Schools of Clay

Schools of Clay

By Derek Künsken

Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, edited by Rich Horton, Prime Books, 2015.

The hive vanished behind him. The minuteness of their former home was spiritually humbling. Stippled stars on black night, close companions since birth, now wrapped him in their vastness. His struggle for the workers, all his words to free his brothers, seemed hollow here. And the migration might still die stillborn, like a drone without a soul. No future. Not even a present.

His soul was silent, perhaps hoping that Diviya had resolved himself to his duty. He fell behind the thrusting princes, still so far that they were just tinypoints of hot breath. Perspective placed them near the unknowable voice of the pulsar. The thought of approaching the Hero terrified him.

Diviha’s soul began, in staccato radio crackles, the liturgy of migration: vectors ad star sightings, landmarks, and flight speeds drawn from the sagas. The souls had done this before. They adjusted the liturgy each migration, to account for the drift of the asteroids, but the mythic arc of the Hero and the Maw was unchanging.

Diviya knew the migration route. He’d studied it, perhaps in a way unseemly for a country doctor. He eased his thrust, contrary to the liturgy. His soul repeated the timingf of the thrusts, and their strengths. Diviya ignored his soul. He needed to be trailing the pricnces and princesses for what he wanted to try. And he needed his thrust later.

Schools of clay. Photo by Elena.

The pulsar became a fat dot. Its gravity drew him onward and its voice had become a deafening, constant shout. Diviya unfurled his radio sail. It bloomed outward, bound to him by many fine steel wires. He angled his sail so that the microwaves pushed him off a collision with the collapsed star. The force would grow as he approached, compensating for the rising gravity.

The pulsar had bloated into a fat disk. The Hero’s Voice was too pure and loud to be audible. Microwaves seared tiny arcs of electricity across Diviya twice each second, filling him with life for what must come. He was sick with overcharging. His soul recited the prayer of brushing against divinity. When that finished, his sol told the parable of the prince fleeing before waves of the shaghal. The Hero made Diviya large and small. Diviya could not turn to look how close the shaghal might be, nor even if his fellow revolutionaries had kept pace with him. One approached divinity alone.