Short Fiction

Glenn Tropile

Glenn Tropile is a Son of the Wolf in a starving, ritual-bound world where every motion is measured against survival, and his restless hunger for something more has already marked him for a Donation he intends to survive. Aboard Haendl's helicopter he confronts Princeton's striding, electricity-burning citizens and a guide who laughs at the Gestures, and the contrast splits his old life open. His refusal to be docile is the engine that turns a personal escape into something far larger.

Howard Mooney

Howard Mooney is a small-time operator wintering in a Sea Bright house, dodging stockholders from a failed frozen-food club and guarding his one warm room against the cold. When a shoeless stranger in a silvery leotard offers to pay for guidance to a place and time stated like coordinates, Mooney's instinct for a deal overrides his alarm. His mercenary curiosity makes him the reader's entry point into a world where time itself is a destination.

Peter Duane

Peter Duane comes to in a ship's infirmary with a nurse watching his eyelids and a captain explaining that Andrias is locked below and the rifles never reached Callisto. He sabotaged the controls himself, trusting no one, and now learns he and the captain were both League undercover workers stalling a delivery that could have ignited a political powder-keg. His fractured memory and slow recovery frame the story's central question of who he can believe, including himself.

Gala Tropile

Gala Tropile stands in Citizen Boyne's house torn between ritual obedience and the husband who deliberately touches her arm, reminding her of their furtive quarrels and the deep importance they hold for each other. She wails that she cannot help, then submits within minutes, whispering what she must do. Her wavering loyalty and the after-spiral of their argument are the leverage Glenn uses, and her flight to Citizen Germyn carries the consequences forward.

Herrell McCray

Herrell McCray is a navigator aboard the faster-than-light Jodrell Bank, a man trained to trust mathematics over the lies of common sense, now sealed in a space suit in a warm room on an unknown planet. The hours-long radio lag tells him he is impossibly far from home, and the halogen stench in the air tells him he cannot breathe here long. His methodical report and sour grin establish the story's blend of hard-SF problem-solving and mounting isolation.

Citizen Germyn

Citizen Germyn performs the ritual greetings and deprecations even as Haendl and his companion arrive with no breeding and alarming news: Tropile and other Wolves have been Translated, which Germyn insists is impossible. He fingers the I.D. bracelet of a dead soldier, hiding his thoughts while weighing whether to raise the hue and cry. His shaken orthodoxy and careful manners make him the story's window into a society confronting a contradiction it cannot absorb.