Science Fiction: Welcome to my Worlds

confident and even ready to commit deadly actions on someone she considered a stranger and a threat. What had been happening here? “Cesily, it’s me, Darin. Don’t you remember me?”

She backtracked, crossing the chasm on the bridge connecting it’s narrowest points, and came toward him with her weapon still pointing in his general direction. As she got closer, he could see the puzzled look on her face. “I don’t know any Darin. Not since…” Then her face cleared. “Darin Salorin? I remember you always talked to me when my family visited. But you’ve been gone for, for, years!”

“Only two years,” Darin protested. “I’ve been learning things. Amazing things.” He moved toward her then, but a warning snarl from above reminded him that the hill cat was still watching. To demonstrate his education for Cesily, he pocketed the needler and sent soothing waves of warmth and assurance reaching out to the big cat.

“ROWWWH!” Spitting its displeasure, it leaped from the ledge above, a silver streak arching toward him in midair.

“No Purz! Don’t hurt him. He’s a friend.”

The big cat landed ten feet from him on the ledge, nearly in the middle of the oily spot. Surprise let its momentum carry it toward the edge and spin the cat around twice before it’s claws came out. They scraped off great

his nose, sniffing. It smelled like grill cakes. No, like the oil his mother cooked them with. Why would cooking oil be on the path?

Above him something coughed. Or growled. Darin looked up and found himself staring into the violet eyes of the biggest hill cat he’d ever seen. Reflex brought his hand out of his pocket with a needler at ready. This was crazy. What was a hill cat doing here at this time of year?

“Shoot him and I’ll drop you like a cheese-stealing rat.”

Startled, Darin almost dropped the needler, catching it with the tips of his fingers. The voice came from across the chasm sounding like it meant business. It also sounded oddly familiar. “I’m not going to let it eat me.”

“Purz won’t hurt you. Unless I tell him to, of course.”

Darin squinted at the bundled up figure across the chasm, sure he’d seem him before somewhere. No, wait, it wasn’t a him at all. What was he thinking. All that training should be of some use. Carefully, he let his mind open a bit and began to pick up impressions of the other. Familiar, and definitely female, though not as he remembered. “Cesily? Is that you?”

Two years ago she’d been a shy adolescent, barely able to speak in the company of adults. Now she seemed assured,

Cold Comfort

by Don

Chapter One

What a homecoming this was. Darin groaned, reaching for his head. The ice-covered shelf of rock he lay on was smeared with a reddish stain from the blood seeping out of his scalp. He couldn’t be that out of shape; he’d only been away for two years training in the Psi program. The grav-and-a-half of Targus clutched at his body and dragged him to it’s surface as though he were an immigrant outworlder just stepping on the planet.

Darin levered an elbow under him and started to get up from the icy surface, pulling the parka hood back over his head. Better he bloody it than freeze his face. “Uuuh!” His foot slipped and dropped his butt back to the ice with a painful thump. Even short falls were no joke on Targus and a chasm yawned to his right. Getting clumsy, he thought, then he noticed a liquid sheen on the ice. It was all around him on the ledge, like a big water spill, but he knew it couldn’t be water. It was mid-Spring on Targus but the temperature was still thirty degrees below freezing. He dipped a gloved finger in the liquid and brought it to

table, then his gaze calmly swept the room. Her eyes widened in shock. “These worthless texts were taken from a Roman galleon. You will return them. Now.”

The sharp steel piercing her arm hurt terribly, but it was as nothing compared to the Vision imposed by contact with the soldiers’ knife. In a distant time, she saw the soldier laughing as the library burned. But overlaying that, she saw herself married to this hard-eyed oaf before the moon changed phase.

do the same—preferably on documents dealing with magic and the arcane, but nearly any subject would be of some interest. Patiently, she waited for Tellus to notice her.

“Yes, what is it boy?”

“Diokles sent me to help with the translations sir.”

Tellus raised his bushy brows. “You are familiar with Sumerian?”

“Yes sir.” She might be only nineteen but she had no doubt her gift with language would soon put her far ahead of most of those here.

Tellus gaze swept the pile available, pulled out one of the smaller volumes and handed it to her. A quick glance showed her it was a book of children’s stories. Certainly not what she would have chosen, but it was a place to start. She settled into an empty desk by the doorway and began immediately writing the Greek version into a blank codex that had been provided. Intermediate notes would not be required for this. She settled into a routine of the translation and could not keep the smile from her face. She was home.

She was so deeply engrossed in transforming the Sumerian tales to her native Greek that she didn’t hear the heavy footfalls in the corridor until it was too late. A Roman soldier entered the room, his arms bigger around than her thighs and his eyes cold and contemptuous. He pulled a dagger from his belt and drove it through Calixta’s arm, pinning her to the