Free Stories 2016 Read online

  “It is money that feeds those who inform against us,” said the man, grimly. “But there is little left to us.”

  Edmund took off his overcoat. He was unsurprised, by now, to find a small hedgehog had somehow ended up in the pocket. He moved it carefully, hiding it in the folds, and reached down into the lining until his hand found the odd cool of the jewel. He drew it out. “Would this help?”

  The man peered at it. “How extraordinary! I’ve never seen anything quite like it. What is it?”

  “I don’t know. But I have been told that it is very valuable. The most valuable stone in all Ireland, worth a prince’s ransom.”

  The man blinked. Stared at it again. “It certainly looks as if it should be. I would have to ask someone…I really have to go and consult with McNally about this. In his profession he would possibly know someone who could sell it. I could take it to him.”

  Edmund found himself clutching the silver chain. “Uh. No. I can’t let it go. Maybe I can take it…or you could bring someone here.”

  His involuntary host nodded. “But I’d better hide you, young man. I don’t even want my people to know you’re here.” He took Edmund to a panel on the far side of the room, and pressed a boss to the side of it. It slid open revealing a small room with a bench and little else. “I will get you some food and drink. I’m sorry it’s so Spartan.”

  “It’s safe, and warm and dry,” said Edmund gratefully.

  “There is a small hole which allows you to see out. I will bring a candle. Perhaps something to read?”

  Soon Edmund was left to his own devices in the secret hidey-hole—with some good beef and a mug of porter. Sitting there he felt the phooka squirm in his pocket. “I don’t suppose you’d like some beef and porter,” he asked, more out of politeness than anything else.

  “Beef, no. Porter, yes,” said the phooka in his burring voice. “It is an appropriate reward. Pour a little out on the bench for me.”

  So in the candle-light Edmund ate, and saw the Phooka snuffle up the little puddle of beer.

  The warmth, the security, and the porter had him doze off, until the screaming, yelling and breaking started. Peering through the hole, Edmund saw a group of soldiers, and several rather more sinister looking men coming in through the broken-down door to the parlor. “The hiding place should be this room. He is not to be removed until we find this ‘vast diamond,’” said a grim-faced officer.

  Edmund felt, in horror, for his only hope, the phooka.

  It wasn’t there. Neither was the candle.

  As the men were feeling and tapping their way around the paneled walls, there was a sudden and terrified yell from down the hall: “Fire! FIRE!”

  “See what that’s about,” snapped the officer to the soldier at the doorway. The soldier stepped out—and came straight back in. “The place is an inferno, sir! Out, we have to get out!”

  Frantically, Edmund tried to join them. Better caught than burned. But the panel refused to budge and there was no one to hear his yelling and banging. Except the phooka, who came in as a horse in a house, and a very amused looking one at that.

  “Let me out,” yelled Edmund. “The place is on fire!”

  The phooka calmly kicked the panel open. “Not to worry, Prince. It’s something of an illusion. Merely the candle-flame. We can go out of the back door.”

  Edmund was too stunned—and half-terrified out of his wits—to do more than follow the phooka, as they walked out of the kitchen, and down to the little alley along the back of the square. It was already nearly dusk, out there. Once they were well clear: the phooka said: “Where now, Prince?”

  It was a hard question.

  “I can take you to Cnoc Meadha,” suggested the phooka. “To your father, the king.”

  Edmund bit his lip. Shook his head. It might be true by blood, but he knew who his father was, and it was not this King of Faerie. It seemed important, now to do what his real father had wanted, as best as possible. “I need to get onto a ship down at the docks. She may be watched. In France…well, I can try to sell this jewel and try to support the dream of my father…the man who loved me and raised me, not Finvarra.”

  “Your wish,” said the phooka, “is of course my command.” But he seemed pleased about this and did not try to talk Edmund out of it.

  In the dusk they arrived at the quayside, the darkening sky pricked with masts and spars. Somehow the phooka had become a pocket-dwelling hedgehog again. The lamp-lighters were busy, and stevedores and draymen were too, finishing up their day. One of them told Edmund where to find the Darroway. “There she is. That two-masted packet.” The stevedore took a quick glance around, “But you’d want to be careful son. She’s bein’ watched.” And he walked off, hastily in the opposite direction.

  So Edmund approached the little ship very cautiously. He spotted one man, sitting in the shadows on some crates. But there might be others. He found himself a spot between some empty salt-fish barrels and settled to watch.

  The phooka inevitably asked what he was doing. “Waiting for a chance to sneak onto that ship.”

  “A ship that will take you away from the green lands. I have never been on one of those,” said the phooka, curiously. “What are they like?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been on one either.”

  “I will go and see how it might be done,” said the phooka, slipping out of his pocket.

  “Not a lot of hedgehogs around here,” commented Edmund.

  “I shall choose a suitable form.”

  But it was as a hedgehog that he returned, nuzzling at Edmund’s foot. “The ships are watched. But if you’d put me in your pocket and go to the boozing ken up yonder alley, it can be arranged. Just buy the men there some rum and take a hot glass with them in return. They’ll be willing to help.”

  That would be easier than sitting in cold. And he still had some money which he’d not spent on the mail coach, thought Edmund.

  It was dirty little place, smelling of rum, urine and unwashed sailors. The men were a rough looking trio too. But they were willing to let him buy them a drink.

  ***

  And that was the last he remembered, until he woke and muzzily said: “Where am I?”

  “You said you wanted to be on board the ship,” said the almost entirely black cat, bar the white blaze on its chest. A cat with the odd eyes of the phooka. They seemed more natural on a cat, than they had on a hedgehog or a horse.

  “Yes,” said Edmund, with a groan. “Oh, my head. How did I get here?”

  “I’d believe that the right description is that you’ve been pressed.”

  “Pressed?” asked Edmund.

  “Into service, as they say,” said the phooka.

  “You mean…I am part of the crew?”

  “Yes. They thought you were older and larger than you are. A small glamor.”

  “I think I am going to die,” he said, as floor he was lying on rolled beneath him.

  “Indeed, it’s what the men in chains below are saying too,” said the phooka, unsympathetically. “But the sailors seem happy enough.”

  “There are men in chains below?”

  “Yes, they’re throwing up,” said the phooka, with cheerful unconcern. “I recognized one of the prisoners as being from the house in Dublin.”

  Edmund pinched his eyes shut. It made no sense and the ship still rolled. “When do we expect to get to France?” he asked hoping that that would at least mean the movement would stop.

  “I wouldn’t know. One of the sailors said we lie in the Biscay. What does that mean?”

  Edmund scrambled to his feet and up the companionway, and out into the fresh salt-laden air. This was a bigger vessel than the little packet he’d hoped to board without being spotted. And…that flag. It was the white ensign.

  “This is the wrong ship!” he said savagely.

  The phooka gave a very feline shrug. “A ship is a ship. You wanted to go away from the green lands.”

  It all became horr
ifyingly clear to Edmund now. Biscay. The flag. The prisoners below. To the phooka there was no real difference between places across the sea from Ireland. France was as foreign as where the ship was taking the rebels below.

  The prisoners were being transported…to Australia.

  And so was he, with the jewel-key to Faerie lands still in the lining of his coat. The desperate United Irish rebels were being rounded up or killed in the Wicklow Hills, just as the blackthorn people foretold, with blood and havoc, and a hatred that would run deep for generations.

  He’d been delivered into the hand of his foes, and sent into exile.

  But it felt like freedom, right now.

  As for faerie…Finvarra had never been his father. His father lay dead at the hands of Loyalist Militia.

  “You’re awake, are you?” commented a boy not much older than Edmund, coming up from behind. “Hello, where did the cat come from?”

  “It’s my p…cat,” answered Edmund.

  “Good. The last one died. We need one to keep the mice down. What’s its name?

  Edmund knew the answer to that one. “Trouble,” he said.

  Moonlet Sonata

  by William Ledbetter

  I replayed Toomie's last words for the seventeenth time and they still made no sense.

  "They're just babies."

  What had she meant?

  The argument with her brother had been ugly. She'd called him greedy and a selfish little prick, then even said he'd murdered their parents to gain access to the 55 Cancri mining rights. All of that may have been important, but instead of screaming for help or begging Kofi to stop, she'd used her final breath to say, "They're just babies."

  I replayed my recording of her final minutes again as I watched Kofi wrap his sister's rapidly cooling body in clinch wrap. When he finished, he strapped her to the control cabin's bulkhead.

  "What did she mean when she said they were only babies?" I asked Kofi.

  He ignored me and turned his attention to prepping Indian Summer for the gate translation.

  "This wasn't your fault," I said. "I think we can prove that if you surrender. You signed the waiver, but you're only eighteen and your brain is still growing. There have been problems in past cases. My implantation into your head might have caused serious damage."

  "Shut up," he muttered. "Or I'll kill you too."

  It was a valid threat. He could do it with a mere code word. From my home on a jellified substrate positioned between his brain and skull, I had nearly a thousand hard connections interfacing with his cerebral cortex, yet I'd been powerless to stop him when he'd reached for Toomie's throat.

  And he could wipe me from his head with impunity. I had no rights and he would suffer no consequences, but I did have options. I hadn't had enough time to save Toomie, but I might be able to stop him from leaving the system. I ordered my nano assemblers to finish building the last millimeter of garrote wire to encircle his spinal cord.

  He'd been furious when he killed her—I knew that because I'd monitored his biochemistry the entire time—but it had not been a crime of passion. Not the kind that blossomed from blind rage. He'd rigged Indian Summer to be a radio black hole before bringing her aboard. We had been unable to transmit or connect to any network from his ship. She'd been trapped as effectively as I.

  "This makes no sense," I said. "They'll still arrest you when we return. There are too many tracking records showing Toomie's visit to your ship."

  He only grunted and closed his eyes. Since he'd cut me out of the command loop, I had no access to the ship's instruments or video and could only see fuzzy, monochrome images through his eyes, but I deduced from his sudden labored breathing that Indian Summer started her burn to move us into an approach orbit for the transfer gate.

  I had to decide. Once we attained the new orbit it would be too late. If I used the spinal garrote, I could stop him from leaving the system with Toomie's body. He would be caught and punished, but I too would be punished. I had secreted nano-assemblers in my host's body. Under these circumstances they might show mercy and not order my immediate execution, but probably not. Still, it was not fear of oblivion that made me hesitate. If I stopped Kofi, then I would never see the singing Moonlets.

  Kofi's parents had ignored my offers of a symbiotic liaison, but when they died I renewed my efforts to contact the children. It took Kofi three months to reply, but when he finally agreed, I left Professor Walker and my research position at MIT and initiated the transfer that same day. Due to one rather megalomaniac individual early in our history, we Fabs were no longer allowed to live outside of a human body, but we did have the right to switch between willing hosts as we wished.

  My entire career had been focused on gas giants, so I was immediately enthralled by the first reports from 55 Cancri. When the Gate Probe arrived and survey craft were sent through, they found thousands of crystalline structures orbiting the system's largest gas giant, creating systematic manipulations of the world's natural radio signals.

  Discussions and theories flourished during that first year, but since they found no evidence that the Moonlets were anything more than a strange, but naturally occurring phenomenon, the Gate Authority refused to send another expedition. The Pattersons, who'd won prospecting rights via lottery five years before the Gate Probe even arrived, saw an opportunity to make money from either scientific or tourism expeditions, locked the gate and started putting together a business model. Then they died.

  Had Kofi really killed them? Why was his trip to 55 Cancri so important at this particular point in time? So many uncertainties, but the largest was Toomie's last comment. Had she meant the Moonlets? Were they only babies?

  I had to see them. I had to know. That need outweighed all others. So I waited.

  Three minutes later Kofi relaxed, signaling an end to the course correction.

  I listened to the chatter between Kofi and Jupiter Gate Control as he queued up behind tankers, freighters and liners. They were mostly bound for either Saturn or the inner system, but we were bound for a destination that lay forty-one light-years farther.

  Kofi cycled through camera views, checking the small cargo train being pushed ahead of Indian Summer. Each container was held in place and shielded from Jupiter's radiation by a powerful magnetic field that had to be turned off before the box could pass through the gate. It was a complicated series of switching fields off and on at the right times, a delicate maneuver, but he didn't ask for my help. I had no idea why he'd agreed to my request for a liaison.

  The gate appeared first as a dot on the main monitor, but soon filled the screen. Kofi triggered a deceleration burn that ended just as he sent the code directing the gate to establish a quantum link with the gate probe in the 55 Cancri system.

  The gate's composite strut grid raced toward us at just under five hundred klicks per hour, which invoked the panicky feeling of flying into a wall for most humans, but Kofi didn't flinch. Where the first container should have hit the panel, lightning filigree outlined the intersection and it passed through, followed in succession by the other three and finally the Indian Summer.

  #

  A gas giant, four times larger than Jupiter, dominated the camera's field with twenty shades of yellow and orange. The official name was 55 Cancri, planet D, but because its icy rings glittered like a stream of shattered gold, most of the planetary researchers called it Tinsel. From my prison in Kofi's head, I could see only what Kofi saw on the screen and could hear none of the "music" made by the twelve-thousand Moonlets.

  "Kofi? You promised to let me study these life forms. I can't even listen to their music unless you allow me to access the ship's sensors."

  He snorted. "Yeah, but that was before I killed Toomie."

  "We've passed through the gate. If I sent a message to the police now it would take forty-one years to arrive."

  He scanned sensor feeds that I could barely even see, but said nothing.

  "Where's the benefit in my betraying you? I wante
d to come here. Besides, you can always trigger the kill switch or lock me out of the loop again."

  He covered the keypad and typed something. The part of me that had been essentially dead flared to life and established contact with the Indian Summer's data store and sensor array. I could see again and luxuriated in the flood of data from her sensors and cameras.

  Kofi sent the command to lock the gate. Not even the Gate Authority could operate it without his password. They would have to send an override order, by radio signal. I couldn't leave without him.

  "With your permission," I said. "I'd like to launch my probes now." I started diagnostics on the twenty grapefruit-sized spacecraft. Even though we were supposed to be partners in this expedition, Kofi had not only made me purchase the probes with my own funds, but also charged me to berth them in the Indian Summer's equipment bay. We had a rather one-sided business partnership.

  "Sure," he said, "but it's also time you started earning your keep. I need your help with some things."

  After unbuckling his harness, he pushed off and floated back to the equipment storage lockers at the rear of the cabin. He opened one of the bins and pulled out a yellow canister about half a meter long. It was programmable thruster unit. Using a splintlike arrangement, he stiffened his sister's body, then attached the unit to her wrapped feet.

  "Program this thing to avoid the ring debris and send Toomie into the planet's atmosphere."

  I launched my probes, then did as Kofi asked.

  Neither of us spoke while he struggled into his pressure suit, but I admit that I was curious about his "earning my keep" comment. I'd long wondered why he agreed to my request for a liaison.

  "The thruster module is ready," I said. "So what else did you have in mind?"

  "Why'd it take you so long to ask?"

  "I assumed . . . "

  "It's because you didn't care," he said and closed his helmet with a loud click. "You just wanted to get here. You're as single-minded and greedy about what you want as I am."

  I didn't reply.