Tuesday's Short - Nothing

This week’s short story takes us from an urban fantasy tale of nettles, teens and fairy princes to a science fiction story about the survivors of a crashed starship. Welcome to Nothing.

Jerome is glad to finish the last patrol of the evening, and head in to the security of the base for the night, but, if the base is so secure, why can’t he sleep?

Nothing

It was dawn on the prairie. The sun rose, red-gold, in a sea of pale blue sky, and was reflected in apricots and peaches on a sea of ice-green grass. The soft morning wind did nothing to ease the winter cold from the air.

Jerome watched the sun, and the prairie waking slowly beneath it. The colors of land softened the brown in his eyes, tainting it first with emerald, then with gold. He would have been horrified had he known. He had been a technician in the starship’s engine room, but now he was a soldier.

He stood on a rise in the rolling prairie, the grass lapping around his knees and steaming gently as it warmed with the sun. He stood above the town of Nothing, shivering as the breeze wound chilly fingers through his hair, and the dew on the grass soaked its way through the legs of his cotton fatigues. His breath came in small misty clouds as he gazed across the plains.

Beyond the town a river wound or rather, a riverbed, for its bottom was sand and rocks and islands of earth crowned with grass and trees that water rarely touched. Jerome looked it over carefully, just in case. The uneven ground and clumped vegetation provided a perfect place for concealment.

His gaze wandered to where another sentry stood, on another rise, overlooking the town. The man had shifted so that his back was to the town, reminding Jerome that the river wasn't the only place his enemy could hide. He turned to survey the ground behind the rise. Nothing broke the wavelike ripple of the grass.

The sun climbed higher in the sky, turning the grass from an ocean of softly rippling green ice to a never-ending land of waving gold. It reminded Jerome of the wheat fields that, on another world, had surrounded his home. Small, birdlike creatures whistled and flitted just above the grass-tops. They signaled the coming of full day but, more importantly, their presence meant nothing lurked below them. Jerome began to relax. The sun, climbing towards midmorning, meant it was too late for Them to come. At least, They'd never come this late before.

Jerome scanned the surrounding prairie once more then, shouldering the rifle propped at his side, he strode towards Nothing. From the shelter of another rise, green eyes watched.

Their green matched the color of the pale green grass. They reflected the sun in striations of gold radiating from a dark blue splotch pooled at their center. They reflected the sun in the shifting amber that disturbed the green.

The eyes watched the man’s lone figure walking towards the stone huts clustered in a bowl-shaped valley in the prairie. They saw the shimmering curtain of the force field surrounding the huts part to allow the soldier entry and watched him disappear into the largest hut. When he was gone from their sight, they blinked once in slow satisfaction.

It had been only a handful of years since the first starship had landed, five since the first man had emerged from the wreckage of its belly to walk across the blackened scar of its crash site. Scant enough time for man to have claimed the plains as his own.

Man had been dazed then, shell-shocked by the sudden end to his journey across the stars. He had also been stunned by the unscheduled landing on an uncharted planet, and numbed by the realization he was cut off from the rest of his kind. He and They had arrived together.

At first they hadn't known what to call the world they'd found. It had plains, rolling grasslands and dry rivers like their home. They'd called the area Channel Country.

They hadn't cared about their new town. When asked what he could think of to name it, the captain's shell-shocked first mate had shrugged and muttered, 'Nothing'. As a name, Nothing had stuck.

The green eyes stared down at the town. Man had never known what struck him, had never been aware. When Nothing subsided into nothing, the last man would still be unaware.

Abruptly, the eyes spun their gaze from the town.

In the hut below, Jerome shook his head at the soldier who tried to take his rifle. He didn't want to return it. He didn't feel safe, even with the stone beneath his feet and the force field surrounding the town.

The soldier reached for it again. Jerome leant towards her and looked deeply into her eyes. Her eyes met his gaze, blue not green. He relaxed but refused to give her his rifle all the same.

The soldier shrugged. There were rumors in the barracks. Now she knew they were true. She watched Jerome take the rifle to his sleeping quarters and shrugged again. It didn't matter.

Jerome knew about the rumors. He knew and didn't care. As he felt the tiredness begin to creep through him, he loosened his boots on his feet and slid beneath the blankets. Even if he hadn't wanted to sleep alone, the rifle would still have shared the bed, and his lover would have worn handcuffs.

The sun rose higher above the town of Nothing. Its invisible rays scorched the prairie around the settlement. The heat rose to meet those rays in a wavering veil and the ice green grass shivered beneath its touch.

The green-eyed watcher wasn't alone now. Its kindred had gathered beside it on the rise. They peered through the heat at the shimmering collection of stone buildings below and watched the men move between them.

The sun had never bothered the watchers. It had merely been convenient to let the men believe it, just as it had been convenient to let the men believe that all their eyes were green touched with gold like the plains of their homeland.

The green-eyes smiled at the memory. The Channel Country, so like the world they had found. The eyes hardened. Channel Country that was still bound by humankind.

The sun reached its zenith. The owner of those eyes sent a swift spark of silent command to her waiting kin and confusion erupted in the buildings below. Those waiting on the rise swept down the slope, concealed by the waving grass, hidden from men by dangers more immediate.

Jerome felt that danger approaching and woke. He was still swinging the rifle from beneath the blankets when the soldier struck. He died to the sound of the rifle blast passing harmlessly by her as her claws passed through his throat. He was the last.

The soldier reverted enough to shrug her way out of her uniform and the constrictive boots that bound her feet, then dropped to all fours. Outside, the sounds of battle stilled and she knew they'd won.

With a last sneering look at the body on the bed, she padded out of the room.

Since man had first come to their original homeland, her kind had been in danger of extinction. They had hidden amongst mankind until the building of the starship, then they had hidden themselves, as many as qualified for the trip, amongst the first humans to take to the stars.

The ship had been called Going Nowhere. It had been built to explore. The creature that had been the soldier lifted its lips in a snarl.

'From Nowhere to Nothing,' she thought with scorn. 'My, haven't we achieved a lot?"

With a derogatory flick of her tail, the creature disappeared through the door of Jerome's sleeping quarters and into the compound outside.

They would build the compound as a real town. They would prepare for the men who would follow. Every starship that came across them would stop here and every man in it would come to Nothing.

 

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Nothing is available as a stand-alone short story at the following links: https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-C-M-Simpson-ebook/dp/B008CZNO5I/.

You can also find Kristine Kathryn Rusch's latest free short story over on her blog: kriswrites.com. Why don't you go and check it out?