Friends (2013) - Adams, Robert

With any degree of military discipline worth the name, the Ganiks would have prevailed. But the Judge had only been able to give them the appearance of soldiers. The reality was somewhat different. The shaggy men and women were fighting each other in a frenzied scramble to flee the base.

Von’s flesh crawled as he wrapped his hand around the Judge’s scrawny neck, lifted him from where he’d lain, and forced him back into his chair. There were puddles on the floor, but the liquid wasn’t blood—rather something like stagnant water.

With his other hand, Von lifted a sword, grateful to Noplis for the delivery, and drove it straight through the Judge’s midsection, until the blade imbedded itself in the floor. Amazingly, this did not kill; but it pinned him to the spot. Picking the wig up from where it had fallen, Von replaced the smelly thing on the Judge’s head, then stood back, admiring his handiwork. The human monster struggled, as would a bug, in a vain attempt to free himself.

“ ’Tis no easy task returning your ‘justice’ in full measure, but methinks your throne will do as a place to receive it,” said Von—and then he laughed the loud, clean laugh of certainty.

The Judge screamed. It was part cackling, part retching. Slowly the room was emptied of Ganiks, and Von’s warriors gathered around their foe. “Ere now, words came from you like maggots from a carcass,” said Von. “What have you to say before we quit this stinking hole?”

“If you kill me, you’ll remove the moral conscience of the future. I was only practicing the politics of reality, but it appears that I should have made a better choice than Ganiks. We might work together! What do you say we build a new society together?”

Noplis, suddenly more useful than he’d ever dreamed possible, figured out how to turn off the lights, and they left the Judge babbling in the dark about how he could have been a contender.

They tasted good fresh air when they stepped outside, and even the leaden sky of the first night after the earthquake appeared to them as the open vaults of paradise in comparison to where they had been. Von insisted on waiting until the final cave-in, rumblings of which increased as a promise that the Judge would retire soon.

Noplis finally had an appreciative audience for his every word—and the story was all the better told without his usual singsong delivery. He described how Flatear and he had found themselves caught between the flame and the rock, when they reached the edge of a cliff. With rope they had taken from a dead mountain pony, the bard was able to swing down a dizzying ten feet to a ledge below; then the rope was tied to Flatear, and the prairiecat was able to jump within a margin of safety. As night set in, they used some of the rope to make torches, but this light soon proved unnecessary as they detected an illumination showing through a small hole in the rubble.

Clearing this away, they found a tunnel that led directly to the base. They took the short cut. “The spoor of so many unbathed two-legs was a better guide than the underground sun,” mindspoke Flatear.

Like corpuscles in a vein, they were drawn to the source of continued life within the ruined plateau, and came out in a place with a sign that read “Sector 8.” Dead Ganiks were in there, but living ones were clearing an entrance to get at them, no doubt with feeding in mind.

“We heard your mindspeak,” said Noplis, “a relief after the long silence. We followed that, and in so doing, learned of your peril.”

“Could not you have let us know that you lived?” asked Ethera.

“Originally, communication was impossible. The earthquake cut us off in ways we do not understand. When we found you, anon, and you were in the clutches of these vermin, we trusted in stealth.”

“Guards there were in the man-tunnel,” said Von.

“Flatear killed the Ganiks in the corridor,” said Noplis, respect for the feline infusing his voice. With the discovery that his telepathy was working again, the prairiecat had delighted in clouding the minds of the guards, one at a time, before dispatching them.

Suddenly there was a loud crash from within the mountain. Dust puffed out the entrance to below. Several men cheered.

“The Judge is dead,” said Ethera.

Then Noplis said what Flatear would later agree were the wisest words the bard had ever spoken: “Thanks be to all the gods.”

Yelloweye

by Steven Barnes

Steven Barnes is one of those rare writers equally at home in both books and television. He has written two novels, Streetlethal and The Kundalini Equation ; collaborated on two others with Larry Niven, Dream Park and The Descent of Anansi , and has yet another collaboration coming out this fall, cowritten with both Niven and Jerry Poumelle, called The Legacy of Heorot. He has also written several television screenplays, mostly for Twilight Zone. In his copious spare time, he both instructs and studies various forms of the martial arts, among them Tae Kwon Do, Kempo Karate, Kali Stickfighting, and Aikido.

He currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Toni, and their daughter, Lauren, two dogs, a cat, and a houseful of tame, invisible Tyrannousaurs ( Caveat Burglar).

Winter was dying softly in the ’Ginni mountains. Under the soft, insistent touch of sunlight, the milky ice crystals melted into water. It trickled down, formed shallow, rapid streams that cut through the banks of snow, whispered promises of spring.

Hoofprints dappled the snow. Here goats and sheep foraged for winter grass under the watchful eyes of their herdmaster. In places the hoofprints were scattered, barely impressions in the sparkling white carpet. Where the herd had been guided back and forth regularly the trail cut deep, exposing rock and dark earth below.

A rabbit lay burrowed into the snow, nose pressed against a skewed fence of barren twigs. Its coloration made it nearly invisible, but its pink eyes were nervous, frightened. The smell of Man was strong here. Man, and . . . something else. Something terrifying. An unfamiliar sound wound its way through the trees. The rabbit paused, ears perked.

Paused for a moment too long.

Snow flew in a flurry of sudden motion. With an impossibly fast blur, claws and teeth ripped into the rabbit’s flesh, crushed its body into the snow before the thought flee! could fully congeal. There was a flash of pain too intense for consciousness to bear, and then numbness. It saw its own blood spatter onto the snow, its intestines fill the crimsoned mouth of its slayer. Then, there was nothing.

But the sound wound on. Now lilting, now stringent, the trilling of a flute coaxed by nimble fingers.

“Ar’tor!” The cry rang from a distance, and the music paused. Up above the bloodied twigs, a tuft of snow puffed gut, and a boy thrust his head out of a slit in the rock beneath. If one hadn’t known the cave was there, it would have been impossible to find, so well protected was it by snow and overhanging rock and dead brush.

The boy was as easy to overlook. His neck was thin and clumsily long. His hair was shadow-dark, shoulder-length, and looked perpetually windblown. His mouth and nose seemed too wide for his narrow face. His eyes were huge, dark, inquiring. Somehow, they made the balance work.

“Karls,” he muttered, and popped his head back into his little hideaway. He had five more minutes before his brother would appear. Ar’tor twirled his flute like a baton, then set his lips to it again. There was the thread of melody that he sought. It vibrated in the cave, a clear, intoxicatingly mellow tone.