Today I’m joined by Betty Adams, a northwest native and the author of a well-received science fiction short story collection Humans Are Weird. She joins me today to discuss her full length novel Dying Embers ahead of her two volume sequel, Flying Sparks.
At one point a happy trilling woke him up. All three of the embers were awake and had poked their round, gleaming heads out of the parkas. Drake followed their gaze up and nearly stopped breathing. His mind searched for something to compare what he was seeing to. It was a portal—no, a thousand portals, massive and powerful in the night sky above, swirling with red, green, blue, and pink. Smaller spirals surrounded the main one. There was no fear in the boy. Nothing evil could come out of something so beautiful. It was as if his very being was thrumming in tune to the lights above him.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” a gruff voice called out, breaking the dreamlike state Drake was in. Drake looked over his shoulder in confusion at their current musher. How did he know about portals? “The aurora,” the man explained, pointing up.
“What, oh yes, the Northern Lights,” Drake said, feeling a bit sheepish.
Of course that’s what they were, his mind scolded. No one in this solar system had the kind of power it would take to make such a massive portal. Still, he stared up at them in fascination. The human adjusted his parka so his two embers could enjoy the view and still stay warm. They appeared to be as fascinated by the spectacle as he was. Drake saw the display reflected in their eyes. Not just reflecting, the youth realized with a start, but mimicking as well. The membrane over their heads had grown jet black under the milky covering, and a thousand stars danced with a miniature aurora across their faces. The smaller one looked at the human and smiled in delight.
“Skyfire,” Drake whispered softly, stroking the little one’s head.
“It really doesn’t make sense,” Ama murmured as she gently stroked the little ember under her parka.
“We ran over an old oil drum sticking out of the ice and snow,” Drake pointed out. “It stressed the sled, and the musher wants to make sure it’s good to go for the rest of the stretch.”
They were standing inside a ring of small fires that Ama and the musher had set up while the repairs were being done. The dog team lay in the snow, waiting for the word to go again. Above the small band, the starry sky seemed to stretch on to infinity. Ama shot her brother an annoyed look and muttered something about pragmatic males.
“I mean Songmaster,” she clarified. “The Singer sub-castes are supposed to be compassionate to a fault. It is what they are bred for. To earn the title of a Songmaster, the committees are supposed to confirm unusually high compassion even for a Singer.”
“So what went wrong? Why did this Songmaster turn out all sadistic?” Drake asked as understanding dawned.
“Exactly,” Ama replied.
“Well, we will probably never know,” he shrugged as he turned his full attention back on the squirming embers.
“And here you go! Solid river ice under the snow now,” the musher called out as the sled pulled up to the base of a mountain where its foothills met the sea. He waved goodbye cheerfully as the two passengers carefully stumped across the slick ice to the next sled in the relay. The man shook his head. He knew he shouldn’t be so curious, but what were they carrying under those parkas?
The next team consisted of nineteen dogs, each larger than those they had seen before. When Drake asked about it, he was told that more strength was needed to keep up the pace over hills and scrub. Like every other dog team, this one seemed interested in the mysterious bundles the two humans carried. It took the musher more than a few moments to get them straightened out. The woman then handed the travelers a thermos of hot tea and warm cinnamon rolls. While Drake was gratefully eating his, a small hand reached up and snatched a piece out of his mouth.
“Hey! That’s not for you,” Drake laughed. “Your little systems aren’t meant to handle that much carbon.”
Despite his warning, the ember showed the bit of food to its sibling, who tore off half. They mimicked the human’s actions, shoving it into their mouths and beginning to work it over with imitated teeth.
“Yuck!” Drake unbuttoned his parka a bit and tried to work the goop out of the infant’s mouth, unsure exactly what the carbohydrates would do to the Larians’ innards but remembering that Bole and the others had gone to great lengths to sift the carbon content out of the silicone slush they consumed. “Ouch!” He exclaimed, yanking his finger back, suddenly very glad for the extra protection of his glove. Skyfire’s jaws were strong.
“Are you okay?” Ama called worriedly from behind him.
“I’m fine,” Drake reassured her. “But do you think cinnamon rolls will do them any harm?”
Ama let out a laugh and shook her head. “A little bit shouldn’t cause any problems,” she reassured him. “And it is good to see them interacting. I was getting a bit worried….
Seeing things that no one else can is more than enough of a burden for anyone. Drake McCarty however, finds himself thrust into the position of liaison to an alien race at the tender age of sixteen. Bole and the other exiled Royal Guardsmen are friendly enough, and the work is fascinating.
However, Drake is also often required to run dull errands for the large shape shifting aliens. A two story tall glowing blue elk might be something a National Park Ranger can explain away to a frightened tourist, but for anything in a populated area a human representative is needed.
Meanwhile the civil war that drove the aliens from their home-world has arrived on Earth and the conflict begins anew.
Drake is just learning to cope with the fact that his life is constantly in danger when an alien pod falls from the sky. Within hours of it striking an island in the border waters between Russia and the USA, McCarty is sent to retrieve the debris. He arrives to find international tensions the least of his worries.
Inside are three embers, infants of Bole’s species; desperately afraid, injured, and carrying a dangerous contagion. Military medics make two startling discoveries; the embers have imprinted and bound themselves to McCarty, and the disease that they carry is terminal.
Hinterspace Episode 7