instantaneously, from me to the starship ten
kilometres away.There was a sharp detonation of
sound somewhere inside my head.I was thrown off
the tree stump.
When I sat up again the ship had fallen.The Great
Square blazed with flames and smoke and strange,
bristling tongues of some terrible lightning; the
remaining lasers and fireworks were made dull.I
stood, shaking, ears ringing, and stared at what I'd
done.Late-reacting sprinterceptiles from the
escorts criss-crossed the air above the wreck and
slammed into the ground, automatics fooled by the
sheer velocity of the plasma bolt.Their warheads
burst brightly among the boulevards and buildings
of the Inner City, a bruise upon a bruise.
The noise of the first explosion smacked and
rumbled over the park.
The police and the escort ships themselves were
starting to react.I saw the lights of police cruisers
rise strobing from the Inner City; the escort craft
began to turn slowly above the fierce, flickering
radiations of the wreck.
I pocketed the gun and ran down the damp path
towards the bike, away from the escarpment's
lip.Behind my eyes, burnt there, I could still see
the line of light that had briefly joined me to the
starship; bright path indeed, I thought, and nearly
laughed.A bright path in the soft darkness of the
mind.
I raced down to join all the other poor folk on the
run.
Odd Attachment
Depressed and dejected, his unrequited love like a
stony weight inside him, Fropome looked longingly
at the sky, then shook his head slowly and stared
disconsolately down at the meadow in front of him.
A nearby grazer cub, eating its way across the
grassy plain with the rest of the herd, started
cuffing one of its siblings.Normally their master
would have watched the pretended fight with some
amusement, but today he responded with a low
creaking noise which ought to have warned the hot-
blooded little animals.One of the tumbling cubs
looked up briefly at Fropome, but then resumed the
tussle.Fropome flicked out a vine-limb, slapping
the two cubs across their rumps.They squealed,
untangled, and stumbled mewling and yelping to
their mothers on the outskirts of the herd.
Fropome watched them go, then - with a rustling
noise very like a sigh - returned to looking at the
bright orange sky.He forgot about the grazers and
the prairie and thought again about his love.
His lady-love, his darling, the One for whom he
would gladly climb any hillock, wade any lakelet;
all that sort of thing.His love; his cruel, cold,
heartless, uncaring love.
He felt crushed, dried-up inside whenever he
thought of her.She seemed so unfeeling, so
unconcerned.How could she be so dismissive?
Even if she didn't love him in return, you'd have
thought at least she'd be flattered to have somebody
express their undying love for her.Was he so
unattractive?Did she actually feel insulted that he
worshipped her?If she did, why did she ignore
him?If his attentions were unwelcome, why didn't
she say so?
But she said nothing.She acted as though all he'd
said, everything he'd tried to express to her was
just some embarrassing slip, a gaffe best ignored.
He didn't understand it.Did she think he would say
such things lightly?Did she imagine he hadn't
worried over what to say and how to say it, and
where and when?He'd stopped eating!He hadn't
slept for nights!He was starting to turn brown and
curl up at the edges!Food-birds were setting up
roosts in his nestraps!
A grazer cub nuzzled his side.He picked the furry
little animal up in a vine, lifted it up to his head,
stared at it with his four front eyes, sprayed it with
irritant and flung it whimpering into a nearby bush.
The bush shook itself and made a grumbling
noise.Fropome apologized to it as the grazer cub
disentangled itself and scuttled off, scratching
furiously.
Fropome would rather have been alone with his
melancholy, but he had to watch over the grazer
herd, keeping them out of acidcloys, pitplants and
digastids, sheltering them from the foodbirds'
stupespittle and keeping them away from the
ponderously poised boulderbeasts.
Everything was so predatory.Couldn't love be
different?Fropome shook his withered foliage.
Surely she must feel something. They'd been
friends for seasons now; they got on well together,
they found the same things amusing, they held
similar opinions if they were so alike in these
respects, how could he feel such desperate,
feverish passion for her and she feel nothing for
him?Could this most basic root of the soul be so
different when everything else seemed so in
accord?
She must feel something for him.It was absurd to
think she could feel nothing.She just didn't want to
appear too forward.Her reticence was only
caution; understandable, even commendable.She