Table of Contents

Introduction

To Drive the Cold Winter Away

Michael H. Payne

In Search of the Creators

Alan Loewen

The Rocky Spires of Planet 227

Mary E. Lowd

Defiant

Harwich Wolcott

Why Indeed

Pepper Hume

Come to Todor!

Fred Patten

You Are Our Lifeboat

Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen

The Animal Game

Vixyy Fox

Ashland’s Fury

MikasiWolf

Legacy

M. R. Anglin

Umbra’s Legion: Shamblers of Woe

Adam Baker

Umbra’s Legion: Where Pride Planted

Geoff Galt

Beyond Acacia Ridge

Amy Fontaine

One Day in Hanoi

Thomas “Faux” Steele

Welcome, Furries

Cathy Smith

Back Then

Frank LeRenard

Tortoise Who

Mary E. Lowd

I Am the Jaguar

Cairyn

The Promise of New Heffe

Kary M. Jomb

About the Authors

About the Artist

About the Editor

Other books by Fred Patten

Best in Show: Fifteen Years of Outstanding Furry Fiction (2003)

reprinted as: Furry! The World’s Best Anthropomorphic Fiction! (2006)

Watching Anime, Reading Manga:

25 Years of Essays and Reviews (2004)

Already Among Us: An Anthropomorphic Anthology (2012)

The Ursa Major Awards Anthology:

A Tenth Anniversary Celebration (2012)

What Happens Next: An Anthology of Sequels (2013)

Five Fortunes (2014)

Funny Animals and More: From Anime to Zoomorphics (2014)

Anthropomorphic Aliens: An Interstellar Anthology (2014)

The Furry Future: 19 Possible Prognostications (2015)

An Anthropomorphic Century: Stories from 1909 to 2008 (2015)

Cats and More Cats: Feline Fantasy Fiction (2016)

Gods with Fur: And Feathers, Scales (2016)

Furry Fandom Conventions, 1989-2015 (2017)

Dogs of War (2017)

Symbol of a Nation (2017)

Dogs of War II: Aftermath (2017)

What the Fox?! (2018)

Exploring New Places

Edited by Fred Patten

Exploring New Places

Production copyright FurPlanet Productions © 2018

Cover artwork copyright © 2018 by Demicoeur

Published by FurPlanet Productions

Dallas, Texas

www.FurPlanet.com

ISBN 978-1-61450-421-4

eBook ISBN 978-1-61450-447-4

First Edition Trade Paperback July 2018

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part in any form without written consent of the copyright holders. People, places, events, or organizations contained within these works are products of the author(s) imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real.

“Introduction” to this book and introductions to the individual stories by Fred Patten. Copyright © 2018 by Frederick Walter Patten. First published in Exploring New Places, edited by Fred Patten (FurPlanet Productions, July 2018).

“Legacy” by M. R. Anglin. Copyright © 2018 by M. R. Anglin.

“Umbra’s Legion: Shamblers of Woe” by Adam Baker. Copyright © 2018 by Adam Baker.

“I Am the Jaguar” by Cairyn. Copyright © 2018 by Ronald W. Klemp.

“Beyond Acacia Ridge” by Amy Fontaine. Copyright © 2018 by Amy Fontaine.

“The Animal Game” by Vixyy Fox. Copyright © 2018 by Vixyy Fox.

“Umbra’s Legion: Where Pride Planted” by Geoff Galt. Copyright © 2018 by Geoff Galt.

“Why Indeed” by Pepper Hume. Copyright © 2018 by Pepper Hume.

“You Are Our Lifeboat” by Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen. Copyright © 2018 by Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen.

“The Promise of New Heffe” by Kary M. Jomb. Copyright © 2018 by Kary M. Jomb.

“Back Then” by Frank LeRenard. Copyright © 2018 by Frank LeRenard.

“In Search of the Creators” by Alan Loewen. Copyright © 2018 by Alan Loewen.

“The Rocky Spires of Planet 227” by Mary E. Lowd. Copyright © 2018 by Mary E. Lowd.

“Tortoise Who” by Mary E. Lowd. Copyright © 2018 by Mary E. Lowd.

“Ashland’s Fury” by MikasiWolf. Copyright © 2018 by MikasiWolf.

“Come to Todor!” by Fred Patten. Copyright © 2018 by Frederick Walter Patten.

“To Drive the Cold Winter Away” by Michael H. Payne. Copyright © 2018 by Michael H. Payne.

“Welcome, Furries” by Cathy Smith. Copyright © 2018 by Cathy Smith.

“One Day in Hanoi” by Thomas “Faux” Steele. Copyright © 2018 by Thomas “Faux” Steele.

“Defiant” by Harwich Wolcott. Copyright © 2018 by Harwich Wolcott.

To

Brigadier Sir Hywel Catterwaul, Scratch Sharp, and the four other cats of the Great Cat Expedition, to climb the H.K.P. (Highest Known Peak) in the Kingdom of Catdom

In Scratch & Co.; the Great Cat Expedition by Molly Lefebure (Victor Gollancz, September 1968), the oldest novel I know with anthro animal explorers. A British pastiche of Himalayan mountaineering expeditions, with cat Pukka Sahib British explorer Sir Hywel leading (at first) and young Scratch Sharp, Oliver Simpkin, Tybault Brightstone, Dr. Thomas Black, and Felix Mouser; sponsored by the Royal Feline Geographical Society; Manx Scoop and Whiskey Bylines, rival reporters for The Cat Times and Cat’s Courier; rabbit lowland native bearers, terrier upland Sherpa guides, fox hill bandits, and Ranjit Singh, Manx Scoop’s mongoose Hindu servant. Jolly good fun.

If you want real animal explorers, the champions are the rats (Rattus rattus, the black rat, and Rattus norvegicus, the brown rat). Other animals such as sled dogs, and dogs, monkeys, and mice sent into space have been used by man for exploration, but the rats are the most avid explorers on their own for pure curiosity. Other rodent pets such as dormice, gerbils, guinea pigs, hamsters, lemmings, and mice tend to stay in their cages and squeak to be fed. Rats will escape their cages if they can, to explore.

Introduction

by Fred Patten

Who were the earliest explorers?

When did humanity begin? Apparently somewhere in what is today northeast and east Africa, about three to one million years ago.

Man spread to Europe, Asia, and Oceania from 500,000 to 40,000 years ago, going by the archaeological evidence of fire sites and stone tools. Man crossed over from east Asia to North America via the Bering land bridge which was then above water, about 16,500 years ago.

Why did humanity expand to fill the planet? Population pressure, or curiosity? We may not know.

But the span of recorded history is full of the feats of exploration. The earliest-known semi-legendary ship was the Argo, captained by Jason with a crew of fifty to a hundred “heroes”. It sailed from Thessaly in Greece to Colchis in Georgia on the Black Sea and back, to fetch the Golden Fleece. The legend dates from about 1300 BCE. A complete myth, or based upon one of the first trading expeditions? Byzantium, which later became Constantinople and still later Istanbul, started as an organized colony from the Greek city-state of Megara around 660 to 650 BCE.

According to Norse records, Vinland was settled in 1000 AD by the Viking Leif Erikson after he was blown off-course while sailing from Norway to Greenland. Leif recognized Vinland from the descriptions of Bjarni Herjólfsson, who had himself been blown off-course there a year or two earlier, but he had not stayed. Leif organized a group of 35 settlers and returned in the first attempt to create a permanent European settlement in North America.

Columbus’ “discovery” of America was an accident; he was exploring to find a trade route from Europe to India. The 16th-century Spanish explorations in North and South America are well-known. Juan Ponce de León was looking for the legendary Fountain of Youth in Florida. Francisco Vásquez de Coronado was looking for Cibola, the “Seven Cities of Gold”, somewhere in New Mexico or further north. Legends of El Dorado, the native kingdom somewhere in Colombia or Venezuela or some area of the upper Amazon, whose ruler covered himself with gold dust, brought several Spanish expeditions and two English expeditions led by Sir Walter Raleigh (he was executed by King James I after complaints from the Spanish).

So it is human nature to go exploring. What about anthropomorphic animals? Some of the best works of furry fiction have been tales of exploration. The quest of the Sandalford breakaway rabbits in Watership Down to find a new home. Rat’s seven-year walkabout from Ottersgate around the world, in Rat’s Reputation. The decades-long trip of twelve light-years of the ahsin bey, the catlike space explorers in The Alien Dark, to the Chai-te stellar system to explore it for colonization. The last unicorn’s search for the Red Bull of King Haggard, and, ultimately, for other unicorns.

If humans ever bioengineer animals in their image, can the urge to explore be left out of them? Here are 19 stories about individuals or groups of anthro animals who find themselves Exploring New Places, and what they discover there.

To Drive the Cold Winter Away

Michael H. Payne

Music is an ethereal magic that is supposed to mystically transport the listener to another world. From the lyre-playing of Orpheus (before the 6th-century BCE) to the 1943 jazz-trumpeter’s “I’m gonna send you right outta dis world!” (Leon Schlesinger/Warner Bros. “Tin Pan Alley Cats”; direction by Bob Clampett, story by Warren Foster), music has sent listeners to strange dimensions.

Where will Taymer and Snow end up?

To Drive the Cold Winter Away

by Michael H. Payne

Inside Stone Creek’s main barn, the air simmered like the height of summer. Taymer kept having to flick sweat from the tips of his whiskers, and he hadn’t moved a paw from his perch on one of the elderberry crates separating the hay-covered dance floor from the rest of the room.

The band was just that good.

Ranging in size from robin to otter and in instrumentation from fiddle to conga drums, the septet had been swinging away all evening with hornpipes and cha-chas, mazurkas and reels, tongue-twisting calypso numbers and jigs that practically set the walls to bulging and swaying. Taymer leaned into the music and marveled at how the tacky Harvest Festival bunting seemed to glow where it stretched from beam to beam across the barn’s ceiling. Even the scents of the casseroles, fish perloos, and cobblers mixed with the chattering of his fellow mice and the other townsfolk filling the barn—rats, sparrows, foxes, squirrels, rabbits, hawks—tickled Taymer’s senses rather than assaulting them.

Well, except for the hooting and hollering of his classmates—his former classmates, he meant, after graduation at the beginning of the summer. As always, they’d gathered shouting at the front of the barn, but this year, rather than congregating around the food tables, they were thronging the beer and cider kegs.

Taymer pursed his lips. Not that reaching his own eighteenth birthday had proven to be any more of a milestone. Sure, he had an apartment now, one room in a converted beehive tucked among the branches of an old hornbeam down the way. But he was still working at Doc Ristoli’s tree surgery and spending the rest of his waking hours at his harp, trying in vain to get it to sound like the music surging through his head.

So, yeah. Nothing had really changed.

The polka the band had been pounding through spun to an ending with a breath-taking run of notes from the badger’s accordion. The dancers went wild, stomping and clapping, and Taymer fanned himself, already hungry for the next tune.

But instead of another raucous number, the bobcat guitarist set up a slow, waltzing rhythm with a pattern of major and minor chords that shivered through Taymer’s fur. The rat strummed his mandolin gently on the first beat of each measure, and when the slim white mouse out front tucked her flute to her side and began singing in a low, dusky voice, everything else in the whole place vanished as far as Taymer was concerned.

“I revel in rain, for I saw as a youth

How waterfalls, massive, expansive, and free,

Cascading and shattering stone, were in truth,

Collections of drops even smaller than me.”

The robin came in with an instrumental break, her wings spread out behind her like a skirt and holding her up as her claws caressed a liquid flow of notes from the fiddle tucked to her chest. The badger, her eyes closed, summoned a low humming note from her accordion, the otter tapping the same note on his double bass.

A slight smile rustled the mouse’s whiskers, and when the top of the verse came around again, she continued:

“The frostiest mist in the morning extends

Through forest and meadow, replacing the air.

But melting to steam, it’s the warmest of friends,

Alive and embracing, enveloping care.”

With a quick tattoo of his wings across the conga drums and a spatter of sharply plucked notes from the banjo in his talons, the crow at the back of the stage led a modulation into a section dominated by minor chords. Taymer’s neck fur prickled, the mouse clenching a forepaw as she sang:

“It’s snow that disturbs me, that troubles my mind,

A stranger on silent, unstoppable paws

Inviting me, urging me, ‘Leave it behind.

Relax and accept them: the teeth and the claws.’”

Another modulation brought the major chords into ascension, and when the rat, the robin, and the bobcat raised their voices in quiet but soaring harmony above and below the mouse, Taymer never wanted the moment to end.

“Inevitability! Push it away!

Together, we’re stronger than instinct or time!

United, we struggle each night and each day

To spend our existence in reason and rhyme!”

Every hair on his body prickling, Taymer almost fell over backwards when the crow gave four piercing caws and the band burst into a two-step so lively, it swept through the barn like a swarm of butterflies. Everyone cheered, the stillness of the previous song shattering, and the party kicked back into gear as if the suspension of the last few seconds or minutes—Taymer wasn’t sure which it had been—had never happened.

The next couple hours flew by, but folks did eventually start leaving, the barn’s warmth dimming, the crowd on the dance floor thinning, the food tables behind Taymer emptier every time he glanced at them with the thought that he really ought to grab some supper. So when the mouse announced, “One more, perhaps,” and the band launched into as crisp a rendition of “Campbell’s Farewell to Red Gap” as he’d ever heard, Taymer couldn’t decide if he felt exhausted or refreshed. And while he wasn’t the only one left in the barn when the group wrapped the tune up, he was the only one paying attention enough to applaud.

The white mouse’s eyes met his, and the smile that crinkled through their dark blue depths tipped the scales completely to ‘refreshed’ in Taymer’s mind. She gave a delicate curtsy, slid her flute over the small metal stand beside her, hopped from the stage, and padded on all fours across the dance floor toward him. “Forgive my boldness, sir,” she said in her lilting contralto, “but I’d venture to guess you enjoyed this evening almost as much as we did.”

“It was—” Taymer searched for the right word, didn’t find it, and finally went with, “Spectacular.”

She rose onto her hind legs to give another small curtsy. “Thank you most kindly. Such praise always carries a bit more heft when it comes from a fellow musician.”

Taymer had to blink. “How did you know I was—?”

His heart stuttered when she caught his paws in hers, the white of her fur standing out against his own dark brown. “A string player,” she said, turning his paws over so the palms pointed upward, “says the wear of your claws. And the equal fraying of both left and right leads me to declare you a harpist.”

Looking at his paws as if he’d never seen them before, Taymer did some more blinking, then lifted his gaze to meet hers again. She seemed porcelain rather than flesh and fur, and Taymer found himself completely stymied as to her age. Older than him, certainly, but by two years or twenty, he couldn’t’ve guessed. “I’m Taymer,” he more blurted than said.

“Are you?” She cocked her head, her paws not letting his go. “As in the noun, or the comparative adjective?”

And while Taymer knew what those words meant, he hadn’t a single idea what she was talking about.

That slow smile stretched through her whiskers again. “The comparative adjective applies to something that’s not as wild as something else. Such an object is characterized as being tamer, you see. The noun, however, means one whose job it is to tame other things. One then is called a tamer, is one not?” She leaned closer to him. “So which are you?”

Everything around Taymer went warm, and he couldn’t keep his own smile from stretching. “I can’t be both?” he asked.

* * *

Waking the next morning with his snout tucked into the sweet fluff of her chest fur, Taymer let memories of the previous evening trickle back and forth through his thoughts.

“Call me Snow,” she’d said after leading him back to the tables where her bandmates were gathered, the group sucking down whatever food and drink remained from the party and aiming more than a few smirks at the two of them. Taymer had stopped noticing anyone other than Snow pretty quickly, though, and when she’d asked to hear him play, they’d wound up back at his place sitting on the floor among the boxes he hadn’t quite gotten around to unpacking yet.

Except for his harp, of course. “I couldn’t crate up the beast,” he’d told Snow, her flute in her paws as he checked the harp’s pegs. “It’s a balky enough monster as is, and if I threw it into a box?” He’d shaken his head in mock sorrow. “It’d never hold a tuning for me again.”

He’d started with a simple air, and when she’d raised her flute and joined in, he’d thought his heart might stop from joy. They’d reached the end of it in perfect harmony, and Snow had jumped right into a quick little strathspey, all syncopated sixteenth and dotted eighth notes, Taymer following without needing to think.

After that, she’d begun changing tempos and moods in no pattern that Taymer could discern, but he’d stepped right in each time, providing back-up for her and plucking the melodies himself when the tune called for it. She’d started singing at some point; he’d added tenor lines even when he hadn’t known the words, and after hours or days of this musical bliss, well, the mattress in the corner had been the only possible option.

Now, inhaling the perfect nectar of her scent, light as the morning sun drifting across them from the room’s sole window, he swallowed till his throat felt damp enough to form words. “I hope I didn’t spoil any plans with your bandmates.”

“Not at all,” she whispered, and the wonderful things her claws began doing along the back of his neck rolled his eyes closed and banished his words once more. “We’ll both of us be seeing them soon enough, after all.”

That brought his eyes back open, and he stretched himself along her firm, warm body till he was blinking into the sheer blue of her eyes. “Both of us?” he asked.

“Of course.” Snow touched a kiss to his nose and almost derailed him again. “Why else’d we come to such an out-of-the-way spot as Stone Creek were we not recruiting for the finest harpist in the land?”

“What?” His voice cracked. “Why would you think that of me? I’ve only performed five times in public since I was big enough to pluck the strings without cutting my paws!”

Her gaze became nothing but serious. “You rustle the very sky when you play, Taymer.” Another of those slight smiles tugged her whiskers, and she stroked a single claw through the fur between his ears. “Unless, of course, you’re tangling and tripping yourself, flailing about in that labyrinth you call a mind. Those times that you stop thinking so much about the music and start feeling it, well, sooner or later, folks like my colleagues and I take notice of such things.”

For half a moment, Taymer thought perhaps he’d lost the ability to understand spoken language: she simply couldn’t’ve said what he’d heard her say. Then Snow was sliding from between his paws, rolling off the mattress, and landing firmly on the floor. “You’ve already passed the first three tests with stalwart distinction,” she said, brushing her whiskers, “and it now only remains for me to ask formally if you’d care to join our little ensemble before I take you off for one final bit of an exam.” She folded her forearms. “Any more questions?”

Questions, in fact, flooded Taymer. Hadn’t he known the first time he’d stroked a claw over a harp’s strings that this was to be his life, his fortune, his destiny? Hadn’t he known that somewhere out there, the universe was stretching an ear, tapping a paw, nodding a head or swaying in place? Hadn’t his every fantasy before falling asleep involved the beautiful future that was one day certain to come calling upon him? And hadn’t that future now indeed done just that?

But the only question he needed to ask aloud was: “When do we get started?”

She blinked. “You’re in, then?”

Tumbling to the floor more than rolling, he still ended up tail downward and facing her, so he counted the maneuver a success. “My sisters and brothers have families; they can use this stuff better’n I ever could.” He nodded to the boxes before focusing all his attention on her. “And now that I’ve met you, there’s nowhere I’ll call myself content but at your side.”

This time, just Snow’s eyes rolled. “I’ve never known a harpist who wasn’t as melodramatic as any moustache-twirling actor upon the stage.” But for all that Taymer whiffed a bit of a blush going on beneath her fur, her paw was steadiness incarnate when she held it out to him. “Give me a hearty clasp to signal your agreement, and we’ll be on to step four.”

Taking her paw with both of his, Taymer breathed in to let fly a solemn declaration of his devotion to her and the music, but a burst of strident melody from Snow’s lips cut him off, the sound tearing the air like claws on slate. Taymer winced, and everything swirled sideways, only himself and Snow remaining unmoved. Shadows subsumed his little sunlit room, the air suddenly heavy with acrid smoke and choking dust, the wooden floor now a cold steel mesh.

“For your final test,” Snow murmured, her voice nearly lost in the vast darkness echoing around them, “you’ve got to face reality.”

Ears tight against his head, Taymer didn’t let go of her paw, his mind jittering and trying to absorb what he was seeing and scenting. The mesh beneath them stretched away to his left and right as far as he could see in the gloom, and through its gridwork, he could see crates and boxes made of wood, cardboard, and metal stacked on a floor below. The wall behind Snow seemed to be corrugated metal as well, and it reached up to what could only have been the interior angle of a roof. “Are… are we inside a barn?” he asked, wincing at the waver in his voice.

“A warehouse,” Snow said. “Turn around.”

Not sure he wanted to but even more sure that he didn’t want to fail whatever her test was, Taymer managed to pry his claws away from her, cranked his head around with a creak he was sure he could hear, and gaped at what lay behind him.

Vast felt like too small a word for the building—and it was indeed an interior space, he could see by the dim light of the ceiling fixtures that receded into the distance. “Why?” he couldn’t help asking, the rows of crates giving him a better sense of scale. “Why would anyone need a place this size?”

“Not just anyone.” Something white moved in his peripheral vision, Snow coming up beside him. “Humans.” She practically spat the word.

It nudged a few memories in the back of Taymer’s head. “Aren’t they storybook monsters?”

“The exact opposite of that, actually.” Snow moved again; Taymer tore his gaze away from the storehouse to see her picking her way across the steel mesh toward what he now realized was a giant stairway leading down to the floor. “Not to put too fine a point upon it, but we’re the stories, the roses sweet and dew-bedecked whose sylvan glades these creatures bulldoze to erect charming spots such as this one.” She looked over her shoulder, her eyes now as sharp as bejeweled daggers. “Come see what we’re fighting against, Taymer. Might be you’ll decide a musician’s life’s not for you, after all.” And she started descending, hopping from step to step.

* * *

For half a heartbeat, Taymer hesitated, then he rushed forward, caught up with Snow on the third step down, and had to struggle not to press himself close to her side. Forcing away as much panic as he could, he said, “Imagine that I’m asking the usual ‘where’ and ‘how’ questions instead of gibbering in terror, if you’d be so kind.”

She gave a coughing sort of laugh. “Be glad you’re a mouse. Singing larger folks through to show them what lies outside the walls of our universe can be a mite on the tricky side.” Tossing her head, she gestured with her snout to the rows and stacks getting larger and larger the closer they got to the warehouse floor. “But to answer your semi-asked questions, as I said, we’ve crossed over into the real world now. Here, only humans talk and think, science reigns, magic is nothing but the most knavish sort of trickery, and non-humans such as you and I and everyone we know are nothing but dumb brutes, bothersome at best, vermin at worst.”

His shock fading, Taymer’s mind was starting to turn over, was starting to register why the scents of mice and rats reaching his nose were so disturbing. “All the folks around us,” he muttered, taking the lightest possible whiff of the sour saltiness. “They’re sick or terrified or injured or all three. It—” He couldn’t stop a shiver. “It’s like a nightmare.”

“Again,” Snow said, “it’s the exact opposite of that.” They jumped together onto the grimy concrete of the floor, Taymer’s ears tightening further against his head at the crates towering as tall as the trees within Stone Creek Township. “It’s reality, and it’s what our world would become if we wardens let down our guard for so much as an instant and allowed rationality to start nosing about in our affairs.” She made a high-pitched squeaking noise, and similar noises followed some rustling among the nearest boxes. “But understand, Taymer. These aren’t folk you’re about to see. They’re animals. And while the poor things probably won’t attack, be ready to give me a tenor line in case they do.”

The next question died on his lips as creatures began crawling from the cracks between the crates: mice in shape only, their eyes blank and empty, their movements tentative and animalistic. “It’s the magic of song,” Snow whispered, “that keeps our world separate from this, that keeps the impossible possible for us, that keeps our minds and hearts from spiraling downward into what reality insists is our natural state.” She waved a paw at the beasts sniffing from the shadows, their fur matted, their claws cracked, their ears bitten and torn.

Taymer couldn’t look away.

“Without magic,” Snow continued, “without music, everything we know devolves into hunters and hunted, eating and eaten, tooth and claw and hot red blood. Those of us chosen to join the ensembles, we travel about strengthening the barriers, reinforcing the harmony that defines us as folk rather than animals, and stopping the soul-curdling influence of this world from staining, twisting, and destroying our world. It’s a burden you’ll shoulder along with the hardest-working musicians you’ll ever meet, and while there may be just the teeniest bit of glitz and glamour involved in the process, it’s not—”

A metallic thump shook the building, the local mice all freezing. A soft hissing pricked Taymer’s ears, a harsh chemical stink frizzing his whiskers, and something sparkled in the corridors between the boxes, the dim light revealing it to be a foul-smelling fog rolling toward them.

Whether Snow gasped or was taking a breath to warble out the countermelody to the discordant song that had brought them here, Taymer didn’t know. The hacking cough that doubled her over, however, was unmistakable, and he was just turning to ask how he could help when alarmed squeaks and chirps sprang up everywhere. Mice and rats of this mindless, feral variety streamed from among the crates and pallets, the whole mass of them fleeing the cloud in a panicked flood that smashed Taymer sideways.

“Snow!” he shouted, more furry bodies tumbling him over and around, shoving him farther away from her, but then he was coughing, too, the air stinging his throat like nettles. Up and down kept shuffling positions, and when he lashed out with a paw trying to catch the wood of a crate surging by, he somehow managed to tear a piece of it away instead, the chunk bashing him hard in the head.

Vision blurring, inner ears churning, he flipped and floundered among sweaty, stinking fur, flailed and twisted and finally tumbled into something billowing but stationary. Cloth, it felt like; Taymer dug in and hoped it would hold. He needed to get back to where Snow—

The cloth ripped, and he flopped forward into mud, cold rain spitting over him for half an instant before squeaking paws began trampling him once again.

“Damn it!” a big voice shouted. “They’re breaking through! I told you we shoulda hired a regular exterminator for this!”

“It’s okay!” another voice called. “That’s what the hoses are for!” And an absolute torrent of water burst across Taymer, shoving him back and spinning him through the mud. Nothing solid met his thrashing claws, every sucked-in breath more liquid than air, until his inner ear spasmed, his pounding heart clenching in his chest at the realization that he was falling.

He plunged into utter darkness, then into some swift and churning river, the flow of it sweeping him away just as thoroughly as the flow of bodies had. With water around him, though, he felt freer to lash out, and flashes of memory from various ‘Summer Safety Swim’ classes helped him keep his nose above water despite the river’s best efforts.

Limbs as heavy as stones, Taymer somehow kept paddling, the surface below hard and unyielding whenever his paws brushed against it, the blackness so absolute, his eyes never adjusted. Despair wanted to drag him down, but he pushed it away till a grayish spot appeared ahead. It grew swiftly, vast and unnaturally round, and then he was flopping out into a darkness that wasn’t quite as utter as before.

Ready for the splash when he hit this time, he angled his efforts to the left. One paw met something that squished, and he dug at it with all four, never so thankful to feel his claws sinking into mud. Gritting his teeth, he heaved himself out of the stream and onto the bank, everything about him cold and wet and stinking of sewage and fear. Still, the mere fact that he was able to lie there shivering and gasping struck him as nothing short of a miracle, so he concentrated on doing those things for a fair stretch of time before pushing his head up to look around at wherever he’d landed.

The rain still drizzled, clouds darkening the sky. Behind him, water poured out of what he realized was a massive pipe jutting from a mountain thick with gigantic briary bushes. Ahead, a few scraggly trees jabbed their bare branches into the dreariness, and on the other side of a chain-link fence at least ten times taller than any fence Taymer had ever seen, a squareish structure slumped, lights glowing from several of its oversized windows.

Humans, Snow had said, and all the stories spoke of them as giants. It just stood to reason that their houses would be big, too. Of course, the stories also spoke of humans as lumbering dolts prone to violent bursts of body-crushing rage. So maybe the best idea would be to sneak into the house, dry off, filch some provisions, and scramble back through that pipe in search of Snow. He could worry about polite introductions to the local mythical monsters later.

It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was better than nothing. Taymer crept up the shallow embankment under the brambly undergrowth, clambered through the fence, and scampered across what he guessed was a patchy lawn to a massive plain of concrete and a door bigger than most of Stone Creek’s buildings. It seemed designed to keep out similarly sized intruders, however; Taymer squeezed between the door and the jamb easily enough.

Inside, everything smelled of exhaust, the air heavy and warm with the tang of burnt wood, burnt oil, burnt gas, who knew what. Some sort of machine filled most of the space—a mechanical cart, he guessed, from its enormous rubber tires. Spreading his ears and whiskers, he slunk along beneath the whole length of the thing and peered out from the shadow of the front tire to see more machines against a wall and tools hanging haphazardly above a workbench. A smaller door, however, drew most of his attention. He was obviously in a garage right now, so the humans’ living quarters must lie through there.

Fortunately, the mud in Taymer’s coat proved to be lubricant enough to slide him through the gap beneath the door. Unfortunately, a gasp greeted him on the other side, his gaze snapping upward to meet the wide eyes and gaping mouth of what had to be an actual human being.

* * *

The creature stood wrapped in cloth from feet to neck, only its hands and head uncovered, but since that wrapping seemed to be various shades and textures of pink, it struck Taymer as somewhat less than threatening. The creature’s shirt even bore a pink stylized image of what could only be a smiling rabbit. What Taymer could see of the creature’s actual hide was as dark as his own fur, and the thing’s only hair lay in tight coils against its head.

All that in the first frozen instant, then Taymer noticed two more things: first, that the creature was barely half as tall as the door he’d just dragged himself under, and second, that the creature was holding a bowl of something that smelled phenomenally delicious.

“It’s okay,” the creature said then, the pitch of its voice confirming Taymer’s suspicion that this was a pup and making him think it might be female. “I won’t hurt you, little guy.”

Taymer swallowed and muttered without even thinking, “If only I could believe that.”

The human’s eyes went even wider, and the bowl fell from her splaying fingers to clatter against the odd spongy tile of the floor.

“Chayli?” a deeper voice called from somewhere to their right. “You okay, darling?”

“Yeah, Dad!” The young human’s attention never wavered from Taymer. “It didn’t break! I’ll just… just hafta get some paper towels is all!”

“All right,” the deeper voice said, but the young human still didn’t move.

For his part, Taymer couldn’t keep from darting glances at the bowl, sitting not more than ten taillengths away, its contents splashed across the floor: beans and tomato slices as big as his head surrounded by a whisker-tingling aroma of pepper sauce. After all, he’d had neither breakfast this morning nor dinner last night.

Chayli squatted down, moving slowly, her thick meaty scent tinged with something that wasn’t quite fear. “You… you talked,” she whispered.

“I did, yes,” Taymer said. So much for waiting on the introductions. “I hope you’ll forgive me just wandering in, but I really need help, and since I’ve never met any humans before, I don’t know the proper etiquette for—” And that was when he recalled Snow saying that humans were the only creatures in this place who could think and talk.

He clapped his forepaws over his snout at the same time as she clapped her hands over her mouth. “I knew it,” she murmured between her fingers. “I knew there was talking animals somewhere! Knew it, knew it, knew it!” She dropped to her knees and elbows and thrust her face, bigger than Taymer’s whole body, at him. “You’re here to be my special magic friend and take me on big magic adventures!”

Apparently, humans had stories, too. Still, it took all Taymer’s self-control not to dive for the crack under the door. “I’d like very much to be your friend, Chayli,” he said, telling himself it wasn’t a lie, “but right now, I need your help to find another friend of mine, a white mouse named Snow.”

“Snow?” She sat back and cocked her head. “Then what’s your name? Dirt?”

“I’m Taymer.” He gave her a little bow. “We were inside a warehouse.” Not quite sure what direction to point in, he just waved a paw vaguely. “Some gas drove me out, and I fell into what must’ve been a drainage pipe. I don’t know what happened to her, and I need to get back up there to look for her as quickly as possible.”

She stayed on her knees, her face blank and blinking, and Taymer wondered if he’d given her more than she could take in. But then she started nodding. “The warehouses’re on the other side of the hill by the highway. We’ll hafta take my bike.” She turned and started scraping beans and tomatoes back into her bowl. “Dad?” she called. “I just remembered I’ve gotta book I need to read for class tomorrow!”

“Really?” the deeper voice answered from around a corner at the end of the hall. “I thought you read all the books for the whole year already?”

Chayli rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but now everybody else is catching up, so I’d better look it over again so I can answer Ms. Mayweather’s questions.”

“All right, darling. You got that spill cleaned up?”

“Yes, sir.” She rubbed the floor with the hand not holding the bowl, and Taymer couldn’t stop his stomach from growling.

Blinking some more, Chayli broke into a snaggle-toothed grin that reminded him of his younger sisters. “Climb aboard and help yourself,” she muttered, lowering the bowl once more. “Dad makes it not too spicy special for me.”

“Thank you!” Taymer dove in and managed to suck down four of the enormous beans in just the time it took her to carry the bowl across what had to be their kitchen to a sink as big as the smaller folks’ swimming pool at the Stone Creek Community Center. He hopped out onto the counter and eyed the stream of water she directed from the tap into the bowl. “Might I borrow a bit of that to wash myself off?”

She giggled. “I’ve got a better idea!” One of those giant hands swooped toward him, and Taymer tensed, ready to leap aside, a line from one of the old human tales popping into his head: I’ll grind your bones to make my bread!

A gasp, and Chayli’s hand froze. “Sorry!” she whispered. Slowly, the hand moved to rest palm up at the edge of the counter. “Get in, and I’ll carry you to the bathroom where we’ve got shampoo and stuff!”

Taymer tore his gaze away from that hand long enough to look up at her and nod, then he scampered in, very aware of his muddy coat. Chayli just giggled again, and Taymer hunkered down to her weird bare skin, his stomach alternately stretching and tightening. She brought him close to the rabbit cartoon on her shirt and lurched them both toward the kitchen’s other door.

The trip lasted but a dozen of her strides—through the door, down a hall, through another door—Taymer the whole way recalling old stories about genies and magic carpet rides. Then the scents of strong soaps and cleansers prickled at him, Chayli using her other hand to turn a handle that once more summoned water. “Tell me if it’s too hot,” she said.

It was a marvelous but all too brief shower; the pink goo she squeezed from a bottle smelled as if someone had tried to recreate the aroma of strawberries from a written description, but it washed the mud away well enough. Then she was taking some sort of mechanism from a drawer and snapping a cable attached to the end of it into a pair of slots in the wall. “I’ll use the lowest setting,” she murmured, “but hang on.” A flick of a switch set the machine to roaring, and Taymer dug into the tile against the blast of warm air she fired at him.

He couldn’t complain about its drying power, though, and more quickly than he’d dared to hope, he was feeling as normal as any mouse likely could in a world full of storybook giants. But Taymer knew he didn’t have the time to marvel at that thought. “Now, how do we get to this warehouse?”

She held her hand open at the edge of the counter again. “We need to stop off in my room, then we’re out the window and on our way.”

* * *

With a swallow, Taymer scrambled into her palm to ride a few paces down the hall and through another doorway, the darkness on the other side smelling deeply of Chayli. He felt her stretch above and behind him, something clicked, and light flooded a place whose pinkness nearly took his breath away. Shelves seemed to line every inch of wall space, books standing and stacked everywhere he looked. Several blinks focused his eyes enough to show him a bed covered with plush toy animals—all of which, he noted, were bigger than him—as well as a small desk cluttered with papers, smaller animal figurines, and other assorted bric-a-brac.

Her hand slid him through the air to the edge of this desk. “Wait here,” she said, “and I’ll get my jacket.”

Nodding, he hopped onto the lacquered wood and found his attention settling on one of the figurines along the back of the desk: a mouse very nearly his size standing on its hind legs, a jaunty cap between its ears and a harp hanging from its neck.

More a lyre than a harp, a certain pedantic part of his brain insisted, but Taymer couldn’t’ve stopped himself from scurrying over if he’d wanted to. And for all that the harp had looked as phony as any kid’s toy at his first glance, the closer he came to it, the more it seemed to shiver and sit up, to yawn and stretch and curl itself into a more proper shape.

Taymer blinked, certain that the twelve strings he now saw between the soundboard and the pegs had been four when he’d started across the desk. He took another several steps, and the instrument unfurled a whole second octave, the thing quickly becoming a lightweight lever harp.

The rustling behind him had stopped. “Taymer?” Chayli’s voice had a waver in it. “Is that… magic?”

“If it is—” Taymer reached the figurine and gently tapped a claw against the solid wood of the harp’s frame. “It’s none of mine.” He looked over his shoulder, Chayli staring down at him, a bulky pink jacket around her torso. “My friend Snow said you humans have no magic, but if it’s not me and it’s not you—” Facing forward again, he undid the strap that held the harp to the figurine, squatted down to rest it on the desktop, and plucked out a basic scale to check the tuning. “It must be the both of us together.”

“Impossible,” Chayli said.

He shrugged, flexed all his claws, and launched into “Banish Misfortune,” the first melody that came to mind. “It’s smaller than the harp I have at home, but I’d call it perfectly serviceable.”

Chayli stood with her hands clenched together and pressed to her chest. “Those strings’re too short to make real notes: I read that when I was looking up how guitars work! And they’re only some of my Mom’s sewing thread! And I made the thing out of cardboard! And—!”

“And we’d best bring it along.” Taymer strummed a final chord, slipped the harp’s strap around his shoulder, slung it over his back, and scurried across the desk toward her. “Whatever magic’s going on between us is plenty powerful, and I’d not be surprised were we to need it.”

For a breath and a half, Chayli just wavered some more. Then she gave a jerky nod and fumbled with the front of her jacket. “I’ve got a pocket here you can ride in.” Something made a sound like cloth ripping, and her finger worked a flap open. “My bike’s just outside.” Her other hand came down to plop in front of him with barely a shake.

He stepped in, rode up, and sliding into the pocket, he brought the harp around to cradle it in his forearms. Once he’d settled, his nerves drove him to start plucking notes again—”Ships are Sailing,” he realized the tune was about halfway through the first phrase.

Chayli’s chest behind him rose and fell. “All right,” she said; she turned toward the one window nestled among the room’s bookshelves, slid the pane upward, and climbed out over the sill. At least the rain had largely tapered off, a dampness in the air rather than actually water. Dropping to the ground with a squish that made Taymer wince for her pink shoes, Chayli crouched low and skirted the wall of the house, a small muddy yard to her left.

They came quickly to a covered patio area, and Chayli grabbed a two-wheeled machine with an obvious seat and control handles. Pushing the machine, she directed them past a large glass door covered by a curtain through which soft light glowed. Not wanting to breathe, Taymer kept playing, and Chayli only paused to open the gate in the fence that surrounded the place.

The hair on the back of Taymer’s neck was rustling. Throughout this entire operation, all he’d heard had been the harp. Music was magic, Snow had said, and without even thinking about it, he realized, he’d been casting a spell through the song, a spell formed in equal measure from his anxiety and his hope, a spell he could feel flowing from him and surrounding Chayli like a bubble, a spell that would make anyone who heard the tune ignore it and everything around it.

How he was doing it, he had no idea. But he couldn’t deny the strange and magical shiver he felt simply from putting his claws to these strings.

Chayli unfastened some sort of helmet—pink, of course, with what looked for all the world like little triangular cat ears attached to the top—from between the bike’s control handles. Jamming it onto her head, she slung herself over the seat, began grinding the pedals with her feet, and their sudden burst of speed nearly broke Taymer’s concentration, already slightly bent by his attempt to see how the machine worked. Taking a breath, he focused back on the music.

The route Chayli piloted them along wasn’t the one he’d taken earlier in the evening, of course, but Taymer couldn’t do anything except hope she actually knew the warehouse he was talking about. They rode on through puddles of sluggish water and puddles of cold, orange light cast by lamps at the tops of impossibly high poles. Giant wheeled conveyances whooshed past now and then, and Taymer guessed that they bore some relation to the machine he’d scampered under in Chayli’s garage.

Quickly leaving behind the area of smaller structures, they came into wider streets with more concrete than Taymer had ever imagined could possibly exist. Chayli bore them consistently to the right and up hills, and before long, the chemical stink that had stabbed his nose in the warehouse began tugging his whiskers. “I think,” he said, the effort of keeping the magic on course shortening his breath, “that we’re getting close.”

“Yeah,” she said, and she steered them around one last corner, up a ramp, and out onto a vast, flat plane paved with black and divided into sections by white and yellow lines. Large buildings loomed in the orange-tinted darkness ahead, and just the sight of them made his claws falter on the strings. Chayli, though, kept pumping her machine forward. “If you came down the big pipe, you were probably in the warehouse at the far end.”

The closer they pedaled, the thicker the stink grew and the tighter Taymer’s stomach clenched. Undertones had begun rising through the odor: blood and fear, urine and vomit, the cloying fetor of death. And he could see bodies now, small and furry and strewn about the muddy field beyond the last warehouse.

“Oh, Taymer,” Chayli gasped, coasting the bike to a stop and putting one foot to the blacktop.

But Taymer was already scrambling down her jacket to her trousers and leaping to the ground with the harp tucked under one arm. No white fur glinted anywhere in the filth and the shadows, but not letting himself think twice, he plopped forward onto his knees, set his foreclaws to the strings, and began playing the melody he’d heard Snow sing the night before, his own throat too tight to voice the words that echoed through his memory:

“Inevitability! Push it away!

Together, we’re stronger than instinct or time!

United, we struggle each night and each day

To spend our existence in reason and rhyme!”

The music sprang from him like a light he was sure he could see, arched upward, then dropped near the wall of the massive building. The harp slung over his back, Taymer sprinted toward the spot.

* * *

She wasn’t breathing, her eyes and mouth closed, her fur sodden and stinking.

“Oh, Taymer.” Chayli whispered it this time. The squish squish squish of her big shoes had trailed him out into the field, and the movement of the shadows now told him she had hunkered down into a squat beside him.

But he couldn’t look away from Snow sprawled and unmoving in the mud.

Torrents of rage and despair wanted to tear through his shaking chest and convulse his brain in their ceaseless, burning grip, but—”No,” he said, addressing the madness inside him as well as any of the sundry universes that might be listening. Setting the harp carefully into place on the ground in front of him, he heard a melody hum between his ears and again didn’t let himself think twice. “Chayli?” He looked up at her. “Do you sing by any chance?”

She blinked. “At church. Do mice have funeral songs?”

Taymer shook his head so thoroughly, he was surprised it remained attached to his neck. “The song I’d like to play is called ‘Afton Water’.” Hoping against hope, he started plucking the tune. “Do you know it?”

“A mouse song? How would I—?” Her brow creased, then cleared just as quickly. “Wait! That’s—You’re playing ‘Away in a Manger’!”

His heart surging, Taymer closed his eyes for the briefest of instants, but he’d send his grateful thanks to every single universe once they were done. Fixing his gaze on Chayli’s excited face, he asked, “Would you be able to hum the melody along with me while I sing and play? This can only possibly work with the both of us together, I think.”

Chayli nodded. Taymer struck up the last four bars as an introduction and had to smile when she came in exactly on time and on pitch with him, her hum bolstering his song of a shepherd entreating the sweet river to flow past more gently so as not to awaken the lovely maiden asleep on the bank beside him.

No strength bristled the words, none that Taymer felt, at least. He had no spell to cast like he had earlier to make their passage silent. Emptiness filled him, and he let the music take that space, let Chayli’s childish soprano enter his ears to mix through his head and heart, let the combination drift from his lips and claws.

He slowed as they finished the sixth verse, held the last note, opened his eyes, and saw Snow’s chest rising and falling.

Behind him, Chayli gave another little gasp. “They’re all… are they all just sleeping?”

“They are now.” Taymer leaned forward and touched a paw to Snow’s shoulder, the mud cold in her fur but the skin warm underneath. “Time to wake up, though.” He gave her a shake.

Snow’s eyes shot open. “The gas!” she squeaked, leaping upright.

Taymer had already pulled his paws back to the harp, his claws starting “Softly as in a Morning Sunrise” almost of their own volition. “Careful,” he said, having to force the word out past the tightness in his throat and the grin that stretched his lips. “Don’t panic, but this is my friend Chayli. Chayli, this is my friend Snow.”

Snow blinked at him, then tipped her head back, her eyes and mouth widening at Chayli’s squealed, “This is so great!”

“What?” Snow muttered. “How?” Her breath caught, a shiver wracking through her, and when she brought her gaze back down to meet Taymer’s, the slightest sliver of her regular glint shone there. “You know: the usual gibbering in terror questions.”

His heart too full even for music, Taymer leaped around the harp and wrapped Snow in a hug, pressed his damp face to her shoulder. “Later for that,” he whispered. “Just as later we need to reexamine everything our musicians have been doing for the past however many generations.”

“What?” she asked again, pulling away from him, her glint hardening. “Taymer, you don’t know what you’re—”

“Maybe.” He stepped back as well, turned partway, and gestured up to Chayli, her grin shimmering in the orange light. “But I do know that it was a song shared between this mouse and this human that proved slightly effective right here and right now. So could be that our music’s meant to be a bridge rather than a barrier. That we’re meant to spread our magic to this world instead of hoarding it to ourselves.”

Her face tightening, Snow opened her mouth, but the other mice stirring around the field seemed to derail her train of thought, her head snapping over and her eyes going wide again.

So Taymer stepped in. “Like I said, that’s for later. Right now, though, perhaps you’d like to avail yourself of Chayli’s shower facilities? The shampoo’s a bit stinky, but—”

“Hey!” Chayli folded her arms. “I like strawberry!”

“As do I.” Taymer fanned a paw before his snout and made a face. “This, however…”

Snow’s whiskers drooped. “Is that supposed to be strawberry? It smells more like—” She stopped, her attention flickering back and forth between Taymer and Chayli. “I, uhh, I’ll thank you for your kind offer,” she said then, her voice as brittle as spring ice in Taymer’s ears. “But if it’s all the same to all involved, I’d rather be heading home.”

Chayli’s face fell, and Taymer stifled a sigh. He’d need to take this very slowly, he knew, on both sides of the divide. And since he’d be going with Snow, he put on a smile and held the harp up. “Can you keep this for me, then, Chayli? I’d like very much to come back and sing more with you, but I’d best be seeing that Snow makes a safe return to our neck of the woods.”

Her hand shaking, Chayli reached out and took the harp gently between her thumb and forefinger. “But… you’re coming back? You promise?”

“I will and I do.” Again, he spoke the words to the larger universes as well. “I may even have more friends with me.”

“I’d like that.” She tucked the harp into her pocket and wiped a sleeve under her nose. “So I… I’ll see you next time, then.” Rising to her feet, she grimaced at the mud coating the knees of her pink trousers. “Oh, Mom’s gonna kill me!” She started toward her bike, standing where they’d left it on the blacktop, then stopped and turned back. “It was nice meeting you, Snow. And Taymer, I—You—” With a swallow, she shook her head, sprinted to the bike, jumped on, and pedaled away.

The local mice were beginning to squeak now. Taymer glanced at Snow, and she was staring at him, her ears tight against her head. “Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?” she growled.

Taymer shrugged. “Saved the life of the mouse I love.”

“Love?” Her stare became more amazed than glowering. “Taymer, you don’t even know me!”

“But now I’ll get the chance.” He waved toward Chayli, the pink of her jacket just disappearing into the night. “Just as you’ll get the chance to know her.” And as much as he wanted to grab Snow’s shoulders, he didn’t—slow, after all, was his watchword here. Still, he couldn’t keep from stressing his words. “There’s meant to be an exchange between our world and this, Snow, I’m certain of it! They imagine us, and we imagine them in return! Or they give us ideas and we give them ideals! Or something: I don’t know! But we have stories about them, and they have stories about us! It’s like that harp!”

The memory made him stop, his claws still tingling from the touch of those strings. “She made it from cardboard and thread, Snow, but as soon as I saw it, it transformed into the finest instrument I’m ever likely to play! So there’s something going on, some reaction we provoke from each other!” One last argument popped into his head. “And she knew the melody to ‘Afton Water’! How could she possibly if there’d not been some sharing between folks and humans in the past?”

For a moment, the only sound was the rustle and chirp of the other mice pushing themselves onto all fours and shaking the mud from their coats. Then Snow blew out a breath. “Right now, I’m cold, filthy, hungry, and may have been dead for a bit.” She held out a forepaw and gave him about a quarter of a smile. “Let’s see about addressing some of those issues, then we can talk about what may or may not have happened here this evening.”

Warmth filling him, Taymer took her paw, and the warble of her song swirled them away.

In Search of the Creators

Alan Loewen

One of the basic themes in furry fiction is that the future’s bioengineered animal peoples who have replaced mankind will seek their creators. Captain Illatha is sent by her lapine homeworld to explore stellar systems until she finds them.

In Search of the Creators

by Alan Loewen

The oldest legends say that when the Creators left blue-green Ur to explore the stars, they found themselves alone in a cosmos without boundaries. Grieved at their loneliness, they returned to their world, took their animals, and gifted them with sentience, hands, and a bipedal stance. The Creators then scattered their progeny across numerous stars and today, they patiently wait for their children to return and ease their solitude.

~ Histories and Legends

Captain Illatha brushed her hair out of eyes, flipping her long lop ears to hang over her back. Through the windows of the shuttle, she observed the Warren.

A creation never made for planetary atmosphere, the skin of the ship bristled with sensors and defensive weaponry. At the rear of the ship, a portal irised open and the shuttle eased its way into the internal docking station.

“Captain, we have docked and have received clearance to disembark.”

“Thank you,” Illatha said. She watched as they flipped switches and adjusted gauges to power the shuttle down. In a few hours, the shuttle and its pilot would return to the Homeworld, leaving Illatha and her crew in orbit and ready to embark on their lengthy mission.

Through the window, she could see the crew of the Warren assemble before the shuttle’s exit for presentation. Lapines all, they all wore their ears in lop style, deliberately broken during training to facilitate their heads fitting inside a space helmet.

She made her way to the exit ramp. With a hiss and pop, the door opened and the ramp descended. Her First Mate stepped forward smartly. For a moment, in her panic, Illatha could not remember his name. She slowed her breathing, dulling the anxiety of the moment. Her training had taught her to resist millions of years of evolution, to deliberately pause, control the panic and the impulse to flee, and master the situation.

The name came to her immediately. Thrane.

Beside Thrane, fifteen crew members stood at attention and as Illatha descended the ramp, all of them bowed deeply.

“Welcome aboard, Captain Illatha,” Thrane said.

“Thank you,” Illatha said. She turned to face the crew. “We are faced with one of the most important tasks for our race to ever undertake. Our mission, as you already know, is to find the Creators, should any of them still exist. We must find them before the other races they seeded across the cosmos either discover interstellar flight or we encounter a violent race that is already making its way among the stars. We need protection, and the Creators can supply that.

“I expect your best and to work together for the good of Homeworld and the Warren. That is all.”

In response, the crew bowed deeply.

* * *

“Sensors at full.”

Captain Illatha stared at the main viewscreen currently showing nothing but the endless gray of the warp manifold that enveloped the ship. The timers ticked off the seconds until they would pop into real space and a new star system, the thirty-first to be explored since they started their journey three Lapine years ago.

The rest of the crew studied their monitors intensely. Tension filled the air of the control deck. The ship lacked offensive weapons, and the instinctive response of Illatha’s race, exactly like the rabbits from which the Creators had upraised them, was to flee if danger threatened.

Illatha forced her emotions under control. All five bridge members stood ready to feed her important information the moment they appeared in normal space. Within seconds she would make the decision to either stay and explore this new planetary system, or flee back into the safety of warp.

She mindlessly tapped her pen on her incisors that peeked out from her upper lip, a nervous habit borne from the many times she had entered a new system.

The timer ticked down and suddenly the main viewscreen snapped from formless gray into the dark of space with a brilliant mainstream sun shining like a bright dot in its center.

Information started flashing over her monitor as her crew shouted their findings.

“Five planets, Captain!”

“No radio signals detected.”

“Captain, I detect a ship! Wait! It’s dead, Captain. No heat at all. No electromagnetic signals. Just floating.”

“Captain, there is one planet that is the proper distance from the sun to maintain life. I detect no electromagnetic signals. Nothing artificial in orbit.”

It was only then that Illatha realized she was holding her breath. She let it out with a shudder. “Set a course for the ship,” she said. “Let’s see what information it can give us.”

* * *

Ship sensors probed the wreck while Illatha and her crew stared in fascination. Three millennia in open space orbiting a small gas giant had not been kind to what was clearly an old mining ship. Why the Creators had left it behind remained a mystery. Massive holes pitted its hull, remnants of strikes from natural debris.

“Send a subspace squirt to Homeworld,” Illatha ordered. “Tell them that we found a Creator artifact. Put it on the salvage list.” She brushed her hair out of her eyes and turned to her First Mate. “Maybe they might actually get to it in a few years or so.”

The First Mate nodded at the wreck. “Think it can tell us anything?”

Illatha shook her head. “Nothing else has so far. I have no hopes for an old wreck that the Creators left behind.”

* * *

A day later, Illatha and her crew approached the second planet out from the star. It hung blue, green, and white in the main viewscreen, making them all homesick.

“The ratio of water to land is around seventy to thirty percent, but Captain, look at this.”

Illatha’s monitor centered on a piece of land now heavily forested but showing the remains of a massive crater. “Natural?”

“No, Captain. Mined. And there are many more. This planet has been mined out.”

“So…” Illatha said in growing excitement.

“Yes, Captain,” her First Mate said. “This explains the presence of the Creator mining ship. It had a purpose being here. There may be even more Creator artifacts on the surface, but only assuming they could survive millennia on a planet with an active atmosphere and flora.

“Pilot, put us in orbit.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Immediately sensors began probing this new world while the crew talked animatedly among themselves. Slowly, their orbit took them past the terminator into the night side of the planet and that is when they saw the dim lights of the small city below them.

Dozens more peppered the planet’s dark surface as they orbited.

* * *

Illatha stared at the screen before her. The rest of the crew had retired, letting the ship monitor itself, but Illatha could not stop staring at the information before her. Less than a Lapine century after they discovered space flight, just one thousand years ago, her people had found ancient Ur, the Creators’ homeworld. However, the Creators’ home planet stood deserted, telling a story only of ruin and desertion. Since then, Illatha’s people had explored thousands of planets, discovering the terraformed worlds the Creators had left behind, filled with creatures and life that could all be traced back to Ur itself.

Yet, never had they discovered life with an indigenous RNA that would tell them that they had discovered something truly alien and not originally a part of Ur’s biosphere. And the mystery as to the where and why of the Creators’ vanishing had disappeared with the Creators themselves.

Yet now, Illatha and her crew had found what they hoped would be descendants of the Creators, evidently living in simple circumstances, probably unaware of their heritage as gods who had spanned the galaxy and seeded life on planets they had transformed.

Illatha and her crew stayed in silent orbit waiting for orders from Homeworld. A subspace squirt took one week out and back. Assuming a few days for the leaders of Homeworld to debate what they should do, a response was expected soon.

Illatha stared at the dots of light that speckled the night side of the planet, each one declaring the presence of a city. Sensors had shown the lights were not electrical in nature, but the glow from fires that appeared to be from natural gas.

One of the lights dimmed slowly and then brightened again. Illassa’s gaze focused on it.

It blinked again, twice in succession in a slow, but steady pattern.

Illassa’s furred brow furrowed in curiosity and concentration.

The light blinked again, three times in succession.

Immediately, the captain’s four-fingered hands flashed over the control board to put her ship into a stationary orbit.

Fascinated, she watched as it blinked five times and then went back and blinked once. And then twice, then three times and then five, cycling back to repeat the pattern of prime numbers in a base ten system.

Fear welled up in Illatha’s heart. They had been spotted.

Contact had been made.

* * *

Illatha could feel her heart beating as she strapped herself into the descent shuttle.

Homeworld’s orders had been clear. The Captain would descend and make contact. If they killed her, the second-in-command would guide the ship back to Homeworld and the system would join other worlds on the list of isolated worlds with hostile inhabitants.

“But these might be Creators,” Thrane said. “If so, they created us. They aren’t going to eat us.”

“We know they’re omnivores. We found enough evidence on Ur to affirm that,” Illatha said, unable to stop her hands from trembling, “and there is a theory they may have created us originally for food. And even if they hadn’t, these Creators, if that is what they are, are still primitives. They have no technology to speak of. Their usage of metal is practically nonexistent.”

Her First Mate shrugged. “It’s a mined-out planet. There’s hardly any metal left for them to use.”

“Sticks could still kill me.”

He put his muzzle against hers and brushed his cheek against hers in a traditional parting. “We are a fearful people. That trait has kept us alive for millennia when the Creators first raised us up on Homeworld. Yet now, we must not let our fears get in the way of our need for answers. Remember that in not too many centuries, other races that we know of will be traveling between the stars. We will need allies and the Creators…”

“Would you go in my place?”

Thrane hung his head and refused to look into her eyes. “The Warren said that you must go, Captain. I cannot take your place. I will not say that I am envious.”

Illatha looked away. “Close the door,” she ordered. “I must leave.”

* * *

Illatha had programmed her shuttle to land outside the city where she had first seen the blinking light. As she swung her small ship into a landing pattern, she targeted a meadow filled with animals she could not recognize, animals that looked like large wads of cotton that fled at her approach.

Gently she touched down on an alien world, recognizing the plants immediately. Everywhere the Creators had been, they had brought the life of Ur with them including grasses and other flora. At the very least, she would not starve. Here was food genetically similar to Homeworld’s, and it was unlikely that any sizeable genetic drift had occurred in the thousands of years since this planet was colonized and mined out.

Illatha waited, her fear too great to motivate her to go out and explore, so she opted to see if the inhabitants of the planet would come to her first.

When the planet’s sun stood directly overhead, she saw her first movement at the edge of the meadow. With trembling fingers, she keyed her radio.

“Warren? This is Captain Illatha. Can you hear me?”

Thrane’s voice came in clearly. “Yes, Captain. Please continue.”

“The natives have made contact with me. I see five of them at the edge of the meadow. I am sending direct video feed to you now.”

“Receiving.”

Illatha stared at the five beings with a combination of fascination and fright. Except for flora and fauna, Ur had stood deserted, but in the ruins of the cities, they had found statues that had survived the epochs. Illatha had never been to Ur, but she remembered the pictures. These strange, almost hairless beings, were clearly descendants of the Creators.

Working slowly, Illatha watched as the five constructed a tent of poles and tarps. Sitting halfway between her ship and the edge of the meadow, the front of the tent stood wide open allowing her to see freely inside. The creatures then brought tables, chairs and set them up inside as well as boxes.

When it appeared they were finished, the men left, leaving one of their party behind.

Illatha stared in a mixture of curiosity and revulsion. Hairless except for the red hair on the top of his head and a carefully sculpted pattern of short hair on his face that started under his nose and covered his chin, his body was clothed in some simple type of cloth making up a shirt and pants.

The Creator grabbed a chair from inside the tent and approached Illatha’s shuttle. A few paces from its nose, he put the chair down and then held up empty hands toward the shuttle. Slowly he spun around and then sat on the chair, his open hands palm up on his lap.

It took some time for Illatha to calm her heart, as she struggled to control her fear and xenophobia.

“For the safety of Homeworld,” she muttered over and over again. “I have to do this for the safety of Homeworld.”

Trembling, she made her way to the airlock. The shuttle’s sensors had confirmed the studies from the Warren that the air was breathable and similar to the atmosphere on Homeworld. With a hiss, the iris door opened and Illatha found herself in the presence of a Creator.

The creature slowly stood showing empty hands as Illatha made her way down the ramp, a gesture, Illatha assumed, to show he held no weapons.

Reaching the bottom of the ramp and only three paces away from the Creator, Illatha stopped as she tried to stop the beating of her heart and the overwhelming instinctual panic that had kept her people alive since their creation.

Slowly, the man put his open hands on his chest. “Blayne,” he said. His voice was deep. Again, he put his hands on his chest. “Blayne,” he repeated. Then with his hands still opened, he motioned toward Illatha.

Illatha knew what he wanted. Her name. “Illatha,” she said repeating his actions with her own hands.

“Illatha,” the man repeated.

Slowly the man stood. Illatha’s head came up to his chest and she shuddered from how small she was in comparison. He pointed at the sun that shone down on the meadow. “Odo,” he said.

Illatha already knew what the creature wanted. He was working on a basic vocabulary. She squinted up at the bright sun and pointed at it. “Nae,” she said in her own language.

“Nae,” Blayne repeated. “Nae.” Then Blayne turned and gestured toward the tent. “Illatha?” he said, using an odd inflection at the end of her name. Did that make the gesture a request or command? The Creator turned and walked toward the tent a few steps and then turned, looking at her. Swallowing her apprehension, Illatha followed.

* * *

Toward the end of the day, Illatha marveled at how rapidly Blayne had picked up Lapine language. Using pictures and mime, Blayne had mastered much of the basic Lapine grammar and vocabulary. Illatha found it difficult to repeat any of the words the Creator spoke. Lacking certain muscular and vocal controls, the human, as they called themselves, used labials difficult for Illatha to speak, consonants that Illatha could not plainly articulate.

The sun was almost setting when the man closed his books and put them back in a box.

“Latha,” he said, using the Lapine word for morning. He pointed toward the shuttle and using gestures and simple words, he communicated that Illatha needed to return to her shuttle and that the linguistic lessons would continue tomorrow.

Suddenly tired, Illatha signified agreement. Back in the shuttle, she contacted the Warren. “Contact made,” she said. “The Creators are learning my language.”

* * *

Four days later Blayne introduced Illatha to several other Creators including two females. By now, Blayne spoke Lapine with few errors. From what Illatha could learn, as the humans lacked significant amounts of metal, they had turned from technology to harnessing the powers of the intellect. Blayne had trained as a linguist. Most of the Creators on the planet could speak several artificial languages, each one with a specific purpose.

Now Blayne acted as a teacher of the Lapine language to the other humans. Three days later, four of the humans could talk freely with Illatha.

Illatha had been invited to leave the meadow and tour the nearest Creator town. Now comfortable with the aliens, Illatha spoke with the Warren and they agreed that the Creators were not dangerous. Illatha told the humans she would be honored to see their town.

* * *

The next day, a large cart appeared with two large quadrupeds. The animals were bound to the cart with leather traces and guided by a human holding leather lines connected to the mouths of the creatures. The Creators called them horses.

Illatha marveled at the town when it came into view. Lacking metal, the Creators here had not only attempted to master intellectual pursuits but sought to master the absolutes of aesthetics. Gardens and buildings meshed together in harmony. The entire village showed a form of beauty that stunned Illatha with its extravagance, knowing that the practicality of her own people would struggle to understand what the Creators had accomplished here.

“Where are the people?” she asked. “The town is deserted.”

“We did not wish to make you nervous,” Blayne responded. “They are inside their homes. We thought it best.”

Suddenly, Illatha pointed at a garden. “I recognize those plants!” she exclaimed. “Cabbage! Lettuce! I even see beans.”

Blayne smiled, an expression that Illatha still struggled with, forcing herself to realize that bared teeth with the corners of the mouth upturned was not a display of impending aggression. “Stop, driver,” he said.

Stepping down from the cart, he gathered some vegetables from the garden and then held them up for Illatha to inspect.

Illatha was delighted and smelled the offerings with pleasure. “They are very similar to what we have on Homeworld,” she said.

“When our ancestors seeded your world,” Blayne said, “the time between then and now is simply not long enough for any significant change to occur. Though we don’t have an exact timeline, I doubt if there have been more than seven millennia between your world being terraformed and your finding us. However, we have bred some vegetables for different color and size.”

Blayne pointed at a plant in the garden. The foliage was taller than him, and the tuber from which the stems and leaves sprouted was almost the size of the cart in which they rode. “We call that a sugar beet,” he said. “It takes days to dig it up and process, but it produces a sweet substance that can supply an entire village for a year.”

* * *

In communication with the Warren and Homeworld, the decision was made that a delegation of humans would be taken aboard the Warren and interviewed by a select group of Lapines. The entire session would take place with audio and video doing a live squirt to Homeworld even though it would take a Lapine week for the signal to arrive and then another to receive any response.

The delegation consisted of Blayne and another male and two females.

The trip from the planetary surface to the orbiting Warren took a small fraction of the time, but along with the delegation, Illatha had filled the holds with samples of plant life as well as large crates of food freely given to the Lapines to supplement their dwindling food stores. The Lapine scientists were eager to analyze the new foods and already talk was underway of trade between the planets.

After attending to the comfort of her guests, Illatha prepared for the conference. She had a sheaf of questions from Homeworld. Illatha was determined the meeting between her peoples and the Creators would go smoothly. She prepared a table, chairs, and glasses of water she hoped would be acceptable to the shape of human lips.

In the meantime, she had provided the humans with monitors that would display educational tapes on Lapine history, culture, and language. This historical event would be marred by nothing that was reasonably within Illatha’s control.

* * *

The four humans sat at the table. Across from them sat Illatha and three other hand-picked crew members. Behind the Lapines, small cameras blinked sending their information across the light years to Homeworld where the Elders would watch the proceedings on large screens when the signal finally reached them.

The eight faced each other, the Creators relaxed and smiling, the Lapines nervous and fidgety.

“Let us begin,” Illatha said. She looked at the papers in her hands, questions that would ultimately lead to the most important question the Lapines had. Would the Creators protect them from the more violent of their children they had seeded across the galaxy?

Illatha put the papers aside and swallowed her nervousness. She had spent years hoping for this moment and now that it was in her grasp, she refused to let it go. She had earned this right to ask the question that had brought her so many sleepless nights.

“Why did the Creators abandon us?” she asked. Her compatriots froze in their chairs, their eyes wide with surprise. The humans sat across from them with expressions on their faces that Illatha could not read.

Blayne turned to the other three humans and spent a moment in private conversation in a language Illatha could not follow. After a brief, whispered conversation, Blayne turned to the Lapines across the table.

“We didn’t,” he said. After a moment’s pause, he added. “Not in any deliberate manner.”

He motioned toward the woman who sat at Illatha’s far left, a gray-haired human who gave off an air of age, but whose face looked young.

“The story is long,” she said, “but mayhap I have the gift of brevity.” She closed her eyes giving the impression she concentrated on her response without being hindered with visual feedback.

“Go back in time in your mind almost twenty-five thousand Terran years. Our ancestors, who you call the Creators, had mastered the technology of space travel. First colonizing their own system, the discovery of warp travel opened the stars up to us. From our home world, we expanded outward, following the disk of the galaxy, traveling the arms of what we called the Milky Way, ever expanding, discovering new worlds and new marvels. Our knowledge grew and we mastered so much.

“But in those thousands of years, what we longed for most of all was to encounter others to let us know we were not alone.” The woman sighed. “Thousands of years passed, and when our explorers met each other on the far side of the galaxy disk, as they stared in recognition of their Terran brothers and sisters, from the planet you call Ur, we knew at that moment within the billions of stars, the human race stood alone.”

The other human woman took up the tale. “What could we do? So we decided to return to our world. We decided to create alien children of our own, children who would look at the galaxy with different eyes and with different minds. We returned to Terra and we gave the gift of sentience to your ancestors and to others.

“The rabbit, the wolf, the fox, the cougar and so many others. We had mastered the art of genetics and we gave you and others a bipedal stance, hands, minds, and self-awareness. For five thousand of our years, we spread the life of Terra across the galaxy, allowing it to grow and mature on each planet with no interference from us. Some of those worlds failed and we grieved. Others, like yours, prospered. And above all, we waited. We waited for children to learn and ultimately to venture into the unknown and join us.”

Blayne took up the tale. “However, there were others who had different goals. Three thousand years ago, our direct ancestors decided to forsake technology and form a civilization on a world with only a very small amount of metal, a world dedicated to the human mind, to learn and develop. We were given a mined-out planet and we began our great experiment. But now our tale takes a darker turn.”

The other man spoke up, his gray eyes solemn as he spoke. “We humans accidentally created the seed of our own destruction. A carrier virus used in genetic manipulation mutated without our knowledge. As it incubated in our bodies, it spread from human to human for it was highly contagious. Humans spread it across the galaxy to each other and when it had incubated for a decade or more, it burst forth with a virulence that caught us off guard. It killed in two hours. Nobody was immune.

“We had deliberately isolated ourselves from the rest of humanity. Though we hope there are other enclaves of humanity across the galaxy not exposed to the virus, our radio, until it died, never picked up any signals from any other survivors.”

Blayne spoke up again. “We may be the last of humanity in the galaxy. We who once lived on countless worlds may be reduced to a number of only five billion people.”

Illatha tried to stop her hands from shaking. “My people discovered space flight only one thousand years ago. Our legends spoke of gods from the stars who put us on Homeworld seven thousand years previously. In that millennium of space flight, we have explored and discovered almost a thousand worlds, but such a small part of the overall galaxy!

“And what we have discovered makes us believe we may have been the first of your creation to master warp. Of course, the galaxy is big, but we have no reason to suspect otherwise… yet.” Illatha looked down at her hands and swallowed. “And we discovered worlds that consist of races like us in spirit: pacifist, vegetarian, peaceful. We wait for them to join us.

“But there are other worlds.” Illatha looked up directly into the eyes of the human delegation. “I have seen horrors on other worlds that test my sanity, creatures seeded from ancient Ur that have sunk to their most bestial natures. And… and some of them are close to discovering ways to leave their worlds.” Illatha could not help but tremble as she spoke. “You are more than just our Creators. You used your own DNA to give us the ability to speak and to reason.” Her voice rose in her growing passion. “We are your children. You are our parents. Help us! Protect us!”

* * *

Illatha finished up her report to Homeworld. She knew there would be repercussions for going off on her own line of questioning, but the ability to sleep better made the price acceptable.

“It was never the plan of this world’s original settlers to force their children to stay,” she said. “Each child was to be given a choice to leave and rejoin the starfaring humans or stay on their adopted homeworld. Unfortunately, the great plague that killed off the Creators removed that option. With no sizeable metal deposits on their planet, they had little choice. They were trapped on their world with no means to leave. That was clearly their salvation.”

Illatha’s mind went back to her last conversation with Blayne. “We will not kill,” Blayne said. “We will not destroy. Yet, we can be ambassadors and there are other peaceful methods we can use to prevent genocides and wars. And we will do so together, not only with your people but the rest of humanity’s children.”

“This is Captain Illatha of the Warren signing off this report,” she said. “The Creators have made the decision to learn from us on how to travel the starways. They have decided to return to Ur.”

Illatha smiled. And we,” she said, her hands no longer trembling, no fear in her heart, “are orphans no longer.”

The Rocky Spires of Planet 227

Mary E. Lowd

These are the voyages of the starship Initiative, to boldly go where no cat or dog has gone before…

The Initiative has had many strange encounters in space. What will it find on Planet 227?

(For some other adventures of the T.G.N. Initiative and its crew, see the anthologies Inhuman Acts; A Collection of Noir edited by Ocean Tigrox, and Dogs of War, Gods With Fur, and What the Fox?!, all edited by Fred Patten; the first three available from FurPlanet Productions and the last from Thurston Howl Publications.)

The Rocky Spires of Planet 227

by Mary E. Lowd

Captain Pierre Jacques sniffed the air on Planet 227. It was dry and sweet, very still in his whiskers, and chill on his bare pink skin. None of his science officers had mentioned being cold, but then Captain Jacques was the only Sphynx cat in his crew. Everyone else had fur under their Tri-Galactic Navy uniforms.

“It’s exhilarating!” Captain Jacques said, eliciting a polite but distracted nod from the nearest officer, a junior scientist tabby who was busy scanning the unusual red-brown rock clusters with a uni-meter.

Captain Jacques twisted his large triangular ears as he looked up to see how far the geometrical spires reached into the violet sky. He didn’t usually get to join his reconnaissance teams on their first visit to a planet; it’s the captain’s job to stay on the ship, making decisions, retaining command. But scans had shown no sign of life or geologic instability on Planet 227, so he’d decided it would be safe to leave his second officer in command and enjoy a little field trip.