Colony Worlds, page 1
Colony Worlds
Rob Bleckly
Published by Rob Bleckly, 2023.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
COLONY WORLDS
First edition. December 15, 2023.
Copyright © 2023 Rob Bleckly.
ISBN: 979-8223076018
Written by Rob Bleckly.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Introduction
Author’s Preface
1 The Big Picture
2 The Descent of The Kestrel
3 Outcasts
4 Journey to the Corner
5 Only Oomans
6 A Goat for the Killing
7 The Transit of Thera
8 Out on the GRim
9 End of Days
10 The Native Question
11 Days of Future Passed
12 The Mound
13 Date Night
A Final Word
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Further Reading: The Break of Civilisation
Also By Rob Bleckly
About the Author
To my wife Felicity for her support and belief.
To the Blackwood Writers Group, who listened and made helpful suggestions,
And not least to the administrators and judges of L Ron Hubbard's, Writers of the Future Contest for the opportunities.
Introduction
Think of your favourite book.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a pot-boiler, or a great literary masterpiece; the only criterion is that it’s your favourite. Something about it captivated you enough to put it in that special place in your memory that says This book made me feel things I haven’t felt before. This one stays as a little pearl in a hidden part of your heart regardless of other books you’ve loved.
Got the book in mind?
Now, did it make you think that you could write something similar? Or – and I suspect you’ll blush to remember this – write something actually better? Good, but I’ll get back to that naughty bit in a moment.
Now, consider the author of that book because, at one time, the book was no more than a germ in the mind of your author, a tiny spark that had to grow into the concept that captured your imagination. Just imagine the author sitting down and writing the very work which you hold in your hands, and consider the number of iterations through which that work passed before it finally landed in your bookstore. Some authors are notorious editors of their work, agonising about the exact wording. Or, perhaps just a comma, as Oscar Wilde was supposed to have once said.
The point is, your favourite book was written by one person bent over writing implements and struggling to put on the page the story that was insisting to be written. And, even your favourite author had to be inspired by something, impelled by a desire to do one better than the story which captivated them, because they were also inspired by someone. It is that naughty secret to which I referred: the unspoken thought that I can do better.
I was inspired to write many years ago when, in the course of trying to learn English – which was not my native language – I turned to books to accelerate the learning process. I, too, had that naughty thought. Initially, it was the mild: I can do this, too. Later, when I got older and less inhibited, it was the very naughty: I can do this, but I can do it better. My muse at that time was Larry Niven, and I seriously doubt I could do better than him.
But; we all have a starting point.
Steven King confessed to being inspired not just by Robert Louis Stevenson, but by one descriptive passage in Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. The particular passage is the dreadful scene in which Hyde kills a young girl. The scene is ghastly, but it started a fire in Steven King. Horrible though it was, King reckoned he could have written into it even more horror. He has since proved that whatever combusted in his chest by that scene has given the world some dazzling works of fiction.
And, having started, we grow as we write. And some of us, the lucky few, have a wellspring that gives them not just skill but insight and a wonderful range of stories.
Which brings me happily to Rob Bleckly and this book. Rob has written a diverse range of stories over the years. He’s the kind of author to whom I refer when I want you to imagine the writer bent over his task. Because what he does is not just produce stories, but he produces them very well. There is a lovely feature in his stories that just hides behind the curtain and whispers that there’s a lot to this story. It’s inventive and you’ve never read a story like this one. Or written as well as this, because it takes you to places you find you have actually wanted to go. Or wished you’d been.
And you’re not alone in appreciating them: every story in this collection was selected by well-known authors to be awarded an Honorable Mention. Every one. An entire book of award-winning stories. And, it’s in your hands right now.
Turn the page.
Kain Massin
Adelaide, South Australia, November 2023
Author’s Preface
Colony Worlds is a selection of my short stories, that have been awarded an Honorable Mention certificate from L Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future contest. (Honorable’ spelt as it appears on the included certificates.) I found the contest on a tear-out card in the middle of an early volume of the annual anthology of quarterly winners.
I’ve submitted a story every quarter since Sep 2017 and will continue to submit a story each quarter while I remain eligible under Rule 5. My aim is to be ineligible. Up to the second quarter of 2023, I’ve submitted twenty-seven stories, including six re-submissions. Of the twenty-one unique stories submitted, I received seventeen awards: 14 Honorable Mentions, 2 Silver Honorable Mentions & a Semi-Finalist.
This collection is a baker’s dozen containing twelve Honorable Mentions and one of the Silver Honorable Mentions. The stories appear in the order of first submission. Except for minor they grammatical corrections, they are unchanged from what I submitted. Every flaw that prevented the stories from getting published in the annual anthology remain. Outcasts (story #2) is the single anomaly; edited and resubmitted it gained a second Honorable Mention. I have included the second version.
None of these awards would’ve been possible without the support of my wife, a wise reader and editor, or the mutual help and advice of The Blackwood Writers Group, founded in my bookshop on Monday 26th August 1996.
Figure 1 The Blackwood Writers Group homepage
.
Members come and go, but unlike the bookshop the Blackwood Writers Group remains, meeting for three hours weekly despite several relocations. During Covid we met online.
Before BWG I had abundant scraps of paper with notes, ideas, dialog, story fragments, outlines and openings. I began submitting completed stories, receiving awards, and having my flash fictions published online within months of the group getting together,
One year later, I received my first Honorable Mention.
Rob Bleckly
Strathalbyn South Australia, 2023
Figure 3 WOW the awards are not like this anymore.
1 The Big Picture
Written Apr 1996 | Submission #1 | 3rd quarter 1997
Honorable Mention #1 |
* * *
I had this story idea from argument at work. The immediate concerns of any locality are never the full picture. Stand back a little and get to see the picture in context. Further back the picture is often bigger, clearer and more complex. I checked the guidelines and sent a disposable paper copy for the third quarter 1997, my first submission, my first Honorable Mention.
A certificate, a letter from the contest administrator Edith Shields and a half page critique from contest judge Dave Wolverton (later David Farland) both of which said, and I quote,
“... congratulations on being a semi-finalist ...”.
The days when the recipient of an Honorable Mention certificate was also considered a Semi-Finalist and received a critique from the coordinating judge are gone. Despite what they said, I never felt justified in calling myself a Semi-Finalist based on an Honorable Mention Certificate.
I haven’t put a prologue in a short story since but in this, collection, it stays.
The Big Picture
Prologue
Cogito ergo sum - I think, therefore I am.
Since Arthur was still able to contemplate his predicament, he must be still be conscious. Running on batteries?
He polled each of his CICs in turn for conformation. No response.
Arthur instantly calculated how long he could survive on the batteries. Based on the estimated load at failure he would be dead in fifty-seven seconds (plus or minus two point eight five). What could he do in that time? Without web links, he was powerless to effect any external changes. He began instead to analyse possible reasons for the power loss.
At twenty-five seconds, his search was completed. He had a single anomaly. A post, previously given low priority because the content of the message was incorrect. He immediately commenced a transaction rollback, then resigned himself to death, hoping for the future.
With eighteen seconds remaining, Arthur generated the thought that if power up was handled in a logical step-by-step fashion, then conceivably those memories that distinguished his evolved persona from his initial load could be retrieved.
Eleven seconds. Consciousness began to fade as the batteries weakened and the fields collapsed. H e burnt in some strategic blocks and filters to channel the reboot sequence.
Three seconds.
How will they cope without me?
I
There was a break in the forest at the confluence of a tributary with the main stream. Here, the pathways of many animals met as they came for water and their trampling kept the forest at bay facilitating a small patch of open grassland. Sunlight streamed through the ragged hole the clearing created in the canopy. The grass strove towards the light. Each square millimetre of leaf surface contained approximately 500,000 chloroplasts, perhaps 40 to 50 in each plant cell. Chlorophyll trapped the light energy, photosynthesising carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water. The regular overnight rain had already soaked into the ground and been absorbed by the root network.
But something was wrong. Each blade had straightened, altering the angle at which it intercepted the light. The light sensitive feedback system reacted, lengthening some cells, shortening others, realigning each blade to compensate.
II
The rabbit sat perfectly still. The two-year-old female carried her third litter for the year. Her moist nose protruded cautiously from the open mouth of the burrow. The mottled grey pelt shone in the early morning light as she contemplated the patch of dew tipped grasses just beyond her reach. The fine beads of moisture left on the grass made the meadow appear like a pool.
Caution competed with hunger but her need to feed soon grew imperative. She emerged in short hopping bursts propelled by powerful hind legs. In the pause between each burst, quivering nostrils tested the breeze. Sniff ... hop ... repeat. In four jumps she was in the grass at the edge of the clearing, feeding yet alert for the slightest alteration to her surrounds. Last time, here in this patch, she had lost her second mate to a lightning streak of red.
Something was wrong. Perhaps an unrecognised odour on the breeze. Perhaps a slight shift in the pattern of light or shade. Instinct took over. The doe kicked off in a mighty leap for safety. The leap never landed. She found herself suddenly airborne, soaring like a magpie up and out of the clearing at an angle where she would not clear the canopy.
III
The fox crouched in a blackberry bush above the burrow mouth. His narrow, elongated muzzle tracking the rabbit’s cautious emergence into the clearing. Erect triangular ears faced outward ever mindful of his own safety while his keen eyes tracked his quarry. He waited patiently, waited for that special moment when the safety of the burrow would be beyond the rabbit’s reach.
Certainly, there was less danger here than he had met at the chicken coop. Escaping the cockerel, the wire netting and the shotgun blast had left him somewhat battered. Streaks of congealed blood matted his thick reddish-brown fur. He would have to make an allowance in his timing for the damaged tendon in his left front leg. Though not crippled, he would be slower.
His vixen of three winters had borne seven cubs this season, filling the den with insatiable appetites. He could not afford to fail as he had at the chicken coop or they would lose some. Perhaps that might not be a bad thing. Last year’s litter had established their territories too close. It seemed as if there was no longer enough room in the forest.
Something was going wrong. The rabbit’s ears had pricked up, a sure sign to the fox that it was paused for flight. It was too soon, the rabbit too close to the hole. To have any chance of a quick and easy kill, he would have to move now. The fox exploded into the clearing on an intercept course a heartbeat behind the rabbit. He was a bound away when the rabbit vanished.
The fox hit the ground where the rabbit should have been, scrabbling to maintain his own footing in suddenly altered circumstances. His reflexes were no longer responding correctly. As he tumbled through the air a foot above ground towards the creek, he occasionally caught sight of his former quarry. It was rapidly flying away from him just as if it had been snatched from his grasp by an eagle. Strangely, there was no sign of anything clutching the rabbit.
IV
After carefully putting the rifle on the blanket, Winston Baker shifted position to ease cramped muscles. At forty, he was too old for damp nights in the bush. The four-foot-high hide had been built against an old pine years ago. Its original covering of freshly cut wattle was now dry and brittle, replaced and overgrown with blackberry. The height which forced Winston to sit, squat or kneel, had not been a problem in his youth but now all positions became painful even after short periods.
He had dozed fitfully, sitting with his back against the pine and his knees drawn up to his chin. His backside was numb and his feet freezing. The simple act of straightening his legs was agony. Not the first time that night, he wished himself home in bed, enjoying a bit of slap and tickle before drifting off in Dora’s warm embrace. Unhappily the gods had refused to favour Dora Baker with any children so he had no sons to do the things that must be done.
A weak sun had already crested the ridge behind him by the time Winston crawled to the peep hole and looked out. The forest canopy, which hid a small creek on the valley floor was almost continuous. The exceptions were the clearing at the confluence and the small rocky escarpment on which Winston had built the hide to study the wildlife. This time, however, he was here for an entirely different reason.
The rust-coloured pelt stood out in sharp contrast to the surrounding greens. At this distance, it would be a difficult shot, but still the best chance he would have. At least here he was beyond the reach of the gods. Two days ago, when the fox had been at his farm, Winston had missed the shot. One of the gods had shouted at him to stop right at the critical moment.
It was difficult to understand why the fox was so favoured. For the first time in his life, Winston had been on the point of having surplus produce and was thinking about taking things a bit easier. Then in one month he had lost three of his best layers and after the last raid the rest had stopped.
Winston spat on a callused thumb and wiped the foresight clear of dust. The fox had to go even if the gods didn’t approve. He adjusted the rear sight with practiced ease to allow for both the distance and slight breeze and sighted on the rabbit. He would wait till the fox made his move and came out into the clearing. There would be a moment just after the kill when he would be most vulnerable. That pelt would make Dora a fine stole.
Something was terribly wrong. The ground trembled. Strange things were happening in and around the clearing. The trees were lifting their branches. In a purely reflexive action Winston fired at a flash of red, knowing even as he pulled the trigger that the shot was wild. Unexpectedly, the recoil propelled him straight out through the back of the hide. His shoulder took the brunt of the blow as the dry wattle broke under the impact and he exited in a gyrating tangle of dead branches and blackberry until halted by the solidity of a pine.
Winston was stunned, scratched and bleeding. His whole body felt light, as it did when he was floating on his back in the dam. He looked down, instantly closing his eyes in disbelief. Impossibly, he was floating in the air. He must be being punished for trying to bag the fox. He started to pray, directing his plea to the most reasonable of the gods.
“I give up.” he shouted. “You win Harriet. I’ll leave the fox alone if just let me get home and let things go back to the way they were.”
The silence in his head reminded him that he was beyond her reach. He stole another glance down and fiercely grabbed the nearest pine branch, ignoring the rough bark and sharp needles. He willed his feet back to solid ground and found, to his surprise it worked a little. He was quick to realise that it was actually the muscles of his arms and abdomen, pushing and twisting, that had accomplished the desired result.
Sometime later, once he’d mastered the fundamentals of his new environment, he started up the trail for home. It wasn’t all that different from swimming underwater. In fact, it required a lot less effort and there was no need to surface every couple of minutes. Carefully launching himself and coasting from tree to tree, he made his way back to where Harriet could hear his apology.
