Book Promo
If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH
FROM JOHN DAVID MARTIN: The Lost Sword and Other Stories
Jared Thorne: A para-human detective and his dryad wife hunting for a legendary lost sword in a multi-dimensional city.
Eysteinn Bjarnarson: A descendant of the viking who settled North America fighting to win the love of the town beauty. His only opposition? A monster of Indigenous Canadian legend and…her father.
Captain Faust of the North American Marine Corps: A descendant of one Dr. Johannes Faust who learns some deals are heriditary. But can they be re-written?
Milo “Wolfkiller” Patel: A teenage bullrider on an alien world facing the challenge of his young career.
Pawel and Tamar: Newlywed asteroid miners whose wedding cruise from the trans-Martian orbit out to the belt turns deadly.
These are the characters whose stories I have faithfully recorded for you here.
FROM J. MANFRED WEICHSEL: Planet of the Wage Slaves
Richard would rather be in his special place than have to get a job, until he’s transported against his will to an office planet where the only way to escape from work is death! With the help of a rebel coworker named Destiny, and a newfound power, Richard must navigate an impossible maze of particle board cubicles and endless spreadsheets in order to take on the oppressive whip-wielding boss and save her people.
Planet of the Wage Slaves is a hilarious, satirical take on the modern work environment that will have you laughing and cringing at the same time. It’s the perfect read for anyone who’s ever felt trapped in a soul-sucking job, or who just wants a good dose of surreal sci-fi comedy. So put down that TPS report, grab a copy of Planet of the Wage Slaves, and join Richard on his absurd journey through the cubicle jungle!
FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Phantom Atlas: A Chronicle of Coincidence and Courage
Embark on a thrilling odyssey with Ned Hawthorne and Theo Caldwell, two Yale men spared by a twist of fate from the Titanic’s doomed voyage in 1912. Driven by a hunger for adventure and a knack for unraveling mysteries, they chase whispers of ghosts and curses across a world teetering on the brink of war—from Scotland’s haunted cairns to Siberia’s demon-plagued rails. With charm-laced bracelets and a battered notebook, Ned’s quarterback bravado and Theo’s skeptical logic unmask smugglers, thieves, and spies hiding behind legends. As the Great War looms in 1917, their journey lands them in Washington, D.C., decoding ciphers that could alter history. The Phantom Atlas weaves heart-pounding action, rich historical detail, and the enduring quest for truth in a tapestry of courage that will grip fans of adventure and mystery. Join Ned and Theo to uncover the shadows that haunt the world’s edges—before those shadows strike back.
FROM BRIAN HEMING: Illustrated CONAN Adventures: Black Colossus
This illustrated version of Black Colossus contains:
- Original title page and cover art from Weird Tales June 1933. (warning: contains mild nudity)
- Over 70 all-new full color illustrations. (warning: contains mild nudity based on the original text)
- Text and formatting based on the original publication of this story in Weird Tales June 1933.
Conan the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, is called upon by the beautiful princess Yasmela to lead the armies of Khoraja. But what dark magic lies behind the enemy desert hordes and their mysterious masked sorcerer, Natohk?
Neural networks were heavily leveraged to create the breadth of illustrations in this story, capturing the epic detail, dark magic, and heroic deeds of Conan’s world.
FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Lion and the Lizard (Timelines Book 2)
Thirty years ago, Dr. Ariela Rivers Wolff, M.D., Ph.D., AKA The Lion of God, had a pretty exhausting week.
Her world was invaded by time-traveling soldiers, she was nearly turned into human toothpaste by an experimental dimension jumper when she went to find her parallel “Dad,” who just happens to be able to borrow a Space Force fleet to come and take out her world’s invaders . . . and then she found out she was considered by those same invaders to be a saint in their odd religion, and one of the targets of their invasion. If that wasn’t enough, she nearly fell completely out of the universe into a time rift, being saved only by the skin of her teeth by her parallel “Dad”.
After all that, learning she was going to be the one to bring universal healing and long life to the human race in her particular timeline was just the icing on the proverbial cake.
Anybody else would go home, turn off their phone, pull all the blinds, lock all the doors, and take the rest of their life off. But Ari isn’t “anybody else”. And her cult of admirers across two timelines won’t take “nobody home” for an answer.
Fast-forward thirty years. Scientists have detected radio transmissions in an unknown language from several hundred light years away. And now she’s been asked to use her special “saintly” skills as demonstrated on her last “mission” to make first contact with whoever they are.
And that’s only the beginning.
Looks like Ambassador Dr. Ariela Rivers Wolff, M.D., Ph.D., is going to have another pretty exhausting week. Or six.
FROM HOLLY CHISM: Bite Sized (Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 1)
Meg Turner has been a vampire for twenty years. Her favorite food is rapists. Which is how she met Andi Donahue, her new best friend/ girl Friday.
And then the nightmares start. And the bodies start showing up–bled out and raped. Just like Meg was. They don’t have a whole lot of time to stop the killer before he strikes again, and only one way to stop the killer.
But how can Andi help Meg stop a killer she can’t even see?
FROM KAREN MYERS: To Carry the Horn – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Book 1)
AN ENTIRE KINGDOM BUILT AROUND A SUPERNATURAL NEED FOR JUSTICE, ENFORCED BY THE WILD HUNT AND THE HOUNDS OF HELL.
What would you do if you blundered into a strange world, where all around you was the familiar landscape of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, but the inhabitants were the long-lived fae, and you the only human?
George Talbot Traherne stumbles across the murdered huntsman of the Wild Hunt, and is drafted into finding out who did it. Oh, and assigned the task of taking the huntsman’s place with the Hounds of Hell, whether he wants the job or not.
The antlered god Cernunnos is the sponsor of this kingdom, and he requires its king to conduct the annual hunt for justice in pursuit of an evil criminal, or else lose his right to the kingship, and possibly end up hunted himself.
Success is far from guaranteed, and no human has held the post. George discovers his own blood links to the fae king, and he’s determined to try. But Cernunnos himself has a personal role to play, and George will have to sort out just why he’s the one who’s been chosen for the task.
And whether he has any chance of surviving the job.
Find out what it’s like to live in a world where you can help the Right to prevail, even if it might cost you everything.
To Carry the Horn is the first book of The Hounds of Annwn.
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Rockin’ the USA
It’s not easy being married to the leader of the band, even in the best of times. When everything becomes political, you’ve got a nightmare on your hands.
Laurel had her doubts when her husband signed on to headline Governor Thorne’s Independence Day concert in Candlestick Park. Now that the band’s committed to the appearance, the Flannigan Administration has decided to shut the show down, with prejudice.
Laurel knows she has to fight this attempt to stop the signal. But doing so may put her in more danger than she could ever have anticipated, and risk those she loves.
A story of the Grissom timeline, originally published in Liberty Island Magazine.
This edition also includes a bonus essay on the era of dictatorship in Grissom-timeline America.
FROM MARY CATELLI: The Princess Goes Into The Forest
Act with care. . . .
In the home of a wealthy but vanished family, four young people, inventorying the household, find the props for the family’s amateur theaterics. But a few minutes of donning them to play at roles has consequences that none of them could have guessed. One plays a subtle courtier, one a brave swordsman, one a powerful enchantress. . . and one takes up the role of a princess, and goes into a forest.
FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Lights Out and Cry (The Shifter Series Book 5)
It is New Year’s Day in Goldport Colorado, the most shifter-infested town in the known universe.
At the George — the diner where shifters gather — Kyrie is about to give birth, Tom is getting psychic messages from the Great Sky Dragon and Rafiel is looking for information on why the mayor exploded.
Fasten your seat belts. This is going to be a fast ride into adventure and shape-shifting, after which things will never be the same.
AND THERE IS A KICKSTARTER: Ken Lizzi’s Cesar the Bravo Live on Kickstarter
Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.
We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.
If you have questions, feel free to ask.
Your writing prompt this week is: PREFER
BLOG FUNDRAISER 2025
Yes, I know it’s a nuisance. And I’m not going to claim that if I don’t get enough money I’ll shutter the blog or any such foolishness.
I’m just going to say every blogger to the right of Lenin has paid the price in career, in wealth, in prospects. And that keeping us poor and meek is a great way to serve as a warning to others who would speak out. If you want to nullify the “warning,” consider donating.
If you read this blog a few times a week and feel like donating, I’m tremendously grateful.
If you read this blog and don’t feel like donating, that’s fine too.
If you wish you could donate but can’t, consider buying one of my books (hopefully a bunch coming out starting next month… Yeah, I am better) and if you like it leaving a review. If you’ve read my books and enjoyed them, consider leaving a review. If you can — and have something you know well — consider sending me a guest post to give me a “free day.” (No guarantees of acceptance, of course.)
I’d like to say I’m doing better and will be better at following through on rewards. But I still have them pending from other years, because the last four years have been a slow upward battle. I am better, but I’m not adding to that backlog. (Though I’ll continue trying to fulfill promises long overdue.)
For this year, I’ll (merely) give you ways to donate.
The Give Send Go is still active. Lately I’ve gotten more disenchanted with them, though. Not only have they hosted fundraisers for the kid who stabbed the track star through the heart, but there was some appearance of encouraging racialist bs. True or not? Don’t know. Haven’t looked that closely. Still, that and the fact they calculate how much of the raised money you actually get in some weird way makes them less than shiny.
So, what else is there? Well, there is paypal. Yes, I removed the button from the side (though I’ll return it) because they were threatening to fine people for badthink. Whether that was entirely organic or part of the Autopen administration it’s open to debate. They were being very enthusiastic about forcing everything from social media to everything else including debanking. At any rate, I think it is safe to use a paypal link for the next four years. Give or take. (Look none of these services are pure. We use what we can and seems safe at the time.)
So, here’s the paypal link.
I’m very grateful to all who contributed and all who might contribute.
And please, please, please, don’t send Indy-cat a multitool. He already broke into my bedroom yesterday, past the locked gate and closed door. Because he has hand paws that are scarily agile.
Also, stop wishing more Indies on me. Now there’s a skinny orange boy catching and eating birds in my driveway….
According To Hoyt 
”I did tell you I’m a were, right?”
”Yes, you did, and you startled me a bit, you then being a talking tiger and all.” I shook my head. Startled was understating my reaction a bit, but I was trying to be cool, because now she was a very hot looking woman, and, hey, I am a single guy…
”Yeah, sorry about that,” she continued, smiling. “We try and not do that as it makes staying under the radar harder and all. But my point is this is my girlie human form. So now you’ve seen me with claws and teeth and all furred up, and now, in this form, I am pre-…”
”Oh, don’t, please…”
“What?”
”The pun.”
“Why?”
”You don’t know?”
”Know what?”
”About the carp?”
”Carp?”
I looked up nervously. “Yeah, carp. If you speak a really solid pun sometimes you just get one, but sometimes it’s a whole carp storm from the sky.”
”What? You mean if I say this is my pre-fur form…”
”NO! Quick, get under cover…”
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The Neolithic was before the Bronze age, and both were before the Iron age, that is, pre-Ferrous.
Before the food is sent to the real refrigerator, it passes through a prefer for initial cooling.
When one selects from among apartment lease terms, one expresses a preferrents.
Jars of gefilte fish probably are more aerodynamic than fresh carp.
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On a technical note, by what procedure does one award a ‘like’ to a post?
Firefox on MacOS offers nothing obvious. But I can be remarkably dense sometimes.
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If you get e-mails, there’s a Like button at the bottom of the e-mail, next to the Reply button.
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Ah, so there is.
I fear to manipulate my email preferences in WPDE though.
More thought required. Thanks.
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If you log in via wordpress you can also ‘like’ in the reader (which is separate from readingon the website) either via browser or app. Definitely something that WordPress could improve.
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There is room for improvement between the software as it is now, and the software as it could be.
Whether the organizations behind WordPress are able to do that improvement, is a separate point, that might be worth discussing on a platform where said organizations have less ability to surveil and to censor.
There are specific choices of word or of phrase that might be automatically censored regardless of what a web site operator thinks is happening.
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Pa said we needed to have a frigerator for putting things in before they could be refrigerated.
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“If that’s what you prefer…”
“What I prefer? I prefer plenty of other things but you and yours made what I’d prefer impossible. So This Is What Is Going To Happen!”
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“If Princess Leopoldine prefers her to come to the castle for Lammas, she will come. She can hardly decline such an invitation.”
“A duke’s granddaughter,” said Violetta, “would certainly have visited before. It would make up for the time from when she was younger. It’s hardly an insult to her.”
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Brylyx slipped out of the jumpsuit as one its three mates watched from the lounge pit. Scales scraped pleasantly against the sand and rocks under the thermal lamps as Gnuzr shifted for a better view.
“I hate this job Command has assigned us. How do you stand spending so much time with those soft … fleshy … creatures?”
Brylyx’s scaly exterior rippled, smoothed, and blanched, losing all its attractive rusty brown hue. Now mimicking the prey’s female form, she slipped into a low-cut white dress.
“Brylyx, you look absolutely repulsive,” Gnuzr hissed. “Tasty, but repulsive.”
“Call me Marilyn, silly,” she cooed in return. “On this planet, they say gentlemen prefer blondes.” She pulled the tuxedo from the closet and held it out. “Your turn, Joe.”
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Remember to be Force Multipliers.
You can redouble the effect of this promo by rating or reviewing books you buy through it.
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Would you prefer to arrange that?
Scholastica considered the thought and snorted. Who wouldn’t? It would end. She rose and made ready, and when she came out the door, Mafeo and Angelo awaited her, with Mafeo in the act of explaining that he studied her magics and so was special.
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I prefer to buy the books listed in the promo posts. And I wish all of the authors the greater of the success they want or the success they deserve…
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The medium’s voice warbled like a sick seagull at Venice Beach as she worked the rich desperate suckers around her seance table. “Oh, spirits of Hollywoods golden age, we are gathered in this time of troubling box office returns to call upon you for guidance from beyond!” The silent hydraulics bumped the table, startling the suckers as intended.
She moved on to the specific question these idiots were paying her to use. “How do we adjust our message to bring back the moviegoing public and make money again?”
And then she panicked as suddenly all her electronic atmospherics, subtle lighting and subsonic acoustic effects died. The table stilled, and the room went silent, then everything started to hum and vibrate, and a bright tear in the very fabric of the air above the table appeared. “What the …” she started, but then a loud male voice with a heavy Yiddish accent boomed from the tear out across the room:
”Messages, messages. From Western Union you get messages. From me you got pictures. Do that again, you amoretz putzes. Leave the messages out.”
The bright tear snapped shut with abrupt finality and the room fell totally silent.
”If you prefer,” she said, her voice shaking naturally with her terror at what had just happened, but her mercenary instincts carrying her through, “you can pay me now on my app.”
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She sighed. She would prefer it if the poison were always as easily visible as it had been in the hospital wards. She could still feel something ahead.
But there was no way that a poison could blast a wasteland and leave it dead without remaining. It was a curse.
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“I prefer not to say the following. My full and correct legal name is Matlock Hermes Shandygaff.”
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Not Raymond Luxury Yacht (pronounced ‘Throatwobbler Mangrove’)?
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In a multi-species society, you have to be careful to distinguish between food preferences and actual differences in nutritional needs. Children of omnivorous species often don’t like eating their vegetables — but obligate carnivores cannot extract adequate nourishment from plant proteins, and can actually have serious adverse effects from ingesting too much vegetable matter.
Even more critical is knowing what foods can be actively dangerous to members of other species. Many of the alium species that the Yumann use for seasoning their food are toxic to Chongu, Rhaganth, and several other member species of the Empire. But the Yumann also must watch for certain plants that are toxic to them, but not to the Katachua or several other species.
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(Part 1/3, since 8K hit moderation; was ‘list’ but ‘prefer’ works too)
“Okay, boss, that’s the fourth run-through. Still nothing on any of the standard significance indices, nothing on any of the crypto indicators, nothing to catch my eye either. Not that that’s as sharp as customary.”
In a word, Emily Rothermill looked even more exhausted than I felt. But it wasn’t bad enough this was for us a classic locked-room mystery; it was also accompanied by just enough of a warp-field signature from the central detectors over at the starport, it might be a technological variation on that old saw. Humanoid alien had a particular meaning — from outside our Commonality. Maybe a species or world with unfamiliar capabilities.
Which, all, meant assorted Powers That Be were very eager to get our final results. Which meant we were both somewhere around Hour 37 awake and still busily trying to break the case. Of course, we had a big clue. One.
“Boss, would it sound overly bitchy if I just said I’d really, really like to strangle the dear departed? Yes, he was brave, yes he died in the line of duty, but given he couldn’t not get himself killed, given he had only a few seconds lucid, couldn’t he’ve managed something better than ‘the list, the key is in the list’ — somehow, some way?” I’d looked over at her as she’d started speaking, and at the end of it she just took her face in her hands. One more time, after nearly two of Portoway’s eerily-short days.
Lucky girl, she’d been the one (she and her logcam, of course) to witness Liam Parker’s dying moments; now it was likely all replaying in her head one more sad time. Which did not help her be the unworldly-good analyst it was ordinarily her blessing and her curse to be…
“It doesn’t sound that way at all to me, Em. But in this business we get what we get to go on, as you know better than most in it.
“Okay. Once more straight from the top, then. Is there anything, and here I do mean anything at all whatever, that you or your search programs have excluded from the… um, catalog of things coming back from ‘the list’ as a search term?” There were, not surprisingly for 28th-century machinery, many terabytes of assorted data lying around here, lazily lurking in wait for any unwary investicops. (Fortunately most of it was fixed-memory, like the standardized contents of a pocket library, but still…)
She closed her eyes, relaxed just a tiny well-calibrated bit in her plush chair (brought in for the job of course), and was silent only a dozen or so seconds. “The sole thing is the audio files. Phonetically, as I think you know, ‘list’ is identical to ‘L-i-s-z-t’ — written Hungarian ‘sz’ is an ‘s’ sound just like written ‘s’ is a ‘sh’ sound — so the old pre-space composer’s name fits the say-it search term perfectly. But all those files ran through the same significance-checks and stego-detectors as all of it. I even listened to most or all of ’em, while you were on the ‘phone with the, um, interstellar liaisons. One file did seem to have a few glitches, as compressed audio tends to betimes, so I cut playing that one short…”
Emily’s eyes snapped open. “Gil, you don’t think, I mean, it couldn’t even possibly be that…”
“Define ‘glitches’ in this context, Em.” Her hands were already flying over the mechanical keyboards in front of her. As if she were fresh as a daisy, not dog-tired and burdened by unprocessed death-scene stress.
“Bad notes, in a piano concerto file. But consistently. Like a few of the strings on the pianoforte were tuned to an utterly different scale, like some over-clever compression algorithm was really hitting the clunkers. I was simply and only listening to it as music, then, I tend to like most of the pre-millennial classical composers…”
Suddenly I was still as a stone. Asking my intuition if it had anything at all to say. Getting only the very faintest equivalent of… maybe back.
“I can play it, if you want.” And after a few moments to estimate a risk benefit profile — we were in the actual room itself, still — I said yes.
And there it came, some jaunty rendition of a piece that was only barely familiar to me; but Em had the sort of wary expression you see on someone in the middle of a sparring bout who’s anticipating getting very painfully whacked by their opponent’s next lucky blow…
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(Part 2/3)
Then there it was, a false note that wasn’t so much hitting the wrong key as hitting a pitch that wasn’t even on our equal-tempered chromatic scale or the keyboard at all. There, but then gone, and back to the workmanlike playing of the same music.
“Got that one, boss. Running on a chromatic-match program that isolates a score of the standard notes and, um, lists the non-standard ones. As we go listening to it, or also run on the whole. Total of seventy-three notes of not-chromatic match, if the raw machine is to be trusted, over the quarter hour of this piece.”
And, there it was again, another clunker. There and swiftly gone. “See any harmonic relation between those, ah, anomalous notes?”
“No, it’s not any geometric progression. Sometimes you get the odd bit of avant-garde where somebody thinks it’s cute to switch to some alien scale on a random basis, but… this isn’t really hitting a match.” She’d fed her 73x frequency table over to my display. Semi-random, but spaced…
“It’s almost like it’s an arithmetic coding. Wait, arithmetic coding of a much longer number, like a digital numeric key…”
“‘The Liszt, the key is in the Liszt'” we said, both together, or nearly.
“Your call, Gilbert. But if we have the chance to do it, now, as far as I care let’s go and do it now, damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.”
I couldn’t help smiling at her. “I thought your American ancestors were on the other side of that war, I mean the ones that guy was shooting at.”
“‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.’ And I’ve sent you a bracketing of those ‘wolves’ in that file; the background sounds are not continuous with the piano notes, but they are with each other. So we could simply play a strung-together version of it, in about 41 seconds.”
I smiled. And it was a wolf’s smile, like hers. “Liam was my friend, too, Emily. You don’t have to convince me. Get your long-gun ready and I’ll see to my needler.” Centuries ago, a man named H. Beam Piper “invented” a gun called a “sigma-ray needler” in his fiction — and, a century and a half ago, Commonality Liberty Bell Labs had made their work-alike really work. Handy, if a bit conspicuously short-ranged. “And there’s a few pre-wrote messages I’ll be about sending, before we try anything.”
There was a van on the corner, with research-grade warp-field recorders. I had a nasty-good feeling they might just get something, soon. “My guess is either the walk-in closet or the hall entry door to this apartment. But no telling, mind, no residual warp-field signatures anywhere earlier.” That careful scan had been some 21-ish (long) hours ago.
Emily grinned. The way a hardened merc does, anticipating action. “You get the closet, I’ll aim through the hall door frame. Does your famous ‘sense of snow’ tell you anything?”
“Smilla Jespersen I am for dead-certain sure not, Emily. And… that, it’s all good, if it’s anything at all.” And I smiled. “Ready to rock and roll, Franz Liszt style, Technician Inspector Rothermill?”
Her voice was quite nearly monotone as she said, “press Enter to play file aloud.”
I raised my needler, like a Dawn Age soldering gun with a gray glue-stick barrel at the business end of it. “Presumed-key transmit in… three, two one, fire.”
It felt a little theatrical, listening to not-piano sounds that still did sound like an instrument. But tune something like a harpsichord carefully enough, it’s a keyboard in at least two senses of the word…
“Thirty seconds to endfile.
“Twenty seconds to endfile.”
“May God send the right, Emily. For us both and for Liam.”
“Ten seconds. And Amen, Inspector Sullivan.
“Five, four, three, two, one.”
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(Part 3/3)
And the muted light of the closet doorframe I was facing turned bright as day, as a daylight colored the warm-white of a (by-guess) M5 or so sun. A lizard-faced, but yet very closely humanoid, person looked at me, out of a plaza that looked much like an airfield or spaceport. He gabbled a bit in something that probably wasn’t pure language, then stared quite fixedly at the needler I held very steadily toward his center of mass. As my logcam went to high-speed, whirring its uncompressed best effort at everything. As it transmitted everything too, microsecond by microsecond, local-live.
“Jeep to your left, boss. Twice the range of your subject. One of ’em’s at some breadbox-sized thing in ‘is lap. Twirlin’ knobs, like.”
“Don’t shoot unless shot-at, Em. First-contact protocols.”
“Liam’s been shot at, Gil. Not bein’ too-careful myself.”
There was a high-pitched whine, that had not been there before. And it got more and even more rough-sounding, all higher and deeper harmonics and sub-harmonics, as it all got louder together.
I spoke in Trade, the closest thing our Commonality has had to a shared tongue these past four-five centuries. “First contact, no demands. But one of ours is killed, and one of yours is missing, and blowing this link set would not be keeping faith.” And I smiled, as Em had. “We are a peaceful culture but we are also a warrior culture. We’d far prefer the peaceful; but the side we show is mostly up to you.” All the while my eyes held his, all the while my needler never wavered.
He spread his hands, empty palms, claws clearly visible. It was a Trade mudra for “No ill intent here.” He was, apparently, unarmed. And no-one was aiming anything obvious at Em, either, or she’d’ve sung that out.
The throbbing, sobbing, wailing distortions smoothed out. Then the whine itself went away. “We don’t have any known cutoff key, this was simply a trial, to see if our closed room was really… open. We simply guessed.”
“You never did clear that room. We couldn’t retrieve our elements from the room and erase the evidence. And our — agent, I believe the word would be for you, went far beyond his orders. Rogue. We regret your casualty.”
That wasn’t Trade; it was the same Mid-Classical English Emily and I grew up speaking, and had been using. (Trapped, like a fly in amber, by and as part of clever and unforgetful machines.)
“Will he be punished?”
My target’s tongue flicked out, reeled back into his mouth past his teeth. “Our justice supersedes yours.” But my intuition Read his gesture as far more and far clearer, just as it’d heard more. Inside I shivered, a bit.
I’d Heard it, internally, as “Our justice surpasses/ overtops/ encompasses yours. You have no basis for any further action by us or you.”
And my intuition had also elaborated his tongue-gesture as, very closely, He went dishonorably too far, he has killed one of you unrightly, he will be fed live to the Mothers in apology and expiation. And so it is done.
It went far beyond anything we could want or ask, there was nothing more to be done, case closed. (As the lid of a casket is shut.)
“We have, as you said, made First Contact. Our own protocols recognize you as First Speaker to us, Gilbert Aubrey Sullivan. We recognize your second, your lieu-tenant Emily Rose Rothermill, as Second Speaker to us. Recognize the champion, battle-heir or war-brother, or lieu-tenant of Liam Macdonald Parker as Third Speaker to us, if you or Emily-Rose would present that one to us to be recognized as his lieu-tenant and take Liam-Macdonald’s proper place before us.
“You and your Second have demonstrated persistence and honor and are thus given our hearing and our speaking. No others will be attended, for now.”
And he looked at me, still, even (somehow) more intensely. “My name is no sound for your mouth, and you do not yet know our speech. Yet you may call me Cadwallader Patricius Dragon, if you would. I lead many of our warriors in peace and in battle. And now I am become Speaker to Mammals as well.”
I smiled. “Should I stop pointing this needler at you now?”
“That would be meet, First Speaker. You may contact us again in, let us say for simplicity, fifty standard hours.” And the closet with its tumble of clothes and odds-and-ends faced me again, just as quickly as that.
Almost as if that startling, bright-edged, unprecedented door across what surely must’ve been light-years had never been… but, of course, it had.
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