The Breath of The Gods Scott William Carter
The city looked like an angel. As he guided his ship down through the dark skies of Vagal Rone, it was the first thing Commander Richard Hagel thought when he saw the flames that engulfed the city. The High Ones Coliseum, now totally ablaze, was the hallo. The city-long aqueducts were shaped like slender wings. The twin domes of the Ascender's Chambers looked like breasts. And the rest of the various buildings within the aqueducts formed a womanly body. It was such an remarkable and obvious image that Richard wondered why it took a raging inferno to get him to see it, especially after making the trip dozens of times. And then, of course, he realized: He couldn't see an angel, but he could see a burning angel just fine. Julie wouldn't have been surprised at the irony of this--at least the old Julie wouldn't have been. "How long until the asteroid hits?" he asked the ship. "Twenty seven minutes," the ship answered. Richard grimaced and set his stopwatch. The good news was that he knew exactly where she would be, where everyone who was left on Vagal Rone would be: in the coliseum. But there would be thousands of people there, and there was no telling if he would be able to find her. He landed just outside the city -- as close as he dared put his ship to the fires -- and ran to the back of the ship. He jumped in his three-wheeled buggy and buzzed down the landing ramp before it even touched the ground, landing with a jolt and tearing off over the dunes toward the city. He didn't even bother turning on his headlamps; the fires were so bright it was almost like day.
When he met Julie for the first time, Richard was recently divorced, still simmering at being dumped for a miner who smelled of cheap beer and spoke in monosyllabic grunts. He asked for Vagal Rone because it was the most distant assignment available. The Rones, as they were commonly called, were mostly made up of followers of the Order of Ascension, and abstinence was one of their pillars. It was fine by him. He didn't even want to think about other women. Yet when Julie barged into his office five days after his ship touched down, he was surprised at how instantly he was attracted to her. She wasn't part of the Order, as she was wearing a simple floral dress instead of the traditional brown fri'loch robe, but he would have known she was an off-worlder just by her eyes: there was a burning intensity in them that was never present in the ever-vacant expressions worn by members of the Order. It only took a few seconds before he realized why the intensity was there. "You bastard son of--" she began, and proceeded to spew a litany of profanity at him that would have put his ex-wife to shame, and she had called him plenty of names over the years. He let her finish, taking the opportunity to enjoy the way her body filled out the dress, as well as the shine of her smooth ebony hair in the lamplight. Most of the time he hated adhering to the Order's request that they light their offices with only the weak oil lanterns that all inhabitants of Vagal Rone used, but just then he rather enjoyed it. It gave this woman a mysterious allure . . .
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© Scott William Carter. Originally appeared in Oceans of the Mind, December 2004. |
