Hayden Trenholm is an award-winning editor, playwright, novelist and short story writer. His first novel, A Circle of Birds, won the 3-Day Novel Writing competition; it was recently translated and published in French. His trilogy, The Steele Chronicles, were each nominated for an Aurora Award. Stealing Home, the third book, was a finalist for the Sunburst Award. Hayden has won five Aurora Awards – thrice for short fiction and twice for editing. He purchased Bundoran Press in 2012 and is its managing editor. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and fellow writer, Liz Westbrook-Trenholm.

Mike Rimar is a Prix Aurora award-nominated writer of speculative fiction and associate publisher of Bundoran Press. You can find his work in "OSC's InterGalactic Medicine Show," Tesseracts 15, Writers of the Future XXI, and "On Spec Magazine". For more information on Mike visit www.mikerimar.com.

Second Contacts edited by Michael Rimar and Hayden Trenholm

Second Contacts presents seventeen stories from writers in six countries (Canada, United States, England, Mexico, Israel, and the Netherlands) that answer the question: What happens after first contact? Set fifty years in the future, they explore the aftermath of alien contact, for us and for them. With stories by Barry King, Jetse De Vries, Nicole Lavigne, Robin Wyatt Dunn, David Tallerman, Naomi Libicki, Matt Moore, Morgan Crooks, Albert Nothlit, Karen Anderson, Andrew Barton, David Yeh, Jaime Babb, Peter Wendt, Coleen Anderson and Rhea Rose, Liz Westbrook-Trenholm, and Holly Schofield.

 

REVIEWS

  • "One of many great stories in Michael Rimar and Hayden Trenholm's Second Contacts anthology. Peter Wendt's "Get the Message" features a ticking clock, the impending destruction of the human race and an appeal for help that falls on deaf ears – or equivalent to ears – in species across the galaxy. With a brilliant balance of humour and tension, "Get the Message" shows how being on your own ain't necessarily a bad thing."

    – Amazon Review
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

THE SUSANS COME HOME

by Barry King

I was dibbling for ikthar eggs in the sand when he suddenly appeared across the tidal pool from me.

"I have potatoes." He held them out to me, over the lapping water. His hands were tan with red palms, and there was hair all over the backs. Black hair, like on his head. He was wearing clothes, though, so I couldn't see if he was hairy all over, like they say. I giggled, but it was mostly nerves.

He smiled at that, and I saw he was nervous, too. I stepped back. I could feel a pod of ikthar-eggs in the wet sand between my toes, and I squatted to dig them out with one hand, but I kept my eyes on him.

"Do you like potatoes?" he asked, but he was looking at my crotch. So I smiled, like mother said I should, and didn't say anything while I worked at the egg-case. It came free and I rinsed it in the water before tossing it backwards into my basket with the others. When I stood up, he looked me in the face again. I kept smiling. He was trying to smile, too, but the corners of his mouth kept slipping.

"I like potatoes," I said, because I did. I had them once before. At a feast. My aunt-Six had brought them for Mama. Everyone in our brood got one, each as big as my fist, even little Thirteen. Mama chewed it for her. Mine tasted different from anything, ever. That was the first time I ever tasted Earth. It was like clay, but mustier, and hot, and it made me belly-full and warm.

He smiled some more, and stepped around the pool clumsily, holding them out: three of them. I stepped back and squatted down again, keeping myself between him and the path up to Camp. He smiled and squatted down to look me in the eye. I looked at his proffered potatoes. I must have laughed, because he laughed, too. I took them in my hands. They were hard. Uncooked. They had that smell, the smell of Earth. I licked one, and tasted that smell on my tongue. He reached out and touched my hair, the braid on my temple. I jerked with surprise and he drew his hand back.

"Is it true, what they say? That if I bring a susan something they like, that she'll... you'll... sleep with me?" I smiled, but not at him. It was that thing Mama said might happen if I met a 'Nist. I stood up.

"Yes," I said, like I was supposed to. My face was starting to hurt from smiling, so I turned towards Camp. When I looked back, he was stepping out of his pants. I had never seen a man naked, so I watched. His thing was strange and bumpy and purple on the end. It was wet at the tip. I laughed. He laughed too, more nervously than me, though.

"Lie down," he said, "in the sand."

I shook my head. "Not here," I said, and started walking toward the camp. When I looked back, he had pulled his pants back on and was following me, but he was having trouble finding the path through the horsetails. Someone saw me from behind a fern. It was Three. I nodded for her to go forward. She slipped into the bush. I turned and smiled at him again. He smiled back, but it wasn't an even smile. He stopped.

"Up there," I said. "Let's go up there. It's pretty."

"You're pretty," he said, and started following again. "I'm Jason," he said.

"I'm Susan," I replied.

He said: "of course."

One and Three and Five were ready with spears when we got to Camp. They took his clothes and tied him. He was shouting and bawling when we put him in the empty shartar hutch. Mama went to the barrier and negotiated for him. She came back with two good knives, a sack of potatoes, and three lamps, and Mama bled him before we gave him back. We had puddings made with his blood, and everyone called me a brave girl. Mama told me he was only as old as I was, or maybe fourteen years at the most, even though he was a lot bigger.

"They eat a lot of potatoes," she said, by way of explanation.

Draped over the wall in the twilight, Six's face was red and puffy. She pulled at my wrists, trying to help me up. My first pregnancy made it hard for me to climb like I used to, and I skinned my arms when she pulled me over. We landed in the soft soil, and I stopped rolling when I hit a low, leafy mound.

For a few heartbeats, I lay there breathing. I'll never forget that rich, musty smell of Earth that was suddenly everywhere. I rolled over, scraped up handfuls, held them under my nose to smell them. It was so strong, so foreign, that smell. That's when I understood what some people say, that there is a piece of Earth in all of us, so we know where we came from.

Six smacked me on the arm. Hard.

"Come on," she whispered, angry at me for stalling.

I shook the dirt off my hands. "Where are the potatoes?" I asked.

She pushed me for being stupid and laughed. "You're standing on them."

We dug with our hands, and filled the small 'tail-net sack she'd brought. All the time, she was looking around with wide eyes. I caught some of her anxiety and started throwing potatoes into the sack without pulling them away from the roots, from the soil.

Then there was a noise, loud as thunder but strong and clear like a feeney-bug screeching in your ear. It was so sudden I dropped down, wondering what was going on, but Six jumped up.

"Run, Seven. Run now!" she said, already running, but I was too scared to get up, and squeezed myself into a ball. That's what saved me. There was a whistling noise followed by a bang, and something picked her right off the ground and threw her over like a straw in the wind.

I ran to her on my hands and feet, keeping low. Her eyes, still terrified, stared up at the stars. A light as bright as day swept over us, and I saw the glint of metal and blood on her neck.

"STOP RIGHT THERE. DO NOT MOVE!" shouted a voice that roared from all directions at once. I don't remember climbing the wall, but I remember falling hard on the other side. I didn't notice that I'd twisted my ankle until I hobbled into Camp, the fires blurring from my tears. One and Mama tried to comfort me. They said that she wasn't dead. "The 'Nists shoot you with sleeper-darts, and the next day you wake up."

But something must have gone wrong because, next day, we waited at the Colony Gate, but nobody came out to negotiate. Nor the next day. After a month had passed, we sang the songs of the uneaten dead for her. Nobody said so, but I felt like I had murdered her myself. They said: "you didn't know. It's not wrong you ran away. You didn't know she wasn't dead." But I knew it was wrong, and I was a coward. I told myself that I should have stayed, and then she would still be alive.

I saw Jason again four years later. It was early Spring. I know it was, because we had just changed our evening-songs in anticipation of ikthar-spawning. I had two (my Third and Fourth) that were old enough, but had not yet learned the dibbling, so I was helping them memorize the songs. Fifth was being cranky, and I had her on the breast. I was a susan for whom breastfeeding delays the brooding, so I was giving her the breast often, because I wanted a birthgap before my Sixth.

So if I hadn't been standing and rocking Fifth, I would have missed seeing him among the delegates. But there he was. He had grown, and grown hairier, even on his face.

I couldn't get away until evening-song was finished, but as soon as I could, I made my way back to One's hut. She was negotiator, now that mother was gone. Several of us stood outside the fern-reed hut, listening through the gaps in the walls.

There were seven of them in the delegation. Him, two dark 'Tinu women, one of whom was doing the talking, two men, one short and dark-haired, the other tall and pale with silver hair in a braid, and another: a woman who looked just like us, like a susan, only she was tall and slender like a reed, and her feet and hands were like bundled twigs. I must have been staring at her because she looked my way and stared back. I was reminded of the stories of Mama Death the way her skull showed right through her skin. She was dressed like Mama Death, too, in a dress like a shroud.

As I watched, she bent over and confided something in his ear. He looked up and saw me and nodded. But there was no recognition of me. They turned back to One, whom they called "Lady" during negotiations, because she speaks for the village.

"We can only take your word for it, though," One said to the 'Tinu woman. "Please understand, we mean no disrespect, and we know your organization has come with friendship in mind, but this is a lot of trust for us to give."

"I think you will see the effects within a year, Lady," she replied.

"And will we start to look like her?" One asked, pointing to the thin susan. "Is that the picture of health?"

The thin susan looked down, as if struck, and Jason replied for her. "Lady, you misunderstand. My wife has chosen the regimen. She doesn't need to use the ironware."

"That's comforting. And a little too convenient. There are other metals, not so beneficial. How do we know this isn't another 'Nist ploy to limit our numbers? It's far from the first time."

The thin susan spoke. "Things have changed. There's a new council in the Colony, and we don't have that policy any more. Susans are free to leave... and to join."

"And I suppose you are the proof," said One.

"Yes," she smiled when she said it. "I was allowed to join. I am twenty-three and I have had no daughters." There was such a hubbub after she said that, that I was unable to hear anymore. But the negotiation ended soon after, and the little ones needed me.

Later that evening, while I was rocking Fifth and singing to the little ones to help them sleep, One came in. She was upset.

"Six. She's alive," she said, but it was without joy. Before I could ask, she hugged me tight and cried into my shoulder, so I was comforting both babe and older sister at once, while the other little ones watched in sleepy wonder. Six is alive, was all I could think, alive, but what's wrong?

When she could get breath to speak again, she told me. "It's her. The thin one. She's our Six. And her 'husband'..."

She looked me in the eyes, watching me understand what she was saying. I said, "Yes, I know. It's the boy, Jason. Grown up. The one we pawned. I recognized him." But my mind was trying to see our sister in that emaciated skattle-bug creature... I couldn't see it.

"It's sick, and it's wrong. She... starves herself. For him."

"He tells her to?"

"She says 'no', but I don't believe it."

"But why?"

"She says it keeps away the brooding."

"But she's like a thing almost dead."

"That's how it works. Just enough food to keep alive, but not enough for a pregnancy."

"So it's true, they've found a way."

"A way we know already. A horrible way."

She stared at me for a while, swallowing the dryness in her mouth. When she spoke again, it was without emotion. "They want to meet the witches. They have a proposition for them."

"Do you know what it is?"

"They are saying we can return."

"All of us?"

"Only if we do the same. If we agree to the 'regimen'."

"You said 'no', didn't you?"

One sighed, and pressed her palms against her belly. She was brooding her Fourteenth. She had thought she was finished after her Twelfth two years ago, but it was only a birthgap. "It's not for me to say. I want to say no, but it's too big a decision for one negotiator. I don't have the right."

"But who's going to be their guide?"

A sly smile at that. "Is there anyone more appropriate?"