Starquake.pdf

She came to an intersection and looked down the street. Wandering blindly from slide-walk to
slide-walk was a filthy, drunken, heavy-set male. Where his eye-balls should have been were oozing
sores on the ends of stumps. Shreds of skin hung from his blistered hide. Shocked by his condition,
Qui-Qui stood still in the middle of the intersection as he weaved his way closer. Her first reaction was
that of revulsion. It changed to pity as she realized the pain and suffering he had gone through even to
survive, while she flitted around in a luxurious flyer. He was coming to the third verse in the song, and she
softly blended her deep contralto voice into his.
" ... Be my friend, by my lover, Be my tread, be my cover. Twine thine eyen about mine."
The male's voice trailed off as hers became louder.
"I mustreally be going mad!" he said out loud to himself, throwing the half-finished bag of cheap pulp
juice into the street.
"No. You're not," said Qui-Qui, moving toward him.
"Is this the way you die?" he said, still not sending his tread vibrations in her direction. "All my life I have
longed for Qui-Qui. Now I imagine she is here."
"Iam here," said Qui-Qui in her unmistakable voice, "I amreally the Qui-Qui you have longed for and I
have come to take care of you." She moved alongside Heavy-Egg, gently twined three eye-stubs about
his wounded stumps and led him off to a hospital she had noticed a few blocks away. As they moved
along side-by-side, she sang to him.
At the hospital she cleaned his hide, anointed his blisters, bandaged his eye-stumps, and filled his eating
pouches with decent food. Then she made love to him.
She concentrated on the bulk of the body of the male and ignored the lack of eye-balls. His tread
massaged her topside with quivering delight, while his twelve eye-stubs wound tighter and tighter around
hers until they were coupled eyeflap to eyeflap. The orifice at the base of his eye-stubs opened and
droplets of fluid from his body fell into her waiting eyeflaps. A long yearning in each of them was finally
satisfied. Qui-Qui
relaxed under Heavy-Egg's limp body as the droplets made their way through her body to her eager
egg-case.
TIME: 06:58:11 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE2050
Pierre's hands and feet had been pulled through the water and slammed against the walls of the tank by
some unimaginable force as the viewscreens had turned dark. For three long seconds alarms had rung
throughout Dragon Slayer as the computer tried to repair its damage and return to operation. The
multiple screens built into the walls of his tank finally lit up again.
"Report status," he said.
"Starquake on Dragon's Egg," the computer responded. "Systems suffered damage from gamma rays