IGMS Issue 49 Read Free Page A

It keeps coming back."
    I search for another topic to distract him. He chews his lip, peeling off a near-white layer of skin. His lips are cracked and blotchy-red from where he's done it before. He's whirling over something in his head, I can see his breathing quicken.
    "I made it part of my myth, you know." My voice is too bright, it sounds false.
    "What, the fungus?" He's only half listening.
    "In a way." I clear my throat for a storytelling voice. "Mytyr's first son, Yllikos the wolf, still in his mother's womb, wanted all the heavens for himself, to shape as he saw fit.
    "He refused to be born and instead, ate his way out from inside her. And once he was out, he kept eating, devouring every bit of her until his own belly was so big and round and heavy that it descended from the heavens and formed our planet, Azure."
    Justin shifts back from the screen, his lip forgotten. I keep my relief from showing.
    "In the blaze of the sun, Azure woke and rolled and stretched, and breathed Mytyr's soul back up into the sky, where she was reborn. But Yllikos was not so lucky, stuck as he was with his swollen belly. He was trapped on the south horizon, never to touch the heavens, let alone shape them. Mytyr left him there as a warning to her future children."
    Justin narrows his eyes. "But why would she let him devour her in the first place? Surely a mother is stronger than her infant."
    I'd wondered about that myself when I'd written it. But I have Justin's full attention now. "It's a common thread with myths; being subsumed and reborn. Maybe she wanted to give him the choice."
    "And he did it anyway," Justin says with an almost-smile. I nod.
    Sometimes I worry if we're a bit too much like Yllikos.
    Justin's comm cuts off - Seris must have discovered the breach. I try to get him back, but she's locked it down tight. He doesn't buzz again.
    I collapse into sleep before the pod reaches the end of its tunnel, half a kilometre down, and wake to the comm announcement that the terraforming catalysts have been released. Half awake, I shuffle myself to the celebrations in the mess hall, by way of Justin's quarters.

    Anna's reporting to us all that she's traced the fungus to the hydroponics water supply when the first tremor crashes through. The walls groan and shudder, the floor tilts crazily. I try to keep my lunch in my stomach as the hydraulics struggle to keep us balanced. In my mind I can see great talons of stone crushing us, spearing in so the acid air can devour our skin. I blot it out, jaw clenched against the spinning in my head, smother it with blue-green twists of rock under burnt-orange, the rasp of the O2 filters, the brush of shimmering lichen.
    Anna grasps my hand, her grey eyes flicking over my face, and I force myself away from the wall and nod reassurance. I shove the images down, bury them deep in my bones, and smile. This is my job, to be the calm one.
    The quakes come almost every day. Some are merely terrifying, spinning the floor like a gyroscope. Others nearly cripple the colony. People are flung into walls, warps ripple across the skin of the floors. Chomsky starts a book on how big a quake will rupture the bulkheads; I don't have the guts to bet.
    When the generator housing cracks, the surge takes the backup system with it. With no power or life support, we huddle in the mess hall with emergency O2 canisters and headlamps while Chomsky and Renna scramble to get us back online before our air runs out. I clutch the thumb-sized drive that holds my constellation stories, running my fingers over the access port until they're numb. There's no talk, people sit and squeeze hands, conserving air.
    A shout cuts through the silence.
    "You're sick! Why would you do this?" Lights flash as people turn to look. A crowd of four or five are up on their feet near the door, ringed around something on the floor. The lights move again. I glance across to Anna, but she's looking at me. So are others.
    I'm supposed to handle this. It's my