Marya Should Be Studying

Do you remember where and how you acquired your scars, dear reader? The one on your chin, from a combination of new bike and old stump. The one on your hand, from the edge of a steel sink.

Or the reason you check all the locks on the doors, a couple times even, each night before bed.

Marya Hodges knows her scars. She knows the look in her mother's eye, and the way her elbow aches from that time she fell out of an aspen when she was eight.

This morning, well before dawn, Marya will pick up another scar. But in the mean time, dear reader, for this week's story...

Marya Should Be Studying by M. K. Dreysen

The stench of the thing fought its way up the back alley.

Past the garages, the ones turned to apartments and the ones turned to collections of forgotten stuff. Through the well-tended backyards and those better off covered in cement. Past the garbage cans, and the bikes the teenagers had left turned over in their driveways.

Every step away from the beast, the smell faded. Almost at the same rate that the entity itself clawed its way through the pre-dawn darkness.

Nowhere near as quickly as the misshapen creature made its way toward its target.

When it moved. It didn't, not continuously anyway. The twisted form sped, faster than thought, from stillness to stillness. A stalker, then. On the hunt.

For a little cottage, and the person who slept the fitful sleep awarded to someone who'd made her way past grandkids to great-grandkids and the arthritic world that waited for her there.

The creature paused beneath a hawthorn tree, just off the backdoor of the little collection of stone. The grass, when spring woke it, would show a dead trail from the sidewalk to the tree. And then to the porch.

For now, the night-thing paused. All around it, the stench settled, gathered, the smell searched for someone, something to cause to retch.

The creature, nose-blind to its own scent, grinned when it caught scent of the woman inside. And that she slept alone in her widowhood.

Even in its grin the creature gave nothing of itself to its surroundings. Its teeth were as dark as the shadow it crouched in.

****

Marya Hodges didn't want to wake before dawn.

She definitely didn't want to wake to a smell that would have gagged a maggot. She ran to the bathroom, desperate to spit the taste of it into the toilet, then rinse from the faucet.

Even the faint rotten-eggs odor of the city's water through the old pipes, something Marya normally turned her nose up at every morning, even that she could tolerate better than whatever it was that had awakened her.

"Skunk, has to be," she told her face in the unlit bathroom mirror. Right outside the front door, she thought.

A snore, Ashley's, drifted from the middle room. Technically the master bedroom of the little rent-house.

Marya, just like she'd let Ashley have the top bunk their freshmen year in the dorms, had given over the master bedroom without argument. Just having a room to herself, that was heaven. And with their desks and computers the only living room furniture, she had plenty of room in the old kids' room for that business, anyway.

"If I'm up, I might as well get some work done," Marya muttered to herself over the coffee pot.

The one that helpfully told her the 5:30 am time the skunk's dead self had boosted her to. "Ugh." Even Marya, an inveterate early riser, hadn't had to beat the sunrise in years.

Not since high school band practice. Dorm rooms, the little house she and Ashley had somehow discovered just a couple blocks off campus, junior year and getting to even an early morning class meant she hadn't needed a daily alarm.

Not like the forty-five minute drive through the Arizona desert, from home to the only school in the county. Marya hadn't known how to take her mom's look, when she'd realized that Marya had taken the scholarship offer in Houston rather than go to school closer to home.

Where she could drive her younger brother and sisters to school.

Marya's musings vanished with the last burst of steam from the coffee pot, and the waft of the brew that came with it.

She poured a little condensed milk from the open can in the fridge, and then the coffee in on top. Stirred it to warm life. Sipped and considered whether she'd be better off tackling the Sophocles essay while yesterday's lecture still held itself fresh in her mind, or...

But there came the stench again, overwhelming the peace the sweetened coffee had brought her. "Shit." Marya parted the blinds over the kitchen sink.

The streetlight out front showed no roadkill. Just the live oaks of campus and old cracked and buckled sidewalks and the potholes that made her glad of the alleyway in the back, on the few occasions when Marya did have to use her barely-hanging-on, hand-me-down Accord.

The empty street meant the dead skunk had to be in the back alley. So Marya girded herself for the endeavor by way of one more waft of the cooling coffee, before she set the mug on top of the microwave, no sense ruining that, and headed through the utility room to the back door.

She picked up her phone before she opened the door. The flashlight app was far more reliable than the back porch light. If she needed it, she'd turn on the garage light, but that was one of those sodium arc flood lamps that could call in the UFO's from Mars; Marya hated using it, as much for the noise as the fact that it lit the universe.

But she didn't even have to fumble through her apps. Oh, the stench was definitely waiting for her, present and worse out here than in the house. But she could let the screen door ease closed while she looked in vain for the source.

The alley lights, the couple of poles marking the block, gave just enough light to let her know the generator of the smell, whatever it was, was not torn to guts and bits in the middle of her and Ashley's back yard. "Well, ok then..." Marya whispered.

She turned to go back inside, thoughts of peppers and onions to cover the smell bubbling up when she caught the movement out of the corner of her eye.

And then the slam. Of Mrs. Real's door.

Mrs. Real's garage, just like theirs, was detached from the house, and set close to the alley itself, just back of the sidewalk. Between the house and the garage, there was fifteen feet or so of clear space. A rusty chainlink fence, just about waist high, divided the two yards, with a hedge on Mrs. Real's side cut flush with the top of the fence.

Nothing to block Marya's view. Even in that blurry time where the whole world waited for the sun's gift.

The slam of Mrs. Real's screen door didn't echo. It gave just one flat smack, sharp and quick. Marya jumped at the noise of it. Then paused and wondered if she'd missed it.

Because from here, about halfway into her and Ashley's yard, she could see through the screen. Mrs. Real's back door was closed.

And there was no way Marya's sweet, slow moving neighbor could have disappeared that quickly from her back step. Even if she had let the screen slip and slam as hard as it had.

****

The hunter had been born across the sea. Or, it had crawled its way out of the guts of an elk in the Rocky Mountains.

It could have dreamt itself in the darkness of an ice floe, or the dribbled mess of a dead whale carcass.

The creature had many bornings. Here, on the porch of Val Real's house, the hunter sought one thing. Identity.

The old lady's identity would suit nicely. And so easily taken, the faintest of holds on life and the creature could absorb that thread by the simplest of weaves. And when it was finished, it would let go of Val Real's identity as easily as it had been taken, to resume the hunt for the next one.

Ideal, exquisite. The creature slid through the reality of the door.

The screen slammed itself, somehow, in protest and in complete denial of the lack of wind or physical action to move it. No matter.

The creature wasn't listening, it heard only Val Real's heartbeat, the low flutter, and her intermittent snorted breaths as she neared awakening.

The hunter bent over Val Real. Then it laid a shadowed claw over her mouth to feel Val's breath. Satisfied at whatever it found there, the creature wrapped itself around Val.

Absorbed her, and in absorbing lost itself to the depth of Val's years and experience.

Val Real, the facade of her anyway, opened her eyes to darkness and the quiet rap of Marya Hodges' hesitant knocking at the back door. She grinned, stretching from her face to her toes, and stalked off to answer the young lady's request.

****

"Mrs. Real? Mrs. Val? Are you ok?"

Marya had looked around Mrs. Real's yard just as hard as she'd looked around her own. Not for a skunk, in this case, but for whoever had tried to open her neighbor's back door.

And, thankfully, Marya had come up empty. No footprints marred the grass, or the back steps.

Marya knocked on the door again. The screen door was latched, from the inside. Marya had checked that first thing, as soon as she'd reached the top of the steps.

Her heart hadn't beaten any easier, knowing that. But at least everything looked like she'd imagined something. Still, Mrs. Val had told her and Ashley that she liked early mornings. "Can't sleep anyway, my knees and hips hurt if I stay in one position too long. I take a lot of naps to make up for it."

Marya listened, was rewarded with the faint creak, then thud, of the deadbolt rotating open.

And then Mrs. Val opened the door. A lot quicker than Marya would have credited her. Mrs. Val moved with a lot more patience. Normally. "Is that you, Marya? Child, are you ok?"

Marya wanted to smile at that, her question thrown back at her. Really, she thought, what else would she be knocking on Mrs. Val's door for, except that something had gone wrong? A break-in or a breakdown.

Only, just like how easily she'd pulled the door open, Mrs. Val's voice was a lot stronger than it usually was. And Marya's neighbor stood a little taller, a little more even.

Or maybe that was just Marya's imagination. "No ma'am, I'm, we're fine. I just wanted to check on you. I thought I heard someone trying to open your back door."

Mrs. Val laughed. A good, strong, hearty laugh, Marya noticed. And quailed away from, because Mrs. Val's laugh didn't just start at her toes.

It wound its way into Marya's mind, wrapped its way around the base of her neck. "If someone did try and come in, the latch kept them out. See?" Mrs. Val pushed at the screen door, jiggling it to show that the latch held.

Marya focused on the hand that did the jiggling. A hand that showed none of the arthritis sufferer's hesitancy or pain while it grabbed and pushed. Marya's brain whispered to her, from somewhere deep a small voice said, "Run. Now. Get away."

Marya backed away from the door, down one step, two, to the ground.

Mrs. Real thumbed the hook of the latch up, opened the screen door, and waved, vigorously, to her young neighbor. "Why don't you come on in, Marya, so that we can enjoy a good cup of coffee together."

****

That small voice of terror and self-protection didn't hold grudges. Marya had ignored it and went into Mrs. Real's little kitchen anyway.

Now that she lay on her hands and knees, the old lady's hands wrapped in her hair and around her throat, fighting for her life and probably more than that, Marya listened to that voice.

And past the terror that burned her body, the voice answered again. "The butter knife, the fork."

They had sat down to coffee and toast. The knife and the fork and every other damn thing had come off the table and onto the floor when Mrs. Real had leapt across the little kitchen table.

Marya thrashed against the grip, too strong and sure, and reached for whatever she could grab. The little jelly jar, she hammered that at Mrs. Real's head but missed. Her old neighbor, the one that couldn't sit down on the toilet without the grab bars Ashley had put in last year for Mrs. Val's Christmas present, no way could that Mrs. Val have dodged Marya's desperate hands.

Marya threw the jar, then jabbed the fork into Mrs. Real's leg. That, the old lady couldn't dodge. And she didn't.

She also didn't react to the pain. Whether dealing with the arthritis or something else... but Marya kept going. She twisted, coiled and yanked, grabbed the butter knife and pushed and yanked again.

Until the opening came. Mrs. Real still gripped Marya's hair, but only just, and that down near the end of her ponytail. Mrs. Real's hand on Marya's throat dropped away, enough for Marya to twist fully.

And jam the butter knife into the old lady's throat, then up and harder again and all the way through to Val Real's brain.

Val Real, the physical part of her anyway, stiffened and died, a stainless steel wall now disconnecting the last of her brain function from doing anything her body would recognize as a command.

The creature that had absorbed her, absorbed itself into Val Real, leapt free. Val Real had been but a moment's vessel after all.

Marya fought it. There were no sights to see, no clouds or shadows or grasping hand hovering over her face.

Just a shadow over her mind. A net held Marya and dragged her down somewhere she refused to go. "Momma. Daddy." She called the names, some part of her reacting like she'd just dipped into an old nightmare. But nobody would come if she called.

Marya fought the creature; it was the smell that did it. Crept into Marya's nostrils and wrenched at the back of her throat.

She vomited, and cast the creature out to join its smell. Marya stumbled up, yanking the butter knife free of Mrs. Real's throat.

She waved the knife around, scattered blood with it while she shuffled, kicking the breakfast things away as she found the back door. "Go to hell!" she screamed at the darkness.

It didn't. It crawled, beaten but only temporarily, after Marya. A smell and a bad feeling, she should not have been able to see it but she'd at last won something from her battle. A glimpse of her foe.

Marya kicked at it, and stabbed with the knife. Maybe it was Mrs. Real's blood, maybe it was Marya's own anger and fury reaching through the knife, but something there burned the beast.

Burned it. And as Marya's realization twinned with her anger, cast it out. Marya forced the thing away, now she turned it to the outside and cast it from Mrs. Real's house.

She stood at the still-closed back door, panting, waiting for it to come back.

And when it didn't, Marya tried to think of just how the hell she was going to explain her neighbor's dead body, and the bloody kitchen it lay in.

****

Six months later, Dan Murphy, her landlord's handyman, worked on the main kitchen circuit in Marya and Ashley's rental. "Just putting in a GFCI outlet and breaker."

Marya sat at their kitchen table, a glass of water and Aeschylus keeping her and Dan company. "Mrs. Real's fire made Eulis nervous?"

"That, and the insurance company. I don't know that this would have saved Mrs. Real, but at least it would have kept her house from burning down around her."

Marya nodded and went back to her essay while Dan finished up. She'd jammed the knife into the unplugged toaster, and then plugged the toaster back into the wall. The sparks and smoke had started before she'd even made it out the back door.

She'd waited to call 911, and then wake Ashley, until the flames were visible through Mrs. Real's kitchen window. The fire had covered whatever had gone on in that house. At least as far as the police were concerned.

But Marya worried more about whatever dark spirit had caused it. She'd felt, smelled nothing of the creature since that time in Mrs. Real's kitchen.

Marya knew, though, that every morning, and most evenings, when she stepped out on the back porch and took a big sniff, then waited and breathed easy only when she didn't smell anything?

Marya Hodges knew that she'd be doing that every day. For however long she lived.

I'm No Bard

This week's story for you dear reader is one that sort of wound its way through mind and fingers to keyboard and here. It's about what might happen if you were to wake up and find yourself having to start life over from, almost, scratch.

With just a hint or two of the past to deal with, first. This week's story is one I call...

I'm No Bard by M. K. Dreysen

I wake in a cell with a face and a body too young and skinny to be mine. I contemplate both of these things for some few hours, until guards appear to drag me into the light.

And a royal presence. "Do you remember our faces?" the woman asks.

"I've never met either of you," I answer, truthfully.

The younger of the two, a prince I guess, laughs. "So it worked, then?"

The older nods, but only after gazing into my eyes for long thoughtful minutes. "Yes. Surprisingly enough, yes."

They leave, full of thought and conspiracy. The royals exit the room by a back door; the guards, summoned from somewhere they wouldn't have been able to eavesdrop from, arrive not long after.

Certainly not more than an hour. They take me to the gate and turn me loose. "Now what?" I address myself.

I remember myself, older than this face, a belly to go along with the kids and the wife and the countdown to retirement and the brass watch of my 401K.

This world, the prisoner who it seems wore my self same face, how we got to where we were and the royal mother and son who managed to switch us? I know nothing of it but the cell and the room and now a road leading from a castle gate.

At least I have clothing, smelly and dirty as it is. I'm covered well enough that coming to the second worst tavern in the castle town to beg them to let me try a few stories, a few songs beaten out to the rhythm of my hands on a tabletop, works.

Enough so that my pennies pay for a bath and a bed and dinner. I drum out what I remember of Highway 61 Revisited and Tennessee Whiskey and half a dozen others. When my hands grow sore, I tell them my condensed version of Salem's Lot.

When they ask me of these places, these stories, I tell them I had them from my grandfather. If I told you where Salem's Lot lay, or which country Highway 61 ran through, I'd be lying, you see.

A few nights of that and I've pennies enough for a little old traveling guitar, clean new boots to go with a change of clothes and a warm, water shedding cloak of wool. I'll need these and the extra strings because I'm not hanging around this town.

People ask me if I'm a bard. I tell them I'm a musician, a storyteller, but I'm not a bard. I play before the common folk, not the king.

The new king. Apparently, the old king lost his marbles a day or so after I took my first bath of freedom. He's safe in the castle, but the queen summoned the court sometime while I was busy slowly re-learning three chords and the truth.

She put her son in charge about the time I added All Along The Watchtower and A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall to my repertoire. That's when I bought the cloak and plenty of extra strings.

I save Redemption Song for when I'm no longer bound by royal walls; I recast Caesar and Macbeth and Hamlet from the voices in my head. There are taverns enough, traveler's places and half a dozen other, smaller free towns within the royal reach.

Places where merchants and pilgrims appreciate a sly tale without running to the local duke as soon as the beer's run dry.

Just about the time my tour has reached the last free town, and I'm considering my options, I meet up with a troop. Actors and jugglers and musicians.

The Lost Abbot's Mummers, they call themselves. They're in need of a storyteller and a guitarist. "Wouldn't you prefer a lute? Isn't that what bards are..."

"Too many strings, and I'm no bard."

I save the tale of the Bishop and the Actress for when the children are in bed. Now that I spend my days telling tales and singing songs, my voice is roughly good enough to not scare the straights, and my memory's worked it's way up to just less than poor. I string Poe and Twain and Dickens along, come back tomorrow night for part three, folks!

We are six weeks and six towns away, and safety allows me to mourn now my kids and my wife and the world that I came from. I wonder, as the wine runs out that night, whether they've a father who's wondering where the hell this belly came from, and how to count and dispense prescriptions for twelve hours a day, four days a week.

I try and talk the Mummers out of the invitation from the king. "We don't need the money."

"A royal performance means we will continue to not need the money for years further, sir Bard."

"I'm not..."

"You will be by the time this gig is done."

And so I am. I look at my face in the mirror.

I am clean, well trimmed, well fed. Dressed in wool and leather and linens finely made. I am not the confused mess the royal pair had known they didn't even need to force to bow.

I still don't remember anything of the young man they'd cursed. Small blessing.

I sing of Changes and Sympathy for the Devil; I tell the court of Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night, and I'm proud enough now of my storytelling memory to lie and tell myself that I got most of both into my stories.

When the meal begins, I find myself sitting next to an old man, ignored and left in the corner.

Forgotten. As he appears to have forgotten when he sat where his son, clearly echoed in his countenance, now sits. I play for the lost king, here in the quiet corner between bites and sips and the performances of my now by royals appointed comrades.

He enjoys most of all a quiet, oh so quiet, version of Weary Hangs the Head. "You know, don't you?"

I share a look, of memories of a world gone. "Do you remember any of who he was, whose face you wear?"

The old man smiles, a sly curl of his lips concealed behind a chicken leg. "It would take a strong neck indeed to allow words like those to pass the throat within it. Look around and tell me how this court has changed, since the person whose face you now wear learned of what loose tongues can lead you to."

It's my turn to smile, and even laugh. There may be no memories to go along with the old man's story, but something still thrills within me at his words. I ponder them. As I lead him back to his bed.

As I wander the darkened halls.

We the Mummers have been called to play for a full meeting of the royal court. Dukes and barons roam these halls this night.

And the new young king nor his mother have produced an heir of the body in the months between. Not even a bastard to be recognized. Such a shame then, really, when both fall sick that night.

All weep when the queen and the new king pass some few nights later, within hours of each other. The old king, tested by his former barons and dukes for hours to verify his sanity, asks me to sing at their mutual funeral.

I ask him if he has any requests. He winks at me, and says wing it.

I don't do it; I play Bach at the funeral, and wait 'til the old man and I are alone to play him Dire Straits and Pink Floyd. We drink 'til we're maudlin and my fingers finally give out.

And this time, when I've put the king to bed and wander the darkened halls, I can return to my mourning assured that at least I've taken at least some small measure of justice for what was done to us.

more than a little crazy, but it's an idea!

Since my brain threw this at me, I'm going to share it with you!

Ok, Hollywood, I love a good remake as much as the next moviegoer. But the next time someone's looking for a new project, can I propose a remake of Hudson Hawk with Tiffany Haddish and Queen Latifah in the Bruce Willis/Danny Aiello roles, respectively. Please?

Keep it just as silly and ridiculous as the first one. That's the magic bit. Get Ashton Kutcher to do the Richard Grant evil bad guy. Work your butts off to cast the Candy Bars. Beg someone like Henry Golding to do the Andie MacDowell part. Laurence Fishburne for James Coburn is so obvious I hesitate to even point it out.

Of course it's over the top and outrageous. That's kind of the point.

It's also poetry. The dialogue may be the hardest part, matching the way that crew went batshit crazy at the same time that they managed to land all those lines. I can't even imagine how you'd protect the writers/director while they're scripting.

Never mind, I'm probably crazy for even bringing it up. Still, can you imagine the soundtrack?

A Smuggler In Rose

If you've ever crossed a state border with a horse, or taken a cat to another country, you've run into what seem like pretty strange rules.

Same thing with plants. Here where I live, citrus plants are carefully controlled.

The point is to keep outbreaks of disease from impacting the local populations. Horses can conceal some pretty intense maladies, "swamp fever" and others, that would kill if they broke loose.

Same thing with oranges and lemons and so on. There are real reasons for these rules and controls.

And thus, thinking about such things, for this week's story I imagined the Gardens. Far in the future, a grand artificial environment dedicated to safely controlling and propagating plant species betweens the worlds of the settled galaxy.

We'll need something like that, I think. Some way of insuring that begonias and roses and dogwoods, and species from worlds we've never yet seen, can appear in our gardens. Safely, of course.

That said, I also think that, even the far future will require a certain type of flexibility. Even in the Gardens, you just know, dear reader, that there will always be a reason for...

A Smuggler In Rose by M. K. Dreysen

Under the light of two moons, an iron-veined mantis stalked a young dragonfly.

Inside, Rose Bridgette prepared for her trip to the Gardens.

She'd worked her plots for some three years to reach this point. Six years from school, three years from her internship on the Gardens itself. Here under the late-stage orange sun, she'd plied compost and water. Rose had turned, weeded.

Her gardens had only just reached what she believed to be an acceptable stage for visitors.

But most importantly for her trip, the first plants she'd set her eyes on when she'd arrived on Rexa had stood up to her tests.

She gauged them, half a dozen specimens in what she knew now were the primary stages of growth. First year's growth for stem and greenery, second year's for flowering.

Third year for a graceful arch, reaching for the ground and returning approximately twelve hundred earth standard days worth of life to the dirt which birthed it. Even in this stage, the one that had first caught Rose's imagination, her plants held their arch.

Just more than two hand's breadths above the dirt; through decomposition, the woody stems continued for some two more years before the twin-rooted ends let go and allowed the stem to rest at last. If her specimens survived the Garden's tests, Rose believed this feature would be what captured lasting interest.

She cased her first visit's prizes in environmental carrying crates, and then began her other preparations.

Seeds needed packing into the rings at her fingers and ears. Spores went into the false ends of ink cartridges of several pens. Simple objects, each with an aspect that shadowed x-rays and other simple security techniques.

****

One approached the Gardens at one of two ends of the massive cylinder. Those who came for the weekly shows came through the visitor's end.

Those, such as Rose Bridgitte, who sought to deposit candidates for trade and import, came through the Gardener's end.

"How many candidate types?" the import controls agent asked.

"Just the one, with three examples," Rose answered. "A three year lifecycle with an approximate two year decay cycle after that."

"Standard pollination pattern?" the agent asked as she spun the environment crate. "No major eruption?"

As in, did Rose's new candidate throw unusual clusters? Did its pods explode? Did the plants need to be contained under extraordinary conditions? "No, just pollen. The seed pods are heavy enough to drop in place."

The agent pursed her lips, making comments to her recording phone. "Do you have a request for a sponsor?"

An on-board botanist, one who'd take responsibility of Rose's candidate for the Garden's required testing cycle. "Doctor Orthling has agreed to sponsor my candidate."

The agent nodded. "A good choice."

"Thank you. I worked with Rana for my internship."

"Then I'll expect to see you back in another..."

"Probably two years."

"Good luck," the import agent said. "Doc Orthling's staff will take it from here."

"I can go?"

"Just go through the personnel gate and you're fine."

****

The import terminal, at least at the Gardener's entrance, didn't concern themselves overly with security, other than being able to provide proof of membership. This was, after all, the controlled end of the Gardens.

Row after row of laboratories. Thousands of botanists and biologists, carefully prising secrets from stem and spore, leaf and mold. Every living world in the galaxy was of interest to the Gardens and their members.

The lab spaces served the Gardeners for controlled experimentation. One gravity, a yellow sun at just the proper distance, here in the labs Doctor Rana Orthling and her colleagues teased out the life of the galaxy, from plants and molds and fungus, looking for secrets.

Rose's gardens on Rexa served as the first line. Here, the labs served as the second. If her candidates could be successfully monitored throughout their lifecycle, and no major impediments found, they would then be released to the Garden's main section.

"A three year cycle, Rose? Interesting indeed." Rana gave Rose a swift hug. "Tell me about what drew you to this one."

Rose's samples had made their way to the laboratory. She pointed out the arch of the third-year specimen. "The architecture of it. Next year, as it dies off, the little arch will have rooted at that end. I found an entire field of them on my first year survey."

"And you suspect our busy little gardeners will find this feature useful." Rana referred specifically to the Garden's breeders, those who sought interesting traits to expand upon.

Rose nodded. "If they can be encouraged to grow a little, of course."

"Of course. You're headed through to the main area, then? What about the show?"

The main Gardens, the bulk of the cylinder, acre after acre of carefully and not so carefully attended walking garden. A vast open space with its own weather, this was where the plants from all corners of the galaxy met the test of display and variation.

And, in the very middle, the Great Cacophony, where those that had passed all the other tests were turned loose to spread as naturally as they were able.

"Of course. What's this week's show?"

"Cut flowers." The two botanists nodded. "It's too bad, really..."

"With a little luck, our little new world rose will make it for next year."

The two discussed coloration and propagation over tea. And then Rose left to enter the Garden itself.

****

In a technical sense, the main Gardens constituted a high level biological containment facility. But, the whole purpose of the place was to test how well a garden could be built from the plants of all the worlds of a galaxy.

How well they cultivated. How poorly they shared space with others. And, just as importantly, how well they withstood fungus and mold and bacteria.

So the entrance controls on the Gardener's end of the cylinder were in fact loose. "Declarations?"

"None to speak of," Rose answered. And there weren't. "My candidates remain with Doctor Orthling for testing."

And the seeds and spores tucked away into her pockets weren't aimed for the Gardens, anyway. In principle, the trick was getting out.

But every inch of the Garden space was watched and recorded. Because her passage would be noted, Rose kept to the tram. Allowing the computer to classify her as "Gardener, lowest possible risk."

And thus pass through to the visitor's end of the cylinder with no examination at all.

****

The deals the Gardeners had agreed to, where they had agreements, were simple. The Gardeners would test for every known issue with the candidate plants. Disease and propagation risks, mostly.

The fungus and molds and bacteria were also tested; the home-world biologists cried out continuously for more stringent controls here, but the Gardeners pointed out, patiently, over and over again, that trying to control bacteria on plants while allowing the ambulatory biological experiments known as the Nine Species to move freely between worlds was to attempt to hold back the tides with a pocket umbrella.

Then, when a candidate had passed all agreed-upon testing protocols, and spent time in the Gardens proper with no sign of misbehavior, then and only then would the candidates be shown for general purchase.

The rules of the Trade were simple. The approved plants, flowers, and fungus of the Garden shows could be sold to any of the member planets. The plants of the Gardens could also be, with proper paperwork, imported to the controlled zones on many planets.

However, if you were a Gardener working to experiment with the next generation's plants, you had a problem. Rose needed a variety of candidates for release to the Rexa system in particular, from vegetables and mushrooms to fruit trees and decorative plants.

The Rexa Governor's list covered many varieties that the Gardens themselves did not necessarily have on hand, even if they'd been previously tested and released for sale. However vast the Gardens were, the arable space could hold only so many. Even if the particular grape variety Rose needed for the Governor was still available in the Gardens, in practice it had dropped off the inventory list more than a century before.

When she'd been an intern, Rose had more than once gone so far as to attempt the trackless Cacophony, hunting for lost varieties. She could search for a lifetime and not be successful at finding her needed test subjects.

So she, as did all Gardeners at some point, turned to the shadow trade. Thus, the spores and seeds tucked away into the everyday objects on her person.

Rose walked the aisles of the show, watching for the little things. The subtle signs from the Uxerry, a pass of tentacles that the water-born preferred to vocalization. Rose nodded, and signed her willingness to bargain for the fungus spores.

She suspected the Uxerry needed a particular kind of poison, but the rules of the shadow trade were, as they ever had been for cultivators of plants, ironclad: one didn't ask what the customer needed a poisonous material for.

The seeds and other spores she traded away were much more benign. In each case, no money traded hands, only propagation materials. The seeds from the lost grape variety, a handful of thorny berry varieties with similar intent and goals as the Governor's grapes.

And from the Uxerry, a delicate slurry of kelp seeds. Rose acknowledged the difficulty here; she had yet to set up a true saltwater-oriented regime in her own gardens, but these samples would force her to remedy that.

She boarded for passage home from the visitor's end. Here, the Gardener's ethic ruled: don't shit where you eat.

****

"Got everything you needed?" Rana asked via video link.

"Not as much as I hoped for, more than enough to keep me busy for a couple of years."

Rana nodded. Before she'd come home to the Gardens, she'd run her own front line garden on the Bogalinn system. "I miss it, you know?"

"The wildness?"

"Exactly. The reminder that we're never in complete control."

Rose giggled. "I'll remember that the next time a thunderstorm wipes out one of my spaces. Or a wildfire blows through."

Rana Orthling returned the laugh. "Just keep a space open for me when I retire. Oh, and are you going to try for that pond lily you told me of?"

"Among others, with a little luck I'll have three or four candidates for you next time. Take care, Rana."

The two Gardeners exchanged virtual hugs, then returned to their gardens.

Past The Brink

Stories come about in many ways, I find. Some I come to the keyboard with a broad sketch in my head. That's happened a couple times lately. Those have almost been more a surprise than the other sort.

The kind where I just sit down and find out what's been hiding on the inside of my head. This kind of story.

This story might well be about the vastness of the universe, a vast deep containing all the possibilities. And, packed into an equal but decidedly more compact infinity, all the destruction.

This story might also be about the drives that might ask us to look upon such destruction. That's what the good Professor Roon is after, you see. A good look, and an even better set of measurements of just how the black hole at the center of the galaxy goes about its gluttony.

But then, for Artie Moreno, I suspect that this story's about something a little simpler. A little closer to home. You see, dear reader, now that I've had a chance to think about it, I believe that this week's story, for Artie Moreno at least, is about what you do when you've been asked to do something very much against who you are.

Who you are, who you want to be. What will your answer be when someone asks you the question that forces you to look...

Past The Brink by M. K. Dreysen

"You're right," Artie Moreno told his prospective passenger. "I will say your idea is awfully crazy."

That's how she'd pitched it to him. "You're going to say I'm crazy."

Only, Artie didn't think she was.

The idea maybe. But even that one...

"I want, I need to see, to take pictures of the boundary layers. I need to analyze it. Understand it."

Boundary layers. Which, there were an awful lot of boundary layers in Artie Moreno's Milky Way. Shock waves in nebula. The edges of all the solar systems.

You didn't need much from pilot and ship to get pictures of those boundary layers. Professor Gir Mazila Roon wanted data from the boundary layer that ruled the galaxy.

The one where the black hole at the center did its level best to digest the universe. One bite at a time.

Artie sent the professor back to her hotel room with the usual. "I'll have to think about it, talk it over with my crew. We'll be no good to you if they aren't on board."

Her chances went way up in Artie's estimation when she nodded her acceptance and left on cue. "I understand completely."

Of course, the crew would have to wait until Artie finished his drink. And the second one. "Double with a water back, right?"

"Yep." And a second drink. For fool's luck, he told himself.

****

"This opportunity of course comes with a suitable remuneration, Captain Moreno."

The second offer of the day came in the way the majority of them did. As a video mail message to the Windrush's main network address.

Artie admired the care that Professor Roon's university colleagues took in dancing around the subject. "There are so many possibilities, Captain. We're certain you'll find an appropriate time and place. Our only request, should you accept the opportunity, is that you place a device within the Professor's remote. We'll of course provide the device to you. All you need do then is find an appropriate location and collect the rest of your payment."

One third of that had been wired to the Windrush's exchange account already. "As assurety," the video message told him.

Artie accepted the offer with no second thoughts. Space is large, after all. He did remember to tell the rest of the crew of the state of play.

****

Thousands of years of carrying the power of the universe around in everything from handheld devices to the core of a battleship, and the physics geeks just couldn't shake the fascination with black holes.

It was one thing to create lab-scale versions, Artie reminded himself. It was another thing altogether to sit here and watch the most vicious of the universe's little secrets rip a star apart.

Roon had monopolized the observation ports with her gear. So to get an actual visual view of the show, she'd had to ask permission to take up the co-pilot's chair. When she could sit long enough to enjoy it at all, Roon spent most of the time running back and forth to her sensors.

Artie lounged in his chair, feet up. He worried that tea and an oatmeal raisin cookie wasn't up to the task. But really, what would have been?

The process had taken weeks. First, jump to the last known safe system. Then, plot out a search trail, one system at a time.

And always keep a planet between the Windrush and the star. The tortured beast Roon sought would, had, lash out unpredictably. The almost-superluminal particle jets spewed their way up and down, relative to the Windrush's approach, before splitting in a brilliant cascade.

At least, this side, the escapable side was brilliant. The sacrificed twins vanished into the hole's maw, half an arc and then nothing.

Those jets, Artie could predict, more or less, and they served admirably as a navigational beacon. The gamma ray bursts, unpredictable massive planet killers, they were another thing entirely.

Roon would have gone farther. Artie had stopped when they reached the last identifiable core of a gas giant. "No. We're here where even Jupiter must kneel before Chaos. It will make a good, safe place to park."

And an even better one to escape from. The super-dense remains kept the gamma shower on the proper side of the planet. Which was nowhere near the 'Rush. Uijer, the 'Rush's co-pilot, spent most of their time checking their observation orbit, a hair's breath below the horizon of the old chunk of metal.

"Far enough to see, not far enough to get roasted." The 'Rush's shields could handle the blast echoes, here, with the dead gas giant's help. A little farther, and the 'Rush would be all alone.

And gone. So Uijer worried, and Artie as well.

"When are you going to want to send the probe?"

They'd been in orbit for a week. Long enough to get comfortable with it.

Which made Artie nervous. Because it was also long enough to get complacent.

"Tomorrow?"

Artie saluted the Professor with his tea cup. "Perfect."

****

He'd already defused the device, and placed it in a carefully chosen nook of Roon's probe. He knew enough of tense working days to know that, if he'd waited, Roon would never let him near her baby at this time and place.

Uijer had wondered if Roon's colleagues thought she would be actually riding the probe. "They're paying enough for an assassination."

Artie spun the detonator where it lay on the table. He'd spent the weeks pondering that question. Here, a few hours from launch, he'd given it up for too little information.

The heart of the sabotage had been removed. But the Windrush had been payed.

He'd checked, before they left safe space and the network connection that had long since been lost in the noise of the dying star.

****

"Your colleagues worry about you, don't they?" he asked Roon, as she shepherded her packages off the 'Rush.

Roon stopped and walked to join Artie where he sat on a packing crate. "They approached you? What did they want?"

He handed her the detonator. It had ridden in his pocket for most of three months.

She tucked the explosive into her own pocket. After a long lingering look over. "Ambition scares folks, I guess."

"Reminds them of too much, I think."

"I don't suppose..."

"No names, no identifiable faces or voices." The video message had used a common masking protocol; the Actor's Guild saw to it that thousands of years of dreams were available for pennies. And the Professor's jealous colleagues had known enough to pay for an inseparable masking, one that couldn't be lifted because there was nothing to lift it from. "They just fed a script to a director and let them do the rest."

"Probably an AI," Roon mused.

"Just so. Listen, Doc, are you gonna be ok?" Artie had invested some of the 'Rush's time and energy into her and her project. He didn't want to see it wasted.

She shrugged. "Sure."

"Uh-huh." Artie, Uijer more, had spent a little time with folks who did business via explosives. "We'll be checking in on you, Professor. You need anything, anytime anywhere, holler. Preferably enough before the fan hits the shit for us to get here and remove you from particulate path? Please?"

She paused at the bay door, the last of her gear crates trundling its way down the ramp. Then she turned, her face a study in distraction and dawning trust. "I'll do that, Captain."

"Promise?"

Roon smiled. "Of course." Then she turned and walked down the ramp.