Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/homepage.ez?Who=mysteri

I thought I'd go ahead and post my entry from the contest for the story to go along with the cover image for issue #3. Here's the beginning. I posted the entire story on my member page as an article, as was kindly suggested. It has minor modifications from the original submission, and italicized text didn't come through that way. ---- "Come in; sit down," I said as he stood in the archway. "Good to see you had the sense to keep your helmet on." He even had the faceplate polarized still. "Go ahead, you can take it off now." "Thanks," he replied as he unzipped his flight suit and unfastened his helmet. "I'm frying in here." He brushed the sandy grit off his pants and stamped his boots on the flagstones before stepping onto the intricate inlaid mosaic tiles of my office. "Water?" "Gladly." I stepped around my desk to the dispenser against the wall. His gaze followed me across the room. He had sapphire eyes to match his blond, Caucasian features. The same sapphire eyes I had come to know intimately the last few weeks. "Who is she?" he asked. I knew he was caught by the piercing emerald stare of the Afghan refugee pictured on my wall. "Her name was Sharbat Gula. One of the most recognized faces on Earth about a hundred years ago. Just a refugee made famous by her eyes, fate, and National Geographic." "Offends their sensibilities, doesn't it?" I smiled as I turned to him. So he's a quick study. "Yup, but I haven't had many occasions to have a ruk in here." I handed him the carved stone cup and extended my right hand. "Martin Zagoyen at your service." "James Mitchell. Pleased to meet you." He hesitated briefly and chose to recline on the settee rather than sit. Score one more for Mr. Mitchell. "So James, tell me what you know of the rukai." "Other than the typical propaganda everyone sees on the vid, just the cultural details you've been kind enough to supply. Let's see, generally nomadic but now tending toward urbanism. Hunters turned herders. Alpha male dominance. Aggressive, though enjoying a period of peace. Artistically skilled and intellectually advanced. And obsessed with symmetry. Not what most people expect from a bunch of talking lizards." "I assume you're not like most people. You seem not to have underestimated the rukai in following my advice so far." "I'm a cautious man. Being gutted in the street for showing too much of my face to the wrong ruk sounds unpleasant. It seemed prudent to take your suggestions seriously." "I'm glad to see that you're a sensible man. Not everyone who comes here takes my advice seriously, and that just makes my job all the more difficult. Establishing a working relationship with the rukai is tricky at best. They are certainly our equals. One-on-one, they easily outrank us physically. They are in a golden age intellectually, dimmed only by our own relatively long history of civilization. The rukai excel at mathematics and metallurgy and easily best us in genetic manipulation. You said rightly that they are aggressive. And they have pursued every road to give them an edge in battle or to make better meat animals, whether domestic or feral. "We're just fortunate they don't care much for mechanized transport and never got beyond this content, much less off-planet. If they had been a space-faring race and found Earth first, I doubt the encounter would have been a peaceful one." He nodded in agreement at that. "Are you familiar with the Moors?" I asked. "Lowland bogs? Here? I thought this continent was mostly desert, though I couldn't see much coming in low over the ocean in the dark." "You're right, but I'm talking about the Moorish period in Spain. Earth history." "Can't say I really am." "Islamic invaders we call the Moors swept over the Iberian Peninsula from North Africa. While the rest of Europe groped through the Dark Ages, the Moors experienced their cultural golden age, preserving and extending the knowledge of the civilizations before them. I see a fascinating symmetry between the rukai and the Moors. "There are exceptions, of course. Like the fact that the rukai surprisingly didn't ever develop the concept of zero, like Islamic mathematicians did. But when we introduced it, they grasped it immediately and made the leap to binary computation. But we've helped them along in that area in return for hints in biological design. I hope to help keep this process mutually beneficial. If Earth hadn't seen the darkness of the Crusades and the Inquisition, who knows where our civilization would be today?" "That's all well and good, Martin. But none of that really concerns me. I just want to find Sharon." "But it does concern you, James. You've already shown yourself adept at following cultural protocol for your own benefit. That's what my job is all about. It will help keep you alive here in Maz-ir-Ruk. And it will help us find your sister. Now, do you have what I asked for?" James pulled a data wafer out of an inner pocket of his flight suit and handed it to me. Stepping behind my desk, I quickly copied the information. Then I handed the wafer back, along with a cloth turban and gilded mask. "Keep the disk on you," I instructed. "And leave your helmet here. You'll bake your brains in that thing. We've got an appointment with the sam-alruk." James turned the mask over in his hands a few times, admiring the intricate filigree etched into it. Then he donned his head covering and stepped out into the blazing sun with me. ----- continued at link below

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/homepage.ez?Who=mysteri&ViewArticle=2045

make that at the link above

I really liked it. Saw a few typos, but it was a very good story. jon

I enjoyed it a lot. I agree with jstro, good solid story telling. I am intrigued by the obsession with symmetry you hint at here. Although what I found a bit disconcerting was the similar speech patterns of the two characters. They talk alike too much to be strangers meeting for the first time. That's just my niggle. :o) Going off to enjoy the rest of it... Cheers! - M

Thanks for the feedback. Moebius, I especially appreciate the comment on the dialogue. I've realized that realistic dialogue is hard to accomplish, powerful when done right, and something I still need to work on. Now you've forced me to go back and look at how to improve it. Of course now I've got to go back and find those typos, too!

At 1,994 words, this is just about the right length for publication. Indeed, it could stand to be just a bit longer, so if you thought about fleshing it out just a little bit you should. Although, at this length, it need not be longer. Take a look through the WritersWrite.com database of paying publications and seriously give some thought to sending it off. Of course read the submission guidelines for any target publication before doing so. As to the typos, literally there were a couple, just two. "Martin Zagoyen at your service." should be "Martin Zagoyen, at your service." and "We're just fortunate they don't care much for mechanized transport and never got beyond this [content], much less off-planet. Should be "We're just fortunate they don't care much for mechanized transport and never got beyond this [continent], much less off-planet. There were also a couple of phrases that nagged at me, but this is just a matter of opinion. or to make better meat animals, Make just did not seem like the right word here. Perhaps... or to breed better meat animals, In this phrase: That's not terribly easy considering how few females there are circulating in public from which to generalize, and how scandalously many of those dress in rukai society. I thought it was somewhat inconstant to mention how few females are circulating yet how many dressed scandalously. Perhaps... That's not terribly easy considering how few females there are circulating in public from which to generalize, and how the few that did, tended to dress scandalously for rukai society. Then in this phrase: We gladly rose. I held my ground, but James never even made a move for the shade. I think but should be and or maybe a slight rephasing to empahsis how savy the new guy is. Perhaps something like... We gladly rose. I held my ground, and to his credit, James never even made a move for the shade. Also, should ruaki and sam-alruk be capitalized as proper nouns? I like the story a lot. I think you did an excellent job of conveying the sense of a very alien yet believable culture in a short space. I liked the analogy of the Moors and the ruaki. And I'm somewhat of a name freak, I love names, and I really like the names you came up with for your aliens and there environs. Oh yes, there seemed to be an implication that Sharon was used to genetically modify some ruaki fems. Not too likely in the short time they had her? If you want to expand the story at all, clarifying this point is where I think it could pay off. Did they capture her as a child or have they gotten their hands on other blue-eyed humans in the past? jon

Regarding length, I restrained myself a bit for the original to keep it at (just) under 2000 words, and do have some ideas I couldn't explain in that space. That ties into your last comment about the time the rukai had Sharon. Even I don't have a full answer to that yet. In hinting at the rukai prowess in genetic engineering, I toyed with the thought that they can modify genetic expression in adults instead of zygotes. Details of Sharon's abduction need clarification in my own mind. I can't count how many times I missed content versus continent. Of course, my brain KNEW it said "continent" and that's what I saw, and the darn spell checker didn't help a whit on that one! I agree with you on all three phrases you tagged. They even went through a few drafts, but as the clock ticked down to submission time and my brains got gooey, I left well-enough alone. I am extremely pleased that you understood the implication of James resisting the suggestions of the sam-alruk in spite of the mangled phrasing. I worried that I was being too subtle. Just before posting, I looked at the sentence containing both "rukai" and "Moors" and noticed the inconsistency in capitalization. I yield to the wisdom of the jury. I'm glad you enjoyed it and extremely appreciative of your thoughtful critique. And I'll take a look at WritersWrite.com.