outside the ship. I listened in, for security’s sake of course.”

“Yeah,” Lianna nodded. “Summerize?”

“That’s more like it. Certain members are imminently satisfied at having driven off the filth and riffraff, so to speak, to wit every migrant to our solar system. ‘Only Dr Jensen and her alien brood mares are left’, they said, ‘and they’re next.’…”

TBC

Her Last Chance 5

Judging by the frequency with which she kept nudging Lianna awake, she guessed Miss Jamai wasn’t getting through to the Infirmary. Gita stayed with her, seated beside her on the lounge, sometimes running a cool cloth across her brow. Time drifted from the blackness closing like a porthole over her consciousness to the next time Jamai shook her. On one occasion she caught her in a less dignified pose, shrieking into the wall comm on her behalf before finally slamming her fist into the panel.

As the tunnel closed on her again, she seemed to be fumbling with a hand unit and tapping all the buttons on its face. The next thing she remembered was a light intruding on her tunnel vision. It grew in intensity, a supernova blasting from the bedroom alongside a howling of angry banshees. Both light and noise faded as another oddball strode into the living area.

Lianna couldn’t be sure if she was imagining this person or not. A plush mane of red curls adorned her head. This figure seemed statuesque, if a bit on the thin side. A tartan skirt swirled under a—a buffalo hide? —thrown across her shoulders. Her lips were thin, her face narrow, but there was mirth in her green eyes as she clasped Jamai. “An’ what’ll it be this time, Granny? A nip an’ a tuck, a lift o’ yer boobs?”

“Kate–!”

“Na, ye dinna need that. Perhaps if ye’d pass some o’ that joy onto others in yer Posse…”

“Kate, please…”

The stranger, this Kate, grinned with a shake of the head. “Fear not. Ye know I ken never refuse me Granny.” She tossed the buffalo robe onto a settee, and then her gaze fell on Gita. “An’ who’s the we’en, hmm?”

“This is Gita. She’s fine. Her mother is the one in need.”

“Aye?” Her eyes widened as they fixed on Lianna briefly. Somehow she didn’t question the obvious fact that they were not related by blood. They conferred in whispers by the settee. Lianna couldn’t distinguish their words and caught a few covert glances cast her way.

Then she winked at Gita, shooing her away. “Dinna worry, lass. We’ll have ye sorted ‘ere long.” Kate hovered beside Lianna as she rubbed her large hands together. She stood over her for an interminable time. “Granny, will ye take a look yonder?” Jamai glided to the other side of the lounge, both now emitting ‘ooos’. “If I’m not mistaken, grey matter is nae usually green an’ blobby—”

“It’ s all right. I’ve seen her medical reports. It’ll reabsorb into her body once her skull is repaired—”

“Heyyy…right here,” Lianna moaned, raising her right hand.

“Fair point. I just dinna wanna do anything wrong ‘ere.”

“Sorry, what ARE you going to—” Two large hands pressed to her scalp. At first the warmth emanating from her palms was soothing. Until a knifing pain lanced through her braincase, right where the plates of her skull seemed to join together. Lianna’s eyes rolled, and the tunnel rushed forward to blacken her universe.

Then Jamai was seated beside her, supporting her as she swayed. Dizziness swamped her, spinning fast as a neutron star. But the spell seemed to pass, as had the stabbing ache in her head. “Wha…? How did you…?”

“Kate’s a great healer,” Jamai smiled. “Thank you, sister.”

“What are bandmates for?” Kate shrugged, gathering the buffalo hide around her shoulders.

“Have you seen the others? How are they?”

“Well, they—wait, ye dinna nae?” A frown creased her mouth. “Granny, are ye okay?” She would only shrug and duck her head. Kate apparently was having none of that. Her fingertips brushed Jamai’s chin and raised her head. “Eyy,” Kate smiled. “Ye know ye kin tell me anything. I’ll always love ye.” Their eyes closed as their lips caressed.

And suddenly Lianna and Gita were both alert, though they might as well have been invisible. Kate’s arms closed around Jamai, her hands stroking her back. No sound came from them apart from their satisfied moans. One eye opened partway to glance at Lianna. Then Kate smiled and winked, without interrupting the kiss.

With a soft smack their lips finally parted, and Kate stepped back. “Ye should visit us sometime. Ye’re always welcome. The buffalo are everywhere. Sometimes we sleep amongst ‘em, an’ not a bluidy flintlock in sight.”

“I’ll think about it. I love you, Kate.” That seemed to be all Jamai—Granny? —which was it? —could say as Kate drifted back toward the bedroom, their fingers touching as they smiled across at each other. Their fingertips touched, then she whisked into the bedroom. Jamai seemed unfazed as a white hole howled from the other room, soon to fade.

“I must be sleepy,” Lianna yawned. “I could’ve swore…”

“Best not to think about it just yet,” Jamai smiled, stroking her temple. “And it’s okay to call me Granny.” The darkness closing in was more like a soft blanket this time. “Sleep, baby. I’ll take care of…”

Gita tried to sleep. Their hostess offered her a guest room, off to the side of the restroom, but she didn’t want to leave Mama Lianna’ side. And despite her promise of safety, she retained her human form. Granny spread a quilt over them as she lay across Mama Lianna’s back. Sleep came easily to a nagini. She did not fear for her defenses; she could easily overpower this human, should she attempt any trickery.

The living area was dark as space. Her eyes adapted to that easily enough. What was unexpected was the muffled sobs from the bedroom Miss Kate had disappeared into. Gita slipped off Mama Lianna’s back, making sure to keep the blanket tucked around her. She padded into a room with a dresser on the far wall, and a massive bed taking up the center of the chamber. Miss Granny clutched a book with an inner light shining into her face, which seemed much older now.

She showed little surprise when Gita plopped onto the bed beside her. “Hi, baby,” she smiled. “I didn’t mean to wake you. It’s okay, your mother only needs some rest.” Her hand stroked Gita’s cheek as the tears streamed down. “I’m sorry, it’s been so long since I’ve seen a healthy baby. I’ve been in a war zone for so long. I thought we were doing some good. When they finally deposed Bashir, I thought maybe we could finally have peace.” Her face twisted, both fists balling in her lap. “Then it started all over again. Of course the bastards in the army, and the militias–!” She closed her eyes, but her fists remained balled. “I-I’m just disappointed in the powers that be.”

Gita’s eyes nodded at the open tome in Granny’s lap. “Right. This is a book of remembrance I’ve been collecting. It records all the names of the babies we’ve taken care of. Not all of them made it. Your mother won’t tell you this, but humans are often very cruel to their children. At least we used to be, hundreds of…well.” Gita’s hands flowed softly. “No, I don’t understand it, either. That’s part of why I’m here.”

She turned over a blank page, rotating the back of her hand to face the page. A sensor built into the back of her hand glowed. A moment later a framed image scrolled across the page, complete with biographical information.

“I’m close to being done,” Granny said. Gita dabbed at her damp cheeks with her fingertips. “I’m collecting this so they’ll never be forgotten. None of them.” She flipped back several pages. “This one is very special. She opened so many minds that were closed. Her name was Hind…”

The scent of fresh brewed coffee, peppers and eggs teased the air. Lianna shifted the blanket off her shoulders and eased to a sitting position. Apart from a little fatigue, her mind and body felt sharp and alert. Her stomach gurgled, and…there seemed to be a weight on her bosom. Lianna pushed them apart, just a little. A small snout yawned, showing rows of needle teeth. Granny’s space bat blinked tiny black eyes at her, then licked its chops and nuzzled her right boob.

Instinct compelled her to cradle the little creature nestled to her as she stood to take a look around. The lounge she’d been sleeping on was set ten paces back from the entrance, facing a curved sofa, with a jade end-table set between them. She’d been in rooms like this in other space ports, though usually not this cozy. Following the wall from the entry one first encountered a guest room, across from her lounge, and then a common restroom. Several meters past that was a private bedroom, and to the rear a small kitchenette with a countertop, cutting area and cooking surfaces.

Granny was turning something in a black skillet, while Gita spooned ingredients into the mix as she directed. “Ms. Hadebe…” Lianna began, but she already had a hand up to correct her.

She ignored a flush of pain in her noggin as she drifted to the counter. The fragrance of peppers and eggs spiced with cumin called her back to childhood meals with Fayd in the maintenance section. “This is shakshuka,” she said. “Where did you…?”

“A widow in Palestine taught me how to prepare it,” Granny said, serving first a bowl for Gita, then another for Lianna.

“There’s no life in Palestine—”

“Only olive groves and mass graves. I’ve made several expeditions to the area over the years. I know.”

“But this is perfect. I don’t—”

“Another time, Doctor. Please.”

She passed a cup to Lianna. The milk was flavored with sahlab and cinnamon. “I was born not far from here,” Lianna started, “on one of Jupiter’s moons. My parents thought it’d be the neatest thing to have their own star baby.”

“The Jovian system is 156 weeks and two billion kilometers distant. To say you were born nearby would be a misnomer at best.”

“Astronomically speaking, it’s the closest thing to being next door neighbors as you can get. Pardon me for asking, but how did you get here?” Granny raised her gaze. “My android mate asked Cassie about you. She said you just appeared unannounced one day in the Slush Pit. Transit from Terra would take 70 days, even at one percent the speed of light. You can’t just decide to vacation on a distant planet. The orbital position of Terra in relation to Uranus would have to be projected precisely or you might overshoot the target by several billion kilometers.

“And your friend Kate just disappeared. Gita saw her march into your bedroom, and I’m pretty sure there’s no access to the rest of the station from there. So where did she go?”

“She teleported.”

Lianna blinked. Her host seemed to delight in her discomfort, smiling across her raised cup. She sipped and tried to explain. “Kate and I are able to travel point to point via wormhole transit. We’re agents of a sort, for beings who are able to fold space via contained quantum singularities.”

“Like a white hole.”

“Not quite. It doesn’t have the same gravitational aspects otherwise we’d never survive these transits. It’s how I transferred from Earth to this moon within a matter of minutes. Though I confess it’s the longest transit I’ve ever experienced.”

“Oh.”

“Sounds crazy, doesn’t it, baby?”

Lianna shrugged. “Trust me, it’s not the craziest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

They continued their meal in silence for a few moments, until Granny said, “I notice you don’t apply a lot of makeup.”

Lianna shrugged. “It’s not a very practical concern in my line of work.”

“I meant no insult. You have a natural beauty. So many women in the cities on Earth are dolled up with rouge and powder, like they’re ghosts. Yours is an honest face, without all the ostentation.”

A different sort of warmth spread through Lianna’s chest. “Thanks. I meant what I said too, when I said you were gorgeous. You’re not a fan of cosmetics either, but gods, you’re beautiful.”

“I’ve been on a peace mission for a long, long time. It was never important to me.”

“Where’s my suit?”

“I sent it to Henri’s for cleaning. It’ll be returned by 0700 Station time. While we’re on the subject.” She set her bowl half-finished on the counter. She glided behind Lianna, peeling the blanket from her bare back. “What did this to you?” Her fingertips brushed the ridges gouged into her flesh. “They’re everywhere.”

Lianna shivered, shifting the blanket back over her shoulders and clutching it tighter to herself. “I-I’d like to contact my ship.”

“Of course, baby.” Together the three of them padded back to the living area. Lianna and Gita plopped onto the lounge as Granny plucked a handheld slab from the end table. She was gazing up at her host and the question just popped from her mouth. She pointed at Jamai’s chest and asked, “Are those real?”

“Sorry…?”

“I-I’m just wondering what it’d like for them to bud like in normal people.”

She smiled. “If you must know, I nurtured three strong sons with these. It was my youngest who arranged my passage to this outpost. He knew I needed someplace… quiet. He thought that would work for my well-being. Why would you ask such a thing? You’re not without endowments yourself.”

Lianna barely glanced at herself before she scoffed. “These? I was just trying to fit in. You wouldn’t have noticed me in my first year at the Academy. I was a skinny kid. I aced all my exams. I was able to apply a couple of years early. And the girls, all clustering together in the corridors, their chests all ballooned out and the boys flocking to them. I was still as flat as an ice cube.

“I liked it at first. I could concentrate on my studies. As the semester wore on, the isolation became intolerable. I didn’t think anyone knew I was from the Lost Ship, but I was alone, and everyone else was so gorgeous. So I lied. I told Professor Chronitis, my adopted dad, I needed an extravagant amount of credits for this upcoming seminar. He probed me a little, but he really loved me. He’d done everything for me after we were rescued from the Lost Ship.

“I had it done between semesters. When classes resumed, suddenly guys were stopping to stare at me, they were asking, ‘Where did you get those bazooms?’ Boys were asking me to the theater. Then it started to get creepy. All they wanted to do was stare and…I-I gave in to their demands, a couple of times. I couldn’t satisfy…they kept asking, what’s the matter with you?

“I completed the rest of my studies remotely. I only showed up in person for the final exams, and I usually sat in the back of the lecture hall. I thought these would help me fit in.”

“Why would you even have to have such a procedure? The budding of a woman is a natural part of—” Granny’s saucer clattered to the floor. Her hands suddenly clutched at her mouth. “Oh my god, I didn’t—how could I have been so stupid? And I’ve been blathering on about my children—baby, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to be so insensitive–!”

“It’s okay. Can I get ahold of my ship now?” She nodded, her eyes still haunted as she tapped her slab. She asked Lianna for the contact code for her ship which led to more beeping. Finally she handed it over to Lianna. “Just hit the flashing tab and it’ll come up.”

Lianna balanced the slab in her palm. She’d seen such things in museums behind cases. A numerical keyboard stared back at her, set in a touch-sensitive surface. “This is kind of quaint, isn’t it?”

“It’s served my needs for over 20 years.”

The flashing light she found in the upper left corner of the screen. Once she tapped that, a bubble filled the space between them. Gita giggled as an image resolved of the ship’s pilothouse. Ernie’s red android body swarmed into the foreground. “Miss Lianna! Where have you been?’

“We’re okay,” she smiled. “Say hi, baby.” She rotated the module to Gita, who signed a greeting. Then she set the module down on the end table. “Did you get the cargo stowed?”

“Yes! Never mind the cargo! What happened? Where are you?”

And he says he’s incapable of emotional excitability, she thought. “I was hurt but Miss Hadebe took me in for the night. We’re in…what room is this?”

“Suite 1263,” Jamai said, “in the private sector, Level One.”

“Tell Amba and Stavros I’ll be back later tonight, after my suit—”

“That may not be advisable,” Ernie interrupted. “Allow me to switch to an external view. That will explain things much better.” The image flickered seamlessly from the ship’s interior to a very crowded docking bay with even more fanatics clustered around the ship than last night. All Lianna could see was a sea of faces mingling suffocatingly tight together. “Stand by,” Ernie’s voice cut in. “Pastor Bienbouw is coming to make a speech.”

The congregants shifted to one side to allow a beefy specimen who towered over the rest to pass. He was dressed in a stiff white shirt, sealed with an equally stiff collar. His blonde hair was butched close to his scalp. A podium had been set up next to the ship’s dorsal fins, and behind this he stood with raised hands. The congregation became suddenly quiet, barely seeming to breathe.

“Rejoice, my brethren! The devil has been driven from our midst!”

“No he hasn’t, pal,” Lianna grumbled, “You’re still here.”

Though his voice was guttural, it seemed to carry across the bay. ‘‘We don’t know where Dr. Jensen has been taken. Nonetheless we can take solace in the fact that she has been driven into hiding. The last vestiges of alien trash have been driven from our solar system!” This was met with cheers and whoops. “Now we must be vigilant, patient, and allow Dr. Jensen to return to her ship. After all, she’s the only one who can pilot this wreck out of this station!” The congregation joined him in his chuckles.

“I want to thank our esteemed solicitor Mr. Hobson, for his service in delaying the deportation of countless brethren on account of Commander Stephensen’s spurious insinuations. For too long our liberties have been intruded on. Those days are over, I promise you.

“And our work is not yet done! We tried to build a more perfect society in Rhodesia, South Africa and in Zion. Each time our holy efforts were undermined by kaffirs and feminists and all the radicals, demanding we respect THEIR rights—”

Granny stiffened during that last harangue, her fists cracking in her lap. Gita, on the other hand, signed, ‘Rats?’ “He said ‘rights’,” Lianna signed back. “I know, he talks funny.”  The three of them had a giggle about that, at least.

Bienbouw raised his palms again, garnering the mob’s attention. “The Last Great War was not as we were promised. Paradise was given over to the perverted. The wall we’d labored so diligently to erode between church and state had been reinforced. Other faiths were allowed to flourish over the true gospel. Even our hopes for a greater world in the New Frontier had been dashed. We’ve seen with our own eyes the alien taint oozing from Dr. Jensen’s own hands!”

The congregation’s murmurs rose to ululations as the pastor raised one hand like a conductor. “That’s it,” Lianna grumbled. “Ernie, patch me into the ship’s amplifier.”

“Doing so now, Miss Lianna. Although may I advise it may not be wise to antagonize—”

But she was already leaning over Granny’s end-table. “HEY! SMART-ASS!”

Granny started. That certainly got the pastor’s attention, since he immediately swung to the perceived source of the offending noise, as did the stunned mob before him. “Before you stick your foot any deeper down your gullet, I just wanted you to know I’m alive and well, and I’m not going anywhere! I’m not gonna waste any more time reasoning with you. I’ve visited neutron stars that were less dense than you loons! If it’s the devil you’re looking for, I suggest you look in the fucking mirror!”

After that she severed communications with a touch of a button. That was singularly satisfying, almost as much as the high five she shared with Gita, or the wide-eyed gaze Granny regarded her with. “Child,” she whispered, “you’ve got balls!”

…Pressure was exquisite. Her throat seared from dozens of ruptures. She coughed another mouthful of blood as its throat muscles contracted, ridges of muscle grinding into her hips and thighs.  Her arms cramped as her suit was slowly shredded with her still inside it. Its mouth closed over her face as her hair was strained between its jagged jaws—

–and the scream died in her throat. She sat rigid on the edge of the lounge hyperventilating, dripping ice cold perspiration. Her blankets were soaked, clinging to her as she fought for composure. I haven’t had that nightmare for years, she thought.

The evening had passed easily. They spent a few hours playing cards. After dinner her suit was delivered as promised. She left it in its slipcover for now; she still needed to recover. She and Granny had tucked Gita into bed in the spare room, and then she did the same for Lianna, which worked out fine until now. “Baby? What’s the matter?” Granny called from her room.

“It’s fine,” Lianna called back. “Gita’s still asleep.”

“I was referring to you.”

“Oh.” She sat quietly for a moment, until her host spoke again. “Would you come in here, so I don’t have to shout across the apartment?”

Something in her tone seemed so familiar, so—family—that it brought a smile to Lianna. She cast off her damp blanket and padded into the bedroom. Sweet Mother Kali, her brown body was even more beautiful in her birthday suit. Lianna sat on the edge of the bed as Granny propped herself up on one elbow. “I had a nightmare is all,” she began.

But Granny abruptly tossed the covers off herself. “Oh my god, you’re frigid. And you’re wet all over. Wait here!” She dashed to her dresser. Suddenly a fluffy luxurious towel was tossed across her shoulders. She was very thorough, rubbing Lianna back and then front until every drop of sweat was scrubbed dry. “I-I’m sorry,” Lianna stammered. “I haven’t slept alone for so long…”

“Baby, what happened to you? What could’ve inspired such a vivid nightmare?”

“It wasn’t…it was real.” Granny stopped toweling her down for a moment. “You could sense what I was dreaming.”

She nodded. “How could you remember that so vividly?”

“I remember everything. I have hyperthymesia. I remember every hour of every day on the Naga Sentry. Every day of my life with precise accuracy.”

The bed creaked as Granny sat down beside her. “Tell me.”

Lianna wet her lips and leaned forward to make sure Gita was still tucked in. So far so good. She leaned back with Granny’s great hands gripping her shoulders. “I-I wasn’t looking for monsters. I just wanted to explore, without the dangers I’d been encountering. I thought it’d give the Professor fewer headaches,” she chuckled.

“There were stories in my parents’ journals about a planet with a sacred body of water. I set down a few kilometers from where my ship’s sensors pinpointed a cavern with a large body of water. I hadn’t known there was a mercenary army bivouacking there too. These were Blanchard Benzentine’s thugs, the Scourge of the Seven Empires. They got off a few shots, inflicted radiation burns to my right leg.” Her hand brushed a faded pink blemish spread across her upper thigh.

“I barely managed to shut a bulkhead door and deadlocked it behind me. And there it was, the Sacred Waters of Turin. There was nothing especially magical about it, besides the name but it cooled my wound. And then…you ever get those pinpricks on the back of your neck, like you know you’re not alone? The water surged in front of me, waves building till it was the size of a whale.

“Sweet Kali, if only that’s all it was. This was the mother of all monsters, a grey skinned squid full of tentacles twice as long as me and twice as thick. I was armed, sort of. The professor had given me a wrist mounted nullifier for self-defense. I didn’t know what it’d do against this monstrosity, but I had to do something. I raised my arm to take aim, and it threw its tentacles around my arms. And then my wrist gadget says, ‘tracking lens blocked—please remove obstruction.’

“Can you believe that? That thing was gonna kill me and it still thinks it’s in the lab! It was all over me in seconds, clutching my legs and shoulders, flowing down my throat. Its suckers were tearing into the inside of my throat. It wasn’t like Terran cephalopods. Its suckers bit right through my mother’s skinsuit, into my flesh.

“I-I think they were recording it. Gita’s mother told me she found a trove of data slats, covering dozens of travelers they fed to that creature, and,,. they were laughing about it. It lifted me like I was nothing, cinched its tentacles tight around my chest. Then it turned itself inside out. It was astonishing that anything that huge could regurgitate itself so easily.

“It had no beak. From the looks of it, Benzentine’s mercenaries had blasted its beak to pieces. There were only jagged nubs left around its mouth. Those jaws had opened to receive me. Gods, the stench of brine and raw flesh blasted from its throat. My soles slipped down its tongue. Its tentacles oozed up my torso as it forced me down. First my hips, then my hands, then its mouth closed around my chest. I was gonna die alone while they were back in their HQ, watching, pleasuring themselves over my…”

“Baby, stop. You don’t have to…”

“Let me finish. It had me, my hair was sliding through its mouth. And then my wrist gadget says, ‘Target acquired. Shall we respond?’ Oh hell yes, so I fired right down its throat. Blew a space-girl sized hole through the back of its head. It got the last word, though. It spit me out, but the force of the blast blew me across the pond into the retaining wall, head-first.

“I don’t remember much after that. I think it killed me. Ernie rescued me, Gita’s mother came and they ministered to me. I was in a coma for several weeks. I only had Stavros travelling with me at that time, and she contributed some of her amoebic fluid to heal some of my wounds. That’s where all those welts came from, and that’s part of how I acquired a little amniotic goo.”

“Please tell me that bastard was arrested for what he did.”

Lianna shook her head. “Not exactly. Gita’s mother had become extremely fond of me.” Lianna swallowed. Meanwhile Granny’s hands massaged her shoulders, “I didn’t want revenge, I didn’t…but she tracked the whole mercenary army, across several sectors, billions of kilometers, and she killed them all at once. She’s a goddess. She unleashed a demon horde on his soldiers, and then…

“She harvested their souls. She released her demon army from its servitude and bound Benzentine’s army to her service for the next thousand years.” She turned to stare into Granny’s shining eyes. “Why would she do that for me? I never dreamed anyone could care enough…” She was suddenly aware of her hands trembling in her lap. Then one of Granny’s hands pressed over both of hers, rubbing them gently. “I’m sorry. Can I stay here tonight?”

The request spilled out of her without a thought. Once spoken, she didn’t regret it. She barely knew this woman, but somehow all her instincts whispered that she could trust her. “Of course you can, baby,” Granny smiled. “Just lay down, you’ll be safe here.”

Hardly had the blanket covered them both before Lianna gasped, “Sweet Kali!”

“What? I’m sorry, is something–?”

“No, it’s just…gods, you’re so WARM. This is like bathing in a star.”

She sensed the smile in her reply. “Space is cold. You probably haven’t had a warm body to cuddle up to.”

Lianna was suddenly reminded of how tiny she was next to Granny as she spooned closer, her breasts smooshed across her back. Lianna’s hands, so very small, clutched the powerful arms draped around her waist. “Why are you so kind?”

“I know what its like to be alone,” Granny whispered. “I didn’t have an advocate to help me when I was your age. I never want anyone to feel that lonely…Oh. I guess you’re not the only one who couldn’t sleep.”

Lianna raised her head, brushing her hair out of her eyes while Gita peeked over the top of the mattress. Her trunk trailed a couple of meters behind her into the living area. “Hi, sweetie. Is something wrong?”

She didn’t sign anything this time, but clutched Lianna’s fingers. “You don’t want to sleep alone either, is that it?” she nodded enthusiastically. Lianna glanced back at Granny, who nodded.

“It’s a strange place. One night won’t matter.”

“Okay. Come on up, sweetie.” Lianna put her hands to her waist and lifted Gita onto the mattress beside her. The child wriggled up to Lianna’s shoulders while her lower body coiled once, twice, three times around her waist. Her scales stretched and contracted as she breathed, supple against Lianna’s bare skin. Her breath was warm and feather soft on her neck. Gita settled into Lianna’s arms while Granny snuggled close.

Her Last Chance 4

“I assure you, Doctor, your child is in no danger. Her vomiting is indicative of stomach upset. However, there is no suggestion of viral infection.”

Lianna stroked the top of Gita’s head. She’d been seated beside her cot ever since she puked in the pilot house that morning. Lianna was still in the pink bathrobe that she’d flung over herself as she carried Gita to bed, her trunk draped over Lianna’s arms and dragging at her ankles. The Medical bot reported to the ship five minutes after she summoned him, babbling several kilometers a minute.

“You’re sure there’s no fever?’ she persisted.

“None,” the ‘bot said.  “You reported none when you took it yourself. “

“Yeah, I-I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

“Overprotective motherly instinct is my diagnosis. I believe the prescription would be to relax.” He seemed to spend a few moments too long scrolling through his most recent scan. “Curious. The food Gita regurgitated was only partially digested. Her stomach appears to be retaining a considerable amount of proteins. And she appears to be digesting these items at a slower rate than is normal, for a human child of her apparent age.”

Why hadn’t she seen this before? She’d been feeding Gita like a horse since she met her, on the assumption that was what you did with a child. She hadn’t considered that as a naga child, she’d digest her meals at the equivalent rate of a reptile—if that WAS the way the digestive rate worked with a naga child? “I’m sorry, Doc. Could you scan her stomach?” The ‘bot ceased his bending over Gita and faced Lianna stiffly. “Please. It’s important.”

Dutifully he did so. He studied the results. Rapped the side of his portable scanner, then examined Gita again. “Doctor Jensen, you are aware your child has two stomachs?”

“T-two….Yeah,” she lied. “She’s more than human, Doc. Listen, I know this is unusual, but there are some paranoid people on this station. Can I rely on your discretion on this matter?”

“I have taken an oath, Doctor Jensen. I have never violated that trust. And I am aware of the prejudice Miss Gita may face as an alien. Since this appears to be her normal anatomical configuration, I can promise you both that discretion. For now, I suggest you feed Gita not so often. We’ll see if that improves her stomach upset.”

“Thanks, Doc.” She saw the medic off at the hatch. As he was leaving, Cassie arrived. Twice in one night. Before she’d gone to sleep Cassie had stopped by to inform her formally that her symposium, the reason she’d come to Uranus in the first place, had been suspended indefinitely over security concerns. “Welcome back,” Lianna mumbled as she brushed past.

“Good morning,” Cassie nodded. In her hands floated an official looking tablet. “I brought you a registry padd. Fill it out as soon as possible. This will make your adoption of Gita official. “

“Maybe later.” Her eyes were focused on her cabin, where Gita wiggled her fingers at her from under her blanket.

“It’s best to get this red tape over with quickly.”

“My baby was sick this morning, do you mind?” Lianna yanked the padd from where it floated between them and slapped it on the pilot’s console. A shrill chirrup erupted in protest.

Cassie raised her palms. “Okay. I’m just saying, the longer you put this off, the easier it’ll be for some hairlip like Pastor Ludden to threaten you.”

“How?”

“I DON’T KNOW! WE BOTH KNOW WE CAN’T—!” Cassie’s jaw clenched, tighter than Lianna’s, tight enough she thought she’d break her teeth. “We both know she’s an alien. I don’t care about that, okay? How long do you think it’ll take one of those freaks to figure it out? Get it done.” Spinning on her heel, Cassie showed herself out.

Lianna huffed, staring at the tablet. The hatch had slammed after her several minutes before Lianna could bring herself to approach the task. ‘Mother’ was easy enough. ‘Father’? ‘Place of Birth’? Would anyone recognize Patala for what it was? Well, who would know it existed in a separate dimension ? The other questions…

After a half hour of nibbling her lip and chasing the fog in her brain, Lianna padded to her cabin. She thought Gita was sleeping, but she rolled over straightaway once Lianna took the stool beside her cot. “Baby, who is your father?”

She signed that she was proud of her parents and the two siblings born in the same clutch. “Does he mind that I’ll be taking care of you for a spell?” Gita shook her head, adding by sign, if you fail he will not hesitate to crush you in his coils. Lianna could only hope she was kidding. The other questions would have to wait, as there was yet another rap on the hatch.

I can’t take two steps away from my baby’s room, she fumed as she keyed the hatch open, and immediately regretted it. “Good morning,” Pastor Ludden breezed past her so quickly she couldn’t tell if his grin was genuine or not. “Is everyone well here? My parishioners say the Medical ‘bot paid a call.”

“Gita had an upset stomach. She’s in bed sleeping.”

“Would that have anything to do with that outburst in the Commander’s office yesterday?”

“Word travels fast.”

“It is a small station. One wouldn’t need large ear lobes to hear the pair of you shouting through the bulkheads.”

Somehow Lianna kept both fists from balling. She crossed her arms across her chest, which somehow didn’t seem better. “She’s right in there. Would you like to see how she’s doing?”

“If you’ll permit me.” He followed at a discreet distance as she led him to her cabin. Gita was still in her humanoid mode, but her eyes widened until Lianna signed that it was okay, the pastor was her guest. “Is she incapacitated?” Ludden queried.

“Of course not, she just prefers signs. She doesn’t know you yet. Say hello, sweetie.”

Gita flicked her gaze from the pastor to Lianna. But she did as she was told, adding something Lianna wasn’t about to repeat. “Doctor, tell me. Will you be raising her in the word of the Lord?”

“Not without asking her parents first. They might have something to say about that.”

Ludden frowned. “Aren’t you concerned with the salvation of her eternal soul?”

“Why would I? You’re not going to tell me you believe every child is damned from the cradle? Don’t you find that a horrid concept?”

“I would never imply such a thing. Is she at least aware of the story of the Serpent tempting Eve?”

Gita sat up, puffing the pillows behind her. Her hands flowed in a fluid motion. Lianna hesitated before relaying her question. “Gita was wondering if the Serpent ate Eve after he tempted her.”

“Wha—No! It’s a metaphor! The Devil wanted her to eat from the Tree of Knowledge—”

More signs. “She says she ate a tree?” With the pastor at her back, Lianna smiled and signed, “Baby, you’re just kidding around now, aren’t you?”

Gita grinned and signaled back: “I could do this all day.”

“No,” Ludden flustered, “I meant the fruit from the tree, my mistake…”

“Gita wants to know now what’s the point of that? If it was a real serpent he would’ve just ate her. That’s what she would’ve done…if she was the serpent, that is.”

“It’s a story—OUR stories! These are what define us, defines our moral—” Ludden suddenly seemed to become aware of his hands, flurrying in a blur under his chin. He forced both arms into immobility by his sides. “Clearly you’ve been neglecting our history.”

“She’s a child. There’s plenty of time to learn it yet.” Lianna trailed off as Gita’s hands steepled beneath her chin, and her mouth worked in silent prayer. “What’s she doing now?’

“Praying to Brahma that her stomach will heal soon, that she can have a little peace and quiet so she can get some sleep.”

“Brahma?”

“Yeah, Brahma. He’s the highest of the gods in her pantheon.”

His face flushed scarlet. “Is this what you’re teaching this child? What other pagan blasphemies are you bringing to this outpost?”

“Pastor, it’s a vast universe. There are higher realities, other dimensions we can’t even imagine. Surely you understand this. You believe in an omnipotent being you can’t see but is supposedly everywhere and everything all at once. “

“But you don’t believe in this Brahma, do you? You’re talking about this—this being as though he’s an entity you’ve met.”

“I’ve never seen Brahma.” Not yet anyway, she said to herself. “I’m a scientist, I accept the evidence of things observed. What I have seen is that there are bigger things you’re not ready for, yet. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like my child to get some rest. Would you please leave now?”

As he stormed off the ship, Lianna realized she may have gone too far, but she wasn’t sure at what point she’d done so. She’d barely tapped into the experiences of her last ten years in space in her symposiums. If he’d lived a tenth of what she had…

After the pastor has left, Ernie greeted her with a slip of hard bound paper—a card, was it? That’s quaint, Lianna smirked. No one’s used one of these for hundreds of years. “This arrived while you were conversing with Pastor Ludden,” he said. “It is very unusual.”

Lianna lifted it to the ceiling lights. “Please join Jamai Fatima Hadebe at Iva’s for a luncheon at noon Greenwich Time. Your sweet nagini is invited.” She lowered the card with a huff. “At least she has the terminology right. What’s so unusual about a lunch date?”

“Apart from the possibility that she knows Miss Gita’s true nature, there is also the fact that this person literally disappeared off the face of the Earth over 20 Terran years ago.”

“I’m still not getting it. What’s so important about this—this Ja-May?”

“Ja-Mii,’ Ernie corrected. “Miss Hadebe, if this is indeed who she is, was a well-known spiritualist of great power and, for many decades, a councillor for troubled youths. Many attributed her disappearance to the death of her husband not long before.

“Of more immediate concern is your own relations on the ship. Miss Amba has been sulking in the cargo lounge. She won’t eat or reply to inquiries. I suspect she is jealous of the attention you have been lavishing on Miss Gita.”

“What does she have to be jealous of?”

“Hmm. It has been many years since I have had to do this.”

“Since you’ve had to do what—OWW!” His explanation was a smack into the back of Lianna’s head. Not a severe blow, but modulated with just enough force to get her attention.

“Miss Amba,” Ernie replied with what seemed more force to his voice, “may feel left out of the decision making process. Until yesterday she had only to share you with Miss Stavros, a being not unlike herself. Now there is a new lifeform which requires your upmost attention. Miss Amba may be miffed that you had not consulted her before bringing Miss Gita into your life.”

“Ernie, this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me! Her mother is a goddess, for Christ sakes, and she’s trusting ME with her upbringing! Don’t you know what a gift that is?”

Ernie contemplated this for the longest time. “Apologies. It is my role to play what humans call ‘Devil’s Advocate’. Nevertheless, your happiness is my happiness. My suggestion regarding Miss Amba is, before you go to lunch, that you express these sentiments for her benefit.”

“Okay,” Lianna nodded.

The cargo lounge appeared empty at first. Oddly a pleasing blue-green aura suffused the area. After sealed the hatch behind her, Lianna glanced up. Her eyes focused on a series of thick gooey stalagmites clinging to the domed ceiling. “Hey sweetie,” Lianna smiled. Strangely, this was almost exactly the state in which she first encountered Amba.

A pseudopod oozed down from the central pillar, the tip curling up to face her. This swelled into a pair of rounded cheeks and an ameboid wig. Her mouth was not at all pleased. “Ernie thinks I didn’t ask before I made this big decision, but I didn’t have time. What I mean is, Gita kind of dropped into my lap and I couldn’t refuse her—”

–You didn’t want to, the thought accused.

“That’s not–!” Her protestations died before she could voice them. Even in her mind they sounded hollow. “No, I didn’t. You know, I’m kind of envious of your kind. You’re part of a huge family. We call it a colony, but you’re connected to thousands of cells, just like you. All sharing their thoughts and impressions, even over countless star systems.” Lianna stared at her fidgeting hands. Usually she didn’t need to express herself verbally. They understood each other intuitively, as she did with Stavros.

“I can’t have that. They won’t even allow us to adopt, any of us from the Lost Ship. We’re too unstable, too prone to violence. It’s legal, literally all legal.”

Two aquamarine hands clasped hers. While she’d been talking, stalagmites had tapered down from the ceiling, spooling around Lianna’s waist, clasping both legs. The face on a tendril had swollen into a chest and neck to support Amba’s head, and the arms that held Lianna.

“I knew I’d never have that from a young age. So, I buried any hope of having a child in my work. Then I met Stavros, and I met you, and I wasn’t alone. I had my parent’s journals, so that was something to make myself useful, hey?” The last of her pseudopods flopped onto Lianna’s shoulders. Thick gelatinous folds pooled around her lower body, exerting a gentle pressure, pushing up beneath her armpits. “I can’t give her up. I want you to be part of this. I’ve never done anything like this, anything…”

–Responsible?

Lianna nodded. Amba’s face was foggy from the warm moisture burning in her eyes. “Please give her a chance. Will you do that for me, beloved?” Assent came in the form of her ameboid arms draped over Lianna’s neck. Amba’s lips brushing hers, and an echoing –beloved—in her thoughts.

Gita indicated she felt well enough to accompany Lianna, though she might not eat much today. Lianna understood and promised to ease her through this lunch. She’d shimmied out of her robe and into a facsimile of her mother’s skinsuit. The original had been destroyed; the scars from that encounter were left all over her body. This suit was supposed to be indestructible, as it should be since it was a gift of the gods.

Sleek and supple, it had only one patch topping her right shoulder. This was a grooved imprint of a rounded gold key, a yoni she supposed represented her mother. She’d applied a portion of her stipend from the observatory to request extra saris for Gita. That morning they chose colors and styles. The tailor promised her new outfits would be printed and delivered by early evening, Terran time. 

The maitre’d had been expecting them. They followed him to a booth far to the rear of the restaurant, dimly backlight by the aquariums encircling the main seating area. The same dark woman from the night before rose and indicated a seat beside her. She seemed to have done a fresh brush job to her hair. Lianna and Gita slid onto the bench. “Is this a social call, or are you stalking me?” Lianna began.

The woman chuckled. “I’m sorry your symposium has been suspended. I found your presentation fascinating.”

“You came to see me?’

This-Jamai?- nodded. “The last three days. You seem to have quite an affinity for children.”

Lianna shrugged. “They’re inquisitive, perceptive…”

“And not so quick to judge as adults?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“So. Lianna. Is that like the vine?”

“No, that was my parents being cute. It’s a contraction of my father’s name, Lee, with my mother’s, Anna.”

“What a thoughtful gift.”

“Thanks. Sooo…how do you know about Gita?”

“I saw her on the day she arrived. The two of you were beautiful together. I’m curious whether you know what you’ve let yourself in for.”

Their drinks had arrived atop a service ‘bot with drink inserts set into its flat top. Gita patted the ‘bot as it departed. They raised glasses of fresh lemonade. “Her mother’s been my therapist for many years,” Lianna said. Jamai’s glass froze at her lips, greenish liquid dribbling down her chin. “Have you ever encountered a nagi in her native environment?”

“In fact I’ve met two.” It was her turn to grin as Lianna and Gita both spit-taked. Some of the other patrons lifted their eyes from their menus. “I took it upon myself to wrestle them. I was lost at the time, it wasn’t long after the death of my husband. It wasn’t the brightest thing I’d ever done.”

“Huh. And you survived that.”

“No.”

“Have you told anyone about Gita?”

“No. Why would I? I’ve spent the last twenty years dealing with fools who didn’t give a—” Her fingers had started tip-tapping on the tabletop. Apparently she noticed she was doing it at the same time Lianna did and dropped her hands under the table. “I’d never endanger a child. Any child. Is something wrong?”

Lianna blinked. While her host was speaking, her boobs seemed to jiggle. No, she must have imagined it. “Look, maybe it’s none of my business, but my android Ernie told me you just vanished, like say, twenty years ago. Where did you go?”

A small sad smile pursed her full lips. Her hands stroked the cup facing her. “I was invited on a peace mission. I needed something like that after my husband passed away. It was important to our success that we operate under a cloak of anonymity.”

“You were part of some non-governmental body or something?”

“Yes. It was the first time I’d worked with a team. I liked that. We rescued a lot of people. Some of us fell in love…”

“Then why are you here? It’s a long way from Terra.”

“I’ve…” She closed her eyes, sucking in a deep breath. “I had a troubling spiritual experience. I needed a sabbatical.”

A chirrup erupted from—her? Then Lianna noticed her boobs jiggling again. She hadn’t meant to, but she couldn’t help staring, especially after a triangular head poked over the top of her bosom, its pointed ears unfolding.  “Excuse me, I don’t mean to pry, but have you got a bat nestled in your bosom?”

Jamai glanced down, then peeled half a slice of orange from her plate and held it to its snout. It nibbled voraciously at it before tucking itself back in its warm spot. “It’s okay, they’re friends,” she cooed. Then she noticed Lianna and Gita both gawking. “The station had a visit from warriors of the Antarian Empire. Some Antarian space bats had hitched a ride on their warship. A colony took up residence on the upper level, including Commander Stephensen’s quarters. I assisted her in rounding them up for relocation to one of Uranus’ moons. This sweetheart needed some extra loving care. I’ve been nursing him back to health, and I’m afraid he’s grown quite attached to me.”

Lunch arrived on a glass platter loaded with diced tomatoes and cucumber mixed with parsley and spices. The maitre’d squeezed juice from a lemon sifter while his waiters laid down platters of fried pita as a side dish. Gita picked at vegetable pieces while Lianna nibbled the pita. “Have you given any thought to her schooling?” Jamai asked.

Lianna guffawed around a mouthful of pita bread. “I’m not letting her out of my sight. I’ll probably home school her. Such as it is,” she added, thinking of her ship.

“Are you sure that’s what her mother intended? Associating with your own kind may be exactly what she—”

“I’m not human.”  Hot steam rose inside her skinsuit, seemingly under her very skin. Why does everyone want to interfere with how I’m raising her? “I just got her. Can’t you people give me a chance to try raising her the right way?”

Her host’s lip trembled. “That may be how you feel now, but you can’t stand apart from what you really are. Trust me, I know.”

“Lady, you don’t know me at all. You don’t know what I’ve had to survive. Given what’s happened this past week—who the hell are you to judge me? Did Cassie push you into this? Did those freaks haunting my ship?”

“Doctor, you need to calm down. People are staring—”

“I DON’T CARE! Do you know how many ‘aliens’ I’ve met who’ve tried to kill me because I was different or weird or—whatever? NONE! NEVER! NOT ONE TIME! I’ve been welcomed—I’ve been loved more deeply than any human was ever capable of! I’ve been cared for better than any human could bother to! If I never see another asshole human it’ll be—fuck!”

The glass was in her hand without her thinking of it. It shattered into broken fragments, sparkling brightly across the table. One fragment stuck in her palm. Every eye in the café seemed to be on her as she pulled it out. Blood pulsed from the puncture, but that was soon overwhelmed by an aquamarine bubble spreading into the wound and sealing it. Every eye, including Jamai’s, was wide and staring. “Come on, baby,” Lianna said quickly, taking Gita’s offered hand with her uninjured one. Together they padded quickly from the silent café.

“That was a little over the top, wasn’t it?’ Lianna asked Gita shortly in the infirmary. She nodded vigorously. “Sorry, baby, it just came out of nowhere. With her and Cassie and that damn pastor hounding me all in the same morning…” she stopped when Gita lunged in for a hug. “Okay, I’ll try to do better.”

“At this rate you may as well take up residence in my infirmary, Doctor.” Lianna tightened her lips as the Medibot sprayed a healing patch over her broken skin. The glass had penetrated the muscle in her palm, but the nanobots inserted into her when she was a child were already repairing that damage. “Did anyone see the protoplasm fill your wound?”

“What?”

“Did anyone see what happened?” The Medibot repeated.

“I-I don’t know,” Lianna admitted, “That wasn’t my biggest priority.” Gita shrugged, so she guessed she hadn’t been paying attention either.

“This should heal in a few days,” the ‘bot continued. “In the interim I suggest you maintain a low profile on your ship. Why would you do such a stupid thing?”

Lianna hunched up on the exam table. It always seemed to strike deeper when an android criticized her than when a human did. “She pissed me off,” she mumbled. “She was trying to give me some BS about acting more human.”

“You ARE human!” His words made her cringe even more. “It is one thing if you don’t wish to socialize with them, but that is who—what!—you are! It cannot be helped!”

“I just wish…I just want people to forget I was ever on the Lost Ship.”

“I can’t treat that illusion,” the Medibot spoke, more softly. “Rest. See me in two days. My intern will need your thumb scan for the supplies you requested.” Lianna nodded. Gita took her hand as she slid off the cot.

Outside the clinic’s Auxiliary Station, where supplies were regularly delivered, the intern dispensed a cargo pod. His was a generalized design, an upright floating bowling pin with a egg-shaped pod on top with a sensor band for sight, Lianna peeled the glove back on her left hand and pressed her thumb over a sensor pad. A green light acknowledged receipt of her supplies. “Here we are, 500 kilos of crystallized silicate. I’m at a loss as for why you would require this.”

“Crew,” Lianna replied breezily. “Thanks, doc.”

She got behind the handles of the antigrav buffers framing the cart’s chassis and pushed. Gita was in front of her, also leaning on the handles. Lianna grinned; with those buffers it took almost no effort. Of course, by the time they reached the docking bay, Gita was riding on top of the cart in front, swinging her legs right and left.

The usual mob surrounding her ship was restive, maybe a bit too quiet. But they parted for the cart’s approach like—what sea was it in old Earth mythology? Gita bounded off the top of the cart as Ernie opened the ship’s cargo hatch. There was little to it, two dark grey metal doors curving up and down with a magnetic track to ease large loads onto the ship. The problem was, this time the cart seemed to be stuck.

Lianna frowned as she pushed once, twice. It wouldn’t slide more than half a meter inside the hold. She had to bend down and lift it from the bottom a few centimeters to slide it the rest of the way inside the ship so that Ernie could maneuver it to its proper cubbyhole.

Her relief was jolted out of her by the feral scream behind her. The pastor’s son Nick was dashing toward her, and the rest of the mob was surging behind him. Lianna ducked the pipe he swung at her, and as he staggered past she dropped him with a chop to the neck. She landed a kick to another man’s groin before he reached Gita. The mob was on top of them before she could shoo a screaming Gita up the hatch. Lianna threw herself over her as fists pummeled her back. That wasn’t important, she was still pushing them through a sea of legs toward—

Metal crashed into the back of her skull. Stabbing pain flashed all through her nervous system. The second blow brought another flash and—did something crack? Amid every agonizing pulse, goo flowed toward her damaged skull plates. Only instinct enabled her to cover Gita with her body as hands tore at her, trying to dislodge her.

Flaming bushes roared around them—no, flame throwers, frightening the crowd back, gushing from the gauntlets of Cassie’s security patrol. The pillars of fire weren’t actually pointed at her attackers, Lianna realized. The ‘bots had waded into the mob, using the flames to drive them away. She suddenly found herself in a heap on an empty space on the deck with Gita shaking her, trying to rouse her.

Frigid metal clamps took hold of her arms and lifted her as though she were nothing. The sudden motion brought on a fresh roil of nausea. The deck spun as they dragged her back toward the entry hall outside the docking area. “Gita,” Lianna called, weakly at first, but when she couldn’t locate her, “GITA!”

One of the five ‘bots surrounding her raised a clamp, then dropped to one knee and leaned forward so that Gita could wave to Lianna from her safe perch on his back. “Thank you,” Lianna panted as a black hole closed on her thoughts. The smelling salts shoved under her nostrils solved that, temporarily. Everything seemed to be draped in gauze. She could hear things but her mind, her body seemed to float through them. “Medic, prepare to receive patients,” the Chief Security ‘bot called, a bit too shrill.

“Negative, Infirmary is in lockdown,” came the reply. “There are an unknown number of rioters attempting to access the Infirmary. Recommend you take the patients to a safe area until it is possible to administer aid.”

The Chief ‘bot stepped away from the comm panel set in the bulkhead. “Doctor Jensen…? Stay with us, Doctor. We appear to be cut off from your ship and any immediate medical aid. Is there any place we can take you for safety?’

She couldn’t for the life of her think of anyplace. She didn’t know anybody here except Cassie, and that other lady. And after she went half cocked on her only an hour ago…Gita was tapping on her escort’s back. Once she dropped to the deck, she showed them a card she was carrying. The little scamp must’ve picked it up while Lianna wasn’t looking.

Their feet clanked like regimental soldiers as they marched through silent echoing breezeways. A lift deposited them on an upper level. The air seemed cleaner, even warmer here than in the lower levels. She sensed a lot of these staterooms were vacant. Neither Uranus nor its moons held Terra’s cultural romance with either the Jovian or Saturnian systems. Lianna had blacked out again, but she awoke at a door which seemed to emanate the scent of jasmine and orchids. The Chief ‘bot buzzed the door repeatedly until a familiar voice groused, “What? Do you know what goddamn time—”

The door whisked open and there she was, her dark body lightly wrapped in a pink nightgown adorned with imprints of rainbow butterflies. Lianna met her eyes, expecting some lingering resentment. Perhaps there was a flash, for a second, until she frowned, either at her escorts or her dropsy gaze. “Doctor Jensen?” she asked.

“Forgive us for calling at this late hour, Ms, Hadebe,” the Chief ‘bot said, “but a situation has arisen. Would you assist us?”

She ignored him, her gaze seeming to bore into Lianna. “Doctor, what’s going on?”

Lianna supposed she ought to apologize. All she could manage was, “I can’t get to my ship. Please, I’ve got to protect Gita…” Her head dropped, at least partly from shame. Suddenly two large brown hands clasped hers, rubbing them gently.

“Hey.” Her voice was warm with an exotic lilt. A blanket settled around Lianna’s shoulders. “Come on. No one will harm you here. I’ll keep you safe.”

They were at the threshold of her quarters when the Chief ‘bot blared, “We can’t make that promise, Ms. Hadebe.”

Her host glared back, and it seemed her eyes could’ve melted steel. Yet her voice held an icy calm: “I can.”

For the first time in days Lianna felt she was truly safe. Gita had already skipped inside when the Chief said, “That may be. Nonetheless—” and then Jamai snapped her fingers, and the doors slammed shut on her escorts.

She eased Lianna onto a luxurious two-seater lounge. That’s as far as she got before her stomach retched all over her dining room floor. The room spun wildly as Lianna pitched forward…

TBC

Her Last Chance 3

THREE

There was much to do still. Between them, Lianna, Stavros and Ernie shuffled boxes and loose slates and uniforms tossed carelessly over the bed and dresser. The boxes with her parents’ journals they moved to the pilot deck until they could think of a better storage space. Then Lianna shifted her undergarments to the bottom drawer. That left the two upper drawers for Gita’s belongings. Lianna never had that much junk to begin with.

Fortunately the station’s allotment allowed her to run a warm bath for Gita. She wanted this first day to be special. Gita wriggled out of her half-sari, which she promptly tossed to the deck as she climbed in. I’ll have to teach her some neatness, Lianna thought, but reconsidered once it dawned on her that she was in need of such training herself. Gita giggled lost in the bubbles, then beckoned with both hands. Lianna pointed at herself, to which Gita nodded. “Okay, kid, but I don’t know if this is proper—”

A shrill yelp jerked Lianna off the deck. Her skinsuit was draped half off of her chest. Both of Gita’s hands were clasped to her small mouth, and then she peeled one away to point at Lianna’s bare back. She didn’t need to incline herself toward the powder room’s mirror. For once she’d forgotten the fist-sized circular welts scarring her back. There would be more covering her arms and legs.

I guess this is gonna be one of those talks. She knelt beside the tub, still half exposed, and took Gita by the hands. “Sorry, kid, there are monsters in this universe.” She wanted to say more—NEEDED to reassure the child. All of a sudden, though, she was drawing a blank. ”Guess that’s another reason I hide under a skinsuit,” Lianna sighed. Gita’s hands flicked furiously, splattering water on them both. “Yeah,” Lianna said, looking down. “I killed it. It killed me, too.”

Gita’s arms opened to her. Lianna leaned in to hug her as her tail flopped out of the bath to tug at Lianna’s waist. “Okay. Then I suppose you’ll want to hear all about how your mom avenged me.”

After a good long soak and a toweling off, she tucked her little baby in to her cot. Gita held her with a worried frown. “It’s okay,” Lianna reassured her. “I usually don’t sleep here anyway.”

Little Stavros crawled across the cot to climb under the blankets beside Gita. Something warm beat inside Lianna, just gazing at the pair of them beside each other. “I’m gonna stay here a minute, just till you fall asleep. Okay?”

Both children nodded. Lianna didn’t know if the little ameboid needed ‘sleep’. Even so, unlike her parent body, she seemed to have grown eyelids that shut lightly over her oversized pupils at the same time as Gita’s. Lianna sat in a stiff back seat watching Gita’s blankets rise and fall with the soft whistles from her nostrils, with Little Stavros’ arm across her. Yeah, just a few minutes…

She jerked suddenly to a stiff ache in her back. Lianna stretched and groaned as the chronometer rang Nine in the morning. Had she been there all…? Never mind. Gita had already bounded out of bed, flinging the blankets half off the cot with Little Stavros bouncing right along behind her. Okay, what to do, first? Best to update Fayd at the observatory; he’d be worried sick.

Ernie had the linkage tied in before Lianna poured her first cup of qahwah sadah, with cardamom. Ooh, that woke her up. She sat in the command chair, patchy as it was, while the girls raced all over the ship. “Poppa,” Lianna smiled as a dark haired, lean faced man with two day old stubble smiled back at her across the stars.

“Habibi!” Fayd grinned back. “How goes the symposium?” Lianna raised her right hand and wriggled it, flat to her chest level. Faud shook her head. “I know that sigh, Habibi. What can I do?’

“There’s a bunch of fanatics who’ve shut me down for a couple of days. You know, I’m longing for the days when I could hang out in the calibration chamber with you. Nobody else wanted me around then either. I was always grateful you put up with me, Poppa.”

“Pff! You needed a secluded place where you could acclimate to us, to the observatory. I was happy to offer you the space.”

Lianna ducked her head as the thought barged back in: I was an animal.

She recalled she was a child, still feral after months fending for herself. The other scientists, apart from the Professor, tolerated her but kept their distance. Faud had given her free roam of a critical but isolated area on the station. Sometimes he left her a warm bowl of hummus which she devoured with her bare hands. He kept his keffiyeh folded neatly beside himself as he conducted routine adjustments or took precise stellar measurements at the telescope array.

One day she’d crept up and put it on just as she’d seen him wear it. She fiddled with the egel, winding it three times around her small head instead of the traditional twice. Fayd eyed her across a telescope and thought he’d be furious. Then he chuckled and resumed his work. Nobody else had thought she was cute at that point, and it helped her relax a little.

Some weeks later while he ducked inside a telescope tube, he asked, “Could you hand me that spanner, Habibi?” She grabbed the tool, but then padded toward him slowly, pausing every few steps. His hand remained open, expectantly. Finally she slapped the spanner into his hand and dodged behind a power conduit.  Fayd smiled, “thank you,” and continued his adjustments.

Lianna raised her head, returning his radiant smile. “You taught me everything I know about astrophysics and mechanics, and everything else.”

Fayd shrugged. “I know what it is to be abandoned. It’s a heritage my fathers and my mothers handed down in story and song, I did my little part to welcome you to our family.”

“You always did, Poppa. Speaking of which, I’ve got someone you’ve gotta meet…”

After she shut off the link, Lianna rubbed her eyes. “What to do…?”

“Might I suggest you get dressed first,” Ernie chimed behind her, shaking ten years’ growth off her. “Breakfast might also be in order for little Gita. It is the most important meal of the day.”

She found a shawarma deli in the Slush Pit she loved. Gita’s nose was practically in the cook’s pan as he mixed eggs, tomatoes, peppers and more and sauteed it to a warm stew. The cook was a genius, and after a second helping she left an extra big tip. If only the rest of the day had been so pleasant.

Back on the Observation Deck, a hooded figure loomed over the crowd, despite his hunched posture. With him were two equally long companions, all huddled close, cringing with each bump from the bustling humanity. Ordinarily Lianna would shy away, except, something familiar tingled inside her. With Gita still riding her shoulders, she visualized an empty starfield. Once her mind was clear, she sent out a single thought message: “Bon?”

The lead figure froze, straitening head and shoulders over the passing patrons. Then he and his companions turned to her, three slender beings with pale iridescent eyes large as saucer plates. The lead fellow tapped his staff on the deck and sent back: “Star sister!”

Gita’s leg muscles must’ve been stronger than they looked. Lianna nearly dislodged her when she barreled right int Bon’s chest and flung her arms around him. The crowd seemed to disappear as she snuggled into him. His companions draped their arms around her in turn. “It’s been so long,” she thought. “How have you been, my friend?”

“We are…fine,” Bon returned. “Just fine.” He gazed across her into Gita’s eyes. “And you have a child now. Blessings to you both. Do you hide her true nature for her protection?”

Lianna started in their collective grip. Then she gazed up into Bon’s face. “Yeah. There’s some loonies here. Is everything okay?”

The tall figure sagged again. “We are returning home. This place is not…welcoming.”

“I’m sorry.” Another tickle in her brain. “Yeah, they’re not exactly happy to see me, either.” Buzz. Lianna grinned. “You saw my symposium?”

“Indeed. It was very enlightening. We regret that your brethren are not open enough to receive your findings.”

“They haven’t even heard the really weird shit.” Bon bent down and they touched skulls. As his forehead touched Lianna’s, Gita reached down to touch Bon’s face. Where a nose and mouth would normally be in humans, his people displayed a stretched plate of skin. She signed, indicating her mouth.

“We oxygenate in our own way. Does our appearance frighten–?”

A swift jab at his shoulder dispelled that concern. She leaned across Lianna’s neck and tossed both arms around Bon’s head.

“I wish I’d known you were here,” Lianna sighed. “I’d have loved to spend some time with you. You always made me welcome.”

“We did not wish to endanger you. We have received some…unsavory correspondence.” His left-hand companion extracted a slip of paper from the sleeve of his robe. A slash cleaved through the upper right corner. Still, the note was bad enough: NOT IN OUR SOLR SYSTEM—ALIEN TRASH DON’T BELONG HERE.

Lianna was tempted to crumble the paper to dust, if she could. Her hands tightened inside her skinsuit as she fought the impulse. “Did you show this to the Commander?”

“Yes. It was examined. No fingerprints were found to trace the individuals responsible, so the Commander was unable to take action. So she says.”

“I bet.”

“We cannot stay longer. Our ship awaits. I’m sorry our visit has been contracted.”

“Could I at least walk you back to your ship? Just to make sure you’re safe?”

“Of course, star sister.”

With Gita holding Bon’s hand on one side and Lianna’s arm laced around the other, they walked together toward the space dock. Every once in a while, Lianna would shoot a poisonous glance at the milling crowd, daring anyone to challenge them. Outside the docking plate, Bon paused to offer Lianna a thought. “It is not true.”

“Sorry?”

“You are not the Harlot of Babylon, or any of the other accusations certain visitors have been thinking. You have always come to us without malice or prejudice. These are new things among us. It has always been a pleasure to call you friend.”

“And I’ve always been grateful for your friendship.”

Their ship was not ostentatious. Sleek pterodactyl wings braced a tubular body from which extended a 20-meter neck capped by a two-seater pilot’s capsule. “It’s gorgeous,” Lianna breathed aloud.

“Before we depart…” Bon hesitated in his transmissions. “May we see young Gita as she truly is?”

Lianna frowned, until Bon’s companions nodded and flanked Gita, flaring their cloaks as a shield. Between one breath and the next she’d traded her legs for a shimmering serpent’s trunk. Lianna sensed the awe in all her friend’s thoughts as she thumped her tail on the deck. If it were possible, Bon probably would’ve whistled. “The holy mothers,” thought he. All three raised their right arms to their chests, bowing their heads respectfully.

Then she had her legs again, and the pair pulled their cloaks tight around themselves again. Lianna and Gita vacated the docking area, waiting by the airlock hatch as Bon’s ship dipped from the launch bay. Her booster jets lifted her clear of the station. First she banked toward the Oort Cloud. Then it was a streak departing the Sol System. A surge of heat swelled Lianna’s cheeks. “Come on, kid,” she said to Gita. “We’ve got someone to see.”

Commander Stephensen was scrolling through a slate when Lianna burst in. “WHEN THE HELL ARE YOU GOING TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THESE LUNATICS?”

The report hovering above the Commander’s palm burst like a solar prominence. She sighed as both hands dropped to her side. “I assume you’re referring to Captain Bon’s merry crew.”

“Don’t you patronize him—ever! I’m referring to someone who welcome me as an honored guest, who always treated me and all visitors to his planet with courtesy and respect. For Christ’s sake, he saved my life!”

“I’m glad.” They stood across from each other over a mural of the Milky Way Galaxy emblazoning the floor, Lianna huffing as the Commander stared at her feet. “Did he tell you they tried to vandalize his starship 48 hours after he landed? I’ve initiated deportation proceedings against thirteen members of this FAITH sect.”

“Sorry, faith—?

“Jesus Christ, don’t you even know who’s harassing you? “The Commander—Cassie—ticked off each word into her right palm. “The Fellowship of Agnostic Inter-Terrestrial Humans. They believe we made mistakes, ruined our chances on Earth, allowed refugees into developed nations—”

“—After they ruined their indigenous lands or flooded them out of existence—”

“—Can I finish? Can I? They don’t want to dilute the purity of our species, or some crap like that. They believe they should permit bonds between the best pairs of people, to bring the best fruit to bear.”

“Yeah, there’s a word for that. It’s called inbreeding. Why can’t you boot the rest of those fanatics off the station?”

“It’s not that easy. They’ve claimed their religious liberties have been trespassed on back on Terra. That’s what forced them into space in the first—”

“Nobody forced them! People stopped believing because they were acting like jackasses!”

“How would you know? You’ve never been to Earth! You weren’t even born there!”

“I have it on an extraordinarily good authority.”

Another silence, only punctuated by Cassie’s nails rapping on her desktop as she eyed Gita. “One question. People are gonna ask. Where did she come from?”

“I’m her appointed guardian,” Lianna said. Gita meanwhile was tapping on her padd, which she momentarily handed to Cassie. Her eyes widened occasionally as she scrolled through.

‘Well, we both know she couldn’t be your natural child,” Cassie muttered with a sad tinge in her voice. “I’m happy for you, I truly am. I saw how good you were with the kids at your show. I assume you have some legal documentation to support your guardianship. People are gonna ask.”

Lianna’s stomach seemed to drop. But she kept her expression neutral. “People already have.”

“Goddamn waste of time,” Lianna grumbled, her hand tightly gripping Gita’s. She’d hoped some solace would be found at the Portal. Solitude certainly wasn’t. Someone was already standing by it. A very tall someone; she had to be at least a head taller than Lianna. Her neck length curls seemed frizzy, and there were prominent bags under her eyes. But her skin was a glistening cinnamon brown under a coral tinted shawl flowing to her heels. Dogs and butterflies danced all across the fabric. “Hey gorgeous,” Lianna greeted her.

She grinned. “Hello. Do you greet everyone in that manner?”

“It puts most people at ease,” Lianna shrugged. It worked for most exospecies, too.

“You’re Doctor Jensen, aren’t you? I’ve seen your presentation.”

Sweet Kali, she was falling in love with that husky lilt of hers. “Yeah. Where are you from?”

“Earth, of course, the same as you,” she laughed. “And who is this little sweetheart?” She bent low over Gita. Then suddenly her hands flashed over Gita’s ribs. The child burst into giggles before ducking behind Lianna. She peeked over her right thigh, still giggling. “She’s delightful! Who’s the father?”

Shit. That’s three. “Umm…I’m acting as her guardian. I don’t know about the father. I didn’t—oww!” She glared at Gita before she could pinch her again. Did nagas even need a father?

The lady had turned aside so Lianna and Gita could have a better view out the Portal. “Isn’t that something? So many beings skimming through the atmosphere, drinking helium and expelling hydrogen. And no one knows.”

Lianna frowned. “How do YOU know? No life has ever been confirmed on Uranus.”

She shrugged. “I know. No one has bothered to properly search. They’re too enthralled with more romantic facades like Titan or Mars. Uranus has her charms…ohhh.”

Her eyes grew rounder, her hands rising to her mouth as the daily flash from the polar beacons illuminated the planet’s rings in an pale iridescent glow, like a saw blade rotating toward the station. For just a few seconds, Uranus’ cloud features became more prominent, displaying faint bands amidst a global haze. “Look, we have to go,” Lianna said after a few minutes.

The lady nodded, “I’ll be around. Call on me if you need anything.”

“That would be a neat trick, since I don’t even know your name.”

“Some people call me Fatima. I’ve kind of gotten used to people calling me Granny. That’s how most of the crew knows me around the station. Take care.” She reached out to stroke Lianna’s shoulder, then turned away.

Doctor Jensen had disappeared with her child into the bowels of the ship. As she turned back to the Portal, a blue skinned reflection stared back. “Contact has been made,” Granny sighed. “I hope you’re happy.”

Part 1: https://mike3839.com/2023/09/

Part 2: https://mike3839.com/2024/04/03/her-last-chance-part-2/

Her Last Chance, Part 2

Part 1: https://mike3839.com/2023/09/

Before the security ‘bots arrived to investigate the backstage vandalism, Lianna and Gita agreed through sign that they’d both keep Gita’s true nature a secret. At first the ‘bots asked no questions about her, instead grilling Lianna about how her morning had gone, what led up to this, did she know who etched ‘WHORE’ into the blackboard, station property, blah blah. How would she know, she responded; it was like this when she got to the auditorium.

After an hour of collecting residue and heat tracings, they promised a full investigation and shooed her from the ‘incident scene.’ They were almost at the backstage portal when the ‘bot in charge, so she guessed from his steel blue plating and cap, finally asked Lianna, “To whom does this child belong?”

Only then did Lianna realize she had no alibi for Gita. Finally she said, “Her mother sent her to me to be cared for. It’s part of a special coming of age ritual.” Okay, at least the truth wouldn’t need to be revised later on. “Please excuse us, we’re going to the Slush Pit, I’d like to feed her.” She stepped out, Gita clutching her right hand, without a word passed between them.

The first question of course was what should she feed her? Seeing as she was a child, the choice seemed obvious. “Hey kid, how’d you like some ice cream?”

The Slush Pit on Deck 5 offered a bazaar hosting a variety of kiosks. Many offered slushies and other semi-liquid delights, in honor of the ice giant looming outside the ring of viewports, not unlike those on cruise ships of old, implanted into the bulkheads. A stepladder led down to a subdeck three meters lower than the rest of the deck, offering access to this alien cafeteria.

After she’d descended to the lower level, Lianna turned to make her choice. That’s when a skinny pair of legs clambered onto her shoulders, and Gita’s small hands balanced on the top of her head. Lianna chuckled and sauntered to the first ice cream parlor Gita jabbed a finger towards.

At Fries-Or-Frieza, the vendor’s eyes smiled in place of a mouth that wasn’t there and passed a menu to each of his guests. His body was stout under a standard apron, while his eyes were set in a flattened eraser head. His flesh seemed the color and texture of freshly opened play doh. Lianna and Gita had a seat while he slipped on sanitary gloves and mixed two mugs of banana splits topped with sprinkles and chocolate frosting.

While Lianna scooped a spoonful at a time to her lips, Gita dove face-first into her serving, nomming with a back-and-forth swirl of the head. “I think she likes it,” Lianna smiled. The vendor returned a moment later both with a towel, and two large fizzy drinks Lianna hadn’t ordered. He waved an appendage towards a diner across the bazaar with a bright pink neon sign proclaiming Miranda Loves You. Seated at an umbrella table just outside that diner, a dark-skinned woman raised a glass to them. Lianna glanced once at the drinks, then back to Miranda’s. Now the woman was gone.

The child was a bottomless pit. Next she pointed to a seafood café, simply titled Iva’s, with crustaceans floating lazily in backlit aquariums encircling the seating area. “Would the madams prefer a selection?” the waiter asked.

Suddenly Lianna drew a blank. What did one feed a growing naga baby? “Could you give us a minute?’ she asked. The waiter nodded and glided away. Once they were alone she whispered, “hey, is here anything I shouldn’t be feeding you?” Gita’s big round eyes brightened. Rummaging in her pack, she retrieved her smart-slate, tapping it randomly before passing it to Lianna. She skimmed through what seemed like pages of menu options. Apparently there was very little she couldn’t eat; certainly there were a lot of protein items available. She called the waiter back with a snap of her fingers. “Lobster, please.”

She wasn’t sure what to do with the massive crustaceans plopped on their table a quarter hour later. Gita attacked hers with the same gusto she’d assailed her ice cream. While she didn’t have a naga’s jaw power, Lianna dove in teeth first. The shell didn’t seem as palatable to her as Gita seemed to find it. Nevertheless they shared their meal over giggles.

The Professor would probably shit when he got the voucher for these meals. In any event she cleaned Gita’s face, then knelt down by her chair so she could clamber back onto Lianna’s shoulders. Clutching her legs for support, she’d ride her until they arrived at the docking bay.

What was new today was the podium posted not five meters to the right of the ramp running up to her ship. There had to be fifty patrons around it, silent, some with their hands clasped beneath their chins, as a man in a black one-piece jumpsuit bid them welcome. Lianna lingered in the arched hanger entry portal, both arms around Gita.

“My friends,” the man began, “the Earth is lost, and I have to be honest. We are in large part to blame. We ignored the signs, as plain as the nose on our faces. Instead we heeded the words of the well-endowed, speaking through their vessels, our chosen leaders. They denied the Earth was changing. Denied the evidence as our forests burned and our air turned stagnant.

“We allowed ourselves to be led by men of no moral character, because certain of our evangelical brethren claimed they were called of God. And because of this claim, we never questioned, no never.” A assenting murmur rumbled through the gathered assembly, tinted with anger. Lianna clutched Gita closer.

“We know where this took us. Our home world is a steamy hothouse barely able to support life, while our exalted benefactors orbit us in their beneficent space stations, drink their champagne and smirk down on the lower class. But I say unto you, we are not animals—we are not dirt! We are men, and we have found our own way unto the stars, despite the deprivations visited on us for the last twenty-five generations!”

A hundred fists pumped the air on a tide of rousing cheers. Somehow a smile had come to Lianna’s face. He wasn’t wrong, whoever he was, and even if Earth had never been her home, she was half-tempted to shout out herself. He wasn’t done, either.

“We have lost our way, and I say unto you, we will not lose ourselves in space! Our morals are firm, our race is pure. But we must be vigilant. Our species can remain pure only so long as we don’t intermingle with aliens.” The preacher’s neck craned around, his gaze shooting across the top of the assembly, straight towards Lianna.

“Uh-oh,” she muttered.

His gaze turned away, as though he hadn’t seen her; as if all other eyes in the docking bay were not focused on her. “We will be saved when we have driven the last aliens from our system,” his voice rising, spitting the word ‘aliens’ with distaste. “Just as we drove the animals from Zion.”

Lianna nodded in the sudden pause, her voice very quiet. “Zion. Yeah. I heard about that. I was told the history of that bloodbath, by someone who was there.”

The crowd remained quiet, betraying its interest. Lianna let the hammer drop. “Well, I should say someone whose ancestors survived that massacre. It was another Holocaust, one of those words we like to toss around when another people are slaughtered, and those who had the power to do something did NOT. There’s still a lot of collective guilt on Earth about that.

“Your religious tenets had something to do with that, too. You thought the ‘restoration of Zion’ would bring on the Last Days, whatever the hell that was. You succeeded in that. If its any comfort, the people you drove out of Zion—” it was her turn to spit out that name— “grieved with the rest of the planet when certain world leaders had enough of Zion’s nonsense and carpet bombed it out of existence.”

There were a lot of bowed heads now, few of them in prayer. Fewer still seemed able to look her way, except for Gita who smiled and nodded proudly up at her. Oh, as well as the preacher. “You seem well acquainted with Earth history, Doctor Jensen. At least of our shameful episodes. We don’t intend to repeat those mistakes.”

“No, you’re just going to quietly shame those visitors to our system to pack their bags,” Lianna said. “I had excellent teachers. They helped me realize, even being the surviving child on a doomed ship, that I wasn’t alone. Even though I was a stranger among them, I was welcomed with open arms. For that I’ll always be grateful.”

“I’m pleased for you. If it pleases you, my name is Pastor Ludden. These are the children of Faith. Just one other thing.” He nodded down. “What child is this?”

Gita’s little fingers clutched Lianna’s as she nestled closer to her side. Lianna smiled. “Her name is Gita. Her mother has entrusted her to me as a temporary guardian. If you’ll excuse me, I have to tuck her into bed.”

Another voice shouted across the hold, “I bet you do!”

Lianna had turned to the hatch, only a few meters away. But she swung back to face the crowd, a torrent of accusations flooding her mind. Fortunately Pastor Ludden shouted back, “Nick! Be silent!” Glancing across the congregation, he added, “we don’t want to have any more of our brethren deported, do we?”

Lianna bowed, guiding Gita to the ship with a hand on her shoulder. As she keyed the security code to the airlock, the pastor had one final question: “Doctor Jensen, who is the father?”

Lianna didn’t answer at first. She didn’t trust her gut reaction. When the question came again, she inhaled, exhaled and cleared her mind just as the Professor and Gita’s mother had taught her. Calm suffused her, even over the murmur of voices. She turned back.

“I don’t know. I didn’t think it was any of my business to interfere. Know what I mean?” There was silence at last as she tapped the last digit in the entry code. The doors hissed and whisked open. Lianna shooed Gita inside before anything else happened. She hoped the kid would like it here. Ernie met them in the pilothouse just inside the ship. “Very well said, Doctor. Fayd would be proud.”

“Thanks, Ernie,” Lianna grinned. “You’ll never guess what happened to me today. This is Gita.”

As an android, Ernie was incapable of emotion, but his lenses brightened considerably at the sight of the child. Antenna extended from a port in his left shoulder joint, followed by another on the right. Each antenna sprouted smaller probe filaments with shining bulbs on their tips. Both probes and antenna slapped back into his joints after a cursory exam. “I presume this is the reason you’ve cut your seminar short this fine morning?”

“Vandalism cut it short,” Lianna sighed.

“Dare I ask how this sweet child came into your custody?”

“Her mother sent her to me. Go ahead, show him, Gita.” When she

hesitated, Lianna knelt beside her. “Hey, it’s okay. You can trust Ernie. He took care of me when I was little.”

With a grin and a burst of hugs, Gita retrieved her padd once again, scrolling  to the beginning entry. This she handed to Ernie, who emitted a synthesized “ooo.” He’d learned to do that, when such expressions seemed necessary.

“We will need to clear out a space for her to sleep in,” Ernie declared. “Are all her belongings in that rucksack?” Gita nodded. She had already reverted to her naga form, her trunk wound twice around Ernie’s base. She frowned, tapping a rounded dent in Ernie’s flank. “Oh, that? I received that mark from a claw hammer when we were on the Lost Ship. Lianna was hiding inside me from…dear me, you haven’t told her about that yet, have you?”

“I-I haven’t had a chance,” Lianna shook her head, “I just wanted to treat her to lunch, like Mom used to.”

“There will be time for that later. Why don’t we find you a room. Gita?”

Gita nodded, riding Ernie’s base as he circled the pilot’s deck. “Why don’t we clear out my cabin?” Lianna suggested. “I never sleep there anyway.”

“A most providential idea. Perhaps we might introduce her to the ladies, before it gets much later?”

“Not a bad idea. Hey, ladies!” With Gita beside her, Lianna waved as her two ameboid lovers wandered to the upper-level rail. Amba, an iridescent aquamarine even in the ship’s dim nighttime lighting, gazed down on the child. For once Lianna sensed no empathic reaction from her, no “Beloved”. Amba observed Gita through her button eyes, never stirring from her perch.

Neither of them was truly female. Their ‘gender’ was a choice based largely on their association with Lianna, as the first human to freely develop a relationship with them. Each of them had branched off from a larger colony inhabiting the mineral-rich interiors of their respective planets. Each had developed their own individuality, while still retaining a connection to their mother colony.  

Stavros, a shimmering crimson beauty, had never been as reserved as Amba. She glided on light steps to the ladder joining upper and lower decks and slid on down. Not in the human fashion, however. Her legs clinched around the ladder. Then her lower body from the waist down dropped to the pilot house deck, while her middle section stretched like a crimson band of elastic. Gita’s eyes widened as Stavros’s feet touched the deck. And then her upper body eased down the ladder, both hands sliding down the sides.

She padded over to the child, who nestled closer to Lianna’s legs. Then she put on her best smile. Lianna knew Stavros had been sneaking off the ship at various space ports, secreted in the upper levels people watching. She’d especially taken an interest in the children skipping along beside their mothers. She knew about Lianna’s condition, and Lianna wondered how she’d receive their unexpected guest. “Baby, this is Stavros. Honey, Gita’s gonna be staying with us for a while. Is that cool with you guys?”

Was Amba tapping her feet on the upper deck? Stavros remained bent over her, her elastic hands braced on both knees. She stepped back, raising a hand palm up. Her gaze seemed to turn inward, just as her belly began to swell. A skinny pair of legs began to sprout from an aperture below her bump.

Apparently Stavros had studied the human birthing process, to a limited degree. A flat belly followed and then a small body slapped her feet to the deck, shaking a short mane of ameboid hair. This new being stood around a meter and a half in height, all skinny limbs. For all practical purposes a spitting image of Stavros. But smaller.

Gita grinned and skipped towards little Stavros. She took Gita’s hand and the pair of them scampered off to climb the rails of the ladder. Lianna threw her arms around Stavros. “That was so sweet!” Stavros cuddled her close. Hopefully Amba would come around. She had to, didn’t she?

Not All Viewpoints Are Welcome-1

[Note: this is the first chapter of a serialized project I’ll be working on periodically. I don’t know how long it’s going to take, and I’m not sold on the title. If anyone reading this would like to comment, those are welcome. I’d enjoy the feedback. So, on with the show…]

ONE:

“And that’s how we discovered these rocks were only the tip of a much larger organism.” Lianna Jensen punctuated that remark with a last swirl of chalk on the old-fashioned blackboard. It was quaint, of course, but it required no energy to function, and on a station on the far reaches of the Sol system, power came at a premium. Besides, it’s easy to clean.

“Subsequent probes have confirmed these early findings with the loss of but one probe.” Muted clapping echoed through the auditorium. It’s okay, Lianna reminded herself, forcing her legs not to tremble. It’s only a 200-seat venue, about half full. A handful of children were scattered among the red velvet seats, and they clapped the loudest.

The lavender skinsuit under her knee-length laboratory coat insulated Lianna from the station’s chill while absorbing every drop of perspiration, keeping her cool and cozy inside. Her shoulder length honey-blonde hair she’d tucked up in a bun in back. The reading glasses were an affectation suggested by the professor to soften her appearance before an audience probably as uncertain about her presentation as she was.

The station Commander stepped in from the auditorium’s left wing as the clapping ended. “I want to thank Dr. Jensen for this fascinating symposium on her recent discoveries of exobiological life. She’ll be back tomorrow, so bring your friends.”

The room responded by not responding. At all. They stood awkwardly on the stage a moment before the commander pressed on. “We’ll now open the floor for questions. Good luck, kid,” she muttered to Lianna as she left the stage.

A hand shot up, belonging to a little brunette girl, about six. “Were you scared when that monster grabbed you?”

Lianna smiled and knelt on the edge of the stage, almost nose to nose with her. “Yeah, I was scared shi—silly.” (Stop. Remember your audience.) “But I had an emergency transponder I could have used if things really got bad.” She ruffled her hair, which earned her a giggle. “Thanks, sweetheart.”

The girl grinned and bounced back to her seat. “Yes, sir, in the back.”

A skinny fellow with a buzzcut scalp stood up. “Yes, I got a question. What kind of sexual relations did you have with that alien slug?”

Fuck. Not another one of those. She dug deeper to draw in a calming breath, this time. Some of the other patrons shuffled in their seats, waiting on her. Her heart hammered faster, despite her outer calm. “Sir, that is an inappropriate remark,” the commander shouted, stepping forward. “Especially when we have young people with us today.”

“Come on, commander, everybody knows Dr. Jensen shags every odd ball freak she discovers. It’s the talk of every space port. Who knows how much alien trash she’s birthed across half the galaxy?”

Okay, Lianna lied. I’m ready. “Sir, my purpose is interstellar exploration on behalf of the Deep Space Observatory. The liaisons you’ve heard about are innuendo and fetishist dream logs. Considering our disparate biologies, I doubt anything would come of it if I—”

“So you are shagging aliens!”

“That’s not what happened! If you’d been listening you’d recall I almost died—”

“Excuse me. I have a question.”

That came from the back. Lianna couldn’t see who was speaking, except that she was tall and had a gorgeous black mane. Something in her exotic voice soothed her. “Yes, ma’am, what was your question?”

“This is directed at the toubab running off at the mouth. Why don’t you sit down and shut up? Some of us came to listen to what Dr. Jensen has to say!”

Lianna teared up at the round of applause that followed. She didn’t know how long it went on for, except that Buzzcut scowled and slunk out of the auditorium with his head down.

Thank Kali the commander called an end to the presentation for the day. While Lianna packed her props in a satchel and wiped the board, the people filed out a little at a time. She glanced once or twice toward the seats, expecting someone else to accost her. But no one else had stayed behind. Good. She’d had enough harassment for one day.

“You gonna be okay?” the commander asked. Lianna nodded. “I can assign a security detail to take you back to your ship.” She shook her head. “Okay. If you need anything…” and then she was gone.

The Professor and his bright ideas. After ten years alone in space he says, “I think now might be a good time to take stock of your accomplishments. Present your findings in a public setting. I have some friends at Uranus Orbital station who could set you up. No, it’ll be good for you, my dear. It’ll be a chance for you to brush up on your social skills. You know, you don’t interact with people very much. It’s my fault, you did grow up with a bunch of stuffy old scientists all around you.”

There was a reason for that. She was a bit of an animal once they took her off the Naga Sentry, her and all the other children left to fend for themselves for seven frustrating months. Who tells those stories anyway? Even if it was true that every spacefarer in every port thought she was some kind of—

No, the professor was right; he had to be. It’s just those fundamentalist Terran freaks at her last two symposiums questioning her morality. Maybe if there hadn’t been a smidgen of truth to their accusations…Sure. Me spread my alien seed around the solar system. Not much chance of that.

Lianna emptied her chest, breathed in a shallow breath. She’d been so lost in thought she hadn’t realized she’d arrived at the infirmary ahead of schedule. The Medibot floated to greet her before she could turn and leave.

“Doctor!” The ‘bot greeted her. Lianna sighed and sat on the stool indicated by her host. The cushion poofed under her bum, which was more comfortable than expected. Then the ‘bot addressed the door. “Consulting!”

The two-toned panels irised shut, presenting a façade of an inverse ying and yang in crimson and yellow. Lianna was grateful all the same. In this mode the infirmary stood isolated from the rest of the station. No one could barge in uninvited.

“Your lab work has all returned negative. You’re in relatively good health. However,” the ‘bot continued before she could push off and leave. “Your physical health is not the only issue. Your esophagus shows signs of forced intubation, which exerted pressure on your trachea. This trauma appears several years old. Some brain deterioration has resulted, not to the point where it can be an issue, but it does suggest your activities frequently entail unnecessary risks.”

“I, umm, I suppose that’s true,” Lianna nodded, staring at her feet. “Would you believe you’re not the first to point that out?”

“Yes. Insofar as the other matter we discussed…” Wait, was he pausing? “I’m sorry, Doctor. Our labs are consistent with the tests every other facility has conducted. There is no treatment for yourself or any of the Lost Children.”

“It’s okay. A girl could hope.”

“There is one last thing, a curious anomaly we detected in your muscle, epidermal…everywhere. There is a suffusion of cytoplasm, which appears to have bonded to your soft tissues.”

“I can explain,” Lianna said. “I…this goes back to that trauma you mentioned. I suffered some life-threatening injuries. You know about my shipmates?…Okay. Well, one of them donated a part of herself to heal me. I hadn’t realized how much she’d become a part of me, literally. You understand why I have issues with human relations.”

“Yes. I shouldn’t be telling you this,” the medic said, “but you’re not alone in this variety of relationship. There is a captain in the Antarian fleet who has had carnal relations with an Undian, also a amoeboid female. They argue, they disagree, but my sources tell me, by the end of a projected shift they are the best of friends. “

“I had no idea,” Lianna conceded. “So how come I’m getting all the harassment?”

“I’ve cited only one example. And subjectively speaking, while Antarians are a humanoid species, they are not considered human. So perhaps such human prejudices are not applied as liberally to them.”         

“Yeah, and besides, who wants to fuck with an Antarian?”

Before she returned to the ship, there was one last ritual. It’d become a habit, as with so many visitors, to pop by the Portal. Officially its designation was UA-1A7, but visitors and crew referred to it by its vernacular name.

The station was based on one of the inner moons orbiting Uranus. The slush giant’s dusty rings glimmered from the energetic bursts periodically shot from the station’s polar beacon lights, more for its visitor’s amusement than any practical purpose.

Not all the Classic Moons were visible; in fact, the only reason the pole facing her was visible at all was due to the viewport’s scanner being set 27 settings below true visibility. Otherwise, the extreme closeup given of the rapid rotation of Uranus’ cloud layers would leave all and sundry in a perpetual state of nausea. There’s still plenty of moons to go around, well past the first twenty-seven discovered up to the early 21st Century.

The usual mob awaited in the docking bay, a conglomeration of middle-aged men and women, some young adults, all shuffling loosely around the air lock leading to her ship. Some lofted signs such as ‘You Must Have F.A.I.T.H.’ Exactly like that. All eyes focused on her as they parted like the Red Sea, but at least no one accosted her.

At least until that rotten egg splattered her cheek.

Lianna whirled to the sea of faces, but most of them seemed as surprised as her. Others gazed around themselves to see who’d done the deed. She wanted to shout, “All right, who’s responsible for this?”

She fought that instinct, as the Professor had taught her to, and put her back to them, standing as rigid as possible. Then she continued at a measured pace toward the air lock. Any moment now she expected a fusillade of rotten fruit. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath. Without a word, against the heat rising in her chest, she entered her ship’s code for the hatch. With a hiss and the crank of metal, the hatch admitted her, Once that closed behind her, she exhaled.

After ten years in space, you’d think I’d have accumulated more mementos, Lianna thought. Apart from an orchid taken from Orchis 3, some dirty dishes on the pilot console, and an old portrait of her at seven, riding Ernie, the flight deck was relatively spartan. For now, her android companion Ernie detached himself from the charging port just off the docking hatch. She rushed to him and swept her arms around him—well, halfway around, anyway.

He offered the customary hug back with his stiff metal-barred arms. “Welcome home, miss Lianna,” he said, approximating a human voice. “I’m sorry the reception was not what you expected.” He raised a sani-wipe to her cheek and gently scrubbed it.

She clucked as she stepped down from his base. “If they only knew what I was holding back! Then they’d really shit bricks.”

“An interesting metaphor,” Ernie said, handing her a slate. “Which emotionally appropriate. The inspection was conducted in your absence. The ship passed magnificently, as always.”

She scanned the report almost as fast as Ernie would have memorized it. “That’s a bit of embellishment, isn’t it?”

“Informality suits you. I thought I’d practice.”

She tapped his shoulder socket with the slate before tossing it onto the pile of dishes. “I’m kinda tired. Are the girls asleep?”

“DO they sleep? I was told you may expect them in cargo lounge 2. Will you be changing first?”

She’d started to shrug off her lab coat, fingered the broad, important looking lapels, then slipped it back onto her shoulders. The molecular recyclers could always regurgitate another. Shaking her head, she trudged to the spiral step ladder and descended to the cargo deck.

It’d be inaccurate to call a converted cargo hold a ‘lounge’ but after her GFs had signed on, so to speak, she and Ernie converted a couple of spare cells into passable living quarters.

Oddly a red light shone down from the domed ceiling. And was it me, or did the walls seem—bloated? Sweet Kali–!

As soon as she realized the trap, Lianna smiled. It was already too late to retreat. A crimson tendril flopped against the sensor panel. The cargo door sealed shut with a prolonged squeal, meaning the air lock seals had engaged. She wasn’t going anywhere.

An amorphous pillar pushed between her thighs, and then her feet left the deck. She pointed her toes down, encountering only air. Half a meter of space separated the top of her head from the ceiling. The tip of the column expanded to cushion her bum.

The ‘bulge’ in both hulls oozed down, two semi-solid masses of aquamarine goo thick as honey, sandwiching Lianna between them. Engulfed to the shoulders, she moaned as both lab coat and the skin suit beneath it dissolved in a matter of minutes. Lianna surrendered to the pressure against her chest, the brush of rubbery textured membranes clinging to every bit of her bare skin.

Up until a few months ago, she hadn’t believed they were capable of dissolving her garments without harm to her. Maybe that was a choice on their part. Didn’t matter. She was safe with the only pair who really cared for her.

The red light suffusing the lounge initially obscured their translucent forms matted to the actual hull. Now their bodies molded to her in streams of ameboid tentacles. A crimson tongue peeled from the column between her legs. The tongue swelled, taking the form of a matted head nestled to her breast. Another pair of tongues, a translucent shade of jade this time, flexed into a powerful set of biceps, each tip extruding slender fingers. These arms clutched Lianna by the throat. Then she felt the weight of Amba’s head on the back of hers.

The scent of caramel marshmallow wafted up her nostrils, and she drank it in, as they drank her. She’d discovered them on different worlds but in similar habitats, both inhospitable to humanoid life. Each of them, Stavros and Amba, were actual detachments of a larger cellular body, inhabiting caverns deep within their respective planet’s crusts. She’d come to believe such celluloid colonies inhabited a variety of worlds, either unrecognized or undiscovered by previous explorers. She’d just been the lucky one they chose to reveal themselves to.

A loud hiss issued from the quivering mass as Lianna tugged her hands free of the gelatinous goo, to clutch the loving arms around her neck. A voice, half mocking, echoed in Lianna’s thoughts: welcome, beloved.

Lianna nodded, already half asleep. Stavros was nestling her red cheeks between Lianna’s breasts, silent as always and yet gently affectionate. She would float here all night, vulnerable and yet comforted in their gelling caress. “Hey, gals,” Lianna sighed as she slipped into dreamland, “is there something wrong with me?”

Normally the first thing Lianna noticed coming backstage of the auditorium hall was the overpowering reek of sterilized lilac, the residue of the cleanser sprayed over the hall after each day’s events. Even from the corridor outside the backstage door the scent seemed off today.

Lianna strode onto a stage facing empty seating. Her presentation wasn’t scheduled to begin until 9 a.m. station time, which was synched with Terran Greenwich time. As she turned to the display board, she almost fell on her behind. This was no longer a scent. It had been upgraded to a full-blown stench of burnt polymers with a strong undercurrent of mercury.

The blackboard had been defaced with several impact strikes, probably from a common prybar, with icicles radiating out from each strike. Dead center, carved into the board’s surface with a hot plasma torch, perhaps, in bold caps stood out one word: WHORE.

Lianna stared at that, just stared, her thoughts clouded. She stumbled back a couple of steps, back, into the soft touch at the back of her thigh.

She whirled, too quickly. Her feet slipped. A sharp sudden shock rocked her as her head banged into the blackboard. Her mind swirled as her stomach spat acid up her windpipe. Then a little dark-haired girl blinked back at her.

“Oh. Hi, there,” Lianna said, once her stomach settled. The child had waited patiently. Gods, she was gorgeous, her skin a beautiful shade of brown. ”Where did you come from?”

As though forgetting herself, the little one pulled a child-sized slate from the pouch slung over her right shoulder. She shrugged off the pouch, and after a few rapid taps, passed the slate to Lianna.

‘My name is Gita. I’ve been sent to offer you greetings from Patala.’

Lianna wet her lips, working the name over on her tongue, Patala which lay on another dimension plane, parallel to Terra, home to beings…”Hey, are you lost, sweetheart?’

She offered to pass back the slate, but no need. Gita’s fingers danced in a series of signs. “It is your time? I don’t understand. I mean I can see you’re of age, but what…?”

Lianna’s mouth started to drop. Gita grinned, taking the slate back now and tapping furiously. The slate erupted in a fanfare of trumpets before Gita handed it back.

It read, ‘My beautiful daughter Lianna, daughter of my spirit, I have sent you my birth daughter Gita. This is the Time when all Devis must go forth to explore the mortal realm. I commend her to you and designate you Guardian.’

“She wants me…?” Lianna squeaked. That was all she got out before she noticed Gita rising. She stared as Gita’s half-sari flopped to her waist, effectively hiding where creamy brown skin seamlessly blended into scales.

It wasn’t a very thick trunk, as befit her youth, no thicker than Lianna’s calves. Still it held a gorgeous sheen, forest green splattered with mottled patches. She kept rising until she swayed a meter above Lianna. The stage lights cast an iridescent halo around her dark raven hair.

Lianna couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried; maybe it was the night when both her parents died. The tears flowed freely now. “Oh my gods, “she whispered. “You’re beautiful.”

Her arms opened, and Gita settled her head to Lianna’s cheek. Her coils folded into Lianna’s lap as she held onto Gita oh so gently. The child cooed, breathing warmly on Lianna’s neck in their shared embrace, neither aware of their being watched…

–Image of Uranus & its rings courtesy of NASA & the James Webb Space Telescope, 2023

I Hope My Grandchildren Forgive You

I hope my grandchildren forgive you    

for what you brought on our land  

for the world we leave to them

Forgive the desert that was once California  

the parched land and tongues of ordinary souls  

rationed to a few drips a day  

or will that be a week, who knows?

Forgive the 30 years wasted in deceit and denial  

while simulations became fact

and facts piled on facts  

and opportunities to act became wasted in dithering politics

And to the passing of the Floridas  

while salt of sea infiltrated our children’s drinking supplies  

I fear not for New Orleans, she’ll adapt  

she always does

Forgive us the storms like no other   

coming to a landmark near you   

New York barraged by tides she’ll not soon forget   

Lady Liberty will stand as a beacon still   

even waist deep in the ocean

I certainly hope they can find it in their hearts   

to forgive your cowardice, your avarice,  

your blind blinkered stupidity   

‘Cos God knows I won’t

Lianna in the Microverse: Conclusion

Soon as this was over she wanted to get stoned again. So much had been real…so much surreal: the heft of Kali Ma’s sword in her fist, the cool solidity of the pommel. Cradling Lady Smirnoff to her chest, her weight in her four arms evenly distributed, drooping like a lazy cat…

Four…arms–!

The Professor and Dr. Chen bumbled into each other as Lianna jumped up. She tossed off the blanket, then immediately tugged it back to her naked chest. She took in the bland white medical cabinet over a sink behind the medics, the stiff sheets under her legs.

Dreamy, fuzzy images floated in the periphery of her thoughts; an emergence of some kind on the main floor of the observatory, her tail swishing between her buttocks. No tail now, she thought. Some wise ass must’ve thought it’d be a good idea to get her to the outpost’s dispensary. That was probably a good idea since she didn’t remember much after first she dropped Lady Smirnoff, and then collapsed herself.

She slapped her left shoulder, groping for ridges, skin folds, anything that would be indicative of a scar. She came up empty. “Professor, how many arms did I have when I got back?”

Their distended eyeballs gave the game away. Troopers that they were, they kept up the pretense. “Two, of course,” the Professor replied, lifting his arms. “Just two. Right, Chen?”

“Oh yes, yes! How many arms were you expecting to have?” His forced laugh reeked of fear and barely suppressed hysteria. And then Petersen burst in.

“Got the stills developed! They’re gonna love this at the…” he frowned, first at the two scientists waving their hands like livid sports coaches. His eyebrows raised at Lianna, nodding at her cot. “Oh. Hi, four-arms.”

That earned him the double sock in the arm that she’d been waiting for. “I knew it!” Lianna bounced off the cot, pacing the room despite the Professor’s efforts to keep up and drape his lab coat over her. “I knew it! It’s the first proof that the Hindu cosmology has a basis in fact! I gotta write this up in the Physicists Quarterly–“

“Lianna…”

“Mom would shit if she could see this! This would be the best–!”

“Lianna!”

Both bare heels slapped on the deck. The Professor stopped himself just in time, finally succeeding in wrapping his coat over her. “Your other limbs disappeared shortly after we had you settled,” he said.

“What, they melted?”

“No, they…how do I say this, dissipated. I can’t explain it better than that. They seemed to vanish as soon as you came off your high. Umm, how much powder did…?”

“A snootful.”

“I thought it’d be a bit much.”

Lianna crossed her arms with a smirk. “And if there had been evidence of a transformation, I suppose you’d keep it from me anyway?”

The Professor sighed. “Lianna, cultivating a personal relationship with Kali is not something I’d encourage.”

“But isn’t that what Mom and Poppa wanted to investigate? Surely that’s the reason they kept such extensive notebooks.”

The Professor nodded to both points, though his downturned bushy mustache suggested he now wished that he’d never let her get her hands on them, let alone follow the hints and star charts highlighted in red in the margins. ‘What happened to my tail? And what about Lady Smirnoff?”

“First, allow me to congratulate you on the successful conclusion of your extraditionary mission. She’s in the next room. Would you like to see? We can discuss the, umm, other item after that.”

Her deep crimson skinsuit glistened even in the dimmed lighting ordered for her recovery room. What was left of it, anyway. Lady Smirnoff looked like she’d been through a war and lost. Her right leg was a purplish stump below the knee. Her left side wasn’t in much better shape. The skinsuit over both her left shoulder and breast was torn, exposed to the dangers of the Microverse. In fact, her left breast appeared to have been punctured by a barbed shaft. Tardigrade, Lianna deduced silently.

Further puncture marks could be found in both wrists, another in her suit through the crotch. Some repulsion prevented Lianna from examining that hole too intensely. Lianna took a scanner from a young medic in training, which enabled her to probe the puncture just below Lady Smirnoff’s breast that almost reached through her chest cavity to her heart. Curiously, all these puncture wounds had been plugged with a flexible, indigo-tinted foam. Further proof, to Lianna at least, of Kali’s charity, or malice.

The medics stepped aside to let Lianna in, but not too far from the floating examination table. They were keeping her in an induced coma for now, they told her, pending a decision by the outpost’s chief of staff toward what exactly they were supposed to do with her; whether her punishment by Kali had been sufficient, if indeed that would factor into any subsequent care she’d receive at a better equipped facility.

Her hand squeezed the smooth blotchy stump, just above the knee. Lianna peeled back one of Lady Smirnoff’s eyelids. Her pupils had shrunk to tiny dots. Her facial features, usually so stern, was relaxed in sedated rest. She hadn’t been prepared for this, Lianna thought, her hand lingering for what little comfort it might offer. Sweet Kali, what a state her mind must be in.

“Baby, come on,” the Professor said, gently taking her hand. He led her along the main corridor to the Specimen Lab. Normally this was where cultures were housed in specialty racks, behind vacuum sealed doors housing the wall-mounted coolant cells. He fixed on the third coolant door to the right, grunting as he yanked the handle down.

A tray rolled out containing no racks full of specimen trays, only an extra-large storage bin, about the size of Lianna’s upper torso. With the input of a code, the top was forced wide open as a bushy something arched out of its confined space.

“It didn’t dissipate…”

“Presumably Kali wanted this preserved, as a keepsake,” the Professor muttered. “So we’d know this wasn’t entirely a dream.”

The thick fur yielded several centimeters to the touch. Moments passed as he watched her stroke the reddish streaks. The end where it should’ve ‘connected’ seemed evenly cut, or partly healed. “Did you guys…?”

“We didn’t have to do anything. It sort of popped off as soon as you two hit the floor, just as a chameleon’s would.” All latches shut quietly, efficiently as he tucked the fur back under the lid and shoved the tray door shut. Lianna drew the lab coat closer, almost disappearing inside it.

“Professor, this isn’t a surprise to you. None of it. I’ve given you probably the most absurd, unscientific reports you’d ever seen, about things that would normally get a gal shipped to the nearest funny farm. And you…you just accept them. How much did you know, before I started out there?”

He kept his hands in his pants pockets, then adjusted the online scribbler in his top shirt pocket with a smile. “I had a more adventurous youth than I’ve let on. Several of my experiences could be described as humbling. I’d like to tell you I was never…hmm, intimate within my interpersonal contacts, but,” he shrugged, “I could never lie to you, child.”

“But you’re never gonna tell me about those experiences, are you?” she asked.

Still smiling, perhaps a little more warmly, he held out his hand to her. “There’s too much to cover in one afternoon,” he said. She clutched the coat to her bunched in one hand, while with the other she took his proffered palm. “But I see no reason why we couldn’t start.”

Continued from ‘Summoned by Kali’: (link)  https://mike3839.com/2021/01/18/summoned-by-kali-a-story/

Here’s where it all began: (link)  https://mike3839.com/2020/02/11/lianna-into-the-microverse-introduction/

Coils Everywhere

Where the devil was this place? The Minister was expecting her. He’d told Kiana, oh it’s only a half hour drive at most from the Storehouse. So far, all Kiana had come across was mile upon mile of dry season veldt. She couldn’t be late. This meeting would determine the level of security she and her crew received over the next couple of seasons. After that last attempt on her life in JoBerg by the self-styled Colonel Welles, they’d need it. Well, she certainly could use some.

            Mile upon mile stretched ahead of her beat-up Jeep, and while she loved the outdoors Kiana did have somewhere to be tonight. The Moon shone full upon the South African grasslands. That could be a good or a bad sign, depending on your superstition, she mused. And she was gonna be late, she just knew it.

            She only hoped she hadn’t gotten herself dolled up for nothing. She preferred shorts and tank tops, but tonight she needed to make the best impression. She had showered and shimmied into a brand-new shimmering indigo gown and opera gloves, all of it faux leather. Joshua thought it suited her tanned complexion and short strawberry blonde hair. He could be such a sweetheart. She’d put a clean towel on the dusty car seat so as not to stain her bottom–a rare consideration given how raw she lived–and set out. She would meet Joshua Mzima, her second in command at the Storehouse, as well as the Minister at the field station.

            That had been the plan, anyway. Had she taken a wrong turn? According to the Jeep’s onboard GPS she was pointed in the right direction. “Alia,” Kiana addressed the dashboard’s AI unit, “give Joshua a ring. Tell him I may be a little late.”

            “That line is unavailable,” the prim AI responded.

            “What do you…? Never mind. Try again.”

            “That line is unavailable.”      

            Kiana tried to keep her focus on the ‘road’ and not how stuffy it was inside this motorized coffin. She darted a glance to her pocket cell, which was turning out to be a useless slip of plastic. “Why? Is the battery not charged enough?”

            “Your cell’s battery capacity is at 92 percent. There is a connection error.”

            Kiana slowed down. “Explain.”

            “There appears to be a counter signal interfering with reception.”

            “What, we’re being jammed?”

            “Affirmative.”

            “Alia, has someone been hacking into your base program again?”

            The reply was almost tart. “My cognitive functions have not been penetrated.”

            She’d been relying on the GPS too much to guide her. Kiana realized as she drove on into the dark that might have been a mistake. Ahead loomed a tree with incandescent bulbs strung through its branches. “All right. Stand by, I’m pulling over…So stupid, should have pulled over sooner.”

            “Is that an inquiry–?”

            “NO! Shut off!” Grass rustled beneath the undercarriage as the Jeep rolled to a stop under the tree’s arching branches. Kiana slipped off her fancy indigo flats; no point getting them dirty, given what she’d already spent on this outfit for this ONE evening. Then she popped her Poppa’s compass from the glove box. It was his gift to her, upon announcing that she was returning to continue his work collecting gene samples of all the wildlife in South Africa for restoration, once present-day disruptions to the climate settled down.

            This tree being here, so very conspicuous, screamed ‘too much coincidence!’, but she had to stop somewhere to get her bearings. She stepped out, hiking the trailing fabric of her gown off the grass in her left hand. Using the Southern Cross as a base point, she ought to be able to take a reckoning and gauge exactly how far off the mark she was.

            Welles. Huh. She wouldn’t need security if not for his pranks, disrupting her work and that of her crew. She couldn’t figure that man before. The authorities billed him as some kind of ecoterrorist but that just did not fly. They shared the same goals, or so she thought. Surely they could work together. A conversation with Stempf brought some welcome insight.

            Stempf had been involved with Welles’ organization prior to joining her staff. Circumstances had apparently disillusioned him toward the good colonel’s methodology, so, on a recent tagging mission involving two displaced lionesses, she got him to open up. She wasn’t sure now whether that had been a good thing.

            “I was outside his door, ready for the day’s assignment,” Stempf said in his clipped Germanic tone. “I don’t think I was meant to overhear but…he, uh, he sees your relationship with Dr. Mzima as unnatural, as normalizing relations between races. Apparently it was a notion Colonel Welles found repellent.”

            The lioness beneath Kiana jerked as she clipped too hard on the tag she’d just put in its ear. It was 120 degrees in the shade, but her skin suddenly felt chilled. “Not you, though,” she prompted.

            Stempf smirked. “I never gave it a thought. It’s obvious you’re both crazy about each other. Everyone knows it. I think it’s kind of adorable, but I’m young. It’s not like my grandfather’s generation, when they still had all that racial separation shit–sorry, didn’t mean to curse.”

            Kiana smiled. “Don’t worry, I won’t sick the other lioness on you.”

            “There’s also the fact that you’re American. You know some people in your country still consider it the greatest nation in the world, even now that it’s broken into several nationalist provinces.”

            “Yeah, I know. Here, help me get her into the shade so she can shake off the tranq without boiling alive.” Thus endeth that conversation.

            She took her bearings beneath a string of small white bulbs, groaning at the anomalous readings. Well, the compass worked fine. She knew where the field station was. But it was stupid easy to use that GPS, and that thing in her Jeep had steered her in a polar opposite direction from where she should have been. But as she tipped the flash on her cell toward those lights, her eyes adjusted to the dark. And this tree with its long spindly branches seemingly supporting the sky had taken on a familiar aspect.

            Once a season she and Joshua would come here to volunteer alongside a team from the Ministry of Health to vaccinate the children and give adults boosters for their AIDS and Ebola shots, welcome diluted strains from once fearsome diseases. Then she and Joshua would picnic in the shade at this tree’s base, now defaced with smooth bore holes from some joker’s router saw or some other tool.

            She imagined this was the kind of tree George Schaller would lounge beneath to write a thesis, or Dian Fossey interacting with her gorillas at Karisake, right before–

            “AAAAA!”

            Why did this crap always happen when she was thinking of Dian Fossey? A scrape above alerted her too late. Suddenly she found herself the victim of an ice bucket challenge. Kiana screamed as much from frustration as anything. Stupid, sticky, gooey–! She noticed a note clinging to her soaked bare right shoulder. As she peeled it away, she also became aware of the pungent sickly-sweet perfume, almost muskine, bathing her skin.

            At least that bucket wouldn’t come crashing down on her head. Her motion beneath the lights probably triggered a pulley trap that yanked the line attached to its rim. The handle was still secure by an outdated ol’ zip-tie. More scrapes, like tarps against wood, sounded from lower down. Now, something else. A hiss in the dark. In fact a whole chorus of them. A fleshy plop of muscle issued…from inside the tree?

            Kiana rotated the flash on her cell toward its bole, as a half-dozen thick oily roots seemed to pour out of those bore holes. And she was suddenly aware of how very alone she was. This wasn’t natural behavior, she told herself shakily. Pythons are not naturally gregarious creatures. They’d never nest in the same tree in such numbers, unless… “Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me,” she said.

            The sheer isolation she so often craved was its own kind of enemy. The snakes had cleared the holes in the tree, oozing along the dry grass toward her. Perspiration dribbled from her pits as her empathic sense detected the echo of an unnatural…no, not actual hunger. Their bellies seemed full at least. This was a stronger, overpowering urge. If they were human, she’d have called it by its name among the Seven Deadlies, lust.

            She sniffed her arm in sudden suspicion, aware now of a pheromonal element in the greasy crap Welles’ bucket had spilled all over her. It was surely overwhelming the natural pheromones her body normally produced, as a means of gaining an animal’s trust and fitting into any environment. God, but they were so glossy and gorgeous, the mottled patterns in their hides rippling with each sinuous movement. Even the weight of the closest fellow on her bare feet enticed–

            Kiana yanked her foot away with unexpected reluctance. Her breathing shouldn’t be this deep, so HUNGRY– Crap crap crap! She thought. Don’t tell me this goo was affecting me the same way! “The latest temptation,” she gasped, chilled in her flimsy clingy gown. Someone had stashed those snakes in those improvised dens. When that bucket tipped and the lights switched off, that probably engaged a separate control that released these cuddlies.

            “No wonder lust was one of the Seven Deadlies,” she whispered, her breath a bit shallower than she preferred. Between her and the Jeep lay five slithering tubes, all issuing long extended hisses. Her feet backpedaled on the gritty soil. It should be possible to lure them around, she reasoned, angle back toward the Jeep. Once she winced as the sharp edge of a stone bit into her left heel. Despite that she kept her feet, nimbly prancing backward. Anyway, that wasn’t what tripped her up.

            A thick muscular tube slapped her behind the knees. Kiana swayed for balance. The sky rushed away from her as the ground punched the air out of her lungs. Her mouth worked like a fish but she wasn’t getting any air. Her arms, legs, chest, nothing would obey her. Why didn’t she have any energy…? After a quarter of a minute she started to take in a few small breaths as the first serpent flopped across her chest.

            Two of the pythons joined as one, corkscrewing around Kiana’s waist in opposing directions. Another thrust between her legs, spreading them apart. She pushed herself up, despite being bundled up to her stomach. Her left hand slipped on a rubbery hide, plunging right up to her armpit into a fistful of coils. This particular herp seemed to take delight in the sudden bounty. Like a fist the loops tightened, and a moan was torn from Kiana. Needle pricks stung up and down her imprisoned arm as the circulation began to die.

            Kiana dropped, but this time the snakes squirming under her bare back cushioned the impact. She’d grabbed one of the buggers with her free hand by the scruff of its neck. The problem was they were ALL neck, and these stupid faux latex gloves didn’t allow for a sure grip. In the space of a breath it’d slipped through her hand, and with her other hand trapped there was no way to catch a firmer grip. She stared half in fascination while circles of reptilian muscle flopped around her wrist and arm.

            The boys were in no hurry now. Drawn by her empathic nature, as well as her extraordinary body heat, the serpents had enveloped Kiana in seconds, pressing her to the ground, helpless in their glistening coils. A writhing mass of slick hoops like Medusa’s hairdo enveloped her, binding her legs and piling on double, one on top of another, weighing on her ribs. Latex crinkled as she flexed her fingers, in tandem with the firming of those reptilian bodies. Kiana’s small nose wrinkled as a trunk the thickness of her thighs–which she was thinking way too much about right now–oozed across her left shoulder, and the sensation of its sheer weight, its scales clinging to her skin, rocked her with shivers.

            Her teeth chattered while a rounded body crept along her throat, brushing her chin. A tail slid into her open palm, cinching tight around her thumb. The noose draped around her neck was pushed up as a second loop landed with a fleshy plop beneath the first. Usually, she was the one who initiated these interactions. This was one instance where she might have no control over the outcome, and no backup to extract her if the situation turned sour.

            She might never wear this gown again. It was too stupid easy for these snakes to push beneath its folds. At times like these Kiana was uncomfortably reminded of what a small petite thing she was. Still they piled on, thick meaty coils nestling to her torso, pushing the fabric down, down until her breasts flopped like two pale protuberances sweating under the moonlight. Perspiration tickled her nakedness as a second tail stroked her right breast. She rarely gave them much thought, as other girls she knew in the church were ‘more blessed’. She wasn’t sure if pride or embarrassment were more evident as the flesh mounded over the tail securing a firm grip on her.

            “Please…stop…”

            More thick bodies like trees pushed from beneath, lifting her back off the ground, winding around the coils already encircling her. Her feet could no longer touch the ground, pedaling incrementally, her range of movement restricted by the loops binding her to the ankles. Yet another tail insinuated itself in the space between her left thigh and her womanhood. Worse still, some primal sinful instinct compelled her to clench her thighs around the supple elastic skin rippling against her bare skin, stirring shameful desires she usually kept to herself.

            “No no no no no–! Not again,” she wheezed. Her hips wouldn’t obey her conscious directive, rocking inside her muscular cocoon. At least before she’d had a choice. She would go to the savannah, alone, when she couldn’t take her mind off of Joshua, when the urges became too strong. All alone, when she was sure there was no one around for miles, she would relieve her tensions.

            But this–! Her bare thighs tightened around the sinuous trunk thrust between them, a spasm building as an irresistible urge, body jerking as tears burned her eyes. The leathery hides crinkled as the coils oozed over her, firm and inescapable. A coil slipped over her chin, brushing her lips. Shame drove her to bury her face into the folds of its coils, muffling her screams. Her nostrils flared, drinking precious air as creeping death compressed her cheeks.

            Finally, blessed release! Her limbs jerked spasmodically one last time, every muscle straining to the bone. Then she’d gone limp, finally sated.  Kiana wheezed in her serpentine cocoon, a slick coat of perspiration coating every inch of skin, her body devoid of all energy. The coil willingly slipped off her chin as her head sank into a cushioned mass snuggling firmly to her cheeks. Chest still heaving, Kiana struggled to lift enough of the weight off her ribs to breath deep.

            Why weren’t they constricting? That was probably what Welles had been counting on. For now, her companions seemed content to continue this bestial embrace, muscles softly contracting and relaxing, treating Kiana to a full body massage she could never hope to escape. That forked tongue lapping at the bare soles of her right foot wasn’t helping. A brief tickle brought the giggles on top of her shortness of breath.

            In the moment when her foot slid along a moist cushion, clarity snapped back to her. A double row of recurved teeth stabbed into her ankle. If she’d had the air she would have screamed. Her leg jerked but the predator wouldn’t be denied. Mucous dribbled thick as its jaws worked its way up her calf, skin stretched tight, just as a second carnal urge pulsed in her loins.

            “You can’t be serious,” she moaned. “Not again–AAAA! N-no, think nasty things… autopsy…think autopsies, yeah–GAAA!–scat! Raw, putrid, diarrhetic dog shi–AAA!”

            Sweat poured afresh as her heart hammered triple-time against the creeping snakes. Oh God, what if these other brutes turned on her? The rest of them seemed quiescent enough, for now. That bastard had chewed halfway up her thigh, each bite a thousand needles sinking into skin and muscle. The only thing that stopped it was when it reached her crotch and couldn’t engorge her anymore. She had no idea whether her foot had pushed into its stomach or not. Her entire right leg was crushed in a mucous filled tube, tugging at her in a relentless swallow.

            Her stomach gurgled, an empathic echo of the juices swirling in her devourer’s empty belly. It was to be expected that at least one of these coiling monstrosities would need to eat. Odds are that was exactly the intent. Think positive, girl, Kiana told herself, one of them could have gone for your head.

            Its snout pushed up beneath the coil binding her already-enfolded arm to her hip, glaring into her eyes. It was her first good look at one of her aggressors, and her attention was drawn to the pinhead, a small round red button set between the bony ridges over its eyes. Its distinctive design was intended to commemorate a doomed state, featuring two red diagonal bars symbolizing the cross of Saint Andrew; overlaid on top of that were images of a palmetto tree, a steamboat and a Seminole woman scattering flowers. Just like that, Kiana knew with perfect clarity where Welles’ goons had acquired these herps. Breasts crushed between their obscene caress, Kiana sank slowly, inexorably into their hungry embrace.

            Morning brought little relief. Everything was actually kind of a blur. Her ribs ached and her limbs cramped, what she could feel of them. She had no feeling in her left arm; her fingers felt like five bloated sausages. The overhanging canopy of leaves would probably protect her from the worst of the Sun’s heat. A tongue flicked into her gloved hand. The empath in her rubbed her fingers across the top of its head as it nudged her palm.

            If the Minister didn’t kill her, she thought…Teeth sank patiently into her thigh, bringing fresh tears. Those red eyes fixed on hers, willing her to die. The snake in her hand gazed down on her almost dispassionately. They were all so beautiful and sleek, glossy and patterned in gorgeous spots. Every coil glistened with each fresh contraction. If only she could be certain this was the naturalist in her talking and not those stupid pheromones…

            A subtle vibration jiggled her deep inside her cocoon. Kiana craned her neck, only a few inches. But the only thing in sight was a mound of coils. Still, the supple scales peeled away from her cheeks, reluctantly, high enough that her ears pricked at a distant putter of engine…engines? It was impossible to pinpoint whether those Jeeps were closing in on or speeding past her position. Joshua and the others must have been out searching for her. They would know she wouldn’t have just blown off the Minister.

            She had an inspiration for how she might attract their attention, too. The keys to her Jeep had a miniature touchpad that set off the alarm if she even breathed on it. She’d always thought it’d been a bit too touch sensitive, but that just might be the thing. Please tell me I didn’t leave them in the Jeep, she prayed. No, she remembered pocketing them automatically as she slipped out onto the grass. She could feel them poking around in her right pocket… her head slumped onto the meaty coil supporting her neck. “Of course it was,” she grumbled.

            Her keys were practically sitting under that snake’s palette. Fine. She grit her teeth and closed her eyes. It had to be done, she told herself, before the guys drove right past her. Yet even an incremental shift of her right hip set off a fresh round of constriction. Whatever feeling she still retained returned full-force as stinging needles in her cramping limbs. She still wriggled, trying to nudge the padd that was suddenly too stubborn to activate. Damn it, usually it was too sensitive, why did this have to be the one time–?

            Even with both ears cushioned in a muscular embrace, the sudden muffled hooting startled her. Were the Jeep’s headlights also strobing, or was that just the effect of the constriction?

            The snake’s head oozed out of her palm, rising on a stalk half a meter high as its jaws distended. Saliva dribbled over its jaws, onto her lips. Funny, it wasn’t really glaring at her; there was something off to the side. What–? Then a blur, and that head exploded. Moments later Joshua dropped his bloodied prybar and skid to the ground, his stricken face over hers muttering “No no no no no no–!” Another python’s head rose, to be snared in a burlap sack as Joshua unwound the coils drooping around her neck.

            His gaze drifted down, widening over her exposed nipples before he snapped away. Someone swore in Afrikaans, and then Stempf peeled his shirt over the top of his head and tossed it to Joshua. Then he too swung away as Joshua carefully draped it over her breasts. “I’m sorry,” she kept repeating, to which they both answered with a shake of their heads.

            “We’ll have those things off you in a minute,” Joshua smiled. “First, we thought now would be an opportune time to discuss our wage increases for the coming year.” He winked. Even knowing it for the joke it was, Mkosi still swatted him on the shoulder.

            “Yeah? How’d you like to wake up with these herps in your sleeping bag?” Kiana retorted. It hurt too much to grin.

            Joshua spread his big hands to take in the spectacle enfolding her. “How the fu–how is this even possible?” Maybe Joshua was just trying to keep her lucid while a second Jeep coasted to a stop near them.

            “Welles…” Kiana moaned. “He set this up, disabled GPS…he doused me with a pheromone extract to attract ’em…sexually–“

            “Sexually? Kiana, what…?”
            “I-I couldn’t help myself…” but he didn’t seem to hear her. He was screaming orders, about hazmat conditions, fresh clothes, a portable boma, stuff…

            “I’ll kill him for this,” Joshua muttered, bare seconds before he spotted the snake that had swallowed her leg. She practically felt the profanity before he blurted it. “Get my knife from the truck!” he shouted to Stempf. “Get it now! We’ve got to get this off her–!”

            “Don’t kill it,” Kiana wheezed.

            Joshua hesitated. “Kiana, I know you value life, but there are limits. That thing must have been chewing on your leg all night. It might be infected. I don’t know if we can even save it now–“

            “Just sedate it, please! It’s just following its instincts. There’s no malice on its part–“

            “I don’t care!”

            “This is what Welles wants, don’t you see, to drive us apart. He knows I wouldn’t lift a finger to harm these creatures. Please, you and me. Don’t give him this victory.”

            Joshua ducked his head, shaking it. Eyes brimming, he looked left and right, but the others were either not paying attention or pretending not to. “Kiana I can’t stand this. It pains me to see you violated like this.” That last string of words was spat with venom; towards who, it wasn’t hard to guess. But she knew him. With that one mighty clap of his hands, Joshua was on board.

            “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he began. “Mkosi, Stempf, you and I are going to sedate these things. We’re going to peel them off Kiana, and then we’ll sort how to get this monster to regurgitate her leg. Call the Storehouse, we’ll need as many sedatives and as many transport pods as are available. All right, chop-chop!”

            The other snakes were relatively easy to extract, excepting the brute chewing her thigh. Between the three of them, Joshua, Mkosi and Stempf took the time to safely slip a hood over the head of each successive constrictor, then uncoiling them. Each animal would then be piled into the very transport pods that she and Joshua had ordered for crating injured animals they usually brought back to the Storehouse for recovery and later, release. As the coilee, Kiana had little input into the process.

            “Where the devil did he acquire these things? Most of them aren’t indigenous to this ecosystem,” Joshua groused to himself as he snapped on a disposable glove, the kind they normally used when sterilizing equipment. He whispered, “I’m sorry,” as he reached beneath her right breast to unwind the tail digging into it. This was done quickly, with as little contact with her fleshy nodes as possible.

            “They’re not,” Kiana said. Stempf offered her a waterskin, which she sipped from slowly. “Welles’ goons stole them from the holding area in Joberg we’re using for our cooperative reintroduction program with Florida.”

            A collective groan rose from all parties. These snakes were part of a program the South African Ministry of Ecology had initiated with the former state of Florida, now a member body of the New American Confederacy. This was an effort to relocate what had been an invasive species anyway, back to their natural environment. This had become necessary with saltwater encroachment into Florida’s aquifer and the steady loss of land that could no longer be denied, which had actually begun decades ago, in her father’s young adult life.

            Finally, they’d come to the real challenge. This whole time Stempf has been preoccupied being the middleman as it were, cradling the midsection of the first five snakes they’d peeled off her. Now suddenly he’d dropped to his knees, eyes wide and bloodshot, sweat pouring off his brow as he stared at the beast where Kiana’s leg should be, blood filling every puncture mark in her thigh where its teeth remained sunken in. A lump rocked up and down in Stempf’s throat, and for a moment she thought he might throw up on her.

            Kiana thought he might when Joshua’s big hand clamped on his shoulder. But his voice was surprisingly mellow. “Stempf–this wasn’t you. You had no part in this. You’d parted ways with Welles’ organization a long time before he planned this. Look at me, young man. The best thing you can do is to help us get this thing off Kiana and get her some medical help.” A brotherly thump at the self-same shoulder followed. “Okay? You ready?” The young man forced a smile and nodded.

            “Begging your pardon, sir, but why don’t we just have Kiana summon a lion?” the others stared at Stempf then like he’d just landed from Mars. “I mean it’d regurgitate her if it was threatened! She can control animals, can’t she? Uhh, no offense, miss.”

            “There’s no lions around…” Kiana panted. Every rib ached from last night’s ordeal. “Dry season…they followed the herds to a moderate climate…”

            “She’s in no condition to control wild predators, even if any were nearby,” Joshua confirmed. “Those things squeezed all the strength out of her.” He rubbed one hand over his scalp with a sigh. Kiana’s soft whisper galvanized their attention.

            “a-5, in the genetics tanks…you could use the coolant reserve in the Jeeps…”

            “Yes–lower environmental temperatures,” Joshua nodded, glancing toward his compatriots. “That’s also what forces a constrictor to regurgitate its prey. Threat or lower temperatures–“

            “…guys…? Right here…I can hear you…”

            “Sorry,” the three men chorused. Joshua beckoned them to follow him a ways off. Apparently he was outlining a plan, judging by the speed his hands chopped at the air. The huddle broke up, while each man pelted toward a Jeep. Joshua seemed to have chosen hers. Kiana was left to stare down the length of her small body, criss-crossed in black and blue bruises, down to the mouth gushing fresh gobs of saliva over her crotch.

            “…don’t suppose you’re ready to just let me go…?” Her burning eyes widened as instead the jaws yawned ever wider. Somehow it inched around her right buttock, its gums pressing to her roundness. “…guys…!”

            Three sets of knees scuffed to the ground around her. Their hands were bundled in double layers of haz-mat gloves, each man cradling a thermos-sized coolant tank. The hoses trailing from each tank were now deployed along the python’s flanks. “Brace yourself,” Joshua said as he aimed the tip of his hose right at its broad snout. By either fortune or sheer luck, at that moment the beast opened wide to take in more of her hip.

            “No you don’t!” Joshua snarled. His hands twisted a knob. A jet of Antarctic coolant hissed down its gullet. Two more jets sprayed its glossy neck from both flanks. While on their expeditions to collect gene samples from wild animals, Kiana’s crew stored the collected sequences in insulated iceboxes stowed in the back of each Jeep. The iceboxes were chilled with the most recent innovation in coolant technology, ironically dubbed ‘Antarctic ice’, or a-5 for short. That was shorthand, her dad used to say, for ‘it’s five times colder than a witch’s teats.’

            This might not have been the use its makers intended, but it achieved the desired goal. The snake’s jaw stretched impossibly wide, gagging as all four meters contracted, roiling backwards as its mouth slid off her butt. Her thigh, a mass of tiny punctures, was suddenly chilled as its muscular embrace oozed from her too-pale skin.

            Stempf’s tank was the first to spit and sputter out of coolant. Joshua and Mkosi kept up the pressure, practically jamming their hoses in its mouth. It was a slow motion swallow in reverse. Once it had vomited itself past Kiana’s knee, Joshua dropped his tank and slapped his hands beneath Kiana’s armpits, tensing, waiting. Mkosi and Stempf did the same, tossing their now-useless tanks to one side and hefting a lump of python in their arms. Then Joshua called, “Go!”

            Joshua scrambled to the rear, dragging Kiana finally free of its death swallow. Which led to a new problem: now Stempf and Mkosi were stumbling to control an angry, hurting python denied its meal, writhing in their arms. Fog clouded the edges of Kiana’s vision, so she couldn’t be sure if Mkosi was really pressing one foot on a length of coil bucking beneath him. It seemed only seconds passed between the time Joshua laid her head down and bolted, to the moment he was standing over that livid python, pumping one tranq dart after another into its exposed neck. After that, she didn’t know.

            Two strong arms bundled her into a blanket. Then Joshua lifted her and padded across the swishing grass. A tailgate rattled down, and tender hands eased them both into the open bed of one of their Jeeps. She drank in his strong man scent, sprinkled with the eggs and jam he must’ve wolfed for breakfast. Joshua held her close, plucking sprigs of grass from her auburn mane. “I’m such a mess,” she moaned. “How can you stand me…?”

            “Must be your shining personality,” Joshua quipped. “It’s okay, the Minister was quite concerned about your absence, after his initial tantrum. I don’t think we’ll have much of an issue getting that extra security now.”

            Just then Mkosi dashed up to the tailgate with a message. “Magistrate Malaza is sending an air-foil,” Mkosi reported. “He’ll be here in five minutes.”

            “That was quick on his part,” Joshua said. “How did you persuade him to do that?”

            “I said it was Welles and, ummm, that there might have been sexual crimes involved. I hope I, mmm, haven’t overstepped my bounds.”

            Joshua glanced at Kiana, dabbing a damp cloth to her cheeks. “I only wish it wasn’t. No, you haven’t, my friend. Well,” he added, smacking his hand together again, “I suppose after what happened in Joberg and this incident, we can now officially declare that Colonel Welles is a fetishist.” 

            A flare of light in the south-eastern sky, like the light of Bethlehem, preceded a rush of air, like a rocket falling from space. The Magistrate’s supersonic airfoil wasn’t that far away now. Kiana pawed kitten-soft at Joshua’s wrist. “Hey, I’m curious. How’d you resist Welles’ pheromones?”

            He smiled. “I didn’t, not completely. But I’d wrestled with my hormones back in our college days. I knew your religion would never permit a mixed-race relation any more than Welles would. We’ve been friends since childhood, Kiana. I valued that too much. So I could either cut myself off from you, completely, or I could choose to live with it. I chose the latter. And I can always hope.”

            Kiana stared down into her lap. “I’ll always love you.”

            He nodded, “I know.”

Summoned by Kali: a story

Wow. It’s all green.

The professor will probably shit when he reads this report. This was supposed to be a rescue mission.  Floating inside the belly of a tardigrade wasn’t part of the plan. Still, navigating the microsphere wasn’t so tough. In some ways it was similar to free fall in zero gravity. This water bear bore me with remarkable alacrity now that I was inside it, if one can assign such values to a microbial anthropoid thingy.

I’m trying not to touch anything. I should be thinking of my own survival, floating in this thick interior jelly, but…this specimen was unique. Its feeding stylets actually shifted into a fissure in the upper part of its snout, which enabled it to ‘devour’ me without harm…. shit, those phrases don’t really belong together, do they?

A flap had opened in its digestive bulb after its intestinal tube pushed me through. That allowed me to slide into its lower body cavity, in the segments between its third and fourth pairs of legs. Here I was wedged between his spinal ridge and that intestinal tract that ran like a big ugly worm throughout the length of its chubby body.

If I pressed my face to its inner membrane I could breathe; these bugger’s respirate through the pores of their skin anyhow. I wasn’t alone either. There were swarms of beach-ball sized nodules–no, eggs, in this fluid-filled cavity with me.

All this for a woman who hated me. Lady Smirnoff was jealous of my position with the Professor, thought he favored me over her. Funny thing was, I was never aware of having any ‘position’. He saw her as a capable lab assistant. Me, I always called him Professor but I thought of him as a second Dad.

Jealousy had driven her to steal an experimental shrinking formula from Dr. Chen’s biolab. It worked, after a fashion. She surprised me in the lab and gave me a hefty spray. Then she watched as a alien grub devoured me.

That the plan failed was only on account of the formula’s unstable nature. Let’s just say that grub experienced an explosive end, once the shrinking effect wore off. I fought back before she could douse me again. Her tanks ruptured on a lab sink, exposing her to ten times the dosage I received. All that was left of her after that were her clothes. Fortunately the biolab was able to refine the formula into a stable element for this mission.

Apparently the goal lay ahead. Mama Bear was ambling along a string of lichen toward this gorgeous orchid floating improbably in this microscopic soup. Its spreading petals displayed a blood red aperture, a bowl tapering into a rounded pitcher vessel. As if aware of our approach, the skin of the pitcher became transparent, stretching over four projecting fingers pawing at its interior. The fingers curled into claws before its waxy outer skin smoothed over once more.

And above said orchid floated my host, I suppose, the goddess who’d been guiding and testing me up to this point. Dark hair that absorbed all color from the spectrum billowed around an oily blue face. Fangs indented the corners of her full red lips while a necklace of skulls rattled across her neck.

Eggs poked my bare thighs as we bobbed in this baptismal chamber, waiting to be discharged unto the world. The question becomes how this mother tardigrade intended to eject me. If I recalled my studies aright, baby tardis get excreted through the anal chamber to make their way in the world–oh crap, that’s not how–

A gush of fluid flooded its torso as a narrow tube squeezed me out of my host. God, do I feel like an ass–! …Stop that. After orienting myself, I paddled to her as the tardigrade lumbered on about its own business. Four arms beckoned and gods, she was as naked as I was. “Welcome, daughter,” she intoned.

I sighed and waved, “Hi, Mom.”

“Oh, you’ve sweated up a storm, child. You’re going to be in no condition to carry your burden home. Come, drink.”

A cup was raised. I hadn’t noticed the empty eye sockets and grinning teeth until I’d taken it in my hands, shaking now as I raised it to my lips. Thankfully instead of worms it tasted of ice-cold water; just water. I drained that, and the second skull thermos she detached from the band around her perfect waist. 

Still I held back, suddenly uncomfortably aware of my own state of unclothedness. Shivers rattled me; and yeah, the fact was that I could not look this manifestation of Kali in the face. “Gaze upon me, mortal,” she chuckled.

I gazed down at the underside of my bare arms. “I-I can’t, not as long as you’re wearing that face.”

Her upper left palm, red as blood, cupped my cheek, so very warm. I hadn’t thought about how frigid this place was in a while, if at all. “Does this face displease thee?”

“No–I mean, yes! Gods, you’re gorgeous, it’s just–I know you’re really not her. I-I see Mama lying dead, on the floor by our bed, every time–it just reminds me–“

“C’mere, little vine.”

Just like that my head shot up. That was her voice–! With my guard down, four strong arms drew me to her bosom. I rested my chin on her shoulder, inhaling the scent of incense and perspiration, blood and jasmine all intermingled. Muscles oiled with sweet alms flexed in a protective cocoon. “Why have I found favor with you?” I whispered.

Hands stroked waist and shoulders as her warm breath brushed my neck. “The pure of spirit are rare in the mortal sphere, more so in the realm of gods. It would be sacrilegious to tarnish such a spirit, especially one that has survived so many perils.”

“Huh. You haven’t seen me with the freaks I’ve encountered.”

“Wanna bet, kiddo?”

I jerked back, enough that I was staring nose to nose into my mother’s eyes. That long forgotten smirk was there for a second, and then there was only Kali Ma. Red palms stroked both my cheeks. “Innocence is a state beyond sexuality. It is possible to possess such purity even when the flesh is weak.”

“Doesn’t feel weak when I’m turned on.”

We both shared a laugh. “And now,” Kali said, “I suppose you will want to view the prize, the object as it were of your quest.”

Her arms stretched to their full length as I gazed over the rim of petals. At first I only saw vague shapes in the darkness, two blue mounds twitching and pressing over a reddish scalp. The blue flesh parted and a face tipped up. Our eyes met but no recognition flickered in her glassy stare.

I’d spent weeks scrutinizing every microscope in the observatory to find her. The Professor would pass me the odd assignment to take my mind off her. Somehow, I finally found her. Or maybe I was allowed to view the inescapable horror she’d been subjected to. Maybe it was a challenge our host knew I couldn’t ignore.

 Her skin was the whitest shade of pale, with sweaty cheeks sunken. But this was unmistakably the missing Lady Smirnoff. The rest of her body was lost in a quivering fluid mass pressing into her. The mounds flopped over her face with a wet slop and she was gone again. “Is she all right?” I asked as Kali pulled me close again.

“That depends on your definition.”

“Why hasn’t she tried to escape?”

“Where is there for her to escape to? The hallucinating incense infusing that bulb have convinced her that our bodies have melded. It was easy to maintain the delusion with an extension of our musculature around her crippled form.”

“Crippled?”

“Her encounter with an amoeba was not so fortunate as yours. She has lost the lower half of her right leg. Have no fear, I can detach myself from her at any time. But I needed her to reflect on her life choices, on the karma that had brought her to this state. And I wished her anguish for the terror she had inflicted on thee.”

“I think she’s got it. Kali Ma…Mama…will you grant me the boon of releasing the Lady Smirnoff to me?”

“She may not recognize you now. Not much of her feeble mind is left.”

“I-I don’t care,” I panted. “I need to bring her back.”

“She is not likely to thank you.”

“Huh. That’s what the Professor said. Please, this is inhuman.”

‘Neither are we.”

“Yeah, well,” I ducked down, staring down at my wringing hands. “I am. I’m human. I-I know she did this to herself, but…I can’t leave her. I don’t understand why but I don’t hate her. If only you could understand.” I kept staring down even though I could sense Kali’s gaze on me. Her lips pressed to my forehead. The words she spoke were my Mama’s.

“You couldn’t abandon her to a hopeless situation, the way I’d abandoned you on the Lost Ship.”

“It wasn’t your fault…”

“So. That wasn’t so hard, wasn’t it?”

I shrugged. “I’m still not sure how I’ll get back. Your tardigrades burst all my nanobots, and the growth formula they were carrying. Even if we can get home, we might both be stuck at this size.”

But then Kali held a capsule under my nose, right before she quickly withdrew it and tucked it back into one of her waist pouches. “Not so fast, silly me. That was a disintegration pill. Here’s…no, wait, that’s another shrinking pill. Fear not, I’ll find it. Take this,” she muttered as she absent mindedly handed over the sword in her upper left hand

“What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked.

“Dance, of course. Join me in the Dance of Kali.”

“I-I can’t dance.”

“Yes you can.”

“No, I…”

“Yes.”

“But I never…”

“You would deny Kali, who wears your mother’s face?”

“No, I’m just saying…” What was I trying to say? I kept staring down, muttering words to myself: “Om Hreem Shreem Kleem Adya…” “I’ve never danced before. I don’t know how.”

Her upper right arm stretched tight as she took hold of mine, now also extended straight. “Fear not. It’s easy. Follow my steps.”

But there were too many questions. What was this supposed to accomplish? How was this going to get the pair of us home, and at normal size? What was normal anyway? Why’d she have to take my mother’s–

“Shhhh…no more questions. Let your thoughts flow.”

I was about to protest further before this Kali apparition blew into her palm. A cloud of fine dust pecked me full in the face. Breathing was a reflex so I sucked it right up my nostrils and…and…what purty colors they are, swirlin’ an’ oscillatin’ rainbow suckers.

Everythin’s all fuzzy an’ dreamy. Why’d my stomach drop, an’ where these other two arms come from? No, I gotta be dreamin’. My shoulders ain’t really brushin’ up to another pair o’ shoulders rotatin’ an’ poppin’ in their sockets like dey always been there. Heyyy, my palms was red all over, all four of ’em.

Big Blue Babe pressed her hands inna mine, gobs of fingers strokin’ the back o’ my four hands, an’ objectively, Kali’s one gorgeous bitch. “Now I knows you actin’ like a gob,” I giggled. “My mama wudn’ make me hallubsin–hallub–she wudn’ do dat.”

“Is that all you’ve noticed? Suppose I imagined an extra pair of arms growing out of your ass?”

“Eyyy, dis is my hallub–hallu-oooo!” Somethin’ pushed between my cheeks–! I took a gander over both right shoulders just as somethin’ silky, bushy an’ red wit’ white stripes swished from my butt.

I guess when yer stoned dancin’ is easy. Kali’s moves wuz like oil, fluid an’ smooth an’ so precise. With my four palms pressed to hers, I could kinda trace her movements. Her sidewise shuffle led me forward an’ pushed me back, while our arms wheeled in flowing clockwise circles.

The hard part wuz knowin’ which Kali to follow. There wuz ‘nuther Kali overlaid on top of the first one, all fuzzy an’ trailin’ rainbow colors. Didn’t nobody line up the 3D projectors right? Well, so wat? Anythin’ she could do–

OWWWW! I popped the socket in my hip steppin’ too far out. And she kept on, raisin’ her hands in the prayer position, bobbing her head side to side. I followed as her arms flowed up an’ around, feet sliding side to side and back. Our tails counted time as dey swayed to balance us. Our upper palms came together as our heads zigzagged, sharp yet synchronous.

It wuz just me an’ Kali, skifflin’, hand in hand, countless fingers interlocked while Mama’s bootiful lashes batted like butterfly wings. Mebbe it wuz ‘cos we wuz on the same wavelength but some minutes in, it hit me that we been doin’ the same singsong chant: “Om hreem shreem …adya kalika param…” Kinda like that.

A really absurd thought entered my mind as I pirouetted…hey, with this sword I could kill Kali. I dismissed it quick, largely ‘cos even in this state I was repulsed that I ever thought. Besides, this wasn’t Kali facing me, just another aspect of her. That’s probably why she took Mama’s face in the first place. Judging by her toothy smile and slow shake of the head, she already knew what I was thinking anyway.

At some point Kali-Mom eased away. I wuz ‘lone, an’ somehow I didn’ mind. My legs still pranced, touchin’ on water molecules as dey traced her movements as if dey’d always knowed how. Her sword was still in my hands. Our chant grew louder, more authora…authora–more bossy.

Kali floated ‘hind ‘er orchid bulb, gesturin’ hypnotically over its petals. A shadow rose over the inner rim. An’ there she wuz, Lady Smirnoff floatin’ feather-like over her former prison. The left shoulder o’ her skinsuit wuz torn down t’ the upper bicep an’ yeh, her right leg was gone below the kneecap. Her stern scowl musta mellowed on ‘count of her zombie-like torpor.

Despite her emaciated state, she wuz hot in that glistening crimson skinsuit. Oh my gawd, it emphasized every voluptuous curve. You jus’ hang on, gorgeous, we’s gonna gets you outta here.

Now I nebber used a sword ‘fore, but somehow I knew what I hadda do. With an “om hreem shreem” I held my upper hands pointin’ up in supplication, blade straight an’ true as we cut a 180-degree arc in the space facin’ us. On the “adya kalika param“, I followed with a reverse cut…I think. Some of it’s kind of a blur. An’ then it wuz like sunrise over the Moon.

Light poured in us, radiant godlike an’ pure, and ohmygod so toasty–! Even as I bobbed over to take the Lady in my arm an’ arm an’ arm an’ arm, I wondered how Kali’d administer her potion to us, whether with another puff in our snozzers or a dab on our tongues–

Kali answered with a bucket drenched over our heads. Already our skins stretched taut as muscles bulged beneath ’em. There was no time for anything else as Kali braced herself on the rim of her orchid and with both feet booted us into the vortex…