Last Lines: Science Fiction by BoyerA

No one is born a baitman, I don’t think, but the rings of Saturn sing epithalamium the sea-beast’s dower.

C’Mell came in and the robot-doctor left. [Smith’s note: be careful!]

She touched my eyes, shut out all the light, and I saw no more. ¶ We live in the lovely quiet and dark.

Last year the Church granted me a new ship. I named this one Dragon.

He was looking at the house, but I was unable to tell if there was anyone at the window.

It took a long time before I stopped hearing her calling in my head. Asking me, asking me: do you know what love is? ¶ Sure I know. ¶ A boy loves his dog.

On the horizon outside the window, in the direction of Saro City, a crimson glow began growing, strengthening in brightness, that was not the glow of a sun. ¶ The long night had come again.

Well, time to go: unknown beckons. ¶ But have never felt so small. Awfully big world waiting out there. ¶ For me.

It seemed, almost, that she still sat small and bewildered and frightened on the metal box beside him, her words echoing hauntingly clear in the void she had left behind her: ¶ I didn’t do anything to die for – I didn’t do anything –

I enjoy dancing with Norrey. Together we’re not as good as Shara was alone – but we mesh well. In spite of the obvious contraindications, I think our marriage is going to work. ¶ That’s the thing about us humans: We persist.

In the few minutes it took the police, summoned by the shrieking Mrs. Coleman, to arrive, the instruments had become crusted with rust, and the flasks which had held vascular glue and clumps of pink, rubbery alveoli and spare gray cells and coils of receptor nerves held only black slime, and from them when opened gushed the foul gases of decomposition.

I nodded at the child. “Your child will be called Gothig, and then” – I looked at the sky and felt the tears drying on my face – “and then, Gothig’s child will be called Shigan.” I nodded and headed for the cleft that would bring us down to the level of the cave.