ChallengingDestiny17Challenging Destiny #17Crystalline Sphere PublishingCrystalline Sphere PublishingCopyright © 2003 by Crystalline Sphere Publishing, December 2003Science Fiction/Fantasy. 50815 words long. enNoveltext/xml

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Challenging Destiny #17
by Crystalline Sphere Publishing
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Science Fiction/Fantasy

Crystalline Sphere Publishing
challengingdestiny.com

Copyright ©2003 by Crystalline Sphere Publishing, December 2003

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

Challenging Destiny

New Fantasy & Science Fiction

Number 17, December 2003

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CONTENTS

EDITORIAL: How Can You Use Your Computer More Effectively? by David M. Switzer

FICTION: Dark Thread by Marissa K. Lingen

FICTION: Jack Be Nimble by Fraser Sherman

INTERVIEW: Interview with Scott Mackay interview by James Schellenberg & David M. Switzer

FICTION: Faller by William McIntosh

FICTION: Frank Among the Franks by Brian N. Pacula

REVIEW: Time Travel: Movies (Part 2 of 2) by James Schellenberg

FICTION: Robin Williams, Speaking Spanish by A. R. Morlan

Challenging Destiny Back Issues

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Publisher Crystalline Sphere Publishing

Editor David M. Switzer

Contributing Editor Michael Felczak

Cover Artist John Hancock

Layout Designer David M. Switzer

Creative Consultants Lesley-Ann Jurawan, James Schellenberg & Robert P. Switzer

Challenging Destiny (ISSN 1206-6656), Number 17, December 2003. Copyright (c) 2003 by Crystalline Sphere Publishing. All rights reserved by the individual authors. All correspondence: Challenging Destiny, R. R. #6 St. Marys, Ontario Canada N4X 1C8. Email: csp@golden.net. Web site: challengingdestiny.com.

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EDITORIAL: How Can You Use Your Computer More Effectively?
by David M. Switzer

Unless you've already retired or you're going to become a hermit it's highly likely that you will be using a computer in your life.

The world of computers has moved very quickly and will continue to do so. For example, 10 years ago hardly anyone had heard of the internet and now millions of people are using it, including most people I know.

Because of this rapid change, learning how to use certain applications is not the most important thing to do—the applications that you learn now are not going to necessarily be the ones you use later, and applications always change too. What's most important to learn is underlying concepts and techniques. You have to be able to learn new things—to apply your knowledge of one application to another. So memorizing certain things is only going to get you to a certain point—what'll get you farther is understanding how things work.

One thing that worries people is when they're presented with a new application that they have to learn, or even a new feature in an application that they know. I'm going to give you some strategies for learning new things on a computer.

Use the help menu. It's typically the right-most menu, and you should check it out when you're learning a new application. You shouldn't read through the whole thing—that would be boring, and you wouldn't remember it all anyway. But you should read any introductory topics and look around to see what's there. And when you need to find something later, remember that the help menu is there to help you. It's true that sometimes the help menu isn't as helpful as it could be, but if you get used to reading the kind of material that's there it's going to help you more. Applications often come with an introductory tutorial, which can be very helpful too.

Look for shortcuts. In any application you're using these days there should be shortcuts to the common actions you perform. The shortcuts will just let you do these actions a bit quicker. A key sequence (holding down two or three keys together) or clicking on a button is faster than going to a menu and selecting some item, as long as you know what the shortcut is. In an application that you use frequently it won't take long to get to know the shortcuts. In some applications you can even create your own shortcuts (for example, see Tools—Customize in Microsoft Word).

Click on things to see what they do. Some people are afraid of breaking the application, but don't be. In any application you're using you should be able to do a lot of things by clicking, double-clicking, or dragging the mouse. Do some experimenting to see what happens.

Remember where you see things are in case you need them later. Let's say you're using a particular dialog box. Instead of just focusing on the part that you're using right now, look around and see what else is there. That way you can keep it in the back of your mind for later when you might need it. Of course, you're not going to remember everything but this can give you an idea of what's in the application—and you can always look things up in the help.

Create a small document just to play around with. Instead of starting with an important document, create a document to experiment with. That way you don't have to be afraid of breaking something.

Save a copy of the files you create. If you use the previous strategy and add some comments to remind yourself what you were doing, you can save the documents for later use. You'll remember the things you learned for some time while you're using that application, but if you don't use it for a while you'll forget. If you then have to use it again, it'll be more efficient to look at what you did the first time rather than do it all over again.

Everyone knows you often encounter problems on a computer. Why is that? Computers are more sophisticated devices—they can do more things—than other machines (like your microwave or your TV) and so there are more possible problems that could occur. When you encounter a problem, you should first read the error message if there is one. Sometimes the error message is cryptic, but sometimes it actually tells you some useful information. The next thing to do is figure out what could possibly be the cause of the problem. Then check each of those possible causes (maybe starting with the one that's most likely) to see which one is the actual cause.

Memorizing where things are in an application is not the most efficient plan, because as I said at the beginning—things change. Obviously if you use an application a lot you're going to remember where the common things are. But when you're learning a new application a more efficient plan is to figure out what kind of things are in the different areas of the application. For example, each of the menus should have a theme. If you figure out what the theme is, then you don't have to memorize each item in the menu—if you're looking for an item you'll know where to find it.

These strategies I've mentioned take some effort—but the effort you put in now using them will pay off later when you use applications more efficiently. Following are some more things that may help you use your computer more effectively, depending on what you use your computer for.

Organize your files. At some point you're going to look for something and you're going to have a lot of files. Depending on whether or not your files are organized, it will either be easy or hard to find what you're looking for. Name your files with meaningful file names—luckily the days of 8-character file names are over, and you can use reasonable names that you can later recognize. Store files that belong together in a separate folder/directory, rather than putting all your files in the same place.

Do you know why the keys on a standard “Qwerty” keyboard are in the order they're in? They were designed that way back in the typewriter era to slow you down—so that people who typed really fast on a typewriter wouldn't jam the keys together. There's a “Dvorak” layout that is easier to learn, more comfortable, and allows you to type faster. (See www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/)

The web has lots of garbage on it but it also has lots of good stuff—you just have to know how to find it. Search engines typically allow you to search by topic or keywords. One thing to keep in mind is that no one search engine knows about all the web pages in the world. Different search engines also do their searches in different ways. So depending on what kind of information you're looking for, one search engine could be much more helpful than another. (See searchenginewatch.com/facts/)

If you have a question that needs answered and no one can answer it, you can probably find a web site or newsgroup that's relevant. Newsgroups are places you can go and look at messages from different people all on the same topic (like a mailing list except the messages are stored in one place rather than mailed to you). There are newsgroups devoted to just about any topic imaginable. Check the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) and if your question isn't answered there, ask it on the newsgroup. If you're in the right place you'll often get several answers within a few hours. (See groups.google.com/)

If you're using your computer to do desktop publishing, or you've created a web page, or you're doing any kind of design with text, I recommend The Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams. The book gives you concrete rules about how to make a good design. Of course, once you know what you're doing you can break the rules.

If you want to learn the mechanics of how to create a web page, there are lots of books and web sites that can help you. One book that's good is Learning Web Design by Jennifer Niederst.

If all you've learned about on the computer is applications, you might consider learning a bit about programming. It can be useful even if you're never going to become a programmer. Knowing a bit about programming gives you an idea of why things work the way they do in the applications that you use. Knowing a bit about programming also helps you do fancier things in many applications and also on your web page. You might start with The Philosophical Programmer by Daniel Kohanski, which discusses various topics to do with programming in layman's terms.

* * * *

By day Dave Switzer is a mild-mannered instructor of computer science. By night he's a wild and crazy editor of science fiction and fantasy. If you're looking for more short fiction, he recommends Virtual Unrealities by Alfred Bester, Masterpieces edited by Orson Scott Card, Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang, The Bakka Anthology edited by Kristen Pederson Chew (which you probably can't get but maybe somebody will reprint it), and The Perseids and Other Stories by Robert Charles Wilson. He also recommends all collections by Isaac Asimov, Orson Scott Card, Arthur C. Clarke, and Frank Herbert.

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FICTION: Dark Thread
by Marissa K. Lingen

Anne knew it was time to stop practicing soon. Her fingers were less sure on the keys, and she could hear the difference in the counterpoint. She had rechecked the Braille manuscript three times in the last five minutes—never a good sign. She heard footsteps in the wings and withdrew her hands from the keyboard.

“I didn't mean to disturb you, Miss Duvallier,” said the young woman. “I just—your chauffeur is pulling the car around. I can take you out to the atrium, if you like."

“I would appreciate that very much,” said Anne, wishing she could remember the girl's name. “Just let me take your arm, if you will."

The girl helped Thea get Anne settled in the back seat of the car. “Did you have a good session?” asked Thea.

“It was all right,” said Anne. “The performance will be quite good, I think. The acoustics are excellent."

“You've worn yourself out."

Anne sighed. “I'm a little tired, yes.” She was grateful that she had Thea—without the dogged young woman, Anne's musical career would have halted immediately when she went blind. But sometimes she wished Thea didn't know her quite so well.

“You need to take a longer break next time."

“Thea, sweet child, you know I'm terrible at relaxing."

Anne could hear the young woman cluck her tongue. “I'm going to get a masseuse again when we get done with the tour, and I'm not going to let you out of the house all day."

Anne did not dignify that with a response. She let Thea help her negotiate the unfamiliar hotel room, and then they laid out her nightgown and cane in easy reach of the bed. After she told Thea good-night, Anne turned the radio on to a jazz station and slipped clothes off and her nightgown on. The magic came quickly when she was tired, and it had washed around her almost immediately. She felt light reaching her eyes as she entered the other place.

She blinked into a sunset whose colors would have dazzled her even if she had been able to see during the rest of her day. It was color that always dazzled her in Avrenes. She had used her prerogatives as the Weaver Queen to get a huge stained glass window in deep azures and rubies installed in the Weaver Queen's Tower, and she always wore deep purple robes to luxuriate in the color.

But there was work to do. She stretched forth her hands out of habit and crossed the room to her loom. The threads were made of pure colored light, but when she touched them, she could see all sorts of pictures, bits of past and present and future. There were possibilities as yet unrealized and potentials lost forever, all woven into the glowing fabric of the loom.

The threads had to be contemplated, pulled through and knotted individually, and Anne's hands were already tired from a day at the piano. She could only work for a few minutes at a time before having to take a break. As night fell, she could have worked by the light of the loom, but she lit a lamp to enjoy its golden glow. Also, she was expecting a visitor, and the eldritch light often unnerved strangers.

Anne frowned at the loom. There were twists in the pattern she hadn't meant to make. Little mistakes. She could fix them, but what if she didn't catch the next ones? She hurried to repair them.

In among the mistakes she had to correct was a thread whose color she couldn't identify. She squinted at it, moving her head around to try to adjust the angle. Anne finally grasped the thread. She was plunged into darkness so thorough that she thought she was falling back into her everyday world, until she heard the music.

For the first time in her years as the Weaver Queen, she could not see the life and the plans this thread encompassed. She could only hear them—a boy's laughter, turning into a young man's voice. A thunderous organ concerto. Some recorder music. Quarreling from the young man's voice, and then laughter again.

She dropped the thread, and her sight came back. After she recovered from the shock of blindness in the other world, she knew that the dark thread wasn't evil, simply strange to her, someone unknown. She picked it up again and tried to use her magic to discern its secrets. She heard the organ concerto again, but could see nothing.

She let the thread drop again and sat staring at the loom.

It was a relief when the Scientist knocked on her door. “Good evening, Weaver Queen."

She inclined her head. “Scientist.” She didn't know what his name was, in their home world. In Avrenes, who they were was synonymous with what they were.

“My Queen, I have spent many long hours in research, but I must confess myself baffled."

Anne frowned. “Do you have any avenues left open?"

He sighed and seated himself across from her. “I can't think of anything. In all of my studies, and in all the notebooks I could find from previous Scientists, it seems that the question of injury is still open. Some claim that it is a matter of whether the pain or injury is essential to a person's sense of self. If it is essential, it crosses worlds. Others believe that some external party determines whether it crosses over. No one has admitted to this power, of course."

“So somehow this pain in my hands is supposed to be more important than being blind?"

“I can't explain it,” he said. “Now, if you would like, we can send for the Healer to get an ointment prepared for your hands. It won't fix the essential problem, but...."

Anne frowned. “Yes. I think that would be a good idea.” Great things were coming in Avrenes. She needed all the help she could get.

* * * *

When Anne awoke in the hotel bed the next morning, she felt the same shock of disappointment she always did at the return of her darkness. Her hands, too, felt a trifle stiff, and she winced at the thought of having to play that evening. She waited, listening to the faint sounds of life outside her room, until Thea came in to wake her.

The afternoon concert went almost well. Anne was never satisfied with “almost.” She missed ornamentation twice in the second half of her program. It was something a dozen people would have noticed, at the most. But she knew.

And Thea knew. “What's wrong?” she asked as she drove Anne back to the hotel room.

“Nothing."

“Don't tell me nothing,” said Thea sharply. “I know. What's wrong? Is it your hands again?"

“No."

“Are you having trouble with the different surroundings? Are you sleeping okay?"

“I'm fine."

“Fine.” She snorted. “Go on ahead and be fine. See if I care. But I'm going out for supper. I'm going to be fine as well. If that's all right with you, if you're so fine."

Anne wrinkled her forehead in surprise. “Of course. Yes. Go on ahead."

“Because you're fine."

“Sure."

Thea had not taken a night off in four years. Anne thought she must have been particularly hard to deal with lately. She flushed and squirmed, and when Thea steered her into the hotel, she tried to be as accommodating as possible about dinner and arrangements. Thea was still snappish. Anne picked at her sandwich, trying to think about the choices she had ahead of her.

“I'm getting ready to go out,” Thea said.

“Have fun."

Thea was wearing something with a skirt that rustled. Anne could hear her turning in the doorway. “You won't be able to do this for much longer, you know."

“No,” said Anne softly, after she'd gone. “No, I know.” Fifty-six years of the piano. Twenty as the Weaver Queen. She rubbed her hands. Something had to give—something besides her hands. A world without sight, a world without magic? Impossible. A world without music? Inconceivable.

She tore the paper napkin they'd provided into tiny shreds, then ran her hands over her dress to make sure she'd gotten all of the pieces back on the tray for the hotel maid to pick up.

The Healer brought her some ointment for her hands that night, addressing her diffidently. “I can change the scent if you don't like it, my lady."

“No, no, it's fine,” said Anne absently. “Lovely.” She rubbed her hands over and over again.

“Do you need something more, my lady?"

“No, thank you, that will be all."

Anne sat down at her loom again. The first few threads she touched were mundane, average people going about their daily lives in both worlds. She saw a peddler, a teacher, a man making bread. She stopped. Something felt wrong with the man making bread. She ran her hand along the thread and felt it become coarse and rough. She saw the man staring into a bleak landscape, featureless and oppressive from all sides.

Flinching, she drew her hand back. She tried one of the threads further into the pattern. It, too, turned coarse and gray. She searched for the other great powers of the world. Each of them grew prickly and gray, and then, sooner or later, snapped.

“The death of the magic?” she whispered to herself. But no, it went on, and the world with it. It was just the features, the distinctions, the soul of the place, and the people in it, that would be gone.

She shuddered.

The dark thread hovered in the very center of her tapestry. She braced herself for the blindness and took hold of the thread. As before, it was all sound and no sight, the boy's voice, uncertain in itself but stubborn. It outlasted all of the others before it even started to coarsen—but it finally succumbed, surrounded by gray warp and gray weft.

Anne took a deep breath. “No.” She wove like a spider on LSD, trying one pattern that she thought might be crazy enough to fix things, then picking it out again and trying another. Her hands grew stiffer and stiffer; she rubbed another dose of the ointment into them and kept going. But every time, she found the dark thread blocked, kept from carrying out its mission by a white thread wrapped round in purple.

It was her own.

She slept badly that night and barely spoke to Thea as they traveled. She sat with her hands folded to keep from compulsively rubbing her skirt. Thea, for her own part, moved around her hesitantly, a guilty, cranky mother hen.

“Everyone has to retire at some point,” Thea said hesitantly at dinner.

“Yes,” said Anne. “I know.” She knew her clipped tones must sound as though she was still annoyed with the other woman, but she was too preoccupied to care.

That night in Avrenes, Anne lit her lamp again. She wished she had known more people there personally. People were easier to say goodbye to. They could talk back, perhaps even promise to visit. All the things she would miss—they had no such advantages. She smoothed her robes again and again, admired the stained glass, even went to the Tower's clear window to watch the hearth-fires highlighting all the homes in the countryside around her.

Finally, she turned to the loom. She settled the threads, leaving as stable a warp as she could. The world was filled with unforeseen circumstances. The next to last thread she touched was the dark one, with the music and the boy's voice. She tucked it through under the others, to emerge when it was safe.

Then she found the white thread wrapped in purple. With practiced ease, and a little melancholy, she tied it off and sank back into the growing darkness for the last time.

Anne slept hard for the two days before her next concert. Thea kept complimenting her on how well she was taking care of herself. There was a little bewilderment in the other woman's voice—Anne's sudden improvement came as an unexpected gift to Thea, and Anne couldn't tell her what the gift had cost. Anne accepted the kind words quietly; she missed the visions of her nights, but her hands had regained their full flexibility.

Backstage after the concert, Thea said, “Anne, I'd like you to meet a, well, a special friend of mine. This is Ivan Blazovich—he's an organ and keyboard professor at the university here in town."

Anne felt her hands enveloped by warm, dry ones, and she smelled a man. “Pleased to meet you."

“I am charmed, Miss Duvallier,” said Professor Blazovich. “And this is my student, a great admirer of yours. Nate Iverson."

The boy's hand was broad and strong, a little damp. That was to be expected, Anne supposed. And then the boy spoke. “It's wonderful to meet you, Miss Duvallier."

His voice was familiar, and she knew that if he laughed, that, too, would be a sound she already knew. She smiled incredulously. Great things were coming to Avrenes.

* * * *

Marissa Lingen is a freelance writer living in Minnesota after a four-year exile to California. She has particularly missed snow, Norwegian food, and people who don't cut off their vowels. She is currently working on a novel about Finnish mythology, thermionic computers, and Cold War spies.

* * * *

There's two big forces in the world, science and capitalism. Two ways of thought or controlling capital. One is a kind of absent minded professor, “Let's just see how things work, that's what I'm interested in, I'm not interested in world domination.” The other is just completely interested in getting control of as much as possible and piling up as much capital at the top as they can.

—Kim Stanley Robinson, “Axes of Evil” in Albedo One (Issue 25)

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FICTION: Jack Be Nimble
by Fraser Sherman

“Stupid, worthless, miserable boy!” The belt lashed Jack's back, emphasizing every word. “How could you trade our precious magic beans for a useless cow?"

“It's a good deal, Ma!” Crouched on the carpet at the center of Ma's trailer, Jack winced at each weak blow; if she realized she wasn't hurting him, she'd try harder and probably pull a muscle. “Briar's a good cow, she'll give enough milk for us to drink and plenty left over to sell."

“Sell milk? My son, a tradesman?” The faux Gucci belt fell from Ma's shaking hands; exhausted, she sank back into her recliner. “You gave away your destiny for a cow! When you climbed the beanstalk you could have—"

“Been eaten like Pa? It's not like I'm a third son."

“You're a widow's son, that's almost as good."

“The giants aren't a threat to anyone down here, not since the Erlking started factory-farming prisoners to feed them. Jack Dairy's pretty sure he has a destiny, and he wants a princess real bad, so I traded him for Briar Rose."

“And what about your princess? Why do you always waste every opportunity I've given you, all your training—"

“I don't want to get rich just because I know how to lie and play riddle games. I want to accomplish something—own a small business, work it up to—"

“And none of my dreams matter!” A hacking cough cut her next words off.

“You shouldn't exert yourself like that.” Biting his lip, he tugged at the chair's stubborn switch until the footrest came up, then tucked the comforter around her. “It's not good for your asthma."

“You could find a magic inhaler in the giant's castle. One to make me healthy."

“Or I could sell the milk, pay for a prescription—wouldn't that be just as good? Jack Files in the SBA says he'd be glad to arrange a small business loan—someday.” Specifically when Files was sure Ma wouldn't trade away the assets for something hopelessly impractical.

Like trading Jack's old car for the magic beans. It had taken him six months doing odd jobs to earn the down payment, but he'd had a pizza delivery job lined up, above minimum wage, good tips ... by now he'd have had the cable reconnected, and she could be watching General Hospital.

But once she saw he could support them without a destiny, make his own way in the world, she'd be proud of him, wouldn't she? “Ma, wouldn't you like to eat out once in a while? Have an air-conditioner that works?"

She rolled over on her side with an audible sniff. He sat there, stroking her arm until she fell into wheezy sleep.

In the distance, he could hear loud r&b playing—of course, Miller's third son had come home yesterday morning, with a duke's daughter and a spaniel that shed gold when it sneezed. They'd brought in Jack Tune's garage band to play at the engagement party.

And Ma had probably heard how the whole Miller family would be relocating into the duke's new gated community, with a house right on the waterfront. All because Miller's son had robbed a griffin or dragon or ogre or whatever it had been and now he had a hot new wife, money to burn ... Jack drove his fist into the floor, then gasped out in pain.

“If you didn't want to hurt, why'd you hit it?” Puss, the talking marmalade cat, jumped in through the open window. “Metal beats flesh, even flimsy metal like this."

“What do you want?"

“You have a cow. I like milk."

“I don't know how to milk Briar, not yet. Dairy promised he'd show me before he climbs the beanstalk.” He nursed his hand, wishing he could spare the Ibuprofin, but Mom ached so much these days...

“Why aren't you climbing? Even princes go on quests, and they have everything they need already.” The cat followed Jack into the kitchen, licking herself as the boy made a Velveeta sandwich.

“Even first and second sons keep trying,” Jack said, “and they have to know the odds. Or Jack Tailor's wicked stepdaughter, she really thought the North Wind would choose her side over Ella's."

“You're a widow's son, though, and you're not wicked. Why not plant the beans and try? Don't you want a princess?"

“I'd be happy with an ordinary girl ... and it's not like I'd have to save someone from enchanted sleep to get them to like me.” Puss kept licking herself. “Is it?"

“You all look ugly and hairless to me, you know that. But you are kind—well, when you feed me."

Jack tossed the cat a small scrap of Velveeta. “It's not just about Pa, no matter what Jack Shrink says. It is scary, thinking of what happened to him, but—"

“How'd he die?"

“He was a second son. But I was in the hospital, we didn't have insurance; he decided since he was the youngest son that would have to be good enough. He tried using a second-hand invisible cloak to do some industrial spying on the Erlking."

“He thought he could beat the goblin CEO?"

“Snuck into Goblin, Inc.'s head office ... and never came out.” Don't cry. It's been a long time, you're over it. “By the time my hospital bills were paid off, his savings were wiped out."

“Why not ask Sam for some of his gold? Magic gold doesn't run out."

“It will if he gives it away—that's to stop it causing an inflationary spiral. No, I just wish...” He fell silent.

“Finish your sentence!” Puss hissed. “I hate it when humans do that!"

“I was just wishing Ma believed in me. Believed I don't need a destiny to take care of her. And wishing her not to sell the cow for seven-league boots or something useless.” He'd thought the last pair would at least work out for courier service, but when Ma found out his plans, she'd traded them for a magic sword. “But I'm only seventeen, I'm living at home, she can do it legally if she wants."

“That's not good. You don't get some money for medicine, she's going to be dead soon—mrow!” Puss leapt away from the flurry of Harlequin romances Jack hurled at him. “Why do people get so upset when I tell them the truth?"

“Because there's always another truth, cat, for those with vision enough to see it.” It wasn't Puss's voice; Jack turned to the trailer door, suddenly open, and saw a tall man in a dark traveling cape, hood pulled up over his head. “Greetings, Jack."

“If you're a mysterious stranger, try next door,” Jack pointedly turned his back to check on Ma. “I don't mean to be rude, but I have enough trouble as it is."

“I'm not a mysterious stranger. I'm more of a mysterious venture capitalist.” Jack snapped back around. “I was passing by, heard you talking and thought, there's a young man in desperate need of financing."

“I—I can't—my Ma would—” God, why was he telling the man no?

“I have a first-rate legal team, I guarantee your mother won't be able to trade away whatever we set up. Interested?"

“Yes, but—you are mysterious."

“I'm not here to lure you off on a quest, Jack. Unless setting up your own dairy farm counts. Or if you have another business concept, I'm willing to listen.” Jack took an involuntary step closer. “You're exactly what I'm looking for—a smart, sensible boy who won't run off and leave his business in chaos just because an enchanted princess needed help."

“Never!"

“However—” Jack froze on tenterhooks. “—have you had any experience at all in business?"

“I used to subscribe to Small Business Operator.” The man pursed his lips dubiously. “I can do it, all I need is a chance."

“How about a test? Of your ability to function under pressure.” The man stepped closer, pulled a vial out of his pocket. “Uncork this and set it by your mother. Chamomile and echinacea mixed with the footfall of cat, excellent aromatherapy for asthma. To prove I'm in earnest.” Jack managed not to snatch the potion, but set it down on the side table next to Ma's half-empty coffee cup and uncorked it. Was it just imagination or did she start to breathe easier at once? “Well?"

“Whatever the test is, I'll pass it.” Good, that sounded like a take-charge, run-a-business kind of guy. “What is it?"

“I want to see how you handle yourself in a business transaction. I have a business meeting this evening in the woods."

“The woods? Why would you—” Jack stepped back. “Goblins. You're trading with goblins."

“Surely you're not planning to discriminate?"

“Goblin Meadows is a company town. If the Erlking finds out—"

“Which is why I need someone discreet and trustworthy. If you're neither, or if you don't have the will to take risks—well, I'd have to reconsider investing in you.” Jack opened his mouth; nothing came out. “I know about your father—"

“How?"

“I'm mysterious, remember? Let me assure you, I'm not dealing directly with Goblins, Inc. There are a ton of illegal home businesses out there offering cut-rate potions, generic magic swords, the like."

“What about Goblin Security?” Long snaky arms, red-glowing, fell eyes, chittering, whispering ... his father's killers.

“My truck's cold iron and chrome; as long as we stay on the highway, GobSec won't be able to touch us. They'll try to talk us into the woods, but neither of us is that stupid—right? We'll be back before nightfall—I wouldn't risk it otherwise—and tomorrow morning, I'll have the papers drawn up for your initial loan.

“Well, boy? What do you say?"

* * * *

“The sun's going down.” Jack stared up at the dimming light, the long hands of the trees clawing blue from the sky. Hidden somewhere behind them sat the goblin subdivisions, surrounded by walls of thorns and GobSec patrols. “You said we'd be back home—"

“No, I said we'd be leaving Goblin Meadows by nightfall, that's a good thirty minutes. We're almost there, lad; quit worrying and drink your Coke."

“My bladder's too small. I'd have to pee in the woods.” He wanted to turn on the radio, but here in the woods they wouldn't pick up anything but goblin metal. The truck braked to a stop; Jack glanced around, trying to stay calm and professional. “Are they out there?"

“I certainly hope so."

“Then...” He could do this. He could look goblins in the eye. “So what now? You're sure it's not dangerous."

“Certainly not for me.” Something brushed Jack's arm, then pain seared through him. He slumped against the door, unable to move, heard the truck stop, heard the stranger's door open and close, then the passenger door opened and Jack fell into the stranger's arms. Without a word, the stranger dragged him out and over to the nearest tree.

Movement started to return as Jack felt cold metal encircle his wrists, then heard a click. He pulled his arms forward; handcuffs thunked against the tree. “Why?"

“Because you didn't drink the Coke. It had enough Roofies in it I wouldn't have needed the taser."

“I mean, why are you—why me?"

“Last boy I sold to the goblins had a destiny. Escaped, so the Erlking's attorneys all wanted a piece of me. Eventually I got the pieces regrown, but ... I need someone who won't escape. A nice, normal, non-heroic boy. I've been through the trailer park a couple of times, listened to the gossip, picked my mark. Quite well, it turns out.

“And here come my associates now.” Jack followed the direction of the stranger's gaze. Cunning red eyes glinted in shadows.

* * * *

“Owww!” Jack couldn't keep back a scream as the burning red welts sprang up on his arm.

“Fffailed...” Sitting in front of him like an oversized, scaled frog, the goblin crew chief, marked it on his clipboard. “Raissesss a rash..."

“Will you wash it off, please?” Jack asked the tiny kobold trailing behind its superior. “Please! If my skin all sloughs off—"

“Alwaysss complaining...” The goblin hopped off the table, but nodded to the kobold, who sprayed Jack's arm from the plastic bottle and wiped him down with a grungy cloth. “Try preparation 233 nexxxt."

Jack could almost laugh: He'd made it into business.

Somehow, he hadn't thought of doing it shackled to a wall as a product-testing slave.

One shock of hair was now permanently blue from the defective hair restorative, and he hadn't bathed in a week, unless you counted the sprayings. But they did spray him, they did feed him and he did get bathroom breaks; it wasn't that easy to capture replacement testers and stay nominally legit. The mysterious stranger probably got a great deal.

But what would happen to Ma while he was here? There was almost no food left in the house, no money. “I've got to get out of here!"

“Yeah, don't we all.” The stringy woman sitting on the stool down from him made a face. Well, she made half a face, the other half being stiff as a board. “T'ain't no way, though."

“Oh, a couple of years and you'll be out.” a grizzled man across the way added. “After a point, your body loads up on potions and starts giving them false reactions—I've only about five months to go."

“And it's not as bad as it used to be,” the woman said. “When I started, testers still had to sit in their own shit, until OSHA insisted on bathroom breaks. And you did sign a consent form—"

“The goblins moved my hand for me!"

The woman shrugged. “Good enough for the feds. Not even they really want to take on the Erlking over people like us."

“Though they say inside the private suite next to his office, there's a lake of virgin water—” the old man said.

“And in the lake there's a duck, and the duck holds the egg that will destroy the Erlking if it breaks,” Jack said. “I know all that stuff, but there's never been a third son could get past ten floors of GobSec—” He broke off. The foreman was coming back up the line, one of the kobolds behind him holding a sponge and a bottle of glowing pink fluid.

He didn't have to stay here for this. He'd palmed a needle from the scratch allergic reaction test earlier, and Pa had taught him how to pick locks. He could be out next sleep period.

Only ... he swallowed, staring at the endless line of shackled testers. He wasn't a hero, he didn't have a destiny, but... “I only hope widow's sons are just as good.” The old man and woman stared at him blankly as he rose from his stool and waved to the foreman. “Hey, goblin!"

“That's Mr. Scroungegizzard, human!"

“Scroungegizzard, I have an amazing riddle for you—or is it true you goblins forgot how to answer those when you let the suits take over?"

“Riddle?” The foreman hissed like a boiling kettle. “A goblin can anssswer any human riddle."

“Then—you shouldn't have any trouble making a little bet, should you?"

He hoped and prayed his parents really had trained him well.

* * * *

“The answer is, a spider eating a fly.” Jack smiled.

“Ssstupid!” The Goblin Inc. VP raked his claws over the chief negotiator's skull. “Obvioussss ansswer! Should have guessssed!"

“You didn't!” The negotiator hissed back.

“That means we push up the date for the union election by three more weeks.” There was a torrent of applause from the table behind Jack, where the strike committee sat, stuffing their faces. A few riddle-games back, he'd gotten them free from their chains, and burgers and fries delivered for the entire testing facility.

“Now it issss my turn to riddle you,” the VP hissed. “If I sssuccceeed ... open shop, right-to-work, agreed!"

“Agreed!” No problem there, product testers didn't have much competition from scab labor.

“Two legs sat upon three legs—"

“What exactly is going on here?” A cold silence fell over the room as the Erlking stepped out of his elevator. He had on a black Armani jacket, black chinos, tasseled black Italian loafers, an expensive black silk shirt; speech therapists had almost eliminated his hiss. “I take a simple three-day weekend and come back to find my product testers—unionizing?"

“It—it wasss a riddle game,” the VP protested. “It ssseeemed harmlesss—we could—"

“Mr. Biteweb, did you read my last memo? The one strictly banning riddle games?” He pointed a scaly finger at the VP. “Remember our mission statement: Goblins never enter contracts—"

“Unlessss they have loopholes!"

“Therefore, we no longer play riddle games because—?"

“No ffine print!"

“Exactly.” Every eye fixed on the CEO as he strode closer. “I have worked long and hard to put us in a position where conniving humans with swords or magic charms cannot walk off with goblin assets no matter how cleverly they riddle.

Now tell me, does it fit our corporate goals to let unionization of any part of Goblins, Inc. hinge on whether or not you know what's black and white and red all over?"

“Ahh ... no?"

“Finally, a right answer—but tragically, a little too late.” With a twist of his wrist, the Erlking wrenched Biteweb's head off, then turned to face Jack and the other testers. “Now, might I ask if your unionization movement has such a thing as a spokesman?” No one moved. No one spoke. “Pinchfinger, will you bring out the strikebreaking trolls—"

“Leader.” Jack swallowed. “That would be me."

The Erlking smiled. “Come upstairs."

* * * *

“Vice president?” Jack stared across the Erlking's desk

“You must have noticed there's a new opening.” The Erlking smiled at Jack over the rim of his demitasse; Jack's cup sat on the desk, untasted. “Admittedly outwitting a lackwit like Biteweb is no great triumph, but how few of my testers would dare? I can use men of daring."

“But I'm not a goblin."

“At the last shareholders’ meeting, I promised them a corporate suite that looked like America, or some such nonsense. You look more like America than I do."

“What about the other pris—” The Erlking raised one black, snaky eyebrow. “I mean the long-term contract labor?"

“Sheep. Without you, they'll quiet back down.” He fixed Jack with a beady, black-eyed gaze. “Don't let them cloud your judgment, Jack. A team player is important—but a team player who knows when the right play is carrying the ball alone, all the way down the field, that's a man who shapes his own destiny."

“Uh—right."

“It comes with the usual perks: Corporate credit card, company car, company apartment, rental options on many companions of either sex—"

“You think I'll have to rent companions?"

“Of course not, but that way you get what you want, when you want it, exactly the way you want it.” The Erlking leaned forward, smiling. “That's what it's all about, right?"

“Absolutely.” Jack forced an answering smile onto his face, hoping he wasn't about to make a terrible mistake. “But may I have a second to think about it—while I uh, pee?"

“'Pee'?” The Erlking rolled his eyes, but gestured at the gold-handled executive washroom door. “We also provide all executives with training in etiquette—"

“I'd love to hear about that, in just a second.” Jack ran to the oaken door, ignoring the Erlking's sigh, stepped into a bathroom twice the size of Ma's trailer and locked the door behind him.

He raced across the marble tile floor, swung the door on the far side open, and darted into the Erlking's private suite. Half a mile away, a white duck—the white duck—paddled in the middle of a dark pond of water so pure no goblin could stand its touch.

And none of the gryphons, three-headed dogs, gargoyles or other guardians populating the floors below in sight. Jack ran for the water.

“I do so admire initiative.” The Erlking stood in the doorway, framed against the bathroom light; Jack took one glance back and ran faster. “But I'm afraid I need you to be more of a team-player, so if I were you—"

“You're not."

“Which I'm quite happy about, actually.” Jack risked another glance back, saw the Erlking sprinting after him—and gaining. “'No need for security at the actual site.’ ‘Cost effectiveness must be considered in allocating GobSec resources.’ Accountants!” The slap of Italian leather on the tiled floor drew closer. “A shame your reach exceeded your grasp, you had real potential."

“You ate my father!"

“Is that all this is about? I assure you—"

“No. Not all.” The footsteps sounded horribly close as Jack neared the pool. “I don't like—” Closer. “—the way—” Just a few more steps, he had to make it! “—you do business!"

Jack felt talons close on his ankle, flung himself forward, hit the water and started swimming.

“Jack, be reasonable.” The Erlking's hiss was a little more pronounced. “I can arrange stock options—health benefits—” Jack's hands closed on the duck; despite her quacking and wriggling, he reached under her and the egg fell into his hand. “Did I mention the rentable companions? Either sex?"

Jack hurled the egg against the onyx and gold tile on the edge of the pool.

Suddenly, an army of gray-suited, bespectacled men filled the room.

“There are irregularities in your expense account—"

“We need forms filed on each of the 4,200 people you ate last year."

“About your latest attempt at union-busting—"

“You've deviated from standard accounting practices in your annual report—"

“I want my attorneys!” The Erlking backed against the wall as the crowd of gray men swelled. “My corporate spokesperson! My—"

His clothes sodden, Jack pulled himself out of the pool and lay on the tiles, smiling.

* * * *

“Treasure?” His mother, snuggled deep in the new electric blanket, sipped medicine from the spoon Jack held in front of her. “Goblin treasure? A magic carpet, a—"

“Just gold, Ma.” American money was backed with gold, or at least as good as gold, so it wasn't a lie. Exactly. “I defeated the Erlking himself—outwitted him, really—to win the treasure.” In the form of sizable whistle-blower awards from the SEC, EEOC, OSHA and a couple of other alphabetics.

“Oh, my son. I knew my Jack had the stuff of heroes.” She leaned over and kissed his forehead. “Wait till I tell them down at the bingo parlor!” She was proud of him. Really proud. Even if it had been just a stupid riddle-game, it felt—good. “What about your princess?"

“I'm working on it.” Technically, it had only been a really good looking SEC intern who said his blue hair looked edgy, but she had said yes to a date, and Ma didn't need to know the details just now, did she? “And I'm going to put the goblin gold to sensible use, okay? I've had my adventure, now I'm going to move us into a better trailer, buy a reliable used car, invest in an organic dairy—"

“All right, all right.” She sighed. “You should be ruling a kingdom, you really should."

“I guess.” He picked up the remote and turned on the TV. “I love you Ma, you know? Now I got cable hooked up, would you like to watch wrestling?"

* * * *

Fraser Sherman works as a reporter for the Destin Log newspaper. His freelance work includes short stories in Realms of Fantasy and Eldritch Tales, articles in The Writer, Boys’ Life and Newsweek and the movie reference book Cyborgs, Santa Claus and Satan, on made-for-TV SF, horror and fantasy films. Fraser lives in northwest Florida.

* * * *

Tourism is a two-faced giant that, at its best, has rescued many communities from depression and poverty. At its worst, it has created an international market for child prostitution and left a trail of destroyed natural habitats from Mount Everest, with its garbage-littered slopes, to resorts where bewildered sea turtle hatchlings head for the lights of hotels instead of into the sea.

—Patricia Bow, “Lightening the heavy tread of tourism” in University of Waterloo Magazine (Summer 2002)

[Back to Table of Contents]

INTERVIEW: Interview with Scott Mackay
interview by James Schellenberg & David M. Switzer

CD: Your first SF novel Outpost is an interesting and unique time travel story. How do you go about trying to write an original take on a story that's been used a lot in SF before?

SM: In the case of Outpost I think what's unique and original about it is the choice of protagonist. I took a 17-year-old girl and then put her in a state of amnesia so she doesn't really know what she's done or where she is or how she's going to get out of her situation. I put a twist on the old time travel scenario. SF, as far as I'm concerned, is a series of tropes, and they've all been used again and again. I think the job of today's SF writer is to more or less put a new twist on those tropes—putting old wine in new bottles.

CD: When you wrote it did you sit down and read other time travel stories, or did you have those in the back of your mind?

SM: I wasn't researching time travel stories in terms of reading fictional time travel stories. I was researching the historical aspects of it. For instance, the book The Prince by Machiavelli figures in it so of course I read that. A lot of collateral materials as well, to give me a feeling for the time. Time travel stories are of a type—there are about three types. This one is the type where the person goes back in history, changes one small detail, and the rest of the future is changed from there on in.

CD: How did you get started writing?

SM: My mother's a writer. Her name is Claire Mackay, and she's quite a well-known young adult non-fiction writer—she started her career writing young adult novels. Her cousin was a writer as well. Her latest one to come out is called The Toronto Story, published by Annick Press. She's doing a series now from Scholastic, a series of three books—a young adult history of Canada.

CD: Have you known that you wanted to write for a long time?

SM: I started out originally as a musician. My father's a musician—I come from a very artistically inclined family. My father's a jazz musician, and we've always had that in our family. I actually went to the University of Toronto and got my BA in music performance, and played professional classical music for about 15 years. I had my own group—flute, violin, viola, and cello. I played flute. I got sick of the lifestyle—you can only make so much money. I thought it was time to get a job—I wanted to have a house and kids. So I got a full-time job. All this time I was writing—I've been writing stories since my teens. But I think I seriously realized I wanted to be a writer in 1979. My first novel, unpublished, was SF for juveniles about these three kids who took off to another planet and they get themselves in a situation where they have to get back. Fairly standard, but I enjoyed writing it, so much so that it ignited a spark in me. Ever since then SF has always held a special place for me.

CD: What draws you to the SF genre in particular?

SM: It has such wide-open boundaries. I'm also a mystery writer. That, on the other hand, is like crafting a small gem because the focus of a mystery novel is always a murder. The focus of a SF novel can be anything, any place, any time, anywhere, any being. That's why I like it—you can really go for the big idea. You can have a lot of fun with mysteries, but you can't have the wide open canvas that you can have with a SF novel.

CD: Are there any particular authors who have been influences on your writing?

SM: I always liked Dorothy L. Sayers, a mystery novelist. The framework of my mystery novels are more or less based on the same kind of framework she uses. Particularly her because her suspects are treated as full-fledged characters. I always say that a suspect has to be more than just a suspect, he has to be a character. The mystery genre is really a great genre for character development because, what does the protagonist do? He goes around, he interviews character after character, and they speak for themselves—they're either unreliable as narrators about themselves or they're reliable, so you get to have a lot of fun with characters.

As far as SF is concerned, I like John Varley, who is I think a vastly underrated writer. I wish he'd produce more. In his Ophiuchi novels, aliens have taken over the Earth but left the habitable planets—the rocks like Mars, the moon, Titan—available for human habitation. So you have the aliens inhabiting the Earth and humans all throughout the solar system, particularly on the moon. His novel Steel Beach is just a wonderful picture of a human society on the moon, and I was thrilled when I read it and I remember it always and it's influenced me greatly.

The other writer who's influenced me is Robert J. Sawyer. I read his Quintaglio series years ago and I thought to myself, “This guy is vastly readable. I can just turn page after page.” A lot of SF I find myself editing as I go. That comes from being trained by my mother. My mother being a writer, I always submitted my works to her first, and she would go with the blue pen and so forth. I have a highly conscious sense of editorial needs. Sawyer's ideas are interesting. I was talking to him recently and they're thinking of reissuing the Quintaglio series, and he's thinking of wanting to get a more serious cover on the book because now he's taken a more serious vein in his writing with Hominids and Humans. I don't know whether that reflects his own opinion about the book or not, but I think they're serious works. I enjoyed them immensely, the characters were all well-drawn—just a great read, all three of them.

CD: Which genre do you enjoy writing in the most?

SM: It's a question about my level of excitement at any given time. If I'm writing a mystery, by the time I've finished the mystery I'm a little fatigued by it, by the genre, and by the book I happen to be writing. So I start thinking of SF again, and when I do, it's because I haven't been working on it for a while, and my excitement is rekindled. So it's kind of this back and forth, and I have this incredible enthusiasm for SF, and when I get to the end of the book, and Laura Anne (Laura Anne Gilman, editor at Roc) sends the final copy editor's version, and we're going through it for the umpteenth time, I think, “Geez, wouldn't it be nice to write a mystery?” So one provides relief for the other, but my enthusiasm for both is basically equal. I also write literary fiction—I haven't published a literary novel but I've published several literary short stories in magazines like The Fiddlehead. I would like to eventually write a literary novel—in fact I'm working on one right now. But the demands of my mystery contracts and my SF contracts don't leave me too much time for that. Also, from a commercial sense you don't want to spread yourself too thin. If you spread yourself too thin you can't keep a book in your treadmill, which is what they like you to do to build your career.

CD: What do you like most about writing?

SM: With SF, what I like a lot about writing is developing the setting. For instance, in Outpost you had the setting of a fully automated prison on a remote planet. How does it work, who put it there, what does it look like, why is it falling to pieces. And just getting the atmosphere of that sense of decay and of a place falling apart was a great deal of fun.

The same thing with my most recent SF novel, Orbis. It's an alternate 1947—somehow that just appealed to me. SF novels are supposed to be about the future—I wanted to write one in 1947 and change certain things about it. The biggest part I enjoyed about it was having the United States uninhabited west of the Mississippi, so that you still had all the traditional Native ways happening. My main character was thrust into that whole situation. I'm a great fan of Larry McMurtry. Lonesome Dove has got to be one of the best books ever written—it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986. I've always wanted to do something like that about the West, and I thought this was a perfect opportunity to put some of that into Orbis. There's also a lot of research I used for that—reading up on the different Indian tribes and the way they lived, and the way they developed through the centuries, and the introduction of white man into their society, the introduction of horses to the Plains people. That was an interesting challenge because Cortez was the one who introduced horses into the West. Of course with the West uninhabited and no Spaniards anywhere in sight I had to have the Romans introduce the horse through Florida—a lot of interesting challenges.

As far as mysteries go, it's the character. My detective is presented with a murder to solve and he gets a certain number of suspects and he goes around and interviews them or his partner does. It's a lot of fun because you get to focus specifically on the characters. It's like carving out a small gem for each character—a kind of set piece for each one.

CD: Do you know who the murderer is right away, or how does that work?

SM: Lately I've been having to do proposals, which is a plot outline and three chapters, and I send them to my publisher. So lately I've been having to let them know who the murderer is. But the way I really like to work it is if, through the book I begin to think that who I first believed the murderer was going to be becomes too obvious to the reader, I will then change it. I will fool myself, and then devise extra narrative, extra passages, to point somewhere else. Part of the fun of a mystery for a lot of readers is to keep on guessing. They feel cheated if they can guess who the murderer is on page 2. The Barry Gilbert series is not so much a who-done-it as a why-done-it, and that goes back to the characters, and relationships between the characters.

CD: You said for SF you liked working with the setting. For a mystery you're often working with real-world settings. How do you go about living in Toronto and writing about Toronto?

SM: Writing a mystery set in Toronto was actually my agent's suggestion. At the time when I decided I wanted to write a mystery series, regional mysteries were very big. A lot of mysteries that were coming out were set in small out of the way places or in cities with a lot of exact detail from those locales. He said, “Why don't you write about Toronto?” And I said, “OK, I'll write about Toronto.” I've read books that are set in Toronto by various Canadian authors and I never felt as if they had quite the same version of it as I did, so it was a lot of fun to write my own impressions of Toronto. I've lived here now for 32 years so I know the city fairly well. A lot of my Toronto readers come up and say they love to read it because they can recognize all the places, and in that respect setting in a mystery is a lot of fun to do.

CD: You also wrote a book called A Friend in Barcelona.

SM: It was my first novel, published by HarperCollins in 1991, and it's a World War II thriller. At the time I was reading a lot of Ken Follet and John Le Carré and I was just coming out of a literary phase, not selling too many stories and I thought, “What can I write that might have a better chance of getting published? Well, since I'm reading all this thriller fiction, why don't I try my hand at a thriller?” So I tried my hand at a thriller and I chose WWII because I have an interest in WWII. I'm a bit of a history buff as far as WWII is concerned, and I like submarines too. It was a lot of fun to research all the submarines, and watch Das Boot about five times. As far as my novels go it's kind of an anomaly. I'm not sure that I'll ever write a thriller again, but who knows?

I was younger then, and still settling in my ways. I did try writing a few thrillers afterwards but they didn't sell. My then-agent didn't particularly think that they were strong, and I thought, “It's time to try something else.” It comes back to this idea of writers having to be persistent, keep trying different things. I seem to be having some success with the SF in particular—the numbers are going up. I'm continuing to enjoy it, which is probably the best thing.

CD: What have your experiences been with different publishers that have published your books?

SM: When you say publisher, what it amounts to for the writer is an editor. That's your chief point of contact. I've liked all my editors so far. My editor for A Friend in Barcelona was Stanley Colbert. He ran the Colbert Agency here in Toronto—he was my first agent, and then he bought HarperCollins and published my first novel. I became a client of Linda McKnight's. As for Outpost, that was David Hartwell. Their styles are different—he likes to write marginalia, a lot of comments on the side. I thought his comments were valid—he's the most knowledgeable man I've ever met as far as SF goes. He can just talk a red streak of SF, pull these titles that are so archaic and on the fringes that hardly anybody's heard of them—he has an academic knowledge. For Cold Comfort my editor was Ken Carroll. He said Cold Comfort was the cleanest book he'd ever seen. Basically he just shipped it to the copy editor. Now my editor is Laura Anne Gilman—she's very organized, thoughtful, and thorough and I can't praise her highly enough. Of the editors that I've had I think she's brought the most out of my books. She writes these long letters—8 or 9 pages—the first page will be to do with the major points and then the remaining pages will be about the smaller points. After the book goes through that process with her, it's a much better book. As far as promotion is concerned, I've had the most promotion from Penguin. Also St. Martin's—they send me promotional materials.

CD: We thought that the premise of Orbis was very unique and interesting. How did you come up with the idea for it?

SM: A lot of novel ideas don't come full-blown, as such. What you get is a germ or two. From those germs you develop the entire novel. As for Orbis, one of the germs was my interest in older technology. A lot of SF novels deal with the technology of the future. I've always been fascinated with radio and the development of radio, so there's a big element of radio in the book. The other small germ, funnily enough, comes from my interest in WWII. I was watching a program on PBS or the Learning Channel—it was an old black and white newsreel of the German army, and it showed young recruits and they were bragging about how these young recruits got to eat a pound of butter a day. It's not particularly nutritious but it probably builds muscle. That got me thinking about the elite elements of the German army, and that in turn led me to join that onto this whole radio idea that was developing in my head. So one of the characters, Neil, becomes a seminarian, and those two ideas together—a unique fighting force and also the idea of radio—joined, and from there it was developing and explaining how this could have worked. Also I just wanted to do something in 1947. You give yourself these scenarios and then you have to provide a reasonable rationale. That's the way the rest of the plot filters into it, by having to explain in a reasonably coherent fashion why the original two points come together.

CD: In The Meek and Orbis, you have the theme of what it's like to be powerless because you're in a certain group, and what kind of resistance you can have to prejudice. Is that a theme you want to continue with?

SM: I've noticed that theme in my books. It's unconscious, but it keeps cropping up. In my new book Omnifix, about a man who gets infected by an alien nanogen, slowly disintegrates, and has to use an Earth-created nanogen to build himself back into a cybernetic human being, it's the same thing. There's a whole underclass of cybernetic human beings. I don't know why that is—maybe I have an ingrown sense of injustice about that. Or maybe it's just a plot device. You have one underdog group and you start rooting for them. Put them against another group and you have your basis for conflict in a novel.

CD: When you're using that as part of your plot, have you been happy with how it's turned out?

SM: For the most part, yes. But Fitzgerald said you should never repeat yourself. The more I unconsciously do it, the more I think that I should break out and try something else. Most of my novels are good against evil, especially my SF novels, and it's usually an underdog pitted against a superior being. Like The Empire Strikes Back. It's all just Star Wars in new bottles. I like to have a moral issue, an angle. I like my characters to have to face some sort of moral dilemma. For instance, in Orbis, Eric has such a strong belief in the church, and in the first 200 pages of the novel he begins to see evidence that makes him starts to doubt the church, and he has to figure out what's right for himself rather than have the church figure out what's right for him. The same thing with The Meek—they finally come to Carswell and encounter what they think at first is a non-intelligent race called the Filaments, and they have this moral dilemma: Are they going to take over this planet and rid it of these intelligent indigent beings or are they not? In my mysteries too—if you add that sort of moral dilemma for the characters to solve as well as the usual obstacles, an adventure challenge, it adds an extra element and makes it a lot more enjoyable for me to write. It makes me really feel as if the characters are coming alive, and that they have feelings. It's a good character device.

CD: You mentioned your new novel Omnifix. Can you tell us more about it?

SM: It's coming out in February 2004 from Roc. My agent thinks it's my best since Outpost. Robert Sawyer read it and he wrote a glowing blurb for it—"This is the one we've been waiting for, the one that's going to make Scott a big SF name.” Laura Anne thinks it's the one too. To me, I was writing another SF novel—you never know what you're going to get. The story takes place in and around the year 2500 and it's about a man who's infected by an alien nanogen which disintegrates his body bit by bit, so he's slowly watching himself disintegrate. People on Earth have developed a nanogen to fight this, and the way they do this is to slowly replace the bits he's losing with cybernetic equivalents or biological equivalents. Through the course of the novel what you see is a man who starts out as human slowly turning into a machine, and not only in a physical sense but also in an emotional, spiritual sense. So he has to cope with this and his struggle is obvious—he wants to become human again and he's willing to do anything. He's part of this large underclass known as Number 17s. That's what they're calling this alien nanogen, Number 17. It's basically a man into machine story.

CD: You have a new mystery that just came out too.

SM: Old Scores. It's about the murder of a rock and roll mogul who promotes concerts in Toronto. Gilbert, my protagonist—his wife had an affair with this mogul 23 years ago and it almost broke his marriage up. Through the course of the investigation he begins to uncover clues that implicate his wife in the murder. The department brass begin to see this and they take him off the case. He realizes that other detectives are now trying to convict his wife, so he has to work behind the scenes on the other suspects in order to prove her innocence. Time is running out. It came out from St. Martin's Minotaur in September in hardcover.

CD: Each of your SF novels seems to be very different—time travel, genetically engineered beings on asteroid, and alternate history. Is that a conscious choice, and how do you go about writing such diverse novels?

SM: I perhaps don't read as much SF these days as I used to. I read a lot in my university years and I now read very selectively in SF. I don't have a solid grounding besides what I read in Locus magazine about what current trends are. Some writers say they don't like to read other writers’ books because it'll influence what they themselves write, and to a certain extent it's the same with me and SF. With Orbis my editor's first comment was, “This is original.” I'm not sure whether she levelled that as praise or criticism. It comes down to just what appeals to me at the time—I get an idea and then I start working on it. I don't abandon ideas, no matter how hard they are to work believably, like Orbis—it was very hard to make it with enough verisimilitude to suspend the disbelief of the reader. I keep at it, so eventually I get these strange little orchids coming up.

CD: What's your favourite thing about writing?

SM: Writing's a process. When I look at the process, I start off with notes, some general research—more specific research comes later—then I write the first draft. Then I go back and I write the second draft—the second draft actually involves about five drafts by the time I'm through with it. I have my own peculiar system. Then I do the polish-up drafts. My favourite part is writing the first draft, because when you're writing it you're engaged in creating the story rather than worrying about the words. As a reader—because when you're writing you're also reading—you're more engaged in your own story, it becomes more alive to you. Once you finish the first draft, you go back and say, “Oh my god. How could I have written all this crap?” So the second draft I don't like too much. But I have a system. I go through a chapter from beginning to end trying to clean it up, and I'll do each scene three times, and then I'll go through it a final time. By the time I go through it the final time it's clean enough so that the story starts to come alive again and I begin to enjoy it again. Once I've done that second draft—there's the five drafts of the second draft—I go through the whole thing again, and by that time it's totally cleaned up. When you finally get to the sixth draft, it's enjoyable—it's fun to cross out a word here and add an extra shiny part there.

Then you have the whole publishing aspect. That's a lot of work, because by that time, you're fatigued by the novel. You get the editor's main revisions back and start working through them. I get excited when the novel is really worked on—when she suggests something that will really improve the novel. Then the copy editor goes through it and makes his or her changes, and you put “stet” at the side if you don't want them—it's quick. After that it's promotional, and that's something I'm just learning now. I had a big lunch with Robert J. Sawyer in March, and as everybody knows he's the wiz at promotion. He was so helpful, I can't praise him highly enough for the way he and his wife freely gave me their time and their expertise, and I think it's really going to make a difference for my upcoming novels.

CD: What kind of response have you had to your novels?

SM: Critically, they've all been basically favourable. Kirkus Reviews loves my mystery novels. Booklist loves them. Locus had good things to say about Outpost, good things to say about The Meek, mixed things to say about Orbis. That's because Orbis came out right when The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson came out, and it was compared against that kind of meticulous researched, encyclopedic world building that he does, compared to my moral fable. But they thought there were a few riveting scenes of great drama. Challenging Destiny just loves me.

When readers come up to me on the street, they say, “I love The Meek.” In terms of the numbers, the numbers on that were better than Outpost, and the numbers on Orbis were even better. About 22% higher than The Meek. My agent and I are riding the wave, and he's happy with the way things are going.

Mysteries are little harder. So far all I've had is a hardcover deal. We've now set up a paperback deal with Worldwide, the mystery branch of Harlequin. Cold Comfort, the first mystery, is finally coming out in paperback this March. With a much bigger print run, we're hoping that sales of the paperback will influence sales of the hardcover Old Scores.

CD: Do you have any advice for new writers?

SM: I think a real writer will know that he's a real writer, that he'll have such a burning passion for writing—such a desire to do it, that it doesn't matter what I say or what editors say or how many rejection slips he gets or she gets, she'll keep writing. Other than the usual clichés—stick with it, try and improve yourself, read widely—I really have no advice other than to say that if you're a writer you'll know it. You'll do it to the exclusion of everything else. I have to say my family comes first, they always have. But given that, I sometimes get complaints about spending too much time on the computer. My wife's very understanding, she's totally supportive of me, wants me to be a writer. That's the other thing—hook up with a partner who will support you in your habit. Because that's what it comes down to—it's such a competitive industry you have to be completely obsessed. You have to be writing every day as much as you can, as far as I can see. When I go to work at my day job I go there at 7:30, I write until 9, then I do my day job until 12, at lunch I write for an hour, I get off at 5, and I come home and do an hour at night. As I get older I'm beginning to see energy as a bigger factor in the whole equation. I'm 46 now—I don't have the same kind of energy I used to.

CD: Have you gone to many conventions?

SM: I don't travel too much because of my day job. Ever since I had my talk with Robert Sawyer I plan on going to more. They're great—to talk to people and promote your work. I think SF conventions are indicative of the kind of readership SF has—this is another reason I got into SF—it has a really dedicated readership. These people are interested in what they read. It isn't like the latest Jacqueline Susann novel for the airplane. A lot of readers have almost a cult interest in what they read, they have that sort of devotion, they have fanzines. I thought, “This is a great audience to write for—dedicated readers who really care about what they're reading."

[Back to Table of Contents]

FICTION: Faller
by William McIntosh

I've been falling for thirty-eight days.

Plunging through the clear sky, my tattered orange jumpsuit snapping in the wind, all I can do is drink in the gorgeous scenery. A bank of rain clouds ripples with dark energy to my right. To my left the sun radiates warm streaks that reach so close I'm sure I can touch them. A bird flies by. It's large, light blue, and impossibly thin. I watch every graceful movement—glide and flap, glide and flap—until it disappears from sight.

I'm dying. I'm out of water and there's no sign of land.

I'm here because of a careless mistake I made a long time ago, while chuting off one of the towering mountain peaks that covers my home city of Antuie.

I stood on a ledge that day overlooking a wide expanse of green trees and yellow fields, and beyond that a brilliant blue sky. Behind me the rock face of the mountain climbed up into the clouds. As I'd done a thousand times before I secured my chute and leapt easily off the ledge, taking care to clear the jagged stone jutting beneath me. I fell for a few moments, gliding and tumbling, then I opened my chute.

When the chute unwrapped from inside my pack I didn't feel the familiar sensation of leather straps tugging at my chest. Instead there was a flapping noise. I snapped my head back to stare up at the chute, knowing something was terribly wrong. Three of the five lines that secured the chute were not attached, and the chute was flapping in the air like a huge yellow bed sheet hung to dry in a summer breeze.

I screamed, and wet my pants. I grabbed the lines snapping above my head and began reeling in the chute, hoping to quickly repair it in midair and reopen it. But even as I frantically clawed the lines I knew there wasn't enough time.

An inspiration struck me. The field below was at the city's edge—it was possible I could make it over the edge. If I'd been thinking clearly I would have reasoned that I'd die just as surely going over the city's edge as I would hitting the ground, only the death would be protracted and unpleasant, but I desperately did not want to hit the hard ground rocketing toward me.

I let go of the lines and spread my arms and legs wide in gliding posture, stretching the webbing that ran from elbow to hip on my suit. I made for the city's edge.

At first the landscape was nothing but a collage of yellow, green, and brown, then fields and tall trees took shape and grew, simultaneously passing horizontally under me. As I got closer to the ground I saw three farmers pointing up; they knew I was too close to the ground to open my chute.

The ground loomed ever closer and I panicked. Urgently I stretched my arms and legs, coaxing the air to carry me past the edge. I stretched so wide my joints hurt. I heard a muffled scream in the whistling air and realized it was me.

My foot just nicked the roof of a house leaning over the edge. I dropped past the back of the house and for an instant saw the startled face of an old woman washing dishes at a kitchen window.

I had cleared the city's edge.

For five seconds the rough stone side of the city passed, then the world opened up and there was blue sky in all directions. I had escaped death for the moment. Now I would die falling through the infinite heavens.

I shifted from a spread-eagle gliding posture to a feet-first standing posture to minimize the force of the wind on my face. I looked up at Antuie. The underside was solid stone, roughly surfaced, like mountain ranges pushing downward. I glanced up at Antuie again and again as I fell. Each time it was smaller until it was only a pebble in the sky, then a speck. Then I couldn't see it at all. There was nothing but blue sky and white clouds in every direction.

I waited to die, knowing it would be a long wait. I considered cutting my throat with the knife sheathed at my waist. I wondered where the blood would go if I cut my throat. I was falling, so would the blood go up, down, or just sit there in front of my face? Too unpleasant, I decided. I'd rather die of thirst.

As hours turned to days, time and distance began to lose meaning. With no reference points it felt like I wasn't moving at all. Instead I was suspended in the air and a gale wind blew toward me from below. My thoughts slowed, then stopped. I went through alternating periods of depression and euphoria. Later the depression and euphoria seemed to belong to someone else and I watched them with detached fascination.

There was no night during my fall. I marked the days by counting the times the sun circled me. In Antuie it became dark when the sun sank below the city and cast it into shadow. As I fell the only thing that cast a shadow was my hand, when I held it in front of my face.

I fell for three days, sleeping much of the last day as my strength ebbed. My throat was dry, my tongue swollen from thirst. On what may have been the last time I bothered to pry open my eyes, I spotted something. I struggled to focus, unsure I actually saw the tiny speck below me. As I fell closer I recognized the object in the sky, and I would have wet my pants again if my bladder were not bone dry. It was a city.

My worldview shattered. Maybe the city below me was Antuie, I thought. Perhaps the universe was circular, a great wheel that was returning me to my world. But it was not Antuie. Antuie was mountains and golden fields. This city was mostly blue, mostly water.

As the shock wore off I realized I could save myself. I reeled in my chute, retied and repacked it, shifted to gliding posture and maneuvered over the city.

When I landed my legs were too weak to hold me and I fell to my knees. The solid ground felt so strange. My head was spinning from a combination of fatigue and the impossibility of the scene before me. There was a crowd gathered around me; I heard shouts and excited exchanges that sounded like words but were not. The sounds began to fade and the edges of my vision blackened. As I slipped into unconsciousness I looked directly into the eyes of one man. The man's eyes were green. It had never occurred to me that eyes could be green—everyone in Antuie had brown eyes.

It took the Sensini and I some time to recover from the shock of each other's existence. For me, another shock soon followed.

When I had recuperated I took to exploring the city of Sensin. It was gorgeous—waterfalls surged between buildings and under walkways, streams ran through the center of homes. The sound of water, flowing and crashing, was everywhere.

I hiked far from the scattered towns into the lush green hillsides. One day I tripped on something hidden in the tall grass by a waterfall. It was an ancient, weathered cat blind, used to keep big domesticated mountain cats under control during a hunt. Looking closer I saw it had words etched into the strap—"mountain swift.” Likely the name of the cat who had worn it. A beat later I realized two things. There were no mountain cats on Sensin, and I could read the words on the cat blind. They were written in Antuian.

I walked until dark, thinking. How could an object from Antuie be on Sensin? Had someone been here before me? Inconceivable. But there had to be an answer—I held the cat blind in my hand. It was real. It had gotten there somehow.

Looking off into the peaceful sky, I had an insane thought. I had to fall again. If there were two cities, there must be more than two, and somehow I felt certain that the mystery of the cat blind was tied to those other cities.

The people of Sensin thought I was insane to leap off the city's edge, and maybe I was. A crowd showed up the morning I left and stood tight around me as I approached the edge, gripping a week's water and food in a sack. People smirked and shook their heads, shouted jests.

I climbed down a rocky outcropping to get to the edge proper. Part of the way down my foot gave out under some loose stones and my heart leaped as I desperately regained my hold. I laughed out loud at the fear of falling I'd felt for a moment. What difference whether I fell off the edge or leapt?

At the edge I looked down into the sky, then up at the people watching. It was hard to actually take the leap. I started having doubts about the sanity of my plan, and if no one had been watching I would have climbed back up and taken a few more weeks to think. But people were watching, and I didn't want to clamber back up the slope like a coward. I gave a final wave and dove head-first into the air amid their farewell cries. I was falling again.

The first few minutes were ecstasy. I shouted my approval as I tumbled end over end. I rolled onto my back, arms and legs spread into an X, and stared up at Sensin.

Eventually doubts crept in again. How could I have made the decision to leap into the void, simply taking it on faith that there would be somewhere to land? But gradually my anxiety melted away as I slipped into the familiar state I'd longed for since landing in Sensin. This time I tried to cultivate that state. I encouraged the silence to enter me; I did not try to draw my thoughts back when they drifted away and seemed to be coming from outside me. Eventually my hands and feet began to tingle, then vibrate. Energy coursed through me. I stood transfixed in space, painted with sunlight. My body crackled; joy and anguish washed over me in waves.

Four days into my fall I had a startling vision. I saw Antuie, then I saw Sensin, then a hundred other cities that I knew without a doubt were above and below me. The cities were the broken chips of a water vessel, and as the cities came together they formed a whole, unbroken vessel. Excitement ripped through me. Perhaps the ancient cat blind had been on Sensin because at one time Sensin and Antuie had been part of one huge city that had broken apart! I scanned the sky below for another city, eager to confirm my vision.

On the sixth day I spotted the city. The city was Ajahn. Its residents were just as stunned to witness my fall from the sky as those on Sensin. This time I was better prepared, and less dehydrated.

* * * *

There are hundreds of cities, perhaps thousands. There are cities so huge they block out the sky from horizon to horizon as you approach the ground, and there are small cities, two hundred paces across, where no people live at all. In one city there are no people, but the faded ruins of man-made structures are witness that people once lived there, but died off. Or perhaps they'd left; perhaps I'm not the first to fall. One by one I landed on each city, learning all I could of their ways before moving on. I found striking similarities among them—similar tales, similar styles of dress, similar customs. I recorded what I learned, even sketching the shapes of most of the cities I visited. I hoped to eventually show how they all fit together. The sketches were flat, so it was difficult.

Then something totally unexpected happened. I fell in love.

When I first spotted the city where I would meet Norri, it looked no different from any of the others. But as I fell closer I saw that it was not one city, but a cluster connected in some fashion. I'd never encountered anything like it before.

Tugging on the lines of my chute I guided myself over a marketplace. The people below spotted me, shouting and pointing as they followed me to my landing spot. A few ran in the opposite direction.

I landed softly, my chute settling to the ground beside me. I relished the dramatic effect my sudden appearance had on the citiespeople. Their eyes were wide, the air lit with screams of terror, angry shouts, excited exchanges in an unfamiliar language. I listened carefully to the gibberish they spoke, confident I would understand it quickly after years of deciphering strange languages.

When the worst of the commotion had subsided I was escorted to a man wearing a fine red velvet cloak. I assumed this man was an official, judging by how the others cleared a path for him. Taking two balls of bread from a bowl offered to me by a young girl, I began, as I had countless times in the past, attempting to explain where I had come from.

I met Norri a few weeks later, on a narrow wooden bridge connecting the cities of N'eta and I'emba. She was looking down at her feet, walking in the center of the bridge, oblivious of my approach. To avoid a collision I extended my hands, gently touching Norrie's arm and side-stepping to her left. She glanced up at me, smiled somewhat sarcastically and said, “Hi Faller.” Then she looked back down and kept walking. In the brief instant that our eyes met I had seen no awe or fear in hers, just twinkling amusement. I continued to watch her after she passed, her tall, gangly figure emphasized by a knock-kneed, weaving walk, and—I couldn't help noticing—a cute butt. Impulsively I followed her.

I caught up with her a few yards off the bridge and tried to think of something to say. What came out was, “Hi to you, too. What's your name?” Not original, but enough to get her talking. We sat down on a bench in the city commons. She was delightful. Not a beautiful woman, but pleasant looking. She had a quick, slightly sarcastic wit, and a contagious childlike enthusiasm that made me wistfully aware of how long it had been since I'd been close to anyone. Language was a problem and Norri talked fast, but we managed.

Norri asked me about my fall. I had told the story a thousand times, but gazing into Norri's laughing eyes brought a freshness and energy to my memories. When I got to the part of my tale where I discovered the cat blind, I fished it out of my pouch and handed it to her. She smiled in delight at the strangeness of it, turned it over, ran her fingertip over the writing she could not read.

“How did it get there?” she asked.

Again I fished in my pouch, pulling a rolled stack of tattered parchment. I flattened the parchments on the bench and slid them to face Norri, explaining my broken-vessel theory of the world.

Norri put a hand on my forearm. I felt every point where her fingers met my skin as a separate delight.

“You're an interesting man, Faller,” she said, smiling.

“It's Rohan."

“I like Faller better,” she said, laughing. “Can I help you solve your mystery while you're here? I can show you where the cities’ records are kept, and I can translate them for you.” She paused, then casually added, “Do you plan to stay here long, or will you be jumping off the edge of our world soon?"

Summoning courage, I lightly brushed Norri's long sky-blue hair back behind her ear. “I thought I might stay a while."

* * * *

Thirty days later Norri and I were wandering the streets of N'eta, letting the light breeze be our guide. At city's edge we came upon a funeral. In N'etan fashion each person in turn waved goodbye to the dead woman, who was laid on top of the low rock wall that separated land from air. Then the woman's closest family gently rolled her off the wall and into the sky. The mourners sang a traditional farewell song, and Norri joined in.

“It's a shame that she's not alive to feel what it's like to fall,” I said as we walked away. Norri didn't reply.

As we wandered my footsteps felt buoyant; I bobbed along like I was still floating in the air. I saw a dozen shades of shifting blue and gray in the stone cliffs of N'eta, shades I'd never have noticed before my fall.

A tavern called the Hawk's Nest caught my eye, because it leaned precariously over the city's edge. I convinced Norri to go inside.

As we headed for a corner table in the dark tavern, a woman we passed whispered “That's him, the one who fell from the sky!” loudly enough for most of the other patrons to hear her. I spotted a door leading to a narrow back porch and led Norri outside, tired of the constant attention.

The vista on the porch was stunning, and I went right to the railing and leaned out over the blue sky.

“Norri, look at this! It's almost as open as when you're falling."

Norri was pressed against the wall of the tavern, as far from the railing as she could get. Her smile was tight. I stepped over and took her hand, coaxing her toward the railing, but Norri stood fast, meeting my gaze with silence. I furrowed my brow; my unspoken question hung in the air unanswered.

The realization hit me like a fist in the kidney.

“You're afraid of heights,” I said. I thought of our meeting, Norri walking in the center of the bridge, eyes down. I'd thought it was just another part of Norri's eccentric personality, the quirkiness in her that I loved. But every time we'd crossed a bridge Norri had clung tightly to me and stared at her feet.

Norri nodded softly. “I'm so afraid of heights that I wish I was a foot shorter. It's ironic. You live to fall, I don't even like climbing stairs."

“You could get used to it,” I blurted, betraying my unspoken thoughts.

“Get used to what?” Norri asked sharply.

I sighed, turned to face the open sky. I was silent for a long time.

“Rohan, if you think I'm going to jump into the sky, you should forget that thought right now. I will never, ever do it. I won't ask you to stay here if you don't want to. But you should understand now, I'm not going with you if you leave."

“You don't realize how peaceful and beautiful it is,” I said, taking both of her hands in mine. “I'd be with you. I'd make sure nothing happens to you—"

“Faller!” Norri said, more sharply than I had ever heard her speak. “Listen to me.” Her gaze drilled into me like twin suns as she enunciated each word. “I am not going to fall. Never, ever."

* * * *

On a cool, windy morning we stood at the city's edge, I in my orange jump suit, Norri in a blue one I'd fashioned for her. I had my arm around her and could feel her trembling.

“I can't, I can't,” she said, over and over. The more I tried to soothe her the more distraught she became. After interminable arguing and negotiating I coaxed her to stand with me on the low wall and look down into the sky. After one quick glance she let go of my hand and slapped it away from her. “I can't,” she said, stepped off the stone wall and moved a safe distance from the edge.

I lost my temper. “I'm going,” I shouted from atop the wall. “Either come with me or stay.” I turned to face the sky, then looked back over my shoulder at Norri. The moment stretched as we looked at each other, irresistible force and immovable object. Then, without a word, Norri stepped back onto the wall and took my hand. She peered over the edge again, and let out a soft cry of despair, a sound like I had never heard. I could not believe a human being had made it. I ignored it.

“Here we go, ready?” I said. She closed her eyes, tears leaking out of them, and nodded. I jumped, pulling her with me. She screamed as we fell off the wall.

Norri screamed herself hoarse, then kept screaming until the sound bursting from her throat was indistinguishable from the sound of the wind. Finally, she settled into sobbing, then into silence. Her eyes shut tightly, she clung to me so hard I had trouble breathing.

We fell for two days before I spotted land. I opened Norri's chute, then my own. We landed in a remote place by design—I didn't want Norri to have to deal with the local residents right away.

Norri landed hard and stayed on the ground, face down. I knelt at her side, thinking she was hurt, but she wasn't. She just lay there hugging the ground and taking long, ragged breaths.

When the city's inhabitants arrived I dealt with them while Norri stared listlessly at the ground. I could not get her to meet my eyes.

Weeks later I still couldn't get Norri to look at me. The light had gone out of her eyes, and I knew that it was not falling that had caused it. I had caused Norri to undergo a trauma I knew she couldn't endure, and she couldn't forgive me for that.

Lampere, the city we had fallen upon, was a pleasant land covered in rolling green hills and colorful blooms. Norri spent most of her time wandering its hills, alone, while I conducted my research.

As the months glided by I felt the riddle of the cat-blind calling me. I told Norri of my desire to leave, and she said she understood. She seemed to encourage me to go. I knew there was no convincing Norri to come with me, but despite our troubles I loved her deeply and did not want to leave her, so I lingered.

Months after finishing my research, tortured by conflicting emotions, I decided to fall. On the day I was to leave Norri stood a safe distance from city's edge and watched me check my chute. I climbed onto the low stone wall. She smiled sadly and waved. I waved back, not sure what to say to her, feeling so distant from her.

“Rohan, wait,” she said at the last minute, and came over to me. A rush of pain overwhelmed me as I watched Norri walk her knock-kneed, coltish walk and remembered my first glimpse of her on that bridge. Norri wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tightly.

“Come with me,” I whispered into her ear. “What I'm doing is important. One day I'll find proof that all the cities were once one city..."

Norri looked up at me. “Is that why you think you're leaving?"

“Why else?” I said

“Can't you see into your own mind?” Norri asked, shaking her head in disbelief. “It's not land you're after, it's air—"

A flat thud interrupted her. We turned to see a weathered body lying twisted in the grass a dozen steps from us.

I knelt and turned the corpse over. It was an old man, his mouth hanging open to reveal toothless gums. Norri pinched the fabric of the corpse's tunic, held it between her fingers.

“N'etan funeral garb,” she said.

Stunned, we stared at each other, each silently piecing together what had just occurred. A vision burst into my mind's eye, much like the vision of the cities as pieces of a water vessel. This vision, less grand than the first, was an old woman washing dishes at a window that looked out over city's edge on Antuie. Earlier she had washed a cat blind that had grown filthy with blood and cat spittle and set it to dry on the window ledge. She leans to place a newly-rinsed bowl on the same ledge and accidentally knocks the cat blind off the ledge. It falls into space.

I pulled the cat blind from my pouch and stared at it as if I had never seen it before. I reared back and hurled it over city's edge. I laughed. I laughed so hard I could barely breathe, until tears rolled down my cheeks. Norri laughed with me.

Finally, wiping my cheeks, I took Norri's hand and we turned to go home. I glanced over my shoulder at the open sky. Norri followed my gaze, but said nothing.

* * * *

Walking along the cobbled road that hugged the city's edge, I stopped to rest, climbing to sit cross-legged on the wall, admiring the particularly clear sky, a deep azure blue flecked with pink. I sat for a long time, a cool breeze blowing my long hair, reminding me faintly of the howling wind that accompanied falling.

A voice from behind pulled me out of my meditation.

“As I was saying all those months ago, it's not the land you're after, Faller, it's the air.” I spun around to face Norri. She was hugging a fat pack, and she was crying. She put the pack in my lap. I peered inside. It was my chute, and food and water.

I shook my head. “I would never hurt you again. You fell with me, now I'll live on land with you."

“I know you would. But you're wasting away here. The light in your eyes is dimming.” Tears welled in my eyes and I blinked them away. Norri leaned and kissed me softly.

“Fly Faller,” she whispered. “Touch the sky. Know that I love you.” With that she shoved my chest, and I fell backward, over the edge and into the sky. I might have resisted the push if I'd tried, but I didn't. As I fell I gazed into Norri's moist, plum-colored eyes. The wind whipped the tears from my eyes before they could touch my cheeks, and I kept my eyes locked on hers as long as I could, falling away into the sanctuary of the rushing wind.

* * * *

I'm tired, so I'll have to sleep soon. It's possible I won't wake up this time. When Norri pushed me off Lampere I had no reason to doubt there would be another city below. But so far there has been no next city. I just fall.

I ran out of water six days ago. I no longer expect to spot a small speck in the sky below. I have passed the bottom of the world.

I miss Norri, but despite that I'm at peace. Thirty-eight days of uninterrupted falling has given me a clarity beyond anything I've ever felt before. I try to remember what my mind was like before I fell from Antuie. I recall waves of thought, uncontrollable, constant. Now thoughts only come when I push them. When I don't my mind is still like the lakes of Ajahn on a windless day. I dwell in this stillness for hours. It is indescribable. There is no problem. No fear. No me. I don't fear death because the sky doesn't end, and I'm in it as much as I'm in this body.

I unstrap my chute and toss it into the sky. I pull off my jumpsuit and toss it away as well. I fall unfettered.

* * * *

Will McIntosh is a 2003 graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction Writer's Workshop. This is his third published story—his others appeared in NFG and Planet Relish. By day, Will is a psychology professor at Georgia Southern University. He is 97% water.

* * * *

No human society can survive without religion, and few human individuals are able to conceal the innate human need for it. When the old religions are struck down, new ones rise, though because religion itself has been given a bad name by those who opposed the old ones, the new ones insist they are not religions at all. But all the quacking suggests there are still ducks around.

—Orson Scott Card, Introduction to Future on Ice

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FICTION: Frank Among the Franks
by Brian N. Pacula

I am a lucky mortal, cause I am in tight with the Principate of Anthropology. Let me break that down for you: the angel in charge of studying and preserving human societies digs me so much that s/he/it made me the overseer of some endangered Salian Franks. Prince Anthro says there's been a major surge in conquest and slaughter rates across the high-probability reality spectrum lately (and hey—who's lucky enough to get born in the low-prob spec?), so there's been a real push to isolate and preserve little pockets of culture that are in danger of being wiped out. Here's how I got involved.

I've known Prince Anthro for about three years on account of I accidentally summoned her/him/it back when I was studying the black arts and buying grimoires from online bookstores. Don't get me wrong: I didn't actually believe in any of that garbage. At the time, I was scamming on this Wiccan girl (black lipstick, a dozen piercings per ear, Stevie Nicks-circa-1977 hair—a little on the chubby side, but oh man) and I thought she'd be impressed if I learned how to perform the rituals that enthused her so much. So I practiced one at home, and hey surprise, it worked. I ended up getting a nice long lecture about how there's no such thing as “black” or “white” magic, or any meaningful distinction between “demons” and “angels,” merely a complicated and very busy organization of supernal entities who really don't appreciate it when idiots with crystals and incense and deep-seated hang-ups about institutional religion go calling them forth into the boundaries of fixed space and linear time for no good reason whatsoever. S/he/it said all this while invisible, by the way, and standing on my chest. Apparently I had drawn a lousy Circle of Protection.

He (forget this P.C. “unlike mortals, we are omnigendered” crap—from now on, the Prince is a he) probably would have left it at that and warped right back to his home dimension if I hadn't tried to fight back and kick him in his invisible groin. Not to brag or anything, but I don't care if you're a supernal entity or not—where I come from (Fresno), you don't just let somebody stand on your chest and not fight back. So I kicked him in the nuts and we wrestled for a while.

As soon as he had me good and pinned, with my right arm all twisted up and hurting real bad and my neck shoved backwards, he let me go and told me we were friends now. Supposedly there's some ancient law about angels being obligated to consort and conspire with any mortal bold enough to wrestle them—he said it's in the Bible somewhere, but I wouldn't know. Every time I try to read the Bible I fall asleep just after the Flood. Then the Prince told me his real name (Telmael Ouriel Atoimenpsephei Kaiochlabar, which is why I never use it, and just now when I was writing this I had to call him over to help me get the spelling right, and he was annoyed because—never mind), and I told him mine (Frank Mulligan), and I guess he had been waiting to make a friend for a long time, cause he proceeded to dump all his work-related stress on me. As Principate of Anthropology, he was in charge of taking representative samples of endangered societies and transplanting them to suitable empty worlds somewhere else in time and space, before war or plague or locusts or whatever killed them all on Earth (just last week, for instance, he had relocated four clans of Gittites to a temperate moon on the fringes of the Sombrero Galaxy). The trouble was that these preserve-groups tended to go bat-shit crazy once they were left to their own devices, and only so many angels could be assigned to babysit them, so the whole project was starting to go haywire (as of yesterday, only two and a quarter of the Gittite clans were still alive). I said, “Yeah, that's too bad, but what can you do? People are mean and stupid, especially people from olden times."

So then Prince Anthro looks at me (I guess—he was still invisible) and says: “That gives me an idea. What if someone from a more enlightened age were to act as a steward and guide to these communities, to lead them as would a wise and benevolent elder brother..."

And I was all over the idea, and I knew I'd be the perfect guy for the job, cause I mentored at my old high school a couple summers ago and the kids totally loved me (the school administrators didn't, but to hell with them), and plus I had given the Prince the idea in the first place. He told me he would work up a proposal and take it to his supervisor, the Potentate of Mortal Concerns. That was the last I saw of him for about three months.

We met again when he unexpectedly materialized in my car, while I was driving, which was pretty messed up cause it startled the crap out of me, and I almost swerved off the road.

“Good news, Francis. My supervisor loved our idea and told me to go ahead and select ‘threescore mortals of temperate character and excellent virtue’ to start a trial run. I've already picked a few candidates—Martin Luther King, Mohandas Gandhi, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Kung Fu-Tzu—but of course, you being my special friend, and having provided the germ of the idea, I thought you should receive the first offer."

And I said “Hell yes, I'll do it.” What, like I wanted to stick around on Earth long enough to see if I'd get that promotion to assistant manager at Hollywood Video?

My hands started shaking, so I pulled over. “When do I start? Do I get to pick my subjects?"

“They won't be your ‘subjects,’ Francis. You're not going to be their king. You are simply to reside with them in an advisory capacity, providing them with—"

“Instruction and guidance. Right. I know. But I'm in charge, aren't I? They have to do what I say, right?"

“Well, yes, technically speaking, but—"

“So, do I get to pick, or not?"

“Certainly. I felt it was only proper to give you first choice."

“Okay, terrific. Man, this is going to be great. Got any Amazons? You know: lusty, uninhibited, all-female..."

“I'll show you the list of peoples currently in need of supervision,” said Prince Anthro, and he pulled a copper tablet out from within the glowing folds of his robe. It was covered in writing.

“I can't read this,” I said. “This is in Angel-ese.” So the Prince disappeared for about five minutes and came back with a copper tablet in English. I read all the names of the tribes they had stashed away on their save-the-wildlife planets and said, “Who the hell are these people? I've never heard of any of them."

Prince Anthro pointed at the names and started explaining. “These are nomads from Turkmenistan ... these are hunter-gatherers from Lake Ngami ... these are icthyophagi from the Farasan islands...” When he got to “Salian Franks” I stopped him, cause I thought I knew Franks were French people, and I asked him if that was true, and he said it was, sort of. So I told him I wanted the Salian Franks, cause I had taken a couple years of French in high school, and I like French cuisine, and I went out with a girl from Montreal once, and hey, their name is my name too.

* * * *

I am no good at public speaking, so it kind of sucked that the first thing I had to do as overseer of the Salian Franks was give them a big speech explaining who I was and why they had to fear and obey me from now on. I gave my address from the hilltop grove where they had set up the wooden idols to whom they had already sacrificed two of their own (already, a problem requiring my intervention). Plus, I had to deliver it in their irritating garbledygook language, which is nothing at all like French, except that both require you to talk from the back of your throat so much you feel like you want to throw up after twenty syllables or so. Prince Anthro had given me speech notes written out fo-net-ick-lee.

I introduced myself. The Franks all stared at me, bug-eyed, like I was a jumbotron TV. They were grizzled and foul-smelling. I laid down the law: I told them they were still free to comport themselves however they wished, but that I was there to make sure they followed the Golden Rule and lived in harmony and shared their food and all that. I told them I would teach them how to live safer, healthier, cleaner, happier lives. I told them if they had any problems, to come to me, and I would take care of them. That's what Prince Anthro told me the notes said, anyway.

There were about a hundred and twenty Franks. They all wore drab tunics and pants and hides. They looked dumpy, like Depression-era immigrants or something, and most of the women had hairier legs than mine. It was a sorry sight. I knew I would have my work cut out for me, getting them all smart and hygienic like myself; but before I could do anything, I had to learn their language. I read off the part of my notes where I was supposed to ask for a volunteer to be my live-in servant and help me learn Frankish. A lumpy old man with a wooly beard and a younger guy with half his nose missing stepped forward. I looked past them and pointed to the bosomy, ashen-haired teenager who closest resembled the Saint Pauli Girl I'd been imagining since Prince Anthro told me the Franks were a Germanic race. “You there,” I said, in English. She hadn't volunteered, but everybody was afraid to disobey me, so the two guys backed off and she walked up to me after a little hissing and shoving from her father, a big meat-faced bulldozer of a man who apparently thought it a privilege to have his daughter employed in my household.

Only one thing was left for me to do before I could retire to my house, fifteen minutes upstream from the Franks’ village—I asked their king or chief or whatever, whose name the Prince said was “Chlogio,” which sounded like a brand of drain cleaner to me, to come forward and identify himself. If you have already guessed that the chief was none other than the hulking gorilla who sired my new chambermaid and language tutor, then good for you. I was not a happy camper. He was whopping huge and had an axe the size of a snow shovel hanging off his back. I shouldn't have had any reason to be afraid of him, since technically I had the authority to summon transdimensional legions of numinous avengers to my aid, but I wasn't sure how quickly or enthusiastically they would respond to my call, so I figured it'd be safest not to get the guy angry. In the interests of safety, I even considered exchanging his daughter for the daughter of some arthritic, malnourished peasant, but figured that would be impolite. Anyway, I had to look tough and cool and not let my stress show: I shook hands with Chlogio, let him embrace me, faced the crowd while he yelled something to his people, then got embraced again as they shouted back some reply, all the while thinking: this man smells like a urinal full of spoiled beef. I was so relieved when they finally let me go.

Walking to the house (a primitive one-story deal, Roman villa style, so it wouldn't trip out the Franks by being all modern), I asked the girl her name, using one of the few Frankish phrases I had memorized. “Audofled,” she said, which I shortened to “Audi” right away. I made a mental priority list of things to teach her: number one, to bathe; number two, to shave; number three, to tell her people to knock off the human sacrifice. Reasonable requests, I thought.

Sure, it lacked electricity and indoor plumbing, but my house sure was pretty. When I heard it was going to be a Roman villa, I specifically requested erotic murals, like the ones they dug up in Pompeii. The walls were all painted bright colors and they even used real marble in places. I liked it a lot. The food was catered, too—the Franks had to forage and fish and farm and hunt; I got whatever I wanted delivered to me by angels (nice, eh?). I wanted a TV, but Prince Anthro said no way, not allowed.

First things first: I walked Audi to a stone tub in the courtyard and made bathing gestures, dipping my hand in the water and rubbing it on my arm. Audi marched up to the tub and started to wash my arms, which was cute, but I stopped her and mimed it again, pointing at her this time. She got the idea and started to loosen her clothes, when a voice at the front door started calling my name:

“Fraang Mooligun? Fraaaang Mooooligun?"

So I left Audi there and rushed to answer it, sweating bullets that it was Chlogio there to see how his daughter was being treated. But it wasn't. It was the two guys who had volunteered to be my servants. The younger one was holding up the steaming, headless carcass of a wild pig.

Housewarming committee, I guess.

I took the pig, carried it into the kitchen, and set it down. The two Franks followed me inside. I walked back towards the front door, trying to lead them away from the interior of the villa, not wanting them to find out I had already ordered Audi out of her clothes. They said things I couldn't understand. They didn't want to leave. Lacking a better idea, I asked them their names.

The old one was Marcomer and the young one was Gundomer: Mark and Gunner (I felt it was an important step in the Franks’ cultural development to get them to use snappy nicknames for themselves). I sighed and stretched my arms; they stayed put. I walked outside and stood by the door, grinning stupidly at them, but they didn't get the hint. Finally I figured they must have wanted a gift in return. I went back to the kitchen and looked through the icebox. Honestly, I didn't have much to give: fun high-tech stuff like fireworks and espresso machines and Nintendo were forbidden by the Potentate of Mortal Concerns. I had some toiletries and personal effects, but I didn't want to share them. Food for food seemed like a good idea. I gave them a bowl of shrimp chow mein and two Cokes, and they were very grateful. Satisfied, they left, and I was very grateful for that. I grabbed a bar of soap from my suitcase and hurried back to the courtyard to see how Audi was doing.

She had stripped to the altogether and was in the tub, dutifully smearing water on her arms. I handed her the soap and demonstrated its use. Though I did watch her, I kept my distance. Regardless of whether or not her father was an axe-swinging barbarian chief, I was not about to put any moves on her before I knew how they say “yes” and “no” and “more, please” in Frankish. There are certain gentlemanly standards to which I adhere.

That afternoon, Audi learned how to wash herself, her hair, and her clothes. But what could I learn from her? She didn't have the slightest clue how to teach anyone to speak her language. We worked out a simple system where I would point to an object and she would tell me its name, so what I got that first day was a crash course in Frankish nouns. I knew words for house, water, door, pig, tub, mural, food, pants, tree, fire, bed, knife, and most of the human anatomy. For my part, I babbled stream-of-consciousness English at her almost nonstop, hoping the total immersion technique would make her a whiz at my native tongue in a matter of days.

* * * *

That didn't happen. I pretty much stopped speaking English at all and practiced my Frankish whenever I had the chance, cause it was just too frustrating being misunderstood all the time. Slowly, I picked up verbs and pronouns. My attempts to civilize Audi continued, in the hopes that she would disseminate my teachings to her fellow Franks. I taught her how to shave her legs and armpits, which caused, believe me, no small degree of friction between us. She just did not like me coming at her with that razor, and I guess I can't blame her. My hands tend to shake when I'm nervous, and by the fifth time I'd nicked her on the shin, she must have thought I trying to sacrifice her very, very slowly. I lacked the words to reassure her I meant no harm. In the end, I had to shave my own legs and armpits in order to get the idea across, and boy did I feel clammy and effeminate afterwards.

She cooked the wild pig Mark and Gunner had brought, and we ate it with potato chips, coleslaw, soda, and beer. To my happy surprise, I kept the pork down just fine, but Audi wasn't so lucky. She spent all night throwing up. Modern food must take some getting used to, I guess. After that, I decided it would be best if I let her go home for a few hours every day, to catch up with her family and get properly fed.

If my food made Mark and Gunner sick they didn't mention it (not that I would have understood them). They came back every other day with some strange offering that they would trade for whatever disposables I wanted to unload on them. From them, I got: a brooch made of shiny stones, a hatchet, a basket of onions, a wool blanket, and a human skull. From me, they got: mint chocolate chip ice cream, a five-dollar bill, toothpaste, a pepperoni-and-olive pizza, and a box of antibacterial hand-wipes.

On the seventh day, Audi came back from the village chattering like crazy. Something must have happened, but I couldn't understand her. She looked worried, so I just started walking towards the village, and she followed.

The Frankish village is built right up alongside a wide river, and consists of over a dozen timber huts that encircle some sort of administrative building that serves as a temple, granary, courthouse, and who knows what else. The only thing special about Chlogio's house is that it's a bit larger than the other huts and there are more combat trophies (pieces of armor, broken weapons, dried-up heads and ribcages propped up on stakes) decorating his space like lawn ornaments. Everybody stayed indoors; only the chief came out to meet us.

Chlogio tried to tell me what was going on, and like a trooper Audi did her best to translate his Frankish words, but because she was new to the whole interpreter thing her translation was also in Frankish. I stood there like a dummy while the chief and his daughter ranted and raved at me in stereo. The commotion drew a few neighbors out of their homes, and they added themselves to the unhelpful symphony of voices.

“Prince Anthro,” I called, “get over here. We need your help. Repeat, Prince Anthro, do you read me? Come in.” Either he didn't hear me, or he was too busy to answer.

I couldn't take it anymore. “Stop,” I shouted. “One at a time!” But I might as well have been shouting “louder, please, and less coherent if you don't mind!” for all they knew.

I won't bore you with the details of how I finally got apprised of what was going on. Let's just say it was like the most crowded, noisy, and rank-smelling game of charades in all of recorded history. The long and short of it was that there had been a small case of mutiny. Chlogio's half-brother, Merobert, had fled into the night with his servants. I was mortified: this was exactly the kind of thing I'd been hired to prevent. They didn't seem to need my advice, they were going ahead with plans to hunt down and kill the deserters. I didn't know what to do, so I just walked back home with Audi.

Halfway there, Prince Anthro showed up. “Ahoy there. Did you call a few minutes ago?"

“Yeah,” I said. “The tribe just split. They're going to war."

The Prince frowned. “That's no good. That's exactly the kind of thing we were hoping you would prevent. What's the problem, Francis? Dr. King has already brought his Scythians gender equality, democratic rule, Judeo-Christian ethics, and germ theory."

I told him to go away and let me handle things. There's nothing worse than trying to do your job while your boss is right there breathing down your neck.

* * * *

The next day, I hung out at the village with Audi while Chlogio and his men practiced fighting and the women practiced treating the injuries the men kept accidentally giving each other. During the night, twelve able-bodied men had escaped to Merobert's camp across the river.

Late that morning, I had a linguistic breakthrough. I realized I could understand most of the words I was hearing around the village. Excited, I tried starting an actual conversation with Audi, asking her to tell me about her people. She seemed genuinely happy that I could choke my way through remedial Frankish at last.

“Marcomer is the uncle of my sister-in-law. He is deaf in one ear. He had seven sons, but they are all dead now. Once, we found beetles living in his hair.” I had asked about Mark and Gunner first. “Gundomer is slow-witted because his mother was a Breton. He lost that piece of his nose in a fight with his cousin Gunderic. A crow lighted on the roof of his father's house on the day he was born, so everybody knew he would be unlucky."

Audi had eight sisters that were still alive, as far as she knew. Some of them, married to the chiefs of neighboring tribes, hadn't left Earth with them. She had no brothers: Chlogio had killed them all so they could never rival his claim to the throne of the Salian Franks, such as it was. On his deathbed, she said, he planned to father one son on a virgin concubine, and name that child his successor.

“How smart. You can never be too careful,” I said, trying to act polite. Prince Anthro had told me to be “culturally sensitive.” Just because something seemed cruel or twisted to me, he said, didn't mean I had the right to judge it by my own 21st-century standards. Privately, though, I added “infanticidal” and “paranoiac” to the list of adjectives I had associated with the chief, right alongside “enormous” and “walrus-like."

I learned about the other important Franks. Their spiritual advisor was one-armed Chlodin, who was incredibly old—at sixty, he had at least twenty years on any other Frank. He could speak the language of snakes and birds and knew all the best ways to propitiate the idols. Dagomer, their best fighter, kept his chops up by punching the bark off trees. Chonober, the carpenter, was hated by everyone cause he'd sold his wife to a Burgundian. Ascyla was the chief's first wife, and all the Franks adored her. Audi's mother was the chief's fourth concubine, and she had been traded to a Thuringian chief as part of a deal to settle a dispute over fishing rights. It was fascinating stuff, and I could have listened to her all day.

Unfortunately for us, Mark, who wasn't fit enough to practice fighting with the others, caught on to the fact that I'd finally gotten the hang of the local dialect, and interrupted my private time with Audi to come talk at me. Worse, all the other crippled and/or deranged noncombatants followed him over, and circled around me gawking like I was some kind of street performer.

Mark shooed Audi away, apologized a bunch of times that I'd been forced to converse with a female, and assured me that I would suffer no more, cause he and his toothless pals were here to regale me with good manly discourse. Mostly they asked me questions:

“Will you cure my palsy?"

“Was your father a god?"

“Where do the dead go to live when they die?"

“What should we sacrifice to the Winged One who brought us here?"

“Have you ever killed a Roman?"

“Why do you eat green snow with pieces of dung in it?"

Didn't like the mint chocolate chip, I guess. To shut them up and avoid having to answer, I turned the tables on them and asked pointed, hardball questions about Merobert and his followers: Why were they leaving? What would they do? Why did we have to fight? Mark and a few others answered, but I didn't recognize the words they used.

That evening, when the practice was over and everyone had gone home and all the wounds were bandaged and all the blood and puke was reeking on the village green, I waited while Audi had dinner at her father's house. They were having milk curds and fish. I had a giant steak burrito waiting for me at home, and boy was I starving. I couldn't wait to tear into that sucker.

* * * *

Walking home, I had the very unpleasant sense of being watched, but didn't mention it to Audi. As we approached the house, something didn't seem right. When we got there, it was obvious. My door was busted in. The place had been ransacked. Somebody raided my villa and stole every goddamn thing that wasn't nailed down.

I called for Prince Anthro right away, but he didn't answer (vindictive bastard). I sure didn't want to alert the Potentate and have him find out how badly I had let the Franks get out of hand in only a week. Plan ‘C’ was to run back to the village, but Audi said it would be way too dangerous to go out after dark with bandits on the loose. She had a number of theories regarding the identity of the thieves: demons, cave-people, shapeshifters, Visigoths. I figured it could only be Merobert and his merry men.

My giant steak burrito was gone. The only food they'd left was the bag of onions Mark and Gunner gave me. Audi kindly offered to boil them for me, but I wasn't that hungry.

We were too nervous to sleep, so I resumed the grilling I'd been giving her that afternoon. “Tell me why Merobert left the village."

“He was driven to it, I think. Afraid for his life. Papa wanted to kill him. ‘A half-brother is a whole rival,’ that's what Papa says."

“What about the twelve who followed him?"

“Who knows what they are thinking? Not me,” she said. I could make a fair stab at a guess: they were rallying to Merobert to help him win the war against Chlogio's men, hoping to come out on top, as members of Chief Merobert's favored inner circle, once the carnage settled. I wondered how bad all this tribal-politics crap had been back on Earth, where there were all sorts of foreigners and invaders complicating things all the time. No wonder they were an endangered culture.

“Audi, do you like being a Frank? Do you enjoy your life?"

She had no idea what the hell kind of question I was asking. Enjoying life and liking oneself seemed to be a foreign concept to her people. I tried phrasing it differently: “Are you happy most of the time? Or not?"

What a stupid question! Of course she wasn't happy! What did I expect, knowing what I did about her life so far? After we cleared that up, she threw me a bone: “I like staying here, teaching you words and washing in the water. At home I always have too much hard work to do."

Well, I wasn't doing so badly after all: I had taught one Frank to enjoy leisure. Surely that was a laudable thing.

* * * *

We made for the village as soon as the sun came up, and told everyone what happened. They all blamed Merobert, too. Chlogio got really mad. “Wrath of Wotan upon thee, cruel and inconstant Merobert!” he screamed at the sky. “How can you visit such treachery and ill-will upon us, who have shown you only friendship and loving-kindness? How can you desecrate the home of our guest and protector? You force yourself to become my blood-enemy!"

Then we heard that six more villagers had crossed the river overnight, so now Merobert had almost as many fighting men as we did. At the moment, the Franks were chopping down trees to make several large rafts, so they could cross the river fully armed, storm the bank, and cut Merobert and his followers to ribbons. That was the plan, anyway.

Since I'd been looted by his own half-brother, Chlogio made amends by way of appointing bodyguards to look after me. Gunner and Dagomer (henceforth Dag) laid their swords at my feet and pledged to guard my life with their own, or something like that—I wasn't really listening, and they couldn't enunciate worth a damn anyway. Unfortunately, having my own security detail meant I couldn't get a single minute alone with Audi. These barbarians are so phony. Let's you and me get out of here... Nothing doing. Gunner “entertained” me by recounting every single battle and skirmish he or one of his forefathers had ever participated in. Before long, I felt stupid just standing around on the sidelines, so I went to help lash wood together to make the rafts.

Pretty soon my fingers were all cut up by the ropes. The laboring Franks all had hands like sofa leather and one of them laughed at me for having “the soft hands of a girl-child.” Gunner cuffed him upside the head.

“Fool! Do not speak badly of our guest!"

Then everybody stood up and stopped working, cause something was happening downstream. Half of a four-man search party that had left in search of Merobert early in the morning was returning to the village. They were in bad shape, and one of them was leaning heavily on the other, like he couldn't walk on his own.

“We were ambushed,” explained the upright guy. “The others were slain."

Shock, horror, tears. Rage, rage, rage.

“I swear by my father's shade,” snarled Chlogio, “that I shall neither eat nor sleep nor lay with a woman until I have split the criminal skull of Merobert with my own two hands."

“Before you act, seek the favor of the gods,” Chlodin said. “If we forget to satisfy them, our undertakings will be doomed to fail."

All of a sudden they were trying to decide who they should offer up to Wotan, and I remembered that I had planned to wean them off the whole human sacrifice business. I was just about to explain my feelings on the matter to Chlogio when Gunner jumped onto a boulder and shouted: “Here is your victim! This is the man whose blood shall be offered!"

He was pointing at the guy who said I had girly hands. Maybe if I'd been a little less anxious and sleep-deprived, I would have tried harder to intervene. But before I could think of anything to say, they were dragging the poor bastard up the hill, and what was I supposed to do? Anyway, I didn't watch; I stayed behind and showed my raw, bleeding hands to Audi. She offered to fix them up, so we went down to the river, and she washed them clean and applied a stingy herb salve that was supposed to toughen up my palms. It was nice down there, by the water, just the two of us. We talked for what seemed like hours.

“So. Do you Franks go to war often?"

“How could we survive without war? We would be trampled."

I wanted to talk about pacts, treaties, and the benefits of peace, but didn't know the Frankish words for such things. I changed the subject. “What do you think of this land? Do you like it better than the place you came from?"

“I can't decide. It's almost the same. Here, the water is cleaner. There's much more game for the hunters. But there aren't very many people. There is only our tribe, and you, and no-one else."

As far as I knew, back on Earth, anyone who wasn't a Frank had been the Franks’ mortal enemy. Why did she sound like she missed them? I asked: “Do you wish there were others?"

“I don't know. Maybe it's better like this.” Maybe, but she didn't sound too sure. Maybe those mystery tribes that lived beyond the frontiers of Frankdom represented freedom to her. Maybe she could take the idea of being kidnapped or sold to strangers and romanticize it into some kind of fantasy escape from the brutal day-to-day struggle of living in her native society. If she was a normal 21st-century female, this is where I would have started asking about her hopes, dreams, career goals, aspirations for the future, and so on, but I had the sense by now that “surviving childbirth” was about the highest goal any Frankish girl could set for herself, realistically speaking. Not that the men had it any better. Chlogio had made it to the absolute top rung of the Salian Franks’ social ladder, and what did he have to show for it but acute paranoia and a bunch of murdered relatives?

I decided then that my civilization was flat-out better than hers, and said so. “You'd probably like the United States. Everybody lives for a long time, and we don't have to farm our own food cause there's always plenty to eat. We don't fight over borders, and women are free to do whatever they want."

“Really? You don't have famine, war, or marriage contracts?"

“Well—"

“Who is the king of the United States? What kind of man is he?"

“We don't have a king, we have a—a—” How do you say “President” in Frankish? “—A king who only rules for a short time. Every four years, we can replace him."

She gave me a look of understanding and nodded. “Just like our forefathers, the Sicambrii—whenever omens foretold the end of their king's reign, the chief priest would cut his throat in the grove of the Moon Goddess."

“It's not quite like that, actually—"

She leaned in. “What gods do you worship in the United States?"

How to field this one? I wanted to give the American God a name, but I wasn't sure what to call him, since I didn't want to favor one religion over another (some of my best friends are Jewish). So I went with:

“Jehovah."

Again, she made like she knew what I was talking about. “Oh, Jove—like the Romans."

See, this is why you don't talk politics or religion with people: it gets way too complicated, and you end up saying things you're not really sure you mean. I tried to steer the conversation back to what I was interested in, which was her.

“I'd like to take you to America sometime, if I can,” I said, wondering if the Prince could maybe arrange a special field trip. “You'd be amazed. You've never seen anything like it."

She glanced over my shoulder, then shifted her hips to move even closer. “I'd love to see your country. I hope, one day, we can go.” Her hair smelled pretty, thanks to the shampoo I'd taught her to use.

“Once you've stayed at a three-star hotel, you'll never look at timber huts the same way again. They've got these things called ‘hot tubs'...” I trailed off because she started giving me the green light: hungry looks, parted lips, deep breaths, you know the drill. I'm no statue. I leaned in and kissed her, and she grabbed my hand and mashed it against her left breast.

“Audofled, my daughter! What are you doing!"

I leapt back like she was radioactive and looked up to see Chlogio and his entourage staring down at me.

“Oh! Father! I was just—"

“We weren't doing anything—she was just putting salve on my hands—we were—” Reflexively, my denials came out in English. I looked back at Audi. The salve had left an oily print where my hand had been.

“You, Protector Frank Mulligan! You have deflowered my daughter!” Chlogio said, hefting his axe at me. “Because of what you have done, no Frank will take her to wife!"

I admit that I panicked here. “Prince! Prince Anthro—help! Please! I need you! Prince Anthro, get over here, now! Please!” Slipping back into Frankish, I stammered: “I didn't do it, King, we didn't—"

“This is our fault, merciless chief,” said Dag, fixing a steely grip on Gunner's arm. “It was our duty to keep ceaseless watch over our noble guest, and we failed."

“Enough! There is but one way to remedy this crime,” said Chlodin, holding up his gnarled hand. “Our protector must himself marry Audofled."

Chlogio scratched his beard and grimaced. “Yes. Yes, you have spoken wisdom, ancient one. That is the only way."

“She cannot be left in this defiled state,” said Chlodin. “They must be wed immediately."

Audi was staring at me with a guilty look on her face, but I felt completely responsible for what had happened. Shouldn't I have known better? Exactly how old was she, anyway? I didn't know. What was I thinking, trying to debauch the chief's daughter? I felt like a very, very bad and very, very stupid person right then, but at the same time, very, very happy that I wasn't going to be summarily executed.

This awkward moment was interrupted by a voice from the opposite riverbank. “Ho there, men who once were Franks! I bring you a message from Merobert the Bold.” There was a brown-bearded man in a wolfskin standing at the water's edge, shouting through cupped hands. “Join him and be free, or remain where you are and die!"

Chlogio didn't waste any time coming up with a rebuttal. “My loathsome half-brother is a coward and a thief!” he yelled back. “I swear on the eye of Wotan that all you who betrayed us will die the death of traitors before this week is through!"

“You are the coward, Chlogio! You let us be taken from our homeland, removed to a place we have never known and can never leave. You let us be severed from our beloved Rhine, our bountiful sea, and the Gaulish settlements we used to plunder so joyously. You did nothing to save our way of life! Instead, you bow and scrape before this smooth-skinned foreigner and the evil gods he serves.” He was pointing at me during that last part. “To the rest of you, I say: join Merobert or perish by his hand!” The messenger turned and walked away. Everyone on our side jeered and swore at him as he left, and Chlogio was damn near insane with rage. Chlodin suggested that a wedding would be just the thing to calm him down.

* * * *

The wedding was held in the hilltop grove, where the afternoon sacrifice could still be seen and smelled. The ceremony was quick—we had a war to prepare for, after all. When it was over, Chlogio led us down to an empty house in the village, barked at servants to hastily fill it with a few armloads of dowry gifts, showed us in, and slammed the door behind us with an order to consummate. Well, I'm man enough to tell you that my nerves were so completely shot by this point that I couldn't even think about doing that. I just sat against the wall and massaged my pounding temples while Audi neatly arranged our wedding presents. She still had that guilty look, like something was up.

“I must tell you something,” she finally said. “I tricked you. I led you into a trap."

“What?"

“Papa meant to catch us together. He planned it. He told me to seduce you, so he could force us to marry."

“Why'd he do that?"

“He thinks that if he makes you his son-in-law, you might help him become a god."

“Oh, crap, I can't do that. Why does he think I can do that?"

“Because you are in league with the Winged One who brought us to this land—the one you call ‘Prince.’ He thinks that if you aren't a god yourself, then you can at least intercede with them on his behalf."

Granted, I had some connections (well, one), but the gods didn't exactly owe me any favors. I wondered how long I could expect to live once Chlogio figured out I couldn't get him deified.

“I'll see what I can do,” I said.

* * * *

The next morning, we readied ourselves for the attack on Merobert's camp. The rafts were lined up along the riverbank. The men girded themselves with sharp weapons and dull armor while the women and children gathered on the grassy ridge overlooking the water to see them off.

Because I was the chief's son-in-law, I had the high honor of riding in his raft and receiving arms from his collection. I got a Saxon sword and a Gallo-Roman helmet, lucky me. While we all prepared, dallied, hugged our wives, and got blessed by Chlodin, Merobert and his men gathered at the other side of the river, waiting knee-deep in the water to meet us. Merobert himself had red hair, and just like his half-brother, was appallingly huge. He held six wicked-looking throwing hatchets in one hand. There were twenty-two men on his side, twenty-three on ours. Dag told me that if both sides annihilated each other, the advantage would belong to us, cause we had women, children, and invalids to declare victory for our side, and they didn't. That did not console me.

Before shoving off, the Franks sang one of their traditional war songs, “We Will Go Forth And Slay Huns This Day,” which sounded too stiff and droning for my tastes, so I taught them a traditional American war song:

na na na na

na na na na

hey hey hey

goodbye

...Which they all sang with zeal. I was proud of them. One by one, we launched our rafts into the water. Merobert's men yelled; we yelled back, louder. They raised their arms in the air and beat their weapons against their shields. Obscene, personalized insults started flying across the river. Our oarsmen paddled furiously. The enemy was so eager to fight that they waded till the water was up to their waists. My heartbeat was like an artillery range blasting in my ribcage, and I felt sure that I was going to either die painfully or achieve some kind of horrible bestial apotheosis in an orgy of blood and mayhem and slaughter.

But just then, a gap was torn in the heavens above us. We all stopped and looked up to see what it was. Two luminous beings descended from that eerie hole in the sky: one was Prince Anthro; the other was a strange shapeless thing with thousands of colorful wings and lidless eyes joined at impossible angles, shining with a migraine-inducing radiance that made the base of my spine tingle. This was, I correctly guessed, the Potentate of Mortal Concerns.

“We're here for your ten-day inspection,” said Prince Anthro. “What's going on?"

“These men are arrayed for war,” said the Potentate in a voice that sounded like ten thousand castrati screaming in an echo chamber. “What an unhappy sight."

The Prince turned to me. “What is the meaning of this, Francis? Look at you—carrying a sword! You're supposed to be helping the Franks get along. What have you done?"

“It wasn't my fault,” I protested. On both sides, the Franks were shielding their eyes, terrified to look directly at the Potentate.

“We should not have chosen this man to counsel the Salian Franks,” said the Potentate. “He must be removed at once."

I began to levitate.

“Stop! Stop, you can't do that!” cried a voice from the near side of the river. It was Audi. “That's my husband. You can't take him away."

The Prince turned to me, stunned. “Francis, don't tell me you married into the tribe."

“What, was I not supposed to?” Unseen hands continued to carry me upwards, towards that hideous crack in the sky.

“You were supposed to teach them, advise them, guide them—not encourage warfare! Not marry their daughters! Good grief, Francis..."

Chlogio lifted his head. “See here, ye lofty spirits—is this man not a god, as you are?” He quickly averted his gaze again.

“What? A god?” said Prince Anthro. “No, of course not—he's just an ordinary mortal.” I made faces at the Prince and slashed my hand across my throat, but apparently he didn't recognize the universal sign language for dude, shut up. Chlogio's head slowly swiveled towards me.

“Just ... an ordinary ... mortal?"

“Yes, and he shall spend many aeons treading the wheel of rebirth for the lamentable things he has done here among you,” said the Potentate, who I was starting to vehemently dislike.

“Please, my lords, let him stay here,” said Audi. “He meant us no harm, and—he belongs here. He is one of us, now."

I stopped rising. For a brief moment, the Potentate considered. “Very well,” it said. “Francis Mulligan shall stay here, henceforth to be regarded as a Frank by adoption.” I was abruptly released, and plunged into the water. When I surfaced, I did not climb onto the nearest raft. I swam all the way to the shore.

* * * *

That was two and a half years ago.

I live in a cave, with Audi, about thirty miles west of the village. The Potentate got Merobert and Chlogio to reconcile, and they have a new overseer, so everything is hunky-dory over there, last we heard. We're in hiding, you see, cause Chlogio wants to kill me. I can certainly understand why: I'm his son-in-law, which by Frankish custom makes me a potential rival, and besides, I married his daughter under a false pretense of divinity. So we've got to lay low.

Prince Anthro comes by once a week to bring us food and do our laundry. He takes good care of us. He even let us have a television with a DVD player (cause we don't get broadcast, cable, or satellite in whatever solar system this is), which Audi absolutely adores. She learned English by watching. The Prince also tells me what's happening back on Earth. Go Sharks!

We have a promise from Gunner that he will come for us one day, when Chlogio is feeble or dead, and lead us back to the village in triumph, where we will assert my claim to the throne. It may be dangerous, and the new overseer probably won't like it, but I've got a trump card to play: all the Franks remember me as the miracle-worker who brought down the divine intervention that prevented them from rashly slaughtering their own kin in a pointless civil war. They will greet me, Gunner swears, with songs of praise and garlands of flowers. They will prefer me to Merobert or any infant heir Chlogio can produce. Well, someday I'll find out if that's true. Audi and I both want to go back; it's lonely out here, and the wilderness is no place to raise children. We can't live in exile forever. Besides, I'm a Frank by adoption. I'm one of them. It's my right.

* * * *

Brian N. Pacula was born in Berkeley, California in 1979 and currently lives in Sonoma County with his girlfriend and their daughter. His work has previously appeared in The Copperfield Review, Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency, First Class, and elsewhere. He has a web site at www.brianpacula.com.

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REVIEW: Time Travel: Movies (Part 2 of 2)
by James Schellenberg

The Time Machine, written by David Duncan from the novel by H.G. Wells, directed by George Pal, 1960, 100 min.

The Time Machine, written by John Logan from the earlier screenplay by David Duncan and the novel by H.G. Wells, directed by Simon Wells, 2002, 95 min.

Time travel movies are a dime a dozen. Every year it seems that at least two major releases (and many more obscure, direct-to-video, and TV projects) use time travel as the major plot device. Most of these are films not commonly thought of as science fiction, some good, like Groundhog Day, others not so good, like Black Knight. Many were inspired by the success of Back to the Future in the 80s (this sub-subgenre included such bottom-of-the-barrel projects like Millennium, Highlander, and Timerider). Sometimes the time travel is used as an excuse for action movie heroics, like the popular Terminator series, but more commonly, time travel is the basis for comedies. Surprisingly, this seems to work more often than might be expected. Consider the aforementioned Groundhog Day and Back to the Future, along with Woody Allen's gagfest Sleeper, as well as Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and Time Bandits. The popularity of the time travel movie continues: just this year, two big budget time travel movies have come out, Terminator 3 earlier this summer and Timeline at time of writing (see the Challenging Destiny website for reviews of both). And coming soon (subject to the vagaries of the entertainment industry as such projects always are), many similar movies, such as an adaptation of Bradbury's famous story “A Sound of Thunder” due out summer 2004.

Why this popularity? Why would time travel be one of the most commonly used science fiction tropes in Hollywood, surpassing alien invasion? For one, the visual possibilities are hard to resist, with juxtapositions that otherwise wouldn't happen. Killer robots from the future, your parents as teenagers, the Enterprise in 1980s San Francisco, and so forth. Correspondingly, time travel allows a modern narrator to anchor a story in a way that doesn't happen in a straight-up period film or a tale of the future. Another big reason for time travel's enduring popularity is that at least two storylines virtually write themselves, the fish out of water and the mission to fix a mistake (combined, as it happens, in Back to the Future). Also, time travel stories traffic heavily in nostalgia or regret, and the coinciding impulses to revisit or change things in our past. Some of the more mainstream efforts have gone this route, like Peggy Sue Got Married and Disney's The Kid. As this column will show, time travel and the movies have had quite a successful and interesting relationship. Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crud) still applies, naturally, but the 10% is well worth seeking out.

In my previous column on time travel books, I wrote about The Time Machine by H.G. Wells and its pivotal effect on science fiction. It's fitting that there are two adaptations of the book, but unfortunately both are only mediocre. The Time Machine was first made in 1960, directed by George Pal after involvement with a long series of successful films; many directors and special effects technicians working today cite Pal, along with Ray Harryhausen, as key inspirations. Last year the book was remade into a movie by a team that, after some shuffling, was directed by Wells’ great-grandson, Simon Wells. Both movies have flaws that are symptomatic of their times.

In a relatively solid adaptation, The Time Machine of 1960 takes Cold War fears as the thematic backbone, and does so effectively. A Victorian-era scientist named George has gathered some friends together to show them his new invention, a time machine. He travels into the future only to find that the twentieth century has two world wars in its first half, and then, even more horrifyingly, a nuclear holocaust has already happened by the 1960s. These scenes are reminiscent of Things to Come, a 1930s adaptation of a Wells story that posited a second world war that would last into the 1970s. The sheer force of the truth hits home in both cases. Much further in the future, George and his time machine arrive in a bucolic, pastoral society, with a people known as the Eloi. But all is not as it seems, and one of the first signs is that air raid sirens dominate the lives of the Eloi. When George finds out about the Morlocks, the darker half of the society of the future, underground dwellers who eat the Eloi, he faces a difficult decision. The movie becomes a decently constructed vignette about the line between pacifism and self-defence. Not surprisingly, this movie version jettisons the superbly melancholy ending as originally written by Wells—the time traveller alone on a dead beach at the end of the world. Frankly, I don't think any filmmaker could do the ending justice, but the book can almost support this change, not like putting a happy ending on 1984 or similar nonsense.

This is not to say that I enjoyed the movie myself. Most reviews or commentary on the 1960 version relate some kind of personal story about watching the movie as a young viewer and being enormously impressed. I watched the film for the first time as an adult and I was braced and completely ready for cheesy special effects and dull acting. These were present of course, but, as even a casual glance through the Mystery Science Theater 3000 catalogue indicates, movies from this era can display near-infinite badness. Thus fortified, I did find the movie reasonably competent on this level, and the time machine itself is a marvel of design (it has become a bit of fabled lore in the history of movie props since it went missing and was mysteriously found much later). Unfortunately, this was all overshadowed: the movie is shockingly sexist, beginning to end. I understand that this was de rigueur for the time period, and that a modern audience should have the intellectual decency to apply at least some filters of historical awareness to judgments of past works. I also understand the movie uses a female Eloi to stand in for the overall devolution of a strain of humanity at that point in the future. But this devolved Eloi character is the only female onscreen, and most of her comments are the worst stereotypes of the dumb blonde, asking questions about the past like “Would I be pretty?” or “How do they wear their hair?” George makes a number of inexcusable comments about her, as well as about a mannequin of all things. The time traveller is condescending towards the Eloi in the book, but most of the worst excesses have been added here.

By this measure, it's remarkable that the 2002 version almost makes the 1960 version look good. Who can complain about cheesy special effects in old sf movies, when more recent movies have no idea what to actually do with their big budgets and fancy computerized effects? The Time Machine of 2002 is a movie in wild disarray, putting forth a version of Wells’ story that doesn't work. The characters here are so bland and underwritten that they could only hope to be offensive or sexist. Worst of all, the movie is not even luridly bad, so there's no point rewatching it for the unintentional humour.

The 2002 adaptation of Wells’ material suffers from a disconnect that the 1960 version simply doesn't have. This time around, the time traveller is trying to rescue his fiancée from death; we see several attempts at the beginning of the movie, none of which go well. The entire Eloi/Morlock episode becomes an accident, as he is stranded there while on a completely different mission. Yes, he wants to get back to his own time and to his loved one, but this change removes the thematic consistency. For the purposes of this new construction, the Eloi/Morlock episode could have been replaced with any randomly chosen obstacle, whereas in Wells’ story, the societal evolution represented by the Eloi/Morlock split was the precise point. In the book, the time traveller was a scientist going on his mission for purely rational reasons; neither movie version can leave this alone, but the changes work in one case and not the other.

Also, while Wells’ time machine story didn't address the key point of time travel, the mutability of time, and the 1960 version also skips over this, the 2002 version uses it as the hinge of the story. But inconsistently. Can the time traveller save the life of his loved one? He fails several times, but the movie doesn't make its conceptual basis clear, so the story flounders. That said, few movies take any stance except that the past and future are mutable. Back to the Future and Star Trek IV both seem to fall into this category, 12 Monkeys is one of only a few movies I can think of that use an immutable timeline, and in the case of Donnie Darko, it's not clear that there's any time travel at all (reviews of all four movies following).

* * * *

Back to the Future, written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, directed by Robert Zemeckis, 1985, 110 min.

Back to the Future, a fun, competent movie that actually pays attention to its ideas of time travel, has also become a cultural artifact of the 80s. This movie bases its structure on going back in time, and so clearly evokes a time two decades in the past now that it has almost become a time travel device of its own. Many other, very bad movies bring the 80s to mind, and thankfully, Back to the Future is a clever, hilarious movie that succeeds in the presence or absence of the nostalgia factor. Zemeckis’ direction seems casual and rambly, but the movie is actually tightly structured and rewards repeated viewings with attention to detail. A great cast, some nifty visuals, a well-paced story, it all adds up to a movie to remember.

Marty McFly is an ordinary teenager, a bit rebellious so he has trouble with some of the authority figures at high school. He also has a supremely weird family, with a father who is under the thumb of a colleague named Biff, a mother who doesn't seem in love with her husband anymore but tells stories about how the two of them met, and some very repressed siblings. Fortunately for Marty's sanity, he is a good friend with a local mad scientist named Doc. One night Doc asks Marty for some help documenting his new experiment: a time travel device installed in a De Lorean. After one successful test, in which Doc's dog Einstein gets sent one minute into the future, Doc is ecstatic, but the source of power for the device, plutonium, leads to some problems. It seems that Doc stole the material from some Libyans, and the Libyans are now very angry.

Doc gets shot, and the next thing Marty knows, he's in the De Lorean, trying to get away. The magic number is 88 mph, and once that has been exceeded, Marty is sent to a different temporal destination in a blaze of rubber and flame. Since Doc happened to type in a date in the 1950s into the car's computer, and since there was no time to pack extra plutonium, Marty soon finds out that he is stranded in the past. How can he get back? Who can he turn to for help? Why, Doc, of course. But before he can get to Doc's place, he has encountered his father, as a teenager, and interfered with the famous first meeting between his parents. Now he has two problems on his hands: how to get back to the future, and how to make sure his parents fall in love. All the while, he has to survive the alien world of the 1950s. The plot is tightly set up, with a nice twist at the end to escalate tension (when Marty's plan to reunite his parents faces an unexpected change of roleplaying).

Marty as played by Michael J. Fox is a large part of the appeal of the movie. He has superb comic timing—some of my favourite moments are small lines, tossed off with perfect aplomb. For example, when he sees his Uncle Joey in a crib in the past, an uncle familiar to him only as an incarcerated adult, he can't resist telling the baby, “You better get used to those bars!” Later, when Marty is trying to fend off the overtly carnal advances of his own mother, this comic timing almost makes us forget how deeply weird the Oedipal part of the story is. Christopher Lloyd as Doc is one of the best realizations of that kind of character in science fiction film. It's a cheerful/cynical use of stereotype: having a mad scientist certainly helps propel the plot along, but Doc is also congenial in an insane way. I like the relationship between the two and how Doc gets along with Marty. I always wondered, how did they meet? That bit of backstory is left to the imagination, and the characters are realized fully enough without it.

Back to the Future has only a few things to dislike in it. One of the most annoying is the egregious use of Marty as inspiration for rock and roll. Chuck Berry certainly didn't need a white kid from the future to figure out how to play his music. As mentioned, the Oedipal aspects of the plot seem like an odd basis for a light-hearted story. And that pesky “To Be Continued...” More on that in a minute.

The time travel in the movie is supported by the consistent use of visual parallels, both to establish period and to give clues as to what is going on. One of the sly questions suggested by the production design: are the 80s actually better? Neither is black and white; Marty would go crazy in the authoritarian 50s, but the 80s are dirty and mean. The time travel device, a boring chair in both versions of The Time Machine, has been visually spiffed up, which is another reason for the appeal of the movie. Who wouldn't want to drive around in that De Lorean? Back to the Future's past is highly mutable, and by definition, also fixable, thus the plot. It's interesting to note Doc's repeated refusal to accept a warning from Marty about his death that night in the future; this represents about the only mention of issues like free will. Like Star Trek IV, the time travel in some ways feels more like an excuse for fish out of water jokes than a serious rumination about the nature of reality. But serious rumination can be overrated! This is a fun movie.

A note on the sequels. Back to the Future Part II was inevitable considering the cheesy “To Be Continued” that comes up on screen at the end of the first movie. I actually enjoyed the second, more futuristic outing; it recomplicates the story rather joyously, and some of the speculation about the future is fun. The western setting of Back to the Future Part III didn't seem to have much personality to me (and I think the bland void of the movie has been coloured in retrospectively by the horror that was Wild Wild West). I'm a completist so I've watched all three, but when I've talked to friends who experienced the 80s as non-sf fans, I've found out that Back to the Future was a big hit but that the two sequels seem to have not even registered. In addition to its cultural impact, the first movie is clearly the best. As for further sequels, I've read that they have now been ruled out due to the unlikeliness of Michael J. Fox's participation.

* * * *

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, written by Steve Meerson, Peter Krikes, Harve Bennett, and Nicholas Meyer from a story by Leonard Nimoy and Harve Bennett, directed by Leonard Nimoy, 1986, 120 min.

Time travel is an idea that pops up quite often in Star Trek and considering the lifespan of the franchise it may have been inevitable. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home ranks as one of the most successful and interesting examples of time travel in the ongoing Trek future history, although the two-part episode that concluded The Next Generation was also quite good. Looking back fondly on this movie and rewatching it are two different things: I had forgotten that the plot is distinctly clunky and the humour tends to make the consistency of the characterization waver here and there. The Voyage Home is by no means a perfect movie, but flaws aside, it's also entertaining and congenial (in much the same way as Back to the Future) and now available in an excellent Collector's Edition DVD.

The Voyage Home essentially closes a trilogy, following the events of The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock quite closely. Spock has been at the centre of most of the story, and by the beginning of The Voyage Home, he has a new body and a newly installed consciousness. The Enterprise has been destroyed, and Kirk has been called back to Earth to face a court martial over events relating to the battle that blew up the famous ship. The basic Enterprise crew has renamed their captured Klingon ship the Bounty and are heading back to Earth. So far, so good, especially for fans of the excellent second and third movies in the series.

But this introductory section doesn't have much to do with the rest of the movie, and soon becomes glossed over due to a new threat. A massive probe is heading straight for Earth, and in its wake it is leaving a string of crippled ships and blacked out space stations. Once in orbit around the Earth, the probe causes more havoc, and nothing seems capable of stopping it. The only clue as to the motivation of the strange probe is the eerie, high-pitched signal it emits. The next section is a bit of a head-scratcher, as the writing team struggles to get the story from Point A to Point C. First, one of the finest logical minds in the form of the newly resurrected Spock deciphers the signal. The probe is speaking in humpback whale song, and since there are no whales left in the oceans of Earth in the 23rd century, it's getting no reply. Second, the crew of the Bounty decide that they will go back in time to 20th century Earth and grab two whales and bring them back to the time of the probe. Third, they do this by going really fast around the sun. I don't know enough about Star Trek canon to say if this method of time travel has been done before or since, but it sounds pretty dubious!

Finally, the movie gets to the good stuff. The Bounty lands in San Francisco in the 1980s, and we get a number of hilarious scenes, as the uber-competent crew has to face the horrors and intricacies of 20th century life. In a pair of famous scenes, Kirk and Spock's quest to use public transit is defeated by the concept of exact change and Scotty is baffled by the lack of voice activation on 1986 computers. Many of McCoy's scenes portray him reacting crankily to the barbarities of primitive medicine. Later, Kirk meets a woman, of course, but this time he may have met his match: Dr. Gillian Taylor is a humpback whale specialist, and she is extremely suspicious of Kirk's motives when he comes around to her aquarium asking questions. Will they get the whales? Will Scotty change history when he gives away the secret of invisible aluminum? If and when they get back to the 23rd century, will the arrival of some humpback whales be enough to make the deadly probe go away? It's no surprise that it's a light-hearted ending and that Kirk gets pardoned by the court martial due to his heroic efforts at saving Earth, but it's a fun trip along the way. I also liked the way the storyline between Kirk and Dr. Taylor gets resolved.

One of the key appeals of the original Star Trek series was the interaction between the close-knit members of the crew. The Voyage Home is probably the showpiece for those relationships, especially since the tone of the movie is much lighter than the previous two outings. Also, with Spock in a purer Vulcan state of mind than had been the case for many years, he has to relearn a lot of the camaraderie and human ways that made life on the Enterprise so interesting. This gives McCoy in particular extra opportunities to needle Spock. The comic scenes in this movie, like Spock's experimentation with profanity in the 1980s, are occasionally too broad, but overall the force of the characters and their long-term fellowship shines through.

More so than Back to the Future, the time travel in The Voyage Home feels like an excuse for fish out of water humour. None of the Federation officers seem too concerned about changing the past or other issues like that. Most of the poignancy of the story actually comes from the ecological issues, as heightened by the time travel. What will the Earth be like with empty oceans, polluted skies, and dead lands? We're getting a taste of it already, but it doesn't seem to be sinking in. As Spock says in the movie: “To hunt a species to extinction is not logical.” While there is probably a better reason to halt whaling or other such practices than to avoid the attention of a world-destroying interstellar probe in the 23rd century, the point still stands. Like the best science fiction, this movie focuses a debate by giving us a new perspective. The ostensible villains of the movie, the whalers, show up for only a few minutes at the end; the villain for most of the running time is something as abstract as widespread ecological callousness. The message is just as pertinent as ever, and it still strikes home because of the entertaining story that keeps us watching.

* * * *

12 Monkeys, written by David Peoples and Janet Peoples, directed by Terry Gilliam, 1995, 110 min.

Note: The credits indicate that the script for 12 Monkeys was “Inspired by the film ‘La Jetée’ written by Chris Marker."

I consider 12 Monkeys, quirks and all, to be one of the greatest science fiction films ever made. Gilliam's genius is sometimes uneven, but when he is working from a smartly written script—as happened with Brazil, The Fisher King, and this movie—then he can pull off wonders like few other directors. His long experience with Monty Python, a troupe that would hone any creative instinct, has always served him well. In 12 Monkeys, all the elements came together perfectly, from the script to visuals to the acting to the music. And best of all, the viewer experiences a time travel movie with some open-endedness but remarkably little in the way of internal contradiction.

James Cole lives in our future. He's a criminal, a convicted murderer, used as a convenient guinea pig for a trip to the dangerous aboveground, and later, for trips through time to the past. In 1996 (this movie's future), a deadly virus of some kind will destroy most of humanity—there's nothing the scientists in charge in Cole's time can change about the past, but they want to get a hold of the pure strain of the virus in order to study it. Due to the chaos of billions of deaths, it's not clear who was responsible or even how to find the virus. The storyline of 12 Monkeys follows the subjective timeline of Cole's life, as he skips back and forth through time searching for the virus with the only clue available to the future: the Army of the 12 Monkeys did it. The simple subjective device of following Cole's point of view keeps us from confusion at the same time as it garners sympathy for Cole—time travel is a wrenching experience and as he says at one point, “the human body was not meant to travel through time.” Cole meets up with Railly, a psychologist of the mid-90s, several times and under several different circumstances. Is Cole crazy? With pronouncements like “All of you people are dead,” it certainly appears true, and he gets duly committed. In the asylum, Cole meets Jeffrey, a somewhat unstable individual whose ultimate role in the events of the film is one of its best surprises. Also, Cole has a recurring vision, of a man who gets shot in a public building, set to the most tragic violin solo imaginable. How do these elements work together? And what does the Army of the 12 Monkeys mean when they say “We did it!” and why might a message from Railly be Cole's only clue? It seems impossible that everything will fall together, but it does, and seamlessly.

The characterization in this film is superb. Cole is shown to be quite capable of doing harm, as when he beats the two thugs in the abandoned theatre in Railly's presence. He also radiates more menace in the dentist scene than most action stars would generally let on to—Cole is a genuinely dangerous individual. But the film's power lies in its careful portrayal of him as a human being, a kind of normal guy, thrown into mental wards and world wars against his will. He struggles for survival, but also for some dignity of his own. James Cole is perhaps the best role that Bruce Willis has ever played; 12 Monkeys becomes a time travel movie with a human core because of James Cole and his story.

The supporting roles are similarly excellent. Madeleine Stowe portrays the character of Railly with a stunning, sensitive balance. As the psychologist who has lost her faith, as the author obsessed with the apocalypse, as the woman keeping her sanity in the face of intense pressure—all of these aspects had me cheering. What a relief to have a science fiction movie without a screaming bimbo in the female lead role! Cole is the main character, but at least the movie pays attention to Railly's dilemmas and emotions. Brad Pitt received an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of the character of Jeffrey, in a role that does grab for attention. However flamboyant and over the top, there's also a subversive edge to the typical things Jeffrey says: Gilliam lets Pitt have fun as the madman who knows bitter truths about life. Personally, I liked the function of the Jeffrey subplot in 12 Monkeys, although I know some people who were upset at the misdirection. I will say no more, only that I felt that not a moment in this film was wasted.

Time travel and its paradoxes have been poorly treated by the movies, enough so to make everyone a little wary of the idea. When treated comedically, as in the case of Back to the Future and Star Trek IV, much can be forgiven, but when treated seriously, the task becomes far more difficult. How does 12 Monkeys fare? Where does its theory of time travel fit onto the spectrum between the mutable and immutable past? It's not much of a spoiler to say that the movie falls firmly on the immutable side, and it works because everything about the film fits together to support that assertion. The past has always already happened, and this trickles down from the main mission of the future scientists—to isolate the virus, not stop its initial spread—to the day-to-day events in Cole's life. A good example is the message that becomes key to the plot: in the future, the scientists have deciphered a message that points to the Army of the 12 Monkeys as the culprits. Cole returns through time to find the Army, entangling his life with Railly's. When the true role of the Army is discovered, Railly leaves a half-hysterical message on the designated answering machine, sarcastically saying what happened. Railly believes the future has been averted, but Cole realizes that this is the message that motivated his mission into the past. That this moment is psychologically crushing only prepares us glancingly for the larger heartbreak of the ending. The writing team gives us a story that secures our sympathy and provides the illusion of mutability by taking us along on the subjective chronological ride of Cole's life (it would be an interesting, albeit illegal exercise to remove this illusion by rearranging the movie into an objective timeline). Cole is searching for the truth, but what does the truth matter, in the end? Some things can be changed, when they are the future, possibly. But when they are the past, only tragedy is possible.

12 Monkeys is an interesting expansion of Marker's original film, La Jetée. Anyone who is even mildly intrigued should search out this short film immediately—it's well worth the effort. Marker's work is full of arty technique, while 12 Monkeys uses some Hollywood gloss here and there. But the core story of the man who is standing on a pier with a younger version of himself remains powerful and moving in both films. Marker tends to encourage more of the esoteric speculation of the academic, but Gilliam seems to have many of the same aims in mind. Marker's “Silent Movie” (a video installation designed for art galleries) in particular has a fascinating parallel to Gilliam's use of the old Hitchcock films in 12 Monkeys. Both La Jetée and 12 Monkeys certainly hold their own, no matter the company.

* * * *

Donnie Darko, written and directed by Richard Kelly, 2001, 110 min.

Of the six films in this column, Donnie Darko is the hardest to parse. At its surface, it's simply a story about a disturbed teenager, a finely observed tale of the horrors of high school and family. The movie could almost function at this level, except that all of the dread and creepy events seem to be pointing towards a science-fictional transformation or epiphany or trip through time. I'll discuss the problematic plot mechanics in detail later, but I don't want that to overshadow my big-picture impression of the movie: a surprisingly gifted writer/director makes a debut that looks very smart and is by turns charming and disturbing and intriguing.

The movie opens with our eponymous hero asleep in the middle of a road somewhere on a mountain. Donnie wakes up, bicycles back home, and seemingly returns to the routine of any normal teenager in high school. But Donnie, already seeing a psychiatrist, becomes even more disturbed after an incident late one night. A voice in his head named Frank causes him to sleepwalk out of the house just as a jet engine falls on his bedroom. Frank also tells him that the world will end within 28 days or so. We get a glimpse of Frank early on: he's a giant bunny with a metallic and grotesque head, a demonic version of Harvey. Is there someone under the costume? What are Frank's motivations? After saving Donnie's life, Frank also tells Donnie to do things like vandalize the school and burn down a house. What will happen in 28 days? And where did the jet engine come from, if, as the FAA investigation finds out, there was no airplane that lost an engine?

Donnie's life continues, at least for that span of a month, and most of the movie consists of interaction with an outsized cast of characters. The other characters are often as sharply drawn as Donnie or Frank, especially Donnie's family. The mother and father fall close to several stereotypes, like the unobservant or self-absorbed suburban parental units. After closer observation however, they are actually decent parents. They might be self-satisfied Republicans, and out of touch, but it's hard to pin the blame for Donnie on them. I also liked Donnie's two sisters, one close to his age, and one much younger. The teachers at school loom large in the events of the film, with one of the most incompetent principals ever, and a scary and cringe-inducing gym teacher. Two sympathetic teachers help even things out, even if they have to struggle with their own issues more than they can aid Donnie. Donnie's psychiatrist is probably one of those roles that makes professionals cringe and reach for their angry-letter pen, but I think it's not too bad, however much she might be out of her depth. Donnie's girlfriend is also a relatively thankless role that fits well but could have been much worse. To round things out, Patrick Swayze gets a role as the world's slimiest motivational speaker, best friend of the gym teacher, and bound for comeuppance. This is a big cast for a debut movie, and it all threatens to spin out of Kelly's control. But by the end, with a closing pan across most of the people, we know all of them, and that's an accomplishment.

A few aspects of Donnie Darko simply don't work, like the broadly satiric teachers at the school. Apparently Kelly based these on some experiences from high school, but this is a case of truth being too unbelievable for fiction. Furthermore, this sets up the story for a bit of a false cheer-for-Donnie moment when he confronts them in a school assembly—also not entirely believable. Later in the movie, Donnie has a now-famous conversation with his friends about the sexual habits of Smurfs; pop culture monologues/diatribes like this have been stale for over a decade now.

What does a movie as intricate as Donnie Darko mean? That's a good question that doesn't seem to have an answer. As much as I like the movie, I'm forced to admit that it uses genre baggage for a completely different purpose without much regard for internal coherency. A few explanations for the plot:

1. Donnie is completely crazy. While supported by some internal evidence, this rationale is a cop-out—granting it makes anything possible and any element dismissible—and not many people seem to support it. However, I do see the intense and sinister texture of the movie as a valid portrait of mental disintegration (or at least, the morbidity that might be the result of the second explanation).

2. Donnie has an Owl Creek experience in the few seconds before he is crushed to death. Kelly refers specifically to Bierce's famous story in interviews, so this is a legitimate rationale. But the movie ends with a slow pan across other characters waking up that morning, all acting with knowledge of events (Frank in particular gives this away) that would have happened only in Donnie's reverie if this explanation stands.

3. Some form of time travel happens. This is the most problematic of all explanations, despite its apparent fit. In particular, if Donnie travels back from the end of the 28 days to the beginning of that time period, accompanying the jet engine in some way, and then not proceeding through the loop again, then where has the loop started? Hasn't the loop just extinguished itself, but only partially? In other words, the movie doesn't commit to the immutability of its premise fully, and runs into a logic trap that 12 Monkeys avoided.

4. The movie is a colossal screw-up, plain and simple. Kelly simply throws in too many contradictory impulses and the movie dissolves into a mess without possible resolution. This is probably the easiest argument to make on a case-by-case basis if the movie is logically laid out beginning to end. I'll talk more about this in my discussion of the director's commentary on the DVD.

5. A mix of all of the above. I tend to fall into this camp, even though it makes no sense as a category. However, with a judicious amount of #4—Kelly has many interesting ideas but isn't in full control of their expression—this is the best way I can see to stop a different type of loop, a never-ending discussion of the movie. I've complained too often about the lack of internal consistency in other movies to let Donnie Darko off the hook so easily but there may be no other way out. I like the movie, despite all these problems, so perhaps that is Kelly's biggest achievement.

Donnie Darko is a case where the director's commentary is the opposite of helpful. Bluntly, Kelly seems to have a completely separate movie in his head than the one on the screen. According to his comments, Donnie is endowed with superhero-like powers by the universe as it tries to heal itself from a rift in space-time. As I said, a different movie than the one I saw! This explanation suffers from most of the problems of #3 above, in addition to making the Frank-related subplot (important to #1 and #2) irrelevant. Also, the whole problem of causation is not addressed anywhere in the movie, and neither are superpowers. I wish I hadn't listened to the commentary available on the DVD, which has never been the case before.

Donnie Darko never got a proper release in North America, due to 9/11 related concerns. It couldn't have happened to a less apropos movie! It has an airplane crash, of a type, but the story is more about Donnie's personal life and the experience of high school. I only found out about Donnie Darko from the review in F&SF, and subsequently bought the bargain bin DVD. I've been reading rumours that a Director's Cut of Donnie Darko will be released into theatres next year—the deleted scenes were cut for a reason (they're mostly padding), but apparently some pop music got cut due to budgetary reasons. Again, this news needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

The online version of this column has DVD notes for each of the movies. Also available on the Challenging Destiny website: my reviews of Timeline, Time Bandits, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

* * * *

James Schellenberg lives in Canada, and has enjoyed re-watching all these classic time travel movies.

* * * *

Tune in next time for

Frankenstein James reviews the original book by Mary Shelley and Frankenstein Unbound by Brian Aldiss; the movies Frankenstein, Young Frankenstein, Frankenstein Unbound, and Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein; and the computer game Through the Eyes of the Monster.

Interview with Karin Lowachee Karin Lowachee's Warchild won the Warner Aspect First Novel Contest. Her second novel Burndive was just published in October. She was born in South America, grew up in Ontario, and lived for 9 months in the tundra community of Rankin Inlet, Nunavut.

and more new fantasy & science fiction.

[Back to Table of Contents]

FICTION: Robin Williams, Speaking Spanish
by A. R. Morlan

“Amazing ... that's amazing. He should work for NASA or something like that."

...

“So much for NASA..."

Ronald Bass and Barry Morrow,

Rain Man, 1988

* * * *

Case # 290727DD/I-R

03-01-58/T. Kenward, caseworker

Day 1: Contact

“The Jones’ cabin's down past Storage Module Four ... don't bother to knock. Ain't like he's gonna get up to greet ya—"

“Throw some cheese balls in first, he'll never notice you're in there—"

Sabriah put one hand on my shoulder and pressed her dark fingers into the soft hollow between my collarbone and the top of my upper arm, as she told the two asteroid engineers, “Dalton wouldn't appreciate that ... he's lactose intolerant.” Turning her scarf-wrapped head my way, as she steered me down the diffusely-lit corridor, away from Broga Hastings and Moire Payne, Sabriah continued, her voice loud enough for the man and woman behind us to hear easily, “I also have Dalton on a yeast and gluten-free diet. I'm not all that sure that it's helping him, but between that and his meds, he does seem to be content."

I guessed that the last part was strictly for my benefit: every ship's nutritionist on every asteroid-tracking or asteroid mining vessel I'd visited in the last eighteen months inevitably managed to toss off some sort of comment about how “happy” or “content” or “integrated” his or her Savvy happened to be. Even when the rest of the crew was attacking their Savvy, taunting him, teasing him, or calling him names like “Rain Man” or “Equipment” or (on the last vessel I'd been on before boarding the Isen-Rodor a few hours ago) “Ballast."

Nodding my own head, I said, “That is the goal here ... although I have to admit—” twisting my neck as far to the left as it would go comfortably, I made sure that the pair of engineers were out of hearing range “—it doesn't look like the rest of the crew is all that content with Mr. Durwin's presence on this ship. Not that that's uncommon,” I added quickly, when I saw what seemed to be a moue of consternation pucker the nutritionist's mouth. “The presence of a Savant-Contingent usually does create some interpersonal difficulties ... which is why I'm here—"

“Listen, Ms. Kenward. You can cut the socio-worker babble with me. You're here for pretty much the same reason Dalton's here ... there's a big damn glut of social workers running around on Earth and the Moon, tending to all the Savvy-babies who've grown up to be a bigger damn burden on the economy than anyone could've guessed when they were all born some thirty-odd years ago. Only thing is, at least someone got creative when it came time to find all those Savvies jobs ... I don't see much of anything creative or useful in your job. Especially when it comes to the Savvies."

“Well, I do think what I'm doing is ‘useful’ when it comes to Savant-Contingents. Have you been on some of those other ships—"

“Do you think things actually change once you've been on any of those ‘other ships'? I doubt anything you can do will make asteroid monkeys like Moire and Broga change when it comes to how ‘content’ they are with a Savvy like Dalton. As long as all he does all day and all night is sit around, doing however little he does, while they're floating around a damned asteroid out in the middle of nothing, with just a few cables attached to glorified harpoons keeping them from really floating away for good and—” here she deliberately stared at me, her dark hazel eyes boring into mine “—they're getting paid the same as he is, I'd say that it isn't too likely that they'll ever be ‘content’ with a Savvy taking up space on their ship."

“If by ‘space’ you mean room, I don't think that's the problem ... this vessel was assembled over the moon, so keeping it streamlined or even small wasn't a consideration. There's plenty of room for—"

“Do they have a course in Obtuse down in Social Worker School?"

“No, there's no course in—"

The nutritionist let out an open-mouthed sigh and backed away from me, until the top of her scarf-wrapped head was resting on the slightly curved corridor wall behind her. Finally looking my way after letting her chin sink low against her neck, she said, “I was being facetious. I'm sorry, I know you were sent here, and I know I should co-operate. Dalton's room is just ahead. One with the picture of a cat pasted on the door. Not that he did that ... I don't know if it was Moire or Broga who's responsible for that. But the guys in navigation and astrometrics aren't into Alien movies, and I know the Captain's strictly a reader. Go on ... Broga was right about the knocking part. Dalton won't notice, and I don't think he'll care."

As I watched the woman walk away from me, back toward those “asteroid monkeys” who'd been so quick to ingratiate themselves with me from almost the minute I'd boarded the Isen-Rodor, I finally made the connection between Hastings’ “Jones” reference and the typical Savvy nicknames—Jones, that “ship's cat” from the first two Aliens films. The orange tabby who was ultimately the only survivor of that mining ship's original crew, since that woman (Ripley?) left him back on Earth before heading back to the Alien's planet. I'd have to make a note of that one in my report—calling a Savvy a “Jones” would have to be added to the official list of non-PC phrases included in asteroid-mining training classes. Not that it had helped so far when it came to the words “Rain Man."

Sabriah was right about the picture pasted on the door. An old shot of the cat food spokescat, Morris, crudely clipped from a calendar. Orange cats—anything orange, for that matter—mostly look alike to me, but there was a bit of lettering from the calendar cover slanting across this cat's front paws. Wondering if Dalton was a redhead (and hoping he wasn't—bad enough Moire had dark red hair, so dark-yet-bright it hurt my eyes), I nonetheless did knock first, before pressing the palm-pad to the left of the sliding pocket-style door, and letting myself into the Savant-Contingent's room. As the door slid into the bifid sidewall, the cut-out of Morris rasped against the narrow opening, and tore a bit more along the cat's right side. A few more trips back and forth, and that picture would be decapitated. I'd have to remember to rip it off the door before that happened.

For a second, I was mentally torn—shut the door behind me, risking a possible panic attack on the Savvy's part, or allow those asteroid monkeys to listen in, in case they happened to follow me down the corridor? While my eyes acclimated to the darkness, I slid my hand along the smooth surface of the interior wall until I found the palm-pad, then reflexively pushed it in. As the door emerged from the recesses of the bifid wall, I turned around, taking in the Savvy's quarters.

Personal quarters on asteroid ships tended to be large by Terran or Lunar standards, thanks to the vessels being constructed in space—the need to streamline was gone, since the ship wasn't designed to land, let alone move through an atmosphere. The design of the Isen-Rodor was common to all the other asteroid miner/trackers I'd visited. Navigation, astrometrics/ main computers/locking springs for asteroid-landings and launches were lumped on one end, with a short, thick axial connector (giving each ship its gravitational spin) between, surrounded by a series of smaller, well-shielded walkways which allowed the crew to enter the assemblage of prefabricated units which made up the other end of the “dumbbell,” including storage units, crew cabins, and reserve air/fuel/food/water units. From the outside, the Isen-Rodor was lumpy, asymmetrical, and studded with solar panels and undeployed space-sails (another contingency measure, this one less subject to crew-member ire than the Savvies). But on the inside ... there was an astonishing amount of personal space.

Personality clashes might have been inevitable, but every crew member could retreat to a twelve by fourteen private room, complete with a personal bathroom—no shower, but their own sink and toilet—whatever sound/movie system he or she desired (within reason; each person could consume a limited amount of power for their own entertainment devices), plus enough space for whatever tchockies each crew member deemed necessary for his or her continued sanity while trapped in what some miners called intergalactic trailer parks. (The “intergalactic” part made no sense to me, since none of the asteroid ships ever left this galaxy, but the “trailer park” part made sense, especially since the assembled units which made up each end of the rotating “dumb-bell” did tend to be rectangular in shape.)

Dalton Durwin's cabin—once my eyes grew acclimated to the dim interior—seemed little different than that of any of the Savvy cabins I'd seen so far during this assignment. Lots of MDVD's, tall thin stacks of them like upended packages of soda crackers. And just as big as a square cracker—they looked like the old DVD's but held more information per disk, for less mass. Virtually all the Savvies watched movies; while they'd been unlucky enough to be born during such a severe economic recession that even the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act—not to mention the already failing SSI benefits—couldn't guarantee the children of the Savant-Syndrome catastrophe previously standard treatments like music therapy, Lovass-type behavior programs, augmentation devices, facilitated communication, sensory integration, social skills programming, or auditory training, it was soon discovered that selecting the proper movies for these children could be of limited (i.e., cheap) benefit. At the very least, it kept them occupied while their parents and educators tried to figure out what to do with a second baby boom comprised largely of severely autistic, mathematically inclined savants. That this Savant-Syndrome was the result of a drug company foul-up of the highest order was of little help to either the children or their parents. After the manufacturer realized that a mix-up between what was supposed to be several batches of a common antacid and a newly-designated over-the-counter testosterone supplement for men was what had triggered an epidemic of autism, said drug company promptly filed for Chapter One bankruptcy. So even the lawyers were shafted some thirty years ago.

Before the Savant-Syndrome mess, perhaps one in ten autistic persons (most commonly a boy) was also a savant, but within a single generation, over 100 thousand expensive-to-educate savants were born. All of these children had no left/right brain division, but instead had one combined brain which was a full one third larger than the average human brain. The Social Security safety net was frayed to breaking by an ever-diminishing birth rate, and the whole SSI system was virtually cleaned out. True, the old system of reimbursing companies to hire the handicapped was still in place, but how many companies actually needed a worker whose lone talent is remembering long strings of numbers, or calculating square roots?

As I slowly looked around the cabin, with its stalagmite-like deposits of MDVD's sprouting from every horizontal surface, I tried to find Dalton amid the clutter. I had to smile when I remembered how the bulk of the Savant-Syndrome babies managed to find their way into the astro-mining sector ... The phrase “Rain Man” was now considered to be both unPC and possible grounds for job termination after at least five written complaints within one year for any miner or tracker stupid enough to keep calling the ship's Savvy by that name. But none of the children of the ‘20's Savvy-Boom would've ever been on an asteroid ship if it hadn't of been for that movie.

I'd seen the film so many times myself, I knew the whole sequence by heart—after the autistic savant, Raymond Babbitt, gets on his brother Charlie's nerves once too often, the younger man takes his older, autistic brother to a small-town doctor. And the doctor just has to try something he's read about, specifically asking Raymond some difficult calculating questions, which Raymond answers easily. And is his brother ever amazed ... he immediately thinks his older sibling is ready to work for NASA. Only, after doing those amazing feats of calculation, Raymond quickly reveals that he has no concept of numbers as they apply to money ... to him, a candy bar and a car cost the same amount of money. So, so much for NASA.

But Charlie Babbitt forgot something ... NASA-style calculations have nothing whatsoever to do with the cost of either candy bars or automobiles. For them, numbers are numbers, to be crunched, calculated, and compiled. So one day, someone at NASA who also happened to have a neighbor whose wife had given birth to a Savant-Syndrome son a few years earlier suddenly remembered a forty-some year old film, and a short scene within said film—and within a couple of years, when the oldest of the Syndrome boys were close to their teens, first NASA, then the private mining companies, began their Savant-Contingent training programs.

Which, in a few more turns, had brought me to this particular ship, where I now stood in this specific Savvy's cave of a cabin, trying to figure out exactly where he was—then I noticed the reflected light on his face and body, as he sat with his legs crossed in a semi-Lotus position on the far corner of the bunk attached to the one narrow end of his cabin, with a portable MDVD player resting on his knees. The rectangular back of the unit—which resembled a standard laptop—hid most of his chest, but the suddenly brighter light illuminated his arms and face rather clearly.

I must have walked into the room when he was loading the movie into the player; the first few seconds of play time usually showed a black screen with a white inset ratings symbol. He must have been wearing a private earphone—I couldn't hear any sound at all, save for his slow, steady breathing. Wondering if he could see me, I cautiously made my way toward his bunk, saying loudly-but-evenly, “Hello, Dalton? Can you hear me? I've been assigned to work with you during this run, by Social Services—hello?"

I wasn't expecting him to do anything specific—when it comes to dealing with minimally socialized savants, no set reaction can be anticipated, or expected—but what happened next did surprise me.

He looked at me. Directly eye-to-eye. Then ... smiled.

Not that his behavior was impossible; after all, the Rain Man character was something of an extreme case, in that he virtually never made eye contact. Autistic people, even savants, could make eye contact and sometimes did so without previous social skills training.

Aside from the asteroid-monkey twins, and the nutritionist, I'd also spoken to Gremian Penn, the bored, deeply wrinkled captain, as well as Kevan Lawler, the navigator, and Sloan Garrick, head of astrometrics—one as mild as the other was openly aggressive. Judging from the brief conversations I'd had with all of them, Dalton Durwin was not only not welcome in the rest of the ship, but he had never expressed any inclination to venture out past his own cabin, regardless of the feelings (or more properly the lack thereof) his crewmates had for him. Kevan and Sloan couldn't recall saying more than each asteroid-run's successive approximations to him over the intercom. And I don't think the captain even knew what Dalton looked like; he was so utterly disinterested in talking about him after I'd given the man my orders that the most I could get out of him was that Sabriah was more or less responsible for the man's care and feeding.

So he wasn't in the habit of holding extended conversations with anyone, save perhaps for the nutritionist, and I already gathered that she wasn't the most gifted person when it came to give and take conversations.

I smiled back at him, thinking that his smile may have merely been a reflexive action, something he'd learned from watching all those movies. Anyone can learn a lot about a nation's culture from watching its films, and considering that his brain literally had no barriers to information, that just about everything which went in stayed there, ready to be accessed, perhaps he simply picked up the notion of smiling-as-a-greeting from what he'd seen.

But he kept on looking at me. None of the other Savvies on any of the other ships had done that. A couple of them barely spoke to me after I'd spent days working with them.

Telling myself, Don't become overeager, he hasn't said anything yet, I kept on smiling, before coming a few steps closer, and asking, “May I see what you're watching?"

Standing about three feet from him, I could see the thin wires snaking from the back of the player up along his chest, where they puffed out to form two dark foam rounds over his ears. Simultaneously yanking the small earphones off his head with his left hand, and pushing the screen around toward me with his right, he said, “Standard Model's scattered in the names,” as I slowly began to hunker down so that my eyes were level with the screen. One look toward that flat rectangular image, and I immediately knew what he was talking about—although hearing that unmistakable Danny Elfman score helped, too. The Savvy was watching that old Disney remake of The Absent-Minded Professor, Flubber. The Robin Williams vehicle, with the opening credits that mixed physics symbols, including the unique letters which comprised the Standard Model, along with the remaining letters in each cast and crew-member's name. I'd loved that film when I was a child; my grandpa had one of those original DVD players, and he also had a small toy made for one of the fast-food places which featured a translucent bright green man-shaped blob of flubber dancing on an even older VHS videotape box. He'd bring out the toy whenever he played the film for me ... but it wasn't until I was much older that I figured out what all those “funny” letters in among the people's names really stood for.

When the credits were over, just before the film itself began, Dalton suddenly said, “Still looking for the one for the Higgs boson."

Physics was one of the subjects I almost didn't pass in college, but I remembered that it was a tiny particle, something still theoretical after being proposed in the 1960's, which had something to do with mass. I think. I did remember that there was no sign for it in the Standard Model. Just as I remembered that most of the Savant-Syndrome children were lucky if they received the equivalent of a high school education ... and subjects like physics were definitely considered unnecessary for them.

But there was no way he could have learned about Higgs bosons by watching a family-oriented comedy film ... even if the main character was a physics professor, let alone understood that they were something to be searched for, be it in the film's admittedly imaginative credits, or elsewhere. Maybe he'd seen a Standard Model chart somewhere, but to connect that with movie credits—

I was about to assure him that he wasn't the only one looking for the Higgs boson when I noticed something was off-kilter in the movie: Everyone, even the professor's cute little yellow flying robot, was speaking Spanish. I dimly recalled that Grandpa's DVD had some alternate language tracks, Spanish and I think even French, so I found myself asking him instead, “Do you speak Spanish?"

No answer at first, so I tilted my head just enough to be able to watch the Savvy instead of the film. He was trimmer than most of the other Savvies I'd seen in the past year and a half; considering that he seemed to spend his time watching movies on his bed, he looked to be the right weight for his height. No roll of fat pushing out the middle of his standard-issue tan cover-alls, no tell-tale creases over the thighs. Sabriah's special diets did seem to be doing him some good.

And thankfully (for me) he didn't have red hair; it looked dark, either black or brown. Like his eyes; those were definitely brown, with long, thick lashes. A little soft around the jawline, but not excessively so. No laugh or frown lines to speak of anywhere on his face. Not unexpected, there. He wasn't bad looking by any standards, either savant or average male. If his mouth hadn't been so immobile, with the lips pulled in a virtually straight horizontal line, he most certainly would have been considered “cute” by any standards. Not handsome—his features were a bit too slack—but unequivocally attractive.

I'd noticed how Moire was all over every man she happened to be within close proximity to, regardless of who he was (including the obviously gay navigator Lawler, who not-so-tacitly slid away from her), so I realized that there was no way she'd ever been in Dalton's room. She would not have been able to leave him alone, regardless of his emotional deficiencies. So there was no possibility that he'd been doing any socializing on his own—

“Robin Williams, speaking Spanish."

Five minutes or more had to have passed since I'd spoken to him. But it was more or less an answer to my question—

“So you don't speak Spanish yourself?"

“He is."

I took that to mean No, as far as Dalton went.

“Uhm ... I don't think that's the actor on the screen speaking Spanish ... most actors can't speak too many languages and I know they sometimes dub these films into more than one language. Do you know what dubbing is?"

Silence from Dalton, more unintelligible Spanish from the speakers.

“The studio hires someone who does speak Spanish, or whatever, and they record another audio track for the film. Then, when you make the selection, you hear that person speaking Spanish. Or whatever. Like French. There's a French track on this, isn't there—"

“French sounds wormy."

I had to agree with him there. I had no facility for languages myself so all I could do was nod, then say, “Yes, it does sound... ‘wormy.’ But I can't understand Spanish, either. Can you understand it?” Considering that he'd somehow picked up more than a rudimentary understanding of physics seemingly by watching the opening credits of a Disney film, I thought it worth a try to ask him about languages again.

And again, I got the same answer:

“Robin Williams speaking Spanish."

No pause this time, no verbal comma. I supposed that he felt that Robin Williams’ body with a different-sounding Spanish voice equaled that actor speaking that language. Deciding that this Savvy's linguistic skills were both unknowable and unimportant at the time, I decided to try a new approach.

Turning away from the viewscreen, I strained my eyes in the sugary haze and looked for the nearest stack of MDVD's, before I began counting them softly, from the bottom to the top of the thin square tower. “—Eighteen, nineteen ... twenty. One, two, three ... four, five—” Gradually, Dalton turned down the volume on his player, and I let my voice grow louder as I began counting the last stack of films resting on the low stool near his bunk, “—Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. That's twenty, nineteen and ... twenty on the stool—"

“No. Twenty, twenty and nineteen. Nineteen's twenty is in the machine."

Hoping that he couldn't see me smile in the darkness, I said, “You got me. I never was any good with numbers ... but you are, aren't you?"

“Very good.” He went back to watching the gelatinous leafy-green dancing blobs of flubber on the viewscreen.

Resting my crossed arms on his bunk, I asked him, “Do you like that color?"

“Nice color."

“But do you like it?"

“It's nice.” I hated to make assumptions, but that seemed to be a yes.

“You like this movie, though. In Spanish and English?"

“Nice movie."

“Are your other movies just as nice?"

He watched the fluorescent green goop hop across the Professor's floor, replicating bounce by bounce for a few seconds, before I noticed a thin vertical frown line appear between his dark eyebrows. A change in expression could mean just about anything with a Savvy, and I subtly shifted my body away from him, just in case he started hitting himself, like the Savvy on the Ignance-Roche did five months ago. But he remained in his Lotus position, moving only his left hand as he began pointing at the various narrow piles of MDVD's around the room, while speaking in that low, slightly strident but still basically pleasant-sounding voice of his, “Twenty-two, twenty and twenty are good. Eighteen, eighteen and twenty ... ok. Twenty, twenty and nineteen, nice. Twenty-one, twenty-one, twenty-one ... don't watch much. Sixteen, sixteen, sixteen ... ok."

He went through every stack of films in the room (odd, how I'd not noticed how he had them in sets of three before), rating them by his own system of “don't watch much” to “nice” which—judging by the ever-so-slight emphasis in his voice—seemed to be his version of thumbs up, four stars, or “highly recommended.” For some reason, to Dalton, “nice” was better than “good"—whether that was a strictly personal, idiosyncratic determination, or a deeper insight into what qualities made up that which was merely good as opposed to that which was intentionally nice, I had no way of knowing. And I doubted that he could tell me.

“Dalton, did you choose these movies, or were they given to you? By the mining company.” I knew that everything Dalton owned was courtesy of the multi-national mining conglomerate which owned and operated the fleet of asteroid miner/tracker ships now scattered between the Earth, the Moon and Mars like so much debris in the heavens, the same company which was forced to seek out ore-rich asteroids once the majority of the Terran and Lunar mines were depleted of their mineral riches. But it was important to the people I worked for to determine whether or not the Savvies understood where they fit into the mining conglomerate's personnel structure. In short, did they think of themselves as employees, or as equipment?

“Given.” A pause, then, unexpectedly, “I choose among them."

“I'm glad to hear that,” I found myself blurting out, before I refocused, and continued, “So you did watch them all. Before you chose.” (I had to know if he was selecting his “favorites” by content, or by some more intangible system, like how he reacted to the jewel-box artwork. It was something my employers felt was important.)

“All of them. Once or more. Nice ones most."

For once, I regretted my habit of not reading a Savvy's personnel file before speaking to him—usually, those first, unbiased opinions were far more useful than static clinical assessments stored in a data file—since Dalton was just so different from every other Savvy I'd spoken to so far. Despite the darkness in that cabin, I had this feeling that he was studying me—

“Dalton ... may I ask you a favor?"

That thin vertical furrow reappeared between his brows, then: “Oh ... kay..."

“I have trouble seeing in the dark ... everything looks really grainy. I can barely see your stacks of movies over there ... once the movie is over, could you please turn up your lights?"

From his silence, I realized that I may've overloaded him with too many requests, but as soon as the end credits of the movie were over—he obviously watched every disk from beginning to end—he reached over to the light panel above his bunk and flicked it on with his left hand. His action took me by surprise; I had to steady myself against the side of the bunk when I realized that his bunk had a red blanket on it. The intense color made my eyes ache, as the hue filled my range of vision.

“You ok?"

Narrowing my eyelids over my throbbing eyes until I was peering through a rainbow haze of eyelashes, I looked up into Dalton's face. Limited as my view was, I could see that he was a rather good-looking young man. And I'd been right, his eyes were brown, a deep mahogany, like his hair. He'd put the player on his bunk, and had shifted around so that he was facing me, albeit with his legs still crossed. His hands were resting palms up on his thighs, the fingers loosely splayed. I didn't expect him to put his hand on my shoulder, anything like that, but his voice did have a distinct note of concern.

Nodding, I shakily got to my feet, then—as I patted the nubby surface of his painfully cochineal blanket with my right hand—asked, “May I sit down?"

I wasn't offended when he simultaneously nodded even as he edged closer to the cabin wall. Personal space was more than an issue with the majority of autistics, especially savants.

Positioning myself at the far end of the bunk, barely resting my weight on the mattress itself, I smiled at him, saying, “Red hurts my eyes. Just something I was born with ... it's not your fault. You know how it is, to be born a certain way. You're good with numbers, I'm bad with red. Yours is useful, mine isn't. But it's the way my brain is—” I was about to say “wired” but I still wasn't sure if he thought of himself as employee or equipment, and a simple word like “wired” could so easily be misinterpreted by a Savvy, so I finally ended with “—structured. Genetically."

“GATC."

He said it so quickly, I wasn't sure if he'd said it at all.

“Pardon me, I didn't hear—"

“Geee. Aaay. Teee. Ceee. Genetics. Like Gattaca. Good movie."

One mystery solved. At least he was paying attention to the dialogue in the films. Then, he continued:

“VIP ... CGRP, BDNF ... NT four. Proteins. In the brain. My brain."

He was right. Autistic people tended to have high levels of those four proteins in their blood samples, which indicated that non-normal brain processes were in play before birth. Did he hear that when he was a child, perhaps when some doctor spoke around him, as if he were an inanimate object in the examining room?

I was making too much of what he'd been saying. Dalton was simply plugging in accurate responses following general observations I'd made.

He had to be of at least normal intelligence; every Savant-Contingent had to have an IQ of at least 99-100 in order to be employed by the mining company, which just happened to be a subsidiary of the remains of NASA in the United States. So of course he could link up random nuggets of information with my comments. Just as he could input, store and recite the successive approximations for figuring out where and when to launch radio-transmitter-tagged asteroids toward the nearest mining ship, or toward the Moon itself, once Lawler and Garrick used their computers to calculate those approximations, then transmitted the figures to him in his cabin. Which was literally all he was expected to do on board the vessel; he and his fellow Savvies were nothing more than computer backups, riding each vessel for months at a time, simply waiting for their laptops to spew forth rows of figures which they'd remember, on the off-off-off chance that something unforeseen might happen to the ship's main computer. A random solar flare, or an on-board fire. Something statistically unlikely to happen in the first place, but—just in case—the Savant-Contingents were there, ready and waiting, with the necessary information right when it might (i.e., when icicles formed in hell) happen.

Thanks to the effect of various gravities working on both the target site—be it another ship, the Moon, or wherever—and the ship launching the asteroid toward the target site, elliptical orbits and ever-changing flight times, successive approximations were the backbone of the asteroid-mining industry. Those figures had to be there, when needed, and if for whatever unforeseen reason they weren't there, ready to be inputted from the main computer to the navigational console, things could go wrong. Not life-threatening things, but money-wasting things. Things which might necessitate changes in schedules, which in turn affect the timing of each ship's other mining operations ... miss one mining ship, and a radio-tagged asteroid might keep on going, to interfere with the orbit of yet another ship, or asteroid or—

—or the mining company could take advantage of the existing government programs set up to encourage firms to hire the handi-capable.

A simple extension of supply and demand ... over 100,000 savants ready to be the flesh and blood back-up for silicon and gold computer chips. The company gets a truly nice tax break for hiring them, the government doesn't have to shell out SSI payments, and the Savvies get pensions after age sixty. All for remembering a few numbers (which they'll never be called upon to actually recite) with complete and unwavering accuracy—an accuracy so precise, it eliminates the ever-so-slight possibility of a crew member in navigation or astrometrics inputting the figures off their own laptop, or from jotted down notes, and making a mistake. The basic detachment of the Savvy is another prized factor ... since they don't understand the gravity of their gift, or of the information entrusted to them, they can coolly rattle off the missing successive approximations without nervous hesitation.

Or without the possibility of making a mistake, or transposing any numbers out of panic.

Granted, some Savvies occasionally hit themselves, or flailed out, but things other crew members found catastrophic never fazed them. On the Ignacio-Silvio, a fire once broke out in a fuel storage unit, and that Savvy didn't so much as turn his head in the direction of his running crewmates, or seem to notice anything unusual when the corridor beyond his room was sundown bright with reflected flames, let alone covered with slippery billows of extinguisher foam.

But, considering that it sometimes took hours, even days for the crew to calculate said successive approximations, then more days might pass between the time when the calculations were made, then relayed to the Savant, followed by even more days before the figures would be needed there was precious little happening on any mining/tracking ship which directly concerned the Savant-Contingent. So, there was virtually no reason for them to consider themselves a part of the crew per se, which in turn was the reason I was now sitting on Dalton Durwin's red blanket, listening to him blurt out tid-bits of genetic information.

Information I hadn't specifically requested, though, which was interesting. And unique. Not that getting to the essence of what any Savant was thinking or feeling was ever easy, but in this particular case, I suspected that the study of science itself actually interested him. For the time being, I pushed aside all those rote questions I'd been hired to attempt to ask in the interest of making sure that the Savvies were treated humanely by their fellow crewmates, and instead leaned forward ever so slightly, not an overt invasion of his space, but a gentle sign of interest, and asked, “Do you ever talk to Sabriah, when she brings you your food—talk about science?"

“We talk ... not science. About food. What I eat. No lactose. No yeast, no gluten. But the food is good. She makes it."

“How about the other people in the crew? Do you talk to them? About science?"

“They talk about science ... with each other. I ... listen."

That furrow appeared between his eyes again, and he was definitely looking away from me, at his open palms. Which, finger by finger, became cupped palms. I had suspected as much. Dalton's door wasn't locked in any way, and he had to know the layout of the ship, after having spent months at a time on each asteroid-seeking trip.

But I couldn't come out and accuse him of eavesdropping on the other crew-members; I knew from experience what open denunciations might do to an autistic person. Gradually, his gaze rose to about the level of my jawline—not quite eye contact, but for him, it was close enough.

“The things the others say ... they're interesting to you?"

“Like the movies ... only different every time. No pause. No fast forward."

“For whatever bores you?"

Those round dark eyes were now level with my nose.

“Bores me ... like Moire and Broga. Always saying the same things. Putting ... things on my door."

“Like ... the picture of the cat?"

“Jones."

“From Alien... yes, Jones was the ship's cat. But you aren't a cat, are you?"

“Leo ... that's a big cat."

His birthday. Late July. Why wouldn't he know Zodiac signs, too? They were more common than Higgs bosons.

“Do Moire and Broga know that? Do you think they might?"

“Dunno ... they climb on the asteroids. Attach the radio transmitters."

“Does that make them smart? Smart enough to know your birth sign?"

“They're engineers, too. Sabriah calls them asteroid monkeys."

“That's because they climb on things with very strange surfaces ... they have to be agile,” I soothed, thinking of that wiry twerp Broga and that harpy Moire and wanting to strand both of them on an asteroid sans life support, “and most monkeys are agile."

“Monkeys sound wormy."

I wondered if Dalton had placed any Planet of the Apes movies or anything else with chimps in it in one of his “don't watch much” piles.

Not really wanting to pursue the subject of those backbiting idiots much longer, I awkwardly crossed my own legs as I tried, “But Kevan and Sloane are more interesting?"

This time those eyes met mine, and didn't waver as he said, “Yes. Listen to them ... talk about science, space ... everything. Not boring. Make fun of Moire and Broga. Make the Captain yell sometimes."

I'd only spoken to Gremain Penn for perhaps a minute or so after boarding the ship, but I'd sensed that he had little patience for anything but staying in his small command room just off navigation, with his nose illuminated by his e-book. I could almost feel the cursor blinking on the last page he'd been reading before I interrupted him, beckoning to him like a light-house beacon.

“The Captain's not very friendly, is he?"

“I dunno."

He'd finally said it. There was an “I” in there.

Hoping he hadn't noticed my excitement, I continued smoothly, “Do you know what his name is?"

“Gremain Penn. He's old. Wrinkled. Up and down on his cheeks."

Penn did have deep vertical creases on his cheeks, amid dozens of other wrinkles.

“Does he know you've seen him?” This question might be dangerous, but I was willing to risk it.

“I don't think so. He never looks up from his reading. Unless someone making noise."

“Do you know what Kevan and Sloan look like?"

“Kevan's dark-haired, like my hair. Young. This tall—” here, Dalton uncrossed his legs in a fluid motion, and stood about three feet from me.

He was about the same height as the navigator, roughly five ten or eleven.

I just nodded, and he continued, standing there with his arms dangling limply by his sides, “Sloan is smaller. Skinny. Blond hair, big forehead. Narrow face,” and he used his left hand to indicate a pinched, small face in front of his own, before dropping his arm again.

“And Sabriah has a scarf around her head,” I added, hoping Dalton would take the bait. He did.

“She's a Muslim. She doesn't like dogs. She likes cats."

“And Leo is a big cat, isn't he?” I smiled, resisting the temptation to get up and stand near him.

“A very big cat ... more hair, though.” He wore his hair short, like Kevan and the Captain did.

“Hair grows,” I said, not expecting any answer, and not getting one. “But Sabriah does have hair under her scarf, I'm sure. She does like you, takes good care of you. But ... I think Kevan and Sloan might also like you, might want to talk science with you. GATC, Higgs bosons. Standard Models, too. Do you think you'd like that?"

His hands pressed down hard on the loose rough fabric of his jumpsuit but his eyes stayed level with mine.

“I ... don't know. Maybe. Just Kevan and Sloan. About science."

This wasn't part of my job description; my heart was lopping in my ribcage as I uncrossed my legs, and let my feet drop slowly to the floor of the cabin, before I got up, and stood perhaps four feet or so away from Dalton, hands placed on my own thighs, making myself into a small, unthreatening presence before him. No, socialization wasn't a goal during my stay on this ship, nothing was ever specifically said about it during the training courses—I was supposed to make sure the Savvy felt reasonably good about himself and his job, that he didn't feel like an inanimate object, and I was also to make sure that the rest of the crew treated him like a human being ... albeit a very unique, very special human being, and not a living calculator.

I wasn't supposed to be a social co-ordinator ... but none of the other Savvies were anything like Dalton, either. Sabriah had told me that I couldn't change anything on the ship, that nothing I might do would make any difference once I was gone.

But Dalton was interested in science. Interested. Like Kevan and Sloan were. The situation with the asteroid monkeys might not change, but Lawler and Garrick seemed reasonably polite, at the least.

And as long as I was there, supervising the conversation—

“I'll ask them, about you talking with them. Would that be all right with you?"

A pause, then, “All right. Kevan and Sloan. Science. Talk about science?"

Nodding, I assured him, “Science. With Kevan and Sloan. I'll let you get back to your movies now, Dalton—"

“Who are you?"

I stopped so quickly I almost fell over from the forward momentum of my body. I'd started to tell him who I worked for, then completely forgot to give him my name. Feeling my face flush, I turned around and said, “My name is Temple Kenward. I'm a social worker. I go from ship to—"

“Temple. Like Temple Grandin?” he asked, naming one of the most famous autistic scientists and authors from the late 20th century.

Pausing to pull a bit of dead skin off one lip, I nodded and said, “Yes, Temple is my first name, and hers too."

Obviously, he'd been exposed to either her work, or someone who followed her physical-closeness theories. While she'd been primarily involved with livestock science, some educators had utilized therapies based on her experiments with close, steady physical contact to calm animals.

“Temple-not-Grandin.” Was he looking at me expectantly?

“Temple, period, is okay. No ‘not-Grandin,'” I said patiently.

“Temple, per—"

“Temple."

Behind me, the pocket door swooshed open, and Sabriah was framed in the empty doorway, a tray of food in her dark hands. “Dalton, time for lunch,” she said softly, before motioning for me to leave with a couple of quick jerks of her cloth-swathed head.

“Dalton, it was a pleasure talking to you. I'll see you soon, okay?"

“Talk science later?” Sabriah kept staring at me as she walked into the cabin, and placed the Savvy's tray on the end of his bed.

“Later. Enjoy your meal,” I said over my shoulder, before hurrying into the corridor. I wasn't fast enough; within ten strides I could feel the vibration of the nutritionist's footsteps behind me.

“Ms. Kenward, what was that about? ‘Talk science'? With whom?"

“That's a privileged conversation ... client confidentiality,” I said over my shoulder.

“Clichés won't cut it with me—” she began, but I slapped my open hand against the palm-pad next to my cabin door, and slid through the door before it was half-open—and immediately pressed my palm against the interior pad before she could say anything else I didn't want to hear.

* * * *

Dalton Durwin's case files didn't tell me much more than I'd already been able to surmise from merely talking to him: Diagnosed shortly after birth via blood tests for the proteins VIP, CGRP, BDNF and NT4 and neural-imaging tests which revealed small, densely packed cells in the limbic region of his brain, he was immediately given up for adoption by his unwed, college-student mother. Raised in foster care until he was fourteen, at which time he was enrolled in the Savant-Contingency training program. Prior to that time, he had not received much more than drug therapy—mostly mild antidepressants to control some moderate compulsive behaviors. No Applied Behavioral Analysis, no treatment for what the mining corporation discovered to be a mild-to-moderate case of sensory integrative dysfunction involving certain sounds (the “wormy” French he'd mentioned), no one-on-one Lovass therapy ... he was moderately verbal from an early age, so no Facilitated Communication therapy was deemed necessary. True, most of the treatments he never received were simply too expensive; unless an autistic child was lucky enough to be born into a well-to-do family nowadays, most of the long-standing therapies developed in the latter half of the 20th century were simply out of reach. And foster-care homes—forget it.

Nothing was mentioned in his case files concerning his diet, so apparently Sabriah had taken it upon herself to try the still-disputed diet-therapy approach.

Since he was fairly articulate for his condition, an IQ test had been administered shortly before he joined his first asteroid-tracking flight, shortly before his 18th birthday. It was listed as a “probable” 111—and, according to my fraying and flaking copy of George I. Thomas and Joseph Crescimbeni's Guiding the Gifted Child, that meant Dalton's IQ ("probable” IQ) placed him in the high average/bright/fast learner category. Or, at worst, if the estimate was a bit high, he was still likely to be an average learner.

Average or above-average enough to have a passing knowledge of physics—and to be able to make what may well have been a joke about finding the Higgs boson in the opening credits of an old Disney film.

I wondered if Sabriah was jealous of my progress with Dalton—she may have taken it upon herself to adjust his diet, but healing the body should also mean healing the mind. She may have read up enough on the subject of autism therapy to attempt a yeast/gluten free diet, but there was so much more she hadn't tried. Simple things, really, like inclusion therapy. Dalton wouldn't get that as long as someone brought him his food tray three times a day.

* * * *

Case # 290727DD/I-R

07-01-58/T. Kenward, caseworker

Day 5: Initial inclusion

It took me a few days to figure out exactly when Sabriah took her five breaks for daily prayer, days spent watching movies with Dalton (a daily screening of Flubber, but also other “nice” films like Cast Away, Raising Arizona and what seemed to be his second-favorite film, Con Air—he liked the part when the one cop's sports car was attached to the wheel of the airplane, and “flew” through the air), but once I knew when she'd be occupied, I waited until Dalton's latest disk had finished the final line of on-screen credits, then gently suggested, “How about if we go talk science now? With Kevan and Sloan?''

It had only taken me a couple of days to work on them; initially, Sloan was annoyed to learn that the ship's Savvy had been listening in while he and Kevan were discussing their work, but Kevan seemed to be mildly bemused by the prospect of anyone finding shop-talk so interesting. The day before, they'd agreed to “talk science” with Dalton, provided the Captain was holed up in his quarters—Penn was close to retirement age, and considering that most of the ship's basic navigation was on a form of gloried auto-pilot, he seemed eager to begin practicing for a remaining lifetime of doing virtually nothing—and Moire and Brogan were off doing whatever it was they did when not planting radio transmitters on the asteroids ... which, judging from the sounds which alternately could be heard through either of their cabin doors, was unabashedly carnal.

“Talk science in the daytime?” Figuring out when Dalton had been roaming the ship hadn't been difficult—like many autistic people, he had sleep disorders which often kept him awake well into the postmidnight hours, or he'd intermittently wake up during the night. I heard him myself the first night I'd spent on the Isen-Rodor, walking with that stop-start gait down the corridor, occasionally patting the walls as he walked. And since Sloan and Kevan sometimes visited each other's cabins, talking shop, or occasionally stayed in the other part of the ship, working on their approximations after the ship's sensors picked up an ore-rich asteroid in the distance, Dalton had had many opportunities to listen to them.

“In the daytime ... that's right,” I said, getting up off his bunk and motioning for him to follow me out of the cabin. According to my watch, Sabriah should be on her cabin floor, praying, head pointed toward wherever Mecca (or, less specifically, Earth) happened to be. And she usually stayed in her cabin for a half hour or more afterwards.

Not able to physically steer him in the right direction, I was forced to keep on motioning for Dalton to follow me. I didn't dare say anything, lest Sabriah hear me. He did pause for a moment in front of the navigator's cabin door, but quickly picked up on my forward-pointed finger, and followed me.

I hated walking the connecting corridors between the cabin/storage units and the ship's main navigation section; while the ship's artificial rotation was moderately noticeable elsewhere, here it was a physical impossibility to not notice it. The walls were well-rounded here, with only a narrow “floor” and “ceiling” whose surfaces were level and flat. I'd had a mild inner-ear imbalance since childhood, one which I'd been trained to virtually ignore, but in this twenty-yard stretch of unvarying straight closeness, I'd began to feel disoriented. But Dalton didn't mind—in fact, his hesitant gait actually improved the closer we came to the cluster of console-filled rooms.

Kevan noticed us first.

“Welcome to Navigation, Dalton ... want to see what it looks like in the daytime?” Consistently the most openly polite of the crew members, even if he did tend to slip into what might be deemed (in most un-PC terms) as “gushing” gestures and vocal flourishes, he stepped up to Dalton—I had been right, they were the same height—and, mindful of the latter's need for physical space, extended one hand in what could either be construed as an impending handshake, or a simple welcoming gesture. A few steps behind him, Sloan leaned against a wall largely given over to luminescent star charts, his narrow face twisted into a bemused smirk. Glancing away from Sloan after his eyes suddenly grew wide, I turned to see Dalton tentatively extend his right hand, and briefly align it just under Kevan's hand, their palms almost touching, before Kevan smiled, and led Dalton into the Navigation section, with its myriad of blinking lights, computer screens, and small windows revealing a thick swath of grainy stars against blackest-black. Too many of the lights in there were just too red for my comfort, so I hung back, only half-listening as Kevan began showing Dalton the various pieces of equipment within.

Kevan was saying something about how fast the Earth and Moon rotate, and how fast the ship could accelerate when Sloan reached out to grab me by the upper arm, saying, “How did you sneak him past Our Lady of the Scarf?” Gently shaking off his fingers without trying to appear openly offended that he'd touched me, I leaned against the opposite wall of the short corridor and said softly, “You must've been dozing during Tolerance Training in high school ... she's busy in her cabin. Tell me, Sloan ... has Sabriah always shown that much interest in Dalton's welfare?"

He shrugged against the wall, the rough fabric of his uniform rasping against the textured metal behind him. “Yeah, I guess ... she's been bringing him his meals ever since I've been here. That's five years come March. Kevan would know, he's worked this ship longer. Probably since the Sav—Dalton was instal—assigned here."

“Installed” was a common term for Savant-Contingent placement on asteroid ships. But I was grateful that Sloan was making an effort for my sake, at least.

“So Kevan's around Dalton's age?” I had to move a few steps into the corridor proper—and a bit closer to Sloan—to see what Dalton and Kevan were doing in Navigation. Kevan was showing him a computer screen, saying, “—you have to figure how long it'll take the asteroid to reach the mining ship, which can be a problem because there's no standard amount of time for—” while Dalton leaned forward, peering at the screen. Sloan crossed his arms, before replying, “A few years older. Thirty-four, thirty-five ... a year or two younger than I am. Not that the bastard looks it,” he added, “Must be a hormone thing."

I knew and he knew that homosexuals didn't have excess estrogen, so I let the gibe pass.

A few beats of silence, then: “Is this some new thing the government's cooked up for Sav's? Take Our Savant to Work day? Every other ship I've been on, they've just holed up in their cabins."

“Can you blame them?” I whispered. “I've been on other ships, too. Nobody's actually welcomed the Savants into their cliques—"

“Lady, how can you—oh, screw it.” He slumped against the wall.

“Screw what? I mean, they're crew members, same employer, same damned uniforms, same missions ... I realize that they're unique, but every person I've ever met has been unique in his or—"

“You got a talent for understatement, I'll give you that. Christ, how do you talk to someone like him? If they do say something back, it doesn't make sense ... believe me, I have tried, and eventually, after blank stares and non-sequiturs, you get god-damned tired of trying. Like they did,” he added tersely, motioning with his head of lank blonde hair toward the connecting corridor ... where the monkey twins, Moire and Brogan, were walking side by side toward us. Wincing at the sight of her sleep (or whatever) tousled hair, I started to make a move toward the room where Kevan and Dalton were talking, but Sloan shook his head, saying, “Stick around ... see for yourself. It's not us—"

“I thought it was intermission time ... come up this way for some popcorn?” I felt as if I'd known Brogan Hastings—or someone all too much like him—my entire life: the eternal smart-ass with the witty jibe, too wiry and short and not-too-good-looking to impress anyone otherwise. I'd even met a few men like him while earning my degree in social work. One or two of them were working the same job I was—the wave of pity I felt for their Savvies was interrupted by Moire's “No, I think he ran out of toothpicks ... the butter on the popcorn's hell on the wood."

They were worse than Dalton was when it came to thinking in movie.

I tried staring them down; aside from being roughly the same height (tall for a woman, short for a man), and wiry-but-muscular, they were so utterly ill-matched—she had that thick, waving mass of painfully bright hair, framing a face that might have been pretty if she'd done anything besides pull her small lips forward in a pout, while he was runty-faced, with greasy, thinning salt-and-pepper hair, with an equally sparse mustache—that their status as a couple was solely based on their joint job titles. On Earth, the Moon, or virtually any other floating body with a minimum of gravity, her kind would never look once at his kind, let alone a second time.

But they sensed that the ship's cat was out of his cage, and both of them elbowed past Sloan and me to see what Kevan and the Savvy were doing in Navigation.

“Hi, stranger ... how long has it been?"

“Look who's learning how to fly this junkheap—"

“God, he'll never understand what they're jabbering about,” I started to say, as I went to follow them, but Sloan shook his head, and held up one hand in front of me, palm out. “No, don't ... they won't hurt him, for Chrissakes. They're teasing him, not taunting him. If you'd have spent some time with them, you'd know what they're like. Damned ‘stroid monkeys, that's all. Goof-balls. What they do, on the rocks ... the pressure is intense. It's that way for every monkey ... we sit in here, they get to do the real hands-on work. So when they aren't risking their lives, they make the rest of ours miserable.” I couldn't figure out why he said “miserable” in such a light tone, but I kept my silence as he went on, talking so fast I couldn't make out what the others were saying: “You spend so much time with Savvies, you forget what the rest of us are going through on these junkheaps. We could use some social work, too.

“Something better than the movies and playthings they send up here with us on every run. Something—” here he leaned in uncomfortably close to my face “—to help us deal with all the waiting we have to do before we reach those damned flying chunks of minerals. I've requested transfers from six different ships—including two mining vessels—because I couldn't stand my crewmates. You think this bunch is bad—"

“I've seen plenty of other crews. I've witnessed their group dynamics. I know there's as many assholes as asteroids out here in space, but my job is to just make sure the Savvies are well-treated. And respected for being the crew members they are—"

“Who here has said different about him? You're freaked ‘bout the ‘Jones’ poster on his door? Moire did that. When she and Brogan were playing out some weird Aliens sex-game scenario. Her Ripley, him ... whoever Ripley had the jones for in one of the sequels, the one where she's got no hair. The doctor dude, I think. Those two, they get weird, play their games, and the rest of us ignore them until they're actually on the rocks out there. But remember how everyone on the first mining ship ended up dying, while Ripley was out looking for the cat? That ball of fur was crew to them. Like he—” Sloan jerked one thumb in the direction of the Navigation room “—is to us. We act stupid, but we aren't retards—everyone here is aware of what he ‘does’ on the ship. You might drive your car for a hundred thousand miles and never blow a tire, but you'd be nuts not to have a spare in the trunk. He's a spare that watches a lot of movies. In his cabin. Which is what every Savvy I've ever known has wanted to do. I think they make out like they don't understand people ‘cause they don't want to. What's up in their heads is a lot better than what's running around the corridors.

“Hell, I was pissed when I found out he was eavesdropping on me, but mainly ‘cause I don't like it when anyone sneaks up on me. Has it occurred to you that he had all damn day and night to wander around? He can watch movies whenever he wants. And there's no lock on the—"

First Sabriah, now Sloan. God, I was getting so tired of being harangued by these people, I wanted to hole up in my own cabin, and cover my ears with earphones, too. I'd dealt with some obnoxious crews before, but these people seemed to have issues with me, as a person. Everyone else had tried to steer clear of me, considering my status as a government-sent social worker, but these people—

“—an accelerator ... one loop is larger, the other ... one third as big. Put together like a snowman—"

Dalton's voice was far less hesitant than normal, while Kevan's was gushier than before as he said, “That's the Tevatron accelerator ... and the spot where the protons and antiprotons are produced sticks out from where the ‘neck’ would be like—” I entered the room just in time to see Kevan miming what looked like a necktie against his neck, while the monkey twins watched in bemusement as Dalton puzzled out Kevan's charade, then said, “Like a scarf, only with a small circle on the end."

Moire actually smiled when he said that, and side-stepped closer to where Dalton was standing. As if he were attached to her at the hip Brogan inched over a couple of feet, too.

Obviously uncomfortable, Dalton in turn stepped away from Moire, and, as he noticed me, said, “We're talking science. Accelerators."

“We're listening science. Atomic drag races.” I wondered if Brogan realized how funny he wasn't.

But everyone was laughing at that ... and Dalton was smiling. So I decided to keep my peace, and wait to see if Brogan would move on to ridiculing Dalton himself, and not just his speech patterns.

Making sure that he moved slowly, Kevan placed one hand lightly on Dalton's forearm, before saying, “I hate to run you out of here, but I think our friend Sabriah will be coming around soon ... I'd hate to have her bring a meal to an empty room, wouldn't you?"

“No one to eat it.” Dalton didn't seem offended, and as he walked out of the room, and back down the connecting corridor toward his cabin his face was unlined and placid. The same way he looked after watching one of his “nice” movies. Once he'd gone, I found myself saying, “I appreciate that you all put up with him ... I think it went well. He might not want to come out again, but he did seem interested in science."

“No need to apologize,” Kevan smiled, even as he didn't bother to try laying a hand on my arm, “He is fairly knowledgeable about physics ... high school level, but considering ... his circumstances, that's not bad at all. For him, excellent, actually. Too bad he's been holed up in there so long,” he added, and Moire cut in too quickly, “'Too bad'... he can be funny, once he gets going."

It wasn't until I'd gone back to my own cabin that I realized that Kevan had subtly put me down, stressing that Dalton was interested in physics, not science per se. But any residual feelings of inadequacy I felt over that were brushed aside by my surprise over how well Dalton had done—even with the monkey twins. And he'd been reluctant to talk to them at all just a few days earlier.

I was just glad that the Captain, not to mention Sabriah, hadn't seen Dalton roaming outside his cabin.

* * * *

Case # 290727DD/I-R

11-01-58/T. Kenward, caseworker

Day 9: Personal Interface

For the first time since he'd been assigned to the Isen-Rodor, Dalton received the successive approximations for the upcoming asteroid boost directly from Kevan and Sloan, rather than via a message on his in-cabin laptop. It was also the first time he'd watched exactly what the monkey twins did once they were jettisoned from the ship in their two-person-sized landing craft. The craft utilized a locking spring due to the near-zero surface gravity of this particular asteroid, which was perhaps the size of a domed football stadium. As Kevan explained to him (and to me, since I was perhaps less knowledgeable about asteroid mining than even Dalton was), the surface gravity of this asteroid was less than one-ten-thousandth of Lunar gravity which in turn meant that “—escape velocity is oh, around 0.3 kilometers per hour, or 0.1 meters per second. Not very fast ... which means they have to descend to the planet differently than ship-to-ground shuttles do. Once they've landed—see, they've turned on their helmet-cams, they're getting out of the lander now—they'll need to use those power anchors, those harpoon-like things ... see, Moire's shot hers into those rocks. If it wasn't powered, it'd take minutes to hit the ground."

Dalton watched the live feed from the monkeys’ cameras with the same rapt, unblinking attention usually reserved for his “nice” movies in his cabin. I wondered if he realized that what he was watching was happening in the now, as opposed to something which was filmed, edited, then recorded decades earlier.

“—now Brogan is spiking in the transmitter, that's what the mining ship uses to track the asteroid after we boost it into the proper orbit ... which is where your successive approximations come in. Every orbit is different—"

“Different by x-number of days and x-number of hours,” Dalton said.

“Exactly. Once the mining ship gets the asteroid, they despin it, then erect the solar-powered mining equipment. Or blow off sections, depending on the asteroid's size. Then again, there's tunneling, and sometimes strip mining is necessary, but none of that can happen unless we get that tagged asteroid into the right orbit."

“So the mining ship can catch it.” On the screen before us, the pair split up, each moving with surreal slowness against the mufti-faceted, scabrous asteroid's greatly foreshortened horizon, until one of them was standing directly in the sightlines of the other's helmet-cam, resulting in full-body views of both engineers. After fumbling with the main bib-like “pocket” which covered the chest area of their exploration suits, each of them slowly withdrew a sheet of that thin, mylar-like “netting” the engineers on the mining ships usually carried while doing surface work (in zero or near-zero gravity, small chunks of chipped-away rock tended to float unless covered with a canopy, then netted prior to the engineer's return to the ship), and unfurled the sheets to a reasonable facsimile of “flatness,” revealing the messages darkly scrawled on their individual squares of mylar:

Camera One: “Hello—” Camera Two: “Dalton!"

As soon as I read that, I turned to look at him: Dalton was smiling, not showing his teeth, but his mouth was unmistakably turned up at the corners. Beside him, Kevan—very gently—patted his shoulder, and said, “See that? They knew you'd be watching ... what do you think they'd like to hear when they get back to the ship?"

(Next to me, Sloan leaned over to whisper in my ear, “'Up yours’ might be interesting—")

“Hello Moire and Brogan?” Dalton seemed to have completely missed being touched unexpectedly, he was so excited about what he'd seen on the screen. On the screens, each of the engineers let go of their hand-made signs, and the mylar continued to flutter in space, even as the two asteroid monkeys made their way next to each other, so they could continue to watch the ever-so-slowly falling glittering squares of metallic fabric against the inky backdrop of star-dusted deep-space “sky."

I wondered if Dalton realized just how beautiful the sight was; his dark eyes were focused on the screens, darting from one camera's viewpoint to the other, but I'd seen him stare like that at CGI green goo doing the mambo, too. He'd come so far in the last few days, but there was no way to measure just how much emotional distance “far” meant for him—

“Is this what my god-damn taxes are going for now?"

I hadn't spoken to Captain Penn in so many days, his voice was virtually unfamiliar to me. Kevan, Sloan and I all turned around as one when we heard that obviously pissed-off snarl behind us; Penn was standing, arms crossed (invariably a bad physical sign), pale eyes glaring like sunlight sheeting across ice, furrowed face a craggy twin to the convoluted surface of the asteroid which still filled the screens on the console.

Dalton turned around a few beats after the rest of us; he wasn't smiling this time.

“Since when—what the hell is this? Ms. Ken ... whatever, is this your doing? I take it you brought him—” the captain pointed at Dalton with his e-book-holding hand “—up here? Were you aware that this is a working ship? All you're supposed to do is check on the status of our Savant. Which I assume you did. What's he doing up here?"

“He wanted to come out ... he's not causing any problems,” Kevan quickly soothed, “I already gave him the figures, so that part of his job is done ... Ms. Kenward was just supervising him. Sloan and I are fine with him being here—” Sloan let out something between a grunt and a snort, then turned his attention back to the engineers, typing in something on his keyboard “—so we didn't want to bother you. The transmitter's in place, and working—we'll be in boosting position in a few hours. Milk run. No problems with having him up here...” Kevan punctuated his short speech with a smile, one that showed virtually all his front and side teeth.

“So what was that on the screens?"

“Moira and Brogan being themselves,” Kevan schmoozed; obviously, he had some sway over the Captain, for the older man uncrossed his arms, and merely warned before quitting the room, “Just as long as everything works..."

Down on the asteroid, the monkeys had finished climbing the surface leading up to the lender; once they got in, and removed their helmets, voice contact resumed: “Isen-Rodor, this is the I-R One—” Brogan's voice.

“I-R One, copy. Guys, your half-time show reached a larger audience than anticipated,” Kevan teased, while punching in something on his own keyboard.

“Male or female demographics?” Moire asked, her voice brittle over the receivers.

“Male ... but he's switched channels. Didn't like what he saw—"

Kevan let the tip of his tongue extend past his front teeth while shaking his head at the unseen engineers.

“No frigging kiddin'. He didn't send the Sav—Dalton back, did he?” It may have been the slight static, but I thought Brogan sounded concerned.

“Nope ... the man's here. Come over here, speak into this mike—"

“Hi Brogan ... hi Moire—"

“Hi, kid ... did the Captain chew you out?"

“No ... Moire. He went away."

“That's nothing new—"

“I'm surprised he came out of his cave in the first place ... Sloan, everything a go up there?"

“Yeah, Brog, lander doors are open—"

Something Brogan said about the Captain leaving his cave made my eyes grow hotly moist: it had all been so obvious, Dalton and the whole Plato's cave-shadows-on-the-wall analogy. Only in this Savvy's case, it was more like voices beyond the walls—

Now that Dalton had come this far out of his cave, I didn't think he needed me to stand next to him, out here in the place where voices and shadows became flesh. Quietly backing out of the navigation bay, while the men sitting near Dalton continued to bring him into their conversation with the returning engineers, I went as far out into the semi-circular corridor as I could while still able to see and hear what was going on in Navigation without actually being a presence in the room.

“Congratulations. You must've aced Obtuse 101.” Sabriah's voice wasn't bitter, just ... resigned? Under the over-hanging folds of her scarf, her smooth dark face was almost as expressionless as Dalton's used to be, mere days before. Glancing away from those staring dark eyes, I noticed for the first time that she wore the skirt version of the standard-issue mining company cover-alls.

Finally, I admitted, “I'm sorry ... I don't understand what you're talking about. I'm just doing what I was sent here to—"

“Oh, stuff it, would you? You weren't listening at all a few days ago, were you? Didn't I tell you he was content? You're acting as if I wasn't doing my job—"

Not wanting the others to hear us, I motioned for her to walk a few yards down the corridor with me. Judging by the sharp swicks her uniform skirt made as she walked, she was still upset, as I tried to explain, “I never said or assumed anything about the way you were doing your job—Dalton's in excellent physical shape, he seems healthy ... I'm just doing what I was sent here to do, as I tried to tell you before. I'm improving communications between one crew member and the other crew members. They're treating him better, and he's responding to them in a positive manner. Things are going much better than they have on any other ship so far ... they've stopped calling him names, and he's interacting with them. Dalton has progressed so much in such a short time,” I stressed, hoping she'd understand that my efforts were in no way contradictory to hers ... but I realized she wasn't open to my ideas as she deliberately crossed her arms over her breasts, and just shook her head slowly, the ends of her scarf making that same slightly mocking snicking sound as they slid over her uniformed shoulders.

“Ms. Kenward ... how old are you? If I may be so impolite as to ask?"

“Forty-three, as of a week ago. It took me ... a while to finish my degree, but that should be beside the point—"

“I wouldn't have guessed you were that old,” she mused, her voice somehow softer, less condescending. “You don't look it at all ... before you received your degree, you were—?"

“A student ... I've more than one degree,” I added, trying not to sound as defensive as I felt. Then, figuring that she'd ask me anyhow, I added, “Yes, my family was able to send me to more than one college and university. They value education—"

“So they're educated themselves?” Her voice was still soft.

“I'd say so ... they both have Master's degrees. But that has nothing to do with Dalton. I've made a genuine difference in his life, here on this ship. Which impacts everyone here ... even you. Eventually, he won't rely on you to bring him his food, like a servant ... he'll be eating with the others. Like a real crew member—” I stressed, but she cut me off with an upward-raised palm in the air between us.

“Truce ... truce. I won't interfere ... my faith urges me to be tolerant, so tolerant of your actions I will remain,” she said in a strangely light tone, which contrasted with the intricate formality of her words, before turning away from me and walking toward the corridor which led to her quarters in the other half of the ship.

Behind me, I actually thought I heard Dalton laughing, as he greeted Brogan and Moire from their expedition on the asteroid.

* * * *

Case # 290727DD/I-R

15-01-58/T. Kenward, caseworker

Day 13: Solo

I'd only fallen asleep a short time earlier, after what seemed like hours of flipping from side to side under my covers, when I felt the jarring impact of movement, shuddering me awake. Not a floor-vibrating motion, such as I'd felt when the Isen-Rodor had maneuvered itself to a position behind the asteroid, and forced it from its orbit with a powerful explosive charge aimed opposite the radio-transmitter-imbedded end of the massive rock, but something more specific, localized ... and intermittently repeating.

Then, I heard the indistinct, wall-muffled sound of voices, male, in the corridor beyond, followed by another whump against the outer wall of my cabin. Silently cursing the obviousness of pocket doors as I padded over to the source of the sound, I slowly moved along the wall, trying to make out what was being said beyond in the corridor.

They were speaking too softly to be plainly heard, but one of the men was doing most of the talking, an undulating, continuous vibration punctuated only sporadically by the other, lower voice. Only when the voices and the minute vibrations ceased did I dare to palm open my door, and then only part-way. During the “evening” time, the already nebulous corridor lights were further dimmed, so all I could make out in the distance were two men, of identical height and dark coloring, walking closely side-by-side toward the forward half of the ship. From the rear, I couldn't tell which was which, even as I realized who they were. Releasing my palm from the pad near the door, I shuffled back to my bunk, and slid between the enveloping covers.

I tried to tell myself that Dalton had to have done this many times, leaving his room at night, to go eavesdrop on the others while they worked late, but I'd been on enough ships following enough asteroid boosts to know that once the target asteroid had been located, tagged and sent orbiting toward a waiting miner ship, or planetary body, no one spent much time at all in the forward compartments of the ships come evening time. And nothing I'd experienced so far explained the sounds against my wall, the resonating whumps which had woken me. Telling myself, One of them must've tripped, fallen against the wall, I tossed myself back to sleep.

* * * *

That morning, there were no sounds coming from Dalton's cabin, no daily morning matinee (a part of his routine he'd never missed before), but I forced myself not to palm-open his door to check on him. I'd be leaving the ship once the Isen-Rodor's path intersected with that of the Berde-Pedar, a comet-mining vessel with a rare female Savvy on board, so I realized that the time was drawing near for Dalton to start learning to function as a solo Savvy—he'd have to continue living with these people, his crewmates, once I was gone, and I wouldn't be around to serve as a personal facilitator, he'd be on his own—completely.

That brief, noisy interlude from last night only came back to mind when I found Dalton and Kevan sitting together at the main console in Navigation, their swivel chairs positioned facing each other, each with a cup of something dark and steaming in their hands. At least one of them had chocolate; I could smell it as I stepped into their space, and asked, “You two have a good night?"

Kevan turned to face me, but his glittering eyes seemed to move everywhere but in alignment with my own eyes. Balancing his half-full cup on his crossed knee, he said, smiling, “Excellent. We were going to be passing through the tail of a small comet, and I wanted Dalton to see it. What did you think of it?"

Dalton started nodding before he spoke, “Excellent ... I enjoyed it. It was ... excellent.” But he never did look my way, instead glancing at Kevan between sips of his chocolate. I felt a twinge of sadness that he no longer felt it necessary to address me specifically, even as I knew his conduct was utterly within the parameters of autistic-savant behavior.

It was good to observe that Dalton and Kevan were maintaining eye contact; feeling somehow that I was intruding on them, I said my farewell for the moment, then left them to their talk of comets and Standard Models. As I quitted that end of the ship, I saw Brogan and Moire coming toward me, both of them far less friendly-looking than they'd been after tagging that asteroid a few days earlier. I tried to merely squeeze past them, but Moire grabbed my upper arm just as I was about to walk past her.

“Temple, where's Kevan? And Dalton?” She leaned in toward me as she spoke, her mouth a tight puckered moue, her eyes dark. As she spoke, Brogan slid in front of me, so our three bodies formed a tight triangle.

“In Navigation ... sitting at the console. Talking—” I began, and the engineers glanced at each other, as Brogan echoed, “'Talking'... ohhh-kay.” Moire's grip on my arm tightened, as she asked, “Did you hear anything strange last night? An argument, in the corridor?"

“Something hit my wall a couple of times, but—"

“Did you hear voices? Someone fighting?"

“No ... talking, but I wouldn't call it—"

Brogan began striding toward Navigation, and motioned for Moire to join him; as she let go of my arm, the engineer said, “And you didn't go out there to see what was... jeeesus—” before running off to join Brogan.

Wanting to tell her, What kept you from seeing what was happening? I debated what to do—if this was something between Kevan and the navigators, it was none of my business, but if Dalton was involved...

The uncertainty was paralyzing. Wondering if I should go find the Captain, I started to walk in the direction of his cabin, until I heard a powerful echoing voltaic snap! back in Navigation, a sharp, hot burst of sound that left a full, rubbery feeling in my mouth. A series of brief, sizzling snaps followed, tiny percussive fizzles of noise, then the human sounds took over—concussive thuds of flesh hitting unyielding surfaces, flesh-sheathed bone hitting thick skin, and the shuffling squidge and squeak of rubbery-soled boots moving fast and sloppy against hard flooring. And the voices ... mewling animal sounds of pain, angry whispered hisses, and over everything else, the inarticulate keening of someone rendered near mute with fear—

Behind me, footfalls pounded closer, closer, then Sloan and Sabriah pushed me aside, as they ran forward toward Navigation—

That keening. Dalton—

Apparently Brogan had grabbed him and held him just outside the room before Moire and Kevan went at each other; he was still holding Dalton around his midsection, pinning both arms down, the muscles in his own thin forearms taut from the effort of restraining the larger, younger man. For his part, Dalton strained to release himself from the engineer's grasp, trying to kick his way free, but Brogan was faster and more agile than Dalton, and adroitly avoided the younger man's jerking legs. Still making that horrible shrill moaning sound, while unshed tears turned his eyes a dark shimmering copper hue, Dalton kept trying to look into Navigation, but every time his head was parallel to the doorway, Brogan jerked his body back into the corridor.

Moving past Dalton and Brogan, I saw why the engineer refused to allow the Savvy out of his grip. Kevan was slumped on the floor, his arms and legs jerking spasmodically, his fingers spread wide in clawed cages of twitching flesh. His eyes were glazed, as he stared up past Sabriah, as she knelt next to him, murmuring, “It was just a shock, it's over, you're all right,” even as the console above him kept on sputtering and sizzling where someone (Moire?) had doused it with coffee, prior to throwing something heavy (Kevan, I realized) against the panel, which not only broke the keyboard, but shattered most of the underlying structure of the console surface.

Thanks to the navigation computers and the ship's main power being controlled by separate electrical systems, it was painfully easy to see all the damage done by the battling crewmen. At least one entire bank of computers was fried, probably down to the hard drives. And from the way the lights on the surrounding banks were flickering, the damage might be more widespread. Glancing away from the ruined console, I noticed Moire leaning against the far wall of the room, hands pressed flat in back of her against the smooth wall, her chest rising and falling as she hyperventilated through slack, open lips.

Finally, she began talking, her voice wheezy, but still strident in its intensity: “Your ... your fault. Had—had to bring him out, didn't you? Didn't you realize what ... what'd happen? Are you that stupid?"

“I'm not the one who trashed the—” I began, but Moire kept on, “Couldn't you figure things out? I can't believe a social worker would be so utterly blind to this sort of thing ... what the hell do they teach you people, anyhow?"

On the floor, Kevan protested, “I didn't do anything wrong ... or illegal. He's a god-damn adult... he's thirty damn years old—"

“And he's a Savant, you prick! His brain isn't wired like yours or mine—emotionally he's a damned baby! I don't care how old he is, he's just not like us. He doesn't think the same! You took advantage of him, you horny son of a bitch! He didn't understand—"

“I'm not retarded—” Dalton's voice cut through the throb of angry voices and sparking components, as he pulled himself—and Brogan—into the threshold of the small room. “No, not a baby ... I'm not retarded—"

“No one said you were, Dalton,” I tried to soothe, but I knew he'd heard everything we'd said, all the insults Moire had thrown Kevan's way,

“Like you ... like ... Kevan. Brain's wired all right. Understand. Not a baby. Am like you. Not a retard...” He'd stopped fighting, so Brogan released his hold on the Savant. I wondered if he'd go over to Kevan, but Dalton simply stood there, staring at the ruined console just above the navigator's head, until he muttered, “Gone for no good” to no one in particular.

“That's right, Dalton, the console's gone. I'll have to fix it,” Sloan said; until he'd spoken, I hadn't noticed him there in the room, but he walked away from the wall where he'd been standing quietly, and approached the damaged console, a small fire extinguisher in hand. Motioning to Sabriah to move Kevan out of the way, he aimed the nozzle at the ruined plastic and freshly exposed circuits, and sprayed a layer of foul-smelling foam aver the sparking mess. Sabriah pulled Kevan to his feet, while Moire went to take Dalton by one arm, to lead him out of the room while Sloan worked, only he shook off her offered hand, and left the area on his own. I started to follow him, but Brogan blocked my way with one arm, asking, “Don't you think you've done enough today? For the past few days?"

That was it. I couldn't stand the way these people kept on attacking me, verbally, for things I hadn't done—

“What is this about ‘done enough'? I didn't do any of that—” I motioned to the spot where Sloan was already starting to dismantle the ruined portion of the console “—and I had nothing to do with whatever happened between Kevan and Dalton. All I did was try to get this crew into something resembling a working unit—a whole crew, not six people and something everyone treated like a freak—"

“Who is ‘everyone'? Moire asked, as she came over to stand next to Brogan, “Nobody was treating Dalton like a ‘freak'—like a Savant, yes, because that's what he is. He's not like us in that way. Which affects everything else he does. We weren't trying to force him to be something he wasn't ... sure, we made fun of him, but we make fun of each other. No one ever regarded him as something less than a crew member ... we just couldn't talk to him. Haven't you noticed? No one talks to the Savvies that much. They stay by themselves, and remember things all day—that's what they're paid for. Not to be mascots, but to work. Hasn't anyone told you about—"

“Ohhh... shit.” Sloan's voice was oddly buoyant, as he quickly said, “I hear you, Arianrod. There's going to be a delay on those approximations—"

An unintelligible gurgle of static, then Sloan went on: “We've had ourselves an accident, with one of the computers—nothing the Savvy can't cover. Lemme get him—"

Turning around, Sloan whispered, “Get him, now—"

Brogan sprinted off down the corridor, while Sloan told the crew of the Arianrod, the silver-mining ship whom Kevan had told us would be intercepting the asteroid the Isen-Rodor had boosted five days ago ... only, the Arianrod needed to get those successive approximations at least three days before it could in turn estimate its own successive approximations for when the orbits of the ship and the asteroid would meet, but it hadn't been close enough for radio contact all those days ago.

Back when there was nothing wrong with the computers, and back when the Savant-Contingent's input was still theoretical at best.

“Yeah, our Savvy's hard to coax out of his shell, too—” even as Sloan tried to joke with the Arianrod's crew, he kept on motioning with his left hand for us to get Dalton here, now—

The pound of several pairs of feet on hard metal behind us, then Brogan pulled Dalton—who obviously didn't like the feel of Brogan's hand clamped down so tightly on his wrist—into the area, where Sloan quickly said to him, “Take this mike and tell the crew of the Arianrod the successive approximations Kevan gave you a few days ago. They need those figures."

Nodding his head, Dalton grabbed the mike awkwardly with his right hand, and began repeating a series of numbers, saying them slowly and clearly, just as he'd been taught years before by the mining company, back when the whole Savant-Contingent program began merely as a way for the conglomerate to score a legal tax break for hiring people like him ... in all the months I'd spent on mining and tracking ships, no Savant had actually been called upon to recite those successive approximations.

But he sounded something close to confident, as he went through that long string of figures, then repeated them upon request from the other ship's barely intelligible crewman, millions of miles away. It was impossible to tell that he'd been crying and keening only a few minutes before.

When he was through, Sloan gently took the microphone away from him, and finished speaking to the other crew, telling them, “No, just a couple of circuits got fried ... the navigator spilled his coffee on them. No biggie..."

“Ms. Kenward, you're confined to your cabin—” the Captain's voice took me by surprise; I hadn't realized that he'd come forward along with Brogan and Dalton.

Turning around, I began, “Captain Penn, you don't have the authority to do that—the company's orders were—"

“Screw the company, and screw their god-damned orders. You're out of here. And he—” the Captain pointed at Dalton with his free hand “—is back in his cabin. Where he belongs,” he added, slapping his e-book against one thigh for emphasis as he stalked down the corridor back to his cabin.

Next to me, Moire said, “Which is what I was trying to tell you. Savvies belong in their cabins. Didn't anyone tell you that before? They're not locked in, but they just stay in there anyhow. It's what they do."

Shaking my head, I told her, “It's what they do because they don't know any better. Or aren't curious. Dalton ... that wasn't enough for him. And as for Kevan ... he is right. Whatever was going on wasn't illegal. You might not approve, but they're both of age—"

“That's not the point!” Moire started to grab for my upper arms, but I pulled away before she could touch me. “That's not the kind of one-on-one therapy he needs ... it isn't necessary for his job—"

“But you were willing to talk to him when I brought him out,” I protested, to Moire and to all of them, “You all paid attention to him—"

“Because you pushed him on us ... because you were acting like that was what the company wanted ... the company sends a damned social worker, we try to co-operate with her. Because that seems to be what the company wants ... but I can't see the company wanting this—” she pointed to the ruined console, and to Sloan as he began taking out circuit boards “—so I can't see them wanting him out, either. Social worker my ass, you're a damned menace,” she finally hissed, before quitting the tight circle that she and the others had formed around me.

Kevan was the next to leave, after Brogan told him, “And you stay the hell away from him, understand? I don't care if he did let you—"

Brogan started to say something to me, then closed his mouth and shook his head, before he, too, walked away. Which left Sabriah.

“Make that an A-plus in Obtuse,” she said softly, before taking my arm and leading me back to my cabin.

* * * *

Case # 290727DD/I-R

19-01-58/T. Kenward, caseworker

Day 17: Status—limbo

Sabriah was the one who told me, when she brought me my noon meal.

“The figures were wrong.” She was actually standing in front of the closed door, her hand moving toward the palm-pad, when I asked, “'The figures'... you don't mean the approximations, for the other—"

Turning around, she crossed her arms over her breasts, and nodded her head until the scarf began sliding around on her hair beneath.

“Yes, they were wrong ... only two transposed numbers, but guess what? Those two transposed digits were enough for the Arianrod to loose the asteroid. The thing orbited right past them, and they couldn't intercept it. So ... since it was loaded with silver, they had to break their orbit, and try to catch up with it. Which took them off course for the rest of their run. Because if they didn't go after it, and despin it, it would've gone on to crash into the Lunar mines. The orbit was that far off the figures Dalton gave them ... Sloan managed to get the original figures off his own laptop, but that was back in his cabin, while Dalton was right there with the wrong figures—"

“Brogan got Dalton ... he wasn't there in the—"

“I don't care about that. Dalton did what no Savant-Contingent is supposed to do. He messed up. Got the data wrong. Savants usually don't do that ... unless they've been socialized for too long. Personally, I'd hoped that what you'd done wouldn't set him too far back, but I guess whatever it was Kevan was doing with him really rewired his brain—too many new emotions, too much stimulus ... you do know, don't you, how the autistic brain differs from ‘normal’ brains ... how changes in routine can affect previous function. And you know how that can mostly be a good thing, don't you? It was good for you, when you were young, wasn't it?"

She'd had the time to radio Earth, maybe to even get a response, but I had been assured—no, promised—by both the last university I'd attended as well as by the mining company itself that information about my condition would be kept confidential. There were laws about that, after all—

I wasn't obligated to say anything, but I'd been away from the others for so many days, with no stimulus, no interaction, save for Sabriah's brief, virtually wordless intrusions into my cabin three times a day, I simply needed to talk to her.

“Yes, it was ‘good'—being autistic can be so lonely... especially when a person is affected with sensory integrative dysfunction. Mine was so bad... colors seemed to scream and claw at my eyes, red and green especially ... certain sounds were all wrong ... and no one understood, they just talked around me, or through me.

“You cannot imagine what it was like ... or how long it took, how many different teachers my parents had to hire ... you can't imagine. And once I could think, more or less like the rest of you, I did not want to ever go back to where I'd been ... I wanted the companionship, the interaction, the interface ... was that so wrong of me?"

That dark scarf-covered head now moved from side to side. She didn't answer me, but did say as she opened the door, “I'll try and get you some movies, and a player. I don't use mine much,” then the door slid out of the bifid wall, and I was alone again.

* * * *

Case # 290727DD/I-R

23-01-58/T.Kenward, former caseworker

Day 21: Status—missed connection for Berde-Pedar.

Sabriah told me that the Captain had contacted Earth, not her. Said he told the company everything, and that they gave him the information they'd promised they wouldn't. She said the Savvy is all right, that he's in his cabin, watching movies. She brought me some of his, the one from his “don't watch much” pile. Two of them are Robin Williams movies, Dead Poets Society and Awakenings. I know she put them on top of the stack on purpose. I only watched them once myself. I know she meant for them to show me the error I've committed with Dalton, that I'd done little better than that prep school teacher who set a chain of events into motion which resulted in that one boy killing himself, or that bearded doctor who'd given all those frozen people that drug, so they improved ... only for a brief, brief time, before going back into that metaphorical cave of theirs. As if I don't know that already.

Perhaps two of us graduated from Obtuse 101.

She did write me a note, folded up small and square like the MDVD jewel cases, and slipped between some of the movies in the stack.

Lately she hands me the food tray and leaves immediately, so I've had to re-read the letter quite a few times, while waiting for whatever ship is going to pick me up, and I assume take me back to Earth:

“Temple,

It looks like you won't be playing Anne Sullivan to that female Savant over on the Berde-Pedar anytime soon. I heard the Captain requesting an immediate transport back to Earth for you, as soon as we cross orbits with an Earth-bound ship. Which might take a while. Until then, you're off limits to everyone on board. Me included. Dalton, he's about back to normal—his normal. Watches his “nice” movies every day. Kevan's behaving himself too—looks like you'll have company on the ship back to Earth.

I realize that you must think me a bitch, or worse, but I have orders to follow, too. We all do, or did, until you came here. But I do realize how tempting, how necessary, it must have seemed to you, to try and bring Dalton out of his isolation. Even as you weren't able to ‘read between the lines’ so to speak. Perhaps that was one of the hard things for you to overcome—I do suspect you still haven't mastered reading people yet. Not the way you seemed to have misunderstood all of us so thoroughly. Just as I noticed that you still seem to have an aversion to the color red. Perhaps, after you managed to earn all those degrees of yours, you might've considered all of your autism-related difficulties conquered. But there's no way to completely erase autism, even though science has discovered the responsible genes, even after all those therapies have been tried. Not that you should want not to be autistic—from the brief ‘conversations’ I've had with Dalton, I do realize that he lives in a special, perhaps even beautiful world. A cave, as Plato may've thought of it, but such a warm, cozy, nicely-decorated cave. And a cave he has always been able to leave as he chose. I never had to urge him to exercise—he took walks at night, on his own. And came back to his cabin, afterward. On his own.

Back when I was a small girl, living in Kentucky with my mother, my grandmother was rear-ended in her car, several times, many years before that whole 9-11, World Trade Center thing made us conspicuous, by the local rednecks. So they did terrible things to her, and to my mother. Because they looked different. Because they prayed differently. I remember asking my Nana, Why don't you take off the scarf in your car? It's like being in a small house, only she told me, Sabriah, honey, I can't live in that car. I gotta come out, too.

I know you're not a Muslim, and I know you don't live in a car. But you are what you are, everywhere you are. Hiding it will only cause you grief. Your parents must've known you were autistic right from birth, probably why they named you Temple, after that autistic scientist, Temple Grandin. Only no one's ever forgotten she was autistic. And she always said she was.

It didn't make her accomplishments any less important. But it did put her and her work in context. Lose the context, and the meaning is lost, too. I hope you can understand. Without his context, Dalton's just another cute guy for someone like Kevan to hit on. And maybe hurt—I don't know what did or didn't happen, nor do I really want to know. As you said, they're both of age.

Even if Brogan and Moire don't see it that way. But as good looking and as young as Dalton is, he's not just a good looking young man. He's special, and he has a purpose in this world. Even if that purpose is to sit around all day watching movies to escape boredom, and wait for someone to give him a set of numbers to remember and not mess up. It isn't an unbearable life for him.

I do admire your effort to transcend your uniqueness—but I cannot condone someone ignoring that uniqueness in the process. Hope you enjoy the movies.

Sabriah"

I wonder how someone like her ended up working with people. When all she does is try to hold people back, make them bow down low under a yolk they cannot tolerate any more.

But the movies help ... just as they helped when I was small, and the colors jumped up at me, tearing at my eyes. Mostly the red and the green. Until Grandfather showed me that movie with the harmless, transparent green goo, and gave me that little burger-place toy, the one with the dancing green blob I could cover over with my hands when the color was too bright, until it didn't hurt my eyes so much after all. I never did get used to the red Thunderbird the professor in the movie drove around, but I liked when it rode up into the sky, and hovered there. Like the sun, only not as painful in the eyes.

I didn't realize how much I'd missed that movie until I saw Dalton watching it. Or remember how much it helped me. Only I'd never seen it with the other language tracks—foreign languages sound so harsh, so bristly to me. Not wormy like Dalton hears French, but still strange.

Sabriah didn't tell me so, but I found out I'm not locked in this cabin. Last night when I couldn't sleep, I opened my door, and walked out into the corridor. The others were asleep, but Dalton wasn't. I heard Robin Williams in there, speaking Spanish.

* * * *

Special thanks to Jayge Carr for her help on this novelette.

A. R. Morlan

* * * *

A. R. Morlan's fiction has either been published in or accepted for publication in over 110 different magazines, websites, and anthologies, including Sci-Fi.com/SciFiction, F&SF, Space & Time, Weird Tales, The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, Vanishing Acts, Night Screams, Prom Night, The Definitive Best of the Horror Show, and 100 Twisted Little Tales of Torment. Her novels The Amulet and Dark Journey were published by Bantam, and her co-edited anthology Zodiac Fantastic was published by DAW Books. Her first collection of short stories Smothered Dolls (which includes “The Gemütlichkeit Escape” from Challenging Destiny Number 8) is coming out in March from Overlook Connection Press (see www.overlookconnection.com/sd.htm). A. R.'s stories “Dora's Trunk” and “Etamin at East 47th” appeared in Challenging Destiny Number 12 and Number 16 respectively.

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On the Challenging Destiny web site you'll find previews of upcoming magazines, as well as guidelines for authors & artists.

You'll also find lots of reviews from James Schellenberg that aren't in the magazine—reviews of books, movies, soundtracks & games.

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Here are some excerpts from recent reviews:

The Telling (2000) is a strong science fiction novel, with smooth and sure writing, an interesting protagonist, and the ingenious construction of societies that has always characterized Ursula K. Le Guin's work. It's also an angry work, as strong a condemnation of certain human tendencies like intolerance as might be possible.

Nekropolis (2001) is a stunning work, a massively ambitious novel that fulfills all of its promise. By some alchemy that very few can reproduce, Maureen F. McHugh takes simple elements and constructs something rich and strange out of them. The book exists in the reader's mind after reading the last page, kind of like an artifact of exquisite beauty, carved and perfect and glowing. Each sentence itself seems as plain as could be, but taken together the writing is astounding, smooth and flowing and seductive.

Burndive is the follow-up to Karin Lowachee's acclaimed debut, Warchild, and it takes place in the same universe as the first book. Although Burndive seems to be based on much on the same template as Warchild—namely the story of a young boy who lives through terrible events, and grows up despite what is essentially psychological torture—the characterization takes us to a wildly different part of society. I liked this book a great deal; it's a complex work that rewards reflection, all in the context of a readable story.

The Core There is a good deal of sheer entertainment from the thoroughgoing B-movie-ness of this flick. The writers and director have put together a good-natured movie, but don't expect anything even remotely intelligent. It's all gobbledygook, as hard as it tries. The straining can get on the nerves, but it mostly delivers the laughs. Not many inadvertent comedies are really worth watching, but this one comes close.

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Challenging Destiny Back Issues

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