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I am of the "wait and see" school of thought. I mean, nobody sets out to make an awful tv show so I might as well trust in their skills and intentions at least enough to watch it.

No matter how faithful, or otherwise, a thing remains to the source, I always try to enjoy it for what it is.

That said, I'm looking forward to this.

[PART II]

.../cont

PART II

His name, this ragged man, this King of the Galaxy, was Hosef, and no more would he add, though Huruka expanded with pride, 'King Hosef, the First and Only Monarch of the Entire Milky Way Galaxy.'

Hosef himself shied away from the title, at first I assumed through humility but soon I realised it was through fear. I begged him to tell me the story but it was Huruka who began it when Hosef returned his gaze to the fire.

'Out here,' she said, 'the Old Gods still walk abroad, away from the confusing clamour of biology, out in the peaceful dark beyond the fringes of the galaxy where they can perform their godly works unencumbered. But once, when the galaxy was young and pure, it belonged to the Splintered Gods and the Primal Gods alone and they found much joy in its beauty and in its sanctity.

'They played amongst the stars and planets. The Blessed Ä, God of Geometry, made boundaries and constellations, folding and bending stars into complex geometric patterns pleasing to the eyes of gods. Fa-R'mni, the God of Gravity, began his lifelong rivalry with the Blessed Ä there when he crushed the geometry of a star to nothing and ripped a hole in the universe, releasing Uvu, the Fractal God, into the world. And Ekshaah-Ekshah, the Goddess of Life, began her experiments there. She taught biology to think and at first the Splintered Gods were enamoured of mortals.

'But soon the life was everywhere, spreading on its own, even evolving on its own as if the galaxy itself learned to make life on its own by watching Ekshaah-Ekshah. Worst for the gods was the incessant chatter of uncountable biological minds, an infinity of perspectives forever plucking at the fringes of the Splintered Gods' daydreams, threatening to hypnotise them into ruin. And so they left the noisy galaxy behind and settled in the dark, quiet gulfs beyond the Edge.

'They never stopped looking back, though, towards the Milky Way, towards reclaiming it for themselves. None searched harder for a solution than the Splintered Goddess Ekshaah-Ekshah, who was responsible for imbuing biology with life and filling the Milky Way with clamour and noise. She would not eradicate the cacophony, though, and refused to take back the gift of life from throughout the galaxy as many of the Splintered Gods demanded. She thought, then, that if the cacophony could not be silenced, perhaps it could be organised and transformed into a symphony pleasing to the Gods' ears. To do this, Ekshaah-Ekshah decided that the galaxy needed a king, a being of infinite wisdom, humility, honour, and...'

'Stop,' said Hosef, still gazing into the fire. 'I wasn't chosen,' he said. 'I was foolish. Foolish and about to die. Adrift in a dead starhopper somewhere inside the Yawden Void. Ekshaah-Ekshah did not choose me, I just happened to drift past her on my way to the grave.'

Huruka sniffed and began to gather up her things. 'The ways of the Splintered Ones are not our ways, their paths are not for our paws, their meat is not for our jaws. She chose you, Hosef, and brought you to her, out there in the dark nothingness with not another soul for light centuries in any direction. She chose you, from an entire galaxy of people.' She tossed the soiled bandages into the brass bowl and picked it up. 'Coffee?'

We both nodded and Huruka padded away, her paws silent against the deep carpet.

'Why were you in the Yawden Void, if I may ask?'

He shifted in his armchair and frowned, as if he couldn't quite remember. 'Knowledge,' he said. 'Exploration.'

'But there's nothing that far out,' I said, 'no stars, no planets, nothing. What were you looking for?'

'Detritus,' he said, 'intergalactic wreckage. Flotsam and jetsam cast out of galaxies throughout time. The cinders of ancient stars, perhaps from the very first galaxies, long since spent and dead, their cores as cold as their crusts, stars as close to maximum entropy as it's possible for stars to get before they turn to dust and blow away. And with them, perhaps, planets from the most profound depths of abyssal time and, upon those planets...'

'Yes,' I said, my mind playing with the possibilities. 'Scooped up by our galaxy's gravity as it moves through the cosmos, like accumulating dust – but, yes, such precious dust indeed.'

Hosef smiled and looked at his boots. 'I thought you would appreciate that, Professor General Sir Estobahn Khan De-Barlow Jo-Jong Brown, KPGE, DCM, AVA, CJC and bar, head of the Stellar Archaeology Department at the University of Europe in Bern. Or do you prefer to be called Ess?'

My jaw fell so fast I feared I might knock out all my own teeth on the floor. 'How did you...?'

He chuckled and looked back into the fire, absently rubbing the palms of his hands together. 'I was King of the Galaxy, remember? For over half an hour. I know everything about everybody.'

The innkeeper, Huruku, padded towards us with two mugs of steaming hot coffee. 'Your Majesty,' he said, handing the largest and cleanest of the mugs to Hosef with a bow. 'Ten debits,' he said to me, slapping my mug down onto a disreputable table beside my armchair. 'I'll add it.' He bowed again to Hosef and padded away back to the counter, where Huruka was softly singing as she polished the counter-top to fill an idle moment.

We sat in silence, blowing on our coffee until it was cool enough to sip. The holographic fire danced and crackled, the emitter field before it threw out a pleasant heat, and the blizzard redoubled its efforts to scour the lodge off the mountain as the suns went down and the winds got up.

'I looked for months,' said Hosef, 'and found nothing. A few grains of dust, incredibly old, a few shards of gravel. Tantalising. I should have settled for that meagre teaspoon of dust, taken it back for study, but I wanted more. I wanted a dead, extragalactic star. And so I kept searching even as my rations, and my fuel supply, began to run dangerously low.

'Finally, a million light years from the nearest star and in the deepest midnight I have ever known, I found it. Hosef's World. A planet ejected from its parent galaxy before even our own galaxy was formed. A fossil, preserved all alone in intergalactic space for time beyond reckoning before falling under the influence of the Milky Way, clinging to its gravity well like dust to a balloon.

'Before it died, Hosef's World was a modest gas giant, around the size of Jupiter. Now it is nothing but spent ash. Every chemical or physical reaction that can take place within it has already taken place within it. The core of the planet is the same temperature as the surrounding universe. It is a planet where entropy reigns supreme.

'And, foolishly, I attempted to land upon it. The surface of the planet was completely smooth, like a billiard ball, and completely dark. There was so little energy in the surface that my sensors couldn't get an accurate reading and, before I knew it, I was inside the planet. The surface layer of dust was so thin and inert that my ship passed through it as easily as mist, but that ancient, entropy-riddled dust got sucked into my engines and vents, clogged my systems. My ship began to wear out before my very eyes, as if the entropy-laden dust was sucking the vitality out of everything it touched.

'I barely escaped, but doing so was no boon. My ship, purchased from new three years earlier, was now the equivalent of a fifty year old wreck. The engines died first, then the life support systems, then everything else. On the second day, when the lights went out, I could see my dark world, a shadow against shadows, as my ship limped slowly away from it. Picked out in the sparse, faint starlight, ripples were spreading all over the planet. My accident had introduced a pinprick of energy into that giant, inert planet, but in a virtually zero-energy environment that pinprick was like being hit by a moon. The ripples lasted for two days and spread around the whole planet, creating complex, ever shifting, ever diminishing patterns in the dust until it returned to a perfectly smooth equilibrium. With nothing better to do, I made notes and christened it the Hosef Effect.

'And then I settled down to die, hopeless of my remains ever being recovered. Another lost and unremembered mote adrift in the cosmos. And then, she found me.'

'Ekshaah-Ekshah,' I said, setting down the empty coffee mug, 'Goddess of Life, one of the Splintered Gods?'

He nodded, his fingers folded around his still full mug. 'I naturally thought it was hypoxia. Hypothermia. Hysteria. One of the hypes, anyway, most likely a melange. But it was her.'

Here, his story faltered as he tried to explain his meeting with the Goddess and found his words wholly inadequate. Clearly, the experience remained burned into him but he was attempting to convey the perspective of an eagle to an earthworm. All that he knew was what he had seen, which he could not describe, and all that he did sprang from what he had learned, which he could not explain.

'She made me a crown,' he said, and here his face darkened and he looked at one of his hands again, examining the fresh scars. He took a swig of coffee and, disappointed that it had gone cold, set the mug aside. 'Once she placed it upon my head, every biological mind in the galaxy flowed through my own. I saw everything everyone saw, heard everything everyone heard, felt everything, knew everything. It was... It was... It was, I suppose, infinitely singular.

'She wanted me to take control of it all, to become the galaxy's great conductor, to transform the cacophony into a waltz so that the Gods might dance again. And in this cause I believed until Ekshaah-Ekshah placed that crown upon my head, for as soon as she did I heard no cacophony but a symphony, beautiful and tragic, filled with swooping pain and soaring hope. And I could not do it, I could not still the song of life.

'And so I betrayed the Goddess, ripped her crown from my head, and she was terrible in her anger, like teeth in the night clawing at my soul and smothering vines choking my heart, but I escaped. I flung the crown before me and fled to this world.'

'Why this world?'

'Because this is where I hid the crown, somewhere in these mountains. I'll know where when I see it. I remember only that I must dig for it, turn these mountains upside down if I have to. And then, once I have the crown, I can use the power of all the minds in the galaxy to destroy Ekshaah-Ekshah and all her Splintered kind for once and for ever, as the Unhinged Prophets of Extor foretold. Then shall mortals truly know peace under my benevolent rule. Even Satan Alexander, Emperor of the Pax Galactica, will bend to me, and every person, and every animal. Not the smallest bird shall live and die without my knowing, nor the highest king of kings. They shall all be me, and I they, and we one, and the Gods will be dead, so I will help the Twelve Galaxies kill their gods as well, bring to them my perfect harmony.'

He sighed and looked at me, his eyes glittering in the holographic firelight. 'Do you think I'm mad?'

'I hope you are,' I said.

He laughed and nodded with no small measure of enthusiasm. 'That would most certainly be the best explanation all around. Occam would love it.' He sighed then, unseen dark weights settling upon his weary shoulders. 'But then, Occam was never plucked out of spacetime and engulfed by a god, so I suppose it's moot.'

'I suppose it is,' was all I could think to say.

'Well,' Hosef slapped the arms of the chair with his palms, exciting thin billows of dust, 'I reckon this lot's going to blow itself out by morning,' he nodded towards the domed roof of the lodge. 'Got to keep looking, keep digging. I need my rest,' he said, standing out of the armchair without a grunt or a groan. He extended his hand and I stood to take it firmly in mine.

'Good luck, Your Majesty,' I said.

'A pleasure, Ess. It's always good to meet someone I've already been, everyone in this galaxy feels like an old friend. If I can thank her for nothing else, then I can thank her for that. Goodnight, old friend.'

And with that, he took his leave and retired to his room for the night.

* * *

PART III

I awoke to silence and saw through the window a flawless green sky and endless drifts of virgin snow basking in clear morning sunslight. As Hosef predicted, the blizzard was no more and he was gone, departing before the suns came up to resume his search. And with this break in the weather I was able to resume my search also, an aerial cataloguing of the prehistoric temples of this remote world, about which little is known. I cleared the little lodge sleeping cubicle of my few possessions and packed them away into my bag, free now to return to the S.S. Ess and move on.

As I moved through the lodge to leave, Huruka barred my way. 'Don't go out without breakfast,' she said.

'My ship is half a mile away,' I said, 'and I have plenty of supplies aboard. Really, there's no need to put yourself out.'

'It's no bother,' she said, 'and I insist. The weather up here can change in an instant and that half a mile might take you a lifetime. With a good breakfast in you, maybe half a lifetime.' She wrested my bag from my grasp with surprising ease, presumably employing some little-known form of hostellers' martial art, and directed me to a slightly too tall stool at the main counter.

'Eggs, bacon, that kind of thing?' Huruka asked, grasping for pans and turning on the stove.

I shrugged. 'Sure. Sounds good.'

'You know,' she said as she flitted about, retrieving bacon and sausages from the fridge and dropping them into an angry snake of a frying pan, 'you shouldn't worry about Hosef's stories. There is no crown through which he can destroy the gods and take control of the galaxy.'

I helped myself to a mug of coffee from the pot and said nothing. Such a crown could not possibly exist and, even if it did, there's no way one mind can control all the minds throughout an entire galaxy.

'Twenty five debits for a cooked breakfast,' Huruku called from the pantry. Huruka ignored him and gestured for me to do the same. 'I'll add it,' Huruku added after a long moment.

'I know there's no crown to be found because Huruku already found it.' She placed the breakfast in front of me and searched my eyes with hers. 'Hosef... Hosef fell from the sky ten years ago, the crown right beside him. We were going to give it to him once he regained consciousness but... his ambitions for conquest...' She lowered her head. 'We decided to destroy it.'

'Wait – this was a real thing? A piece of technology from a higher plane?'

She shook her head. 'Can't say what it was, really, or how it was made. It was hard to destroy, though. It took Huruku and me three days with a plasma torch, working around the clock in shifts, to disintegrate the thing. But we did it. There's nothing left of it but atoms.'

'Why haven't you told him? He's out there right now, cutting his hands to ribbons. Doesn't that...'

'We have told him,' she said, a sliver of irritation jabbing into her voice, 'many times. He refuses to believe us, saying that which the gods create cannot by people be broken. So he continues. Digging and searching and spilling his blood on these senseless rocks.

'And every day he searches, and every day I tend to his hands, and feed him, and give him a bed, and bow to him.'

The breakfast was good but not holding my attention. 'Why, though? As far as I can see, he doesn't contribute anything to this place.'

She snorted. 'How many kings have there been in this galaxy throughout the ages, and how much mayhem and murder have they wrought? How many have suffered beneath their heels? Died at their capricious whims?

'Hosef was King of the Galaxy for almost forty minutes. He was every one of us, every person, every animal, and every one of us was him. He could have done anything with that power, literally anything, yet he cast it away to save us all. He took ultimate power over every aware creature in the palm of his hand, and held it there, and did not kill a single thing. Think of that. The most powerful king in the history of kings, next only to a god, and not one decree did he issue, not one subject execute, not one friend elevate. He cast it all away.

'For this,' she said, 'and only for this, I wash the blood from his fingers and hold him as my King, from now until whatever grave awaits.'

~~~^~~~

[The Bloody Fingers of the King]

The Bloody Fingers of the King

by Mark Howard

PART I

In an ulterior lodge huddled beside a nameless pass through the Barbarian Mountains on Outer Pell, waiting for a brutal spring blizzard to pass, I was dozing by the fire and half-dreaming of Emily when the outer door slid open and a figure all in ragged furs staggered inside, dragging an ill-tempered limb of the blizzard thrashing in with him. The other patrons, there were four, and the innkeeper scowled at the sudden intrusion but the door slid shut behind the figure immediately, amputating the blizzard's thrashing claw so that it exploded into a puff of feeble, harmless snowflakes.

The figure removed his furs and hung them on the rack. His clothes were as distressed as his furs but still serviceable and warm. He seemed human, or thereabouts, slightly shorter than average but also more sturdy. His wild beard and wilder hair were a deep almost blood red and his eyes sparkled in the firelight. It is hard to guess a man's age now that we can all live forever, but in those sparkling eyes I divined a youth belying the careworn cicatrice scored into his leathery, midnight blue face.

The innkeeper, a bipedal hairy mammal with a silicon shell and talons on his knees and elbows, bowed to the man and handed him a bowl of hot broth. I was intrigued, and more than a little peeved, to note that the innkeeper did not ask the ragged man for payment. Payment was the only topic upon which the innkeeper and I had touched, and then extensively so. Payment for broth. Payment for drink. Payment for a room. Payment for heating said room. Payment for hire of linens. Payment for sundries. Payment for parking my little explorer ship in the lee of a sheltered escarpment half a mile away. Payment for local taxes. Payment for Imperial taxes. Payment for the blizzard tax. Payment for hire of the comfortable armchair by the fire.

The other four patrons, sat in an easy group around a table near the counter sharing hot broth and red bread, were of the same taxon as the innkeeper but they too bowed their vaguely chiropteran heads respectfully as the ragged man walked past. He acknowledged their gesture with a small but warm smile and an all but imperceptible nod.

He settled into the armchair facing my own, on the other side of the fire, and took a deep sniff of the steaming broth as he swirled it around the bowl in his gloved hands. No, not gloved, bandaged. He opened his eyes and caught my gaze.

'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I didn't mean to stare.'

He smiled and took up a spoon between his bandaged fingers. 'Huruku will be gratified to learn you find his broth so fascinating,' he said, before blowing on a spoonful of the stuff and sipping it daintily into his mouth.

I looked into the fire, not sure what to make of this ragged man, and its warmth on my skin and the constant, muted thunder of the blizzard outside lulled me once more into thoughts of home and of Emily's vital embrace.

'Mmm.' The ragged man put down his bowl and wiped his lips with the back of his sleeve before producing a distinctly unsanitary handkerchief with which he finished the job, beard and all. 'Best broth on the planet,' he said. 'Only,' he leaned forward and beckoned me to do the same, which I did, 'don't tell old Huruku I said so, all right? I can't have him taking it as a royal endorsement or anything, at least not under the current circumstance. In the future,' he spread his bandaged hands, 'who knows? Broth-maker to the King, perhaps. The Royal Brothier. But not now. Now is too dangerous. So...' He tapped the side of his nose with a bandaged finger and winked but did not sit back in his armchair. Instead, his dark brown eyes stared into mine, awaiting an answer.

'Of course,' I said. 'I'm just passing through, don't want any trouble.'

He nodded and settled back into his armchair, gazing at the fire. 'You'd almost think it was real,' he said at length, 'not a hologram behind an emitter field.'

I managed to hide my surprise but not, I think, my disappointment. The fire looked and felt so real and, more than that, I had wanted it to be real. But of course it was artificial. It had to be. What kind of idiot sets a real fire inside a building in this day and age, even in as remote a place on as remote a planet as this? But now it was as if some intangible enchantment had been lifted and the lodge felt a little less cosy, a little more afraid of the ravening blizzard clawing at its walls.

'I wish it was real,' he said, 'that would be more satisfying, somehow. Raw nature outside, trying to kill us, and raw nature inside, keeping us alive. Ice and fire, the eternal struggle between the inferno and the glacier, to burn or to freeze.'

'Real or not, the fire is warm. On a day such as this, I'm content to tolerate the dissatisfaction.'

He nodded. 'Wise words,' he said. 'This blizzard will take lives. They always do. Someone, somewhere, will be unprepared, or uneducated, or unlucky, and the blizzard will eat them.'

'That's a rather grim view, I think. Even the most basic of modern vehicles and emergency shelters can easily handle conditions like these.'

He nodded, still gazing into the dancing holographic flames. 'Nevertheless, the blizzard will have its meal. It's the law.'

My brow furrowed. 'What law?'

He pushed his hand inside his shirt and slowly scratched his belly, luxuriating in this simple pleasure. 'The law of the universe,' he said.

He delivered this pronouncement with such quiet conviction, such inner certainty, that it was impossible not to be intrigued. Before I could question him further, however, the innkeeper's wife padded up to the ragged man and set a brass bowl of warm water on the floor beside his armchair.

'Now let's get you sorted out, Your Majesty,' she said in her people's high, monotonous accent.

I raised an eyebrow at this royal address but the ragged man refused to catch my eye, focusing his attention on this furry, silicon-shelled, vaguely bat-faced angel of mercy. 'Huruka,' he said, his voice soft but clear, 'you don't have to do this. I'm quite all right, really.'

'Nonsense,' said Huruka, taking one of his bandaged hands gently in her dextrous paws, 'who will ever visit here again if word gets out that I allowed the King of the Galaxy's hands to rot away and drop off under my very own roof?' She began unravelling the bandages, taking infinite care where they were glued down with dried blood. 'Very bad publicity, that would be.' She dropped the soiled bandage into a waste bag and then took a moment to touch her paw to his cheek and gaze into his eyes. 'And very rude.'

She lifted the brass bowl onto his lap and lowered his ravaged and bloody hands into the steaming water. The ragged man first winced and then eased through the pain into something akin to contentment. Huruka let his hands soak for a moment before cleaning them with a mild, unscented soap and an oil-soft sponge.

When his hands were cleansed, she dried them with a sterile pad and, as she reached into the pocket of her apron for a dermal spray, I saw that the ragged man's fingers, palms, and wrists were covered with fresh, deep cuts. The slightest movement caused blood to flow, which Huruka efficiently wiped away as she applied the spray to each cut in turn until they were all healed, leaving behind a pattern of bright white scars overlying countless others more faded.

'There,' said Huruka, holding the ragged man's hands and leaning back to examine her handiwork. 'Good as new, Your Majesty.'

'I'm sorry,' I said, for I could hold my tongue no longer, 'but I must know, why do you address him so? As if he is a king?'

'Because he is a king,' she said. 'He's the King of the Galaxy.'

The ragged man frowned. 'Well, that's not exactly true,' he said, 'as Huruka well knows.'

'I did think it somewhat unlikely,' I said.

'I used to be King of the Galaxy, for a very short time,' the ragged man said, 'thirty seven minutes and twelve seconds, to be precise, but I'm not the king any more. Not at the moment, anyway.'

* * *

cont.../

[PART II]

.../cont

PART II

For three weeks after our departure I remained aboard my ship, which remained lashed to the deck in one corner of the Mwindo's primary cargo hold. Some days I had the hold almost to myself, others the S.S. Ess was crowded in by stack upon stack of pallets, pods, and containers, once even by countless eerily still cattle encased in individual stasis fields. On the sixth night of that last week, as I slept, or tried to sleep, or dreamed of sleep, I heard sporadic, mournful cries from the depths of those carefully stacked herds. As if some of them were aware, and paralysed, and terrified. Capable of only the weakest entreaty to whichever hidden force declares itself the God of Cows and comforts their despair.

Yet even these horrible moans were almost comforting, distractions from the data stripped bare before me. All my readings and recordings, all my translations and projections, taken apart and reassembled, examined, all contradictions eliminated. All doubts erased.

'Permission to come aboard?' Captain Bambat stood in the open door of my study, obviously aboard already. I returned my attention to the data.

'You know, Sir General High Lord Professor Baron of the Rest of the Universe,' she said after a moment, 'I'm just a simple freighter captain. Somebody tells me to pick something up over here and take it over there, I pick it up and I take it. It's a fairly simple job, on the face of it.'

I tried to tune her out, concentrating on the correlations between various electromagnetic and gravimetric scans, which yielded yet more compelling evidence to support the dark hypothesis I was so desperately trying to disprove.

'But it's not quite so simple, of course. Nothing is,' she said. 'I'd lay good debits that your job's about more than just digging up old bones and bits of pottery. I don't know what those extra dimensions are for you, but for me one of the most important is to understand my crew. When they're happy, tired, disgruntled. Worried.'

I finally looked at her. Her arms were at her sides, loose beside her bejewelled scimitar, but in one hand she held two tumblers and in the other a bottle of genuine Ye Olde Sweaty Thistle Earth Scotch whisky.

'They are worried about me?' I asked, perplexed. 'I'm perfectly fine. I appreciate that...'

She marched into my study and perched herself on the edge of my desk before setting down the tumblers and unstopping the bottle. 'You misunderstand,' she said, sniffing the open mouth of the bottle and closing her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, they were fixed on mine. 'They're not worried for you, they're worried about you. Never mixing with us, never leaving your ship, never even sending regular status reports to the ship's net.'

'They fear I intend to murder them in their sleep,' I said.

She began pouring the whisky and the aroma was like the kiss of a lover of long standing. 'The idea has been floated,' she said, 'my duty as captain is to sink it.' She handed me one of the drinks. 'Drink now, die later.'

I took the proffered glass and tapped its rim against hers. 'Drink now, die later.' I took a sip and laughed a small laugh. 'Curious,' I said, 'how we put so much stock in such arbitrary, essentially meaningless traditions. They used to say "cheers" everywhere, even in space. Then Colony Jones supposedly says "drink now, die later" aboard her ship the night before the Latan were finally destroyed and suddenly that's the thing to say, especially in space.'

She took a sip and leaned back against the wood-panelled bulkhead, making herself comfortable. 'You got Latan to destroy, Prof?'

'Captain,' I said, 'I assure you...'

She held up a finger and I waited for her to savour and swallow her latest sip. 'I'm sure you do. But there's something in your eyes. Thought I glimpsed it at Zoggy's but wasn't sure. It's there now, though, plain as night.'

'You're imagining things, Captain.' I put the tumbler down and returned to my work. She didn't move save for recharging both our glasses.

'The crew knows you've been out beyond the Edge.'

'So have many people.'

'And many people have been changed out there.'

'Driven mad?'

She shrugged and took another sip. 'You're a man of science,' she said, 'if there's a danger to my crew I have to... assess its probabilities.'

I laughed. 'There is a danger,' I said, 'a very great danger, but it is not me.'

She put down her tumbler with deliberate slowness, her lips compressed with the pressure of concern. 'See now, any mention of "very great danger" gets me...' she groped for a word.

'Worried?'

She snapped her fingers and pointed at my chest. 'Bingo.'

'Captain, have you ever heard of the Unsaahl?' I said after a pause, taking up my drink and leaning back into my chair. Her brow furrowed and she shook her head.

'They are part of an ancient myth cycle common in the outer reaches of the galaxy, all around the Rim as I believe. The myths begin with Aug, the Inferno, and Gau, the Screaming God.'

She nodded then. 'Yeah, I heard the locals thereabouts talking about such things. They split apart, right? The Screaming God became the Splintered Gods and the Inferno became the stars?'

'Yes, but there were others. Uru, goddess of Hope, and Ka-Yava, god of Despair, siblings tricked into mating by ancient Uga, daughter of Aug and Gau, goddess of Agony. The spawn of this foul union was the Unsaahl, a race of monsters.'

She raised an eyebrow. 'Monsters.'

I held out my tumbler for a refill and, after a moment's thought, she obliged.

* * *

There came upon this infant galaxy the oldest of the Unsaahl, whose name is unknowable but whom The Splintered Gods named Mawglut, Devourer of worlds.

First Mawglut devoured Pell, beloved of Thune, God of the Mind. And Thune could not defeat Mawglut, for Mawglut is without thought or reason or dream. And Thune warned his Splintered Siblings but they laughed at him, berating his inability to protect a single world from a single monster, and calling into question his right to be called a god at all.

Next Mawglut devoured the paradise world of Oreegha, where Ekshaah-Ekshah, Goddess of Life, first encouraged biology to think. And Ekshaah-Ekshah could not defeat Mawglut, for Mawglut is not alive. And Ekshaah-Ekshah went before her Splintered Siblings with dire warnings of Mawglut's power but again they laughed, though a with a little less certainty this time, and said that life was a puny thing anyway, fit only for entertainment and amusement to while away the eternities.

Third was Kood, where the Blessed Ä, God of Geometry, kept safe his sacred angles, but which Mawglut consumed angles and all. And  the Blessed Ä could not defeat Mawglut, for Mawglut exists at right angles to the universe and all there is of him in this world is his shadow, and shadows have no fixed angles. And now the Splintered Gods took notice and were afraid, for could not the Blessed Ä fold entire stars into darkness with ease?  The Blessed Ä could shape galaxies, how now so powerless against this monster?

The Splintered Gods then called for a champion to defeat the monster and it was agreed that, of them all, only Oio, Goddess of Time, was powerful enough to face Mawglut, for all things flee before her. So she set herself before Mawglut in the depths between the stars, stacking centuries in his path. And the more centuries she stacked before him, the harder Mawglut strove against them so that the years foamed over his skin like surf. And in ten centuries Mawglut advanced but an inch. After ten more, a foot. Ten more, a mile. And, in the last millennium, a light year, so that Oio began to weary even as Mawglut grew thinner and more ravenous. But Mawglut would not die, because he was not alive, and Mawglut would not give up, because monsters endure.

But Oio, being unhurried, was setting a trap. In the path of Mawglut, the Goddess of Matter was building a solar system filled with ten thousand planets of pure uranium, the monster's food of choice. When Suln-Ya declared her solar system completed, Oio removed the centuries from before Mawglut, replacing them with scant seconds, until the ravening monster fell upon the planetary feast. There to remain, gorging contentedly, until the massive star at the centre of the trap collapses into a black hole and crushes Mawglut to oblivion.

Thus does Oio teach us the value of patience.

* * *

PART III

Captain Bambat poured us both another drink before letting me know that my story had provided her with a little less than zero confidence in her crew's continued nocturnal safety. 'I know a story about a Yallish monk who rescued a Murian parrotmonkey because he thought it was the reincarnation of Zebediah Scott. It's hilarious. Really. There's even a donkey in it. And an actress, sort of. Not really relevant though, is it?'

'I saw it, Captain,' I said softly. 'The Mawglut.'

She said nothing.

'Out there, wrapped around the remaining half of the last pure uranium planet orbiting a collapsing star. At least, I think I saw it. A part of it. Something like a tentacle made of boiling ice, too big to see. Black against space, glistening with starlight.'

'It's real?' She put her drink down and leaned forward.

'Yes. I believe so. Just being close to it almost destroyed my ship. But I recorded everything I could. The more I look at the data, the more I am certain that the Gods made a mistake.'

She laughed. 'You question the Gods beyond the Edge? Know better, do you?'

I scowled and waved her amusement away. 'Regardless of what it is or how it got there, the Mawglut is real. The data is real. The science is real. The numbers are real. You see, the Splintered Gods miscalculated. They expected the monster to begin feeding at the edge of the solar system, to work its way over the billions of years towards the collapsing star, sliding imperceptibly down its gravity well until escape was impossible. But the monster began feasting with the planets closer to the star, and as it collapsed so Mawglut kept ahead of the gravity well. Soon, he will finish devouring the last of  Suln-Ya's planets and escape even before the star collapses.'

'How long?'

I told her, giving my best guess based on the data, the number I intended to present to the University Council immediately upon my return. She nodded and shared the remainder of the bottle between us.

'Something like that, a creature bigger than planets,' she said, staring deep into her glass, 'something like that must be worth...' Her voice trailed off.

'Captain, it is death. Calculating its worth is like trying to meter gravity. It simply is.'

She shrugged and drained her tumbler. When I found my own thirst quenched, she finished mine as well and then took both tumblers and the empty bottle into her hands and strode away. She paused at the door and looked back. 'Phobos in nine days,' she said.

'Tell your crew they're quite safe, Captain.'

'Except from prehistoric planet-eating god monsters,' she said.

'Well,' I said, attempting a smile, 'one can never be safe from those, can one?'

* * *

The remainder of the trip passed without incident. The crew's worry evidently never reached a boiling point and they stayed away, failing to storm my ship with blazing plasma torches. For my part, I remained aboard the S.S. Ess and refrained from assassinating them in their sleep.

At Phobos Docks, I powered up my ship and eased her clear of the mighty Mwindo's cargo bay. On the dockside, being loaded into one of the huge freighter's secondary cargo holds, were spools and spools of mole-line, thousands upon thousands of miles' worth. Alongside the spools lay stack upon stack of various species of harpoon and containers holding railguns and other, less identifiable equipment.

'Captain Bambat,' I spoke softly into the comm. 'I never properly appreciated the sheer size of your ship until now.' No response. 'It strikes me,' I said, 'that to be in control of such a behemoth must require a great deal of confidence. I hope,' I paused, my mouth dry. 'I hope those old legends of which we spoke have not tipped you into overconfidence.'

'Just deliveries for the breachturtle farms at Voth,' said Captain Bambat. 'You think I'm mad enough to harpoon a planet killer and try to ride it like a distortion-horse?'

'I think, Captain, that you will do anything for a good anecdote. Please take care.'

'Drink now, die later, Prof.'

'Drink now, die later, Captain.'

I engaged my ship's distortion engines and she shuddered into distorted space, grazing along at around lightspeed for the half hour trip to Earth. That was the last I saw of the mighty Mwindo and her crew. Two weeks later she docked again at Dhar-Ah-Zhul Station, bound for distant Ath out beyond the fabled Edge, where the stars are lonesome and the planets fall by inches into shadow and frore, there to fade into the infinite.

And for two years I lamented the folly of Captain Bambat and her crew, believing them victims of their own hubris. But when I returned to study the Mawglut, it was not there. The star designed by the Splintered Gods to crush it was now nothing more than a dark pinprick surrounded by a thin ring of uranium dust and of the monster there was no sign, either there or in surrounding systems.

Before I left, my scanners detected several hundred miles of tangled mole-line and a score of mangled harpoons orbiting just outside the event horizon. Although I can draw no solid conclusions from this data, I do wonder if, somehow, the patience of gods and the endurance of monsters were eclipsed both by the uncharted bravery of ambitious fools.

~~~^~~~

[Gods are Patient but Monsters Endure]

Gods are Patient but Monsters Endure

by Mark Howard

PART I

Beyond the fabled Edge, where the stars are lonesome and the planets fall by inches into shadow and frore, I found myself amongst people after too long a time wandering the dead worlds of the Dhar-Ah-Sum Wastes in search of forgotten things. My mind, even accustomed to such solitary expeditions, was still numb and leaden, weighted down by memories and discoveries, by logical extrapolations and dark fantasies. My little explorer ship, the S.S. Ess, creaked and groaned as I nursed her, finally, into a docking bay at Dhar-Ah-Zhul Station, a small but busy Imperial outpost servicing the transport and distribution needs of a remote and small, but busy, province of the Empire with stars in its soul. She came down with a thump, external sensors all out of whack, and clicked and moaned and sighed as I shut her down. A deck-tech team advanced on the S.S. Ess with umbilical feeds and refuelling pods but I waved them away, having a better plan. I grabbed my Civilization Tag and disembarked.


The cavernous landing bay was about half full, with naval, civil and commercial ships coming and going at irregular intervals. Most of them, like my own beloved S.S. Ess, were of standard Imperial designs and manufacture but a few sprang from different minds; a Ziffrosian mining claw, a Zorth Imperium star-shaver, freighters from Ath, Koh-Lajr, The Span and Ziffros, private yachts from Cartella and Luxok, and at least seven A.I. Alliance drones huddled in a belligerent knot near the space doors.


Lifters and gravs flitted between the ships with cargo, fuel pods, spare parts, robots, repair crews and passengers. Radioed instructions, sirens, buzzers, bells, hollered communications, power tools, engines and the occasional bursts of laughter rang around the place, a mere cacophony to me but an exquisite running commentary for the experienced crew, a symphony of organization. The ships smelled of space, ionisation and rot, as I strolled past them. The bay was overloaded with the fumes from spilled fuels, lubricants and coolants, the confusing, nauseating fug of spilled foodstuffs from disparate cultures, the stench of leaking waste systems, and a thousand other things my nose had no clue about. After so long breathing the dusty drab air of dead worlds, though, my nose cared not and strove, in its own way, to grasp the concept of orgasm.


Outside the docking bay, in a wide and carpeted hallway, the sound was far less; dull and enveloping like sluggish summer breezes. I shouldered my bag and made my way to one of the pilots' bars at the station's port side. The corridors were busy, teeming with people from all over the galaxy, a dizzying parade of body shapes, colours, twitters and growls, and further aromas for my nose to embrace like lovers. A few people knew me, and I they, sometimes acknowledged with a wave or a rushed statement of regret at having no time to talk and sometimes having so much to say and so much time in which to say it that the excuse of fictional impending deadlines spilled from my lips.


Eventually, after two and a half hours or so, I fetched up at Zoggy's Bar. The place was comfortably full with starship crews on long layovers or short breaks and some looking for work or simply hanging around.


'Ess!' Zoggy, the establishment's infamous owner, called me as I shouldered my way to the bar, smiling and nodding a welcome in return. 'Terran whisky,' Zoggy said as I took up an empty bar stool and he placed a tumbler of Tharnish swampcat piss in front of me with one of his manipulator tentacles. I smiled resignedly and took a sip. It tasted almost like whisky and had almost the same effect but, as was our custom, I made a disappointed face and shook my head.


'Almost,' I said, 'but no.'


Zoggy sighed, a sound like distant thunder rolling out of his air sacs, replaced the cork in the bottle of swampcat piss, put it back on the shelf next to all the other failed bottles, and charged me 25 debits. Noting that his infra red eyes were narrowing, a sure sign that Zoggy was about to launch into his standard monologue concerning the difficulties of obtaining genuine liquors all the way out here, I asked about the pilots in his bar and was directed to a tall Martian captain and her tall Martian crew.

* * *

'Captain Bambat?' I asked. She initially ignored me, preferring to finish the tall tale with which she was entertaining the six biological members of her crew. As they burst into laughter at the punchline, an almost imperceptible expression of satisfaction ghosted across her ebony face. She took a swig of ale, put her tankard down and then looked up at me.


'Captain Bambat,' I repeated, 'I am Professor General Sir Estobahn Khan De-Barlow Jo-Jong Brown, KPGE, DCM, AVA, CJC and bar, head of the Stellar Archaeology Department at the University of Europe in Bern.'


The captain's dark eyes narrowed and her crew stifled giggles.


'My friends call me Ess,' I added with a smile, extending my hand.


She looked at it for a moment before honouring me with a brief handshake. 'Kersis Bambat,' she said, 'captain of the Mwindo.'


'An honour,' I said. 'Captain, my ship is damaged and I need a ride home.'


She shook her head. 'Not going to Earth,' she said. 'Phobos Docks at Mars.'


'That will do,' I said. 'My ship should make it the rest of the way from there. My distortion engines are running a little lumpy but my breach system's all kinds of broken.'


She nodded, considering. 'Be a while before we get to Mars. From here we're breaching beyond the Edge to Ath, then a couple of deliveries in The Span, on to Koullar, Flith, Knoor, Hoh, then maybe Puth, Railar-Sorme, Hae-zo-zo Uff, and the Centrehub before heading home. A month at least, maybe two.'


This was perfect for me as it would allow plenty of time to arrange and study my data and also to rest and calm my mind. I did, however, feign reluctance in order to secure a better price. It didn't work.

* * *

cont.../

Shark the Herald Angel.

Obvs.

P1R4T3 84Y.

Poetic justice.

(Not poetic at all. Not just at all. Irony deployed in pursuit of satire. Views of individual posters do not reflect. The views of the management do not necessarily. No liability. Just say nothing. Etc. Ltd.)

Never stopped me. Though I was actually sent off once for being fat. The ref gave me a yellow first then about five minutes later said "I warned you about being fat, I booked you for being fat but you've ignored me and are still fat. So off!".

Ha! I am so stealing that for my autobiography! ;-)

Oh, and I forgot The Mask.

I wish I could...

[What We Do In The Shadows]

...What We Do In The Shadows is fantastic.

It sure is - at least as good as the film, which is quite rare. I love the Cursed Hat - it [spoiler]chasing after the car in the background[/spoiler] made me laugh so hard I had to pause it.

Top telly!

[The Terror]

I will never - NEVER - forgive you lot for not highlighting The Terror sooner.

The Terror. It is 1845 and two Royal Navy ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, are searching for the North West Passage through the Arctic. The weather closes in and both ships become trapped in the ice, forcing both crews to hunker down for the winter - there to face sickness, intense cold and something else. Maybe it's a savage polar bear and maybe it's something else...

It's a bit like Shackleton vs. Shako with a sprinkling of H. P. Lovecraft. At ten episodes, some might think this series drags a bit but I enjoyed it immensely because most of the story concerns the characters and their various interactions.

Well worth watching, says I.

Nobody listens to me

Story of my life

...my boat's actual name... is Sin É*, though I've been planning to change it for years...

How about Sin E * Deck *?

(I'll get me coat.)

Off topic a bit - what's the story behind the name "ChristCurrach"? Is it like a Jesus boat?

I haven't been paying him any attention for four years so it's business as usual in the Sharkshed.