Sci Fi Weekly Gallery Image 6 August 2007

This week's entry in the series of snippets inspired by SciFi Weekly's featured artist image is based on "Tunnels," by Luca Oleastri, cover #537 on this page.

"Papa, Papa," Luc said from within the tall flechettegrass. "Come see!"

Irritated, Henri turned away from the virtual press officer of the pro-Unité rebels. The sere yellow grass thinned out and he felt heavier as he returned to full verity. Across the living room, Luc stood at the picture window, his fingertips resting on the plasma pane, his posture showing him raptly watching something in the tunnel. Probably a maintenance robot, 1200 meters away on the far side.

"Papa, come see!"

The boy was too young for his brain to be nanolinked with the Communité Télépathique de l'Unité, so Henri could not send a ganger across the room to his son. He could let a concierge guide his body over while his attention remained in virtual, but the boy was old enough to see through that. Tell the boy no, he thought, but then he remembered As the Unité is to its people, so should parents be to their children. He heeded the CTU's wisdom and crossed the room.

"The worldship is giving birth to triplets!"

What did he mean? Then Henri saw the childish logic. The drydocks lay many kilometers to the left, past twists and turns, somewhere deep in the worldship's core; the tunnel was a birth canal and its blast doors a dilated cervix. If three ships came down the tunnel, they must be small ones, tenders or light patrol craft. Henri rested his hand on the boy's shoulder and looked up.

Gooseflesh stippled his neck and cheeks. The three ships were Oleastri-class cruisers, saucers half the width of the tunnel, bristling with weapons and sensor arrays. The conversion drives were throttled almost to zero, glowing dull red instead of white hot, with conduction and convection impossible through the tunnel's hard vacuum; even so, Henri squinted and the plasma shimmered when the ships passed. Luc yiped and pulled his fingertips away, but his gaze remained rapt. "They're so big!"

"Yes, son."

"What kind of people are in them?"

Henri sensed the crews through the CTU. Nodes of thought pulsed within and between the ships. "All the sorts of people of the Unité. Verities, uploads, cyborgs, robots, ais."

Luc's head turned to the right after the last cruiser. "Where are they going?"

"I don't know." In his mind's eye, Henri saw only stock images of space battles and support operations for ground forces. "But I know they will defend us from the Tiánquán Republic."

They stood in silence for a moment. Pride in the Unité welled in Henri's chest, perhaps an odd thing to feel looking onto the empty tunnel. The plasma pane deexcited, but what had set it off? A power surge? He'd have to call maintenance again.

Luc looked up. "Papa, what did you think of the triplets?"

Triplets? What was the boy imagining? Well, he wasn't even linked with the CTU. Let him enjoy his imagination while he could. "I liked them very much."