2109:  ENDING A HEPTADE
OF PLUTONIAN ECLIPSES

1:  On Pluto

In a city
of metallic
ice blue,
people
of shadows
look upward
into the
smokey dark
orb which
is Charon
In their towers
on parapets
of green ice
they stand
watch and
chant prayers
counting incantations
on seven-fingered hands
as their tiny copper
sun traces a diurnal
path out of sight every
six-point-three-nine days

They sometimes wonder:
	if Charon is the eye of a dreaming Goddess and if the
	sun is a thought darting through her mind
but then they recall:
	all the occulting explanations of their spectral
	and learned saucer-eyed astronomers.


2:  On Charon

Occasionally, the burrowers break through purple ice, hunker
their carapaces down to the flowing solid surface, then turn
down the flame on their alcohol breath
	just long enough
	to look at the stars.

They gasp the air they're making in their own jaws and
nervously twitch thousands of legs, and of course,
	above them,
It's still there

The legendary one,
crystalline circle in the sky,
Pluto, and now it's the Season of Shadow
the Charonian year is over.

And they spin a yarn:
	about a vengeful God who once a year looks down on all
	burrowers and judges them, hanging terrible and eternal
	-visioned in the night sky, ready to tumble down if, on
	a whim, He finds them wanting
And they burrow back,
	muttering and shivering.


3: From the Night

The Spacecraft Orpheus III plummets
out of the dark
	quietly, and with the barest hint of orange flame
	it crash-lands.

A golden-skinned cyborg digs herself from the ice
	dragging behind an instrument pack
	and a just-in case of spare brains
She looks skyward,
	recognizes Pollux, Arcturus, and Denab
	and routinely cuts a fix.
*This*must*be*the*place* she says, and
	starts titrating methane with an electolytic
	divining rod
She never realizes:
	that dream cities overhead have faded upon her arrival
	and burrower nests have turned to barely-discernible
	barely-interesting veins in the ice beneath her feet
Unable to exist in the glow of her colder, harder logic.


4: During the Mission

As she works she whistles.

-Charles M. Saplak

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