Az had to hold her glass in both hands. I made a mental note to get lightweight drink containers from now on. We drank. Az and I made faces.
“Isn’t anyone going to ask why Azuria’s child isn’t sterile?” Thurston stood before the fire, a slight, bent figure, holding the cut-crystal glass. “I’ll give you a clue,” he said. “The drug you took, Azuria, the one meant for Cassie, was steroidal.”
“Hormone-based,” I broke in, remembering the black marketeer’s explanation for the exorbitant price.
“A few days either way,” Thurston gestured, “and it wouldn’t have made any difference to the development of the foetus. Ah, even in biomechanics there’s an element of luck.” He drank deeply from his glass, then held it up. “To you, Daniel Doyle! You were a worthy adversary, but I beat you.” He topped up my glass and Az’s and refilled his own. Then he lifted his glass to her. “To us, my dear! The creators of a new species.”
“You need more than one being to create a species,” I said uneasily. “A species must, by definition, be able to reproduce itself.”
Thurston drained the rest of his glass. His eyes blazed with excitement. I’d never seen him like this before. “A thousand winged females, perhaps, Michael. Programmed for maximum genetic variability. And a thousand male humans—it’s not hard. With this breakthrough, the next generation’s progeny won’t be sterile. And I think we can avoid this problem,” he waved one hand casually towards Az, “in the next generation. Of course, that first two thousand, they’d have to fall in love and mate, but that can be programmed too. You can even program a love for roses, y’know.”
I choked on the stout.
Az lifted her face to him. “Did you program me to fall in love with Elliott?”
Thurston smiled at her. “What a question.”
An ancient prophet once said, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” I went to the window, inhaled the Blue Monday and looked out at the night.
High, high above the bare branches of the treetops, my people were wheeling in slow, lazy spirals against the moon.
END
More stories in this series
“The Cyborg’s Story” is the 9th story in the O’Neill, Star and Lawson series.
[Undercover narcotics agents Michael O’Neill and Baby Johnson are sent to the northern rivers of New South Wales to bust a heroin dealer so big everyone up there calls him God.]
[Michael O’Neill and Baby Johnson, still suffering from PTSD, quit the Australian Narcotics Bureau and move to the far north coast of NSW. Each hopes love will save them.]
[Released from jail, Lawson, formerly the heroin manufacturer known as God, fails in his attempt at suicide, but he manages to save Star from her abusive relationship with Wayne.]
[Almost all the men in Star’s life have turned out to be violent. In choosing Wayne, she thinks she is breaking the pattern.]
[When Lawson is forty he goes to Maralinga to investigate a mysterious coin found there. Here he meets Jamie Stanborough, who seduces Lawson for his own ends.]
[“Trio” consists of 3 very short stories: “The Sunflowers; A Happily Married Man” and “The State of Grace.”]
[When O’Neill finally breaks up with Azure, he seeks help. Unfortunately, he becomes obsessed with his psychiatrist Adrianne West.]
[While working at night, Johnson is hit by a train. In the last seven minutes of his life, before his brain shuts down, he imagines he has found the mythical kingdom of Parthenia.]
To preview the 10th and last story, “Reflections”, go to: https://danielledevalera.wordpress.com/short-story-previews/ This will be released in March ‘15. If you’re an aficionado of my work and you’d like to be notified in advance of any new release, please send me an email at
[email protected] I’ll be happy to add you to my mailing list.
About the author
Until the publication of her novel MagnifiCat at the end of 2013, Danielle de Valera was best known for her short stories, which won a number of Australian awards and appeared in such diverse publications as Penthouse, Aurealis, and the Australian Women’s Weekly. Many of her short stories are set on the far north coast of New South Wales, Australia, where she has lived since 1977.
Other works by this author
MagnifiCat: an Animal Fantasy, 70,000 words, 288 pages.
[Meet the Katt family. Despite the love in their little cottage, they’re finding it hard to make ends meet. When the bank won’t grant more time t pay the mortgage, the Katts must find a way to save the day. A feel-good, animal fantasy for adults with the fairy tale ending we’d all like to have.]
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/377028
“Frankie and Juno”. Very short story, 1,000 words, 3 pages—a quick read.
[Frankie, a lovesick tom, falls for the beautiful Juno, an elegant white cat, but the relationship is not a success.] On Derek Haines’s e magazine Whizzbuzz Shortz.
https://www.derekhaines.ch/shortz/2013/12/frankie-and-juno-a-fable-by-danielle-de-valera
Connect with me online
Twitter: https://twitter.com/@de_valera
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/danielle.devalera
Google+: https://plus.google.com/+DanielledeValera/about
My blogs: 1. About Writing and Writers: https://danielledevalera.wordpress.com
2. Manuscript Development Services: https://patrickdevalera.wordpress.com
Questions or comments?
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to email me at:
[email protected] Need help with your writing?
I’ve been a freelance manuscript assessor since 1992, and an editor (copy, structural and creative) for even longer; I can also help you with simple formatting, if you are working in Word. I love helping emerging writers, and my rates are very reasonable. Check out:
https://patrickdevalera.wordpress.com/manuscript-development-services/
One last thing ...
If you enjoyed this story, would you mind taking a few seconds to let your friends know about it, perhaps on Facebook, Google+ or Twitter?
Thank you,
Dani
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