Jim Baen's Universe

Science Fiction Stories

Candy-Blossom

Written by Dave Freer

Illustrated by Verónica Casas

I was going to run. As soon as he . . . it . . . the THING stopped looking at me. Staring a hole through my stupid head with its four eyes. I was going to run like the wind. I shouldn't have come here. Never. I swore to God . . . if I ever got out of here . . .

The thing opened its mouth. The wrong way, like a vertical slash. The inside was watermelon-pink, full of tombstone teeth. Orange tombstones. Glowing even in the moonlight.

"Candy-blossom?" it said. Or that is what I thought it said, anyway. It sounded like one of those wind-chime magodies that that langhaar by the beach sells. What was the word he used again? Oh, Ja. Mellifluous. Mellifluous with just a little bit of lost-child despair.

Nothing that looks like a cross between a nightmare and train-smash should speak like that. Not even to an old poacher. My bag of illegal spiny lobster twitched where it lay on the sand.

The creature jumped like a startled rabbit. He pointed the thing in his—hand?—at the bag and backed off. I was happy he was pointing it at the bugs. I didn't know what a set of semi-see-through rods in these modern dayglo-fashion-design colors did. But something about the thing said "gun."

A spiny lobster stuck out a feeler and went "eerrrrrk." A bleddy scary noise in the quiet, if I say it myself. The thing crouched and aimed the gun-goody, waiting. Hey, the bugs could make a sudden move and find out if it was a cigarette vending-machine or not. Me, I was out of here.

I tensed myself to make the dash. Just a few seconds and I'd be gone behind that big gray granite boulder. And then I'd be away. I'd sneaked around these granite bricks and scrubby fynbos for thirty years. If the bleddy army couldn't catch me, then furry feeler-face Candy-blossom hadn't a chance.

Suddenly my ears picked up a familiar sound. One I was used to listening for.

Put-put . . . Patrol boat.

Old Candy-blossom heard it too. His four eyes nearly bugged out. And then, from up the hill, we heard a radio-crackle.

Shit. Not even to save my life from this alien thing was I going to be caught here! That bleddy magistraat at Vredenburg wouldn't give a damn how I'd been caught this time. . . .

"Candy-blossom? Enku?"

I didn't have to be a mindreader to understand the alien. It was just as scared of being caught as I was. And I'd bet "Enku" meant please.

"Oh, bugger it. Ja. Come." I picked up the bag.

It stood, looking bleddy pathetic.

"Man! Heretjie-tog, follow me, dammit."

It still didn't move, just made a miserable little "eeep!ting" sound. The patrol-boat was getting closer.

"Ag! Candy-blossom."

"Candy-blossom?"

"Ja, all right then, bleddy Candy-blossom. Now come."

It did.

****

Down here on this patch of beach there was no cover, unless you counted the piles of half-dry washed-up kelp. I'd got myself caught once before, hiding in one of those piles. The bleddy patrol had stopped and sat down on the rock next to my pile for a smoke-break. The buggers were parking off maybe three feet from where I was lying under that stinking kelp. They didn't have a clue that I was lying there with a streepsak of perlemoen and those damned kelp-goggas crawling all over me. Ai. It still makes me gril just thinking about it. Eventually I just had to scratch, even if it meant getting caught.

I wasn't doing that again.

Up the slope was mostly those big granite boulders and scrubby little renosterbossies. Not an easy place to hide but also damned near impossible to keep a skirmish-line patrol in contact with each other.

You could hear the dumb troeps vloeking their way through the bushes. Hell. There must have been a couple of hundred of them up there. This wasn't just a patrol out looking for old Piet Geel poaching in the military reserve again. They must be out looking for Candy-blossom here. Looking for him seriously.

I'd been wondering if I'd done something really stupid. Maybe I should give this monster to them. I mean he was . . . an alien. Like from the X-files, on the teevee down at Minna's place. But they shouldn't have come searching for him like that, not with half the bleddy Military Academy out after him. That got me mad. I'd had them looking for me before. Right now old Candy-blossom and me were up the same damned creek. I'd get him away, then, maybe . . .

There was a little vlei just up the hill in a bit of a flat-patch there. The water is the color of rooibos tea that's been boiled for two hours, with this red-brown scum on it. At the deepest it is just over knee-deep, and it's full of platannas and waterblommetjies. I pulled old Candy-blossom out into it, and made him lie down in between the lily-leaves. Then, pulled a couple of them over him and put one on his face. I lay down next to him, with a leaf on my face, too.

I heard them splash in the shallow water. Couldn't hear what they were saying, because my ears were underwater, but I know troeps. There hasn't been a troep born that is going to walk into the water deeper than half-way up his boots, if he gets that wet. Not on a winter's night, that's for sure. All I had to worry about was that there'd be some snotkop officer watching them. A torch shone across my face. I lay still. The torchlight stopped blinding me. Moved on.

The splashing stopped. We waited.

I gave old Candy-blossom a nudge. We got up. The skirmish line was downhill from us now. On the sea I could see not one patrol boat but all four. All around where we'd been. Not, thankfully, where we were going. I poured the water and a happy little plattie out of my boots and led old Candy-blossom over the ridge.

Now, you leave a boat on the beach, and anyone can see it. Put it in the open water and it's pretty obvious in the moonlight. Cover it with kelp and it gets full of those damned kelp-goggas. Me, I always leave the boat in a patch of three big gray rocks just off the beach. Who notices if there are three or four rocks? They're higher than my old boat. I put a bit of kelp on the back and just leave her there.

She stayed there three months, last time I got arrested. They thought I'd come over the fence. Lelik is niks, maar stupid . . . Like, I'm going to climb a ten-foot razor wire fence when I can just row around? So the old boat just stayed there. Even in the daytime nobody noticed her. Okay, it means I get myself wet getting out to her, but what is a bit of wetness to old smokkelaar like me? I could see my rocks below us, and in two minutes we'd be away.

Except there was some troepie gyppoing on the point. Okay. Maybe he was supposed to be on guard. Looked more like he was having a smoke and a daydream. Funny, they reckoned these black troeps would be different from the white ones. But a troep is a troep is a troep, like they say.

We couldn't wait. I'd swear blind that was a dog I heard. You can't fool dogs as easily as