Silvia Moreno-Garcia - Future Lovecraft

The explosion threw me against the wall so hard I thought sure it would break the faceplate of my helmet. A flash of light filled the area and in that moment, I saw the hideous thing torn apart, reduced to a dust of ash so fine even photons would scatter it to the farthest reaches of the solar system.

Although the control room shielding did protect me, I still took a lethal dose of radiation. It just bought me enough time to transmit this account before my body fails altogether.

Now you must see that my warning gets to every mining outpost in the Asteroid Belt. There are things undreamed-of by our science, that can lie encysted for so many millions of years that the accretion of space dust upon them can form an asteroid around them. And when disturbed, can reawaken to a life inimical to our very existence—

[Choking sounds, followed by an open carrier for 15 minutes]

E. Catherine Toblerlives and writes in Colorado—strange how that works out. Among others, her fiction has appeared in Sci Fiction , Fantasy Magazine , Realms of Fantasy , Talebones , and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet . She is an active member of SFWA and senior editor at Shimmer Magazine . For more, visit www.ecatherine.com.

ABENI BABA WAS accustomed to things falling apart in her hands: grains from distant worlds, the dead in autopsy, her marriage. As iyaloja of Aphelion Station, she found that things fell apart less than they once had, yet still, these corridors with their people and goods could surprise her, as happened when she took the palm-sized copper pendant from the opened sack of nutmegs. How had it come to contaminate the goods? This was her first thought, being that her purpose was to ensure clean and equal trade among the people; she was Mother of the Market, these traders her children, these goods her grandchildren. And this pendant—

It was marked with a figure: upward man and downward fish. When her thumb moved over it, the pendant came apart, silent and sure, and Abeni closed her hand around it so that none might see. Her dark eyes lifted to the vendor before her. Bolanle bowed her head, spreading broad hands toward the bounty of nutmegs she had procured this journey. Such goods were worth more than gold on Aphelion, yet Abeni would give them all up for a taste of sunlight once more.

“You journeyed to…?” Abeni’s voice trailed off, wondering from where these sacks had come. She knelt before them, one hand sliding over the canvas sack, finding it had no mark upon it. In her other hand, the pendant warmed, seemed to send tendrils of sunlight up the length of Abeni’s arm. Her fist tightened.

Bolanle’s answer didn’t interest Abeni: It was a common trade route, the nearest planet to the Aphelion Station. However, the dark man who emerged from behind Bolanle did interest Abeni. She watched this man, overly tall and thin, peer around Bolanle’s slender bare shoulder, borealis eyes widening as he looked down upon Abeni and the sacks of nutmegs. He reached with one impossibly long arm—Where was the joint for his elbow, for his forearm seemed to reach entirely to his shoulder?—black spindle fingers sliding with a whisper against Abeni’s own, holding a startling coldness that seemed like the very depths of space to her. So, too, his skin: black abyss, like that which stretched around and out from Aphelion.

“Mother Baba.”

The dark man dwindled and faded to nothing more than Bolanle’s shadow as she rounded her goods and knelt beside Abeni. Abeni felt the pulse of the thing in her hand and slowly rose, shaking Bolanle off. “It has been a long morning of arrivals,” she said, nodding to the traders who cluttered the docking ring and cargo bays. “And I’ve more to tend.” Her voice snapped and Bolanle withdrew. Abeni took one nutmeg with her and fled Bolanle’s stall without marking the requisite forms to allow her goods full entry to Aphelion. And if Bolanle opened her mouth to cry a protest, Abeni took no notice, so intent was she on leaving the docking ring.

Aphelion Station spread in five concentric rings, rotating on the edge of known space. Abeni had never been troubled by its motion before, for her work consumed her. But as she hurried away now, she caught sight of the whole and infinite black beyond the arched station windows, and she cried out, as if looking into the face of the shadow man. And then, Aphelion faded.

Abeni felt the pulse of the thing in her hand and found herself standing in a field of grain. Sun drenched the space and her. Abeni thought she would melt, that her entire body would liquefy and flood the ground beneath her. Her death would feed these grains until they were strong, until they—they whispered against her fingertips as she walked and under her passage, they grew. They changed. These grains, once green, flushed to gold and thickened. These grains, once only knee-high, pressed their roots into the soil and surged upward, until they reached skyward. Abeni lifted a hand, but could no longer touch the grain tips. And these tips, once gold, now burned under a flaring sun, turning black, the charred fragrance falling onto Abeni’s shoulders like snow. The grains closed over her then, pressing her to the dirt, until its darkness filled mouth and nose, until the shadow man snatched a hand out and pulled her into the earth.

She woke in the depths of the station, humid, fetid air rolling over her sticky skin. Painlessly, one palm had been marked by the pendant, the fish figure curling inward, as if huddled. Abeni sat up, the small pendant gleaming a step away from her nose. It was sealed shut once more, though the nutmeg she had taken was cracked in half, revealing its labyrinthine innards, brown curling through ivory; its sharp scent carried to her, seemed to clear her mind. Abeni rolled herself to sitting, crossing her legs and finally reaching a hand to claim the strange pendant. Moisture coated its case, making it slick within her grip. When she picked up the nutmeg next, it withered in her hand, yet Abeni took it with her as she climbed her way out of the maintenance levels and returned to her private room.

It was a small room, unassuming, decorated with very little, save small trinkets that merchants brought her. Three books, two miniatures, a dried flower from a riverbank on a planet she would never know. A figure that looked like a blue jellyfish, a small plate with an off-center fish painted upon it, three jars of soil. It was the soil she sought, knowing she needed it—though not knowing why or how. She broke the seal on one jar, releasing a fragrance that seemed like sunlight to her; the air sounded like whispering grains as the lid came away. She stuck her small hand through the mouth of the jar, burying the withered nutmeg in the black soil. After a second thought, she planted the pendant, too.

Come morning, Abeni returned to the docking ring, wishing to pretend all was normal and well. But she knew she had left her work unhed and unhappy merchants greeted her. Goods lined the pathways, awaiting proper entry to the station. One by one, Abeni worked her way through them, last of all to Bolanle, who sat atop her nutmeg sacks, as she had the whole night through. Abeni made no apologies and none of the merchants were openly hostile. As iyaloja, her methods were beyond scrutiny; she would work as she worked and their goods would only be allowed entry by her word. Bolanle worked at her side in comfortable silence, shifting her approved goods to the pallet so they could be moved into the station proper. When Abeni claimed one sack of nutmegs for herself, Bolanle only looked at her.

“I have need of these,” Abeni said and Bolanle said nothing, for it was not her place. She considered herself lucky to lose only one sack. Everyone knew that larger tithes had been taken by iyaloja prior to Abeni.