Laframboise Clouds of Phoenix (WOW Stories)

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-988339-49-8
Verlag: Echofictions
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 250 Seiten

Reihe: WOW Stories

A threat written in the sky. A budding colony marked for death. A girl no one takes seriously.
Blanche, a paraplegic girl walking in a cobbled-up exoskeleton, spends long hours watching the strange clouds dancing in the Phoenix sky. She soon realizes that their coordinated figures signal a threat. Alas, the adults building their city discard her concerns. Even her shy sister Lupianne worries more about the oxygen plant's dropping quotas and her similarly failing social life...
Then, as the cloud dances grow more complex and the temperatures rise to never-seen-before levels, the sisters must join forces with a despised artist to save their budding settlement from total eradication.
If you like stories featuring a disabled heroine and her much put-upon sister going against family and dangers, you'll love this clever planet-opera.
Get Clouds of Phoenix to discover the strangest alien contact ever described in science fiction!
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The French version of this novel received the 2001 Cecile Gagnon Award for best first YA novel.
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'We can only be fascinated by the powerful images
born from the descriptions, by the originality
and coherence of her universe (...)'

-- Le Devoir
«An excellent introduction to science fiction
and to a number of questions about the environment, 
social relations and communication.»
--Hélène Marchetto, 
Les vagabonds du rêve

Autoren/Hrsg.

Laframboise, Michèle

Leseproben

1 _______________________ The Dreamer in the Ruins
BLANCHE RAN AS FAST AS SHE COULD. Which was: faster than anything on the planet. Her slender arms waving like a bird’s wings, her legs pumping the ground eight times per second, she inhaled the saline air flowing from the distant sea. The overhead sky was the color of tender grass, a reverse pasture grazed by a herd of fluffy sheep. In a strong contrast, the mineral land replied with tawny shades of honey, oranges, rusty reds, ash grey… Jumping from a crumpled wall to another, the girl dashed across the ruins sitting downstream of the new town. Her city harbored the builders of the future Phœnix, as the mayor affirmed at every New Year banquet. Phœnix, her home. The planet was named after her unique continent, its shape suggesting a great bird raising his beak as to defy the water. The bird shook away some feathers, forming a string of archipelagos. Along is vertebral spine, a mountain range dominated the highlands. A tiny cut on the bird’s neck, the valley inhabited by the colonists enjoyed a temperate climate. The ocean thrived with indigenous life, which had yet to take over the firm ground. Blanche soon found herself on the highest point of the dead city: the temple. At least, that had been how the archaeologists named this abstract-patterned floor, surrounding a high table carved into black polished stone, like the sacrificial altar of the ancient religions. In a single leap, the young pioneer reached the top of the massive block. A quick look to her oxygen puffer light showed a dark green circle. She had more time left to trot outside the Bubble that enclosed the town. Phœnix might be classed as an open world, but the oxygen mass counted only for a hundredth of the atmosphere, not enough to breathe. The planet’s rating, O-, reflected the scope of the terraforming effort needed. Phoenix had a lesser note than the “P” planets, soft-climate paradises where any patch of land was disputed for fortunes. However, living on Phœnix was more enjoyable than squeezing under the pressurized domes of the closed worlds or in the floating cities of the gaseous giants. Calypso, a G4 rated star, solitary and inconspicuous, has just risen, her light veiled in a milky halo. This halo was due to a thick dust layer hovering in high atmosphere. Those particles, diffusing the green wavelength, generated the sky color. Blanche crossed her long legs, a tricky task considering the intricate framework of metal, pumps and pistons around them. Straps rose to her shoulders and encircled her waist to keep her inside the apparatus. She used her basin and torso to direct the crude roboservers inserted in the mechanical joints of the frame. Clumsy at first, when her father had fitted her with the contraption, her moves had become as natural to her as brushing her hair. Those mechanical “overalls” enabled Blanche to run, fast. Only a full speed off-road vehicle could catch up with her… if she let it. A playful wind lifted her long hair strands, trying in vain to steal them. Blanche took out a nutrient bar and nibbled at the sweet chocolate and wheat savor. This was her own precious moment of solitude. Her gazed traveled over the low walls, the remains of razed habitations. Here and there, spikes wearing red, orange and sky green ribbons warned the rare walkers of the presence of treacherous hidden wells and other dangers. The dead city had no name. The crews that had mapped, analyzed, dissected, memorized it had long since departed towards more exciting challenges. No scripts graced the arches and the murals. The best translators had tolled in vain on the abstract patterns covering the floors. No tool, no tombs helped reconstitute the life of its inhabitants. No clue hinted to the nature of the cataclysm that had annihilated the city. Eons ago, three planets circled around Calypso. The two sisters of Phœnix remained as thin asteroid belts that the courier shuttles cautiously avoided. Which raging war had destroyed this city? Because the adults considered her too young to understand, they never mention in front of Blanche the ongoing war that the Gayan Alliance was leading against a rival race, the mysterious Gardeners. But she had listened in to some conversations. Blanche paused, imagining the strident rash across the sky, or explosions gouging the ground. But, outside the breeze gusting between two rocks, the only sounds she heard was the chattering of the Ubu River, flowing down below. In front of her, the valley broadened as to offer the dead city to the plains. The river traced a series of meanders where sand and stones snatched from the landscape accumulated. Then, the Ubu split in a dozen streams brimming over the delta before escaping into the ocean. Blanche ate the wrapping of her bar, enjoying the marshmallow taste, and chased it down with a few gulps of treated water. She lay on her back to look at the clouds. Three pale filaments drifted, strands of hair frayed by strong high-altitude air currents. She knew that over the sky, a more glacial void stretched, an infinite blackness where Phoenix and Calypso danced like tiny dust grains. A dizziness fell over her. The young girl felt that, any time now, her body would loosen itself from the rock and fall in this endlessly green void, ripping the frail threads of cloud. Then, the first dancers appeared. They came from the eastern highland. Their forms reminded her of spinning tops enclosed in a disk of ice crystals. Their rotation generated a long tail spiraling down, burdened by the weight of agglomerated crystals, as if the clouds tried to reach the land. An impossible errand, since the dancers stayed high in the atmosphere, where atoms got scarce. Now, they were eight, nine, ten, eleven… She smiled broadly at them. * A GRAVELLY VOICE called overhead. “Speaking again to the clouds, Blanche?” Blanche’s eyes blinked open. Six slender polymerized steel legs had made a cage around her, holding the squat body of a spider. She must have dozed off while watching the dancers. Not a serious problem: in case of prolonged sleep, her oxygen puffer would have warned her in time to return to the Bubble. The metal spider stepped aside. The legs folded down in a hiss of hydraulic joints, lowering the abdominal seat to the ground. His hand on the sole command, a man clad in a brown overall looked at her from mischievous eyes. Blanche greeted him with a broad smile. Sabian was the only adult not all worked up and ranting all day about schedules and quotas. A rare thing on a burgeoning colony, he moved around on his own runner, a freedom that many other coveted. “I saw you from afar,” he said, using the intrafamilial form of address that Blanche appreciated. “I thought that here would be a good place to work.” He had come here to paint, of course. A gush of wind pushed grey strands from his brow. Sabian was also the only man on Phœnix over fifty standard years old. Raising his hand as a shelter, he looked up, tiny wrinkles fanning from the corners of his eyes. “The dancers are already here? Well, I’m late!” He jumped from the seat and landed on his boots, a lithe move many younger men would envy. Sabian cast a triangular cushion to the ground. Three legs popped up, inserting themselves between the tiles. The man sat on the mechanical stool, grateful for a little stability after being shaken by his spider’s gait. Following his habits, he would stay here without moving at least half an hour, before pacing the ruins for inspiration. Blanche left him to roam the ruins on her own. There was a lot to discover, she was certain of it. She took precautions not to fall in the wells or trip over a raised angled stone. While descending the unequal slope from the temple, she could guess at the geometry of the houses foundations. Metal beams had held the stone houses together at a point, but whatever had killed the city had melted the supports, leaving the low foundations in place. Most bases had been covered by scattered bricks, but the teams of archeologists had cleaned out a few of the habitations in the hopes of finding some usable alien tech, or some jewels. They hadn’t found anything besides mineral artifacts: the table, some marked slabs, signs on the walls. They never found any doors, nor windows. Blanche imagined the unknown beings hopping over the base of their wall to land on the roof and descend to the living area. * WHEN SHE RETURNED from her exploration, she found her friend installed before the graceful curve of a triple portal. His veined hands brushed over his pad, fluttering as bird wings. He was fashioning a series of clouds roaming high over the portal. He used a fan brush, its magnetic points reacting with the screen cells of the pad to recreate the woolly spirals of the dancers. Blanche bent over his shoulder to get a closer view, fascinated by such a sophisticated instrument. One of her long strands swept the surface, sprouting a lace of dark patches. The young girl backed up in alarm, her face flushing red. But the artist erased her mishap with his thumb. “Do you want to draw?” he asked, smiling. Blanche pointed an inquiring finger on the existing sketch. “Oh! Don’t worry; this one will wait in memory.” Elated, Blanche put her hands on the screen and began to draw a cloud. The task soon got...