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If You Like This Page... See my cover story in the August Salon magazine, about new surveillance technologies
and some of the stark choices we face in the years ahead. (Government Technology magazine also ran an interview
with me about government accountability and the proposal to
establish an Inspector General of the United
States.) Hear a recent speech (from NPR) about TECHNOLOGICAL NIGHTMARES, by renowned futurist
economist Paul Streetn. Prof. Streetn offers exceptionally wise
perspectives about future threats and opportunities. (I'm biased. He
spends five minutes discussing The
Transparent Society.) Salon Magazine recently ran another of my articles
about popular culture. This one focuses on J.R.R. Tolkien's epic
fantasy, Lord of the Rings, and how that famous trilogy has
played an important role in the long struggle of romanticism against
the modern world. The version on Salon was abridged. The full-length
article can be viewed here.
Now available in bookstores:
The Life Eaters! This lavish 144 page graphic novel
vividly extends one of my classic novellas into a full-length saga
-- a dark but ultimately uplifting tale about an alternate world,
offering chillingly plausible insight to what the Nazis might have
really been up to, during World War II. DC/Wildstorm calls Life
Eaters 'the biggest thing to happen in the graphic novels since
Watchmen or The Dark Knight'! More than a dozen
organizations, spanning a wide spectrum of interest, have lately
engaged me for my specialty -- questioning deep-seated assumptions.
One of these 'unconventional' consultations finally was transcribed
-- a keynote
speech for the Libertarian National Convention (7/02). Beyond
some specifics aimed at that group, you may find the general
perspectives (e.g., about the way people view past and future)
unusual and thought-provoking.
Now available in
bookstores, Contacting Aliens: An Illustrated Guide To David Brin's
Uplift Universe is a fun tour of the many alien races people
enjoyed in books like Startide
Rising and The Uplift
War. I do need to make one correction, however; take a look at
my fiction
errata page.
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home > science
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"Thor Meets Captain
America"
a novella by David Brin
Copyright © 1986 (revised 12/98), by David Brin. All
rights reserved. No duplication or resale without
permission.
1.
Loki's dwarf rolled
its eyes and moaned pitifully as the sub leveled off at periscope
depth. With stubby fingers the gnarled, neckless creature pulled its
yellow-stained beard and stared up at the creaking
pipes. A thing of dark forest
depths and hidden caves, Chris Turing thought as he watched the
dwarf. It wasn't meant for this
place. Only men would choose
such a way to die, in a leaking steel coffin, on a hopeless attempt
to blow up Valhalla. But then,
it wasn't likely that Loki's dwarf had been given much choice in
being here. Why, Chris
wondered suddenly -- not for the first
time. Why do such creatures
exist? Wasn't evil doing well enough in the world before they came
to help it along? The
submarine's engines rumbled and Chris shrugged aside the thought.
Imagining a world without Aesir and their servants in it was as hard
as remembering a time without war. He sat strapped in a crash seat
listening to the swishing of icy Baltic water just behind a
tissue-thin bulkhead -- and watched the gnome huddle atop a crate of
hydrogen bomb parts. It drew its clublike feet up away from the
sloshing brine on the deck, scrunching higher on the black box.
Another moan escaped the dwarf as the Razorfin's periscope went up,
and more water gurgled in through pressure relief
lines. Major Marlowe looked up from
the assault rifle he was reassembling for the thirtieth time.
"What's eating the damn dwarf now?" the marine officer
asked. Chris shook his
head. "Search me. The fact that
he's out of his element, maybe? After all, the ancient Norse thought
of the deep as a place for sunken boats and
fishes." "I thought you were some
sort of expert on the Aesir. And you aren't sure why the thing is
foaming at the mouth?" "I said I
don't know. Why don't you go over and ask him
yourself?" Marlowe gave Chris a
sour glance. "Sidle up to that stench and ask Loki's damn
dwarf to explain its feelings? Hmph. I'd rather spit
in an Aesir's eye." From the left
side of the cabin, Zap O'Leary leaned out and grinned at
Marlowe. "Dig it, daddyo. There's
an Aes over by the scope, dope. Be my guest. Write him runes in his
spitoon." The eccentric technician
gestured toward the Navy men clustered around the sub's periscope.
Next to the Skipper stood a hulking figure clad in furs and leather,
towering over the
submariners. Marlowe blinked back
at O'Leary in bewilderment. The marine seemed less offended than
confused. "What did he say?" he asked
Chris. Chris wished he weren't
seated between the two. "Zap
suggests that you test it by spitting in Loki's
eye." Marlowe grimaced. O'Leary
might as well have suggested he stick his hand into a scram-jet
engine. One of the marines crammed into the passageway behind them
made the mistake of dropping a cartridge into the foul water.
Marlowe vented his frustration on the poor grunt with rich
profanity. The dwarf moaned again,
hugging his knees and pressing against the sealed
crate. Wherever they're from,
they aren't used to water. And these so-called dwarfs don't like
submarines. Chris wasn't
exactly partial to this one, either. But nowhere else in the world
was much safer. In late 1962, very little time remained for the
Alliance Against Nazism. If anything could be done this autumn, to
stave off the inevitable, it was worth the
gamble. Even Loki -- bearlike,
nearly invulnerable, and always booming forth laughter that sent
chills down human spines -- had betrayed nerves earlier, as the
Razorfin dropped from the belly of a screaming bomber, sending their
stomachs whirling as the arrow-sub plummeted like a great stone into
Neptune's icy embrace. The fall seemed endless. The crash and shriek
of tortured metal, when they hit the sea, was even
worse. And yet, almost anything
seemed an improvement over the long, screeching trip over the Pole,
skirting Nazi missiles, skimming mountains and gray waters in
lurching zigs and zags, helplessly listening, strapped into place,
as the airmen swooped their flying coffins hither and yon... praying
the enemy's Aesir masters weren't patrolling that section of the
north tonight... Of twenty sub
carriers sent out together from Baffin Island, only six made it all
the way to the waters between Sweden and Finland. And both Cetus and
Tigerfish broke up on impact, tearing like ripped sardine cans,
spilling their hapless crews into freezing
death. Just four subs left,
Chris thought. Still, our chances may be slim, but those poor
pilots are the real heroes. He
doubted any of the crews would make it across dark, deadly Europe to
Tehran and safety. "Captain
Turing!" Chris looked up as the
Skipper called his name. Commander Lewis had lowered the periscope
and moved over to the chart table, making a beckoning motion. Chris
unstrapped and jumped into the
brine. "Tell the swabbies we're
savin our hooch for ourselves," O'Leary advised him, sotto voce.
"Good pot's too rare to
share." "Shut up, fool." Marlowe
growled. Chris ignored them both as he sloshed forward. The Skipper
awaited him, standing beside their "advisor," the alien creature
calling himself Loki. I've known
Loki for years, Chris thought. I've fought alongside him
against his Aesir brothers... and still he scares the living hell
out of me each time I look at
him. Towering over everyone,
Loki regarded Chris with fierce,enigmatic eyes. The "god of tricks"
looked much like a man, albeit an unnaturally large and powerful
one. But those black eyes belied every impression of humanity. Chris
had spent enough time with Loki, since the renegade Aesir defected
to the Allied side, to know he should avoid looking into them
whenever possible. "Sir," he said,
nodding to Commander Lewis and the bearded Aesir. "I take it we're
approaching point Y?" "Correct.
We'll be there in ten minutes, barring anything
unforeseen." Lewis seemed to have
aged over the last twenty hours. The young sub commander knew his
squadron wasn't the only thing considered expendable in this
operation. Several thousand miles to the west, the better part of
what remained of the United States Surface Navy was engaged
hopelessly for one reason only. To distract the Kriegsmarine -- and
especially a certain "god of the sea" -- away from the Baltic and
Operation Ragnarok. Loki's cousin Tyr wasn't very potent against
submarines, but unless his attention was drawn elsewhere, he could
make life unbearable when their tiny force tried to
land. So tonight, instead, he would
be far away making hell for American and Canadian and Mexican
sailors. Chris shied away from
thinking about it. Too many boys were going to their deaths off
Labrador, just to keep one alien creature occupied while four subs
tried to sneak in through the back
door. "Thank you. I'd better tell
Major Marlowe and my demolition
team." He turned to go, but was
stopped by an outsize hand on his shoulder, holding him gently but
with steely adamancy. "Thou must
know something more," the being called Loki said in a low, resonant
voice. Impossibly white teeth shone in his gleaming
smile. "Thou wilt have a passenger
in going ashore." Chris blinked.
The plan had been for only his team and their commando escort...
Then he saw the pallor of dread on Commander Lewis' face deeper than
any mere fear of death. Chris
turned back to stare at the fur-clad giant. "You..." he
exhaled. Loki nodded. "A small
change in plans. I will not accompany the undersea vessels, as they
attempt to break out through the Skagerrak. I will go ashore with
thee, instead, to Gotland." Chris
kept his face blank. In all honesty, there was no way this side of
Heaven that he or Lewis could stop this creature from doing whatever
it wanted. One way or the other, the Allies were about to lose their
only Aesir friend in the long war against the Nazi
plague. If the word "friend" ever
really described Loki, who had appeared one day on the tarmac of a
Scottish airfield during the final evacuation of Britain,
accompanied by eight small, bearded beings carrying boxes. He had
led them up to the nearest amazed officer and imperiously
commandeered the prime minister's personal plane to take him the
rest of the way to America. Perhaps
an armored battalion might have stopped him. Combat reports proved
that Aesir could be killed, if you were very lucky, pounding one
hard and fast enough. But when the local commander realized what was
happening, he decided to take a
chance. Loki had proven his worth
many times, since that day ten years
ago. Till now, that
is. "If you insist." He told the
Aes. "I do. It is my
will." "Then I'll go explain it to
Marlowe. Excuse me, please." He
backed away a few meters first, then turned to
go. As he sloshed away, that
glittering stare seemed to follow him, past the moaning dwarf, past
O'Leary's ever-sardonic smile, down the narrow, dank passageway
lined with strapped-in marines, all the way to the sabot launching
tubes. Voices were hushed. All the
young men spoke English, but only half were North Americans. Their
shoulder patches -- Free French, Free Russian, Free Irish, German
Christian -- were muted in the dim light, but the mixed accents were
unmistakable, as well as the way they stroked their weapons and the
gleam Chris caught sight of in several pairs of
eyes. These were the sort that
volunteered for suicide missions, the type common in the world after
thirteen years of horrible war -- that had little or nothing left to
lose. Major Marlowe had come back
to supervise the loading of the landing boats. He did not take
Chris's news well. "Loki wants to
come along? To Gotland?" He spat. "The bastard's a spy. I
knew it all the time!" Chris shook
his head. "He's helped us a hundred ways, John. Why, just by
accompanying Ike to Tokyo, and convincing the Japanese
--" "Big deal! We'd already beaten
the Japs!" The big marine clenched his fist, hard. "Like we'd have
crushed Hitler, if these monsters hadn't arrived, like Satan's
curse, out of nowhere. "And now
he's lived among us for ten years, observing our methods, our
tactics and technology, the only real advantage we had
left!" Chris grimaced. How could he
explain it to Marlowe? The marine officer had never visited Tehran,
as Chris did last year. Marlowe had never seen the capital city of
Israel-Iran, America's greatest and most stalwart ally, bulwark of
the East. There, in dozens of armed
settlements along the east bank of the Euphrates, Chris had met
fierce men and women who bore on their arms tattooed numbers from
Treblinka, Dachau, Auschwitz. He heard their story of how, one
hopeless night under barbed wire and the stench of chimneys, the
starving, doomed masses looked up to see a strange vapor fall from
the sky. Unbelieving, death-starkened eyes had stared in wonderment
as the mist gathered, coalescing into something almost
solid. Out of that eerie fog, a
bridge of many colors formed... a rainbow arch climbing,
apparently without end, out of those places of horror into a
moonless night. And from the heights, each doomed man and woman saw
a dark-eyed figure on a flying horse. They felt him whisper inside
their minds. Come, children,
while your tormenters blink and stammer in my web of the mind. Come,
all, over my bridge to safety. Before my cousins descrie my
treason. When they sank to
their knees, or rocked in thankful prayer, the figure only snorted
derisively. His voice hissed within their
heads. Do not mistake me for
your God, who left you here to die! I cannot explain that One's
absence to you, or His plan in all this. The All-Father is a mystery
even to Great Odin! Know
only that I will take you to safety now, such as there may be in
this world. But only hurry! Be grateful later, if you must, but
come! Down to the camps, to
bleak ghettos, to a city under siege, bridges formed in a single
night, and vanished with dawn like vapor or a dream. Two million
people, the old, the lame, women, children, the slaves of Hitler's
war factories, climbed those paths -- for there was no other choice
-- and found themselves transported to a desert land, by the banks
of an ancient river, arriving just in time to take up hasty arms and
save a British Army fleeing the wreckage of Egypt and Palestine.
They fused with the astonished Persians, and refugees from crippled
Russia, to build a new nation out of
chaos. After that night of
miracles, Loki could not return to Europe. For the fury of his Aesir
kin would be savage. Returning to Gotland, he was in as much peril
as the commandos. "No, Marlowe,
you're wrong. I haven't any idea what on God's green Earth he is.
But I'd bet my life Loki's not a spy."
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