SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

“Iviðja has the þurs,” Bergrisar said. The commbox flashed a message on my HUD. It was a guess that the word meant “thirst.”

Iviðja, the one with the chosen shard, fluttered panels over her eyelids in capitulation. One shoulder had a delicate mess of spider-webbed cracks, likely signs of an old injury now healed. The light fractured through it as she turned to me.

“What’s a þurs?” I asked.

“She marked the ice,” Iviðja replied. “All had saliva from her mandibles, but one had a special hormone, the þurs.” She paused a moment, then continued. “After we eat, you may come to my fire.” I appreciated the distinction between “may” and “ will .”

I nodded. “I appreciate your hospitality,” I said. “But it’s still light—why are we retiring?”

A panel on one of her arms adjusted, and for a moment I caught a fragrance off it, akin to dried lavender. “Nights are cold here. Those of us too long on the surface out of shelter forfeit the protections of our carapace. Our secretions freeze, and we die slowly as the ice shatters our entrails. It is a punishment reserved for traitors. They are fitted with an implant that sends electricity through them should they stop moving, and they are forbidden to return to the warm tunnels.”

I shivered.

In time, several people with even limbs and flat backs came in, packs bound across them. Others helped them unload and began dividing the contents. Now, I’ve never been a carrot person—not even a parsnip one, despite my mother’s best efforts. So I couldn’t say I was relishing the opportunity to eat a meal made entirely of what looked like the unholy love-child of carrots and beets, which I decided to call beetrots. If anything, the name made them less appetizing.

Iviðja was taking her role as hostess very seriously. When a plate was ready, she brought it to me. Several shell panels slid away from her hands, exposing delicate fingers nearly subsumed by the protective plates. She held a piece to my lips, and I made myself open my mouth. When in Rome, and all that.

The vegetable was bitter—fiercely so. If it weren’t for the color, I might have believed it was raw horseradish. Iviðja set the plate before me and settled in beside me.

“There are areas deep below the ice mantle where you can rely on the planet’s turmoil to send steam to warm the soil,” she said. “We mostly reside in these tunnels. Our civilization is a mountain with only the peak above the ice; the broad base of it is beneath. We had mountains, before the flood, made of rocks and ice. Do you understand the word?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, and pantomimed a triangle.

She made a pleasant sound, perhaps the first pleasant sound I’d heard from a Jötnar. “It’s complex and labor intensive, and in the absence of sunlight, you can only grow food with pieces of yourself to nourish them.”

“Pieces of yourself?” I didn’t see any missing limbs.

“The pieces you no longer need: filth, and those who no longer move.” I tried not to let the thought that the bitter taste was alien shit sour my meal. “We must use all we can, for nature helps no one. Our strength, and our sacrifice, are what give us power over her.”

That put a different dent in my appetite. “I hope I’m not overstepping my bounds here. But would it offend you if I didn’t eat more? I don’t feel right gorging myself when your people worked so hard to create this.” I patted my belly. “And as you can see, it isn’t exactly like I need it.”

“I’m sure Bergrisar would find a way to take offense, get a pincer up her cloaca about it being a rejection of our cuisine or a snub at our poverty of resources. But I think it’s noble. And the vegetables do taste like digestive gases.” She let out a pleasant cackle, took a handful of vegetables off the plate, then dumped the rest back into the serving dish.

Iviðja led me a short distance from the court to a shelter formed almost entirely of a milky substance, like agate or smoky quartz. She noticed my look. “It is a glass concrete formed from my ancestors’ carapaces. It is at once a temple, a shrine, and a mausoleum. We only use them for ceremony, or when needs dictate. When I die, it will honor me to have my shell join with my ancestors’.”

“My people traditionally achieved a similar effect with melted sand—granulated rock—and modern 3D printing processes aren’t so far removed from that.”

Her eyelids shifted, in what I hoped was excitement and not a sudden desire to eat my entrails. “Lens glass? We form braziers from the leftover carapace, the smaller pieces less suited to construction. When they are new, the impurities cook out, and leave a glass lens at the base at the end of a cold season.” She made a clicking noise that was reminiscent of a chuckle. “It cracks upon exposure to the outside air. When we build a new community, each resident carries one from their old home, and we put them around the new home in a circle for protection. When they crack, the ghosts from our memories laugh, pleased to know where their shadows are now.”

It took me a moment to realize she was waiting for me to enter the dwelling first; it must have been an honor she was reserving for her guest.

Light flickered through the walls. They were milky enough that I hadn’t noticed it from the outside, but inside, the light caught the facets of the walls and made them appear to almost glow.

I set my suit to warm slightly, not seeing any sign of blankets or fabric. I didn’t doubt that clothes wouldn’t be useful to the Jötnar, as it would counter their natural camouflage and impede the movement of their shells. And the hard edges of the carapace would be harsh on cloth, too. But the lack of any coverings meant I was in for a cold night.

Iviðja—whom I’d mentally nicknamed Ivy, which worked with her clingy yet restful presence—touched a rectangular block inside the shallow bowl of a chest-high brazier. My HUD recognized a power source within, and the bowl caught fire. Warmth washed over me.

“It is a battery. It stores heat from the vents, then releases the heat slowly here.” The plates around her fingers retracted, and she took my hand in hers. “So long as there is fire, there is life .”

Those words brought to mind an incident from Drew and Louise’s younger days, fighting to rescue people from a burning colony as others fought them. It strengthened my resolve to get the Jötnar to work with us—and finally do something worthy of Louise.

Ivy roused me in the morning and pressed a cup of tangy, mildly acidic liquid into my hands. I restrained myself from asking which bodily fluids went into producing this repast. She hurried away and returned with another section of root. I nodded my thanks at her and tried to make myself eat.

I’ve never been especially squeamish, so it wasn’t the food’s origins that bothered me so much as the totality of what I was about to do. I’d never risked my life when no one was actually in danger . Metaphorical danger on the ship just didn’t inspire the same protective impulses and adrenaline; here, I had only nerves.

My HUD chirped at me, recognizing my elevated stress. I forced myself to breathe evenly.

“Are you ready?” she asked. I couldn’t find anything other than polite concern in Ivy’s movements, until I noticed a small twitch on the side of her neck. She was aware that I was anxious, and that made her anxious. I wondered if her reputation was tied up in my performance, if she would be considered tainted by association. I glanced at my guns and checked their charges.

“Yeah. Let’s get this over with.”

She retracted several plates, exposing her surprisingly soft hand, and hauled me to my feet. Her grip was almost overwhelmingly strong, even though she didn’t seem to be using her full strength. I would have to keep my opponent at a distance, or else guns or no, I’d be done for.