Out of twenty SCI-FI tales in "The Vyton", here's a tasty two to sample...
- Trevor Watts
- 7 days ago
- 2 min read
As I said to the lady I see in the mirror, ‘I share my house with this alien that turned up in the summer, disguised as a sleek grey Siamese cat with ultra-light blue eyes.
‘She’s sure got a mind of her own,’ I told my glassy-eyed lookalike. ‘I know she’s a she, because men aliens couldn’t possibly be so beautifully aloof.’
‘How true,’ my reflective companion agreed.
‘I call her SooChin, but, obviously, she doesn’t pay any attention to me when I call, or reach to her.’
‘Oh, yes, right?’ says my friend in the mirror. She doesn’t say it aloud, of course: she’s cleverer than that. But I can tell from the expression on her face that she believes me, mostly. But wants me to prove it. Like Hubbly Bubbly Stanley always did. Before he upped and died on me. Literally. On me. Right in the middle of it.
Like the doctors said, ‘It’s a wonder you’re not unbalanced by the experience, Mrs Kellyson. Two days stuck under him. Dead.’
Him; not me.
‘These otbrosy—’
‘Call them human, Chadny: it’s what they’re registered as. They get touchy if we call them scum to their faces.’
‘Huh, with faces like theirs, they can hardly expect anything more; disgusting creatures.’ Chadny tightened his rasper ligaments in loathing. Frustrated, he multi-clicked his secondary pincers, and continued, ‘These humans: they’re whining about the tax again.’
‘What this time?’ CityFort Commander Zokoz bristled his high antennae in irritation. ‘They know that all out-Empire traders must pay the tax if they want to enter our territories.’
‘It’s the amount, Sir. The conditions. They have discovered that most traders coming to the Vyton Empire pay a considerably lower rate of tax.’
‘Most are not revoltingly pallid squidgy things that pollute our presence by their very existence – like humans do. Of course we don’t charge the same levy on their goods. Besides, all the others have long since learned their lesson in obedience.’
‘Yes, indeed, Commander, Sir. It’s basically a tax on being human; but they are becoming restless again.’
'We need to teach them a lesson, hmm?'
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