Archive for the ‘Edd Vick’ Category
short they were, and murky-eyed
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
They are not the telegenic aliens of popular fiction. But they have an interstellar empire. They have space travel.
The aliens came to Earth four years ago. It was an accident Hubble even picked them up at all. Their envoys contacted every President and Queen and whatever on the planet at the same time, all the way down to Lichtenstein, Monaco, and Sealand. Representatives are exchanged, the aliens sit politely through our plays, speeches, and presentations. They exchange philosophical ideas with us, and entertainments. But no science.
No secret of interstellar travel.
And then they don’t go away. Their spaceships sit in orbit; no new ones appear. If they communicate with their own systems it is in some secret way. Why do they stay here and make small talk when they could show us the stars? When they could go back to those stars themselves? All of our attempts to examine their ships are rebuffed. We grow restless.
The meeting commemorating their fourth anniversary on Earth is in Lisbon this time, and since this is a celebration the human’s ambassador Yelena brings her children for the first time. Humans have finally decided that the aliens are not hostile. A bit slow, them.
She enters holding the hands of her twins, Izabel and Joao. The aliens and the seven-year-olds regard each other gravely. Joao clutches his mother’s skirts while Bella advances to touch fingers, greeting the alien’s leader. They are the same height, which seems to appeal to all of them, even Joao who darts forward to hold hands with his sister.
The adults, snubbed, gather in their cliques and chat. Yelena backs away to watch. After a time their leader beckons her.
“Offering travel to these ones,” he says. “Aring to be emissaries from your world to ours.”
Joao backs to Yelena, and Izabel bites her lower lip, looking excited. She’s about to get a “Can we, Mama?” out of the child.
“We have offered envoys,” Yelena says.
“Too old,” it says. “Aring long journey.”
“Long–?”
“Aring seventy years journey,” says the alien. “Nothing aring able to going faster than light, of course.”
By now a ring of humans has gathered, and a moan goes up. Someone says, “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Not wanting to disappoint you,” says the leader. Another alien pipes up with, “Also, hoping you might thinking lightspeed canning be broken, and doing it.”
Truth and Beauty
Thursday, September 11th, 2008
Dahlia and Verbena Algonquin were sculptors. They were sisters. Joined at the shoulder, Verbena used her left hand to shape truth and Dahlia her right to create beauty. Angels and devils, heroes and monsters, the sacred and the profane all took shape from clay or marble or bronze.
On a Monday, Ziff Parkinship came to call. “I’d like a statue of my dead wife,” he said, offering such a great sum that they agreed on the spot.
In the privacy of their studio, Verbena and Dahlia examined the photos he had provided. Verbena turned them this way and that, even upside down. “Strong jaw,” she said. “Intense gaze. I can work with this.” Dahlia took the photos and held them, now near, now far, even flipping them to search for inscriptions on the backs. “Flawless skin,” she said. “Perfect features. She will be gorgeous.”
They built an armature and brought out their clay, sprinkled it with water, and set to kneading it. Verbena used her left hand to work on the right side of the sculpture, Dahlia her right to shape the left. Slowly they walked around the low pedestal on which the sculpture stood, examining it from all angles. From rough mass to fine detail, the very image of Olivia Parkinson came to life under their gifted hands.
Their hands were precise in the steps that followed: the plaster negative, the wax positive, the addition of the sprues, the ceramic coating, the melting of the wax, the pour.
Ah, the pour. Bright molten bronze exhaled into the shape of a woman. When Dahlia and Verbena cut excess metal from Olivia Parkinson, the statue shivered so that a sharp edge cut one of the sisters’ fingers. As she snatched it back, the other held up a calming hand. “Be still,” they both said.
Ziff Parkinson arrived on another Monday to pick up his statue. He examined it from every angle, walking around and around the pedestal. “Well,” he said, and “Yes,” he said, and “Very lifelike,” in a tone that meant anything but.
Dahlia pursed her lips. Verbena glared. Finally, one of them said, “She is exactly as she was in life,” and the other said, “No more, no less.”