Tweezers

By Sean Monaghan

Exploring the alien rock pools on Kombya, a gorgeous, ocean-dominated planet, the little robot Tweezers patiently uncovers new snippets of data. The researchers encourage him. Tweezers performs with meticulous enthusiasm.

So what makes him wonder about other lives?

A science fiction adventure story with a heart, from the author of "Little Voices"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Triple V Publishing
• Release date: Jan 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215979204

Sean Monaghan

Award-winning author, Sean Monaghan has published more than one hundred stories in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and in New Zealand, where he makes his home. A regular contributor to Asimov’s, his story “Crimson Birds of Small Miracles”, set in the art world of Shilinka Switalla, won both the Sir Julius Vogel Award, and the Asimov’s Readers Poll Award, for best short story. He is a past winner of the Jim Baen Memorial Award, and the Amazing Stories Award. Sean writes from a nook in a corner of his 110 year old home, usually listening to eighties music. Award-winning author, Sean Monaghan has published more than one hundred stories in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and in New Zealand, where he makes his home. A regular contributor to Asimov’s, his story “Crimson Birds of Small Miracles”, set in the art world of Shilinka Switalla, won both the Sir Julius Vogel Award, and the Asimov’s Readers Poll Award, for best short story. He is a past winner of the Jim Baen Memorial Award, and the Amazing Stories Award. Sean writes from a nook in a corner of his 110 year old home, usually listening to eighties music.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

In the brisk wind, Tweezers scuttled forward from the icky pond. The pond itself had to be, what, fifteen meters wide? Kind of place he could have swum across in moments in his old body.

Not that the pond was a nice place to swim anyway. Scummy with algae, a briney mix of salt spray and rainwater. Rocky, beyond the reach of all but the highest of tides.

Right now, his body was giving out and he needed repair quick. Real quick.

Tweezers's body was the kind of thing they'd grown in labs maybe thirty years back. A mollusc shell that curled into a kind of trumpet ten centimeters long, with a soft tongue of organ-filled flesh winding up the spiral. The forward end had six stalk sensors, an even dozen legs and a few simple mouth parts to retrieve nutrition.

He scraped up the pond's dried-out mud bank. The mix of musculature and microservos in most of those legs doing a fair job of hauling him along.

Little readouts across his vision scans showed that the temperature was falling. Cloud banks building up across the western horizon already stretching far enough to blot out light from Hazel, the system's primary star. Flickers of lightning deep in the darkest parts of the clouds.

Closer, slamming breakers were striking the rocky headland. Every little impact working to loosen things, water sliding into the cracks, lifted sand particles sluicing through and slowly wearing away.

In fifty thousand years this part of the island might be nothing more than a nub. Probably well under the waves.

The island was close to forty thousand square kilometers. An oblong lying on a north-east to south-west axis. Four hundred and twelve kilometers tip to tip, a shade over a hundred and seventy kilometers at its widest point.

A tunabill landed in front of Tweezers, black wings folding onto its back. The bird tilted its flat head and peered at him. One of the bigger seabirds that called this area home, the tunabill stood a good forty centimeters tall. Mostly they dined on fich carcasses abandoned by larger predators.

The bird stank of fish, and there was blood on its breast. Fresh from a feast farther along the coast.

The tunabill darted its head down and pecked at Tweezers's