QSFer Sheila Jenné has a new queer sci-fi book out: Bisection.
Tria and Resa have shared the same body since they were born. Like everyone on their home planet of Kinaru, their mind and body are divided down the middle: the logical right and the emotional left. Tria, the right, has a budding career as a biologist, while Resa dreams of more freedom than their home planet grants her.
When aliens land on Kinaru, Tria and Resa seize the opportunity to be the first of their people to travel to the stars. Karnath, the alien scientist assigned to study them, is convinced there is more to the Kinaru than meets the eye. But only days into the trip, crew members start turning up dead, and a mutiny redirects the ship toward a forbidden, war-torn planet—Earth.
To solve a conspiracy that threatens three planets, Tria must find out the truth of who her people really are, and Resa needs to finally tell Tria the dark secrets she’s been hiding all their lives.
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Excerpt
[Tria]
It was the first full day of our polar biological survey, and already I was arguing with my other half.
I stepped on the heel of the shovel, driving it a handspan into the tundra.
Resa lifted her shoulder and dropped it again. she said. Well, perhaps said is the wrong word. Resa is my left, so we don’t communicate aloud. We share a body, and I hear whichever of her thoughts she chooses for me to hear.
I said. I had been correct. A wind like a sandblaster tore down from the craggy slopes, making my eye tear up. The tears formed crystals in my eyelashes, which I brushed away with a heavy mitt.
That’s not how I talk, or how I think. Such poetic nonsense is a left tendency. So while I think in degrees, she seems to expect a metaphor. She might as well ask for . . . well . . . a metaphor from a right.
Bending down, I scooped a few crumbs of frozen earth into a vial. Back at the base we’d examine the sample for extremophile bacteria. If there were any, that would tell us something important about whether, and how, life might evolve on a frozen planet. There is one in Kinaru’s solar system, always assumed to be lifeless, but if there were organisms here, why not on our nearest neighbor?
Resa continued.
I protested, offended. But internally I quailed at the thought of turning down this mission. Could I really have made that sacrifice? I had been lucky enough to be assigned exobiology as my career right when it was an emerging field. I was positioned to be one of the first to visit another planet, if we managed to travel to one before my working years were over. But not if I got a reputation as so ruled by my left I would turn down prestigious assignments.
She made a dismissive gesture. Taking the vial from my hand, she stuffed it into our coat’s left pocket.
It’s true, she feels the cold much more than I do. She feels everything more. As the right, I’m the thinker, the logical one.
“Tria il Resa!” called my team leader, Heda il Trambo, over the screaming of the wind. “Come around this outcropping with me. If we can get out of the wind a little, we’ll have a much easier time digging.”
I shouldered my shovel and followed my mentor, trudging across the stony permafrost. There was no snow. It is far too dry on the Northern Continent for there to be any; the frozen ground was barely touched with frost. A few icy bits skittered along the ground; that was all the moisture for miles, if you didn’t count what we had brought with us.
I was just rounding the outcropping when I almost tripped over Heda il Trambo, who had stopped dead. His stout figure, made even stouter with layers of heavy clothing, blocked me from seeing beyond him. “Is something the matter, Professor?” Without the wind screaming so loudly in my ear, my voice sounded too loud.
He turned, shushing me. “Look! What do you see?”
I followed his pointing finger. “The camp? How have we gotten so turned around?” Then I looked again at the squat buildings, the radio antenna, the solar panels. “That’s not our camp. Who else is on the Northern Continent right now? I thought we were the only expedition for a hundred miles!”
“We are,” said Heda.
“It could be abandoned,” I started to say, but just then I saw a figure come out of the door, stomping its way over to the radio antenna to tinker with it. From this distance, and in their heavy clothing, it was impossible to tell anything about them.
We came out of the shelter of the outcropping and started to walk toward the mysterious base. The figure tinkering with the antenna didn’t look up; the wind was far louder than any sound we made, tramping across the frozen earth.
The closer we got, the stranger the shelter looked. What was that gray, smooth material it was built out of? It didn’t look like stone or metal. What was that platelike dish near the antenna? A fancy radio receiver? This wasn’t a makeshift shelter of smugglers hiding from customs. It looked like a scientific station, like ours, only bigger and more advanced. Yet the Science Ministry would surely have notified us if another scientific expedition was coming to the exact same place as we were. Unless there was some kind of top-secret government research going on we weren’t privy to? But that just didn’t seem like the placid, paper-pushing Science Ministry I knew.
At last we were within a few yards of the shelter, and Heda let out a loud halloo. Wouldn’t want to seem to be sneaking around.
The person at the antenna started wildly, waving their arms. Clearly not expecting company any more than we had been. Then they turned around.
We stopped dead. Heda clutched my arm suddenly in shock. The person working on the antenna . . . was not Kinaru. Could not possibly be.
Author Bio
Sheila Jenné was raised on Star Trek and never lost the yearning for something different, something far away, something genuinely weird. She has worked as an editor, content writer, and Latin teacher, but for fun she spins yarn, goes hiking, and creates historically accurate cosplays. She is the author of Bisection, Black Sails to Sunward, and the upcoming novel The Sea of Clouds.
| Author Website | sheilajenne.com |
|---|---|
| Author Twitter | https://twitter.com/jennelikejennay |