Starlady & Fast-Friend Read online

  “Soon, angel,” he said patiently. “Soon.”

  Then Melissa was there, caught in the viewscreen. Brand felt a chill go through him.

  Her skin was milk-white now, her hair a halo of streaming silver. But otherwise she was the same. She had the firm curves of a twenty-year-old, and the face that Brand remembered.

  He shooed the angel from his lap, and turned to the console. He hit some buttons.

  Outside, the stars began to flicker. The bright dot of the distant sun dimmed. The hulks of the Jungle, the Hades wheel, Changling Station; all darkened slightly. Only Melissa and the other fast-friends were unchanged.

  Caught within the globe.

  Robi smiled, and started to speak. Brand silenced her with a look. His signal lights called Melissa. When she acknowledged, he cut the safe-screens to let her through.

  He met her in the corridor after the airlock had cycled her in. Robi stayed up on the bridge.

  They stood ten feet apart. They did not touch or smile.

  “Brand,” Melissa said at last. She studied him with ice-blue eyes, from a cold and steady face, and her voice had a husky quality he had not remembered. “You… what are you doing? We are not… not darks. To be trapped.” Her speech stumbled and halted awkwardly.

  “Have you forgotten how to talk, Melissa?” Brand said. As he spoke, the bridge panel slid open behind him. The angel flew out and hovered.

  “Oh,” she said to Melissa. “You’re pretty.”

  The fast-friend’s eyes flicked to her quickly, then dismissed her and went back to Brand. “Some, I’ve forgotten. Ten years, Brand. With stars, the stars. Not… I’m not a human now. I’m elder now, an elder fast-friend. My… my call comes soon.” She paused. “Why have you screened us?”

  “A new kind of screen, Melissa,” Brand said, smiling. “Didn’t you notice? It’s dark. A refinement, just developed back on Earth. They’ve been doing a lot of screen research, and I’ve been following it. I had an idea, love, but the old screens were no good. This kind, well, it’s more sophisticated. And I’m the first one to realize the implications.”

  “Sophisticated. Implications.” The words sounded odd, foreign, alien on Melissa’s tongue. Her face looked lost.

  “We’re going to the stars together, Melissa.”

  “Brand,” she replied. For a moment her voice had an almost-human tremor. “Give it up, Brand. Give up… me. And stars. They… they’re old dreams, and they’ve gone sour on you. See? Can’t you see?”

  The angel was swooping up and down the corridor, coming closer to Melissa each time, clearly fascinated by the fast-friend, but afraid to come too close. They both ignored her.

  Brand was looking at Melissa, at the dim, far-off reflection of a girl who’d loved him once. He shook it away. She was just a fast-friend, and he’d get his stars from her.

  “You can take me to the stars, Melissa, and other men after me. It’s time you fast-friends shared your universe with us poor humans.”

  “A drive?” she asked.

  “You might…”

  But the angel interrupted him. “Oh, let me, Brand. Let me tell her. I know how. You told me. I remember. Let me talk to the fast-friend.” She’d stopped her wild circles, and was floating eager between them.

  Brand grinned. “All right. Tell her.”

  The angel spun in the air, smiling. Her wings beat quickly to underscore her words. “It’s like horses,” she told Melissa. “The darks are like horses, Brand said, and the fast-friends are like horses with riders. But he’s got the first chariot, and the fast-friends will pull him.” She giggled. “Brand showed me a picture of a chariot. And a horse too.”

  “A star chariot,” Brand said. “I like the image. Oh, it’s a cartoon analogy, of course, but the math is sound. You can transport matter. Enough of you, locked into a dark screen, can transport a ship this size.”

  Melissa floated, staring, shaking her head slowly back and forth. Her silver hair shimmered. “Stars,” she said softly. “Brand, the core… the songs. Freedom, Brand. Like we used to talk. Brand, they won’t… no running… they won’t let us go… can’t chain us.”

  “I have.”

  And the angel, emboldened by Melissa’s sudden stillness, flew up beside her. In a childish, tentative way, she reached out to touch, and found the phantom solid. Melissa, her eyes on Brand, put an arm around her. The angel smiled and sighed and moved closer.

  Brand shook his head.

  And the angel suddenly looked up, childish pique washing across her face. “You fooled me,” she said to Brand. “She’s not a horse. She’s a person.” Then, brightly, she smiled again. “And she’s so pretty.”

  There was a long, long silence.

  * * *

  The bridge panel slid shut behind him. Robi was waiting. “Well?” she asked.

  Wordlessly Brand kicked himself across the room, strapped down, and looked up at the viewscreen. Out in the darkness, in the screen-dimmed gloom, Melissa had rejoined the other fast-friends. They spoke with staccato bursts of color. Brand watched briefly, then reached up to the console and hit a button.

  The stars flared cold and bright, and the flanks of Hades shone.

  Before Robi had a chance to speak the fast-friends had vanished, spinning space around them, moving faster than the Chariot ever would. Only Melissa lingered, and only for a second. Then emptiness, and the derelicts around them.

  “Brand!”

  He smiled at her, and shrugged. “I couldn’t do it. We would never have been able to let them outside the screens. They’d be animals, draft animals, prisoners.” He looked sheepish. “I guess they’re not. Not people either, though, not anymore. Well, we always wanted to meet an alien race. How could we guess that we’d create one?”

  “Brand,” Robi said. “Our investment. We have to go through with it. Maybe we can use darks?”

  He shook his head. “No. We couldn’t get them to understand what we wanted. No. Fast-friends or… nothing, I guess.”

  He paused, and looked at her. She was staring up at the viewscreen, with an expression that shrieked disgust and exasperation. “I’ll make it up to you,” Brand said. He took her hand, gently. “We’ll trap. We’re well equipped.”

  Robi looked over. “Where’s the angel?” she asked, and her voice sounded a shade less angry.

  Brand sighed. “In my cabin,” he said. “I gave her a necklace to play with.”

  Document information

  Title Info

  Genre SF

  Author George R. R. Martin

  Title Starlady & Fast-Friend

  Date 2008

  Language en

  Publisher Info Starlady & Fast-Friend

  Copyright © 2008 by George R. R. Martin. All rights reserved.

  “Starlady” Copyright © 1976 By George R. R Martin. All rights reserved.

  “Fast-Friend” Copyright © 1976 By George R. R Martin. All rights reserved.

  Dust Jacket Illustration Copyright © 2008 by Martina Pilcerova. All rights reserved.

  Interior Design Copyright © 2008 by Desert Isle Design, LLC. All rights reserved.

  First Edition

  ISBN 978-1-59606-175-0

  Subterranean Press

  PO Box 190106

  Burton, MI 48519

  www.subterraneanpress.com

  Document Info

  Author mtvietnam

  Program used FictionBook Editor 2.4, AlReader2, calibre (0.8.0)

  Date June 2011

  Version 1.0

  History 1.0 — Scan, OCR, proofreading — mtvietnam (2010)

  Some typos were fixed:

  multi-colored strobes were Hashing — flashing

  [He] voice was even, quiet — Her

  hand, and took it off the table[.] — added period

  He laughed[.] “Probly, starlady, on Rhiannon — added period

  Her tone was cutting[.] — added period

  Hal did not smile, hack — Hal did not smile back

&
nbsp; an’ wound[,] up raped and ripped — deleted comma

  joysmoke and grabtabs and rippin — joy-smoke

  Janey blinked[.] “What?” — added period

  boy with pointy ears and big [ears] — eyes

  “He won’t do it,” Janey said stubbornly[.] — added period

  Mayliss followed her[.] — added period

  Everybody left him; his ’sticks[?] his girls, everybody — replaced question mark with comma

  They found me on the concourse — Concourse

  “Later,” said Stumblecat[.] — added period

  They’ll kill you[,] Starlady — added comma

  And you’ve heard the wobbly spins[,] right? — added comma

  “Hey, Starlady,” Hal said — added closing quote

  “It’s only a dark. Come on. Let me trap it[,]” — replaced comma with period

  She was naked, wreathed in fire, adrift among the stars[,] She no longer breathed — replaced comma with period

  “Her next,” he said[,] — replaced comma with period

  “The course has been altered,” he stated. He looked at her[,] — replaced comma with period

  “We’ll be right on top of them in five minutes,” Brand said. Robi pretended not to hear. // “I don’t know about you, Brand,” she said — added paragraph break

  Brand silenced her with a look[,] — replaced comma with period