Free IGMS Issue 22 by IGMS

think. "You know where he went."
    "I don't approve," Aunt Albane said.
    "Please."
    When she didn't answer, I said, "He went home, didn't he? Back to Brittany."
    There was silence on the other end of the line, and it told me all I needed to know. "You know home is here," Aunt Albane said.
    "I know I should have a choice. No one gave me any."
    She made a sound in her throat, like the whistle of a fish, but by then I was already hanging up.
    Home. He'd gone home -- to wind and surf, to brine and fish -- to the familiar currents and the never-ending pull of the tides.
    I would find him, and everything would be right again with the world.
    I gathered Father's maps, my heart hammering against my chest -- and went to look up the train timetable to Brittany.

    I left the small duffel bag with Father's armour and sword in a locker at the Montparnasse train station, and made my way back to the hospital with the things Mother had asked of me.
    They'd moved Father into a large room where other people lay sedated, moaning quietly in their sleep. Partitions of cloth were all that gave the illusion of privacy.
    I found them by the smell, which I could find even through the sour ones of sickness and rotting bodies -- a hint of sea-salt, of brine-laden wind, like a caress; like a promise, once broken, now made whole again.
    Mother sat in a plastic chair, half-turned away from me. I walked noiselessly and she didn't turn when I arrived. I slid the bag down to the floor in silence, groping for words I could say -- for excuses, but there was nothing left.
    She was watching Father's still form, her whole body taut with a terrible intensity. In that moment she looked like a princess from the depths, wild and terrible and elemental, with the fury of the sea in her grey gaze -- and then the moment was gone, and she was only a frail old woman in a hospital room, waiting for death's visit.
    I turned, without a word, and left -- running towards my train, and the waiting sea.



 
Exiles of Eden
     
    by Brad R. Torgersen
     
    Artwork by Scott Altmann
----
    She was gorgeous, and didn't look a day over twenty-five. Her honey-blonde hair fanned about her head as she lay beside me on the limestone sand of the beach. Two suns -- one white and the other orange -- baked our bellies. Occasionally a bubbling wave of warm seltzer water rushed in from the lifeless sea, coating us pleasantly. Her deep blue eyes blinked as I adjusted my position and gazed at her.
    The blonde's smile was fixed, like the Cheshire Cat's. She looked and felt almost as good as I remembered a real woman should.
Almost
. I wondered if I'd ever get the algorithms just right -- hers or mine.
    A set of bare white feet suddenly appeared, just at the edge of my peripheral vision.
    I froze -- so far as I knew, I was the only person on the planet. What the . . .?
    I rolled onto all fours and looked up.
    It was another woman. I knew her.
Wanda
. She stood four meters further up the beach. She smiled down at me, her brown hair cut short, just like I remembered it. She had on a pair of black short-shorts and a white tank top which hugged her athletic figure. Why hadn't I detected her coming into orbit? I smiled sheepishly at my old friend.
    "Nice toy you built for yourself," Wanda said.
    "How did you find me, Wanda? I didn't sense your ship coming in."
    "One can never be too careful, Rordy. You should know that. Lucky for me I remembered you telling me once that you'd discovered a fantastic piece of beach circling a binary. You even gave me the rough coordinates. I gotta say, you were right -- this really is excellent real estate."
    "Just wait until I've finished seeding the tidal regions with xenophytoplankton," I said. "That rust color in the sky will be blue within a thousand years. Then all this place will need are palm trees."
    "Sounds perfect," Wanda said, surveying the carbon dioxide horizon.
    "Interested in a swim?" I said. I looked down at the blonde I had built, then back up