Bastion Science Fiction Magazine - Issue 3, June 2014 Read online

  Where he had once spent several hours a day hauling water back to the house, he now simply poured a few bucketfuls into the trough and let the water run down to collect in a large metal tub outside his front door. Freed from the tyranny of his water needs, Asim found more time to gather food and repair sections of the house that had deteriorated over the years. The tree, now nearly six years old and thirsty as ever, had suffered a great deal during the construction of the trough but it soon recovered and by the end of the following year it stood nearly ten feet tall.

  Sometime during the tree’s seventh year, Asim noticed that more travelers were passing by the house than had done so in the past. Not all of them stopped to stare at the tree, but all of them gave it at least a long, considered glance. Asim watched them carefully from behind locked doors, his rifle at the ready.

  One day he returned from the river to find a man chopping at the tree with an axe. Asim, who always carried his rifle with him, shot the stranger dead. He never knew what purpose the man had in mind. The axe had inflicted serious damage to the tree’s trunk and when it became clear that it would soon have difficulty supporting its own weight, Asim used his few remaining nails and wooden boards to fashion a set of supports.

  In the early months of the tree’s eighth year, Asim returned from the river to find a woman seated in the tree’s ample shadow. She sat hypnotized by the movement of its branches in the wind and took no notice of Asim’s arrival. He said nothing to her and went into the house, but he continued to watch her from the upstairs window. Several hours passed and she did not move. Asim did not leave the house to hunt that day.

  When the sun rose the next day, the woman was still there. Asim fetched a bucket and offered to let her water the tree. She accepted and he left for the day to gather food. When he returned, she was still there. She remained there with him from that day forward.

  With Lillian’s arrival, Asim could finally venture farther away from the house without fear of thieves or another madman with an axe. He taught her to shoot and gave her his spare rifle when he traveled to collect food or trade with nearby settlements. Asim rarely visited the small village to the west, but he did make lengthy journeys to distant trading posts that peddled artifacts of the old world. On one journey he found a book that contained information on trees, but since neither he nor Lillian could read, it was of little use. He always looked for seeds, but the ones he found were useless, dried out husks.

  The tree was over twenty feet tall by its tenth year. Every spring, it produced small seed petals, but they always dried out under the scalding sun before they could find any purchase in the soil. Lillian suggested planting them, but Asim feared that they could not spare the water to sustain another tree. During that year, more travelers stopped to marvel at the tree than ever before. It was no longer possible for anyone to pass by without taking note since the tree was nearly as big as the house beside it.

  At Lillian’s insistence, Asim finally greeted and spoke to the travelers. Some of them asked how such a thing could survive in the barren wastes and Asim explained how he had constructed the irrigation trough and reinforced the tree’s trunk after it was attacked. Others simply stared and said nothing before continuing their journey. Lillian began giving a seed petal to anyone who asked about the tree and Asim eventually took to offering a drink of water to every traveler.

  By the tree’s fifteenth year, it was taller than the house and nearly as wide. Where travelers had once stopped to gawk at the tree before continuing on their journeys, a good number of pilgrims now arrived with the sole purpose of laying eyes upon the towering giant. Many of them brought offerings in the form of food and supplies and, much to Asim’s surprise, they asked for nothing in return. When the aging irrigation system was damaged in a severe storm during the tree’s seventeenth year, many visitors offered their assistance and the repairs were completed in less than a month.

  Lillian fell ill near the end of the tree’s twentieth year and Asim spent the rest of the year tending to her worsening condition. He never discovered the source of her illness and could do little more than comfort her with his presence in the final weeks of her life. After she died, he buried her beneath the shadow of the tree.

  With Lillian’s passing, Asim became more reclusive. He no longer spoke to visitors, though every day he set out a bowl of the petal seeds that Lillian had joyously passed out to anyone that happened by the house. One day blurred into the next and Asim no longer bothered to keep track of them. More than ever, the tree became the sole focus of his daily routine. He no longer traveled to distant settlements to trade, leaving the house only to send water down the irrigation trough and to gather enough food to survive. When there were no visitors about, he sat under the tree next to Lillian’s grave. Sometimes he cried.

  The tree was over fifty feet high when Asim, now white-headed and wrinkled, developed a painful, rasping cough. His labored breathing and sore joints made it difficult to carry out his daily tasks and, for the first time, he considered what might befall the tree should he become incapable of caring for it. He spent many weeks considering what to do, but he knew from the beginning what Lillian would have suggested. Finally, he relented under the weight of her memory and set off towards the old village to the west where he had once received a handful of seeds.

  The journey was more difficult than he remembered. When he reached the town, he could not believe how greatly it had changed. Defended by a sturdy, mudbrick wall, the settlement was no longer a ramshackle collection of vagabond traders and predatory wanderers, but a living, breathing community. There were families and children, wells that brought water up from the earth, and gardens filled with a brilliant array of plants.

  And on every corner of every earthen street, there was a tree.

  Asim recognized the characteristics immediately, the thin-winged petals, the narrow leaves, the rough bark. He thought of Lillian and the petals she had handed out to everyone who stood in wonder before their living monument of the glory of a world they had thought lost forever.

  At first, the townspeople only stared at him. Then there were whispers, starting among the older folk and spreading to the youngest. When Asim introduced himself, he was met by a mixture of gasps and cheers that left him bewildered. The townspeople surged forward and embraced him like a long lost relative. Overwhelmed and scarcely able to speak, Asim wanted nothing of the praise they heaped upon him. He explained that he had but a simple request, that someone bury him next to his beloved Lillian and care for their tree when he died.

  Satisfied, Asim returned to his house alone. It was nearly dark when he arrived and after sitting beneath the tree for several minutes, he went inside and fell asleep.

  A few days after his return, a boy from the town visited the house and found Asim’s dead body in the bedroom. He was buried the next day beside Lillian and the town’s entire population attended the funeral. After the service, the town elders selected a group of young men and women and charged them with the care of the massive tree that loomed over the now crumbling house.

  In the years that followed, the townspeople gathered to commemorate the Asim’s life on the day of his death. A few people suggested planting flowers on the graves or planting more trees in the area, but the older townsfolk, those who recalled the wonder of laying eyes upon that lone sign of life in a barren landscape, rejected such notions.

  The tree may stand by itself, they said, but it had never been alone.

  ###

  Benjamin Sperduto works as a senior editorial assistant for an academic journal. In addition to having a number of short stories published, he has also worked as a freelance editor and writer for Fantasy Flight Games and FASA Games. His first novel, The Walls of Dalgorod, is forthcoming in Winter 2014 from Curiosity Quills Press.

  A graduate of the University of South Florida, he holds a Master’s Degree in European History with a focus in seventeenth century Russia. He lives and works in Tampa, Florida with his wife
and two children (and their menagerie of pets). Visit his website (benjaminsperduto.com) for a full list of previous and forthcoming publications.

  Miracle of Asteroid Camp 88

  Michael Andre-Driussi

  Toothless Tom stuck his head into the gambling den just long enough to say, "Necky's in trouble."

  For Shoe the Gambler, who had been placidly studying his bad hand of cards, this distraction seemed as good an excuse as any.

  "Well, gentlemen, shall we quit?"

  The other men were already heading for the door.

  Shoe unbuckled his seatbelt and followed them through the microgravity into Jin's Hydroponics. The store was empty of the usual cracker-barrel crowd, and Jin himself was absent.

  Camp 88 was located on an unpromising asteroid, being neither a metallic one, nor an icy one, but a stony one in which metals and ices existed only in traces. When Shoe stepped out of Jin's he was in the downtown area of the main cavern, his mag-slippers keeping his feet against the metal sidewalk.

  Necky's place was a battered little pressure shelter anchored on the other side of the road, next to the junk department. Around the hut huddled a crowd of men, growing as he watched. He whistled softly in surprise when he saw miners that had come straight from their diggings. Must be the entire population now, he thought.

  "Oh, so that's it," said an out of breath voice beside him. Shoe turned to see Supervisor Young, a big fat man who was the nearest thing to a mayor that the settlement had. "I thought it was a fight," he said, looking relieved.

  "Not likely to draw a crowd, these days," said Shoe.

  "Yeah," said Toothless Tom, floating over to join them. "The last fight was way back when Beijing Beau and Slippery Mike shot each other in Jin's front room. You fellers in the poker room didn't even take a peek." He reached down toward Shoe for an assist.

  "I had a winning hand," said Shoe. He drew Tom down so his feet stuck to the walk.

  "Anybody in there now?" asked Young, wiping his sopping forehead with a greasy sleeve. More men were drifting over into his orbit, like captured moons circling a gas giant.

  "Nah, they all came out," said Shoe. "And you're the last to arrive, so now everybody's here."

  Young took a breath and blew it out.

  "Well," he said, "this has been brewing for half a year, at least."

  "Nine months," said Shoe.

  "She just started, like, an hour ago?" asked Young.

  "Turns out she started a couple days ago," said Tom.

  "That's a bad sign," said Young, hands on his hips.

  Loitering there at the periphery, they spoke in low tones about Necky the catgirl.

  "How'd she get here in the first place?" said Young.

  "Damned if I know," said Tom, "but oh, seems like she's been around forever. Nearly a year, don't you think?"

  "That's right," said Young. "Right near the beginning, she was here."

  "Perhaps," said Shoe, "she came along with that playboy back then, remember him?"

  "That perfume-y guy?" said Tom. He sucked his gums and said, "Could be, could be."

  "And then she stayed on," said Young.

  "Abandoned," said Tom, "or maybe she jumped ship."

  "Things went bad," said Shoe. "The last human whores left, the population fell to 100-"

  "Ninety-seven," said Young.

  "-but she's still here."

  It was ironic that Necky, who had given female companionship to all of the men, was now in dire need of a different sort of female companionship — someone to tend to her labor pains.

  Talk about a bad hand, thought Shoe. And look at us, all standing around, helpless in the face of it. Hell, somebody's going to do something, and it isn't going to be me. And that's when he came up with a plan.

  "That's rough, the spot she's in," he said to Young.

  "Yes, it is," said Young, bobbing his head like a judge. "It is, indeed."

  "If I remember right," said Shoe, scratching at his cheek, "you've had experience with wives and kids."

  "Sure, that's why I — hey, just a second! What are you saying?"

  "I'm just saying that, among all of us here, you're in the best position to be of some assistance to the lady in distress."

  Casting his eyes about in near panic, Young caught sight of Doc lounging in quiet over to the side. Quickly he cornered Doc, a big mass confronting a nimble one.

  "You go in there," said Young. "You gotta see what you can do."

  "Me?" said Doc. He was deceptively small, wiry in build and very fierce when riled up. "No way. I don't know the first thing."

  "You're the best we got."

  "We all know I'm just a medic," said Doc, looking around for support while tugging on his beard in agitation.

  They pushed him in.

  Necky's pregnancy was something so unusual as to be almost a miracle. The men debated how it was even possible, given that she was a b-bot, a biological construct of human and feline genes.

  "I wonder if she'll drop a whole litter," said one, which got a few laughs.

  "Now look here," said another. "I growed up on a dirt farm, see? An' I knows how a horse mated with a donkey makes a mule, a what'cha-call 'high-bread,' with the best of both horse and donkey, but excepting it can't breed at all."

  Others nodded, since Necky was a hybrid herself. Everybody had figured she was sterile, one-way or the other.

  Time stretched on and the men began to joke away the tension. Some made bets on Necky surviving, on the baby surviving, and other details. — Shoe refused to take part.

  Tom and Young got to talking about the way gravity assists a woman's labor on Earth and how poor Necky had none of Mother Earth's help. This led to an excited discussion of engineering a solution to the problem, in the middle of which came a yell from those nearest the door. The population stopped to listen. Above the whirr of the ventilation, the gurgle of the plumbing, and the hum of the light tubes, sounded a sharp, angry cry — a tiny yell unlike anything heard before in that place.

  The silence lasted for one breathless moment and then the men roared back, their tension released.

  Someone shouted from the front hatch, "It's a boy!" and they roared again.

  Doc showed up at the hatch, looking haggard. The excited men around him talked about a caesarean section performed with a jack knife. He brushed off their congratulations and demanded that more supplies be brought at once — the new mother was in critical condition.

  For the next hour Doc did everything he could. She slipped away despite his efforts.

  "Can the boy live?" asked Young.

  "Sure, why not?" said Doc. "Mother's milk is just chemicals. Get somebody to look up a formula, and whip up a batch at the main kitchen."

  "Go on, Shoe," said Young.

  "I'm on it," the gambler called over his shoulder. Things had worked out well, and now that the main thing was done he was glad to put in some work behind the scenes.

  First he went over to the main kitchen to see what they had in the way of basic foodstuffs. He was hoping to ask a few questions, but naturally there was nobody there.

  Then he hit upon the idea of going online, so he went to the communication section and helped himself to some free computer access. The time lag to Mars was a torturous few minutes each way, but after a lot of typing and pacing around, he got a recipe he could use.

  Back at the kitchen he mixed up the first batch, using powdered milk, water, and a bit of corn syrup. Shoe poured this into an unused vinyl glove and tied the end shut.

  Returning to Necky's cabin, he found a line of men waiting to view the baby. Young, stationed at the hatch, waved him over to the head of the line.

  The upper bunk was piled with clothes and feminine knickknacks cleared out from the airlock, which Necky had been using as a closet. On the lower bunk lay Necky's body, shrouded in blankets and lashed down with bungee cords. Beside this squatted a small table magnetically stuck to the f
loor, with a box Velcroed to the top. Inside the box lay the latest arrival, bundled in a pillowcase and lashed with bungee. An upturned space helmet was duct-taped next to this makeshift cradle.

  Doc spoke, his voice worn with fatigue and repetition. "Come in, go around the table, and out the back airlock. If you'd like to contribute anything toward the orphan, put it in the helmet."

  There were two miners in front of Shoe, who, having no mag-slippers, hovered in the cramped quarters like benign spirits or sooty angels.

  "Is that him?" said one.

  "He's tiny," said the other.

  "Looks human."

  When his turn came, Shoe the Gambler handed the improvised bottle to Doc, then looked at the napping baby. Something stirred in his chest so that he felt like coughing, but he held back to keep from waking the baby.

  He glanced into the helmet, his practiced eye calculating the amount it contained in an instant. It was a good sum, not to be dismissed, but he found he wanted to give something more personal. From his pocket he dug out his lucky gold sample and put that into the helmet. Next he added his vial of cologne, won back in the heyday and saved for special occasions. That still wasn't enough, so he put in his best pistol, a fancy derringer. Then he nodded with satisfaction and moved on to let the next man in.

  This calls for a drink, thought Shoe, stepping toward Jin's.

  The place was packed. Shoe got a shot of the good stuff and saluted the baby's safe arrival. Looking around, he couldn't remember the last time he'd seen such excitement at the camp.

  After a while, Supervisor Young came in, puffed up and beaming with pride.

  "The li'l wizard shook my finger," he said. Everybody raised a toast to that.

  #

  The next light period they gave Necky her funeral, after which there was a formal meeting of the camp to discuss the fate of her orphan. A proposal to adopt the infant as a group was met with enthusiasm by nearly all, but the details on how to proceed led to animated discussions. A notion was floated that the child should be sent over to Ceres, the nearest big asteroid, where he could be tended by women. Shoe the Gambler was in favor of this, but to his surprise it met fierce and nearly unanimous opposition. It was plain that they wouldn't let the boy go.