I have no idea what happened to Kate’s post,but since she isn’t here, something needs to go up…  Um…

Um… Um… Um…

Well, tell you what — I’ve got the flu and a book to finish.  So, I’m going to treat you to the first story I ever sold.  “Story” is a misnomer.  It’s a series of vignettes I wrote while I was mildly drunk.  And the “sold” is a misnomer too.  I “sold” it to the BYU (don’t ask.  really) student-run sci fi mag… and they never paid me.  Since I was nobody I didn’t remind them, and the semester ended…

So, written in… 92? 93? and good for a laugh, here is The Problems of Xenobiology read it and weep (well, I do.  MY LORD, was I ever THAT bad?):

 

 

The Problems of Xenobiology

by

Sarah A. Hoyt

 

 

Commitment

     They met at a seaside resort in Proxima Centauri.

He came from Antares.  He was tall, dark, handsome, and multi- worldly-wise.

She came from Iowa.  She was slim, fair, blue-eyed and innocent.  When their eyes met sparks flew.

He would make bold to get what he could.

She was innocent, but not that innocent.

And she would not.  She could not.  She dared not.  Not with just any extraterrestrial.

So he set out to prove he wasn’t just another alien.

He took her for walks on the purple sands.  And carried her across the golden water in his strong, muscular arms.  Then he took her to dinner at the little beach front restaurant… food just like on the little Dipper, but the fish is dead.  And he took her dancing, all night, non-stop.  And he knew how to bargain and he knew where to shop.

Ah, the walks and the talks, and the vermillion sunsets.  And the smile on his lips, and his large, large diamonds… that he said were household trash where he came from.

He bought her multicolored fire-flowers and gifted her with birds that wouldn’t stop singing.

Then one night in his room, amid the cool sheets, she did what he wanted, he did as he pleased.

If things were just a little strangely arranged, she didn’t notice.  She was innocent, remember?  She didn’t even know it wasn’t supposed to retract quietly into a chest cavity.

To her anguished pleas, he replied, “Marry you my dear?  Don’t talk nonsense.  Different species can’t procreate.”

Nevertheless, in less than a month, she laid two thin-shelled eggs.  Out of which, in a year’s time, popped two little boys.  With multicolored eyes.

 

THE END

 

 

Endurance

 

They met at a bar, in the lowest section of a forgotten city, in a nameless planet in the Archer’s far side.  She came from Alpha Centauri.  He hailed from Maine.

She was a sometime famous singer, with a voice sweeter than honey and lighter than a feather on the outer asteroids.  She’d been banned from most worlds, for reasons she wouldn’t mention.       Probably just money, he thought, sympathetically.

He had been an astronaut, before too much moonshine from the moons of Saturn rendered his hands unsteady on the controls.

She sang for her living.  He lived for her singing.

Night after night — this world had no day to speak of — he sat amid the smoke of tobacco and of other nameless weeds, from countless carcinogenic planets, and gazed at her blue/green eyes.

Night after night, he forgot the blue liquor in the crystal bottle on his table.  Night after night, his hands trembled less and less.  And he felt redeemed, by his lady fair.

One night she came and she sat at his table.  And told him of husbands she’d loved and lost.  And how much they’d resembled him and how lonely she was.

The next day he went to the Space Force Medical Examination Building and was pronounced fit for all duty.

That night he bought a diamond ring, and thought of it sparkling in her tiny fingers with carefully-looked-after nails.

He was sure she’d have him.  An astronaut was not just any catch.  An astronaut was choice prey.  Oh, sure, he faced danger, but there was danger pay.  She’d again know all the comfort of her heyday.  And he’d have someone waiting for him at the end of the run.  Someone to keep him from the blue liquid in the crystal bottle.

So that night he proposed and that night they were married, by the bar owner, in a simple little ceremony, without even the barest of fertility rites.

Afterwards, in her little room, he told her how happy he was and how they would travel together the never ending universe and visit again all the places she missed.

She pouted a little, with her heart-shaped mouth, then sighed, revealing row upon row of very sharp teeth.  She turned off the lamp they’d lit.

“Yes dear,” she said.  “But first let’s eat.”

THE END

 

Parity

     They just weren’t right for each other.  Anyone could see that.  He was a good boy, from good Boston families.  She was an interplanetarily renowned socialite, from Arcturus, with nothing to her name but the whispered comments, from man to man in exclusive clubs.

He was tall, fair, golden skinned, green eyed, strong, rich.  She was small, slim ash-blond, fragile.

Their meeting was like a white giant erupting in a dark universe.  Worlds collided then merged in interesting ways.

Day after day — she worked nights — in her carefully furnished apartment, she did what she knew, he said what he meant.

The forbidden pleasures of a thousand races, in all she was skilled, in all she excelled.  Her body bent, in shapes never seen, and the mobious strip was the most common.  And he sighed, and he sang, and he implored, that she marry him, and curse the ill-wishers.

He had the money, she had the muscles.

But she laughed and laughed, and said delicately, “But sweet, can’t you see?  For a real marriage, we’d need all that genders and where will we find the other three?”

THE END

 

Differentiation

     They met while studying archeology in the Ursa Major.   He came from the little Dipper, and was a member of an almost unknown species.

She came from Kansas.  They were both oh, so well read and tall and sensitive and had so much in common.

He was tall and fair and attractive.  He knew the names of all the vegetarian restaurants in fifty five worlds, and he liked children and was kind to animals, and he read poetry every night, before turning to that lower state of consciousness that he called sleep.

She was thin and dark and quiet.  All her life, she’d waited for a man to listen to her.  Just like the librarian in antique movies, she became ravishing when he convinced her to loosen her long hair and remove her glasses.

He complimented her hair and noticed her clothes, he liked her perfume.  He understood how her heart had just got broken to smithereens, all those times, with all those boars.

Together they collected fragments of pottery, from a civilization long ago vanished from the surface of the dusty, golden planet.  Together they cleaned, glued and admired.  Together they commented on how this lost civilization didn’t seem to have made a difference between genders and how wonderful it must have been to live in a world so unbiased.

All day, every day, they worked in a room so tiny one could hardly breathe without pressing, provocatively, against the other.  Still he wouldn’t, he couldn’t.

She couldn’t seduce him.  Not for her long hair and her lack of glasses and the obvious fact that, without glasses, she should be crowned the beauty queen of the multi-universes.

All day, every day — Earth standard and not — she dropped hints and she made suggestions.  All day, every day, he ignored them.

And yet he talked about how ravishing she was and how he relished the sight of her and the smell of her perfume.

     He must be shy, she thought.  So one day she feigned forgetfulness and dared into the shower during his bathing time.  She do what she would, he’d counter as he could.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, with well forged contrition, “My chrono must be wrong.”  All the while she looked at his perfect physique, from which only a detail lacked.  Was it retractable?

But he didn’t look embarrassed.  “Oh, never mind.  After all, we’re both female and there are no males of either species on this planet.”

END