zebra mussels
cover the snapper's broad back
bright yellow boot

Hotel Antarctica



Jake jerked his head up. He'd been drooling. He wiped his face on his sleeve, looked around, then saw the message flashing on the screen. The scanning electron microscope had finally finished pumping down. They really needed that new machine.

He groggily clicked thru the startup procedure, finally got an image of the sample. One am. He had 6 hours left till anyone else had the machine scheduled.

Zoom in, focus, zoom in, focus, Jake was reading license plates before it registered that he'd imaged a city on an antarctic meteorite. One of those meteorites that, mineralogically, seemed to have come from Mars.

Jake excitedly scanned the rock surface. The city covered a good part of it. This was incredible! Forget the thesis. Nature, Science, a Nobel prize!

Jake feverishly scanned and photographed streets full of dwellings, temples, public buildings, focusing in on smaller and smaller details. Fountains, park benches, things that could be statues or streetlights, even people. Hundreds of people, all frozen in place, the monochromatic SEM display reminding him of the ash people of Pompeii.

"This stupid machine," Jake grumbled. No matter how he focused or adjusted the stigmation he could not resolve facial features. He became obsessed with getting the perfect shot. Backscatter electrons didn't help. He tried an alternative view and suddenly, one of the faces swam into focus. It had a pair of wide-spaced oblong eyes, a thin, sharp nose, and a wide mouth. The martian looked up at Jake, beckoned with a finger.

Jake began to doubt, for the first time, that he was awake.



"I don't know," Sara said. "Jake was supposed to be on overnight. I unlocked the door, and the place was a mess."

"Ew. His clothes are here." Jili poked her foot at the crumpled jeans and T-shirt that lay on the floor between the chair and the SEM. The worksurface was littered with empty Mountain Dew cans, candy wrappers, and a spiral notebook, open to a blank page. "He doesn't use a laptop?"

"No, and it doesn't even look like he was working last night. He didn't take any photographs. Do you suppose he ran out of here naked?"

Jili woke up the screen. "He's got a sample in there, but at such a high power and so out of focus you can't see a thing. Well, let's clean up and get to work."

monster storm
Beryling down on the islands
hunkering time

water ran
from the harbor's stinking mud
strengthening sea breeze

asteroids become
Earth crossers
the whites of our eyes

thunderstorm tears
the roof off the pergola
we stay indoors

Milkmaid



I was born here. My parents came from Earth, stolen before the stars aligned, so they just have one head and two arms apiece. Most humans here are slaves, but I have a good job. I get regular meals and have my own sleeping place under the grub shed. I'm a milkmaid. I milk the grubs. They look sort of like dholes, but they are white and their faces are tiny. Twice a day I milk the ichor that comes out from nipples on each body segment. Of course their nipples are not like mine, and they don't have breasts either. Their little faces are so cute, with round black lips and rows and rows of needlelike teeth, noses that are just patterns of holes, and eyes so shiny and black they look like seeds. The ichor stinks. It reminds me of the smell from the pit where they threw disobedient slaves until there were so many rat scorpions they had to call in the Horde.

I have my own bed. Sugar mushrooms grow under there, and I eat them early in the morning before anyone else finds them. They are so good. Also, slaves sleep outside the fence and every morning some of them come in covered with bites, or the oozing blisters made by the rat-scorpion stings. Most of the slaves don't live as long as I have already. I'm grown up now, I am 14. That's old enough to be a bride of He Who Is Not Named. I hope that this year his priest will choose me. If I carried the Son, I would not have to work as a milkmaid. I would tell everyone else what to do, and inspect them at their work, for the first two trimesters. After that, they would have to bring me whatever I wanted. If I carried the Son I would keep them busy finding things that don't grow here. Things only found on Earth, and nowhere since the alignment. I hope I would not want the same things Kerry wanted. Before the end she was asking for live lizards, the entrails of virgins and other disgusting stuff. And none of it made a difference. She split open and was all hollow, just like the rest.