Zach Hughes: The Legend of Miaree

Stinkpot driver pounding upward on primitive fire blackening the atmosphere. But even pollution can, at times, be beautiful, and the pull of the enforced gravity of the drive does not detract from the sheer joy of looking back to see the long trail as the driver gains cold air and speeds, screaming, into the dark side. Behind, as night moves in a knife-edge line, the distant stream of the contrail and the silk-puff clouds which are once individual and soft, looking as if one could walk, and then, from the heights, solid blankets, and then, higher still, overall whorls and patterns

of the planet’s weather. A huge circular movement on the southern seas, the shine of the ice cap of the north as the driver reaches height and apparent motion ceases, only the swimming of New World below giving an illusion of life in the stillness of near space.

The shuttle is not crowded. The days of leisure are ahead, but below the Artonuee labor industriously and only a few, on holiday, may seek the frivolity of work-period flying. To her left, a matronly woman, grown thick in age, soon to feel the debilitating call back home. In the seat to her rear a young girl, wearing the red-and-yellow badge of the learner, slightly nervous. First solitary flight, guesses Miaree, and feels a surge of empathy, a need to reach out and touch. Her mind seeks, is greeted. "Love, don’t be afraid."

A burst of corrective fire, sending a tremble through the driver, and the lingering, in the nostrils, of the smell of New World, gradually replaced, cycled out, as the air is reconditioned. And in the huge forward viewer, Flyer Haven. In the time it takes to reach it, drifting at mechanical speeds, she could have soared past Outworld. But there is patience mixed with her anticipation, for she has a long holiday. The Rim Star is provisioned and ready, according to her advance orders.

Flyer Haven gleams with inner light. The dome, slightly frosted by condensation from the interior, is a silver jewel in the black fur of the outer night. The main spread of the distant fires is hidden behind the planetary bulk, but shines out at the rims, haloing the globe, refracting blue on the fringes of the atmosphere. The good blue world, a paradise of hills and water and multicolored plant life, home, now. And out there, a half-inch circle of reflected light. The World.

A shuddering braking fire, then silence and a slightly discernable bump and the metallic sounds of the locks engaging, and she is standing, smiling encouragingly toward the novice, nodding with respect toward the graying veteran who amasses her carry baggage and nods in return, sending a pleasant "Good soar."

Ah, God, the wonderful smell of it. Flyer Haven. Enclosed, safe, old but constantly renewed. Flyer Haven, a senseless squandering of the wealth of the Artonuee, according to the reactionary males, who, from their minority seats in the Interplanetary Council, mount annual battles against it, for their natural caution and the slowness of their reactions bars them from partaking of what it offers. Flyer Haven, catharsis, reward, blood of

life to those who have known the spread of thousands of yards of golden sail running before a sun storm.

Reused air, sweet, but marked by its mechanical treatment. A decorative and expensive touch there, at the inner lock, a planter of pleele, sweetest of the sweet, the look of which causes a stirring in the female breast and the breath of which, when pre-eggs are lodged and forming, is the most lovely of aphrodisiacs. She paused, closed her eyes in ecstasy, breathed long and deep. Then moving on the conveyor past the shops on the outer layer, the smell of a welder, acrid, cold, burning. The feel of a charge in the air as a convertor is tested, raising goose bumps on her, causing the fine, smooth fur of her body to ripple in sensation.

She stepped off the conveyor at Operations, left her carry baggage outside, stood before the officious male at the desk. "Miaree of the Rim Star. Ten days’ provisions in place?"

"Ah." An incline of the head. Indifference. But, about her, a lingering aroma of pleele flowers. A widening of the eyes. "Miaree." The name is hissed.

It is, she suspects, closer than she thinks, although reading, she cannot tell. But this reaction from a young male tells her. She has seen it. And within her there is a fierce pride as she tilts her beautifully molded head imperiously and smiles. Poor male. When the time is near, he will be at his duty on Flyer Haven and she.

On Outworld there are meadows nestled among the crags on which grow the Outworld wonders, the zoological garden of the Artonuee, a world given over to the fashioning of beautiful objects and to love.

Close. She shakes her head. The heavy, flowing yellow of her hair moves, as if in slow motion, about her radiant face. Huge blue eyes blink, open to reflect, from their multifacets, the charge light of the arcs.

He is checking off the list. His male lips—why are they so suddenly of interest?—say the words. Food. Necessities.

"Ah, yes, ten days, Lady. Your credit voucher please?"

Even old Beafly notices. "The pleele flower is sweet," he says, as she stands next to him in his shop. He tinkers with a control circuit board

from a Class II, a beginner’s flyer with a feeble little convertor suitable only for orbital flights. "Yes, my daughter?"

"Indeed," she admits. "You finished the major on Rim Star?"

"Ah, a sweet ship." His hand trembles as he steadies a tool and jabs expertly into the innards of a complicated Mires expander. She, saddened, smells the age of him. "I have shared her secrets with young Runder."

"So soon, Beafly?" From her blue eyes the dew of the sadness she feels.

"It comes to all," he says, not looking at her. "Smelling the pleele as it clings to you, telltale, exciting, is my only reason for sadness."

"Perhaps." She pauses. It was Beafly who checked her out in her first Class II.

"No, daughter. See how the hand rebels?" He held it out in front of him. And she touched it. He smiled. "Could I but wait, I would break the rules and choose one of your ifflings, daughter."

"Thank you."

"A ten-day holiday?" He was at his work, not looking into her wide eyes. "Ten days. The signs are good. Weather predicts a flare."

"I know. I timed it so." She put her hand on his shoulder. "I am sorry, Beafly. Do you know when?"

"I want to walk, not crawl." He sighed. "Before you have flown and returned."

"Ah, no."

"I will like being there, once more. I find myself dreaming of the soft shade of the juplee. I hunger for the taste of the fruit and the coolness of its waters in my throat. Do you remember, daughter, how it tastes, the water?"

"Yes." Winglings hover and dive, splashing, thin membranes then weighted and grounded until the sun, stronger there on The World, dries them, and as they wait, the sweet fruit, snatched playfully from the powerful maw of a hapless iffling, the smell of the flowers, the taste of the

water.

She had not kissed a male. "Beafly?" He turned, faced her. The thought caused her shapely backside to twitch, put life into muscles not yet used. He looked and smiled.

"Three times I have been chosen," he said. "Never did I see one so beautiful."

She leaned. Her long, flexible lips touched. He sighed and touched her; her thin waist felt the shaking of his old hands. And the agitated chemistry of her body flowed pleele flower aroma and filled the grimy workshop and left him dazed and weak as she broke the kiss.

"I would consider you," she said.

"I seek my ifflings happily," he said. His eyes were down.

"Perhaps I will see you in—someone—somewhere. I will know, should it happen."

"I pray so, daughter. May my iffling be kind. May I be wingling and like you, daughter."