Shanti

By John Walters

The colonists on the remote planetary outpost of New Sedona are a contented lot. Their work is undemanding, and they have the companionship of alien creatures called shanti that shape-shift into the forms of their favorite imagined pets. However, the colony's serenity is shattered when new way station administrators arrive and assume dictatorial control. And in the surrounding wilderness, other aliens begin to assume the shapes of nightmarish monsters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Astaria Books
• Release date: Apr 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386275374

John Walters

John Walters recently returned to the United States after thirty-five years abroad. He lives in Seattle, Washington. He attended the 1973 Clarion West science fiction writing workshop and is a member of Science Fiction Writers of America. He writes mainstream fiction, science fiction and fantasy, and memoirs of his wanderings around the world.

Book preview

Shanti

The arrival of the new leadership couple shattered the colony's honeymoon period. Within a few weeks of stepping off the shuttle they managed to suck the joy out of every inhabitant of that hitherto idyllic world.

No one in the loose conglomerate of geologists, botanists, naturalists, horticulturalists, and spaceport personnel saw it coming. The husband and wife with their three young children appeared innocuous enough as they stood on the ocher dust of the landing pad, and they greeted the colonists they first met with civility. Once the Darqueth Foundation representatives that had deposited them on New Sedona and confirmed their appointments as way station administrators had left, however, they wasted no time in establishing their positions of authority. Clarence Hiddleton appropriated a spacious office in the terminal building and began to radically restructure schedules and personnel assignments. Lydia Hiddleton took over three adjoining rooms at a commune by the riverside called Calm Waters, appointed caretakers for the kids, and set herself up as the domineering matriarch not only in her own home but also in the half-dozen other extended households of permanent residents. They accomplished it all subtly, swiftly, and skillfully, meeting and interviewing everyone under the guise of establishing friendships, assessing vulnerabilities, making pointed suggestions supposedly for the well-being of all, and quoting regulatory documents. Before colony personnel knew what had hit them, the Hiddletons had established a disciplinary unit and begun to impose punishments for behavior they considered errant.

*     *     *

White-Fang, holding his coffee cup and still chewing the last bite of breakfast roll, knocked on the door, paused a moment, and then opened it without waiting for a reply.

The new administrator looked startled. He sported an anachronistic moustache that resembled a dark hairy caterpillar sitting on his lip, and his short, tightly curled hair shone with grease or perspiration. The massive desk made him appear diminutive: a short, thin child in a man's position.