Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
An Incident at the Mars Debates
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
Captain Daneham met his wife in the following way.
He was at the House of Commons, watching the Mars debates; he’d gone alone, and the Shadow Minister for Space was wittering away about fuel sources, as if all that hadn’t been sorted ages ago.
Two girls in moonsuits were standing nearby, and, unable to pay attention to the old windbag any longer, he watched them instead. They were whispering and laughing softly. The tall one was what he would call Junoesque, a regular Amazon, who wore her stars and bars as if born in a rocket, while her friend had close-cropped red curls, a naughty pixie face, and a shockingly careless way of wearing her uniform—sleeves rolled up and unpolished boots. When she turned his way he saw the Mechanics’ 101st patch on her chest pocket and understood. Posy bunch of know-it-alls, they were, but too good at their job by half.
He watched them, and they watched him, while down among the green leather seats of Parliament history was made.
Then came the quick, sturdy tap of boot heels, and a flash of brown leather, followed by the flick of a blue-black ponytail.
“Sorry we’re late—got held up,” said the girl with the ponytail. “Miss anything?”
“Only old al-Rashid going on and on,” said Juno, and the redhead laughed. “Where’s Sarah?”
“In the loo, she’ll be along in a minute. Literally, we got held up. Four lads and two guns in an alley.”
“No!” Juno stared.
“Good heavens. Are they all right?” Asked the redhead.
Ponytail laughed; he could hear the adrenalin draining from her.
“One won’t walk again, I’m afraid. The others are probably still up the station explaining things. You know what she’s like.”
Captain Daneham couldn’t help but stare himself. And then she came around the corner, brown hair with a touch of red in it, checking her purse, looking up at her friends with the clearest blue eyes he had ever seen, as if she wondered what all the fuss was about.
He couldn’t help himself. He stepped forward, saying, “I beg your pardon, but I couldn’t help overhearing…”
The rest of his stumbling speech was drowned in the sound of shouts and roars from the benches below, the noise of history—but he did manage to get out for a drink with them afterwards, once colonization was decided upon.
The Lost Seed
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
Spring never really showed up when the calendars said it did. By April first, we rarely saw anything but solid-cloud skies and lumps of icy snow all over our frozen mud yards. But the pomegranate made us feel things weren’t completely hopeless.
The Mentonville pomegranate wasn’t as famous as that groundhog down in Pennsylvania. We’d stand in the sleet on the city hall steps, while the civil witch muttered the spell and the mayor tossed the fruit over our heads.
The pomegranate exploded at the top of its arc, and the seeds would drift, random as fireflies, red as taillights, and scatter.
Our parents would hurry us home to start looking for the seed we knew was somewhere. When we did, sleet would turn to warm rain, mud would thaw, and spring would arrive.
Some families, it took less than a week; for others, nearly a month. Spring came, eventually, to everyone.
Except, one year, for the Ziglars, who didn’t seem to be trying at all. The rest of us mowed our lawns for the first time while they were getting their snow shovels back out. The rest of us were swimming down at the oxbow, while the Ziglar kids skated on the flooded patch beyond their backyard.
We all thought they were crazy, but, in the hottest days of August, we paid a quarter to shiver fifteen minutes on the winter side of the fence.
The adults didn’t admit the Ziglars were onto something until the leaves started turning, and the Ziglars’ lawn finally began to green. It was a long winter for the rest of us, but a balmy summer for them. So it was with a certain satisfaction that we all saw the unfound seed sprout to a whole tree in the waning days of their out-of-sync summer. A whole tree laden with fruit: there was no way the Ziglars were dodging the natural order of things this year.
We were right: when the pomegranate burst downtown, every one on the Ziglar’s tree exploded. There was no way they couldn’t find a seed. It was spring by sunset, and they didn’t see another cloud for months, but roasted in the fiercest drought in memory.
Still, they did OK, their fields yielding more than anyone else’s, watered as they were by meltwater from the properties on all sides, where the rest of us were trying the winter thing.