The Future Is Short (9 page)
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18.
S.M. Kraftchak
Herbert knew those footsteps, he’d heard them before. Ba-lump, ba-lump, ba-lump, as steady as the tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock of the cuckoo’s clock; first to the corner where ancient floorboards creak under leather boots that click and crack on gravel as they turn back to the middle of the room; ba-lump, ba-lump, ba-lump where steps shoosh sand and dirt between time-worn boards and then continue, ba-lump, ba-lump, wa-lum, wa-lum, wa-lum as his footsteps soften on the rug that hovers over the squishy dank darkness of the cellar where Herbert watches his precious gears turn, their teeth coming together, snick, snick, snick. They had done their job.
Squinting at the sand raining down in dirty veils, Herbert growls—low like a lion purring—deep in his throat at Adam.
What now? What did he care about time? He hadn’t spent a lifetime without the one he loved. Time was nothing to him but currency spent on banging his tankard down and roaring for another drink. To Herbert it meant days, standing by her headstone … Elspeth L. George, beloved Daughter, died 1866 … and nights fiddling in this dim basement. His clock had worked; now he had the time he needed.
After an hour of tick-tock, ba-lump footsteps; stomp and the man’s roar, “Fine, I’m leaving.”
“Finally,” Herbert said, looking at his clock in the dim light.
Herbert’s breath was ragged: puff-wheeze, puff-wheeze, puff-wheeze, but as steady as the scrip-plop, scrip-plop, scrip-plop of his feet and the tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock of a cuckoo’s clock. He could make it. He had to. The wheels on the horse-drawn trolley rumbled as it gained speed on the next hill back. It would be here shortly. There she was.
“Adam, wait!” Elspeth whimpers as she pauses on the sidewalk, then steps into the street.
Puff-wheeze, puff-wheeze, puff-wheeze; he had to go faster; the whinnying and clattering ca-lump, ca-lump, ca-lump of a spooked horse and thundering wheels is growing louder. He couldn’t let it happen again.
“Adam Wells, wait—” She stopped to tug at her boot heel caught in the tracks.
“Elspeth, I’m—puff-wheeze—coming!”
“Papa?”
Herbert reaches her as the trolley crests the hill. Ka-chang, ka-chang, ka-chang, the trolley bell warns; metal screeches on metal and the terrified horse squeals and thunders toward them.
“Move! Move! Move!” the conductor croaks, and waves.
Herbert thuds to his knees and pops the laces open on Elspeth’s boot.
“Go-wheeze, go-wheeze, go-wheeze.” Herbert shoves Elspeth as the runaway trolley bears down on them.
“Elspeth?” a man’s voice cries out. “Elspeth, get out of there!” Adam roars and rushes back to the street as screaming and screeching metal meld in dissonance, smothering the sickening thud-thud, whuff.
“Papa? Papa? What were you thinking?” Elspeth says, with tears falling from her eyes onto her father’s bloody shirt as she cradles him in her arms.
Herbert opens his eyes.
Whuff-gurgle, whuff-gurgle, whuff and smiles. “I did it. I saved you. If he had left sooner, maybe—”
“But Mr. George, I was waiting to ask you for Elspeth’s hand in marriage,” Adam said.
“Yes, Papa, we’re going to get married, because I’m pregnant.”
Herbert looked between his daughter’s face and Adam’s face, his breath shallow with a soft tick, tick, tick as air just barely passed the pooling blood, and then smiled.
“When he’s old enough, gurgle-wheeze, give my grandson a present from me, gurgle-wheeze, my clock and papers in the basement, gurgle-wheeze.”
“No,” Elspeth squawked. “We’ll give him much more. We’ll give him your name.”
Herbert smiled, “I’d like that, click, but don’t saddle him, click, with a name the kids, click, will make fun of, wheeze. Call him H.G.” Herbert’s eyes closed, his breath a long low wheeze, gurgle, gurgle, tock.
Elspeth fought back tears as she watched her father fade. “Herbert George Wells, I like that name.”
S. M. Kraftchak notes: As a writer who spends most of her time in other worlds with dragons, elves, and the occasional alien, S.M. still enjoys sunrise on the beach, sunset in the mountains, and portraying Elizabeth Tudor. She has two dogs, who think they are footrests, a cat who thinks she’s a blanket, and three awesome daughters. Her husband is her best friend, her harshest critic, and her most fervent supporter. Writing is S.M.’s passion.
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19.
Helmuth Kump
The red sun of this wretched planet, Amoluz, burned the soil around Pytor with brutal efficiency.
From his partial shade in the ragged mangrove-like growth, he tried to forget about the Raakei’s advance. It was done. He now yearned only to reach out to Ruth.
The Raakei had disrupted all dimensional communications. A simplex digital radio was Pytor’s only
backup. He’d have to cope with the time required for a text conversation: six minutes for the signal to reach Ruth at the outpost, and six more for her reply. It was all he had, but it worked.
“The enemy’s latest attack caught me by surprise. I’m trying to shield myself until
it’s cool enough to return to the shuttle. How do you like the new facility there? I can’t believe we were together a week ago. I miss you.”
Pytor hit “send” and peered up through the branches at the antenna, which he’d set up in the highest mangrove he could reach. The indicator on the antenna’s base glowed green, signifying a successful uplink.
While waiting for a reply, he looked to his left at the yellow-tinged waves of acidic ocean, breaking on the shore about 200 meters away. The constant roar brought him back to summers past, when his father took him and his brother Adam fishing in Captree Park. Memories of plump flounder, pale sand, and golden sun filled his tired mind. His father and brother were gone now, victims of the enemy’s chemical poisoning that devastated New York. Pytor had no inclination to return after that.
The buzz of the transceiver broke his reminiscing. His heart jumped as he saw Ruth’s reply.
“I miss you so much, Pytor. This is a huge campus. In one of the halls here there is a keyboard, the heavy mechanical kind. It says Steinway, does this mean anything? I put my hands on the keys and imagine your hands on top of mine, teaching me.”
He imagined her loving embrace. His fingers typed quickly. “Yes, Steinway pianos were highly prized. The factory was near our home in Astoria. Feel my hand on yours, guiding your fingers into place. Then we push down together, sounding a full major chord.”
Their exchange was the only thing keeping Pytor from going mad in this brutal furnace. He tried to cover any exposed flesh, but it was impossible to block every inch. Whenever he felt the blisters start, he’d shift any way he could to move that area into the shade, but that would of course expose another area of skin.
He heard another buzz. Was this another message from Ruth? No, page after page of garbled characters were filling the display.
It was then Pytor noticed the approaching cloud bank. The red sun abruptly disappeared behind the thick cumulus layer racing across the sky, and twilight replaced the red sunlight. Cursing the unstable weather of Amoluz, he left his mangrove refuge and started running toward the shuttle, leaving his gear behind. He could see his breath as he tried to stay warm by running faster. A few gray acidic snowflakes swirled around him. His lungs burned.
The leading edge of the pulse caught up with him from behind. He left his feet as the shock wave hurled him forward ten meters. The rocky soil scraped his forehead and cheek open as he landed.
Dazed, Pytor got up again, feeling the residual thrust at his back. It pushed him onward, as if he were running downhill. He felt blood trickle out and freeze on his cheeks and chin. Gratefully, the shape of his spacecraft was now discernible a few hundred meters ahead.
Inside the transition room, Pytor looked at his body. Bright red blisters on his legs, arms, and neck contrasted with bluish frost nip on his toes and fingertips. His scraped-up face would take a while to heal. But, for now, he was okay.
Using an onboard transceiver in simplex mode he sent another message to Ruth. “Made it back to the shuttle. Are your hands on the Steinway?”
Twelve long minutes later came her reply. “Yes, they are, waiting for yours.”
An information technology professional residing in Crafton, Pennsylvania, Helmuth Kump has had two short stories published and is presently germinating a science fiction novel. When not working or writing, the native of Queens, New York, enjoys running, playing drums, chess, opera, amateur radio, casino blackjack, books on metaphysics, and spending time with his two adult sons.
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2
0.
Amos Parker
“Go on.”
On one knee in the alien soil, Jasper pointed at the plant’s radial red tendrils. Cassie, with a glance up at the high galaxy of nighttime stars, shook her head. In the low Delanine gravity, her blonde tresses flew windless and wild.
“No. No, Jas. I can’t.”
Her wide blue eyes locked with Jasper’s browns. His hair hung cut to a small fraction of the length of hers, matching his eyes. He looked up at the stars, as she had. The thin Delanine atmosphere scattered a star field twice Earth’s midnight density.
“It won’t hurt, Cas. That I can promise. Not like the past.”
Both of them wore the same loose green clothes they’d come out of the long hypersleep wearing.
“It can’t be love then, now can it Jas.”
Off in the distance, at the base of a craggy hill, the ship Valentine vented steam from thrusters. None of the others there had changed either.
Her fingers were long, white and delicate. His were short, brown and clumsy. His palm alone had a red tendril piercing its lifeline. Close to fifty sprouted from the blue, bud-like pod a stone’s throw away. And, in that gravity, it was a muscular throw.
Soft voices called from the ship and echoed off a cliff near Jasper and Cassie. Somewhere, water gurgled. The tendril pulsed and glowed.
It had taken Jasper some time to calm Cassie down. No wonder.
“I’m going back now, Jas. Please pull that off and come with me. I don’t trust the scouting reports the way you do.”
“I never told you how much I love you, Cas.”
“What?”
The young woman stood up and then took a step away. In the bright starlight, she could see the acne pits on the older man’s face. He said nothing.
“No. You never told me. For –”
She twitched.
“For how long haven’t you been telling?”
“Since the first tests they ran on us, back on Earth. Rorschach. Newton. Shakespeare. In the Hive.”
“Even then?”
“Too scared to say so until …”
Jasper closed his four fingertips and one thumbtip on their palm-penetrating scarlet vine. It hid the biting tip from her blue sight. As if his gentle touch impeded it, the shoot bulged beyond his fingerprints.