Striking Fire

Striking Fire

by Dirk Flinthart

BOOK DESCRIPTION

A lonely, overweight vampire tends a sleazy video store in inner-city Sydney…

A multi-billionaire sacrifices everything to become Earth's first ambassador to the stars…

A legendary time-travelling assassin finds himself pitted against the greatest detective that never was…

A young father goes to extraordinary lengths to save his child after a car accident…

A collection of works old and new from the pen of Tasmanian author Dirk Flinthart, these stories deliver a perilous gauntlet of speculative fiction from contemporary fantasy through thoughtful science fiction all the way to disturbing horror. A dizzying, eclectic display of accomplished storytelling grounded in a deeply human emotional landscape, this book is sure to strike fire.

Striking Fire

by Dirk Flinthart

Smashwords Edition

First published in Australia in 2015

by FableCroft Publishing

http://fablecroft.com.au

This collection © 2015 FableCroft Publishing

Cover design by Amanda Rainey

Design and layout by Tehani Wessely

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry (pbk)

Creator: Flinthart, Dirk, author.

Title: Striking fire : a Dirk Flinthart collection / Dirk Flinthart ; edited by Tehani Wessely.

ISBN: 9780980777079 (paperback)

9780987400079 (ebook)

Subjects: Short stories, Australian.

Other Contributors: Wessely, Tehani, editor.

Dewey Number: A823.3

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your preferred ebook seller and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author and publisher.

Story Acknowledgements

The Ballad of Farther-on Jones © 2002, first published in AGOG! Fantastic Fiction (AGOG! Press)

Parity Check © 2003, first published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #9

Gaslight a Go Go © 2004, first published in AGOG! Smashing Stories (AGOG! Press)

The Flatmate from Hell © 2004, first published in Encounters (CSFG)

Fortitude Valley Station, 2:15am © 2005, first published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #18

One Night Stand © 2006, first published in AGOG! Ripping Reads (AGOG! Press)

Truckers © 2007, first published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #30

The Last Word © 2008, first published in 2012 (Twelfth Planet Press)

Walker © 2010, first published in Sprawl (Twelfth Planet Press)

Eschaton and Coda © 2011, first published in After the Rain (FableCroft Publishing)

Outlines © 2012, first published in Damnation and Dames (Ticonderoga Publications)

The Fletcher Test © 2012, first published in Epilogue (FableCroft Publishing)

Sanction © 2014, first published as an Amazon single (FableCroft Publishing)

Granuaile © 2015, first published in Cranky Ladies of History (FableCroft Publishing)

Collateral Damage © 2015, first published in Insert Title Here (FableCroft Publishing)

A Friend in the Trade © 2015

Faith © 2015

Night Shift © 2015

No Hard Feelings © 2015

The First Martian © 2015

Tough © 2015

IN PRAISE OF FLINTHART…

…raw and violent, sexual and powerful, chaotic and mesmerising… — Jamie Marriage

Sheer brilliance… — Pete Aldin

…one of Australia’s most talented writers with a stellar record in producing quality work. — David McDonald

Flinthart delivers some beautifully timed surprises and shocks… — Jason Franks

…a solid track record in short horror and science fiction… — Kyla Lee Ward

Flinthart’s writing is punchy… — Sean Wright

…comprehensively recommend anything he’s written… — Simon Petrie

Flinthart utilises his considerable flair for prose to depict a strongly-drawn character, and to invoke a depth of pathos which transcends the tropes it makes use of. — Ben Payne

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the long-suffering editor and publisher of this work. She won’t say it herself, but Tehani is one of a small group of people who have, in recent years, raised the standards of Australian small press to a level which is drawing attention from around the world. There’s amazing work coming out of this country, and Tehani is one of the people who really should be thanked for it. (And you better put all of this on the acknowledgements page, Madame T—yes, this bit too.)

I’d also like to thank Michael Moorcock first for creating Jerry Cornelius, and next for allowing me the privilege of playing with the character in print. That was a genuine moment of joy for me.

Finally: thanks, as always, for the support of my much-loved wife Natalie. As for my children…well, I suppose you could have been more distracting. I’m just not too sure how!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

introduction

the first martian

the flatmate from hell

the ballad of farther-on jones

collateral damage

eschaton and coda

faith

truckers

fortitude valley station, 2.15am

a friend in the trade

granuaile

sanction (a night-beast story)

no hard feelings

the fletcher test

the last word

outlines

tough

walker

one night stand

gaslight a go-go

parity check

night shift

about the author

also from fablecroft publishing

INTRODUCTION

Tehani Wessely

There are some things you need to know about this collection.

1. Dirk and I started talking about collecting some of his extensive short story canon several years ago. If you have ever met Mr Flinthart, you will know that in any one conversation you may touch on approximately ninety-three different topics ranging from writing to politics to insects to popular culture to music to media to martial arts to child-rearing to food to wine to the delights of Tasmanian lifestyle and just about anything in between (this is not an exaggeration—trust me). Thus, working on a project with him travels along somewhat similar lines. In this case, I’m fairly certain he has had at least a dozen new stories published, written two novels and an opera libretto, almost if not quite completed a Masters degree, and continued to wrangle three frighteningly active and intelligent children along the way. Let this set the stage.

2. There was no way we could include every piece of writing he has ever done. Nor would we want to. However, readers familiar with Dirk’s work will potentially identify some quite unusual omissions, and I want to reassure you there are very, very good reasons for these that have absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the stories. In fact, it is for this reason we have chosen not to title the book a ‘best of’, because we have left out some most excellent stories. Deliberately.

Why? There is more than one reason. Flinthart’s Red Priest stories are well-known and loved, but you will not find one in these pages. I want to promise you, as a fellow fan, that you will appreciate the reason, as we have instead planned a Red Priest mosaic novel in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future, which will incorporate not only the existing stories, but several more to satisfy you.

Also absent from this book are Dirk’s highly engaging New Ceres stories, featuring his original character the proctor George Gordon. For these, I wholly recommend getting your hands on the New Ceres material, still readily available from Twelfth Planet Press, including Dirk’s standalone novella Angel Rising. In this world, too, there is more to be told, and Gordon comes up in our conversations quite frequently, so there’s a potential future at some point as well.

Finally, you need to know that for the balance and tone of this collection, we had to make the very difficult decision not to include any of Dirk’s stories for younger readers, despite several of these having previously been recognised and awarded in many arenas. But do not despair, dear reader! FableCroft has plans afoot to collate these pieces, and several new ones pitched at the appropriate level, in a different book that you could quite happily share with the junior speculative fiction fans in your life. (We do not, however, recommend doing so with THIS book, at least not until you have read it yourself…)

3. Within these pages, you will find stories that reach across the boundaries of science fiction, fantasy, horror and beyond. Most cannot be pinned to a specific genre; Flinthart dips in and out of themes, ideas and genus with carefully controlled abandon, drawing on his vivid imagination and extensively-read rat-trap of a mind, and constructing unique works with his particular blend of painstaking craftmanship and rollicking storytelling technique.

In this collection, among work that has been previously published in the years since 2002 (which is when he started seeing frequent publication of his fiction), we present to you six original stories. In these, you will see exactly the sort of breadth Flinthart habitually demonstrates in his writing, in that you really just never know exactly what to expect. Well, other than an entertaining, quality piece of work, that is.

Some of these pieces will horrify you; others (or sometimes the same stories) will make you chuckle. Some will leave you satisfied; others may make you think deeply about life, the universe and everything in it. So why don’t I let you get on with the business of discovering all this for yourself—it’s much more fun!

THE FIRST MARTIAN

2012: Archival footage, FOX news

Kathy O’Connell is very young. Dressed warmly against the pre-dawn April chill, she stands at the front of the little crowd, holding her father’s hand. A lock of red hair falls from under her woollen cap, teased across her eyes by the breeze, and she swipes it away impatiently. From somewhere, a flat, almost mechanical voice recites an echoing countdown, and as it approaches zero, a glorious light, greater than the dawn itself, blossoms. A huge, world-filling roar shakes her.

Her eyes widen and her mouth becomes an ‘o’ of astonishment and delight as the blunt, unwieldy arrow of the shuttle climbs, slowly at first, then swift as a dart, rising atop a vast, column of howling flame. The wind from the distant launch blows hot, and the smell of strange fires prickles in her nose. She watches, her head tilting back, back, as the spacecraft—no earthly thing now, but a living beast of the aether—changes from a pencil of searing light to a glowing line, to a bright dot, and then finally, disappears into the still-dark sky. When at last her gaze returns to earth, her eyes are bright with tears.

Halstead’s chip pinged him, both aurally and via his visuals, until he pulled himself out of a very relaxed and comfortable sleep. He did some of his best sleeping in the lifemodule of the crawler. Most likely it was the vibrations. Whatever reason the kid had for pinging him, it better be good. What you got? he vocalised.

Not sure. The kid’s voice sounded hoarse. Probably he’d been singing along to that antique country-western shit again. Maybe nothing. But—my gyrocompass says the GPS readouts are wrong.

Halstead sat up abruptly, cracked his head on the low ceiling, and swore.

Sorry? said the kid. That didn’t come through too clearly.

Never mind, said Halstead. What did you say about the GPS?

I can’t find anything wrong with it. But according to my gyrocompass, we’re at least five kay offbeam. The kid sounded uncomfortable. I can’t find anything wrong with the gyrocompass either.

Gyrocompass? Halstead rubbed his face blearily, and chipped an inquiry to the Net.

Old-style navigation tool, said the kid, beating the lag-time on Halstead’s query by several seconds. A hobby. I made one, off an old design. Just to see if I could get it to work under Martian conditions.

Okay, said Halstead. So maybe it doesn’t work right. He bit his lip. He shouldn’t have said that. The kid was good with electronics, antique stuff like that. He was proud of it. You’re saying it does work right?

I’m saying something’s screwy, said the kid. And I’m getting a magneto trace too. A really strange one.

Crustal magnetisation, Halstead said. Just a hot spot. They’re all over the place. Even NASA knew about ’em, as far back as the twentieth century. I think.

You think I don’t know about magnetic hot spots? The kid’s voice was hurt. How long have I been doing these runs with you, Halstead? You still think I’m some kind of high-stepper?

Halstead pushed his hand over his buzz-cut, trying to massage some sense into his foggy brain. Ya, okay, he said finally. Don’t mind me. I’m still asleep here. What do you want to do about it?

Thought I might take a walk. Get out of this cockpit for a while. The magneto trace is small, but intense. Might be a meteorite, maybe. Worth a look.

You’ve got an hour, said Halstead. Don’t make me come after you, Anders.

The kid laughed.

A minute or so later, Halstead’s chip warned him the cockpit was depressurising. Halstead gave the kid ten minutes to get well ahead. Then he slid out of the bunk, slapped on a suitpak, waited until it sealed properly, and dropped out of the crawler through the belly lock.

FLINTHART

2015: Homeland Security Deep Archive Retrieval. Security Camera Footage, Grover Cleveland Elementary School

Kathy O’Connell stands at the front of the classroom. Behind her, an interactive whiteboard depicts the Apollo 11 moon landing. And then, says young Kathy, Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on another world. ‘That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind’, he said, and the Space Age truly began.

In the front rank of students, a hand goes up. Kathy O’Connell points at it. Questions? she says.

"My dad says the moon landings were faked," says the owner of the hand.

"That’s rubbish, says Kathy. The broadcasts went all over. Even in Australia."

Another student speaks up. My dad says NASA is a big waste of money. He says space travel is crap.

Kathy O’Connell juts her lower lip. I don’t care what your dad thinks, Sean Williams! He doesn’t know anything. I’m going to join NASA and be an astronaut when I grow up!

(At this point, the sound recording fails, and the visual record is truncated due to later legal proceedings. But we can clearly see Kathy O’Connell as she throws the first punch.)

FLINTHART

Down in the canyon bottoms, the wind was almost nothing and the kid’s tracks were clear in the fine sand and red dust. Following him was easy, even through the maze of arroyos and gullies cut by long-ago Martian waters. The tracks led in a more or less northerly direction from the crawler. Sometimes they doubled back out of blind-ended gulches. Sometimes they disappeared briefly on pans of hard, windswept rock, but always they reappeared on the far side, heading much the same way as before. It was almost a surprise when he ran into the kid, coming down from a narrow gash in the side of some kind of low mesa.

Hey, said Halstead. So what’d you find?

Anders stared down at him for a moment, his face blurred by the polarised faceplate of his suit. Nothing, he said after a while. Crustal magnetisation. Boring as hell.

Halstead tilted his head, and looked past the kid, up the narrow slot in the rock. The footing looked good. Too good, almost. The work of the vanished waters of Mars had been augmented by the action of the winds, and the ever-present grit, and it almost looked as though somebody had carved steps leading up into the high-walled gully.

He gestured at the path behind Anders. That go to the top?

Eh. Not really, said the kid. It narrows, you know? I couldn’t get all the way up, so there’s not even a view. Just stray magnetism. We should get back to the crawler.

Behind Anders, the cut in the rock rose straight as a laser beam. At the top, a long strip of pinkish-purple sky showed clear.

Doesn’t look too narrow to me, said Halstead. Why don’t you let me have a go? I think I can fit through there.

The kid spread his arms, resting his gloved hands on the cliffs to either side. It’s narrower than it looks, he said. It’s dangerous.

There’s two of us, said Halstead. And the crawler. We’ve got the sampling gear. He nodded his head at the path behind Anders. I can’t imagine getting stuck there, but even if I did, you’d be able to free me.

Well…yeah, said the kid. He turned his head briefly to look behind, then glanced at the sky. We haven’t really got that much time, though. Not if we’re going to make Independence on schedule.

Halstead folded his arms. Hell, kid, he said. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to hide something up there. You wouldn’t be trying to cheat your partner out of something good, would you?

Come on, Halstead, Anders replied. You know that’s garbage. Let’s just get out of here. He made to push his way down the tight path, but Halstead stood his ground.

I’m going up, said Halstead. He turned sideways, and slid his helmeted head under Anders’ elbow. The kid leaned into him for a moment, like he meant to stop him, pin him against the wind-sculpted stone, but then maybe he thought better of it, and Halstead wriggled through. The way beyond was steep, but the steps carved into the stone made it safe, if not exactly easy..

Hey, wait up, said Anders, from behind. It’s really not worth it, Halstead.

Halstead kept his mouth shut, saving his wind for the climb. After a while, the kid fell quiet. Halstead didn’t look back to see if he was following.

FLINTHART

2028: Homeland Security Deep Archive Retrieval — NASA Training Facility, Austin, Texas

The administrator is clearly unhappy with Kathy O’Connell. He holds up her e-pad and shakes it accusingly. You didn’t complete the simulation properly.

Kathy folds her arms. I got the ship down in one piece. One hundred percent survival. Nobody else did that.

"But that’s the point, says the administrator. The exercise doesn’t include sufficient fuel for a return trip. You were supposed to make decisions about which modules had to be jettisoned."

"Show me where it says that, says Kathy. The question asks what I would do to ensure the safety and well-being of ship, crew and mission."

The administrator fumes. This is ridiculous. You put the whole ship down on the surface!

"That’s correct, says Kathy. With ample fuel to supply energy needs until the fission plant can be deployed, and all mission-critical hardware intact."

"But you can’t reconfigure for takeoff! The administrator jabs a finger at the e-pad. You can’t bring anybody back! You didn’t save anyone at all!"

"The data will get home, says Kathy. And maybe they’ll send a rescue mission."

"A rescue mission! The administrator’s voice rises. You’re crazy! That would take years!"

For the first time, Kathy grins. Who cares?

FLINTHART

The gash in the rock climbed steeply, maybe a hundred-fifty metres up from the canyon floor. At the top, it emerged onto a broad, flattish depression with a jumble of boulders and wind-sculpted stone columns towards the centre. Anders’ tracks were clearly visible in the dust, going down into the pile of stone and coming back up. Halstead followed them to their end. There he waited.

Anders came into view a minute or so later. He walked slowly, his head down, kicking up sand and dust as he went. I guess I maybe should have tried to cover my tracks, he said as he approached. I thought the wind would take care of it. Why’d you have to follow me?

Halstead glanced back over his shoulder at what was unmistakeably a simple portal dolmen; a tomb. Just two massive verticals and a capstone, it protected a single long, flat stone beneath, like a bier. The shadowed shape atop the bier, sheltered from the sun and wind, was clearly human. Figured I shouldn’t let you out alone too long, kid, said Halstead. What are we looking at here?

Anders shrugged. It’s old. The seals on the suit have broken down. The body’s dried out. Can’t tell anything about it. I think we should just leave it here. We don’t want the trouble of reporting it, do we?

The older man shook his head, and ducked under the roof-slab. Come on, Anders, he said, looking down at the perfectly preserved face behind the antique glassite visor. You can do better than that. Look at the shoulder flashes. This is a NASA suit. You know as well as I do who this has to be.

No way. The kid shook his head vigorously back and forth, as if that might change something. That’s just crazy.

Halstead sighed, and turned to face his young partner. The kid was being deliberately obtuse. You couldn’t really blame him, though. The find was almost too much to believe.

Come on, kid, he said. That’s Kathy O’Connell.

FLINTHART

2041: Archival Footage. NASA first manned Mars expedtion: footfall.

The autodrone focuses on the airlock of the Hope. Without any human artifacts for reference, the delta-wing lander looks like a toy, a cinema prop resting on the windswept plain of the LZ. Then the doorseal cracks. The camera zooms in as a ramp is deployed at glacial speed. Pressure-suited figures emerge from the darkness, gleaming in the Martian afternoon sun.

Kronstein is first to descend the wide ramp, the others holding back in deference to his rank and seniority. As he sets foot on the dusty red plain, he speaks slowly and carefully for the recorders. Earth Control, this is Colonel Abel Kronstein. Hope has come to Mars. He steps away from the ramp, and unfolds a titanium flagstaff, with a red-white-and-blue banner at the top, just above the blue-and-white of the United Nations. As he raises his hand in salute, loud music cuts into the channel: the Rolling Stones and the raucous riffs of ‘Satisfaction’.

Kronstein’s hand hovers, wavers, and then he spins, comically slow in the lower gravity of Mars, and he points. Jesus fucking Christ, O’Connell, he bellows. I know that’s you! Fuck you! Couldn’t you just once do it like we rehearsed? You fuck… his voice trails off, and he shoots a guilty glance at the autodrone. The music continues.

Kathy O’Connell jumps from the top of the ramp with a raucous rebel yell. As she lands on Martian soil, she goes down on one knee with one hand pointed skyward, a rock-star in a pressure suit. Hellooooo Mars! she calls. We! Are! HERE!

The recording ends abruptly, cut off during a smattering of laughter and applause.

FLINTHART

Halstead, I will give you whatever you want to just go away and forget you ever saw this. Anders was close now, so close the older man could see the sweat on his pale face behind the visor of his suit. Seriously. Anything.

You’re crazy. Halstead glanced back down. He could see the clear space Anders had made when he’d wiped the dust from her visor earlier. This is Kathy O’Connell. The Princess. The First Martian. We are made, son. Made!

Richard. Please don’t make me do this. Something in Anders voice caught Halstead’s attention, and he looked back to see the kid had a flare-point trained on him. The kid’s hand was shaking, but the flare-point was steady enough. The thing could put a pin-head flareburst a thousand metres into the air. At this range it would go through even an e-suit like a hot drill through an ice core. Just turn around. Forget you saw anything. You weren’t at the controls. You don’t know where we are. We can go back to the crawler and pretend this never happened.

Richard, is it? said Halstead slowly. As a sort of afterthought, he raised his open hands. Okay. We’ll play it that way, shall we, Ole? What’s your game? It can’t be the money. The Princess is worth enough for both of us for a couple centuries, at least.

I wouldn’t expect you to understand, Halstead, said the kid, bitterness ringing in his voice. You haven’t been on Earth for decades. You don’t know what it’s like.

Halstead shrugged. Crowded. Smelly. What’s new? Look, Kathy O’Connell is a hero to everyone. We find her, we make a mint, everybody’s happy. What’s the problem?

The flarepoint came down, and the kid pushed past Halstead to look down at the frozen corpse on the bier. They’ll bury her, he said softly. They’ll take her back to Earth and put a pile of dirt and a big fuckin’ stone the top of her. They’ll put her back in a fuckin’ hole, and she’ll never see the stars again.

Halstead grinned, knowing the kid couldn’t see his face. She really means that much to you?

The kid’s head snapped up, and he squared his shoulders as he rounded on Halstead. "You know what she did! She’s the whole reason I’m here. That anybody’s here. She’s—she’s… His gloved hand reached down until it rested on the shoulder of the corpse in the old suit. She’s the First Martian!"

His helmet tilted a little, and Halstead could almost feel the intensity of the kid’s glare through two layers of plex.

Halstead lifted his hands again, this time in a gesture of peace. That’s good to hear, kid. I guess you’ll do. Before the kid could ask what he meant by that, Halstead squeezed in close to the bier, opposite Anders, and knelt. The ground was rough with gravel and stonewrack, and cold even through the hyperefficient insulation of his e-suit. Carefully, with fingers made clumsy by the cold and by the second skin of his e-suit, Halstead reached down either side of the old NASA helmet, and triggered the release catches.

What the hell are you doing? The kid’s voice was thick with shock and anguish. You can’t do that! You’ll damage her!

Relax, kid, said Halstead, lifting the faceplate away. Why do you think I brought you here, anyway? He let the kid think about that one for a minute or two while he unlimbered the little cutter from his utility belt.

She…almost looks alive, said the kid.

Yeah, grunted Halstead. She didn’t really. Her flesh was so white it was nearly blue, and her face was drawn and sunken. But preserved by the intense cold, she was still recognisable. She cut back the O2 in her mix, and turned off the temperature controls. It was freezing that killed her, but she would never have known. He glanced back at Anders. She died on her back, looking up at the stars.

Turning his attention back to the dead woman, Halstead gently, carefully brought the cutters down and clipped a small lock of dark, reddish hair away from the unruly mass that crowded the helmet. There we go, he said, tucking his prize into a little quartzite tube. Then he lowered the faceplate once more, and fastened the catches.

Across the stone from him, the kid just stood and stared. Finally, he spoke. I think you better explain, Halstead.

Rising, Halstead tucked the sample tube into a belt pouch. Yeah. Maybe I should.

FLINTHART

2042: Public Domain Footage released anonymously to the WorldNet: Kathy O’Connell’s Last Address

She looks into the camera, and smiles. Hi. I’m Doctor Katherine O’Connell, Mars Mission Specialist in Biochemistry and Life Sciences. I’m also pretty good with a soldering iron. She lifts one arm to show a device clenched in her fist. A red LED blinks. That’s what’s called a Dead Man Switch. If I let go of it without the disarm code, the oxygen tanks I welded to the outer shell of the fission plant are going to explode. She grins. That’s by way of explaining why Commander Abe and the rest co-operated with my demands. Don’t give ’em any grief when they get home, you Admin dinks: I didn’t leave them any choices.

Moving back from the camera a little, she relaxes into a spindly chair, and flicks hair out of her eyes with her free hand. My demands were pretty simple. All they had to do was go back to Earth on schedule, without me. She pauses for a beat, letting that sink in. When I signed onto this mission, it was the greatest moment of my life. All I ever wanted to be was an astronaut. Other girls had boy-band posters. I had big publicity stills from the old ISS. I worked for this my whole life. Again, she pauses, and sips water from a squeeze-bottle. So, here I am. As far from Earth as any human has ever gone. And I’m not coming back.

She frowns, and seems to listen, but anything she might be hearing is inaudible.

"Forget it, Abe, she says. You did fine. It’s not your fault. I’m a freak. Go home and lap up the glory. You’ve earned it. All of you earned it. But I don’t want it. Once more, she seems to hear someone offscreen. Well don’t forget; when I signed up, this was supposed to be the first of ten missions, and a permanent base. There were going to be resupply drops, and more personnel. That’s the contract I signed. There was nothing about this being a one-shot thing, and me spending the rest of my life opening shopping malls and lecturing to bored high school kids. Is that how Christopher Columbus finished up? Did the Wright Brothers do the rubber chicken circuit? She leans forward again, glaring into the camera. You tell me one thing on Earth that can possibly be as good as coming to Mars. Just one."

The pause is longer this time, and her grin turns smug.

"Yeah, I’ve got a plan, she says. I’m staying here. Except not in this piddly little base. This place is for Earthlings, and I’ve given that shit up for good. You hear me, Colonel Dreyer? You hear me, President Ramirez? All of you: hear me! I, Katherine O’Connell hereby relinquish and repudiate all connection with Earth and all its nations. I hereby nullify any claim you Earthlings may have to this planet, and I claim it in the name of the Free Republic of Mars. She reaches under her seat and brings out the UN flag and it’s American counterpart. Laying them over her knees, she clumsily cuts them in half left handed, with a pair of shears. As the sole citizen of the Martian Republic, I declare this planet open to any who come in peace, ready to take on a new world and make something real."

She waits again, then shrugs. Well, yeah. I know the legality is weak, but who cares? I’m staying. You’re not. This is my goddam planet until somebody shows up to argue with me, and last I heard, that wasn’t going to happen. So you know, Commander Abe, she snaps a salute with her free hand, then notices she’s still holding the shears, and puts them down. When she salutes again, an extended middle finger touches her forehead. See you ’round. Try not to get in the way of any real astronauts, eh?

Her hand drops, and she sits up straight. The rest of you—all of you—good luck. But if you do come back again, don’t expect I’ll be waiting for you. We Martians refuse to die on Earthling soil! I’m going to load up one of the rollers and a trailer with everything I can, and then I’m going. Out there. And when I run out of juice for the roller, I’ll make a travois, and get into my suit, and I’ll walk.

She smiles again, and her voice softens. And when I’ve run out of options, I’m going to lie down on my back and look at the stars.

She reaches forwards, under the camera’s view, and the screen blacks out.

FLINTHART

Five of us found her. It was… Halstead paused to think. It was sixty standard years ago. We were all part of the SchrammCo expedition. He grinned at Anders, and nodded. Yep. I’ve been here that long.

Where was she?

We found her roller way out on the flats, smashed up against a megalith. Once we worked out what we were looking at, we used the wind patterns to backtrack the thing. He looked back down at the cold, still form. She was high up, in a magnetic patch. On purpose, I think. She didn’t want to be found. Good plan, but she didn’t know about quantum magnetometers. They were brand new back then, and kind of unreliable, but those old NASA suits had such a big, bulky power supply that once we got within half a kilometre, our screens lit up like a nova. You’d know about that, he offered. From the cockpit.

You put her up here? Why? The kid still seemed dazed. That was understandable.

Shit, kid, Halstead said. There wasn’t one of us hadn’t seen the footage. I think I was in love with her, a little bit. The thought of her, anyway. Maybe we all were. He looked off to the distant sky, trying to spot Earth, but there was too much light and dust in the air. Anyway, it was Pete Davis’ idea. The five of us were ground-surveying to flesh out the satellite photos, and we figured we had one chance to hide her, keep her here, where she wanted to be. We’d already found this mesa, so we hacked a path up the side, and put her under a cairn at the top. Later, Yamada and I came back with powersuits. We built this thing, he gestured at the dolmen, To make sure the satellites never found anything but rock.

What about the GPS system? Anders said. How’d you manage that?

Halstead shrugged. "Been here a long time, kid. Somebody had to calibrate those satellites. We brought a couple more people in on the secret, down the years. Right now, there’s twelve on Mars, counting you and me. You’ll get to meet the rest soon enough. He clapped Anders on the shoulder, and jerked his head towards the cut in the stone. We’d better get moving before somebody gets worried."

Anders hesitated, staring at the body on the slab. That’s really her?

Yep. No question about it. Now let’s go. You can come back later.

The kid hurried to catch up to Halstead, who was already descending the narrow path to the canyon floor. What’s the hair for? he asked.

Good luck, if you like, said Halstead. He didn’t look back over his shoulder at the kid. Coming down was trickier than going up, and he needed to concentrate. You know the Titan colony, right? Not waiting for an answer, he went on. There’s a statue of Kathy O’Connell there, made of pure water ice. Frozen inside it is a lock of her hair. Da Silva took it with him when he and the others decided to set up a permanent place out there. Oh, and Europa? he added as an afterthought. There’s a stone mural of her carved from a single slab of quartz at the main port. A single hair, sealed in diamond, is tucked away behind it. That was Miki Yamada.

It took a while, but the kid put two and two together. You’re going somewhere, aren’t you? But I haven’t heard about any new colonies. The government put that moratorium in place. They say we’ve got to clean up Earth and consolidate what we’ve already done before we can go any farther.

The older man stopped at the bottom of the cut, and looked back up. Yeah, he said. Same government, more or less, as Kathy O’Connell disagreed with. Can’t say I think she was wrong.

So you are going? Somewhere new?

Halstead paused, and looked very carefully at Anders.

All right, he said at last. I brought you this far. I showed you the Princess because it’s part of the deal, for all of us in the know. We each of us tell one person, when we can’t do the job any more, so’s there’ll be someone to look after her. It’s not difficult. The GPS system is already rigged. And this whole canyon complex is going to be designated a wilderness park. The paperwork is already underway. But there’s got to be people on Mars who know. People who can make sure she stays safe. So nobody tries to take her off to Earth, or do anything stupid like that.

He straightened up a little, and looked to the sky. There’s a bunch of us bought rights to a decent-size asteroid, Anders, he said. I’m not saying which one, and I’m not saying who else, either. We’ve been working it. Mining it, the government thinks, and we’ve sold enough metals to make it worth our while. But we’re not just carving it up. We’ve been shaping it. Getting it ready. He turned, and grinned at Anders. We’re turning it into a ship, and we’re going farther out than ever before.

Awestruck, Anders nodded. Then he cocked his head.

The Oort Cloud, he said. How the hell are you planning something like that? The government won’t let you build a goddam fusion drive, case you take it into your heads to torch GovSat, or LunaCentral or something. And you’re not going outsystem on any ion drive. Unless…somebody cracked cryonics and I didn’t hear?

Halstead shook his head, slowly and deliberately so the helmet followed his movements. Who wants to be a corpsicle? We’ve got time, kid. With nanomeds, we’re good for a couple-hundred Standard years. More, if you can get multiple renewals.

Need to be rich or important for that, grumbled Anders. So. Not cryonics. Some kind of fusion shortcut?

Better, said Halstead, feeling yet again the buzz of excitement as he thought about it. He looked at the kid again, and bit his lip. Yeah, okay. It’s going to be all over the system in a couple months, anyway. We’ve got a mathman and a quantum thinker out there. They’ve cracked mass conversion. We don’t need fusion. Any mass at all, we can untie the strings, turn it back into energy one hundred percent. Einstein’s working for us this time, kid.

Holy shit, said Anders. Holy shit! For real?

Eight sigma certainty, Halstead said. And you can forget the Oort Clouds. We’re going to crank her up to maybe one-half cee and get the hell out. We’ll widecast the math for the matter conversion unit once we’re clear of Government ships. And we’ll keep on widecasting. This is where it all starts, Anders. He reached into his beltpouch and held up the quartzite tube for the kid to see. "She’s coming with me. When we get there, wherever it is, I’ll carve a whole fucking mountain for her and put this in a diamond shrine on top. And you, he pointed at Anders. One day you’re going to be ready to go. When you do, you bring someone else out here, someone you trust, and you show ’em, and you make sure they know the whole story. Then you get to cut a lock for yourself."

Halstead raised the sample tube to the purple sky, like a toast, or maybe a salute. She’s going to the stars, kid. One step at a time.

The Flint…

There’s little I can say about this story that it doesn’t say for itself. No, scratch that. There’s little I can say because anything I can say would be too personal, too close to the heart. The one and only thing I could add would be a question: why the fuck are we still tooling around on this overcrowded mudball? There’s a whole goddam universe waiting out there.

It’s time to go.

THE FLATMATE FROM HELL

If it hadn’t been for the Nazi skinheads next door, the vampire would never have moved in.

They were complete bastards. Coming and going at all hours. Playing thrash music at unbearable volume. Getting smashed, bellowing racist war-cries, and puking half-used beer over the fence. It’s not like you can reason with a houseful of Nazis. Not without an Uzi, or something similar. You can’t even call the police, because it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who’s complaining when the police are required by law to park outside your house and confirm that you’ve made a phone call about the neighbours.

Mostly, we just put up with it. The three bedrooms in the house were on the far side, away from the Nazis, and we kept the same sort of hours they did anyhow. The corner shop was on our end of the street, not theirs, so we didn’t even have to walk past their place. The only person who really had much to deal with from them was Vega, the Goth who lived in the old machine room. She had come to our house for a party one night, and took a liking to what she called the ‘post-industrial neo-brutalism’ of the big room beneath the house. The rest of us thought of it as a place where the landlord stowed a lot of rusting heavy machinery, but Vega apparently felt at home there. She offered to pay a quarter of the house rent if we let her have a free hand redecorating. Nobody argued.

Unfortunately, the machine room occupied the half of the understory that was closest to Neonuremburg—what we called the Nazi stronghold next door. When they went on their late-night rampages, puking and pissing over the fence, howling at the moon, and pogoing like bald jackhammers to the beat of their bloodcurdling Serbian death metal, a lot of the fallout wound up right outside Vega’s bedroom window. Sooner or later, something was bound to give.

First thing I heard about it, Gardner came up to me in the lounge room, where I was catching up on some daytime TV. Hey, Louise, he said. Seen Vega?

Too early. The bats don’t leave the cave until dusk.

She wasn’t around last night. Nor the night before, I think. And she’s got my notes from Tuesday’s Psych lecture.

So go and get them.

What, by myself? Vega was protective about her privacy. Like, with a small chainsaw painted matte black with a chromed chain. You were all right if she invited you in, but God help you if you caught one of her mood swings.

All right, I said. Tell you what—we’ll make her a cup of tea. It’ll give us an excuse, eh?

We made the tea, triple sugar, lots of lemon, and we ventured down under the house, past Fishface’s old ute that was never going to run again no matter what he said, to the industrial steel door that barricaded Vega’s space from the real world. There was a note on it, held in place by a magnet the size of my fist, and an envelope with the note. It was addressed ‘To the house’, so we pried off the magnet and took the paperwork back upstairs.

Fishface was in the kitchen. Did you make a cup of tea? Without me?

Here. I gave him the cup we’d made for Vega.

There’s money in the envelope, said Gardner. Excellent. He pulled out a few redbacks for us to see. I grabbed the note Vega had left.

Well, it’s been real, I read. But I got an offer of a room without hot and cold running vomit. Week’s rent in the envelope, plus a bit extra for the power bill. Thanks for the memories, guys. PS: Gardner, your psych notes are on top of the Wankel rotary in the corner. See you next Tuesday. Love, V.

Shit.

Without Vega, we’d have to come up with an extra eighty dollars a week. That might be all right for Fishface who was working as a cab-driver, as well as getting big-city prices for home-grown country dope from his brother in Guthalungra, plus sharing the rent on the room with his live-in partner Sally the Stripper in addition to his regular dole payment—but for Gardner and me it was going to be tough. There was only one thing for it. I looked at Gardner. Gardner looked at me