Giants and Ogres Page 6

  “We have some exciting guests today, but first, an announcement. In honor of today’s 75th anniversary of colonization, we’re going to be doing an entire show at the home of one lucky fan who has a birthday today.” He paused for the cheers and screams to die down, and a sari-draped woman came up to him with a bowl of names. He reached in, plucked one up, and then paused again. “And the winner is … Vivian Cross, of … the Cloud?”

  A picture of me flashed up on the screen. I looked less than two meters tall, because there was no one else in the picture for comparison.

  “Well, Vivian, we look forward to meeting you!” Jack went on, his smile back in place.

  Elation warred with doom, and we all turned to look at the slightly damp Cyn. There was silence, and then Jared spoke.

  “Oh, Cyn, what have you done?”

  When a new world is colonized, viability is the main concern. New environments encourage mutations, and many of those become the new normal. Some changes, though, are just too far out of human norms to fit in.

  I had looked normal when I was born. It was only when I was nine months old, a full meter long, 25 kilos, but not yet rolling over, that my parents learned the truth. My maturation was delayed, but my growth was not.

  When I was five, I was a two meter tall toddler. I learned normally for a toddler, which I remained for another five years, so they taught me languages. Math and reading couldn’t begin until my teens, but by then I was fluent in all 23 of the languages our colony contained.

  Talk of sending me away began when I was in my twenties, but I was the emotional equivalent of a six year old. My parents wouldn’t allow it. I went on to learn math, coding, and reading and writing in all 23 languages. Our community helped to build us a house that would hold a six meter tall child. I kept growing, they kept aging, and finally, in my 60’s, they both died. I barely fit in our old house and couldn’t stand anywhere in it, but I stayed until the people from the government came, made me an emancipated minor, and sent me up the Stalk to live with the other ageless ones from the era of colonization. The Cloud was the first actual settlement on the planet, a research facility from before the planet was considered safe. There was no longer a need for it beyond housing the few monsters who remained.

  We believed I had stopped growing at 24 meters and a few centimeters. The government sent us what we needed, and all they asked was that we stay safely, quietly out of sight.

  It looked like we weren’t going to be holding up our end of that bargain.

  “Tell them we’re contagious!” Jared insisted.

  Ella shook her head and music drifted out from her. “Jack did a show in Hazmat suits last year. That won’t stop them.”

  “What if we tell him that Vivian died?” he offered.

  “What if we just let them come?” I asked.

  The others turned to look at me, and I shrugged. “How bad can it be? They come up, see we’re freaks, go away again. Best case, they realize we’re also people. We get to carry on conversations with other people for a few days, hear some music, let the world know that we exist. Then life goes back to normal.”

  Jared growled something, but Ella nodded. “That’s probably the best attitude. If we don’t expect too much, don’t get our hopes up, I think we’ll get through it.”

  “We can do that,” Cyn agreed. “We know better than to care too much what any of them think.”

  I nodded, fairly certain that we were both lying.

  The elevator inside the Stalk is immense, so big that I can sit cross legged in it without ducking my head. The number of people and amount of equipment that Jack brought still filled it.

  There was a moment of silence when the doors opened. There must have been twenty people inside, but I only had eyes for Jack. He looked out at the four of us … and smiled.

  I could have died happy right then.

  “Thank you so much for having us! You must be Vivian, the birthday girl. Won’t you introduce me to your friends?”

  I did, hardly noticing the camera people and assorted others as Jack gave the same warm smile to each of my friends, shaking hands with them and even reaching out to touch the enormous finger I offered. His voice was just as compelling up close, and while I suspected that he’d been air-brushed minutes before, he looked incredible.

  “Can any of you sing?” he asked. “Or play any instruments?”

  Ella shook her head in denial, and he froze at the chiming of her hair. “Oh, Ancestors, that’s beautiful. Is that you? I mean, do you do it on purpose?”

  Ella blushed, and I stifled instinctive jealousy. “She’s amazing, isn’t she?” I answered. “Every movement she makes, every breath, is music.”

  Jack tilted his head back to look at me. “And how about you, Vivian? Do you sing?”

  I cringed. “I never learned how to do that quietly. It’s … too loud.”

  Jack put his hands on his hips. “Don’t stifle yourself to fit someone else’s idea of appropriate. You sing out loud, and don’t be afraid who hears you.”

  “You’ll want ear protection, in that case,” Cyn murmured, but it didn’t matter.

  I was already in love.

  By the end of the day Jack had talked Jared into a kind of drumming, Ella and Cyn into a dance routine with just the music of Ella’s body, and me into recording a song. They did use ear protection, all of them, but when the tech people played it back it was … beautiful. I’d done a song about a pilot, doomed to stay awake and age while her love slept in cryo, and it amazed me that such a sad song could perfectly capture my joy.

  After the tech people had bedded down in the empty rooms and even my friends had gone off to bed, Jack sat beside me on my enormous bed and talked. It felt weird, talking alone to a boy. It wasn’t like he could even kiss me, let alone harm me in some way, but still … weird.

  “How do you survive up here, just the four of you?”

  I shrugged. “We have greenhouses, although it’s hard for me to tend anything except the orchards. The government sends us our necessities, and we save to buy other things we want.”

  Jack gestured at my necklace. “How did you manage to get that?”

  I fingered the gold links. “Oh, Jared can change metals into each other.”

  His eyes went wide, and just for an instant there was something in them I couldn’t catch. “That sounds like a fairy tale.” He grinned, and the look was gone. “And you’re the princess, trapped in your tower.”

  And how will you free me, my Prince, when I can’t even kiss you?

  I smiled. “Close enough.”

  The tech people stayed in the background, murmuring to each other. I amused myself by identifying the languages they spoke, trying not to eavesdrop. Just because Jack accepted us didn’t mean that the others did. Still, the worst I heard was one of them referring to us as “the poor bastards,” and another saying something about a cage, which the Cloud was in a very real sense.

  The show went off without a hitch, Jack singing an introduction as usual. Then he taped segments with us and did a live shot of all of us waving and smiling. Ella recorded it, and I imagined all of us watching it, over and over again. It would be bittersweet, but I wouldn’t trade the memories for the comfort of before.

  It was late that night when Jack knocked cautiously on the wall beside the curtain that marked my bedroom. He slipped in at my call and stood a moment looking up at me.

  “Vivian, we need to talk.”

  I had considered the possibility that he would want to. They were going away tomorrow. Still, what was there to say?

  I held out my hand anyway, let him climb on and lifted him up to my bed.

  “I want you to know … I would be your prince if I could. I would rescue you from this tower, but there’s no place for you down below. Every step you took would be hemmed in, people would be afraid of you, and I think you’d be miserable.”

  All things I already knew, but I nodded, appreciating his effort.

  “And I …
I can’t stay with you, Vivian. This isn’t my place.”

  “I know,” I whispered, sorry to see his distress. “It’s okay, really.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not okay. Because the others … they can leave, Vivian. They can have a place down below. I can help people to see them as they are, not as monsters. But they won’t leave, because they love you.”

  I fell back against the headboard, barely registering that the movement of the mattress made Jack fall to his knees. The thought of my friends, sacrificing for me? Oh, beautiful, but not acceptable.

  “You have to take them,” I agreed. “They can’t give up that for me. It isn’t right.”

  “You are so beautiful, inside and out,” Jack said fiercely. “If things were different ….”

  Blessedly, he left that unfinished.

  “Should I say goodbye?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Pretend you’re asleep. We’ll leave now to get it over with.”

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I set him gently back down on the floor, and laid back against the pillows. I turned the light off and stared up at the darkness of the ceiling. I could have undressed, but there was no point. Tomorrow I’d only be alone.

  There were soft sounds a bit later, then Jack spoke softly in Cantonese. “Get the shipment in first.”

  Two of the tech crew were arguing in Swahili, and a third suddenly hissed in Russian. “The sedative is wearing off!”

  Sedative?

  In Swahili, “The cage!” and then in Standard a more familiar voice. “Viv?” Cyn called. “Viv, I’m scared.”

  “Now, now, don’t wake her, you know she’s too heart-broken for a goodbye,” Jack said soothingly in Standard, although there was an edge to his voice.

  The Swahili told a different tale. “Get the monster back in her cage!”

  I leapt from my bed, tore open the curtains in time to see the Stalk doors closing … and my three friends in cages.

  I screamed so loudly that the whole room shook, pulled open the doors, pulled on the chains, but even my strength was not enough to stop them. My hands were too big to hotwire the elevator. I paused only an instant before heading to the glass door.

  The air outside the Cloud is thin, but breathable. Our plants inside keep the oxygen richer, but the glass door, once used for hover craft, still opened. I pulled it ajar, looked down at the Stalk, and jumped.

  The Stalk is made of woven columns of cement and metal, none particularly comfortable to land on. I caught hold anyway and began to climb down it as fast as I could. If they got to the bottom before me ….

  They wouldn’t.

  The metal chains thrummed with the weight of the load, and I began to sing along to it, matching my movements to the music. It was a song my father had liked, for all that my mother had considered in too dark. “A Woman Scorned,” and I hoped my voice—NOT hidden, NOT toned down—was audible to Jack inside.

  Oh blades may cut and bullets sting

  But a woman scorned is a terrible thing.

  She’ll sear the eyes right from your head

  And grind your bones to bake her bread.

  Hand over hand, faster and faster I descended as the chains inside hummed and the elevator lowered. Finally, 30 meters from the ground, I jumped. The ground shook, the Stalk shivered, and the elevator door pinged open.

  I stood, smiling. “You may want to record this,” I said in Swahili. I put my hands together and cracked my knuckles. “I don’t like my friends being kidnapped,” I went on in Russian. Then I took a step forward as I finished in Cantonese. “And I most especially don’t like having my emotions manipulated by a megalomaniac sociopath.”

  “Vivian, sweetheart,” Jack tried as I grabbed the first few techs and tossed them into the swamp behind me. “There’s some sort of misunderstanding,” he continued as much of his equipment followed them into the mud.

  I smiled as I grabbed another handful of techs and send them splashing with the others. “Is there, my prince?” I inquired sweetly. “Tell the nice woman with the camera why you have my friends in cages.”

  The last tech was filming, although her hands shook. She peered around the camera at me. “It was all his idea, really!”

  “Shut up!” Jack screamed. “It isn’t—I didn’t—” He reached into his pocket and pulled out something tiny.

  I frowned as a projectile lodged itself into my necklace. “Jack, I really don’t think we can be friends anymore.” I picked him up by the back of his jacket and turned back to the woman with the camera. “If you open those cages nicely, I’ll let you walk out of here under your own power.”

  She nodded, still filming as she fumbled with the locks and let my friends out. Ella was still asleep, but she roused when Jared shook her gently.

  I crushed two of the cages in my free hand, then shoved Jack into the third.

  “You can’t do this!” He screamed. “I’m famous; I’m important!”

  I tilted my head to one side. “You look rather small to me.” I gestured the woman out. “We’ll send him back to you, eventually—when he understands his mistakes and has paid off his debt.”

  “You can keep him,” the woman muttered, but she scurried away.

  Cyn flew up to my shoulder and held on as I bowed my head to climb in and sit down. Ella and Jared settled on my legs as I hit the button to take us up.

  “I’m going to need you to program this to lock at the top,” I informed Ella.

  “But what about me?” Jack wailed.

  I smiled. “You get to sing for your supper. If you do a good job, you’ll get out of that cage eventually. If not ….”

  I hummed the tune to “A Woman Scorned,” while Ella chimed along.

  Hope Erica Schultz writes Science Fiction and Fantasy for teens and adults. Her YA post-apocalyptic novel, The Last Road Home, came out November 2015, and her first experience as co-editor, the YA anthology One Thousand Words for War, came out May 2016. Her prior stories have appeared in publications including Fireside Press, Diabolical Plots, and Plasma Frequency. She is an Associate Member of SFWA. She is generally busy with family, work, and shenanigans, and has trouble saying “No” to part time jobs and interesting projects.

  Hungery

  John Linwood Grant

  It happened, but it happened slowly.

  First he lost his job when the machine-parts factory closed down. It wasn’t a good job, but it made him talk to people. The more he was at home, the less he had anything to say to anyone but his mother, with whom he lived.

  The following year his mother died quite suddenly. A brief bout of pneumonia, and the house was empty except for him. He talked even less after that.

  Then there was the subsidence at the end of the street. Old mine shafts, they said, empty snake-skins coiled under the road, waiting to collapse, and part of the street had to be demolished. The part with his mother’s house.

  So he had to move, and they found him a flat in Rowan Rise. It wasn’t difficult. Rowan Rise would be next on the list of demolitions, with or without collapsing mine-shafts. No one lived there if they had anywhere else to go. He didn’t.

  Names mattered as well, not only jobs and homes. He had a name, obviously, but after a while no one bothered to use it because they didn’t need to. “Him in Flat Seven,” they said. “That odd guy in the dump.” And finally, as the other tenants left, one by one, he became nothing more than “that guy.”

  It didn’t bother him, because he didn’t notice the world outside any more. He often forgot to wash. His hair grew longer, began to straggle on his shoulders as it thinned on top. His fingernails thickened with age, harder to cut, and so he left them.

  Money was tight. He’d had some compensation, but he didn’t understand it. He bought cheap cuts of meat, stock bones and ham hocks, and learned to live on them. His jaws grew stronger, his teeth like yellowed pegs as he ground down the gristle and sinew. He tried marrowbones and fish-heads, pig’s trotters and stewing steak, all of w
hich went down his gullet in a moment. He grew, his shoulders wider than ever, and his belly breaking open his pants. And yet he was always empty inside, somehow.

  He wasn’t seen much. When he did emerge, usually at night or in pouring rain, he was a bulk moving in shadows, a bulk no one wanted to approach. And even those appearances stopped eventually. It was rumoured that someone local did his shopping for him, but no one had seen anyone go in or out of the flat.

  A few years passed. The flats still stood, an ugly mass of bricks on the edge of the neighbourhood, and he was still there. While lawyers argued over land-law and zoning, office blocks and affordable housing, the kids found a new name for the one person left in Rowan Rise. They listened to their parents, and they remembered the nonsense that they had heard in bedtime stories.

  They called him The Ogre.

  Esme Carlito had almost gone in once, a few months ago when the front door of the flat began to hang half open, one of the hinges rusting away. A dare, of course. She told her friends afterwards that the smell had put her off, a stench of stale sweat and meat. She told her dog Max, however, that she could hear the ogre’s breathing, a snorting in the darkness, and that she had been terrified. Max understood.

  Her brother didn’t want to hear Esme’s stories. He was fifteen, two years older, and the wrong age for bedtime stories, or for anything else. No love life, no skill at sports, and not particularly academic.

  Daniel Carlito was a loner—not because he wanted to be, but because he was edged out of everything that might have been interesting. The teams and clubs didn’t want him, a mediocre boy with slightly too much weight around his waist. He was Hispanic, but not Hispanic enough to be considered hip. The others in his year derided him for his lack of sexual experience. He knew that most of what they said was made up, but he didn’t tell lies very well. So he played computer games, read the odd crime story, and kept out of people’s way.