Category Archives: NOVEL WRITING

March 27, 2017 · 10:17 pm

Stardusters… Canto 40

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Canto Forty – In the Bio-Dome Command Center

Davalon and Tanith found themselves naked and alone in the command center, looking at monitors and trying to figure out what was actually going on in the Bio-Dome.

“Do you think we can really trust Sizzahl, Dav?” Tanith asked.  Her large and beautiful eyes looked into the heart of Davalon, Son of Xiar… at least he felt that they did.

“I wonder…  She is not hiding the fact that she plans on exploiting us for her own reasons.  In fact, she has exploited us in bringing us here with those plants she tried to rescue.”

“That’s true.”  Those amazing eyes turned downward towards the floor.  “I was wondering after Brekka was almost eaten by that alien plant why she didn’t tell us that it was there… you know, warn Brekka and the others away from the flower garden?”

“Yeah, I was wondering that too.  She doesn’t seem to care very much if we live or die.”

The two Telleron tadpoles looked at the monitors.  The black-and-white picture screens showed no movement except that of the Morrells and Sizzahl in the cloning facility and the others in the crew quarters.  Everywhere throughout the facility the plants and the animals of the Bio-Dome lay mostly brown and dead.  Only the lone zhar-doe continued to wander and look for food as if it were still trying to survive.

“Do you think this planet deserves to be dying like it is?” Davalon asked.

Tanith looked him directly in the eyes.  “Planets never deserve anything that happens to them.  Comets strike the surface… species go extinct… all life comes to an end… none of that happens because a planet did something wrong.”

“What about the Galtorrian people?”

“I actually like Sizzahl.  She’s so smart and she works so hard… But these lizard people… ugh!”

“They’ve poisoned the whole biosphere.  They eat each other… like our people used to do… and they don’t even have to.  They don’t need to recycle protein and flesh in order to maintain their population and food supply.”

Tanith nodded her agreement.  “These Galtorrian lizard people are creatures from a nightmare.”

“Yeah,” said Davalon.  He realized how much he and Tanith always agreed on things.  She was more than his nest-mate.  She was his friend, his best friend.  If he was ever going to be old enough to be allowed to breed offspring, a rare privilege for space-faring Tellerons, he would want to do it with Tanith.  He actually felt he understood the love between Alden and Gracie when he looked at Tanith.  Davalon loved Tanith.

“What do we do next?”  Tanith looked to Dav for leadership.  He really wasn’t sure what the best course of action was.  They were committed to the present course of action.  Their space ship was wrecked and quite some distance from the Bio-Dome.  If they were to have any hope of living through this adventure, they had to find some way to make this place livable, at least until Xiar’s rescue party found them.  Would Xiar send a rescue party?  Dav didn’t know.

“We have to help Sizzahl for now.  We don’t have any other choices.  At least, not yet.”

“Davalon, I would die to protect you and keep you from harm.”

“I feel the same way about you.”

“But you feel that way about all the tadpoles.  You’re a hero.  But I mean just you.  You are the one Telleron that I couldn’t live without.”

Davalon looked at beautiful, naked, green Tanith standing there in front of him, not only without a single stitch of clothing on her, but more personally naked than he had ever seen her before.  Her soul was bare.  “And I repeat… I feel the same way about you.  You are that one Telleron for me.”

She put both her arms around his neck and hugged him breathless.  She was crying softly.  And all he could think to do was hug her in return.

*****

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March 27, 2017 · 11:08 am

The Hardest Part to Write

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I finished a novel rough draft today.  But the end is not the hardest part to write.  Well, this one was, but not because it was the end of the story.  It was the part where a character you have carefully crafted over time, and really learned to love, has to die because that is simply how the story goes.  It was not a sad death, or an unresolved death, as such.  It was a fulfilled life of meaning and magic that simply came to its ending point.  My own real-life story may come to an end sometime in near the future too, and I can only hope it is half as much a satisfying completion as this one was.  And yet, my heart is sore from having written it.

The novel is called Recipes for Gingerbread Children.  It is a story of a little old lady.  She is alone in the world, except for the people in the little Iowa town where she is now living, especially the middle school age people who gather at her house to eat her gingerbread cookies and listen to her German fairy tales.  She was also a concentration camp survivor, so this story has Nazis in it.  Don’t worry though.  They are dead Nazis.  And there is a werewolf in it.  But only a baby werewolf.  Oh, and there are two twin teenage girls who are practicing nudists in it.  But you probably aren’t worried about them.  There are also fairies in it.  She tells fairy stories, after all.  And the whole book is more or less a collection of fairy stories.  And there is a lot of magical gingerbread cookies.

But I had to write the “character dies” part that I knew was coming for about six months.  It is the part that will make or break the story.  It is the part I will most need to polish and rewrite.  But the fact remains, the story ends with a death.  So there is that.  Life with gingerbread in it is also life that eventually comes to an end.

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And that part of the story is always really, really hard to write.

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March 21, 2017 · 11:04 am

Stardusters… Canto 39

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Canto Thirty-Nine – The Bio-Dome’s Crew Quarters

Since Brekka had nearly gotten killed by a maniac sentient flower with hidden teeth, Brekka, Menolly, and George Jetson had not been apart by more than a few feet.  In fact, George and Menolly had spent an uncomfortably long time attached at the lips.

George finally pulled away from Menolly’s mouth to breathe.

“Oh, Brekka,” gasped Menolly, “we are so glad you didn’t die.  Life would never be the same again if I didn’t have you to dance with.”

Brekka crossed her arms and frowned at Menolly.  “What exactly are you and George doing exchanging spit like that?  I thought the two of you were never going to talk to me again.”

“You remember the kissing thing from Earther television?” asked George.

“Yes…” said Brekka cautiously, “like when Gilligan kissed Mary Ann that time to convince the surfer guy that they were boyfriend and girlfriend so he would surf back to Hawaii?  And she said he had skinny lips?”

“Um… yeah… that works,” said George.  “We discovered it makes you feel really, really good to kiss somebody like that.  Want to try it?”

Brekka pursed her lips for a moment and mulled it over.  “Okay.”

Without warning, she leaned over and kissed Menolly right on the mouth.  She tried to make it last like she had seen Menolly do with George… but… it was kinda yucky.

“I don’t really see what’s so great about it.”

“I dunno,” said Menolly.  “I thought it was kinda good.  Brekka is almost as good a kisser as George.”

“But,” said George, “maybe you would consider making some Telleron tadpole eggs with me… huh, Menolly?”

“Oh, you stupid-head…” said Brekka.  “We three are nest-mates.  That means we have the same mother and father… probably.  You know what in-breeding is?”

“We were programmed with that information in the egg, Brekka,” said Menolly.

“Well, you know… it might be the thing that makes Tellerons so stupid and incompetent… in spite of all the knowledge and skills programmed into us while we are in the egg.”

“Yeah,” said George, “you’re probably right.  But when I kissed Menolly that first time, it made me feel so strange in my stomach.  Isn’t it possible the feelings of the stomach are more powerful than the thoughts in the head?”

“I think in that episode of Gilligan’s Island it was the heart that love came from, not the stomach,” said Menolly.

“Well, my heart seems to be in my stomach,” said George, “really low down, too.  And it’s telling me to make tadpoles with the two of you.  We almost lost Brekka to that plant thing.  I don’t want to waste any more time.”

“You know that we are still too young for egg-laying, George,” said Brekka.  “Our ovipositors are not fully formed yet.”

“Yeah… but we could practice…”

Brekka was furious.  Why were male tadpoles so… so…?  Yeah, that.

*****

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March 14, 2017 · 2:44 pm

Stardusters… Canto 38

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Canto Thirty-Eight – The Bio Dome Cloning Facility

Alden tenderly rubbed Gracie’s naked back and shoulders.  He loved his wife desperately and wanted to make love to her again… but she inhabited a child’s body and that just felt wrong.  Of Course, he was living in a child’s body as well, his physical age reduced to childhood by the de-evolution machine that Commander Biznap maintained in his space ship (along with at least a hundred other machines on Telleron space ships or aboard Xiar’s mother ship).  They were both physically children again, though their minds were filled with a combined seventy-eight years of life experience, something no actual children had.  Gracie purred like a kitten and grinned at Alden with her ten-year-old’s face.  What a strange life they now had together.

“Will you allow me to take skin and tissue samples for DNA?” asked Sizzahl, also naked, but not so noticeably because she was covered in skin that looked like a soft version of alligator-skin.

“You can only take them from me?” asked Alden.

“I can’t use Gracie’s DNA.  She is now a simuloid, made of artificial flesh.  Her DNA bears highly technical artificial helixes that don’t smoothly mesh will real DNA.  Besides, you both claim to want offspring of your own… and this is the only way you will ever do that.”

“What?” said Gracie.  “We can’t grow up and make babies of our own?  The natural way, I mean?”  Gracie looked shocked and shaken.

“I thought you knew.  The child-sized simuloid you used to stay alive was only ever programmed to be child-sized.  Its tissue regenerates like a child’s. So now that the termination program is removed from your artificial system, you are effectively immortal… but will always be child-sized.”

It was Alden’s turn to be shaken.  “We will never grow up?”

“Well, you can, if you choose.  But you can also keep using the Telleron machine to stay the same size as your wife.  That probably will make you immortal too.”

Sizzahl’s yellow lizard-eyes with the snake-like pupils were dead serious.  No way was Sizzahl joking… not that Alden had ever even seen her laugh.

“But what if we don’t want to be children forever?” asked Alden.

“As long as you don’t get killed on this horrible planet,” said Sizzahl, “you will have to choose to die and terminate yourselves.  You will not die of old age.  At least, Gracie won’t, and you don’t have to age either if you don’t want to.  The Tellerons’ technology allows that.”

It was a lot to take in all at once.  Children forever?  Alden couldn’t get his mind around such a thing.  Did he want to live forever if he had to do it in a child-sized body?

“Tell me more about these babies you plan to make,” said Gracie.

“I was going to use the cloning vats that I have used for animals to make two sets of five, one set male and the other one female.  I will accelerate their growth to a teachable age, because I will need them to work for me as soon as they possibly can.”

“And Alden and I could be their parents?” asked Gracie.

“Well… genetically they would be surrogate children, owing their genetic heritage half to me and half to Alden.  They would be Galtorrian/human fusions.  But you would certainly be welcome to think of them as your own.  Alden is technically their father.”

Gracie draped her arm around Alden’s naked shoulders.  “I want to be their mother, Alden.  We will have ten kids.  That’s as many as anyone on my side of the family ever had.”

“Do we really want to bring babies into a horrible world like this?”  Alden was horrified at the thought.

“Yes, we certainly do.  You have to admit, repopulating this dying world is a noble reason to have so many kids.  And you know how much we would both love them.”

“But we are doomed to stay child-sized, Gracie.  We would be midget parents.  And, Sizzahl?  Would they look like lizard-people or humans?”

“I don’t really know, of course, but I like to think they would look more like humans… maybe with scales or a tail.”

Alden shook his head sadly.  He could not do this.

“Will you let me scrape the skin on your arm, Alden?” asked Sizzahl, “and swab the inside of your mouth with a special cloth?”

“Of course he will!” said beautiful, child-like Gracie with adult certainty.

Alden nodded agreement and held out his bare arm.  Women always decided these things anyway… didn’t they?

*****

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March 7, 2017 · 11:34 am

Stardusters… Canto 37

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Canto Thirty-Seven – On the Moonbase of Gundahl

Starbright used the material synthesizer to make a wide variety of synthetic meat dishes.  Tellerons really didn’t care for that sort of protein-heavy fare, but if the synthesizer had not run out of molecules in the storage bin, the little lizard people would’ve eaten until they burst like over-filled balloons.  As it was their little lizard bellies were round and stuffed to the point of hurting on the synthetic meat and Skoog gravy.  The lizard children all curled up in satisfied but stomach-achy balls on the control center floor and drifted off into hibernation-like slumber.

“Now that you fed them into a stupor,” said Farbick, “I will pick up all their weapons, and we are in control of the situation at last.”

“You don’t fight fair,” growled Stabharh the violent little lizard man.  “You are not supposed to win the battle by feeding my troops into a coma.  There was no blood and death and drama.  Where’s the glory in that?”

“I don’t think we were looking for glory,” said Starbright.  “Victory for us is staying alive… and possibly finding a new place for our people to live.”

“Not here!” protested fat Bahbahr.  “This moon is my sacred property, legally purchased with the blood of slaves and warriors, and owned by me and my family for all time.”

“You have family?” asked Stabharh surprised.

“Well, not any more.  Senator Tedhkruhz probably ate them when he took over Predator’s Preserve and all the military bases I owned on that sub-continent.”

“What about these children?” asked Farbick.  “Were you going to share this place with them?”

“No,” said the fat overlord, “we were planning to eat them, since we are running out of edible food all over the planet.  These are all merely low-class slaves and chattel.  I might’ve saved a female or two to fertilize eggs with… there don’t seem to be any other living nobility besides Tedhkruhz and Rekhpahree and a handful of their kin.”

“Those young soldiers still belong to my command,” growled Stabharh.  “You will turn them over to me when you let us out of here.”

“What if we don’t?” asked Farbick.  “We could put the two of you down on the planet with the force-field box you are trapped in.  We could keep this Moonbase for ourselves, and let Harmony Castille teach these lizard-tadpoles some manners.”

Bahbahr howled incoherently at that.

“What kind of mind-control device is a Harmony Castille?” asked Stabharh.  “Especially one that is strong enough to control lizard brats that I have trained as killers?  It would take a very powerful force.”

“Harmony calls it Christian Bible-teaching,” said Starbright with a shrug.  “I have noticed it has the power to make Tellerons feel shame and self-loathing.  And it can apparently also help any species to care about one another in a self-less way.  I’d say that was pretty powerful mind control.”

“Well, you better hope it works at a distance,” sneered Stabharh.  “You see that monitor over on the control panel?  The one with the blinking red warning lights?”

“Yes,” said Farbick, suddenly concerned.  “What does it mean?”

“One of Senator Tedhkruhz’s space battle cruisers is headed here to destroy this moon for all time.”

“That can’t be good,” sighed Starbright.  “How do you know that that is who it is?”

“Because only Tedhkruhz still has working space ships, and you lot stupidly allowed one of them to survive its encounter with us.  He obviously figured out who we were and where we were going in spite of your lah-dee-dah invisibility cloaking field.”

Stabharh’s evil smirk was loathsome and foul to look at, Farbick thought.  Even serpents on Telleri, the really big ones, weren’t as horrid to look at as this reptile was.  Even if he was about to die right along with Farbick and Starbright, Farbick knew this lizard-man was going to enjoy whatever happened next.

*****

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February 28, 2017 · 11:54 am

Stardusters… Canto 36

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Canto Thirty-Six – The Bio-Dome

Alden stood a safe distance from the man-eating plant that Brekka had said was called Lester.  He studied it.  It was a meat-eating plant and didn’t rely totally on photo-synthesis, but it was much greener than a Venus flytrap from Earth.  And the important thing that struck Alden’s farmer mind with nearly thirty years of farm-working experience was that it seemed totally untouched by the blight that was killing nearly every growing thing on Galtorr Prime.

“What’s the matter, Alden?” asked Gracie.  “Does something about that plant bother you?”  Gracie’s concern colored her beautiful little-girl face.  Alden had never seen that face except in old black-and-white pictures in the family album.  This new body she inhabited took some getting used to, but as far as Alden was concerned, she had never been more stunningly beautiful.  It made being naked shamefully hard.  “Did you hear my question, my love?”

“Yeah… didn’t Sizzahl say this man-eater was an alien plant?  Not from here?”

“Yes, I think she did.”  Gracie turned around and looked where Sizzahl seemed about to leave the flower garden following the others.  “Sizzahl?  Can you come over here and talk to us about Lester?”

The naked lizard girl walked back across the garden path to where Alden and Gracie stood.  “What now?”

“This plant has no blight,” said Alden, pointing at the green leaves.

“Is that important?  It is from a different world.  It comes from a planet called Telos Three.”

“It is a green plant, and it is resistant to the disease killing the ecosphere of this planet.  Couldn’t we cross-breed it or something with cuttings from the dying plants, and maybe save them?”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”  Sizzahl made some serious-thinking lizard faces.  “I can go one better.  I have a gene splicer that I also want to use to make a Galtorrian/Human fusion.  We could use that to transplant resistance genes into the dying plants.  I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before.”

“Alden thinks like a farmer.  He’s battled corn borers and burdock weed and corn smut for years in Iowa.”  Grace looked at Alden with obvious pride embedded in her smile.

“I have learned a few things about saving crops.”

“If I could isolate the gene for cross-species use, I might be able to defeat the bio-weapon diseases once and for all.”  Sizzahl seemed to be getting excited by the idea.

“What exactly is the Galtorrian/Human fusion idea all about?” asked Gracie.

“Oh, that wasn’t about disease resistance.  I wanted to make better people for our planet.  I figure if we can combine aggressive Galtorrian methods with Earther peacefulness we could make a race of people that would be better than either side at present.”

“Don’t you like your own people, Sizzahl?” Gracie asked.

“I hate their evil, vengeful, selfish ways.  A few corporate emperors own everything on this planet.  They treat the people as things that can be used up and then disposed of.  A few nasty old gators decided that they were the only big lizards who mattered, and now you can see what their fighting amongst themselves has done to this whole planet.”

“I hate to say it, but Earth humans aren’t that different,” said Alden.  “We make wars and kill our own people too.  We put a lot of artificial chemicals and poisons into our own environment, and we don’t even do it to try to wipe out the other side of every argument.  At least… I don’t think we do it on purpose.”

“I need to try the plan anyway,” said Sizzahl.  “I don’t know if your people deserve to live without being fundamentally changed, but I do know that mine are a bunch of sorry, verminiferous beasts that deserve to die a horrible death.  I want to replace them rather than re-grow and save them.”

“I am so sorry your world is like this,” said Gracie.  “I’m sure if more of your people were like you, they’d be a very worthy race.”

“You are wrong, but it is a happier thought than most I have had in life.”

*****

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February 21, 2017 · 11:44 am

Stardusters… Canto 35

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Canto Thirty-Five – In the Control Center on the Moon Gundahl

Farbick and Starbright still had the two lizard-men in their force field trap, but they were definitely also surrounded and in big trouble.  Thirty-four half-sized lizard men, or, rather, lizard-boys and lizard-girls were standing around them in a huge circle, looking at them with snaky eyes and holding things that looked distinctly like guns.

“You’re surrounded now,” warned Bahbahr from his prison, “and the kids have krahzhen-lachhers with them.”

“Krahzhen-lachhers?” asked Farbick.

“What they call tommy-guns in the language of the Untouchables starring Robert Stack and Walter Winchell… you know, automatically repeating slug-throwers.”

“Wait a second!” said Stabharh, “kids?  Where is your handler?”

“We had a fight over who was going to die next to provide food for the others,” said one of the lizard-girls, “so we killed and ate him.”

“That showed good initiative,” said Stabharh.    “Now kill these two Tellerons and we can eat them too.”

“Wait!” said Bahbahr.  “We still need them to show us how the alien tech works!”

“Why?  They will just try to trick us again.  They might succeed in killing us the next time.”

“You can’t have them killed yet,” argued the fat lizard-man.  “We’re still stuck in the invisible box.  We have to get out of here before you have them killed.”

“Um, I hadn’t thought of that,” said Stabharh.

“Are you really, really hungry, kids?” asked Farbick of the lizard-kids.

“Oh, yes!” answered four or five of the lizard-kids at once.

“You see all this technology we have here,” said Farbick slyly.  “We have a machine here that can make food out of thin air.”

The little lizard people all drew closer to the pile of Telleron tech with wide, questioning eyes.

“Don’t listen to them!” barked Stabharh.  “They will trick you!”

“Aren’t you going to eventually kill us and eat us too?” asked a lizard-girl.  “You did that with all the adults in the station after the Senator’s attack started the food shortage.”

“We kept you alive so we would have a next generation of our people,” said Bahbahr in a pleading voice that made Farbick shudder.

“But you would eat us before you let yourself starve to death, right?”

“She has you there,” sneered Stabharh at Bahbahr.

“We can leave them where they are,” said Starbright.  “The material synthesizer can make food out of random atoms.  It can feed you for long periods of time.”

“Food out of nothing?” asked a lizard-boy skeptically.

“Not out of nothing,” admitted Farbick.  “We will have to find carbon and proteins and other molecular materials to put into the synthesizer when the current fuel runs out.”

“But we can make food out of garbage… or recycled dead bodies,” said Starbright.

Farbick hated the fact that for too many generations in space the Tellerons had used extra tadpoles and personnel for fuel for the synthesizers aboard the mother ship.  Eating children was not a good thing, and their cultures both needed to stop doing such things.

“Well, can you make us some food?” asked a lizard-girl.  “We are in no hurry to free Lord Bahbahr.  He is a terrible ruler and we all hate him.”

“We might like him better with what the Earthers call ketchup all over him,” added a lizard boy.

“You cannot rebel against me!” shouted Bahbahr.  “I own all of you!  You must obey me!”

“He’s in a cage, right?” a lizard-girl asked Starbright.

“Yes.  But let Farbick and I make you some nice meat sandwiches to eat.  You can give us those heavy, nasty old krahzhen-lachhers and we can decide what to do about Stabharh and Bahbahr later.”

“Okay,” said several of the lizard-kids.  The gun-things were handed over and Farbick made a food he had seen on Earth with the material synthesizers.

As one lizard-boy received a synthesized hot dog with a big, toothy smile, he turned and grinned at Bahbahr.  “You do have an awful lot of meat on your bones,” the lizard-child said.

*****

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February 14, 2017 · 12:03 pm

Stardusters… Canto 34

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Canto Thirty-Four – The Main Flower Garden

The five tadpoles and two Earther primate adults with the bodies of children were all together again, with a very concerned lizard-girl genius in the center of the circle lost in thought.

“I can’t answer for what the plant did,” Sizzahl said, shaking her head.  “It should not have done what it did.”

Brekka was being held tightly between Tanith and Menolly, the slime was almost gone from her bare green skin, wiped off by a concerned George and an even more concerned Davalon.

“You mean it shouldn’t have eaten anybody?” asked Tanith.

“No.  It shouldn’t have spit Brekka out.”

The tadpoles all glared, either at the plant, which was happily munching on the scabby it was eating, or at Sizzahl.

“What do you mean?” asked Gracie Morrell.

“It is an alien life form brought here by the wise ones and left behind when they returned to their home systems.  It has never let anyone live before.  It ate my father and the Great General Gohmurt as they fought over the fate of this very Bio-Dome.  It has eaten every naked scabby that found its way in here, including the intruder tonight.  I have never known it to spit anybody out.”

“How is that a problem?” asked Alden Morrell.  “We have Brekka back safe and alive.”

“Well, yes… that is a very good thing.  But it means we don’t know everything about what it will do next.  Can it move about and eat us at will?  Who will it eat, and who will it not eat?  And can we learn why?”

“I can tell you that,” said Brekka.

“Really?”  Sizzahl looked skeptical.

“Yes.  It can speak inside my head now that its saliva has penetrated my skin.”

“What?  Perhaps you are having a delusion caused by the trauma of nearly being eaten!”

“No, it’s true.  He says that in the language of the people who put out the I Love Lucy television broadcasts he is named Lester.  His other two blossoms are Thing One and Thing Two.”

Gracie bent over Brekka and put a concerned hand on her cheek.  She looked into Brekka’s eyes.  “Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?”

“It’s true.  I can prove it.  Lester, make Thing Two waggle its leaves.”

The blossom that was not munching the scabby wiggled all eight of its leaves in a way that reminded Davalon of how Earth people wave at one another.  Everyone but Brekka gasped a tiny bit.

“Tell me more,” insisted Sizzahl.  “Why didn’t Lester eat you?”

“Well, it’s kinda because I don’t taste very good.”

Menolly and George giggled at that, then both looked embarrassed.

“I mean,” said Brekka, “Tellerons are more amphibian in nature and not as warm blooded as Galtorrians and Earth people.  He could happily eat Sizzahl and the Morrells, but Tellerons have a body-chemistry that could make him very sick.  And besides… he’s been wanting to be able to communicate with Sizzahl for a very long time, and I gave him a way to do that… or, maybe, gave her a way to do that… I guess Lester is both a boy and a girl plant at the same time.”

“Me?” said Sizzahl.  “Why did he want to talk to me?”

Brekka looked up at the blossom that had engulfed her.  “He says he’s sorry that he ate your father.  When he ate your father, he absorbed all of your father’s thoughts and feelings… as well as the General’s thoughts and feelings.  He says he knows that your father was one of the good guys… not evil like Gohmurt.”

Sizzahl began to cry.  Davalon had not been certain before that moment, but now he knew that Galtorrians could feel love and have emotions just like Tellerons… and Earthers.  She was not the self-sufficient little super-genius she always seemed to be.  She was an orphan who missed her parents.

“Will he eat me or the Morrells now?” Sizzahl asked.

“He’s determined not to,” said Brekka, “but don’t get too close and cause temptation.  His blossoms get very hungry waiting for the next scabby to wander in.”

“Is he willing to help us in trying to save this planet?” asked Sizzahl, the tears drying up.

“Of course he will,” said Brekka.  “He likes the plans your father had to re-make this world into a better place for all sorts of people.  And he hates plant-destroyers like Gohmurt.  He promises to eat all the scabbies he can in order to help you make your father’s dream come true.”

*****

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February 7, 2017 · 12:32 pm

Stardusters… Canto 33

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Canto Thirty-Three – Aboard Golden Wing Thirteen

Shalar looked at the readout on the control panel in front of her.  There was no mistaking that signature.  It was the same kind of supra-magnetic photon drive used in a Golden Wing, and it was no longer operational.  It also appeared to be crash-landed in the middle of a debris field, and that couldn’t be good.  In addition, it also had to be the tadpoles’ ship, because Farbick and Biznap on the other missing ship were too capable to have crashed in that manner.

“Is it them?” asked Harmony Castille.  The beautiful young Earth woman who was really an old lady made young and beautiful by Commander Biznap’s own de-evolution machine.  She had a grim face, like someone who expected the answer could only be bad news.

“I don’t see how it could be anybody else.”

“Life signs?”

“I register bodies with no breathing and considerable signs of disease.  No living bodies… but no confirmation that the dead ones are our missing tadpoles.”

Harmony seemed to stifle a sob.

“Why are you so affected by Telleron tadpoles, Harmony?  I understand how much you are in love with Commander Biznap, but none of these tadpoles are his.”

“I have never in my long life had children of my own.  I have always loved children vicariously through the young brats and evildoers I taught in Sunday School at the Methodist Church back in Iowa.”  A tear escaped the beautiful young woman’s eye and rolled down her powdered and rouged cheek.  Shalar couldn’t help but notice that even though the woman’s face was young, her eyes held a certain look of wisdom and experience, as well as pain.

“I will be very sad if I have lost young Tanith and Davalon.  They are very probably children from my own eggs, even though we usually only keep track of the male parents.”

“I will miss young mistresses Brekka and Menolly, too,” said Harmony sadly.  “Their immature giggles and love of dancing always seemed to brighten the room whenever I tried to teach them important life lessons from the Bible.”

“I thought the way you talked to them while teaching them meant you loathed their immature behavior.”

“Oh, I did hate most of the behavior, but I adored those girls.  Underneath the death-eye frowns I gave them, I was always secretly laughing at their antics.”

“I never realized that about you before, Harmony,” Shalar said with some sympathy.

“What kind of mean old fuddy-fuss did you take me for, Shalar?”  Harmony gave a small chuckle with the reply.

“The kind you were pretending to be, apparently.”

“I will miss the Morrells, too.  They were a little dim sometimes, but basically good Christian people.”

“…And how about little George Jetson?”

Harmony’s eyebrows raised in disbelief of some sort.  “That little heathen?  He was almost as full of Satan and evil ways as one of our Earth boys from the Norwall Methodist Church!  He made me wonder sometimes if he actually had a little bit of wicked Baptist in his demon blood.  I never met such a child for pranks and playing with his privates when he should be listening to some good, soul-saving advice!”

Shalar was amused by that reaction.  She was beginning to understand how self-contradictory Earther primates actually were.  In fact, she understood that the reaction actually meant that Harmony would miss that little rapscallion more than all the rest put together.  Shalar had come to see that the old church lady always claimed to hate most what she really loved and adored.

“Studpopper, can you land this wing near the wreckage down there?  We need to find our missing children.”

“I will certainly do my very best, my lady.”

Harmony quickly grabbed Studpopper’s pointy green ear and twisted.

“You’d dang well better do better than that!” the young old lady cried with passion.

*****

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January 31, 2017 · 12:15 pm

Stardusters… Canto 32

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Canto Thirty-Two – In the Main Flower Garden of the Bio-Dome

There were three large red-and-yellow blossoms on robust stalks in the center of the garden.  Everything else was either withering and brown or completely dead.  George Jetson felt slightly creeped out by the three giant, healthy plants in the center of so much death and rot.  Still, he didn’t object as Brekka and Menolly danced and sang as they moved towards the bright colors of the three blossoms.

“Georgie?  Why aren’t you dancing with us?” sang Brekka.

“Yeah, why not?” added Menolly.

“I don’t need to dance with goofy girls right now.  I… I’m supposed to guard you and keep bad things from happening.”

The girl tadpoles scoffed and continued to dance towards the blossoms.

George watched the leaves of the flowers, easily the size of dinner plates, begin to twitch and move.  It was almost as if they were trying to detect something either by feel, maybe of vibrations in the air, or possibly by smell.  George knew from his educational programming that leaves had openings called “stoma” that sniffed the air as they breathed carbon dioxide in and oxygen out.  It wasn’t an important fact, was it?

Suddenly there was a large, burly lizard man bursting in through the far door into the flower garden.  He was completely naked, for reasons unknown.  He was also obviously a scabby with the tell-tale white, filmy eyes and desiccated patches on his naked scales.

“George!  Help!” cried Brekka.  She had danced so far towards the three live flowers that the interrupting scabby had her cut off from Menolly and George.  George leaped forward to engage the monster in hand-to-hand combat, but pulled up short when he noticed the huge teeth and long, scimitar-like claws on both hands.

“Brekka!  Run away!  We will catch up to you on the other side!” screamed George.  “Menolly!  Come here to me!”

Brekka broke toward the flowers and ran.  The scabby followed her.  Menolly reached George and threw both of her green arms around his neck, making him unable to either flee or fight.  Both of them watched the pursuit of Brekka with absolute horror.

The largest of the three blossoms moved its huge flower-face closer to the fleeing Brekka.  The four main petals of the blossom formed into two sets of opposing jaws.  As Brekka moved close enough, the blossom engulfed her entire body and lifted her into the air.  Her screams were muffled by the blossom that seemed much more like a gigantic mouth.

“Oh!  No!  Brekka is gone!” cried Menolly, sagging against George Jetson.

“It ate her!”  George was too stunned to move.

The flowers were still in motion.  The two remaining blossoms grabbed the scabby, one seizing its head, and the other grabbing a leg.  The two blossoms pulled in opposite directions, splitting the unfortunate lizard man in two, then settling down to munch contentedly and smack their petal-lips.

Menolly was devastated and sobbing uncontrollably.  George didn’t know an awful lot about the hugging and kissing stuff that Earth humans did on their television shows, but he felt the urge to try.  He held Menolly tightly with both arms and pressed his mouth to hers.

“Mmmph!  What are you doing?” Menolly moaned.

“I’m comforting you, dummy.”

“Well, don’t stop!”

When the blossom that had engulfed Brekka began making retching noises, George was almost too lost in the entire kissing thing to respond.  He felt rather funny in his lower stomach as the two tadpoles pulled apart.

The blossom vomited Brekka onto the walkway.  She was clearly still alive, but covered with sticky-looking goo.

“Ooh,” moaned Brekka, “that was not very fun.”

*****

My Art

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