This was a row that had simmered for years but hadn’t yet been defused. It was an underground river of molten lava that threatened to erupt but, apart from the odd burps of hot magma, remained sluggishly subterranean and unacknowledged.
The accelerant was the proposed retirement, in five years’ time, of Joan and Hywel. Each had busy and fulfilling jobs – which had masked their need to discuss points of incompatibility and irritation. However, they were both keen to leave the worlds of work for the worlds of…..well this was the main problem.
I have lived in the cathedral rafters for an endless number of bell chimes. At first I thought I’d count them to track the passage of time. It’s an enormous hunk of bronze, the bell, and every time it rings, it roars so loudly I’m amazed I haven’t lost my hearing yet. In fact, though, most of the time I don’t hear it at all; after so long living here I must’ve learnt to ignore it, and only when I was much younger did it used to wake me up on a Sunday.
Sometimes the chime of the bell is so incessant it’s impossible to ignore. When it rings to announce special occasions, so do my ears. I remember, as a child, church bells singing wedding melodies while beautiful women floated like clouds along the aisle. From this close there is nothing melodious about this bell. It only clangs.
I’ve heard tell that science instructors at the Fleet Academies teach students that the most important thing, the core fundamental need that humans have when terraforming new planets, is water.
Those two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms are used to sustain us wherever we go; no water, no humanity.
You know why I hired you? Because convincing a halfway decent person to go out with me is an impossibility.
Recall Sam Jackson yelling and waving a gun in some poor bastard’s face. All the poor bastard can do is say “what” over and over again because he’s too terrified to even think.
‘Could I actually just go in there and…? Let me think. Smother him? Yes, yes I could.’
‘We might not need to, Natasha. I’ve not been feeding him.’
‘You’ve been cutting back on his meals?’
‘I’ve not given him any food in seven days. Just water.’
‘He’s looking very gaunt, Annette. Do you mean you’ve been deliberately…?’
‘I want him dead. I hate him. This way we just say he wouldn’t eat, we say he…’
‘Refused food… we say he didn’t want to live any more with the pain of the cancer… we…’
‘We wait two more days. He can’t last out if we starve him.’
/
In his studio they looked at the paintings, many of them of themselves in the first flush of puberty, thin, uncomfortable, unhappy, all naked. Natasha remembered him painting Annette many times, then her turn came. She didn’t quite know what was going on. It’s art, darling, her mother insisted, keep still for Daddy and stop complaining. Her mother had practically pimped her. Creation from exploitation? That wasn’t art. Post-Jimmy Saville his reputation had crashed. Now he was reviled by many, his works removed from galleries. Quite right. Burn them all. A vile paedophile.
His sister though believed they had aesthetic value, said each haunted portrait revealed her mixed feelings: fear of her father and her unbreakable connection to him.
The storm clouds are gathered just to starboard, forcing us further and further west. The sun, lurking around the horizon and casting golden and amber hues, hasn’t set in what feels like eleven hundred days, although it’s tough to tell. We’ve given up counting, after the crude marks we’d scratched into the deck mysteriously vanished.
Time hasn’t frozen, so much as slowed to a crawl. The fluttering and rustling of the sails proves there’s still a tailwind; the creaks and groans of wood as waves lap around us, and the swells of the waves we ride, are enough to evidence that. Our crew, fractious at the best of times, had initially turned on each other, tensions increasing until it spilled to violence. Men were thrown overboard, beaten, and blades drawn. It had only stopped after a voice had cut across the melee, singing; pure, clean, and melodious.
Pilot Gamma-Tau 453 personal log: birth offset date 4067, relative time +220637.1.
Security code: <redacted>
The Navy’s always had a weird sense of humour, at least that’s what I’ve been told, even going back to the days of seafaring vessels in the Sol system. Lots of in-jokes lost to history, obtuse terminology, and language designed to exclude civilians and make us feel like part of a family, even as we sacrifice our personal humanity for the greater good.
Inspector Camden Ironbell glared through the taxi window. He sighed and stroked his long beard. It would have been quicker to walk, he thought. He turned to his sergeant, who had her head stuck in a magazine.
“What are you reading, Lightwarble?”
Umros Lightwarble held up the magazine so he could see the cover. “Scientific Gnomus.”
“I see.” He raised an eyebrow. In his opinion, young Gnomes spent far too much time on human science and not enough on old-fashioned magic. “And WHAT is the article about?”
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