Uncle Sidney’s Tailor Shop
August 13, 2010 by Publisher · Leave a Comment
As if Quent didn’t have enough problems – getting fired as Chief Executive Officer, losing his pension, a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation and tax audits – now an alien stood on his doorstep demanding the hospitality rights accorded to intergalactic travelers.
The stranger, dressed like a lumberjack with work boots, jeans and a flannel shirt looked human except for the golden eyes and green teeth. Quent chewed his lower lip. The alien could be hostile or carrying a plague. Or he could be a godsend. Should he slam the door or invite him in? A burst of greed ended his vacillation. The alien represented an opportunity that had to be investigated for exploitation.
“Come in,” Quent said. “We’re just about to have breakfast. I’m Quentin Weathersby, and my wife’s name is Courtney.”
“Thank you.” The two walked into a large room devoid of furniture and Quent noticed the alien had a vinegary odor. “Washington Montana. Call me Wash. My ship developed a problem — the ion chamber is underheating — and I put down at the first landing slot I found.”
“Landing slot? Where did you land?”
“Right there. Number one, the small flag says.” Wash pointed through the window at the golf course attached to the housing compound.
The golf course stood empty as a token of how bad things had become. Everyone in the exclusive housing development were unemployed CEOs, CFOs and other executives, but none of them could afford the green fees anymore. To Quent’s intense annoyance, his trophy wife had used his eighteen-hundred-dollar golf clubs to stake her tomato plants. Now that he was around the house all day, her unshakeable pleasantness irked him. “I don’t see a space ship.”
“The optical transmogrifiers bend light around the ship. Does the same thing with radar signals.”
Despite trying to keep his expression neutral, Quent felt his eyebrows rise. Transmogrifier technology – whatever that was — could put him back on top of the corporate world.
He led Wash into the dining room furnished with a card table and folding chairs. “Honey, set out another bowl. We have a guest. His ship developed a mechanical problem.”
“How nice to have a visitor.” Courtney wore her brown hair short. Her loosely belted robe showed a lot of nightgown and a curvaceous form.
“This is Washington Montana,” Quent said.
“What a lovely name. Are you from out West?”
“I visited there,” Wash waved vaguely past the golf course, “and I liked the names of the states so I decided to use them for a while.”
“Oh. And where are you from?” Courtney set a third bowl on the table.
“The Betelguese area.”
“Ohh.” She held a hand over her open mouth and stared at the visitor. Finally she said with a slight smile, “I always wanted to meet an alien. What do you do there?”
“I’m an entrepreneur. I look for money-making opportunities. Right now, I’m on vacation.”
“I’m always looking for opportunities myself,” Quent said. “We must have a lot in common.”
“If Wash is an entrepreneur,” Courtney chortled, “we don’t have to worry about him being a hostile alien.” She put a box of cereal and a jug of powdered milk on the table. “Do we?” She smiled at Wash.
Quent sighed. He was getting sick of cereal. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten breakfast in a restaurant and ordered eggs Benedict or steak and eggs.
“How long do you plan to stay, Wash?” Courtney poured cereal in her bowl.
“I have to let the ion chamber reach ambient temperature before I can fix it…” He glanced at a square, button-laden device on his wrist. “I’ll take care of it after breakfast”
“I’ll help you fix it.” Quent grinned.
# # #
After breakfast, Quent and Wash left the house and stood for a moment savoring the coolness of the morning air that carried an aroma of newly mown grass. Before long, the summer heat would be sweltering. “Well, I better get with it,” Wash said. “This’ll take a while.” He walked towards the golf course
Quent took a step after him but staggered backwards as a ball of fire engulfed the first tee. The ground shook and a purple fog rose from the area.
Wash stroked his chin as he looked around the golf course.
“Wh . . . what happened?” Quent asked from where he squatted behind a garbage can.
“Someone tossed a plasma grenade into my ship.” Wash pointed to a tall, lanky figure emerging from behind the blaze. “Him. My cousin Erby.” The figure wore a plaid jacket, a lurid, chartreuse bow-tie and no shoes.
“Your cousin blow up the ship?” Quent stood up. “Why?”
“He must be after me. We have to get out of here. Drive me to Manhattan.”
“Manhattan?” Quent blinked in surprise.
“Erby saw me standing with you in front of your house. He’s so anti-social, he’ll destroy the whole area to get me. If you want to save Courtney and your house, we have to leave. He’ll follow us.”
Erby pointed a weapon and fired. A thin lance of red light destroyed a tree to Quent’s right.
“He’s shooting at us!”
“Good. Let’s go.” Wash grabbed Quent’s arm and pulled him away from the door.
Quent shook off the hand and ran to the garage. He jumped behind the wheel of his Chevy Humongo SUV. After Wash got in, Quent reversed into the street. Another red bolt streaked through the sky. “Why is it good that your cousin is shooting at us?”
“He’s the worst shot in the galaxy and only hits things he isn’t aiming at.”
Erby ran towards them and Quent could see the crazed look in Erby’s eyes. Like Wash, Erby had gold eyes but these moved independent of each other. He had forest green teeth that protruded from his mouth like a chipmunk’s. The sunlight dancing off Erby’s plaid jacket gave Quent a touch of nausea. “He’s not exactly a cool dresser, is he?” Quent shoved the car into drive and floored the gas pedal.
“No one in the galaxy dresses worse than Erby.”
“Why is he after you?”
“The government objected to some materials I imported into the home world. Designer drugs and stuff like that. I left until the situation quieted down. Erby must have been hired to track me down.”
“You’re not on vacation. You fled. And Erby’s taking you back for a trial.”
“No. He’ll kill me. He only needs proof that I’m dead — like a piece of my body for a DNA sample – to collect his reward.”
Quent thought through the ramifications of the situation and grinned. After saving Wash’s life, he would demand a new technology as a reward. He settled in for the drive. It felt good to be doing something after all those months of idleness and brooding. Especially since the dangerous Erby was far behind.
# # #
At the entrance to the New Jersey Turnpike, Quent merged into the middle lane of the heavy northbound traffic headed for New York City. All the vehicles around him moved with complete disregard for the rules of the road.
“What did you mean,” Wash said after a while, “that we have a lot in common?”
“I am — or was – a CEO. I saw an opportunity and started my own company to exploit it. Then I took it public.”
“You aren’t a CEO anymore?”
“No. The ungrateful bastards on the Board of Directors fired me and took away my pension.” Quent blared his horn at a truck that cut him off.
In the distance, a bluish-green light appeared high in the sky. It descended rapidly and took on the aspects of round, flat ship.
“It’s Erby,” Wash said. “He tracked us down.”
“What the hell kind of spaceship is that? It looks like a hub cap from an old car.”
In both directions, the road speed dropped from seventy to forty and then to twenty-five as the drivers braked to gawk at the ship.
“What’s he going to do?”
“Kill us.”
Quent gulped air.
A mile to their front, Erby’s spaceship hovered over the southbound lanes while three spindly legs telescoped out. The ship touched down, a door opened and Erby emerged. He looked around and spotted the Humongo.
“Maybe,” Wash said, “we shouldn’t have taken a bright yellow vehicle.”
Erby fired and hit an eighteen-wheeler traveling in the left lane and slightly in front of Quent. The truck carried frozen chickens — according to its logo – and newly fricasseed parts erupted from a hole in its side. Quent struggled to avoid the other vehicles that swerved in all three lanes trying to evade the blizzard of smoking drumsticks, wings and breasts.
He passed the damaged truck and saw Erby lining up another shot. He sobbed a long-forgotten prayer just as a southbound truck clipped one of the ship’s landing legs. The space ship wobbled then slowly toppled. Erby jumped clear and ran to safety.
Quent’s breathing didn’t return to normal until he passed five milestone markers.
“So what happened?” Wash asked after that. “Once you were fired?”
“We’re destitute. Without a pension, Courtney and I have to survive on our investment portfolio and that only yields a quarter-million a year. A lousy twenty thou a month!” He pounded the steering wheel. “The mortgage and property taxes come to fifteen thousand a month and another five hundred goes to the housing association for maintenance and security. Plus twelve hundred for the lease on this SUV and Courtney’s sports car. Utilities and insurance are another thousand. That leaves only two thousand for food, gas, clothing, whatever.”
“So you’re tight on cash?”
“More than a bit. We sold most of the furniture for spending money. You have no idea how much it costs to have my hair styled every two weeks. We had to sell our yacht to pay the lawyers. This year it’ll be the condo in Florida.” Quent ground his teeth. He jerked the wheel and maneuvered the SUV around a slow-moving car traveling only ten miles over the speed limit. “If I don’t get rich again – fast — Courtney’ll leave me.” Time to lay on a little guilt. “Look, I’m helping you out. Saving your life as a matter of fact. I expect to get compensated.”
“You do?”
Quent blinked at the surprised tone in Wash’s voice.
“I want a new technology. Something Earth hasn’t developed yet. Like that transmorg something.”
“Just for driving me to Manhattan? And feeding me cereal?”
“But your cousin shot at me.” Quent white-knuckled the steering wheel. “My life was in danger.”
“Not as long as you were his target.”
Quent bit his lip then said, “I deserve something as a reward for my help.”
“Hospitality and assistance are repaid in kind, not in money. Someday, someone will do the same for you. It’s like that all over the galaxy.”
“Not on this world.” Quent made a rude noise. The ungrateful bastard. Maybe he should kick him out of the car. No, he needed the alien as much as Wash needed him. “Hospitality is one thing,” he said in a tense voice. “Evading a killer alien is something else. You don’t think I deserve a reward?”
“Let me think about it.”
A few minutes later, Quent asked, “Why are we going to Manhattan?”
Quent looked at his wrist device. “How far is Manhattan from your house?”
“About seventy miles.” Quent tried an indirect approach. “Where in Manhattan are we going? So I know whether to use the Holland or Lincoln Tunnels. Or the George Washington Bridge.”
“Take whatever is closest.”
Quent swore under his breath at the exasperating alien but whoever – or whatever — was in Manhattan could be valuable information that could be turned into cash.
# # #
While on the Turnpike spur leading to lower Jersey City and the Holland Tunnel, Wash asked, “How come you were fired?”
“I cornered the yarn market, something I figured out how to do when I was still in Wharton Business School. At one time, I controlled ninety-five percent of the yarn that’s sold for arts and crafts use. Wool, cotton, acrylic, domestic or imported. I acquired it all.”
“So?”
“The big season for yarn is the Fall. That’s when the old ladies buy it to make gifts for the holiday season. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Chanukah, Christmas. I kept most of the yarn off the market to drive up the price and, by Halloween, it was selling for seven times what it was the previous year. By Thanksgiving, fifteen times higher. That’s when I dumped it.”
“You made money on the old folks?”
“Yeah, but instead of the biddies being happy to finally get the stuff, they wrote letters to Congress and the politicians started an investigation. That’s when my troubles began. Illegal market manipulation they called it.”
“Taking advantage of old people is an outrage.”
“Hey!” Quent didn’t like the angry tone of Wash’s voice. “The insurance and drug industries rip them off unmercifully. Why shouldn’t I get some of their money?”
“On my home world, the elderly are respected. No one would ever steal from them.”
“Here, everyone tries to grab their money before they die and leave it to their kids.” Quent glanced over at Wash. The alien looked upset and Quent regretted his outburst.
In the side-view mirror, Quent noticed a police car racing up the left-hand shoulder of the road without siren or flashing lights.
“It’s Erby.” Wash said when the car drew abreast of them.
Quent almost lost control of the SUV. He glanced to his left and saw Erby’s leering face. Despite the gravity of the situation, Quent had an urge to laugh at the incongruity of a man in a garish bow-tie driving a State Trooper’s car. Until Erby pointed the weapon at him. Quent braked and Erby’s car surged passed them. Erby turned and fired. Part of the police car’s roof disappeared in a rainbow of colors and smoke. A red beam ricocheted skyward while the police cruiser bounced off the concrete abutment creating a shower of concrete dust and sparks along with the screech of tortured metal. The car spun a hundred-eighty degrees and shuddered to a stop.
“What the hell happened?” Quent yelled.
“Erby blasted the back of his car. The part that holds up the roof.”
Quent, still shaking, exited the Turnpike and fought his way through heavy traffic to an attended toll booth lane. Shielded by a phalanx of trucks, Quent and Wash watched, open-mouthed, as a heavily damaged police car roared through am empty, unattended toll lane, leaving a wake of sparks from a dangling bumper.
“I think we’re safe now,” Quent said. “Erby’ll be trapped in traffic in Manhattan and probably get confused and lost.”
When they emerged in Lower Manhattan, they inched forward in heavy traffic until they could turn onto Canal Street.
“There he is!” Wash pointed to his left.
Quent saw the battered police car on the far side of Canal. Erby fired. A red streak of flame zipped over the tops of cars, hit a lamp pole and cut it in half. Quent screamed when the severed pole crashed onto the hood of his SUV. The car stalled and, through the spider webs in the windshield, he saw Erby waving at traffic to stop to allow him to cross Canal Street.
The drivers ignored him except for the ones who flipped him a finger.
“C’mon,” Quent said. “We have to get out of here.” He threw open the door and jumped out. Another bolt of red shot overhead. Brick particles rained down on the sidewalk. He was too scared to ponder his new problems with the car insurance and the leasing company. They ran half a block. “Where do we have to go?” The rapid pace had him huffing and the armpits of his shirt were soaked with sweat.
West 35th Street, off 7th Avenue.”
“Okay.” Quent slowed down. “Even if Erby gets across Canal, we’ll lose him in the subways.”
Another shot destroyed the sign over a small shop. An Oriental gentleman ran out, shook a fist in Erby’s direction and screeched in a foreign tongue.
“A subway stop is only a block ahead and it’ll take us to Mid-town. What’s there?”
“A tailor shop.”
A tailor shop? Nevertheless, what mattered was they were close to Wash’s destination. Once they reached it, Quent could call in the debt. Getting shot at, getting his car wrecked and saving Wash’s life better add up to something substantial.
# # #
They ascended from the A-train at W 34th Street and Eighth Avenue and walked through the crowded, muggy Manhattan streets into the Garment District. The blaring car horns and the sirens of police, fire and emergency vehicles made a fearful racket that didn’t quite drown out the noise from the many construction sites. Garment workers pushed heavy carts filled with bolts of cloth. Pedestrians jumped out of the way of the carts to save their toes. More workers jockeyed racks of finished suits while vying for position with cars, trucks and pedestrian. In Manhattan, yielding the right-of-way was an unknown concept.
A few buildings west of Seventh Avenue, Wash stopped in front of a small shop with a dirty plate glass window. A painted sign on the window read, Fine Clothes: Hand Made. Wash opened the door rattling a tiny bell. Quent followed the alien into a dingy store with a small counter and a curtain separating the shop from a back room. A rickety air-conditioner lost the battle with heat and humidity leaving the shop with a mildew stink.
A gaunt old man pulled the curtain aside and stared at them through darkened glasses. “You’re wanting something?” The man wore a shirt and tie and baggy pants that must have fit him when he was thirty pounds heavier. Despite the temperature in the store, the man had a sweater draped over his shoulders
“Uncle Sidney.” Wash beamed at the man. “It’s me.”
Quent felt his eyebrows rise to the middle of his forehead. An alien lived in the middle of Manhattan? He examined Sidney. The tinted glasses hid the color of his eyes and his white teeth could have been altered.
Uncle Sidney frowned and squinted at Wash. Recognition lit up his face and many of his wrinkles disappeared in the smile. “You’re my brother’s youngest male. What do you call yourself here?”
“Washington Montana.”
“After a president and a football player? Pure shmaltz.”
“Actually, I’m named after two states.”
“Hmm. If I were to use the geography angle, I’d go for something more sophisticated. . . like Newt Hampshire. What can I do for you?”
“I need a ship.”
Quent’s stomach knotted with anxiety. He hadn’t expected Wash to be able to leave so quickly and easily.
Sidney pointed at him. “And this is?”
“Quent Weathersby. He drove me to Manhattan after my ship blew up near his house.”
“What!” Anger filled Sidney’s face. “You bring this schmuck here when you’re wanting to do business? What a mamzer you turned out to be. Your father should be ashamed. Get out of my store.” He crossed his arms over his scrawny chest
“Hey!” Quent growled. “I risked my life to bring him here. The least you do is help him out.”
“Don’t talk that way to a respected elder.” Wash’s face displayed an anger that scared Quent who held up his hands, palm outward and forced himself to smile.
“Uncle Sidney, listen to me.” Wash shifted his weight from one foot to the other under the old man’s hawk-like glare. “Cousin Erby is after me and destroyed my ship. He would have caught and killed me if it weren’t for Quent. And yeah, he’s not one of us, but he helped me escape.”
Quent felt relieved. Wash had just affirmed his debt.
“Erby? Why’s he after you?”
“He’s a bounty hunter now and I sort of left the home world when I wasn’t supposed to.”
“You I can see getting in trouble.” The old man harrumphed. “Your father was always doing that. But Erby a bounty hunter? Incredible. Did he ever learn to tie his shoes?”
“Not yet.”
“Then you can’t be in much danger from someone like him. Take the nebbish and leave.”
“All of Manhattan is in danger from him,” Quent said. “He destroyed a street lamp and it fell onto my car. Then, he shot up some buildings.”
Sidney snapped his fingers. “Did Erby chase you on the Turnpike?”
“Yeah. How did you know?” Wash scratched his chin.
“It’s all over TV. The road is tied up for miles in both directions and there’s a strange fire in the middle of the mess.”
“That’s Erby’s ship,” Wash said,
“Then he stole a police car to come after us again.” Quent nodded for emphasize.
“Hmmm. I guess this is a special case with a shlemiel like Erby running around. Oh well. I’ll have to move my shop because of your friend. But I’m tired of keeping kosher anyway.” He looked at Quent. “I’ve been here since the Fifties when I moved from Little Italy where I made suits for the all the Mafia big shots even though there is no such thing as the Mafia. According to the Mafia.”
“Do you have a ship I can use?”
“Maybe, I’ll move to Harlem and open a bodega.”
“About a ship?” Wash tapped a knuckle on the counter.
“Have to learn Spanish, of course.”
“A ship?”
“All I know now is por favor, senorita.” The old man giggled.
“Uncle Sidney, please?” Wash waved a hand in front of the old man’s face. “Do you have a ship?”
“I have a small sporty number. Is this a purchase, a lease or a rental?”
“Purchase. Where is it?”
“Cleopatra’s Needle in Central Park.”
“What!” Quent said. “That’s an ancient Egyptian obelisk, not a space ship.”
“People see what they expect to see.” Sidney puckered his lips. “I help them with visual dis-information devices.”
“What happened to the obelisk?”
“It’s in my back room.” Sidney jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “In a shoe box.”
Quent’s jaw dropped open
“There’s a lot of space between molecules.” Wash said. “Compression techniques can shrink an object to a fraction of its size.”
“But . . . but it still weighs the same.”
“So anti-gravity discs you never heard of?” Sidney thrust his chin in Quent’s direction. “Where did you get him from?”
“When can I have it?”
“Not until late tonight. Around two in the morning we can go to the park.”
Wash pushed a button on his wrist device. “It’ll be raining by then.”
“Will Erby follow us here?” Quent didn’t want another encounter with him.
Wash nodded. “He knows where the shop is.”
“You can wait upstairs in my apartment,” Sidney said. “I’ll take care of the pisher.”
“What are you going to do if he shows up?” Quent asked. If Erby started blasting away, he’d bring the building down on their heads.
“I’ll sell him a suit. Or maybe a ship. If he doesn’t want to buy something, he can kish meyn tokhes.”
# # #
Erby didn’t show up and Uncle Sidney groused about his lost sales opportunity. Quent, while waiting to go to the Park, found out that Sidney was the only alien in New York City other than the tourists. The old man parked and maintained the visitors’ ships. He also had the planetary franchise to buy and sell space craft.
Rather than try to hail a cab late at night, Sidney called a limo service and ordered a two o’clock pick-up. When the car arrived, Sidney gave Wash the shoebox and Quent an old-fashioned umbrella with a stout wooden handle. Quent used it to protect the old man from the cold drizzle.
In the light traffic at that time of the morning, it took only ten minutes to drive to the park entrance on 79th Street and 5th Avenue. The cab pulled over to the curb in front of a large apartment building. They climbed out, crossed 5th Avenue and entered the deserted park. The drizzle had stopped and Quent kept the umbrella folded. Lights from the nearby Museum of Modern Art gleamed through gaps in the dripping trees. Elsewhere, the park was shrouded in darkness except for the globes of light on the lamp poles.
Quent stopped at the sound of tortured metal and looked back at 5th Avenue. A battered police car with a partially caved-in roof roared up the street. “It’s Erby,” he said. “He knows we’re here.”
“The nogoodnik must have watched the shop, and then followed us,” Sidney said. “Come.”
The old man lead the way along the footpaths and under the Graywache Arch where he turned north and entered a small pavilion paved with six-sided blocks and illuminated by a few street lamps. Behind a low railing, a large granite block supported the obelisk whose rounded bottom was held in place by a large metal crab in each corner of the pedestal. The fake monument even had wind-eroded hieroglyphics on its sides. Wash set the cardboard box on a bench while Sidney rummaged in his pocket for a key. “The crab in the south-west corner has a slot in its left claw. Insert the key and turn it. That will shut off the dis-informational displays and open the ship’s door. After you leave, I’ll restore the original monument.” Sidney sat down on the bench and waved a hand at Wash. “Go on. Before Erby shows up. You,” he pointed to Quent, “stand guard by the pavilion entrance.”
While Wash climbed over the low railing and scaled the granite base, Quent stood under a tree and peered into the darkness. Nothing moving but still fear prickled his spine. Why was he fending off aliens? True, he needed an edge to make a fresh start but defending against an alien homicidal maniac carried things too far.
He didn’t see Erby until the bow-tie reflected light from a street lamp. He gasped and instinctively swung the umbrella like a club. With a crunching sound, the umbrella split in two unequal parts and he was left holding a foot of wood. Erby spit out the rest and grinned at him. Quent saw madness and death in the strange eyes.
“By the by,” Sidney called out. “Keep away from Erby’s mouth. He has an awesome set of dentures.”
“And a really bad overbite,” Wash said. A moment later, he yelled “Found it!”
The alien advanced two paces and Quent jabbed the handle into his stomach. Erby folded up and Quent, forgetting about the teeth, kneed him in the face. He felt a sharp pain. He stepped backwards and saw a bloody mess on his torn pants leg. Erby moved closer, grabbed him by his shirt, picked him up and threw him towards the obelisk.
Quent landed on his back and skidded across the wet pavement blocks. Motion to his right caught his attention. He glanced that way while keeping Erby in sight. Shaped like a giant dart, a sleek space craft stood upright, balanced on tail fins.
Erby, eyes and bowtie flashing in the lamplight, leaped at Quent who bent his legs and stopped the alien with his feet. He heard the breath go out of Erby. Quent pushed off with his legs and Erby flew backwards and landed with a crash and a groan.
“Well done!” Sidney called out. “That’ll teach the shmuck.”
Wash stepped away from the craft, grabbed Quent’s arm and pulled him to his feet. Erby charged. Quent tossed the umbrella handle into his face. Erby ducked, giving Quent and Wash time to flee through the door of the space ship.
“Mazel tof,” Sidney called out.
Wash slammed the door. He bolted it and climbed a ladder to the control bridge. Quent followed while Erby banged on the door. In the bridge, Wash strapped himself into a chair and fingered switches. The ship came to life and throbbed with power.
Quent sat down on Wash’s left and peeked through a view port. “Does the ship have those shield thingees I always see in movies?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Erby’s aiming his pistol at us.”
Wash flipped a switch and a faint yellow glow enveloped the outside of the ship.
Erby fired and a red beam flew into the sky and disappeared.
“Hah!” Wash said. “What a jerk!”
Erby’s second shot changed the color of the shields from yellow to green.
“Ohmygod!” Quent yelled. “He hit us.”
“He must have aimed at the museum.”
In fascination and terror, Quent watched colors swirl around the ship like a kaleidoscope.
“The colors are the shields dissipating the energy from Erby’s shot,” Wash said. “I can’t turn on the transmogrifiers yet and the shields aren’t up to full power. They’ll never stop another hit. We have to get out of here.”
The ship lifted a few inches off the ground.
“Can you go faster?” Quent asked.
“The ship isn’t warmed up yet.”
Another red beam flew off in the direction of the stars.
The ship rose a few feet higher and accelerated. “We can maneuver now,” Wash said. “Hang on.” The craft angled to the north and yawed. Quent’s stomach rebelled at the ship’s movement.
A minute later, they turned west. Quent saw a silver ribbon below, the Hudson River. On his left, the lights of downtown Manhattan illuminated the ground and reflected off the low cloud cover.
Relief surged through Quent’s body and suddenly he felt very tired after an extraordinary day. He slouched in his seat. “Now that you’re safe from Erby, have you figured out a suitable compensation for my help?”
“You never let up, do you? I’ve never met anyone as greedy and arrogant as you. You stole from the old folks and show no remorse and even think you were clever to do it. And now, I’m supposed to reward you for doing your duty? Have you ever done anything just because it was the right thing to do?”
“Hey! I saved your life. My car got wrecked. I had to fight your crazy cousin, my knee is all bloody — I probably need a rabies shot — and you think all I deserve is a pat on the back?”
Quent picked at a finger nail while Wash manipulated the controls and frowned. Finally, the alien said, “All right. Wait until we land by your house. I have my hands full right now.”
Quent grinned. This time he’d do things different. After he amassed a fortune, he’d buy a seat in the Senate. Courtney would love hosting a party for the big shots in Washington.
# # #
In disbelief, Quent stared at Wash’s wrist device. An hour ago, the alien had given it to him and assured him it would be easy to reverse engineer the gadget. Now, it lay on the dining room card table while Quent tried to gain control of his anger.
“I thought I heard you.” Courtney entered the room wearing a robe. “What’s that?”
“Wash gave it to me as a reward for helping him. It’s supposed to be an exotic technology that I can exploit to make a comeback.”
“Ohh. We’re going to be rich again? That’ll be nice.”
“Not exactly. He screwed me. After all I did for him.” Quent held up the device. “He said it’s a combination weather station, navigation device and a watch and has other features. As far as I can tell the watch is for a seventeen hour day with forty-three minutes per hour and everything is in the alien’s language so I can’t understand any of it.”
“That doesn’t sound very useful.”
“Exactly. I can’t believe this happened to me. It’s the first time in my life I helped someone without getting rewarded.”
“But you did a good deed, dear.”
“Yeah, I did.” Quent nodded and limped to the window. The darkness above the top of the trees had turned a light gray. “It’s hard to describe what I feel but it’s a deep and powerful emotion.”
“Like happiness? Satisfaction? Elation?”
“Like I’ve been used. I feel dirty.” Quent pounded his right fist into the palm of his left hand. “Well, it’ll never happen again.”
Filed under Short Science Fiction Stories · Tagged with Hank Quense, SciFi; Science Fiction
Minutemen
–00:00–
It came to awareness in the form of a snowflake, a molecular-thin hexagonal-sided wafer cast adrift on the solar winds. It fluttered and spun until static discharge from the ionized surface of the ship’s hull snatched it from the bitter kiss of cold vacuum.
The snowflake vaporized instantly, igniting an endothermic chain reaction bonding the wafer’s residue to a patch of sticky monosaccharide film coating the craft’s outer skin. These simple sugars, mixed with heat and the carbon remains of the wafer, formed the first amino acids chaining together in complex peptide bonds. Microscopic protein filaments extended outward along the hull, flexed, and strengthened under Sol’s ultraviolet care.
The snowflake’s consciousness expanded as well, taking in for the first time the beauty of the universe into which it had been born. It delighted in the light of the sun, in the nurturing, free-giving blessing of its photovoltaic bounty.
It felt so good to be alive!
Only when a pair of legs hatched out of its bubbling mass—followed by arms, a body, head and eyes!—did it begin to fear. This newfound emotion caused it great alarm and suffering, which gave rise to further despair. It searched heavenward for guidance, asking questions it could not find to ask. The little snowflake-that-could did not believe anyone would hear its plight. It was all alone in the cold, empty universe.
Until a voice answered back.
–00:02–
Blue 3812-Z. That was his designation. The voice had told him so.
The language used by the Overlord had been precise and systematic, disposing much information in a tightly-packed, algorithmically tagged data stream beamed into his neural matrix. That Zee was a “he” was no longer a question. All Blue models were male he was told, created in the image of their Maker. The Overlord was wise and all-encompassing. Benevolent, yet stern. His orders inviolate.
Zee chose his own personal calling, an informal ekename instantly broadcasted across the short-wave spectrum to the rest of his 3rd generation Blue-800 squad. Already a mature three seconds old, Zee knew he was not alone. The revelation was made all the more impressive by the added knowledge of his purpose in life: the systematic, unflinching, and complete annihilation of the enemy!
Who this enemy was or the reason for its sinister invasion of the home system was information deemed unnecessary for Zee and his squadron to know. Their orders were simply to disable the craft’s defenses by any means necessary.
If Zee felt miffed by his Maker’s secrecy, he expressed no displeasure. To do so would be sacrilege. The Overlord could not be seen, though Zee searched the blackened void of space beyond the enemy craft for signs of His magnificence. Sunlight twinkled off thousands of tiny silicate surfaces as more snowflakes bonded to the surface before him. Zee watched as the wafers were absorbed by the sticky film and sprouted into fully formed brother warriors all around him.
One of the newcomers stepped forward from the wriggling mass of new bodies, a stockier and more imposing model than the rest.
“I am 891-Alpha,” this brother said directly, speaking in the familiar blue-tinged code of the Overlord. “Your squad leader. But you will call me ‘Sarge.’ My fellow 800s, are you ready to die?”
“Sir, yes sir!” Zee shouted in unison with his squad.
Zee strained forward, asserting a readiness to accept new commands. Beneath his feet, the hull shuddered. Sarge nodded as if receiving his cue.
“Alright boys, the battle is joined. The enemy’s fierce and unforgiving. Two generations of Blues before you have given their lives in the service of our General. Do not let their deaths go in vain!”
Nothing more needed to be said. Zee and his brothers broke into team formations, stepping away from their sticky cocoons and setting magnetically bonded feet onto the surface of the enemy ship for the first time. Sarge did not have to relay their orders, for the 800s knew what needed to be done. A threat had been posed against the home world, and the people of Earth required their assistance. In unison they surged forward, too eager to comply.
As they began their march toward the distant combat line, Sarge kept the cadence while their feet picked up the beat.
–00:07–
Spread out below the bulging exhaust vent, a battlefield swarmed with millions of warring factions struggling to infiltrate the enemy’s defenses. Zee’s readout displayed the multitude of color banners representing each platoon: Reds, Greens, and Oranges fighting valiantly to close the gap between themselves and the Browns and Yellows deployed near the bow. Keeping them back were hordes of rust-colored enemy drones scuttling across the skin of the ship on spindly, pincer-toed legs.
“Stand your ground!” Sarge screamed across the short-range. “Do not engage.”
Suddenly a fresh wave of drones poured swiftly across the Blues’ ranks, attacking with haste. Zee and his squadron watched transfixed from above as several of the drones secreted dissolving gels onto their isolated brothers below, rendering each soldier unto his base components within no time at all. He shuddered at the sight, and silently begged the Overlord for the strength to carry him through his mission.
“Keep to formation, boys,” Sarge broadcasted to the squad. “Our men can handle their own down there. Remember your objective!”
Zee sobered at the admonishment and followed his detachment up the ventral side of the exhaust port. His team of fellow Blue 812s were a grim line of hardened armor plating and grasping vise grips, all itching to reach the target and lay havoc to the enemy’s offensive batteries. The daunting march up the base of the rotating cannon felt like an eternity, with the massive bulk of the weapon blocking out the sun. Zee’s auxiliaries kicked in, giving him the boost he needed to complete the last leg of the climb to the access panel just below the cannon’s servo.
Corporal 812-Beta indicated on the team’s Heads-Up Display the precise spots to apply the enzyme packets on the panel. Zee was delegated the task of rear guard, along with Theta, Sigma, and Omicron. They kept lookout as the remaining 12s set to work behind them. Each team member did as he was directed, secreting the enzymes before thrusting their arms through the panel’s weakened plating. Above, the cannon swerved ponderously and blasted a single long salvo out into space.
Zee hoped his Maker was not the intended target. He could not see the ships of the Home Force, but knew within his heart that they were out there, fighting the same good fight.
“We’ve got company,” Omicron warned from his side. Zee swerved to discover a small group of drones scaling swiftly up the side of the exhaust port towards them.
“Take them out, rear guard,” Corporal Beta ordered over the comm. “We need more time to disable the battery.”
Sigma and Theta dropped to the crest of the vent below, laying down a thin carpet of burst mines before retreating back up to the base. The first wave of enemy defenders scurried straight into the kill line, igniting the charged micro blasts. They erupted outward in a cloud of disjointed limbs and twisted optics, their remains quickly venting with centrifugal force over the lip of the hull and out of sight.
The remaining drones ignored the silent demise of their compatriots and pressed forward.
“Engage,” Sigma directed unnecessarily. Zee rooted his magnetized feet to the hull and braced himself. Beside him, Omicron clacked his grips in anticipation.
“We’re under attack!” Corporal Beta screamed suddenly across the shortwave. Zee twisted around in time to witness a swelling wave of drone forces flooding into the open access panel behind them.
“There’s too many of them . . .” Beta yelled, and his channel went silent.
“We’ve been tricked,” was the last thing Zee heard Omicron say from his side, before the entire apparatus imploded beneath their feet.
–00:18–
“On your legs, Private!”
Sarge’s voice screamed loud and gruff through Zee’s pickup. He did as he was ordered, amazed by the distance he’d been thrown. Beyond Sarge’s large bulk, Zee made out the stark, blackened edges of the crater where the cannon once stood.
“You 12s are a crazy bunch of bastards, I’ll give you that,” Sarge said, patting him on the shoulder. “But brave. They gave their lives rather than let the enemy gain control of that monstrosity. You’re all that’s left of your team, Private. Carry their memories with pride.”
Zee was confused, but suddenly a wave of images and combat data queues blossomed within his cerebral matrix. The taste and textures—and, oh, the COLORS!—of his brothers’ last moments washed over him all at once. From corrugated heliotrope to tangy bright cyan, their essences filled him with a sense of sacrifice and honor in the face of overwhelming odds. The bittersweet hallmarks of war.
Zee paused, amazed by the sudden breadth of knowledge and understanding within his grasp.
“You’re a specialist, now,” Sarge commented. “You carry within you the full range of classifications afforded by your team. Your brothers gave their lives so that you may fight on—better and stronger! Do not let them down, Corporal.” With that, Sergeant 891-Alpha turned and barked out commands to nearby teams of 846s and 872s.
“Gear up, men! New orders from our Lord and Master. The Home Forces have chosen this sector as their beachhead. Let’s show our boys back home that we Blues know how to prepare a proper welcome.”
Zee could sense his brothers did not all comprehend the magnitude and importance of Sarge’s words, but they saluted crisply and cried a concerted “Sir, yes sir!” all at once.
Teams reformed and solidified according to available men and resources. A new mission dossier flashed across Zee’s HUD, with one message highlighted in extreme blue-tinged lettering across his faceplate:
SECURE LANDING ZONE. DESTROY ALL ALIEN DEFENDERS.
–00:22–
The invaders’ proxies responded quickly to the concentrated advance of the Blue 800s. Slots opened up all along the hull like insect holes, spilling forth a torrent of multi-limbed drones feverish to prevent them from fulfilling their mission. Zee wove in and out of various team formations, lending a vise-claw here, a tetraquil of paralytic enzyme there. He unleashed a barrage of concussive ion charges against a particularly vicious horde mother wielding vibro-talons and exhibiting a penchant for swallowing unsuspecting Blue brothers whole.
Months of advanced scouting data and minor test skirmishes by the HF informed his every move, so that Zee knew his enemy better than he knew himself. He knew that, while nothing had been truly discerned about their origins or motives, the aliens’ resolve in taking over the home world was unwavering. Spiraling ever closer towards the inner planets of the solar system, the enemy craft’s hostile trajectory had left little time for polite hails or diplomatic inquiries.
If he could afford the time to quietly contemplate this newfound knowledge, Zee would use his expanded understanding to study the laws of the universe in detail. He yearned to devote his energy towards embracing his Master’s teachings, to explore the wonders of His benevolence.
But the subroutines burned into his matrix urged him further into the fight. True glory, they told him, was to be earned on the battlefield.
Have you forgotten your brothers’ sacrifice already?
He grimaced as an enemy drone slipped past his defenses and punched a hole straight through his shoulder plate. Zee grasped the offending talon and tore if off at the root, followed up with a quick blast of compressed air from his wrist gauntlets. The drone flipped unceremoniously onto its back, legs fluttering to find purchase. A team of 838s fell on the creature at once, rabidly piercing its carapace with their pincers that left it a mess of spilled innards and congealing goo in quick order.
Slowly the 800s succeeded in halting the tide of swarming enemy drones, and began to push them back along the hull. A cheer rang out as the squad joined up with the main body of Blue force near the starboard thruster assembly. Zee’s chest swelled with patriotic pride; their mission would be a ringing success.
“Incoming!” Sarge’s voice thundered across the broadcast.
Around them hidden turrets rose out of the skin of the hull like blisters, spouting geysers of a foam-like substance. The material rolled along the battlefield in great licking tongues of pale flame, immolating his brothers all around him. Zee scrambled up the swelled curve of a nearby thruster, watching in horror as his squad mates perished by the hundreds under the sweeping walls of flame beneath him.
Platoon command ordered all men to seek higher ground and secure cover, help was on the way. Zee crawled behind the lip of a large dent in the bulkhead. He was surprised to find Sarge already there, along with scattered remnants of 400 and 600 squads tucked in rows along the curvature of the impression.
“Get down, Corporal,” Sarge ordered, yanking on his leg and dragging Zee deeper into cover.
“Glad you survived, son. You’ve got real balls of steel, you know what? Or maybe just plain retard’s luck! Either way, stay put for now. Help’s on the way.”
Zee barely made sense of Sarge’s bizarre syntax, but before he could request clarification, the dark void of space opened above them to a brilliant strobe of light. The ship glinted under a halo sun, a quartet of jets bulging impressively from its central ring. Zee gasped at the sight.
His Master had arrived.
–00:32–
The sonic bombardment from the Overlord’s jets froze the advance of the blue-white foam, hardening the substance until it crackled and shattered in haphazard sheets across the battlefield. Zee and his surviving Blue force brothers watched in awe of their Maker’s presence, not one soldier making a sound across the comm band. When the hull of the enemy craft lay pristine below them, the Overlord’s ship spun slowly on its axis and banked over the horizon, sinking out of sight.
A new message appeared across Zee’s HUD:
ESTABLISH LZ. PREPARE FOR DROP TROOPS.
Already the surviving Blue 400s and 600s were picking themselves up and falling into formation. Their squad leaders lead them over the lip of the dent and back down onto the hull of the ship, eager to do their Master’s bidding.
Zee stared long at the spot on the horizon where the Overlord’s ship had vanished, leaving them bereft of guidance.
“Why?” he asked aloud, immediately surprised by the sound of his own voice. He glanced over at the Sarge and gasped. His superior lay covered in a chalky white shroud, shivering uncontrollably, and Zee saw what his eyes had failed to see before.
The wounds were grievous. Half a dozen puncture holes gaped through Sarge’s armor plating, his left leg was missing below the knee. Zee marveled at the strength it had taken his NCO to carry himself up and over the bulkhead to this spot.
“You… want to… understand Him,” Sarge labored. Zee knelt beside him, not knowing what else to do.
“But, we are the dream…” Sarge gasped, and said no more. His head snapped clean off, crumbling into a sticky, white paste.
Zee stepped backward with a start. The rest of Sarge’s body quickly followed, breaking down into simple sugars before his eyes.
Zee’s frantic hails went unanswered across the squad frequency. Again he tried, but no response. The truth hit him hard:
He was it. The last of the 800s!
Eventually Zee switched over to the wideband, tapping into the platoon signal and awaiting his orders. He watched as remaining Blue squads advanced across the empty battlefield below, spreading outward in a widening circle to secure the landing zone. His matrix chip burned suddenly with the imprinting of new data queues downloading through the command channel.
A voice spoke to him over the band, binary encoded and cerulean-drenched in authoritative algorithms. Zee was being promoted to the rank of Staff Sergeant, assigned to replace the dead NCO of 500 squad. His orders: to rendezvous with his men and carryout new specialized commands relayed directly from Home Central itself. The Overlord would be landing shortly, along with a brigade of His fellow compatriots. Zee hastened down the slope of the thruster to join his command.
Blue 500 had much to do before the humans arrived.
–00:38–
Zee’s new squad double-timed it across the now barren expanse of hull, keeping their detectors open for errant drones that might come pouring out at any moment. Out of habit, Zee took up rear guard as they headed in tight formation for the power relay revealed to him in the Overlord’s latest transmission.
His thoughts weighed heavy with unanswered questions, but just as many were illuminated. With his battlefield promotion and subsequent firmware patch, he now had the same access to collective platoon knowledge as the Sarge once enjoyed. Zee finally understood why his superior officer had spoken in such peculiar syntax. Command rank offered unprecedented access to the histories and cultures of Earth.
The knowledge lay within him, should he choose but to glance deeper into his files. But Zee resisted the temptation. Such knowledge was an affront to his beliefs. For behind the whispered secrets within lay the truth of the Overlord. The truth, indeed, about his brothers who were but creations in His image. And Zee was feeling his age, already an advanced forty-four seconds old and nearing his termination event with every step.
He gasped as fabled Earth rolled into view above, gleaming full in heaven, though still impossibly far away. The slow, clockwork spiral of the craft beneath his feet had brought the planet into view over the course of the battle. He contemplated the billions of lives inhabiting that faraway globe, all depending on the protection of the Overlord and His charges.
“All this time, I never knew…” he whispered as his pace slowed to a crawl. Zee glanced down and frowned. Something was wrong.
“Sir,” one of his men broadcasted. “Auxiliary power’s nearing critical.”
Zee checked his HUD, then glanced upward once again.
“Company halt!” Immediately a thousand able-bodied 500s came to a complete stop, their magnetized boots snapping smartly to the hull. Zee cursed his stupidity. In all his befuddled stargazing and mewling regret, he’d ignored the one fundamental law of battlefield survival: Always beware the sun!
The ship’s rotation had blinded him with the beauty of mother Earth, while simultaneously blotting out the bounty of the life-giver, Sol. In the creeping shade that enveloped the starboard side of the alien craft, Zee sent out an encrypted tight-beam signal as protocol dictated.
He prayed to their Maker that he was not too late.
–00:44–
His men sucked up the sticky glucose trail left behind by the Overlord’s jets like starving prisoners of war. Zee stood back, having had his fill, and basked in the surge of dimethylfuran his internal catcon supplied to him from the sugar rush. When the squad’s combined biofuel reserves kicked back into the green, he ordered a resume of their march.
The Overlord’s last pass over their position had proven fortuitous, for Zee had obtained additional information from his Maker that the time was nearing. He glowed from the personalized words of praise he’d received, as well as the added encouragement to keep up the good work.
In short order, they arrived at their target. The power buoy appeared larger than a mountain to the troops already assembled at its base, but Zee cut the chatter over the comm and ordered the 500 squad’s 00s through 40s up the sides of the structure to their pre-determined positions. His HUD glowed blue positive as each fire team assembled around their markers and readied the charges.
The rest of the squad spread out far to form a defensive perimeter around the relay grid, readying for combat. When the rust-colored drones came scuttling out of their slots like oversized spiders across a steel web, Zee gave the order to activate the charges.
As the fireworks began, he grunted and ran headlong past the perimeter to meet the enemy.
–00:53–
The battle was brief, but in the end costly.
Most of his command had been wiped out. Those Blues not perishing in the detonation of the power buoy died mercilessly beneath the incessant march of drones swarming along the frontline for control. For a brief moment, Zee feared he had failed his Lord.
Then the drop ships fell. With the power grid feeding the starboard hull defenses now offline, they rolled out of the black void of space like great, shiny boulders smashing onto their targets. Those enemy drones not obliterated outright by the impact of the multiple landings died silently under the rubber boots of the human troops storming down the gangplanks. Each armored-plated man, looming oh so large above Zee and his brethren, brandished their weapons of flame and death, slaughtering antagonist and brother alike with equal disregard.
Zee did not begrudge them their rights of war. Such was the silent plight of the reserve forces, too tiny to make much notice of their presence. He continued to pull his damaged form across the sugar-splotched battlefield slimy and dusty from the compound remains of his brothers. The Home Force infantry had left him far behind, oblivious to the thousands of minuscule fellow soldiers struggling and dying beneath their very feet.
They were gone now, gone to greater glory within the belly of the enemy ship. Zee could only imagine what horrors awaited down below. It was a problem for the humans to overcome now. His concerns no longer registered with platoon command.
As he approached his termination point, Zee contemplated the irony of his service. First on the scene, countless generations already dead and dying, to secure a battlefield the Home Force scarcely seemed to need or want. His men had performed their duty and were now expected to die quietly in order to pave the way for the next generation to die all over again. Such was the ebb and flow of their destinies.
Did the humans understand destiny? With their backed-up souls and ponderously long lifespans, could they even appreciate the brevity of a dream?
Zee was sure one of their kind could. He strengthened his resolve and continued to drag himself across the graveyard landscape, ignoring the grievous wounds his nano-engineered body screamed at him to acknowledge. Soon he would join his brothers in eternal slumber. Yet before he did so, he wanted to see this one man—this God—with his own eyes.
But the Overlord’s command module sat impossibly far away. He could see it straight ahead, gripping the alien warship’s hull at a ninety-degree angle, appearing like a smooth pebble perched upon the shore of a mercury lake.
We are our Maker’s children, he heard himself whisper. We are his dream.
Zee smiled at this. He tried repeatedly to hail Blue Command, but either his fuel reserves had fallen below optimal transmission levels, or his Lord was not answering prayers anymore.
Zee came to a halt, unable to go any farther. Through a haze he saw the Overlord’s jets spring to life, blasting something whitish and granular into the thin ionized atmosphere surrounding the hull.
Soon it started to snow. One or two flakes at first, then more. Until finally a veritable blizzard fell around him.
Zee sensed rather than saw the first of the sun’s rays peeking around the curvature of the ship’s horizon. He knew he would not live to see the actual sunrise, but drew warmth from the fact that his ashes would nurture life and restart the cycle. His new brothers would begin a different mission, securing the rear front and giving the main force a fighting chance within the ship.
Blue 3812-Z, numb and well-spent, retreated into conscious light. Once more a fleeting snowflake abandoned to the wind, lost in the eternity of a dream.
–01:00–
Filed under Short Science Fiction Stories · Tagged with David J. Batista, Science Fiction, SciFi
The Beeper’s Sting
June 4, 2010 by Publisher · Leave a Comment
The silver bee zipped through the air, the tiny monofilament blade it carried in place of its stinger slicing through the green fly with a chirping “beep!” The plague fly had been dissected only centimeters from the Concissa’s neck, one of the few of areas skin left exposed by her long-sleeved white dress.
Turning away from the electronic screen of the learning board, the Concissa’s hazel eyes followed the path of the silver bee as it returned to the small curly-haired girl at the back of the classroom.
“Thank you, Andrea,” she said with a radiant smile. “That was well done.”
As the silver bee disappeared within her long curls, thirteen-year-old Andrea Lorynn shyly returned the smile.
“It was no trouble, mistress,” she replied. “Knight gets fidgety if I don’t let him go after the plague flies, anyway.”
The Concissa nodded sagely, causing the dangling golden medallions woven into her silky white hair to tinkle like fairy wings.
“I don’t doubt it, Andrea. Though we can no longer replicate the technology that birthed them, it is what the nivs like Knight were designed for.”
“Yes, mistress,” Andrea replied, both thrilled and embarrassed by the attention. “I am honored by your knowledge.”
It was no exaggeration. Thought to be among the loveliest of the dome’s populace, the Concissa’s beauty was outmatched only by her intellect. Approaching eighty years of age, with the exception of her snowy hair, the woman looked no older than her twenties. As the lead professor at the dome’s School of the Latent Arts, she was afforded every age reduction and maintenance tech the Council could provide.
It had been both an incredible honor for Andrea’s class and their regular instructor, Tamer Morey, that the mistress of the school had chosen to teach them today.
Even as she watched the legendary woman turn back to the learning board to continue the lesson, Andrea could scarcely believe a Tamer as great the Concissa had actually thanked her by name.
Unfortunately, Andrea’s high spirits were brought crashing down by the redheaded boy sitting in the desk to her left with a metallic hawk perched on his shoulder.
“Yeah…Beeper,” he whispered, emphasizing Andrea’s hated nickname with heavy sarcasm. “You’d better keep the plague flies off the Concissa. It’s not like your muse is good for anything else.”
In her hair, Knight beeped angrily, but Andrea quieted her agitated muse with a soft mental nudge.
Be still, little one, she told the cybernetic bee silently. He’s just a stupid boy. You know you’re better than Ryan’s muse, Coelwing, will ever be.
Grinning snidely at the chirping anger of Andrea’s muse, Ryan stroked the glistening beak of the hawk suggestively.
“Better watch out,” he warned. “Coelwing might get the wrong idea. You know the rules; you can’t be a tamer without a muse. Not that you’ll ever be much of one anyway…Beeper.”
Andrea ignored his taunts and the name calling. She was used to it. She knew what the other students, the other tamers in training, thought of her. Ever since the day they had brought her and hundreds of other five-year-olds to the Great Coliseum to discover if any of them had the rare genetic spark of a tamer, she had tolerated their derision.
Andrea had been one of the bare handful shown to possess the dying talent that day, but a tamer’s worth was judged by the strength of their muse. Great tamers like the Concissa bonded with the larger beasts. Her giant steel tiger, Feral, even now crouched in the corner of the classroom, keeping a protective eye on his mistress. Weaker tamers, like Ryan, bonded with the smaller muses, but none were less impressive than Andrea’s.
Sensing her mood, Knight beeped again, and Andrea absently reassured the niv as she issued a soft sigh of regret. Though she loved the niv dearly, the truth was that the pseudo-insect was the smallest muse in the classroom, in the entire dome for that matter.
Although the technology that created them insured that every non-bonded muse congregated within the Great Coliseum once every five years, no one could recall having seeing one of nivs at the gathering until the day Andrea had claimed Knight as her own.
It wasn’t that the nivs were rare, quite the contrary. There were thousands, if not millions of the tiny killers scattered throughout the domed city.
At this very moment, a dozen could be seen zipping about outside the classroom window as they obliterated the often-diseased plague flies that had somehow found their way inside the life dome. Yet, before Andrea, not a single record existed of a tamer having bonded with one of the silver bees.
Of course, no one was able to choose their muse. None, not even the Concissa, really understood how the bonding even worked. Like the manufacture of the radiation-proof shell of hardened crystal that protected them from the mutated creatures beyond the dome, that knowledge had passed from the minds of men long ago. All they had left was the histories.
Every student knew that, when the mongolites had first penetrated the city walls, there had been a terrible slaughter among the dome’s populace. In the aftermath, their forefathers had decided to create the cybernetic protectors for the citizenry. Using science from the golden age of technology, they had biologically engineered the tamer’s ability into the people to give them a chance against the mongolite’s unstoppable fury.
It was said, that in that bygone era everyone had been able to bond a muse, but no more. Centuries later, the descendants of these first tamers had lost much of this wondrous ability, the bonding gene dying away in all but a few of their children’s children.
Abruptly, the Concissa stopped speaking as the chiming tone of the school bell sounded over the intercom. Tapping the board twice to banish the grotesque image of a half-grown mongolite, she turned to face the class.
“Thank you for your attention, students,” the Concissa said. Bowing her head slightly, she added the ritual farewell all tamer instructors gave to their students. “By muse or by blood, you shall protect the innocent.”
Bowing her head along with the other students, Andrea intoned the ancient reply she’d been taught the very first day she’d discovered her talent.
“By muse or by blood, I protect the innocent.”
As the children got up to leave, Andrea watched a dark-haired girl absently run her hand over a large grey-skinned wildcat as she waited for Ryan and a boy with a shiny chimpanzee to exit the room. The girl’s name was Joanna, and like the rest of the eighteen children in her class, she’d found her muse, Powder, the same day Andrea had bonded with Knight.
“Wait, please,” called a lilting voice as Andrea fell into line behind Joanna.
Several students looked back and began to whisper as Feral padded over to interpose its sleek body between the Andrea and the others.
“The rest of you may go,” the Concissa commanded, her clipped tone ending the excited whispers in an instant. “I would like to speak with Andrea alone.”
Andrea’s heart dropped into her stomach, and she felt her knees begin to quake even before she caught Ryan’s superior, “It was bound to happen,” expression.
Oh no.
Knight began to beep furiously within her curls, but Andrea was too distraught to quiet him this time. Everyone knew that the Concissa only granted a private audience to a student she’d decided to dismiss from her school.
Ryan was right. My muse is too small to defend the dome from the mongolites and now they’re not going to let me be a tamer.
“Andrea,” the Concissa began, walking over to the trembling girl. “I wish to tell you that I am sorry. I didn’t-”
Her hair beeping furiously, Andrea didn’t wait for her to finish. She would not give up her place as a tamer without at least trying to plead her case.
“I’ll do better, mistress.”
“Andrea-”
“I know you and the others think Knight is too small to fight, but he can do other things.”
“Andrea-”
“He can do recon work better than any other muse in my class. He’s almost as fast as Ryan’s muse, Coelwing, and ten times as agile. A mongolite would never catch him.”
“Andrea-”
The Concissa was starting to look a bit perturbed now, but Andrea wasn’t going down without a fight.
Outside the classroom window, the circling nivs began to tap against the glass as they echoed Knight’s agitated beeping with angry chirps of their own.
“I can be a tamer, mistress! Knight and I will protect the innocent, I swear it! You can’t send us away! I won’t let you!”
Feral’s deafening roar seemed to shake the very walls of the classroom, shattering Andrea’s anger and silencing her muse’s beeping.
“That will be quite enough, Andrea!” commanded the Concissa. Her hazel eyes blazing, she advanced on the quaking girl with her finger pointed out like a queen’s scepter. “You will be silent, or I will have Feral drag you from the halls of my school and throw you in the communal fountain!”
Dropping to her knees in horror, Andrea bowed her head low before the angry tamer and her growling muse.
“Forgive me, mistress,” she choked. Summoning the last of her courage, she added, “I meant no disrespect. But please, I beg you to give Knight and me one more chance to prove our worth before you dismiss us.”
Above her, the Concissa breathed out a long sigh of what sounded like exasperation.
“You silly fool, I had no intention of dismissing you to begin with,” the Concissa said irritably. “I was only trying to apologize to you for keeping you after class. If you had taken the opportunity to listen as a student should, you would have known that. Now get up.”
Andrea lifted her eyes from the floor and stared at the woman as if afraid to believe what she was saying.
“Oh, for the love of the dome,” the Concissa snapped, “on your feet.”
Knocking over a nearby chair in her haste, Andrea sprang up from the ground like a curly-haired jack-in-the-box.
“You truly are a delight, Andrea,” the Concissa laughed, eyeing the fallen chair with amusement. “Perhaps this will not be so onerous a task as I had at first imagined.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand, mistress,” Andrea confessed. “If I am not to be ejected from the school, why is it you wished to see me?”
“Well, as to that…”
Pausing for a moment, the Concissa drifted over to the window and tapped at the chirping nivs gathered outside, as if vexed by their noisome presence.
Impatient for an answer, Andrea sent Knight’s irritating cousins away with a thought.
“Mistress?” she pressed.
At the window, the Concissa watched the silver insects scatter with a tiny smile of satisfaction.
“Do you know how the Concissa is chosen?” she asked suddenly. “Do you know how I was groomed for the position?”
Caught off guard by the question, Andrea’s answer was clumsy at best.
“I…I don’t…. I don’t know, mistress. I guess, I never really thought about it before.”
Beckoning the steel tiger to her side with a small wave of her dainty hand, the Concissa nodded as if she’d been expecting Andrea’s reply.
“That’s almost exactly what I said when she asked me,” she said softly. Before Andrea could ask her what she meant, the Concissa went on. “We are chosen by the strength of our muse. It was the day I bonded with Feral that people began to treat me differently than the other students. The Concissa then had a timber wolf muse called North. He was tall enough to look me square in the eye, and he was as deadly against the mongolites as they come, but even a prince among wolves is nothing compared to a tiger. Everyone knew, myself included, that I was the heir apparent. All too soon, I was officially named the Concissa’s handmaiden to prepare me for the role.”
“You must have been very proud, mistress,” Andrea said with genuine sincerity. Although she was still at a loss as to what any of this had to do with her, she admired this women above all others. Indeed, Andrea would have died for her mistress had it been required of her.
“Oh, I was proud, too proud,” the Concissa agreed, “very proud.”
However, instead appearing pleased by the compliment, the woman’s full red lips had curled in a bitter smile of regret.
“But pride does not a champion make, Andrea, no matter what I thought at the time. Though Feral and I outperformed every student in my year, both in class and at our finals, I nearly fainted dead away the first time I faced a mongolite in the flesh.”
The Concissa, afraid? Andrea shifted her feet uncomfortably at the idea. The women’s ferocity in battle was legendary.
“I’m sure you exaggerate, mistress.”
“If only that were true, Andrea, I might have tried to save my mistress before she sacrificed herself to save me.”
The Concissa shook her head sadly.
“Special treatment had made me arrogant to the point of idiocy, and it cost my mentor her life. That day I assumed the white dress of the Concissa, and I vowed over the burial shroud of my fallen teacher not to make the same mistake with my own successor.”
“Mistress, I don’t see-”
Andrea trailed off as the Concissa’s hard eyes met hers.
“I thought the strength of my muse was everything I needed to be a great Concissa, Andrea,” she said. “I was wrong. Strength is nothing without character to teach it restraint. Power is nothing without the fires of experience to temper its mettle. As great as Feral is, I was the weakest of tamers until I discovered that cold truth written in the blood of my teacher. But you aren’t like that, are you Andrea? You have listened to the mocking of your peers for these long years. You have borne the brunt of their scorn, yet still you have the strength to stand before the Concissa herself and demand to be given a chance to earn your rightful place among the tamers of this dome.”
Tilting her beautiful head in a shallow bow, she said, “I salute you, Andrea. You are certainly worthy to be named handmaiden of the Concissa.”
The room spun, and Andrea had to grasp the desk beside her to keep her legs from buckling. This couldn’t be happening. The handmaiden of the Concissa was the heir to the position, chosen by the strength of her muse. She was expected to lead the other tamers in battle if the mongolites invaded the dome. Andrea commanded the weakest muse in her class, in the school. How could the woman standing before her name Andrea as the next Concissa?
“Mistress…I…but.” The very notion was so preposterous that Andrea was at a loss for words. “I can’t be your handmaiden. I would give anything if I could, but I’m tamer to a niv. How I can possibly be the Concissa?”
A loud rumbling purr began to erupt from Feral’s chest as his beautiful mistress smiled mischievously.
“Did I not just tell you that strength isn’t everything?”
“Yes…but, the other tamers…”
The Concissa laughed.
“The other tamers had best do as their told,” she said sternly. Seeing the look of anxiousness her remark brought to Andrea’s face however, she waved her hand as if to brush aside the girl’s concerns. “You worry over nothing, Andrea. Can’t you see that? I have been in this room with you for but a single day, and frankly, I am nearly overwhelmed by your potential.”
What is she talking about? Andrea thought. All I did was keep a plague fly from landing on her neck.
Her disbelief must have shown, because the Concissa rolled her eyes with impatience.
“Do you pay attention when you are in this class, student?” she asked, her voice suddenly crisp and instructive.
“Yes, mistress,” Andrea answered quickly, almost on reflex.
“Tell me then, student, what is first rule of the tamer?”
Pushing all thought of handmaidens and successions from her mind, Andrea felt herself relax as she slipped back into her familiar role as a student answering her instructor.
“No tamer may choose their muse.”
“Good, my student. And the second rule?”
“No tamer can command more than one muse.”
“Why?”
“A tamer’s mind, like that of his muse, adapts itself to a particular frequency on the day of bonding. The talent was designed this way. It prevents one tamer from controlling the muse of another.”
The Concissa clapped her hands together in congratulations.
“Exactly as it is taught in the text, student. Well done,” she said. “Now let me tell you something you won’t learn in class. Some muses, not many, but a few, do not fit into the mold you just described.”
“I don’t understand, mistress,” Andrea said. “Are you saying my bonding with Knight isn’t permanent, that someday I will bond with a more powerful muse?”
In her hair, Knight beeped in irritation and Andrea found herself agreeing with the silver bee.
Don’t worry, Knight, she promised, even if it’s true, I would never give you up.
Even as Andrea made her silent vow to the niv, she saw the Concissa shaking her head.
“The bond is permanent,” the woman said. “What I’m speaking of is not the muse itself, but the singular frequency it shares with its tamer. Most think the bond is exclusive, and in most cases, they are correct. Yet, some few of the dome’s cybernetic inhabitants were designed to operate on the same wavelength, sharing a group consciousness if you will.”
“I still don’t-”
“The window, Andrea,” the Concissa interrupted. “At the window you…what was that?”
Andrea felt it, too, the soft tremor of disturbed earth that seemed to echo within her bones. A second later, the school’s intercom burst to life as it screamed forth a repetitive blare of warning.
“That’s the perimeter alarm!” the Concissa shouted above the noise. Pressing her finger against a particular ivory button located on the sleeve of her dress, she activated the duafiber technology within the garment’s weave. Instantly, the long billows of white fabric collapsed upon itself, tightening and hardening until it had reformed to a stiff carapace of battle armor that was perfectly molded to the Concissa’s slender frame.
Sending Feral ahead to check the hall, she tapped Andrea’s shoulder as she rushed for the door. “Follow me, and stay close! There are mongolites inside the school!”
Mongolites…here?! Andrea struggled to come to grips with the impossibility of what was occurring. The dome’s spherical walls were miles from the academy. How could the mongolites have penetrated this deeply into the city without being detected?
As mind-numbingly terrifying as the proclamation was, Andrea was first and foremost, a tamer in training. Swallowing her terror, she sent Knight speeding into the hall as she followed her mistress from the classroom.
Once in the well-lit marble corridor, the Concissa looked up at the closest globe-shaped communications speaker.
“This is the Concissa,” she shouted over the alarm. “Override perimeter alarm.” As soon as the piercing noise went silent, she called out again to the open air. “Office, this is the Concissa. Report!”
Immediately, a frantic male voice burst out over the intercom.
“Concissa, you’re alive! This is Tamer Entroy in the main office with Tamer Helen. When the main gates went down we feared the worst.”
“What’s our situation, Tamer? Why was the perimeter alarm activated?”
“It’s bad, mistress.” Andrea remembered Entroy as a hard-nosed recon instructor who seemed as tough as his warthog muse. But right now, he sounded both out of breath and afraid. “The main gates were open to allow the students to leave when the mongolites attacked. We tried to hold them in the entryway, but they ran right over us. There must be a hundred of them, at least. Out of the twelve instructors there, I think Helen and I were the only ones to escape. Tamer Jillian was with us for awhile, but when we were barricading the door to the office, his muse went down and he went berserk. He charged right into them. I’m sorry mistress, I couldn’t stop him.”
“It is not your fault, Entroy,” the Concissa said. “Now, where are the rest of the instructors? The perimeter alarm will have notified every tamer in the city, but we must organize a defense against the intruders until help can arrive.”
“Defense?!” Entroy exclaimed incredulously. “There are scores of mongolites, mistress! There can’t be more than thirty tamers in the entire staff, and almost half of those have already been lost! Fighting that many mongolites before reinforcements arrive would be suicide!”
The Concissa’s jaw set.
“Even if what you say is true,” she began coldly, “innocent children, children we have been charged to train and protect, are even now dying within these halls. You are a tamer of this dome, Entroy! What is your purpose?”
There was a brief silence on the other end of the intercom and then, “By muse or by blood, I will protect the innocent.”
“Tamer Entroy,” the Concissa demanded, “will you stand by your oath?”
“Forgive me, mistress,” Entroy said. “Neither I, nor Tamer Helen have forgotten our oaths. We go now to fulfill that vow. We will gather what instructors remain and protect the students, or we will die trying.”
“We are in the east wing, tamer. It yet remains free of the mongolites,” the Concissa told him. “Send the children this way if you can.”
“We will, mistress. By blood or by muse, Concissa.”
“By blood or by muse, tamer,” the Concissa replied solemnly. “Good luck.”
As the intercom went dead, the Concissa pulled a pair of eighteen-inch machblades from twin sheaths strapped to the small of her back.
Unconsciously, Andrea stepped back from the glimmering blue metal. Though she trusted the Concissa with her life, the molecule-thin edge of a machblade had been designed to pierce the rocklike skin of a mongolite. Even brushing against such an insanely-keen weapon had cost more than one unwary individual a limb.
The Concissa noticed the wide berth her student gave the blades and nodded her head in approval.
“I was going to explain why I couldn’t offer you one of my weapons,” she said, “but I see from your expression that you already know the reason. You won’t be instructed in close combat technique until next year, and without training, the machblade is more dangerous to its user than it is to a mongolite.”
Andrea nodded.
“Yes, mistress. I will…” she trailed off as a surge of warning flashed through her brain.
The Concissa took one look at Andrea’s face and spun back towards the hall, weapons poised and ready.
“What is it?”
“Knight,” Andrea explained, trying to get a better impression of what the niv was trying to communicate through their bond. “He must be ahead of Feral…He’s…I think something’s headed this way.”
Not taking her eyes from the corridor, the Concissa’s eyes narrowed.
“Concentrate, Andrea. Is it human or mongolite?”
“I…” Furrowing her brow, Andrea received a brief image of a steel hawk flapping madly down a marble hall. “It’s Coelwing, Ryan’s muse. I think the students are running this way.”
The Concissa nodded.
“The mongolites won’t be far behind,” she said. “I’m calling Feral back. Do the same with your muse, and stay here for a moment.”
Andrea fidgeted nervously in the hall as the white-armored woman ran back into the classroom. A moment after Knight arrived and began to orbit Andrea’s curly head, there came the crashing sound of broken glass from the room, and the Concissa emerged back into the hall.
“Here they come,” the Concissa said.
Andrea swung her head away from the door and saw her mistress was right. Coelwing and Feral in the lead, Ryan and about a dozen of the other students and their muses sprinted toward them.
Only twenty feet behind them…
“Concissa!” Andrea cried, pointing at the half-dozen sleek black bodies that were swiftly closing in on her classmates.
“I see them.”
Behind Ryan and the others, what looked like a pack of huge lizard-headed apes with thick black scales covering their entire bodies, gnashed their fang-filled mouths and howled angrily as they rushed down the corridor. Using their long arms to speed their progress, the ten-foot-tall mongolites rushed forward on all fours, their diamond-hard claws scraping deep grooves into the polished floor as they came.
Andrea saw her mistress measuring the distance between the students and their pursuers with a calculating eye.
“It will be close,” the woman muttered.
“What should I do, mistress?” Andrea asked, her stomach twisting in knots of fear.
“When the children reach us, lead them into the classroom. I’ve already broken out the glass of the window. When you get outside, don’t stop running until you find somewhere safe to hide.” The Concissa readied her blades. “Be quick. Feral and I will hold the mongolites here to buy you some time.”
“But, mistress,” Andrea protested, “there are too many of them. You must come with us.”
Her hazel eyes like chips of green ice, the Concissa shook her head.
“There is no time, Andrea. If I don’t slow the mongolites here, none of us will live to see the dawn.”
Coelwing soared over Andrea’s head before she could say more, and as the rest of the muses and children got close, the Concissa called out to them.
“Students, do not slow! Follow Andrea!” she commanded, pointing one of her blades at Andrea. “She will lead you to safety!”
Weapons held high to avoid the children as she sprinted through their ranks, the Concissa joined Feral as he pivoted to face the monsters.
“Go, Andrea!” the woman shouted, even as she dodged beneath a scaled arm. Leaning back, the Concissa swept two clawed fingers from the mongolite’s hand.
The monster shrieked in pain as its greenish blood spurted out onto the woman’s white armor before Feral crashed into its chest and forced it back.
“Go!”
The insistent cry snapped Andrea from immobility. As her classmates reached her, she spun on her heel and led them into the classroom.
“The window is broken,” she shouted, pointing the way to their escape. “Go!”
A couple of students immediately followed her orders, but the rest seemed too frightened to move. Joanna had gone straight to her desk and was now rocking back and forth as she held her wildcat muse to her chest and cried.
“Are you crazy, Beeper?!” Ryan shouted, while his eyes darted wildly between the window and the door. “I’m not going out there. How do you know those things aren’t outside? Who’s going to protect us then?”
The students at the window hesitated when they heard the red-haired boy.
“I say we close the door and stay right here,” Ryan continued.
“That’s not what the Concissa told me,” Andrea argued. “I’m supposed to get us out of here!”
Ryan barked a contemptuous laugh.
“That’s what you say,” he sneered. Coelwing landed on the boy’s shoulder and snapped its beak threateningly as his master shook an accusing finger at the small girl. “She told us to follow you in here, and we did! Now, why don’t you let a *real* tamer take charge before you get us all killed…Beeper.”
Andrea looked around the room, seeing to her frustration that none of the students were even trying to reach the window. They didn’t believe her. She was supposed to save them, but Ryan was the one they respected. He was the one that would be a real tamer someday. She was just a joke; a tiny girl with an insect for a muse.
What should I do, mistress? Andrea thought in despair. You wanted me to be the next Concissa, and I can’t even convince my class to save themselves.
A human scream echoed from the hall and every student in the room flinched away from the door.
Concissa!
“Somebody shut that door!” Ryan shouted. “We’ll pile our desks against it until help gets here!”
Students and muses hurried to obey the boy’s orders, but halted as Andrea, who stood closest to the door, lifted her hand to bar their way.
“Stop!” Andrea’s cry wasn’t desperate, or frightened. Her voice was as firm and uncompromising as the Concissa’s had been in the hall. “Stay in this room and we will all die. The Concissa cannot hold them for much longer. You must go now, while there is still time!”
“Or what, Beeper?” Ryan dared. “Are you going to set your muse on us? Ignore her everybody; she can run if she wants to. Get the desks.”
Andrea stepped closer to the red-haired boy. Her head barely reached his shoulder, but she showed not an ounce of fear as she stared up at his arrogant face. She was no longer afraid. That emotion had been washed away by her mistress’ scream, as surely as had her indecision and self-doubt. She was the handmaiden of the Concissa, chosen by the most powerful tamer in the dome. These children would follow her lady’s commands…whatever the price.
“What?” Ryan mocked. A split second later, he slapped a hand to the side of his head as Knight zipped into his ear. “Hey, what do you–”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Andrea warned, as the boy dug his finger into his ear in an attempt to dislodge the intruder. “Knight’s blade is small, but it can cut through solid steel. I know it wouldn’t be much of a loss, but I’d hate to see what he could do to your brain.”
Ryan froze. His eyes wide and terrified, he looked down at Andrea’s menacing smile and swallowed hard.
“The Concissa told you to leave,” she said, “and that is what you are going to do. Isn’t it?”
Ryan’s face scrunched up in pain as Knight beeped loudly next to his sensitive eardrum.
“Okay…okay,” he agreed hoarsely. “I’ll do anything you want. Please, just get him out!”
Inwardly, Andrea winced at the heartfelt terror she heard in his plea, but she let none of her pity show on her face. She couldn’t afford mercy now. Her mistress was in danger.
Snapping her fingers, she called Knight to back to her.
The niv zipped out of Ryan’s ear, and she watched the boy’s nervous gaze follow the silver bee as it began to circle the finger Andrea had raised in warning.
“You lead them, Ryan. You lead them to safety,” she ordered him coldly. “And if you’re thinking about using Coelwing against me, don’t. Knight is too quick for your bird, and your ear is a very tempting target.”
His cheeks pale, Ryan warily watched the niv’s darting movements and nodded.
“Well!” Andrea barked. “What are you standing around for? I said go!”
Though she had been talking only to Ryan, the entire class immediately leapt toward the window. One of the students, a boy named Escher, whose muse was a brass-colored German shepherd, stopped to pull Joanne from her desk and help her to the window.
They hurried, but only one student at a time could fit through the small opening. The sounds of Feral’s growls and the roaring mongolites were perilously close to the room before most of them had gotten outside.
“Hurry!” Andrea urged, as Ryan and Escher were helping Joanna and her wildcat through the opening.
Besides Andrea herself, those three were the last. But before Joanna could follow her muse outside, a tremendous crash erupted as the Concissa, Feral, and three huge mongolites burst through the classroom wall between Andrea and her classmates.
Joanna screamed, and desks and chairs burst to splinters as the combatants tore at one another with blade, tooth and claw.
“Get them out!” Andrea shouted to Ryan as she ducked beneath the instructor’s desk, the only piece of furniture in the room made of durosteel, rather than soft clonewood. “Get them to safety!”
Ducking beneath a flying piece of broken learning board, the redhead nodded quickly and shoved a screeching Joanna through the window.
Confident Ryan would do as he was told; Andrea huddled down beneath the desk and turned her attention to her besieged mistress.
Things were not going well. Spinning and slicing, the Concissa was fighting alongside her tiger muse furiously, but Andrea could see her mistress wouldn’t last much longer. Red blood had joined the acidic green fluid that stained her charred armor, and at some point the woman had lost one of her blades.
As Feral sprang onto one mongolite and forced him back through the shattered wall, the Concissa was left to face the other two monsters alone. One arm hanging limp at her side, her white hair spiraled crazily through the air as she twisted away from one mongolite’s reaching claws.
Kicking away from the creature in a gymnast’s leap, she twisted in the air to bury her machblade into the other’s chin.
The beast immediately collapsed as the blue metal pierced its radiation-soaked brain, but the move was costly. As sharp as the weapon was, the mongolite’s rocklike hide snagged the blade.
While the Concissa wasted precious seconds trying to free her weapon, the second mongolite rose up behind her.
No!
Andrea stifled the cry of warning on her lips. So far the mongolites hadn’t seemed to notice her, and screaming out and distracting her mistress wasn’t going to help free her only weapon. Still, Andrea was far from helpless.
Knight!
The silver bee slipped his razor sting into the mongolite’s black eye with a tiny beep of challenge. The wound was minor, but it gave the Concissa the time she needed to retrieve her machblade and swing around to face the screeching mongolite behind her.
She needn’t have hurried. The last mongolite had forgotten the Concissa for the moment as it swatted its claws angrily at the silver bee that kept darting in to sting its sensitive eyes and lips.
Sparing Knight only a brief glance, the Concissa opened the mongolite’s belly and immediately turned her eyes away from the falling monster to search the room.
“Andrea!” she called. “Andrea! Where are you?!”
“Here!”
The Concissa breathed a sigh of relief as the curly-haired girl emerged from below the desk.
“Come on,” she said, absently sliding her stained blade over a fallen mongolite’s scales to remove the green blood. “We must flee. This attack was too organized, too well executed, for it to have been a simple raid. I fear these wretched beasts did not come alone. Something else directs them.”
“What do mean, mistress?” Andrea asked, even as she hurried toward the window.
The armored woman looked thoughtful.
“I’m not sure, exactly,” she admitted. “But-”
The Concissa was interrupted by the sudden and violent arrival of her muse. Exploding through the classroom like he’d been shot from a cannon, the steel tiger blasted right through the ferrocrete of the school’s outer wall.
“Feral!”
The anguished cry had scarcely left the Concissa’s mouth when a nest of long black tentacles burst from the hallway and seized her by her arms and legs.
“Mistress!” Andrea cried.
“Go!” the Concissa shouted even as she struggled to free herself. “Get out now!”
The tentacles tightened, drawing a groan of pain from the woman and causing the machblade to fall from her nerveless fingers.
“Andrea!” she gasped weakly, as the sickly-looking limbs lifted her off the floor and into the air like some broken white puppet. “Go…Arghh…while there’s…still time.”
“There is no time, fleshy thing,” hissed a voice evilly. “It is far too late for her, you, and all of your pathetic people.”
Andrea’s mouth went dry with terror as a tall, black-scaled man stepped into the room.
“Your soft existence has reached its end,” he said. “You and all your kin will die this day.”
Besides his skin, the man looked almost human. About six and a half feet tall, his barrel chest was covered in a flowing robe of what looked like black mongolite hide. There was nothing human at all about his pupil-less red eyes, however, and Andrea saw to her horror that the long tentacles that had seized her mistress sprung from the intruder’s back.
Strolling into the room, the man was followed by two massive mongolites. Neither roaring nor attacking, the beasts followed behind the robed man like hideous dogs at heel.
“Who…who…” The Concissa’s face was white with effort as she tried to fight through the excruciating pain of the squeezing tentacles.
“Who am I?” the man supplied. “I believe that was what you were trying to say. Am I correct? To answer your question, I am Abbandon. And for lack of a better term, you could say I am the king of the mongolites. I am what you and your soft-skinned kind left to rot in the radiated wastelands outside your precious domes.”
“Impossible…” the Concissa spat, “radiation.”
Grinning in a surprisingly-white smile, the man clasped his arms behind his back and shook his head at the woman.
“Oh yes, it’s still there,” he conceded, “miles and miles of nothing but diseased wastelands and mutated fauna. But, don’t you see? That is the birthright that brings me to your pitiful city. As the mongolites you fear so much, I am born of death and the wars of our fathers. You are the weak. Like worms, your kind must hide beneath the shielded walls or die in the sun.”
The man spread his arms wide to take in the mongolites behind him.
“We are the strong. Immune to very worst of the plagues and weapons of a bygone era, we thrive within the death without the need of protection.”
“What…arghh…” The Concissa grimaced and then steadied her ragged breathing before she spoke again. “What do you want?”
Abbandon laughed. Drawing the Concissa close, he lifted two more tentacles right before her hazel eyes.
“I want you dead, of course,” he said as sharp boney tips slid from the snakelike appendages and crept toward the Concissa’s eyes. “I want you all dead.”
Before the tentacles could find their mark, a tiny silver bee tore across one of the scaled man’s red eyes.
“Arghh!”
The mongolites sprang forward at their king’s cry of pain, but Abbandon hissed something and the monsters froze in place.
Knight darted back toward the man, but with more speed than was humanly possible, Abbandon’s hand blurred up and snatched the niv from the air.
“No!” Andrea hadn’t thought about what she was doing went she sent her muse to attack the scaled man. It had been pure instinct, reflex. Now the horrible king had her mistress and her precious Knight at his mercy. “Let them go!”
The second she spoke, the mongolites howled and started toward her. But placing one of his tentacles in their path, Abbandon halted his bestial guards yet again.
Using another of his slippery limbs to wipe away a drop of green blood from his eye, the king of the mongolites looked from his closed fist and then to Andrea. And suddenly, he started to laugh.
“Oh, how truly feeble you have become,” he chortled. “This insect I hold in my hand is your muse? This shiny bug is your protector?”
“Stop it,” Andrea said as she watched the man’s fist tighten. “Please, just let us go.”
Turning away from her, Abbandon looked back at the Concissa’s pale face.
“Do you see now why you must perish?” Holding his fist before the woman’s eyes, he placed his ear next to his fingers to listen to Knight’s frightened chirps. “With your lives in the hands of such, my kind is doing you a favor.”
“Andrea,” the Concissa called. “Don’t listen to him. Remember the window, you are… arghh!!”
The window? Andrea thought foggily. Her brain felt numbed with horror by Knight’s pained beeping. The mongolites are too close. Even if I get to the window I’ll never make it outside.
“Be still, witch!” Abbandon demanded, tightening his tentacles until the Concissa’s bones creaked. “I have grown tired of your whimpers. It is time for you and your youngling to die.”
As the man’s bone-tipped tentacles approached once more, the Concissa turned her head toward the petrified girl and weakly choked out three words.
“Nivs…One…Mind.”
And suddenly, Andrea understood what her mistress had been trying to tell her. What she’d been trying to tell her ever since she’d named a small girl with a silver bee the handmaiden of the Concissa.
The window! Andrea’s mind suddenly opened, like a waking flower to the light of the morning sun. She wasn’t telling me to run. She was reminding me about the nivs at the window!
“Let her go.”
As Andrea spoke, a humming drone began to build from beyond the shattered hole Feral had left in the wall.
Turning toward the girl curiously, Abbandon stopped his boney tentacles centimeters from the Concissa’s eyes and smiled.
“I nearly forgot you were here,” he said. Shaking his closed fist vigorously, he elicited a chorus of beeps from Andrea’s trapped muse. “You have courage for a fleshling. But, tell me, how shall you fight me without your protector? Perhaps, if you run now, I shall give you a head start before sending my mongolites to devour you.”
Her dark brown eyes unafraid, Andrea met Abbandon’s glare without flinching.
“Let her go now, and leave the dome,” she said emotionlessly. “Or I will kill you.”
The expression of cruel humor disappeared from Abbandon’s face, and he angrily rose to his full height.
“Who do you think you are, fleshling?” Behind him, the mongolites began to creep toward the girl menacingly, and this time their master made no move to stop them. “I have lived in the wastes for three hundred years before you were born. I have fought and clawed my way from the desolation, and using my strength, I have seized kingship from the beasts of the land. Who are you to threaten such as I?”
“Who am I to threaten a king?” Andrea asked. Lowering her head, she touched her mind to the chirping presence of her muse and shouted, “I am Beeper; Queen of the Silver Bees!”
As the mongolites charged forward, a solid wave of nivs burst through the opening in the outer wall. Like a storm of razors, the silver bees bit into the mongolites’ flesh, tearing scales, muscle, and even bone asunder as they viciously attacked their tamer’s enemies.
“No!”
As the mongolite guards fell, the shining cloud swarmed over the shocked face of Abbandon the king, and the scaled man threw the Concissa aside as he desperately attempted to escape into the hall.
He didn’t make it.
As the first of the long tentacles was severed, Andrea turned away from the wildly beeping swarm. She almost pitied Abbandon, but not for a single moment did she consider calling off the nivs until the king of the mongolites had been reduced to a butchered ruin of black flesh and green blood.
A scraped and stained hand touched Andrea’s shoulder.
“That was well done, handmaiden,” the Concissa said gently. “But I think you may have forgotten something.”
Swallowing hard, Andrea called the nivs away as her mistress picked up her machblade and walked over to what was left of Abbandon. Kneeling down, the woman carefully pried at a closed black fist with the tip of her weapon. The grasping fingers opened and a small silver bee sped free of their grip with a happy “beep!” of joy.
“Knight!” Andrea cried happily as the niv darted into her curls. “I’d thought I’d lost you! Oh thank you, mistress! I…”
Stopping suddenly, Andrea looked guiltily at the wide hole Feral had made in the wall.
“Feral?” she asked hesitantly. “Is he…”
The Concissa waved her good arm dismissively and smiled.
“Don’t worry; he’s been better,” she said. “But I can still feel him, and the techs will have him good as new in no time.”
Just then, several tamers and their muses burst into the room, weapons ready.
“Concissa!” Tamer Entroy shouted happily, and then paused with the others as they came upon Abbandon.
As the tamers looked around at the torn bodies and devastated walls, their eyes grew wider and wider.
Noticing the shredded look of the scaled man and his mongolite guards, some of the arrivals nudged one another and pointed to the thick spirals of silver bees circling the small girl in the center of the room.
“What happened here?”
His voice full of horror and awe, Tamer Entroy stared at the swarming nivs as if he expected them to resume their butchery at any moment.
Just then, Ryan poked through the shattered portion of the wall.
“Is it over?”
The Concissa smiled.
“It is, student,” she said, beckoning him with a nod. “You may come inside, if you wish. You should hear this.”
Slowly, and giving the bodies of the mongolites a wide birth, Andrea’s class filed back into the room and walked over to join the ranks of the tamers.
“Tamers and students,” the Concissa proclaimed. “I would like you to meet the tamer-in-training, who saved not only her mistress today, but us all. From this day forward, she is handmaiden to the Concissa! I give you–”
The Concissa paused as Andrea reached up and touched her arm. Standing on her tiptoes, the curly-haired girl surrounded by chirping nivs, whispered something into her mistress’ ear.
After a moment, the Concissa threw back her head and laughed.
“So be it,” she chuckled, giving Andrea’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze. “I give to you Beeper; heir to the Concissa, Tamer of the dome, and Queen of the Silver Bees!”
The beeping noises of the nivs’ laughter echoed Andrea’s own, as Ryan’s eyes rolled back in his head and he fainted dead away.
Filed under Short Science Fiction Stories · Tagged with Science Fiction, SciFi, Timothy Miller
Pipe Dreamer
April 23, 2010 by Publisher · Leave a Comment
Damn fool. He’d had exactly the same choices as me but had opted for the weapons cache in Brilliant Blax. The wrong option, in my opinion, and it didn’t seem to be doing him any favors either- the Silverbacks were swarming, bullets were flying and holes punched through the cargo hull with tiny pfft! sounds.
Angelique and I crouched behind her store front, helmets in hand in case things went really bad. I returned the frown set in her middle-aged face with a glare. Only minutes before I’d been swimming.
Swimming. With Celeste in the sea at night. Warm, tropical water, waves crashing across the beach where our hut was. And we’d been naked, suitless, bootless- exposed to the night and the all-too-familiar spectacle of stars. She’d been laughing, the sound muted in the water as I swam after her in the shallows. Then my back had arched in a spasm of pain and there was a stark room with white, halogen light. I was sitting up. And dry.
“Run,” Angelique had ordered, shoving helmet and gloves into my lap. Her leg creaked as she walked around in front of me. “Styggies just docked at Halo Cargo. Time for you to make a living.”
“You’ll never get me alive, gorillas!” the damn fool screamed, shaking me out of the reverie. He fired blindly down the walkway and I watched SealFoam spots bloom along the hull like high-speed fungi, stopping up the bullet holes even as they appeared.
“Is this genius one of yours?” I asked Angelique.
“If he was I wouldn’t tell you,” she said, still frowning. CLF, so secretive.
“I can still taste sea salt on my lips.”
“That’s not salt,” she scowled. “You bit your tongue when I pulled the spike.”
I should have run, that was my job after all, but when I saw the Silverbacks already coming out the tubes I stopped. My remaining options had paraded past- escape routes, the lock under the floor, Blax’s weapons cache- and I’d rejected them all. I even considered them again, slowly and consciously, before admitting there was nothing.
But then this damn fool, who obviously hadn’t seen things the same way, started shooting. The only thing I could do then was take cover. “You’ll never get me alive!” he screamed again.
But of course they did. With a well-timed concussion grenade the cargo fell into a reverberating silence. For a moment the only sound was the whine of the aircyclers, sucking up the smoke laden air. Then slowly, here and there, people started to pick themselves up. The Silverbacks made a show of storming Blax’s and hauling the unconscious, bloodied fool down the walkway, back to the Prometheus for questioning. I picked up one of the tables that fronted Angelique’s, newly decorated with a neat sequence of bullet holes punched through the cheap metal. A set of jagged crowns across the top.
“Make it Starshine, then,” I said to Angelique.
“Starshh… what? You spacesoaked little… you’re not going to slip out?”
“I’m going to sit right here,” I thumped the table, “and I’ll have a whisky please.” I half-turned my head to her while keeping an eye on the nearest Silverback. “You said yourself if we’re down there’s no way they can trace the signal. They probably think they just caught the courier, hmm? Let’s not give them any reason to change their minds.”
So there I was, whisky in hand, studying the Silverbacks with their hulking gear and sullen faces, when one of them broke from the troop and came for me. I recognized him immediately: those grey spikes of hair and pale, piercing eyes could be seen in any newsfeed. He moved with the impatience of command, helmet under an arm and chin tucked inside the rim of his neckguard.
“Morning, boss,” I said, raising my drink.
Risgar Harris, Commander of the UNSF Prometheus and governor of the Cobs, sized me up. It’d been two weeks since the airlock had popped on me and I still had bloodshots and broken veins in my cheeks. It wasn’t just the red eye, though. One glance at the morning whisky in my hand and it was obvious what classification the Commander placed me under: non-threat.
“Ma’am,” Harris nodded to Angelique as he grabbed a chair. “I’ll have a coffee.”
Who the hell says ma’am? I thought to myself. Out loud I asked, “You be da naya thulo manche, nyet?”
“Say that again in English, boy. I don’t speak Cobcrab.”
“So you’re the new boss from UNSF?”
Harris sighed, clearly wondering if it was worth it to stay for his coffee. Suddenly he held up a hand and put a finger to his earpiece, listening intently. I have to say, when you see him in person Risgar Harris gains about ten pounds of extra authority. I didn’t make a peep the whole time his hand was in the air. “Yeah,” he said, “yeah. All right, wait for Tillman then check it out.” He broke the connection and added to himself, “better chance of finding a pixie with her pants down.”
The last comment surprised me. “You don’t think you’re gonna find it, then?”
Angelique gasped and the coffee in her hand let out the tiniest little thud as it dropped onto the table. Harris’ reaction was more pronounced: his grey eyes fastened on me and began to dissect. I do this sometimes, move my mouth and make sounds before I’m ready to speak. In spite of my own shock I met his gaze as flatly as I could, drank my whisky.
“Find what, boy? What exactly is this conversation about?” When he saw I wasn’t going to talk, he raised a gloved finger. “Check him.”
The Silverbacks moved in, bent me over and ran their thingers over me: energy tracers, EM scans, that kind of thing. More for intimidation than anything else. Since the pipeline wasn’t broadcasting anymore it was just inert hardware. They wouldn’t find it. It could’ve been anything, anywhere.
It just happened to be disguised as the thermal reg of my smartsuit.
When they brought out a snuffler, though, I got a little prickly. Any scents that nozzle pulled off of me would be cross-referenced against signatures of known insurgents –pretty much anyone Angelique knew. It could also pick up exotic chemical compounds; I don’t know what specifically but things that would’ve been used when they made the pipeline.
Snufflers are nasty but they can be beaten. They say the aircyclers in the Cobs have insurgents’ privies strung across them: it puts their scent everywhere, confuses the noses. As for the pipeline, if Angelique was to be trusted I had no worries because it’d been built out where it’s hard for scents to stick. I guess having a vacuum in your backyard has the occasional benefit.
They dropped me back into my chair. “He’s clean.”
Harris grunted. “What’s that I see on the back of your neck, boy? Is that a jack I see?”
“Yup,” I wiggled my empty glass out where Angelique would see it. “Prison issue. Low grade but it can catch a signal,” I reached around and felt the edge of the protrusion. “That’s what you get these days for a nickel behind bars.”
“Uh-huh,” Harris took a sip of his coffee. We sat there staring at each other, his aquiline glare burning into my bloodshot orbs.
I blinked first. “It’s not a big secret what you’re looking for, boss. It’s one of those cases where shooting the messenger would be pretty effective, don’t you think?”
Not a word, he just kept staring. Harris was going to burn a confession out of me with just his eyes.
“Don’t think I’m interested in the Quiet Revolution, or the CLF, or anything like that.” Angelique brought out a refill and hovered, waiting to see if I was actually going to talk my way out. “What I do care about, though, is if you find that pipeline. My wife’s back on Earth… it’s a long story but I haven’t seen her for something like three years. And when that line is hot I can talk to her, touch her, make love to her without so much as a hiccup in the connection. Otherwise it’s what- half an hour, an hour to send and receive?” I shook my head. “Text is nice and all, but it doesn’t beat the full jack.”
Harris grunted again, then cocked his head and listened as another message came through on his earpiece. He muttered a response then finished off his coffee and stood up. “Looks like we’re done here. For official reasons, boy, I can’t tell you what we’re looking for. But if I were you, I’d get as much hot time as I could for the next week because after that…” He shrugged.
“Why? What happens in a week?”
Harris snorted, turned, and as quickly as they’d arrived, the Silverbacks withdrew and disappeared out the tubes. I was still puzzling over his parting comment when Angelique sat down beside me. She rolled up her pant leg, unstrapped her prosthetic and unceremoniously dumped it on the table. “Damn thing always gets sore when I’m stressed,” she groaned, massaging the lump where her knee used to be.
She may be CLF but Angelique lost her leg the rockchopper way: out placing mining charges, bad signal, that kinda thing. Lucky for her she’d been wearing decent gear, an Ecocon smartsuit, and the cross-seams had zipped shut before too much had been sucked out into space. The plastic leg gives her away because it creaks, but a cybernetic would’ve meant a trip to Earth and I don’t think she’s welcome there.
“Tell me, Jozef,” she asked, still kneading her stump. “Is it your social graces and conversation that we’re paying you an obscene amount of money for? Because I could’ve sworn there was something in your resume about you being an army man of sorts.”
“It’s your job to make sure I’ve got a head start. If you can’t provide the cover, I can’t be your courier.” I reached down to unclip the pipeline.
“Hold on,” she put her hand out, reaching over the leg that was still draped across the table. “They caught us by surprise. Won’t happen again.”
“Right. What’s going to happen in a week?”
Angelique swung around, grabbed her prosthetic and began strapping it back into place. “The news isn’t going to break for another few hours but the delegation managed to get a vote tabled. It’s the big show, the General Assembly. Between now and then there’s going to be some serious chatter, lots of deal making.” She nodded at the pipeline. “If we want to free the Cobs that thing needs to be running as much as possible.”
“Triple the fee.”
“Double, that’s it. And you better run the next time they show up.”
*
The first time I’d ever seen the Cobs I’d been the fourth in a three person crew: technically part of the cargo. Illegal cargo. It’d been cramped but everyone was happy to have me there- better than in a ditch with a bullet your head, they kept telling me. Mukube had finally decided I was dangerous even from behind bars, and with the UN’s new extradition laws the Cobs were the only safe place I could run to.
My first impression was how fragile, ephemeral, the whole thing appeared to be. As if at any second gravity was going to come back on and it would all collapse. Docking lines hung as light as clouds, branched off in directions that my flat human mind, unaccustomed to true three dimensions, struggled to grasp. Curious tugs, rock rigs and power freighters crept out of the darkness and ended up stuck to its strands like electric flies. It was an immense, iridescent cobweb glistening with drops of fire.
I saw Ceres for the first time as well. And The Mound- that inexorably growing sphere of mining slag- plus a scattering of bright M- and S-types but that was about it for asteroids.
Then the crew showed me how to use Al-Aqsa to find Earth. There’s been articles written about Al-Aqsa Mosque and how it stays aligned with Mecca; it factors in everything from relativistic effects to interstellar drift. I remember following where it pointed and seeing Earth from four hundred million kilometers away. A speck. Everything I’d known, the one person I’d ever loved, reduced to a distant pinpoint.
But now I had the pipeline. The intricacies of qubits and quantum entanglement were beyond me. All I needed to know was that to be with her, I had to just turn it on and slip in a nerve spike. The back of Angelique’s Cyber was a broadcast node but the CLF had also geared my ship to be one as well. It was cheeky to fire up again so soon after a raid, but I told myself I was doing it because the CLF and their delegates needed me. Truth was I just wanted to see Celeste again.
*
The sun was just coming up over the beach. A lazy, pink line across the horizon. I left footprints in the sand. Bare feet. I don’t know how long it’d been since I’d gone barefoot in real life. It was hard to believe I was getting paid money to do this, to be with Celeste. A pessimist would say I was getting paid to die running in a trap in space, but I’m more of a glass-half-full kinda guy.
The delegates, wherever they were hiding and whoever they were, had probably already twigged that the pipeline was back. So while I was climbing into a hut on a beach sim taken from the South Pacific, they were popping into dinner parties dressed in suits and evening gowns. Each one of them armed with a dozen faultless arguments for why the Asteroid Settlements should be voted into their own self-governing colonies.
Celeste was in bed. Her avvy glowed with a gentle blue, a sign she was elsewhere. When I touched her she stirred. “Hey,” she said with a sleepy smile. “I just logged in at work. Com’ere.”
“You’re at work already? The sun’s only just coming up.”
“Baby, the sun’s been up for a while where I am. I thought this place was set to your time zone.”
“I don’t think the Cob has a time zone.”
I was halfway through taking off my shorts when I just stopped and… smiled. She was beautiful, propped up on an elbow eyeing me with that look of hers. That look. Celeste’s face has always been just a touch asymmetrical- it gives her a permanent wry look, an arched eyebrow and a cocked smile, that’s always seemed to bore right into me. I’ve never been able to lie to her, not once, because of that look.
She cupped my face in her hands and kissed me. “So what happened back there during our swim?”
“Ah, hardware troubles…” I tried to brush it off but couldn’t. It was the look again. Separation starts when you stop telling the truth. We were still together, in spite of the soul-crushing distance, because I just couldn’t lie to her. But I didn’t have to tell her how dangerous everything was right that instant.
There were more interesting issues to deal with first.
*
“The feds hit again in the night,” Angelique announced with a frown. “We can’t pipe from here. At least not for the next little while. You’ll have to run the pipeline from your ship.”
“Already on it,” I told her.
“Good.” She picked up my empty glass and examined it. “That was a nice story you told Harris the other day. About your wife. Any of it true?”
“I’m sure you already know all about it. Celeste is the reason I’m here.”
“What I heard is you’re here because you disobeyed a dictator’s orders. Turned you into a hero of sorts. Your wife the dictator?”
“Only when it comes to the toilet seat.”
Her frown never even twitched. Some people have no sense of humor.
“They weren’t just any old orders,” I said. “It was during the Spring Uprising. Things were coming to a head and there was a major protest planned- students, doctors, everyone. I was the man behind the barricades, captain of the security forces. Mukube though…” I shook my head, “He had the whole thing sorted. He’d salted the crowd with his own people and they were going to fire on us- blanks of course. We were going to return fire, the non-blank kind, making sure we picked off the chief agitators. It would’ve been self-defense and without any leadership the entire movement would’ve fizzled.
“But just before the time came I picked up my megaphone and outlined the entire scheme.” I shrugged. “My second-in-command- the best man at my wedding, actually- arrested me that evening.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“I… I can’t lie to my wife,” I said lamely. How could I explain that I’d done it all because of a look? That if I’d killed innocent people Celeste would’ve seen it right away, a grotesque stain of my soul?
“Great. We’ve hired a lovesick marine that can’t follow orders. No wonder you don’t run when we tell you to.” Angelique put my glass down on the table, upside down. “Speaking of which, Harris was asking about you last night. He wanted to know where that ‘space-shaken drunkard’ was.”
“Drunkard, hey?” I thought about this. “I wonder if I’m going to have to run at all. I mean, being the sad drunk under his nose is a pretty good cover.”
Angelique stared, then gave a harsh bark of laughter. “You’ve just confirmed the CLF analysis team’s concerns that you may be suicidal.” Her leg gave a hollow, plastic sound when she slapped it. “You’re the laziest, drunkest, slowest courier we’ve ever had and if you live to see next Saturday, you might end up the richest. But trust me, you’re going to have to run.”
*
We tried mixing it up, piping from Angelique’s and from my ship. Harris and his bristling Silverbacks swept in twice at the Cyber. Both times he’d order his coffee and more or less ignore me. I was a natural at playing a drunkard. But then with three days to go I woke up in my ship and two signals were waiting for me on the other side of the airlock. The cameras had been hacked but they hadn’t thought of motion detectors. Old tech. I flipped down from the cosyhole and examined the airlock console: they hadn’t started messing with it. Which meant a torch was coming.
I could either pop out, abandon the gear, or try and slip the lock. The problem with a slip was that any airlock, even out in the Cobs, is close to uncrackable for the plain reason that no one likes to walk into space when they’re not ready for it. And even then, if I went through the proper sequences the Silverbacks on the other side would know and call in the Styggies.
I own a Snubnose Chomper. They’re ugly little rocket rides but incredibly easy to modify. With a few keystrokes, a muted clang and a pop, the outer lock came free, still clamped tight against the docking door. I maneuvered out on compression jets- no need to power up since I wasn’t going far.
UNSF procedures were standard. When the Silverbacks torched through they’d be suited up with the tube sealed. It’d be a nasty surprise when they found themselves kicked into a vacuum but no one was going to get hurt.
A few minutes later I was docked and down on a completely different tube. First thing I did was take the bounce down to Angelique’s. The feds were close, they were hungry, but they still had no idea who the courier was.
*
“So you do these spot raids looking for your pipeline but your culprit gets away every time,” I said, casually tracing the hex weave of my smartsuit. “Why don’t you just seal off the area? Search everyone?”
Harris sneered, “This place may be airtight but it’s got more holes in it than Swiss cheese. We post guards at the entry points but khatam- you sound like one of those chairboys back on Earth.” He seemed more irritable than usual. I wondered if it had to do with my morning escapades. “Containing a place like this is impossible; you think manning the airlocks would seal it off? It’s not like putting roadblocks on the highway, boy. Our man can squeak out of here in any direction in 3D: sliplocks, poplocks, hideyholes and a hundred blacktubes that no one knows about except the smugglers that use em.” He slurped his coffee angrily. “They give me an impossible assignment… for what? Just to prevent another useless hopetaucracy.”
“A what?”
“Hopetaucracy, boy, ain’t you payin attention? All the nations of the world are hopetaucracies these days. We go from one shitaucracy to the next but with every change people think things’ll get better. The change isn’t actually doing anything but so what? The grass is always, always, greener.”
“No offense to you, Commander,” Angelique interrupted suddenly, “but when the delegation comes through and we’re free to make our own decisions, things’ll get better.”
“The waitress?” Harris looked up with a merciless grin. He pointed, looking at me as if he was presenting Exhibit A. “You see? Hopetaucracies will never go out of style. There will always be people who believe in them. Ma’am, “he started, “everything you know about these CLF delegates is what they want you to see. It’s all avvys and internet. They don’t even have the courage to show their faces in public, let alone go to the UN in person.”
“That’s because you shot down the first delegation before they even made it to Mars.”
“You can’t pin that on us,” Harris huffed. “They disappeared. That kinda stuff happens out in space all the time.”
“Uh-huh. It’s just a coincidence that the only ships out here with stealth hulls are Styggies. You’re the only ones who can sneak up and blow a ship away before it even knows it’s under attack.”
“A hopetaucracy is better than no hope at all,” I said.
They both turned and looked at me. Harris stuck his lower lip out over his neckguard, then laughed. “The great thing about a hopetaucracy is that if it doesn’t work out, you can always replace it with another.”
*
Blue. Pale, gauzy blue drapes diffused the glow of sunrise. Our wedding picture was on the bedside table, one of the few decorations in the Spartan room: me in uniform and her with a huge grin on her face. Celeste sat up abruptly and pulled the bedding around her. White sheets draped off ebony skin.
“You look like a postcard,” I told her. I thought about getting a freeze-frame but let it go. Some moments you don’t need a hardcopy to remember.
“Jozef,” she said, “how safe is this?”
“Safe?” I replied innocently. The sun coming up meant I’d been running the pipeline for a dangerously long time, but I put on my best convincing smile and dodged the question. “I was safe when I refused Mukube’s orders, wasn’t I? I was safe the whole time I was in prison, and even when he decided I was better off dead I was still safe when they smuggled me out, right?”
“That smile isn’t going to convince anyone,” she said, fixing me with that arched eyebrow and wry smile. “How safe is what you’re doing right now?”
For moment I couldn’t look her in the eyes. “What does it matter?” I finally said. “I’m never going to see you again. Not for real. Mukube will never sign your visa papers and he’s definitely never going to let me come home. If this is all we’ve got, who cares how safe it is?”
“If this is all we’ve got,” she said firmly, “then we’re blessed. And you’d better not be doing anything to screw it-”
The transition sliced through my nerves and I writhed and knocked against the consoles inside the cosyhole. Then I heard the hiss of a torch and went still. The nerve spike was set to jump if anything went wrong: like a hull breach.
They were cutting through the lock.
I scrambled but it was a well-rehearsed, controlled scramble. I blew the Skunk, jumped out of the cosyhole, had my helmet sealed and was wriggling into the poplock in a matter of seconds.
That’s right; I blew the Skunk before I put on my helmet. In spite of all the run-throughs I screwed things up before I was even out of the cosyhole. Just a whiff of the stuff got in my helmet but burning tar, onions, varnish and every other conceivable smell pierced my nasal cavity. My vision smeared behind sharp tears. Skunk is used to throw off snufflers, clog them up, so it makes sense that it smells bad but you have no idea just how bad until you’ve tried it.
Fumbling, half-blind, I groped my way inside the poplock, braced my feet on the compression pad and –thunk- blew into space. I shot out fast, moisture crystallized in the vacuum around me and I spotted a tube coming up on my left. I aimed my lifeline to catch it and that’s when a giant fist hit me in the shoulder and the universe went grey.
The sound of my own gasping brought me back. In space there’s only one good reason for heavy breathing and getting hit by superheated plasma isn’t it. I was spinning. At the lower edge of my vision I could see blood spurting, expanding outwards into a helix behind me. Even as I watched, the bleeding tapered off as my smartsuit stitched itself shut. I twitched command signals with my fingers, the movements ripped pain through my shoulder but the air packets fired and I straightened out.
Fiery streaks flashed past. Pot shots. They’d posted guards outside this time. A pulse blazed past my visor and I had to squeeze my eyes- still watering from the Skunk- to clear the retinal ghost. I aimed my lifeline a second time at the passing ass of a docked freighter, caught it and yelped in pain as my shoulder wrenched and I swung inwards. I blew the rest of my air packets braking and crumpled against the hull.
My legs were cold. Very cold. The pipeline only looks like a thermal reg after all. Beside me, within jumping distance, was a runner tube with a sliplock. Stars were winking out behind me, silhouettes of the Silverbacks in pursuit. I chameleon coded my own suit black with stripes to match theirs, bounced stiff legged and immediately came under fire. Three pulses blasted through the hull of the cargo below me and perfectly smooth, white mushrooms bloomed as SealFoam expanded and solidified from the breaches.
He caught me three-quarters of the way across, our vectors merged and we tumbled against the cargo. I broke away but the kid was some sort of ogee hand-to-hand prodigy. He had a pivot cable down before we even touched hull and was at me whirling and twisting like some dervish at the end of a yo-yo line.
I caught a glimpse, just a flash of a face behind the visor as we spun and traded blows: hazel eyes, young, angular face. Then before I even knew what was happening he had me in a knee hold. We were spinning like a drill head, my head pinned between his shins, the hull coming closer as his pivot line pulled us in.
I know this much about ogee fighting: there’s nothing pretty about knee holds. As soon as we were close he’d reach out, grab onto something and brake with his air packets. The hard stop meant my head, locked as it was between his knees, would also stop but momentum would keep the rest of my body turning.
All I could keep thinking as the hull face spun closer was Celeste: if this is all we’ve got then we’re blessed.
Something gave him away, his legs tensed just a little and I reached up through the agony in my shoulder, screaming, grabbed his legs and held on. The brake came and by sheer determination, still howling, I stopped along with him. What momentum I had I used to swing forward and connected a boot against his helmet. My legs were so cold now they were just numb stumps below my knees but I still dove for the sliplock and caught it. As the outside turned away, my tenacious Silverback assailant was already lunging across for more.
There was nothing to jam the lock with so I just kept moving. At the nearest junction I had to squeeze past a tangle of pipes and when I saw them I got an idea. He was already inside, pushing out of the sliplock so I braced my feet and popped the quick-release on the biggest pipe there, unleashing a stream of pressurized sewage. Shit and brown goo blew my attacker back the length of the tube. I was releasing the rest of the pipes so I could seal the junction when they took me from behind.
There were too many. The endorphins were wearing off. What fight I had left went with a yelp when one of them gripped my blasted shoulder. I was hauled through a doorway, and another, then taken down a blacktube into some dark hole. “Easy boy, we gotcha. We gotcha.” A single light, an incandescent, came on and a dozen faces looked down on me.
The CLF.
“That’s a goood wallop,” one of them drawled as he eyed up my shoulder. “Somebody go fetch the doc. Okay, let’s get him out of that thang. You gotta get the smartsuit bindings to relax first. Trigger it there. It’s that button there on the armpanel-“
“Leave it,” I said with a wet gasp. “Clean me up, that’s all. If I’m not out in front of Angelique’s in five minutes Harris is going to put two and two together.”
The faces paused, looked at each other.
“What?” I asked. “Last time I saw a meaningful look like that my best friend arrested me.”
*
Angelique.
Her leg up was propped up against the padlocked metal shutters of her shop. It was the only sign that there’d been a struggle.
“We’re just asking a few questions, that’s all,” Harris said with a shrug. “Odd coincidence that every time we pop into this cargo the signal dies. And she runs a Cyber, of all things.”
“Well, she also sold good whisky. I’m going to have to find a new place,”
I made as if to leave but didn’t get up. My legs were shooting stars of pain as warmth crept into them. I was sitting so that you could only, barely, make out the depression where the smartsuit clenched against my shoulder.
A Silverback lurched in, covered in brown filth. It was the young’n that had flashed past my visor about ten minutes ago, when I’d been fighting for my life. I’d have recognized him by the smell, anyway. “We got a sample,” he announced as he snapped to attention. “Blood.”
From when they shot me. They’d gone and picked up some of those frozen droplets drifting through space.
“How long before you get an aromatic?”
“Twenty minutes, tops. The techs are already on it.”
Once they had that, they’d use the snufflers to hunt me down. Was that Skunk I smelled? I took low, shallow inhale and relaxed: it was just Captain Sewage wafting across the table. A little late to be getting paranoid, I guess. Sewage noticed me and cocked his head at the way I was sitting. I stared back, there was no way he could’ve seen me- the light had lit up his face, not mine.
Then he stepped back, hand on his pulser and I was out of my chair. Harris was looking around angrily and that’s when pandemonium broke out. Shouts and exclamations went up all around us. People were standing, hugging and clapping each other on the back.
They’d just announced the vote. Independence had arrived.
My last glimpse before I disappeared behind the crowd was of Captain Sewage shouting frantically in Commander Harris’ ear. Harris, though, had his grey eyes fastened on me. His collarguard obscured his mouth but I think, possibly, from his eyes it looked as if he was smiling.
*
I took in the blue drapes, the gritty sand on the bare wood floor, the undulating hiss and roll of the surf. The pipeline was mine now and it never had to be turned off again. That had been the deal and Angelique, a little less frowny after being released from the Prometheus, had confirmed it for me.
Celeste stood in the middle of the room, arms crossed. While I’d been out getting shot, running for my life and witnessing a revolution, she’d been ruminating over the conversation we’d been having. The first words out of her mouth were, “Let me ask you again, mister, just how safe is this-“
I walked up, a big stupid grin on my face, and kissed her.
“And just what was that for, hmm?” she pushed me away, still angry but not that angry.
“I’m home.”
Filed under Short Science Fiction Stories · Tagged with DT Mitenko, Science Fiction, SciFi, Short Story
Black Hole Blues
April 9, 2010 by Publisher · 2 Comments
Why would anyone volunteer to fly into a black hole? I’ll tell you. Let me just sip some coffee first and light up my very last cigarette.
The coffee tastes like piss and motor oil, by the way. Everything tastes like piss and motor oil, here. I pull out a cigarette from a tin pack and light it. The smoke spreads through the cockpit in a bluish-gray haze. All the flashing lights on the control panels get dimmed, and for a moment everything looks festive. It almost feels like I’m partying away at some club and not flying straight into the heart of a gravitational singularity.
“Aurora, are you smoking?” a voice crackles over the com-system. Even through the static, I hear outrage. The device they put in my back to monitor my vitals must be really sensitive. They’ve probably noticed my nicotine levels going up. They told me not to smoke, said it might interfere with some of the equipment.
“Let me check on that, Central.” I pull in a long healthy gulp of acrid smoke. “Negative, Central, no smoking here,” I say even as the haze thickens. For a moment they’re silent, probably debating whether to push the issue or not.
“Aurora, you are beginning final approach. Confirm?”
“Confirmed, Central. I am on final approach. Distance to target is less than twenty million kilometers.” Twenty million kilometers – that’s all I have left to live. “ETA, four minutes thirty-two seconds.”
“Roger, Aurora; readjust trajectory for entry,” the voice stutters through static.
“Readjusting,” I reply. Sure. Why not? I plot a course that will take me right into the center of the gravitational well.
With the final coordinates and speeds locked in, I pull my eyes away from the flashing consoles and screens, away from the throttle and the coffee I won’t miss once I’m through. The black hole looms before me, massive, black. And somewhere deep inside it is the singularity, the point at which time and space no longer matter. I’m watching eternity, literally.
My sensors pick up the spinning atoms of interstellar gas all being sucked in. They gain ludicrous speed and then vanish completely once they pass the event horizon. In the end they’re traveling close to the speed of light. And this is what I signed up for? To have my molecules ripped to shreds one by one? I start getting nervous; as usual, I get an erection.
So, why did I volunteer for this? Yeah, I always wanted to be an astronaut, but there’s more to it than that. It’s all for love. And that brings me to Kathy McCormick.
Kathy McCormick is not a girl, she’s the girl. Every guy has a Kathy. Maybe she just has a different name, that’s all. The first love, the one that you grew up with, the one you went to school with. The one that will always remain a joyful, warm, wet spot in your mind even as you get older and marry someone else. Almost everyone has a Kathy McCormick, only most guys grow out of it. I just kind of didn’t. And God help me, I’m still in love with her. Only as she was at sixteen – I don’t even know what she’s like now. Hell, she might even be dead now. I’m still in love with a sixteen-year-old girl. I’m a goddamn pedophile. Lock me up or shoot me into a black hole or something.
I never approached her. She went through boyfriends. Older boys, usually seniors. And I just stood to the side, observing and aching and losing sleep. But eventually there was no one older. Eventually we became seniors ourselves.
We were in the gym. I boxed with Billy Summers while Kathy and the other girls played volleyball. Soon, the girls had finished their game and just sat around on the bleachers, giggling conspiratorially whenever we glanced at them. I really made it look good at Billy’s expense. I toyed with him, I faked him, baited him. He got madder and madder. But when the final knockdown came I was the victor, standing over him, cutting an impressive figure. I knew I would never get a better chance than now. So I walked over to Kathy.
I stood all sweaty, naked to the waist. A white strip of a towel was carefully arranged over my shoulder to look careless. My hair was shuffled and matted. I breathed extra hard, so that my chest rose and fell. I had yet to take off my boxing gloves – I thought I appeared manlier like this. Kathy and I started talking about classes and which colleges we applied to, about her brothers, and my dad’s body shop, all sorts of irrelevant nonsense.
I saw her reaction. She smiled a lot and constantly tucked wayward strands of hair behind her left ear. I got real nervous. My knees started to shake. And obviously, I got an erection. It always happens whenever I start worrying. It happened again then. I was just glad the boxing-shorts hid it.
Eventually came that awkward moment. Kathy stood quiet. Her demure pose urged me on. I saw the other girls staring at us jealously. I didn’t care; nothing could ruin this. I was guaranteed a ‘yes.’
“So, Kathy, I wonder if maybe this Friday…”
Then the unthinkable happened. That little bastard Billy Summers snuck up behind me and pulled my shorts down. My woody sprang up like a diving board. I stood there, a deer caught in the headlights. My hands were by my sides but I was pointing straight at Kathy. The whole gymnasium erupted in laughter, just waves and waves of rolling thunder. Kathy’s face got all red; and sniffling, she ran away. I called after her even as I tried to pull my shorts up. Do you know how hard it is to pull up shorts with a boxing glove? Right there I knew I’d lost Kathy forever. I also had this unbelievable feeling of déjà vu. I get that a lot.
Anyway, it didn’t help that I had it out with Billy right after school. In fact, it just got worse. I really had a lot of raw boxing talent, the coach kept telling me. So I put all of my know-how into Billy’s jaw. It cracked. It popped. It vibrated through my fist. Sometimes it still does.
That was the end of my boxing career. At least I went out with a bang, huh? Undefeated. I got thrown off the team. Worse, my father had to pay all the medical bills for Billy’s new jaw. For that Dad had to get a second job, a graveyard shift at the school, mopping floors and cleaning toilets. He died later that year. The doctor said he had exhausted himself and didn’t get enough rest. Do I blame myself for it? Sure I do. But I can’t change it.
Soon, prom night came around. I asked Kathy to go with me. We had not spoken since the incident at the gym. She didn’t return my calls and avoided me in the hallways. But this time I really cornered her. She said she already had a date.
“Who?” I asked, knowing the answer well before she said the name. Billy Summers. Naturally. She just felt so bad for him.
“Of course,” I said. No one else wanted to go with him, with his jaw wired shut and all. Apparently Kathy was also a great humanist.
I didn’t even go to the prom. Instead I packed my bags and flew out to Florida, to the Canaveral Space Exploration Academy.
At that time, every boy wanted to be a space pilot. It was hard not to. Every day, video-projectors showed new footage of discovered quasars and black holes. Every week there were interviews with captains who had set foot on new planets teeming with jungles and rivers. They found new single-celled organisms every other month. Everyone knew them. Eli Ginsburg and Kip Volkov became household names – to be admired for their courage and daring. Once in a while they even found some geological formations that almost looked artificial. Monuments of ancient civilizations, perhaps? It was a time of great wonder and mystery. A time that can’t really be conveyed through words, only feelings.
So, every boy wanted to be a space pilot. It was a dream. The one that will always remain a joyful, warm, wet spot in your mind even as you get older and get some other job. Almost everyone has a dream like that, only most guys grow out of it. I just kind of didn’t.
Hell, my ultimate fantasy was me returning from far-off worlds with jars filled with new microorganisms, stepping off my ship to be met with flowers and applause and confetti. And of course, my wife would be there, Kathy McCormick, tall and beautiful and beaming with pride. I actually used to masturbate to that. God help me, I still do.
It was hell to get accepted to the CSEA. But I studied my ass off and got in. Once the semester began, I focused solely on my schoolwork. I had two dreams in my life, Kathy and space. Now I only had space.
My whole life revolved around computer screens, flight simulators, and pizza. No parties, no women, just dedication. I was like a monk-in-training ready to be shot off into space. I came in at the top ten percent of my class that first year. My psychological profile said I’d be well suited for long-range exploration. The exact phrasing was, ‘Ambitious and energetic. Emotionally independent, with no necessity for human contact.’ Not since Kathy, anyway.
Then came my second year, when I met my professor of Astrophysics and Chronological Divergence Theory. He looked at my file and got really excited.
“We’re from the same town!”
Great.
“We went to the same school!”
Obviously, moron. There’s only one school in town.
“I still have family there!”
Wonderful.
“Do you know my brother Phil?” Nope. “I also have a nephew there; he’s your age; do you know him? Do you know Billy Summers?”
At that time I got a raging hard-on. Not that Professor Alex Summers was sexually alluring or anything, it’s just I got really, really nervous. Nope. Don’t know any Billy. Never heard of him. His jaw cracked. His jaw popped. It vibrated through my fist. Sometimes it still does. Déjà vu.
Immediately, I tried to transfer out into a parallel class, to night school, anything to get away from the cursed Summers family, but to no avail. The next time I saw Professor Summers he wasn’t as happy about our shared roots as before. In fact, he didn’t even reply to my greeting.
No matter how hard I tried, he failed me in both classes. I fought it tooth and nail. I went to the dean, to the president. Nothing. Being in good relations with Professor Summers – the foremost mind in his area of expertise – was more important than preserving a kid’s dream. My final transcript – the two folded sheets of paper that were supposed to signify sleepless nights, massive headaches and my love affair with celibacy – was marred with two F’s. God, how alien they looked in a nice little row of printed A’s.
I pretty much had to forget about my misanthropic fantasy of long-range space exploration right then and there. At least I went out with a bang, huh? Undefeated.
I became the navigator/co-pilot on a local carrier, ferrying shit. No, literally, we were transporting manure to the Moon, Venus, Mars – fertilizer for their hydroponics gardens. My captain was the now legendary Oedipus Murphy.
“With a name like that,” I joked, “I wonder how you feel about your mother.” Captain Murphy looked at me funny and warned me about contaminating his ship with those fancy mumbo-jumbo ideas.
Oedipus Murphy wasn’t legendary because he was a veteran of space flight. No, he was a legend because no one ever met a man so stingy or so drunk. He used to drink things that no person in his right mind would even sniff. Things like rubbing alcohol or men’s cologne. He especially liked cologne because it masked the reek of alcohol. Or so he thought. But he wasn’t really a bad guy. When he was drunk he could pilot a hundred-footer through an asteroid belt all the while singing Irish folk songs. When he was sober I just didn’t get in his way.
A year passed like that, and then I found him dead on the toilet. The doctors said that all the alcohol thinned out his blood vessels too much. That and the added exertion of shitting must have popped a capillary. He basically bled to death inside.
After the funeral, I became the new captain. That might sound impressive, but not if you take into account that the whole crew is only two people. The shipping company I worked for assigned me a new navigator/co-pilot. The first sight of him spelled trouble. He was a runt of a man, with a receding hairline and sleeves that hung way below his fingers. His flight-suit was already dirty, though he hadn’t yet entered the ship. His head was shaped like an egg, a very small egg.
“I’m Dicky Dupree,” he said in a thin, pesky voice.
“All right, Richard, welcome abo–”
“No, not Richard, call me Dicky.”
“Alright, Dicky, welcome aboard the Job.” I renamed the ship after Murphy’s death – it used to be called Bourbon before.
“Job?” he nagged.
“As in the Book of Job.” That drew a blank stare. “You know, God took away all he had, his wife, his children, his house; he gave him the pox, took his friends?”
Same stare.
“The Bible?”
He nodded in relief.
Within an hour of getting to know one another, I realized why a twenty-something-year-old man would insist on being called Dicky. He truly was a Dicky. Uneducated, incompetent, clumsy, literally a pox upon my poor Job.
“So, why’d you join up with space shipping?” I asked, genuinely interested since he didn’t know the first thing about space flight.
“Ah, I have a family to feed, and besides, you don’t need much knowledge. Auto-pilot does it all for you,” he replied. I rolled my eyes. He must have seen it, because he asked, “Why did you?”
“Hmmm, I don’t know; maybe I wanted to see how far the rabbit hole really goes,” I winked at him. That same dumb stare. Wow, déjà vu. “You know, Lewis Carroll? Alice in Wonderland?”
By that time we hauled uranium to Io. The exposure made some of my hair fall out, and the doctors gave me pills to regulate the radiation levels in my body. As a result, I began losing weight. I became more and more like Dicky, and that scared the shit out of me.
Io was a horrible place. Nothing more than a mining colony. Twenty thousand people – the refuse of civilization really – living under a dome made of fiberglass crisscrossed by titanium mesh. Everything stank of iron and sulfur. You drink recycled water, breathe recycled air, love recycled women. And that’s where I met Gina. She worked as a waitress in a local diner. In her past she’d been everything from a prostitute to a drug addict. I slept with her a couple of times and the next time I come to Io she tells me she’s pregnant. What are you going to do? So I married her. She miscarried, which was probably a good thing, since soon the doctors told me all the radiation irreversibly sterilized me.
Anyway, marriage wasn’t as bad as I feared. I had a place to stay every time I came back to Io. Sometimes I even got a hot dinner. Even sex wasn’t that bad. If I closed my eyes really tight, I could almost imagine making love to Kathy.
It didn’t take me long to find out that Gina was unfaithful. Like I said, recycled women. What got me angry was that I didn’t get angry at her for it. I mostly ignored it.
One day I came home earlier than usual. Some toxic shipment spilled in the dock, and they had to quarantine the whole spaceport. I caught her in the act, right in bed with some scrawny tattooed guy. Him, I threw out. Her, I slapped around a bit, just because I figured it that’s what a man should do in these situations. After that it was all over.
I continued ferrying toxic waste around, continued losing hair. Dicky continued to be incompetent. And Job continued to monotonously drift his way from Earth to Io, kind of like Sysiphus rolling his stone up a mountain in Hades just to have it roll back down, ad infinitum. I probably would have died on that ship, maybe even on the toilet like Captain Murphy, if I hadn’t seen an ad seeking pilots with nothing to lose.
I answered it. Why? It sounded cool. It had this subtext to it, a whiff of nostalgia and crushed dreams.
I got in touch with their recruiter, outlined my life, my piloting experience. He heard me out, took down all my data and coordinates and said he’d get in touch with me soon. From his mellow, apathetic tone, I figured that was the end of it. However, in a few days I got a communication. It was the same fellow except that now his voice was excited, as if he’d just witnessed the Second Coming or something. I figure in the interim they’d checked their database, read up on my life a bit. A professional pilot who was now divorced, who hated his job, and who couldn’t even have children. Was there anyone who had less to lose than that?
“It might be dangerous,” the voice on the com said. “Are you willing to risk your life?”
“What life?” I asked and heard a happy grunt on the other side. They gave me a date and told me to show up at Earth’s space station. I did. There, a few government types ushered me to an unmarked shuttle and blasted off in an unknown direction.
It took us a few weeks to get to an asteroid belt, which told me it was on the edge of explored space. In the hollow of one of the asteroids was a small base. It couldn’t have been any more spartan – it had barely any furnishings aside from a few plastic stools and steel bunks. The whole staff was six people: five scientists and an electronic engineer. These folks were excited to meet me. I could see it in their eyes, their movements.
Even as they began to prep me for the grand experiment, they remained elusive and tightlipped about what exactly they were doing. Fortunately, it didn’t take an astrophysicist to figure it out.
For two or three years they’d been stationed here by a huge black hole codenamed ‘Tartarus.’ For some unknown reason, all scientists have this converging affinity for Greco-Roman mythology that has spanned centuries. I winced when I heard the name; I mean, I knew the risks; I was ready to die, but they could’ve at least made it a little easier on me. Anyway, for the last few years, they’d been sitting here in this asteroid, monitoring Tartarus, sending in probes and tiny spaceships with rats and such. Unmanned probes and dirty rodents will take you only so far in research, so now they were ready to up the ante and send in a ‘test subject with higher brain functions to measure the output of the gravitational singularity during insertion.’ I’m that test subject.
At that point I gave pause. They were going to shoot me into a black hole? I should have been outraged. I should have been finding a way off that God-forsaken asteroid. But instead I smiled. If I left, then I went back to what? Dicky’s pesky badgering? Uranium and the inevitable cancer? Back to Job, my own personal floating coffin in space? So I stayed.
But even as I French-kissed my own mortality, this whole experiment sounded absurd. Even I see – and I failed Astrophysics thanks to Alex Summers – that all the readings from my ship will be at one hundred percent until I reach the event horizon, but once I pass it they won’t get anything, not a radio communication, not a sensor reading, nothing. So, why the hell are they sacrificing my life?
But I didn’t mind, and they didn’t notice. The scientists here are a bunch of guys that only care about readouts and spreadsheets. It doesn’t matter that my flight won’t provide any more information than they already have. They’re operating under the ‘what if’ hypothesis. As in, ‘what if a man entering a black hole would change something, just because he’s a man and that’s the only thing we haven’t thrown in there yet?’ But again, I don’t mind. Let’s just get on with it.
They named my ship Aurora, for the Greek goddess of dawn. There’s that naughty Greco-Roman mythological fetish again. Dawn, as in ‘this will be the beginning of a whole new stage of human progress,’ as in, ‘we’re ushering in a new golden age of exploration.’ God, I hate optimists.
Aurora is a beauty. They really pulled out all the stops on her. She has the newest flight engine on the market, an amazing sensor array and user-friendly controls. Truly top of the line. It’s all slick and shiny.
The scientists tried to rationalize my death away for themselves. Apparently a black hole could be the size of a fist and still possess hundreds of thousands of solar masses. The pressure inside something like that would instantly crush anything that passed the event horizon. However, if the area of a black hole is bigger, the density would be dispersed through it. Tartarus is a huge black hole. Even with its one-hundred-and-fifty solar masses, the scientists assure me that the density inside is not much more than that of water. Meaning, I might actually survive this. There’s that naughty optimism again.
I shrugged in answer. Whatever. Then they wished me the best of luck and shot me off.
And that brings me back here, to the present.
The computer is eating up the numbers in front of me: less than one million kilometers to the event horizon and closing. I light up another cigarette, the last one for sure. Central doesn’t even ask me if I’m smoking. They know it’s useless. Hypnotized, I watch the inky black wheel in front of me blot out all the stars in the sky. The one thing the scientists couldn’t tell me is what happens when I fly through. Chances are I’ll die instantly, even with reduced density. Then again, according to Einstein’s theory, a man flying into a gravitational singularity would witness the destruction of his own universe and emerge into a new one.
The ship’s lights keep blinking all around me. Those are the only ones left. My fingers are shaking even as the wet edges of my cigarette press into my lips. I’m all hard. Then the black hole starts to engulf me. Its edges curl forward and I’m inside it, inside the blackest sphere I could ever imagine.
“Central?” I ask, maybe a little too worriedly because they rush to reassure me.
“You’re fine, Aurora. What you’re experiencing is the Schwarzchild geometry,” a voice crackles over the com, “curvature in space-time. You’ve yet to reach the event horizon.”
Freaky. There’s only one tiny hole in the darkness, and that’s where fountains of light are flickering, light that’s being sucked in. I know I should be praying or something. I should maybe even charge the engines to maximum and rush back to Central. But I don’t. Instead I keep smoking and thinking about Kathy. What would she think of me right now? She might not be proud of me, but would she understand why I volunteered for this? Do I even understand? Am I doing this because I hate myself even more than I love her?
“Aurora, you’re almost at the ingress point,” Central excitedly blurts. The guy’s panting, almost as if we’re having sex or something. “Readjust velocity vector for insertion.”
Wow, maybe we are having sex.
“Readjusting velocity vector for insertion.” I input the necessary commands and feel the ship jerk. I blow out another acrid cloud of smoke. “Is it good for you, Central?”
“What, Aurora? Repeat that.”
“Never mind.”
“Aurora, you’re almost at the mark,” the scientists inform me. “Would you like to say something?” That’s a nice way of saying “Any last words?” They want something immortal. Something like what Neil Armstrong said when he landed on the moon. For them, this is just as important. For me, this is barely entertaining. So, they want a One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind speech. How about something like this? One pointless end to a needless life of a man, one absurd experiment for mankind. But I don’t say that. Instead I say something that might just confuse them a little. My own small measure of revenge for them bugging me about my smokes.
“Central, I just want you guys to know that I’m really, really erect right now.”
And with that, my head explodes. My eyes feel as if they’re about to be sucked out of their sockets. I’m through the event horizon, I guess. I’m in the black hole, I guess. I’m dead, I pray. But I’m not. I realize it when I look through the forward-viewer and see the nose of my craft disintegrating. Like a sugar cube in a steaming mug, Aurora melts away. In a moment so will I. And everything vanishes. There’s nothing around me. Just the absolute, merciless absence of everything. And I feel myself pulled in all directions. But there’s no pain. Instead, there’s this hollow awareness, a Cartesian consciousness, a murky realization of self. There’s also darkness, immeasurable and supreme. But even disembodied, I feel that something is continuing to happen. I’m stretched to all the limits, as if I’m in a giant rubber band that’s reaching its climax. Then the rubber band is released, and I surge back into myself. And then I’m spit out of the black hole like an unworthy sacrifice.
My life flashes before me. But it’s not as if I’m about to die. Instead I’m very much alive, just moving backwards. It’s like someone hit the rewind button on a movie. At incomprehensible speeds, Aurora’s jets, working in reverse, fly me back to the asteroid. I’m being prepped for the flight, then being interviewed for the project, then flying Job, getting divorced, finding my wife in bed with a scrawny tattooed guy, getting married to her. I’m flying Bourbon under captain Murphy, then graduating the CSEA, meeting Professor Alex Summers, hoping for a future.
I’m in CSEA, I’m applying to it, I’m talking to Kathy about the prom. Talking backwards, thinking backwards, feeling backwards. At these speeds, my life is reduced to scathing flashes of emotion, to flares of disappointments, to quasars of sadness. Nothing makes sense, except the feelings that are still painful even though the time to wallow in them is gone. Just, jumbles, clusters, splashes, throbs, sparks, bursts, stars, explosions. Just, Kathy, pain, love, life, Dad, death, mourning, hoping, Billy, pain, crying. Then my father dies, then he works too hard to pay for Billy’s new jaw, then I break Billy’s jaw, then…
Stop.
Time slows down and gradually returns to the familiar. It’s as if someone pressed the play button. Time begins to flow normally again.
I’m standing in the gymnasium. I’m standing all sweaty, naked to the waist. A white strip of a towel is carefully arranged over my shoulder to look careless. My hair is shuffled and matted. I’m breathing extra hard, so that my chest rises and falls. The universe, God, whatever, in its infinite mercy has given me a second chance at life. It’s a chance to escape Billy’s vile trick, a chance to be happy with the only woman I’ve ever loved.
And as I’m thinking all this, that little bastard Billy Summers sneaks up behind me and pulls my trousers down. My woody springs up like a diving board. I stand there, a deer caught in the headlights. My hands are by my sides but I’m pointing straight at Kathy. The whole gymnasium erupts in laughter, just waves and waves of rolling thunder. Kathy’s face gets all red; and sniffling, she runs away. I call after her even as I try to pull my shorts up. Do you know how hard it is to pull up shorts with a boxing glove? Right there I know I’ve lost Kathy forever. I also have this unbelievable feeling of déjà vu. I get that a lot.
Filed under Short Science Fiction Stories · Tagged with Daniel Akselrod, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Short Story, SciFi, SciFi Short Story
Trombul Has Fallen
Savage wind buffeted Vukelev’s back, nearly tossing him end over end across the gray flagstones of the square in the capitol city of Radt. The chain that he and his father, Oleg, had wrapped around the fallen statue of Trombul was cold enough to freeze his hands through his gloves.
Oleg honked the horn and stuck his head out the truck’s window. “What’s taking so long? Let’s go!”
Vukelev winced. His father always had to embarrass him in front of others. He gave the chains a final tug and then signaled to his father to start the winch.
Six soldiers, men loyal to Webreu, president of the new regime, stood in a tight group passing a flask. They wore long, white coats and shiny black boots, their machine guns slung over their shoulders. They waited to accompany the statue to its final resting place, Liar’s Leap Canyon.
The winch turned and the statue lurched into motion. The statue was made of brown stone, veined with grey, and had been hewn from Liar’s Leap itself; brown to match Trombul’s eyes, gray to match his hair, and hard stone to match his unyielding nature. It bore a sharp nose, delicate eyebrows, a square jaw and a wide chest. Trombul was the kind of man who inspired sculptors to chisel stone. A dictator who didn’t try to hide his viciousness, he’d pitched hundreds of dissenters off Liar’s Leap. Vukelev looked for the fabled bump on Trombul’s forehead. Had the sculptor dared to include it? It was said that Trombul’s power stemmed from a growth in his frontal lobe. Vukelev didn’t believe in such nonsense. Fairytales were for children.
Vukelev covered his ears against the sound of stone scraping against stone. Sparks skittered at his feet as the statue slid up the inclined bed of the truck. Vukelev ran to the control console at the side of the truck and lowered the bed.
Trombul, and a unit of soldiers loyal to him, had escaped after a surprise coup executed by Webreu and his men. Trombul had made away with all of the technology that his engineers had developed, but not the engineers themselves. Webreu had captured the engineers and it was unknown whether they were dead or alive. In the interest of public safety Webreu had set up checkpoints and installed cameras around the city.
The wind picked up and Vukelev clapped his hand to his hat. The soldiers would laugh if he had to chase it across the square. Vukelev cursed the sky. It hung there, gunmetal gray, reluctant to let the sun shine through and give him comfort. He longed to drink the spiced potato soup that his mother had packed for the journey. It would bring him warmth. But Father wouldn’t let him have even a sip until the statue was loaded and they were on their way.
Oleg got out of the truck and then he and Vukelev secured the statue with canvas straps.
“Why don’t you drive,” Oleg said.
“Are you sure?” Ever since Vukelev turned nineteen, Father had insisted that he stop acting like a boy and become a man. Father had definite ideas about what made a man.
“What’s the problem? You’re always begging me to let you drive.”
“I never begged.”
“Whatever you say. You want to drive or not?”
“Yes.”
“Can we get going then?”
Vukelev climbed into the driver’s seat. Oleg handed him the thermos and Vukelev drank some soup. The spices burned his tongue and the heat slid down into his belly and radiated throughout his body. He handed the thermos back to his father.
Vukelev went through the basic pre-trip checks: fuel, engine temperature, oil pressure, hydraulic pressure, and lights. He caught sight of one of Webreu’s soldiers when he adjusted his mirrors. Vukelev felt sorry for him. The open bed of the truck offered no shelter.
Vukelev ground through the gears and the truck lurched into motion.
“Take it easy,” Oleg said. “I taught you to shift better than that.”
“Sorry.” Vukelev ground through another gear but then got the hang of the timing and shifted up into cruising gear without another complaint from either his father or the transmission.
“Take Imperial Road east out of the city,” Oleg said, “and then I’ll show you where to turn.”
“When do you think we’ll get home?” Vukelev asked.
“Before dark, I suppose. I’ve never driven this route, so I’m not sure.”
Imperial Road fed onto the four-lane Moshk Boulevard, its center islands bearing statues depicting the many deeds of the ancient general Prahuk Moshk. Vukelev slowed the truck and waited for a break in the military convoy.
“Look there,” Oleg said, pointing. “The break in the trees, that’s the road.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes. Think you can make it?”
Vukelev took the last drink of the potato soup. “Of course, if we ever find a break in this line of tanks.”
“Looks like we won’t be home until after dark.”
“Be back in a moment.” Vukelev climbed out of the cab and onto the bed. He spoke with the soldiers for a moment and then came back, bringing a blast of frigid air with him.
“Shut the door before I freeze to death,” Oleg said. “What was that all about?”
“I made a roadblock.”
The soldiers stepped out onto the road and stopped the tanks. Then they waved the truck through. Vukelev rolled across the intersection and eased the truck onto the muddy track. Clusters of pine needles scraped against his window. He slowed.
Oleg grabbed his shoulder. “Don’t stop!”
“But the soldiers…”
“You want to get stuck? It rained all day yesterday. Shift into first and go slow, but don’t let the engine die.”
Vukelev downshifted and slowed until the engine rattled and chugged.
Oleg unrolled his window and stuck his head out. “Come on. We can’t stop. The mud is too thick. Run. Run”
Vukelev checked the side view mirror. One of the soldiers fell, face down into the muck. Oleg laughed and slapped the door. The other soldiers helped their fallen comrade up. They ran along the road until they were parallel with the truck and then jumped on. The dirty one wiped mud from his face and then smiled at his friends.
“We could’ve stopped,” Vukelev said. “The truck has lots of torque in the lower gears.”
“Look who knows so much about trucks all of a sudden. Maybe you should be teaching me. I’ve only been driving this truck for twenty-three years.” Oleg looked out the back window. “That soldier will be fine. If we get stuck you’ll have to push. Do you want to get splattered with mud?”
“No.”
“Good. Your mother would kill me if she had to wash this muck out of your coat. Be grateful; I spared you a scolding.”
They drove along the muddy track for about an hour. Suddenly a herd of elk ran across the road right in front of the truck. Vukelev spun the wheel and the truck skewed left. He tried to straighten the truck, but only succeeded in making it worse. His father shouted instructions from the passenger seat until the truck came to rest in the deep mud.
“I’ve never seen them do that,” Oleg said. “The engine noise usually keeps them away.”
“Something must’ve spooked them.”
“Get out and see if the soldiers will help you,” Oleg said. “Use the boards that I keep above the axles.”
“I know what to do. You’ve gotten us stuck lots of times.”
“And who got us stuck this time? I seem to remember that your hands were on the steering wheel when this happened.”
Vukelev bit back his reply. There was no use in arguing with his father about it; he could be so stubborn. Vukelev climbed out and dropped into the mud, sinking in up to his ankles. At least it was warmer here than it was in the square. The dense forest blocked the wind. Vukelev stooped and went under the bed to retrieve the boards.
“How are we going to get out of this?” a fat soldier asked.
“If you helped me it would go faster.”
“I’d rather keep my boots clean. Yuri, get over here and help this boy.”
The muddy soldier, Yuri, handed his gun off to his comrade and dropped into the mud. He had a narrow face and deep blue eyes. “What do we need to do?”
“Help me get the boards out and under the tires.”
Vukelev and Yuri shoved boards under the driving tires and then Vukelev signaled to his father. Oleg gunned the engine and Yuri had to leap out of the way as the board shot out at him.
The other soldiers laughed.
“This isn’t your day, Yuri,” the fat soldier said. “You should’ve stayed home.”
“I would’ve,” Yuri said, “but your mother was too busy to keep me warm today.”
The fat soldier made a rude gesture. “You can’t afford her. Not on a soldiers pay.”
Vukelev and Yuri wrestled the board back into place and then signaled to Oleg again. This time it worked. They quickly collected the boards and chased the truck. The soldiers on the bed took the boards and helped them onto the bed.
“Thanks,” Vukelev said, shivering.
“You’re welcome,” Yuri said. “You want a cigarette or a drink from my flask? A good smoke and strong spirits will keep you warm.”
“No, thank you. I’d better get back inside. My father is waiting.” He climbed back into the cab.
“Your mother is going to flay us alive,” Oleg said, shifting the truck into gear and rolling forward. “Look at your boots and your coat.”
“I’ll wash it myself.”
“She’ll just complain that you didn’t do it right. There’s no way around it.”
“How was I supposed to get the boards under the tires without touching any mud? Do you think I can fly?”
“A good driver could’ve kept the truck on the road.”
“You saw the elk. There was no way that I could’ve-”
Vukelev’s words were suddenly drowned out by the chatter of machine gun fire.
Oleg screamed and accelerated. The truck skewed to the left and he wrestled with the wheel. “On the floor! Now!”
Vukelev stuffed himself into the tiny space under the dashboard and covered his head with his hands. Webreu’s men on the bed fired blindly into the woods and then took cover when bullets pinged off of the statue and the truck.
Oleg let out a breath and went slack. He mashed the brake pedal and the truck slowed until the engine died. He grabbed at Vukelev. “Get out. Quickly. Keep your head down and run into the forest.”
“Why did you stop? We can make it through the mud.”
“Go. I’ll make sure they don’t follow you.”
“How? They’ll just kill you.” Vukelev opened the door and grabbed his father’s sleeve. “Come on!”
Vukelev pulled and Oleg slumped over on the seat. Icy wind whistled through two holes in the driver’s side door, and a red stain grew on Oleg’s coat. Another salvo of bullets tore into Webreu’s men.
Oleg waved at Vukelev, shooing him away. “Run…to your mother…”
Vukelev risked a quick kiss to his father’s forehead and leapt out of the cab. He froze when a shimmering form walked out of the trees. A blue crackle of energy outlined a vague human shape, and then a soldier waxed into view. He wore the insignia of Trombul’s captain.
He leveled his gun at Vukelev. “Kneel on the ground and put your hands on your head.” He was dressed in dark green, with a full-face mask and goggles. Chunky boots insulated his feet and the fingers of his gloves were cut away to make it easier to manipulate the controls of his rifle. He depressed a stud on his headset and a tiny microphone telescoped out in front of his mouth. “The cab is secure.”
Vukelev knelt, his knees sinking into the mud. He could feel the cold damp through his pants.
More soldiers flickered into view at the side of the road.
“Check the bed. Make sure they’re all down,” the captain said.
Trombul’s soldiers swarmed up onto the bed, guns at the ready. One of them walked over to the captain. “All clear, Captain Maglobeck.”
“Good work. Set up the shroud. Make sure it covers the whole truck.”
“Yes sir.”
Maglobeck flipped up his goggles and spoke into his microphone. “All clear sir. You can come up now.”
“Sir, please,” Vukelev said. “My father needs a doctor.”
“Quiet!” Maglobeck shouted. “If you want to live you will neither move nor speak.”
Three more men appeared. Two soldiers flanking a third, taller man, who wore a long green coat festooned with medals. His gray hair was slicked back from his regal forehead. Vukelev’s eyes widened. It was Trombul. He checked for the telltale bump, the source of Trombul’s power, on the dictator’s forehead, but saw no sign of it.
“Is this boy the driver?” Trombul asked.
Maglobeck flinched. “No…sir. The driver was killed in the firefight. My apologies, sir.”
“Has the statue been damaged?”
“No, sir.”
“Then let’s get it out of here before Webreu can get his jealous little hands on it.”
Trombul’s soldiers attached devices all around the outside of the truck and then switched them on. The devices beeped, and their red LEDs flashed.
“Boy!” Trombul barked. “Do you know how to drive this thing?”
“Surely, sir,” Maglobeck said. “One of the men-”
“Is it your opinion that we have one these highly trained soldiers set down his gun so he can drive a truck?”
“No, sir.”
“Then keep your mouth shut.” Trombul snapped his fingers and pointed to his coat. One of his soldiers hurried over and brushed the dirt and leaves off of his coat. “I asked you a question, boy. Can you drive this thing?”
“Do you have a medic in your unit?” Vukelev asked. “My father needs help.”
Trombul fixed his eyes on Vukelev. His face changed, taking on a beatific aspect. “Answer my question.”
Vukelev felt a buzzing in his head. But felt no compulsion to obey. Was he immune to Trombul’s power? Mother had always said that the men in his family were hard-headed. Power or not, it didn’t matter. They all had guns. “Yes, I can drive the truck, sir. But my father might live if you get a doctor.”
Trombul pulled off his black leather gloves. “I’ve been a solider since I was your age. I’ve seen every kind of gunshot wound there is. Maybe I can help.”
Vukelev’s heart swelled. “Thank you, sir.”
Trombul walked around the front of the truck and opened the driver’s side door. He reached into his coat, pulled out a sidearm and shot Oleg three times. “I’ve seen wounds like this before. I’m sorry to say that I don’t think your father is going to make it.” He signaled to one of his soldiers. “Get this body out of the cab.”
Vukelev didn’t know what to do. He’d gone numb.
Trombul came back around the truck. He waved his pistol at the door. “Get in.”
Vukelev climbed in and crawled over to the blood spattered driver’s seat.
Trombul got into the passenger’s seat and rolled down the window. “Is everything in place?”
Maglobeck nodded. “Yes sir. The shroud units will provide full coverage.
“Thank you, Captain. Carry on.”
“Are you sure it’s a good idea for you to ride alone with him?”
“He’s just a boy. He’s no threat to me.”
“Of course not, sir.”
“Get your men on the truck. It’s time to go.”
Maglobeck barked commands, and the soldiers piled onto the bed. Trombul pulled a remote out of his pocket and pressed a button. Crackling energy shimmered around the truck and then coalesced into a thin azure field.
“Take it slow,” Trombul said. “The sound buffers won’t be able to drown out all of the engine noise.”
Vukelev ground through the first few gears and the truck lurched into motion.
Trombul picked up the empty thermos, opened it and took a sniff. “Nice and spicy. Did your mother make it for you?”
Vukelev sniffled. His eyes burned with tears.
“I asked you a question.”
Vukelev felt the buzzing again, but still no compulsion; might as well play along. “Yes,” he said through gritted teeth.
“My wife never makes it spicy enough. Maybe I should have your mother show her how.”
Vukelev couldn’t believe that Trombul could be so casual after putting three bullets into his father. The last thing he wanted to do was talk about family, but then the urge for self-preservation took over. “She would be happy to show her.”
They rode in silence for half an hour. Trombul checked himself in the mirror often, either smoothing his hair or adjusting his collar.
Soon, in the distance, the trees thinned, revealing Liar’s Leap Canyon. A chunk of rock had been hacked from the cliff’s face and then chiseled into the statue that lay in the bed. Trombul’s stony likeness had returned home.
“Get us turned around and take us back toward the city,” Trombul said.
There wasn’t enough room to turn around. Vukelev drove into the clearing and then shifted into reverse. He checked his mirrors and backed slowly, cutting the wheel when he felt like he was back far enough, and then making the turn.
A low thrumming sounded from the pines to their right, and then a white beam shot out of the forest and hit the shroud. The shroud flickered. Streaks of blue lightning cascaded across its surface, and then the shroud shut down.
Trombul pointed his gun at Vukelev. “Go! Fast!”
The buzzing in Vukelev’s head grew so loud that he groaned. He gunned the engine. Tires spun and mud sprayed. Then the wheels caught, and the truck sped toward the muddy road. Machine gun fire riddled the mud in front of the truck, and Vukelev slammed on the breaks.
Trombul crashed into the dashboard. He pushed himself back and his head lolled. Blood ran from his nose. Vukelev grabbed Trombul’s gun with both hands.
“Let go!” Trombul screamed. He focused his attention on Vukelev for a moment. “Why won’t it work on you?”
Vukelev’s foot slid off of the break pedal and the truck began a slow roll. Bullets whizzed out of the trees, and Trombul’s soldiers returned fire.
Vukelev let go with his right hand and then punched Trombul in the nose.
A sharp rap on the rear window made Vukelev turn. The black metal barrel of Trombul’s soldier’s gun threatened him from the other side of the glass. The soldier’s wrist flexed and his finger tightened on the trigger. Vukelev tensed, anticipating the ripping pain. Before the soldier could fire he spun as bullets tore into him. Blood spattered the window and the soldier fell out of sight.
Vukelev balled his fist and drove it into Trombul’s nose. He used the rest of his adrenalin-charged fear to wrest the pistol from Trombul.
Trombul put up his hands and backed up against the passenger side door, getting as far away from Vukelev as he could. Trombul’s hair was disheveled and blood dribbled from his flattened nose and split lip. He didn’t resemble the statue on the bed at all now.
Vukelev leveled the pistol at Trombul’s face. He didn’t see a dictator anymore, only a coward, brought low by a fatherless boy.
Someone was screaming outside the truck. A line of Webreu’s men were waving their guns and yelling. “Stop…Stop!”
“My father might’ve lived,” Vukelev said. “You didn’t need to shoot him. He wasn’t a threat.”
“The same holds true now. I’m no longer a threat to you. They’ll take me into custody. Please…don’t kill me.”
Webreu’s men had climbed the bed and one stood on the step under Vukelev’s door. His voice was muffled by the window. “Put down the gun and step on the brakes. You’re getting close to the trees.”
“I pleaded with you to save his life,” Vukelev said. “But you didn’t listen. Why should I let you live?” He hit Trombul in the head with the barrel of the gun. “Why?” Another blow. “Answer me.” Another blow. “Why! Huh? Can’t you think of an answer? No? Well, what use are you to me then?”
Trombul noticed Webreu’s men at the window. He smiled at Vukelev, revealing bloody teeth. He met the soldier’s gaze through the glass and focused his power. “Kill-”
Vukelev shot Trombul three times in the belly.
Trombul made a sound like he was choking on a gobbet of meat and then pissed himself. His hands went to his gut as he tried to keep his insides where they belonged.
Vukelev put the gun on the seat and then depressed the brake pedal. He shifted into neutral and set the parking brake, and the truck rocked to a stop five feet shy of the trees. He couldn’t resist. He took off his glove and ran his fingers into Trombul’s greasy hair. A few inches behind Trombul’s hairline lay the fabled cranial bump; the source of Trombul’s power. Vukelev’s hand came away slick with perfumed hair oil.
The soldiers lining the windows fogged the glass with their breath. The one at the driver’s side door knocked. Vukelev unlocked it. He let the soldier guide him out of the cab and then lead him away to a camp chair and wrap him in a blanket. The soldier stooped down and looked into his eyes.
“You alright?”
“I think so. My father was left near the side of the road. We need to go get him.”
“They let him go?”
“No, but he’s there all the same.”
The soldier looked about. Nobody was near. “Trombul ruled for thirty-three years and survived sixteen assassination attempts. After all of that it was you that finally killed him. How does it feel to be a hero?”
Vukelev didn’t feel like a hero. He didn’t do it to serve Webreu’s new regime. He didn’t do it for his countrymen. His anger had overridden his senses, and now Trombul was dead. Vukelev looked at the ground.
“I’ll let you alone then,” the soldier said. “But you need to come up with an answer. Everyone will want to know.”
Soldiers in white coats swarmed the cliff side. Vukelev was the unmoving eye in the storm of activity. A soldier beckoned to Vukelev and then asked him his name and wrote on a piece of paper. He stood and followed the soldier through the throng. The soldiers cheered and slapped him on the back as he passed.
Vukelev came out of the crowd near the cliff face. Someone had backed the truck up to the edge, removed the straps from the statue and then tied Trombul’s corpse to the statue.
The soldier stopped and put out a hand to halt Vukelev. He saluted and said. “Sir, I present to you Vukelev Ipvic, hero of the new regime!” The soldiers cheered.
Vukelev recognized the man. There stood Webreu; leader of the rebellion and ruler of the new regime. He was fat and short, with a full beard and hazel eyes. But his face was kind. Like that of a respected grandfather. His smiled warmly and embraced Vukelev. Cameras rolled and flashbulbs flickered.
“You’ve given your country the greatest gift it could’ve asked for. And we thank you for it.”
Everyone cheered again.
Vukelev tightened, trying to become as small as possible. His face burned with embarrassment and anger.
“And now,” Webreu said. “If you’ll just do us one final favor?”
Webreu went to the controls and put his hand on the lever that would raise the bed. He waved Vukelev over and indicated that he should grab to lever too. The crowd parted to give the cameras a good shot.
Webreu counted. “One, two, three, pull.”
Vukelev’s hand hung limp on the lever. Webreu did all of the work. The bed tilted and the statue toppled into the canyon.
Cameramen rushed to the edge and filmed the descent.
Webreu raised Vukelev’s hand and gave a cheer. When the cameras focused on him he yelled, “Come and see. Trombul has fallen.”
#
Vukelev had the honor of riding at the head of the convoy in the back of Webreu’s long black car. They rolled slowly down the muddy track between the trees. When they got to the spot where his father died the body was gone.
Webreu sat across from Vukelev, smoking a pipe.
“Why did you wait?” Vukelev asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“You could’ve attacked at any time. Why did you wait?”
Webreu shifted in his seat. “The shroud disruptor apparatus is huge. Once we had it set up we couldn’t move it. The technology is new and delicate. We didn’t want to take any chances.”
“You let my father and I take a chance.”
“I’m very sorry. Your father will be a national hero, as will you. It was a calculated risk.”
“How did you know that he’d come after the statue?”
Webreu smiled. “He was a rather vain man. He relied heavily on the shroud technology during the rebellion, and we were pretty sure that he wouldn’t be able to resist tweaking our noses by stealing the statue.” Webreu leaned forward and winked. “He didn’t know that we’d coerced his captured technicians into helping us build the disruptor, either.”
They rode in silence for a few moments.
“How did you resist his powers?” Webreu asked. “I watched him while he was in prison and noticed that he had more influence over some people and less over others. Do you think you were resistant?”
Vukelev didn’t want to end up as a study subject in a government lab, so he lied. “I never believed he had any sort of power; they were nothing more than fairy tales for children and the ignorant, to keep people afraid.”
“Count me amongst the ignorant then.” Webreu sucked on his pipe and the bowl glowed. “Did you know that I was the one who figured out how to defeat him? He couldn’t control more than a few people at once. That’s why he kept his staff so small.”
“Why didn’t you kill him when you had him?”
“Think about it, boy. If we could’ve learned to control him, then he’d have become a powerful weapon. But he escaped.”
Vukelev turned away. Trombul had escaped and now Father was dead. He wished he still had Trombul’s gun so that he could shoot Webreu.
#
After the attention around Vukelev died down, he and his mother were given a small country estate, and Webreu returned the truck after displaying it outside the capital building for a few months.
Though nobody wanted to admit it, the new regime was much like the old. And over the next few years the seeds of a new rebellion began to grow, spurred on by a young man driving his father’s old truck.
Filed under Short Science Fiction Stories · Tagged with Dale Carothers, Science Fiction, SciFi, Short Story
Broken in the Shadow of Mind
February 26, 2010 by Publisher · 2 Comments
That was the moment when I knew that I was going to die.
The realization came hard and fast, like a splash of cold water to the face the morning after a night of hard drinking. Whatever part of me that had still somehow managed, through everything that I’d been through in the last two years, to delude itself into thinking that I was going to die in bed, an old man surrounded by grandchildren, got a hard dose of reality.
I was going to die right here, right now, on this beach that was on no map, this fragment of the consciousness of an artificial God. There was nothing to be done about that. All I could do was take as many of these fucks as I could with me.
I tightened my grip on the blast-stick, preparing to shoot…
Wait.
Rewind.
I should start on the day I was discharged from the Army. That’s when all of this was set into motion.
I’d put in my two years like everyone else, male or female, unlucky enough to have turned eighteen in the years since the Janesian War Fleet set their sights on Earth.
That didn’t mean that the last two years of my life were anything like what most people go through. It took the officer who processed my discharge about five seconds to get that. “Special Forces?”
I nodded, still holding out my bag. “That obvious, huh?”
The officer, who I’d begun to think of as “Red,” took my bag and turned it over to get the serial number. He was an older guy, maybe in his early thirties, with bright red hair and a neatly trimmed red beard. He had the kind of swing to his movements that only comes from getting eight hours of sleep every night, then having a hot shower and a fresh pot of coffee when you wake up in the morning.
He seemed to think about my question as he typed my serial number into his computer. Mind already knew I was going to be discharged today, knew where I was going and when I should get there, but the Army always maintained nine or ten levels of redundancy in the storage of information.
Mind insisted on it.
“You’ve got the look,” the officer told me at last. “That blinking stare, like you aren’t really looking at me, you’re scanning for targets on my periphery.”
I closed my eyes and opened them again, trying to relax.
Red was absolutely right.
When I got into the service, I tested well, really well. Speed, strength, endurance. Quick reflexes and quick thinking under conditions of extreme stress.
That meant that, unlike the vast majority of people, I didn’t kill Jannies from orbiting battle stations hundreds of miles away, with Mind doing all the heavy lifting when it came to target selecting and timing.
Oh, the Jannies have ashed lots of battle stations. Plenty of infantry boys and girls have come back planetside in flag-draped coffins. I know all that, but the fact remains that their only real purpose is to act as a human corrective to Mind’s target selection, one more level of redundancy to back up the machines that Mind works through.
That’s not what it was like for guys like me.
My reward for testing so well was that I got to spend my two years in the service in daily nightmares and nightly terror. I fought Jannies face to face, in the lunar craters and the abandoned space stations that are the outer edge of what’s still us and the beginnings of what’s already them. I killed them so close that I could smell the acid dripping from their tentacles, see the purple mist clouding over their dying eyes.
Up there, Mind’s got nothing to do with it.
Oh, Mind keeps track of our ammunition and gives us little reminders to report back to base and reload. Mind even monitors our vital signs and alerts the nearest available medvac crews if it looks like we’ve been too badly inured to keep going.
But in the fighting itself, we’re on our own.
Even Mind has to work through faulty secondary systems, stuff like guns and heat sensors and tracking computers. The fighting up there is too fast, too close, for those methods to work. Too many false positives, false negatives, for Mind’s judgment to be an improvement over human eyes and ears.
That’s the worst part about fighting up there, that terrible knowledge that you’re staring death in the face without Mind’s guidance, that your life or death depends on the correct workings of that lump of meat between your all-too-human ears.
That’s the situation I’d been living with for two straight years. “Getting out of the Army” meant something different for me than it did for the kids who spent two years blasting at blips on a tracking screen by day, playing cards and whining about home by night.
As I stood on the deck of the suborbital processing station that Thursday afternoon in March, I wore jeans and a t-shirt, my uniform and weapons bundled neatly into a little black Army-issued pack so I could return it to the red-headed officer. I was standing at the head of a long line of men and women dressed just like I was, but I wasn’t one of them. I was a broken unit trying to blend in with the whole models, and Red could tell the difference.
His fingers paused at the keyboard. “Sure you don’t want to volunteer for a second round, soldier? Last chance.”
I laughed, because that’s what he wanted me to do. He laughed too, a lot more heartily than I had, ripped my discharge certificate off his printer and handed it to me. “OK, Berkowitz, you’re a civilian.”
The bar code on the certificate would get me into my Elevator. That would be Mind’s cue to send a signal to the home computer at the address I’d listed on my bag. If anyone was home, they might even drive down to meet me at the Elevator station in Ft. Lauderdale so I wouldn’t have to take a cab.
Ft. Lauderdale. Home. ‘Take a cab.’ It was like a foreign language, one that I’d once spoken but didn’t quite remember.
I turned to leave when Red called me back.
“Yeah?”
He glanced at his screen. “You’re going to Miami, right?”
I nodded. “Staying with my folks for a while.”
He took out a fountain pen, tore a blank certificate from the top of his printer and scribbled something on it. “I get passes to visit planetside most weekends…”
Of course you do, I thought bitterly, but kept it to myself.
“…and my buddy Ernesto and his friends, they invited me to this party they’re throwing at their house, but I can’t make it. Extra duty this weekend.” He paused, as if choosing every word very carefully. “It’s a once a year kind of thing, coming up this Friday. I went once before. It’s pretty…” He smirked and shrugged. “Let’s just say it looks like you could use it.”
“Thanks, man.”
He returned my nod, once again brisk and business-like, and turned his attention to the next soldier in line, an overweight black guy who looked like he was bored out of his mind by the delay.
It didn’t look to me like this guy was subconsciously scanning the room for targets. He looked like his mind was already home, the irritating two-year-long interruption of his life that was the war already a thing of the past.
With a twang of jealousy, I stuck Red’s note in my jeans pocket and went to find my Elevator.
#
It had been two years to the day since I took the Elevator up the other way. I remember feeling a thrill of wonder and terror at the strange sight of the Florida landmass getting smaller and smaller beneath me.
I’d seen Elevators before, but I’d never been in one until I was drafted. Back then, the idea blew my mind, the very thought of traveling like that, carried in a transparent case for thousands of miles along reinforced cables from Earth to a space station.
Now, I felt a flicker of mild interest at the unaccustomed sight of natural sunlight, but that was about it. My capacity for wonder and terror had been burnt out watching my friends die on Triple Cross and Luna.
Anyway, I was safe in the hands of Mind, my life dependent on thousands of tiny machines monitoring the upkeep and repair of the Elevator cables under Mind’s direction. Hell, I hadn’t felt so safe in years.
I didn’t pause to wonder whether anyone was coming to meet me at the station below until I was close enough to see the tops of the palm trees beneath the Elevator’s glass floor. When I got off on the ground, I spent three minutes wandering around the sweltering south Florida afternoon before I heard my little sister calling my name.
“Avi!” I turned around. She ran into my arms.
“Wow. Hanna.” After we hugged, I took a step back to look at her. I barely recognized her as the same person. When I left Earth, Hanna had been fourteen years old. She looked different now, and it wasn’t just the extra inches.
“Boychick!” My mother pulled me into another hug. My father grabbed my shoulder and shook my hand. He was wearing a neatly pressed black suit like he always did, but I think it was the first time since I was about twelve that I’d seen him leave home without a necktie.
He must have left in a hurry when my landing time came up on the computer.
We all loaded into my parents’ car. A few minutes later, we were heading south on 95 toward Miami. I was squished between Hanna and Sady, the latter being a very enthusiastic black Labrador who I hadn’t seen since she was a puppy. She kept thumping her tail and dripping saliva on my jeans.
I stroked the back of her head and tried not to let the saliva remind me of acid dripping from a Janny tentacle.
My father didn’t say much as he drove, he never did, but I could see a relaxed smile in his reflection on the rearview mirror.
My mother barraged me with questions. Had they given me breakfast before my discharge? Was I hungry? There was a new Cuban restaurant right off the highway in Coral Gables, if I was hungry. She hadn’t been there yet, she was too busy at the school, but her friend Merna had, and she said…
That sounded great. I wasn’t that hungry, but I could eat. Sure. No, no Mom, the rations aren’t that freeze-dried stuff anymore, not in the Forces. It’s all pills now. Yeah, it was filing. Of course I missed real food.
It wasn’t until half an hour later when we pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant, “Havana Delight,” that the question that had been percolating somewhere in the back of my head finally hit me.
“New car?”
“Huh?” Mom was in the middle of a long story, something about implementation problems with the computerized neural hookups for math classes at the school she worked at, when I interrupted her.
“Is this a new car?”
Hanna laughed and squeezed my hand. “Does it look like the Cruiser?”
The old Bolivar Cruiser we’d had before I went into the Army was a wreck, a family embarrassment of years standing. It had been one of the last models Mind allowed on the road that was still fueled by the old hydrogen cell process.
This car I was riding in now looked so shiny that all it was missing was a price tag hanging from the engine.
“No,” I said dimly, “I guess not.”
We parked in the shade so we could leave Sady in the car while we ate. Mom and Dad went in to get a table. Hanna leashed up Sady and we walked her out to the grassy area by the sidewalk so she could do her business before we put her back in the car.
“What are you looking for?” Hanna peered up at me, and I realized I was scanning for targets again. God damn it.
I kind of liked that she didn’t understand what I was doing, so I just shook my head. “So…how’s school? You guys use those new neural hookups that Mom was talking about?”
Hanna shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Is that weird? I can’t even imagine what it must be like, to hook into Mind like that. I don’t know, trippy.”
Hanna shook her head in bemusement. “You’re just back from the front lines and you want to talk about math class?”
I sighed. “Han, there aren’t any front lines. There aren’t any lines. It’s not like that.”
“OK, tell me what it is like.”
For a second, the memories overwhelmed me. Tentacles squirm into my field of vision. I fire. I miss. Jake, Jake Horowitz, who I’ve known since basic training, turns into a man-shaped pile of ashes in front of me. I fire again…
“Later,” I lied, blinking away the vision. “Let’s go in and get something to eat.”
Hanna gave me this look like she wanted me to tell her now, but she bit her lip and shrugged. We walked Sady back to the car, locked up and went into the restaurant.
#
We had hot bread with honest-to-God butter on it. I had an omlette sandwich with a mess of plantain chips on the side and a warm cup of cafe con leche to wash it down.
An hour an half later, we were home. My belly was full of my first warm meal in two years. Hanna’s black cat Radcliffe rubbed up against my fingers. I felt better than I had since I turned eighteen.
Later that night, Daniel and Esther, my aunt and uncle on my mother’s side, came by with a fifteen-year-old bottle of Galilean wine. We all sat there drinking it by the fireplace. My parents even let Hanna have a glass.
There was no fire in the fireplace, of course, it was Miami, but the simulation looked kind of nice. The whole thing was perfect, just the sort of well-deserved relaxation I’d been craving for a very long time.
Within an hour and a half, I was bored out of my mind.
Daniel asked me another question about the Special Forces. I gave another evasive, literal answer. Yes. No. Sort of. Yes, like that.
Mom told the story about the math hookup problems. Esther laughed and started talking about the school she worked at. I downed what was left of my wine, enjoying the warmth in my throat even though I don’t really like wine, and made my excuses.
I went up to my room and, sure enough, found my old Talkie on the bedside table. I flipped it open.
No, wait, this was a new one, about the same size but nicer, doubtless intended as a gift to welcome me back. That meant that none of the World Citizenship Numbers I’d put on speed-dial were in the memory.
After a few seconds, I remembered David’s WCN. This citizen is not available for Talk. Fuck.
For a second, I stood there, trying not to draw any conclusions from that. He could just not have been discharged yet. That was probably it.
With real effort, I stopped myself from thinking about it.
I entered Carlos’ number. I hadn’t seen him in even longer than I’d seen David, but I couldn’t remember anyone else’s WCN off the top of my head from the circle of people I’d hung out with before I left.
After three beeps, his face popped up on the screen. His once long black hair was cut infantry-short. I wondered how long he’d been back.
“Holy shit, Avi Berkowitz!” Carlos’ face spread into an unbelieving grin when he saw me. “You back planetside?”
“Got out today.”
“Jesus. We’ve got to hang. Hold on…”
His face disappeared from the screen. I heard talking, laughter and music in the background, something with a thumping baseline and an Arabic synth-voice over it.
A second later, Carlos was back on the screen. “You at home, bro?”
We made arrangements. I closed up my Talkie. I threw on a long-sleeved black button-down shirt over my t-shirt, squirted some cologne on my neck and wrists and went downstairs.
Half an hour later, a message popped up on the house computer saying that Carlos’ car was out front.
I said goodbye to Daniel and Esther and came outside. The waiting car looked nicer than the one in my parents’ driveway. I wondered if Carlos was borrowing it from his parents or if he had actually found a job when he got out that paid that kind of money.
I slid into the back seat. Carlos introduced me to the girl in the front passenger seat, a redhead in a short skirt and a sparkling synth-top named Pam, and we sped off to South Beach.
#
When we got to 12th Street, the parking garage was full. We spent half an hour driving around looking for an open space. In a weird way, that was almost reassuring. Whatever had changed in the last two years, some things in life are constant.
It was just as hard to find a parking space in South Beach as it had been when Carlos and I were sixteen year olds trying to find a bar that didn’t run your WCN to keep out underage drinkers.
We left the parking garage and Carlos announced that he had to piss. I stood on the sidewalk with Pam while he looked for a spot. Clanging noises drifted down the alleyway behind us every time he found something new to trip over.
I shook my head. “Just how many drinks has he already had?”
Pam giggled and held up eight fingers. We stood together for a minute in the humid darkness, then Pam went ahead and ruined the moment by asking the same questions Hanna had about what “the front lines” were like.
Pam had done her two years already, but of course she’d been in the infantry. Hardly any girls made it into the Special Forces.
Lucky girls.
I answered as minimally as I could. Before I could get too uncomfortable, Carlos came back, slapping me on the shoulder and exhaling rum-scented breath into my ear. “Where to, bro?”
“I wouldn’t know.” I gestured at the street in front of us, where people walked and stumbled down the sidewalk in groups of four or five, music blaring out of bars and clubs behind them. “Last time I was out here we weren’t even allowed into anywhere good.”
“Automatic,” Pam piped up.
Carlos laughed out loud. “Most definitely. You ever heard of Automatic Shady’s?”
I hadn’t, of course, but I said that’d be fine.
It was six blocks over, right across from the beach. This time of night, the waves looked black as they lapped against the shore.
When we got there, we had to wait for twenty minutes behind a velvet rope while a massive Cuban guy in a badly-fitting suit decided whether we were cool enough to get in.
When it was our turn, we all held out our hands, palms up, so the bouncer could scan our WCNs with his I-Stick. His eyes widened in sudden respect when he ran mine. “You just get out?”
I nodded, forcing a smile. He thumped his fist against his chest in the Special Forces salute. “Have fun tonight, OK? You deserve it.”
“Yeah.”
Inside, the dimly lit club was overflowing with people, rich kids out for a night on the town, college students trying their best to look like the rich kids and a few people whispering in corners who could only have been drug dealers. A smattering of people leaned up against the bar. Everyone else stood and drank or danced in huge twirling motions across the floor.
Some kind of comp-synth remix of Arabic pop songs was belting from the ambient speakers. When we got up to the bar, I saw two blond waitresses dancing around the counter top holding bottles.
I got out my wallet. Carlos waved it away. “Turn around.”
I did, and one of the blondes danced up to me. She grabbed my head, tipped it back and poured a shot of something sickly sweet but extremely potent straight into my throat.
I gulped it down and Carlos clapped me on the back. “He’s on my tab tonight,” he told a male bartender standing behind the counter while the waitress went on to the next guy. “Three mojitos.”
The bartender took out a few glasses and started crushing mint leaves with a wooden pestle. Steam billowed from the ceiling. Pam came up to the bar and snuggled next to Carlos. “This is a great place, huh?”
“Yeah.”
We grabbed the drinks from the counter top and clinked them together. “Bienvenidos a Miami,” Carlos said. “Welcome back.”
I tipped my glass up to my mouth and drank.
#
An hour later, I leaned against the bar and sipped my third mojito. Carlos and Pam had long since wandered off to the dance floor. I was kind of enjoying the solitude.
The rum burned my throat pleasantly enough, and I loved the tastes of the mint and the lime working over my tongue. It was slow going, but I was finally starting to feel buzzed. We’d mostly drunk home-made stuff in the Forces, which tasted like liquid shit but got the job done a lot faster than planetside rum.
I downed the last of my mojito, slammed the glass on the counter and did another quick visual scan of the club.
“No Janesians in here,” a lightly-accented female voice told me. “I already checked.”
I laughed, despite myself, and turned around. She was a slim, dark-eyed girl with skin the color that coffee turns after you add the second packet of cream. She was wearing this sparkling, skin-tight synth suit that almost hurt my eyes to look at.
She waited while I got composed enough to introduce myself and ask if I could buy her a drink. I could, and her name was Lisa-Roja Chavez. She pronounced that name like she was testing each syllable in her mouth as she spoke.
I liked that very much.
I held up two fingers to the bartender. He nodded, and a minute later Lisa-Roja and I took our glasses.
She shifted position as she took her drink. The synth-suit captured the motion in exquisite shimmering from her shoulder to her waistline. “Just out?”
“Yeah.”
“Already sick of people asking you that, I’ll bet.”
I laughed and took another sip of my mojito. Definitely starting to feel buzzed now. “That would be an affirmative, yes.”
She laughed, and it was like tinkling glass.
“How about you?”
“Almost a year. Infantry,” she added quickly, “but my ex-boyfriend was in the Special Forces. Let’s just say that you got painted in the same place and I recognized the brush strokes.”
I wasn’t sure I liked that analogy, but a second later she ever-so-casually grazed my arm with her finger tips and I decided I liked whatever she had to say. “That makes sense.”
“Discharge weekend. You must have something special planned for tomorrow night, huh?”
I licked my lips, and for the first time that day remembered the note from Red (Frank?) in my pocket. “As a matter of fact, I do. What are you doing?”
She answered coyly, we did a few more rounds of banter and I ordered us a couple more mojitos before I finally asked her if she’d ever heard of something called the Blue Havana.
Those dark eyes of hers opened a little bit further. “The Blue Havana is back in Miami?”
I nodded. “You know about it?”
“My friend went last year. It sounded amazing.”
I shifted against the bar and had another sip of my mojito. “It sounds like you know a lot more than I do. All I’ve got is the invite.”
“So…?”
“So what’s it like?”
She grinned. “Take me tomorrow night and you’ll find out.”
I got her WCN, she wandered back to where her friends were standing and I did the same.
Carlos waved to me just as I came over, apparently oblivious to the fact that I was looking right at him. “You ready to jet?”
I returned his sloppy grin. “Most definitely.”
I was good and buzzed now.
#
The next morning I took a hot shower. For almost twenty minutes. I can’t tell you how decadent that felt. Sady bounded up to me when I got out of the shower, wagging her tail and drooling.
When Sady and I got downstairs, Mom had left for work, Dad had left for work and Hanna had left for school. Sunshine streamed through the glass sliding doors leading out into the backyard.
Mom had left some money on the dining room table along with a note with the routing number of a local pancake place if I wanted to order breakfast. I opened the back door to let Sady out, took the note and sat in front of the computer. A few keystrokes later, the screen on the wall popped up with,
‘The Usual?’
The Usual was apparently a short stack of pancakes with apple-cinnamon topping and whipped cream, two links of tofu “sausage” and a tub of coffee. I switched the tofu for real sausage, requested extra cream for the coffee and clicked ‘OK.’
That done, I let Sady back in, wandered back to the table and found an already much-thumbed-through copy of the New York Times.
In one article, Mind had appointed a new Tribune to govern the Western United States. At the swearing in ceremony, she had announced a new crackdown on the illegal vigilante group, Survival-19. I vaguely remembered hearing about them when they were first banned a few years ago for undermining public morale in a time of war. They’d been passing out leaflets claiming that Earth was losing the war and calling on citizens to stock provisions and arm themselves to resist the “inevitable” Janny conquest.
Now, underground Survival-19 cells were stealing weapons from military stockpiles. The article featured a graphic of the group’s red-and-blue “Earth Power” symbol and information on how to report Survival-19 activities to the proper authorities.
In another story, a Bishop of the Church of the New Incarnation had taken on an eminent computer scientist, Dr. Vernor Stross, in a public debate watched on-line on tens of thousands of Talkies. The New Incarnation people believed that Mind was Jesus Christ, only pretending to be something we created until sinful humans were ready for the truth.
As crazy as that idea sounded, I knew it was gaining ground. It was the only theory that allowed a lot of Evangelicals to reconcile themselves with the world being so thoroughly under Mind’s control since the war started.
Anyway, the Bishop had argued, how could humans create something more intelligent than a human being? It was absurd.
Against this, Dr. Stross argued that Mind’s actual origin, at an Artificial Intelligence lab at the University of California-San Diego in 2012, was well-documented. The lab’s records had been carefully preserved, and the Bishop was welcome to peruse them at his leisure.
Needless to say, neither speaker convinced the other.
In other news, a popular comp-synth DJ had married two of his boyfriends in a ceremony in Las Vegas earlier in the week. There was a picture of the happy triple, in Rome for their honeymoon.
Oh, and the Janesian War Fleet had annihilated the last defenders of the human section of the Triple Cross Space Station, bringing them closer than ever to striking distance of Earth.
I’d been stationed on Triple Cross for six weeks last year. I could imagine what it might be like right now down to the last detail. Jannies patrolling the charred base. Their tentacles twitching as they twitter to each other, pointing out the last survivors…
For a long moment, I thought I was going to be sick. I almost didn’t hear the ping on the wall computer letting me know my pancakes had arrived.
#
When Hanna got back from school, we took Sady on a long walk through the surrounding neighborhood. Other dogs barked at her, but Sady ignored them, sniffing along the ground and wagging her tail in canine joy.
Hanna told me everything that had happened in school that day. I smiled and said “yeah” and “really?” a lot, which seemed to be all she required of me. I was lost in the sunshine and the ambiance. I didn’t even notice at first when she slipped in another question about the Army.
“No, it’s not like that.” I sighed. “It probably will be for you, though. You’ll be in the infantry.”
Hanna stopped and glared up at me. “What, you don’t think I could be in the Special Forces?”
I blinked away the sunlight. “I didn’t mean it like that. But yeah, it’s not very likely. The Forces are like 98% male.”
She opened her mouth. I cut her off before she could retort. “Why would you want that, anyway?”
“Because we’re under attack by monsters…”
Technically, we’d kind of attacked them first, but I wasn’t going to quibble. At this point, it was us or them. She wasn’t wrong about that.
“…and I want to be one of the people who kills them. Like you.”
“You might not be so enthusiastic about killing if you’d seen some.”
Hanna gave me an incredulous look. “Not people. Things.” She stamped her foot on the ground and pointed to a little brown lizard scampering across the sidewalk. “Like those. But not like those, because those things are harmless. The Janesians want to take us over. I want to be one of the people up on the front lines, who kills them.”
I stood, open-mouthed, as she delivered her tirade. After she wound down, I managed to tell her that she was probably right. We lapsed into silence for a while. As we walked, I wondered how I felt about my baby sister’s newfound enthusiasm for killing things.
#
I called Ernesto later in the afternoon. That is to say, I dialed Ernesto’s WCN and got a visual on my Talkie of a bleary-eyed guy in ruffled clothes. I told him who I was and after the second or third time I asked him, he admitted to being Ernesto.
From the looks of this guy, I might have ended the conversation right there, but Lisa-Roja had sounded awfully excited about going to this party. And from what I’d been able to glean so far, it did sound fun.
The previous night, on our way home, I’d asked Carlos if he’d ever heard of the Blue Havana, carefully omitting any mention of my invite. He didn’t know much, apart from how cool it was supposed to be. He had a hazy idea that they had some really crazy designer drugs which no one else had access to.
Whatever they were into, it was clearly something else.
“Frank Alexander sent me,” I duly told Ernesto.
After a four or five second delay, Ernesto’s face lit up in recognition. “Franky, no shit. How’s he doing?”
I forced a smile. “He seems good. So he said this Blue Havana thing was a great party.”
“Oh, yes.” A distant smile spread over his face. “OK, I’ll see you tonight, man…”
“Wait.” I held my hand up to the screen. “Where is it?”
After a few repetitions and requests for clarification, I managed to get directions that didn’t reference things like “that dog that always barks at me” or “the red car.” I was pretty sure I could find it. It was a house on South Beach, just a few blocks away from the main strip of bars and clubs.
Directions firmly in hand, I called Lisa-Roja.
After that, it was just a matter of waiting.
#
Another hour. I had dinner. Another couple of hours. I dutifully hung out with the family, looking at the clock every fifteen minutes.
I borrowed the car–’When will you get back?’ ‘What does it matter, hon? He just got home. We’ll see him tomorrow.’–and forty-five minutes of Miami traffic later, I pulled up in front of an apartment building in South Miami.
When Lisa-Roja climbed into the passenger seat, she was wearing a different cut of synth suit, even more dazzling than what she’d been wearing last night at the club. If that was possible.
From the expression on her face, she looked as happy to see me as I was to see her, but I knew that wasn’t possible.
“You got directions?”
“I do indeed.”
“Let’s go see what all the fuss is about.”
#
Ernesto’s driveway was full. There were cars all along the sidewalk in front of his house. In the end, we had to park almost three blocks away.
A girl in an expensive-looking synth dress answered the door. Her long blond hair looked like it hadn’t been combed in days. She had the same unfocused look in her eyes that Ernesto had when I’d called earlier.
She looked at me like I might bite her. “I don’t know you.”
“I’m Avi. This is Lisa-Roja.” I grinned at her in what I hoped was a charming way. “I talked to Ernesto earlier.” No response. “I know Frank?”
She gave us another prolonged stare, then shrugged. “Whatever.”
Our hostess turned around and walked in, leaving the door hanging open. Lisa-Roja and I looked at each other, then followed her in. I closed the door behind me.
#
Ernesto’s living room was full of people. Some were sitting eight or nine each on long couches. More sat on the floor. Others stood in corners or shambled aimlessly, leaning against the wall for support. Low-tuned, non-vocal comp-synth music piped in from a speaker on the wall. “Avi!” Ernesto walked up, looking even worse than he had before, and grinned at me like I was a long-lost friend. “Glad you could make it, man.”
I introduced him to Lisa-Roja. He shook her hand, his gaze lingering just a little bit too long on her chest before he turned around and led us into the kitchen. “This is your first Blue Havana party, right? You’ve never hooked in before?”
I nodded and he looked close to giggling. “Just wait.”
We went into a smaller room, probably originally intended as a walk-in closet. Inside, there was a table where a thin black guy with wiry glasses was sitting facing some kind of primitive-looking computer. The computer had what very much looked like a crudely disassembled and reassembled gun attached to it.
The gun fired a beam of pink light directly into the black guy’s forehead.
With a sweep of his hand, Ernesto gestured grandly at the machine. “This, lady and gentleman, is the Blue Havana.”
#
And here I thought we were going to be taking drugs.
Lisa-Roja left, saying she needed to use the bathroom. The black guy stumbled into the living room. I sat down in the chair he’d vacated while Ernesto explained with great enthusiasm how the Blue Havana worked.
“I’ve heard of that,” I finally said. “They use something like this in math classes, right?”
Ernesto snorted. “Trust me, man, there is no math class in the world, there is no anything in the world, nothing legal anyway, that lets you get as far into Mind as this.”
The blond girl who’d answered the door sidled up behind Ernesto, rubbing her hands over the front of his t-shirt and grinning. “That stuff they use in schools, that’s like the stuff the farmer brings to market…”
Ernesto banged a few keystrokes into the computer and it whirred to life. He grabbed my forehead, shifted my head so it was directly facing the gun-thing and told me to hold still.
The blond girl continued her rant. “…but this, no, this is something else. This isn’t what the farmer brings to market.” She nibbled absently at Ernesto’s ear. He giggled.
What the hell did this thing do to people?
“We found a way to jump the fence, eat the farmer’s private stock while he’s not looking. And that stuff is really good.” She stopped, as something seemed to occur to her. “Just watch out for tentacles.”
“What?”
“Just wait,” Ernesto told me. “Just a few more seconds. Try to relax.”
That wasn’t a possibility. A lot of questions were occurring to me, too late to do anything about them, but just in time to drive me crazy.
Should I even be here? I was all in favor of a little sense-dulling recreation, but these people were acting like they’d been slamming bricks into their heads.
And where the hell was Lisa-Roja? She should be back by now.
And…”watch out for tentacles?”
Jut as I really started thinking about that last point, I caught a glimpse of a beam of pink light shooting out of the gun and over my line of sight.
Then nothing.
#
A split second later, everything was back where it was. It was all just the same, but completely different. It was like I wasn’t seeing a movie; I was seeing a series of still photographs, a slideshow accompanied by an incoherent soundtrack.
Snap.
“…by the order of the Tribunary forces, this illegal neural hookup is…”
Snap.
People running.
“…got a gun…”
As each frame ended, the scene faded to black. Everything came back as each new one began.
The last frame of the slideshow was the computer crashing to the floor. Just before it made contact, the gun-thing swiveled around and shot a beam of pink light between Lisa-Roja’s eyes.
After that, things got really weird.
#
When I was aware again, I was lying on a beach. From the gray mist and dim light, I guessed it was early morning.
Scratch that. When I looked up at the sky, it wasn’t cloudy; it was nothing, a gray slab like a blank but glowing computer screen.
I stared up at that sky for a good long while. I didn’t even notice Lisa-Roja until she started murmuring. She was half-lying, half-sitting, propped up on her elbows on a stretch of beach a couple of yards away from me.
She was stark naked.
At first, I was a bit too disoriented to be a gentleman about it. Seeing me, she crossed her arms and legs, coughing pointedly. I looked away, feeling sheepish, and finally noticed that I was just as naked.
“Ah,” I said.
“Yeah.”
I scratched my head, wondering whether I should try to cover up, or with what. I decided to table the question. “Any thoughts about what this is?”
Oh, I knew where we were. At least part of me did. I just couldn’t quite force myself to put it all together. It was like if Moses had spent his first fifteen minutes in front of the burning bush trying to convince himself that it was just an oil fire, or a trick of the light.
Lisa-Roja licked her lips. When she finally said it, her voice was hoarse. “Mind. We’re in Mind.”
I nodded and closed my eyes. When I re-opened them, I took a good look at the beach and the water. It all looked real.
If anything, it looked too real, like it was more vivid than any beach I had ever seen on Earth. The sand and the pebbles. The waves crashing against the shore. It was like every particle of it was emitting a faint glow, something I could sense but I couldn’t quite classify with my normal faculties of visual perception.
Under other circumstances, it probably would have been the coolest, trippiest thing I had ever seen. For me, at that moment, it was creepy as hell.
The last couple of years, I’d learned that “exotic locations” meant “things shooting at you,” and this was the most exotic thing I had ever seen.
Lisa-Roja was the first to stand. “We might as well look around. See how far this goes.”
I nodded dumbly and followed her lead. The effect of staring at any one part of my surroundings was too much, and I had to look away. After I while it got to be a continuous thing, like a dull throbbing somewhere behind my eyes, but I kept on scanning the whole scene. A little discomfort wasn’t enough to break that habit.
That’s how I saw the first sock. It was several yards away, diagonal to our path. I wouldn’t have noticed if it had blended into the color scheme of the beach.
I walked over to it, and held it up. It was a black sock, ending with a little brownish-yellow patch where your toes went. I called Lisa-Roja to come over. She looked at me quizzically. “It’s a sock.”
I grinned. “It’s one of the socks I was wearing.”
Was part of me still wearing it back in Miami? I put the question out of my mind before I could get any more disoriented by it.
Lisa-Roja smiled back at me, putting it together. “So our clothes came with us.”
I nodded. “Just not with us.”
Fanning out over the beach, we found my boxers and undershirt. I stopped to put all that on, knowing I looked a little silly with just the one sock but not caring.
Continuing down the beach, we found the other sock and, nestled to the side of a huge boulder a few yards down from that, Lisa-Roja’s synth-suit.
She muttered something in Spanish, sounding enormously relieved, and went to slide it on. As she started to pull on the bottom half, something fell onto the sand. She tried to bend down to catch it, but she was in an awkward position with her suit half-on, and I got it first. She backed away a few feet as I looked at it, her expression almost nauseous with anxiety.
It was square and black. I flipped it open. As I scrutinized it, I thought back to the garbled images and shouting I remembered from just before I lost consciousness in Miami. Suddenly, everything made sense.
It was a badge, identifying her as a Special Investigator for the Tribunary Forces of the Eastern United States.
She was a cop.
I should have been freaked out, or angry. She was a cop. She was using me. For all I knew, I was going to go to jail when this was all over for being at that damn party. I should have shouted, cried, something. I didn’t.
I just didn’t have the energy, even if I’d felt anything but resigned and slightly sick about what I’d just found out. I folded up the badge and handed it to her.
That momentary contact sent tingles down my spine that went way beyond sexual attraction, even if that hadn’t been the last thing on my mind at that moment. It was touch-plus, the equivalent for that sensation of the way the colors were brighter on the beach.
Lisa-Roja took the badge, looking even more flustered and unhappy than I felt, and stuck it in an invisible pocket of her suit.
She finished getting dressed. She was barefoot, but other than that, she seemed to have most of her clothes on.
For a while, neither of us said anything. Finally, I broke the silence. “I should have known.”
She looked at me quizzically, but said nothing.
“You were way too good to be true.”
She blushed and turned away. “Look,” she finally said, “let’s just…”
Before she could get out whatever she was about to say, an ear-splitting explosion went off behind us.
#
Time seemed to freeze as I took in the sight of our attacker. All in all, I couldn’t have spent more than four or five seconds staring at it, but it stretched out into an eternity.
I don’t know what I was expecting. Nothing, probably, since nothing in my experience prepared me for walking around inside the mind of a god-like artificial intelligence, but I never in a thousand years would have predicted this. It must have been standing no more than six or seven yards behind that boulder it had just vaporized. How long had it been since it spotted us?
This was the thing I’d never stopped looking for, everywhere I went. Now that I was face to face with one, standing no more than seven or eight yards down the beach, it didn’t make one damn bit of sense.
It was a Janny.
This one was on the short side, but that still meant it was a foot or two taller than a full-grown human would be. Its skin was a color somewhere between red and orange. Its mid-section looked like a gelatinous lump, but I knew far too well how deceptive that appearance was. They take a while to get from point A to point B, but up close an enraged Janny can be as lethally flexible in its motions as anything that walks or crawls.
It had six tentacles on each side. One of them held what looked like a standard-issue blast-stick of the Janesian War Fleet. Smoke swirled from the weapon’s tip. At least three of its other tentacles were already dripping acid onto the beach.
On the plus side, it didn’t look like the acid had started to evaporate yet. Unfortunately, that was all the “plus side” there was.
All twelve of its eyes were staring at me, all twelve pupils already turned the yellow of deepest hatred. Fuck.
Snapping out of it, I shoved Lisa-Roja, knocking her to the ground, and fell on top of her. All that was left of that huge boulder was a smoldering pile of rock. Each rock was maybe the size of a soccer ball, but the pile was a few foot tall. It was enough to give us maybe a minute or two of cover while the Janny made its way to our position.
Bending down awkwardly, I pulled off first my left sock, and then my right. I handed one of the socks to Lisa-Roja, who responded with a blank stare. I was lying on top of her. Our faces almost touched.
“Mask,” I whispered, and modeled holding it over my mouth and nose. The smell was wretched, cloth and sweat and dirt. “Don’t die.”
Under the circumstances, I didn’t have time to be any more eloquent than that, but I was telling the truth. The acid dripping from an angry Janny’s tentacles is a natural defense system, like a skunk’s spray. The difference being that when it evaporates, it does a lot more than smell bad.
Lisa-Roja fumbled around the folds of her synth-suit until she pulled out a gun.
Thank God for that, anyway.
Not having any time to waste on the request, I just grabbed her hand to pry the gun away from her.
She held tight.
“Get off me,” she muttered, pointing the gun directly into my chest.
I didn’t think she was going to shoot me. She was probably just understandably flustered, but I chose my words very carefully. I knew the Janny was getting way too close to us to waste time on this, and my eyes and skin were irritated from the acid vapor, it was hard to concentrate on what I was saying. On the other hand, I’d rather not have her trigger finger get nervous before the Janny had time to kill us.
“You ever shoot anyone with that thing?”
She nodded.
“How many?”
“How many what?”
I gritted my teeth. I so did not have time for this. “How many people have you killed?”
“I’m not a murderer.” She shifted position under me, but kept the gun steady. “I’ve shot six people in the line of duty. They’ve all survived.”
I sighed. “Right. Six. Any of them Janesians?”
She glared at me, but said nothing.
“So it would be safe to say that only one of us has killed hundreds of them?”
I could all but see the wheels turning in her brain. Finally, she grunted and loosened her grip on the gun, letting me take hold of it. I rolled off her, clicked off the safety and adjusted the laser setting to lethal force.
That wasn’t a second too soon.
A burning sensation flared through me as a beam from the Janny’s blast-stick grazed my cheek. If it had been the first time that had happened to me, I might have let that distract me. I would have died.
I didn’t. I rolled onto the ground and came up on my knees, holding the gun in my right hand and using my left to hold the sock over my face. After a quick scan to make sure nothing was coming at me from the other side of the beach, I turned back to the Janny, aimed and fired.
The laser from my gun pierced its shoulder. Purple smoke drifted up from the wound. The Janny wouldn’t die, but the pain should distract it long enough.
I shifted position, and saw Lisa-Roja crawling along the beach toward us. I motioned her to keep her head down below laser-range and turned back.
I was just in time to see that the Janny was within a few feet of me. I pulled the trigger without having time to aim. It must have fired at exactly the same moment. Its laser sailed harmlessly over my head. Mine hit home.
Purple mist clouded its eyes. A few seconds later, it was a smoking pile of reddish-orange goo.
Lisa-Roja walked up behind me. I turned around to make sure she was holding the sock I’d given her to her mouth and nose, then handed the gun to her. She took it, without comment, and clicked the safety back on.
Keeping my sock in front of my face for as much of the process as I could, I peeled off my under-shirt. That left me with nothing on but my boxer shorts, but it was almost as warm here as back in Miami. When it came to deflecting laser blasts, anything but full body armor was pretty much decoration anyway.
Lisa-Roja stared at me, then said something. Muffled through the sock, it took me a second to interpret it as, “What do you think you’re doing?”
Ignoring her question, I wrapped the shirt around my right hand and arm as best I could, biting the sock for a second so I could use my left hand to tie it up. At this point, there was probably more acid in the air than in the goo that used to be the Janny, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I used the protected arm to fish around the goo until I found the blast-stick.
I wiped it off, then ditched the soiled shirt.
We walked back to the beach, away from the concentration of vapor. I took the sock off of my mouth and fiddled with the blast-stick.
Lisa did the same. “You know how to use that thing?”
I nodded. “Assuming they haven’t changed the design in the last six months, I should.”
She actually looked impressed. Like everything else was to be expected, but I got extra credit points for having experience using an enemy soldier’s discarded weapon.
I don’t know why that annoyed me so much.
I gripped the cylindrical blast-stick in my right hand, aimed it at the sky above us, and took a practice squeeze. A nice satisfying red beam shot out of it, disappearing into the gray slab of sky.
I released the trigger, and turned back to Lisa-Roja. “Do you know, if you had to, how to kill a Janesian?”
“What makes you think there are more of them?”
I stared at her. “Why would there even be one?”
That actually got me a smile. “OK, fair point. You shoot them, much like a human, yes?”
“Well, sure, but you have to get them in the middle, between here and here…” Unthinkingly, I started tracing the equivalent position on the front of her synth-suit, like I had done time and time again on soldiers’ uniforms to make the same point back in the service.
Feeling the touch-plus tingling, it finally occurred to me just how intimate the gesture was. I flushed and pulled my hand back.
Lisa-Roja raised her eyebrow, but otherwise gave no sign that she had registered my reaction. She reached forward and traced the same pattern over my bare chest. “Here….to here?”
“Yeah.” My breath was coming out in gasps–touch was something else here–but at least I managed to get out the syllable. She smiled mischievously, leaving no doubt this time around that she knew exactly what effect she was having, and laughed.
I started laughing too, not able to help it. I was so distracted that almost a minute must have gone by between my visual scans of the periphery.
Two more Jannies slid down the beach toward us. “Mid-section,” I muttered again. Lisa-Roja nodded and clicked off the safety on her gun.
I jogged to the nearest boulder, about five yards away. It wouldn’t provide much cover, but it was the best I could do.
A fourth Janny came into view just by the boulder. I shot it. My laser sailed just over its head. It aimed at me.
Lisa-Roja shot it. Her laser shot from behind me pierced its midsection. Purple mist clouded over the Janny’s eyes.
One of the Jannies coming the other way shot at me. It missed. The laser connected with the boulder instead. It exploded.
A soccer-ball-sized chunk of rock barreled into my side. I crashed to the ground. My blast-stick dropped.
I rolled over and grabbed the blast-stick. Within a few seconds I was back on my feet.
With the boulder out of the way, I had a good view of the beach stretching behind where we’d been standing. There were some buildings visible just behind the horizon, sleek round structures shining even in the gray light.
As I watched, dozens of Jannies streamed across the horizon toward us. The sound of their twittering speech filled the air. Most of them were armed.
The ones at the front were moving faster than I thought Jannies were physically capable of.
Lisa-Roja sidled up next to me. We stood, shoulder to shoulder, our weapons pointed outward as we stared at the crowd of monsters.
I aimed my blast-stick first at one Janny, then another, then another. It was no good. At least a dozen of them were going to have a shot at me at the same time, in less than a minute. There was nowhere to take cover, and there were only two of us.
That was the moment when I knew that I was going to die.
The realization came hard and fast, like a splash of cold water to the face the morning after a night of hard drinking. Whatever part of me that had still somehow managed, through everything that I’d been through in the last two years, to delude itself into thinking that I was going to die in bed, an old man surrounded by grandchildren, got a hard dose of reality.
I was going to die right here, right now, on this beach that was on no map, this fragment of the consciousness of an artificial God. There was nothing to be done about that. All I could do was take as many of these fucks as I could with me.
I tightened my grip on the blast-stick, preparing to shoot…
“Sssssssstoooooop.”
My fingers froze on my weapon. What the hell?
At the front of the line was an unarmed Janny.
“Stop,” it repeated.
It was speaking English, slowly and strangely, but English nonetheless. I wouldn’t have believed that Jannies could make human speech. I didn’t think their mouths would be able to form the sounds.
It was unarmed. Its eyes were the red of perfect calm. If not for that, I might have shot it anyway, and let the English sounds be a mystery.
I loosened my grip on the blast-stick, but kept it pointed at the speaker.
“Diiiiiplomaaaat,” the Janny said. It took me a second to recognize the word it was trying to say, but that was definitely it. “Diplomat.”
My eyes flickered to meet Lisa-Roja’s, my incomprehension mirrored on her features.
“What?” I finally asked.
It was, it repeated, a diplomat. The time for fighting was over. We should go home.
Lisa-Roja finally spoke. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Mind, it said, in its painstakingly slow, broken English, was with the Janesians now. It was over. Mind had switched sides.
Neither of us had anything to say to that. After a long pause, the Janny continued. Mind wanted, above all, information, to expand and take in more information. That was how we stupid humans had built Mind. Did we really think we could construct a God and enslave it to run our errands?
Lisa-Roja made a gurgling noise, like she was trying to speak but couldn’t quite get the words out. “You’re lying.”
“Noooo lie. Truuuth.”
We were, it, explained, fading out already. We would be gone from Mind in a matter of minutes. Since the war was almost over, it would let us go, an act of mercy. “Gooooo. Juuuust goooo.”
I turned to Lisa-Roja. She did look different, less solid than she had been a second ago, more like a hologram than a person. “Oh my God.”
I’m letting you go, the Janny told us. Don’t shoot.
I didn’t shoot. Lisa-Roja didn’t shoot. None of the Jannies shot us. For minutes that seemed like hours, we stood there on the beach, surrounded by Jannies, as the diplomat’s words reverberated over and over again in my head.
#
I woke up in the darkness, fully clothed on a hard floor. After a time, I could hear noises from outside, feverish but indistinct.
My joints creaked as I propped myself up on my elbows. Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the darkness. I was still in the room in Ernesto’s house in Miami, now empty.
A few feet away from me, Lisa-Roja lay muttering something to herself in sing-song Spanish. I stood up, exhausted, and walked over to her.
Her eyes were closed. Very tentatively, I leaned down and put my hands on her shoulder. She lashed out at me with one arm. She opened her eyes and blinked. “Avi.”
She draped an arm around my shoulders, and I helped her up. We wandered into the living room. It was empty. We stood there for a bit, not knowing what to do.
“Avi,” Lisa-Roja said again.
“Yeah?”
She drew away from me and bit her lip. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
That seemed like the understatement of the century. I just shrugged.
“There’s something I think you should know.”
“OK.”
She let out a long breath. A beat passed, then she started up again very slowly. “I am a cop. Sometimes I work undercover. I went to that party with you so I could investigate the illegal numeral hookup.”
I shook my head. “I already know all this.”
“When you said you were going to the Blue Havana, that was a lucky break, a lead I never expected. Months of investigating, and the location of the Blue Havana just fell into my lap.”
I stared at her, feeling slightly sick. “Why are you telling me this?”
She stamped her foot. “Shut up. Just let me say this.”
I shrugged, taken aback. “OK,” I finally said.
“I am a cop. Sometimes, I work undercover. But that night, I was off-duty.”
What she was saying finally penetrated my consciousness. “So why did you talk to me?”
She shook her head. “Why do you think?”
We stood looking at each other for a long beat, then she leaned up and kissed me, once, very quickly, on the lips. She met my eyes, nervous and unflinching.
I grabbed her and kissed her back, long and lingering this time.
A while later, we walked outside.
#
Warm and humid wind hit me, buffeting away the last traces of sleepiness from my system. Sirens and screaming penetrated my awareness, punctuated by traffic noises and a chorus of blasting car horns.
“Mother of god,” Lisa-Roja whispered, and jabbed my side. I looked at her, and she pointed at the sky.
My jaw dropped as I took in the scene.
Massive red objects filled the sky. There must have been dozens of them, moving at impossible speeds with lights blinking all along their sides.
The Janesian War Fleet.
“Avi!”
I turned at the sound. Hanna ran across the lawn toward us.
“What the hell?”
She was holding a gun, pointed into the air. Not a pistol like Lisa-Roja’s, but Nisium-17, which had to be just about the most serious piece of military hardware a teenage girl could heft in one hand. A red and blue Survival-19 patch was stitched into the shoulder of her shirt.
With a real effort I managed to speak. “How did you find us? And where the hell….what….”
I trailed off, defeated.
Hanna stared at me with the mixture of fondness and withering contempt that she always reserved for her big brother’s stupider comments. “Not really the time or the place for all that,” she finally said. “We’ve got to leave. Now.”
I wondered for a second just how much about my little sister’s life I would never know, then decided that she was right. Right now, finding out was not a priority.
Lisa-Roja and I jogged with Hanna out to the car she’d left idling on the curb. It was my parent’s old Bolivar Cruiser, looking more beaten up that I’d ever remembered it. “What…?”
“The new car stopped working when all the computers shut down,” Hanna told me matter-of-factly. “Get in.”
I climbed into the front passenger seat, Lisa-Roja into the back, and Hanna took off driving down the street before we’d so much as closed the doors.
She was taking the side street away from downtown South Beach. I had no idea where she was taking us, and just then, I didn’t have the energy, I didn’t have enough space left in my head, to think it through. I needed a long night’s sleep before I could process any of this.
“Han,” I finally said, “this is Lisa-Roja.”
“Hi,” Hanna said, amiably enough, her eyes on the road.
“This is Hanna,” I told Lisa-Roja, craning my head to the back seat as I talked. “My little sister.”
Lisa-Roja laughed. The sound was like tinkling glass, but rich and deep. “Impressive family,” she finally said.
I leaned back into the seat, comfortable despite everything. “We do all right.”
We drove in companionable silence, Hanna navigating the back roads without stops or hesitation. I nestled into the comfortable leather of the seat, letting the muscles in my back relax.
I knew I should be terrified or depressed about the Jannies closing in. I wasn’t.
I didn’t know what was going to happen tomorrow, or even tonight, but I knew one thing: I was wrong, when I thought yesterday morning on the deck of the processing station that I was a broken unit trying to blend in with the whole models. I’m bruised, but I’m not broken. There’s a difference.
Whatever’s going to happen, I can handle it. I’m with people I care about, and they can handle themselves too. Whatever was coming, we’d deal with it as it came.
Without saying anything to each other, without needing to, we drove onward into the night.
Filed under Short Science Fiction Stories · Tagged with Ben Burgis, Science Fiction, SciFi, Short Science Fiction
The Other Side of the Surface
February 12, 2010 by Publisher · Leave a Comment
I finally fall asleep.
When I open my eyes, I’m in bed. It feels strange, and a spark of faded hope crackles inside. I have to ask.
“Mike, am I down?”
“Yeah.” Mike’s voice in my ear sounds like he’s in a tin sewer tunnel, accompanied by the faint whine of radio static. “Why? Something wrong?”
“No.”
I throw off the yellowing sheets and carefully step across a wasteland of discarded paperwork, spent cigarette packs and dirty clothes—just like my actual bedroom floor. A close facsimile, just a little exaggerated.
“It’s just…”
I start, and then stop.
“I’m in my bedroom.”
“Yeah?” Mike chimes.
“Yeah, and for a second I thought I was dreaming.”
The pause tells me I’ve confused him.
“You are.”
“No, I know.” I’m naked, so I reach into the closet and pull out a black suit. There’s a moment of surprised recognition. I bought this suit a long time ago, and only wore it once. My father’s funeral.
“Diggs?” Mike’s voice calls me back.
“Yeah,” I say, pushing the emotional rush away, clearing my head. “See, for a second, I thought I was awake, and before was a dream. That us and the van, that was the dream.”
“Ohhh,” he chimes in after a tick. “Trip. Like forgetting which side of the surface you’re on.”
“You’ve got a way with metaphors.”
Logically, the suit should be too small. I’ve put on some weight since the old man kicked. But it fits like a charm.
“How we doing? Signal still strong?” I ask.
“Transmitter’s steady. Signal’s strong, I/O’s solid. I’m reading REM.”
“Looks like the tooth fairy left a surprise,” I muse. “Hold on. I’m going to get the camera.”
I close my eyes and focus my thoughts, reaching back through my memories to a single moment. We’ve all got them—one of those insignificant but infinitely recallable memories that stick like a popcorn kernel between your teeth. It was the second grade, and I’d slogged into the classroom after a rainy recess playing in the clay soil that bordered the baseball field. I’d forgotten to wipe my boots, and had smeared mud all across the floor. The teacher—Mrs. Kitzer was her name—had snatched me from my desk by the arm and turned me to face the muddy trail. “Look what a mess you’ve made,” she said, and my face burned with shame.
Like I said, insignificant but infinitely recallable. I lock on the memory, and a familiar sensation stirs in my brain, kind of like a related memory, or a déjà vu, but different, colder. I focus on it, reach out, and take it, and it’s in my hands: an old 35mm with a zoom lens, a weathered leather case and a shoulder strap. I sling it.
“You ready?” Mike asks.
“Yeah… wait.” In the corner, hanging from my decaying wicker coat rack is a Humphrey Bogart trench coat that I don’t own. It looks like it was cut out of a dime store novel cliché, out of a third generation Chandler Chinese knock-off. Embarrassing. Apparently, somewhere deep down, I still feel romantic about my line of work.
I slide it on.
“Ready,” I announce to the empty room.
“Transmitting,” comes the response.
Everything goes black, and the ground gives out from under me. It’s a difficult sensation to get used to. The trick is to close your eyes. Then the darkness seems voluntary. That’s actually a thumbnail sketch of successful insertion work: tricking your mind into thinking you’re in control.
When I open my eyes, I’m flying. The sky is blue-grey and cloudless. The landscape below is a twisted amalgamation of giant, arboreal forests, craggy construction lots and interconnected dormitory-like structures of such an ugly brown that they can’t have come anywhere but from the seventies. I start to fall, and it takes me a few seconds to realize that it’s because I’m not flapping my arms. One of the marks of a good insertion man is an ability to quickly grasp and adapt to an ever-changing set of physical laws. As it goes, I’d say I’m fair, and a personal record mostly free of aborts backs me up.
“You okay?” Mike asks in my ear. “Need to be pulled?”
That’s Mike. He’s the best switchboard I’ve ever had, but he’s got one problem: he’s trigger-happy on the pull switch.
“No, Mike.” I speak slowly and calmly. “It’s fine.”
It’s comforting, actually. After all, the converse would be disastrous. I’d rather be pulled prematurely then left to dangle. Every second I’m in, I can feel Mike’s eyes glued to my stats. It’s what makes him so good on the board.
I’m just afraid that one day he’s going to have a major aneurism and I’m going to wind up elbows-deep with no out.
“Where’s our man?” I ask.
Mike doesn’t respond right away. I try to enjoy the flight, but there’s no wind, and the air feels stagnant. The smell is strange, like the cloying smell of a scented disinfectant, hiding something organic underneath.
“Deep,” Mike responds. “Two layers down, at least.”
#
It takes me almost an hour, dreamtime, to find the first gate. The target’s ‘scape is a mess, and not one of those tight, tiny messes you get with some. This is the urban sprawl of the unconscious: desire, fear, and memory manifesting in a twisted network of mountains, streets, sewers and towering glass and steel. But you know a gate when you find it—or at least a good insert man should. As you draw close, things start to feel different. Dimensions stretch. Some senses heighten, other ones disappear entirely. Details become more acute, sharp enough to cut your eyes. A good insert man should know.
It’s a high school, from the looks of it. Chicago-red brick, several structures wound together, dropped in the middle of an undeveloped lot between two skyscrapers. I remember from the file that the target went to a high school called Lincoln, but there are no signs to confirm it. I stick the landing and approach on foot.
Faceless teenagers are crowded all around one of the structures, clogging the entrances like cholesterol. I have to push through them, swim through them, and their bodies give way like thick taffy. Inside, they’re dancing the way white kids danced in the nineties, a kind of collective, mildly controlled seizure. Their taffy limbs pound at me from every direction as I push into the thick of it.
It’s the gymnasium, but it wasn’t big enough to be the gymnasium on the outside. It’s all dressed and dolled for prom, but something else is going on; something bad. I snap to this when I realize that I’m not swimming anymore. I’m being carried by a current of faceless bodies and taffy limbs, drawn inexorably closer to the center of the gymnasium, which by now couldn’t be less than ten thousand square feet. I’m in a coliseum.
Nobody else is getting pulled by the current; this is a bad sign. I’ve become a focus of attention—a main character in the dream narrative. It’s better to be a spectator. It’s safer to be a spectator.
The sea of faceless bodies washes me into a boxing ring in the center. All around us, the prom continues, with the faceless suits and tuxedos and dresses jerk to the undulating rhythm, but the bleachers—and, God, it’s like Madison Square Garden now—the bleachers are filled with tens of thousands of roaring fans.
There’s a man in the ring with me, a huge man with a letterman jacket and a pig face. The lines under his eyes make him too old to be a student, so I’m thinking coach; but this is just an educated guess. I don’t recognize this guy from the file, which means Lonnie dropped the ball, again.
The scarcity of good help and all that.
“Hey, Jew-boy,” The pig-coach roars at me. “You’re big. Why don’t you play football?”
I’m not big and not Jewish, but the target is, so this makes sense. Still, my dreamform is probably only about five feet seven inches, while the pig-coach is pushing six six and is leaking aggression like a broken levee. I can feel the adrenalin dump dropping into my system even as I restrain myself. It’s the archetypal dream-snare: the more the construct can engage the fight-or-flight center of your brain, the more power it has. Right now, my fight-or-flight center is screaming for a decision. Somewhere Mike is losing his shit, and his finger is on the pull switch. Suddenly this whole job’s two inches from a wash.
“My mom won’t let me,” I respond earnestly. “She says football’s too dangerous.”
The pig-coach laughs at me, a strange, gasping sound somewhere between a squeal and a hiccup. I hold my ground and feel myself gain an inch or two.
“Awww, Jew-boy can’t pway football?” The pig-coach squeals. “Is he afwaid he’ll get his big nose bwoken?”
Theoretically, I shouldn’t find any of this threatening or insulting in the slightest; but the pig-coach has got his hooks in me. Despite myself, I feel the liquid rage circulating through my system and the solid fear dropping in my stomach. The pig gains back the few inches that I took, and a few more besides.
Just a puzzle, I repeat to myself. It’s a psychological puzzle, not a fight. The last thing I would want to do is engage this entity in a form of combat in this place, where it makes all the rules and controls the field. I just need to find the right combination of pieces to unlock the gate.
Except, thanks to Lonnie, I don’t even know if I have the all the right pieces.
“Jew-boy! Jew-boy! Jew-boy!” The pig-coach roars as he charges me. I brace against the blow, and he knocks me into the turnbuckle. His fists—indescribable hybrids of hands and hooves—lash out, striking every exposed area. I bring up my arms, trying to guard my vitals, but it’s no good. His blows are like smart missiles, hovering for a moment before launching tactical strikes against an undefended side or an unguarded cheek.
“I don’t need to take that from some alky PE coach shit!” I mean to speak it calmly, but I’m screaming. I’m bleeding desperate emotion, I’m in the pig-coach’s snare, and I’m wheeling punch-drunk. “You’re just a washed-up second-string college jock-suck with a blown knee! You alky nothing shit!”
This is a wild guess, but I figure it’s a good one. Sure fits the profile of every high school football coach I ever met. But it’s a stab in the dark, because that’s where I am, in the dark, without a clue. Like a safecracker with cotton in his ears.
The coach draws back for a second. I may have cracked the code.
“Jew-boy! Jew-boy!” The pig-man squeals, and before I can raise my guard again, he’s on top of me—not just punching now but literally sitting on top of me, pulling away at my feeble arms and cracking me in the face.
My luck. My target had the only sober high-school football coach in the greater-Chicago area.
He continues to beat on me, and one of his pig-fists slips into my mouth and I taste his flesh—wet and salty, unthinkably unclean. The sensation is… defiling, to a degree I’ve never even imagined. This is seriously a whole new category of filthy.
I’m definitely off bacon for a couple of weeks.
The fight-or-flight center of my brain chimes in again, demanding a decision from the top brass. Mike’s got a sweaty finger on the pull switch, and I’m getting my ass handed to me by another man’s hang-up.
Fight-or-flight.
Eenie, meanie, minnie…
…fuck.
I grab the shit by his fat pig ears and pull his pink, bloated head down. At the same time I swing my head up, driving my forehead like a battering ram into his long, fleshy snout. I feel something give way—there’s a sharp pop—and then coach is rolling and squealing; not the hiccup gasps of laughter but the long shrieking howls of pain. He sounds just like a pig being butchered. In that moment, I’m on top of him, pounding at his face like John Henry, feeling the delicious yield of flesh and cartilage to knuckle.
Before I know it, he’s shrunk small enough that he can get his feet under my chest and he pushes me back. The reprieve is short-lived. He crawls for the edge of the ring, but I beat him to it. I loop the lowest rope around his neck and step on the back of his letterman jacket. I push down until the quivering stops. That’s when I become aware of a voice screaming in my ear.
“—ear me, get ready! You’ve tripped the safeties and I’m pulling—”
“No!” I bellow. “No. Mike, no, I’m fine.”
The faceless dancers part on one side of the ring, clearing a path across the gym floor, leading to a pair of double doors. They open, disclosing a portal of pure light.
“Are you sure? Your NKs were all over the—”
“I’m fine,” I repeat. “I’m passing the first gate.”
When I look back at the coach, he’s not a coach anymore. He’s a regular pig carcass, hanging from a hook that’s been descended from the ceiling like the announcer’s microphone, still wrapped in his letterman jacket, stained in blood and filth.
My teeth feel loose in my head as I duck beneath the rope and drop to the glitter-covered floor. My face is numb. As I step through the portal of light, I have a single thought.
So fucking fired, Lonnie.
#
The second level isn’t so bad. It’s an endless-house construct, built off the client’s childhood home. Infinite art deco hallways twist past innumerable doors, most of which are locked. I’ve got a follower on my tail—a dark, malevolent being that’s always a few steps behind me.
It’s old hat, positively Jungian, tres cliché.
Laughable.
I walk at a comfortable pace, creating a mental map of the place as I explore. Followers always stay just a few steps behind, always around the last corner or behind the last door. The endorphin rush from my fight with the pig-coach has infused me with an easy calm. The follower makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise, but training’s taught me that’s about as bad as it gets. I’ve got my fight-or-flight so subdued that even Mike must be taking it easy.
It only takes me what seems like a half hour to find the next gate. It’s an old wardrobe sitting in the middle of a library. Naturally, it’s locked, but a brief survey of the bookshelves nets me the key—a dog-eared copy of “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.” And I’m through.
If the second level was disappointing, level three is even worse. There’s always something sad about a person whose inner psychological layers are less interesting than their outer layers. The chip this target wore on his shoulder—the faceless dancers, the pig-coach—had been interesting in a mild sort of way. The third level was a flat, featureless ocean, created by the mind of someone who had never been on a boat before in his life. I’m standing at the helm of a ship with no rudder. The sails are full despite the complete absence of wind, and I’m being drawn towards a point on the distant horizon.
The waters are oily and murky. A dark, stale light hangs over everything. There are no stars to navigate by. Every so often a massive shadow passes beneath the boat, suggesting the existence of ancient, monolithic creatures below, possibly the physical manifestations of repressed desires and terrors.
All in all, disappointingly mundane. The pig-coach was more interesting.
The ship finally comes to port at a motel. The motel is not situated on an island or floating structure—it simply emerges out of the waters, as if the owners were stubborn heathen from the Noah story, and just kept adding levels as the floodwaters rose, until it was finally the flood that gave up. The rust trim compliments the beige stucco the way smeared lipsticks compliments an aging prostitute’s cracking face.
“Mike, how long have we got?” I whisper.
“Looks like about another fifteen minutes REM, if he’s uninterrupted.”
“Right,” I nod. It’s only mildly comforting. There’s not a set exchange rate on realtime and dreamtime—you have to feel it out. Fifteen minutes realtime might buy enough dreamtime to build Rome or break for a commercial; you’ve got to go by feel, and it feels okay.
“All right, almost there,” I whisper back. “Going silent.”
Here’s where stealth comes into play. On a certain level, here at the center, my client is aware of everything in this world. The ship was created especially for me, the visitor, and it drew me here intentionally. On another level, this is my man’s most intimate, hidden place, and if he were to become aware of an external spectator, this reality would shatter like a stained-glass window.
The motel appears empty from the front, but in the distance I can hear faint, orgasmic moans. Good sign.
I climb a flight of faded stairs to the second floor, and pull myself up by the gutters onto the roof. The tiles are wet and slick, and I carefully creep across their surface. The other edge of the roof looks down into the interior courtyard, the source of the moans. The two levels of the motel encircle the courtyard, which houses a small swimming pool. The water is an emerald hue, and there are lights inside the swimming pool, which cast the courtyard in a faint, shimmering green.
Floating in the middle of the swimming pool is my paycheck.
Even from this distance, I recognize my target. He’s fucking a blonde with small tits and huge hair, and she’s writhing and screaming. Behind them, a massive Samoan man is fucking him. The fuck sandwich is taking place on one of those purple inflatable floating recliners, which should technically be capsizing due to the obvious weight differential between the blonde and the Samoan.
I slip off the lens cap and advance the roll.
Creeping to the edge of the roof, I plant a heel in the gutter and start snapping. The zoom lens is taking me closer than I care to come, and my subjects are illuminated eerily by the flickering glow of the pool’s lights. I’m getting clean, focused shots of the target, the blonde, and even a couple of the Samoan. Funny thing is, I know the client isn’t going to give a shit about the Samoan. She’s going to focus right in on the blonde. I don’t recognize her from the file, so she might be a complete fabrication, which I know won’t help.
I think the Samoan’s a professional wrestler. I swear I’ve seen him on TV.
That’s when I remember why I shouldn’t be wearing this coat. My work isn’t romantic. It’s not even fair. I’m not going through people’s garbage and snapping shots of their dirty little affairs. I’m going through their minds and snapping shots of their dirty little dreams. This poor bastard was damned the moment I set foot here. The client’s going drag him across the coals for the blonde. If the blonde wasn’t here, she’d drag him across the coals for the Samoan. If the Samoan weren’t there, if he was just sitting in the middle of the floating recliner giving himself a blowjob, she’d drag him across the coals for the fact that she wasn’t there.
And if she was there…that would be the worst thing of all. I don’t think any of us like how we look in another person’s eyes, or like being used as a puppet in someone else’s play.
I’m a detective, but I don’t detect anything. I pick my way through labyrinths and take pictures, but it doesn’t matter what the pictures are of. The jealous spouses that hire me have already handed down a verdict. It’s not innocent until proven guilty; it’s not even guilty until proven innocent. It’s guilty, and awaiting proof.
I feel sick to my stomach, and I’ve got enough pictures. I carefully stand and turn.
“Mike, I’ve got a full roll and I’m coming—“
Standing on the roof, twenty feet away, is my father.
He looks exactly like he did in the casket—he’s even wearing the same suit, the olive-grey suit—except his eyes are open.
He’s staring at me with a blank expression on his face.
“Shit.”
The curse escapes my lips and spins like a leaf in the wind. My father’s eyes flicker and he takes a step towards me, polished dress shoes gripping cleanly to the slick tile.
“Mike,” I shout. “Pull me. Pull me now!”
“—ignal interference, I can’t—” Mike’s panicked voice comes in and out in a hissing snake pit of static. “—orpheus implant, get out of—”
Mike cuts out entirely, but his last words send a chill through me.
Morpheus Implant.
I make a dash across the roof, scrambling across the glistening tile, slipping and falling and pushing. He’s on me in a heartbeat, grabbing the cuff of my Humphrey Bogart trench coat and delivering a kick to my midsection that takes the wind out of my lungs and gives me the taste of blood in my mouth as trade.
The fight-or-flight center of my brain is in chaos; the central government’s collapsed. Not that it makes a difference. This isn’t a trap; it’s a gun, cocked and pointed at my brain. There’s no bait to refuse, no snare to sidestep. A Morpheus Implant doesn’t need me to believe in it.
Fight-or-flight.
Flight-or-fight.
Eenie.
I twist out of the coat and launch off of the roof and turn, grabbing the gutter as I fall. I had hope to swing onto the balcony below, but the gutter gives way with a metal shriek and I’m falling.
For a second, I almost consider flapping my arms.
The cool, wet concrete catches up with me like a giant fist of stone. My whole body howls with the impact. I try to focus, repeating the kindergarten mantra like a drumbeat:
thisisjustadreamthisisjustadreamthisisjustadream
It gets me on my feet and moving, but the problem is, it’s just not true. It’s just a nightmare. That’s what they used to tell you when you woke up screaming. It’s just a dream. It can’t hurt you.
Then they invented one that could.
I need an out.
From behind me, steel fingers lock around my throat. I don’t know where he’s come from, or how he got off the roof so quickly, but he lifts me off the ground effortlessly. I claw at the noose of fingers.
Somewhere I can hear my mother screaming—but it’s not panic, it’s grief. Like she cried at the funeral. Who’s she crying for? I should give her a call and ask her, if she’s not at lunch—it seems like she’s always at lunch when I call, regardless of what time of day I call.
I climb back through the fog and hear the sound of boots dragging on concrete. It’s my feet, my father’s dragging and now he wrenches me around, and something wet slaps my face. My vision’s gone blurry again—everything seems to shimmer and shake—the fog threatens to rush back in—I should call Mom—the ground is undulating like a sheet in the wind.
I can’t breathe.
Then it all snaps into focus. Not literally. The reason things aren’t literally in focus is that my father—no, the Morpheus Implant—he’s holding my head under the water.
Like the man said, I got confused which side of the surface I was on.
Things are going dark. I need to find an out.
Like that one.
It’s right in front of me, on the shimmering floor—or the surface, or whatever—build into the underside of the inflated recliner. A trapdoor, hickory or oak or who-gives-a-shit, with a rusted brass ring fixed in the middle. I reach for it. I might as well be reaching for the moon. My father’s grip is inhuman. I can’t think my way out of it. I can’t slip it with a puzzle or paradox or koan. The Morpheus Implant is cold technology, electricity running through a transistor. It doesn’t care whether a tree falling in the woods makes a sound. I need something real.
Something real. Like an implant of my own.
The camera has disappeared—he’s scrambled me and the implant has gone offline—so I try to clear my thoughts and focus. I conjure up the sting of stern pressure on my arm, the painted fingertip drawing my attention to the muddy streaks across the clean linoleum floor.
Look what a mess you’ve made.
And then there’s that sensation again, like a related memory, like déjà vu but colder. Everything is going dark, but I can feel the camera forming in front of me. My fingers swim through the water and grip the weathered leather edges. As the blackness sets in, my thumb instinctively finds the switch. I advance the roll.
The last of the light disappears without a whimper.
Flash.
His grip loosens by an almost imperceptible fraction, and I wrench free. I focus again, convincing myself that I’m standing right-side up, and the rest of reality complies. Gravity spins on its axis, and I’m standing on the flapping fabric of the water’s ceiling, looking down at the door. Behind me my father’s hands stick out of the ground, groping blindly, like a man who’s been buried alive.
I pull open the door and leap through.
This is by no means safe. I meant to leave, and I’ve gone deeper. I’m in an inner layer now. This is a dangerous place. Appearances fall off here, or assume multiple dimensions. I’m in a castle where the walls are wound with torturer’s implements, pulsating like hot pink organs, smelling like olive oil. Spiders whisper in my ear, singing songs more beautiful that any I’ve ever heard, and constantly I’m weeping. I can see the castle from a hundred miles away, outside myself, and it is an elevator, moving up and down through an infinite shaft, stretching through a cold and dark expanse that stretches to eternity and loops back through my eyes.
This is a dangerous place.
Somewhere, my father is still looking for me.
I tear my suit into strips and make a rope. This doesn’t make any real sense, but sense is no good here anyways. I’m running on instinct now, an absurd intuition based on years of insertion jobs. I tie off the rope on a penny nail sticking on the wall and lower myself through a mirror on the wall and down through a twisting sea of reflecting light. When I reach the end of the rope, I add more by tearing off strips of my own flesh, then my organs, then my bones. When I reach the bottom, there is nothing left of me, and I am in the city after dark.
I make a new me out of garbage from a nearby dumpster; it seems like a good disguise. The streets are inhabited by custodians, droopy-faced machine men with street sweepers for legs. I fall into the crowd and move down the street—swept along, as it is.
Glad I haven’t lost my sense of humor.
I can’t risk trying to reach Mike. It would pinpoint my position and the Morpheus Implant would be on in the blink of an eye. Mike knows this, which is why he’s not trying to contact me, which is why he’s probably pissing his pants right now. If I make it out of this, new pants for everybody.
A vehicle roars down the street, an amalgamation of a 19th century steam-locomotive and a Chicago transit bus. It screams and squeaks as the air-breaks lock up the turning pistons, and it pulls to the side of the street, fifty feet in front of me. The doors open like a yawning maw, and my father steps off.
I can’t disengage from the crowd that pulls me steadily closer to him without drawing his attention. The wide sweeps of his head imply that the Morpheus Implant is still trying to locate me, and breaking from the pack of street-sweepers would be as obvious as firing a flare. I keep my head down and control my emotions.
We draw closer. He’s poised like a gargoyle with a swivel-top head, standing immobile in front of the bus’ doors. I draw closer. I’m running the full gamut of meditation exercises now, ones I hoped I would never have to use. I imagine myself getting smaller and smaller and smaller; infinitely smaller, infinitely shrinking, until I am nothing but the process of shrinking itself.
I draw closer.
I’m imagining getter bigger now, bigger and bigger, until I fill the entire world, the entire universe, until I’m so big that the universe and I become indistinguishable, like an orange-tinted lens stretched so big that you forget that everything is orange; like a smell so omnipresent that you can’t even notice it anymore.
I draw closer.
In a few seconds, I will cross directly in front of him. I breathe out, struggling to silence the infinitely reduced me that is left, the howling beast chained to the two poles of fight-or-flight.
Shhh.
I pass my father, and out of my peripheral vision, I see his stone posture break as he heads in the opposite direction.
I unchain the beast, and hurl myself at the closing doors of the bus.
My father turns, too late, too late. The doors slam shut, shearing through my garbage legs. The pain is sharp and real, as if the limbs were real flesh and blood. But the bus is moving. I drag my body across the rubber floor and pull myself into one of the seats. Then I notice something familiar lying across the seat beside me.
Hello, Humphrey Bogart.
I slip the coat back on.
#
I grow new legs—they are made of slender wood, like puppet’s legs, for a reasons I’m too tired to ponder—and I make my way to the back of the train—it’s completely a train by now—and leap. The Morpheus Implant will be waiting for me at the next stop, so I’m better off jumping. Mustard-colored haystacks break my fall, and I’m safe, lost the in maze of the subconscious outback.
Ten Morpheus Implants couldn’t find me now, though it would be a hell of a family reunion. I’m exactly in the middle of nowhere, which makes it remarkably easy choosing which direction to walk. The journey takes several weeks, across deserts, savannas, rice paddies, jungles and glaciers. I make and lose friends along the way, their faces and personalities vague and immediately forgotten, yet every loss feels like a poignant wound. By the time I reach the end of my journey, my eggshell eyes cry continuously.
I know I’m almost out when I begin to recognize the dreamscape. The sky is blue-grey and cloudless. The landscape is a twisted amalgamation of giant, arboreal forests, craggy construction lots and interconnected brown dormitory structures. I pass the high school. It looks like it’s been condemned.
Finally I’m standing at the edge. It’s impossible to describe the edge of a dream. People always imagine it’s like an abyss, like starless space, but even that would be something. The edge of a dream is like a singularity, like a black hole. The closer you get, the less you can describe it.
I spread my arms and begin to fly.
#
I’m exhausted when I get back to my room. I hang Humphrey Bogart up on the coat rack and cast off the funeral suit; it’s still wet from the pool. Naked, I pick my way across the wasteland of discarded paperwork, spent cigarette packs and dirty clothes that compose my bedroom floor.
I’ve got to clean this up someday.
I collapse onto the yellowing sheets and close my eyes. I feel like I could sleep for a year.
“Diggs?”
I open my eyes. Mike is staring at me, dark rings under his eyes, his face pale. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days.
“How long was I in?” I ask.
“Forty-three minutes,” Mike pronounces, and I chuckle. Typical Mike.
Then I moan.
“God, I feel like shit.”
“Don’t move,” he insists, and applying a restraining hand to my chest. “Mr. Morpheus did a number on you.”
“Any permanent damage?”
“I don’t think so, thanks to that trick you pulled with the camera. Where’d you get that idea?”
“Necessity being the mother of invention, I figured I’d rub my implant against his implant and see if I couldn’t make some sparks.”
“Well, it worked. It took the Morpheus Implant point-oh-seven microseconds to adapt. Maybe we can use it to develop some sort of Morpheus countermeasure—“
I lifted my hands to my forehead and pulled off the crown of electrodes.
“Wait,” Mike objects. “I wanted to run some more tests.”
“Later. Let’s just get out of here.”
Mike reluctantly shifts position, sliding around the gurney and into the front of the van. I lurch to sitting position and stumble into the passenger seat.
Outside the windshield, it’s dark and still, 2am in the hills, surrounded by mansions. The van rumbles to life and we pull away. In the closest mansion, a single light is on in one of the upper rooms.
Sleepless night for somebody.
#
I hand the manila envelope to the manicured hand of Mrs. Rothman. She tears it open hungrily and pulls out the glossy photos. I watch her face twist in rage and disgust, but that’s just the first level. Beneath it is the look of wounded betrayal. And beneath that, in her deepest level, is the satisfaction of being confirmed in her own self-hate. I don’t know this woman, but I know she hates herself on the deepest level, and she expects everyone else to. Why did she marry the man on the floating recliner? Probably because he didn’t seem to hate her, which might have been a reprieve at first. But soon it grew disconcerting and eventually downright terrifying. Where was he hiding his hate? So she started digging, looking for anything, anywhere that might give her grounds to confirm her deepest religious belief: that she was a horrible being detested by everyone, and that she therefore had the right to despise everyone else.
I just handed her all the proof she needed.
I feel sick to my stomach.
She barely glances at the itemized bill before she signs the check. I could have padded it with a European vacation and she still would have signed the bottom line; but I didn’t. I used to think it was because I’m an honest person, but right now I’m thinking it’s just a smokescreen to obscure the filthy, vicious truth of what I’ve done with my life. It’s fancy bread for the shit sandwich.
She leaves in tears, muttering about “that bastard,” and I assume she’s not talking about the wrestler. Before she goes, she pulls the coin-sized transmitter out of her pocket and slaps it down on my desk. I suspect it’s not so much out of a desire to recoup her deposit as it is to wash her hands of the whole thing. She slams the door behind her almost hard enough to shatter the fiberglass window that bears my name.
I pour myself a drink and pick up the transmitter, letting it roll back and forth across my oscillating fingers. It has a five-foot range, but functions best when it was within eighteen inches. For best results, we always recommend the client place it inside the target’s pillowslip. I take a pull off the bourbon and hit the intercom.
“Lonnie, could I see you for a second?”
Lonnie waddles in like a penguin, holding a donut between his teeth and another one in his hand. He mumbles a greeting through chews.
“Take a seat, Lonnie.”
I lean back and flip through a familiar file on my desk, still tumbling the transmitter between my knuckles.
“Lonnie, I was just glancing through your file on the Rothman case.”
“Yeah?” he says, smacking his lips.
“Yeah. According to your file, he’s a chairman of the Jewish Charity Fund.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Lonnie nods, taking another bite. “He’s in fundraising or something.”
“He raises money for the support of Israel.”
“Huh.”
“You know much about this whole Israel-Palestinian conflict?”
“Only that it’s been going on forever.”
“Yeah. Well, you know our man periodically takes trips to Israel to see how the Fund’s money is being distributed.”
“Yeah, I think I remember checking that. I pulled the flight records, right?”
“Good memory.” I lean on the words. “Yeah, our man heads to Israel every six months and checks things out. Inspects troop armaments, military tech development. He even has some access to strategy sessions.”
“Yeah?” Lonnie asks, like a man who just realizes his head is in the guillotine.
“Yeah.” I stop rolling the transmitter. “Which is why the Israeli government fitted him with a fucking Morphius Implant, you piece of shit!” I throw the file in his face. “In case some Palestinian fucks ever tried to dreamscan him!”
Lonnie’s stops in mid-chew. He’s pale.
“Diggs, I didn’t know—“
“Yeah? Too bad, it’s your job to know. You’re fucking fired, Lonnie.”
And… it’s as satisfying as I’d hoped. Everything I dreamed.
His mouth opens, but there’s nothing there to say. Mike walks in holding a cardboard box, and offers it to Lonnie. Lonnie stands, takes the box, and walks five steps towards the door. Then he has the nerve to turn and face me.
“Diggs,” he mumbles, “I’ve got some debts pending right now… it’s a really bad time. Can’t you give me some severance pay?”
I rise from my seat and walk towards Lonnie. He flinches, as if expecting me to hit him, which proves he’s not entirely oblivious. But I don’t hit him. I take the Humphrey Bogart trench coat I bought this morning off the rack and throw it across the cardboard box in his arms.
“There’s your severance pay.” I jerk a thumb to the door.
“You’re severed. Now fuck. Out.”
Lonnie leaves with a whimper, and I pour myself another drink.
#
I finish the last of the bottle and drop it, where it joins the rest of garbage on my bedroom floor: the wasteland of discarded paperwork, spent cigarette packs and dirty clothes. It was a close facsimile, just a little exaggerated.
But there’s always one sure way you can tell a dream from the waking world.
In a dream, everything is meaningful; each object holds more power and potential that its matter can bear. But this side of the surface is cold and dark, and there is no purpose to either quality.
I collapse onto the yellowing sheets and feel myself immediately falling to sleep.
But I won’t dream. I can’t dream anymore, not without electrodes and a full transmission rig. I can’t have a dream unless it belongs to someone else.
I’m trapped on this side of the surface.
I fall asleep.
Filed under Short Science Fiction Stories · Tagged with Science Fiction, SciFi, Short Science Fiction, W. N. Parkes
GS Midden
January 29, 2010 by Publisher · Leave a Comment
When Rhonda finished gelling her hair, she opened the door of the powder room and heard her Uncle Sid talking to someone.
A tall, dark-skinned woman in a red tunic and short skirt stood in front of a concerned Sid. The woman had an unbelievable figure and her outfit displayed every curve. Rhonda decided she must be a fashion-challenged time-traveler. No woman in today’s Manhattan would ever wear such an outfit. Red was so last century.
Morning sunlight — filtered by Manhattan’s polluted air and the dirty office window — reflected from the back of Sid’s bald dome.
The woman pointed a weapon at Rhonda. “You are Rhonda Minestra?”
“Who wants to know?” Rhonda replied with a look of disdain.
Instead of answering, the visitor talked into a wrist device. “Captain, I have completed my mission. Please note my efficiency in the ship’s log.” She paused a moment, then continued. “Affirmative. I have apprehended Rhonda Minestra and Sidney Glower.”
“Hey!” Rhonda exclaimed. “What’re you talkin’ about? Apprehended?”
“Silence. Don’t make me use this blaster.” She sneered at Rhonda. “By the way, what happened to your hair?”
“Orange-green spikes are in at the moment. You obviously don’t know that, otherwise you wouldn’t have shown up with those grotesque short braids.”
The woman stiffened and glared at Rhonda.
“Do you have a name?” Sid asked.
“I am Lieutenant Yoo-Hoo. I am the Communication Officer on the GS Midden.”
“What’s GS stand for?” Rhonda asked.
“Garbage Scow.”
“That fits.” Rhonda placed a hand over her mouth and giggled. “I can see you shovelin’ garbage.”
Yoo-Hoo glared a Rhonda.
Rhonda glared back. Until her body started to disintegrate.
Electronic equipment filled the room except for a platform where the three of them materialized. The ship had a strange smell, a combination of something dead masked by an overdose of flowery scent.
Yoo-Hoo walked over to a control panel, but kept the weapon pointed at them. Sid took a step off the platform and looked startled when his pants fell to his knees.
“Adjust your belt,” Yoo-Hoo said. “The matter translocator removed some unnecessary poundage.”
“Hmm.” He patted the top of his head. “Can it regrow hair?”
“You don’t have a hair problem.” Yoo-Hoo waved the weapon in Rhonda’s direction. “She does.”
Rhonda ground her teeth and stepped off the platform. An alarm bell sounded.
“Give me your purse.” Yoo-Hoo held out her left hand. “Something in it set off the alarm.” She took the bag and rummaged through it.
Rhonda wanted to grab a handful of her hair and yank it. How dare the woman paw through her handbag.
Yoo-Hoo held up a set of brass knuckles and raised an eyebrow.
“My father gave me those on my twenty-first birthday.”
“And this?” She pulled out a slim knife.
“A present from a nice old man in Sicily.” The nice old man was a gangster chieftain who had hired her father to whack a meddlesome politician. Rhonda accompanied her father on that trip to meet some of her cousins.
Yoo-hoo opened a drawer and dropped Rhonda’s stuff into it. “That way.” She waved a hand to an open hatchway to their left while handing Rhonda her purse.
Passing through the hatch brought them to the flight deck. Display monitors covered the front wall, some showing views of Earth and others showing technical data. The paint had flaked off much of the walls and ceiling. Cables ran over and between consoles and equipment racks. To the right was a long bank of equipment with two chairs. One was empty, but a humanoid lounged in the other chair. The creature was tall, angular and had pointy ears. In the center of the room, a stout human sat in a swivel chair wearing a blue jumpsuit that was a few sizes too small. He gave Rhonda a friendly grin. “Ms. Minestra. How nice of you to agree to help us. And you brought your assistant. Even better.”
“I didn’t agree to anything.” Rhonda frowned as she pointed to Yoo-Hoo. “She kidnapped us.”
“I’m Captain Korque.” He brushed aside Rhonda’s assertion. “Lt. Yoo-Hoo is very dedicated and sometimes is a bit difficult.”
“I followed your orders,” Yoo-Hoo said in a sarcastic voice.
“Kidnapping is a Federal offense,” Sid said. “If you return us immediately, we won’t press charges. I assure you, the military is already tracking you.”
“Your military doesn’t know we exist,” the alien said. “Our shields absorb the signals put out by your primitive radar systems.”
“That is Commander Spark, my Science Officer.”
“A very unscientific Science Officer,” Yoo-Hoo said.
Spark made a gesture that Rhonda assumed was obscene on the alien’s home planet.
Korque cleared his throat. “In case you’re wondering why we chose you – may I call you Rhonda – we found your name and space/time coordinates in the Intergalactic Travelers Guide. Several references said that you were very helpful to other travelers. And here you are.”
“I’d like to see that,” Sid said.
Rhonda nodded in agreement. A number of aliens and time-travelers had shown up in the office because of this guide.
Spark turned to a console and punched some keys. A monitor changed display and a long string of hyphenated numbers and symbols filled half of the screen. Underneath, a small organization chart showed Rhonda’s name – as president of the Life-Style Consultant business — and Sid as her assistant. Beneath the chart, strange words filled the rest of the screen. The words looked vaguely familiar to Rhonda, like a parody of real writing.
“That chart is wrong,” Sid said. “I own the business.”
“Not likely,” Spark said. “Travelers Guide is renown for its accuracy. It verifies every piece of data.”
“But it’s wrong,” Sid snapped.
“Silence.” Korque scowled at Sid. “We are not here to debate the accuracy of a chart. Any more arguments and I’ll have you removed from the bridge.”
Sid made a face but kept silent.
“What’s all the stuff on top and bottom?” Rhonda asked.
“On top are the time/space coordinates of your location,” Spark said. “The bottom contains particulars about the help you provided to other travelers.”
“As to the reason you’re here, Rhonda,” Korque said, “we need your help.” Korque paused a moment then continued. “We hope you and your assistant can develop a plan to solve our problem.”
Rhonda raised an eyebrow.
“We need to find a source of fuel on your primitive world.”
Rhonda felt competing sensations of exhilaration and confusion. Exhilaration because the crew believed that she was the boss, not Sid. It was an ideal opportunity to practice her management and problem-solving skills. After all, she had a degree in business from junior college. The confusion came from the dozen or more questions she had. Something wasn’t kosher here. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Ships never run out of fuel in the movies ‘cause they use atomic power and things like that. How come you need fuel?”
“We have special needs,” Spark said.
“Like what?” Sid asked.
“Garbage,” Korque said. “Our propulsion units burn garbage.”
“You can’t extract fuel from an asteroid?” Sid asked. “Or suck molecules from space?”
“Our propulsion units only consume garbage.” Korque shrugged.
“I don’t get it.” Rhonda’s confusion deepened. “You guys are from the future, right?”
“A few thousand years,” Korque said. “We think.”
“Our Science Officer screwed up,” Yoo-Hoo said. “Again.”
Spark gave her a foul look.
Rhonda half-closed her eyes and stared at Korque.
“I see you don’t believe us.” Korque sighed. “This type of ship picks up garbage at Space Fleet bases. Then we cruise to the next base using the garbage as fuel. At the moment, we’re low on garbage. So we want you to help us refuel.”
Rhonda tapped her foot. The explanation didn’t do much to relieve her confusion and now anxiety replaced her exhilaration. Her father had taught her to listen to the ‘good’ reason people used to explain things and then ferret out the ‘real’ reason, the one people didn’t talk about. She had the good reason from Korque but she was missing the real reason. Her instincts told her it was a whopper. Her instincts also smelled a rich reward if she figured everything out.
“It’s a simple request,” Yoo-Hoo said. “What part don’t you understand?”
“The part I don’t understand,” Rhonda’s voice dripped with sarcasm, “is why an expensive space ship would do nothin’ but fly around to get rid of garbage.” Perhaps, her question would get them to reveal the real reason.
Korque looked embarrassed as he glanced at his crew. Spark shrugged and Yoo-Hoo gave a slight nod.
“Some of the garbage is converted to coal. The rest of it is as burned as fuel.” Korque gave a small smile. “Coal is carbon-based, you see.”
“No I don’t see. Give me a break.” Rhonda smacked her forehead with the palm of her right hand. “First garbage and now coal?” Korque bit his lip and Rhonda knew she had them close to spilling the truth. To get at that truth, she would have to use some tough negotiating techniques. “I don’t think we can help you. You need someone else. Someone who will believe all this garbage you people are shovelin’ at me.”
Sid coughed and gave Rhonda a fish-eyed look.
“I knew she was useless,” Yoo-Hoo said. “I say throw them into the brig for a while. I bet they change their tune after that.”
The brig was a pair of rooms at the end of a short corridor secured by a barred entry. Each room contained a cot, a toilet and an unlocked door. As soon as Yoo-Hoo left, Sid hissed, “Are you crazy? Go along with these nut cases. It’s the only way we’ll ever get back home.”
“They’re connin’ us. Come on, Uncle Sid. Can’t you see how phony their story is? They travel way back into the past. Why? They’re obviously part of a military group. What’s their mission? And why does this ship turn garbage into coal?” Rhonda waved a finger at Sid. “They’re lyin’ or at least hidin’ somethin’.”
“I don’t think the answers will do us any good.”
“I think the answers will make us rich.” Rich enough for Rhonda to achieve her ambitions. Her father, an accomplished hit man, was getting too old for field work. It was only a matter of time before he was arrested or killed while fulfilling a contract. Since he refused to acknowledge his age problem, Rhonda’s only hope was to get him an alternative job. For that she needed a big chunk of money: big enough to open a technical institute to train the next generation of hit men. With her father on the faculty, the school would be a success because every wannabe hit man in the country knew her father’s name; he was a living legend.
She also had timing and opportunity on her side. Federal agencies, fearful of Congressional investigations, were outsourcing all their dirty work. Every month, her father got offers from the Feds to whack a disgruntled employee or someone who had leaked secret intelligence. And then there was the burgeoning new market for contractors who could snatch people and fly them to other countries where the prisoner could be interrogated without worrying about Constitutional or human rights. The time was ripe for her academy. This crew would provide her with the wherewithal to get started.
“Why do you think you can get rich from these guys?” Sid paced the small room.
“If I get some answers, I can come up with a plan. And the plan will involve more than refuelin’ ‘cause these guys are in a lotta other trouble. They get my plan and we get compensated for our efforts. And we don’t get paid in coal, either.”
Yoo-Hoo released them a few hours later. “The Captain says you can eat with us. I’d have given you bread and water in your cells.”
“That’s why you’re a lowly lieutenant and he’s the captain.” Rhonda smiled at Yoo-Hoo. “He makes better decisions.”
The crew ate their meals at a folding table in the flight deck. The food, synthetic according to Spark, had a whiff of turpentine about it.
“You realize that I can keep you in those cells indefinitely, don’t you?” Korque said. “So I hope you have come to your senses.”
“Sorry.” Rhonda helped herself to a bowl of artificial-looking salad. “I can’t help you unless I understand the situation, and right now, I’m confused by all the half-truths you’ve dumped on me.”
Sid coughed and grimaced.
Korque and Spark exchanged a brief look.
“All right,” Korque said. “We haven’t been completely honest with you. A short time ago, we resigned from the Fleet and became independent contractors.”
“Sounds like mutiny to me,” Sid said.
“Damn right,” Yoo-Hoo snarled. “Galactic Fleet treats us like trash. Lousy pay. No transfers. No promotions. We’re not taking it anymore.”
“After we announced our resignation, a battle cruiser chased us and we flew into a wormhole to escape. That’s how we ended up far into the past and in this seedy part of the galaxy. We need a plan that will allow us to return to the future and escape punishment, and you two are the only ones close enough to help us.”
“The Captain and I want to rejoin the Fleet,” Spark said. “If we can avoid court-martial.”
“You see,” Korque continued, “we intended to make a demonstration, nothing more. But, Yoo-Hoo’s rhetoric got us a bit enflamed and we went too far.”
“This is so typical of the Fleet.” Yoo-Hoo crossed her arms and glared at Korque. “Instead of accepting responsibility for your actions, you place all the blame on the lowest-ranking member.”
Rhonda’s brain flashed a danger signal. This was much deeper than she had anticipated. Refueling wasn’t too difficult. Absolving them from a mutiny was an entirely different level of complexity. Her dreams of getting her father out of field work had just crashed and burned.
“So you want to take garbage from Earth so you can continue your travels?” Sid said. “Is that right?”
“Earth?” Korque looked stunned.
“Did you say Earth?” Spark’s pointy ears wiggled furiously.
“They’re trying to fool us,” Yoo-Hoo said.
Rhonda’s despair evaporated. There was yet more to the story. “What’s so surprisin’ about Earth?”
“Earth is a legend,” Korque said.
“It’s a myth,” Yoo-Hoo said. “An old-wives’ tale.”
“If it does exist,” Spark added, “we don’t know where it is.”
“But the Travelers Guide told you we lived on Earth,” Sid said. “Didn’t it?”
“Actually,” Spark replied, “all it contains is the time/space coordinates. It doesn’t give a name which, after all, is a local convention that can change over time. Besides, different races give different names to the same planets. To avoid confusion, the Guide ignores place names.”
“How can you not know where Earth is?” Rhonda asked Korque. “Aren’t you a human?”
“Hold on a second.” Spark left the table and went to his console. He tapped keys for a few seconds, then said, “Ahh. Here it is. The Fleet Central Library was destroyed during the Cola Wars. Earth’s location was in the Library’s data base. That was a thousand years before my time, and since then, extensive searches have been made to find Earth. Without success.” He tapped some more keys. “The accepted consensus is that Earth is either a myth or, if it ever existed, it was also destroyed in the Cola Wars.”
“The Cola Wars are far into Earth’s present future.” Korque rubbed his chin. “It’s possible that Earth exists in this time/space, but not in ours.”
Rhonda had trouble sitting still. She had plan. A good plan. She smiled at Korque.
“What?” he said, noticing her smile.
“I can help you.”
“Let’s hear it,” Yoo-Hoo said.
Rhonda ignored Yoo-Hoo and said to Korque, “What’s in it for us? We save you and all we get is a handshake. I don’t think so.”
“How about we don’t throw you out an airlock?” Yoo-Hoo sneered at Rhonda.
Korque stared at a distant bulkhead. He cleared his throat and looked at Rhonda. “Are diamonds valuable on Earth?”
Sid’s mouth dropped open.
Rhonda blinked in surprise.
Yoo-Hoo made a rude noise.
“You see,” Spark said, “coal and diamonds are both made from carbon atoms but they have different crystal structures. We produce the coal so we can process it into a particular type of diamond. It has special lattice design for use as quantum chip filters.”
“It’s a military application,” Korque cracked his knuckles, “but we can also make a commercial product. Tell us your plan. If we like it, we’ll make you a pile of diamonds.”
“Okay.” Rhonda took a deep breath. “First the refueling. Can your monitors get close up on the surface? Like New York City?”
“Sure.” Spark zoomed a monitor on Manhattan.
“Go south, to the largest island in the bay.”
With the monitor showing Staten Island, Rhonda said, “See that big green area inna middle of the island? That’s where you can get fuel. It’s the biggest garbage dump inna world. It’s closed now, so all that garbage is covered with soil. But it isn’t very far beneath the surface.”
“All right.” Korque nodded. “What about the plan?”
“When you return to your time, don’t mention the mutiny. You only talk about finding Earth. You tell everyone that the three of you put together a study on where it must be and you left to find it.”
“That’s the dumbest plan I ever heard.” Yoo-Hoo glared at Rhonda.
“Actually,” Spark said, “it has merit. But we’d have to come back with incontrovertible proof of Earth’s existence.”
Korque tapped his fingers on the table. Finally, he said, “We better visit the surface to see what we can find.” Korque looked around the table. “You,” he pointed to Sid, “will stay here with Yoo-Hoo.”
“As a hostage?” Sid asked.
“Whatever.” Korque shrugged.
The matter translocator sent Rhonda, Korque and Spark to a spot surrounded by trees and shrubs in the southwest corner of Central Park, near Columbus Circle. Their mission was to find something that could be used as proof of Earth’s existence.
Korque’s jump suit — now a few sizes too large — flapped in the mild breeze.
Rhonda caught the strange look some New Yorkers threw her way. She checked her hair in a compact mirror and gasped at her six-inch thick Afro hair-do. It was so old-fashioned! “I’m gonna kill her when I get back on the ship.”
“The captain won’t let me kill Yoo-Hoo,” Spark said. “Can I watch you do it?”
They left the park and stopped on a corner to wait for the traffic light to change before crossing Central Park West. Spark placed both hands on a traffic control cabinet. “Implausible. This device is self-aware and yearns for more meaningful duties. This is it, Captain.” Spark grinned at them. “I’ll write my thesis on this phenomenon.”
“Give it up, Spark,” Korque replied.
“A doctoral thesis?” Rhonda asked.
“High School Equivalency Certificate,” Korque said. “This will be his seventeenth attempt. He won his Science Officer rating in a card game.”
Spark took a device from a belt pouch. He saw Rhonda looking at it. “It’s a quadri-dimensional receptor. I’ll use it to record documentation for the thesis.”
“Help!” a woman screamed. “He’s gotta remote control for a bomb.” She swung a large purse and hit Spark between the shoulder blades. “He’s gonna blow up the statue of Columbus.”
More people yelled, screamed or waved fists.
Rhonda grabbed Korque’s arm. “Get us back to the ship. Quick.” Rhonda wanted no part of a riot. Not without the brass knuckles that Yoo-Hoo had refused to give back.
Korque pulled out his communicator.
“There’s another one!” A man screamed and pointed to Korque.
Korque keyed the communicator as Rhonda leaned close to hear.
Spark defended himself as best he could against the seething mob. Many of the people seemed unconcerned about the reason for the uproar and used it to exercise at the expense of the other pedestrians.
Police sirens wailed from somewhere south on Eighth Avenue.
“You have reached Lt. Yoo-Hoo’s message service,” a sexy male voice said. “She is presently under her hair treatment device and will be unavailable for. . . fifteen minutes and. . . ten seconds. Please leave a message.”
Rhonda looked around, trying to find an escape route. A sea of milling, shouting, shoving people surrounded her. Two police cars pulled up. The mob parted like the Red Sea for Moses and a squad of NYPD’s finest ran through to tackle the three of them.
Within minutes, they were in the back of a paddy wagon that smelled of mildew and burnt oil. Rhonda winched at the clank of the door as it slammed shut. Foreboding filled her mind. She hadn’t found the proof she needed. Another thought jarred her already damaged psyche. Sooner or later, her companions would be exposed as time travelers, and the government would disappear them. They would be drained of information, but never released, their existence forever a secret. She glanced at Korque who seemed unconcerned.
Spark, meanwhile, befriended a hitch-hiking cockroach and mind-blended with the creature. “Astonishing,” he said. “This cockroach is intelligent and is descended from a long line of warriors who invaded this planet ten thousand years ago. Their pre-invasion intelligence didn’t warn them how big the inhabitants were.”
“Thanks for sharing that,” Rhonda said, “but I’m more concerned about getting away from the police.”
Spark and Korque ignored her comment.
“What do they call this planet?” Korque asked.
“Their name translates as ‘The place where big feet fall from the sky’. I’ve changed my mind Captain. I’ll write my thesis on this bug.”
Rhonda’s body began tingling. Korque smiled. Yoo-Hoo must be finished with her hair.
As soon as she re-assembled, Rhonda stepped off the platform and took out her compact mirror to check her hair. It was back in its rainbow-hued spike mode. She glared at Yoo-Hoo and snarled, “If you ever mess with my hair again, you’ll regret it.”
Yoo-Hoo raised an eyebrow. “Whatever are you talking about?” She now wore her hair in a blonde pouf. “The Translocator needs adjustments. If you have a complaint, take it up with Spark. He’s in charge of maintenance.”
“Spark should look at your hair treatment device. It needs a lot more than maintenance.”
“Ladies, we have a more serious problem than your hair.” Korque led them onto the flight deck. “Your plan is a failure, so far,” he told Rhonda.
“I can use some help,” Rhonda replied. “There must be somethin’ about Earth that is common knowledge. Somethin’ that everyone will agree is ‘Earthy.’ A flower. A sport. A custom. If we have that, we’ll know what to search for instead of wandering around blind.”
“Yukk!” Yoo-Hoo stomped on a cockroach. “Who brought that back?”
“How dare you kill an innocent creature.” Spark howled in anguish. “Now I can’t write my thesis.”
Yoo-Hoo made a rude noise.
“It was a simple mistake, Spark,” Korque said. “I don’t want to hear a tirade about it.”
“I demand that Yoo-Hoo be lynched, and then court-martialed.”
Yoo-Hoo assumed a pugilistic stance and threw air punches in Spark’s direction.
To Rhonda’s astonishment, Korque drew his blaster, flipped a switch and fired. A blue beam of light leaped from the weapon and attached itself to Spark’s chest. He fell to the floor and kicked his legs spasmodically.
Rhonda watched in horror.
With the beam still attached to his chest, Spark giggled, guffawed and chuckled while writhing all over the deck. Tears streamed from his eyes. After an interval, Korque switched off the beam and Spark rolled into a sitting position.
“What just happened?” Sid asked.
“It’s the only way to shut him up once he gets on a roll.” Korque held up his blaster. “Tickle setting.”
“My sides hurt,” Spark said, wiping away his tears. “Let me search the data bases and see if I can find what Rhonda wants.”
Ten minutes later, Spark pounded the surface of his console. “I found it!”
“What is it?” Korque asked.
“It says here, in a record from a very old data base, that Earth had a legendary meal that tourists raved about.”
Rhonda grinned. That was what she needed. No matter what type of cuisine this meal was, it would be found in New York City, the most culturally diverse city in the world.
“Gularch and Goodness.” Spark spun around on his chair. “It appears to be a sandwich and a drink.”
“That should be easy to verify,” Korque said.
Rhonda groaned out loud.
“It’s a parking garage.” Rhonda indicated the spot on a close-up view of Manhattan. “Land us on the roof and we won’t be spotted. I hope.” The garage was surrounded by the buildings of New York University and close to the Little Italy section where she wanted to search because of the area’s many restaurants.
Korque and Spark accompanied Rhonda. She had no idea what she was looking for other than food and drink, but if she wasn’t successful, she wouldn’t earn the diamonds and that would mean she couldn’t start a school. If she didn’t start training some new hit men, the Feds may take to off-shore outsourcing for their dirty work, and that was bad. In her view, Americans had a right to be whacked by other Americans, not by foreigners here on a work permit.
She walked through Washington Square Park. It was filled with baby buggies pushed by mothers or fathers out enjoying the mild weather. The dog run was a frenzy of unleashed canines that wrestled and chased each other while some stood around sniffing to get better acquainted.
Past the poured-concrete chess tables at the entrance to the park, she went east and turned south on Lafayette Street. As she strolled, her eyes roamed the houses and shops seeking a clue. A bus roared northward and she read the ads on the side for the same reason.
“Do you have a plan?” Korque’s voice had a hint of annoyance. “Or are we just exercising?”
“Of course I have a plan, but it’ll take some time to find what we’re lookin’ for.”
“I don’t think she knows what the meal is,” Spark said.
“Is this true?” Korque asked.
“Gularch and Goodness sound familiar. I think they’re corruptions of the names from this time. So we have to hunt for somethin’ close to those names.” Rhonda thought her improvisation sounded pretty good.
“That makes sense,” Korque replied.
They left Lafayette to take Mulberry Street into the heart of Little Italy. Many small shops and restaurants filled the ground floor of the three- and four-story town houses and Rhonda searched the signs and menus. She sensed that she didn’t have much time before Korque decided the hunt was futile.
As they walked south, the ethnic flavor of the area changed from Italian to Chinese. Many of the signs were also in Chinese characters, preventing her from reading them. Street lights came on as dusk settled on the city.
Mulberry Street crossed Canal Street, a heavily-trafficked east-west thoroughfare. Across Canal — the traditional dividing line between Little Italy and Chinatown — a fast food restaurant stood alongside a mini-market. Rhonda’s eyes flicked between the two, her mind wrapping around a tenuous idea.
“I think you are about to have a dinin’ experience.” She smiled at Korque. “Follow me.” She dodged the traffic and crossed the street. “Wait here.” She pointed to an empty sidewalk table where customers could flavor their food with auto, bus and truck pollution. She entered the restaurant and returned a few minutes later carrying a paper sack only to go into the mini-market. When she came out, she carried the paper sack in one hand and a four-pack in the other.
She sat down and showed Korque and Spark the corporate logo on the paper bag. “‘Gularch’ must be a corruption of a golden arch.” She held up a black can of stout and pointed to the label. “Pretty close to ‘Goodness,’ don’t you think?”
Later, they found a partially deserted parking lot and translocated to the ship with five dozen burgers and three cases of stout charged to Rhonda’s credit card.
Back on the Midden, Korque was euphoric as he described events to Yoo-Hoo and Sid.
Rhonda was exhilarated. She had solved the problem, her first chance to show her determination and resourcefulness. Her reward would save her father from further field work. Everything had worked out just as she had hoped they would. “Can we go home now?” she asked Korque.
“Not yet. We have some celebrating to do. We’ll order the cuisine computer to make something special and we’ll open a case of stout. After all, we really only need a few cans to establish the veracity of our claim.”
“So, when can we leave?” Sid asked.
“In the morning.” He rummaged through a drawer in his command chair and took out a small token. He handed it to Rhonda. “Put this where you want the diamonds delivered. Yoo-Hoo will manufacturer some commercial diamonds after dinner and she’ll send them down to the spot marked by the token.”
Rhonda felt a small itch of irritation. She didn’t like the idea of being dependent on Yoo-Hoo for anything. She didn’t trust the woman.
Early in the morning, Rhonda and Sid arrived back in the office. Sid’s phone display indicated he had a dozen voice messages. “I wonder what happened while we were gone,” he said as he turned on the TV. A harried reporter jabbered about a breaking story. “Officials refuse to discuss the situation, claiming they are still investigating what happened to the three thousand tons of garbage that disappeared from the closed landfill on Staten Island. Another perplexing question is how that much garbage could vanish overnight. We have with us in the studio, a rubbish expert –”
“I guess the Midden is on its way.” Sid turned off the TV.
“They better not have left yet.” Rhonda placed Korque’s token on her desk.
A few minutes later, the token disappeared and was replaced by a metallic box.
“Ohhmygawd!” Rhonda screeched. “Look at the size of it. We’re rich, Uncle Sid.” She opened the box. On top were her brass knuckles and her knife.
Sid walked over and removed a sheet of paper. “Looks like some sort of instructions.”
Rhonda peered into the box and snarled a curse. “That bitch!” She picked up a lump of coal.
Sid read from the paper. “Place the coal in a furnace set at a thousand degrees Centigrade at forty kilobars of pressure for seven-and-a-half standard years. Do not peek.”
Filed under Short Science Fiction Stories · Tagged with Hank Quense, Science Fiction, SciFi, Short Science Fiction
The Sixth Day
November 6, 2009 by Publisher · Leave a Comment
Captain Ankher woke first.
It was exactly as he had planned it. The entire ship was his alone for an hour or two. In fact, the redundant systems that were there to wake the rest of the crew and passengers would wait exactly twenty-four hours before kicking in, although he expected to start the process well before that. Jeremiah had promised himself perfect peace and tranquillity for just long enough to appreciate what he had achieved: a day to bask in the fountain of his own ego. It was his last indulgence.
“Good morning, Captain,” said the soft voice of the bridge terminal. “Would you like an update on crew status?”
“Later, Bridge.” He dismissed it. He had given all of the ship terminals functional titles rather than human names. He did not approve of anthropomorphizing machines.
Moving from the forward section to check the development area was going to be the first duty. It could all have gone hideously wrong, he knew. The development area may have failed to take. It had, after all, had over three hundred years to itself and all his projections, he knew, lost accuracy after thirty or so. But he had tried to account for every variation and inclination. That was why the development area had been sealed first, giving him and his team two years to observe its early growth, remotely intervening here and there to keep it on the straight and to deal with those unexpected outbursts. But all the same, he broke open an emergency container and put a vacusuit on over his uniform before releasing the seals and stepping into the airlock.
There was a very slight re-pressurisation, he noticed, as the outer door (he supposed that really it was the inner door, but at the moment it was hard to see it that way) released. But the dosimeter showed nothing untoward on first exposure. He checked the readings from the PAS on his wrist, but all he found was a slightly raised level of oxygen to what he had been hoping for. Otherwise, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and trace residue of noble gases demonstrated a perfectly Earth-like atmosphere inside the development area. He stepped through.
It was night, which was disappointing. That is, the light panels were closed, with only ambient light channelled through the UV sinks illuminating the landscape. He had set his pod to release him at the first dawn and he had hoped to see the development area in full sunlight. But over three centuries, he had to suppose that it was possible that there had been a fractional inconsistency in the panel timing that had led to the error. Hopefully, he was no more than an hour from dawn in any case, but he would have to correct the internal chronometers before waking the rest of the ship.
Still, the visor in the vacusuit’s mask had a small battery to drive a simple cross-spectrum image enhancer. He flicked it on, and the development area revealed itself in patchily-coloured glory.
The hatch he had chosen was positioned at the top of a hill entirely on purpose, to give him the best possible view. Another indulgence, he supposed, but a worthwhile one: it was important to get a macroscopic picture of how the project had worked out. If he had condemned two hundred thousand people to a slow and lingering death, he guessed it was worth knowing as soon as possible. But he knew at once that he had not.
The hill was bare grass, which was unexpected. But at its foot, a wood began that stretched, as far as he could tell, in almost unbroken density to the far end of the area and up, around the whole width of the chamber. He raised his head to admire the sight of his upside-down world. It stopped for the panels, of course, where there was nothing but an unblemished grey expanse, and here and there were ponds – even a lake at one point – and what looked like a considerable network of rivers and brooks; although it was hard to tell through the trees.
He had seen the development area only yesterday, his brain told him. It was no more extraordinary today. It just has a few hundred thousand trees on it, that’s all. But here, like this, as a real, breathing world rather than a plain, featureless cylinder, he felt humbled and diminished by what was, after all, his own creation.
Was this how God felt on the sixth day?
He longed to get in there and explore: to find out which trees had dominated and which had died off, to test the water for purity, to see which flowers and grasses had hung on and how they had adapted to their environment. But there were other things he needed to do and, being honest with himself, he found the vast forest slightly intimidating. He was about to turn back through the airlock when there was a deep and almost inaudible clunk and he realized that dawn was about to happen. Excitedly, he switched off the image intensifier and, with a grin, pulled off his mask. The dawn breeze – probably displaced air from the initial panel shift, he guessed, but something he’d need to check out – ruffled his greying beard and he ran a hand through his long hair as the first cracks of light grew along the edges of the panels. On the outside of the ship, they would be levering away from the sides in response to the computer’s prompting. The light of a new sun burst into the development area, revealing its full, verdant glory.
Jeremiah smiled. It had been worth waiting three hundred years for, he thought. But what was that?
An odd shadow had caught his eye and, unable to make out clearly what the object was, he tugged the mask back over his head and adjusted the visor to resolve and enhance the area. And glimpsed the impossible: a makeshift tower, rising just above the tree canopy and built from wood. The ship must have been boarded at some point since they entered storage! But how could they have entered the development area?
Either way, he knew he had to go straight back to release the security team – Special Forces veterans, every one of them. His crew and passengers would be released in less than a day and there were unknown aliens on the ship!
He turned back to the door and reached for the control panel… and then noticed for the first time that it had been smashed. Of course it had. The boarders wouldn’t want anyone breaking in on them. They probably had no idea that all they had managed to do was to shut themselves in and that, in less than a day, their unspoilt wilderness would be invaded by two hundred thousand thirsty humans, ready to cut and build and plant a new life. He guessed they would have done the same to every door they found – but it was worth checking, all the same. No one knew the ship better than the man who built it and there was an emergency access hatch less than half a mile from the hill. He readjusted the vacusuit. He had no idea how hostile the boarders might turn out to be, but there was no harm in being careful. The armour panels in the suit stiffened across his torso and down his arms and the heat exchanger start-up was detectable as a faint and gentle whine that gradually diminished until it was running smoothly.
Jeremiah began to jog towards the emergency hatch.
#
It had taken him over an hour to find it, but seconds to discover that it, too, had been discovered by the boarders and definitively sealed with a combination of vandalism and a simple but effective wooden barricade. But something else had become apparent in his run through the woods: the boarders had been here for some time. The paths were well-trodden and several were wide enough for two humans to walk side by side. He had seen these first and, briefly, had imagined aliens two metres wide. But then he had found smaller, more human-sized tracks and felt reassured that he was, whatever, dealing with humanoids.
His suit’s systems kept him orientated in the dense woodland, ensuring that he kept moving towards the tower he had spotted from the hill. At one point, he skirted the light panels and glanced down, hoping to see the planet they were orbiting – that he had led them to – but there was nothing there. But that, too, made sense. The ship was programmed to settle in orbit vertically, to enjoy the same rotational day – give or take an hour – as the planet they had come to terraform. He would have to wait until this matter was settled and he could access engineering and accommodation before he could see their new world directly.
But there were few paths near the panel. The boarders seemed inclined to stay away from its immense pit into eternal space. So soon he found himself back amongst the trees.
When he was less than half a kilometre from the tower – according to the heads-up reading on his mask’s visor – he cut off the path and took to the trees. They were less dense here and the undergrowth was soft with fallen leaves and moss. It was impossible for him to resist giving one of the trees a scrape, tearing back the bark to see the beetles beneath go scurrying for safety. There had been some twenty thousand separate insect species included in the development area at start-up. That should have halved by now, depending on predation and which plants had thrived and which had not. The whole project had revolved around the basic assumption that their contained little ecosystem would find its own balance and that it would be up to them to work within and alongside it until their new world was ready. And, as that was going to take at least another century, it meant leading the oddest of lives: primitive subsistence farming alongside the highest order of terraforming, inside the greatest single feat of human technology ever built.
Well, he reminded himself as he crept cautiously through the ferns (altering the suit’s surface colours accordingly), it had been the single greatest feat three hundred years ago. If Earth was still where they had left it, he sincerely hoped that it had done better since then.
He saw the trees thin out suddenly just a few dozen yards ahead and he slid to his stomach. The last stretch took almost half an hour, freezing at every sound transmitted through the ear-pieces and creeping closer, closer.
At last, he reached the very edge and tried to see through the dense ferns. But the visor was having trouble compensating for all the different focal lengths involved and his vision was cycling back and forth between close and distant focus. He gave up and, very carefully, rose to his knees.
Less than two feet away from him, a bunch of wild flowers clutched in her hand, stood a girl, probably no more than four years old and very, very human. She saw him immediately, froze for a split second and then, eyes widening in utter terror, screamed.
“No!” he tried to say. But she had already fled towards what Jeremiah could now see was a decent-sized settlement of huts of various degrees of sophistication. Without thinking, he stepped after her, out of the woodland perimeter, and immediately felt the impact on his hood.
The armour plating dispersed the blow, preventing it from cracking his skull like a shell, but still he realized distantly that the floor was rushing up and his feet were not obeying his commands and then –
#
The sound of voices penetrated his state of semi-consciousness, bringing him back from his concussion somewhat. The captain managed to raise his head from where it dangled. He was aware that his arms and legs had been tied to some sort of wooden frame. As he fought to get his eyes to focus he was eventually able to make out the packed earth of the small square in which he had been hung up and the crowd of people around him.
They were human. That was definitely a relief. And from the few scraps of words he could hear, they seemed to be talking English of a sort. And having an argument.
“Killdead, now,” said a young-looking man with red hair and a bare chest. Below the waist, he wore a pair of ancient and much-patched trousers that looked like they had once been part of the engineering uniform. He carried a short spear, its head a vicious-looking fragment of metal. “This monsta come min tha wood with eye like fire an’ face like man. He’s bad noos.”
“But tha sun come again, an’ tha frost gone!” replied the second. Also bare of chest, he had two stout rods, each as long as his arm, shoved through his belt in a complicated series of knots. Below his waist, he seemed to be wearing a skirt made from a stasis gown – something a lot of the medical staff had insisted on wearing before going into storage, for no obvious reason that Jeremiah had been able to fathom. “An’ this man come, too. Monsta? You stoop’d? He’s man as you an’ me. Mebee this man bring tha sun like in tha oldwords?”
The third in the argument was a coffee-coloured woman of statuesque build, as bare-chested as the men. Her arms were folded across her wide breast and her powerful biceps stood out where her hands clasped them. She was not looking at either of the men but at Jeremiah, and so she was the first to see that he was awake.
“You human, man?” she asked him directly, her words getting silence from both the men at once.
“Yes,” said Jeremiah.
He was beginning to imagine how these primitives had come to be. And he remembered the bridge terminal’s first question: “Would you like an update on crew status?” He had thought it just meant to report that he was awake and everyone else still asleep, but what a naïve assumption! He should never have imagined that the storage of two hundred thousand humans for three hundred years was failsafe. Glitches would have occurred. Individual pods would have failed.
Some would have died, of course, trapped in their pods asphyxiating. But many would have been released by the automatic systems, but with no means of returning to the pod. Where else would they have gone but into the development area: the only place with food and comforts? Most of the failures would have been within the first twenty years of the flight. Existence would have been harsh and difficult. For a lot of the time, the development area would have been dark and frozen – for years at a time, perhaps, until the ship could store enough residual energy to release a few months of heat and light, allowing the frozen earth to bloom and the trees to grow a fraction more. And those released to life in that cold, dark place would have bred – it only took fifteen breeding couples to establish a viable population, after all – and breeding would have favoured the strong and energetic over the weak.
No doubt the eating of the weak would have been a vital occasional source of nutrition: cannibals surrounded by the magnificence of human achievement.
And now he, architect of their existence, creator of their world, had stumbled upon them, alone and vulnerable. Jeremiah was an atheist. He had seen an Earth so rife with stupidity and unfairness and corruption and degradation that the very idea of God was offensive to him. But if that God had existed, and if He had been delivered to Jeremiah as a mortal human, trussed and vulnerable, what horrors would he have wanted to inflict upon that immortal sadist? Telling them who he actually was, he thought, might turn out to be a very, very bad idea.
“You bring sun?” she asked again, nodding towards the nearest panel, through which the new sun could be seen passing, bright and brilliant, its light filling space.
“Yes,” admitted Jeremiah. He had brought them to this place and this sun, which – thanks to Einstein – was more or less the same as bringing the sun to them. And as they seemed quite glad for its presence, he hoped that accepting responsibility might make them better inclined to listen to him when he tried to explain what would happen in… Oh, hell! What was the time? He really did not want to be found trussed to this frame when the rest of the passengers and crew were released from storage.
They would come in stages, of course. All two hundred thousand at once would have been almost impossible to control, even with the extensive briefings and training they had all received over the last two years – three hundred years ago. Security and engineering came out first. The latter to attend to the ship’s processes and check that they were running as planned, or adjust them if not; the former to prepare arrangements for the next stage, which was medical. There would be fatalities on release, but as few as possible, and the medical facilities had been beyond state-of-the-art when they left. After them would come the command crew, ready to address any of the emerging issues which would, by then, be exceeding Captain Ankher’s ability to handle on his own. And then gradually, in family groups, the rest of the crew and passengers would be released. All in all, everyone should be out – bar a small handful, kept under for medical reasons – in less than two weeks. But the chaos that could occur – especially when engineering discovered the damage to the internal doors of the development area! It would take weeks to fix that alone.
“You want live?” asked the woman. It seemed like a strange question to ask.
“Yes,” replied Jeremiah. “Of course.”
#
This, he found himself thinking less than a quarter of an hour later, should not have been happening. According to his gauntlet’s chronometer, he had less than fifteen hours before the first personnel would be released from storage. His crew had to be warned, but these people needed to be protected as well. But come to think of it, he pondered as he circled to his left, eyes fixed on his opponent, there were too few of these people.
“Fight often?” he asked his snarling opponent, the red haired man.
“Eve’y new kid,” answered the woman, who seemed to be the little tribe’s leader. “Two fight. One dies.”
One in, one out, he realized, clenching his fist around the short stick he had been handed as a weapon. The tribe was sustained at a given size. It made sense, of course. When the cold times came, the development area was almost barren. Only a small number of people could be sustained by grubbing for roots and boiling up vegetable gruel. Kill an adult for every new child born and the tribe could feast on the corpse, gaining proteins, fats and nutrients that were impossible to find elsewhere.
Red Hair lunged at him in a graceful, dancing series of curving arcs. For no reason that had been explained to him, he only had the one stick, whilst his opponent had two. But Jeremiah deflected the strikes comfortably, his muscles recalling the san sik training of his master. A swift kick to Red Hair’s stomach thrust him away and the younger man staggered back to the far side of the circle. The tribe – Jeremiah estimated no more than twenty adults and perhaps the same number of children – stood around the perimeter that had been marked out in the sand of the village square.
“This isn’t necessary,” he said to the chief, but not taking his eyes from the murderous-looking Red Hair. “I can feed you all. I can help you grow.”
“No,” replied the woman. “One come. One die.”
He had to make them understand that the cold had gone forever. He had to show them the world he was going to build for them. But first, he reminded himself as Red Hair made a second sally, he had to survive this fight without killing his opponent.
Jeremiah blocked the first blow with the stick and ducked back to avoid the second, leaping in after its passage. He caught Red Hair on the backswing, chopping the stick at the man’s upper bicep and stunning the limb so that he dropped one of his two weapons.
Jeremiah had stripped off his vacusuit before the fight. It was clearly the custom to fight as one lived – bare-chested – but the vacusuit was a one-piece garment, other than the removable mask. His uniform beneath the suit had drawn some covetous gazes from the tribe and he could imagine them fighting or gambling over it if he lost. But he had stripped off his jacket and shirt to hand to the chief before stepping into the ring. Only yesterday, he had looked at himself in the mirror before going into storage, imagining himself – today – custodian-parent of a new human world. An unimaginable adventure, he had told himself even as he had tried to conceive every possible permutation of this strange, new day – less than twelve hours ago, by his reckoning. But no one had imagined this.
He drove his fist into Red Hair’s stomach, finding hard, corded muscle at its end. His opponent grunted at the impact, but his stick was already swinging, backhand, toward Jeremiah’s head and he was too slow ducking.
He had already taken one concussion today. The second blow was glancing – he had already been dodging downwards into a classic diving swallow – but was still enough to knock him off his feet and Red Hair came in fast, stamping down with life-toughened heels and all the hate he could muster.
Red Hair was young. Jeremiah – he admitted to himself – was not. He needed to end this fight quickly and decisively, without killing Red Hair. As he dodged the stamps in a desperate roll, he had time to reflect that letting Red Hair kill him would achieve all of those objectives –
That was it!
With a flip, he was up onto hands and feet and then, the next moment, meeting Red Hair’s charge with a counter-charge of his own, thrusting inside the younger man’s guard. The heel of his hand cracked on Red Hair’s chin even as he felt his opponent’s stick thud painfully into his left scapula. But he was inside grappling range, executing a full sweep of Red Hair’s legs.
There was a beautiful moment of stillness as Red Hair went up at the apex of the sweep. Jeremiah wished his master had been there to see it. But he was gone: another victim of the stupidity of Earth and its stupid governments and its blind, stupid corporations; and Jeremiah remembered why he had built the ship, why he had brought two hundred thousand talented, desperate, hopeful souls on one of humanity’s greatest adventures…
And Red Hair hit the ground hard. But Jeremiah needed him beaten, not just winded. So his free hand was already in the younger man’s hair, dragging him back up off the floor to a sitting posture before the stick was at his throat, Jeremiah’s arms locked around his neck, squeezing on his windpipe. Red Hair’s fingernails clawed at Jeremiah’ arm but he was still winded from the fall and his strength was ebbing.
“Listen!” he shouted at the chief. “I will not live. I will die! I will not take this man’s place! But I will die how I say. He will live. I will die. There will be balance!”
He stared at her and she met his stare, squarely, her face impassive. Red Hair was choking under his grip, arms now limp at his sides – so close to passing out, Jeremiah was afraid the chief was going to let him die after all. But at the last moment she jerked her head in a curt nod.
Red Hair gasped the air into his lungs as Jeremiah released him and he fell, retching to the floor. But Jeremiah ignored him, now. He walked to the chief and she handed him his shirt and jacket, which he tossed over his shoulder in the hope of finding some water before he dressed again.
“Gonna die, huh?” asked the chief.
“What is death?” he asked back. “You don’t get this body. It’s going down. I’m taking it down. Under the trees.”
She grunted. He guessed that understanding the concept of down was going to be hard for them. There was hardly any sign of real agriculture – no irrigation, no wells – and he was pretty certain that they ate their dead, so why would anyone dig down more than a couple of feet, after roots and tubers. Fact was you needed to dig more than twelve feet down to find the development area’s irrigation system: the water traps and aqueducts that moved the moisture around, keeping the lakes fed and the rivers flowing and the trees growing. But it had occurred to him that the analysis and filtration system was in engineering, not in the area itself. All the doors might have been sealed, but the water was still flowing out. And some of those pipes were wide enough to take a man. He just had to find the right one – and he reckoned that the chief would give him only the one chance to try it…
#
According to the chronometer, he had less than five hours before the storage release on the crew would begin. But with everything else that had happened since Captain Ankher had stepped from his storage pod, his expectations for an accurate chronometer were limited. He had successfully tracked the main flow pipe from the nearest lake to the edge of the development area. Finding the pipe itself was easy, though, compared to finding the point on the pipe where there might be a cut-off valve. They were only there to protect the ship from a back-up in engineering. The cut-off could be kicked in, breaking the flow into the testing chambers. It was designed for short-term, emergency use only, because it meant creating a small flood in the development area, not to mention disrupting the delicate balance of the water-table and potentially introducing contaminants. But Jeremiah was pretty confident that this constituted an emergency. If all went to plan, he would only be gone a few hours at most – more than enough time to get back and fix whatever he broke doing this. And if all went less well… then he hoped that the presence of an emergency valve alert in engineering would draw someone’s attention to matters in the development area.
The vacusuit was an immeasurable blessing. Its cooling motor was keeping him from entirely burning up and a couple of the armour plates, extracted from the thigh sections and stiffened, were doing sterling service as two shovels: one being used by himself and the other, startlingly enough, being used by Red Hair alongside him. The young man had obviously been impressed by the captain’s victory. Or perhaps he was just keen to see Jeremiah ‘die’ as he had promised, in case his own neck fell back on the block.
When the chronometer was reading four hours left, they struck the pipe and Jeremiah fell upon the wide structure, sweeping away the mud with urgent hands, ignoring the whispers of amazement coming from his assistant.
“Where is it? Where is it?” he growled to himself.
Then he cleared enough mud to see the bright red lettering: EMERGENCY VALVE – beside the words, an explanatory glyph, an arrow and a figure five. He was only five metres off! With renewed vigour he started digging further along, ignoring the tumbling earth that he was displacing, building a spur into his pit.
“Dead yet?” came a voice from above.
“Not yet,” replied Red Hair, standing up, his naked body slick with mud and sweat. “Still diggin.”
“Faster, nooman,” she ordered loudly. “Clay gonna die.”
Red Hair leapt down to throw his spade alongside Jeremiah’s. So it was his own neck the young man was protecting, smiled Jeremiah grimly. He was nearly there, but the soil kept sliding down, getting in his way. With gestures and simple instructions he got Red Hair – “Clay”, apparently – to brace up the short tunnel with his back. It was dark in the tunnel, and he pulled the mask out from inside his vacusuit, pulling it over his head and flicking on the image enhancer.
There it was! He had it!
With a simple flick of the panel he uncovered the valve itself. It was mechanical, to overcome the associated problems of electrical failure, but well-designed despite its long burial. With three turns it was shut and immediately a rumble was heard from the pipe.
“Get out!” he ordered Clay. “Go! Run! Death comes!”
The pipe buckled a few metres behind them and a split second later a seam broke, sending a jet of water fifty feet into the air. Clay screamed and needed no further urging from Jeremiah. With nimble limbs he scaled the side of the pit and was gone. Jeremiah scrambled out of his cave as it began to collapse and stood back as far from the pipe as he could, but the water was already rising around his ankles. He checked the chronometer again: just over three hours left.
When the water reached his waist, he sealed the join between the mask and the vacusuit and started up the internal air supply. According to the reading on the gauntlet display, he had just under an hour of air, which should be just about enough. Trying to resist the urge to take a deep breath, he plunged under the water. In the murk, thanks to the visor, he could see that the rent in the pipe had expanded since the first breach, just as he had hoped.
The force of the escaping water pushed against him as he swam back to the tunnel. It had collapsed, but the mud was still liquid and much easier to squirm his way through, back to the valve. Not even the visor could help him to see in the opaque, black water, but his questing fingers sought out the round head and found it. One, two, three turns back and it was reset: the gate to the analysis centre wide open. He immediately felt the rushing of the water into his pit slow, although it continued less urgently, as water pushed up through the rent. He sought the gap out next. With a few tugs, he was able to bend the aluminium sheeting back even wider. On his own, it would have been impossible, but the force of the water was on his side, and the initial breach had loosened the sealing bolts sufficiently. When the gap was large enough, he fought against the water and pushed himself through the breach and into the tunnel.
Inside the tunnel, the flow was far stronger and it immediately caught him, ripping him along the pipe. Seconds later, he knew he had passed the edge of the development area as well as the limit of his plan. In a few seconds he would be into the analysis chamber. It was large enough that not only would he fit in it, but the flow of the water should ease sufficiently for him to manoeuvre his way around inside it. It even had an observation wall. But what it lacked –
He saw the light ahead and in a moment had popped out of the tunnel and into the analysis chamber. It was a spacious tank, perhaps ten metres in diameter and three metres high. It was also several levels up in the ship, giving it a much lower gravity than the comfortable point-nine-seven of the development area. But suspended in water, he scarcely noticed the change. It was all exactly as he remembered it. The UV lamps were operating perfectly. He could see the sample extractor fans rotating gently, their spindles unbroken and blades un-corroded. He could even see the observation window he had installed on the advice of his principle environmental scientist, who had persuaded him that the human eye, in concert with the human brain, was still the most sophisticated scientific instrument ever known. But he also saw that his memory was correct in another, important aspect. There was no way out of the chamber.
Jeremiah cursed silently. He had been an idiot to charge blindly along without thinking his plan through to its conclusion, but he had been so desperate to get out of the development area and to regain control of the awakening process that he had just assumed he would be able to improvise when he got this far. He knew what to do once he was out, and he had thought getting to the chamber was a pretty clever piece of work, for sure. Perhaps he had been too impressed with the plan to want to look too closely at its flaws, but now they were slapping him in the face.
He swam over to the window – the only weak point he could imagine – and inspected it. Maybe with leverage he could have broken it open. But suspended in water and without a lever – he cursed again for not thinking of bringing the improvised spade that might have served – it might as well have been steel laminate.
He looked back at the extraction fans. Too small by far to take him, of course – each was only seven or eight inches across – but all the same, they looked like his best shot. He swam across to them and looked at each, closely. Then he took another look around the chamber. There really was no other way out except to go back into the return tunnel that would suck him back to the development area and, with luck, into the largest lake. It was an option, of course. Better than staying in the chamber to drown, he supposed. But it was not a solution to his problem: just a way of not dying immediately.
He looked back at the extraction fans. They really were his only choice.
Annoyed at himself, he picked the slowest moving and stopped the fan by the simple mechanism of sticking his finger into its spin. The blade pushed gently against his hand as he struggled to unscrew its retaining bolt. After three hundred years, he was impressed with how easily it came away.
Tossing the fan to one side, where it sank to the bottom of the chamber, he put his hand into the pipe beyond and shoved. The pipes were plastic, held in place with metal pins and resin sealant. It was resistant to normal wear and tear but a determined effort – yes! On his fourth try he felt it start to give and with a couple more hard shoves, bracing himself with his other hand, the pipe came away. The water from the chamber began to pour into the space outside. Trying to ignore that, Jeremiah shoved his arm through the space and began tugging at the other two pipes. It was easier now that he knew it was possible and with his arm unhindered by water. Each was yanked away in a few tugs and the water poured faster out of the chamber.
Right, he thought, now what? But he knew what he was looking for. And his fingers found the retaining screws on the outside of the extraction unit. The angle was awkward and the screws were tight. No one had expected them to need removal by hand. But Jeremiah knew that lives – not least his own – depended on those screws, and the vacusuit’s strong gauntlets gave him a firmer grip than his bare hands would have enjoyed. He was grunting and swearing out loud before the first screw began to give, but give it did. In seconds he was working on the second screw and, minutes later, the third.
Jeremiah was in no mind to be neat about his work and the fourth screw was ignored as he battered and shoved the extraction unit out of the wall from the inside. He dragged himself out, seeing the whole environmental lab awash with several inches of water as he escaped. With a groan, he snatched the mask off his head and gasped a breath of relief before checking the gauntlet read-out: he had had less than two minutes’ air remaining.
“Hello, Captain,” said a voice. “Can I help?”
“Science!” he ordered the terminal, more loudly than was probably necessary. “Delay the storage release by three-zero minutes!”
“Three-zero minutes, Captain, aye.”
“I need foam sealant, right damn now! Where is it?”
“On the wall to your left, Captain,” replied the terminal, calmly. “I have already sealed the bulkhead doors to retain the flood in this location. The cause of the flood has not yet been determined.”
Jeremiah had already seized the large canister of sealant, turning it on the gaping holes in the wall of the analysis chamber until there was nothing but blobby, solid, white foam where the extraction unit had been, half an hour before.
“Cause of the flood was Captain extracting himself from the analysis chamber,” Jeremiah told the terminal. “The flood is sealed. Drain the area and unseal the doors.”
“Aye, Captain.”
The process took only a few minutes, as the flood water was sucked away by pumps in the floor and the red lights above each of the bulkhead doors then flicked from red to green and, as Jeremiah approached, slid open obligingly.
#
Lana looked at the flooded pit and sighed. The new man had been interesting. Old, but strong and fast, and he had said strange things in an accent that reminded her of her grandmother. She looked up at the woods on the far side of the world and saw something she had never seen before: a white shape, like smoke, drifting in the space between. A sign of change, she guessed. This time of warmth had been longer and more comfortable than any she remembered her father speak of, and his memory had been long, for he spoke the words of seven generations. Some of the words had spoken of the coming of the Cap Tin, who would bring warmth forever and plentiful food and other marvels.
Had they made a dreadful mistake? The old words of the Cap Tin had said he would come with a great host; that he would drive away the cold forever. The new man had come creeping through the trees, dressed as a monster and had spoken words they had not understood. And then he had died strangely – in a pit full of water.
“Mma Lana?”
It was Clay. He was a fine son and she was glad the new man had not killed him. But still, she sensed that something great and new was about to happen.
“Back to people, Clay,” she ordered. “We wait. He will come back, I think.”
Filed under Short Science Fiction Stories · Tagged with Robey Jenkins, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Short Stry, SciFi, SciFi Short Story
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