TransVersions II

Cover Art for Issue #6 by Lorri McMullen.

Click on the small cover above to view full size colour cover. (284K jpeg)

Issue #6
Table of Contents

Front Cover Illo - Lorri McMullen
Back Cover Illo - Kenneth McCool
Some interior illustrations by GAK, Kenneth McCool, Lorri McMullen, Ursula Pflug, and Wolf Read.

Excerpts from Issue#6:

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Excerpt from "Shout of the Storm Riders" by Michael Coney

"Look!" shouted Yugu.

I joined him at the observation bubble. Tom crept overhead. A stormglider was plunging out of the darkness. Eurydice. I caught a glimpse of her as she swept past. Pretty, dark-haired woman; but at that moment, her face looked old.

"Storm-devil," said Yugu.

It dived after her like a hawk. It was a big one, maybe three metres across, almost spherical, rotating slowly, shedding sparks like a waved brand. Euridice flung her glider about as she dived, veering and banking and trying to throw the storm-devil off, but always losing height. I zoomed the bubble as she fell away, bringing her into close-up again. The storm-devil was within five metres of her tail assembly.

"It'll get her," siad Yugu.

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Excerpt from "The Last Day" by Dick Bird

It squats on the porch, flexing and arching its multiple legs. Its claws dig the wood with a crisp, tidy sound. Now here is a beast with a mind of its own; an opponent worthy of Fluffy. The cat hasn't seen it. The rules have changed, but the game goes on, hide and seek across the board. Her fur quivers, ears twitch toward it, her nostrils open to the new smell. If she stretched her neck, she'd see it over the board on the screen door, but she won't look, that's not her game.

Instead of ears and eyes and nose, the flea has antennae, cracking like whips toward the cat.

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Excerpt from "The Road" by Cathleen Thom

"I'm not sure the implications of all this," my brother Keegan said hesitantly, pushing up his glasses, a nervous movement I think he got from me. "But grandfather has become a road."

The announcement was met with some surprise, granted, but some of the elders had, I think, expected such a thing. From their faces, one would never know. You had to look for things with our elders, twitches of the brow, or whether grandmother Sarah pushed her hair back. It had become such a habit for her, she tended to reach up and twitch it into place whether it needed such ministrations or not. When she stopped, it was an important moment.

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Excerpt from "Snipe" by Tom Piccirilli

I swear if I ever get out of this cage of flesh and scales, I'll snap Cassidy's neck.

The stasis room is meant for safely containing radioactive soil samples brought back to the ship by the outrider cybernauts: they dispatch the specimens through the science wing's intestinal hull, and the automatoid arms separate, tag and process the samples for Murch and Briggs to study later.

But Cassidy's found a new use for the skeletal plasti-steel claw. He's much more computer literate than I ever gave him credit for -- during the night, he bypassed several of the lower security triggers and overrode the internal wiring functions, forcing current up the length of the rods.

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He can effectively torture me with the electrified retractile claw, and for a man who's supposed to be the team's Primary Contacts Relations Officer, he's got an innate talent for guessing weak spots: near the looser scales on my belly, the soft spot of membrane beneath the quills at the back of my elongated skull, and the quivering tip of my snout.

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Excerpt from "It Ain't All Broomsticks and Roses" by Sue Storm

The clock winked at me.

All day long I'd felt it staring, making the skin crawl on the back of my neck. It was one of those big white clocks that count off the seconds in constipated little clicks. Plain and ugly, like the kind they always had in school.

And now it was winking at me.

"Polly? You got the layouts done yet?" Karen poked her head into my office. I looked up at her, then back at my computer. The screen filled up with tiny pink hearts. I shook my head.

"Sam wants to see them before four. Oh yeah, and here's that card we're signing for Debra. Listen..." She stepped inside. Karen was tall and bony. If she were a man, she'd be called lanky. Unfortunately, the kindest term given to tall, ungraceful women like Karen was "gawky." She'd learned to make up for it, though, with her tongue. Karen cut down more people before breakfast than most folks did in a week. "...did you know she was pregnant? Poor kid, I wondered why this wedding thing came up so quick. Isn't it funny how here it is the 90s and some people are still living in the Dark Ages? I mean..."

While she talked, the electric pencil sharpener I'd shoved under my desk started murmuring, "Pretty legs, oh so nice, pretty, pretty, smooth lovely legs . . ." I kicked it. The thing yipped once and then fell quiet.

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Excerpt from "Bugtown" by Ursula Pflug

The Bugtown nexus is a warehouse in the middle of a six block radius of evacuated Chinatown territory, full of shoestring insecticide operations and street vendors. Many of the Chinese left with the evacuation; Lee stayed, and some of his family and friends. It is my friend Jayne who asked me to describe them this way, more truthfully.

"Why?" I say, "everyone trashes the Chinese."

"I know. I do it too. It's the stress. But you know it really isn't true, and there are, in any case, very few Chinese left to trash."

"Its just another way of dividing us."

"I know. But I'm afraid too."

"Afraid of what?"

"Of Lee."

"Me too. And afraid of Bugtown. Why are we more afraif of Lee than of Max?"

"Je ne sais pas. But if we go, maybe we'll find out."