Free Cosmocopia by Paul di Filippo

blade downward.
    The lips of the wound vibrated with the expelled gas, making an uncanny animalistic moan that seemed to carry a freight of pain and despair.
    The volvox hit the earth.
    “Jump on it!” yelled Crutchsump. “Crush its bones!”
    The two scavengers began to kick and mangle the relatively fragile skeleton inside the green skin. Soon the volvox had been reduced to a heap of calcific flinders, all inside a handy squishy sack much more compact than the inflated live creature.
    Together, Lazorg and Crutchsump hauled the dead volvox back to the wain and heaved it aboard. They rested, panting, against the sides of the wagon, before refreshing themselves with some livewater.
    “This one alone will net us a hefty sum,” said Crutchsump. “Shall we call it a day?”
    Shading his eyes, Lazorg looked to the sunny skies. Another volvox, only a distant dot, seemed to be heading their way.
    “No, we made a long trip out here. Let’s get the most for our efforts. And besides, I need my freedom as soon as possible—to paint.”

5. The Ideation Maker
    PIRKLE RUSHED PAST AND got underfoot as Crutchsump, burdened with string bags full of groceries, descended the grit-strewn stairs to her flat, nearly causing his mistress to fall. But the bone scavenger recovered herself with a natural agility, and remonstrated with the wurzel.
    “Pirkle! What’s the matter with you! Calm down!”
    But the wurzel did not heed her words. Instead, he was capering about as if on the scent of some tasty quarry. A symphony of buzzes issued from his various diaphragms and sonic membranes.
    As Crutchsump laid a hand on the doorknob, her own olfactory pits registered odd smells emanating from beyond the door. From inside the flat came explosive grunts and wordless exclamations.
    Hastily, Crutchsump opened the door and entered, calling, “Lazorg! What’s the trouble!”
    The privacy curtain was drawn, dividing the room in half, and Lazorg’s coarse cries issued from behind the drapes.
    Pirkle darted below and past the barrier, buzzing furiously.
    Crutchsump dropped the groceries and dashed the curtains apart.
    Besieged by the jack-legged wurzel but ignoring the creature, Lazorg stood before an odd apparatus, the likes of which Crutchsump had never before seen.
    A piece of cheap white shirt cloth had been stretched tight and nailed securely across an old window-frame. That assemblage had been propped at head-height on an improvised tripod of sticks lashed together with twine.
    Lazorg held a cracked dinner plate in one hand. The plate was heaped with a variety of gelatinous colored stuffs. These mixtures were the source of the odd odors. In his other hand, Lazorg flourished a stick with a clump of longish animal whiskers bound to its tip with thread.
    Even as Crutchsump watched, Lazorg continued what he had been doing. He furiously scooped up portions of the colored stuffs onto his whiskery stick, then stabbed at the cloth, smearing trails across the already-clotted fabric.
    Lazorgs’s angry grunts cohered into words. “Damn you! Come together! Take shape! Obey me! Show yourselves! Why can’t I see !”
    Crutchsump tentatively approached Lazorg. When she laid a hand gently on his arm, he finally registered her presence, as if waking from a dream. He ceased stabbing the cloth. His eyes betrayed his immense agitation. Suddenly, he dropped his tools and clung to her, weeping.
    Awkwardly, Crutchsump patted Lazorg’s broad back. The big weight of him felt solid and comfortable in her arms, natural and acceptable—intimate.
    This was the first time they had so embraced.
    Reminded inescapably of past intimacies—mostly hurried, casual couplings with acquaintances of the Telerpeton slum at her own hardscrabble level, all now far in the past—Crutchsump half expected to feel Lazorg’s throbbing introciptor resting on her shoulder, just as hers now did on his, token of intercourse to come. The lack of any such mate to her organ left her emotions