The State of the Art(10)

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