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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: Two intelligent species must be evacuated from the doomed planet Splendor. Mike Christopher must figure out what to do if he cannot find a single world where the two interdependent species can live together.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Analog, 2000
Fictionwise Release Date: January 2003

15 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [179 KB], eReader (PDB) [63 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [52 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [47 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [89 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [117 KB], hiebook (KML) [151 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [86 KB], iSilo (PDB) [43 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [54 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [82 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [75 KB]
Words: 15505
Reading time: 44-62 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"Creek explores the three cultures involved--human, valley dweller, and highlander--just enough to make us understand the individual characters we follow, and I didn't find myself skipping a single paragraph. My favorite novelette this time around."--Michael H. Payne, Tangent Online (Learn more about Tangent Online, the Internet's leading SF&F short fiction review website)

"We see life persistent and intrusive--spreading everywhere, insinuating itself, adapting itself, resisting everything, defying everything, surviving everything!"

--Sir John Arthur Thomson, biologist, 1920.

7918 B.C.: As most of Humanity was undergoing the Agricultural Revolution, the universe handed the planet Splendor a death sentence to be executed over ten thousand years later.

A star 16 light-years away, which Humanity would name Aeolus, was about to die. It was a blue body over four times Sol's mass. It had used up the hydrogen fuel in its core and must fuse successively heavier elements to keep the nuclear flames burning--helium, then carbon, oxygen, magnesium, neon, silicon, sulfur. Its core grew hotter, its outer layers expanded and cooled.

The star became a red giant, then finally--disaster! Its outer layers blew away in a titanic supernova explosion. A nebula of hot gas expanded at thousands of kilometers a second. Those gases would reach Splendor in just over ten thousand years, and their high-energy particles would increase the intensity of the cosmic rays bathing the planet a hundredfold, bringing death for most species and a soaring mutation rate among survivors. Those in narrow ecological niches would suffer the most.

Meanwhile, Splendor's two intelligent species lived in narrow ecological niches, indeed.

10,056 years later...

The highlander named Ahtenhurat knew the strain of the long journey west must show in his features. His reddish fur was heavily matted, his body gaunt. On his back he bore the burden of a dozen of the furs that were a highlander's stock in trade. About six times a year he ventured out from his safe, frozen homelands to the unnaturally warm realm of the valley dwellers.

Each trip was more of a strain than the one before. As tribal Elder, he thought, I should bring a young one with me next time.

By the time the sun topped the mountain ahead, the snow gave way to marshy ground. The air grew warmer with each step downward into the valley that was his and D'jirar's trading site. A thin trickle of lava flowed from a nearby active volcano into a large basin on one side of the valley.

Ahtenhurat spotted D'jirar near a series of pools of water on the opposite side of the valley. She squatted, motionless, supported by two strong legs. Her skin had a greenish cast and was finely scaled. Her thick tail curled behind her. To her right, two smaller versions of her species swam in one of the water pools. They weren't the valley dwellers' young, but the males of her species.

D'jirar stood. Her lips and teeth struggled to speak the highlander tongue. "Glad you are well, my friend Agh-en-hur-agh."

Ahtenhurat said, "You strengthen my hearts." D'jirar unwrapped a long slender sheath, eight fingers working with the practiced dexterity integral to her craft. The knives, spears, and tools lay revealed. D'jirar picked each one up, reveling in their artistry. Magnificently-detailed images glorifying the valley dwellers' gods were carved into the point of a spear or the bone handle of a knife or scraper. Some of those carvings combined images of animals such as quicksleep or burrowers with others clearly patterned after highlanders, in a manner which Ahtenhurat found unsettling. It had often been suspected the valley dwellers looked upon highlanders as somehow godlike. He'd never risked asking his friend about such matters.

Ahtenhurat's short, thick fingers struggled with the bonds of his own pack. Finally the furs his tribe had produced laid between them. D'jirar knelt to examine them. She looked up at Ahtenhurat and hissed quietly, which he knew indicated pleasure. Picking up the furs, D'jirar stood, then leaned back on her tail.

This was a pattern played out as far back as Ahtenhurat's tribe could remember. He wrapped up the bundle of spears and tools and slung them across his back. "Good health to your females," he said.

"Good hunting to you," the valley dweller said. Ahtenhurat started to trudge back the way he had come, the marshy ground and his old bones making for slow going.