Oblivion by Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch Page A

had treated the other two who spoke. Instead, Cicoi kept his stance rigid and waited for further instructions.
    But there were none. The lead Elder waved his eyestalks, turning them toward all the other Elders. They imitated the movement, and then their tentacles pointed upward.
    The ceiling opened, and the breeze grew stronger. The Elders tilted their heads back, pointed their lower tentacles behind them so that they were streamlined, and floated toward the cold darkness above.
    Cicoi unpocketed two more eyestalks so that he could watch this tremendous sight. Fifty Elders, their bodies wispy and black, absorbing all light and energy, soared toward the surface of Malmur, a place they had not been in generations.
    A place they had not been in living memory.
    A place they had not been since Malmur left its home sun a long, long time ago.
    Cicoi had thought life for his people was hard before. Now it would become even harder.
    April 27, 2018
8:45 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time
    170 Days Until Second Harvest
    Leo Cross balanced one suitcase against his thigh as he struggled with the old-fashioned lock on his front door. He had already disengaged the security system, but for some reason his housekeeper Constance insisted on using all of the locks when he was gone, including the one on the antique oak door. He should have waited at the airport for fifteen more minutes. By then, she would have arrived and been able to let him into his own house.
    Instead, he had to waggle the ancient brass key into the even older brass lock and wait until he heard the tumblers turn. Then he pushed the door open with his shoulder.
    The suitcase fell inward with a bang and Cross stiffened, half expecting his mother’s voice to yell at him from upstairs. But his parents were long gone. Only their ghosts echoed throughout the house. He had grown up here, and had done little since his parents’ death to make the house his. The antiques his mother so loved still filled the foyer and most of the ground level.
    Still, it felt good to be home. It felt good to have a home to return to. He shuddered. He’d managed to get some sleep on the red-eye he had taken back from San Francisco, but his dreams had been filled with the slight whirr of NanTech’s wand and the clank of wedding bands as they hit the glass front. Wedding bands and engagement rings and anniversary necklaces. So much stuff that had meant so much to people at one time and was now not much more than junk.
    His personal phone hadn’t rung since he left, nor had his pager gone off. Jamison clearly hadn’t found anything—and neither had Bradshaw and Groopman in South America.
    Cross sighed and kicked the door closed. Then he lugged his suitcases upstairs and tossed them on the king-sized bed he had bought specially for his room. He had made this room his, with its utilitarian furniture and high-tech gadgetry. It wasn’t fair to say he had missed it—he hadn’t been gone long enough—but he did feel more relaxed when he was here.
    Downstairs the door opened, and he thought he heard female laughter. Constance usually wasn’t so merry when she came to work. She had been with the family forever. He could no more get rid of her than he could have fired his grandmother. She made certain he ate well and his home wasn’t a complete pigsty.
    Cross could have afforded an entire bevy of housekeepers— his parents had left him independently wealthy—but he rarely thought of the money. Instead, it provided him a way to do the work he loved. Or the work he had once loved, before the world had changed with the attack of the aliens.
    He pulled off his clothes and took a hot shower, staying for a long time under the spray. He needed to get the feel of the black dust off him. He knew he didn’t really have any on him, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the sense of it, the way his skin crawled even when he thought of it.
    As he got out, the smell of fried pork sausage reached him, along with the