There is not much space for an editorial this issue, because the rest of issue 34 is packed tight with fiction, reviews and artwork. I didn't think you would mind. A Y Tanaka's highly original debut contribution to Ibn Qirtaiba is a retrospective on a poet from a future millenium. Our regular Sci-Fi Corner review column follows, and the issue concludes with the first installment of our new serial, a continuation of Frederick Rustam's Adventures of a Data Organizer which appeared in issues 30 and 31. Roman Kochnev is this issue's featured artist, and if you enjoy the three space scenes selected you can click on them to visit his gallery. Now, on to issue 34...
Domingo
by A Y Tanaka
Serial: Further
Adventures of a Data Organizer, part 1 by Frederick Rustam
As our readers have reminded us, this month marks the four-hundredth anniversary of Joe Domingo's epic poem, The Preparation of the Mining Planets, the highpoint of Outer World literature. Our guest essayist this month has been Advocate in Humanities at the Classroom of Ganymede, and Senior Editor of the thirteen-cartridge Bibliography of Domingo Studies.
The Preparation of the Mining Planets, based on the poet's Brigade adventures, surged in the public soul from the morning it arrived at the kiosks and pricked the spirits of the Generation of '098:
In Pygmalion's Brood by Sarton, the questing warlock cries, "Oh to have Domingo's balls, and stride, clanking, onto an alien planet."
In Milgrom's Thy Brother's Captor the gruel-hefter threatens the rent strikers, "I'll call Domingo and his crew and he'll 'prepare' you as he did those planets." They reply: "Domingo shares our grit and crib. 'Tis you must be prepared."
In The Quaestor by Sienkowicz the mad geographer reveals his treasure: "Salvaged, have I, the Preparation, the Outworlder, the Fleets of Kairos - jewels right precious from our garbled tongues."
Garth de Vega in Blood's Tribute sings of his Domingo-like protagonist, "He retrieved for Earth the pearls we'd wasted."
The Guild held aloof. Sworn taste-makers, they feared for their image. Off-camera of course, members embraced the Preparation yet acknowledged it rarely, in dim flashes - No phlegm . . . Not the waste one might expect . . . Foil, of sorts, to dullness - tossed off in a breeze-note or slipped into a study on an extraneous topic. It smacked of danger, so they thought, to challenge the dictum nothing of merit came from the Outer Worlds.
Their dictum, theirs to modify.
Fitz the Younger, least dogmatic of the Guild, translated the Preparation into the Tongue, thus freed it for a wider audience. He praised as "almost human" the Desert Monster's war speech, and as "quaint, in the word's best sense" the Bitch's lament over her pups. He was "thrilled" by Domingo's stanzas on the Tree we nourish with our own blood and with the like fluid of our enemies, the Tree we leave behind to shade our tomb. Domingo's next life mattered little, this life's fame mattered more, to live in the memories of who'd known him, who'd tell their children what he'd done. "Triumph's noise made word - No frown on plunder earned."
Hovic's brief eulogy for Domingo in Federation's Hall has mesmerized and been memorized by generations of school children: "He was the first, perhaps the last, to stand and speak so well of us." Hovic told his friends, "He beats Torqua," the long-dead epic poet of the previous age, creator of Orlando Inflamed, The Liberation of Mars and Orlando Beyond.
Indeed, a legend grew that Torqua hadn't been "long-dead" at all, had cunningly rehearsed with friends the oft-played-back brawl that "killed" him, to skip the Sheriff's wrath; then fled to find compassion's lease and anonymity in P. and E. Domingo's rustic home. The legend need not state, merely imply, the one we know as Joe Domingo - But few bother to refute or prove this, though the records wait to lay it to rest. Legend-lovers, too, have rights we must respect.
Adaptations for broadcast, recordings and live performance brought Domingo the wealth to match his fame. Unchallenged by the philosophical community were the sequels on the Ether-for-the-Millions network, Preparation II-VIII. Despite its elitist name, the network's ratings were always high. The series is available in home form and sells well despite the Cromwell administration's withdrawing Preparation IV, which treats of J.D., Salinch and Akhts in detail considered too graphic.
When an epic sparks affection, imitations arise. We pass over the Cultivation of the Orchard Planets (and the Plucking of the same), the Shattering of the Granite Planets, the Awakening of the Sleeping Planets, with a kind word for that clever take on the whole epidemic, Lloy's Milking of the Dairy Planets. Lloy's wit was unappreciated during her brief life.
Rushed and uncrafted, the least of the early imitations was Miner's Planet, Brigadier's Blood by Thardi, whose very first stanza asks, "Who dares to speak beyond Domingo? All whose ears have heard the truth." Thardi juggles characters about; above all, the hero. (The Preparation, of course, has "J.D.") Thardi's version has a muddling, superficially-J.D.-like character who comes near to subverting the Brigades in general and Group A (A-Corps) in particular. But Thardi brings on cool-headed Lt. Ceniza, who saves the day and leads the Brigades to victory.
We've seen this Ceniza before. Isn't he the Preparation's "punk lieutenant"? The wide-eyed incompetent officer whose "reckless disregard of all we honor" jeopardizes the Brigades in general and A-Corps (Group A) in particular. J.D. must more than once forcefully undo this punk lieutenant's - Ceniza's - failures. Suspected, and now known, Ceniza in real life was Thardi's uncle.
Thardi and Ceniza shared many relatives - writers, critics, editors, professors of literature, librarians, broadcasters and publishers - who welcomed Thardi's negative epithets into the standard works of Preparation criticism, including the "Domingo Made Easy" tapes resorted to in our schools. Our ill-read thus believed Domingo guilty of "unfortunate slippage" in his grasp of truth, "disrespect for long-dead predecessors" (a point upon which the Lords of Congruence flung themselves), and the "perverse inability to comprehend the tumult about him, nor to express with flow and urgency the significance thereof."
Charges were mutual, such as "perverse inability to comprehend." Of the Corps' behavior in canto l9, Briga, who'd served on Iesu and Gandhi as a youth, wrote: "You must understand the 'wild geese' on Gandhi were in biology and spirit ill-equipped for a constructive human/alien relationship. 'Enlightened Treatment' never worked, served but to encourage their senseless attacks."
Thardi's grandson replied, "True Enlightened Treatment was never tried. Governor Endros used the term to obscure his real policy of oppression and genocide [sic] and most importantly, for him, to divert attention from his warped Commissary records. Refusing to be sand in the wind, the Chaqui rose again and fought. That Endros died with his perjured Governor's Oath stuffed down his often-full gullet, seems more than just."
The famed Chrysostum's eldest brother chose Other. In the paragraph allotted him he unearthed (his word) the Preparation's "sterile theme, its intense sterility of thought and deed, its cornucopia of sterile concepts enhanced by its overwhelming, all-encompassing, ever-reaffirming Faustian proto-sterility, doing justice to the crepuscular behema-droppings of Domingo's bone-dry imagination." He was otherwise favorably impressed: "I find, in most stanzas, correct grammar. The absence of imagination is made up for by a careful avoidance of banality."
This errant Chrysostum, alone among the Guild, doubted the Preparation "qualified" as epic, "For I cite: It shall relate the deeds of an idealized larger-than-life hero (Soncino 362). But I find no larger-than-life hero explicitly identified as such."
That was wig-splitting. We expect Group-A's commander to hoist the Glory, but he is the "punk lieutenant." The real hero, J.D., covers for the lieutenant and redeems the Brigades not by doing all the fighting, though capable, but by inspiring the troops. He shares their glory (Aymara: "Spreads the guilt"), too modest to reveal more than his initials.
Briga pointed out J.D.'s cunning and often humorous stratagems, a further trait of the genuine epic hero (Baris l3, Vaughan 806), such as the ruse whereby an alien pack on Iesu was allowed to capture a shrewdly abandoned sandroller primed to explode when its starter switch was thrown. That the "capturers" were merely scampering pups, not the seasoned warriors the pompous First Colonel had vehemently predicted, fulfills the most important comic requirement - the surprise deflation of a stuffed shirt.
Chrysostum insisted the rule specified an idealized hero, free of vices. Briga: "Read on. A further rule [no citation] allows vices, but the vices must be larger-than-life, to the exact extent the hero and his virtues are larger-than-life. For example, in civilized worlds J.D.'s treatment of Salinch would be unthinkable, yet many among us long to perform those very acts upon each other and are unaware of that longing."
Briga also cited: It shall relate the deeds of valiant heroes, magnanimous to their foes (Mbona 848). Chrysostum: "Magnanimous? If dismemberment without 'excessive' torture is magnanimous. If plowing under entire civilizations [sic] with 'sincere apologies' is magnanimous."
Briga cited as well: The foe's nobility shall be acknowledged (Sung 37). Chrysostum: "You omit Sung's key word - 'ungrudgingly.' Domingo must have worried the foe'd come off so noble the audience wouldn't feel threatened enough to root for the hero or buy his book."
Granted, a
few Preparation episodes seem to acknowledge the foe's nobility, though the work's
premise would collapse were this done too well. Aware he and his Gandhi pack are to be
executed, the indignant Xka breaks air in the laser bearer's face. In a later episode the
captured Desert Monster stares long moments into his executioner's face, then cries,
"A female! Desert Monster stains no unborn child!" Domingo continues: "Then
noble Monster's claws, fine-fashioned, tore [own] innards out, so died unshamed."
Probing in the Wine Cellar, Ktavono discovered the original rhyme-files had "heart" rather than "innards." "Heart" would have drawn unnecessary sympathy to the Monster. She nevertheless applauds Domingo's "reflections on the innocent aliens corrupted by humanity." The proven way to save those on Rimbaud and Lethe was to kill them in as honorable a fashion as the Code permitted, well before the rest of us could land and do further harm. For the sensitive Domingo, to fail to act would have been intolerable.
Ktavono investigated the possible alien influences hidden in the epic's rhyme schemes, rhythmic segues and allomorphic tropes, seeking insights to the aliens' lifestyle and religion. Domingo's "feral dreamscape" is a classic: "In invisible masters' hands, in invisible parents' arms, in invisible blankets wrapped, in intangible cradles asleep. Yet the cradles rock."
Alienisms are heard throughout the poem, though often allo-planetic. Nouns knth, ptoma, atmn, used by Domingo to bring alive Fides' landscape and hint both past and future for the Fidei, prove not their talk at all, but derive from the pup-talk of herds on Gandhi. Occasions arise where Domingo avoids the chance for an alien term in a genuine alien context, doubtful his audience would understand. There is Akhts' bitterness as he turns away from the strip mining: "A dog has pissed on my planet." Dogs were unknown to Akhts, as was the concept "planet."
Chrysostum claimed the Preparation fails another epic standard in that it has no love interest, few encounters between the Brigades' male and female members coming close to it. The odd-formed alien females could be approached each seventh week, but J.D. hesitates: "Any [of us] might have them in any of their portions, were any [of us] fools."
Yet Briga reminded us J.D.'s seduction of Salinch, the Desert Monster's daughter, also meets the standard (Plekhanov 328) requiring one love interest be related to a prominent figure on the enemy's side; and the standard (Vaughan 806) requiring the hero to engage in clever stratagems: The seduction's sole purpose, we must believe, is to gain Salinch's golden key and the secrets to the Monster's fort.
He also cited: The love interest shall not distract the hero from his/her goal [see Orlando Inflamed] (Kreshkhine 74), and in conformity, J.D. orders Salinch's dismemberment. "She taught me great pleasure, thus taught me great sin; full of right it was to punish her."
Briga, shifting focus, cited further: The hero shall commune with the dead for aid or advice; if necessary, visit the after/underworld in person (Besant 236). This rule traces back to Orpheus the Nazarene, who smashes Plutarch's gates to rescue Father Abraham from the one-eyed Beowulf.
The mine shafts sunk by the first humans on Iesu qualify as underworld; J.D. and his blazers descend therein to incinerate the last Iesi. Dante's gray sandstone caverns, blasted open for a like purpose, also satisfy the requirement. As does J.D.'s descent into the "multi-chambered, endless" Salinch. As does his psychological descent into that relationship, its haunting and needless guilt.
For Pidal, the rules question lacks weight. He bids us recall Dimon's Asteroidians, Sato's Nouveaux Voyages Synchroniques, Merg's Joviad and Saturniad, and Torqua's famed Orlando series, all that set the standards the Preparation "fails" to meet, were themselves imperfect imitations of a thing much older. When rules indeed served was among the pre-dawn bards who composed in their heads, and were rules for survival.
Consider how Domingo evolves from the bards of the pre-dawn age. In the heat of stanza l2 Domingo records how "The Yathink came ready for battle, dripping of oil, swinging his wrench, spitting a Damniad, sweating a torrent, heavy in anger, paging for blood." Cogent, emphatic, sufficient. Hear how it differs from stanza 67 of The Striped Flag by the obscure Bard of the Hurons: "The Yankee came ready for battle, the Yankee came dripping of oil, the Yankee came swinging his [wood? stick? tool? wrench?], the Yankee came spitting a Damniad, the Yankee came sweating a torrent, the Yankee came heavy in anger, the Yankee came paging for blood." Why does the Huron repeat himself so? He must. It gives him but a half-line to remember. It sets things up for the cathartic head-cleft in the next stanza. It stretches the grace for some fellow in the marketplace audience who's turned aside to sneeze, poke a friend's ribs, stroll over to a merchant's stall, scan the skies for argosies, soothe or whip a restless eohipp, or go further off to relieve himself. When he turns back, even having missed the first "Yankee came-" he might yet hear the concluding "Yankee came-" and not lose the chord of things. The Bard of the Hurons keeps his audience, earns his sips and wafers.
The first bards sucked the brains of those brag-chaps stretching out each night around the fire. The bards salted it with iangis from the handing-on of knacks from bard to bard: How to recover from a skipped or too-soon stanza, how to hinder the catharsis till the group's more attentive, how to deal with crowd-jibes such as "That's a lot of bull, old man."
The old man might silently acknowledge it is indeed a lot of bull, and subtly re-string his tale. Thank you, fool.
Yuen has always felt it unjust to compare Domingo, however kindly, with Torqua, who was a unique mix, for those times, of artist and intellectual - not called to it by fate or genes but fallen to it by circumstance. Torqua spent much of his youth recovering from sports injuries, including a broken leg during a lunar lacrosse match, severe burns on the laser-fencing piste, temporary deafness and spasms of incoherent ramblings after running the methane rapids, and partial paralysis from defects in an anti-gravity slide. His stretches of decommission gave him time to delve into the pre-classic epics, ecclesiastic and secular, around which he formulated his Orlando work.
Domingo, however, remained a man of action, ambidextrous - a sabre in his first hand, a stylus in his second - who composed as he fought, a microphone sealed to his helmet, another to his collar. As a comrade told it, "He prattled much; more, in the heat of things."
Still, Domingo owes much to Torqua. Despite "rude tumult's facade," he shares Torqua's bold yet elegant line, his rich and valiant vocabulary, his feel for the vibrant verb, his bald gusto for breeze-blown banners, his freedom from self-consciousness in the face of alliteration.
And of the legend - who Joe Domingo "really" was - Pandit, once a legend-learner, more than once affirms, "Joe is Joe. We know it, the Lords of Congruence know it. Domingo glows in Torqua-glow, yet only in technique. In philosophy, sexual attitude, and self-presentation before Nature, there is Space between them."
His dictum, his to modify.
Closer to home, Priam dares reflect modern taste, or weariness, as he trembles before the Preparation's rigorously wrought rhythms. He fears Domingo's architectonic vigor, as yet unmatched, is wasted on us. We live in disconsolate times, and suffer errant words and voices - as Rhode offers in Slaughters of Marras, which includes in sight and sound editions a yet unproven musical tool to bolster the poem.
But the ancient iangis is rare, and readers of taste and fortitude long for sterner stuff, for kidney pie instead of fingertips. When the pulse beats thus, one reads Domingo and strides, clanking, onto an alien planet.
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The subject came up recently of the possibility of making movies of Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality. The thought intrigues me... who would you cast in the roles of the various books? For On a Pale Horse I would choose Joel Grey in the role of Satan, Arnold Swartzenegger as War, Pierce Brosnan as Death, Whoopi Goldberg as The Fates, George Clooney as Cronos. Who would you choose? Tell me.
This month, we have:
Alien Chronicles
is a new series with a plethora of alien races all subjugated and ruled by the reptilian
Viis. (I had a plethora once but my brother broke it.) The Viis Empire has been shrinking
for the last thousand years but no one is really concerned about it. Ampris, a female of
one of the subject races, is stolen from her mother and sold as a pet to the ruling
family. She grows up as the Companion of the heir and next ruler. When she is accused of
treason and sold to the arena to be trained as a fighter for the amusement of the lower
class Viis, she finally rebels....
Ampris seems to be cast in the role of Sparticus, the slave-turned-gladiator that turned the Roman Empire on its ear. This story is apparently based on the old Roman Empire. Chester apparently got hold of an old copy of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and paraphrased everything. Not that I'm complaining about that, mind you! Its just that the story is extremely long , the action doesn't move very fast (Chester seems to think this story is worth a trilogy - I don't) and it's hard to keep all the alien races straight in your mind.
This one is not worth the time it takes to read it. I wish I hadn't.
Scissors Cut
Paper Wrap Stone is a Neo-Zen type story that I think I have read somewhere before.
The premise is thus: a young man decides to use his computer to analyze all the common
elements of religious art that generate a feeling of awe and love, and print out to his
screen these common elements. The result (in sci-fi) is predictable. The resultant picture
is transcendent - he dubs it "the Face of God". After that success, he generates
other pictures - things that cause healing, fear, instant trust, forgetfulness, even...
death.
Of course, the wrong hands get hold of it. The government. They tattoo one of his computer generated designs on each palm and tell him he is now working for them - or else!
I think that the idea for this one came from a short story that I read about twenty years ago. The idea was that this theater set designer (who couldn't see very well, that's why he was never effected by the designs he came up with) came up with the common elements that engender fear, humor, love, etc. and could draw the pure shapes that did it. The pure shapes were so much more powerful than just the elements that he could induce any emotion he wished. Is it any wonder that at the end of the short story he was killed?
At any rate, Scissors is a journey of redemption for the main character. A bit wordy at times, it still has some promise. You might like it, you might not. This one I rate at about a 6.
Space Cadet is
classic Heinlein. The story of a young man who has qualified for training at the Space
Academy, it details the tests, training, and life of a spaceman of the Patrol. Keeping the
peace on all the planets of the System, Matt and his friends find themselves on Venus with
orders to put down a native uprising... and Venus is largely unexplored, especially where
the uprising is supposed to be taking place. A coming of age story that would make a good
movie if Hollywood didn't muck it up....
The Secret Visitors is Golden Age sci-fi (1956). Old men, who seem to have no past, are dying in Europe, and if you try to question them they commit suicide! At the start of the story, the authorities finally get one of the "grandfathers" before he can commit suicide and get very little information before he dies naturally. The autopsy reveals that he is an alien! There are several factions of aliens, one of which is trying to push Earth into another World War.
A group of humans stows away on the ship that ferries the old men to Earth. In an effort to contact the galactic authorities, the group encounters opposition on every turn before appearing in Court to defend their planet. This is classic space opera that is somewhat dated now but still a good read.
I don't have a cover to show you on this one... the cover on my copy has been missing for years.
And now to letters....
Hi there,
I'm a member of Mensa Bulgaria, but unfortunately, there is no SF SIG organized here.
By the way, I'm intensive SF reader (any kind of SF), and I've made some attempts to write SF short stories. Now I'm trying to translate them into English, but I'm not fluent enough.
I need a help to refine the syntax, the grammar, or even the style. If you are willing to help me refine the translation of my stories I'll be very thankful.
Do not hesitate to refuse me.
P.S. I joined the SF SIG, but still my name & email is not published into the members' list.
Pavel B.
Well Pavel, I would be delighted to give you what help I can. I have already tried to write to you but there is something wrong with the address you used. However, you can talk to me through this column, if you don't mind.
Still not enough replies to my reader survey to have a meaningful result. I'll keep it open only a couple more issues before I close it so get your entries in!
As usual, send e-mail to: Fred@sf.sig.au.mensa.org or snail-mail to The Sci-Fi Corner, P.O. Box 30245, Savannah, Georgia 31410
We want to hear from you! See ya next month!
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Previously, in the two-part serial, Adventures of a Data Organizer:
Brother Robert Crawley fled the datacult, Web Possibilities Ltd., and escaped to outer space on the dataship, Terrinforma. But he was captured by datapirates and taken to Redrock, a barren planet. There, he was forced by an unknown alien race to assist them in gathering intelligence from those computers connected to Earth's World Wide Web. Bobby did his Webrunning - and datajacking - by means of the aliens' secret ultrawave circuit to Earth, something unknown and unavailable to his fellow Terrans. Later, Bobby was joined by Ranavalona, a crewmate from the Terrinforma, whom the aliens purchased for him (without his knowledge) as a companion. Ranny temporarily accepted hers and Bobby's captivity in exchange for a vague promise by the aliens of eventual freedom. The alien-in-charge of Redrock's ultrawave operation revealed himself to be Agent F, a cyborg fellow-clone of Web Possibilities guru, "Dee" (Agent D). While Bobby worked on Redrock, Dee persuaded the WebPoss cult members to commit mass suicide after he was ordered by the aliens to liquidate their Terran operation. Dee, however, avoided death and disappeared.
Bobby was awakened from a sound sleep by Agent F's security guards, who simply seized him and dragged him from his warm bed.
"Huh... Wha's happenin'?" he protested. "Where's Ranny?" His data organizing associate and sometime companion of the night was missing from her side of the bed.
None of the scaly, gray-skinned alien guards that Bobby had dubbed "Squamatosians" had ever spoken to him - and they didn't do so now. He doubted they spoke Universal, the lingua franca of the Terran-influenced part of the galaxy. Bobby spoke no other language.
"Your mothers are snakes, and your fathers are lizards!"
There was no reaction. This either confirmed his linguistic guess, or the mute Squamatosians were very disciplined.
They dressed him in a coverall, then a protective suit. They intended taking him outside the underground station into the cold, thin air of Redrock. Bobby seethed with outrage - and curiosity - but he knew the guards had their orders and wouldn't tell him anything. They pushed him through the tunnel to the surface.
At the end of the tunnel, the outside doors opened to reveal a small spaceship lighter at a landing pad. On it, was painted a black patch with a white skull-and-crossbones. And below, a name: J.J. JUNIOR.
"The Jolly Jug!" Bobby squinted at the dark night sky, but the pirate ship which had abducted him from the Terrinforma and had brought him to this rocky world at the request of Agent F was in orbit and beyond his sight. Instead of landing, they had sent their remote-controlled autolighter.
He looked around for Ranavalona. She was not in sight, either.
"Damn you, F." he muttered. "What have you done with Ranny?"
"Well, well... as I live and breathe," said Captain Morganski. "Brother Robert is shipping out with us, again."
Bobby glared at the blackbearded datapirate. "Aye, Cap'n. I can see that my presence is a big surprise for you," he said, sarcastically. He sat at a dataterminal in his cramped quarters, a tiny compartment reserved for an involuntary passenger. "I can hardly wait to be fed your great bullybeef stew."
Despite the current circumstances, Bobby recalled with some fondness his previous voyage aboard the Jolly Jug. Captain Morganski had been a congenial host to his temporary captive: a datajack who would earn him a handsome fee upon delivery.
Morganski
gave a rumbling bellylaugh. "We've switched to gourmet venison, lately. We stopped a
ship loaded with it. But I'll have the cook make you some bullybeef stew, since you like
it so much."
On Bobby's previous voyage, Morganski had nourished Bobby's mind by allowing him to practice his dataskills on the Jolly Jug's big database computer. In it were stored Terran World Wide Web sites captured from dataships traveling from Earth to its colonies and to alien worlds - ships such as Captain Brickbender's Terrinforma, where Bobby had found a new home after his flight from the datacult, Web Possibilities, Ltd.
"I'm taking you to another interesting place, Bobby. A place where you can show off your dataskills to the maximum... We all know how you like to do that." He grinned, mischievously. Bobby was quite self-assured about his Web skills.
"Oh?... What place would that be?"
Before the pirate could answer, an intercomm crackled. "Cap'n, the Terran forces have started their invasion of Rubicon Four. They haven't detected us, yet - or maybe they don't care about us."
("That's Redrock!") Bobby received his second shock of the day.
"Okay, Sami. Keep me informed," Morganski replied.
"Did you leave Ranavalona back there on Redrock?!" asked Bobby.
"Your aliens had her transported before we picked you up. They sent her back to the Terrinforma. Those savvy fellows knew the Terran Confederation was going to invade their Rubicon station long before the Marines showed up... I wonder what the Terrans seek, there?"
("Their ultrawave apparatus, Cap'n. But if you don't know about it, I won't be the one to tell you.") The Terrans had apparently discovered the aliens' ultrawave connection to their Web, and they sought this secret technology. However, the aliens had probably demolished their ultrawave equipment and everything else they'd built on Redrock.
The pirate's story about Ranavalona was only half true... She was actually secreted elsewhere in the Jolly Jug, where Bobby wouldn't find her. For recreation, she had a terminal to the same Web database Bobby accessed. She was on her way back to her old dataship, though.
"So where are you taking me this time, Cap'n?"
"Arcade."
("Arcade... Wow.") Bobby knew something of this fabulous place - but not enough. His keyboard-fingers began itching.
"You're going to make me some big money again, Brother Robert. We're going to have ourselves an auction." Before Bobby could react to this disheartening news, Morganski left the compartment.
It was a measure of his fortitude that, after learning he was to be auctioned off as a slave, Bobby immediately turned to his terminal and began furiously pounding its keyboard. He had some important personal research to do, and the voice-control had been disabled.
He would pound the walls later.
Bobby stared at the colorful graphic of Arcade. ("Beautiful.")
It was on a backpage of its official Terran Web site - one of the thousands stored in the Jolly Jug's computer. This graphic's fine computer-generated imagery depicted a place to which few Terrans had ever traveled.
Arcade wasn't a stopover for passenger jumpliners. It was the kind of entrepot that televideo producers used as a virtual setting for their fantasy thrillers. (No location-filming was allowed by Arcade's shadowy proprietors.)
Bobby recalled that the ancient Terran ironclad vessel, Monitor, had been described as "a cheesebox on a raft." Arcade was shaped like an old-style, circular cheesebox. It floated in deep space, however, in an orbit around a stable star whose radiation supplied much of its electrical power. Its artificial gravity was created by its rotation about its axis, and diminished as one moved toward the center of the station - almost half a kilometer from the outerside hull.
Arcade was a rendezvous for spacers of various occupations. There, one could find both dataship crews - and the datapirates who preyed upon them in space - mixing congenially in a neutral atmosphere. It was a place of sanctuary and of skullduggery. In its compartments, deals were made, debts paid (or settled), and wares traded. It was also a place of relaxation and recreation; dataships traditionally stopped there for crew R&R.
Bobby entered a pseudo-3D tourfile and began a virtual tour of the Concourse, the circular arcaded hallway that lay inside the outer hull. It was this shopping-ring that had given Arcade its popular name. (Officially, it was cataloged as Commercial Waystation 37rtw8J.)
As he "walked" the Concourse, he looked around him. Between the arches on both sides of the wide hallway, were the shops and stores. These were the registered commercial establishments. Many of them presented legitimate fronts, but did questionable business under-the-counter or in their backrooms.
Using a three-button joystick to change his view, Bobby gawked like a first-time tourist. In this virtual tour, he had the Concourse all to himself. He could enter the shops and stores for static displays, but the numbered doors which led from the Concourse into the maze of interior compartments were unopenable. To explore the Maze, he'd have to actually be there.
("I wonder if the Arcade Management has a full-access virtual tour - all compartments - with realtime avatars of the people who're there. I'd sure like to jack that.") Bobby couldn't avoid taking his usual datajack's view of restricted computer facilities.
Above the Concourse deck was another level of arcaded establishments. On the lower deck, public dataterminals in open-topped booths listed and communicated with all the registered enterprises. Bobby guessed that these terminals had secret, passworded files which gave details of those enterprises whose entrepreneurs had purchased secrecy. Some of these couldn't stand the light of public scrutiny, even the pale light at Arcade.
("Just let me at those terminals,") he wished.
Bobby held the ancient hacker belief, "Data wants to be free." He'd devoted his life to liberating data... He forgot for a moment that he was now a dataslave destined for an auction block in some Maze compartment. His new owner might not treat him as well as Capt. Morganski's jolly pirates had.
To say that slavery was legal in Arcade was an understatement.
Most of the brothel girls were "under contract." Many of the sales clerks, and even some of the maintenance workers had been brought to Arcade by pirates or outright slavetraders. This state of affairs bothered few visitors, though. In deep space, life was not regulated by paternalistic governments. At Arcade, the code was simple: Thou shalt do nothing to offend the Management.
The public terminals also displayed the Arcade Code of Conduct. They redisplayed this file after a terminal had sat unused for several minutes - under the cheery "Welcome to Arcade" message.
Bobby's tourfile also offered the Code as a menu item. He read it. ("Interesting.")
The liberal state of Arcade morality did not preclude religious establishments. There were minitemples and chapels of almost every popular persuasion. Some of the more-dangerous cults were banned, but flourished secretly.
The most-worshiped entity at Arcade was Mammon.
Bobby approached a virtual Concourse dataterminal booth. He was able to look inside and view its screen. It had a realistic static display, but it wasn't hyperlinked to other files, and couldn't be operated from the tourfile in which Bobby was immersed.
("Too bad. I'd like to use it to read about 'vocational selection' at Arcade.")
This was the euphemism used by the slave traders for their operations. They advertised on no Web sites Bobby had ever seen... He suddenly recalled something of great interest to him. ("Yeah. I've got to find out about that. It could be my destiny.")
Arcade was the finest offworld mart for rare and antique Web files.
("Maybe...") As Bobby used the program to walk the virtual Concourse, he daydreamed of finding a data-custodianship of some kind on Arcade, gaining his manumission, then going into business for himself.
After all, wasn't he Mister Data?
"Here you go, kid. This is your new home. It's the VIP suite for slaves. Don't abuse your privileges."
Kivo Artish
was an experienced, canny slaver. He was a Terran, who perpetually kept a cigar in his
mouth. But he lit it only when he was in his quarters or his Auction Room. Arcadians were
allowed to smoke in a compartment only if it was furnished with electrostatic
smoke-filtration equipment leased from the Management. Smoking was, predictably, forbidden
elsewhere.
After Artish had set Bobby straight about his new status as a marketable slave, he'd led him to his temporary quarters in an inner compartment where the gravity was about half-Terran. Prison bars and shackles for slaves were generally avoided on Arcade. Slaves had nowhere to run - it was believed. Artish was armed with a stunner, just in case.
"You'll stay here until the auction... Since you're a datajack, try to get a response out of that 'droid." Bobby looked inside the room. Frankenstein's monster was lying on one of the bunkbeds!... Or so it seemed at first glance.
"It went brain-dead on me after I bought it. Get it up and running, and there'll be a reward for you before your sale."
But there would still be a sale. ("How generous. A few minutes with one of your femslaves, maybe?") This thought made Bobby wonder, ("Is Ranny stashed somewhere around here, waiting for the Terrinforma?")
The slaver pushed Bobby into the spartan compartment. It had two bunkbeds, a bathroom cubicle, and a public dataterminal. Bobby suspected that the terminal would be monitored by Kivo Artish to surreptitiously evaluate his datajacking skills. When the buyers arrived for the auction, he'd have a record of Bobby's genuine accomplishments to show them.
("How clever of him. He probably thinks his own important files are protected... We'll see about that.")
The android was lying in the lower bunk in a catatonic state. It was tall, husky, and dressed in a simple suit of heavy brown fabric. Close up, it looked less like the fabled Frankenstein's monster. But it was noticeably different from a human being.
Most worlds had laws requiring androids to be "noticeably different" from those living beings they were modeled after. Bobby's cellmate resembled an early computer-generated image of a human. Its sallow skin looked rubbery, and its facial configuration had sharp-edged planes that alone marked it as nonhuman. ("I sure hope it's not inhuman, too.") Bobby had never seen an android in person, but he'd heard scare-stories about police and military androids designed as ruthless killing machines.
Bobby bent over to examine the android. Its dark eyes were open, and it was staring upward. The stare alone was enough to give him the creeps. Bobby had a feeling the thing might suddenly reach out and grab him. He backed away and spoke to it.
"Hi." He waved a hand. "My name's Bobby Crawley. I'm a slave, too."
There was no response from the electromechanical man.
"Have a good sleep, fella." Bobby turned to the dataterminal.