The Future Is Short Read Free Page B

ain’t allowed. To shout—’tain’t allowed, in crowds. It bothers folksies. Here on Earth.
    Me? I’ve sent Josie and my mother out to exile over Delta Araiadne, sent Kalie and the boy along with. They’ll be okay; there’s grass on Delta, folksies say. “The sky is blue, the trees are pink , /  the snakes don’t climb out of the stink”—y’see? They’ll be okay.
    But I stay here with Granmer. I take her on my lap, then sigh and carry her out through the corridors’ bang-bangs, past televisie, televisie blarin’ and the guys’ constructin’ Noisies next each wall. I carries her on—on beyond. And then I put her on my lap, here out on The Last Meadow (more kinda a square), and I put Oaksing by her too, so she lies back to hear Cortiex’s music of the heart, and, ’spita every throbbin’ from the Noisies’ tractors, and in ’spite she’s got her palm across her mouth to hide all them lost teeth, she smiles. And I say, “There, now you comfortable, Granmer? No need we ever be goin’ back.” And she still smiles. And taps my finger, the one that usedtahave Marvin’s ring, and says too low. So I says, “Whatzat, Granmer?” and she draws, with her skinny fingers, six words.
    Bless you. You found it. Love.
     
    Paula Friedman is author of The Rescuer’s Path (2012), which Ursula K. Le Guin has called “exciting, physically vivid, and romantic.” Friedman has received two Pushcart nominations and several literary awards; her short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines. She seeks a new siamese cat and a Macarthur, Nobel, or other major award/grant. [email protected]   http://www.paula-friedman.com
     
     
     
     

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    5.
    The Daughter
    J.F. Williams
     
    Hundreds of glogla clung together in the great spherical cluster as it wended its way in the deep water and swept through the thickest clouds of plankton. A fissure had opened in the seabed far below and a bubble of gas charged toward the colony, interrupting the feeding and diverting the cluster’s lazy progress. But only for a moment. The elders with their many tentacles held firm, preventing any rupture to the sphere. It shuddered and rippled but all their barbs remained fixed in their purchase. Except for one daughter’s. One of her six limbs released its grip, exposing one of six stomata, and in that moment a selka worm slipped in.
    She could feel the worm inside her, its tiny, writhing form swimming up the vessels of her inner fluids, finally resting against the glofa at her center. That organ of feeling swelled at the selka’s touch, as when a plankton cloud was unexpectedly thick and nourishing, or the waters quieted after a storm, or one of the mothers’ limbs cleaved and became a daughter. Emboldened by this emotion, her barbs retracted completely and she freed herself from the cluster. Her glofa continued to swell in bursts as she beat her tentacles and pushed her body higher and higher. She heard the distant call from her mother, a subtle vibration in the water, pleading “No!” 
    How much time had passed, she did not know or care. As she continued rising, her entire form swelled, no longer constrained by the pressure of the deep. She was intoxicated by life now, and danger only felt like adventure. As the pressure lightened, so did the water; it become warmer and the dancing shafts of light from the two suns—one white, one yellow—became brighter, smarting her six eyes. Finally, she reached the surface and her forward limbs padded against the sandy beach, pulling her up and halfway out of the drink.
    What she saw now made her glofa cramp. Spread out on the sand were the flattened, hardened corpses of unknown cousins. None of her eyes could detect a sign of movement and there were no vibrations of speech, just sand and rocks and bright light, and hundreds of desiccated glogla. The selka, flat, transparent and pink to her sight, had reversed its journey and shot out from