TOBACCO  WORDS
by Yves Meynard
____________________________________
Taken from: Year's Best SF 2
Edited by David G. Hartwell
Copyright © 1997 by David G. Hartwell
ISBN 0-06-105746-0

eBook scanned & proofed by Binwiped 11-30-02 [v1.0]

When it rained over the town, Caspar would open his mouth to let the drops fall in and wet his dead tongue. He ran through the streets, his head tilted back, staring at the roil of clouds, letting the rain fall into his mouth and his eyes.
He would run down sloping Boar Street and reach Maar Square, where he would let his accumulated speed bleed away in bone-jarring steps until he was strolling, his head still tilted as far back as he could. He would wander to the left, navigating by the sight in the corners of his eyes. Passersby stared at him, but he did not notice; he was too used by far to being stared at.
Of all places in the town, he liked best the street that opened to the left of Maar Square, because it was a narrow and twisting street, and it was full of tiny workhouses for the town's confessors. Every workhouse had a big window in front. By tradition the confessors sat at the window, in their extravagant confessors' clothes.
When his sister wasn't busy, she'd open the door of her workhouse and let him in, give him a tiny mug of hot chocolate to drink. She would pat his head when he was done and tell him to go home before he got too cold.
Once as she was letting him out he almost ran into a sinner, a man wide as three normal men and nearly twice as tall, with a face like a tape star's perched atop it all.
"What's this, sister, you do little boys, now?" The man's voice was deep but melodious.
"He's my brother, and you'll apologize now if you want absolution." He had never seen his sister truly angry before; he was fearful that the sinner wouldn't apologize, and of what she would do then. But the big man had said, "Y'r pardon, little master. No offense meant." Caspar had nodded in acknowledgement and left.
Looking over his shoulder, he had seen the door closing on the sinner's huge shadow, the window opaquing a second later. He had lingered, curious. He had heard laughter from behind the door after a while, and then screams, and then sobbing. Then he had run for home, not wishing to meet the man again.

Home was one of the two hundred and fifty identical houses in the town. Grandfather, who had owned it all his life, had refused to alter its exterior. He was very much a man of regulations, was Grandfather, a man who took very seriously his duty to the Fleet, even though he had been retired twenty years and more; and official regulations of the Fleet stipulated that the houses of the Town remain unchanging through the years. In practice, people made subtle alterations, which the Town censors did not object to. But Grandfather was a man of principles.
Even inside, regulations dictated much of the decor. Standard-issue furniture, standard-issue conveniences, kept nearly pristine from constant maintenance. Walk into the Moe'n house, and you could not tell when you stood in time.
The only exception to the rule was the large painting that hung over the chimney in the living room. It showed a group of people, standing in what seemed a clearing. They were talking, some laughing. One was about to catch a large ball that had been thrown to her from a point outside the frame. The metallic wall of a large building could be seen to the left. No one's house held such a painting, and for many years it had been to Caspar a source of disquiet and obscure pride both.
The painting had as a matter of fact been a source of conflict within the family. Caspar's father objected to it, but never in words. Caspar, perhaps because he was without speech himself, could read his father's thoughts and feelings plainly enough in the set of his shoulders and the play of his face.
Matters had stood at equilibrium for some time, when Karl came into their lives and troubled the waters. Karl was Flikka's admirer, and he courted her with all due process. He seemed like a fairly good match: he had been cleared to breed if he chose, during the next ten years, and was a kind and gentle man. Flikka acted cool toward him, yet Caspar could tell she was really interested.
However, when Karl finally won an invitation to dinner with the family, he saw the painting and made the error of trying to work it into the conversation.
"Herr Moe'n, that is a very nice work of art you have on display in the living room."
Grandfather lifted his eyes from his soup and said, in a very dry voice, "That's not a work of art."
"I don't understand," said Karl, and all the while Flikka said shut up, shut up please with her eyes and chin.
"It is a live video feed from a ship," said Caspar's father. "Maintained constantly, at a high cost."
"A cost I choose to bear," said Grandfather.
"A live feed? But the image is completely motionless."
"Their time-slope is almost vertical," said Caspar's father. "It currently stands at something around one second to the year, and it's steepening. They've been on their way for over thirty years, local time. A voyage of exploration outside the Galaxy. You see, my father's wife is on that ship. That's her, about to catch the ball. If you waited another year you'd see it make contact with her hands. Wonderful, isn't it?"
"You will close your mouth, Diet," said Grandfather. He had been Security and his voice kept the overtones of command.
But Caspar's father had rebelled against Grandfather when he'd chosen to become Maintenance, and he replied: "No, I won't. Your stupid wife is dead, dead to you as if she'd been drowned in the North Sea."
Grandfather had risen from his seat then, white mustache bristling. He might have been funny if everything in his body had not shouted with a rage so vast it could not be encompassed. Caspar's father rose in his turn, threw his bowl of soup into a corner where it smashed with an explosion of steaming liquid, then stalked out of the room.
"Please leave, Karl," said Flikka. "I don't want to see you inside this house again."
Karl rose and left the room in turn. Caspar, as if obeying the dictates of a complicated dance, followed him out, leaving only his mother and his sister at the table.
The young man had stopped on the porch; his fidgeting said he was confused, reluctant to go down the steps to the street, and thus admit defeat. When he saw Caspar come out, he grunted with something like relief. He sat down on the second step from the bottom and motioned for Caspar to join him.
The boy sat on the third step, so he was even with Karl. It was getting cold already, and his crippled hand hurt him. He cradled it in his whole one, rubbing the twisted fingers gently to ease the ache.
Karl lit a cigarette, drew on it. "She's a strange girl, your sister," he said. Caspar shook his head no. "Well, maybe you know her better than I do. Think she's gonna stay mad at me?" Again Caspar shook his head no. "I don't think so either."
Karl sighed. Caspar was looking at him with an imploring look on his face. "What?" said Karl. Then he understood and handed him the cigarette. Caspar took it carefully in his left hand and brought it to his lips. He took a drag, let the smoke fill his lungs, and bubble up to his head. He did it once again before Karl took the cigarette back.
The cigarette worked its customary magic. Something loosened in Caspar's head, and he felt his dead tongue come back to life. He could speak now; his mouth was full of tobacco words. He made himself speak, telling Karl all he wanted to say.
It all came out the same, of course, ahhuunnh-hah, hunnb, hunnh-huunh, meanings and sharp exhalations, all the words he would ever be able to speak. Karl could not, no one could, ever understand them, but Caspar knew what they meant and that was enough for him.
He looked at Karl and Karl was looking back at him, actually listening at the tobacco words. Caspar grew excited, started another sentence, and suddenly found he was weeping. Karl patted his shoulder.
"Hey, it'll be all right, you'll see. Okay?" Those words were like the tobacco words, bursts of sound without intrinsic meaning. It was Karl's face that spoke, and Caspar loved him at that moment. He told him he'd be a good husband for Flikka, in tobacco words, and Karl smiled at him. He offered him another drag on the cigarette, but Caspar shook his head no.
They waited in companionable silence for a time, but Flikka did not come out, as both of them had hoped. Eventually Karl stood up.
"I've got to go home," he said. "We're heading out onto the Sea at daybreak tomorrow. Tell Flikka—sorry, Caspar. I mean, I'll be gone for almost a week. I'll come visit you when we dock again, okay?"
Caspar nodded yes.
"You know . . . even if you don't go to school, I could teach you to write." Karl looked embarrassed as he made his offer. Caspar smiled and shook his head no.
"No pressure, kid. But if you ever want to learn, I'll be glad to teach you." He ruffled Caspar's hair. "Get inside, you'll catch cold." Then he went off down the street, the set of his back saying I love her but sometimes it's so very hard.

Starships came once a week or so, and stayed for several days while the sinners took shore leave. Although what they mostly needed was confession, there were also restaurants, showhouses, a casino, and several game halls in town. As he was still a child, Caspar was officially barred from the latter two, but since a cripple was considered lucky at the gambling tables, he'd sometimes get invited inside by some sinner who wanted a charm. He liked the flashing lights and the dizzying smell of neurojoss from the sticks smoldering in black crystal holders.
Once, a woman, whose arms were double-elbowed and reached down to her ankles, had kept him with her for an hour and won a small fortune. She'd taken him afterwards to the fanciest restaurant in the town and he'd gorged himself on cake until he was sick to his stomach. While the woman had been gone to the bathroom, a young waiter had bent down over Caspar and threatened to tell his parents what he was doing. The trembling of his upper lip and his furious blinking said how much he was afraid of the deformed little boy, and so Caspar had made a cabalistic gesture with his crippled hand and the waiter had retreated in near-panic.
He had all his life to waste: he would never go to school, never work, never breed. Station would lodge, clothe and feed him until he died. It was his right and his curse, and he no longer questioned it. He was twelve and looked no more than nine or ten, though sometimes inside he felt much older. He had lived his whole life inside the town, except for a short trip to a farm when he was five, but he had not liked the endless acres of plants growing in the dirt. Apart from that, there were only two other places in Station: the Sea to the north, which scared him, and the desert far to the south, where no one went save Engineering.
When starships came to Station they halted straight above the town; at night, you could see them far overhead, glowing shapes like far-away glass toys. Shuttles left the ships to land at the field, in the southwest quarter of the town.
When they landed, townspeople were there to welcome the sinners. Caspar was often among them, caring not that some townspeople resented his presence. The sinners were glad to see new faces, and often he got kissed or whirled around in the grip of some particularly huge sinner. He liked that; it made him feel more intensely alive, somehow.

Karl had been gone with the fishing boats two days. Flikka had forgiven him, and the way she set the plates on the table spoke of how she yearned for his return. No ship had come to the world from overspace, and so she had no one to confess. She played cards with Caspar, keeping a strict tally of their respective wins that extended back almost a year. A year during which a second had passed for the people in the painting, one of whom, if she was Grandfather's wife, must be Grandmother, although she was astonishingly younger than him—but those matters left Caspar befuddled and he preferred not to think about them.
They had been playing Hop-Jack; Flikka was distracted and Caspar had won three games in a row. He was busily dealing when Perle, who was Confession also, knocked at the door. Flikka rose from the table and let the young woman in, then they sat down together. Perle was used to Caspar and ignored him as if he wasn't there. He didn't rnind it so much since he could tell it was sincere disinterest, and not the hidden contempt most people felt.
"Fucking rain again," Perle said. She had a gutter mouth and a reputation for being loose. Caspar enjoyed her visits because she and Flikka always laughed loud, and gossiped outrageously. They let him listen because they felt he wouldn't understand, and besides, he couldn't repeat anything.
"Fucking rain, and cold. I'm telling you, it might damn well snow tomorrow," Perle said.
"They never let it snow. If it gets really that cold, they'll adjust the sun's output."
"I wish it would snow, just once. It's not the same if you just see it in tapes."
"You were just complaining about the cold. Make up your mind, girl."
"Ah, don't give me trouble, Flik. I had the shit-worst sinners the last ship and I'm still sore."
"That wouldn't happen if you didn't bed them afterwards."
"Hey. Just the cute ones, all right? You should try it sometimes; you're too much the prude, Flik. Besides, I had my cramps, so I didn't do nothing of the sort."
"So what got you sore?"
"It's this guy. Not one of the big ones, but tall, all spidery and thin, with a neck that didn't stop, you know? Nice eyes, though, kind of purple. Anyway, he comes in at the door, and I think this is gonna be an easy one, right? He doesn't look like he's got much on his conscience. So I let him in, we chat, and already his eyes are getting wet. I think, fuck, he hasn't had it for a long time, or it's worse than I thought. So I put him down on the bed, and hook him in, and I work him over, and out comes a little sin, then another. You know, I lied to my mother and made her cry, sort of thing. And then he goes quiet, and I think that's it, he didn't have anything else, it was like when you gotta piss in a hurry but all you have is a coupla drops.
"And then, shit, he bends backwards like a bow-and-arrow, and he gives this scream that stops up my ears, it's so loud, and he screams again, and he tears out from the fucking straps, and hits me one across the chest, it knocks my fucking wind out. I'm sitting on the floor, trying to catch my breath, and he's still screaming and twisting on the bed, and out comes the fucking biggest sin, the recorder's indicator goes off the scale. I stand up, and I'm still bent over, and he's bumping around on the bed, and I'm afraid the leads are gonna tear loose before he's done, and he begins to speak. He calms down just enough so I can get the restraints on him again, and I'm lying on top of him to add my weight, and I'm still out of breath, and I'm thinking I should hit the emergency switch, and he says, in my ear, the most fucking weird thing I ever heard.
"He says 'Forgive me, spirits of the Eld, for I have sinned against you. In the darkest phase of the long night, I entered my second mate's family sanctum and I modulated its flame so it would burn brighter for those of her sept. It was done out of love, this I swear. I admit my guilt. I beg to be absolved.' And I swear, those were his exact fucking words. I listened to the recording often enough, I know them by heart."
Flikka had crossed her arms and tilted her head. I don't know if I should believe you was what it said to Caspar.
"What did it mean?"
"Damned if I know, Flik. But I think it's a very, very old sin, you know? Something from the dawn of time, so old we can't understand it anymore."
"What's a soul that old doing hanging around over-space'
"Hey, you think you understand the great beyond, maybe? Nobody does."
"So you got a sinner with a two-thousand-year-old sin on his conscience."
"That's what I think."
"You gave the recording to Administration?"
"Yeah, but I duped it before, it was just too weird. I know, I know, it's illegal. Like nobody ever does it, eh?"
"What did they say?"
"Nothing. They'll review it when they have the time. Like next fucking year."

Two days later, around mid-afternoon, a starship came into orbit. When they heard the announcement over the radio, Caspar and Flikka interrupted their game of Hop-Jack. She went to her room to change into her work clothes; he went directly to the landing field.
It was warmer than it had been, and the sky for once was completely clear. Caspar ran tirelessly and soon reached the landing field. A shuttle was descending from orbit. Along with half a hundred others, he watched it touch down, scorching the ground with its engines. Afterwards, it stayed motionless for a few minutes, then extended wheels and began to roll slowly toward one end of the field. When it stopped again, a hatch opened and nearly fifty sinners came out.
They were mostly unmodified; only a dozen or so diverged noticeably from human-normal. The townspeople came forward to greet them, and the sinners greeted them with pleasure. Some asked for immediate confession, some wanted to go gambling; many sought bed partners, but did not say so in words. Caspar looked from one sinner to the other, smiling at all of them. Then he found someone very special. She was a young girl, some years younger than Flikka, and this was unusual. She was short, and she had reddish-blond hair that reminded him of his own. She was looking around delightedly. Caspar, grinning, came toward her.
She noticed him, smiled back, said "Hello, I'm Aurinn. And you?" Caspar opened his mouth and pointed to his dead tongue, shaking his head. As he had guessed, she did not pull back in disgust, but accepted him as he was.
"Well . . . can you show me where there's a park? I want to see plants growing in real earth."
He nodded with enthusiasm and took her right hand in his left one. He dragged her along through the streets until they came to the park he liked best, a small but lovely square of greenness. Aurinn knelt at the edge of the path and breathed the smell of the grass reverently. Caspar danced onto the grass; the girl stifled a scandalized gasp. "No! Don't . . . oh, that's right, you're allowed to do that here. Well. ..." And she joined him, a strange grin on her face. Then she stretched out on the grass and looked up at the sky. Caspar sat down next to her and peered down into her face.
"It's so nice to be outside again! Even though this isn't a real planet, it's almost like one. It's kind of like being on Earth. You've never been to Earth, have you? Neither have I. I was born on Wolf's Hoard, and I never traveled anywhere. Until now. I got a commission on the Callisto. This is my first voyage. See?"
She held up a pendant that rested on her chest. It was a squat metal cylinder, with a shiny disc at one end. She sat up, turned the disc toward him; then she stopped.
"Oh, wait. You've lived here all your life. I must be the ten-thousandth first-timer to show you her first punch-through."
Caspar shook his head no. Then he raised his clenched left hand, flashed it open twice, then showed two more fingers.
"I'm the twelfth one?"
He shook his head patiently, signed twelve again and pointed to himself.
"Oh. You're twelve years old." He nodded. "So," she said, "how many first-timers have you spoken to?"
He raised one finger and then pointed to her.
"Really? Well, then, d'you want to see the punch-through?" He nodded and smiled, and Aurinn activated the recording. On the disc appeared a small image, mostly black space, with here and there the hard pinpricks of stars. Then fields of color began to wash across the picture; the pattern of the stars distorted itself. Suddenly the blackness crumbled in an eruption of yellow light, blew away like flakes of soot. The image was all yellows and reds now, spiral patterns unfolding and getting constantly more intricate.
"This is overspace," said Aurinn. "You feel so strange when you punch through; like tingles all through your body, and then it's like you're hanging down over a pit that goes down forever— You want to throw up and laugh all at once, and sometimes it feels like you've lived a thousand thousand years and you're so old nothing has meaning anymore. ..."
She stopped speaking, words failing her. The pattern of her limbs, her trembling smile, the rhythm of her breathing, said It was the most wonderful and horrible thing I will ever experience. I never want to feel it again, and I can't wait until the next time.
The visual recording went on. The red-and-yellow spirals had become so intricate the whole field was a shimmering orange. Then the spirals coarsened, the image trembled, and black space began to show through flickering cracks, like inverted lightning bolts.
"We travelled for nearly a week, but that part's been compressed. It's all the same, anyway. Now this is just before we arrived. It was hard to find your station, it's so small and it has so little mass. See how we had to try three times before we punched back out? Now, we get it right." The disc showed a black egg against a yellow-and-red background. Inside the egg was a blazing dot of light and some distance from the dot a small sphere, blue on top, green around its waist, gray and tan on the bottom. "This is your world," said Aurinn. "It's so small I couldn't believe it at first. Captain said you could fit a million of them inside Wolf's Hoard."
Caspar watched the end of the visual recording. The ship achieved orbit around the sphere, which had now grown quite large. He failed to understand how any world could be a million times larger; he was sure that Aurinn had misunderstood her Captain's explanations.
The recording ended. Aurinn grinned at him and expressed a wish to see one of the games palaces. Caspar had a different idea. Since he could not speak it, he merely tugged on her hand and drew her on.
He led her across Maar Square and along the twisting street, until they reached Flikka's workhouse. Flikka looked at them through the window and motioned toward the door.
"Hey, no, I don't want to go there!" Aurinn was mildly upset. Caspar pulled again on her hand. "No, kid, I don't need to go there. I haven't got any sins on my conscience."
Flikka opened the door herself. "I'm free and at your service, sister."
"Sorry, Ma'am, but I don't need to be confessed. This kid seems to think so, and he won't understand."
"He's my brother Caspar. Are you saying you've already confessed?"
"No. I don't need any confession. When you're young, you don't get as many sins, and I'm only fifteen. So I didn't get any this voyage. I'm just lucky."
"Sister," said Flikka, with a worried frown, "confession isn't like getting a haircut. You don't take chances with it. Especially not on your first voyage."
"But I don't have any sins on my conscience! I don't have any of the symptoms. I tell you, I'm clean!"
Something in the slope of her shoulders spoke of fear and denial. Caspar grew very worried; he looked urgently at Flikka and tried to tell her she must not let Aurinn go.
"I believe you, sister. But my brother's still concerned for you. Why don't you step inside, and we can do a quick scan to show you're clean? It'll only take a moment, and besides, if you've been scanned once before, it's easier to get confessed afterwards. It will only be a minute or two."
Caspar could see Aurinn vacillating. Flikka had lied about the process being easier if one had been scanned before, but the young girl could not tell. Eventually she swallowed her fears and nodded acceptance.
They stepped inside. Flikka's manner was soothing and friendly; the girl relaxed slightly. Caspar did not know whether he should stay or not. He was afraid, but he didn't want to desert Aurinn. He swallowed his own fears and resolved to remain.
Flikka led Aurinn to the comfortable bed. She made Aurinn lie down, adjusted leads at her temples and on the crown of her head. The girl fidgeted. When Flikka pulled out the restraints, Aurinn protested out loud.
"It's okay," said Flikka. "Regulations, that's all. I won't tighten them, see? Just fasten them loosely, like this. Come on, sister, it's scary the first time, but you don't have any sins, remember? You'll be out of them as soon as I do the scan. Okay?"
Aurinn nodded reluctantly. Caspar held her right hand in his whole one and smiled reassurance. Flikka looked at him; her mouth twisted and her eyes said 7 shouldn't let you stay here; confession is a private matter. But I need you to calm her down.
"Now shut your eyes, little sister. Don't worry, Caspar will stay by you."
Aurinn squinched her eyes shut. She was biting her lower lip. Flikka activated her equipment. The main screen showed a tangle of curved lines, all in various shades of green and blue. Flikka gauged it with an expert eye. "See? It doesn't hurt a bit," she said, but it was her turn to be worried now. Caspar could not tell what the lines meant, but it seemed to him sins ought to show up in hot colors, yellow and red like the flames of hell in the legends—He had once looked at old holograms meant to depict the torments of sinners in the afterlife, and the images had stayed with him vividly.
"Are you going to be done soon?"
"Just a little bit longer, sister. How do you feel?"
"All right. . . b-but it's like I want to cry."
"That's good. Everyone gets that. If you want, let it come. You'll feel better afterwards."
"But it's not a sin. I don't have any sins. I felt fine all through the voyage. ..."
"I know. And you never felt. . . strange in any way?"
"No, I told you." On the screen lines had appeared, strange lines, curved and recurved. They flickered, on and off. Strange lines in shimmering colors. Flikka twisted dials, pushed a button, and let one hand stray to the torso restraint. Caspar watched, wide-eyed.
"Tell me, little sister, just so I can finish the scan: did you do anything yourself that you're embarrassed about? Any sins of your own? You know I can't repeat them to anyone, so any secret is safe with me."
Aurinn started to blush. "Well. .. Just once. I was supposed to be on watch from ten thousand to twelve thousand, and I... I skipped the last three hundred. There was nothing to watch for, it was just pointless, so. ..."
"Of course. Just a little tiny thing. Not really a sin, if you ask me. Everyone does it." Though her tone remained calm, Flikka looked at the screen in alarm. She swung a metal hemisphere into position above Aurinn's head, then grasped the end of a restraint with one hand. Caspar understood the meaning of the gesture and clumsily took the end of the other strap in his crippled right hand.
Aurinn gasped. Her eyes opened, full of tears. "What's happening?" She breathed faster and faster. "What are you doing to me?"
"Nothing, sister." Flikka yanked on the restraint and drew it tighter. Caspar tried to copy her gesture but the strap slid out of his grasp.
"Don't! Stop that!"
"I'm afraid you do have a sin on your conscience, little sister. It has to come out."
"No! I don't have anything! I told you I didn't. ..." Aurinn tried to raise her arms, but they were held by the restraint. "Take the leads off! Take them off!"
"Don't fight it, sister. Don't fight it or it'll hurt."
"No ..." Aurinn's words strangled to a halt. Her eyes grew fixed, and suddenly a scream tore out of her. Her legs, only loosely held by the restraint, shuddered; her heels drummed on the mattress. Flikka cursed and tightened the restraint. Caspar tried to pull away, but his hand was held in Aurinn's, which was clenched so tightly he thought she might break his fingers.
Aurinn began to scream out words, one after the other, like an incantation torn from the depths of her being. Caspar could not understand the words; and what frightened him more was that he could make no more sense of her body's language. She yowled, as if she'd been cut by a blade, and suddenly there was a fecal stink as she voided her bowels. She screamed again, and urine began to stain the front of her trousers.
Flikka swore in panic, hit the emergency switch that summoned Medical. Caspar, desperate, tore his hand out of Aurinn's grasp and retreated to a corner of the room. Aurinn's face was an inhuman mask. And it said nothing, nothing intelligible to him.
And then words rushed out in a stream, words almost as meaningless as all that had preceded them:
"O forgive me, forgive me, great spirits of the Eld! I took my brother's life, I took it before our time was done, I took it and held it to me, and though he searched for it I withheld it from him! I took his life and held it to me, and it was done out of envy, this I do swear!"
And when the last word had left the girl's lips, she went completely limp. It was Caspar's turn to scream then, for her slack limbs said death, death. He forced air out of his throat, over his dead tongue, and out came a strangled mewling, and again and again. Then he put his crippled hand before his eyes and crouched in the corner. He heard the door open, people rushing in, a rapid-fire exchange of information, diagnostics, orders. "Heartbeat has resumed." "Give me pure oxy." "Pressure rising." "The ambulance is on its way." After a little while more people came in, then it seemed everyone left.
He didn't want to take his hand away from his eyes, ever. But then his wrist was grasped gently, and his hand drawn away. Flikka took him in her arms, and held him tight.
"You've been very brave, Caspar. Don't worry, she will live. Medical got to her in time."
Caspar trembled and coughed weakly.
"If you hadn't brought her to me, the sin would have killed her," said Flikka, as if she had understood the words he could not speak. "It would have struck all of a sudden, and she wouldn't have had any chance to live. You did right."
She wiped the tears from his eyes, and together they walked home, under a sky that was once again filling up with clouds.

The next days were strange for Caspar: his life seemed to have acquired a shape, something it had always lacked before. Hours were no longer something to be spent at random; now he had purpose. In the morning, alone or with Flikka, he went to visit Aurinn in the hospital, only for an hour at a time. The girl was unconscious, tubes and wires stuck in her. The doctors told him that she would live, and their hands said that they spoke the truth. But they also said that they found her case unusual, disturbing.
Aurinn's ship departed after three days. It could not, of course, afford to wait for an ailing crewmember. When Aurinn recovered, she would have to take hire on some other ship. Things would work out, Caspar told himself, and though he believed it, still he felt worry.
Afternoons he would spend with Flikka. She had requested a suspension of her duties from Administration and gotten it. The way she brushed her hair added that she had told them something important. Caspar supposed it had to do with the strange sin Aurinn had been saddled with.
Flikka and he played cards again, but her mind was never on the game. Caspar understood she waited for something, or rather someone. When Karl finally returned with the fishing fleet, Flikka's relief became obvious.
She went to the docks to welcome him home, accompanied by Caspar. Karl seemed exhausted from the voyage, but when Flikka greeted him with a passionate kiss, he shed his fatigue in an instant.
He insisted on treating Flikka and Caspar to a visit to the casino. Even Flikka could tell it mattered to him, and she accepted gracefully. Caspar, even though he never concerned himself with money, knew she earned several times as much as Karl did, and should by tradition have been the one paying. But Karl needed to show happiness by pleasing others. He bought Caspar a small stack of chips. Caspar bet them one at a time and lost again and again, but with the next-to-last chip he won fifty times his bet. Karl burst out laughing and cashed in the chips, putting every last bill into Caspar's hand despite his mute protestations. Caspar resolved he would buy Aurinn a gift with the money, when she recovered.
They parted outside the casino. The way Flikka knotted her fingers said she wanted Karl to ask to visit the next day; but his shy smile said that the memory of his last visit was still too fresh in his mind, and he dared not.
"So . . . maybe I'll see you tomorrow," she said.
"I'd like that."
Flikka kissed him goodbye, then went off. Caspar started to follow her, but Karl held him back. He whispered in his ear, "Does she really want to see me?"
Caspar grinned and nodded vigorously.
"Then I'll come over to your house around midmorning, okay?"
Caspar nodded again. Karl grinned in turn, then lowered his gaze and spread his fingers, which meant he wanted to give Caspar something to reward him. At a loss for anything better, he pulled out a crumpled cardboard pack and handed Caspar the last cigarette left in it. Caspar hurried to catch up to Flikka, hiding the cigarette in his pocket. He turned around once he'd reached her side; Karl had gone away into the night.

The next morning, he went to the hospital to see how Aurinn was doing. Flikka came with him. They were told that her condition had improved. She had regained consciousness the night before, but her grip on it was precarious. Lying on her bed, Aurinn was still stuck full of tubes and wires, but she breathed easier. They stayed with her a short while; she was not aware of their presence. The movement of her eyes under the half-closed lids asked again and again what? what? what? Caspar found it unnerving but he knew it for an improvement.
He was thinking it was time they left, when an alarm bell sounded throughout the building. Caspar thought it meant fire. Flikka opened the door of the room; they went out into the corridor, looking for the closest exit.
There was a low-ranked Security man at the emergency exit. He had stuck a bar through the handle, to prevent the door from opening. "Please go back," he told them. "Everyone has to stay inside."
Flikka was taken aback. "Isn't there a fire?"
"No. No fire. Security has given orders: everyone in town is to stay inside."
"What's going on?"
"They haven't told me, sister. But a code one-eight-eight means external threat. My guess is we're under attack from space. Now will you go quietly into your room and stay inside?"
Flikka and Caspar retreated to Aurinn's room and sat down. They looked at one another, astonished. "I don't believe him," said Flikka. "He said that just to get us back inside. It doesn't make any sense. If there was an attack, we'd be able to see or hear something. ..." But her eyes said she wasn't convinced of the truth of her own words. And, faintly, from outside, they could hear something: the same warning bell that pealed inside the hospital was echoed inside the rest of the town.
Caspar went to the window. The hospital was built close to the landing field. Caspar could look out over the field, along the receding perspective of the landing strip, into the cloudy horizon. When he saw a dot in the sky, at first he took it for a speck in his eye; but soon it had swelled into the silhouette of an incoming shuttle. He pointed it out to Flikka, who hissed between her teeth.
"No one was told about a landing. What the hell is this? Hey, look!"
There were Security at one end of the landing field, where normally townspeople would be standing to welcome the sinners.
"This is insane," said Flikka, "what the hell can they do against a spacecraft? Maybe it's a ship of criminals and Security wants to arrest them. ..."
The shuttle swelled in size, faster and faster; but there was no wash of sound, no glare. It glided to a stop in perfect silence and touched down not a hundred meters distant. It didn't look like a shuttle. It looked like a fish from the North Sea, grown monstrous and cast in metal. A door opened in the fish's flank, and a single figure jumped to the ground. It was the strangest sinner Caspar had ever seen: huge, and proportioned all wrong. The sinner began to run across the field, toward the hospital, moving in such a strange way it reminded Caspar of a cartoon. After a few seconds he understood why: the sinner's knees bent backwards instead of forward.
"My God," breathed Flikka, "this thing isn't human. Oh God, this is an alien."
It was like a geometric caricature of a human being.
Its knees bent backwards; its shoulders were like huge spheres; the torso was a truncated cone, melding into a dumbbell pelvis. The head was like a bullet, the features flattened and distorted. It had dead-white skin and wore dull green, skintight clothes. The feet were housed in supple gloveboots; they had a short palm and three long toes.
"We're not safe here," Flikka said suddenly. "We have to get into the basement."
Caspar shook his head no. Flikka pulled him away from the window. "Let's go, Caspar! We're in danger!"
But Caspar freed himself from her grip. He was staring at the alien, and a shiver passed through him: he could understand its body. It said Help Pain Pain Oh Help Pain.
Then Security caught up with the alien, barely ten meters from the hospital. Flikka, overcome by the spectacle, ceased trying to pull Caspar away.
There were six men and women, and each carried a short baton. By the law of the Fleet, no one on Station could carry a weapon, so that ship crews need never fear harm from Station personnel. The alien carried no visible weapon, but it was nearly half again as tall as a human and massively built. It slowed its progress, halted. Caspar could read the way it held its arms. It spoke of confusion, pain so great it twisted the mind nearly to rupture.
The Security people tried to form a ring around the alien. Their postures spelled uncertainty and desperate courage. The alien sprang into movement suddenly, smashed its arm into the chest of the nearest man. The man fell to the ground like a broken toy. The alien opened its mouth then and moaned like a bassoon, a weirdly beautiful sound. Its knees pumped up and down, and they said Pain Oh Please Pain Help Help.
And Caspar understood suddenly that this being was a sinner. A sinner overwhelmed by the sins it had picked up during the passage through overspace. A sinner driven to madness by the weight on its soul. Who would kill and kill again, unless it could confess and obtain absolution. And no one else could tell; no one else could read the being like he could. They only saw a monster from nightmares, something whose purpose could only be to destroy.
He wanted to explain this to Flikka, but his tongue was a dead strip of flesh in his mouth, and there was no way his hands could speak the words for him. He could have written it down, if he had ever bothered to learn how. He had been a stupid boy all his life. It was too late to make up for it.
The five remaining Security had bunched up in a tight line, trying to protect the entrance to the hospital. The alien moved toward them slowly, birdlike, one step at a time. Why couldn't they see they were going to die if they kept blocking its way?
Caspar felt his shame inside his belly; like a piece of metal weighing him down. He had to do something or more people would die, and it would be his fault. He had to speak, somehow. In desperation, he took Karl's cigarette from his pocket, struck a crimped match and lit the cigarette. He took a long, deep drag, let the smoke fill his lungs and bubble up to his head. Outside, the alien pounced on a woman, raised her off the ground and threw her against the wall five meters away. The last four Security tried to rush it, were scattered in all directions, torn and bloody.
Flikka finally snapped out of her horrified fascination. She grabbed Caspar and pulled him out of the room. He let himself be carried away. He was trying to talk to Flikka, but she couldn't understand his tobacco words.
Outside the room, there was confusion in the corridor.
The Security man was now at the end away from the emergency exit. He was trying, and failing, to keep order. Caspar's mind was working fast, but strangely. For the first time in years, there was no longer that little watcher inside his skull, that heard all his thoughts and judged them. He knew what he had to do, but not why he knew it.
He gauged his time, and when the right moment had come he yanked his crippled hand out of Flikka's grasp, then ran down the corridor toward the emergency exit. He reached it in a few seconds, pulled the bar out of the handle and opened the door. He heard Flikka's cry superimposed over the electronic wail triggered by the door opening. Then he was outside, just around the corner from the alien. Caspar took a last drag on the cigarette, then threw it away. He ran to the corner, then slowed down and rounded it carefully.
The alien was fifteen meters away, battering at the main doors to the hospital, still moaning musically. The Security personnel were scattered all around it. All the bodies said death. Caspar made himself ignore them and walk forward, to meet the alien.
Behind him, he heard Flikka screaming and running. He knew she would risk anything to take him out of danger; he had only a few seconds.
He spoke out loud to the alien, with tobacco words. He came to it walking, not running, palms held forward, trying to smile.
The bullet-shaped head turned toward him. The alien's body still shouted Help Pain Oh Pain. It faced him then, and suddenly it bounded forward and its huge hands grabbed him under the shoulders and raised him high. Caspar knew suddenly that he would be killed, thrown against the wall or torn apart. But it did not happen. The alien held him high, motionless. Caspar spoke again, in a thin strangled voice, all the tobacco words that filled his head. He promised the alien it would be helped, that his sister would free it from its sins. Hhuunnh, ahhuunnhhah, hunnh, hunnh-hah.
And the alien lowered him to the ground, gently. Still its body shouted Pain Pain Help. It took Caspar's crippled hand in its own, and looked at him with startling eyes, blue eyes, human eyes. It opened its mouth and spoke in turn, a succession of vowels with just the hint of consonants.
"Caspar ..." Flikka's voice, behind him. Caspar did not turn around to look at her. He pulled on the alien's hand gently, going toward the town. And the alien followed, towering over him, a figure from nightmare, its clothes speckled with human blood, yet tame, for the moment.
Caspar stretched out his whole left hand, beckoned Flikka with a twitch of the fingers. And after a few paces, he felt her hand in his. The alien turned to look at her, but did not otherwise react.
Now Caspar saw people coming from the town, more Security. He looked to Flikka, terrified that the alien would panic. She glanced back at him. He did not need to speak any tobacco words; this time she understood him. She cupped a hand to her mouth and shouted out: "Stand back! Let us pass! Don't come close!"
Security wavered, stopped, but did not disperse. They would still bar their way into the town.
She asked: "Caspar, where are we going? Do you know?" He nodded yes, vigorously. "Where? Where do you want to take it? Why is it following you? What did you do to it?" The questions came in a rush, betraying Flikka's terror at what might have happened to him. Caspar tried to say Slowly. Ask me the right questions only.
"Wait, wait." Flikka bit her lip, calmed herself. "You said you know where we're going. Did it tell you where it wanted to go?" No. "So you've decided?" Yes. "You want to take it someplace; someplace I know?" Yes, yes. "Our home?" No! "A public place." No.
Then it hit her. Her eyes widened. "You want me to confess it." Caspar nodded yes, weeping in relief. "Caspar, that's crazy." She spoke softly. Still the alien followed behind Caspar, a nightmare twice as tall as the boy who led it. Caspar signed no. "You think it's bearing a sin? But—oh God, oh God, wait, now I know. Oh God, you're right. Of course ..."
They were approaching Security. Still they stood in their way. Flikka raised her voice. "Let us pass. I am taking this being to confession."
"You're crazy," said the Security leader. "We won't let you into town."
"Our station was built to provide services to over-space crews. This being came down to be healed of the sins it accumulated in transit. By Fleet law, we can't refuse to confess it."
"This isn't a human being, and it's killed six people already."
"If you don't let us pass, it'll kill me and my brother, and you'll be next. For God's sake, man, think!"
Caspar felt panic. He told the alien it would be all right, it was being taken to be confessed. The huge body began to quiver with tension. The grip of the fingers that held his crippled hand tightened to a painful intensity.
At the last instant, Security moved aside and let them pass. They formed a semicircle in back of them and followed their progress. Flikka said, in a commanding voice: "I need ten meters of strong chain for restraints, and have Medical on standby, for what it's worth. Do it now." Caspar was astonished to see a Security man dash off to do her bidding.
Soon they reached Maar Square and went into the twisty street of the confessors. All the while, Caspar spoke to the alien, trying to reassure it. It had relaxed when Security let them pass, but it had been tensing up again.
Finally they were at Flikka's workhouse. Flikka opened the door for them. Caspar went inside; the alien bent its huge frame to enter. It saw the confession machines and uttered a terrifyingly musical scream. It loosed Caspar's hand, laid its body onto the bed; the frame had been built to accommodate even very large sinners, and only the lower half of its legs stuck out. Flikka came inside, staggering under the load of the chains. Moving purposefully, she passed length after length around the alien's body. She held her head at an angle that said she no longer felt any fear: her duties occupied all of her thoughts.
The alien suffered itself to be bound tightly. Panting, Flikka secured the chains with a heavy lock and went to activate the equipment. Her fingers depressed keys, adjusted sensors. A pattern of tangled lines emerged on the main screen.
"All right," said Flikka out loud, speaking to an invisible audience. "You see what I see. I'm picking up standard signs of accumulated sins. Potential very high, no structural anomalies." Caspar suddenly understood she must have activated a relay to Administration. "I'm going to follow standard procedure, except without any verbal contact with the subject. Activating probe."
She swung the metal hemisphere into position over the alien's head. Its features twisted around, it looked at her with its human eyes, and it made a flutelike gasping sound. It repeated it as she adjusted the controls. "Matrix responding normally. Potential still very high. I'm drawing the first one out."
When the first scream came, Caspar's eardrums felt it like a metal blade stabbing into his ears. Once he had been deafened, the rest were easier to take. The alien twisted inside its bonds, but they did not break. Its motions shook the bed, but the steel frame held. And after a moment Caspar realized that the constrained spasms were intelligible to him, far more clearly than the general posture. They spoke complete sentences.
I told a lie about someone I knew, so I could get a job in his place. And he had been the one who had told me about the opening. I'm so very sorry.
It was a human sin, weighing on an alien's soul. While Aurinn's sin, and the sin Perle had confessed, they were alien sins weighing on human souls.
The alien confessed another sin, then another, and another, and when the last sin had come out, it went limp and closed its eyes.
"Process complete." Flikka's voice was frayed, but strong. "Potential zero. Absolution has been obtained." She paused for a second or two, then added, "I'm removing the restraints."
Then, moving quickly, she undid the length of chain. Caspar helped her. The effects of the cigarette had faded by now, and his mouth was empty of all words.
When they had removed half the chain, the alien opened its eyes and helped free itself. It rose from the bed, then took Flikka's hand in his and made a gesture with the other hand. Caspar could not understand it; in fact, he could not interpret the alien's body language at all anymore. It was like looking at a statue.
The alien released Flikka's hand and went out of the workhouse. Flikka and Caspar followed, uncertain. Outside were thirty Security, looking determined. The alien halted, spread its arms wide, hung its head, raised one foot then the other, alternately.
The ring of Security left one opening, leading outside. After a while, the alien stopped its display, looked around itself. It moaned gently, like a snatch of song, and began slowly going back, toward the landing field. Security closed up behind it and this way it returned to the metal fish. Caspar and Flikka trailed the procession, unwilling to let the being out of their sight. It did not look back at them; Caspar did not know if he wished it had, or not. No one prevented the alien from going aboard. The access door shut behind it, and then the shuttle took off in an astonishing fashion, floating five meters off the ground without any thruster firing, then suddenly rising in a steep parabola, up toward orbit.

Caspar and Flikka were taken to confer with Administration. Flikka told all she had seen, repeated it several times. Caspar was questioned also, a long and unpleasant process. His neck soon began to ache from all the nodding and headshaking. Flikka protested on his behalf, but the interrogator did not relent.
After a long while, the questions ceased. The Administration woman heaved a sigh, shut off the audio/video recorder.
"Thank you for your cooperation," she said. "Please return to your residence now. If there is anything more, we will contact you."
Flikka's body had been speaking anger louder and louder throughout the interrogation. Now she let her words take over.
"I'm not going away. I want answers of my own, and now."
"You're lucky not to have been taken to carcery, Confessor Moen. Your actions endangered the whole of this station, and some Administrators wanted your head."
"Fuck them." Caspar started at the words. In Flikka's mouth they took on an intensity they never had in Perle's. "You know damned well I acted correctly. If it was a human who'd come down and killed left and right, we'd have had no recourse. Isn't that right? That's what I was taught in school: we serve starship crews, and their rights outweigh ours."
"We've been through this already. Please go home now. You've had a very difficult time and. ..."
"Answer my questions, Administrator. What did you learn about this being? You must have tracked the ship when it left. What happened to it? Tell me. Or is it that you're so low in the hierarchy that they didn't bother to tell you?"
The Administrator's mouth twisted in exasperation, a meaning which must have been plain to anyone. But then, surprising Caspar, she relented.
"It wasn't a ship that came down. It was only a shuttle; but you probably guessed that. The ship itself ... is fifteen kilometers long. It looks like nothing you could imagine. It can't, or won't, answer us. From time to time, it broadcasts gibberish at various EM frequencies. We have no idea what it wants, or where it's from. We're defenseless against it. That's all we know. Now please, please go home, and keep this to yourself. People have already been panicking, and we've had six deaths too many."
The mask had slipped from the Administrator's face and her weariness and concern were plain to see. Flikka lowered her gaze and left without further words, her hand linked with Caspar's.
When they entered the Moe'n house, the family fussed about them no end. Flikka recounted what had happened, but she refused to go into details. She seemed to have been won over to the Administrator's opinion now, and her hands said she wished she could stay utterly silent. Finally she broke free from her mother and father's attentions, and went to her room, locking the door.
Caspar was left the focus of attention, something he found unpleasant. He was asked a few questions, but everyone soon gave up, lacking the Administrator's persistence. When he was let go, he went to the standard-issue refrigerator and poured himself some juice, holding the pitcher in his left hand and clumsily steadying the glass with his crippled right. In the living-room his parents and grandfather were talking in lowered voices. From where he was he could just see the painting, in which Grandmother waited, waited, waited for the ball to reach her hands. Suddenly, with a queer shock, he remembered very clearly that at one time the ball hadn't been in the picture.
He ran up to his own room then, feeling bone-tired. He found he was crying, not for the Security who had died, but, strangely, for all those who had lived. He did not understand. He thought then, for the first time, of reading his own body, to understand what he said to himself. He looked at himself in the mirror above his dresser, but he could not make sense of what he saw. In the end, he crawled into his bed and fell prey to a sleep full of nightmares.
And in the morning, before the sun even came over the rim of the horizon, Security came for him and Flikka. The shuttle had returned. They were wanted.

There were three of the aliens now. They were utterly identical: size, shape, and colors. But Caspar could tell them apart; two of them shouted pain and terror from their bodies, while the third was as unreadable as a piece of stone. By that he thought to recognize the one he had helped yesterday. The aliens had been standing at the foot of the shuttle, almost motionless, until they saw Caspar and his sister. Then they came forward, and the absolved one spoke again in its music-like language.
And they proceeded as before. The aliens went with them to Flikka's workhouse, and one, then the next, were chained, confessed, absolved of the human sins that weighted them. Flikka knew fear this time, Caspar saw, she was no longer overwhelmed by what she did, and she could fully taste the weirdness of it.
But it went well, and eventually it was done. Flikka collapsed in a chair, drained. The aliens made gestures and spoke words no one could interpret, Caspar least of all. Then the first one came to him and took his crippled hand in his, and led the way out of the workhouse. The other two followed, and Security, and Flikka.
The aliens made their way back to the fishlike shuttle; then Caspar's hand was let go, and the three went inside. "They're going away, now," said Flikka in a tired voice. "They'll never come back, will they?"
Caspar did not know, and it hurt him deep inside, not to be able to know. It was as if some essential meaning had drained from the world. He waited in silence, along with the others, for the shuttle to lift off.
But then, the door opened again and one of the aliens came back out. It carried a bag on a strap across its shoulder. It put the bag down, opened it. Took out six strange objects of metal and lights, a meter and a half high, and set them on the ground. The pattern they made seemed familiar; then Caspar understood it was the pattern the bodies of the six dead Security had made.
Two more things the alien took out of the bag. One was carved, from some sort of wood, crimson with gold veins. It might have been a musical instrument; it might have been something else. The alien stepped around the pattern it had built and presented the wooden object to Flikka. She accepted it, keeping silent.
The alien took the last object from its bag then, and put it in Caspar's arms. Flikka hissed in astonishment.
Security shouted incoherently. Caspar, for the first time in his life, knew what it was to have one's hair stand on end.
It was a doll, nearly a meter high. A slim young girl, dark-haired, wearing multicolored robes and calf-high boots. She looked fully human, and she was warm to the touch.
Caspar looked up from the doll, and saw the alien moving back into the shuttle, and then there was no more delay: the metal fish rose from the ground and sped off into the sky.

Once Aurinn had recovered, Flikka and Karl rented a small boat and took her, along with Caspar, on a brief cruise. On their first evening, when the sun had slipped below the horizon and the North Sea lay all about them, they sat down on deck. Karl lit a cigarette and gave one to Caspar. Aurinn was shocked, then amused: on Wolf's Hoard, such practices were considered the depth of barbarity. Greatly daring, she tried a puff, and coughed herself hoarse.
When Aurinn had stopped coughing, Flikka said, suddenly and quietly, "I don't think they were aliens."
"How can you say that?" said Karl. "You saw them. No one except Caspar saw them from closer up. They weren't human. You saw their ship. ..."
"But we've all seen this." And she pointed to Caspar's doll, which was dancing slowly on the planks of the deck. The doll wasn't just a manikin; it moved, it looked about, it danced, at odd moments. The Administration had tried to take it from Caspar, but the doll had evaded their grasp, and finally, afraid of it, they had relented. Now it accompanied him wherever he went, a dream-toy, living and not.
"Karl, do you think they could have made such a thing in the few hours between our first meeting and their return? And even if it was possible, how can you explain that they looked so much like us? By any rational account they should have been completely different. We've both seen sinners who looked almost as strange. ..."
"You think they were human," said Aurinn. "But you said they didn't speak. And the sin that . . . that almost killed me ... it wasn't a human sin."
"Maybe, maybe not. Humankind is spread out so wide. Maybe somewhere, they've been engineering themselves into something . . . new. Different. I think that's what we saw: humans who've been altered so profoundly that we almost can't recognize them. People who were isolated from the rest of humanity for so long that they forgot many things ... I don't know. We can't really know, but that is what I think."
"And what is this, then?" asked Karl. Caspar's doll danced on the deck, long black hair flying, booted feet stamping a complex rhythm on the planks. "A toy? An idol?"
"Administration feared it was a spy; an information-gathering device. They thought it might be transmitting data back . . . somewhere. But what if it is, anyway? If we are coming into contact, whether it's with aliens or with a long-forgotten branch of ourselves—isn't it better that they learn more about us?"
"I'm sure Administration fears they'll use the information against us."
"I know. But the one that came down . . . one of only three crew for that huge ship ... it only killed when it was blocked. Caspar guessed, somehow, what it had come down for. The same as all of our crews: to be absolved of the strange sins it had picked up crossing overspace. And when it dies, its soul will dissolve into overspace and its sins will float there, waiting to be
snagged by a living soul, and perhaps then laid to rest at long last. ..."
The doll danced on, oblivious to Flikka's musings. Caspar rose and walked a ways toward the prow. The doll followed him, still dancing. Caspar drew on his cigarette, letting the smoke bubble up to his head. The doll spun and whirled, smiling, then slowed her dance into a courtly pavane. The others might speculate all they wanted, but Caspar knew what her purpose was. He knew that one day she would be able to speak, and that on that day the strangers would return.
He breathed in the smoke of the cigarette, and his dead tongue was loosened in his mouth. He spoke tobacco words to the doll. And, in the midst of her dance, she winked at him, to show that she understood.

-end-

About the author:

Yves Meynard, a French Canadian with a Ph.D. in Computer Science, writes in French and translates his own fiction into English. Along with Elizabeth Vonarburg and Jean Louis Trudel, he is a frequent ambassador of French-Canadian SF to English-language conventions. There is a small, but vigorous, SF movement up there that is acutely attentive to the British and American SF writers in the English language, and to the French traditions as well. It is in some ways more successful than the SF field in France—Quebec has two long-running SF magazines.
    Since 1986, Meynard has been publishing young adult SF novels and stories in French (the short fiction mostly in the magazine Solaris), and has won a number of French-Canadian awards. He is also coeditor of an anthology of Quebecois SF. In the early 1990s he began to send out his stories in English and had a story in Northern Stars, the anthology of Canadian science fiction, in 1994. His fantasy novel in English, The Book of Knights, is forthcoming in 1998. In the past two years he has published several pieces in Algis Budrys's magazine, Tomorrow, including this one. Meynard's SF is lyrical and filled with complex imagery, which gives it an atmosphere wholly unlike most English language SF. Some basic cultural attitudes are different, too. Yet Meynard remains interested in the traditional futures and alien worlds and technologies of science fiction. This story has one of the attributes of classic hard SF: true strangeness. It is about the drug, tobacco. It reminds me somewhat of Cordwainer Smith and in other ways of R. A. Lafferty.