ParSec #10: ParSec, #10

By PS Publishing, Tim Major, L.B. Spillers and 9 more

A digital magazine featuring the very best in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror

The latest fiction from established writers alongside the best new stories from emerging talents and debut authors. On-point articles and regular columns, exploring genre fiction in all its forms. Interviews with leading authors and artists. Insightful and informative book reviews by a carefully selected cadre of reviewers, assessing current titles and imminent releases from publishers big and small.

This is the table of contents for the Issue #10

Introduction – Ian Whates

Small Lives – Tim Major

Golden Cuckoo – L. B. Spillers

What Music They Make – Alister Davison

Picture Postcards – Emma Coleman

The Manktelow Timepiece – Simon Bestwick

Seagifts – CL Hellisen

Small Gods and Little Demons – Dave Blake

The Crossing – Robert S. Malan

Dreaming in Babylon – Stan Nicholls

Ghost Shift — Angus McIntyre

Life in the Fast Lane featuring Angela Makey

In the Weeds  – Anne C. Perry & Jared Shurin

Reviews Section

Andy Hedgewick's Interview with Paul Magrs

ParSec is available online for reading on computers, tablets, IPads, smartphones, and all popular e-readers

• Language: English
• Publisher: PS Publishing
• Release date: Apr 25, 2024
• ISBN: 9781803949871

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

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Ian Whates

I WRITE THIS A FEW DAYS after returning from Telford, having attended Levitation, this year’s Eastercon—the British National Science Fiction Convention—where I was on hand to witness Donna Scott, subject of last issue’s ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ piece, win the BSFA Award for ‘Best Collection’ in her capacity as editor of NewCon Press’ Best of British Science Fiction 2022. Yes, I know it’s an anthology rather than a collection, but I don’t set the categories for the awards and, given the outcome, I’m certainly not complaining.

This issue’s ‘Fast Lane’ contribution features another award winner: Niche Comics, an SF and fantasy bookshop in Cambridgeshire which has become an integral part of the local community, while Jared and Anne’s ‘In the Weeds’ takes a critical look at the pros and cons of the popular site Goodreads, and our interview this time around finds Andy Hedgecock in conversation with Paul Magrs.

As for the fiction, we kick things off with a typically neat and clever SF tale from Tim Major. Small Lives is set on a colony ship whose skeleton crew face escalating problems which appear insurmountable, but it’s all a matter of interpretation. Next up, L.B. Spillers introduces us to a near future in which a mega-rich individual believes his wealth and power grant him the right to claim anything with impunity, including a woman’s womb. Cheryl disagrees.

Next, Alister Davison whisks us off to Paris for a detective story with a difference, involving murderous goings on, mesmerising song, distinctly ‘shady’ characters and more, before Emma Coleman introduces us to sixteen-year-old Margot, who is counting down the days until her beau, Larry, returns home. Her consolation is a series of daily postcards Larry sends her, but, although outwardly cheerful, each successive card proves a source of growing concern...

Simon Bestwick ushers us back to Bone Street, the surreal setting of his story Are We Going Under from issue 6. On this occasion, a fateful timepiece forms the centre of a chilling and cautionary tale that proves equally as gripping as our first visit. CL Hellisen’s brine-drenched story takes us to the sea, but there are no gulls or ice creams here; instead we encounter an island community and a shy creature that is the very last of its kind. In his first published story, Dave Blake introduces us to Linsa, who has inherited the role of God Catcher from her father—a role for which he has never prepared her. Linsa must travel into the dark mountains and capture a God, or her community will perish, but she has no idea what she is doing and does not expect to survive, let alone succeed.

Robert S. Malan’s The Crossing is set in Tokyo, where Junichi Mori’s humdrum life is changed forever when, one day on his way to work, he notices the smile of a young woman depicted on a billboard; a smile he can’t stop thinking about...Stan Nicholls’ Dreaming in Babylon is a murder mystery that invites us behind the scenes of reality to disclose what’s really going on. In our closing story, Angus McIntyre takes us to Chenggong in Southwest China, where an American tech company is investigating a batch of anomalous circuit boards, concerned that workers are being co-opted to an unauthorised ‘ghost shift’, using their facility to produce components for a rival company. The truth proves to be far darker. 

—Ian Whates

SMALL LIVES

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Tim Major

RHEA BESS SNEEZED at the very same moment that the comms unit pinged, and the associated convulsive movement of her right arm knocked the carefully prepared slide from the microscope and onto the floor.

She cursed, rubbed her nose, made a mental note to clean up the broken glass, then accepted the call and said, What’s up, Anni?

It’s Iver.

This is the captain’s frequency.

I’m the captain now. Acting captain.

Ida blinked in confusion. Why?

She’s worse than before. Much worse. I had to take over. Look, Dr Bess, it doesn’t matter—

"Doesn’t matter? A three-person crew, and you’ve unilaterally decided to take one of us out of commission? In what world doesn’t that matter?"

Iver’s sigh crackled over the comms. I mean not at this moment. You’ve got to come down here. There’s some-thing very, very bad happening.

As bad as insurrection?

Yes. Definitely yes.

It was only now that Rhea registered the strain in Iver’s voice. While their relationship had never been anything more than functional, and his rulebound approach to every activity on board the ship—from course amendments to cleaning rotas to bar billiards—drove her insane, she nevertheless respected his integrity.

Okay, she said. She moved away, then darted back to the speaker. Where?

Loading bay on level five.

Rhea laughed nervously, then her nose tickled and she sneezed again. You’d tell me if we were being boarded by aliens or something, right?

A pause. Would you want me to?

She rubbed at her nose. Not really.

Then just get down here ASAP.

Iver was standing outside the loading bay, crouching behind a low wall like a child playing hide and seek. Only his head protruded above it to allow him to peer through the window into the large hangar beyond.

Within the bay, the far wall was a single panel of borosilicate glass interrupted only by the airlock doors. Through the panel, Rhea could see no stars, no planets, nothing.

No, it wasn’t nothing. She registered movement outside. Whatever it was, it was close, and travelling at a rate only slightly faster than their ship, and even as she watched it seemed to slow.

What is that? she said, squinting, trying to ignore the reflections on the twin panes.

Iver turned to her. His eyes were wide, the muscles around them trembling. He was pale, but then again he’d been pale all week, a state of affairs that had resulted in Rhea running medical diagnostics, which in turn had resulted in the discovery of a series of small ulcers in his colon. Rhea hadn’t dared suggest that they had been caused by guilt due to Iver’s increasing uncertainly about the correct course to reach their destination.

"It’s the Lemuel," he said.

Now it was Rhea’s eyes that widened. Seriously? They’re back?

She thought of her older brother, Roland, who had volunteered to join the Lemuel’s twelve-person crew half a decade ago, and whose excitable, optimistic messages had halted abruptly two and a half years later, soon after their own launch. She hadn’t expected to see him for another ten months at least—and given the lack of any homing signal broadcast from their destination, they might easily be searching for the new colony planet for longer than that.

Her excitement dissipated as quickly as it arose. Then...what about the colony? They wouldn’t have abandoned it, would they, so soon after establishing it?

It doesn’t seem so.

"What do you mean? And why have you only spotted the Lemuel now?"

Iver grimaced. It’s the same answer to both questions. She’s dark.

Rhea stared out of the window at the scuffed plates and nodules of the aging ship that now seemed so close that it might bump and scrape the hull of their own vessel.

"All ships are pretty dark, Iver, she said. They’re just metal-coloured, aren’t they?"

I don’t mean visually. I mean no comms, no signal. And no—

Rhea shook her head immediately. Don’t say it.

I’m sorry, Dr Bess. But then he said it anyway. And there are no signs of human life.

It took only another few minutes for the Lemuel to slow to the same speed as the Gibbous. After that, Rhea and Iver didn’t have to wait long. Iver’s confidence in his calculation that the Lemuel’s docking bay would draw level with their cargo bay was well-founded, though whatever was piloting the other ship appeared to have misjudged slightly: its docking bay doors were clearly visible through the transparent panel rather than having aligned neatly with the airlock. Rhea imagined the Lemuel backing up, its pilot twisting to look over their shoulder and grunting in frustration as they wrestled with the wheel, as though parallel parking in a tight spot in a supermarket car park.

She laughed at the image, then sneezed. Then, when Iver spun around at the violent sound, she grinned apologetically and said, Allergies.

You should have had treatment to eliminate them before launch. It’s regulation. He was a stickler for the rules to the last. Absurd, in the circumstances.

I didn’t have them before, Rhea muttered petulantly. Maybe I’m allergic to you.

Their squabble had no time to blossom. The docking bay doors of the Lemuel opened. To her surprise, Rhea realised she could see into the airlock and through it; both its external and internal doors were open. Exposure to the vacuum would kill everybody on board. But then again, Iver had already stated that there was nobody on board.

Nobody human.

Rhea saw shapes within the arched frame of the airlock. Their outlines shifted like blobs of oil in a puddle. They drew closer.

Oh shit, Iver said.

Iver! Rhea scolded. "You never swear."

He turned to look at her, his eyes wild.

Sorry, she said. I get silly when I’m scared. Swear away.

I’m scared too, Iver said. He took Rhea’s hand. His was clammy and cold. She held it tight, all the same, and they watched the alien life forms in silence. There were eight of them, pale translucent yellow, no sign of eyes or mouth or anything. Their shapes undulated slowly. They were rather beautiful, apart from the spikes that occasionally rippled across their surfaces, reminding Rhea of puffer fish.

The eight shapes emerged from the Lemuel, floated across the short space between ships, then affixed themselves gently onto the wide window panel of the Gibbous, their bodies turning duller and more opaque at the edges, like the feet of snails.

What do we do? Rhea asked.

I don’t know. None of this is in the handbook.

Still, you’re the security expert, aren’t you?

Iver shook his head. I’m pilot and payload. There is no security expert. There was no reason to expect any encounter or any breach.

Speaking of breach, Rhea said, pointing.

At first it was only the slight displacement of air that was noticeable, creating blurriness around the snail-feet of the aliens. Then, through this haze, Rhea saw that the window panel itself was warping and tearing.

We have to tell Anni, Rhea said. She’ll know what to do.

She’s in no state to make a decision.

And you are, Mr Acting Captain? So what’s the plan?

You won’t like it. Listen, Rhea, there’s only one course of action, when you think about it.

But Rhea had already set off at a sprint in the direction of the bridge.

Where is she? Rhea demanded. Her cabin’s empty.

Iver ignored her. He hammered at the screen of the central command module, pulling up menus, cursing under his breath.

Iver! Rhea said, shaking his shoulder. Tell me where Anni is. What have you done with her?

He had the decency to flash her a look of apology as he pointed through the open doorway that led to the medical bay—Rhea’s own territory, in her secondary role as ship’s medic. Rhea dashed through it, then skidded to a halt outside the clinic. Through the window embedded in the door she saw Anni Claith sitting cross-legged on a trolley bed. Rhea put her hand to the palm scanner, but it emitted an insulting, low bleep and the door remained locked.

Anni? Rhea said. Are you all right?

Anni looked up. One side of her hair was in disarray as though teased by static electricity, the other a tangle of inexpertly tied braids. Her lined face, too, had an asymmetric appearance. What began as a smile on the left became a frown on the right.

You can call me captain, Anni said, and then laughed raucously.

Rhea shuddered. Okay. Captain. Can you tell me what the problem is?

Innocently, Anni replied, Is there a problem?

Actually, yes. Foreign bodies are at this moment infiltrating the loading bay.

Foreigners?

Rhea shook her head. More like... She stopped to consider. "Like white blood cells. It’s more like our ship is a foreign body that they’ve detected. They’re clearly simple organisms, but that doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous."

And they’ve been flying around in our sister ship, she thought. She prayed that the colonists had arrived on the planet Orcus as planned, before the Lemuel was hijacked.

Organisms, Anni repeated. "I like that word. Organ. Isms. I like all the isms."

We don’t know what to do, Rhea said.

There’s no point asking her, Iver said, rushing up behind Rhea. Can’t you see she’s suffering from space madness. Now come on, Rhea—I need you.

To do what?

His expression clouded. I told you—there’s only one course of action. Anni would have been able to put the command through herself, but I can’t do it alone. Without the captain, we need two crew to authorise the jettisoning.

"The what?"

Iver gestured over his shoulder. What’s happening back there...we can’t stop it. If those things can eat through the hull, imagine how easily they’ll dispatch us. We have to be pragmatic. We have to give them something and hope it keeps them busy long enough for us to escape.

Within the clinic, Anni began to sing softly: a children’s rhyme. It was difficult to reconcile this childlike figure with the hard-headed woman that Rhea had looked up to and, frankly, adored for so very long.

Slowly, Rhea said, But those life forms are already in the loading bay, Iver. What are you suggesting jettisoning, which includes the bay itself?

She saw Iver’s fists clench, perhaps involuntarily. A tortured rumble came from his stomach, and he winced. His ulcers must be causing him great discomfort. 

We jettison everything beyond that point, he said finally. All the cargo. It’s the only way. Otherwise we risk those things consuming everything, including us.

"The cargo?" Rhea repeated in disbelief.

Anni rose from her cross-legged pose on the bed and approached the door. She tapped on the window politely.

We don’t actually have any cargo to speak of, she said. Then, more reflectively, Cargo. Cargo. Funny word. I used to have a car, a VW Beetle. Burgundy. Car go. Car went. She traced a circle on her forehead, around and around and around. Then she peered up at Rhea and whispered, You look just like my friend Rhea Bess. It’s uncanny.

Rhea watched her with growing dismay. It wasn’t only that Anni Claith was her captain; she had also been responsible for Rhea’s own training, during which time Rhea had grown to love Anni’s pragmatic outlook regarding her role, her responsibilities, her purpose. And she was fun. It had been her dazzling brightness rather than the stars that had led Rhea to volunteer for this mission. Now that wonderful intellect was diminishing before her eyes.

He’s referring to the passengers, Rhea said forlornly.

Iver thumped the wall. "They’re not passengers, Rhea. They’re cargo in crates, ferried from Earth to Orcus to populate the new colony, which for all we know hasn’t even been established after all. The people on this ship might as well be corpses—which they will be once those bloodsuckers find them."

Anni pressed her face to the glass, peering at him.

They’re people, she said pleasantly.

"Thirty thousand people, Rhea added. We’re not about to make ourselves murderers of thirty thousand people, are we?"

Do we have a choice? Iver asked. Do you want the decision to be made for us, and get killed in the process? As acting captain, I demand that you contribute your joint authorisation, Dr Bess. Then he bent double in pain, his fingers clawing the wall.

Rhea’s nose itched terribly.

Hold on.

Abruptly, she asked, Have you ever had intestinal issues in the past, Iver?

He stared up at her, his mouth still contorted with pain. What? No.

I’ve never had allergies either. She pointed through the little window in the door. And Anni never suffered like this.

All astronauts are prone to space madness, Iver said. It’s been three years, and it’s taking a toll on our bodies, that’s all.

Rhea nodded excitedly. Exactly, she said. "They’re all the same, our conditions. We knew it was a risk of such long periods of travel, and the crew of the Lemuel gave hints of it before comms cut out. Don’t you see? It’s our microbiomes that are to blame. Back on Earth, all the organisms in our bodies were in balance—the pathogenic and symbiotic microbiota coexisting. Out here, we’ve been knocked off course, in a biological sense. Your ulcers, my allergies, Anni’s mental deterioration...we’re all being preyed upon by bacteria that are running riot within us."

So what? Iver said. This is hardly the time for detailed medical investigation—literal navel-gazing. A two-minute walk from where we’re standing, aliens are oozing through the hull, and they’ll come after us next. Either that, or they’ll chew holes everywhere and we’ll be sucked out into space. Once again, Dr Bess, I order you to co-authorise the jettisoning.

Rhea kissed her hand and planted her palm on the window of the clinic, eliciting a grin of delight from Anni. Then she strode along the corridor to the kit stores. Iver followed her and then watched, arms folded, as she pulled on a space suit.

It’s got to you too, then? he said. You’re space mad as well, are you?

Maybe, Rhea said. If I was, I imagine I’d find it hard to judge.

Iver strode to the lockers and yanked out two pistols. With a great sigh, he said, Well, I for one don’t intend to go out without a fight.

Rhea fitted her bulky helmet, then patted him on the shoulder. I’d expect nothing less from you, she said.

Iver turned and raced back into the bridge, then through the opposite door and towards the loading bay. Rhea yanked another suit and helmet from the locker, then plodded after him, watching the scrawny figure brandishing his two ineffective pistols as if he were a five-year-old playing at cowboys. Every so often, he slowed, presumably because his guts were racked with pain, and every so often, Rhea sneezed, lightly spraying the inside of her visor with mucus.

The loading bay was filled with yellow shapes. At their tallest, they were twice as tall as a human, though their forms were so pliable that they were capable of squashing to a quarter of this height and growing correspondingly wider, like silly putty crushed in a fist. Whenever one of them met any surface the metal hissed violently, and every one of the life forms flashed red and spikes rippled along each of their flanks; Rhea imagined it was an automatic response, jointly assessing material that might be consumed. The shapes bobbed around the hangar, tilting forward at their peaks to counter the pull of the air sucking through the eight puncture holes in the transparent hull, occasionally butting into one another gently, rebounding and then all glowing golden as if expressing apologies.

It would have been tempting to imagine that they were benign, if it weren’t for fact that even as Rhea and Iver watched, a blob in the corner succeeded in eating through the floor grille and disappearing into the level below.

Rhea dropped the spare suit and helmet at Iver’s feet. Put it on, she said.

Iver glanced at the holes in the hull, then nodded his thanks. He struggled into the suit, not seeming to want to put down either of the pistols for any amount of time.

Rhea checked his helmet fastenings, then gestured to a thick pipe protruding from the wall. Hold onto that, she said.

He obeyed immediately, and only then asked, Why?

Rhea’s only response was to open the door to the loading bay. Immediately, her legs were pulled from under her and she struggled to cling onto the door frame. Carefully, she worked her way around the internal wall using handholds