Free Stories 2015 Read online

  She laughed. “All right, no, it’s not. You guys have enough roadblocks in your way getting ahead in our society. It costs me nothing but a little credit to put your name first, and this is a big, splashy, important event in the history of space travel. If you get a lot of the credit, it will show a lot more people how much you have to contribute, not just by diving and swimming and so on, but in thinking fields, just as much as us. And you did do a lot of the work, so it’s not in any way a lie.”

  The big Bemmie rubbed his arm-tendrils uncertainly for a moment, then relaxed. “Then . . . thank you, thank you very much, Sue. I’ll make sure to always mention you if anyone asks.”

  She gave the alien a friendly slap on the back. “I’d expect no less, given how I’ll be talking you up.” She looked at her omni display. “Your family’s continuing on? You’re sure?”

  “Yes,” he said emphatically. “Whips . . . Whips would not want his loss to stop us. We were honored beyond all other pods in being chosen; we cannot give up now, or it is possible that it will be a long time before any of our people is given the chance again.” His colors muted again for a moment. “And it has now been nine months. More than enough time for any survivors to have made it here . . . and longer than any of them could have survived.”

  She held back a reflexive, well-meaning offer of hope. Kryndomerr was right; there weren’t enough supplies on any of the lifeboats to allow them to survive to this point, and even fewer supplies had been on LS-5, the boat that Numbers’ son had been aboard. “My sympathies again. But I’m sure you’re right.” She gripped the bases of two of his arms with her hands, the equivalent of a warm handshake. “Good luck on Tantalus. And maybe I’ll find a way to come out that way and visit.”

  “Please do. My pod . . . my family would be honored to have you as a guest.”

  She stood and watched as Numbers and his family — Windharvest, Dragline, and Pageturner — boarded the shuttle to Outward Initiative. All four of them stopped just before boarding and gave her a wave-and-flattened-bow that was the deepest sign of respect, echoed by the solemn color pattern on each. She waved and bowed back; a few moments later, the landing shuttle launched and was gone.

  Sue stood there a moment, just letting the quiet efficiency of Orado Station soak into her. She thought back to the time just before Outward Initiative’s arrival, and felt a pang of guilt. I was wishing something would happen then. I should always remind myself what ‘something happening’ means in space. This “something” had cost over two hundred people their lives. Some might have died long after the others, drifting in space in non—functioning shuttles; they obviously had not survived.

  From now on, she promised herself, I will be happy to have nothing to do.

  She smiled, and headed towards Port Control. Back to what I devoutly hope will be many years of boring duty!

  FIN.

  When the Lion Feeds

  by John Lambshead

  Lady Trouble, that was how Hawthorn always remembered her.

  The Kit Kat Klub was the sort of place considered sophisticated by the sort of people who considered themselves sophisticated. Anything unchromed was plastered in plushly padded leather in a particularly repellent shade of purple.

  In one corner a female singer in a shimmering dress slashed so low that you could see her fundamentals crooned about the evils of wealth. Behind her three bored looking young men in evening dress variously beat, blew and stroked musical instruments as if they were filling in time while waiting for the main feature.

  Hawthorn lost a little money and won a little in return on the gaming tables while waiting for a contact who never arrived. The enigmatic message that had brought him to this den of lethargy was a bust. He finished his drink and disposed of his glass onto a tray carried in an overhead grip by a waitress in a spangled leotard.

  Then she walked in.

  Walk is a simple verb implying one foot placed in front of the other in steady sequence. Such a definition did not even begin to adequately describe her progress. She glided across the room on heels higher than the mark up on the club’s drinks.

  Hawthorn watched her, not something that caused him undue pain. Hair fashionably styled in sea-green waves flowed over her bare shoulders matching the color she had chosen for eyes nestling deep within the maroon mask perched on her nose.

  She slowed when she reached the roulette wheel. Spectators moved aside—but she hesitated before taking a place at the table. Although she might have seemed serene to the unobservant, Hawthorn noticed an infinitesimal tremble when she placed a handful of coins on spin-positive. A spin bet gave only a one third chance of a win, less the House’s zero, worse than the fifty-fifty of even-odd but better than the one fifth chance of a color and much, much better than the probability of choosing a number.

  “No more bets.”

  The croupier tossed a silver ball with a practiced flick of the wrist. It slid around against the spin of the plate until descending far enough to hit the grid with a protesting rattle. He damped the wheel with the edge of his hand.

  “Twenty-two wins, evens, green and spin-positive.”

  The croupier pushed the lady’s winnings onto the table and she let them ride: spin-positive won again. She bit a finger in indecision before transferring the pile to spin negative.

  “Forty-seven wins, odd, blue and spin-negative,” said the croupier, after the little ball of destiny had finished bouncing.

  He replaced the lady’s winnings with a few high-denomination coins as her impressive heap of loot threatened to spill over onto neighboring bets.

  She let the money ride.

  Hawthorn pursed his lips. She had won three times on a one third probability. The chance of winning and losing was exactly the same on each spin of the wheel and she had no greater chance of disaster on the fourth try than the first but letting a bet run changed the odds perniciously. Sooner or later the gambler would lose and a quick mental calculation suggested to Hawthorn that she now had less than a one percent chance.

  The ball rattled. When it dropped into the slot a collective groan arose from the table.

  “Zero,” the croupier said unemotionally, raking in all the cash.

  He could afford to be phlegmatic. Win or lose, it wasn’t his money.

  The lady took it well. Perhaps there was the merest hint of a quiver of her lips and a glistening in her eyes but she walked across the room to the bar with her nose in the air. Behind her the roulette wheel rattled into life once more.

  She selected a stool two seats up from Hawthorn and ordered a drink. When the barman brought the heavily diluted offering she fiddled in her purse. A sneer formed slowly on the barman’s face like a fungal infection.

  “I believe it is my turn to pick up the tab,” Hawthorn said, flipping a coin on the bar. “And I’ll have what the lady is drinking.”

  “Thank you,” she said, after the barman had left. She drank deeply. “Who’re you?”

  “Knight,” Hawthorn said, taking the stool beside her. “Jeb Knight.”

  The name Hawthorn was not entirely unknown in certain circles and he wasn’t looking for trouble. He was never looking for trouble—but trouble had a way of seeking him out, nonetheless.

  “Well you saved my blushes tonight, Jeb Knight,” she said, holding her glass up in salute before taking a generous gulp. “I doubt I’d enough cash left to pay.”

  “And you are?”

  She gave a small bow.

  “Desole Frawline, at your service, sar.”

  She spoke precisely with an accent hinting at a genteel upbringing but her voice had a brittle edge that intrigued Hawthorn. She sounded like someone clinging by the fingertips to normality.

  “I admire your bravery.” Hawthorn shook his head. “It takes guts or stupidity to let your winnings run like that, and you don’t seem foolish.”

  She laughed over-brightly and finished the rest of her drink in a single gulp.

  “Not bravery or stupidity but despera
tion. I’m no worse off for losing.” She shrugged. “But you don’t want to hear my sob story.”

  “On the contrary, I like stories,” Hawthorn replied.

  He signaled the barman for refills. Hawthorn could be a surprisingly good listener when someone interested him—and he found her very interesting. Her story was not unusual in itself, merely the details varied, her parents dead, no siblings just a beloved grandfather with a nasty wasting disease needing complex, regular and very expensive genosurgery. Eventually the money ran out. Many of the ‘Stream’s population carried molecular time bombs in their DNA from the biowars. Every so often something unpleasant erupted and doomed an individual.

  Naturally nobody would lend money to a dying man, but a bank would to his granddaughter. Her contract as an indentured servant was very sellable should she default. And of course, default she duly had.

  “And someone has bought your contract?” Hawthorn asked.

  She nodded, blinking back tears.

  “The bastard who owns this club,” she said bitterly. “That’s why I chose to gamble here. It would’ve been sweet to have bought back my contract with his own money. I guess it won’t be too bad working here. I’ll just have to get use to wearing spangled leotards.”

  Hawthorn thought she might have to get used to a lot more than that.

  She fished a miniaturized datapad out of her grip and slid off the stool.

  “Excuse me for a second,” she said, heading for the lady’s convenience.

  Hawthorn ordered another round and considered. He hauled his own battered heavy duty pad out of an inside pocket and dropped it on the bar. A smile flickered across Hawthorn’s face when it gave a little chime and flashed a message. So she was not as naive as she looked, checking him out by interrogating his pad with her own.

  He grinned. Knight was an old and favored alias so his pad would insist that it belonged to an entirely respectable and solvent gentleman of that name no matter how deep she looked. However, her search was entirely superficial, merely the behavior of a sensible woman confirming the identity of a strange man who approached her in a bar.

  Still, one check deserved another. He opened her slim grip bag and examined the contents. There was little of a personal nature, just the usual grooming devices without which no lady can pass through her front door.

  A quick check via his datapad confirmed that an indentured service contract had been taken on a Mistress DS Frawline which would activate within the week unless redeemed. He tapped the pad with his thumb to dig deeper and it slipped. He made a grab but for it and dropped her bag in the process

  It fell onto the foot rail with a clang ejecting a cosmetic tube. The top flipped off but fortunately the container was unbroken. Hawthorn retrieved both and was replacing the cap when he was struck by the most unusual nozzle on the perfume dispenser. For some reason it was fashioned to look like the business end of an ion pistol.

  He inserted a nail into a small slit in the tube and flipped open a cover exposing a button. Hawthorn was a curious man who was inclined to trip switches and depress buttons just to see what happened but in this case he restrained his natural impulses. Before he replaced the top he sniffed the nozzle. It didn’t smell of anything much.

  When she returned, Desole discovered Hawthorn flipping through some files on his pad. “The owner of this club is a certain Ramos Neddard and he’s sitting over there.”

  Hawthorn inclined his head.

  “No don’t look. He might recognize you.”

  “I shouldn’t think so,” she replied. “We’ve never met.”

  Actually, Neddard didn’t seem particularly interested in Desole, which was odd since Hawthorn assumed that he had at least looked at her picture before buying her. Not everyone looked good in a leotard, especially not the spangled variety.

  “What happened to your grandfather?” Hawthorn asked.

  “He died anyway,” she replied.

  Hawthorn nodded, half expecting the answer.

  “Maybe I can help,” he said.

  “I don’t want your money,” she cut in quickly.

  “I wasn’t going to offer you any,” Hawthorn replied truthfully.

  He had an aversion to handing stacks of coin to young woman he’d just met in a bar, no matter how fair their countenance or unfortunate their life history. But he was bored, she was interesting and her countenance was fair.

  The club owner on the other hand was not fair. He looked like the product from a biowar experiment to cross a man with a yeti. His compatriots sat around the same table were no more prepossessing. An anthropologist might have waxed lyrical at their resemblance to an early stage of human evolution but Hawthorn doubted if even their mothers loved them.

  “Perhaps I might persuade Master Neddard to release you.”

  “And why would he do that?” she asked.

  “Possibly I could appeal to his better nature,” Hawthorn replied, piously.

  Desole looked skeptical. Across the room Neddard laughed coarsely at some witticism from one of the gorillas sat at his table, slapping a passing spangled leotard across the bottom by way of emphasis.

  “Or perhaps not,” Hawthorn said.

  A couple of nights later a new punter strolled into the Kit Kat Klub. He was about the same build as Hawthorn but there the resemblance ended. His hair was brown and his skin olive brown, matching dark brown eyes not at all like Hawthorn’s blond hair and blue eyes.

  Rather more unusually, the punter wore clothes far more fashionable, which is to say far more expensive, than either Hawthorn or most of his fellow ‘Streamers. But what really marked the punter was the expression of credulous imbecility that he wore on his face like a badge of honor.

  Hawthorn was very attached to that look. It had served him well over the years. When he opened his wallet to buy a drink he made sure the barman saw a clip of purple Manzanita sovereigns that would have choked a fleek.

  He wandered around the tables, making the odd wager, usually losing. He bet according to whim or whether he discerned some lucky omen in the crease of a card or the play of light. Such a punter warms the cockles of the club owner’s heart. The odds are shaved to favor the house even against the most able players but a gambler who believes in lucky omens is a gift from the gods.

  Hawthorn returned to the bar for a refill of distilled water contaminated with the merest trace of plum brandy. He expressed his disappointment at the lack of action in the club in an accent so refined that it would have made a Brasilian Senator brush up his vowels.

  “The real players meet in a back room,” the barman ventured.

  “And how does one obtain entry to said back room?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  The barman painted an ingratiating smile across his mouth. At least,Hawthorn chose to believe it was a smile rather than acid indigestion. The man looked over Hawthorn’s shoulder and nodded. Hawthorn had a good view of the gaming room in the mirror behind the bar and so noticed Neddard and some cronies sliding out of a side door.

  Only a few minutes passed before a spangled leotard arrived to conduct Hawthorn into the inner sanctum. The Kit Kat back room decor was utterly Spartan in comparison to the public areas. Paint uncurled from the walls and the ceiling showed the residue of thousands of cigarettes. In one corner stood a desk, and spare gambling equipment was stacked around suggesting that the room doubled both as office and store.

  A light cluster hanging from a flexible arm lit a low table in the center of the room. Hawthorn suspected that table was normally where they counted up the night’s takings and that the cluster included cameras.

  Three of the four chairs around the table were taken, the club owner sitting on the left.

  “I’m Neddard. Understand you want to play a real game?”

  “If the stakes are high enough,” Hawthorn said, boldly.

  “Siddown,” Neddard pointed to the empty chair.

  “This is Eddy and that’s Frog,” Neddard said indicating
his companions with his thumb without taking his eyes off Hawthorn.

  “Peebleford,” Hawthorn replied, “Quinton Peebleford.”

  He held out his hand but received only sneers in reply.

  “Bring us some drinks in an hour or so, honey,” Neddard slapped the girl’s rump, apparently his normal way of communicating with the female staff.

  The girl shuffled out.

  “We’re playing Chase The Lady, Eddy’s in the chair.”

  The aforesaid Eddy produced three cards and turned them over to show the Queen of Spades and the two red knaves. He picked one of the knaves up with his left hand and the other two cards with his right, queen under the knave, before placing them face down on the table and sliding them slowly in what appeared to be a futile attempt to randomize their position.

  “Lay your bets,” Eddy said.

  Hawthorn sighed. They took him for a complete mug. Chase The Lady was the oldest con in the world. Eddy had probably switched the positions of knave and queen by dealing the bottom card first. Hawthorn couldn’t win. That was the point.

  “Sorry gentlemen, I’m out,” Hawthorn said.

  “Now wait a moment….,” Neddard half rose.

  Hawthorn held up a hand, palm out.

  “My dear old nanny made me promise never to play Chase since her father lost his potting shed in a game. Can’t go against poor old nanny, eh?”

  Neddard took a deep breath.

  “Okay, how about Landsknight?”

  “Don’t think I know the rules.”

  “No worries, we’ll teach you.”

  “I like to play with new cards. Nanny was very particular about germs.”

  Neddard turned an interesting shade of purple. He stomped over to the desk and retrieved a handful of sealed packs from an unlocked drawer.

  “Happy now?” Neddard snarled, throwing the packs down. “Nanny have anything else to say?”

  Hawthorn shook his head.