Wings of Joy: Stories and Songs of the Thousand Worlds

By Anne Prather and Sourdough Jackson

In Wings of Joy, author, scientist, musician and artist Anne Harlan Prather introduces readers to the Starmasters—her contribution to the long tradition of stories about pilots with mysterious abilities. Like Cordwainer Smith's go-captains, Frank Herbert's Guild steersmen and Ann Aguiere's Jumpers, the Starmasters move starships at hyperlight speeds through the mysterious Beyond by means of a rare gift. But their gift is constrained by stark limitations. Not for these pilots are the consolation of retirement, the relief from copilots, or the stability of a home planet. Even the long life afforded others by rejuvenation treatments is denied them—unless they bow to their gift and fly.

Meet Caryssa, the daughter of Renaissance faire show people. She longs for a place as an entertainer—or for life in the Enclaves. Then a mysterious patron comes to hear Caryssa, and the teen-ager's life is turned upside-down by a double dose of opportunity.

Zephaniah's career has been haunted for nearly fifteen years by the consequences of thoughtless words and practical jokes carried out when he was barely out of his teens. Yet he carries on, bound by his flight gift to wander the Galaxy while the legacy left him by his family awaits his discovery.

Youngest daughter of the Radiant Empire's royal house, Ariella has embraced the role of the Commoner Princess, helping her family to keep in touch with the issues faced by the common folk. A master of disguise and subterfuge, she embraces her various roles, even when the roles might require that she risk her life to do what's right.

The eighteen stories in this innovative anthology are infused by Prather's scientific background, her 35+ years of teaching, and her love of history. This is character-driven science-fiction that explores all the dimensions of the kind of piloting gift that has captured readers since Mark Twain wrote Life on the Mississippi.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781733002622

Book preview

© 2020 Anne Harlan Prather

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-1-73300-262-2

Contents

Foreword

Part 1: Beginnings

High Wings

Mother

A Man Called Twenty-three

Part 2: Empire Rising

Family Matters

Stranger

Sojourner

Weather Woman

Ballad of the Windsong

The Portmaster of Kellsharah

War Stories

Home to the Stars

Part 3: Precipice

Awakening

Homecoming

Vocations

How Silverhawk Got Her Name

Boot Camp

The Commoner Princess

Royal Wedding?

Part 4: Songs

High Wings

Starwinds

Starships

Ballad of the Windsong

More Than Just a Dream

Cargo Handler’s Shanty

Star Pilot’s Hymn

Sing the Stars my Song

Who Loves the Phoenix

Silverhawk

Calendar

Timeline

Acknowledgements

About The Cover

Foreword

By Sourdough Jackson

According to Heinlein, the profession of art critic is an unpleasant one. Good art is all about talent and execution.

The Landlord of New Testament fame gave Anne Prather four talents—science, music, artistic and literary. Musician, scientist, artist, and now author, Anne Prather has woven all of these talents into her first anthology of works concerning the Starmasters.

So it’s not surprising that her science fiction focuses heavily on the theme of talent. The stories illustrate the difficulties faced by those with the Starmaster’s inborn ability to move ships at ultra-hyperlight speeds between the stars, and also their society’s imperfect knowledge (and often fear) of the talent that alone holds their interstellar culture together.

Many science fiction stories feature some kind of space flight. The stories of rocket flights, for instance, are based on the work of the works of Newton and Tsiolkovsky, with the stories emphasizing the physical laws and constraints discovered by these scientists.

Yet another sub-genre of science fiction features stories of pilots flying all kinds of ships, most of them at superluminal speeds. A few astute readers may notice a similarity between Prather’s Starmasters and other authors’ similar-appearing vocations, such as Cordwainer Smith’s Go-Captains, Frank Herbert’s Guild Steersmen, and Zenna Henderson’s Motivers. But in a very real way, all of the stories of star pilots hark back to Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, which told of the remarkable memories of river pilots.

While some of these tales in this book are new to me, some I’ve known for decades from when Anne was beginning to work in the Starmaster universe with my wife Gail Barton—We were all members of a filk music circle, singing songs of SF and fantasy. Gail often worked with Anne on the basics of that universe, and both wrote songs set within it. One, The Star Pilots’ Hymn, we all sang as the closing song of nearly every circle meeting (and we even usually managed to stay on key). Several of Gail’s songs turn up in the stories in this book.

One of Anne’s stories, Ballad of the Windsong, is a yarn I’m particularly fond of, partly because I’ve been waiting to read it since the mid-1980s, when she wrote that song, performing it frequently in our circles. Now it’s in prose, too.

So, read the stories. The long ones go down like a big stein of German beer, the short ones more like a shot of Scotland’s best.

Skoal!

Part 1: Beginnings

High Wings

Mother

A Man Called Twenty-Three

The serendipitous combination of a science experiment and one young woman sends a shuttle on a jaunt to Alpha Centauri. Thus begins humanity’s great diaspora to the stars led by pilots whose ability to transit hyperspace, known as the Beyond, lay in the power of mind alone—and one strange drive.

The Schmidt-Kokorov pilots quickly divided into two groups: The first, typified by MaryEllin Holmes, could see three pathways leading out from Earth. For these pilots, an apparent velocity many times the speed of light could be and often was computed. Their routes could be mapped and taught easily. They were known as star pilots and, later, casual pilots. The second group, known as Starmasters, could jump much further, could see more pathways, and could regularly find habitable planets. It was the Starmasters’ flight time that formed the basis of Galactic exchange.

In the wake of the star drive’s discovery, other psionics came to prominence and were accepted by a society weary from years of asymmetrical warfare and disinformation. By the time of Mother and A Man Called Twenty-three, there were four social classes—the functional psionics, making up the middle and upper classes; the sub-psionic show people and artists; the non-psionic Programmed, connected to the psinet electronically, and the Marginals, who would not accept electronic connection to the psinet.

It was the creative sub-psionics and the Marginals who rose up in fury against the upper classes and demanded the right to self-rule, forming the Radiant Empire.

High Wings

Heinlein, the engineering master, could not have written this story. Bradbury, the emotion master, might have, on one of his better days. Neither could have written the song.

High Wings is a song—and a tale—of leave-taking, and of hope. I first heard and loved the song decades ago, when my wife wrote and sang it. I wondered what story might lurk behind it. Now, her old friend has written it.

Tragedy and glory—the glory is obvious. The tragedy is that the engineer could not share in it, until it was too late.

—Sourdough Jackson

The click-click of Cat MacKenzie’s Volvo faded away as the fat Scotswoman bore his wife off into the nether distance. Jack Kramer had always thought the cadence of four clicks that characterized the sound of Cat’s Volvo were saying, I-love-you-dear, I-love-you-dear. After being out with Cat, Beth always came back wearing a gentle smile. Her lips would touch his softly in the way they had during the first years of their marriage, and the two would end the evening in each other’s arms, sighing in soft satisfaction.

Now, though—Jack listened to the rain pattering against the porch roof. The gloomy clouds of late afternoon had given way to a malevolent dusk that turned the pavement jet black. Now the clicks of Cat’s Volvo seemed to be saying I’m-leaving-you, I’m-leaving-you.… His fists clenched and a hard lump rose in his throat.

Where had it all gone wrong?

"You’re doing what? His voice rose in thunderous waves as he waved the Visa bill in front of his wife’s unseeing eyes. Flying lessons? And just what in hell use are flying lessons for a blind woman?"

"I am not blind! Beth screeched, gray-green eyes blazing. I can see just fine. I line the plane up on the runway just fucking fine!"

Right. And I suppose this—caper—is going to pay for itself someday? He’d managed to lower his voice to a dull roar. He breathed in and out, trying to calm himself. Because, he reflected bleakly, if he didn’t calm down, he was going to hit something. Probably that something would be Beth. It wouldn’t be the first time.

I’m earning money, Beth’s face had arranged itself into a stony mask. I just got a forty-thousand dollar advance on a contract for three novels. Did you know that?

Jack felt himself deflate like a popped balloon. He hadn’t known that, of course. Somehow, he’d thought the flying lessons would be just like everything else involving Beth—things that always started out intending to make money but which eventually wound up in piles of bills that stretched their budget to the breaking point.

I’m sorry, he said.

Beth grimaced. Not, ‘Congratulations, dear!’ Not, ‘Wow! Good going!’ Just, ‘I’m sorry’?

He felt a slow warmth spread across his face. Of course, I’m happy for you, dearest. It’s just—I can’t see how ten-thousand dollars in flying lessons is going to help you in this endeavor. It’s so impractical.

Beth’s face crumpled. I can’t seem to live without it. The words were barely audible.

Jack went to the kitchen and put a kettle of water to boil. After an argument, he always wanted tea. Beth, for her part, would happily drink instant coffee. In a daze, he put cups on the counter, measured coffee into one and put a St. John’s wort tea bag into the other. I wish Beth would drink St. John’s wort, he muttered as he draped the teabag’s tag over the handle of his Husky mug. He waited for the kettle to whistle and then carried the steaming mugs to the antique radio that served as a reading table between their two chairs. He set the cups down and took a seat in his own chair, raising the footstool and stretching his legs out before him.

Bethie. He kept the words low and soft, non-threatening. "First it was music you couldn’t live without. Then you had to get a PhD in biology. And now it’s flying that’s going to cure your depression? He shook his head and sipped his tea. Sometimes I wonder if you wouldn’t be better off on anti-depressants."

So— Beth’s mouth worked, fighting with the words. So—if I’m earning enough money to pay for flying lessons, why should you care? Why should it matter?

Because there’s so much else we could do with the money? he thought to himself, taking a gulp and hissing as the hot tea scorched his throat. Because it’s a complete waste of time? Because I want to see you focus on something, do something with that degree? He frowned, set the cup down. The radio in his study went on, preparing to record his favorite business program. Distracted, he got up and shut the door to the room, leaving the two of them in silence.

I’m always the villain, he said softly.

Beth turned towards him. No, you’re not. The words were flat, I can’t make you understand.... A tear shone in her eyes.

A great, gray exhaustion stole over Jack, like a stagnant pool. It reached out and began consuming him, weighing down his step as he carried his mug to the kitchen. He shambled back to his chair, defeated. Beth would have her way and he would be left in the dust, as he’d always been left in the dust by his wife’s endless search for thrills.

Beth peered through the darkness at her husband’s silhouette, framed in the soft light of the front hallway. She imagined that she could see the smoothness of his bald head, the gauntness of his body, and the grayness of his face. But her eyes saw only the blurred lines of his shadowy form, standing immutable in the light.

Beth had been afraid of her husband, once.

In the first years of their marriage, when Beth had gone off on a motorcycle ride without Jack’s permission, he’d slapped her face viciously upon her return, his voice thundering, "You thoughtless bitch! You could have died out there! Don’t you give even one little damn about how I feel!" She’d thought, her cheek stinging, that if she had given a damn—which she had—the caring had stopped the moment he slapped her.

In the following years, their arguments had escalated—disagreements over sex (he wanted it often and conservatively; she less frequently but more creatively); money (Beth spent, Jack wanted to save—except, of course, for his hobbies), and, most of all, education. Beth had insisted on graduate school, obtaining her PhD after ten long years of struggle. And then, armed with her book advance, she’d started flying school.

Looking back across the two years she’d been in flight school, she thought the first fight about flying lessons was when it had all begun—this long, inevitable downward spiral as Jack fought his losing battle against cancer. She saw, like a movie in her head, his exhausted step as he went into the kitchen for tea, heard the flat tone in his voice as he gave up by degrees—surrendering the argument he suddenly didn’t have the strength to continue. She should have sent him to the doctor then, knowing how unlike him it was to just give up. But what would she have said? My husband doesn’t fight like he used to? Her jaw tightened. He just doesn’t hit me like he did before? For that matter, what would Jack have said? She huddled in her thick cloak, willing the dampness of the rainy night away.

Two months after that fight—on a day in mid-summer when Beth had awakened knowing that Jack was finally getting his patent act together, going to see the patent lawyer at last—he’d come into the room after his shower, his face pale. We have to go to the emergency room, he’d said. I’m pissing blood. There are little worms in it.... For the first time, Beth had heard naked fear in his voice. There was no anger, no bluster, no recrimination. Just his voice, small and tinged with the flatness that had crept into it over the last two months.

The inside of the Volvo had warmed up, and Beth, her face breaking out in a sweat as she remembered the day of Jack’s diagnosis, reached automatically for the heater controls.

Cat got there first. A soft click was followed by the descent into murmuring of the heater’s blower motor.

You’re awfully quiet tonight, Cat said, peering ahead, looking for the exit sign.

Beth shifted her weight and pulled the seat belt down off her neck. You know— her voice sounded raw, as though she’d been shouting, when an engineer starts talking like a cell biologist, it’s because he’s trying to sweep the ocean of fear back with a broom.

Cat gave a small, strangled laugh. Is he bad tonight?

Bad? Beth shook her head. No, not especially. But he’s told the doctors no more treatment. After this last round ... and the surgery and the breathing trouble— She drew in a ragged breath, her chest tightening at the remembrance of Jack’s labored breathing just before his last round of therapy. It’s gotten so every time I hear someone cough, I think they’re dying.

Have the doctors told you how long?

No mention of death, Beth thought. Cat had finished the question as though it were complete—even though it obviously wasn’t.

A year, they think. Or maybe less. He’s supposed to get scanned in a week. They’ll know more then.

They had left the highway and turned down a long, narrow road that wound through the deep woods. Beth stared at the hulks of trees, inky black against the clouds. Occasionally, a patch of bare ground gave back unexpected light. Where you’d never notice otherwise, she thought.

Cat cleared her throat. I hate to ask this—but is he hitting you again?

Sudden, blistering anger exploded in Beth. Hell, no! My God, Cat, during treatment he can barely hold a spoon! Just how the fuck do you expect he’d go about slapping me?

I’m sorry.... The phrase faded into silence.

You know, the words rasped in Beth’s throat, I made the mistake of telling one person that Jack had hit me. And now all of fandom thinks it’s their bounden duty to make sure I’m ‘all right’ —and they treat Jack like some kind of monster every time he comes to a con with me!

The statistics— Cat began.

Beth cut her off, raising her hand and nearly running it into Cat’s cheek. Jack took anger management classes, did you know that? I’ve seen him walk away countless times, go out to the garage and pound stuff with a hammer. And then he’d come in and kiss me.... Her voice broke. Even his kisses don’t taste right anymore.

BK, are you sure you want to go to this party? Cat had pulled the car off the road onto the narrow shoulder.

Yeah, I’m sure. I gotta see the girl from Kansas ride the shuttle. She smiled in the darkness, remembering how desperately she’d wanted ‘to win the lottery for a shuttle ride. Heck, she’d have been content to win the moon rock or the month-long training tour that had gone to the second and third-prize winners. Her usual luck had held, however, and she’d gotten nothing. A thousand dollars, down the tube. She pursed her lips. That, she hoped, Jack never found out about.

Okay. Cat pulled into the road again. We should be just about in time, assuming there are no holds in the countdown.

Beth pushed her way through the cluster of people at the dip and chip table, angling for tortilla scoops and Manga Jim’s famous bean sauce. She grabbed a plate and spooned sauce onto it, then filled it with chips. Making her way into the large entertainment room, she seated herself at one end of a long, saggy sofa before the ludicrously large flat-screen TV.

They’re on schedule, somebody shouted in her direction.

Beth sank back in her seat, dangling a chip in her hand and looking around the room at the riotous celebration in progress. Not since the Moon shot had there been so much public interest in a launch. But then, who could resist? MaryEllin Holmes, the blonde farm girl from Kansas was just too photogenic. And, Beth mused, too happy.

There she is! a deep voice intoned from a spot near the television. Beth thought she could see a slight figure in an orange space suit waving, moving towards the waiting shuttle. Katie MacLean’s chirpy voice ran over the scene on the launch pad, Our lottery winner is boarding at this point. We’ll be launching in one hour....

Not, Beth thought, three hours or four after boarding.

She gazed in admiration at the new, sleek shuttle, its nose pointed towards the sky. New-generation computers, lighter materials and a simpler design had made the Minerva-class shuttles easy to prepare and fast to turn around. A celebration, she thought, of a happy marriage between free enterprise and public funds. She tried to let herself be borne away by the excitement of her friends, willing herself to leave behind the desolate shadow of her husband and his illness.

As the countdown droned on, she found herself unexpectedly remembering a first night together, in which they’d watched the launch of one of the original shuttles.

That thing, Jack had scoffed, only half-joking, is like some klooged-together truck. Do you have any idea how much stuff there is in that bucket of bolts that just barely works? I mean—

Beth had bitten her lip, wishing that, just for once, Jack could hold his engineering comments.

The current countdown seemed to meld with the one playing in her head, and for a wild moment she could feel Jack’s arms around her, smell the brush of his breath against her cheek—the sweet spice of his after-shave mingled with the faint salt-smell of sweat.

At some point he had kissed her, and they had sat together, murmuring and cuddling as the flame of the rocket carried the klooge into the sky.

The voice on the TV rose, and Beth jerked herself back to the present. The small, slender ship rose into the sky, its trail of flame an arrow of sunrise in the night. Her friends clapped and raised their glasses, clinking them together in a toast.

And let’s not forget the unknown heroes, someone said, and before Beth knew what was happening, someone was shoving a guitar at her. You know the song, don’t you? someone asked, and Beth, smiling hesitantly, began to sing.

The image of the shuttle had faded as the final chorus of the song fell into silence. From the far corner of the room, Mary Jo—slight, redheaded and green-eyed—spoke up.

I heard this at a filk con last year. She reached for the guitar. Written by Gillian Morgan. I bet it describes most of us. She began, her warm contralto filling the room. Someone hit the TV’s mute button.

I feel my soul is growing, shining wings to reach the sun

And I feel a wind come calling far and higher....

Beth’s throat closed around a lump, and tears stung her cheeks. She heard the thunder rise at the end of the second verse, felt the burning of tears and found herself looking at the ceiling as though she could see straight through it. Perhaps, she thought bleakly, if I just go outside, start running and stretch my arms ... But even as the thought filled her mind, the weight of her feet on the floor brought her back to reality.

The party was breaking up and Cat was standing beside her, holding out her cloak. I need to go, she said. Work in the morning, you know....

Beth nodded, rising to her feet and shrugging her shoulders under the cloak.

With ship, or soon without it, I’ll be leaving....

Was that Jack’s song, she wondered, or hers? She followed Cat out the door and down the driveway, bits of gravel crunching as she walked. The rain had stopped, and a blanket of silence filled the air. The sound of shoes on wet pavement ground at her oddly, playing an eerie accompaniment to the song about High Wings.

The phone shrilled.

Beth opened one eye and reached for it, sitting up and dangling her feet over the edge of the bed. She hit the Answer button just as she reached the hallway. No sense waking Jack. Time enough to deal with the fallout from yesterday.

H’lo, she said.

BK, it’s Cat. The shuttle—

Oh. Cat. Hey, look ... I can’t really talk now—

Cat continued relentlessly.

—disappeared.…

Cat’s voice was at war with the doctor’s voice. Less than a year ... kidney failure ... dialysis ...

Disappeared? The word was a small, strangled moan. What—

BK, are you all right?

No. I’m not. Can I—like talk to you sometime later? I just need some time....

Oh, my God! BK—I’m sorry....

Beth hit the End button and shuffled back to bed, curling herself against the warmth of Jack’s body. She’d begun a countdown of her own the day before. Less than a year, optimistically. Three months, more realistically.

He hasn’t responded to the treatment at all. The doctor’s words had fallen into the air like chipped ice. His remaining kidney has failed, and the tumors have spread to both lungs, the esophagus and the brain.…

They had left the office and had sat grim-faced in the cab. Silence had punctuated every moment from then on.

Death’s calling card. The thought intruded like a cat burglar, stealing her depression and replacing it with a searing grief.

Death’s calling card—for Jack, and for the shuttle and the little blonde girl from Kansas.

Sighing, realizing that she wouldn’t be able to sleep, Beth rose to face the day.

Beth gazed across the table as Jack sipped at his cup of tea.

The sun had come out and now cast a puddle of watery light across the kitchen table. She sat across from him, listening to the burble of her coffeemaker, spooning idly at a bowl of Fruity Cheerios.

He set the cup down and reached across the short space between them, laying a hand on her thigh. Bethie. The words were half a whisper. I’m not doing dialysis.

She dropped the spoon with a clatter, spilling cereal across her place mat. Not—But why not? I mean—

Beth, you heard the doctor. Kidney, lungs, brain… Even on dialysis, I’m not going to be here long. I just want a peaceful death.…

Jack, that’s ludicrous! I get it why you don’t want any more cancer therapy—

No, Bethie, I don’t think you get it. His eyes sought hers, and she turned towards him, wishing she had enough vision to lose herself in his sky-blue eyes. I don’t think you have any idea. He rubbed her thigh absently. I don’t want to go senile or nutty or have a lot of pain. There’s nothing I can do, do you see? We’re all going to die, but my number’s come up and it’s useless to avoid it.

"How do you think I feel?" Beth’s jaw tightened.

I don’t know. His voice had taken on that awful, cancer-induced flatness. Exactly like blotting paper would sound if it could talk, she thought. I’ve never known how you felt. Aside from that dreadful depression that hangs over you all the time.…

Oh, come on! She struggled for a bit of vehemence, but the comment fell flat. I’m not depressed all the time.…

Beth, as long as I’ve known you, there was some huge desire that exudes from you like a black hole. And it’s drawn me in, and your friends too, I think. I don’t know what you want.… A wracking cough stopped his words. He sipped at his tea, drew a breath and began again. I love you.... Did you know that? I’d have given my very life to see that cloud lift. But it never did, and I tried everything—tried to help you find a meaning for your life, find a focus, make money.…

Jack— It’s not about money or a job or anything like that! She wanted to speak the words, but they wouldn’t let themselves go.

Jack got up from the table. I’m tired, he said. Would you mind—the doctor gave us the number of a hospice. Could you call them, ... please?

In the end, he lasted six weeks. Beth counted the days, frustrated that she had to count forwards instead of towards zero. All through the last month, as late winter turned into spring and the flowers began to dot her front yard with spots of color, Jack’s death was a wall standing between her and the future. Sometimes it drew so close that she could feel its damp, hard stone on her face. Then, as though to torment her, it would recede, like the gate of some prison opened so the inmate chained inside could see the outside. Hadn’t she read a story like that once? Yes, she thought—in some awful French class, years ago. Tortured by Hope it was called, where the unfortunate convict was tortured and then shown the outside and given every reason to believe he’d be released—only to discover that it was all a sham.

Beth wanted to stomp the daffodil blossoms in her front yard into oblivion. She wanted to douse the grass with herbicide and pour concrete over the whole thing. She wanted to do to her yard what the cancer was doing to Jack. But, coward that she was, all she could do was sit by him and talk to the hospice workers and keep the damn notebook they wanted and fight with them over medications. Where was love in this mess? she asked herself.

The clouds began to dance in the sky, growing more vivid as Jack faded, singing softly as his voice fell into silence. She stroked the fuzz of hair that had grown back after the therapy, bending down to plant a kiss on his forehead. One eye opened, and a faint, sad smile quirked the corners of his mouth upward.

Bethie— His breath was a rasp. I love you.…

On a quicksilvered, overcast day in late April, he called to her, his voice barely audible above the rattling breath.

Yes, Beth whispered.

You don’t have ... to ... whisper, he admonished, the words punctuated by a constant catch in his throat.

I’m sorry. Her voice sounded impossibly loud in the quiet room.

It’s ... okay. He reached out a hand and Beth took it.

Help me to the chair in my study, he said. I want to see the cedars in back.

Beth sighed. She could barely manage him now. Even near death, he outweighed her, and his height made it nearly impossible to support him. But she took his hands, helping him up from the bed. He stood in front of her, straightening his shoulders with a mighty will, and began shuffling towards the study. She let him take her arm, trying to keep perfectly steady. They reached the chair and he sank into it, turning his head to look at his two favorite trees. Bethie ...

I’m here.

Grandfather ... he’s here. He’s looking at you.... Can ... you see him?

Beth wanted to shake her head, but she stood there, rooted in place.

He … says ... A cough caught him mid-sentence. Beth reached for his water bottle, held it so he could drink.

He ... says ... you were ... meant ... to fly.... The last word escaped with an awful rattle. Beth’s heart was racing. An odd, sweetish smell filled the small room. Jack’s skin was translucent, his face drawn.

Promise me ... He paused, turning toward her. Promise me ... you’ll look ... for ... the chance ... to fly.…

My God, Beth almost snapped. She couldn’t help it. I thought flying was impractical.…

For some ... for you ... essential. He reached for her hand again. I didn’t ... know. Couldn’t ... see when I was ... well.

Jack!

—sorry. So sorry ... I love you. Take ... my love ... Take to the... stars.…

He drew a final rattling breath, shuddered and went silent.

June. Midsummer. Beth gazed out at the sky, still light at nearly 10:00, and thought about the last months. Probate and massive fights over finance, the house, the health savings account—she’d been consumed with arrangements. Finally, in desperation, she’d asked for her money back from the flight school. They didn’t want to refund her money.

And that was when Cat came to the rescue.

Cat, Beth mused, should have been a lawyer. By the time she got done with the owner of the school, he couldn’t get them the money fast enough.

And so, here she was, in the house she’d shared with Jack for nearly thirty years, staring at ... nothing.

Cat moved in in July, content to leave her kittens at a friend’s for the time being. You look awful, and you’re not doing yourself any good living alone. Her friend sat across the kitchen table from Beth, regarding her appraisingly. You’ve lost weight and not in a good way. And—have you even watched the news lately?

Beth shook her head.

While you were caring for Jack, the shuttle with MaryEllin on it went to Alpha Centauri. They’re going to have another flight.…

A shiver ran up Beth’s spine. Jack had known.

But known what?

Carry my love to the stars. The echo of his final words played in her head, said now not in his cancer-voice but in the rich baritone he’d had when they met.

Beth? You’re not listening. ...

I heard you. Her voice felt unexpectedly husky. We discovered a star drive while I cared for Jack. He knew somehow ... Cat? Do you suppose I’ll ever get the chance to try?

Cat gave her friend a faint smile. I don’t know, BK, but if anybody deserves it, it’s you.

Mother

Mother is an origin story, of a sort. It is also a coming-of-age story, an alternative-future anthropology, and a miniature: clear, brief glimpse into a world fully formed but not fully comprehended, or possibly not even fully comprehensible. Told from two perspectives, even then there is no sense of an omniscient narrator. There is music, and color, and psychic communication, and a glimpse behind the burlap of a Ren Faire circuit of this future. And a glimpse of a shard of the experiences of the author, herself a passionate harpist. Each of these stories may stand on its own, but I think they are best taken in the aggregate, like a pointillist painting, each dot is colorful in itself, but together they form a more comprehensive image.

—HL Preston

Caryssa’s wrist shimmered gold iridescence in the garish light of the sign that heralded the entrance to Scarborough Fair. She stared at it, bewildered, the shimmer wavering in the light, her hand changing shape in time to the trailer’s rattling.

Where did I get a databand? Surely the shimmering strip on her left wrist was an Enclaver’s databand. It had to be. But how—

The final, merciful ending of the rattling and jouncing woke Caryssa. She sat up, bleary-eyed, wishing she could go back to sleep. She rubbed at her eyes and stared out the window of the trailer. The sign for Scarborough Faire jutted up through the twilight, its shape a stark shadow in the setting sun, its letters lit by a solitary LED bulb.

The murmur of her father’s voice told Caryssa that they had been admitted to Scarborough’s sprawling campground. She sighed, relieved. But her stomach roiled with hunger. She hadn’t eaten lunch—long trailer rides always left her feeling queasy, as though her stomach’s contents refused to give ground to the temporary stillness that accompanied their meal stops.

A few minutes more of jouncing lay between the gate and the Minorou campsite. Caryssa wondered if Camden was still traveling with his parents or whether he had finally become his own act. She knew that Tharaco